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From the 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
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Stories from Everybody's Magazine
From the 1910 Issues
October, 1996 [Etext #694]
The Project Gutenberg Etext of Stories from Everybody's Magazine
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These are stories from Everybody's Magazine, 1910 issues.
Scanned by Charles Keller with OmniPage Professional OCR software
donated by Caere Corporation, 1-800-535-7226. Contact Mike Lough
Vol. XXIII No.1 JULY 1910
THE LAYING OF THE MONSTER
BY THEODOSIA GARRISON
Dorothea reposed with her shoulders in the shade of the bulkhead
and her bare feet burrowing in the sun-warmed sand. Beneath her
shoulder blades was a bulky and disheveled volume--a bound year
of Godey's Lady Book of the vintage of the early seventies.
Having survived the handling of three generations, this seemed to
take naturally to being drenched with rain and warped by sun, or,
as at the present moment, serving its owner either as a
sand-pillow or as a receptacle for divers scribbled verses on its
fly-leaves and margins.
It was with a poem now that Dorothea was wrestling, as she
wriggled her toes in the sand and gazed blankly oceanward. Under
the scorching August sun, the Atlantic seemed to purr like a
huge, amiable lion cub.
It was not the amiabilities of nature, however, in which Dorothea
found inspiration. A harp of a single string, she sang as that
minstrel might who was implored to make love alone his theme.
Given an imaginative young person of eleven, who, when not
abandoning herself utterly to athletics, has secret and continual
access to the brand of literature peculiar to the "Seaside
Library," and the result is obvious. Dorothea's mother read
recipes; her father was addicted to the daily papers. It was only
in her grandmother that Dorothea found a literary taste she
approved. On that cozy person's bookshelves one could always find
what happened to Goldie or what the exquisite Irish heroine said
to the earl before she eloped with the captain.
In this knowledge Dorothea's parents had no ambition that their
daughter should excel. In fact, an uncompromising edict on the
subject had been given forth more than once to a sullen and
rebellious sinner. But how should the most suspicious parent,
when his daughter sits in his presence apparently engrossed in a
book entitled "The Girlhood of Famous Women," guess that
carefully concealed in its interior is a smaller volume bearing
the title "Muriel's Mistake, or, For Another's Sin?"
Having acquired knowledge, the true student seeks to demonstrate.
Dorothea had promptly and intentionally fallen in love with the
son of her next-door neighbor. Amiel--fresh from his first year
in college-- was a tall, broad-shouldered youth, with kindly
brown eyes and a flash of white teeth when he smiled. In contrast
to the small boys and the sober-going fathers of families in
which the summer colony abounded, he shone, as Dorothea's
favorite novelists would have expressed it, "like a Greek god."
It was this unsuspecting person whom Dorothea had, at first
sight, elected to be the Hero of her Dreams. She trailed him,
moreover, with a persistency that would have done credit to a
detective. Did he go to the post-office, he was sure to meet
Dorothea returning (Lady Ursula, strolling through her estate,
comes upon her lover unawares). Dorothea, emulating her heroine's
example by vaulting a fence and cutting across lots, could be
found also strolling (if slightly breathless) as he approached.
She timed her day, as far as possible, with his. Would he swim,
play tennis, or go crabbing--there was Dorothea. Would he repose
in the summerhouse hammock and listen to entire pages declaimed
from Tennyson and Longfellow, the while being violently
swung--his slave was ready. She read no story in which she was
not the heroine and Amiel the hero. At the same time, she was
perfectly and painfully conscious in the back of her brain that
Amiel regarded her only as a sun-browned, crop-headed tomboy, who
had an extraordinary facility for remembering all the poetry she
had ever read, and who amused and interested him as his own small
sister might. Outwardly she kept strictly to this role--a purely
natural one--while inwardly she soared dizzily from fantasy to
fantasy, even while her physical body was plunging in the waves
or leaping on the tennis court.
Could Amiel have had the slightest insight into the fancies
seething in his small neighbor's mind, he would have been
astounded to the verge of doubting her reason. Little did he
know, as he stood now on the bulkhead and looked down at her,
that at the moment Dorothea was finishing mentally a poem in
which with "wild tears" and "clasping hands," he had bidden her
an eternal farewell--by moonlight. She was, moreover, perturbed
by the paucity of her native language. There appeared to be
nothing to rhyme with "love" except "shove," "above," and "dove."
Of these one was impossible and two were trite. Scowling fiercely
at the ocean, she finally gave the bird to the hungry line and
repeated the final couplet doubtfully:
" `Farewell,' he said. `Ah, love, my love,
My heart is breaking for thee, Dove.' "
"Look out!" said a voice above her. "I'm going to jump."
Dorothea sat up delightedly, with her bare, brown legs tucked
beneath her, Turk-like, as she welcomed him. ("Ah! Beloved," said
Lady Ursula with her hand on her fluttering heart.) "Hello," said
Dorothea, with a wide grin.
He flung himself down beside her and surveyed her with amusement.
"Been digging holes with your head?" he asked affably. "Your hair
and eyelashes look it. Been here all the afternoon?"
"Yes," she said. "I saw you go riding after lunch. I've been here
ever since. I love to be on the beach when there isn't a lot of
people bothering around. Then"--she made a wide gesture with her
brown hand-- "all of it seems to belong to me, not broken up in
little bits for everybody." She shook her cropped head
vigorously, and the sand pelted down her shoulders.
"Well," he said, watching this operation, "you came near taking
your little bit to the house with you to keep, didn't you? How
long have you worn your hair cropped like that, Dorothea? Was it
when you decided to be captain of a ball team?"
He drew a box of chocolates from his pocket and tossed it over to
her. She caught it neatly on her outstretched palm, as a boy
would have done, and nibbled squirrel-like as she talked. She did
not resent being teased by Amiel--she liked it, rather, as
representing a perfect understanding between them. Also, once
removed from the high hills of romance, she was not devoid of
humor.
"It was cut in June--before you came. They didn't want me to, but
I just begged them. It was such a nuisance bathing and then
flopping about drying afterward, and being sent upstairs all day
long to make it smooth."
"You funny kid," he said. "You don't care how you look, do you?
You ought to have been a boy. What have you been doing down here
all by yourself?"
"Reading--and--listening," said Dorothea vaguely. She folded
Godey's Lady Book tightly to her chest. Lady Ursula or no Lady
Ursula, she would have died--with black, bitter shame at the
thought of any eye but her own falling upon the penciled lines
therein. The horror of ridicule is the black shadow that hangs
over youth. That strange, inner world of her own Dorothea shared
with nothing more substantial than her dreams.
"Listening?" he inquired.
"To the ocean," explained Dorothea. "It was high tide when I came
down, and the waves boom-boomed like that, as though it were
saying big words down in its chest, you know."
"And what were the wild waves saying?"
"Oh, big words like--" she thought a moment, her small, sunburnt
face serious and intent. "Oh, like
"Robert of Sicily, Brother of Pope Urbane
And Valmond, Emperor of Allemaine."
she intoned deeply. "You see?"
"Absolutely," he said enjoyingly. "And so you weren't lonesome?"
Dorothea, who had spent her afternoon in a region peopled with
interesting and exquisite figures, shook her head.
"You don't get lonesome when you think," she said--"imagine" was
the word she meant; she used the other as appealing to his
understanding. Suddenly the vague, introspective look left her
face; she turned to him with the expression of one imparting
pleasing tidings. "My friend is coming to-morrow to stay a week,"
she said. "You remember I told you that mother had asked her.
Well, she's coming down with father to-morrow. She has never been
to the seashore before. You'll take us crabbing, won't you,
Amiel? And if we have a bonfire you'll ask father to let us stay
up, won't you?"
"Sure," he said good-naturedly. "What's her name?"
"Her name is Jennie Clark, and she lives next door to us in the
city, and we're going to have fun--fun--fun," chanted Dorothea.
"Come on." She sprang lightly to her feet and dug her shoes and
stockings out of the sand. "We can have a game of tennis before
dinner."
Clutching her book with her shoes and stockings, she raced with
him to the steps that led to the bulkhead, and from that
eminence--with the air of one performing an accustomed act--she
clambered on the fence that separated the green lawns from beach
to avenue. This, with a fine disregard for splinters, she
proceeded to walk--her property tucked under her arm.
Amiel strode beside her on the lawn. She was as sure-footed as a
goat; but when he clutched her elbow as she performed a daring
pirouette, she offered no opposition, but proceeded sedately
beneath his hold. Why not? She had ceased to be Dorothea on her
way to a tennis game ("Lean heavily on me, dearest," whispered
Reginald, "the chapel is in sight. Bear up a little longer").
With a weary sigh the Lady Ursula slid finally from the gate-post
to the ground and proceeded to put on her stockings.
Jennie Clark arrived duly and was received, if not rapturously,
at least hospitably. To be frank, Jennie Clark was not among
those first suggested by Dorothea as a prospective visitor. Of
her own private and particular friends some five had been
rejected by a too censorious parent, mainly, it seemed, because
of a lack of personal charm--Dorothea preferring a good sport
from the gutter, as it were, to a dull fairy from a dancing
school.
Jennie had been near, perilously near, the end of Dorothea's
list. Her sole claims to Dorothea's friendship were that, living
next door, she was available on rainy days when greater delights
failed, and that Dorothea, by a dramatic relation of a ghost
story, could hypnotize her into a terrified and wholly fascinated
wreck.
Jennie was thirteen, a very young thirteen--pretty and mindless
as a Persian kitten--but developing rapidly a coquettish instinct
for the value of a red ribbon in her dark curls, and the set of a
bracelet on her plump arm. Beside her curves and curls and pretty
frilled frocks, Dorothea, in her straight, blue flannel playing
suit or stiff afternoon pique', with her cropped blonde head,
suggested nothing so much as wire opposed to a sofa cushion.
She was in white pique' this afternoon. To meet one's friend at
the station was an event. Dorothea was honestly excited and
happy, and she was not at all pained that Jennie Clark's first
greeting was a comment on her short hair and her sunburn.
By what might have seemed to the unobserving a happy coincidence,
Amiel, strolling from his house to the beach with his after-
dinner pipe, was hailed by Dorothea from the summerhouse. She had
run the unsuspecting Miss Clark very hard to arrive at the
psychological moment. Joining them there, he was duly presented
to Jennie Clark, and Dorothea, accepting the courteous fashion in
which he acknowledged the introduction as an indirect compliment
to herself, was elated. Jennie was certainly very pretty. She
tossed back her long curls and talked to Amiel with an occasional
droop of her long lashes, and Dorothea, beaming upon them both,
had no notion that, hovering above her in the quiet twilight, the
green- eyed Monster was even then scenting its victim and
preparing to strike.
Presently Dorothea's father and mother and Amiel's stout and
amiable parents joined their offspring in the summerhouse. One of
the affable, if uninteresting, neighbors came as well and,
promptly introducing a banjo as a reason for his being, lured the
assembled company into song.
Dorothea, snuggled into her corner, blissfully conscious of
Amiel's careless arm about her shoulder, gave herself up to
happiness. The night was soft as velvet, sewn with the gold
spangles of stars. The waves whispered secrets to each other as
they waited for the moon to rise. Dorothea, rapturously using the
atmosphere as a background for Lady Ursula, became suddenly aware
that the singing of "Juanita" in six different keys had ceased,
and that Jennie, having been discovered to be the possessor of a
voice, was singing alone. She had an exquisite little pipe, and
she sang the dominating sentimental song of the year with ease if
not with temperament. Its close was greeted with instant and
enthusiastic applause. Jennie became instantly the center of
attraction.
It was Amiel who urged her to sing again, Amiel who seized upon
the banjo and accompanied her triumphantly through a college
song, turning his back squarely upon Dorothea the while.
Dorothea sat up straight, a sudden, bewildering anger at her
heart as she watched them. In the midst of the song she announced
casually that the moon was coming up. No one paid the slightest
attention to her except the calling neighbor, who said "Hush!"
An instant later, the instant that saw Amiel lay a commending and
fraternal hand on Jennie's curls, the Monster struck. Jealousy
had no firmer grip of beak and talons on the Moor of Venice than
on the crop-headed Dorothea. In absolute self- defense she did an
unprecedented and wholly unexpected thing. Without warning she
burst into song, even as Jennie was coyly preparing for an
encore.
"O fair dove, O fond dove.
O dove with the white, white breast,"
shrilled Dorothea to her startled audience. This was the same
song with which Lady Ursula invariably brought blinding, bitter
tears to the eyes of those assembled at picnics and hunt balls.
It had an opposite effect upon Dorothea's auditors. With
apparently one accord they burst into hilarious mirth, comment,
and expostulation.
"My child!" "Where did you get that absurd song?" "Dorothea,
never try to sing again. I forbid it." This last from her father.
It was Amiel who commented admiringly on the fact that Dorothea
with practice might go through an entire song without once
touching upon the tune and time, and Jennie who giggled
enjoyingly and said, "Oh, Dorothea, you're awfully funny."
Dorothea sat out the rest of the evening in stony silence, which
nobody regarded. She refused to join in the various choruses-- no
one noticed the omission in the least. When at last she walked to
the house with Amiel between herself and Jennie, and haughtily
shrugged her shoulder away from his hand, he continued listening
to Jennie's prattle without giving the slightest attention to her
aloofness.
Long after Jennie was asleep, Dorothea, wide-eyed, communed with
the Monster. This was not an imitation Lady Ursula jealousy at
all. That was an interesting game at which one played when Amiel
occasionally walked and talked with some stray damsel in the
colony. She had no real jealousy of the young ladyhood that at
times intruded. But this was different; here she was out- ranked
in HER OWN CLASS. In that lay the sting. She reflected dismally
that this was only Tuesday and that Jennie was to stay until the
following Monday.
She was perfectly and miserably fair in recounting Jennie's
attractions as contrasted with her own. She, Dorothea, could, at
demand, which was seldom, reel off pages of poetry; Jennie could
sing--to appreciative audiences. Dorothea could swim and dive;
Jennie had curly hair. Plainly, Jennie had all the best of it. It
remained only for Dorothea not to forget the courtesy due a guest
and, above all, oh, above everything, not to show the slightest
trace of the jealousy that consumed her. Lady Ursula had several
times been the life of the party when her heart was breaking. Her
proud smile had never faltered in the presence of her rival.
Well, neither would Dorothea's. She assumed it instantly in the
darkness by way of immediate practice, and fell asleep with the
result plastered upon her face.
In the morning the Monster, wearied perhaps by his session of the
night before, seemed to lie dormant. Dorothea woke jubilant as
the morn and, having roused her friend by the gentle method of
half stifling her with a pillow, rushed her through her dressing
and led her forth.
The ocean welcomed them with rapture; it caught the sun for them
and threw it back in millions and millions of living, rainbowed
diamonds. The world was all gold and blue and tremulous with
clean salt winds. It seemed ridiculous that one could be unhappy
on such a day. Dorothea danced pagan-like at the wave edge while
Jennie watched demurely from the bulkhead.
However, it appeared that even on a day like this one could carry
black envy at one's heart. It was during the bathing hour that
the Monster again asserted himself--this time for no indefinite
stay. As a rule, the bathing hour was one in which Dorothea
reveled. Arrayed in her faded bathing suit, guiltless of skirt or
sleeves, her prowess as an amphibious creature had been highly
commended by that one for whose praise she would gladly have
precipitated herself from the highest pier.
In vain to-day did she perform feats of daring and agility that
would have done credit to a flying fish. No one had eyes for her
except an agitated mother and grandmother, who finally ordered
her summarily out of the water and into the bath house.
Amiel had occupied himself in coaxing Jennie into the water and
giving her primary instructions in swimming. Jennie, in the
daintiest red and white suit that could be imagined, skirted and
stockinged, with her curls escaping from a coquettish red
handkerchief, timorously advancing and drawing back from the wave
rush with little, appealing cries, was as fascinating as a
playful kitten.
Dorothea regarded her with the disgust of the seasoned veteran
for the raw recruit. This, however, her erstwhile friend might
have been pardoned for not suspecting, seeing that whenever she
caught Dorothea's eye she was immediately the recipient of a wide
and beaming smile that even one less vain might have accepted as
a tribute to her attractions. It never wavered even while Jennie
shook down her long curls ostensibly to let the sun dry a single
lock that in some unaccountable way had felt the touch of a wave.
Beamingly Dorothea heard Amiel humorously contrast this brown
glory with her own short crop. Beamingly she fell into the plans
for the crabbing party that afternoon. However, it was this
lightsome expedition that laid the last straw upon the Monster's
back.
The gentle art of crabbing involves the carrying of a
long-handled net and a huge basket, and a stop at the butcher's
to purchase unsavory lumps of meat for bait.
Hitherto Dorothea had always proudly and vehemently insisted upon
carrying the basket the long, hot mile to the bay. To-day, as
Amiel dropped the bait in and handed it to her as a matter of
course, she accepted it with the look of the proud spirit that
will not cry out beneath indignities. She hung the basket over
her blue flanneled arm and trudged valiantly before them.
The afternoon was one of long and unprecedented martyrdom.
Dorothea reviewed it as she changed into her white pique' for
dinner, the while beamingly advising Jennie as to the selection
of hair ribbons. SHE had vaulted fences; Jennie had been
assisted. SHE had baited lines; Jennie's had been baited. The
fact that a week before the offer of help in that delicate
operation would have been regarded as an insult to her
intelligence failed to occur to her to-day. She burned with
humiliation as she remembered that after a half hour of seeing
Jennie's line carefully prepared, she had handed her own to Amiel
with the air of one doing only what was expected of her. Amiel,
in return, had stared at her, and in the tone he might have used
to a younger brother had said briefly, "Well, go on and bait it.
What's the matter?" She had baited it. Also, she had carried home
the net while Amiel had borne the spoils and protested
courteously when Jennie offered an assisting hand. It was dreary
consolation to realize that never for a moment had the proud
smile wavered. She was beginning to feel as though an elastic
band had been stretched for hours under her nose and behind her
ears, and the sole comment her lofty amiability had drawn forth
had been a reference to the famed animal of Cheshire.
From her window she presently saw Jennie, all rosy muslin and
tossing curls, strolling beachward with Amiel. The sight nerved
her to demonstrate an idea that had occurred to her inspiringly
during the day. Once by simply placing a dewy rose in her golden
torrent of hair, Lady Ursula had brought the ball room to her
feet. In emulation, Dorothea extracted a hair ribbon from
Jennie's stock and, failing other means, tied it bandage-wise
about her head. The result was not coquettish. It suggested only
accident or disease. She removed it wearily, and sat down on the
edge of the bed to think. Plainly, she could not compete with
Jennie on the grounds of beauty or accomplishments. Apparently
the fact of being able to swim, vault, and leap from vast heights
constituted none of these things. And yet, before Jennie
arrived--and doubtless after Jennie departed--after these five
interminable days that stretched before her--but why five?
The dinner bell rang insistently. Some one was calling her from
the stairs. Dorothea sat still, with her arms folded on the
bedpost and a new thought playing like summer lightning in her
brain. The thought gradually resolved itself into a problem. It
was well enough to decide that Jennie must go--the problem was
how to make her go. A telegram or a letter summoning her home? A
good idea if there were any one in the city to send it. That was
obviously impossible.
Dorothea walked downstairs with her brows knitted in thought
above the unchanging smile, and in her eyes the look of the rapt
soul momentarily expecting inspiration.
The inspiration arrived during that hour when the denizens of
the little colony sat ring-wise about the beach fire.
The neighbor with the banjo had done his worst, and desisted;
Jennie had piped through her repertoire and was now graciously
accepting the support of Amiel's arm. Dorothea and the Monster,
somewhat withdrawn from the circle, watched a crooked moon lift
itself above the horizon and lay a trail of opal glory on the
waves. Still awaiting inspiration, she regarded it with as little
interest as Lucretia Borgia might have given the sunset that
preceded one of her little poisoning dinners.
Presently, as befitted the atmosphere and hour, the talk of the
little circle fell upon things ghostly and mysterious--strange
happenings and prophetic dreams. Dorothea, who had a love of
horrors, lent a suddenly attentive ear; but Jennie, though
plainly fascinated, uttered a protesting plaint. "Oh, please
stop! You don't know how you frighten me! Dorothea has had some
awfully queer things happen to her, and it scares me almost to
death when she tells about them."
Mirth followed the announcement of Dorothea's occult powers,
which, needless to say, had come as a surprise to her immediate
family.
Dorothea paid no attention whatever. Instead she rose to her feet
and, flinging her arms wide, yawned elaborately. It was a
delicate suggestion, which caused the men to look at their
watches, and the party forthwith dispersed.
Dorothea, for all the sand in her shoes, seemed to walk to the
house on air. The inspiration had arrived, fully accoutered, as
it were, on the breath of Jennie's complaint.
The work in hand called for the dexterity of the true artist.
With managerial instinct, Dorothea, repelling any attempt at
conversation, waited only until Jennie was comfortably ensconced
in bed, to turn the lamp down so that it glimmered in sickly
fashion, before beginning proceedings. Then, seating herself
beside the bed--an eerie figure in her straight, white gown--she
shook her head dismally and indulged in a heartfelt sigh. Jennie,
her nerves already on edge with the ghost stories of the hour
before, turned startled eyes upon her.
"What is the matter? What is it?" she inquired anxiously.
"I--feel--strange," said Dorothea. She turned upon her victim a
face full of uncanny suggestion. Divested of its perpetual smile,
it seemed to Jennie as unfamiliar as a room from which an
accustomed piece of furniture had been moved.
"I feel--strange. Something terrible is happening somewhere.--I
can tell--I always can--I am going to have a vision--I can feel
it--It always comes like this." With a quick hand she
extinguished the lamp. "It will come in a dream," she muttered.
"Let me sleep, oh, let me sleep!"
She made a sweeping pass with her out- stretched hands and, after
a dramatic pause, fell heavily on her pillow, where she instantly
proceeded to fall into a deep and trance-like slumber--a slumber
that prevailed through the terrified questionings, whimperings,
and agitated shakings by her friend.
It is an awesome thing to seek repose beside one wrapped in
trance; it is worse to traverse unlighted halls and ghostly
stairs in an effort to awake the gifted medium's family. Wrapped
in terror as in an icy sheet, after divers Herculean efforts to
rouse the log beside her, the responsive victim fell into a
troubled slumber with her head well under the bedclothes.
The gray dawn was in the room when she was awakened by what
seemed to be muffled sobs from--the figure beside her. In an
instant wide awake and palpitating, she fell upon Dorothea. "What
is it? Oh, what is it?" she cried.
"I have had it," said Dorothea in a sepulchral whisper. "The
vision. Oh," she turned dramatically from the instant question,
"I can't bear to tell you!--It was about you."
"Dorothea, you've GOT to tell me! I think you're HORRID. I'm
going right downstairs to tell your mother."
"Of course I'm going to tell you," said the sybil crossly. She
resumed her chest tones hurriedly. "I must tell you. It was sent
to me to tell you. I wanted to prepare you."
"Prepare? Oh, Dorothea, what WAS it?"
Dorothea stood upright on the bed, and her eyes assumed the
expression of those that see inward--Jennie stared at her,
hypnotized, breathless.
"I saw a room," chanted the inspired one, "a room in a large
city. I can see it now. It is a bedroom. There are blue rugs on
the floor, and the furniture is oak. It has two windows. There is
a canary bird in one, and the other has a seat with blue
cushions."
"Why, that is my mother's room, Dorothea! You know it is."
"In the bed a woman is lying. She is sick. She is turning from
one side to the other--she says, `Oh, where is my daughter? I
want my daughter! Why doesn't she come back to me?'"
"Oh, Dorothea!" Jennie, tearful and excited, began to draw on her
clothes. "That was my mother! It must have been! Oh, Dorothea!"
The sybil drove in the fine point again. "`Why doesn't she come
back to me?'" she reiterated.
The program that had proceeded so smoothly now received an
unexpected hitch. Jennie paused suddenly in her garmenting,
relief growing in her face.
"After all," she observed, "I don't believe mother had anything
more than one of her sick-headaches. She has them all the time. I
wouldn't go home just for that. I do believe that is it,
Dorothea."
It was time for rapid thought. Another moment and the fine
dramatic work of the morning would have gone for naught. For a
moment Dorothea staggered, but for a moment only. "I didn't tell
you everything," she said mysteriously. "Your mother is not alone
in the bed. She is holding something in her arms. She is
saying--" she paused to give her climax its full effect-- "`Oh,
why doesn't Jennie come home to see her little sister?'"
"Her little--?--Dorothea!"
It behooves the villain to be without conscience. No slightest
shame visited the brazen one's heart at the sight of Jennie's
instant joy and excitement. Modestly she accepted the tribute to
her uncanny power; obligingly she assisted her friend to pack;
martyr-like she acquiesced in Jennie's decision that the first
train after breakfast would be none too early to bear her to that
long-coveted delight--a baby sister. Moreover, she cannily
advised her friend as to the mode of proceeding. "If you tell
them downstairs why you are going, they may not let you. They
don't know about visions. Just tell them that you're going home
and NOTHING ELSE."
This advice, followed to the letter, produced no little agitation
at the breakfast table. Jennie simply announced her intention of
immediate departure; all questions as to her health, happiness,
and possible reasons were met only with a parrot-like repetition
of the fact. Upon closer pressing she gave way to hysterical
tears, Dorothea the while assisting the scene with round,
innocent eyes and the bewildered air of one suddenly made aware
of an impending event.
The solution was presently found by a sympathetic and consoling
circle--the child was homesick; she wanted her mother. Assuredly
that explained everything. The lure of sails and picnics having
failed, Dorothea's mother came to a decision with sympathetic
tears in her eyes and a glance toward her own innocent. "She
shall take the first train home if she wants to. The child
sha'n't be miserable. No, don't urge her, Bob. I was homesick
myself once, and I understand perfectly."
Dorothea reposed in the shade of the bulkhead, sand on her person
and a great peace in her heart, upon which the Monster,
departing, had left no scar. Under her head was the Godey's
Lady's Book, in which, over the picture of a brocaded pelisse,
she had recently finished a poem in which "lover" rhymed-- with
"forever." Amiel, cross-legged on the sand beside her, was
whistling gently as he industriously whittled at a bit of
driftwood, little suspecting that at the moment he was taking tea
in a bower with Lady Ursula.
Presently he drew a letter from his pocket and flipped it over to
Dorothea. "Your mother asked me to give you this," he said. "She
thought it might be from that pretty little friend of yours."
Dorothea opened the letter with some trepidation. Presently a
bland smile over- spread her countenance. The day of reckoning
that she expected to dawn upon her next meeting with her victim
melted cloud-like as she read:
Dear Dorothea:
I arrived home safely. It's just as well I did, because my aunt
was waiting to take me to Lake George, but you made a mistake in
the vision. It wasn't my mother. It was Mrs. Gray across the
street and hers is a boy, but I think that was very near.
I think the vision was perfectly wonderful, but I am glad I don't
have them. My mother says I can come again later if your mother
wants me. I didn't tell her why I came home, because she doesn't
believe in them either.
She presented her love to several people and added in a
postscript, "Let me know at Lake George if you have another."
Dorothea tore the letter into minute scraps and gave them over to
the sea breeze.
"Well," queried Amiel idly, "what does she say?"
"She says she arrived safely," said Dorothea.
*****************************************************************
Vol. XXIII No.1 JULY 1910
{pages 44-55} THE GOLD BRICK AND THE GOLD MINE
Fake Mining Schemes that Steal the People's Savings
By EMERSON HOUGH
Author of "The Mississippi Bubble," "54-40 or Fight," etc.
EDITOR'S NOTE.--It is time vigorous efforts were made to stop the
cruel frauds perpetrated on the name of one of the world's
greatest industries. Mining is a legitimate and honorable
enterprise. It contributes immensely to the national wealth. It
has been the source of some of our great fortunes. Because there
is something magical in the suggestion of gold or coal or copper
taken out of the ground, sharpers have made mining an instrument
of successful deception. They have tricked people into investing
their savings in worthless or even non-existent mines. Perhaps
you who read this have bitten at an advertisement in a reputable
publication, which pretended to place the wealth of some western
El Dorado at your feet for a few hundred dollars. Doubtless your
money has disappeared. It is for the purpose of giving you the
protection of a knowledge both of legitimate mining and of the
ways of thieves that this article is published.
AMERICA is the land of the free and the country of opportunity
for all. Incidentally, it is free hunting-ground for sharpers,
and a land of opportunity for the unscrupulous. No such chances
for fraudulent business exist anywhere else in the world.
Americans are the richest people on earth, and the most easily
parted from their money. Those whose sole ambition is to get rich
quick very frequently help some other man to get rich quick.
Society owes no debt to either of these. It is obliged to support
them both. This is wrong both as a moral and as an industrial
proposition. Once, a dollar was spent to mine a dollar. To-day
two are spent: One dollar goes into blasting powder, the other
into advertising and office furniture.
No doubt you have heard the age-old legend of the Mother Vein of
Gold, which appears and vanishes, now and again, in this corner
of the world. Superstition regarding this great original vein of
gold is found wherever men seek the precious metal. The feverish
Spaniards called this phantom lode the Madre d'Oro, or "Mother of
Gold." Now it is located in Mexico, now in India or Peru,
California or Australia. Tradition says that Montezuma got his
gold from this great vein, which lay in a secret valley whose
where-abouts was jealously guarded by three priests of the war
tribe, sole possessors of the knowledge. Any intruder who by
chance or design looked down into this valley was smitten
absolutely blind. Tradition among the successors of the Aztecs
says that when Montezuma passed, the Madre d'Oro sank back again
into the earth, and has been seen no more. Men still follow the
phantom vein. Those who see it, even in their dreams, still are
smitten blind.
Gold! There is no other word that means quite so much. We want
gold; indeed, we must have it. Malleable, divisible,
indestructible, rare, it is the indispensable medium of exchange.
It is our chosen unit of power and success, the measure of
civilization and human attainment. Hence it has always been the
object of human desire. The Golden Fleece very probably was the
sheepskin bottom of an old-time sluice-box, in a day when they
used wool, instead of blankets, below the rocker troughs. In the
vast ruined civilization of Southeast Africa unknown men once
mined probably $400,000,000 worth of gold. There are mines
profitably operated in Greece to-day which the Phoenicians opened
1,200 B. C. Sixteen hundred years later the Romans owned all the
mines in Europe. Hannibal once paid his warriors in gold coin of
Carthage. Egypt was settled by the Semitic races 2,500 B. C.,
because of the gold that was found there. A thousand years later
Job knew about gold, and five hundred years later still, King
Solomon showed what an abundance of wives and what a reputation
for wisdom a man can get when he has unlimited gold mines back of
him. Columbus found America when he was searching for the wealth
of Ormus and of Ind. Cortez and Pizarro toiled and slew in the
hope of finding the Madre d'Oro. The great discoveries of the
world have been made by men in search of gold. The great voyages
of exploration were in part piratical voyages made in search of
gold already found and mined by others.
HONEST MINING IN HANNIBAL'S TIME
But there is to be said about gold mining ways of the old time,
that Tyre sought gold with actual ships, with actual men and
mining implements. The peninsula of Sinai did not sell stock, but
mined actual gold. Gold in those days meant actual risk and
courage. Perhaps even then fraudulent promoters weren't unknown;
but he who ventured, in the days of Vespasian or Hannibal or
Hiram, too prominently to gild the gold brick certainly lost his
head. The mining of gold was then a sober and serious and honest
matter.
In America we place the gold brick ahead of the gold mine. We mix
alloy of duplicity and greed with the virgin metal of our
standard of value. By improved mining methods we nearly double
our output of gold, and so cheapen it by well-nigh a half. This
shrunken gold dollar is small enough; but that is not all. We
adulterate and divide it by, say, another half when we falsely
double its cost. This we certainly do when we issue counterfeit
promises as against good coin; for in civilization and commerce
always the genuine coinage has to pay the cost of the
counterfeit. Your tailor charges you a stiff price for your suit
of clothes. That covers the clothes of the dead beats who did not
pay. To allow the sale of a fraudulent mining stock is to
depreciate the basis of this country's values. Such a wrong ought
not to be allowed in a country claiming an enlightened
government.
It is the thief who is protected in America, not his dupe. The
old law of caveat emptor protects the SELLER of fake mining
stocks, not the BUYER of them. There is little or no actually
enforced law to protect the latter. That is to say, there is
little or no actually enforced law to protect those who most need
protection, those of small incomes, orphans who have no
guardians, wage earners who have little education, widows whose
life insurance is not quite enough to support them, women engaged
in the desperate battle of life and needing more money, quick
money, better to protect themselves. The fence between these and
the natural perils of the world is slight enough. In America we
break it down entirely.
We offer these helpless ones freely as victims to the greater
cunning and strength of men wholly without sense of business
honor or personal decency. When we do this, we also attack the
whole system of savings banks, which is, or should be, the very
bulwark of a nation's financial safety. Says the wolf to the
widow, to the busy professional man, to the clerk, the
stenographer, the wage earner: "Take your money out of the
savings bank. What is three per cent. a year, when I can make you
three hundred per cent. a year? Give your money to me!" We permit
that. Our national government does not undertake to put a stop to
it; our states do not undertake to do so; and this fact is more
possible through actual lack of proper statutes than through any
misinterpretation or lack of enforcement of the law.
The field is one devised by nature for the trickster. His success
does not depend altogether on human gullibility; part of his
argument rests on the conditions which surround the industry of
mining, one which never can be free of extreme risk. All men know
that gold is found far away, where living is high and means of
transportation are scarce; that it costs large sums to find and
dig it, and that such sums are more easily raised among the many
than among the few. None of these attending features has weight
to stop the capitalization of bona-fide enterprises. These latter
are used as bait by men who have nothing bona-fide to offer, and
who make their fattest profits out of their shallowest shafts.
THE "SUCKER LIST" IN WALL STREET
Methods vary among such fraudulent operators, but new victims
continually are found. The "sucker list" of one firm in Wall
Street numbers 110,000 names, selected as those of persons who
will bite more than once at a mining scheme, and whose records
show that they have so bitten. This operator proudly declares
that the only way a sucker can get his name off that list is to
die. In the reorganization of the firm of Douglas, Lacey & Co.,
of New York City, it was discovered that 20,000 persons had money
invested in stocks of the company.
The best bait in this particular operation was a "trust fund"
established for the benefit of stockholders. The proceeds of the
better-paying mines were to be applied to pay dividends for those
which were less successful. In this way, the various directors of
the many Douglas-Lacey Companies explained, it was impossible for
the investors to lose. But they did lose. The reorganization,
intended to save some of the better properties, wiped out more
than seventy per cent. of the small stockholders--widows,
schoolteachers, stenographers, washwomen, scrubwomen--all who
once had a dollar in the stocking.
Burr Brothers, Inc., of New York, used the effective bait of the
instalment plan of payment. Their literature and advertising
offered sudden wealth at twenty cents a share, payments to be in
instalments, "the best twenty offers" to be accepted. It was
pointed out that if one made one's weekly payment large enough to
be included among the fortunate twenty, one could have a nice,
clean certificate sent to one immediately, and pay for it at
one's leisure. If you think the operators could not afford to do
that, you are ignorant. There was an old negro woman in the South
who often importuned her white friends for funds to build a
certain somewhat mythical church. They asked her what she
received for the time spent in collecting. "I has what I gits,"
was her frank response. She enunciated a great modern mining
principle which has made fortunes in Denver, Butte, New York,
Boston, and many other places where handsome lithographic work is
done, and where advertising space can be bought in journals
considered reputable.
NEW ENGLAND "DONE" BY AN INSANE MAN
Sometimes there are victims in enterprises of this sort where
there probably was no deliberate intent to deceive or to defraud.
Not long ago, in Boston, one Henry D. Reynolds, formerly
president of the Reynolds Alaska Development Company, was brought
before the United States Circuit Court on the charge of using the
United States mails with intent to defraud. Three alienists are
said to have declared him insane. In 1907 ex-Governor John G.
Brady, of Alaska, endorsed Reynolds and his schemes, and is
reported to have collected in New England about $450,000 for
these Reynolds projects. Brady gave "lectures" and stereopticon
exhibitions in New England churches. Reynolds took out an
excursion of Boston and New England investors to Prince William
Sound, at one time, and showed them the seacoast of Alaska,
practically all of which he claimed to own. At Boulder Bay he
took his party into a long tunnel, the face of which they were
told was composed of solid copper ore. When they emerged into the
garish light of day, each was given a bright copper nugget, said
to have come from the mine.
ALASKA REYNOLDSIZED
Really, according to local report, these nuggets of native copper
had been taken from sluice boxes on Chittitu Creek, 235 miles
inland. Reynolds, so ran the story, had treated them with an acid
bath to brighten them, knowing that bright bait is better. At any
rate, the good, sober New Englanders went back home and sent him
$300,000 more, which set him entirely "dippy," in local phrase.
Reynolds's scheme was to run all the barber shops, laundries,
bars, and pretty much everything else on the Alaskan coast. A
certain Sam Blum had a store and bank; Reynolds wanted it; and
Blum, it is alleged, annexed $50,000 of the New England money as
a forfeited first payment on his property. A steamship company,
it was said, got $75,000 of money on a forfeit. So the good New
England savings merrily disappeared, in one of the most
spectacular farces ever known in Alaska; which latter is too good
and valid and valuable a national possession to permit to be
Reynoldsized, as it has been. Reynolds, in the belief of one who
knew him well, was a combination of the ignorant enthusiast, the
wild promoter, and the crazy man; and as for Brady, another
Alaskan called him "nothing worse than an innocent old ninny."
Yet, even with so sorry a mental equipment, these two took
something like half a million out of conservative New England!
The ease with which money can be raised for such enterprises by
the deliberately fraudulent or the unintentionally insane
continues one of the wonders of our civilization.
Another kind of bait offered is that of the "prominent name."
This has proved more useful in England than in this country.
Whittaker Wright was able to secure members of the nobility for
his boards of directors, and the English public swallowed his
schemes one after another, bait, hook, bob, and sinker. In this
country we have no lords whom we dearly love, so the names of
prominent literary or scientific men sometimes are employed by
wise promoters. A "prominent mining expert" is excellent bait.
Some good men have been used in this way, and the bait of their
reputation in other lines of activity has served to make ignorant
and innocent people of small means swallow the hook hid in the
lying statements which they have perhaps innocently, certainly
ignorantly, fathered. We are all familiar with the literature of
this class, sent to us under the guise of personal and intimate
confidence. Always that part of the communication is followed by
the blackfaced type where the stinger lies concealed. The words
AT ONCE usually come in capitals, as do LAST CHANCE, and PRICE
POSITIVELY WILL ADVANCE AFTER TEN DAYS. Millions and millions of
dollars have been extracted from the public by these means. There
is no law against it.
"ADJOINING" MINES--GOOD BAIT
Then there is the same old argument about wonderful properties
"adjoining" such and such a dividend-paying property. Very often
the properties are miles apart. They might be within twenty-five
feet of each other, and one still might be worthless and the
other rich. The profits of old and famous properties very
frequently are given in advertising literature of this class, "to
show what money there is in mining." The "property" sold may be a
ten-foot hole in a sand-bank two thousand miles from any of
these; yet this absurd argument is sufficient to extract coin
from the pocket of the American buyer. You can use Michigan to
tout him on to Arizona; Utah to land him in California; Mexico to
interest him in Alaska. Is it not true? There is no law against
it.
Again, the appeal to your mining pocket may come, not through the
advertising page, but in the proper person of the promoter or
owner himself. For instance, not long ago a gentleman from
California came into my office. He owned a mine on the old and
well-traced Mother Vein, of Tuolumne County, California. It had
been well opened, and showed, in development, according to a
reputable engineer's report, three million dollars' worth of ore
in sight, with many tons of the best ore already in the dump,
stuff which would run very high in value.
At the proper time the gentleman carefully produced from his
pocket a little ingot of pure gold, product of one test-mill run.
He gave the best of references as to his responsibility. He
offered to guarantee ten per cent. dividends on all money
invested, and declared that he had a banking proposition and not
a mine.
WHEELBARROW VS. $72,000
"My Christian friend," said I to him, "you seem to have a good
thing. How far is it from your mine dump to the nearest bank?"
"About five miles," he answered.
"In that case," said I, "it seems to me you don't need to sell a
hundred thousand dollars' worth of stock to build a stamp-mill.
You need only enough to buy yourself a good, strong wheelbarrow.
In two or three months you can thus build your own stamp-mill and
pay for it with ore, and still have your mine all in your own
hands."
He could not see it that way, and, pursuing his own method, he
took $72,000 in two weeks out of the city of Chicago, from some
of the best business men of that city. Now, perhaps he had a real
mine. I have no right to doubt that he had; but the point of
interest to the small investor is this: NEITHER HAVE I ANY RIGHT
TO BELIEVE THAT HE HAD. The thing for me to do, had I wished to
invest in this way, would have been to send an expert to see the
property personally.
ENTER THE FINANCIAL AGENT
In this game of plucking the dollars of the poor and the
ignorant, there has been a gradual improvement in methods. The
constant aim has been, first, to increase the amount of the
harvest; second, to reduce to a minimum the risk the reapers run
of detection and punishment by the authorities. Experience in
most lines of commercial activity has shown that the middlemen
often gather in the largest profits and have the smallest losses.
Many of those working the mining game--and by this is meant
selling stocks on wind and water--have made use of this fact.
To-day in the majority of cases we have, in place of the
prospector or the company selling stock direct to the suckers,
the financial or fiscal agent. He operates either under the name
of a banking firm or as a security company, which is generally a
registered trade-name intended as a cloak to cover the names of
individuals not desirous of publicity.
The financial agent of this description is in reality the
organizer and promoter of the mining company whose stock he
sells. But should trouble come along, he is the first to assert
that he has been deceived as well as his customers. He sells the
shares of the mine on a commission basis so large that
practically nothing is left for development. He takes out of the
money secured large salaries and the entire expense of
advertising and carrying on the exploitation. He prepares all the
literature. One of the advantages he claims for his proposition
is the wide distribution of the stock as a safeguard against
assault by wicked Wall Street interests.
CULLED TWO MILLIONS IN FOUR YEARS
In this wide distribution, however, lies one of his own greatest
safeguards against either criminal or civil prosecution.
Scattered over the country are his investors--the mill hand, the
poor seamstress, the humble artisan, whose total investments,
comprising perhaps all their savings, seldom exceed one hundred
dollars each; and, with their savings gone, there isn't money
left to pay carfare to the office of the financial agent, let
alone to undertake a civil suit or enlist the aid of the
authorities. The poor seamstress has no way of knowing any of her
fellow unfortunates. Hence the utter impossibility of cooperation
in seeking to get back their savings.
As an example of the fiscal agent, there may be cited the concern
of Douglas, Lacey & Company, already mentioned, a concern which
in four years, through its operations in this country and in
Canada, culled from the people of this country, according to its
own statement, over $2,000,000 in exchange for stock certificates
in more than forty varieties of mining companies. Here is a
letter written to a woman by this concern four years after she
had invested all her savings in the stock of one of these
companies through this concern, showing the advantage of the
fiscal agency plan:
DOUGLAS, LACEY & CO.
Financial Agents
66 Broadway.
New York Cable Address "Douglacey"--Anglo-American and Bedford
McNeil Codes Telephone, 790 & 791 Rector
DEAR MADAM: June 2, 1908.
Replying to your favor of June 1st would say that we do not find
in our files any recent letter from you, and your letter
addressed care of 44 Wall Street has probably gone to the Dead
Letter Office, from which you will in time receive it.
Now, in reply to your question, we think if you are at all
familiar with business procedure, you will see that it would be
impossible for the fiscal agents of any of the companies to
return money which had been paid for shares and which had been
turned over by the fiscal agents to the treasury of the various
companies and expended in development work on the different
properties.
It is true that we have sold stock for our customers at various
times and we are glad to do so when it is possible. At the
present time, however, as this company is in process of
reorganization, there would be no market for its stock and for
this reason we are unable to help you in the way you request.
Very truly yours Douglas, Lacey & Co.
In pursuing this method, few promoters have had the success of
Dr. John Grant Lyman. He is credited with having gathered in a
half million dollars in his International Zinc operations. This
company was supposed to have valuable zinc properties in the
Joplin district of Missouri. To unload its stock on the people of
this country Lyman organized the firm of Joshua Brown & Company,
Bankers, incorporated under the laws of West Virginia. Through
them the stock was sold until the collapse of the scheme in 1901,
when the investors found that what property it did own was
heavily mortgaged. While the firm was taking in the money, Lyman
maintained a racing stable, had a reputation as a daring
automobilist, and even invaded the sacred precincts of the New
York Stock Exchange.
LYMAN'S SCHEME TO GET STOCKING SAVINGS
Three years ago the papers throughout this country were filled
with the advertisements of the Union Securities Company, selling
the stock of the Boston Greenwater Copper Company. It was stated
that the mine had cost $200,000 and that so much ore was in sight
that an offer of $400,000 had been refused. The Union Securities
Company, with offices in New York and in Goldfield, Nevada,
started the stock at forty-five cents and lifted it to a dollar.
It was merely another name for John Grant Lyman. Not only did the
Union Securities company sell the stock to the public, but it
also offered it to brokers at thirty-seven and a half cents, on
their guarantee that it would not be sold by them at less than
forty-five cents. The brokers began getting contracts for the
stock and then were told that the Union Securities Company was
all sold out.
Shortly thereafter, confederates of Lyman came to these brokers
and offered stock to them at fifty cents a share; and the Union
Securities Company at the same time telegraphed the brokers that
it wanted all the shares it could get at sixty cents. That forced
the brokers to buy of confederates; but when they shipped on the
stock to the Union Securities Company, expecting to get sixty
cents a share for it, Lyman was gone. It had not cost him much.
He owed the newspapers of this country $150,000 for advertising,
which went unpaid. He reaped $300,000 profits. Boston Greenwater
Copper stock can still be found in many a stocking--of humble
folk.
"SALTING" WITH A CIGARETTE
It is not, however, always the city promoter who furnishes all of
the crookedness. He himself may be deceived by those who sell him
the mine. Some of the most thrilling stories in literature might
be written about salted mines. The sale of the Bear's Nest Mine,
and the special train expedition to the salted Bear River placer
field; the sale of the Mulatos Mine to a set of Chinamen, and
scores of other instances in American mining history, have been
regarded rather as big jokes than as great lessons. And as to
such large jesting we advance in finesse. The old way of salting
a placer or a quartz vein with a shotgun is now antiquated.
A little while ago a party of capitalists bought a Nevada placer
on what they thought to be strictly a "cinch" basis. With their
own hands they collected the specimen dirt from all over the
claim, and they watched a Mexican miner pan the dirt at the
creek. The pans showed up beautifully. They bought the claim.
Later, it proved worthless. Afterward they remembered that the
Mexican smoked cigarettes all the time he was panning, and that
he was careless in expectorating, as well as in knocking the
ashes off his cigarettes. The truth was that the highly
intelligent Greaser was using the cigarette trick in salting the
pan. There was much fine gold in his cigarette and under his lip!
THE MULATOS MINE SALTING SCHEME
All sorts of methods of salting mines, even to the injection,
with a hypodermic needle, of strong solutions of mineral salts
into a mining engineer's carefully sealed sample bags, have been
worked. The most honest, careful, and expert mining engineers
have been deceived time and again, and salted right under their
own eyes. Even a bland Chinee may be fooled. Take the instance of
the Mulatos Mine: The bunch of Chinamen who proposed to buy it
insisted on a mill-run test on fresh-mined ore, taken out BY
THEMSELVES, for a five-days' run. They were not taking any
chances, in their own belief. The owners of the mine, however--so
runs the story--had a platform of plank arranged above the
timbers at the top of the drift where the Chinamen brought out
their ore cars. On this planking a man lay face downward where he
could see each ore car that passed. He had a rather hard life for
five days on the sandwiches and water which he took up there with
him, but he managed to drop a pinch or so of nice gold dust into
every car of ore that came trundling under him. The mill-run was
an entire success from the viewpoint of the sellers, although not
from that of the buyers.
There is no working law, let us repeat, which actually protects
the investor against this sort of thing, nor which always
protects even the promoter, though he be honest. The game is
risky all the way along the line, in spite of state laws against
the heinous crime of salting, which latter hath as yet by no
means lost its savor.
THE MAIL AND MINING THIEVES
As matters stand to-day, the man selling mining stock on a
fraudulent basis fears the Post Office Department much more than
he fears the District Attorney. That is the main protection which
the public has against such schemes. But to depend upon it is
like trying to stop Niagara with a dam of reeds. The man who
induces you to take your money out of the savings bank in
exchange for stock in a mine, through such operations as have
been described, thrives by reason of his use of the United States
mails. It is a mail-order business pure and simple.
Let us see what machinery the Government has to protect you and
prevent the letter-carrier from bringing daily to your door the
flamboyant literature intended to lure your money from the bank.
There are five hundred Post-Office inspectors employed in
watching Uncle Sam's mail wherever it is carried, in keeping the
vast and complicated machinery of the Post Office Department
oiled and working smoothly, in running down Post-Office robbers
and mail thieves and, lastly, in keeping the mail free from
frauds. Ninety per cent. of this force is required to do the
routine work of the inspecting branch; that is to keep the
machinery running smoothly and to prevent delays. That leaves
just ten per cent. for actual detective work such as is necessary
in running down thieves and in tracing frauds. In the New York
district, which comprises the state of New York as well as New
York City, there is a force of twenty-five men working under a
chief inspector. Of the ten men assigned to work in New York
City, by no means all have special detective ability, and the
time of these is taken up almost entirely in catching actual
thieves.
POST-OFFICE PROTECTION INADEQUATE
It is only the biggest and most barefaced scheme that under these
conditions can receive any attention whatsoever from the
department, and even then its force is hopelessly inadequate and
incompetent for the work in hand, work requiring the
highest-class detective ability.
About twelve years ago the Post Office Department ran down and
convicted a swindler, Stephen Balliet, who was selling stock in a
mine full of water in Oregon and was known as "the mining genius
of the Northwest." He was tried three times, finally convicted,
and sent to prison. That case cost the Post Office Department
$18,000, took a man's entire time for two years, and required two
trips across this continent. The Government has not tried since
to get many such convictions.
Perhaps because of the pressure of other work, perhaps for other
causes, investigations of this nature are allowed to languish.
Some years ago, when the firm of Douglas, Lacey & Company was
reaping its harvest, an inspector was assigned to investigate the
concern's operations. He was one of the ablest inspectors of the
service, a man with real detective ability and a knowledge of the
devious ways of certain kinds of financing. He made a trip to
Mexico and subsequently sent in a report to Washington
recommending that a fraud order be issued against the concern and
that its use of the mails be stopped. He waited a long time and
then got word from Washington that more evidence was required. He
made another investigation and sent in another report,
recommending in even stronger language that the mails be barred
and the public protected. While on this work he was constantly
assigned also to other matters and finally was shifted to a
station in the South. The concern collapsed some years later,
leaving thousands of people in this country and in Canada bereft
of their small savings. There was no fraud order ever issued
against this firm, though shortly before it closed up it was
informed that if it continued to sell stock its use of the mails
would be stopped.
The burden of proof is on the buyer. If he turns to the District
Attorney he finds perhaps a sympathetic official, without power
to assist him. The man selling bogus mining stocks knows all
this; therefore his harvest goes on. It is better than the
green-goods game, better than the wire-tapping swindle, safer
than selling any other form of gold bricks. A few years ago a
reporter who was engaged in investigating the schemes of Cardenio
F. King--now in Charlestown jail, but then posing as "the apostle
of the golden rule in finance" and selling his stocks by the
barrel in every mill town in New England--made a call on the late
John B. Moran, then District Attorney in Boston and widely known
as a reformer. He asked Mr. Moran's help in proving that King was
a swindler.
"Young man," said Boston's reform District Attorney, "if King was
selling corner lots in heaven and advertising them in the
newspapers, I couldn't stop him, because I haven't anybody to
send up there and prove that they are not there."
King wasn't selling corner lots in heaven, but he was selling
stock in a Texas company that was the next thing to it, so far as
tangibility is concerned. It was only when he actually took from
investors money sent to him to buy real stocks, and pocketed it,
that he was put in jail.
LAWS TO PROTECT INVESTORS
A plan for the protection of the investor by statute is embodied
in a model law drafted by the American Mining Congress of Denver,
and recommended for general passage:
AN ACT.
To Prohibit the Making or Publishing of False or Exaggerated
Statements or Publications of or Concerning the Affairs,
Pecuniary Condition or Property of Any Corporation, Joint Stock
Association, Co-partnership or Individual, Which Said Statements
or Publications Are Intended to Give, or Shall Have a Tendency to
Give, a Less or Greater Apparent Value to the Shares, Bonds or
Property, or Any Part Thereof of Said Corporation, Joint Stock
Association, Co-partnership or Individual, Than the Said Shares,
Bonds or Property Shall Really and in Fact Possess, and Providing
a Penalty Therefor.
Section 1. Any person who knowingly makes or publishes in any way
whatever, or permits to be so made or published, any book,
prospectus, notice, report, statement, exhibit or other
publication of or concerning the affairs, financial condition or
property of any corporation, Joint-stock association,
co-partnership or individual, which said book, prospectus,
notice, report, statement, exhibit or other publication, shall
contain any statement which is false or wilfully exaggerated or
which is intended to give or which shall have a tendency to give,
a less or greater apparent value to the shares, bonds or property
of said corporation, joint-stock association, co-partnership or
individual, or any part of said shares, bonds or property, than
said shares, bonds or property or any part thereof, shall really
and in fact possess, shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and upon
conviction thereof shall be imprisoned for not more than ten
years or fined not more than ten thousand dollars, or shall
suffer both said fine and imprisonment.
This law has been enacted in six states and a campaign for its
general enactment is under way. But let not the credulous
investor suppose that even such a law would guarantee him against
loss. The Secretary of the American Mining Congress, Mr. James F.
Callbreath, offers the following comment:
CAMPAIGN OF THE AMERICAN MINING CONGRESS
"I do not believe that any one law can effect protection to
mining investors, nor that the protection afforded through the
Post Office Department forbidding the use of mails for fraudulent
advertising matter can fully cover that ground. The greater part
of mining frauds are perpetrated without the use of the mails.
"The proposed law, in our judgment, is the longest possible step
toward preventing mining frauds. A second step has been taken in
the form of a publicity law. My belief is that no system of laws,
either state or national, will prevent men from gambling in mines
more effectually than such laws now prevent gambling in its more
common forms. These may restrict and furnish protection to those
who are wise enough to open their eyes, but it will be impossible
to protect all the fools all the time. It is the purpose of the
American Mining Congress, after having secured the enactment of
laws providing penalties for fraudulent representations and
requiring publicity, to perfect an organization to SECURE
EXECUTION of these laws, and also to carry on campaigns of
education showing to investors, first, that mining is a
legitimate business and not a gamble; second, that mines are
found and not made; third, that investments in mining should be
made with the same care and prudence exercised by business men
when embarking in other business enterprises. . . . The next work
of our organization will be along the line of developing some
manner of control of corporations by which paid-up capital stock
shall represent actual value."
Mr. Callbreath would seem to be one fore-doomed to his own
troubles; yet it is clear that he and his organization stand for
legitimate mining as opposed to prospect-selling. In strictly
accurate phrase, it is the prospect which is found, and the mine
which is made and investment cannot properly begin until a body
of ore has been blocked out in a proved prospect. Add to the
glamor of risk the haze of fraud, and the foregoing will show the
nebulous condition of mining investments in relation to mining
laws in America to-day.
What we really need is a Bureau of Mines at Washington. Nobody
protects the mining investor. Nobody guards the widest open gate
into the savings deposits of this country.
The American Mining Congress, it should be stated, had a quasi
pre-inaugural pledge from President Taft in favor of a Federal
Bureau of Mines. Toward this we have made a start. A bill
establishing this Bureau has already passed both the House and
the Senate, and bids fair to become a law. But the activities of
this new department will be confined to safe-guarding
mineworkers. The next step should be to enlarge the province of
the Bureau so as to include the supervision of the mining
industry for the protection of investors.
It seems quite likely that the states and the nation will need to
unite if adequate protection to the investing public is to be
expected. But when did state and nation unite to solve a great
popular problem? When did section ever unite with section or even
resident with nonresident? This is America.
THE ENGLISH WAY OF MINING--HONEST BUSINESS
Back of any movement of this kind there must be popular interest
in popular education. Thus far, the greater publicity idea is of
more value than anything at hand. We may perhaps. best do our own
little part by offering some studies in the theory of mining,
showing just WHY it is risky, and just HOW we ought to tabulate
the risk. In addition to this, we can present, and should perhaps
first present, some of the results of intelligent mining as
pursued in other countries.
Take the Rand Mines of South Africa, operated on the English
basis--mines which turned out more than $12,500,000 in one month
not long since. The English method of operating on the Rand is
this: A corps of experts is sent to examine a proposed
property--that is to say, a proved prospect. If their report be
favorable, an estimate is made of the cost of a five-or
seven-compartment shaft, to be sunk, say, 3,500 feet. The cost of
producing a year's supply of ore for the mill is then considered.
The cost of the mill and the cyanide plant is also figured. The
total cost is then cast up, and the company is ready to be formed
for a half million to five millions of dollars, according to
existing conditions. This money is paid in, and is ready to start
operations. These men mine carefully, using all possible
scientific knowledge and practical experience as guides. The
operation may have risk, but it is perforce honest.
THE AMERICAN WAY--A GAMBLE
Now let us examine conditions not infrequent in the United
States, by no means assigning wings to all English mining men, or
hoofs to all Americans:
A prospector discovers mineralized rock. He locates one or more
claims as controlled by the laws of the district where he is.
Perhaps others also locate more ground. A little work is done,
and then the claims are up for sale. A claim is perhaps sold for
a few hundred to several thousand dollars; sometimes the seller
receives in addition stock in the company to be formed. No
attention is paid to the geology, but a company is formed
ostensibly for the purpose of mining, with a capital of one
million shares at one dollar par. Perhaps four hundred thousand
shares are placed in the treasury to be sold for development
purposes. Of course the whole thing is as yet on a wholly
gambling basis. The property is still a prospect and not a mine,
and hence it is not possible to put it on an investing basis.
Comparatively few companies have ever used the services of a real
expert, although very possibly the company furnishes a report
made from a purchasable local "mining engineer," one of the
cheapest commodities in any mining district, where the wide hat
and the high-laced boot often take the place of a mining
education and a reputable character. This is the stage at which,
this is the basis on which, most of the mining "investments" of
America are made.
In this state of affairs grafters find their opportunity. Prices
in a boom camp are always above any sort of industrial warrant.
There were literally millions of dollars poured into Goldfield
and Tonopah for claims which never had any careful examination by
competent men. Fortunes were made by local promoters and
"operators" out of claims which could not show ten feet of actual
work. Sometimes the entire capitalization was sold out, and the
promoters put the money in their pockets. One operator of this
kind sold $130,000 worth of stock, and omitted the precaution of
putting even ten per cent. of it in the treasury. Fortunately, he
got into the penitentiary. Many of his fellows never had actions
brought against them except under the postal laws, which
naturally are inefficient. There was one shaft of a hundred feet
which cost twelve thousand dollars, charged up to the
stockholders, the names of dead men being used on the pay rolls
as "laborers." The mine boss and the local officers got big
salaries to keep their mouths shut. The real mine was in the
savings banks of America, in the pockets of non-residents. In
Nevada alone, in the past four years, more than twenty million
dollars have been invested in WORTHLESS properties. One engineer
with a government certificate could have saved the clerks,
stenographers, widows, washwomen, and orphans of America fifteen
million dollars at the cost of, say, five thousand. Would that
have been a good investment? What could a dozen do? What could an
efficient corps do? Is there here yet one more future task for
our patient and long-suffering United States Army? What police
work would pay better dividends?
THE PROMOTER AND THE CREAM
Even when the mine wins, the small stock-holder rarely wins. The
promoters often take the cream. Suppose a company is organized
for three million shares. One million is put in the treasury for
sale. Of this million shares, say, two hundred thousand are
offered at twenty-five cents. This raises a working capital of
fifty thousand dollars. Let us be very glowing, and suppose that,
with this fifty thousand dollars, we really uncover five million
dollars' worth of ore. The net profit would not exceed three
million dollars; so that the man who put in twenty-five cents
might, after a long time, get back a dollar. In the meantime, two
million dollars would have gone to promoters, in "commissions,"
and so forth. There are thousands of such cases, and still the
people continue to bite on such bait.
THE PUBLIC = THE MINE
Instances of actual Nipissing rises caught in time by the lamb
are very rare. I rom first to last, the PUBLIC is the mine, AND
THE RETURNS COME OUT OF THE SAVINGS BANKS. In some mines "high
grading"--the carrying away of valuable pieces of ore by the
miners themselves--is fought as sternly as the diamond stealing
by the Kaffirs in a Kimberley mine. In yet other mines, far more
numerous, high grading is encouraged among the miners. The report
gets out that the ore is so rich that the miners steal it in
their dinner pails. That booms the stock. WALL STREET MAKES THIS
MONEY OUT OF THE MARKET AND NOT OUT OF THE MINE.
In spite of all warning and all examples, the average American
will to a certain extent persist in gambling in mining stocks.
Supposing this to be true, it is of value for the investor to
learn something of the theory of mines, something enabling him to
pass on the natural value of any mining stock which is offered to
him. What, then, is a mine? What are some of the inevitable
features in developing a mine?
In the first place, there must be prospecting. This is sheer and
unavoidable risk on the face of it, and it is attended with
economic waste which cannot be avoided. Of a hundred prospectors,
ninety-nine die poor. The failures must be charged off to
industrial waste attendant upon inherent conditions of the mining
industry.
Again, in the development of a mine after it is located and
proved in part, there is more unavoidable economic waste. The
rock is blank and silent. It can only be explored by means of
expensive drifts and drillings. In one mine at Bisbee, Arizona, a
shaft was sunk which had drifts at the 600-and 900-feet levels,
all without result. Later on they found a blanket of copper
between those two levels, from which six million dollars were
taken. Even in old established mines there is something of a
chance, and there are often unwittingly false standards of
values. Which is no argument for making all gamble that which
originally was part gamble.
Any mine, no matter how rich, or how large, begins to be
exhausted from the time the first pick is stuck into the ground
and all its profits ought to be figured on the basis of
diminishing deposits. When your deposit is drawn out, your bank
does not honor your check. A mine is the reverse of a mortgage or
a bond. The security does not remain stable nor increase in
value, but, on the contrary, CONTINUALLY DECREASES in value. In a
mortgage, six per cent. is wisdom; in a mining return, it is
folly. A mine, instead of being figured on the basis of a
mortgage, ought to be figured on the basis of a term annuity.
That is to say, on the basis of a wiping out date. When the mine
is done paying dividends, there is no return of the face of the
principal invested. Yet the great and gullible public forgets
this all-important fact, which differentiates mining from every
other form of business.
CRACKER-BOX INVESTORS
There is every probability that the average investor never heard
of a proper "amortization charge" in the management of a mine.
Until he shall have heard of it, until he shall have learned
something of the terms of life annuities, he ought never to
invest a cent in any mining stock. After he actually has learned
the theory of amortization, he will observe that ALMOST EVERY
MINING STOCK LISTED IN PUBLIC PRINTS IS SELLING AT AN INFLATED
VALUE. That is to say, even the best and most stable of mines are
overrated, not to mention the purely wildcat ventures. Some mines
may naturally be long-lived, others short-lived; yet, if either
pays a good, stiff dividend, THE PUBLIC MAKES NO DISTINCTION
BETWEEN THE TWO and will buy the stock of either. In this
investing, the public has no protection on the part of the
government, on the part of honest publicity, or on the part of
its own careful education.
In the MAJORITY of cases, a mine ought to pay annually perhaps
twenty per cent. of the investment, to be profitable. That is to
say, the actual value of any mine is rarely over five times
actual dividends paid after expenses of operation. How many mines
are capitalized on any such real basis as that? The answer lies
in our own ignorance, and in the shrewdness of the men who sell
us mining stocks. Stocks that are the best dividend-payers often
sell at TEN or TWELVE times the face of the annual dividends. Let
the mine hit a brief streak of bonanza, and the stocks will climb
yet higher. We buy such stocks, or worse; but even a fundamental
acquaintance with the theory of mines would show us that such an
investment is usually a bad one. In a mortgage we do not look to
the interest to pay us back our principal; in a mine we MUST look
to DIVIDENDS to pay us back our PRINCIPAL AND INTEREST also. When
the mine is done, our principal is gone. But how many mining
investors ever thought of that? And how many, when offered a ten
per cent. "guaranteed dividend" for five years on their money,
ever stop to reflect that, for instance, I could take your money
and put it in a cracker box, and myself make money by paying it
back to you, ten per cent. a year for nine years--and then
explaining what had happened to the cracker box! Now, most of us
are just such cracker-box investors. We pay out millions and
millions annually, just that foolishly. And our nation, our
states, allow us to do it. They even--as recent legal proceedings
prove--allow the "inside" operating stockholders to borrow money
to pay dividends to the "outsiders." That keeps up the "values"
in the market. It does not enhance the real value in the mine.
ENGLISH VS. AMERICAN MINE REPORTS
Again, granted even a valid and a well-managed mine, how much
information regarding it does the average investor in the stock
secure? In a general way, he knows in advance that all mining,
whether placer or quartz, is very expensive. Beyond that, he gets
the annual report of the officers, which will tell perhaps the
names of the men who are spending his money, the total earnings,
the total output, the balance sheet, the statement of capital
stock issued--and little else. All of which means nothing!
A well-regulated English company is obliged to go much farther
than this. A good annual report will show the advertisement of
the general meeting of stockholders, the list of directors and
officers, reports of directors, giving details of the condition
of property, including the development work, the tonnage of
production, the values recovered from such tonnage, the costs of
operation, the profits for the period covered, the balance sheet
of accounts, the profit and loss statement, including a working
cost estimate, the appropriation list showing what has been done
with all the earnings, the reports of managers giving details of
the development work, the estimated values of ores EXPOSED ON
THREE SIDES, the probable values of ores not so well exposed, the
working expenses, the construction account, general remarks on
the physical condition of the property, and a map of the property
itself.
What American promoter would trouble himself to make such a
showing as that to the American sucker? Even if such detailed
information existed in the records of the average American mining
concern, the sucker could not get access to the books even did he
have the temerity to demand it.
Professor H. S. Munroe, of the Columbia School of Mines, when
asked whether such a thing as general supervision of mining
investment could be possible, answered: "Yes, if some
philanthropist will give us ten millions to endow such an
institution, and maintain a corps of engineers in the field who
will do work similar to that accomplished by J. Curle under the
auspices of the London Economist. Such work should, of course,
cover all incorporated mining companies, not merely a few hundred
of the more prominent gold mines; and it should be continuous and
not spasmodic. Such a plan is of course Utopian, but I feel that
anything less would be likely to do little good. Even Curle's
opinions began to lose their value within a month or two after
they were written, and are of less value every year. Mining can
never be put on the same basis as agriculture, for the reason
that the risk of failure is infinitely greater, and that it is
impossible to prove the value of any mine or mining region
without spending a large amount of capital, the greater part of
which will inevitably be lost in this work of initial
development."
Those are the sober words of an expert who spends his life in
studying the theory and practice of mining. If such words shall
teach us a little wisdom, so much the less need for laws. But let
us consider what the laws ought to do in order to protect you for
the sake of your family, and for the sake of society, and for the
sake of the savings which lie back of the prosperity of this
country.
Let us agree that no government can guarantee the safety of any
investment. Let us admit that digging gold can never be put on
the same amortization basis with digging potatoes, for instance,
because the soil remains for more potatoes, whereas the ore of a
mine is exhausted and does not raise more ore. Nevertheless,
although the industries of potato growing and ore digging are not
the same, the principles lying back of them ought to be precisely
the same; and our governments, both state and national, ought to
see to it that they are kept precisely the same, and controlled
on the same plane legally. If it be true that no government can
watch after every mine, none the less any enlightened government
can establish general conditions for engaging in mining or
engaging in the sale of mining stock; and, perhaps with yet
better results, it can establish a general supervision over the
mining intelligence of the public, just as it does over the
agricultural intelligence of that public.
NEEDED: A FEDERAL BUREAU OF MINES
The enactment of good mining laws, punishing the proved intent to
commit a fraud as well as the fraud itself, and seeing to it that
capital stock shall be paid up, seeing to it also that all moneys
spent by a mining corporation shall be traceable from start to
finish, is the natural first step toward the purification of
American mining methods. Beyond that, the national government
could take a hand in the game through a federal Bureau of Mines.
There must be some clearing-house of intelligence and of values
in this country, some place from which our intelligence may start
and to which it may return. The public must have accessible
reports of engineers, state or federal, of a sort entitled to
confidence.
The nest of vermin in our large cities, inhabited by those who
make a living out of the ignorance and eagerness of small
investors, must be smoked out once and for all. In this work,
state and national governments, popular education and
intelligence, and the aid of the better class journalism of
America, all must be enlisted. The pages of our press might well
be far cleaner than they are. The publication which prints the
advertisements of a fake-mining enterprise is itself a party to
the fraud. A Bureau of Mines chief can sit behind the desk of
every advertising manager in the counting-rooms of every
newspaper and magazine in America. The press of this country,
when it likes, can, by taking thought, somewhat dim the splendor
of the mahogany in many an elegant suite of offices in New York,
Boston, or elsewhere. It can reduce the reckless and senseless
expenditure of ill-gained wealth which is making civilization a
mockery in America, and branding our republican form of
government as a failure.
We will have a different way of life, or another form of
government. We will have a better administration of law in the
United States or we will have another political party, possibly
another political system. We will clear up this rotten society,
or we will try how we like a different organization of society.
The people of America are beginning to murmur. The burden of the
murmur is that they have long enough been betrayed. Unspeakable
injustice has been done the people of America under the forms of
law and government. It is coming to be said that our law and
government have not an even hand for all, that a few are allowed
to despoil the many. When a people murmurs, let a government
beware. Meantime the more that certain unspeakable things are
reduced in, and eliminated from, Wall Street and the other
"financial centers," the better for our schools, our taxes, our
farming, our industry, our living, our CHARACTER, our country.
After all, the government of this country, as we now have it
organized, depends on the CHARACTER of its average individual
citizen. The end of this abuse of fake-mining enterprises begins
now, here, with you and me, in OUR intelligence, in OUR love of a
square game. By taking thought we can add a cubit to our OWN
stature, and so add to the stature of OUR laws and of our
national morality.
WHAT YOU AND I CAN DO
As for you and me, when next we see the flaming advertisement
advising us that the Madre d'Oro, Montezuma's fabled Mother Vein
of Gold, has once more come to the surface of the earth on
Manhattan Island or near Plymouth Rock; when next we read counsel
that because mining pays in Michigan it ought to pay in Nevada;
when next we are advised to get into the game at once because
this is our LAST CHANCE--we might at least ask to see the report
of the engineer, likewise the record and antecedents of the
engineer; and many, many other things. Perchance we might write
and ask the mining promoter what, in his belief, is the proper
amortization charge in his particular mine. At which the average
mining promoter would probably fall dead.
*****************************************************************
Vol. XXIII No.1 JULY 1910
HOW THE MAN CAME TO TWINKLING ISLAND {page 64-73}
By MELVILLE CHATER
OUT of the great world came a man to the wooing of Susanna Crane.
From the vague southwest he came, now skirting the chimneyed
towns and elm-bordered village streets, now exchanging the road
for the bright rails and perhaps the interior of a droning
freight-car, now switching anew through the edge of odorous pine
woods, yet leaving behind him always a wary, broken trail.
The man was tall and strong, with hair that gleamed red in the
sun, and eyes of a reddish brown. He walked with the free swing
of a world wanderer, yet always his heart strained for a glimpse
of the Canadian border; for some hundreds of miles behind him lay
the Vermont marble quarries whose dust still faintly blanched his
clothes, and there, in a drunken flight, he had killed a man. He
did not know that in fleeing from justice he was rushing into the
arms of love; he did not even know that he was in the Ragged
Woods, with Twinkling Island just off the coast; he only studied
the tree bark and snuffed the breeze, and knew that the sea was
near. At length, well satisfied with the distance he had come
since dawn, he cleared a space among the pine cones, then lay
down, and, lulled by the ancient whisper of the wind in the
treetops, closed his eyes.
He was of the Ulysses breed, this man, a wanderer of the earth,
acquainted with many cities, one whose shipwrecks and misfortunes
had but whetted his love of life; and even while he slept, there
came upon him, as of old Nausicaa came upon Ulysses, a woman.
She, too, was straight and strong; her dark face was framed by a
blue-checked sunbonnet; she carried a large basket filled with
blackberries, and her lips as well as her hands were stained. She
saw the man lying in a shaft of the sunset, and started back,
then, tiptoeing past, bent forward slightly to examine his face.
In that lingering gaze a twig cracked beneath her foot. He sat up
instantly, tense, expectant; then for a silent space their eyes
caught and clung. Thus the first pair might have gazed when Adam
wakened to find her who was bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh,
standing over him.
"Did I scare you, Miss?" at length asked the Man. "I
thought--well, I didn't know who you might be at first." His gaze
deepened into unconcealed admiration. "I wouldn't scare YOU for
anything!"
"I ain't so easy scairt," the girl returned defiantly. "Ef I
was," she went on in her fresh, young voice, full of queer,
upward inflections, "I wouldn't be a-berryin' in Ragged Woods
after sundaown."
She marched onward, her head thrown well back. Twenty steps later
the Man was again at her side.
"Pardoname, little one!" he said. "But, seein' you ain't scared,
an' thar bein' no blaze in these yere parts, maybe you'd put us
on the trail. Guess I'd a-gone on siesterin' till midnight if you
hadn't a-happened by--gracias a Dios!"
Her glance shot suspicion at him as though she scented banter in
the strange, foreign phrases; then she said:
"Ef you mean you wanter git to Potuck, whar the railroad starts,
you've got to walk three miles back to the Potuck Road; then it's
three miles west to Potuck taown."
"An' what lies on ahead, whar you're goin'?" he asked.
"Why, nothin'," she returned with a child's surprised simplicity.
"Nothin' but Twinklin' Island an' father an' me."
There was silence then, but the Man watched the strong, straight
lines of her face, her keen black eyes, her wealth of black hair
tumbled into the back-fallen sunbonnet. At length he said
quietly:
"Think I'll g'long over with you to your island, camarada. Maybe
your father's got a bite o' something for a hungry man. I pay the
freight, sabe? 'Twon't take me more'n a couple o' hours to make
the railroad to-night."
To this she vouchsafed nothing, but swung onward, shifting her
heavy basket from one hand to the other; then a strong grasp
intervened, and she found herself burdenless. In the village
streets of Potuck and Nogantic, shamefaced lads had offered such
help a hundred times, and she had accepted it, flattered by their
homage; but the quick, silent action of this big, red-haired man
thrilled her with strange anger.
"I don't want no help," she said proudly, "I kin carry that."
"Not while I'm here, chiquita mia!" He smiled downward, and his
body seemed to loom over her like a shield. "Say, when I woke up
an' seen you, do you know what come into my head? A little Navajo
squaw I knowed once. Her name was Moonlight Water, but the
fellers called her Little Peachey. But she was twenty-five, and
you--well, now, how old might you be?"
"Goin' on eighteen," she would have answered nonchalantly to any
one else; for him there woke from the depths of her nature a
fierce retort:
"Give us that basket! I ain't a-goin' to let you carry it a speck
further."
"ALL right," he acquiesced with broad, kind humor, vet without
relinquishing his burden. "ALL right, chiquita mia! Never you
mind me, Little Peachey!"
They gained a bare tongue of land lapped by water. She stepped
into a canoe, the Man following. Very quickly he took the paddle
from her and put forth with strong, practiced strokes, cheering
himself onward with snatches of a queer, guttural burden which he
had picked up from a negro chantey-singer on some Southern
cotton-wharf.
Straight ahead lay the island, breasting the Atlantic swell. Seen
from the distant hills, the red sunset strikes its outpost cliffs
for a moment's splendor, and so it is called Twinkling Island.
The girl said not a word, nor indeed was it necessary. He found
the beach without trouble, helped her ashore, and carried the
canoe up the slope on his back. A hundred yards onward they
encountered a low, rambling house and the vague shape, in the
twilight, of an elderly man smoking his pipe on the steps.
The stranger set down the canoe and gave an account of himself.
But even as the great Ulysses was wont to name a false lineage
and give a feigned story to his hosts, so this man said his name
was McFarlane--which it was not--and told a wily tale of having
been directed to a logging camp where hands were needed, of
alighting at the wrong station and losing his way in an attempted
short cut through the woods. Meanwhile his listener, a man of
weather-beaten face and a great shock of gray hair, observed him
with shrewd attention. At length he replied:
"Thar's few strangers git to Twinkling Island; but so long as
you're here, you're welcome to our plain victuals. The money's
neither here nor thar. Git supper, daughter. Seems you're mighty
particular to git that canoe high an' dry to-night."
The girl wheeled abruptly and strode indoors, flashing at the
stranger a covert, half-defiant glance.
"Gals are queer cattle," mused old Crane, drawing off his
fisherman's boots. " 'Pears to give 'em a kind o' satisfaction to
set a man to work. Her mother was just the same, before her."
The guest said nothing; but the realization that the girl who had
grudged his taking her basket had afterward suffered him to carry
her canoe quite an unnecessary distance, seemed to yield him no
unpleasant thoughts.
They sat down to supper in a low'ceiled room of smoked rafters.
The stranger ate hungrily and with few words, yet always his gaze
followed the girl's slim figure as she moved to and fro, waiting
on the board. As the food disappeared, the talk sprang up. The
girl brought in a huge pitcher of cider and left the men by the
fireplace, while she passed back and forth, clearing away the
dishes. Crane set out a decanter of whisky, which spirit he mixed
sparingly with his cider, as did also his guest--none too
sparingly.
Now was the Man's heart loosened, and he told of all he had seen
and done and lived; of his spendthrift youth, passed aboard tramp
freighters between Lisbon and Rio, Leith and Natal, Tokyo,
Melbourne and the Golden Gate--wherever the sea ran green; of
ginseng-growing in China, shellac gathering in India,
cattle-grazing in Wyoming. He spoke of Alaskan totem-poles, of
Indian sign language, of Aztec monoliths buried in the forest. He
sang "Lather an' Shavin's," "La Golondrina," "The Cowboy's
Lament," and, clicking his fingers castanet-wise, hummed little
Spanish airs whose words he would by no means translate.
Crane marveled that this man should be still on the hitherward
side of thirty; and as the stranger sat there, his very clothes,
poor rags of civilization, seemed to bulk with heroic lines, his
face to reflect man's primal freedom, while his every word rang
with the sheer joy of the things he had seen and known.
At a break in the talk, the girl, who, though she had constantly
busied herself about the room, had missed not a word, nodded
significantly to her father, then walked from the house and out
into the night. He glanced after her for a moment, then turned
with a queer smile.
"We're all 'baout the same, I reckon," he said, "so far as furren
countries is consarned. That's to say, a man allaways conceits
thar's a heap o' promise waitin' for him, somewhar over yonder.
Naow, you've seen sights enough for a hundred men. Contrariwise,
thar's my gal--never been further'n the Caounty Fair. But that
don't stop her; no sirree, human nature can't be stopped. Every
night, fair or storm, she walks daown an' sits on the rocks,
lookin' seaward, before she turns in. She's done it ever since
she was SO high. Why, thar's nothin' to see but the Atlantic an'
a piece o' foreland to the northwest! But her fancy is, the sea's
a-bringin' her somethin'--that's what she used to say as a
kid--somethin', she don't rightly know what. _I_ say it's just
furren countries--pieces she's got outer story books, an' yarns
she's heard the fishermen tell--that's what's she's hankerin'
for, Mr. McFarlane. So ye see, as I say, we're all 'baout the
same, that way."
"When I first seen her," began the Man tentatively, "I could ha'
sworn that--See here, now! Ain't thar still the leavin's of a
redskin outfit up this way?"
"Why, yes," returned the other, with some compunction. "I don't
talk much 'baout it--not that it's a thing to he ashamed of; but
I wouldn't give the gal a handle to think herself different from
any one else hereabout. The truth is, her mother's mother was
pretty near to a full-blooded Ojibway--not the kind you've seen
plaitin' baskets for summer boarders, but a clean,
straight-backed red woman, an' she claimed descent from one o'
their big chiefs. I'm English stock myself, but the wild breed
mixes slow: it's in her blood, Mr. McFarlane, and sometimes it
worrits me. Thar's days she won't speak nor eat, but just goes
off to the woods an' makes little trinkets out o' pine needles
an' bark, and then I know the fit's on her. And proud! Thar's not
a man hereabout she'd lift an eye at, and one feller that
wouldn't take "no" got his head split open with an oar. Sometimes
I've thought that ef she was married to a strong man--strong AND
kind, d'ye see?--'twould be the best thing for her."
At this the stranger, who had missed no word, leaned quickly
forward, the firelight striking his firm face. With the poise of
conscious power he said quite simply:
"I'm the man!"
They eyed each other a moment, Crane measuring the Man who had
come, the Man inviting measurement.
"You mean--?" asked the father. He paused as if welcoming
interruption, but it was not in this man's slow, sure nature to
interrupt. "Tell us what you do mean!"
"I mean," repeated the other slowly, "that I'M THE MAN! I love
that little gal, I want to marry her. O' course you objeck:
that's natural, that's right. I like your objectin', an' I'm
going to fight it to a show-down. First you'll say, `You're
verruckt--crazy.' See hyar now! I've lived life, I have, and I've
seen a drove o' women, hither an' yon, but not one of 'em could
hold me, no more'n an ordinary slipknot could hold stuff on a
packsaddle. I'm no lightweight, an' I need the diamond hitch. But
to-day, when I seen Little Peachey in the scrub over yonder, why,
it was different, and I knowed it right quick. Ever broke a
horse, have you? Well, before you've got your lassoo coiled, the
critter's eyes'll tell you just what sort o' tea-party you're
goin' to have. Thar was a man once--a hoss wrangler--an' the
easier a hoss broke, the more he'd mouch around an' hang his
head, real melancholy and sad-eyed. The only minutes o'
slap-bang-up joy that came his way was when he corralled a bucker
whose natural ability to roll on him an' kick his brains out left
no percentage o' chance in the player's favor. Maybe that's what
I seen in Little Peachey to-day. Just now you said the wild breed
mixes slow. It does: for it sticks out, waitin' for its own kind.
And by that same token, blood talks to blood--aye, even without
no Indian sign-language. Maybe all these years Little Peachey,
settin' out on them rocks, has been a-watchin' for more than
foreign countries."
"Aye, mebbe that's all right." Crane paced the floor, and his
voice rose savagely: "Don't know but what your palaver mightn't
win plenty o' foolish gals. But who are ye? What's your trade?
Whar's your folks? Thar's lots o' rogues afoot. Do you allow I'd
let the first stranger in Ragged Woods talk marriage to my
daughter? What have you said? What's between you? Out with it, or
I'll have you in Rockledge Jail by to-morrow morning!"
The Man who had come nodded response with imperturbable gravity.
"I like your talk," he said. "It comes straight off the hip, an'
it calls for a straight answer. What have I spoke to her?
Nothin'! What's between us? Nothin' but the makin's! Next,
touchin' myself: Since sixteen I've been kickin' up the dust o'
the earth till my home is anywhar immediately convenient. Once I
had a brother in New Orleans, another in the Northwest, and
another who drank himself accidentally into the British army an'
died in the Sudan. We were wanderers, the lot of us. I'm
Scotch-Irish, and my old mother used to claim we harked back to
the kings o' some outfit I've forgotten. But blood-facts is no
more proof than specimens from an unprospected claim. Friends? I
make 'em everywhar: any one on the top o' the earth who's got the
makin's of a man kin call me friend. Yet right here an' now I
wouldn't touch the twelve apostles for an assay on my character.
'Cause why? 'Cause I hold that, just like a man lays in his own
little square o' earth, so a man stands alone on his own little
piece o' reputation. Good or bad, friends or no friends, it's
his'n; and the Almighty files a pretty good chart of it right on
his face. I want you to size me up accordingly."
Again the father gazed deeply at the Man who had come, and again
the Man gave him the full of his eyes. Crane's glance shifted
suspiciously from the other's face to the decanter and back
again; the Man immediately responded by lifting his glass.
"Fill that up three times raw," he said, "and I'll swaller it in
three breaths, just to show you what a drink IS. No, sir, it's
hot your picayune drop o' spirits that's talkin'--it's me.
Acabado! Finished!" And, tossing the contents of his glass into
the fire, he replaced it upside down on the table.
"Yes," said Crane wonderingly, "you're sober--and you're honest.
You certainly are honest!" He paused as if to steel himself. "But
what o' that? Why should you come between me and my child in one
night, after these twenty years we've spent--we've spent--"
Simultaneously his words failed and his shoulders drooped. "See
here, now: Stay along and work for me awhile. I'll give you half
shares in the boat. But just wait, wait awhile. Some day you'll
speak to her about it, and then--then mebbe I'll see it
different."
But the Man rose restively.
"It comes hard on you," he mused, "aye, mighty hard; but it ain't
all my doin', Mr. Crane, nor yet Little Peachey's. It's something
bigger'n the lot of us: it's nature. You might as well put your
back up against a landslide. As to stayin' on here, 'tain't in
me: I must hit the trail to-morrow morning. But to-night thar's
somethin' in here"---and he struck his breast--"that won't keep:
it's got to be said. I've spoken my little piece, an' you say you
size me for a man. Bien! Bein' a man, I take no favors. No sir, I
ain't no empty-handed brave. Little Peachey bein' the squaw for
me, an' I havin' told you so, an' smoked your tobacco an' drunk
your whisky, I hereby deliver."
He drew out a roll of bills and tossed them upon the table,
observing whimsically:
"Two hundred an' thirty-odd dollars, honestly come by, an' all
the estate, real or otherwise, whereof I stand possessed. Money
talks. Take it; it's yours. An' now I'm goin' to find Little
Peachey."
He strode out into the night and toward the forelands, his ears
guided by the monotonous crash and moan of the long Atlantic
swell.
Standing on the cliff was a wind-fluttered figure that turned at
the sound of his step, with eyes defiantly alert.
"You knew I'd come," he said simply, drawing close to her.
"Peachey, little Peachey, what's them waves a-sayin' to the
rocks? It's: `ME! YOU! ME! YOU!' Ain't they always been a-sayin'
it? Kin you stop 'em, little Peachey? And that's the words I'm
a-standin' here now fer to say to you."
"I ain't a-goin' to listen," she cried sharply, drawing back. "I
don't want none o' your words. You just leave me alone, now,
Mister--Mister----"
"Why, names don't count between us, chiquita," said he, with his
great-hearted smile. "I'm just a man, I am, an' you're just a
woman; and rightly I don't know no name for the thing that's been
a-callin' between us ever since I seen you in the woods. But I
kin see it in your face, Peachey, an' you kin see it in mine;
it's a-lookin' at me through them eyes o' yourn----"
"Don't you look at me!" she cried, flinging an arm across her
face. "I hate you, you--Man. Don't you come near me, naow! I hate
you, I could kill you!"
But he only smiled down upon her kindly, understandingly.
"That's what the father said--aye, or somethin' mighty like it;
but I told him, I wrastled with him till he savvied. And--makin'
no secrets between us, Peachey--I paid him two hundred dollars
down, to call it quits. Why, what's a few dollars? They don't cut
no figure between you and me, 'cause I love you, little Peachey,
an' I know right down in your heart you love me, too."
His voice quivered deeply as he drew near and laid his hands on
her shoulders.
Instantly she raised her face, and their glances met in one quick
flare. He felt her shiver in his grasp like some panic-stricken
animal, then she turned and fled from him.
He followed, calling after her to stop; yet the lust of the chase
swelled within him, and he knew he but loved this woman the more
that she was not lying tamed within his arm. Breasting the house,
he saw that she had swerved toward the island's long, leeward
neck, from whence there was thrown a narrow pile-bridge
connecting it with the mainland. His feet rang on the planks as
she gained the opposite shore; and his heart laughed with joy,
for he divined the instinct that had called her, not to her
father's side, but to the mysterious heart of the woods.
Now he felt beneath him the soft pad of pine needles, little
twigs switched his face, and warm, odorous airs breathed their
welcome. Through the dimness he saw her gain the crest of a
ridge, running lightly with long strides, and, as he reached the
spot, from the hollow beneath there rang her voice flung back in
mocking laughter. By the trail's wide curve and the shelving land
he perceived that they were skirting the edge of inland waters;
more than this he knew nothing save that, through vista after
vista, mile by mile, her flying feet beckoned him onward, and
that her heart was singing to his the last wild defiance of the
almost-won.
At a sharp turn he came suddenly upon a cleared space shoring
along the water's edge, lit by a blazing camp-fire. Within the
circle of the glow she stood, a spent, panting figure, half
supported by two men. A hunting-dog dashed forward, menacing the
oncomer with stiffened back and bared teeth. The man strode into
the group and said with quiet courtesy:
"Good evening, gentlemen. I am glad you rounded her up, for both
consarned. Peachey, my hat's off to you an' all your tribe: you'd
have run till you dropped. I see, gentlemen, that you're sizin'
me up, which is natural an' gratifyin'. But things is square an'
satisfactory between me and her, I do assure you."
The younger of the two--a tall, keen-faced man of city-bred
appearance--turned to the girl and said with irritation:
"I don't understand. What does he mean? Are you his wife?"
She was leaning against a tree, her face averted. "No!" she
panted vehemently. "No, no!"
"Tell yer it's Crane's gal," insisted the second man. "They live
over yonder on the island. I pointed it aout a-comin' through the
woods, the day you landed up here, Mr. Hemsley."
"Have you any claim on this girl?" demanded Hemsley, wheeling
upon the stranger.
"Touchin' claims," returned the other, with sure emphasis, "I am
not for filin' mine with the first party immediately convenient.
The claim is filed O. K. elsewhere, and at present, as you're
prospectin' on the hither side o' my line, I'll put one straight
question to you: Did, or did not, Little Peachey ask you for
protection?"
"Why, no," retorted Hemsley, a trifle confused, "she didn't--not
in so many words." He turned to the girl. "Who is this man? Tell
me everything; you needn't be afraid, Miss Crane."
"I'm not afraid!" she flashed sullenly. "He was a-layin' in
Ragged Woods this afternoon, an' he carried my berry basket home
an' stayed to supper. And afterward he caught hold o' me, he did,
an' tried to kiss me; an' I ran away 'cause--'cause I hate him. I
hate him!"
Her shrill cry ended in a passionate gesture. Wheeling, she
marched down the slope to the water's edge, where she stood
looking out into the night. All at once the man threw his face up
to the sky and burst into a great roar of laughter.
"Right you are, Little Peachey!" he called. "Thar ain't no more
to be said than that--just you an' me in the Ragged Woods at
sundown. An' now--Blessed if we ain't downright stampeded! It's a
reg'lar round-up, Peachey!" And he laughed again uncontrollably.
"Well," said Hemsley at length, "I don't like the looks of
things, and I'm going to make it my business to take Miss Crane
home to her father. I advise you not to make any trouble until
you've proved who you are. Rockledge County Jail is only six
miles away."
The other sobered to a statue, then turned, regarding Hemsley
with mild fixity.
"Gentlemen," he said, "gentlemen both. I ain't askin' for your
help, and, as far as I can see, neither is Peachey. I mean it.
Gentlemen, a mule is a most onsafe critter. Even when you go to
his funeral, you'll do well to sit at the head of the coffin."
Then all three turned quickly, for there had arisen from below
the sound of a grating keel.
"That settles it," said Hemsley with dry satisfaction. "Miss
Crane has gone home in the canoe. So much the better: I'm not
looking for trouble." And he turned away.
But the Man gave one great laugh, then he was off like a shot,
down the slope and into the water. At shoulder-depth he overtook
the canoe and clung to its stern.
"Go up forward, Little Peachey," he cried, "an' sit mighty still
till I swing in, else we'll be swimmin' in another minute.
There!"
And drawing himself up over the stern, he seized the paddle,
while the canoe leaped forward beneath his powerful strokes. From
somewhere along the shore came the sound of voices, but the
camp-fire blazed deserted. Gradually its light diminished to a
twinkling spark in the blackness. For a while no word was spoken,
the man bending to his task, the girl crouching with averted face
in the extreme bow. Then a little new moon peered over the
distant pine tops, the heavens spread their starry veil, and the
hour of Susanna Crane's wooing had come.
"Me! You!" intoned the Man, to the sweep of his paddle. "Me! You!
That's what the waves were sayin', that's what you kep' a-callin'
to me through the woods, that's what the stars are writin' on the
sky--Me! You! Big Chief, oh, you heap Big Chief, somewhar up
yonder, ain't you l'arned me some things this day? Peachey, me
and another man, down in the marble quarries, got fightin' in
liquor, an' he drew a gun on me, an' I killed him with it. Then I
got away quick and careless-like; but the Big Chief he leads me
up here an' sets me in the woods, an' sends you along the trail.
An' while I'm lyin' thar asleep, He tells me in a dream, `You
proud man! You unbroke bucker! Maybe you kin kill a man, but I've
got my own good way o' tamin' you and bringin' you home.' Blood
for blood I thought He meant, but I wakes up and--Que
gracia!--thar you stands. And your face it says to me, `Come on,
you wicked, red-handed man. God's a-callin'.' And I says to
myself real sudden, like I was at a camp meetin', `Praise God!'
Then, when we ran into the camp, just now, who was thar but
Hemsley, the county sheriff, whose deputies have been after me
for a week! Maybe the Big Chief's savin' me to l'arn me something
more. So again I says, `Praise God!'
"Will you travel with me, camarada?" he went on. "The whole big
world's waitin' for us. I kin read an' write, an' my arms are
strong. We'll ride the plains an' climb the hills an' swim in the
rivers, and when you're tired I'll carry you on my shoulder. Then
we'll take in the big, flat cities, Little Peachey, an' walk
around 'em at night, lookin' on friendly. Yes, we'll drop in at
all of 'em, stringin' out across the country like sideshows on
the old Chicago Midway. And one o' these days, when we're gittin'
real old, we'll pull up stakes an' start off to locate our last
campin' ground. Thar ain't no maps nor surveys to it; it's just
somewhar over yonder, and we'll know it on sight, Little Peachey.
Maybe it's some picayune island chucked into the middle o' the
ocean, with one high rock whar we can sit and watch the sun
a-risin' an' the sun a-settin', an' the seagulls flyin'. And
we'll talk over old times, Little Peachey, an' we'll just sit an'
watch an' wait thar together till--till thar ain't nothin' left
at all, only the rocks an' the sky an' the gulls a-screamin' at
the sea.
"Peachey, a man read me some pieces out o' a book once, and I
wrote 'em down an' learned 'em.
" `For springtime is here,' it says, `thou soul unloosened--the
restlessness after I know not what. Oh, if we could but fly like
a bird! Oh, to escape, to sail forth as on a ship!' Camarada,
give me your hand. I will give you myself, more precious than
money. Will you give me yourself? Will you travel with me? Shall
we stick by each other as long as we live?"
The chant of his voice died away upon the night, and there was no
sound but the soft ripple of the water under keel. In the bow sat
the girl, motionless as a crouched Indian, her face fixed upon
the nearing shore.
As the water shoaled, the Man stroked powerfully, landing the
canoe sternforemost; then he stepped forth, drew it along the
bank, and said:
"Camarada, give me your hand!"
But already the girl had risen, steadying herself with the bow
paddle. With a sinuous movement she eluded his arms, and fled;
then voices woke amid the pines, and the Man strode forward, to
find his way blocked by two men holding the sobbing girl between
them.
"I've seen enough of this," said Hemsley, facing him, "to know
what you are. Miss Crane, can you find your way home alone? Jim,
you and I will walk this man over to Rockledge."
"Peachey!" called the Man, retreating instantly. "Come on over
here; thar's goin' to be trouble. Git behind me, Little Peachey!"
In the landing place there was driven a heavy stake. He drew this
forth, then advanced, saying earnestly:
"Gentlemen both, you size me up wrong. Now, I ain't lookin' for
trouble, but don't you bank too strong on takin' me anywhar with
you to-night."
Hemsley's right hand drew backward, then came the level glitter
of a long revolver barrel. "Drop that!" he began.
But suddenly something flashed before his face, and the keen edge
of a boat-paddle bit numbingly into his extended hand; then the
girl darted forward to where the revolver lay glistening among
the pine needles.
"Well struck, Little Peachey," cried the Man; and he stepped
protectingly in front of her, with upraised stake. But she stood
from behind him and leveled the revolver full at Hemsley.
"I don't want your help," she said. The words came torn from her
in sobbing whispers. "Git! Don't you come back no more. Don't you
send no one lookin' for this man. I kin take care o' myself, I
guess."
And the look in her eyes warned them to go. Now the Man and the
Woman were alone in the black hush of the pine woods.
"I saved you," she said at length; "now go away from here. Yes,
go!" And as her face lifted defiantly to his, her voice slid
upward like the lonely, untamed wail of some wild creature. "Go
back from whar you come! Don't you never let me see your face
again, nor hear you speak; don't you never touch me no more, you
Man! 'Cause I'm scairt o' you, I am; 'cause you're big an'
strong, an' you'd forgit a gal like me. 'Cause I hate you, an' I
hate myself!"
For an instant the man gazed at her, perplexed, irresolute; then
he took her right hand and guided it until the revolver muzzle
touched his forehead.
"Peachey," he whispered tenderly, "you hate me--but could you
kill me; Little Peachey?" And he smiled his great, full-hearted
smile.
Then her hand fell, her head sunk upon his breast, and a strong
shuddering filled all her young body.
"Oh, Man, Man!" she breathed, as his arms closed about her.
*****************************************************************
Vol. XXIII No.1 JULY 1910 {pages 74-83}
By Alice MacGowan and Grace MacGowan Cooke
Authors of "Return, A Story of the Sea Islands," etc.
"Is Ellen worse to-day?" The opening and closing of the front
door brought in a swirl of red and yellow leaves from the porch
outside. There came, too, a breath of sharp, sweet October air to
tired little Mrs. Kendrick where she paused, foot on stair, the
tray steadied in her hand, looking back at her husband.
"No. It's just that I got Mary Louise Jackson to come over and
play with her. I can't ask Aunt Dicey to wait on a negro child
like Ma'Lou is, and she's got to eat with Ellen; so I'm----"
"So you're waiting on her yourself," supplied Kendrick, hanging
up a shabby overcoat on the hall rack.
"I'd do more than that to keep her here," his wife returned
almost fiercely. "I tell you nobody knows till they've tried it
what it is to have a child like Ellen, always lonesome and pining
for company, and quarreling with every girl that comes about her.
Sometimes I think it would be better if we moved away from
Watauga. Everybody pities her--they all notice that she's
backward in her studies--how can she help it, poor dear, with
that hip joint the way it is?"
Kendrick came closer; he laid a kind arm along the frail, bent
shoulders of his wife, and her senses were aware of the fresh
outdoor air as he put his cool cheek to hers. "Don't you grieve,
Fanny," he said. "Ma'Lou's a good companion for Ellen. The kid's
better trained and better educated than half the white girls of
her age in Watauga. If things go well, in a year or two we'll
send Nellie to Baltimore and see what the big man there can do
for her. You shall have a daughter that can dance like you used
to, honey," and he patted her shoulder gently.
She turned with a little, gasping sigh to put up her tired face
for his kiss. "You're good, Scott," she murmured, then went more
cheerfully upstairs and to Ellen's room, glancing as she entered
at the two girls, who were playing happily with paper dolls.
"Here's your feast," she called to them in the gay tone we use
with sick children. "Come, Ellen. I'll go down and give your
father his dinner, and you two can play any kind of party you
want to with this."
The little girl with skin like white cotton cloth rolled her big,
gray eves toward the tray and asked listlessly, "What you got for
dinner, ma?" The brown-skinned one, tidily dressed from her
carefully combed head with its crisp, black mass that was
scarcely hair, held in place by spick-and-span hair ribbons, to
the toes of her stout, handsome shoes, got up quickly and came
forward to arrange the meal.
"They's molasses pie, Nell," Ma'Lou said joyously. "Oh, I'm going
to bring it over there and fix it by the side of the lounge.
We'll play you' a sick lady, and I'm you' trained nurse. Just
wait till I fix my handkerchief into a cap like they wear."
Mrs. Kendrick turned away and left the children at their play.
Mary Louise Jackson had been kept at home from school that she
might come over and spend the day with Ellen. For when Ellen
Kendrick was ill, her cry always was, "Oh, send for the
doctor--and Mary Louise."
The old Kendrick place sat back in its grassy yard and concealed
behind voluminous chinaberry trees such shabbiness as time had
brought it; but on the corner, the home of Ezra Jackson perched
proudly above its stone wall and added a considerable touch of
elegance to the street.
It was in the early eighties, and the Queen Anne style of
architecture was just coming into great popularity in the South.
Jackson, who could well afford it, had let an architect have full
sway in producing for him a dwelling in the new mode. Ezra
Jackson, a full-blooded negro born a slave, had been a teamster
on his master's Georgia plantation, and after the war that
master, who still maintained friendly relations with his
ex-slaves, gave him a start in life with a mule and a dray. From
this the honest, industrious, and enterprising man had built up a
transfer business which was the best of its sort in town. There
were many teams and drivers now, and Ezra could walk in the garb
of other men of means about him; yet he still wrote his name in
the manner of the kings of old--he produced it as a sort of
landscape effect without any idea of what the separate characters
meant. He was a good citizen, a dignified man; and, except for
his black skin, he would have been an acceptable neighbor to the
Kendricks, and a desirable resident in their quarter of town. The
young wife whom he had married rather late in life, and to whose
taste the Queen Anne house catered, had a good grammar-school
education, gained from those first devoted teachers that the
Freedman's Bureau sent to the Southern negroes in the years
immediately following the war. At first she had kept his books
and made out his bills; and she always insisted on the best of
schooling for their children.
Of these latter, only Mary Louise concerns this history, since
she chanced to be very near the age of Ellen Kendrick and had
become a necessity in the life of that peevish little invalid.
The negro girl had smooth features, and her mother saw to it that
she was always spotlessly dressed and that her manners were
perfect. The children of her race take to good manners very
readily, being usually amiable and eager for approbation. Mrs.
Jackson undoubtedly took pride in the connection with her
aristocratic white neighbors, and Mrs. Kendrick was forced to be
glad of the chance to have the Jackson child come over and play
with Ellen. A nurse she could have hired, but a child near the
afflicted girl's age, a sound-natured, sweet-tempered, well-bred
little girl, was not to be had for money--love was the only coin
current that could pay for that.
And the two girls loved each other--of course they did. Did not
Ellen need Ma'Lou and is not service the basis of all love? The
flame on the altar of their affection burned always clear and
strong, unshaken by the peevish gusts that extinguished many a
less sturdy light of friendship for the Kendrick girl. So that
existence to Ellen--the pleasant part of it, anyhow--meant a
great deal of Ma'Lou, and there was scarcely an object in her
room, a game or a pursuit of her days, that was not associated
with the brown girl. The pair grew up in a companionship closer
than that of some born sisters.
The mere fact of this intimacy was not regarded by the Kendricks
with any disfavor whatever. Scott and Fanny both had played with
negro children, both had been reared by negro mammies. Neither
realized that conditions were changed, that the negroes with whom
they had associated were no longer an enslaved people, hopeless
of any equality, nor that, with the coming of freedom, and still
more with the growing ferment among the blacks, such association
was different from the intimacy of slavery days.
And Ezra Jackson's wife watched jealously that the preponderance
of gifts and favors should be always on her child's side. If any
present were given Mary Louise in the Kendrick house, her mother
always retorted instantly, as one might say, with something
better or handsomer. Mrs. Kendrick was a slow woman, and such a
point would naturally have been obscure to her; yet she finally
came to be aware of the fact, and at last it vexed her a little.
She turned the question in her mind and sought for some
substantial favor or patronage which she might offer to the
Jacksons, to quiet once for all her offended sense of fitness.
It fell out that about this time she was passing their home on
her way to her own, loaded down with bundles from the market
because her cook, Aunt Dicey, was old and feeble and there had
been nobody else to go this morning, when she raised her eyes and
saw the Jackson back yard full of snowy wash on the line. Mrs.
Jackson stood in the kitchen door, and, at the juxtaposition of
the dark skin and the well-washed clothes, an idea promptly
occurred to the lawyer's wife.
"Good morning," she called in a friendly tone. "I wanted to ask
you something; I guess I'll come through the gate and go out your
front way, if you don't mind."
Ezra Jackson's wife ran down the steps and put out a hand to help
the tired woman with her packages. Mrs. Kendrick rested them on
the railing of the back porch.
"Your clothes look lovely," she said meditatively. "You get them
out so early. Aunt Dicey's too old to do the washing and cooking
both any longer. I've been thinking for some time that I would
really have to get me a washerwoman."
"It is hard to have the person who cooks wash also," said Mrs.
Jackson, choosing her words carefully, and speaking in that
serious tone which the new generation of colored people are apt
to use toward their white neighbors. It is always as though they
were on guard, or perhaps on parade is the better word,
determined not to be guilty of lapses which would be excusable in
those whom they address, but which are not permitted to the
inferior race.
Fanny Kendrick looked at the handsome, well-kept house and its
dignified, serious-faced mistress, and a feeling of irritation
rose within her.
"I thought maybe you--I want a washerwoman--and seeing your
clothes looked so nice made me think that maybe you----"
She came to an uncertain halt, and glanced again half impatiently
at the other woman. After all, Ezra Jackson's wife was just a
negro, and there was no use in feeling embarrassed or in
supposing you didn't know how to deal with negroes. Good
gracious! what was the world coming to if you couldn't offer work
to folks without blushing? But she did not complete her sentence.
The Jackson woman waited for a while that she might do so, and
finally said, still in that slow, correct utterance which was in
itself an offense:
"You thought I might tell you of some one? Mrs. Payson does mine.
As you say she does it very nicely, and is quick about it. Her
prices are high. I pay her half a dollar, and she gets done, as
you see, a good deal before noon. But the work is satisfactory,
and I think it pays better. I don't know whether she has a free
day--but--shall I send her to you when she comes next week?"
Mrs. Kendrick blushed burning red, and took up her bundles with a
jerk.
"No, thank you," she said shortly. "I couldn't any more afford
that than I could fly. I didn't know Sally Payson had got to
charging like that--fifty cents for less than half a day's work!
I declare, prices are enough to ruin a body these days."
She went on to her own home smarting. She had called the washer
woman "Sally Payson," to be sure, in correction of Eliza
Jackson's "Mrs. Payson," which was a minor victory, yet it was
not enough to wipe away a feeling of stinging exasperation and a
curious sense of defeat. And when she told her husband about it
afterward, he received her recital with a sort of humorous
impatience.
"Good Lord, Fan," he broke in finally, "don't you know that every
woman with a black skin isn't hungry to do your washing? It's not
a question of complexion; it's money that talks. Ezra Jackson
could buy me out two or three times over. I'm trying to act all
his legal business. He's bringing a big suit against the
railroad. If he gives it to me I shall be able to send Ellen to
Baltimore this year instead of next."
"Well," said Mrs. Kendrick, submissively but acidly, "if you want
me to go and apologize, I suppose I can. The South is getting to
be a queer place when white gentlemen have to be under obligation
to negro teamsters. I certainly don't want to interfere with your
business in any way, Scott," she concluded plaintively. "We're
hard up all the time; I feel it deeply that poor Ellen is such an
expense to you."
Scott Kendrick's ready arm went round the weary little woman. "An
apology would be worse than the offense, Fanny," he admonished
gently. "It's just this. the Jacksons are in an absolutely new
position, and have to be treated in a new way. You wouldn't go
and ask Mrs. Ford or Mrs. Brashear to do your washing; and the
Lord knows that neither Jim Brashear nor Bate Ford makes half
what Ezra Jackson does. The world is changing, honey, and we have
to change with it."
II
As they grew older, the association of the two girls, in spite of
the affection between them--perhaps because of it--began to
present almost daily problems and embarrassments. Ellen's health
was worse, her nerves were shattered, and she clung with more and
more insistence to this one healthy companion, who responded with
a tireless devotion. Coming in from her wholesome outdoor life
and her triumphs at school--where she always stood high--Ma'Lou
brought to the sick room a very wind of comfort and cheer, which
Mrs. Kendrick had not the heart to deny her pining young invalid.
Once, when she spoke apprehensively of the matter to her husband,
Scott Kendrick answered with astonishment:
"Why, Fanny, it's only a question of health--a little bodily
improvement. We'd break it off to-morrow if Ellen was well.
You'll see; there would never be any more of it if I could send
her away for that operation."
But the white people had not, as they supposed, this anxiety all
to themselves. The timid, conservative, colored mother regarded
the friendship with growing anxiety. And before Scott Kendrick
got together the money to send Ellen to Baltimore, Ezra Jackson's
wife had coaxed her husband into letting Mary Louise go North to
school. The Watauga public schools, with a term or two of Fiske,
at Nashville, afterward, had been good enough for the other
children. But the mother craved wider opportunities for this, her
youngest; money was freer with them now; and Mary Louise went to
a preparatory school, then to Oberlin.
Ellen Kendrick returned from the hands of the surgeons in
Baltimore much improved in health. She was sent back twice
afterward for treatment. Finally she walked as well as other
girls, and hastily made up her arrears of education, as best she
might, at a private school in Watauga. She would always be frail;
the invalid habit had gotten into both mind and body; she would
continue dependent, demanding; and somewhat irritable; yet there
was a fragile prettiness about her, and her very childishness had
its own charm.
Mary Louise Jackson passed one of two vacations at home; but, as
time went on, there were opportunities for her to have trips of
an educational nature, and one summer was spent at a Chautauqua
taking a special course, so that after the first break in their
association the two girls saw almost nothing of each other till
they were women grown. There had been some letters; yet what the
white girl had always demanded and received from her friend could
not come through the mails, and the neglected correspondence
finally died a natural death.
There was one person in Watauga, however, to whom Mary Louise
wrote, and from whom she received letters regularly--Ulysses
Grant Payson, the washerwoman's son, with whom she had gone to
school. Grant Payson was a sober, ambitious, industrious fellow,
who seemed to feel from childhood the weight of responsibility
for his people. A widow's only boy, he had worked hard and
studied hard. With a very fair mental endowment, he was able to
get what the Watauga public schools could give him, secure a few
years training at Nashville, then read law.
And, when, after her graduation, Mary Louise returned to her
father's home, a very well-educated young lady indeed, wearing
glasses and looking older than her years, she found Grant
established in a good practice, and with some other prospects
that were, for a colored man, flattering. Both families knew that
Grant wanted Ma'Lou. Whether the girl would marry him and settle
down in Watauga had been a matter of anxiety, often talked over
between the two mothers. For they also knew of and discussed
Ma'Lou's opportunity to take a position as private secretary to
one of the instructors in her college. They understood that it
was a situation which would pay fairly well, and give her
associates who gained an added glory in the minds of these humble
folk by their distance. In short, it would be a foothold in the
white people's world; and Grant Payson's mother trembled for her
son, while the mother of Mary Jackson feared to lose, once for
all, her daughter. The two Southern-bred black women could see in
such things as the girl reported only the wiping out of all race
barrier, the sudden achievement of equality. Had Mary Louise been
asked, no doubt she could have told them of a social ban at the
North quite as definite as that in Watauga, if different; but her
father's daughter kept a silence that was not without dignity
over what she found irremediable, in the North as in the South.
To warm-hearted Mary Louise, Watauga meant, of course, father and
mother; but directly after them--perhaps before them, in the
calendar of youth--it meant Ellen Kendrick and Grant Payson. And
the colored elders, looking on, felt that as these twin idols of
the girl turned out, so rose or fell the chances of keeping her
with them in Watauga.
Grant instituted at once a courtship as ardent and eager as it
was open and avowed. His people, florid and colorful in
temperament, are natural wooers, free of the language of
affection and adroit in its use. Grant was very much in love with
the girl, and she meant even more to him than that, since in
aspiring to her his ambition stepped hand in hand with his
affections.
Mary Louise received his advances with curious reservations, as
though there were positions and premises she defended against
him.
It was when the girl's visit was three weeks old that the
fine-looking, broad-shouldered, young colored man in his
well-fitting business suit--a goodly figure in the eyes of the
mother watching from her own room across the hall--left the
parlor where he and Mary Louise had been sitting all evening,
with so doleful a countenance that the older woman had a quickly
suppressed impulse to go to him and speak. She did open the
subject to the girl next morning, approaching it obliquely. In
her own day a very progressive person, she felt that her daughter
had far outstripped her, and she offered advice but timidly to
this tall, perfectly dressed young woman who seemed so competent
in all the affairs of life, and who knew so much more than she
did upon many subjects. But after a little profitless skirmishing
she came out with:
"Looks like you must have said something hard to Grant last
night--he never came in to say good-by to me. Ain't you going to
have him, Ma'Lou? Don't you care anything about him?"
"I care a great deal about Grant," Mary Louise told her, in a
voice of pain. "I could love him dearly--if I'd let myself. But,
mother, I just can't settle down to live here in Watauga. There's
nobody and nothing here for me."
The woman looked at her child, and her mind misgave her sorely
that she had done wrong to send the girl away among an alien
people, where she would learn to despise her own.
"You're still grievin' about Ellen Kendrick," she said finally.
"If I were you I wouldn't let that go the way it has. Don't--"
she hesitated, with eyes full of helpless solicitude upon her
daughter's face--"honey, don't wait for any sign from Ellen,
because you won't get it. You just take those postal cards that
you got for her on your Canadian trip, and some morning you step
over to the side door and ask for her, if you want to see her. I
know she thinks a great deal of you. She's stopped me on the
street more than once and asked all about you and what you were
doing. I don't see why you shouldn't go to the side door and go
in and have a nice little visit with her."
Mary Louise considered this suggestion at some length. She had
the wider outlook which some travel gives, and, in Oberlin, she
had been where the race question was relatively negligible. Her
mother's way of putting it jarred on her; yet the hungry craving
she felt at this time for a touch of companionship with a girl of
her own age, her longing for the beloved Ellen of her childhood,
overbore all shrinking. That afternoon she brought the cards down
in her hand, and, full of an unwelcome timidity, made her way to
the side door of the Kendrick house and rapped. Mrs. Kendrick
answered and received her with a certain thin cordiality that
suggested reservations. The fact was that Ellen was having a
little party that evening, and the colored girl would perhaps be
in the way. Among the guests bidden were two young men, upon
either one of whom Mrs. Kendrick looked with a hopeful maternal
eye, and nothing could be less desirable than for her daughter to
seem to "even herself with negroes" in the eyes of these possible
suitors.
"Shall I stop and see Ellen a minute, or may I just leave these
with you, Mrs. Kendrick?" asked the tall, brown-skinned young
woman finally.
"Oh, come in--come right in here to the dining room and sit
down," said the mistress of the house, remembering with a twinge
how much she owed to this girl. "Ellen will be crazy about these.
She's got a postal card album, and she hasn't anything in it from
Canada. Ellen! Come downstairs, honey; Ma'Lou Jackson has brought
you something pretty."
But even as she called up the stairway, and heard the quick
response from above, it crossed Mrs. Kendrick's mind that her
daughter would not be willing to put these postal cards in her
album, for she would be ashamed to tell from whom they came.
She was annoyed when Ellen came flying down the stairs, her thin,
blond hair all about her shoulders, and caught both the
newcomer's hands--the mother feared for a moment that she would
kiss her old playmate.
"And then if somebody saw it through the window, and went and
told young Emery Ford or Mr. Hyatt, I don't know what on earth I
should do," reflected the careworn matron.
"Mamma, do come and look at these lovely postals," Ellen cried
effusively a little later, as her mother, plainly ill at ease,
passed through the room. "I'm going to pull out those that Cousin
Rob sent me from Texas, and put these in right after the
California ones. See here, mamma; isn't this one beautiful?
Ma'Lou was there a week. She's put a little cross over the hotel
where they stayed."
Mrs. Kendrick looked at the strong, well-developed figure of her
guest, and a certain dull anger arose in her mind. Why did health
and money both go to this inferior creature, when they were
lacking in higher quarters? Perhaps this prompted her query;
"That hotel? It's a big one, isn't it? Did they--could you----?"
She broke off, and Mary Louise supplied, innocently enough: "Oh,
they didn't let us travel during school term. This was a vacation
trip."
She had been long away from the South; in the protective
conditions of Oberlin she had been measurably free from the
wounding of race prejudice; and now she failed to realize that
Mrs. Kendrick's curiosity was as to whether she had been
permitted to go to a hotel with white people.
Old Dicey's place in the kitchen had long been supplied by a
negress of the newer generation--"the worst gossip and tattler in
town," if you might take her mistress's word for it. Mrs.
Kendrick now made her way thither, ostensibly to superintend the
preparation of the evening's refreshments, but in reality to try
to fix up an explanation of why Ezra Jackson's daughter sat
visiting in the dining room with the young lady of the house.
"Because if Penny goes out and tells her friends, every darky in
town'll be retailing the story to the folks that hire them, and
it'll soon be all over the place."
She came back into the dining room to find Ellen glowing with
enthusiasm. Yes, her mind was still that of a sick child; she had
dropped back into her old-time attitude toward Mary Louise.
"Mamma, Ma'Lou says that they used to give lunches at the
college, and fix the floral centerpiece so it would all come
apart, and each guest could draw a bunch of it with a ribbon. Oh,
I don't understand very well, but she can tell you--it's just
beautiful, and we could make it out of the chrysanthemums in the
side yard, she says."
Mrs. Kendrick looked uneasy. But there was no window in the
dining room which commanded the street except the side light of
the bay, and at it Ellen herself sat. Nobody passing would be apt
to see Mary Louise over in the room.
"I reckon we can't go into those things," she objected, a little
irritably. "I suppose Ma'Lou has seen a heap of fine doings up
North that we couldn't possibly attempt."
"But she's promised to make me a lot of cute little candies--like
potatoes, and put them in paper baskets--to go at each plate,"
put in Ellen, jealously.
The brown-faced girl nodded and laughed, with a quick flash of
white teeth. It was plain she was taking the attitude of an older
person talking to a child about a juvenile party to which there
could be no question of invitation, and Mrs. Kendrick's fears
rather subsided. She was safe, if only Ellen would show some
sense and judgment.
"Well, I must go on home, now, if I'm to make those candies and
have them ready by this evening," said Ezra Jackson's daughter,
getting to her feet. "They take a good while to harden properly."
Ellen went with her to the side door, clinging to her arm and
insisting on some last remark. Mrs. Kendrick, in an agony of
apprehension, hovered in the background.
"Oh, well," said the daughter of the house finally, "I won't
bother you any more about it now, Ma'Lou. It's hard for you to
explain just how to fix it, but you can show me when you come
over this evening. I'll have the chrysanthemums ready. You come a
little early--won't you, please?"
Mary Louise, in the doorway, glanced from mother to daughter in
some confusion. Would this do? Her own mother had cautioned her
to be certain to go to the side door.
"I--I don't know," she hesitated doubtfully. "I'll bring the
candies over, if you like, and I might be able to show you a
little about the table then." And again she looked from the face
of the girl who had been her childhood's most intimate friend and
associate to that of the woman who had accepted so much at her
childish hands.
"Why, I supposed you'd be here when I was giving the party,
Ma'Lou," argued Ellen petulantly. "I don't see why not! Isn't it
all right, mother?" she appealed sharply. "Shouldn't Ma'Lou come
over this evening?"
For one desperate moment Mrs. Kendrick sought to shape a policy;
Ellen's words sounded frightfully like an invitation to the
party. Would Mary Louise accept them so? Her worried, resentful
glance traveled over the tall, dignified figure, the correct,
quiet costume. Oh, it had no business to be as hard as this! But
she must make the girl understand; she could not run the risk of
injury to Ellen's belated social opportunities.
"Why--you see--we--" she began, in an agony of embarrassment, "we
can't--we can't--" Her voice failed her. She looked fleetingly at
Mary Louise, who returned the gaze with a look hurt, accusing,
difficult to meet. She drew her breath sharply, and began again
with more resolution. "We'll have an extra maid in to help with
the serving. If you don't mind staying in the dining room with
her--" She ceased and waited hopefully, to see if the girl
understood. There was an uncertain silence. She must finish.
"Ma'Lou, if you'd stay in the dining room with Tillie, and
wouldn't mind wearing a--cap--and apron like she does, why you
could come over and look on."
Ellen Kendrick had seen somebody coming down the street. It was
Emory Ford, and she flushed and dimpled and smiled as she bowed
to him, forgetting everything else, including the departing Mary
Louise, who, after one mute look at Mrs. Kendrick's flushed,
disturbed face, turned and walked with hanging head toward the
house on the corner.
Arrived at home, she went methodically to work upon the promised
candies and the little baskets that were to contain them. Ezra
Jackson's wife, noting the face of set misery, forbore long to
question her as she brought out the novel materials and pursued
her work.
The afternoon wore on. Mrs. Jackson was at work at her
sewing-machine in the front hall; but she could not keep out of
the kitchen, she made continual futile errands through it, giving
anxious, sidelong glances at the child over whom her heart
yearned.
Finally, when she could bear it no more, "Did--did something hurt
your feelings over there, Ma'Lou?" she asked huskily.
She spoke behind her daughter's shoulder. The girl set the last
finished basket in its place in the row before she turned to
answer. Then she showed a face so much more cheerful and composed
than the elder woman had dared hope for that the relief was
almost revulsion.
"Sit down, mother," said Mary Lou, pushing a chair with her foot.
"Sit there while I fill the baskets, and I'll tell you about it."
The mother sat and watched the deft brown fingers, and marveled
at the girl's collected manner, her quiet, even voice. For Ezra
Jackson's wife was shaken by alternate gusts of anger and hurt
pride, of shame and fear, as, with a judicial fairness
extraordinary in one of her years and sex, the girl went over the
details of that unhappy visit. The old teamster had given his
child a heritage of rare good sense. Early in the recital the
woman broke in bitterly with:
"And yet you're making candies for her party? Such as that is all
they want of you. I wouldn't do it. And I'd never step foot in
their house again!"
"Why, mother, I'd certainly make these. I promised them," said
Mary Louise mildly. She put the last tiny candy potato in place,
pushed back the basket, wiped her hands, and turned fully to her
mother. "But you're exactly right about not entering Judge
Kendrick's house again," she said, with increasing emphasis. "I
can't go in at the front door as a friend--that's true; I can't.
I certainly sha'n't go in at the back door as a
servant--and--I've thought it all out now--I see it plain--our
people make a great mistake when they hang around the side doors
of white folks. There's no way but----"
"Don't say it, honey!" gasped the mother "Wait a minute." This
was the end, and she could not quite face it. She was to lose her
youngest and dearest. Mary Lou was going back North to live among
the white people. Her head went down on the table the convulsed
face hidden in her arms. Then broke forth the cry of the blood:
"Oh, Lord! I reckon I'm just another fool nigger woman that's
raised a child too good for her own color. I wish I was dead--I
wish I was dead!"
"Mother--mother!" The girl flung herself on her knees beside the
chair, and caught at the other's dress. "Don't take on that way.
You don't understand. I'm--look around here--I'm glad of what
happened over there to-day. It's shown me the truth about a good
many things. We're all black people together. It's the only way
for us now. I'm not going back to be Professor Sheridan's
secretary--a black woman among white people. I'm going to marry
Grant--he's everything to me; these people are nothing--and
settle right down here in Watauga with him--and be happy and
useful. Mother, you didn't make any mistake in the way you
brought me up. I'll be a credit and a comfort to you yet."
*****************************************************************
Vol. XXIII No. 1 JULY 1910
THE TRIAL BALANCE {pages 83-94}
By MAXIMILIAN FOSTER
Author of "Corrie Who?" etc.
Like so many others of her class, Stella Willoughby was a
satisfied, confident woman, placidly aware of the station her
husband's money assured to her. For Willoughby was accounted
wealthy even in this lake town, where riches were so much in
evidence; and if the wife betrayed a cool superiority because of
his money, it was only natural, perhaps, since she and most of
her associates knew no other means of gauging success, or worth,
or the individual's place in life. Looking over her shoulder now,
she glanced nonchalantly across the club dining-room.
"You mean those people--the Severances, Mrs. Kinsman?" There was
a bland indifference in her tone that made the guest beside Mrs.
Willoughby look at her curiously, for she knew that Severance had
once been a suitor for Mrs. Willoughby's hand. "I believe we did
know them before they dropped out. He lost everything, didn't
he?--went to smash, as I vaguely remember."
Still with the same air of unconcern, she dipped the tips of her
fingers in the finger-bowl, and prepared to rise. "Queer they
should come back here, isn't it?" she commented idly; and then,
as if the subject had passed from her mind with the observation,
Mrs. Willoughby pushed back her chair in signal to her guests,
and led the way from the room. In the hall, while the maid was
putting on her wraps, she turned and looked back, still idly as
before. Her eyes, traveling about, rested a moment on the man
sitting at the distant table, and then, when he half rose from
his place as if to bow, they journeyed on again, coolly
unconcerned. A moment later, smiling gayly, she walked down the
steps to her carriage, and, with her guests, was driven away to
the theatre.
Yet, somehow, in spite of this sureness of speech and manner, the
sight of her old-time suitor had wakened in Mrs. Willoughby the
subtle discontent that occasionally affected her--the discontent
of women who have only themselves to think about. One might have
said that at these times she was subconsciously wearied of her
form of life; that, in so many words, though ignorant of the
fact, though, consciously, her vacuous life immensely satisfied
her, she was BORED. But to-day, bluntly speaking, it was about
her husband that her vague dissatisfaction centered; and when she
had glanced coolly at her former suitor, it was for the purpose
of comparison.
Willoughby was a fair type of the money-getter. Furthermore, what
he had built had been raised by his own hands unaided; he was a
self-made man, whose one boast was that he owed nothing to any
one, not even so little as a debt of gratitude. One realized the
fact, too, in the way he carried on his affairs; for in his
business he was alert and determined, implacably pursuing his
money-making as if it were a warfare, and considerate of none but
those joined with him in the moment's harvesting venture. Perhaps
his reasons were sufficient--who knows? Perhaps Willoughby was as
well aware as they that the friends of to-day might reasonably
become the enemies of to-morrow.
But at home the money gathered so ruthlessly elsewhere was thrown
about with a lavish hand. Nothing that wealth could provide was
denied Mrs. Willoughby or her boy; and though she had been poor
when she married, money, in the mere crudity of having it to
spend, had long since lost its novelty. To-day, beyond the pride
of having it, and beyond the luxury and ostentation it could buy,
money possessed for her a far greater significance in its power
to make one powerful. In that she had already tasted the
illogical enjoyment of one that can obtain power in no other way.
And it was because of this place that his money had bought her
that Mrs. Willoughby began to look on her husband with a critical
eye.
For she was an ambitious woman, though one with definite
limitations. Among different surroundings and in an atmosphere
less sordidly striving and commonplace, she was fitted to have
become, with some encouragement, an admirable and utterly
inconspicuous wife and mother. But here, in this narrow,
money-getting environment, many things prevented; among them,
primarily, the way in which she had been brought up. For her
father, too, had been driven by this lust for riches; and though
he had failed, to the last he had been goaded on by his one
eager, grasping hope. He had drummed into her head the single
lesson that without money one is nothing.
In itself it suggested to the few a plausible reason why she had
married Willoughby. There had been nothing openly unhappy in
their life together. Still, as others saw, Willoughby was much
older than his wife, radically without her social instincts, and,
furthermore, when she had accepted him, it had been pretty
generally understood that Severance had won her heart.
And now, as she sat back in her carriage, remembrance came
rapping like an unwelcome, unadmitted visitant. She tried to put
it away by chattering smartly; the theatre-wagon rolled along to
the clicking of hoofs on the asphalt; but through it all the
troublous knocking persistently recurred. For this was one of the
few times when she had lingered upon a thought of that first
romance of hers; and now, coupled with her hardening criticism of
Willoughby, it brought forth insistent questions.
Whether she had really loved her husband when she married him, or
whether she had not instead been dazzled by his peculiar
abilities remained in doubt.
Severance had come first; he had a little money to begin, and he
was doing well with it and seemed on the road to do better.
Therefore, her friends were secure in the belief that she would
marry him, when Willoughby had made his appearance.
He went at this love-making of his as he went at all his
affairs--implacably bold and ruthlessly sweeping aside whoever or
whatever came into his way. The fact that he and Severance were
considered friends seemed to have counted little; and when, a few
months later, it was learned that she had dropped one to take the
other, it was also learned that Severance had played at ducks and
drakes with his money. Briefly, he had become bankrupt in a
mining deal. He and others, Willoughby among them, had gone into
a Wyoming copper prospect--the Teton Sisters Company--and while
Willoughby apparently got off without damage, Severance had
dropped everything. How, was never clearly understood. Severance
and his sister had parted with their home to satisfy his
creditors, and then moved away.
In the twelve years of the Willoughbys' married life, the tide of
money had kept steadfastly on the flood. Nothing his hands
touched seemed to fail him. He had his fingers in every kind of
venture--mines and mills, foundries and furnaces, steam roads,
trolley lines and public utilities; and to each and every one of
these promotions, the name of Willoughby affixed the hall-mark of
success. Now his dollars jingled in every state of the Union--and
they jingled in his own home, too, almost as the only evidences
that the home was his. For Willoughby, pursuing money everywhere,
seemed to have lost interest in all else but his money-grubbing,
just as Willoughby's wife, excepting for the same money-grubbing,
seemed to have lost all interest in him.
And now she had looked at Severance; her eyes had rested on him
long enough to make comparisons--Severance much improved, cool,
suave, presentable, and deferential; her husband big and
masterful, a brooding, preoccupied man, and a kind of Orson to be
kept denned in his money caves. She sighed to herself
regretfully.
Some minutes after Mrs. Willoughby had found her seat in the
theatre box she was aware of another party coming down the aisle.
"Hello!" exclaimed the man beside her, "here come Hudson Mills
and his wife with Case Severance. I didn't know he was in town."
Mrs. Willoughby laid a gloved finger to her lips and affected to
yawn, though she stole a glance out of the corner of her eye. Her
guest was now nodding over her shoulder at the arrivals in the
seats below.
"Severance has made a ten-strike, I hear," he volunteered, in an
expressive, if inelegant, idiom of the money game; "there's a
story going the rounds that Mills and Severance have been gunning
together and that some one else got burned. Anyway, I hear
they've lined their pockets. Severance is rich again."
This mixed metaphor affected Mrs. Willoughby with a curious
interest. "Oh, is he!" she exclaimed, and, glancing down, she
looked unexpectedly into Severance's watching eyes.
But she seemed not in the least disconcerted. Severance was just
turning away, mindful of the previous snub, when, with a
reassuring smile, she bowed, and then smiled again. For why not?
Severance's position had been reestablished in her world.
It was late that night when Mrs. Willoughby returned home. There
was a light in her husband's library, and before going to her
room she stopped and tapped at the door. Willoughby, with a pile
of papers stacked before him, sat with his chin in his hand,
staring absently at the wall. As the door opened, he turned for a
moment, and then, seeing who it was, thrust his hands into his
pockets and slouched down in his chair. "Well?" he murmured,
absently.
Mrs. Willoughby, slipping out of her wrap, dropped into a
convenient seat.
"Are you still at it? It's nearly one o'clock, Harmon." Yawning
slightly, she wriggled her feet out of her carriage slippers and
kicked them under her chair. Willoughby looked up, silently
watching her, and a momentary small shadow crept into his face.
Yet the shadow, small as it was, could not have been because of
any flaw in his wife's appearance. Mrs. Willoughby was still
young and fair to look upon, clear-eyed and almost girlish, her
rounded, regular features set off picturesquely by her hat and
its flowing purple plumes, even though both hat and plumes were
extravagant in size. Willoughby must have known another reason to
frown.
"Where've you been?" he demanded, heavily, his voice bare of any
interest. He was a large, florid man, heavily built,
square-jawed, and with the deep, scrutinous eyes of one aware of
his own power and accustomed to enforce it. But now his eyes
seemed listless, as if weary of the strain that had kept them so
long on the alert.
"I? At the club," she answered, briefly. Though her own home was
large and amply appointed, few were ever asked there to anything
more formal than a luncheon or an afternoon at bridge. Home
hospitality and the housekeeping it involved had long since
become a bore to her; like many others in her set, she had
learned to square her obligations through the convenience of her
husband's club. The hospitality there entailed no other bother
than paying the bills. "Just dinner at the club, and the theatre
afterward."
She stripped off her long gloves and dropped them to the floor
beside her carriage slippers. Again her husband studied her,
almost covertly, one might have thought.
"Any one there?" Willoughby began absently to pick at the edges
of the papers on his desk.
She shook her head. "No one you'd care about, I think. There were
only three tables besides mine. Mrs. Chardon and her daughter
with some of her young friends, and then--" Mrs. Willoughby
closely inspected one of her rubies. "The Severances are back in
town, Harmon. He and his sister were there with Hudson Mills and
his wife."
"Severance--with MILLS!" cried her husband, lifting his head
alertly. It was not often that Mrs. Willoughby's talk with him
evoked such instant attention. "See here, Stella, are you sure it
was Severance?"
"Sure? Sure whether it was Severance? Why, of course I am!" she
answered petulantly. She and her husband had never discussed the
man, and it seemed a late day now to begin. "What in the world
is--?" she began, and then desisted. Willoughby, slouched down in
his chair again, had dropped his chin on his breast and was
nervously gnawing his lip.
His wife leaned over and gathered up slippers and gloves. "I
think I'll go to bed," she murmured carelessly, and wandered
toward the door. Willoughby made no response, and she turned and
slowly came back. A calendar hanging from the gas bracket had
fallen a little aslant, and she reached up and critically
straightened it. "Harmon, I hear Case Severance is rich again. I
wonder how he managed it."
"Hey? Who?" Willoughby jerked up his head as if startled from a
dream--and not a very pretty dream, either, if one might judge
from his countenance. "Oh, you mean HIM," he uttered thickly.
"How do I know. I suppose he's been up to some of his games
again." An almost savage dislike and contempt evidenced
themselves in his tone, and pushing back his chair, he picked up
his papers and arose. "You'd better go to bed Stella," he
suggested brusquely, averting his eyes from her quick scrutiny;
"I've got a lot of work here."
She laid a hand on his arm. "What's wrong with you?" she asked
intently. There was alertness in the question, rather than
responsive softness. Willoughby drew a hand across his mouth.
"Nothing's wrong Stella. I've had a hard day. Aren't you going?"
"Yes--in just a moment." She had moved toward the door again, and
now was standing with her hand on the knob. "It's Willard's
birthday next Wednesday." Willard was their boy. "He'll be
eleven, an he wants an electric runabout. The Doane boys have
one, and he's just crazy about it We'd better let him have it."
Willoughby frowned, and irritably ruffled the papers in his hand.
"A runabout. No; he sha'n't have it. He's too young, and
besides----"
"Oh, nonsense, Harmon!"
Willoughby fluttered his papers more irritably than before.
"Well, he can't have it; that's all I have to say." Ordinarily,
he gave to her and the boy what they wished, never questioning
the cost or character of what they bought "Eleven, and wants an
automobile!" he commented, sullenly. "When I was his age I was
working day and night to support my----"
"Yes, I know, Harmon," interrupted Mrs. Willoughby, affecting to
stifle a yawn "but Willard, fortunately, doesn't have to think of
that."
Mrs. Willoughby gave her gloves a disdainful, careless twirl, and
went on her way to her room. To her astonishment, a few moments
later, she heard the front door slam. Willoughby had gone out.
He was away for nearly a week; and when he returned, his eyes
were heavy and blood-shot, his face was pallid and wearily drawn.
"Well, so you are back. What have you been doing?" Mrs.
Willoughby asked, perfunctorily. Though it was late in the
morning she was still in bed, sitting up in a dressing sack, and
turning the pages of a weekly publication that dealt in news of
local high life. Its chief item, to-day, was the announcement of
a dance she was to give shortly--at the club, as usual--and she
had just finished for the second time the commentator's glib and
unctuous phrasing.
He answered evasively, "Oh, just away on business." As he walked
to the window and looked out, she carelessly turned the pages.
"Stella, what did you do for the boy's birthday?" he asked,
slowly pacing back to the foot of the bed.
She turned another page. "The boy? Oh, I gave him some money, and
sent him down-town with the coachman. I was too busy." Smiling
lightly, she went on glancing through the paper. "I suspect he
stuffed himself on candy."
But there was no answering smile on Willoughby's face. "On candy?
How much did you give him?"
Without looking up, she answered as lightly as before. "Oh, I
can't remember now. Let me think." Then she vaguely named an
amount, and Willoughby pressed his lips together.
"Stella," he said slowly, after a moment's darkening of his eyes,
"do you know that amounts to a week's salary of more than one of
my clerks? Don't you think it was a great deal to give a boy?"
She looked up now, astonished--a little vexed, too; for this was
the second time he had questioned her use of money. "Well, what
of it? It seems of little consequence." She buried her face in
the paper again after this shot, and Willoughby stared at her.
"No," he murmured, reflectively, an alarming bitterness in his
voice; "nothing seems of any consequence."
As she glanced casually over the top of her paper, she saw him
draw a hand across his face; but, still vexed, she took no
warning from the sign. "Well, there's no need of making a fuss,
is there?" she asked, rebukingly. Thus showing how distasteful
the subject had become, and, having had her say, she instantly
changed the topic. "You're coming home Thursday night, aren't
you?"
Willoughby watched her absorbedly. "I don't know. Why?"
"Oh, I just wanted to find out. It's the night of my dance, you
know."
"A dance? Your dance?" He drew in his breath, and his hands,
gripping the bed's footboard, closed a little tighter. "I'd
forgotten that. Yes, your dance, and I----"
He broke off wearily, his lips framing a mere wraith of a smile,
and in its gravity she still saw no warning of deep waters
stirring troublously. "A dance--you're giving a dance!" he
repeated, and there came into his eyes a subtle hint of mockery
that, coupled with the words, gave them almost the significance
of a jeer.
"Oh, for heaven's sake, Harmon!" Mrs. Willoughby threw down her
paper irritably, aware only of the unspoken protest in his
manner, and disdaining to analyze it. "See here--are you going to
make a fuss about that, too? Or are you still growling about the
boy? I should think a man with your money would be above----"
It seemed unnecessary to round out the sentence; in itself the
fragment, sharply uttered, peevish and fretful, conveyed more
than enough. "You wouldn't let him have what he wanted; so what's
the use of making it any worse? He swallowed his disappointment;
but if you're getting ready to complain about me now, I'll----"
"Yes, I've thought there was good stuff in the boy," he
interrupted, the slow words cutting short her vehement protest.
"Where is he now?" he added abruptly. " I think I'd like to see
him."
Mrs. Willoughby flounced down among the pillows. "I don't
know--at school, I suppose. Aren't you going to your office
to-day?"
Willoughby shook his head. He turned to the door, moving heavily;
and there, at last, in his sunken head, his shoulders wearily
bent, she caught some hint of the man's hidden emotion.
Astonishment at first ousted all else from her thought, and she
gaped at him in wonder. Then came a small, chilling touch of
fear.
"HARMON!" At the swift call he looked back at her. "Harmon! Has
anything happened?"
His answer was an evasion, and she knew it. "I'm staying home to
see some men. That's all."
But the moment's fear was too stressful to be so easily set at
rest. "Wait--do you hear?" She slipped from the bed, and, with
her eyes still fastened on him she groped about till she found
her down slippers. Willoughby had slowly opened the door, but his
wife angrily reached over his shoulder and pushed it shut. "You
SHALL tell me!" she insisted, fiercely determined. "I want to
know what's happened."
Willoughby shook off her hand, and renewed his effort at the
door. "I've nothing to tell you," he rumbled sullenly; and
then--"What do you want to know for?"
She caught her breath, certain now of the fear that shook her
like an ague. He was in trouble, and trouble, to her, meant but
the one thing--a money trouble. It was the first time in her
years of placid, self-possessed vanity that any terror like this
had come to jar her. To lose it now--this bought and paid-for
complacency, this counterpart of happiness, struck her to the
heart with a keener, more convincingly human emotion than she had
known for many a day in her negligent, shallow existence.
"You want to know?" he answered, and smiled at her in grim,
accusing mockery. "All right, then; I'll tell you. You'd better
be ready for it, too." In his brutality there was a guarded note
of self-pity, as if to see her suffer would somehow rejoice him
in his own trouble. "Well, I'm smashed up--that's all. I'm
ruined!"
Mrs. Willoughby, shrinking away, laid a hand on her lips and
stared with distended eyes. "RUINED?" she gasped, unable to
believe him--incredulously, as if at some barbaric jest.
"Ruined?" She had turned quite white. "Oh," she cried, wetting
her lips, "does it mean there is nothing left? How did it happen?
Oh, it can't be true!"
"How did it happen?" Willoughby had thrust both hands into his
pockets, and his head was turned sideways, as if the better to
study the depths of her emotion. "Oh, the usual way--flying too
many kites, I suppose. Poor?" he growled savagely. "Yes; we're
poor as Job's turkey! They've cleaned me out of
everything--their----Teton Sisters, too!"
In her mind's bewilderment of distress she caught at the name; it
was the property in which Severance had lost his money; and she
recalled ugly rumors that, before, had not affected her. Now that
his money was gone, they attached to themselves a newer
significance, accusing and indefensible. "The Teton Sisters! What
do you mean?" For was the shame of losing his wealth to be
coupled with the shameful admission that he had taken a hand in
gouging her former suitor? It was singular she hadn't thought of
it before; now it struck home with redoubled poignancy.
"Mean, hey? I mean they've got it away from me--Mills and that
fellow Severance. It was the prettiest thing I owned, too," he
groaned, careless of what he was saying, and blurting out the
acknowledgment. "But that ain't the worst--no, not by a long
chalk! Do you know what they're going to do?" he demanded,
hoarsely, and with an almost weeping resentment, yet as if glad
to find some one to whom to pour it out. "They're going to sue
for the money, too!"
"What money?" she persisted, hollowly, determined now to know
all. It might be dreadful to lose one's money--it was dreadful;
but to have this man drag her down into his own shame, too--ah!
Willoughby threw up both hands in a gesture of ungovernable
petulance. "Oh, what's the use of talking about it?" he growled,
and then instantly his voice dropped. "Stella, I'm sorry for your
sake. We'll have to begin all over again, dear."
"But you shall talk of it!" she directed, with a cruel and
cutting significance in her voice. "You can't hide it from me
now."
His mouth opened dumbfoundedly. Then he thrust out his jaw with a
reawakened truculency, now aimed at her.
"Well, then--it was the money I took from that fellow--from your
old friend, Severance. He was----"
"You took it from him!" she cried. "You mean you STOLE it!"
Willoughby's mouth twitched, as if she had struck him a blow. "So
that's the way you look at it now, is it?" he said, his voice
quietly effective. "All right, then! I came in here hoping to get
a word of sympathy from you--perhaps a little kindness. But I
knew it was only a hope." He drew a deep breath. "Now don't work
yourself up over him, I warn you, my dear. I won't tell you why I
ruined him, years ago, but I'll tell you how. You've called me a
thief, so I'll give you some more facts before you jump at
conclusions."
"I don't want excuses--it's explanations!"
It was another taunt that struck home, but Willoughby again
mastered himself grimly. "Any one of us would have done it," he
answered, ignoring the remark. "Severance made it easy. I did to
him only what he tried to do to others. When he saw how good the
mine was, he wanted me to help him rook them out of their stock,
so that we could get it. Simple enough, of course, but they'd
been square with me. No, I refused--but I did accommodate him to
the extent of doing him out of his own block. He'd mortgaged
everything to buy shares, and when he was where I wanted him, all
tied up with loans and not able to borrow another cent, I told
the mine people what Severance was trying to do. So they put in a
ruinous report, and every one from whom he'd borrowed a cent just
called his loans and foreclosed on him right and left. He went
down and out--and that's all there was to it. Nobody else got
hurt, and we divided his stock among us. Can't you see how it
was, Stella?" he asked quietly, and stood awaiting her verdict.
"Yes! I see how it was!" she flashed. "It was robbery--you can't
excuse yourself."
If she had wished to sting him again, the attempt seemed to
become fruitful. "Excuses! I make none, do you hear?" he
retorted, incensed. " I ruined him to get him out of your
way--yes!--oh, you needn't say it!--out of mine, too. Look here!"
he cried, passionately; "don't you think I didn't know you? All
you looked for or lived for was--" But he broke off there, and
surveyed her with an affronted dullness, as if it were only
wasted effort. "Oh, well, what's the use?" he muttered, and with
morose and glowering eyes slouched through the doorway.
Mrs. Willoughby lay among the pillows, her arms flung out and her
face half hidden by her disordered hair. TO BE POOR! Her mind
seized on that as the one incalculable shame that had befallen
her--on that, rather than on her view of his dishonesty.
Curiously enough, it was not only the loss of the money itself
and the imminent surrender of her ease and luxury and ostentation
that dismayed her. She was anguished, as well, by the stigma of
being poor. She was able to see only the mean side of it; the
pity of her friends already rang in her ears like scorn, mocking
her because the one thing that had made her was now stripped
away. Hers was not the nature to see the other side of it--the
helpful nobility of self-denial, the heroism of unselfishness,
the courage that stoically faces the narrow and sordid effort
whose rewards are only in the future. No, indeed!--there was only
a savage resentment in her mind, the inexplicable sense that
somehow she had been tricked and cheated, and that he alone was
to blame.
Though she accused him of dishonesty in the Severance affair, the
charge was only secondary. Given another time, she might
carelessly have acquitted him, taking his own say-so as enough;
but Willoughby now had chosen a poor hour for his acknowledgment,
when he linked it to the tidings of his ruin. All that day she
kept to her bed, her mind absorbed with the catastrophe that had
swept out from under her the unsolid prop of her arrogant money
pride. For, again, without money what was left?
She showed herself the day following, wan and silent. Willoughby
was away; the news of his failure was public property, and she
writhed when she read of it in the daily prints. But in the
following days she suffered other pangs that were a healthy
counter-irritant--she learned to pick and number her FRIENDS, and
to know, among so large a list of acquaintances, how very few
they were. Though she was prepared for this, well aware what
befalls the one with broken playthings, nevertheless she was
filled with bitter exasperation against those who were no more
careless than she had been herself. So she left orders with the
servants that none was to be admitted.
Her husband was not so easily evaded. He returned, three days
later, and, walking straight to her, laid a hand on her shoulder.
"Stella, I'm mighty sorry; but if you'll help me, I can get on my
feet again."
"Oh, don't bother me!" she retorted, flinging off his hand.
Willoughby flushed, seemed about to make a bitter retort, and
apparently changed his mind. "Stella, I'm in a good deal of
trouble. A kind word or two would help." But the wife maintained
a sullen dumbness, her eyes turned away from him; and Willoughby
retired, shaking his head.
At the week end he tried again, hopefully. "Stella, it's not so
bad as we first thought. I think we'll save enough to live
on--maybe enough to keep our home. But you'll have to lend a
hand."
She looked up from her packing. "What do you say?" she demanded,
with a rekindled interest, and at the sight of it his eyes
lightened.
"Why, if you're willing to go slowly, and put up with a few
things, we might be able to do it."
"Humh!" Mrs. Willoughby bent over her trunk again. "I suppose
that means you'd make me a kind of drudge. Thank you; I prefer
the other way."
"The other way?" he inquired, looking at her closely. "What do
you mean by that?"
She affected to show her carelessness by smoothing the clothes in
the trunk tray. "Oh, I'm going to take the boy and go away
somewhere for a while."
It was not unexpected. Willoughby came a step nearer, his brow
wrinkled ominously. "You shall not!" he said, with a slow
distinctness, every syllable rapped out decisively. Then his
anger, righteous enough in its way, got the better of him.
"Listen to me, Stella!' he gritted, clenching his hands beside
him. "I can see clear through you. You haven't the nerve to face
this down, so you're going to sling me overboard. That's it,
isn't it? Well, you sha'n't. I've handled you like a fool, these
years, and now I'm going to take charge. You'll stay here--not
because of yourself or me--but for the boy!" he cried; and Mrs.
Willoughby arose, quiet, but white.
"No," she answered, clearly; "we've played this farce too long,
Harmon. I don't think I'm suited to you, and I'm sure you're not
suited to me. We married under false ideas of each other."
Willoughby turned white, too, but, restraining himself, he peered
at her from under his heavy brows. "No, we didn't!" he retorted,
solemnly. "YOU did, but _I_ didn't! You married me thinking my
money would buy you what you wanted. I question whether you
thought of ME at all. But I married you, Stella, knowing exactly
what you were, and, since I've paid for it, I intend you shall
stick to your bargain."
"Oh, yes," she answered, smiling a little in scorn, "it would be
like you to call it a bargain. But you can't prevent my leaving."
"No--perhaps not; but I can give you a good, strong argument why
you shouldn't. Don't think I'm the only one that knows you--why,
good Lord, Stella, I've no monopoly on the knowledge! Do you know
what they'll say of you, all these fair weather friends that've
dropped you like a smashed toy? _I_ DO--they'll say you've wrung
me dry, and that now I'm ruined you've chucked me just as they
thought you would. If you care to know, I've heard whispers of it
already; so I'm going to save my boy, if I can."
Mrs. Willoughby stood with a hand at her throat, gasping; the
shot had struck home. "How dare you?" she whispered. "How dare
you, after what I know of you? You say that, after cheating me
into marrying you?"
Willoughby tossed his head. "Do you still refer to Severance?" he
inquired, caustically; and then his face darkened. "I'll tell you
why I cheated you into marrying me. It was because I loved you, I
think," he said, and there came a wistfulness into his voice that
almost startled her. But she put it away scornfully.
"You mean you stole his money to get me!" she retorted,
unequivocally.
"I did--you're quite right!" he answered quickly. "And do you
know what became of the money?" he demanded, pausing long enough
to wet his lips, but giving her no time to reply "Well, it bought
the clothes you wore--your hats--your gloves--your jewels. It's
paid for your extravagances--or a part of them. It bought you the
carriage you wanted; your string of pearls too. My soul!" he
cried in a kind of fierce wonderment, "it bought nearly all there
is of you, I think! It bought you, besides--that money did--his,
with a lot more added to it!"
Mrs. Willoughby stared at him confounded--the situation had
become reversed. She found herself impugned and called to defend
when she had thought only to attack. It was a bitter reflection
that he had, all along, hidden his contempt, while she had been
idly picking flaws in him.
"Oh, yes!" he cried, going on; "all you looked for or lived for
was money. I'd heard your father drum it into your head, and I'd
seen the way you took it in!" He threw up his hand with a gesture
of intolerable regret, this man who had been only a
money-grubbing automaton. "I was ashamed, at first, but as you'd
seemed to take a fancy to me, I deluded myself into thinking you
cared. I knew Severance, too. He was clever and shrewd, but
crooked as a fish-hook. At the time he was making love to you,
there was another. But, never mind, I won't talk of that. I saw
you, and it didn't take long to turn my head." He smiled
wistfully, as before. "I'd never seen a woman like you, you know.
I'd been too busy trying to keep alive. But there was this
Severance, and--oh, well, what's the use?" he muttered again
thickly. "You got your money, and I got the woman I loved. Yes, I
got her--my soul!" he protested; "and it's a pretty trial
balance, isn't it, to cast up on a day like this?"
Silenced, she stood and watched him, waiting for the next storm
of his passion. But Willoughby's rage seemed to have burned
itself out. He drifted across the room and reached his hand for
the bell-pull. "Put away that trunk," he ordered quietly, facing
her; "I'm going to run things now. If you're determined to leave
me, you'll have to put it off a while. I'm going to save the boy.
When I'm on my feet again, I'll give you what money you want; but
there shall be no open scandal." Still silent, she was watching
him, when the maid came in answer to the bell. "Help Mrs.
Willoughby with these," he said curtly, denoting the half-packed
trunk; "we're not going away." And in the presence of the servant
she dared make no rejoinder. Later in the day he looked in again;
Mrs. Willoughby and the maid were rearranging the room, and the
trunk had been whisked away. He smiled grimly, and withdrew.
There could be but two results from a conflict like this: she
would either scorn him the more or she would come to respect him.
For days the outcome wavered in the balance. They met at the
table only--she sitting preoccupied, he talking quietly with the
boy. At the week end he brought her a roll of bills. "For the
house money," he said briefly; and when she would not reach out a
hand for it, he dropped it in her lap, and went away. But that
night she entered into the talk at the table, a little quiet,
still repressed, and showing her hurt. Willoughby, quietly
deferential, kept to his part of the conversation exactly as if
nothing ugly had occurred between them. His bantering with his
son was genial and affectionate, and once she thought he tried to
include her in this camaraderie. The few last shreds of her
vanity, however, still waved distressing signals of the hurt, and
she evaded it. But she felt strangely alone, notwithstanding;
with an almost unconquerable self-pity she reflected on the
fair-weather friends that had deserted her. A little sense of
comfort trickled into her heart, though, when she thought of her
boy. HE, at all events, had not been affected by the rumble of
drums that had beaten her out of the worldly camp where once she
had commanded. That night Willoughby looked in at her, while she
sat musing over a book, and when she would not look up at him he
went away again. A more complete sense of her loneliness came
over her as the hours passed in the big, silent house. So she
laid down her book, and went up-stairs to her boy's room.
"Who's there?" he cried, awakening from a doze.
"Just I, Willard. I came up to see whether you were all right."
"Oh, yes, I am!" he answered, a little perplexed; it had not been
often that she had found time from her busy affairs for a visit
like this. The boy took her hand in his and snuggled down in the
pillows. "It's nice to have you, mumsy," he mumbled, comfortably.
Willoughby, coming home the next evening, heard her talking to
the cook. "You mustn't be so wasteful, Annie. Unless you can do
better, I shall have to get some one else." Her voice was
peevish, but to Willoughby it sounded full of inexplicable
melody. Nor when she carried her complaint to him later, at the
dinner-table, was he less affected with a secret joy.
"Harmon--we'd better take a smaller house. I can't do it any
longer on what we have."
"You needn't," he answered lightly; "I can let you have more.
Things are working out better than I expected. Just let me know
what you're short at the end of the week. I can manage it."
That night, too, he came and sat in the room where she was
reading. He said nothing, and picked up another book. But she
knew what he wished, and resolutely steeled herself. The next
night he was there again. "Good night, dear," he said cheerfully,
daring the added word when she arose to go.
"Good night," she answered.
But on the evening following they talked together, each evading
the shoals of past regret, and threading only the safe channels
of the commonplace. "Good night, Stella dear," he said,
unaffectedly, as she picked up her things; and she answered:
"Good night, Harmon."
He came close to her, and looked down into her face. "Stella," he
said, quietly; "Stella, it would make me very happy if you--if I
might--why, kiss you good night."
Mrs. Willoughby gathered up the remainder of her things, and then
slowly shook her head.
"No, we won't talk of that--yet!" she answered, and went away up
the stairs. Willoughby bit his lip, looking silently after her.
"Why, mumsy!" exclaimed the boy, his hand touching his mother's
cheek as she leaned over him. "What's wrong?"
She shook her head vehemently in the dark. "Nothing at all, dear.
You must go to sleep now."
The next day, Willoughby, on his return from down-town, found her
busily superintending the two servants while they cleaned up his
room. It was an unexpected attention on her part. He withdrew
quietly. A little while later, leaning over the balusters, she
saw Willard whispering to him earnestly. "Did she, my boy?" she
heard the man cry under his breath. "Why, now, mumsy must just
have been a little tired. I don't think it was anything else."
Willoughby's smile seemed enough at the moment to reassure almost
any one.
At dinner his lightness, good-nature, geniality became
infectious. Even Mrs. Willoughby suffered herself to smile at his
whimsical jollity with the boy. Later there was the little comedy
of the good night; and then they parted again. But Willoughby did
not go out as usual.
It was very late that night when Mrs. Willoughby awoke with the
conviction that some one was in her room. Her first impulse was
to cry out in alarm; then, in terror she lay quiet, peering from
beneath her half-closed lids. Across the lighter background of
the curtained window a figure moved, big and familiar in its
bulk. She knew then, and there seemed a greater reason than ever
why she should remain quiet.
Nor was she wrong in her surmise. A moment later Willoughby
leaned over, and she felt his lips lightly brush her cheek. A
little sigh followed, and then he was gone, tiptoeing cautiously.
Mrs. Willoughby sat up in bed, her face in her hands, and
reflected in the stillness that presages the storm. But
loneliness no longer pained her; the solitude had become suddenly
peopled with vivid, poignant regrets, shouting loudly their
indictment and their appeal.
Then, with the curious informality of a woman's emotion--whether
of grief or of joy, whether of pleasure or of pain--she rocked
down her head to her knees, while through her fingers poured the
scalding tears. Mrs. Willoughby had become sincere at last.
*****************************************************************
Vol. XXIII No.1 JULY 1910
The Painter of "Diana of the Tides" {pages 95-103}
By WALTER PRICHARD EATON
Author of "The American Stage of To-day," etc.
Given nearly three hundred square feet of blank wall space, and
it takes something of an artist to fill it up with interesting
paint. Probably you would not pick a miniature painter for the
task. Yet, curiously, John Elliott, creator of "Diana of the
Tides," the great mural painting which adorns the large gallery
to the right of the entrance of the new National Museum at
Washington, also paints on ivory. He works, likewise, in silver
point, that delicate and difficult medium; he draws pastel
illustrations for children's fairy tales; he works in portraiture
with red chalk or oils. And, when the need comes, he has shown
that he can turn stevedore, carpenter, and architect, to slave
with the relief party at Messina, finally to help design and
build, in four months, an entire village for the stricken
sufferers, including a hotel, a hospital, three schoolhouses, and
a church. The too frequent scorn of the "practical man of
affairs" for the artist and dreamer, the world's sneaking
tolerance for the temperament which creates in forms of ideal
beauty rather than in bridges or factories or banks, finds in the
life and work of such a man as John Elliott such complete, if
unconscious, refutation, that his story should have its place in
the history of the day.
John Elliott was born on Good Friday, 1859, one of a famous
Scottish border family. His residence is now in Boston,
Massachusetts, at the home of his mother-in-law. Mrs. Julia Ward
Howe. Robert Louis Stevenson had Elliott blood in his veins.
"Parts of me," he once wrote, "have shouted the slogan of the
Elliotts in the debatable land." If Stevenson's Homeric account
of the Four Black Elliotts in "Weir of Hermiston" is historically
veracious, we might fancy that one of their descendants would
feel his activities somewhat cramped on Beacon Street, Boston.
The Elliotts were a wild lot, and some of them did not escape the
hangman. Their family tree appears to have been the gallows. But
Stevenson tells us they were noted for their prayers, and at
least one of them wrote poetry, and declaimed it, drunk, to
Walter Scott, who retaliated in kind.
But the present John Elliott, artist, though he is of the kin of
Stevenson, and bears the dark hair and rather prominent,
melancholy eyes of the traditional Elliott stock, yet physically
much more closely resembles Edgar Allan Poe. If you press him
hard, he will confess that he began life by studying for the
stage, and "almost played Romeo," before painting drew him away.
Reaching Italy, he aspired to enter the studio of Don Jose di
Villegas, now director of the Prado Museum in Madrid, but then in
Rome. Villegas took no pupils. But "Jack" Elliott is Scotch. He
made a bargain. He would teach the master English, in return for
instruction in painting. At the end of two years, young Elliott
had learned much about art, but the master, he says, had acquired
only one English phrase--"I haf no money!"
At the end of two years, Elliott wished to leave, because he
despaired of painting like his master. "That is why I keep you,"
said Villegas; "you have retained your own manner and choice of
subjects." So the pupil stayed on in Rome for five years, sharing
his studio later with Aristide Sartorio, now a leading Italian
painter. Here, in the Via Flaminia, he painted his first
important mural decoration, for the dining room of Mrs. Potter
Palmer's Chicago Lake Shore mansion. This work, called "The
Vintage," is decorously inebriate, a vinous riot of little
cupids. It led, shortly after his marriage in 1887 to Miss Maud
Howe, a daughter of Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, to his establishing
himself in Chicago, where he did many decorations and portraits.
In 1894, he went back to Rome to execute a commission for a huge
ceiling piece for the Boston Public Library. The piece was for a
room later converted into a children's room, and after the canvas
was placed, in 1901, the incongruity of the adult painting and
the purposes of the room caused unfavorable comment. But the room
has been recently readjusted. It is now lined with high oak
shelves, almost to the cornice, filled with musty old books of a
beautiful brown--perhaps the most effective decoration in the
world--and the ceiling tells at its true value.
This ceiling, fifty feet square, divided into two equal panels,
represents the twenty Christian centuries, as horses, led by the
hours (winged female figures) out of the mists of the past into
the illumination of the present. The models for the horses were
the undersized nags of the Roman Campagna, which are "small but
decorative beasties," as Mr. Elliott puts it, and lend themselves
to a slightly conventional treatment. They sweep two by two, out
of a cool mistiness, round the ceiling past the suggestion of a
pale moon, into the full radiance of the golden orb of the sun.
The triumph of the picture is its handling of the problem of
light. This golden daybreak pierces the mists whereon the horses
gallop, touches here a flank, there a wing feather on one of the
hours, and warms to rosy glow the tip of a cloud. It appears in
unexpected places, grows where only shadow seemed to be, and
surprises you anew each time you look up. Painted in the
flat--that is, with no part of the picture telling as farther
from the eye than another, to distort the proportions of the
room--the ceiling yet has great depth, distance, airy lightness.
It is a true decorative painting.
While at work upon it, Mr. Elliott painted many portraits,
including the well-known red chalk heads of the "Soldiers Three,"
Lord Ava, the Marquis of Winchester, and General Wauchope; the
portrait of His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge; and that of
Lady Katherine Thynne, now Lady Cromer, a celebrated English
beauty. Indeed, he made her the model for the second hour in the
Boston ceiling, the figure next to the leader in the procession.
Three studies of her head for this figure, well known from
reproduction, are now in the possession of Thomas W. Lawson.
In Rome the Elliotts occupied for some time the apartments of
Mrs. Elliott's cousin, the late F. Marion Crawford, in the
Palazzo Santa Croce. In writing "With the Immortals," Mr.
Crawford had collected many death masks, including one of Dante,
which fascinated Mr. Elliott. Two pictures of "Dante in Exile"
were the result. One of them now hangs in the living room of
Queen Margherita of Italy, the other in the house of Mrs. J.
Montgomery Sears of Boston. A third pastel study was made, an
unfinished head of the poet, and thrown into a wastebasket. By a
curious fatality, it is now better known than either of the
paintings. Mrs. Elliott rescued the drawing, smoothed it out,
framed it, and was allowed to hang it in her chamber. Later it
was seen and purchased by Mrs. David Kimball of Boston, and in
reproduction has gone all over the world, receiving honors in
Japan and the higher honor of a place over the desk of many Dante
students. Yet few who possess the reproduction know anything of
the artist.
Mr. Elliott, receiving his commission to do a great mural
painting for the new National Museum in Washington, again went to
Rome four years ago. "Diana of the Tides" was completed and
signed on Christmas day, 1908. Three days later came the awful
news of the Messina earthquake, and the Hon. Lloyd Griscom, then
American Ambassador to Italy, at once called for volunteers for
his relief expedition. John Elliott was among the first to
respond. He went south officially as an interpreter. Actually, he
played the part of stevedore as well for ten days on the relief
ship.
"I have dropped my last knuckle down the hold this morning," he
wrote back, "and I have only two fingers left that I can wash."
After a few weeks, he hastened back to Rome, to give a promised
public exhibition of "Diana of the Tides," and, as soon as the
exhibition was over, rushed down to Messina again.
There Commander Belknap, who was at the head of the American
relief forces, put him to work, as architect, on the erection of
the American village, in the lemon groves on the outskirts of the
stricken city. "I had never been trained as an architect," he
says, "but I once made over a house up in Cornish, New Hampshire,
and that gave me a practical experience which came in remarkably
handy."
Most of the lumber had been cut for the erection of small houses,
and the door and window frames were stock pieces. It became his
task to design and build, as quickly as could be done, not only
comfortable houses for many thousand people, but a church, a
hotel, three schools, a hospital, all out of these small lumber
units. He combined the units for the larger buildings, so
grouping the small stock window frames as to give a pleasing
effect of size, even constructing a kind of rose window for the
church. He helped lay out the streets in such a way as to
preserve all the trees possible. And, in spite of the haste with
which the work had to he done, and the sixteen-hour-a-day strain
under which the workers labored, the Zona Americana emerged an
attractive and sanitary, as well as practical, village. Queen
Helena, as soon as the American village was under way, got Mr.
Elliott to go over the drafts for the plans of the American
quarter in her village near by, working them up along the same
lines. So, in four months, he designed and superintended the
erection of houses, churches, schools, and hospitals for a town
of several thousand inhabitants.
Commander Belknap's report spoke of him as "the first to
volunteer, and the most devoted worker, sharing every hardship
with unfailing good humor and leaving his beautifying touch on
every part of the work."
On June 12, 1908, having built his town and recovered his lost
knuckles, John Elliott returned to Rome, where the soil did not
rock, and set quietly about making twenty-four small pastel
drawings to illustrate a fairy story! From building houses for
the wretched homeless sufferers, he turned to the play tales of
childhood. He laid down the T square and the hammer for a piece
of pastel crayon. But he had triumphantly refuted the scorn of
the "practical man" for the artist. He had shown the stuff that
dreams are really made of. Incidentally, he had won for himself a
decoration from the King of Italy, and the medal of the American
Red Cross Association.
"Diana of the Tides," which now covers the end wall of the
right-hand gallery of the new National Museum at Washington, is
akin to the Boston Library ceiling in its employment of horses
symbolically, its light, luminous color, and its subtle play of
illumination. This charm of illumination is unfortunately lost in
reproduction. Mr. Elliott has made symbolic use of Diana, the
Moon Goddess. in a way obvious enough, but hitherto, oddly,
untried by artists. It is a way singularly appropriate in a
museum of scientific character--a combination of ancient myth and
modern science. As the Moon Goddess, Diana controls the four
tides, which, in the shape of horses, draw her erect and jubilant
figure on a great seashell. They are without guiding reins and
harness, to suggest the unseen channels of her sway. If the
reader will note an advancing wave, he will see that, just before
the crest curls over, the foam is tossed back. Then the wave bows
and breaks. So the nearest horse raises his head slightly, the
next higher, the third tosses his head back, and the last has
bowed his neck. In their motion and grouped attitudes. as they
gallop up on the beach, is the rhythm of an oncoming wave.
Farther than that Mr. Elliott wisely did not go. "Let them
suggest more obviously a wave," he says, "and you have a trick
picture. After a while, you wouldn't see anything in it but the
trick." The wave motion is repeated on a comber out at sea, and,
to the left, against a rock on the shore.
Diana stands behind the horses, against the great, golden moon--a
radiant halo. She has just unloosed an arrow from her bow. Her
draperies are of indefinite color, the rose and lilac and amber
of sunset. Her face, it will be noted, though she stands against
the moon, is lighted from in front. In that fact lies the secret
of the illumination. For this picture was supposedly painted at
that one Byronic hour of the year when
The sun was setting opposite the moon.
Turner, in a small water color, has worked out a similar problem,
with the cool copper of the harvest moonlight bathing one side of
an old stone tower, the warm rose of sunset the other. In Mr.
Elliott's great canvas the mutual lights kill all shadows, and
out toward the great yellow disk of the moon the invisible sun
floods its lilac and pink, kindling the waves, the draperies of
the goddess, the wet flanks of the horses, and suffusing the
whole painting with its delicate, bright warmth, which is yet
kept too cool for gaudiness by the twilight of the moon.
While this canvas was being unpacked in Washington last winter,
Mr. Elliott was exhibiting in Boston his portrait of his
mother-in-law, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe. It was begun and nearly
finished at Newport four or five years ago; but Mr. Elliott has
not cared to complete it, for during the interval the "Grand Old
Lady" has considerably changed in appearance. She is now more
than ninety years old. When the sittings began, Mrs. Howe had
just recovered from an illness, and could read or talk only for
brief periods. Mostly she sat looking out of her window at a bird
which had a nest in a nearby tree. In this attitude, the eyes
raised, the face quiet yet alert, the artist has caught her;
calm, patient, but with one hand characteristically clenched on
the arm of her chair, showing a touch of hidden force and
commanding will. She is dressed in light green. The background is
an indistinguishable brown. Her eyes have that very delicate
light blue of advanced age, wistful yet prophetic. The skin, too,
has the rare ivory delicacy of old age, of old age gently dealt
with and protected. The light is unobtrusive yet
luminous--morning sunshine. The picture is utterly simple; the
more so for its touch of incompleteness. The masses are broad,
artless. It is tender, reverential, a sweet and solemn
glorification of old age, and of the old age of a distinguished
spirit.
And at the exhibition in Boston one of the women visitors
complained to the artist: "But you know, Mr. Elliott, when Mrs.
Howe comes to the Woman's Club, she always looks so bright and
animated, and always has something smart to say!"
To which the artist replied: "No doubt, my dear lady. But I was
not painting a president of the New England Woman's Club, but the
author of `The Battle Hymn of the Republic.' "
Queen Margherita of Italy made a truer comment when she saw the
portrait in Mr. Elliott's studio in Rome. "That portrait deserves
to go into any collection in the world," she said, "not because
it is a good portrait of a distinguished old woman, but because
it is a portrait of Old age as it ought to be."
Can it be that a mere Continental Queen is a better judge of art
than a member of a Boston Woman's Club? Such thoughts are very
disturbing!
Queen Margherita, ever since she first visited Mr. Elliott's
studio in Rome ten years ago, has been his warm patron. It was
for her he made his well known silver-point portrait of the late
King Humbert, which she carries with her on all journeys. It has,
indeed the boldness of line inseparable from good silver-point
drawing, where a stroke once laid on is indelible and no "working
over" is possible. When "Diana of the Tides " was exhibited in
Rome in February, 1909, the Queen was one of the first visitors.
She was not the first, the Chinese Minister arriving ahead of all
others, on the stroke of ten--the opening hour--attended by all
his suite, to signify his profound Celestial veneration for the
Fine Arts. The Queen, seeing the picture, expressed delight and
volunteered to tell her son, King Victor Emmanuel, about it.
A few days later, at seven thirty in the morning, there came a
knocking at the door, with the announcement, "A message from the
King."
The King, said the messenger, would follow in an hour. Presumably
there was some hurry of preparation in the Elliott family. A New
York artist, at any rate, at seven thirty A. M. would be in no
condition to receive a crowned head--or any other! Promptly at
eight thirty--punctuality being a royal virtue--King Victor
Emmanuel drove up in a motor car with two aides. He remained half
an hour. Being fond of horses, he found much in the picture
genuinely to interest him. The artist accompanied the monarch to
the door of his car, where he thanked him for the honor of his
visit.
"Not at all," said the King, in his excellent English. "My mother
told me to come."
Which shows, at least, that the Fifth Commandment is honored in
Italy.
The twenty-four pastel drawings made to illustrate Mrs.
Anderson's fairy tale, "The Great Sea Horse," were also exhibited
in America last winter. Made immediately after Mr. Elliott's
heartbreaking labor on the rocking soil of Sicily, they are none
the less quiet, childish, and fanciful in their charm. Only one
of them might have been inspired by the turning over in his
uneasy sleep of the giant buried beneath Etna--the picture of the
naked giant sitting on a headland and emptying his hot pipe ashes
into the sea, where they form a volcano. The grim, grotesque old
fellow is carefully drawn, with a fine rhythm of line in the
seated limbs. His bulk dwarfs the headland, and his head and
shoulders grow blue and pale in the sky. One questions why the
ashes do not fall farther out to sea; they seem to lie in the
shallow tide water on the beach. Barring this note of smallness,
the picture is a true grotesque in miniature.
Mr. Elliott also works in genuine miniature. He has painted
several portraits--of Mrs. Potter Palmer, the Chanler sisters of
New York, and many more. He has painted landscapes, as well.
Professor Barrett Wendell possesses a charming example. Most
recently he has been engaged on a large mural decoration, best
fitted, perhaps, for a music room, showing Pan seated on a tree
trunk by a lake, making into a pipe the broken reeds in his hand
after Syrinx eluded him. No horizon line shows. Pan and his tawny
leopard skin (his automobile coat, the artist calls it) tell
against the high purple banks across the lake. The god is making
the best of his loss--making music of it, in fact. He was the
eternal boy, before Mr. Barrie rediscovered him and surnamed him
Peter.
And there is something of the eternal boy about John Elliott. He
plays with a paint box on a fifty-foot ceiling or a twenty-seven-
foot end wall, turns aside to paint a miniature on ivory, drops
all his paints when a great national calamity comes and is
converted into an architect overnight, building a whole town in
four months and making it as beautiful as he can in the process,
though the "practical" man would say that utility alone was
demanded; and then, when this work is over, turning blithely back
again to make pictures for a fairy book. He is strong, through
his fresh imagination, to combine ancient myth with modern
science in a huge decorative canvas, to reflect the dignity and
loveliness and spiritual power of an exalted old age, to do
practical work in a practical crisis--and to joy, at the same
time, with the moon baby dancing on the beach!
"Jack Elliott," they will tell you who know him, "has an artistic
temperament." Well, if this be the artistic temperament, what a
pity there is not more of it in the world! It is not the
temperament that is self-centered, whining, ineffectual. It is
the temperament that does whatever comes to hand as well as it
can, for sheer love of the task, and of beautiful workmanship
that through imagination wins to sympathy, and through
imagination grasps the opportunity to do practical work
beautifully, where others would only do it practically. It is the
temperament eternally boyish and buoyant, which is on the side of
sweetness and light.
Perhaps it is not what the world means by the artistic
temperament. But it is the temperament of the true artist. "Never
do a pot-boiler," said Mr. Elliott to a young painter the other
day. "Let one of your best things go to boil the pot." In these
words is a rule of conduct that all of us--artists or artisans
brokers or clerks, men or women--might well walk by toward the
light of a more beautiful and cooperative society.
*****************************************************************
Vol. XXIII No.2 AUGUST 1910
THE HEATHEN {page 193-204}
By JACK LONDON
Author of " The Call of the Wild," "Martin Eden," etc.
I met him first in a hurricane. And though we had been through
the hurricane on the same schooner, it was not until the schooner
had gone to pieces under us that I first laid eyes on him.
Without doubt I had seen him with the rest of the Kanaka crew on
board, but I had not consciously been aware of his existence, for
the Petite Jeanne was rather overcrowded. In addition to her
eight or ten Kanaka sea men, her white captain, mate, and
supercargo, and her six cabin passengers, she sailed from
Rangiroa with something like eighty-five deck
passengers--Paumotuans and Tahitians, men, women, and children,
each with a trade-box, to say nothing of sleeping-mats, blankets,
and clothes-bundles.
The pearling season in the Paumotus was over, and all hands were
returning to Tahiti. The six of us cabin passengers were
pearl-buyers. Two were Americans, one was Ah Choon, the whitest
Chinese I have ever known, one was a German, one was a Polish
Jew, and I completed the half-dozen. It had been a prosperous
season. Not one of us had cause for complaint, nor one of the
eighty-five deck passengers either. All had done well, and all
were looking forward to a rest-off and a good time in Papeete. Of
course the Petite Jeanne was overloaded. he was only seventy
tons, and she had no right to carry a tithe of the mob she had on
board. Beneath her hatches she was crammed and jammed with pearl
shell and copra. Even the trade-room was packed full of shell. It
was a miracle that the sailors could work her. There was no
moving about the decks. They simply climbed back and forth along
the rails. In the night-time they walked upon the sleepers, who
carpeted the deck, two deep, I'll swear. Oh, and there were pigs
and chickens on deck, and sacks of yams, while every conceivable
place was festooned with strings of drinking cocoanuts and
bunches of bananas. On both sides, between the fore and main
shrouds, guys had been stretched, just low enough for the
fore-boom to swing clear; and from each of these guys at least
fifty bunches of bananas were suspended.
It promised to be a messy passage, even if we did make it in the
two or three days that would have been required if the southeast
trades had been blowing fresh. But they weren't blowing fresh.
After the first five hours, the trade died away in a dozen
gasping fans. The calm continued all that night and the next
day--one of those glaring, glossy calms when the very thought of
opening one's eyes to look at it is sufficient to cause a
headache. The second day a man died, an Easter Islander, one of
the best divers that season in the lagoon. Smallpox, that is what
it was, though how smallpox could come on board when there had
been no known cases ashore when we left Rangiroa is beyond me.
There it was, though, smallpox, a man dead, and three others down
on their backs. There was nothing to be done. We could not
segregate the sick, nor could we care for them. We were packed
like sardines. There was nothing to do but die--that is, there
was nothing to do after the night that followed the first death.
On that night, the mate, the supercargo, the Polish Jew, and four
native divers sneaked away in the large whaleboat. They were
never heard of again. In the morning the captain promptly
scuttled the remaining boats, and there we were.
That day there were two deaths; the following day three; then it
jumped to eight. It was curious to see how we took it. The
natives, for instance, fell into a condition of dumb, stolid
fear. The captain--Oudouse, his name was, a Frenchman--became
very nervous and voluble. The German, the two Americans, and
myself bought up all the Scotch whisky and proceeded to drink.
The theory was beautiful--namely, if we kept ourselves soaked in
alcohol, every smallpox germ that came into contact with us would
immediately be scorched to a cinder. And the theory worked,
though I must confess that neither Captain Oudouse nor Ah Choon
was attacked by the disease either. The Frenchman did not drink
at all, while Ah Choon restricted himself to one drink daily.
We had a week of it, and then the whisky gave out. It was just as
well, or I shouldn't be alive now. It took a sober man to pull
through what followed, as you will agree when I mention the
little fact that only two men did pull through. The other man was
the Heathen--at least that was what I heard Captain Oudouse call
him at the moment I first became aware of the Heathen's
existence.
But to come back. It was at the end of the week that I happened
to glance at the barometer that hung in the cabin companion-way.
Its normal register in the Paumotus was 29.90, and it was quite
customary to see it vacillate between 29.85 and 30.00, or even
30.05; but to see it, as I saw it, down to 29.62, was sufficient
to chill the blood of any pearl-buyer in Oceania.
I called Captain Oudouse's attention to it, only to be informed
that he had watched it going down for several hours. There was
little to do, but that little he did very well, considering the
circumstances. He took off the light sails, shortened right down
to storm canvas, spread life-lines, and waited for the wind. His
mistake lay in what he did after the wind came. He hove to on the
port tack, which was the right thing to do south of the Equator,
IF--and there was the rub--IF one were NOT in the direct path of
the hurricane. We were in the direct path. I could see that by
the steady increase of the wind and the equally steady fall of
the barometer. I wanted to turn and run with the wind on the port
quarter until the barometer ceased falling, and then to heave to.
We argued till he was reduced to hysteria, but budge he would
not. The worst of it was that I could not get the rest of the
pearl-buyers to back me up. Who was I, anyway, to know more about
the sea and its ways than a properly qualified captain?
Of course, the sea rose with the wind, frightfully, and I shall
never forget the first three seas the Petite Jeanne shipped. She
had fallen off, as vessels do when hove to, and the first sea
made a clean breach. The lifelines were only for the strong and
well, and little good were they even for these when the women and
children, the bananas and cocoanuts, the pigs and trade-boxes,
the sick and the dying, were swept along in a solid, screeching,
groaning mass.
The second sea filled the Petite Jeanne's decks flush with the
rails, and, as her stern sank down and her bow tossed skyward,
all the miserable dunnage of life and luggage poured aft. It was
a human torrent. They came head-first, feet-first, sidewise,
rolling over and over, twisting, squirming, writhing, and
crumpling up. Now and again one or another caught a grip on a
stanchion or a rope, but the weight of the bodies behind tore
such grips loose. I saw what was coming, sprang on top the cabin,
and from there into the mainsail itself. Ah Choon and one of the
Americans tried to follow me, but I was one jump ahead of them.
The American was swept away and over the stern like a piece of
chaff. Ah Choon caught a spoke of the wheel and swung in behind
it. But a strapping Rarotonga vahine[1]--she must have weighed
two hundred and fifty--brought up against him and got an arm
around his neck. He clutched the Kanaka steersman with his other
hand. And just at that moment the schooner flung down to
starboard. The rush of bodies and the sea that was coming along
the port runway between the cabin and the rail, turned abruptly
and poured to starboard. Away they went, vahine, Ah Choon, and
steersman; and I swear I saw Ah Choon grin at me with philosophic
resignation as he cleared the rail and went under.
[1] woman
The third sea--the biggest of the three--did not do so much
damage. By the time it arrived, nearly everybody was in the
rigging. On deck perhaps a dozen gasping, half-drowned, and
half-stunned wretches were rolling about or attempting to crawl
into safety. They went by the board, as did the wreckage of the
two remaining boats. The other pearl-buyers and myself, between
seas, managed to get about fifteen women and children into the
cabin and battened down. Little good it did the poor creatures in
the end.
Wind? Out of all my experiences I could not have believed it
possible for the wind to blow as it did. There is no describing
it. How can one describe a nightmare? It was the same way with
that wind. It tore the clothes off our bodies. I say TORE THEM
OFF, and I mean it. I am not asking you to believe it. I am
merely telling something that I saw and felt. There are times
when I do not believe it myself. I went through it, and that is
enough. One could not face that wind and live. It was a monstrous
thing, and the most monstrous thing about it was that it
increased and continued to increase. Imagine countless millions
and billions of tons of sand. Imagine this sand tearing along at
ninety, a hundred, a hundred and twenty, or any other number of
miles per hour. Imagine, further, this sand to be invisible,
impalpable, yet to retain all the weight and density of sand. Do
all this, and you may get a vague inkling of what that wind was
like. Perhaps sand is not the right comparison. Consider it mud,
invisible, impalpable, but heavy as mud. Nay, it goes beyond
that. Consider every molecule of air to be a mud-bank in itself.
Then try to imagine the multitudinous impact of mud-banks--no, it
is beyond me. Language may be adequate to express the ordinary
conditions of life, but it cannot possibly express any of the
conditions of so enormous a blast of wind. It would have been
better had I stuck by my original intention of not attempting a
description.
I will say this much: The sea, which had risen at first, was
beaten down by that wind. More--it seemed as if the whole ocean
had been sucked up in the maw of the hurricane and hurled on
through that portion of space which previously had been occupied
by the air. Of course, our canvas had gone long before. But
Captain Oudouse had on the Petite Jeanne something I had never
before seen on a South Sea schooner a sea-anchor. It was a
conical canvas bag, the mouth of which was kept open by a huge
hoop of iron. The sea-anchor was bridled something like a kite,
so that it bit into the water as a kite bites into the air--but
with a difference. The sea-anchor remained just under the surface
of the ocean, in a perpendicular position. A long line, in turn,
connected it with the schooner. As a result, the Petite Jeanne
rode bow-on to the wind and to what little sea there was.
The situation really would have been favorable, had we not been
in the path of the storm. True, the wind itself tore our canvas
out of the gaskets, jerked out our topmasts, and made a raffle of
our running gear; but still we would have come through nicely had
we not been square in front of the advancing storm-center. That
was what fixed us. I was in a state of stunned, numbed, paralyzed
collapse from enduring the impact of the wind, and I think I was
just about ready to give up and die when the center smote us. The
blow we received was an absolute lull. There was not a breath of
air. The effect on one was sickening. Remember that for hours we
had been at terrific muscular tension, withstanding the awful
pressure of that wind. And then, suddenly, the pressure was
removed. I know that I felt as though I were about to expand, to
fly apart in all directions. It seemed as if every atom composing
my body was repelling every other atom, and was on the verge of
rushing off irresistibly into space. But that lasted only for a
moment. Destruction was upon us.
In the absence of the wind and its pressure, the sea rose. It
jumped, it leaped, it soared straight toward the clouds.
Remember, from every point of the compass that inconceivable wind
was blowing in toward the center of calm. The result was that the
seas sprang up from every point of the compass. There was no wind
to check them. They popped up like corks released from the bottom
of a pail of water. There was no system to them, no stability.
They were hollow, maniacal seas. They were eighty feet high at
the least. They were not seas at all. They resembled no sea a man
had ever seen. They were splashes, monstrous splashes, that is
all, splashes that were eighty feet high. Eighty! They were more
than eighty. They went over our mastheads. They were spouts,
explosions. They were drunken. They fell anywhere, anyhow. They
jostled one another, they collided. They rushed together and
collapsed upon one another, or fell apart like a thousand
waterfalls all at once. It was no ocean any man ever dreamed of,
that hurricane-center. It was confusion thrice confounded. It was
anarchy. It was a hell-pit of sea water gone mad.
The Petite Jeanne? I don't know. The Heathen told me afterward
that he did not know. She was literally torn apart, ripped wide
open, beaten into a pulp, smashed into kindling wood,
annihilated. When I came to, I was in the water, swimming
automatically, though I was about two-thirds drowned. How I got
there I had no recollection. I remembered seeing the Petite
Jeanne fly to pieces at what must have been the instant that my
own consciousness was buffeted out of me. But there I was, with
nothing to do but make the best of it, and in that best there was
little promise. The wind was blowing again, the sea was much
smaller and more regular, and I knew that I had passed through
the center. Fortunately, there were no sharks about. The
hurricane had dissipated the ravenous horde that had surrounded
the death ship.
It was about midday when the Petite Jeanne went to pieces, and it
must have been two hours afterward when I picked up with one of
her hatch-covers. Thick rain was driving at the time, and it was
the merest chance that flung me and the hatch-cover together. A
short length of line was trailing from the rope handle, and I
knew that I was good for a day at least, if the sharks did not
return. Three hours later, possibly a little longer, sticking
close to the cover and, with closed eyes, concentrating my whole
soul upon the task of breathing in enough air to keep me going
and, at the same time, to avoid breathing in enough water to
drown me, it seemed to me that I heard voices. The rain had
ceased, and wind and sea were easing marvelously. Not twenty feet
away from me, on another hatch-cover, were Captain Oudouse and
the Heathen. They were fighting over the possession of the
cover--at least the Frenchman was.
"Paien noir!" I heard him scream, and at the same time I saw him
kick the Kanaka.
Now, Captain Oudouse had lost all his clothes except his shoes,
and they were heavy brogans. It was a cruel blow, for it caught
the Heathen on the mouth and the point of the chin, half-stunning
him. I looked for him to retaliate, but he contented himself with
swimming about forlornly, a safe ten feet away. Whenever a fling
of the sea threw him closer, the Frenchman, hanging on with his
hands, kicked out at him with both feet. Also, at the moment of
delivering each kick, he called the Kanaka a black heathen.
"For two centimes I'd come over there and drown you, you white
beast!" I yelled.
The only reason I did not go was that I felt too tired. The very
thought of the effort to swim over was nauseating. So I called to
the Kanaka to come to me, and proceeded to share the hatch-cover
with him. Otoo, he told me his name was (pronounced
-t-); also he told me that he was a native of Bora
Bora, the most westerly of the Society Group. As I learned
afterward, he had got the hatch-cover first, and, after some
time, encountering Captain Oudouse, had offered to share it with
him, and had been kicked off for his pains.
And that was how Otoo and I first came together. He was no
fighter. He was all sweetness and gentleness, a love-creature
though he stood nearly six feet tall and was muscled like a
gladiator. He was no fighter, but he was also no coward. He had
the heart of a lion, and in the years that followed I have seen
him run risks that I would never dream of taking. What I mean is
that, while he was no fighter, and while he always avoided
precipitating a row, he never ran away from trouble when it
started. And it was " 'Ware shoal!" when once Otoo went into
action. I shall never forget what he did to Bill King. It
occurred in German Samoa. Bill King was hailed the champion
heavyweight of the American navy. He was a big brute of a man, a
veritable gorilla, one of those hard-hitting, rough-housing
chaps, and clever with his fists as well. He picked the quarrel,
and he kicked Otoo twice and struck him once before Otoo felt it
to be necessary to fight. I don't think it lasted four minutes,
at the end of which time Bill King was the unhappy possessor of
four broken ribs, a broken fore-arm, and a dislocated
shoulder-blade. Otoo knew nothing of scientific boxing. He was
merely a man-handler, and Bill King was something like three
months in recovering from the bit of man-handling he received
that afternoon on Apia beach.
But I am running ahead of my yarn. We shared the hatch-cover
between us. We took turn and turn about, one lying flat on the
cover and resting, while the other, submerged to the neck, merely
held on with his hands. For three days and nights, spell and
spell, on the cover and in the water, we drifted over the ocean.
Toward the last I was delirious most of the time, and there were
times, too, when I heard Otoo babbling and raving in his native
tongue. Our continuous immersion prevented us from dying of
thirst, though the sea water and the sunshine gave us the
prettiest imaginable combination of salt pickle and sunburn. In
the end, Otoo saved MY life; for I came to, lying on the beach
twenty feet from the water, sheltered from the sun by a couple of
cocoanut leaves. No one but Otoo could have dragged me there and
stuck up the leaves for shade. He was lying beside me. I went off
again, and the next time I came around it was cool and starry
night and Otoo was pressing a drinking cocoanut to my lips.
We were the sole survivors of the Petite Jeanne. Captain Oudouse
must have succumbed to exhaustion, for several days later his
hatch-cover drifted ashore without him. Otoo and I lived with the
natives of the atoll for a week, when we were rescued by a French
cruiser and taken to Tahiti. In the meantime, however, we had
performed the ceremony of exchanging names. In the South Seas
such a ceremony binds two men closer together than
blood-brothership. The initiative had been mine, and Otoo was
rapturously delighted when I suggested it.
"It is well," he said, in Tahitian. "For we have been mates
together for three days on the lips of Death."
"But Death stuttered," I smiled.
"It was a brave deed you did, master," he replied, "and Death was
not vile enough to speak."
"Why do you `master' me?" I demanded, with a show of hurt
feelings. "We have exchanged names. To you I am Otoo. To me you
are Charley. And between you and me, forever and forever, you
shall be Charley and I shall be Otoo. It is the way of the
custom. And when we die, if it does happen that we live again,
somewhere beyond the stars and the sky, still shall you be
Charley to me and I Otoo to you."
"Yes, master," he answered, his eyes luminous and soft with joy.
"There you go!" I cried indignantly.
"What does it matter what my lips utter?" he argued. "They are
only my lips. But I shall think OTOO always. Whenever I think of
myself I shall think of you. Whenever men call me by name I shall
think of you. And beyond the sky and beyond the stars always and
forever you shall be Otoo to me. Is it well, master?"
I hid my smile and answered that it was well.
We parted at Papeete. I remained ashore to recuperate, and he
went on in a cutter to his own island, Bora Bora. Six weeks later
he was back. I was surprised, for he had told me of his wife and
said that he was returning to her and would give over sailing on
far voyages.
"Where do you go, master?" he asked, after our first greetings.
I shrugged my shoulders. It was a hard question. "To all the
world, "was my answer. "All the world, all the sea, and all the
islands that are in the sea."
"I will go with you," he said simply. "My wife is dead."
I never had a brother, but from what I have seen of other men's
brothers I doubt if any man ever had one who was to him what Otoo
was to me. He was brother, and father and mother as well. And
this I know--I lived a straighter and a better man because of
Otoo. I had to live straight in Otoo's eyes. Because of him I
dared not tarnish myself. He made me his ideal, compounding me, I
fear, chiefly out of his own love and worship; and there were
times when I stood close to the steep pitch of hell and would
have taken the plunge had not the thought of Otoo restrained me.
His pride in me entered into me until it became one of the major
rules in my personal code to do nothing that would diminish that
pride of his. Naturally, I did not learn right away what his
feelings were toward me. He never criticised, never censured, and
slowly the exalted place I held in his eyes dawned upon me, and
slowly I grew to comprehend the hurt I could inflict upon him by
being anything less than my best.
For seventeen years we were together. For seventeen years he was
at my shoulder, watching while I slept, nursing me through fever
and wounds, aye, and receiving wounds in fighting for me. He
signed on the same ships with me, and together we ranged the
Pacific from Hawaii to Sydney Head and from Torres Strait to the
Galapagos. We blackbirded from the New hebrides and the Line
Islands over to the westward, clear through the Louisiades, New
Britain, New Ireland, and New Hanover. We were wrecked three
times--in the Gilberts, in the Santa Cruz group, and in the
Fijis. And we traded and salved wherever a dollar promised in the
way of pearl and pearl shell, copra, beche de mer, hawkbill
turtle shell, and stranded wrecks.
It began in Papeete, immediately after his announcement that he
was going with me over all the sea and the islands in the midst
thereof. There was a club in those days in Papeete, where the
pearlers, traders, captains, and South Sea adventurers
foregathered. The play ran high and the drink ran high, and I am
very much afraid that I kept later hours than were becoming or
proper. No matter what the hour was when I left the club, there
was Otoo waiting to see me safely home. At first I smiled. Next I
chided him. Then I told him flatly I stood in need of no
wet-nursing. After that I did not see him when I came out of the
club. Quite by accident, a week or so later, I discovered that he
still saw me home, lurking across the street among the shadows of
the mango trees. What could I do? I know what I did do.
Insensibly I began to keep better hours. On wet and stormy
nights, in the thick of the folly and the fun, the thought would
come to me of Otoo keeping his dreary vigil under the dripping
mangoes. Truly, he made me a better man.
Yet he was not strait-laced. And he knew nothing of common
Christian morality. All the people on Bora Bora were Christians.
But he was a heathen, the only unbeliever on the island, a gross
materialist who believed that when he died he was dead. He
believed merely in fair play and square-dealing. Petty meanness,
in his code, was almost as serious as wanton homicide, and I am
sure that he respected a murderer more than a man given to small
practices. Concerning me, personally, he objected to my doing
anything that was hurtful to me. Gambling was all right. He was
an ardent gambler himself. But late hours, he explained, were bad
for one's health. He had seen men who did not take care of
themselves die of fever. He was no teetotaler, and welcomed a
stiff nip any time when it was wet work in the boats. On the
other hand, he believed in liquor in moderation. He had seen many
men killed or disgraced by squareface or Scotch.
Otoo had my welfare always at heart. He thought ahead for me,
weighed my plans and took a greater interest in them than I did
myself. At first, when I was unaware of this interest of his in
my affairs, he had to divine my intentions, as, for instance, at
Papeete, when I contemplated going partners with a knavish fellow
countryman on a guano venture. I did not know he was a knave. Nor
did any white man in Papeete. Neither did Otoo know; but he saw
how thick we were getting and found out for me, and that without
my asking. Native sailors from the ends of the seas knock about
on the beach in Tahiti, and Otoo, suspicious merely, went among
them till he had gathered sufficient data to justify his
suspicions. Oh, it was a nice history, that of Randolph Waters! I
couldn't believe it when Otoo first narrated it, but when I
sheeted it home to Waters he gave in without a murmur and got
away on the first steamer to Auckland.
At first, I am free to confess, I resented Otoo's poking his nose
into my business. But I knew that he was wholly unselfish, and
soon I had to acknowledge his wisdom and discretion. He had his
eyes open always to my main chance, and he was both keen-sighted
and far-sighted. In time he became my counselor, until he knew
more of my business than I did myself. He really had my interest
at heart more than I did. Mine was the magnificent carelessness
of youth, for I preferred romance to dollars, and adventure to a
comfortable billet with all night in. So it was well that I had
some one to look out for me. I know that if it had not been for
Otoo, I should not be here to-day.
Of numerous instances, let me give one. I had had some experience
in blackbirding before I went pearling in the Paumotus. Otoo and
I were on the beach in Samoa--we really were on the beach and
hard aground--when my chance came to go as a recruiter on a
blackbird brig. Otoo signed on before the mast, and for the next
half-dozen years, in as many ships, we knocked about the wildest
portions of Melanesia. Otoo saw to it that he always pulled
stroke-oar in my boat. Our custom, in recruiting labor, was to
land the recruiter on the beach. The covering boat always lay on
its oars several hundred feet off shore, while the recruiter's
boat, also lying on its oars, kept afloat on the edge of the
beach. When I landed with my trade goods, leaving my steering
sweep apeak, Otoo left his stroke position and came into the
stern sheets, where a Winchester lay ready to hand under a flap
of canvas. The boat's crew was also armed, the Sniders concealed
under canvas flaps that ran the length of the gunwales. While I
was busy arguing and persuading the woolly-headed cannibals to
come and labor on the Queensland plantations Otoo kept watch. And
often and often his low voice warned me of suspicious actions and
impending treachery. Sometimes it was the quick shot from his
rifle, knocking a nigger over, that was the first warning I
received. And in my rush to the boat his hand was always there to
jerk me flying aboard.
Once, I remember, on Santa Anna, the boat grounded just as the
trouble began. The covering boat was dashing to our assistance,
but the several score of savages would have wiped us out before
it arrived. Otoo took a flying leap ashore, dug both hands into
the trade goods, and scattered tobacco, beads, tomahawks, knives,
and calicoes in all directions. This was too much for the woolly
heads. While they scrambled for the treasures, the boat was
shoved clear and we were aboard and forty feet away. And I got
thirty recruits off that very beach in the next four hours.
The particular instance I have in mind was on Malaita, the most
savage island in the easterly Solomons. The natives had been
remarkably friendly; and how were we to know that the whole
village had been taking up a collection for over two years with
which to buy a white man's head? The beggars are all
head-hunters, and they especially esteem that of a white man. The
fellow who captured the head would receive the whole collection.
As I say, they appeared very friendly, and this day I was fully a
hundred yards down the beach from the boat. Otoo had cautioned
me, and, as usual when I did not heed him, I came to grief. The
first thing I knew a cloud of spears sailed out of the mangrove
swamp at me. At least a dozen were sticking into me. I started to
run, but tripped over one that was fast in my calf and went down.
The woolly heads made a run for me, each with a long-handled,
fantail tomahawk with which to hack off my head. They were so
eager for the prize that they got in one another's way. In the
confusion I avoided several hacks by throwing myself right and
left on the sand. Then Otoo arrived--Otoo the man-handler. In
some way he had got hold of a heavy war-club, and at close
quarters it was a far more efficient weapon than a rifle. He was
right in the thick of them, so that they could not spear him,
while their tomahawks seemed worse than useless. He was fighting
for me, and he was in a true Berserker rage. The way he handled
that club was amazing. Their skulls squashed like overripe
oranges. It was not until he had driven them back, picked me up
in his arms, and started to run, that he received his first
wounds. He arrived in the boat with four spear-thrusts, got his
Winchester, and with it got a man for every shot. Then we pulled
aboard the schooner and doctored up.
Seventeen years we were together. He made me. I should to-day be
a supercargo, a recruiter, or a memory, if it had not been for
him.
"You spend your money, and you go out and get more," he said, one
day. "It is easy to get money, now. But when you get old, your
money will be spent and you will not be able to go out and get
more. I know, master. I have studied the way of white men. On the
beaches are many old men who were young once and who could get
money just like you. Now they are old, and they have nothing, and
they wait about for the young men like you to come ashore and buy
drinks for them.
"The black boy is a slave on the plantations. He gets twenty
dollars a year. He works hard. The overseer does not work hard.
He rides a horse and watches the black boy work. He gets twelve
hundred dollars a year. I am a sailor on the schooner. I get
fifteen dollars a month. That is because I am a good sailor. I
work hard. The captain has a double awning and drinks beer out of
long bottles. I have never seen him haul a rope or pull an oar.
He gets one hundred and fifty dollars a month. I am a sailor. He
is a navigator. Master, I think it would be very good for you to
know navigation.
Otoo spurred me on to it. He sailed with me as second mate on my
first schooner, and he was far prouder of my command than was I
myself. Later on it was:
"The captain is well paid, master, but the ship is in his keeping
and he is never free from the burden. It is the owner who is
better paid, the owner who sits ashore with many servants and
turns his money over."
"True, but a schooner costs five thousand dollars--an old
schooner at that," I objected. "I should be an old man before I
saved five thousand dollars. "
"There be short ways for white men to make money," he went on,
pointing ashore at the cocoanut-fringed beach.
We were in the Solomons at the time, picking up a cargo of
ivory-nuts along the east coast of Guadalcanar.
"Between this river mouth and the next it is two miles," he said.
"The flat land runs far back. It is worth nothing now. Next
year--who knows!--or the year after--men will pay much money for
that land. The anchorage is good. Big steamers can lie close up.
You can buy the land four miles deep from the old chief for ten
thousand sticks of tobacco, ten bottles of squareface, and a
Snider, which will cost you maybe one hundred dollars. Then you
place the deed with the commissioner, and the next year, or the
year after, you sell and become the owner of a ship."
I followed his lead, and his words came true, though in three
years instead of two. Next came the grass-lands deal on
Guadalcanar--twenty thousand acres on a governmental nine hundred
and ninety-nine years' lease at a nominal sum. I owned the lease
for precisely ninety days, when I sold it to the Moonlight Soap
crowd for half a fortune. Always it was Otoo who looked ahead and
saw the opportunity. He was responsible for the salving of the
Doncaster--bought in at auction for five hundred dollars and
clearing fifteen thousand after every expense was paid. He led me
into the Savaii plantation and the cocoa venture on Upolu.
We did not go seafaring so much as in the old days now. I was too
well off. I married and my standard of living rose; but Otoo
remained the same old-time Otoo, moving about the house or
trailing through the office, his wooden pipe in his mouth, a
shilling undershirt on his back, and a four-shilling lava-lava
about his loins. I could not get him to spend money. There was no
way of repaying him except with love, and God knows he got that
in full measure from all of us. The children worshiped him, and
if he had been spoilable my wife would surely have been his
undoing.
The children! He really was the one who showed them the way of
their feet in the world practical. He began by teaching them to
walk. He sat up with them when they were sick. One by one, when
they were scarcely toddlers, he took them down to the lagoon and
made them into amphibians. He taught them more than I ever knew
of the habits of fish and the ways of catching them. In the bush
it was the same thing. At seven, Tom knew more woodcraft than I
ever dreamed existed. At six, Mary went over the Sliding Rock
without a quiver--and I have seen strong men balk at that feat.
And when Frank had just turned six he could bring up shillings
from the bottom in three fathoms.
"My people in Bora Bora do not like heathen; they are all
Christians; and I do not like Bora Bora Christians," he said one
day, when I, with the idea of getting him to spend some of the
money that was rightfully his, had been trying to persuade him to
make a visit to his own island in one of our schooners--a special
voyage that I had hoped to make a record-breaker in the matter of
prodigal expense.
I say one of OUR schooners, though legally, at the time, they
belonged to me. I struggled long with him to enter into
partnership.
"We have been partners from the day the Petite Jeanne went down,"
he said at last. "But if your heart so wishes, then shall we
become partners by the law. I have no work to do, yet are my
expenses large. I drink and eat and smoke in plenty--it costs
much, I know. I do not pay for the playing of billiards, for I
play on your table; but still the money goes. Fishing on the reef
is only a rich man's pleasure. It is shocking, the cost of hooks
and cotton line. Yes, it is necessary that we be partners by the
law. I need the money. I shall get it from the head clerk in the
office."
So the papers were made out and recorded. A year later I was
compelled to complain.
"Charley," said I, "you are a wicked old fraud, a miserly
skinflint, a miserable land-crab. Behold, your share for the year
in all our partnership has been thousands of dollars. The head
clerk has given me this paper. It says that during the year you
have drawn just eighty-seven dollars and twenty cents."
"Is there any owing me?" he asked anxiously.
"I tell you thousands and thousands," I answered.
His face brightened as with an immense relief.
"It is well," he said. "See that the head-clerk keeps good
account of it. When I want it, I shall want it, and there must
not be a cent missing. If there is," he added fiercely, after a
pause, "it must come out of the clerk's wages."
And all the time, as I afterward learned, his will, drawn up by
Carruthers and making me sole beneficiary, lay in the American
consul's safe.
But the end came as the end must come to all human associations.
It occurred in the Solomons, where our wildest work had been done
in the wild young days, and where we were once more--principally
on a holiday, incidentally to look after our holdings on Florida
Island and to look over the pearling possibilities of the Mboli
Pass. We were lying at Savo, having run in to trade for curios.
Now Savo is alive with sharks. The custom of the woolly heads of
burying their dead in the sea did not tend to discourage the
sharks from making the adjacent waters a hang-out. It was my luck
to be coming aboard in a tiny, overloaded, native canoe, when the
thing capsized. There were four woolly heads and myself in it, or
rather, hanging to it. The schooner was a hundred yards away. I
was just hailing for a boat when one of the woolly heads began to
scream. Holding on to the end of the canoe, both he and that
portion of the canoe were dragged under several times. Then he
loosed his clutch and disappeared. A shark had got him.
The three remaining niggers tried to climb out of the water upon
the bottom of the canoe. I yelled and cursed and struck at the
nearest with my fist, but it was no use. They were in a blind
funk. The canoe could barely have supported one of them. Under
the three it up-ended and rolled sidewise, throwing them back
into the water.
I abandoned the canoe and started to swim toward the schooner,
expecting to be picked up by the boat before I got there. One of
the niggers elected to come with me, and we swam along silently,
side by side, now and again putting our faces into the water and
peering about for sharks. The screams of the men who stayed by
the canoe informed us that they were taken. I was peering into
the water when I saw a big shark pass directly beneath me. He was
fully sixteen feet in length. I saw the whole thing. He got the
woolly head by the middle and away he went, the poor devil, head,
shoulders, and arms out of water all the time, screeching in a
heart-rending way. He was carried along in this fashion for
several hundred feet, when he was dragged beneath the surface.
I swam doggedly on, hoping that that was the last unattached
shark. But there was another. Whether it was one that had
attacked the natives earlier, or whether it was one that had made
a good meal elsewhere, I do not know. At any rate, he was not in
such haste as the others. I could not swim so rapidly now, for a
large part of my effort was devoted to keeping track of him. I
was watching him when he made his first attack. By good luck I
got both hands on his nose, and, though his momentum nearly
shoved me under, I managed to keep him off. He veered clear and
began circling about again. A second time I escaped him by the
same maneuver. The third rush was a miss on both sides. He
sheered at the moment my hands should have landed on his nose,
but his sandpaper hide--I had on a sleeveless undershirt--scraped
the skin off one arm from elbow to shoulder.
By this time I was played out and gave up hope. The schooner was
still two hundred feet away. My face was in the water and I was
watching him maneuver for another attempt, when I saw a brown
body pass between us. It was Otoo.
"Swim for the schooner, master," he said, and he spoke gayly, as
though the affair was a mere lark. "I know sharks. The shark is
my brother."
I obeyed, swimming slowly on, while Otoo swam about me, keeping
always between me and the shark, foiling his rushes and
encouraging me.
"The davit-tackle carried away, and they are rigging the falls,"
he explained a minute or so later, and then went under to head
off another attack.
By the time the schooner was thirty feet away I was about done
for. I could scarcely move. They were heaving lines at us from on
board, but these continually fell short. The shark, finding that
it was receiving no hurt, had become bolder. Several times it
nearly got me, but each time Otoo was there just the moment
before it was too late. Of course Otoo could have saved himself
any time. But he stuck by me.
"Good by, Charley, I'm finished," I just managed to gasp.
I knew that the end had come and that the next moment I should
throw up my hands and go down.
But Otoo laughed in my face, saying:
"I will show you a new trick. I will make that shark damn sick."
He dropped in behind me, where the shark was preparing to come at
me.
"A little more to the left," he next called out. "There is a line
there on the water. To the left, master, to the left."
I changed my course and struck out blindly. I was by that time
barely conscious. As my hand closed on the line I heard an
exclamation from on board. I turned and looked. There was no sign
of Otoo. The next instant he broke surface. Both hands were off
at the wrist, the stumps spouting blood.
"Otoo," he called softly, and I could see in his gaze the love
that thrilled in his voice. Then, and then only, at the very last
of all our years, he called me by that name.
"Good by, Otoo," he called.
Then he was dragged under, and I was hauled aboard, where I
fainted in the captain's arms.
And so passed Otoo, who saved me and made me a man, and who saved
me in the end. We met in the maw of a hurricane and parted in the
maw of a shark, with seventeen intervening years of comradeship
the like of which I dare to assert have never befallen two men,
the one brown and the other white. If Jehovah be from his high
place watching every sparrow fall, not least in His Kingdom shall
be Otoo, the one heathen of Bora Bora. And if there be no place
for him in that Kingdom, then will I have none of it.
*****************************************************************
Vol. XXIII No.2 AUGUST 1910
THE QUESTION "HOW?" {page 205-208}
By WILLIAM HANNA THOMSON, M.D., LL.D.
Author of " Brain and Personality," "What is Physical Life?" etc.
Physician to the Roosevelt Hospital; Consulting Physician to the
New York State Manhattan Hospital for the Insane; formerly
Professor of the Practice of Medicine and Diseases of the Nervous
System, New York University Medical College; Ex-President of the
New York Academy of Medicine, etc.
IN one of Carlyle's earliest productions, dealing with the
philosophy of Clothes, he showed that a man quite plainly reveals
his inner self by what he wears. So we would now discuss what the
being, Man, reveals about himself by his eternal question, "How?"
As language is a lofty endowment and, moreover, on this earth
exclusively human, we would lead up to the subject by stating
what the parts of speech are.
According to the Arabs, who surpass all other peoples in the
study of language--for they claim that they have twenty-five
thousand books on grammar in their literature--the parts of
speech are three; and, as one of their old scholars states, this
threefold division of speech is not confined to one language, but
is universal, because human speech does not differ with the
difference of human tongues. These three parts are: first,
nouns--the names of things; second, verbs--the names of events;
and, third, the partitives--or the words which express the
relations of things to events. Thus the most abstract of verbs,
"to be," refers to an event; for when a man says, "I am," he is
mentioning an event in the history of the universe which did not
occur till he existed.
This division, however, necessitates that the adjectives should
be regarded as nouns; and so they are classed in all Semitic
languages, as the Hebrew, the Arabic, the Syriac, etc. The
writers of the New Testament, therefore, could not write Greek
without continually falling into their native Hebrew idiom; so
that if the passages were translated literally, some modern
expositions would have to be much modified. Thus, "Who created
the worlds by the word of his power" means "Who created the
worlds by his powerful word." "The body of our humiliation" is
"our humiliating body." "Who shall deliver me from the body of
this death?" is "from this deadly body," as the context of the
passage clearly shows. In each case the second noun is the
adjective modifying the first.
Moreover, the most interesting deduction from this division of
the parts of speech is that the partitives are far the highest in
rank among words, because they express pure relations, which only
the royal mind of man can so distinctly perceive as to make words
for them. Thus, a dog can learn his own name, and understand the
verbs "go" and "come," especially with the imperative tone of his
master; but he could never understand the words "outgoing year"
or "incoming year."
Prepositions belong to the partitives, and, with different
prepositions attached to one and the same thing or noun, the
human mind can step through the vast regions of thought as easily
as the ether can vibrate through space. Thus the Latin scriptio,
the name of a thing, a writing, gives us the following changes,
according to the preposition: An Ascription is not a
CONscription, by any means; nor does a conscription mean anything
like a DEScription; nor is that the same thing with an
INscription; nor when we PREscribe for a man are we PROscribing
him; and every one of us knows, when the agent of a worthy cause
enters, what the difference is between a SUBscription and a
SUPERscription.
To the adverbs, however, must be given the preeminence among all
human words. But even here there are gradations in rank. Thus the
adverb, "Why?" may be nothing but a question of curiosity, and
hence its idea may be suggested to an inquisitive monkey. But it
is not so with the question, "How?" "Why?" may be answered by an
affirmation, but "How?" can be answered only by a demonstration.
Now, as our object is to call speech to witness as to what is in
man, or, in other words, what man is himself, we will proceed to
analyze the testimony of this word, "How?"
"HOW" FINDS A PLANET
First: It does not refer to anything which appears on the
surface. Instead, it seeks to find the hidden and the unknown by
following up one clue after another. When the astronomer,
Leverrier, found that the planets Saturn and Uranus did not come
to time, he asked himself how that could be. Meanwhile, the
answer to any number of "hows" must have been previously
demonstrated by him and by other astronomers before the movements
of these great and distant heavenly bodies could be shown as not
according to the clock-like regularity of planets in their
courses. He reasoned that only one probable "how" could account
for the facts; namely, another planet of just such a size and
weight, and moving at just such a distance, would suffice thus to
hold back Saturn and Uranus in their orbits. And so he calculated
how large this heavenly body was, how heavy it was, and then just
where it was, until, by this human but sure detective system,
astronomers caught sight of Neptune--after Leverrier told them
where to look for it.
But, after all, to decide how the vast heavenly bodies move in
space is easy compared with finding out how to make a sewing
machine go. For a needle to thread itself and then rapidly
proceed to sew without the help of fingers calls for the
discovery of more "hows" than are needed to explain Laplace's
"Mecanique celeste." Mass and gravity suffice for the one, but
only a Yankee's mind could have created the other.
We have now come to a great word--"create." A creator is a being
who gives origin to things which would not exist but for his
intelligent purpose and design. Now, man has simply filled this
earth with his own creations, all due to himself alone and to
none other, and all again by pondering the question, "How?" He
began, for instance, by putting a hole through a flint hatchet,
and ended with putting a hole through the Alps. In this last, an
engineer stood at the foot of the great mountain and asked
himself how he could tunnel it for nations to pass through. He
saw a small stream dashing down the mountainside and at once
found his desired "how," for he made that stream work big drills
by compressed air, till the everlasting rocks themselves had to
give in.
But man is an infinite creator--by which we mean that his
creative capacity is limitless and inexhaustible. No sooner does
he create one thing than he turns to create another thing totally
different from it. A locomotive thundering past with a long train
has no resemblance to a telegraph line, nor that, in turn, to a
great printing press. Man coolly sets at defiance the most
fundamental laws of physical science.
Thus, a heavy load of passengers, sitting in no less heavy cars,
if put on a smooth inclined plane must slide down faster and
faster to the bottom, or Vulcan would be confounded. But man
strings a thin wire overhead, which would snap instantly if the
load gave it one pull; but something which, some "how," man
causes to pass along that wire, makes the trolley with its live
freight go uphill faster than a horse can run.
THE ETHER ENSLAVED
And what about that mysterious ether? It can neither be seen,
heard, felt, handled, smelt, nor tasted. Nevertheless, man has
learned so much about its "how" that he is turning it into as
menial a servant, obedient to his wishes, as he has made of
electricity, the cause of sublime thunder; for man bids the ether
carry his stock quotations or any other message of his to the
ends of the earth.
These are great doings, but really no greater than his small
doings, for the least of these is just as impossible for other
earthly creatures as are an Alpine tunnel or a battleship. A
large convention of chimpanzees could not combine to make one pin
or one sleeve-button, if they tried.
All this is because man is native to the world of relations,
which no other earthly beings are, because they cannot go beyond
the information provided by their bodily senses. Man, on the
contrary, gains infinitely more knowledge than his bodily senses
can afford. By studying the relations of abstract points to
abstract lines, he becomes a mathematician. Following up the many
"hows" of chemistry, he talks about molecules, atoms, and ions as
fluently as: if he had seen or handled them.
MAN IS INVISIBLE
This explains how man can and does create. Every great invention
existed first in the mind of the inventor. So the great engineer
who made the Brooklyn Bridge never had to handle one of the
materials used in its construction, for every stone, wire, and
bolt was provided for in that engineer's mind before any part of
that tremendous mass of matter could be seen on the earth.
Moreover, this great human creator is as invisible as the Divine
Creator Himself. People are continually saying that they will not
believe in a thing till they can see it, thus pinning their faith
to the testimony of that one of our senses which makes more
mistakes than do all our other senses put together. When a man
six feet high is a mile off, it says that he is only six inches
high. The eye can see nothing of the vast microscopic living
world which lies within six inches of the eyeball, and so we have
had to invent a microscope to make up for this serious
deficiency. But what would the Russian Witte not have given if he
could have telegraphed to St. Petersburg that he had actually
SEEN the Japanese Komura while they were talking about making
peace at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and that he knew just what
the courteous Jap thought and proposed! All that he saw was the
Asiatic's smiling face and other things of his outside. Every
human personality belongs to the real world, the world of the
Unseen, and cannot be known except as he chooses to reveal
himself.
BRAIN NOT THE MAN
Some persons might object here that the brain is both visible and
tangible in man, and that man is in his brain, and, therefore,
the brain is man. Medical science, however, shows that the brain
no more thinks than the hand and foot do, but is simply the
instrument of the invisible thinker. The proof of this is that we
have two brains, just as we have two eyes and two ears, but that
only one of our two brain hemispheres is the instrument for
talking, thinking, or knowing. Which one of the two hemispheres
will be the mental one will depend altogether on how it has been
TAUGHT by the invisible thinker, who will begin to teach the left
hemisphere if he is right-handed, or the right hemisphere if he
is left-handed. He will leave the other hemisphere in each case
wholly speechless or thoughtless, and concerned only with the
business of governing the muscles or receiving the bodily
sensations of its corresponding side. If brain matter really
itself thought, we should have two thinking and speaking
hemispheres--and this the first case of loss of speech by an
apoplectic clot would disprove.
"By thy words thou shalt be judged." This means that man is to be
judged by his own creations, for it is only men who create words.
By their words they show what is in them, both intellectually and
morally. We have demonstrated that the being who can ask the
question, "How?" naturally belongs to the universe. Already he
knows what stuff inconceivably distant stars are made of; and the
"how" to know that he found in a small glass prism.
THE MORAL "HOW"
It would seem, therefore, as if it were by some temporary
accident that he is held to this little material speck of matter
called the earth. And this impression grows upon us as we study
the greatest facts of human life. We enter this world knowing
nothing and not nearly so well equipped to take care of ourselves
as are other animals. There is no helplessness like that of a
babe. But wonderfully early he begins to ask the question, "How?"
A little boy will ask more questions in a day than his father
will ask in a week; nor can he be stopped or deceived, because
the question, "Why?" you can answer as you please, but not "How?"
He who can ask "How?" can be a learner as long as he exists,
whether here or hereafter. In his life here he may become either
a great financier or a great statesman, but certainly not either
unless he knows how. Any education, in fact, is simply learning
how.
What is true in the intellectual world is still more true in the
moral world. Whenever a question bearing on morals enters, every
one should stop and ask, "How?" A mistake here is like entering
the wrong gate in a large railroad station. The longer you stay
in its corresponding train, the farther it will take you from
where you should go. For example, there are some who say that the
human will is not free, but that our actions are all, in the last
analysis, according to our make-up. In other words, we are
machines which must go as they are made to go. There is,
therefore, no right nor wrong in human conduct, for machines
cannot be held responsible for conduct or the way they go--there
can be no sinful automobile or wicked windmill.
According to these reasoners, therefore, when human law punishes
one who has robbed a widow of all she had, or has seduced the
daughter of a friend, or committed a cold-blooded murder, the law
is wholly illogical in punishing him, because, since he is a
machine, his punishment is like throwing a clock out of a window
if it does not keep good time. The only answer to such a talker
should be, "Get out!" with particular emphasis on the "out."
----WHO WOULD BE A YOUNG LADY
By SARAH N. CLEGHORN
1830
Sister walks past the garden wall
In monstrous hoop, and slippers small,
And polonaise, and sash, and all,
To join the Dorcas Circle.
She'll sit indoors, and stitch, and moon,
And sip her tea, and clink her spoon,
This whole blue, breezy afternoon!
For so do all Young Ladies.
Come, Poll, come, Bet! Escaped from school,
We'll wade across the shallows cool
Of Roaring Tom and Silver Pool,
And climb the pines of Randal.
Far up the mountain path we'll go,
And leave the Raven Rocks below,
And creep inside the caves of snow,
To hear their echoes thunder!
Let briers scratch, let brambles tear
Our oft-patched frocks--we shall not care:
Green are the woods, and fresh the air;
Then who would be a Young Lady?
*****************************************************************
Vol. XXIII No.2 AUGUST 1910
INSTEAD OF AN ARTICLE {page 209-214}
About Pittsburg and, Incidentally, about Editing a Magazine
Important articles in magazines of the type of "COLLIER'S,"
"MCCLURE'S," the "AMERICAN," and "EVERYBODY'S," like plays, are
rewritten rather than written. Too begin with, there must be the
idea, then to find the man or woman best able to embody it. That
settled, the author must steep himself in his subject. When he
acquires mastery, his findings are written down and submitted to
the editor. This may take months; it often requires years.
It has happened that the editor did not know what he wanted until
he read this first draft. Now he has the subject spread before
him by an authority. His associates all read it and criticise.
Sometimes that first draft is flawless, but most often it is
returned to the author with direction for reconstruction. The
process may be repeated half a dozen times. Finally the
manuscript is satisfactory, which means that it is valuable,
simply expressed, and readable. It is in shape for publication.
It is put into type and sent around to outside experts who are
the representative authorities on the subject.
In these days a magazine can afford to have its conclusions
disputed, but its facts must be incontrovertible. Perhaps the
trouble the big publications take to be right--and that means
square and just, as well as accurate--explains such prestige and
influence as they now enjoy in America.
At a women's club gathering in Mississippi, recently, Harris
Dickson told his audience something about an article of his that
had recently appeared in "EVERYBODY'S." He explained that a
manuscript written by another man had been sent him to put in
shape. The facts were there, and the moral, but the treatment was
technical. It lacked carrying power. Dickson knew nothing of the
other author, and so proceeded to get up the subject at first
hand. He took not one of the facts for granted. After three
months he returned the revised manuscript to the magazine. It was
sent back, with specific directions for rewriting. In due course
he again remailed it to the editor, who congratulated him on his
achievement--for that is what it was. Then the article, having
attained a satisfactory form (it was on Fraternal Insurance), was
sent round among the experts. The first man who read it was a
high official of one of the old line insurance companies, but a
hearty believer in the fraternal system. He returned it with
approval and an elaborate criticism. Then it was submitted to the
chief insurance commissioner of a western state--the undoubted
political authority on the subject. The approval and criticisms
of both men, with the manuscript, were again forwarded to Mr.
Dickson. The necessary corrections having been incorporated, the
manuscript was ready for the printer. To make assurance doubly
sure, proofs were sent out to prominent officials of leading
fraternal organizations, who returned them with most commendatory
letters. And then, and only then, did it appear in the magazine.
Mr. Dickson's audience, doubtless under the impression that
magazines are produced by editors out of the contributions sent
them by mail, expressed surprise that so much time, effort, and
money should be devoted to what seemed a comparatively
unimportant subject. Yet it involved a matter that concerned five
million men and their families, and a tremendous controversy. Its
appearance has made the controversy even keener, and of course
the enemies of sanity and good order in fraternalism are now
hurling bolts at us. However, when we have done our part and know
we are right, we stay put.
Mr. Dickson told part of what to us is a familiar story. In this
instance he knew nothing of the time and trouble the author and
ourselves had taken just to get together the facts and place them
in the right perspective. We began on this particular article in
November, 1906, and during the interval it was being worked at or
over by one of some dozen men. The same is true of most of our
big series. "The Woman's Invasion" represented two and a half
years of work. Fifteen months elapsed between the delivery of
Judge Lindsey's first manuscript and the beginning of publication
in the magazine. Trained writers, the best men we know about, are
out investigating and gathering the facts for the articles we
will print a year hence. This is the process of magazine making
to-day. It is not peculiar to "EVERYBODY'S"; it is the rule with
"COLLIER'S," "MCCLURE'S," the AMERICAN, and SUCCESS."
INSTEAD OF AN ARTICLE
This is all by way of introduction to the story of an article
that was not written. About the time the Pittsburg flare-up began
to show itself in the papers, it occurred to us that some
exposition of the situation there would be of value and interest
to our readers. Before going about it, we debated it very
carefully. Some of us in the office (and this magazine is edited
by all of us) were fairly familiar with the subject, and we
believed it would subserve no useful purpose to tackle it along
the "Shame of the Cities" lines. We agreed that the way to
approach Pittsburg was to consider what had happened there, not
as a sporadic outburst, but as an economic symptom. Whom could we
get that was far enough from the controversies involved to treat
the subject objectively and with a big perspective? Brand
Whitlock. The Mayor of Toledo knows more about cities and their
governments, and the evils that arise within them, than any other
man, and he can write--with knowledge, with sympathy, with
clarity. Also he knew Pittsburg. So we telegraphed to find if he
was free to write an article, and, when he replied in the
affirmative, the following letter was sent him:
April 1, 1910. DEAR MR. WHITLOCK:
The article we want is on Pittsburg. It is neither our purpose
nor our desire merely to "muckrake" Pittsburg or any other city.
The eruption there is typical of similar conditions in other
great civic centers throughout the country, and it seems to us it
might be made the text of a diagnosis of the whole municipal
problem in America.
Here are a few thoughts that occur to me which might be
represented:
We have come to realize that the real trouble in our country is
Privilege. Big business, in its ruthless pursuit of results, has
the ultimate responsibility for the ills that confront us in
political, social, and commercial life. The graft scandals, the
bank defalcations, etc., are simply symptoms of internal
disorders. They are the eruptions of the disease.
Pittsburg might be called the typical get-rich-quick community.
Its great wealth is based on the abundant coal and iron with
which the Creator loaded its environment. Down on those deposits
fasten thousands of Americans seized with the mania of
money-making. They coin the coal and iron into millions. They
work feverishly; they work their men furiously. It's a mad,
frenzied scramble for success and sensation. To get rich quicker,
they exact excessive protection from Congress--first to prop up
infant industries, then to consolidate abnormal profits. If the
government undertakes to deny their demands, they bluster first,
then intrigue, then intimidate. Mills are closed down; the
"prosperity" of the country is threatened, lobbies are organized,
corruption funds subscribed, until Congress succumbs and new
"jokers" are written into steel tariffs.
In the meantime a huge city is upreared. But this city is run for
the benefit of its industries, not for the comfort of its
inhabitants. Street railway, gas, electric corporations are
organized, ostensibly to serve the community, actually enabling a
greedy group to make more money. Again, what cannot be gained by
request is won by force and guile.
Over and over again the various processes are repeated, until you
have built up a sort of City Monstrous, dedicated to machinery,
in which all the men and many of the women are just machines, and
there is no ideal save that of feverish industrial adventure and
accomplishment. Power--blind, ruthless, marvel-working, bending
backs and bodies to its will--is Pittsburg's god, and Success its
divine attribute Success that spells Gold, the instrument of
exploitation and sensation. What wonder that weaker men,
confronted by the colossal rewards of industrial conquest, are
frenzied with the gold fever? In the absence of communal
patriotism, graft becomes an incident. Graft and greed are the
minor watchwords of success. Get money, anyway--but get it. Is it
surprising that cashiers graft, that aldermen graft, that city
officials graft, that there's a very pandemonium of graft? Isn't
it the way the other fellows get rich?
All of a sudden the poison clogs the pores, and the infection
blotches the surface--and every one is horrified. The great
manufacturers, the great merchants, the great lawyers--high
priests of the Power God--throw up their hands. Can such things
be? Dreadful, horrible!--blindly oblivious of their own
responsibility for the epidemic.
More startling still to the conquerors were the pitiless
revelations of the Survey, exhibiting in mathematical terms the
cost to the human factor of this monstrous material success.
Hordes of anaemic, emaciated men and women, exhausted by long
hours of toil, piled thick in wretched hovels, underfed,
half-clothed, dragging out a miserable existence unrelieved by
leisure or rest or recreation--the Juggernaut toll of
efficiency--of the passion for results at any price. Against this
horror, what avails Pittsburg's panorama of splendid churches, of
lordly palaces, of noble art museums, of great orchestras, richly
endowed educational institutions--the patriotic tribute of the
conquerors to civilization? What is this boasted civilization of
ours worth--not Pittsburg's only, for Pittsburg is an
incident--if it be reared on the wrecked and depleted bodies of
men at its base?
There would then be the opportunity in the article to suggest the
regenerated Pittsburg--all this furious energy hitherto devoted
to material success turned to social betterment and decent
government. The turn of the worker comes. The conquerors, having
learned that they cannot take greedily what belongs to a
community, and find happiness, turn magnificently to the rescue
of their own downtrodden. The old question--what does it profit a
man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?--has been
burned into Pittsburg humanity once again.
For several years the newspapers have carried stories about these
successive scandals in Pittsburg, until people have in a measure
become confused as to how they connect, whether all are really
parts of the same story. I doubt if the average man who reads the
article in the morning paper has a clear grasp of what has been
going on, and he can't discover it without hunting back through
the files. Once we published an article by Owen Wister about the
Capitol frauds in Pennsylvania, after the newspapers had been
printing countless columns on the subject for months, and it was
one of the most successful articles we have used, because of the
way it crystallized and interpreted the whole occurrence.
A similar service is here suggested. Write the story of Pittsburg
dramatically; crystallize the big exposures of the last few years
through which bankers and politicians have been going to prison,
culminating with the present crisis in the City Council; bring
out the economic significance of these occurrences to Pittsburg,
to the United States. Such an article will help all of us to see
where we are "at," will help develop civic consciousness in New
York, Chicago, San Francisco. It is immensely well worth doing.
I'm not dictating your article. What is written here is purely
suggestive. You must tell what you see and find in your own way.
You will, anyway. You know most of the facts. You are in touch
with the balance. We'll help to get material. If you will, you
can put up an article that the country will read. We'd like copy
as soon as possible.
Sincerely,
J. O'H. COSGRAVE,
Editor.
Mr. Whitlock, replied, expressing willingness to handle the
subject along the lines indicated, and asked for whatever
assistance we could render him. William Hard, a member of our
editorial force, had spent some time in Pittsburg, acquiring
material for his "Woman's Invasion," and he recommended J. J.
Nordman, a reporter of that city, as the best man to equip Mr.
Whitlock with the historical details of the exposure. He would
thus have immediately a succinct, up-to-date statement of the
case for his use as a skeleton.
Mr. Nordman was willing to help, and soon after got into
communication with Mr. Whitlock. Here is an account of his
service, which was accompanied by a letter from District Attorney
Blakeley, certifying to his reliability and knowledge of the
facts.
May 10, 1910.
HON. BRAND WHITLOCK, Toledo, Ohio.
Dear Sir:
Mr. Cosgrave has asked me to forward you matter bearing on the
Pittsburg graft expose and such clippings as I may have.
I shall weave the facts together with no effort towards literary
form, but rather in letter form, and present it to you not later
than Monday next.
Enclosed please find what I have termed a "Retrospect," being a
review of the political conditions leading to and making possible
the present expose.
Such clippings as I have will be forwarded with matter. I enclose
letter from Mr. Blakeley.
Very respectfully,
J. JEROME NORDMAN.
After that we waited, rather impatiently, it must be confessed,
for Whitlock's manuscript. After the passage of other admonitory
letters and telegrams, we received the following letter. We print
it "instead of an article." In our opinion, it is an
extraordinarily valuable summary of the whole subject of
municipal misrule. It goes far and beyond Pittsburg, and deep
into economic, social, and national conditions of which that city
is but an instance and an illustration. And, moreover, it sets
forth just how such an article, could we find the right man to do
it, should be written. Here it is:
Executive Offices
THE CITY OF TOLEDO 3 June, 1910.
JOHN O'HARA COSGRAVE, Esquire,Editor
EVERYBODY'S MAGAZINE.
DEAR MR. COSGRAVE:
The Pittsburg story is big, too big and too important and too
significant to do at second hand. I have had a valuable
correspondence with Mr. Nordman, and he has most kindly put his
information, and in clear form, at my disposal. He has sent me
his scrapbook of newspaper clippings, and he has written me at
length and in detail of the various exposures and prosecutions. I
have made inquiries, too, from friends, and I have been thinking
over the story that you propose. But it won't go, and I have
concluded that it ought not to go in that form; and that is the
only form in which it is possible for me now to tell it.
I find just what I expected to find, or I find the familiar
symptoms of what I expected to find. The intelligent answers to
the several questions I put to Mr. Nordman after our first few
letters are exactly what I expected them to be. One city is all
cities; and all exhibit the same effects, proceeding from the
same causes. Look about you, anywhere, and if you see graft, and
bribery, and corruption, you'll find a bi-partisan machine
controlling nominations and elections to municipal offices, and
representing the few who consider themselves privileged to
exploit the people by means of franchises in public utilities,
etc. It's as easy as it is for a physician to tell what ails a
sallow and emaciated Southern "cracker" who shivers with chills
one day, and burns up with fever the next.
And so, in Pittsburg, I found the usual Republican machine with
its big boss, the usual Democratic machine and its little boss,
and the two, as usual, working together, the Democratic boss and
his tools rewarded by a few small offices on "bi-partisan"
boards, and the like; then the street railway system and other
public utility corporations which these bosses represent, and for
which they procure franchises. And after this, the "better
element," the "eminently respectable" citizens, supporting this
combination, enjoying the fruits of its labor, and influencing
the business interests of the city in the way that gives such
perfect exemplification of the evils of class government in our
cities--the same, old, sordid story.
The revelations, as they are called--though by this time they
should have ceased to be revelations, and have become
"recognitions" in this country--made by the newspaper clippings
before me are the expected indications of the deeper, underlying
causes. The superficial observer sees in them merely a corrupt
council; and, from the fact that councilmen have taken bribes, he
makes the daring deduction that some one gave them the bribes; he
sees that councilmen have been grafting, and then is naively
astonished by the revelation that some business men higher up,
although not very much higher up, have been caught and publicly
disgraced. He sees, too, a brave and fearless prosecutor who is
sending these men to prison; and there are the usual predictions
that out of all this there is to come to Pittsburg "good"
government--that is, government by honest men, to be aided,
perhaps, by the adoption of the commission plan. That is to say,
we have here the subject only in its personal aspect, and not in
its institutional, sociological, economic aspect.
THE SAME OLD STORY OF GRAFT
Now, to be frank, the story of the grafting doesn't interest me
much, though it is as saddening and depressing as ever; and I
can't work up enough enthusiasm for that feature of it to write
anything that would be worth your while to print, or worth
anybody's while to read. Toward the subject I feel the same
apathy that was felt toward the ordinary newspaper account of
some casualty by Thoreau, who would not read, as you will
remember, the accounts--for example--of crimes and accidents,
because, having once grasped the principle, he felt it
unnecessary to multiply, indefinitely, instances of that
principle. The story of Pittsburg, so far as it has been related
to me, is merely the old, squalid story of municipal graft. I
have the names and the dates in an orderly and logical way--who
were sent to the penitentiary, and when, and for what particular
crime, and what the judge said in pronouncing sentence, etc. All
of this has been told over and over and over again in the
newspapers and magazines during the last few years; the only
difference lies in the names and the dates and the place. Indeed,
Pittsburg's story in this respect is hardly as interesting as the
old stories--it is, if anything, more commonplace, more squalid.
But behind all this, there is, of course, a story, and a big one,
as you unerringly divined. Reading between the lines of the dry
recital of facts with which I have been provided, and peering a
little way behind the scenes, I come, I think, upon the real
story, the one that some one should write, the one that some one
should print.
The first chapter, perhaps, is the story of the old political
machines in Pittsburg, and of that interesting, and--in certain
elemental, human senses--strong personality, Chris Magee, the
boss--who has a monument.
Then, there is another personality, of a different sort, in
Blakeley, the district attorney. My accounts are meager and bald,
and yet I catch glimpses of a striking personality. This district
attorney, I should imagine, is a man with the best ideals of the
legal profession, honest, capable, sincere, and unafraid; a man,
withal, who knows life and politics and can play the game without
being soiled in its many contacts. What draws me to him, even at
this distance, is that he seems to have little of the Puritan in
him, as there is too apt to be in prosecutors who convict, and
push their victims within prison doors. And he is another chapter
of the story. But I don't know Blakeley; I can't describe him, I
can't interpret him, and I haven't the time nor the opportunity
just now to become acquainted with him.
Then there is the story of the organization of the Civic League,
or whatever they call it, and especially the story of its
operations. These good citizens, it seems, hired a detective to
come and run their men down for them. To me the private detective
is not the most inspiring and heroic figure on our modern scene;
but that is neither here nor there. One of these detectives
evidently has not only ability but versatility, and in an
interesting manner combines the occupation of a detective with
the profession of an evangelist. It was not, however, he who
worked the old panel game--much as a black paramour might work it
down in the Tenderloin--on certain councilmen, led them into a
trap, and then exposed them--an achievement in confused morals
that has not been permitted to go unapplauded. There are those,
of course, in every city who could think fondly and smugly of
themselves as doing, in this way, preeminently the will of God;
and such deeds not infrequently make men self-righteous.
But, of course, I may be mistaken about the present application
of this generalization, and, as I should like to be just, or,
what is better, to be charitable, I should hesitate, on such
unsupported conclusions, to write it down for the public eye.
There are, of course, those who with logic can justify the larger
end by the smaller means, and thus excuse certain deviations from
the straight line of the moral ideal, and thereby hold one back
from the temptation to divide his moral indignation about equally
between pursuer and pursued. But, if he claimed one's sympathy
for the pursuers, he could not prevent one's pity from going to
the ruined councilmen.
THE SHOCK TO CARNEGIE
But beyond all this--and here I think I touch on the real
story--there is the peculiar temper and tendency of Pittsburg.
Pittsburg is an artistic center; fortunes have been lavished in
endowing schools and universities and palaces for art, on
symphonies and oratorios. All the expressions of a new, ruling
plutocracy are easily discernible here, as in all such epochs of
society recorded in history; just, for instance, as Ferrero
describes them in the last phases of the Roman Republic. And when
Carnegie returns, he sheds tears and wrings his hands because of
the corruption that has been exposed, and he fails, as many in
Pittsburg seem to fail, to note the necessary, if subtle,
relation that must exist between all this corruption and
debauchery between all this art and music, and--shall I say?--the
tariff on steel.
This, however, isn't all; though this is part. Pittsburg is a
moral town; the most moral, in the conventional sense, in all
America. She won't even allow the kids to play baseball on a back
lot on Sunday. A woman, an old friend of mine who lives in
Pittsburg, said: "I think it very unfortunate that the Survey was
published. It overlooks Pittsburg's good points. For instance,
Pittsburg has more churches than any city of its size in America.
More people of our class go to church than in any place I ever
saw; more money is given to charity. People just pour out of
their houses and into the churches on Sunday morning." She was
quite serious--and she expressed Pittsburg, or the ruling class
of Pittsburg, exactly.
Now I don't mean to say that Pittsburg is especially
hypocritical; but she does seem to be pharisaical. The article
about Pittsburg should find its beginnings, perhaps, away back in
the days of scholasticism, and come down through the moss hags of
Scotland; and its title should be "Pious Pittsburg," or something
like that. Written properly--if I am right--it would be an
eloquent exposition of phariseeism at its apotheosis.
THE REAL STORY OF PITTSBURG
Now I can't write this, because I haven't the evidence to prove
what I see, or think I see. All I have is the mere outline--and
the outline applies, as I have said, to most cities. What one
should have is the color, the detail, the thousand and one little
things in the way of personality--you know what I mean; all that
which is necessary to "lend artistic verisimilitude to an
otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative." (I wish I were in New
York to-night! I'd go to the Casino and see the revival of "The
Mikado.") The Pittsburg story can't be written, and it should not
be written, without this; and to do it properly one would have to
spend much time in Pittsburg and become saturated with the
atmosphere of the place; and when he emerged, if he ever did
emerge, he would be ready to undertake this rather stupendous
study in psychology. I do not feel at all equipped for this task,
and no amount of material without the personal contact could
equip me for this service. With my material, I could only write
the old and squalid story of a rather commonplace exposure of
municipal grafting, and that wouldn't be worth while.
The story of Pittsburg would be all that the story of any city
is--as I have indicated: the bi-partisan machine, the public
service corporation, etc.--but it would be more. It would
illustrate the curious effects of long acceptance of cold,
intellectual theories in place of religion, and how this develops
the ability to separate morals and manners; how one's theology
needn't interfere with one's religion, and all that. It would be
the story of the union of politics and business; and the trail
would lead up to those proud and insolent aristocracies that are
founded on the purchase of the privilege of making the laws, and
down to those stews of horror where they pay for the privilege of
breaking the laws. It would be the story of Chris Magee, the
good-natured, human boss; of Blakeley, the upright prosecutor; of
the methods of hired detectives and the corruption of
officialdom. Pittsburg has riches, art, organized charity, and
piety; but she lacks wealth, beauty, social justice, and
religion. And sending the "bad" to prison, and electing the
"good" to office, and changing the paper charters of the city,
are not going to work any real reform. They think they'll get
"good government" and "civic righteousness," and then their
problems will be solved. This is what they propose to do; this is
all they tell us now, and I can't write a story on that. The
story would be as futile as little legal reforms.
It is, however, consoling and inspiring to believe--yes, to
know--that there are in Pittsburg--as in all cities--hundreds of
thousands of decent, virtuous, wholesome, toiling people; that
these make up by far the larger part of the population, too, and
that they will save Pittsburg, and make her as good as she is
great. It is a fact stimulating to the imagination and
encouraging to the soul that, in all these stores and shops and
mills, there are hard-working, modest, unknown thousands who are
pure and loyal, who are humanity's hope; that even the most
stunted and abused figures out of the Survey give more promise
than that class which rides upon their backs and devours them as
it rides.
Good government, efficient government, if by those phrases is
meant, as is usually meant, government by the "good"--whoever
they may be!--and the efficient, will not do; it will avail
nothing to Pittsburg or to any city, to substitute for grafters,
great or petty, personally honest men who will legally give away
franchises for nothing, instead of bartering them illegally for
big bribes. Pittsburg can't be saved by an aristocracy of the
better element, she can be saved only by democracy--with a very
little "d." And she will be saved that way some day, never fear,
though not until all the other cities are similarly saved.
I shall await with interest what you think of my suggestions.
Your ever sincere friend,
BRAND WHITLOCK.
*****************************************************************
Vol. XXIII No.2 AUGUST 1910
THE WOMEN OF TO-MORROW {page 215-226 part 1.}
By WILLIAM HARD
EDITOR'S NOTE: It is commonly supposed that only the women of
poverty are affected by modern industrial conditions. On the
contrary, modern industrial conditions are having their greatest
influence among the women who, before marriage, enjoy wide
educational opportunities, and who, after marriage, enjoy the
blessing of partial leisure. It is among these women that
economic developments are producing the profoundest changes in
habit of life and in character of mind. Mr Hard, who will be
remembered by all readers of the "Woman's Invasion," has spent
two years in the diligent investigation of this subject, and has
acquired an authoritative knowledge of it.
EVERY Jack has his Jill." It is a tender twilight thought, and it
more or less settles Jill.
When the Census Man was at work in 1900, however, he went about
and counted 2,260,000 American women who were more than
twenty-five years old and who were still unmarried.
It is getting worse (or better) with every passing decade, and
out of it is emerging a new ideal of education for women, an
ideal which seems certain to penetrate the whole educational
system of the United States, all the way from the elementary
schools to the universities.
The Census Man groups us into age periods. The period from
twenty-five to twenty-nine is the most important matrimonially
because it is the one in which most of us get pretty well fixed
into our life work. Out of every 1,000 women in that period, in
the year 1890, the Census Man found 254 who were still unmarried.
In 1900, only ten years later, he found 275.
There is not so much processional as recessional about marriage
at present. In navigating the stormy waters of life in the
realistic pages of the census reports, it is not till we reach
the comparatively serene, landlocked years from forty-five to
fifty-four that we find ourselves in an age-period in which the
number of single women has been reduced to less than ten per
cent. of the total. The rebound from this fact hits education
hard. As marriage recedes, and as the period of gainful work
before marriage lengthens, the need of real technical preparation
for that gainful work becomes steadily more urgent, and the
United States moves steadily onward into an era of trained women
as well as trained men.
In Boston, at that big new college called Simmons--the first of
its kind in the United States--a regular four-year college of
which the aim is to send out every graduate technically trained
to earn her living in a certain specific occupation, there were
enrolled last year, besides some five hundred undergraduate
women, some eighty other women who had already earned their
bachelor's degrees at other colleges, such as Bryn Mawr,
Wellesley, Smith, Vassar, Radcliffe, Leland Stanford, and the
University of Montana.
These eighty women, after eight years in elementary schools, four
years in high school, and four years in college, were taking one
year more in technical school in order to be--what? Not doctors
or lawyers or architects. Not anything in the "learned"
professions. But to be "social workers" in settlements or for
charity societies, to be librarians, to be stenographers and
secretaries.
The Bachelor of Arts from Vassar who is going to be a
stenographer, and who is taking her year of graduate study at
Simmons, will go to work at the end of the year and then, six
months later, if she has made good, will get from Simmons the
degree of Bachelor of Science. At that point in her life she will
have two degrees and seventeen years of schooling behind her. A
big background. But we are beginning to do some training for
almost everything.
Did you ever see a school of salesmanship for department-store
women employees? You can see one at the Women's Educational and
Industrial Union in Boston. Under the guidance of Mrs. Lucinda W.
Prince, the big department stores of Boston have come to think
enough of this school to send girls to it every morning and to
pay them full wages while they take a three months' course.
If you will attend any of the classes, in arithmetic, in
textiles, in hygiene, in color and design, in demonstration
sales, in business forms, you will get not only a new view of the
art of selling goods over the counter but a new vision of a big
principle in education.
In the class on color, for instance, you will at first be puzzled
by the vivid interest taken by the pupils in the theory of it.
You have never before observed in any classroom so intimate a
concern about rainbows, prisms, spectra, and the scientific
sources of aesthetic effects. Your mind runs back to your college
days and returns almost alarmed to this unacademic display of
genuine, spontaneous, unanimous enthusiasm toward a classroom
study of a theoretical subject. At last the reason for it works
into your mind. These girls are engaged in the practice of color
every afternoon, over hats, ribbons, waists, gloves, costumes.
When you begin once to study a subject which reaches practice in
your life, you cannot stop with practice. A law of your mind
carries you on to the philosophy of it.
Right there you see the reason why trade training, broadly
contrived, broadens not only technique but soul, trains not only
to earn but to live. "Refined selling," some of the girls call
the salesmanship which they learn in Mrs. Prince's class. They
have perceived, to some extent, the relation between the arts and
sciences on the one hand and their daily work on the other.
To a much greater extent has this relation been perceived by the
young woman who has taken the full four-year course in, say,
"Secretarial Studies" in Simmons and who, throughout her English,
her German, her French, her Sociology, and her History, as well
as throughout her Typewriting, her Shorthand, and her Commercial
Law, has necessarily kept in mind, irradiating every subject, the
light it may throw on the specific work she is to do.
"Ah! There, precisely, is the danger. Every Jack should have his
Jill; but if every Jill has her job, why, there again the wedding
day goes receding some more into the future. Let them stop all
this foolishness and get married, as their grandparents did!"
Poor Jack! Poor Jill! They get lectured at all the time about the
postponement of marriage, and they can no more control it than
they can control the size of the city of New York. Theoretically,
everybody on Manhattan Island could get up and go away and leave
the island vacant. Actually, it can't and won't be done.
Theoretically, we should all of us get married young. We fall in
love young enough. But, actually, we can't get married young, and
don't. The reasons are given later. Meanwhile, just notice, and
just ponder, the following facts.
It was in the United States as a whole that the Census Man found
275 out of every 1,000 women in the twenty-five-to-twenty-nine
age--period unmarried. But the United States consists of
developed and undeveloped regions. The cities are the high points
of development. Look at the cities:
In Chicago, out of every 1,000 women in the age period from
twenty-five to twenty-nine, there were 314 who were unmarried. In
Denver there were 331. In Manhattan and the Bronx there were 356.
In Minneapolis there were 369. In Philadelphia there were 387.
Southern New England, however, is the most industrially developed
part of the United States, the part in which social conditions
like those of the older countries of the world are most nearly
reached.
In Fall River, out of every 1,000 women in the
twenty-five-to-twenty-nine period, the unmarried were 391. In New
Haven they were 393. In Boston they were 452.
In view of such facts, how can anybody object to the steps which
have been taken recently toward giving the women in the
manufacturing trades, as well as the women in the commercial
trades, some little preparation for the work in which they are
likely to spend so many years?
In the Manhattan Trade School for Girls, in the last eighteen
months of record, the enrollment was 1,169. More and more the
girls in this school are willing to stay in it for a full year.
They have finished at least five grades of the public school, and
they are now learning to be milliners, to be dressmakers, to be
operators of electric-power machines, to be workers in paste and
glue in such occupations as candle-shade-making, to be workers
with brush and pencil in furnishing the manufacturing trades with
designs.
It is not only a matter of learning to do one particular thing in
one particular department in one particular trade. That they
could learn in a factory. It is a matter of getting some
understanding of a whole trade, or getting some kind of a view of
how the world is run. Nobody wants to make people into machines.
The object of a good trade school is precisely the reverse. It is
the common school which makes people into machines, when it sends
them directly from books, which do not explain the working world,
out into that world to become uncomprehending appendages to
minute processes in infinitely subdivided manufacturing
organizations.
A good trade school, besides teaching the technique of the
machine, covers what Mrs. Woolman, the director of the Manhattan
School, in her wonderful report of last year called the "middle
ground" between general academic preparatory work on the one hand
and practical trade training on the other. In this "middle
ground" the pupil takes simple courses in, for instance, "Civics"
and "Industries."
"Nothing to it," says an irritated manufacturer. "Nothing to it
at all! I can't get a good office boy any more. I can't get
anybody, boy or girl, who wants to do anything but just hold down
a job and grab a pay-envelope. Too much schooling! Those
inventors and pioneers who came out of New England and made this
country from a hunting-ground into an empire--they didn't have
all this monkey-business in technical schools and trade schools.
They just went to work. That's all. I say send 'em to work young
and let 'em sweat. That's what makes men and women."
My dear sir, those early New Englanders were in trade schools
from the time they began to crawl on the floor among their
mothers' looms and spinning-wheels. There was hardly a home in
early New England that didn't give a large number of technical
courses in which men and women were always teaching by doing, and
the boys and girls were always learning by imitating.
The facts about this are so simple and so familiar that we don't
stop to think of their meaning. When in the spring the wood-ashes
from the winter fires were poured into the lye-barrel, and water
was poured in with them, and the lye began to trickle out from
the bottom of the barrel, and the winter's savings of grease were
brought out, and the grease and the lye were boiled together in
the big kettle, and mother had finished making the family's
supply of soap for another year, the children had taken not only
a little lesson in industriousness, by helping to make the soap,
but a little lesson in industry, too, by observing the technique
and organization of the soap business from start to finish. A boy
from that family, even if he never learned to read or write,
might some day have some IDEAS about soap.
The curriculum of an old New England home, so far as presided
over by the wife, may be incompletely suggested as follows:
(N. B. The reader will note the inappropriateness of
congratulating the daughters of that home on their not wanting a
job. They had it.)
VEGETABLES DEPARTMENT.
1. A course in Gardening.
"In March and in April, from morning to night,
In sowing and setting good housewives delight."
2. A course in Medicinal Herbs. Borage, fennel, wild tansy,
wormwood, etc. Methods of distillation. Aqua composita, barberry
conserve, electuaries, salves, and ointments. A most important
course for every housewife.
"A speedy and a sovereign remedy,
The bitter wormwood, sage and
marigold."--FLETCHER: "The Faithful Shepherdess."
3. A course in Pickling. In this course pretty nearly everything
will be pickled, down to nasturtium-buds and radish-pods.
PACKING-HOUSE DEPARTMENT.
1. A course in Salting Meat in the "powdering" tub.
2. A course in Smoking Hams and Bacons.
3. A course in Pickling Pig's feet and Ears.
4. A course in Headcheese and Sausages.
LIQUOR DEPARTMENT.
1. A course in Beer. The making of wort out of barley. The making
of harm out of hops. The fermenting of the two together in
barrels.
(This course is not so much given now in New England, but it is
an immemorial heritage of the female sex. Gervayse Markham, in
his standard book, "Instructions to a Good Housewife," says about
beer: "It is the work and care of woman, for it is a house-work.
The man ought only to bring in the grain.")
2. A course in Light Drinks, such as Elderberry Wine.
CREAMERY DEPARTMENT.
1. A course in Making Butter.
2. A course in Making Cheese, Curdling, breaking curds in basket,
shaping in cheese press, turning and rubbing cheese on cheese
ladder.
CLEANING DEPARTMENT
1. A course in Soapmaking.
2. A course in Making Brooms out of Guinea-wheat Straw.
3. A course in Starch making.
4. A course in Cleaning.
(This last course is very simple. Having manufactured the things
to wash and sweep with, the mere washing and sweeping won't take
long.)
FRUIT DEPARTMENT.
1. A course in Preserving--everything that can't be pickled.
BREAKFAST FOOD DEPARTMENT.
1. A course in Mush and forty kinds of Bread--Rhineinjun
(sometimes called Rye and Indian), bun, bannock, jannock, rusk,
etc., etc.
LIGHTING DEPARTMENT.
1. A course in Dips. The melting of tallow or bayberries. The
twisting of wicks. The attaching of wicks to rods. The dipping of
them into the melted mass in the kettle. Patience in keeping on
dipping them.
(Pupils taking this course are required to report each morning at
five o'clock.)
2. A course in Wax Candles. The use of molds.
These departments might give a girl a pretty fair education of
the hand and a pretty fair acquaintance with the technique and
organization of the working world; but we haven't yet mentioned
the biggest and hardest department of all.
Before mentioning it, we call attention to a picture reproduced
in this article from a book published in the year 1493. The book
was a French translation of Boccaccio's collection of stories
called "Noble Women." The picture shows a woolen mill being
operated in the grounds of a palace by a queen and her
ladies-in-waiting. It summons back the days when even the
daughters of kings and nobles could not help acquiring a
knowledge of the working world, because they were in it. One of
the ladies in-waiting is straightening out the tangled strands of
wool with carding-combs. The other has taken the combed and
straightened strands and is spinning them into yarn. The queen,
being the boss, has the best job. She is weaving the yarn into
cloth on a loom.
The daughters of the Emperor Charlemagne, who was a very rich
man, learned how to card and spin and weave. Noble women had to
boss all that kind of thing on their estates. They lived in the
very midst of Industry, of Business.
So it was with those early New England women. And therefore,
whether well-to-do or indigent, they passed on to their sons as
well as to their daughters a steady daily lesson in the world's
work. The most intelligent mother in the United States to-day,
let her be kindergartner and psychologist and
child-study-specialist as much as she pleases, cannot give her
children that broad early view of the organization of life. The
only place where her children can get it now is in the school.
On the first of January of this year Mrs. Ella Flagg Young,
superintendent of schools in Chicago, took algebra out of the
eighth grade of the elementary schools, and, in its place,
inserted a course on Chicago. Large parts of what was once the
Home are now spread out through the Community. The new course
will teach the life of the community, its activities and
opportunities, civic, aesthetic, industrial. Such a course is
nothing but Home Training for the enlarged Home.
But we must go back for a moment to that biggest and hardest
department of all in the old homes of New England.
"Deceit, weeping, spinning, God hath give
To women kindly that they may live,"
said Chaucer in a teasing mood.
But spinning was a very small part of the Department of Textiles.
We forbear to dilate on the courses of instruction which that
department offered. We confine ourselves to observing that:
First. In the Sub-Department of Flax, after heckling that flax
with combs of increasing degrees of fineness till the fibers lay
pretty straight; after spinning it into yarn on her
spinning-wheel; after reeling the yarn off into skeins; after
"bucking" the skeins in hot lye through many changes of water;
and after using shuttle and loom to weave the stuff into cloth,
the home woman of those days had to accomplish some twenty
subsequent processes of bucking, rinsing, possing, drying, and
bleaching before the cloth was ready for use.
Second. In the Sub-Department of Wool, in addition to being
carders, spinners, and weavers, women were dyers, handling all
the color resources of the times, boiling poke-berries in alum to
get a crimson, using sassafras for a yellow or an orange, and
producing a black by boiling the fabric with field-sorrel and
then boiling it again with logwood and copperas.
We pass over, as trivial, the making of flax and wool stuffs into
articles of actual use. We say nothing about the transformation
of cloth into clothes, table-covers, napkins; nothing about the
weaving of yarn on little lap looms into the narrow fabrics for
hair-laces, glove-ties, belts, garters, and hat-bands; nothing
about the incessant knitting of yarn into mittens and stockings;
nothing about a host of other details. They were for idle
moments.
Sweet domestic days, when girls stayed at home and helped their
mothers and let father support the family!
It seems as if even Rip Van Winkle, in his most shiftless mood,
ought to have been able to support a large number of daughters
under such conditions.
Does it astonish you that they matured young? There, all about
them, from babyhood, were the basic processes by which the world
was sheltered, clothed, and fed. Those processes were numerous
but simple. Boys and girls observed them, absorbed them, through
eyes, through finger-tips, all through those early years when
eyes and finger-tips are the nourishing points of the intellect.
John Winthrop, the first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony,
was married at seventeen. His parents were not only willing, but
aiding and abetting. They considered him a man.
Mercy Otis, in Revolutionary days, in Massachusetts, the wife of
the patriot, James Warren, and Abigail Smith, the wife of the
future president, John Adams, both married before twenty. A study
of their lives will show that at that age they were mature.
To-day, in Boston, a woman of twenty is considered so immature
that many of the hospitals will not admit her even to her
preliminary training for the trade of nurse till she has added at
least three years more to her mental development.
Who has thus prolonged infancy; who has thus postponed maturity?
No individual.
Science has done part of it.
By the invention of power-driven machines and by the distribution
of the compact industries of the home through the scattered,
innumerable business enterprises of the community, Science has
given us, in place of a simple and near world, a complicated and
distant one. It takes us longer to learn it.
Simultaneously, by research and also by the use of the
printing-press, the locomotive, and the telegraph wire (which
speed up the production as well as the dissemination of
knowledge), Science has brought forth, in every field of human
interest and of human value, a mass of facts and of principles so
enormous and so important that the labors of our predecessors on
this planet overwhelm us, and we grow to our full physical
development long before we have caught up, in any degree, with
the previous experience of the race. And till we have done that,
to some degree, we are not mature.
With this postponement of personal maturity, there is an even
greater postponement of what might be called "technical"
maturity. The real mastery of a real technique takes longer and
longer. The teacher must not only go to college but must do
graduate work. The young doctor, after he finishes college and
medical school, is found as an interne in hospitals, as an
assistant to specialists, as a traveler through European
lecture-rooms. The young engineer, the young architect, the young
specialist of every sort, finds his period of preparation
steadily extending before him.
What is left undone by Science in keeping us immature is finally
accomplished by System.
The world is getting organized. Except in some of the professions
(and often even in them) we most of us start in on our life work
at some small subdivided job in a large organization of people.
The work of the organization is so systematized as to concentrate
responsibility and remuneration toward the top. In time, from job
to job, up an ascent which grows longer as the organization grows
bigger, we achieve responsibility. Till we do, we discharge minor
duties for minimum pay.
This is just as true of the boy from a "middle class" family as
it is of the boy from a "working class" family. There follows,
however, a most important difference between them. The "middle
class" boy will have to work longer and go farther than the
"working class" boy in order to rise to the financial standards
of his class. In this respect the "working class" boy will be a
man, ready for marriage, long before his "middle class"
fellow-worker.
It is among "middle class" boys, then, that the period of infancy
is most prolonged. They get a good deal of schooling. The stores
of human knowledge are put in their hands, to some extent, and,
to some extent, they catch up with the experience of the race.
This takes a longer and longer effort, particularly if real
mastery of any real technique is attempted. Then, on going to
work, they find that System, supplementing Science, has perfected
such an organization of the world of work that they must stay for
quite a while in the ranks of the organization. They will not
soon be earning what is regarded among their friends as a
marrying income. In money, as well as in mind, they approach
marriage with increasing tardiness. Their prolonged infancy is
financial, as well as mental.
They say that college girls marry late. It is true enough. But it
isn't properly stated.
The girls in the kind of family which college girls come from
marry late.
It can be definitively established by statistics here
considerately omitted that the age of marriage of college girls
is no later than the age of marriage of their non-college sisters
and acquaintances.
College is not a cause. It is a symptom.
Out of the prolongation of infancy in the "middle class" has come
the conquest by women of the intellectual freedom of the world.
It was by no vagary of chance that the demand of women for the
higher education came simultaneously with the change from the old
industrial home to the new, more purely domestic home. (It may be
a higher, nobler type of home. We are not here discussing that
point.)
As the home ceased to provide its daughters with adequate
education and with adequate employment, what was their situation?
In the "working class" it was simply this: That they went into
factories and that their sweethearts married them somewhat later
than had previously been the case, because their share as wives
in the support of the family was increasingly smaller. But the
"working class" man soon reaches his maximum earning capacity in
his craft and stays there. His financial infancy is short,
compared with that of the "middle class" man. He therefore
marries younger.
In the "middle class," however, Science and System began to
lengthen the mental and financial infancy of the men to such an
extent that the "old maid" of twenty-three became common. What
were the girls in the "middle class" to do while the boys were
growing up to be men, in mind and in money?
The father of Frederick the Great used to go about his realm with
a stick, and when he saw a woman in the street he would shake the
stick at her and say "Go back into the house. An honest woman
keeps indoors."
Probably quite sensible. When she went indoors, she went in to a
job. The "middle class" daughter of to-day, if her mother is
living and housekeeping, goes indoors into a vacuum.
Out of that vacuum came the explosion which created the first
woman's colleges.
There was plenty of sentiment in the explosion. That was the
splendid, blinding part of it. That was the part of it which even
to-day makes us veil our eves before the nobility of such women
as Emma Willard and Mary Lyon. They made Troy Female Seminary in
the twenties and Mount Holyoke in the thirties in the image of
the aspirations, as well as in the image of the needs, of the
women of the times.
But the needs were there, the need to be something, the need to
do something, self-respecting, self supporting. The existence of
these needs was clearly revealed in the fact that from the early
women's colleges and from the early coeducational universities
there at once issued a large supply of teachers.
This goes back to the fountainhead of the higher education of
women in this country. Emma Willard, even before she founded Troy
Female Seminary, back in the days when she was running her school
in Middlebury, Connecticut, was training young women to TEACH,
and was acquiring her claim (which she herself subsequently
urged) to being regarded as the organizer of the first normal
school in the United States.
From that time to this most college women have taught school
before getting married. The higher education of women has been,
in economic effect, a trade school for training women for the
trade of teacher.
But isn't it the purpose of the colleges to avoid training their
pupils for specific occupations? Isn't it their purpose to give
their pupils discipline and culture, pure and broad, unaffected
by commercial intention? Isn't that what colleges are, and ought
to be, for?
On the shore of this vast and violent controversy we discreetly
pause and stealthily sidle off, taking note of just three reefs
of solid fact which unsubmergably jut out above the surface of
the raging waters.
First. The colleges instruct their pupils in the subjects which
those pupils subsequently teach.
Second. The pupils specialize in the subjects which they are
going to teach.
Third. The colleges, besides providing the future teachers with
subjects, almost always offer to provide them with instruction in
the principles of education, and frequently offer to provide them
with instruction in the very technique of classroom work.
Our verdict, therefore, which we hope will be satisfactory to
counsel on both sides, is that the college is by no means a trade
school, but that if the woman who is going to earn her living
will choose the one trade of teaching, she can almost always get
a pretty fair trade training by going to college.
We are more interested in observing that the amount of trade
training which a teacher is expected to take is increasing year
by year. In teaching, as in other trades, the period and scope of
preliminary preparation continue to expand.
In the last calendar of Bryn Mawr College, the Department of
Education, in announcing its courses, makes the following
common-sense remarks:
"It is the purpose of the department to offer to students
intending to become teachers an opportunity to obtain a technical
preparation for their profession. Hitherto practical training has
been thought necessary for teachers of primary schools only, but
similar training is very desirable for teachers in high schools
and colleges also. Indeed, it is already becoming increasingly
difficult for college graduates without practical and theoretical
pedagogical knowledge to secure good positions. In addition to
the lectures open to undergraduates, courses will be organized
for graduate students only, conducted with special reference to
preparation for the headship and superintendence of schools."
But the teaching trade is getting choked. There is too much
supply. Girls are going to college in hordes. Graduating from
college, looking for work, there is usually just one kind of work
toward which they are mentally alert. Their college experience
has seldom roused their minds toward any other kind of work. They
start to teach. They drug the market. And so the teaching trade,
the great occupation of unmarried "middle class" women, ceases to
be able to provide those women, as a class, with an adequate
field of employment.
It is a turning point in the economic history of the class.
At the 1909 annual convention of the Association of Collegiate
Alumnae, in Cincinnati, Miss Susan Kingsbury (acting for a
committee of which Mrs. Richards, of the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, and Miss Breckenridge, of the University of
Chicago, were members) read a real essay on "The Economic
Efficiency of College Women."
This essay was not written till detailed reports on income and
expenditure from 377 self-supporting college graduates had been
got together.
Out of these 377 there were 317 who were teachers. There were 183
who had followed up their regular college course with from one to
eight years of graduate study. The capital invested in education
was from $2500 to $3500 and often amounted to $7000 because of
advanced work and travel. After all this preparation, the average
income achieved may be sufficiently disclosed in the one fact
that, among those graduates who had been at work for from six to
eight years, more than seventy per cent. were still earning less
than $1100.
After drawing a complete statistical picture of the case, Miss
Kingsbury concluded with certain questions and recommendations,
here condensed, which show the new economic needs of "middle
class" women knocking at the door of present "middle class"
education:
"Should not the over-supply of teachers be reduced by directing
many of our graduates into other pursuits than teaching? This
will place upon the college, just where the responsibility is
due, the obligation of discovering what those opportunities are
and what preparation should be given.
"This organization should endeavor to arouse in our colleges a
sense of responsibility for knowing the facts with regard to
their graduates, both social and economic, and should also
endeavor to influence our colleges through appointment
secretaries, to direct women, according to fitness, into other
lines than teaching.
"Should not courses be added to the college curriculum to give
women the fundamental principles in other professions, or lines
of industry or commerce, than teaching?
"May not required courses be added to the college curriculum to
inculcate business power and sense in all women?"
This philosophy seems to aim at making the modern school as
informative about modern industry as the primitive home was about
primitive industry. It seems to be the same educational
philosophy which produced the course on Chicago in the Chicago
elementary schools, which produced the Manhattan Trade School in
New York, which produced the School of Salesmanship at the
Women's Educational and Industrial Union in Boston.
At that Women's Educational and Industrial Union, at 264 Boylston
Street, you may see the evolution toward the age of trained women
proceeding at all levels of educational equipment.
There, before you, at one level, are the Trade School Shops--a
shop in hand-work and a shop in millinery. The pupils are
graduates of the Boston Trade School for Girls. They have had one
year of training. They are now taking another.
Florence Marshall made the Boston Trade School, with a committee
of women to help her. It has now been taken over by the public
authorities and merged into the public-school system. What looked
like a private fad has become a public function. The training of
women for self-support has been recognized as a duty of the
state.
The Trade School Shops at the Women's Educational and Industrial
Union were started for the express purpose of supplementing the
work of the Boston Trade School for Girls. One year was not
enough.
In the Trade School the prospective milliner had spent four
months on plain sewing, four months on summer hats, four months
on winter hats. She had also taken short courses in Personal
Hygiene, Business Forms, Spelling, Business English, Color
Design, Textiles, Industrial Conditions. These latter courses
were not, strictly speaking, "technical." They were "vocational."
They were in the "middle ground" between general and technical
training. They went beyond the general training of the elementary
schools and furnished the girl with the background of her future
vocation. But she often needed a little more of the foreground, a
little more of actual trade technique.
Thus does her education divide itself up into periods:--general,
vocational, technical.
The Trade School Shops are designed to give the girl her final
technical finish. They are really more like a factory than like a
school. Although the object of them is to convey a broad
instruction, the pupil gets wages, the stuff she makes is sold,
and the organization is that of a commercial establishment.
So, at the end of two years from the time she left the elementary
school, the young milliner is ready to go out into the world
organization. She is better fitted for her world than many a
college girl is for hers.
On a different level of educational equipment from the Trade
School Shops stands the School of Salesmanship. It gets many high
school girls and even, occasionally, a girl who has been to
college.
Finally, there is the Appointment Bureau, for college girls in
particular.
This Appointment Bureau is the most extraordinary employment
agency ever organized. Its object is not merely to introduce
existing clients to existing jobs (which is the proper normal
object of employment agencies), but to make forays into the wild
region of "occupations other than teaching," and find jobs, and
then find girls to fit those jobs. In other words, it is a kind
of "Company of Adventurers Trading into Hudson's Bay" for the
purpose of exploring, surveying, developing, and settling the
region of "occupations other than teaching" on behalf of college
women.
It is managed by Miss Laura Drake Gill, President of the National
Association of Collegiate Alumnae and former Dean of Barnard
College. She is assisted by an Advisory Council of
representatives of near-by colleges--Radcliffe, Wellesley,
Simmons, Mount Holyoke, Smith, and Brown.
There is no more important work being done for women to-day.
In connection with it, the Women's Educational and Industrial
Union has just issued a handbook of three hundred pages, entitled
"Vocations for the Trained Woman." It is an immense map of the
occupational world for "middle class" women, in which every bay
and headland, every lake and hill, is drawn to scale, from
Poultry Farming to Department Store Buying, from Lunch-Room
Management to State Child-Saving.
The responses made to this movement by certain educational
institutions (including particularly Simmons College) will be
observed in a future article. Just one response, from an
unexpected quarter, must be noticed here.
In a small Illinois city there is a woman's college, founded as a
Preparatory School in the forties and soon advanced to be a
Seminary, which, with Anna P. Sill for its first head, Jane
Addams for its best-known graduate, and Julia Gulliver for its
present president, has come to be a college of standing and of
leading. Only Troy Female Seminary and Mount Holyoke Seminary
preceded it, in date of foundation, among the important women's
institutions.
Rockford College is ranked to-day, by the reports of the United
States Commissioner of Education, in rank one--among the sixteen
best women's colleges in the United States. It hasn't risen to
that rank by any quick, money-spurred spurt. It brings with it
out of its far past all the traditions of that early struggle for
the higher education which, by friction, kindled among women so
flaming an enthusiasm for pure knowledge. It remains "collegiate"
in the old sense, quiet, cloistral, inhabiting old-fashioned
brick buildings in an old-fashioned large yard, looking still
like the Illinois of war times more than like the Illinois of the
twentieth century, retaining all the home ideals of those
times--a large interest in feminine accomplishments, a strict
regard for manners, a belief in the value of charm.
But here, in this quiet, non-metropolitan college, so really
"academic," so really--in the oldest-fashioned ways--"cultural,"
here is a two-year course in secretarial studies.
It is the first time (within our knowledge) that such a thing has
happened in any of the old first-rank women's colleges.
The course in secretarial studies at Rockford gives the pupil
English, Accounts, Commerce, Commercial Law, and Economic History
in her first year, and Political Science, English, and Economics
in her second year. Shorthand and Typewriting are required in
both years, and a few hours a week are reserved in each year for
elective courses to be chosen by the pupil among offerings in
French, German, Spanish, and History.
This is a notable concession not only to the increased need of
"middle class" women for "occupations other than teaching" but
also to the increased recognition of those other occupations as
being worthy of "cultural" training.
We keep moving forward into an era of trained women as well as
trained men. The extraordinary prolongation of mental and
financial infancy in the "middle class," bringing with it an
extraordinary postponement of marriage, makes this training
particularly necessary in the case of the women of that class.
But the contraction of the home as a field of adequate employment
for daughters exists everywhere, increasing the cost of living
for the family and driving daughters to supplementing the family
income.
What futility, as well as indignity, there is in the idea that
the query of support for women gets its full answer in a husband!
In the United States, in the year 1900, among women twenty years
of age and over, the married women numbered 13,400,000. The
unmarried women and the widows together numbered 6,900,000. For
every two women married there was one woman either single or
widowed.
If education does not (1) give women a comprehension of the
organization of the money-earning world, and (2) train them to
one of the techniques which lead to self-support in that world,
it is not education.
Just at this point, though, we encounter a curious conflict in
women's education. Just as we see their urgent need of a
money-earning technique, we simultaneously hear, coming from a
corner of the battlefield and swelling till it fills the air with
a nation-wide battle-cry, the sentiment: "The Home is also a
technique. All women must be trained to it."
At Rockford College, illustrating this conflict, there exists,
besides the course in Secretarial Studies, an equivalent course
in Home Economics.
In one photograph in this article we show the tiny children of
the Francis Parker School in Chicago taking their first lesson in
the technique of the home. In another picture we show the
post-graduate laboratory in the technique of the home at the
University of Illinois. And the space between the kindergarten
and the degree of Doctor of Philosophy threatens to get filled up
almost everywhere with courses in cooking, sewing, chemistry of
diet, composition of textiles, art of marketing, and other phases
of home management.
The money-earning world, a technique! The home, a technique! The
boy learns only one. Must the girl learn two, and be twice a
specialist?
(In the September number Mr. Hard will discuss The Home Economics
Movement.)
*****************************************************************
VOL. XXIII September 1910 NO. 3
Law and Order
By O. HENRY
AUTHOR OF "THE FOUR MILLION," "THE HEART OF THE WEST," STRICTLY
BUSINESS," ETC.
I found myself in Texas a recently, revisiting old places and
vistas. At a sheep-ranch where I had sojourned many years ago, I
stopped for a week. And, as all visitors do, I heartily plunged
into the business at hand, which happened to be that of dipping
the sheep.
Now, this process is so different from ordinary human baptism
that it deserves a word of itself. A vast iron cauldron with half
the fires of Avernus beneath it is partly filled with water that
soon boils furiously. Into that is cast concentrated lye, lime,
and sulphur, which is allowed to stew and fume until the witches'
broth is strong enough to scorch the third arm of Palladino
herself.
Then this concentrated brew is mixed in a long, deep vat with
cubic gallons of hot water, and the sheep are caught by their
hind legs and flung into the compound. After being thoroughly
ducked by means of a forked pole in the hands of a gentleman
detailed for that purpose, they are allowed to clamber up an
incline into a corral and dry or die, as the state of their
constitutions may decree. If you ever caught an able-bodied,
two-year-old mutton by the hind legs and felt the 750 volts of
kicking that he can send through your arm seventeen times before
you can hurl him into the vat, you will, of course, hope that he
may die instead of dry.
But this is merely to explain why Bud Oakley and I gladly
stretched ourselves on the bank of the near-by charco after the
dipping, glad for the welcome inanition and pure contact with the
earth after our muscle-racking labors. The flock was a small one,
and we finished at three in the afternoon; so Bud brought from
the morral on his saddle horn, coffee and a coffeepot and a big
hunk of bread and some side bacon. Mr. Mills, the ranch owner and
my old friend, rode away to the ranch with his force of Mexican
trabajadores.
While the bacon was frizzling nicely, there was the sound of
horses' hoofs behind us. Bud's six-shooter lay in its scabbard
ten feet away from his hand. He paid not the slightest heed to
the approaching horseman. This attitude of a Texas ranchman was
so different from the old-time custom that I marveled.
Instinctively I turned to inspect the possible foe that menaced
us in the rear. I saw a horseman dressed in black, who might have
been a lawyer or a parson or an undertaker, trotting peaceably
along the road by the arroyo.
Bud noticed my precautionary movement and smiled sarcastically
and sorrowfully.
"You've been away too long," said he. "You don't need to look
around any more when anybody gallops up behind you in this state,
unless something hits you in the back; and even then it's liable
to be only a bunch of tracts or a petition to sign against the
trusts. I never looked at that hombre that rode by; but I'll bet
a quart of sheep dip that he's some double-dyed son of a popgun
out rounding up prohibition votes."
"Times have changed, Bud," said I, oracularly. "Law and order is
the rule now in the South and the Southwest."
I caught a cold gleam from Bud's pale blue eyes.
"Not that I----" I began, hastily.
"Of course you don't," said Bud warmly. "You know better. You've
lived here before. Law and order, you say? Twenty years ago we
had 'em here. We only had two or three laws, such as against
murder before witnesses, and being caught stealing horses, and
voting the Republican ticket. But how is it now? All we get is
orders; and the laws go out of the state. Them legislators set up
there at Austin and don't do nothing but make laws against
kerosene oil and schoolbooks being brought into the state. I
reckon they was afraid some man would go home some evening after
work and light up and get an education and go to work and make
laws to repeal aforesaid laws. Me, I'm for the old days when law
and order meant what they said. A law was a law, and a order was
a order."
"But----" I began.
"I was going on," continued Bud, "while this coffee is boiling,
to describe to you a case of genuine law and order that I knew of
once in the times when cases was decided in the chambers of a
six-shooter instead of a supreme court.
"You've heard of old Ben Kirkman, the cattle king? His ranch run
from the Nueces to the Rio Grande. In them days, as you know,
there was cattle barons and cattle kings. The difference was
this: when a cattleman went to San Antone and bought beer for the
newspaper reporters and only give them the number of cattle he
actually owned, they wrote him up for a baron. When he bought 'em
champagne wine and added in the amount of cattle he had stole,
they called him a king.
"Luke Summers was one of his range bosses. And down to the king's
ranch comes one day a bunch of these Oriental people from New
York or Kansas City or thereabouts. Luke was detailed with a
squad to ride about with 'em, and see that the rattlesnakes got
fair warning when they was coming, and drive the deer out of
their way. Among the bunch was a black-eyed girl that wore a
number two shoe. That's all I noticed about her. But Luke must
have seen more, for he married her one day before the caballard
started back, and went over on Canada Verde and set up a ranch of
his own. I'm skipping over the sentimental stuff on purpose,
because I never saw or wanted to see any of it. And Luke takes me
along with him because we was old friends and I handled cattle to
suit him.
"I'm skipping over much what followed, because I never saw or
wanted to see any of it--but three years afterward there was a
boy kid stumbling and blubbering around the galleries and floors
of Luke's ranch. I never had no use for kids; but it seems they
did. And I'm skipping over much what followed until one day out
to the ranch drives in hacks and buckboards a lot of Mrs.
Summers's friends from the East--a sister or so and two or three
men. One looked like an uncle to somebody; and one looked like
nothing; and the other one had on corkscrew pants and spoke in a
tone of voice. I never liked a man who spoke in a tone of voice.
"I'm skipping over much what followed; but one afternoon when I
rides up to the ranch house to get some orders about a drove of
beeves that was to be shipped, I hears something like a popgun go
off. I waits at the hitching rack, not wishing to intrude on
private affairs. In a little while Luke comes out and gives some
orders to some of his Mexican-hands, and they go and hitch up
sundry and divers vehicles; and mighty soon out comes one of the
sisters or so and some of the two or three men. But two of the
two or three men carries between 'em the corkscrew man who spoke
in a tone of voice, and lays him flat down in one of the wagons.
And they all might have been seen wending their way away.
" `Bud,' says Luke to me, `I want you to fix up a little and go
up to San Antone with me.'
" `Let me get on my Mexican spurs,' says I, `and I'm your
company.'
"One of the sisters or so seems to have stayed at the ranch with
Mrs. Summers and the kid. We rides to Encinal and catches the
International, and hits San Antone in the morning. After
breakfast Luke steers me straight to the office of a lawyer. They
go in a room and talk and then come out.
" `Oh, there won't be any trouble, Mr. Summers,' says the lawyer.
`I'll acquaint Judge Simmons with the facts to-day; and the
matter will be put through as promptly as possible. Law and order
reigns in this state as swift and sure as any in the country.'
" `I'll wait for the decree if it won't take over half an hour,'
says Luke.
" `Tut, tut,' says the lawyer man. `Law must take its course.
Come back day after to-morrow at half-past nine.'
"At that time me and Luke shows up, and the lawyer hands him a
folded document. And Luke writes him out a check.
"On the sidewalk Luke holds up the paper to me and puts a finger
the size of a kitchen-door latch on it and says:
" `Decree of ab-so-lute divorce with cus-to-dy of the child.'
" `Skipping over much what has happened of which I know nothing,'
says I, `it looks to me like a split. Couldn't the lawyer man
have made it a strike for you?'
" `Bud,' says he, in a pained style, `that child is the one thing
I have to live for. SHE may go; but the boy is mine!--think of
it--I have cus-to-dy of the child.'
" `All right,' says I. `If it's the law, let's abide by it. But I
think,' says I, `that Judge Simmons might have used exemplary
clemency, or whatever is the legal term, in our case.'
"You see, I wasn't inveigled much into the desirableness of
having infants around a ranch, except the kind that feed
themselves and sell for so much on the hoof when they grow up.
But Luke was struck with that sort of parental foolishness that I
never could understand. All the way riding from the station back
to the ranch, he kept pulling that decree out of his pocket and
laying his finger on the back of it and reading off to me the sum
and substance of it. `Cus-to-dy of the child, Bud,' says he.
`Don't forget it--cus-to-dy of the child.'
"But when we hits the ranch we finds our decree of court
obviated, nolle prossed, and remanded for trial. Mrs. Summers and
the kid was gone. They tell us that an hour after me and Luke had
started for San Antone she had a team hitched and lit out for the
nearest station with her trunks and the youngster.
"Luke takes out his decree once more and reads off its
emoluments.
" `It ain't possible, Bud,' says he, `for this to be. It's
contrary to law and order. It's wrote as plain as day
here--"Cus-to-dy of the child." '
" `There is what you might call a human leaning,' says I,
`towards smashing 'em both--not to mention the child.'
" `Judge Simmons,' goes on Luke, `is a incorporated officer of
the law. She can't take the boy away. He belongs to me by
statutes passed and approved by the state of Texas.'
" `And he's removed from the jurisdiction of mundane mandamuses,'
says I, `by the unearthly statutes of female partiality. Let us
praise the Lord and be thankful for whatever small mercies----' I
begins; but I see Luke don't listen to me. Tired as he was, he
calls for a fresh horse and starts back again for the station.
"He come back two weeks afterwards, not saying much.
" `We can't get the trail,' says he; `but we've done all the
telegraphing that the wires'll stand, and we've got these city
rangers they call detectives on the lookout. In the meantime,
Bud,' says he, `we'll round up them cows on Brusby Creek, and
wait for the law to take its course.' And after that we never
alluded to allusions, as you might say.
"Skipping over much what happened in the next twelve years, Luke
was made sheriff of Mojada County. He made me his office deputy.
Now, don't get in your mind no wrong apparitions of a office
deputy doing sums in a book or mashing letters in a cider press.
In them days his job was to watch the back windows so nobody
didn't plug the sheriff in the rear while he was adding up
mileage at his desk in front. And in them days I had
qualifications for the job. And there was law and order in Mojada
County, and schoolbooks, and all the whisky you wanted, and the
government built its own battleships instead of collecting
nickels from the schoolchildren to do it with. And, as I say,
there was law and order instead of enactments and restrictions
such as disfigure our umpire state to-day. We had our office at
Bildad, the county seat, from which we emerged forth on necessary
occasions to soothe whatever fracases and unrest that might occur
in our jurisdiction.
"Skipping over much what happened while me and Luke was sheriff,
I want to give you an idea of how the law was respected in them
days. Luke was what you would call one of the most conscious men
in the world. He never knew much book law, but he had the inner
emoluments of justice and mercy inculcated into his system. If a
respectable citizen shot a Mexican or held up a train and cleaned
out the safe in the express car, and Luke ever got hold of him,
he'd give the guilty party such a reprimand and a cussin' out
that he'd probable never do it again. But once let somebody steal
a horse (unless it was a Spanish pony), or cut a wire fence, or
otherwise impair the peace and indignity of Mojada County, Luke
and me would be on 'em with habeas corpuses and smokeless powder
and all the modern inventions of equity and etiquette.
"We certainly had our county on a basis of lawfulness. I've known
persons of Eastern classification with little spotted caps and
buttoned-up shoes to get off the train at Bildad and eat
sandwiches at the railroad station without being shot at or even
roped and drug about by the citizens of the town.
"Luke had his own ideas of legality and justice. He was kind of
training me to succeed him when he went out of office. He was
always looking ahead to the time when he'd quit sheriffing. What
he wanted to do was to build a yellow house with lattice-work
under the porch and have hens scratching in the yard. The one
main thing in his mind seemed to be the yard.
" `Bud,' he says to me, `by instinct and sentiment I'm a
contractor. I want to be a contractor. That's what I'll be when I
get out of office.'
" `What kind of a contractor?' says I. `It sounds like a kind of
a business to me. You ain't going to haul cement or establish
branches or work on a railroad, are you?'
" `You don't understand,' says Luke. `I'm tired of space and
horizons and territory and distances and things like that. What I
want is reasonable contraction. I want a yard with a fence around
it that you can go out and set on after supper and listen to
whip-poor-wills. I'm a fool about whip-poor-wills,' says Luke.
"That's the kind of a man he was. He was home-like, although he'd
had bad luck in such investments. But he never talked about them
times on the ranch. It seemed like he'd forgotten about it. I
wondered how, with his ideas of yards and chickens and notions of
lattice-work, he'd seemed to have got out of his mind that kid of
his that had been taken away from him, unlawful, in spite of his
decree of court. But he wasn't a man you could ask about such
things as he didn't refer to in his own conversation.
"I reckon he'd put all his emotions and ideas into being sheriff.
I've read in books about men that was disappointed in these
poetic and fine-haired and high-collared affairs with ladies
renouncing truck of that kind and wrapping themselves up into
some occupation like painting pictures or herding sheep or
science or teaching school--something to make 'em forget. Well, I
guess that was the way with Luke. But, as he couldn't paint
pictures, he took it out in rounding up horse thieves and in
making Mojada County a safe place to sleep in if you was well
armed and not afraid of requisitions or tarantulas.
"One day there passes through Bildad a bunch of these money
investors from the East, and they stopped off there, Bildad being
the dinner station on the I. & G. N. They was just coming back
from Mexico looking after mines and such. There was five of
'em--four solid parties, with gold watch chains, that would grade
up over two hundred pounds on the hoof, and one kid about
seventeen or eighteen.
"This youngster had on one of them cowboy suits such as
tenderfoots bring West with 'em; and you could see he was aching
to wing a couple of Indians or bag a grizzly or two with the
little pearl-handled gun he had buckled around his waist.
"I walked down to the depot to keep an eye on the outfit and see
that they didn't locate any land or scare the cow ponies hitched
in front of Murchison's store or act otherwise unseemly. Luke was
away after a gang of cattle thieves down on the Frio, and I
always looked after the law and order when he wasn't there.
"After dinner this boy comes out of the dining-room while the
train was waiting, and prances up and down the platform ready to
shoot all antelope, lions, or private citizens that might
endeavor to molest or come too near him. He was a good-looking
kid; only he was like all them tenderfoots--he didn't know a
law-and-order town when he saw it.
"By and by along comes Pedro Johnson, the proprietor of the
Crystal Palace chili-con-carne stand in Bildad. Pedro was a man
who liked to amuse himself; so he kind of herd-rides this
youngster, laughing at him, tickled to death. I was too far away
to hear, but the kid seems to mention some remarks to Pedro, and
Pedro goes up and slaps him about nine feet away, and laughs
harder than ever. And then the boy gets up quicker than he fell
and jerks out his little pearl-handle, and--bing! bing! bing!
Pedro gets it three times in special and treasured portions of
his carcass. I saw the dust fly off his clothes every time the
bullets hit. Sometimes them little thirty-twos cause worry at
close range.
"The engine bell was ringing, and the train starting off slow. I
goes up to the kid and places him under arrest, and takes away
his gun. But the first thing I knew that caballard of capitalists
makes a break for the train. One of 'em hesitates in front of me
for a second, and kind of smiles and shoves his hand up against
my chin, and I sort of laid down on the platform and took a nap.
I never was afraid of guns; but I don't want any person except a
barber to take liberties like that with my face again. When I
woke up, the whole outfit--train, boy, and all--was gone. I asked
about Pedro, and they told me the doctor said he would recover
provided his wounds didn't turn out to be fatal.
"When Luke got back three days later, and I told him about it, he
was mad all over.
" `Why'n't you telegraph to San Antone,' he asks, `and have the
bunch arrested there?'
" `Oh, well,' says I, `I always did admire telegraphy; but
astronomy was what I had took up just then.' That capitalist sure
knew how to gesticulate with his hands.
"Luke got madder and madder. He investigates and finds in the
depot a card one of the men had dropped that gives the address of
some hombre called Scudder in New York City.
" `Bud,' says Luke, `I'm going after that bunch. I'm going there
and get the man or boy, as you say he was, and bring him back.
I'm sheriff of Mojada County, and I shall keep law and order in
its precincts while I'm able to draw a gun. And I want you to go
with me. No Eastern Yankee can shoot up a respectable and
well-known citizen of Bildad, 'specially with a thirty-two
calibre, and escape the law. Pedro Johnson,' says Luke, `is one
of our most prominent citizens and business men. I'll appoint Sam
Bell acting sheriff with penitentiary powers while I'm away, and
you and me will take the 6.45 northbound to-morrow evening and
follow up this trail.'
" `I'm your company,' says I. `I never see this New York, but I'd
like to. But, Luke,' says I, `don't you have to have a
dispensation or a habeas corpus or something from the state, when
you reach out that far for rich men and malefactors?'
" `Did I have a requisition,' says Luke, `when I went over into
the Brazos bottoms and brought back Bill Grimes and two more for
holding up the International? Did me and you have a search
warrant or a posse comitatus when we rounded up them six Mexican
cow thieves down in Hidalgo? It's my business to keep order in
Mojada County. '
" `And it's my business as office deputy,' says I, `to see that
business is carried on according to law. Between us both we ought
to keep things pretty well cleaned up.'
"So, the next day, Luke packs a blanket and some collars and his
mileage book in a haversack, and him and me hits the breeze for
New York. It was a powerful long ride. The seats in the cars was
too short for six-footers like us to sleep comfortable on; and
the conductor had to keep us from getting off at every town that
had five-story houses in it. But we got there finally; and we
seemed to see right away that he was right about it.
" `Luke,' says I, `as office deputy and from a law standpoint, it
don't look to me like this place is properly and legally in the
jurisdiction of Mojada County, Texas.'
" `From the standpoint of order,' says he, `it's amenable to
answer for its sins to the properly appointed authorities from
Bildad to Jerusalem.'
" `Amen,' says I. `But let's turn our trick sudden, and ride. I
don't like the looks of this place.'
" `Think of Pedro Johnson,' says Luke, `a friend of mine and
yours shot down by one of these gilded abolitionists at his very
door!'
" `It was at the door of the freight depot,' says I. `But the law
will not be balked at a quibble like that.'
"We put up at one of them big hotels on Broadway. The next
morning I goes down about two miles of stairsteps to the bottom
and hunts for Luke. It ain't no use. It looks like San Jacinto
day in San Antone. There's a thousand folks milling around in a
kind of a roofed-over plaza with marble pavements and trees
growing right out of 'em, and I see no more chance of finding
Luke than if we was hunting each other in the big pear flat down
below Old Fort Ewell. But soon Luke and me runs together in one
of the turns of them marble alleys.
" `It ain't no use, Bud,' says he. `I can't find no place to eat
at. I've been looking for restaurant signs and smelling for ham
all over the camp. But I'm used to going hungry when I have to.
Now,' says he, `I'm going out and get a hack and ride down to the
address on this Scudder card. You stay here and try to hustle
some grub. But I doubt if you'll find it. I wish we'd brought
along some cornmeal and bacon and beans. I'll be back when I see
this Scudder, if the trail ain't wiped out.'
"So I starts foraging for breakfast. For the honor of old Mojada
County I didn't want to seem green to them abolitionists, so
every time I turned a corner in them marble halls I went up to
the first desk or counter I see and looks around for grub. If I
didn't see what I wanted I asked for something else. In about
half an hour I had a dozen cigars, five story magazines, and
seven or eight rail-road time-tables in my pockets, and never a
smell of coffee or bacon to point out the trail.
"Once a lady sitting at a table and playing a game kind of like
pushpin told me to go into a closet that she called Number 3. I
went in and shut the door, and the blamed thing lit itself up. I
set down on a stool before a shelf and waited. Thinks I, `This is
a private dining-room.' But no waiter never came. When I got to
sweating good and hard, I goes out again.
" `Did you get what you wanted?' says she.
" `No, ma'am,' says I. `Not a bite.'
" `Then there's no charge,' says she.
" `Thanky, ma'am,' says I, and I takes up the trail again.
"By and by I thinks I'll shed etiquette; and I picks up one of
them boys with blue clothes and yellow buttons in front, and he
leads me to what he calls the caffay breakfast room. And the
first thing I lays my eyes on when I go in is that boy that had
shot Pedro Johnson. He was setting all alone at a little table,
hitting a egg with a spoon like he was afraid he'd break it.
"I takes the chair across the table from him; and he looks
insulted and makes a move like he was going to get up.
" `Keep still, son,' says I. `You're apprehended, arrested, and
in charge of the Texas authorities. Go on and hammer that egg
some more if it's the inside of it you want. Now, what did you
shoot Mr. Johnson, of Bildad, for?'
" `And may I ask who you are?' says he.
" `You may,' says I. `Go ahead'.
" `I suppose you're on,' says this kid, without batting his eyes.
`But what are you eating? Here, waiter!' he calls out, raising
his finger. `Take this gentleman's order.'
" `A beefsteak,' says I, `and some fried eggs and a can of
peaches and a quart of coffee will about suffice.'
"We talk a while about the sundries of life and then he says:
" `What are you going to do about that shooting? I had a right to
shoot that man,' says he. `He called me names that I couldn't
overlook, and then he struck me. He carried a gun, too. What else
could I do?'
" `We'll have to take you back to Texas,' says I.
" `I'd like to go back,' says the boy, with a kind of a grin--`if
it wasn't on an occasion of this kind. It's the life I like. I've
always wanted to ride and shoot and live in the open air ever
since I can remember.'
" `Who was this gang of stout parties you took this trip with?' I
asks.
" `My stepfather,' says he, `and some business partners of his in
some Mexican mining and land schemes.'
" `I saw you shoot Pedro Johnson,' says I, `and I took that
little popgun away from you that you did it with. And when I did
so I noticed three or four little scars in a row over your right
eyebrow. You've been in rookus before, haven't you?'
" `I've had these scars ever since I can remember,' says he. `I
don't know how they came there.'
" `Was you ever in Texas before?' says I.
" `Not that I remember of,' says he. `But I thought I had when we
struck the prairie country. But I guess I hadn't.'
" `Have you got a mother?' I asks.
" `She died five years ago,' says he.
"Skipping over the most of what followed--when Luke came back I
turned the kid over to him. He had seen Scudder and told him what
he wanted; and it seems that Scudder got active with one of these
telephones as soon as he left. For in about an hour afterwards
there comes to our hotel some of these city rangers in everyday
clothes that they call detectives, and marches the whole outfit
of us to what they call a magistrate's court. They accuse Luke of
attempted kidnapping, and ask him what he has to say.
" `This snipe,' says Luke to the judge, `shot and willfully
punctured with malice and forethought one of the most respected
and prominent citizens of the town of Bildad, Texas, Your Honor.
And in so doing laid himself liable to the penitence of law and
order. And I hereby make claim and demand restitution of the
State of New York City for the said alleged criminal; and I know
he done it.'
" `Have you the usual and necessary requisition papers from the
governor of your state?' asks the judge.
" `My usual papers,' says Luke, `was taken away from me at the
hotel by these gentlemen who represent law and order in your
city. They was two Colt's .45's that I've packed for nine years;
and if I don't get 'em back, there'll be more trouble. You can
ask anybody in Mojada County about Luke Summers. I don't usually
need any other kind of papers for what I do.'
"I see the judge looks mad, so I steps up and says:
" `Your Honor, the aforesaid defendant, Mr. Luke Summers, sheriff
of Mojada County, Texas, is as fine a man as ever threw a rope or
upheld the statutes and codicils of the greatest state in the
Union. But he----'
"The judge hits his table with a wooden hammer and asks who I am.
" `Bud Oakley,' says I. `Office deputy of the sheriff's office of
Mojada County, Texas. Representing,' says I, `the Law. Luke
Summers,' I goes on, `represents Order. And if Your Honor will
give me about ten minutes in private talk, I'll explain the whole
thing to you, and show you the equitable and legal requisition
papers which I carry in my pocket.'
"The judge kind of half smiles and says he will talk with me in
his private room. In there I put the whole thing up to him in
such language as I had, and when we goes outside, he announces
the verdict that the young man is delivered into the hands of the
Texas authorities; and calls the next case.
"Skipping over much of what happened on the way back, I'll tell
you how the thing wound up in Bildad.
"When we got the prisoner in the sheriff's office, I says to
Luke:
" `You remember that kid of yours--that two-year-old that they
stole away from you when the bust-up come?'
"Luke looks black and angry. He'd never let anybody talk to him
about that business, and he never mentioned it himself.
" `Toe the mark,' says I. `Do you remember when he was toddling
around on the porch and fell down on a pair of Mexican spurs and
cut four little holes over his right eye? Look at the prisoner,'
says I, `look at his nose and the shape of his head and--why, you
old fool, don't you know your own son?--I knew him,' says I,
`when he perforated Mr. Johnson at the depot.'
"Luke comes over to me shaking all over. I never saw him lose his
nerve before.
" `Bud,' says he, `I've never had that boy out of my mind one day
or one night since he was took away. But I never let on. But can
we hold him?--Can we make him stay?--I'll make the best man of
him that ever put his foot in a stirrup. Wait a minute,' says he,
all excited and out of his mind--`I've got something here in my
desk--I reckon it'll hold legal yet--I've looked at it a thousand
times--"Cus-to-dy of the child," says Luke--"Cus-to-dy of the
child." We can hold him on that, can't we? Le'me see if I can
find that decree.'
"Luke begins to tear his desk to pieces.
" `Hold on,' says I. `You are Order and I'm Law. You needn't look
for that paper, Luke. It ain't a decree any more. It's
requisition papers. It's on file in that Magistrate's office in
New York. I took it along when we went, because I was office
deputy and knew the law.'
" `I've got him back,' says Luke. `He's mine again. I never
thought----'
" `Wait a minute,' says I. `We've got to have law and order. You
and me have got to preserve 'em both in Mojada County according
to our oath and conscience. The kid shot Pedro Johnson, one of
Bildad's most prominent and----"
" `Oh, hell!' says Luke. `That don't amount to anything. That
fellow was half Mexican, anyhow.' "
----IN A FAR TOWNSHIP
By SARAH N. CLEGHORN
His roundabout of bottle-green,
And pantaloons of fine nankeen
Were Sunday best; the month was May,
And this from school a holiday;
But he had none with whom to play,
And wandered wistful,up and down,
All in a strange old Garden,
And in a strange old Town.
An ancient chaise, a Dobbin gray
Had brought him here to spend the day.
Now his old aunt and uncle drowse;
No chick nor child is in the house--
No cat, no dog, no bird, or mouse;
No fairy picture-book to spell,
No music-box of wonder,
Nor magic whispering-shell.
Unending is this afternoon,
And strange this landscape as the moon,
With home a thousand miles away--
The pasture where his brothers play
With whoop and shout, in Indian fray;
The porch where, even at this hour,
His mother prunes the vine and flower,
And hums the nursery melody,
"I saw a ship a-sailing,
A-sailing on the sea."
*****************************************************************
VOL. XXIII September 1910 NO. 3
Lassoing Wild Animals In Africa
By GUY H. SCULL
Field Manager of the Buffalo Jones African Expedition
Editor's Note: The wild animals of Africa have been hunted with
firearms for many a year, and photographed by more than one
marksman of the lens. But here is the truly unique expedition
into the jungle. The idea that any one should seriously
contemplate a journey to Africa for the purpose of lassoing such
creatures as sportsmen either shoot or photograph at the longest
range possible, seems quite absurd. But an American frontiersman
has done it, with American cowboys, cow-ponies, and hunting-dogs,
and with wonderful moving pictures to prove it. It is a fine
evidence of the sporting qualities of both parties to the
undertaking that Colonel C. J. Jones, a Western plainsman, could
so completely interest Mr. Charles S. Bird, an Eastern
manufacturer, in the fantastic plan as to command his backing.
And if there is such a thing as the glow of adventure by proxy,
it must have been felt in the Nassau Street law office, where the
Buffalo Jones African Expedition had its headquarters, when the
cablegram from Nairobi announced that lion and rhino had been
lassoed, and that the moving pictures were a complete success.
IT was a special train--loaded to capacity with horses and dogs,
camp baggage, moving-picture cameras, cowboys, photographers, and
porters; and when it pulled out of the Nairobi station on the way
to the "up country" of British East Africa, the period of
preparation passed away and the time of action began. As the
faces of the people on the platform glided by the window of the
slowly moving carriage, there was good will written on all of
them; but also unbelief. There was no doubt as to what they
thought of Buffalo Jones's expedition that was setting out to
rope and tie and photograph the wild animals of the East African
Veldt.
"How are you going to hold a rhino that weighs two tons and a
half?"
"What are you going to do when the lion charges?"
Such were the questions asked us by the hunters of the country.
They further took pains to explain that a rhino charges like a
flash, and that a lion can catch a horse within a hundred yards.
These items of information, however, were well known to Buffalo
Jones before the expedition was organized in New York, and his
preparations to meet the difficulties had been made accordingly.
Colonel C. J. Jones is tall and spare, with a strong, rugged face
and keen blue eyes. During his sixty-five years of life, he has
roped and tied, often single-handed, every kind of wild animal of
consequence to be found in our western country, and his
experience with these has led him to believe implicitly that man
is the master of all wild beasts.
He has climbed trees after mountain lions, and with a lasso over
a branch has hauled grizzlies up into the air by one hind leg.
And once he set out alone to journey over a country that no white
man had ever traveled before, to reach the land of the musk-ox on
the border of the Arctic Circle. The story is told of how he met
a trapper on the way, and how these two, in the face of the
hostility of all the Indian tribes, the wolves, and the cold of
the northern winter, eventually came to the musk-ox and captured
five calves. Then, deserted by their Indian guide, they started
to return with their prizes, got lost in the wilderness, and
fought the wolves till their cartridges ran out. And when at last
they reached safety and fell asleep, exhausted, the Indians,
obeying the laws of their religion, stole upon them in the night
and killed the calves.
But the success he had achieved with the mountain lions of the
Southwest, the musk-ox of the North, and the grizzly bears of the
Rockies was not enough. For twenty years it had been the one
ambition of his life to take an outfit to British East Africa to
try his hand with the more ferocious big game of that country.
But in his Western experience Colonel Jones had learned something
else besides the mastery of man over beast. Precisely how an
American cowboy was going to hold a rhinoceros that weighed two
tons and a half was purely a matter of speculation. Yet of one
thing the Colonel was certain--the experiment would result in a
moving picture that would be well worth the taking. For this
reason, what afterward came to be known as the "picture
department" was added to the make-up of the expedition.
The preparations extended over a considerable length of time, and
were carried on in various places. Unquestionably, the most
important part of the outfit was the horses. It was absolutely
essential that they should be Western cow-ponies, fast, well
trained, and reliable in every way. The Colonel, who best of all
could foresee the nature of the work they would have to do,
selected them himself, ten in all, from the ranches of New
Mexico, and shipped them to New York. The American dogs to be
used for trailing were likewise chosen by the Colonel. Some of
them belonged to him personally, and had been thoroughly tried
out. The rest had reputations of their own. Of the two cowboys
who were to act as his assistants, Marshall Loveless had worked
with the Colonel before and knew his methods, and Ambrose Means
came highly recommended for skill and daring from one of the
largest ranch owners in the West.
When, at the last moment, the writer of these articles was
introduced to the expedition in the capacity of acting field
manager, the preparations were well under way. The horses and
dogs had been already shipped, en route to Africa, in charge of
the cowboys, and the date of our sailing for London had been
fixed for the following day.
The meeting was held at a luncheon in the Railroad Club, in New
York. There were present Colonel Jones, Mr. F. W. Bird, son of
Charles S. Bird[1] who financed the expedition, Mr. W. G. Sewall,
of the Boma Trading Company, of Nairobi, and myself. After
certain matters of business had been disposed of, the talk at the
luncheon table drifted to the probabilities and possibilities of
success; to lions, rhinos, elands, and cheetahs; to cowboys,
horses, and dogs. But the Colonel would hear of no possibilities,
or even probabilities, of failure. He was peculiarly insistent
upon this point. And when the hour of the business man's lunch
time came to an end, and the room began to empty, Mr. Sewall said
to me across the corner of the table:
"Of course, every one in Nairobi will think all of you either
fakers or crazy. I know you're no fakers. I don't know whether
you're crazy or not. But there is one thing in your favor: The
Colonel's unshaken belief that the thing can be done will
probably pull it through."
[1] EAST WALPOLE, MASS.,
July 8, 1910.
Mr. GUY H. SCULL.
MY DEAR SCULL
It has been asked by some what the object of the
Buffalo Jones African Expedition was. I will tell you.
You know my friend, Colonel C. J. Jones, broke his rifle a
generation or so ago and vowed he would never again kill game
save for food or in self-defense. Since taking that oath he has
subdued and captured all kinds of wild animals in North America,
including the musk-ox, buffalo, grizzly bear, and cougar.
I discovered that it was his dream to go to East Africa to prove
that with American cowboys, horses, and dogs he could lasso and
capture the savage animals of that country as readily as he has
the wild animals of our country. As a sporting proposition, it
seemed to me unique and fascinating, and so, as a small tribute
to Colonel Jones, I volunteered to finance the expedition.
I somewhat doubt whether there is another man in the world who
has the courage, skill, and determination to do what he has done
in the animal kingdom, and he well deserves to be called "The
Preserver of the American Bison."
I want to acknowledge our indebtedness to Mr. Arthur A. Fowler of
New York for his assistance in helping us outfit the expedition
in London and Nairobi, and to you and the others who have helped
to make the expedition a success.
Very truly,
CHARLES S. BIRD.
On our arrival in London about the middle of January of this
year, the work of preparation was continued at once. Outside of
the minor details of the outfit, such as personal equipment,
saddlery, medicines, bandages, and so forth, the first matter to
receive attention was the organization of the picture department.
Mr. Cherry Kearton was sought to take charge of this branch of
the expedition. Kearton--a powerfully built Yorkshireman--is an
experienced cinematograph photographer and a naturalist of no
small reputation. He had taken moving pictures in Africa before,
and so he knew the climatic conditions there--the heat radiation
and the different intensities of light. He also knew the animals
the Colonel was going to rope. But besides being a cinematograph
expert and a naturalist, he was also a sportsman.
When Kearton learned of the nature of the undertaking, he was
skeptical. He had no more than a slight acquaintance with the
Colonel then, and only a vague, hearsay knowledge of what the
American Cowboy could do. Evidently his mind was divided by the
dictates of common sense and the sporting instinct. On many
occasions during this time, he questioned the feasibility of the
experiment in the light of what he knew of the African beasts.
The agreement, in documentary form, was spread out on the table
in the Boma Trading Company's London office when he finally
wanted to know how in Heaven's name we thought this thing could
be done.
"We'll do it," the Colonel said quietly. That was all.
"Well, there's a picture in it, anyway," said Kearton, and signed
the papers.
With his assistant, David Gobbet, two cinematograph machines and
tripods, hand cameras and developing apparatus, he set sail
immediately for Africa, leaving an order for thirty thousand feet
of film to be divided between two manufacturers and to be
forwarded as soon as possible.
In the meantime, Colonel Jones was hard at work collecting a
rather unusual assortment of articles. The experience of a
life-time enabled him to foresee what kind of materials were
absolutely necessary, and what kind might prove useful on the
present expedition. Naturally, the articles required were not
usually in stock, but the London shopkeeper is proverbially
obliging and imperturbable.
One rainy morning the Colonel walked into a hardware store and
asked to see some handcuffs. A pair was shown him.
"Not large enough," said the Colonel.
"How large would you want them, sir?"
"Twice that size."
"May I ask for what purpose you require them, sir?"
"For lions," said the Colonel.
"Precisely, handcuffs for lions; yes, you need large ones. I am
afraid I have none in stock just now, but I can have them made
for you within a few days."
It was the same with almost everything the Colonel wanted to
purchase; everything had to be made especially for him after his
own description--handcuffs, collars and belts, chains, branding
irons, a block and fall, muzzles of different sizes, corkscrew
picket-pins for holding the turn of a rope, and a nondescript
article shaped like a huge pair of tongs, for which I feel sure
there is no name in any trade, but which looked to be a handy
implement for clamping the jaws of a beast. To have these things
made according to specifications took time and an endless amount
of running about. Besides, there was the more ordinary part of
the equipment to procure: English dogs, both foxhounds and
terriers, horse-blankets, extra ropes, horseshoes, and so on.
When the last of the expedition sailed from Southampton, there
were forty-eight pieces of baggage on the list.
This last contingent reached Nairobi at noon on March 3, and for
the first time then all the members of the expedition met
together. Loveless proved to be a man a little below the medium
height; he held himself very erect, walked with quick, energetic
steps, and wore a blond mustache. He made polite inquiries as to
our voyage out, commented on the hot weather, and fully explained
the condition of the horses and dogs. Means was taller. He
carried his head slightly forward and wore his black hair brushed
low down over his forehead. He stood slumped on one hip, so that
one shoulder also was lower than the other.
"Please' to meet you," he said.
On our arrival at Nairobi the first matter to be decided was the
district to be worked. The choice lay between the Sotik and the
Kapeti Plains. According to the usual batch of contradictory
stories in such cases, the game was said to be equally plentiful,
or equally scarce, in both districts. Both had been shot over
considerably of late, and, anyhow, no one could really tell us
where the most game was to be found; because, as one informant
explained, the game everywhere shifted so frequently and so fast.
But the Sotik and the country approaching it--the Kedong and Rift
Valleys, and the Mau--were reported to be more or less free from
ticks, and, as the health of the horses was of the gravest
importance to us, we determined to work this district first.
The Colonel and his two cowboys, Loveless and Means, were ready
to start at once. Eight out of the ten horses were in fine
condition. With but one exception, the dogs had come through
safely, though all were suffering somewhat from distemper. It was
concluded, however, that they would recover just as rapidly in
the open country as they would in Nairobi.
Kearton and Gobbet were ready. Kearton had built a dark room in
Nairobi, because his earlier experience had taught him that the
pictures could not be developed with any degree of satisfaction
in the field. His four special porters to carry the cameras and
tripods--porters he had trained on previous safaris--were only
waiting for the word to move. Mr. Ray Ulyate, the white hunter to
the expedition, had already gone to Kijabe to prepare his
ox-wagons against our coming, and the Boma Trading Company had
engaged a special train to leave Nairobi on the fifth.
On the morning of that day we held the customary procession of an
outgoing safari down the main street of Nairobi to the waiting
train. The Colonel rode first, with the assorted pack of dogs at
his horse's heels. Then came the cowboys with the led horses;
then the picture department; then the long single line of black
porters, bringing up the rear. Above the loads on the porters'
heads two flags flashed their colors in the sunlight--the stars
and stripes, and the house flag of the company, with the white
buffalo skull against the red background, and underneath the
motto, Sapiens qui Vigilat.
The night had already fallen black and cold when the special
train crested the top of the divide and coasted down grade into
Kijabe. The most imposing structure in the place is the railroad
station, with its red wooden building propped up on piles, its
tin guest-house alongside, and the neat gravel platform growing a
clump of trees. The rest of Kijabe is composed of four other
houses, the goods-shed, an open-faced Indian booth, the
post-office, and the water-tank. Ulvate met us with a lantern,
for the station lights are dim, and we detrained in the face of
the high wind that always blows there from sunset to dawn, and
picketed the horses among the trees of the station platform.
Because a large part of the revenue of the country is derived
from the visiting hunters, a safari is accorded privileges out of
the ordinary. So, as a matter of course, we took possession of
the station and camped in the tin guest-house for the night.
The morning came clear and hot and still. The railroad at Kijabe
runs along the face of the hills, so that the land drops down
abruptly to the plains below, and you can look away for miles
over the Kedong and Rift valleys, with the two sentinel extinct
volcanoes rising black against the heat-blurred sky;
The floors of the valleys are laid with volcanic ash. But on
first appearances the land looks much the same as the regulation
veldt or certain parts of our own Western plains. It is only by
the fineness of the dust that hangs about the horses' feet, and
the peculiar quality of the thirst that dries in the throat, that
you know this is no ordinary soil.
The sun was high in the heavens before we finally started from
Kijabe and descended the rough road to the level ground, with the
brakes on the ox-wagons squealing harshly and the horses treading
silently in the dust.
We had planned to camp at Sewell's farm that night. It was only
about four hours away, but a short trek the first day is always a
good rule to follow. It gives every one a chance, so to speak, to
shake down well into the saddle. We had gone but a short
distance, however, when one thing became strikingly apparent:
Gobbet did not know how to ride! He was mounted on a white
African pony that we had found it necessary to add to our string.
The pony was stolid, lazy, and easy-gaited, but Gobbet's
unfamiliar attitude toward his mount was unmistakable.
Now it is a delicate matter in any country to broach the question
of a man's horsemanship, but presently Gobbet introduced the
subject of his own accord.
"Of course I can't ride a horse," he said. "Have never been on
one before. When Mr. Kearton spoke to me about coming out here
with him, he just asked me if I could ride, and I told him surely
I could ride--but I didn't tell him I meant a bicycle."
After all, the matter was of no great importance. Gobbet was
young and thin and active, with sharp black eyes, and the work
that lay ahead of us would probably teach him to ride in short
order--and it did.
We had little expectation of finding either a lion or a rhino on
that first day's trip. We were traveling on a regular road,
making a kind of initial march. The fringe of scrub at the
beginning of the valley had been left behind some three or four
miles when Ulyate suddenly reined in his horse and pointed to
three black dots on the veldt about half a mile away.
The black dots proved to he only wart-hogs, but we wanted them,
and, so long as there was little chance of our finding any of the
more important species of game, we took the opportunity that
offered. The Colonel and the two cowboys tightened their cinches
and then rode out to the westward to round up the beasts.
"Drive 'em back to us," Kearton called after them, and Means
waved his hand by way of answer.
Behind us, the line of porters was coming up along the road. They
were straggling badly, broken up into little sections of threes
and fours, so that the last of them were not yet in sight. Gobbet
was sent back to hurry forward the four special porters with the
cameras, and when these finally arrived upon the scene, their
faces covered with dust and sweat, the horsemen had dwindled to
dots only a little larger than the hogs themselves.
Kearton placed the cameras a few yards apart, and there we
waited, watching the distant specks.
Two of the riders disappeared into a far patch of scrub. The
third began swinging to the southward. His horse was galloping
after something we could not see.
In the meantime the safari was coming up, and as each section
arrived it was halted, and the porters put down their loads and
sat on them. Some of them turned their backs upon the scene in
total indifference as to what was coming next; others regarded
the cameras with expressions of mild curiosity.
Little by little the third horseman had swung round so that he
was headed due east, riding straight at us. Rapidly the speck
grew larger, and the two other riders came out of the scrub and
joined the chase.
Nearer and nearer they came, with the dust cloud swirling behind
them. Gobbet began turning the handle of his camera, and the whir
of the machine sounded loud in the stillness. One or two of the
porters jumped to their feet and pointed. Kearton waited.
"I hope they won't come straight into the lens," he said. "If
they do, it won't make a good picture. They ought to come at an
angle. So," he explained, placing his hand obliquely to the line
of focus. Then he bent over, laid his eye to the gun-sight of the
machine, and likewise began turning.
The thunder of the chase could be heard now, and we could see
that it was Loveless leading, on his black, with Means and the
Colonel close behind and the wart-hog some forty yards ahead. The
beast was running strong. His huge snout was thrust forward, and
his upturned tusks gleamed in the sunlight. But gradually the
black horse gained on him, and Loveless loosened the rope from
his saddle and began swinging the long noose round and round his
head.
On came the wart-hog, straight for Kearton's camera.
Kearton straightened up above the machine and waved his helmet
frantically.
"Give over, give over!" he shouted.
"You're driving him right into the picture. It's no good. Give
over!"
The chase never swerved an inch, and Kearton bent to his work
again, cursing in well-selected periods.
The next moment the hog drove past him. At the same instant
Loveless threw his rope and caught the beast by one hind leg. The
black horse stopped, fore feet planted firmly, and the dust cloud
swept across and hid the scene.
When the dust cleared away, the hog was lying across the road,
blowing comfortably, with the rope leading from his hind leg to
the horn of Loveless' saddle. Loveless laughed.
"There's the first one for you," he said. "And my, can't he run!"
Gobbet, however, was indignant. "It's no use," he complained. "To
bring an object that way straight into the lens is against the
first principles of cinematography. It's no use, I tell you."
Means sat half slumped in his saddle, with his reeking horse
panting heavily.
"Well, well, well," he finally drawled. "And didn't Mr. Pig come
a-bending across that prairie? He most certainly come a-bending."
The porters gathered around and looked long at the beast; some of
them spoke a few words in low tones, and the others nodded their
heads and smiled.
Sometimes a wart-hog will act nasty, and his lower tusks are
sharp as razors; but when this one was released he walked out of
the circle of grinning natives, slowly, quietly, and apparently
thoroughly disgusted.
At Sewell's farm there is a pan of water made by a dam across an
almost waterless brook, and alongside of this pan we pitched our
camp. When the sun set, the high wind rose again, whirling up the
dust in heavy clouds and sending the sparks from the fire
scurrying over the ground. But the Kedong Valley wind is more or
less a phenomenon of the country. You can count upon it
absolutely for every one of its disagreeable qualities. I think
the citizens of Africa are a little proud of it.
There was now a fair chance that on our way into the Rift Valley
we should flush one or another of the larger animals.
Preparations for such a contingency were accordingly made before
starting from Sewell's farm. Canteens and iron drums were filled
with water, because the next camp would be a dry one. The
cinematograph, cameras, and all the extra boxes were loaded with
films the evening before, and the four special camera porters
were given strict orders to keep well up with the advance of the
safari. The lion-taming outfit--the tongs, muzzles, chains, and
collars--was stowed on the first wagon, on top of the load, where
it could be got at readily in case of need. The Colonel rode
ahead, with the two cowboys close behind, all three ropers
mounted on their best horses--the Colonel on "the paint,"
Loveless on his black, and Means on the big-boned bay. Every
member of the party was especially cautioned to keep a sharp
lookout on both sides of the road.
Just as the day before, the morning came hot and still, and for
hour after hour the straggling safari crawled slowly over the
long waves of the undulating veldt. The road was a wagon track
always vanishing in front toward the head of the valley. The land
lay silent beneath the glaring sunlight.
We outspanned at noon for an hour. Over the country here grew
small, scattered thorn trees, thick with thorns but with scarcely
any leaves, so that the shade beneath them was thin and could
shelter no more than one horse. The water in the canteens, cold
at the start, had become warm now.
When we mounted again, the sweat had dried on the horses, and the
boots felt stiff on our feet. The line of the road still
stretched away its interminable length until it disappeared in
the distance.
And then, as we crawled sleepily ahead over the rises, the
Colonel was the first to notice the lion spoor in the dust.
With sudden animation the safari awoke from the lethargy of the
hot, monotonous march. The spoor was judged to be at least four
hours old, so there was no use putting the dogs on it. Then
presently it disappeared. On the dead grass of the bordering
veldt there was nothing to show which way the lion had gone. But
there was a chance--a small one, yet still a chance--that the
beast was lying up near by in the shade of a thorn tree. So all
the horsemen spread out over the veldt to obtain a wider scope of
vision, and for mile after mile the company moved forward,
sweeping the immediate country.
Proceeding in this manner through the afternoon, we eventually
crested a slightly higher rise and looked down into a shallow
valley that was greener than the rest of the veldt. A few
full-sized trees were growing in the bottom, and there were a
number of outcroppings of rock. Large herds of antelope were
grazing there.
The Colonel called a halt.
"There is no lion anywhere hereabouts," he said, "because the
game are grazing peacefully. But there is a bunch of eland
yonder. We might as well round them up while the light lasts."
The plan of operation was quickly made. The cameras were
stationed about a mile to the southeast, partly concealed by the
bole of a tree, and the bunch of eland were skillfully rounded up
and a good specimen was singled out.
Everything was working to perfection. The three horsemen drove
the eland toward the cameras--not directly at them, but a little
to one side, at an angle, as Kearton wanted it done. At the
proper moment Loveless roped the animal by the forelegs and neck,
and threw it down. Loveless jumped from his horse and was running
forward to tie the prize when something--the smell of the strange
beast, perhaps--started the black horse bucking. With the rope
made fast to the saddle and the eland acting as a pivot, the
black went careering round and round. Both the Colonel and Means
tried to rope him, and missed, and finally Loveless, on foot,
caught him by the dangling reins.
Of course such a thing might have been readily foreseen, but
somehow it came as a surprise and opened up grave possibilities.
That night in camp at "Rugged Rocks" we were gathered about the
cook s fire for the warmth it gave, when the Colonel spoke of the
affair.
"Everything was going great till that horse started bucking," the
Colonel remarked. "We've got to teach our horses not to mind the
smell of these strange animals out here. We've got to be able to
depend absolutely on our horses. Of course that eland wasn't
dangerous. But when we tackle something else and a horse acts
that way, it might be bad."
But Gobbet said it was good action, anyway, and would look fine
when thrown on the screen.
March 8 was a day of disappointments. Between sunrise and sunset
we traveled fifteen miles to the Wangai River and hunted in turn
a pair of lions, a cheetah, and a rhinoceros--and lost them all.
Two circumstances were held accountable: one was the necessity of
getting the horses to water, and the other was the fact that it
was just a bad luck day all through.
We came upon the lions early in the morning, close to the base of
the southern volcano. This particular pair of lions must have
been shot over at one time or another, for they did not wait to
satisfy any curiosity as to our intentions, but fled at once for
the safety of the mountain. Although we gave chase immediately,
their lead was so great and the distance to the mountains so
short, that they were soon lost to us in the gullies and crevices
of the foothills.
It was while we were trying to pick up the lost trail of the
lions that we flushed a cheetah out of one of the dongas.[2] It
broke away along the foothills, and finally stopped at bay in a
district where the going was so bad for the horses that we had to
give up the attempt.
[2] Donga.--a gully.
With the rhinoceros we had scarcely any chance whatsoever. The
Colonel, who was scouting the country to the northward of the
line of march, caught a glimpse of the beast in the adjacent
valley. By the time he had come back to get us and we had ridden
in pursuit, the rhino had disappeared.
We found his trail leading still farther to the northward, and
dismounted and looked down at it in silence. No comments were
made. No comments were necessary. Every one knew that for lack of
water the horses were too done up to follow.
Means had dismounted a little to one side of the group, and for a
while he stood there with his arms resting on his saddle, gazing
back over the way we had come. Presently he remarked to the world
at large: Excitement has certainly been runnin' high all day. We
mounted then; and, instead of hunting the rhino farther, we rode
the jaded horses slowly into camp and put a proper finish to a
bad luck day by holding a consultation.
The Wangai River is no river at all; merely a small spring in the
shadow of the range that crosses the head of the valley. But the
spring could supply sufficient water for all our needs. Also, the
problem of transportation demanded that Ulyate should return to
Kijabe and bring up another wagon with supplies before the
journey over the Mau into the Sotik could be undertaken. Then,
too, here in the Rift Valley we had seen both lion and rhino, and
there was always the chance of finding them again. The
consultation resulted in the decision to make a permanent camp
here and hunt the neighboring country until Ulyate should return.
For the succeeding three days the Colonel laid out a plan of
campaign; simple, but effective, and limited only by the
necessity of keeping within reasonable distance of the water. The
plan consisted of a series of drives; one in a northeasterly, one
in an easterly, and one in a southeasterly direction. By this
means we would cover in turn all the territory at the head of the
valley.
The Colonel was anxious to try again for the rhino he had seen on
the march the day before, and for this reason the drive to the
northeast was inaugurated first. Every member of the expedition
took part in these drives. The Colonel and the writer at one end,
and the two cowboys at the other, occupied the extreme positions.
Between the right and left wings stretched a long line of
porters, under the command of two escaris, and with Kearton and
Gobbet in the center with the cameras. The dogs on leash and the
saises carrying water for the horses brought up the rear. When
finally formed, the line of the drive extended approximately five
miles, and the cameras and the dogs were so placed that they
could be brought to either end of the line with the utmost
despatch. Two shots fired in quick succession would be the signal
to gather.
That first day's drive brought little success. To begin with, we
were late in starting, so that the sun had already risen before
we moved out of camp; and besides, the porters were new at that
kind of work and had to be halted and reformed many times before
they understood what was wanted.
The land across which we were driving lay at the very edge of the
valley, and was consequently somewhat broken into small hills and
hollows. By the time we came to the old rhino trail, the day was
well advanced. But no fresh tracks were to be found up and down
the entire length of the hollow, nor was anything to be seen of
the beast from the next hill to the northward, which we climbed
to search the country ahead. There was only a large herd of
hartebeests grazing on the plains below.
The Colonel retreated halfway down the hill and fired two shots
from his revolver. Somewhere beyond our range of vision we heard
the two shots repeated, and at the end of a little more than half
an hour all the members of the drive were gathered on the
hillside below the crest.
Then the Colonel explained the reason for his signal. The rhino
was not there. We might still find him, and we might not. The
chances were now that we should not. He had probably left the
country for good and was already miles away. In the meanwhile a
good opportunity offered for rounding up the herd of hartebeests
in the plain below and driving them up the hillside to the
cameras.
On top of the hill was a small clearing, the edges of which were
fringed with scrub. While the Colonel and the cowboys maneuvered
to circle the herd, Kearton placed the cameras in the clearing,
with the northern line of scrub as a background for the intended
picture.
For a long time there was silence. Then suddenly the scrub sprang
into life, and the next instant the herd dashed into the clearing
in a cloud of dust that was pierced by a hundred startled eyes
and tossing horns. At the sight of the cameras the herd broke and
scattered in every direction; but the horsemen, pressing them
close, roped one in the open, and held him to have his picture
taken, and then let him go.
On the second drive, over the lowlands to the east, the porters
worked better; but, although we covered a far greater territory,
the total result was the roping and photographing of a serval-cat
that we flushed on the way back to camp.
The third drive carried us well out toward the southern volcano
where we had seen the lions on the march from Rugged Rocks, but
this time there was no trace of them anywhere in the land. Means,
however, found a cheetah, and the two faint reports of his signal
brought us together on the run.
We came upon Means seated on his horse in a bit of the veldt that
was covered all over with tufts of rank grass, so that it looked
like a swamp that had been dry for ages. Near by ran a small,
shallow donga.
When the rest of us rode up to him, he merely pointed at one of
the tufts of grass behind which the cheetah lay crouched.
There followed a brief delay, while a plan of maneuver was made
and expounded, while the tripods were set up, the cameras screwed
on, and the ropers moved out to their appointed places.
Then all at once the cheetah started, and, instead of breaking
away, as we had calculated he would, he doubled on his tracks and
made for the shelter of the donga. It was a quick, sharp
race--and the cheetah won. He hid in the scrub at the bottom of
the ditch. The native porters collected there and complacently
regarded the scene, and the members of the drive ranged
themselves on either bank and offered innumerable suggestions as
to what had better be done next.
But in the midst of it all the Colonel put an emphatic end to the
discussion. He rode into the donga with his rope swinging free,
and when the cheetah failed to spring at him, he dropped the
noose over the animal's head and dragged him out on to the open
veldt, where his picture could be properly taken.
The black porters looking on commenced speaking in low tones in
their native tongue, and nodded and grinned at each other as they
had done before. But this time Mac was among them. Mac was
Kearton's tent-boy. He originally came from Somaliland and spoke
English. He was called upon to explain what the porters said.
"Please," he began. "They are very bad men, these people, but
don't be sorry. They say--they say that, of course, the white
gentlemen are able to do what they want to do, but just the same
they are all crazy."
That night we held our second consultation. Ulyate had returned
from Kijabe with the extra wagonload of supplies, which placed us
in a position to move again immediately. The question now arose
as to whether it would be best to remain where we were a few days
longer to gain more experience, or to trek at once over the Mau,
with a chance at giraffe on the way, and so on into the Sotik
country, with its alluring promises of both rhino and lion.
By this time we had hunted the Rift Valley thoroughly. During the
seven days since we had left Kijabe, the expedition had roped and
photographed a cheetah, a serval-cat, a hartebeest, an eland, and
a wart-hog. Although we had been given no opportunity yet to find
out how we were going to hold a rhino or what we would do when
the lion charged, still, in addition to our success with the
lesser animals, we had acquired something else of value. All the
members of the expedition had learned to work well together--in
all the usual emergencies each man knew what was expected of him
and could likewise make a ready guess as to what the others
intended doing. Thus, in spite of the fact that on an expedition
of this kind it is the unexpected that always happens, our
experience only added to our confidence that when we eventually
encountered one of the larger beasts we should get him.
The consultation ended with the unanimous decision to start for
the Sotik at dawn.
In the October number Mr. Scull will relate the; adventures of
the Buffalo Jones African Expedition in Lassoing Giraffe and
Rhinoceros.
*****************************************************************
VOL. XXIII September 1910 NO. 3
THE WOMEN OF TO-MORROW {page 368-379 part 2.}
By WILLIAM HARD
II
THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT SUBJECT.
Dear General Reader, please let that sentence stand for the
thousand words (much like those of a competent barker at the door
of a show-tent) which you usually oblige an author to expend on
enticing you into reading his article. Think how much time you
save by walking straight into the tent and observing that--
THE First International Congress on Domestic Science and Arts was
held in 1908 at Freiburg in Switzerland. It as no improvised
amateur uplift, private-theatricals affair.
The head of the organizing committee was M. Python, president of
Freiburg's State Council. Seventy-two papers on technical topics
were printed and circulated beforehand. The participating members
numbered seven hundred. The discussions developed the
characteristic points of the three rival breeds of household-arts
instruction--the German, the Swiss, and the Belgian. Visits were
made to the normal schools of Freiburg, Berne, and Zurich, in
each of which there is an elaborate system for the training of
household-arts teachers. In the end, in order that facts and
ideas about the education of girls for their duties as
house-keepers might be more rapidly circulated, it was voted to
establish, at some place in Switzerland, a Permanent
International Information Committee.
Thus, in an age in which the productive tasks of the home have
almost all been surrendered to the factory; in an age in which
even cooking and sewing, last puny provinces of a once ample
empire, are forever making concessions of territory to those
barbarian invaders, the manufacturers of ready-to-eat foods and
ready-to-wear clothes; in an age in which home industry lies
fainting and gasping, while Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman begs
the spectators to say "thumbs-down" and let her put it out of its
agony altogether--in such an age there comes, at Freiburg, in
this First International Congress on Domestic Science and Arts,
the most serious, the most notable, recognition. ever given in
any age to the home's economic value.
A real paradox? Well, at any rate, it gives wings to the
fluttering thought that theories of industrial evolution, one's
own as well as Mrs. Gilman's, are a bit like automobiles--not
always all that they are cranked up to be.
Certainly the revival of the home seems to attract larger crowds
to the mourners' bench every year.
At the University of Missouri the first crop of graduates in Home
Economics was gathered this last spring. They were seven. And as
most of them took likewise a degree in Education, it may be
assumed that they will go forth to spread the gospel.
Their preceptress, Miss Edna D. Day, who next year will head the
just-organized Department of Home Economics in the University of
Kansas, is a novel type of new woman in that she has earned the
degree of Doctor of Philosophy in "Woman's Sphere." She took
graduate work in the Department of Home Administration in the
University of Chicago and achieved her doctorate with an
investigation into "The Effect of Cooling on the Digestibility of
Starch." What she found out was subsequently printed as a
bulletin by the United States Department of Agriculture.
In the midst of the festivities at the wake held over The Home,
it perplexes the mourners to learn that some of those domestic
science bulletins of the United States Department of Agriculture
excite a demand for a million copies.
It is a wake like Mike McCarthy's.
Mike was lookin' iligant
As he rested there in state.
But
When the fun was at its height
McCarthy sat up straight.
The ballad (one of the most temperately worded of literary
successes) goes on to say that "the effect was great." So it has
been in this case--great enough to be felt all the way around the
world.
It is being felt in the Island Empire of the East. Miss Ume
Tsuda's Institute at Tokyo (which stands so high that its
graduates are allowed to teach in secondary schools without
further government examination) has installed courses in English
domestic science as well as in the domestic science of Japan.
It is being felt in the Island Empire of the West. King's
College, of the University of London, has organized a three-year
course leading to the degree of Mistress of Home Science, and has
also established a "Post-Graduates' Course in Home Science," in
which out of fourteen students (in this its first year of
existence) four are graduates of the courses of academic study of
Oxford or Cambridge.
It is being felt in the United States at every educational level.
It has familiarized us with household arts in the public schools,
and we are not astonished to learn that in the public schools of
Boston in every grade above the third, there is sewing or
cooking, or both, for 120 minutes every week for every girl.
It has accustomed us to such news as that in Illinois there are
fifty-eight public high schools in which instruction is offered
in one or more of the three following subjects: Food, Clothing,
or The Home.
It has brought us to the point of expecting domestic science in
all schools of agriculture and of regarding it as natural for the
legislature of Montana to appropriate $50,000 to the State
Agricultural College for a woman's dormitory.
It has cushioned the shock of the tidings from the University of
California to the effect that entrance credit will this fall be
given for high school domestic science work.
We are reduced to equanimity in the face of the fact (which might
have frenzied Alexander Hamilton) that Columbia University,
through its Teachers College, is offering courses in Elementary
Cookery, in Shirt-waists, in Domestic Laundering, and in
Housewifery.
And at last, when we see the resuscitated home making its way
even into the really-truly, more-than-masculinely, academic
Eastern women's colleges, we rush up to the Mike McCarthy of this
case and assure him warmly that we were not deceived for a moment
by his apparent demise, having just learned that President Hazard
of Wellesley College, in her latest commencement address, said:
"I hope the time may soon come when we can have a department of
domestic science, which shall give a sound basis for the problems
of the household "
What does it all mean?
"Fellow-Citizens," said the colored orator reported by Dr. Paul
Monroe of Columbia, "what am education? Education am the
palladium of our liberties and the grand pandemonium of
civilization."
But it does mean something, this Home Economics disturbance. AND
SOMETHING VERY DIFFERENT FROM WHAT IT SEEMS TO.
II
Mr. Edward T. Devine. of the New York Charity Organization
Society, has distinguished himself in the field of economic
thought as well as in the field of active social reform. Among
his works is a minute but momentous treatise on "The Economic
Function of Women." It is really a plea for the proposition that
to-day the art of consuming wealth is just as important a study
as the art of producing it.
"If acquisition," says Mr. Devine, "has been the idea which in
the past history of economics has been unduly emphasized,
expenditure is the idea which the future history of the science
will place beside it."
We have used our brains while getting hold of money. We are going
to use our brains while getting rid of it. We have studied
banking, engineering, shop practice, cost systems, salesmanship.
We are going to study food values, the hygiene of clothing, the
sanitary construction and operation of living quarters, the
mental reaction of amusements, the distribution of income, the
art of making choices, according to our means, from among the
millions of things, harmful and helpful, ugly and beautiful,
offered to us by the producing world.
Mr. Devine ventures to hope that "we may look for a radical
improvement in general economic conditions from a wiser use of
the wealth which we have chosen to produce."
This enlarged view of the economic importance of Consumption
brings with it a correspondingly enlarged view of the economic
importance of the Home. "If the Factory," says Mr. Devine, "has
been the center of the economics which has had to do with
production, the Home will displace the Factory as the center of
interest in a system which gives due prominence to Enjoyment and
Use."
"There will result," continues Mr. Devine, "an increased respect
on the part of economists for the industrial function which woman
performs," for "there is no economic function higher than that of
determining how wealth shall be used," so that "even if man
remain the chief producer of wealth and woman remain the chief
factor in determining how wealth shall be used, the economic
position of woman will not be considered by those who judge with
discrimination to be inferior to that of man."
Mr. Devine then lays out for the economist a task in the
discharge of which the innocent bystander will sincerely wish him
a pleasant trip and a safe return.
"It is the present duty of the economist," says Mr. Devine, "to
accompany the wealth expender to the very threshold of the home,
that he may point out, with untiring vigilance, its emptiness,
caused not so much by lack of income as by lack of knowledge of
how to spend wisely."
Mr. Deville's proposition therefore would seem finally to
sanction some such conclusion as this:
Physical science and social science (and common sense) are making
such important contributions to the subject of the rearing of
children and to the subject of the maintenance of wholesome and
beautiful living conditions and to the subject of the use of
leisure that, while the home woman has lost almost all of the
productive industries which she once controlled, she has
simultaneously gained a whole new field of labor. Consumption has
ceased to be merely PASSIVE and has become ACTIVE. It has ceased
to be mere ABSORPTION and has become CHOICE. And the active
choosing of the products of the world (both spiritual and
material) in connection with her children, her house, and her
spare time has developed for the home woman into a task so broad,
into an art so difficult, as to require serious study.
We have quoted at length from Mr. Devine's discourse because it
is recognized as the classic statement of the case and because it
is warmly commended by such women as Mrs. Ellen H. Richards, of
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, whose skill as
scientist and vision as philosopher have made her the most
authoritative personality in the American Home Economics
Association. (That association, by the way, has some fifteen
hundred due-paying members.)
The scales fall from our eyes now and we see at least one thing
which we had not seen before. We had supposed that sewing and
cooking were the vitals of the Home Economics movement. Not at
all! The home woman might cease altogether to sew and to cook
(just as she has ceased altogether to spin, weave, brew, etc.)
without depriving the Home Economics movement of any considerable
part of its driving power. Sewing and cooking are productive
processes. They add economic value to certain commodities;
namely, cloth and food. But it is not Production, it is
Consumption, which the Home Economics movement is at heart
devoted to.
This is plainly set forth by some of its most zealous workers.
Thus Edna D. Day, at the Lake Placid Conference on Home Economics
in 1908, was more or less sorry that "domestic science has come
to be so largely sewing and cooking in our schools," was quite
willing to look at the white of the eye of the fact that "more
and more we are buying ready-made clothes and ready-cooked
foods," and marked out the policy of her "Survey Course in Home
Economics" at the University of Missouri in the statement that
"sewing and cooking are decreasingly home problems, while the
problems of wise buying, of adjusting standards of living to
income, and of developing right feelings in regard to family
responsibilities are increasingly difficult."
To choose and use the world's resources intelligently on behalf
of family and community--in this Mr. Devine sees a new field of
action, in this Mrs. Richards sees a new field of education.
Women will train themselves for their duties as consumers or else
continue to lie under the sentence of condemnation pronounced
upon them by Florence Nightingale. "Three-fourths of the mischief
in women's lives," said she, "arises from their excepting
themselves from the rule of training considered necessary for
men."
But what, in this case, is the training proposed?
The answer to that question will cause some more scales to fall
from our eyes. Just as we have seen that Home Economics does not
consist essentially of sewing and cooking, we shall see that
Consumption is not at all a specialized technique in the sense in
which electrical engineering, department store buying,
railroading, cotton manufacturing, medicine, and the other
occupations of the outside world are specialized technigues. Home
Economics will not narrow women's education but in the end will
enlarge it, because Consumption, instead of being a specialty, is
a generality so broad as almost to glitter.
III
AT Menomonie, Wisconsin, Mr. L. D. Harvey, lately president of
the National Education Association, has established a Homemakers'
School. It does not turn out teachers. Its course of instruction
is solely for the prospective housewife.
The first grand division of study is The House.
We here observe that the housewife is going to be something of a
Sanitary Engineer, since she studies Chemistry, Physics, and
Bacteriology in their "application to such subjects as the
heating, lighting, ventilation, and plumbing of a house." It is
thought that knowledge of this sort "will go a long way toward
improving the health conditions of the country."
We also observe that the housewife is going to be something of an
Interior Decorator, since she studies "design, color, house
planning and furnishing."
She also acquires some skill as Purchasing Agent, Bookkeeper, and
Employer of Labor when she takes the course on Household
Management and studies "the proper apportioning of income among
the different lines of home expenditures, the systematizing and
keeping of household accounts, and the question of domestic
service."
The second grand division is Food Study and Preparation.
Here the housewife becomes, to some extent, a Dietitian, studying
"the chemical processes in the preparation and digestion of
foods," and considering the question "how she shall secure for
the family the foods best suited to the various activities of
each individual."
Here, likewise, she makes a start toward being a Pure Food
Expert, through a study of "physical and chemical changes induced
in food products by the growth of molds, yeasts, and bacteria,"
and a start toward being a Health Officer, through a study of
"bacteria in their relation to disease, sources of infection,
personal and household disinfection."
Nor does she omit to acquire some of the technique of the
Physical Director through a course in Physiology bearing on
"digestion, storage of energy, rest, sleep, exercise, and
regularity of habits."
Of course, in her work in cookery, she pays some attention to
special cookery for invalids.
The third grand division, that of Clothing and Household Fabrics,
produces a Dressmaker, a Milliner, and an Embroiderer, as well as
a person trained to see to it that "the expenditure for clothing
shall be correct in proportion to the expenditure for other
purposes."
The fourth grand division, the Care of Children, is of course
limitless. The rearing of the human young is, as we all know and
as Mr. Eliot of Harvard has insisted, the most intellectual
occupation in the world. Here the homemaker applies all the
knowledge she has gained from her study of the hygiene of foods
and of the hygiene of clothes, and also makes some progress
toward becoming a Trained Nurse and a Kindergartner by means of
researches into "infant diseases and emergencies," "the stages of
the mental development of the child," "the child's imagination
with regard to truth-telling and deceit," "the history of
children's books," and "the art of story-telling."
Passing over the fifth grand division, Home Nursing and
Emergencies (in which the pupil learns simply "the use of
household remedies," "the care of the sick-room," etc.), we come
to the wide expanse of the sixth grand division, Home and Social
Economics.
The work in this division begins with a study of the primitive
evolution of the home and comes on down to the present time, when
"the passing of many of the former lines of woman's work into the
factory has brought to many women leisure time which should be
spent in social service."
Note that last fact carefully. Home Economics is no attempt to
drive women back into home seclusion. On the contrary, it is an
attempt to bring the home and its occupants into the scientific
and sociological developments of the outside world.
For this reason, in traversing the division of Home and Social
Economics, the pupil encounters "an attempt to determine problems
in civic life which seem to be a part of the duties of women."
Seventhly and lastly, there is a division dedicated to
Literature, in which "a systematic course in reading is carried
on through the two years." Indispensable! No degree of
proficiency at inserting calories in correct numbers in to Little
Sally's stomach could atone for lack of skill at leading Little
Sally herself in morning strolls through the "Child's Garden of
Verses," with trowel in hand to dig up the gayest plants and
reset them in the memory.
Which brings us back to the observation that the Consumption of
Wealth is a generality.
The homemaker may happen to be a specialist in some one
direction, but it is clear that she cannot simultaneously know as
much about food values as the real dietitian, as much about the
physical care of her child as the real trained nurse, as much
about the wholesomeness of her living arrangements as the real
sanitarian, as much about music as the Thomas Orchestra, as much
about social service as Mr. Devine, and as much about poems as
Mr. Stevenson. Her peculiar equipment, if she is a good
homemaker, is a round of experience and a bent of mind which make
it possible for her to cooperate intelligently with the
dietitian, the trained nurse, the sanitarian, the Thomas
Orchestra, Mr. Devine, Mr. Stevenson, and the various other
representatives of the various other specialized techniques of
the outside world.
It follows that her school discipline cannot be too
comprehensive. No other occupation demands such breadth of sense
and sensibility. One could make a perfectly good cotton
manufacturer on the basis of a very narrow training. One cannot
make a good consumer without a really LIBERAL EDUCATION.
For this reason it becomes necessary to resist certain
narrownesses in certain phases of Home Economics.
One of these narrownesses is the assumption that because a thing
happens to be close to us it is therefore important. We have
heard lecturers insist that because a house contains drain-pipes
a woman should learn all about drain-pipes. But why? In most
communities drain-pipes are installed and repaired and in every
way controlled by gentlemen who are drain-pipe specialists. The
woman who lives in the house has no more real need of a knowledge
of the structural mysteries of drain-pipes than a reporter has of
a knowledge of the structural mysteries of his typewriting
machine. The office mechanic fixes all that for him, and, so far
as his efficiency as a reporter is concerned, an investigation of
his faithful keyboard's internal arrangements would be in most
cases an amiable waste of time.
Another possible narrowness is the attempt to manufacture
"cultural backgrounds" for various important but quite
safe-and-sane household tasks.
For instance, in the books and in the courses of instruction (of
college grade) on "The House" we have sometimes observed
elaborate accounts of the evolution of the human home, beginning
with the huts of the primitive Simianians. And in pursuing the
very essential subject of "Clothes and Fabrics" we have not
infrequently found ourselves in the midst of spacious preliminary
dissertations on the structure of the loom, beginning with that
which was used by the Anthropenguins.
Now we would not for the world speak disparagingly of looms or
huts. We have ourselves examined some of them in the Hull House
Museum in Chicago and in the woods of Canada, and have found them
instructive. We suggest only that college life is short, that the
college curriculum is crowded, and that (except possibly for
those students who are especially interested in anthropology or
in industrial evolution) it would surely be a misfortune to learn
the Simianian hut and to miss Rossetti's "House of Life," or to
get the impression that as a "cultural background" for
shirtwaists the Anthropengruinian loom can really compete with
Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus."
If this occasional tendency toward exaggerating the importance of
drain-pipes, window-curtains, and door-mats were to grow strong,
and if girls, as a class, should be required to spend any large
proportion of their time on the specialized history and sociology
of feminine implements and tasks while the boys were still in the
current of the affairs of the race, we should indeed want
President Thomas of Bryn Mawr to repeat on a thousand lecture
platforms her indignant assertion of the fact that "nothing more
disastrous for women, or for men, can be conceived of than
specialized education of women as a sex."
These parenthetical observations, however, amount simply to the
expression of our personal opinion that Home Economics, like
every new idea, carries with it large quantities of dross which
will have to be refined out in the smelter of trial. The real
metal in it is its attempt to establish the principle that
intelligent Consumption is an important and difficult task. For
that reason it will not only desire but demand the utmost
equality of educational opportunity. And women, like men, will
continue to get their "cultural backgrounds" in the great
achievements of the whole race, where they can hold converse with
Lincoln and Darwin and the makers of the Cologne Cathedral and
George Meredith and Pasteur and Karl Marx and Whistler and Joan
of Arc and St. John.
The woman voiced a great truth who said that the soul which can
irradiate the numberless pettinesses of home management (and it
is folly to deny that there ARE numberless pettinesses in it) is
the soul "nourished elsewhere." Think it over. It tells the
story. Whether that "elsewhere" is the deep recesses of her own
religious nature or the wide stretches of the great arts and
sciences, it is always an "elsewhere."
Let that be granted, as it must be granted. Let us say that there
shall be no abridgment of the offerings of so-called academic
education. What does a course of study like that of Mr. Harvey's
Homemakers' School attempt to add to academic education?
Principally three things.
First: Certain manual arts.
Second: Certain domestic applications of the physical and
sociological sciences.
Third: Money Sense in Expenditure (in the course on Household
Management).
The last of these three things is appearing in many places. At
the University of Illinois, for instance, Professor Kinley, now
delegate from the United States to the Pan-American Congress, has
given courses in Home Administration for women which he has
regarded as of equal importance with his courses in Business
Administration for men.
At the University of Chicago, in the Department of Household
Administration, Course 44 is on "The Administration of the House"
and includes "the proper apportionment of income."
The business man says: "My sales cost, or my manufacturing cost,
or my office-force cost, is such and such a per cent. of my total
cost. When it goes above that, I want to know why; and I find
out; and, if there isn't a mighty good reason for its going up, I
make it go down again to where it was." Shall we come to the day
when in spending the money which has been earned in business we
shall say: "Such and such a per cent. to food; and such and such
a per cent. to clothes; and such and such a per cent. to shelter;
and such and such a per cent. to health and recreation; and such
and such a per cent. to good works; and such and such other per
cents. to various other purposes?" Shall we come to the day when
we shall consume wealth with as much forethought and with as much
balance of judgment between conflicting claims as we now exhibit
in acquiring wealth?
They are trying to develop this "Costs System for Home
Expenditures" in many of the schools and departments of Home
Economics to-day. They believe that most people, because of not
looking ahead and because of not making definite plans based on
previous experience, come to the contemplation of their bills on
the first of each month with every reason to confess that they
have bought those things which they ought not to have bought and
have left unbought those things which they ought to have bought.
But it is not only a matter of reaching a systematic instead of a
helter-skelter enjoyment of the offerings of the world. It is
also a matter of reaching, by study of money values, a mental
habit of economy. And it comes at a time when that habit is
needed.
We are just beginning to realize in the United States that we
cannot spend all our annual earnings on living expenses and still
have a surplus for fresh capital for new industrial enterprises.
We are on the point of perceiving that we are cramping and
stunting the future industrial expansion of the country by our
personal extravagance. We shall soon really believe Mr. James J.
Hill when he says that "every dollar unprofitably spent is a
crime against posterity."
When international industrial competition reaches its climax,
that nation will have an advantage whose people feel most keenly
that the wise expenditure of income is a patriotic as well as a
personal duty.
But is this a matter for women alone? Do not men also consume?
Are there no vats in Milwaukee, no stills in Kentucky, no
factories wrapping paper-rings around bunches of dead leaves at
Tampa? Are there no men's tailors, gents' furnishing shops,
luncheons, clubs, banquets, athletics, celebrations? And as for
home expenditures themselves, is the man simply to bring the
plunder to the door, get patted on the head, and trot off in
search of more plunder? We must doubt if economy will be reached
by such a route. We find ourselves agreeing rather with the Home
Economics lecturer who said: "There never yet was a family income
really wisely expended without cooperation in all matters between
husband and wife."
The Massachusetts legislature has passed a law looking toward the
teaching of Thrift in the public schools. Boys and girls need it
equally. And we venture to surmise that in so far as the new art
and science of Consumption is concerned with wise spending, the
bulk of its teachings ultimately will be enjoyed by both sexes.
It will not be, to any great extent, a specialized education for
women.
So much for the "Money Sense in Expenditure" which a full Home
Economics course adds to "academic" education. The more we admit
its value, the more convinced we must be that it ought to include
every kind of expenditure and both kinds of human being.
A precisely similar conviction arises with regard to those
"domestic applications of the physical and sociological sciences"
which a full Home Economics course adds to an "academic"
education.
Those "domestic" applications are most of them broadly "human"
applications. They bear on daily living, exercise, fresh air,
personal cleanliness, diet, sleep, the avoidance of contagion,
methods of fighting off disease, general physical efficiency.
They all amount to what Mrs. Ellen H. Richards calls Right
Living. She would have four R's instead of three: Reading,
Riting, Rithmetic, and Right Living.
Now is Right Living to be only for girls?
Mr. Eliot of Harvard does not think so. In a recent "Survey of
the Needs of Education," he said:
"Public instruction in preventive medicine must be provided for
all children and the hygienic method of living must be taught in
all schools. . . . To make this new knowledge and skill a
universal subject of instruction in our schools, colleges, and
universities is by no means impossible--indeed, it would not even
be difficult, for it is a subject full of natural history as well
as social interest. . . . American schools of every sort ought to
provide systematic instruction on public and private hygiene,
diet, sex hygiene, and the prevention of disease and premature
death, not only because these subjects profoundly affect human
affections and public happiness, but because they are of high
economic importance."
A large part of Home Economics is simply Living Conditions. It is
simply the lessons of Bacteriology, Chemistry, Physiology, and
Sociology about the common facts of daily physical and social
existence.
It may very well be, therefore, that what Mr. Eliot had in mind
will not only come to pass but will even exceed his expectations.
It may very well be that the educational policy of the future was
correctly search-lighted by Miss Henrietta I. Goodrich (who used
to direct the Boston School of Housekeeping before it was merged
into Simmons College) when she said:
"We need to have courage to break the present courses in
household arts and domestic science into their component parts
and begin again on the much broader basis of a study of living
conditions. Our plea would be this: that instruction in the facts
of daily living be incorporated in the state's educational system
from the primary grades through the graduate departments of the
universities, with a rank equal to that of any subject that is
taught, AS REQUIRED WORK FOR BOTH BOYS AND GIRLS."
We revert now finally to the "manual arts" which a full course in
Home Economics adds to an "academic" education. In this matter,
just as in the matter of Money Sense in Expenditure and in the
matter of Right Living, we observe that the ultimate issue of the
movement is not so much a specialized education for women as a
practical efficiency in the common things of life for men and
women both.
A reasonable proficiency in manual arts will some day be the
heritage of all educated people. Mr. Eliot, in his "Survey of the
Needs of Education," speaks appreciatingly of his father's having
caused him to learn carpentry and wood-turning. He goes on to
say:
"This I hold to be the great need of education in the United
States--the devoting of a much larger proportion of the total
school time to the training of the eye, ear, and hand."
It follows, then, that cooking and sewing for girls in the
elementary schools must be made just as rigorous a discipline for
eye and hand as wood-working is for boys. It even follows that
boys and girls will often get their manual training together.
It will not be a case of "household drudgery" for the girls while
the boys are studying civics.
Somewhere in this article (and as close to this paragraph as we
can get the Art Director to put it) the reader will find a
picture of the "living room" of the "model" house of the
Washington-Allston Elementary School in Boston. The boys and
girls of graduating grade in that school give four hours a week
to matters connected with the welfare of that house. They have
furnished it throughout with their own handiwork, the girls
making pillow-cases, wall-coverings, window-curtains, etc., and
the boys making chairs, tables, cupboards, etc. Succeeding
classes will furnish it again. THE REASON WHY MR. CRAWFORD, THE
MASTER OF THE SCHOOL, CHOSE TO HAVE A HOUSE FOR A MANUAL TRAINING
LABORATORY WAS SIMPLY THAT A HOUSE OFFERS AMPLER OPPORTUNITIES
THAN ANY OTHER KIND OF PLACE FOR INSTRUCTION IN THE PRACTICAL
EFFICIENCIES OF DAILY LIVING FOR BOTH SEXES.
The system will be complete when the girls get a bigger training
in design by making more of the chairs, and when the boys get a
bigger training in diet by doing more of the cooking.
IV
LAST month's article ended with the inquiry whether the new
education for homemaking would clash seriously with the modern
young woman's necessary education for money-earning. We conclude
that it will not.
Such developments as the long, specialized, four-year course in
Household Economics at Simmons College in Boston are not here in
point. That Simmons course is more than an education for
home-making. It is an education for earning money by teaching
home-making or by becoming (among other things) a dietitian in a
hospital, or a manager of a lunch-room, or an interior decorator.
Our subject is not Home Economics as a money-earning occupation
for a few women, but Home Economics as part of the education of
all women.
In that aspect it does not seem likely to result in any "special
feminine education" of such bulk as to withdraw women, in any
serious degree, from the general education of the race. This is
undeniably true, provided our observations have been correct
that----
1. Home Economics is at heart Consumption, and must be so because
the home woman is more and more purely a consumer.
2. Consumption is the broadest of generalities, requiring the
broadest of liberal educations.
3. So far as manual arts are concerned, the "non-academic"
cookery of the girl is balanced by the "non-academic" carpentry
of the boy.
4. Right Living and Wise Spending will, to a great extent, get
diffused throughout the whole educational system for boys and
girls, men and women, alike.
If there remains (and there does remain) certain further
specialization which the average girl needs in order to be a good
wife, mother, and home-maker, she will get it in "finishing
courses" furnished at the various levels of the educational
system, when she leaves school, or else (better still) she will
get it in "continuation schools" for adults to which she may
resort when she is actually going to be a wife, mother, or
home-maker.
Why learn really technical specialized things years and years
before they are needed? Why learn them at a time when it is not
certain that they will be needed at all?
The modern postponement of marriage is here a controlling
element.
The fact that in Boston, among women from thirty to thirty-four
years of age, 297 out of every 1,000 (more than a quarter) are
still unmarried is usually put down to a scarcity of men. That
scarcity is exaggerated.
Observe the comparative numbers of unmarried women and of
unmarried men in that age-period in Boston:
Unmarried Women 8,081
Unmarried Men 10,651.
Observe further:
The total number of men of all conjugal conditions in the
age-period in question is 28,603.
A little work with pencil and paper will now still further weaken
the scarcity theory by revealing the fact that in Boston, among
men from thirty to thirty-four years of age, 372 out of every
1,000 are still single.
Social conditions in rural communities tend to approach those of
urban communities. Social conditions in the West tend to approach
those in the East. Boston is not eccentric. It is only ahead.
"Continuation School" instruction in Home Economics for engaged
and married women is a form of education beginning to appear in
every part of the world.
But it lies beyond the woman's period of money-earning. How long
is that period? And what are the social and racial consequences
of the fact that (speaking generally) the more highly prepared
modern men and women are to transmit intelligence to posterity,
the more steadily do they tend to give their most vigorous years
to singleness?
----I'LL NIVER GO HOME AGAIN!
By ARTHUR STRINGER
I'll niver go home again,
Home to the ould sad hills,
Home through the ould soft rain,
Where the curlew calls and thrills!
For I thought to find the ould wee house,
Wid the moss along the wall!
And I thought to hear the crackle-grouse,
And the brae-birds call!
And I sez, I'll find the glad wee burn,
And the bracken in the glen,
And the fairy-thorn beyont the turn,
And the same ould men!
But the ways I'd loved and walked, avick,
Were no more home to me,
Wid their sthreets and turns av starin' brick,
And no ould face to see!
And the ould glad ways I'd helt in mind,
Loike the home av Moira Bawn,
And the ould green turns I'd dreamt to find,
They all were lost and gone!
And the bairns that romped by Tullagh Burn
Whin they saw me sthopped their play--
Through a mist av tears I tried to turn
And ghost-like creep away!
And I'll niver go home again!
Home to the ould lost years,
Home where the soft warm rain
Drifts loike the drip av tears!
*****************************************************************
Vol. XXIII October 1910 No. 4
THE WOMEN OF TO-MORROW {page 486-496 part 3.}
By
WILLIAM HARD
III LOVE DEFERRED
Mary felt she would wait for John even if, instead of going away
on a career, he were going away on a comet.
She waited for him from the time she was twenty-two to the time
she was twenty-six, and would have waited longer if she hadn't
got angry and insisted on marrying him.
Into why she waited, and why she wouldn't wait any longer, chance
put most of the simple plot of the commonplace modern drama,
"Love Deferred." It is so commonplace that it is doubtful if any
other drama can so stretch the nerves or can so draw from them a
thin, high note of fine pain.
We will pretend that John was a doctor. No, that's too
professional. He was a civil engineer. That's professional enough
and more commercial. It combines Technique and Business, which
are the two big elements in the life of Modern Man.
When they got engaged, Mary was through college, but John had one
more year to go in engineering school.
How the preparation for life does lengthen itself out!
When Judge Story was professor at Harvard in the thirties of the
last century, he put the law into his pupils' heads in eighteen
months. The present professors require three years.
In 1870 the Harvard Medical School made you attend classes for
four months in each of three years. It now makes you do it for
nine months in each of four years.
As for engineering, the University of Wisconsin gave John a chill
by informing him in its catalogue that "it is coming to be
generally recognized that a four-year technical course following
the high-school course is not an adequate preparation for those
who are to fill important positions; and the University would
urge all those who can afford the time to extend their studies
over a period of five or six years."
John compromised on five. This gave him a few Business courses in
the College of Commerce in addition to his regular Technique
courses in the College of Engineering. He was now a Bachelor of
Science.
He thereupon became an apprentice in the shops of one of the two
biggest electrical firms in the United States. He inspected the
assembling of machines before they were shipped, and he overheard
wisdom from foremen and superintendents. His salary was fifteen
cents an hour. Since he worked about ten hours a day, his total
income was about forty dollars a month. At the end of the year he
was raised to fifty. This was the normal raise for a Bachelor of
Science.
The graduates of Yale and Harvard in the bright colonial days of
those institutions married almost immediately on graduation. John
didn't. He didn't get married so early nor become a widower so
often. He didn't carry so many children to the christening font
nor so many to the cemetery.
Look at the dark as well as the bright side of colonial days.
Pick out any of the early Harvard classes. Honestly and truly at
random, run your finger down the column and pick any class. The
class of 1671!
It had eleven graduates. One of them remained a bachelor. Don't
be too severe on him. He died at twenty-four. Of the remaining
ten, four were married twice and two were married three times.
For ten husbands, therefore, there were eighteen wives.
Mr. G. Stanley Hall, President of Clark University, very
competently remarks: "The problem of superfluous women did not
exist in those days. They were all needed to bring up another
woman's children."
The ten husbands of the Harvard class of 1671, with their
eighteen wives, had seventy-one children. They did replenish the
earth. They also filled the churchyards.
TWENTY-ONE OF THOSE SEVENTY-ONE CHILDREN DIED IN CHILDHOOD.
This left fifty to grow up. It was an average of five surviving
children for each of the ten fathers. But it was an average of
only 2.7 for each of the eighteen mothers.
In commending the colonial family one must make an offset for the
unfair frequency with which it had more than one wife-and-mother
to help out its fertility record. And in commending the era of
young wives and numerous children one must make an offset for the
hideous frequency with which it killed them.
Turn from Harvard to Yale. Look at the men who graduated from
1701 to 1745.
The girls they took in marriage were most of them under
twenty-one and were many of them down in their 'teens, sometimes
as far down as fourteen.
May we observe that they were not taken in marriage out of a
conscious sense of duty to the Commonwealth and to Population?
They were taken because they were needed. The colonial gentleman
had to have his soap-kettles and candle-molds and looms and
smokehouses and salting-tubs and spinning-wheels and other
industrial machines operated for him by somebody, if he was going
to get his food and clothes and other necessaries cheap. He lost
money if he wasn't domestic. He was domestic.
Our young engineering friend, John, when HE looked forward to HIS
future domestic establishment, saw no industrial machines in it
at all except a needle and a saucepan. Consequently he had very
little real use for a wife. What he wanted was money enough to
"give" Mary a home.
Marriages are more uncertain now. And fewer of them are marriages
of mere convenience. It is both a worse and a better state of
things. On the one hand, John didn't marry Mary so soon. On the
other hand, he was prevented from wanting anything in his
marriage except just Mary.
The enormous utility of the colonial wife, issuing in enormous
toil (complicated by unlimited childbearing), had this kind of
result:
Among the wives of the 418 Yale husbands of the period from 1701
to 1745, there were
Thirty-three who died before they were twenty-five years old;
Fifty-five who died before they were thirty-five years old;
Fifty-nine who died before they were forty-five years old.
Those 418 Yale husbands lost 147 wives before full middle age.
It ceases, therefore, to be surprising, though it remains
unabatedly sickening, that the stories of the careers of colonial
college men, of the best-bred men of the times, are filled with
such details as:
"----First wife died at twenty-four, leaving six children."
"----Eight children born within twelve years, two of them
feeble-minded."
"----First wife died at nineteen, leaving three children.
"----Fourteen children. First wife died at twenty-eight, having
borne eight children in ten years."
From that age of universal early marrying and of promiscuous
early dying we have come in two centuries to an age of delayed
(and even omitted) marrying and of a settled determination to
keep on living.
The women's colleges are so new and they attracted in their early
days so un-average a sort of girl that their records are not
conclusive. Nevertheless, here are some guiding facts from Smith
College, of Northampton, Massachusetts:
--> We are taking college facts not because this article is
confined in any respect to college people but merely because the
matrimonial histories in the records of the colleges are the most
complete we know of.)
In 1888, Smith College, in its first ten classes, had graduated
370 women.
In 1903, fifteen years later, among those 370 women there were
212 who were still single.
This record does not satisfy Mr. G. Stanley Hall, who figured it
out. The remaining facts, however, might be considered more
cheering:
The 158 Smith women who had married had borne 315 children. This
was two for each of them. And most of them were still in their
childbearing period. Compare this with the colonial records. But
don't take the number of children per colonial father. Be fair.
Take it per mother.
We have the matrimonial histories of colonial Yale and Harvard
men grouped and averaged according to the decade in which they
graduated. We will regard the graduates of each decade as
together constituting one case.
In no case does the average number of children per wife go higher
than 3.89. In one case it goes as low as 2.98.
Perhaps the modern wife's habit of going on living and thereby
protracting her period of childbearing will in time cause her
fertility record to compare not unfavorably with that of the
colonial wife, who made an early start but a quick finish.
In the year 1903, among all the 370 Smith graduates in those
first ten classes, only twenty-four had died. And among all the
315 children, only twenty-six had died. On the whole, between
being the wife of a Yale or Harvard colonial graduate and being a
member of one of the first ten Smith classes, a modern girl might
conclude that the chances of being a dead one matrimonially in
the latter case would be more than offset by the chances of being
a dead one actually in the former.
This deplorable flippancy would overlook the serious fact that
permanent or even prolonged celibacy on the part of large numbers
of young men and young women is a great social evil. The
consequences of that evil we shall observe later on.[1]
[1] In speaking about celibacy we refer wholly to secular and not
at all to religious celibacy.
In the meantime we return to John and Mary.
While John was doing his last year in engineering school, Mary
did a year of technical study in the New York School of
Philanthropy, or in the St. Louis School of Social Economy, or in
the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy, or in the Boston
School for Social Workers.
They won't even let you start in "doing good" nowadays without
some training for it. This is wise, considering how much harm
doing good can do.
But how the preparation for life does lengthen itself out!
Mary took a civil service examination and got a job with the
State Bureau of Labor. She finished her first year with the
Bureau at the same time when John finished his first year with
the electrical firm. She had earned $600. He had earned $480.
There were several hundred other apprentices in the shops along
with John. When he thought of the next year's work at fifty a
month and when he looked at the horde of competing Bachelors of
Science in which he was pocketed, he whitened a bit.
"I must get out of the ruck," he said to himself. "I must get a
specialty. I must do some more preparing.
He began to perceive how long it takes the modern man to grow up,
intellectually and financially. He began to perceive what a
tedious road he must travel before he could arrive at
maturity--and Mary!
But he had pluck. "I'll really prepare," he said, "and then I'll
really make good."
A western university offered a scholarship of $500 a year, the
holder of which would be free to devote himself to a certain
specified technical subject. John tried for the scholarship and
got it, and spent a year chasing electrical currents from the
time when they left the wheels of street cars to the time when
they eventually sneaked back home again into the power-house,
after having sported clandestinely along gas mains and water
pipes, biting holes into them as they went.
It was a good subject, commercially. At the end of the year he
was engaged as engineer by a street-car company which was being
sued by a gas company for allowing its current to eat the gas
company's property. He was to have a salary of $1,000 a year. He
was going strong.
One thousand dollars! Millions of married couples live on less
than that. But John didn't even think of asking Mary to share it
with him.
Mary, when married, was to be supported in approximate accordance
with the standards of the people John knew. Every John thinks
that about it, without really thinking about it at all. It's just
in him.
It bothered Mary. How much money would John want to spend on her
before he would take her? It made her feel like a box of candy in
a store window.
Still, a social standard is a fact. Just as much so as if it
could be laid off with a tape. And there is sense in it.
"After all," thought Mary, "if we had only $1,000 a year we
couldn't live where any of our friends do, and John would be cut
off from being on daily intimate terms with people who could help
him; and if we had children--Well, there you are! We surely
couldn't give our children what our children ought to have. That
settles it."
The influence of social standards is greatly increased and
complicated in a world in which women earn their living before
marriage and have a chance to make social standards of their own
in place of the ones they were born to.
We here insert a few notes on cases which are not compositely
imagined--like Mary and John--but are individually (though
typically) existent in real life in one of the large American
cities:
R----J----. Makes $6,500 a year. Only man she was ever "real
sweet on" was a teamster. When she was selling in the perfumes at
five a week he used to take her to the picnics of the Social
Dozen Pleasure Club. They would practice the Denver Lurch on
Professor DeVere's dancing platform. At midnight he would give
her a joy-ride home in his employer's delivery wagon. He still
drives that wagon. She is in charge of suits and costumes and has
several assistant buyers under her. She has bought a cottage for
her father, who is an ingrain weaver in a carpet factory. She
wears a stick-pin recently presented to her by her teamster. "I
like him all right," is her notion about it, "but I ought to have
took him ten years ago. Now he can't support me."
S----V----. Makes twelve dollars a week as a manicurist. Thinks a
man ought to have at least thirty dollars a week before marrying.
T----V----. Sister of S----V----, who doesn't think much of her.
She works in a paper-box factory at five dollars a week and is
engaged to a glove cutter who makes eleven.
T----A----. Saleswoman. Thinks women ought to be paid as much as
men. "Then they wouldn't be so ready to marry ANYBODY." Works in
the cloak department. Is a star. Makes about eighteen dollars a
week. Says that most of the men she knows who could support her
would certainly get in a terrible row at home if they married a
cloak-department girl. Families are stuck up. "But I don't care;
let it run awhile. Tell you something. I was born in the
steerage. I've been right where the money isn't. I'm not taking
any chances on getting there again. Let Georgina do it."
R----B----. Sub-bookkeeper. Seven dollars a week. Engaged to
clerk who earns thirteen. Says: "Of course I'm not earning much,
but I'm living with my folks and when we're married I'll have to
give up a lot of things. Kinda wish I hadn't got used even to the
seven."
This last case, of the bookkeeper engaged to the clerk, is the
modern situation at its happiest normal. The modern marriage,
except among the rich, is a contraction of resources. It is just
the reverse, in that respect, of the colonial marriage.
The colonial bride, marrying into Industry, brought her full
economic value to her husband.
The modern bride, marrying out of Industry, leaves most of her
economic value behind. And the greater that value was, the
sharper is the shock of the contraction of resources.
Of course, the case of the department-store buyer and the
teamster is irrelevantly extreme. But aren't there thousands and
thousands of cases which, while less advanced, are pointed in the
same direction? The more a woman earns, the fewer become the men
who can support her. How can the clerk support the cloak
saleswoman who has had eighteen dollars a week of her own? How
can the barber support the manicurist who has had twelve?
The cloak saleswoman may talk flippantly about it, but, at heart,
isn't she seriously right? She has pulled herself up to a certain
level. Except in response to a grande passion she will not again
drop below it. She will bring up her children at a point as close
to her present level as she can. That is instinct.
Meanwhile, she isn't married. But what can you do about it? She
went to work, like almost every other working woman, because she
had to. And you can't pass a law prohibiting her from earning
more than five dollars a week.
"It's all economic," thought Mary. "Nothing else." She had much
reason for thinking so.
Did you ever see Meitzen's diagram showing the relation between
the price of rye and the number of marriages in Prussia during a
period of twenty-five years?
Cheap rye, easy living conditions--number of marriages rises.
Dear rye, hard living conditions--number of marriages drops. The
fluctuations are strictly proportional. In the twenty-sixth year,
given the price of rye, you could predict very closely the number
of marriages.
It's like suicides. It's the easiest thing in the world to
predict the number of men and women who will next year "decide"
to take their own lives.
The marriage rate responds not only to the economic conditions of
a whole country but to the economic conditions of its various
parts.
You live in Vermont. Very well. Between the ages of twenty-five
and thirty in Vermont, there will be 279 out of every 1,000 of
you who will still be single.
But you live in the state of New York. Very well. Between the
ages of twenty-five and thirty there will be 430 of you out of
every thousand who will still be single.
In Vermont, 279. In New York, 430. A difference of 151 in every
1,000.
For those 151 persons, is it human volition? Is it a perverse
aversion to the other sex?
Even at that, on the face of it, those who try to argue New
Yorkers into marrying young are clearly taking the difficult
route to their purpose. It would be more adroit simply to urge
them to live in Vermont.
But isn't the real reason this--that New York, with its large
cities, is farther removed than Vermont, with no large cities,
from the primitive industrial conditions of colonial times?
The North Atlantic states, as a whole, are industrially more
advanced than the South Central states. Compare them in this
marriage matter:
Among all the wives in the South Central states, there are 543
out of every 1,000 who are under thirty-five years of age.
Among all the wives in the North Atlantic states those who are
under thirty-five years of age are, in each thousand, only 428.
In the South Central states, 543. In the North Atlantic states,
428. A difference of 115!
Getting married early is imputed unto us for actual personal
righteousness by innumerable clergymen, essayists, and editorial
writers. Are there so many more righteous women along the Gulf of
Mexico than along the Atlantic coast? One hundred and fifteen
more out of every thousand? We cannot quite credit so great a
discrepancy in relative human virtue.
You can't escape, in any numbers, from the law which reigns in
your vicinity.
Live on the Gold Coast of Africa. When you're thirteen, if you're
a girl, they'll boil a yam and mash it and mix it with palm oil
and scatter it on the banks of the stream and wash you in the
stream and streak your body with white clay in fine lines and
lead you down the street under an umbrella and announce your
readiness to be a bride. Which you will be in a day or two.
Live in Russia, and if you're a girl you'll get married before
you're twenty in more than fifty cases out of a hundred. It's the
most primitive of civilized countries. It's half way between
Africa and, say, Rhode Island.
These marriages before twenty tend to fall off rapidly in a
rapidly developing industrial region like Rhode Island.
In 1860 the married persons in Rhode Island who had married
before they were twenty were twenty-one in every 100.
In 1900 they were only nine in every 100.
A drop from twenty-one to nine in forty years!
And if you can't escape, in any numbers, from the law which
reigns in your vicinity, neither can you escape, in any numbers,
from the law which reigns in your social set.
Here's Bailey's book on "Social Conditions":
Live in England and be a girl and belong to the class of people
that miners come from: Your age at marriage will be, on the
average, twenty-two. But belong to the class of people that
professional men come from: Your age at marriage will be, on the
average, twenty-six.
This difference exists also in the United States. It is in the
direct line of social and economic development.
The professional man is a farther developed type of man than the
miner. It takes him longer to get through his educational
infancy--longer to arrive at his mental and financial maturity.
The professional man's wife is a farther developed type than the
miner's wife. She has much more economic value (if she works)
before marriage and much LESS economic value (in any case) after
marriage.
Where these two lines of development, male and female, come to a
meeting point; where the man's infancy is longest and the woman's
economic value as a wife is least, there is, necessarily,
altogether apart from personal preferences, the greatest
postponement of marriage.
The United States, except possibly in certain sections, has not
come to the end of its growth toward postponed marriage.
It is true that in Massachusetts, within the past forty-five
years, the average age of women at marriage has risen from 20.7
to 24.6. That is a very "modern" and "developed" marriage age.
But many of the older countries surpass it. In Belgium, for
instance, which is a most intensely industrialized country, the
average age of women at marriage is 28.19.
It is hard, indeed, to look at the advancing marriage age and to
compare its varying rate of progress in different continents,
different countries, different localities, and different social
circles without admitting that, whatever whirling, nebulous mists
of personal preferences it may create and carry with it, its
nucleus is purely economic.
Early marriage was made by economic advantages. It was destroyed
by economic changes. It will not be restored except by economic
adjustments.
"Nevertheless," said Mary, "I want John."
John had finished being engineer for the electric railway
company.
Out of his two years' experience he had saved a few hundred
dollars. No, he hadn't. That isn't probable. The way he made his
start into the next phase of his career was not by having any
ready money. Having ready money is far from being characteristic
of the young man of to-day.
John opened his office as a consulting electrical engineer not on
his own resources but as an agent for an electrical supply
company. Being agent for that company assured him enough money to
pay the office rent and stenographer. For the rest, for his meals
and his bed, he depended on his clients. Whom he didn't have. But
he started out to get them.
He opened his office in the city in which Mary was.
And then a strange but normal thing occurred. They spent enough
money on theatres and boat rides and candy in the next three
months to have paid the rent on a flat. It is true John's net
income was too small and uncertain to have justified the founding
of a family. But it was also true that they spent every cent they
had. The celibate life is an extravagant life. One of the
innumerable sources of modern extravagance is found just there.
Mary reflected on it. She didn't like it. And she began to see
other things she didn't like in this protraction of the period of
singleness.
Her work for the Bureau of Labor had taken her into many places,
among all sorts of women. She began to observe the irregular
living which is inevitably associated with a system of late
marriages.
Mr. Lester F. Ward has learnedly and elaborately informed us that
if we go back to the origin of life on this planet we shall find
that the female was the only sex then existent, being original
life itself, reproducing itself by division of itself, and that
the male was created as an afterthought of nature's for the
purpose of introducing greater variation into the development of
living things. The male, to begin with, had only one function.
That was to be a male. He was purely a sex-thing.
Whether this biological theory stands or falls, it is certain
that it squares with the present character of the sexes. The sex
which originated as a sex-thing remains the more actively sexed.
There was once a very good sociologist called Robert Louis
Stevenson who made many researches into the psychology of the
human race. While on his "Inland Voyage" he observed in this
matter that "it is no use for a man to take to the woods; we know
him; Anthony tried the same thing long ago and had a pitiful time
of it by all accounts. But there is this about some women, that
they suffice to themselves and can walk in a high and cold zone
without the countenance of any trousered being."
The celibate life is more possible for most of them by nature. If
it were not for that fact, the postponement of marriage would by
this time have demolished the ethical code.
Even as things stand, Mary was quite willing to admit, when she
saw it, that there are two kinds of women greatly increasing in
modern days. Both have always existed, but now they are
increasing very rapidly and in parallel lines of corresponding
development.
In one column is the enormous army of young women who remain
unmarried till twenty-five, till thirty, till thirty-five. Even
at that latter age, and beyond it, in a well-developed city like,
say, Providence, Rhode Island, in the age period from thirty-five
to forty-five, twenty out of every hundred women are still
single.
In the other column is the enormous army of young women who,
outside of the marriage relation altogether, lead a professional
sex life, venal, furtive, ignoble, and debasing; an army which
has existed since the beginning of time but which every
postponement of the age of marriage causes to increase in
relative numbers and to gain new strength for poisoning the blood
of life.
Love, denied at the front door, flies in by the cellar window.
Angel or bat, it is always with us. Our only choice is between
its guises.
Mary looked at the army of women celibates in offices and in
stores and in their apartments and in their boarding houses,
women celibates five and ten and fifteen and twenty years into
the period when nature has by irrepealable edict ordained love.
It was surely unnatural, for the mass of them. They were not
vowed nuns. They were not devoted to any Great Cause. They were
just ordinary, normal young women, thousands and thousands and
thousands and thousands of them.
Then, on the other side, Mary looked at the great army of women
in the midnight restaurants, in the streets, in their segregated
quarters--women who, however they may be sentimentalized about
and however irresponsible they may be for their own condition,
are, as a matter of fact, ignorant, stupid, silly, and dirty. Yet
on them was squandered the emotional life of millions of young
men.
On the one side--intelligent, capable, effective young women,
leading lives of emotional sterility. On the other side--inferior
women blasted and withered by their specialization in the
emotional life of youth!
The connection between postponement of marriage and irregularity
of living will be admitted by everybody who is willing to face
facts and who is optimist enough to believe that if, instead of
letting facts lie, we face them and fight them we can make a
better race.
The great Russian scientist, Metchnikoff, successor to Pasteur in
the Pasteur Institute, mentions the postponement of marriage as
one of the biological disharmonies of life. It is a disharmony
that "among highly civilized peoples marriage and REGLULAR unions
are impossible at the RIGHT TIME."
And Mr. A. S. Johnson, writing in the authoritative report of the
Committee of Fifteen on the Social Evil, notes the parallel
increase of "young unmarried men" and of a city's "volume of
vice."
He goes on to make, without comment, a statement of the economic
facts of the case.
"As a rule," he says, "the income which a young man earns, while
sufficient to secure a fair degree of comfort for himself, does
not suffice for founding a family."
He cannot found a family at the right time. He goes unmarried
through the romantic period of his development, when the senses
are at their keenest and when the other sex in its most vividly
idealized perfection, is most poignantly desired.
Then, later on, he may begin to get a larger income. Then
marriage may become more feasible. But then romance is waning.
Then, as Mr. Johnson says, "his standard of personal comfort
rises." Romance has been succeeded by calculation. "Accordingly
he postpones marriage to a date in the indefinite future or
abandons expectation of it altogether."
Celibacy through the age of romance! It's emotionally wrong.
Sexlessness for a score of years after sex has awakened! It's
biologically wrong. It's a defiance of nature. And nature
responds, as she does to every defiance, with a scourge of
physical and social ills.
"But what of all that?" thought Mary. "Those things are just
observations. What I am going to act on is that I want John."
At which point she stopped being a typical modern young woman.
SHE BECAME A WOMAN OF THE FUTURE.
"Look here," she said to John, "I'm working. You're working.
We're single. Very well. We'll change it. I'm working. You're
working. We're married. Have we lost anything? And we've gained
each other."
Two years later she stopped working.
In those two years she had helped John to start a home. She
couldn't operate soap-kettles and candle-molds and looms and
smokehouses and salting-tubs and spinning-wheels for him. But she
brought him an equivalent of it in money. She earned from $900 to
$1000 a year.
Being married, they were more thrifty. They saved a large part of
her earnings. John was still spending a large part of his on
extending his business, on traveling, on entertaining prospective
clients, on making acquaintances. Sometimes she had to contribute
some of her own money to his expense accounts. That was the
fortune of war. She helped him pursue success.
"I wouldn't give up the memory of these two years," Mary used to
say, as she sat and stitched for her children, "for anything. I
shared at least a part of my husband's youth."
By sharing it, she won a certain happiness otherwise
unattainable. They had come to know each other and to help form
each other's characters and to share each other's difficulties in
the years when only there is real joy in the struggle of life.
They had not postponed their love till, with a settled income,
John could support her in comfort and they could look back like
Browning's middle-aged estranged lovers to say:
We have not sighed deep, laughed free,
Starved, feasted, despaired,--been happy.
"It used to take two to start a home in colonial days," Mary
would say. "I am really an old-fashioned woman. I helped to make
this home. We had twelve hundred dollars in the bank when I
stopped working, and John was pretty well established.
"I don't regret it," she went on, still speaking as a woman of
the future, "even for the children. Of course I do wish we had
started earlier. But I would have wanted to wait a while for the
children in any case. People risk too much when they start a
family before they become sufficiently used to marriage and to
each other to know that they can keep on loving each other and to
know that they have in them through their mutual, continued
happiness the power to make a happy home, a noble home, for
children to live in."
As for the number of children she will have--we reserve that
subject to a future article. We call attention here only to this:
That the facts which were cited from the Smith College records
are harmonious with many other facts and records tending to show
that the fertility of the modern wife has been considerably
underrated, just as the fertility of the colonial wife has been
considerably exaggerated.
And this:
That Mary got to her childbearing period sooner than she would
have if she hadn't insisted on marrying John before he was ready
to support her. Those two years would have been childless years
in any case. But they would probably, if it hadn't been for
Mary's money, have been lengthened into four or five.
Of course, later marriages in themselves tend to reduce the
number of children. As to quality, however, the evidence is not
clear. There is even some reason to think that a moderate
postponement is conducive to an improvement in quality.
Did you ever read Havelock Ellis's book called "A Study of
British Genius"?
He made a list of the most distinguished of Eminent British
Persons and studied everything about them from their religious
opinions to the color of their hair.
In the matter of the age of their parents, he finds that the
average age of the father at the birth of the person of genius
was thirty-seven years, while the average of the mother was
thirty-one. His conclusion is: "On the whole it would appear, so
far as the evidence goes, that the fathers of our eminent persons
have been predominantly middle-aged and to a marked extent
elderly at the time of the distinguished son's birth; while the
mothers have been predominantly at the period of greatest vigor
and maturity and to a somewhat unusual extent elderly. There has
been a notable deficiency of young fathers and, still more
notably, of young mothers."
And did you ever see the study which Mr. R. S. Holway made for
the Department of Education of Leland Stanford University on "The
Age of Parents: Its Effects upon Children"? His conclusions are:
"In most physical qualities the children of mature parents tend
to come out best.
"In mental ability the children of young parents show best at an
early age but rapidly lose their precocity.
"The elder children who show best tend to be the children of
mature and old parents.
"The children of elderly mothers show a tendency to superiority
throughout."
Mary did not know about all this, but she had a very strong
opinion to the effect that, in so far as the quality of her
children could be affected by their home training, she was glad
she had spent at least a few years earning her living.
"Every woman," said Mary, "ought to have some little time for
developing into an individual. Home won't do it altogether. Not
nowadays. The colonial home did, being part of the working world.
But what is the modern home? It is a nest, an eddy, a shelf, a
nook. It's something apart from the world. If a woman is going to
prepare her son for a knowledge of the real world, if she's going
to be able to give him a training which has in it an
understanding and an appreciation of the real world, if she's
going to be able to educate him into real living, she must
nowadays and increasingly in the future have some experience of
her own on her own account in the real world before she becomes a
mother. There's no getting away from that. A reasonable
postponement of motherhood till the future mother becomes a
competent individual is a good thing."
"The trouble about that," said John, "is that it makes you too
independent of me. Your proposition is to start in and earn your
living till you're pretty good at it. That is, you wouldn't marry
me till you were sure you could chuck me. How about that?"
Well, it has that side. But it has its other side, too.
Isn't there, after all, something rather pleasant for John in
knowing, KNOWING, that Mary isn't cleaving unto him simply
because she can't shift for herself? Something exquisitely
gratifying in being certain, CERTAIN, that it isn't just
necessity that keeps her a home woman?
"If I were a man living in wedlock," said Mary, "I should want
the door of the cage always wide open, with my mate fluttering
straight by it every minute to still nestle by me. And I should
want her wings to be strong, and I should want her to know that
if she went through the door she could fly.
"For keeping her," said Mary, "I should want to trust to my own
wings and not to bars.
"However," said Mary, going farther into the future, "the process
isn't complete. Freedom is not yet completely acquired. Children!
We want them! We must have them! Yet how often they tie us to
unions which have come to be unholy, vile, full of all
uncleanness. Women will never be completely free till, besides
being able to earn their bread when they are NOT bearing
children, they are relieved of dependence on the individual
character of another human person while they ARE. Mr. H. G. Wells
is clearly right about it. When women bear children they perform
a service to the state. Children are important to the state. They
are its future life. To leave them to the eccentricities of the
economic fate of the father is ridiculous. The woman who is
bringing up children should receive from the state the equivalent
of her service in a regular income. Then, and then only, in the
union of man and woman, will love and money reach their right
relationship--love a necessity, money a welcome romance!
"It's remote, very remote," said Mary. "And we can't dream it out
in detail. But when it comes it won't come out of personal
sentiment. It will come because of being demanded by the economic
welfare of the community. It will come because it is the best way
to get serviceable children for the state. It will come because,
after all, it is the final answer to the postponement of
marriage."
In the November instalment of "The Women of To-morrow," Mr. Hard
will discuss "The Wasters."
*****************************************************************
Vol. XXIII October 1910 No. 4
The Poison Bugaboo {pages 518-525}
By SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS
AUTHOR OF "THE GREAT AMERICAN FRAUD," "THE MYSTERY" (WITH STEWART
EDWARD WHITE), ETC.
ROMANCE revels in the peril of the unknown. Lapped about with the
armor-plate of civilization, the modern citizen muses
relishingly, like a child beguiling himself with ogre tales, upon
the terrors which lie just beyond his ken. To his mind,
A stone's throw out on either hand,
And all the world is wild and strange.
Avid for sensation, he peoples the remoteness of forest and
mountain with malign and destructive creatures, whence has grown
up an extensive and astonishing literature of snake and insect
poison lore.
"Deadly" is the master word of the cult. The rattlesnake is
"deadly." The copperhead and moccasin are "deadly." So is the
wholly mythical puff adder. In hardly less degree is the
tarantula "deadly," while varying lethal capacities are ascribed
to the centipede, the scorpion, the kissing-bug, and sundry other
forms of insect life. The whole matter is based upon the
slenderest foundations. I don't mean, by this, that these
ill-famed species are wholly innocuous. It would be highly
inadvisable to snatch a kiss from a copperhead or to stroke a
tarantula's fur the wrong way. But one could do it and live to
boast of the achievement. Pseudoscience to the contrary
notwithstanding, there is no living thing within the boundaries
of the United States of America whose bite or sting is sure death
or (with one possible exception) even probable death.
There are five varieties of venomous serpents in this country:
three of them Crotalids, and two belonging to the Elaps family.
The Elaps are rather rare. The Crotalids (rattlesnake, moccasin,
and copperhead) are common, and of the widest geographical
distribution. Yet, on the basis of actual evidence, the amazing
fact stands out that only about eighty persons, so far as is
ascertainable, have ever died from snake bite in the United
States. Nowhere in the Civil War records does a death from this
cause appear, though hundreds of thousands of men were living "on
the country," and at a time when the serpent clan was much more
numerous than now.
Estimates vary as to the proportion of deaths to bites. Prentiss
Willson believes that something over ten per cent. of all persons
bitten by venomous snakes in the United States die. As to how
many of these succumb, not to the venom, but to the misdirected
efforts of misguided friends at treatment--an extremely important
differentiation--he lacks the data upon which to base a
reckoning. S. Weir Mitchell's figures indicate 8.7 per cent.
mortality for rattlesnake bite. This would make the venom about
as dangerous as the toxin of typhoid fever, which is not
generally regarded as a necessarily "deadly" disease. Other
writers go as high as fifteen per cent. for the rattlesnake and
as low as one per cent. for the copperhead.
All general estimates seem to me to leave one basic element out
of consideration--the unnoted, non-fatal snake bites. That a bite
resulting in death will eventually get itself reported is
reasonably certain. On the other hand, I am satisfied, from
talking with plantation owners in the South, with ranchmen in the
West, and with woodsmen and hunters all over the country, that,
in the remoter regions, many instances of poisoning by
copperheads and the smaller rattlesnakes never attain the dignity
of being listed, so insignificant are they in their effects. Were
all these to be recorded, I believe that the mortality ratio
would fall notably.
Although I have been interested in the subject for many years, I
have never met a man who has seen a fatal case of snake bite.
More than this, my friend Mr. Stewart Edward White, a noted
hunter and explorer of untrodden ground in regions infested by
reptiles, has known of but one case terminating in death which he
believes to be authentic. Dr. J. A. Mitchell, of Victoria, Texas,
one of the most experienced of field observers, has never met
with an instance of fatality from this cause. Dr. Mitchell
believes that horses always, and dogs almost always, recover from
rattlesnake bite. He confirms, from observation, the mysterious
fact that hogs exhibit absolute immunity from the venom.
WHISKY VS. SNAKEBITE
Be it remembered always that death following snake bite is not
necessarily the same thing as death from snake bite. Error in
treatment plays no small part in vitiating the statistics. For
"error" read "whisky." Whoever is primarily responsible for the
hoary superstition that liquor in huge doses is useful in snake
poisoning has many a life to answer for. Apart from any
adventitious aid whatsoever, whether from a snake or any other
source, a whole bottle of raw whisky forced down the throat of a
man unaccustomed to alcohol is pretty likely to kill him, and is
absolutely certain to cause grave poisoning. Add to this that it
is given, often, in such a manner that the reaction from it comes
contemporaneously with the heart collapse caused by the venom,
and a telling commentary upon the method is suggested. It is a
question whether alcohol should ever be given in such cases
without the advice of a physician. Certain it is that it should
not be poured into the victim in quantities limited only by the
flask-contents of the bystanders.
Several years ago I saw two interestingly contrasted cases of
copperhead bite. The first patient was a powerful, full-blooded,
temperate, Irish day-laborer who, while road-mending, was bitten
on the back of the hand between two fingers. His fellows hustled
him off to a room over a neighboring saloon, where they proceeded
to administer the classic treatment. Before the doctor arrived
they had introduced a quart and a half of whisky into a stomach
unused to anything stronger than beer in small quantities. Six
hours later, when I saw the man through the wreckage of chairs,
tables, and bedding, four battered friends were trying to hold
him down. They thought he was having convulsions from the snake
venom. He wasn't. He was having delirium tremens from the whisky.
His arm and shoulder were purple and swollen. Later he collapsed.
"Will he die?" I asked the doctor.
"He won't die of the bite, but I think he will of the whisky,"
replied the disgusted practitioner.
But he didn't. His splendid physique pulled him through. It was
long, however, before he wholly recovered from the effects of the
two poisons.
This was in a Hudson River town. Only a few miles away a negro
boy, shortly after, was struck by a copperhead on the bare leg.
The wound was a deep, double-fanged puncture. While the boy's
father rushed for whisky, his mother ran for the doctor. The
doctor got there first. He opened up the wound and rubbed in
permanganate of potash to oxidize the venom and destroy its toxic
properties. When I talked with the boy, two days later, he was
hobbling about on a crutch, and the swelling had almost subsided.
Setting the boy's lesser age and resistant power against the fact
of the laborer's being bitten in a worse place (for crotaline
venom is much more effective in an upper limb or extremity than
in a lower), we have a fairly illustrative instance of the
relative merits of alcoholic and non-alcoholic measures.
WHEN RATTLESNAKES KILL
Thirteen cases of death following rattlesnake and copperhead bite
in which satisfactory clinical data were obtainable, are given by
Prentiss Willson. Of the victims, five were young children, one
was a fourteen-year-old boy, one a chronic drunkard, and one a
leper who submitted to the stroke of a captive rattlesnake in the
mad hope that it would cure his affliction. It did--in
twenty-four hours. Of the remaining five, three were dosed with
alcohol in large quantities. In several of the cases, notably
those of the children, there seemed to be at least an even chance
of recovery, when the ligatures binding the affected limb were
loosened to relieve the pain, with quickly fatal results. Two of
the fatalities were attributed, not immediately to the venom, but
to the secondary blood-poisoning, this being the case with the
only copperhead bite in the list.
Death resulting typically from crotaline poisoning occurred in
two instances, one the fourteen-year-old boy, who was struck by a
large rattlesnake and died in six hours, despite skilled and
prompt medical attendance; the other, a Dr. Post, into whose
veins, it would appear, the poison entered immediately, since a
jet of blood spurted from the wound inflicted by the captive
rattlesnake. The man passed from great agony into coma, from
which he never rallied, death ensuing in five hours after the
bite. There is nothing in these data to indicate that a
full-grown man in normal health, and with proper treatment, will
succumb to crotaline poisoning unless the venom enters a vein,
direct.
In the matter of the comparative potency of snake poisons, there
are apparent contradictions. In the order of recorded fatalities,
the rattlesnake ranks easily first, with the water moccasin a
rather distant second, and the copperhead a very poor third. Yet
experiments upon animals indicate that moccasin venom is five
times as powerful as rattlesnake, though only three times as
powerful as copperhead. Taking the cobra as the basis of
estimate, it requires only twice as much moccasin venom as it
does cobra poison to kill a guinea pig, whereas it requires six
times as much copperhead and ten times as much rattlesnake virus.
Why, then, is the rattler pre-eminent over its more virulent
cousins? Probably for two reasons--the greater amount of venom
secreted, and the superior power with which the rattler drives
its fangs home.
NO VIPERS IN THIS COUNTRY
Fully as much terror attaches, in the country districts, to the
puff adder or sand viper as to the rattlesnake or copperhead.
This is a suggestive bit of superstition, since there's no such
thing as an adder or viper on the Western hemisphere and never
has been one, unless it came, carefully pickled, in a jar. What
passes for the supposedly deadly reptile is the common hog-nosed
or bull snake. It is about as dangerous as an infuriated rabbit.
But it puts up one of the best "bluffs" known to natural history.
When caught at its favorite occupation of basking in the open,
without convenient avenue of escape, it flattens its head, and
strikes right and left, blowing and hissing with an aspect much
more terrifying than that of the truly venomous species. Then,
when the objects of its fury have taken to trees or adjacent
fences, it glides quietly away into the grass and effaces itself.
Any one who has the nerve to look it between the eyes may uncover
its pretense. For by this token may be known the real Crotalids
from the mock: a small but distinct pit between eye and nostril.
Lacking this mark, no ventral crawler in the land of the free
need cause a flutter in the most timid breast, with one notable
exception.
BEWARE THE ELAPS
Shun, as you would a rabid dog, a pretty little red-and-black
banded serpent about as thick as your thumb. If any living
creature whose habitat is the United States deserves the epithet
"deadly," it is the Elaps. Two species are known; the harlequin
snake, which ranges throughout the Gulf states to Texas and up
the Mississippi River to Ohio, and the Sonoran coral snake, found
in the Southwest only. By a strange perversion of facts, while
the harmless hog-nosed snake enjoys a repute of terror, the
Elaps, most dangerous of all American reptiles, is commonly
regarded as harmless. Partly this is due to its slight and
graceful prettiness, partly to its innocent-appearing head, which
shows no flattening (the popularly understood mark of the
venomous species), and partly to its lethargic and peaceful
disposition. Experimenters wishing to secure the venom of the
Elaps often find it difficult to rouse the snake to striking
wrath.
Very few instances are known of Elaps bite, but those few
unquestionably set this ornamental creature in a class by itself,
among American Ophidia, for "results." Out of eight
well-authenticated cases of Elaps bite, six of the victims died.
This is believed to indicate a falsely large percentage, however,
the scientific estimate of mortality being somewhere between
twenty-five and fifty per cent.
A government scientist tells me of a curious result from
coral-snake bite which came under his notice. The victim, who was
handling the reptile preparatory to photographing it, apparently
overstepped the bounds of its habitual forbearance, for it
fastened upon his finger with such determination that it had to
be pried off. The man soon became unconscious, but rallied, and,
after three days of dubious condition, recovered. Every year
since, at about the anniversary of the bite, an ulcer forms upon
the finger and the nail sloughs off. I have heard of similar
recurrent effects from crotaline poisoning, but none
scientifically attested, as is this phenomenon.
Before passing from the subject of snakes, let me make one point
clear. While the venomous snakes of this country are by no means
"deadly" in the ordinary sense of the term, their bite is always
serious, both in its immediate effects and in the possibility of
after effects. The bitten person should get to a physician at
once. The immediate treatment is prompt incision and sucking of
the wound. Permanganate of potash for rubbing into the bitten
place should always be carried by persons traveling in a
snake-infested country. If the bite is on a limb, a light
ligature will check the spread of the venom. Use whisky
sparingly, if at all, and then only in case of complete collapse.
The local treatments are most effective while the venom is still
around the site of the bite, and will reduce the injurious
effects considerably. But after half an hour or so the absorption
of the venom becomes more general and the local treatments
ineffective. When the venom once enters into general circulation
no chemicals or medication can neutralize its effects, except a
specific antivenin, such as has been prepared by Dr. Noguchi at
the Rockefeller Institute in New York. Antivenin is the only
antidote that can counteract the action of venom anywhere in the
body. It finds the venom wherever it is present and neutralizes
it there, without producing any ill effects on the system.
GILA MONSTER NOT SO MONSTROUS
Dissension and discussion have raged for years about the hideous
head of the Gila monster. This great lizard of the Southwest has
been pronounced absolutely deadly by one set of partisans, and
absolutely harmless by another. Somewhere between lies the truth.
If any human being has actually been bitten by a heloderma, the
event has either escaped notice or has been so hedged about with
obstructive legend as to have forfeited scientific credence. But
the saurian itself has been studied and dissected, and its venom
has been analyzed. The venom is related to snake poison, but is
neither crotaline nor elapine. From animal experiments it is
thought that it might be fatal to man under unfavorable
conditions. There are no fangs proper. The poison gland is in the
lower jaw, instead of in the upper, as in snakes, and its product
is projected through small ducts which open in the gums outside
the teeth. The Gila monster has the grip of a bulldog. Torture
will not loosen its hold, once fastened on. It is through this
intimate contact that the venom works into the wounds.
Fortunately, the lizard is slow to anger, and prefers flight to
battle, so it is likely to be long before science has an
opportunity of studying the effect of its envenomed jaw-clamp
upon man. There are a few vaguely rumored reports of prospectors
having perished, in the desert, of Gila monster poison, but these
are so confused with symptoms suspiciously resembling alcoholic
poisoning as to lead Dr. R. W. Shufeldt, an authority upon the
Reptilia, to remark that "a quart of raw whisky, practically
given at one dose, may prove more fatal than the bite of ten
helodermas."
Almost any kind of an insect bite or sting MAY prove fatal. So
may a pin scratch, if the blood of the subject be in bad enough
condition. There is a well-substantiated case of a trained nurse
who died from blood poisoning following a mosquito bite. Ant bite
has resulted fatally, as has a single sting from the common wasp.
No one, however, considers these everyday insects as "deadly."
But substitute "scorpion" for "ant," and "centipede" for "wasp,"
and shrieks of dismay rise from the general throat. Yet perhaps
there is no other variety of harmful creature whose reputation
rests upon so meager a foundation as that of these two.
True, an El Paso report claims that a man stung by a whip
scorpion died in twelve hours; but the details are so vague as to
be in a high degree unconvincing. Dr. Eugene Murray-Aaron, a
witness of unimpeachable scientific competency, describes the
sting, after several personal encounters with the vigorous
tropical species, as no worse than that of a large hornet. Dr. L.
B. Rowland, of Florida, says: "My wife has been stung several
times [by the common scorpion]. It is like a wasp sting, only."
THE SCORPION'S STING
The Mexican scorpion enjoys an evil repute, which, from personal
observation, I consider greatly exaggerated. Stewart Edward White
was so obliging as to afford me excellent opportunity of judging,
in the course of a recent hunting trip which we took together in
a hot and remote Mexican desert. Mr. White, in the process of
disrobing, sat down upon a brown scorpion, an inch and a half
long. The scorpion punctured Mr. White twice. I noted his
symptoms. They were chiefly surprise and indignation. Within half
an hour he was asleep, and on the following day he was riding a
mule. The scorpion, however, died.
With respect to the centipede, satisfactory data are difficult to
obtain. Some scientists whose observations are worthy of note
state that the legs of this curious creature secrete a poison,
and that their trail over human flesh is marked by a sort of
rash, sometimes followed by fever. As showing that this is not an
invariable phenomenon, I may set the circumstantial account given
me by Captain Robert Kemp Wright, who, at his place at Pitch
Lake, Trinidad, saw a good-sized centipede crawl across the
forehead of his sleeping son. Not daring to make a move, as the
centipede is supposed to strike very swiftly, Captain Wright was
compelled to stand still while it slowly made its way to the
pillow and thence to the floor, where it was killed. The boy, who
had neither waked nor moved, showed absolutely no trace of the
reptile's course.
THE DEADLY TARANTULA--IN PRINT
The only direct evidence which has come to me regarding the bite
of the hundred-legged crawler was from an English naturalist whom
I met in Venezuela. He was bitten on the ankle by a centipede
nearly a foot long. So severe was the laceration that his sock
was clotted with blood before he could get it off. The two
punctures were marked. Almost immediately the ankle began to
swell. The pain he describes as being equal to a bad toothache.
It kept him awake all that night. He had some fever, which,
however, he attributes rather to the loss of sleep than to any
specific action of the poison, as there were no other general
symptoms. In the morning the pain had abated a good deal, and he
believes that he could have gone about his pursuits had he been
able to get his sock and shoe on. He noted some discoloration
about the wound. Late in the afternoon he was hobbling about. A
week in a carpet slipper was the extent of disability which he
suffered. On these evidences it would seem just, for the present,
to set down the scorpion and the centipede as painful, rather
than dangerous, assailants.
Diseased imagination could invent no creature more horrific of
appearance than the tarantula. Its bristling and hostile aspect,
the swift ferocity of its rush, its great size, and its
enthusiastic preference for combat as against flight, are
sufficient to account for the fear and respect in which it is
generally held. But, though several species of the huge spider
are native to the United States, and others frequently drop out
of banana bunches from South or Central America, to the
discomfiture of the unsuspecting grocer, no authentic instance of
death from tarantula poison in this country is obtainable. St.
Louis papers please copy, particularly that one which, several
years ago, announced in appropriately black headlines:
IN TWO WEEKS Three Men Have Died From Bites of Tarantulas,
proceeding to explain that the victims were banana handlers in
the wholesale fruit district. No names were supplied--a common
phenomenon in this class of obituary notice. Search in the
coroner's records failed to bring to light any case of the sort,
and an exhaustive inquiry in the fruit district was equally
unproductive. The report was a pure fake.
Apparently of the same nature is the "news story" of a
Californian who, presumably mistaking a tarantula for a fragrant
floweret, was bitten on the nose and "died in great agony." That,
of course, is the proper way to die under such circumstances.
They all do it--in print.
Now let us see about the "agony." Herbert H. Smith, the
naturalist and collector, saw a man bitten on the bare foot by a
tarantula (Mygale) so hard as to draw blood. There was very
little swelling, and the man paid no heed to the occurrence, but
went on with his work.
I have talked with a Southern Pacific Railroad fireman who was
jabbed on the wrist by a large tarantula. Some years before, he
had been stung on the cheek by a "bald" hornet. He wasn't
inclined to make any choice between the two except that the
tarantula (not the wound) "looked a d----sight more scary." He
didn't let the bite interfere with his job, even for the day.
On the other hand, Dr. Murray-Aaron records serious symptoms
following two bites upon the hand by a large female trapdoor
tarantula; pain comparable to that of the worst earache,
involuntary twitching of arms, legs, lips, and tongue, great
swelling and discoloration of the hand and forearm, and
considerable suffering for four days, with occasionally recurrent
pains for a month. This, however, was in Haiti. And even there,
he believes, death never follows tarantula bite unless the
subject is in a depleted state of resistance from blood-disease
or other cause.
Under the heading "Fatal Spider Bite" there is a considerable and
interesting newspaper bibliography. The details do not analyze
well. Often the name of the supposed victim doesn't appear; and
where names and specifications are given, the evidence is hardly
sufficient, as a rule, to convict the insect of any crime more
serious than mayhem. For example, a young woman in Brooklyn awoke
one morning to find a swollen spot on her body. On the bed was
(according to allegation) a spider. Some ten days later she died.
For a long period she had been in ill health. Yet the death was
credited to the spider, though specific symptoms of venomous
poisoning were lacking.
The instance of a young woman in an Eastern state is significant.
Thrusting her foot into an old slipper, she felt a sharp jab upon
the point of her index digit. Upon hasty removal of the footgear,
she saw, or supposed she saw, a large and ferocious spider dart
forth. This, to her mind, was evidence both conclusive and
damning. Seizing upon the carving knife, she promptly cut off her
perfectly good toe, bound up the wound, and sent for the doctor,
thereby blossoming out in next day's print as a "Heroine who had
Saved her own life by her Marvelous Presence of Mind." The
thoughtful will wonder, however, whether the lady wouldn't have
got at the real root of the matter by cutting off her head
instead of her toe.
SPIDER HYSTERIA
Imagination and terror undoubtedly account for certain general
symptoms in this class of injury. Colonel Nicholas Pike, a
competent observer, records a case of a man slapping his hand
down upon a window sill and feeling a lively stab in the palm. At
the same moment a small spider ran across the back of his fingers
and was captured. There was a distinct puncture in the hand.
Here, then, was a definite case, where the wound and the insect
were both in evidence. But examination of the arachnid's fangs
satisfied Colonel Pike that they were far too small and weak to
penetrate the tough skin where the wound was. Meantime the victim
exhibited the classic symptoms of venomous poisoning: numbness,
nausea, chills, and threatened collapse. A physician, being
summoned, examined both the victim and the accused, and took
Colonel Pike's view that the spider was innocent. The man was
wrathful, with the indignation of terror. He said he guessed he
knew whether he was bitten or not, and that the physician's
business was to eschew idle speculations and go ahead and save
his life if it wasn't already too late. Thereupon the doctor
opened up the wound and extracted a section of a fine needle. The
other half was found sticking in the window sill where a careless
seamstress had fixed it. The spider had been a fortuitous
arrival. The man made one of the quickest recoveries recorded.
THE "RED-SPOT"--DANGEROUS
Strangely enough, the one really dangerous spider on the American
continent is small, obscure, and practically unknown to popular
or journalistic hysteria. Latrodectus mactans is its scientific
name. It is about the size of a large pea, black with a red spot
on the back--a useful danger signal--and spins a small web in
outhouses or around wood-piles. So far as is known, its poison is
the most virulent and powerful, drop for drop, secreted by any
living creature. Cobra virus, in the minute quantity which the
Latrodectus's glands contain, would probably have no appreciable
effect upon man; whereas the tiny spider's venom, in the volume
injected by the cobra's stroke, would slay a herd of elephants.
Were this little-known crawler as large as the common black
hunting spider of our gardens and lawns, its bite would be almost
invariably fatal. Happily, the "red-spot's" fangs, being small
and weak, can with difficulty penetrate the skin, and are able to
inject venom in dangerous quantity only when the bite is
inflicted upon some tender-skinned portion of the body.
Nevertheless, fatalities consequent upon the bite of this insect
are sufficiently well attested to take rank as established
scientific facts.
One of the most detailed comes from an intelligent farmer of
Greensboro, North Carolina. A workman in his employ, while
hauling wood, brushed at something crawling upon his neck and
felt a sharp, stinging sensation. He found a small, black spider
with a red spot. This was at 8.30 A.M. Presently, ten small white
pimples appeared about the bitten spot, though no puncture was
visible and there was no swelling. The pain soon passed, but
returned in three hours and became general, finally settling in
the abdomen and producing violent cramps. At one o'clock the man
had a spasmodic attack. Two hours later he had so far recovered
as to be able to go back to work, for an hour. Then the spasms
took him again; he sank into coma, and died between ten and
eleven o'clock that evening, about fourteen hours after the bite.
At no time were there local symptoms or swelling, other than the
slight eruption, but the neck, left arm, and breast are reported
as having assumed a stonelike hardness.
The same farmer had seen, three years previous, a negro who had
been bitten upon the ankle by a "red-spot" and who suffered from
diminishingly severe spasmodic attacks for three weeks. The white
pimples appeared in this case also. The negro recovered, but the
eruption reappeared for years thereafter whenever he was
overheated.
Recoveries from Latrodectus bite are much more common, in the
records, than deaths. Dr. Corson, of Savannah, Georgia, reports
six cases, characterized by agonizing pains, spasmodic
contractions like those of tetanus, and grave general symptoms.
All recovered. From Anaheim, California, a fatal case is reported
by Dr. Bickford, death occurring twenty hours after the bite.
William A. Ball, of San Bernardino, California, gives a vivid
account of his sensations after being bitten on the groin by a
red-spotted spider, the data being attested by his physician.
Shortly after being bitten, he began to suffer great agony, with
convulsive contractions of the muscles.
"The pains in my hip-joints, chest, and thighs grew rapidly more
violent, until it seemed that the bones in these parts of my body
were being crushed to fragments." He was seriously ill for ten
days.
WORSE TEXAN THE "DEADLY" COPPERHEAD
It may be that only under certain uncomprehended conditions is
the venom of the Latrodectus effective. Inoculation of guinea
pigs with the poison has been without any resultant symptoms.
Scientific experimenters have suffered themselves to be bitten
and have experienced no ill effects. The foreign cousins of the
American species, however, have as evil a repute as the
"mactans." The "katipo," found in sedges on the beach of New
Zealand, is dreaded by the Maoris, who traditionally refuse to
sleep nearer than half a stone's throw from the water, that being
the extent of range of the spider. The Latrodecti of Corsica,
Algeria, and France are infamous in the lore of the country folk,
which fact must be regarded as strongly evidential, when their
insignificant appearance is taken into account.
Only in America is there no popular fear of this really
formidable little creature. Yet it is found in almost every part
of the United States, though by no means one of the commoner
spiders. In the past five years I have seen two specimens at my
country place in central New York, and have heard of a dozen
others. If people understood generally that this rather
ornamental insect is both more perilous to life and health, and
rather more prone to attack human beings, than the
superstitiously dreaded "deadly" copperhead, there would probably
be a heavy mortality in the Latrodectus family at the hands of
energetic house-cleaners.
THE RISE OF THE KISSING-BUG
Years ago the United States Bureau of Entomology received from an
exasperated clergyman in Georgia a dead insect, enclosed in this
note:
"Prof. Riley: What is this devil? He sailed down on my hedge. I
took hold of his lone front leg, and as quick as lightning he
speared me under my thumb nail and I dropped him. My thumb and
whole arm are still paining me . . . "
The miscreant was a fine specimen of Reduvius personatus, the
cone-nosed blood-sucker, soon thereafter to achieve heights of
newspaper notoriety together with its cousin, Melanolestes
picipes, as the "kissing-bug." How many persons died (in type)
from kissing-bug bites in the year of enlightened civilization,
1899, will never be known. But from far and near, from California
and Connecticut and the Carolinas, from Minnesota and Maryland
and Maine, came startling reports of this hitherto unfamed
creature's depredations upon the human countenance. Thereby the
spider family was relieved of much unmerited odium, for it is
more than suspected by entomologists that a large proportion of
so-called spider bites are really the work of the more vicious
but less formidable-appearing kissing-bug, as is often evidenced
by the nature of the puncture.
The kissing-bug is about half an inch in length, flat-backed,
shaped in geometrically regular angles, and armed with a large,
hard beak. It is this beak which does the damage, for the
kissing-bug is a fighter and will risk a prod at anything that
gives it cause of offense. Testimony is not lacking that it
sometimes punctures the human epidermis with a view to obtaining
blood at first hand instead of from its natural prey.
But the curious feature of the kissing-bug's bite is its after
effect. Neither the southern Reduvius nor the northern
Melanolestes possesses any venom apparatus. Now, an insect
without fangs (or sting), duct, and poison gland, can no more
envenom the object of its attack than a fish can kick a man to
death. Yet we find such authorities as Dr. L. O. Howard, the
United States Entomologist, Professor Le Conte, Mr. Charles
Drury, of Cincinnati, and others, including a mass of medical
witnesses, declaring from first-hand observation that the
kissing-bug bite causes much swelling and severe pain. Le Conte,
indeed, compares the effect to snake bite, and states that people
are seriously affected for a week. A case is recorded from
Holland, South Carolina, where there were vomiting and marked
weakness. Mr. Schwartz, an expert of the Bureau of Entomology at
Washington, was bitten twice upon the hand and testifies to the
painful effects. In 1899, when the species was very common in
Washington, the Emergency Hospital had a long list of patients
who appeared on the records under the heading, "Insect Bite."
THE DECLINE OF THE KISSING-BUG
Thus was started the general "scare," a reporter with a keen nose
for news having made a legitimate "sensation" from the repeated
entries on the hospital roster. From Washington it spread over
the country, and became the topic of the day, until any insect
bite or sting--mosquito, hornet, bedbug, or whatnot--was
magnified by the hysteria of the patient and the credulousness of
the public into a "dangerous" instance of kissing-bug poisoning.
Reports of fatal cases, however, invariably proved to be canards.
For explanation of the marked local symptoms resultant upon
attack by the insect, science has been hard put to it. The
general symptoms, observed in a few cases, where violent, may
probably be ascribed to shock and nervousness. But the marked
swelling and pain cannot be thus dismissed. Medical men believe
that the insect, in its various prowlings for food, thrusts its
exploring beak into decaying animal and vegetable matter and
thus, in a sense, so poisons it that when it comes into contact
with human blood, a rapid local infection is set up--not through
any specific poison, as in spider bite or bee sting, but by the
agency of the putrefactive germs collected on the weapon.
Not the least interesting phase of the kissing-bug scare is the
rapidity and completeness of its decadence. It is but ten years
ago that the newspapers rang with it; that victims of the bite,
in every city, were fleeing, white-faced and racked with
forebodings, to doctor or hospital. To-day, both the Melanolestes
and the "conenose" are abroad in the land. Doubtless, upon
provocation, they are "spearing" others as they speared the
outraged clergyman. But that's all. The bepunctured ones do not
seek the consolations of medical or journalistic attention. They
put a little wet mud or peroxide on the place and let it go at
that. Exit another bogy!
OUR REAL POISON PERIL
One venomous creature there is in this country which may justly
be termed a public peril, in the widest sense. Proportionately to
population, more victims fall to it yearly in the United States
than to the dreaded cobra in India. Some twelve thousand
Americans are killed every year by its bite. Three hundred
thousand more are made seriously ill from the after effects.
Unfortunately, the virus works so slowly that alarm is stilled.
The victims do not sicken at once. The bite is forgotten; but ten
days or two weeks after, the subject falls into a fever. His
blood is poisoned within him. Eventually, in extreme cases, he
becomes delirious, succumbs to a stupor, and dies.
Yet, because there is nothing horrific to the sensation-loving
imagination in the malaria-bearing mosquito, public inertia or
ignorance tolerates it with a grin and permits it to breed in
city and country alike throughout the length and breadth of the
nation. Compared with it, as a real menace, all the combined
brood of snakes, scorpions, centipedes, tarantulas, and other pet
bugaboos of our childish romanticism are utterly negligible; are
as figment to reality, as shadow to substance. It is perhaps
characteristic of our wryly humorous American temperament that we
should have invested the unimportant danger with all the
shuddering attributes of horror, and have made of the real peril
a joke to be perennially hailed with laughter in a thousand
thoughtless prints.
*****************************************************************
Vol. XXIII October 1910 No. 4
Lassoing Wild Animals In Africa {pages 526-538}
By GUY H. SCULL
Field Manager of the Buffalo Jones African Expedition
II
SOMEHOW everything seemed to happen on moving day with the
Buffalo Jones Expedition in East Africa. Exactly why this should
have been it is impossible to tell. Perhaps the reason may be
found in the fact that a considerable part of our time was
occupied in moving. No doubt the circumstance could be traced to
some such perfectly reasonable cause. But we chose to look upon
it otherwise.
When an outfit like ours has been working for a while in the open
country--especially when the undertaking has no precedent and the
outcome is decidedly uncertain--the little happenings of each day
gradually grow to have a peculiar significance of their own, and
finally a brand-new set of superstitions is formed and half
jokingly believed in by every one concerned. In this way an
expedition comes to be regarded as lucky or unlucky, or lucky on
certain days, or at certain hours of the day, or at certain
periods of the moon. The wide reaches of the African veldt have
something to do with it, perhaps.
These superstitions are temporary, local, and often purely
personal affairs. Means, being a cowboy, believed that when he
rode his big-boned bay the drive would be successful. The native
dog-boy insisted that when the long-eared bloodhound and the
little white terrier were coupled together on the march, the rest
of the pack would come through without mishap. Loveless swore by
a particular piece of rope, and Mac--which is short for
Mohammed--discovered propitious omens on every conceivable
occasion.
It was on the first day's march into the Kedong Valley that we
had roped the wart-hog. On the journey from Sewell's Farm to
Rugged Rocks we had rounded up and photographed the eland. Again,
it was on the trek of March 8 to the Wangai River that we had
caught our only glimpses of rhinoceros and lion--faint chances of
making a capture, but still chances, and better than no signs at
all.
And thus, merely because it had turned out so in the past every
member of the expedition had come to entertain a semi-serious
belief that something momentous was bound to happen on moving
day.
A general feeling of expectancy pervaded the entire safari when
we broke camp at the Wangai River at dawn of a hazy morning. The
sky was clear of clouds, but behind the hills of the Mau
escarpment a veldt fire had been burning for several days, so
that a veil of smoke was seen hanging in the air as the dawn
broadened into day. The smell of the burning veldt and the
nearness of the fire lent an oppressive warmth to the still
morning.
"You two boys had better carry your heavy ropes," the Colonel
said at starting. "We might meet something."
We had finished with the Kedong and Rift valleys. We had hunted
every corner of the district within striking distance of the
water. And we had had success of a kind. Cheetah, eland,
hartebeest, and serval-cat we had roped and tied and
photographed. But the really big game had so far escaped us. For
this reason we had decided to take the road over the Mau, where
the smoke haze hung heavy, and so on into the Sotik country,
where both lion and rhino were said to abound.
For the first ten miles of the march our way led across
untraveled country, toward the two deep ruts in the veldt that
were known as the wagon road. We had an extra ox-wagon with us
now, in charge of Mr. Curry, an Africander, who lived with his
partner on a farm on the border of the Sotik, and who on his
return journey home with his wagon had agreed to help us carry
supplies. Curry was slight and round-shouldered, with light
yellow hair. His face was burned a bright red, excepting his
nose, which was white where the skin was peeling. He had a
peculiar, slow, drawling way of talking--when he talked at all,
which was seldom. Being an inhabitant of the district into which
we were going, he was naturally subjected at first to a number of
questions in regard to the big game there.
"Plenty of rhino in your part of the world, I suppose?"
"Y--as," drawled Curry.
"And lion, too, I imagine?"
"Y--as."
"Ought to get some giraffe on the way, hadn't we?"
"Y--as."
"Rhino pretty scarce just now, though, aren't they?"
"Y--as," Curry answered placidly.
Thus it soon became apparent that Curry's chief ambition was to
agree pleasantly with whatever anybody said, which tended to
discredit any information he had to impart. So, as a matter of
course, the questions ceased, and when no more were asked him
Curry's conversation ceased also.
It was rough going for the ox-wagons those first ten miles, and
they made slow time of it along the base of the hills. According
to our custom on the march, the Colonel and the two cowboys, the
picture department (composed of Kearton and Gobbet), and Ulyate
(the white hunter) and myself rode in a widely extended line in
front of the safari, sweeping the country for game. It was hot at
the base of the hills--so hot that when your bridle hand dropped
inadvertently to the pommel of the saddle, the brass mounting
there seemed to burn you. Not a breath of air was stirring, and
the sun shone down blazing through the wisps of smoke haze, and
the heat waves rose from the dead, parched veldt so that the
distant southern volcano looked all quivering.
Then from out the blurred vista in front little by little a clump
of comparatively large trees began to take definite shape.
Another half mile farther, and we saw that something was moving
among the trees as high up as the topmost branches.
"Giraffe," said Ulyate, and no sooner had he spoken the word than
the great, towering animals wheeled and fled from their shelter
with that long-legged gallop of theirs which looks so easy and
slow, but which carries them over the ground as fast as a speedy
horse can run.
The Colonel and the two cowboys set off at a hand gallop in a
vain attempt to round them up and drive them back to the cameras.
The race was a hopeless one for the horsemen from the start. But,
according to the general method of operations adopted by the
Colonel from the very beginning, no chance of a capture, however
slim it might appear, was to remain untried so long as men and
horses could endure.
The two ruts of the wagon road led close by the grove of trees,
and when the rest of us reached this spot and dismounted to await
results, the three leading horsemen had disappeared long ago into
the scrub-grown country to the south.
As noon approached, the heat became more and more oppressive. The
cameras had been screwed to the tripods and covered with our
coats to protect them from the sun. The horses grazed near by.
Mac was sent up one of the trees to warn us of the approach of
anything like a giraffe, and the rest of us sat on the ground
round the bole in the small circle of thin shade and lazily
watched the black ants always crawling and climbing and
zigzagging back and forth over the network of fallen twigs and
leaves. It was too hot to talk--it was too hot to sleep or think.
And by and by the ox-wagons came up, and the oxen brought the
flies. For a time then the only sounds were the slow crunching of
the feeding horses and an occasional inarticulate snarl from some
one or other who foolishly tried to brush the flies away from his
face.
Eventually, after a long time had passed, Means rode into the
grove of trees, un-heralded by Mac and alone. The bay horse had
fallen badly, wrenching his rider's back where once he had been
hurt before. Means took his saddle off, threw it on the ground,
and sat on it.
"He dropped into a pig hole," he explained, "an' hopped out again
as neat as could be. But in hoppin' out he hopped into another,
an' that just naturally discouraged him an' he come down with
me."
No comments were made, nor did Means expect any. But evidently he
had considered it only justice to the bay that the mishap should
receive from him the proper explanation.
Then Loveless returned, also alone. He made a few grumbling
remarks about its being all nonsense to run the horses to death
when there was no chance at all. But as his listeners showed not
the slightest interest in the matter, he, too, relapsed into
silence.
The Colonel was the last to come in. He rode straight to the tree
where the company were gathered, dismounted, and sat down. Then
he spoke to the world at large.
"They must be about here somewhere," he said. "And being about
here somewhere, we'll get 'em yet."
When the shadow beneath the tree began to lengthen toward the
east, the safari shook itself together and prepared to move on
once more. But this time, instead of occupying his customary
position at the head of the column, the Colonel lagged behind.
Immediately after leaving the grove of trees, the road commenced
to climb the first rises of the Mau escarpment. As we mounted
higher up the hillside, the view behind us opened out into a
grand panorama of the two valleys and their sentinel volcanoes,
with the smoke haze hanging over all. For a time, those of us who
were in front rode half sideways in the saddle, looking back over
the way we had come and over the district we had grown to know so
well. Then we crossed a small, level park that formed the crest
of the first hill, and as we moved down the western slope the
view behind us disappeared and the new country spread before us.
Kearton was riding with his head sunk on his chest like a sick
man. Gobbet asked if anything was wrong with him.
"Nothing bad; too much heat this morning, likely."
"Want to hunt a bit of shade and lie up awhile? "
"No, I'll go on."
Gobbet shrugged his shoulders. "You're the judge," he said.
Hill after hill stretched away in front to the one upstanding
kopje that marked the top of the Mau. The district was wooded
with small, twisted trees, and the fire had crossed here, so that
the ground was black and the air smelled stronger of burning.
Presently Means stopped. "I'd better wait till the Colonel comes
along," he explained. "The Colonel don't carry any weapons."
Loveless stopped with him, and, as Ulyate was somewhere behind
with the ox-wagons and porters, this left Kearton, Gobbet, and
myself to ride on by ourselves. For a mile or more the road
lifted and dipped with monotonous regularity, and the burnt land
was still on either hand, without a sign of life anywhere to be
seen. So when the sun really began to decline toward the west,
Gobbet, who had once been assistant manager of the Alhambra Music
Hall in Brighton, told the story of Harry Lauder and the liquid
air biscuits, and it seemed to do Kearton good. Kearton had just
told Gobbet to quit his lying, when all three of us realized that
for the last half minute we had been unconsciously listening to
the beat of a galloping horse on the road behind.
The next instant Ulyate pulled up in a cloud of dust.
"Colonel wants you," he said. "They've rounded up a giraffe."
We wheeled the horses and started back on the run.
"About--three--miles! Left--of the--road!" Ulyate shouted after
us.
There were various reasons that called for haste. How long the
ropers could keep the giraffe rounded up was especially
uncertain, and then, besides, it was near the end of the day and
soon the light would be too far gone for a picture.
We met the line of porters and they scattered right and left.
Farther on, the ox-teams crowded one side to give us room. Then
we came upon the four special porters with the cameras. Kearton
took his machine on the saddle with him, and Gobbet caught up the
tripod from another pair of outstretched arms.
When we reached the bit of clearing and looked to the left of the
road, we saw the long neck and head of a giraffe sharply outlined
against the sky.
The giraffe stood motionless. His feet were spread a little apart
as though he was prepared to dash away again at the first
opportunity, and he gazed in a curious way first at one, then at
another of the three ropers that surrounded him and now sat their
horses, waiting. There was still enough light left for a picture,
but Kearton was nearly done.
"Give him a minute's breather," said the Colonel. " We'll hold
the critter till he's ready."
We took Kearton off his horse and stretched him on the ground and
poured the lukewarm water from a canteen on his head. Meanwhile
Cobbet screwed the camera to the tripod and set it up.
By the time Gobbet had finished, Kearton was on his feet again.
From his position near by, Means ventured the opinion that it was
too much excitement that had knocked him over, and Kearton swore
back at him pleasantly and went to work.
A high-pitched yell from the Colonel sent the giraffe away across
the open with that clumsy-looking, powerful gallop that is all
his own, and with his long neck plunging slowly back and forth.
Loveless's black, one of the fastest horses in the string, had
hard work to gain on the giraffe, expecially as the animal
swerved quickly at the last moment and fled down the eastern
slope of the hill through the scrub where the going was none too
good.
It was a difficult throw--and a new one for a Western cowboy--to
send the noose so far up into the air over the head perched high
on the long, swaying neck.
But at the first attempt Loveless succeeded, and then reined in
gently so as not to throw the beast, because a giraffe would fall
heavily, and would very likely break his neck or a leg if tumbled
over.
Finally he was brought to a standstill, his feet spread apart as
before, and for a while the two stood facing each other--the
cowboy and the towering giraffe, with the rope from the saddle
horn leading up at a considerable angle to the shoulders of the
prize. The rest of the hunt soon gathered about them. Although
the light was rapidly failing, Kearton finished what was left of
his roll of film. The whir of the camera ended with a peculiar
flapping sound.
"That's all," said Kearton, and sank down on a near-by stone.
But Loveless and the giraffe continued to face each other
undisturbed.
"Well?" said Loveless, presently.
"Well?" echoed the Colonel.
"Well, how are we going to take this rope off him? We've got none
to spare, you know."
"Get a ladder," suggested Means.
"No, we won't need a ladder," said the Colonel seriously, "but
we'll have to throw him, after all. We can do it gently, I guess,
without hurting him."
Accordingly, Means roped the giraffe by one hind leg and pulled
it out from under him, so that he sank easily to the ground and
both the ropes were loosened and freed.
The sun had set and the short twilight was rapidly deepening. The
ox-wagons and porters were several miles ahead. So we packed up
the camera, coiled up the ropes, mounted, and rode away, and the
giraffe raised himself on his haunches among the bushes and
watched us go.
We camped at a water hole that night, and started on again the
next morning in the darkness before the dawn, with a porter ahead
carrying a lantern to show the way. With ox-wagons it is a three
days' journey from that water hole to the Guas Nyiro River at the
border of the Sotik. The country through which we passed
continued to be the same as that of the Mau escarpment--a
succession of low hills and shallow valleys covered with the
small, twisted trees. And there was plenty of water on the way.
But there was no game in the district.
We had been told before starting that we need not expect to see
anything on the way, because antelope, zebra, and such like
animals avoid the wooded section so as not to be caught unaware
by lions, and, since the prey seek the safety of the open plains,
the lions are compelled to follow.
In spite of this fact, and although the dense woods and broken
ground generally forced the safari to keep to the road, the
cowboys were always ready and the cameras, always loaded with
film. But the land on either side remained silent and deserted.
And each day's journey was the same as the one before; the start
in the gray of the morning, the long, hot ride, with the road
gently rising and falling over the hills, and the sudden cool of
the evening when the sun went down. At times the camera
department would take moving pictures of the wagons and porters
crossing a river, where an especially picturesque bit of scenery
offered an attractive setting. Occasionally Means, as he rode
along, would commence singing one of the songs of our Western
plains, verse after verse, seemingly without end, recounting in
detail some local historical event, such as an Indian attack on
an army post, a shooting affair at a dance, or a train-robber's
hanging. He would sing more to himself than to anybody else, and
if this began to bore him at all, he would stop in the middle and
leave the story untold.
Then sometimes, when we outspanned for an hour at noon, the four
special camera porters would give imitations of Kearton and
Gobbet taking pictures, of Loveless shoeing horses, or of Means
in the act of roping. And in the evenings, when the day's march
was done and the outpost fires had been lighted, the talk of the
company would turn to our chances of finding luck in the Sotik
country that lay ahead.
In the afternoon of March 16 we reached Webb's Farm, in the Guas
Nyiro valley, which lies at the edge of the big plains. In this
neighborhood there were three farms--Webb's, Curry's, and
Agate's--and on the evening of our arrival some of their men paid
a visit to the camp. They had heard of the expedition, and each
in turn examined the horses, the dogs, the ropes, and the
saddles, and then, like the hunters at Nairobi, asked the
inevitable question:
"But how are you going to do it?"
"Oh, we'll do it somehow," the Colonel replied good-naturedly.
And the visitors shook their heads a little and smiled and
changed the subject.
But to attempt to rope a rhinoceros or a lion required fresh
horses, and ever since we had left Nairobi, nearly a fortnight
ago, we had worked our horses hard every day. Now that we had
reached the land of the big game, the Colonel for the first time
called a day of rest. So we loafed about camp from sunrise to
sunset and by evening were heartily sick of it all.
Perhaps we had expected too much of this Sotik country; perhaps
the expedition was running, temporarily, in a streak of bad luck;
but the fact remains that when we resumed hunting on March 18,
disappointment only followed disappointment.
As we had done in the Rift Valley, so here we adopted the method
of sweeping the country with a widely extended line. The first
day we rode far to the southward, to the Hot Springs and back,
and found nothing, and an unreasoning depression settled upon the
expedition. The next day we rode still farther, to the westward
this time, and again found nothing, and so the depression
deepened. Also on the afternoon of this day it rained heavily,
and Curry agreed with Ulyate that this probably meant the
beginning of the rainy season, which was already overdue.
That night at the supper table the Colonel spoke his mind. The
rain was dripping through the canvas fly overhead, and the
Colonel wore his broad-brimmed hat to help keep the water off his
plate.
"There's no use hanging round here any longer," he said, "not a
bit of use. We haven't seen anything, nor a sign of anything.
When the rains begin in earnest, this ground will soften fast an'
the horses will get bogged an' we'll have to quit. So from now on
we've got to work fast. Now Ulyate says there's water about
twelve miles from here to the north--called the Soda Swamp. We'll
start for the Soda Swamp in the morning."
Again it was moving day. The morning dawned fine after the rain,
and the air was clear, and the country looked greener and fresher
than it had ever looked before. By the time the sun rose, the
first wagon was packed, so the safari set out on the journey,
leaving the second wagon to load and follow our tracks, for there
was no road to the Soda Swamp.
At the last moment the Colonel decided that he and the cowboys
might just as well make a circuit to the westward of the line of
march on the off chance of finding game.
"We covered that district pretty thoroughly yesterday," he said.
"But still, you never can tell."
Yet nobody thought it worth while for the camera department to go
with them, and so Kearton and Gobbet and the four special porters
trailed along with the slow, plodding wagon. In the first place,
the wagons would follow the shortest route and the horses would
be none the worse for an easy day; in the second, if by the
remotest chance the Colonel flushed anything worth while, he
could more easily find the cameras.
Curry had remained behind to bring on the second load, and soon
Ulyate left us to make a detour past Agate's farm to procure
another sack of rice that was badly needed. Ours was a large
safari, and the details of transportation required close
attention.
The morning wore on. The sky remained clear and the heat became
intense. The direction in which we were traveling led us along
the border of the plains, through small green parks, scattered
groves of trees, and scrub.
So far as the mounted men were concerned, the march was a
succession of rides and halts. The heavily laden ox-wagon
traveled slowly, and it soon became our custom to dismount in a
bit of shade and let the wagon pass ahead about a mile, when we
would mount again and catch up with it and then repeat the
process.
At one of these places there was a grass-grown mound against
which we sat, leaning comfortably, and speculated on the distance
we had come and the distance we had to go. When, after a while,
it became evident that we should never agree in the matter, the
conversation altered to a sort of spasmodic affair.
"I thought this district was so full of big game that you
couldn't sleep at night for the lions roaring around you," Gobbet
remarked lazily.
"Wait till you get among them," said Kearton. "Sais, keep that
horse farther away; he'll be walking on us next."
"Well, I haven't been kept awake any yet," Gobbet replied.
"I wonder where that wagon's got to," and Kearton raised himself
on one elbow and peered ahead from beneath the down-tilted brim
of his helmet. Then he lay back again and shut his eyes.
"Means is coming," he said.
The announcement occasioned no surprise. Undoubtedly Means had
some reason for returning over the trail, and when he reached the
mound we should probably learn what he wanted.
Means dismounted and sat down beside us. "We've found a rhino
over in the next valley yonder," he remarked, and nodded his head
toward the west.
"A rhino is no matter to joke about," said Gobbet. "Please
remember that in future."
"I'm not jokin'," said Means. "Colonel's watchin' him. Loveless
stopped halfway here, about three miles off. Colonel sent me to
bring the rest of you and get the heavy rope."
"Is that right, Means?" Kearton asked sharply.
"Sure."
"Come on, then."
In five minutes we had overtaken the wagon and stopped it, and
while Means clambered up on to the load to hunt for the heavy
rope, Kearton collected the camera porters and started ahead with
them in the direction Means pointed out.
But Means could not find the rope he wanted. He threw off half
the load without success.
"It's on the other wagon. There's where it is," he finally
concluded. "No time to wait now. Other wagon likely hasn't
started yet. We'll have to do with what we've got."
We rode on at an easy jog to keep the horses fresh, and at the
end of half an hour we came upon Loveless waiting for us just
beneath the crest of a rise. He had off-saddled his horse and had
turned him loose to graze a bit before the coming work, and a few
minutes were occupied while Loveless saddled up again and Kearton
and Gobbet adjusted their cameras and took them on their horses.
Finally every one was ready, and we set forth once more on a wide
detour to the north to approach the beast from down the wind.
Loveless gave us the latest news: "The Colonel came over the rise
a half hour ago and said the rhino was laying down resting quiet.
The Colonel went back again at once to keep watch."
As we proceeded farther on the circuit and began to ride down the
gentle slope into the adjacent valley, we slowed down the pace to
a cautious walk. No one spoke, and on the grass of the veldt the
tread of the horses made scarcely any sound.
Suddenly the Colonel appeared, walking toward us, bent low. He
had backed out o' his hiding-place behind a clump of scrub.
"He's laying down over there about a hundred yards away," he
whispered. "Now we want to catch the start of the show. You boys
ready?"
Means tightened his cinch, and shook his rope loose and coiled it
up again. Loveless said he was ready. One of the saises produced
the Colonel's horse from behind another clump of scrub, and
Kearton dismounted and began creeping forward with his camera.
"Don't start him up till I get my position," he cautioned. "I'll
wave my hand."
On account of the growth of low bushes, we could not see the
rhino, but in silence we watched Kearton tiptoeing farther and
farther ahead toward the spot where the Colonel had said the
beast was lying down. The time was approximately a little after
noon. The wind that was blowing was light, and same to us hot
over the sunny reaches of veldt. The sky was cloudless.
Then the three ropers commenced maneuvering forward, swinging out
a little to the right. Kearton stopped. He set up his camera and
sighted it, and took out his handkerchief and carefully wiped the
lens.
When Kearton waved his hand, the Colonel's yell shattered the
stillness and the great beast heaved up out of the grass and
tossed his head and sniffed the air and snorted. The horsemen
rode full tilt at him, and with surprising quickness the rhino
wheeled and broke away south down the valley.
For a good three miles the rhino ran straight and fast. Finally
he came into more open country, which was dotted here and
therewith small thorn trees. Here, also, in one place there was a
fair-sized pool of water, left over from the rains of the night
before. The rhino selected this pool as a good position from
which to act on the defensive. He splashed into the water,
stopped, and faced the horsemen.
Then followed a few minutes' respite for all concerned. The
horses were panting heavily after the sharp run, and the rhino's
position in the pool rendered it difficult to approach him for a
chance to throw a rope. Evidently considering himself safe for
the moment, the beast rolled once or twice in the water and then
stood on guard as before, but with his black sides dripping.
"We've got to get him out of that," said the Colonel. "A horse
wouldn't stand a show there. Now when I get him to charge me, you
boys stand by."
Before the Colonel finished speaking, he was already edging
toward the pool. For fifteen yards the rhino watched him coming.
Then with a great snort he charged out of the water, sending the
white spray flying in every direction, and the Colonel had to
ride hard to keep ahead of the tossing horn. But Means was after
the rhino like a flash, and with a quick throw caught him round
the neck. The big bay fell back on his haunches and the rope
snapped like twine.
"We'll miss that heavy rope to-day," Means said.
"We'll tie him up with what we've got," the Colonel replied.
"Only we've got to tire him out some first. What we'll do is to
make him charge us one after the other, so he'll run three times
to the horses' running once."
It was a full half hour before the next attempt was made to throw
a rope. Time after time the rhino came plunging out of the water
to charge the nearest horseman. Our Western horses proved to be
only just a trifle faster than the rhino, so that each time the
beast nearly caught them. Besides, here and there, the ground was
bad with ant-bear holes, which had to be avoided, for a fall
would mean disaster. But little by little it became apparent that
the rhino's continual charging was beginning to produce an
effect.
In the meanwhile the rest of the chase was coming up. In the
distance we could see them hurrying down the valley--horsemen and
porters considerably scattered, as if each one followed a route
of his own choosing Kearton led on his big chestnut. He was
carrying the heavy camera under his arm, the tripod over his
shoulder. The reins were hanging loose over his saddle horn, his
heels were thumping the horse's sides, and the perspiration was
streaming down his face.
"We lost you," he panted. "How's it going? What a picture!"
Mac, the Mohammedan, and Aro, the Masai warrior, took the
apparatus from him, and he dismounted and went to work.
At the second attempt to rope the beast, Loveless caught him by
one hind leg, and the rhino decided to shift his base of
operations to an ant-hill in the neighboring clearing. His mode
of progression was to walk on three legs and to drag the black
horse after him with the other. He reached the ant-hill and
demolished it and paused for a breathing spell.
The chase followed after, and Kearton went into action on the
north and Gobbet on the south, near a small thorn tree, with a
negro porter beside him. The rhino caught sight of Gobbet's
camera and charged. The porter went up the tree like a flash.
Gobbet was bent over, looking through his view-finder, which, of
course, gave him no idea of how fast the beast was bearing down
on him nor how close he had already come.
"Look out!" yelled the Colonel.
Gobbet glanced up over the top of the camera and made a jump for
the tree. But the porter was already in the branches, and the
tree was so small there was not room for two, and Gobbet had to
run for it. The next second, with a powerful upward stroke of his
horn, the rhino sent the apparatus flying. Then Means succeeded
in attracting his attention and he charged the horseman instead.
Gobbet picked up the debris, found that the tripod-head was split
clean in two as with an axe, found the camera itself undamaged,
found there was enough head left to support the camera, quickly
mounted his machine again, and was just in time to catch the end
of the rhino's chase after Means.
And all the while Kearton had his camera trained upon the scene
in which his assistant was playing the conspicuous part.
"I hope I got that good," he said; "it'll make fine
action--fine."
From one position to another, from ant-hill to thorn tree and
back to ant-hill once more, the fight went on through the long,
hot afternoon. Ropes were thrown and caught and broken, mended
and thrown again. The horses were pulled, all standing, one way
and another. Rolls of film were exposed and replaced by fresh
ones. The rhino sulked and stormed and charged in turn.
At the end of the fourth hour Loveless had one short length of
light line left. The rest of the ropes were dangling, broken,
from the rhino's legs and neck as he stood at bay over the ruins
of the ant-hill.
The sun was rapidly canting toward the west. The continual work
in the intense heat, without food or water, was beginning to tell
on both horses and men. The rhino was weakening faster. But only
one hour of daylight remained, and if the beast could hold out
till dark we should lose him.
There was the dead stump of a tree with the roots protruding
lying in the grass near by. The Colonel told Means to fasten the
stump to the last piece of line, and Loveless rode toward
Kearton's machine, past the rhino, dragging the stump behind him.
As the Colonel had foreseen, the beast charged at the stump, and
the loose ropes hanging from him became entangled in the roots.
So on they went at a run, first Loveless, then the stump,
bounding over the ground, then the charging rhino, headed
straight for Kearton's camera. The Masai warrior stood by the
tripod with his long spear poised high, and Kearton turned the
handle and shouted at Loveless:
"How many times have I got to tell you not to come straight into
the lens? Bring him on at an angle! . . . I don't want to be
unreasonable," he added, when the rhino stopped, "but you ought
to have learned better by this time."
Then, by hauling in gently, Loveless succeeded in recovering two
of the ropes, and they were pieced together and thrown again,
catching the rhino by one hind leg. Both the cowboys put their
horses to work pulling forward on the rope, and they lifted that
one hind leg ahead. The tired beast shifted his great body after
it, and thus step by step the horses dragged him up to a tree,
where Loveless passed the end of the rope two turns around the
bole and made it fast.
The rhino charged once just before the knot was tied, and
Loveless had to jump into the branches through the thorns to
escape. He charged again, rather feebly this time, trying to get
free, but the rope held well and tripped him up. After that he
stood quietly at the end of his tether, watching the camera in a
sullen way while Kearton took his picture with the last few feet
of film.
By this time the light was almost gone, the films were finished,
horses and men were nearly done, and, besides, it was moving day
and high time we resumed the march.
In the November number Mr. Scull will relate the adventures of
the Buffalo Jones African Expedition in Lassoing Lion.
*****************************************************************
Vol. XXIII No. 5 NOVEMBER, 1910
The Homely Heroine {pages 602-608}
By EDNA FERBER
MILLIE WHITCOMB, of the fancy goods and notions, beckoned me with
her finger. I had been standing at Kate O'Malley's counter,
pretending to admire her new basket-weave suitings; but in
reality reveling in her droll account of how, in the train coming
up from Chicago, Mrs. Judge Porterfield had worn the negro
porter's coat over her chilly shoulders in mistake for her
husband's. Kate O'Malley can tell a funny story in a way to make
the after-dinner pleasantries of a Washington diplomat sound like
the clumsy jests told around the village grocery stove.
"I wanted to tell you that I read that last story of yours," said
Millie, sociably, when I had strolled over to her counter, "and I
liked it, all but the heroine. She had an `adorable throat' and
hair that `waved away from her white brow,' and eyes that `now
were blue and now gray.' Say, why don't you write a story about
an ugly girl?"
"My land!" protested I. "It's bad enough trying to make them
accept my stories as it is. That last heroine was a raving
beauty, but she came back eleven times before the editor of
Blakely's succumbed to her charms."
Millie's fingers were busy straightening the contents of a tray
of combs and imitation jet barrettes. Millie's fingers were not
intended for that task. They are slender, tapering fingers,
pink-tipped and sensitive.
"I should think," mused she, rubbing a cloudy piece of jet with a
bit of soft cloth, "that they'd welcome a homely one with relief.
These goddesses are so cloying."
Millie Whitcomb's black hair is touched with soft mists of gray,
and she wears lavender shirtwaists and white stocks edged with
lavender. There is a Colonial air about her that has nothing to
do with celluloid combs and imitation jet barrettes. It breathes
of dim old rooms, rich with the tones of mahogany and old brass,
and Millie in the midst of it, gray-gowned, a soft white fichu
crossed upon her breast.
In our town the clerks are not the pert and gum-chewing young
persons that story-writers are wont to describe. The girls at
Bascom's are institutions. They know us all by our first names,
and our lives are as an open book to them. Kate O'Malley, who has
been at Bascom's for so many years that she is rumored to have
stock in the company, may be said to govern the fashions of our
town. She is wont to say, when we express a fancy for gray as the
color of our new spring suit:
"Oh, now, Nellie, don't get gray again. You had it year before
last, and don't you think it was just the least leetle bit
trying? Let me show you that green that came in yesterday. I said
the minute I clapped my eyes on it that it was just the color for
you, with your brown hair and all."
And we end by deciding on the green.
The girls at Bascom's are not gossips--they are too busy for
that--but they may be said to be delightfully well informed. How
could they be otherwise when we go to Bascom's for our wedding
dresses and party favors and baby flannels? There is news at
Bascom's that out daily paper never hears of, and wouldn't dare
to print if it did.
So when Millie Whitcomb, of the fancy goods and notions,
expressed her hunger for a homely heroine, I did not resent the
suggestion. On the contrary, it sent me home in thoughtful mood,
for Millie Whitcomb has acquired a knowledge of human nature in
the dispensing of her fancy goods and notions. It set me casting
about for a really homely heroine.
There never has been a really ugly heroine in fiction. Authors
have started bravely out to write of an unlovely woman, but they
never have had the courage to allow her to remain plain. On Page
237 she puts on a black lace dress and red roses, and the
combination brings out unexpected tawny lights in her hair, and
olive tints in her cheeks, and there she is, the same old
beautiful heroine. Even in the "Duchess " books one finds the
simple Irish girl, on donning a green corduroy gown cut square at
the neck, transformed into a wild-rose beauty, at sight of whom a
ball-room is hushed into admiring awe. There's the case of Jane
Eyre, too. She is constantly described as plain and mouse-like,
but there are covert hints as to her gray eyes and slender figure
and clear skin, and we have a sneaking notion that she wasn't
such a fright after all. Therefore, when I tell you that I am
choosing Pearlie Schultz as my leading lady you are to understand
that she is ugly, not only when the story opens, but to the
bitter end. In the first place, Pearlie is fat. Not plump, or
rounded, or dimpled, or deliciously curved, but FAT. She bulges
in all the wrong places, including her chin. (Sister, who has a
way of snooping over my desk in my absence, says that I may as
well drop this now, because nobody would ever read it, anyway,
least of all any sane editor. I protest when I discover that Sis
has been over my papers. It bothers me. But she says you have to
do these things when you have a genius in the house, and cites
the case of Kipling's "Recessional," which was rescued from the
depths of his wastebasket by his wife.)
Pearlie Schultz used to sit on the front porch summer evenings
and watch the couples stroll by, and weep in her heart. A fat
girl with a fat girl's soul is a comedy. But a fat girl with a
thin girl's soul is a tragedy. Pearlie, in spite of her two
hundred pounds, had the soul of a willow wand.
The walk in front of Pearlie's house was guarded by a row of big
trees that cast kindly shadows. The strolling couples used to
step gratefully into the embrace of these shadows, and from them
into other embraces. Pearlie, sitting on the porch, could see
them dimly, although they could not see her. She could not help
remarking that these strolling couples were strangely lacking in
sprightly conversation. Their remarks were but fragmentary,
disjointed affairs, spoken in low tones with a queer, tremulous
note in them. When they reached the deepest, blackest, kindliest
shadow, which fell just before the end of the row of trees, the
strolling couples almost always stopped, and then there came a
quick movement, and a little smothered cry from the girl, and
then a sound, and then a silence. Pearlie, sitting alone on the
porch in the dark, listened to these things and blushed
furiously. Pearlie had never strolled into the kindly shadows
with a little beating of the heart, and she had never been
surprised with a quick arm about her and eager lips pressed
warmly against her own.
In the daytime Pearlie worked as public stenographer at the Burke
Hotel. She rose at seven in the morning, and rolled for fifteen
minutes, and lay on her back and elevated her heels in the air,
and stood stiff kneed while she touched the floor with her finger
tips one hundred times, and went without her breakfast. At the
end of each month she usually found that she weighed three pounds
more than she had the month before.
The folks at home never joked with Pearlie about her weight. Even
one's family has some respect for a life sorrow. Whenever Pearlie
asked that inevitable question of the fat woman: "Am I as fat as
she is?" her mother always answered: "You! Well, I should hope
not! You're looking real peaked lately, Pearlie. And your blue
skirt just ripples in the back, it's getting so big for you."
Of such blessed stuff are mothers made.
But if the gods had denied Pearlie all charms of face or form,
they had been decent enough to bestow on her one gift. Pearlie
could cook like an angel; no, better than an angel, for no angel
could be a really clever cook and wear those flowing kimono-like
sleeves. They'd get into the soup. Pearlie could take a piece of
rump and some suet and an onion and a cup or so of water, and
evolve a pot roast that you could cut with a fork. She could turn
out a surprisingly good cake with surprisingly few eggs, all
covered with white icing, and bearing cunning little jelly
figures on its snowy bosom. She could beat up biscuits that fell
apart at the lightest pressure, revealing little pools of golden
butter within. Oh, Pearlie could cook!
On week days Pearlie rattled the typewriter keys, but on Sundays
she shooed her mother out of the kitchen. Her mother went,
protesting faintly: "Now, Pearlie, don't fuss so for dinner. You
ought to get your rest on Sunday instead of stewing over a hot
stove all morning."
"Hot fiddlesticks, ma," Pearlie would say, cheerily. "It ain't
hot, because it's a gas stove. And I'll only get fat if I sit
around. You put on your black-and-white and go to church. Call me
when you've got as far as your corsets, and I'll puff your hair
for you in the back." In her capacity of public stenographer at
the Burke Hotel, it was Pearlie's duty to take letters dictated
by traveling men and beginning: "Yours of the 10th at hand. In
reply would say . . ." or: "Enclosed please find, etc." As
clinching proof of her plainness it may be stated that none of
the traveling men, not even Max Baum, who was so fresh that the
girl at the cigar counter actually had to squelch him, ever
called Pearlie "baby doll," or tried to make a date with her. Not
that Pearlie would ever have allowed them to. But she never had
had to reprove them. During pauses in dictation she had a way of
peering near-sightedly over her glasses at the dapper,
well-dressed traveling salesman who was rolling off the items on
his sale bill. That is a trick which would make the prettiest
kind of a girl look owlish.
On the night that Sam Miller strolled up to talk to her, Pearlie
was working late. She had promised to get out a long and
intricate bill for Max Baum, who travels for Kuhn and Klingman,
so that he might take the nine o'clock evening train. The
irrepressible Max had departed with much eclat and clatter, and
Pearlie was preparing to go home when Sam approached her.
Sam had just come in from the Gayety Theatre across the street,
whither he had gone in a vain search for amusement after supper.
He had come away in disgust. A soiled soubrette with
orange-colored hair and baby socks had swept her practiced eye
over the audience, and, attracted by Sam's good-looking blond
head in the second row, had selected him as the target of her
song. She had run up to the extreme edge of the footlights at the
risk of teetering over, and had informed Sam through the medium
of song--to the huge delight of the audience, and to Sam's
red-faced discomfiture--that she liked his smile, and he was just
her style, and just as cute as he could be, and just the boy for
her. On reaching the chorus she had whipped out a small, round
mirror and, assisted by the calcium-light man in the rear, had
thrown a wretched little spotlight on Sam's head.
Ordinarily, Sam would not have minded it. But that evening, in
the vest pocket just over the place where he supposed his heart
to be, reposed his girl's daily letter. They were to be married
on Sam's return to New York from his first long trip. In the
letter near his heart she had written prettily and seriously
about traveling men, and traveling men's wives, and her little
code for both. The fragrant, girlish, grave little letter had
caused Sam to sour on the efforts of the soiled soubrette.
As soon as possible he had fled up the aisle and across the
street to the hotel writing-room. There he had spied Pearlie's
good-humored, homely face, and its contrast with the silly,
red-and-white countenance of the unlaundered soubrette had
attracted his homesick heart.
Pearlie had taken some letters from him earlier in the day. Now,
in his hunger for companionship, he strolled up to her desk just
as she was putting her typewriter to bed.
"Gee! This is a lonesome town!" said Sam, smiling down at her.
Pearlie glanced up at him, over her glasses. "I guess you must be
from New York," she said. "I've heard a real New Yorker can get
bored in Paris. In New York the sky is bluer, and the grass is
greener, and the girls are prettier, and the steaks are thicker,
and the buildings are higher, and the streets are wider, and the
air is finer, than the sky, or the grass, or the girls, or the
steaks, or the air of any place else in the world. Ain't they?"
"Oh, now," protested Sam, "quit kiddin' me! You'd be lonesome for
the little old town, too, if you'd been born and dragged up in
it, and hadn't seen it for four months."
"New to the road, aren't you?" asked Pearlie.
Sam blushed a little. "How did you know?"
"Well, you generally can tell. They don't know what to do with
themselves evenings, and they look rebellious when they go into
the dining-room. The old-timers just look resigned."
"You've picked up a thing or two around here, haven't you? I
wonder if the time will ever come when I'll look resigned to a
hotel dinner, after four months of 'em. Why, girl, I've got so I
just eat the things that are covered up--like baked potatoes in
the shell, and soft boiled eggs, and baked apples, and oranges
that I can peel, and nuts."
"Why, you poor kid," breathed Pearlie, her pale eyes fixed on him
in motherly pity. "You oughtn't to do that. You'll get so thin
your girl won't know you."
Sam looked up, quickly. "How in thunderation did you know----?"
Pearlie was pinning on her hat, and she spoke succinctly, her
hatpins between her teeth: "You've been here two days now, and I
notice you dictate all your letters except the longest one, and
you write that one off in a corner of the writing-room all by
yourself, with your cigar just glowing like a live coal, and you
squint up through the smoke, and grin to yourself."
"Say, would you mind if I walked home with you?" asked Sam.
If Pearlie was surprised, she was woman enough not to show it.
She picked up her gloves and handbag, locked her drawer with a
click, and smiled her acquiescence. And when Pearlie smiled she
was awful. It was a glorious evening in the early summer,
moonless, velvety, and warm. As they strolled homeward, Sam told
her all about the Girl, as is the way of traveling men the world
over. He told her about the tiny apartment they had taken, and
how he would be on the road only a couple of years more, as this
was just a try-out that the firm always insisted on. And they
stopped under an arc light while Sam showed her the picture in
his watch as is also the way of traveling men since time
immemorial.
Pearlie made an excellent listener. He was so boyish and so much
in love and so pathetically eager to make good with the firm, and
so happy to have someone in whom to confide.
"But it's a dog's life, after all," reflected Sam, again after
the fashion of all traveling men. "Any fellow on the road earns
his salary these days, you bet. I used to think it was all
getting up when you felt like it, and sitting in the big front
window of the hotel, smoking a cigar and watching the pretty
girls go by. I wasn't wise to the packing, and the unpacking, and
the rotten train service, and the grouchy customers, and the
canceled bills, and the grub."
Pearlie nodded understandingly. "A man told me once that twice a
week regularly he dreamed of the way his wife cooked
noodle-soup."
"My folks are German," explained Sam. "And my mother--can she
cook! Well, I just don't seem able to get her potato pancakes out
of my mind. And her roast beef tasted and looked like roast beef,
and not like a wet red flannel rag."
At this moment Pearlie was seized with a brilliant idea.
"To-morrow's Sunday. You're going to Sunday here, aren't you?
Come over and eat your dinner with us. If you have forgotten the
taste of real food, I can give you a dinner that'll jog your
memory."
"Oh, really," protested Sam. "You're awfully good, but I couldn't
think of it. I----"
"You needn't be afraid. I'm not letting you in for anything. I
may be homelier than an English suffragette, and I know my lines
are all bumps, but there's one thing you can't take away from me,
and that's my cooking hand. I can cook, boy, in a way to make
your mother's Sunday dinner, with company expected look like Mrs.
Newly-wed's first attempt at `riz' biscuits. And I don't mean any
disrespect to your mother when I say it. I'm going to have
noodle-soup, and fried chicken, and hot biscuits, and creamed
beans from our own garden, and strawberry shortcake with
real----"
"Hush!" shouted Sam. "If I ain't there, you'll know that I passed
away during the night, and you can telephone the clerk to break
in my door."
The Grim Reaper spared him, and Sam came, and was introduced to
the family, and ate. He put himself in a class with Dr. Johnson,
and Ben Brust, and Gargantua, only that his table manners were
better. He almost forgot to talk during the soup, and he came
back three times for chicken, and by the time the strawberry
shortcake was half consumed he was looking at Pearlie with a sort
of awe in his eyes.
That night he came over to say good-by before taking his train
out for Ishpeming. He and Pearlie strolled down as far as the
park and back again.
"I didn't eat any supper," said Sam. "It would have been
sacrilege, after that dinner of yours. Honestly, I don't know how
to thank you, being so good to a stranger like me. When I come
back next trip, I expect to have the Kid with me, and I want her
to meet you, by George! She's a winner and a pippin, but she
wouldn't know whether a porterhouse was stewed or frapped. I'll
tell her about you, you bet. In the meantime, if there's anything
I can do for you, I'm yours to command."
Pearlie turned to him, suddenly. "You see that clump of thick
shadows ahead of us, where those big trees stand in front of our
house?"
"Sure," replied Sam.
"Well, when we step into that deepest, blackest shadow, right in
front of our porch, I want you to reach up, and put your arm
around me and kiss me on the mouth, just once. And when you get
back to New York you can tell your girl I asked you to."
There broke from him a little involuntary exclamation. It might
have been of pity, and it might have been of surprise. It had in
it something of both, but nothing of mirth. And as they stepped
into the depths of the soft black shadows he took off his smart
straw sailor, which was so different from the sailors that the
boys in our town wear. And there was in the gesture something of
reverence.
Millie Whitcomb didn't like the story of the homely heroine,
after all. She says that a steady diet of such literary fare
would give her blue indigestion. Also she objects on the ground
that no one got married--that is, the heroine didn't. And she
says that a heroine who does not get married isn't a heroine at
all. She thinks she prefers the pink-cheeked, goddess kind, in
the end.
----
IN A MISSION GARDEN
(Santa Barbara)
By CLARENCE URMY
Stand here, and watch the wondrous birth of Dreams
From out the Gate of Silence. Time and Tide,
With fingers on their lips, forever bide
In large-eyed wonderment, where Thoughts and
Themes Of days long flown pass down the slumbrous streams
To ports of Poet-land and Song-land. Side
By side the many-colored Visions glide,
And leave a wake where Fancy glows and gleams.
And then the bells! One stands with low-bowed head
While list'ning to their silver tongues recite
The sweet tale of the Angelus--there slips
A white dove low across the tiling red--
And as we breathe a whispered, fond "Good night,"
A "Pax vobiscum" parts the Padre's lips.
*****************************************************************
XXIII No. 5 NOVEMBER, 1910
Lassoing WILD ANIMALS In Africa {pages 609-621}
By GUY H. SCULL
FIELD OF THE BUFFALO JONES AFRICAN EXPEDITION.
III
There was no use trying to avoid the fact any longer. The lions,
for the present, had left the Sotik country, and by remaining in
camp at the Soda Swamp the Buffalo Jones Expedition was only
wasting time. And time was precious then--was growing more
precious every day--if we expected to finish the work before the
rains.
The lion was the only big game we wanted now to complete the list
of wild animals roped and tied, and the lion was the most
important of all. The expedition had traveled the long journey to
the Sotik country especially to find them. Yet ever since the
capture of the rhinoceros on the moving day of March 20th we had
thoroughly swept the land in the vicinity of the Soda Swamp
without finding even a single spoor.
----
The blurred effect of the unique illustrations to this article is
accounted for by the extreme difficulty of reproducing from a
cinematograph film.
It simply meant that the lions were not there. Some explanations
were offered, some arguments arose as to the whys and wherefores
of this state of affairs. A few maintained that the lions had
always been found there before; it was strange they should have
gone. A theory was advanced that the rains were late and the
country was unusually dry, so that the game had shifted to better
pastures. Perhaps some water hole they depended on had failed.
There is generally some discussion on such occasions. We had
counted so much on the Sotik to give us our chance that the truth
was hard to realize at first. But no matter what the cause might
be, we were finally forced to acknowledge the undeniable
fact--the lions had left the district.
On the evening of March 25 the expedition faced the situation. As
usual, the night fell cold, and when supper was finished the
company collected about the fire that was burning close to the
horses. A light wind stirred in the leaves overhead and the sky
was full of stars. Here and there a tired horse was already half
asleep, and his head nodded gently in the firelight. From the
darkness came the low talk of the saises, rolled in their
blankets on the ground at the end of the picket line.
Most of the men stood with their backs to the flames, gazing
vacantly at the horses, the trees, or the stars. For a while not
a word was said. Means threw another log on the fire and then
squatted on his heels and silently watched the flames catch the
bark and flare up brightly. As the heat increased, Kearton took a
step farther away and stood again. Every one knew that the Sotik
had failed us and that it was time for us to go, and so
eventually when the Colonel spoke he only voiced the general
conclusion.
"We've got to go back," he said, speaking straight in front of
him at the nearest of the sleepy horses. "We've got to go
to-morrow and have a try from the water hole at the Rugged Rocks
where we saw the two lions on the way out here. We may find one
there and we may not. If we don't, we've got to go on to Nairobi
and start all over again--provided the rains don't begin."
Accordingly, through the long hot days the safari plodded back
over the way we had come from the Soda Swamp to Agate's, from
Agate's to the Honeybird River, and then on once more to the Last
Water. The cameras were stowed away on the wagons, the ropes
remained coiled on the saddles, for there was no probability of
our finding lions on the way. And each man rode as his judgment
decreed, because the business of the safari then was to get on
over the road, and the ox-wagons behind came along as best they
could.
For the most part it was a silent journey. The expedition had
turned its back on the district that only a short week ago had
held out such alluring promises, and any day now the rains might
commence effectually to put a stop to the work before it was
done. Then, too--although this may seem to be a small matter,
still it had weight with all of us--the white hunters of the
country had ridiculed the idea of our being able to rope a lion,
and the prospect of returning and admitting defeat without having
been given a proper chance was not pleasant to contemplate.
At the Last Water we outspanned for the night and most of the
succeeding day. In view of the situation, the long halt was
absolutely necessary to give the oxen a good rest and drink
before setting forth on the twenty-four-hour journey without
water to the Rugged Rocks. But throughout the dragging hours of
the enforced rest always there loomed ahead of us the possibility
of failure and the need of haste. No mention was made of this
openly. The only sign of our underlying anxiety was a vague
restlessness pervading the entire safari.
Once on the march again, with the sun low in the west, the
restlessness disappeared. The night came dark, because the moon
rose late, and the air was still, so that the dust that lifted
from beneath the feet of the oxen drifted along with the wagon.
Now and again one of the wheels bumped over a rock in the road
and the brake beam shook and rattled. At times the high-pitched
cries of the native drivers pierced the stillness. Ahead of us
the bulk of the wagon load loomed big against the stars.
When the dying moon first showed red through the branches of the
twisted trees, the safari crossed the top of the Mau and
commenced the slow descent to the valley, and the wagons in front
became lost in the darkness and the dust. When the morning star
rose, we had come to the foothills of the escarpment, and the
dawn wind sprang up cold, so that the men shivered a little in
their saddles and buttoned up their coats and began to talk.
"It was just about here that we caught the giraffe that day,"
said Kearton. "Remember? And wasn't it hot?"
The talk drifted aimlessly, round and about from the western
ranches to Flicker Alley and the London Music Halls, only to
return in the end, as it naturally would, to the water hole at
Rugged Rocks and our chances of finding lion. The discussion was
lengthy on this point--it always was.
By the time the sun came, the expedition had entered the plain of
the Rift Valley, and with the rising of the sun the thirst began.
Toward noon we halted for a couple of hours to allow the worst of
the heat to pass over, gave the horses and the porters a little
of the water that was carried on one of the wagons, and then
inspanned again and went on. As the horsemen took the road the
Colonel outlined his plan.
"We'll give the horses a good rest to-night, for we ought to make
camp early, and then start hunting the first thing in the
morning. We've got enough horse-feed to last us three or four
days if the water holds out that long. In that time we ought to
get a lion if there's any there. I'll ride on now a bit and look
for signs."
The Colonel's horse was a faster walker than the others and
slowly he forged ahead. Little by little the safari began to
string out along the road until wide spaces grew between the
ox-wagons, with the porters straggling after them a mile behind.
A change had come over the valley since we had seen it last. The
land was whiter beneath the blazing sunshine and the dust lay
thicker in the road. Somehow it seemed deserted. The only
movement was the shimmer of the heat waves.
The camera department had the slowest mounts, and as the march
had become a plodding procession, in which the horses were
allowed to choose their own paces, one by one the other members
of the expedition passed us.
Loveless came from behind and rode with us for half a mile or so.
"I've been thinking this thing over," he finally said, "and my
idea is that after the dogs get the lion stopped, one of us can
go by him, rope him, and keep on going, and then the other fellow
can catch him by the hind legs and we've got him. If you keep on
going fast enough, I don't think he'll have a chance to spring at
you."
In the pause that followed the delivery of this opinion on a
matter that had been thrashed out a hundred times before, his
horse gradually carried him farther ahead until he had gone
beyond the range of talk.
Ulyate, the white hunter, was the next. Kearton had just finished
filling his pipe and he silently reached out the bag of tobacco.
But Ulyate shook his head.
"Throat's too dry," he said. "But I want to be sure I understand
what I've got to do. I'm to stand by to protect the cameras and
leave the Colonel and the two boys to look after themselves. If
the lion charges them I'm not to fire--only if he comes at the
cameras."
"That's right--only if he comes at the cameras."
"That's what I thought, but I wanted to make sure--It's a likely
place, this Rugged Rocks," he continued over his shoulder. "We
might easily find one to-morrow."
Means on his big bay borrowed a drink of water from Gobbet's
canteen, and rode on after the others.
The march of the safari grew slower and slower. The road was
flat, bending a little back and forth in long, sweeping curves,
like a rope that was once taut and had been loosened. The native
drivers no longer cried at the oxen, for the beasts knew by
instinct that they were traveling to water and could be relied
upon to do their best; and the men rode with their heads hung
down, watching the shadows of the horses on the road and hoping
to see them lengthen.
The Colonel, the two cowboys, and Ulyate reached the Rugged Rocks
at least an hour ahead, and when the rest of us came straggling
in we found them seated on the ground with their backs to the
bole of a tree. None of them looked up as we halted there,
dismounted, and turned the horses loose. Then Ulyate spoke.
"Water hole has dried," he said.
There was nothing to be done about it. If the water hole had
dried, it had dried. That was all. And we had to push on to
Kijabe. Lions or no lions, there was no appeal from that decree.
So we sat down with the others and watched the progress of the
far-off dust cloud that marked the approaching wagons. Then, when
darkness came again, the safari resumed the march.
But the Colonel refused to abandon his former plan entirely
without making at least one more attempt. Together with the two
cowboys and Kearton, he remained behind to scout at dawn the
district between the Rugged Rocks and the railway.
"We might be able to tell if it's worth while to come back here,"
he explained.
It was nearly noon of the following day before the scouting party
rejoined the expedition on the platform of the Kijabe station.
The party reported that near the base of Longernot, the northern
volcano, a belt of lava rock rises perpendicularly from the
plain. Close to the southern end of this belt they had flushed
two lions, a male and a female, and had kept sight of them for
fully an hour. It was the opinion of all in the party that the
lions lived in the neighborhood, probably in the rocks.
"Very likely," said Ulyate; "no one has ever hunted that corner
of the valley. There is no water there."
At first the Colonel was anxious to start back for them at once,
hauling the water with us; but after a moment's reflection he was
compelled to concede that it was time to call a halt. Means had
strained his back again and could no longer sit straight in the
saddle. An old thorn wound in Loveless's foot needed attention.
Horses, dogs, and oxen were entirely fagged out. And besides, the
camera department demanded time to develop the earlier pictures,
already too long kept in the rolls.
Of course, as the Colonel maintained, the rains might come and
the chance be lost. Also the lions might not live in the rocks,
as we thought, and to-morrow they might be gone.
"Better grab the opportunity while we have it, he said.
"Look at the horses," said Means.
The Colonel walked deliberately along the platform to where the
horses were tethered among the trees, and stood there watching
them for quite a while.
"You're right, Means," he said, when he returned to us. "They'll
need at least four or five days before we can put them at a
lion--well, we've got to chance it."
The next five days were the longest in the history of the
expedition. The Colonel, Means, and Ulyate remained at Kijabe
with the outfit. The rest of us traveled down the line to Nairobi
to procure more porters, more horse-feed, and more supplies; and
every day we watched the weather closely and speculated on the
probabilities of how long the lions would see fit to remain in
the district. The time was so short that all other plans had been
abandoned to take advantage of this one opportunity--the
expedition was plunging, so to speak, on this final chance to
succeed. But the weather held clear, and in the meanwhile the
preparations for this last attempt were pushed with the utmost
speed.
The hunters at Nairobi, together with the storekeepers and
farmers of the vicinity, had heard of the capture of the rhino.
On occasions some of them spoke of it to us. They explained that
they had thought all along that we could undoubtedly rope a
rhino.
"But you haven't got a lion yet, have you?" they said.
On April 5 the preparations were nearly completed and Loveless's
foot was nearly well. So we started up the line to rejoin the
outfit, leaving Gobbet at Nairobi to finish developing the films.
We could not afford to spend more time in preparation. At Kijabe
we found the horses thoroughly rested and Means's back much
improved. He had refused to see a doctor, asserting that his back
would just naturally get better of its own accord. He said he was
ready to start.
With one exception the dogs were in good condition--old John from
Arizona with his scars of many battles, Rastus and The Rake,
taken from a pack of English fox-hounds, and Simba, the terrier,
and the collie clipped like a lion, from the London pound.
Sounder, the American bloodhound, still showed some effects of
distemper. But none of the dogs was to be left behind on this
journey.
That night the ox-wagons were loaded--one with provisions and
camp baggage, the other with drums of water--and when the dawn
first began to break over the top of the range the expedition set
forth from the station. The crater on Longernot had already
caught the first rays of the sun when we reached the bottom of
the hill and started across the flat land of the valley.
There was no road leading to where we were going, nor track, nor
path, of any kind. No safari had ever gone there before. From the
height of Kijabe station we had seen what looked to be a long,
low mound in the distant veldt. The southern end of that long,
low mound was our destination.
The horsemen, as usual, spread out in a widely extended line and
passed in front of the wagons and porters. As we penetrated
farther into the valley the nature of the country altered. Open
parks and stretches of scrub succeeded one another, with here and
there a dry donga cutting deep into the ground. As we approached
the mound it rapidly grew in height and the black rocks commenced
to appear beneath the covering of verdure.
Among the settlers of the district this mound is called the Black
Reef. It is the general opinion that the Black Reef is formed of
lava that long ago flowed down into the plain from the crater of
Longernot. The sides, which rise almost perpendicularly to a
height of some two hundred feet, are composed of jagged blocks of
stone, honeycombed with deep caves and caverns. The top is
covered with thick scrub and creepers and tall, rank grasses. To
the southward it ends abruptly, as though the lava flow had
suddenly stopped and cooled.
Under the shadow of the Black Reef the hunting party was divided
into three parts. The day was too far advanced for any real
hunting to be done, but as long as the light lasted the Colonel
wanted to make a personal survey of the ground in the immediate
vicinity of the rocks. Accordingly he rode to the northern end of
the reef, sending the two cowboys to the plains to the south,
while the rest remained where we had halted, behind the southern
shoulder, to wait for the arrival of the wagons and make camp.
But the only incident of the afternoon was a thunder cloud that
rose up out of the north and hung there, and then gradually
disappeared as the twilight advanced. The others were late in
coming in. The Colonel in the north had found tracks--innumerable
tracks of different kinds of beasts--all excepting those of the
lion. In the south the two cowboys had found a large mixed herd
of game; and Loveless had dismounted to shoot for meat, when out
of the herd a rhino charged him and he had to kill it to save
himself.
"Well, so long as he's dead we'll let him lie where he is," said
the Colonel. "Lions are mighty fond of rhino meat. They'll travel
miles to get it. Day after to-morrow, say just at dawn, we ought
to be able to pick up a fresh trail there. If we don't, it will
mean that the lions are no longer here, that's all."
Loveless grunted some unintelligible comment.
"Might as well be cheerful," said Means. "We're not beat yet."
The first real hunting day commenced at daylight the next
morning. Hour after hour the horsemen traveled the plains, back
and forth, and across and around, and carefully searched the base
of the Black Reef on every side. Only one spot was left
untouched. The Colonel decreed that no one should approach where
the dead rhino lay, lest our presence there should arouse
suspicion too soon. The rhino was a sort of special chance that
was to be saved for the proper time.
The day was unusually still and cloudless. Here and there
throughout the plains scattered herds of zebra, hartebeests, and
gazelles grazed in peace. Not a spoor or a sign of lion was to be
seen. For us the day was a blank, and toward evening the thunder
cloud rose again out of the north and again melted away into the
twilight.
The camp behind the shoulder of the Black Reef was a dry camp.
Every drop of water had to be hauled in drums from Sewell's Farm.
The ox-wagon went in the morning and returned in the afternoon.
In this way we could haul just enough water to last the outfit
twenty-four hours. Special rules were inaugurated. Horses and
dogs were given the preference always, and one of the escaries
was detailed to guard the drums.
That night the wagon was long in returning from Sewell's. When it
finally arrived, the water in one of the drums had a strange
taste.
"It's bad," said Loveless.
Immediately the affair assumed grave proportions. That particular
drum became the most important object in camp. A feeling akin to
personal animosity sprang up against it. For a time the merits
and demerits of the case were seriously discussed, and some of
the porters gathered there and stared stupidly at the wagon load
of water.
"I'll tell you what it is," said Ulyate; "it's the weeds they've
used as a stopper."
The weeds in question were inspected closely and various
judgments passed, and some of the men were reminded of other
times in other lands when the water had turned bad on their
hands.
Means drew a cupful and sipped deliberately.
"It might be the weeds," he finally remarked. "It's not really
bad--only tastes bad."
So in the end we begged the question by setting the drum aside
and deciding to use it only if we had to.
But there were other matters to be determined that evening.
In the Colonel's opinion the time had come for us to try to find
a trail at the carcass of the rhino, and the talk lasted far into
the night. When finally evolved, the plan of campaign was simple.
It was arranged that the Colonel, with the dogs, should go to the
southeast, where the dead rhino lay, the two cowboys should ride
about two miles to the southwest and wait near the lower end of
the big donga, and Kearton, Ulyate, and myself should scale the
southern face of the Black Reef, where, with the aid of glasses,
we could keep in touch with the Colonel and the boys on the plain
below. Thus the men would be stationed at each corner of a vast
triangle. If the Colonel flushed a lion, the animal would
probably break for either the rocks or the donga, and so either
the cowboys or the camera department could cut him off. Because
the distances were so great, the customary signal of two revolver
shots to "gather" could not be relied upon; the lighting of a
fire would mean the same.
The morning star was still bright in the eastern heavens when the
expedition rode out of camp in the early hours of April 8th. At
the end of half a mile the three parties gradually separated on
slightly diverging lines and moved silently to their appointed
stations. Leaving the horses and the camera porters at the base
of the reef, the three of us of the center station climbed the
rocks in the darkness and waited for the dawn.
Slowly the first signs of day appeared over the hills and the
morning star commenced to fade. As the light strengthened, the
wide panorama of the plains and the far off mountains unfolded
and the individual patches of scrub and single trees began to
stand out distinctly from the general blur of the darker reaches.
For fully half an hour everything was still and the light
steadily broadened. Then suddenly Ulyate pointed.
In the plain to the southeast we could see a black speck moving
about in a strange manner--first one way, then another, then
stopping and moving on again.
"It's the Colonel," said Kearton, who had the glasses. "I think I
can see the dogs. He's up to something."
It was not many minutes before the Colonel's actions took on a
different trend. For a space he rode straight for the reef. There
the smaller black specks of the dogs appeared on the plain in
front. No doubt remained now of what the Colonel was up to. The
dogs were on the trail of some animal--lion or hyena, there was
no telling which--but the scent was hot and the hunt was coming
strong.
At one place the dogs made a big bend to the north toward our
camp. So the beast, whatever it was, had come to have a look at
us in the night.
For the first time then, as they swung back for the rocks, we
faintly heard a hound give tongue. It was the only sound in the
stillness.
Kearton began tearing up the dry grass that grew in the cracks
between the rocks, and piled it in a heap.
"Not yet," said Ulyate; "wait till we're sure."
On came the hunt, following close to the southern base of the
reef. The hounds could be heard giving tongue in turn now. The
Colonel rode behind, leaning forward and cheering on the dogs.
"He's made for the rocks all right--come on," said Ulyate as,
rifle in hand, he started down the cliff.
Kearton touched a match to the pile of grass, and blew on it in
his hurry, and as the small flame sprang into life he threw on
some green stuff and in a thin blue column the smoke rose up
straight into the air.
"That will fetch the boys, all right," he said, and we followed
Ulyate down to the plain.
Although the delay in lighting the fire was brief, yet by the
time we had reached the base and had mounted the horses, the
Colonel, Ulyate, and the dogs had already passed out of sight
beyond a farther out-jutting buttress of rock.
We rounded the buttress only to find that the chase had vanished.
The almost perpendicular wall of rocks was empty. There was a
moment's halt. Then two quick shots rang out, and at once there
began a general chorus of baying, yelping dogs, intermingled with
the deep, heavy roar of a lion.
The sounds came from somewhere in the thick growth on top of the
Reef, so we left the horses and climbed toward the sound. On the
plateau the ground was covered with rugged lava blocks, and the
scrub and creepers were so dense that when Kearton shouted
Ulyate's name the white hunter answered from not more than ten
yards away.
"It's a lioness," said Ulyate. "The dogs have got her bayed. Look
out! She's just on the other side of that bush. When I got here I
found the Colonel seated on his horse, facing the beast and
trying to rope her. He didn't even have a knife on him. Why she
didn't charge him, I don't know. He couldn't get away over this
kind of ground. He told me to call the others and so I fired."
When the cowboys arrived from the distant donga, they came
threading their way toward us through the brush, leading their
horses. A short consultation was held.
"We've got to shift her," said the Colonel. "Can't do anything
with her here. Bring the firecrackers. Bring--there she goes!"
The lioness had decided the issue and had bolted of her own
accord. There was a streak of yellow through the bushes, a
scrambling of dogs, wild, frightened cries from the approaching
camera porters, and the hunt was on once more.
The beast ran to an open cave at the edge of the plateau and
crouched there facing the dogs. To maneuver the horses was
absolutely out of the question, so the lioness had to be shifted
again. For upwards of two hours then, by means of the dogs,
firecrackers, and lighting the grass, we drove her from one
stronghold to another, from crevasse to crevasse, in trying to
force her down off the reef.
The sun rose and the heat commenced. The dogs were feeling the
strain of the constant baying. One by one they would seek a spot
of shade and lie panting there for a while and then return to the
fray. Sounder, being weak from distemper, was the first to give
out, but he had done his share of the work. Porters were sent
back to camp to bring water. Because the ground was bad and the
beast was on the defensive, photography was difficult, but
Kearton managed to catch small bits of action here and there,
with Ulyate standing by him.
The day advanced and the dogs showed signs of tiring fast, yet
the lioness still clung to the stronghold of the rocks. Every
means at hand to drive her into the open had been tried time and
again without avail. The task began to look hopeless. We had
already reached the stage when we saw our resources coming to an
end.
"Get a pole," said the Colonel, "and we'll poke a noose over
her."
"It won't work," said Loveless. "We've tried that often enough to
show it won't work."
"Just the same we'll try it again," replied the Colonel.
Loveless had just started to hunt for the pole when, without
warning, the beast gave a quick, savage snarl, scattered the dogs
from in front of her, and, dropping down the face of the reef to
the plain below, ran straight for the distant donga.
Old John led the chase, with the rest of the dogs trailing along
as best they could, and behind them the men and horses, camera
porters, saises, and dog-boys went scrambling down the rocks in
pursuit.
On the bank of the donga the lioness stopped to fight the ropers.
She had run far enough and meant business now, and the hunt came
up and halted a short distance away for a breathing spell.
The lioness had taken up her position at the end of a short
tongue of land projecting into the donga, so that she was
partially protected on three sides. The yelping dogs had quickly
surrounded her, but she paid little heed to them now. Crouched by
the side of a small thorn bush, she watched every move of the
horsemen preparing to advance.
Kearton mounted his camera at one side of the scene, selecting
his position with care to obtain the best background and general
composition. He shifted about two or three times before he was
satisfied.
"Of course there's no telling which way she's going to jump," he
explained. "But we might as well get the beginning of it right."
Means went first. Slowly he maneuvered toward her for a chance to
throw his rope, and the lioness, alert, opened her jaws and
snarled at the horseman circling near.
Closer and closer Means approached. Then all at once she charged.
Means wheeled and spurred his horse to escape. For the first
thirty yards of the race the lioness gained rapidly. Then the bay
began to gather headway and slowly forged ahead.
With a quick change of front the lioness turned and charged the
Colonel, who was sitting on his horse nearby. Again the lioness
gained at first and again the horse drew away from her, and so,
giving up the charge, she returned to another thorn bush, where
she crouched down low and snarled and growled as before. And all
the while Kearton, on foot with his tripod, was busy taking
pictures of the show.
This second position of hers gave the horsemen a better chance.
There was now more room in which to get near her by a quick dash
past the bush. While Means edged around on the northern side, the
Colonel moved to the south, and by tossing his rope about and
shouting he managed to attract and hold her attention. In fact,
he nearly succeeded too well, for once she rose to the first
spring of the charge and the Colonel half wheeled his horse for
flight, but the beast sank back again and glared at him.
Then from behind her Means darted forward on the run, swinging
his rope free round and round his head. Kearton began shouting.
"Wait--the camera's jammed! Wait a bit--she's jammed here!"
But there was no stopping then, and before the lioness knew what
he was up to, Means dashed by within a few feet of her and roped
her round the neck. But a lioness's neck is short and thick, and
with a quick, catlike twist she slipped the noose over her ears.
"Why can't they wait?" complained Kearton. "Somebody tell them to
wait till I fix this. It's jammed. It must have got knocked on a
rock somewhere. It never acted this way before." And all the
while he talked his fingers were busy ripping out the jammed
piece of film and loading up afresh.
When he declared himself ready, Loveless, this time, had already
taken up his position to the north. Again the Colonel waved his
rope and shouted, and when the right moment came Loveless dashed
past her and likewise roped her round the neck. Again the beast
slipped the noose.
Here a rather strange thing happened. We had been told on many
occasions that in shooting lions the beast will give its
attention to the man who has the rifle, as if the instinct of the
animal told it which man to fear. Up to this moment the lioness
had held off the horsemen easily, but no sooner had she freed
herself from Loveless's rope than she fled into the donga and hid
herself in a thicket of scrub and grass. For a time then it
seemed that nothing would move her from out this scrub. The dogs
were finished. Men and horses were becoming played out.
Firecrackers and burning grass were used without result.
Eventually the Colonel fastened a forked stick to his rope and
dragged it across her hiding place to uncover her. This maneuver
partly succeeded--succeeded enough, at least, for Loveless to
throw his rope at her. And at the sight of the rope coming toward
her through the air she hurled herself at him like a flash, so
that it was only the side jump of his horse that saved him; then
she turned and broke away along the donga.
At once Means was after her, galloping hard, for without the dogs
there was danger of our losing sight of her.
But the lioness did not run far. Her next and last position was
in the bed of a small gully about three feet deep in the bottom
of the donga and thickly grown with grasses. Here the ropers held
a brief consultation and planned a final attempt.
Loveless made a throw and the noose landed fairly above the
beast's head, but the thick grasses held it up. Loveless passed
the other end of his rope over the branch of a near-by tree and
down to the horn of his saddle.
The rest of us, with the cameras trained on the scene, had no
knowledge of the plan. We had not the slightest idea what the
Colonel intended to do. Still wondering, we watched him procure a
long pole and ride quietly along the edge of the ditch toward the
place where the lioness crouched.
For a moment there was intense silence. The Colonel stopped his
horse. Then, leaning over from his saddle, he poked the noose
down through the grass.
With a roar the beast sprang at him--sprang through the loop--and
at the other end of the rope Loveless yanked quickly and caught
her by the last hind leg going through. Putting spurs to his
horse, Loveless galloped away, hauling the lioness back across
the gully and up into the tree, where she swung to and fro,
dangling by the one hind foot and snapping upward at the rope she
could not reach.
"Got her!" yelled the Colonel. "Now the rains can come when they
like."
The beast was furious. She was still swinging, head down like a
pendulum, from the limb of the tree, and was tossing her body
about in frantic endeavor to get loose. Means approached close
and deftly slipped a noose over one of the wildly gyrating
fore-legs. Leading his rope over the branch of another tree, he
stretched her out in a helpless position parallel with the
ground.
"Now lower away on both lines," said the Colonel.
He dismounted and stood beneath her, directing affairs as
methodically as the foreman of a construction gang.
"Steady, Means--a little more, Loveless--now together--easy."
She came within his reach and with a quick grab he caught and
held her two hind legs with both hands while Kearton bound them
together with a piece of light line.
The rest was easy. In less than five minutes she was bound
securely and lowered all the way to the ground to rest in the
shade.
It was nearly noon, and time to call a halt to let the heat of
the day pass over before attempting to bring her back to camp.
Porters were sent to fetch food and more water, horses were
off-saddled and turned loose to graze, and one by one the dogs
came straggling in.
The men stretched themselves out on the ground where a bush or a
tree afforded some protection from the sun. But the Colonel kept
wandering over to the prize, to examine a knot, to arrange a
better shade, or to pour the last drops of water from his canteen
into her open mouth. Once he stood over her for a while, watching
her vain attempts to cut the ropes with her teeth.
"Yes, you're a beauty," he finally said. "You're certainly a
beauty. I guess we'll just have to take you home with us as a
souvenir of the trip."
*****************************************************************
Vol. XXIII December 1910 No. 6
THE WOMEN OF TO-MORROW {page 767-777 part 4.}
By WILLIAM HARD
IV
THE WASTERS
It got talked around among Marie's friends that she didn't want
children. This was considered very surprising, in view of all
that her father and husband had done for her.
Here is what they had done for her:
They had removed from her life all need, and finally all desire,
to make efforts and to accomplish results through struggle in
defiance of difficulty and at the cost of pain.
Work and pain were the two things Marie was on no account to be
exposed to. With this small but important reservation: she might
work at avoiding pain.
When the cook had a headache she took Getting-Breakfast for it.
When Marie had a headache she worked not at breakfast but at the
headache.
It was a social ceremony of large proportions, with almost
everybody among those present, from the doctor down through
Mother and Auntie to Little Sister. The decorations, which were
very elaborate, comprised, besides the usual tasteful arrangement
of thermometers, eau-de-Karlsbad, smelling-salts bottles, cracked
ice, and chocolate creams, a perfect shower of tourmaline roses,
the odor of which, alone among all the vegetable odors in the
world, had been round after long experimentation to be soothing
to Marie on such occasions. It was not thought that Marie could
vanquish a headache except after a plucky fight of at least one
day's duration.
Actresses go on and do their turns day after day and night after
night with hardly a miss. Marie's troubles were no more numerous
than theirs. But they were much larger. Troubles are like gases.
They expand to fill any void into which they are introduced.
Marie's spread themselves through a vacuum as large as her life.
The making of that vacuum and the inserting of Marie into it cost
her father and her husband prodigious toil and was a great
pleasure to them. Marie belonged to the Leisure Class. Socially,
she was therefore distinctly superior to her father and her
husband.
President Thomas of Bryn Mawr had Marie in mind when she said:
"By the leisured class we mean in America the class whose men
work harder than any other men in the excitement of professional
and commercial rivalry, but whose women constitute the only
leisured class we have and the most leisured class in the world."
Marie's father wasn't so very rich either. He was engaged in a
business so vividly competitive that Marie's brother was hurried
through college as fast as possible and brought into the game at
twenty-two with every nerve stretched taut.
Nothing like that was expected of Marie. She was brought up to
think that leisure was woman's natural estate. Work, for any
girl, she regarded as an accident due to the unexpected and
usually reprehensible collapse of the males of the poor girl's
family.
This view of the matter gave Marie UNCONSCIOUSLY TO HERSELF, what
morality she had. Hard drinking, "illegitimate" gambling, and
excessive dissipations of all sorts are observed commonly to have
a prejudicial effect on male efficiency and family prosperity.
Against all "vices," therefore (although she didn't catch the
"therefore"), Marie was a Moral Force of a million angel-power.
Aside from "vices," however, all kinds of conduct looked much
alike to her. Ethics is the rules of the game, the decencies of
the struggle for existence. Marie had no part in the struggle.
She violated its decencies without being at all aware of it.
All the way, for instance, from stealing a place in the line in
front of a box-office window ahead of ten persons who were there
before her, up the tiny scale of petty aggressions within her
narrow reach to the cool climax of spending three months every
summer in a pine-wood mountain resort (thus depriving her
city-bound husband of the personal companionship which was the
one best thing she had to give him in return for what he gave
her), she was as competent a little grafter as the town afforded.
But she was a perfectly logical one. Her family had trained her
to deadhead her way through life and she did it. Finally she went
beyond their expectations. They hadn't quite anticipated all of
the sweetly undeviating inertia of her mind.
Nevertheless she was a nice girl. In fact; she was The Nice Girl.
She was sweet-tempered, sweet-mannered, and sweet-spoken--a
perfect dear. She never did a "bad" thing in her life. And she
never ceased from her career of moral forcing. She wrote to her
husband from her mountain fastness, warning him against
high-balls in hot weather. She went twice a month during the
winter to act as librarian for an evening at a settlement in a
district which was inhabited by perfectly respectable working
people but which, while she passed out the books, she
sympathetically alluded to as a "slum."
It is hardly fair, however, to lay the whole explanation of Marie
on her father, her husband, and herself.
A few years ago, in the churchyard of St. Philip's Church at
Birmingham, they set up a tombstone which had fallen down, and
they re-inscribed it in honor of the long-neglected memory of the
man who had been resting beneath it for a century and a half. His
name was Wyatt. John Wyatt. He had a good deal to do with making
Marie what she was.
What toil, what tossing nights, what sweating days, what agonized
wrenching of the imagination toward a still unreached idea, have
gone into the making of leisure--for other people!
Wyatt strained toward, and touched, the idea which was the real
start of modern leisure.
In the year 1733, coming from the cathedral town of Lichfield,
where the Middle Ages still lingered, he set up, in a small
building near Sutton Coldfields, a certain machine. That machine
inaugurated, and forever symbolizes, the long and glorious series
of mechanical triumphs which has made a large degree of leisure
possible, not for a few thousand women, as was previously the
case, but for millions and millions of them.
It was only about two feet square. But it accomplished a thing
never before accomplished. It spun the first thread ever spun in
the history of the world without the intervention of human
fingers.
On that night woman lost her oldest and most significant title
and function. The Spinster ceased to be.
The mistress and her maid, spinning together in the Hall, their
fingers drawing the roving from the distaff and stretching it out
as the spindle twisted it, were finally on the point of
separating forever.
We all see what Wyatt's machine did to the maids. We all
understand that when he started his mill at Birmingham and hired
his working force of TEN GIRLS, he prophesied the factory "slum."
We do not yet realize what he did to the mistresses, how he
utterly changed their character and how he marvelously increased
their number.
But look! His machine, with the countless machines which followed
it, in the spinning industry and in all other industries, made it
possible to organize masses of individuals into industrial
regiments which required captains and majors and colonels and
generals. It created the need of leadership, of MULTITUDINOUS
leadership. And with leadership came the rewards of leadership.
And the wives and daughters of the leaders (a race of men
previously, by comparison, nonexistent) arose in thousands and
hundreds of thousands and millions to live in leisure and
semi-leisure on the fruits of the new system.
While the maids went to the "slums," the mistresses went to the
suburbs.
Looking at it in that way, one sometimes doesn't feel so sorry
for the maids.
What did Wyatt get out of it? Imprisonment for debt and the buzz
of antiquarians above his rotted corpse.
Wyatt and his equally humble successors in genius, Hargreaves and
Crompton, artisans! Where in history shall we find men the world
took more from, gave less to?
To Hargreaves, inventing the spinning jenny, a mob and a flight
from Lancashire, a wrecked machine and a sacked house! To
Crompton, inventing the spinning-mule (which, in simulating,
surpassed the delicate pulling motion of the spinster's arm)--to
Crompton, poverty so complete that the mule, patient bearer of
innumerable fortunes to investors, was surrendered to them
unpatented, while its maker retired to his "Hall-in-the-Wood" and
his workman wages!
Little did Wyatt and Hargreaves and Crompton eat of the bread of
idleness they built the oven for.
But Arkwright! There was the man who foreshadowed, in his own
career, the new aristocracy about to be evoked by the new
machinery. He made spinning devices of his own. He used everybody
else's devices. He patented them all. He lied in the patents. He
sued infringers of them. He overlooked his defeats in the courts.
He bit and gouged and endured and invented and organized till,
from being a barber and dealing in hair-dyes and bargaining for
the curls of pretty girls at country fairs, he ended up Sir
Richard Arkwright and--last perfect touch in a fighting
career--was building a church when he died.
And his son was England's richest commoner.
It was the dawn of the day of common richness.
The new aristocracy was as hospitably large as the old
aristocracy had been sternly small. Before Wyatt, leisure had
been the thinnest of exhalations along the very top of society.
Since Wyatt, it has got diffused in greater and greater density
through at least the upper third of it. And for all that magical
extension of free time, wrested from the ceaseless toil with
which God cursed Adam, we stand indebted (and so recently!) to
the machinery SET going by that spontaneous explosion of artisan
genius in England only a hundred and fifty years ago, KEPT going
(and faster and faster) by the labor of men, women, and children
behind factory windows, the world over, to-day.
Marie's view of the situation, however, is the usual one. We are
billions of miles from really realizing that leisure is produced
by somebody's work, that just "Being a Good Woman" or "Being a
Decent Fellow" is so far from being an adequate return for the
toil of other people that it is just exactly no return at all. We
are billions of miles from admitting that the virtuous parasite
is just as much a parasite as the vicious parasite:--that the
former differs from the latter in the use of the money but not at
all in the matter of getting it in return for nothing.
To get something for nothing is the fundamental immorality in the
world. But we don't believe it. There will be a revolution before
we get it into our heads that trying to trade a sweet disposition
or an intelligent appreciation of opera or a proficiency at
amateur tennis for three meals a day is a fraud.
Marie didn't mean to commit a fraud. She just dropped a
sentimental, non-negotiable plugged nickel into the slot-machine
of life and drew out a motor car and a country place, and was
innocently pleased. Such a wonderful slot-machine! She never saw
the laboring multitudes behind it, past and present multitudes,
dead fingers, living fingers, big men's fingers, little
children's fingers, pulling the strings, delivering the prizes,
laying aside the plugged nickel in the treasury of a remote
revenge.
Perhaps the reason why she didn't catch on to the fact that,
instead of being the world's creditor, she was really inhabiting
an almshouse was that she was so busy.
You see, she not only did things all the time but she had to find
and invent them to do. Her life, even before she was married, was
much more difficult than her brother's, who simply got up in the
morning and took the same old 7:42 to the same old office.
When he wanted clothes he went to the nearest decent tailor.
No such cinch for Marie. Her tailor lived in Sutherton, on the
directly opposite side of the city from the suburb in which Marie
lived. Just to get to that tailor's cost Marie an hour and a half
of effort. She had got up early, but by the time the tailor had
stuck the world's visible supply of pins into the lines of her
new coat, most of the forenoon had been arduously occupied.
Of course many forenoons had to be thus occupied. Never forget
it! The modish adaptation of woven fabrics to the female contour
becomes increasingly complex and minute and exacting and
time-occupying in precise proportion as the amount of time
increases for which occupation must be devised.
Besides, it gives employment to the tailors.
This is the really meritorious function of the leisure class. It
gives employment. And every extension of its tastes and needs
gives more employment. Marie and her friends greatly increased
the number and prosperity of tailors and milliners and
candy-dippers and perfume-manufacturers and manicurists and
hair-dressers and plumed-bird hunters and florists and
cab-drivers and Irish lace-makers and Chinese silkworm tenders
and violet-and-orris sachet-powder makers and matinee heroes and
French nuns who embroider underwear and fur-traders and
pearl-divers and other deserving persons, not forgetting the
multitudes of Turks who must make nougat or perish.
In fact, Marie and her friends, in the course of a year, gave as
much employment as a fair-sized earthquake. That is, in the
course of a year, they destroyed, without return, a large amount
of wealth and set many people to work replacing it. If we had a
large enough leisure class we should have no need of fires and
railroad wrecks and the other valuable events which increase our
prosperity by consuming it.
Marie belonged to the real Consumers' League. And she consumed
prettily and virtuously. It wasn't bad air that suffocated her
soul. It was no air.
She thought she was breathing, however, and breathing fast. Why,
it was half-past eleven before she got back down-town from her
tailor, and she bought a wedding present till one, and she was
just famished and ran to a tea-room, but she had hardly touched a
mouthful when she remembered there was a girl from out of town
who had come in to spend a month doing nothing and had to be
helped, but though she rushed to the 'phone she couldn't get her
friend before it was time to catch her suburban train home; in
order to do which she jumped into the station 'bus, only to
remember she had forgotten to buy a ribbon for her Siamese
costume for the Benefit Ball; but it was too late now and she
spent her time, going out on the train, trying to think of some
way of getting along without it, and her head began to ache; but
luckily she met some of the girls on her way from the station to
her high-school sorority alumnae reunion and they began to tell
her how to do it; but she had to hurry away because she had
promised to go to the house of one of the girls and do stencil
patterns, which started to be beautiful, but before she could get
any of them really done she recollected that Chunk Brown had sent
over a bunch of new songs and was coming to call to-night and she
had to scoot home and practice "June time is moon time and tune
time and spoon time," as well as "The grass is blue o'er little
Sue" till there was just one hour left before dinner and she was
perfectly crazy over the new "do" which one of the girls had
showed her and she rushed upstairs and went at that do and by
dinner time she had got it almost right, so that Father told her
always to do her hair like that and Brother wished he had it down
at the factory to replace a broken dynamo brush, while as for
Chunk, he was nicer than ever till he learned he had to take her
to a rehearsal of the Siamese Group for the Benefit Ball: so
that, what with having to coax him to go and what with changing
into her costume, she got to the rehearsal so tired she couldn't
stand up to go through the figures till she caught sight of the
celebrated esthete, the Swami Ram Chandra Gunga Din, who was
there to hand out the right slants about oriental effects and who
had persuaded Marie there was great consolation to be found in
realizing that life is a spiral and that therefore you can't make
progress straight up but must go round and round through rhythmic
alternations of joy and sorrow, which caused Chunk to relapse
again from his attentiveness but which pleased Marie greatly
because she was always unhappy in between two periods of
happiness and therefore felt she was getting along the spiral and
into Culture pretty well, till it was eleven o'clock and she
waked Chunk up out of a chair in the hall and made him take her
home; and he said the Swami was a VERY CLEVER man and she said
American men had no culture and didn't understand women, and
Chunk didn't even say good-night to her, and she went to sleep
crying, and remembering she hadn't after all learned from the
girls how to get along without that ribbon in her costume and she
must get up early and buy it, which made her utter one final
little plaintive sniffle of vexation.
It was a nice child's life, full of small things which looked
big, uncorrected in its view of Love, Culture, Charity, or
anything else by any carrying of the burdens, enduring of the
shocks, or thrilling to the triumphs, of a really adult life. Her
brother, when he went to work, was her junior. In five years he
was much her senior. (You may verify this by observations among
your own acquaintances.) Marie was not a minute older now than
when she left school. Talking to her at twenty-six was exactly
the same experience as talking to her at twenty-one. That was
what the world, from John Wyatt to her father, had done for her.
From such a life there are necessarily revulsions. The empty
leisure of the Nice Girl is quite successfully total waste. But
it becomes intolerable to that waster who, though not desiring
genuine occupation, desires genuine sensation.
Hence smart sets.
Every social group in which there is much leisure has its own
smart set. There may be a million dollars a year to spend. There
may be only a few thousands. But there is always a smart set.
How suddenly its smartness may follow its leisure, how accurately
its plunge into luxury may duplicate the suddenness of modern
luxury itself, you may observe with your own eyes almost
anywhere.
You see a little crowd of women come into the Mandarin Tea Room
of the St. DuBarry in Novellapolis in the fresh West. When they
remove their automobile veils you see that they were once, and
very recently, the nicest sort of members of the sewing circle
and the W. C. T. U. of Lone Tree Crossing.
When the waiter comes along with their cocktails and they begin
to sip them out of their tea-cups, you wake up with a jerk to
realize that it's half-past three in the afternoon and the
evening has begun.
How rapid it all is!
There's Margaret Simpson. A few years ago you might have seen her
pumping the water for Jim's breakfast, cleaning the lamps, and
picking bugs off the potato vines.
Jim came to town. He struck it poor. Then he struck it rich. He
owns a bunch of moving-picture places. He manufactures a patented
bottle-stopper. He's a pavement contractor. His wife has just as
much leisure as any duchess.
The duchess has her individual estate and resources, which make
it possible for her to lead an almost complete social life within
her own walls. But never mind! Margaret has the Down-town
District, cooperatively owned, cooperatively maintained,
magnificently equipped with bright boudoirs in the rest-rooms of
the department stores, with wonderful conservatories where one
may enter and gaze and pay no more attention to the florist than
to one's own gardener, with sumptuous drawing-rooms, like the
Purple Parlor of the St. DuBarry, with body-servants in the
beauty-shops, with coachmen on the taxi-cabs, with seclusion in
the Ladies' Department of the Novellapolis Athletic Club--an
infinitely resourceful estate, which Margaret knows as intimately
as the duchess knows hers.
This morning she hunted down a new reduction plant on the
eighteenth floor of the Beauty Block and weighed in at 185 on the
white enamel scales, and after an hour of
Thermo-Vibro-Magneto-Magenta-Edison-Company-light-therapy weighed
out at 182-6.
At luncheon she ate only puree of tomatoes, creamed
chicken-and-sweetbreads, Boston brown bread and butter, orange
punch and Lady Baltimore cake, severely cutting out the potatoes.
After luncheon she spent an hour in a tiny room which had mirrors
all around it and a maid (as trim and French-accented as any maid
any duchess could have) and a couple of fitters and a head
fitter. It ended up with: "Do you mean to tell me that after all
the reducing and dieting I've been doing I can't wear under a
twenty-seven? It's ridiculous. I tell you what. Measure me for a
made-to-order. These stock sizes all run large. If it's
made-to-order I can wear a twenty-six as easy as anybody."
Then she met up with her friends at the St. DuBarry.
You watch the waiter bring another round of drinks and you
perceive that the evening is well under way and that the peak of
the twenty-four hours is being disputatiously approached.
It appears that Perinique's is a swell place to dine, but that
the cheese is bad. The cheese is good right here at the St.
DuBarry, but they don't know how to toast the biscuits. At the
Grunewurst the waiters are poor. At Max's the soup is always
cold. The mural decorations at the Prince Eitel are so gloomy
they give you a chill.
Despair settles down on the scene. There seems to be no
likelihood that there will be any dinner at all anywhere. A ray
of light penetrates with the inquiry whether you saw the way Jim
looked at Dora last night. If _I_ was you, Margaret, and MY
husband looked at Dora like that, _I_--. . . No wonder Dora's
husband divorced her. . . . The trouble with Margaret is she's
too good to Jim. If she had any sense she could make him so
jealous he'd stand on his head for her. . . . Why don't you tell
Ned to cut in there and pay a little attention to Marge? . . .
Oh, Ned's no good. . . . Well, I'll tell MY HUSBAND--. . . Don't
you do it: I started my husband once on a thing like that and
he--. . . That's right. Ned's not married. Let him do it. . . .
Somebody ought to. . . . Call Ned on the 'phone. . . . We'll eat
at the Royal Gorge and I'll put 'em side by side. . . . I'LL sit
next to Jim and point it out to him. . . . Say, Marge, it's a
good thing you've got on your white broadcloth and those willow
plumes. . . . You can get 'em at Delatour's now for twenty-five
dollars. . . . Say, I called Ned on the 'phone and what do you
think? He's got an engagement for to-night. . . . Say, here's
Dora now.
Dora: "Got to sweep right along. Goin' to buzz out to the Inland
Inn for dinner with Ned."
Talk of nerve!
Exit Dora.
Enter Stern Moralist. Points gaunt finger at ex-members of Lone
Tree Crossing Sewing Circle. Says: "Back to your kitchens, women,
and get supper for your husbands."
Onlookers: "Great!"
Enter husbands, about to dine with the women right there, or at
some other place where dinner is cooked and ready.
Stern Moralist turns to husbands.
Does he? Why not?
Stern Moralist: "Back to the woodshed and chop the kindling for
your wife to get supper with."
Onlookers: "Police! Arrest that man! He's crazy."
Stern Moralist, being propelled down corridor: "Well, if the way
to restore women to womanliness is to make them do drudgery which
they can hire somebody else to do, why isn't----"
His voice dies away.
Jim asks where Dora is. Loud chorus tells him. Details of Dora's
divorce begin to fly about. Harry orders a round of drinks.
Somebody praises the drawn butter sauce at the Suddington. This
is met with the merits of the pineapple parfait at the La
Fontaine. Jim thinks Dora's divorce was her husband's fault.
Margaret gets up and goes back to the Purple Parlor and cries.
Bessie begins to tell Jim how attentive Ned is to Margaret. This
is so helpful that Jim gets up to find Margaret and tell her what
he thinks of her. Finds her crying and thinks she is crying
because Ned is away with Dora. Terrible row in Purple Parlor.
Bessie starts in to explain. Everybody stands about in couples
explaining. Waiter runs around trying to find gen'l'man to pay
for undrunk drinks. Poor Frank, being the only member of the
party who hasn't been drinking, is so sober that he pays. He
finally corrals the whole crowd into a couple of taxi-cabs. They
go down the street with everybody's head out of the cab-window
and everybody's voice saying "The Suddington," "The Grunewurst,"
"Max's," "The Royal Gorge," "Perinique's."
The revulsion from empty leisure in the direction of
full-every-night leisure is balanced to some extent by a
revulsion toward activity of a useful sort. This latter revulsion
has two phases: Economic Independence, which has been spoken of
in former articles; Social Service and Citizenship, which will be
spoken of next month.
Which one of these two revulsions will be the stronger? If it is
the one toward useful activity, we shall see a dam erected
against the current which, in carrying women out of the struggle
for existence, carries them out of the world's mental strife. If
it is the one toward frivolity, we shall see simply an
acceleration of that current and a quicker and larger departure
from all those habits of toil and service which produce power and
character.
With marriage, of course, Marie had a certain opportunity to get
back into life. She had before her at least fifteen years of real
work. And it would have been work of the realest sort. Effort--to
and beyond all other effort! The carrying of new life in fear,
the delivery of it in torture, the nourishing of it in
relinquishment f all the world's worldliness, the watching over
it in sleeplessness, the healing of its sickness in
heart-sickness, the bringing of it, with its body strong, its
mind matured, up into the world of adults, up into the struggle
for existence! What a work!
But what a preparation for it had Marie!
She flinched from it. The inertia of her mind carried her to the
ultimate logic of her life. Along about the time of her marriage
she began to cease to be the typical normal girl of her type.
She became a woman of the future--OF HER TYPE.
From the facts of modern idleness the positive character reacts
toward new-found activity: toward an enormous,
never-before-witnessed expenditure of intelligent care on
children; toward self-support; toward civic service. The
character which is neither positive nor negative runs along as a
neutral mixture of modern facts and of old ideals of casual
idling and of casual child-rearing. The negative character--like
Marie's--just yields to the facts and is swept along by them into
final irresponsibility and inutility.
Marie wasn't negative enough--she wasn't positive enough in her
negativeness--to plunge into dissipation. It wasn't in her nature
to do any plunging of any kind. Good, safe, motionless sponging
was her instinct. And she will die in the odor of tubbed and
scrubbed respectability. And if you knew her you would like her
very much. She is charming.
When she and Chunk were married, they went to live in an
apartment appropriate to a rising young man, and Marie's job was
on all occasions to look as appropriate as the apartment.
No shallow cynicism, this! Just plain, bald truth without any wig
on it. The only thing that you could put your finger on that
Marie really did was so to wear clothes and so to give parties as
to be the barometer of her husband's prosperity. And in every
city you can see lots of such barometers giving themselves an
artificially high reading in order to create that "atmosphere" of
success which is a recognized commercial asset.
Chunk was hugely pleased with Marie. She looked good at the
dinner-table in the cafe of their apartment building. She knew
how to order the right dishes when they entertained and dined
down-town. She made it possible for him to return deftly and
engagingly the social attentions of older people. She completed
the "front" of his life, and he not only supported her but, as
Miss Salmon, of Vassar, flippantly and seriously says, he
"sported" her as he might a diamond shirt stud.
No struggle in Marie's life so far! No HAVING to swim in the cold
water of daily enforced duty or else sink. NO BEING ACCUSTOMED TO
THE DISAGREEABLE FEEL OF THAT WATER.
She had missed work. That was nothing. She had missed being
HARDENED to work. That was everything.
The first demand ever made on her for really disagreeable effort
came when Chunk, in order to get a new factory going, had to move
for a while to Junction City. When Marie bitterly and furiously
objected, Chunk was severely astonished. Why, he had to go! It
was necessary. But there had been no necessity in Marie's
experience. They became quarrelsome about it. Then stubborn.
Marie talked about her mother and her friends and how she loved
them (which was true) and stayed.
For two years she inhabited Chunk's flat in the city and lived on
Chunk's monthly check.
She and Chunk were married. Chunk was to support her. Her father
used to support her. Her job then was being nice. That was her
job now. And she was nice. And she was still supported. Perfectly
logical.
For two years, neither really daughter now nor really wife, not
being obliged any longer even to make suggestions to her mother
about what to have for dinner, not being obliged any longer even
to think out the parties for Chunk's business friends, she did
nothing but become more and more firmly fixed in her inertia, in
her incapacity for hardship, in her horror of pain.
When Chunk came back from Junction City and was really convinced
that she didn't want children he was not merely astonished. He
thought the world had capsized.
In a way he was right. The world is turning round and over and
back to that one previous historical era when the aversion to
childbearing was widespread.
Once, just once, before our time, there was a modern world. Once,
just once, though not on the scale we know it, there was, before
us, a diffusion of leisure.
The causes were similar.
The Romans conquered the world by military force, just as we have
conquered it by mechanical invention. They lived on the plunder
of despoiled peoples just as we live on the products of exploited
continents. They had slaves in multitudes just as we have
machines in masses. Because of the slaves, there were hundreds of
thousands of their women, in the times of the Empire, who had
only denatured housekeeping to do, just as to-day there are
millions of our women who, because of machines, have only that
kind of housekeeping to do. Along with leisure and semi-leisure,
they acquired its consequences, just as we have acquired them.
And the sermons of Augustus Caesar, first hero of their completed
modernity, against childlessness are perfect precedents for those
of Theodore Roosevelt, first hero of ours.
Augustus, however, addressed himself mainly to the men, who
entered into marriage late, or did not enter into it at all, for
reasons identical with ours--the increased competitiveness of the
modern life and the decreased usefulness of the modern wife. It
was the satirists who addressed themselves particularly to the
women. And their tirades against idleness, frivolity, luxury,
dissipation, divorce, and aversion to child-bearing leave nothing
to be desired, in comparison with modern efforts, for
effectiveness in rhetoric--or for ineffectiveness in result.
Now it could not have been the woman who desires economic
independence through self-support who was responsible for the
ultimate aversion to childbearing in the Roman world--for SHE did
not exist. It could not have been the woman who desires full
citizenship--for she did not exist. What economic power and what
political power the Roman Empire woman desired and achieved was
parasitic--the economic power which comes from the inheritance of
estates, the political power which comes from the exercise of
sexual charm.
The one essential difference between the women of that ancient
modern world and the women of this contemporary modern world is
in the emergence, along with really democratic ideals, of the
agitation for equal economic and political opportunity.
The other kind of New Woman, the woman brought up throughout her
girlhood in a home in which there is no adequate employment for
her; trained to no tasks, or, at any rate, to tasks (like dusting
the dining-room and counting the laundry) so petty, so
ridiculously irrelevant that her great-grandmother did them in
the intervals of her real work; going then into marriage with
none of the discipline of habitual encounter with inescapable
toil; taken by her husband not to share his struggle but his
prosperity--that sort of New Woman they had, just as we have her
in smaller number, it is true, but in identical character.
They tell us it was "luxury" that ruined the Romans. But was
luxury the START? Wasn't it only the means to the FINISH?
Eating a grouse destroys in itself, no more moral fiber than
eating a ham sandwich. Bismarck, whether he slept on eider-down
or on straw, arose Bismarck.
The person who has a job and who does it is very considerably
immunized against the consequences of luxury. First, because he
is giving a return for it. Second, because he hasn't much time
for it.
On the other hand we see the hobo who won't work ruining himself
on the luxury of stable-floors and of free-lunch counters, just
as thoroughly as any nobleman who won't work can ever ruin
himself on the luxury of castles and game preserves.
It is clearly the habitual enjoyment of either grouse or ham
sandwiches, of either eiderdown or straw, WITHOUT SERVICE
RENDERED AND WITHOUT FATIGUE ENDURED, that ultimately desiccates
the moral character and drains it of all capacity for effort.
Marie was as reasonable a proposition as that two and two make
four.
She had given her early, plastic, formative years to acquiring
the HABIT of effortless enjoyment, and when the time for making
an effort came, the effort just wasn't in her.
Her complete withdrawal from the struggle for existence had at
last, in her negative, non-resistive mind atrophied all the
instincts of that struggle including finally the instinct for
reproduction.
The instinct for reproduction is intricately involved in the
struggle for existence. The individual struggles for
perpetuation, for perpetuation in person, for perpetuation in
posterity. Work, the perpetuation of one's own life in strain and
pain; work, the clinging to existence in spite of its blows;
work, the inuring of the individual to the penalties of
existence, is linked psychologically to the power and desire for
continued racial life. The individual, the class, which struggles
no more will in the end reproduce itself no more. In not having
had to conquer life, it has lost its will to live.
The detailed daily reasons for this ultimate social law stand
clear in Marie's life. And remember what sort of woman she was.
The woman who is coerced by external, authoritative ideals will
bear children even when the wish to bear them is really absent.
She will bear them without thinking. She will bear them because
she has never thought that anything else was possible. But Marie
(and this means millions of women throughout the modern world)
was free, wonderfully, unparalleledly free.
She was free, though a leisured woman, from the requirement of an
heir for a great family estate. She was free from the dictates of
historic Christianity about conjugal duty and unrestricted
reproduction. She was free from the old uncomplaining compliance
with a husband's will.
Modern life had done all this for her. She was uncoerced by
family authority, ecclesiastical authority, or marital authority.
She was limitlessly free, limitlessly irresponsible, a creature
of infinite opportunities and no duties.
All social coercion toward childbearing having been withdrawn
from her, the only guide she had left (and it would have been her
best one) was instinct and impulse.
But with the cessation from struggle, with the cessation from
effort and from fatigue and from discipline, and from the sorrow
of pain that brings the joy of accomplishment, that instinct and
impulse had disappeared. With the petrifaction of its soil, it
had withered away.
She had been sedulously trained to sterility.
Nevertheless, when it got talked around among her friends that
she didn't want children, everybody thought it very surprising,
in view of all that had been done for her.
In the January number Mr. Hard will discuss "The Women of
To-morrow" in "Civic Service."
*****************************************************************
Vol. XXIII December 1910 No. 6
{pages 778-783 are NOT numbered in the printed copy!}
THE WATCHMAN
"And for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead
men." Matthew xxviii. 4
BY L. M. MONTGOMERY
My Claudia, it is long since we have met,
So kissed, so held each other heart to heart!
I thought to greet thee as a conqueror comes,
Bearing the trophies of his prowess home.
But Jove hath willed it should be otherwise--
Jove, say I? Nay, some mightier, stranger god,
Who thus hath laid his heavy hand on me,
No victor, Claudia, but a broken man
Who seeks to hide his weakness in thy love.
How beautiful thou art! The years have brought
An added splendor to thy loveliness,
With passion of dark eye and lip rose-red,
Struggling between its dimple and its pride.
And yet there is somewhat that glooms between
Thy love and mine; come, girdle me about
With thy true arms, and pillow on thy breast
This aching and bewildered head of mine;
Here, where the fountain glitters in the sun
Among the saffron lilies I will tell--
If so that words will answer my desire--
The shameful fate that hath befallen me.
Down in Jerusalem they slew a man,
Or god . . . it may be that he was a god . . .
Those mad, wild Jews whom Pontius Pilate rules.
Thou knowest Pilate, Claudia--a vain man,
Too weak to govern such a howling horde
As those same Jews. This man they crucified.
I knew naught of him--never heard his name
Until the day they dragged him to his death;
Then all tongues wagged about him and his deeds;
Some said that he had claimed to be their king,
Some that he had blasphemed their deity.
'Twas certain he was poor and meanly born,
No warrior he, nor hero; and he taught
Doctrines that surely would upset the world;
And so they killed him to be rid of him.
Wise, very wise, if he were only man,
Not quite so wise if he were half a god!
I know that strange things happened when he died . . .
There was a darkness and an agony,
And some were vastly frightened--not so I!
What cared I if that mob of reeking Jews
Had brought a nameless curse upon their heads?
_I_ had no part in that bloodguiltiness.
At least he died; and some few friends of his
Took him and laid him in a garden tomb.
A watch was set about the sepulchre,
Lest these, his friends, should hide him and proclaim
That he had risen as he had foretold.
Laugh not, my Claudia. _I_ laughed when I heard
The prophecy; I would I had not laughed!
I Maximus, was chosen for the guard,
With all my trusty fellows.
Pilate knew I was a man who had no foolish heart
Of softness all unworthy of a man!
I was a soldier who had slain my foes;
My eyes had looked upon a tortured slave
As on a beetle crushed beneath my tread;
I gloried in the splendid strife of war,
Lusting for conquest; I had won the praise
Of our stern general on a scarlet field,
Red in my veins the warrior passion ran,
For I had sprung from heroes, Roman born!
That second night we watched before the tomb;
My men were merry; on the velvet turf,
Bestarred with early blossoms of the spring,
They diced with jest and laughter; all around
The moonlight washed us like a silver lake,
Save where that silent, sealed sepulchre
Was hung with shadow as a purple pall.
A faint wind stirred among the olive boughs . . .
Methinks I hear the sighing of that wind
In all sounds since, it was so dumbly sad;
But as the night wore on it died away,
And all was deadly stillness; Claudia,
That stillness was most awful, as if some
Great heart had broken and so ceased to beat!
I thought of many things, but found no joy
In any thought, even the thought of thee;
The moon waned in the west and sickly grew,
Her light sucked from her in the breaking dawn . . .
Never was dawn so welcome as that pale,
Faint glimmer in the cloudless, brooding sky!
Claudia, how may I tell what came to pass?
I have been mocked at, when I told the tale,
For a crazed dreamer punished by the gods
Because he slept on guard; but mock not THOU!
I could not bear it if thy lips should mock
The vision dread of that Judean morn.
Sudden the pallid east was all aflame
With radiance that beat upon our eyes
As from the noonday sun; and then we saw
Two shapes that were as the immortal gods
Standing before the tomb; around me fell
My men as dead; but I, though through my veins
Ran a cold tremor never known before,
Withstood the shock and saw one shining shape
Roll back the stone; the whole world seemed ablaze,
And through the garden came a rushing wind
Thundering a paean as of victory.
Then that dead man came forth . . . oh, Claudia,
If thou couldst but have seen the face of him!
Never was such a conqueror! Yet no pride
Was in it . . . naught but love and tenderness,
Such as we Romans scoff at, and his eyes
Bespake him royal. Oh, my Claudia,
Surely he was no Jew but very god!
Then he looked full upon me; I had borne
Much staunchly, but that look I could not bear!
What man may front a god and live? I fell
Prone, as if stricken by a thunderbolt;
And though I died not, somewhat of me died
That made me man; when my long stupor passed
I was no longer Maximus . . . I was
A weakling with a piteous woman soul,
All strength and pride, joy and ambition gone!
My Claudia, dare I tell thee what foul curse
Is mine because I looked upon a god?
I care no more for glory; all desire
For honor and for strife is gone from me,
All eagerness for war. I only care
To help and save bruised beings, and to give
Some comfort to the weak and suffering;
I cannot even hate those Jews; my lips
Speak harshly of them, but within my heart
I only feel compassion; and I love
All creatures, to the vilest of the slaves,
Who seem to me as brothers. Claudia,
Scorn me not for this weakness; it will pass--
Surely 'twill pass in time and I shall be
Maximus strong and valiant once again,
Forgetting that slain god. And yet . . .and yet . . . .
He looked as one who could not be forgot!
*****************************************************************
Vol. XXIII December 1910 No. 6
THE MAN WHO MADE GOOD {pages 784-799}
By ARTHUR STRINGER
AUTHOR OF "THE SILVER POPPY," "PHANTOM HOUSE," ETC.
Trotter opened his door and listened. Then he tiptoed out to the
stairhead. The coast seemed clear. The house lay beneath him as
still as a well. It was nothing more than a three-tiered cavern
of quietness.
So he crept back to his own room and closed and locked the door
after him. It was a top-floor rear, where a hip-roof gave his
back wall the rake of a Baltimore buckeye, and a dismantled
electric call-bell bore ignominious testimony to the fact that
his skyey abode had once been a servant's quarters.
But the room was quiet, and, what counted more, it was cheap. The
thought of ever being put out of it terrified the frugal-minded
Trotter. For seven weary months he had wandered about New York's
skyline, looking for just the right corner, as peevish as a
cow-bird looking for a copse nest.
Yet Mrs. Teetzel's laws were adamantine. Her rule was as
Procrustean as her thin-lashed eyes were inquisitive. She daily
inspected both her lavishly distributed lambrequins and her
"gentleman roomers'" mail, with an occasional discreet excursion
into their unlocked trunks. Cooking in a bedroom was as illicit
as private laundry work in the second-floor bathtub. A young
Toronto poet who had learned the trick of buttering an envelope
and in it neatly shirring an egg over a gas jet was first
reminded that he was four weeks behind in his rent and then sadly
yet firmly ejected from the top-floor skylight room.
So Trotter, once back in his own quarters, moved about with a
caution not untouched with apprehension. Mrs. Teetzel, he knew
had a tread that was noiseless. She also had the habit of
appearing, in curl-papers, at uncouth moments, as unheralded as
an apparition from the other world. And Trotter's conscience was
not clear. For months past he had kept secreted in his trunk one
of those single-holed gas heaters known as a "hot plate." This he
surreptitiously attached to the gas jet, and secretly thereon
made coffee and cooked his matutinal hard-boiled egg. There was a
thrill of excitement about it, a tang of outlawry, a touch of
danger. It took on the romance of a vast hazard. And it also
rather suited his purse, since that particular newspaper office
which he had journeyed to New York both to augment and to uplift
showed no undue haste in receiving him.
His third and last assault on the Advance office, in fact, had
amounted to an unequivocal ejection. Three short questions from
the shirt-sleeved autocrat of that benzine-odored bedlam had led
to Trotter's undoing. He wasn't expected to know much about
newspaper work, but before he came bothering people he ought at
least to know a shadow of something about the city he was living
in! And the one-time class orator of the University of Michigan
was calmly and pointedly advised to go and cut his eyeteeth on
the coral of adversity. He was disgustedly told to go out and
make good, instead of coming round and bothering busy people.
And Trotter went meekly out. But he had not made good.
He drifted hungrily about the great new city, the city that
seemed written in a cipher to which he could find no key. He even
guardedly shadowed the resentful-eyed Advance reporters on their
morning assignments, to get some chance inkling of the magic by
which the trick was turned. He wandered about the river front and
the ship wharves and the East Side street markets. He nosed
inquisitively and audaciously about anarchists' cellars and
lodging-houses; he found saloons where for a nickel very
palatable lamb stew could be purchased; he located those
swing-door corners where the most munificent free lunches were on
display; he dipped into halls where Socialistic fire-eaters
nightly stilettoed modern civilization; he invaded ginmills where
strange and barbaric sailors foregathered and talked. From all
this he was not learning Journalism. He was, however, learning
New York.
But now he had struck luck--sudden and unlooked for--in the
humble creation of "rhyme-ads" for a Sixth Avenue furniture
store. So, having his Bohemian young head somewhat turned by his
first check of twenty dollars, he had promptly celebrated his
return to affluence by as promptly spending a goodly portion of
that wealth. He had bidden a cadaverous animal painter named
Mershon and two equally hungry-eyed Michiganders yclept Albright
to his room with the rakish back wall, where the feast had been a
regal if somewhat subdued one.
And now Trotter looked about the room, thoughtfully, and decided
it was time to act. All record of this past orgy would have to be
wiped out. The window, he knew, was impossible, for already there
had been divers complaints as to the mysterious showers of
eggshell which day by day fell into the area below.
So Trotter laid several newspapers together. On these outspread
newspapers he placed four empty beer bottles, a sardine can, odds
and ends of biscuit and zwieback, a well-scraped wooden butter
tray, and--what had troubled and haunted him most, from the
moment of its purchase in a Sixth Avenue delicatessen store--the
lugubrious and clean-picked carcass of a roast turkey.
It had been a fine turkey, and done to a turn. But all along
Trotter had been wondering just how he was going to get rid of
those telltale bones. At the merriest moments of the feast the
question of the corner in which they could be secreted or the
aperture out of which they could be thrust had hung over him like
a veritable sword of Damocles.
But now he knew there was only one way to solve the problem. And
that was to wrap the remains carefully together, tie them up, and
make his escape down through the quiet house into the midnight
street. There the ever-damnatory parcel could be casually dropped
into a near-by ash barrel or tossed into a refuse can, and he
could aimlessly round the block, like a sedentary gentleman
enjoying his belated airing.
II
Trotter crept down through the quiet house with all the
trepidation of a sneak-thief. His one dread was the apparition of
Mrs. Teetzel; she would naturally surmise he was making away with
the bedroom stoneware, or the door knobs, or even the lead
piping.
He felt freer when he had once gained the street. But no peace of
mind could be his, he knew, until he had utterly discarded those
carefully wrapped turkey bones. It would be easy enough to toss
them into an areaway, if the worst came to the worst.
He looked up and down the street for a garbage can. But there was
none in sight. So he walked toward the avenue corner, with his
parcel under his arm. There he turned south, and at the next
corner swung about west again. But the right chance to get rid of
his turkey bones had not come. He glanced uneasily about. He
suddenly remembered that the police had the habit of holding up
belated parcel carriers and inspecting what they carried. So he
quickened his steps. But all the while he was covertly on the
lookout for his dumping spot.
A moment later he saw a patrolman on the street corner ahead of
him. He dreaded the thought of passing those scrutinizing eyes.
He eventually decided it would be too risky. So he doubled on his
own tracks, rabbit-like, crossing the street and turning north at
the next corner. He had had enough of the whole thing. It was
getting to be more than a joke. He would shilly-shally no longer,
even though he had to toss the cursed thing up on a house step.
He let the parcel slip lower down on his arm, with one finger
crooked through the string that tied it together. He was about to
fling it into the gloom of a brownstone step shadow when the door
above opened and a housemaid in cap and apron thrust a
plaintively meowing cat from the portico into the street. Trotter
quickened his steps, tingling, abashed, shaken with an inordinate
and ridiculous sense of guilt. He felt that he wanted to keep out
of the light, that he ought to skulk in the shadows until he was
free of the weight on his arm. He hurried on until he became
desperate, determined to end the farce at any hazard. So, as he
passed a building where a house front was being converted into a
low-windowed shop face, he dropped the paper package into an
abandoned mortar box.
He was startled, a moment later, by a voice calling sharply after
him: "Hi, yuh! You've dropped y'ur bundle!"
Trotter turned guiltily about. It was a night watchman. He
stepped slowly out to the mortar box as he spoke, and picked up
the parcel.
There was nothing for Trotter to do but go back and take it. He
mumbled something--he scarcely remembered whether it was a word
of explanation or of thanks. But he felt the eye of the night
watchman boring through him like a gimlet, and he was glad to
edge off and be on his way again.
By this time Trotter could feel the sweat of embarrassment on his
tingling body. He began to dramatize ridiculous contingencies. He
pictured himself as haled into night court, as cross-examined by
domineering and incredulous magistrates, who would send him to
the Island as a suspicious person. He began to be haunted by the
impression that he was being followed. The parcel became a weight
to him, a disheartening and dragging weight. He was now sure he
was being followed. He squinted back over his shoulders, only to
catch sight of a nocturnal "bill-sniper" placarding vulnerable
areas with his lithographed laudations of a vaudeville dancing
woman. A child murderer burdened with the body of his victim
could not have been more ill at ease, more timorous, more
terrified.
A sudden idea came to him as he passed a Chinese laundry in which
lights still burned and irons still thumped on an ironing board.
It was an audacious one, but it pointed toward deliverance.
His plan was to enter the laundry and pass over his parcel, as
though it were his week's washing. He would be gone before they
had discovered its contents. He merely needed to be offhand and
nonchalant. More than once he had seen dilapidated actors
carrying a limited wardrobe to the laundry at equally small hours
of the night. And the sloe-eyed iron-thumpers would never again
get sight of him!
But it took a moment or two to key himself up to the right pitch.
He stepped in beside one of the granite column bases of the First
National Trust, to give an extra tug to his still lagging
courage. He leaned for a moment against the huge steel grillwork
that covered the wide bank window behind him, looking eastward
along the side street to where he could see the oblong of light
from the laundry front.
A wave of exasperation swept through him at the thought of his
own white-livered irresolution. He was about to step forward to
face the end of his dilemma when an unlooked-for movement
occurred between him and the illuminated laundry front.
It was the movement of a shadowy figure which seemed, at first
sight, to erupt from the earth itself. It was several moments, in
fact, before Trotter realized that the figure had come up from
the basement of the building which stood immediately at the rear
of the bank, the building which also contained the laundry. But
this was not the thing that held Trotter's attention. The
discovery which was causing his eyes to follow every step of the
stranger was the fact that this second man ALSO CARRIED A LARGE
PAPER PARCEL UNDER HIS ARM.
He turned eastward without looking back. Yet there was something
circumspect in his footfall, something suspicious in the very
casualness of his movements. Trotter leaned out and looked after
him, nonplused by the coincidence, wondering if this second man's
mission was the same as his own. He was almost glad to see
somebody in the same boat.
Then curiosity overcame him. He turned and followed the other
man. He walked eastward, keeping as well in to the house shadows
as he could. He saw the man cross the wider traffic-way that ran
north and south, look quickly up and down the deserted street and
then, as he gained the shadow of the next house wall, veer close
in to an iron paling. Then there was a movement which Trotter
could not quite make out.
It was not until he crossed the street that he saw what the
movement meant. It was not until he caught sight of a galvanized
ash barrel standing beside the basement step and the stranger
ahead of him walking empty-handed away, that Trotter realized the
completeness of the coincidence.
The other man, without so much as stopping for a second, had
quietly dropped his paper-wrapped parcel on the top of the
galvanized barrel.
At no time did Trotter feel that there was anything momentous in
the movement. But it aroused his curiosity. It challenged
investigation. It set off his inquisitive young soul into
spreading pyrotechnics of imagination. And he realized, as he
walked up to the barrel, that his earlier sense of timidity had
disappeared. He quite calmly lifted the parcel from the barrel
top. Then he quite calmly dropped the other parcel in its place.
He was a little astonished, as he started on again, at the
pregnant weight of this new parcel. But he did not stop to
investigate. He did not care to gulp and lose the mystery at one
swallow. He scurried off with it, chucklingly, like a barnyard
hen with a corncob, to peck at it in solitude. He swung south and
then west again, to his own street. He went up his own steps,
through his own door, and up to his own top-floor room with the
rakish back wall. There he cautiously lighted the gas, drew the
blinds, and locked himself in. Next, he dragged a chair over to
the bedside, sat down on it, and carefully untied the parcel
string. Then, with somewhat accelerated pulse, he unwrapped the
paper-screened enigma.
A little puff of ironic disappointment escaped his pursed-up
lips. For at one glance he could see that it held no mystery. The
only mystery about it all was that he had been theatrical enough
to imagine it could prove anything that was not sordid and
worthless.
For lying on the paper before him was nothing more than a litter
of mortar and wall plaster, interspersed with stone chips. It was
nothing more than the sweepings a brick-layer had left behind
him, a pile of worthless rubbish, a bundle of refuse, another
white elephant on his hands.
Trotter stirred the heap of dust and lime, impassively,
disdainfully. There was nothing more than an occasional brick
corner, an occasional piece of wall plaster. The only other thing
was one larger fragment of stone. Trotter looked at it
indolently. It was merely a piece of granite--an ounce or two of
stone with one highly polished end, a bit of refuse which a
hurrying mason might have used to "rubble" a wall crevice. And he
had been fool enough to cart it up four flights of stairs!
He turned the piece of stone over in his hands. It was of
porphyritic granite, with distinct crystals of feldspar embedded
in a fine grained matrix. Trotter's brow wrinkled in vague
thought as he peered down at it. He was trying to think what it
reminded him of, what possible link it made in a chain of lost
association.
Then he remembered. It was toward the pillars of the First
National Trust Building that his mind was trying to grope. They
were of the same stuff, highly polished porphyritic granite, the
pride and wonder of the avenue along which they made a burnished
and flashing peristyle.
Trotter rubbed his chin, meditatively, and once more examined the
stone. Then he took a sudden deeper breath, and, leaning
hurriedly forward, raked through the parcel with his fingers. He
found nothing of note.
But as he sat there, stupidly staring at the fragment of granite,
his crouching body, with his feet tucked in under the chair
rungs, was startlingly like that familiar figure known as an
interrogation mark.
III
It was nine o'clock the next morning when Trotter, carrying a
parcel of laundry, walked casually past the First National Trust
Building and turned the corner. He also made note, as he stepped
into the open-fronted Chinese laundry, of this incongruous
side-street neighbor, its squalid meanness cheek by jowl with the
lordly magnificence of the many-columned bank structure.
On a narrow-fronted ground floor was the crowded little laundry
with its red-lettered sign, its uncurtained windows, its shelves
of red-tagged parcels, and its ever-present odor of borax. Below
this was a basement, a cellar as narrow and dark as a cistern. A
flight of perilously inclined steps led to the door of this
basement. This door, in turn, was glass-fronted, but protected by
a heavy woven-wire grating. On it was a sign which read:
"J. HEENEY. PLUMBING,
WIRING AND ELECTRIC SUPPLIES."
It was this basement which so inordinately interested Trotter. He
essayed several mild inquiries, in handing his frugal parcel of
washing over the Chinaman's counter, as to the occupant of the
cellar below. About "J. Heeney," however, he discovered nothing
beyond the fact that he had occupied the cellar for several
months. Trotter did not want to arouse unnecessary suspicion by
overinterrogating "J. Heeney's" neighbors.
So he went mildly back to his top-floor room, and sat down and
tried to study things out. As he sat there wrapped in thought,
his idly wandering gaze rested on the electric bell above the
door. He looked at it for several seconds. Then he stood on a
chair and twisted away the bell's wiring. Using his pocket knife
as a screwdriver, he released the bell from the door lintel. Then
he cleaned and polished it. This done, he removed the clapper,
wrapped the bell up in a piece of newspaper, and made his
unhesitating way back to the cellar beneath the Chinese laundry.
He was very much awake as he went slowly down the narrow steps.
He wanted nothing to escape his notice.
He found the wire-screened door at the bottom locked. But he
could get a clear enough view of the interior, even through the
dirty glass. The entire space within was not more than ten feet
wide and eight feet deep. It held a litter of plumber's tools, a
few lengths of gas piping, a row of batteries, a blowpipe, a
small hand-forge, a couple of porcelain washbowls, a deal table
and chair and what seemed to be an electric transformer in a
sadly battered case.
Across the back of the shop ran a wooden partition, plainly
shutting off the main part of the cellar. In this partition,
Trotter's careful scrutiny discovered, stood a narrow door. He
ached to know what lay behind that door and that partition. But
he had to be content with the shallower shop front. So he was not
hurried in his inspection of it. It was not until he had fixed
the details of the entire place in his mind that he ventured to
knock.
There was no answer to his knock. Yet it was plain that some one
was inside, for he could see the key in the lock, through the
dirty glass. Who that person was he intended to find out.
He was rattling the wire fretwork, impatiently, loudly, when the
partition door swung open.
Through this door stepped a short and extremely broad-shouldered
man. There was no trace of annoyance on his face. In fact, much
to Trotter's vague disappointment, he was smiling, smiling easily
and broadly. He wore a workman's jumper, stained with oil and
iron rust, and in his hand he carried a large pair of pipe tongs.
But these did not interest Trotter. What caught his eye was the
fact that the man's boots were white with lime dust.
"Hold on, sister; hold on!" said the man, with a laugh, for
Trotter was still rattling the door. The owner stepped across his
shop and turned the key in the lock.
"Hard to hear when I'm in doin' my lathe work," he explained, as
he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. All the while, as
he swung back the door, his eyes were closely studying the eyes
of the other man. Trotter noticed the row of matches stuck in the
soiled hatband, and the cotton bag of "Durham" that swung from
his sweat-stained belt.
"What can I do for you, sister?" was his companionable greeting.
Trotter unwrapped his electric bell.
"Can you give me a clapper for this?" he asked.
The other man took the bell in his hand. Trotter could see
powdered lime under his nails.
"I guess I can fix you out," said the shop owner. "Wait a
minute."
He turned to the door in the partition, and disappeared from
sight, closing the door after him.
Trotter's first decision had been to take the key from the outer
door lock. But some sixth sense made him hesitate, prompted him
to turn and look at the inner door.
His stare was rewarded by the discovery of a hole in this door,
about five feet from the floor. It was a lookout; he felt sure he
was being watched. So he thrust his hands into his pockets, gazed
carelessly about the shop, and waited.
The man reappeared, shaking his head.
"Nothing doing," he said. He was not able to fit a clapper to the
bell.
"But I thought you kept electric supplies here," objected
Trotter.
The other man smiled. His good nature was impregnable.
"Oh, I can get it, if you've got to have it. Come back about ten
to-morrow."
"All right," was Trotter's indifferent answer, as he turned
languidly away. He went up the steps with equal languor, humming
as he went.
IV
Trotter kept guarded watch on "J. Heeney's" plumbing
establishment. He watched it like a hungry cat watching a rat
hole. And it was three hours later that he had the satisfaction
of seeing the plumber ascend to the street and walk hurriedly
westward. Trotter could see that he carried a kit of tools under
his arm. But to follow him in open daylight was too great a risk.
Instead of that, he went down the narrow steps, and through the
dusty glass examined the doorlock.
Fifteen minutes later he went down another flight of basement
steps, this time to the cellar of a Sixth Avenue locksmith.
"I've got a closet door locked shut on me," he explained. "And I
want a key to get it open."
The locksmith looked him up and dow.n He seemed respectable
enough, this mild-eyed youth with the locked closet.
But the locksmith knew the tricks of his trade.
"Then I'll take a bunch of `blanks' over with me and open her up
for you."
"I'd rather get her open by myself."
"It will cost you a dollar," was the locksmith's ultimatum.
"It's worth a dollar," agreed Trotter. "But how'll we do it?"
"I'll dip a skeleton blank in hot wax and lampblack. Then you put
the key in the lock and turn it as far as you can. That'll show
the ward marks, where they bite the wax. Then bring me the key
and I'll cut it. Maybe it'll take two cuttings. That'll be two
dollars!"
Trotter paid a quarter deposit and took the key, made a
circuitous way to the plumber's cellar, descended the steps,
knocked, got no answer, and quietly inserted the key in the lock,
turning it as far as it would go.
Instead of going back to the locksmith, he bought a ten-cent
file, and with his own hand cut away the blank according to the
ward marks. Once more he made his way to the door of the empty
shop and fitted his key. It turned part way round in the lock,
but did not throw back the bar. He recoated the key flange with
the black wax by holding it to a lighted match and letting it
cool again.
He at once saw where his cutting had been imperfect. A few
strokes of his file remedied this. He once more fitted the key to
the lock, and found that he was free to pass in and out of the
door.
Yet he deferred forcing an entrance, at the moment, hungrily as
he studied the inner partition door through the iron-grated
glass. He knew what such a movement meant. He could not count on
Heeney's continued absence. Above all, at this, the beginning of
things, he wanted to avoid any untimely mis-step. So he made his
way to the street, shuttling cautiously back and forth across the
avenue, aimless of demeanor, diffident of step, yet ever and
always on the lookout. From half a block away he saw Heeney
return to his cellar. From an even remoter stand, two hours
later, he perceived the plumber emerge, like a rabbit out of its
warren. He also perceived that the rapidly disappearing man
carried a large paper parcel under his arm.
As before, this parcel was carried for three blocks and then
adroitly deposited on the top of an ash barrel.
Trotter, once Heeney had skulked about the next corner, quietly
crossed the street and sauntered past the parcel-crowned barrel,
with his open pocketknife in his hand. One sweep of the knife
blade slit the paper wrapper, and without so much as stopping on
his way Trotter was able to catch up a handful of the litter it
held. This litter, as before, was made up of ground mortar and
plaster and stone chips. But this time, amid the lime and dust,
he could detect the glitter of minute particles of steel.
He tested the larger fragments of these with his knife point.
They were very hard, harder even than his tempered blade steel,
diamond-like in their durity. He concluded, as he sat on the edge
of his bed that night, rubbing them between his fingers, that
they could be nothing but particles of keenly-tempered chromium
steel. And chromium steel, he knew, was not used in gas pipes. It
was foolish to think of it as a subject for lathe work. It was
equally absurd to accept it as an everyday element in any
plumber's everyday work. Trotter was not ignorant of the fact
that steel of this character was used almost exclusively in the
construction of high grade safes and bank vaults.
He stood up, suddenly, and crossed the room to his little
bookshelf. From this shelf he took down a much-thumbed "World
Almanac," a paper-bound volume which for months past had been
serving as his only guide to New York. He turned to the pages
headed "Banks in Manhattan and Bronx." It took but a minute's
search to secure the names of the president and cashier of the
First National Trust Company. But when he further read that its
capital was three million five hundred thousand, and that its
total resources amounted to forty-seven million three hundred
thousand dollars, his breath came in shorter gasps of excitement.
He began to realize the colossal wealth which lay guarded behind
the great porphyritic granite pillars. He also began to realize
some new and as yet undefined responsibility. The mere thought of
the magnitude of the movement in which he was being made a
deliberate and yet disinterested factor brought him once more to
his feet, pacing his little den of a room with thoughtful and
preoccupied steps.
V
Early the next morning Trotter was back at the bank corner, like
a guard at his sentry-box. He kept watch there, with that
pertinacious alertness peculiar to the idler, until he had the
satisfaction of witnessing Heeney's early departure from the
cellar, with a tool kit under his arm.
Five minutes later Trotter was descending the stairs that led to
the plumber's shop. Once there, he took out his key, fitted it to
the lock, opened the door, stepped quietly inside, and locked the
outer door after him. Before venturing to open the inner door he
pressed an ear flat against the wooden partition and stood there
listening. The silence was unbroken.
He stepped to the side of the shop and caught up a plumber's
thick-bodied tallow candle. Then he softly opened the second
door, stepped inside, and as softly closed the door after him.
He found himself in perfect darkness. But he stood there,
waiting, before venturing to move forward, before daring to
strike a light. He knew, as he peered about the blackness that
engulfed him, that he was now facing more than an indeterminate
responsibility. He was confronting actual and immediate danger.
Even as he stood there, sniffing at the air, so heavy with its
smell of damp lime and its undecipherable underground gases, a
sudden fuller consciousness of undefined and yet colossal peril
sent a telegraphing tingle of nerves up and down his body.
The only thing that broke the silence was the faint sound of
footsteps on the laundry floor above him, together with the
steady thump of irons on the ironing table. There was something
fortifying, something consoling, in those neighborly and
sedentary little noises.
Trotter struck a match and lighted his candle. He waited without
moving for the flame to grow. Then he thrust the candle up before
him. As he did so, his hand came in contact with the rough
surface of what at first he took to be a stone wall. But as he
looked closer he saw that it was not masonry. It was nothing more
nor less than a carefully piled mass of stone and brick. Each
fragment had been carefully placed on top of its fellow, each
interstice had been carefully filled with rubble.
The pile extended from floor to ceiling. It filled the entire
cellar. It left only space enough for a man to pass inward from
the opened door. It was nothing more than the dump of a mine, the
rock and brick from a tunnel, not flung loosely about, but
scrupulously stowed away.
Holding the candle in front of him, Trotter bent low and groped
his way in through the narrow passage. Everything was as orderly
and hidden as the approach to a wild animal's lair. Everything
was eloquent of a keen secretiveness. No betraying litter met his
eye. Each move had been calmly and cautiously made. Each step of
a complicated campaign had been quietly engineered. Trotter could
even decipher a series of electric wires festooned from the
little tunnel's top. He could see where the passage had gone
around obstacles, where it had curled about a dishearteningly
heavy buttress base, where it had dipped lower to underrun a
cement vault bed, where it had sheered off from the tin-foiled
surface of a "closed-curcuit" protective system, and where it had
dipped and twisted about to advance squarely into a second blind
wall at right angles to the first.
A portion of this wall had been torn away. With equal care an
inner coating of cement had been chiseled off, exposing to view
an unbroken dark surface.
As Trotter held the candle closer, he could see this dark surface
marked off with chalk lines, sometimes with crosses, sometimes
with figures he could not decipher. On it, too, he could see a
solitary depression, as round and bright as a silver coin, as
though a diamond drill had been testing the barrier.
He knew, even before he touched the chill surface with his hand,
that it was a wall of solid steel, that it was the steel of the
bank vault itself, the one deep-hidden and masonry-embedded area
which stood without its ever-vigilant closed-circuit sentry. And
he knew that Heeney had grubbed and eaten and burrowed his way,
like a woodchuck, to the very heart of the First National Trust's
wealth.
It was only then that the stupendousness of the whole thing came
home to Trotter. It was only then that he realized the almost
superhuman cunning and pertinacity in this guileless-eyed cellar
plotter called Heeney. He could see the hours of patient labor it
had involved, the days and days of mole-like tunneling, the weeks
and weeks of gnome-like burrowing and carrying and twisting and
loosening and piling, the months of ant-like industry which one
blow of the Law's heel would make as nothing.
It rather bewildered Trotter. It filled him with an
ever-increasing passion to get away from the place, to escape
while he still had a chance. It turned the gaseous underground
tunnel into a stifling pit, making his breath come in short and
wheezing gasps. It brought a tiny-beaded sweat out on his chilled
body.
Then he stopped breathing altogether. He wheeled about and
suddenly brought his thumb and forefinger together on the candle
flame, pinching it out as one might pinch the life out of a moth.
For on his straining ears fell the sound of a door slammed shut.
There was no mistake, no illusion about it. Some one had entered
the shop. Then came the sound of a second door. This time it was
being opened. And it was the door leading into the tunnel.
Trotter could see the momentary efflorescence of pale light at
the bend in the passage before him. And he realized that he was
unarmed. He had not even a crowbar, not even a chisel or wrench,
with which to defend himself. He knew he stood there trapped and
helpless.
He shrank back, instinctively, without being conscious of the
movement. He heard the sound of steps, shuffling and short. Then
came an audible grunt, a grunt of relief. This was followed by
the thump of a heavy weight dropped to the brick floor. Then came
the sound of steps again, still shuffling and short.
Trotter leaned forward, listening, waiting, with every nerve
strained. He concentrated every sense on the blur of light along
the tunnel wall before him.
As he peered forward, scarcely daring to breathe, he was
conscious of the fact that the light had suddenly withered. It
vanished from the refracting tunnel sides, as though wiped away
by an obliterating black sponge. Even before the truth of the
thing had come home to him, he heard the sound of a quietly
closed door.
Heeney had gone. He had merely crept into his tunnel mouth,
dropped some tools, and then quietly crept out again.
It was not until he heard the slam of the outer door, a moment or
two later, that Trotter felt sure of his deliverance. It was not
until he knew his enemy was up the steps that he let his aching
lungs gulp in the fetid tunnel air.
Then he crept forward cautiously, obsessed by one impulse, the
impulse of escape, the passion to reach the open, to find air and
light and space once more about him. He did nothing more than
feel hurriedly over the bundle that lay in his path. It seemed an
instrument of steel tied up in a cloth. He could feel strand
after strand of wires, ductile and cloth-covered wires. He could
also decipher a disk through which ran a piece of metal, like a
blade through a sword guard. He felt sure it was an electrode of
some sort, a tool to convert stolen electricity into a weapon of
offense and assault. But he neither waited to strike a light nor
stooped to puzzle over the bundle.
He paused for a minute to listen at the closed partition door.
The only sound that came to his ears was the shuffle of feet and
the thump from the ironing board above him. Yet when he opened
this partition door he did so noiselessly, cautiously, slowly,
inch by inch. Still screened in shadow, he studied the shop, the
steps, the wire-blurred window, the street above him. Then he
took a deep breath, crossed to the shop door, unlocked it,
stepped outside, relocked it after him, and, pocketing the key,
climbed the steps to the sidewalk.
His face, as he came out to the light, was almost colorless. His
eyes were wide and staring with wonder. He kept telling himself
that he must walk slowly, that he must in no way betray himself,
that he must appear indifferent and offhand and inconspicuous to
every one he chanced to pass. He felt the necessity of guarding
himself, for he was now a person of importance. He was an
emissary of destiny, an agent entrusted with a vast issue.
The streets through which he passed no longer frowned down at him
from their inhospitable skylines. He was no longer an unattached
and meaningless unit in the life that throbbed and roared all
about him. He meant something to it. He was part of it. He was
its guardian. And it would acknowledge him, in the end, or he
would know the reason why.
VI
Trotter sat peering mildly about him as that Gargantuan organism
known as a newspaper office labored and shrieked in the birth of
an afternoon edition. Subterranean Hoe presses roared and hummed,
telegraph keys clicked and cluttered, typewriters tapped and
clattered like a dozen highholders on a hollow elm, telephone
bells shrilled, shouting pressmen came and went, unkempt copy
boys trailed back and forth with their festoons of limp galley
proof, and Hubbart, with close-set eyes and a forehead like a
bisected ostrich egg, sat at the City Desk, calmly presiding over
an otherwise frenzied accouchement.
It interested Trotter. It interested him very much. But it no
longer filled him with mingled fear and revolt. He was, indeed,
no longer envious, just as he was no longer nervous. He was as
calm as a Nihilist with a bomb in his pocket.
Looking up, he saw that the office boy was holding the rail gate
open for him to enter. But he was conscious of no spirit of
elation as he stepped through the gate and passed on into that
glass-fronted cage where Pyott, the managing editor, sat like a
switchman in his many-levered tower.
Trotter saw, seated at a desk before him, a thin-featured,
thin-haired man of forty, with the crumpled-up eye-corners
peculiar to the face that masks a circuitous and secretive mind.
It was a face full of that weary concern, that alert
indifferency, which is companion to the spirit of repeated
compromise. It was far from an open face: it seemed to betray
only two things, tiredness and satiric intelligence.
The man at the desk did not even look up. He merely flung a
barbed "Well?" over his shoulder. It reminded Trotter of the
preoccupied tail swish of a horse worried by a black-fly. The
side flick of one casual monosyllable was plainly all he was
worth. Trotter calmly sat down.
"I've been waiting for six months for a job on this paper," he
began, quite seriously, quite deliberately. The man at the desk
went on writing. The pen did not even stop.
"Yes?" This second monosyllable was neither an answer nor a
question. It was merely an intimation that nothing of arresting
moment had as yet been uttered.
"So I've come straight to you!"
"Yes!" This third exclamation was plainly a challenge to come to
the issue in hand.
"I've been thrown down three----"
"Excuse me," the man at the desk had his hand on a desk 'phone
standard, "but you'd better see our city editor."
Trotter laughed a little. "I've seen the city editor four times.
It's no use. He only throws me out."
For the first time Pyott, the managing editor, looked up. Then he
swung about in his swivel chair and stared at the youth, the
somewhat narrow-chested and calm-eyed youth who had the
effrontery to sit down without being asked. The calm-eyed youth
seemed in no way daunted by the ordeal.
"What do you want?" was Pyott's quick and curt demand.
"I want a job."
The editor's face darkened. Trotter could see that he had angered
him. He could see a lean hand shoot out and a lean finger push
down on the button that sounded a buzzer in the outer office.
"There's no use doing that till you've heard what I've got to
say," announced Trotter.
"Why not?" snapped the man, with a finger still on the button.
"Because your man Hubbart out there told me not to stick my nose
in here till I'd made good--till I'd got a big story. And now
I've got it. And I'm going to give you the biggest scoop you've
printed in five years."
"That's interesting!"
"I'd never have had the nerve to face you if it wasn't."
A boy appeared through the door. The editor swung back to his
desk.
"Show this gentleman the way downstairs," he said, without anger,
without resentment, without interest.
Trotter stood up and stared at him. "You mean you're not going to
take this beat when I've got it right here to hand out to you?"
he cried in his startled and high-pitched voice. "You're not
going to give me my chance?"
"What chance? What beat are you talking about?"
"A beat that involves the theft of millions of dollars!"
"And what's going to happen to your millions of dollars?"
Trotter sat down in the chair again. "It's going to be stolen,
every cent of it."
The man at the desk smiled. It was a very faint and mirthless
smile. "You said that before, I think. But who's taking it?"
"One of the most accomplished crooks in all America."
"And from where?" was the next indulgent interrogation.
"From one of the richest banks in this city."
Trotter's calm and deliberate tones were beginning to nettle the
other man a little.
"Then it hasn't actually been done?"
"No!"
"Yet you know it IS to be done?"
"Yes!"
Pyott was smiling by this time, quite broadly. "Would you kindly
tell me just how you know all this? Just what first opened up the
road to your somewhat startling knowledge?"
"Some turkey bones!"
"Ah, I see! Some turkey bones!" He nodded approvingly,
indulgently. "And what were you doing with these particular
turkey bones?"
"Putting them in a garbage can."
"Ah! You were putting some turkey bones in a garbage can. And as
you were about to do this?"
"I caught sight of another man also trying to get rid of a
parcel."
"Turkey bones, of course."
A butterball's bosom was no more impervious to slough water than
the rapt-eyed youth to the older man's irony.
"When I opened his parcel I found it held mortar and stone and
some steel cuttings."
"And this led you to infer?"
"This led me to follow him. He had a basement, I found, directly
in the rear of a bank building."
"What bank building?"
"That's my story."
"And I trust the locality agreed with him."
"Extremely well," was Trotter's mild-toned reply. "In fact, it
was essential for him to be side by side with that particular
bank building, where he could quietly tunnel his way through its
back wall and burrow under its floors and eat a passage right
through to its vaults."
The man at the desk sighed and looked at the obsessed youth with
a smile too impersonal to be called pitying. "Vaults! That's a
matter for the police. This is a newspaper office."
"But can't you see the story in it? Can't you see what it means
when you're the only people who're in on it?"
"You'll have to show me your Eskimo!" remarked the unperturbed
editor.
"That's what I'm here for!" cried the exasperated youth.
Still again the man at the desk eyed his visitor for a minute of
silence. Then he reached for his telephone. "I want Kendrick and
Gilman for some city work. Send 'em in to me. Yes, right away,
please."
Pyott swung about to his visitor once more. "I'm giving you our
two best men. They'll do what you tell them to do."
"But that'll make it THEIR story!" objected Trotter. "I want to
land this myself. I want it to be mine."
"Then what am I to do?"
Trotter scarcely knew. But he had not forgotten the thing he had
waited and hungered for this many a month. "Put me on your staff,
first, so I can be acting for somebody."
Still again the editor smiled. "You're set on being one of us,
aren't you?"
"I've got to have something behind me before I can tackle a job
like this."
"All right," was the wearily indulgent answer, "call yourself one
of us. Now what else do you want?"
"I guess you'd better give me one of your workmen for a lookout,"
suggested the narrow-chested youth.
"Why a workman? Why not Kendrick or Gilman?"
"All I want is a husky man to see I'm not interfered with from
outside," replied the new and jealous god of the press world.
"Then I'll land the story myself."
The managing editor's finger end was once more on the buzzer.
"I'll give you Tiernan of the job room. He's Irish, and weighs
two hundred. Is there anything else?"
"I s'pose I'll need a gun," ruminated the mild-eyed youth. "But
I'm willing to buy that with my own money."
It was not the purchase of the gun that was troubling him. It was
the thought that he had never in all his life so much as
discharged a revolver. He would not even know how to load it. But
then Tiernan would doubtless be able to show him.
A telephone bell was shrilling at the editor's elbow.
"Is that all?" demanded the impatient man of affairs as he turned
to the 'phone. He called a cryptic sentence or two into the
transmitter and slapped the receiver back on its hook.
"Yes, I guess that's all," answered the wide-eyed boy, with his
hat in his hand.
"Then go and make good," said the man at the desk as Tiernan
swung in through the office door. "Go and get your story!"
VII
In a newspaper office, where one impression so quickly and
inevitably obliterates another, sensation is startling only in
the fact of its ephemerality. For two busy hours wave after wave
of the world's turbulence had beaten on the shoreline of the
Advance staff's attention. Every one knew, from Pyott down, that
the day was a "big" one. And since it is seldom the ever-arriving
guests of sensation which disturb a newspaper office but rather
the secondary thought of bestowing them in their right chamber
and bed and fitting them with their right "heading" night-caps,
the ordeal of the Advance's day had reached its second and most
exacting crisis. So when Pyott, the managing editor, was called
up on the wire by Obed Tyrer, the President of the First National
Trust, the call from that quarter carried with it no responsive
curiosity.
"Can you come up here right away?" demanded the banker, in a
voice of that coerced tranquillity into which the trained mind
translates itself when face to face with undue excitement.
"No; I can't! "
"Why can't you?"
"Well, among other things, I've got the trifling matter of a
paper to put to press. What's wrong?"
"You know what's wrong!"
"Do I?"
"And you and your men let this go through, two whole weeks of it,
for the sake of your little yellow-journal scarehead!"
"Look here, Tyrer, I'm a busy man. Tell me what you're talking
about, or ring off."
"I'm talking about the lunacy of a one-cent journalist who's
willing to risk even his own funds for the sake of an afternoon
beat! I tell you, Pyott, the whole story's got to be stopped!"
"What story?"
"The Advance story! I've got your man Trotter here now. He----"
"Ah, Trotter!" exclaimed Pyott. He was at last beginning to see
light.
"I've got him and your job-room man named Tiernan up here, but I
can't do anything with Trotter. He's mad, mad as a March hare.
Says he's got to get his story down to you for to-day's issue."
"So you've got Trotter there! What else have you got?"
"Will you hold things up till I run down and talk it over? Will
you promise me that much?"
Pyott laughed. "Then young Trotter got his story, after all?"
"Got his story? Of course he got it. And in another four hours
that safe-cracker would have drilled right into our vitals. I
tell you we can't imperil our institution this way. We can't let
that stuff get out. We can't do it!"
"Nobody's going to break your nice new bank, Obed! You run down
here in a taxi and we'll try to straighten things out."
"But what'll I do with Trotter? How're we ever going to hold him
in?"
"Where's your safe-cracker man?"
"We've got him right here! Burns is sending over an A. B. P. A.
man to take care of him."
"D'you mean he's hurt?"
"No, no! We've identified him as Missouri Horton of the Scott
Gang--he got a Sing Sing life sentence for yegg work in Yonkers.
But Burns tells me he had enough money buried away to buy Tammany
influence and get paroled. Can't you see what that means?"
"Which way? To your office or to mine?"
"To us! They've got him now, for life! They can get him back to
Sing Sing and keep the whole cursed thing under cover!"
There was a moment's silence before the cogitating Pyott spoke
again. "And you say you've got Trotter right there with you?"
"Yes, but he's acting like a madman, in the Vice-President's
private room."
Again there was a moment's silence. "Then give him ink and
paper--give him lots of it. Tell him I've said for him to write
the story THERE. Tell him to sling himself, that I want every
detail, every fact, and ten solid columns of it!"
"What are you driving at?"
"I'm driving at this: keep him busy, man! Don't you see? Keep him
writing there until the thing's worked out of his system. Then
I'll tame him down, later. Meanwhile, you'd better clean house up
there so you can officially contradict the whole story if the
yellows happen to get after you."
"But nothing can get out, I tell you, unless you PUT it out!"
"Then what are you worrying about?"
"Young Trotter says he's got to send his stuff in. He's not
satisfied with the mere idea of writing it."
"Then give him one of your men, two of your men, for carriers.
Tell him to keep sending his copy down in relays, as he writes
it. But don't let him get away."
"Oh, I'll hold him here if I have to nail him to the floor. I
tell you, a thing like this would shake public confidence. It'd
be worse than a fireproof hotel going up in flames. It would mean
an alarming and immediate depreciation in our credit, a
deplorable----"
"Of course it would. Come down as soon as you can and tell me all
that. I'll have more time then."
Pyott hung up the receiver. He poised for one brief and immobile
moment, deep in thought, before he swung about to the three
exigent figures making signs for his attention. Then the
thin-featured, many-wrinkled, weary-eyed face relaxed in an
almost honest and unequivocal smile.
VIII
Trotter, shut in the Vice-President's private office, paid little
attention to his surroundings. He did not even know that the desk
on which he wrote was of mahogany. He did not notice the imported
Daghestan under his feet. He was unconscious of the orchids in
the low desk-vase of French silver. He was oblivious of the onyx
and marble elegance that surrounded him.
All he knew was that he had paper and ink in plenty and the
Greatest Story of the Age to write. All he knew was that time was
precious, that two trusted messengers stood before him to deliver
his copy, that presses in the lower part of the city waited like
hungry animals to gulp down his story, and that before nightfall
a million eyes would widen and half a million hearts would beat a
little faster at the words that he was about to write.
He pushed back the silver and cut-glass desk ornaments, the heavy
gold-framed portrait of a young girl standing beside an
opulent-bosomed woman in an opera cloak, the foolish vase of
orchids. He made space for himself and his work. And then he
wrote.
He wrote with all the rhapsodic passion of a god creating a new
world. He began with a preamble that would have broken a
copy-reader's heart. He followed it up with atmospheric
discursiveness that would have worn away an editor's blue pencil.
He told how Steam and Steel were supposed to have crushed the
Spirit of Romance out of the age. He pointed out how the modern
city of stone and concrete seemed no longer to house that wayward
and retrospective spirit in which the heart of the poet has
forever reveled.
Then he sought to demonstrate how true Romance can never die, how
Wonder is all about even the Wall Street clerk and the
five-o'clock commuter. He put forward the claim that modern New
York was as potentially picturesque, as alluringly labyrinthine,
as olden Bagdad itself. He argued that the Thousand and One Tales
were nightly recurring in our very midst, only we had neither the
eyes nor the leisure to observe them. He told of the strange
underworlds hidden from the casual eye, of subterranean rivers of
life which Respectability never sees. He showed how it was only
the face of life that had changed. He intimated that Stevenson
had unearthed romance enough in an up-to-date London, that Hugo
and Balzac had found it in Paris, and he eloquently proclaimed
that even to-day it was to be stumbled across in our city of
homes on the Hudson.
It was a very rhythmical piece of fine writing, and he had his
coat off and was working in his shirt sleeves before he had
advanced six pages into it. Then he veered about to the story
itself. He enlarged on the amount of wealth harbored by a
national bank. He explained how this vast wealth was hoarded and
protected, the massive walls, the steel vaults, the steam flood
pipes, the ever-watching attendants, the tangle of articulate
wires that a touch would make garrulous, the time locks, the
floors of cement and railway iron, the contact mats which
reported the slightest footfall of the trespasser.
Then he told how an idea had come to the mind of an idle yegg
named "Missouri" Horton. He told how this wary and cunning and
romantic-spirited outlaw had planned his attack, how he had hired
the cellar next to the granite-walled citadel of opulence, how he
had learned the location of the vaults, how he had figured out
the thickness of the masonry, how he had slowly and quietly
prepared for his lonely and Promethean attack.
Trotter's sallow young face grew chalkier as he wrote, though he
was unconscious of either effort or weariness. They brought him
luncheon, in due time, on a napkin-covered tray. He lifted the
napkin peevishly, took a disdainful look at the food, gulped down
a cup of black coffee, and pushed the mess away from him. He had
serious work in hand.
He wrote on, unconscious of time. His mind seemed to sway,
hypnotically, with the reverberations of his own rhetoric. He
tossed in a classical allusion or two; here and there he left an
Old Testament phrase to coruscate along the fringe of his text;
he even called back one of his copy carriers, to revise an
unelaborated figure of speech.
Then he told how the tunnel was begun, how brick by brick and
stone by stone a passage was grubbed through every obstacle. He
expatiated on the infinite patience of such a man as Horton, how
Monte Cristo paled beside him, how vast difficulties had to be
overcome, how every stone had to be stowed carefully away in the
back of the cellar, how in time the mortar and cement had to be
ground to a powder and carried secretly away. He told how the
tunnel was pushed forward, foot by foot; how the bank was
attacked in its one and only vital spot, precisely as a porcupine
curled defensively up in the snow is seized by the fisher-marten,
not through open attack, but by artfully tunneling up under the
quill-less belly.
Then he retailed how the vast business of this great banking
institution went tranquilly and ponderously on, how millions were
handled and changed and stowed away while all the time the
unknown enemy was inch by inch crawling nearer.
When a note came up from the Advance office signed by the
managing editor--the managing editor who had never been known to
praise one of his men in all his twelve-year regime--Trotter took
it as a matter of course. "Your story is great," this note had
read. "Keep it up." Trotter merely gave the scrawl a second
hurried glance. It did not excite him; it did not intoxicate. He
was already drunk with the wine of creation, as delirious as a
whirling dervish. And he knew he still had work to do.
A white-whiskered gentleman wearing a pearl-buttoned white
waistcoat stepped quietly up to the office door and peered
guardedly in over his glasses. Then he tip-toed away unseen, with
a condoning smile on his astute and thin-nosed old face. Trotter
had no thought or memory of his surroundings. It was his Story;
the Story of his life. He sat there, entangled and locked
together with it, unconscious of what it was doing to him,
oblivious of how, like a blood-sucking vampire, it was draining
the vigor of his youth from him.
He was now in the very vortex of his story. He told how he had
posted Tiernan at the head of the steps leading down into the
plumber's shop. He cunningly enlarged on the huge Irishman's
bewilderment, his incredulity, his blasphemously reiterated
demand to know what it was all about. He told how he himself had
silently entered the shop, how he had crept through to the second
door, how he had waited for a moment to take out his revolver. He
described the hot and reeking air of the tunnel as he crept into
its mouth. He pictured the sudden glare of light at the shaft end
where Horton stood burning away an outer vault wall with an
electrode. He told how the heat and the fumes of that little
underground hell bewildered him, how he stood gaping at the
scene, watching the white-hot tongue of fire hissing and licking
at its last barrier of steel. He did not neglect to paint how the
hardened metal, under the electrolyzing current eroding its
surface, became as chalk, decomposing into a charry mass which
one blow of a hammer might penetrate.
He told how he crept up on the man, step by step, with his
revolver in his hand. He told how he could see the safe-breaker's
face shining with sweat, how he could smell scorching clothing,
how his eyes began to ache with the light-glare until he threw up
a forearm to protect them. He explained how it had been his
intention to creep up on the criminal and seize him bodily, and
how he was defeated in this by a sudden and unlooked-for movement
on the part of his unsuspecting enemy.
Horton had quickly swung about--he was, in fact, groping along
the passage floor for a two-quart tin pail partly filled with tap
water. The glare had blinded him, for the time being, and he was
in reality feeling for a drink. But the Advance reporter had
thought the movement meant that his presence was discovered. And
the two men had come together.
Trotter told of the fight there, hand to hand, in the choking
tunnel with its tangle of deadly currents. He recounted how the
other man's strength had been greater than his own, how he felt
his breath going, how he saw himself being forced closer and
closer back on the glaring electrode. He confessed that he had
been excited and foolish enough to lose the revolver. He
mentioned his indignation when he saw that the other man was
actually trying to use his teeth. He described how for the first
time it came home to him that he would be killed there, that
Tiernan could not possibly hear his cries, that his heart could
not possibly continue to beat without fresh air.
Then he had grown desperate. He had apparently gone mad. He had
started to use his own teeth. He had set his jaw on the yeggman's
hand as it groped for his throat. He had caught the index finger
of the other blackened hand and levered it savagely backward,
backward until the bone broke and it hung limp on the tortured
tendon. He had sent the relaxed head skidding against the tunnel
wall, once, twice, three times, until the sweat-stained arms fell
away and left him free.
He had sat there for many minutes, stupidly staring at the
unconscious man. Then he had found the revolver at his feet, and,
being too weak to get up he had still sat there, contentedly
firing a volley of bullets against the steel vault wall until the
bank officials were alarmed and an armed guard was sent scurrying
about to investigate. And with the timely arrival of Tiernan and
that armed guard came an end to the most audacious and staggering
criminal coup of the century!
It was all very beautiful, the very finest of fine writing.
Trotter poured his ardent and exultant young soul into it. And
when his last page had been written and sent away, he sat back in
the wide-armed, morocco-upholstered bank-room chair, white with
weariness, the fires of creation burnt out to the last ember.
But one thing sustained and consoled him. He knew, as he whisked
down to the Advance office in the Vice-President's French touring
car, that his work was done. He also knew that it was well done.
It did not even startle him when Pyott himself held out a
cold-fingered hand.
"Good business!" was his chief's sardonic commendation.
"Then I've made good?" asked the weary youth, without enthusiasm.
"You've made your TEN-STRIKE!" was the answer. "You're on the
city staff at twenty dollars a week."
"When do I have to go over my proofs?" asked the tired-eyed and
innocent youth.
"What proofs?"
"My story proofs!"
Pyott forced his eyes to meet those of the pale-faced boy looking
up at him. The managing editor did so without an outward flinch.
He was more or less used to such things.
"You've made good, my boy!" He casually turned away before he
spoke the next sentence. "BUT WE'VE HAD TO KILL THAT STORY OF
YOURS!"
Trotter did not move. He did not even gulp. He merely closed his
tired eyes and at the same time let his lower lip fall a trifle
away from the upper, as his breath came brokenly between them.
Then he sat down. For they had done more than kill his story.
They had killed the spirit of Youth in him. There would be other
battles, he knew, and perhaps other victories--but never again
that fine, careless rapture of Youth! For they had killed his
firstborn!
*****************************************************************
Vol. XXIII December 1910 No. 6
AN OPEN MIND: WILLIAM JAMES {p 800-801}
By WALTER LIPPMANN
Within a week of the death of Professor William James of Harvard
University, the newspapers had it that Mr. M. S. Ayer of Boston
had received a message from his spirit. This news item provoked
the ridicule of the people who don't believe in ghosts, but the
joke was on Mr. Ayer of Boston. When, however, it was reported
that Professor James himself had agreed to communicate with this
world, if he could, and, in order to test the reports, had left a
sealed message to be opened at a certain definite time after his
death, the incredulous gasped at the professor's amazing
"credulity."
William James wasn't "credulous." He was simply open-minded.
Maybe the soul of man is immortal. The professors couldn't prove
it wasn't, so James was willing to open his mind to evidence. He
was willing to hunt for evidence, and to be convinced by it.
And in that he was simply keeping America's promise: he was
actually doing what we, as a nation, proclaimed that we would do.
He was tolerant; he was willing to listen to what seems
preposterous, and to consider what might, though queer, be true.
And he showed that this democratic attitude of mind is every bit
as fruitful as the aristocratic determination to ignore new and
strange-looking ideas. James was a democrat. He gave all men and
all creeds, any idea, any theory, any superstition, a respectful
hearing.
His interest in spiritualism is merely one illustration in a
thousand. The hard scientists knew it was a hoax because they
couldn't explain it, and the sentimentalists knew it was the
truth because they wished it to be: but James wanted to know the
facts. So he went to Mrs. Piper, and heard her out. Nay, he
listened to Palladino and to Munsterberg. They pretended to know,
and maybe they did.
And last year, when Frank Harris published his book on
Shakespeare, to show that the "unknown" life and character of the
poet could be drawn from his works, the other professors laughed
the theory out of court. James went to Shakespeare and read the
plays all over again to test the Harris theory. Maybe the poet
could be known by his works. The fact that the theory was
revolutionary did not alter the possibility that it might be
true.
So with religion. A scientist, living in an age when science is
dogmatically irreligious, he turned from its cocksure reasoning
to ask for the facts. He went to the lives of the saints! Not to
Herbert Spencer, you see. When he wanted to study the religious
experience he went to the people who had had it, to Santa Theresa
and Mrs. Eddy. They might know something the professors didn't
know.
And again: at the age of sixty-five, with the whole of New
England's individualism behind him, he asked about socialism.
When he met H. G. Wells, he listened to the socialist, and, as it
happens, was converted. So he said so. James was no more afraid
of a new political theory than he was of ghosts, and he was no
more afraid of proclaiming a new theory, or an old one, than he
was of being a ghost. I think he would have listened with an open
mind to the devil's account of heaven, and I'm sure he would have
heard him out on hell.
James knew that he didn't know. He never acted upon the notion
that the truth was his store of wisdom. Perhaps that is why he
kept on rummaging about in other people's stores, and commending
their goods. He seemed to take a delight in writing
introductions, and appreciations of new books, and in going out
of his way to listen to a young doctor of philosophy, or an
undergraduate discussion of pragmatism, or the poetry of an
obscure mystic. And, optimist that he was, by virtue of his
unceasing freshness of interest, there is nothing more
open-minded in our literature than his chivalrous respect for the
pessimism of Francis Thompson.
"Speak not of comfort where no comfort is,
Speak not at all: can words make foul things fair?
Our life's a cheat, our death a black abyss:
Hush and be mute, envisaging despair."
He felt with all sorts of men. He understood their demand for
immediate answers to the great speculative questions of life.
God, freedom, immortality, nature as moral or non-moral--these
were for him not matters of idle scientific wonder, but of urgent
need: The scientific demand that men should wait "till doomsday,
or till such time as our senses and intellect working together
may have raked in evidence enough" for answers to these
questions, is, says James, "the queerest idol ever manufactured
in the philosophic cave." We cannot wait for a final solution.
Our daily life is full of choices that we cannot dodge, and some
guide we simply must have. There can be no loitering at the
crossroads. We are busy. We must choose, whether we will it or
not, and where all is doubt, who shall refuse us the right to
believe what seems most adapted to our needs? Not know, you
understand, but believe.
That is the famous position taken in "The Will to Believe." As
James has once pointed out, its real title should have been "The
Right to Believe." No doctrine in James's thinking has been more
persistently misunderstood. Yet it rests on the simplest of
insights: that atheism and theism are both dogmas, for there is
scientific evidence for neither; that to withhold judgment is
really to make a judgment, and act as if God didn't exist; that
until the evidence is complete men have a right to believe what
they most need.
James has acted upon that right. He has made a picture compounded
of the insights of feeling, the elaborations of reason, and the
daily requirements of men. It is a huge guess, if you like, to be
verified only at the end of the world. But it has made many men
at home in the universe. And this democrat understood the need of
feeling at home in the world, and he understood also that the
aristocrats are not at home here. (Perhaps that's why they are
aristocrats.) "The luxurious classes," he says, "are blind to
man's real relation to the globe he lives on, and to the
permanently hard and solid foundations of his higher life." And
he prescribed for them--for their culture, I mean--this
treatment: "To coal and iron mines, to freight trains, to fishing
fleets in December, to dishwashing, clotheswashing and
windowwashing, to road-building and tunnel-making, to foundries
and stoke-holes, and to the frames of skyscrapers, would our
gilded youths be drafted off according to their choice, to get
the childishness knocked out of them, and to come back into
society with healthier sympathies and soberer ideas."
This, and thoughts like this, and kindnesses like this, put James
not alone among the democrats of this uncertain world, but among
the poets also; among the poetic philosophers who, like Goethe,
Schopenhauer, and Whitman, have a sense of the pace of things.
Sunlight and storm-cloud, the subdued busyness of outdoors, the
rumble of cities, the mud of life's beginning and the heaven of
its hopes, stain his pages with the glad, sweaty sense of life
itself.
It is an encouraging thought that America should have produced
perhaps the most tolerant man of our generation. It is a
stimulating thought that he was a man whose tolerance never meant
the kind of timidity which refuses to take a stand "because there
is so much to be said on both sides." As every one knows, he
fought hard for his ideas, because he believed in them, and
because he wanted others to believe in them. The propagandist was
strong in William James. He wished to give as well as receive.
And he listened for truth from anybody, and from anywhere, and in
any form. He listened for it from Emma Goldman, the pope, or a
sophomore; preached from a pulpit, a throne, or a soap-box; in
the language of science, in slang, in fine rhetoric, or in the
talk of a ward boss.
And he told his conclusions. He told them, too, without the
expert's arrogance toward the man in the street, and without the
dainty and finicky horror of being popular and journalistic. He
would quote Mr. Dooley on God to make himself understood among
men. He would have heard God gladly in the overalls of a
carpenter, even though He came to preach that the soul of man is
immortal. So open-minded was he; so very much of a democrat.
End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Stories from Everybody's Magazine
From the 1910 Issues of Everybody's Magazine
