The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Scrap Book, Volume 1, No. 3, by Various
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Title: The Scrap Book, Volume 1, No. 3
May 1906
Author: Various
Release Date: April 24, 2010 [EBook #32120]
Language: English
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THE SCRAP BOOK.
Vol. I. MAY, 1906. No. 3.
MARK TWAIN'S IDEAL GENTLEMAN.
On the arms of the Prince of Wales are the words _Ich dien_--"I serve."
Thus he who stands next to the English king expresses in terms of service
that gentle and knightly rank which is typified by his high position.
Speaking to a New York audience a few weeks ago, Mark Twain made passing
reference to the communications which he receives from strangers who ask
for his counsel or advice. "Here is such a request," he said. "It is a
telegram from Joplin, Missouri, and it reads: 'In what one of your books
can we find the definition of a gentleman?' I have not answered that
telegram," he continued. "I couldn't. It seems to me that if any man has
just, merciful, and kindly instincts, he will be a gentleman, for he will
need nothing else in this world."
Taking from his pocket a letter from William Dean Howells, the speaker
went on:
"I received the other day a letter from my old friend,
William Dean Howells--Howells, the head of American
literature. No one is able to stand with him. He is an old,
old friend of mine, and he writes me: 'To-morrow I shall be
sixty-nine years old.' Why, I am surprised at Howells
writing that. I have known him longer than that. I'm sorry
to see a man trying to appear so young. Let's see, Howells
says now, 'I see you have been burying Patrick. I suppose he
was old, too.'"
There was silence. For a short time the great humorist and humanitarian
stood there apparently oblivious to his audience, reminiscence working in
his heart. Then, with spontaneous eloquence, he delivered the following
noble tribute, which must rank among the loftier expressions of
democracy--Mark Twain's conception of an ideal gentleman:
"No, he was never old--Patrick. He came to us thirty-six years ago. He was
my coachman on the morning that I drove my young bride to our new home. He
was a young Irishman, slender, tall, lithe, honest, truthful, and he never
changed in all his life. As the children grew up he was their guide. He
was all honor, honesty, and affection. He was with us last summer, and his
hair was just as black, his eyes were just as blue, his form just as
straight, and his heart just as good as on the day we first met. In all
the long years Patrick never made a mistake. He never needed an order; he
never received a command. He knew. I have been asked for my idea of an
ideal gentleman, and I give it to you--Patrick McAleer."
The Latest Viewpoints of Men Worth While
Stuyvesant Fish Says That Americans Are Wasteful, While
Pastor Wagner Praises Our National Character--John D.
Rockefeller, Jr., and Professor Fagnani Discuss Joseph's
Corner in Corn--Thomas F. Ryan Holds That Opportunity to Win
Wealth is Necessary to Industrial Progress--Andrew Carnegie
as the Financier of Spelling Reform--With Other Opinions of
Representative Men on Questions of the Time.
_Compiled and edited for_ THE SCRAP BOOK.
A PLEA FOR THE HIGHER ECONOMY.
Unnecessary Waste is the Crying Evil in
All Our Business Administration,
Says Stuyvesant Fish.
"The Higher Economy" is the theme upon which Stuyvesant Fish, the
well-known president of the Illinois Central Railroad, discourses in the
_Arena_ for March. Mr. Fish is a solid figure in finance. His idea of
economy is not parsimony, but thrift--the prevention of waste. The higher
economy, he points out, is needed in the household, in the state, and in
the management of corporations. First, he speaks of waste in the
household:
No one will question that our people are spendthrifts,
earning money freely and wasting it to such an extent as to
make it proverbial that what is thrown out of our kitchens
would support a frugal people in almost any country in
Europe.
Conditions in local, State, and Federal government are much in need of
reform, continues Mr. Fish:
There is not only waste and extravagance in administration,
and what is now commonly called graft, which is a
combination of bribery and larceny, but, what is
economically worse, the laws are so framed as not to get
the best use out of the taxes paid by the people. What we
have to fear is not so much the magnitude of the
appropriation as that our laws require that an uneconomical
and therefore bad use be made of them.
In the Post-Office Department, for example, there was, in 1905, a deficit
of fourteen million dollars, which the writer thinks was due to laws and
not to administration. Government free matter cost twenty million dollars.
Rural free delivery cost nearly twenty-one millions, the receipts covering
only about one-quarter of this sum. Mr. Fish does not think it surprising
that under laws which not only permit, but require, such a waste of public
revenues there is a deficit, and that the deficit should be growing
rapidly.
The Surgeon's Knife Needed.
Under the head of corporate management, Mr. Fish says:
I need not repeat that the country is prosperous, and likely
to continue so. While fully appreciating these facts, we
cannot shut our eyes to the trouble that has been going on
in the center of our financial system.
Having looked into the matter myself somewhat carefully of late, I beg to
say to you in all seriousness that not only in the insurance companies,
but in many other corporations, there is need of the advice and probably
the knife of the trained surgeon. Without pretending to any superior
knowledge on the subject, I think that the root of the evil lies in too
few men having undertaken to manage too many corporations; that in so
doing they have perverted the powers granted under corporate charters, and
in their hurry to do a vast business have in many cases done it all.
We who--as breadwinners, as taxpayers, and as stockholders--provide the
wherewithal suffer because we have set others to rule over us without
holding them to that strict accountability for the discharge of their
trust which the common law and common sense alike demand. Indeed, things
have come to such a pass that in certain quarters it is now considered
indecorous and ill-bred for us, the many, even to discuss, much less to
correct, the shortcomings of the elect few. Such was neither the theory
nor the practise on which our forefathers ordered the economy of this
republic.
KINDLY WORDS FROM PASTOR WAGNER.
The Author of "The Simple Life" Sets
Forth in Friendly Terms His
Impressions of America.
Charles Wagner, the author of "The Simple Life," has published a volume,
"Vers le Coeur de l'Amérique" ("Toward the Heart of America"), in which
are recorded his impressions of the United States as gathered during his
visit here in the fall of 1904. He is no globe-trotting critic, nor is he
a collector of statistics; he gives merely an account of what he has seen.
Of President Roosevelt the famous French pastor holds a high opinion, as
this bit of appreciation indicates:
A man in sympathy with the humble; equal to all emergencies;
as great as the greatest; truly a man, one of those who do
most honor to the human family.
One feels that he is ready for any struggle; willing to step
behind the gun himself, if need be. Thus in regard to
subjects relating to public spirit, nothing which might
contribute to promoting a mutual understanding among
American citizens leaves him indifferent. He often says that
that which is important for the welfare and the power of the
people is not so much the existence of a few isolated
characters of extraordinary powers as a good general level
of public spirit.
Effort, individual energy, the sentiment of responsibility,
a primordial decision to go straight ahead and not be
diverted--all this, combined with a sociable disposition and
a willingness not to go to the end of one's right out of
regard for one's neighbor, is what he most appreciates.
As a pastor, M. Wagner was struck by the depth of religious feeling in the
United States. The great diversity of creeds signified to him vitality and
liberty, not the loss of a central belief. He was surprised, too, to find
such cordial relations existing among different sects.
In our schools, he says, it is possible to trace the universality of the
ideals of democratic government. The public schools are the mills to which
comes the grist of immigration, to be ground into American citizens.
To the American character he admits the advantages of youth--sincerity,
frankness, prompt initiative; and with these, the maturer qualities of
endurance and patient wisdom.
The strength of the country, concludes this most kindly of observers, is
in four strongholds. The first is religious faith. The Americans, he says,
are a religious nation by heredity as well as by conviction. The second
stronghold is the belief in liberty:
Our old Europe shows us states whose entire politics consist in hindering
the development of men and institutions. There law takes the form of a
systematic prohibition, initiative is regarded as lack of discipline,
independence of mind as an act or a beginning of treason. America believes
in liberty as she believes in God; and, as she believes in the God of
others, she also believes in the liberty of others. To individuality there
is left an unlimited field. From childhood, strength of character is
encouraged. Each one is expected to show himself in the fulness of his
originality; all he is asked in return is to respect the right of his
neighbor.
Though Pastor Wagner recognizes our country's originality in questionable
financial schemes, he thinks that on the whole our relations are marked by
sincerity and conscientiousness. Therefore, he names honesty as our third
stronghold.
The fourth is respect for women. Custom makes slaves of women in France,
while in America our national respect for them gives them freedom and the
opportunity to develop.
JOSEPH'S CORNER IS NOW DEFENDED.
Pros and Cons of an Old Question Discussed
by J.D. Rockefeller, Jr.,
and Professor C.P. Fagnani.
Joseph's policy in cornering the visible supply of corn in Egypt has found
its defense. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., raised the question a short time
ago in his New York Bible class, and after discussing the transaction in
its different phases, said that he could not see how Joseph had done
anything unjust. The foresight and ability of Joseph, said Mr.
Rockefeller, saved the people of Egypt from starvation.
Mr. Rockefeller's talk, in substance at least, appears to have been as
follows:
One commentator says that Joseph bought the fifth part of
the corn crop of the years of plenty. If that was true, we
can find nothing to criticize in him, because he gave them a
market for their product. If, as another commentator says,
he levied this fifth as taxes, we can have no criticism, for
he created a reserve supply against the time of want.
In the distribution of the corn during the famine, did
Joseph act rightly? Should he have given away the corn
instead of selling it? They brought money to purchase it,
and when they had no money they offered their cattle, and
finally their land and themselves, for they did not want to
die....
Joseph let them have corn at their own terms. They did not
then become slaves as we think of slaves. The situation then
was that they were tenants of the land. The only difference
was that the people not only paid the tax as they had paid
it before the famine, but paid a rental of exactly the same
amount, the lands being held by Pharaoh. They had sold their
land to Pharaoh for the food.
A few days after this pronouncement Professor Charles P. Fagnani, of the
Union Theological Seminary, was addressing the New York Baptist Social
Union on "Christianity and Democracy," and among other things he said:
The corn corner of Joseph has been in the public eye
recently. That young man had a good private character, but
Joseph, the king's jackal, who took every advantage to take
away all the property of others, can be held up only to
obloquy. Compare Joseph, the enslaver of the people, with
Moses, the liberator!
What was the matter with Joseph? He was, like most men, only
fractionally converted. We think the conversion of a man in
his private character is enough; but he was not converted as
a citizen and as a man.
In conclusion we may note the Richmond _Times-Dispatch's_ remark that
"compared with Mr. Rockefeller's, Joseph's was a mere cozy corner."
SOCIALISM'S LATEST MILLIONAIRE CONVERT.
Views Expressed by J.M. Patterson, of
Chicago, Who Has Resigned Office
Because of His Convictions.
One of the most recent converts to Socialism is Joseph Medill Patterson,
of Chicago. Though he is now only twenty-seven years of age, Mr. Patterson
has had a strong taste of public life as commissioner of public works in
Chicago. In the local campaign of 1905 he supported Judge (now Mayor)
Dunne, who, after election, gave him his important appointment. He has now
resigned the commissionership. In his letter of resignation he says:
It was through a common belief in the cause of municipal
ownership of municipal utilities that I first became
acquainted with you, and in this letter of resignation I
desire to express publicly just how my views on this subject
have changed. They have not diminished. They have enlarged.
I used to believe that many of the ills under which the
nation suffers, and by which it is threatened, would be
prevented or avoided by the general inauguration of public
ownership of public utilities. But my experience in the
Department of Public Works has convinced me that this policy
would not be even one-fourth of the way sufficient.
He then goes on to say that in Great Britain--where municipal trading has
been highly developed--the problem of the unemployed is becoming very
intense; while in Germany--where municipal and government ownership of
public utilities has become almost the rule--the gap between the
possessions of the rich and the poor grows wider every day. The letter
concludes:
The universal ballot gives every male citizen an equal
political opportunity. The common ownership of all the means
of production and distribution would give everybody an equal
chance at music, art, sport, study, recreation, travel,
self-respect, and the respect of others. I, for one, cannot
see why those things should be concentrated more and more in
the hands of a few.
Two hundred years ago a proposition for equal political
opportunity would have seemed more absurd than to-day seems
the proposition for equal opportunity in all things on this
earth for which men strive.
I have hardly read a book on socialism, but that which I
have just enunciated I believe in general to be its theory.
If it be its theory, I am a socialist. You will find, and
other advanced liberals and radicals who believe as I do
will also find, that you are merely paltering with skin-deep
measures when you stop short of socialism.
Interviewed regarding his conversion to socialism, Mr. Patterson adds:
When we say that things should be divided equally we mean
that every man should have a chance. Men like Schwab and
Carnegie have risen from poor young men to wealth; but they
are the extraordinary young men. The ordinary young man is
not able to rise above his birth, and the extraordinary
young man is one in a million.
I don't mean that all the money in the country should be cut
up into equal parts. What I mean is that the people should
own in common all the means of production, the sources of
wealth, and divide the results. The talk of economical
equality is no more ridiculous now than was the talk of
social equality years ago.
Suppose Alfred G. Vanderbilt has five million dollars
invested in his railroads. Say there are twenty-five
thousand employees. Out of his investment he receives, say,
five per cent, which is two hundred and fifty thousand
dollars a year. He doesn't turn a wheel, he doesn't move a
locomotive, he doesn't do a thing for the railroad. He
simply owns it. He doesn't contribute toward making the road
safe. Those men earn so much money for him. Suppose he
should give them what they earn, instead of taking it
himself?
My idea is to have things equally divided so that when a man
dies his children shall not inherit wealth.
Mr. Patterson is a son of a wealthy family. His father, Robert W.
Patterson, proprietor of the Chicago _Tribune_, is a conservative, opposed
to his son's beliefs. But he adds: "I am a firm believer in letting
everybody think as he pleases, including my son." He says, however, that
if the young man runs for office on the socialistic ticket, the _Tribune_
certainly will not support him.
THE RICH MAN IS NOW THE UNDER DOG.
If the Millionaire Does Not Give, He is
"Stingy;" if He Does Give, He
is Called a "Briber."
Dr. Emil G. Hirsch, the distinguished Chicago rabbi, says that "charity,
as the word is known to-day, is only a bribe of moneyed men to make a
community forget the wrongs heaped upon it." The New York _Globe_ catches
at the text, and brings out the fact that present-day critics are leaving
the rich no refuge at all. The rich man is the common target.
Heretofore the poor man has had the world's sympathy as the
under dog. Now he is becoming supercanine and the rich man
subcanine. Does the rich man not give? He is stingy. Does he
give? He is a briber--passes from negative to positive
crime.
If he would get rid of superfluous wealth his only chance is
to buy edifices and burn them down uninsured. Even then he
might be arrested for arson and accused of maliciously
overworking the poor firemen; or hygienists would say he was
dirtying the air with smoke, and thus murdering those
compelled to breathe it.
Instead of settlements for the neglected poor--such
institutions as grew up in East London after Sir Walter
Besant wrote "All Sorts and Conditions of Men"--there should
be settlements for the neglected rich.
As things are now they have no chance--their best is
necessarily a worst. Victims of society, equally condemned
whether they do or don't do, no option seems open but to
journey to the extreme edge of space and jump off into
nothingness.
A favorite doctrine of Calvinistic New England was that a
man was not saved unless entirely and absolutely willing to
be damned for the glory of God; with a similar inexorable
logic our new moralists have established the doctrine of
unescapable taint--that if a man have and keep he is stewed
in iniquity; that if he does not keep, adding would-be
bribery to his other sins, he scatters his own corruption
among the innocent.
Ground between upper and nether stones, fenced in all
directions, the life of the rich is necessarily an ethical
tragedy. Whatever he does or doesn't do, the rich man is a
traitor to the kingdom, a puller down of the temple.
It is obvious that the only thing feasible is to abolish
wealth and go back to the tree-climbing days, to that period
of primitive apehood when each plucked his own cocoanut and
had no thought of ownership, tainted or untainted.
GREAT SERVICES AND GREAT FORTUNES.
Thomas F. Ryan Contends that Opportunity
to Win Wealth is Necessary
to Stimulate Initiative.
Are the fortunes of to-day too vast? Does the getting of great wealth by
individuals necessarily involve injustice to others? If it does, is it
possible to prevent men from making much money without at the same time
destroying the energy and initiative which spring up in the presence of
opportunity?
These are familiar questions. Thomas F. Ryan has tried to answer them from
the viewpoint of a successful financier, saying, in an article contributed
to the _Independent_:
Fortunes which sometimes look excessive may be the result of
rendering great services to the community. If a man by
intense mental application or natural aptitude can introduce
important economies into railroad management, he is worthy
of a large salary. The salary would not in any case absorb
the entire saving made to the stockholders of the railroad
and to the public by the reforms introduced.
In some cases this claim of the inventor is compensated by
the royalties paid under the patent law; and there are many
services rendered in the matter of organization which are
not patentable, but afford as striking benefits as patents.
Among these, for instance, may be suggested the reduction in
the cost of the manufacture of steel by Mr. Carnegie and
those associated with him in the upbuilding of the
industries now combined in the Steel Corporation.
From such services have come many of our great fortunes. If
their possessors receive what amounts to a commission on the
services they rendered, it is only a small part of the
benefit they have conferred on the community.
Take away the opportunity for winning either money or
distinction by rendering such services, and few men, as
human nature is constituted, would render them.
It is right that competition between men should be brought
within constantly narrower and narrower rules of justice.
This is possible without taking away the initiative which
makes men do things, and seems to me the direction in which,
in spite of obstacles, humanity is tending.
Closely related to these arguments is the opinion of the New York _Evening
Post_:
We do not believe that there is so formidable a jealousy and
hatred of wealth, in itself, as is frequently alleged to
exist, and to be growing. The sting lies in wealth unjustly
acquired. It is ill-gotten gain, flaunting itself, that is
the great breeder of socialism.
FOR THE REFORM OF ENGLISH SPELLING.
Many Representative Men Associated
With the New Movement to
Simplify Orthography.
Andrew Carnegie's latest activity is to champion a movement for the reform
of English spelling. He has promised to finance a campaign by the
Simplified Spelling Board. The greater part of the actual campaign work
will be done by the following executive committee of the board: Professor
Brander Matthews, chairman; Dr. Charles P.G. Scott, secretary; Dr. William
Hayes Ward, Henry Holt, Dr. I.K. Funk, and Colonel H.B. Sprague. With Mr.
Carnegie's backing, far-reaching results are likely to be gained.
Movements for reformed spelling are no new thing, but this is the first
one that has been adequately financed.
Word comes from England that the poet Swinburne denounces the Carnegie
plan as "a monstrous, barbarous absurdity." But the American press, on the
whole, seems favorable. For example, the New York _Times_ says:
The number of people who are vehemently in love with the
difficulties, absurdities, inconsistencies--and crystallized
ignorances--of our present spelling is very small, and
neither their denunciation nor their ridicule will weigh at
all heavily upon the great majority, who look upon spelling
as a means to an end, and to an end quite different from the
preservation of etymological history in the most clumsy,
expensive, and deceptive of forms.
One might imagine, from the way in which the enemies of this
reform run on, that any changes made now would be the first
to which English spelling had ever been subjected--would be
the establishment of an evil precedent instead of merely a
slight hastening, in the interest of convenience and
economy, of a process that has been going on steadily ever
since the day when English became a written language.
One of our correspondents said yesterday that, in his
opinion, "before we try to monkey further with so good an
instrument as the English language we ought to try to use it
properly."
Well, not necessarily. With a little, or even with a lot, of
"monkeying" an amount of time almost incalculably large, now
devoted to the learning of such utterly useless and imbecile
things as the arrangement of the vowels in "siege" and
"seize," could be used on the task which our correspondent
wisely intimated is so important.
The personality of the Simplified Spelling Board is
guarantee that the demand for an improved orthography is not
an outgrowth of ignorance or irreverence. These men have
more than a little affection for the history of words, and
they are not at all likely to do anything that will hide or
distort it. They will, however, put and keep that history in
its proper place.
How Dr. Johnson Takes It.
It would seem, however, that the shades of former lexicographers are
incensed by the threat of "fonetic speling." The New York _Globe_
describes the reception of the news in the land across the Styx:
It has been the practise at the Cheshire Cheese Inn in the
trans-Styx London, where post-mortem encyclopedists have
their "clubs," to make light of the modern verbal reformers
and "simplifiers." It was immediately seen, however, that
Andrew's addition to the reformer's fold put a very
different complexion on the case.
"Sir," said the doctor to Boswell, in his best "bow-wow"
manner, "I have never slept an hour less nor eat an ounce
less meat on account of these caitiffs, but now that the
Scotch barbarian, that futile Highland Cherokee, has
supplied them with money, they may ruin the language in a
twelvemonth."
"I don't see, sir," replied Boswell, "why my countryman did
not confine his charities to libraries and hero funds."
"Because, sir," thundered the doctor, "he is insane on the
subject of charity; he could not make a worse use of his
money than thus to threaten the integrity and purity of the
great vehicle of expression."
"There is, however, sir," replied Boswell, "something to be
said in their favor; thru saves three letters over through,
catalog saves two, becaws one; they take less ink, and less
room on a page; think of----"
"Well, sir," said the doctor, "suppose they do; what of
that? A man with his arms and legs off would take up less
room. You take up less room than I. Does that make you any
more valuable to the world?"
"I can see no logical objection, sir," replied Boswell, "to
the omission of silent letters. They do no good----"
"No good, sir!" snarled the doctor. "There are some letters,
sir, as there are some men, who do themselves more credit,
sir, when they are silent."
THE PUNISHMENT TO FIT THE OFFENDER.
Samuel J. Barrows Gives Reasons For
Favoring the Indeterminate Sentence
For Convicted Criminals.
Times and conditions have changed since Dickens and Charles Reade aroused
the English-speaking world by revealing the inhuman abuses of the English
prison system. To-day humane treatment is taken as a matter of course. The
chief aim of the modern criminologist is not to punish the criminal but
to cure him; and in curing him the first agency is fair treatment.
Therefore is urged the necessity of making the penalty more nearly fit the
crime.
According to Samuel J. Barrows, president of the International Prison
Congress, "it is still more difficult to make the penalty fit the
offender." In a recent article in the _Outlook_, he enters a plea for
safeguarding the "indeterminate sentence" for convicted criminals. The
best criminal code, he says, is an arbitrary instrument, and it is
impossible, on any principle, so to construct one that the penalty and
crime are commensurate. After making this assertion, he continues:
No legislator can show why the theft of twenty-five dollars
should be punishable with one year's imprisonment, and the
theft of twenty-six dollars with five years' imprisonment.
Nor is the difficulty removed by empowering the judge to use
his discretion in imposing sentence within certain limits of
minimum and maximum. A judge would find it hard to tell why
he sentenced one boy five years for stealing a dollar and
another boy one year for stealing two hundred dollars, or
another judge why he sent one boy to prison for a year, and
another, a first offender, to sixteen years for the same
offense. A study of codes on one hand and of sentences on
another reveals an amazing amount of contradiction and
confusion, not to say rank injustice, in the application of
penalties. For this inequality and injustice the
indeterminate sentence furnishes the necessary relief.
Instead of making the code-maker or the judge decide when a
man shall come out of prison, it puts the main
responsibility of deciding that question upon the prisoner
himself.
DOES COEDUCATION FEMINIZE COLLEGE?
Thorough Training, Rather than Separate
Training, is the Need of the
Times, Says President Jordan.
President David Starr Jordan, of Leland Stanford Junior University, has
ever been a strong advocate of coeducation. At the present time, when the
system is being so severely criticized in so many quarters, his defense of
it, which appears in _Munsey's Magazine_ for March, sounds a note of
reassurance. The article is an answer to an attack on coeducation--in the
February issue of the same magazine--by President G. Stanley Hall, of
Clark University.
To the charges that the character of college work has been lowered by
coeducation, and that it offers difficulties or embarrassments in the
class-room, Dr. Jordan replies with categorical denials. The argument that
the presence of women tends to "feminize" the universities is, he grants,
more serious. But he then enters into the following distinctions:
It has been feared that the admission of women to the
university would vitiate the masculinity of its standards;
that neatness of technique would impair boldness of
conception; and delicacy of taste replace soundness of
results. It is claimed that the preponderance of high school
educated women in ordinary society is showing some such
effects in matters of current opinion.
For example, it is claimed that the university extension
course is no longer of university nature. It is a lyceum
course designed to please women who enjoy a little poetry,
play, and music, who read the novels of the day, who dabble
in theosophy, Christian science, or psychology, who
cultivate their astral bodies and think there is something
in palmistry, and who are edified by a candy-coated ethics
of self-realization. There is nothing ruggedly true, nothing
masculine left in it.
Current literature and history are affected by the same
influences. Women pay clever actors to teach them, not
Shakespeare or Goethe, but how one ought to feel on reading
"King Lear" or "Faust." If the women of society do not read
a book, it will scarcely pay to publish it.
Science is popularized in the same fashion by ceasing to be
science and becoming mere sentiment or pleasing information.
This is shown by the number of books on how to study a bird,
a flower, a tree, or a star, through an opera-glass, and
without knowing anything about it. Such studies may be good
for the feelings or even for the moral nature, but they have
no elements of that "fanaticism for veracity" which is the
highest attribute of the educated man.
These results of the education of many women and of a few
men, by which the half-educated woman becomes a controlling
social factor, have been lately set in strong light by Dr.
Münsterberg; but they are used by him, not as an argument
against coeducation, but for the purpose of urging the
better education of more men. They form likewise an argument
for the better education of more women.
The remedy for feminine dilettanteism is found in more
severe training. Current literature reflects the taste of
the leisure class. The women with leisure who read and
discuss vapid books are not representative of woman's higher
education. Most of them have never been educated at all.
In any event, this gives no argument against coeducation. It
is thorough training, not separate training, which is
indicated as the need of the times. Where this training is
taken is a secondary matter, though I believe with the
fulness of certainty that better results, mental, moral, and
physical, can be obtained in coeducation than in any
monastic form of instruction.
The question whether or not coeducation leads to marriage seems to present
few difficulties to Dr. Jordan. "Love and marriage and parenthood," he
says, "will go on normally whatever our scheme of education."
PREDOMINANCE OF COLLEGE ATHLETICS.
Sport is the Great Secondary Interest in
Our Universities, Says Professor
Ostwald, a German Visitor.
Professor Wilhelm Ostwald, of the University of Leipsic, is not only a
great chemist; he is also a philosopher, and his mind is alert to every
kind of human interest. The courses of lectures which he delivered not
long ago at Harvard and Columbia universities attracted much attention.
Among other things he predicted that before long scientists might be
creating living things.
Since his return to Germany, Professor Ostwald has been preparing for the
Prussian government a report on what he observed in America. Meantime he
talks freely to German press interviewers. He says of our college sports:
The personal interest of the students, next to their
studies, is concentrated on sport. Football before all is
loved uncommonly, and it is practised in such a fashion that
academic and State authorities are near to forbidding it
altogether. In the course of a single semester nineteen
students fell victims to brutal handling. At every American
university is a sort of open amphitheater, in which many
thousands of spectators view the periodic football battles.
The trouble is not, of course, that the great secondary interest of
student life is sport, but that the American idea of college sport has
come to be the training of a few champion athletes for the purpose of
winning, not the training of all young men and women for the purpose of
recreation. G. Upton Harvey dwells on this point in an article published
in the _Review of Reviews_:
It really is not fair or profitable to judge athletics in
general, or any particular sport or game, by the benefits
secured by the few. The test should be the good accruing to
the nation at large. Athletics should build us up as a
people, raise the standard of average manhood, and thus
benefit us as a nation, rather than develop a selected few
who use their strength and skill chiefly as a means of
earning money.
In America, we love our players rather than our games. The
result is that only one man in a thousand acquires the
strength and proficiency which make him an acceptable
player. Our athletics develop the few, and benefit us but
little, if at all, as a people.
Of course, we turn out teams and individual athletes
unequaled anywhere else in the world. But what good does
that do you and me, who are shut out from participation in
the games because we are not giants in point of strength or
wizards in point of skill?
We are compelled to be mere onlookers at the present-day
baseball or football game, or track meet, to watch the
players with mingled feelings of awe and admiration, much as
the Romans of old sat about the amphitheater and marveled at
the exploits of the gladiators.
The "sport" of the Romans--desperate encounters between man
and man, or between man and wild beast--undoubtedly
developed men of unsurpassed courage, skill, and strength.
But did it benefit Rome?
Our athletes lead the world. That is a matter of record. But
how has this superiority been achieved? By making athletics
a business or a profession for selected individuals, instead
of a sport, a pastime, and a recreation for all. Athletics
as we know them may be sport or pastime for us as
spectators, but our games are no recreation for those who
participate in them.
The desire to excel, to win at any cost, is the root of the
evil. If we can't win, we drop out of the game and join the
ranks of spectators. The benefits of participating in an
afternoon's sport, even as a loser, are lost sight of. We do
not play for the sake of playing, or for the betterment of
our physical condition--we play to win, to come out first,
to excel our neighbors.
What we need to learn is to be cheerful losers. Any one can
be a gracious winner, but few of us are good losers. Until
we do learn that there is something in the game besides the
winning of it, we cannot hope that our athletics will be of
general benefit to the nation.
SHAW RAGES AGAINST THE AMATEUR STAGE.
The Author of "Candida" Declares
With Emphasis That Charity Actors
Make Themselves Ridiculous.
Bernard Shaw recently contributed to the London _Tribune_ a characteristic
bit of criticism. It seems that he has been much annoyed by requests for
permission to give amateur performances of his plays in behalf of charity.
Mr. Shaw has a small opinion of amateur actors, as may be gathered from
the following:
Almost all amateurs desire to imitate the theater rather
than to act a play.
Reach-me-down dresses, reach-me-down scenery, reach-me-down
equipments are considered good enough for dramatic
masterpieces--are positively preferred to decent and
beautiful things because they are so much more theatrical.
As to plays, they, too, must be second-hand reach-me-downs.
Your amateurs don't want to bring plays to a correct and
moving representation for the sake of the life they
represent; they want to do Hawtrey's part in this or Ellen
Terry's part in that, or Cyril Maude's part in the other.
The enormous and overwhelming advantage possessed by
amateurs--the advantage of being free from commercial
pressure and having unlimited time for rehearsal--is the
last one they think of using.
The commercial plays, which are the despair of actors, but
which they must produce or starve, are the favorites of our
amateurs. They do out of sheer folly and vulgarity what our
real dramatic artists do of necessity and give some saving
grace and charm to in the doing.
KAISER MAKES NEW TEN COMMANDMENTS.
The Most Versatile of Monarchs Draws
Up a List of Rules to be Followed
by Horse-Owners.
Varied and numerous as are his regular activities, the German Emperor
frequently adds new ones to the list. One of the latest manifestations of
his ubiquitous interest is the following productions, which he has sent to
his friends under the title, "The Ten Commandments for Horse-Owners." It
is worth preserving for two reasons--first, because of the soundness of
the advice it offers; second, because it indicates that the most important
figure among continental monarchs is not above considering the welfare of
his dumb servants.
First--Do not expose your horses to draft, in or out of the
stable.
Second--Do not allow any broken windows in your stable. At
the same time see that it is properly ventilated.
Third--Do not keep your horses too warm. Never cover them
with blankets in the stable.
Fourth--Exercise your horses daily as the best preventive
against disease.
Fifth--Don't feed wet fodder, but give dry fodder and fresh
water. In winter let the water stand a while after taking it
from the well or faucet.
Sixth--Prevent ammonia gases, which are bad for the eyes and
the ligaments.
Seventh--Every fourth or sixth week remove the shoes and
have the hoofs attended to. After that the shoes may be
nailed on again.
Eighth--When the roads are covered with ice, use spiked
shoes.
Ninth--Do not put an ice cold bit into a horse's mouth in
winter unless you want him to have toothache and become ill.
Tenth--Be as careful of your horse's skin as of your own.
PARADOX PROVERBS.
These Pampered Children of Wisdom and Experience Find It So Difficult to
Agree That if They Had Teeth and Claws They Might Fight It Out in
the Manner of the Kilkenny Cats.
A proverb is defined in one of the more popular dictionaries of our
language as "a brief, pithy saying, condensing in witty or striking form
the wisdom of experience."
But experiences vary and often lead to different results, so that of
proverbs it may be said that "what is one man's meat is another man's
poison." It is as futile for a man to live his life in accordance with
proverbs as it is for twenty cooks to collaborate in the making of a broth
that will please the palates of all.
The truth is, proverbs are just as likely to disagree as are physicians.
Here are a few that have agreed to disagree:
A proverb is one man's wit and all men's wisdom.
_A formal fool speaks naught but proverbs._
* * * * *
Education forms the man.
_By education most have been misled._
* * * * *
Everything comes to him who waits.
_He who would find must seek._
* * * * *
Better a patch than a hole.
_A true gentleman would rather have his clothes torn than
mended._
* * * * *
Patience surpasses learning.
_Patience is the virtue of asses._
* * * * *
No wickedness has any ground of reason.
_Success makes some crimes honorable._
* * * * *
He who hunts two hares at once will catch neither.
_It is always good to have two irons in the fire._
* * * * *
Never spur a willing horse.
_A good horse and a bad horse both need the spur._
* * * * *
The middle path is the safe path.
_The neutral is soused from above, and singed from below._
* * * * *
Many hands make light work.
_Too many cooks spoil the broth._
* * * * *
As ye sow, so shall ye reap.
_The seed you sow, another reaps._
* * * * *
Be sure you are right, then go ahead.
_Nothing venture, nothing have._
* * * * *
It is fortune, not wisdom, that rules man's life.
_Wisdom is the conqueror of fortune._
* * * * *
The wise man has a short tongue.
_Silence is the virtue of those who are not wise._
* * * * *
The face is the index of the mind.
_A fair skin often covers a crooked mind._
* * * * *
Trust not to appearances.
_A fair exterior is a silent recommendation._
* * * * *
Good fortune ever fights on the side of the prudent.
_Fortune helps the bold._
* * * * *
A rolling stone gathers no moss.
_Push on, keep moving._
* * * * *
Out of sight, out of mind.
_Absence makes the heart grow fonder._
* * * * *
A bad beginning makes a good ending.
_A good beginning makes a good ending._
* * * * *
Birds of a feather flock together.
_Two birds of prey do not keep each other company._
* * * * *
All truths are not to be told.
_Tell the truth and shame the devil._
* * * * *
No jealousy, no love.
_In jealousy there is more self-love than love._
* * * * *
The end justifies the means.
_Never do evil that good may come of it._
* * * * *
A sin confessed is half-forgiven.
_A sin concealed is half-pardoned._
WHEN THE LAST CURTAIN FELL.
Some Striking Instances of How Death Has Stepped Behind the Footlights
and Claimed His Victims in Full View of Audiences Who Have Mistaken Real
Tragedy for Play.
"Into Thy hands, O Lord! Into Thy hands!"
These words, inscribed on a card that was fastened to the cross of lilies
sent by Queen Alexandra of England to be laid on the casket containing the
body of Sir Henry Irving, were the last uttered on the stage by that
famous actor. They are the last words of _Becket_, in Tennyson's drama of
that name.
Though Irving did not die on the stage, the hand of death was upon him at
the close of that last performance. He was scarcely more than outside the
theater in Bradford, England, when he was stricken with syncope, and he
died a few minutes after reaching his hotel.
There are a score of other cases on record in which death has appeared on
the stage of a theater for the purpose of marking its victims.
It was a fateful irony that Signor Castelmary should be fatally stricken
on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, in the midst of
the bright and romantic scenes of "Martha." A tragi-comedy if ever there
were one!
Yet this overpowering mingling of the real and the unreal is by no means
an unusual element of stage life. History records many instances of deaths
on the stage; some of them the result of accidental violence, but by far
the greater number caused by the sudden effect of overwrought emotions.
Sometimes death comes instantaneously; sometimes the blow is received from
which recovery is impossible, and the actor lingers on with nothing but
suffering and death before him. Both tragedy and comedy have been the
scenes of actual death on the stage.
Peg Woffington, it will be remembered, was stricken with paralysis while
playing _Rosalind_. She had gone through the entire play with a life and
spirit which gave no sign of the weakening powers plainly evident to her
companions on the stage, and had nearly concluded the epilogue:
"If I were among you, I would kiss as many of you as had beards that
pleased me----"
Her last words on the stage had been spoken. Staggering off the scene, she
fell apparently lifeless, and recovered only to live three long years of
loneliness and retirement away from the work she loved.
But most wonderful of all was Edmund Kean's last night on the stage. He
was playing _Othello_ to his son's _Iago_ at Covent Garden, and, worn out
with physical and mental excess, barely managed to conceal his incapacity
and weakness from the audience.
Reaching the great scenes of the third act, they proved too much for his
waning powers, and uttering the words, "Othello's occupation's gone," he
began the next line, but was unable to complete it, and fell into his
son's arms, with the faint cry:
"God, I am dying! Speak to them, Charles."
He was carried to his home, where he died seven weeks later.
The story of the death of John Palmer, while acting in "The Stranger" at
Liverpool, in 1798, offers an instance almost analogous to the death of
Castelmary. He had gone on with his part into the fourth act, when,
faltering in his lines, he fell prostrate before his companion actor and
died while being carried off the stage. The story that he died while
uttering the lines in an earlier act, "There is another and a better
world," is a fiction which requires denial almost as often as the story of
his death is repeated.
Others have met with accidental death in melodramatic scenes at the hands
of their overzealous brother actors. Sometimes the actor does himself
actual violence, and there are a few instances on record of the murder of
actor by actor during the performance of a play.
Crozier, for example, was accidentally stabbed by a brother actor in "Sins
of the Night," at the Novelty, in London, on August 10, 1896. In 1820 Mme.
Linsky was fatally shot in a melodrama by a soldier super; and in 1891, at
a school representation of "Romeo and Juliet," in Manchester, England, the
youngster playing _Tybalt_ killed _Romeo_ in the quarrel scene.
In 1898 Miss Ethel Marlowe died from heart disease at the Knickerbocker,
New York, during a performance of "The Christian." Her sister, Virginia
Marlowe, in 1896, and her father, Owen Marlowe, in 1876, also died on the
stage in view of the audience.
Creating Wealth From Waste.
BY EUGENE WOOD.
The Number of Scrap-Heaps Is Diminishing as Manufacturers Learn that
By-Products Often Are More Valuable than the Things
from Which They Are Taken.
_An original article written for_ THE SCRAP BOOK.
The true test of the industrial civilization of a people is the extent to
which every scrap and grain of its resources are utilized. The motto of a
prosperous nation is: "Gather up the fragments that nothing be lost."
That the last few years have seen such an increase in the production of
wealth as has never been known before in the history of the world is not
to be wondered at when it is realized that in every department of industry
those things that had been previously thrown away have become a source of
revenue, and, in some cases, the by-product has become of more value than
the original product itself.
The recovery of wealth from waste is the distinguishing mark of the age,
because this is the age of industrial civilization. If the increase in the
production of wealth is greater and more rapid than it has ever been since
man first landed on this earth, without either a penny or a pocket to put
the penny in, it is due to the general extension of methods that have been
in use ever since he began to try to pick a living out of the clinched
fist of dour old Mother Nature.
The delicate perfumes of flowers that otherwise would vanish in a day are
trapped in lard, and then snared again from the lard by alcohol. The
crusted argols that gather on the inside of the vats where wine ferments
are utilized to make the cream of tartar for our biscuits.
Tin Pans for Complexions.
The bloom of health that glows upon the cheeks of the ladies of the
chorus may be traced to the tin pans and cups that jingle on the
rag-collector's wagon. These homely and prosaic vessels are made of plates
of iron, coated, all too thinly in these degenerate days, with tin.
These iron plates have to be "pickled," as the trade phrase goes. All the
rust and other substances than the clean iron have to be washed off with
acids and water. The pickling liquor is not emptied out as slops by any
means. There is a finely divided iron rust floating in it, and when the
water is removed by evaporating it, the residue is Venetian red and iron
pigment that, made up as rouge, can counterfeit the ruddy blood that
courses so near the surface of the satin skin of youth.
It is almost a personal triumph to us to know that the broken bits of rock
from the quarry, unfit to use as building material, are turned into
crushed stone, for which there is so large a demand, thanks to the
increasing popularity of concrete, and that its revenues pay the operating
expenses of the quarry, and make the price got from building stone so much
clear money.
Illuminating-gas has to be washed and scrubbed anyhow before it can be
introduced into our houses. The household ammonia with which the kitchen
sink is kept so sweet is taken by the thousand tons from the scrub-water
of the gas-house and the furnace-gas of iron-works.
Only the Pig's Squeal Gets Away.
Meat packers will tell you that nowadays they save everything but the
pig's last dying squeal. Naturally, the hides and skins of the animals
slaughtered are worth saving. The tips of cows' horns are used for the
mouthpieces of pipes; the horns themselves are split and pressed flat, and
combs, the backs of brushes, and large buttons are made of them. What bits
and splinters are too small to be worked up go for fertilizer.
Hoofs are sorted by colors. The white ones go to Japan, there to be made
up into ornaments of artistic merit. We haven't got that far along
ourselves. The striped ones stay here to be made up into buttons. The
black ones are utilized in the manufacture of cyanide of potash, by which
gold is extracted from low-grade ores it formerly did not pay to work.
The bones in the feet of cattle bear up a great weight, so they are hard
and take a high polish. They can be used instead of ivory, which is
getting scarce. Tooth-brush handles and cutlery handles are made of these
bones. The others in the skeleton are built of lime stuck together with
glue and molded into shape by the push and pull of muscles.
The soft bones of the head, shoulders, ribs, and breast do not need to be
so stiff as the bones of the legs; they have more glue in proportion to
lime than the leg-bones. The animal needs a kind of flexible,
weather-proof varnish flowed over it, so to speak, to protect the tissues.
Glue is what makes this coat or hide. So from bones and scraps and
trimmings of hide this glue or gelatin is soaked out. Even the bones on
which meat has been cooked have some little dribs of gelatin and fat in
them, and these are stewed under pressure until there is nothing left in
them of the gelatin, of which they now make the little capsules in which
the druggist puts the medicine whose taste we don't just fancy, and fats
which go to the soap-maker for the want of a better destination.
Drugs from Dead Cattle.
From the bodies of cows is obtained the tallow which is made into
oleomargarin.
The prevailing ailment of the American people is dyspepsia, which is due
to a natural lack of pepsin. But it has been found out that the pig's
pepsin will do as well as our own, so it is prepared for the drug-trade
and sold at considerably above the price per pound of the hog on the hoof.
There are all sorts of obscure nervous troubles which can be very
materially helped by a substance extracted from the gray matter of calves'
brains.
A growing child should make red corpuscles in his blood at a great rate.
All the processes which construct his bones and his flesh and his various
organs should be working full-powered. The red rib-marrow of freshly
killed young animals contains a substance which is soluble in chemically
pure glycerin and can be digested out of that red rib-marrow, and which,
if given to the child, greatly increases the proportion of red corpuscles
in the blood and stimulates all the constructive processes of the body.
This will sell for a much larger sum a pound than veal.
And so there are various other substances taken from the sweetbreads
proper, the neck-and-throat sweetbreads, the thyroid gland, the parotids,
and the suprarenal capsules which can be used in medicine and can be sold
at a large profit to people brought up to believe that "eating the part
strengthens the part."
Glycerin a By-Product.
And when all has been extracted that you would think could be extracted,
all the bits and scraps and scrapings and what not are put into a tank and
cooked and cooked until all is dissolved that can be dissolved. The
residual fat is skimmed off, and the last bit of glue, and the insoluble
matter at the bottom of the tank, go for fertilizer, and then, in the
packing-houses that don't know their business, the tank water is let run
away. But there is much valuable nitrogenous matter in those waters which
the first-rate packers utilize. And there is glycerin there.
In the old days the candle-makers who used palm-oil had their own troubles
with glycerin. If a candle was blown out, the smoldering wick used to
leave an offensive odor. It was the glycerin that caused this. Naturally,
the only thing to do was to take it out of the candle, and the next thing
was to get rid of it down the gulley into the creek. People complained, as
people will; but what else was an honest chandler to do? Latterly they
have been figuring on the matter, and some of them have come to the
conclusion that they used to let as much as two thousand dollars' worth of
glycerin get away from them every week.
In the last five years the soap-makers have learned that they can realize
more money out of the glycerin than they can out of the soap they make.
Some of this glycerin is refined, but the great part of the crude goes to
the manufacturers of dynamite, which is nitroglycerin mixed with
infusorial earth, so as to weaken it.
There is just as much acid after the glycerin is turned into nitroglycerin
as there was before. After it is washed out the nitro is left apparently
unchanged. It is not broken up, but it is on the edge of it. Give it a
knock and it all flies to pieces at once so suddenly that it will loosen
more dirt in a second than a hundred pick-and-shovel men could scoop out
in a week.
Wealth in Refuse Heaps.
Back of the tin shop there used to be a heap of shining clippings. The
heap of clippings isn't there now. If there are any bits of tin too small
to make the backs of buttons, they are pressed together to make
window-sash weights.
Nor is that pile of sawdust back of the sawmill any more. The butchers
want it for their floors, but that isn't the most economical use for it.
There are acetic acid, wood alcohol, naphtha, wood-tar (and all that that
implies) to be had from the distillation of sawdust--to say nothing of
sugar from birch sawdust. The reason there isn't more money in the sawdust
than in sashes, doors, and blinds which the factory turns out is because
we have more faith in cog-wheels than we have in test tubes.
In machinery, big or little, Americans stand at the head of the class; in
industrial chemistry they are at the foot of the class.
We pay the Germans about ten times what we ought to for phenacetin,
because we can't get it into our heads that there is any money in applied
organic chemistry. Coal-tar was once a nuisance, but the Germans make
indigo so much better and cheaper from it now that they have put the
indigo-plant out of business.
The red trousers of the French soldiers are dyed with German alizarin,
also a coal-tar product, because it doesn't pay to raise madder any
longer. In coal-tar are all sorts of valuable drugs, dyes, and perfumes.
But we don't know it--industrially.
Stay! I do my country an injustice. We can make moth-balls and carbolic
acid. But that is as much as ever we can do. And this is why we do not
utilize the saw-dust and make a better business out of it than the sawmill
can.
And garbage! I wonder how much orange-peel and lemon-peel is thrown away
in New York City every day, and how much the neroli or essential oil that
could be got from it would be worth. I wonder if the stalks and fag-ends
of vegetables could not be distilled and something made from them. But the
limit of our wisdom in regard to garbage is: burn it and get power from
it. Somebody is going to get rich from this garbage problem one of these
days. But it will be the test-tube and not the cogwheel that will make the
money. It will be the industrial chemist, not the mechanic.
Fortunes Lurk in Old Wool.
See what a difference such knowledge has made in the wool industry.
Sheep's wool is dirty and greasy when it comes to the mills. Wash it with
strong alkali in running water. That is what has always been done. But a
man in Massachusetts thought it would be a good idea to dissolve the
grease with some such solvent as naphtha. He saved the naphtha to use over
again; he recovered the grease, which is the most softening and
penetrating of all fats and is most valuable for ointments, and he
recovered carbonate of potash. Sheep wearing heavy wool in the hot weather
perspire freely, and this perspiration contains carbonate of potash.
After the wool is once woven into cloth, we may dismiss from our minds all
thought of effecting any more economies. When the suit of clothes is worn
to rags, the rags are still as good as new, for the wool is picked out
into strands of fiber again and woven anew. It isn't ground into shoddy
as it was in the days of the Civil War.
The wool is picked apart as long as it has any staple to it at all, and
forms part of the most expensive and enduring of fabrics. It may be mixed
with cotton, but when it comes to be a rag again, the cotton is burned out
either with acid or with heat, the dust is taken out, and once more behold
absolutely pure wool, much safer to wear than the new wool of the tropics
and semi-tropics. When there is not enough wool to hold together it goes
into our clothing. With wood ashes and scrap iron it ceases to be a fabric
and becomes a dye, Prussian blue.
The cotton rag has no such long life. All it is good for is paper stock.
The paper business is essentially a wealth from waste industry. For a long
time, linen rags, cotton rags, and old rope were the only materials of
which paper was made. Cheap books and magazines and newspapers had to wait
until it was discovered that the resins and gums in which the fibers of
wood are imbedded could be dissolved away, leaving the pulp of the wood in
just the same condition that the pulp of rags was.
Where Old Magazines Go.
If the resins are not thoroughly dissolved away the paper turns brown in
the course of time. Naturally enough, the wood-pulp makers let the
solution of resins run off and become a nuisance, but they, too, are
learning that there are glucoses and pyroligneous acids and all manner of
riches to be obtained from the solution of the vegetable matter, to say
nothing of the possibilities of a sort of gum or glue which is softened
both by heat and by moisture.
And just a word about an economy found necessary by the magazines and
newspapers which take back the copies the newsdealer does not sell. These
"returns" were hard to get rid of. Paper is mean stuff to burn in
quantities. So far as the texture of the wood-pulp paper is concerned, it
might be used to print on again, but how are you going to remove the ink?
Let the ink stay on and use the pulp over again for pasteboard boxes. And
that's what becomes of the newspapers and magazines that nobody buys.
If you will look over journals devoted to concrete and its wonders, you
will see a good deal about the concrete made out of slag. And there was a
neat little point made when it was discovered that about two cents a pound
could be saved in the manufacture of iron by freezing all the moisture out
of the atmospheric air before it was heated for the blast. But the best is
yet to come. Quite a little bit of money has been made in this country
from the manufacture of iron. What do you say to the proposition to make
the iron itself a mere by-product to something even more valuable?
Valuable Gas Ran to Waste.
From the top of the furnace in which iron ore is liquefying in the fervent
heat there rushes out a gas, largely carbon monoxide, whose hunger for
oxygen has been only half satisfied. If it could get that other atom of
oxygen it would be a gas that would only smother us when it didn't make
the soda-fountain fizz. As it is, carbon monoxide is deadly poison.
It has to be put to some use. It doesn't burn under a boiler very well. It
is necessary to keep a bed of coals going so that the furnace-gas may stay
lighted. But it has been found that even when it is too poor to keep
alight it will explode in the combustion chamber of a gas-engine.
It has also been found that a furnace smelting seven tons of pig-iron an
hour will make enough furnace-gas to supply nine thousand horse-power per
hour.
Deducting gas and power that can be economically used on the premises, it
is estimated that there will be a surplus of power to sell of five
thousand horse-power per hour. Now that we are able to transmit power
cheaply by high-tension currents, it is easy to see what this means. In
New York they sell electromotive force for from four cents per horse-power
per hour up to twelve cents. Call it two cents, and five thousand
horse-power per hour means a hundred dollars, which is more money than
seven tons of pig-iron will bring.
A lot has been done with cog-wheels; a lot is being done with wires; but
when it comes to recovering wealth from waste, it is the test-tube that
will do it. And so, study chemistry, young man.
OLD MAY-DAY CUSTOMS.
The Ancient Romans and the Druids Are Partly Responsible for Some of the
Modern Methods of Celebrating the Festival of the Spring Deities Which
Are Now Represented by Youthful Queens and Kings.
Customs do not become established without reason. If no meaning is seen in
a popular superstition or an annual festival, the significance or the
apparent lack of significance, is simply that the ritual, as so often
happens, has long outlived the belief.
In many of our hereditary customs we bow down, unaware, before the gods of
our pagan ancestors. Thus May-Day rites, which have come to us through
Roman and Druidical channels, are remains of a very early worship.
The Druids, on May 1, lighted great fires in honor of Bel or Belen--the
Apollo, or Orus, of other nations. In Celtic centers of Great Britain the
day is still called _la Bealtine_, _Bealtine_, or _Beltine_, which means
"day of Belen's fire," since, in the Celtic language of Cornwall, _tan_
means "fire," and the verb _tine_ means to "light a fire."
In the Highlands of Scotland, as late as 1790, the Beltein, or rural
sacrifice on May 1, was fully observed. The herdsmen of every village
lighted a fire within a square outlined by cutting a trench in the turf.
Over the fire was dressed a caudle of eggs, milk, oatmeal, and butter.
Part was poured on the ground as a libation.
Then every one took a cake of oatmeal, upon which were nine knobs, each
dedicated to some divinity. Facing the fire, they broke off the knobs, one
at a time, throwing them over their shoulders and saying: "This I give to
thee. Preserve thou my horses." "This to thee; preserve thou my sheep,"
and so on. The caudle was then eaten.
Traces of fire sacrifice are found in Ireland, particularly in the custom
of lighting fires at short intervals and driving cattle between them, and
the custom of fathers jumping over or running through fires with their
children in their arms. Undoubtedly these singular forms of sport are
modifications of what was once real sacrifice.
Our commonest May-Day games, however, probably come from the Floralia, or
rather from the Maiuma, of the Romans, who, it is said, were but repeating
the festal customs of ancient Egypt and India. The Maiuma were established
under the Emperor Claudius, to take the place of the Floralia, from which
they seem to have differed little, except, perhaps, that they were not
made an occasion for so great license.
The May-festival, in its deepest meaning, is a recognition of the renewed
fertility of the earth with the returning spring. It is one of the oldest
of all festivals. The children who now go a Maying, or dance around the
Maypole, or choose a May Queen, are unconsciously imitating the joyous
ceremonies with which the ancients welcomed the new birth of Nature.
Fertility was among the earliest of religious ideas.
"Going a Maying" is a very ancient custom in England. Bourne, in his
"Antiquitates Vulgares," said:
On the calends, or first, of May, commonly called May Day,
the juvenile part of both sexes are wont to rise a little
after midnight and walk to some neighboring wood,
accompanied with music and blowing of horns, where they
break down branches from the trees, and adorn themselves
with nosegays and crowns of flowers. When this is done, they
return with their booty homeward, about the rising of the
sun, and make their doors and windows to triumph with their
flowery spoils.
In the "Morte d'Arthur" we find this passage:
Now it befell in the moneth of lusty May, that Queene
Guenever called unto her the Knyghtes of the Round Table,
and gave them warning that early in the morning she should
ride on Maying into the woods and fields beside Westminster.
Shakespeare, in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," alludes to the custom:
No doubt they rise up early to observe
The rite of May.
The Maypole is still common in many countries. It used to be general
throughout England, and the cutting and decorating of the pole was one of
the many reasons for going a Maying. Often the pole was left standing
until near the end of the year, and sometimes especially durable poles
remained erect in their places for many seasons and were used in
successive festivals.
The last Maypole erected in London was a hundred feet high and stood in
the Strand. Taken down in 1717, it was removed to Wanstead Park, in Essex,
where it was made part of the support for a large telescope which was set
up by Sir Isaac Newton.
The May Queen traditionally represents the Roman goddess Flora.
SOME DEEP-SEA HUMOR.
The first day out: Steward--Did you ring, sir? Traveler--Yes, steward,
I--I rang. Steward--Anything I can bring you, sir? Traveler--Y-yes,
st-steward. Bub-bring me a continent, if you have one, or an
island--anything, steward, so l-lul-long as it's solid. If you can't,
sus-sink the ship.--_Harper's Bazar._
* * * * *
Van Dyke--As the boat left the dock I waved my handkerchief, and then a
most curious thing happened. Forney--What was it? Van Dyke--The ocean
waved back.--_Truth._
* * * * *
Uneasy Passenger (on an ocean steamship)--Doesn't the vessel tip
frightfully? Dignified Steward--The wessel, mum, is trying to set hexample
to the passengers.--_Chicago Tribune._
* * * * *
Jinks--I can't understand how shipwrecked sailors ever starve to death.
Filkins--Why not? Jinks--Because I just came over from Liverpool and I
never felt any desire to eat.--_Puck._
* * * * *
Lady (to sea captain)--How do you manage to find your way across the
ocean? Captain--By the compass. The needle always points to north.
Lady--But suppose you wish to go south?--_London Tit-Bits._
* * * * *
Nervous Passenger--Why are you steaming along at such a fearful rate
through this fog? Ocean Captain (reassuringly)--Fogs are dangerous, madam,
and I'm always in a hurry to get out of them.--_New York Weekly._
* * * * *
"This is your sixth trip across the ocean in winter, is it?" said the
timid passenger. "Are you never oppressed by a fear that the ship will run
into an iceberg and sink?" "Never, madam," replied the business-like
passenger briskly; "I never invest a cent in ships."--_Chicago Tribune._
* * * * *
Two ministers were crossing a lake in a storm. When matters became most
critical some one cried out: "The two ministers must pray!" "Na, na," said
the boatman; "the little ane can pray if he likes, but the big ane maun
tak' an oar."--_Century._
* * * * *
A judge, in crossing the Irish Channel one stormy night, knocked against a
well-known witty lawyer who was suffering terribly from seasickness. "Can
I do anything for you?" said the judge. "Yes," gasped the seasick lawyer;
"I wish your lordship would overrule this motion!"--_White Mountain Echo._
* * * * *
"My dear, look down below," said Mr. Grandiose, as he stood on deck with
his wife and gazed at a tug hauling a long line of barges. "Such is life;
the tug is like the man, working and toiling, while the barges, like
women, are----" "I know," interrupted Mrs. G. acridly, "the tug does all
the blowing, and the barges bear all the burden."--_Charleston News._
* * * * *
The bishop thought the capful of wind was an Atlantic storm, and worried
the captain by asking constantly if there was danger. The captain led his
lordship to the hatch over the fo'cs'le. "You hear the crew swearing," he
said. "Do you think those men would use such oaths if there was danger of
their meeting death?" The sun set in an angry storm-torn sky, the wind
rose higher yet, and the good steamer pitched and rolled and groaned and
creaked. It was midnight, and a portly figure crept forward to the
fo'cs'le hatch. "Thank heaven," murmured the bishop, "those men are
swearing yet."--_New York Mercury._
How They Got On In The World.
Brief Biographies of Successful Men Who Have Passed Through
the Crucible of Small Beginnings and Won Out.
_Compiled and edited for_ THE SCRAP BOOK.
A TITLED INVENTOR.
Englishman Spent Fortune After Fortune
Experimenting With New Ideas,
but Died a Millionaire.
Samuel Cunliffe-Lister, Lord Masham, whose air-brake is used on many
British railroads and who invented the first successful wool-combing
machine, started, in 1837, at Manningham, Yorkshire, England, in company
with his elder brother, a small worsted-spinning establishment. Both
brothers had worked at the trade since childhood, and both were capable
men. For a time the business prospered. Then it began to drop off and the
elder partner accused Samuel of wasting his time and energy in
experimenting with toys when he should devote his efforts exclusively to
building up the enterprise they had started. The discussion almost
terminated in a rupture between the two, but a couple of the toys were
patented and as machines in the worsted-spinning business they brought in
a fair profit.
But another cause for dissension arose. As fast as money came in for early
inventions it was spent in experimenting on other things. Several times
Cunliffe-Lister spent what would then be looked upon as a fairly
comfortable fortune in trying to perfect his ideas, and, despite his
income, he continually hovered on the verge of bankruptcy.
Perfects His Wool-Comber.
At last, in 1865, he perfected the wool-comber, a machine that takes the
raw material, thoroughly cleanses it, and straightens the fiber, leaving
it ready for the carder to take in hand. Its enormous utility was
instantly recognized, and the wool-working towns and cities of England
and the United States were supplied with the new machines. During the
subsequent years the inventor received every year, from this machine
alone, an income that seldom fell below two hundred thousand pounds.
The first form of the wool-comber was far more perfect than the first form
of most machines. Nevertheless, Cunliffe-Lister spent enormous sums of
money in making improvements on it, and on one occasion, when several
hundred of the machines were ready for shipment, he held them up in order
that there might be incorporated in them certain improvements he had just
made. His partners protested that the machines embodied all the features
the purchasers had paid for. The inventor was obdurate, and every one of
the machines had added to it the improvements, and all the alterations
were made solely at his expense.
Head Not Turned by Fortune.
The immense fortune he had made from this and other inventions never for
an instant turned him from his work and experiments. Like Edison, he had
the ability to concentrate his mind for long periods, to work for long
stretches with little rest, and to apportion to his assistants the
experiments that he could not personally perform. He could have retired
thirty-five years ago and been assured of a large income for the remainder
of his life, but he preferred to stick to his work to the last.
"You've got your fortune now," said one of his friends; "why don't you
stop working?"
"I didn't work simply to acquire wealth," he replied. "I value the money
chiefly for what it will enable me to do."
His second great invention was the air-brake, introduced by him at about
the same time Westinghouse introduced his air-brake in America. The
English inventor, however, experienced little difficulty in having his
device adopted, for he had already made a name for himself, and the
English railroad officials were willing to give the benefit of thorough,
practical tests to what he brought them. The tests proved the efficiency
of the brake, and its general adoption added greatly to the inventor's
already large income.
He worked incessantly, experimenting in all branches of science, and his
improvements in mill machinery, in railroad devices and steel working are
of immense value. For weeks at a time, the expense of his experiments
averaged a thousand pounds a day. In spite of this, the enormous income he
received from his patents more than kept pace with his expenses, and when
he died, early last February, he was one of the richest men in the United
Kingdom.
HARD-FIGHTING EDITOR.
Founder of Modern Journalism Was
Called Everything That Had an Unpleasant
Name, but He Prospered.
James Gordon Bennett, who founded the _New York Herald_, was well over
thirty-five years of age when he left the office of the old _New York
Courier and Enquirer_. He had learned what a newspaper should be, he
believed, and he was going to put that knowledge into operation. He had
toiled early and late all his life, and when he was ready to start for
himself he had a nominal capital of five hundred dollars, and a big idea.
He was the only newspaper man in New York who thought that a newspaper
didn't have to be dull to be good. In fact, he found that if he wished to
be an editor at all it would have to be on his own paper. So on May 6,
1835, in a cellar on Wall Street, he issued the first number of the
_Herald_.
Many things which we take for granted in the newspapers of to-day were
originated by Bennett and his lively little cellar-born sheet. In the
second month of its existence, the _Herald_ printed the first Wall Street
reports that had ever appeared in an American daily. Later, in the same
year, Bennett introduced modern reportorial methods by his graphic "story"
of the great fire that devastated down-town New York in December, 1835;
and his introduction of a picture of the Stock Exchange on fire, and a map
of the burned district, was another epoch-making innovation. It was he,
too, who ordered for the _Herald_ a telegraphic report of the first speech
ever sent in full over the wires to a newspaper--that of Calhoun on the
Mexican War.
There were no theories concerning the news in the _Herald_, no stately,
long-winded, word-spinning explanations of what the news meant; just the
news itself, given tersely and in as simple and bright language as
possible. The readers were left to draw their own inferences and make
their own comments.
Competitors Tried to Crush Him.
Bennett was right in trusting to the readers' intelligence, for his
following increased. But though the public came to him in goodly numbers,
the battle was a desperate, up-hill one. Five years after he started, all
the papers in the city banded together to crush him. The records of the
fight are curious now, chiefly for the profusion of the epithets that were
hurled at him. One paper, in one short broadside, managed to call him an
"obscene rogue," "profligate adventurer," "venomous reptile,"
"pestilential scoundrel," "polluted wretch," "habitual liar," and "veteran
blackguard."
Bennett weathered the storm, seldom bothering about hitting back, but all
the time striving to make his paper brighter and more readable. His
adversaries soon realized that they were losing ground, and they gradually
relinquished the struggle.
Twelve years after he had started the _Herald_, Bennett got into a dispute
with Horace Greeley concerning the relative circulation of the _Herald_
and _Tribune_. The dispute was settled by an impartial committee, and this
committee found that the _Herald_ had a daily circulation of 16,711 to the
_Tribune's_ 11,455, while the _Weekly Herald_ had a circulation of 11,455
to a circulation of 15,780 for the _Weekly Tribune_. On the whole, the
result was a decided victory for Bennett.
His Announcement of His Marriage.
Here is the announcement of his marriage, written by himself and published
in the _Herald_ on June 1, 1840:
To the Readers of the "Herald"--Declaration of Love--Caught
at Last--Going to Be Married--New Movement in Civilization.
I am going to be married in a few days. The weather is so
beautiful--times are getting so good--the prospects of
political and moral reforms so auspicious, that I cannot
resist the divine instincts of honest nature any longer; so
I am going to be married to one of the most splendid women
in intellect, in heart, in soul, in property, in person, in
manner, that I have yet seen in the course of my interesting
pilgrimage through human life.
I cannot stop in my career. I must fulfil that awful destiny
which the Almighty Father has written against my name, in
the broad letters of life, against the wall of Heaven. I
must give the world a pattern of happy wedded life, with all
the charities that spring from a nuptial love.
In a few days I shall be married according to the holy rites
of the most holy Catholic Church, to one of the most
remarkable, accomplished, and beautiful young women of the
age. She possesses a fortune. I sought and found a
fortune--a very large fortune.
She has no Stonington shares, or Manhattan stock, but in
purity and uprightness she is worth half a million of pure
coin. Can any swindling bank show as much? In good sense and
elegance, another half a million; in soul, mind, and beauty,
millions on millions, equal to the whole specie of all the
rotten banks in the whole world.
Happily, the patronage of the public to the _Herald_ is
nearly twenty-five thousand dollars per annum--almost equal
to a President's salary. But property in the world's goods
was never my object, Fame, public good, usefulness in my day
and generation--the religious associates of female
excellence--the progress of true industry--these have been
my dreams by night and my desires by day.
In the new and holy condition into which I am about to
enter, and to enter with the same reverential feelings as I
would Heaven itself. I anticipate some signal changes in my
feelings, in my views, in my purposes, in my pursuits. What
they may be I know not; time alone can tell. My ardent
desire has been through life to reach the highest order of
human excellence by the shortest possible cut. Associated
night and day, in sickness and in health, in war and in
peace, with a woman of this highest order of excellence,
must produce some curious results in my heart and feelings,
and these results the future will develop in due time in the
columns of the _Herald_.
Meantime I return my heartfelt thanks for the enthusiastic
patronage of the public, both in Europe and in America. The
holy estate of wedlock will only increase my desire to be
still more useful. God Almighty bless you all.
JAMES GORDON BENNETT.
A BARBER LINGUIST.
King of Italy's Prize for Language Scholarship
Won by Humble Toiler
Who Amazes Europe.
Alfredo Trombetti, who won the King of Italy's Prize for Languages, has a
remarkable history. In 1903 King Victor Emmanuel of Italy, carrying out
his plan for encouraging education, offered a prize of ten thousand
_lire_--two thousand dollars--for the best contribution to the study of
languages. Hundreds of Italian scholars competed. But the work of the
judges was facilitated by the fact that one man so far distanced the
others that there could be absolute unanimity in making the award. The
successful treatise was in five volumes, and was a remarkable study and
comparison of ancient languages, into which the author had compressed a
store of knowledge that astounded the learned judges.
The writer was Trombetti. Those who passed on his work had never before
heard of him. They looked him up, and their astonishment at his erudition
was heightened when they found he was a poor teacher in a little academy
at Cuneo, a town with a population of thirty thousand. He, in turn, was
astonished that the reward should come to him, for he was as modest as he
was poor. His salary was less than two hundred and fifty dollars a year,
and on this he supported a family of seven. The prize amounted to two
thousand dollars--a sum greater than he could earn in eight years of
teaching. He was master of fifty languages and dialects.
Learned from Customers.
They found he was a simple, enthusiastic man, without much knowledge of
the world and of its ways. He had been living among books practically all
his life, and they represented everything to him, and for them he had
sacrificed practically everything. But underneath the naïveté there were
the solidity and thoroughness of the scholar. Trombetti had cultivated his
natural aptitude for languages by the most exhaustive studies and at a
cost few men would care to meet. After the dull routine and hard work of
the school year he employed his vacations in traveling about from one
library to another in order to consult and study the books he could not
afford to buy. On these trips black bread, wayside pot-herbs, and fruit
given him from vineyards and orchards formed his fare.
He managed to buy some books, painfully saving the money cent by cent, and
when other scholars discovered him he had already gathered together a
fairly good library. In that library the chief place was occupied by a
tattered old French grammar, a book he had bought for five cents when a
boy, and from which he had learned his first foreign language.
"How did you manage to acquire such an amount of knowledge?" one of the
judges asked him.
"I began when I was a barber," he said.
"A barber!"
"Yes. When a man sat in my chair I let him talk. I got from one a new
word, from another a new variation in dialect. So even there I was
learning all the time."
Faculty Not Easily Acquired.
The faculty of learning languages, he said, was not easily acquired. It
took him longer to gain a reading knowledge of French, despite the fact
that French and Italian have an enormous number of words derived from the
same common source, than it took him to learn Russian and Hebrew--the
fifth and sixth languages he began to study--although both the latter are
much more difficult than French.
"I had taught myself how to study," he said, "how to systematize, and make
everything I had previously learned help me in everything I undertook. I
know from my own case that any one can learn a language if he is
determined and will give a little time each day to it."
So, by pursuing the method he had learned, Trombetti had placed himself,
as far as the number of languages understood is concerned, with Cardinal
Mezzofanti, who spoke fifty-eight.
The winning of the king's prize when Trombetti was thirty-seven years old,
and after he had struggled amid the direst privations, changed the whole
current of his life. He was appointed a professor at the University of
Bologna. Linguists everywhere placed their collections at his service, for
they recognized that the work he had already done would facilitate the
researches and studies of all future inquirers. The scholars of the United
States were especially prompt, and the Bureau of Ethnology, when he
announced his intention of making a comparative study of Indian languages,
sent him a large and valuable collection of works on the subject.
GAMBLING IS A VICE, BUT--
Famous Speculator Who Tries to Limit
His Investments to "Sure Things"
Has Had Many Stumbles.
James R. Keene, famous as a leader of the Wall Street bulls--or
occasionally of the bears--asserts that he never gambles in stocks, and
that gambling is one of the worst of vices.
"I try not to touch anything that is not worth while," he said. "If a
stock is good and is selling under price it is legitimate to take that
stock and push it up to its real value."
Several times in attempting to do that Keene has been cleaned out and left
as poor as he was when he started out in California in the fifties. He was
a sickly, nervous, near-sighted boy of twelve when he arrived in the West.
Three years of life in the open built him up, and he started in as a
prospector on his own account. It didn't pan out well, and he turned
farmer for a while, left that work as a cowboy, and then put in a year as
a newspaper reporter.
But the mines drew him back, and he managed to get ten thousand dollars
out of the Comstock lode. With this he went to San Francisco, and when he
saw how things were run on the exchange there he decided that he would
enter the game. It took him three months to turn his ten thousand dollars
into a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and it took his opponents two
days to take that away from him and leave him not only without a cent, but
also heavily in debt.
Young Keene's Period of Poverty.
The period that followed was one of poverty for Keene, and for two years
he fought through it, working at whatever he could find to do, but all the
time intent on getting back to the exchange. Finally, his creditors
allowed him to join the Mining Exchange, and his knowledge of mining
properties soon put him at the head of the mining stockbrokers.
Keene won his success as a broker through his painstaking study of the
property in which he invested either for himself or for others, and
through the amazing courage he evinced in taking a chance on properties in
which he believed.
"Keene's too blamed conscientious," said one of his fellow-brokers. "Why,
he's taken a week to look over some Idaho property, and he could just as
well have handled the investments even if there wasn't a sign of metal
there. He wouldn't lose anything."
That was not Keene's way. He was not in the game to make a little and risk
nothing. He was willing to risk everything in order to make a big killing,
and usually the campaigns that looked like wild and reckless gambles were
backed by good, solid knowledge, gained after examination of the value of
the property involved.
Keene's clients liked such methods, and they came to him in such numbers
that in a short time he forced his way to the leading position among the
San Francisco brokers, and as an operator on his own account he easily
distanced all the others both in daring and in winnings.
Thirty years ago he had a fortune of six million dollars, and he started
for Europe, but stopped off in New York to sell railroad shares short, for
what he had seen on his trip East convinced him that there would be a
break. His first deal netted him two hundred thousand dollars, and he
threw up all thoughts of a European trip.
There was a story current at the time that Keene had all his wealth turned
into gold, and the gold was done up in neat little parcels. With this, so
he was credited with saying, he intended to wipe Jay Gould off the
financial map. This story, however, is not true. It was Keene's intention
to take a little flier, gain a little spending money, and continue on his
way to Europe for rest.
But Wall Street fascinated him. Everything there was done upon such a
lavish scale that it just suited him. So instead of taking a vacation he
plunged into the market, and his winnings at first were enormous. During
the next two years he cleared nine million dollars. Then he went into a
wheat corner, and before he got out again he was squeezed dry, and a
million and a half in debt.
Turning Failure into Success.
He fought the old San Francisco fight over again and he manifested the
same old San Francisco courage.
They had pushed him down to such a point that he could no longer afford to
live in New York, and he hired a little house in the suburbs. A cab was a
luxury that was not to be thought of, and so every day, pleasant or
stormy, Keene walked from the cars to his office. His lunch, and sometimes
his dinner, consisted of fruit bought from a basket.
Around him were scores of men reduced to a similar pass, and most of them
lost courage and drifted down and out. Courage was the only thing Keene
did not lose. He hung on tight, and his former experience enabled him
slowly to recover the position he had lost. Little by little, he got on to
his feet, and when once he had wiped out his debts he began the fight
again on a big scale, and has managed to make himself one of the richest
men in the country.
The Tapestried Chamber.
BY SIR WALTER SCOTT.
This tale by Sir Walter Scott is justly reckoned among the
most effective ghost stories ever written. Its art lies in
its perfect simplicity, which for the moment convinces the
reader of its truth and therefore makes the horror of it
intensely real. Scott had himself a strain of superstition
in his nature, derived in part from his Scottish ancestry
and heightened by the strange stories and gruesome legends
which had been told him by the peasants around whose fires
he had sat at night while still a boy.
His belief in the supernatural appears and reappears in many
of his most famous novels, as in the episode of the _Gray
Specter_ in "Waverley," the second-sight of _Meg Merrilies_
in "Guy Mannering," and the weird figure of _Norna of the
Fitful Head_ in "The Pirate." But no better example can be
found of Scott's command of the mysterious as an element in
fiction than this short story of "The Tapestried Chamber."
The following narrative is given from the pen, so far as memory permits,
in the same character in which it was presented to the author's ear; nor
has he claim to further praise, or to be more deeply censured, than in
proportion to the good or bad judgment which he has employed in selecting
his materials, as he has studiously avoided any attempt at ornament which
might interfere with the simplicity of the tale.
At the same time it must be admitted that the particular class of stories
which turns on the marvelous, possesses a stronger influence when told
than when committed to print. The volume taken up at noonday, though
rehearsing the same incidents, conveys a much more feeble impression than
is achieved by the voice of the speaker on a circle of fireside auditors,
who hang upon the narrative as the narrator details the minute incidents
which serve to give it authenticity, and lowers his voice with an
affectation of mystery while he approaches the fearful and wonderful part.
It was with such advantages that the present writer heard the following
events related, more than twenty years since, by the celebrated Miss
Seward, of Litchfield, who, to her numerous accomplishments, added, in a
remarkable degree, the power of narrative in private conversation.
In its present form the tale must necessarily lose all the interest which
was attached to it by the flexible voice and intelligent features of the
gifted narrator. Yet still, read aloud, to an undoubting audience by the
doubtful light of the closing evening, or, in silence, by a decaying
taper, and amidst the solitude of a half-lighted apartment, it may redeem
its character as a good ghost-story.
Miss Seward always affirmed that she had derived her information from an
authentic source, although she suppressed the names of the two persons
chiefly concerned. I will not avail myself of any particulars I may have
since received concerning the localities of the detail, but suffer them to
rest under the same general description in which they were first related
to me; and, for the same reason, I will not add to or diminish the
narrative by any circumstance, whether more or less material, but simply
rehearse, as I heard it, a story of supernatural terror.
About the end of the American War, when the officers of Lord Cromwell's
army, which surrendered at Yorktown, and others who had been made
prisoners during the impolitic and ill-fated controversy, were returning
to their own country, to relate their adventures, and repose themselves
after their fatigues, there was among them a general officer, to whom Miss
S. gave the name of Browne, but merely, as I understood, to save the
inconvenience of introducing a nameless agent in the narrative. He was an
officer of merit, as well as a gentleman of high consideration for family
and attainments.
Some business had carried General Browne upon a tour through the western
counties, when, in the conclusion of a morning stage, he found himself in
the vicinity of a small country town, which presented a scene of uncommon
beauty, and of a character peculiarly English.
The little town, with its stately old church, whose tower bore testimony
to the devotion of ages long past, lay amid pastures and corn-fields of
small extent, but bounded and divided with hedgerow timber of great age
and size. There were few marks of modern improvement. The environs of the
place intimated neither the solitude of decay nor the bustle of novelty;
the houses were old, but in good repair; and the beautiful little river
murmured freely on its way to the left of the town, neither restrained by
a dam nor bordered by a towing-path.
Upon a gentle eminence, nearly a mile to the southward of the town, were
seen, among many venerable oaks and tangled thickets, the turrets of a
castle, as old as the wars of York and Lancaster, but which seemed to have
received important alterations during the age of Elizabeth and her
successor.
It had not been a place of great size; but whatever accommodation it
formerly afforded was, it must be supposed, still to be obtained within
its walls; at least, such was the inference which General Browne drew from
observing the smoke arise merrily from several of the ancient wreathed and
carved chimney-stalks.
The wall of the park ran alongside of the highway for two or three
hundred yards; and through the different points by which the eye found
glimpses into the woodland scenery, it seemed to be well stocked. Other
points of view opened in succession; now a full one, of the front of the
old castle, and now a side glimpse at its particular towers; the former
rich in all the bizarrerie of the Elizabethan school, while the simple and
solid strength of other parts of the building seemed to show that they had
been raised more for defense than ostentation.
Delighted with the partial glimpses which he obtained of the castle
through the woods and glades by which this ancient feudal fortress was
surrounded, our military traveler was determined to inquire whether it
might not deserve a nearer view, and whether it contained family pictures
or other objects of curiosity worthy of a stranger's visit; when, leaving
the vicinity of the park, he rolled through a clean and well-paved street,
and stopped at the door of a well-frequented inn.
Before ordering horses to proceed on his journey, General Browne made
inquiries concerning the proprietor of the château which had so attracted
his admiration; and was equally surprised and pleased at hearing in reply
a nobleman named, whom we shall call Lord Woodville. How fortunate!
Much of Browne's early recollections, both at school and at college, had
been connected with young Woodville, whom, by a few questions, he now
ascertained to be the same with the owner of this fair domain. He had been
raised to the peerage by the decease of his father a few months before,
and, as the general learned from the landlord, the term of mourning being
ended, was now taking possession of his paternal estate, in the jovial
season of merry autumn, accompanied by a select party of friends, to enjoy
the sports of a country famous for game.
This was delightful news to our traveler. Frank Woodville had been Richard
Browne's fag at Eton and his chosen intimate at Christ Church; their
pleasures and their tasks had been the same; and the honest soldier's
heart warmed to find his early friend in possession of so delightful a
residence, and of an estate, as the landlord assured him with a nod and a
wink, fully adequate to maintain and add to his dignity.
Nothing was more natural than that the traveler should suspend a journey,
which there was nothing to render hurried, to pay a visit to an old friend
under such agreeable circumstances.
The fresh horses, therefore, had only the brief task of conveying the
general's traveling carriage to Woodville Castle. A porter admitted them
at a modern Gothic lodge, built in that style to correspond with the
castle itself, and at the same time rang a bell to give warning of the
approach of visitors.
Apparently the sound of the bell had suspended the separation of the
company, bent on the various amusements of the morning; for, on entering
the court of the château, several young men were lounging about in their
sporting dresses, looking at, and criticizing, the dogs which the keepers
held in readiness to attend their pastime.
As General Browne alighted, the young lord came to the gate of the hall,
and for an instant gazed, as at a stranger, upon the countenance of his
friend, on which war, with its fatigues and its wounds, had made a great
alteration. But the uncertainty lasted no longer than till the visitor had
spoken, and the hearty greeting which followed was such as can only be
exchanged between those who have passed together the merry days of
careless boyhood or early youth.
"If I could have formed a wish, my dear Browne," said Lord Woodville, "it
would have been to have you here, of all men, upon this occasion, which my
friends are good enough to hold as a sort of holiday. Do not think you
have been unwatched during the years you have been absent from us. I have
traced you through your dangers, your triumphs, your misfortunes, and was
delighted to see that, whether in victory or defeat, the name of my old
friend was always distinguished with applause."
The general made a suitable reply, and congratulated his friend on his new
dignities, and the possession of a place and domain so beautiful.
"Nay, you have seen nothing of it as yet," said Lord Woodville, "and I
trust you do not mean to leave us till you are better acquainted with it.
It is true, I confess, that my present party is pretty large, and the old
house, like other places of the kind, does not possess so much
accommodation as the extent of the outward walls appears to promise. But
we can give you a comfortable old-fashioned room, and I venture to suppose
that your campaigns have taught you to be glad of worse quarters."
The general shrugged his shoulders and laughed.
"I presume," he said, "the worst apartment in your château is considerably
superior to the old tobacco-cask, in which I was fain to take up my
night's lodging when I was in the Bush, as the Virginians call it, with
the light corps. There I lay, like Diogenes himself, so delighted with my
covering from the elements that I made a vain attempt to have it rolled on
to my next quarters; but my commander for the time would give way to no
such luxurious provision, and I took farewell of my beloved cask with
tears in my eyes."
"Well, then, since you do not fear your quarters," said Lord Woodville,
"you will stay with me a week at least. Of guns, dogs, fishing-rods,
flies, and means of sport by sea and land, we have enough and to spare;
you cannot pitch on an amusement but we will find the means of pursuing
it. But if you prefer the gun and pointers, I will go with you myself, and
see whether you have mended your shooting since you have been among the
Indians of the back settlements."
The general gladly accepted his friendly host's proposal in all its
points. After a morning of manly exercise, the company met at dinner,
where it was the delight of Lord Woodville to conduce to the display of
the high properties of his recovered friend, so as to recommend him to his
guests, most of whom were persons of distinction.
He led General Browne to speak of the scenes he had witnessed; and as
every word marked alike the brave officer and the sensible man, who
retained possession of his cool judgment under the most imminent dangers,
the company looked upon the soldier with general respect, as on one who
had proved himself possessed of an uncommon portion of personal courage;
that attribute, of all others, of which everybody desires to be thought
possessed.
The day at Woodville Castle ended as usual in such mansions. The
hospitality stopped within the limits of good order; music, in which the
young lord was a proficient, succeeded to the circulation of the bottle;
cards and billiards, for those who preferred such amusements, were in
readiness: but the exercise of the morning required early hours, and not
long after eleven o'clock the guests began to retire to their several
apartments.
The young lord himself conducted his friend, General Browne, to the
chamber destined for him, which answered the description he had given of
it, being comfortable, but old-fashioned. The bed was of the massive form
used in the end of the seventeenth century, and the curtains of faded
silk, heavily trimmed with tarnished gold. But then the sheets, pillows,
and blankets looked delightful to the campaigner, when he thought of his
"mansion, the cask."
There was an air of gloom in the tapestry hangings, which, with their
worn-out graces, curtained the walls of the little chamber, and gently
undulated as the autumnal breeze found its way through the ancient
lattice-window, which pattered and whistled as the air gained entrance.
The toilet, too, with its mirror, turbaned, after the manner of the
beginning of the century, with a coiffure of murrey-colored silk, and its
hundred strange-shaped boxes, providing for arrangements which had been
obsolete for more than fifty years, had an antique, and in so far a
melancholy aspect.
But nothing could blaze more brightly and cheerfully than the two large
wax candles; or if aught could rival them, it was the flaming, bickering
fagots in the chimney, that sent at once their gleam and their warmth
through the snug apartment; which, notwithstanding the general antiquity
of its appearance, was not wanting in the least convenience that modern
habits rendered either necessary or desirable.
"This is an old-fashioned sleeping apartment, general," said the young
lord; "but I hope you find nothing that makes you envy your old
tobacco-cask."
"I am not particular respecting my lodgings," replied the general; "yet
were I to make any choice, I would prefer this chamber by many degrees to
the gayer and more modern rooms of your family mansion. Believe me, that
when I unite its modern air of comfort with its venerable antiquity, and
recollect that it is your lordship's property, I shall feel in better
quarters here than if I were in the best hotel London could afford."
"I trust--I have no doubt--that you will find yourself as comfortable as I
wish you, my dear general," said the young nobleman; and once more bidding
his guest good night, he shook him by the hand and withdrew.
The general once more looked about him, and internally congratulating
himself on his return to peaceful life, the comforts of which were
endeared by the recollection of the hardships and dangers he had lately
sustained, undressed himself, and prepared for a luxurious night's rest.
Here, contrary to the custom of this species of tale, we leave the general
in possession of his apartment until the next morning.
The company assembled for breakfast at an early hour, but without the
appearance of General Browne, who seemed the guest that Lord Woodville was
desirous of honoring above all whom his hospitality had assembled around
him.
He more than once expressed surprise at the general's absence, and at
length sent a servant to make inquiry after him. The man brought back
information that General Browne had been walking abroad since an early
hour of the morning, in defiance of the weather, which was misty and
ungenial.
"The custom of a soldier," said the young nobleman to his friends; "many
of them acquire habitual vigilance, and cannot sleep after the early hour
at which their duty usually commands them to be alert."
Yet the explanation which Lord Woodville thus offered to the company
seemed hardly satisfactory to his own mind, and it was in a fit of silence
and abstraction that he awaited the return of the general.
It took place near an hour after the breakfast bell had rung. He looked
fatigued and feverish. His hair, the powdering and arrangement of which
was at this time one of the most important occupations of a man's whole
day, and marked his fashion as much as, in the present time, the tying of
a cravat, or the want of one, was disheveled, uncurled, void of powder,
and dank with dew. His clothes were huddled on with a careless negligence,
remarkable in a military man, whose real or supposed duties are usually
held to include some attention to the toilet, and his looks were haggard
and ghastly.
"So you have stolen a march upon us this morning, my dear general," said
Lord Woodville; "or you have not found your bed so much to your mind as I
had hoped and you seemed to expect. How did you rest last night?"
"Oh, excellently well! remarkably well! never better in my life," said
General Browne rapidly, and yet with an air of embarrassment which was
obvious to his friend. He then hastily swallowed a cup of tea, and,
neglecting or refusing whatever else was offered, seemed to fall into a
fit of abstraction.
"You will take the gun to-day, General?" said his friend and host, but had
to repeat the question twice ere he received the abrupt answer: "No, my
lord; I am sorry I cannot have the honor of spending another day with your
lordship; my post horses are ordered, and will be here directly."
All who were present showed surprise, and Lord Woodville immediately
replied: "Post horses, my good friend! What can you possibly want with
them, when you promised to stay with me quietly for at least a week?"
"I believe," said the general, obviously much embarrassed, "that I might,
in the pleasure of my first meeting with your lordship, have said
something about stopping here a few days; but I have since found it
altogether impossible."
"That is very extraordinary," answered the young nobleman. "You seemed
quite disengaged yesterday, and you cannot have had a summons to-day; for
our post has not come up from the town, and therefore you cannot have
received any letters."
General Browne, without giving any further explanation, muttered something
of indispensable business, and insisted on the absolute necessity of his
departure in a manner which silenced all opposition on the part of his
host, who saw that his resolution was taken, and forbore all further
importunity.
"At least, however," he said, "permit me, my dear Browne, since go you
will or must, to show you the view from the terrace, which the mist, that
is now rising, will soon display."
He threw open a sash-window, and stepped down upon the terrace as he
spoke. The general followed him mechanically, but seemed little to attend
to what his host was saying, as, looking across an extended and rich
prospect, he pointed out the different objects worthy of observation.
Thus they moved on till Lord Woodville had attained his purpose of drawing
his guest entirely apart from the rest of the company, when, turning
around upon him with an air of great solemnity, he addressed him thus:
"Richard Browne, my old and very dear friend, we are now alone. Let me
conjure you to answer me upon the word of a friend, and the honor of a
soldier. How did you in reality rest during last night?"
"Most wretchedly indeed, my lord," answered the general, in the same tone
of solemnity; "so miserably, that I would not run the risk of such a
second night, not only for all the lands belonging to this castle, but for
all the country which I see from this elevated point of view."
"This is most extraordinary," said the young lord, as if speaking to
himself; "then there must be something in the reports concerning that
apartment." Again turning to the general, he said: "For God's sake, my
dear friend, be candid with me, and let me know the disagreeable
particulars which have befallen you under a roof where, with consent of
the owner, you should have met nothing save comfort."
The general seemed distressed by this appeal, and paused a moment before
he replied.
"My dear lord," he at length said, "what happened to me last night is of
a nature so peculiar and so unpleasant, that I could hardly bring myself
to detail it even to your lordship, were it not that, independent of my
wish to gratify any request of yours, I think that sincerity on my part
may lead to some explanation about a circumstance equally painful and
mysterious. To others, the communication I am about to make might place me
in the light of a weak-minded, superstitious fool, who suffered his own
imagination to delude and bewilder him; but you have known me in childhood
and youth, and will not suspect me of having adopted in manhood the
feelings and frailties from which my early years were free."
Here he paused, and his friend replied:
"Do not doubt my perfect confidence in the truth of your communication,
however strange it may be," replied Lord Woodville, "I know your firmness
of disposition too well to suspect you could be made the object of
imposition, and am aware that your honor and your friendship will equally
deter you from exaggerating whatever you may have witnessed."
"Well, then," said the general, "I will proceed with my story as well as I
can, relying upon your candor; and yet distinctly feeling that I would
rather face a battery than recall to my mind the odious recollections of
last night."
He paused a second time, and then, perceiving that Lord Woodville remained
silent and in an attitude of attention, he commenced, though not without
obvious reluctance, the history of his night adventures in the Tapestried
Chamber.
"I undressed and went to bed, so soon as your lordship left me yesterday
evening; but the wood in the chimney, which nearly fronted my bed, blazed
brightly and cheerfully, and, aided by a hundred exciting recollections of
my childhood and youth, which had been recalled by the unexpected pleasure
of meeting your lordship, prevented me from falling immediately asleep.
"I ought, however, to say that these reflections were all of a pleasant
and agreeable kind, grounded on a sense of having for a time exchanged the
labor, fatigues, and dangers of my profession for the enjoyments of a
peaceful life, and the reunion of those friendly and affectionate ties
which I had torn asunder at the rude summons of war.
"While such pleasing reflections were stealing over my mind, and gradually
lulling me to slumber, I was suddenly aroused by a sound like that of the
rustling of a silken gown, and the tapping of a pair of high-heeled shoes,
as if a woman were walking in the apartment.
"Ere I could draw the curtain to see what the matter was, the figure of a
little woman passed between the bed and the fire. The back of this form
was turned to me, and I could observe, from the shoulders and neck, it was
that of an old woman, whose dress was an old-fashioned gown, which, I
think, ladies call a sacque; that is, a sort of robe completely loose in
the body, but gathered into broad plaits upon the neck and shoulders which
fall down to the ground and terminate in a species of train.
"I thought the intrusion singular enough, but never harbored for a moment
the idea that what I saw was anything more than the mortal form of some
old woman about the establishment, who had a fancy to dress like her
grandmother, and who, having perhaps (as your lordship mentioned that you
were rather straitened for room) been dislodged from her chamber for my
accommodation, had forgotten the circumstance and returned by twelve to
her old haunt.
"Under this persuasion I moved myself in bed and coughed a little, to make
the intruder sensible of my being in possession of the premises. She
turned slowly around, but, gracious heaven! my lord, what a countenance
did she display to me!
"There was no longer any question what she was, or any thought of her
being a living being.
"Upon a face which wore the fixed features of a corpse were imprinted the
traces of the vilest and most hideous passions which had animated her
while she lived. The body of some atrocious criminal seemed to have been
given up from the grave, and the soul restored from the penal fire, in
order to form, for a space, a union with the ancient accomplice of its
guilt.
"I started up in bed and sat upright, supporting myself on my palms, as I
gazed on this horrible specter.
"The hag made, as it seemed, a single and swift stride to the bed where I
lay, and squatted herself down upon it in precisely the same attitude
which I had assumed in the extremity of horror, advancing her diabolical
countenance within half a yard of mine, with a grin which seemed to
intimate the malice and the derision of an incarnate fiend."
Here General Browne stopped and wiped from his brow the cold perspiration
with which the recollection of this horrible vision had covered it.
"My lord," he said, "I am no coward. I have been in all the mortal dangers
incidental to my profession, and I may truly boast that no man ever knew
Richard Browne dishonor the sword he wears; but in these horrible
circumstances, under the eyes, and, as it seemed, almost in the grasp of
an incarnation of an evil spirit, all firmness forsook me, all manhood
melted from me like wax in the furnace, and I felt my hair individually
bristle. The current of my life-blood ceased to flow, and I sank back in a
swoon, as very a victim to panic terror as ever was a village girl, or a
child of ten years old. How long I lay in this condition I cannot pretend
to guess.
"But I was roused by the castle clock striking one, so loud that it seemed
as if it were in the very room. It was some time before I dared open my
eyes, lest they should again encounter the horrible spectacle. When,
however, I summoned courage to look up, she was no longer visible.
"My first idea was to pull my bell, wake the servants, and remove to a
garret or a hayloft, to be insured against a second visitation. Nay, I
will confess the truth, that my resolution was altered, not by the shame
of exposing myself, but by the fear that, as the bell-cord hung by the
chimney, I might, in making my way to it, be again crossed by the fiendish
hag, who, I figured to myself, might be still lurking about some corner of
the apartment.
"I will not pretend to describe what hot and cold fever-fits tormented me
for the rest of the night, through broken sleep, weary vigils, and that
dubious state which forms the neutral ground between them. A hundred
terrible objects appeared to haunt me; but there was the great difference
between the vision which I have described, and those which followed, that
I knew the last to be deceptions of my own fancy.
"Day at last appeared, and I rose from my bed, ill in health and
humiliated in mind. I was ashamed of myself as a man and a soldier, and
still more so at feeling my own extreme desire to escape from the haunted
apartment, which, however, conquered all other considerations; so that,
huddling on my clothes with the most careless haste, I made my escape from
your lordship's mansion to seek in the open air some relief to my nervous
system, shaken as it was by this horrible encounter with a visitant, for
such I must believe her, from the other world.
"Your lordship has now heard the cause of my discomfiture, and of my
sudden desire to leave your hospitable castle. In other places I trust we
may often meet; but God protect me from ever spending a second night under
that roof!"
Strange as the general's tale was, he spoke with such a deep air of
conviction that it cut short all the usual commentaries which are made on
such stories. Lord Woodville never once asked him if he was sure he did
not dream of the apparition, or suggested any of the possibilities by
which it is fashionable to explain supernatural appearances--as wild
vagaries of the fancy or deceptions of the optic nerves.
On the contrary he seemed deeply impressed with the truth and reality of
what he had heard; and, after a considerable pause, regretted, with much
appearance of sincerity, that his early friend should in his house have
suffered so severely.
"I am the more sorry for your pain, my dear Browne," he continued, "that
it is the unhappy, though most unexpected, result of an experiment of my
own. You must know that, for my father and grandfather's time at least,
the apartment which was assigned to you last night had been shut on
account of reports that it was disturbed by supernatural sights and
noises.
"When I came, a few weeks since, into possession of the estate, I thought
the accommodation which the castle afforded for my friends was not
extensive enough to permit the inhabitants of the invisible world to
retain possession of a comfortable sleeping apartment.
"I therefore caused the Tapestried Chamber, as we call it, to be opened;
and, without destroying its air of antiquity, I had such new articles of
furniture placed in it as became the modern times. Yet as the opinion that
the room was haunted very strongly prevailed among the domestics, and was
also known in the neighborhood and to many of my friends, I feared some
prejudice might be entertained by the first occupant of the Tapestried
Chamber, which might tend to revive the evil report which it had labored
under, and so disappoint my purpose of rendering it a useful part of the
house.
"I must confess, my dear Browne, that your arrival yesterday, agreeable to
me for a thousand reasons besides, seemed the most favorable opportunity
of removing the unpleasant rumors which attached to the room, since your
courage was indubitable, and your mind free of any preoccupation on the
subject. I could not, therefore, have chosen a more fitting subject for my
experiment."
"Upon my life," said General Browne, somewhat hastily, "I am infinitely
obliged to your lordship--very particularly indebted indeed. I am likely
to remember for some time the consequences of the experiment, as your
lordship is pleased to call it."
"Nay, now you are unjust, my dear friend," said Lord Woodville. "You have
only to reflect for a single moment in order to be convinced that I could
not augur the possibility of the pain to which you have been so unhappily
exposed.
"I was yesterday morning a complete skeptic on the subject of supernatural
appearances. Nay, I am sure that had I told you what was said about that
room, those very reports would have induced you, by your own choice, to
select it for your accommodation. It was my misfortune, perhaps my error,
but really cannot be termed my fault, that you have been afflicted so
strangely."
"Strangely indeed!" said the general, resuming his good temper; "and I
acknowledge that I have no right to be offended with your lordship for
treating me like what I used to think myself--a man of some firmness and
courage. But I see my post horses are arrived, and I must not detain your
lordship from your amusement."
"Nay, my old friend," said Lord Woodville; "since you cannot stay with us
another day--which, indeed, I can no longer urge--give me at least half an
hour more. You used to love pictures, and I have a gallery of portraits,
some of them by Vandyke, representing ancestry to whom this property and
castle formerly belonged. I think that several of them will strike you as
possessing merit."
General Browne accepted the invitation, though somewhat unwillingly. It
was evident he was not to breathe freely or at ease till he left Woodville
Castle far behind him. He could not refuse his friend's invitation,
however; and the less so, that he was a little ashamed of the peevishness
which he had displayed toward his well-meaning entertainer.
The general, therefore, followed Lord Woodville through several rooms,
into a long gallery hung with pictures, which the latter pointed out to
his guest, telling the names, and giving some account of the personages
whose portraits presented themselves in progression.
General Browne was but little interested in the details which these
accounts conveyed to him. They were, indeed, of the kind which are usually
found in an old family gallery. Here was a cavalier who had ruined the
estate in the royal cause; there, a fine lady who had reinstated it by
contracting a match with a wealthy Roundhead. There hung a gallant who had
been in danger for corresponding with the exiled Court at Saint Germain's;
here, one who had taken arms for William at the Revolution; and there, a
third that had thrown his weight alternately into the scale of Whig and
Tory.
While Lord Woodville was cramming these words into his guest's ear,
"against the stomach of his sense," they gained the middle of the gallery,
when he beheld General Browne suddenly start and assume an attitude of
the utmost surprise, not unmixed with fear, as his eyes were caught and
suddenly riveted by a portrait of an old lady in a sacque, the fashionable
dress at the end of the seventeenth century.
"There she is!" he exclaimed; "there she is, in form and features, though
inferior in demoniac expression to the hag that visited me last night!"
"If that be the case," said the young nobleman, "there can remain no
longer any doubt of the horrible reality of your apparition. That is the
picture of a wretched ancestress of mine, of whose crimes a black and
fearful catalogue is recorded in a family history in my charter-chest. The
recital of them would be too horrible; it is enough to say that in yon
fatal apartment incest and unnatural murder were committed. I will restore
it to the solitude to which the better judgment of those who preceded me
had consigned it; and never shall any one, so long as I can prevent it, be
exposed to a repetition of the supernatural horrors which could shake such
courage as yours."
Thus the friends, who had met with such glee, parted in a very different
mood; Lord Woodville to command the Tapestried Chamber to be unmantled and
the door built up, and General Browne to seek in some less beautiful
country, and with some less dignified friend, forgetfulness of the painful
night which he had passed in Woodville Castle.
THE DIARY OF AN OLD MAID.
The following truthful and touching history of an old maid, dating from
about 1843, is one of the briefest, yet at the same time most complete,
records of human experience in print. Those who can read between the lines
will have full sympathy for the author of it, who seems to have found that
though marriage may prove a failure, abstention from matrimony does not
bring happiness:
At fifteen years, anxious for coming out.
Sixteen, began to have some idea of the tender passion.
Seventeen, talked of love in a cottage, and _disinterested
affection_.
Eighteen, fancied myself in love with some handsome man who
flattered me.
Nineteen, was a little more difficult, in consequence of
being noticed.
Twenty, commenced to be fashionable and dashing.
Twenty-one, still more confidence in my own attractions, and
expected a brilliant establishment.
Twenty-two, refused a good offer because he was not a man of
fashion.
Twenty-three, flirted with every young man I met.
Twenty-four, wondered why not married.
Twenty-five, rather more circumspect in conduct.
Twenty-six, began to think a large fortune not quite so
indispensable.
Twenty-seven, preferred the company of rational men.
Twenty-eight, wished to be married in a quiet way, with a
comfortable home and children.
Twenty-nine, almost despaired of entering the marriage
state.
Thirty, was rather fearful of being called an old maid.
Thirty-one, an additional love of self-adornment.
Thirty-two, professed to dislike balls, finding it quite
difficult to secure good partners.
Thirty-three, wondered how men could leave the society of
sensible women to flirt with chits.
Thirty-four, affected good humor in conversation with men.
Thirty-five, jealous of the praises of women.
Thirty-six, quarreled with friend who had been lately
married.
Thirty-seven, thought myself slighted in company.
Thirty-eight, liked talking of my acquaintances who are
married unfortunately, and found endless consolation in
their misfortunes.
Thirty-nine, ill-nature increased.
Forty, became a confirmed scold.
And so on up to fifty, when the lady seized upon lap-dogs,
and talked largely of philanthropy. After that age, gray
hairs start out upon the temple, and "old lady" becomes the
tune--no longer old maid.
GRAVE, GAY, AND EPIGRAMMATIC.
COMPENSATION.
"Too late!" he shrieked--with bulging eyes
He watched the train pull out--
And, overcome, gave vent to rage
In one tremendous shout.
"We'd caught the thing in plenty time!"
He turned around and said:
"But for the hour you took to put
That hat upon your head!"
"I know it!" happily smiled his wife;
"But did you notice, sweet,
How everybody rubbered 'round
When we came down the street?"
_New York World._
EASTER GOSSIP.
Dey's done had chicken at her house,
It's easy tellin' dat
By de contentment in her face
An' de feathers in her hat.
_Washington Star._
FAR FROM MARKET.
Soon after the Civil War, General Ingalls, U.S.A., visited a friend in the
South. Taking a walk one morning he met a boy coming up from the river
with a fine string of fish.
"What will you take for your fish?" asked the general.
"Thirty cents," was the reply.
"Thirty cents!" repeated the general in astonishment. "Why, if you were in
New York you could get three dollars for them."
The boy looked critically at the officer for a moment and then said,
scornfully:
"Yes, suh; en' I reckon if I had a bucket of water in hell I could get a
million dollars for it."--_Saturday Evening Post._
MOZART'S MILITARY MARCH.
Cardinal Gibbons was facetious when the Irish ladies' choir of Dublin
called on him. Turning suddenly, he asked:
"Which one of you is the oldest?"
None claimed the honor and all blushed. The talk drifted around to Gilmore
and his band, and Cardinal Gibbons told of how Gilmore, at Coney Island,
hearing that the cardinal was in the audience, played "Maryland, My
Maryland," and how it pleased him.
"Gilmore," said the cardinal, "was famous for his playing of Mozart's
'Twelfth Mass.' Once he played it in a North Carolina town and next day
the local paper announced that he rendered with great effect Mozart's
'Twelfth Massachusetts.'"
_Pittsburgh Dispatch._
THE BOSS.
Who is it, when the people rise
And make the welkin ring with cries
For freedom, sits with upturned eyes?
The Boss.
Who is it makes a little slate
And nominates the candidate--
But lets the people pay the freight?
The Boss.
Who is it, after all the noise
Against the methods he employs
Is meekly followed by the boys?
The Boss.
Who, when he gets alone where we
That boast about the liberty
We have can neither hear nor see
Says: "Oh, what fools these mortals be!"
The Boss.
_Chicago Times-Herald._
CHANGES.
One hundred years ago to-day,
With wildernesses here,
With powder in his gun, the man
Went out and got the deer.
But now the thing is somewhat changed,
And on another plan;
With powder on her cheeks the dear
Goes out and gets the man.
_Indianapolis Sun._
THE SULTAN'S THREAT.
The Sultan of Sulu is the man who is not afraid. He imported an
eighteen-thousand-dollar uniform from Paris for the occasion of the Taft
reception not long ago and when the costume came he refused to pay duty
on it. The custom authorities made a fuss and threatened to keep the
uniform.
"Very well," said Mr. Sultan, "keep your old uniform, but understand that
I shall wear that at the reception or nothing." The horrified officers
perceived that he meant what he said and the suit was handed over in
silence.--_Minneapolis Tribune._
A FRAGMENT.
Only a woman's hair,
Long, delicate, and slender;
Light as the spider's silken lair,
Soft as a moonbeam tender.
One that some hapless swain
Might carry as a token
Of her he loves, yet loves in vain,
With constancy unbroken.
For such as this, I ween,
Knights dead and gone have battled;
When lance met lance in tourney keen,
And sword on buckler rattled.
And yet it makes me swear
At our confounded slavy;
For I'll be hanged if I can bear
Such relics in the gravy!
_Pick-Me-Up._
REED'S WAY OUT OF IT.
A story is told of Thomas B. Reed by neighbors who knew him in his
childhood to the effect that once, when sent to the grocery store with a
jug for vinegar, he forgot what he was told to get, and, when asked by the
grocer what he wanted, replied.
"Smell of the jug, and give me a quart."
_Boston Herald._
CAUSE FOR ALARM.
The late Dr. Boardman of Philadelphia used to relate this on himself: "I
preached a funeral sermon at one time, and spoke on the resurrection. I am
sure I spoke longer than was my custom.
"The undertaker was a man of nervous temperament, and as the afternoon was
going he began to be anxious to be on the way to the cemetery. He finally
whispered to one of my members: 'Does your minister always preach as long
as that at a funeral?'
"'Well,' said the brother, 'that is a good sermon.'
"'Yes,' said the undertaker, 'the sermon is all right, and I believe in
the resurrection, but I am afraid if he does not stop pretty soon I will
not get this man buried in time.'"--_Philadelphia Ledger._
A CORRECTION.
'Twas not for want of breath he died,
But rather that he misapplied
The ample breath he had, I wot.
Before he went to bed that night
He witlessly blew out the light.
The gas escaped; the man did not.
_New York World._
WHEN THE BIG STICK WOULDN'T DO.
The following anecdote of President Roosevelt's youth is being told in
England:
When Roosevelt was a student at Harvard he was required to recite a poem
in public declamation. He got as far as a line which read:
"When Greece her knees in suppliance bent,"
when he stuck there.
Again he repeated,
"When Greece her knees ...," but could get no farther.
The teacher waited patiently, finally remarking:
"Grease her knees again, Roosevelt, then perhaps she'll go."
_Woman's Home Companion._
DESERVED TO LIVE.
In a rural justice court in Georgia recently an old negro, whose testimony
had been questioned, said in his own defense:
"Jedge, I'm a good man. I been a-livin' roun' heah ten years. I ain't
never been lynched; en de only horse I ever stoled throwed me en broke my
two legs!"--_Chicago Daily News._
SENATORIAL COURTESY.
"I suppose you will bow to the will of the people," said the friend.
"Of course I will," answered Senator Sorghum; "I'll bow and take off my
hat all they want me to. As long as there's no chance of their having
their own way it's as little as I can do to be polite."--_Washington
Evening Star._
The Nation's Conscience Fund.
For Ninety-five Years Persons Who Have Succeeded in Defrauding the
Government Have Coined Remorse into Gold and Sent It to Uncle
Sam, Who Has Received $400,000 in This Manner.
_An original article written for_ THE SCRAP BOOK.
For ninety-five years contributions from penitent people throughout
America have been flowing into the government's Conscience Fund at
Washington. The first contribution of this nature was received in 1811,
during the administration of Madison. At the first of this year the sums
received from thousands of men and women who confessed that they had
defrauded the government amounted to four hundred thousand dollars.
There is a great deal of variety in the character of transgressions, and
also in the sums of money turned in to the Conscience Fund. One woman, a
few years ago, sent a single one-cent stamp to the Secretary of the
Treasury, explaining that she had defrauded the government of that amount
of postage. In marked contrast to this contribution was a draft for
fourteen thousand dollars, sent to the Conscience Fund by an American
living in England.
One peculiarity that is revealed by the letters of repentant citizens is
the effort to disguise the identity of the writers. They frequently write
in a cramped, unnatural style, or they "print" the letters as children do,
or purposely mis-spell words, as is evident when wretched orthography is
done in handwriting that is itself indicative of culture.
All these efforts are unnecessary, for the United States government does
not divulge the names even when, occasionally, they are frankly signed by
the conscience-stricken. To enable the sender to know that his
contribution has reached the Conscience Fund, announcement of the amount
sent and the nature of the confession is made in the newspapers of the
city or town whence the letter was mailed. But no effort is made to
discover the identity of the contributor.
Many of the writers are women, but they do not send so much money to the
Conscience Fund as the men. Their transgressions, as a rule, involve small
transactions. The largest contributions come from smugglers. The remainder
is received from persons who have used canceled stamps, or who have sent
first-class mail under third-class rates, or persons who have actually
stolen articles from Government buildings, forts, or reservations.
Faith in Fellowmen Awakened.
A curious fact in regard to the action of many of these penitents is that,
having become awakened to a sense of high ethics, their distrust of others
vanishes. This is not a universal trait among the contributors to the
Conscience Fund, but there have been many conspicuous examples of it.
The Treasury Department receives daily about ten thousand letters. One
morning, in 1905, there was received in the mail at this department a
package in manila paper, folded to resemble an ordinary official-size
envelope. It bore several two-cent stamps, but no more than was necessary
to carry it, and nothing whatever to indicate its contents. It was the
sort of package which might be expected to contain the vouchers of some
claimant or subordinate official.
When the contents were shaken out, twelve thousand dollars in paper money
lay on the desk of the astonished clerk. The letter accompanying this
contribution to the Conscience Fund read as follows:
HON. L.M. SHAW, Secretary of the
Treasury,
DEAR SIR:
I am sending you herewith twelve thousand dollars, which is
to go to the use of the United States government. Years ago
I defrauded the government of money, but have returned it
all, and now am paying fourfold, in accordance with the
teachings of the Scriptures. The way of the transgressor is
hard, but no one but God knows how I have suffered the
consequences, and I would seek to do a bountiful
restoration. May God pardon while the United States
government is benefited.
That letter was simply signed "A Sinner," which is a common signature to
these interesting confessions.
Of an entirely different turn of mind was a penitent a few years ago, who
sent in eight thousand dollars to the Conscience Fund. He tore the bills
making up this sum exactly in half, and sent the first instalment to the
keeper of the Conscience Fund, saying that if the government would
acknowledge its receipt, he would forward the other half. True to his
word, upon receipt of the Federal acknowledgment, he mailed the necessary
fragments of the bills. Pieced together, these were, of course, as good as
gold, and the Conscience Fund was materially increased.
To His Majesty, the President.
While the contributions and the interesting letters connected with them
are the source of some merriment, the whole custom and institution is a
very serious one to a majority, if not to all, the penitents. Many of the
letters reveal a condition of poignant remorse. Some of them are pathetic
in the genuineness and simplicity of the suffering revealed.
One letter that deeply impressed the officials of the Treasury Department
was from a little girl fifteen years of age. It was during the
administration of President Cleveland. The child's letter disclosed
intelligence and keen regret for using two canceled postage stamps. The
missive read:
TO HIS MAJESTY, PRESIDENT CLEVELAND,
DEAR PRESIDENT:
I am in a dreadful state of mind, and I thought I would
write and tell you all. About two years ago--as near as I
can remember, it was two years--I used two postage stamps
that had been used before on letters, perhaps more than two
stamps, but I can only remember of doing it twice. I did not
realize what I had done until lately. My mind is constantly
turned on that subject, and I think of it night and day.
Now, dear President, will you please forgive me, and I
promise you I will never do it again? Enclosed find cost of
three stamps. Please forgive me, for I was then but thirteen
years old, for I am heartily sorry for what I have done.
FROM ONE OF YOUR SUBJECTS.
That was from a child. Here is a letter from a woman of evident
cultivation. It was dated at Roanoke, October 12, 1905, and was sent to
the President of the United States. It reads:
THE HON. THEODORE ROOSEVELT,
PRESIDENT,
Enclosed you will find two dollars, which please place in
the National Treasury, as it should be there by rights. Some
time ago I made a purchase of an article and evaded paying
duty when the custom-house official came around. My
conscience has hurt me sorely, and I desire to pay the
government, and know of no better way than by sending it to
you. I am very sorry indeed to trouble you, but please help
me out of my trouble by giving the money to Uncle Sam, and
you will have the thanks and gratitude of one who is
penitent.
Prosperity Stirs the Conscience.
The sincerity displayed in all the letters is unmistakable. A few years
ago many of the communications revealed a strong religious feeling. During
the present period of prosperity contributions have been increasing, and
it is now the opinion of some officials that many of these penitents have
long been anxious to restore "to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's," but
that they waited until they were better able to do so.
A few weeks ago a man wrote from Kansas, stating that thirty-six years
before he bought a horse from army deserters, who had stolen it from Fort
Leavenworth. He paid them forty dollars for the animal, and not long
afterward sold it for the same sum. He therefore made nothing out of the
transaction, but the fact that he had dealt in a contraband horse had
preyed steadily, he said, upon his conscience, and after the lapse of a
generation he sent forty dollars to the Conscience Fund.
Just how much smuggling is carried on is a matter of interesting
speculation. Last year our registered imports amounted in value to over
one billion dollars. The dutiable goods amounted to considerably more than
half this sum, and the duties collected aggregated no less than two
hundred and seventy-seven million dollars.
In the latter part of 1905 a farmer in Michigan sent in thirty dollars as
the duty which he should have paid on a horse driven across the Canadian
border from Manitoba a number of years ago. This was duly credited to the
Conscience Fund, and nearly a month later a second letter was received
from the same penitent farmer, saying that he had decided also to pay duty
on the harness (valued at seven dollars) which the horse wore and the
buggy (valued at ten dollars) it hauled on the occasion of its journey
across the border from Manitoba. In the second letter he enclosed six
dollars and sixty-five cents for the Conscience Fund.
When John G. Carlisle was Secretary of the Treasury he received the
following letter with forty dollars enclosed:
DEAR SIR:
Though I disapprove as heartily as you of the recent tariff
laws, I think it the duty of every honest man to declare
fully the value of articles subject to the same, as he can
only avoid doing so by perjuring himself. I did so when I
returned from Europe, with the exception of a few trifles,
which, if examined, would have involved the putting about
the contents of my trunk to the injury of my property. I
hope that you will use your influence to have the present
tariff laws changed. I hope this less on account of economic
ignorance which they display than because of the terrible
demoralizations which they have powerfully aided to bring
about.
The Shadow of the Great Hereafter.
From Pleasant Lake, North Dakota, came a registered letter which contained
ten dollars. An accompanying note was evidently in the handwriting of a
very old man. He added the pathetic postscript:
"There is a lot more due in the near future. All of us become honest as
we near the Great Hereafter. I need only sign my name as 'Conscience.'"
Collectors of customs throughout the United States, and particularly along
the Canadian border, frequently receive sums of money sent to them
anonymously, with the request that they be forwarded to the Conscience
Fund at Washington. Some of these officials state that passengers,
including fashionably dressed women, come hurriedly into the office of the
collector, nervously hand in sums of money to relieve their conscience,
and depart without any explanation other than at some previous time they
have smuggled goods into the country.
The largest sum, briefly referred to above, was for fourteen thousand two
hundred and twenty-five dollars and fifteen cents. It was sent to the
Conscience Fund by the Rev. Prebendary Bariff, Vicar of St. Giles' Church,
Cripplegate, London, who explained that the sum was entrusted to him by a
person who declined to disclose his identity, but who said that he had
come into the possession of that amount by defrauding the United States
government.
Some of the penitents confess to odd offenses. A Chicago man sent one
dollar to the Conscience Fund with the statement that years before he had
taken a small apple-tree from the government orchard at Fort Sheridan, and
that he now wished to make compensation for it. A few weeks ago Secretary
Shaw received a letter from the West, stating that many years before the
writer had stolen two sheets and a pillow-case from an Indian school. This
penitent also sent one dollar to cover the value of the stolen goods.
Five Cents From Kansas.
During the administration of the late President McKinley, a Kansas man
sent five cents to the United States Treasury to be added to the
Conscience Fund. His note said:
Enclosed find five cents which I wish to refund, as I used a
canceled stamp when it took three cents to send a letter.
One who wishes to lead a Christian life.
Whether large or small, the sums sent to the Conscience Fund no doubt take
a great load from the spirit of the repentant ones. The following letter
received by the President of the United States is typical of many. It was
written by a woman, and reads:
Enclosed please find three dollars, the amount of which I
did not defraud the government of, but only a few small
coins, but I will send more to give peace to my tortured
conscience. The act was committed in childhood. Remorse has
taken hold of me, and I cannot rest. Who but God, my
Heavenly Father, has made me do this? Oh, that I may feel
that I am forgiven, for God, my Heavenly Father, knows I
would not do such a thing now. Forgive me for withholding my
name. If I were face to face with you, I would not hesitate
to tell you, but I have other reasons. Pray for me, too. May
God bless you and yours. Please do not publish this. But,
still, how am I ever to find out that you received it? I
trust the Lord will take care of it.
UNHAPPY PENITENT.
P.S.--Ezekiel 23d chap., 15th verse.
The Conscience Fund is presided over by E.B. Daskam, chief of the Division
of Public Moneys. All these quaint and tragic records of the quickening of
conscience in America are carefully filed away.
While a separate record is kept of the Conscience Fund, the money
constituting it is placed in the Government's big vaults and becomes a
part of the nation's finances. It has been suggested that an act of
Congress be passed setting aside this particular fund for some national
benevolence.
HOCH, DER GOVERNOR OF KANSAS.
Taken to Task by a Recalcitrant Legislature Because He Said "Set 'Em Up,"
He Talks of Things That May Happen on Resurrection Morn.
Governor Edward Wallis Hoch, of Kansas, is a big man, with a slow manner
and a keen sense of humor. Born fifty-seven years ago in Kentucky, as soon
as he had graduated from a freshwater college he moved westward. At
twenty-five he found himself editor and proprietor of a country weekly in
Kansas; and the step from journalism to politics proved an easy one.
When Hoch talks about "trust-busting" legislation he speaks quietly and
seriously, with shrewdness and intelligence. At other times he is capable
of enlivening the dull routine of official work with a touch of
unconventional pleasantry. During the recent legislative eruption at
Topeka one of the more impetuous representatives introduced a bill which
had already been passed. The Governor vetoed it, remarking that it was up
to the representative to "set 'em up."
A member of the opposition, thinking that this was a dangerous expression
for the Governor of a prohibition State to use, had a resolution adopted
calling on the Governor to explain. Governor Hoch was extremely busy, but
he disentangled his signing hand from the pile of bills before him long
enough to dash off the following reply:
To the Senate--I am in receipt of Senate Resolution No. 40,
introduced by the Senator from Atchison County, requesting
me to explain what was meant by the term "set 'em up," as
used in my veto message of Senate Bill No. 341. This
expression, used playfully, and without having any
particular meaning, and possibly hardly comporting with the
dignity of your body, seems to have had, if not a good, at
least an unexpected effect, in that it has caused the
emaciated corpse of the Kansas Democracy to take on the
semblance of life and sit up and take notice.
The belief in miracles is here strengthened by absolute
proof, showing that the proper call will restore animation
to the dead. If the Angel Gabriel, standing with one foot on
land and one on sea, were to blow such a blast from his
trumpet that the mountains should rock to their bases, the
Democratic party of Kansas would probably sleep on
undisturbed, but if he were even to whisper the magic words
"set 'em up," the grave of this moribund organization would
give up its dead, and from the entire aggregation, headed by
the talented and handsome Senator from Atchison, would come
the answer in swelling chorus, "We will take the same."
E.W. HOCH, Governor.
ALL KINDS OF THINGS.
Curious Letters That Enliven the Prosaic Records of the
United States Post-Office Department--The Human Nose as a
Sign-Board of Character--The Origin of Lynch Law--Amusing
Extracts From Old-Time Newspapers--The First Self-Made
American--The Comparative Longevity of Various
Callings--With Other Interesting Items From Many Sources.
HUMOROUS SIDE OF THE POSTAL SERVICE.
ILLITERACY OF RURAL OFFICIALS.
Fourth-Class Postmasters Sometimes
Write Queer Letters, Telling Their
Troubles to the Department.
The eagerness with which fourth-class postmasterships are sought seems
strange when one remembers that the salaries are small and the duties
often exacting. No fourth-class postmaster receives more than a thousand
dollars a year. More than half of them receive less than a hundred dollars
a year; fourteen thousand receive less than fifty dollars a year; and
hundreds of them receive ten or twelve dollars a year.
Henry A. Castle, former auditor for the Post-Office Department, recently
contributed to the _Sunday Magazine_ an article filled with curious
information concerning the fourth-class postmaster and his idiosyncrasies.
Here, for example, is a facetious letter from an Illinois postmaster who
for some time had been vainly trying to resign:
But anyhow, this time I am unanimously through fiddling
about it, and this here 'leventh and last resignation of
mine has got to be accepted, let the chips fall where they
may. Along about four o'clock this afternoon a passel of our
best citizens informed me in no uncertain tones that if I
wasn't up and gone by midnight they 'lowed to tar and
feather and rail-ride me out of our law-abidin' little city,
for a small matter that it ain't necessary for me to go into
details at present; and a spell ago a friend let me know
that they had reconsidered to the extent of decidin' to make
it nine o'clock instead of midnight, and were already
a-bilin' of the tar.
So you can see for yourself that it is high time for me to
step down and out. No more at present from
Yours truly,
T.J. WACKERBACK.
P.S.--It's eight-forty-two right now, and I'm gone.
An Arkansas postmaster expressed as follows his delight in his
appointment:
I feel honored, as in duty bound, by my appointment, and am
glad to know, the salary is to be the same as heretofore,
namely, nothing a year; for I'd hate like thunder to pay
anything.
Illiteracy is not uncommon among the postmasters. Mr. Castle quotes a
letter from a Southern ex-postmaster, presumably a negro:
P.M. generall Sir, I have a complaint against the citty of
gilead the police crippled me. In 1901 committ no offense
and the city fathers there humbugged me, and drove me out of
town contrary to the laws of christ, moses, and the profets,
and all nations, tribes, and clans.
So i pray you to lift your finger and do something about it,
i want to get paid for my property. I was up in tenicee to
beg the price of a suit of clows but i am back now and want
them to settle that claim with me.
P.S.--i tried to get before the last Congris and i got in
the workhouse.
And again, here is a letter from a local official who dreads the invasion
of rural free delivery:
Poastmaster General, Sir as this Tock of Rheual free
Delivery has Got up heare and so many is Dissathisfide is
the cause of the Patrishon Being sent you and if you will
Nodes, you will See that Several Names Appear on Boath
Patrishons and About Nine out of Every Ten that Assign for
Rheual Free Delivery Mail Surves is Dissathisfide and doant
want hit and Ses they wars Fool and Lyde in to sign the
Patrishon for Rheual Free Delivery.
The ignorance and illiteracy of these postmasters is not typical. The
cases are really exceptional. Yet there are many official eccentricities.
There is, for example, the old story of postmasters who persistently
peruse private postal cards--and this propensity is so common, or is
supposed to be so common, that it has even been celebrated in verse:
In a village post-office Miss Peek
Had a job at six dollars a week;
But she near had a fit
And threatened to quit
When a postal came written in Greek.
A MAN'S CHARACTER IS AS HIS NOSE IS.
SIZE AND SHAPE ARE SIGNIFICANT.
He Who Knows His Nose May Quickly
Determine Whether His Traits Are
Those of Greatness or Mediocrity.
The nose, according to physiognomists, is one of the most important
features. It tells its story of character like the eye and the mouth. Its
size and its shape have their significance. Studying the faces of men and
women prominent in past history the following interpretation of the
language of noses has been made:
The Roman nose denotes a propensity for adventure.
A wide nose with open nostrils is a mark of great
sensuality.
A cleft nose shows benevolence; it was the nose of St.
Vincent de Paul.
A straight nose denotes a just, serious, fine, judicious,
and energetic mind.
The curved, fleshy nose is a mark of domination and cruelty;
Catharine de' Medici and Elizabeth of England had noses of
this kind.
The curved, thin nose is a mark of a brilliant mind, but
vain, and disposed to be ironical; it is the nose of a
dreamer, a poet, or a critic.
It is desirable that the nose should be as long as possible,
this being a sign of power and genius; for instance,
Napoleon and Cæsar had long noses.
If the line of the nose be reentrant--that is, if the nose
is turned up--it denotes that its owner has a weak mind,
sometimes coarse, and generally playful, pleasant, or
frolicsome.
SUPPOSED ORIGIN OF AMERICAN LYNCH LAW.
ROUGH JUSTICE IN OLD VIRGINIA.
The Phrase Probably Arose from the
Administration of Off-Hand Judgments
of a Colonial Planter.
The application of summary punishment without authority of law is known in
our country as Lynch law. The origin of the term is somewhat obscure. Here
is one explanation:
Lynch law takes its name from the stern and summary act of
one James Lynch Fitz-Stephen, a merchant of the Irish town
of Galway, and, in 1526, its mayor or warden. The son of
this Lynch Fitz-Stephen, having committed a foul murder, his
father, exercising his authority as warden, had him arrested
and brought for trial before himself.
The father, on conviction, Brutus-like, sentenced the son to
death, and fearing a rescue from the prison, caused him to
be brought home and to be hanged before his own door.
More or less apocryphal is this story from Ireland. The explanation most
generally accepted refers the term back to a planter who lived in what is
now known as the Piedmont country of Virginia.
At the time his district was the western frontier, and
having no law of its own, and being seven miles from the
nearest court of criminal jurisdiction, controversies were
constantly referred to men of sound judgment and
impartiality, whose decisions were regarded as final.
Prominent among these was Charles Lynch. His awards
exhibited so much justice, judgment, and impartiality, that
he was known throughout the country as Judge Lynch.
In the course of time criminals were brought before him, and
he awarded such punishment as he considered just and
proper.
There were other persons, in different districts, who acted
as arbitrators, and who awarded punishments; but Judge Lynch
was the most conspicuous, and consequently the system took
his name, and was called Lynch law. This was a compliment to
his integrity and high character.
In England Lynch law was formerly called Lydford law. In Scotland it was
known as Cowper law.
THE SORT OF NEWS OUR ANCESTORS READ.
GLEANINGS FROM OLD JOURNALS.
Runaway Slaves Delighted Hearts of Advertising
Managers, and Antics of
Militia Excited Applause.
Old newspapers make good reading--if they are old enough. Like the
deciphering of moss-covered epitaphs, the reading of journals of other
days gives rise to reflections that mingle the sweet with the sad. It
shows plainly that time does not alter human nature, much as customs may
change.
_The American Weekly Mercury_ was formerly published in Philadelphia. An
examination of the issue for November 29, 1722, brings to light this
interesting advertisement:
Run away from Ezekiel Balding of Hempstead on Long-Island,
one Indian Man Slave, named Dick, of Middle Stature and of a
smiling Countenance. He speaks English pretty well, and no
other Language. He can read. He has a big nose, and has
white scratches on his Arm, and a blue spot on the Inside of
one of his Wrists, and a little above his Shirt wrist-bands.
He run away about the Beginning of September, and had a
homespun Shirt and a dark coloured Drugget Coat. We have
been informed, that he intended to get into Indian-habit.
Others tell, that he has said he would go towards New London
and Rhode-Island, and so to Sea.
Whoever can take up the said Indian Man, and secure him, and
give Notice to his Master so that he can be had again shall
have Three Pounds Reward, besides reasonable Charges.
Whether Dick was ever caught may never be known, for he seems to have made
no deep impression on history, though his "smiling Countenance" is here
immortalized.
Another Indian receives mention for another reason in the issue for
September 2, 1723, the item coming from Boston:
On Monday Night last at Judge Sewall's, and the Night
following at Judge Dudley's, was entertained one of the
oldest Indians in New-England; John Quittamog, living in the
Nipmug Countrey, near Woodstock. He is reckoned to be above
One Hundred and Twelve Years old. The English Inhabitants of
Woodstock remember him as a very old Man for near Forty
Years past, and that he has all along affirmed and which he
still affirms, that he was at Boston when the English first
arrived; and when there was but One Cellar in the Place, and
that near the Common, and then brought down a Bushel and a
half of Corn upon his Back. He says that the Massachusetts
Indians sent up word to the Nipmugs, that if they had any
Corn to spare the English wanted it, and it would be worth
their while to bring some of it down. He is now in good
Health, and has his Understanding and Memory very entire,
considering his great Age, and is capable of Traveling on
Foot Ten Miles in a Day.
The year 1723 seems nearly as far back to us as the year in which the
English first settled on Boston Harbor. But Judge Sewall and Judge Dudley
and their friends considered John Quittamog as interesting as we should
consider a man, still living, who had witnessed the duel between Alexander
Hamilton and Aaron Burr.
The genial "neighborhood note" style of journalism is in evidence in this
item from Boston in the issue for November 20, 1721:
We hear from Amesbury, That the generous and charitable
Captain of that Place, Lately warned his Company to appear
at the Place of Parade, well armed with their Axes instead
of their Firelocks; after which he marched them into the
Woods, where (with invincible Courage) they slew as many
Trees as made 30 Cord of Wood, and carted it to the Water
side, in order to be brought hither, for the Relief of the
Poor of this Place.
The man who inserted the following notice was manifestly in earnest:
Whereas Mathew Burne of Chester County served John Camm two
Years (that is ten or twelve months) at Stocking weaving and
other work, during which time John Camms Stockings bore many
Reflections and now the said Mathew Burne goes about Selling
Stockings in John Camms name as though they were his make,
which is false and not True.
For incoherence Mr. Camm's English is a match for the printed request
which, within a few years, was attached to the doors of a hotel at
Lexington, Ky.:
"Guests are respectfully requested, if either leaves the room before the
other is up, to lock and bolt the door again immediately upon his
departure."
FIRST SELF-MADE MAN IN THIS COUNTRY.
WAS INVENTOR OF THE SEXTANT.
Thomas Godfrey Got a Valuable Idea by
Noting the Reflection of the Sun
from a Pail of Water.
Thomas Godfrey was probably the first self-made man in America. Born in
1704, he died in 1749. He was a glazier by trade, but he had naturally an
interest in mathematics, and he learned Latin in order that he might read
certain scientific treatises.
His reputation rests on an improvement which he made in the quadrant of
John Davies. What Godfrey really did was to invent the sextant. John
Hadley also invented a sextant, evidently carrying out a suggestion of
Newton's which was found in Sir Isaac's original draft among Hadley's
papers after his death. Godfrey antedated Hadley by about one year, but
for a long time his claims were not recognized, and Hadley received all
the credit.
How the humble glazier received his first inspiration to design the
instrument of so great use to mariners is an interesting story. One day,
while replacing a pane of glass in a window of a house on the north side
of Arch Street, in Philadelphia, opposite a pump, a girl, after filling
her pail, placed it upon the sidewalk. Godfrey, on turning toward it, saw
the sun reflected from the window on which he had been at work, into the
bucket of water, and his philosophic mind seizing upon the incident, was
thus led to combine the plan of an instrument by which he could draw the
sun down to the horizon, by a contrivance incomparably superior to any
that had ever before been used for the purpose of ascertaining angular
measurements.
EUROPEAN MONARCHS WHO SMOKE TOBACCO.
KING EDWARD'S BRIER-ROOT PIPE.
Almost All the European Monarchs Indulge
in Cigars, Pipes, or Cigarettes,
Except King Oscar of Sweden.
King James I of England, that "wisest fool in Christendom," was a monarch
who inveighed against the "Virginia weed" in vain. His "Counter-blast
Against Tobacco" was a famous book in its day. Yet to-day there is
scarcely a king in Europe who does not smoke. The Paris _Figaro_ has
collected statistics as to smoking by royalty, and the _Literary Digest_
translates the item:
The King of England almost always has a cigar in his mouth,
but when with his intimate friends he puffs a short
brier-root pipe. The Emperor of Germany is forbidden by his
physicians to touch tobacco, but sometimes he lights a
cigarette and throws it away when half smoked. King Carlos
smokes superb cigars, golden-brown and fragrant, and of
Portuguese make.
Alphonso XIII prefers cigarettes to cigars, and Nicholas II
consumes daily about thirty cigarettes of the Russian
variety. Emperor Francis Joseph, in spite of his advanced
age, smokes a pipe from morning to night, and King Leopold
smokes about twelve cigars a day.
Victor Emanuel III smokes very little, and is satisfied with
a few cigarettes daily, but King Oscar of Sweden does not
use tobacco at all.
MAN'S LIFE AS AFFECTED BY HIS VOCATION.
SOME LONG-LIVED PROFESSIONS.
Musical Composers and Men of Letters
Are Shown to Be the Most Likely
to Reach a Sound Old Age.
The Psalmist's "threescore years and ten" are not the average man's life,
but are named as the average limit of those who arrived at a normal old
age. The average life of men in various occupations appears in the
appended table:
Years.
Rural laborers 45.32
Carpenters 45.28
Domestics 42.03
Bakers 41.92
Weavers 41.92
Shoemakers 40.8
Tailors 39.40
Hatters 38.91
Stonemasons 38.19
Plumbers 38.18
Mill operatives 38.09
Blacksmiths 37.96
Bricklayers 37.70
Printers 36.66
Clerks 34.99
Av. population 39.88
The figures just given cover most classes of non-professional work.
Musical composers, however, are said to live longer than persons engaged
in other occupations, in proof of which this eminent list has been
prepared:
Auber 89
Monsigny 87
Verdi 87
Cherubini 81
Rameau 81
Haydn 77
Spontini 76
Rossini 76
Gounod 75
Paisiello 75
Salieri 74
Handel 74
Lesueur 74
Gluck 73
Gade 73
Piccinni 72
Grétry 72
Meyerbeer 72
Saint-Saëns (living) 71
RARE WORKMANSHIP IN OLD TIMEPIECES.
ILL-FATED MARY'S SKULL-WATCH.
Book-shaped Article Made for Duke of
Pomerania Is a Beautiful Triumph of
Metal Engraving and Design.
Two of the most elaborate watches that have ever been constructed
belonged, the one to Queen Elizabeth, the other to Mary Queen of Scots.
Queen Elizabeth's watch was in the form of a duck, with beautifully chased
feathers. The lower part opened, showing a face of silver, with an
elaborate gilt design, and the whole was kept in a case of brass, covered
with black leather studded with knobs of silver.
The Scottish queen's watch was in the shape of a skull, the dial being
introduced where the palate should have been, the works being in the mimic
brain cavity. A little bell struck the hours.
One of the choicest rarities of the Bernal collection was a book-shaped
watch. This curious time indicator was made by order of Bogislaus XIV,
Duke of Pomerania, in the time of Gustavus Adolphus. On the face of the
book, where the dial of the watch is set, there is an engraved inscription
of the duke, and his titles and armorial bearings, together with the date,
1627.
On the back the engravings are also very finely and skilfully executed,
among them being the portraits of two gentlemen of the seventeenth
century. The dial-plate is of silver, chased in relief, while the insides
are beautifully chased with figures of birds and foliage. The watch has
two separate movements, and a large, sweet-toned bell. At the back, over
the bell, the metal is ornamentally pierced in a circle, with a dragon and
other devices, while the sides are pierced and engraved with a complicated
design of beautiful scrollwork.
THE MONEY KINGS OF ANCIENT ROME.
THEIR RECORDS OF EXTRAVAGANCE.
Antony and Caligula Appear to Have Been
Leaders in the Wanton Expenditure
of Vast Fortunes.
That the accumulation of vast fortunes was as possible in ancient Rome,
which knew neither the railroad nor Standard Oil, as it is in the United
States to-day, is shown by the following table that has been compiled from
authoritative historical records.
While it may be true that the wealth of the Czar of Russia and John D.
Rockefeller may exceed nearly all of these old-time hoards, there can be
no question of the fact that as spenders of enormous fortunes Antony and
Caligula have never been surpassed.
Crassus's landed estate was valued at $8,333,330
His house was valued at 400,000
Cæcilius Isidorus, after having lost much, left 5,235,800
Demetrius, a freedman of Pompey, was worth 3,875,000
Lentulus, the augur, no less than 16,666,666
Clodius, who was slain by Milo, paid for his house 700,000
He once swallowed a pearl worth 40,000
Apicius was worth more than 5,000,000
He poisoned himself after he had
spent in his kitchen and otherwise
squandered immense sums
to the amount of 4,160,000
The establishment belonging to
M. Scaurus, at Tusculum, was
valued at 4,150,000
Curio contracted debts to the amount of 2,500,000
Milo contracted one debt of 2,915,000
Antony owed at the Ides of
March, which he paid before
the Calends of April 1,666,666
Seneca had a fortune of 17,500,000
Tiberius left at his death, and
Caligula spent in less than
twelve months 118,120,000
Gifts and bribes may be considered
signs of great riches:
Cæsar presented Servilia, the
mother of Brutus, with a pearl
worth 200,000
Paulus, the consul, was bribed by
Cæsar with the sum of 292,000
MACHINES TAKE JOBS OF INSURANCE AGENTS.
THEY ISSUE POLICIES IN ENGLAND.
Applicant Drops Coin in Slot, Writes His
Name Through an Opening, and
Then Gets the Document.
Do nothing by human labor that can be done by machinery--that is the
business maxim of the twentieth century.
No man is sure of his job once an inventor gets on his trail.
Twenty years ago it was said that nothing on earth, with less intelligence
than a human being, could set type, play the piano, add figures, or tie a
knot in a piece of binding-twine.
The inventors said, "We can make machines of wood and steel--machines that
have no brains and no feeling, that can do these things, and do them
better than a man."
The world haw-hawed at the silly inventors, but the inventors have made
good. In England, to-day, there are showing us a machine that can hand out
an insurance policy, properly stamped and signed.
The machine, which defies fraud, looks like a clock. When the applicant
drops his coin into the slot he pulls forward a handle, when out drops a
pencil, already sharpened, and an opening is disclosed through which the
signature is made. Then the client pushes back the handle and
simultaneously the space closes and an insurance policy is issued through
another slot.
Against the signature inside the machine is printed the exact date and the
time to the very minute when the policy was issued. If the insured meets
with an accident within seven days he applies to the insurance company for
his weekly allowance, and if his name is on the register retained by the
machine the policy is paid.
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ARITHMETICAL SIGNS.
HOW THEY FIRST CAME TO BE USED.
Prone to Short Cuts and Abbreviations,
Man Has Chopped Words Into
Lines and Crosses.
A little mark or sign, used in every-day life so frequently that its users
concern themselves only with its necessary meaning, may have a very
elaborate history--may embalm much tradition. Take the English sign for a
pound--£. How many persons have stopped to inquire as to its meaning? £
stands for the Latin _libra_, as "d," used to indicate the pence, stands
for the Latin _denarius_, and as "s," used to indicate the shilling,
stands for the Latin _solidus_.
The origin of arithmetical signs is explained as follows:
1. The sign of addition (+) is derived from the initial
letter of the word plus. In making the capital letter, it
was made more and more carelessly, until the top part of the
P was placed near the center; and hence the plus sign was
finally reached.
2. The sign of subtraction (-) was derived from the word
minus. The word was first contracted into m n s, with a
horizontal line above to indicate the contraction; then the
letters were omitted, which left the short line -.
3. The multiplication sign (×) was obtained by changing the
plus sign into the letter X. This was done because
multiplication is a short method of addition.
4. Division (÷) was formerly indicated by placing the
dividend above a horizontal and the divisor below. In order
to save space in printing, the dividend was placed to the
left and the divisor to the right, and a dot was written in
the place of each.
5. The radical sign [TN Symbol] was derived from
the initial letter of the word radix.
6. The sign of equality (=) was first used to avoid
repeating the words "equal to" or "equals."
HOUSEHOLD GODS IN TRANSIT.
Two Lyrics Which Describe Some of the Vicissitudes of Those Who Seek New
Dwellings and Give Employment to Furniture Vans.
FURTHERUPTOWN!
Tired to death, but walking fast,
Along Broadway, one night, there passed
A youth, who bore a pretty nice
Umbrella, with this strange device,
"Furtheruptown!"
His anxious eyes and weary feet
Hunted the houses in each street;
And like a New Year's fish-horn rung
The accents of that unknown tongue
"Furtheruptown!"
In happy homes he saw the light
Of household fires gleam warm and bright;
Beyond, the spectral street-lamp shone,
And from his lips escaped a groan,
"Furtheruptown!"
"Try not that street," the old man said;
"A tenement-house is just ahead--
A public school is by its side";
Then loud that clarion voice replied,
"Furtheruptown!"
"Oh, stay," the broker said, "and rest;
This brown-stone house will suit you best."
A tear stood in his bright blue eye,
Sadly he said, "The rent's too high";
"Furtheruptown!"
"Beware of the livery-stable's smell,
Beware the engine-house as well!"
This was the agent's last good night--
A voice replied, far out of sight,
"Furtheruptown!"
At break of day, as heavenward
The Central Park policeman stared,
Watching the gathering sunbeams there,
A voice rang through the startled air,
"Furtheruptown!"
By following up the unusual sound,
A dying traveler they found,
Still grasping his no longer nice
Umbrella, with the strange device,
"Furtheruptown!"
There, in the Reservoir, they say,
"_Drownded_" but beautiful he lay,
While somewhere over Bloomingdale
A voice fell like a rocket's tail,
"Furtheruptown!"
1877. _New York Evening Post._
A MOVING BALLAD.
You must wake and call me early, call me early, husband dear,
To-morrow'll be the maddest time of all the round New Year;
Of all the circle of the year the maddest, muddiest day,
For to-morrow's the first of May, my love, to-morrow's the first of May.
Be sure and take the hammer round--we shall have need of that;
Save all the paper you can find--and don't forget the cat.
Don't mix the pickles and preserves, nor throw th' old brooms away,
For to-morrow's the first of May, my love, to-morrow's the first of May.
And oh! tell Bridget, husband, to be careful how she moves
The earthenware and crockery and other things she loves;
And if upon the sidewalk you should hear a dreadful crash,
You'll know our china dinner-set has gone to eternal smash.
Of course, some common things will break, some costly ones perhaps;
But you can't expect to move, you know, without a few mishaps.
And when we've got the moving done, you'll have some bills to pay,
For to-morrow's the first of May, my love, to-morrow's the first of May.
The night winds come and go, my dear, along the vacant street,
And the happy stars above them do not seem to mean to cheat;
But to-morrow it will be sure to rain the whole of the livelong day,
For to-morrow's the first of May, my love, to-morrow's the first of May.
So you must wake and call me early, call me early, husband dear,
To-morrow'll be the maddest time of all the round New Year;
To-morrow'll be of all the year the maddest, muddiest day,
For to-morrow's the first of May, my love, to-morrow's the first of May.
BROTHERS TO SISTERS.
THREE DEDICATIONS IN WHICH FAMOUS AUTHORS GIVE
ELOQUENT EXPRESSION TO AFFECTION
INSPIRED BY NOBLE WOMEN.
The men who wrote the three extracts which are given here represent three
vividly contrasted types. Ernest Rénan was a distinguished Frenchman, a
profound Hebrew scholar, and yet witty, cynical, and eloquent. John
Greenleaf Whittier was a Massachusetts Quaker of rustic manners and great
simplicity of life, who viewed Nature with the sympathetic eyes of a born
poet, but always serious, simple, and sincere. Eugene Field was a Chicago
journalist, full of irreverent American humor, rollicking and sometimes
boisterous, although he too had a vein of tenderness in his nature and a
sympathy with the finer things of life. Yet these three men all agreed in
their affection for their sisters. Rénan wrote of his sister Henriette
that "it was she who exerted the strongest influence on my life," and at
his death he left a little volume containing his reminiscences of her.
It is evident from the dedications of Whittier and Field that each felt an
almost equal debt of gratitude to the sisters with whom their early years
were spent and whose affection they have so beautifully commemorated.
RÉNAN'S DEDICATION.
(From "The Life of Jesus," by Ernest Rénan. Translated by C.E. Wilbour.
Copyright by George W. Carlton, 1863.)
TO THE PURE SPIRIT OF MY SISTER HENRIETTE, WHO
DIED AT BYBLUS, SEPT. 24, 1861.
Do you remember, from your rest in the bosom of God, those long days at
Ghazir, where, alone with you, I wrote these pages, inspired by the scenes
we had just traversed? Silent by my side you read every leaf, and copied
it as soon as written, while the sea, the villages, the ravines, the
mountains were spread out at our feet.
When the overwhelming light of the sun had given place to the innumerable
army of stars, your fine and delicate questions, your discreet doubts,
brought me back to the sublime object of our common thoughts.
One day you told me you should love this book, first, because it had been
written with you, and also because it pleased you. If sometimes you feared
for it the narrow judgments of frivolous man, you were always persuaded
that spirits truly religious would be pleased with it.
In the midst of these sweet meditations Death struck us both with his
wing; the sleep of fever seized us both at the same hour. I woke alone!...
You sleep now in the land of Adonis, near the holy Byblus and the sacred
waters where the women of the ancient mysteries came to mingle their
tears.
Reveal to me, O my good genius, to me whom you loved, those truths which
master Death, prevent us from fearing, and make us almost love it.
WHITTIER'S TRIBUTE.
(From the dedication page of his "Home Ballads.")
I call the old time back; I bring these lays
To thee in memory of the summer days,
When, by our native streams and forestways,
We dream them over; while the rivulets made
Songs of their own, and the great pine trees laid
On warm noon-lights the masses of their shade.
And she was with us, living o'er again
Her life in ours, despite of years and pain--
The Autumn's brightness after latter rain.
Beautiful in her holy peace, as one
Who stands at evening, when the work is done,
Glorified in the setting of the sun!
Her memory makes our common landscape seem
Fairer than any of which painters dream--
Lights the brown hills and sings in every stream.
For she whose speech was always truth's pure gold
Heard, not unpleased, its simple legends told,
And loved with us the beautiful and old.
FIELD'S APPRECIATION.
(Dedication to His Sister, Mary Field French, from His "Little Book of
Western Verse." Copyrighted, 1889, by Eugene Field, Published by
Charles Scribner's Sons.)
A dying mother gave to you
Her child a many years ago;
How in your gracious love he grew,
You know, dear, patient heart, you know.
The mother's child you fostered then
Salutes you now and bids you take
These little children of his pen
And love them for the author's sake.
To you I dedicate this book,
And, as you read it line by line,
Upon its faults as kindly look
As you have always looked on mine.
Tardy the offering is and weak;
Yet were I happy if I knew
These children had the power to speak
My love and gratitude to you.
The Personal Character of the Czar.
BY FRANK MARSHALL WHITE.
Trained Observers of Men Describe the Impressions Made Upon Them by the
Ruler of the Russian People, But No Two Agree in Their
Estimates of the Man Behind the Mask.
_Compiled and edited for_ THE SCRAP BOOK.
In the present crisis in Russia the actual character of the Czar is a
matter of unusual interest to the world at large, since he is one of the
factors to be considered in predicting the outcome of the most tremendous
social and political upheaval of the time.
It is difficult enough for the person whose acquaintance with the rulers
of the earth is through the public prints to obtain an idea of the
individuality of any one of the reigning monarchs, though we appraise many
of them with confidence--if not with accuracy.
For instance, the popular conception of Edward of England is that of an
affable gentleman, with a fondness for pageantry and show, and tastes that
lead him to the race-track rather than to the library. Most of us believe
William of Germany to be a cocky little chap, of tireless energy, who
makes all knowledge his province in the intervals of being photographed
and changing his uniforms, and who pays personal attention to the
fireworks that invariably illumine his progress.
We consider Oscar of Sweden to be a man of scholarly tastes, who would
rather write books than rule, and too modern in his ideas to make a regal
figure on the throne. We think of the aged Emperor of Austria as a
pathetic figure, a man of naturally kindly disposition, after a long life
into which has entered almost every element of tragedy and unhappiness,
ending his career an object of obloquy to many of his subjects.
A pathetic figure also, to our minds, is young Alfonso of Spain, upon
whom are visited the sins of his fathers, who was born literally in a
cabinet meeting, and in all the twenty years of his life has scarcely been
out of sight of his mother or one of his guardians, and who begged in vain
for only one day to himself, incognito, during his recent visit to Paris,
as the greatest possible boon.
We know of the personal attributes of several other monarchs--that Carlos
of Portugal is as likely as any of his contemporaries to meet the fate of
Henry I of England; that Leopold of the Belgians is not to be mentioned in
polite society; that Victor Emmanuel of Italy is a serious young man who
believes that his first duty is to his country instead of to himself.
Mystery Enshrouds Czar and Sultan.
With the foregoing sovereigns we find evidence as to their habits and
disposition in the same direction. Of the Czar, however, as of Abdul Hamid
of Turkey--who is described by one set of biographers as a high-minded and
scholarly recluse, and by others as a sodden and fear-shaken
sensualist--we have two pictures at variance with each other in almost
every particular. It may prove interesting, therefore, under existing
conditions, to compare some recorded impressions of Nicholas II, as made
by him upon various persons who have been brought into contact with him.
In the _World of To-Day_, for January, William T. Stead, editor of the
_Review of Reviews_, of London, one of the ablest and best-known
journalists of his time, and who recently had a personal interview with
the Czar, writes of him thus:
The question as to his intelligent grasp of the facts of the
situation with which he has to deal is one upon which those
who are admitted to the intimacy of his councils can speak
with authority. It is one, however, upon which those who
have never heard him speak are often the most confident.
I can speak with some assurance on this matter, although it
is one on which it ought not to be necessary to speak at
all. But I have seen many men, crowned and uncrowned, in the
course of a tolerably long and varied journalistic career. I
have had four opportunities of talking with Nicholas II.
Altogether I have spent many hours alone with him. Our
conversation never flagged. It did not turn upon the
weather, but upon serious topics both at home and abroad, in
which I was intimately concerned and intensely interested.
Hence I have at least had ample materials for forming
judgment, and few people have had more of the experience of
contemporaries necessary to compare my impressions. I have
no hesitation in saying that I have seldom in the course of
thirty years met any man so quick in the uptake, so bright
in his mental perception, so sympathetic in his
understanding, or one possessing a wider range of
intellectual interest.
Neither have I ever met any one man or woman who impressed
me more with the crystalline sincerity of his soul. Of his
personal charm, of his quick sense of humor, of the genial
sense of good-fellowship by which he puts you at once at
your ease, I do not need to speak.
A Former Instructor's Impression.
Mr. Stead's view partly corroborates that of a fellow-journalist, Brayley
Hodgetts, who, in England, is considered an authority on Russian affairs,
having received his earlier education in that country and lived there many
years. Mr. Hodgetts wrote of the Czar in the _Pall Mall Gazette_, just
before the war with Japan, as follows:
A very great friend of mine was one of his instructors, and
when discussing in moments of confidence the character of
his imperial pupil I never once heard him speak of him
otherwise than in the language of sincere affection. He
always used in referring to him the Russian expression
_oomnitza_, meaning that he was wise and diligent.
It seems that he always showed great application, and also
an imperial aptitude for acquiring knowledge; but, above all
things, what struck my friend most was his high and noble
sense of duty. "I have seen this young man, with his
pathetically earnest face, grow up." he said. "When the time
was ripe he was made a member of the Imperial Council, a
sort of bureaucratic parliament in which the ministers of
the empire and the various higher officials and privy
councilors debate the measures which it is proposed to
introduce. In this assembly the young heir apparent early
manifested a quiet tact and wisdom which showed him to be a
born ruler of men."
"Nothing Disconcerts Him."
Dr. Dillon, the St. Petersburg correspondent of the London _Daily
Telegraph_, who visited the United States last summer to report the
proceedings of the Portsmouth peace conference, telegraphed to his paper
immediately after "Bloody Sunday" in January of last year:
If the emperor has changed his place of residence several
times of late, he acted solely out of consideration for
others, not from any sense of personal insecurity. It is
only fair to him to say that he is absolutely calm and
unmoved as he was after the intelligence had arrived that
ninety thousand men had been wounded or killed on the Sha
River.
Nothing disconcerts his majesty. A person who has spoken
with him several times during the eventful days of this week
assures me that he was less concerned, less preoccupied, on
Sunday and Monday than was General Grant or Von Moltke
before one of their critical engagements.
Just before signing to-day's ukase abolishing civil powers
and administration and appointing Trepoff governor-general,
his majesty was whistling a lively air in his apartments in
the palace.
As Seen by Two American Business Men.
One of New York's foremost men of affairs, Charles R. Flint, who visited
Russia last spring with a view to making an inquiry into the industrial
possibilities of the country, was thus quoted in the _Herald_ on his
return in June last:
The emperor impressed me as a man of extraordinarily quick
perception and of broad intelligence. His memory also is
marvelous, which I believe is a characteristic of the
Romanoffs. It was just after it had become generally known
in St. Petersburg that the Czar had taken an unalterable
stand on the question of indemnity, and while the issue of
peace or the continuation of the war was hanging in the
balance, that I was accorded an interview with him. I may
say that his imperial poise, his kinglike dignity, in this
tremendous crisis in the affairs of his empire, was what
impressed me most.
Lewis Nixon, who has recently been in Russia constructing torpedo-boats,
and who talked with the Czar at Tsar-koye-Selo so short a time ago as last
December, says of him, according to the _Sun_:
His majesty, contrary to reports, was in perfect health, and
had not broken down at all under the strain of recent events
in Russia. There is not a gray hair in his head.
Asked by the reporter: "Did the Czar impress you as a man of great
strength of character?" Mr. Nixon replied:
Well, a man of his rank and power naturally creates a great
impression on one. The Czar is a man of remarkable
intelligence.
Andrew D. White's Somber Picture.
Not every one who has been brought into personal contact with the Czar
names him but to praise, however. In an article that appeared in the
_Century Magazine_ just after the beginning of the war with Japan, Andrew
D. White, who as minister to Russia during Harrison's administration saw
something of the Czar before he succeeded to the throne; says of him:
I was told by a person who had known him intimately from his
childhood that, though courteous, his main characteristic
was an absolute indifference to all persons and things about
him, and that he never showed any application to business or
a spark of ambition of any sort. This was confirmed by what
I afterward saw of him at court.
He seemed to stand about listlessly, speaking in a
good-natured way to this or that person when it was easier
than not to do so, but, on the whole, indifferent to all
that went on about him. After his ascension to the throne,
one of the ablest judges in Europe, who had every
opportunity to observe him closely, said to me:
"He knows nothing of his empire or of his people; he never
goes out of his house if he can help it."
Referring to the denationalization of Finland, in the same article Mr.
White says:
It is the saddest spectacle of our time. Former emperors,
however much they have wished to do so, have not dared break
their oaths to Finland, but the present weakling sovereign,
in his indifference, carelessness, and absolute unfitness to
rule, has allowed the dominant reactionary clique about him
to accomplish its own good pleasure.
Scathing Censure From Tolstoy.
Nor is Mr. White alone in expressing an uncomplimentary opinion of the
Czar. In an article published in the _Free Age Press_, of England, last
August, Count Tolstoy, in acquitting his emperor of the charge of bringing
about the war, declares:
About Nicholas II, I do know that he is a most commonplace
man, standing lower than the average level, coarsely
superstitious and unenlightened, and therefore who could not
in himself possibly be the cause of those events, enormous
in their scope and consequence, which are now taking place
in the Far East. Can it be possible that the activity of
millions of men should be directed against their will and
interest merely because this is desired by a man in every
respect standing lower than the intellectual and moral level
of all those who are perishing as it seems by his will?
Two other Russians, both anonymous--Tolstoy being the only man in Russia
who dares openly speak his mind about the throne and its occupant--but
whose standing is guaranteed by the publications in which their articles
appear, have written of their hereditary ruler in much the same strain.
The first of these articles was published in the London _Quarterly Review_
after the beginning of the war, the author, according to the editor of the
review, being "a Russian official of high rank." This writer devotes
several pages to a bitter denunciation of the Czar and his entourage. Of
Nicholas he says:
Unsteady and Self-Complacent.
Unsteady, half-hearted, self-complacent and fickle, he
changes his favorites with his fitful moods, allowing a band
of casual, obscure, and dangerous men to usurp the functions
of his responsible ministers, whose recommendations are
ignored, whose warnings are disregarded, and whose measures
for the defense of the state are not only baffled but
resented as symptoms of disobedience.
The other anonymous article appeared in the _National Review_, of London,
last May. The author of it says:
The leader of the nation during this terrible crisis is a
sickly youth of arrested development and morbid will, whose
inability to govern might pass unnoticed if he would but
allow any man of intellect or will-power to grapple with the
warring elements. This, however, he refuses to permit, while
allotting to obscure soldiers and seaman, tricksters and
money-grabbers, a share of the supreme power, to the
detriment of the nation.
The mental and moral impotency of this well-intentioned
marplot, who cannot be said to have had even experience,
unless ten years of uniform failure could impart it, is one
of the commonplaces of conversation in town and country.
Even the rough and ready drosky drivers say of him that he
has been thrust among rulers like a pestle among spoons.
Yet apprised of his impotence by the "boudoir council," he
wishes to will, and he takes the volition for the deed. No
occurrence, no event makes a lasting impression on his mind.
Abroad, our armies may be scattered, our ships sunk, our
credit ruined; he is serene in spite of all. At home the
whole framework of society may be going to pieces; Nicholas
sits still and fondly annotates state papers, a very
Narcissus of the inkpot.
Only a short time before this article appeared the _Times_ had published
an interview, obtained by its Paris correspondent with "a prominent
European diplomat just arrived from St. Petersburg," who described the
Czar as "a little, commonplace, family man, never happier than when
playing with his children in their nursery, and quite unequal to the task
of government."
The diplomat added that the autocrat of all the Russias was so afraid of
the present Count Witte (who was then plain monsieur) that he trembled
when the minister came into his presence.
In endeavoring to arrive at a conclusion as to the real character of the
Czar from the mass of conflicting evidence cited, it is essential to
consider the relation of the witnesses to the subject of our inquiry, in
order to ascertain if their testimony is likely to be prejudiced,
consciously or otherwise, for or against him.
It should be borne in mind, in the first place, that so effective are the
artificial adjuncts that lend grandeur to the occupant of a throne it
sometimes occurs that a visitor unaccustomed to such environments is
unable to retain the complete use of his ordinary faculties.
The Majesty That Hedges a King.
That is to say that it is often difficult for one who has hitherto pursued
the commonplace routine of life, on accomplishing the protracted and
arduous negotiations essential to obtain access to a palace, then being
introduced with pomp and ceremony into the royal precincts and attended
through one stately apartment after another by court functionaries,
themselves of high rank and distinguished name, to realize, on being
reverently ushered into the kingly presence, that he is face to face with
a mere human like himself--nay, that in nine cases out of ten he is the
superior of the royal personage in all that constitutes real worth.
It may be remembered that the arrogant Samuel Johnson, in the presence of
George III, his inferior in everything that was not superficial, was
properly subdued; and that, according to Boswell, the incident of his
visit to royalty was one that he "loved to relate with all its
circumstances when requested by his friends."
Human vanity also may be considered as a factor in the value of the
testimony of him who comes forth from the seats of the mighty to relate
his experiences. Does he not speak ill of the great one who has given him
an audience, the listener's inference is that the visitor has found
something in the manner of his treatment to resent; whereas he who sounds
the monarch's praises is put down as having met with a cordial reception.
None of these generalizations necessarily apply to the gentlemen whose
views concerning Nicholas II have been quoted, however.
William T. Stead's Opportunities.
At fifty-five years of age, and in spite of many bitter experiences, Mr.
Stead is still a man of many enthusiasms. He has always had the courage of
his convictions, and has known what it is to suffer for them. He has
probably never, in the course of a long and honorable journalistic
career, sought the popular side of a controversy; indeed, during the Boer
war he was one of a mere handful of Englishmen to stand out against the
entire nation.
As he himself shows, he has had abundant opportunity to form an opinion of
Nicholas, and sufficient experience of men to make that opinion valuable.
It may be recalled, however, that after spending an hour or two with
Richard Croker during a voyage across the Atlantic, when that eminent
politician was at the height of his power, Mr. Stead described the boss of
Tammany Hall as a benefactor of his countrymen.
No one would think of accusing Mr. Stead of wilful misstatement, but it
may be mentioned that, while Mr. Stead informs us that the interview
quoted from is the fourth he has had with the Russian sovereign, it is
probable that if he had ventured to publish anything detrimental about him
in any one of them that one would have been the last. And access to a
reigning monarch is a valuable asset to any journalist.
Mr. Hodgetts is a different type of journalist from Mr. Stead. He is of
the school which, as a matter of public policy, invariably treats with
outward reverence men in high station. More than that, an article like Mr.
Hodgetts's appearing in a journal of the standing of the _Pall Mall
Gazette_ might secure for its author any degree of consideration on the
occasion of a visit to Russia.
Mr. Hodgetts, however, does not pretend to come by his ideas about
Nicholas II at first hand, but gives an instructor of the young emperor as
his authority; and who ever heard of an instructor having opinions other
than complimentary of a royal pupil, even when we get down to the tutors
of the princes of the cannibal islands?
Dr. Dillon's rather involved despatch to the _Daily Telegraph_, quoted
above, bears internal evidence of having been produced under some sort of
pressure. As a matter of fact, it was his first contribution to his paper
after his release from arrest to which he had been subjected by reason of
his association with Maxim Gorky and other liberals with whom the Russian
officials knew him to be in sympathy. If, in the circumstances, Dr.
Dillon allowed his name to be attached to a telegram dictated by Trepoff
he is not to be severely blamed.
Both Mr. Flint and Mr. Nixon take an admiring view of the Czar, and agree
that he is a man of unusual intelligence, the former crediting him with
"imperial poise and kingly dignity." It may be noted, however, that both
of these gentlemen come within the category of witnesses who, Dr. Johnson
believes, may from gratitude exaggerate the praises of kings.
The unnecessary use of the word "imperial" by both Mr. Flint and Mr.
Hodgetts, by the way, seems to be palpable flattery, though either
gentleman may have employed it merely for rhetorical purposes.
Mr. White, in his estimate of the character of Nicholas, seems to have
come very close to the facts. Mr. White is not only an unprejudiced
witness, but a trained observer and thinker. He is an American who has
spent a considerable portion of his life in European courts, and thus has
come out of the ordeal a truer democrat than ever, and he is, above
everything else, a truth-seeker and a truth-speaker.
His testimony is the more valuable in that he violates one of the
unwritten laws that help to make diplomacy ridiculous in these times, in
venturing to make public property of information obtained in a diplomatic
capacity within the awesome precincts of a court.
That Mr. White's picture of Nicholas is true to life is evidenced by the
present plight of Russia, as well as by the fact that the American
diplomat's views are corroborated, not only by the three Russian witnesses
who may be considered as testifying against him, but by Messrs. Flint,
Nixon and Stead, who speak in his favor. Mr. Stead declares that during
his recent interview with the Czar "his spirits were as high, his courage
as calm, and his outlook as cheerful as ever." Only a weakling sovereign,
careless and unfit to rule, could remain serene, indifferent, and
passive--whether his demeanor be characterized as kingly dignity or the
self-complacency of mental and moral impotence--under the conditions that
exist in Russia to-day.
ANECDOTES OF AUTHORS.
A.T. Quiller-Couch told a good Cornish story the other day in presenting
certificates to the members of an ambulance class in his own town of Troy.
"Years ago," he said, "an old Cornish fisherman at a similar class was
asked how he would treat the apparently drowned.
"'Well,' he replied, 'the first thing we always did was to empty the man's
pockets.'"--_Westminster Gazette._
When Archibald Clavering Gunter began the series of novels which was to
make him famous, he tried in vain to find a publisher. As none of them
would have anything to do with his books, he was obliged to bring them out
himself.
Shortly after the appearance of "Mr. Barnes of New York," he met the head
of one of the big publishing houses, who inquired how his last book was
selling.
"Fine," responded the cheerful commercialist; "I've sold two tons of it
already."
Thackeray chanced to be dining at his club when a pompous officer of the
Guards stopped beside the table and said:
"Haw, Thackeray, old boy, I hear Lawrence has been painting yer portrait!"
"So he has," was the reply.
"Full length?"
"No; full-length portraits are for soldiers, that we may see their spurs.
But the other end of the man is the principal thing with authors," said
Thackeray.--_London Tit-Bits._
Mr. Gladstone was once guilty of deliberately evading an international
regulation at the Franco-Italian frontier. He was carrying for his
refreshment a basket of fine grapes, which stringent regulations at the
time forbade being taken from one country to the other, on account of
phylloxera, an insect that attacks the roots and leaves of the grapevines.
Mr. Gladstone's great brain reviewed the situation; he must obey the law,
but he was determined to have the grapes, so he sat down then and there on
the railway station bench and--ate them.
Irving Bacheller, the author of "Eben Holden," went a little farther north
than usual last summer while on his vacation, and penetrated Newfoundland.
He caught a good many fish, but this did not prevent his keeping an eye
on the natives. He was particularly impressed by the men who spent the day
lounging about the village stores.
"What do you fellows do when you sit around the store like this?" he asked
of the crowd arranged in a circle of tilted chairs and empty boxes and
maintaining a profound silence.
"Well," drawled one of the oldest, "sometimes we set and think, and then
again other times we just set."--_Woman's Home Companion._
Marie Corelli's domestic quiet at Stratford-on-Avon seemed likely to be
destroyed not long since by the opening of a girls' school in the house
immediately adjoining her own. The famous novelist found that the
recitations of the pupils greatly interrupted her literary work. She stood
it, however, as long as she could, but finally wrote a letter of protest
to the proprietor of the school. The reply she received from the elderly
school-mistress was prompt, and ran as follows:
"Dear Miss Corelli: Judging from the literary work of yours which it has
been my privilege to see, I should say that it would be just as well if
you were interrupted even more frequently."--_New York Times._
* * * * *
Emerson Hough once wrote a story called "Hasenberg's Cross-Eyed Horse,"
which he sought diligently, but unsuccessfully, to market with the greater
number of the known periodicals of the world. At last the story found a
resting-place in Mr. Hough's desk. Three years ago, feeling a bit let down
physically, he took the advice of a distinguished publisher of New York
and put himself in the hands of an osteopathic physician.
Some doubts as to the beneficial results existed, but no doubt whatever as
to the size of the bill. Mr. Hough pondered long and seriously on the
question of getting even with his doctor. At length he happened to think
of his old story of the cross-eyed horse.
"I'll have the osteopath treat the horse's cross-eyes," said the author to
himself. Whereupon he rewrote the story, sold it promptly at a good
figure, and made it a chapter of his last novel, "Heart's Desire," where
it is known as "Science at Heart's Desire."--_Bookman._
WHEN THE MUSE CUTS BAIT.
Fish Don't Always Bite, but Everything Is Grist for the Poet's Mill, So
Here Are a Few Verses Anglers May Con When the Tide is Out and the Boat's
High and Dry on a Mud Flat.
THE COLD-WATER MAN.
By John G. Saxe.
It was an honest fisherman,
I knew him passing well;
And he lived by a little pond,
Within a little dell.
A grave and quiet man was he,
Who loved his hook and rod;
So even ran his line of life,
His neighbors thought it odd.
For science and for books he said
He never had a wish;
No school to him was worth a fig
Except a school of fish.
In short, this honest fisherman
All other toils forsook;
And, though no vagrant man was he,
He lived by hook and crook.
He ne'er aspired to rank or wealth,
Nor cared about a name;
For, though much famed for fish was he,
He never fished for fame.
To charm the fish he never spoke,
Although his voice was fine;
He found the most convenient way
Was just to drop a line!
And many a gudgeon of the pond,
If made to speak to-day,
Would own, with grief, the angler had
A mighty taking way!
One day, while fishing on a log,
He mourned his want of luck--
When, suddenly, he felt a bite,
And, jerking--caught a duck!
Alas! that day this fisherman
Had taken too much grog;
And, being but a landsman, too,
He couldn't keep the log!
'Twas all in vain, with might and main,
He strove to reach the shore;
Down, down he went to feed the fish
He'd baited oft before!
The jury gave their verdict that
'Twas nothing else but gin
That caused the fisherman to be
So sadly taken in.
Though one stood out upon a whim,
And said the angler's slaughter--
To be exact about the fact--
Was clearly gin-and-water!
The moral of this mournful tale
To all is plain and clear--
That drinking habits bring a man
Too often to his bier.
And he who scorns to "take the pledge,"
And keep the promise fast,
May be, in spite of fate, a stiff
Cold-water man at last!
THE ANGLER'S CHANT.
By Isaac M'Lellan.
Oh, the shriek of the reel, the trout-fisher's-reel!
No sound is so sweet to the ear;
The hum of the line, the buzz of the wheel!
Where the crystalline brook runs so clear.
Here's a shade on the stream, where the willows bend down,
Where the waters sleep drowsy and dim,
And there where the ripples whirl amber and brown,
The lords of the rivulet swim.
Then fling the light tackle with delicate cast,
Let your fly like a cobweb alight,
A dash and a splash and the victim's fast,
While your reel sings a song of delight.
See, yonder a green-moss'd boulder enchecks
The stress of the turbulent tides,
And there amid bubbles and foam-bell flecks
The gold-spotted brook-trout hides.
The sweet breezes blow, the morning sun shines,
The white clouds drift slow down the sky;
'Tis a day that is perfect for sport with the lines,
For artistic cast of the fly.
Ah, haste to the shore, brother angler, to-day,
On the weedy, gray rock take your place,
Where the surf, at its base, makes glorious race,
And, like rainbows, glitters the spray.
Cast your eye o'er the blue expanses of sea;
How lovely, how grand is the scene!
The great rolling waves, now dusky, now green,
Forever rejoicing and free.
See the flash of the bluefish over the main,
The gleam of the bright striped bass!
Then the braided line fling, let the reel hum its strain,
And so the gay moments shall pass.
FISH LINES.
By Jessica H. Lowell.
A fish sat him down with a blink to think,
And dipped his fin thoughtfully into the ink;
Then finned this short note:
"Dear Tommy," he wrote,
"In response to your line of the other day
I hasten to thank you without delay.
But had not that squirming, delicious young worm
Shown a set in his curves too suspiciously firm,
I might not be here
To write you, my dear
(What you may not believe, 'tis so monstrously queer),
That the wriggler you sent
With most kindly intent
Had swallowed a pin that was frightfully bent!
"You see--if I'd greedily taken a bite,
The pain and the shock would have finished me quite;
So, the next time you send,
My juvenile friend,
Just mark if the worm has a natural bend
Ere you dangle him temptingly down here to be
The death of some innocent young thing like me."
And he grinned as he used some dry sand for a blotter
(Ink dries rather slowly, you know, under water),
Then signed it in haste
And sealed it with paste.
It was growing quite dark and he's no time to waste,
So he posted it slyly, without wasting more,
On the crest of a ripple that ran toward shore;
Then, shaking his scales in a satisfied glow,
All shining and shimmering, sank down below,
Where he soon fell asleep
In an oyster bed deep,
With the green sheets of water his slumber to keep.
_St. Nicholas._
THREE FISHERS.
Three fishers went strolling away to the stream,
To the babbling brook where the fishes swim.
Of speckled beauties they all did dream,
And each felt certain they'd bite for him.
For men will tramp from morning till night,
And suffer the fierce mosquito's bite,
And drink to stop their groaning.
Three fishers strolled into the market-place,
'Twas some two hours after the sun went down,
And a look of gloom was on each man's face,
For at empty baskets they each did frown,
For men may fish, but may get no bite,
And tired and hungry go home at night,
And vent their wrath in groaning.
Three fishers strolled into the beer saloon,
Where the crowd sat round and the gas was bright,
And each gaily whistled a merry tune,
And showed his fish with assumed delight,
For men will fish, yea, and men will lie,
And boast of catching the fish they buy,
While inwardly they're groaning.
BULLS IN PARLIAMENT.
Some of the Mixed Metaphors Perpetrated in the English House of Commons
Have Afforded Amusement for the Entire World.
For many years there has been an impression that the linguistic bull is a
distinctively Irish animal. The fame of Paddy Bull is world-wide, but the
fact is he often is compelled to answer for the sins of his neighbor,
Johnnie Bull, who, as a perpetrator of mixed metaphors, is without a peer.
In no deliberative body in the world is the mixed metaphor so much in its
element as in the British House of Commons. As examples of its activity in
that institution, London _Tit-Bits_ submits the following list:
"Sir, we are told that by this legislation the heart of the
country has been shaken to its very foundations."
"Among the many jarring notes heard in this House on
military affairs, this subject at least must be regarded as
an oasis."
"The interests of the employers and employed are the same
nine times out of ten--I will even say ninety-nine times out
of ten."
"Our tongues are tied, our hands are fettered, and we are
really beating the air to no purpose."
"I will now repeat what I was about to say when the
honorable member interrupted me."
"The West Indies will now have a future which they never had
in the past."
"A thorny subject which has long been a bone of contention
among us."
"A slumbering volcano which at any moment a spark might set
aflame."
"The honorable member would denude us of every rag of the
principles which we have proclaimed from the housetops."
"Ah! The honorable member opposite shakes his head at that.
But he can't shake mine!"
A well-known member of Parliament informed the House that an
"oral agreement is not worth the paper it is written on."
Barristers are usually credited with possessing accuracy of
speech, but some expressions recently reported indicate that
they are capable of a blundering use of words. A member of
the bar, in his opening speech for the defense, said:
"Gentlemen of the jury, the case for the crown is a mere
skeleton, for, as I shall presently show you, it has neither
flesh, blood, nor bones in it."
But a Leeds barrister outdid his competitors when he said
fervidly:
"Gentlemen of the jury, it will be for you to say whether
this defendant shall be allowed to come into court with
unblushing footsteps, with the cloak of hypocrisy in his
mouth, and take three bullocks out of my client's pocket
with impunity."
In his "One Thousand and One Anecdotes" Alfred H. Miles records some
exceptionally amusing bulls. Among these are the following:
Sir Boyle Roche described himself on one occasion as
"standing prostrate at the feet of royalty"; and, in the
days of threatened rebellion, wrote to a friend: "You may
judge of our state when I tell you that I write this with a
sword in one hand and a pistol in the other."
Even worse than the foregoing was the climax of an honorable
member's speech in the House of Commons: "I smell a rat; I
see it floating in the air; and, by heaven, I'll nip it in
the bud!"
A Scotchwoman said that the butcher of her town only killed
half a beast at a time.
A British magistrate, on being told by a vagabond that he
was not married, responded: "That's a good thing for your
wife."
A Portuguese mayor enumerated, among the marks by which the
body of a drowned man might be identified when found, "a
marked impediment in his speech."
A Frenchman, contentedly laying his head upon a large stone
jar for a pillow, said it was not hard because he had
previously stuffed it with hay.
An American lecturer solemnly said one evening: "Parents,
you may have children; or, if not, your daughters may have."
Two Scotchmen were discussing the relative merits of
churchyards and cemeteries when one of them boldly expressed
his aversion to the latter in the remark, "I'd raither no
dee ava than be buried in sic a place"; to which his
companion retorted, "Weel, if I'm spared in life an' health,
I'll gang naewhere else."
The Part of Chance in Progress.
Fortunate Accidents Frequently Have Opened the Way to the Discovery of
Important Truths Before the Searchlights of Science and
Invention Were Brought Into Play.
Nature has her own ways of telling her secrets to man, and the commonest
of those ways is what man chooses to call chance or accident. The words
are convenient names and that is about all we know of the phenomena which
they are used to describe.
Below are given the stories of a number of important discoveries made by
accident. Perhaps it will occur to the reader that none of the discoveries
was really accidental, since in each case it was the witnessing of the
accident by an intelligent human being which aroused in the mind of that
human being the train of thought leading to the discovery. An Australian
black might watch a swaying chandelier for ten years, and he would never
discover the pendulum. As a rule, special knowledge is required to make
"discoveries by accident."
But the apparent working of chance in the incidents told here is obvious:
The power of lenses, as applied to the telescope, was
discovered by a watchmaker's apprentice. While holding
spectacle-glasses between his thumb and finger, he was
startled at the suddenly enlarged appearance of a
neighboring church spire.
The art of etching upon glass was discovered by a Nuremberg
glass-cutter. By accident a few drops of aqua fortis fell
upon his spectacles. He noticed that the glass became
corroded and softened where the acid had touched it. That
was hint enough. He drew figures upon glass, with varnish,
applied the corroding fluid, then cut away the glass around
the drawing. When the varnish was removed, the figures
appeared raised upon a dark ground.
The swaying to and fro of a chandelier in the cathedral at
Pisa suggested to Galileo the application of the pendulum.
The art of lithography was perfected through suggestions
made by accident. A poor musician was curious to know
whether music could not be etched upon stone as well as
copper.
After he had prepared his slab, his mother asked him to make
a memorandum of such clothes as she proposed to send away to
be washed. Not having pen, ink, and paper convenient, he
wrote the list on the stone with the etching preparation,
intending to make a copy of it at leisure.
A few days later, when about to clean the stone, he wondered
what effect nitric acid would have upon it. He applied the
acid, and in a few minutes saw the writing standing out in
relief. The next step necessary was simply to ink the stone
and take off an impression.
The composition of which printing-rollers are made was
discovered by a country printer in England. It was the
established custom to ink the type on a printing-press with
a pelt-ball--an ink-soaked roll of sheepskin. Having mislaid
his pelt-ball, the ingenious Englishman inked the type with
a piece of soft glue which had fallen out of the glue-pot.
It was such an excellent substitute that, after mixing
molasses with the glue to give the mass proper consistency,
the old pelt-ball was entirely discarded.
The shop of a London tobacconist, by the name of Lundyfoot,
was destroyed by fire. While he was gazing dolefully into
the smoldering ruins, he noticed that his poorer neighbors
were gathering the snuff from the canisters. He tested the
snuff for himself, and discovered that the fire had largely
improved its pungency and aroma.
It was a hint worth profiting by. He secured another shop,
built a lot of ovens, subjecting the snuff to a heating
process, gave the brand a peculiar name, and in a few years
became rich.
The Origin of Tinted Paper.
The origin of blue tinted paper came about by a mere slip of
the hand.
The wife of William East, an English paper-maker,
accidentally let a blue-bag fall into one of the vats of
pulp. The workmen were astonished when they saw the
peculiar color of the paper, while Mr. East was highly
incensed over what he considered a grave pecuniary loss. His
wife was so much frightened that she did not confess her
agency in the matter.
After storing the damaged paper for four years, Mr. East
sent it to his agent in London, with the instruction to sell
it for what it would bring. The paper was accepted as an
attractive novelty, and was disposed of at quite an advance
over the market price.
Mr. East was astonished at receiving an order for another
large invoice of the paper. He was without the secret, and
found himself in a dilemma. Upon mentioning it to his wife,
she told him about the accident. He kept the secret, and the
demand for the novel tint far exceeded his ability to supply
the article.
A Brighton stationer took a fancy for dressing his show
window with piles of writing-paper, rising gradually from
the largest to the smallest size in use; and to finish his
pyramids off nicely he cut cards to bring them to a point.
Taking these cards for diminutive note-paper, lady customers
were continually wanting some of "that lovely little paper,"
and the stationer found it advantageous to cut paper to the
desired pattern.
As there was no space for addressing the notelets after they
were folded, he, after much thought, invented the envelope,
which he cut by the aid of metal plates made for the
purpose.
The sale increased so rapidly that he was unable to produce
the envelopes fast enough, so he commissioned a dozen houses
to make them for him, and thus set going an important branch
of the manufacturing stationery trade.
Asphalt as a Street Pavement.
All forms of bituminous pavements, whether manufactured from
natural or artificial asphalt, are, in fact, artificial
stone pavements. The industry started with the use of the
natural rock asphalt from the mines in the Val de Travers,
Canton Neuchatel, Switzerland.
The mines were discovered in 1721, but it was in 1849 that
the utility of their product as a road covering was first
noticed. The rock was then being mined for the purpose of
extracting the bitumen contained in it for its use in
medicine and the arts. It is a limestone, impregnated with
bitumen, of which it yields, on analysis, from eight to
fourteen per cent.
It was observed that pieces of rock which fell from a wagon
were crushed by the wheels, and under the combined influence
of the traffic and heat of the sun, a good road surface was
produced.
A macadam road of asphalt rock was then made, which gave
very good results, and finally, in 1854, a portion of the
Rue Bergère was laid in Paris of compressed asphalt on a
concrete foundation. From Paris it extended to London, being
laid on Threadneedle Street in 1869, and Cheapside in 1870.
HATE FOR NAPOLEON TURNED TO LOVE.
Curious Effect Produced on French Newspapers By the Series of Successes
That Attended the Emperor's Progress from Elba to Paris.
There are instances on record of cases in which distance did not "lend
enchantment to the view." Of these instances Napoleon's advance to Paris
after his escape from Elba affords a striking example.
In 1815 the French newspapers announced the departure of Bonaparte from
Elba, his progress through France, and entry into Paris, in the following
manner:
March 9. The Anthropophagus has quitted his den.--March 10.
The Corsican Ogre has landed at Cape Juan.--March 11. The
Tiger has arrived at Gap.--March 12. The Monster slept at
Grenoble.--March 13. The Tyrant has passed through
Lyons.--March 14. The Usurper is directing his steps toward
Dijon, but the brave and loyal Burgundians have risen _en
masse_, and surrounded him on all sides.--March 18.
Bonaparte is only sixty leagues from the capital; he has
been fortunate enough to escape the hands of his
pursuers.--March 19. Bonaparte is advancing with rapid
steps, but he will never enter Paris.--March 20. Napoleon
will, to-morrow, be under our ramparts.--March 21. The
Emperor is at Fontainebleau.--March 22. His Imperial and
Royal Majesty yesterday evening arrived at the Tuileries,
amid the joyful acclamations of his devoted and faithful
subjects.
The Story of the Snow Elinora.
A True Tale of the South Seas That Tells of the Remarkable Experience
of an American Trading-Vessel and Its Skipper's Terrible
Revenge, More Than a Century Ago.
At the time that Commodore Dewey's squadron hurled its showers of lead and
steel upon the doomed ships of the Spanish admiral in Manila Bay, scores
of mushroom bards uncovered their lyres and described the sensations of
the echoes that had the honor of bearing, "for the first time in the
history of the world," the sounds of Yankee guns among the startled
islands of the Pacific. But the bards were wrong. The echoes performed
that office during the first administration of George Washington as
President of the United States.
The incident is one which apparently has escaped the notice of historians,
else it would have been recalled shortly before the close of last year
when political circles in France were somewhat fluttered by a rumor that
as a result of a series of secret negotiations the French government had
expressed its willingness to sell to the United States the island of
Tahiti.
The rumor was soon denied officially, but in the meantime thousands of
Americans had taken down their atlases, looked up the situation of the
island, and asked themselves what the United States wanted with it anyway.
But there was a little story concerning the island of Tahiti, formerly
known as Otaheite, that the atlases and gazetteers did not give them--the
story of a Yankee skipper's revenge. It tells how American guns commanded
respect for the flag in the South Seas in the year 1790.
The Yankee skipper was Captain Metcalfe, who then was in command of an
armed trading vessel named the Elinora. The Elinora was a snow--which, it
may be worth while to explain, was an old-fashioned variety of brig. Her
crew consisted of Americans, Portuguese, and some natives picked up at
Manila. The account of the remarkable adventure is printed in _The
Gentleman's Magazine_, published in London, April, 1791. The writer, who
was one of the officers of the Elinora at the time, relates his story with
brutal frankness, and his narration resulted in a vast deal of comment
abroad that was somewhat galling to the citizens of the new-born republic
of the United States.
The account, as published in _The Gentleman's Magazine_, is as follows:
Story Told by an Officer.
Mobee, Lat. 19 N., Long. 168 E.
On or about the 30th of January, 1790, we anchored under
Ladrone Mount, and commenced a trade with the natives for
hogs, fruit, limes, fish, etc.; but not liking the
situation, we weighed anchor and went two miles farther up
into a bay, and came to anchor about 4 P.M.
At eleven or twelve o'clock, midnight, some of the natives
swam off and cut away the cutter from astern. At 1 P.M. we
discovered that she was missing, and immediately called all
hands aft on the quarter-deck and found none missing except
the man who was in her as boat-keeper. We then hoisted the
small boat out to go in search of her, but found, on
lowering her into the water, she leaked in such a manner as
obliged us to hoist her in again, which rendered it
impossible to search that night.
On the preceding evening an old man requested permission to
sleep on board, which was granted; but after missing the
boat we put him in irons. When daylight approached, no
canoes came off as usual, which confirmed our suspicions
that they had cut the boat adrift.
The women on board wished to go on shore. Captain Metcalfe
told them they might go when they thought proper. They all
immediately leaped into the water and swam to the shore, at
least three miles' distance. The old man also requested
leave to go, but leave was not granted him.
In the afternoon two or three canoes came alongside, with
presents from the chief, consisting of hogs and fruit; but
they were not accepted. The last that came we ordered
immediately away; but they paid little attention to it,
until we fired musket-shots at them, which killed and
wounded three or four.
Tried to Sink Ship with Knife.
Toward night a man swam from the shore to the cable, with a
knife in his hand, and afterward swam under the ship's
counter, where we saw him with the knife; he had once or
twice dived under water and started a piece of copper off
the ship's bottom, imagining, could he get the copper off,
the ship would sink. Captain Metcalfe fired a pistol at him
from the cabin window, but missed him. Three or four of the
people jumped into the boat and caught him. After bringing
him on board, Captain Metcalfe fully determined to hang him,
ordering a rope to be rove at the fore-yardarm and the rope
greased. But, by the persuasion of Mr. Chambers and myself,
he concluded to save his life and keep him prisoner.
The next day we observed four or five thousand people to
come down opposite the ship, all armed with slings, spears,
and arrows. At ten o'clock we hauled the ship within a
quarter of a mile of the shore, and fired round and grape
shot at them, and dislodged them from the village.
At twelve o'clock I went on shore with the boat and six men,
set fire to the village and _morai_ (a place of worship).
Some of them were seen very near, but, by constant firing
from the ship, they did not attempt to attack us.
I came on board and took some small water-casks to fill with
water. But after landing (that attention not being paid to
firing as before) the natives came down--great numbers,
throwing their spears and stones, which obliged us to go on
board again, our object unaccomplished.
They then all went to the summit of a hill, thinking the
shot from the ship could not reach them there. But we fired
two guns with such good aim that they were soon convinced of
their error, and immediately fled to the mountains and low
ditches, where it was impossible for our shot to touch them.
We then desisted from firing, hove up the anchors, and went
farther up the bay in hope of completing our water.
The Chief Accepted Ransom.
Toward evening we again came to an anchor, and on the next
morning two or three canoes came off, who were well treated,
so that more came off and engaged to bring us water, and the
captain purchased a small boy and girl for two axes and a
few beads.
After continuing here three or four days we weighed anchor
and stood from the island.
We had been under way about an hour and a half, with a light
breeze, when the natives came in a canoe alongside and
informed us that the chief of the people who had stolen the
boat lived behind a point to the northward. We then hauled
our wind, went around the point, and came to anchor.
The next day a canoe came alongside with one of their
chiefs. When he came on board we began to expostulate with
him in order to recover our boat and the man. He told us
that for a reward he would bring both of them. Captain
Metcalfe offered him a musket, eight cartridges, one bar of
iron, and a piece of Bengal cloth for the man, and the same
for the boat, which he agreed to.
The next morning he again came on board and said if we would
send a boat on shore, or near the shore, he would bring the
man. Immediately, by order of Captain Metcalfe, I armed the
boat and went near the shore; but after waiting an hour,
paying attention to their proceedings, and their not
bringing the man, I returned on board.
The chief then came off a second time and said if the boat
went again we might depend upon getting the man. I armed the
boat, and again went toward shore, where, after waiting half
an hour, they sent a man, who swam to the boat, with the
thigh bones of the man who was boat-keeper when they stole
the boat.
I received them and came on board, showed them to Captain
Metcalfe, and threw them into the sea. A few minutes
afterward the same chief came on board for the reward. It
was given, and he was also told that if he brought the boat
the reward should be given for that also, for he insisted
that it was not hurt.
Sacrificed Seaman to Gods.
He then told us the manner in which they had killed the
boat-keeper, as follows: That after cutting away the post,
and she had drifted a distance from the ship, they got into
her and found the man asleep; but he immediately awoke,
and, seeing them, drew his knife upon them. They, however,
overpowered him and took the knife from him, cut his head
off, and took him on shore, and the next night burned him
for a sacrifice to their gods.
We judged the night they stole the boat they killed the man,
and the next day burnt him (as the mountains seemed to be
one continuous blaze), which is their custom on such
occasions, but were not then positive of the above.
After relating the story, he desired of the captain that the
natives might come and trade as usual. Leave being granted,
he went on shore, and just at sunset he came off again in a
large double canoe with twenty-five women. But the captain,
suspecting they had some design in the night to take the
vessel, would not permit them to come on board.
The day following, the canoes, as usual at the other
islands, came alongside with hogs, fruit, limes, etc. The
chief had told them they might come and trade without
molestation.
At 10 A.M. the chief came alongside, with two others, and
had in their canoe the keel of the boat which they had
stolen. After he came, he called and wanted the reward which
was promised. Captain Metcalfe was informed of his being
alongside, and of his having the boat's keel. He then came
on deck and saw it, and, being then perfectly convinced of
the man's being killed and the boat broken, made this
expression--that, "I will now give the reward they little
expect."
The Captain Was Merciless.
Mr. Chambers and myself endeavored to persuade the captain
to entice the three chiefs on board, and afterward to hang
them on the foreyard in view of the whole island; which
might, perhaps, be sufficient warning for them in future
never to attempt distressing any ships which might touch at
their islands.
But our persuasions were of no effect. He was fully
determined to take the following means of punishing them:
First, to decoy those canoes which were on the larboard to
come to the starboard side, then to station one man to each
post lanyard, and others down to the guns, between decks,
while others on the quarter-deck were stationed at the
swivels and four brass guns, and, when everything was in
readiness, to fire immediately into the canoes all at one
command.
The guns that were below had on each of them a hundred
musket-balls and fifty langrage nails. There were seven of
the above guns, each containing the like quantity. The four
guns on the quarter-deck had in them fifty balls each; some
of the swivels had ten balls.
Mr. Chambers and myself strongly insisted that this
punishment was too severe, and only butchering a number of
innocent women and children. But he replied, we were going
to attempt taking the command of the ship from him, and that
the orders should be obeyed, and immediately ordered every
man to his station.
The men wished to fire into the canoes, as the man whom they
had killed was a Manila man and the crew were all Portuguese
or Manila men.
After the people were all stationed he gave orders to
fire--and the whole broadside was aimed direct at the
canoes. To attempt to describe the horrible scene that
ensued is too much for my pen. The water alongside continued
of a crimson color for at least ten minutes; some were
sinking, others lying half out of their canoes, without arms
or legs; while others lay in their canoes weltering in their
blood.
Although the appearance was so horrid, our people wished to
get into the boats and use boarding-pikes to kill those in
the water; but by severely punishing two or three they
desisted from their dreadful purpose.
The Harvest of Death.
Some persons on board said they had counted the canoes
before we fired, the number of which was two hundred and
twelve; but I did not think they were above one hundred and
seventy or eighty. The number killed, we then imagined,
exceeded one hundred, and as many more wounded; but, some
weeks after, they told us the number missing on the island
was eighty and one hundred and fifteen were wounded, the
greater part dead and dying fast.
This information they gave us at the island of Owyhee, about
fifteen leagues to windward; and we judged it to be true, as
canoes are daily passing from island to island. After our
firing ceased we weighed anchor and stood for the island of
Owyhee.
I have sent this account, as those who are acquainted with
the circumstance think Captain Metcalfe much to blame; and
that should any vessels go to these islands from America
they might be particularly cautious, and not pay too much
attention to the friendship professed for them by these
islanders.
P.S.--They cut off a schooner about six weeks after, which
belonged to Captain Metcalfe, and murdered all the people.
1868--DECORATION DAY--1906.
Among the holidays which are generally observed in the United States, none
excites more reverence in the breast of an American, or more respect in
the mind of a foreigner, than Decoration (or Memorial) Day.
Decoration Day was first celebrated in 1866, by Union soldiers and sailors
in Washington. In the spring of 1868 General John A. Logan,
commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, issued an order in
which he named May 30 as a day on which all members of the G.A.R. should
repair to the cemeteries in the towns in which they lived and there spread
flowers on the graves of their dead comrades.
Among the many tributes paid to our dead soldiers none has made a more
profound impression on two generations of American people than the speech
delivered by Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, on November 19, 1863, on the
occasion of the dedication of a part of the famous battle-field as a
soldiers' cemetery. It is here given in full, from a manuscript in
Lincoln's own handwriting.
LINCOLN'S SPEECH AT GETTYSBURG.
Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent
a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that
all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or
any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a
great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that
field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that
that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should
do this.
But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot
hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here,
have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world
will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never
forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be
dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus
far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the
great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take
increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure
of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have
died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of
freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people,
shall not perish from the earth.
Blue Laws in Old New England.
How the Puritans, Seeking and Finding Toleration for Themselves, Become
Themselves Intolerant--Sunday Observance With a Vengeance--Death
Penalty for Disobedient Children.
_Compiled and edited for_ THE SCRAP BOOK.
People who object to modern laws for the regulation of conduct may, after
all, consider themselves fortunate. Sometimes anti-cigarette laws are
resented as infringements on personal liberty. But what shall we say of a
law under which, in a certain colony, the mere possession of dice or
playing-cards was punishable by a fine?
The old "Blue Laws" of Connecticut, or, strictly, of New Haven Colony, are
not, in their frequently quoted form, true Blue Laws. Attention was first
attracted to the collection by the publication of a "General History of
Connecticut" in England in 1781. The author was a Tory minister, the Rev.
S.A. Peters, who had been forced to flee from the colony. In the
circumstances, it is not remarkable that his volume should bear many signs
of spiteful exaggeration.
The Rev. Mr. Peters, however, did not invent the Blue Laws, though he has
often been charged with so doing. All but two or three of the forty-five
are to be found in the works of earlier writers, or, slightly modified, in
the statute books of the various New England colonies. Many of them are
not in the New Haven statute books. Those which we quote have been
carefully selected from the best obtainable authorities.
The Puritans came to America to find a place where they could practise
their religion without interference. Here are some of the Blue Laws which
indicate the Puritan intolerance of the religion of others:
If any man, after due conviction, shall have, or worship any
other God but the Lord God, he shall be put to death.--Lev.
xxiv:15-16.
If any person turns Quaker, he shall be banished and not
suffered to return upon the pain of death.
No priest shall abide in this Dominion; he shall be
banished, and suffer death on his return. Priests may be
seized by any one without a warrant. (In force before 1656.)
No man shall hold any office who is not sound in the faith,
and faithful to his Dominion; and whoever gives a vote to
such person shall pay a fine of one pound; for a second
offense he shall be disfranchised.
No Quaker or dissenter from the established worship of this
Dominion shall be allowed to give a vote for the election of
magistrates or any officer.
No food or lodging shall be afforded to a Quaker, Adamite,
or other heretic.
How strictly the conduct of the individual was made to conform with
religious rules may be gathered from the following laws as to Sunday
observance, the name of authorities being given in parentheses, in some
instances:
Every person in this jurisdiction, according to the mind of
God, shall duly resort and attend worship upon the Lord's
days at least, and upon public fasting, or thanksgiving
days, and if any person, without just cause, absent, or
withdraw from the same, he shall for every such sinful
miscarriage forfeit five shillings. (1656.)
No one shall run on the Sabbath day, or walk in his garden,
or elsewhere, except reverently to and from meeting.
(Barber.)
No one shall travel, cook victuals, make beds, sweep house,
cut hair or shave, on the Sabbath or fasting day. (Barber.)
No woman shall kiss her child on the Sabbath or fasting day.
(Barber.)
Whosoever shall profane the Lord's day, or any part of it,
by work or sport, shall be punished by fine, or corporally.
But if the court, by clear evidence, find that the sin was
proudly, presumptuously, and with a high hand committed
against the command and authority of the blessed God, such
person therein despising and reproaching the Lord shall he
put to death. (1656.)
If any man shall kiss his wife or wife kiss her husband on
the Lord's day, the party in fault shall be punished at the
discretion of the Court of Magistrates.
Tradition says that a man of New Haven reached home on Sunday, after an
absence of several months, and, meeting his wife at the door, kissed her.
For thus violating the law he was arraigned before the court and fined.
Children were given excellent reason to mind their parents, as witness the
following laws:
If any child above sixteen years old shall curse, or smite
his, her or their parents, such child or children shall be
put to death (Exod. xxi:17; Lev. xx:9; Exod. xxi:15), unless
it be proved that the parents have been very unchristianly
negligent in the education of such child, etc. (Eaton.)
If any man have a stubborn, rebellious son of sixteen years
old, who will not obey the voice of his father or mother,
and being chastened will not hearken unto them, then shall
his father and his mother lay hold on him and bring him to
the magistrates assembled in court, and testify unto them
that their son is stubborn and rebellious, and will not obey
their voice, but lives in sundry crimes: such a son shall be
put to death. (Enacted 1656.)
Puritan notions of propriety, as enforced by the laws, seem odd to modern
minds. Thus we learn on authority of Barber, as well as from Peters, that
"every male shall have his hair cut round according to a cap." Sometimes
half a pumpkin was used instead of a cap, to guide the hair-cutting of
these "Round-heads." Other unique laws follow:
No minister shall keep a school. (Barber.)
A debtor in prison, swearing he has no estate, shall be led
out and sold to make satisfaction. (Altered in 1656.)
Whoever brings cards or dice into this Dominion shall pay a
fine of five pounds. (Barber.)
No one shall read common prayer, keep Christmas or Saints'
days, make minced pies, dance, play cards, or play on any
instrument of music except the drum, trumpet, and
jew's-harp. (Barber.)
Whoever wears clothes trimmed with gold, silver, or bone
lace, above two shillings by the yard, shall be presented
by the grand jurors, and the selectmen shall tax the
offender at three hundred pounds estate. (Several acts
governing the attire of the subjects.)
There was an ancient law in Massachusetts that ladies' dresses should be
made long enough to hide their shoe-buckles. In 1660 an act of the General
Court prohibited short sleeves, and required garments to be lengthened so
as to cover the arms to the wrists and gowns to the shoe-buckles;
"immoderate great breeches, knots of ribbon, broad shoulder bands, and
they be, silk roses, double ruffs and cuffs" were forbidden. In the same
colony, in 1653, I. Fairbanks was tried for wearing great boots, but was
acquitted.
Laws governing marriage and the marriage relation were rigorous.
When parents refuse their children convenient marriages, the
magistrate shall determine the point. (Reenacted with
alterations.)
The selectmen finding children ignorant may take them from
their parents and place them in better hands at the expense
of their parents. (Record.)
A wife shall be deemed good evidence against her husband.
Married persons must live together, or be imprisoned.
No man shall court a maid in person or by letter without
first obtaining consent of her parents; five pounds penalty
for the first offense; ten pounds for the second; and for
the third, imprisonment during the pleasure of the court.
A man that strikes his wife shall be fined ten pounds. A
woman that strikes her husband shall be punished at the
court's discretion.
Puritan New England was not alone among the colonies in adopting harsh
laws. Virginia went to extremes, as appears in the following extract from
"Laws of Virginia, at a Grand Assembly held at James City, 23d March,
1662":
In every county the court shall cause to be set up a
pillory, a pair of stocks, and a whipping-post near the
courthouse, and a ducking stool; and the court not causing
the said pillory, whipping-post, stocks, and ducking-stool
to be erected, shall be fined five thousand pounds of
tobacco to the use of the public.
Among commercial restrictions we find an enactment prohibiting the
planting of tobacco after July 10, which was done for "the improvement of
our only commodity, tobacco, which can no ways be effected but by
lessening the quantity and amending the quality."
Another object that the government had in view was to compel the people to
become silk-growers against their will. "Be it therefore enacted," says
the Legislature, "that every proprietor of land within the colony of
Virginia shall, for every hundred acres of land holden in fee, plant upon
the said land ten mulberry-trees at twelve feet distance from each other,
and secure them by weeding and a sufficient fence from cattle and horses."
Tobacco fines, as usual, were enacted in case the planting and weeding
were not duly performed according to the statute; and further:
There shall be allowed in the public levy to any one for
every pound of wound silk he shall make, fifty pounds of
tobacco, to be raised in the public levy, and paid in the
county or counties where they dwell that make it.
This act was passed in 1662, and probably continued in force for a long
time; but Virginia did not therefore become a silk-growing country, nor
has it yet, though many parts are well adapted to raise this commodity.
People, we presume, have hitherto found other things more profitable.
The following enactment is a mixture of the barbarous and the ludicrous:
Whereas many babbling women slander and scandalize their
neighbors, for which their poor husbands are often involved
in chargeable and vexatious suits, and cast in great
damages; be it therefore enacted, That in actions of
slander, occasioned by the wife, after judgment passed for
the damages, the woman shall be punished by ducking; and if
the slander be so enormous as to be adjudged at greater
damages than five hundred pounds of tobacco, then the woman
to suffer ducking for each five hundred pounds of tobacco
adjudged against the husband, if he refuses to pay the
tobacco.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF TROUBLE-SEEKING.
Adversity Has So Many Pleasant Uses That Most of the World's Inhabitants
Appear to be Unable to Wait Until It Comes to Them.
A very large proportion of the inhabitants of earth appear to take no
stock in that cheerful assurance, given in the Book of Job, that "Man is
born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward." They believe that man cannot
have trouble unless he looks for it.
"Seek and ye shall find" is their motto, and they seek trouble because
they are philosophers. Apparently Shakespeare was of their ilk, for he
said:
Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
Here are some advantages of adversity as pointed out by _Punch_:
You wear out your clothes.
You are not troubled with visitors.
You are exonerated from making calls.
Bores do not bore you.
Tax-gatherers hurry past your door.
Itinerant bands do not play opposite your windows.
You avoid the nuisance of serving on juries.
No one thinks of presenting you with a testimonial.
No tradesman irritates by asking, "Is there any other
article you wish to-day, sir?"
Impostors know it is no use to bleed you.
You practise temperance.
You swallow infinitely less poison than others.
Flatterers do not shoot their rubbish into your ears.
You are saved many a debt, many a deception, many a
headache.
And lastly, if you have a true friend in the world, you are
sure, in a very short space of time, to know it.
THE BIVOUAC OF THE DEAD.
BY THEODORE O'HARA.
Theodore O'Hara (1820-1867) has been said to have produced the one perfect
and universal martial elegy that the world has known. "The Bivouac of the
Dead" has been translated into almost every European language, and since
it was written, more than half a century ago, it has been almost as
popular in England as in the United States.
On the field on which was fought one of the most stubbornly contested
battles of the Crimean War is a large monument which bears the last four
lines of the first verse of O'Hara's poem, and over the gateway of the
National Cemetery at Arlington the whole first stanza is inscribed, while
there, as at Antietam and other national cemeteries, the entire poem is
produced, stanza by stanza, on slabs along the driveways.
O'Hara was a native of Kentucky, and served in the army during the war
with Mexico. He wrote "The Bivouac of the Dead" on the occasion of the
removal of the bodies of Kentucky soldiers from the field of the battle of
Buena Vista to their native State.
At the outbreak of the Civil War O'Hara entered the Confederate army as a
colonel. He died in Alabama in 1867, and his body was removed to Kentucky
and laid beside those of the soldiers he had commemorated.
The muffled drum's sad roll has beat
The soldier's last tattoo!
No more on life's parade shall meet
That brave and fallen few.
On fame's eternal camping ground
Their silent tents are spread,
And glory guards, with solemn round,
The bivouac of the dead.
No rumor of the foe's advance
Now swells upon the wind;
No troubled thought at midnight haunts
Of loved ones left behind;
No vision of the morrow's strife
The warrior's dream alarms;
No braying horn nor screaming fife
At dawn shall call to arms.
Their shivered swords are red with rust,
Their plumed heads are bowed,
Their haughty banner, trailed in dust,
Is now their martial shroud,
And plenteous funeral tears have washed
The red stains from each brow,
And the proud forms, by battle gashed,
Are free from anguish now.
The neighing troop, the flashing blade,
The bugle's stirring blast,
The charge, the dreadful cannonade,
The din and shout are passed;
Nor war's wild note nor glory's peal
Shall thrill with fierce delight
Those breasts that never more may feel
The rapture of the fight.
Like the fierce northern hurricane
That sweeps this great plateau,
Flushed with the triumph yet to gain,
Came down the serried foe,
Who heard the thunder of the fray
Break o'er the field beneath,
Knew well the watchword of that day
Was "Victory or death!"
Full many a norther's breath has swept
O'er Angostura's plain,
And long the pitying sky has wept
Above the moldering slain.
The raven's scream or eagle's flight
Or shepherd's pensive lay
Alone now wakes each sullen height
That frowned o'er that dread fray.
Sons of the Dark and Bloody Ground,
Ye must not slumber there,
Where stranger steps and tongues resound
Along the heedless air;
Your own proud land's heroic soil
Shall be your fitter grave;
She claims from war its richest spoil,
The ashes of her brave.
So 'neath their parent turf they rest,
Far from the gory field,
Borne to a Spartan mother's breast
On many a bloody shield;
The sunshine of their native sky
Smiles sadly on them here,
And kindred eyes and hearts watch by
The hero's sepulcher.
Rest on, embalmed and sainted dead!
Dear as the blood ye gave,
No impious footsteps here shall tread
The herbage of your grave.
Nor shall your glory be forgot
While fame her record keeps
Or honor points the hallowed spot
Where valor proudly sleeps.
Yon marble minstrel's voiceless stone
In deathless songs shall tell,
When many a vanished age hath flown,
The story how ye fell;
Nor wreck nor change nor winter's flight
Nor Time's remorseless doom
Can dim one ray of holy light
That gilds your glorious tomb.
Little Glimpses of the 19th Century.
The Great Events in the History of the Last One Hundred Years, Assembled
so as to Present a Nutshell Record.
[_Continued from page 163._]
THIRD DECADE.
1821
A congress of the European powers, held at Laibach, in Austria, determined
to suppress the liberal movement in Italy and to restore absolute rule in
Naples. King Ferdinand of Naples agreed, though he had recently sworn to
uphold the constitution. Austrian armies invaded Piedmont and Naples,
speedily crushed the revolutionary movement, and the leaders of the
popular party were shot or imprisoned.
Both in the Old World and in the New the year was one of political unrest.
Brazil rebelled against Portuguese rule, and Mexico, Peru, and Ecuador
against Spanish domination. Greece and the Christian tribesmen of the
Balkans rose against Turkey. In retaliation, Greeks in Constantinople were
strangled; Greek settlements on the Bosporus were wiped out; and the
Patriarch of Constantinople, head of the Greek Church, was hanged by the
Turks. Russia, on the point of declaring war against Turkey, was
restrained by England and Metternich. Both Greeks and Turks carried on a
war of indiscriminate slaughter.
Napoleon died at St. Helena, May 5, after nearly six years of captivity. A
curious feature of his will was his bequest of ten thousand francs to
Cantillon, who had attempted to assassinate Wellington. Queen Caroline of
England, wife of George IV, died; serious riots at her funeral. John
Keats, English poet, died.
In the United States, James Monroe began his second term as President.
Missouri was admitted to the Union. Arrangements were made to open the
territory of Liberia, on the west coast of Africa, as a colony for
freedmen. Amherst College and the Massachusetts General Hospital were
founded.
=POPULATION--Washington, D.C., 13,247; New York (including the boroughs
now forming Greater New York), 152,056; New York (Manhattan), 123,706;
London (Metropolitan District), 1,225,694; London (old city), 125,434;
United States (1820), 9,633,822; Great Britain and Ireland (1821),
20,893,584.=
=RULERS--United States, James Monroe; Great Britain, George IV; France,
Louis XVIII; Spain, Ferdinand VII; Prussia, Frederick William III; Russia,
Alexander I; Austria, Francis I; Pope Pius VII.=
1822
The Turks slaughtered some twenty-five thousand Greeks on the island of
Scio (Chios), and sold the surviving women and children into slavery.
Constantine Kanaris, unaided, burned the flag-ship of the Turkish fleet. A
Turkish army under Dramalis invaded the Grecian mainland, and reached
Corinth, but gained no decisive success. Other nations, in response to
popular sympathy for the Greeks, intervened to put an end to the war.
Spain disturbed by civil war; King Ferdinand VII imprisoned in his own
palace. Spanish efforts to reconquer the revolted colonies in South
America ended disastrously in the battle of Ayacucho, in which General
Sucre, a lieutenant of the great liberator Bolivar, decisively defeated
the Spaniards. Brazil became independent of Portugal by a peaceful
revolution, which set Dom Pedro, son of the Portuguese king, upon the
Brazilian throne with the title of emperor. General Iturbide proclaimed
himself Emperor of Mexico.
Percussion-caps invented. Cabs introduced in London, and their use
immediately spread. Aleppo, Syria, destroyed by an earthquake; twenty
thousand people killed. Percy Bysshe Shelley, English poet; Sir William
Herschel, astronomer; and Antonio Canova, Italian sculptor, died. Viscount
Castlereagh, British statesman, committed suicide.
=RULERS--The same as in the previous year.=
1823
Louis XVIII of France decided to invade Spain in order to maintain Bourbon
rule, which was threatened by the Spanish liberal movement; the Cortes
withdrew to Cadiz, which was besieged and captured by the French.
Ferdinand VII, being restored to absolute power, dissolved the Cortes,
despite all persuasion annulled the constitution, and implacably punished
by death, exile, or imprisonment all who had sided against him. The
struggle between the Greeks and the Turks continued with much desperate
fighting, but no decisive result. A notable episode of the war was the
gallant defense of Missolonghi by Markos Bozzaris. Central America
declared itself free from Spanish rule.
In the United States, 1823 is historically memorable as the year in which
President Monroe, in his annual message to Congress, enunciated the
so-called Monroe Doctrine, which has since been the keynote of American
foreign policy. First steam printing-press operated in New York; an
earlier attempt made by the London _Times_ was only partially successful.
Gaslight introduced in New York. The first boat passed through the Erie
Canal from Rochester to New York.
Richard Jenner, discoverer of vaccination, and David Ricardo, political
economist, died.
=RULERS--The same as in the previous year, except that Pope Pius VII died,
August 20, and was succeeded by Cardinai della Genga, who assumed the name
of Leo XII.=
1824
An Egyptian army, aiding the Sultan of Turkey--to whom Egypt was, and
nominally still is, a vassal state--landed in Crete, and nearly
exterminated the Greek population. It also captured the island of Kossos,
slaughtering most of the inhabitants, but on proceeding to attack Samos it
was repulsed and driven back to Crete. The Turks also captured Psara and
butchered or enslaved the whole population. The new independent states of
South America--Venezuela, New Granada (Colombia), Chile, Peru, and Buenos
Ayres (Argentina)--were formally recognized by the United States
government. In Mexico, the self-styled Emperor Iturbide was shot, and
Santa Anna established a republican government. The first Burmese War was
precipitated by Bundula, who invaded Bengal. He was repelled, and the
British captured Rangoon.
Lafayette revisited the United States and received a memorable welcome.
Robert Owen, the English Fourierist, founded a colony at New Harmony,
Indiana. First society for the prevention of cruelty to animals founded
in England. Portland cement invented by Joseph Aspden, of Leeds, England.
Lord Byron, English poet, died at Missolonghi, Greece, where he was
serving as a volunteer in the cause of Grecian liberty.
=RULERS--The same as in the previous year, except that Louis XVIII of
France died, and was succeeded by his brother, Charles X.=
1825
The Turks reduced much of the Grecian territory to a desert, and
slaughtered thousands of its inhabitants, the patriot forces having been
defeated and scattered. General European resentment was aroused by the
inhuman savagery of the Turks. The British forces decisively defeated the
Burmese, and added greatly to British territory on the eastern frontier of
India.
The first public steam railroad was opened in England, between Stockton
and Darlington, George Stephenson himself driving the engine. It was the
first thorough and practical test of the locomotive, though in 1813
William Hedley had partially succeeded at the Wyland colliery, and in 1814
Stephenson built an engine that made six miles an hour, but it proved
defective. After the success of the new road was undeniable, it was
difficult to persuade Parliament to sanction it.
In the United States, Congress decided the disputed Presidential election
in favor of John Quincy Adams, John Calhoun becoming Vice-President. John
Randolph and Henry Clay fought a resultless duel. Reorganization of United
States political parties, the Whigs lining up as supporters of President
Adams, with the Democrats, whose main strength lay in the South, as their
opponents.
The first boat came through the entire length of the Erie Canal, from
Buffalo to New York. Bunker Hill monument begun; Lafayette present;
Webster the orator of the day. Congress granted Lafayette two hundred
thousand dollars and a township site.
Mutiny of Russian troops at the coronation of Nicholas I put down after
much bloodshed. First steam voyage from England to India, by the Cape of
Good Hope route, eighty-five days out. Augustine Fresnel, French
scientist; Jacques Louis David, French historical painter; and Jean Paul
Richter, German author, died.
=RULERS--The same as in the previous year, except that Nicholas I
succeeded Alexander I as Czar of Russia, and John Quincy Adams succeeded
James Monroe as President of the United States.=
1826
Insurrection in Portugal against the infant queen, Maria da Gloria.
Insurgents defeated and fled to Spain; aid sent to Portugal by England.
The Russian Czar Nicholas began his reign by hanging or exiling to Siberia
those who stood for a liberal government and for popular education. The
Russians pushed forward in the direction of Persia, defeating the Persian
troops and annexing disputed territory. Nicholas demanded from Turkey the
autonomy of Servia, Moldavia, and Wallachia; Turkey, still occupied with
its Grecian troubles, yielded. In Greece, the Turks captured Missolonghi
and Athens, though the Acropolis of the latter city still held out.
Financial and industrial depression prevailed in England; machine-smashing
continued; friction matches perfected by John Walker; lime-light
discovered by Thomas Drummond; English state lotteries prohibited.
On July 4, while the people of the United States were celebrating the
semi-centennial of the Declaration of Independence, two signers of that
immortal document, both ex-Presidents, died--Thomas Jefferson and John
Adams. A violent anti-Masonic movement further disturbed the American
political situation. Bellevue Hospital founded in New York.
Froebel published "The Education of Man." Famous men dying in 1826 were
Lindley Murray, grammarian; John Flaxman, sculptor; Reginald Heber, Bishop
of Calcutta and hymn-writer; and Prince Rostopchin, by whose orders Moscow
was burned in 1812.
=RULERS--The same as in the previous year.=
1827
The revolt in Portugal finally suppressed, with the assistance of a
British army corps. The Acropolis at Athens captured by the Turks. Many
foreign volunteers joined the Greek forces, and England, Russia, and
France demanded that Turkey should agree to an armistice. As the Turks
refused, and continued their atrocities upon the helpless Greeks, Admiral
Codrington, commanding twenty-nine English, Russian, and French vessels,
attacked the Turkish and Egyptian fleets at Navarino--consisting of
seventy warships, forty transports, and four fire-ships--and utterly
destroyed them. The Sultan, however, remained obdurate, refusing all
demands, and insisting on an indemnity for his ships.
Popular discontent and anti-clerical riots in France; Charles X disbanded
the National Guard, and made ineffectual attempts to gag the press.
Joseph Smith, at Palmyra, New York, began to have visions that later
developed into Mormonism. Woehler, German chemist, discovered the metal
aluminum; Ohm made important discoveries concerning electric currents.
Famous men dying in this year were George Canning, English statesman;
Laplace, French astronomer; Ludwig van Beethoven, German musician; William
Blake, English poet and artist; and Alessandro Volta, Italian physicist.
=RULERS--The same as in the previous year.=
1828
Russia concluded peace with Persia, exacting an indemnity of twenty
million rubles and annexing two provinces. She now moved against Turkey,
where the Sultan Mahmoud had incited his people to a holy war. The
Russians won some early successes, but were hampered by poor commissariat
and transportation service, and could not pass the Turkish fortresses at
Silistria, Varna, and Shumla. Meanwhile a French force landed in Greece;
the Morea was evacuated by the Turks, and Greece became independent, with
Count Joannes Capo d'Istria, a Greek who had been foreign minister at St.
Petersburg, as president.
In the United States, Congress passed a bill establishing a protective
tariff. The North, formerly agricultural and in favor of free trade, had
turned to manufacturing, and, led by Webster, strenuously upheld
protection against the Southern leaders, once its advocates, now its
enemies. States rights discussions grew stronger. The first American steam
railroad constructed at Baltimore. Webster's Dictionary published.
Internal wars in Latin America. The Emperor of China sought to restrain
the English from carrying on the opium trade. Daniel O'Connell elected to
Parliament, but not permitted to sit, being a Roman Catholic. As a result,
however, a general sentiment in favor of Catholic emancipation developed
in England. British troops withdrawn from Portugal. Dom Miguel proclaimed
King of Portugal; absolutism supreme.
Famous people dying in 1828 were Franz Schubert, Viennese musician; Lady
Caroline Lamb, English author; Dugald Stewart, Scottish philosopher; and
Thomas Bewick, engraver.
=RULERS--The same as in the previous year.=
1829
In the Balkans, the Russian forces renewed the campaign against Turkey,
severely defeated the Turks at Kulevtcha, and captured Silistria and
Adrianople. Other European powers demanded peace, and on April 14 a treaty
was signed giving Russia a protectorate over the newly liberated Danubian
principalities, Turkey surrendering all fortified points on the left bank
of the Danube.
In the United States, President Jackson began his term by declaring that
"to the victors belong the spoils," and instantly removing one hundred and
sixty-seven appointees made by John Quincy Adams. Adams absented himself
from the inaugural ceremonies. Georgia and South Carolina, in the course
of their opposition to the tariff, maintained the right of the States to
nullify acts of Congress. Jackson involved in quarrels with his Cabinet.
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad opened.
The popular opposition to King Charles of France increased in intensity.
The Catholic Emancipation Act passed by the British Parliament. Capital
punishment for burglary abolished in England. The burning alive of widows
forbidden in India. Sir Charles Gurney invented a steam-driven omnibus,
the forerunner of the automobile. Sir John Ross, the British explorer,
made the first Arctic voyage in a steamship. Jean Baptiste de Lamarck,
French scientist; Karl von Schlegel, German scholar; and Thomas Young and
Sir Humphry Davy, English scientists, died.
=RULERS--The same as in the previous year, except that Andrew Jackson
became President of the United States, and Pope Leo XII died, February 10.
Cardinal Castiglione, his successor, took the name of Pius VIII.=
1830
France seized Algiers, despite English protests, thus laying the
foundation of her vast colonial empire in Africa. The liberals gained a
majority in the French chamber, and on an appeal to the people the
government was overwhelmingly defeated. On July 24 Charles X dissolved the
legislature and made Marshal Marmont commandant of Paris. Next day
barricades were thrown up in the streets, merchants, working men,
students, and soldiers joining in opposition to the government. Paris was
declared in a state of siege, but the Louvre and the Tuileries were
captured by the revolutionists. After vainly endeavoring to quiet the
country by concessions, Charles abdicated and fled to England. His cousin,
Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans, son of the so-called Philippe Egalité,
was crowned king.
Rebellion began in Brussels, and Holland and Belgium, which had been
united as one state since the downfall of Napoleon, formed separate
governments. Uprising in Spain against Ferdinand VII, because he had
abolished the Salic law, being without male issue and wishing his wife to
succeed him. Poland also rose against Russian domination, and set up a
provisional government. The Sultan of Turkey formally recognized the
independence of Greece.
In the United States Congress, nullification continued to be the absorbing
topic; Webster, speaking on it, made his famous oration in reply to Hayne,
of South Carolina (January 26, 27). Mormon Church organized at Manchester,
New York. First American-built locomotive operated at Baltimore. A portion
of Texas was claimed as United States territory by settlers living on the
Texan border; Congress refused to take action in the matter.
In England, the Duke of Wellington's ministry resigned, and was succeeded
by Earl Grey's. In the British colony of Van Diemen's Land--since renamed
Tasmania--the white inhabitants began a war of extermination upon the
natives. A cordon was drawn across the island, but failed to accomplish
the work. There was further political unrest in Germany; Duke Charles
Frederick of Brunswick was expelled from his dominions by a popular
uprising, and the people of Saxony forced their king, Antony, to promise
them a constitution.
Barthélemy Thimonnier, French tailor, introduced a practical chain-stitch
sewing-machine. Joseph Lister contributed greatly to the utility of the
microscope. Simon Bolivar, liberator of South America, and Sir Thomas
Lawrence, English painter, died.
=RULERS--United States, Andrew Jackson; Great Britain, George IV, died
June 26, succeeded by William IV; France, Charles X, deposed, succeeded by
Louis Philippe; Spain, Ferdinand VII; Prussia, Frederick William III;
Russia, Nicholas I; Austria, Francis I; Pope, Pius VIII, died March 31.
The Papacy remained vacant until the following year.=
FROM THE COUNTRY PRESS.
Crumbs of Wit, Wisdom, and History That Have Been Dropped by Rural
Scribes in Whose Hands Pens Are Mightier Than Swords.
A CANADIAN VIEW OF PUNCH.
A copy of _Punch's_ Almanac has been received at this office. It is
England's leading exponent of humor. A member of this great journal's
staff read it through carefully and studied every drawing. Then he went
outside and kicked at a strange dog. The English brand of humor is sedate
and stately. It is not intended to be laughed at. Laughter--that is, loud
laughter--is excessively rude, don't you know. _Punch's_ Almanac for 1906
is sixpen'orth of humor profundo. The man who would laugh at _Punch_ would
go into hysterics at a funeral. _Punch's_ notion of humor is altogether
too sublime for any place outside of an English drawing-room.--_Bobcaygeon
(Ontario) Independent._
CONCERNING MRS. TAYLOR.
Mrs. Herbert Taylor, who is a pleasant and estimable woman, and who can
bake the finest cake ever made, having sent us some, and, therefore,
making us a judge, and who has a family of nice, clean, polite children,
and who plays the piano beautifully, and gives lessons to a few fortunate
pupils in our little city, had a tooth pulled Friday.--_Waitesburg
(Missouri) Record._
A SUGGESTIVE FAREWELL.
An editor of a country paper thus humorously bids farewell to his readers:
"The sheriff is waiting for us in the next room, so we have no opportunity
to be pathetic. Major Nabbem says we are wanted and must go. Delinquent
subscribers, you have much to answer for. Heaven may forgive you, but we
never can."--_Western Exchange._
A QUIET NIGHT IN PLUSH.
A very pleasant surprise party was given at the 7T Ranch about a week ago,
at which every one had a very enjoyable time. Jeff Parish took all honors
for the best dancer. Another party was given at Plush last Friday night; a
large crowd attended and had a good time, without any fights. One or two
bluffs were stirred about, but no hard blows were cast.--_Plush
correspondence Lakeview Examiner._
FASHION NOTES IN ARIZONA.
Every symptom points to a tendency to spread of style in Tombstone. Among
other instances in this direction, the boys bought a pair of beautiful
barber-pole suspenders and presented them to the amiable dispenser who
shoves the amber extract of cheerfulness over the mahogany of the Parlor
Saloon. He promptly donned the innovation, but claimed that he felt like
he had a fence-rail on each shoulder. Then, when they became
overburdensome, he would unbutton them and permit them to dangle in front,
but he finally got them down fine enough to go to church in. Several
old-timers, conspicuously court attendants from the other end of the
county, have fallen into the habit of wearing boiled shirts, and it looks
as if sky-blue overalls might be discarded as a full-dress costume.
Getting "powerful tony" in town nowadays.--_Tombstone (Arizona)
Prospector._
MULE PAWNED FOR LICENSE.
James Richardson, of Roger Mills County, tendered a mule to-day as a
chattel to a Cheyenne money-lender in order to get funds with which to get
a marriage license and pay the preacher. He had ridden the mule
in--eighteen miles--and expected to walk back home in time for the
wedding.--_Guthrie (Oklahoma) Gazette._.
THE REASON.
Our fat friend, Henry Bowles, fell off his front porch Sunday, but was not
injured. He landed on his stomach.--_Leedsville (Colorado) Light._
IT WONT HAPPEN AGAIN.
Miss Mills, the school-teacher, asked for her salary last Friday night. Of
course it created much surprise, but as it was her first offense, the
board have decided to give her another trial.--_Grafton (North Dakota)
Record._
GATHER YE ROSEBUDS.
A Famous English Lyric of the Seventeenth Century.
BY ROBERT HERRICK.
Robert Herrick (1591-1674) has long been known to fame as a writer of some
of the most graceful lyrics in the English language. "Merrie England" has
had many a laughter-loving parson who, peeping over his Book of Common
Prayer, has been unable to resist the temptation to flirt with muses who
have been rather more at home in ballrooms, studios, and old-world taverns
than in the atmosphere of a country parsonage, but that black-garbed
company never sent forth a singer with a lilt so free or a heart so light
as Robert Herrick's.
Of Herrick's life comparatively little is known. He took his degree at
Cambridge in 1620, and in 1629 Charles I made him vicar of Dean Prior, in
Devonshire. From this position he was ousted about the beginning of the
Cromwell regime. He went to London then and published "Hesperides," a book
of verses. There, it is supposed, he lived a bohemian sort of existence
until he was returned to his Dean Prior living by Charles II. He continued
there until he died at the age of eighty-four.
This old-time Devonshire vicar was a great worshiper at the shrine of
feminine beauty, and was a fond lover of his garden and ale-tankard as
well. Like Omar Khayyám, he believed in making hay while the sun shone,
and it is this spirit that pervades the exquisite verses which are
published herewith.
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles to-day,
To-morrow will be dying.
The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he's a-getting.
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he's to setting.
That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer:
But being spent the worse and worst
Times still succeed the former.
Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may go marry;
For having lost but once your prime,
You may forever tarry.
The Beginnings of Stage Careers.
BY MATTHEW WHITE, JR
A Series of Papers That Will Be Continued from Month to Month
and Will Include All Players of Note.
LACKAYE NEARLY A PRIEST.
On the Way to Rome to Prepare Himself
for Holy Orders He Was Stricken
with Stage Fever.
It is an interesting coincidence that Eben Plympton, now playing a bishop
in "The Duel," should have been the unconscious means of keeping a young
man out of the priesthood. It was away back in the early days of the
Madison Square Theater, when "Esmeralda" was having its big run at that
little playhouse and Plympton, as the hero, was a matinée favorite.
In the audience one day was a youth with big gray eyes, which were riveted
in charmed attention on Plympton's every movement. The young man was with
his father, and was on his way from his home in Washington to Rome, to
attend there the school for acolytes, which was to pave the way for him to
become a priest. His tomblike cell had already been selected for his
occupancy, and, meantime, until the steamer sailed for Havre, the boy was
going to the theater every night in New York with his father. He went in
the afternoons, too, whenever there was a matinée.
"I wish the theaters were open in the morning," he said one day to his
father, who began to wonder whether his son had not mistaken his vocation.
After this they went to see "Esmeralda," and then the sixteen-year-old
youth issued his proclamation in these words:
"I have a vocation, but it is for the stage."
"Your vocation is the padded cell," replied his father tersely.
Trip to Rome Abandoned.
But they did not sail for Rome via Havre or any other way, but returned to
Washington, and here Wilton Lackaye--for it was he--by way of compromise,
began to study law. He gratified his theatrical cravings by joining an
amateur dramatic club, of which he was speedily elected president, and
which was known as the Lawrence Barrett Society.
Barrett himself was once induced to attend one of the performances, and he
asked the young president if he wanted to go on the stage. This was like
fire to gunpowder, and Mr. Barrett engaged him for utility work at twenty
dollars a week.
The season ran for thirty weeks, so that he received for this period six
hundred dollars. As he was obliged to buy his own costumes, and as they
cost him seven hundred and twenty dollars in all, he discovered that the
only way he could make money out of that company was to be discharged from
it. However, his mother helped him. His father hadn't spoken to his son
since he went on the stage.
After leaving the Barrett troupe, he went to New York to get another job.
As an excuse to visit the agents' offices several times a day he used to
write letters to himself in their care. As he was walking out with the
letters, he would stop when near the door, and inquire over his shoulder,
as though by an afterthought:
"Oh, by the way, have you anything for me to-day?"
He kept this up until the usual "Nothing," in the way of reply, was one
day changed to:
"I think there is."
This "find" took him to a stock company in Dayton, Ohio, and after that he
went from one company to another until he began to find solid footing at
last with Fanny Davenport as _Claudio_ in "Much Ado About Nothing." His
first big success was in the title role of "Paul Kauvar" with Rose
Coghlan.
Compliment for Brady.
His first part with Lawrence Barrett was one of _Paolo's_ friends in
"Francesca da Rimini," done at the Star Theater, New York--now pulled
down--in 1883. He was born in Virginia.
When he comes to play in "Les Misérables" this spring, and has so much to
do with the priest in the story, I wonder if he will think many times of
what might have been his career had he not gone to the theater so often
while waiting for that ship to sail, back there in his 'teens!
Apropos of the production of "Les Misérables," Lackaye was asked some
years ago if he had yet found a manager to bring it out for him.
"Bring it out?" he repeated. "I have yet to find one who can pronounce
it."
Which, now, in the sequel, is an implied compliment for William A. Brady.
At one stage of his career, Lackaye's chief claim to distinction was his
refusal, while a member of Daly's company, to accept a part to which Mr.
Daly had assigned him. The part was _Oliver_ in "As You Like It," given to
him after he had made a hit as _O'Donnell Don_ in "The Great Unknown."
It was the joking remark made at the time, that for the _Oliver_ Mr. Daly
offered him, Lackaye handed him a _Roland_ in the shape of his
resignation.
ROYLE TOOK MANY BUFFETS.
Author of "The Squaw Man" Has a Run
of Ill-Luck to Thank for His
Success as a Playwright.
Edwin Milton Royle, author of "The Squaw Man," is another of that
countless army brought up to the law and who sidetracked themselves to the
stage. He spent his youth in a place that seems to breed actors so
freely--Salt Lake City--where he attended the same Presbyterian school as
Maude Adams. He is now on the sunny side of fifty, having graduated from
Princeton in 1883.
Amateur theatricals at college are responsible for the lure that drew him
to the professional footlights. After Princeton he went to continue his
studies in Edinburgh, and there he took prominent part in a great
performance of the students that had among its spectators some of the most
prominent men in Great Britain.
On his return to America he set about studying law in New York, but he did
not really settle down to it. The inclination toward the stage had by this
time become too strong to be resisted. He began to make a tour of the
manager's offices in search of an opening.
In this he had no better luck than usually falls to the lot of the
unknown. Men in power along the Rialto did not know what he could do, and
it was not to be expected that many of them would take the time to let him
prove his abilities. At last, however, he secured, through Eugene W.
Presbrey, an interview with the late A.M. Palmer, who gave him the small
part of the boy in "Young Mrs. Winthrop," at the Madison Square Theater.
From that he drifted to other small parts in the company of Edwin Booth,
while the latter was at the Fifth Avenue Theater, and the next season he
was with Booth and Barrett during their engagement at the Broadway.
Short on Words.
"You can imagine the nature of my rôles," said Mr. Royle, in relating to
me this portion of his career, "by the following incident: At the end of
the season it was decided to bring out a souvenir of the engagement, with
signatures by all the people in the company. Each signature was to be
accompanied by a line from his or her part. When it came my turn to write,
my part was so short that all I had to say in the piece went down as my
contribution, in the shape of--
"'Oh, Cæsar! No, by no means!'"
And here began the apparent strokes of ill luck which in the end have
proved blessings in disguise. The first one was the failure of Mrs. Potter
to come to this country for a tour on one occasion when Royle had been
engaged in her support. He did not know that he was free until September,
when it was too late to seek other positions.
Thrown out of a job, he turned his attention to playwriting, having at one
time thought seriously of taking up literature as a profession. He wrote
"Friends," and brought it out in New York the next summer, with a capital
furnished by a Western uncle.
The play made a hit after a rather slow start, and he played it on the
road for some seasons, following it with another, "Captain Impudence," and
later by a farce, "My Wife's Husbands." The latter made a decided hit, but
Mr. Royle was unable to obtain road bookings for it owing to a glut of
attractions kept out of New York by the unfinished condition of two
theaters which should have been ready for them. Shows booked for them,
with companies all engaged, had to be placed somewhere pending the
completion of the Lyceum and the Hudson, so that the dates were all filled
by the time it was known that "My Wife's Husbands" had caught on. In this
crisis, Nat Goodwin, who had just come a cropper with a new offering of
his own, rose up and bought the rights to the play, but failed to make
good in the part himself and shelved it after two weeks' trial.
Meanwhile, one night when he couldn't sleep, Royle got to thinking about
the Indians he used to see when a boy at the Indian reservation not far
from Salt Lake. And then there formed in his mind the germ idea of "The
Squaw Man"--the Englishman tied to the Indian wife when the way was clear
for him otherwise to go back home.
The next morning he told his wife--Selena Fetter--of the scheme, adding
that he thought of making a play out of it.
"Oh, don't," she begged him. "Can't you think of something pleasanter? You
know 'Friends' gained all its success out of the comedy there was in it."
So he did nothing in the matter then, but later, when he was asked to
write a skit for the Lambs' Gambol, he used this idea for a short piece,
which went so well that it was used afterward at the annual public gambol,
where it repeated its hit.
Royle was now in vaudeville, having cut down "Captain Impudence" to the
required time limits. He decided to follow this with "The Squaw Man," and
here is where once more his good luck in the guise of bad stepped upon the
scene.
A Fortunate Rejection.
The vaudeville managers refused positively to consider a sketch containing
more than four people; Royle could not cut "The Squaw Man" to fewer than
ten. Had either he or they given way, the four-act play that has proved
one of the big New York hits of the season might have remained a sketch
and spent its life on the road, instead of tarrying for six months on
Broadway.
In this deadlock it occurred to Royle that he would expand the play and
try it in a new field, but even after this was done he failed to find a
purchaser. Nat Goodwin, to whom he sent it first, turned it down, and
Charles Frohman could not read it within the time limit set.
But Royle had active agents in his brother actors, who had seen the thing
in its Lambs' Club performance, and who were all anxious to play the
leading part. Whenever they got the chance they spoke of the piece to
their respective managers, and in this way Royle finally got four of these
gentlemen to consent to listen to a reading of the play. The result was
the purchase of the rights by Mr. Tyler, of the Liebler Company, on terms
which have netted Mr. Royle royalties amounting close to a thousand
dollars a week.
HOPPER WAS AN "ANGEL."
The Tall Comedian Exchanged His Inheritance
for a Bowl of Thespian Pottage,
but Doesn't Regret It.
De Wolf Hopper's father was a Philadelphia lawyer, and it was intended
that Will (his real name) should follow in the paternal footsteps so far
as his career was concerned. And, by the way, more men have turned away
from the sheepskin to the footlights than from any other one vocation.
Reckon them up and you would have a sufficiency of leading men to outfit
plays for every theater in New York, oversupplied as that city is with
them.
But to return to Hopper.
At the crucial period, the elder Hopper died and the son inherited some
money. As there were no automobiles in those days for him to blow it in
on, he invested in a much more foolish and infinitely more hazardous
luxury--a dramatic company of his own. He had the itch to act, and, being
unable to get on the stages controlled by others, he decided that now was
his chance to manage a stage of his own.
And what do you suppose he sent himself out in? Nothing less than
Robertson's "Caste," with "little Willie" as _Eccles_! Of course the
troupe went to smash, but young Hopper had tasted of the life, and there
was no staying him now, not even the Quaker blood in his veins. As a
matter of fact, the gulf that was dug between himself and his family in
those days has never been bridged, a rare exception nowadays, when even
the most austere stand ready to forgive theatrical connection--provided
the prodigal has sown success along with his wild oats.
The boy--he was scarcely out of his 'teens--contrived to obtain a job as
_Pittacus Green_ in "Hazel Kirke," and a song he sang off stage inspired
Annie Louise Cary with the belief that he might do well in opera. He
actually studied for some time with the Metropolitan in view, and then
compromised by taking the barytone part with McCaull in the Sousa opera,
"Desirée." Mark Smith fell ill at a critical moment, and, as it is easier
to replace a singer than a comedian, Hopper was put in his place, and has
worked his legs and his antics in excess of his singing voice ever since.
He began his career as a star in "Castles in the Air," not much of a
success, but followed it with "Wang," which set him on his feet good and
hard.
"Wang" lasted him two seasons, and he followed it with "Panjandrums," to
my mind a far more entertaining hodge-podge of music and nonsense. In that
view the public did not agree with me, for Hopper lost several thousand
dollars in pushing the thing to a long run in New York. After that he
became _Dr. Syntax_ in a musical version of "Cinderella at School," which
he soon exchanged for the biggest hit in his career--"El Capitan."
MISS ALLEN BEGAN AT TOP.
Essayed Rôle of Leading Woman at Sixteen
in a Play in Which Her Real
and Stage Father Were One.
In one sense of the term, Viola Allen never began at all. She plunged
right into the midst of her career. To put it differently, she has been a
leading woman from the first time she set foot upon the stage.
Her father and mother were both in the profession. Her father, C. Leslie
Allen, is acting yet, being with his daughter in "The Toast of the Town."
He was doing the father--a specialty of his--in "Esmeralda" at the Madison
Square Theater, when Annie Russell, the leading woman, fell ill.
Viola Allen was at that time barely sixteen--just the age of the
character. She had been about the theater a good deal with her father, and
in the sudden emergency it was suggested that she should play the part.
"They came to me with the proposition," said Miss Allen, in describing the
incident, "and I was so absorbed in the story that I began with all
eagerness to study the part, without seeming to realize all that it meant
to play it. I shall never forget my sensations on that first night when I
walked out on the stage in response to the cue, which, as it happens, was
given to me by my own father.
"At rehearsals, of course, the auditorium had been dark and empty. Now it
was a glow of light and a sea of faces. This is what I should have
expected, but somehow I had failed to do so, and now, being confronted
with the thing, my wits seemed to fail me.
"My lines went from my memory, but luckily I did not have to speak them
until I was close to my father. He, realizing that I must have stage
fright, whispered the words to me, and as soon as I heard them I was all
right again. I plunged back into my absorption in the story I was helping
to depict, and went through to the end without any further trouble."
With "Joe" Jefferson.
After her term in "Esmeralda," Miss Allen played Shakespeare leads with
John McCullough and the elder Salvini, and then became first assistant to
Joseph Jefferson in "The Rivals" and "The Heir at Law." From this she
passed under the management of Charles Frohman, and helped lay the
foundations of his fortunes, along with Henry Miller, in "Shenandoah," and
from its second season and for many years thereafter these two were
closely identified with the conspicuous position won for the stock company
at the Empire, where Miss Allen's _Rosamund_ in "Sowing the Wind" took the
town by storm.
In this connection, it is an odd circumstance that the part Miss Allen
most enjoyed playing in the whole Empire list was that of _Audrie Lisden_
in Henry Arthus Jones's "Michael and his Lost Angel," a play that ran for
only twelve nights in New York, and had been no more successful in London.
Miss Allen handed in her resignation from the company after the production
of "The Conquerors," a play of which she wholly disapproved, and she was
then starred by the Lieblers in "The Christian," the dramatizing of which
was her own suggestion, and from which several people reaped fortunes.
When, three years ago, she deliberately cut loose from the Hall Caine type
of drama in order to follow her own personal inclinations and take up
Shakespeare, she was looked upon almost as a martyr to the cause of art.
Monotony the Bane of the Footlights.
And yet the outcome would seem to prove that she was only a shrewd woman
of good common sense, after all. Her managers followed "The Eternal City"
with Hall Caine's "Prodigal Son," and lost mighty sums upon it.
It is interesting to recall that before Miss Allen finally decided on "The
Christian" with which to inaugurate her stellar career she was minded to
use a version of Longfellow's "Courtship of Miles Standish". She is very
bookishly inclined, and has said that there are two things she prefers to
acting--to be an author or to serve as a trained nurse.
Nine years ago, when she was at the height of her success at the Empire,
she was asked by a certain paper to state what in her opinion was the one
drawback to the full enjoyment of life on the stage, and her prompt answer
was "Monotony, the deadly routine engendered by the long run."
WILSON CAME WITH CLOGS.
Comedian Might Have Gone in for Tragedy
Had the Wind Not Blown His
Credentials Into a River.
According to a story current some years since, which may or may not be a
press-agent yarn, the only reason Francis Wilson is not a tragedian is
because a gust of wind blew into the Schuylkill his letter of introduction
to the late E.L. Davenport. Like Hopper, Wilson is a native of
Philadelphia, where he was born in 1854. The nimbleness of his legs sent
him to the stage, where he began as a clog-dancer with a minstrel troupe
in the farce, "The Virginia Mummy."
It was during this engagement that he conceived the ambition for the
legitimate and obtained from his manager the letter to Davenport, which
blew out of his hand as he was reading it on a bridge in Fairmount Park.
He claims he hadn't the courage to ask for another one, but struck out for
better things later on in a different direction. But this was after he had
formed a partnership with James Mackin, with whom he toured the country as
one of a song-and-dance team. The two played a long engagement in New York
with the San Francisco Minstrels at their "opera house," now the Princess
Theater.
Instructor in Fencing.
Around the Centennial year he returned to Philadelphia and set about
realizing his aspirations by obtaining an engagement in very small parts
at Mrs. John Drew's Arch Street Theater. This brought him in only ten
dollars a week against the fifty he had been getting for clog work. But he
made himself popular with the members of the company, and eked out his pay
by giving them lessons in fencing and boxing, arts in which he was
specially proficient. Indeed, he had just won in a contest, at what is now
Madison Square Garden, the title of amateur champion swordsman of America.
These friends in the Drew company aided him in obtaining better parts,
and the next year he was engaged as utility man at the Chestnut Street
Theater, which then had a stock company. A year with Annie Pixley and
another as the _Baron_ in "Our Goblins" brought him up to his engagement
as comedian by McCaull for the Casino troupe, where he made his notable
hit as _Cadeaux_, one of the two thieves in "Erminie."
It was but natural that his prodigious success should suggest the idea to
Wilson of striking out for himself. He had saved a great deal of money,
and the year after Hopper became a star Wilson launched out at the same
theater--the Broadway--in "The Oolah."
Snatched Victory from Defeat.
The curtain fell on what even the actors were forced to admit to
themselves and one another was a failure. Gloom thick as night pervaded
the region behind. For a while Wilson sat there with his head in his
hands; then his indomitable courage asserted itself, and he sprang up with
the exclamation:
"We have got to make this go. Let's get to work at it."
His company stood nobly by him. His leading woman, Marie Jansen, and the
other principals, begged him not to consider them in the alterations, but
to give the public more of himself. With much cutting and slashing of the
book and innumerable rehearsals, the thing was whipped into shape, and
turned out one of the successes of the season. It was followed the next
year by "The Merry Monarch," which placed Wilson securely on the throne he
continued to occupy until last year, when he decided to step down--or
rather up, as no doubt he would prefer to put it, from musical to straight
comedy.
Apropos of Wilson's beginnings, a well-known writer on dramatic topics was
"reminiscing" some time since, and recalled the wigging he had received in
his early days--along in '72 or '73--when he was a very young city editor
of the Buffalo _Evening Post_. He had gone to Dan Shelby's Terrace
Theater, and devoted considerable space the next day to praising the work
of two men who took part in the variety show there current, and it was for
this eulogy he had been called down by his chief. One of the men was
Denman Thompson, who was using "Uncle Josh" in its crude, one-act form;
the other was Francis Wilson, who was doubling song and dance with Jimmie
Mackin.
TWO IMMORTAL HYMNS.
Interesting Stories of the Origin of World-famous Sacred Lyrics Which Have
Been Sung in Every Country on the Globe.
The two favorite hymns, "Lead, Kindly Light," and "Abide With Me," were
each written in circumstances which lend them peculiar significance. In
1833 John Henry Newman, afterward Cardinal Newman, left England in extreme
ill-health. "My servant thought I was dying," he relates, "and begged for
my last directions. I gave them as he wished; but I said: 'I shall not
die, for I have not sinned against light, I have not sinned against
light!' I never have been able to make out at all what I meant." This was
just before he started upon his journey. He was still in a very feeble
state, suffering from bodily weakness and mental depression, when one June
evening he was becalmed in an orange-boat on the Mediterranean, in sight
of Garibaldi's home on the island of Caprera. As he lay there he composed
the beautiful hymn "Lead, Kindly Light."
Did the language of his fevered mind flash back upon him as he saw the
shore lights on Caprera? The lights led the boat safely to harbor, and he
returned to England. The mental darkness with which he had been struggling
also cleared for him, for it was just after his return that the Oxford
Movement began. He was a leader in that movement until he went over to the
Church of Rome in 1845.
Henry Francis Lyte, curate of Brixham, in Devonshire, England, from 1823
until his death, in 1847, wrote many "hymns for his little ones, and hymns
for his hardy fishermen, and hymns for sufferers like himself." His health
declined as the years passed, and it was seen that the climate of the
Devon coast was too harsh for his frail constitution. But he was loath to
leave his parishioners, and, lingering at his post, could not be persuaded
to go to Italy until it was too late for the change to save him.
He held a last communion service and delivered his solemn, pathetic
parting words. Then, dragging himself wearily to his room, he wrote the
hymn "Abide With Me," a most affecting expression of the faith of a dying
man. Not long afterward he died at Nice, France. Of all his hymns, "Abide
With Me" is best remembered. Like "Lead, Kindly Light," it is a hymn of
comfort and help. Always the most helpful words have come from those who
have themselves most felt the need of help.
LEAD, KINDLY LIGHT.
BY CARDINAL NEWMAN.
Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom;
Lead thou me on!
The night is dark and I am far from home;
Lead thou me on!
Keep thou my feet! I do not ask to see
The distant scene--one step's enough for me.
I was not ever thus, nor prayed that thou
Shouldst lead me on.
I loved to choose and see my path, but now
Lead thou me on!
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,
Pride ruled my will. Remember not past years.
So long thy power has blest me, sure it still
Will lead me on
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone.
And with the morn those angel faces smile
Which I have loved long since and lost awhile.
ABIDE WITH ME.
BY HENRY FRANCIS LYTE.
Abide with me! Fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens: Lord, with me abide!
When other helpers fail, and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me!
Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day;
Earth's joys grow dim, its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see:
O thou, who changest not, abide with me!
Not a brief glance I beg, a passing word,
But as thou dwell'st with thy disciples, Lord,
Familiar, condescending, patient, free--
Come, not to sojourn, but abide, with me!
Come not in terrors, as the King of kings;
But kind and good, with healing in thy wings,
Tears for all woes, a heart for every plea:
Come, Friend of sinners, and thus bide with me!
Thou on my head in early youth didst smile;
And, though rebellious and perverse meanwhile,
Thou hast not left me, oft as I left thee:
On to the close, O Lord, abide with me!
I need thy presence every passing hour.
What but thy grace can foil the Tempter's power?
Who like thyself my guide and stay can be?
Through cloud and sunshine, oh, abide with me!
I fear no foe with thee at hand to bless:
Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness.
Where is death's sting? where, grave, thy victory?
I triumph still, if thou abide with me.
Hold thou thy cross before my closing eyes;
Shine through the gloom, and point me to the skies.
Heaven's morning breaks, and earth's vain shadows flee:
In life and death, O Lord, abide with me!
FROM THE LIPS OF ANANIAS.
A Collection of Tales for Which Belief is Respectfully Solicited, But
Which Sophisticated Readers are Likely to Cite as Evidence of the Fact
That Truth Has Lost Much of Her Youthful Charm and Many Admirers.
SPEAKING OF FLOODS.
An old soldier, whose cherished name was that of two of our presidents,
died here in Washington recently, and his passing reminds me of a story I
once heard him tell. Veteran of '61 as he was, he had listened patiently
to the very long story a youthful veteran of the Spanish War told. The
account of hardships left him unmoved.
"Just after the Johnstown flood, my boy," said he, "there was a man in the
next world who went about telling everybody how that Johnstown affair had
sent him where he was.
"His listeners hung on his words--all of them, that is, except a quiet
looking little man who seemed so little impressed that every time the
Johnstown man got through he merely looked bored and said, 'Oh, shucks!'
"The Johnstown man got tired of it after a while. It got on his nerves to
have anybody act as if what happened at Johnstown wasn't of any
importance. No matter how he told his story, the quiet looking little man
merely said, 'Oh, shucks.'
"At last the Johnstown man spoke to a fellow who had been there a long
time about it.
"'Say,' said he, 'who is that little man who keeps saying "shucks?"'
"'Who?' said the man who had been there a long time. 'Do you mean the
fellow over there? Why his name's Noah.'"--_Washington Post._
STRONG WATER.
Mr. Edison was once asked to send a phonographic cylinder to a fair. He
sent this reply:
"You ask me to send you a phonographic cylinder and to say a few words to
the audience. I do not think the audience would take any interest in dry
scientific subjects, but perhaps they might be interested in a little
story that a man sent me on a phonographic cylinder the other day from San
Francisco. In the year 1873 a man from Massachusetts came to California
with a chronic liver complaint. He searched all over the coast for a
mineral spring to cure the disease, and finally he found, down in the San
Joaquin valley, a spring the waters of which almost instantly cured him.
He therefore started a sanitarium, and people all over the world came and
were quickly cured. Last year this man died, and so powerful had been the
action of the waters that they had to take his liver out and kill it with
a club.--EDISON."--_Woman's Home Companion._
A SILVER-PLATED CAT.
A remarkable freak of lightning occurred some time ago near the small
village of New Salem, Vermont. Arent S. Vandyck occupies an old mansion,
in the parlor of which hung a collection of Revolutionary swords, one of
which was heavily plated with silver. On the night in question a terrific
thunderstorm burst, and one particularly heavy crash stunned every one in
the house.
Quickly recovering, the family hastened to see what damage had been done.
Suddenly the youngest Vandyck pointed to an old-fashioned sofa. There lay
what seemed to be a silver cat, curled up as comfortable as could be. Each
glittering hair was separate and distinct, and each silvery bristle of the
whiskers described as graceful a curve as if in life.
Turning to the sword on the wall just above the sofa, father and son
remarked that the plated sword had been stripped of all its silver, the
scabbard was a strip of blackened steel and the hilt had gone altogether.
The family cat had been electroplated by lightning. A round hole in the
window-pane, about the size of a half-crown, showed where the electric
fluid had entered. There was a charred streak showing the path of the
lightning as it made its way to the sword, down which it passed to the
sofa, carrying with it the fused silver, which it scientifically deposited
on that magnetic animal, the cat.
Of course, the cat was instantly killed, and therefore remained in the
position in which the lightning found her peacefully sleeping. It is
thought the plating of the cat's surface will prevent decay, and that she
may be retained permanently among the family curiosities. Local
scientists, the Bostonians say, are quite puzzled by the occurrence, and
the electroplated cat is being investigated by a member of the Albany
Institute.--_Newtowne Calendar._
A SUPERSENSITIVE HEN.
"Yas," declared a new man on the country court jury, to his companions the
other noon, "I maintain that hens has souls jest as does human bein's.
Mebbe not all on 'em, but now an' then you strike a bird that has
reasonin' faculties an' feelin' an' 'motions jest as you an' me. They has
their joys and their sorrers. So, I says, they has souls. Now here's
proof.
"I had a fine Plymouth Rock what was a master layer. When th' other hens
was takin' a vacation she was 'tendin' ter business an' layin' aigs. Well,
one day she come out a-cacklin' an' I went in ter git th' aig.
"It 'pears that while she was tellin' me about it, my boy, Willum, took
th' aig an' put a hard-boiled one in its place. Did it fer a joke on me,
ye know. I noticed the aig looked kinder queer an' cracked her open. Well,
if ever ye see a hen look dumfounded! She thought she'd layed it.
"I thought nothin' 'bout it till I looked down, an' hanged if she wasn't
cryin'. Big tears was rollin' down her furrered cheeks an' I tried ter
tell her that she was all right, that 'twas some of Willum's horseplay,
but she jest sighed kinder human like an' walked slowly off. Th' next day
she didn't lay, but moped 'round the' yard sad an' homesick like. Well, it
went on fer a week an' still nary an aig.
"Then I noticed she was quittin' th' feed I was givin' her, an' tryin' ter
pick up a livin'. She had a conscience, ye see, an' wouldn't eat boughten
food 'less she could repay me in the right kind of aigs.
"She knowed she wan't looked to ter lay hard-boiled aigs as she thought
she'd done. 'Father,' says Willum one day, 'I guess we're goin' ter lose
that hen. She's thinkin' up something desperate. I just caught her 'xamin'
a scythe out back of th' barn.'
"Well, we tried our best ter cheer her up, but 'twan't no use. One day I
found her in the tool-house, dead. She had dragged her neck across a
scythe, cuttin' her throat.
"Over in one corner was a aig jest left ter show me that she intended ter
do what's right. But if ever I see'd a clear case of suicide, her death
was one. So, I says, some' hens has feelin's jest as does a human bein',
an' therefore I 'low they has souls."--_Rochester Post-Express._
PEWTER'S INDUSTRIAL BUGS.
Silas Pewter, of Hendricks township, Chautauqua County, who discovered the
adamant bug, is getting rich fast off his discovery. It was in August when
he discovered the bugs, and several weeks had passed away before he could
get things shaped up to "colonize" them properly.
He now has at least a dozen different "herds" of them. Some are removing
the stone from fields for farmers by eating it into sand and letting it go
back into the soil when the ground is plowed. Pewter gets two dollars an
acre for this.
One herd is working on the road in Harrison township cutting the rock out
of the hills. Several herds are at work in the sandpaper factory between
Elgin and Hewins.
Mr. Pewter says his sandpaper mill has paid well, but thinks he will close
it down during the spring months because so many road overseers want the
bugs for spring road-work.
He says he is about to close a contract with the Santa Fé for the
mastication of the big boulders along its tracks west of Elgin. This, he
says, will give the bugs work all season.--_Kansas City Journal._
A HAIR-RAISING TALE.
"The 'beauty doctor' told a good story about her hair-restorer," said a
well-known Akron business man Monday, "but I know a better one. With
several other men I was associated, several years ago, in the manufacture
of a restorer. We had a fakir selling the remedy, and this was one of his
tales:
"'A woman came to me the other day for her eighth bottle. She said she
liked the taste of it so well. I was frightened and took her into a
private office and told her to show me her tongue. She stuck it out and
there was a half-inch of hair on it. To keep from hurting the business we
had to feed her camphor balls all that summer to keep the moth out of her
stomach.'"--_Akron (Ohio) Times-Democrat._
The Stolen Letter.
BY WILKIE COLLINS.
William Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) was the son of an English
portrait painter. As a young man he engaged in commerce, but
later studied law and was admitted to the bar. His own
tastes, however, inclined him to literature; and even while
in business life he wrote a historical romance, "Antonina."
Becoming acquainted with Dickens, he was encouraged by the
latter to give up his profession and devote himself entirely
to novel writing. Dickens at that time was editor of the
magazine called _Household Words_; and in its pages there
were published the short stories by Collins, afterward
collected into a volume entitled "After Dark," from which
the accompanying selection is taken.
In another magazine, also edited by Dickens--_All the Year
Round_--Collins scored his first great success with the
serial story "The Woman in White," which was read with the
keenest interest by tens of thousands. In it Collins showed
himself to be a great master of construction. The plot was
so intricate as to hold the reader in suspense until the
end; while the mystery and horror of certain parts of it
were masterly in their execution. Collins, in fact, ranks in
English with Gaboriau in French for the ingenuity with which
he elaborates a plot; and this special gift is seen also in
"Armadale," "The Moonstone," and "No Name."
For a long while his stories were almost as widely read as
those of Dickens himself; and in 1873, like Dickens, he
visited the United States, where he gave readings of his own
short stories. The narrative printed here is an excellent
example of the skill with which Collins piques and sustains
one's interest even within the space of a few short pages.
I served my time--never mind in whose office--and I started in business
for myself in one of our English country towns, I decline stating which. I
hadn't a farthing of capital, and my friends in the neighborhood were poor
and useless enough, with one exception. That exception was Mr. Frank
Gatliffe, son of Mr. Gatliffe, member for the county, the richest man and
the proudest for many a mile round about our parts.
Stop a bit, Mr. Artist, you needn't perk up and look knowing. You won't
trace any particulars by the name of Gatliffe. I am not bound to commit
myself or anybody else by mentioning names. I have given you the first
that came into my head.
Well, Mr. Frank was a stanch friend of mine, and ready to recommend me
whenever he got the chance. I had contrived to get him a little timely
help--for a consideration, of course--in borrowing money at a fair rate of
interest; in fact, I had saved him from the Jews.
The money was borrowed while Mr. Frank was at college. He came back from
college, and stopped at home a little while, and then there got spread
about all our neighborhood a report that he had fallen in love, as the
saying is, with his young sister's governess, and that his mind was made
up to marry her.
What! you're at it again, Mr. Artist! You want to know her name, don't
you? What do you think of Smith?
Speaking as a lawyer, I consider report, in a general way, to be a fool
and a liar. But in this case report turned out to be something very
different. Mr. Frank told me he was really in love, and said upon his
honor (an absurd expression which young chaps of his age are always
using) he was determined to marry Smith, the governess--the sweet, darling
girl, as _he_ called her; but I'm not sentimental, and _I_ call her Smith,
the governess.
Well, Mr. Frank's father, being as proud as Lucifer, said "No," as to
marrying the governess, when Mr. Frank wanted him to say "Yes." He was a
man of business, was old Gatliffe, and he took the proper business course.
He sent the governess away with a first-rate character and a spanking
present, and then he looked about him to get something for Mr. Frank to
do.
While he was looking about Mr. Frank bolted to London after the governess,
who had nobody alive belonging to her to go to but an aunt--her father's
sister. The aunt refuses to let Mr. Frank in without the squire's
permission. Mr. Frank writes to his father, and says he will marry the
girl as soon as he is of age, or shoot himself.
Up to town come the squire and his wife and his daughter, and a lot of
sentimentality, not in the slightest degree material to the present
statement, takes place among them; and the upshot of it is that old
Gatliffe is forced into withdrawing the word No and substituting the word
Yes.
I don't believe he would ever have done it, though, but for one lucky
peculiarity in the case. The governess's father was a man of good
family--pretty nigh as good as Gatliffe's own. He had been in the army;
had sold out; set up as a wine merchant--failed--died; ditto his wife, as
to the dying part of it. No relation, in fact, left for the squire to make
inquiries about but the father's sister--who had behaved, as old Gatliffe
said, like a thoroughbred gentlewoman in shutting the door against Mr.
Frank in the first instance.
So, to cut the matter short, things were at last made up pleasant enough.
The time was fixed for the wedding, and an announcement about it--Marriage
in High Life and all that--put into the county paper. There was a regular
biography, besides, of the governess's father, so as to stop people from
talking--a great flourish about his pedigree, and a long account of his
services in the army; but not a word, mind ye, of his having turned wine
merchant afterward. Oh, no--not a word about that!
I knew it, though, for Mr. Frank told me. He hadn't a bit of pride about
him. He introduced me to his future wife one day when I met him out
walking, and asked me if I did not think he was a lucky fellow. I don't
mind admitting that I did, and that I told him so.
Ah! but she was one of my sort, was that governess. Stood, to the best of
my recollection, five feet four. Good lissom figure, that looked as if it
had never been boxed up in a pair of stays. Eyes that made me feel as if I
was under a pretty stiff cross-examination the moment she looked at me.
Fine red, kiss-and-come-again sort of lips. Cheeks and complexion----
No, Mr. Artist, you wouldn't identify her by her cheeks and complexion, if
I drew you a picture of them this very moment. She has had a family of
children since the time I'm talking of; and her cheeks are a trifle
fatter, and her complexion is a shade or two redder now than when I first
met her out walking with Mr. Frank.
The marriage was to take place on a Wednesday. I decline mentioning the
year or the month. I had started as an attorney on my own account--say six
weeks, more or less, and was sitting alone in my office on the Monday
morning before the wedding-day, trying to see my way clear before me and
not succeeding particularly well, when Mr. Frank suddenly bursts in, as
white as any ghost that ever was painted, and says he's got the most
dreadful case for me to advise on, and not an hour to lose in acting on my
advice.
"Is this in the way of business, Mr. Frank?" says I, stopping him just as
he was beginning to get sentimental. "Yes or no, Mr. Frank?" rapping my
new office paper-knife on the table, to pull him up short all the sooner.
"My dear fellow"--he was always familiar with me--"it's in the way of
business, certainly; but friendship----"
I was obliged to pull him up short again, and regularly examine him as if
he had been in the witness-box, or he would have kept me talking to no
purpose half the day.
"Now, Mr. Frank," says I, "I can't have any sentimentality mixed up with
business matters. You please to stop talking, and let me ask questions.
Answer in the fewest words you can use. Nod when nodding will do instead
of words."
I fixed him with my eye for about three seconds, as he sat groaning and
wriggling in his chair. When I'd done fixing him I gave another rap with
my paper-knife on the table to startle him up a bit. Then I went on.
"From what you have been stating up to the present time," says I, "I
gather that you are in a scrape which is likely to interfere seriously
with your marriage on Wednesday?"
He nodded, and I cut in again before he could say a word:
"The scrape affects your young lady, and goes back to the period of a
transaction in which her late father was engaged, doesn't it?"
He nods, and I cut in once more:
"There is a party, who turned up after seeing the announcement of your
marriage in the paper, who is cognizant of what he oughtn't to know, and
who is prepared to use his knowledge of the same to the prejudice of the
young lady and of your marriage, unless he receives a sum of money to
quiet him? Very well. Now, first of all, Mr. Frank, state what you have
been told by the young lady herself about the transaction of her late
father. How did you first come to have any knowledge of it?"
"She was talking to me about her father one day so tenderly and prettily,
that she quite excited my interest about him," begins Mr. Frank; "and I
asked her, among other things, what had occasioned his death. She said she
believed it was distress of mind in the first instance; and added that
this distress was connected with a shocking secret, which she and her
mother had kept from everybody, but which she could not keep from me,
because she was determined to begin her married life by having no secrets
from her husband."
Here Mr. Frank began to get sentimental again, and I pulled him up short
once more with the paper-knife.
"She told me," Mr. Frank went on, "that the great mistake of her father's
life was his selling out of the army and taking to the wine-trade. He had
no talent for business; things went wrong with him from the first. His
clerk, it was strongly suspected, cheated him----"
"Stop a bit," says I. "What was that suspected clerk's name?"
"Davager," says he.
"Davager," says I, making a note of it. "Go on, Mr. Frank."
"His affairs got more and more entangled," says Mr. Frank; "he was pressed
for money in all directions; bankruptcy, and consequent dishonor (as he
considered it), stared him in the face. His mind was so affected by his
troubles that both his wife and daughter, toward the last, considered him
to be hardly responsible for his own acts. In this state of desperation
and misery, he----" Here Mr. Frank began to hesitate.
We have two ways in the law of drawing evidence off nice and clear from an
unwilling client or witness. We give him a fright, or we treat him to a
joke. I treated Mr. Frank to a joke.
"Ah!" says I, "I know what he did. He had a signature to write; and, by
the most natural mistake in the world, he wrote another gentleman's name
instead of his own--eh?"
"It was to a bill," says Mr. Frank, looking very crestfallen, instead of
taking the joke. "His principal creditor wouldn't wait till he could raise
the money, or the greater part of it. But he was resolved, if he sold off
everything, to get the amount and repay----"
"Of course," says I; "drop that. The forgery was discovered. When?"
"Before even the first attempt was made to negotiate the bill. He had done
the whole thing in the most absurdly and innocently wrong way. The person
whose name he had used was a stanch friend of his and a relation of his
wife's--a good man as well as a rich one. He had influence with the chief
creditor, and he used it nobly. He had a real affection for the
unfortunate man's wife, and he proved it generously."
"Come to the point," says I. "What did he do? In a business way, what did
he do?"
"He put the false bill into the fire, drew a bill of his own to replace
it, and then--only then--told my dear girl and her mother all that had
happened. Can you imagine anything nobler?" asks Mr. Frank.
"Speaking in my professional capacity, I can't imagine anything greener,"
says I. "Where was the father? Off, I suppose?"
"Ill in bed," says Mr. Frank, coloring. "But he mustered strength enough
to write a contrite and grateful letter the same day, promising to prove
himself worthy of the noble moderation and forgiveness extended to him, by
selling off everything he possessed to repay his money debt. He did sell
off everything, down to some old family pictures that were heirlooms; down
to the little plate he had; down to the very tables and chairs that
furnished his drawing-room. Every farthing of the debt was paid; and he
was left to begin the world again, with the kindest promises of help from
the generous man who had forgiven him. It was too late. His crime of one
rash moment--atoned for though it had been--preyed upon his mind. He
became possessed with the idea that he had lowered himself forever in the
estimation of his wife and daughter, and----"
"He died," I cut in. "Yes, yes, we know that. Let's go back for a minute
to the contrite and grateful letter that he wrote. My experience in the
law, Mr. Frank, has convinced me that if everybody burned everybody else's
letters, half the courts of justice in this country might shut up shop. Do
you happen to know whether the letter we are now speaking of contained
anything like an avowal or confession of the forgery?"
"Of course it did," says he. "Could the writer express his contrition
without making some such confession?"
"Quite easy, if he had been a lawyer," says I. "But never mind that; I'm
going to make a guess--a desperate guess, mind. Should I be altogether in
error if I thought that this letter had been stolen; and that the fingers
of Mr. Davager, of suspicious commercial celebrity, might possibly be the
fingers which took it?"
"That is exactly what I wanted to make you understand," cried Mr. Frank.
"How did he communicate the interesting fact of the theft to you?"
"He has not ventured into my presence. The scoundrel actually had the
audacity----"
"Aha!" says I. "The young lady herself! Sharp practitioner, Mr. Davager."
"Early this morning, when she was walking alone in the shrubbery," Mr.
Frank goes on, "he had the assurance to approach her, and to say that he
had been watching his opportunity of getting a private interview for days
past. He then showed her--actually showed her--her unfortunate father's
letter; put into her hands another letter directed to me; bowed, and
walked off, leaving her half dead with astonishment and terror. If I had
only happened to be there at the time!" says Mr. Frank, shaking his fist
murderously in the air, by way of a finish.
"It's the greatest luck in the world that you were not," says I. "Have you
got that other letter?"
He handed it to me. It was so remarkably humorous and short, that I
remember every word of it at this distance of time. It began in this way:
To FRANCIS GATLIFFE, ESQ., JUN.
SIR--I have an extremely curious autograph letter to sell.
The price is a five-hundred-pound note. The young lady to
whom you are to be married on Wednesday will inform you of
the nature of the letter, and the genuineness of the
autograph. If you refuse to deal, I shall send a copy to the
local paper, and shall wait on your highly respected father
with the original curiosity, on the afternoon of Tuesday
next. Having come down here on family business, I have put
up at the family hotel--being to be heard of at the Gatliffe
Arms. Your very obedient servant,
ALFRED DAVAGER.
"A clever fellow that," says I, putting the letter into my private drawer.
"Clever!" cries Mr. Frank, "he ought to be horsewhipped within an inch of
his life. I would have done it myself; but she made me promise, before she
told me a word of the matter, to come straight to you."
"That was one of the wisest promises you ever made," says I. "We can't
afford to bully this fellow, whatever else we may do with him. Do you
think I am saying anything libelous against your excellent father's
character when I assert that if he saw the letter he would certainly
insist on your marriage being put off, at the very least?"
"Feeling as my father does about my marriage, he would insist on its being
dropped altogether, if he saw this letter," says Mr. Frank with a groan.
"But even that is not the worst of it. The generous, noble girl herself
says that if the letter appears in the paper, with all the unanswerable
comments this scoundrel would be sure to add to it, she would rather die
than hold me to my engagement, even if my father would let me keep it."
As he said this his eyes began to water. He was a weak young fellow, and
ridiculously fond of her. I brought him back to business with another rap
of the paper-knife.
"Hold up, Mr. Frank," says I. "I have a question or two more. Did you
think of asking the young lady whether, to the best of her knowledge, this
infernal letter was the only written evidence of the forgery now in
existence?"
"Yes, I did think directly of asking her that," says he; "and she told me
she was quite certain that there was no written evidence of the forgery
except that one letter."
"Will you give Mr. Davager his price for it?" says I.
"Yes," says Mr. Frank, quite peevish with me for asking him such a
question. He was an easy young chap in money matters, and talked of
hundreds as most men talk of sixpences.
"Mr. Frank," says I, "you came here to get my help and advice in this
extremely ticklish business, and you are ready, as I know without asking,
to remunerate me for all and any of my services at the usual professional
rate. Now, I've made up my mind to act boldly--desperately, if you
like--on the hit or miss, win all or lose all principle--in dealing with
this matter.
"Here is my proposal. I'm going to try if I can't do Mr. Davager out of
his letter. If I don't succeed before to-morrow afternoon, you hand him
the money, and I charge you nothing for professional services. If I do
succeed, I hand you the letter instead of Mr. Davager, and you give me
the money instead of giving it to him. It's a precious risk for me, but
I'm ready to run it. You must pay your five hundred anyway. What do you
say to my plan? Is it Yes, Mr. Frank, or No?"
"Hang your questions!" cries Mr. Frank, jumping up; "you know it's Yes ten
thousand times over. Only you earn the money and----"
"And you will be too glad to give it to me. Very good. Now go home.
Comfort the young lady--don't let Mr. Davager so much as set eyes on
you--keep quiet--leave everything to me--and feel as certain as you please
that all the letters in the world can't stop your being married on
Wednesday."
With these words I hustled him off out of the office, for I wanted to be
left alone to make my mind up about what I should do.
The first thing, of course, was to have a look at the enemy. I wrote to
Mr. Davager, telling him that I was privately appointed to arrange the
little business matter between himself and "another party" (no names!) on
friendly terms; and begging him to call on me at his earliest convenience.
At the very beginning of the case, Mr. Davager bothered me. His answer
was, that it would not be convenient to him to call till between six and
seven in the evening. In this way, you see, he contrived to make me lose
several precious hours, at a time when minutes almost were of importance.
I had nothing for it but to be patient, and to give certain instructions,
before Mr. Davager came, to my boy Tom.
There never was such a sharp boy of fourteen before, and there never will
be again, as my boy Tom. A spy to look after Mr. Davager was, of course,
the first requisite in a case of this kind; and Tom was the smallest,
quickest, quietest, sharpest, stealthiest little snake of a chap that ever
dogged a gentleman's steps and kept cleverly out of range of a gentleman's
eyes.
I settled it with the boy that he was not to show at all when Mr. Davager
came; and that he was to wait to hear me ring the bell when Mr. Davager
left. If I rang twice, he was to show the gentleman out. If I rang once,
he was to keep out of the way, and follow the gentleman wherever he went
till he got back to the inn. Those were the only preparations I could make
to begin with; being obliged to wait, and let myself be guided by what
turned up.
About a quarter to seven my gentleman came.
In the profession of the law we get somehow quite remarkably mixed up with
ugly people, blackguard people, and dirty people. But far away the ugliest
and dirtiest blackguard I ever saw in my life was Mr. Alfred Davager. He
had greasy, white hair and a mottled face. He was low in the forehead, fat
in the stomach, hoarse in the voice, and weak in the legs. Both his eyes
were bloodshot, and one was fixed in his head. He smelled of spirits, and
carried a toothpick in his mouth.
"How are you? I've just done dinner," says he; and he lights a cigar, sits
down with his legs crossed, and winks at me.
I tried at first to take the measure of him in a wheedling, confidential
way; but it was no good. I asked him, in a facetious, smiling manner, how
he had got hold of the letter. He only told me in answer that he had been
in the confidential employment of the writer of it, and that he had always
been famous since infancy for a sharp eye to his own interests.
I paid him some compliments; but he was not to be flattered. I tried to
make him lose his temper; but he kept it in spite of me. It ended in his
driving me to my last resource--I made an attempt to frighten him.
"Before we say a word about the money," I began, "let me put a case, Mr.
Davager. The pull you have on Mr. Francis Gatliffe is, that you can hinder
his marriage on Wednesday. Now, suppose I have got a magistrate's warrant
to apprehend you in my pocket? Suppose I have a constable to execute it in
the next room? Suppose I bring you up to-morrow--the day before the
marriage--charge you only generally with an attempt to extort money, and
apply for a day's remand to complete the case? Suppose, as a suspicious
stranger, you can't get bail in this town? Suppose----"
"Stop a bit," says Mr. Davager. "Suppose I should not be the greenest fool
that ever stood in shoes? Suppose I should not carry the letter about me?
Suppose I should have given a certain envelope to a certain friend of mine
in a certain place in this town? Suppose the letter should be inside that
envelope, directed to old Gatliffe, side by side with a copy of the letter
directed to the editor of the local paper? Suppose my friend should be
instructed to open the envelope, and take the letters to their right
addresses, if I don't appear to claim them from him this evening? In
short, my dear sir, suppose you were born yesterday, and suppose I
wasn't?" says Mr. Davager, and winks at me again.
He didn't take me by surprise, for I never expected that he had the letter
about him. I made a pretense of being very much taken aback, and of being
quite ready to give in. We settled our business about delivering the
letter, and handing over the money, in no time.
I was to draw out a document, which he was to sign. He knew the document
was stuff and nonsense, just as well as I did, and told me I was only
proposing it to swell my client's bill. Sharp as he was, he was wrong
there. The document was not to be drawn out to gain money from Mr. Frank,
but to gain time from Mr. Davager. It served me as an excuse to put off
the payment of the five hundred pounds till three o'clock on the Tuesday
afternoon. The Tuesday morning Mr. Davager said he should devote to his
amusement, and asked me what sights were to be seen in the neighborhood of
the town. When I had told him, he pitched his toothpick into my grate,
yawned, and went out.
I rang the bell once--waited till he had passed the window--and then
looked after Tom. There was my jewel of a boy on the opposite side of the
street, just setting his top going in the most playful manner possible.
Mr. Davager walked away up the street toward the market-place. Tom whipped
his top up the street toward the market-place, too.
In a quarter of an hour he came back, with all his evidence collected in a
beautifully clear and compact state. Mr. Davager had walked to a
public-house just outside the town, in a lane leading to the highroad.
On a bench outside the public-house there sat a man smoking. He said, "All
right?" and gave a letter to Mr. Davager, who answered "All right!" and
walked back to the inn. In the hall he ordered hot rum-and-water, cigars,
slippers, and a fire to be lit in his room. After that he went up-stairs,
and Tom came away.
I now saw my road clear before me--not very far on, but still clear. I had
housed the letter, in all probability for that night, at the Gatliffe
Arms. After tipping Tom, I gave him directions to play about the door of
the inn, and refresh himself when he was tired at the tart-shop opposite,
eating as much as he pleased on the understanding that he crammed all the
time with his eye on the window. If Mr. Davager went out, or Mr. Davager's
friend called on him, Tom was to let me know. He was also to take a little
note from me to the head chambermaid--an old friend of mine--asking her to
step over to my office, on a private matter of business, as soon as her
work was done for that night.
After settling these little matters, having half an hour to spare, I
turned to and did myself a bloater at the office fire, and had a drop of
gin-and-water hot, and felt comparatively happy.
When the head chambermaid came, it turned out, as good luck would have it,
that Mr. Davager had drawn her attention rather too closely to his
ugliness, by offering her testimony of his regard in the shape of a kiss.
I no sooner mentioned him than she flew into a passion; and when I added,
by way of clinching the matter, that I was retained to defend the
interests of a very beautiful and deserving young lady (name not referred
to, of course) against the most cruel underhand treachery on the part of
Mr. Davager, the head chambermaid was ready to go any lengths that she
could safely to serve my cause.
In a few words I discovered that Boots was to call Mr. Davager at eight
the next morning, and was to take his clothes down-stairs to brush as
usual. If Mr. D---- had not emptied his own pockets overnight, we
arranged that Boots was to forget to empty them for him, and was to bring
the clothes down-stairs just as he found them. If Mr. D----'s pockets were
emptied, then of course, it would be necessary to transfer the searching
process to Mr. D----'s room. Under any circumstances, I was certain of the
head chambermaid; and under any circumstances, also, the head chambermaid
was certain of Boots.
I waited till Tom came home, looking very puffy and bilious about the
face; but as to his intellect, if anything, rather sharper than ever. His
report was uncommonly short and pleasant. The inn was shutting up; Mr.
Davager was going to bed in rather a drunken condition; Mr. Davager's
friend had never appeared.
I sent Tom (properly instructed about keeping our man in view all the next
morning) to his shake-down behind the office-desk, where I heard him
hiccoughing half the night, as even the best boys will, when overexcited
and too full of tarts.
At half-past seven next morning I slipped quietly into Boots's pantry.
Down came the clothes. No pockets in trousers. Waistcoat pockets empty.
Coat pockets with something in them. First, handkerchief; secondly, bunch
of keys; thirdly, cigar-case; fourthly, pocketbook. Of course I wasn't
such a fool as to expect to find the letter there, but I opened the
pocketbook with a certain curiosity, notwithstanding.
Nothing in the two pockets of the book but some old advertisements cut out
of newspapers, a lock of hair tied round with a dirty bit of ribbon, a
circular letter about a loan society, and some copies of verses not likely
to suit any company that was not of an extremely free-and-easy
description. On the leaves of the pocketbook, people's addresses scrawled
in pencil, and bets jotted down in red ink. On one leaf, by itself, this
queer inscription:
"MEM. 5 ALONG. 4 ACROSS."
I understood everything but those words and figures, so of course I copied
them out into my own book.
Then I waited in the pantry till Boots had brushed the clothes, and had
taken them up-stairs. His report when he came down was, that Mr. D----had
asked if it was a fine morning. Being told that it was, he had ordered
breakfast at nine and a saddle-horse to be at the door at ten, to take him
to Grimwith Abbey--one of the sights in our neighborhood which I had told
him of the evening before.
"I'll be here, coming in by the back way, at half-past ten," says I to the
head chambermaid.
"What for?" says she.
"To take the responsibility of making Mr. Davager's bed off your hands for
this morning only," says I.
"Any more orders?" says she.
"One more," says I. "I want to hire Sam for the morning. Put it down in
the order-book that he's to be brought round to my office at ten."
In case you should think Sam was a man, I'd better perhaps tell you he was
a pony. I'd made up my mind that it would be beneficial to Tom's health,
after the tarts, if he took a constitutional airing on a nice hard saddle
in the direction of Grimwith Abbey.
"Anything else?" said the head chambermaid.
"Only one more favor," says I. "Would my boy Tom be very much in the way
if he came, from now till ten, to help with the boots and shoes, and stood
at his work close by this window which looks out on the staircase?"
"Not a bit," says the head chambermaid.
"Thank you," says I; and stepped back to my office directly.
When I had sent Tom off to help with the boots and shoes, I reviewed the
whole case exactly as it stood.
There were three things Mr. Davager might do with the letter. He might
give it to his friend again before ten--in which case Tom would most
likely see the said friend on the stairs. He might take it to his friend,
or to some other friend, after ten--in which case Tom was ready to follow
him on Sam the pony. And, lastly, he might leave it hidden somewhere in
his room at the inn--in which case I was all ready for him with a
search-warrant of my own granting, under favor always of my friend the
head chambermaid.
So far as I had my business arrangements all gathered up nice and compact
in my own hands. Only two things bothered me--the terrible shortness of
the time at my disposal, in case I failed in my first experiments for
getting hold of the letter, and that queer inscription which I had copied
out of the pocketbook:
"MEM. 5 ALONG. 4 ACROSS."
It was the measurement most likely of something, and he was afraid of
forgetting it; therefore it was something important. Query--something
about himself? Say "5" (inches) "along"--he doesn't wear a wig. Say "5"
(feet) "along"--it can't be coat, waistcoat, trousers, or underclothing.
Say "5" (yards) "along"--it can't be anything about himself, unless he
wears round his body the rope that he's sure to be hanged with one of
these days. Then it is _not_ something about himself.
What do I know of that is important to him besides? I know of nothing but
the Letter. Can the memorandum be connected with that? Say, yes. What do
"5 along" and "4 across" mean, then? The measurement of something he
carries about with him? or the measurement of something in his room? I
could get pretty satisfactorily to myself as far as that; but I could get
no further.
Tom came back to the office, and reported him mounted for his ride. His
friend had never appeared. I sent the boy off, with his proper
instructions, on Sam's back--wrote an encouraging letter to Mr. Frank to
keep him quiet--then slipped into the inn by the back way a little before
half-past ten. The head chambermaid gave me a signal when the landing was
clear. I got into his room without a soul but her seeing me, and locked
the door immediately.
The case was, to a certain extent, simplified now. Either Mr. Davager had
ridden out with the letter about him, or he had left it in some safe
hiding-place in his room. I suspected it to be in his room, for a reason
that will a little astonish you--his trunk, his dressing-case, and all the
drawers and cupboards, were left open. I knew my customer, and I thought
this extraordinary carelessness on his part rather suspicious.
Mr. Davager had taken one of the best bedrooms at the Gatliffe Arms. Floor
carpeted all over, walls beautifully papered, four-poster, and general
furniture first-rate. I searched, to begin with, on the usual plan,
examining everything in every possible way, and taking more than an hour
about it. No discovery.
Then I pulled out a carpenter's rule which I had brought with me. Was
there anything in the room which--either in inches, feet, or
yards--answered to "5 along" and "4 across"? Nothing. I put the rule back
in my pocket--measurement was no good, evidently. Was there anything in
the room that would count up to 5 one way and 4 another, seeing that
nothing would measure up to it?
I had got obstinately persuaded by this time that the letter must be in
the room--principally because of the trouble I had had in looking after
it. And persuading myself of that, I took it into my head next, just as
obstinately, that "5 along" and "4 across" must be the right clue to find
the letter by--principally because I hadn't left myself, after all my
searching and thinking, even so much as the ghost of another guide to go
by.
"Five along"--where could I count five along the room, in any part of it?
Not on the paper. The pattern there was pillars of trellis-work and
flowers, enclosing a plain green ground--only four pillars along the wall
and only two across. The furniture? There were not five chairs or five
separate pieces of any furniture in the room altogether. The fringes that
hung from the cornice of the bed? Plenty of them, at any rate.
Up I jumped on the counterpane, with my pen-knife in my hand. Every way
that "5 along" and "4 across" could be reckoned on those unlucky fringes I
reckoned on them--probed with my pen-knife--scratched with my
nails--crunched with my fingers. No use; not a sign of a letter; and the
time was getting on--oh, Lord! how the time did get on in Mr. Davager's
room that morning.
I jumped down from the bed, so desperate at my ill luck that I hardly
cared whether anybody heard me or not. Quite a little cloud of dust rose
at my feet as they thumped on the carpet.
"Hullo!" thought I, "my friend the head chambermaid takes it easy here.
Nice state for a carpet to be in, in one of the best bedrooms at the
Gatliffe Arms." Carpet! I had been jumping up on the bed, and staring up
at the walls, but I had never so much as given a glance down at the
carpet. Think of me pretending to be a lawyer, and not knowing how to look
low enough!
The carpet! It had been a stout article in its time; had evidently began
in a drawing-room; then descended to a coffee-room; then gone up-stairs
altogether to a bedroom. The ground was brown, and the pattern was bunches
of leaves and roses speckled over the ground at regular distances. I
reckoned up the bunches. Ten along the room--eight across it. When I had
stepped out five one way and four the other, and was down on my knees on
the center bunch, as true as I sit on this chair I could hear my own heart
beating so loud that it quite frightened me.
I looked narrowly all over the bunch, and felt all over it with the ends
of my fingers, and nothing came of that. Then I scraped it over slowly and
gently with my nails. My second finger-nail stuck a little at one place. I
parted the pile of the carpet over that place, and saw a thin slit which
had been hidden by the pile being smoothed over it--a slit about half an
inch long, with a little end of brown thread, exactly the color of the
carpet ground, sticking out about a quarter of an inch from the middle of
it.
Just as I laid hold of the thread gently, I heard a footstep outside of
the door.
It was only the head chambermaid. "Haven't you done yet?" she whispers.
"Give me two minutes," says I, "and don't let anybody come near the
door--whatever you do, don't let anybody startle me again by coming near
the door."
I took a little pull at the thread, and heard something rustle. I took a
longer pull, and out came a piece of paper, rolled up tight like those
candle-lighters that the ladies make. I unrolled it--and, by George there
was the letter!
The original letter! I knew it by the color of the ink. The letter that
was worth five hundred pounds to me! It was all that I could do to keep
myself at first from throwing my hat into the air and hurrahing like mad.
I had to take a chair and sit quiet in it for a minute or two, before I
could cool myself down to my proper business level. I knew I was safely
down again when I found myself pondering how to let Mr. Davager know that
he had been done by the innocent country attorney, after all.
It was not long before a nice little irritating plan occurred to me. I
tore a blank leaf out of my pocketbook, wrote on it with my pencil,
"Change for a five-hundred-pound note," folded up the paper, tied the
thread to it, poked it back into the hiding-place, smoothed over the pile
of the carpet, and then bolted off to Mr. Frank.
He in his turn bolted off to show the letter to the young lady, who first
certified to its genuineness, then dropped it into the fire, and then took
the initiative for the first time since her marriage engagement, by
flinging her arms round his neck, kissing him with all her might, and
going into hysterics in his arms.
So at least Mr. Frank told me.
It is evidence, however, that I saw them married with my own eyes on the
Wednesday; and that while they went off in a carriage-and-four to spend
the honeymoon, I went off on my own legs to open a credit at the Town and
County Bank with a five-hundred-pound note in my pocket.
As to Mr. Davager, I can tell you nothing more about him, except what is
derived from hearsay evidence, which is always unsatisfactory evidence.
My inestimable boy, Tom, although twice kicked off by Sam the pony, never
lost hold of the bridle, and kept his man in sight from first to last. He
had nothing particular to report except that on the way out to the Abbey
Mr. Davager had stopped at a public-house, had spoken a word or two to his
friend of the night before, and had handed him what looked like a bit of
paper. This was no doubt a clue to the thread that held the letter, to be
used in case of accidents.
In every other respect Mr. D. had ridden out and ridden in like an
ordinary sightseer. Tom reported him to me as having dismounted at the
hotel about two. At half-past I locked my office-door, nailed a card under
the knocker with "not at home till to-morrow" written on it, and retired
to a friend's house a mile or so out of the town for the rest of the day.
Mr. Davager, I have been since given to understand, left the Gatliffe Arms
that same night with his best clothes on his back, and with all the
valuable contents of his dressing-case in his pockets. I am not in a
condition to state whether he ever went through the form of asking for his
bill or not; but I can positively testify that he never paid it, and that
the effects left in his bedroom did not pay it either.
When I add to these fragments of evidence that he and I have never met
(luckily for me, you will say) since I jockeyed him out of his bank-note,
I have about fulfilled my implied contract as maker of a statement with
you, sir, as hearer of a statement. Observe the expression, will you? I
said it was a Statement before I began; and I say it's a Statement now
I've done. I defy you to prove it's a Story! How are you getting on with
my portrait? I like you very well, Mr. Artist; but if you have been taking
advantage of my talking to shirk your work, as sure as you're alive I'll
split upon you to the Town Council!
Books.
They are delightful when prosperity happily smiles; when
adversity threatens they are inseparable comforters. Arts
and sciences, the benefits of which no mind can calculate,
depend upon books.
--Richard Aungerville (Richard de Bury, tutor of Edward III,
1281-1345).
A HOROSCOPE OF THE MONTHS.
BY MARION Y. BUNNER.
THIRD INSTALMENT.
The Fate of Those Born Under the Sign "Taurus," Representing the Period
Between April 20 and May 19.
_Compiled and edited for_ THE SCRAP BOOK.
TAURUS: THE BULL.
APRIL 20 to MAY 19.
CUSP: APRIL 19 to APRIL 25.
The constellation Taurus, the second sign of the zodiac, is the positive
pole of the Earth Triplicity, governing the neck and throat. The higher
attributes are secretiveness and will. It is a fixed, feminine, vernal,
earthy sign.
A person born in the period of the cusp, when the sun is on the edge of
the sign, does not receive the full benefits of the individuality of
either sign, but partakes of the characteristics of Taurus and of Aries,
the sign preceding.
This is a very hard sign to overcome. It endows those born under it with a
stubborn disposition. It makes them rebellious to advice, abnormally
proud, difficult of approach, and fond of opposition to the point of
starting a controversy for the sole purpose of coming out ahead.
Slow to anger and slow to calm down, the subjects of Taurus will harbor a
grudge and will be hard to reconcile. They are fearless, kind, and
generous.
This sign gives its subjects a mind straightforward, just, inquisitive,
and shrewd. It makes them hard to fathom, and endows them with the
essential qualities of a diplomat. Their passions are fiery, but not
persistent.
They are generally very much attached to their own sentiments and
opinions; they are taciturn and tenacious; their will is steady,
persevering, and determined to reach its purpose. They are fit to command,
and have great power of concentration.
These people are usually broad-shouldered and of powerful build. The face
is full, the complexion ruddy, the nose and mouth wide. The physical
temperament will be bilious-sanguine in a southern latitude and
lymphatic-nervous in the north. They will find their best friends among
those born under Capricorn and Libra.
Their dominant faults are anger, cruelty, and stubbornness. When excited
they are utterly unmanageable. Taurus people are exacting, domineering,
and selfish in their demands.
The union of those born under Taurus and Capricorn is most auspicious;
next best is Taurus and Libra. The children of the first union will be
physically strong and robust, while those of the second will be very
bright intellectually.
Most children born under this sign are obstinate and wilful. They have
great powers of endurance, and are natural conquerors. They are quick to
follow the example of their elders, and should be carefully guarded in
such respects.
The governing planet of the month is Venus, and the gems are moss-agate
and emerald. The astral colors are red and yellow; the flower, jonquil.
Friday is one of the fortunate days for a Taurus subject. May and July are
his luckiest months. The ancient Hebraic tribe under which he would be
classed was that of Asher, and the ruling angel of the sign is Asmodel.
May, the fifth month of our modern year, was the third of the old Roman
calendar. The name is of doubtful origin. It was considered unlucky among
the Romans to contract marriage during this month--a superstition which
still survives. In the Roman Catholic Church May is known as "the month of
Mary."
In England the first day of the month is called May Day, when, according
to ancient custom, all ranks of the people rose at dawn and went "a
Maying" to welcome the advent of spring.
In the United States, May 30 (Decoration Day) is a legal holiday in most
of the States.
General Grant and the Duke of Wellington are good examples of the
determination and endurance of the Taurus nature.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Scrap Book, Volume 1, No. 3, by Various
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