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Title: The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1
December, 1906.
Author: Various
Editor: Paul M. Pearson
Release Date: April 5, 2009 [EBook #28498]
Language: English
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Transcriber's Note
The Table of Contents for this issue is found at the end of the text.
THE SPEAKER
EDITED BY
PAUL M. PEARSON
No. 5
PEARSON BROTHERS
PHILADELPHIA
The Speaker
Volume II. DECEMBER, 1906. No. 1.
[Sidenote: =The Will=]
In teaching public speaking the final purpose must be to train the will.
Without this faculty in control all else comes to nothing. Exercises may
be given for articulation, but without a determined purpose to speak
distinctly little good will result. The teacher may spend himself in an
effort to inspire and enthuse the student, but this is futile unless the
student comes to a resolution to attain those excellencies of which the
teacher has spoken. That a student may become self-reliant is the chief
business of the teacher. To suggest such vital things in a way that the
student will feel impelled to work them out for himself, this is the art
in all teaching. To tell a student all there is to know about a subject,
or to present what is said in such a way that the student thinks there
is nothing more to be said, is to dwarf and stultify the mind. The
inclination of most students is to depend upon the teacher with a
helplessness that is as enervating as it is pitiable. Too many teachers,
flattered by this attitude or possessed of a sentimental sympathy,
encourage it. Thought, discretion, and courage are required to put a
student on his own resources and compel him to stay there until he has
acquired self-mastery.
Public speaking cannot be exchanged for so much time or money. It cannot
be bought or sold; it comes, if it comes at all, as the result of a
wisely-directed determination. The teacher's part is to exalt, enthuse,
stimulate. He must criticise, certainly, but this is generally overdone.
Like some teachers of English who can never overlook a misplaced comma,
whose idea of English seems to be to spell and to punctuate correctly,
there are teachers of public speaking whose critical eye never sees
farther than gesture, articulation, and emphasis. With this attitude
toward their work, they become fault-finders rather than teachers. They
nag, harrass, and suppress. The business of the teacher is to make the
student see visions of beauty, truth and love, to open up to him these
mighty fields that he may go in and possess them. To implant a yearning,
an unquenchable, all-consuming desire to comprehend and to express the
emotions of which his teacher enables him to get glimpses.
[Sidenote: =The Teacher=]
Exercises? Yes, all the student can stand without becoming a drone.
Criticism? Yes, but no quibbling, no nagging. Criticism is something
more than fault-finding. The teacher exalts his profession, ennobles his
art, and begets consideration for himself when he maintains the highest
standards for himself and for his students.
[Sidenote: =Habit=]
Learning to speak well is, like forming character, a matter of
self-discipline and self-culture. A good voice is a good habit; distinct
articulation is a good habit; graceful and effective gestures are a good
habit. Like all good habits, these are formed by a constant exercise
of the will. The teacher's part is to get the students to hear his own
voice, to observe his own gestures, and listen to his own articulation.
These things cannot be accomplished over night, and if attempted all at
once may make the student too self-conscious; certainly this condition
will result if his faults are continually insisted upon. The teacher's
great opportunity is to enable the student to know himself, and to see
that he is determined to develop his best self.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: =Sincerity=]
Sincerity in art! One sometimes doubts whether it exists. Take the
special field of art with which the readers of this magazine are
especially concerned. How many depend upon tricks to get their effects!
How many struggle mightily to gain a laugh or "a hand," neglecting the
theme, the message, the spirit of that which they are professing to
interpret. If that which we read is worth while, if it has anything
vital in it, the effect will be stronger if the skill and personality of
the speaker are kept in the background, and the audience is brought face
to face with the spirit of that which has been embodied in the lines. As
some readers go through their lines they seem to be saying, Listen to my
voice, observe my graceful gestures; isn't this a pretty gown I have?
I'll win you with my smile. Most audiences are good-natured, and enjoy
to the full such small vanities; moreover, we all like to see winning
smiles, beautiful gowns, and graceful gestures; but it is a pitiable
misnomer to call such exhibitions reading. But the more subtle forms of
insincerity in this art are even more prevalent. To exaggerate some form
of emphasis, to exaggerate a gesture or facial expression, to wrest a
passage from its meaning, these, and many other devices for forcing
immediate approval from an audience, are grossly insincere. There is
still a broader plan on which our sincerity must be judged. To present
this effectively I quote at length from Bliss Carmen's recent book, "The
Poetry of Life." The essay sets a high standard, but by no other can
enduring work be done. The fact that a reader has many engagements, or
that a teacher has many pupils is no assurance of sincerity or the high
grade of his work. "Munsey's Magazine" has a larger circulation than
"The Atlantic Monthly"; the one, "hack stuff," to be suffered only a
few minutes while waiting for a train; the other is literature. But,
to quote from Bliss Carmen. He is discussing the poetry of life, but
the same general principles apply to all art:
[Sidenote: =Quoting Bliss Carmen=]
"As for sincerity, the poetry of life need not always be solemn, any
more than life itself need not always be sober. It may be gay, witty,
humorous, satirical, disbelieving, farcical, even broad and reckless,
since life is all these; but it must never be insincere. Insincerity,
which is not always one of the greatest sins of the moral universe,
becomes in the world of art an offence of the first magnitude.
Insincerity in life may be mean, despicable, and indicate a petty
nature; but in art insincerity is death. A strong man may lie upon
occasion, and make restitution and be forgiven, but for the artist who
lies there is hardly any reparation possible, and his forgiveness is
much more difficult. Art, being the embodiment of the artist's ideal,
is truly the corporeal substance of his spiritual self; and that there
should be any falsehood in it, any deliberate failure to present him
faithfully, it is as monstrous and unnatural as it would be for a man
to disavow his own flesh and bones. Here we are every one of us going
through life committed and attached to our bodies; for all that we do
we are held responsible; if we misbehave, the world will take it out of
our hide. But here is our friend, the artist, committing his spiritual
energy to his art, to an embodiment outside himself, and escaping down
a by-path from all the consequences--what shall be said of him? The
insincere artist is as much beyond the pale of human sympathy as the
murderer. Morally he is a felon.
"There is no excuse for him, either. There was no call for him to make a
liar of himself, other than the most sordid of reasons, the little gain,
the jingling reward of gold. For no man would ever be insincere in his
art, except for pay, except to cater to some other taste than his own,
and to win approval and favor by sycophancy. If he were assured of his
competency in the world, and placed beyond the reach of necessitous
want, how would it ever occur to him to create an insincere art? Art is
so simple, so spontaneous, so dependent on the disingenuous emotion,
that it can never be insincere, unless violence is done to all laws of
nature and of spirit. Since art arises from the sacramental blending of
the inward spirit with the outward form, any touch of insincerity in it
assumes the nature of a horrible crime, a pitiable revolt against the
order and eternity of the universe.
[Sidenote: =Sincerity in Humor=]
"It is not necessary, as I say, for art to be solemn and wholly
serious-minded in order to be sincere. Comedy is quite sincere. Yet it
is easy to usurp her name and play the fool for pennies, with never a
ray of appreciation of her true character. Sincerity, then, is not the
least averse to fun; it only requires that the fun shall be genuine and
come from the heart, as it requires that every note of whatever sort
shall be genuine and spring from the real personality of the writer."
On Time
BY JOHN MILTON.
Fly, envious Time, till thou run out thy race,
Call on thy lazy, leaden-stepping hours,
Whose speed is but the heavy plummet's pace;
And glut thyself with what thy womb devours,
Which is no more than what is false and vain,
And merely mortal dross;
So little is our loss,
So little is thy gain.
For when as each thing bad thou hast entomb'd,
And last of all, thy greedy self consum'd,
Then long Eternity shall greet our bliss
With an individual kiss;
And Joy shall overtake us as a flood;
When everything that is sincerely good
And perfectly divine,
With Truth, and Peace, and Love shall ever shine
About the supreme Throne
Of Him, t' whose happy-making sight alone,
When once our heav'nly-guided soul shall climb,
Then all this earthly grossness quit,
Attir'd with stars, we shall forever sit,
Triumphing over Death, and Chance, and thee,
O Time.
The Knight in the Wood
BY E. LEICESTER WARREN.
(Lord de Tabley.)
The thing itself was rough and crudely done,
Cut in coarse stone, spitefully placed aside
As merest lumber, where the light was worst
On a back staircase. Overlooked it lay
In a great Roman palace crammed with art.
It had no number in the list of gems
Weeded away, long since pushed out and banished,
Before insipid Guidos over-sweet
And Dolce's rose sensationalities,
And curly chirping angels, spruce as birds.
And yet the motive of this thing ill-hewn
And hardly seen did touch me. O, indeed,
The skill-less hand that carved it had belonged
To a most yearning and bewildered brain:
There was such desolation in the work;
And through its utter failure the thing spoke
With more of human message, heart to heart,
Than all these faultless, smirking, skin-deep saints,
In artificial troubles picturesque,
And martyred sweetly, not one curl awry.--
Listen; a clumsy knight, who rode alone
Upon a stumbling jade in a great wood
Belated. The poor beast, with head low-bowed
Snuffing the ground. The rider leant
Forward to sound the marish with his lance.
The wretched rider and the hide-bound steed,
You saw the place was deadly; that doomed pair,
Feared to advance, feared to return.--That's all.
"A Little Feminine Casabianca"[A]
BY GEORGE MADDEN MARTIN.
(_Arranged by Maude Herndon and Grace Kellam._)
[By permission of the publishers and the author we reprint two
cuttings from stories in "Emmy Lou." There are ten stories in
the book, all of them excellent readings. McClure, Phillips &
Co., New York.]
The Primer Class according to the degree of its precocity was divided in
three sections. Emmy Lou belonged to the third section. It was the last
section, and she was the last one in it, though she had no idea what a
section meant nor why she was in it; and Emmy Lou went on wondering
what it was all about, which never would have been the case had there
been a mother among the elders of the house, for mothers have a way of
understanding these things. But to Emmy Lou "mother" had come to mean
but a memory which faded as it came, a vague consciousness of encircling
arms, of a brooding tender face, of yearning eyes; and it was only
because they told her that Emmy Lou remembered how mother had gone away
South, one winter, to get well. That they afterward told her it was
heaven, in nowise confused Emmy Lou, because, for aught she knew, South
and heaven and much else might be included in these points of the
compass. Ever since then Emmy Lou had lived with three aunties and an
uncle; and papa had been coming a hundred miles once a month to see her.
But somehow the Primer year wore away; and the close of the first week
of Emmy Lou's second year at a certain large public school found her
round, chubby self, like a pink-cheeked period, ending the long line of
intermingled little boys and girls making what was known, twenty-five
years ago, as the First Reader Class.
Her heart grew still within her at the slow, awful enunciation of the
Large Lady in black bombazine who reigned over the department of the
First Reader, pointing her morals with a heavy forefinger, before which
Emmy Lou's eyes lowered with every aspect of conscious guilt. Nor did
Emmy Lou dream that the Large Lady, whose black bombazine was the
visible sign of a loss by death that had made it necessary for her to
enter the school-room to earn a living, was finding the duties incident
to the First Reader almost as strange and perplexing as Emmy Lou
herself.
Emmy Lou from the first day found herself descending steadily to the
foot of the class; and there she remained until the awful day, at the
close of the first week, when the Large Lady, realizing perhaps that
she could no longer ignore such adherence to that lowly position, made
discovery that while to Emmy Lou "d-o-g" might spell "dog" and "f-r-o-g"
might spell "frog," Emmy Lou could not find either on a printed page,
and further, could not tell wherein they differed when found for her;
that, also, Emmy Lou made her figure 8's by adding one uncertain little
o to the top of another uncertain little o; and that while Emmy Lou
might copy, in smeary columns, certain cabalistic signs off the
blackboard, she could not point them off in tens, hundreds, thousands,
or read their numerical values, to save her little life. The Large Lady,
sorely perplexed within herself as to the proper course to be pursued,
in the sight of the fifty-nine other First Readers pointed a condemning
forefinger at the miserable little object standing in front of her
platform; and said, "You will stay after school, Emma Louise, that I
may examine further into your qualifications for this grade."
Now Emmy Lou had no idea what it meant--"examine further into your
qualifications for this grade." It might be the form of punishment in
vogue for the chastisement of the members of the First Reader. But "stay
after school" she did understand, and her heart sank, and her little
breast heaved.
It was past the noon recess. At last the bell for dismissal had rung.
The Large Lady, arms folded across her bombazine bosom, had faced the
class, and with awesome solemnity had already enunciated, "Attention,"
and sixty little people had sat up straight, when the door opened, and
a teacher from the floor above came in.
At her whispered confidence, the Large Lady left the room hastily,
while the strange teacher with a hurried "one-two-three, march out
quietly, children," turned, and followed her. And Emmy Lou, left sitting
at her desk, saw through gathering tears the line of First Readers wind
around the room and file out the door, the sound of their departing
footsteps along the bare corridors and down the echoing stairway coming
back like a knell to her sinking heart. Then class after class from
above marched past the door and on its clattering way, while voices from
outside, shrill with the joy of the release, came up through the open
windows in talk, in laughter, together with the patter of feet on the
bricks. Then as these familiar sounds grew fewer, fainter, farther away,
some belated footsteps went echoing through the building, a door slammed
somewhere--then--silence.
Emmy Lou waited. She wondered how long it would be. There was watermelon
at home for dinner; she had seen it borne in, a great, striped promise
of ripe juicy lusciousness, on the marketman's shoulder before she came
to school. And here a tear, long gathering, splashed down the pink cheek.
Still that awesome personage presiding over the fortunes of the First
Reader failed to return. Perhaps this was "the examination into--into--"
Emmy Lou could not remember what--to be left in this big, bare room with
the flies droning and humming in lazy circles up near the ceiling. The
forsaken desks, with a forgotten book or slate left here and there upon
them, the pegs around the wall empty of hats and bonnets, the unoccupied
chair upon the platform--Emmy Lou gazed at these with a sinking
sensation of desolation, while tear followed tear down her chubby face.
And listening to the flies and the silence, Emmy Lou began to long for
even the Bombazine Presence, and dropping her quivering countenance upon
her arms folded upon the desk she sobbed aloud. But the time was long,
and the day was warm, and the sobs grew slower, and the breath began to
come in long-drawn, quivering sighs, and the next Emmy Lou knew she was
sitting upright, trembling in every limb, and some one coming up the
stairs--she could hear the slow, heavy footfalls, and a moment after
she saw the Man, the Recess Man, the low, black-bearded, black-browed,
scowling Man, with the broom across his shoulder, reach the hallway, and
make toward the open doorway of the First Reader room. Emmy Lou held her
breath, stiffened her little body, and--waited. But the Man pausing to
light his pipe, Emmy Lou, in the sudden respite thus afforded slid in
a trembling heap beneath the desk, and on hands and knees went crawling
across the floor. And as Uncle Michael came in, a moment after, broom,
pan, and feather-duster in hand, the last fluttering edge of a little
pink dress was disappearing into the depths of the big, empty coal-box,
and its sloping lid was lowering upon a flaxen head and cowering little
figure crouched within. Uncle Michael having put the room to rights,
sweeping and dusting, with many a rheumatic groan in accompaniment,
closed the windows, and going out, drew the door after him, and, as was
his custom, locked it.
Meanwhile, at Emmy Lou's home the elders wondered. But Emmy Lou did not
come. And by half-past two Aunt Louise, the youngest auntie, started out
to find her. But after searching the neighborhood in vain, returned home
in despair. Then Aunt Cordelia sent the house boy down-town for Uncle
Charlie. Just as Uncle Charlie arrived--and it was past five o'clock by
then--some of the children of the neighborhood, having found a small boy
living some squares off who confessed to being in the First Reader with
Emmy Lou, arrived also, with the small boy in tow.
"She didn't know 'dog' from 'frog' when she saw 'em," stated the small
boy, with derision of superior ability, "an' teacher, she told her to
stay after school. She was settin' there in her desk when school let
out, Emmy Lou was."
But a big girl of the neighborhood objected. "Her teacher went home the
minute school was out," she declared. "Isn't the new lady, Mrs. Samuels,
your teacher?" "Well, her daughter, Lettie, she's in my room, and she
was sick, and her mother came up to our room and took her home. Our
teacher she went down and dismissed the First Readers."
"I don't care if she did," retorted the small boy. "I reckon I saw Emmy
Lou settin' there when we come away."
The three aunts grew pale and tearful, and wrung their hands in despair.
The small boy from the First Reader, legs apart, hands in knickerbocker
pockets, gazed at the crowd of irresolute elders with scornful wonder.
"What you wanter do is find Uncle Michael; he keeps the keys. He went
past my house a while ago, going home. He lives in Rose Lane Alley.
'Taint much outer my way, I'll take you there." And meekly they followed
in his footsteps.
It was dark when a motley throng of uncles, aunties, visiting lady,
neighbors and children went climbing the cavernous, echoing stairway
of the dark school building behind the toiling figure of the skeptical
Uncle Michael, lantern in hand.
"Ain't I swept over every inch of this here schoolhouse myself and
carried the trash outten a dust-pan?" grumbled Uncle Michael, with what
inference nobody just then stopped to inquire. Then with the air of
a mistreated, aggrieved person who feels himself a victim, he paused
before a certain door on the second floor, and fitted a key in its lock.
"Here it is then, No. 9, to satisfy the lady," and he flung open the
door. The light of Uncle Michael's lantern fell full upon the wide-eyed,
terror-smitten person of Emmy Lou, in her desk, awaiting, her miserable
little heart knew not what horror.
"She--she told me to stay," sobbed Emmy Lou in Aunt Cordelia's arms,
"and I stayed; and the Man came, and I hid in the coal-box!"
[A] Copyright, 1901, 1902, by McClure, Phillips & Co.
What He Got Out of It
BY S. E. KISER.
(From the _Chicago Record-Herald_.)
He never took a day of rest,
He couldn't afford it;
He never had his trousers pressed,
He couldn't afford it;
He never went away, care-free,
To visit distant lands, to see
How fair a place this world might be--
He couldn't afford it.
He never went to see a play,
He couldn't afford it;
His love for art he put away,
He couldn't afford it.
He died and left his heirs a lot,
But no tall shaft proclaims the spot
In which he lies--his children thought
They couldn't afford it.
The Play's the Thing[B]
BY GEORGE MADDEN MARTIN.
(_Arranged by Maude Herndon and Grace Kellam._)
It was the day of the exhibition. Miss Carrie, teacher of the Third
Reader Class, talked in deep tones--gestures meant sweeps and circles.
Since the coming of Miss Carrie, the Third Reader Class lived, as it
were, in the public eye, for on Fridays books were put away and the
attention given to recitations and company. _No_ other class had these
recitations, and the Third Reader was envied. Its members were pointed
out and gazed upon, until one realized one was standing in the garish
light of fame. The other readers, it seemed, longed for fame and
craved publicity, and so it came about that the school was to have an
exhibition with Miss Carrie's genius to plan and engineer the whole.
For general material Miss Carrie drew from the whole school, but the
play was for her own class alone.
And this was the day of the exhibition.
Hattie and Sadie and Emmy Lou stood at the gate of the school. They had
spent the morning in rehearsing. At noon they had been sent home with
instructions to return at half-past two. The exhibition would begin at
three.
"Of course," Miss Carrie had said, "you will not fail to be on time."
And Miss Carrie had used her deepest tones.
It was not two o'clock, and the three stood at the gate, the first to
return. They were in the same piece. It was "The Play." In a play one
did more than suit the part.
In the play Hattie and Sadie and Emmy Lou found themselves the orphaned
children of a soldier who had failed to return from the war. It was a
very sad piece. Sadie had to weep, and more than once Emmy Lou had found
tears in her eyes, watching her.
Miss Carrie said Sadie showed histrionic talent. Emmy Lou asked Hattie
about it, who said it meant tears, and Emmy Lou remembered then how
tears came naturally to Sadie.
When Aunt Cordelia heard they must dress to suit the part she came to
see Miss Carrie, and so did the mamma of Sadie and the mamma of Hattie.
"Dress them in a kind of mild mourning," Miss Carrie explained, "not too
deep, or it will seem too real, and, as three little sisters, suppose we
dress them alike."
And now Hattie and Sadie and Emmy Lou stood at the gate ready for the
play. Stiffly immaculate white dresses with beltings of black sashes,
flared jauntily out above spotless white stockings and sober little
slippers, while black-bound Leghorn hats shaded three anxious little
countenances. By the exact center, each held a little handkerchief,
black-bordered.
Hattie and Sadie and Emmy Lou wore each an anxious seriousness
of countenance, but it was a variant seriousness; for as the hour
approached, the solemn importance of the occasion was stealing
brain-ward, and Emmy Lou even began to feel glad she was a part of
The Exhibition, for to have been left out would have been worse even
than the moment of mounting the platform.
"My grown-up brother's coming," said Hattie, "an' my mamma an' gran'ma
an' the rest."
"My Aunt Cordelia has invited the visiting lady next door," said Emmy
Lou.
But it was Sadie's hour. "Our minister's coming," said Sadie.
Emmy Lou's part was to weep when Sadie wept, and to point a chubby
forefinger skyward when Hattie mentioned the departure from earth of the
soldier parent, and to lower that forefinger footward at Sadie's tearful
allusion to an untimely grave.
Emmy Lou had but one utterance, and it was brief. She was to advance one
foot, stretch forth a hand and say, in the character of orphan for whom
no asylum was offered, "We know not where we go." All day, Emmy Lou had
been saying it at intervals of half minutes, for fear she might forget.
Meanwhile, it yet lacking a moment or so of two o'clock, the orphaned
heroes continued to linger at the gate, awaiting the hour.
"Listen," said Hattie, "I hear music."
There was a church across the street. It was a large church with high
steps and a pillared portico, and its doors were open.
"It's a band, and marching," said Hattie.
The orphaned children hurried to the curb. A procession was turning the
corner and coming toward them. On either sidewalk crowds of men and boys
accompanied it.
"It's a funeral," said Sadie.
Hattie turned with a face of conviction. "I know. It's that big
general's funeral; they're bringing him home to bury him with the
soldiers."
"We'll never see a thing for the crowd," despaired Sadie.
Emmy Lou was gazing. "They've got plumes in their hats," she said.
"Let's go over on the church steps and see it go by," said Hattie, "it's
early."
The orphaned children hurried across the street. They climbed the steps.
At the top they turned. There were plumes and more, there were flags and
swords, and a band led. But at the church, with unexpected abruptness,
the band halted, turned; it fell apart, and the procession came through;
it came right on through and up the steps, a line of uniforms and swords
on either side from curb to pillar, and halted.
Aghast, between two glittering files, the orphaned children shrank into
the shadow behind a pillar, while upstreamed from the carriages below
an unending line--bare-headed men and ladies bearing flowers. Behind,
below, about, closing in on every side, crowded people, a sea of people.
The orphaned children found themselves swept from their hiding by the
crowd and unwillingly jostled forward into prominence.
A frowning man, with a sword in his hand, seemed to be threatening
everybody; his face was red and his voice was big, and he glittered with
many buttons. All at once he caught sight of the orphaned children and
threatened them vehemently.
"Here," said the frowning man, "right in here," and he placed them in
line. The orphaned children were appalled, and even in the face of the
man cried out in protest. But the man of the sword did not hear, for
the reason that he did not listen. Instead he was addressing a large
and stout lady immediately behind them.
"Separated from the family in the confusion, the grandchildren
evidently--just see them in, please."
And suddenly the orphaned children found themselves a part of the
procession as grandchildren. The nature of a procession is to proceed.
And the grandchildren proceeded with it. They could not help themselves.
There was no time for protest, for, pushed by the crowd, which closed
and swayed above their heads, and piloted by the stout lady close
behind, they were swept into the church and up the aisle, and when they
came again to themselves were in the inner corner of a pew near the
front.
The church was decked with flags. So was the Third Reader room. It was
hung with flags for The Exhibition.
Hattie in the corner nudged Sadie. Sadie urged Emmy Lou, who, next to
the stout lady, touched her timidly. "We have to get out; we've got to
say our parts."
"Not now," said the lady, reassuringly; "the program is at the
cemetery."
Emmy Lou did not understand, and she tried to tell the lady.
"S-h-," said the person, engaged with the spectacle and the crowd;
"sh-h-" Abashed, Emmy Lou sat, sh-h-ed.
Hattie arose. It was terrible to rise in church, and at a funeral, and
the church was filled, the aisles were crowded, but Hattie rose. Hattie
was a St. George, and a Dragon stood between her and The Exhibition.
She pushed by Sadie, and past Emmy Lou. Hattie was slim as she was
strenuous, but not even so slim a little girl as Hattie could push by
the stout lady, for she filled the space.
At Hattie's touch she turned. Although she looked good-natured, the
size and ponderance of the lady were intimidating. She stared at Hattie;
people were looking; it was in church; Hattie's face was red.
"You can't get to the family," said the lady; "you couldn't move in
the crowd. Besides I promised to see to you. Now be quiet," she added
crossly, when Hattie would have spoken. She turned away. Hattie crept
back vanquished by this Dragon.
"So suitably dressed," the stout lady was saying to a lady beyond;
"grandchildren, you know. Even their little handkerchiefs have
black borders." The service began, and there fell on the unwilling
grandchildren the submission of awe. The stout lady cried, she also
punched Emmy Lou with her elbow whenever that little person moved, but
finally she found courage to turn her head so she could see Sadie. Sadie
was weeping into her black-bordered handkerchief, nor were they tears
of histrionic talent. They were real tears. People all about were
looking at her sympathetically. Such grief in a grandchild was very
moving. It may have been minutes; it seemed to Emmy Lou hours, before
there came a general uprising. Hattie stood up. So did Sadie and Emmy
Lou. Their skirts no longer stood out jauntily; they were quite crushed
and subdued. There was a wild, hunted look in Hattie's eyes. "Watch
the chance!" she whispered, "and run."
But it did not come. As the pews emptied, the stout lady passed Emmy Lou
on, addressing some one beyond. "Hold to this one," she said, "and I'll
take the other two, or they'll get tramped in the crowd."
Slowly the crowd moved, and being a part of it, however unwillingly,
Emmy Lou moved, too, out of the church and down the steps. Then came
the crashing of the band and the roll of the carriages, and she found
herself in the front row on the curb.
The man with the brandishing sword was threatening violently. "One more
carriage is here for the family," called the man with the sword. His
glance in search for the family suddenly fell on Emmy Lou. She felt it
fall.
The problem solved itself for the man with the sword, and his brow
cleared.
"Grandchildren next," roared the threatening man. "Keep an eye on
them--separated from the family," he was explaining, and in spite of
their protests, a moment later the three little girls were lifted into
the carriage, and as the door banged, their carriage moved with the
rest up the street.
"Now," said Hattie, and Hattie sprang to the farther door. It would not
open. Through the carriage windows the school, with its arched doorways
and windows, gazed frowningly, reproachfully. A gentleman entered the
gate and went in the doorway.
"It's our minister," said Sadie, weeping afresh. Then Hattie wept and
so did Emmy Lou. What would The Exhibition do without them?
Late that afternoon a carriage stopped at a corner upon which a school
building stood. Since his charges were infantile affairs, the colored
gentleman on the box thought to expedite matters and drop them at the
corner nearest their homes. Descending, he flung open the door, and
three little girls crept forth, three crushed little girls, three limp
little girls, three little girls in a mild kind of mourning. They came
forth timidly. They looked around. They hoped they might reach their
homes unobserved.
There was a crowd up the street. A gathering of people--many people.
It seemed to be at Emmy Lou's gate. Hattie and Sadie lived farther on.
"It must be a fire," said Hattie.
But it wasn't. It was The Exhibition, the Principal, and Miss Carrie,
and teachers and pupils, and mammas and aunties and Uncle Charlie.
"An' grand'ma," said Hattie. "And the visiting lady," said Emmy Lou.
"And our minister," said Sadie.
The gathering of many people caught sight of them presently, and came
to meet them, three little girls in mild mourning.
The parents and guardians led them home.
Emmy Lou was tired. At supper she nodded and mild mourning and all,
suddenly she collapsed and fell asleep, her head against her chair.
Uncle Charlie woke her. He stood her up on the chair, and held out his
arms. "Come," he said, "Come, suit the action to the word."
Emmy Lou woke suddenly, the words smiting her ears with ominous import.
She thought the hour had come; it was The Exhibition. She stood stiffly,
she advanced a cautious foot, her chubby hand described a careful half
circle. Emmy Lou spoke her part.
"We know not where we go."
[B] Copyright, 1901, 1902, by McClure, Phillips & Co.
The Dancing School and Dicky[C]
BY JOSEPHINE DODGE DASKAM.
(_Arranged by Maude Herndon and Grace Kellam._)
[From "The Little God and Dicky."]
[We have debated long and earnestly which of the seven stories
in "The Madness of Phillip and Other Tales of Childhood" is the
best public reading. As yet we have no decision; certainly six
of them are among the choicest readings of child-life which may
be found in American literature, where we have the real child in
books. With the permission of the author and the publishers,
McClure, Phillips & Co., New York, we reprint cuttings from two
of these stories.]
"Where are you going?" said somebody, as he slunk out toward the
hat-rack.
"Oh, out."
"Well, see that you don't stay long. Remember what it is this
afternoon."
He turned like a stag at bay.
"_What_ is it this afternoon?" he demanded viciously.
"You know very well."
"_What?_"
"See that you're here, that's all. You've got to get dressed."
"I will not go to that old dancing school again, and I tell you that
I won't, and I won't. And I won't!"
"Now, Dick, don't begin that all over again. It's so silly of you.
You've got to go."
"Why?"
"Because it's the thing to do."
"Why?"
"Because you must learn to dance."
"Why?"
"Every nice boy learns."
"Why?"
"That will do, Richard. Go and find your pumps. Now, get right up from
the floor, and if you scratch the Morris chair I shall speak to your
father. Ain't you ashamed of yourself? Get right up--you must expect to
be hurt, if you pull so. Come, Richard! Now, stop crying--a great boy
like you! I am sorry I hurt your elbow, but you know very well you
aren't crying for that at all. Come along!"
His sister flitted by the door, her accordeon-plaited skirt held
carefully from the floor, her hair in two glistening, blue-knotted
pigtails.
"Hurry up, Dick, or we'll be late," she called back sweetly.
"Oh, you shut up, will you!" he snarled.
She looked meek, and listened to his deprivation of dessert for the
rest of the week with an air of love for the sinner and hatred for the
sin that deceived even her older sister who was dressing her.
A desperately patient monologue from the next room indicated the course
of events there.
"Your necktie is on the bed. No, I don't know where the blue one is--it
doesn't matter; that it just as good. Yes, it is. No, you cannot. You
will have to wear one. Because no one ever goes without. I don't know why.
"Many a boy would be thankful and glad to have silk stockings. Nonsense,
your legs are warm enough. I don't believe you. Now, Richard, how
perfectly ridiculous! There is no left or right to stockings. You have
no time to change. Shoes are a different thing. Well, hurry up, then.
Because they are made so, I suppose. I don't know why.
"Brush it more on that side--no, you can't go to the barbers. You went
last week. It looks perfectly well. I cut it? Why, I don't know how to
trim hair. Anyway, there isn't time now. It will have to do. Stop your
scowling for goodness' sake, Dick. Have you a handkerchief? It makes
no difference, you must carry one. You _ought_ to want to use it. Well,
you should. Yes, they always do, whether they have colds or not. I
don't know why.
"Your Golden Text! The idea! No, you cannot. You can learn that Sunday
before church. This is not the time to learn Golden Texts. I never saw
such a child. Now take your pumps and find the plush bag. Why not? Put
them right with Ruth's. That's what the bag was made for. Well, how
do you want to carry them? Why, I never heard of anything so silly!
You will knot the strings. I don't care if they do carry skates that
way--skates are not slippers. You'd lose them. Very well, then, only
hurry up. I should think you'd be ashamed to have them dangling around
your neck that way. Because people never _do_ carry them so. I don't
know why.
"Now, here's your coat. Well, I can't help it, you have no time to hunt
for them. Put your hands in your pockets--it's not far. And mind, don't
run for Ruth every time. You don't take any pains with her, and you
hustle her about, Miss Dorothy says. Take another little girl. Yes,
you must. I shall speak to your father if you answer me in that way,
Richard. Men don't dance with their sisters. Because they don't. I don't
know why."
He slammed the door till the piazza shook, and strode along beside his
scandalized sister, the pumps flopping noisily on his shoulders. She
tripped along contentedly--she liked to go. The personality capable of
extracting pleasure from the hour before them baffled his comprehension,
and he scowled fiercely at her, rubbing his silk stockings together at
every step, to enjoy the strange smooth sensation thus produced. This
gave him a bow-legged gait that distressed his sister beyond words.
"I think you might stop. Everybody's looking at you! Please stop, Dick
Pendleton; you're a mean old thing. I should think you'd be ashamed to
carry your slippers that way. If you jump in that wet place and spatter
me I shall tell papa--you _will_ care, when I tell him just the same!
You're just as bad as you can be. I shan't speak with you to-day!"
She pursed up her lips and maintained a determined silence. He rubbed
his legs together with renewed emphasis. Acquaintances met them and
passed, unconscious of anything but the sweet picture of a sister and a
brother and a plush bag going dutifully and daintily to dancing school.
He jumped over the threshold of the long room and aimed his cap at the
head of a boy he knew, who was standing on one foot to put on a slipper.
This destroyed his friend's balance, and a cheerful scuffle followed.
Life assumed a more hopeful aspect.
A shrill whistle called them out in two crowded bunches to the polished
floor.
Hoping against hope, he had clung to the beautiful thought that Miss
Dorothy would be sick, that she had missed her train--but no! There she
was, with her shiny high-heeled slippers, her pink skirt that puffed
out like a fan, and her silver whistle on a chain. The little clicking
castanets that rang out so sharply were in her hand beyond a doubt.
"Ready, children! Spread out. Take your lines. First position. Now!"
The large man at the piano, who always looked half asleep, thundered out
the first bars of the latest waltz, and the business began.
Their eyes were fixed solemnly on Miss Dorothy's pointed shoes. They
slipped and slid and crossed their legs and arched their pudgy insteps;
the boys breathed hard over their gleaming collars. On the right side
of the hall thirty hands held out their diminutive skirts at an alluring
angle. On the left, neat black legs pattered diligently through mystic
evolutions.
The chords rolled out slower, with dramatic pauses between; sharp clicks
of the castanets rang through the hall; a line of toes rose gradually
towards the horizontal, whirled more or less steadily about, crossed
behind, bent low, bowed, and with a flutter of skirts resumed the first
position.
A little breeze of laughing admiration circled the row of mothers and
aunts.
"Isn't that too cunning! Just like a little ballet! Aren't they
graceful, really, now!"
"_One_, two, three! _One_, two three! Slide, slide, cross; _one_, two,
three!"
There are those who find pleasure in the aimless intricacies of the
dance; self-respecting men even have been known voluntarily to frequent
assemblies devoted to this nerve-racking attitudinizing futility. Among
such, however, you shall seek in vain in future years for Richard Carr
Pendleton.
"_One_, two, three! _Reverse_, two, three!"
The whistle shrilled.
"Ready for the two-step, children?"
A mild tolerance grew on him. If dancing must be, better the two-step
than anything else. It is not an alluring dance, your two-step; it does
not require temperament. Any one with a firm intention of keeping the
time and a strong arm can drag a girl through it very acceptably.
Dicky skirted the row of mothers and aunts cautiously.
"Oh, look! Did you ever see anything so sweet?" said somebody.
Involuntarily he turned. There in a corner, all by herself, a little
girl was gravely performing a dance. He stared at her curiously.
She was ethereally slender, brown-eyed, brown-haired, brown-skinned. A
little fluffy white dress spread fan-shaped over her knees; her ankles
were bird-like. Her eyes were serious, her hair hung loose. She swayed
lightly; one little gloved hand held out her skirt, the other marked the
time. Her performance was an apotheosis of the two-step; that metronomic
dance would not have recognized itself under her treatment.
Dicky admired. But the admiration of his sex is notoriously fatal to the
art that attracts it. He advanced and bowed jerkily, grasped one of the
loops of her sash in the back, stamped gently a moment to get the time,
and the artist sank into the partner, the pirouette grew coarse to
sympathize with clay.
"Don't they do it well, though! See those little things near the door!"
he caught as they went by, and his heart swelled with pride.
"What's your name?" he asked abruptly after the dance.
"Thithelia," she lisped. She was very shy.
"Mine's Richard Carr Pendleton. My father's a lawyer. What's yours?"
"I--I don't know!"
"Pooh!" he said, grandly; "I guess you know. Don't you, really?"
She shook her head. Suddenly a light dawned in her eyes.
"Maybe I know," she murmured. "I gueth I know. He--he'th a really
thtate!"
"A really state? That isn't anything--nothing at all. A really state?"
He frowned at her. Her lip quivered. She turned and ran away.
"Here, come back!" he called; but she was gone.
"That will do for to-day," said Miss Dorothy, presently, and they surged
into the dressing-rooms, to be buttoned up and pulled out of draughts
and trundled home.
She was swathed carefully in a wadded silk jacket, and then enveloped in
a hooded cloak; she looked like an angelic brownie. Dicky ran to her as
a woman led her out to a coupé at the curb, and tugged at the ribbon of
her cloak.
"Where do you live? Say, where do you?" he demanded.
"I--I don't know." The woman laughed.
"Why, yes, you do, Cissy. Tell him directly, now."
She put one tiny finger in her mouth.
"I--I gueth I live on Chethnut Thtreet," he called as the door slammed
and shut her in.
His sister amicably offered him half the plush bag to carry, and opened
a running criticism of the afternoon.
"Did you ever see anybody act like that Fannie Leach? She's awfully
rough. Miss Dorothy spoke to her twice--wasn't that dreadful? What made
you dance all the time with Cissy Weston? She's an awful baby--a regular
fraid-cat! We girls tease her just as easy--do you like her?"
"She's the prettiest one there!"
"Why, Dick Pendleton, she is not! She's so little--she's not half so
pretty as Agnes, or--or lots of the girls. She's such a baby. She puts
her finger in her mouth if anybody says anything at all. If you ask
her a single thing she does like this: 'I don't know, I don't know!'"
He smiled scornfully. Did he not know how she did it?
"And she can't talk plain! She lisps--truly she does!"
Was ever a girl so thick-headed as that sister of his!
"She puts her finger in her mouth! She can't talk plain!" Alas, my
sisters, it was Helen's finger that toppled over Troy, and Diane de
Poitiers stammered!
For two long months the little girl led him along the primrose way. The
poor fellow thought it was the main road; he had yet to learn it was but
a by-path. But the Little God was not through with him. That very night
he reached the top of the wave.
He came down to breakfast rapt and quiet. He salted his oatmeal by
mistake, and never knew the difference. His sister laughed derisively,
and explained his folly to him as he swallowed the last spoonful, but
he only smiled kindly at her. After his egg he spoke.
"I dreamed that it was dancing school. And I went. And I was the only
fellow there. And what do you think? _All the little girls were
Cecilia!_"
They gasped.
"You don't suppose he'll be a poet, do you? Or a genius, or anything?"
his mother inquired anxiously.
"No!" his father returned. "I should say he was more likely to be a
Mormon!"
[C] Copyright, 1902, by McClure, Phillips & Co.
"A Model Story in the Kindergarten"[D]
BY JOSEPHINE DODGE DASKAM.
(_Arranged by Maude Herndon and Grace Kellam._)
[From "The Madness of Philip." McClure, Phillips & Company.]
It was evident that something was wrong that morning with the children
of the kindergarten. Two perplexed teachers were quieting the latest
outbreak and marshaling a wavering line of very little people when the
youngest assistant appeared on the scene.
"Miss Hunt wants to know why you're so late with them," she inquired.
"She hopes nothing's wrong. Mrs. R. B. M. Smith is here to-day to visit
the primary schools and kindergartens, and--"
"Oh, goodness," exclaimed a teacher, abruptly, ceasing her attempted
consolation of Marantha Judd. "I can't _bear_ that woman! She's always
read Stanley Hall's _last_ article that proves that what he said before
was wrong! Come along, Marantha, don't be a foolish little girl any
longer. We shall be late for the morning exercise."
Upstairs a large circle was forming under the critical scrutiny of a
short, stout woman with crinkly, gray hair. This was Mrs. R. B. M.
Smith, who, when the opening exercises were finished, signified her
willingness to relate to the children a model story, calling the
teacher's attention in advance to the almost incredible certainty that
would characterize the children's anticipation of the events judiciously
and psychologically selected.
The arm-chairs shortly to contain so much accurate anticipation were
at last arranged and the children sat decorously attentive, their faces
turned curiously toward the strange lady with the fascinating plumes in
her bonnet.
"Nothing like animals to bring out the protective instinct--feebler
dependent on the stronger," she said rapidly to the teachers, and then
addressed the objects of these theories.
"Now, children, I'm going to tell you a nice story--you all like
stories, I'm sure."
At just this moment little Richard Willetts sneezed loudly and
unexpectedly to all, himself included, with the result that his
ever-ready suspicion fixed upon his neighbor, Andrew Halloran, as the
direct cause of the convulsion. Andrew's well-meant efforts to detach
from Richard's vest the pocket-handkerchief securely fastened thereto
by a large black safety-pin strengthened the latter's conviction of
intended assault and battery, and he squirmed out of the circle and made
a dash for the hall--the first stage in an evident homeward expedition.
This broke in upon the story, and even when it got under way again there
was an atmosphere of excitement quite unexplained by the tale itself.
"Yesterday, children, as I came out of my yard, _what_ do you think I
saw?" The elaborately concealed surprise in store was so obvious that
Marantha rose to the occasion and suggested:
"An el'phunt?"
"Why, no! Why should I see an elephant in my yard? It wasn't _nearly_
so big as that--it was a _little_ thing!"
"A fish?" ventured Eddy Brown, whose eye fell upon the aquarium in the
corner. The _raconteuse_ smiled patiently.
"Why, no! How could a fish, a live fish, get in my front yard?"
"A dead fish?" persisted Eddy, who was never known to relinquish
voluntarily an idea.
"It was a little kitten," said the story-teller, decidedly. "A little
white kitten. She was standing right near a great big puddle of water.
And what else do you think I saw?"
"Another kitten?" suggested Marantha, conservatively.
"No, a big Newfoundland dog. He saw the little kitten near the water.
Now cats don't like the water, do they? They don't like a wet place.
What do they like?"
"Mice," said Joseph Zukoffsky, abruptly.
"Well, yes, they do; but there were no mice in my yard. I'm sure you
know what I mean. If they don't like _water_, what do they like?"
"Milk!"
"They like a dry place," said Mrs. R. B. M. Smith.
"Now what do you suppose the dog did?"
It may be that successive failures had disheartened the listeners; it
may be that the very range presented alive to the dog and them for
choice dazzled their imaginations. At any rate, they made no answer.
"Nobody knows what the dog did?" repeated the story-teller,
encouragingly. "What would you do if you saw a little white kitten
like that?"
Again a silence. Then Philip remarked gloomily, "I'd pull its tail."
"And what do the rest of you think?" inquired Mrs. R. B. M. Smith,
pathetically. "I hope _you_ are not so cruel as that little boy."
But fully half the children had seen the youngest assistant giggle at
"that little boy's" answer, and with one accord came the quick response,
"_I'd_ pull it too."
[D] Copyright, 1902, by McClure, Phillips & Co.
Fishin'?
(From the _New Orleans Times-Democrat_.)
Settin' on a log
An' fishin'
An' watchin' the cork,
An' wishin'.
Jus' settin' round home
An' sighin',
Jus' settin' round home--
An' lyin'.
"Ardelia in Arcady"[E]
(_Arranged by Maude Herndon and Grace Kellam._)
[From "The Madness of Philip," by Josephine Dodge Daskam.
McClure, Phillips & Co.]
When first the young lady from the College Settlement dragged Ardelia
from her degradation, she was sitting on a dirty pavement and throwing
assorted refuse at an unconscious policeman.
"Come here, little girl," said the young lady, invitingly. "Wouldn't
you like to come with me and have a nice, cool bath?"
"Naw," said Ardelia, in tones rivaling the bath in coolness.
"You wouldn't? Well, wouldn't you like some bread and butter and jam?"
"Wha's jam?"
"Why, it's--er--marmalade. All sweet, you know."
"Naw!"
"I thought you might like to go on a picnic," said the young lady,
helplessly. "I thought all little girls liked--"
"Picnic? When?" cried Ardelia, moved instantly to interest. "I'm goin'!
Is it the Dago picnic?"
The young lady shuddered, and seizing the hand which she imagined to
have had the least to do with the refuse, she led Ardelia away--the
first stage of her journey to Arcady.
Later arrayed in starched and creaking garments which had been made for
a slightly smaller child, Ardelia was transported to the station, and
for the first time introduced to a railroad car. She sat stiffly on the
red plush seat while the young lady talked reassuringly of daisies and
cows and green grass. As Ardelia had never seen any of these things, it
is hardly surprising that she was somewhat unenthusiastic.
"You can roll in the daisies, my dear, and pick all you want--all!" she
urged eagerly.
"Aw right," she answered, guardedly.
The swelteringly hot day, and the rapid unaccustomed motion combined to
afflict her with a strange internal anticipation of future woe. Once
last summer, when she ate the liquid dregs of the ice-cream man's great
tin, and fell asleep in the room where her mother was frying onions, she
had experienced this same foreboding, and the climax of that dreadful
day lingered yet in her memory.
At last they stopped. The young lady seized her hand, and led her
through the narrow aisle, down the steep steps, across the little
country station platform, and Ardelia was in Arcady.
A bare-legged boy in blue overalls and a wide straw hat then drove them
many miles along a hot, dusty road, that wound endlessly through the
parched country fields. Finally they turned into a driveway, and drew up
before a gray wooden house. A spare, dark-eyed woman in a checked apron
advanced to meet them.
"Terrible hot to-day, ain't it?" she sighed. "I'm real glad to see you,
Miss Forsythe. Won't you cool off a little before you go on? This is the
little girl, I s'pose. I guess it's pretty cool to what she's accustomed
to, ain't it, Delia?"
"No, I thank you, Mrs. Slater. I'll go right on to the house. Now,
Ardelia, here you are in the country. I'm staying with my friend in a
big white house about a quarter of a mile farther on. You can't see it
from here, but if you want anything you can just walk over. Day after
to-morrow is the picnic I told you of. You'll see me then, anyway. Now
run right out in the grass and pick all the daisies you want. Don't be
afraid; no one will drive you off this grass!"
The force of this was lost on Ardelia, who had never been driven off any
grass whatever, but she gathered that she was expected to walk out into
the thick rank growth of the unmowed side yard, and strode downward
obediently.
"Now pick them! Pick the daisies!" cried Miss Forsythe, excitedly. "I
want to see you."
Ardelia looked blank.
"Huh?" she said.
"Gather them. Get a bunch. Oh, you poor child! Mrs. Slater, she doesn't
know how!" Miss Forsythe was deeply moved and illustrated by picking
imaginary daisies on the porch. Ardelia's quick eye followed her
gestures, and stooping, she scooped the heads from three daisies and
started back with them. Miss Forsythe gasped.
"No, no, dear! Pull them up! Take the stem, too," she explained. "Pick
the whole flower."
Ardelia bent over again, tugged at a thick-stemmed clover, brought it
up by the roots, and laid it awkwardly on the young lady's lap.
"Thank you, dear," she said, politely, "but I meant them for you.
I meant you to have a bunch. Don't you want them?"
"Naw," said Ardelia, decidedly.
Miss Forsythe's eyes brightened suddenly.
"I know what you want," she cried, "you're thirsty! Mrs. Slater, won't
you get us some of your good, creamy milk? Don't you want a drink,
Ardelia?"
Ardelia nodded. When Mrs. Slater appeared with the foaming yellow
glasses she wound her nervous little hands about the stem of the goblet
and drank a deep draught.
"There!" cried the young lady. "Now, how do you like real milk, Ardelia?
I declare you look like another child already! You can have all you want
every day--why, what's the matter?"
For Ardelia was growing ghastly pale before them; her eyes turned
inward, her lips tightened. A blinding horror surged from her toes
upward, and the memory of the liquid ice-cream and the frying onions
faded before the awful reality of her present agony.
Later, as she lay limp and white on the slippery haircloth sofa in
Mrs. Slater's musty parlor she heard them discussing her situation.
"There was a lot of Fresh-Air children over at Mis' Simms's," her
hostess explained, "and they 'most all of 'em said the milk was too
strong--did you ever! Two or three of 'em was sick, like this one, but
they got to love it in a little while. She will, too."
Ardelia shook her head feebly. In a few minutes she was asleep. When
she awoke all was dusk and shadow. She felt scared and lonely. Now that
her stomach was filled and her nerves refreshed by her long sleep, she
was in a condition to realize that aside from all bodily discomfort
she was sad--very sad. A new, unknown depression weighed her down.
It grew steadily, something was happening, something constant and
mournful--what? Suddenly she knew. It was a steady, recurrent noise, a
buzzing, monotonous click. Now it rose, now it fell, accentuating the
silence dense about it.
"Zig-a-zig! Zig-a-zig!" then a rest.
"Zig-a-zig! Ziz-a-zig-a-zig!"
"Wha's 'at?" she said.
"That? Oh, those are katydids. I s'pose you never heard 'em, that's a
fact. Kind o' cozy, I think. Don't you like 'em?"
"Naw."
Another long silence intervened. Mr. Slater snored, William smoked, and
the monotonous clamor was uninterrupted.
"Zig-a-zig! Zig-zig! Zig-a-zig-a-zig!"
Slowly, against the background of this machine-like clicking, there grew
other sounds, weird, unhappy, far away.
"Wheep, wheep, wheep!"
This was a high, thin crying.
"Burrom! Burrom! Brown!"
This was low and resonant and solemn. Ardelia scowled.
"Wha's 'at?" she asked again.
"That's the frogs. Bull-frogs and peepers. Never heard them, either, did
ye? Well, that's what they are."
William took his pipe out of his mouth.
"Come here, sissy, 'n I'll tell y' a story," he said, lazily.
Ardelia obeyed, and glancing timorously at the shadows, slipped around
to his side.
"Onc't they was an' ol' feller comin' 'long crosslots, late at night,
an' he come to a pond, an' he kinder stopped up an' says to himself,
'Wonder how deep the ol' pond is, anyhow?' He was just a leetle--well,
he'd had a drop too much, y' see--"
"Had a what?" interrupted Ardelia.
"He was sort o' rollin' 'round--he didn't know just what he was doin'--"
"Oh! Jagged!" said Ardelia, comprehendingly.
"I guess so. An' he heard a voice singin' out, 'Knee deep! Knee deep!
Knee deep.'"
William gave a startling imitation of the peepers; his voice was a high,
shrill wail.
"'Oh, well,' s' he, ''f it's just knee deep, I'll wade through,' an' he
starts in.
"Just then he hears a big feller singin' out, 'Better go rrround! Better
gorrround! Better gorrround!'
"'Lord,' says he, 'is it s' deep 's that? Well, I'll go round then.'
'N' off he starts to walk around.
"'Knee deep! Knee deep! Knee deep!' says the peepers.
"An' there it was. Soon's he'd start to do one thing they'd tell him
another. Make up his mind he couldn't, so he stands there still, they
do say, askin' 'em every night which he better do."
"Stands where?"
"Oh, I d' know. Out in the swamp, mebbe."
Again he smoked. Time passed by.
Suddenly Mr. Slater coughed and arose. "Well, guess I'll be gettin' to
bed," he said. "Come on, boys. Hello, little girl! Come to visit us,
hey? Mind you don't pick poison vine."
Mrs. Slater led Ardelia upstairs into a little hot room, and told her
to get into bed quick, for the lamp drew the mosquitoes.
Ardelia kicked off her shoes and approached the bed distrustfully. It
sank down with her weight and smelled hot and queer. Rolling off she
stretched herself on the floor, and lay there disconsolately. At home
the hurdy-gurdy was playing, the women were gossiping on every step, the
lights were everywhere--the blessed fearless gas lights--and the little
girls were dancing in the breeze that drew in from East River.
In the morning Miss Forsythe came over to inquire after her charge's
health, accompanied by another young lady.
"Why, Ethel, she isn't barefoot!" she cried. "Come here, Ardelia, and
take off your shoes and stockings directly. Shoes and stockings in the
country! Now, you'll know what comfort is."
To patter about bare-legged on the clear, safe pavement, was one thing;
to venture unprotected into that waving, tripping tangle was another.
Ardelia stepped cautiously upon the short grass near the house, and with
jaw set felt her way into the higher growth. Suddenly she stopped; she
shrieked:
"Oh, gee! Oh, gee!"
"What is it, Ardelia; what is it? A snake?" Mrs. Slater rushed out,
seized Ardelia, half rigid with fear, and carried her to the porch. They
elicited from her as she sat with feet tucked under her that something
had rustled by her "down at the bottom"--that it was slippery, that she
had stepped on it, and wanted to go home.
"Toad," explained Mrs. Slater, briefly. "Only a little hop-toad, Delia,
that wouldn't harm a baby, let alone a big girl nine years old, like you."
"She's a queer child," Mrs. Slater confided to the young ladies. "Not a
drop of anything will she drink but cold tea. It don't seem reasonable
to give it to her all day, and I won't do it, so she has to wait till
meals. She makes a face if I say milk, and the water tastes slippery,
she says, and salty-like. She won't touch it. I tell her it's good
well-water, but she just shakes her head. She's stubborn 's a bronze
mule, that child. Just mopes around. 'S morning she asked me when did
the parades go by. I told her there wa'n't any, but the circus, an' that
had been already. I tried to cheer her up, sort of, with that Fresh-Air
picnic of yours to-morrow, Miss Forsythe, an s'she, 'Oh, the Dago
picnic,' s'she, 'will they have Tong's band?'"
"She don't seem to take any int'rest in th' farm, like those Fresh-Air
children, either. I showed her the hens an' the eggs, an' she said it
was a lie about the hens layin' 'em. 'What d' you take me for?' s'she.
The idea! Then Henry milked the cow, to show her--she wouldn't believe
that, either--and with the milk streamin' down before her, what do you
s'pose she said? 'You put it in!' s'she. I never should a' believed
that, Miss Forsythe, if I hadn't heard it."
"Oh, she'll get over it; just wait a few days. Good-bye, Ardelia. Eat
a good supper."
But this Ardelia did not do. Mr. Slater ate in voracious silence.
William never spoke, and Mrs. Slater filled their plates without
comment. Ardelia had never in her life eaten in silence. Through the
open door the buzz of the katydids was beginning tentatively. In the
intervals of William's gulps a faint bass note warned them from the
swamp.
"Better gorrround! Better gorrround!"
Ardelia's nerves strained and snapped. Her eyes grew wild.
"Fer Gawd's sake, talk!" she cried, sharply. "Are youse dumbies?"
* * * * *
The morning dawned fresh and fair; the homely barnyard noises brought a
smile to Miss Forsythe's sympathetic face, as she waited for Ardelia to
join her in a drive to the station. But Ardelia did not smile.
At the station Miss Forsythe shook her limp little hand.
"Good-bye, dear. I'll bring the other little children back with me.
You'll enjoy that. Good-bye."
"I'm comin', too," said Ardelia.
"Why--no, dear--you wait for us. You'd only turn around and come right
back, you know."
"Come, back nothin'. I'm goin' home."
"Why--why, Ardelia! Don't you really like it?"
"Naw, it's too hot."
Miss Forsythe stared.
"But Ardelia, you don't want to go back to that horribly smelly street?
Not truly?"
"Betcher life I do!"
"It's so lonely and quiet," pleaded the young lady. Ardelia shuddered.
Again she seemed to hear that fiendish, mournful wailing:
"Knee deep! Knee deep! Knee deep!"
They rode in silence. But the jar and jolt of the engine made music in
Ardelia's ears; the familiar jargon of the newsboy:
"N' Yawk evening paypers! Woyld! Joynal!" was a breath from home to her
little cockney heart.
They pushed through the great station, they climbed the steps of the
elevated track, they jingled on a cross-town car. And at a familiar
corner Ardelia slipped loose her hand, uttered a grunt of joy, and Miss
Forsythe looked after her in vain. She was gone.
But late in the evening, when the great city turned out to breathe, and
sat with opened shirt and loosened bodice on the dirty steps; when the
hurdy-gurdy executed brassy scales and the lights flared in endless
sparkling rows; when the trolley gongs at the corner pierced the air,
and feet tapped cheerfully down the cool stone steps of the beer-shop,
Ardelia, bare-footed and abandoned, nibbling at a section of bologna
sausage, cake-walked insolently with a band of little girls behind a
severe policeman, mocking his stolid gait, to the delight of Old Dutchy,
who beamed approvingly at her prancing.
"Ja, ja, you trow out your feet good. Some day we pay to see you, no?
You like to get back already!"
"Ja, danky slum, Dutchy," she said airily, as she sank upon her cool
step, stretched her toes and sighed:
"Gee! N' Yawk's the place!"
[E] Copyright, 1902, by McClure, Phillips & Co.
Meriel
BY MARGARET HOUSTON.
(From _Ainslee's Magazine_.)
"Let go my hand!" (A start of quick surprise.)
"How could you dare?" (A flash of angry eyes.)
And yet her hand in mine all passive lies.
"How rude you are!" (The rose-blush fully blown.)
"I trusted you!" ('Twould melt a heart of stone.)
And yet the little hand rests in mine own!
Oh, dainty Meriel--little April day!
However warmly pouting lips cry Nay,
That little hand shall rest in mine--alway!
The Old Man and "Shep"
(A true story.)
BY JOHN G. SCORER.
It was on the morning of the second day of the new year. The mercury
hovered a few degrees above zero. The winds that swept down from the
North were keen and biting, and the mist-like snow fell fitfully. An old
man, his once tall form bent by the burdens and sorrows of sixty odd
years, his step slow and shuffling, his clothes unkempt and tattered,
his long beard flowing down upon his breast, his eye still bright and in
his face lingering traces of refinement, made his way along the deserted
street. He was accompanied by a dog, whose long, shaggy hair indicated a
blooded ancestry. So emaciated was his form that even through his shaggy
coat could be seen the outline of his bony frame.
The two, master and dog, hobbled into the city's out-door relief
department. The dog at once curled himself up on a rug near a radiator
and was soon asleep, dreaming, perchance, of other and more prosperous
days, with "a virtuous kennel and plenty of food." The old man stood for
a time warming his benumbed fingers at the radiator. Presently one of
the clerks approached and asked him who he was and what he wanted.
"I am John Owens," he replied; "and I want to go to the infirmary. I am
ill, homeless and penniless."
"All right, my man," said the clerk, and at once wrote out a permit.
The old man took the permit, read it over carefully, and said: "It says
nothing about the dog. I want one for the dog, too."
"We can't give you one for the dog; we have no place out there for him.
You'll have to leave him behind."
"Leave my dog behind? No, sir," said the old fellow, straightening up
his bent form. "He's the only friend I have in this world. Why old
'Shep' has been my only friend for the last eight years. I had money,
friends and influence when he was a pup, and he had a better bed and
better food then than I have had for many a year. I had my carriages
once, and a man to drive them, too. I know it sounds strange, now.
Sometimes it seems like a dream. But never mind. When I woke up from
that dream I had only my wife Martha, my son George, and 'Shep.' Every
one else turned from me.
"My wife was a good, brave soul, but our reverses broke her down, and on
one spring day we laid her away beneath the daisies and the myrtle. Soon
after that my son George was taken from me by that stern monster, death,
leaving me alone--alone, with no friend but 'Shep.'
"Where do I sleep? Why, my boy, anywhere. You don't know how many warm
stairways there are. 'Shep' and I do, though, and we curl up together in
them when the officer on the beat isn't looking. Yes, poor fellow, he's
lame; had his leg broken. He got that trying to keep me out of the way
of a coal wagon two years ago, when I slipped on the icy street.
"Here's your permit, mister. I won't go out there unless 'Shep' goes
with me. He can't? Well, good-bye, good-bye, sir. Come on, 'Shep.' You
can't stay there all day. Just as much obliged," and the two passed out
into the cold again.
Who Knows
The Lily lifts to mine her nunlike face,
But my wild heart is beating for the Rose;
How can I pause to behold the Lily's grace?
Shall I repent me by and by? Who knows?
--_Louise Chandler Moulton_.
The Negro
BY BOOKER T. WASHINGTON.
(Adapted from the speech delivered at the opening of the Atlanta
Exposition.)
One-third of the population of the South is of the negro race. No
enterprise seeking the material, civil, or moral welfare of this section
can disregard this element of our population and reach the highest
success. I but convey to you, Mr. President and directors, the sentiment
of the masses of my race when I say that in no way have the value
and manhood of the American negro been more fittingly and generously
recognized than by the managers of this magnificent Exposition at every
stage of its progress. It is a recognition that will do more to cement
the friendship of the two races than any occurrence since the dawn of
our freedom.
Not only this, but the opportunity here afforded will awaken among us
a new era of industrial progress. Ignorant and inexperienced, it is
not strange that in the first years of our new life we began at the top
instead of at the bottom; that a seat in Congress or a State legislature
was more sought than real estate or industrial skill; that the political
convention or stump speaking had more attractions than starting a dairy
farm or truck garden.
A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a friendly vessel.
From the mast of the unfortunate vessel was seen a signal, "Water,
water; we die of thirst!" The answer from the friendly vessel at once
came back, "Cast down your bucket where you are." A second time the
signal, "Water, water; send us water!" ran up from the distressed
vessel, and was answered, "Cast down your bucket where you are." And a
third and fourth signal for water was answered, "Cast down your bucket
where you are." The captain of the distressed vessel at last, heeding
the injunction, cast down his bucket, and it came up full of fresh,
sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon River. To those of my
race who depend on bettering their condition in a foreign land or who
underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the
Southern white man, who is their next-door neighbor, I would say: "Cast
down your bucket where you are." Cast it down in making friends in every
manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded.
Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic
service, and in the professions. And in this connection it is well to
bear in mind that whatever other sins the South may be called to bear,
when it comes to business, pure and simple, it is in the South that the
negro is given a man's chance in the commercial world, and in nothing
is this Exposition more eloquent than in emphasizing this chance. Our
greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we may
overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the productions
of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper in
proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labor and put
brains and skill into the common occupations of life; shall prosper in
proportion as we learn to draw the line between the superficial and the
substantial, the ornamental gewgaws of life and the useful. No race can
prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field
as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not
at the top. Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our
opportunities.
To those of the white race who look to the incoming of those of foreign
birth and strange tongues and habits for the prosperity of the South,
were I permitted I would repeat what I say to my own race, "Cast down
your bucket where you are." Cast it down among the eight millions
of negroes whose habits you know, whose fidelity and love you have
tested in days when to have proved treacherous meant the ruin of your
firesides. Cast down your bucket among these people who have, without
strikes and labor wars, tilled your fields, cleared your forests,
builded your railroads and cities, and brought forth treasure from
the bowels of the earth, and helped make possible this magnificent
representation of the progress of the South. Casting down your buckets
among my people, helping and encouraging them as you are doing on these
grounds, and to education of head, hand, and heart, you will find that
they will buy your surplus land, make blossom the waste places in your
fields, and run your factories. While doing this you can be sure in the
future as in the past, that you and your families will be surrounded by
the most patient, faithful, law-abiding and unresentful people that the
world has seen. As we have proved our loyalty to you in the past, in
nursing your children, watching by the sick-bed of your mothers and
fathers, and often following them with tear-dimmed eyes to the graves,
so in the future, in our humble way, we shall stand by you with a
devotion that no foreigner can approach, ready to lay down our lives,
if need be, in defence of yours, interlacing our industrial, commercial,
civil and religious life with yours in a way that shall make the
interests of both races one. In all things that are purely social we
can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things
essential to mutual progress.
There is no defence or security for any of us except in the highest
intelligence and development of all. If anywhere there are efforts
tending to curtail the fullest growth of the negro, let these efforts be
turned into stimulating, encouraging, and making him the most useful and
intelligent citizen. Efforts or means so invested will pay a thousand
per cent. interest. These efforts will be twice blessed--"blessing him
that gives and him that takes."
Nearly sixteen millions of hands will aid you in pulling the load
upward, or they will pull against you the load downward. We shall
constitute one-third and more of the ignorance and crime of the South,
or one-third of its intelligence and progress; we shall contribute
one-third to the business and industrial prosperity of the South, or
we shall prove a veritable body of death, stagnating, repressing,
retarding every effort to advance the body politic.
The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions
of social equality is the extremest folly, and that progress in the
enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result
of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing. No
race that has anything to contribute to the markets of the world is long
in any degree ostracized. It is important and right that all privileges
of the law be ours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared
for the exercise of these privileges. The opportunity to earn a dollar
in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to
spend a dollar in an opera-house.
Here bending, as it were, over the altar that represents the struggles
of your race and mine, both starting practically empty-handed three
decades ago, I pledge that in your effort to work out the great and
intricate problem which God has laid at the doors of the South, you
shall have at all times the patient, sympathetic help of my race; only
let this be constantly in mind, that, while from representations in
these buildings of the product of field, of forest, of mine, of factory,
letters and art, much good will come, yet far above and beyond material
benefits will be that higher good, that, let us pray God, will come,
in a blotting out of sectional differences and racial animosities and
suspicions, in a determination to administer absolute justice, in a
willing obedience among all classes to the mandates of the law. This,
this, coupled with our material prosperity, will bring into our beloved
South a new heaven and a new earth.
The Guillotine
BY VICTOR HUGO.
(This is a part of the speech in defense of his son, under the
circumstances set forth in the oration.)
Gentlemen of the jury, if there is a culprit here, it is not my
son,--it is I!--I, who for these twenty-five years have opposed capital
punishment,--have contended for the inviolability of human life,--have
committed this crime for which my son is now arraigned. Here I denounce
my self, Mr. Advocate-General! I have committed it under all aggravated
circumstances; deliberately, repeatedly, tenaciously. Yes, this old and
absurd _lex taliones_--this law of blood for blood--I have combated all
my life--all my life, gentlemen of the jury! And, while I have breath,
I will continue to combat it, by all my efforts as a writer, by all
my words and all my votes as a legislator! I declare it before the
crucifix; before that Victim of the penalty of death, who sees and
hears us; before that gibbet, in which, two thousand years ago, for the
eternal instruction of the generations, the human law nailed the divine!
In all that my son has written on the subject of capital punishment and
for writing and publishing which he is now on trial--in all that he has
written, he has merely proclaimed the sentiments with which, from his
infancy, I have inspired him. Gentlemen jurors, the right to criticise
a law, and to criticise it severely--especially a penal law--is placed
beside the duty of amelioration, like the torch beside the work under
the artisan's hand. The right of the journalist is as sacred, as
necessary, as imprescriptible, as the right of the legislator.
What are the circumstances? A man, a convict, a sentenced wretch, is
dragged, on a certain morning, to one of our public squares. There he
finds the scaffold! He shudders, he struggles, he refuses to die. He is
young yet--only twenty-nine. Ah! I know what you will say,--"He is a
murderer!" But hear me. Two officers seize him. His hands, his feet are
tied. He throws off the two officers. A frightful struggle ensues. His
feet, bound as they are, become entangled in the ladder. He uses the
scaffold against the scaffold! The struggle is prolonged. Horror seizes
the crowd! The officers,--sweat and shame on their brows,--pale,
panting, terrified, despairing,--despairing with I know not what
horrible despair,--shrinking under that public reprobation which ought
to have visited the penalty, and spared the passive treatment, the
executioner,--the officers strive savagely. The victim clings to the
scaffold and shrieks for pardon. His clothes are torn,--his shoulders
bloody,--still he resists. At length, after three-quarters of an hour
of this monstrous effort, of this spectacle without a name, of this
agony,--agony for all, be it understood,--agony for the assembled
spectators as well as for the condemned man,--after this age of anguish,
gentlemen of the jury, they take back the poor wretch to his prison.
The People breathe again. The People, naturally merciful, hope that
the man will be spared. But no,--the guillotine, though vanquished,
remains standing. There it frowns all day, in the midst of a sickened
population. And at night the officers, re-enforced, drag forth the
wretch again, so bound that he is but an inert weight,--they drag him
forth, haggard, bloody, weeping, pleading, howling for life,--calling
upon God, calling upon his father and mother,--for like a very child
had this man become in the prospect of death,--they drag him forth to
execution. He is hoisted on the scaffold and his head falls! And then
through every conscience runs a shudder. Never had legal murder appeared
with an aspect so indecent, so abominable. All feel jointly implicated
in the deed. It is at this very moment that from a young man's breast
escapes a cry, wrung from his very heart,--a cry of pity and anguish,--a
cry of horror,--a cry of humanity. And this cry you would punish! And in
the face of the appalling facts which I have narrated, you would say to
the guillotine, "Thou art right!" and to Pity, saintly Pity, "Thou art
wrong!" Gentlemen of the jury, it cannot be! Gentlemen, I have finished.
Robespierre's Last Speech
BY MAXIMILIAN MARIE ISIDORE DE ROBESPIERRE.
[Before his execution, Robespierre addressed the populace of
Paris in part as follows:]
The enemies of the Republic call me tyrant! Were I such, they would
grovel at my feet. I should gorge them with gold, I should grant them
immunity for their crimes, and they would be grateful. Were I such, the
kings we have vanquished, far from denouncing Robespierre, would lend
me their guilty support; there would be a covenant between them and me.
Tyranny must have tools. But the enemies of tyranny,--whither does their
path tend? To the tomb, and to immortality! What tyrant is my protector?
To what faction do I belong? Yourselves! What faction since the
beginning of the Revolution, has crushed and annihilated so many
detected traitors? You, the people, our principles, are that faction--a
faction to which I am devoted, and against which all the scoundrelism of
the day is banded!
The confirmation of the Republic has been my object; and I know that
the Republic can be established only on the eternal basis of morality.
Against me, and against those who hold kindred principles, the league is
formed. My life? Oh! my life I abandon without a regret. I have seen the
past; and I foresee the future. What friend of this country would wish
to survive the moment when he could no longer serve it,--when he could
no longer defend innocence against oppression? Wherefore should I
continue in an order of things where intrigue eternally triumphs over
truth; where justice is mocked; where passions the most abject, or
fears the most absurd, over-ride the sacred interests of humanity? In
witnessing the multitude of vices which the torrent of the Revolution
has rolled in turbid communion with its civic virtues, I confess that
I have sometimes feared that I should be sullied, in the eyes of
posterity, by the impure neighborhood of unprincipled men, who had
thrust themselves into association with the sincere friends of humanity;
and I rejoice that these conspirators against my country have now, by
their reckless rage, traced deep the line of demarcation between
themselves and all true men.
Question history, and learn how all the defenders of liberty, in all
times, have been overwhelmed by calumny. But their traducers died
also. The good and the bad disappear alike from the earth; but in
very different conditions. O Frenchmen! O my countrymen! Let not your
enemies, with their desolating doctrines, degrade your souls and
enervate your virtues! No, Chaumette, no! Death is not "an eternal
sleep"! Citizens, efface from the tomb that motto, graven by
sacrilegious hands, which spreads over all nature a funereal crape,
takes from suppressed innocence its support, and affronts the
beneficent dispensation of death! Inscribe rather thereon these words:
"Death is the commencement of immortality!" I leave to the oppressors
of the People a terrible testament, which I proclaim with the
independence befitting one whose career is so nearly ended; it is
the awful truth,--"Thou shalt die!"
Secession
BY ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS.
[Delivered at the Georgia State Convention, January, 1861.]
Mr. President: This step of secession, once taken, can never be
recalled, and all the baleful and withering consequences that must
follow will rest on the convention for all coming time. When we and our
posterity shall see our lovely South desolated by the demon of war,
which this act of yours will inevitably invite and call forth; when our
green fields of waving harvest shall be trodden down by the murderous
soldiery and fiery car sweeping over our land; our temples of justice
laid in ashes; all the horrors and desolation of war upon us; who but
this convention will be held responsible for it? And who but him who
shall have given his vote for this unwise and ill-timed measure, as I
honestly think and believe, shall be held to strict account for this
suicidal act by the present generation, and probably cursed and
execrated by posterity for all coming time, for the wide and desolating
ruin that will inevitably follow this act you now propose to perpetrate?
Pause, I entreat you, and consider for a moment what reasons you can
give that will even satisfy yourselves in calmer moments--what reasons
you can give to your fellow-sufferers in the calamity that it will
bring upon us. What reasons can you give to the nations of the earth to
justify it? They will be calm and deliberate judges in the case; and
what cause or one overt act can you name or point, on which to rest the
plea of justification? What right has the North assailed? What interest
of the South has been invaded? What justice has been denied? And what
claim founded in justice and right has been withheld? Can either of you
to-day name one governmental act of wrong, deliberately and purposely
done by the government of Washington, of which the South has a right to
complain? I challenge the answer. While, on the other hand, let me show
the facts (and believe me, gentlemen, I am not here, the advocate of
the North; but I am here the friend, the firm friend, and lover of the
South and her institutions, and for this reason I speak thus plainly and
faithfully, for yours, mine, and every other man's interest, the words
of truth and soberness), of which I wish you to judge, and I will only
state facts which are clear and undeniable, and which now stand as
records authentic in the history of our country. When we of the South
demanded the slave-trade, or the importation of Africans for the
cultivation of our lands, did they not yield the right for twenty years?
When we asked a three-fifths representation in Congress for our slaves,
was it not granted? When we asked and demanded the return of any
fugitive from justice, or the recovery of those persons owing labor or
allegiance, was it not incorporated in the Constitution, and again
ratified and strengthened by the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850? But do you
reply that in many instances they have violated this compact and have
not been faithful to their engagements? As individuals and local
communities they may have done so; but not by the sanction of
government; for that has always been true to Southern interests. Again,
gentlemen, look at another act; when we have asked that more territory
should be added, that we might spread the institution of slavery, have
they not yielded to our demands in giving us Louisiana, Florida and
Texas, out of which four States have been carved, and ample territory
for four more to be added in due time, if you, by this unwise and
impolitic act, do not destroy this hope, and perhaps by it lose all,
and have your last slave wrenched from you by stern military rule, as
South American and Mexican were; or by the vindictive decree of a
universal emancipation which may reasonably be expected to follow.
But, again, gentlemen, what have we to gain by this proposed change of
our relation to the general government? We have always had the control
of it, and can yet, if we remain in it, and are as united as we have
been. We have had a majority of the Presidents chosen from the South,
as well as the control and management of most of those chosen from
the North. We have had sixty years of Southern Presidents to their
twenty-four, thus controlling the executive department. So, of the
judges of the Supreme Court, we have had eighteen from the South and
but eleven from the North, although nearly four-fifths of the judicial
business has arisen in the free States, yet a majority of the court
has always been from the South. This we have acquired so as to guard
against any interpretation of the Constitution unfavorable to us. In
like manner we have been equally watchful to guard our interests in the
legislative branch of government. In choosing the presiding presidents
(pro tem.) of the Senate, we have had twenty-four to their eleven.
Speakers of the House we have had twenty-three, and they twelve. While
the majority of the representatives, from their greater population,
have always been from the North, yet we have so generally secured
the Speaker, because he, to a great extent, shapes and controls the
legislation of the country. Nor have we had less control in every other
department of the general government. Attorney-generals we have had
fourteen, while the North have had but five. Foreign ministers we have
had eighty-six, and they but fifty-four. While three-fourths of the
business which demands diplomatic agents abroad is clearly from the free
States, from their greater commercial interest, yet we have had the
principal embassies, so as to secure the world-markets for our cotton,
tobacco and sugar on the best possible terms. We have had a vast
majority of the higher offices of both army and navy, while a larger
proportion of the soldiers and sailors were drawn from the North.
Equally so of clerks, auditors and comptrollers filling the executive
department; the records show, for the last fifty years, that of the
three thousand thus employed, we have had more than two-thirds of the
same, while we have but one-third of the white population of the
Republic.
Again, look at another item, and one, be assured, in which we have a
great and vital interest; it is that of revenue, or means of supporting
government. From official documents we learn that a fraction over
three-fourths of the revenue collected for the support of the government
has uniformly been raised from the North.
Pause now while you can, gentlemen, and contemplate carefully and
candidly these important items. Look at another necessary branch of
government, and learn from stern statistical facts how matters stand in
that department. I mean the mail and post-office privileges that we now
enjoy under the general government as it has been for years past. The
expense for the transportation of the mail in the free States was, by
the report of the Postmaster-General for the year 1860, a little over
$13,000,000, while the income was $19,000,000. But in the slave States
the transportation of the mail was $14,716,000, while the revenue from
the same was $8,001,026, leaving a deficit of $6,704,974 to be supplied
by the North for our accommodation, and without it we must have been
entirely cut off from this most essential branch of government.
Leaving out of view, for the present, the countless millions of dollars
you must expend in a war with the North; with tens of thousands of your
sons and brothers slain in battle and offered up as sacrifices upon
the altar of your ambition--and for what, we ask again? Is it for
the overthrow of the American Government, established by our common
ancestry, cemented and built up by their sweat and blood, and founded on
the broad principles of right, justice and humanity? And as such, I must
declare here, as I have often done before, and which has been repeated
by the greatest and wisest of statesmen and patriots, in this and other
lands, that it is the best and freest government--the most equal in
its rights, the most just in its decisions, the most lenient in its
measures, and the most aspiring in its principles, to elevate the race
of men, that the sun of heaven ever shone upon. Now, for you to attempt
to overthrow such a government as this, under which we have lived for
more than three-quarters of a century--in which we have gained our
wealth, our standing as a nation, our domestic safety, while the
elements of peril are around us, with peace and tranquillity accompanied
with unbounded prosperity and rights unassailed--is the height of
madness, folly, and wickedness, to which I neither lend my sanction nor
my vote.
Birds
Birds are singing round my window,
Tunes the sweetest ever heard,
And I hang my cage there daily,
But I never catch a bird.
So with thoughts my brain is peopled,
And they sing there all day long;
But they will not fold their pinions
In the little cage of song!
--_Richard Henry Stoddard_.
The Death of Hypatia
BY CHARLES KINGSLEY.
["Hypatia was a mathematician of Alexandria, who taught her
students the philosophy of Plato. Orestes, governor of
Alexandria, admired the talents of Hypatia, and frequently
had recourse to her for advice. He was desirous of curbing the
too ardent zeal of St. Cyril, who saw in Hypatia one of the
principal supports of paganism. The most fanatical followers
of the bishop, in March, A.D. 415, seized upon Hypatia as she
was proceeding to her school, forced her to descend from her
chariot, and dragged her into a neighboring church, where she
was put to death by her brutal foes. Canon Kingsley's historical
romance has done much to make her name familiar to English
readers" (Classical Dictionary). Raphael Aben-Ezra, a former
pupil, converted to Christianity and returning to Alexandria,
seeks audience with Hypatia to tell her of the Nazarene. Broken
and discouraged, she still holds to her philosophy, but finally
consents to hear what Raphael has to say of Christianity. It is
almost time for her to lecture at the school, so she makes an
appointment for Raphael the following day. She sends him from
her until then with the words with which this cutting begins.]
"Yes, come.... The Galilean.... If he conquers strong men, can the weak
maid resist him? Come soon ... this afternoon.... My heart is breaking
fast."
"At the eighth hour this afternoon?" asked Raphael.
"Yes.... At noon I lecture ... take my farewell, rather, forever, of
the schools.... Gods! What have I to say?... And tell me about Him
of Nazareth. Farewell!"
"Farewell, beloved lady! At the ninth hour you shall hear of Him of
Nazareth."
As Raphael went down the steps into the street, a young man sprang from
behind one of the pillars and seized his arm.
"Aha! my young Coryphæus of pious plunderers! What do you want with me?"
Philammon, for it was he, looked at him an instant, and recognized him.
"Save her! for the love of God, save her!"
"Whom?"
"Hypatia!"
"How long has her salvation been important to you, my good friend?"
"For God's sake," said Philammon, "go back and warn her! She will hear
you--you are rich--you used to be her friend--I know you--I have heard
of you.... Oh, if you ever cared for her--if you ever felt for her a
thousandth part of what I feel--go in and warn her not to stir from
home!"
"Of what is she to be warned?"
"Of a plot--I know that there is a plot--against her among the monks and
parabolani. As I lay in bed this morning in Arsenius' room they thought
I was asleep--"
"Arsenius? Has that venerable fanatic, then, gone the way of all
monastic flesh, and turned persecutor?"
"God forbid! I heard him beseeching Peter, the reader, to refrain from
something, I cannot tell what; but I caught her name.... I heard Peter
say, 'She that hindereth will hinder till she be taken out of the way.'
And when he went out in the passage I heard him say to another, 'That
thou doest, do quickly!'"
"These are slender grounds, my friend."
"Ah, you do not know of what these men are capable."
"Do I not?"
"I know the hatred which they bear her, the crimes which they attribute
to her. Her house would have been attacked last night had it not been
for Cyril.... And I knew Peter's tone. He spoke too gently and softly
not to mean something devilish. I watched all the morning for an
opportunity of escape, and here I am! Will you take my message, or
see her--"
"What?"
"God only knows, and the devil whom they worship instead of God."
Raphael hurried back into the house. "Could he see Hypatia?" She had
shut herself up in her private room, strictly commanding that no visitor
should be admitted.... "Where was Theon, then?" He had gone out by the
canal gate half an hour before, and he hastily wrote on his tablet:
"Do not despise the young monk's warning. I believe him to speak the
truth. As you love yourself and your father, Hypatia, stir not out
to-day."
He bribed the maid to take the message up-stairs; and passed his time in
the hall in warning the servants. But they would not believe him. It was
true the shops were shut in some quarters, and the Museum gardens empty;
people were a little frightened after yesterday. But Cyril, they had
heard for certain, had threatened excommunication only last night to any
Christian who broke the peace; and there had not been a monk to be seen
in the streets the whole morning. And as for any harm happening to their
mistress--impossible! "The very wild beasts would not tear her," said
the huge negro porter, "if she were thrown into the amphitheater."
Whereat the maid boxed his ears for talking of such a thing: and then,
by way of mending it, declared that she knew for certain that her
mistress could turn aside the lightning and call legions of spirits to
fight for her with a nod.... What was to be done with such idolaters.
And yet who could help liking them the better for it?
At last the answer came down, in the old, graceful, studied,
self-conscious handwriting:
"I dread nothing. They will not dare. Did they dare now, they would have
dared long ago. As for that youth--to obey or to believe his word, even
to seem aware of his existence, were shame to me henceforth. Because he
is insolent enough to warn me, therefore I will go. Fear not for me. You
would not wish me, for the first time in my life, to fear for myself.
I must follow my destiny. I must speak the words which I have to speak.
Above all, I must let no Christian say that the philosopher dared less
than the fanatic. If my gods are gods, then will they protect me; and if
not, let your God prove His rule as seems to Him good."
Raphael tore the letter to fragments.... The guards, at least, were not
gone mad like the rest of the world. It wanted half an hour of the time
for her lecture. In the interval he might summon force enough to crush
all Alexandria. And turning suddenly, he darted out of the room and out
of the house.
"Stay here and stop her! Make a last appeal," cried he to Philammon,
with a gesture of grief. "Drag the horses' heads down, if you can! I
will be back in ten minutes." And he ran off for the nearest gate of
the Museum gardens.
On the other side of the gardens lay the courtyard of the palace. There
were gates in plenty communicating between them. If he could but see
Orestes, even alarm the guard in time!...
And he hurried through the walks and alcoves, now deserted by the
fearful citizens, to the nearest gate. It was fast and barricaded firmly
on the outside.
Terrified, he ran on to the next; it was barred also. He saw the reason
in a moment, and maddened as he saw it. The guards, careless about the
Museum, or reasonably fearing no danger from the Alexandrian populace
to the glory and wonder of their city, or perhaps wishing wisely enough
to concentrate their forces in the narrowest space, had contented
themselves with cutting off all communication with the gardens. At all
events, the doors leading from the Museum itself might be open. He
knew them, every one. He found an entrance, hurried through well-known
corridors to a postern through which he and Orestes had lounged a
hundred times. It was fast. He beat upon it; but no one answered. He
rushed on and tried another. No one answered there. Another--still
silence and despair!... He rushed up-stairs, hoping that from a window
above he might be able to call the guard. The prudent soldiers had
locked and barricaded the entrances to the upper floors of the whole
right wing, lest the palace court should be commanded from thence.
Whither now? Back--and whither then? And his breath failed him, his
throat was parched, his face burned as with the simoon wind, his legs
were trembling under him. His presence of mind, usually so perfect,
failed him utterly. He was baffled, netted. His brain, for the first
time in his life, began to reel. He could recollect nothing but that
something dreadful was to happen--and that he had to prevent it, and
could not.... Where was he now? In a little by-chamber. What was that
roar below?... A sea of weltering heads, thousands on thousands down
into the very beach; and from their innumerable throats one mighty
war-cry--"God, and the Mother of God!" Cyril's hounds were loose.... He
reeled from the window, and darted frantically away again ... whither,
he knew not, and never knew until his dying day.
Philammon saw Raphael rush across the streets into the Museum gardens.
His last words had been a command to stay where he was, and the boy
obeyed him, quietly ensconced himself behind a buttress, and sat coiled
up on the pavement ready for a desperate spring.
There Philammmon waited a full half-hour. It seemed to him hours, day,
years. And yet Raphael did not return; and yet no guards appeared.
What meant that black knot of men some two hundred yards off, hanging
about the mouth of the side street, just opposite the door which led to
her lecture-room? He moved to watch them; they had vanished. He lay down
again and waited.... There they were again. It was a suspicious post.
That street ran along the back of the Cæsareum, a favorite haunt of
monks, communicating by innumerable entries and back buildings with the
great church itself.... He knew that something terrible was at hand.
More than once he looked out from his hiding place--the knot of men were
still there; ... it seemed to have increased, to draw nearer. If they
found him, what would they not suspect? What did he care? He would die
for her if it came to that--not that it would come to that; but still he
must speak to her--he must warn her.
At last, a curricle, glittering with silver, rattled round the corner
and stopped opposite him. She must be coming now. The crowd had
vanished. Perhaps it was, after all, a fancy of his own. No; there
they were, peeping round the corner, close to the lecture-room--the
hell-hounds! A slave brought out an embroidered cushion, and then
Hypatia herself came forth, looking more glorious than ever; her lips
set in a sad, firm smile; her eyes uplifted, inquiring, eager, and yet
gentle, dimmed by some great inward awe, as if her soul were far away
aloft, and face to face with God.
In a moment he sprang up to her, caught her robe convulsively, threw
himself on his knees before her.
"Stop! Stay! You are going to destruction!"
Calmly she looked down upon him.
"Accomplice of witches! Would you make of Theon's daughter a traitor
like yourself?"
He sprang up, stepped back, and stood stupefied with shame and
despair....
She believed him guilty then!... It was the will of God!
The plumes of the horses were waving far down the street before he
recovered himself, and rushed after her, shouting he knew not what.
It was too late! A dark wave of men rushed from the ambuscade, surged
up round the car, ... swept forward.... She had disappeared, and, as
Philammon followed breathless, the horses galloped past him madly
homeward with the empty carriage.
Whither were they dragging her? To the Cæsareum, the church of God
Himself? Impossible! Why thither of all places of the earth? Why did
the mob, increasing momentarily by hundreds, pour down upon the beach,
and return brandishing flints, shells, fragments of pottery?
She was upon the church steps before he caught them up, invisible among
the crowd; but he could track her by the fragments of her dress.
Where were her gay pupils now? Alas! they had barricaded themselves
shamefully in the Museum at the first rush which swept her from the
door of the lecture-room. Cowards! He would save her.
And he struggled in vain to pierce the dense mass of parabolani and
monks, who, mingled with the fish-wives and dock workers, leaped and
yelled around their victim. But what he could not do another and a
weaker did--even the little porter. Furiously--no one knew how or
whence--he burst up, as if from the ground in the thickest of the crowd,
with knife, teeth and nails, like a venomous wild-cat, tearing his way
toward his idol. Alas! he was torn down himself, rolled over the steps,
and lay there half dead in an agony of weeping, as Philammon sprang up
past him into the church.
Yes! On into the church itself! Into the cool, dim shadow, with its
fretted pillars, and lowering domes, and candles, and incense, and
blazing altar, and great pictures looking down from the walls athwart
the gorgeous gloom. And right in front, above the altar, the colossal
Christ, watching unmoved from off the wall, his right hand raised to
give a blessing--or a curse!
On, up the nave, fresh shreds of her dress strewing the holy
pavement--up the chancel steps themselves--up to the altar--right
underneath the great, still Christ; and there even those hell-hounds
paused....
She shook herself free from her tormentors, and, springing back, rose
for one moment to her full height, naked, snow-white against the dusky
mass around--shame and indignation in those wide, clear eyes, but not
a stain of fear. With one hand she clasped her golden locks around her,
the other long, white arm was stretched upward toward the great, still
Christ, appealing--and who dare say, in vain?--from man to God. Her
lips were opened to speak; but the words that should have come from them
reached God's ear alone; for in an instant Peter struck her down, the
dark mass closed over her again, ... and then wail on wail, long, wild,
ear-piercing, rang along the vaulted roofs, and thrilled like the
trumpet of avenging angels through Philammon's ears.
Crushed against a pillar, unable to move in the dense mass, he pressed
his hands over his ears. He could not shut out those shrieks! When would
they end? What in the name of the God of mercy were they doing? Tearing
her piecemeal? Yes, and worse than that. And still the shrieks rang
on, and still the great Christ looked down on Philammon with that calm,
intolerable eye, and would not turn away. And over his head was written
in the rainbow, "I am the same, yesterday, to-day, and forever!" The
same as he was in Judæa of old, Philammon? Then what are these, and in
whose temple? And he covered his face with his hands and longed to die.
It was over. The shrieks had died away into moans; the moans to silence.
"Death Stands Above Me."
Death stands above me, whispering low
I know not what into my ear;
Of this strange language all I know
Is, there is not a word of fear.
--_Walter Savage Landor_.
The Tournament
BY SIR WALTER SCOTT.
(_Arranged by Maude Herndon._)
[The scene from Ivanhoe is of the description of the grand
tournament, held by Prince John Lockland, at Ashby, in which
Robin Hood, under the disguise of Locksley, wins the prize for
his skill in archery.]
The sound of the trumpets soon recalled those spectators who had already
begun to leave the field; and proclamation was made that Prince John,
suddenly called by high and peremptory public duties, held himself
obliged to discontinue the entertainments of the morrow's festival.
Nevertheless, that, unwilling so many good yeomen should depart without
a trial of skill, he was pleased to appoint them, before leaving the
ground, to execute the competition of archery intended for the morrow.
To the best archer a prize was to be awarded, being a bugle-horn,
mounted with silver, and a silken baldric richly ornamented with a
medallion of St. Hubert, the patron of sylvan sport.
More than thirty yeomen at first presented themselves as competitors,
but when the archers understood with whom they were to be matched,
upwards to twenty withdrew themselves from the contest, unwilling to
encounter the dishonor of almost certain defeat.
The diminished list of competitors for sylvan fame still amounted to
eight. Prince John stepped from his royal seat to view the persons of
these chosen yeomen. He looked for the object of his resentment, whom
he observed standing on the same spot, and with the same composed
countenance which he had exhibited upon the preceding day.
"Fellow," said Prince John, "I guessed by thy insolent babble thou wert
no true lover of the long-bow, and I see thou darest not adventure thy
skill among such merry-men as stand yonder."
"Under favor, sir," replied the yeomen, "I have another reason for
refraining to shoot, besides the fearing discomfiture and disgrace."
"And what is thy other reason?" said Prince John.
"Because I know not if these yeomen and I are used to shoot at the same
marks; and because, moreover, I know not how your Grace might relish the
winning of a third prize by one who has unwillingly fallen under your
displeasure."
"What is thy name, yeoman?"
"Locksley," answered the yeoman.
"Then Locksley," said Prince John, "thou shalt shoot in thy turn, when
these yeomen have displayed their skill. If thou carriest the prize,
I will add to it twenty nobles; but if thou losest it, thou shalt
be stript of thy Lincoln green, and scourged out of the lists with
bowstrings, for a wordy and insolent braggart, and if thou refusest my
fair proffer, the Provost of the lists shall cut thy bowstring, break
thy bow and arrows, and expel thee from the presence as a faint-hearted
craven."
"This is no fair chance you put on me, proud Prince, to compel me to
peril myself against the best archers of Leicester and Staffordshire,
under the penalty of infamy if they should overshoot me. Nevertheless,
I will obey your pleasure."
A target was placed at the upper end of the southern avenue which led
to the lists. The contending archers took their station in turn, at the
bottom of the southern access; the distance between that station and the
mark allowing full distance for what was called a shot at rovers. The
archers, having previously determined by lot their order of precedence,
were to shoot each three shafts in succession.
One by one the archers, stepping forward, delivered their shafts
yeomanlike and bravely. Of twenty-four arrows, shot in succession, ten
were fixed in the target, and the others ranged so near it, that,
considering the distance of the mark, it was accounted good archery.
Of the ten shafts which hit the target, two within the inner ring were
shot by Hubert.
"Now, Locksley," said Prince John, "wilt thou try conclusions with
Hubert, or wilt thou yield up bow, baldric, and quiver, to the Provost
of the sports?"
"Sith it be no better, I am content to try my fortune; on condition that
when I have shot two shafts at yonder mark of Hubert's, he shall be
bound to shoot one at that which I propose."
"That is but fair," answered Prince John, "and it shall not be refused
thee. If thou beat this braggart, Hubert, I will fill the bugle with
silver pennies for thee."
The former target was now removed, and a fresh one of the same size
placed in its room. Hubert took his aim with great deliberation, long
measuring the distance with his eye, while he held in his hand his
bended bow, with the arrow placed on the string. At length he made a
step forward, and raising the bow at the full stretch of his left arm,
till the centre or grasping place was nigh level with his face, he
drew his bow-string to his ear. The arrow whistled through the air,
and lighted within the inner ring of the target, but not exactly in
the centre.
"You have not allowed for the wind, Hubert, or that had been a better
shot."
So saying, Locksley stept to the appointed station, and shot his arrow
as carelessly in appearance as if he had not even looked at the mark. He
was speaking almost at the instant that the shaft left the bow-string,
yet it alighted in the target two inches nearer to the white spot which
marked the centre, than that of Hubert.
"By the light of heaven!" said Prince John to Hubert, "and thou suffer
that runagate knave to overcome thee, thou art worthy of the gallows!"
"Shoot, knave, and shoot thy best, or it shall be the worse for thee!"
Thus exhorted, Hubert resumed his place, and not neglecting the caution
which he had received from his adversary, he made the necessary
allowance for a very light air of wind, which had just arisen, and
shot so successfully that his arrow alighted in the very centre of the
target.
"A Hubert! a Hubert!" shouted the populace, more interested in a known
person than in a stranger.
"Thou canst not mend that shot, Locksley," said the Prince with an
insulting smile.
"I will notch his shaft for him, however," replied Locksley.
And letting fly his arrow with a little more precaution than before, it
lighted right upon that of his competitor, which it split to shivers.
"This must be the devil, and no man of flesh and blood," whispered the
yeomen to each other; "such archery was never seen since a bow was first
bent in Britain."
"And now," said Locksley, "I will crave your Grace's permission to plant
such a mark as is used in the North Country; and welcome every brave
yeoman who shall try a shot at it to win a smile from the bonny lass he
loves best."
He then turned to leave the lists, but returned almost instantly with
a willow wand about six feet in length, perfectly straight, and rather
thicker than a man's thumb. He began to peel this with great composure,
observing at the same time that to ask a good woodsman to shoot at a
target so broad as had hitherto been used, was to put shame upon his
skill. "A child of seven years old might hit yonder target with a
headless shaft, but," added he, walking deliberately to the other end
of the lists, and, sticking the willow wand upright in the ground, "he
that hits that rod five-score yards, I call him an archer fit to bear
both bow and quiver before a king, and it were the stout King Richard
himself."
"My grandsire," said Hubert, "drew a good bow at the battle of Hastings,
and never shot at such a mark in his life--and neither will I. I might
as well shoot at the edge of our parson's whittle, or at a wheat straw,
or at a sunbeam, as at a twinkling white streak which I can hardly see."
"Cowardly dog!" said Prince John. "Sirrah Locksley, do thou shoot; but,
if thou hittest such a mark, I will say thou art the first man ever did
so. Howe'er it be, thou shalt not crow over us with a mere show of
superior skill."
"I will do my best, no man can do more."
So saying, he again bent his bow, but on the present occasion looked
with attention to his weapon, and changed the string, which he thought
was no longer truly round, having been a little frayed by the two former
shots. He then took his aim with some deliberation, and the multitude
awaited the event in breathless silence. The archer vindicated their
opinion of his skill; his arrow split the willow rod against which it
was aimed. A jubilee of acclamations followed; and even Prince John, in
admiration of Locksley's skill, lost for an instant his dislike to his
person. "These twenty nobles," he said, "which, with the bugle, thou
hast fairly won, are thine own; we will make them fifty, if thou wilt
take livery and service with us as a yeoman of our body guard, and be
near to our person. For never did so strong a hand bend a bow, or so
true an eye direct a shaft."
"Pardon me, noble Prince," said Locksley, "but I have vowed, that if
ever I take service, it should be with your royal brother, King Richard.
These twenty nobles I leave to Hubert, who has this day drawn as brave
a bow as his grandsire did at Hastings. Had his modesty not refused the
trial, he would have hit the wand as well as I."
Hubert shook his head as he received with reluctance the bounty of the
stranger; and Locksley, anxious to escape further observation, mixed
with the crowd, and was seen no more.
A Plea for the Old Year[F]
BY LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON.
I see the smiling New Year climb the heights--
The clouds, his heralds, turn the sky to rose,
And flush the whiteness of the winter snows,
Till Earth is glad with Life and Life's delight.
The weary Old Year died when died the night,
And this newcomer, proud with triumph, shows
His radiant face, and each glad subject knows
The welcome monarch, born to rule aright.
Yet there are graves far off that no man tends,
Where lie the vanished loves and hopes and fears,
The dreams that grew to be our hearts' best friends,
The smiles, and, dearer than the smiles, the tears--
These were that Old Year's gifts, whom none defends,
Now his strong Conqueror, the New, appears.
[F] Copyright, 1899, by Little, Brown & Co. (Reprinted by permission.)
Fagin's Last Day
(From Oliver Twist.)
BY CHARLES DICKENS.
[It will be remembered that Fagin was leader of a band of
thieves, and that little Oliver Twist had once been held in the
Jew's school for educating criminals. Through the influence of
Mr. Brownlow and some friends the kidnapped boy was rescued and
the Jew brought to justice.]
He sat down on a stone bench opposite the door, which served for a seat
and bedstead, and casting his bloodshot eyes upon the ground, tried
to collect his thoughts. After a while he began to remember a few
disjointed fragments of what the judge had said, though it had seemed
to him, at the time, that he could not hear a word. These gradually fell
into their proper places, and by degrees suggested more; so that in a
little time he had the whole almost as it was delivered. To be hanged
by the neck till he was dead--that was the end--to be hanged by the neck
till he was dead!
As it came on very dark, he began to think of all the men he had known
who had died upon the scaffold, some of them through his means. They
rose up in such quick succession that he could hardly count them. He
had seen some of them die--and had joked, too, because they died with
prayers upon their lips. With what a rattling noise the drop went down,
and how suddenly they changed, from strong and vigorous men to dangling
heaps of clothes!
Some of them might have inhabited that very cell--sat upon that very
spot. It was very dark; why didn't they bring a light? The cell had been
built for many years. Scores of men must have passed their last hours
there. It was like sitting in a vault strewn with dead bodies--the cap,
the noose, the pinioned arms, the faces that he knew, even beneath that
hideous veil. Light, light!
At length, when his hands were raw with beating against the heavy door
and walls, two men appeared--one bearing a candle, which he thrust into
an iron candlestick fixed against the wall; the other dragging in a
mattress on which to pass the night, for the prisoner was to be left
alone no more.
Then came night--dark, dismal, silent night. Other watchers are glad to
hear the church clock strike, for they tell of life and coming day. To
the Jew they brought despair. The boom of every iron bell came laden
with the one, deep, hollow sound--death! What availed the noise and
bustle of cheerful morning which penetrated even there to him? It was
another form of knell, with mockery added to the warning.
The day passed off. Day? There was no day. It was gone as soon as come;
and night came on again--night so long, and yet so short; long in its
dreadful silence, and short in its fleeting hours. At one time he raved
and blasphemed, and at another howled and tore his hair. Venerable men
of his own persuasion had come to pray beside him, but he had driven
them away with curses. They renewed their charitable efforts, and he
beat them off.
Saturday night. He had only one night more to live. And as he thought
of this the day broke--Sunday.
It was not until the night of this last awful day that a withering sense
of his helpless, desperate state came in its full intensity upon his
blighted soul; not that he had ever held any defined or positive hope
of mercy, but that he had never been able to consider more than the dim
probability of dying so soon. He had spoken little to either two men,
who relieved each other in their attendance upon him; and they, for
their parts, made no effort to rouse his attention. He had sat there
awake, but dreaming. Now, he started up every minute, and with gasping
mouth and burning skin, hurried to and fro in such a paroxysm of fear
and wrath that even they--used to such sights--recoiled from him with
horror. He grew so terrible, at last, in all the tortures of his evil
conscience, that one man could not bear to sit there, eyeing him alone,
and so the two kept watch together.
He cowed down upon his stone bed, and thought of the past. He had been
wounded with some missiles from the crowd on the day of his capture,
and his head was bandaged with a linen cloth. His red hair hung down
upon his bloodless face; his beard was torn, and twisted into knots; his
eyes shone with a terrible light; his unwashed flesh crackled with the
fever that burnt him up. Eight--nine--ten. If it was not a trick to
frighten him, and those were the real hours treading on each other's
heels, where would he be, when they came round again? Eleven! Another
struck, before the voice of the previous hour had ceased to vibrate. At
eight he would be the only mourner in his own funeral train; at eleven--
Those dreadful walls of Newgate, which have hidden so much misery and
such unspeakable anguish, not only from the eyes, but, too often and too
long, from the thoughts of men, never held so dread a spectacle as that.
The few who lingered as they passed, and wondered what the man was doing
who was to be hung to-morrow, would have slept but ill that night if
they could have seen him.
From early in the evening until nearly midnight, little groups of two
and three presented themselves at the lodge-gate and inquired, with
anxious faces, whether any reprieve had been received. These being
answered in the negative, communicated the welcome intelligence to
clusters in the street, who pointed out to one another the door from
which he must come out, and showed where the scaffold would be built,
and walking with unwilling steps away, turned back to conjure up the
scene. By degrees they fell off, one by one; and, for an hour in the
dead of night, the street was left to solitude and darkness.
The space before the prison was cleared, and a few strong barriers,
painted black, had been already thrown across the road to break the
pressure of the expected crowd, when Mr. Brownlow and Oliver appeared at
the wicket, and presented an order of admission to the prisoner, signed
by one of the sheriffs. They were immediately admitted into the lodge.
The condemned criminal was seated on his bed, rocking himself from side
to side, with a countenance more like that of a snared beast than the
face of a man. His mind was evidently wandering to his old life, for
he continued to mutter, without appearing conscious of their presence
otherwise than as a part of his vision.
"Good boy, Charley--well done," he mumbled; "Oliver, too, ha! ha! ha!
Oliver, too--quite the gentleman now--quite the--take that boy away to
bed!"
The jailer took the disengaged hand of Oliver, and whispering him not
to be alarmed, looked on without speaking.
"Take him away to bed!" cried the Jew. "Do you hear me, some of you? He
has been the--the--somehow the cause of all this. It's worth the money
to bring him up to it--Bolter's throat, Bill; never mind the
girl--Bolter's throat, as deep as you can cut. Saw his head off!"
"Fagin," said the jailer.
"That's me!" cried the Jew, falling instantly into the attitude of
listening he had assumed upon his trial. "An old man, my lord; a very
old, old man!"
"Here," said the turnkey, laying his hand upon his breast to keep him
down--"here's somebody wants to see you--to ask you some questions, I
suppose. Fagin, Fagin! Are you a man?"
"I shan't be one long," replied the Jew, looking up with a face
retaining no human expression but rage and terror. "Strike them all
dead! what right have they to butcher me?"
As he spoke he caught sight of Oliver and Mr. Brownlow. Shrinking to
the farthest corner of the seat he demanded to know what they wanted
there.
"Steady," said the turnkey, still holding him down.
"Now, sir, tell him what you want--quick, if you please, for he grows
worse as the time gets on."
"You have some papers," said Mr. Brownlow, advancing, "which were placed
in your hands for better security by a man called Monks."
"It's all a lie together," replied the Jew. "I haven't one--not one."
"For the love of God," said Mr. Brownlow, solemnly, "do not say that
now, upon the very verge of death, but tell me where they are. You know
that Sikes is dead, that Monks has confessed, that there is no hope of
any further gain. Where are those papers?"
"Oliver," cried the Jew, beckoning to him. "Here, here! Let me whisper
to you."
"I am not afraid," said Oliver, in a low voice, as he relinquished
Mr. Brownlow's hand.
"The papers," said the Jew, drawing him towards him, "are in a canvas
bag, in a hole a little way up the chimney in the top front room. I want
to talk to you, my dear; I want to talk to you."
"Yes, yes," returned Oliver. "Let me say a prayer. Do! Let me say one
prayer--say only one, upon your knees with me, and we will talk till
morning."
"Outside, outside," replied the Jew, pushing the boy before him towards
the door, and looking vacantly over his head. "Say I've gone to
sleep--they'll believe _you_. You can get me out, if you take me so.
Now then, now then!"
"Oh! God forgive this wretched man!" cried the boy, with a burst of
tears.
"That's right, that's right," said the Jew; "that'll help us on. This
door first. If I shake and tremble as we pass the gallows, don't you
mind, but hurry on. Now, now, now!"
"Have you nothing else to ask him, sir?" inquired the turnkey.
"No other question," replied Mr. Brownlow. "If I hoped we could recall
him to a sense of his position--"
"Nothing will do that, sir," replied the man, shaking his head. "You had
better leave him."
The door of the cell opened, and the attendants returned.
"Press on, press on," cried the Jew. "Softly, but not so slow. Faster,
faster!"
The men laid hands upon him, and disengaging Oliver from his grasp, held
him back. He struggled with the power of desperation for an instant, and
then sent up cry upon cry that penetrated even those massive walls, and
rang in their ears until they reached the open yard.
A Caution to Poets.
What poets feel not, when they make
A pleasure in creating,
The world, in its turn, will not take
Pleasure in contemplating.
--_Matthew Arnold_.
Apollo Belvedere[G]
_A Christmas Episode of the Plantation._
BY RUTH McENERY STUART.
[In the same volume which contains this story there are many
others that lend themselves to recitation. "Moriah's Mourning"
is one of the best pieces of humor which Mrs. Stuart has
written; "Christmas at the Trimbles" has proven itself a
never-failing success, and "The Second Mrs. Slimm" is an
excellent reading.]
He was a little yellow man, with a quizzical face and sloping shoulders,
and when he gave his full name, with somewhat of a flourish, as if it
might hold compensations for physical shortcomings, one could hardly
help smiling. And yet there was a pathos in the caricature that
dissipated the smile half-way.
"Yas, I'm named 'Pollo Belvedere, an' my marster gi'e me dat intitlemint
on account o' my shape," he would say, with a strut, as if he were
bantered. As Apollo would have told you himself, the fact that he had
never married was not because he couldn't get anybody to have him, but
simply that he hadn't himself been suited.
Lily Washington was a beauty in her own right, and she was the belle of
the plantation. She was an emotional creature, with a caustic tongue on
occasion, and when it pleased her mood to look over her shoulder at one
of her numerous admirers and to wither him with a look or a word, she
did not hesitate to do it. For instance, when Apollo first asked her to
marry him--it had been his habit to propose to her every day or so for a
year or two past--she glanced at him askance from head to foot, and then
she said: "Why, yas. Dat is, I s'pose, of co'se, you's de sample. I'd
order a full-size by you in a minute." This was cruel, and seeing the
pathetic look come into his face, she instantly repented of it, and
walked home from church with him, dismissing a handsome black fellow,
and saying only kind things to Apollo all the way.
Of course no one took Apollo seriously as Lily's suitor, much less the
chocolate maid herself. But there were other lovers. Indeed, there were
all the others, for that matter, but in point of eligibility the number
to be seriously regarded was reduced to about two. These were Pete
Peters, a handsome griff, with just enough Indian blood to give him an
air of distinction, and a French-talking mulatto, who had come up from
New Orleans to repair the machinery in the sugar-house, and who was
buying land in the vicinity, and drove his own sulky. Pete was less
prosperous than he, but, although he worked his land on shares, he
owned two mules and a saddle horse, and would be allowed to enter on a
purchase of land whenever he should choose to do so. Although Pete and
the New Orleans fellow, whose name was also Peter, but who was called
Pierre, met constantly in a friendly enough way, they did not love
each other. They both loved Lily too much for that. But they laughed
good-naturedly together at Apollo and his "case," which they inquired
after politely, as if it were a member of his family.
"Well, 'Pollo, how's yo' case on Miss Lily comin' on?" either one would
say, with a wink at the other, and Apollo would artlessly report the
state of the heavens with relation to his particular star, as when he
once replied to this identical question:
"Well, Miss Lily was mighty obstropulous 'istiddy, but she is mo'
cancelized dis mornin'."
It was Pete who had asked the question, and he laughed aloud at the
answer. "Mo' cancelized dis mornin', is she?" he replied. "How do you
know she is?"
"'Caze she lemme tote her hoe all de way up f'rom de field," answered
the ingenuous Apollo.
"She did, did she? An' who was walkin' by her side all dat time, I like
to know?"
Apollo winced a little at this, but he answered, bravely, "I don't kyah
ef Pier was walkin' wid her; I was totin' her hoe, all de samee."
The Christmas-eve dance in the sugar-house had been for years an annual
function on the plantation. At this, since her debut, at fourteen, three
Christmases before, Lily had held undisputed sway, and all her former
belles amiably accepted their places as lesser lights.
Lily was perfectly ravishing in her splendor at the dance this year. The
white Swiss frock she wore was high in the neck, but her brown shoulders
and arms shone through the thin fabric with fine effect. About her slim
waist she tied a narrow ribbon of blue, and she carried a pink feather
fan, and the wreath about her forehead was of lilies-of-the-valley. She
had done a day's scouring for them, and they had come out of the summer
hat of one of the white ladies on the coast. This insured their quality,
and no doubt contributed somewhat to the quiet serenity with which she
bore herself as, with her little head held like that of the Venus of
Milo, she danced down the center of the room, holding her flounces in
either hand, and kicking the floor until she kicked both her slippers
to pieces, when she finished the figure in her stocking feet.
She had a relay of slippers ready, and there was a scramble as to who
should put them on; but she settled that question by making 'Pollo rise,
with his fiddle in his arms, and lend her his chair for a minute while
she pulled them on herself. Then she let Pete and Pierre each have
one of the discarded slippers as a trophy. Lily had always danced out
several pairs of slippers at the Christmas dance, but she never achieved
her stocking feet in the first round until now, and she was in high
glee over it. If she had been admired before, she was looked upon as a
raving, tearing, beauty to-night, and so she was. Fortunately 'Pollo had
his fiddling to do, and this saved him from any conspicuous folly. But
he kept his eyes on her, and when she grew too ravishingly lovely to his
fond vision, and he couldn't stand it a minute longer in silence, he
turned to the man next him, who played the bones, and remarked, "Ef--ef
anybody but Gord A'mighty had a-made anything as purty as Miss Lily,
dey'd 'a' stinted it somewhar," and, watching every turn, he lent his
bow to her varying moods while she tired out one dancer after another.
It was the New Orleans fellow who first lost his head utterly. He had
danced with her but three times, but, while she took another's hand
and whizzed through the figures, he scarcely took his eyes from her,
and when, at about midnight, he succeeded in getting her apart for a
promenade, he poured forth his soul to her in the picturesque English of
the quadroon quarter of New Orleans. "An' now, to proof to you my lorv,
Ma'm'selle Leelee"--he gesticulated vigorously as he spoke--"I am
geeving you wan beau-u-tiful Christmas present--I am goin' to geev
you--w'at you t'ink? My borgee!" With this he turned dramatically and
faced her. They were standing now under the shed outside the door in
the moonlight, and, although they did not see him, Apollo stood within
hearing, behind a pile of molasses barrels, where he had come "to cool
off."
Lily had several times been "buggy-ridin'" with Pierre in this same
"borgee," and it was a very magnificent affair in her eyes. When he
told her that it was to be hers she gasped. Such presents were unknown
on the plantation. But Lily was a "mannerly" member of good society, if
her circle was small, and she was not to be taken back by any compliment
a man should pay her. She simply fanned herself, a little flurriedly
perhaps, with her feather fan, as she said: "You sho' must be jokin',
Mr. Pier. You cert'n'y must." But Mr. Pierre was not joking. He was
never more in earnest in his life, and he told her so, and there is no
telling what else he would have told her but for the fact that Mr. Pete
Peters happened to come out to the shed to cool off about this time, and
as he almost brushed her shoulder, it was as little as Lily could do to
address a remark to him, and then, of course, he stopped and chatted
awhile; and, after what appeared a reasonable interval, long enough for
it not to seem that she was too much elated over it, she remarked, "An',
by-de-way, Mr. Peters, I must tell you what a lovely Christmas gif' I
have just received by de hand of Mr. Pier. He has jest presented me
with his yaller-wheeled buggy, an' I sho' is proud of it." Then,
turning to Pierre, she added, "You sho' is a mighty generous gen'leman,
Mr. Pier--you cert'n'y is."
Peters give Lily one startled look, but he instantly realized, from
her ingenuous manner, that there was nothing back of the gift of the
buggy--that is, it had been, so far as she was concerned, simply a
Christmas present. Pierre had not offered himself with the gift. And
if this were so, well--he reckoned he could match him.
He reached forward and took Lily's fan from her hand. He hastened to do
this to keep Pierre from taking it. Then, while he fanned her, he said,
"Is dat so, Miss Lily, dat Mr. Pier is give you a buggy? Dat sholy is a
fine Christmas gif'--it sho' is. An' sense you fin' yo'se'f possessed of
a buggy, I trust you will allow me de pleasure of presentin' you wid a
horse to drive in de buggy." He made a graceful bow as he spoke, a bow
that would have done credit to the man from New Orleans. It was so well
done, indeed, that Lily unconsciously bowed in return, as she said, with
a look that savored a little of roguishness: "Oh, hursh, Mr. Peters! You
des a-guyin' me--dat what you doin'."
"Guyin' nothin'," said Peters, grinning broadly as he noted the
expression of Pierre's face. "Ef you'll jes do me de honor to accep' of
my horse, Miss Lily, I'll be de proudest gen'leman on dis plantation."
At this she chuckled, and took her fan in her own hand. And then she
turned to Pierre.
"You sho' has set de style o' mighty expensive Christmas gif's on dis
plantation, Mr. Pier--you cert'n'y has. An' I wants to thank you bofe
mos' kindly--I cert'n'y does."
Having heard this much, 'Pollo thought it time to come from his hiding,
and he strolled leisurely out in the other direction first, but soon
returned this way. And then he stopped, and, reaching over, took the
feather fan--and for a few moments he had his innings. Then some one
else came along and the conversation became impersonal, and one by one
they all dropped off--all except 'Pollo. When the rest had gone, he and
Lily found seats on the cane carrier, and they talked a while, and when
a little later supper was announced, it was the proud fiddler who took
her in, while Pierre and Peters stood off and politely glared at each
other; and after a while Pierre must have said something, for Peters
suddenly sprang at him and tumbled him out the door and rolled him over
in the dirt, and they had to be separated. But presently they laughed
and shook hands, and Pierre offered Pete a cigarette, and Pete took it,
and gave Pierre a light--and it was all over.
It was next day--Christmas morning--and the young people were standing
about in groups under the China-trees in the campus, when Apollo joined
them, looking unusually chipper and beaming. He was dressed in his
best--Prince Albert, beaver, and all--and he sported a bright silk
handkerchief tied loosely about his neck.
He was altogether a delightful figure, absolutely content with himself,
and apparently at peace with the world. No sooner had he joined the
crowd than the fellows began chaffing him, as usual, and presently some
one mentioned Lily's name and spoke of her presents. The two men who
had broken the record for generosity in the history of plantation
lovers were looked upon as nabobs by those of lesser means. Of course
everybody knew the city fellow had started it, and they were glad that
Peters had come to time and saved the dignity of the place; indeed, he
was about the only one on the plantation who could have done it.
As they stood talking it over, the two heroes had nothing to say, of
course, and 'Pollo began rolling a cigarette--an art he had learned from
the man from New Orleans.
Finally, he remarked, "Yas, Miss Lily got sev'al mighty nice presents
last night."
At this Pierre turned, laughing, and said, "I s'pose you geeve 'er
somet'ing, too, eh?"
"Pity you hadn't a-give her dat silk hank'cher. Hit 'd become her a
heap better'n it becomes you," Peters said, laughing.
"Yas, I reckon it would," said 'Pollo; "but de fact is she gi' me dis
hank'cher--an' of co'se I accepted it."
"But why ain't you tellin' us what you give her?" insisted Peters.
'Pollo put the cigarette to his lips, deliberately lit it, puffed
several times, and then, removing it in a leisurely way, he drawled:
"Well, de fact is, I heerd Mr. Pier here give her a buggy,
an'--Mr. Peters, he up an' handed over a horse,--an' so, quick
as I got a chance, I des balanced my ekalub'ium an' went an' set
down beside her an' ast her ef she wouldn't do me the honor to
accep' of a driver, an'--an' she say yas.
"You know I'm a coachman by trade.
"An dat's huccome I to say she got sev'al presents las' night."
And he took another puff of his cigarette.
[G] From "Moriah's Mourning." Copyright, 1898, by Harper & Brothers.
An Invalid in Lodgings
BY J. M. BARRIE.
Until my system collapsed, my landlady only spoke of me as her parlor.
At intervals I had communicated with her through the medium of Sarah
Ann, the servant, and, as her rent was due on Wednesday, could I pay my
bill now? Except for these monetary transactions, my landlady and I were
total strangers, and, though I sometimes fell over her children in the
lobby, that led to no intimacy. Even Sarah Ann never opened her mouth
to me. She brought in my tea, and left me to discover that it was there.
My first day in lodgings I said "Good-morning" to Sarah Ann, and she
replied, "Eh?" "Good-morning," I repeated, to which she answered
contemptuously, "Oh, ay." For six months I was simply the parlor; but
then I fell ill, and at once became an interesting person.
Sarah Ann found me shivering on the sofa one hot day a week or more ago,
beneath my rug, two coats, and some other articles. My landlady sent
up some beef-tea, in which she has a faith that is pathetic, and then,
to complete the cure, she appeared in person. She has proved a nice,
motherly old lady, but not cheerful company.
"Where do you feel it worst, sir?" she asked.
I said it was bad all over, but worst in my head.
"On your brow?"
"No; on the back of my head."
"It feels like a lump of lead?"
"No; like a furnace."
"That's just what I feared," she said. "It began so with him."
"With whom?"
"My husband. He came in one day, five years ago, complaining of his
head, and in three days he was a corpse."
"What?"
"Don't be afraid, sir. Maybe it isn't the same thing."
"Of course it isn't. Your husband, according to the story you told me
when I took these rooms, died of fever."
"Yes, but the fever began just in this way. It carried him off in no
time. You had better see a doctor, sir. Doctor was no use in my
husband's case, but it is satisfaction to have him."
Here Sarah Ann, who had been listening with mouth and eyes open,
suddenly burst into tears, and was led out of the room, exclaiming,
"Him such a quiet gentleman, and he never flung nothing at me."
Though I knew that I had only caught a nasty cold, a conviction in
which the doctor confirmed me, my landlady stood out for its being
just such another case as her husband's, and regaled me for hours with
reminiscences of his rapid decline. If I was a little better one day,
alas! he had been a little better the day before he died; and if I
answered her peevishly, she told Sarah Ann that my voice was going. She
brought the beef-tea up with her own hands, her countenance saying that
I might as well have it, though it could not save me. Sometimes I pushed
it away untasted (how I loathe beef-tea now!), when she whispered
something to Sarah Ann that sent that tender-hearted maid howling once
more from the room.
"He's supped it all," Sarah Ann said one day, brightening.
"That's a worse sign," said her mistress, "than if he hadn't took none."
I lay on a sofa, pulled close to the fire, and when the doctor came, my
landlady was always at his heels, Sarah Ann's dismal face showing at the
door. The doctor is a personal friend of my own, and each day he said I
was improving a little.
"Ah, doctor!" my landlady said, reprovingly.
"He does it for the best," she exclaimed to me, "but I don't hold with
doctors as deceive their patients. Why don't he speak out the truth like
a man? My husband were told the worst, and so he had time to reconcile
himself."
On one of these occasions I summoned up sufficient energy to send her
out of the room; but that only made matters worse.
"Poor gentleman!" I heard her say to Sarah Ann; "he is very violent
to-day. I saw he were worse the moment I clapped eyes on him. Sarah Ann,
I shouldn't wonder though we had to hold him down yet."
About an hour afterwards she came in to ask me if I "had come more round
to myself," and when I merely turned round on the sofa for reply, she
said, in a loud whisper to Sarah Ann, that I "were as quiet as a lamb
now." Then she stroked me and went away.
So attentive was my landlady that she was a ministering angel. Yet I
lay on that sofa plotting how to get her out of the room. The plan that
seemed the simplest was to pretend sleep, but it was not easily carried
out. Not getting any answer from me, she would approach on tiptoe and
lean over the sofa, listening to hear me breathe. Convinced that I was
still living, she and Sarah Ann began a conversation in whispers, of
which I or the deceased husband was the subject. The husband had slept
a good deal, too, and it wasn't a healthy sign.
"It isn't a good sign," whispered my landlady, "though them as know no
better might think it is. It shows he's getting weaker. When they takes
to sleeping in the day-time, it's only because they don't have the
strength to keep awake."
"Oh, missus!" Sarah Ann would say.
"Better face facts, Sarah Ann," replied my landlady.
In the end I had generally to sit up and confess that I heard what they
were saying. My landlady evidently thought this another bad sign.
I discovered that my landlady held receptions in another room, where
visitors came who referred to me as her "trial." When she thought me
distinctly worse, she put on her bonnet and went out to disseminate the
sad news. It was on one of these occasions that Sarah Ann, who had been
left in charge of the children, came to me with a serious request.
"Them children," she said, "want awful to see you, and I sort of
promised to bring 'em in, if so you didn't mind."
"But, Sarah Ann, they have seen me often, and, though I'm a good deal
better, I don't feel equal to speaking to them."
Sarah Ann smiled pityingly when I said I felt better, but she assured me
the children only wanted to look at me. I refused her petition, but, on
my ultimatum being announced to them, they set up such a roar that, to
quiet them, I called them in.
They came one at a time. Sophia, the eldest, came first. She looked at
me very solemnly, and then said bravely that If I liked she would kiss
me. As she had a piece of flannel tied round her face, and was swollen
in the left cheek, I declined this honor, and she went off much
relieved. Next came Tommy, who sent up a shriek as his eyes fell on me,
and had to be carried off by Sarah Ann. Johnny was bolder and franker,
but addressed all his remarks to Sarah Ann. First, he wanted to know if
he could touch me, and, being told he could, he felt my face all over.
Then, he wanted to see the "spouter." The "spouter" was a spray through
which Sarah Ann blew coolness on my head, and Johnny had heard of it
with interest. He refused to leave the room until he had been permitted
to saturate me and my cushion.
I am so much better now that even my landlady knows I am not dying. I
suppose she is glad that it is so, but at the same time she resents it.
There is an impression in the house that I am a fraud. They call me by
my name as yet, but soon again I shall be the parlor.
The Stirrup-Cup
BY SIDNEY LANIER.
Death, thou'rt a cordial old and rare:
Look how compounded, with what care!
Time got his wrinkles reaping thee
Sweet herbs from all antiquity.
David to thy distillage went,
Keats, and Gotama excellent,
Omar Khayyam, and Chaucer bright,
And Shakespeare for a king-delight.
Then, Time, let not a drop be spilt;
Hand me the cup whene'er thou wilt;
'Tis thy rich stirrup-cup to me;
I'll drink it down right smilingly.
Das Krist Kindel.[H]
BY JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY.
I had fed the fire and stirred it, till the sparkles in delight
Snapped their saucy little fingers at the chill December night;
And in dressing-gown and slippers, I had tilted back "my throne"--
The old split-bottomed rocker--and was musing all alone.
I could hear the hungry Winter prowling round the outer door,
And the tread of muffled footsteps on the white piazza floor;
But the sounds came to me only as the murmur of a stream
That mingled with the current of a lazy-flowing dream.
Like a fragrant incense rising, curled the smoke of my cigar,
With the lamp-light gleaming through it like a mist-enfolded star;--
And as I gazed, the vapor like a curtain rolled away,
With a sound of bells that tinkled, and the clatter of a sleigh.
And in a vision, painted like a picture in the air,
I saw the elfish figure of a man with frosty hair--
A quaint old man that chuckled with a laugh as he appeared,
And with ruddy cheeks like embers in the ashes of his beard.
He poised himself grotesquely, in an attitude of mirth,
On a damask-covered hassock that was sitting on the hearth;
And at a magic signal of his stubby little thumb,
I saw the fire place changing to a bright procenium.
And looking there, I marveled as I saw a mimic stage
Alive with little actors of a very tender age;
And some so very tiny that they tottered as they walked,
And lisped and purled and gurgled like the brooklets, when they talked.
And their faces were like lilies, and their eyes like purest dew,
And their tresses like the shadows that the shine is woven through;
And they each had little burdens, and a little tale to tell
Of fairy lore, and giants, and delights delectable.
And they mixed and intermingled, weaving melody with joy.
Till the magic circle clustered round a blooming baby-boy;
And they threw aside their treasures in an ecstasy of glee,
And bent, with dazzled faces, and with parted lips, to see.
'Twas a wondrous little fellow, with a dainty double chin,
And chubby cheeks, and dimples for the smiles to blossom in;
And he looked as ripe and rosy, on his bed of straw and reeds;
As a mellow little pippin that had tumbled in the weeds.
And I saw the happy mother, and a group surrounding her,
That knelt with costly presents of frankincense and myrrh;
And I thrilled with awe and wonder, as a murmur on the air
Came drifting o'er the hearing in a melody of prayer:--
_By the splendor in the heavens, and the hush upon the sea,
And the majesty of silence reigning o'er Galilee,--
We feel Thy kingly presence, and we humbly bow the knee
And lift our hearts and voices in gratefulness to Thee._
_Thy messenger has spoken, and our doubts have fled and gone
As the dark and spectral shadows of the night before the dawn,
And, in the kindly shelter of the light around us drawn,
We would nestle down forever in the breast we lean upon._
_You have given us a shepherd, you have given us a guide,
And the light of Heaven grew dimmer when you sent Him from your side,--
But He comes to lead Thy children where the gates will open wide
To welcome His returning when His works are glorified._
_By the splendor in the Heavens, and the hush upon the sea,
And the majesty of silence reigning over Galilee,--
We feel Thy kingly presence, and we humbly bow the knee
And lift our hearts and voices in gratefulness to Thee._
Then the vision, slowly failing, with the words of the refrain,
Fell swooning in the moonlight through the frosty windowpane;
And I heard the clock proclaiming, like an eager sentinel
Who brings the world good tidings,--"It is Christmas--all is well!"
[H] From "Afterwhiles." Copyright, 1898. By special permission of the
publishers, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Hiram Foster's Thanksgiving Turkey
BY S. E. KISER.
[Of the many poems written when President McKinley was
assassinated, none surpassed in sympathy and original conception
the verses printed below.]
See that turkey out there, mister? Ain't he big and fat and nice?
Well, you couldn't buy that gobbler, not for any kind of price.
Now, I'll tell you how it happened: 'Way along last spring, you know,
This here turkey's mother hatched some twenty little ones or so--
Hatched 'em in the woods down yonder, and come marchin' home one day
With them stringin' out behind 'er, catchin' bugs along the way.
Well, my little grandson named 'em--both his folks are dead, you see,
So he's come and gone to livin' with his grandma, here, and me.
He give each a name to go by: one was Teddy, one was Schley,
One was Sampson, one was Dewey, one was Bryan, too, but I
Liked the one he called McKinley best of all the brood, somehow--
He was that there turkey yonder that's a gobblin' at you now.
How them cunnin' little rascals grew and grew! Sometimes, I swear,
It 'most seemed as though we seen 'em shootin' upward in the air.
And McKinley was the leader and the best of all the lot,
And you'd ought to seen the mother--proud of him?--I tell you what!
So I says to ma and Charley--oh, three months ago at least--
That I guessed we'd keep McKinley for our own Thanksgivin' feast.
Then we sold off all the others, keepin' only this one here,
And I guess we won't have turkey for Thanksgivin' Day this year.
Just the name we gave that gobbler makes him sacreder to me,
After all the things that's happened, than I--well, somehow you see
I was in his ridgement--so you'll please excuse me--I dunno--
I don't want to show my feelin's--sometimes folks can't help it, though.
Hear 'im gobble now, and see him as he proudly struts away;
Don't you s'pose he knows there's something in the name he bears to-day?
See how all his feathers glisten--ain't he big and plump and nice?
No, sir! No; you couldn't buy 'im, not for any kind of price.
That there gobbler, there, that Charley gave the name McKinley to,
He'll die natural--that's something turkeys mighty seldom do.
The Winning of Lorna Doone
(From Lorna Doone.)
BY R. D. BLACKMORE.
[The Doones were a band of aristocratic, but lawless, people
living in the Doone Valley, from which they sallied forth to
raid the neighboring farmers and travelers. John Ridd, who tells
the story, while fishing one spring had followed a stream into
the Doone estate. When the following scene opens he had just had
a desperate struggle to save himself from the swift current of
the stream, and had nearly lost his life.]
When I came to myself again, my hands were full of young grass and mold,
and a little girl, kneeling at my side, was rubbing my forehead tenderly
with a dock-leaf and a handkerchief.
"Oh, I am so glad!" she whispered, softly, as I opened my eyes and
looked at her; "now you will try to be better, won't you?"
I had never heard so sweet a sound as came from between her bright red
lips, while there she knelt and gazed at me; neither had I ever seen
anything so beautiful as the large, dark eyes intent upon me, full of
pity and wonder. And then, my nature being slow, and perhaps, for that
matter, heavy, I wandered with my hazy eyes down the black shower of her
hair, as to my jaded gaze it seemed. Perhaps she liked my countenance,
and indeed I know she did, because she said so afterward; although at
that time she was too young to know what made her take to me.
Thereupon I sat upright, with my little trident still in one hand, and
was much afraid to speak to her, being conscious of my country brogue,
lest she should cease to like me. But she clapped her hands, and made
a trifling dance around my back, and came to me on the other side, as
if I were a great play thing.
"What is your name?" she said, as if she had every right to ask me;
"and how did you come here, and what are these wet things in this great
bag?"
"You had better let them alone," I said; "they are loaches for my
mother. But I will give you some, if you like."
"Dear me, how much you think of them! Why, they are only fish. But how
your feet are bleeding! Oh, I must tie them up for you. And no shoes
nor stockings! Is your mother very poor, poor boy?"
"No," I said, being vexed at this; "we are rich enough to buy all this
great meadow, if we chose; and here my shoes and stockings be."
"Why, they are quite as wet as your feet; and I cannot bear to see your
feet. Oh, please to let me bandage them; I will do it very softly."
"Oh, I don't think much of that," I replied; "I shall put some goose
grease to them. But how you are looking at me! I never saw one like you
before. My name is John Ridd. What is your name?"
"Lorna Doone," she answered, in a low voice, as if afraid of it, and
hanging her head so that I could see only her forehead and eyelashes;
"if you please, my name is Lorna Doone, and I thought you must have
known it."
Young and harmless as she was, her name alone made guilt of her.
Nevertheless, I could not help looking at her tenderly, and the more
when her blushes turned into tears, and her tears to long, low sobs.
"Don't cry," I said, "whatever you do. I am sure you have never done
any harm. I will give you all my fish, Lorna, and catch some more for
mother; only don't be angry with me."
She flung her soft arms up in the passion of her tears, and looked at me
so piteously that what did I do but kiss her. It seemed to be a very odd
thing, when I came to think of it, because I hated kissing so, as all
honest boys must do. But she touched my heart with a sudden delight.
She gave me no encouragement, as my mother in her place would have done;
nay, she even wiped her lips (which methought was rather rude of her),
and drew away, and smoothed her dress, as if I had used a freedom.
I, for my part, being vexed at her behavior to me, took up all my things
to go, and made a fuss about it, to let her know I was going. But she
did not call me back at all, as I had made sure she would do; moreover,
I knew that to try the descent was almost certain death to me, and it
looked as dark as pitch; and so at the mouth I turned round again, and
came back to her, and said, "Lorna."
"Oh, I thought you were gone," she answered; "why did you ever come
here? Do you know what they would do to us if they found you here
with me?"
"Beat us, I dare say, very hard, or me at least. They could never beat
you."
"No. They would kill us both outright, and bury us here by the water;
and the water often tells me that I must come to that."
"But what should they kill me for?"
"Because you have found the way up here, and they could never believe
it. Now, please to go; oh please go. They will kill us both in a moment.
Yes, I like you very much"--for I was teasing her to say it--"very much
indeed, and I will call you John Ridd, if you like; only please to go,
John. And when your feet are well, you know, you can come and tell me
how they are."
"But I tell you, Lorna, I like you very much indeed, nearly as much as
Annie, and a great deal more than Lizzie. And I never saw any one like
you; and I must come back again to-morrow, and so must you, to see me;
and I will bring you such lots of things--there are apples still, and
a thrush that I caught, with only one leg broken, and our dog has just
had puppies--"
"Oh dear! they won't let me have a dog. There is not a dog in the
valley. They say that they are such noisy things--"
"Only put your hands in mine--what little things they are, Lorna!--and
I will bring you the loveliest dog; I will show you just how long he is."
"Hush!" A shout came down the valley, and all my heart was trembling,
like water after sunset, and Lorna's face was altered from pleasant play
to terror. She shrunk to me, and looked up at me, with such a power of
weakness, that I at once made up my mind to save her or die with her. A
tingle went through all my bones, and I only longed for my carbine. The
little girl took courage from me, and put her cheek quite close to mine.
"Come with me down the water-fall. I can carry you easily, and mother
will take care of you."
"No, no," she cried, as I took her up; "I will tell you what to do.
They are only looking for me. You see that hole, that hole there?"
"Yes, I see it; but they will see me crossing the grass to get there."
"Look, look!" She could hardly speak. "There is a way out from the top
of it; they would kill me if I told it. Oh, here they come; I can see
them." Then she began to sob aloud, being so young and unready. But I
drew her behind the withy-bushes, and close down to the water, where it
was quiet and shelving deep, ere it came to the lip of the chasm. Here
they could not see either of us from the upper valley.
Crouching in that hollow nest, as children get together in ever so
little compass, I saw a dozen fierce men come down on the other side of
the water, not bearing any fire-arms, but looking lax and jovial, as if
they were come from riding and a dinner taken hungrily. "Queen, queen!"
they were shouting, here and there, and now and then; "where the pest is
our little queen gone?"
"They always call me 'queen,' and I am to be queen by-and-by," Lorna
whispered to me, with her soft cheek on my rough one, and her little
heart beating against me; "oh, they are crossing by the timber there,
and then they are sure to see us."
"Stop," said I; "now I see what to do. I must get into the water, and
you must go to sleep."
"To be sure, yes; away in the meadow there. But how bitter cold it will
be for you!"
She saw in a moment the way to do it sooner than I could tell her; and
there was no time to lose.
"Now, mind you, never come again," she whispered over her shoulder, as
she crept away with a childish twist, hiding her white front from me;
"only I shall come sometimes--oh, here they are, Madonna!"
Daring scarce to peep, I crept into the water, and lay down bodily in
it, with my head between two blocks of stone, and some flood drift
combing over me. I knew that for her sake I was bound to be brave and
hide myself. She was lying beneath a rock, thirty or forty yards from
me, feigning to be fast asleep, with her dress spread beautifully, and
her hair drawn over her.
Presently one of the great, rough men came round a corner upon her; and
there he stopped and gazed a while at her fairness and her innocence.
Then he caught her up in his arms, and kissed her so that I heard him;
and if I had only brought my gun, I would have tried to shoot him.
"Here our queen is! Here's the queen; here's the captain's daughter!"
he shouted to his comrades; "fast asleep, and hearty! Now I have first
claim to her; and no one else shall touch the child. Back to the bottle,
all of you!"
He set her dainty little form upon his great, square shoulder, and her
narrow feet in one broad hand; and so in triumph marched away.
II.
[After this, John and Lorna met often in a secret place, where
there was little chance of discovery. It was decided by the
family that Lorna should be the wife of Carver Doone, the leader
of the band, but as she was unwilling, and Grandfather Doone,
the retiring leader, would not permit them to compel her, years
went by without Carver accomplishing his purpose. Finally Lorna
came no more to the trysting place, so that John suspected she
had been put in a dungeon. He resolved to gain an entrance to
the Doone village, and, after a desperate night adventure,
succeeded.]
My heart was in my mouth, as they say, when I stood in the shade of
Lorna's window, and whispered her name gently. But, though the window
was not very close, I might have whispered long enough before she would
have answered me, frightened as she was, no doubt, by many a rude
overture. And I durst not speak aloud, because I saw another watchman
posted on the western cliff, and commanding all the valley. And now
this man espied me against the wall of the house, and advanced against
the brink and challenged me.
"Who are you, there? Answer! One, two, three; and I fire at thee."
The nozzle of his gun was pointed full upon me, as I could see, with
the moonlight striking on the barrel; he was not more than fifty yards
off, and now he began to reckon. Being almost desperate about it, I
began to whistle, wondering how far I should get before I lost my
windpipe; and, as luck would have it, my lips fell into that strange
tune I had practiced last,--the one I heard from Charlie Doone. My
mouth would scarcely frame the notes, being parched with terror; but,
to my surprise, the man fell back, dropped his gun and saluted. Oh,
sweetest of all sweet melodies!
That tune was Carver Doone's passport (as I heard long afterward), which
Charleworth Doone had imitated, for decoy of Lorna. The sentinel took
me for that vile Carver, who was like enough to be prowling there, for
private talk with Lorna, but not very likely to shout forth his name,
if it might be avoided. The watchman, perceiving the danger, perhaps,
of intruding on Carver's privacy, not only retired along the cliff, but
withdrew himself to good distance.
Meanwhile he had done me the kindest service; for Lorna came to the
window at once to see what the cause of the shout was, and drew back the
curtain timidly. Then she opened the rough lattice; and then she watched
the cliff and trees; and then she sighed very sadly.
"Oh, Lorna, don't you know me?" I whispered from the side, being afraid
of startling her by appearing over suddenly.
Quick though she was of thought, she knew me not from my whisper, and
was shutting the window hastily, when I caught it back and showed
myself.
"John!" she cried, yet with sense enough not to speak aloud; "oh, you
must be mad, John!"
"As mad as a March hare," said I, "without any news of my darling. You
knew I would come--of course you did."
"Well, I thought, perhaps--you know; now, John, you need not eat my
hand. Do you see, they have put iron bars across?"
"To be sure. Do you think I should be contented even with this lovely
hand, but for these vile iron bars? I will have them out before I go.
Now, darling, for one moment--just the other hand, for a change, you
know."
So I got the other, but was not honest; for I kept them both, and felt
their delicate beauty trembling as I laid them to my heart.
"Oh, John, you will make me cry directly"--she had been crying long
ago--"if you go on in that way. You know we can never have one another;
every one is against it. Why should I make you miserable? Try not to
think of me any more."
"And will you try the same of me, Lorna?"
"Oh yes, John; if you agree to it. At least I will try to try it."
"Then you won't try anything of the sort," I cried, with great
enthusiasm, for her tone was so nice and melancholy; "the only thing
we will try to try is to belong to one another. And if we do our best,
Lorna, God alone can prevent us."
She crossed herself with one hand drawn free, as I spoke so boldly;
and something swelled in her little throat, and prevented her from
answering.
"Now tell me," I said; "what means all this? Why are you so pent up
here? Why have you given me no token? Has your grandfather turned
against you? Are you in any danger?"
"My poor grandfather is very ill. I fear that he will not live long.
The Counselor and his son are now masters of the valley; and I dare not
venture forth for fear of anything they might do to me. When I went
forth to signal for you, Carver tried to seize me; but I was too quick
for him. Little Gwenny is not allowed to leave the valley now, so that
I could send no message. I have been so wretched, dear, lest you should
think me false to you. The tyrants now make sure of me. You must watch
this house both night and day, if you wish to save me. There is nothing
they would shrink from, if my poor grandfather--oh, I cannot bear to
think of myself, when I ought to think of him only; dying without a son
to tend him or a daughter to shed a tear."
"But surely he has sons enough; and a deal too many," I was going to
say, but stopped myself in time. "Why do none of them come to him?"
"I know not. I cannot tell. He is a very strange old man, and few
have ever loved him. He was black with wrath at the Counselor this
afternoon--but I must not keep you here--you are much too brave, John;
and I am too selfish; there, what was that shadow?"
"Nothing more than a bat, darling, come to look for his sweetheart. I
will not stay long; you tremble so; and yet for that very reason how can
I leave you, Lorna?"
"You must--you must," she answered; "I shall die if they hurt you. I
hear the old nurse moving. Grandfather is sure to send for me. Keep back
from the window."
However, it was only Gwenny Carfax, Lorna's little handmaid; my darling
brought her to the window and presented her to me, almost laughing
through her grief.
"Oh, I am so glad, John; Gwenny, I am so glad you came. I have wanted
long to introduce you to my 'young man,' as you call him. It is rather
dark, but you can see him. I wish you to know him again, Gwenny."
"Whoy!" cried Gwenny, with great amazement, standing on tiptoe to look
out, and staring as if she were weighing me; "he be bigger nor any
Doone! I shall knoo thee again, young man; no fear of that," she
answered, nodding with an air of patronage. "Now, missis, gae on
coortin', and I will gae outside and watch for 'ee." Though expressed
not over-delicately, this proposal arose, no doubt, from Gwenny's sense
of delicacy; and I was very thankful to her for taking her departure.
"She is the best little thing in the world," said Lorna, softly,
laughing, "and the queerest, and the truest. Nothing will bribe her
against me. If she seems to be on the other side, never, never doubt
her. Now, no more of your 'coortin',' John. I love you far too well
for that. Yes, yes, ever so much! If you will take a mean advantage
of me--as much as ever you like to imagine; and then you may double it
after that. Only go, do go, good John; kind, dear, darling John; if you
love me, go."
"How can I go without settling anything?" I asked, very sensibly. "How
shall I know of your danger now? Hit upon something; you are so quick.
Anything you can think of; and then I will go, and not frighten you."
"I have been thinking long of something," Lorna answered, rapidly, with
that peculiar clearness of voice which made every syllable ring like
music of a several note. "You see that tree with the seven rooks' nests,
bright against the cliffs there? Can you count them from above, do you
think? From a place where you would be safe, dear?"
"No doubt I can; or, if I cannot, it will not take me long to find a
spot whence I can do it."
"Gwenny can climb like any cat. She has been up there in the summer
watching the young birds day by day, and daring the boys to touch them.
There are neither birds nor eggs there now, of course, and nothing
doing. If you see but six rooks' nests, I am in peril, and want you.
If you see but five, I am carried off by Carver."
"Good God!" said I, at the mere idea, in a tone which frightened Lorna.
"Fear not, John," she whispered, sadly, and my blood grew cold at it;
"I have means to stop him, or at least to save myself. If you can come
within one day of that man's getting hold of me, you will find me quite
unharmed. After that you will find me, dead or alive, according to
circumstances, but in no case such that you need blush to look at me."
I only said, "God bless you, darling!" and she said the same to me, in
a very low, sad voice. And then I stole below Carver's house in the
shadow from the eastern cliff; and, knowing enough of the village now to
satisfy all necessity, betook myself to my well-known track in returning
from the valley.
III.
[It was not long after this that John Ridd saw the signal that
Lorna was in danger. With the aid of friends he planned and
successfully executed a raid upon the Doone village, and carried
away Lorna to his mother's house. Subsequently the Doones
attacked the house where Lorna was staying, but John Ridd and
his friends were prepared to meet them, as is related in the
following scene:]
It was not likely that the outlaws would attack our premises until some
time after the moon was risen, because it would be too dangerous to
cross the flooded valleys in the darkness of the night. And, but for
this consideration, I must have striven harder against the stealthy
approach of slumber. But even so, it was very foolish to abandon watch,
especially in such as I, who sleep like any dormouse. Moreover, I had
chosen the very worst place in the world for such employment, with a
goodly chance of awaking in a bed of solid fire.
And so it might have been--nay, it must have been--but for Lorna's
vigilance. Her light hand upon my arm awoke me, not too readily, and,
leaping up, I seized my club, and prepared to knock down somebody.
"Who's that?" I cried. "Stand back, I say, and let me have a fair chance
at you."
"Are you going to knock me down, dear John?" replied the voice I love
so well. "I am sure I should never get up again, after one blow from you,
John."
"My darling, is it you?" I cried; "and breaking all your orders? Come
back into the house at once; and nothing on your head, dear."
"How could I sleep, while at any moment you might be killed beneath my
window? And now is the time of real danger, for men can see to travel."
I saw at once the truth of this. The moon was high and clearly lighting
all the watered valleys. To sleep any longer might be death, not only to
myself, but all.
"The man on guard at the back of the house is fast asleep," she
continued; "Gwenny, who let me out, and came with me, has heard him
snoring for two hours. I think the women ought to be the watch, because
they have had no traveling. Where do you suppose little Gwenny is?"
"Surely not gone to Glen Doone?" I was not sure, however, for I could
believe almost anything of the Cornish maiden's hardihood.
"No," replied Lorna, "although she wanted even to do that. But, of
course, I would not hear of it, on account of the swollen waters. But
she is perched in yonder tree, which commands the Barrow Valley. She
says that they are almost sure to cross the streamlet there."
"What a shame," I cried, "that the men should sleep and the maidens be
the soldiers! I will sit in that tree myself, and send little Gwenny
back to you. Go to bed, my best and dearest; I will take good care not
to sleep again."
Before I had been long on duty, making the round of the ricks and the
stables, and hailing Gwenny now and then from the bottom of her tree,
a short, wide figure stole toward me, in and out the shadows, and I saw
that it was no other than the little maid herself, and that she bore
some tidings.
"Ten on 'em crossed the water down yonder," said Gwenny, putting her
hand to her mouth, and seeming to regard it as good news rather than
otherwise; "be arl craping up by the hedgerow now. I could shutt dree
on 'em from the bar of the gate, if so be I had your goon, young man."
"There is no time to lose, Gwenny. Run to the house and fetch Master
Stickles, and all the men while I stay here and watch the rick-yard."
The robbers rode into our yard as coolly as if they had been invited,
having lifted the gate from the hinges first, on account of its being
fastened. Then they actually opened our stable doors, and turned our
honest horses out, and put their own rogues in place of them. At this
my breath was quite taken away, for we think so much of our horses. By
this time I could see our troopers waiting in the shadow of the house
round the corner from where the Doones were, and expecting the order to
fire; but Jeremy Stickles very wisely kept them in readiness until the
enemy should advance upon them.
"Two of you lazy fellows go,"--it was the deep voice of Carver Doone,
"and make us a light to cut their throats by. Only one thing, once
again. If any man touches Lorna, I will stab him where he stands. She
belongs to me. There are two other young damsels here, whom you may take
away if you please. And the mother, I hear, is still comely. Now for our
rights. We have borne too long the insolence of these yokels. Kill every
man and every child, and burn this cursed place down."
Presently two young men came toward me, bearing brands of resined hemp,
kindled from Carver's lamp. The foremost of them set his torch to the
rick within a yard of me, the smoke concealing me from him. I struck him
with a backhanded blow on the elbow as he bent it, and I heard the bone
of his arm break as clearly as ever I heard a twig snap. With a roar of
pain, he fell on the ground, and his torch dropped there and singed him.
The other man stood amazed at this, not having yet gained sight of me,
till I caught his fire-brand from his hand, and struck it into his
countenance. With that he leaped at me, but I caught him in a manner
learned from early wrestling, and snapped his collar bone, as I laid
him upon the top of his comrade.
This little success so encouraged me that I was half inclined to advance
and challenge Carver Doone to meet me; but I bore in mind that he would
be apt to shoot me without ceremony; and what is the utmost of human
strength against the power of powder? Moreover, I remembered my promise
to sweet Lorna; and who would be left to defend her, if the rogues got
rid of me?
While I was hesitating thus, a blaze of fire lit up the house, and brown
smoke hung around it. Six of our men had let go at the Doones, by Jeremy
Stickles's order, as the villains came swaggering down in the moonlight
ready for rape or murder. Two of them fell, and the rest hung back, to
think at their leisure what this was. They were not used to this sort of
thing; it was neither just nor courteous.
Being unable any longer to contain myself, as I thought of Lorna's
excitement at all this noise of firing, I ran across the yard, expecting
whether they would shoot at me. However, no one shot at me; and I went
up to Carver Doone, whom I knew by his size in the moonlight, and I took
him by the beard and said, "Do you call yourself a man?"
For a moment he was so astonished that he could not answer. None had
ever dared, I suppose, to look at him in that way. And then he tried a
pistol at me; but I was too quick for him.
"Now, Carver, take warning," I said to him, very soberly; "you have
shown yourself a fool by your contempt of me. I may not be your match
in craft, but I am in manhood. You are a despicable villain. Lie low in
your native muck."
And with that word I laid him flat upon his back in our straw-yard by
the trick of the inner heel, which he could not have resisted unless he
were a wrestler. Seeing him down, the others ran, though one of them
made a shot at me, and some of them got their horses before our men came
up, and some went away without them. And among these last was Captain
Carver, who arose while I was feeling myself (for I had a little wound),
and strode away with a train of curses enough to poison the light of
the moon.
IV.
[Through many vicissitudes and many dangers, Lorna and John
spend the months following the incident just related. John
learns that Lorna is, after all, not a Doone, but the daughter
of a family the Doones had waylaid. John's father had also been
murdered by the Doones when John was a lad at school. The
following scene carries its own story:]
Everything was settled smoothly and without any fear or fuss that Lorna
might find end of troubles, and myself of eager waiting, with the help
of Parson Bowden, and the good wishes of two counties. We heard that
people meant to come for more than thirty miles around, upon excuse of
seeing my stature and Lorna's beauty; but in good truth, out of sheer
curiosity and the love of meddling.
Dear mother arranged all the ins and outs of the way in which it was to
be done; and Annie and Lizzie made such a sweeping of dresses that I
scarcely knew where to place my feet, and longed for a staff to put by
their gowns. Then Lorna came out of a pew half-way, in a manner which
quite astonished me, and took my left hand in her right, and I prayed
God that it were done with.
My darling looked so glorious that I was afraid of glancing at her, yet
took in all her beauty. I was afraid to look at her, except when each of
us said, "I will," and then each dwelt upon the other.
It is impossible for any who have not loved as I have to conceive my joy
and pride when, after ring and all was done, and the parson had blessed
us, Lorna turned to look at me with her glances of subtle fun subdued by
this great act.
Her eyes, which none on earth may ever equal or compare with, told me
such a depth of comfort, yet awaiting further commune, that I was almost
amazed, thoroughly as I knew them. Darling eyes, the sweetest eyes, the
loveliest, the most loving eyes--the sound of a shot rang through the
church, and those eyes were filled with death.
Lorna fell across my knees when I was going to kiss her, a flood of
blood came out upon the yellow wood of the altar steps, and at my feet
lay Lorna, trying to tell me some last message out of her faithful eyes.
I lifted her up, and petted her, and coaxed her, but it was no good; the
only sign of life remaining was a spot of bright red blood.
She sighed a long sigh on my breast, for her last farewell to life, and
then she grew so cold, and cold, that I asked the time of the year.
Of course I knew who had done it. There was but one man in the world,
or, at any rate, in our part of it, who would have done such a
thing--such a thing. I use no harsher word about it, while I leaped upon
our best horse, with bridle, but no saddle, and set the head of Kickums
toward the course now pointed out to me. Who showed me the course I
cannot tell. I only knew that I took it. And the men fell back before me.
Weapon of no sort had I. Unarmed, and wondering at my strange attire
(with a bridal vest wrought by our Annie, and red with the blood of the
bride), I went forth just to find out this--whether in this world there
be or be not God of justice.
With my vicious horse at a furious speed, I came upon Black Barrow Down,
directed by some shout of men, which seemed to me but a whisper. And
there, about a furlong before me, rode a man on a great black horse, and
I knew that the man was Carver Doone.
"Your life, or mine," I said to myself; "as the will of God may be. But
we two live not upon this earth one more hour together."
I knew the strength of this great man; and I knew that he was armed with
a gun--if he had time to load again, after shooting my Lorna--or at any
rate with pistols, and a horseman's sword, as well. Nevertheless, I had
no more doubt of killing the man before me than a cook has of spitting
a headless fowl.
Sometimes seeing no ground beneath me, and sometimes heeding every leaf,
and the crossing of the grass-blades, I followed over the long moor,
reckless whether seen or not. But only once the other man turned and
looked back again, and then I was beside a rock, with a reedy swamp
behind me.
Although he was so far before me, and riding as hard as ride he might,
I saw that he had something on the horse in front of him, something
which needed care, and stopped him from looking backward. In the whirling
of my wits I fancied first that this was Lorna; until the scene I had
been through fell across my hot brain and heart, like the drop at the
close of a tragedy. Rushing there through crag and quag at utmost speed
of a maddened horse, as of another's fate, calmly (as on canvas laid),
the brutal deed, the piteous anguish, and the cold despair.
The man turned up the gully leading from the moor to Cloven Rocks. But,
as Carver entered it, he turned round and beheld me not a hundred yards
behind; and I saw that he was bearing his child, little Ensie, before
him. Ensie also descried me, and stretched his hands and cried to me;
for the face of his father frightened him.
Carver Doone, with a vile oath, thrust spurs into his flagging horse,
and laid one hand on a pistol stock, whence I knew that his slung
carbine has received no bullet since the one that had pierced Lorna. And
a cry of triumph rose from the black depths of my heart. What cared I
for pistols? I had no spurs, neither was my horse one to need the rowel;
I rather held him in than urged him, for he was fresh as ever; and I
knew that the black steed in front, if he breasted the steep ascent,
where the track divided, must be in our reach at once.
His rider knew this, and, having no room in the rocky channel to turn
and fire, drew rein at the crossways sharply, and plunged into the black
ravine leading to the Wizard's Slough. "Is it so?" I said to myself,
with brain and head cold as iron; "though the foul fiend come from the
slough to save thee, thou shalt carve it, Carver."
I followed my enemy carefully, steadily, even leisurely--for I had him
as in a pitfall, whence no escape might be. He thought that I feared
to approach him, for he knew not where he was; and his low, disdainful
laugh came back.
"Laugh he who wins," thought I.
A gnarled and half-starved oak, as stubborn as my own resolve, and
smitten by some storm of old, hung from the crag above me. Rising from
my horse's back, although I had no stirrups, I caught a limb, and tore
it (like a mere wheat-awn) from the socket. Men show the rent even now
with wonder--none with more wonder than myself.
Carver Doone turned the corner suddenly on the black and bottomless bog;
with a start of fear he reigned back his horse, and I thought he would
have turned upon me. Upon this he made up his mind; and, wheeling,
fired, and then rode at me.
His bullet struck me somewhere, but I took no heed of that. Fearing only
his escape, I laid my horse across the way, and with the limb of the
oak struck full on the forehead his charging steed. Ere the slash of the
sword came nigh me, man and horse rolled over, and well-nigh bore my own
horse down with the power of their onset.
Carver Doone was somewhat stunned, and could not arise for a moment.
Meanwhile I leaped on the ground and waited, smoothing my hair back and
baring my arm as though in the ring for wrestling. Then the little boy
ran to me, clasped my leg, and looked up at me; and the terror in his
eyes made me almost fear myself.
"Ensie, dear," I said, quite gently, grieving that he should see his
wicked father killed, "run up yonder round the corner, and try to find
a pretty bunch of bluebells for the lady." The child obeyed me,
hanging back, and looking back, and then laughing, while I prepared
for business. There and then I might have killed my enemy with a single
blow while he lay unconscious, but it would have been foul play.
With a sudden and black scowl, the Carver gathered his mighty limbs and
arose, and looked round for his weapons; but I had put them well away.
Then he came to me and gazed, being wont to frighten thus young men.
"I would not harm you, lad," he said, with a lofty style of sneering.
"I have punished you enough, for most of your impertinence. For the rest
I forgive you, because you have been good and gracious to my little son.
Go and be contented."
For answer I smote him on the cheek, lightly, and not to hurt him, but
to make his blood leap up. I would not sully my tongue by speaking to a
man like this.
I think he felt that his time was come; I think that he knew from my
knotted muscles and the firm arch of my breast, and the way in which I
stood, but most of all from my stern blue eyes, that he had found his
master. At any rate a paleness came, an ashy paleness on his cheeks, and
the vast calves of his legs bowed in as if he was out of training.
Seeing this, villain as he was, I offered him first chance. I stretched
forth my left hand, as I do to a weaker antagonist, and I let him have
the hug of me. But in this I was too generous; having forgotten my
pistol-wound, and the cracking of one of my short lower ribs. Carver
Doone caught me round the waist with such a grip as never yet had been
laid upon me.
I heard my rib go; I grasped his arm, and tore the muscle out of it (as
the string comes out of an orange); then I took him by the throat, which
is not allowed in wrestling, but he had snatched at mine; and now was
no time of dalliance. In vain he tugged and strained, and writhed, and
dashed his bleeding fist into my face, and flung himself on me with
gnashing jaws. Beneath the iron of my strength--for God that day was
with me--I had him helpless in two minutes, and his fiery eyes lolled out.
"I will not harm thee any more," I cried, so far as I could for panting,
the work being very furious. "Carver Doone, thou art beaten; own it, and
thank God for it; and go thy way, and repent thyself."
It was all too late. Even if he had yielded in his ravening frenzy--for
his beard was like a mad dog's jowl--even if he would have owned that
for the first time in his life he had found his master, it was all too
late.
The black bog had him by the feet; the sucking of the ground drew him
on, like the thirsty lips of death. In our fury we had heeded neither
wet nor dry; nor thought of earth beneath us. I myself might scarcely
leap, with the last spring of o'erlabored legs, from the ingulfing
grave of slime. He fell back, with his swarthy breast, like a hummock
of bog-oak, standing out the quagmire; and then he tossed his arms to
heaven, and they were black to the elbow, and the glare of his eyes was
ghastly. I could only gaze and pant, for my strength was no more than an
infant's, from the fury and the horror. Scarcely could I turn away,
while, joint by joint, he sunk from sight.
When the little boy came back with the bluebells, which he had managed
to find, the only sign of his father left was a dark brown bubble upon
a new-formed patch of blackness. But to the center of its pulpy gorge
the greedy slough was heaving, and sullenly grinding its weltering jaws
among the flags and sedges.
With pain and ache, both of mind and body, and shame at my own fury, I
heavily mounted my horse again, and looked down at the innocent Ensie.
Would this playful loving child grow up like his cruel father, and end
a godless life of hatred with a death of violence? He lifted his noble
forehead toward me, as if to answer, "Nay, I will not"; but the words
he spoke were these:
"Don"--for he never could say "John"--"oh Don, I am so glad that nasty,
naughty man is gone away. Take me home, Don. Take me home."
It hurt me more than I can tell, even through all other grief, to take
into my arms the child of the man just slain by me. But I could not
leave him there till some one else might fetch him, on account of the
cruel slough, and the ravens which had come hovering over the dead
horse; neither could I, with my wound, tie him on my horse and walk.
For now I had spent a great deal of blood, and was rather faint and
weary. And it was luck for me that Kickums had lost spirit like his
master, and went home as mildly as a lamb. For, when we came toward
the farm, I seemed to be riding in a dream almost; and the voices of
both men and women (who had hurried forth upon my track), as they met
me, seemed to wander from a distant, muffling cloud. Only the thought
of Lorna's death, like a heavy knell, was tolling in the belfry of my
brain.
When we came to the stable door I rather fell from my horse than got
off; and John Fry, with a look of wonder, took Kickum's head and led
him in. Into the old farmhouse I tottered, like a weanling child, with
mother, in her common clothes, helping me along, yet fearing, except
by stealth, to look at me.
"I have killed him," was all I said, "even as he killed Lorna. Now let
me see my wife, mother. She belongs to me none the less, though dead."
"You cannot see her now, dear John," said Ruth Huckaback, coming
forward, since no one else had the courage.
"Annie is with her now, John."
"What has that to do with it? Let me see my dead and pray to die."
All the women fell away and whispered, and looked at me with side
glances, and some sobbing, for my face was hard as flint. Ruth alone
stood by me, and dropped her eyes and trembled. Then one little hand
of hers stole into my great shaking palm, and the other was laid on my
tattered coat; yet with her clothes she shunned my blood, while she
whispered gently:
"John, she is not dead. She may even be your living one yet--your wife,
your home, and your happiness. But you must not see her now."
Now, whether it was the light and brightness of my Lorna's nature, or
the freedom from anxiety, but anyhow, one thing is certain; sure as the
stars of hope above us, Lorna recovered long ere I did.
The Sky
The sky is a drinking-cup,
That was overturned of old,
And it pours in the eyes of men
Its wines of airy gold.
We drink that wine all day,
Till the last drop is drained up,
And are lighted off to bed
By the jewels in the cup!
--_Richard Henry Stoddard_.
+----+------------------+----+
| | | |
| | THE SPEAKER | |
| | | |
+----+------------------+----+
TABLE OF CONTENTS
=NO. 1=
Editorials 1-4
The Artist's Secret Olive Schreiner 5
The History Lesson from L'Aiglon Edmund Rostand 6
Dawn Paul Laurence Dunbar 11
Bill, the Lokil Editor Eugene Field 12
Arena Scene from Quo Vadis Henry Sienkiewicz 15
The Cushville Hop Ben King 21
Sonny's Christening Ruth McEnery Stuart 22
How She Went into Business Joel Chandler Harris 28
The Leadership of Educated Men George William Curtis 34
Jean Valjean and the Bishop Victor Hugo 38
Coom, Lassie, Be Good to Me Charles McIlvaine 43
A Bird in the Hand F. S. Weatherby 44
The Slow Man Ernest Poole 45
Emmy Lou George Madden Martin 49
Glory John Luther Long 53
The Rose and the Gardener Austin Dobson 57
The Cap that Fits Austin Dobson 58
The Cure's Progress Austin Dobson 60
The Philosopher in the Apple Orchard Anthony Hope 61
The Photograph Paul Laurence Dunbar 67
A Message to Garcia Elbert Hubbard 68
Lovey-Loves Ben King 69
The Fall of the House of Usher Edgar Allan Poe 70
Nini, Ninette, Ninon Frederick S. Weatherby 77
With Any Amazement Rudyard Kipling 78
One, Two, Three H. C. Bunner 83
Mr. Dooley, on the Grip 85
=NO. 2=
Editorials 97-100
The Sign of the Cross Wilson Barrett 101
My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold William Wordsworth 105
"Gentlemen, the King" Robert Barr 106
The Only Way Charles Dickens 111
The New Americanism Henry Watterson 114
A Plea for Patriotism Benjamin Harrison 116
Fame Ben Jonson 117
The Independence of Cuba J. M. Thurston 118
The Children of the Poor Theodore Parker 122
Burns George William Curtis 124
A Night in Ste. Pilagie Mary H. Catherwood 127
The Call of the Wild Jack London 131
The Prisoner of Zenda Anthony Hope 135
In the Toils of the Enemy John S. Wood 139
The Advocate's First Plea George Barr McCutcheon 144
The Tell-Tale Heart Edgar Allan Poe 148
The Trial of Ben Thomas H. S. Edwards 151
Even This Shall Pass Away Theodore Tilton 155
On Milton John Dryden 156
Richelieu Bulwer Lytton 157
Flower in the Crannied Wall Lord Tennyson 161
The Burgomaster's Death (from "The Bells") 162
Jathrop Lathrop's Cow Anna Warner 167
The Hunchback Sheridan Knowles 172
Love Shakespeare 180
Last Speech of William McKinley 181
For Dear Old Yale James Langston 184
The Lance of Kanana 189
=NO. 3=
Editorials 193-198
Reading Elizabeth B. Browning 198
The Shave-Store Edmund Vance Cooke 199
The Moo-Cow-Moo Edmund Vance Cooke 200
Brother Wolf and the Horned Cattle Joel Chandler Harris 201
A Summer Lullaby Eudora S. Bumstead 204
The First Nowell (Old Carol) 205
A Riddle Jonathan Swift 206
Tiny Tim (from "A Christmas Carol") Charles Dickens 207
The American Flag Joseph R. Drake 212
A Grace for a Child Robert Herrick 212
The Fairies William Allingham 213
The Rule for Birds' Nesters (Old Rhyme) 214
Queen Mab Thomas Hood 215
The Star Song Robert Herrick 216
O Little Town of Bethlehem Phillips Brooks 217
Santa Claus (Anonymous) 218
Recessional Rudyard Kipling 219
The Bonniest Bairn in a' the Warl' Robert Ford 220
The Flag Goes By Henry Holcomb Bennett 221
Pocahontas William Makepeace Thackeray 222
A Farewell Charles Kingsley 223
The Shepherd Boy Sings John Bunyan 223
Two Apple-Howling Songs (Old Rhymes) 224
A Boy's Prayer Henry Charles Beeching 224
To-day Thomas Carlyle 225
Be True Horatio Bonar 225
My Native Land Sir Walter Scott 226
Green Things Growing Dinah Maria Mulock 226
The Wonderful Country of Good-Boy Land Mary E. Blake 227
The Fir-Tree Hans Christian Andersen 229
From a Railway Carriage Robert Louis Stevenson 233
The Land of Nod Robert Louis Stevenson 234
Burns George William Curtis 124
Whole Duty of Children Robert Louis Stevenson 234
The Story of Joseph (Arranged from Genesis) 235
Auld Daddy Darkness James Ferguson 240
The Owl and the Pussy-Cat Edward Lear 241
The Angel's Whisper Samuel Lover 242
Going into Breeches Charles and Mary Lamb 243
The Lost Doll Charles Kingsley 244
Baby Corn (Unknown) 245
Who Stole the Bird's Nest? Lydia Maria Child 246
Po' Little Lamb Paul Laurence Dunbar 248
Little Brown Baby Paul Laurence Dunbar 250
An Incident of the French Camp Robert Browning 251
Lullaby of an Infant Chief Sir Walter Scott 252
Old Ironsides Oliver Wendell Holmes 253
Concord Hymn Ralph Waldo Emerson 254
His College Examination
(from "Up from Slavery") Booker T. Washington 255
A Child's Grace Robert Burns 260
A Howdy Song Joel Chandler Harris 261
Duty Ralph Waldo Emerson 261
Bud's Fairy Tale James Whitcomb Riley 262
The Boy that was Scaret o' Dyin' Annie Trumbull Slosson 268
What Does Little Birdie Say? Lord Tennyson 270
Laetus Sorte Mea
(from "The Story of a Short Life") Juliana H. Ewing 271
The Victor of Marengo 275
Good Morning Robert Browning 279
Miranda and Her Friend Kroof
(from "The Heart of the Ancient Wood") Charles G. D. Roberts 277
Little Nell Charles Dickens 282
Parsifal the Pure (from "Stories from Wagner") 285
=NO. 4=
Editorials 289-292
Charles Sumner Carl Schurz 293
How the Elephant Got His Trunk Rudyard Kipling 295
The Owl Lord Tennyson 299
T'nowhead's Bell J. M. Barrie 300
John Storm's Resolution Hall Cain 308
The Flood of the Floss George Eliot 314
The Real Muck Rake Man Henry van Dyke 319
The Hunt Mercy E. Baker 322
Francois Villon, About to Die John D. Swain 323
Lady Moon Lord Haughton 326
A Good Dinner Mary Stuart Cutting 326
My Rival Rudyard Kipling 328
Imph-m James Nicholson 328
Looking Forward Robert Louis Stevenson 329
Mrs. Atwood's Raiment Mary Stuart Cutting 330
Hymn of a Child Charles Wesley 341
The Day of Precious Penalties Marion Hill 342
Cradle Hymn Martin Luther 349
A Kentucky Cinderella F. Hopkinson Smith 350
At Lincoln's Tomb Robertus Love 355
Mammy's Pickanin' Lucy Dean Jenkins 357
The Old Doll Edith M. Thomas 359
Santa Claus Unknown 360
Little Christel Wm. B. Rands 361
Seven Times One Jean Ingelow 363
Daffy-Down-Dilly Anna B. Warner 364
The Ant and the Cricket Unknown 366
Cradle Hymn Isaac Watts 367
The Usual Way Anonymous 368
The Lark and the Rook Anonymous 369
The Gondola Race F. Hopkinson Smith 371
Lincoln Jonathan P. Dolliver 374
Spacially Jim Bessie Margon 376
An Opera George Ade 378
A Little Knight-Errant Margaret A. Richard 382
Jane Jones Ben King 383
=NO. 5=
Editorials 1-5
On Time John Milton 5
The Knight in the Wood E. Leicester Warren 6
A Little Feminine Casabianca Geo. Madden Martin 7
What He Got Out of It S. E. Kiser 11
The Play's the Thing Geo. Madden Martin 12
The Dancing School and Dicky Josephine Dodge Daskam 18
A Model Story in the Kindergarten Josephine Dodge Daskam 24
Fishin'? Anonymous 26
Ardelia in Arcady Josephine Dodge Daskam 27
Meriel Margaret Houston 34
The Old Man and "Shep" John G. Scorer 35
Who Knows Louise Chandler Moulton 36
The Negro Booker T. Washington 37
The Guillotine Victor Hugo 40
Robespierre's Last Speech Maximilian M. I. Robespierre 42
Secession Alex. H. Stephens 44
Birds Richard Henry Stoddard 47
The Death of Hypatia Charles Kingsley 48
Death Stands Above Me. Walter Savage Landor 54
The Tournament Sir Walter Scott 55
A Plea for the Old Year Louise Chandler Moulton 59
Fagin's Last Day Charles Dickens 60
A Caution to Poets. Matthew Arnold 64
Apollo Belvedere Ruth McEnery Stuart 65
An Invalid in Lodgings J. M. Barrie 71
The Stirrup-Cup Sidney Lanier 74
Das Krist Kindel. James Whitcomb Riley 75
Hiram Foster's Thanksgiving Turkey S. E. Kiser 77
The Winning of Lorna Doone R. D. Blackmore 79
The Sky Richard Henry Stoddard 96
* * * * *
Published by PEARSON BROTHERS
29 S. Seventh St., Philadelphia
Transcriber's Note
Variant forms of words in the original text, sometimes within the
same selection, have been retained in this ebook. Ellipses have been
standardized. Omissions in the Table of Contents match those of the
original document.
The following typographical corrections have been made in this ebook:
Page 17: Changed , to .
(kind of mourning.)
Page 18: Changed You're to You've
(You've got to go.)
Page 23: Added missing quotes; changed single to double
('I don't know, I don't know!'")
Page 27: Changed helpessly to helplessly
(said the young lady, helplessly)
Page 40: Changed constanly to constantly
(constantly in mind)
Page 40: Removed duplicate word 'these'
(these twenty-five years)
Page 41: Changed scafforld to scaffold
(the scaffold against the scaffold)
Page 47: Changed shown to shone
(the sun of heaven ever shone)
Page 53: Removed stray period
(She had disappeared, and)
Page 66: Changed constanly to constantly
(met constantly)
Page 71: Removed duplicate quotes
(I feared," she said.)
Page 72: Changed is to it
(but it is satisfaction)
Page 82: Changed single-quote to double
(go to sleep.")
Page 87: Changed by to my
(hand upon my arm)
Page 90: Changed Doone's to Doones
(murdered by the Doones)
Page 93: Changed though to thought
(I thought he would)
Table of Contents: Added missing parenthesis
(from "The Heart of the Ancient Wood")
Table of Contents: Added missing question mark to match title in text
(Fishin'?)
Table of Contents: Changed Kris to Krist to match title in text
(Das Krist Kindel.)
Table of Contents: Added missing word 'On' to match title in text
(On Time)
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