SCRIBNERS MAGAZINE. JIJLY, 1892. AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. By Joseph Kirkland. CHICAGOS plague-spots are rather red than black; blotches marking excess rather than insufficiency. Vice and crime are more characteristic of a new, young, busy, careless, prosper- ous city than is any compulsory, inevit- able misery. An English philanthropist who lately visited Hull House (Rev. Mr. Barnett, Warden of Toynbee Hall) re- marked, in taking his leave, that the prevalent dirt and flagrant vice in Chi- cago exceeded anything in London ; but that he had seen scarce any evidence of actual want. The West is the paradise of the poor. And the purgatory of the rest of us, adds some fine lady who agonizes over the servant problem. Well, even if this were true (which it is not), it would be better than the reverse. The paradise of the rich, based on the purgatory of the poor, has endured long enoughin the older lands. How the other half lives, in Chi- cago, is pretty much as it chooses.~~ Americans born, and the better nat- ures among the foreign born (supposing them to have physical strength), can se- lect their own kind of happiness. If they choose the joy which springs from sobriety, they can have it in plenty. If they prefer the delight of drink, that also is abundant. A solid devotion to work and saving gives a house and lot, a comfortable and well-taught family, and a good chance for children and grandchildren, who will take rank among the best, employing laborers of their own, and perhaps, alas! looking back Familiar Scene in an Underground Lodging. with mortification on their laboring an- cestors. An equally solid devotion to drink gives vice, crime, want, and (what we shonld call) misery; but this is a free country. The latter class, like the former, are exercising their inalienable right of self-government. They abso- copyright, 1892, by charles Scribners Sons. All rights reserved. Vot. XII. No. 1. 4 AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. lutely do not want our cleanliness, our savings-accounts, our good clothes, books, schools, churches, society, prog- ress, and all that, unless they can have them without paying the pricetemper- ance ; and they cannot so have them. Half of the other half belong strictly to the first-named class, a tenth to the last-named, and the rest pursue a mid- dle course. Some rise from the middle to the upper; the others live along, hav- ing ups and downs and furnishing the recruits to keep up the numbers of the lower, the submerged tenth which, happily, has not the faculty of maintain- ing itself by direct reproduction. The city has no East End, White- chapel, or Mulberry Street region; no locality given over to great hives of helplessness, since there is no quarter which was built up for fine residences or business blocks and afterward de- serted and turned over to baser uses. The most ancient house in town (but one) is not fifty years old, and the aver- age scarcely twenty. Therefore the no trace in the new, spacious mart on the edge of the Grand Prairie. Rooms are sublet to individuals and families, yet it is not in tall, huge rookeries built for the purpose, but in smaller, lower structures, outside the limits of the Great Fire, which destroyed the whole middle district----cleared it of weeds to make way for a sturdier and healthier growth. If ever the time comes when the sky-scraping structures of to-day are deserted by the uses for which they are now occupied because they are in the geographical and busi- ness centre of the city, then there may be in Chicago gigantic human hives of wretchedness such as exist in London and New York. But as Chicago can spread north, south, and west, it is dif- ficult to imagine a state of things when the present business district sball not be what it is. The lay of the land is against lo- cal congestion. The river, with its main stem running east and west and its sprawling branches running north and tenement-house evil, as it is known in south, trisects the whole plain into New York and London, shows almost North Side, South Side, and West Side. A Chicago Underground Lodging. AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. These in turn are dissected into small- er patches by the railways, which come to the very centre of population, and radiate thence in all directions except due east, where the lake maintains a glorious ventilation, moral and mate- rial. There is no Sailors Quarter, no place where Jack ashore hastens to spend in a week the savings of a year; gets drunk as soon as possible, and stays drunk as long as possible, to balance his weeks or months of enforced abstinence. The sailors here have only a week or less afloat at one stretch, and they spend, every winter, several months on shore, when they go mining or lumbering or pursuing whatever calling suits their fancy. Many of them are family men good, sturdy fellows, not distinguish- able from the average of intelligent tradesmen. For depth of shadow in Chicago low life one must look to the foreign ele- naents,* the persons who are not only of * Of Chinamen there are about two thousand in chicago, living, as a general rule, in one quarter of the citySouth Clark Street, adjoining the line occupied by the Lake fihore and eastern Illinois Railways, running eastward alien birth but of unrelated bloodthe Mongolian, the African, the Sclav, the semitropic Latin. Among them may be found a certain degree of isolation, and therefore of clannish crowding; also of contented squalor, jealous of inspec- tion and interference. It is in the quar- and southward. and the Rock Island, running westward. Of Italians Chicago has many thousands, part of whom live in the South Clark Street neighborhood, and a larger number only a few squares away, on the West Side, across the south branch of the river. Besides the light common labor of street-cleaning, scavengering, etc., they control, practically, all the great fruit-business of the city, and some of them are getting rich at it. Yet the homes of the majority are among the most lowly and squalid in the city. Educated Italians of the upper classes are handsomely housed in some of the fashionable streets. The Poles and Bohemians inhabit a southwestern quarter, where their impossible names occupy the sign-boards and their unbeantiful faces strike the eye and haunt the memory. They are hard workers and not extravagant, and though crowded they are not congested, though poor they are not in want. The colored pebple have done and are doing remarkably well, considering the disadvantages and discouragements under which they live. They are not largely the supporters of the grog-shops. Their be- setting sin is gambling. They are industrious rather than hard-working, docile rather than enterprising, and economical rather than acquisitive. There are impedi- ments to any accumulation such as their white neighbors engage in. For instance, suppose one of them to invest his savings in a Building Society, he would find, when his lot was ready for him, that he would be unwelcome to his neighbors of a lighter skin. Even as a renter he is only acceptable in regions devoted to his race. As one of them said to me~ obody thinks a colored man fit for anything above being a porter. Still, as I said, there is a very perceptible advance in the race; and it shows but little of poverty or dependence, and still less of crime. 5 Sunday Afternoon in the Italian Quarter. 6 AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. ters inhabited by these that there are down many steps; hence the name of to be found the worst parts of Chicago, the locality, The Dive. I once saw the most unsavory spots in their moral men carrying into one of the darkened and material aspects. entrances here an immense bunch of V green bananas, which hung down between them like the grapes of Esheol in the old primer. One can only fancy the atmosphere in which this wonderful fruit would hang to ripen, and hope that the ripening pro- cess is one of exhalation, not of inhalation, during the week or more which must elapse before it appears, yellow and mellow, to be sold from the way si d e fruit-stand, or be dragged slowly about the streets in the wagons attend- ed by the dark-skinned ped- lers as they troll forth, in the sonorous Italian tones, Banano-o! Fi, Ri, Ba- nano-o-o-o ! A bad state of things exists under the shadow of this via- duct, and under the inclined planes by which the traffic of each street it crosses is raised to its level. This is easy to believe, but it is hard to im- agine just how filthy, how squalid, how noisome, how abhorrent it all is. Walking along between inhabited houses and the brick abut- ments of the raised way is like walking between the walls of a sewerlike it to every sensesight, smell, hearing, and feeling. Twelfth Street is encumbered by a The adjacent buildings are mostly of long viaduct, reaching from Wabash woodsmall, low, rotten, and crowded. Avenue, westward, across the south In no case have I found one family oc- branch of the river, ending on the west cupying more than two roomsoften side very near the starting-point of the only one. Here and there would b& Great Fire of 1871. The viaduct nearly seen an attempt at cleanliness of floor fills the street, and from it one looks and bedclothing, but nowhere even a into the second stories of the taller pretence of sweeping of halls and stair- houses, and over the roofs of the short- ways, or of shovelling out of gutters er. One has there the advantages for and other foul conduits. What squalor, observation possessed by the fabled filth, crowding! The constant feeling of devil on two sticks. This is the hab- the visitor is, how dreadfully wretched itation of the Italian proletariat, these peopleought to be. To get to the main floors of these Ought to be, but are not. They are squalid habitations one must climb chiefly the lower class of Italians, born AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. 7 and bred, probably, to the knowledge of actual hunger, which here they must rarely feel. I went among them re- cently; there were scarcely any men visible ; the swarms were chiefly of wom- en and children. The men were away, largely, no doubt, attending to the fruit business and scavenger work which have been mentioned. The women were universally caring for their innu- merable children, and these latter, es- pecially the boys, played, shouted, ca- reered about the halls and stairways, yards and roofs, in uncontrolled freedom and gayety. Two or three of them had found a great turnip, or some such vege- table, and split it in pieces, which they displayed in a row on a board beside a gutter; no pretence of having any customersit was merely the exhibition of an in- herited instinct for keeping an Italian fruit-stand! In the corner of a squalid hallway, just outside of the ma- ternal door (there not being an inch of spare room within) a bright - eyed little girl had ar- ranged a quite respectable im- itation of a floor-bed (both cov- erlet and stuffing being rags), and on it lay a dirty, dilapidated, flaxen - haired doll. The girls instinct, too, was showing itself. Within the room the mother, with head bound up, as is the universal custom of her kind, was attending to some duties; a child of two or three years sat staring at the intruder, and on the floor stood a wash-tub over which was bending (and really working) a mite of a girl not more than six years old. Her little arms could scarcely reach the grimy liquid in the bottom of the tub, but she did the best she could, and up and down the tin wash - board sounded her tiny knuckles, handling some dingy, dripping stuff or other, she scarce- ly pausing to look up and notice who had opened the door. Here were a few men, more women, and most children; but no young un- married women. One wonders where are the grown girls. They are not in service in private families; such a thing is unknown here; and they are not adapted to the business of shop-girls. It is to be hoped that they are engaged in the innumerable handicrafts that pre- vail; paper-box and paper-bag mak- ers, tobacco-handlers, book-folders and stitchers, etc. The Hull House ladies say that they marry early in their teens, and that many of them do bits of plain sew- ingthe mere finishing of trouser-legs, etc.at wonderfully low rates, and in wonderfully large quantities, often in the so - called sweat - shopss of the tailoring trade. The clothing of all has been (apparently) bought at Chicago second-hand clothing stores; or, if im- The Dive ported from Italy, has a common and familiar aspect, which anew illustrates the levelling and averaging hand of mod- ern commerce and intercourse, whence it comes that all mankind is growing to look alikeeach individual to be a composite photograph~~ of all the rest. 8 AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. Every person, of whatever sex or age, is clothed sufficiently for decency and for warmth; and seems to be provided with all food necessary to sustain life, though perhaps not the rudest health. Emerging on a second-story balcony at the back of one of these Italian houses one comes upon a long vista of house rears and tumble - down back - sheds, squalid beyond conception. Neighbor- ing windows are filled with faces peer- ing out with interest and amusement at the stranger. Here and there are bits of rope stretched from one nail to an- otherfrom house to shed, from fence to banister, from window-sill to door- postcarrying forlorn arrays of washed clothing. Each is the effort of some lowly woman to preserve a little clean- liness in the garments of herself and her household. At least a forlorn hope is keeping up the battle against vileness. On a hot summer night every roof and every balcony in sight is covered with sleeping men, women, and children, each with only a single blanket or cov- erlet for all purposes of protection and decency. All winter the cook-stove of each family supplies warmth to the lit- tle household. (The cheapest coal is al- ways to be had at $3 a ton or less.) The Bad Lands~~ is a quarter more repellent because more pretentious than The Dive, but, being the abode of vice and crime rather than of poverty, it can be properly omitted here. Women of the town are not molested so long as they stay within doors, except on oc- casion of the frequent rows, fights, rob- beries, and murders. The men about are, if possible, more repulsive than the women. Some have showy clothes, more are bums, wrecks of humanity; slouch- ing, dirty, sneaking, hangdog tramps. They do not want work, could not get it if they wanted it, and could not do it if they got it. All they want is a dime a day. With that they can get a great big schooner of beer and a chance at the free-lunch counter. They sleep on the floor till the place closes up, and then crawl into some doorway or hallway, or go to the police station for a bunk. One recognizes Chinatown by the cu- rious signs over the shops. The Chi nese are industrious and economical and peaceablenever molest anybody who lets them alone. Opium they take just as our people take whiskey, and it does not seem to hurt them any more. But when the police find them taking in whites as well as Chinamen, they run them in. It is death, and worse than death, to the others, especially to women. In a typical Chinese shop all is scrupulously neat and clean. It seems as if, by some magic, the smoky, dusty atmosphere of Chicago had been excluded from this unique interior, which looks like the inside of a bric4t- brac cabinet, with bright colors, tinsel and shining metals. On the walls are colored photographs, showing the pro- prietors beautifully dressed in dove- colored garments. In a kind of shrine stands a Joss table or altar, with what is probably a Confucian text hanging over it, and lying on it some opium pipes. In a room behind the shop a fan-tan game is going on upon a straw-matted table, around which gather interested Celestials three deep. In the shop is a freshly opened importation, barrels and boxes of Chinese delicacies, pickled fish of various kinds, with the pungent odor which belongs to that kind of food the world round and the seas over. The men are clothed in heavy, warm cloth, cut in Chinese fash- iongreat, broad cloaks, loose trousers, felt-soled shoes, etc.but in American felt hats. At 406 Clark Street, in the very midst of all that is alien to our better nature, rises the Clark Street Mission. Here are daily gathered, in a free kindergar- ten, some scores of the little unfortu- nates whom a cruel fate has planted in this cesspooL It is a touching sight; they are so innocent as yet, mere buds springing up in the track of a lava- stream. There is a cr& he here as well as kindergarten, and tiny creatures, well fed and cared for, swing in ham- mocks, or sit, stand, walk, or creep all about in charge of kind devoted young women. Curiously enough, many of the little ones are born of Arabian mothers. There are some hundreds of Arabs housed near by. The attendant thinks they are Christian converts, in charge w 10 of church folk who were formerly nus- sionaries in Arabia. The women are occupied in peddling small wares and trinkets, which they carry about in packs and baskets.* In the same hail are evening and Sunday religious meet- ings; and not long ago there was a series of midnight prayer-meetings held here, with how much success I do not know. The whole enterprise is in charge (and at the charge) of the great Womans Christian Temperance Union. This is an institution of wonderful strength and beauty; a giantess, throned in in- telligence and honor; stretching her strong hands toward the weak, sinking thousands of the submerged tenth, and all who are on the edge of the sub- mergence. The W. C. T. U. num- bers 200,000 members in all, of whom 16,000 are in Blinois, and their activity is tireless, their ability wonderful. It is one of the phenomena marking the elevation of the sex under the sunshine of Western freedom and prosperity. The building, planned, erected, and paid for by this body, is just completed, and is the most perfect and (as it should be) the most sightly of all Chicagos new sky-scrapers. It is named Temper- ance Temple; its cost is $1,100,000. Most of its spare room is already en- gaged, and it will earn rentals amount- ing to $200,000 a year. * A year ago I met a party of Arabians on the San Juan River, in Nicaragua, and they too were peddling trinkets carried in packs and baskets. AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. The Pacific Garden Mission has a large hall, opening directly on Yan Bu- ren Street, within five hundred feet of the Grand Pacific Hotel, yet within a scarcely greater distance of some of the worst of the bad districts of the city. The Dive is only half a mile south of it, and The Levee, The Bad Lands, Chinatown, etc., are still nearer. The single big room is vast and dingythe latter characteristic in- separable from every apartment in Chi- cago which is not the object of con- stant, laborious cleaning and renovation. The walls are covered with Scripture texts in large letters, Blessed are ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of God, etc. Welcome, God is love, and other cheering mottoes are em- bossed in Christmas greens over the platform. A little collection of hymns is upon each seat, and notices of the hours of services are suspended in vari- ous places, among the rest some an- nouncing the Salvation Army meetings. No effort at ornament for ornaments sake appears anywhere; nor any out- ward gayety to suggest inward joy and peace. Colonel Clark is the moving and controlling spirit of the Mission, as well as its chief money supporter. The Hull House Cr~cte or Day Nursery. meetings on Sunday are often full to the doors ; a few front seats being filled by the workers and particular friends, and the rest by the chance- comers, gathered from adjacent slums to hear the music and look on at the 10 AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. of church folk who were formerly mis- sionaries in Arabia. The women are occupied in peddling small wares and trinkets, which they carry about in packs and baskets.* In the same hall are evening and Sunday religious meet- ings; and not long ago there was a series of midnight prayer-meetings held here, with how much success I do not know. The whole enterprise is in charge (and at the charge) of the great Womans Christian Temperance Union. This is an institution of wonderful strength and beauty; a giantess, throned in in- telligence and honor; stretching her strong hands toward the weak, sinking thousands of the submerged tenth, and all who are on the edge of the sub- mergence. The W. C. T. U. num- bers 200,000 members in all, of whom 16,000 are in minois, and their activity is tireless, their ability wonderfuL It is one of the phenomena marking the elevation of the sex under the sunshine of Western freedom and prosperity. The building, planned, erected, and paid for by this body, is just completed, and is the most perfect and (as it should be) the most sightly of all Chicagos new sky-scrapers. It is named Temper- ance Temple; its cost is $1,100,000. The Pacific Garden Mission has a large hail, opening directly on Van Bu- ren Street, within five hundred feet of the Grand Pacific Hotel, yet within a scarcely greater distance of some of the worst of the bad districts of the city. The Dive is only half a mile south of it, and The Levee, The Bad Lands, Chinatown, etc., are still nearer. The single big room is vast and dingythe latter characteristic in- separable from every apartment in Chi- cago which is not the object of con- stant, laborious cleaning and renovation. The walls are covered with Scripture texts in large letters, Blessed are ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of God, etc. Welcome, God is love, and other cheering mottoes are em- bossed in Christmas greens over the platform. A little collection of hymns is upon each seat, and notices of the hours of services are suspended in vari- ous places, among the rest some an- nouncing the Salvation Army meetings. No effort at ornament for ornaments sake appears anywhere; nor any out- ward gayety to suggest inward joy and peace. Colonel Clark is the moving and controlling spirit of the Mission, as well as its chief money supporter. The w Most of its spare room is already en- meetings on Sunday are often full to gaged, and it will earn rentals amount- the doors; a few front seats being ing to $200,000 a year. filled by the workers and particular friends, and the rest by the chance- * A year ago I met a party of Arabians on the 5an com ers, gathered adjacent Juan River, in Nicaragua, and they too were peddling from slums trinkets carried in packs and baskets. to hear the music and look on at the Hall Hause Criche er Day Nursery. AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. 11 devotional exercises. It is one of the simply religious efforts to elevate the debased and reform the bad, by offer- ing to them Christ and him crucified; by the direct interposition of heaven it mnst sneceed, but withont snch miracle it cannot. The news of salvation no longer surprises and charms the world, for the world has ceased to fear the opposite. One is reminded of the plaint made two hundred years ago by the French missionaries sent to the savages of this very region (their skin was red in those days) when they said, in effect: Surely we are in nowise to be compared with the Holy Apostles; yet the world must have changed since they went forth among the heathen who heard them gladly, and, rejoicing to receive the glorious news of salvation, flocked forward, one and all, demand- ing baptism. Here we sail the floods and scale the mountains in pursnit of one poor savage, if haply we may pre Temperance Temple. Bnilt by the Womans Christian Temperance Union. 12 AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. vail to save him from the wrath to come, and in most cases his salvation is changed to backsliding as soon as our backs are turned. To the same general effect is the conclusion reached by the religious workers of to-day, who say these beings are in nowise fit subjects for a merely religious minis- try. I once told a young musician (a Scan- dinavian) at the Pacific Garden Mis- sion that I was then in search of the very poor and miserable, the helpless- ly wretched, and asked him where they were to be found. He asked where I had been, and on telling him that I came fresh from The Dive, The Bad Lands, Biler Avenue, Niggertown, Chinatown, etc., he asked if these were not poor enough. I said they were rather vicious, drunken, and de- praved than poor; that I wanted to find the poverty that springs from mis- fortune rather than that from drink. To this he impulsively gave the preg- nant answer: There is none. You might find one or two others in five hundred, but it is drink in the case of all the rest. And so it goes. Such is the evidence of the experts, the philanthropists, the missionaries, and the senses themselves. There are sixty saloons in two blocks of this dreadful Dismal Swamp; each sa- loon pays $500 a year of city license alone; pays its United States Govern- ment license for selling spirits, beer, and tobacco; pays for all its stock in trade, its rent, its wages, and expensesthrives like a Canada thistle on the barren soil of its environment. Five hundred dol- lars for license, $500 for rent, $1,000 for wages and expenses, and $1,500 for stock in trade makes $3,500. The sums paid by these poor must reach $4,000 a year, on the average, to each saloon; and sixty saloons gives $240,000 a year, all in one street, within a distance of two Russian Jews at Shelter House. 9 AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. 13 squares. Verily the savings of the rich are as nothing compared with the wast- ings of the poor. Beer is the alleviation and perpetuation of poverty. I also asked the young musician about the condition of his fellow-Scan- dinavians, where their poor could best be studied. He replied that there were none. Individual helplessness was cared for by individual charities and the churches. That is what might be expected. The Scandinavian immigra- tion has been, on the whole, the finest addition to the Northwest. They are largely agriculturists, are temperate, industrious, strong, frugal, and hardy. Not seldom do great colonies of them go on cheap excursions back to visit the Fa- therland. They pass through Chicago men, women, and childrenwith bands playing and flags flying; they cross the sea and spend some time at the old home, spreading the news of Western freedom and plenty, and then return with many recruits and with fresh relish for the Greater Scandinavia they are building among us. Those who do re- main in the cities are helpers worth having. The girls make the best house- servantsstrong, intelligent, respectful, and self-respecting; and the men, though not blameless in the matter of drink, yet are not among the willing slaves to it. On the whole, they see the alterna- tive presented to themthe two kinds of happiness already spoken ofand make what seems to us the wisest choice between them. The servants, as cooks and second girls, earn from three to five or six dollars a week besides their board and lodging, and the demand for such as have anything like a fair Another Group at Shelter House. 14 AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. knowledge of their business is always ahead of the supply. They dress well, save money, and spend immense sums in helping their friends here and in the Fatherland. In the North Division, near the great gas-works, exists a large colony which of old earned the name of Lit- tle, Hell and which presents features of deep shadow with gleams of growing lighta dark cloud with a silver lining. Many of the men are gas-work laborers, doing hard duty, earning large wages, and drinking deep draughts. They are of three racesIrish, German, and Scan- dinavianthe first-named the most able and the most turbulent. The wages earned since the works were started, if they had been wisely used, would have bought the entire plant; would have vested every dollar of the vast and prof- itable stock in the workers. The latter would now be the capitalists. But that is a mere truism. The wage-earners of the whole country would be the capital- ists if it were not that they have pre- ferred to take their joy drop by drop. The bright lining of the dark cloud hovering about the gas-works is the Unity Church Industrial School and Boys Club near by, and the Saint Jamess Church and Central Church (Swings) Missions, not far away. The former (which I happen to know most about) was started in 1876 by the wom- en of Robert Collyers church, in an effort to do something for the poorest and most neglected children, the diffi- culty being that this class was soon supplanted by a better class, less in need of help people more anxious for what they could get than what they could learn. The others, children of the drunken and vicious, were always hardest to reach and to keep hold of. From this grain of mustard-seed has grown a great tree. The excellent and benevolent Eli Bates bequeathed to the enterprise $20,000, which was used for the construction of a brick building having all the appliances for an indus- trial school, and there the worthy Unity Church people spend time and money to good purpose. There are classes in various branches, and a large and well- kept cr~che. A noticeable feature of this lay mission is the Boys Club, where, for several months every year, meetings have been held on several evenings each week to give the youth of the neigh- borhood rational and wholesome fun with some incidental instruction. The boys range from eight to sixteen years old, and were at the start a hard lot. Yet they always had some traits of good feeling. The young women teachers always found them easier to manage than did the men. And even when dis- cipline had to be maintained by force, the majority was sure to be on the side of law and order. As far as possible, the boys are made to manage their own games and exercises, showing some- times a good deal of ability. They number, on ordinary evenings, about sixty, the picnic aggregate reaching to a hundred and fifty. The older boys are workers during the daytime; the younger, attendants on public and pa- rochial schools. There is but little want among the families. Their houses are small and not crowded together; but the house- holds occupy generally only two or three rooms each. Whether influenced by the various missions near by, by the paving and im- provement of streets, or by other causes, or partly by the one and partly by the others, the place is losing its old char- acter, and even its ugly sobriquet is almost forgotten. In Chicago the fashion and the larger part (though not by any means all) of the wealth of the city are on the South Side , and North Side,~~ where also the deepest poverty and deg- radation are to be found. On the great West Side are the industrious and prosperous workers, with their tens of thousands of labor- bought homes. It may be a new idea to the denizens of older cities that laborers should, cans and do own their dwelling-places, both land and building. Far more than half the homes in Chicago are so owned and occupied. The chief part of real-estate speculation is the buying of suburban acres and subdividing and selling them in lots to thrifty workmen. Purchase for the sake of putting up houses to AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. 15 rent as dwellings (except in the case of flats) is now extremely rare. The chief agent in this homestead movement is to be found in the numerous building so- cieties, * wherein the mechanic deposits his savings as they accrue, and then when he wishes to build his home he draws from the society whatever he may have laid up, and borrows from it what he may need in addition, paying a pre- mium in addition to the usual interest. (This premium and interest inure to the benefit of the other depositors.) Mem- bership in a building society, and the hope of a bit of ground all his own, are wonderful incentives to temperance in the man and economy in the wife. And when the lot is selected, how he clings to it! Beer and whiskey are forgotten. Even schooling and some other good and proper cares are apt to be post- vate fireside, and the lamp in the win-. dow, he is in peril of his life. On the West Side are also, especially in winter, the unemployed; some of whom could not find work if they would, some would not if they could, and some, when they can and do work, make the omnipresent saloon their savings-bank; a bank which takes in good money but pays out only false tokens. I recently accompanied one of the Volunteer County Visitorss on her walk in search of the people who should be helped by charity, public or private. We walked through a half - mile of street lined with the crowded habita- tions of the poor. At the farther end of it are visible the moving trains of the Fort Wayne Railway, and above and be- yond these the masts and funnels of poned. A city of such homes is safe shipping. Being just outside the old from anarchy. As for any wielder of burnt district, its houses are of wood, torch and dynamite, as soon as he steps ancient, squalid, dilapidated. There is forth into the light of the humble pri- not more than about one saloon to every * See the article on Building and Loan Associations, street corner, therefore this is far from in SCRIBNERS MAGAZINE for June, 1889. an infested region. It is chiefly oc A Waif at the Mission Dormitory. 16 AMONG THE P00k OF CHICAGO. cupied by Italians, who are not, as yet, the sots and terrors of the social sys- tem, and do not seem likely ever to be- come so. Groups of them are idling about, well enough dressed, but low- browed and ill-favored, looking with apparent surliness on visitors come to spy out the nakedness of the land. Within the houses we find the families crowded into two small rooms each, or thereabouts; and in those two rooms are all the operations of existence to be carried on in each case. Sleeping, eat- ing, cooking, washing, ironing, sickness, child - bearing, nursing, living, dying, and buryingthese considerations force themselves on the mind and suggest dismal pictures as one fancies a life so spent. Yet as to mere room, warmth, shelter, dryness, and convenience, the inhabi- tants are better accommodated than is the campaigning soldier in his tent, having no furniture, clothing for night or day, or other appliances for comfort, except those he can carry with him from camp to camp in addition to his arms and accoutrements. But women and children are not soldiers. Camp miser- ies would kill them ; one who has suf- fered such privation can scarcely feel the proper degree of pity for these crea- tureswarm, dry, fat, clothed, safe, at leisure and at liberty. The poorest and most wretched house- hold we found that day was that of an old soldier, a gray-haired man of education and (at some time) of intelligence, once a lieutenant in a volunteer regiment. He was wounded at the battle of Fair Oaks. There he lies, grimy and ver- min-infested, in a filthy bed, with a young grandchild beside him in like condition, and a drunken virago of a woman, ramping and scolding in the two rooms which constitute the family abode. She is quite the most repulsive being yet met with. A little inquiry develops the fact that this man was in the Soldiers Home at Milwaukee (and could return there to remain, if he wished), well fed, clothed, and cared for, The Bad Lands AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. 17 and that he left there because: You the choice before him, and the light see you cant stand it to be kept down shining on the parting of the ways, will all the time, and moved back and forth, takeis takingthe one those devoted and here and there, whether you like it young women are making so inviting to or not. And he moved his black paws his footsteps. back and forth, and here and there, on It is not charity that Hull House of- the dingy bedclothes, to indicate how fers, any more than it is precept. True, the Home deprived him of his freedom there are some cases which arise, out- his liberty to pass his time in the side the business of the House, where living death which his present condi- public or private beneficence is turned tion seems to the onlooker, toward deserving helplessness. But that is not strictly Hull House work. The latter consists in bestowing friend- ship and sympathy, the sisterly heart, hand, and voice, on all who are willing to come within its sweet and pleasant influence. With characteristic wisdom and good feeling the Board of the grand Chicago Public Library (free to all) has placed one of its sub-stations in the reading- room of Hull House; and in that large, handsome, well-lighted apartment ap- plications for books are taken, and the books are delivered and returned, all quite without expense of any kind to the reader. The building which contains the lib- rary and reading-room has been added to the Hull House structures by the liberality of Edward B. Butler. The same building contains a studio in which drawing - classes are held each even- ing, and an admirably fitted art-exhibit room in which some of the best pict- ures in Chicago are shown from time to time. The humanitarian side of the Hull House activity is maintained by the Nursery, the Kindergarten, the Diet Kitchen, the District Nursing, and the Industrial Classes. Its activities are multiform that they may meet the needs, not alone of the enterprising nor yet the poor, but of its neighborhood as a whole. That it has met such a need is shown by the fact that the weekly membership of its club and classes is nine hundred. Chicagos Hull House~~ is already widely known as the Toynbee Hall of the West, though the parallelism be- tween the two i~istitutions is far from absolute and complete. In the first place, Hull House was started and is carried on by women, with only the oc- casional and exceptional helpwelcome though it isof the other sex. Then, too, the system is as different as are the conditions in which the two institu- tions are placed. Its best service in stimulating the intellectual life of the neighborhood has been in the establish- ment of its college - extension classes, which have grown into what is practi- cally an evening college, with thirty courses weekly and a membership of one hundred and fifty to two hundred students of a high order. In a widely different sphere is its strictly philanthropic worth. Yet, even here, Hull House is not a mission, since no especial religion is inculcated and no particular social reform is announced as the object of its being. If people in the humbler classes of its visitors learn there to live good, clean, temperate lives, it is through the demonstration of the enduring beauty and gayety of such a life as contrasted with the lurid and fleeting joys of the other. Hull House parlors, class - rooms, gymnasium, lib- rary, etc., are the rivals of the swarming grog-shops. Nobody, not even the orna- ments of the college-extension classes, is more welcome than the poor fellow who has begun to feel that he can no longer struggle against poverty and drink, and nobody is less pointed at, preached at, or set upon than he. The choice is open to him, right hand or left hand as he sees fit, and it surely seems as if no sane human being could hesi- tate. At least the boy growing up with VOL. XII.2 The Cr~che, or Day-Nursery, is surely as bright, sunny, and pretty a room as any ever devoted to that angelic pur- pose. Two little, low tables, two dozen little, low chairs, each holding a pathetic little figure, dear to some mothers heart, and a young lady as busy (and some- times as puzzled) as a pullet with a 18 AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. brood of ducklingsthese are the dra- matis personw. It is luncheon time, and with much pains the babes have been brought to reasonable order, side by side, each restless pair of hands joined in a devotional attitude far from symbolic of the impatient being behind them. One small creature remains re- bellious, and stands against the wall in tearful protest. The guardian angel explains that the small creature misses its mother, whereupon a visitor lifts it in his arms, and all is peace. The Crl~che was only started last year, and has flourished greatly. The num- bers vary from twenty - five to thirty, being governed by a curious law the prevalence of house - cleaning! When many mothers can find jobs of scrub- bing (which, by the way, earns a dollar and a half a day), then many babies are the helpless beneficiaries of the good offices of Hull House. But the benefit is not a gift; Hull House gives out no alms; every child is paid for at five cents a day. The Sewing-Class is, if possible, a still more beautiful sight. Twenty or thirty little girls are gathered about low tables sewing away for dear life, and sitting among them are several young soci- ety women, guiding the immature hands and thoughts. It is proudly said that no social pleasures are allowed to stand in the way of this philanthropic duty. From an admirable pamphlet entitled Hull House: A Social Settlement, I condense the following sketch of labors and efforts: Monday Evenings: Social Club, thirty girls. Debating Club, thirty young men. (The two clubs join later in the evening.) Athletic Class. Drawing Class. Greek Art Class. Mathematics Class. English Composition Class. Tuesday Evening: Working Peoples Social Science Club. (Addresses and discussions led by judges, lawyers, and business men.) Gymnasium. Drawing Class. Cooking Class. American His- tory. Reading Party. Ca~sar. Latin Grammar. Political Economy. Mod- ern History. And so on through the week. The noticeable varieties of interest include (besides the branches already named) Singing, Needlework, Diet Kitchen, Bi- ology, Shakespeare, Lilies and Ferns, Victor Hugo, German Reception, Chem- istry, Electricity, Clay Modelling, Eng- lish for Italians, Womens Gymnastics, etc. This vast curriculum is only for the evenings; the mornings and after- noons and the Sundays have their own programmes; and it may well be imag- ined that no business establishment goes far beyond this beehive of benevo- lence in orderly bustle and activity. Hull House is fairly supplied with means. The use of the property it oc- cupies is freely and generously bestowed upon it by Miss Helen Culver, to whom the property was devised by the late Charles J. Hull, whose old family resi- dence it was. Then, too, the needs of the institution are wonderfully small compared with the ever-widening and deepening sphere of its influence. Miss Jane Addams and Miss Ellen Gates Starr are the young women whose hearts conceived it, whose minds planned it, and whose small hands started it and have managed it thus far. One of the young women had some private means of her own; and such is the sway of their gentle influence among those who know them that when they are told that money must come, lo! it appears. And, what is more, when they are forced to admit that their strength unfortunately not superabundant has reached its limit, other young helpers are at hand and the work never flags. There exist in Chicago other benevo- lent institutions whose very number and variety preclude description. The City Directory contains the addresses of 57 asylums and hospitals, 28 infirmaries and dispensaries, 41 missions, 60 tem- perance societies, lodges, etc., and thirty- seven columns of secret benevolent as- sociations, camps, lodges, circles, etc. The city is honeycombed with philan- thropic associations in all .magnitudes, shapes, and forms, from the ancient and honorable Relief and Aid (which won deathless fame after the Great Fire) down to the latest Working-Girls Luncheon Club, the Ursula, instituted by the graduates of an advanced school to provide and furnish, at cost, mid-day meals in the business districts for their U AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. 19 toiling sisters. (There are several such clubs, and more are forming.) Every- one of the hundreds of churches is a centre of charitable effort. It becomes a net-work so all-pervading that one wonders that any should slip through, after all, and perish of want, as occasion- ally happens, nevertheless. What is known as the Poor Jews Quarter (as contradistinguished from the splendid homes of their richer co-re- ligionists) lies near the western end of Twelfth Street Bridge, and to the south- ward of the West Side Italian quarters already spoken of. Certainly it is not the abode of ease, luxury, and elegance; its odors are not those of flowery meads, its architecture is not marked by either massiveness or ornamentation, its streets and alleys are not grassy (though they look as if they might be fertile under proper cultivation), and its denizens are more remarkable for number than for attractiveness. On the other hand, the region is still less suggestive of a Ghetto, according to any prevailing tradition of those abodes. Children, ranging from infancy to ado- lescence, and from invalidism to rude health, throng the sidewalks. Many of these children have never seen a tree or a blade of grass. In our summer country excursions, said a lady of Hull House, we have much pleasure in watching themthey kneel down some- times so as to study the grass and feel it with their hands. Yet the sidewalk seems to furnish a tolerable substitute for the grass-plat, and the passer-by has to edge close to street or fence to keep clear of the flying rope, turned by two girls, while a little string of others are awaiting their turn to jump, each one who trips taking the place of one of the turnersjust as is done by their richer fellow-mortals, better fed and better dressed, but perhaps not more joyous and unregretful. In the midst of this swarming colony __ risestall, large, handsome, and solid the Jewish Training School, under the management of a strong band of the solid Israelites of the city (representing, of course, solid millions of money) and the superintendency of Professor Ga- briel Bamberger. Fifty thousand dol lars a year is wisely and economically expended here, and eight hundred chil- dren and youths, of both sexes, and all races and religions, are taught and cared for. The classes in drawing and clay-modelling are especially notable. Not far away is the Shelter House of the Society in Aid of Russian Refu- gees. There the members of this un- fortunate class find surcease of their woes and persecutions in a blessed har- bor of temporary refuge, whence they are scattered to various employments and chances to earn an honest living, free from imperialism, officialism, priest- craft, and military service. They are a sturdy-looking set, and will not be long in learning that their greatest ill-treat- ment is turned to their greatest good luck when they arrive at the Shelter House, as they are doing at the rate of more than ten a day. They are sub- merged no longer. When the back streets of Chicago are undergoing their spring cleaning, the mass of mud collected for removal in this quarter is incredible. The piles along the street-side are as high as they can be made to stand erect, and as close together as they can be. This is the accumulation of the months of December to March inclusive the months when snow, frost, and short days impede the work so that a dollar laid out does perhaps not forty cents worth of good. Then, too, the cold renders the vile deposit less hurtful to health, and the moisture and the frost keep it from flying about in the form of dust. The main streets are cleaned even when there is snow on the ground.* One characteristic development of business-like philanthropy in Chicago is in the Liberty Bell and Friendship buildings for the accommodation of working-men. They are not germane to the subject of poverty, except to show its absence, prevention, or alleviation. The first-named was an experiment in the direction of furnishing to working-men good accommodations at rates almost * Even in well-swept London the streets are neglected in winter. In one street is the hody of a dead dog, and near by two dead cats, whichile as thongh they had slain each other; all three have been crnshed flat by the traffic which has gone over them, and they, like everything else. are frozen and harmless.Labor and Life of the People, vol. ii., p. 96, London, 1892. 20 AMONG THE POOL? OF CHICAGO. nominaL A man is there offered a bath, a shave, and the use of a laundry (both provided with hot and cold water and soap), and a clean bed in a clean and ventilated room, all for ten cents. The whole main floor is devoted to a waiting- room with chairs and tables. In this room one sees from fifty to one hundred men, old and young, taThing, smoking, reading newspapers, and the place is filled with the hum of conversation. In one corner is a group discussing work and wages; in another the younger fel- lows have made their newspapers into balls which they toss one to another. There is no drinking, no singing, and no boisterous mirth. They take their pleasure sadly, according to their wont, as Froissart remarks concerning their far-away ancestors. From the profits earned by the Lib- erty Bell the Friendship has been built. There things are more hand- somely done. Not only are there no beds in tiers, as at the other place; but each is entirely inclosed in a locked space, eight feet high, and protected by charged electric wires, so that the tenant and all his belongings are safe from in- trusion or theft. The same accommoda- tions (in more elegant form) are offered as in the former place, and the entire charge is fifteen cents. The originator of the pleasant and profitable scheme is now abroad, looking for further knowl- edge wherewith to provide further im- provements. At each place a good meal is served, in a restaurant attached, at an addi- tional charge of ten cents. The savings of the men are accepted and cared for by the concern, and they amount to a very considerable sum. The men are largely dock-workers, sailors waiting for the opening of the lakes, mechanics out of a job, workers at light trades and callings about town, etc. All are com- fortably clothed and quite free from any marks of want. This is a pleasant aspect of the labor situation; but it is to be remembered that here we have only the able-bodied single men, the class which is last to feel the griping hand of poverty. Wom- en and children, the difficult and dis- tressing element in the social problem, are in all this left out of the account. The dock-laborers among these men the largest class earn from twenty to twenty-five cents an hour. On the North Side (275 Indiana Street), is the Home for Self-supporting Wom- en, which, as its name implies, does a service for the other sex somewhat simi- lar to that offered to men at the Friend- ship. For obvious reasons the difficul- ties in dealing with the stronger sex are greatly magnified when the weaker is in question. Yet, great or small, those difficulties are braved, and, to a large extent, conquered. Better entertain- ment must be (and is) provided; larger charges must therefore be imposed, and that on individuals whose wages are smaller. Still the enterprise is nearly self-supporting, and when kindly fate shall inspire some rich and benevolent friend of woman to pay off a $10,000 mortgage on the realty of the Home, then its net income will overtake its outgo, and even in time exceed it, mak- ing its devoted ministers (all women) able to extend its influence in an ever- increasing ratio. Meantime the annual reports are written in an admirable style of good-humored naThet~ which shows that work and worry cannot daunt or sadden those whose hearts are in their business. It is a most worthy and successful effort at the best kind of help; but it still leaves untouched the problem of family helplessnessthe soft, elastic, unbreakable bond which binds the hands and feet of mothers. Near the centre of business are two institutions for the care of homeless newsboys, bootblacks, and other young street workers, the Waifs Mission and Training School and the News- boys Home. The former has a school, a dining-room and kitchen, a dormitory with fifty beds, a bath-room, a gym- nasium, a printing-office, etc., and its plan includes military drill (with a brass band formed among the boys them- selves), instruction in the printing busi- ness, and the finding of places for boys old enough to enter steady employment. Its patrons and managers include judges of court, business men and capitalists, and a board of charitable women. The number of boys accommodated is lim- ited to the number of beds. An institution somewhat analogous to 1 0 DRAWN BY OTTO H. BACHER. In a Sweat-shop. 22 AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. this is the Illinois School of Agricult- ure and Manual Training for Boys, placed on three hundred acres of farm- ing land at Glenwood, not far south of the city limits. Until this school was started (1887) there was absolutely no place to which a boy could be sent who was thrown upon the world by any of the lamentable casualties to which every community is subjectorphanage, de- sertion, forced separation from drunken or criminal parents. The courts of cer- tain counties make use of this as a ref- uge for such boys, and allow a certain small monthly stipend for each; but this is necessarily far short of the abso- lute requirements of proper subsistence, clothing, and education, and more money than the school has yet received could be well used in it. The boys are pro- vided with homes, chiefly with farmers, and the average outlay for each, up to the time when he is so provided for, is only about 60. The future life of the boy is kept in view and recorded; al- most always with results that justify the efforts. The Newsboys and Bootblacks Home is the oldest of the institutions of its class. It cares for some fifty or sixty boys, giving them decent sustenance and protection at lowest cost, and also providing for their amusement when circumstances permit. Some philan- thropic persons object to these refuges of the human waifs and strays on the ground that they encourage boys to run away from their families. To this there seem to be two possible answers first, that every lodge, circle, hospital, asylum, and refuge runs to some extent against the family relation, not even excepting the fashionable clubhouses next, that the boys in the missions have perhaps found a better home than they left; that the change for them is a step upward, not downward. As far as one can see, it is a change from the gutter to the mission. The sweat-shop is a place where, sep- arate from the tailor-shop or clothing- warehouse, a sweater (middleman) assembles journeymen tailors and nee(lle-women, to work under his super- vision. He takes a cheap room outside the dear and crowded business centre, and within the neighborhood where the work-people live. Thus is rent saved to the employer, and time and travel to Laundry and Bath at the Liberty Bell. w AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. 23 the employed. The men can and do work more hours than was possible un- der the centralized system, and their wives and children can help, especially when, as is often done, the garments are taken home to finish. (Even the very young can pull out basting- threads.) This finishing is what re- mains undone after the machine has done its work, and consists of felling the waist and leg-ends of trousers (paid at one and one-half cent a pair), and, in short, all the felling necessary on every garment of any kind. For this service, at the prices paid, they cannot earn more than from twenty-five to forty cents a day, and the work is largely done by Italian, Polish, and Bohemian women and girls. The entire number of persons em- ployed in these vocations may be stated at 5,000 men (of whom 800 are Jews), and from 20,000 to 23,000 women and children. The wages are reckoned by piece-work, and (outside the finish- ing ) run about as follows: Girls, hand-sewers, earn nothing for the first month, then as unskilled workers they get $1 to $1.50 a week, $3 a week, and (as skilled workers) $6 a week. The first-named class consti- tutes fifty per cent. of all, the second thirty per cent., and the last twenty per cent. In the general work men are only employed to do button-holing and pressing, and their earnings are as fol- lows: Pressers, $8 to $12 a week; underpressers, $4 to $7. Cloak op- erators earn $8 to $12 a week. Four- fifths of the sewing-machines are fur- nished by the sweaters (middlemen) also needles, thread, and wax. The sweat-shop day is ten hours; Liberty Bell. 24 AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. but many take work home to g~t in over- time; and occasionally the shops them- selves are kept open for extra work, from which the hardest and ablest workers sometimes make from $14 to $16 a week. On the other hand, the regular work - season for cloakmaking is but seven months, and for other branches nine months, in the year. The average weekly living expenses of a man and wife, with two children, as es- timated by a self-educated workman named Bisno, are as follows: Rent (three or four small rooms) $2; food, fuel, and light, $4; clothing, $2, and beer and spirits, $1. The first matter complained of is the wretchedness of the quarters. The pro- posed remedy for this is the establish- inent by clothiers of outlying workshops which shall be clean, light, and ventilat- edin other words, not sweat-shops. A city ordinance enacts that rooms pro- vided for workmen shall contain space equal to five hundred cubic feet of air for each person employed; but in the average sweat-shop only about a tenth of that quantity is to be found. In one such place there were fifteen men and women in one room, which con- tained also a pile of mattresses on which some of the men sleep at night. The closets were disgraceful. In an adjoin- ing room were piles of clothing, made and unmade, on the same table with the food of the famiiy. Two dirty little children were playing about the floor. The second complaint regards the public good. It is averred, with ap- parent reason, that clothing should not be exposed to contamination and possi- ble infection in rooms not set apart for working-rooms, especially in private houses, where members of the family, young and old, may quite possibly be ill of dangerously contagious fevers and other complaints. The danger of con- tagion from the hands of the workman himself is multiplied in proportion as the tenement is crowded where the gar- ments are taken for work. Another complaint, urged with much feeling, is that when the workers set up a Union shop of their own, where they did the very best work at prices as low as those charged at the sweat- shops, but (by saving the profits of a middleman) were able to give more to the workers, they were deliberately and confessedly frozen out by the with- holding of patronage by the clothing firms, and this after having been in prosperous and peaceable operation for two years. The sweaters could not force down wages as low as they wished, because the workers in the Union shops were doing so well. Therefore they got the employing firms to refuse work to the mens own establishment, and throw it all into the middlemans hands. A firm of employers for whom the association had worked two years were instrumental in this incredible cruelty. It is said by the workmen that they were driven to their action by othersin the business, for when the little co-operative concern applied for work, they were referred to an association of the employing firms, and were there ab- solutely refused. The sweating system has been in operation about twelve years, during which time some firms have failed, while others have increased their production tenfold. Meantime certain sweaters have grown rich; two having built from their gains tenement-houses for rent to the poor workers. The wholesale cloth- ing business of Chicago is about $20,- 000,000 a year. Mr. Bisno, the workman to whom I have alluded, has been led by his reading toward Socialism (very far from Anarch- ism), and he thinks that poverty and drink are parent and childpoverty the parent. A talk with him would be an en- lightenment to any person who had not already adequate knowledge of the mean- ing of the short phrase A good days work. He would get a new idea of the unusual ability, mental and manual, the unflagging speed, the unwearied appli- cation which go to the earning of a days wages of the higher grades. He thinks that he could not maintain such speed without some liquid stimulus, in which other equally good workers think he is mistaken. (At the same time he is ex- tremely moderate.) He says that beer is sold at five cents the measured pint (yielding two-and-a-half glasses), and that it is freely brought into the sweat- shops, wherein, in fact, the workers are entirely independent of personal control, w AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. 25 their work alone being subject to inspec- tion and criticism. The inspection is close and constant, and failure entails the doing over of the job. Spoiling (such as tearing while ripping spoiled seams) leads to deductions from pay. The lat- ter is very rare. Division of labor is good; scatter- ing of workers from great groups into smaller groups is good; employment of women in their own homes is good; pre- vention of theft is good, and cheapness of garments is good. Unwholesome at- mosphere, moral and material, is bad; insufficient wages is bad; possibility of infection is bad, and child - labor is (usually) bad. How shall the good be preserved and the bad cured or allevi- ated? At the head-quarters of the West Side police one is in the near neighborhood of the Anarchist Riot of 1886. In that building the police force was mustered and formed for its march out to the an- archist meeting-place, 500 feet distant; and there 67 of the police, killed and wounded, were laid when brought back a few minutes later. The messenger in attendance is one of the severely wound- ed, now too much shattered to do more than light tasks about the station. Con- versation with some of the men at this station has led me to a new appreciation of the magnitude of the issues then and there fought out, and the finality of the settlement arrived at. A lieutenant of police recently said to me: The whole thing is played out. They will never make another experi- ment. There is no interest in anarchy or socialism any more, and no meetings to speak of. They do get together, some of them, at Twelfth Street Turner Hall, but youd never know that they had ever planned a riot or loaded a bomb. No; they have no connection with hardship and poverty. They can always get their beer, and thats the main thing with them. These quiet and unassuming officers of law and order know that they did their duty, and think that their success was a foregone conclusion. They do not know that though other stronger~~ governments could have put down an- archy by force of arms, and hanged or VOL. XII.4 shot the insurgents by martial law, yet this is perhaps the only government on earth which could have met such a movement by the ordinary police power, and then have given the guilty a long, public trial before a jury of their peers, and have relied on a verdict of conviction, a judgment of death, and the deliberate execution of that judgment. Mr. Joseph Greenhut (himself a So- cialist, somewhat out of sympathy with the alleviation of poverty, its absolute cure being, in his view, possible by changes in the constitution of society), furnishes many statistics showing the riding rates of wages earned in some hundreds of trades and callings, from which the following are selected: Per diem. Bricklayers, stone-cutters, and stone-masons $4 00 Plasterers 3 50 to $4 00 Carpenters 2 50 to 2 80 Bridge-builders 2 50 to 3 25 Ship-carpenters and caulkers 2 00 to 3 50 Machinists, blacksmiths, and wagon-makers 2 00 to 2 50 Pattern-makers and horse-sho- ers 275to 350 Engineers 2 00 to 5 00 Grain-trimmers 2 75 to 3 50 Lumber-shovers 3 00 to 6 00 Sewer-builders 2 00 to 3 00 Plumbers, gas-fitters, painters, photographers, printers, etc 2 00 to 3 50 Boot- and shoe-makers, cigar- makers, millers, stereotypers and electrotypers, copper, tin, and sheet-iron workers, brass finishers, upholsterers, etc 1 75 to 3 00 Iron and steel mill-workers, japanners, etc 1 50 to 6 00 Tailors and suit-makers 1 00 to 3 00 Type-founders, furriers, book- binders, furniture-workers, distillers, brewers, etc 1 50 to 3 00 Sailors (with board) 1 50 to 2 00 Farmers 1 50 to 3 00 Coopers, fish-packers, gravel- roofers, freight-house men, laundrymen, makers of iron and lead pipe, wire-goods, vault-lights, etc 1 50 to 2 50 Brick-makers 1 00 to 3 00 Planing-mill hands 1 25 to 2 25 Harness-makers, musical in- strument-makers 1 25 to 3 00 Market-menAce-wagon men,etc 1 50 to 2 75 Packing and slaughter-house men 125to 400 Lumber-yard hands 1 25 to 1 50 Dock laborers 1 00 to 2 00 Confectioners, millinery and straw-goods makers, hair- workers, etc 1 00 to 3 00 AMONG THE POOR OF CHICAGO. Per diem. Female clerks $1 00 to $2 75 Glove and mitten-makers.... 60 cents to 3 00 Drug clerks Telegraph and telephone operators Bakers and barbers Stablemen Teamsters Dressmakers Office stenographers and type. writers By the week. $12 00 to $25 00 10 00 to 10 00 to 9 00 to 9 00 to 6 00 to 20 00 14 00 15 00 12 00 15 00 600to 2000 Mr. Greenhut estimates the immi- grant nationalities (including their chil- dren) composing Chicago as follows: Germans, 400,000; Irish, 210,000; Sclavonians, 100,000; Scandinavians, 110,000; English, Scotch, and Welsh, 80,000; French Canadians, 15,000 ; Ital- ians, 15,000; French, 5,000; Colored, 13,000 ; and Chinese, 2,000. all around were made as there were men in the saloon. From a large number of sources it was learned that it is the custom with the Polish labor- ers the violation of which means disgrace for each man on pay-night to treat all his fellows, the bartender and contractor included, and for the two latter, when it comes their turn, to treat the men. It is needless to say that the contractor and bar- tender rarely have to pay for what they set up to the crowd. The possible remedy for this state of thingsif there be any remedyis out- side the province of the present essay. Suffice it to say here, that the non-expert observer, however sympathetic, is prone to feel that any effort at relief of the chosen miseries which does not strike at the cause of the choice, is futile. A late issue of the Chicago Tribune had the following suggestive paragraph: WORK WAITING FOR UNEMPLOYED. No one doubts but that the drink- bill of Chicagoestimated at $1,000,000 a week, of which three-fourths comes from the pockets of the poorwould change into prosperity, practically, all the adversity of the unfortunate classes, just as the drink - bill of Russia $1,000,000 a daywould supplant fam- ine by abundance. Much poverty comes from drink that does not come from drunkenness. A man may spend in drink the total profit on his earnings, the total surplus above necessary outgoes, and it mayusually doesamount to an m- surance fund which, well invested, would form a respectable fortune during his prosperous years. Then, when old age, sickness, or accident befalls, he is penni- less. His poverty springs from drink; no matter if he never was drunk in his life. The man who drinks up what he might save is as short-sighted as the husbandman who should needlessly eat up his seed-wheat. Paying off~~ is often done in saloons, in which the paymaster may or may not be interested. It is a vile and hurtful practice. A late article in a Chicago paper contains the following words on this theme: Contractor Piatkiewicz said some of his work- men habitually spent for liquor half their earnings, and that on one pay-night, several years ago, he recollected that out of a total of $480 due his men, the chips in the basket gave to the saloon-keeper $200. To add to this, he said that as many treats THE STATEMENT ABOUT CHICAGOS ARMY OF IDLE MEN REFUTED. The statement that there are 30,000 to 50,000 laboring men out of employment to-day in Chicago is false, said Oscar Kuehue yesterday. Mr. Kuehue is the General Agent of the German Be- uevolent Society and is in a position to know. I could have furnished, he continued, during the month of March, employment to 300 or 400 more men than I did, if I had had the men to fill the ap- plications that came into my office. Farmers from within a radius of thirty miles of Chicago come to me to supply them with farm-laborers, and when I tell them that 1 havent men for them, and cant get the sort of men they want, they ask in surprise where these 50,000 unemployed in Chicago are. At oue oclock this afternoon there were thirty farm- ers in my office after laborers. They would have employed fifty men, but I had to disappoint them. The truth of the matter is that there is no excuse for the idleness of an energetic young man who is not married. He can get work if he wants it. For a married man there is more excuse. He is not free to move about as the unmarried man is, and is more limited in his choice of occupatious. We find it more difficult to get work for men of families. There is some chosen poverty which is not necessarily connected with drink. Many instances arise in the minds of men and women who are trying to do their philanthropic duty. The pitiable man is he who cannot get work to do, and in so far as this article on poverty in the West does not present the harrowing pictures of want elsewhere, it must be accounted for in the same way as was the shortness of the celebrated chapter on Snakes in Iceland. Work and wages, seed-time and harvest, have not yet failed in the land. And the art of making the wise 26 GETTING OUT THE FLY-BOOKS. 27 choice of possible joys, though not yet fully learned, is gaining ground. The overwhelming tendency of modern life is toward the cities. It al- most seems as if they would have to be walled about in order to keep in the country the proportionsfour-fifths at least which must remain there in or- der to provide food for all. Everything done to alleviate the condition of the poor in great cities works in the direc- tion of bringing more into them; and no argument or persuasion, or more solid consideration of betterment, pre- vails to get them out after once im- mersed in the pleasurable excitement of gregarious existence; they would rather starve in a crowd than grow fat in quietudeespecially if the crowd is sprinkled with aromatic charity. Humanity, like other semifluids, moves in the line of least resistance and most propulsion. Idleness drifts toward where commiseration and alms- giving are most generous and unques- tioning; love of drink toward where beer and liquor are most plentiful The free soup-kitchen is a profitable neigh- bor for the saloon. Labor is a blessing in disguise; and a free gift is often a disguised curse. Then is a part of the prevalent phil- anthropic feeling, though coming from the noblest part of our nature, tainted with sentimentality and sensationalism? Is it, to a certain extent, the vagary of good men and women who, consciously or unconsciously, regard physical labor as only a necessary evil? Is it part of the new creed which sees in drink not the cause but the consequence of want and misery? Quien sabe? At any rate, if any statement should be made of the Western aspect of the matter, as it am pears to men who regard duly paid toil as the condition of well-being, which statement did not present this possi- bility as at least an obtruding suspicion, it would be false and defective. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread was not a curse but a bless- ing, and so shall be until a dreary Utopia prevail, competition giving place to com- bination, mankind being beaten up into an omelet, and excelling and excellence no more. By Leroy Milton Yale. HEN spring seems still afar off, when nights are sharp and patch- es of snow lie about, in spite of the frost the maple feels the sweet juices in all its fibres. The same nameless influence touches the angler, his blood moves, he has no more choice than the budding tree. He must see his fly-books. Every article of his outfitcreel, hobnail, or rodhas its charm to rouse memory or quicken imagination; but in the book is hidden the subtlest spell of alL Move but a fly from its folds and up swarm the recollections and the dreamsrec- ollections of a past in which all joy is fresh, all disappointment forgotten, dreams of a future filled much more abundantly. Not dreams alone. To the observant angler running brooks GETTING OUT THE FLY-BOOKS.

GETTING OUT THE FLY-BOOKS. 27 choice of possible joys, though not yet fully learned, is gaining ground. The overwhelming tendency of modern life is toward the cities. It al- most seems as if they would have to be walled about in order to keep in the country the proportionsfour-fifths at least which must remain there in or- der to provide food for all. Everything done to alleviate the condition of the poor in great cities works in the direc- tion of bringing more into them; and no argument or persuasion, or more solid consideration of betterment, pre- vails to get them out after once im- mersed in the pleasurable excitement of gregarious existence; they would rather starve in a crowd than grow fat in quietudeespecially if the crowd is sprinkled with aromatic charity. Humanity, like other semifluids, moves in the line of least resistance and most propulsion. Idleness drifts toward where commiseration and alms- giving are most generous and unques- tioning; love of drink toward where beer and liquor are most plentiful The free soup-kitchen is a profitable neigh- bor for the saloon. Labor is a blessing in disguise; and a free gift is often a disguised curse. Then is a part of the prevalent phil- anthropic feeling, though coming from the noblest part of our nature, tainted with sentimentality and sensationalism? Is it, to a certain extent, the vagary of good men and women who, consciously or unconsciously, regard physical labor as only a necessary evil? Is it part of the new creed which sees in drink not the cause but the consequence of want and misery? Quien sabe? At any rate, if any statement should be made of the Western aspect of the matter, as it am pears to men who regard duly paid toil as the condition of well-being, which statement did not present this possi- bility as at least an obtruding suspicion, it would be false and defective. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread was not a curse but a bless- ing, and so shall be until a dreary Utopia prevail, competition giving place to com- bination, mankind being beaten up into an omelet, and excelling and excellence no more. By Leroy Milton Yale. HEN spring seems still afar off, when nights are sharp and patch- es of snow lie about, in spite of the frost the maple feels the sweet juices in all its fibres. The same nameless influence touches the angler, his blood moves, he has no more choice than the budding tree. He must see his fly-books. Every article of his outfitcreel, hobnail, or rodhas its charm to rouse memory or quicken imagination; but in the book is hidden the subtlest spell of alL Move but a fly from its folds and up swarm the recollections and the dreamsrec- ollections of a past in which all joy is fresh, all disappointment forgotten, dreams of a future filled much more abundantly. Not dreams alone. To the observant angler running brooks GETTING OUT THE FLY-BOOKS. 28 GETTING OUT THE FLY-BOOKS. have indeed been books, and their stones have preached him sermons, the notes whereof lie in the pages of these same fly-books. Said a witty friend: It is extraor- dinary with what contempt your true angler looks upon any method which will really catch fish. The wit pierces near the heart of the matter. Any method which will only catch fish? Yes. The true angler is not he whose pole is but the weapon of his predatory instinct. The love of the art must be above the greed of prey. With the bois- terous fisherman and the picnicker with a fishing-rod we have no concern. But among actual sportsman - like anglers the manifestations of the enjoyment of the recreation are as various as tem- peraments. Each exaggerates some of its pleasures, but he best realizes them whose rod is a divining wand, who has the widest sympathy with the outer world, whether it touch him through his scientific insight, his artistic sensi- bility, or that nameless poetic feeling which longs for the sunshine, the wind, and the rain. We may for a moment envy him who tells of great game taken from some far-off lake, but our hearts go out to him who bids us share his little brook when the Sanguinaria is in bloom. It is curious to observe how surely this note of sympathy with nature was struck four hundred years ago by Dame Juliana Berners, and how it reap- pears as a leading motive in the best of angling books all the way down to our day, whether Walton discourses to his scholar or Norris is fly-fishing alone. Curious, too, is the vein of moralizing which runs through the elder Eng- lish writers on angling, whether from the fashion of the time or from direct imitation of Dame Juliana, their model in so many things else. Although crit- icism denies the authorship of The Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an Angle to the Dame, one cannot doubt as he reads it that it is the work of some ecclesiastic, who naturally would give first place to the only field sport per- missible in those days to the cloth. It was almost an inspired foresight which placed the work in such connection that it would be read only by gentyll and noble men and kept out of the hondys of eche ydle persone whyche wolde de- sire it yf it were enpryntyd alone by itself . . . to the entent that the for- sayd ydle persones whyche sholde haue but lytyll mesure in the sayd dysporte of fysshyng sholde not by this meane utterly dystroye it. The words in which the duties of an angler are expressed are as serious as in our day are deemed suitable to a marriage service or the installation of a pastor. Would that they all, from I charge and requyre you in the name of alle noble men, to the closing benediction, And all those that done after this rule shall haue the blessynge of god and saynt Petyr, whyche he theym graunte that wyth his precyous blood vs boughte, were burnt with the plumers wire into the memory of every greedy and ill-man- nered angler. An evidence of the solace thai is found in angling is the fact that out of the troublous times of King and Parlia- ment have come down to us at least three works on the art. Walton, who mourned his monarch slain, Venables, whose disastrous West India campaign brought him to disgrace and the Tower, and the Cromwellian trooper, Richard Franck, wandering abroad, all consoled themselves with the rod and writing of its joys. Perhaps the chastening of sorrow joined with the gentle art to sweeten that charming letter which the Royalist Walton prefixed to the book of the Roundhead Venables. Charming books both have written, and one wishes that the same could be said of Franck, for he was a better naturalist and all- round fisherman than either of them. But whatever may have been in his con- troversial heart, there is little of sweet- ness and light in his style. Now to the fly-books. There is no reason why the fly-fisher should con- temn his brother of the bait-rod. Often quite the reverse, if real angling skill be laid in the balance. The anglers circle is quite wide enough for everyone who fishes in the true spirit, whether he casts his fly over the costliest of salmon pools or anchors his punt across the head of a gudgeon swim. But there is room also for a proper regret that he who uses bait alone has never had opened GETTING OUT THE FLY-BOOKS. to him all the delights of his pastime. Many places cannot be really fished with a fly. It is a legitimate matter of choice to decline to fish such places, but let the refusal be really from love of sport and not from priggish affectation. There is good ground for Franciss hint that the degree of Master in Angling should be given only to a proficient in all its branches. The advantages of the fly are ob- vious enough. It is always ready, bait must be procured for each occasion. I wish, said a lady one day, that you would teach my husband to use the fly, for I observe that when you desire to go a-fishing, you go, but he raises the whole village for four days to collect his baits. Besides, it is a gratification to avoid giving pain, even if slight, to living bait. A still greater practical advantage is that the fly does not mor- tally wound any fish, and such as (by reason of size or for any other cause) are not wanted for the basket, may be re- turned to the water unharmed. Un- harmed? Probably entirely so. In bait- fishing many an undesired fish is bas- keted because wounds of its gills or gullet make its survival improbable if it were returned to the water. But a fly is not swallowed unless a bait has been added to it. It goes no farther than the mouth, andby trout at least is instantly recognized as a decep- tion, and if it has not been fastened at the moment of seizure, is immediately rejected. That the presence of a hook in the mouth of predatory fish causes little, if any, pain becomes more prob- able the more their behavior is watched. Their mouths being their only prehen- sile apparatus, we should expect these parts to be but slightly sensitive to pain, and such seems from observation to be really the case. Such fish often seize and swallow others so protected with spines that the angler handles them with great caution. Most anglers of experience have seen a fish take a fly repeatedly, or take a second while still 9 struggling to be free of the first, so that it was perhaps landed by two an- glers at once. I have knowledge of a bluefish taking off three large hooks baited for striped bass and coming to gaff on a fourth, when all four were re covered from its mouth. For experi- ments sake, the writer once caught, un- hooked and returned to the water the same trout four times within a few minutes (it being plainly visible all the time), and finally drove it out of the pool with a stick lest it should swallow the bait and be destroyed if it were al- lowed another opportunity. It may be said that in these two instances hunger overcame the fear of pain. But what shall be said of another experience of the writer, when, after playing a grilse for some minutes and losing him, anoth- er cast brought to the fly a fish which proved to be the same one. The fly was fast in his lower jaw, while in his upper jaw a fresh and bleeding tear half an inch in length showed whence it had just broken away. To the negative advantage of pain avoided we may add the positive one that fly-fishing is for many reasons the most interesting form of angling. Fish take the artificial fly best when feed- ing upon the natural insects, which diet (as has been shown experimentally for trout at least) gives weight and strength more rapidly than any other. They are then more inclined to sport, they fight harder, and, it may be added, are more valued for the table. The grat- ification is enhanced by the greater del- icacy of tackle made possible by the flexibility and elasticity of the rod ne- cessary to fly-casting, and it is certain- ly a greater pleasure to outwit the game by a clever imitation of a fly than by an actual gross lump of food. But the es- sential charm, we think, lies beyond the mere use of a fly, for trolling a fly is scarcely less lethargic than any other trolling, while minnow-casting is nearly as delightful as fly-casting. The gentle but continuous activity of fly- fishing gives it interest; the endeavor to put the fly accurately and delicately just where the angler would have it makes it as absorbing as any trial of marksmanship. The fascinating sus- pense of waiting for the rising fish. (There is one under the azalea bush!) Out goes the fly toward the marked spot. (A yard more, and gently, or it is hung up.) The breathless seconds as it sweeps down over it, the restraint of the space of a hearts beat before the * 29 30 GETTING OUT THE FLY-BOOKS. turn of the wrist, and then the struggle. These are the charms of fly-fishing the bait-fisher cannot share. There must always be differences of taste as to what kind of fly-fishing is the highest branch of the art. In Eng- land and America trout-fishing has gen- erally been put into the first place. Certainly nowhere can the skilful an- gler more fully bring into play all his resources. The game is small com- pared to a salmon, for instance; but the trout of much - fished waters be- comes possessed of a knowledge, a cun- ning and a wariness which are worthy of all respect, and the overcoming of which adds a mental exercise to the many other charms of this variety of angling. On asking an experienced friend which he thought the more en- joyable, salmon- or trout-fishing, I got the answer, They cannot be com- pared. Trout-fishing is like a sym- phonyall is harmony. One can en- joy the sky, the air, the trees, the water, the tackle and the fish; but when one is fast to a salmon, it is circus all the time. This answer touches the essen- tial difference; the gentle exercise typ- ical of angling is replaced by a more laborious occupation and the calm en- joyment by a struggle. To me, at least, no such struggle has left such charming memories as have some hours of trout-fishing (what pictures they are !), when the capture was of so little moment that only the choicest fish went into the creel. The expression, Salm- on-fishing spoils one for everything else, has often a truth beyond the speakers intent Any fishing which makes the capture of the fish, or of any particular fish, important, is so far spoiled as a recreation. Besides, the planning and the commercial de- tails essential to securing salmon-fish- ing go far to remove it from the do- main of sport to that of business. Here, side by side, lie the book of salmon flies and a box of tiny duns and spinners for dry-fly fishing. In them- selves they embody the contention of theories: up-stream or down-stream fishing, close imitation or colorology, sunk-fly or dry-fly. Warm discussion, earnest disputes, hot words almost (strange accompaniments of the gentle art ), have been stirred up by them, and all needlessly. The dissension is more about names than facts. Under the one title of fly-fishing have been confused fly-fishing proper and what, for the sake of a name, I have called feather-baiting. In both the lure is similar as to materials and structure, but the latter method in its principles and practice resembles fly - fishing proper no more than it does minnow - casting. In fact, the fly-minnow, or Alexan- dra, would serve very well as a type of this style of fishing. Between the two styles are many intermediate shades, but typical examples only are taken for illustration. By fly - fishing proper I mean the method of the purist as practised, let us say, upon a Hampshire chalk-stream, with water clear and fine. As nearly as painstaking search for materials and exactness in tying can avail, his flies are reproductions in size, shape, and color of the actual insects usually found upon the stream to be fished. They are indeed marvels of delicate imitation. Upon the finest of casting lines he places usually but one fly, in order that it may float down stream in the most natural manner possible. Nor will he indulge in any aimless casting, any chuck-and-chance-it work, as he would style it. Patiently he awaits the rising of a, feeding fish, marks its place as accurately as he can, gets well below and casts his fly, still dry, as lightly as he is able, above the point marked and allows it to float without tug or strain jauntily down stream until it passes over the fish. If it is not taken it is dried by a few casts in the air and again put over the fish. If it is taken, there can be little doubt, not only from theory but from comparative experi- ments, that it is taken for the natural fly of which it is the avowed counter- feit. This is, I think, fly-fishing in the strict sense of the term. In such streams, with fish made wary by long experience, to use coarse flies, to cast carelessly, or even to fish down stream, would probably put every neighboring fish off its feed or drive it to the shelter of its hold. In our wilder waters such nicety is not yet necessary, and may even be less successful than less exact- GETTING OUT THE FLY-BOOKS. 31 ing methods. But where it is applic able, the writer can testify that it adds to the other pleasures of fly-fishing the charm that always attends delicacy of manipulation and certainty of aim. Note the differences between this kind of fly - fishing and the feather- baiting. Take a salmon - fly, for in- stance. It is a combination in a con- ventional shape, of colors the result of experience or experiment which resembles nothing which the maker ever saw in nature, and if, as some maintain, it is taken by the salmon, because it has seen something like it, that something was certainly not a nat- ural fly. The salmon-fly is usually cast as accurately and delicately as may be, of courseacross the current, and swings in a curve down to the fish, half or wholly submerged. Coming in such a manner it may possibly be taken for a larva, hardly for a fly, whatever be its color. What is true of the salmon- fly is at least equally true of all large flies which are intended to be worked sink and draw. While this method cannot in strictness be considered fly- fishing, there can be no doubt of its success. Trout are often so wild as to have no suspicion of guile, when they will seize any object which attracts their attention. If the water is big, turbulent, or turbid, only a large and showy lure will be visible. There were some pools in the Nipigon in its less frequented days, where the best suc- cess attended, not salmon-flies even, but bass-flies of extraordinary gaudiness and of a size to merit Fosters name of the American half-ounce. What they took the fly for, if for anything in particular, may be a matter of doubt; probably simply as a prey which might furnish food. More recently an ac- quaintance has told me that in a sea- son of low water, when disappointment had been universal, he had good success in this river with the use of midge-flies and light casts. This question, why the fly of th~ V salmon-fly type is taken, has been much discussed in connection with salmon- fishing. Formerly the belief, that salm- on never fed while in fresh water, complicated the inquiry. The con- trary being now well established, it is altogether probable that the fly is seized for examination as possible food. There is a curious difference between the ordinary behavior of a trout and a salmon. As a rule, a trout which takes a small fly apparently in mis- take for a living insect, rejects it al- most instantly if it can. The salmon, on the contrary, usually starts for his hold with the fly in his mouth to ex- amine it there, possibly because of a habit acquired while feeding upon crustacea in the sea. Whether a fresh-run fish takes a fly, or any given fly, on account of its resemblance in the water to some kind of food known at sea, is one of the open questions. But after the fish have been some time in fished water they become usually much more wary. It is interesting to watch their behavior, which seems sometimes to be the result of simple curiosity, or possibly of a halting be- tween hunger and a timidity born of experience. For instance, casting over a pool in which the fish were easily seen, I have had a pair lying near each other rise cautiously to inspect each new fly; rarely would they come twice to the same one. The keen-eyed gaffer in his wrath, as they circled around each and retired, exclaimed, Confound them! They dont mean to take it; they start from the bottom with their mouths shut. After a fish has run the gauntlet of a score or two of pools it becomes very knowing and few flies will move it. I recall a suc- cess with a fly tied with the avowed purpose of presenting an outr6 coin- bination which would certainly be un- familiar. It is hard, as has been said, to be sure whether in such cases it be curiosity or chastened greed that excites the fish. In some cases it must certainly be the latter. For in- stance, for a week the many and tanta- lizingly visible occupants of the Hos- pital poolill-omened nameresisted all the blandishments of my friend and myself, when one evening unexpectedly they began rising very cautiously, fol- lowing the fly as it went down stream, and only touching it as it was being drawn up for the back cast, as if the evi- dence of its departure excited them irre- sistibly to embrace a last chance. But 32 GETTING OUT THE FLY-BOOKS. whatever this motive be, it probably ac- gathered by the suifrages of universal counts for multitudes of instances in experience, and to it from year to year which somebodys fancy, tied on the others are elevated. But the steady spot, brings up fish after all the stand- way in which these standard patterns ard favorites have proved worthless. displace the special ones from their own This success of the aforesaid fancies is strongholds forces one to believe that too often for this occasion only. the latter had usually little else than But there again are instances which tradition and local pride in their favor. lead to the belief that the fish some- Exceptionally, some peculiarity of light times rises through anger, aversion, or and water will give a real advantage to a desire to attack and drive away the fly. a local favorite, and when this advantage Here it is possible that a resemblance is associated with some singularity of is seen to something which has else- color or structure, it is quite possible where been an annoyance. Sometimes that the fly may resemble something the reason of the anger is evident, as known as food or as an enemy to the when a heavy male salmon makes open- salmon. But if one takes a dozen or jawed rushes at the casting-line which twenty approved standard patterns he holds his mate captive. But ordinarily cannot fail to notice that every one has the reason of the attraction or annoy- some peculiarityas brilliancy, striking ance excited by a fly must be merely a color, or strong contrastthat makes matter of conjecture. A friend of the it an object likely to attract attention writer, a very skilful and observant an- in the water. gler, relates the following instance: On The pleasures of fly-fishing are not one of those depressing days in which confined to those who have access to salmon are very abundant, plainly visi- trout brooks and salmon rivers. The ble and absolutely indifferent to the widespread black bass readily takes the anglers solicitation, he laid down his fly, and many humbler fish, such as rod and for experiments sake dragged chub and sunfish, give good sport if the or floated over the head of an accessible tackle be suitably light. Indeed, almost fish various salmon-flies fastened to a any fish that feeds near the surface will cord. One fly after another passed ap- take the moving sunken fly, whether in parently unnoticed, certainly unheeded, fresh or salt water. The resources of until the Jock Scott was used. Then the fisherman are much increased in the fish seemed to be uneasy. The ex- the South by the use of the fly in shal- periment was repeated several times, low bays, harbors, and lagoons. Game and as often as this fly came over him fish of large size and excellent quality his ordinary indifference gave place to are thus taken in abundance. In the disturbance; he would move himself, North the pollack, the various herrings, often turning his head away or moving shad, and white perch are among the sidewise, until the fly had passed. most interesting of the fish to be so ta- Whether this dislike was due to a re- ken. Young bluefish in tideways give semblance of the fly to something else, excellent sport, but their teeth are so or to a recollection of an unpleasant destructive that a material stouter than struggle with si~ich a fly, can only be featherssuch as bright-colored flan- guessed. The sporting of salmon with nelis needed to form the lure, if it is leaves which float down stream, and with to last. the appearance of which they must be The fly - books are still full of un- quite familiar, seems to be due to pure touched heads of discourse, yet let frolic, like the circling walk-arounds us close them with but this remark: of leaping trout sometimes seen in an that he who ties his own flies and makes eddy. his own rods and tackle will have a About sjecial flies this article has keener personal interest in his pastime nothing to say. Out of the enormous and give it an additional pleasure which list of special patterns of salmon-flies he may enjoy in the long winter even- pertaining to various rivers, a certain ings when the weary man craves a light peerage of general flies has been amusement. By Thomas Bailey Aldrich. A STORY RE~TOLD.* ABOVE an ancient book, with a knights crest In tarnished gold on either cover stamped, She leaned, and reada chronicle it was In which the sound of hautboys stirred the pulse, And masques and gilded pageants fed the eye. Though here and there the vellum page was stained Sanguine with battle, chiefly it was love The stylus heldsome wan-cheeked scribe, perchance, That in a mouldy tower by candle-light Forgot his hunger in his madrigals. Outside was winter; in its winding-sheet The frozen Year lay. Silent was the room, Save when the wind against the casement pressed Or a page rustled, turned impatiently, Or when along the still damp apple-wood A little flame ran that chirped like a bird Some wrens ghost haunting the familiar bough. With parted lips, in which less color lived Than paints the pale tea-rose, she leaned and read. From time to time her fingers unawares Closed on the palm; and oft upon her cheek The pallor died, and left such transient glow As might from some rich chapel window fall On a girls cheek at prayer. So moved her soul, From this dull age unshackled and divorced, In far moon-haunted gardens of romance. But once the wind that swept the palsied oaks, As if new-pierced with sorrow, came and moaned Close by the casement; then she raised her eyes. See ScRIENERS MAGAZINE for January, 1888. WHITE EDITH.

By Thomas Bailey Aldrich. A STORY RE~TOLD.* ABOVE an ancient book, with a knights crest In tarnished gold on either cover stamped, She leaned, and reada chronicle it was In which the sound of hautboys stirred the pulse, And masques and gilded pageants fed the eye. Though here and there the vellum page was stained Sanguine with battle, chiefly it was love The stylus heldsome wan-cheeked scribe, perchance, That in a mouldy tower by candle-light Forgot his hunger in his madrigals. Outside was winter; in its winding-sheet The frozen Year lay. Silent was the room, Save when the wind against the casement pressed Or a page rustled, turned impatiently, Or when along the still damp apple-wood A little flame ran that chirped like a bird Some wrens ghost haunting the familiar bough. With parted lips, in which less color lived Than paints the pale tea-rose, she leaned and read. From time to time her fingers unawares Closed on the palm; and oft upon her cheek The pallor died, and left such transient glow As might from some rich chapel window fall On a girls cheek at prayer. So moved her soul, From this dull age unshackled and divorced, In far moon-haunted gardens of romance. But once the wind that swept the palsied oaks, As if new-pierced with sorrow, came and moaned Close by the casement; then she raised her eyes. See ScRIENERS MAGAZINE for January, 1888. WHITE EDITH. 34 WHITE EDITH. The light of dreams still fringed them while she spoke: I pray you tell me, does this book say true? Is it so fine a thing to be a queen? As if a spell of incantation dwelt In those soft syllables, before me stood, Colored like life, the phantasm of a maid Who in the childhood of this wrinkled world Was crowned by error, or through dark intent Made queen, and for the durance of one day The royal diadem and ermine wore. In strange sort worefor this queen fed the starved, The naked clothed, threw open dungeon doors; Could to no story list of suffering But the full tear was lovely on her lash; Taught Grief to smile, and black Despair to hope; Upon her stainless bosom pillowed Sin Repentant at her feetlike Him of old; Made even the kerns and wild-men of the fells, Drawn thither sniffing pillage in the air, Gentler than doves by some unknown white art, And saying to herself, So, I am Queen! With lip all tremulous, reached out her hand To the crowds kiss. What joy to ease the hurt Of bruis~d hearts! As in a trance she walked That live-long day. Then night came, and the stars, And blissful sleep. But ere the birds were called By bluebell chimes (unheard of mortal ear) To matins in their branch-hung priories Ere yet the dawn its gleaming edge lay bare Like to the burnished axes subtle edge, She, from her sleeps caresses roughly torn, The meek eyes blinking in the torches glare, Upon a scaffold for her glory paid The roses on her cheek. For it befell That from the Northland there was come a prince, With a great clash of shields and trailing spears Through the black portals of the breathless night, To claim the sceptre. He no less would take Than those same roses for his usury. What less, in faith! The throne was rightly his Of that sea-girdled isle: so to the block Forthwith the ringlets and the slender throat. A touch of steel, a sudden darkness, then Blue Heaven and all the hymning angel-choir! W No tears for herkeep tears for those who live To mate with sin and shame, and have remorse At last to light them to unhallowed earth. Hers no such low-hung fortunes. Once to stand WHITE EDITH. 35 At her souls height in that celestial air, With no hoarse raven croaking in ones ear The coming doom, and then to have lifes rose Struck swiftly from the cheek, and thus escape Loves death, black treason, friends ingratitude, The pang of separation, chili of age, The grief that in an empty cradle lies, And all the unspoke sorrow women know That were, in truth, to have a happy reign! Has thine been happier, Sovereign of the Sea, In that long-mateless pilgrimage to death? Or thine, whose beauty like a star illumed Awhile the dark and angry sky of France, Thy kingdom shrunken to two exiled graves? Sweet old-world maid, a gentler fate was yours! Would he had wed your story to his verse Who from the misty land of legend brought Helen of Troy to gladden English eyes. Theres many a queen that lived her grandeur out, Gray-haired and broken, might have envied you, Your Majesty, that reigned a single day! All this, between two heart-beats, as it were, Flashed through my mind, so lightning-like is thought. With lifted eyes expectant, there she sat Whose words had sent my fancy over-seas, Her lip still trembling with its own soft speech, As for a moment trembles the curved spray Whence some winged melody has taken flight. How every circumstance of time and place Upon the glass of memory lives again ! The bleak New England road; the level boughs Like bars of iron across the setting sun; The gray ribbed clouds piled up against the West; The windows splashed with frost; the fire-lit room, And in the antique chair that slight girl-shape, The auburn braid about the saintly brows Making a nimbus, and she white as snow! Dear Heart, I said, the humblest place is best For gentle soulsthe thrones foot, not the throne. The storms that smite the dizzy solitudes Where monarchs sitmost lonely folk are they ! Oft leave the vale unscathed; there dwells content, If so content have habitation here. Never have I in annals read or rhyme Of queen save one that found not at the end The cup too bitter; never queen save one, 36 WHITE EDITH. And sheher empire lasted but a day! Yet that brief breath of time did she so fill With mercy, love, and holiest charity, As more rich made it than long drawn-out years Of such weed-life as drinks the lavish sun And rots unflowerd. Straight tell me of that queen! Cried Edith: Brunhild, in my legend here, Is lovelywas that other still more fair? And had she not a Siegfried at the court To steal her talisman ?that Siegfried did. Yet Kriemhild wed him. Was your queen not loved? Tell me it all I,, With chin upon her palm She listened, ever in her ardent eyes The sapphire deepening as I told the tale Of that girl-empress in the dawn of Time A flower that on the vermeil brink of May Died, with its folded whiteness for a shroud; A strain of music that, ere it was mixed With baser voices, floated up to heaven! Without was silence, for the wind was spent That all the day had pleaded at the door. Against the rosy sunset the gaunt oaks Stood black and motionless; among the boughs The sad wind slumbered. Silent was the room, Save when from out the crumbling apple branch Came the wrens twitter, faint, and fainter now, Like a birds note far heard in woodlands dim. No word was spoken. Presently a hand Stole into mine, and rested there, inert, Like some new-gathered snowy hyacinth, So white and cold and delicate it was. I know not what dark shadow crossed my heart, What vague presentiment, but as I stooped To lift the fragile fingers to my lip, I saw it through a mist of strangest tears The thin white hand invisible Death had touched! w THE ART OF RAVENNA. By E. H. and E. W. Blashfield. THE traveller who to-day goes from Rome to Florence by rail, through the noble mountains of Tuscany and Um- bria, bridges in a seven-hours journey a gap of ten centuries in the history of art. He leaves behind him the temples and arches, the Yaticans marble popu- lation of half-nude gods and heroes; he comes to medi~eval towers, to saints and virgins, and the frescoed folk of the four- teenth century swathed in their heavy VOL. XII.5 garments. The abrupt transition be- wilders him, the sudden change in his artistic surroundings is almost inexplic- able. How did it come to pass? The gods and athletes did not all die at once, nor the saints spring fully armed with attribute and symbol from the brain of Giotto ; surely there was some inter- mediate period of anticipation and rec- ollection when these incongruous ele- ments were slowly fused together, and

THE ART OF RAVENNA. By E. H. and E. W. Blashfield. THE traveller who to-day goes from Rome to Florence by rail, through the noble mountains of Tuscany and Um- bria, bridges in a seven-hours journey a gap of ten centuries in the history of art. He leaves behind him the temples and arches, the Yaticans marble popu- lation of half-nude gods and heroes; he comes to medi~eval towers, to saints and virgins, and the frescoed folk of the four- teenth century swathed in their heavy VOL. XII.5 garments. The abrupt transition be- wilders him, the sudden change in his artistic surroundings is almost inexplic- able. How did it come to pass? The gods and athletes did not all die at once, nor the saints spring fully armed with attribute and symbol from the brain of Giotto ; surely there was some inter- mediate period of anticipation and rec- ollection when these incongruous ele- ments were slowly fused together, and 38 THE APT OF RAVENNA. the Arts, who illus- trates for all time the name of her asylum. In those days iRavenna was still a port; but the sea, which made her greatness, has by receding de- stroyed her politi- cal importance, thus leaving her to hold the more surely, in her slow decay, the build- ings of a time which she alone among cities fully representsa time when pictorial Christian art had just emerged from her prenatal con- dition of the cata- combs into the light of imperial favor, and the ar- chitecture of the Roman was begin- ning to be that of the Christian. Thus iRavenna be- came the splendid reliquary which preserved the dry bones of antique art, to be quick- ened by the breath of the Renaissance. A unique link in the chain, she is the anomaly of Italian towns a when some dim projection of the mcdi- city of antitheses; of pure water in the ~eval saint stood side by side with a fast- midst of poisonous marshes, of impreg- fading memory of the antique demi-god. nable refuge among treacherous mo- To find the vanished centuries that rasses. wrought this transformation, one must Saved and lifted to high fortune by ride northeast for seven hours more to her submerged territory, when all Italy the Adriatic marshes. elsewhere sunk under the waves of bar- Fourteen hundred years ago, when It- barian invasion; guarded, not besieged, aly flamed behind the horsemen of Al- by the pestilence which walked without aric, the Emperor Honorius fled to the her walls, she is antithetical even in su- strongest city in the land, Ravenna; perficial appearance, and until our own and with his corrupt and motley court times. Without are mean streets and went one noble fugitive, the genius of rough fa~ades; within, color and splen A Ravennese Gentleman. (Interior of San Apollinare Nuovo.) THE ART OF RAVENNA~ 39 dor; advanced radicalism to-day has usurped the stronghold of Greek hier archy; upon her friezes are The gaunt and wasted faces of the Byzantine wom- en, and in her thoroughfares are the most beautiful of Italian girls. Ravenna is the end of the old, the be- ginning of the new. Toward Rome all ancient history tends, from Rome all modern history springs; but here for a brief moment the broad current of his- tory was dammed up into this little space, then ebbing away, even as the Adriatic has done, it left Ravenna full of strange, stranded monuments of a time that has elsewhere been swept out upon the tide into the ocean of oblivion. Among the graves of the buried past, the sarcoph The Tribune of the Princesses in St. Vitalius. 40 THE ART OF RAVENNA. agi of exarchs, captains, and priests, which lie scattered in the churches and the streetswaifs from the shipwreck of Italy when Alaric burst upon her are the sepulchres and effigies of three rulers who epitomize the art - history of the city: of Galla Placidia, the con- quered Roman princess, who subjugated in her turn and married her captor, and preserved to iRavenna what remained of old-time splendor; of Theodoric the Ostrogoth, who infused the vigor of the north into worn-out forms; of Justin- ian the Emperor, who dowered the city with the art heritage of the Greek. The mausoleum of Placidia and the Baptis- tery represent the first of the three groups into which the buildings of the city fall; those remains of the Theodo- sian epoch being followed by the works of the Ostrogothic period, San Apolli- nare Nuovo and the tomb of Theodoric; while the last group, that of Justinian, boasts San Vitale and St. Apollinaris in the Fleet. The little mausoleum of Placidia may claim a first visit. There, for eleven hundred years, her body sat upright in jewelled cerements in her sarcophagus, and was the very type of her citys mission. For in IRavenna an- tique art grew rigid, swathed away in the embalming-cloths of conventionality, gilded and stiffened, mummied within the stone-walls till eight centuries hav- ing rolled by the spirit of antiquity arose again and the chrysalis was forgotten, even as Gallas actual body crumbled in fire and ashes at a moment when the Renaissance had attained its full strength.* The little church is under the invocation of Saints Nazarius and Celsus, is only forty-six feet long by forty broad, and upon the outside might be taken for some house in which the workmen were wont to lay away their tools at night. Inside it is as if one had crept into the heart of a sapphire. Bluethe blue that glistens jewel-like on the peacocks neckis the prevailing color, with great gold disks and drink- ing stags and dull red borderings. Here one may put on the robe of a catechumen and be of a church which, tiny as is the building, stands erect at its full height, omnipotent over conquerors and con- quered, among pagans to be dispersed and barbarians to be converted. Upon its vaults and friezes, as upon the leaves of a missal, Christianity has written in jewelled letters for all men to read, and in the midst of a tottering world this new handwriting on the wall appeared to the Belshazzar of the Roman decadence. To read it to-day some of Eleve centuries Galla sat in state, diademed and jewelled, in the darkness; but in 15IT some children peering throuch an aperture in her sarcophagus, wishing to see betterf thrust in a lighted brand, and she was burnedrobes, cypress-wood chair, and alla strangely grotesque ending of this grim memorial; for, with nfl its beauty, her little church stands as a monume t to three invasions, and to the beginning of such slanghter, mis- ery, and depopulation as the world has not seen before or since. The Column of St. Mark. DRAWN BY E. H. BLASHFIELD. ENGRAVED NY T. H. HEARD. Way fDr the PrWfact. 42 THE ART OF RAVENNA. the historical conditions of the time must be studied. The earlier Ca~sars and the founders of the Church had alike been in their graves for nearly four cen- turies; but the Roman empire had de- cayed and fallen, while the persecuted Church of Christ had arisen, though with a strangely altered spirit, to a mighty stature. These mosaic pictures expressed the momentous changes of their time, and a new art was announced in their forms and colors. Of the epoch which, reach- ing from about 400 A.D. to 565, includes the buildings of Galla, Theodoric, and Justinian, Byzantium was the real the- atre, Ravenna only an echo, but an echo which has come to us clear and distinct, while the voice of the parent city has been almost lost in the tumult of the crusades and of the Turkish conquest. The age was one of disintegration, yet one in which particles were beginning to crystallize into new and lasting shapes the blood of the empire, poisoned by luxury and tyranny, was drained by the sword of the sectary within, of the bar- barian without. Theologians massacred each other for the difference of a letter in the alphabet; the factions of the chariot races slew one another in the hippodrome and divided the whole city into two camps, while the Goth waited upon the frontier to destroy the survi- vors. Thousands of men, smitten with a strange madness, left family and coun- try and fled to the desert, to starve and pray and see visions, far from all human ties and duties. It was an age of saints and school- men, of petty emperors and great gen- erals. Ravenna, and Ravenna alone, has preserved it for us in the traces of that strange civilization of Constantinople which lingered on for a thousand years till the sword of the Moslem gave the death-blow to what had been so long in dying. Rome was no more, and with the founding of Constantinople a new order of things began. The city which rose upon the Bosphorus inherited the vices but not the virtues of paganism; the military spirit, the religious tolera- tion, the perfect administration of an- tique Rome disappeared. Outside, the barbarian was more frequently bribed than driven from the frontier, alternately betrayed and defended by venal gener- als. The city, unmindful of its danger, abandoned itself to its passion for brawl- ing and chattering. The strife of the ri- val chariot factionsthe greens and the blues filled the streets with bloody tumult and shook the throne itself. Only second in popular interest were the religious dissensions, and all classes, from the Emperor to the fisherman, joined in these struggles. The subtle Greek intellect ever given to word- spinning seized upon the dogmas of the new faith, tore them to shreds, pieced them together again, broidered them over with new devices, and, like Penel- ope of old, spent days and nights in weaving and ravelling the tangled web of theology. The Sophists rose to life again in the heresiarchs and churchmen, and there came no new Socrates to si- lence them. Disputation grew deadly. What had been mere difference of opin- ion with those who were but seekers after truth, became matter of life and death with those who arrogantly claimed to have found the truth. The annals of the time are filled with these fierce outbursts of sectarian ha- tred, mad riots, o~cumenical councils packed with armed ruffians, and savage Nitrian monks, where, after the inevita- ble violence and bloodshed, a heavy bribe to the Emperors cook or chief eunuch settled the doctrinal point at issue. For the Emperor was grand in- quisitor in matters of faith, the Empress not inactive, and more than once, to quote the words of Cyril, the holy Vir- gin of the court of heaven found an ad- vocate in the holy Virgin of the court of Constantinople. The citizen who had left far behind him the days of the palestra and the academy, now decked in curiously em- broidered garments and loaded with jewels passed his time in the circus, an eager partisan of the greens or blues, tarred on his favorite bishop in the hotter strife of the synod, applauded some popular preacher in the churches, or, stripped of his adornments, walked barefoot in penitential procession. The schools of philosophy were closed, and human reason, lulled to sleep by forrnulce, dreamed fitfully or muttered incoherently in nightmare creed quar V Yesterday and to-day. Altar front of fifth century in San Francescostill serving for the daily mass. [Printed in American fliustration of To-day, Vol. XI.] 4zt THE ART OF RAVENNA. rels. The Church was the great career open to ambition, and human energy rushed impetuously into the new chan- neL The artists were now enlisted in its service. Through its first centuries of faith and charity Christian dogma was so simple, its ideal so constantly present in mens minds, that no palpable image was needed to explain the one or recall the other; but in the later days of dogmatic definition, when the Church- men were tying up their faith in ortho- dox packets, the artists were required to label them with all the quaint figures of ecclesiastical heraldry. Pictures are the books of the ignorant, said St. Augustine, and to teach the ignorant the Church used them, clothing the teach- ing, as did her founder, in the garb of symbolism, a language that could be un- derstood by the barbarian and the slave. But in what material should these eter- nal truths be expressed? Painting and sculpture were pagan and aristocratic, governed entirely by antique tradition devils inhabited the statues of heathen gods, and before the image of the Em- peror many a Christian had gone to mar- tyrdom. There remained a minor art unpolluted by heathen worship, used for merely decorative purposes to ornament a fountain, line a niche, or enliven a pave- ment. This could be safely employed without evoking comparisons in the In the Quarter of the Fleet. THE ART OP RAVENNA 45 minds of the less devout or more artistic worshippers. Just as a converted heathen slave might rise from one church dignity to another, until he ascended the bishops throne, so mosaicat first, a cheerful household decorationwhen Christianized, became solemnhieratic, exchanged its dress of simple colors for a gorgeous robe of purple and gold, climbed to church-wall and dome, and there set forth the mysteries of the faith and the glories of heaven. Yet this new art was pagan in form and feeling; as the fathers of the Church imitated the language of Plato and Seneca, so the Christian artist borrowed the imagery of paganism for the service of his faith. It was the spirit of antiquity that animated him; its serenity, its cheer- ful acceptance of inevitable law, its keen sense of the beauty of life were strong within him as he carved the sarcophagus or decorated the apse. There were no images of suffering or punishment, no crucifixion, no last judgment, not even a martyrdom, though the young Church was still ruddy from her baptism of blood. When later the art that had its humble origin in the night of the catacombs flourished in an imperial city on the walls of mighty basilicas its spirit was unchanged. The conversion of Rome had left it unconverted. Greek example, Greek modera- tion still guided the artists hand, for the true artist is ever half a pagan. So, fraught with a new meaning, the imagery of paganism found ready welcome within the Church. Here we still see the vintage trodden out by loves, only now it is the vintage of the Lord; the winged funeral genii become guardian angels of Ambassadors to C oar. the Christians tomb; the crown of the Emperor the re- ward of the blessed; the palm of the victorious athlete the martyrs emblem. The goddesses yield their attributes the dove becomes the visible sign of the Holy Spirit; Junos peacock the symbol of immortality ; Dianas stag the hart of the Psalmist; and as in these same mosaics the Magi bring gifts to the Mother of God, so each dethroned goddess pays tribute to the new Queen of Heaven. Dianas crescent, Minervas serpent, lie beneath her feet; Cybele gives the chair of state, Circe the aureole, Juno the matrons veil and 46 THE ART OF RAVENNA. crown, Flora her roses and lilies, and Isis places the Divine Child in Marys arms. Here even are the heroes of Greek myth, chosen for some likeness to the founder of Christianity: Mercury leading the spirits of the departed; Orpheus, who descended into hell to save a soul, and who draws all men to him by the power of music; Hercules, who came into the world to punish the wicked, to deliver the oppressed, to do the tasks and bear the burdens of others. In this Chris- tianized Pantheon the only purely new symbols are the fish, the monogram of Christ, the cross, the ship struggling through the waves, and the lamb. The good shepherdloveliest figure of all was a precious heritage from Greece. When later historic scenes were in- troduced the same antique spirit char- acterized them. The artists childhood might have thrilled at his grandfathers tales of the blood and martyrdom of Diocletians time; his eyes might have looked with pride at the marks of tor- ture for the faith existent upon the limbs of some old house-servant, yet when he made his cartoon for the mosaic he put upon it Daniel among the lions, the sacrifice of Isaac, the children un- harmed amid the flames, but no more intemperate or realistic allusion to the persecutions which filled the records of the Church. Tradition was strong within him, and the artist of Ravenna had not lost its dignity and self-restraint. Outside the mad controversialists might riot Donatist ruffians clubbing to death in default of the steel their creed for- bade themsticks and stones a-flying; but in- side the arches of the Baptistery, at his quiet work, the artist in- stinctively resisted the bigotry and intoler- ance of his epoch. Only one ominous fig- ure in the tomb of Placidia shows the schisms that were di- viding the Church the figure of the Say- iour burning the her- etical books. By an unconscious irony it is placed directly oppo- site the benign image of the Good Shepherd, and the two conflict- ing aspects of Chris- tianityits bitter in- tolerance and its loving charityconfront each other in this narrow space. The sun of Greek art was setting, but it still shone upon Ravenna. The mosaic- ist of San Apollinare saw about him in the streets the stiff- robed Byzantines; but he had seen, too, the pagan temples with their friezes and tympana, and their figures clad in sim- ple sweeping draperies, so that his long Tne Crypt of San Francesco. V THE APT OF RAVENNA. procession of virgins and martyrs moved in measured harmonies like the ephebo~ and canephor~e of the Parthenon. The grand white - robed angels, the brown- locked, beardless Christ of the apse were calm and stately, line and mass were still noble; beauty had passed away, but an- tique dignity had survived the sack of Rome, and in a fallen Greece the mem- ory of the Zeus at Olympia had not yet quite faded. But it was only a tradition, not a liv- ing reality. Tradition taught the artist a certain grandeur of composition, a conventional position of head and hands, a good treatment of the general lines of the drapery; but it could do no more for him. There was no body under the drapery, no muscles to move the head or raise the hands. The face was a weak- ened copy of the antique type, the era- niuin shrunken and elongated; the great Rain-bound Under the Porch of St. Viteline. DRAWN BY E. H. BLASHFIELD. ENGRAVED BY H. WOLF. A Votive Offeringto St. Vitelius. Costume of Byzantine Empress of sixth century. THE ART OF RAVENNA. 49 hollow eyes and pinched lips had no life in them. They could not move. What Medusa of decadence had stricken these people to stone? what had so changed the type, so utterly transformed the ideal of the artist? Where were the ath- letes, the gods, the goddesses, he loved so well, and how came these hollow-eyed wraiths in their place? Was it inca- pacity of the artist or degeneracy of the models? It was both, as the history and conditions of Byzantium tell us. The Greek of Pericless day, when he carved a god or an athlete, went to the gymna- sium or palestra and found his model in the youths who flashed by in the foot- race; watched the evenly developed muscles strain and rise and fall in the tug of the wrestling bout; talked with the panting ephebos as he scraped the dusty oil from the limbs that were to be translated into marble. He found the long folds of his drap- eries in the sweep of the proces3ion, his faun or Bacchante in the rhythmical changes of the choragic dance, and his fellow-citizens were his best models; his work was patriotic, ethical; art was yet in the service of religiona grate- ful service, for the gods of that religion were idealized and deified mortals. In superior strength and beauty was their godhood made manifest, and these es- sential attributes could be expressed in marble. Thus to the Greek the statue of his god was at once ethical and ~esthetic. Ethicalfor the Hermes of the pakestra spoke eloquently to the Greek youth: Exercise, be temperate, be patient, give your country a good soldier. 2Esthetic for the Greek had a love for the beauty of the human body unique in the history of art, and as beauty was to him the visible expression of the good, so a well-developed body was the high- est form of beauty. Compare these con- ditions with those of Byzantium in the sixth century. Of the Byzantine ar- tist was required something which can- not be expressed by form or color. A new religion had arisen, which, far from honoring the body, regarded it as an instrument of shame and deg- radation, its corporal instincts as temp- tations of the devil, its strength and beauty as a snare; the flesh was to be moriified by fasting and penance. VOL. XII.6 To the fathers of the Church it was a sin to frequent the baths or throw the discus; better in unwashed sanctity to throw stones at heretic Arians. Greek temperance, Roman self - control had yielded to the fanaticism which filled the desert with many a Laura, emptying the camp and the gymnasium. The world was changed, the hardy legionary had become the gilded soldier of Honoriuss palace or the undisciplined Gothic mer- cenaryservant to-day, master to-mor- row; the calm athlete, with limbs bronzed in the healthful sun of the pala~stra, was replaced by the maccrated ascetic, black- ened and burned in the scorching African desert, and the tranquil beauty of the Greek statue gave way to the self-tor- turing genufiections of Stylites upon his pillar. The body was to be reduced till it became a semi-transparent envelope for the soul, a slender bond to hold the aspiring spirit to earth, and the plastic arts soon felt the influence of this as- ceticism. The artists were required to give tangible form to the new ideaL To this task they were inadequate; ex- pression, dramatic movement, strong personality they could not achieve; they could only diminish and attenuate. The body had to be covered, and they soon forgot how the members of this covered body were put together. Costume, too, had become stiff and formaL Instead of the clinging draperies of antiquity, that showed the muscles under their folds, the Byzantines loaded themselves with heavy robes of gold embroidery, or when they wore thin tis- sues covered them with whole Bible stories in needlework that falsified all natural lines. The simple mantle shrank to a cape or scarf, clumsy and stiff with jewels, and the swathed body became a mere prop for a mass of brocade and gems. Under such conditions the artists soon forgot the lessons of the past; each new figure was but a weakened copy of some forerunners copy, and, as at Mount Athos or in modern Russia, art-work was taught by certain well-known and un- changeable formuhe. But while art be- came degraded in form it grew glorious in color. This color was the gift of the East to the western world; oriental sub- tlety filled the intellectual atmospherea 50 THE ART OF RAVENNA. oriental color-feeling dominated the aes- thetic sense, and the sun of Greek art, which rose white and clear in the East, set in the purple and crimson that live upon the walls of IRavenna. After Gallas mausoleum and the Bap- tistery, also of the Theodosian epoch, and which was repaired as early as 451 A.D., in the history of Ravenna we follow the fortunes of those Goths who were the eastern brothers of Placidias Ataulf, and come to San Apollinare. The ba- silica lifts its ugly front of blackened brick, flanked by a simple round tower, and giving no hint of its interior beauty. Within it is difficult to con- ceive of anything more delightful to the eye than its gold scroll-work upon blue, its dull red upon gold. There are in the world few richer decorations than the frieze of saints and virgins moving across the solemn color of the church. It is a three-aisled, round- arched basilica, the friezes filling mag- nificently the place which developed in- to the triforium in later churches, while panels of mosaic cover the walls between the windows of the clear-story. New St. Apollinaris it is called. It was new nearly fourteen hundred years ago, and, as it rose, course upon course, above the house-tops, it saw in the distance the masts of the galleys in the port of Clas- sis, where later the bell-tower of the other church built to the same saint took their place. When Theodoric the heretic raised this golden house for his Arian bishops, Martinnot Apollinarisreceived the dedication, and in violet tunic still heads the procession of the saints. It was four hundred years later that fear of the Sar- acen caused the removal of the patrons bones from the Classis, and gave a new name to the church. In the earlier times, when its flooring was being laid, the sound of the purple shoes of the Em- perors of the West had hardly died away from the pavement of Ravenna, and after the Ostrogoths, when they were to come again on the feet of the exarchs of that Justinian and Theodora, who still blaze upon the walls of San Vitale. A little later and the floor of our basilica heard a very different tread, and rang to the mailed heels of Charlemagne. Seiz- ing both the shadow and the substance the great Charles took the crown and the prestige at Rome, the columns and the bass-reliefs at Raveuna; as guarded by Frankish soldiers wain after wain laden with the spoils of Theodorics palace, the white oxen of Emiia straining at the yoke, creaked away toward Ingel- heim and Aix-la-Chapelle. Franks and even Lombards were, however, still in the future when the Greek workmen on their scaffolding above the capitals stood before the growing frieze, labo- riously building with little cubes of gold and color this Palatium of Theo- done, this Classis with its towers and ships, shaping the magi and add- ing one virgin after another till the whole tale of twenty-two stood proces- sional and complete, facing the saints and patriarchs of the other side. He was a real artist this Greek, for he was of a real art epoch. When he worked upon the friezes, somewhere about the year 560, the founder of the church, Theodoric, had been long laid away under the giant monolith which covers his tomb, and his land had passed into the hand of the Byzantine Justinian, in whose city of Constantinople a true art- growth was stirring. There, in the new capital of the world, ideas as new as the city were springing up, and the nation was in that state of agitation and fer- ment at all times productive of great re- sults for good or evil. A double evolution was being accom- plished. From the theological counter- currents, the ideas of bishopsGreek, Latin, and Africanthe evolution of dog- ma; from the art experience of East and Westthe arcades of Spalato and of Syr- ia and the color-feeling of the oriental the evolution of a new architecture. The Greek had become master again in art. For five hundred years he had served the Roman, and now in throwing away his livery of service he threw away, too, all that false ornament which the Roman had borrowed from him, and falsified in the borrowing. The Greek was master once more, and he determined that his architectural ornament should be what it had always been in his time of free- domstructural. Not that he meant to raise temples and propylt3ea; he served a new God, and the new service had new needs, for which the vault of the Roman THE ART OF RAVENNA. 51 was admirably fitting. The arch, there- fore, he kept, and made the ruling prin- ciple. But the heavy cornices, which once under a roof protected nothing from arain which did not fall; the super- imposed orders, with their pediments and colonnettes, stuck unmeaningly up- on structural masonry he rejected un- hesitatingly, substituting surfaces with but slight projections, lightly though richly carved, where the columns were true weight-bearers, and there were no useless members. In color, too, he was an innovator. The ancient Greek, simple in his taste and restricted by comparative poverty, used delicately painted stuccoes upon his buildings. The wealthy Roman, quar- rying from the whole known world, replaced them with costly marbles, which he collected from the ends of the earth. The polished columns and in- crusted slabs would admit of no less lustrous fellowship in decoration; by the side of their splendid depth of tone stucco and painting in fresco looked poor and cheap. It was necessary to find a wall-covering equally rich and powerful in which the figures of saints, angels, and emperors, and the composi- tions from Bible history could be rep- resented. The chemistry of the earth had given the marbles, with their end- less variety. The Greek set to work the chemistry of the laboratory. With antimony, copper, tin, etc., he made slabs of glass almost as various as the marbles; then cutting them into little cubes he produced with them the richest artificial color in the world. Our Greek artist had thus risen supe- rior to the decadent citizens about him; perhaps he had stood in the crowd at the completion of Saint Sophia, and had heard Justinian exclaim, Solomon, I have outdone thee. Indeed, in that great church, with its wide reposeful curves and spaces, its cupola, its simple round arches springing directly from the capitals, its long rows of polished columns, he had given the typical ex- ample of an architecture which was to deeply influence the most solemn church interior in Italythat of Saint Marks of Veniceand to impress the German feeling so strongly as to give its own name of Byzantine to many a Rhenish church for many a century to come. So it is not enough to accredit Justinian with his great code and pandects, or even with the exploits of those prac- tically pious smuggler missionaries, the good old gentlemen who came journey- ing home from the far East with silk- worms packed in their walking-sticks. Besides the lawyer and manufacturer we recognized in him the art patron of the black-browed, close-curled artisan who stood upon the scaffold of this church. The patron of him, and of his many- sided brethren who busied themselves in the provision of art for all men: making costumes, Christian in their swathing of the body from head to foot, Greek in the transparency of their many-wrinkled tissue; making sculpture, which western monks borrowed long after they had become architects and builders for them- selves; providing eight centuries of Madonnas painted by receipt till Giotto tore up the prescription and made one for himself. Ravennas was an age of decadence, the end of the Roman empire; but it was also an age of beginnings of art propaganda, and the Greek artisan was the first of a series of proselytizers extending to Manuel Chrysoloras in the fifteenth century. San Vitale, founded 526, consecrated in 547, and supposed to be a derivation from the golden Tem- ple of Antioch, built by Constantine, is a typically Byzantine building and the antecedent of the church which Charle- magne raised at Aix-la-Chapelle. To the architect as builder it is interesting as the first western domed churchthe dome raised by Greek workmen long after Italy had forgotten the cunning which curved the cupola of the Pantheon and vaulted the baths of Caracalla. To the architect as decorative artist, and to all men, it is beautiful by reason of the wonderful mosaics which cover its choir from arch to pavement. It is hard to say enough of their unique color, which is not silvery and gray, like that of modern schools of painting; not tender like the IJmbrian, or warm and golden like that of the great Venetians, but deep, glowing, and solemn, like the tone of a bell or the thunder of an or- gan. There are the gold of Byzantium, the purple of Ca~sar, the blues and greens of the chariot factions. The walls glisten 52 THE ART OF RAVENNA. with a sheen like that on a peacocks neck, or the wings of a moth butterfly with tawny red like the rind of a pome- granate, the blue of the Persian tur- quoise melting imperceptibly into green, and orange glowing into red or darken- ing into purple. Even the delicate col- umns, coiffed with strange capitals, are more like Indian ivory than marble. To call it all an Aladdins cave would be to suggest the hard glitter of gems; this is rather a soft and solemn splendor. Still the place shines with gold, and may have suggested jewels to the imagina- lions of northern conquerors. The Korseman of Caisars Varangian Guard, as he looked into the royal mausoleum in the old times, when against the deep-toned mosaic Placidiass sarcopha- gus still glittered with its covering of silver plates, may well have thought that here indeed was the dwarfs work, here the dragons treasure, here the gnomes cavern of Scandinavian tradi- tion; and the crusading minnesinger may have echoed in his song of the Venus- berg his memories of the rich vaulting of St. Vitalius. In the discreet and skil- ful use of gold and in the toning of large masses these early mosaics far surpass those of St. Marks at Venice. Among the latter, many of the fifteenth and six- teenth centuries make spots upon their vast gold backgrounds, while even the earlier ones lack the dignity of the ex- amples at Ravenna. Gold predominates there also, but in smaller masses than at Venice, next comes dark blue, then a green, neither warm nor cold, graduated with a yellower green, a very beautiful creamy white, dull red, and a fine pur- plish brown follow in lesser quantities. The curious blunting of all angles by the little cubes, and the consequent lines of reflected light emphasizing the archi- tecture is a not altogether pleasing, but noticeable and essential effect in mosaic work. It is not too much to say that no decorative wall-covering can equal mosaic. In the first place, it is prac- tically imperishable; Michael Angelo affirmed that oil-painting was for women, and only fresco for men; but his master, Ghirlandajo, said well that mosaic was the true painting for eternity. The frescoed people of Lippi and Gozzoli flake and drop from the walls; the pan- els of the cinque-cento crack, and the tempera breaks away; the canvases of Giorgione and Tintoretto blacken and moulder, but Justinian and Theodora, upon the choir of San Vitale, shine as brightly as if Belisarius were still afield, and Varangers yet in harness guarding the palace of Constantinople. If you go up into the galleries you will find the cubes not a whit less fresh than those you buy now at Murano. Again, this glass pasteopaque, semi- opaque, and transparentis equalled in depth and richness by nothing ex- cept the finest stained glass. Lastly, in their bed of cement, made with pow- dered travertine and linseed-oil, the little cubes cannot be laid so that their faces shall be upon a perfectly level plane; the result is the varied tonality pro- duced by a thousand different degrees of reflection, giving an indescribable richness of surface; while the actual gradations are remarkable, masses which from below seem smooth spots of color, proving to be exquisite modulations running through twenty or more shades of green, or blue, or brown.* The main body of San Vitale has been restored in the true spirit of seventeenth-century bungling, and the painted rose gar- lands of the dome, a proof of how far human beings can be unperceiving of the fitting, moulder away in the damp- ness from the water which now and then rises stealthily upon the flooring of the church, as if it would reflect in homage the columns which, with their anchor- carved capitals are spoils from some an- tique temple of Neptunefoul water, however, and befitting the stricken fort- unes of the god. But the choir is splen- did from top to pavement, not an inch un- covered. With the instinct of true artists, who knew that in mosaic work it was all or nothing, and that no ordinary pigment could stand beside it, they have clothed the whole in a glittering jewelled mail, flowing over every jut and angle, the soft * During our last visit to Ravenna we were fortunate enough to climb to the very dome of thellaptistery, where workmen were putting supporting-irons into loosened portions of the mosaic. Seen close at hand, these mo- saics were wonderful in their freedom of treatment. The color was used almost as in a huge sketch painted with a full brush, and was, in the flesh tones, suggestive of the best Pompeian fresco work. In the great pictures of Theodora and Justinian at San Vitale, which we also examined on a scaffolding, and which are a centurylater. the handling is more serr6, the colors deeper and more solemn, but less atmospheric. THE ART OF RAVENNA. 53 color of which is yet an impenetrable ar- mor, hard enough to utterly resist the tooth of time, which has so gnawed the other portions of the church. On either side of the high altar the reflected gold of the vestments and groundwork glows dully like smoulderiug embers; indeed it is the final smouldering of antique art, from which a brand shall be snatched for the rekindling. But this glorious color ends by going to the head, like strong wine, and provoking all sorts of impossible analogies. Outside Ravenna dykes stretch be- tween fat rice-tields, where Sidonius s frogs still croak in the stagnant water; VOL. XIL7 Santa Maria in Portofuori, away out among the swamps, raises its towers, once a light-house to the Roman ships, still a Christopher to the devout peas- ant, and three miles of the old Flamin- ian way bring one to the church of St. Apollinare in Classethe last building of the great age of Ravenna. Less well preserved than its namesake of the city, it nevertheless has splendid mosaics, is big, solemn, utterly lonely, and cold with the damp of twelve hundred win- ters. In the apse and upon the tribune are saints, angels, and the faithful sheep of the church; and in the medallions Vittoria and Teresa. Types of the women of Ravenna, to-day. 54 THE ART OF RAVENNA. above the nave arches are the one hun- dred and thirty archbishops of Ravenna, a ghostly synod, still throning it over dead Christian quarrels, and sole sur- vivors of a busy port whose bits of sculptured marble are found in every cubic yard of the marsh mud. The bishops look down upon huge sar- cophagi, that seem to go processionally about the church, and in the spring upon the poisonous water which in- vades the nave, and with the scummy surface of its gilded pools appears to mock the color of the mosaics. There was none of the warm smell of incense and of candle-smoke in the bare basil- ica, and in spite of the sun that shone still through upper windows to comfort the grim bishops, all seemed so chill and earthy that one was glad to get away as the shadows climbed the yet ruddy tower, and the great, lonely church began to cover its rough brick- work with a cobwebby white robe of fever mist. After Justinian seven centuries of oblivion followed for Ravenna, when the greatest name of the Italian mid- dle ages, that of Dante, illustrated her again. He died here in exile, and the Piazza of San Francesco, where he lies buried, epitomizes iRavennaGreek, medi~eval, and Republican. There, in the pleasant sunlight under the Gothic arches, are the sarcophagi of early Christians, dispossessed now and ten- anted by Ravennese lords of the Middle Ages; opposite is the accredited house of Francesca da iRimini; Lord Byrons window is just beyond; at ones right is the tomb of Dante, and at ones left, loaded with wreaths, a memorial tablet to Mazzinithe Divine Comedy, Childe Harold, and the epop6e of modern Italian independence! Could one ask for richer suggestiveness of art and history? Under the church of San Francesco is a fine crypt, the stairs descend into deep green water, and in the transparent in- tervals of its scum-flaked surface the columns are seen going down into what looks a home for water - snakes and ugly crawling things. Within the church the paper roses of to-day decorate an altar of the fifth cen- tury with its beardless, Plniebus-like Christ, while opposite are splendid sarcophagi. These early Christian sarcophagi of Ravenna are a feature of the city; they stand in the streets and in the churches, and there are many at San Apollinare in Classe with the mo- tives of the mosaics re- peated upon them doves, stags, and lambs all enlaced in a tangle of vine and acanthus. We made several visits to IRavenna, and a pleasant web of modern interest Quel Pretini Those Priestlings. THE APT OF RAVENNA. 55 was interwoven with its antiquities, thanks to Mariano. We had not been fifteen minutes in the city the last time before Mariano constituted himself onr body-servant. He was thirteen years old, an orphan, a student in the life-class, a future sol- dier, and a present lover, telling us that he adored a young lady in the mantua- making business. He knew every sacristan in town, and the pretty girls who could be induced to sit for their portraits; never an old capital or inscription was found in re- pairing some church or house but he heard of it at once and hurried us there. Once in a church he was a good Catho- lic, like every Italian, but not ultra-de- vout. Quci pretini those priest- hugs, he said with a grin, as the pretty curly-haired acolytes filed up the aisle at Saint Francis. Take him altogether, with his republicanism, his dilettanteism, and his infant gallantry, he was young Havenna epitomized. He understood very well the difference between antique, early Christian, and cinque-cento, and talked to us glibly of Francesca da Rim- mi, Justinian, Byron, and Anita Garibaldi all at once. Anita is the heroine of IRa- venna. Flying with her husband in 1849 from the Austrian soldiery, she died of exposure and fa- tigue, and was bur- ied in the pine wood. The cabin where she breathed her last is religiously shown by the people, and they have erected a large monument to her in the city. The ap- pearance of Raven- nese streets is poor, almost miserable. There are a few IRe- naissance palaces, for Venice gave a sec- ond season of prosperity to the town, and it is still about the columns of Saint Mark that the city life centres. One of them was suggestive; a stone bishop stood at the top, below sat a workingman reading his paper, and behind him, plastered upon the shaft, were bill-posters urging all to vote for Cipriani, a candidate who had been in the galleys for his political opinions. The IRavennese, said an Italian ac- quaintance, are un popolo cattivo, which we read to be radical republi- can. We sat often in the large but dingy cafe by these columns, where Ma- riano ordered two-cent cups of coffee, with luxurious anticipativeness and con- fidence in our solvency, repaying us by much harmless gossip and by point- ing out the handsomest woman in the city. This was not an easy selection to make either, for in IRavenna we saw more lovely women than anywhere else in Italy; not occasional beauties as in other towns. They seemed to go about in threes and fours, all handsome, of a noble, round- chinned, straight-nosed type. Often and again when some door of church or bap- tistery was opened to us, a lovely dark head showed itself against a halo of gold mosaic, like a visible Madonna waiting to unlock for us Para- dise itself, instead of the gates of a Raven- nese basilica. With its art and its peo- ple, its dead past and its living mem- ories, one would will- ingly in the record of the Italian cities linger over the gor- geously emblazoned page whiii bears the name of IRavenna lAntica ; but, how- ever hurried, no lover of art should forego at least one visit to its churches, which, like the agate and onyx of the desert, rough-crusted and ugly without, are within all glorious. w DRAWN BY W. L. METCALF. That kind of an accident, naid hePage 69. By Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne. CHAPTER XXIV. business. I was so extraordinarily for- tunate as to find, in an old newspaper, A HAED BARGAIN. a report of the proceedings in Lyall v. The Cardiff illiutual Accommodation~ THE ship which thus appeared before Banking Co. I confess I fail entirely the castaways had long tramped the to understand the nature of the busi- ocean, wandering from one port to an- ness, the judge had remarked, while other as freights offered. She was two Trent was being examined in chief ; a lit- years out from London, by the Cape of tie after, on fuller information They Good Hope, India, and the Archipelago; call it a bank, he had opined, but it and was now bound for San Francisco seems to me to be an unlicensed pawn- in the hope of working homeward round shop; and he wound up with this ap- the Horn. Her captain was one Jacob palling allocution: Mr. Trent, I must Trent. He had retired some five years put you on your guard ; you must be very before to a suburban cottage, a patch of careful, or we shall see you here again. cabbages, a gig, and the conduct of In the inside of a week the captain dis- what he called a Bank. The name am posed of the bank, the cottage, and the pears to have been misleading. Bor- gig and horse; and to sea again in the rowers were accustomed to choose Flying Scud, where he did well and gave works of art and utility in the front high satisfaction to his owners. But shop; loaves of sugar and bolts of the glory clung to him; he was a plain broadcloth were deposited in pledge; sailor-man, he said, but he could never and it was a part of the managers duty long allow you to forget that he had to dash in his gig on Saturday evenings been a banker. from one small retailers to another, and His mate, Elias Goddedael, was a to annex in each the bulk of the weeks huge viking of a man, six feet three and takings. His was thus an active life, of proportionate mass, strong, sober, in- and to a man of the type of a rat, filled dustrious, musical, and sentimentaL He with recondite joys. An unexpected ran continually over into Swedish mel- loss, a law- suit, and the unintelligent odies, chiefly in the minor. He had commentary of the judge upon the paid nine dollars to hear Patti; to hear bench, combined to disgust him of the Nilsson, he had deserted a ship and two Copyright, 1891, by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne. All rights reserved. VOL. XII.8 THE WRECKER.

By Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne. CHAPTER XXIV. business. I was so extraordinarily for- tunate as to find, in an old newspaper, A HAED BARGAIN. a report of the proceedings in Lyall v. The Cardiff illiutual Accommodation~ THE ship which thus appeared before Banking Co. I confess I fail entirely the castaways had long tramped the to understand the nature of the busi- ocean, wandering from one port to an- ness, the judge had remarked, while other as freights offered. She was two Trent was being examined in chief ; a lit- years out from London, by the Cape of tie after, on fuller information They Good Hope, India, and the Archipelago; call it a bank, he had opined, but it and was now bound for San Francisco seems to me to be an unlicensed pawn- in the hope of working homeward round shop; and he wound up with this ap- the Horn. Her captain was one Jacob palling allocution: Mr. Trent, I must Trent. He had retired some five years put you on your guard ; you must be very before to a suburban cottage, a patch of careful, or we shall see you here again. cabbages, a gig, and the conduct of In the inside of a week the captain dis- what he called a Bank. The name am posed of the bank, the cottage, and the pears to have been misleading. Bor- gig and horse; and to sea again in the rowers were accustomed to choose Flying Scud, where he did well and gave works of art and utility in the front high satisfaction to his owners. But shop; loaves of sugar and bolts of the glory clung to him; he was a plain broadcloth were deposited in pledge; sailor-man, he said, but he could never and it was a part of the managers duty long allow you to forget that he had to dash in his gig on Saturday evenings been a banker. from one small retailers to another, and His mate, Elias Goddedael, was a to annex in each the bulk of the weeks huge viking of a man, six feet three and takings. His was thus an active life, of proportionate mass, strong, sober, in- and to a man of the type of a rat, filled dustrious, musical, and sentimentaL He with recondite joys. An unexpected ran continually over into Swedish mel- loss, a law- suit, and the unintelligent odies, chiefly in the minor. He had commentary of the judge upon the paid nine dollars to hear Patti; to hear bench, combined to disgust him of the Nilsson, he had deserted a ship and two Copyright, 1891, by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne. All rights reserved. VOL. XII.8 THE WRECKER. 58 THE WRECKER. months wages; and he was ready at any time to walk ten miles for a good concert or seven to a reasonable play. On board he had three treasures: a can- ary bird, a concertina, and a blinding copy of the works of Shakespeare. He had a gift, peculiarly Scandinavian, of making friends at sight: an elemental innocence commended him; he was without fear, without reproach, and without money or the hope of making it. Holdorsen was second mate, and berthed aft, but messed usually with the hands. Of one more of the crew, some image lives. This was a foremast hand out of the Clyde, of the name of Brown. A small, dark, thickset creature, with dogs eyes, of a disposition incompara- bly mild and harmless, he knocked about seas and cities, the uncomplaining whip- top of one vice. The drink is my trouble, ye see, he said to Carthew, shyly; and its the more shame to me because Im come of very good people at Bowling down the waer. The letter that so much affected Nares, in case the reader should remember it, was ad- dressed to this man Brown. Such was the ship that now carried joy into the bosoms of the castaways. After the fatigue and the bestial emo- tions of their night of play, the ap- proach of salvation shook them from all self-control. Their hands trembled, their eyes shone, they laughed and shouted like children as they cleared their camp; and some one beginningto whistle Marching Through Georgia, the remainder of the packing was con- ducted, amidst a thousand interrup- tions, to these martial strains. But the strong head of Wicks was only partly turned. Boys, he said, easy all! Were going aboard of a ship of which we dont know nothing; weve got a chest of specie, and seeing the weight, we cant turn to and deny it. Now, sup- pose it was some kind of a Bully Hayes business! Its my opinion wed better be on hand with the pistols. Every man of the party but Hemstead had some kind of a revolver; these were accordingly loaded and disposed about the persons of the castaways, and the packing was resumed and finished in the same rapturous spirit as it was begun. The sun was not yet ten de- grees above the eastern sea, but the brig was already close in and hove to, before they had launched the boat and sped, shouting at the oars, toward the passage. It was blowing fresh outside with a strong send of sea. The spray flew in the oarsmens faces. They saw the Union Jack blow abroad from the Fly- ing Scud, the men clustered at the rail, the cook in the galley door, the captain on the quarter-deck with a pith helmet and binoculars. And the whole familiar business, the comfort, company, and safety of a ship, heaving nearer at each stroke, maddened them with joy. Wicks was the first to catch the line and swarm on board, helping hands grabbing him as he came and hauling him across the rail. Captain, sir, I suppose? he said, turning to the hard old man in the pith helmet. Captain Trent, sir, returned the old gentleman. Well, Im Captain Kirkup, and this is the crew of the Sydney schooner Currency Lass, dismasted at sea Janu- ary 28th. Ay, ay, said Trent. Well, youre all right now. Lucky for you I saw your signal. I didnt know I was so near this beastly island, there must be a drift to the southard here; and when I came on deck this morning at eight bells, I thought it was a ship afire. It had been agreed that, while Wicks was to board the ship and do the civil, the rest were to remain in the whale- boat and see the treasure safe. A tackle was passed down to them; to this they made fast the invaluable chest, and gave the word to heave. But the unexpected weight brought the hand at the tackle to a stand; two others ran to tail on and help him; and the thing caught the eye of Trent. Vast heaving! he cried sharply; and then to Wicks: Whats that? I dont ever remember to have seen a chest weigh like that. Its money, said Wicks. Its what? cried Trent. Specie, said Wicks; saved from the wreck. THE WRECKER. 59 Trent looked at him sharply. Here, let go that chest again, Mr. God- dedael, he commanded, shove the boat off, and stream her with a line astern. Ay, ay, sir! from GoddedaeL What the devils wrong? asked Wicks. Nothing, I daresay, returned Trent. But youll allow its a queer thing when a boat turns up in mid-ocean with half a ton of specieand everybody armed, he added, pointing to Wicks pocket. Your boat will lay comfort- ably astern, while you come below and make yourself satisfactory. 0, if thats all I said Wicks. My log and papers are as right as the mail; nothing fishy about us. And he hailed his friends in the boat, bidding them have patience, and turned to follow Captain Trent. This way, Captain Kirkup, said the latter. And dont blame a man for too much caution; no offence intended; and these China rivers shake a fellows nerve. All I want is just to see youre what you say you are; its only my duty, sir, and what you would do your- self in the circumstances. Ive not al- ways been a ship-captain: I was a ban- ker once, and I tell you thats the trade to learn caution in. You have to keep your weather - eye lifting Saturday nights. And with a dry, business-like cordiality, he produced a bottle of gin. The captains pledged each other; the papers were overhauled; the tale of Topelius and the trade was told in ap- preciative ears and cemented their ac- quaintance. Trents suspicions, thus finally disposed of, were succeeded by a fit of profound thought, during which he sat lethargic and stern, looking at and drumming on the table. Anything more? asked Wicks. What sort of a place is it inside? inquired Trent, sudden as though Wicks had touched a spring. Its a good enough lagoona few horses heads, but nothing to mention, answered Wicks. rye a good mind to go in, said Trent. I was new rigged in China; its given very bad, and Im getting frightened for my sticks. We could set it up as good as new in a day. For I daresay your lot would turn to and give us a hand? You see if we dont! said Wicks. So be it then, concluded Trent. A stitch in time saves nine. They returned on deck; Wicks cried the news to the Currency Lasses ; the foretopsail was filled again, and the brig ran into the lagoon lively, the whale- boat dancing in her wake, and came to single anchor off Middle Brooks Island before eight. She was boarded by the castaways, breakfast was served, the baggage slung on board and piled in the waist, and all hands turned to upon the rigging. All day the work contin- ued, the two crews rivalling each other in expense of strength. Dinner was served on deck, the officers messing aft under the slack of the spanker, the men fraternizing forward. Trent appeared in excellent spirits, served out grog to all hands, opened a bottle of Cape wine for the after-table, and obliged his guests with many details of the life of a financier in Cardiff. He had been forty years at sea, had five times suffered shipwreck, was once nine months the prisoner of a pepper rajah, and had seen service under fire in Chinese rivers; and the only thing he cared to talk of, the only thing of which he was vain, or with which he thought it possible to in- terest a stranger, was his career as a money-lender in the slums of a seaport town. The afternoon spell told crnelly on the Currency Lasses. Already exliaust- ed as they were with sleeplessness and excitement, they did the last hours of this violent employment on bare nerves; and when TTent was at last satisfied with the condition of his rigging, ex- pected eagerly the word to put to sea. But the captain seemed in no hurry. He went and walked by himself softly, like a man in thought. Presently he hailed Wicks. Youre a kind of company, aint you, Captain Kirkup? he inquired. Yes, were all on board on lays, was the reply. Well, then, you wont mind if I ask the lot of you down to tea in the cabin? asked Trent. Wicks was amazed, but he naturally ventured no remark; and a little after, 60 THE WRECKER. the six Currency Lasses sat down with Trent and Goddedaci to a spread of marmalade, butter, toast, sardines, tinned tongue, and steaming tea. The food was not very good, and I have no doubt Nares would have reviled it, but it was manna to the castaways. God- dedael waited on them with a kindness far before courtesy, a kindness like that of some old, honest countrywoman in her farm. It was remembered after- wards that Trent took little share in these attentions, but sat much absorbed in thought, and seemed to remember and forget the presence of his guests al- ternately. Presently he addressed the China- man. Clear out! said he, and watched him till he had disappeared in the stair. Now, gentlemen, he went on, I un- derstand youre a joint-stock sort of crew, and thats why Ive had you all down; for theres a point I want made clear. You see what sort of a ship this isa good ship, though I say it, and you see what the rations aregood enough for sailor-men. There was a hurried murmur of ap- proval, but curiosity for what was com- ing next prevented an articulate reply. Well, continued Trent, making bread pills and looking hard at the middle of the table, rm glad of course to be able to give you a passage to Frisco; one sailor-man should help an- other, thats my motto. But when you want a thing in this world, you gener- ally always have to pay for it. He laughed a brief, joyless laugh. I have no idea of losing by my kindness. We have no idea you should, Cap- tain, said Wicks. We are ready to pay anything in reason, added Carthew. At the words, Goddedael, who sat next to him, touched him with his el- bow, and the two mates exchanged a significant look. The character of Cap- tain Trent was given and taken in that silent second. In reason? repeated the captain of the brig. I was waiting for that. Reasons between two people, and theres ouly one here. Im the judge; Im reason. If you want an advance you have to pay for it he hastily cor rected himself If you want a passage in my ship, you have to pay my price, he substituted. Thats business, I be- lieve. I dont want you; you want me. Well, sir, said Carthew, and what is your price? The captain made bread pills. If I were like you, he said, when you got hold of that merchant in the Gilberts, I might surprise you. You had your chance then; seems to me its mine now. Turn abouts fair play. What kind of mercy did you have on that Gil- bert merchant? he cried, with a sud- den stridency. Not that I blame you. Alls fair in love and business, and he laughed again, a little frosty giggle. Well, sir? said Carthew, gravely. Well, this ships mine, I think? he asked sharply. Well, Im that way of thinking me- self, observed Mac. I say its mine, sir! reiterated Trent, like a man trying to be angry. And I tell you all, if I was a driver like what you are, I would take the lot. But theres two thousand pounds there that dont belong to you, and Im an honest man. Give me the two thousand thats yours, and Ill give you a passage to the coast, and land every man-jack of you in Frisco with fifteen pounds in his pocket, and the captain here with twenty-five. Goddedael laid down his head on the table like a man ashamed. Youre joking, cried Wicks, purple in the face. Am I? said Trent. Please your- selves. Youre under no compulsion. This ships mine, but theres that Brooks Island dont belong to me, and you can lay there till you die for what I care. Its more than your blooming brigs worth! cried Wicks. Its my price anyway, returned Trent. And do you mean to say you would land us there to starve? cried Tommy. Captain Trent laughed the third time. Starve? I defy you to, said he. Ill sell you all the provisions you want at a fair profit. I beg your pardon, sir, said Mac, but my case is by itself. Im working I THE WRECKEI?. 61 me passage; I got no share in that two thousand pounds nor nothing in my pockut; and Ill be glad to know what you have to say to me? I aint a hard man, said Trent. That shall make no difference. Ill take you with the rest, only of course you get no fifteen pound. The impudence was so extreme and startling, that all breathed deep, and Goddedael raised up his face and looked his superior sternly in the eye. But Mac was more articulate. And youre what ye call a British sayman, I suppose? the sorrow in your guts! he cried. One more such word, and I clap you in irons! said Trent, rising glee- fully at the face of opposition. And where would I be while you were doin ut? asked Mac. After you and your rigging too! Ye ould puggy, ye havent the civility of a bug, and Ill learn ye some. His voice did not even rise as he uttered the threat; no man present, Trent least of all, expected that which followed. The Irishmans hand rose suddenly from below the table, an open clasp-knife balanced on the palm; there was a movement swift as conjuring; Trent started half to his feet, turning a little as he rose so as to escape the table, and the movement was his bane. The missile strnck him in the jugular; he fell forward, and his blood flowed among the dishes on the cloth. The suddenness of the attack and the catastrophe, the instant change from peace to war and from life to death, held all men spellbound. Yet a moment they sat about the table staring open- mouthed upon the prostrate captain and the flowing blood. The next, Godde- dad had leaped to his feet, caught up the stool on which he had been sitting, and swung it high in air, a man transfigured, roaring (as he stood) so that mens ears were stunned with it. There was no thought of battle in the A = Currency Lasses; none drew his wea- pon; all huddled helplessly from before the face of the baresark Scandinavian. His first blow sent Mac to ground with a broken arm. His second dashed out the brains of Hemstead. He turned from one to another, menacing and trumpeting like a wounded elephant, ex- ulting in his rage. But there was no counsel, no light of reason, in that ecs- tasy of battle; and he shied from the pursuit of victory to hail fresh blows upon the supine Hemstead, so that the stool was shattered and the cabin rang with their violence. The sight of that post-mortem cruelty recalled Carthew to the life of instinct, and his revolver was in hand and he had aimed and fired before he knew. The ear - bursting sound of the report was accompanied by a yell of pain ; the colossus paused, swayed, tottered, and fell headlong on the body of his victim. In the instant silence that succeeded, the sound of feet pounding on the deck and in the companion leaped into hear- ing; and a face, that of the sailor Hol- dorsen, appeared below the bulkheads in the cabin doorway. Carthew shat- tered it with a second shot, for he was a marksman. Pistols! he cried, and charged at the companion, Wicks at his heels, Tommy and Amalu following. They trod the body of Holdorsen underfoot, and flew up-stairs and forth into the dusky blaze of a sunset red as blood. The numbers were still equal, but the Flying Scuds dreamed not of defence, and fled with one accord for the fore- castle scuttle. Brown was first in flight; he disappeared below unscathed; the Chinaman followed head-foremost with a ball in his side; and the others shinned into the rigging. A fierce composure settled upon Wicks and Carthew, their fighting second wind. They posted Tommy at the fore and Amalu at the main to guard the masts and shrouds, and going themselves into the waist, poured out a box of cartridges on deck and filled the chambers. The poor devils aloft bleat- ed aloud for mercy. But the hour of any mercy was gone by; the cup was brewed and must be drunken to the dregs; since so many had fallen, all must fall. The light was bad, the cheap revolvers fouled and carried wild, the screaming wretches were swift to flatten themselves against the masts and yards or find a momentary refuge in the hang- ing sails. The fell business took long, but it was done at last. Hardy the 62 THE WRECKER. Londoner was shot on the foreroyal yard, and hung horribly suspended in the brails. Wallen, the other, had his jaw broken on the maintop-gallant cross- trees, and exposed himself, shrieking, till a second shot dropped him on the deck. This had been bad enough, but worse remained behind. There was still Brown in the forepeak. Tommy, with a sudden clamor of weeping, begged for his life. One man cant hurt us, he sobbed. We cant go on with this. I spoke to him at dinner. Hes an awful decent little cad. It cant be done. Nobody can go into that place and mur- der him. Its too damned wicked. The sound of his supplications was perhaps audible to the unfortunate be- low. One left, and we all hang, said Wicks. Brown must go the same road. The big man was deadly white and trembled like an aspen; and he had no sooner finished speaking than he went to the ships side and vomited. We can never do it if we wait, said Carthew. Now or never, and he marched toward the scuttle. No, no, no! wailed Tommy, clutch- ing at his jacket. But Carthew flung him off, and stepped down the ladder, his heart ris- ing with disgust and shame. The Chinaman lay on the floor, still groan- ing; the place was pitch dark. Brown ! cried Carthew, Brown, where are you? His heart smote him for the treacher- ous apostrophe, but no answer came. He groped in the bunks; they were all empty. Then he moved toward the forepeak, which was hampered with coils of rope and spare chandlery in generaL Brown! he said again. Here, sir, answered a shaking voice; and the poor invisible caitiff called on him by name, and poured forth out of the darkness an endless, garrulous ap- peal for mercy. A sense of danger, of daring, had alone nerved Carthew to enter the forecastle; and here was the enemy crying and pleading like a fright- ened child. His obsequious Here, sir, his horrid fluency of obtestation, made the murder tenfold more revolting. Twice Carthew raised the pistol, once he pressed the trigger (or thought he did) with all his might, but no explo- sion followed; and with that the lees of his courage ran quite out, and he turned and fled from before his victim. Wicks sat on the fore-hatch, raised the face of a man of seventy, and looked a wordless question. Carthew shook his head. With such composure as a man displays marching toward the gallows, Wicks arose, walked to the scuttle, and went down. Brown thought it was Car- thew returning, and discovered himself, half crawling from his shelter, with another incoherent burst of pleading. Wicks emptied his revolver at the voice, which broke into mouse-like whimper- ings and groans. Silence succeeded, and the murderer ran on deck like one possessed. The other three were now all gathered on the fore-hatch, and Wicks took his place beside them without question asked or answered. They sat close, like children in the dark, and shook each other with their shaking. The dusk con- tinued to fall; and there was no sound but the beating of the surf and the oc- casional hiccup of a sob from Tommy Hadden. God, if there was another ship! cried Carthew of a sudden. Wicks started and looked aloft with the trick of all seamen, and shuddered as he saw the hanging figure on the royal yard. If I went aloft, Id fall, he said sim- ply. Im done up. It was Amalu who volunteered, climbed to the very truck, swept the fading horizon, and announced nothing within sight. No odds, said Wicks. We cant sleep. . Sleep! echoed Carthew; and it seemed as if the whole of Shakespeares Macbeth thundered at the gallop through his mind. Well, then, we cant sit and chitter here, said Wicks, till weve cleaned ship; and I cant turn to till Ive had gin, and the gins in the cabin, and whos to fetch it 2 I will, said Carthew, if any one has matches. Amalu passed him a box, and he went w THE WRECKER. 63 aft and down the companion and into the cabin, stumbling upon bodies. Then he struck a match, and his looks fell upon two living eyes. Well? asked Mac, for it was he who still survived in that shambles of a cabin. Its done; theyre all dead, an- swered Carthew. Christ! said the Irishman, and fainted. The gin was found by the elbow of the dead captain; it was brought on deck, and all hands had a dram, and attacked their farther task. The night was come, the moon would not be up for hours; a lamp was set on the main- hatch to light Amain as he washed down decks; and the galley lantern was taken to guide the others in their grave- yard business. Holdorsen, Hemstead, Trent, and Goddedael were first dis- posed of, the last still breathing as he went over the side; Wallen followed; and then Wicks, steadied by the gin, went aloft with a boathook and succeed- ed in dislodging Hardy. The China- man was their last task; he seemed to be light-headed, ta]]~ed aloud in his un- known language as they brought him up, and it was only with the splash of his sinking body that the gibberish ceased. Brown, by common consent, was left alone. Flesh and blood could go no farther. All this time they had been drinking undiluted gin like water, three bottles stood broached in different quarters; and none passed without a gulp. Tom- my collapsed against the mainmast; Wicks fell on his face on the poop lad- der and moved no more; Amalu had vanished unobserved. Carthew was the last afoot; he stood swaying at the break of the poop, and the lantern, which he still carried, swung with his movement. His head hummed; it swarmed with broken thoughts; mem- ory of that days abominations flared up and died down within him, like the light of a lamp in a strong draught. And then he had a drunkards inspiration. There must be no more of this, he thought, and stumbled once more below. The absence of Holdorsens body brought him to a stand. He stood and stared at the empty floor, and then re membered and smiled. From the cap- tains room he took the open case with one dozen and three bottles of gin, put the lantern inside, and walked preca- riously forth. Mac was once more con- scious; his eyes haggard, his face drawn with pain and flushed with fever; and Carthew remembered he had never been seen to, had lain there helpless, and was so to lie all night, injured, perhaps dy- ing. But it was now too late; reason had now fled from that silent ship. If Carthew could get on deck again, it was as much as he could hope; and casting on the unfortunate a glance of pity, the tragic drunkard shouldered his way up the companion, dropped the case over- board, and fell into the scuppers help- less. CHAPTER XXV. A BAD BARGAIN. WITH the first color in the east, Car- thew awoke and sat up. A while he gazed at the scroll of the morning bank and the spars and hanging canvas of the brig, like a man who wakes in a strange bed, with a childs simplicity of won- der. He wondered above all what ailed him, what he had lost, what disfavor had been done him, which he knew he should resent, yet had forgotten. And then, like a river bursting through a dam, the truth rolled on him its instantaneous volume; his memory teemed with speech and pictures that he should never again forget; and he sprang to his feet, stood a moment hand to brow, and began to walk violently to and fro by the com- panion. As he walked he wrung his hands. GodGodGod, he kept saying, with no thought of prayer, ut- tering a mere voice of agony. The time may have been long or short; it was perhaps minutes, perhaps only seconds, when he awoke to find him- self observed, and saw the captain sit- ting up and watching him over the break of the poop, a strange blindness as of fever in his eyes, a haggard knot of cor- rugations on his brow. Cain saw himself in a mirror. For a flash they looked upon each other, and then glanced guil- tily aside; and Carthew fled from the eye of his accomplice, and stood lean- ing on the taifrail. 64 THE WRECKER. An hour went by, while the day came brighter, and the sun rose and drank up the clouds: an hour of silence in the ship, an hour of agony beyond narration for the sufferers. Browns gabbling prayers, the cries of the sailors in the rigging, strains of the dead Hemsteads minstrelsy, ran together in Carthews mind, with sickening iteration. He neither acquitted nor condemned him- self: he did not think, he suffered. In the bright water into which he stared, the pictures changed and were repeated: the beresark rage of Goddedael; the blood-red light of the sunset into which they had run forth; the face of the bab- bling Chinaman as they cast him over; the face of the captain, seen a moment since, as he awoke from drunkenness into remorse. And time passed, and the sun swam higher, and his torment was not abated. Then were fulfilled many sayings, and the weakest of these condemned brought relief and healing to the others. Amalu the drudge awoke (like the rest) to sick- ness of body and distress of mind; but the habit of obedience ruled in that simple spirit, and appalled to be so late, he went direct into the galley, kindled the fire, and began to get breakfast. At the rattle of dishes, the snapping of the fire, and the thin smoke that went up straight into the air, the spell was lift- ed. The condemned felt once more the good dry land of habit under foot; they touched again the familiar guide- ropes of sanity; they were restored to a sense of the blessed revolution and return of all things earthly. The cap- tain drew a bucket of water and began to bathe. Tommy sat up, watched him awhile, and slowly followed his exam- ple; and Carthew, remembering his last thoughts of the night before, hastened to the cabin. Mac was awake; perhaps had not slept. Over his head Goddedaels ca- nary twittered shrilly from its cage. How are you? asked Carthew. Me arrums broke, returned Mac; but I can stand that. Its this place I cant abide. I was coming on deck anyway. Stay where you are, though, said Carthew. Its deadly hot above, and theres no wind. Ill wash out this and he paused, seeking a word and not finding one for the grisly foulness of the cabin. Faith, Ill be obliged to ye, then, replied the Irishman. He spoke. mild and meek, like a sick child with its mother. There was now no violence in the violent man; and as Carthew fetched a bucket and swab and the stew- ards sponge, and began to cleanse the field of battle, he alternately watched him or shut his eyes and sighed like a man near fainting. I have to ask all your pardons, he began again pres- ently, and the more shame to me as I got ye into trouble and couldnt do nothing when it came. Ye saved me life, sir; yere a dane shot. For Gods sake, dont talk of it! cried Carthew. It cant be talked of; you dont know what it was. It was nothing down here; they fought. On deckO, my God! And Carthew, with the bloody sponge pressed to his face, struggled a moment with hysteria. Kape cool, Mr. Cartew. Its done now, said Mac; and ye may bless God yere not in pain and helpless in the bargain. There was no more said by one or other, and the cabin was pretty well cleansed when a stroke on the ships bell summoned Carthew to breakfast. Tommy had been busy in the mean- while; he had hauled the whaleboat close aboard, and already lowered into it a small keg of beef that he found ready broached beside the galley door; it was plain he had but the one idea to escape. We have a shipful of stores to draw upon, he said. Well, what are we staying for? Lets get off at once for Hawaii. Ive begun preparing already. Mac has his arm broken, observed Carthew; how would he stand the voyage? A broken arm? repeated the cap- tain. That all? Ill set it after break- fast. I thought he was dead, like the rest. That madman hit out like and there, at the evocation of the battle, his voice ceased and the talk died with it. After breakfast the three white men went down into the cabin. Ive come to set your arm, said the captain. w THE WRECKER. 65 I beg your pardon, Captain, re- plied Mac; but the firrst thing ye ~ got to do is to get this ship to sea. Well talk of me arrum after that. 0, theres no such blooming hur- ry, returned Wicks. When the next ship sails in yell tell me stories! retorted Mac. But theres nothing so unlikely in the world, objected Carthew. Dont be deceivin yourself, said Mac. If ye want a ship, divil a onell look near ye in six year; but if ye dont, ye may take my word for ut, well have a squadron layin here. Thats what I say, cried Tommy; thats what I call sense! Lets stock that whaleboat and be off. And what will Captain Wicks be thinking of the whaleboat? asked the Irishman. I dont think of it at ~ said Wicks. Weve a smart-looking brig under foot; thats all the whaleboat I want. Excuse me ! cried Tommy. Thats childish talk. Youve got a brig to be sure, and what use is she? You darent go anywhere in her. What port are you to sail for? For the port of Davy Joness Lock- er, my son, replied the captain. ~ This brigs going to be lost at sea. Ill tell you where, too, and thats about forty miles to windward of Kauai. Were going to stay by her till shes down; and once the masts are under, shes the Flying Scud no more, and we never heard of such a brig; and its the crew of the schooner Currency Lass that comes ashore in the boat, and takes the first chance to Sydney. Captain, dear, thats the first Chris- tian word Ive heard of ut ! cried Mac. And now, just let me arrum be, jewel, and get the brig outside. Im as anxious as yourself, Mac, returned Wicks; but theres not wind enough to swear by. So lets see your arm, and no more talk. The arm was set and splinted; the body of Brown fetched from the fore- peak, where it lay stiff and cold, and committed to the waters of the lagoon; and the washing of the cabin rudely finished. All these were done crc mid- day; and it was past three when the first cats-paw ruffled the lagoon, and the wind came in a dry squall, which presently sobered to a steady breeze. The interval was passed by all in fe- verish impatience, and by one of the party in secret and extreme concern of mind. Captain Wicks was a fore-and- aft sailor; he could take a schooner through a Scotch reel, felt her mouth and divined her temper like a rider with a horse; she, on her side, recog- nizing her master and following his wishes like a dog. But by a not very unusual train of circumstance, the mans dexterity was partial and circum- scribed. On a schooners deck he was Rembrandt or (at the least) Mr. Whist- 1cr; on board a brig he was Pierre Gras- son. Again and again in the course of the morning he had reasoned out his policy and rehearsed his orders; and ever with the same depression and weariness. It was guesswork; it was chance; the ship might behave as he expected, and might not; suppose she gybed, he stood there helpless, a rider without bit or spur, beggared of all the proved resources of experience. Had not all hands been so weary, had he not feared to communicate his own misgivings, he could have towed her out. But these reasons sufficed, and the most he could do was to take all possible precautions. Accordingly he had Carthew aft, explained what was to be done with anxious patience, and visited, along with him, the various sheets and braces. I hope Ill remember, said Car- thew. It seems awfully muddled. Its the rottenest kind of rig, the captain admitted: all blooming pock- et handkerchiefs! And not one sailor- man on deck! Ah, if shed only bccn a brigantine, now! But its lucky the passage is so plain; theres no mamien- vring to mention. We get under way before the wind, and run right so till we begin to get foul of the island; then we haul our wind and lie as near southeast as may be till were on that line; bout ship there and stand straight out on the port tack. Catch the idea? Yes, I see the idea, replied Car- thew, rather dismally, and the two in- competents studied for a long time in 66 THE WRECKER. silence the complicated gear above their heads. But the time came when these re- hearsals must be put in practice. The sails were lowered, and all hands heaved the anchor short. The whale- boat was then cast adrift, the upper topsails and the spanker set, the yards braced up, and the spanker - sheet hauled out to starboard. Heave away on your anchor, Mr. Carthew. Anchors gone, sir. Set jibs. It was done, and the brig still hung enchanted. Wicks, his head full of a schooners mainsail, turned his mind to the spanker. First he hauled in the sheet, and then he hauled it out, with no result. Brail the damned thing up! he bawled at last, with a red face. There aint no sense in it. It was the last stroke of bewilder- ment for the poor captain, that he had no sooner brailed up the spanker than the schooner came before the wind. The laws of nature seemed to him to be suspended; he was like a man in a world of pantomime tricks; the cause of any result, and the probable result of any action, equally concealed from him. He was the more careful not to shake the nerve of his amateur assist- ants. He stood there with a face like a torch; but he gave his orders with aplomb; and indeed, now the ship was under way, supposed his difficulties were done. The lower topsails and courses were then set, and the brig began to walk the water like a thing of life, her fore- foot discoursing music, the birds flying and crying over her spars. Bit by bit the passage began to open and the blue sea to show between the flanking breakers on the reef; bit by bit, on the starboard bow, the low land of the islet began to heave closer aboard. The yards were braced up, the spanker- sheet hauled aft again; the brig was close-hauled, lay down to her work like a thing in earnest, and had soon drawn near to the point of advantage, where she might stay and lie out of the la- goon in a single tack. Wicks took the wheel himself, smell- ing and swelling with success. He kept the brig full to give her heels, and began to bark his orders: Ready about. Helms a-lee. Tacks and sheets. Mainsail, hauL And then the fatal words: Thatll do your mainsail; jump forrard and haul round your foreyards. To stay a ship is an affair of knowl- edge and swift sight; and a man used to the succinct evolutions of a schooner will always tend to be too hasty with a brig. It was so now. The order came too soon; the topsails set flat aback; the ship was in irons. Even yet, had the helm been reversed, they might have saved her. But to think of a stern-board at all, far more to think of profiting by one, were foreign to the schooner-sailors mind. Wicks made haste instead to wear ship, a manceuvre for which room was wanting, and the Flying Scud took ground on a bank of sand and coral about twenty minutes before five. Wicks was no hand with a square- rigger, and he had shown it. But he was a sailor and a born captain of men for all homely purposes, where intellect is not required and an eye in a mans head and a heart under his jacket will suffice. Before the others had time to understand the misfortune, he was bawling fresh orders, and had the sails dewed up, and took soundings round the ship. She lies lovely, he remarked, and ordered out a boat with the starboard anchor. Here! steady! cried Tommy. You aint going to turn us to, to warp her off? I am though, returned Wicks. I wont set a hand to such tomfool- ery for one, replied Tommy. Im dead beat. He went and sat down doggedly on the main hatch. You got us on; get us off again, he added. Carthew and Wicks turned to each other. Perhaps you dont know how tired we are, said Carthew. The tide8 flowing! cried the cap- tain. You wouldnt have me miss a rising tide? 0 gammon! theres tides to-mor- row! retorted Tommy. THE WRECKER. 67 And Ill tell you what, added Car- thew, the breeze is failing fast, and the sun will soon be down. We may get into all kinds of fresh mess in the dark and with nothing but light airs. I dont deny it, answered Wicks, and stood awhile as if in thought. But what I cant make out, he began again, with agitation, what I cant make out is what youre made of! To stay in this place is beyond me. Theres the bloody sun going down and to stay here is beyond me! The others looked upon him with horrified surprise. This fall of their chief pillarthis irrational passion in the practical man, suddenly barred out of his true sphere, the sphere of action shocked and daunted them. But it gave to another and unseen hearer the chance for which he had been waiting. Mac, on the striking of the brig, had crawled up the companion, and he now showed himself and spoke up. Captain Wicks, he said, its me that brought this trouble on the lot of ye. Im sorry for ut, I ask all your pardons, and if theres any one can say I forgive ye, itll make my soul the lighter. Wicks stared upon the man in amaze; then his self-control returned to him. Were all in glass houses here, he said; we aint going to turn to and throw stones. I forgive you, sure enough; and much good may it do you! The others spoke to the same pur- pose. I thank ye for ut, and tis done like gentlemen, said Mac. But theres another thing I have upon my mind. I hope were all Prodestans here? It appeared they were; it seemed a small thing for the Protestant religion to rejoice in! Well, and thats as it should be, continued Mac. And why shouldnt we say the Lords Prayer? There cant be no hurt in ut. He had the same quiet, pleading, childlike way with him as in the morn- ing; and the others accepted his pro- posal, and knelt down without a word. Knale if ye like! Ill stand. And he covered his eyes. So the prayer was said to the accom- paniment of the surf and seabirds, and all rose refreshed and felt lightened of a load. Up to then they had cher- ished their guilty memories in private, or only referred to them in the heat of a moment and fallen immediately silent. Now they had faced their remorse in company, and the worst seemed over. Nor was it only that. But the petition Forgive us our trespasses, falling in so apposite after they had themselves forgiven the immediate author of their miseries, sounded like an absolution. Tea was taken on deck in the time of the sunset, and not long after the five castawayscastaways once morelay down to sleep. Day dawned windless and hot. Their slumbers had been too profound to be refreshing, and they woke listless, and sat up, and stared about them with dull eyes. Only Wicks, smelling a hard days work ahead, was more alert. He went first to the well, sounded it once and then a second time, and stood awhile with a grim look, so that all could see he was dissatisfied. Then he shook himself, stripped to the bufl clambered on the rail, drew himself up and raised his arms to plunge. The dive was never taken. He stood in- stead transfixed, his eyes on the hori- zon. Hand up that glass, he said. In a trice they were all swarming aloft, the nude captain leading with the glass. On the northern horizon was a fin- ger of gray smoke, straight in the wind- less air like a point of admiration. What do you make it? they asked of Wicks. Shes truck down, he replied; no telling yet. By the way the smoke builds, she must be heading right here. What can she be? She might be a China mail, re- turned Wicks, and she might be a blooming man-of-war come to look for castaways. Here! This aint the time to stand staring. On deck, boys! He was the first on deck, as he had been the first aloft, hauled down the ensign, bent it again to the signal-hal- yards, and ran it up, union down. 68 THE WRECKER. Now hear me, he said, jumping into his trousers, and everything I say you grip on to. If thats a man- of-war, shell be in a tearing hurry; all these ships are what dont do nothing and have their expenses paid. Thats our chance; for well go with them, and they wont take the time to look twice or to ask a question. Im Cap- tain Trent; Carthew, youre Goddedael; Tommy, youre Hardy; Macs Brown; AmaluHold hard! we cant make a Chinaman of him! Ah Wing must have deserted; Amalu stowed away; and I turned him to as cook, and was never at the bother to sign him. Catch the idea? Say your names. And that pale company recited their lesson earnestly. What were the names of the other two? he asked. Him Carthew shot in the companion, and the one I caught in the jaw on the maintop-gallant? Holdorsen and Wallen, said some one. Well, theyre drowned, continued Wicks; drowned alongside trying to lower a boat. We had a bit of a squall last night: thats how we got ashore. He ran and squinted at the compass. Squall out of nor-nor-west-half-west; blew hard; every one in a mess, falls jammed, and Holdorsen and Wallen spilt overboard. See? Clear your blooming heads! He was in his jacket now, and spoke with a feverish impatience and contention that rang like anger. But is it safe? asked Tommy. Safe? bellowed the captain. Were standing on the drop, you moon-calf! If that ships bound for China (which she dont look to be), were lost as soon as we arrive; if shes bound the other way, she comes from China, dont she? Well, if theres a man on board of her that ever clapped eyes on Trent or any blooming hand out of this brig, well all be in irons in two hours. Safe! no, it aint safe; its a beggarly last chance to shave the gallows, and thats what it is. At this convincing picture fear took hold on all. Hadnt we a hundred times better stay by the brig? cried Carthew. They would give us a hand to float her off. Youll make me waste this holy day in chattering! cried Wicks. Look here, when I sounded the well this morning there was two foot of water there against eight inches last night. Whats wrong? I dont know; might be nothing; might be the worst kind of smash. And then, there we are in for a thousand miles in an open boat, if thats your taste ! But it may be nothing, and anyway their carpenters are bound to help us repair her, argued Carthew. Moses Murphy! cried the captain. How did she strike? Bows on, I be- lieve. And shes down by the head now. If any carpenter comes tinker- ing here, wherell he go first? Down in the forepeak, I suppose! And then, how about all that blood among the chandlery? You would think you were a lot of members of Parliament dis- cussing Plimsoll; and youre just a pack of murderers with the halter round your neck. Any other ass got any time to waste? No? thank God for that! Now, all hands! Im going below, and I leave you here on deck. You get the boat cover off that boat; then you turn to and open that specie chest. There are five of us; get five chests, and divide the specie equal among the fiveput it at the bottom and go at it like tigers. Get blankets, or canvas, or clothes, so it wont rattle. Itll make five pretty heavy chests, but we cant help that. You, Carthew dash me !You, Mr. Goddedael, come below. Weve our share before us. And he cast another glance at the smoke, and hurried below with Carthew at his heels. The logs were found in the main cabin behind the canary cage; two of them, one kept by Trent, one by God- dedaeL Wicks looked first at one, then at the other, and his lip stuck out. Can you forge hand of write? he asked. No, said Carthew. Theres luck for youno more can I ! cried the captain. Hullo! heres worse yet, heres this Goddedael up to date; he must have filled it in before supper. See for yourself: Smoke ob- served. Captain Kirkup and five THE WRECKER. 69 hands of the schooner Currency Lass. ~ Ah! this is better, he added, turning to the other log. The old man aint written anything for a clear fortnight. Well dispose of your log altogether, Mr. Goddedael, and stick to the old mansto mine, I mean; only I aint going to write it up, for reasons of my own. You are. Youre going to sit down right here and fill it in the way I tell you. How to explain the loss of mine? asked Carthew. You never kept one, replied the captain. Gross neglect of duty. Youll catch it. And the change of writing? re- sumed Carthew. You began; why do you stop and why do I come in? And youll have to sign anyway. 0! Ive met with an accident and cant write, replied Wicks. An accident? repeated Carthew. It dont sound naturaL What kind of an accident? Wicks spread his hand face-up on the table, and drove a knife through his palm. That kind of an accident, said he. Theres a way to draw to windward of most difficulties, if youve a head on your shoulders. He began to bind up his hand with a handkerchief, glancing the while over Goddedaels log. Hul- lo! he said, Thisll never do for us this is an impossible kind of a yarn. Here, to begin with, is this Captain Trent trying some fancy course, least- ways hes a thousand miles to southard of the great circle. And here, it seems, he was close up with this island on the sixth, sails all these days and is close up with it again by daylight on the eleventh. Goddedael said they had the deuces luck, said Carthew. Well, it dont look like real life thats all I can say, returned Wicks. Its the way it was, though, argued Carthew. So it is; and what the better are we W for that, if it dont look so? cried the captain, sounding unwonted depths of art criticism. Here! try and see if you can tie this bandage; Im bleeding like a pig. As Carthew sought to adjust the hand- kerchief, his patient seemed sunk in a deep muse, his eye veiled, his mouth partly open. The job was yet scarce done when he sprang to his feet. I have it, he broke out, and ran on deck. Here, boys! he cried, we didnt come here on the eleventh; we came in here on the evening of the sixth, and lay here ever since becalmed. As soon as youve done with these chests, he added, you can turn to and roll out beef and water breakers; itll look more shipshapelike as if we were getting ready for the boat voyage. And he was back again in a moment, cooking the new log. Goddedaels was then carefully destroyed, and a hunt be- gan for the ships papers. Of all the ago- nies of that breathless morning, this was perhaps the most poignant. Here and there the two men searched, cursing, cannoning together, streaming with heat, freezing with terror. News was bawled down to them that the ship was indeed a man-of-war, that she was close up, that she was lowering a boat; and still they sought in vain. By what ac- cident they missed the iron box with the money and accounts, is hard to fancy; but they did. And the vital documents were found at last in the pocket of Trents shore-going coat, where he had left them when last he came on board. As he fingered them, Wicks smiled for the first time that morning. None too soon, said he. And now for it! Take these for me; Im afraid Ill get them mixed if I keep both. What are they? Carthew asked. Theyre the Kirkup and Currency Lass papers, he replied. Pray God we need em again! Boats inside the lagoon, sir, hailed down Mac, who sat by the skylight do- ing sentry while the others worked. Time we were on deck, then, Mr. Goddedael, said Wicks. As they turned to leave the cabin, the canary burst into piercing song. My God! cried Carthew, witn a gulp, we cant leave that wretched bird to starve. It was poor Godde- daels. Bring the blooming thing along! cried the captain. And they went on deck. 70 THE IVRECKE1?. An ugly brute of a modern man-of- war lay just without the reef, now quite inert, now giving a flap or two with her propeller. Nearer hand, and just with- in, a big white boat came skimming to the stroke of many oars, her ensign blowing at the stern. One word more, said Wicks, after he had taken in the scene. Mac, youve been in China ports? All right; then you can speak for yourself. The rest of you I kept on board all the time we were in Hong-Kong, hoping you would de- sert; but you fooled me and stuck to the brig. Thatll make your lying come easier. The boat was now close at hand; a boy in the stern-sheets was the only of- ficer, and a poor one plainly, for the men were talking as they pulled. Thank God, theyve only sent a kind of a middy! ejaculated Wicks. Here you, Hardy, stand forard! Ill have no deck hands on my quarter-deck, he cried, and the reproof braced the whole crew like a cold douche. The boat came alongside with perfect neatness, and the boy officer stepped on board, where he was respectfully greeted by Wicks. You the master of this ship ? he asked. Yes, sir, said Wicks. Trent is my name, and this is the Flying Scud of HulL You seem to have got into a mess,~~ said the officer. If youll step aft with me here, Ill tell you all there is of it, said Wicks. Why, man, youre shaking! cried the officer. So would you, perhaps, if you had been in the same berth, returned Wicks; and he told the whole story of the rotten water, the long calm, the squall, the seamen drowned; glibly and hotly; talking, with his head in the lions mouth, like one pleading in the dock. I heard the same tale from the same narrator in the saloon in San Francisco; and even then his bearing filled me with suspicion. But the offi- cer was no observer. Well, the captain is in no end of a hurry, said he; but I was instructed to give you all the assistance in my power, and signal back for another boat if more hands were necessary. What can I do for you? 0, we wont keep you no time, replied Wicks, cheerily. Were all ready, bless youmens chests, chrono- meter, papers and alL iDo you mean to leave her? cried the officer. She seems to me to lie nicely; cant we get your ship off? So we could, and no mistake; but how were to keep her afloats another question. Her bows is stove in, re- plied Wicks. The officer colored to the eyes. He was incompetent and knew he was; thought he was already detected, and feared to expose himself again. There was nothing further from his mind than that the captain should deceive him; if the captain was pleased, why, so was he. All right, he said. Tell your men to get their chests aboard. Mr. Goddedael, turn the hands to to get the chests aboard, said Wicks. The four Currency Lasses had waited the while on tenter-hooks. This wel- come news broke upon them like the sun at midnight; and Hadden burst into a storm of tears, sobbing aloud as he heaved upon the tackle. But the work went none the less briskly for- ward; chests, men, and bundles were got over the side with alacrity; the boat was shoved off; it moved out of the long shadow of the Flying Scud, and its bows were pointed at the pas- sage. So much, then, was accomplished. The sham wreck had passed muster; they were clear of her, they were safe away; and the water widened between them and her damning evidences. On the other hand, they were drawing nearer to the ship of war, which might very well prove to be their prison and a hangmans cart to bear them to the gallowsof which they had not yet learned either whence she came or whither she was bound; and the doubt weighed upon their hearts like moun- tains. It was Wicks who did the talking. The sound was small in Carthews ears, like the voices of men miles away, but the meaning of each word struck home to him like a bullet. What did you say your ship was? inquired Wicks. THE WRECKER. 71 Tempest, dont you know? re- turned the officer. Dont you know? What could that mean? Perhaps nothing: perhaps that the ships had met already. Wicks took his courage in both hands. Where is she bound? he asked. 0, were just looking in at all these miserable islands here, said the officer. Then we bear up for San Francisco. 0, yes, youre from China ways, like us? pursued Wicks. Hong-Kong, said the officer, and spat over the side. Hong-Kong. Then the game was up; as soon as they set foot on board they would be seized; the wreck would be examined, the blood found, the lagoon perhaps dredged, and the bodies of the dead would reappear to testify. An im- pulse almost incontrollable bade Car- thew rise from the thwart, shriek out aloud, and leap overboard; it seemed so vain a thing to dissemble longer, to dally with the inevitable, to spin out some hundred seconds more of agonized suspense, with shame and death thus visibly approaching. But the indomi- table Wicks persevered. His face was like a skull, his voice scarce recogniz- able; the dullest of men and officers (it seemed) must have remarked that tell- tale countenance and broken utterance. And still he persevered, bent upon certi- tude. Nice place, Hong-Kong? he said. Im sure I dont know, said the of- ficer. Only a day and a half there; called for orders and came straight on here. Never heard of such a beastly cruise. And he went on describing and lamenting the untoward fortunes of the Tempest. But Wicks and Carthew heeded him no longer. They lay back on the gun- nel, breathing deep, sunk in a stupor of the body: the mind within still nimbly and agreeably at work, measuring the past danger, exulting in the present relief, numbering with ecstasy their ul- timate chances of escape. For the voy- age in the man-of-war they were now safe; yet a few more days of peril, ac- tivity, and presence of mind in San Fran- cisco, and the whole horrid tale was blotted out; and Wicks again became Kirkup, and Goddedael became Carthew men beyond all shot of possible sus- picion, men who had never heard of the Flying Scud, who had never been in sight of Midway Reef. So they came alongside, under many craning heads of seamen and projecting mouths of guns; so they climbed on board somnambulous, and looked blind- ly about them at the tall spars, the white decks, and the crowding ships company, and heard men as from far away, and answered them at random. And then a hand fell softly on Car- thews shoulder. Why, Norrie, old chappie, where have you dropped from? All the worlds been looking for you. Dont you know you~ve come into your kingdom? He turned, beheld the face of his old schoolmate Sebright, and fell uncon- scious at his feet. The doctor was attending him, a while later, in Lieutenant Sebrights cabin, when he came to himself. He opened his eyes, looked hard in the strange face, and spoke with a kind of solemn vigor. Brown must go the same road, he said; now or never. And then paused, and his reason coming to him with more clearness, spoke again: What was I saying? Where am I? Who are you? I am the doctor of the Tempest, was the reply. You are in Lieutenant Sebrights berth, and you may dismiss all concern from your mind. Your troubles are over, Mr. Carthew. Why do you call me that? he asked. Ah, I rememberSebright knew me! 0! and he groaned and shook. Send down Wicks to me; I must see Wicks at once! he cried, and seized the doctors wrist with uncon- scious violence. All right, said the doctor. Lets make a bargain. You swallow down this draught, and Ill go and fetch Wicks. And he gave the wretched man an opiate that laid him out within ten minutes and in all likelihood preserved his reason. It was the doctors next business to attend to Mac; and he found occasion, while engaged upon his arm, to make the man repeat the names of the Flying 72 THE WRECKER. Scuds. It was now the turn of the cap- tain, and there is no doubt he was no longer the man that we have seen; sud- den relief, the sense of perfect safety, a square meal and a good glass of grog, had all combined to relax his vigilance and depress his energy. When was this done? asked the doctor, looking at the wound. More than a week ago, replied Wicks, thinking singly of his log. Hey? cried the doctor, and he raised his head and looked the captain in the eyes. I dont remember exactly, faltered Wicks. And at this remarkable falsehood, the suspicions of the doctor were at once quadrupled. By the way, which of you is called Wicks? he asked easily. Whats that? snapped the cap- tain, falling white as paper. Wicks, repeated the doctor; which of you is he? Thats surely a plain question. Wicks stared upon his questioner in silence. Which is Brown, then? pursued the doctor. What are you talking of? what do you mean by this? cried Wicks, snatching his hall-bandaged hand away, so that the blood sprinkled in the sur- geons face. He did not trouble to remove it. Looking straight at his victim, he pur- sued his questions. Why must Brown go the same way? he asked. Wicks fell trembling on a locker. Carthew told you, he cried. No replied the doctor, he has not. But he and you between you have set me thinking, and I think theres something wrong. Give me some grog, said Wicks. Id rather tell than have you find out. Im damned if its half as bad as what any one would think. And with the help of a couple of strong grogs, the tragedy of the Flying Scud was told for the first time. It was a fortunate series of accidents that brought the story to the doctor. He understood and pitied the position of these wretched men, and came whole- heartedly to their assistance. He and Wicks and Carthew (so soon as he was recovered) held a hundred councils and prepared a policy for San Francisco. It was he who certified Goddedael unfit to be moved in the sick bay, and smuggled Carthew ashore under cloud of night; it was he who kept Wickss wound open that he might sign with his left hand; he who took all their Chile silver and (in the course of the first day) got it converted for them into portable gold. He used his influ- ence in the wardroom to keep the tongues of the young officers in order, so that Carthews identification was kept out of the papers. And he ren- dered another service yet more impor- tant. He had a friend in San Francisco, a millionaire; to this man he privately presented Carthew as a young gentle- man come newly into a huge estate, but troubled with Jew debts which he was trying to settle on the quiet. The millionaire came readily to help; and it was with his money that the wrecker gang was to be fought. What was his name, out of a thousand guesses? It was Douglas Longhurst. As long as the Currency Lasses could all disappear under fresh names, it did not greatly matter if the brig were bought, or any small discrepancies should be discovered in the wrecking. The identification of one of their num- ber had changed all that. The small- est scandal must now direct attention to the movements of Norris. It would be asked how he, who had sailed in a schooner from Sydney, had turned up so shortly after in a brig out of Hong- Kong; and from one question to an- other all his original shipmates were pretty sure to be involved. Hence arose naturally the idea of preventing danger, profiting by Carthews new- found wealth, and buying the brig un- der an alias; and it was put in hand with equal energy and caution. Carthew lived alone in lodgings under a false name, picked up Bellairs at random, and com- missioned him to buy the wreck. What figure, if you please? the lawyer asked. I want it bought, replied Carthew. I dont mind about the price. Any price is no price, said Bellairs. Put a name upon it. THE WRECKER. 73 Call it ten thousand pounds then, ~ if you like! said Carthew. In the meanwhile, the captain had to walk the streets, appear in the con- sulate, be cross-examined by Lloyds agent, be badgered about his lost ac- counts, sign papers with his left hand, and repeat his lies to every skipper in San Francisco: not knowing at what moment he might run into the arms of some old friend who should hail him by the name of Wicks, or some new enemy who should be in a position to deny him that of Trent. And the lat- ter incident did actually befall him, but was transformed by his stout coun- tenance into an element of strength. It was in the consulate (of all untoward places) that he suddenly heard a big voice inquiring for Captain Trent. He turned with the customary sinking at his heart. You aint Captain Trent! said the stranger, falling back. Why, whats all this? They tell me youre passing off as Captain TrentCaptain Jacob Trenta man I knew since I was that high. 0, youre thinking of my uncle as had the bank in Cardiff, replied Wicks, with desperate aplomb. I declare I never knew he had a nevvy! said the stranger. Well, you see he has! says Wicks. And how is the old man? asked the other. Fit as a fiddle, answered Wicks, and was opportunely summoned by the clerk. This alert was the only one until the morning of the sale, when he was once more alarmed by his interview with Jim; and it was with some anxiety that he attended the sale, knowing only that Carthew was to be represented, but neither who was to represent him nor what were the instructions given. I suppose Captain Wicks is a good life. In spite of his personal appearance and his own known uneasiness, I suppose he is secure from apoplexy, or it must have struck him there and then, as he looked on at the stages of that ins~ne sale and saw the old brig and not very valuable cargo knocked down at last to a total stranger for ten thousand pounds. It had been agreed that he was to avoid Carthew, and above all Carthews lodging, so that no connection might be traced between the crew and the pseudonymous purchaser. But the hour for caution was gone by, and he caught a tram and made all speed to Mission Street. Carthew met him in the door. Come away, come away from here, said Carthew; and when they were clear of the house, Alls up ! he added. 0, youve heard of the sale then? said Wicks. The sale! cried Carthew. I de- clare I had forgotten it. And he told of the voice in the telephone, and the maddening question: Why did you want to buy the Flying Scud? This circumstance, coming on the back of the monstrous improbabilities of the sale, was enough to have shaken the reason of Immanuel Kant. The earth seemed banded together to defeat them; the stones and the boys on the street appeared to be in possession of their guilty secret. Flight was their one thought. The treasure of the Cur- rency Lass they packed in waist-belts, expressed their chests to an imaginary address in British Columbia, and left San Francisco the same afternoon, booked for Los Angeles. The next day they pursued their re- treat by the Southern Pacific route, which Carthew followed on his way to England; but the other three branched off for Mexico. EPILOGUE: TO WILL H. Low. DEAR Low: The other day (at Maui- in the neat, little, toy-like church, set hiki of all places) I had the pleasure to with pews after the manner of Europe, meet Dodd. We sat some two hours and inlaid with mother-of-pearl in the VOL XII.9 114 THE WRECKER. style (I suppose) of the New Jerusalem. The natives, who are decidedly the most attractive inhabitants of this planet, crowded round us in the pew, and fawned upon and patted us; and here it was I put my questions, and Dodd answered me. I first carried him back to the night in Barbizon when Carthew told his story, and asked him what was done about Bellairs. It seemed he had put the matter to his friend at once, and that Carthew took it with an inimitable lightness. Hes poor, and Im rich, he had said. I cannot afford to smile at him. I go somewhere else, thats all somewhere thats far away and dear to get to. Persia would be found to answer, I fancy. No end place, Per- sia. Why not come with me? And they had left the next afternoon for Constantinople, on their way to Tehe- ran. Of the shyster, it is only known (by a newspaper paragraph) that he re- turned somehow to San Francisco and died in the hospital. Now theres another point, said I. There you are off to Persia with a millionaire, and rich yourself. How come you here in the South Seas, run- ning a trader? He said, with a smile, that I had not yet heard of Jims last bankruptcy. I was about cleaned out once more, he said; and then it was that Carthew had this schooner built, and put me in as supercargo. Its his yacht and its my trader; and as nearly all the ex- penses go to the yacht, I do pretty well. As for Jim, hes right again; one of the best businesses, they say, in the West, fruit, cereals, and real estate; and he has a Tartar of a partner Nares, no less. Nares will keep him straight, Nares has a big head. They have their country places next door at Saucelito, and I stayed with them time about, the last time I was on the coast. Jim had a paper of his ownI think he has a notion of being senator one of these daysand he wanted me to throw up the schooner and come and write his edi- torials. He holds strong views on the State Constitution, and so does Mamie. And what became of the other three Currency Lasses after they left Car- thew? I inquired. Well, it seems they had a huge spree in the city of Mexico, said Dodd; and then Hadden and the Irishman took a turn at the gold fields in Vene- zuela, and Wicks went on alone to Valparaiso. Theres a Kirkup in the Chilean navy to this day, I saw the name in the papers about the Balma- ceda war. Hadden soon wearied of the mines, and I met him the other day in Sydney. The last news he had from Venezuela, Mac had been knocked over in an attack on the gold train. So theres only the three of them left, for Amula scarcely counts. He lives on his own land in Maui, at the side of Hale-a-ka-la, where he keeps Godde- dads canary; and they say he sticks to his dollars, which is a wonder in a Kanaka. He had a considerable pile to starli with, for not only Hemsteads share but Carthews was divided equal- ly among the other fourMac being counted. What did that make for him alto- gether? I could not help asking, for I had been diverted by the number of calculations in his narrative. One hundred and twenty - eight pounds nineteen shillings and eleven pence halfpenny, he replied, with Thats leaving out what little he won at Van John. Its something for a Ka- naka, you know. And about that time we were at last obliged to yield to the sblicitations of our native admirers, and go to the pas- tors house to drink green cocoanuts. The ship I was in was sailing the same night, for Dodd had been beforehand and got all the shell in the island; and though he pressed me to desert and return with him to Auckland (whither he was now bound to pick up Carthew) I was firm in my refusaL The truth is, since I have been mixed up with Havens and Dodd in the de- sign to publish the latters narrative, I seem to feel no want for Carthews so- ciety. Of course I am wholly modern in sentiment, and think nothing more noble than to publish peoples private affairs at so much a line. They like it, and if they dont, they ought to. But a still small voice keeps telling me they will not like it always, and perhaps not always stand it. Memory, besides, sup- THE WRECKER. 75 plies me with the face of a pressman (in the sacred phrase) who proved alto- gether too modern for one of his neighbors, and Qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum nos precedens, as it were, marshal- ling us onr way. I am in no haste to be that mans successor. Carthew has a record as a dane shot, and for some years Samoa will be good enough for me. We agreed to separate, accordingly; but he took me on board in his own boat with the hard-wood fittings, and entertained me on the way with an ac- count of his late visit to Bntaritari, whither he had gone on an errand for Carthew, to see how Topelins was get- ting along, and, if necessary, to give him a helping hand. Bnt Topelius was in great force, and had patronized andwellout-manomvred him. Carthew will be pleased, said Dodd; for theres no doubt they op- pressed the man abominably when they were in the Currency Lass. Its dia- mond cut diamond now. This, I think, was the most of the news I got from my friend London; and I hope I was well inspired, and have put all the questions to which you would be curious to hear an an- swer. But there is one more that I daresay you are burning to put to myself; and that is, what your own name is doing in this place, cropping up (as it were uncalled-for) on the stern of our poor ship? If you were not born in Ar- cadia, you linger in fancy on its mar- gin; your thoughts are busied with the flutes of antiquity, with daffodils, and the classic poplar, and the foot- steps of the nymphs, and the elegant and moving aridity of ancient art. Why dedicate to you a tale of a caste so modern ;full of details of our bar- baric manners and unstable morals ; full of the need and the lust of money, so that there is scarce a page in which the dollars do not jingle ;full of the unrest and movement of our century. so that the reader is hurried from place to place and sea to sea, and the book is less a romance than a panorama ;in the end, as blood-bespattered as an epic? Well, you are a man interested in all the problems of art, even the most vul- gar; and it may amuse you to hear the genesis and growth of The Wrecicer. On board the schooner Equator, almost within sight of the Johnstone Islands (if anybody knows where these are) and on a moonlit night when it was a joy to be alive, the authors were amused with several stories of the sale of wrecks. The subject tempted them; and they sat apart in the alleyway to discuss its possibilities. What a tangle it would make, suggested one, if the wrong crew were aboard. But how to get the wrong crew there? I have it! cried the other; the so-and-so affair! For not so many months before, and not so many hun- dred miles from where we were then sailing, a proposition almost tanta- mount to that of Captain Trent had been made by a British skipper to some British castaways. Before we turned in, the scaffolding of the tale had been put together. But, the question of treatment was, as usual, more obscure. We had long been at once attracted and repelled by that very modern form of the police novel or mystery story, which consists in begin- ning your yarn anywhere but at the beginning, and finishing it anywhere but at the end; attracted by its pecu- liar interest when done, and the pecu- liar difficulties that attend its execu- tion; repelled by that appearance of insincerity and shallowness of tone, which seems its inevitable drawback. For the mind of the reader, always bent to pick up dews, receives no impression of reality or life, rather of an airless, elaborate mechanism; and the book re- mains enthralling, but insignificant, like a game of chess, not a work of human art. It seemed the cause might lie partly in the abrupt attack; and that if the tale were gradually approached, some of the characters introduced (a~ it were) beforehand, and the book started in the tone of a novel of man- 76 THE WRECKER. ners and experience briefly treated, this defect might be lessened and our mys- tery seem to inhere in life. The tone of the age, its movement, the mingling of races and classes in the dollar hunt, the fiery and not quite unromantic struggle for existence, with its changing trades and scenery, and two types in particular, that of the American handy- man of business and that of the Yankee merchant sailorwe agreed to dwell upon at some length, and make the woof to our not very precious warp. Hence Dodds father, and Pinkerton, and Nares, and the Dromedary picnics, and the railway work in New South Wales the last an unsolicited testimonial from the powers that be, for the tale was half written before I saw Carthews squad toil in the rainy cutting at South Clifton, or heard from the engineer of his young swell. After we had in- vented at some expense of time this method of approaching and fortifying our police novel, it occurred to us it had been invented previously by some one else, and was in facthowever pain- fully different the results may seem the method of Charles Dickens in his later work. I see you staring. Here, you will say, is a prodigious quantity of theory to our halfpenny worth of police novel; and withal not a shadow of an answer to your question. Well, some of us like theory. After so long a piece of practice these may be indulged for a few pages. And the answer is at hand. It was plainly de- sirable, from every point of view of con- venience and contrast, that our hero and narrator should partly stand aside from those with whom he mingles, and be but a pressed-man in the dollar hunt. Thus it was that London Dodd became a student of the plastic arts, and that our globe-trotting story came to visit Paris and look in at Barbizon. And thus it is, dear Low, that your name appears in the address of this epilogue. For sure, if any person can here ap- preciate and read between the lines, it must be youand one other, our friend. All the dominos will be transparent to your better knowledge; the statuary contract will be to you a piece of an- cient history; and you will not have now heard for the first time of the dan- gers of IRoussillon. Dead leaves from the Bas Breau, echoes from Lavenues and the Rue Racine, memories of a com- mon past, let these be your bookmark- ers as you read. And if you care for naught else in the story, be a little pleased to breathe once more for a mo- ment the airs of our youth. THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA. By N. S. Shaler. Living Crinoid. Showing at the top the arms which branch from the ca- lyx which encloses the body cavity and at the base the root- like processes which attach it to the bot- tom. spaces of the sea have shared with the vaster realms of the en- circling heavens the manifold excnrsions of t h e imagination, ever since man began to speculate concerning the unseen parts of nat- ure. The poet and the philosopher whose paths upon the land most often lie far apart, have alike sought to tread over the hidden ocean floors. For a time the spaces of the sky, because they are more visible than the sub- merged realm, were the favorite field for specu- lation. The Greeks, by far the most richly en- dowed in constructive imagination of any of the ancient peoples, gave little thought to the regions beneath the sea. The true love of the deep, and interest in its hid- den regions, is a matter of modern days. The people of northern Europe have felt these motives more strongly than those of any other lands. The Scandi- navians were the first navigators of our race who learned the pleasure which comes to those who break into an un- known sea; a thousand years ago they dared in frail barks the fierce tempests of the North Atlantic; led thereto by no clearly defined purpose of conquest or propagandism, but inspired, it would seem, by the pleasure of dangerous cruis- ing. It is principally among the people who share this Scandinavian blood that we find that vivid interest in all that per- tains to the ocean which has led to some of the most learned and interesting in- quiries of modern science; researches which have created the branch of learn- ing which is termed thalasography, or the description of the ocean. The study of the ocean depths is an extremely difficult inquiry: we know far more concerning the form of the moons surface, though that sphere is a quarter of a million miles away, than we can ever hope to learn of the shape of the ocean-floors. There are few in- struments as yet devised which can give us any considerable information as to the conditions at any great depth below the surface. A century ago the only apparatus of submarine research was the plummet, by which the navi- gator, to learn the position of shallows, sounded for the depth of at most a few hundred feet. A little tallow on the bottom of the lead brought up some fragments of the sea - floor, and showed whether it was sandy, muddy, or covered with fragments of shells. A hundred years ago nothing was known as to the greater depths of the ocean. The lines to which the sounding leads were attached were limited in length to about six hundred feet; when the bot- tom was not found with them the ves- sel was said to be off sounding. The depth beneath her keel was then left to conjecture. With the modern in- crease in curiosity concerning the ocean, the lines were lengthened and the weights increased, so that some information began to be received as to the deeper parts of the sea. But there were many and serious difficul- ties encountered in these explorations. The lines had to be of considerable size to sustain the heavy plummets, and the friction of these cords on the water, though not noteworthy in shal- lows, became very great when a mile or more of depth was encountered. In the abysmal portions it required hours for the weight to drag the hemp- en rope to the bottom, and a yet lon- ger time to lift it again to the ships deck. In very deep water so slow was the descent of the weight, that it was not easy to tell when it had attained the ocean-floor. Moreover as the ocean waters are often pervaded by currents

THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA. By N. S. Shaler. Living Crinoid. Showing at the top the arms which branch from the ca- lyx which encloses the body cavity and at the base the root- like processes which attach it to the bot- tom. spaces of the sea have shared with the vaster realms of the en- circling heavens the manifold excnrsions of t h e imagination, ever since man began to speculate concerning the unseen parts of nat- ure. The poet and the philosopher whose paths upon the land most often lie far apart, have alike sought to tread over the hidden ocean floors. For a time the spaces of the sky, because they are more visible than the sub- merged realm, were the favorite field for specu- lation. The Greeks, by far the most richly en- dowed in constructive imagination of any of the ancient peoples, gave little thought to the regions beneath the sea. The true love of the deep, and interest in its hid- den regions, is a matter of modern days. The people of northern Europe have felt these motives more strongly than those of any other lands. The Scandi- navians were the first navigators of our race who learned the pleasure which comes to those who break into an un- known sea; a thousand years ago they dared in frail barks the fierce tempests of the North Atlantic; led thereto by no clearly defined purpose of conquest or propagandism, but inspired, it would seem, by the pleasure of dangerous cruis- ing. It is principally among the people who share this Scandinavian blood that we find that vivid interest in all that per- tains to the ocean which has led to some of the most learned and interesting in- quiries of modern science; researches which have created the branch of learn- ing which is termed thalasography, or the description of the ocean. The study of the ocean depths is an extremely difficult inquiry: we know far more concerning the form of the moons surface, though that sphere is a quarter of a million miles away, than we can ever hope to learn of the shape of the ocean-floors. There are few in- struments as yet devised which can give us any considerable information as to the conditions at any great depth below the surface. A century ago the only apparatus of submarine research was the plummet, by which the navi- gator, to learn the position of shallows, sounded for the depth of at most a few hundred feet. A little tallow on the bottom of the lead brought up some fragments of the sea - floor, and showed whether it was sandy, muddy, or covered with fragments of shells. A hundred years ago nothing was known as to the greater depths of the ocean. The lines to which the sounding leads were attached were limited in length to about six hundred feet; when the bot- tom was not found with them the ves- sel was said to be off sounding. The depth beneath her keel was then left to conjecture. With the modern in- crease in curiosity concerning the ocean, the lines were lengthened and the weights increased, so that some information began to be received as to the deeper parts of the sea. But there were many and serious difficul- ties encountered in these explorations. The lines had to be of considerable size to sustain the heavy plummets, and the friction of these cords on the water, though not noteworthy in shal- lows, became very great when a mile or more of depth was encountered. In the abysmal portions it required hours for the weight to drag the hemp- en rope to the bottom, and a yet lon- ger time to lift it again to the ships deck. In very deep water so slow was the descent of the weight, that it was not easy to tell when it had attained the ocean-floor. Moreover as the ocean waters are often pervaded by currents 78 THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA. of considerable velocity which move in various directions, the thick cord in its downgoing would often flex, now this way and now that, and thus give very exaggerated records of the depth at any point The most important of these diffi- culties encountered in exploring the depth of the sea, have, through the skill of the American and English ex- plorers of thalassal problems, been overcome. The lead is no longer hung on a rope, but is attached to a fine steel wire which, because of its tenuity and smoothness, slips easily through the water; the weight is so ar- ranged that when it strikes the bottom it is at once detached from the wire which is thus easily wound back to the drum from which it was lowered, while the plummet itself is left to be entombed in the strata forming on the sea-floor. Although these very clever inventions, as well as the complicat- ed and beautiful machinery, by which the miles of delicate wire may be low- ered and hoisted in the rolling sea, have made it possible for a proper- ly equipped exploring ship to deter- mine, in a tolerably accurate manner, the depth of water at any point, the in- formation which is gained even by very numerous soundings, though valuable, is very meagre. Let us fancy that the atmosphere was as impenetrable to vision as the depths of the ocean, and that creatures which dwelt above it should seek to learn the shape of the land by means of a few thousand sound- ings disposed in lines here and there, so as to give what we may term sec- tions, over the surface of the terra firma. We can easily imagine that the information would be very incomplete. Such a gorge as the Grand Cafion of Colorado would have but a bare chance to be unnoted; a volcanic peak like IEtna, though it rises two miles above its base, would most likely escape ob- servation. If our imagined super-terrestrial be- ings should limit their inquiries to the facts developed by the plummet, they would have but the most general no- tions as to the form of the surface they were exploring. We can conceive them using the other aids in their research which have been used by the explorers of the deep sea: the dredge, a con- trivance like a scoop, which is dragged over the bottom, so as to collect a sam- ple of the deposits which are forming there, and of the state of the surface over which it passed. A few thousand essays with this instrument would cer- tainly give some notion as to the nature and variety of the organic forms which people the coast of this sphere, and are contributing their bodies to its dust on sea-floor and land. Yet we readily fancy that these observations would af- ford but an inadequate basis on which to construct a picture of the hidden realm. So, too, the thermometers which give us the ranges of temperature in the depths, and the instruments which collect wa- ter from the various levels of the sea, in order that it may be subjected to chemical analysis, though they provide us with valuable information, do not give us anything like the accurate data for determining the climatology of the ocean-floors that we have secured from the land. Similar observations on the land made by beings in the upper air, even if they were applied only to the natural wildernesses of the earth, would afford only details which would require exceeding skill to frame into important and trustworthy general views. This skill has fortunately been allotted to the naturalists who have prosecuted the modern studies concerning the oceans: no department of modern science has so well combined the daring of the man of action with the patient labor of the closet student; hardly any other has so profited by the advance in the mechanic arts. The methods of the students of the deep sea may indeed serve as a model of the scientific re- search which is so characteristic of our century, for they combine in an admirable way patience in difficult in- quiry with skill in interpretation. The affirmed results, at least those which are likely to prove interesting to the general student, are among the most fascinating chapters in the history of the earth. The student who from the familiar studies of the land surfacestudies which we are all insensibly making in the daily experiences of our ordinary THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA. 79 probably including more than half the oceanic area, which for a great time, perhaps since organic life has tenanted this sphere, has been always in the con- dition of deep sea. Accepting this view as to the toler- able permanence of land and sea with the greater assurance, because it has slowly won its way to belief over the previous opinions and prejudices of students, we are prepared to find that the conditions of the ocean-bottom are in many regards entirely unlike those of the land. It is easy to see that the shape of the land is mainly determined by a contest between the down - wear- ing action of the water which falls up- on its surface as rain or snow, or is swung against it in tides and waves, and the uprising movement which lifts the mass of the continent and wrinkles the underlying rocks into mountain folds. Rivers and glaciers have battled with these ascending masses of strata, they have carved out the valleys and gorges which fret the land in every di- rection; even the plains which appear to feel little of this erosive action generally owe their horizontal aspect to the fact that the wearing agents have done their most effective work in these areas. We readily perceive that all this mighty livescomes to the margin of the sea, is naturally led to the opinion that the ocean - floors have a form essentially like that of the continental fields. At the shore he finds the mountains and valleys of the land passing by a gradual decline of the surface below the level of the water. The emerged mountain- tops often form a fringe of islands ex- tending some distance from the coast- line, and the valleys are prolonged as deep bays which penetrate far into the land. Thus the land and the sea ap- pear to be blended in a way that very naturally leads to the supposition that the ocean-floor is merely an inundated portion of its coast, differing from the dry parts only in certain minor feat- ures, such as river - valleys which are due to actions peculiar to the land. Naturalists for a long time adopted this popular view concerning the con- ditions of the sea-bottom. Observing that the greater part, if not the whole, of the land was made up of sediments which had been accumulated on the sea- floor, naturalists were led to the idea that sea and land had often changed places; no part of the earth for any long period escaping from the invasions of the deep. Gradually, with the advances in knowledge concerning the history of the earth, these students have been driven to other views. While they are thus forced to allow that the continents have been subjected to great altera- tions of form, a part of their surface from time to time sinking beneath the sea while other por- tions which had long been under water rose above its surface, they find good evidence that, as a whole, the seas and lands have not changed places but that the greater oceans have been permanent features in the physiogno- my of this planet. There is doubtless a debatable area next the shores of each continent, machinery of flowing rivers and beat- which is now won to the realm of ing waves has no place in the depths the land and now to the domain of the of the sea. It is true that the ocean waters, but there remains a vast field, has great streams upon its surface, Diagram showing the Position of s Deep-sea Dredge as the Line is Paid Out from the Stern of the Ship. The letters G, G, etc., show the position end effect of the weight which is used to bring the dredge into the proper ettitude. 80 THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA. some of which, for certain parts of their courses, move with the speed of the larger rivers, but these swift currents are superficial things, they rarely if ever touch the bottom except where they come upon the shores of conti- nents or islands, but flow upon a base of deep-lying nearly motionless water. While everywhere upon the land, even in the most arid regions, there are oc- casional rains, and for a time the tor- rents do their appointed work of wear- ing away the surface of the earth, the deeper ocean - floors are practically al- ways the seat of deposition, that is, they are receiving contributions of sedi- ment from the rivers of the land, from the waves and tides of the shores, from the vast amounts of dust thrown out of volcanoes as well as that which falls from the celestial spaces. In a word the land is characteristically the place where the strata are in the course of destruction, and the sea-floor the la- boratory where these materials are sep- arated from the water, partly by gravi- ty and partly by the growth of organic forms, and built again into compact rocks. The result of these differences in conditions is, that while the land is carved into innumerable valleys which mark the process of its destruction, the sea-floor is prevailingly horizontal, for that is the shape which the growing deposits assume as they are deposit- ed. But there are yet other influences which serve to give to the sea - floor a uniform aspect. Chief among these we must reckon the prevailing absence of true mountains in the fields which are covered by the ocean waters. Al- though these vast realms contain nu- merous elevations, some of which are of magnificent proportions, it seems tolerably certain that true mountains that is, elongated heights produced by the folding of rocks into ridges and furrowsdo not occur in the abysmal portions of the ocean. The evidence of this lack of moun- tains in the deep seas, though inferen- tial, is very satisfactory in its nature. We note that the average depth of the sea, as determined by many thousand soundings as well as by the speed with which the waves caused by earthquakes travel over their basins, is about fifteen thousand feet, while the portion of the marine fields where the depth exceeds twenty thousand feet is extremely lim- ited, and the most profound abyss yet encountered in sounding is only about twenty-eight thousand feet below the surface. In the land we find many hundred peaks which exceed fifteen thousand feet in height, and some score which rise twenty thousand feet above the sea level. There are indeed several considerable areas of moun- tainous country where extensive fields attain a greater height than the aver- age depth of the sea. It is thus at once plain that if mountains developed in the ocean-floor as freely as they do on the land there would be a great number of them rising above the plane of the seas, but the fact is that there is not a single distinct mountain peak rising above the water level at any great distance away from the margins of the continents. All the numerous islands of the wide oceans are either coral reefs or the summits of volcanic cones. It is furthermore evident that if mountains grew upward from the sea- floor they would attain the surface of the water without being subjected to any erosion, which has robbed the ele- vations of the land of a great part of their height. If we carefully examine any of the great mountainous peaks of the continents we find that they have been much worn away by the rivers, tor- rents, frost or glaciers, which have al- ways operated upon them, but moun- tains growing upon the sea-floor would be safe from these assaults until they rose above the surface of the water. We would on this account expect to find them even more abundant and of loftier forms in the marine areas than on the parts of the earths surface which rises above the sea. We are therefore force~1 to the conclusion that mountains do not form upon the sea- floor, or if they develop there they at- tain no such dimensions as they ex- hibit upon the land. Although the deeper sea-floors prob- ably lack mountains, they are not with- out striking reliefs which if they could be seen would present all the dignity w THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA. 81 which their size gives to the Himala- yas or Andes: the difference is that these elevations are not true mountains but volcanic peaks sometimes isolat- ed, again accumulated in long narrow ridges but all made up of matter poured out from craters or through great fis- sures in the crust. So numerous are these heaped masses of lava and other ejections from these vents that there is hardly any considerable area of the oceans where they do not rise above the surface; there are indeed thousands of these volcanic peaks distributed from pole to pole. Yet it is likely that only a small part of these elevations attain the surface of the ocean. Probably the greater part of them remain buried be- neath the sea, and are only imperfectly perceived when the sounding lead indi- cates an elevation of the bottom. Thus on the floor of the North Atlantic there is evidently a long irregular chain of these elevations extending from the Icelandic group of islands southward to the Azores. If an explorer could view this part of the sea - bottom he would probably find that the line of craters was as continuous as that ex- hibited by the volcanoes of the Andes. In the invisible landscape of the sea- floor volcanoes play the part of moun- tains on the laud. It seems indeed clear that these elevations, due to the action of the earths interior fires, are in their way as characteristic of the deeper seas as the mountains are of the land portion of the continents: the volcanic field is so essentially marine that of the hundreds of vents that have been in activity within the his- toric period not one is situated more than three huudred miles from the mar- gin of the sea. Besides the volcanic peaks the sea- bottom in certain parts of the tropics and in the regions near to the equa- torial realm which are swept over by warm ocean currents is beset with the singular elevations formed by coral reefs. Next the shore these reefs take on the form of long submerged walls, sometimes many hundred miles in length and only a hundred feet or so in height. To the eye they would ap- pear as singularly regular and artificial terraces, their crests on an exact level for a considerable part of their length. Here and there the wall would present port-like openings through which the streams of the tides and rivers find en- trance and egress. The reefs of the deeper sea present a very different as- pect, they are generally in the form of very lofty cones rising steeply from the depths of the ocean to the height of a few feet above the level of the water. On their tops there is generally a shal- low cup - shaped depression of a few score feet in depth bounded by the low flat wall of the living reef of coral sand which had been formed along the shore. The origin of these deep atoll sea-reefs is not yet perfectly un- derstood. Mr. Darwins explanation, long considered satisfactory but now brought into doubt, was to the effect that they were produced wherever a mas- sive coral growth was formed around the flanks of a slowly down-sinking isl- and, the polyps building their lime- stone wall upward as the peak lowered into the depths of the sea. Dr. John Murray, the well-known oceanographer, has recently shown that these basin- shaped reefs may be formed wherever shallows are produced in situations where they are swept over by a warm marine current. The upward growth of the coral tends to form a cap upon the shoal which extends upward to near the level of low tide. Attaining this altitude, the central part of the mass begins to dissolve away, and the process of solution continues until a basin is formed, while on the outside margin of the reef the polyp communi- ties continue to grow, and from the debris which they afford under the beat- ing action of the waves the ring-like isl- and is formed. Although there might be cases in which the elaborate hypothe- sis of Mr. Darwin is applicable, there can be no doubt that by far the greater part of the atolls have developed in the manner indicated by Dr. Murray. Yet another singular feature in the topography of the oceans is found in the great shelf-like shallows which usu- ally border the margins of the conti- nents. These remarkable features are best known along the coasts of the North Atlantic, perhaps for the reason that there alone is the form of the bot 82 THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA. tom well known. In going from New York to Liverpool, the traveller for the first hundred miles of his east- ward course passes over a portion of the sea where the water rarely exceeds Calys, Arms, and a Part of the Stem of a Metacrinusone of the Sea Lilies. A representative of a group which abounded in the early geological periods, but which is rare in the seas of the present time. five hundred feet in depth, the bottom slopes gradually toward the central por- tion of the ocean, at the rate of about five feet to the mile. There are occa- sional broad swales on the nearly level floor, but as a whole it is much more nearly plain than any similarly exten- sive part of the prairie land of the Mis- sissippi Valley. This gradual descent toward the deep sea is terminated by an abrupt slope where the bottom plunges at the rate of from ten to one hundred feet to the mile, from the crest of the submerged plain to the abysmal depths of the ocean. Unlike most of the submarine topog- raphy it is possible for us to get a clear idea as to the general character of this part of the sea-bottom from certain portions of the dry land which have recently been elevated above the watery envelope. While it is true that nearly if not quite all parts of the con- tinents have been formed on the ocean- floor, the greater portion of the land surface has been so much warped by mountain building, and made uneven by stream action that the original im- press of the marine conditions has been entirely lost. In the southern por- tion of North America, from Virginia through the lowlands of the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and a part of Texas and Louisiana, we have a portion of this shelf, which was formed when the shore was farther inland and when the area in question was below the level of the sea, constituting a por- tion of the continental deposits such as is now submerged along our shores. Like that part of the submarine plain which is still under water, this lowland of the southern Atlantic coast-lands is extremely level with a slight dip toward the ocean depths, and a faintly undu- lating surface, the irregularities not usually causing a difference of altitude in one square mile of more than five or six feet. Examining into the materials which compose this emerged portion of the continental shelf, we find that they consist in part of detritus which the waves and rivers have worn away from this land, and conveyed a little way from the ancient shore, together with quantities of fossils which in their life- time drew their solid parts from the sea-water. Although nowhere else do we find any other so perfect and extensive a fragment of the continental shelf lying above the level of the sea, there is here and there about the great lands evidence that this is the common nat- ure of these deposits. We may there- fore conclude that they are mainly made up of sediments brought to the sea from the neighboring hills and plains of the land. Until within recent times geologists have generally held to the opinion that the lands and seas had occasionally changed positions, so that the conti- nental areas were from time to time lowered into the deep, and the floors of the abysmal seas, by a similar alternat- ing movement, lifted into the realm of the air. The researches of IDr. Murray and others appear to indicate that this alternation of relations does not occur. Nowhere on the land have we yet found clear evidence going to show the exist- ence of any deposits such as are formed in the abysmal regions of the ocean. The students of the subject are now 9 fi THE DEPTHS OP THE SEA. 83 coming to believe that, while the conti- nents have been subjected to frequent oscillations, portions of the surface of each becoming depressed to a moder- ate depth beneath the ocean while other parts are extended farther into the field of waters, these great lands are never deeply submerged, and that correspond- ingly the abysmal realms are never con- verted into dry land. This view finds much support in the fact that each of the continental areas has a somewhat peculiar assemblage of life which is evi- dently continued in unbroken succes- sion throughout the greater part of the time which is recorded in the pages of the great stone book whose leaves are the strata of the successive formations. As the past is the index to the future, we may anticipate in the future of this ancient though still youthful sphere, that geographers will often have to re- frame the charts of land and sea, but it is doubtful if they will ever delineate as continents those portions of the sphere which are now in the deeper parts of the ocean. We have now considered the princi- pal topographic features of the sea- floors, and have noted the fact that they consist mainly of extensive plains with gentle slopes toward the deep water extending for some distance from Tomopteris. A curious worm-like animal inhabiting the surface of tropical seas. the shore, and terminating in steeper slopes which lead down into deeper water: broad undulating fields in the bottoms of abysmal depths: volcanic peaks generally grouped in long ranges, and lastly the shore walls and steep cap I I Globergerina. A member of the Foraminifera, a group of lowly an- imals which live in the superficial parts of the warm open sea, and whose remains fall in great quantities to the bottom. (Much magnified.) topped cones of the deep sea coral-reefs or isles. We will therefore turn our attention to the organic forms which people this vast realmforms so nu- merous and varied, that we can only consider their more important aspects, limiting ourselves in the discursive in- quiry to those features which seem to throw light on the general history of life. The first matter to be noted is that now, as in all the past ages of the earth, the creatures which tenant the sea are in organization much inferior to those dwelling on the land. This is true, not only of the organic forms as a whole, but essentially so of every separate group of animals and plants. Thus in the vegetable kingdom, the truly marine species contain no true flowering forms; none which have de- vised the functionally and structural- ly separated parts of root, stem, and leaves, or which combine their offices to afford the well - ordered life of the familiar vegetation of the land. Al- though the sea-floor is generally coy- If 84 THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA. ered by a coating of detritus far richer in the elements of plant growth than the surface of the land, it does not serve the sea-plants as a soil; they send no roots into it; they take no nourish- ment from it, but derive all their sus- tenance from the water which envel- opes their stems and fronds. Although there are many diverse forms of marine vegetables, the species are generally small and weak structures, only one group, the itliacrocystis, is known to attain any great bulk. This tenant of the Pacific and Antarctic Oceans, has a stem extending from the bottom of the sea to the crown which floats at the surface of the water, and the plant may have the length of one thousand feet or more. Remarkable as is this structure it is lowly organized, and does not deserve to be compared with our more highly developed land plants, which, in every feature by which we measure superiority, are far above their kindred of the sea. Although the animal forms of the deep are proportionally far more diver- sified, and attain to relatively higher states of life than the plants of that realm, they are also much inferior to their relatives of the land. Each of the great types has its representatives among the marine forms, and certain of them, as for instance the group of ani- mals commonly known as radiates, to which the polyps and star fishes belong, are, with some trifling exceptions of species which live in fresh water, con- fined to the sea. But all the mammals, birds, and insects, the groups which contain the intelligent animals, are es- sentially the creations of the conti- nents; the few members of the series which have developed close and perma- nent relations with the ocean, such as the whales, penguins, and rare marine insects, have clearly been derived from characteristic land forms, which, in the rude struggle for existence, have been forced to resort for subsistence to the sea. The greater part of the higher life avoids the sea, for it is to them a place of death. Nothing is clearer than the fact that all our laud animals have been derived from parent stocks which had their origin in the waters; it is not so cer tam as to plants, but it is probable that they, too, were first nurtured in the sea. In the land areas these great groups of animal and vegetable organisms at- tain their perfection. The articulates and vertebrates are at their best above the level of the waters, and in them alone do we find intellectual species. How does it come about that though the deep has been the cradle of these varied creatures it has not been the place of their fuller development? The answer is plain, and in it we shall find some most important teaching. A com- mon view of the action of natural selec- tion is that, given a full measure of in- crease and a fair share of variation, the struggle for existence will bring about a steadfast gain in the fitness of a form for the duties of life in its proper sta- tion, and that in time almost any meas- ure of advance may be attained. But the failure of the marine forms to win their way to the organic and intellec- tual successes of the higher life is suf- ficient evidence that time and struggle, infinite toil and pain, ceaseless life and death will not alone enable life to win the upward way. Many other condi- tions, which, in a question-begging man- ner, we term the influences of environ- ment, must enter into the inconceivably complicated equation which determines the fate of living beings. The struggle for existence has been as bitter in the seas as upon the land, it might well be maintained that it is far more intense in the water than in the animal realm, and it has endured for a far greater time. What, then, is the reason for the lagging behind of the marine life? It may well be that this slow ad- vance, or rather, we should term it, this widespread failure of the aquatic life in all that regards elevation in structure and function, is due to many different causes, but there is one cause which may, of itself, perhaps, in large part, account for the tardy evolution of the inhabitants of the sea. This is the im- perfect nature of the breathing process which is inevitable in all truly aquat- ic animals. Marine animals necessar- ily depend for their process of respira- tion on the small amount of air which is dissolved in the water, a part of which they appropriate by means of 0 THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA. 85 their gills. The result is that in proportion to their size a gill- bearing animal, at best, has not the tenth part of the access to oxygen which is enjoyed by the ordinary land forms. Now, on the amount of this gas which comes in contact with the blood depends the share of nervous energy and muscular power of an an- imal: the force which pro- pels their bodies or their brains is as much a matter of com- bustion as that which is generated in a steam boiler. This respiratory process is necessarily slow in all gill-breathers, which take the air from the exceeding dilution in water where it does not constitute one hundredth of the mass, as com- pared with lung - breathers where the oxygen can be supplied as rapidly as needed. There is another condition of the sea which has, doubtless, much retarded the ad- vance of its tenants ; the greater part of its life dwells in utter darkness. At one hundred feet in depth the vertical sun yields only a twilight, and below one thousand feet it is perpetual night. As a large part of intellectual life de- pends upon the knowledge acquired by sight, we easily perceive that the utter darkness of the deeper sea is most un- VOL. XII.1O Suggestions concerning Submarine Volcanoes, Corel Reefs, and Voinseic Islands. In the foreground the upward growth and lateral enlarge- anent of volcanic cones is indic, ted. The largest of these has heen levelled off and occupied hy an atoll. In the dis- tance a volcano, still active, is in a state of slight eruption. 86 THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA. favorable to the development of intelli- gent beings. With this understanding of the gen- eral limitations of marine life we are ence. The only marine animals which have been observed to have any dis- tinct marks of intelligence are the forms which have the habit of resort- 0 Sketch showing the Arrangement for Dredging in the Deep Sea. The dredge is seen in the foreground. The fringed tassels are intended to entangle objects which rest upon the bottom. The drum-like piece of apparatus is a set of springs intended to prevent the breaking of the line by sudden strains. not surprised to find that the animals of the sea are almost completely lack- ing in habits of an intellectual order. Save in a few forms, as, for instance, the species of fish which weave a rude nest of sea - weed, they make no construc- tions such as are so commonly produced by land animals. They rarely emit any sound in the nature of a sexual call; they never dwell in organized com- munities of a social sort; the sexes rarely if ever mate, even for a season. With them life in general has not risen above the plane of mere exist- ing to the shore, especially the seals, which are descended from the land ani- mals in the kinship of our bears and dogs; and are, in fact, not properly to be classed as marine animals, at least, in their more essential qualities. There seems to be not sufficient nervous en- ergy to spare from the ceaseless tur- moil of the combat which goes on among these creatures of the sea, to afford the basis for intellectual devel- opment. All the small share of force which these creatures with their scanty supply of oxygen can engender goes THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA. 87 to the labor of flight and chase; the ited section is upon or near the bottom, ceaseless struggle to obtain food or to and within a short distance of the top avoid falling a prey to their enemies. of the water; yet the whole of this deep Although the mental processes of these section is open to certain groups of be- creatures of the deep are limited, their ings, and has a share of occupants. The physical growth is marvellously vigor- result is that, to each square mile of ous, and creates an amazing variety of ocean surface, there are usually many forms, which are so far hidden below times the number of individual beings the veil of the waters that even the which we find in an equal area of the eager search of the naturalists has but land. As each of these creatures dies, imperfectly disclosed them. even if it live out its term of existence, The immediate conditions of aquatic its bodily parts become the food of life differ in many important ways many hungry mouths which are exactly from those of the land. In the latter adapted to the task of bringing its car- realm the weight of the animal or cass back to the living state. Some- plant is not sensibly diminished by the thing of this same speedy conversion buoyancy of the air ; the result is that of the dead to the uses of life is seen the creatures have in all cases to dkvell upon the land, but what we see there mainly on the surface; even the most affords but an imperfect image of the volant of the birds and insects spend swiftness with which the translation the greater part of their life on the goes on in the sea. surface of the ground. The result is The movements of the organic ma- that the quantity of these land forms chinery in the deeper seas, unlike those which can find a place for existence is of the land, are unaffected by the pro- determined by the room afforded by a cess of seasons. In the shallow water shallow zone next the soil; the depth next the shore the summers heat and of this stratum is practically limited winters cold have some effect upon between the bot- tom of the true soil and the top of the vegetation which occupies its field; in other words the stra- tum occupied by organic life on the dry land is limited in thick- ness to a few score feet, and in the vast treeless regions is but a foot or two in vertical e x t en t. In the oceans, however, because the greater part of the creatures may freely float or swim in the water, the realm which living Antennarius. things A creature related to our shore goose-fish, but adapted to live in water of a depth of a can occu- hundred fathoms. py is vastly great- er. It may extend from the surface their tenants. In winter, at least in downward to the depth of four miles or high latitudes, fishes, with rare excep- more. It is true that the most inhab- tions, especially the schooling species, 88 THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA. desert the shores, and many mollusks migrate into deeper waters; but in the profounder sea, where neither day nor Figure of a Free Polyp Community related to the Sea Fana. Each little serration on the leaflets of the frond-like body is a separate individual. night, summer or winter, bring any pause to the contest of life or any change in its conditions from age to age since these abyssal regions became first ten- anted by organismsthe contest has been without any of these pauses of the winter sleep, which on the land is evident, even in the tropics and in high latitudes. This continuity in the organic histo- ry of marine creatures makes it possi- ble for a number of singular communi- ties of animals to develop in its waters, the like of which are unknown in the re- gions which are enveloped by the air. In the latter region all the animal species consist of separate individuals which may be associated in intellectual communities and colonies, such as those of the bees and ants, or in the herds of the herbivora or the flocks of birds; but in no case do we find them united by a physical bond. It is otherwise in the sea. There, many groups con- sist of individuals which are knit to- gether in the manner of the polyps and sponges ; the several animals of- ten to the number of millions com- bining their bodies to form vast or- ganic associations, which may build the monumental structures of the fringing, or atoll reefs. This structural union in the life of the marine animals is par- alleled on the land in the plants where many separate buds are associated in a single bush or tree, but none of the land animals have any such union of their bodies ; such associations are pos- sible in plants, even in regions where there is winter cold, because they be- come essentially lifeless while the frigid conditions prevail. It is easy to see that it would be quite impossible for the more highly organized animal creatures to enter on such combinations in the open air. Another peculiarity in the environ- ment of aquatic animals depends on the capacity of water for floating sub- stances. All these forms on the land have to be endowed with the power of moving that they may seek their food, but in the sea the water floats the food to many waiting mouths, and the creat- ures may dwell fixed to the same place on the bottom from their birth to their death, waiting patiently for the cur- rents to bring them their nourishment. All the corals and sponges, and nearly half the mollusks, obtain their supply of food in this manner; perhaps one- half of the marine species trust to this chance of gathering their aliments from the passing water. THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA. 89 For a century or more naturalists have known a great deal concerning the marine organisms which dwell in the shallow water next the shore. They long ago learned the amazing richness of these littoral forms. The census of species amounts now to more than one hundred thousand distinct forms it is, however, of late that they have ascertained that the deeper parts of the ocean-floors have also an abundant and varied peopling. Although the study of the abysmal life of the seas is views concerning the origin and history of organic life. These creatures of the abysmal regions of the ocean appear mainly to have been derived, by a pro- cess of variation, from those which once inhabited the shallower waters next the shore. The greater part of these shore dwellers are exceedingly intolerant of the enormous pressure of the deeper waters, as well as of the low tempera- ture and total darkness which exist there. Certain forms have, however, acquired the ability to withstand these A Group of Fiohes of Peculiar Form such as Inhabit Moderate Depths in the Sea. The bottom form is a flounder, with both eyes on the same side of the head to fit it for lying flat upon the bottom. Tho third from the base of the picture is provided with fringed appendages which attract the atten- tion of its prey, and bring them so near that they may be captured in one leap. but just begun, and the knowledge which has been gained is probably but a small part of that which will be gath- ered during the coming years, the re- sults of the inquiries, in many ways, are not only most interesting, but in the highest degree important in shaping our peculiar conditions, as generation by generation through the g~eologic ages they have crept away from the realms of fierce combat next the shores, to the less contested fields of the open and deeper seas. Through all the geologic ages this selection of especially pre 90 THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA. pared groups for the singular stations or habits of the ocean depths has been going on, with the result that the life of those dark and pressure-burthened regions are now tenanted by eminent- ly peculiar animals, by species which ever surprise the student who is accus- tomed alone to the forms which dwell near the shores. One of the most striking features connected with the animals of the deep seas, is the frequency with which we find there living species which remind us of kinds which in former geologic peri- ods dwelt in the coastal districts of the oceans. It seems that many of these ancient creatures, when they no longer could hold their own against the more highly organized and developed animals which inhabited the favored stations next the shores, shrunk away into the deep water, and in that undesired part of the world found an asylum, where, amid the changeless environment, they have dwelt for ages, unaltered. Thus the vast profounds of the deep have become a sort of almshouse, where- unto antiquated forms have retired be- fore the overwhelming pressure which the newer and higher life ever imposes upon its ancestors. From the results of the relatively trifling explorations which have, as yet, been made, there seems good reason to hope that in time we may win from the deep the nearest living representations of many creat- ures which once occupied a large place in the seas, but now have abandoned the fields of more active combat, which are usually the seat of the greatest ad- vance. In the profounder seas the inverte- brate life appears to have a larger share than is secured by the vertebrcc, or back- boned animals; yet there are a num- ber of fishes known in these depths, and it seems likely that these tenants of the deep sea may be numbered by thou- sands of species. Among the finned tenants of the profounder parts of the ocean, we find the most startling depart- ures from the types with which we are familiar in coastal waters. In general shape they differ little from their kin- dred which dwell in the sunlit shal- lows. The differences are largely in the mechanism of the senses, especially of the eyes. These organs undergo sur- prising variations with reference to the enduring of the darkness of these deeps. In certain of the species the sight not only fails, but the visual ap- paratus entirely disappears; in others the eyeballs become very much en- larged and the nervous apparatus in- creased, and are evidently arranged to catch mere glimpses of light. As it is certain that no trace of sunlight can ever penetrate through the deep which overlies the realm where these animals dwell, the adaptation of these eyes to the needs of different vision at first ap- peared to be a very inexplicable mat- ter. Some recent discoveries provide us 6 / Figure of a Sponge, such as Inhabitu the Deeper Parts of the Sea. THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA. 91 with what seems to be an adequate ex- planation of the enigma. It has been found that certain of the denizens of the deep sea-floors have phosphorescent parts of their bodies which serve to give light in the manner in which it is yielded by the fa- miliar fire-flies and glowworms. The end secured by these light- giving p a r t s is probably the attraction of the sexual mates of the creatures. In the utter darkness of the ocean this in- dispensable end could be at- tained in no other way; even the fishes appear to have this beautiful provision for avoiding the most serious evils of the darkness in which they are com- pelled to exist. It is evident that the fishes with large eyes would also have a decided advantage in the pur- suit of food, for their keen vis- ion would enable them to discern the glimmer of the phosphorescent light for some distance through the still, clear water. The difficulty comes in the case of those fishes which under the same general conditions of existence in darkness, combined with the same need of food, and of finding their mates, have not only failed to better their sight, but have abandoned it altogether. There is, perhaps, no other simple instance in which we may so well perceive the car- dinal difficulty which the extreme se- lectionist encounters in his effort to explain all the complications of the or- ganic world by the single hypothesis to the conditions of utter darkness after long ages of experience in the realms of light ; under circumstances which, so far as we can perceive, are ab solutely identical, the creatures enter upon widely divergent paths of varia- tion. The lesson we may read in these facts seems plain ; it is to the effect that environment alone is not compe- tent to determine the way followed by a species in its process of change. In the sunlit regions of the surface of the open oceans, even in the under water of the sea, down to the utmost depths to which the light penetrates, we have a zone of waters in which the va- riety of form is very limited, and the greater part of them belong to the lower orders of being. From this part of the sea few fishes have been obtained, for the creatures . like to dwell only where there is an abundance of varied food. In this zone the most in- teresting forms are the low- ly protozoa whose bodies, to the eye, appear as mere bits of translucent jelly, essen- tially unorganized, but which secrete shapely shells, showing that the apparent simplicity which they pre- sent to our eyes is due to our imperfect knowledge of them. Dwelling in myriads of the survival of the fittest. Here are in the superficial parts of the sea, these two groups of like creatures introduced foraminifera, as they are termed, sink at Sternoptyx Diaphana. A fish of singular form from the open sea, and possibly inhabiting the greater depths. A Member of the Genus Scopetus. Showing the large eyes common in fishes which swim in the depths of the sea to which the light of the sun does not penetrate. The eyes are probably specially adapted to perceiving the phosphorescent glow of various animals. Suggestions as to the History of a Sunken Ship. In parts of the sea near the shore where the accumula- tion of sediment is rapid. Of the two ships upon the bot- tom that in the foreground must have come to rest cen- turies hefore the other. death to the bottom, over which they accumulate a thick coating of minutely divided limestone powder, forming a layer of ooze as unsubstantial as the finest snow. A large part of the North Atlantic, particularly that vast level tract beneath the central por- tion of the sea, known as the telegraphic pla- teau, because it was crossed by the first tele- graphic cable which was laid, is covered with this chalk-like substance. Along with these shelly bits derived from animals which have dwelt near the surface, there goes into the waste which accumulates on tbe floor, the re- mains of creatures which dwelt upon the bot- tom ; thus it comes about that the fossils which we find in any stratum may have been nurtured under very various conditions: in part they may have dwelt on the floor of the deep sea, in the cold and dark waters of these regions and, in part, in the tropical climate of its surface. We have already alluded to the coldness of the water which is found at great depths beneath the surface of even the warmest parts of the open oceans. Wher- ever in such situations examinations of the temperature at the bottom have been THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA. 93 made it has been found to be very near the freezing point. There seems to be but one possible explanation of this singular fact, which is the fol- lowing, viz.: On the surface of the oceans there is a system of warm cur- rents, such as the Gulf Stream, which flow in great volume from the tropics toward the poles. These tides of wat- er have to be, in some manner, re- turned to the tropical districts. In part this is effected by certain counter currents which set southward along the surface of the sea; but the volume of these superficial movements flow- ing toward the tropics is small as corn- pared with the streams which flow over the surface into the circumpolar seas. The principal return or compensating movement of the water appears to be brought about by a massive drift of the fluid which has been chilled nearly to the freezing point in high latitudes and then creeps, probably with extreme slowness, along the bottom until it may attain the equator. There, very gradu- ally, it rises and takes the place of the part of the sea-water which has been driven away by the currents moving toward the arctic and antarctic regions. The prime movers of the superficial streams, like that which flows from the Gulf of Mexico to the North Atlan- tic, are the trade-winds * and thus it comes about that the really arctic cli- mate of the deep sea-floors of all the open oceans is caused by these wonder- ful permanent winds. On the bottom of all the seas there is constantly gathering a coating of ma- terials derived from the bodies of ani- mals and plants which perish there, or which fall down upon the floor from the higher parts of the water; with this is niingled, more or less finely divid- ed rocky matter. If the portion of the submarine surface where the accumu- lation is making is near the coast line, these several mineral substances may be derived from the land and brought into the sea by the rivers or dragged away from the beaches by the reflux of the tides. In high latitudes the ice- bergs raft off from the land quantities of stony fragments which, when the ice is melted, fall swiftly to the bottom. * See The Instability of the Atmosphere, Vol. II., p. 191. VOL. XILI1 But this importation of detritus from the continents can effect but a small portion of the ocean-floors: it is prob- able that the greater part of the sedi- ment, other than that derived from or- ganic remains which come to rest on these surfaces, is thrown out from vol- canoes. The amount of these ejections from active craters is very great. It seems certain that in a little over a cen- tury the volcanoes of the Javanese dis- trict alone have cast into the sea not less than one hundred and fifty cubic miles of dust and pumice. As this matter contains a good deal of gas in the form of small vesicles, it may float to a great distance and undergo much chemical change before it finally comes to rest on the ocean-floor. Each bit of this pumice or ash may indeed jour- ney all the world about before it is de- cayed and falls to pieces or is weighted down by the small animals and plants which adhere to its surface. The quantity of this igneous matter which is cast into the sea is probably far greater than that brought down to the deep by all the rivers, and in volume, the contribution is probably only ex- ceeded by that which is worn from the shores of the sea itself by the action of the waves and tides. In the endless procession of fragments which are brought to the ocean-floor by the very varied actions which lead, in time, all things down to its depths, there perhaps to await their far-off resurrec- tion into continents which are yet to be, we must reckon the remains of man himself; the debris of his body and his sxts which strew that portion of the earth hidden from our eyes by the sea. There is a rather common, but erroneous notion, to the effect that a human body, or even a ship, will not sink to the bottom of the profounder abysses of the oceans, but will, on ac- count of the density of the waters at a great depth, remain suspended at some distance above the surface of the earth. This is an error. No other fate awaits the drowned sailor or his ship than that which comes to the marine creat- ures who die on the bottom of the sea; in time their dust all passes into the great storehouse of the earth even as those who receive burial on the land. 94 THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA. However deep the sea, it is but a few hours before the body of a man who finds his grave in the ocean is at rest upon the bottom; it there receives the same swift service from the agents which, in the order of nature, are ap- pointed to care for the dead, as comes to those who are reverently inhumed in blessed ground. All save the hard- est parts of the skeleton are quickly taken again into the realm of the liv- ing, and even those more resisting por- tions of the body, in time are, in large part, appropriated by the creatures of the sea-floor, so that before the dust re- turns in the accumulating water to the firm set earth it may pass through an extended cycle of living forms. The fate of animal bodies on the sea- floor is well illustrated by the fact that beneath the waters of the Gulf Stream, where it passes by southern Florida, there are, in some places, quantities of bones, apparently those of the manitee, or sea-cows, a large herbivorous mam- mal, which, like the seal, has become adapted to aquatic life; these creatures plentifully inhabit the tropical rivers which flow into the Caribbean Sea, and are, though rarely, found in the streams of southern Florida. At their death they drift out into the open water and are swept away to the northward by the ocean current. For some weeks, per- haps, the carcasses are buoyed up by the gases of decomposition which are retained by their thick, oily skins; as these decay and break the bodies fall to the bottom. When the dredge brings up fragments of their skeletons we find the bits bored through and through, like insect-eaten wood, by the many animals which are fitted to consume them. It is evident that in a short time these bones become reduced to powder. It is otherwise with the ships which founder in the deep sea. They doubt- less remain for centuries as monuments of the strange doings of the masterful creature of the land. Whatever the atti- tude of the craft when it is overwhelmed by the waters it is likely that a moment after it descends below their surface, it rights itself, assuming the position it occupies when sailing in quiet wa- ters. The weight of the ballast neces sarily brings it into this position. In this attitude the vessel falls steadfastly, but not very swiftly, until it strikes the bottom. It may require in the average depth of the sea, which is about three miles, a quarter of an hour or more be- fore an ordinarily laden wooden vessel finds its long resting place. The blow with which it comes upon the sea-floor is not likely to dismast the vessel or to wreck its hull; the shock usually comes upon mud - like materials, suffi- ciently yielding to give a little to the blow, so that the violence of the con- tact is diminished and the upright po- sition and integrity of the hulk is main- tained. As soon as the sunken wreck is at rest we may imagine that it becomes the subject of careful inquiry on the part of a host of hungry creatures who await such windfalls from above. Pen- etrating the spaces of the hold they make avail of all that can serve them as food. More slowly certain forms, which bore in wood, will honeycomb all the timber until the beams and planks are reduced to mere shells. At the same time a host of species which have the habit of attaching their living skeletons to any firm support, crust over and festoon with their bod- ies all the external parts of the wreck, and serve to bind the frail structure to- gether. In the course of time the fab- ric becomes a mere ghost of a ship, it holds together only because the ocean is perfectly motionless and its parts are buoyed up by the water about them. In the course of ages the weight of the incrustation increases so that at last some part is borne down and through the shock which this causes the shadowy relict may at once melt in- to dust. We must conceive a somewhat differ- ent fate for the modern iron ships which find their last haven in the quiet waters of the ocean-floor. Because of their greater weight they will fall more swiftly and strike with greater violence on the bottom. They are, on this ac- count, more likely to be ruined by the last blow they are to receive. More- over their iron sides and beams afforl no food to the marine animals; never- theless they are attacked by the seal THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA. 95 waters and their decay probably pro- t ceeds so rapidly, and the gravitative energy of their metallic parts is so great, that they more quickly fall into ruins, which can hardly be as pictur- esque as those of the older type of ves- sels. It is doubtful if the wrecks of any of the modern men-of-war which have foundered at sea will hold to- gether for fifty years, while those sunk during the action of Trafalgar may en- dure for centuries in the grim sem- blance of battle ships. The idea that ships are likely to be buried in the accumulations which are forming on the deeper sea-floor, rests upon a mistaken conception as to the speed with which sediments are laid down at a distance from the shore. These deposits of the open oceans are so slowly made that we must decree it ex- cessive to suppose that a depth of a sin- gle inch can be formed in a thousand years. It is likely that in no case, save near the coast line, or in the rare places where the showers of volcanic waste bring an unusually large amount of detritus, can a ship be buried in the ac- cumulating strata so as to be preserved in a recognizable form. If the creat- ures of the far future, to whom it may be given to scan the rocks which are now forming and are hereafter to be uplifted into dry land, are to find a trace of their remote ancestors in the deposits, they will secure it, not by find- ing the hulks of great vessels, proba- bly not from the bones of men or the common implements which serve them in seafaring, but from the objects com- posed of glass, or more likely those made of the rarer metals such as gold and platinum. Of the vast wreckage of an iron warship such as the Cap- tain, which sunk in the Bay of Biscay, the hulk, great guns, shot, and shell, the timber and all the forms of its crew will probably disappear before they are entombed in the slowly gathered strata. The geological remainder will perhaps be the coal of her fuel store, the gold of the watches and trinkets and the massive glass objects which abound in such a ship; in all but a small, and little indicative, part of what went to the bottom of the sea when the vessel foundered. It has, to many persons, been an in- teresting speculation as to the aspect of the countless wrecks which have been swallowed up by the North Atlan- tic since the churn of waters has been ploughed by the keels of ships. Their number is probably to be reckoned by the tens of thousands, and the greater part of them lie in a comparatively small part of that field. If we count this portion of the Atlantic which is most peopled with wrecks as having an area of 3,000,000 square miles and esti- mate the total number of such ruins within this space as 30,000 we would have an average of one sunken ship for each hundred square miles of surface. If all these crafts were at once sailing over the surface of the sea we should, from the deck of any one of them, be likely to note the masts of several others. But as they lie on the floor of the ocean the greater part of them are probably reduced to low mounds of rubbish, so that if the ocean-floor were converted into dry ground, and we crossed it in a railway, seeing the fields as we do the prairies, it would require an attentive eye to discern the exist- ence of many of these remains. It is a singular, and perhaps some- what humiliating fact, that the most conspicuous and indelible record which man is making in the strata now form- ing on the sea-floor is written in the bits of coal and ash which are cast from our steamships as they pursue their way over the ocean. The quan- tity of this debris is very great, and un- like the wrecks it is very evenly scat- tered along the paths followed by our steam marine. It is likely that already in the track of our transatlantic com- merce, not a square rod would fail to give a trace of this waste from our coal- burning engines. As this material is not attacked by the marine animals, and is very little affected by the other agents of decay, it will doubtless be very perfectly preserved in the strata which are to bear the records of our time. In the eventual formation of a deposit containing a notable quantity of cinders, it may be that our succes- sors in the far hereafter will interpret our, perhaps otherwise, unrecorded ways of voyaging. THE HOUSE OVER THE WAY. By Charles F. Carryl. T was a shabby, three- story house on the shady side of fifty, and on the north side of the street. Judged by its dimen- sions, it might have been called small for its age; viewed from without, its appearance was thor- oughly disreputable; considered as to its probable interior, it suggested din- giness and a possible prevalence of rats, and regarded as a dwelling, it might have been promptly set down as a house not to be gone into except un- der compulsion. Closed blinds, in the rhomboidal stages of decay, hung askew at the windows, shutting in the various rooms from the sunlight and the air; ramshackle iron railings, rusty and loose in the sockets, ran along the line of the area and straggled, all awry, up the steps, and the front door shame- lessly displayed to passers-by a sullen- looking coat of blotchy varnish, blis- tered and weather-beaten by the suns and storms of many years. As if to emphasize its repellent features it was flanked upon one side by a respectable dwelling, smart in all the glory of well- painted walls and brass door-fittings, and upon the other by a tall apart- ment-house that dwarfed its three- story neighbor into a squat ugliness that brought all its obtrusive shabbi- ness into strong relief. Young Doctor Ledyard, gazing across the street at it from his office window, reflected professionally upon its prom- ise as a sort of hot-house for the rapid propagation of ills of the typhoid school, speculated as to the probable percentage of contagion in its mil- dewed wall-papers, and drew appalling deductions concerning the drainage from the appearance of sodden damp- ness that clung to the outer bricks. In the earlier stages of this sort of in- ferential diagnosis he had awaited, with placid confidence, the outcome of these assumed morbific conditions; but prac tice is slow in materializing from the- ories, and at the end of three years occupancy of his present quarters he was still without a single summons for medical aid from the premises over the way. With his attention thus drawn from time to time to the unsightly dwelling, Ledyard had gradually become aware of a certain air of stealth that marked the movements of its occupants and those of a solitary visitor whom he had observed, at infrequent intervals and invariably after nightfall, furtively en- tering, or cautiously emerging from, its uninviting portal. The occupants were evidently but two in number, a master of the house above stairs and a maid-of-all-work below, a frowsy, mid- dle - aged woman who issued from the lower door but once a day, and, after a brief absence, returned carrying vari- ous small parcels wrapped in the ochre- colored straw paper peculiar to grocers shops of the cheaper class. The vis- itor, so far as could be observed, was a heavily built man of seafaring as- pect, who uniformly entered the house through the lower door, and as in- variably made his exit from the upper one about an hour later. On several occasions, when Ledyard chanced to notice his arrival, he thought he de- tected a suspicious bulge in the set of the visitors pilot-coat, that suggested the carriage of concealed freight; but with this peculiarity he had no con- cern, and, beyond an occasional sur- mise as to the motive of his repeated visits, gave the matter no particular thought. In the course of time, how- ever, certain eccentricities of habit on the part of the occupant of the house attracted his attention, and eventually aroused his curiosity in a marked de- gree. The man was apparently a foreigner, small in stature and sallow in complex- ion, with an amplitude of coat-tail and an upward curl in the toes of his boots that suggested early associations with I

THE HOUSE OVER THE WAY. By Charles F. Carryl. T was a shabby, three- story house on the shady side of fifty, and on the north side of the street. Judged by its dimen- sions, it might have been called small for its age; viewed from without, its appearance was thor- oughly disreputable; considered as to its probable interior, it suggested din- giness and a possible prevalence of rats, and regarded as a dwelling, it might have been promptly set down as a house not to be gone into except un- der compulsion. Closed blinds, in the rhomboidal stages of decay, hung askew at the windows, shutting in the various rooms from the sunlight and the air; ramshackle iron railings, rusty and loose in the sockets, ran along the line of the area and straggled, all awry, up the steps, and the front door shame- lessly displayed to passers-by a sullen- looking coat of blotchy varnish, blis- tered and weather-beaten by the suns and storms of many years. As if to emphasize its repellent features it was flanked upon one side by a respectable dwelling, smart in all the glory of well- painted walls and brass door-fittings, and upon the other by a tall apart- ment-house that dwarfed its three- story neighbor into a squat ugliness that brought all its obtrusive shabbi- ness into strong relief. Young Doctor Ledyard, gazing across the street at it from his office window, reflected professionally upon its prom- ise as a sort of hot-house for the rapid propagation of ills of the typhoid school, speculated as to the probable percentage of contagion in its mil- dewed wall-papers, and drew appalling deductions concerning the drainage from the appearance of sodden damp- ness that clung to the outer bricks. In the earlier stages of this sort of in- ferential diagnosis he had awaited, with placid confidence, the outcome of these assumed morbific conditions; but prac tice is slow in materializing from the- ories, and at the end of three years occupancy of his present quarters he was still without a single summons for medical aid from the premises over the way. With his attention thus drawn from time to time to the unsightly dwelling, Ledyard had gradually become aware of a certain air of stealth that marked the movements of its occupants and those of a solitary visitor whom he had observed, at infrequent intervals and invariably after nightfall, furtively en- tering, or cautiously emerging from, its uninviting portal. The occupants were evidently but two in number, a master of the house above stairs and a maid-of-all-work below, a frowsy, mid- dle - aged woman who issued from the lower door but once a day, and, after a brief absence, returned carrying vari- ous small parcels wrapped in the ochre- colored straw paper peculiar to grocers shops of the cheaper class. The vis- itor, so far as could be observed, was a heavily built man of seafaring as- pect, who uniformly entered the house through the lower door, and as in- variably made his exit from the upper one about an hour later. On several occasions, when Ledyard chanced to notice his arrival, he thought he de- tected a suspicious bulge in the set of the visitors pilot-coat, that suggested the carriage of concealed freight; but with this peculiarity he had no con- cern, and, beyond an occasional sur- mise as to the motive of his repeated visits, gave the matter no particular thought. In the course of time, how- ever, certain eccentricities of habit on the part of the occupant of the house attracted his attention, and eventually aroused his curiosity in a marked de- gree. The man was apparently a foreigner, small in stature and sallow in complex- ion, with an amplitude of coat-tail and an upward curl in the toes of his boots that suggested early associations with I THE HOUSE OVER THE WAY. 97 Houndsditch and the Minories; and his observable habits supplemented these somewhat unprepossessing pe- culiarities with a certain furtiveness of movement that vaguely pointed at doings without the pale of the law. Quite consistently with these habits he invariably kept himself housed until nightfall, at which hour Ledyard re- peatedly saw him stealthily appearing in his doorway and, from its shadow, casting a reconnoitring glance up and down the street, sometimes withdraw- ing slightly as people passed, and never actually emerging until the coast was fairly clear. This singular pre- caution frequently kept him hovering in his doorway for many minutes, with Ledyard an interested spectator from his office window; occasionally it re- sulted in his final withdrawal and the closing of the door. In grotesque ac- cord with these mamieuvres, the errand that called him forth seemed absolute- ly purposeless and trivial It con- sisted in a hurried shuffle down the street, followed by an almost immedi- ate return on Ledyards side of the way; and here, pausing on the curb, the foreigner would scan the entire front of his own dwelling with an air of extreme solicitude, then hurrying across the street, would let himself in with a latch-key and finally vanish from sight for another twenty - four hours. All this was done with an indescribable sneakiness of movement that caused Ledyard eventually to invest him with a sort of malodorous mystery, and his suspicions that the man was engaged in illegal practices of some description were strongly reinforced by an inci- dent that occurred during his observa- tion of his habits. Ledyard had concluded, from seeing light shining through the closed blinds of a room on the second floor, that this was the apartment occupied by the shady master of the house, and he was glancing across at it from his bedroom window one stormy night when a sud- den furious blast of wind swept through the street, and getting a hold on one wing of the blind, tore it open and swnng it back with a crash against the side of the house. The window was without shade or curtain, and the in- tenor of the room, well lighted, was instantly exposed to view, revealing to Ledyards gaze the occupant on his knees, engaged in sorting over a num- ber of small packages that lay about him on the floor. The view, however, was but momentary. The man sprang to his feet, instantly turned out the light, and, a moment after, Ledyard heard him drawing to and securing the blind. In this desultory observation of his apparently disreputable neighbor, Led- yard had casually noticed the marked contrast afforded by the occupant of the well - appointed dwelling immedi- ately adjoining the house over the way. He was a prosperous - looking man, large in person and with a clean- shaven, florid face that gave him the appearance of a well-nourished come- dian; and it was his custom to come forth from his respectable doorway with a sort of parade that invited, or rather defied, attention as distinctly as the stealthy manner of his shabby neighbor seemed to shun it. Ledyard, whose mind was somewhat too much upon other persons concerns, set him down as a man of affairs from his con- stant habit of appearing with an over- coat and umbrella, and with a large valise of the kind known as a dress- suit case, as if his calls out of town were frequent and imperative. The ad- dress of a letter, inadvertently left by the postman at Ledyards door, had in- formed him that this gentlemans name was Glade; of the foreigners name he remained in ignorance until the occur- rence of the singular adventure about to be related. Ledyard had returned to his office late one evening and was solacing him- self with a pipe, prior to turning in for the night, when his servant announced a caller; no name being given, and no message except that the business was urgent. The visitor, upon being shown into the office, proved to be a remark- ably plain-featured woman of middle age, so poorly attired that Ledyard at once set her down as one of the gratu- itous patients occasionally allotted to him by the local dispensary. He was, consequently, somewhat surprised when she stated, without preamble and with 98 THE HOUSE OVER THE WAY. singular abruptness of manner, that Mr. Kriecher was out of his mind. Kriecher? said Ledyard, inquir- ingly. The woman responded to this query by a sidelong jerk of her head toward the house over the way, and Ledyard, thus enlightened, recognized in her the foreigners maid-of-all-work. Replying to his further inquiries, she went on to say with her former abruptness that after ailing for a few days her employer had taken to his bed, and that being forbidden to go to his room unless summoned, she had heard him, from be- low stairs, talking to himself incoher- ently; also that, not knowing of any rel- ative or friend who could be called in, she had assumed the responsibility of going for a doctor. This concise state- ment was supplemented by the blunt remark, Its a fever. Of course its a fever, said Ledyard, with a glow of indignation at this tardy corroboration of his diagnosis. He ought to have had it months ago; and with this expression of resentment at the slow materialization of the overdue malady, he selected one or two specif- ics from his office - shelf and followed the woman across the street. It seemed to him quite in accord with the air of mystery that appeared to invest the house that the woman took him in through the lower en- trance, explaining, by way of apology, that the upper door could be opened only with a pass-key which Kriecher always kept about his person; and a pronounced disrelish for the business in hand suddenly asserted itself when he was bluntly told how to find his pa- tients room, and then was left to make his own way up-stairs. The main hall- was dimly lighted by a small oil lamp burning on a table, and Ledyard, noise- lessly ascending the next flight, found himself at the door of Kriechers room. He paused for a moment, listening to the muttered ravings of the sick man within, and then, softly pushing open the door, entered. Kriecher was tossing about on a huge, old-fashioned post bedstead, curtained with musty and faded hangings, and Ledyards practiced glance detected at once in the mahogany-colored flush upon his face, the suffusion of his eyes and the restless tremor of his hands upon the coverlet, all the symptoms of the delirium of typhoid. The sick mans gaze became instantly fixed with an ex- pression of intense apprehension upon his visitor, and he made a motion as if to leave the bed, but Ledyard restrained him, quietly but firmly, explaining at the same time his errand. Then dis- solving some hydrate of chloral in a tumbler of water he induced him to swallow the sedative. The effect was not immediate, of course, and Ledyard seated himself beside the bed to await the result, meanwhile surveying with considerable interest the apartment about which he had so frequently spec- ulated. The room was dingy and uninviting to the eye, and was pervaded by a close and stuffy atmosphere which Ledyard sniffed with strong professional disap- probation. The appointments were scant in number and of such hetero- geneous character as to convey the im- pression to the casual observer of hav- ing been selected at random from the stock of a dealer in second-hand goods, the only article of furniture at all out of the common run being an enormous wardrobe that stood like a fixture close up against the side wall of the house. A cheap carpet, worn to the warp, cov- ered the floor, and the walls were hung with a flock-paper of singularly hideous pattern, both conveying an indescrib- able suggestion of mouldiness that quite accorded with Ledyards premoni- tions concerning the premises. During the few minutes devoted to this cursory inspection his patient had succumbed to the quieting draught, and he found himself confronted with the problem of the next step to be taken. The situation was sufficiently em- barrassing. The disease, while not con- tagious, was certainly endemic and re- quired either the immediate removal of the patient or a prompt restoration of proper sanitary conditions in his pres- ent quarters. The first of these alter- natives promised a task of discouraging proportions with a certain element of pecuniary risk, while the other held such possibilities of ramifying compli- cations as to render its immediate ac 0 THE HOUSE OVER THE WAY. 99 complishment extremely doubtful, and neither commended itself to a physi- cian not particularly interested in the sick man, and knowing nothing what- ever of his connections or of his re- sources. Under these circumstances, a few minutes reflection pointed out to Ledyard the wisest course to take. He determined, in short, to call in a male nurse who lived near enough at hand to be immediately accessible, and, leav- ing him in temporary charge of the sick man, to go at once to one of the commissioners of Charities and Cor- rection and surrender the case to the care of that department. Kriecher was reasonably certain to remain under the influence of the chloral for an ensuing hall-hour at least, and Ledyard stole softly down-stairs, briefly explained his purpose to the servant below, and then hurried away in search of the nurse. The man was not at home; and this accident, as the sequel proved, was the means of bringing upon Ledyard the most startling episode of his profes- sional life. There was no time for de- lay and he returned at once to his office, despatched his man after another nurse living far uptown, and then hurried across the street to Kriechers house. The maid-of-all-work, who had appar- ently remained on sentry duty at the lower door during the entire period of his absence, reported everything qui- et, and ascending to the sick-room he found Kriecher still sleeping heavily. It was now very late, and Ledyard, in- wardly imprecating the unlucky chance that had imposed upon him the neces- sity of a night-watch, drew the bed- curtains, opened one of the windows and pushed back the blind, and lower- ing the light to a mere glimmer, seated himself between the window and the bed and resigned himself to the weary duty of awaiting the arrival of the nurse. Perhaps nothing is more soporific in its effect, even upon the most appre- hensive watcher, than the peculiar si- lence of a sick-room; and in this case the remote isolation of the servant in the lower story contributed a sense of solitude almost as absolute as though Ledyard had been the solitary occupant of the house. Not even the ticking of a clock disturbed the stillness, and be- yond the scarcely audible respiration of the sick man, or the occasional dis- tant rumble of a vehicle, not a sound broke the air. Apart from the neces- sity of combating drowsiness, the situa- tion was a depressing one, and Ledyard tried to meet the first and to enliven the other by again fixing his attention upon the contents of the room. It was during this somewhat forlorn diversion that he found his thoughts reverting again and again with unac- countable persistence to the wardrobe standing against the walL With the singular fascination peculiar, under cer- tain circumstances, to inanimate ob- jects, this ungainly article of furniture gradually concentrated his attention upon itself until he presently found his thoughts riveted with a sort of fatu- ous intensity upon its keyhole. This, a narrow slit in a circular disk of metal, indicated a patent lock of some descrip- tion, and Ledyard began surmising that here was probably the lock-up of some sort of illegal deviltry, there being no sign elsewhere of the array of packages which the incident of the open blind had once exposed to view. Thus re- fiseting, he was reminded of the hour by the toll of a distant church clock striking one. Following up this diver- sion of his thoughts he began drowsily calculating how soon the nurse might be expected to arrive, and this kind of rumination being sedative in effect he presently fell into a doze. Weary as he was, Ledyard slept lightly, the sense of responsibility prob- ably serving as a bar to profound slum- ber; but he repeatedly lost conscious- ness and as frequently roused himself to sufficient alertness to turn his eyes to the bed beside him. He was vaguely aware, during one of these waking mo- ments, of the sound of footsteps pass- ing up the steps of the adjoining house, followed by the reverberation of a clos- ing door, but the impression conveyed was so faint that it was instantly ob- literated by the lapse into unconscious- ness that ensued. This desultory napping was accom- panied, like the sleep of fever, by a con- stant succession of fantastic dreams in which the wardrobe played a migratory part, moving weirdly about the room, 100 THE HOUSE OVER THE WAY. and occasionally yawning like a huge maw and revealing horrors of unspeak- able quality that repeatedly brought Ledyard to his waking senses with that indescribable fluttering of the heart that follows sudden emergence from the realms of nightmare. These re- curring visions were extremely vivid, and seemed to lose something of their grotesque improbability in the peculiar atmosphere of his surroundings. Con- sequently, when he was presently awak- ened from one of these fitful slumbers by the sound of a voice, he sat mo- tionless in his chair, uncertain as to whether some one had actually spoken or whether he had been startled by the mere phantasy of a dream. All was perfectly silent, save for the measured respiration of the sick man, but to Ledyards excited fancy the air seemed to be fairly vibrating with the echoes of the sound that had aroused him from his sleep. The voice had spoken three times, calling Kriechers name in a hard, metallic tone, with a quality as resonant as if the word had been shouted through a speaking-trum- pet, and the impression of its actual utterance was so distinct that he await- ed its repetition with every faculty ~t its utmost tension. At this moment of alert apprehension, as his gaze searched every part of the darkened room, a new and most unpleasant development ar- rested his attention. The light of the moon, low in the southern sky, streamed in through the opened window, and falling upon the wardrobe against the wall, brought it out in strong relief from the surrounding obscurity, and in this luminous revealment he became aware that its door was noiselessly opening outward. It would be unfair to Ledyard to state that his own unwholesome specu- lations, and the train of distorted im- agery that had followed in his dreams, had actually affected his mental re- sources; but under the peculiar influ- ences of the situation it certainly oc- curred to him that this ungainly arti- cle of furniture had suddenly assumed a ghostly volition of its own, and he received this apparently supernatural manifestation with a bristling sensa- tion at the back of his scalp and a pro- nounced development of goose-flesh. His common - sense, however, immedi- ately banished this gruesome idea by assuring him that the seeming phenom- enon was readily attributable to an im- perfectly fastened lock or some equally commonplace cause, and it was there- fore a rude shock to his nerves when this comforting conclusion was abruptly dispelled in its turn by a startling reve- lation. A presence in the wardrobe announced itself by the apparition of a face, dimly discernible in the obscurity of the interior as though it had been floating, bodiless, in the air. Ledyards first idea was that a burg- lar was concealed in the wardrobe, and he sat for a moment absolutely ap- palled by the thought of being con- fronted with such an emergency, and conscious that the pulsations of his heart were distinctly audible in the dead silence of the room. The distress- ing suspense that followed this impres- sion was, however, of brief duration. The face was advanced to the aperture of the door, like that of a IRuthven seeking the rays of the moon, and as the light fell upon it, Ledyard recog- nized the broad, smooth features of Glade, the occupant of the adjoining house. The eyes, for a moment, sur- veyed the room, the curtained bed, and his own motionless figure as he sat in his chair; then the face was withdrawn and the door was noiselessly closed. The thought of this apparently re- spectable citizen hiding himself, like a thief in a pantry, seemed so preposter- ous that, for a moment, Ledyard was inclined to doubt the evidence of his own senses and to treat the matter as the delusion of a demoralized imagina- tion; but reflection immediately con- nected the apparition with the incident of the calling voice and gave it sub- stance and reality. An unpleasant in- ference at once suggested itself: Glades concealment in his neighbors room, and his interrupted attempt to communi- cate with him, pointed unmistakably to some sort of unholy alliance between the two men. Following this conclu- sion, there suddenly arose in Ledyards mind the contingency of Glades emer- gence from his place of concealment, accompanied by such disquieting re THE HOUSE OVER THE WAY. 101 flections as to the possible results that his manhood was not proof against the strain thus put upon it, and he left the room, stole noiselessly down the stairs, and explaining to the servant below that he would presently return, went out into the street. The time when Kriecher might be expected to awake from his enforced sleep had already passed, and Ledyard, having assumed the responsibility of looking after him until his plans for relief could be carried out, was unwill- ing to entirely desert his post. He ac- cordingly crossed the street and began walking back and forth along the block, glancing up at the dimly-lighted win- dow of Kriechers room as he passed and repassed the house, trusting that this somewhat remote surveillance would temporarily suffice to apprise him of any immediate need of his ser- vices. His mind at first was in a whirl of agitation at what he naturally con- sidered an escape from an awkward trap; but as his brain cooled and re- covered its poise under the freshening influence of the night air, he recalled the fact that no overt act had been committed, and that his surmises had, after all, received their alarming color- ing largely from the one element of mystery that enveloped the adventure. Here a question of his duty in the mat- ter obtruded itself. He had in full meas- ure the scruples of his craft against the revelation of awkward secrets learned in the privacy of the sick-room, and a re- cent appointment to the police medical staff had, curiously enough, developed in him an extreme caution about carry- ing cock-and-bull stories to that depart- ment; but it seemed fairly debatable whether professional reticence, in a case lying quite without his own clientUe and not of his own seeking, should stand between presumed malefactors and the law. These reflections chased one another through his mind in a confused jostle for consideration until there presently emerged from the rack one thought which confronted him as an emergency to be met at once. This was the unde- niable reality of a concealed presence in the apartment of a man too ill either to approve of or denounce it, and it seemed to him that, in this case, the helpless and friendless condition of the patient perhaps gave the physician an unusual latitude in the matter of dis- cretion. Thus reasoning, he was con- sidering the propriety of reporting at the nearest police station the details of his recent experience, when he became aware that a male figure, barely dis- cernible in the obscurity, was standing at the lower door of Kriechers house apparently awaiting admittance. Dis- turbed as he was by his recent experi- ence, he found this sudden presence, unheralded by any observable approach, singularly startling; then, surmising that the nurse had probably arrived unnoticed, he crossed the street, and as the figure became more distinctly discernible he recognized the seafaring man whose skulking visits he had so frequently noticed in the past. The servant stood in the doorway speaking with him in an undertone, and as Led- yard came up she said, Its Captain Trent, sir, and withdrew into the hall, leaving the two men together. Are you the doctor? said the new-coiner, facing about and speaking rather abruptly. I am, replied Ledyard, with equal directness. Are you a friend of Mr. Kriecher? The seafaring man received this in- quiry with a half laugh. Im as near a friend as hes likely to have, he said. Whats the matter with him? Typhoid, said Ledyard, much ag- gravated by neglect and delay. As the case stands, hes in a bad way. As he said this, the stranger, advancing slightly from the shadow of the door- way, brought his person well within the range of a street - lamp standing opposite the adjoining house, and Led- yard, observing him closely, saw that he was a man of perhaps thirty-five or thereabouts, of the conventional sailor type and exceedingly muscular in build. His face, in bright relief in the radiance of the lamp, showed clear-cut, regular features, tanned and roughened by ex- posure to the weather; and Ledyard noticed that he had dark, extremely brilliant eyes, that were scanning his own countenance in turn with a direct steadiness of gaze singularly at variance 102 THE HOUSE OVER THE WAY. with his preconceived idea of the mans furtive habits. His appearance, on the whole, was rather prepossessing than otherwise, and Ledyard, hastily sur- mising that he might be sufficiently in Kriechers confidence to offer some ex- planation of what had occurred, deter- mined to make a confidant of him. He accordingly asked him to step into the hallway, and, closing the door, told him, with the single reservation of his rec- ognition of Glade, the facts of his ex- traordinary experience. The Captain, leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets, listened with apparent interest, but with such an inscrutable expression on his face that Ledyard was quite unable to determine whether he knew the solution of the mystery or not. At the point where Ledyard, with some embarrassment, confessed his retreat, he interrupted him to ask if he had drawn apart the curtains and looked at Kriecher before leaving the room, and upon his replying in the neg- ative, relapsed into his former atten- tive silence. With this exception he made no comment or inquiry until the story was ended, when he punctuated its conclusion by remarking The devil!~ with much emphasis. Ledyard was disappointed by this indifferent reception of his budget of marvels and, somewhat chagrined, went on to unfold his plan for transfer- ring the charge of his patient; but here Trent broke in upon him sharply. That wont do, he exclaimed. Ill take care of him myself. Id do as much as that for a sick dog. Lets go up and have a look at him. There was something about this con- temptuous dismissal of the gruesome features of the affair that brought the color to Ledyards face as he recalled his late somewhat precipitate flight from the room; but he had a guilty consciousness that his patient certainly needed looking after by this time, and he therefore acceded to the proposal without demur, and the two men went together softly up the stairs. As they reached the landing just out- side Kriechers door Ledyard was as- tounded at seeing that the room was perfectly dark, and his heart sank with a misgiving that something had gone wrong during the parley in the hall be- low. Trent, however, promptly pro- duced a pocket lantern, and, sliding the cover, turned a slender stream of light from its bulls-eye through the door- way. As this miniature search-light illumined the bed, both men saw at a glance that it was vacant, with the dis- ordered coverings thrown in a heap against the foot-board; and then, as the slender cone of radiance was thrown upon every portion of the room in turn, it became evident that Kriecher had disappeared, and the wardrobe was exposed to view with its door tightly closed. This preliminary survey hav- ing been completed, Trent entered the room, lighted the gas, and silently pocketing his lantern turned an inquir- ing eye upon the discomfited doctor. Ledyards response was prompt and to the point There can be no devil- ish hallucination about the sick man, he exclaimed, and his life depends up- on my finding him at once and getting him back into bed. Quite right, said Trent, in his quick, decided way. Well look him up, and again producing his revelatory lantern, a search through the house was begun. To Ledyards relief this proved to be an extremely simple matter, as they presently discovered that, with the ex- ception of Kriechers room, the entire house above the basement floor was ab- solutely unfurnished. A search through bare rooms and empty closets is soon accomplished, and in ten minutes the two men had explored every nook and corner from the attic down, and found themselves in the main hall with the now thoroughly frightened servant, without having discovered a trace of the missing patient. In this dilemma Ledyard immediately conjectured that Kriecher, in his de- lirium, had wandered out into the street, and he proposed a search in that direction, suggesting, as a last resource, the sending out of a general alarm through the police; but here Trent laid his hand upon the doctors arm and pointed significantly to the door, and Ledyard, following this indication with his eyes, saw that a long, heavy bolt run- ning longitudinally along the stile was THE HOUSE OVER THE WAY. 108 shot into the socket on the jam above. This silent evidence against exit was un- answerable, and Ledyard, with an un- pleasant crawling sensation running up and down his spine, turned a startled look upon his companion and then caught desperately at his last straw the windows. All shut and as tight as battened hatches, replied Trent, quite coolly. I looked at every one of them as we went along. My good woman, he contin- ued, addressing the servant without waiting for any reply from Ledyard, do you go below and stay there until we call you up, and as the woman disap- peared down the lower stairs he turned again, with a strange light in his eyes, and added: And now, doctor, if your nerves are in good order well look up your ghost. Ledyard, thus abruptly recalled from his professional solicitude to the almost forgotten episode of the wardrobe, felt that never in his life had he received a more distasteful invitation; but there was a cool composure in Trents man- ner of making the proposition that led him to fancy the man was perfectly in- formed as to what lay before him. Rather vaguely relying upon this sur- face indication of confidence, he made a sign of acquiescence and followed the sailor up-stairs with a thrilling sense of an impending crisis of no ordinary quality. The room was as they had left it, with the gas burning brightly and with the impress of Kriechers body still discern- ible in the bed, as though appealing to them to look up his vanished person- ality. Trent, with a grim saggestive- ness of the burglar in his methods, went to work with extraordinary readi- ness. Placing his lantern on a chair he took a revolver from his pocket and handed it to Ledyard without a word; then, diving into another pocket he produced a sort of dwarf crowbar flat- tened out at each extremity into a broad claw. This he inserted into the crev- ice of the wardrobe door, threw his weight upon it, and with a powerful wrench snapped the lock. As the door swung open he stepped quickly back into an attitude of alert preparation, but to Ledyards intense relief nothing emerged. The interior of the wardrobe was exposed to viewquite empty, save for a few articles of shabby clothing hanging limp and flat against its sides. Ledyard confidently expected to see Trents eyes again turned upon him in mocking inquiry, but, to his surprise, the sailor stood motionless with his gaze riveted upon the empty interior before him. Twice he muttered something to himself and Ledyard caught the words panel and lockers of the brig; then, without turning his eyes, he said abruptly: What was the face like? Ledyard hesitated for a moment be- fore replying, and Trent repeated his question with an angry stamp of his foot. It was a face I had seen before, said Ledyard. Whose? said Trent, imperatively. It was the face of Glade, said Led- yard, not venturing upon further delay; the face of the man who lives next door. Trent turned and stared hard at him for an instant as if not comprehending this reply; then a dark flush overspread his face and with an oath he sprang into the wardrobe and hurled himself against the paneling at the back. The frail wood splintered with a crash at the impact, and, as it gave away, he disappeared through the opening as though he had been thrown from a cata- pult. The next moment Ledyard heard him calling for the lantern, and spring- ing, in his turn, into the wardrobe he turned the gleam of its light through the broken paneL For an instant there was revealed to him, on a door beyond, a bright disk of light, with the figure of Trent, furiously plying his crowbar, appearing and vanishing upon its mar- gin with the fantastic abruptness of a slide in a magic-lantern. Then came the sharp metallic snap of a broken lock, and as the door swung open, the intervening vista became dimly dis- cernible with the stalwart form of the sailor outlined in silhouette against the luminous background of a lighted room. Trent instantly stepped forward into the light, and Ledyard, drawn by the mere volition of association with the others movements, passed through the splintered panel and found himself in the adjoining house. 104 THE HOUSE OVER THE WAY. Although this sudden change of en- vironment was sufficiently startling, Ledyard immediately realized what had occurred, the whole affair being, in- deed, readily comprehensible. He and Trent had simply passed through a sec- ond wardrobe, standing, like Kriechers, close against the side of the room, and concealing an opening through the par- ty-wall that separated the two houses; but what this covert connection might presage excited, at the moment, no in- terest in his mind, his attention being diverted by his peculiar surround- ings and by Trents extraordinary con- duct. The floor of the room was strewn with an infinite variety of small mo- rocco-covered and paper boxes of every conceivable shape, all empty, and with their covers scattered about in every direction. Trent, entirely ignoring Led- yards presence, stood motionless for a moment, surveying this litter with di- lated nostrils and with a gleam of fury in his eyes; then apparently following up, with the confident tenacity of a bloodhound on a trail, whatever purpose had taken possession of him, he pulled open drawer after drawer in the various articles of furniture, trampling, in his search, the boxes under foot into shape- less wrecks as though they had been animate objects of his wrath. Ledyard, closely observing him, conjectured that he had expected to find Kriecher, in a freak of delirium, hiding in his own wardrobe, and that something in the appearance of the panel, coupled with the admission of Glades appearance, had revealed to him the existence of a concealed means of communication; but while this theory explained Trents indifference to the account of the call- ing voice and the apparition of the face, and, moreover, took the edge from the fine display of courage which had so im- pressed Ledyard, it utterly failed to ac- count for his sudden outbreak of fury at the discovery. Here, however, Led- yards speculations, and his half-formed intention of hazarding an inquiry, came abruptly to an end. Trent had suddenly paused in his rummaging operations, and appeared to be listening intently to some sound that had caught his ear, and in the lull that ensued a sibilant whispering in the hall became distinct- ly audible through the half-open door. To Ledyards astonishment, Trent, with the unhesitating boldness which had characterized all his movements, at once strode out of the room and demanded, with angry peremptoriness, informa- tion as to the whereabouts of the master of the house. The reply, in a confused treble of feminine voices, was to the ef- fect that Mr. Glade had hurriedly gone out about ten minutes before, taking with him an unknown visitor with whom he had been heard quarrelling in his room. Trents only comment was a frightful oath, followed by the sound of his heavy tread hastily descending the stairs, and the next moment the echoing slam of the outer door pro- claimed his exit into the street. Ledyard instantly realized the awk- ward position in which he was placed by this unlooked-for desertion, and his first impulse was to follow Trents ex- ample and leave the house at once; but this intention was frustrated in its in- ception by the sudden appearance in the doorway of two dishevelled and extremely agitated maids. Ledyards appearance, equipped as he was with a dark-lantern and a revolver, was not reassuring, and the women, uttering shrieks of horror, fled tumultuously up- stairs, while Ledyard, thoroughly de- moralized by this encounter, hastily laid his house-breaking outfit on the floor and made a precipitate retreat through the broken panel The advent- ure had assumed an aspect that prom- ised the most serious consequences, and heartily imprecating the folly that had led him to connect himself with it, he rushed through Kriechers desert- ed room, hurried down the stairs, and ran through the lower hall out into the street. Here he found his man and the now useless nurse listening open- mouthed to the servants confused re- cital of details, and hastily instructing them to remain on the spot till his re- turn, he went direct to the nearest po- lice station. Feeling perfectly convinced that a man in Kriechers condition must nec- essarily collapse before going very far, Ledyards first care was to have a gen- eral alarm sent out instructing patrol- THE HOUSE OVER THE WAY. 105 men to look for an escaped patient de- lirious from typhoid fever. This pro- fessional duty having been discharged, his next step was to give the sergeant all the details of the concurrent circum- stances. The officer, at first lending a somewhat indifferent ear to the recital, presently called in two sharp-featured detectives to hear the particulars, and Ledyard observed that the three fre- quently exchanged significant glances of intelligence as the story progressed. The necessary formalities of noting down the names and descriptions of the parties concerned, the street num- bers of the houses, and the hours of the night marking the several events having been completed, the sergeant dryly remarked that an hour ago would have done just as well, and sup- plemented this expression of opinion by advising the doctor to go home to bed. It was two oclock, and Ledyard began to realize that he was footsore and weary. He therefore made his way home, dismissed his guards, and tum- bled into bed utterly fagged out. On the day but one following this adventure Ledyard was much refreshed by coming across the following article in his morning newspaper: BREAK-UP OF A SMUGGLING SYNDICATE. The revenue officers, on information supplied by the police, report the dis- persal of the smuggling agency which has for so long defied all their attempts at discovery, and which, doubtless, has supplied the market with large quanti- ties of lace, jewellery, and other readily concealable contraband goods of excep- tional value. Unfortunately no seizure of property was effected, and the prin- cipals, excepting one man, escaped and have thus far eluded all attempts to trace them. The captured man, an undersized foreigner named Kriecher, was found ill in the street, having ap- parently been abandoned by his com- rades, and died in hospital early this morning of typhoid fever, presumably accelerated by the exposure incidental to his attempt at flight. The methods employed by the gang were unusual and not devoid of a cer tam grotesque cleverness. The smug- gling proper was evidently managed with remarkable adroitness by a sea- faring dare - devil named Trent. The empty cases discovered give no clue to the source of supply on the other side of the water, but estimates as to the probable value of the contents indicate a considerable amount of capital em- barked in the enterprise. But the pict- uresque features of the game are those which marked the distribution of the contraband material after it had been landed at this port, it having been evl- dently well known to the parties to the scheme that the marketing of high- grade goods, except by the regular im- porters, is an extremely ticklish under- taking. The missing links in the chain of evidence have been supplied in part by several servants employed on the premises who are under detention by the revenue authorities. The plan resorted to was the utili- zation of two adjoining dwellings, one, intentionally squalid, being occupied by the foreigner already referred to, and the other by a well-appearing fel- low named Glade, who seems to have had a certain mercantile standing, and whose rdle was that of travelling agent for various nebulous foreign houses. The contraband goods having been de- livered to the foreigner, were by him transferred to his confederate in the adjoining house through an opening in the intervening wall, ingeniously concealed by clothes-presses built up against the sides of the rooms thus connected. Duplicate keys to the presses, a sliding panel in the opening, and a speaking-tube to announce readi- ness for action, completed the equip- ment. The conveyance of the goods into the first house was effected by Trent with extraordinary boldness, by the simple device of wrapping the parcels in coarse straw-paper, and handing them on successive mornings to Kriech- ers servant, at an obscure shop where her small marketing was done. Thus convoyed by butter, eggs, and cheese, the contraban4 material was safely housed, and the most vigilant watch upon the agents premises would have failed to detect any delivery of goods. 106 THE HOUSE OVER THE WAY. The sale was subsequently effected in distant cities by the simple device of carrying the articles to such points in an ordinary travellers valise. It was the hand of disease that pointed out to the eye of the law this well-laid plan of fraud, and wrought its downfall The occupant of the humbler dwelling having been stricken down by a fever, which produced de- lirium, his showier neighbor attempted to communicate through the tube, and, failing to elicit a reply, reconnoitred, with the result of discovering his con- dition. It is the theory of the police that, in this emergency, either deter- mining to take advantage of the others helpless condition by decamping with the spoil in hand, or fearing the un- earthing of the plot, Glade was pack- ing up the stock for removal when he was interrupted by the unexpected ap- pearance of the invalid who entered a violent protest. In this dilemma he probably played upon the delirious fancy of his companion and induced him to fly from some imaginary dan- ger, afterward abandoning him in the street. In any event, the departure was discovered by the inopportune ar- rival of the nautical dare-devil, who, in a vigorous search for the patient, came upon the concealed passage, of which he had apparently, and probably for prudential reasons, been kept in igno- rance, his conduct indicating that he had no previous knowledge of Glades connection with the business. Finding that he had been hoodwinked he burst like a cyclone through the panel into the adjoining house, and discovering that the spoil was gone, started off af- ter the fugitives, presumably with hom- icidal intent, and has not since been heard of. The exasperating part of the whole affair is the fact that the contraband material might have been secured, and the trio of smugglers bagged, but for the absolutely fatuous conduct of a physician who had been called in to attend the sick man. This gentleman, whose name we suppress from motives of hardly merited consideration, ap- pears to have behaved with an utter lack of reflection and presence of mindwhich borders upon imbecility. It is a mat- ter of record, taken down from his own lips, that while sitting in Kriechers room awaiting the arrival of a nurse who was to assume charge of the sick man, he not only heard Glade calling through the tube to his confederatc but also subsequently saw him open the door of the clothes-press and leisurely survey the apartment. Furthermore, by his own admission, voluntarily made in subsequently reporting these occur- rences to the authorities, he had from his own dwelling, directly opposite the premises in question, frequently no- ticed suspicious actions on the part of Kriecher, and had speculated, with a strong affirmative bias, on the probabil- ity of his being engaged in illegal prac- tices of some description. It will hardly be credited that, under these impelling circumstances, a practising physician, presumably equipped with brains and other deducing paraphernalia, found the simple expedient of promptly re- porting these suspicious incidents to the police so indefinitely presented to what he was pleased to call his mind, that he delayed action until the last of the gang had disappeared. We are inclined to suspect, from the precipit- ancy with which the doctor retreated at Glades appearance, that the young gentlemans nerves were so unstrung by his adventure that he was incapable of utilizing that best of all prompters common-sense. Ledyard did not preserve the news- paper. THE EVOLUTiON OF A CITY SQUARE. By Samuel Parsons, Jr. DO not know why it is that city squares are generally treated as mere open spaces of greensward with shade- trees dotted over them. Poverty of designing ability, probably, and lack of knowl- edge of what might be done to beautify such places will entirely suf- fice to account for this baldness of treat- ment. In the minds of many people ma- ples and elms, Norway spruces and ar- bor-vita~s make up a nursery catalogue of ornamental trees; and as Norway spruces and arbor-vitees generally come to grief in city squares, there remain only maples and elms. It is a pity that so much ignorance and thoughtlessness are rife in this respect, for there are city squares all over the country that might be greatly improved by the application of a little lawn - planting intelligence. When a portion of a city is improved there are always spaces of ground at the junctions of streets, plots of irregular shape, triangles, etc., that could be readily made to lend an elegant air to the neighborhood by the judicious use of a few trees, shrubs, and flowers. I do not wish by this to convey the idea that I would limit the area of city squares to that of such small spaces. Far from it. I believe the allotment for public squares should be of the most liberal characterten, twenty, fifty acreses- pecially if this allotment can be made before the ground of the city is largely built on. I will even go further and say that it will pay to establish these large squares or parks long after the city has attained important magnitude. Mr. Andrew H. Green and other leading promoters of park interests will, I am sure, bear me out in this statement. It goes, of course, without saying that it will pay from a sanitarian and sesthetic point of view, but it will also pay in the rise of value of adjacent land caused by the establishment of a park. Nero was not such a reckless spendthrift as ap- pears at first sight, when he made a great park of hundreds of acres right in the centre of densely populated old Rome. There might readily have been genuine statesmanlike forethought and sagacity in what must have seemed at the time a reckless exercise of power. Doubtless many old rookeries situated adjacent to this park must have disappeared, and stately palaces appeared in their stead. What a charming place, more- over, this great park must have been, situated in the midst of picturesque Rome of the first century. It was doubtless arranged with fine taste, too, for Nero, or his architects, seem to have had sound ideas concerning the decoration of parks and villas, and a fine appreciation in some cases of the treatment that retains natural effects. But I did not intend to digress to the consideration of great parks. Even in these liberal days we are fortunate if we can get, in the midst of a great city, a number of small breathing-places of two or three acres, half an acre, or a few hundred square feet of greensward. Then, as I have said, there are often vacant places, triangles, and irregular spaces, not suited for building lots, that seem to be left unoccupied, perforce, as we might say. It is of these more lim

THE EVOLUTiON OF A CITY SQUARE. By Samuel Parsons, Jr. DO not know why it is that city squares are generally treated as mere open spaces of greensward with shade- trees dotted over them. Poverty of designing ability, probably, and lack of knowl- edge of what might be done to beautify such places will entirely suf- fice to account for this baldness of treat- ment. In the minds of many people ma- ples and elms, Norway spruces and ar- bor-vita~s make up a nursery catalogue of ornamental trees; and as Norway spruces and arbor-vitees generally come to grief in city squares, there remain only maples and elms. It is a pity that so much ignorance and thoughtlessness are rife in this respect, for there are city squares all over the country that might be greatly improved by the application of a little lawn - planting intelligence. When a portion of a city is improved there are always spaces of ground at the junctions of streets, plots of irregular shape, triangles, etc., that could be readily made to lend an elegant air to the neighborhood by the judicious use of a few trees, shrubs, and flowers. I do not wish by this to convey the idea that I would limit the area of city squares to that of such small spaces. Far from it. I believe the allotment for public squares should be of the most liberal characterten, twenty, fifty acreses- pecially if this allotment can be made before the ground of the city is largely built on. I will even go further and say that it will pay to establish these large squares or parks long after the city has attained important magnitude. Mr. Andrew H. Green and other leading promoters of park interests will, I am sure, bear me out in this statement. It goes, of course, without saying that it will pay from a sanitarian and sesthetic point of view, but it will also pay in the rise of value of adjacent land caused by the establishment of a park. Nero was not such a reckless spendthrift as ap- pears at first sight, when he made a great park of hundreds of acres right in the centre of densely populated old Rome. There might readily have been genuine statesmanlike forethought and sagacity in what must have seemed at the time a reckless exercise of power. Doubtless many old rookeries situated adjacent to this park must have disappeared, and stately palaces appeared in their stead. What a charming place, more- over, this great park must have been, situated in the midst of picturesque Rome of the first century. It was doubtless arranged with fine taste, too, for Nero, or his architects, seem to have had sound ideas concerning the decoration of parks and villas, and a fine appreciation in some cases of the treatment that retains natural effects. But I did not intend to digress to the consideration of great parks. Even in these liberal days we are fortunate if we can get, in the midst of a great city, a number of small breathing-places of two or three acres, half an acre, or a few hundred square feet of greensward. Then, as I have said, there are often vacant places, triangles, and irregular spaces, not suited for building lots, that seem to be left unoccupied, perforce, as we might say. It is of these more lim 108 THE EVOLUTION OF A CITY SQUARE. ited spaces that I wish to speak, and of the methods by which they can be most readily evolved into attractive city squares. The large parks can take care of themselves better, but these small parks are too often neglected and unde- veloped. When we come, however, to the actual improvement of these small squares, we generally find the work too zealously pursued in the way of plant- ing large trees, and the apparently minor details of grading, securing good green- sward and attractive shrubs neglected. The thickly planted trees, in a few years, deform and destroy each other, and in- stead of grass, noxious weeds occupy the densely shaded spaces. I have found fifty feet a good limit to fix for the set- ting out of large shade trees, such as elms and maples, not only for city squares, but for all road-side and lawn planting. The old idea of common, in a back-country village, has unfortunately been too frequently applied, with little development, to the construction of city squares ; but the city squares should, in reality, be a highly developed common, built on definite artistic principles, and not on the cow-path theory, and the hap- hazard system of planting. I should say, moreover, at the outset, that I do not intend to lay down any strict rules, but rather to suggest principles of work- ing. Even in New York and its sub- urbs differences of climate and soil may affect the planting and arrange- ment of walks, etc., in ways hard to foresee. It is, however, necessary to choose il- lustrations somewhere, by which may be indicated the way in which city squares should be evolved out of primary con- ditions. The cases chosen are meant to be merely typical, and in order to have them within reach of many of those who are likely to read these pages I have selected certain city squares in the busi- est part of lower New York. The native soil of this portion of New York is so barren and sandy, and the neighbor- hood so crowded and dusty, that only extremely rugged and vigorous plants will grow there at all. All evergreens, all beeches, oaks, and a hundred other trees fail here entirely. You can de- pend, therefore, on the certainty that plants used in these parks are capable of thriving in almost any soil or climate north of Charleston and east of the Rocky Mountains. The parks I am go- ing to consider have been, as will appear, laid out on a definite artistic theory; maps have been made, proper drainage lines established, and the desired com- binations of trees and shrubs, grass and flowers, carefully studied. The first illus- tration I have taken is Jeannette Park, which most New Yorkers will remem- ber as Coenties Slip, an old inlet run- ning between regular docks up from the East River, not far from the foot of Broad Street. It was a well-known spot in colonial times, and much business was done thereabouts by the old Dutch burghers. A celebrated hostelry stood there long before the Revolution, and in quite recent times it will be remem- bered as a busy place for loading and unloading produce, and for huckstering of all sorts. It has been always a quaint, historic neighborhood, in the midst of busy, unceasing trade. The time at length arrived, however, when the old slip came to be thought something of a nuisance. Busy people were annoyed at being obliged, on their way along South Street, to make a con- siderable detour around the head of the slip. Sundry drunken sailors and other reckless folks, moreover, had a way, it was said, of falling overboard in the slip, as it suddenly yawned across their path along the docks. In a word, the bene- fit of the inlet to shipping was found to be overbalanced by its general in- convenience. Finally, therefore, the slip was filled up with ordinary dumping ma- terial. But thrifty citizens passing by were still not pleased when they were con- fronted by an open stony waste covered with pedlers wagons, trucks, and booths for the sale of sundry and various arti- cles. In one way and another, therefore, pressure was brought to bear on the public authorities to induce them to lay out the territory in question as a park. It had many advantages for this pur- pose. The neighborhood was a crowded one, with many business houses, drink- ing shops, etc., and hereabouts also dwelt many longshoremen and other poor folk. No park existed for a long distance to the east, and to the north DRAWN BY V. PERARD. ENGRAVED BY W. B. WITTE. Jeannette Park New York City. 0 110 THE EVOLUTION OF A CITY SQUARE. there was nothing until you came to the City Hall. Daily travel from other parts of the city was incessant and crowded. For beauty of outlook noth- ing could surpass this spot down town except the Battery. Fresh breezes blew across it, and vessels passed and re- passed, and the quiet or tossing water made a panorama of great and abiding interest. The slip and surrounding streets be- longed to the city, so that it was not necessary, as in most cases of park- making, to have a bill passed in the Legislature at Albany authorizing the city to take, condemn, and pay for the required land. A few thousand dollars was secured by the passage of a bill at Albany permitting the allowance of a sum of money in the budget of expenses of the park Department, fixed yearly by the Board of Estimate and Apportion- ment. This apparently simple operation, however, involved several years of de- lay. The newspapers, of course, lent most efficient aid in creating the neces- sary amount of agitation in favor of the project, and finally the work was fairly commenced. In 1886, as Superintend- ent of Parks in New York City, it be- came my duty to lay out and actually construct and plant this Coenties Slip Park. Previous to this time the slip had been merely filled up with a lot of crude material of a most promiscuous char- acter, and a stone coping and walk of ce- ment concrete constructed around it. The first thing I undertook in con- nection with the future work was the preparation of a complete plan of the walks, lawns, and planting. This I studied out with much care, and the final result was only attained after fre- quent and long discussions with the engi- neers of the department and the com- missioners. I remember one of the commissioners, for a long time, insisted on making the park an open square, without fence or railing. He wanted it laid out with two straight walks cut- ting diagonally across, thus saving a few feet of travel for specially hurried pas- sers-by. This discussion partly grew out of the fact that Union Square and several other parks of the city (which, by the bye, had winding and not straight paths),were denuded of fences and the public seemed satisfied. I contended, however, that this park, and indeed most other parks, required some sort of fence to prevent the ubiquitous dog and other animals from dashing recklessly about and de- stroying shrubs and flowers irretrievably. It seemed to meand much experience of my own, as well as that of other com- petent experts proved this impression correctthat every park, whether small or large, ought to have an enclosure of some kind. Aside from the protection from marauders thus afforded, a fence masked throughout with a border line of trees and shrubs suggested to the loiterer on the park-benches and walks a grateful sense of seclusion and quasi ownership. Even the tramp could feel, as long as he sat upright and behaved himself, that here were grass, flowers, and trees made, as it were, into an ex- clusive picture for himself alone. I finally secured the adoption of my idea of fence and winding boundary walks by dint of taking two of the Park Commissioners to Coenties Slip and there readily convincing them of the correctness of my views. The birds- eye view given on p. 109 shows clearly how the park was laid out. The fence was of iron, about four feet high, and six to twenty feet inside winds a sinuous path thirteen feet wide. This extend- ed around the entire park, thus secur- ing the greatest possible central lawn space, and broad, park-like effect. In either of the four corners a heavy plan- tation of trees and shrubs was arranged, in order to mask the square look of the park. One corner had a group of five Lombardy poplars among the shrubs. These, as their final dimensions were lofty, were intended to shut out the ob- jectionable Elevated Railway close by. In another corner, among shrubs, was an American linden, in another an Ameri- can elm, and in still another, always growing among shrubs, some Lombardy poplars again, used to mask a different view of the Elevated Railway. Between these corners, along the fence, and grow- ing out of shrubs, but never nearer than fifty feet, were set American elms, Nor- way maples, and American lindens; and over on the main central lawn space were single shade - trees of the same THE EVOLUTION OF A CITY SQUARE. 111 kinds and large groups of combined shrubs and trees. These several groups on both sides of the walks were so dis- posed as to mass together solidly in ap- pearance and suggest the idea of walks winding at certain points through a single mass of shrubs and trees. This was the general theory of the plan adopted by the Park Board, and the next thing was to commence the work of actually constructing or evolving from a very primitive condition the park prop- er. In most cities of the country it would have been now only necessary to trench or plough the soil, and, after grad- ing, to spade in a liberal supply of ma- nure. It was not so with Jeannette Park, recently thus named after the daughter of the late James Gordon Bennett. IRub- bish filled up the slip, that is, crude earth, brickbats, coarse sand, and the very miscellaneous materials character- izing an ordinary dumping-ground. It was necessary, therefore, to transport to the spot the actual soil in which the grass and plants must grow. But even the top soil of lower New York was so sandy and unfertile that it was out of the question to use it for park-making. On looking around the outskirts of New York carefully, I de- cided that the best artickS of the kind I could secure, within reasonable distance, would be found in Brooklyn, the soil there being heavier and richer than that of any part of Manhattan Island. I tried New Jersey, but finally obtained what I wanted, for a satisfactory price, just across the river from Jeannette Park. With this material the park was filled from two to three feet deep. Wherever trees and shrubs were to be set, there the rich mould was most lib- erally used; for a rich soil of considera Canal Street Park New York. 112 THE EVOLUTION OF A CITY SQUARE. ble depth is specially necessary where the smoke and dust of a crowded city tend continually to clog and impede the growth of grass and plants. I should have said, however, that one portion, viz., the walks of the park, staked out in accordance with the map, were, of course, not filled with rich mould. It may seem unnecessary to note so evi- dent a matter, but such mistakes are often made, and much excellent mould is thus wasted. Along the walk -bor- ders bluestone curbs were set, about a foot deep, and showing two inches above the surface of the walk. These curbs were cut and set along the curving paths with much difficulty and expense. It has not been my practice to use these curbs in city squares, as any worn places on the walk-borders can be readily and inexpensively repaired from time to time with fresh sod, and a less artificial effect produced. The commissioners, however, in this case, insisted on using curbing, and I certainly could not say it was positively bad practice, only cx- pensive, and not really necessary. After the curbs were set, or, to speak more exactly, just before they were set, the walks were filled in with a foot of stone of various sorts, broken, wherever neces- sary, into pieces one, two, and three inches in diameter. On top of this came sand, and then asphalt blocks shaped like large bricks, and made of asphalt and gravel mixed and pressed in moulds. This kind of walk has the advantage of being easily repaired, but is apt, unless laid with great care, on a properly grad- ed foundation, to look and be uneven. The grading of the surface of the park was, perhaps, the most difficult part of the work to carry out successfully. Drainage had to be considered, the best conditions for the plants secured, and withal a general artistic effect attained. Wherever the trees and shrubs were to stand, the ground being intentionally raised for the natural effect desired, and the proper depth of soil, there was, of course, a swelling or slightly rolling surface developed. This was subdued Abingdon Square, New York, THE EVOLUTION OF A CITY SQUARE. 113 as much as possible in the central lawn, so as to secure breadth of effect and simplicity of treatment. I have dwelt on the character of the trees, but that of the shrubs was also interesting. Shrubs are not generally found on public squares, why, I do not know. Doubtless simple ignorance and lack of interest in lawn-planting are sufficient causes to assign. Nothing can be more brilliant and attractive in its way than a fine collection of trees and shrubs on a city park situated like that on Coenties Slip. Evergreen shrubs fail in such places. We have seen, also, that the best effects are often obtained by planting trees and shrubs together, although some trees may and should be planted singly, a little away from the shrub groups; but remember that you must, if you wish to have groups of mingled trees and shrubs thrive, plant them out at the same time. If shrubs are set out alongside trees, after the roots cf the trees have had possession of the ground ten or fifteen years, the shrubs, if they live, will soon assume a sorry shape. The reader should visit Jeannette Park in summer, if only to note the variety and beauty of the coloring and form of the shrub leaves and flowers. Beauty of leaf is, I think, evidently more valuable than that of flower; for leaves last all summer, and sometimes throughout the autumn. Look at this purple berberry! What could be finer in the way of color- ing, although it does not blaze from afar like its neighbor. This neighbor, the golden elder (Sambucus nigra aurea), is, in June, a great mass of molten goldof concentrated sunlight, with picturesque shadows and outlines. This color, more- over, lasts nearly all summer. If you plant this charming shrub, dont forget to prune it more or less every winter or early spring, otherwise it will become straggling and sparsely supplied with leaves, and, worst of all, lose its beauty of coloring. The mainstay, the staple of shrub- planting in New York, however, has been the privet, and by preference the Cal- ifornia privet (Ligustrurn ovabjolium). It will grow where scarcely anything but a honey-locust or osage orange would thrive, and is far more clean, elegant, VOL. XII.13 and effective as a shrub than either of them. I respect the honey-locust grown as a tree, but not cut back to a shrub. On the other hand, the privet must be cut back occasionally, or it will grow leggy and thin, altogether an unsatis- factory -looking object. In Jeannette Park are dozens of California privets, vigorous and bright and shining of leaf. They help to mask the corners, and also form an important part of the groups upon the lawn. Among the large shrubs used were the weigela and red-stemmed dogwood (Cornus .sanguinea), two ex- cellent shrubs, under most conditions, in city parks. The brilliant red- or purple-leaved Prunus Pissardi has also done well here, as it has in other parts of New York; but it has not been em- ployed in general culture long enough to judge of its ultimate success. The Forsythia viridissima also does well in this park, and in spring droops pendu- lous masses of small golden bells; and in fall the Hydran yea paniculata grandi- flora sends out splendid great trusses of compound flowers, which are first white, then purple, and finally crimson. Rho- dotypus lcerrioides, a hardy shrub from Japan, was also frequently used, and pre- sented an elegant appearance, with its light - green, crinkled foliage. Two of the best shrubs in Jeannette Park, or anywhere else, especially in barren dis- tricts, are the American thorns (Cratw- gus coccinea and Crus-galli). The leaves of these thorns are dark green, shining, and individual in character, and in size they equal that of most small trees. The Loniceras, or standard honeysuc- kles, have done well in Jeannette Park, especially Lonicera fragrantissima, which is rich looking and remarkably effective in its coloring and drooping masses. Be- sides these large-growing shrubs, there were used smaller growing ones that bordered the groups of large kinds, such as Kerria Japonica, Thunbergs barberry, the snow-berry (Symphoricarpos race- mosus), and the other Symphoricarpos, the Indian currant, botanically defined as vulgaris or glomeratus. The finest of these shrubs is Thunbergs barberry. Its masses and outlines are particularly picturesque, and the small, dark green leaves are hardy and effective in a great variety of exposures. In several isolated 114 THE EVOLUTION OF A CITY SQUARE. positions, standing generally just a little shrubs as to secure some genuine effect apart from the main groups, was a note- of breadth and distance. On few parks I worthy shrub, with large and effective of the country, whether large or small, leaves, Viburnum Sieboidji. This great, does this effect appear in any satisfactory dark, glistening shrub, with ridged, cnn- manner, and one reason for this is that kled, and rugged-looking leaves, attracts so few shrubs are used. It is like leav- the eye at once. It is little known and ing off a painters palette some funda- used, but should not be neglected. mental and important color, and expect- This list does not, of course, include ing him to produce a well-composed and all the shrubs that would be likely to painted picture. succeed in Jeannette Park; but they are The proper place to see Jeannette Park all excellent and reliable, and I have at its best is on the nearest part of the learned by much experience and many Elevated Railway, where the cars round mishaps that a short list of shrubs and the sharp curve. Here the jewel-like, trees is a good list to employ, richly decorative effect of the park is I must not forget to point out the spread out in a birds-eye view, and be- beauty of the summer decoration of this yond, a few yards away, rolls the East park. There are coleuses, red and yel- River, with its varied shipping and in- low, geraniums, pyrethrums, etc., wind- cessantly dancing waves. Think what ing in and out and round about the a boon this park becomes to the tired shrub groups in bands of vivid color, laborer and his wife and children as diversified by flanking masses of great they linger on the park benches enjoy- purple- and green-leaved caunas. The ing the river breeze on an evening of use of the beautiful varieties of cannas, some stifling August day. I have cho- green-leaved, bronzed-leaved, and red, sen Jeannette Park as a special illustra- that have been sent over lately from tion, because I consider it an excellent France and elsewhere, cannot be too instance of the genuine lawn-planting highly commended for the desired sub- results that can be attained in what tropical effects in city parks. Another may be called the smallest lawn space, most effective subtropical plant is the where such effects can be readily accom- Aliusa Enseta, with its great, broad plished. Understand, there is, I think, leaves, growing often eight or ten feet a limit to this vista treatment. You high from the base to the tip of the must not make your landscape-garden- actual leaf. This species is better than ing effects petty. The Japanese may ililiusa Cavendishii, the commonly known give such work their own peculiar charm banana-tree, not only on account of its of treatment, but it is in the Japanese beautiful red midrib, but because it way, and this way has no real relation stands up better against high winds. It to any of our park work. The brilliant, is a good idea to plant these musas in jewel-like effect of the bedding is, I the middle of a group of cannas, as the think, specially suited to parks situated tendency of the unsupported leaves of as Jeannette is, among crowded houses the Musas to beat about and tear in on three sides. In large rural parks, high winds, on account of their great like the Central, in New York, and the size, is thus diminished. The combina- Prospect, in Brooklyn, little or no bed- tion of the great musa leaves with those ding should be employed, for in essence of the cannas is very.effective from the bedding is artificial and unsuited to rural similarity of their coloring and outline, surroundings. From either corner of Jeaunette Park There are other small parks in New you catch long vistas between shrubs, York that are so much smaller than surrounded by flashing bands of color Jeannette, that for many years it was bedding, back to solid masses of shrubs not thought best to open them to the and towering trees in the opposite diag- public for fear of the ravages of the onal corner near the Elevated Railway. multitude. One of the best features of The park consists of about two-thirds of Mr. A. S. Hewitts reign as Mayor was an acre of land, and is just large enough his persistent advocacy of the opening to enable the planter to so grade his of these small parks in the interest of ground and so dispose his trees and the crowded tenements that surrounded THE EVOLUTION OF A CITY SQUARE. 115 them. He accomplished his purpose of opening these parks during his term of office, and to him is chiefly due the credit of giving to the public the use of the following small squares and triangles: Jackson Square, Abingdon Square, Ca- nal Street Park, Duane Street Park, and Christopher Street Park. Of these Canal Street Park is the largest, and Duane Street Park the smallest, their size vary- ing from one-third to one-ninth of an acre. They are all on the west side of town, and are situated between Duane Street and Fourteenth Street. The treat- ment of these parks by Mr. Calvert Vaux and myself was made very simple. It consisted of a bordering plantation of trees and shrubs arranged on the prin- ciples applied in Jeannette Park. Fortu- nately fences already existed around the plots. The walks either wound around the outskirts along the fence, leaving a border for planting of five or ten feet, as in Jackson Square, or they cut diagonal- ly across the long narrow parks, leaving a comparatively large lawn space on one side. In Jackson Square the central space was made a great bouquet of brill- iant flowers and leaves, in the middle musas and cannas, and round them bril- liant, glowing acalyphas, coleuses, and geraniums. The effect of this park was extremely decorative, with the central showy bedding, flanked and nested as it were among masses of trees and shrubs. The neighborhood of this park is re- spectable but populous, and it is won- derful on a warm evening to see the dense masses of people that crowd the park benches and smooth asphalt walks. At Canal Street Park the length of the main lawn space was such as to secure something in the nature of a vista, and with this was associated the same jew- el - like effect of bedding and the same charm of trees and shrubs. Abingdon Square has been so long crowded with fine trees that a winding walk ending in a little plaza, and bordered by a few shrubs and little bedding was all that could be satisfactorily done. Shrubs and flowers would not thrive in such deep shade. At Duane Street a diag- onal walk has been introduced, swelling out to a considerable width at one point between the three entrances. Beyond this there are only three small bits of green grass on either side, a few shrubs along the fence, and a small flower-bed; but even this is a boon to the crowded neighborhood. In Christopher Street Park the shade from old trees was so dense that only a bordering plantation of shrubs could be secured, and these were mostly privets. No bedding would thrive in such shade. A diagonal walk has been made here, with the usual widening at one point, where children can play and their elders walk about a bit with more freedom. Along the en- tire length of this path park benches were arranged. These benches with foot-rests we have been accustomed in New York to place in the grass, thus securing more space on the walks for both grown people and children. It will be readily seen from what I have said that in several of these small city parks we have had to contend with many unfavorable conditions. The parks could have been treated more success- fully in some cases if we could have started de novo, as we did in the case of Jeannette Park. There is another interesting experi- ence we have had with these small parks, and that is the perfection with which we have been able to maintain them. Be- fore Mr. Hewitt carried through his en- terprise of opening them, it was deemed impossible that the public would be able to use them without utter destruc- tion coming daily to the shrubs, flowers, and grass. The mere friction of the passing multitude, it was thought, would ruin the grass borders. Three years of experience has, however, proved this be- lief to be a fallacy. People, as a rule, treat the place with respect, and often themselves reprimand grown-up people and children who seem to be likely to injure the grass or flowers. There is actually a guard set by the neighbors, and, to our surprise, the grass and flowers look as well as they do in Cen- tral Park. It is, of course, comparatively expen- sive to keep these small parks in order, for one gardener is obliged to spend nearly his whole time in the summer on each one of them, mowing, watering, cul- tivating plants, and, above all, sweeping and gathering up litter. This last item occupies much time daily in the small 116 TO TROJAN HELEN. parks of a crowded city. There must be also a police-officer on guard most of the time. But no tax-payer in a great city like New York could, I think, grudge this expense if he would take the trouble to visit one of these small parks and see the peopleespecially the women and the little onesenjoying the grass and flowers. New York is singularly lacking in grass and trees, and these small parks are therefore green oases, in the midst of piles of brick and mortar, that are in- valuable. If a large city, in the early days of its growth, would only set aside numerous open spaces at the junction of avenues, and establish a comprehensive and intel- ligent scheme of treatment, it would find in the early future great profit in the way of health and adornment. In nearly every city in the United States these small squares could be established and treated in an approved manner more readily than in New York. The land would be less expensive, and the conditions more favorable. There should be, as lately suggested in Garden and Forest, a great National Park Associa- tion, and similar branch associations in every town and city in the country. These associations could then exert a powerful influence on the authorities in the way of securing the adoption of proper and liberal methods of park-making. TO TROJAN HELEN. By W. G. van Tassel Sutpben. THY heart is a restless sea, Scourged white by windy whips; A fathom deep Lies dreamless Sleep With Silence at her lips. Thy heart is a garden sweet Wherein all greenness grows. Whose blood was shed That burns so red The blush upon the rose? Thy heart is a desert voice That ever lureth men, Unrecking scath, Upon a path That turneth not again. Thy heart is a palace fair, Where all the world is guest; With one, strait room Where none may come Save he who loveth best. Thy heart is the worlds desire For which men strive in vain. Yet thy love lost Were worth the cost Anothers heart to gain.

116 TO TROJAN HELEN. parks of a crowded city. There must be also a police-officer on guard most of the time. But no tax-payer in a great city like New York could, I think, grudge this expense if he would take the trouble to visit one of these small parks and see the peopleespecially the women and the little onesenjoying the grass and flowers. New York is singularly lacking in grass and trees, and these small parks are therefore green oases, in the midst of piles of brick and mortar, that are in- valuable. If a large city, in the early days of its growth, would only set aside numerous open spaces at the junction of avenues, and establish a comprehensive and intel- ligent scheme of treatment, it would find in the early future great profit in the way of health and adornment. In nearly every city in the United States these small squares could be established and treated in an approved manner more readily than in New York. The land would be less expensive, and the conditions more favorable. There should be, as lately suggested in Garden and Forest, a great National Park Associa- tion, and similar branch associations in every town and city in the country. These associations could then exert a powerful influence on the authorities in the way of securing the adoption of proper and liberal methods of park-making. TO TROJAN HELEN. By W. G. van Tassel Sutpben. THY heart is a restless sea, Scourged white by windy whips; A fathom deep Lies dreamless Sleep With Silence at her lips. Thy heart is a garden sweet Wherein all greenness grows. Whose blood was shed That burns so red The blush upon the rose? Thy heart is a desert voice That ever lureth men, Unrecking scath, Upon a path That turneth not again. Thy heart is a palace fair, Where all the world is guest; With one, strait room Where none may come Save he who loveth best. Thy heart is the worlds desire For which men strive in vain. Yet thy love lost Were worth the cost Anothers heart to gain. THE PlANNER MARES. By Martha McCulloch Williams. summer lay ripe and heavy along the hill- tops. A hot shimmer- ing splendor filled the valleys at noontide. White woolly clouds sailed slow athwart a sky, blue, intense, palpitant with vivid light. All the streams were shrunk to bare threads of bright water. No bird sang, save here and there a languid note, just after dawn. But the crows were noisier than ever. Their caw-cawing filled all the air as they flew so straight, so swift, over the cornfields just beginning to yellow. They flew high, too, and for the most part to southward. Riah Gants eyes followed them a little enviously. Ef only I had the wings o them burreds, he said to himself. Id mighty soon find out what the news was. Yet throughout his seventy years IRiah had been noted as a slow, patient, incurious man. He was tall and lean, with deep-set blue eyes, and a fleece of white beard rippling down over the homespun shirt that was his only upper garment. There were grass-stains all over his copperas trousers, and a thick powdering of red earth upon the coarse boots into which they were thrust. Al- together he looked a working farmer to whom news of what went on outside his own fences must be supremely un- important. In one hand he carried a bridle, in the other a small basket of coarse salt. The field he had just en- tered was perhaps forty acres in extent, a smiling level of native blue grass, set here and there with clumps of sassafras, crab-apple, and wild thorn. Upon three sides a semicircle of sharp-wooded hills inclosed it. On the fourth a gray bluff rose perpendicularly forty feet in air, but so far away from the pastures edge as to proclaim a wide stream at its foot. The bed of it was so deeply worn as to make access from that side impossible. And only a goat could go safe over the hills, except at the path down which Riah Gant had just scrambled to this lower level. Notwithstanding, he looked about him apprehensively and started visibly when no living creature save a vanish- ing crow met his eye. I wonder ef theyregone, er jest a-layin in the shade! he said aloud, then whistled low and clear, peering sharply about from under the shelter of his hand. A rush of frolic hoofs, a chorus of whinnys answered him. From every hand galloped a mare, sleek, saucy, with tossing mane, with streaming tail, head daintily upheld, and hoofs that spurned the entanglement of tall grass. Black, gray, chestnut, silver-roan, dappled bay, a thought too stout to be thoroughbred~ yet fine of line, with flat clean legs and perfect action, they crowded upon him, nipping one at the other, thrusting ta- per muzzles under his arms, over his shoulders, whinnying a welcome as he walked toward the salting place. A minute later each was eagerly licking up her allotted portion from a bare spot of earth. Riah Gant eyed them with af- fectionate apprehension. All here safe an heartybut God knows fer how long, he said, walking slowly among them, patting flank or shoulder or arch- ing crest, till he reached a big black creature, evidently the mother and mon- arch of the herd. She wore a bell and had a frisking foal at foot, a yearling filly muzzling in the salt beside her. A lively batting of ears greeted her mas- ter, who stopped three feet away to say, So yere full o fight yit Pianner, spite o bein twenty years old. An a sightly critter too, ye wouldnt be wuth three days purchase, ef I took ye outer here whar them blue-coats cant find ye. The gray ones wouldnt spar ye neither wherfo lay low old gal, dont neigh too loud and raise no ruction. Remember how long weve been together; were old now, an I want us to see the last o one another.

THE PlANNER MARES. By Martha McCulloch Williams. summer lay ripe and heavy along the hill- tops. A hot shimmer- ing splendor filled the valleys at noontide. White woolly clouds sailed slow athwart a sky, blue, intense, palpitant with vivid light. All the streams were shrunk to bare threads of bright water. No bird sang, save here and there a languid note, just after dawn. But the crows were noisier than ever. Their caw-cawing filled all the air as they flew so straight, so swift, over the cornfields just beginning to yellow. They flew high, too, and for the most part to southward. Riah Gants eyes followed them a little enviously. Ef only I had the wings o them burreds, he said to himself. Id mighty soon find out what the news was. Yet throughout his seventy years IRiah had been noted as a slow, patient, incurious man. He was tall and lean, with deep-set blue eyes, and a fleece of white beard rippling down over the homespun shirt that was his only upper garment. There were grass-stains all over his copperas trousers, and a thick powdering of red earth upon the coarse boots into which they were thrust. Al- together he looked a working farmer to whom news of what went on outside his own fences must be supremely un- important. In one hand he carried a bridle, in the other a small basket of coarse salt. The field he had just en- tered was perhaps forty acres in extent, a smiling level of native blue grass, set here and there with clumps of sassafras, crab-apple, and wild thorn. Upon three sides a semicircle of sharp-wooded hills inclosed it. On the fourth a gray bluff rose perpendicularly forty feet in air, but so far away from the pastures edge as to proclaim a wide stream at its foot. The bed of it was so deeply worn as to make access from that side impossible. And only a goat could go safe over the hills, except at the path down which Riah Gant had just scrambled to this lower level. Notwithstanding, he looked about him apprehensively and started visibly when no living creature save a vanish- ing crow met his eye. I wonder ef theyregone, er jest a-layin in the shade! he said aloud, then whistled low and clear, peering sharply about from under the shelter of his hand. A rush of frolic hoofs, a chorus of whinnys answered him. From every hand galloped a mare, sleek, saucy, with tossing mane, with streaming tail, head daintily upheld, and hoofs that spurned the entanglement of tall grass. Black, gray, chestnut, silver-roan, dappled bay, a thought too stout to be thoroughbred~ yet fine of line, with flat clean legs and perfect action, they crowded upon him, nipping one at the other, thrusting ta- per muzzles under his arms, over his shoulders, whinnying a welcome as he walked toward the salting place. A minute later each was eagerly licking up her allotted portion from a bare spot of earth. Riah Gant eyed them with af- fectionate apprehension. All here safe an heartybut God knows fer how long, he said, walking slowly among them, patting flank or shoulder or arch- ing crest, till he reached a big black creature, evidently the mother and mon- arch of the herd. She wore a bell and had a frisking foal at foot, a yearling filly muzzling in the salt beside her. A lively batting of ears greeted her mas- ter, who stopped three feet away to say, So yere full o fight yit Pianner, spite o bein twenty years old. An a sightly critter too, ye wouldnt be wuth three days purchase, ef I took ye outer here whar them blue-coats cant find ye. The gray ones wouldnt spar ye neither wherfo lay low old gal, dont neigh too loud and raise no ruction. Remember how long weve been together; were old now, an I want us to see the last o one another. 118 THE PLANNER MARES. Pianner was in a reckless mood. Re- gardless of her master she rushed squealing at a beautiful, sleek chestnut, who stood guard over her salt, daintily tasting it now and then, and ready to do battle for it with all corners. She met the assault, with a lightning wheel that planted both heels hard and fair upon Pianners quarter. Instantly iRiah was between the combatants, had seized the aggressors foretop, bridled her, and was saying, Consarn ye sassy old pie- tur, fightin must be in the aar. The sound of loose stones rolling away from a hasty foot on the path made him turn in fright to face a slen- der, sun-burned young fellow, whose weather-stained slouch hat, pulled low over his eyes, shadowed without con- cea]ing the sunshine of his face. His gray cavalry uniform was torn and faded, but the grace of gentle blood shone through and redeemed it. Three feet away from the elder man he stopped and bared his head, and said, courteous- ly: Good-day, sir. You seem to have plenty of mighty fine stock. Im mor- tal afeared I wont have it long, Riah Gant said, with half a groan. The ex- pected had happened. A soldier had crept into this equine paradisedesola- tion must follow as day follows night. rm afraid you wont indeed, the new- comer responded, that is, not if our friends in blue stumble on them. Bet- ter sell me that chestnutshe looks like the wind could hardly catch her. I will give you both your pockets full of good Confederate money for her. Riah Gant fell back a pace saying, huskily, Who are ye, young feller ? whut are ye a-talkin about? Dont you know thems the Pianner mares? The young soldier laughed outright, saying, Im John Grayat your ser- vicemost times I do business in Mr. Forrests critter company. Just now my especial segment of it, Napiers com- mand, is investigating the possibility of crossing the Cumberland, to have a bit of fun with Colonel Mason who is keep- ing house on the other side. Be ye right shore now, ye aint no spy? Upon my honor, nomerely a scout, detailed to follow this creek of yours to its junction with the river, in hope of finding there shoal water that we can ford. Stranger hereabout, I reckon! Never set foot here before. Never heard on em? Who? Themthe Pianner mares, with an impatient wave of his hand. Never! Whats their history? Dont know as theyve got any. That thar black critter was foaled the day I fust seen er pianner, so I named her arter it. Shes brought me leven colts, nine on em mares, an Gray Pian- ner, an Mary Pianner, an Pianner Sil- ver-tail, an June Pianner, aint fer be- hind thar mammy. Fust an last thars been the rise o forty Pianners, an not -one ever fetched me less n three hun- dred, cash. Here you see whuts left on emwhut Ive hid away in this creek- parster, tryin to save em fer my grim - sons. Have you no sons? Three, leastways, I had. Toms in the Foteenth, with Lee in Virginny; Bills in the Forty-second, at Port Hud- son, the last I heard on im; an Jim, well! he married into Kaintuck, an his wifes folks is fer union. They tole im ter stay out an let the yothers settle it, but I ses ter him, Jim, I fit at Orleans with ole Hickory, ef ye dont want me ter be shamed o ye, git up an fight fer whut ye says the right, so he up an raised er company, an is Capn Gant, as big an blue er Yankee as any o the rest. Hes somewhere tords Chatty- noogy now, so wharever thars any fightin ye see, thar may be news fer me. What is Jims regiment? Eighth Kaintucky Cavalry. Did you ever happen ter run up agin em? The gray-coat nodded. Put up a pretty good fight? Id hate powerful bad fer Jims company to tuck tail an run for nothin. Well, they made it interesting for us, the scout said, with a smile, adding, after a minute, Maybe youll see Jim before long. I hear the regiment has been ordered back to help Mason hold the outpost. How far is it from here? A matter o ten miles, not countin the river. Are ye right shore thars goin ter be a fight? THE PlANNER MARES. 119 Cant say certain, it looks like it. Why do you ask? Fer this reason; when my boys went off I took thar famblies to take keer onJims as well as the rest. Be- tween em they muster seven boys from twelve to fifteen, an the last one of em, crazy ter jine the cavalry an leave me with nary plough-boy. Every rascal of em can shoot an ride like fun, so I promised em if theyd stay an thar was ever a fight in hahn distance of us, Id take em all to see it. Wouldnt you take a shot or two? I dont know as we could, ye see Betty swars she aint goin to be lef be- hindshe Jims daughter, jest seven- teenan the pizenest little rebel of the lot. Ef this here war lasts much longer, Im afeard shell be totin of er gun her- self. Shes jest crazy now fer the boys ter go. Good for Betty, wish there were more like her. But does she disown her father? young Gray asked, strok- ing the glossy rump of the nearest mare. Riah Gant smiled grimly as he an- swered, No, she says Paps pap no matter what happens, but I reckon Fust Leftenant Ware o Jims company knows pretty much her opinion of Lincoln- ites, an how little use shes got fer em. Im right down sorry now that the gal aint a boy. If she was shed be a sol- dier right. Why, sir! shes got a copy o Hardees ticktacks, an fetches them boys down here on Sunday evenins, mounts em baar-back, and drills em like er major. Its right down pretty, now it is, ter see em goin by twos, by fours, left wheel an right face, an break ranks, an so on. Its hard to tell which likes it best, the boys or the critters. The soldier pulled off his hat and bowed low, saying, Major Betty, I sa- lute you. Some day I hope to see you not at the head of the Pianner mares. A word of caution though to you, sir. What you have told me is very interest- ing, but it would not be quite harmless if I were the spy I might so easily be. You have taken me on trust, to prove that I deserve it, I will tell you that we cross the river at dark and hope to sur- prise the outpost before the moon rises. A dull pallor showed in Riah Gants face. He fingered the reins of Pianners bridle nervously for a minute, then said, looking down as he spoke, Be ye shore Jims regiment is thar? Not a bit; if we were I think we would ride some other way to-nighL In fact it is to get there ahead of him that we are hurrying so, the young sol- dier said, saluting and turning away. Riah Gant put out a detaining hand. Come long to the houseI reckon you aint had a square meal in a crows age, he said, nubridling Pianner as he spoke. I am hungry, thats a fact. A steady diet of roasting ears is apt to leave a fellow with a haunting memory of fried chicken, hot biscuit, and the rest of it, young Gray said, smiling, but really I doubt if there is time. Well, a cold snacks bettern nothin Betty wont be many minutes fixin that fer ye, so git yer critterI see ye lef him up thar top o the hillan come along, the old man said, with his hands on the top rail of the fence, over which the next minute he clambered slow and heavily. Five minutes of breathless climbing brought them out into the orchard, that ran down to the wooded hilltop. A ripe heavy fragrance filled the air of it, the aroma of yellow horse apples, deep red sweetings, and streaked fall pippins, that covered the ground under the gnarled bending trees. Tall weeds grew either side the path. A big white mas- tiff dashed through them, put his paws on his masters breast, and tried to lick his face. Down, Bulge! down, sir! Whar is Betty? You two aint never very fer apart, the old man said, pat- ting the big creatures head. As if in answer to the question a wagon came in view piled high with apples and driven by a slim, dark-eyed girl, in a home-spun frock. She stood bolt up- right upon the whiffie-trees, dangerously near the heels of the two shaggy mules. A cloud of stout lads ran after, their arms flying like windmills as they tossed apple after apple upon the heap. At sight of the old man they set up a shout, Cider, grandpap! cider! Say, maynt we beat some ef Bettyll go with us to the creek? Theyre fraid to go without mefraid to drive the wagon here count o yellow-jacket nests, the girl added, then perceiving the young 120 THE PLANNER MARES. stranger she grew rosily silent, yet held her perch behind the team. Betty, I want youthe rest on ye go down to the creek with the wagin, the old man called. The girl came for- ward, half-shy, half-eager, and returned young Grays salute with a little old- fashioned courtesy. Hes one o our hungry soldierstend to him while I feed his critter, Riah Gant said, then as the two went through the back door into the big square log houseI dont know as ever I sot eyes on a likelier couple then them two. Bettys mother was away visiting in Kentucky. The two aunts safe in the weaving house at the other side of the yard. Most days, indeed, found them therethere were so many boys to clothe besides the grandfather and the little flock of slaves. And homespun was quite the only wear in this debata- ble land where soldiering was all the trade that thrived. Bettys frock was outgrown. She had shot up amazingly since last spring. It ended well above the ankle, and showed a glimpse of home-knit stocking above the awkward shoes of her grandfathers own cobbling. But that mattered little beside a face full of fire and sweetness, set about with wind-blown tendrils of moist, dark shining hair. Young Gray watched her with tender, vague delight, breathed through with a sort of pity for Fust Leftenant Ware. Something in this face recalled another that he had kissed at the parting under Mississippi magnolias. What if she had spurned him for doing his duty as he saw it? He was at once too much a soldier, a gentleman, not to recognize and honor the honest convictions of a foe. Some- how he had a great longing to make this child-woman understand that war is for a day and love for all time. But he spoke to her only of external things of camp, and march, the fortunes of war, the tricksy humors of a partisan~s raiding. She heard him with eyes far more eloquent than his tongue, saying at last with a little shiver, Ah! what it is to be a soldier! It is better, much better, to be a woman, he said, bending to kiss light- ly her small, sun-burned hand. Three hours after he rode away, Bet- ty, sitting with her chin in her hand upon the stone piazza steps, heard the beat of many hoofs, cut through, as it were, accented, with the tinkle of a bell Turning she saw her grandfather mount- ed upon the chestnut, June Pianner with the old mare haltered and trotting beside him as though she trod on air. Behind him rode her one brother, her six cousins, barefoot, in shirt - sleeves, but each with a gun over his shoulder. Intuitively she understood. They were riding off to the fight. Yesterday she, too, would have gone, and dashed with mad rejoicing through the hottest lead- en hail. Now her heart fluttered, sank, at the bare thought. She held one hand hard above it, as her grandfather called softly, Betty? Well, sir? going up to the chest- nuts head. Oh! I say, Betty, just you keep Pianner here in the stable, will ye? We had to fetch the bell to git the rest outer the parster. Betty nodded. Yes, I know. Riah Gant looked at her amazed. For three hours he had been steeling himself against her pleadings to go along, and here she was not even asking why, or wherefore, of this sudden exodus. Peering sharply into her eyes, he asked, Be ye sick, Betty? Pears like ye are feverish in the color o your cheeks. No, I am well, perfectly. What must I do whilewhile you are gone ? Say nothin to nobody, white or black, about whar your grandpap is, ncr when ner how he went. Git yer aunt Sue an Melindy ter arguin bout infant baptism thatll keep em from bein oneasy; leave Bulge loose, an go to sleep as soon as ye can to-night. Id rather sit up, Betty said, sub- missively, then sprang to the pommel, flung her arms tight about her grand- fathers neck, laid her cheek to his for one brief second, then slid down, caught Pianners bridle and hurried away, with no look backward at the motley horse- men who rode straight out into the sun- set. The moon rose that night at ten oclock. At nine as the bugle was sound- ing Horse and Away, Sergeant Gray rode into the partisans camp. A mighty THE PlANNER MARES. 121 merry lot of ragged rebels it was, fel lows of infinite jest, laughing, singing, leaping over the camp-fires, in which their supper of green corn had just been roasted. In front of them the river ran broad and shallow, with a clamor of ripples under-voicing the million katy- dids. Four miles on the hither side lay the outpost, a stockade crowning a lofty hill, at whose foot nestled a strag- gling county town. Stores of all sorts had been accumulated there, arms, mu- nitions, clothes, medicines. To secure or destroy them was what urged Colonel Napier to the desperate undertakinga cavalry charge upon breast-works with a superior force behind them. He listened to the scout with spark- ling eyes, flung his hat in air and said aloud, Were in luck, boyswe are un- expectedly reinforced. A hubbub of excited murmurs ran through the camp. A minute later the rebel yell rang through the soft star- light, as Riah Gant and his troop came out of the dusk beyond. Colonel Na- pier wrung the old mans hand, shouted Forward and keeping his new ally well at his bridle-rein plunged at once into the stream. All got safely over it, climbed the bank opposite and walked their horses in slow silence along the sandy river road. Then somehow the walk became a trot, the trot a dead run, that swept in pickets and sentries as chaff before a whirlwind, that spread a cloud of horsemen with lightning of gun-fire and thunder of hoofs, up and down till it swelled over the sleeping stockade, before drowsy drummers could beat three bars of the long roll. Panic fell on the defenders. Such audacity must mean all Forrests division, twelve thousand strong. Col- onel Mason, half-dressed, flung down his sword despairingthe low beams of the rising moon fell in ghostly silver on the white signal of surrender. It was a bloodless victory, more sur- prising to the victors than even to the vanquished. After it Bedlam broke out. All the dark silent houses woke to life and light, and blossomed gardenwise in- to red, white and red. Women wrapped themselves in the flag-folds to smile ec- statically from lighted windows. Men bared their heads at the sight, and em- braced one another in the street. For eighteen months almost, their eyes, their hearts, had hungered for it. Now they were drunken with joy as with new wine. And Riah Gant was the hero of it all. Colonel Napier himself said the sight of the rugged old fellow with the brave boys at his back was better than a thou- sand men. The prisoners, even, as they were paroled came around to look curi- ously at himmany to shake his hand. They got a heart-warm grip, too. Ive got a boy in blue, little as yed think it from the company I keep, he said, to Colonel Mason and his staff who had been granted full honors of war. The blue-coat smiled grimly. Now that he had seen the slenderness of the force whose impetuous onset had overwhelmed him, rage and shame possessed him. He had surrendered to less than half of his own force, and must stand idly by, while the railway bridge flamed red against the night. The track was torn up, the rails bent and twisted on heaps of blazing ties. He must watch, too, the breaking against tree-trunks of the arms his men had polished so carefully, see his field-battery spiked, his maga- zine despoiled, the stores so carefully gathered go up in a pillar of flame and smoke. Colonel Napier knew but too well he could not hold what he had won. All the night was a babel of shouts and laughter and swift destruction and horsemen galloping to and fro. In the town no eye closed; every door was open, and fair women ran to their gates, eagerly offering wine, coffee, fruit, food to their deliverers. Joy en- dured for the night if weeping came with the morning, whose first faint light showed the gray horsemen headed south, clothed, armed, mounted with the spoil of their foes. Well to the columns head came the Pianner mares, all tricked out in cap- tured trappings, their young riders brave in blue and brass. Riah Gant, even, riding at Colonel Napiers elbow, had wrapped himself in blue from the chill of dawn. Young Gray was with the advance guard at the very front, erect, alert, open-eyed, though full half the troopers dropped heavily over the saddle-bow fast asleep. 1 122 THE PlANNER MARES. The first level sunbeams shot athwart the clear valley and showed him far ahead a faint rustle of dust, out of which a half-minute later, he caught the gleam of carbines, the clank of sword and stirrup, and over all the red, white, and blue streaming gallantly in the breeze. Swiftly, swiftly it all came on so swiftly, indeed, that though the advance guard fell back at the trot, the new-comers were close behind when the main body was reached. Oh, then was a stirring sight. The bugle blew fall in, platoons close order, to right, to left, the horsemen formed, rank upon rank, a centaur each, yet a fitted part of wars dread machine. Riah Gant looked long and close at the attacking column. His eye was still as keen as when it had sped its bullets at Pakenham and his red - coats. Hits right down awkward, it is now, thats Jim, sures youre born, he said, nod- ding toward the tall Federal command- er. An all his regimint behind him, too. If somethin dont happen, I dont see what well do. Something did happen. Out from the blue ranks came a low, exultant, com- plaining whinny. Each Pianner mare answered it, then, spite of curb, or rein, or frantic spurring, ran hard as she could lay leg to earth toward the spot whence it came. Who can explain a panic? One min- ute, and all about, fields, roads, hill-side, were full of flying troopers, men who but last night rode unquailing into the very jaws of death. The valley rung with clamor, shouts, shrieks, rattle of carbine volleys, roll of drum and trumpet, a lit- tle later death-cries of horse and man. In vain Colonel Napier sought to stem the tide of flight and chase; in vain his brave lieutenants flung themselves be- fore the fugitives, swearing, praying, be- seeching. Dropping shots were all that answered, the sheets of fire from their pursuers that emptied saddles by the dozen grew more deadly all the while. Ten minutes of itand the stars and stripes flew victorious over a blood- stained field. Colonel Napier had es- caped to fight and die upon another. Young Gray lay smiling with wide blue sightless eyes still grasping the colors he had caught from the hand of their flying bearer. So I{iah Gant found him, a sight to melt the hardest heart. He touched his sons sleeve, not in sup- plication, but with a tinge of authority, as he said, Youll bury him so, Jim. Twas him won ye the fight. So indeed it proved. Jim pushing across country to relieve the threatened outpost had overridden his horse and halted at his fathers house in search of a fresh one. There he found only Pi- anner, whose call to her mates bore such unlooked-for fruit. They made a grave for young Gray in the Gant burying-ground, and laid the flag he died for folded above his breast. First Lieutenant Warea Captain now rode head of the guard of honor that followed his gallant foe. Over the open coffin he said to Betty, standing white and tearless on the other side, Must I bury these with him? or send them to her, nodding toward the girls pic- tured face, he held in his hand. We found them next his heart, he went on, this and the testament with Laure outside. Betty held out her hand. When the picture was placed in it, she laid it, face down, against the dead mans cheek. Send the book backshe will need comfortbut let him have the picture,~~ she said, very low. Captain Ware looked at her through misty eyes. There was something new, rare, wonderful in her face. Bending, he took her into his arms, and tears of joy, of tender grief, of love and reconciliation fell from two pairs of eyes upon the flowers in the open coffin. (Canterbury, 1891.) By Julia C. 1?. Dorr. So still, so still they lie As centuries pass by, Their pale hands folded in imploring prayer; They never lift their eyes In sudden, sweet surprise; The wandering winds stir not their heavy hair; Forth from their close-sealed lips Nor moan, nor laughter, slips, Nor lightest sigh to wake the entranc6d air! Yet evermore they pray! We creatures of a day Live, love, and vanish from the gaze of men; Nations arise and fall; Oblivions heavy pall Hides kings and princes from all human ken, While these in marble state, From age to age await The rolling thunder of the last amen! Not in dim erypts alone, Or aisles of fretted stone, Where high cathedral altars gleam afar; And the red light streams down On mitre and on crown, Till each proud jewel blazes like a star; But where the tall grass waves Oer long-forgotten graves, Their silent worship no rude sounds can mar! Dost Thou not hear and heed? 0, in Earths utmost need Wilt Thou not hearken, Thou who didst create? Not for themselves they pray Whose woes have passed for aye; For us, for us, before Thy throne they wait! Thou Sovereign Lord of All, On whom they mutely call, Hear Thou and answer from thine high estate! IN MARBLE PRAYER.

(Canterbury, 1891.) By Julia C. 1?. Dorr. So still, so still they lie As centuries pass by, Their pale hands folded in imploring prayer; They never lift their eyes In sudden, sweet surprise; The wandering winds stir not their heavy hair; Forth from their close-sealed lips Nor moan, nor laughter, slips, Nor lightest sigh to wake the entranc6d air! Yet evermore they pray! We creatures of a day Live, love, and vanish from the gaze of men; Nations arise and fall; Oblivions heavy pall Hides kings and princes from all human ken, While these in marble state, From age to age await The rolling thunder of the last amen! Not in dim erypts alone, Or aisles of fretted stone, Where high cathedral altars gleam afar; And the red light streams down On mitre and on crown, Till each proud jewel blazes like a star; But where the tall grass waves Oer long-forgotten graves, Their silent worship no rude sounds can mar! Dost Thou not hear and heed? 0, in Earths utmost need Wilt Thou not hearken, Thou who didst create? Not for themselves they pray Whose woes have passed for aye; For us, for us, before Thy throne they wait! Thou Sovereign Lord of All, On whom they mutely call, Hear Thou and answer from thine high estate! IN MARBLE PRAYER. THE RESUMPTION OF SPECIE PAYMENT. By J. K. Upton. N the first Monday of December, 1874, the Congress of the United States con- vened to find the country still suffer- ing from the finan- cial panic of the previous year, aris- ing, it was generally believed, from the redundant circulation of the irredeem- able legal tender notes of the Govern- ment, of which there was then outstand- ing $382,000,000. Besides these notes there was also outstanding of fractional notes convertible into the legal tenders $44,000,000 and of national bank notes, redeemable in lawful money, $354,- 000,000. Gold was quoted at 112. Both Houses of Congress were in control of the Republican party, and the Chief Executive was of the same politi- cal faith. There was a general feeling through- out the country that to avoid further disaster, a parity of value between the notes of the Government and gold coin should be established in some way, and that it should be maintained as long as the notes should be kept in circulation, and naturally to the party in power the country looked for the legislation nec- essary to that end. As to the steps to be taken, individual views were so di- verse, even within party lines, that evi- dently only through party discipline could any effective measures be accom- plished. A committee was therefore appointed by a caucus of Republican Senators, to draft the necessary legis lation. The committee consisted of Senators John Sherman (Chairman), William B. Allison, George S. Bout- well, Roscoc Conkling, George F. Ed- munds, Thomas W. Ferry, F. T. Fre- linghuysen, Timothy 0. Howe, John A. Logan, Oliver P. Morton, and Aaron A. Sargent. It agreed upon a bill provid- ing for the redemption of the frac- tional notes in silver halves, quarters, and dimes; for the repeal of the limit to the issues of national banks; for the retirement of United States notes to an amount, each month, equal to eighty per cent. of any additional issues of national banks, until the United States notes outstanding should be reduced to $300,- 000,000, and for the redemption of these notes in coin upon their present- ation for that purpose in sums of not less than fifty dollars at the New York Sub-treasury, on and after January 1, 1879. What disposition should be made of the notes redeemed after the minimum limit should have been reached, whether they should be reissued or cancelled and retired, was a question on which the Committee could come to no agreement. Before that matter could become of practical importance, however, the na- tional banks must necessarily increase their circulation about $100,000,000 to bring about the retirement of the United States notes to the limit in question, and this was not likely to happen for several years, so no particular evil could result in leaving the question open for future legislation. To carry into effect the provisions of HISTORIC MOMENTS:

THE RESUMPTION OF SPECIE PAYMENT. By J. K. Upton. N the first Monday of December, 1874, the Congress of the United States con- vened to find the country still suffer- ing from the finan- cial panic of the previous year, aris- ing, it was generally believed, from the redundant circulation of the irredeem- able legal tender notes of the Govern- ment, of which there was then outstand- ing $382,000,000. Besides these notes there was also outstanding of fractional notes convertible into the legal tenders $44,000,000 and of national bank notes, redeemable in lawful money, $354,- 000,000. Gold was quoted at 112. Both Houses of Congress were in control of the Republican party, and the Chief Executive was of the same politi- cal faith. There was a general feeling through- out the country that to avoid further disaster, a parity of value between the notes of the Government and gold coin should be established in some way, and that it should be maintained as long as the notes should be kept in circulation, and naturally to the party in power the country looked for the legislation nec- essary to that end. As to the steps to be taken, individual views were so di- verse, even within party lines, that evi- dently only through party discipline could any effective measures be accom- plished. A committee was therefore appointed by a caucus of Republican Senators, to draft the necessary legis lation. The committee consisted of Senators John Sherman (Chairman), William B. Allison, George S. Bout- well, Roscoc Conkling, George F. Ed- munds, Thomas W. Ferry, F. T. Fre- linghuysen, Timothy 0. Howe, John A. Logan, Oliver P. Morton, and Aaron A. Sargent. It agreed upon a bill provid- ing for the redemption of the frac- tional notes in silver halves, quarters, and dimes; for the repeal of the limit to the issues of national banks; for the retirement of United States notes to an amount, each month, equal to eighty per cent. of any additional issues of national banks, until the United States notes outstanding should be reduced to $300,- 000,000, and for the redemption of these notes in coin upon their present- ation for that purpose in sums of not less than fifty dollars at the New York Sub-treasury, on and after January 1, 1879. What disposition should be made of the notes redeemed after the minimum limit should have been reached, whether they should be reissued or cancelled and retired, was a question on which the Committee could come to no agreement. Before that matter could become of practical importance, however, the na- tional banks must necessarily increase their circulation about $100,000,000 to bring about the retirement of the United States notes to the limit in question, and this was not likely to happen for several years, so no particular evil could result in leaving the question open for future legislation. To carry into effect the provisions of HISTORIC MOMENTS: THE RESUMP TION OP SPECIE PA YMENT. 125 the bill, the Secretary of the Treasury was authorized to use any surplus cash in tbe Treasury, not otherwise appro- priated, and to sell, at not less than par in coin, either of the classes of bonds authorized to be issued by the refund- ing act of July 14, 1870, and to use the proceeds thereof for such redemption purposes. The bill as prepared was accepted by the Senate Finance Committee as its own, and reported to the Senate by its Chairman, Senator Sherman, who ex- plained its provisions, pressing it to a passage before the adjournment for the holidays. In the House the bill was passed without debate, and as in the Senate by a strict party vote. It be- came a law January 14, 1875, and the redemption of the fractional notes was begun a few months later. Upon the incoming of the new ad- ministration on March 4, 1877, Senator Sherman, who alone had advocated the passage of the resumption measure in Congress, was called to administer the affairs of the Treasury. He found that the legal tenders had been considerably reduced in conse- quence of the bank issues, and a large portion of the fractional notes redeemed in silver, but that no steps had been taken toward accumulating the required fund for the redemption of the notes in coin, on and after January 1, 1879; also that under a contract with certain bank- em the Treasury was issuing four and one half per cent. bonds for refunding pur- poses. The Secretary promptly secured the consent of these parties to allow no outstanding bonds to be called against $15,000,000 of bonds sold, thus creating at once a reserve to that extent for the redemption of the notes. The prompt- ness of the measure and the success with which it was attended greatly en- couraged the friends of the adminis- tration and brought dismay to the prophets of evil who could see nothing in the future but bankruptcy and ruin should resumption be accomplished. The action of the Secretary greatly strengthened public credit, and during the summer he sold $25,000,000 of four per cents. at par, making $40,000,000 of solid gold accumulated specifically to meet the redemption of the notes. In addition thereto there was in the Treas- ury at least $20,000,000 which also could be used with safety for like pur- pose, increasing the available fund to $60,000,000. As the banks were in- creasing their issues the outstanding United States notes by the time fixed for their redemption would probably be reduced to $300,000,000, the minimum limit fixed by law. The Secretary be- lieved that with the reserve of forty per cent. ($120,000,000) he could with safe- ty undertake to redeem all the notes which would be presented for that pur- pose. Half of the necessary fund was already on hand, and the withdrawal of the gold from the channels of com- merce had created no disturbance. Five months had sufficed for accomplishing this much; seventeen months remained in which to accomplish the rest. Gold was at 103. There was in the outlook only the promise of a successful resump- tion. But a war sprung up in the Orient, threatening to involve all the great powers of Europe, depressing pub- lic securities in the London market, and creating unexpected demand for gold. Then came the clamor at home for the remonetization of silver, and the pay- ment of public obligations in silver dol- lam then worth about ninety-five cents in gold. More than seventy-five mil- lion dollars of our securities returned from London to New York in one week, causing gold to be shipped to meet their payment. In October Congress met in special session, and on the first day thirteen bills were presented for the absolute repeal of the resumption act, and one of them passed the House without divi- sion. The local fall elections were ad- verse and discouraging. No hope or encouragement came from the utter- ances of the opponents of the adminis- tration, and meanwhile a new party had sprung into existence, having the re- peal of the resumption act the prime article in its declaration of principles. Its supporters, drawn from both great parties, were numerous and noisy. In the ranks of the dominant party little unanimity prevailed. Many stanch advocates of resumption in and out of that party did not believe that the end could be accomplished under existing 126 THE RESUMP TION OF SPECIE PA YMENT. laws and methods. Each had a plan of his own, and rather than see success achieved in any other way preferred that resumption should be a failure. The four and a half per cent. bonds were quoted below par, and the Secre- tary, not to disturb the market, sus- pended all further sales for resumption. In December the Secretary, in an in- terview with the Finance Committee of the Senate was asked: Do you think the resumption act had better be re- pealed? The Secretary unhesitating- ly replied, I think not. Half of the fund has already been accumulated, a year remains in which to accumulate the rest. Repeal the act, inflation will follow and either repudiation will result or the long weary agony and struggle toward resumption will be renewed. Gold can be obtained, if not by sale of four per cents, then by four and a halvesif not by these then by fives, which can be sold to-day, if necessary, in sufficient amounts for the purpose. It is useless to take any steps backward. If resumption is ever to be accomplished, now is the time. A long interview followed, but the Secretary had pitched the tune, and no effort on the part of the Committee could get him away from the key. His utterances showed his purpose. His courage, determination, and resources were well known, but they only in- creased the bitterness of his opponents. A little later the House Committee on Banking and Currency had an inter- view with a delegation of New York bankers. The Committee was known to be unfriendly to resumption, and the interview was to be secret. It leaked out, however, that these bankers also were either opposed to resumption or did not believe it practicable at so early a date. One of the most prominent of them declared that he would give $50,000 for a place at the head of the line at the Sub-Treasury on the day the redemption of the legal tenders in coin should be undertaken, that he might obtain gold for the depreciated notes. The attitude and belief of these men had a dispiriting effect on the country. They were not alone, however, in their opinions. Even Hon. Hugh McCul- loch, whose recommendations as Sec retary of the Treasury in 1865 had brought about the first step toward specie resumption, declared that he should be much surprised if the reserve could be accumulated in the time speci- fied, and he represented the convictions of many eminent financiers. On April 1, 1878, the same Committee had an interview with the Secretary of the Treasury. The members desired to know what he intended to do about resumption. They soon found out. He proposed, if let alone, to redeem in coin the legal tender notes, on and after January 1, 1879, as required by law. As Secretary of the Treasury there could be no other course for him to pursue. To that end he proposed to sell $50,000,000 of bonds at once to increase that redemption fund; more if necessary could be sold later. He did not, however, anticipate any such con- tingency. Already there was under control of the Treasury $70,000,000 of these notes to the credit of public of- ficers and other depositors. The na- tional banks must take care of another $70,000,000, as part of their legal re- serve, thus tying their hands and mak- ing $140,000,000 of the notes which need not be considered. The remainder was scattered over the country among forty million people, and could not be presented in any amounts likely to em- barrass the Treasury. Besides, in his opinion, when gold could be obtained for the notes nobody would want it. He was not afraid with the reserve of forty per cent. to undertake the redemp- tion. Statistics showed that the Bank of England, when it resumed specie pay- ments in 1822, had a reserve of but twenty-three percent.; that State banks, although their circulation was only lo- cal, under ordinary circumstances main- tained their paper at par, generally with a reserve of less than thirty-three per cent. If an extraordinary emergency should arise there was still the power of the Secretary to sell bonds for coin, and Congress also could make such fur- ther provisions as the times demanded. Sufficient unto him were the evils of the day. These evils he proposed to cure. He did not care what the New York Cashiers had said. He only wanted to know what Congress proposed to do. If THE RESUMP TION OF SPECIE PA YMENT. 127 the resumption act was to be repealed, the sooner it was known the better. To every question of the Committee he gave a complete and satisfactory reply, though evidently the questions had been pre- pared with a view to his discomfiture. He accepted tables offered by the Com- mittee and with the new light turned upon them brought out facts to sustain his position to the evident dissatisfaction of the questioners. From his avowed purpose to sell bonds and resume spe- cie payments he could not be turned, nor would he admit of any doubt of his ability to do so. The publication of the interview cleared up the atmosphere at once and confidence became general that, if let alone, he could sell the bonds and that he would undertake resumption. Ten days later, Congress not repeal- ing the act, he went to New York and sold $50,000,000 of four and one-half per cents at 101 net, the proceeds to be used for the redemption of the notes. Any further doubt of the ability of the Secretary to accumulate the coin re- quired was set at rest. The negotiation was generally well received. The Senate refused to pass the House bill repealing the resumption act, but an act was approved, May 31, 1878, suspending the further retirement of the notes, leaving outstandir~g $346,- 681,016, and authorizing the reissue of the notes after redemption, indicating a purpose to retain the legal tenders as a part of the permanent circulation of the country; thus settling, for the time, at least, a most vexatious question. A period of comparative rest followed. Business began to adjust itself to the new conditions and to reach out in every direction. The opponents of resump- tion, however, admitted only temporary defeat. The fund might be accu- mulated, but when the stress was re- moved, gold would flee the country, the fund would be depleted, and, as the re- deemed notes could be reissued, the Treasury would be at the mercy of the mob who would throng its doors de- manding gold when there was no gold to give. To these prognostications the Secre- tary gave ho heed, but at once began to set his house in order for the great event of resumption. He authorized gold to be purchased for notes by the several as- say offices, and ordered interest on the public debt to be paid in coin only at New York, leaving other branches of the Treasury to pay in notes or not at all, and supplemented this order by an arrangement with the New York Clear- ing-house under which that institution agreed to accept notes in payment of all Government checks or drafts passing through its hands for collection after January 1, 1879, thus doing away almost entirely with the necessity of gold for coin interest payments amounting to $100,000,000 per annum. But the law required the duties on imports to be paid in coin, and the Secretary had no power to waive this provision. Should resumption be maintained there would be an absurdity in requiring importers of New York City, before paying their duties, to first present their legal tender notes at the Sub-Treasury for redemp- tion, then to take the coin therefor across the street to the Custom House, ouly to be returned to the Sub-Treasury at close of business, and it would work an injustice to importers at other ports who did not have the privilege of ob- taining coin of the Government for their notes, with which to liquidate custom dues. So the Secretary, after due notice to Congress of his purpose, issued in- structions to customs officers to re- ceive the notes in payment of duties, on and after January 1, 1879, the notes to be redeemed by the Government whenever necessary. Long before the end of the year the contracting parties had placed the $50,- 000,000 in the Treasury as agreed upon. Owing to the act of May 31, 1878, the amount of outstanding notes was $46,- 000,000 more than the Secretary at first anticipated, but for redemption pur- poses he would likely have in all about $135,000,000 in gold, very nearly the forty per cent. of the outstanding notes as originally determined upon. The op- ponents of resumption, baffled in their efforts, could hardly be made to believe that in the vaults of the Sub-Treasury in New York lay this enormous accumula- tion of treasure. The Hon. Thomas Ewing, of the House Committee on Banking and Currency, who had so per- sistently questioned the Secretary, vis 128 THE RESUMPTION OF SPECIE PAYMENT. ited the vaults and, to satisfy himself in the matter, handled bag after bag of the actual gold. This doubt was shown in the market by the continued gold pre- mium. Not till December 18th did this premium cease, and even after that date gold was only nominally at par. No one would give it for paper, dollar for dollar, except for convenience and in small amounts. Congress adjourned for the Christmas holidays, and immediately thereafter the air was full of rumors of a combination in New York for a run upon the Sub-Treas- ury on the opening of the new year. The rumor was persistent, but its source unknown. The alarm in New York was so great that the president of the Na- tional Bank of Commerce in that city, who was also chairman of the Clearing- house Committee, at three oclock, r. M., on the 30th, with the advice of other bankers, sent the Secretary, by special messenger, an urgent request for the transfer to his bank on the following day from the Sub-Treasury of $5,000,000 in gold in exchange for a like amount in United States notes, to enable the banks, he said, to meet their coin disburse- ments at the end of the year. To this there could be but one reply. The Treasury had no power to make the transfer, even if it desired to do so. At the time no publicity was given to the request, but coming as it did on the eve of resumption from one so competent to judge of the necessities and demands of the hour, it gave the Treasury officials cognizant of the matter no little uneasi- ness. Even the Secretary evinced more apprehensions of possible danger than he had shown during the most discour- aging events of the winter previous. He could not believe that danger existed, but if it did not why should such men on the ground and thoroughly conversant with all current movemehts, show such alarm? The movement was a secret one and its extent unknown. The year, however, closed with no un- expected excitement, but with unpleas- ant forebodings. The first day of Jan- uary was Sunday and no business was transacted. On Monday anxiety reigned in the office of the Secretary. Hour after hour passed; no news came from New York. Inquiry by wire showed all was quiet. At the close of business came this message from the Sub-Treas- ury: $135,000 of notes presented for coin$400,000 of gold for notes. That was all. Resumption was accomplished with no disturbance. By five oclock the news was all over the land, and the New York bankers were sipping their tea in absolute safety. Thirteen years have since passed and the redemption fund still remains intact in the Sub-Treasury vaults. The predic- tion of the Secretary has become history. When gold could with certainty be ob- tained for the notes, nobody wanted it. The experiment of maintaining a limited amount of United States notes in circu- lation, based upon a reasonable reserve in the Treasurypledged for that purpose, and supported also by the credit of the Government, has proved generally satis- factory, and the exclusive use of these notes for circulation may become, in time, the fixed financial policy of the Government HISTORY repeating itself fulfils its pro- verbial function, now that something like a Copyright bill has been passed, in the ef- forts of the producing artists to have the duty on works of art by foreign artists im- ported to this country repealed. As in the case of International Copyright, we have here a class of men, who for the sake of an- alogy, may be called manufacturers of the article protected, clamoring to have the protection removed; and in like manner we have the sage legislator virtually informing this producer that it is his duty to prevent him from committing suicide. The whole question seems to any thinking man con- versant with the interests at stake to verge on the ridiculous; but this state of affairs has continued since, early in 1882, the So- ciety of American Artists, through Mr. Perry Belmont, called the attention of our law- makers to the fact that the duty on works of art, then ten per cent., was iniquitous and unnecessary. The effort apparently called attention to the existence of an opportunity, for the almost immediate result was an in- crease of the duty to thirty per cent. To follow the devious ways of the tax, opposed by continued effort on the part of the not easily discouraged artists, would be too long, and with only passing reference to the grotesque person who announced in Congress that as long as his voice could be raised against it, no repeal of the tax on whiskey and art could be had, we may leave the ancient history of the movement against the tax, which after a promise in the Ways and Means Committee, of its total abolition VOL. XIL14 at the time of the McKinley bill, has been reduced to fifteen per cent. A new era seems, however, to have dawned with the recent Congress of the National Art Association at Washington. This Congress, though not the first con- certed movement on the part of our ar- tists, is numerically and strategetically the most important. The National Art Asso- ciation, formed chiefly for the propaganda in behalf of Free Art, together with a num- ber of delegates from the Free Art League, a prior organization, met at Washington on the 16th of May, and after passing resolu- tions similar to those already submitted, arranged for a hearing before the Commit- tees of the Senate and the House of Repre- sentatives. During a long and enthusiastic session the Congress listened to much prac- tical advice from Senator Wolcott, of Col- orado, Representative Henry Cabot Lodge, of Massachusetts, and from various artists and men of prominence interested in the movement. The unanimity of sentiment and the force of argument displayed must, before long, have some effect even on the indurated intelligence of those legislators who now refuse to see the difference be- tween the production of a flannel shirt and a work of art, and sooner or later the cause must triumph. The cause can at any rate be left on its merits from an economic and rational standpoint, but it seems fitting in this place to say a word from a point of view which will hardly come up in dis- cussion before the Ways and Means Com- mittee. THE POINT OF VIEW.

HISTORY repeating itself fulfils its pro- verbial function, now that something like a Copyright bill has been passed, in the ef- forts of the producing artists to have the duty on works of art by foreign artists im- ported to this country repealed. As in the case of International Copyright, we have here a class of men, who for the sake of an- alogy, may be called manufacturers of the article protected, clamoring to have the protection removed; and in like manner we have the sage legislator virtually informing this producer that it is his duty to prevent him from committing suicide. The whole question seems to any thinking man con- versant with the interests at stake to verge on the ridiculous; but this state of affairs has continued since, early in 1882, the So- ciety of American Artists, through Mr. Perry Belmont, called the attention of our law- makers to the fact that the duty on works of art, then ten per cent., was iniquitous and unnecessary. The effort apparently called attention to the existence of an opportunity, for the almost immediate result was an in- crease of the duty to thirty per cent. To follow the devious ways of the tax, opposed by continued effort on the part of the not easily discouraged artists, would be too long, and with only passing reference to the grotesque person who announced in Congress that as long as his voice could be raised against it, no repeal of the tax on whiskey and art could be had, we may leave the ancient history of the movement against the tax, which after a promise in the Ways and Means Committee, of its total abolition VOL. XIL14 at the time of the McKinley bill, has been reduced to fifteen per cent. A new era seems, however, to have dawned with the recent Congress of the National Art Association at Washington. This Congress, though not the first con- certed movement on the part of our ar- tists, is numerically and strategetically the most important. The National Art Asso- ciation, formed chiefly for the propaganda in behalf of Free Art, together with a num- ber of delegates from the Free Art League, a prior organization, met at Washington on the 16th of May, and after passing resolu- tions similar to those already submitted, arranged for a hearing before the Commit- tees of the Senate and the House of Repre- sentatives. During a long and enthusiastic session the Congress listened to much prac- tical advice from Senator Wolcott, of Col- orado, Representative Henry Cabot Lodge, of Massachusetts, and from various artists and men of prominence interested in the movement. The unanimity of sentiment and the force of argument displayed must, before long, have some effect even on the indurated intelligence of those legislators who now refuse to see the difference be- tween the production of a flannel shirt and a work of art, and sooner or later the cause must triumph. The cause can at any rate be left on its merits from an economic and rational standpoint, but it seems fitting in this place to say a word from a point of view which will hardly come up in dis- cussion before the Ways and Means Com- mittee. THE POINT OF VIEW. 130 THE POINT OF VIEW. Art has been compared to a chain, every link of which reaches from a point of de- parture to one of arrival, and this compari- son makes the art of one country absolutely dependent on that of another. No refer- ence to Greece or Rome, to Italy, Holland, France, or England is necessary to make this obviously true; and those who watch the growth of Art in this countrythat which we are fain to call our Renaissanceneed not be reminded of our debt of gratitude to Europe, and to France in particular. It is France which has received and cared for, has instructed in form, color, and taste the major part of the men who, in our annually recurring exhibitions, have drawn and hold a constantly increasing number of inter- ested men and women. It is France that (during these long years that we have treat- ed her art as she has, from a possibly mis- taken economic standpoint, treated our pork) is now instructing and helping for- ward the students who will continue and improve on the work of their predecessors. It is France who, for years to come, while the Louvre shall stand and her ateliers may perfect, will give to all students, as she has given in the past, with largesse and gen- erosity. Of this we may be sure, for in France sentimentdespised sentimentis mighty, and it is only on a lower plane than that of Art that a French economist would consider it consistent with his dignity to think of reprisals. This, then, is the situa- tion: on the one hand a magnificent hos- pitality to all those who come in the name of art; on the other, numbers availing themselves of the best system of art educa- tion yet devised, prizes founded here to en- able the recipient to enjoy these privileges, honors competed for and received in schools and exhibitions there, with, to be just, the fu- tile gratitude of the benefited as the only recompense. This is the point of view of sentiment; but as the sentiment of patriot- ism has force among us, should we not re- flect that our national honor forbids us to ask for bread, and in return offer a stone? Mn. PARDRIDGE, th6 Chicago plunger who recently made a million dollars in a single day, is quoted as observing that a mans financial success is not always de- pendent on his education. What Mr. Par- dridge calls education is more accurately expressed by the word culture ; for of course a man has got to have education of a very definite quality before he can hope to find any profit in balancing himself on the edge of the Chicago wheat pit. Education is trained development; and the country- store boy whose mind runs on trading, and who makes gradual progress from peddling mouse-traps to swapping railroads, gets edu- cation that is quite as distinct, though prob- ably not as broad, as if he were in special training to become a college president. The thing he usually doesnt get is culture; and Mr. Pardridge is probably right in thinking that the sort of education that gives culture is a factor of no particular im- portance in most processes of money-mak- ing. But his remark in its inverted form is just as true and just as important, to wit, that the sort of education that merely results in money-making is of no particular impor- tance in the promotion of culture. A man may get ever so much culture and never get rich; and a man may get ever so rich and never achieve culture enough to speak polite English, or know good poetry from bad. Now, a money-maker who has no culture is liable to be hard put to it to get his mon- eys worth out of life; and the upshot of his embarrassments usually is, that not being fitted by education to enjoy the things that give pleasure to cultivated minds, he either takes up with less innocent amusements, or else sticks to business because it is the only thing he likes to do. At best he di- vides his time between money-making and the cultivation and enjoyment of that won- derfully remunerative animal, the horse. When the money has been made in a busi- ness of large speculative possibilities, there are disadvantages about going on, merely for amusement, after one has won enough. Many men could speak eloquently of the disadvantages of being driven by defective culture to buy and sell wheat for occupa- tion. And yet it is very awkward, too, to be very long of culture and very short of mon- ey. Culture does not make grinding pov- erty easier to bear, but rather the reverse; for though it is true that people of the highest culture can be happy on moderate incomes, it is also true that cultivated tastes mean cultivated wants, and an income on THE POINT OP VIEW. 131 which an uncultured person could live hap- pily might be below the minimum indis- pensable to the comfort of another person whose carefully cultivated wants had be- come necessities. It remains a question, which has had to be pondered for a large proportion of the youth who have just passed or are just about to pass the examinations preliminary to en- tering college, whether it is wiser to try first to make sure of having money or of having culture. The usual verdict (of the in medjo tutissimus order) is that one should first seek culture and get a taste of it, at least while he is young; then, if all other things ~re subsequently added unto him, his enjoy- ment of them will be so much the more in- telligent. So long, however, as the other things are lacking, he should not incur culture enough to put him at a disadvan- tage in his efforts to attain them. A per- fectly safe college, in the estimation of anxious contemporary parents, is one where one s son will not learn so much that he cannot make his living when he gets out. It might not be quite fair to say that it is the glory of the modern college president that his college is safe, but it is true enough that it has been thought expedient of late years to take special pains to dispel the notion that college training impairs the business faculty. Mother of College Presidents was the title of an American college that could call herself Mother of Railroad Presidents now with equal truth, and even greater pride. But in these days when college presidents are men of affairs and railroad presidents are men of culture, it is no unnatural exploit for the same alma mater to mother them both. Tmn~E are, I am told, few persons who receive more gratuitous advicewhich, for the most part, is held to be worth about what it coststhan editors of newspapers; and perhaps I am about to offer another instance in point. But I cannot resist the impression that they are making their jour- nals, especially the great dailies, almost impossible to read, partly by the inordinate amount submitted to their readers, and still more by the manner in which it is sub- mitted. I know that the criticism is not new, and I know the usual answerthat a newspaper is made up of an assortment to suit all tastes, and that each class of read- ers can and will choose what is really of interest. But the answer is only partly true. There is much in the contents of any considerable newspaperthe greater part oftenthat is meant for the general reader, and it is precisely this portion that is grow. ing in volume and diffuseness beyond all reason. If one compares it with the por- tion meant for special classes, the differ- ence is very marked. The commercial and financial reports are not padded or diffuse, nor are the articles commenting on them. Even sporting events get themselves re- corded with a directness and compactness, unless, indeed, they happen to be of such importance that the general reader is sup- posed to be interested in them, and then they are apt to suffer inflation. In other words, wherever a distinct class, known to have clear notions of what it wants, is addressed, it is served rationally. Why in the name of mental hygiene should not the wants of the general reader, myself, for example, so far as they can be known, be treated with the same intelligent re- spect? Of course, there is necessarily a certain vagueness about some of these wants. No editor can be expected to know whether I want my reading served with sauce piquante or accompanied by pieces ~ cries. But there can be no doubt that I, with every other fairly intelligent reader, do like my news told me in generally sim- ple English, and with a decent sense of the relative importance of an earthquake in Cal- ifornia and an elopement in a village of Central New York, a days session of Con- gress or a duel between two insignificant Americans on foreign soil. I am persuaded that the Great morning newspaper that will undertake to address its readers with a reasonably constant assumption that they are persons of common sense, with time and energy and eyesight that they do not care to waste, will achieve certainly a novel and possibly a great success. A cxnctmnn that has been sent out to Harvard graduates, asking for money to put some new athletic fields in order, is accom- panied by a picture of the new grounds as they are going to be. All of Harvards play-grounds in present use do not include more than fifteen acres available for sports. 132 THE POINT OF VIEW. The new fields are just about a hundred acres roomier than the old, and when they are laid out and planted, and built upon as the picture shows, with ball-fields, race- tracks, grand stands, boat-houses, and va- rious supplementary temples to Hercules and Diana, they will bear exceedingly sig- nificant testimony to the growing disposi- tion in this country, at this time, to seek a sound physical foundation for the intellec- tual superstructure. The Greeks built that way, and for centuries there has been a col- lege-bred conviction that the way in which the Greeks did things was the right way. All the American colleges recognize now the educational usefulness of the work that is done with brain and muscle in the open air, and provide for it as they can. It is not to be wondered at if, in the last two months of the college year, the tendency toward athletics seems almost too strong, and the provision for it too ample. Then it is that respectable middle-aged fogies come out of their holes and cry aloud that physical education has entirely got the bet- ter of the intellectual department. When spring has fairly cleared her throat and found her voice, her call is all but irresisti- ble, and nothing less than the prospect of an indispensable pecuniary settlement on Saturday night avails to keep rightly con- stituted individuals indoors. It is particu- larly potent with undergraduates and legis- lators, and from class-rooms and State-house halls comes the same moan about the diffi- culty of getting a quorum. It is so pleasant at this season to sit on a bench in the sun and see good men strike at balls and run bases, or to stand on a moving platform car and shriek at oarsmen on a river, or even to wave a bat or toil at an oar-handle ones- self, that the athletic proceedings supple- mentary to education really do get an inor- dinate amount of attention. It is natural enough that any calamitous-minded prophet who contrives to avoid the spell of the sea- son, should heap dust on his head and reite- rate, all through June, that the last has be- come not merely first, but the whole pro- cession. It is a comfort to be able to assure such. protestants that there are figures, veracious and undeniable, which prove, in spite of all delusive signs, that the intellectual end of education was never so highly prized as now. Price is not an accurate measure of value, but often it is the most reliable measure to be had, and, at all events, it is good enough for purposes of comparison. When the price of the highest grade of in- tellectual education goes up because the demand has exceeded the supply, it is a pretty sure symptom that intellectual edu- cation is not being neglected. That, in a way, is what has happened in the Americaii colleges. Term bills have not increased,. but college presidents wish they had, and that the resulting aggravation of income was available to meet the increasing cost of professors. New universities in the West, strong in position and in the amplitude of their endowments, have sent successive emissaries eastward, charged to spare no ex- pense in procuring the most distinguished pedagogical talent that is open to consider- ations of pecuniary enlargement and in- creased opportunities of usefulness. The result is that, this year, a high-grade base- ball player can be hired for less money than a high-grade professor, and that some pro- fessors are in honorable possession of in- comes that actually take away one of the immemorial reproaches of the pedagogical profession, since they would be considered amply remunerative of the services of an accomplished French cook. So, whatever may be the feelings of the fogies as they read of crowded ball-games and boat-races on rivers swarming with yachts, for this year at least they may as well hold their peace. So long as pro- fessors are notoriously in demand at the highest prices ever offered, the fogies can- not hope to get anybody to believe that the intellectual end of education is neg- lected. a -V DRAWN BY C. DELORT. ENGRAVED BY F. A. PETTIT. I HAVE FOLLOWED THE CURRENTS UNDER THE BRANCHES. The Centaur, page 230.

SCRIBNERS MAGAZINE. AUGUST, 1892. No. 2. STORIES OF A WESTERN TOWN. By Octave Thanet. 1.THE BESETMENT OF KURT LIEDERS. A SILVER rime glistened all down the street. There was a drabble of dead leaves on the sidewalk which was of wood, and on the roadway which was of macadam and stiff mud. The wind blew sharply, for it was a De- cember day and only six in the morning. Nor were the houses high enough to furnish any independent bulwark; they were low, wooden dwdllings, the tallest a bare two stories in height, the major- ity only one story. But they were in good painting and repair, and most of them had a homely gayety of geraniums or bouvardias in the windows. The house on the corner was the tall house. It occupied a larger yard than its neigh- bors ; and there were lace curtains tied with blue ribbons for the windows in the right hand front room. The door of this house swung back with a crash and a woman darted out. She ran at the top of her speed to the little yel- low house farther down the street. Her blue calico gown clung about her stout figure and fluttered behind her, reveal- ing her blue, woollen stockings and felt slippers. Her gray head was bare. As she ran tears rolled down her cheeks and she wrung her hands. Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh, lieber Herr Je! One near would have heard her sob, in too distracted agitation to heed the motorneer of the passing street-car who stared after her at the risk of his car, or the tousled heads behind a few curtains. She did not stop until she almost fell He wiped dishes as he did everything, neatly, slowly. Page 144. against the door of the yellow house. Her frantic knocking was answered by a young woman in a light and artless costume of a quilted petticoat and a red flannel sack. Oh, gracious goodness! Mrs. Lie- ders! cried she. Thekla Lieders rather staggered than walked into the room and fell back on the black haircloth sofa. There, there, there, said the young Copyright, 1S92, by Charles Scribners Sons. All rights reserved. VOL. XII. 136 STORIES OF A WESTERN TOWN. woman while she patted the broad was pretty bad worn and soso I just shoulders heaving between sobs and run and jumped and ketched it in my short breath, what is it? The house hands, and being Im so fleshy it couldnt aint afire? stand no more and it broke! And, oh! Oh, no, oh, Mrs. Olsen, he has done hehe kicked me when I was try to it again! She wailed in sobs, like a come near to git the rope off his neck; child. and so soon like he could git his breath Done it? Done what? exclaimed he swore at me Mrs. Olsen, then her face paled. Oh, And you a helping of him! Just my gracious, you dont mean hes killed listen to that! cried the hearer in- himself dignantly. Yes, hes killed himself, again. So I come here for to git you and And hes dead? asked the other in Mr. Olsen to help me git him down an awed tone. stairs, cause he is too heavy for me to Mrs. Lieders gulped down her tears, lift, and he is so mad he wont walk Oh, not so bad as that, I cut him down, down himself. he was up in the garret and I sus Yes, yes, of course. Ill call Carl. suspected him and I run up andoh, Carl! dost thou hear? come! But did he was there, a choking, and he was so you dare to leave him, Mrs. Lieders? Part of the time she spoke in English, part of the time in her own tongue, gliding from one to another, and neither party observing the transition. Mrs. Lieders wiped her eyes saying: Oh, yes, Danke sch6n, I aint afraid cause I tied him with the rope, righd good, so he dont got no chance to move. He was make faces at me all the time I tied him. At the remem- brance, the tears welled anew. Mrs. Olsen, a little, bright tinted woman with a nose too small for her big blue eyes and chubby cheeks, quivered with indig- nant sympathy. Well, I did nefer hear of sooch a mean He swore at me. acting man! seemed to her the most nat mad! He swore at me andhe kicked ural expression; but the wife fired, at me when II says: Kurt, what are once. you doing of? Hold on till I git a No, he is not a mean man, she knife, I saysfor his hands was just cried, no, Freda Olsen, he is not a dangling at his side; and he says not- mean man at all! There aint nowhere tings cause he couldnt, he was most a better man than my man; and Carl gone and I knowed I wouldnt have time Olsen, he knows that. Kurt, he always to git no knife but I saw it was a rope buys a whole ham and a whole barrel STORIES OF A WESTERN TOWN. of flour, and never less than a dollar of tance, especially on the garret windows. sugar at a time! And he never gits Three times, she answered, not remoy- drunk nor he never gives me any bad ing her eyes, onet he tooked Rough on 137 talk. It was only he got this wanting to kill himself on him, sometimes. Well, I guess Ill go put on my things, said Mrs. Olsen, wisely declin- ing to defend her position. You set right still and warm yourself, and well be back in a minute. Indeed, it was hardly more than that time before both Carl Olsen, who worked in the same furniture factory as Kurt Lieders, and was a comely and after- witted giant, appeared with Mrs. Olsen ready for the street. He nodded at Mrs. Lieders and made a gurgling noise in his throat, expected to convey sympathy. Then, he coughed and said that he was ready, and they started. Feeling further expression demanded, Mrs. Olsen asked: How many times has he done it, Mrs. Lieders? Mrs. Lieders was trotting along, her anxious eyes on the house in the dis Rats and I found it out and I put some apple butter in the place of it, and he kept wondering and wondering how he didnt feel notings, and after a while I got him off the notion, that time. He wasnt mad at me ; he just said: Well, I do it some other time. You see! but he promised to wait till I got the spring house cleaning over, so he could shake the carpets for me; and by and by he got feeling better. He was mad at the boss and that made him feel bad. The next time it was the same, that time he jumped into the cistern Yes, I know, said Olsen, with a half grin, I pulled him out. It was the razor he wanted, the wife continued, and when he come home and says he was going to leave the shop and he aint never going back there, and gets out his razor and sharps it. I knowed what that meant and I told him I got to have some bluing and If they could not get along decently they would better partPage 141. 138 STORIES OF A WESTERN TOWN. wouldnt he go and get it? and he says, Mrs. Lieders, but he said it was for to You wont git another husband run so shave him, and I got him to promise to free on your errands, Thekia, and I let the barber shave him sometime, in- says I dont want none; and when he was gone I hid the razor and he couldnt find it, but that didnt mad him, he didnt say notings; and when I went to git the supper he walked out in the yard and jumped into the cistern, and I heard the splash and looked in and there he was trying to git his head under, and I called, For the Lords sake, papa! For the Lords sake! just like that. And I fished for him with the pole that stood there and he was sorry and caught hold of it and give in, and I rested the pole agin the side cause I wasnt strong enough to hist him out; and he held on whilest I run for help And I got the ladder and he clum out, said the giant with another grin of recollection, he was awful wet! That was a month ago, said the wife, solemnly. He sharped the razor ouct, said stead. Here, Mrs. Olsen, you go righd in, the door aint locked. By this time they were at the house door. They passed in and ascended the stairs to the second story, then climbed a narrow, ladder-like flight to the gar- ret. Involuntarily they had paused to listen at the foot of the stairs, but it was very quiet, not a sound of move- ment, not so much as the sigh of a man breathing. The wife turned pale and put both her shaking hands on her heart. Guess hes trying to scare us by keeping quiet ! said Olsen, cheerfully, and he stumbled up the stairs, in ad- vance. Thunder ! he exclaimed, on the last stair, well, we aint any too quick. In fact Carl had nearly fallen over the master of the house, that enterpris- ing self - destroyer having contrived, None of the boys came to see him, except Carl Oloen. Page 142. STORIES OF A WESTERN TOWN. 139 pinioned as he was, to roll over to the Well, I think you had ought to be very brink of the stair well, with the ashamed of yourself, Mr. Lieders ! plain intent to break his neck by plung- Mrs. Olsen burst out, in a tremble be- ing headlong. tween wrath and exertion, shaking her In the dim light all that they could little, plump fist at him. see was a small, old man whose white But the placid Carl only nodded, as hair was strung in wisps over his pur- in sympathy, saying, Well, I am sorry plc face, whose deep set eyes glared like you feel so bad, Mr. Lieders. I guess the eyes of a rat in a trap, and whose we got to go now. very elbows and knees expressed in their Mrs. Olsen looked as if she would cramps the fury of an outraged soul. have liked to exhort Lieders further; When he saw the new-comers he shut but she shrugged her shoulders and his eyes and his jaws. followed her husband in silence. Well, Mr. Lieders, said Olsen, I wished youd stay to breakfast, mildly, I guess you better git down- now youre here, Thekla urged out of stairs. Kin I help you up? her imperious hospitality; had Kurt No, said Lieders. been lying there dead, the next meal Will I give you an arm to lean on? must have been offered, just the same. No. I know, you aint got time to git Mr. Wont you go at all, Mr. Lieders? Olsen his breakfast, Freda, before he No. has got to go to the shops, and my Olsen shook his head. I hate to tea-kettle is boiling now, and the cof- trouble you Mr. Lieders, said he in his feell be readyI guess you had better slow, undecided tones, please excuse stay. me, with which he gathered up the little But Mrs. Olsen seconded her hus- man into his strong arms and slung him bands denial and there was nothing left over his shoulders, as easily as he would sling a sack of meal. It was a vent for Mrs. Olsens bubbling indignation to make a dive for Lie- derss heels and hold them, while Carl backed down-stairs. But Lie- ders did not make the least resistance. He allowed them to carry him into the room in- dicated by his wife, and to lay him bound on the plump feather bed. It was not his bedroom, but the sacred spare room, and the bed was part of its luxury. Thekla ran in, first, to remove the embroid- ered pillow shams and the dazzling, silken crazy quilt that was her choicest possession. Safely in the bed, Lieders opened his eyes and looked from Thekla but to see them to the door. one face to the other, his lip curling. No sooner did she return than Lieders You cant keep me this way all the time. spoke. Aint you going to take off I can do it in spite of you, said he. them ropes? said he. Hang himself? stammered LossingPage 146. 140 STORIES OF A WESTERN TOWN. Silence. Thekia, brushing a few tears from her eyes, scrutinized the ropes again, before she walked heavily out of the room. She turned the key in the door. Directly a savory steam floated through the hall and pierced the cracks about the door; then Theklas foot- steps returned; they echoed over the uncarpeted boards. She had brought his breakfast, cooked with the best of her homely skill. The pork chops that he liked had been fried, there was a napkin on the tray, and the coffee was in the best gilt cup and sau- cer. Heres your breakfast, papa, said she, trying to smile. I dont want no breakfast, said he. She waited, holding the tray, and wistfully eying him. Take it way, said he, I wont touch it if you stand till doomsday, les- sen you untie me! Ill untie your arm, papa, one arm; you kin eat that way. Not lessen you untie all of me, I wont touch a bite. You know why I wont untie von, papa.~~ Starving will kill as dead as hang- ing, was Liederss orphic response to this. Thekla sighed and went away leaving the tray on the table. It may be that she hoped the sight of food might stir his stomach to rebel against his dogged will; if so she was disappointed, half an hour went by during which the statue under the bedclothes remained without so much as a quiver. Then the old woman returned. Aint you awful cramped and stiff:, papa? Yes, said the statue. Will you promise not to do yourself a mischief, if I untie you? Thekla groaned, while the tears started to her red eyelids. But youll git awful tired and it will hurt you if No, it was not fair to theeI know that nowPage 141. Not till you promise you wont do it. STORIES OF A WESTERN TOWN. 141 you dont get the ropes off, soon, papa! I know that! He closed his eyes again, to be the less hindered from dropping back into his distempered musings. Thekla took a seat by his side and sat silent as he. S~wly the natural pallor returned to the high forehead and sharp features. They were delicate features and there was an air of refinement, of thought, about Liederss whole person, as differ- ent as possible from the robust comeli- ness of his wife. With its keen sensi- tiveness and its undefined melancholy it was a dreamers face. One meets such faces, sometimes, in incongruous places and wonders what they mean. In fact, Kurt Lieders, head cabinet maker in the furniture factory of Lossing & Co., was an artist. He was, also, an incom- parable artisan and the most exacting foreman in the shops. Thirty years ago he had first taken wages from the senior Lossing. He had watched a modest industry climb up to a great business, nor was he all at sea in his own estimate of his share in the firms success. Liederss workmanship had an honesty, an infinite patience of detail, a daring skill of design that came to be sought and commanded its own price. The Lossing art furniture did not slander the name. No sculptor ever wrought his soul into marble with a more unflinching conscience or a purer joy in his work than this wood-carver dreaming over sideboards and bed- steads. Unluckily, Lieders had the wrong side of the gift as well as the right; was full of whims and crochets, and as unpractical as the Christian mar- tyrs. He openly defied expense, and he would have no trifling with the laws of art. To make after orders was an insult to Kurt. He made what was best for the customer; if the latter had not the sense to see it he was a fool and a pig and some one else should work for him, not Kurt Lieders, begehr! Young Lossing had learned the busi- ness practically. He was taught the details by his fathers best workman; and a mighty hard and strict master the best workman proved! Lossing did not dream that the crabbed old tyrant who rarely praised him, who made him VOL. XIJ.16 go over, for the twentieth time, any im- perfect piece of work, who exacted all the artisan virtues to the last inch, was secretly proud of him. Yet, in fact, the thread of romance in Liederss pro- saic life was his idolatry of the Lossing Manufacturing Co. It is hard to tell whether it was the Lossings or that intangible quantity, the firm, the busi- ness, that he worshipped. Worship he did, however, the one or the other, per- haps the both of them, though in the~ peevish and erratic manner of the sav- age who sometimes grovels to his idols and sometimes kicks them. Nobody guessed what a blow it was to Kurt when, a year ago, the elder Los- sing had died. Even his wife did not connect his sullen melancholy and his gibes at the younger generation, with the crape on Harry Lossings hat. He would not go to the funeral, but worked savagely, all alone by himself, in the shop, the whole afternoon breaking down at last at the sight of a carved panel over which Lossing and he had once disputed. The desolate loneliness of the old came to him when his old master was gone. He loved the young man, but the old man was of his own generation; he had known how things ought to be and he could understand without talking. Lieders began to be on the lookout for signs of waning consideration, to watch his own eyes and hands, drearily wondering when they would begin to play him false; at the same time because he was unhappy he was ten times as exacting and per- emptory and critical with the younger workmen, and ten times as insolently independent with the young master. Often enough, Lossing was exasperat- ed to the point of taking the old man at his word and telling him to go if he would, but every time the chain of long habit, a real respect for such faith- ful service, and a keen admiration for Kurts matchless skill in his craft, had held him back. He prided himself on keeping his word; for that reason he was warier of using it. So he would compromise by giving the domineering old fellow a good, stiff, rowing. Once, he coupled this with a threat, if they could not get along decently they would better part! Lieders had an- 142 STORIES OF A WESTERN TOWN. swered not a word; he had given Los- sing a queer glance and turned on his heel. He went home and bought some poison on the way. The old man is gone and the young feller dont want the old crank round, no more, he said to himself, Thekla, I guess I make her troubles, too; Ill git out! That was the beginning of his tam- pering with suicide. Thekla, who did not have the same opinion of the trou- ble, had interfered. He had married Thekla to have someone to keep a warm fireside for him, but she was an ignor- ant creature who never could be made to understand about carving; he felt sorry for her when the baby died, the only child they ever had; he was sorrier than he expected to be on his own ac- count, too, for it was an ugly little creat- ure, only four days old, and very red and wrinkled; but he never thought of confiding his own griefs or trials to her. Now, it made him angry to have that stupid Thekla keep him in a world where he did not wish to stay. If the next day Lossing had not remembered how his father valued Lieders, and made an excuse to half apologize to him, 1 fear Theklas stratagems would have done little good. The next experience was cut out of the same piece of cloth. He had re- lented, he had allowed his wife to save him; but he was angry in secret. Then came the day when open disobedience of Lossings orders had snapped the last thread of his patience. To Liederss aggrieved If you aint satisfied with my work, Mr. Lossing, I kin quit, the answer had come instantly, Very well, Lieders, Im sorry to lose you, but we cant have two bosses here; you can go to the desk. And when Lieders in a blind stab of temper had growled a prophesy that Lossing would regret it, Lossing had stabbed in turn: Maybe, but it will be a cold day when I ask you to come back. And he had gone off without so much as a word of re- gret. The old workman had packed up his tools, the pet tools that no one was ever permitted to touch, and crammed his arms into his coat and walked out of the place where he had worked so long, not a man saying a word. Lie- ders didnt reflect that they knew noth ing of the quarrel. He glowered at them and went away sore at heart. We make a great mistake when we suppose that it is only the affectionate that de- sire affection, sulky and ill-conditioned souls often have a passionate longing for the very feelings that they rebel. Lieders was a womanish, sensitive crt- ure under the surly mask, and he was cut to the quick by his comrades apa- thy. There aint no place for old men in this world, he thought, theres them boys I done my best to make do a good job, and some of em Ive worked overtime to help; and not one of em has got as much as a good-by in him for me 1 But he did not think of going to poor Thekla for comfort, he went to his grim dreams. I git my property all straight for Thekla, and then I quit, said he. Perhaps he gave himself a reprieve un- consciously, thinking that something might happen to save him from himself. Nothing happened. None of the boys came to see him, except Carl Olsen, the very stupidest man in the shop who put Lieders beside himself, fifty times a day. The other men were sorry that Lieders had gone, having a genuine workmans admiration for his skill, and a sort of underground liking for the un- reasonable old man because he was so absolutely honest and a fellow could always tell where to find him. But they were shy, they were afraid he would take their pity in bad part, they wait- ed a while. Carl, honest soul, stood about in Lie- derss workshop, kicking the shavings with his heels for half an hour, and grinned sheepishly, and was told what a worthless, scamping, bragging lot the boys at Lossings were, and said he guessed he had got to go home now; and so departed, unwitting that his presence had been a consolation. Mrs. Olsen asked Carl what Lieders said; Carl answered simply, Say, Freda, that man feels terrible bad. Meanwhile Thekla seemed easily sat- isfied. She made no outcry as Lie- ders had dreaded, over his leaving the shop. Well, then, papa, you dont need git up so early in the morning no more, if you aint going to the shop, was her STORIES OF A WESTERN TOWN. 143 only comment; and Lieders despised the mind of woman more than ever. But that evening, while Lieders was down town (occupied, had she known it, with a codicil to his will), she went over to the Olsens and found out all Carl could tell her about the trouble in the shop. And it was she that made the excuse of marketing to go out the next day that she might see the rich widow on the hill who was talking about a china closet, and Judge Trevor, who had asked the price of a mantel, and Mr. Martin, who had looked at side- boards (all this information came from honest Carl); and who proposed to them that they order such furniture of the best cabinet-maker in the country, now setting up on his own account. He, simple as a baby for all his doggedness, thought that they came because of his fame as a workman, and felt a glow of pride, particularly as (having been pre- pared by the wife, who said, You see it dont make so much difference with my Kurt bout de prize, if so he can get the furniture like he wants it, and he always know of the best in the old country ) they all were duly humble. He accepted a few orders and went to work with a will; he would show them what the old man could do! But it was only a temporary gleam; in a little while he grew homesick for the shop, for the sawdust floor and the familiar smell of oil, and the picture of Lossing flitting in and out. He missed the care- less young workmen at whom he had grumbled, he missed the whir of ma- chinery, and the consciousness of rush and hurry accented by the cars on the track outside. In short, he missed the feeling of being part of a great whole. At home, in his cosey little improvised shop, there was none to dispute him, but there was none to obey him either. He grew deathly tired of it all. He got into the habit of walking around the shops at night prowling about his old haunts like a cat. Once the night watchman saw him. The next day there was a second watchman engaged. And Olsen told him very kindly, mean- ing only to warn him, that he was sus- pected to be there for no good purpose. Lieders confirmed a lurking suspicion of the good Carls own, by the clouding of his face. Yet he would have chopped his hand off rather than have lifted it against the shop. That was Tuesday night, this was Wednesday morning. The memory of it all, the cruel sense of injustice, returned with such poig-. nant force that Lieders groaned aloud. Instantly, Thekla was bending over him. He did not know whether to laugh at her or to swear, for she began fumbling at the ropes, half sobbing. Yes, I knowed they was hurting you, papa; Im going to loose one arm. Then I put it back again and loose the other. Please dont be bad! He made no resistance and she was as good as her word. She unbound and bound him in sections, as it were; he watching her with a morose smile. Then she left the room, but only to return with some hot coffee. Lieders twisted his head away. No, said he, I dont eat none of that breakfast, not if you make fresh coffee all the morning; I feel like I dont eat never no more on earth. Thekla knew that the obstinate nat- ure that she tempted was proof against temptation; if Kurt chose to starve, starve he would with food at his elbow. Oh, papa, she cried, helplessly, what is the matter with you?~~ Just dying is the matter with me, Thekla. If I cant die one way I kin an- other. Now Thekla, I want you to quit crying and listen. After Im gone you go to the boss, young Mr. Lossingbut I always called him Harry because he learned his trade of me, Thekla, but he dont think of that nowand you tell him old Lieders that worked for him thirty years is dead, but he didnt hold no hard feelings, he knowed he done wrong bout that mantel. Mind you tell him. Yes, papa, said Thekla, which was a surprise to Kurt; he had dreaded a weak flood of tears and protestations. But there were no tears, no protesta- tions, only a long look at him and a contraction of the eyebrows as if Thek- la were trying to think of something that eluded her. She placed the coffee on the tray beside the other breakfast. For a while the room was very stilL Lieders could not see the look of re 144 STORIES OF A WESTERN TOWN. solve that finally smoothed the per- plexed lines out of his wifes kind, sim- ple old face. She rose. Kurt, she said, I dont guess you remember this is our wedding-day; it was this day, eighteen year we was married. So! said Lieders, well, I was a bad bargain to you, Thekla; after you nursed your father that was a cripple for twenty years, I thought it would be easy with me; but I was a bad bar- gain. The Lord knows best about that, said Thekia, simply, be it how it be, you are the only man I ever had or will have, and I dont like you starve your- self. Papa, say you dont kill yourself, to-day, and you will eat your break- fast! Yes, Lieders repeated in German, a bad bargain for thee, that is sure. But thou hast been a good bargain for me. Here! I promise. Not this day. Give me the coffee. He had seasons, all the morning, of wondering over his meekness, and his agreement to be tied up again, at night. But still, what did a day matter? a man humors womens notions; and starv- ing was so tedious. Between whiles he elaborated a scheme to attain his end. How easy to outwit the silly Thekla. His eyes shone, as he. hid the little, sharp knife up his cuff. Let her tie me! says Lieders, I keep my word. To-morrow I be out of this. He wont git a man like me, pretty soon! Thekia went about her daily tasks, with her every-day air; but, now and again that same pucker of thought re- turned to her forehead; and, more than once, Lieders saw her stand over some dish, poising her spoon in air, too ab- stracted to notice his cynical observa- tion. The dinner was more elaborate tknn common, and Thekla had broached a bottle of her currant wine. She grave- ly drank Liederss health. And many good days, papa, she said. Lieders felt a queer movement of pity. After the table was cleared, he helped his wife to wash and wipe the dishes as his custom was of a Sunday or holiday. He wiped dishes as he did everything, neatly, slowly, with a careful delibera.. tion. Not until the dishes were put away and the couple were seated, did Thekla speak. Kurt, she said, I got to talk to you.~~ An inarticulate groan and a glance at the door from Lieders. I just got to, papa. It aint righd for you to do the way you been doing for so long time; efery little whiles you try to kill your- self; no, papa, that aint righd! Kurt, who had gotten out his pencils and compasses and other drawing tools, grunted: I got to look at my work, Thekla, now, I am too busy to talk. No, Kurt, no, papa the hands holding the blue apron that she was em broidering with white linen began to tremble; Lieders had not the least idea what a strain it was on this reti- cent, slow of speech woman who had. stood in awe of him for eighteen years, to discuss the horror of her life; but he could not help marking her agitation. She went on, desperately: Yes, papa, I got to talk it oud with you. You had ought to listen, cause I always been a good wife to you and nefer refused you notings. No. Well, I aint saying I done it cause you been bad to me, everybody knows we aint had no trouble. But everbody what dont know us, when they read how you tried to kill yourself in the papers, they think it was me. That always is so. And now I never can any more sleep nights, for you is always maybe git up and do something to yourself. So now, I got to talk to you, papa. Papa, how could you done so? Lieders twisted his feet under the rungs of his chair; he opened his mouth, but only to shut it again with a click of his teeth. I got my mind made up, papa. I thought and I thought. I know why you done it; you done it cause you and the boss was mad at each other. The boss hadnt no righd to let you go Yes, he had, I madded him first; I was a fool. Of course I knowed more than him bout the work, but I hadnt no right to go again him. The boss is all right. Yes, papa, I got my mind made up like most sluggish spirits there was an immense momentum about Theklas STORIES OF A WESTERN TOWN. 145 mind, once get it fairly started it was not to be diverted you never killed yourself before you used to git mad at the boss. You was afraid he would send you away; and now you have sent yourself away you dont want to live, cause you do not know how you can git along without the shop. But you want to get back, you want to get back more as you want to kill yourself. Yes, papa, I know, I know where you did use to go, nights. Now she changed her speech unconsciously to the tongue of her youth it is not fair, it is not fair to me that thou should treat me like that, thou dost belong to me, also; so I say, my Kurt, wilt thou make a bar- gain with me? If I shall get thee back thy place wilt thou promise me never to kill thyself any more? Lieders had not once looked up at her during the slow, difficult sentences with their half choked articulation; but he was experiencing some strange emotions, and one of them was a novel respect for his wife. All he said was: Taint no use taThing. I wont never ask him to take me back. Well, you aint asking of him. I ask him; I try to git you back. I tell you, it aint no use, I know the boss, he aint going to be letting womans talk him over; no, hes a good man, he knows how to work his busi- ness himself! But would you promise me, Kurt? Liederss eyes blurred with a mild and dreamy mist; he sighed softly. Thek- la, you cant see how it is. It is like you are tied u~, if I dont can do that; if I can then it is always that I am free, free, to go free, to stay. And for you, Thekla, it is the same. Theklas mild eyes flashed. I dont believe you would like it so you wake up in the morning and find me hanging up in the kitchen by the clothes-line! Lieders had the air of one consider- ing deeply. Then he gave Thekla one of the surprises of her life; he rose from his chair, he walked in his shuffl- ing, unheeled slippers across the room to where the old woman sat; he put one arm on the back of the chair and stiffly bent over her and kissed her. Lieber Herr Je! gasped Thelka. Then I shall go, too, pretty quick, that is all, mamma, said he, Thekia wiped her eyes. A little pause fell be- tween them and in it they may have both remembered vanished, half-forgot- ten days when life had looked differ- ently to them, when they had never thought to sit by their own fireside and discuss suicide. The husband spoke first; with a reluctant, half - shamed smile, Thekla, I tell you what, I make the bargain with you; you get me back that place I dont do it again, less you let me; you dont git me back that place you dont say notings to me. The apron dropped from the withered, brown hands to the floor. Again there was silence; but not for long; ghastly as was the alternative, the proposal of- fered a chance to escape from the terror that was sapping her heart. How long will you give me, papa? said she. I give you a week, said he. Thekla rose and went to the door; aa she opened it a fierce gust of wind slashed her like a knife, and Lieders ex- claimed, fretfully, what you opening that door for, Thekla, letting in the wind? Im so cold, now, right by the fire, I most cant draw. We got to keep a fire in the base-burner good, all night or the plants will freeze. Thekla said confusedly that some- thing sounded like a cat crying. And you talking like that it frightened me;. maybe I was wrong to make such bar- gains Then dont make it, said Lieders, curtly, I aint asking you. But Thekla drew a long breath and straightened herself, saying, Yes, I make it, papa, I make it. Well, put another stick of wood in the stove, will you, now you are up? said Lieders, shrugging his shoulders, or Ill freeze in spite of you! It seems to me it grows colder every minute. But all that day he was unusually gentle with Thekla. He talked of his youth and the struggles of the early days of the firm; he related a dozen tales of young Lossing, all illustrating some admirable trait that he certainly had not praised at the time. Never had he so opened his heart in regard to his own ideals of art, his own ambitions. And Thekla listened, not always compre 146 STORIES OF A WESTERN TOWN. hending but always sympathizing; she was almost like a comrade, Kurt thought afterward. In the morning, he was surprised to have her appear equipped for the street, though it was bitterly cold. She wore her garb of ceremony, a black, alpaca gown, with a white crocheted collar neatly turned over the long black, broad- cloth cloak in which she had taken pride for the last five years; and her quilted black silk bonnet was on her gray head. When she put up her foot to don her warm overshoes Kurt saw that the stout ankles were encased in white stockings. This was the last touch. Gracious, Thekla, cried Kurt, are you going to market this day? It is the coldest day this winter! Oh, I dont mind, replied Thekla, nervously. She had wrapped a scarf about her and gone out while he was getting into his own coat, and conning a proffer to go in her stead. Oh, well, Thekla she aint such a fool like she looks! he observed to the cat, say, pussy, was it you out last night? The cat only blinked her yellow eyes and purred. She knew that she had not been out last night. Not any better than her mistress, however, who at this moment was hailing a street-car. The street-car did not land her any- where near a market; it whirled her past the lines of low wooden houses into the big brick buildings with their arched windows and terra cotta orna- ments that showed the business streets of the growing Western town, past these into mills and factories and smoke-stained chimneys. Here, she stopped. An acquaintance would hard- ly have recognized her, her ruddy cheeks had grown so pale. But she trotted on to the great building on the corner from whence came a low, inces- sant buzz. She went into the first door and ran against Carl Olsen. Carl, I got to see Mr. Lossing, said she breath- lessly. There aint nothing No, Gott sei dank, but I got to see him. It was not in Carls way to ask ques- tions; he promptly showed her the office and she entered. She had not seen young Harry Lossing half a dozen times; and, now, her anxious eyes wan- dered from one dapper figure at the high desks, to another, until Lossing advanced to her. He was a handsome man, she thought, and he had kind eyes, but they hardened at her first timid sentence: I am Mrs. Lieders, I come about my man Will you walk in here Mrs. Lieders? said Lossing. His voice was like the ice on the window-panes. She followed him into a little room. He shut the door. Declining the chair that he pushed to- ward her she stood in the centre of the room, looking at him with the plead- ing eyes of a child. Mr. Lossings, will you please save my Kurt from killing himself? What do you mean? Lossings voice had not thawed. It is for you that he will kill him- self, Mr. Lossing. This is the third time that he has done it. It is because he is so lonesome now, your father is died and he thinks that you forget, and he has worked so hard for you, but he thinks that you forget. He was never tell me till yesterday; and thenit was it was because I would not let him hang himself Hang himself? stammered Los- sing, you dont mean Yes, he was hang himself, but I cut him, no I broke him down, said Thekla, accurate in all the disorder of her spirits; and forthwith, with many tremors, but clearly, she told the story of Kurts despair. She told, as Lieders never would have known how to tell, even had his pride let him, all the mans devotion for the business, all his per- sonal attachment to the firm; she told of his gloom after the elder Lossing died, for he was think there was no one in this town such good man and so smart like your fader, Mr. Lossing, no, and he would set all the evening and try to draw and make the lines all wrong, and, then, he would throw the papers in the fire and go and walk out- side and he say, I cant do nothing righd no more now the old mans died; they dont have no use for me at the shop, pretty quick! and that make him feel awful bad! She told of his home- sick wanderings about the shops by STORIES OF A WESTERN TOWN. 147 night; but he was better as a watch- man, he wouldn~t hurt it for the world! He telled me how you was hide his dinner-pail, onct for a j9ke and put in a piece of your pie, and hoW you climbed on the roof with the hose when it was afire. And he telled me if he shall die I shall tell you that he aint got no hard feelings, but you didnt know how that mantel had ought to be, so he done it righd the other way, but he hadnt no righd to talk to you like he done, no- how, and you was all righd to send him away, but you might a shaked hands, and none of the boys never said nothing nor none of them never come to see him, cept Carl Olsen, and that make him feel awful bad, too! And when he feels so bad he dont no more want to live, so I make him promise if I git him back he never try to kill himself again. Oh, Mr. Lossing, please dont let my man die! Bewildered and more touched than he cared to feel, himself, Lossing still made a feeble stand for discipline. I dont see how Lieders can expect me to take him back again, he began. He aint expecting you, Mr. Lossing, its me! But didnt Lieders tell you I told him I would never take him back? No, sir, no, Mr. Lossing, it was not that, it was you said it would be a cold day that you would take him hack; and it was git so cold yesterday, so I think, Now it would be a cold day to-morrow and Mr. Lossing he can take Kurt back. And it is the most coldest day this year! Lossing burst into a laugh, perhaps he was glad to have the Western sense of humor come to the rescue of his compassion. Well, it was a cold day for you to come all this way for noth- ing, said he. You go home and tell Lieders to report to-morrow. Kurts manner of re