The Project Gutenberg eBook of Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 26, October, 1880.

Transcriber's notes: Minor typos have been corrected. Table of contents has been generated for HTML version.

A CHAPTER OF AMERICAN EXPLORATION.

Those adventurous gentlemen who derive exhilaration from peril, and extract febrifuge for the high pressure of a too exuberant constitution from the difficulties of the Alps, cannot find such peaks as the Aiguille Verte and the Matterhorn, with their friable and precipitous cliffs, among the Rocky Mountains. The geological processes have been gentler in evolving the latter than the former, and in the proper season summits not less elevated nor less splendid or comprehensive than that [Pg 394]of the Matterhorn, upon which so many lives have been defiantly wasted, may be attained without any great degree of danger or fatigue. All but the apex may often be reached in the saddle. The bergschrund with its fragile lip of ice, the crevasse with its treacherous bridges, and the avalanche which an ill-timed footstep starts with overwhelming havoc, do not threaten the explorer of the Western mountains; and ordinarily he passes from height to height—from the base with its wreaths of evergreens to the zone where vegetation is limited to the gnarled dwarf-pine, from the foot-hills to the basin of the crisp alpine lake far above the life-limits—without once having to scale a cliff, supposing, of course, that he has chosen the best path. The trail may be narrow at times, with nothing between it and a gulf, and it may be pitched at an angle that compels the use of "all-fours;" but with patience and discretion the ultimate peak is conquered without rope-ladder or ice-axe, and the vastness of the world below, gray and cold at some hours, and at others lighted with a splendor which words cannot transcribe, is revealed to the adventurer as satisfaction for his toil.

But, though what may be called the pure mountain-peaks do not entail the same perils and difficulties as the members of the Alpine Club discover in Italy, France, Switzerland and Germany, the volcanic cones and cañon-walls of the West have an unstable verticality which, when it is not absolutely insurmountable, is more difficult than the top of the Matterhorn itself; and though the various expeditions under Wheeler, Powell, King and Hayden have not had Aiguilles Vertes to oppose them, they have been confronted by obstacles which could only be overcome by as much courage as certain of the clubmen have required in their most celebrated exploits. Indeed, nothing in the journals of the Alpine Club compares in the interest of the narrative or the peril of the undertaking with Major Powell's exploration of the cañons of the Colorado, which, though its history has become familiar to many readers through the official report, gathers significance in contrast with all other Western expeditions, and stands out as an achievement of extraordinary daring.

The Colorado is formed by the junction of the Grand and Green Rivers. The Grand has its source in the Rocky Mountains five or six miles west of Long's Peak, and the Green heads in the Wind River Mountains near Fremont's Peak. Uniting in the Colorado, they end as turbid floods in the Gulf of California, a goal which they reach through gorges set deep in the bosom of the earth and bordered by a region where the mutations of Nature are in visible process. In all the world there is no other river like this. The phenomenal in form predominates: the water has grooved a channel for itself over a mile below the surrounding country, which is a desert uninhabited and uninhabitable, terraced with long series of cliffs or mesa-fronts, verdureless, voiceless and unbeautiful. It is a land of soft, crumbling soil and parched rock, dyed with strange colors and broken into fantastic shapes. Nature is titanic and mad: the sane and alleviating beauty of fertility is displaced by an arid and inanimate desolateness, which glows with alien splendor in evanescent conditions of the atmosphere, but which in those moments when the sun casts a fatuous light upon it is more oppressive in its influence upon the observer than when the blaze of high noon exposes all of its unyielding harshness. To the feeling of desolation which comes over one in such a region as this a quickened sense and apprehension of the supernatural are added, and we seem to be invaders of a border-land between the solid earth and phantasy. Nature is distraught; and so much has man subordinated and possessed her elsewhere that here, where existence is defeated by the absolute impossibility of sustenance, a poignant feeling of her imperfection steals over us and weighs upon the mind.

Perhaps no portion of the earth's surface is more irremediably sterile, none more hopelessly lost to human occupation, and yet, an eminent geologist has said, it is the wreck of a region once rich and beautiful, changed and impoverished by the deepening of its draining streams—the [Pg 395]most striking and suggestive example of over-drainage of which we have any knowledge. Though valueless to the agriculturist, dreaded and shunned by the emigrant, the miner and the trapper, the Colorado plateau is a paradise to the geologist, for nowhere else are the secrets of the earth's structure so fully revealed as here. Winding through it is the profound chasm within which the river flows from three thousand to six thousand feet below the general level for five hundred miles in unimaginable solitude and gloom, and the perpendicular crags and precipices which imprison the stream exhibit with, unusual clearness the zoological and physical history of the land.

It was this chasm, with its cliffs of unparalleled magnitude and its turbulent[Pg 396] waters, that Major Powell explored, and no chapter of Western adventure is more interesting than his experiences. His starting-point was Green River City, Wyoming Territory, which is now reached from the East by the Union Pacific Railway. On the second morning out from Omaha the passengers find themselves whirling through sandy yellowish gullies, and, having completed their toilettes amid the flying dust, they emerge at about eight o'clock in a basin of gigantic and abnormal forms, upon which lie bands of dull gold, pink, orange and vermilion. In some instances the massive sandstones have curious architectural resemblances, as if they had been designed and scaled on a draughting-board, but they have been so oddly worked upon by the elements, by the attrition of their own disintegrated particles and the intangible carving of water, that while one block stands out as a castle embattled on a lofty precipice, another looms up in the quivering air with a quaint likeness to something neither human nor divine. This is where the Overland traveller makes his first acquaintance with those erosions which are a characterizing element of Western scenery. A broad stream flows easily through the valley, and acquires a vivid emerald hue from the shales in its bed, whence its[Pg 397] name is derived. Under one of the highest buttes a small town of newish wooden buildings is scattered, and this is ambitiously designated Green River City, which, if for nothing else, is memorable to the tourist for the excellence of the breakfast which the tavern-keeper serves.

But it was from here, on May 28, 1869, that Major Powell started down the cañon on that expedition from which the few miners, stock-raisers and tradespeople who saw his departure never expected to see him return alive. His party consisted of nine men—J.C. Sumner and William H. Dunn, both of whom had been trappers and guides in the Rocky Mountains; Captain Powell, a veteran of the civil war; Lieutenant Bradley, also of the army; O. G. Howland, formerly a printer and country editor, who had become a hunter; Seneca Howland; Frank Goodman; Andrew Hall, a Scotch boy; and[Pg 398] "Billy" Hawkins, the cook, who had been a soldier, a teamster and a trapper. These were carefully selected for their reputed courage and powers of endurance. The boats in which they travelled were four in number, and were built upon a model which, as far as possible, combined strength to resist the rocks with lightness for portages and protection against the over-wash of the waves. They were divided into three compartments, oak being the material used in three and pine in the fourth. The three larger ones were each twenty-one feet long: the other was sixteen feet long, and was constructed for speed in rowing. Sufficient food was taken to last ten months, with plenty of ammunition and tools for building cabins and repairing the boats, besides various scientific instruments.

Thus equipped and in single file, the expedition left Green River City behind and pulled into the shadows of the phenomenal rocks in the early morning of that May day of 1869. During the first few days they had no serious mishap: they lost an oar, broke a barometer-tube and occasionally struck a bar. All around them abounded examples of that natural architecture which is seen from the passing train at the "City"—weird statuary, caverns, pinnacles and cliffs, dyed gray and buff, red and brown, blue and black—all drawn in horizontal strata like the lines of a painter's brush. Mooring the boats and ascending the cliffs after making camp, they saw the sun go down over a vast landscape of glittering rock. The shadows fell in the valleys and gulches, and at this hour the lights became higher and the depths deeper. The Uintah Mountains stretched out in the south, thrusting their peaks into the sky and shining as if ensheathed with silver. The distant pine forests had the bluish impenetrability of a clear night-sky, and pink clouds floated in motionless suspense until, with a final burst of splendor, the light expired.

At the end of sixty-two miles they reached the mouth of Flaming Gorge, near which some hunters and Indians are settled. Flaming Gorge is a cañon bounded by perpendicular bluffs, banded with red and yellow to a height of fifteen hundred feet, and the water flowing through it is a positive malachite in color, crossed and edged with bars of glistening white sand. It leads into Red Cañon, and in 1869 it was the gateway to a region which was almost wholly unknown. An old Indian endeavored to deter Major Powell from his purpose. He held his hands above his head, with his arms vertical, and, looking between them to the sky, said, "Rocks h-e-a-p, h-e-a-p high; the water go h-oo-woogh; water-pony (boat) heap buck. Water catch 'em, no see 'em squaw any more, no see 'em Injin any more, no see 'em pappoose any more." The prophecy was not encouraging, and with some anxiety the explorers left the last vestige of civilization behind them. Below the gorge they ran through Horseshoe Cañon, which describes an elongated letter U in the mountains, and several portages became necessary. The cliffs increased a thousand feet in height, and in many places the water completely filled the channel between them; but occasionally the cañon opened into a little park, from the grassy carpet of which sprang crimson flowers on the stems of pear-shaped cactus-plants, patches of blue and yellow blossoms, and a fragrant Spiræa.

As often as a rapid was approached Major Powell stood on the deck of the leading boat to examine it, and if he could see a clear passage between the rocks he gave orders to go ahead, but if the channel was barricaded he signalled the other boats to pull ashore, and landing himself he walked along the edge of the cañon for further examination. If still no channel could be found, the boats were lowered to the head of the falls and let down by ropes secured to the stem and stern, or when this was impracticable both the cargoes and the boats were carried by the men beyond the point of difficulty. When it was decided to run the rapids the greatest danger was encountered in the first wave at the foot of the falls, which gathered higher and higher until it broke. If the boat struck it the instant after it broke she cut through it, and the men had all they could do to[Pg 399] keep themselves from being washed overboard. If in going over the falls she was caught by some side-current and borne against the wave "broadside on," she was capsized—an accident that happened more than once, without fatal results, however, as the compartments served as buoys and the men clung to her and were dragged through the waves until quieter water was reached. Where these rapids occur the channel is usually narrowed by rocks which have tumbled from the cliffs or have been washed in by lateral streams; but immediately above them a bay of smooth water may usually be discovered where a landing can be made with ease.

In such a bay Major Powell landed one day, and, seeing one of the rear boats making for the shore after he had given his signal, he supposed the others would follow her example, and walked along the side of the cañon-wall to look for the fall of which a loud roar gave some premonition. But a treacherous eddy carried the boat manned by the two Howlands and Goodman into the current, and a moment later she disappeared over the unseen falls. The first fall was not great—not more than ten or twelve feet—but below the river sweeps down forty or fifty feet through a channel filled with spiked rocks which break it into whirlpools and frothy crests. Major Powell scrambled around a crag just in time to see the boat strike[Pg 400] one of these rocks, and, rebounding from the shock, careen and fill the open compartment with water. The oars were dashed out of the hands of two of the crew as she swung around and was carried down the stream with great velocity, and immediately after she struck another rock amidships, which broke her in two and threw the men into the water. The larger part of the wreck floated buoyantly, and seizing it the men supported themselves by it until a few hundred feet farther down they came to a second fall, filled with huge boulders, upon which the wreck was dashed to pieces, and the men and the fragments were again carried out of Major Powell's sight. He struggled along the scant foothold afforded by the cañon-wall, and coming suddenly to a bend saw one of the men in a whirlpool below a large rock, to which he was clinging with all possible tenacity. It was Goodman, and a little farther on was Howland tossed upon a small island, with his brother stranded upon a rock some distance below. Howland struck out for Goodman with a pole, by means of which he relieved him from his precarious position, and very soon the wrecked crew stood together, bruised, shaken and scared, but not disabled. A swift, dangerous river was on each side of them and a fall below them. It was now a problem how to release them from this imprisonment. Sumner volunteered, and in one of the other boats started out from above the island, and with skilful paddling landed upon it. Together with the three shipwrecked men he then pushed up stream until all stood up to their necks in water, when one of them braced himself against a rock and held the boat while the three others jumped into her: the man on the rock followed, and all four then pulled vigorously for the shore, which they reached in safety. Many years before an adventurous trapper and his party had been wrecked here and several lives had been lost. Major Powell named the spot Disaster Falls.

The cliffs are so high that the twilight is perpetual, and the sky seems like a flat roof pressed across them. As the worn men stretched themselves out in their blankets[Pg 401] they saw a bright star that appeared to rest on the very verge of the eastern cliff, and then to float from its resting-place on the rock over the cañon. At first it was like a jewel set on the brink of the cliff, and as it moved out from the rock they wondered that it did not fall. It did seem to descend in a gentle curve, and the other stars were apparently in the cañon, as if the sky was spread over the gulf, resting on either wall and swayed down by its own weight.

Sixteen days after leaving Green River City the explorers reached the end of the Cañon of Lodore, which is nearly twenty-four miles long. The walls were never less than two thousand feet high except near the foot. They are very irregular, standing in perpendicular or overhanging cliffs here, terraced there, or receding in steep slopes broken by many side-gulches. The highest point of the wall is twenty-seven hundred feet, but the peaks a little distance off are a thousand feet higher. Yellow pines, nut pines, firs and cedars stand in dense forests on the Uintah Mountains, and clinging to moving rocks they have come down the walls to the water's edge between Flaming Gorge and Echo Park. The red sandstones are lichened over, delicate mosses grow in the moist places and ferns festoon the walls.

A few days later they were upset again, losing oars, guns and barometers, and on July 18th they had only enough provisions left for two months, though they had supplied themselves with quantities which, barring accidents, should have lasted ten months. On July 19th the Grand Cañon of the Colorado became visible, and from an eminence they could follow its course for miles and catch glimpses of the river. The Green, down which they had come so far, bears in from the north-west through a narrow, winding gorge. The Grand comes in from the north-east through a channel which from the explorer's point of view seems bottomless. Away to the west are lines of cliffs and ledges of rock, with grotesque forms intervening. In the east a chain of eruptive mountains is visible, the slopes covered with pines, the summits coated with snow and the gulches[Pg 402] flanked by great crags. Wherever the men looked there were rocks, deep gorges in which the rivers were lost under cliffs, towers and pinnacles, thousands of strangely-carved forms, and mountains blending with the clouds. They passed the junction of the Grand and Green, and on July 21st they were on the Colorado itself. The walls are nearly vertical, and the river is broad and swift, but free from rocks and falls. From the edge of the water to the brink of the cliffs is nearly two thousand feet, and the cliffs are reflected on the quiet surface until it seems to the travellers that there is a vast abyss below them. But the tranquillity is not lasting: a little way below this space of majestic calm it was necessary to make three portages in succession, the distance being less than three-quarters of a mile, with a fall of seventy-five feet. In the evening Major Powell sat upon a rock by the edge of the river to look at the water and listen to its roar. Heavy shadows settled in the cañon as the sun passed behind the cliffs, and no glint of light remained on the crags above, but the waves were crested with a white that seemed luminous. A great fall broke at the foot of a block of limestone fifty feet high, and rolled back in immense billows. Over the sunken rocks the flood was heaped up into mounds and even cones. The tumult was extraordinary. At a point where the rocks were very near the surface the water was thrown up ten or fifteen feet, and fell back in gentle curves as in a fountain.

On August 3d the party traversed a cañon of diversified features. The walls were still vertical in places, especially near the bends, and the river sweeping round the capes had undermined the cliffs. Sometimes the rocks overarched: again curious narrow glens were found. The men explored the glens, in one of which they discovered a natural stairway several hundred feet high leading to a spring which burst out from an overhanging cliff among aspens and willows, while along the edges of the brooklet there were oaks and other rich vegetation. There were also many side-cañons with walls nearer to each other above than below, giving them the character of grottoes; and there were carved walls, arches, alcoves and monuments, to all of which the collective name of Glen Cañon was given.

One morning the surveyors came to a point where the river filled the entire channel and the walls were sheer to the water's edge. They saw a fall below, and in order to inspect it they pulled up against one of the cliffs, in which was a little shelf or crevice a few feet above their heads. One man stood on the deck of the boat while another climbed over his shoulders into this insecure foothold, along which they passed until it became a shelf which was broken by a chasm some yards farther on. They then returned to the boat and pulled across the stream for some logs which had lodged on the opposite shore, and with which it was intended to bridge the gulf. It was no easy work hauling the wood along the fissure, but with care and patience they accomplished it, and reached a point in the cliffs from which the falls could be seen. It seemed practicable to lower the boats over the stormy waters by holding them with ropes from the cliffs; and this was done successfully, the incident illustrating how laborious their progress sometimes became.

The scenery was of unending interest. The rocks were of many colors—white, gray, pink and purple, with saffron tints. At an elbow of the river the water has excavated a semicircular chamber which would hold fifty thousand people, and farther on the cliffs are of softly-tinted marble lustrously polished by the waves. At one place Major Powell walked for more than a mile on a marble pavement fretted with strange devices and embossed with a thousand different patterns. Through a cleft in the wall the sun shone on this floor, which gleamed with iridescent beauty. Exploring the cleft, Major Powell found a succession of pools one above another, and each cold and clear, though the water of the river was a dull red. Then a bend in the cañon disclosed a massive abutment that seemed to be set with a million brilliant gems as they approached it, and every one wondered. As they came closer to it they saw many[Pg 403] springs bursting from the rock high overhead, and the spray in the sunshine forms the gems which glitter in the walls, at the base of which is a profusion of mosses, ferns and flowers. To the place above where the three portages were necessary the name of Cataract Cañon was given; and they were now well into the Grand Cañon itself. The walls were more than a mile in height, and, as Major Powell says, a vertical altitude like this is not easily pictured. "Stand on the south steps of the Treasury Building in Washington and look down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol Park, and measure this distance overhead, and imagine cliffs to extend to that altitude, and you will understand what I mean," the explorer has written; "or stand at Canal street in New York and look up Broadway to Grace Church, and you have about the distance; or stand at the Lake street bridge in Chicago and look down to the Central Dépôt, and you have it again." A thousand feet of the distance is through granite crags, above which are slopes and perpendicular cliffs to the summit. The gorge is black and narrow below, red and gray and flaring above.

Down these gloomy depths the expedition constantly glided, ever listening and ever peering ahead, for the cañon is winding and they could not see more than a few hundred yards in advance. The view[Pg 404] changed every minute as some new crag or pinnacle or glen or peak became visible; but the men were fully engaged listening for rapids and looking for rocks. Navigation was exceedingly difficult, and it was often necessary to hold the boats from ledges in the cliffs as the falls were passed. The river was very deep and the cañon very narrow. The waters boiled and rushed in treacherous currents, which sometimes whirled the boats into the stream or hurried them against the walls. The oars were useless, and each crew labored for its own preservation as its frail vessel was spun round like a top or borne with the speed of a locomotive this way and that.

While they were thus uncontrollable the boats entered a rapid, and one of them was driven in shore, but as there was no foothold for a portage the men pushed into the stream again. The next minute a reflex wave filled the open compartment and water-logged her: breaker after breaker rolled over her, and one capsized her. The men were thrown out, but they managed to cling to her, and as they were swept down the other boats rescued them.

Heavy clouds rolled in the cañon, filling it with gloom. Sometimes they hung above from wall to wall and formed a roof: then a gust of wind from a side-cañon made a rift in them and the blue heavens were revealed, or they dispersed in patches which settled on the crags, while puffs of vapor issued out of the smaller gulches, and occasionally formed bars across the cañon, one above another, each opening a different vista. When they discharged their rains little rills first trickled down the cliff, and these soon became brooks: the brooks grew into creeks and tumbled down through innumerable cascades, which added their music to the roar of the river. As soon as the rain ceased rills, brooks, creeks and cascades disappeared, their birth and death being equally sudden.

Desolate and inaccessible as the cañon is, many ruins of buildings are found perched upon ledges in the stupendous cliffs. In some instances the mouths of caves have been walled in, and the evidences all point to a race for ever dreading and fortifying itself against an invader. Why did[Pg 405] these people chose their embattlements so far away from all tillable land and sources of subsistence? Major Powell suggests this solution of the problem: For a century or two after the settlement of Mexico many expeditions were sent into the country now comprised in Arizona and New Mexico for the purpose of bringing the town-building people under the dominion of the Spanish government. Many of their villages were destroyed, and the inhabitants fled to regions at that time unexplored; and there are traditions among the existing Pueblos that the cañons were these lands. The Spanish conquerors had a monstrous greed for gold and a lust for saving souls. "Treasure they must have—if not on earth why, then, in heaven—and when they failed to find heathen temples bedecked with silver they propitiated Heaven by seizing the heathen themselves. There is yet extant a copy of a record made by a heathen artist to express his conception of the demands of the conquerors. In one part of the picture we have a lake, and near by stands a priest pouring water on the head of a native. On the other side a poor Indian has a cord around his throat. Lines run from these two groups to a central figure, a man with a beard and full Spanish panoply. The interpretation of the picture-writing is this: 'Be baptized as this saved[Pg 406] heathen, or be hanged as this damned heathen.' Doubtless some of the people preferred a third alternative, and rather than be baptized or hanged they chose to be imprisoned within these cañon-walls."

The rains and the accidents in the rapids had seriously reduced the commissary by this time, and the provisions left were more or less injured. The bacon was uneatable, and had to be thrown away: the flour was musty, and the saleratus was lost overboard. On August 17th the party had only enough food remaining for ten days' use, and though they hoped that the worst places had been passed, the barometers were broken, and they did not know what descent they had yet to make. The canvas which they had brought with them for covering from Green River City was rotten, there was not one blanket apiece for the men, and more than half the party were hatless. Despite their hopes that the greatest obstacles had been overcome, however, on the morning of August 27th they reached a place which appeared more perilous than any they had so far passed. They landed on one side of the river, and clambered over the granite pinnacles for a mile or two without seeing any way by which they could lower the boats. Then they crossed to the other side and walked along the top of a crag. In his eagerness to reach a point where he could see the roaring fall below, Major Powell went too far, and was caught at a point where he could neither advance nor retreat: the river was four hundred feet below, and he was suspended in front of the cliff with one foot on a small projecting rock and one hand fixed in a little crevice. He called for help, and the men passed him a line, but he could not let go of the rock long enough to seize it. While he felt his hold becoming weaker and expected momentarily to drop into the cañon, the men went to the boats and obtained three of the largest oars. The blade of one of them was pushed into the crevice of a rock beyond him in such a manner that it bound him across the body to the wall, and another oar was fixed so that he could stand upon it and walk out of the difficulty. He breathed again, but had felt that cold air which seems to fan one when death is near.

Another hour was spent in examining the river, but a good view of it could not be obtained, and they once more went to the opposite side. After some hard work among the cliffs they discovered that the lateral streams had washed a large number of boulders into the river, forming a dam over which the water made a broken fall of about twenty feet, below which was a rapid beset by huge rocks for two or three hundred yards. This was bordered on one side by a series of sharp projections of the cañon-walls, and beyond it was a second fall, ending in another and no less threatening rapid. At the bottom of the latter an immense slab of granite projected fully halfway across the river, and upon the inclined plane which it formed the water rolled with all the momentum gained in the falls and rapids above, and then swept over to the left. The men viewed the prospect with dismay, but Major Powell had an insatiable desire to complete the exploration. He decided that it was possible to let the boats down over the first fall, then to run near the right cliff to a point just above the second fall, where they could pull into a little chute, and from the foot of that across the stream to avoid the great rock below. The men shook their heads, and after supper—a sorry supper of unleavened flour and water, coffee and rancid bacon, eaten on the rocks—the elder Howland endeavored to dissuade the leader from his purpose, and, failing to do so, told him that he with his brother and Dunn would go no farther. That night Major Powell did not sleep at all, but paced to and fro, now measuring the remaining provisions, then contemplating the rushing falls and rapids. Might not Howland be right? Would it be wise to venture into that maëlstrom which was white during the darkest hours of the night? At one time he almost concluded to leave the river and to strike out across the table-lands for the Mormon settlements. But this trip had been the object of his life for many years, looked forward to and dreamed of, and to leave[Pg 407] the exploration unfinished when he was so near the end, to acknowledge defeat, was more than he could reconcile himself to.

In the morning his brother, Captain Powell, Sumner, Bradley, Hall and Hawkins promised to remain with him, but the Howlands and Dunn were fixed in their determination to go no farther. The provisions were divided, and one of the boats was left with the deserters, who were also provided with three guns: Howland was also entrusted with duplicate copies of the records and with some mementos the voyagers desired to have sent to friends and relatives should they not be heard of again. It was a solemn parting. The Howlands and Dunn entreated the others not to go on, telling them that it was obvious madness; but the decision had been made, and the two boats pushed out into the stream.

They glided rapidly along the foot of the wall, grazing one large rock, and then they pulled into the falls and plunged over them. The open compartment of the major's boat was filled when she struck the first wave below, but she cut through the upheaval, and by vigorous strokes was drawn away from the dangerous rock farther down. They were scarcely a minute in running through the rapids, and found that what had seemed almost hopeless from above was really[Pg 408] less difficult than many other points on the river. The Rowlands and their companion were now out of sight, and guns were fired to indicate to them that the passage had been safely made and to induce them to follow; but no answer came, and after waiting two hours the descent of the river was resumed.

A succession of falls and rapids still had to be overcome, and in the afternoon the explorers were once more threatened with defeat. A little stream entered the cañon from the left, and immediately below the river broke over two falls, beyond which it rose in high waves and subsided in whirlpools. The boats hugged the left wall for some distance, but when the men saw that they could not descend on this side they pulled up stream several hundred yards and crossed to the other. Here there was a bed of basalt about one hundred feet high, which, disembarking, they followed, pulling the boats after them by ropes. The major, as usual, went ahead, and discovered that it would be impossible to lower the boats from the cliff; but the men had already brought one of them to the brink of the falls and had secured her by a bight around a crag. The other boat, in which Bradley had remained, was shooting in and out from the cliffs with great violence, now straining the line by which she was held, and now whirling against the rock as if she would dash herself to pieces. An effort was made to pass another rope to Bradley, but he was so preoccupied that he did not notice it, and the others saw him take a knife out of its sheath and step forward to cut the line. He had decided that it was better to go over the falls with her than to wait for her to be completely wrecked against[Pg 409] the rocks. He did not show the least alarm, and as he leaned over to cut the rope the boat sheered into the stream, the stern-post broke and he was adrift. With perfect composure he seized the large scull-oar, placed it in the stern rowlock and pulled with all his strength, which was considerable, to turn the bow down stream. After the third stroke she passed over the falls and was invisible for several seconds, when she reappeared upon a great wave, dancing high over its crest, then sinking between two vast walls of water. The men on the cliff held their breath as they watched. Again she disappeared, and this time was out of sight so long that poor Bradley's fate seemed settled; but in a moment more something was noticed emerging from the water farther down the stream: it was the boat, with Bradley standing on deck and twirling his hat to show that he was safe. He was spinning round in a whirlpool, however, and Sumner and Powell were sent along the cliff to[Pg 410] see if they could help him, while the major and the others embarked in the remaining boat and passed over the fall. After reaching the brink they do not remember what happened to them, except that their boat was upset and that Bradley pulled them out of the water. Powell and Sumner joined them by climbing along the cliff, and, having put the boats in order, they once more started down the stream.

On the next day, August 29th, three months and five days after leaving Green River City, they reached the foot of the Grand Cañon of the Colorado, the passage of which had been of continuous peril and toil, and on the 30th they ended their exploration at a ranch, from which the way was easy to Salt Lake City. "Now the danger is over," writes Major Powell in his diary; "now the toil has ceased; now the gloom has disappeared; now the firmament is bounded only by the horizon; and what a vast expanse of constellations can be seen! The river rolls by us in silent majesty; the quiet of the camp is sweet; our joy is almost ecstasy. We sit till long after midnight talking of the Grand Cañon, talking of home, but chiefly talking of the three men who left us. Are they wandering in those depths, unable to find a way out? are they searching over the desert-lands above for water? or are they nearing the settlements?"

It was about a year afterward that their fate became known. Major Powell was continuing his explorations, and having passed through Pa-ru-nu-weap (or Roaring Water) Cañon, he spent some time among the Indians in the region beyond, from whom he learned that three white men had been killed the year before. They had come upon the Indian village starving and exhausted with fatigue, saying that they had descended the Grand Cañon. They were fed and started on the way to the settlements, but they had not gone far when an Indian arrived from the east side of the Colorado and told of some miners who had killed a squaw in a drunken brawl. He incited the tribe to follow and attack the three whites, who no doubt were the murderers. Their story of coming down the Grand Cañon was impossible—no men had ever done that—and it was a falsehood designed to cover their guilt. Excited by a desire for revenge, a party stole after them, surrounded them in ambush and filled them with arrows. This was the tragic end of Dunn and the Rowland brothers.

Little need be added. The unflinching courage, the quiet persistence and the inexhaustible zeal of Major Powell enabled him to achieve a geographical exploit which had been deemed wholly impracticable, and which in adventurousness puts most of the feats of the Alpine Club in the shade. But the narrative may derive a further interest from one other fact concerning this intrepid explorer, whom we have seen standing at the bow of his boats and guiding them over tempestuous falls, rapids and whirlpools, soaring among the crags of almost perpendicular cañon-walls and suspended by his fingers from the rocks four hundred feet above the level of the river: Major Powell is a one-armed man!

ADAM AND EVE.

CHAPTER XXX.

For an instant every one seemed paralyzed and transfixed in the position into which upon Jonathan's entrance they had started. Then a sudden rush was made toward the door, which several of the strongest blocked up, while Adam called vainly on them to stand aside and give the chance of more air. Joan flew for water, and Jerrem dashed it over Jonathan.

There was a minute of anxious watching, and then slowly over Jonathan's pallid face the signs of returning animation began to creep.

"Now, stand back—stand back from him, do!" said Adam, fearing the effect of so many faces crowding near would only serve to further daze his scared senses.—"What is it, Jonathan? what is it, lad?" he asked, kneeling down by him.

Jonathan tried to rise, and Adam motioned for Barnabas Tadd to come and assist in getting him on his feet.

"Now, sit down there," said Adam, "and put your lips to this, and then tell us what's up."

Jonathan cowered down as he threw a hasty glance round, the meaning of which was answered by a general "You knaws all of us, Jonathan, don't ee?"

"Iss," said Jonathan, breaking into a feeble laugh, "but somehows I'd a rinned till I'd got 'em all, as I fancied, to my heels, close by."

"And where are they, then?" said Adam, seizing the opportunity of getting at the most important fact.

"Comin' 'long t' roadway, man by man, and straddled on to their horses' backs. They'm to take 'ee all, dead or livin', sarch by night or day. Some o' 'em is come all the ways fra Plymouth, vowin' and swearin' they'll have blid for blid, and that if they can't pitch 'pon he who fired to kill their man every sawl aboard the Lottery shall swing gallows-high for un."

A volley of oaths ran through the room, Joan threw up her arms in despair, Eve groaned aloud.

Suddenly there was a movement as if some one was breaking from a detaining hand. 'Twas Jerrem, who, pushing forward, cried out, "Then I'll give myself up to wance: nobody sha'n't suffer 'cos o' me. I did it, and I wasn't afeared to do it, neither, and no more I ain't afeared to answer for it now."

The buzz which negatived this offer bespoke the appreciation of Jerrem's magnanimity.

Adam alone had taken no part in it: turning, he said sternly, "Do we risk our lives together, then, to skulk off when danger offers and leave one to suffer for all? Let's have no more of such idle talk. While things promised to run smooth you was welcome to the boast of havin' fired first shot, but now every man aboard fired it; and let he who says he didn't stand out and say it now."

"Then off with you, each to the place he thinks safest.—Jerrem and you, father, must stay here. I shall go to the mill, and, Jonathan, for the night you'd best come along with me."

With little visible excitement and but few words the men began to depart, all of them more or less stupefied by the influence of drink, which, combined with this unexpected dash to their hopes and overthrow of their boastings, seemed to rob them of all their energy. They were ready to do whatever they were asked, go wherever they were told, listen to all that was said, but anything beyond this was then impossible. They had no more power of deciding, proposing, arranging for themselves, than if they had been a flock of sheep warned that a ravenous wolf was near.

The one necessary action which seemed to have laid hold upon them was that they must all solemnly shake hands; and[Pg 412] this in many cases they did over and over again, repeating each time, with a warning nod of the head, "Well, mate, 'tis a bad job o' it, this," until some of the more collected felt it necessary to interfere and urge their immediate departure: then one by one they stole away, leaving the house in possession of its usual occupants.

Adam had already been up stairs to get Uncle Zebedee—now utterly incapable of any thought for himself—safely placed in a secret closet which was hollowed in the wall behind the bed. Turning to Jerrem as he came down, he said, "You can manage to stow yourself away; only mind, do it at once, so that the house is got quiet before they've time to get here."

"All right," said Jerrem doggedly, while Joan slid back the seat of the settle, turned down a flap in the wall, and discovered the hole in which Jerrem was to lie concealed. "There! there ain't another hidin'-place like that in all Polperro," she said. "They may send a whole reg'ment o' sodgers afore a man among 'em 'ull pitch on 'ee there, Jerrem."

"And that's the reason why I don't want to have it," said Jerrem. "I don't see why I'm to have the pick and choice, and why Adam's to go off to where they've only got to search and find."

"Well, but 'tis as he says," urged Joan. "They may ha' got you in their eye already. Come, 'tis all settled now," she continued persuasively; "so get 'longs in with 'ee, like a dear."

Jerrem gave a look round. Eve was busy clearing the table, Adam was putting some tobacco into his pouch. He hesitated, then he made a step forward, then he drew back again, until at last, with visible effort, he said, "Come, give us yer hand, Adam." With no affectation of cordiality Adam held out his hand. "Whatever comes, you've spoke up fair for me, and acted better than most would ha' done, seem' that I've let my tongue run a bit too fast 'bout you o' late."

"Oh, don't think I've done any more for you than I should ha' done for either one o' the others," said Adam, not willing to accept a feather's weight of Jerrem's gratitude. "However," he added, trying to force himself into a greater show of graciousness, "here's wishin' all may go well with you, as with all of us!"

Not over-pleased with this cold reception of his advances, Jerrem turned hastily round to Joan. "Here, let's have a kiss, Joan," he said.

"There! nonsense now!" exclaimed Joan, warned by an expression in Adam's face: "there's no call for no leave-takin' with Eve: her'll be here so well as you."

The words, well-intentioned as they were, served as fuel to Adam's jealous fire, and for a moment he felt that it was impossible to go away and leave Jerrem behind; but the next instant the very knowledge of that passing weakness was only urging him to greater self-command, although the effort it cost him gave a hardness to his voice and a coldness to his manner. One tender word, and his resolve would be gone—one soft emotion, and to go would be impossible.

Eve, on her part, with all her love reawakened, her fears excited and her imagination sharpened, was wrought up to a pitch of emotion which each moment grew more and more beyond her control. In her efforts to keep calm she busied herself in clearing the table and moving to and fro the chairs, all the time keenly alive to the fact that Joan was hovering about Adam, suggesting comforts, supplying resources and pouring out a torrent of wordy hopes and fears. Surely Adam would ask—Joan would think to give them—one moment to themselves? If not she would demand it, but before she could speak, boom on her heart came Adam's "Good-bye, Joan, good-bye." What can she do now? How bear this terrible parting? In her efforts to control the desire to give vent to her agony her powers of endurance utterly gave way. A rushing sound as of many waters came gurgling in her ears, dulling the voice of some one who spoke from far off.

"What are they saying?" In vain she tried to catch the words, to speak, to move: then, gathering up all her strength, with a piercing cry she tried to break the spell. The room reeled, the ground beneath[Pg 413] her gave way, a hundred voices shrieked good-bye, and with their clamor ringing in her ears Eve's spirit went down into silence and darkness. Another minute, and she was again alive to all her misery: Joan was kneeling beside her, the tears streaming from her eyes.

"Gone! and never said a word?" she cried. "Gone! Oh, Joan, how could he? how could he?"

"What would 'ee have un do, then?" said Joan sharply. "Bide dallyin' here to be took by the hounds o' sodgers that's marchin' 'pon us all? That's fine love, I will say." But suddenly a noise outside made them both start and stand listening with beating hearts until all again was still and quiet: then Joan's quick-roused anger failed her, and, repenting her sharp speech, she threw her arms round Eve's neck, crying, "Awh, Eve, don't 'ee lets you and me set 'bout quarrellin', my dear, for if sorrow ain't a-drawin' nigh my name's not Joan Hocken. I never before felt the same way as I do to-night. My spirits is gived way: my heart seems to have falled flat down and died within me, and, be doing what I may, there keeps soundin' in my ears a nickety-knock like the tappin' on a coffin-lid."

CHAPTER XXXI.

Since the night on which Jonathan's arrival had plunged the party assembled at Zebedee Pascal's into such dismay a week had passed by—seven days and nights of terror and confusion.

The determined manner in which the government authorities traced out each clew and tracked every scent struck terror into the stoutest hearts, and men who had never before shrunk from danger in any open form now feared to show their faces, dared not sleep in their own houses, nor, except by stealth, visit their own families. At dead of night, as well as in the blaze of day, stealthy descents would be made upon the place, the houses surrounded and strict search made. One hour the streets would be deserted, the next every corner bristled with rude soldiery, flinging insults and imprecations on the feeble old men and defenceless women, who, panic-stricken, stood about vainly endeavoring to seem at their ease and keep up a show of indifference.

One of the first acts had been to seize the Lottery, and orders had been issued to arrest all or any of her crew, wherever they might be found; but as yet no trace of them had been discovered. Jerrem and Uncle Zebedee still lay concealed within the house, and Adam at the mill, crouched beneath corn-bins, lay covered by sacks and grain, while the tramp of the soldiers sounded in his ears or the ring of their voices set his stout heart quaking with fear of discovery. To men whose lives had been spent out of doors, with the free air of heaven and the fresh salt breeze of the sea constantly sweeping over them, toil and hardship were pastimes compared to this inactivity; and it was little to be wondered at that for one and all the single solace left seemed drink. Drink deadened their restlessness, benumbed their energies, made them forget their dangers, sleep through their durance. So that even Adam could not always hold out against a solace which helped to shorten the frightful monotony of those weary days, dragged out for the most time in solitude and darkness. With no occupation, no resources, no companion, ever dwelling on self and viewing each action, past and present, by the light of an exaggerated (often a distorted) vision, Adam grew irritable, morose, suspicious.

Why hadn't Joan come? Surely there couldn't be anything to keep Eve away? And if so, might they not send a letter, a message or some token to show him that he was still in their thoughts? In vain did Mrs. Tucker urge the necessity of a caution hitherto unknown: in vain did she repeat the stories brought of footsteps dogged, and houses watched so that their inmates dare not run the smallest risk for fear of its leading to detection. Adam turned a deaf ear to all she said, sinking at last down to the conclusion that he could endure such suspense no longer,[Pg 414] and, come what might, must the next day steal back home and satisfy himself how things were going on. The only concession to her better judgment which Mrs. Tucker could gain was his promise to wait until she had been in to Polperro to reconnoitre; for though, from having seen a party of soldiers pass that morning, they knew some of the troop had left, it was impossible to say how many remained behind nor whether they had received fresh strength from the opposite direction.

"I sha'n't give no more o' they than I sees the wisdom of," reflected Mrs. Tucker as, primed with questions to ask Joan and messages to give to Eve, she securely fastened the doors preparatory to her departure. "If I was to tell up such talk to Eve her'd be piping off here next minit or else sendin' back a pack o' silly speeches that 'ud make Adam mazed to go to she. 'Tis wonderful how took up he is with a maid he knows so little of. But there! 'tis the same with all the men, I b'lieve—tickle their eye and good-bye to their judgment." And giving the outer gate a shake to assure herself that it could not be opened without a preparatory warning to those within, Mrs. Tucker turned away and out into the road.

A natural tendency to be engrossed by personal interests, together with a life of narrowed circumstances, had somewhat blunted the acuteness of Mrs. Tucker's impressionable sensibilities, yet she could not but be struck at the change these last two weeks had wrought in the aspect of the place. The houses, wont to stand open so that friendly greetings might be exchanged, were now closed and shut; the blinds of most of the windows were drawn down; the streets, usually thronged with idlers, were all but deserted; the few shops empty of wares and of customers. Calling to her recollection the frequent prophetic warnings she had indulged in about these evil days to come, Mrs. Tucker's heart smote her. Surely Providence had never taken her at her word and really brought a judgment on the place? If so, seeing her own kith and kin would be amongst the most to suffer, it had read a very wrong meaning in her words; for it stood to reason when folks talked serious-like they didn't always stop to measure what they said, and if a text or two o' Scripture sounded seemly, 'twas fitted in to help their speech out with, not to be pulled abroad to seek the downright meanin' o' each word.

Subdued and oppressed by these and like reflections, Mrs. Tucker reached Uncle Zebedee's house, inside which the change wrought was in keeping with the external sadness. Both girls looked harassed and careworn—Joan, now that there was no further occasion for that display of spirit and bravado which before the soldiers she had successfully contrived to maintain, utterly broken down and apathetically dejected; Eve, unable to enter into all the difficulties or sympathize in the universal danger, ill at ease with herself and irritable with all around her. In her anxiety to hear about Adam—what message he had sent and whether she could not go to see him—she had barely patience to listen to Mrs. Tucker's roundabout details and lugubrious lamentations, and, choosing a very inopportune moment, she broke out with, "What message has Adam sent, Mrs. Tucker? He's sent a message to me, I'm sure: I know he must have."

"Awh, well, if you knaws, you don't want to be told, then," snorted Mrs. Tucker, ill pleased at having her demands upon sympathy put to such sudden flight. "Though don't you think, Eve, that Adam hasn't got somethin' else to think of than sendin' love-messages and nonsense o' that sort? He's a good deal too much took up 'bout the trouble we'm all in for that.—He hoped you was all well, and keepin' yer spirits up, Joan."

"Ah, you may well say that," replied Mrs. Tucker, casting a troubled look toward her daughter's altered face. "Adam's doin' purtty much the same as you be, Joan—frettin' his insides out."

"He's fretting, then?" gasped Eve, managing to get the words past the great lump which seemed to choke her further utterance.

"Frettin'," repeated Mrs. Tucker with severity. "But there! why should I?"[Pg 415] she added, as if blaming her sense of injury. "I keeps forgettin' that, compared with Joan, Eve, you'm nothin' but a stranger, as you may say; and, though I dare say I sha'n't get your thanks for saying it, still Adam could tell 'ee so well as me that fresh faces is all very well in fair weather, but in times of trouble they counts for very little aside o' they who's bin brought up from the same cradle, you may say."

Eve's swelling heart could bear no more. This sense of being set aside and looked on as a stranger was a gall which of late she had been frequently called upon to endure, but to have it hinted at that Adam could share in this feeling toward her—oh, it was too much, and rising hastily she turned to run up stairs.

"Now, there's no call to fly off in no tantrums, Eve," said Mrs. Tucker; "so just sit down now and listen to what else I've got to say."

But Eve's outraged love could hide itself no longer: to answer Joan's mother with anything like temper was impossible, and, knowing this, her only refuge was in flight. "I don't want to hear any more you may have to say, Mrs. Tucker;" and though Eve managed to keep under the sharpness of her voice, she could not control the indignant expression of her face, which Mrs. Tucker fully appreciating, she speeded her departure by the inspiriting prediction that if Eve didn't sup sorrow by the spoonful before her hair was gray her name wasn't Ann Tucker.

"Awh, don't 'ee say that," said Joan. "You'm over-crabbit with her, mother, and her only wantin' to hear some word that Adam had sent to her ownself."

"But, mercy 'pon us! her must give me time to fetch my breath," exclaimed Mrs. Tucker indignantly, "and I foaced to fly off as I did for fear that Adam should forestall me and go doin' somethin' foolish!"

"Iss, but he is, though. And when us see they sodgers go past I thought no other than he'd a set off then and there. As I said to un, ''Tis true you knows o' they that's gone, but how can 'ee tell how many's left behind?'"

Joan shook her head. "They'm all off," she said: "every man of 'em's gone; but, for all that, Adam mustn't come anighst us or show his face in the place. 'Tis held everywhere that this move is nothin' but a decoy to get the men out o' hidin', and that done, back they'll all come and drop down on 'em."

"Well, then, I'd best go back to wanst," cried Mrs. Tucker, starting up, "and try and put a stop to his comin', tho' whether he'll pay any heed to what I say is more than I'll answer for."

"Tell un," said Joan, "that for all our sakes he mustn't come, and say that I've had word that Jonathan's lurkin' nigh about here some place, so I reckon there's somethin' up; and what it is he shall know so soon as I can send word to un. Say that ought to tell un 'tisn't safe to stir, 'cos he knows that Jonathan would sooner have gone to he than to either wan here."

"Well, I'll tell un all you tells me to," said Mrs. Tucker with a somewhat hopeless expression; "but you knaw what Adam is, Joan, when he fixes his mind on anythin'; and I've had the works o' the warld to keep un from comin' already: he takes such fancies about 'ee all as you never did. I declare if I didn't knaw that p'r'aps he's a had more liquor than he's used to take o' times I should ha' fancied un light-headed like."

"And so he'll be if you gives much sperrit to un, mother," said Joan anxiously: "'tis sure to stir his temper up. But there!" she added despondingly, "what can anybody do? 'Tis all they ha' got to fly to. There's Jerrem at it fro' mornin' to night; and as for uncle, dear sawl! he's as happy as a clam at high watter."

"Iss, I reckon," said Mrs. Tucker: "it don't never matter much what goes wrong, so long as uncle gets his fill o' drink. I've said scores o' times uncle's joy 'ud never run dry so long as liquor lasted."

"Awh, well," said Joan, "I don't knaw what us should ha' done if there'd ha' bin no drink to give 'em: they'd ha' bin more than Eve and me could manage, I can tell 'ee. Nobody but our ownselves,[Pg 416] mother, will ever knaw what us two maidens have had to go through."

"You've often had my thoughts with 'ee, Joan," said Mrs. Tucker, her eyes dimmed by a rush of motherly sympathy for all the girls must have suffered; "and you can tell Eve (for her'll take it better from you than from me) that Adam's allays a-thinkin' of her, and begged and prayed that she wudn't forget un."

"No fear o' that," said Joan, anxious that her mother should depart; "and mind now you say, no matter what time 'tis, directly I'se seen Jonathan and knaws 'tis safe for we somebody shall bring un word to come back, for Eve and me's longin' to have a sight of un."

Charged with these messages, Mrs. Tucker hastened back to the mill, where all had gone well since her departure, and where she found Adam more tractable and reasonable than she had had reason to anticipate. He listened to all Joan's messages, agreed with her suspicions and seemed contented to abide by her decision. The plain, unvarnished statement which Mrs. Tucker gave of the misery and gloom spread over the place affected him visibly, and her account of the two girls, and the alteration she had seen in them, did not tend to dispel his emotion.

"As for Joan," she said, letting a tear escape and trickle down her cheek, "'tis heart-breakin' to look at her. Her's terrible wrapped up in you, Adam, is Joan—more than, as her mother, I cares for her to awn to, seein' how you'm situated with Eve."

"Oh, Eve never made no difference 'twixt us two," said Adam. Then, after a pause, he asked, "Didn't Eve give you no word to give to me?"

"Well, no," said Mrs. Tucker: then, with the determination to deal fairly, she added quickly, "but her was full o' questions about 'ee, and that 'fore I'd time to draw breath inside the place." Adam was silent, and Mrs. Tucker, considering the necessity for further explanation removed by the compromise she had made, continued: "You see, what with Jerrem and uncle, and the drink that goes on, they two poor maidens is kept pretty much on the go; and Eve, never bein' used to no such ways, seems terrible harried by it all."

"Harried?" repeated Adam, with ill-suppressed bitterness, "and well she may be; still, I should ha' thought she might have managed to send, if 'twas no more than a word, back to me."

CHAPTER XXXII.

Under the plea that, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, Jonathan might still possibly put in an appearance, Adam lingered in his aunt's cheerful-looking kitchen until after the clock had struck eleven: then he very reluctantly got up, and, bidding Mrs. Tucker and Sammy good-night, betook himself to the mill-house, in which, with regard to his greater safety, a bed had been made up for him.

Adam felt that, court it as he might, sleep was very far from his eyes, and that, compared to his own society and the torment of thought which harassed and racked him each time he found himself alone, even Sammy Tucker's company was a boon to be grateful for. There were times during these hours of dreary loneliness when Adam's whole nature seemed submerged by the billows of love—cruel waves, which would toss him hither and thither, making sport of his hapless condition, to strand him at length on the quicksands of fear, where a thousand terrible alarms would seize him and fill him with dread as to how these disasters might end. What would become of him? how would it fare with Eve and himself? where could they go? what could they do?—questions ever swallowed up by the constantly-recurring, all-important bewilderment as to what could possibly have brought about this dire disaster.

On this night Adam's thoughts were more than usually engrossed by Eve: her form seemed constantly before him, distracting him with images as tempting and unsatisfying as is the desert spring with which desire mocks the thirst of the fainting traveller. At length that relaxation of strength which in sterner natures takes the place of tears subdued Adam, a softened[Pg 417] feeling crept over him, and, shifting his position so that he might rest his arms against the corn-bin near, a deep-drawn sigh escaped him.

Adam started at the sound, and without moving turned his head and looked rapidly about him. Nothing was to be seen: with the exception of the small radius round the lantern all was darkness and gloom.

"Hist!" was repeated, and this time there was no more doubt but that the sound came from some one close by.

A clammy sweat stood on Adam's forehead, his tongue felt dry and so powerless that it needed an effort to force it to move. "Who's there?" he said.

Adam caught up the lantern, and, turning it in the direction whence the voice came, found to his relief that the rays fell upon Jonathan's face. "Odds rot it, lad!" he exclaimed, "but you've gived me a turn! How the deuce did you get in here? and why didn't ye come inside to the house over there?"

"I've a bin scrooged down 'tween these 'ere sacks for ever so long," said Jonathan, trying to stretch out his cramped limbs: "I reckon I've had a bit o' a nap too, for the time ha'n't a took long in goin', and when I fust come 'twasn't altogether dark."

"'Tis close on the stroke o' twelve now," said Adam. "But come, what news, eh? Have ye got hold o' anything yet? Are they devils off for good? Is that what you've come to tell me?"

"Iss, they's off this time, I fancy," said Jonathan; "but 'twasn't that broffed me, though I should ha' comed to tell 'ee o' that too."

"No? What is it then?" demanded Adam impatiently, turning the light so that he could get a better command of Jonathan's face.

"'Twas 'cos o' this," said Jonathan, his voice dropping to a whisper, so that, though the words were trembling on his lips, his agitation and excitement almost prevented their utterance: "I've found it out—all of it—who blowed the gaff 'pon us."

Adam started forward: his face all but touched Jonathan's, and an expression of terrible eagerness came into his eyes.

"'Twas she!" hissed Jonathan—"she—her from London—Eve;" but before the name was well uttered Adam had thrown himself upon him and was grasping at his throat as if to throttle him, while a volley of imprecations poured from his mouth, denouncing the base lie which Jonathan had dared to utter. A moment more, and this fit of impotent rage over, he flung him violently off, and stood for a moment trying to bring back his senses; but the succession of circumstances had been too much for him: his head swam round, his knees shook under him, and he had to grasp hold of a beam near to steady himself.

"What for do 'ee sarve me like that, then?" muttered Jonathan. "I ain't a-tellin' 'ee no more than I've a-heerd, and what's the truth. Her name's all over the place," he went on, forgetful of the recent outburst and warming with his narration. "Her's a reg'lar bad wan; her's a-carr'ed on with a sodger-chap so well as with Jerrem; her's a—"

"By the living Lord, if you speak another word I'll be your death!" exclaimed Adam.

"Wa-al, and so you may," exclaimed Jonathan doggedly, "if so be you'll lave me bide 'til I'se seed the end o' she. Why, what do 'ee mane, then?" he cried, a sudden suspicion throwing a light on Adam's storm of indignation. "Her bain't nawthin' to you—her's Jerrem's maid: her bain't your maid? Why," he added, finding that Adam didn't speak, "'twas through the letter I carr'ed from he that her'd got it to blab about. I wishes my hand had bin struck off"—and he dashed it violently against the wooden bin—"afore I'd touched his letter or his money."

"Wa-al, I knaws you said I warn't to take neither wan; but Jerrem he coaxes and persuades, and says you ain't to knaw nawthin' about it, and 'tain't nawthin' in it, only 'cos he'd a got a letter fra' she to Guernsey, and this was t' answer; and then I knawed, 'cos I seed em, that they was sweetheartin' and that, and—"[Pg 418]

"Did you give her that letter?" said Adam; and the sound of his voice was so strange that Jonathan shrank back and cowered close to the wall.

"Iss, I did," he faltered: "leastwise, I gived un to Joan, but t'other wan had the radin' in it."

There was a pause, during which Adam stood stunned, feeling that everything was crumbling and giving way beneath him—that he had no longer anything to live for, anything to hope, anything to fear. As, one after another, each former bare suggestion of artifice now passed before him clothed in the raiment of certain deceit, he made a desperate clutch at the most improbable, in the wild hope that one falsehood at least might afford him some ray of light, however feeble, to dispel the horrors of this terrible darkness.

"Why 'twas this way," cried Jonathan, his eyes rekindling in his eagerness to tell the story: "somebody dropped a bit of paper into the rendevoos winder, with writin' 'pon it to say when and where they'd find the Lottery to. Who 'twas did it none knaws for sartain, but the talk's got abroad 'twas a sergeant there, 'cos he'd a bin braggin' aforehand that he'd got a watch-sale and that o' her'n'."

"Iss, o' Eve's. And he's allays a-showin' of it off, he is; and when they axes un questions he doan't answer, but he dangles the sale afront of 'em and says, 'What d'ee think?' he says; and now he makes his brag that he shall hab the maid yet, while her man's a-dancin' gallus-high a top o' Tyburn tree."

The blood rushed up into Adam's face, so that each vein stood a separate cord of swollen, bursting rage.

"They wasn't a-manin' you, ye knaw," said Jonathan: "'twar Jerrem. Her's played un false, I reckon. Awh!" and he gave a fiendish chuckle, "but us'll pay her out for't, woan't us, eh? Awnly you give to me the ticklin' o' her ozel-pipe;" and he made a movement of his bony fingers that conveyed such a hideous embodiment of his meaning that Adam, overcome by horror, threw up his arms with a terrible cry to heaven, and falling prone he let the bitterness of death pass over the love that had so late lain warm at his heart; while Jonathan crouched down, trembling and awestricken by the sight of emotion which, though he could not comprehend nor account for, stirred in him the sympathetic uneasiness of a dumb animal. Afraid to move or speak, he remained watching Adam's bent figure until his shallow brain, incapable of any sustained concentration of thought, wandered off to other interests, from which he was recalled by a noise, and looking up he saw that Adam had raised himself and was wiping his face with his handkerchief. Did he feel so hot, then? No, it must be that he felt cold, for he shivered and his teeth seemed to chatter as he told Jonathan to stoop down by the side there and hand him up a jar and a glass that he would find; and this got, Adam poured out some of its contents, and after tossing it off told Jonathan to take the jar and help himself, for, as nothing could be done until daylight, they might as well lie down and try and get some sleep. Jonathan's relish for spirit once excited, he made himself tolerably free of the permission, and before long had helped himself to such purpose that, stretched in a heavy sleep, unless some one roused him he was not likely to awake for some hours to come.

Then Adam got up and with cautious movements stole down the ladder, undid the small hatch-door which opened out on the mill-stream, fastened it after him, and leaping across stood for a few moments asking himself what he had come out to do. He didn't know, for as yet, in the tumult of jealousy and revenge, there was no outlet, no gap, by which he might drain off any portion of that passionate fire which was rapidly destroying and consuming all his softer feelings. The story which Jonathan had brought of the betrayal to the sergeant, the fellow's boastings and his possession of the seal Adam treated as an idle tale, its possibility vanquished by his conviction that Eve could have had no share in it. It was the letter from Jerrem which was the damnatory proof in Adam's eyes—the proof by which[Pg 419] he judged and condemned her; for had not he himself seen and wondered at Jerrem's anxiety to go to Guernsey, his elation at finding a letter waiting him, his display of wishing to be seen secretly reading it, and now his ultimate betrayal of them by sending an answer to it?

As for Jerrem—oh he would deal with him as with a dog, and quickly send him to that fate he so richly deserved. It was not against Jerrem that the depths of his bitterness welled over: as the strength of his love, so ran his hate; and this all turned to one direction, and that direction pointed toward Eve.

He must see her, stand face to face with her, smite her with reproaches, heap upon her curses, show her how he could trample on her love and fling her back her perjured vows. And then? This done, what was there left? From Jerrem he could free himself. A word, a blow, and all would be over: but how with her? True, he could kill the visible Eve with his own hands, but the Eve who lived in his love, would she not live there still? Ay; and though he flung that body which could court the gaze of other eyes than his full fathoms deep, the fair image which dwelt before him would remain present to his vision. So that, do what he would, Eve would live, must live. Live! Crushing down on that thought came the terrible consequences which might come of Jonathan's tale being told—a tale so colored with all their bitterest prejudices that it was certain to be greedily listened to; and in the storm of angry passion it would rouse everything else would be swallowed up by resentment against Eve's baseness; and the fire once kindled, what would come of it?

The picture which Adam's heated imagination conjured up turned him hot and cold; an agony of fear crept over him; his heart sickened and grew faint within him, and the hands which but a few minutes before had longed to be steeped in her blood now trembled and shook with nervous dread lest a finger of harm should be laid upon her.

These and a hundred visions more or less wild coursed through Adam's brain as his feet took their swift way toward Polperro—not keeping along the open road, but taking a path which, only known to the inhabitants, would bring him down almost in front of his own house.

The night was dark, the sky lowering and cloudy. Not a sound was to be heard, not a soul had he seen, and already Adam was discussing with himself how best, without making an alarm, he should awaken Joan and obtain admittance. Usually bars and bolts were unknown, doors were left unfastened, windows often open; but now all would be securely shut, and he would have to rely on the possibility of his signal being heard by some one who might chance to be on the watch.

Suddenly a noise fell upon his ear. Surely he heard the sound of footsteps and the hum of voices. It could never be that the surprise they deemed a possibility had turned out a certainty. Adam crouched down, and under the shadow of the wall glided silently along until he came opposite the corner where the house stood. It was as he feared. There was no further doubt. The shutters were flung back, the door was half open, and round it, easing their tired limbs as best they might, stood crowded together a dozen men, the portion of a party who had evidently spread themselves about the place.

Fortunately for Adam, the steps which led up to the wooden orrel or balcony—at that time a common adornment to the Polperro houses—afforded him a tolerably safe retreat, and, screened here, he remained a silent watcher, hearing only a confused murmur and seeing nothing save an occasional movement as one and the other changed posts and passed in and out of the opposite door. At length a general parley seemed to take place: the men fell into rank and at a slow pace moved off down the street in the direction of the quay. Adam looked cautiously out. The door was now closed. Dare he open it? Might he not find that a sentinel had been left behind? How about the other door? The chances against it were as bad. The only possible[Pg 420] way of ingress was by a shutter in the wall which overlooked the brook and communicated with the hiding-place in which his father lay secreted. This shutter had been little used since the days of press-gangs. It was painted in so exact an imitation of the slated house-wall as to defy detection, and to mark the spot to the initiated eye a root of house-leek projected out below and served to further screen the opening from view. The contrivance of this shutter-entrance was well known to Adam, and the mode of reaching it familiar to him: therefore if he could but elude observation he was certain of success.

The plan once decided on, he began putting it into execution, and although it seemed half a lifetime to him, but very few minutes had elapsed before he had crossed the road, ran waist-high into the brook, scaled the wall and scrambled down almost on top of old Zebedee, who, stupefied by continual drink, sleep and this constant confinement, took the surprise in a wonderfully calm manner.

"A' right! a' right!" stammered Zebedee, too dazed to take in the whole matter at once. "What is it, lad, eh? They darned galoots ha'n't a tracked 'ee, have 'em? By the hooky! but they'm givin' 't us hot and strong this time, Adam: they was trampin' 'bout inside here a minit agone, tryin' to keep our sperrits up by a-rattlin' the bilboes in our ears. Why, however did 'ee dodge 'em, eh? What's the manin' o' it all?"

"I thought they was gone," said Adam, "so I came down to see how you were all getting on here."

"Iss, iss, sure. Wa-al, all right, I s'pose, but I ha'n't a bin let outside much: Joan won't have it, ye knaw. Poor Joan!" he sighed, "her's terrible moody-hearted 'bout 't all; and so's Eve too. I never see'd maids take on as they'm doin'; but there! I reckon 'twill soon be put a end to now."

"Wa-al, you mustn't knaw, down below, more than you'm tawld," said the old man with a significant wink and a jerk of his head, "but Jerrem he let me into it this ebenin' when he rinned up to see me for a bit. Seems one o' they sodger-chaps is carr'in' on with Eve, and Jerrem's settin' her on to rig un up so that her'll get un not to see what 'tain't maned for un to look at."

"Iss," said Zebedee, "but will it be well? That's what I keeps axin' of un. He's cock sure, sartain, that they can manage it all. He's sick, he says, o' all this skulkin', and he's blamed if he'll go on standin' it, neither."

"Oh!" hissed Adam, "he's sick of it, is he?" and in the effort he made to subdue his voice the veins in his face rose up to be purple cords. "He'd nothing to do with bringing it on us all? it's no fault of his that the place is turned into a hell and we hunted down like a pack o' dogs?"

"Awh, well, I dawn't knaw nuffin 'bout that," said old Zebedee, huffily. "How so be if 'tis so, when he's got clane off 'twill be all right agen."

"All right?" thundered Adam—"how all right? Right that he should get off and we be left here?—that he shouldn't swing, but we must stay to suffer?"

"Awh, come, come, come!" said the old man with the testy impatience of one ready to argue, but incapable of reasoning. "'Tain't no talk o' swingin', now: that was a bit o' brag on the boy's part: he's so eager to save his neck as you or me either. Awnly Jonathan's bin here and tawld up summat that makes un want to be off to wance, for he says, what us all knaws, without he's minded to it you can't slip a knot round Jonathan's clapper; and 'tain't that Jerrem's afeared o' his tongue, awnly for the keepin' up o' pace and quietness he fancies 'twould be better for un to make hisself scarce for a bit."

Adam's whole body quivered as a spasm of rage ran through him; and Zebedee, noting the trembling movement of his hands, conveyed his impression of the cause by bestowing a glance, accompanied with a pantomimic bend of his elbow, in the direction of a certain stone bottle which stood in the corner.

"Did Jonathan tell you what word 'twas he'd brought?" Adam managed to say.[Pg 421]

"Noa: I never cast eyes on un. He warn't here 'bove a foo minits 'fore he slipped away, none of 'em knaws where or how. He was warned not to go anighst you," he added after a moment's pause; "so I reckon you knaws no more of un than us does."

"And Eve and Joan? were they let into the secret?" asked Adam; and the sound of his harsh voice grated even on Zebedee's dulled ears.

"Iss, I reckon," he said, half turning, "'cos Eve's got to do the trick: her's to bamfoozle the sodger.—Odds rot it, lad!" he cried, startled at the expression which leaped into Adam's haggard face, "what's come to 'ee that you must turn round 'pon us like that? Is it the maid you's got a spite agen? Lors! but 'tis a poor stomach you's got to'rds her if you'm angered by such a bit o' philanderin' as I've tawld 'ee of. What d'ee mane, then?" he added, his temper rising at such unwarrantable inconsistency. "I've knawed as honest women as ever her is that's a done that, and more too, for to get their men safe off and out o' way—iss, and wasn't thought none the wus of, neither. You'm growed mighty fancikul all to wance 'bout what us is to do and what us dussn't think o'. I'm sick o' such talk. 'Taint nawthin' else fra' mornin' to night but Adam this and Adam that. I'm darned if 'tis to be wondered at if the maid plays 'ee false: by gosh! I'd do the trick, if I was she, 'fore I'd put up with such fantads from you or either man like 'ee. So there!"

Adam did not answer, and old Zebedee, interpreting the silence into an admission of the force of his arguments, forbore to press the advantage and generously started a fresh topic. "They's a tawld 'ee, I reckon, 'bout the bill they's a posted up, right afore the winder, by the Three Pilchards," he said. "Iss," he added, not waiting for an answer, "the king's pardon and wan hunderd pound to be who'll discover to 'em the man who 'twas fired the fatal shot. Wan hunderd pound!" he sneered. "That's a fat lot, surely; and as for t' king's pardon, why 'twudn't lave un braithin'-time to spend it in—not if he war left here, 'twudn't. No fear! Us ain't so bad off yet that either wan in Polperro 'ud stink their fingers wi' blid-money. Lord save un! sich a man 'ud fetch up the divil hisself to see un pitched head foremost down to bottom o' say, which 'ud be the end I'd vote for un, and see it was carr'd out too—iss, tho' his bones bore my own flesh and blid 'pon 'em, I wud;" and in his anger the old man's rugged face grew distorted with emotion.

But Adam neither spoke nor made comment on his words. His eyes were fixed on mid-air, his nostrils worked, his mouth quivered. Within him a legion of devils seemed to have broken loose, and, sensible of the mastery they were gaining over him, he leaped up and with the wild despair of one who catches at a straw to save him from destruction, it came upon him to rush down and look once more into the face of her whom he had found so fair and proved so false.

"What is it you'm goin' to do, then?" said Zebedee, seeing that Adam had stooped down and was raising the panel by which exit was effected.

"Better bide where you be," urged Zebedee. "Joan or they's sure to rin up so soon as 'tis all safe."

But Adam paid no heed: muttering something about knowing what he was about, he slipped up the partition and crept under, cautiously ascertained that the outer room was empty, and then, crossing the passage, stole down the stairs.

The door which led into the room was shut, but through a convenient chink Adam could take a survey of those within. Already his better self had begun to struggle in his ear, already the whisper which desire was prompting asked what if Eve stood there alone and—But no, his glance had taken in the whole: quick as the lightning's flash the details of that scene were given to Adam's gaze—Eve, bent forward, standing beside the door, over whose hatch a stranger's face was thrust, while Joan, close to the spot where Jerrem still lay hid, clasped her two hands as if to stay the breath which longed to[Pg 422] cry, "He's free!"... The blow dealt, the firebrand flung, each evil passion quickened into life, filled with jealousy and mad revenge, Adam turned swiftly round and backward sped his way.

"They'm marched off, ain't 'em?" said old Zebedee as, Adam having given the signal, he drew the panel of the door aside. "I've a bin listenin' to their trampin' past.—Why, what's the time, lad, eh?—must be close on break o' day, ain't it?"

"Just about," said Adam, pushing back the shutter so that he might look out and see that no one stood near enough to overlook his descent.

"Why, you bain't goin' agen, be 'ee?" said Zebedee in amazement. "Why, what for be 'ee hikin' off like this, then—eh, lad?—Lord save us, he's gone!" he exclaimed as Adam, swinging himself by a dexterous twist on to the first ledge, let the shutter close behind him. "Wa-al, I'm blamed if this ain't a rum start! Summat gone wrong with un now. I'll wager he's a bin tiched up in the bunt somehows, for a guinea; and if so be, 'tis with wan o' they. They'm all sixes and sebens down below; so I'll lave 'em bide a bit, and hab a tot o' liquor and lie down for a spell. Lord send 'em to knaw the vally o' pace and quietness! But 'tis wan and all the same—

It was broad daylight when Joan, having once before failed to make her uncle hear, gave such a vigorous rap that, starting up, the old man cried, "Ay, ay, mate!" and with all speed unfastened the door.

Joan crept in and some conversation ensued, in the midst of which, as the recollection of the events just past occurred to his mind, Zebedee asked, "What was up with Adam?"

Joan looked for a minute, then she lifted the stone bottle and shook its contents. "Why, whatever be 'ee tellin' up?" she said.

"Lor' ha' massy! don't never tell me he didn't shaw hisself. Why, the sodgers was barely out o' doors 'fore he comes tumblin' in to shutter there, and after a bit he says, 'I'll just step down below,' he says, and out he goes; and in a quarter less no time back he comes tappin' agen, and when I drawed open for un by he pushes, and 'fore I could say 'Knife' he was out and clane off."

"You haven't a bin dreamin' of it, have 'ee?" said Joan, her face growing pale with apprehension.

"Naw, 'tis gospel truth, every ward. I've a had a toothful of liquor since, and a bit o' caulk, but not a drap more."

"Jerrem's comin' up into t'other room," said Joan, not wishing to betray all the alarm she felt: "will 'ee go into un there the whiles I rins down and says a word to Eve?"

"Iss," said the old man, "and I'll freshen mysen up a bit with a dash o' cold watter: happen I may bring some more o' it to my mind then."

But, his ablutions over and the whole family assembled, Zebedee could throw no more light on the subject, the recital of which caused so much anxiety that Joan, yielding to Eve's entreaties, decided to set off with all speed for Crumplehorne.

"Mother, Adam's all right? ain't he here still, and safe?" cried Joan, bursting into the kitchen where Mrs. Tucker, only just risen, was occupied with her house-duties.

"Iss, plaise the Lord, and, so far as I knaws of, he is," replied Mrs. Tucker, greatly startled by Joan's unexpected appearance. "Why, what do 'ee mane, child, eh? But there!" she added starting up, "us'll make sure to wance and knaw whether 'tis lies or truth we'm tellin'.—Here, Sammy, off ever so quick as legs can carry 'ee, and climber up and fetch Adam back with 'ee."

Sammy started off, and Joan proceeded to communicate the cause of her uneasiness.[Pg 423]

"Awh, my dear, is that all?" exclaimed Mrs. Tucker, at once pronouncing sentence on poor old Zebedee's known failing: "then my mind's made easy agen. There's too much elbow-crookin' 'bout that story for me to set any hold by it."

But at this moment Sammy appeared, and, without waiting for him to speak, the two women uttered a cry as they saw in his face a confirmation of their fears. "Iss, 'tis every ward true; he's a gone shure 'nuf," exclaimed Sammy; "but by his own accord, I reckon, 'cos there ain't no signs o' nothin' bein' open 'ceptin 'tis the hatch over by t' mill-wheel."

"Awh, mother," cried Joan, "whatever can be the manin' of it? My poor heart's a sinkin' down lower than iver. Oh Lord! if they should ha' cotched un, anyways!"

"Now, doan't 'ee take on like that, Joan," said Mrs. Tucker. "'Tis like temptin' o' Providence to do such like. I'll be bound for't he's safe home alongst afore now: he ain't like wan to act wild and go steppin' into danger wi' both his eyes wide open."

The possibility suggested, and Joan was off again, back on her way to Polperro, too impatient to wait while her mother put on her bonnet to accompany her.

At the door stood Eve, breathless expectation betraying itself in her every look and gesture. Joan shook her head, while Eve's finger, quick laid upon her lip, warned her to be cautious.

"They're back," she muttered as Joan came up close: "they've just marched past and gone down to the quay."

Joan ran down the street, and took her place among a mob of people watching with eager interest the movements of a soldier who, with much unnecessary parade and delay, was taking down the bill of reward posted outside the Three Pilchards. A visible anticipation of the effect about to be produced stirred the small red-coated company, and they wheeled round so as to take note of any sudden emotion produced by the surprise they felt sure awaited the assembly.

"Whatever is it, eh?" asked Joan, trying to catch a better sight of what was going on.

"They'm stickin' up a noo reward, 't seems," said an old man close by. "'Tain't no—"

But the swaying back of the crowd carried Joan with it. A surge forward, and then on her ear fell a shrill cry, and as the name of Jerrem Christmas started from each mouth a hundred eyes seemed turned upon her. For a moment the girl stood dazed, staring around like some wild animal at bay: then, flinging out her arms, she forced those near her aside, and rushing forward to the front made a desperate clutch at the soldier. "Speak! tell me! what's writ there?" she cried.

"Writ there?" said the man, startled by the scared face that was turned up to him. "Why, the warrant to seize for murder Jerrem Christmas, living or dead, on the king's evidence of Adam Pascal."

And the air was rent by a cry of unutterable woe, caught up by each voice around, and coming back in echoes from far and near long after Joan lay a senseless heap on the stones upon which she had fallen.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

SEVEN WEEKS A MISSIONARY.

The sights of Honolulu had not lost their novelty—the tropical foliage of palm, banana, bread-fruit, monkey-pod and algaroba trees; the dark-skinned, brightly-clad natives with flowers on their heads, who walked with bare feet and stately tread along the shady sidewalks or tore through the streets on horseback; the fine stone or wooden residences with wide cool verandas, or humbler native huts surrounded by walls of coral-rock instead of fences; the deep indigo-blue ocean on one hand and the rich green mountains on the other, dripping with moisture and alternately dark and bright with the gloom of clouds and the glory of rainbows, still wore for me their original freshness and interest—when I received an urgent request to come to Waialua, a little village on the other side of the island. My host, to whom the note was addressed, explained to me that there was a mission-school at that place, a seminary for native girls. It was conducted by Miss G——, the daughter of one of the missionaries who first came to the Hawaiian Islands fifty years before. She had been sent to this country to be educated, like most of the children of the early missionaries, and had returned to devote herself to the mental, moral and physical welfare of the native girls—a task which she was now accomplishing with all the fervor, devotion and self-sacrifice of a Mary Lyon.

At this juncture she had forty-five girls, from six to eighteen, under her care, and but one assistant. The English teacher who had assisted her for several years had lately married, and the place was still vacant. She wrote to my host, saying that she had heard there was a teacher from California at his house, and begging me, through him, to come and help her a few weeks. I signified my willingness to go, and in a few days Miss G——, accompanied by a native girl, came on horseback to meet me and conduct me to Waialua. A gentleman of Honolulu, his sister and a native woman called Maria, who were going to Waialua and beyond, joined us, so that our party consisted of six. We were variously mounted, on horses of different appearance and disposition, and carried our luggage and lunch in saddle-bags strapped on behind. Maria's outfit especially interested me. It was the usual costume for native women, and consisted of a long flowing black garment called a holoku, gathered into a yoke at the shoulders and falling unconfined to her bare feet. Around her neck she wore a bright red silk handkerchief, and on her head a straw hat ornamented with a lei, or wreath of fresh, fragrant flowers, orange or jasmine. Men, women and children wear these wreaths, either on their heads or around their necks. Sometimes they consist of the bright yellow ilimu-flowers or brilliant scarlet pomegranate-blossoms strung on a fibre of the banana-stalk—sometimes they are woven of ferns or of a fragrant wild vine called maile. Maria was seated astride on a wiry little black horse, and instead of slipping her bare feet into the stirrups she clasped the irons with her toes. Besides her long, flowing black dress she wore a width of bright red-flowered damask tied around her waist, caught into the stirrup on either side and flowing a yard or two behind.

Waialua, our destination, was about a third of the way around the island, but the road, instead of following the sea-coast all the way, took a short cut across an inland plateau, so that the distance was but twenty-seven miles. We started about one o'clock in the afternoon, the hour when the streets are least frequented, and rode past the shops and stores shaded with awnings, past the bazaars where sea-shells and white and pink coral are offered for sale, through the fish-market where shellfish and hideous-looking squid and bright fish, colored like rainbows or the gayest tropical parrots, lay on little tables or floated in[Pg 425] tanks of sea-water. Men with bundles of green grass or hay for sale made way for us as we passed, and the fat, short-legged dogs scattered right and left.

Although it was December, the air was warm and balmy, tree and fruit and flower were in the glory of endless summer, and the ladies seated on verandas or swinging in hammocks wore white dresses. For one who dreads harsh, cold winters the climate of Honolulu is perfection. At the end of King street we crossed a long bridge over the river, which at that point widens out into a marsh bordered by reeds and rushes. Here we saw a number of native canoes resting on poles above the water. They were about twenty feet long and quite narrow, being hollowed out of tree-trunks. An outrigger attached to one side serves to balance them in the water. A fine smooth road built on an embankment of stone and earth leads across this marsh to a strip of higher land near the sea where the prison buildings stand. They are of gray stone, with miniature towers, surrounded by a wall capped with stone, the whole surmounted by a tower from which waves the Hawaiian flag. In front is a smooth lawn where grow century-plants and ornamental shrubs, including the India-rubber tree. It is much finer than the so-called palace of the king, a many-roomed, one-story wooden cottage in the centre of the city, surrounded by a large grassy yard enclosed by a high wall.

The land beyond the marshes is planted in taro and irrigated by a network of streams. Taro is the principal article of food used by the natives: the root, which looks somewhat like a gray sweet potato, is made into a paste called poi, and the tops are eaten as greens. The plant grows about two feet high, and has an arrow-shaped leaf larger than one's hand. Like rice, it grows in shallow pools of water, and a patch of it looks like an inundated garden. As we passed along we saw half-clad natives standing knee-deep in mud and water pulling the full-grown plants or putting in young ones. Reaching higher ground, we cantered along a hard, smooth road bordered with short green grass. On either side were dwellings of wood surrounded by broad-leafed banana trees, with here and there a little shop for the sale of fruit. This is a suburb of Honolulu and is called Kupalama. We met a number of natives on horseback going into town, the men dressed in shirts and trousers of blue or white cotton cloth, the women wearing the long loose gowns I have described.

At last we reached the open country, and started fairly on our long ride. On our left was the ocean with "league-long rollers thundering on the reef:" on our right, a few miles away, was a line of mountains, divided into numerous spurs and peaks by deep valleys richly clothed in tropical verdure. The country about us was uncultivated and generally open, but here and there were straggling lines of low stone walls overgrown with a wild vine resembling our morning-glory, the masses of green leaves starred with large pink flowers. The algaroba, a graceful tree resembling the elm, grew along the roadside, generally about fifteen feet high. In Honolulu, where they are watered and cared for, these trees attain a height of thirty or forty feet, sending forth long swaying branches in every direction and forming beautiful shade trees. Now and then we crossed water-courses, where the banks were carpeted with short green grass and bordered with acacia-bushes covered with feathery leaves and a profusion of yellow ball-shaped flowers that perfumed the air with their fragrance. The view up and down these winding flower-bordered streams was lovely. We rode for miles over this monotonous country, gradually rising to higher ground. Suddenly, almost at our very feet, a little bowl-shaped valley about half a mile in circumference opened to view. The upper rim all around was covered with smooth green grass, and the sides were hidden by the foliage of dark-green mango trees, light-green kukui, bread-fruit and banana. Coffee had formerly been cultivated here, and a few bushes still grew wild, bearing fragrant white flowers or bright red berries. Through the bottom of the valley ran a little stream, and on its banks were three or four grass huts beneath tufts of[Pg 426] tall cocoanut palms. Several scantily-clad children rolled about on the ground, and in the shade of a tamarind tree an old gray-headed man was pounding taro-root. The gray mass lay before him on a flat stone, and he pounded it with a stone pestle, then dipped his hands into a calabash of water and kneaded it. A woman was bathing in the stream, and another stood at the door of one of the huts holding her child on her hip.

We passed through three other deep valleys like this, and in every case they opened suddenly to view—hidden nests of tropical foliage and color. The natives were seated in circles under the trees eating poi, or wading in the stream looking for fish, or lounging on the grass near their huts as though life were one long holiday.

Now we entered a vast sunburnt plain overgrown with huge thorny cactus twelve or fifteen feet high. Without shade or water or verdure it stretched before us to distant table-lands, upholding mountains whose peaks were veiled in cloud. The solitude of the plain was rendered more impressive by the absence of wild creatures of any kind: there were no birds nor insects nor ground-squirrels nor snakes. The cactus generally grew in clumps, but sometimes it formed a green prickly wall on either side of the road, between which we had to pass as between the bayonets of sentinels. Wherever the road widened out we clattered along, six abreast, at full speed. Maria, the native woman, presented a picturesque appearance with her black dress and long flowing streamers of bright red. She was an elderly woman—perhaps fifty years old—but as active as a young girl, and a good rider. She had an unfailing fund of good-humor, and talked and laughed a great deal. My other companions, with the exception of the native girl, were children of early missionaries, and enlivened the journey by many interesting incidents of island life. At last we crossed the cactus desert, ascended an eminence, and then sank into a valley grand and deep, shut in by walls carved in fantastic shape by the action of water. Our road was a narrow pathway, paved with stone, that wound down the face of the cliff. The natives call this place Ki-pa-pa, which signifies "paved way."

As we were making the descent on one side we saw a party of natives on horseback winding down on the opposite. First rode three men, single file, with children perched in front of them, then three or four women in black or gay-colored holokus, then a boy who led two pack-mules laden with large baskets. All wore wreaths of ferns or flowers. When we met they greeted us with a hearty "Aloha!" ("Love to you!"), and in reply to a question in Hawaiian said that they were going to Honolulu with fresh fish, bananas and oranges.

We climbed the rocky pathway rising out of the valley, and found ourselves on the high table-land toward which we had shaped our course. It was smooth as a floor and covered with short rich grass. Instead of a broad road there were about twenty parallel paths stretching on before us as far as we could see, furrowed by the feet of horses and pack-mules. Miles away on either side was a line of lofty mountains whose serrated outlines were sharply defined against the evening sky. Darkness overtook us on this plateau, and the rest of the journey is a confused memory of steep ravines down whose sides we cautiously made our way, torrents of foaming water which we forded, expanses of dark plain, and at last the murmur of the ocean on the reef. After reaching sea-level again we passed between acres and acres of taro-patches where the water mirrored the large bright stars and the arrow-shaped leaves cast sharp-pointed shadows. We rode through the quiet little village of Waialua, sleeping beneath the shade of giant pride-of-India and kukui trees, without meeting any one, and forded the Waialua River just where it flows over silver sands into the sea. As we paused to let our horses drink I looked up at the cluster of cocoanut palms that grew upon the bank, and noticed how distinctly each feathery frond was pencilled against the sky, then down upon the placid river and out upon the gently murmuring sea, and thought that I had never gazed upon a[Pg 427] more peaceful scene. Little did I think that it would soon be associated with danger and dismay. Beyond the river were two or three native huts thatched with grass, and a little white cottage, the summer home of Princess Lydia, the king's sister. Passing these, we rode over a smooth green lawn glittering with large bright dewdrops, and dismounted in front of the seminary-gate. The large whitewashed brick house, two stories and a half high, with wide verandas around three sides, looks toward the sea. In front of it is a garden filled with flowers and vines and shrubbery, the pride and care of the school-girls. There are oleander trees with rose-colored blossoms, pomegranate trees whose flowers glow amid the dark-green foliage like coals of fire, and orange and lime trees covered with fragrant white flowers, which the girls string and wear around their necks. Besides roses, heliotrope, geraniums, sweet-pea, nasturtium and other familiar flowers, there are fragrant Japanese lilies, and also plants and shrubs from the Micronesian Islands. On one side is a grove of tamarind and kukui-nut trees, mingled with tall cocoanut palms, which stretches to the deep, still river, a few rods away: on the other is the school-house, a two-story frame, painted white, shaded by tall pride-of-India trees and backed by a field of corn. My room opened on a veranda shaded with kukui trees, and as the "coo-coo-ee coo-coo-ee" of the doves in the branches came to my ears I thought that the trees had received their name from the notes of the doves, but afterward learnt that kukui in the Hawaiian language meant "light," and that the nuts, being full of oil, were strung on bamboo poles by the natives and used as torches.

The morning after my arrival I saw the girls at breakfast, and found them of all shades of complexion from deep chocolate-brown to white. Their glossy black hair, redolent of cocoanut oil, was ornamented with fresh flowers, and their bright black eyes danced with fun or languished with sullen scorn. The younger ones were bright and happy in their expression, but the older ones seemed already to realize the curse that rests upon their decaying race, and to move with melancholy languor, as if brooding over it in stifled rebellion or resigned apathy. Some would be called beautiful anywhere: they were graceful in form, had fine regular features and lovely, expressive eyes; others were attractive only on account of their animation; while one comical little negro girl, who had somehow got mixed with the Malay race, was as ugly as a Hottentot, and a veritable imp of darkness, as I afterward learned, so far as mischief was concerned. The girls were dressed in calico, and wore no shoes or stockings. When they had eaten their beef and poi, and we had finished our breakfast, each girl got her Hawaiian Testament and read a verse: then Miss G——, the principal, offered prayer in the same language. When this was over the routine work of the day began. Some of the older girls remained in the dining-room to put away the food, wash the dishes and sweep the floor; one went to the kitchen to wash the pots and pans; and the younger ones dispersed to various tasks—to sweep and dust the parlor, the sitting-room or the school-room, to gather up the litter of leaves and branches from the yard and garden-paths, or to put the teachers' rooms in order. The second floor and attic, both filled with single beds covered with mosquito-netting, were the girls' dormitories. Each girl was expected to make her own bed and hang up her clothes or put them away in her trunk. A luna, or overseer, in each dormitory superintended this work, and reported any negligence on the part of a girl to one of the teachers.

Miss G—— was the life and soul of the institution—principal and housekeeper and accountant, all in one. She had a faithful and devoted assistant in Miss P——, a young woman of twenty-two, the daughter of a missionary then living in Honolulu. My duties were to teach classes in English in the forenoon and to oversee the sewing and some departments of housekeeping in the afternoon. Miss P—— had the smaller children, Miss G—— taught the larger ones in Hawaiian and gave music-lessons.

The routine of the school-room from[Pg 428] nine to twelve in the forenoon and from one till four in the afternoon was that of any ordinary school, except that the girls who prepared the meals were excused earlier than the others. One day in the week was devoted to washing and ironing down on the river-bank and in the shade of the tamarind trees.

The girls had to be taught many things besides the lessons in their books. At home they slept on mats on the floor, ate poi out of calabashes with their fingers and wore only the holoku. Here they were required to eat at table with knife and fork and spoon, to sleep in beds and to adopt the manners and customs of civilization. Now and then, as a special privilege, they asked to be allowed to eat "native fashion," and great was their rejoicing and merrymaking as they sat, crowned with flowers, on the veranda-floor and ate poi and raw fish with their fingers, and talked Hawaiian. They were required to talk English usually until the four-o'clock bell sounded in the afternoon. From that until supper-time they were allowed to talk native, and their tongues ran fast.

On Wednesday afternoons the girls went to bathe in the river, and on Saturday afternoons to bathe in the sea. It usually fell to my lot to accompany them. The river, back of the house a few rods, had steep banks ten or fifteen feet high and a deep, still current. The girls would start to run as soon as they left the house, race with each other all the way and leap from the bank into the river below. Presently their heads would appear above water, and, laughing and blowing and shaking the drops from their brown faces, they would swim across the river. The older girls could dive and swim under water for some distance. They had learned to swim as soon as they had learned to walk. They sometimes brought up fish in their hands, and one girl told me that her father could dive and bring up a fish in each hand and one in his mouth. The little silver-fish caught in their dress-skirts they ate raw. The girls were always glad when the time came to go swimming in the sea, for they were very fond of a green moss which grew on the reef, and the whole crowd would sit on rocks picking and eating it while the spray dashed over them.

Waialua means "the meeting of the waters," or, literally, "two waters," and the place is named from the perpetual flow and counterflow of the river and the ocean tide. The river pours into the sea, the sea at high tide surges up the river, beating back its waters, and the foam and spray of the contending floods are dashed high into the air, bedewing the cluster of cocoanut palms that stand on the bank above watching this perpetual conflict. In calm weather and at low tide there is a truce between the waters, and the river flows calmly into the sea; but immediately after a storm, when the river is flooded with rains from the mountains and the sea hurls itself upon the reef with a shock and a roar, then the antagonism between the meeting waters is at its height and the clash and uproar of their fury are great.

Sometimes we went on picnic excursions to places in the neighborhood—to the beach of Waiamea, a mile or two distant, where thousands of pretty shells lay strewn upon the sand and branches of white coral could be had for the picking up, or to the orange-groves and indigo-thickets on the mountain-sides, where large sweet oranges ripened, coming back wreathed with ferns and the fragrant vine maile.

But we had plenty of oranges without going after them. For half a dollar we could buy a hundred large fine oranges from the natives, who brought them to the door, and we usually kept a tin washing-tub full of the delicious fruit on hand. A real (twelve and a half cents) would buy a bunch of bananas so heavy that it took two of us to lift it to the hook in the veranda-ceiling, and limes and small Chinese oranges grew plentifully in the front yard. Of cocoanuts and tamarinds we made no account, they were so common. Guavas grew wild on bushes in the neighborhood, and made delicious pies. For vegetables we had taro, sweet potatoes and something that tasted just like summer squash, but which grew in thick, pulpy clusters on a tree. The taro[Pg 429] was brought to us just as it was pulled, roots and nodding green tops, and of the donkey who was laden with it little showed but his legs and his ears as his master led him up to the gate. Another old man furnished boiled and pounded taro, which the girls mixed with water and made into poi. He brought it in large bundles wrapped in broad green banana-leaves and tied with fibres of the stalk. He had two daughters in the school, and always inquired about their progress in their studies. One day, happening to look out of the front door, I saw him coming up the garden-walk. He had nothing on but a shirt and a malo (a strip of cloth) about his loins: the malo was all that the natives formerly wore. Neither the girls who were weeding their garden, nor the other teachers who were at work in the parlor, seemed to think that there was anything remarkable in his appearance. He talked with Miss G—— as usual about the supply of taro for the school, and inquired how his girls were doing. When he was going away she said, "Uncle, why do you not wear your clothes when you come to see us? I thought you had laid aside the heathen fashion." He replied that he had but one suit of clothes, and that he must save them to wear to church, adding that he was anxious to give his daughters an education, and must economize in some way in order to pay for their schooling.

The fuel needed for cooking was brought down from the mountains by the native boy who milked the cows for us and took Calico, Miss G——'s riding horse, to water and to pasture. One day, when one of the girls had started a fire in the stove, a fragrance like incense diffused itself through the house. Hastening to the kitchen, I pulled out a half-burned piece of sandal-wood and put it away in my collection of shells and island curiosities. A few days afterward an old native man named Ka-hu-kai (Sea-shore), who lived in one of the grass huts near the front gate, came to sell me a piece of fragrant wood of another kind. He had learned that I attached a value to such things, and expected to get a good price. He inquired for the wahine haole (foreign woman), and presented his bit of wood, saying that he would sell it for a dollar. I declined to purchase. He walked down through the garden and across the lawn, but paused at the big gate for several minutes, then retraced his steps. Holding out the wood again, he said, "This is my thought: you may have it for a real." I gave him a real, and he went away satisfied.

Every Sunday we crossed the bridge that spanned Waialua River near the ford, and made our way to the huge old-fashioned mission-church, which stood in an open field surrounded by prickly pears six or eight feet high. The thorny prickly pears were stiff and ungraceful, but a delicate wild vine grew all over them and hung in festoons from the top. While Pai-ku-li, the native minister, preached a sermon in Hawaiian, I, not understanding a word, looked at the side pews where the old folks sat, and tried to picture the life they had known in their youth, when the great Kamehameha reigned. In the pew next to the side door sat Mr. Sea-shore, straight and solemn as a deacon, and his wife, a fat old woman with a face that looked as if it had been carved out of knotty mahogany, but which was irradiated with an expression of kindness and good-nature. She wore a long black holoku, and on her head was perched a little sailor hat with a blue ribbon round it, which would have been suitable for a girl six or eight years old, but which looked decidedly comical and out of place on Mrs. Sea-shore. She was barefooted, as I presently saw. Two or three times during the sermon a red-eyed, dissipated-looking dog with a baked taro-root in his mouth had come to the door, and seemed about to enter, but Mrs. Sea-shore, without disturbing the devotions, had kept him back by threatening gestures. But when the minister began to pray and nearly every head was bowed, the dog came sneaking in. Mrs. Sea-shore happened to raise her head, and saw him. Drawing back her holoku, she extended her bare foot and planted a vigorous kick in his ribs, exclaiming at the same time in an explosive whisper, "Hala palah!" ("Get out!" or[Pg 430] "Begone!") The dog went forth howling, and did not return.

A few days later Miss G——'s shoulder was sprained by a fall from her horse, and she sent for Mrs. Sea-shore. The old woman came and lomi-lomi-ed the shoulder—kneaded it with her hands—until the pain and stiffness were gone, then extracted the oil from some kukui-nuts by chewing them and applied it to the sprain. All the time she kept up a chatter in Hawaiian, talking, asking questions and showing her white teeth in hearty, good-humored laughs. In answer to the questions I put to her through Miss G——, she told us much about her early life, the superstitions and taboos that forbade men and women to eat together and imposed many meaningless and foolish restrictions, and about her children, who had died and gone to Po, the great shadowy land, where, as she once believed, their spirits had been eaten by the gods. We formed quite a friendship for each other, and she came often to see me, but would not come into the house any farther than the veranda or front hall, and there, refusing our offer of a chair, she would sit on the floor. I spoke of going to see her in return, but she said that her house was not good enough to receive me, and begged me not to come. Just before I left Waialua she brought a mat she had woven out of the long leaves of the pandanus or screw pine, a square of tappa, or native cloth, as large as a sheet, made from the bark of a tree, and the tappa-pounder she had made it with (a square mallet with different patterns cut on each of the four faces), and gave them to me. I offered her money in return, but she refused it, saying she had given the things out of aloha, or love for me. On my return to Honolulu I got the most gorgeous red silk Chinese handkerchief that could be found in Ah Fong and Ah Chuck's establishment and sent it to her, and Miss G—— wrote me that she wore it round her neck at church every Sunday.

One of my duties was to go through the dormitories the last thing at night, and see that the doors were fastened and that the girls had their mosquito-netting properly arranged, and were not sleeping with their heads under the bedclothes. A heathen superstition, of which they were half ashamed, still exercised an influence over them, and they were afraid that the spirits of their dead relatives would come back from Po and haunt them in the night. They would not confess to this fear, but many of them, ruled by it, covered their heads with the bedclothes every night. In my rounds, besides clouds of bloodthirsty mosquitos, I frequently saw centipedes crawling along the floor or wall or up the netting, and sometimes a large tarantula would dart forth from his hiding-place in some nook or corner. The centipedes were often six or seven inches long. They were especially numerous during or immediately after rainy weather. Little gray and green lizards (mo-o) glided about the verandas, but they were harmless. Scorpions are common in the islands, but we were not troubled with them. They frequent hot, dry places like sandbanks, and are often found in piles of lumber.

We had fine views of the scenery as we passed to and fro between the main building and the school-house—the sea, fringed with cocoanut palms; the fertile level plain, dotted with trees, on which the village stood; and the green mountains, whose tops were generally dark with rainclouds or brightened with bits of rainbows. It seemed to be always raining in that mysterious mountainous centre of the islands which human foot has never crossed, but it was usually clear and bright at sea-level. After an unusually hard rain we could see long, flashing white waterfalls hanging, like ribbons of silver, down the sides of the green cliffs. From the attic-windows the best view of the bay could be obtained, and it was my delight to lean out of them like "a blessed damosel" half an hour at a time, gazing seaward and drinking in the beauty of the scene. Waialua Bay was shaped like a half moon, the tips of which were distant headlands, and the curve was the yellow, palm-fringed beach. Into this crescent-shaped reach of water rolled great waves from the outside ocean, following each other in regular stately order with a front of milk-white foam[Pg 431] and a veil of mist flying backward several yards from the summit. The Hawaiian name for this place is E-hu-kai (Sea-mist), and it is appropriately named, for the floating veils of the billows keep the surface of the entire bay dim with mist. Gazing long upon the scene, my eyes would be dazzled with color—the intense blue of the sky and the water, the bright yellow of the sand, the dark rich green of the trees, and, looking into the garden below, the flame-scarlet blossoms of the pomegranates, the rose-pink flowers of the oleanders and the cream-white clusters of the limes and oranges.

It seemed a land for poetry, for romance, for day-dreaming, and the transition from the attic-window to the prosaic realities of house and school-room work was like a sudden awakening. I was destined before leaving the place to have a still more violent awakening to the reality that underlies appearances. Nature in these beautiful islands is fair and lovely, but deceitful. During long months of sunny weather the waves gently kiss the shore, the green slopes smile, the mountains decorate themselves with cloud-wreaths and rainbows; but there comes a dreadful day when the green and flowery earth yawns in horrid chasms, when Mauna Loa trembles and belches forth torrents of blood-red lava, when the ocean, receding from the shore, returns in a tidal wave that sweeps to the top of the palms on the beach and engulfs the people and their homes.

And the human nature here is somewhat similar. The Hawaiians are pleasing in form and feature, graceful, polite, fond of music and dancing and wreathing themselves with flowers, and possess withal a deep fund of poetry, which finds expression in their own names, the names they have bestowed upon waterfalls and valleys and green peaks and sea-cliffs, and in the meles or native songs which commemorate events of personal interest or national importance. But they too have their volcanic outbursts, their seasons of fury and destruction. The last public display of this side of their character was on the occasion of the election of the present king. The supporters of Queen Emma, the defeated candidate, burst into the court-house, broke the heads of the electors or threw them bodily out of the windows, and raised a riot in the streets of Honolulu which was quelled only by the assistance of the crews of the men-of-war then in the harbor—the English ship Tenedos and the United States vessels Portsmouth and Tuscarora.

I come now to the rebellion which broke forth in Waialua school when I had been there three weeks. A month or two before one of the school-girls had died after a brief illness. The old heathen superstition about praying to Death had been revived by the lower class of natives in the place, who were not friendly to the school, and had been transmitted by them to the older girls. While yet ignorant of this I had noticed the scowls and dark looks, the reluctant obedience and manifest distrust, of ten or twelve girls from fifteen to eighteen, the leaders in the school. The younger girls were affectionate and obedient: they brought flowers from their gardens and wove wreaths for us; they lomi-lomi-ed our hands and feet when we were sitting at rest; if they neglected their tasks or broke any of the taboos of the school, it was through the carelessness of childhood. But it seemed impossible to gain the confidence of the older girls.

One day Miss P——, the assistant teacher, received word that her father was quite sick, and immediately set out for Honolulu on horseback. Miss G——and I carried on the work of the school as well as we could. A day or two after Miss P—— left a tropical storm burst upon us. It seemed as if the very heavens were opened. The rain fell in torrents and the air was filled with the flying branches of trees. This continued a day and a night. The next day, Sunday, the rain and wind ceased, but sullen clouds still hung overhead, and there was an oppressive stillness and languor in the air. Within, there was something of the same atmosphere: the tropical nature of the girls seemed to be in sympathy with the stormy elements. They were silent and sullen and brooding. The bridge over Waialua[Pg 432] had been washed away, and we could not go to church. The oppressive day passed and was succeeded by a similar one. The older girls cast dark looks upon us as they reluctantly went through the round of school- and house-work. At night the explosion occurred. All the girls were at the usual study-hour in the basement dining-room. It was Miss G——'s turn to sit with them: I was in the sitting-room directly above. Suddenly I heard a loud yell, a sound as of scuffling and Miss G——'s quick tones of command. The next moment I was down stairs. There stood Miss G—— in the middle of the room holding Elizabeth Aukai, one of the largest and worst girls, by the wrist. The girl's head was bent and her teeth were buried in Miss G——'s hand. The heathen had burst forth, the volcanic eruption and earthquake had come. I tried to pull her off, but she was as strong as an ox. Loosening her hold directly and hurling us off, she poured forth a flood of abuse in Hawaiian. She reviled the teachers and all the cursed foreigners who were praying her people to death. The Hawaiian language has no "swear words," but it is particularly rich in abusive and reviling epithets, and these were freely heaped upon us. She ended her tirade by saying, "You shall not pray us to death, you wicked, black-hearted foreigners!" and her companions answered with a yell. Then, snatching up a lamp, they ran up stairs to their sleeping-rooms, screaming and laughing and singing native songs that had been forbidden in the school, and, taking their shawls and Sunday dresses from their trunks, they arrayed themselves in all their finery and began dancing an old heathen dance which is taboo among the better class of natives and only practised in secret by the more degraded class of natives and half-whites.

It sounded like Bedlam let loose. The little girls, frightened and crying, and a half-white girl of seventeen, Miss G——'s adopted daughter, remained with us. We put the younger children to bed in their sleeping-room, which was on the first floor, and held a council together. "One of us must cross the river and bring Pai-ku-li" (the native minister), said Miss G——. "He is Elizabeth Aukai's guardian—she is his wife's niece—and he can control her if anybody can, and break the hold of this superstition on the girls' minds. Nothing that we can say or do will do any good while they are in this frenzy. Which of us shall go?"

The bridge was washed away; there was no boat; Miss P—— had taken the only horse to go to Honolulu. Whoever went must ford the river. Like Lord Ullin's daughter, who would meet the raging of the skies, but not an angry father, I was less afraid to go than to stay, and volunteered to bring Pai-ku-li.

"Li-li-noe shall go with you," said Miss G——: "she is a good swimmer, and can find the best way through the river."

Just then the whole crowd of girls came screaming and laughing down the stairs, swept through the sitting-room, mocking and insulting Miss G——, then went back up the other flight of stairs, which led to the teachers' rooms and was taboo to the school-girls. They were anxious to break as many rules as possible.

With a lighted lantern hidden between us Li-li-noe and I stole down through the flower-garden and across the lawn. We were anxious to keep the girls in ignorance of our absence, lest they should attempt some violence to Miss G—— while we were gone. Stealing quietly past the grass huts of the natives, we approached the place where the bridge had been, and brought forth our lantern to shed light on the water-soaked path. Just ahead the surf showed through the darkness white and threatening, and beyond was the ocean, dim heaving in the dusk. The clash and roar of the meeting waters filled the air, and we were sprinkled by the flying spray as we stood debating on the river's edge. Li-li-noe stepped down into the water to find, if possible, a place shallow enough to ford, but at the first step she disappeared up to her shoulders. "That will never do," she said, clambering back: "you cannot cross there."

"Then let us try there;" and into the water we went, Li-li-noe first. It was not quite waist-deep, and in calm weather there would have been no danger, but now the current of the river and the tide of the inrushing sea swept back and forth with the force of a whirlpool. We had got to the middle when a great wave, white with foam, came roaring toward us from the ocean. Li-li-noe threw herself forward and began to swim. For a moment there were darkness and the roar of many waters around me, and my feet were almost swept from under me. Looking upward at the cloudy sky and the tall cocoanut trees on the bank, I thought of the home and friends I might never see again. The bitter salt water wet my face, quenched the light and carried away my shawl, but the wave returned without carrying me out to sea. Then above the noise of the waters I heard Li-li-noe's voice calling to me from the other shore, and just as another wave surged in I reached her side and sank down on the sand. After resting a few moments we rose and began picking our way toward the village, half a mile distant. Our route led along a narrow path between the muddy, watery road on one side and a still more muddy, watery taro-patch on the other. Without a light to guide our steps, we slipped, now with one foot into the road, now with the other into the taro-patch, and by the time we emerged into the level cactus-field around the church we were covered with mud to our knees.

Pai-ku-li lived nearly a mile beyond the village, but close by the church lived Mrs. W——, whose place I had taken as English teacher in the school. We knocked at her door to beg for a light, and when she found what the matter was she made us come in, muddy and dripping as we were, and put on some dry clothes, while her husband, pulling on his boots, went for Pai-ku-li. She begged me to stay all night, saying that she would not trust her life with the girls at such a time—they might attempt to poison us or to burn the house down—but I thanked her for her hospitality and lighted our lantern, and we started back as soon as Mr. W—— returned saying that Pai-ku-li would come. We listened for the sound of his horse's feet, for we had planned to ride across the river, one at a time, behind Pai-ku-li, but he did not overtake us, and we waited at the river nearly half an hour. One span of the bridge remained, and as we stood on it waiting, listening to the flapping of the cocoanut fronds in the night wind and the hoarse murmuring and occasional roar of the ocean, I thought of that line of Longfellow's—

and laughed to myself at the contrast between the poetical and the actual. Still, Pai-ku-li did not come, and, growing anxious on Miss G——'s account, we resolved to cross as we had before. Again we went down into the cold flood, again our light was quenched and our feet nearly swept from under us, but we reached the opposite side in safety. As we crossed the lawn we saw every window lighted, and knew by the sounds of yelling and singing and laughing that the girls were still raving. Miss G—— sat quietly in the parlor. She had been up stairs to try to reason with the girls, but they drowned her voice with hooting and reviling. Pai-ku-li came a little later, but he had no better success. He remained with us that night and all the next day. The screaming up stairs continued till two or three o'clock at night, and began again as soon as the first girl woke. Early next morning a fleet messenger started to Honolulu, and just at dusk two gentlemen, the sheriff and Mr. P——, who was Miss G——'s brother-in-law and president of the board of trustees of Waialua Seminary, rode up on foaming horses. A court was held in the school-room, many natives—a few of the better class who disapproved of the rebellion, and more of the lower class who upheld the rebels—being present as spectators, but no one interrupting the prompt and stern proceedings of Mr. P——. Elizabeth Aukai was whipped on her bare feet and legs below the knee until she burst out crying and begged for mercy and asked Miss G——'s forgiveness for biting her. Then she and the other rebels were[Pg 434] expelled, and the sheriff took them away that night. Those who lived on other islands were sent home by the first schooner leaving Honolulu. Thus ended the rebellion at Waialua school.

The remaining month of my stay passed in peace and quietness. The need for my assistance was less after the expulsion of so many girls, but I remained in order that Miss G—— might take a short vacation and the rest she so much needed. During her absence Miss P—— and I carried on the school. A few days after the storm a little native boy brought to the seminary the shawl which had been washed from my shoulders the night I went through the river. He had found it lying on the beach half a mile below the ford. It had been washed out to sea and returned again by the waves. After that we called it "the travelled shawl." Every Monday morning the toot of the postman's horn was heard in the village, and one of us immediately went across to get the mail. The bridge being gone, we had to wade the river at the shallowest place, near the sea. When I waded across on such occasions I usually found on the opposite shore a group of half-naked little natives who drew near to watch with silent interest the process of buttoning my shoes with a button-hook. The whole school waded across to church on Sundays.

The population of the village, with the exception of two or three families, was composed of natives and half-whites of the lower class. Heathen superstition mingled with modern vice. In some instances men and women lived together without the ceremony of marriage. Beyond the village the cane-fields began, and beyond them, at the foot of the mountains, lived a better class of natives, moral and industrious. Here, too, were the cane-mills and the residences of the planters. I remember one pretty little cottage with walls of braided grass and wooden roof and floor, surrounded by cool, vine-shaded verandas. It stood in the middle of a cane-plantation, and was the home of an Englishman and his wife, both highly cultivated and genial, companionable people. He was a typical Englishman in appearance, stout and ruddy, and wore a blue flannel suit and the white head-covering worn by his countrymen in India. She was a graceful little creature with appealing dark eyes, and looked too frail to have ever borne hardship or cruelty, yet she had known little else all her early life. She had been left an orphan in England, and had been sent out to Australia to make her living as a governess. She was thrown among brutal, coarse-mannered people, and received harsh treatment and suffered many vicissitudes of fortune. Finally, her husband met and loved and married her, and lifted her out of that hard life into one which appeared by contrast a heaven of peace and kindness and affection. She often said frankly, "That was the happiest event of my life. I can never be thankful enough to him or love him enough. Sometimes I dream I am back again enduring that dreadful life in Australia, and when I wake and realize that I am here in our own little cottage, thousands of miles from Australia, I am freshly happy and grateful."

Near the foot of the mountains was a Catholic church and a school, round which a little village had grown up. The self-sacrificing efforts of the teachers have been productive of good among the natives, but there seems little hope of any co-operation between the Protestant missionaries and them.

When the time came for me to return to Honolulu, Miss P—— offered to accompany me, and suggested that instead of returning by the way I came we should take the longer way and complete the circuit of the island. As the road lay directly along the sea-coast the entire distance, there was no danger of our losing our way. Miss P—— rode Calico, the missionary steed, and I hired a white horse of Nakaniella (Nathaniel), one of the patrons of the school, choosing it in preference to a bay brought for my inspection the night before we started by a sullen-looking native from the village. When we had gone two or three miles on our way we heard the sound of furious galloping behind us, and looking back saw this native, with a face like a[Pg 435] thunder-cloud, approaching us on his bay horse. Reaching us, he insisted on my dismounting and taking his horse, saying that I had promised to hire it the night before. Miss P——, being able to speak Hawaiian, answered for me without slackening our pace. She said, in reply to his demands, that the wahine haole had not promised to take his horse; that she would not pay him for his time and trouble in bringing over the horse that morning and riding after us; that he might ride all the way to Honolulu with us or go to law about the matter, both of which he threatened. Fuming with wrath, he rode along with us for a mile or two, breathing out threatenings and slaughter in vigorous Hawaiian: then, uttering the spiteful wish, "May your horses throw you and break your necks!" he turned and rode back toward Waialua.

We passed through the ruins of a once-populous village: stone walls bordered the road for a mile or more, and back of them were the stone foundations of native houses and heiaus (temples). Pandanus trees, with roots like stilts or props that lifted them two or three feet from the ground, grew inside the deserted enclosures: long grass waved from the chinks and crevices. It was a mournful reminder of the decay of the Hawaiian race. Just beyond the ruined village a sluggish creek flowed into the sea. At the mouth of the valley whence it issued stood two or three native huts. A man wearing a malo was up on the roof of one, thatching it with grass. Riding near, we hailed him and inquired about a quicksand which lay just ahead and which we must cross. He told us to avoid the makai side and keep to the mouka side. We followed his directions, and crossed in safety. For all practical purposes there are but two directions in the islands—mouka, meaning toward the mountains, and makai, toward the sea.

We rode all the forenoon over a level strip of grassy open country bordering the sea, with here and there a native hut near a clump of cocoanuts or a taro-patch. Toward noon we passed fenced pastures in which many horses were grazing, and came in sight of a picturesque cottage near the shore. Miss G—— had told us that on the lawn in front of this cottage were two curious old stone idols which had been discovered in a fish-pond, and we rode up to the gate intending to ask permission to enter and look at them. A Chinese servant let us in, and the owner, an Englishman who lived here during part of the year, came and showed us the idols, and then invited us inside his pretty cottage and gave us a lunch of bread and butter and guava jelly and oranges. The walls and ceilings were of native wood, of the kinds used in delicate cabinet-work and were polished until they shone. The floor was covered with fine straw matting, and around the room were ranged easy-chairs and sofas of willow and rattan. In one corner stood a piano in an ebony case, and on a koa-wood centre-table were a number of fine photographs and works of art. Hanging baskets filled with blooming plants hung in each window and in the veranda. Altogether, it was the prettiest hermitage imaginable.

Riding along that afternoon through a country much like that we had passed over in the morning, we heard from a native hut the sound of the mournful Hawaiian wail, "Auea! auea!" (pronounced like the word "away" long drawn out). To our inquiry if any one was dead within, a woman answered, "No, but that some friends had come from a distance on a visit." I have frequently seen two Hawaiian friends or relations who had not met for a long time express their emotions at seeing one another again, not by kissing and laughing and joyful exclamations, but by sitting down on the ground and wailing. Perhaps it was done in remembrance of their long separation and of the changes that had taken place during that time. The native mode of kissing consists in rubbing noses together.

Not far from this place we passed a Mormon settlement, a little colony sent out from Utah. The group of bare white buildings was some distance back from the road, and we did not stop to visit them. Near by was a hou-tree swamp,[Pg 436] a spongy, marshy place where cattle were eating grass that grew under water. They would reach down until their ears were almost covered, take a mouthful and lift up their heads while they chewed it. Thus far on our journey there had been a level plain two or three miles wide between the sea and the mountains, but here the mountains came close down to the sea, leaving only a little strip of land along the beach. High, stern cliffs with strange profiles, such as a lion, a canoe and a gigantic hen on her nest, frowned upon us as we rode along their base. We passed a cold bubbling spring which had worn a large basin for itself in the rock. It had formerly been the bathing-place of a chief, and therefore taboo to the common people. In one of our gallops along the beach my stirrup-strap broke, and we stopped in front of a solitary hut to ask for a stout string. A squid was drying on a pole and scenting the air with its fishy odors. In answer to our call an old man in a calico shirt came out of the hut, and, taking some strips of hou-bark, twisted them into a strong string and fastened the stirrup. I gave him a real, and he exclaimed "Aloha!" with apparently as much surprise and delight as if we had enriched him for life.

We rode through a little village at the mouth of a beautiful green valley, forded a river that ran through it, and passing under more high cliffs came about four in the afternoon to Kahana, our stopping-place for the night. It was a little cluster of houses at the head of a bay or inlet of the sea, where the lovely transparent water was green as grass, and stood in the opening of a valley enclosed by high, steep mountain-walls, with sharp ridges down their sides clothed with rich forests. All around us grew delicate, luxuriant ferns, of which there are one hundred and fifty varieties in the islands. Along the shores of the bay some women were wading, their dresses held above their knees, picking shellfish and green sea-moss off the rocks for supper. We rode up to the cottage of Kekoa, a native minister who had studied under Miss P——'s father. His half-Chinese, half-native wife was in a grass hut at the back of the house, and she came immediately to take our horses, saying that her husband was at the church, but would be at home soon. Then opening the door, she told us to go inside and rest ourselves. It was a pretty cottage, with floors and walls of wood and a grass roof. Braided mats of palm and pandanus-leaves were on the floor, and on the walls hung portraits of the Hawaiian royal family and Generals Lee and Grant. It had two rooms—a sitting-room and a bedroom—the first furnished with a table and chairs, the latter with a huge high-posted bedstead with a canopy over it. Altogether, it was much above the common native houses, and was evidently not used every day, but kept for the reception of guests—travelling ministers and the like.

When Kekoa came he welcomed us warmly on account of the attachment he had for Miss P——'s father, and told us to consider the house ours as long as it pleased us to stay. He sent his wife to catch a chicken, and soon set before us on the table in the sitting-room a supper consisting of boiled chicken, rice, baked taro, coarse salt from the bay, and bananas. We overlooked the absence of bread, which the natives know not of, and shared the use of the one knife and fork between us. Our host waited on us, his wife bringing the food to the door and handing it to him. After supper other natives came in, and Miss P—— conversed with them in Hawaiian. Being tired and stiff from my long ride, I went into the next room and lay down on the bed. Mrs. Kekoa came in presently and began to lomi-lomi me. She kneaded me with her hands from head to foot, just as a cook kneads dough, continuing the process for nearly an hour, although I begged her several times to stop lest she should be tired. At the end of that time all sensation of fatigue and stiffness was gone and I felt fresh and well. Kekoa and his wife slept in a grass hut several rods farther up the valley, and Miss P—— and I had the house to ourselves. In the middle of the night we were awakened by the sound of a man talking in through the open window of our room. We both thought for a moment that it[Pg 437] was our persecutor of the morning who had followed us as he had threatened, but it proved to be a native from the head of the valley who wanted to see Kekoa. Miss P—— directed him to the grass hut where our host slept, and he went away, and we were not disturbed again. Next morning we had breakfast like the supper, and asked for our horses. Kekoa and his wife begged us to stay longer, but we could not, and parted from them with much regret. We afterward sent them some large photographs of scenes in Honolulu, and received an affectionate message from them in return. I look back to Kahana as a sort of Happy Valley, and dream sometimes of going back and seeing again its beautiful pale-green bay, its glittering blue sea, its grand mountain-walls clothed in richest verdure, and renewing my acquaintance with its kind-hearted people. Several natives gathered to say good-bye, and two of them rode with us out of the valley and saw us fairly on our way.

We rode past cane-plantations fenced with palm-tree trunks or hedged with huge prickly pear; past thickets of wild indigo and castor bean; through guava-jungles, where we pulled and ate the ripe fruit, yellow outside and pink within; past large fish-ponds that had been constructed for the chiefs in former days; past rice-fields where Chinese were scaring away the birds; past threshing-floors where Chinese were threshing rice; past kamani trees (from Tahiti) that looked like umbrellas slanting upward; past a flock of mina-birds brought from Australia; past aloe-plants and vast thickets of red and yellow lantana in blossom, reaching as high as our horses' necks.

We dismounted in front of a little grass hut where we heard the sound of a tappa-pounder, and went to the door. An old native woman, with her arms tattooed with India-ink, was sitting on a mat spread on the ground, with a sheet of moist red tappa lying over a beam placed on the ground in front of her, and a four-sided mallet in her hand. Beside her sat a young half-white girl with a large tortoise-shell comb in her hair and a fat little dog in her arms. We asked if we could come in and see the tappa. The old woman said "Yes," and displayed it with some pride. She was making it to give to Queen Emma, hence the pains she was taking with the coloring and the pattern. The bark of a shrub resembling our pawpaw tree is steeped in water until it becomes a mass of pulp. Then it is laid on the heavy beam and beaten with the tappa-pounder, and pulled and stretched until it becomes a square sheet with firm edges, about as thick as calico and six or eight feet square. The juice of berries or dye from the bark of trees furnishes the coloring, and the pattern is determined by the figures cut in the tappa-pounder. Some fine mats rolled-up in one corner and some braided baskets on the wall were also the work of this tappa-maker.

We passed through several villages as we neared our journey's end, and the scenery grew more interesting. The palm trees on the beach framed views of little islands bathed in sea-mist which lay half a mile or more from the shore. Narrow green valleys with high steep walls, down whose sides flashed bright waterfalls, opened to view one after another on the mouka or inland side. At the mouth of one we saw a twig of ohia, or native apple tree, placed carefully between two stones. Some superstitious native had put it there as an offering, that the goddess of that valley might not roll down rocks on him and kill him. The Pali, a stupendous perpendicular cliff four thousand feet high, faces the sea a few miles from Honolulu. We came in sight of it early in the afternoon, and stopped on a grassy knoll near a clear stream to eat our lunch and allow our horses to graze. The hardest part of the whole journey lay immediately before us. A zigzag path has been cut up the face of the cliff, but it is so steep and narrow that carriages cannot pass over it, and it is with much exertion and heavy panting that it can be climbed by man or beast. The face of the cliff is hung with vines and ferns, and at its base grow palms and the rich vegetation of the tropics. It is the grandest bit of scenery on Oahu. We rode our horses to the foot of the Pali: then, out of compassion for them,[Pg 438] dismounted and led them up the long steep path, stopping several times to rest. On the way some natives passed us on horseback, racing up the Pali! At the top we stood a while in silence, gazing at the magnificent prospect spread out below us. We could see miles of the road we had come—silvery-green cane-plantations, little villages with white church-spires, rich groves of palm, kukui and koa, and the sea rising like a dark blue wall all around the horizon. Then we mounted and turned our faces toward Honolulu. On either side were lofty mountain-walls, with perpendicular sides clothed with vivid green and hung with silvery waterfalls. We were entering the city by Nuannu ("Cold Spring") Valley, the most delightful and fashionable suburb. Here were Queen Emma's residence, set in the midst of extensive and beautiful grounds, the Botanical Gardens, the residence of the American minister, the royal mausoleum and the house and gardens once occupied by Kalumma, a former queen. Crowds of gayly-dressed natives galloped past us as we neared the city, wearing wreaths of fern and flowers. One man carried a half-grown pig in a rope net attached to his stirrup: it looked tired of life. So, under the arching algaroba and monkey-pod trees that shade Nuannu Avenue, and past the royal palms that grace the yards, we rode into beautiful Honolulu.

FINDELKIND OF MARTINSWAND: A CHILD'S STORY.

There was a little boy a year or two since who lived under the shadow of Martinswand. Most people know, I should suppose, that the Martinswand is that mountain in the Oberinnthal where, several centuries ago, brave Kaiser Max lost his footing as he stalked the chamois and fell upon a ledge of rock, and stayed there, in mortal peril, for thirty hours, till he was rescued by the strength and agility of a Tyrol hunter—an angel in the guise of a hunter, as the chronicles of the time prefer to say. The Martinswand is a grand mountain, being one of the spurs of the greater Sonnstein, and rises precipitously, looming, massive and lofty, like a very fortress for giants, where it stands right across that road which, if you follow it long enough, takes you on through Zirl to Landeck—old, picturesque, poetic Landeck, where Frederic of the Empty Pockets rhymed his sorrows in ballads to his people—and so on, by Bludenz, into Switzerland itself, by as noble a highway as any traveller can ever desire to traverse on a summer's day. The Martinswand is within a mile of the little burg of Zirl, where the people, in the time of their kaiser's peril, came out with torches and bells, and the Host lifted up by their priest, and all prayed on their knees underneath the gaunt pile of limestone, which is the same to-day as it was then, whilst Kaiser Max is dust. The Martinswand soars up very steep and very majestic, bare stone at its base and all along its summit crowned with pine woods; and on the other side of the road that runs onward to Zirl are a little stone church, quaint and low, and gray with age, and a stone farm-house and cattle-sheds and timber-sheds of wood that is darkly brown from time; and beyond these are some of the most beautiful meadows in the world, full of tall grass and countless flowers, with pools and little estuaries made by the brimming Inn River that flows by them, and beyond the river the glaciers of the Sonnstein and the Selrain and the wild Arlberg region, and the golden glow of sunset in the west, most often seen from here through a veil of falling rain.

At this farm-house, with Martinswand[Pg 439] towering above it and Zirl a mile beyond, there lived, and lives still, a little boy who bears the old historical name of Findelkind. His father, Otto Korner, was the last of a sturdy race of yeomen who had fought with Hofer and Haspinger, and had been free men always.

Findelkind came in the middle of seven other children, and was a pretty boy of nine years old, with slenderer limbs and paler cheeks than his rosy brethren, and tender, dreamy, dark-blue eyes that had the look, his mother told him, of seeking stars in midday—de chercher midi à quatorze heures, as the French have it. He was a good little lad, and seldom gave any trouble from disobedience, though he often gave it from forgetfulness. His father angrily complained that he was always in the clouds—that is, he was always dreaming—and so very often would spill the milk out of the pails, chop his own fingers instead of the wood, and stay watching the swallows when he was sent to draw water. His brothers and sisters were always making fun of him: they were sturdier, ruddier and merrier children than he was, loved romping and climbing and nutting, thrashing the walnut trees and sliding down snow-drifts, and got into mischief of a more common and childish sort than Findelkind's freaks of fancy. For indeed he was a very fanciful little boy: everything around had tongues for him, and he would sit for hours among the long rushes on the river's edge, trying to imagine what the wild green-gray water had found in its wanderings, and asking the water-rats and the ducks to tell him about it; but both rats and ducks were too busy to attend to an idle little boy, and never spoke, which vexed him.

Findelkind, however, was very fond of his books: he would study day and night in his little ignorant, primitive fashion. He loved his missal and his primer, and could spell them both out very fairly, and was learning to write of a good priest in Zirl, where he trotted three times a week with his two little brothers. When not at school he was chiefly set to guard the sheep and the cows, which occupation left him very much to himself, so that he had many hours in the summer-time to stare up to the skies and wonder, wonder, wonder about all sorts of things; while in the winter—the long, white, silent winter, when the post-wagons ceased to run, and the road into Switzerland was blocked, and the whole world seemed asleep except for the roaring of the winds—Findelkind, who still trotted over the snow to school in Zirl, would dream still, sitting on the wooden settle by the fire when he came home again under Martinswand. For the worst—or the best—of it all was that he was Findelkind also.

This was what was always haunting him. He was Findelkind, and to bear this name seemed to him to mark him out from all other children and dedicate him to Heaven. One day three years before, when he had been only six years old, the priest in Zirl, who was a very kindly and cheerful man, and amused the children as much as he taught them, had not allowed Findelkind to leave the school to go home because the storm of snow and wind was so violent, but had kept him until the worst should pass, with one or two other little lads who lived some way off, and had let the boys roast apples and chestnuts by the stove in his little room, and while the wind howled and the blinding snow fell without had told the children the story of another Findelkind, an earlier Findelkind, who had lived in the flesh as far back as 1381, and had been a little shepherd-lad—"just like you," said the good man, looking at the little boys munching their roast crabs—"over there, above Stuben, where Danube and Rhine meet and part." The pass of Arlberg is even still so bleak and bitter that few care to climb there: the mountains around are drear and barren, and snow lies till midsummer, and even longer sometimes. "But in the early ages," said the priest—and this is quite a true tale, which the children heard with open eyes, and mouths only not open because they were full of crabs and chestnuts,—"in the early ages," said the priest to them, "the Arlberg was far more dreary than it is now. There was only a mule-track over it, and no refuge for man or beast; so that wanderers and peddlers,[Pg 440] and those whose need for work or desire for battle brought them over that frightful pass, perished in great numbers and were eaten by the bears and the wolves. The little shepherd-boy, Findelkind—who was a little boy five hundred years ago, remember," added the priest—"was sorely disturbed and distressed to see those poor dead souls in the snow winter after winter, and to see the blanched bones lie on the bare earth unburied when summer melted the snow. It made him unhappy, very unhappy; and what could he do, he a little boy keeping sheep? He had as his wage two florins a year—that was all—but his heart rose high and he had faith in God. Little as he was, he said to himself he would try and do something, so that year after year those poor lost travellers and beasts should not perish so. He said nothing to anybody, but he took the few florins he had saved up, bade his master farewell and went on his way begging—a little fourteenth-century boy, with long, straight hair and a girdled tunic, as you see them," continued the priest, "in the miniatures in the black-letter missal that lies upon my desk. No doubt Heaven favored him very strongly, and the saints watched over him; still, without the boldness of his own courage and the faith in his own heart they would not have done so. I suppose, too, that when knights in their armor and soldiers in their camps saw such a little fellow all alone they helped him, and perhaps struck some blows for him, and so sped him on his way and protected him from robbers and from wild beasts. Still, be sure that the real shield and the real reward that served Findelkind of Arlberg was the pure and noble purpose that armed him night and day. Now, history does not tell us where Findelkind went, nor how he fared, nor how long he was about it, but history does tell us that the little barefooted, long-haired boy, knocking so boldly at castle-gates and city-walls in the name of Christ and Christ's poor brethren, did so well succeed in his quest that before long he had returned to his mountain-home with means to have a church and a rude dwelling built, where he lived with six other brave and charitable souls, dedicating themselves to St. Christopher, and going out night and day, to the sound of the Angelus, seeking the lost and weary. This is really what Findelkind of Arlberg did five centuries ago, and did so well that his fraternity of St. Christopher twenty years after numbered amongst its members archdukes, prelates and knights without number, and lasted as a great order down to the days of Joseph II. This is what Findelkind in the fourteenth century did, I tell you. Bear like faith in your hearts, my children, and, though your generation is a harder one than his, because it is without faith, yet you shall move mountains, because Christ and St. Christopher will be with you."

Then the good man, having said that, blessed them and left them alone to their chestnuts and crabs and went into his own oratory to prayer. The other boys laughed and chattered, but Findelkind sat very quietly thinking of his namesake all the day after, and for many days and weeks and months this story haunted him. A little boy had done all that, and this little boy had been called Findelkind—Findelkind, just like himself.

It was a beautiful story, and yet it tortured him. If the good man had known how the history would root itself in the child's mind perhaps he would never have told it, for night and day it vexed Findelkind, and yet seemed beckoning to him and crying, "Go, thou, and do likewise!"

There was the snow, indeed, and there were the mountains, as in the fourteenth century, but there were no travellers lost. The diligence did not go into Switzerland after autumn, and the country-people who went by on their mules and in their sledges to Innspruck knew their way very well, and were never likely to be adrift on a winter's night or eaten by a wolf or a bear.

When spring came Findelkind sat by the edge of the bright pure water amongst the flowering grasses and felt his head heavy. Findelkind of Arlberg, who was in heaven now, must look down, he fancied, and think him so stupid and so selfish sitting there. The first Findelkind[Pg 441] a few centuries before had trotted down on his bare feet from his mountain-pass, and taken his little crook and gone out boldly over all the land on his pilgrimage, and knocked at castle-gates and city-walls in Christ's name and for love of the poor. That was to do something indeed!

This poor little living Findelkind would look at the miniatures in the priest's missal, in one of which there was the fourteenth-century boy with long hanging hair and a wallet and bare feet, and he never doubted that it was the portrait of the blessed Findelkind who was in heaven; and he wondered if he looked like a little boy there or if he were changed to the likeness of an angel.

"He was a boy just like me," thought the poor little fellow; and he felt so ashamed of himself, so much ashamed; and the priest had told him to try and do the same. He brooded over it so much, and it made him so anxious and so vexed, that his brothers ate his porridge and he did not notice it, his sisters pulled his curls and he did not feel it, his father brought a stick down on his back and he only started and stared, and his mother cried because he was losing his mind and would grow daft, and even his mother's tears he scarcely saw. He was always thinking of Findelkind in heaven.

When he went for water he spilt one half; when he did his lessons, he forgot the chief part; when he drove out the cow, he let her munch the cabbages; and when he was set to watch the oven, he let the loaves burn, like great Alfred. He was always busied thinking, "Little Findelkind that is in heaven did so great a thing: why may not I? I ought! I ought!" What was the use of being named after Findelkind that was in heaven unless one did something great too?

Next to the church there is a little stone sort of shed with two arched openings, and from it you look into the tiny church with its crucifixes and relics, or out to great, bold, sombre Martinswand, as you like best; and in this spot Findelkind would sit hour after hour while his brothers and sisters were playing, and look up at the mountains or on to the altar, and wish and pray and vex his little soul most woefully; and his ewes and his lambs would crop the grass about the entrance, and bleat to make him notice them and lead them farther afield, but all in vain. Even the dear sheep he hardly heeded, and his pet ewes Katte and Greta and the big ram Zips rubbed their soft noses in his hand unnoticed. So the summer passed away—the summer that is so short in the mountains, and yet so green and so radiant, with the torrents tumbling through the flowers, and the hay tossing in the meadows, and the lads and lasses climbing to cut the rich sweet grass of the alps. The short summer passed as fast as a dragon-fly flashes by, all green and gold, in the sun; and it was near autumn once more, and still Findelkind was always dreaming and wondering what he could do for the good of St. Christopher; and the longing to do it all came more and more into his little heart, and he puzzled his brain till his head ached.

One autumn morning, whilst yet it was dark, Findelkind made up his mind, and rose before his brothers and stole down stairs and out into the air, as it was easy to do, because the house-door never was bolted. He had nothing with him, he was barefooted, and his school-satchel was slung behind him, as Findelkind of Arlberg's wallet had been five centuries before. He took a little staff from the piles of wood lying about, and went out on to the highroad, on his way to do Heaven's will. He was not very sure—but that was because he was only nine years old and not very wise—but Findelkind that was in heaven had begged for the poor: so would he.

His parents were very poor, but he did not think of them as in want at any time, because he always had his bowlful of porridge and as much bread as he wanted to eat. This morning he had had nothing to eat: he wished to be away before any one could question him.

It was still dusk in the fresh autumn morning; the sun had not risen behind the glaciers of the Stubaythal, and the road was scarcely seen; but he knew it very well, and he set out bravely, saying[Pg 442] his prayers to Christ and to St. Christopher and to Findelkind that was in heaven. He was not in any way clear as to what he would do, but he thought he would find some great thing to do somewhere lying like a jewel in the dust; and he went on his way in faith, as Findelkind of Arlberg had done. His heart beat high, and his head lost its aching pains, and his feet felt light—as light as if there were wings to his ankles. He would not go to Zirl, because Zirl he knew so well, and there could be nothing very wonderful waiting there; and he ran fast the other way. When he was fairly out from under the shadow of Martinswand he slackened his pace, and saw the sun come up on his path and begin to redden the gray-green water; and the early Eilwagen from Landeck, that had been lumbering along all the night, overtook him. He would have run after it and called out to the travellers for alms, but he felt ashamed: his father had never let him beg, and he did not know how to begin. The Eilwagen rolled on through the autumn mud, and that was one chance lost. He was sure that the first Findelkind had not felt ashamed when he had knocked at the first castle-gate.

By and by, when he could not see Martinswand by turning his head back ever so, he came to an inn that used to be a post-house in the old days when men travelled only by road. A woman was feeding chickens in the bright clear red of the cold daybreak. Findelkind timidly held out his hand. "For the poor," he murmured, and doffed his cap.

The old woman looked at him sharply: "Oh, is it you, little Findelkind? Have you run off from school? Be off with you home! I have mouths enough to feed here."

Findelkind went away, and began to learn that it is not easy to be a prophet or a hero in one's own country. He trotted a mile farther and met nothing. At last he came to some cows by the wayside, and a man tending them. "Would you give me something to help make a monastery?" he said timidly, and once more took off his cap.

The man gave a great laugh: "A fine monk you! And who wants more of those lazy drones? Not I."

Findelkind never answered: he remembered the priest had said that the years he lived in were very hard ones, and men in them had no faith. Ere long he came to a big walled house, with turrets and grated casements—very big it looked to him—like one of the first Findelkind's own castles. His heart beat loud against his side, but he plucked up his courage and knocked as loud as his heart was beating. He knocked and knocked, but no answer came. The house was empty. But he did not know that: he thought it was that the people within were cruel, and he went sadly onward with the road winding before him, and on his right the beautiful, impetuous gray river, and on his left the green Mittelgebirge and the mountains that rose behind it. By this time the sun was high: its rays were glowing on the red of the cranberry-shrubs and the blue of the bilberry-boughs; he was hungry and thirsty and tired. But he did not give in for that: he held on steadily. He knew that there was near, somewhere near, a great city that the people called Sprugg, and thither he had resolved to go. By noontide he had walked eight miles, and come to a green place where men were shooting at targets, the tall thick grass all around them; and a little way farther off was a train of people chanting and bearing crosses and dressed in long flowing robes.

The place was the Höttinger Au, and the day was Saturday, and the village was making ready to perform a miracle-play on the morrow. Findelkind ran to the robed singing-folk, quite sure that he saw the people of God. "Oh, take me! take me!" he cried to them—"do take me with you to do Heaven's work!"

"It was only for Hötting-folk," said a lad older than himself. "Get out of the way with you, liebchen;" and the man who carried the cross knocked him with force on the head by mere accident, but Findelkind thought he had meant it.

Were people so much kinder five centuries[Pg 443] before? he wondered, and felt sad as the many-colored robes swept on through the grass and the crack of the rifles sounded sharply through the music of the chanting voices. He went on footsore and sorrowful, thinking of the castle-doors that had opened and the city-gates that had unclosed at the summons of the little long-haired boy painted on the missal.

He had come now to where the houses were much more numerous, though under the shade of great trees—lovely old gray houses, some of wood, some of stone, some with frescoes on them and gold and color and mottoes, some with deep-barred casements and carved portals and sculptured figures—houses of the poorer people now, but still memorials of a grand and gracious time. For he had wandered into the quarter of St. Nicholas of this fair mountain-city, which he, like his country-folks, called Sprugg, though the government and the world called it Innspruck.

He got out upon a long gray wooden bridge, and looked up and down the reaches of the river, and thought to himself maybe this was not Sprugg but Jerusalem, so beautiful it looked with its domes shining golden in the sun, and the snow of the Patscher Kofl and the Brandjoch behind them. For little Findelkind had never come so far before.

As he stood on the bridge so dreaming a hand clutched him and a voice said, "A whole kreutzer, or you do not pass."

Findelkind started and trembled. A kreutzer? He had never owned such a treasure in all his life. "I have no money," he murmured timidly: "I came to see if I could get money for the poor."

The keeper of the bridge laughed: "You are a little beggar, you mean? Oh, very well: then over my bridge you do not go."

"I never have such a thing of my own—never, never," said Findelkind, ready to cry.

"Then you were a little fool to come away from your home, wherever that may be," said the man at the bridge-head. "Well, I will let you go, for you look a baby. But do not beg: that is bad."

"Oh, yes, yes, yes, little saucebox! and take that," said the man, giving him a box on the ear, being angry at contradiction.

Findelkind's head drooped, and he went slowly over the bridge, forgetting that he ought to have thanked the toll-taker for a free passage. The world seemed to him very difficult. How had Findelkind done when he had come to bridges? and oh, how had Findelkind done when he had been hungry? For this poor little Findelkind was getting very hungry, and his stomach was as empty as was his wallet.

A few steps brought him to the Goldenes Dachl. He forgot his hunger and his pain, seeing the sun shine on all that gold and the curious painted galleries under it. He thought it was real, solid gold. Real gold laid out on a house-roof, and the people all so poor! Findelkind began to muse, and wonder why everybody did not climb up there and take a tile off and be rich. But perhaps it would be wicked. Perhaps God put the roof there with all that gold to prove people. Findelkind got bewildered. If God did such a thing, was it kind?

His head seemed to swim, and the sunshine went round and round with him. There went by him just then a very venerable-looking old man with silver hair: he was wrapped in a long cloak.

Findelkind pulled at the cloak gently, and the old man looked down. "What is it, my boy?" he asked.

The old man smiled: "Well, nobody thinks so. If you like to put it so, perhaps[Pg 444] it is. What do you want gold for, you wee thing?"

The old man's face scowled and grew dark, for he was a Lutheran pastor from Bavaria. "Who taught you such trash?" he said crossly.

And Findelkind's face began to burn and his blue eyes to darken and moisten. There was a little crowd beginning to gather, and the crowd was beginning to laugh. There were some soldiers and rifle-shooters in the throng, and they jeered and joked, and made fun of the old man in the long cloak, who grew angry then with the child. "You are a little idolater and a little impudent sinner," he said wrathfully, and shook the boy by the shoulder and went away; and the throng that had gathered round had only poor Findelkind left to tease.

He was a very poor little boy indeed to look at, with his sheepskin tunic and his bare feet and legs, and his wallet that never was to get filled.

And he answered with a sob in his voice, "I want to do like Findelkind of Arlberg."

And then the crowd laughed, not knowing at all what he meant, but laughing just because they did not know, as crowds always will do.

And only the big dogs, that are so very big in this country, and are all loose and free and good-natured citizens, came up to him kindly and rubbed against him and made friends; and at that tears came into his eyes and his courage rose, and he lifted his head.

"You are cruel people to laugh," he said indignantly: "the dogs are kinder. People did not laugh at Findelkind. He was a little boy just like me, no better and no bigger, and as poor, and yet he had so much faith, and the world then was so good, that he left his sheep and got money enough to build a church and a hospice to Christ and St. Christopher. And I want to do the same for the poor. Not for myself—no, for the poor. I am Findelkind too, and Findelkind that is in heaven speaks to me." Then he stopped, and a sob rose again in his throat.

"He is crazy," said the people, laughing, yet a little scared; for the priest at Zirl had said rightly, This is not an age of faith. At that moment there sounded, coming from the barracks, that used to be the Schloss in the old days of Kaiser Max and Mary of Burgundy, the sound of drums and trumpets and the tramp of marching feet. It was one of the corps of jägers of Tyrol going down from the avenue to the Rudolf Platz, with their band before them and their pennons streaming. It was a familiar sight, but it drew the street-throngs to it like magic: the age is not fond of dreamers, but it is very fond of drums. In almost a moment the old dark arcades and the river-side and the passages near were all empty, except for the old women sitting at their stalls of fruit or cakes or toys. They are wonderful arched arcades, like the cloisters of a cathedral more than anything else, and the shops under them are all homely and simple—shops of leather, of furs, of clothes, of wooden playthings, of sweet, wholesome bread. They are very quaint, and kept by poor folks for poor folks, but to the dazed eyes of Findelkind they looked like a forbidden Paradise, for he was so hungry and so heartbroken, and he had never seen any bigger place than little Zirl.

He stood and looked wistfully, but no one offered him anything. Close by was a stall of splendid purple grapes, but the old woman that kept it was busy knitting. She only called to him to stand out of her light.

"You look a poor brat: have you a home?" said another woman, who sold bridles and whips and horses' bells and the like.

The woman looked at him sharply: "Your parents have sent you on an errand here?"

"You are a bad woman to think such things," said Findelkind hotly, knowing himself on how innocent and sacred a quest he was.

"Bad? I? Oh ho," said the old dame, cracking one of her new whips in the air, "I should like to make you jump about with this, you thankless little vagabond! Be off!"

Findelkind sighed again, his momentary anger passing, for he had been born with a gentle temper, and thought himself to blame much more readily than he thought other people were—as, indeed, every wise child does, only there are so few children—or men—that are wise.

He turned his head away from the temptation of the bread- and fruit-stalls, for in truth hunger gnawed him terribly, and wandered a little to the left. From where he stood he could see the long beautiful street of Theresa with its oriels and arches, painted windows and gilded signs, and the steep, gray, dark mountains closing it in at the distance; but the street frightened him, it looked so grand, and he knew it would tempt him; so he went where he saw the green tops of some high elms and beeches. The trees, like the dogs, seemed like friends: it was the human creatures that were cruel.

At that moment there came out of the barrack-gates, with great noise of trumpets and trampling of horses, a group of riders in gorgeous uniforms, with sabres and chains glancing and plumes tossing. It looked to Findelkind like a group of knights—those knights who had helped and defended his namesake with their steel and their gold in the old days of the Arlberg quest. His heart gave a leap, and he jumped on the dust for joy, and he ran forward and fell on his knees and waved his cap like a little mad thing, and cried out, "Oh, dear knights! oh, great soldiers! help me, fight for me, for the love of the saints! I have come all the way from Martinswand, and I am Findelkind, and I am trying to serve St. Christopher like Findelkind of Arlberg."

But his little swaying body and pleading hands and shouting voice and blowing curls frightened the horses: one of them swerved, and very nearly settled the woes of Findelkind for ever and aye by a kick. The soldier who rode the horse reined him in with difficulty: he was at the head of the little staff, being indeed no less or more than the general commanding the garrison, which in this city is some fifteen thousand strong. An orderly sprang from his saddle and seized the child, and shook him and swore at him. Findelkind was frightened, but he shut his eyes and set his teeth, and said to himself that the martyrs must have had very much worse than these things to suffer in their pilgrimage. He had fancied these riders were knights—such knights as the priest had shown him the likeness of in old picture-books—whose mission it had been to ride through the world succoring the weak and weary and always defending the right.

"What are your swords for if you are not knights?" he cried, desperately struggling in his captor's grip, and seeing through his half-closed lids the sunshine shining on steel scabbards.

"What does he want?" asked the officer in command of the garrison, whose staff all this bright and martial array was. He was riding out from the barracks to an inspection on the Rudolf Platz. He was a young man, and had little children himself, and was half amused, half touched, to see the tiny figure of the dusty little boy.

"I want to build a monastery like Findelkind of Arlberg, and to help the poor," said our Findelkind valorously, though his heart was beating like that of a little mouse caught in a trap, for the horses were trampling up the dust around him and the orderly's grip was hard.

The officers laughed aloud; and indeed he looked a poor little scrap of a figure, very ill able to help even himself.

"Why do you laugh?" cried Findelkind, losing his terror in his indignation, and inspired with the courage which a great earnestness always gives. "You should not laugh. If you were true knights you would not laugh: you would[Pg 446] fight for me. I am little, I know. I am very little, but he was no bigger than I, and see what great things he did. But the soldiers were good in those days: they did not laugh and use bad words." And Findelkind, on whose shoulder the orderly's hold was still fast, faced the horses which looked to him as huge as Martinswand, and the swords which he little doubted were to be sheathed in his heart.

The officers stared, laughed again, then whispered together, and Findelkind heard them mutter the word "toll." Findelkind, whose quick little ears were both strained like a mountain-leveret's, understood that the great men were saying amongst themselves that it was not safe for him to be about alone, and that it would be kinder to him to catch and cage him—the general view with which the world regards enthusiasts.

He heard, he understood: he knew that they did not mean to help him, these men with the steel weapons and the huge steeds, but that they meant to shut him up in a prison—him, little free-born, forest-fed Findelkind. He wrenched himself out of the soldier's grip as the rabbit wrenches itself out of the jaws of the trap, even at the cost of leaving a limb behind, shot between the horses' legs, doubled like a hunted thing, and spied a refuge. Opposite the avenue of gigantic poplars and pleasant stretches of grass shaded by other bigger trees there stands a very famous church—famous alike in the annals of history and of art—the church of the Franciscans that holds the tomb of Kaiser Max, though, alas! it holds not his ashes, as his dying desire was that it should. The church stands here, a noble sombre place, with the Silver Chapel of Philippina Wessler adjoining it, and in front the fresh cool avenues that lead to the river and the broad water-meadows, and the grand road bordered with the painted stations of the Cross.

There were some peasants coming in from the country driving cows; some burghers in their carts with fat, slow horses; some little children were at play under the poplars and the elms; great dogs were lying about on the grass: everything was happy and at peace except the poor throbbing heart of little Findelkind, who thought the soldiers were coming after him to lock him up as mad, and ran and ran as fast as his trembling legs would carry him, making for sanctuary, as in the old bygone days that he loved many a soul less innocent than his had done. The wide doors of the Hof Kirche stood open, and on the steps lay a black and tan hound, watching no doubt for its master and mistress, who had gone within to pray. Findelkind in his terror vaulted over the dog, and into the church tumbled headlong.

It seemed quite dark, after the brilliant sunshine on the river and the grass: his forehead touched the stone floor as he fell, and as he raised himself and stumbled forward, reverent and bareheaded, looking for the altar to cling to when the soldiers should enter to seize him, his uplifted eyes fell on the great tomb.

The tomb seems entirely to fill the church as, with its twenty-four guardian figures round it, it towers up in the twilight that reigns here even at midday. There is a stern majesty and grandeur in it which dwarfs every other monument and mausoleum. It is grim, it is rude, it is savage, with the spirit of the rough ages that created it; but it is great with their greatness, it is heroic with their heroism, it is simple with their simplicity.

As the awestricken eyes of the terrified child fell on the mass of stone and bronze the sight smote him breathless. The mailed warriors standing around it, so motionless, so solemn, filled him with a frozen, nameless fear. He had never a doubt but that they were the dead arisen. The foremost that met his eyes were Theodoric and Arthur—the next, grim Rodolf, father of a dynasty of emperors. There, leaning on their swords, the three gazed down on him, armored, armed, majestic, serious, guarding the empty grave, which to the child, who knew nothing of its history, seemed a bier; and at the feet of Theodoric, who alone of them all looked young and merciful, poor little desperate Findelkind fell with a piteous sob, and cried, "I am not mad! Indeed, indeed, I am not mad!"[Pg 447]

He did not know that these six figures were but statues of bronze. He was quite sure they were the dead arisen, and meeting there around that tomb on which the solitary kneeling knight watched and prayed, encircled, as by a wall of steel, by these his comrades. He was not frightened; he was rather comforted and stilled, as with a sudden sense of some deep calm and certain help.

Findelkind, without knowing that he was like so many dissatisfied poets and artists much bigger than himself, dimly felt in his little tired mind how beautiful and how gorgeous and how grand the world must have been when heroes and knights like these had gone by in its daily sunshine and its twilight storms. No wonder Findelkind in heaven had found his pilgrimage so fair when, if he had needed any help, he had only had to kneel and clasp these firm mailed limbs, these strong cross-hilted swords, in the name of Christ and of the poor!

Theodoric seemed to look down on him with benignant eyes from under the raised visor, and Findelkind, weeping, threw his small arms closer and closer round the bronzed knees of the heroic figure and sobbed aloud, "Help me! help me! Oh, turn the hearts of the people to me, and help me to do good!"

There was no sound in the dark, hushed church; the gloom grew darker over Findelkind's eyes; the mighty forms of monarchs and of heroes grew dim before his sight. He lost consciousness and fell prone upon the stones at Theodoric's feet, for he had fainted from hunger and emotion.

When he awoke it was quite evening: there was a lantern held over his head; voices were muttering curiously and angrily; bending over him were two priests, a sacristan of the church and his own father. His little wallet lay by him on the stones, always empty.

"Liebchen, were you mad?" cried his father, half in rage, half in tenderness. "The chase you have led me! and your mother thinking you were drowned! and all the working day lost, running after old women's tales of where they had seen you! Oh, little fool! little fool! what was amiss with Martinswand that you must leave it?"

Findelkind slowly and feebly rose and sat up on the pavement, and looked up, not at his father, but at the knight Theodoric. "I thought they would help me to keep the poor," he muttered feebly as he glanced at his own wallet. "And it is empty, empty!"

"Are we not poor enough?" cried his father with paternal impatience, ready to tear his hair with vexation at having such a little idiot for son. "Must you rove afield to find poverty to help, when it sits cold enough, the Lord knows, at our own hearth? Oh, little ass! little dolt! little maniac! fit only for a madhouse! talking to iron figures and taking them for real men!—What have I done, O Heaven, that I should be afflicted thus?"

And the poor man wept, being a good, affectionate soul, but not very wise, and believing that his boy was mad. Then, seized with sudden rage once more at thought of his day all wasted and its hours harassed and miserable through searching for the lost child, he plucked up the light, slight figure of Findelkind in his own arms, and with muttered thanks and excuses to the sacristan of the church, bore the boy out with him into the evening air, and lifted him into a cart which stood there with a horse harnessed to one side of the pole, as the country-people love to do, to the risk of their own lives and their neighbors'. Findelkind said never a word: he was as dumb as Theodoric had been to him; he felt stupid, heavy, half blind; his father pushed him some bread, and he ate it by sheer instinct, as a lost animal will do. The cart jogged on, the stars shone, the great church vanished in the gloom of night.

As they went through the city toward the river-side and the homeward way not a single word did his father, who was a silent man at all times, address to him. Only once as they passed the bridge, "Son," he asked, "did you run away truly thinking to please God and help the poor?"[Pg 448]

"Then thou wert an ass," said his father. "Didst never think of thy mother's love and of my toil? Look at home."

Findelkind was mute. The drive was very long, backward by the same way, with the river shining in the moonlight and the mountains half covered with the clouds.

It was ten by the bells of Zirl when they came once more under the solemn shadow of grave Martinswand. There were lights moving about the house, his brothers and sisters were still up, his mother ran out into the road, weeping and laughing with fear and joy.

Findelkind himself said nothing. He hung his head. They were too fond of him to scold him or to jeer at him: they made him go quickly to his bed, and his mother made him a warm milk-posset and kissed him. "We will punish thee to-morrow, naughty and cruel one," said his parent. "But thou art punished enough already, for in thy place little Stefan had the sheep, and he has lost Katte's lambs, the beautiful twin lambs! I dare not tell thy father to-night. Dost hear the poor thing mourn? Do not go afield for thy duty again."

A pang went through the heart of Findelkind, as if a knife had pierced it. He loved Katte better than almost any other living thing, and she was bleating under his window motherless and alone. They were such beautiful lambs too!—lambs that his father had promised should never be killed, but be reared to swell the flock.

Findelkind cowered down in his bed and felt wretched beyond all wretchedness. He had been brought back, his wallet was empty, and Katte's lambs were lost. He could not sleep. His pulses were beating like so many steam-hammers: he felt as if his body were all one great throbbing heart. His brothers, who lay in the same chamber with him, were sound asleep: very soon his father and mother also, on the other side of the wall. Findelkind was alone, wide awake, watching the big white moon sail past his little casement and hearing Katte bleat. Where were her poor twin lambs? The night was bitterly cold, for it was already far on in autumn; the river had swollen and flooded many fields; the snow for the last week had fallen quite low down on the mountain-sides. Even if still living the little lambs would die, out on such a night without the mother or food and shelter of any sort. Findelkind, whose vivid brain always saw everything that he imagined as if it were being acted before his eyes, in fancy saw his two dear lambs floating dead down the swollen tide, entangled in rushes on the flooded shore, or fallen with broken limbs upon a crest of rocks. He saw them so plainly that scarcely could he hold back his breath from screaming aloud in the still night and arousing the mourning wail of the desolate mother.

At last he could bear it no longer: his head burned, and his brain seemed whirling round. At a bound he leaped out of bed quite noiselessly, slid into his sheepskins, and stole out as he had done the night before, hardly knowing what he did. Poor Katte was mourning in the wooden shed with the other sheep, and the wail of her sorrow sounded sadly across the loud roar of the rushing river. The moon was still high. Above, against the sky, black and awful with clouds floating over its summit, was the great Martinswand.

Findelkind this time called the big dog Waldmar to him, and with the dog beside him went once more out into the cold and the gloom, whilst his father and mother, his brothers and sisters, were sleeping, and poor childless Katte alone was awake. He looked up at the mountain, and then across the water-swept meadows to the river. He was in doubt which way to take. Then he thought that in all likelihood the lambs would have been seen if they had wandered the river-way, and even little Stefan would have had too much sense to let them go there. So he crossed the road and began to climb Martinswand. With the instinct of the born mountaineer he had brought out his crampons with him, and had now fastened them on his feet: he knew every part and ridge of the[Pg 449] mountains, and had more than once climbed over to that very spot where Kaiser Max had hung in peril of his life.

On second thoughts he bade Waldmar go back to the house. The dog was a clever mountaineer too, but Findelkind did not wish to lead him into danger. "I have done the wrong, and I will bear the brunt," he said to himself; for he felt as if he had killed Katte's children, and the weight of the sin was like lead on his heart, and he would not kill good Waldmar too.

His little lantern did not show much light, and as he went higher upward he lost sight of the moon. The cold was nothing to him, because the clear still air was one in which he had been reared; and the darkness he did not mind, because he was used to that also; but the weight of sorrow upon him he scarcely knew how to bear, and how to find two tiny lambs in this vast waste of silence and shadow would have puzzled and wearied older minds than his. Garibaldi and all his household, old soldiers tried and true, sought all night once upon Caprera on such a quest in vain. If he could only have awakened his brother Stefan to ask him which way they had gone! But then, to be sure, he remembered, Stefan must have told that to all those who had been looking for the lambs from sunset to nightfall. All alone he began the ascent.

Time and again, in the glad spring-time and the fresh summer weather, he had driven his flock upward to eat the grass that grew in the clefts of the rocks and on the broad green alps. The sheep could not climb to the highest points, but the goats did, and he with them. Time and again he had lain on his back in these uppermost heights, with the lower clouds behind him and the black wings of the birds and the crows almost touching his forehead, as he lay gazing up into the blue depth of the sky and dreaming, dreaming, dreaming.

He would never dream any more now, he thought to himself. His dreams had cost Katte her lambs, and the world of the dead Findelkind was gone for ever: gone all the heroes and knights; gone all the faith and the force; gone every one who cared for the dear Christ and the poor in pain.

The bells of Zirl were ringing midnight. Findelkind heard, and wondered that only two hours had gone by since his mother had kissed him in his bed. It seemed to him as if long, long nights had rolled away and he had lived a hundred years. He did not feel any fear of the dark calm night, lit now and then by silvery gleams of moon and stars. The mountain was his old familiar friend, and the ways of it had no more terror for him than these hills here used to have for the bold heart of Kaiser Max. Indeed, all he thought of was Katte—Katte and the lambs. He knew the way that the sheep-tracks ran—the sheep could not climb so high as the goats—and he knew too that little Stefan could not climb so high as he. So he began his search low down upon Martinswand.

After midnight the cold increased: there were snow-clouds hanging near, and they opened over his head, and the soft snow came flying along. For himself he did not mind it, but alas for the lambs! If it covered them, how would he find them? And if they slept in it they were dead.

It was bleak and bare on the mountain-side, though there were still patches of grass, such as the flocks liked, that had grown since the hay was cut. The frost of the night made the stone slippery, and even the irons gripped it with difficulty, and there was a strong wind rising like a giant's breath, and blowing his small horn lantern to and fro. Now and then he quaked a little with fear—not fear of the night or the mountains, but of strange spirits and dwarfs and goblins of ill repute, said to haunt Martinswand after nightfall. Old women had told him of such things, though the priest always said that they were only foolish tales, there being nothing on God's earth wicked save men and women who had not clean hearts and hands. Findelkind believed the priest; still, all alone on the side of the mountain, with the snowflakes flying round him, he felt a nervous thrill that[Pg 450] made him tremble and almost turn backward. Almost, but not quite, for he thought of Katte and the poor little lambs lost—and perhaps dead—through his fault.

The path went zigzag and was very steep; the Siberian pines swayed their boughs in his face; stones that lay in his path, unseen in the gloom, made him stumble. Now and then a large bird of the night flew by with a rushing sound: the air grew so cold that all Martinswand might have been turning to one huge glacier. All at once he heard through the stillness—for there is nothing so still as a mountain-side in snow—a little pitiful bleat. All his terrors vanished, all his memories of ghost-tales passed away; his heart gave a leap of joy; he was sure it was the cry of the lambs. He stopped to listen more surely. He was now many score of feet above the level of his home and of Zirl: he was, as nearly as he could judge, halfway as high as where the cross in the cavern marks the spot of the kaiser's peril. The little bleat sounded above him, and it was very feeble and faint.

Findelkind set his lantern down, braced himself up by drawing tighter his old leathern girdle, set his sheepskin cap firm on his forehead, and went toward the sound as far as he could judge that it might be. He was out of the woods now: there were only a few straggling pines rooted here and there in a mass of loose-lying rock and slate. So much he could tell by the light of the lantern, and the lambs, by the bleating, seemed still above him.

It does not perhaps seem very hard labor to hunt about by a dusky light upon a desolate mountain-side, but when the snow is falling fast, when the light is only a small circle, wavering yellowish on the white, when around is a wilderness of loose stones and yawning clefts, when the air is ice and the hour is past midnight, the task is not a light one for a man; and Findelkind was a child, like that Findelkind that was in heaven.

Long, very long, was his search: he grew hot and forgot all fear, except a spasm of terror lest his light should burn low and die out. The bleating had quite ceased now, and there was not even a sigh to guide him; but he knew that near him the lambs must be, and he did not waver nor despair.

He did not pray—praying in the morning had been no use—but he trusted in God, and he labored hard, toiling to and fro, seeking in every nook and behind each stone, and straining every muscle and nerve, till the sweat rolled in a briny dew off his forehead and his curls dripped with wet. At last, with a scream of joy, he touched some soft, close wool that gleamed white as the white snow. He knelt down on the ground and peered behind the stone by the full light of his lantern: there lay the little lambs—two little brothers, twin brothers, huddled close together, asleep. Asleep? He was sure they were asleep, for they were so silent and still.

He bowed over them and kissed them, and laughed and cried, and kissed them again. Then a sudden horror smote him: they were so very still. There they lay, cuddled close, one on another, one little white head on each little white body, drawn closer than ever together to try and get warm. He called to them; he touched them; then he caught them up in his arms, and kissed them again and again and again. Alas! they were frozen and dead. Never again would they leap in the long green grass, and frisk with one another, and lie happy by Katte's side: they had died calling for their mother, and in the long, cold, cruel night only Death had answered.

Findelkind did not weep nor scream nor tremble: his heart seemed frozen, like the dead lambs. It was he who had killed them. He rose up and gathered them in his arms, and cuddled them in the skirts of his sheepskin tunic, and cast his staff away that he might carry them; and so, thus burdened with their weight, set his face to the snow and the wind once more and began his downward way. Once a great sob shook him: that was all. Now he had no fear. The night might have been noonday, the snowstorm might have been summer, for aught that he knew or cared.

Long and weary was the way, and[Pg 451] often he stumbled and had to rest; often the terrible sleep of the snow lay heavy on his eyelids, and he longed to lie down and be at rest, as the little brothers were; often it seemed to him that he would never reach home again. But he shook the lethargy off him and resisted the longing, and held on his way: he knew that his mother would mourn for him as Katte mourned for the lambs. At length, through all difficulty and danger, when his light had spent itself, and his strength had wellnigh spent itself too, his feet touched the old highroad. There were flickering torches and many people and loud cries around the church, as there had been four hundred years before, when the last sacrament had been said in the valley for the hunter-king doomed to perish above. His mother, being sleepless and anxious, had risen long before it was dawn, and had gone to the children's chamber, and had found the bed of Findelkind empty once more.

He came into the midst of the people with the two little lambs in his arms, and he heeded neither the outcries of neighbors nor the frenzied joy of his mother: his eyes looked straight before him and his face was white like the snow. "I killed them," he said; and then two great tears rolled down his cheeks and fell on the little cold bodies of the two little dead twin brothers.

Findelkind was very ill for many nights and many days after that. Whenever he spoke in his fever he always said, "I killed them." Never anything else. So the dreary winter months went by, while the deep snow filled up valleys and meadows and covered the great mountains from summit to base, and all around Martinswand was quite still, save that now and then the post went by to Zirl, and on the holy days the bells tolled: that was all. His mother sat between the stove and his bed with a sore heart; and his father, as he went to and fro between the walls of beaten snow from the wood-shed to the cattle-byre, was sorrowful, thinking to himself the child would die and join that earlier Findelkind whose home was with the saints.

But the child did not die. He lay weak and wasted and almost motionless a long time, but slowly, as the spring-time drew near, and the snows on the lower hills loosened, and the abounding waters coursed green and crystal-clear down all the sides of the hills, Findelkind revived as the earth did, and by the time the new grass was springing and the first blue of the gentian gleamed on the Alps he was well.

But to this day he seldom plays, and scarcely ever laughs. His face is sad and his eyes have a look of trouble. Sometimes the priest of Zirl says of him to others, "He will be a great poet or a great hero some day." Who knows?

Meanwhile, in the heart of the child there remains always a weary pain that lies on his childish life as a stone may lie on a flower. "I killed them," he says often to himself, thinking of the two little white brothers frozen to death on Martinswand that cruel night; and he does the things that are told him, and is obedient, and tries to be content with the humble daily duties that are his lot, and when he says his prayers at bedtime always ends them so: "Dear God, do let the little lambs play with Findelkind that is in heaven."

HORSE-RACING IN FRANCE.

CONCLUDING PAPER.

By the end of July the dispersion of the racing fraternity has become general. Some have gone into the provinces to lead the pleasant life of the château; some are in the Pyrenees, eating trout and cotelettes d'izard at Luchon; while those whom the Paris season has quite worn out, or put in what they would call too "high" a condition, are refitting at Mont Dore or else at Vichy, which is the Saratoga of France—with this difference, that nobody goes to Vichy unless he is really ill, and that very few were ever known to get married there. But if our friend the sportsman should happen to have nothing the matter with him, and should know of nothing better to do during the summer than to go where his equine instincts would lead him, he may spend the month of July at least in following what is called "the Norman circuit." This consists of a series of meetings at different places, either on the coast or very near the Channel, in that green land of Normandy which is to France what the blue-grass region of Kentucky is to America—the great horse-raising province of the country. Here the circuit begins with the Beauvais meeting, always largely attended by reason of its proximity to Paris and to the numerous châteaux, all occupied at this season of the year, and in one of which, at Mouchy-le-Chastel, the duc de Mouchy entertains a large and distinguished company. Sunday and Tuesday are the days for races at Beauvais, Monday being given up to pigeon-shooting. Then follow in quick succession the courses of Amiens, Abbeville, Rouen, Havre and Caen; and in all these places the daily programme will be found to be a very varied one—too much so, indeed, to suit the taste of the English, whose notions of the fitness of things are offended by the sight of a steeple-chase and a flat-race on the same track. The Normans, on the contrary, finding even this double attraction insufficient, add to it the excitement of a trotting-match in harness and under the saddle. And such trotting! "Allais! marchais!" shouts the starter in good Norman, and away go the horses, dragging their lumbering, rattling Norman carts, guided by equally ponderous Norman peasants, over a track that is sure to be heavy or else too hard—conditions sufficient of themselves to account for the fact that the time made by these provincial trotters has not by any means been reduced to figures like the 2.18 of Dexter or the phenomenal 2.14 of Goldsmith Maid. It is possible, however, that this somewhat primitive condition of things may be gradually bettered by time, and that when American institutions and customs shall have come to be the mode in France trotting-races, and perhaps walking-matches and base-ball, will be developed with the rest; but up to the present time, it must be confessed, these various amusements have been regarded by the French public with profound indifference.

I cannot help feeling the most lively regret that trotting-contests should have taken no hold upon the fancy of my countrymen, who would find in their magnificent roads an opportunity for the demonstration of the practical, every-day value of a good trotter far more favorable than any possessed by America. But it seems that no considerations of utility or convenience can prevail against popular prejudices and, above all, the mode; and we find even the baron d'Étreilles, official handicapper and starter to the Jockey Club—and therefore an authority—writing this singular paragraph in Le Sport: "Trotting-races deserve but little encouragement. The so-called trotting-horse does not, in fact, trot at all. His pace is forced to such a degree of exaggeration as to lose all regularity, at the same time that it is rendered valueless for any practical purpose. The trotter can no more be put to his speed upon an ordinary[Pg 453] road than can the racer himself. By breaking up the natural gait of a horse he is made to attain an exceptional speed, it is true, but in doing so he has contracted an abnormal sort of movement for which it is impossible to find a name. It is something between a trot and a racking pace, and with it a first-rate trotter can make four kilomètres (two miles and a half) in seven minutes and a half, and not much less, whatever may be said to the contrary. I know that certain time-keepers have marked this distance as having been done in seven minutes, but this I consider disputable, to say the least." M. d'Étreilles cites, however, as an exception to his rules, a horse called Rochester, belonging to the Prince E. de Beauvan, which trotted nineteen miles in one hour without breaking or pacing, but when a return bet was proposed, with the distance increased to twenty miles, the owner of Rochester refused.

These assertions of the French authority will appear strange enough to Americans. But we must add that the views of M. d'Étreilles on this subject are by no means universally shared in France. A writer whose practical experience and long observation entitle his opinions to much weight—M. Gayot—goes so far as to say that the American trotters really form a distinct race. "The Northern States of the Union," he writes, "have accomplished for the trotter what England has done for the thoroughbred: by selecting the best—that is to say, the swiftest and the most enduring—and by breeding from these, there has been fixed in the very nature of their progeny that wonderful aptitude for speed which," in direct contradiction to the opinion of M. d'Étreilles, he declares to be "of the greatest practical utility."

The administration of the Haras and the Society for the Encouragement of the Raising of Horses of Half-blood have established special meetings at which trotting-prizes are given. That these are by no means to be despised has been proved by M. Jouben's Norman trotter Tentateur, who last year earned for his owner twenty thousand francs without the bets. There is a special journal, La France Chevaline, which represents the interests of the "trot," and its development has been further encouraged by an appropriation of sixty thousand francs voted this year by the Chamber. A former officer of the Haras has also set up an establishment at Vire for the training of trotters. In 1878 a track was laid out at Maison Lafitte, near Paris, for the trial of trotting-horses, and the government, in the hope that animals trained to this gait would be sent to Paris from other countries during the great Exhibition if sufficient inducement were offered, awarded a sum of sixty-two thousand francs to be given in premiums. Six races took place on the principal day of the trials. These were in harness to two- and four-wheeled wagons, and two of the matches were won by Normans, two by English horses and two by horses from Russia of the Orloff breed. America was, unfortunately, not represented. As to the public, it took little interest in the event, notwithstanding its novelty: the few persons who had come to look on soon grew tired of it, and after the fourth race not a single spectator was left upon the stands.

The marquis de MacMahon, brother of the marshal, used to say that the gallop was the gait of happy people, the natural movement of women and of fools. "The three prettiest things in the world," wrote Balzac, "are a frigate under sail, a woman dancing and a horse at full run." I leave these opinions, so essentially French, to the judgment of Americans, and turn to another point of difference in the racing customs of the two countries.

In France the practice of recording the time of a race is looked upon as childish. The reason given is, that horses that have run or trotted separately against time will often show quite contrary results when matched against each other, and that the one that has made the shortest time on the separate trial will frequently be easily beaten on the same track by the one that showed less speed when tried alone. However this may be, it appears that the average speed of running races in France has increased since 1872. At that time it was one minute and two to three seconds for one thousand mètres (five furlongs);[Pg 454] for two thousand mètres (a mile and a quarter), 2m. 8 to 10s.; for three thousand mètres (one mile seven furlongs), 3m. 34 to 35s.; for four thousand mètres (two miles and a half), 4m. 30 to 35s. The distance of the Prix Gladiateur (six thousand two hundred mètres or three and three-quarter miles one furlong)—the longest in France—is generally accomplished in 8m. 5 to 6s., though Mon Étoile has done it in 7m. 25s. But the mean speed, as we have said, has been raised since 1872, as it has been in America.

But let us come back to our Norman circuit, which this digression about time and trotting interrupted at Rouen. The sleepy old mediæval town on this occasion rouses itself from its dreams of the past and awakens to welcome the crowd of Norman farmers who come flocking in, clad for the most part in the national blue blouse, but still bearing about their persons those unmistakable though quite indescribable marks by which the turfman can recognize at a glance and under any costume the man whose business is with horses. Every trade and calling in life perhaps may be said to impart to its followers some distinguishing peculiarity by which the brethren of the craft at least will instinctively know each other; and amongst horse-fanciers these mysterious signs of recognition are as infallible as the signals of Freemasonry. As one penetrates still farther into Normandy on his way to the Caen races—which come off a few days after those at Rouen—one becomes still more alive to the fact that he is in a great horse-raising country. It is indeed to the departments of Calvados and the Orne beyond all other places that we owe those fine Norman stallions of which so many have been imported into America. In the Pin stud, at the fairs of Guibray and of Montagne, one may see the descendants of the colossal Roman-nosed horses of Merlerault and Cotentin which used to bear the weight of riders clad in iron, and which figure at a later day in the pictures of Van der Meulen. The infusion of English blood within the present century, and particularly during the Second Empire, has profoundly modified the character of the animal known to our ancestors: the Norman, with the rest of the various races once so numerous in France, is rapidly disappearing, and it will not be very long before two uniform types only will prevail—the draught-horse and the thoroughbred.

The race-course at Caen is one of the oldest in France, having been established as long ago as 1837. The most important events of its programme are the Prix de la Ville (handicap), with premium and stakes amounting to twenty or twenty-five thousand francs, on which the heaviest bets of the intermediate season are made, and the Grand St. Léger of France, which before the war took place at Moulins, and which is far from being of equal importance with the celebrated race at Doncaster whose name it bears. The site of the track at Caen is a beautiful meadow upon the banks of the Orne, very long and bordered with fine trees, but unfortunately too narrow, and consequently awkward at the turns.

By the rules of the Société colts of two years are not allowed to run before the first of August, and as the Caen races take place during the first week of this month, they have the first gathering of the season's crop of two-year-olds—an event which naturally excites the curiosity of followers of the turf. The wisdom and utility of subjecting animals of this age to such a strain upon their powers have been much discussed, and good judges have strongly condemned the precocious training involved, as tending to check the natural development of the horse, and sometimes putting a premature end to his career as a racer. In England these races have been multiplied to abuse. There are signs of a reaction, however, in France, where several owners of racing-stables, following the example set by M. Lupin, have found their advantage in refusing to take part in the pernicious practice. For, after all, these first trials really prove nothing at all. They are found to furnish no standard by which any accurate measure can be taken of the future achievements of the horse. In fact, if one will take the trouble to examine the lists of winners of these two-year-old criterions, as they are[Pg 455] called, he will find but very few names that have afterward become illustrious in the annals of the turf.

The races of Caen over, their followers take themselves some few leagues farther upon their circuit, to attend the meeting at Cabourg, one of those pretty little towns, made up of about a hundred villas, four hotels, a church and a casino, that lie scattered along the Norman coast like beads of a broken necklace. Living is dear in these stylish little out-of-the-way places, and this naturally keeps away the more plebeian element that frequents the great centres. About the fifteenth of August begins the week of races at Déauville, the principal event of the Norman circuit, bringing together not unfrequently as many as a hundred and sixty horses, and ranking, in fact, as third in importance in all France, the meetings at Longchamps and Chantilly alone taking precedence of it. It is to the duc de Morny that Déauville owes the existence of its "hippodrome," but the choice of this bit of sandy beach, that seemed to have been thrown up and abandoned by the sea like a waif, cannot be called a happy one. It may be, however, that the duke's selection of the site was determined by its proximity to the luxuriant valley of the Auge, so famous for its excellent pasturage and for the number of its stables. The Victor stud belonging to M. Aumont, that of Fervacques, the property of M. de Montgomery, and the baron de Rothschild's establishment at Meautry, are all in the immediate neighborhood of Déauville; but even these advantages do not compensate for the unfavorable character of the track, laid out, as we have said, upon land from which the sea had receded, and which, as might have been expected, was sure to be hard and cracked in a dry season. To remedy this most serious defect, and to bring the ground to its present degree of excellence, large sums had to be expended. The aspect of the race-course to-day, however, is really charming. A rustic air has been given to the stands, the ring, even to the stables that enclose the paddock, but it is a rusticity quite compatible with elegance, like that of the pretty Norman farm in the garden of Trianon. The purse for two-year-olds used to be called, under the Empire, the Prix Morny, but this name was withdrawn at the same time that the statue of the duke, which once stood in Déauville, was pulled down.

Our Norman circuit comes to a close with the races at Dieppe, which finished last year on the 26th of August. Dieppe was celebrated during the Empire for its steeple-chases, which were run upon a somewhat hilly ground left almost in its natural state—a very unusual thing in France. The flat- and hurdle-races which have succeeded to these since the war are not of sufficient importance to detain us.

Returning from this agreeable summer jaunt, in which the pleasures of sea-bathing have added a zest to the enjoyment of the race-course, the followers of the turf will seek, on coming back to Paris in the early days of September, the autumn meetings at Fontainebleau and at Longchamps. But they will not find the paddock of the latter at this season of the year bustling with the life and fashion that gave it such brilliancy in the spring, and the "return from the races" is made up of little else than hired cabs drawn by broken-down steeds. It is just the period when Paris, crowded with economical strangers, English or German—the former on their return, perhaps, from Switzerland, the latter enjoying their vacation after their manner—mourns the absence of her own gay world. The haute gomme—the swells, the upper ten—are still in the provinces. They have left the sea-side, it is true—it was time for that—but the season in the Pyrenees is not over yet, and Luchon and Bigone will be full until the middle of September, and not before the month is ended will Biarritz give up her pleasure-seekers. The opening of the shooting season on the first Sunday of September has scattered the sportsmen throughout the twenty-five or thirty departments in which there is still left a chance of finding game. But the best shooting is in the neighborhood of Paris, in the departments of Seine-et-Marne and Seine-et-Oise—at Grosbois[Pg 456] with the prince de Wagram; at St. Germain-les-Corbeil on the estate of M. Darblay; at Bois-Boudran with the comte de Greffuhle; or at the château of the baron de Rothschild at Ferrières; and the numerous guests of these gentlemen may, if they are inclined, take a day to see the Omnium or the Prix Royal Oak run between two battues aux faisans. The Omnium is the most important of the handicaps: it is the French Cæsarewitch, though with a difference. The distance of the latter is two miles and two furlongs, that of the Omnium but a mile and a half. The value of the stakes is generally from twenty-five to thirty thousand francs. As its name would indicate, this race, by exception to the fundamental principle of the Jockey Club, is open to horses of every kind, without regard to pedigree, above the age of three years. A horse that has gained a prize of two thousand francs after the publication of the weights is handicapped with an overweight of two kilogrammes and a half (a trifle over five pounds); if he has gained several such, with three kilos; if he is the winner of an eight-thousand-franc purse, he has to carry an overweight of four kilos, or one of five kilos if he has won more than one race of the value last mentioned. The publication of the weights takes place at the end of June, when the betting begins. Heavy and numerous are the wagers on this important race, and as the prospects of the various horses entered change from time to time according to the prizes gained and the overweights incurred, the quotation naturally undergoes the most unlooked-for variations. A lot of money is won and lost before the real favorites have revealed themselves; that is to say, before the last week preceding the race. The winner of the Omnium is hardly ever a horse of the first rank, and the baron d'Étreilles undertakes to tell us why. The object of the handicap, he says, being to equalize the chances of several horses of different degrees of merit, the handicapper is in a manner obliged to make it next to impossible for the first-rate horses to win; otherwise, the owners of the inferior animals, seeing that they had no chance, would prefer to pay forfeit, and the harmony, as it were, of the contest—the even balancing of chances, which is of the very essence of the handicap—would be lacking. On the other hand, the handicapper cannot bring the chances of the really bad horses up to the mean average, no matter how much he may favor them in the weights, and thus it nearly always turns out that the Omnium, like every other important handicap, is won by a horse of the second class, generally a three-year-old, whose real merits have been hidden from the handicapper. This concealment is not so difficult as it might seem. There are certain owners who, when they have satisfied themselves by trials made before the spring races that they have in their stables a few horses not quite good enough to stand a chance in the great contests, but still by no means without valuable qualities, prefer to reserve them for an important affair like the Omnium, on which they can bet heavily and to advantage, especially if they have a "dark horse," or one that is as yet unknown. Otherwise, to what use could these second-rate horses be put? If one should run them in the spring they might get one or two of the smaller stakes, after which everybody would have their measure. Their owners, therefore, show wisdom in keeping them out of sight, or perhaps, as some of the shrewder ones do, by running them when rather out of condition, and thus ensuring their defeat by adversaries really inferior to themselves. In this way the handicapper is deceived as to their true qualities, and is induced to weight them advantageously for the Omnium.

Many readers but little conversant with turf matters will no doubt be scandalized to hear of these tricks of the trade, and will be apt to conclude that good faith is no more the fashion at Longchamps than at the Bourse, and that cleverness in betting, as in stockjobbing, consists in knowing when to depreciate values and when to inflate them, as one happens to be a bull or a bear in the market. The truth is, that no rules can be devised, either by Jockey Clubs or by imperial parliaments, that can put a stop to these abuses: they[Pg 457] will exist, in spite of legislation, as long as the double character of owner and better can be united in the same person. If this person should not act in perfect good faith, all restraining laws will be illusory, because the betting owner has the cards in his own hands, and can withdraw a horse or make him run at his pleasure, or even make him lose a race in case of need. If the thing is managed with skill, it is almost impossible to discover the deception. In 1877, at Déauville, the comte de Clermont-Tonnere and his jockey, Goddart, were expelled from the turf because the latter had "pulled" his horse in such a clumsy and unmistakable way that the spectators could not fail to see it. This circumstance was without precedent in France, and yet how often has the trick, which in this case was exposed, been practised without any one being the wiser for it! It ought to be added that the betters make one claim that is altogether unreasonable, and that is—at least this is the only inference from their talk—that when they have once "taken" a horse, as they call it, in a race, the owner thereby loses a part of his proprietorship in the animal, and is bound to share his rights of ownership with them. But one cannot thus limit the rights of property, and as long as the owner does not purposely lose a race, and does not deceive the handicapper as to the real value of his horse for the purpose of getting a reduction of weights, he can surely do as he pleases with his own. There will remain, of course, the question of morality and of delicacy, of which each one must be the judge for himself. M. Lupin, for example, and Lord Falmouth, when they have two horses engaged for the same purse, always let these take their chances, and do nothing to prevent the better horse from being the winner, while the comte de Lagrange, as we have had occasion to observe before, has acquired the reputation of winning, if he can, with his worst animal, or at least with the one upon whose success the public has least counted. This is what took place when he gained the Grand Prix de Paris in 1877 with an outsider, St. Christophe, whilst all the betters had calculated upon the victory of his other horse, Verneuil. So the duke of Hamilton in 1878 at Goodwood, where one of his horses was the favorite, declared just at the start that he meant to win with another, and by his orders the favorite was pulled double at the finish. The same year, in America, Mr. Lorillard caused Parole, then a two-year-old, to be beaten by one of his stable-companions and one decidedly his inferior. When this sort of thing is done the ring makes a great uproar about it, but without reason, for there can be no question of an owner's right to save his best horse, if he can, from a future overweight by winning with another not so good. Only he ought frankly to declare his intention to do so before the race.

The autumn stakes that rank next in importance to the Omnium are known as the Prix Royal Oak, open, like its counterpart, the St. Leger of Doncaster, to colts and fillies of three years only, with an unloading of three pounds for the latter. On this occasion one will have an opportunity of seeing again in the Bois de Boulogne the contestants of the great prizes of the spring. The Royal Oak is nearly always won by a horse of the first class, and in the illustrious list may be found the names of Gladiateur and of four winners of the French Derby—Patricien, Boïard, Kilt and Jongleur.

In October, Longchamps is deserted for Chantilly, where the trials of two-year-olds take place—the first criterion for horses, the second criterion for fillies—the distance in these two races being eight hundred mètres, or half a mile. The Grand Criterion, for colts and fillies, has a distance of double this, or one mile (sixteen hundred mètres). Since their débuts in August at Caen and Déauville the young horses have had time to harden and to show better what they are made of; and it is in the Grand Criterion that one looks for the most certain indications of their future career. The names of the winners will be found to include many that have afterward become celebrated, such as Mon Étoile, Stradella, Le Béarnais, Mongoubert, Sornette, Révigny and others.[Pg 458]

Chantilly is the birthplace of racing in France. In the winter of 1833—the same year which also witnessed the foundation of the Jockey Club—Prince Labanoff, who was then living at Chantilly, and who had secured the privilege of hunting in the forest, invited several well-known lovers of the chase to join him in the sport. Tempted by the elasticity of the turf, it occurred to the hunters to get up a race, and meeting at the Constable's Table—a spot where once stood the stump of a large tree on which, as the story goes, the constable of France used to dine—they improvised a race-course which has proved the prolific mother of the tracks to be found to-day all over the country. In this first trial M. de Normandie was the winner. The fate of Chantilly was decided. Since the suicide—or the assassination—of the last of the Condés the castle had been abandoned, the duc d'Aumale, its inheritor, being then a minor. The little town itself seemed dying of exhaustion. It was resolved to infuse into it a new life by taking advantage of the exceptional quality of its turf. The soil is a rather hard sand, resisting pressure, elastic, and covered with a fine thick sward, and of a natural drainage so excellent that even the longest rains have no visible effect upon it. On this ground—as good as, if not better than, that at Newmarket—there is to-day a track of two thousand mètres, or a mile and a quarter—the distance generally adopted in France—with good turns, excepting the one known as the "Réservoirs," which is rather awkward, and which has the additional disadvantage of skirting the road to the training-stables—a temptation to bolt that is sometimes too strong for horses of a doubtful character. For this reason there is sometimes a little confusion in the field at this point. Before coming to the last turn there is a descent, followed by a rise—both of them pretty stiff—and this undoubtedly has its effect on the result, for the lazier horses fall away a little on the ascent. Just at this point too a clump of trees happens to hide the track from the spectators on the stands, and all the lorgnettes are turned on the summit of the rise to watch for the reappearance of the horses, who are pretty sure to turn up in a different order from that in which they were last seen. This crisis of the race is sometimes very exciting. A magnificent forest of beech borders and forms a background to the race-course in the rear of the stands; in front rise the splendid and imposing stables of the duc d'Aumale, built by Mansard for the Great Condé; on the right is the pretty Renaissance château of His Royal Highness; while the view loses itself in a vast horizon of distant forest and hills of misty blue. The stands are the first that were erected in France, and in 1833 they seemed no doubt the height of comfort and elegance, but to-day they are quite too small to accommodate the ever-increasing crowd. The stands as well as the stables, and the race-course itself, all belong to the duc d'Aumale, who gave a splendid house-warming and brilliant fête last October to celebrate the completion of the restorations of his ancestral château. Under the Empire, the property of the Orleans princes having been confiscated, a nominal transfer of Chantilly was made to a friend of the family. The emperor, having one day signified his wish to witness the Derby, had the mortification on his arrival to find the reserved stand closed against him by the prince's orders. It was necessary to force the gate. The emperor took the hint, however, and never went to Chantilly again.

The soil of the Forest of Fontainebleau being of the same nature as that of the turf in the open, the alleys of the park furnish an invaluable resource to the trainer. For this reason, since racing has come in vogue, most of the stables have found their way to Chantilly or to its immediate neighborhood, where one of the largest and finest alleys of the forest, running parallel to the railway and known as the Alley of the Lions, has been given up to their use. Thus, Chantilly, with its Derby Day and its training-grounds, may be called at once the Epsom and the Newmarket of France. There is hardly a horse, with the exception of those of the comte de Lagrange[Pg 459] and of M. Lupin, and those of Henry Jennings, the public trainer, that is not "worked" in the Alley of the Lions. The Société d'Encouragement has control of the training-ground as well as of the track, and also claims the right to keep spectators away from the trial-gallops, so that the duc d'Aumale, whose proprietary privileges are thus usurped, is often at war with the society. He has stag-hunts twice a week during the winter, on Mondays and Thursdays, and now and then on Sundays too—as he did with the grand duke of Austria on his late visit to Chantilly—and he naturally objects to having the hunt cut in two by the gallops over his principal avenue. He worries the trainers to such a degree that they begin to talk of quitting Chantilly for some more hospitable quarters. When things get to this pass the duke, who, in his character of councillor-general, is bound to look after the interests of his constituents, relents, and putting aside his personal wrongs calls a parley with the stewards of the races, offers a new prize—an object of art perhaps—or talks of enlarging the stands, and the gage of reconciliation being accepted, peace is made to last until some new casus belli shall occur. His Royal Highness is not forgetful of the duties of his position. When he is at Chantilly on a race-day he gracefully does the honors of his reserved stand to all the little Orleanist court. Since the reconciliation that took place between the comte de Paris and the comte de Chambord in 1873 this miniature court has been enlarged by the addition of several personages of the Legitimist circle, and the "ring" at Chantilly is often graced with a most distinguished and aristocratic assemblage. Amongst the beauties of this brilliant company may be especially noticed Madame de Viel-Castel, the young princesse Amédé de Broglie, the duchesse de Chaulnes with her strange, unconventional type of beauty, Madame Ferdinand Bischoffsheim, the comtesse Beugnot, the comtesse Tanneguy-Duchâtel and the princesse de Sagan. And when all this gay party has dispersed, and the duke is left to his cigar—as constant a companion as the historical weed in the mouth of General Grant—he might almost fancy, as he walks the great street of his good town, that he is back again at Twickenham in the days of his exile. There is something to remind him on every side of the country that once sheltered him. To right and left are English farrieries, English saddleries, and English bars and taverns too. English is the language that reaches his ears, and English of the most "horsey" sort that one can hear this side of Newmarket. Everybody has the peculiar gait and costume that belong to the English horseman: the low-crowned hat, the short jacket, those tight trousers and big, strong boots, are not to be mistaken. It is a little world in itself, in which no Frenchman could long exist, but its peculiar inhabitants have not, for all that, neglected anything that may attract the young folk of the country. They have even offered the bribe of a race in which only French jockeys are permitted to ride, but these, with only an exception here and there, have very promptly given up the business, disgusted either by the severe regimen required in the matter of diet or by the rigorous discipline indispensable in a training-stable. The few exceptions to which I have referred have not sufficed to prevent this race from falling into disrepute; but it may be worth mentioning that on the last occasion on which it was run, the 19th October last, when but three or four horses were engaged, the baron de Bizé, with what has been called a veritable inspiration of genius, threw an unlooked-for interest into the event by mounting in person M. Camille Blanc's horse Nonancourt, and winning the race with him. It is to be borne in mind that the riders must not only have been born in France, but must be of French parentage on the side of both father and mother.

The best-known jockeys are nearly all the children of English parents, and have first seen the light in the little colony at Chantilly or else have been brought very young into France. I give some of their names, classed according to the number of victories gained by them respectively in 1878: Hunter, who generally rides for[Pg 460] M. Fould, 47 victories; Wheeler, head-jockey and trainer for M. Ed. Blanc, 45 victories; Hislop, 39; Hudson, ex-jockey to M. Lupin, who gained last year the Grand Prix de Paris, 36 victories; Rolf, 35; Carratt, 32; Goater, who rides for the comte de Lagrange, and who is well known in England; and Edwards, whose "mount" was at one time quite the mode, and whose tragical death on the 3d of October last created a painful sensation. When Lamplugh was training for the duke of Hamilton he made Edwards "first stable-boy," and this and his subsequent successes excited a violent jealousy in one of his stable-companions named Page. The two jockeys separated, but instead of fighting a duel, as Frenchmen might have done, they simply rode against each other one day at Auteuil—Page on Leona, and Edwards on Peau-d'Âne. The struggle was a desperate one: both riders got bad falls from their exhausted mares, and from that time poor Edwards never regained his aplomb. He frequently came to grief afterward, and met his death in consequence of a fall from Slowmatch at Maison Lafitte.

One of the oldest celebrities of Chantilly is Charles Pratt, formerly trainer and jockey for the baron Nivière and for the late Charles Lafitte, and at present in the service of the prince d'Aremberg. His system of training approached very nearly that of Henry Jennings, under whose orders and instructions he had worked for a long time. His horses were always just in the right condition on the day they were wanted, and as he never allowed them to be overridden, their legs remained uninjured for many years—a thing that has become too rare in France as well as in England. As a jockey Pratt possessed, better than any other, that knowledge of pace without which a rider is sure to commit irreparable mistakes. At the Grand Prix de Paris of 1870, when he rode Sornette, he undertook the daring feat of keeping the head of the field from the start to the finish. Such an enterprise in a race so important and so trying as this demanded the nicest instinct for pace and the most thorough knowledge, which as trainer he already possessed, of the impressionable nature and high qualities of his mare.

The autumn meetings at Chantilly close the legitimate season in France. The affairs at Tours are of little interest except to the foreign colony—which at this season of the year is pretty numerous in Touraine—and to the people of the surrounding country. On these occasions the cavalry officers in garrison at Tours get up paper hunts, a species of sport which is rapidly growing in favor and promises to become a national pastime. Whatever interest attaches to the November races at Bordeaux is purely local. Turfmen who cannot get through the winter without the sight of the jockeys' silk jackets and the bookmakers' mackintoshes must betake themselves to Pau in December. The first of the four winter meetings takes place during this month upon a heath at a distance of four kilomètres—say about two miles and a half—from the town. The exceptional climate and situation of Pau, where the frozen-out fox-hunters of England come to hunt, and where there is a populous American colony, will no doubt before long give a certain importance to these races, but just now the local committee is short of funds and the stakes have been insufficient to offer an attraction to good horses. Last winter in one of the steeple-chases all the horses tumbled pell-mell into the river, which was the very first obstacle they encountered, and although the public was quite used to seeing riders come to grief, it found the incident somewhat extraordinary.

The meetings at Nice, the queen of all winter residences in Europe, are much finer and more worthy of attention. They begin in January, and the programme has to be arranged almost exclusively for steeple-chases and hurdle-races, as flat-racers are not in condition for running at the time when the season at Nice is at its height. The greater number, and particularly the best, of the racers have important engagements for the spring meetings at Paris and at Chantilly, and even in view of really valuable prizes they could not afford at this time of year to undergo a complete preparation, which[Pg 461] would advance them too rapidly in their training and would make it impossible to have them in prime condition in the spring. The race-course at Nice is charmingly situated in the valley of the Var. The perfume of flowers from numerous beds reaches the stands, where one may enjoy a magnificent view of mountain and sea, whilst a good band discourses music in the intervals of the races. Some of the prizes are important. The Grand Prix de Monaco, for instance, popularly known as "The Cup", consists of an object of art given by the prince of Monaco and a purse of twenty thousand francs, without counting the entrance-stakes. On the second day is run the great hurdle handicap for seventy-five hundred francs called the Prix de Monte Carlo, and on the third and last day of the meeting the Grand Prix de Nice, a free handicap steeple-chase for a purse of ten thousand francs.

The international pigeon-shooting matches at Monaco, which occur at the same time, contribute, with the races, to give an extraordinary animation to this period of the season at Nice. The betting-ring feels the influence of the proximity of the gaming-tables, where everybody goes; and yet one could so easily exchange this feverish life of play for the calmer enjoyments of the capital cuisine of London House and an after-dinner stroll on the English Promenade or the terraces of Monte Carlo, in dreamy contemplation of the mountains with their misty grays and a sea and sky of such heavenly blue. But no: this charming programme is wantonly rejected: not the finest orchestras, not the prettiest fêtes, not the newest chansonettes sung by Judie and Jeanne Granier themselves, can turn the players for a moment from the pursuit of their one absorbing passion. Play goes on at the Casino of Monte Carlo the livelong day, the only relaxation from the couleur gagnante or tiers et tout being when the gamblers step across the way to take a shot at the pigeons or a bet on the birds; for they must bet on something, if it is but on the number of the box from which the next victim will fly. And when in the evening the players have returned to Nice it is only to indulge the fierce passion again in playing baccarat—the terrible Parisian baccarat—at the Massena Club or at the Mediterranean, where the betting is even higher than at Monaco. Hundreds of thousands of francs change hands every hour from noon to six o'clock in the morning in this gambling-hell—a hell disguised in the colors of Paradise.

But let us fly from the perilous neighborhood and reach the nearest race-course by the fastest train we can find. The passion for the turf is healthier than the other, and its ends not so much in need of concealment. Unluckily, we shall not find just at this season—that is to say, in February—anything going on excepting a few steeple-chases—some "jumping business," as the English say rather contemptuously. In England there are certain owners, such as Lord Lonsdale, Captain Machell, Mr. Brayley and others, who, though well known in flat-races, have also good hunters in their stables, while the proprietors of the latter in France confine themselves exclusively to this specialty. Perhaps the best known amongst them are the baron Jules Finot and the marquis de St. Sauveur. Most of the members of the Jockey Club affect to look down upon the "illegitimate" sport, as they call it. It would seem, however, that this disdain is hardly justifiable, for as a spectacle at least a steeple-chase is certainly more dramatic and more interesting than a flat-race. What can be finer than the sight of a dozen gentlemen or jockeys, as the case may be, charging a brook and taking it clear in one unbroken line? And yet, despite the attractions and excitement of the sport, and all the efforts made from time to time by the Society of Steeple-chases to popularize it in France, it cannot as yet be called a success. Complaint is made, as in England, of too short distances, of the insufficiency of the obstacles, of an overstraining of the pace. The whole thing is coming to partake more and more of the nature of a race, an essentially different thing. Field sports are not races—at least they never ought to be. A steeple-chase can never answer the true purpose[Pg 462] of the flat-race, which is to prove which is the best horse, to the end that he may ultimately reproduce his like. But nobody ever heard of "a sire calculated to get steeple-chasers". The cleverness and the special qualities that make a good steeple-chaser are not transmitted. The best have been horses of poor appearance, often small and unsightly, that have been given up by the trainer as incapable of winning in flat-races. In England the winners of the "Grand National" have had no pedigree to speak of, and have failed upon the track. Cassetête had run in nineteen races without gaining a single one before he began his remarkable career as a hunter; Alcibiade had been employed at Newmarket as a lad's horse; Salamander was taken out of a cart to win the great steeple-chases at Liverpool and Warwick.

In France there is no Liverpool or Croydon or Sandown for steeple-chases: there is only an Auteuil. The other meetings in the neighborhood of Paris—Maisons, Le Vésinet, La Marche—are in the hands of shameless speculators like Dennetier, Oller and the rest. Poor horses, bought in the selling races and hardly trained at all to their new business, compete at these places for slender purses, and often with the help of dishonest tricks. Accidents, as might be expected, are frequent, although the obstacles, with the exception of the river at La Marche, are insignificant. But the pace is pushed to such excess that the smallest fence becomes dangerous. This last objection, however, may be made even to the running at Auteuil, where the course is under the judicious and honorable direction of the Society of Steeple-chases. The pace is quite too severe for such a long stretch, strewn as it is with no less than twenty-four obstacles, and some of them pretty serious. The weather, too, is nearly always bad at Auteuil, even at the summer meetings, and the ill-luck of the Steeple-chase Society in this respect has become as proverbial as the good-fortune and favoring skies that smile upon the Société d'Encouragement, its neighbor at Longchamps. It is not to be wondered at, then, that the English do not feel at home upon this dangerous track. They have gained but twice the great international steeple-chase founded in 1874—the first time with Miss Hungerford in the year just mentioned, and again with Congress in 1877. This prize, the most important of the steeple-chase purses in France, amounts to twelve hundred sovereigns, added to a sweepstakes of twenty sovereigns each, with twelve sovereigns forfeit—or only two sovereigns if declared by the published time—and is open to horses of four years old and upward. It is run in the early part of June. Last year, whilst Wild Monarch, belonging to the marquis de St. Sauveur and ridden by D'Anson, was winning the race, the splendid stands took fire and were burned, without the loss of a single life, and even without a serious accident, thanks to the ample width of the staircases and of the exits. These stands were the newest and the most comfortable in the country. It is to be hoped that the society will not allow itself to be discouraged by such a persistent run of ill-luck, but that it will continue to pursue its work, the object of which it has declared to be "to encourage, as far as its resources will permit, the breeding and raising of horses for service and for the army." As the Encouragement Society rests upon the Jockey Club, so the Society of Steeple-chases finds its support in the Cercle of the Rue Royale, commonly called the Little Club or the Moutard. This club was reorganized after the war under the direction of the prince de Sagan, and has made great sacrifices to bring Auteuil into fashion.

The regular racing-season in France begins on the 15th of March, and no horse that has appeared upon any public track before this date is permitted to enter. The first event of the series is the spring meeting at Rheims—the French Lincoln. Of the six flat-races run here, one, known as the Derby of the East, is for two-year-olds of the previous year, with a purse of five thousand francs. In the "Champagne" races the winner gets, besides his prize, a basket of a hundred bottles of the sparkling wine instead of the empty "cup" that gives its name to[Pg 463] other famous contests. After Rheims the next meeting in course is at Longchamps, in the beginning of April, opening with the Prix du Cadran, twenty-five thousand francs, distance forty-two hundred mètres, for four-year-olds. Then comes the essay of horses of the year in the Trial Sweepstakes and the Prix Daru, corresponding with the Two Thousand Guineas and the Thousand Guineas at Newmarket. The quotation begins to take shape as the favorites for the great events of May and June stand out more clearly. Of all the prizes—not excepting even the Grand Prix de Paris—the one most desired by French turfmen is the French Derby, or, to call it by its official name, the Prix du Jockey Club, the crowning event of the May meeting at Chantilly. The conditions of the Derby are as follows: For colts and fillies of three years, distance twenty-four hundred mètres, or a mile and a half, fifty thousand francs, or two thousand pounds sterling, with stakes added of forty pounds for each horse—twenty-four pounds forfeit, or twenty pounds if declared out at a fixed date; colts to carry one hundred and twenty-three pounds, and fillies one hundred and twenty pounds. The purse last year amounted to £3863 (96,575 francs). Like the English Derby, its French namesake is regarded as the test and gauge of the quality of the year's production. In the year of the foundation of this important race (1836), and for the two succeeding years, it was gained by Lord Henry Seymour's stable, whose trainer, Th. Carter, and whose stallion, Royal Oak, both brought from England, were respectively the best trainer and the best stallion of that time. In 1839, however, the duc d'Orléans's Romulus, foaled at the Meudon stud, put an end to these victories of the foreigner. In 1840 the winner was Tontine, belonging to M. Eugène Aumont, but Lord Seymour, whose horse had come in second, asserted that another horse had been substituted for Tontine, and that under this name M. Aumont had really entered the English filly Hérodiade, while the race was open only to colts foaled and raised in France. A lawsuit was the result, and while the courts refused to admit Lord Seymour's claim, the racing committee declared the mare disqualified, and M. Aumont sold his stable. In 1841, Lord Seymour again gained the Derby with Poetess (by Royal Oak), who afterward became mother of Heroine and of Monarque and grandmother of Gladiateur. In 1843 there was a dead heat between M. de Pontalbra's Renonce and Prospero, belonging to the trainer Th. Carter, and, as often happens, the worse horse—in this case it was Renonce—won the second heat. In 1848, the name of "Chantilly" being just then too odious, the Derby was run at Versailles, and was gained by M. Lupin's Gambetti. This same year is remarkable in the annals of the French turf for the excellence of its production. From this period until 1853—the year of Jouvence—M. Lupin enjoyed a series of almost uninterrupted successes. In 1855 the Derby was won by the illustrious Monarque, and the following year witnessed the first appearance upon the turf of the now famous red and blue of Lagrange. It was Beauvais, belonging to Madame Latache de Fay, who in 1860 carried off the coveted prize, which was won the next year by Gabrielle d'Estrées, from the stable of the comte de Lagrange. Then for a period of nine years the count's stable had a run of ill-luck, its horses always starting as prime favorites and being as invariably beaten. This was Trocadéro's fate in 1867. He was a great favorite, and had, moreover, on this occasion the assistance of his stable-companion Mongoubert, a horse of first-rate qualities. This time, at least, the count's backers were sure of success, but the victory that seemed within their grasp was wrested from their hands by the unexpected prowess developed upon the field of battle by a newcomer, M. Delamarre's Patricien. At a distance of two hundred mètres from the goal the three horses named were alone in the race, and the struggle between them was a desperate one. It looked almost as if it might turn out a dead heat, when Patricien, with a tremendous effort, reached the winning-post a head in advance, after one of the finest and best-contested races ever seen[Pg 464] at Chantilly. In 1869, however, Consul succeeded in turning the tide of adverse fortune that had set in against the comte de Lagrange, but it was only for the moment, and it was not until 1878 that he was again the victor, when he won with Insulaire. He repeated the success last year with Zut, whom Goater brought in to the winning-post a length and a half ahead of the field.

Unfortunately, the winner of the French Derby can hardly ever be in good condition to contest the great race at Epsom. These two important events are too near in point of time, and the fatigue of the journey, moreover, puts the horse that has to make it at a disadvantage. Were it not for this drawback it is probable that the comte de Lagrange would beat the English oftener than he does. In May, 1878, his horse Insulaire, having just come in second in the Two Thousand Guineas at Newmarket, left that place for home, won the French Derby on Sunday, and returned to England in time for the Epsom Derby on Wednesday, where he came in second. He recrossed the Channel, and the following Sunday was second again in the Grand Prix de Paris, Thurio passing him only by a head. Making the passage again—and this was his fourth voyage within fifteen days—he gained the Ascot Derby. It is not unlikely that if this remarkable horse had remained permanently in the one country or the other he would have carried off the principal prizes of the turf.

For the last three or four years the racing men have been in the habit of meeting, after the Grand Prix de Paris, in the pretty park of La Marche, between St. Cloud and St. Germain. It is quite a private gathering, and as elegant as a dashing turnout of some fifteen or twenty four-in-hands and a pretty luncheon and charming flirtation can make it, and if dancing has not yet been introduced it soon will be. Prizes in the shape of groups in bronze and paintings and valuable weapons are awarded to the gentlemen present who may take part in the hunting steeple-chase or the race with polo ponies or with hacks.

In 1878 a new race-course was started at Enghien, to the north of Paris. The prizes are sufficiently large, the stands comfortable and the track is good; and these attractions, with the advantage of the neighborhood of the Chantilly and Morlaye stables, will no doubt make Enghien a success. Steeple-chases and hurdle-races predominate.

We can hardly close this review of turf matters in France without at least a reference to the so-called sporting journals, but what we have to say of them can be told in two words. They exist only in name. Any one who buys Le Sport, Le Turf, Le Jockey, Le Derby, the Revue des Sports, etc., on the faith of their titles—nearly all English, be it observed—will be greatly disappointed if he expects to find in them anything beyond the mere programmes of the races: they contain no criticism worthy of the name, no accurate appreciation of the subject they profess to treat of, and are even devoid of all interesting details relating to it. Far from following the example of their fellows of London and New York, these sheets concern themselves neither with hunting, shooting or fishing, nor with horse-breeding or cattle-raising, but give us instead the valuable results of their lucubrations upon the names of the winning horses of the future, and with such sagacity that a subscriber to one of them has made the calculation that if he had bet but one louis upon each of the favorites recommended by his paper he would have lost five hundred louis in the one year of his subscription.

Let us add, however, that, the press excepted, the English have nothing more to teach their neighbors in turf matters. The Pall Mall Gazette has well said that the organization of racing in France has taken a great deal of what is good from the English turf, and has excluded most of what is bad. The liberality of the French Jockey Club is declared by Vanity Fair to be in striking contrast with the starveling policy of its English namesake. The Daily Telegraph has recently eulogized the French club for having found out how to rid the turf of the pest of publicans and speculators and clerks of courses, and of all the riffraff that encumber and disgrace[Pg 465] it in England, and that make parliamentary intervention necessary. The French turf, in fine, may be said to be inferior to the English in the number of horses, but its equal in respect of their quality, while it must be admitted to be superior to it in the average morality of their owners.

FROM FAR.

Oh, Love, come back, across the weary way
Thou didst go yesterday—
Dear Love, come back!

"I am too far upon my way to turn:
Be silent, hearts that yearn
Upon my track."

Oh, Love! Love! Love! sweet Love! we are undone
If thou indeed be gone
Where lost things are.

"Beyond the extremest sea's waste light and noise,
As from Ghostland, thy voice
Is borne afar."

Oh, Love, what was our sin that we should be
Forsaken thus by thee?
So hard a lot!

"Upon your hearts my hands and lips were set—
My lips of fire—and yet
Ye knew me not."

Nay, surely, Love! We knew thee well, sweet Love!
Did we not breathe and move
Within thy light?

"Ye did reject my thorns who wore my roses:
Now darkness closes
Upon your sight."

Oh, Love! stern Love! be not implacable:
We loved thee, Love, so well!
Come back to us!

"To whom, and where, and by what weary way
That I went yesterday,
Shall I come thus?"

Oh weep, weep, weep! for Love, who tarried long
With many a kiss and song,
Has taken wing.

No more he lightens in our eyes like fire:
He heeds not our desire,
Or songs we sing.

Philip Bourke Marston.

AMERICANS ABROAD.

Five-and-twenty years ago Americans had no cause to be particularly proud of the manner in which, from a social point of view, their travelling compatriots were looked upon in Europe. At that epoch we were still the object of what Mr. Lowell calls a "certain condescension in foreigners." We were still the recipients at their hands of that certain half-curious, half-amused and wholly patronizing inspection which, from the height of their civilization, they might be expected to bestow upon a novel species of humanity, with manners different from their own, but recently sprung into existence and notice and disporting itself in their midst.

But this sort of thing has had its day. By dint of having been able to produce, here and there, for the edification of foreigners, a few types of American manhood and womanhood which came up to the standard of high-breeding entertained in the Old World, and of having occasionally dispensed hospitality, both at home and abroad, in a manner which was unexceptionable, besides having shown other evidences in social life—not to speak of political life—of being able to hold our own quite creditably, the "condescension" has gradually diminished in a very satisfactory manner. It is now no longer kept alive by even the typical American traveller such as he was when five-and-twenty years ago a familiar sight at every railway-station, in every steamer and in every picture-gallery, museum and ruin of every town in Europe. Now-a-days everybody in America who lays any claim to the right of being called "somebody," however small a "somebody" it may be, has been to Europe at least once in his or her life—on a three months' Cook-excursion tour, if in no other way. And those who have not been have had a father, mother, brother, sister, or in any case a cousin in some degree, who has; so that there is always a European trip in the family, so to speak. The result of all this has naturally been a certain amount of experience concerning Europe which has tended to wellnigh exterminate the race of the typically-verdant American traveller. Occasional specimens, with all their characteristics in full and vigorous development, may still be met, but these are merely isolated survivors of a once widespread family. The Americans that one meets to-day in Europe, both those who travel and those who reside there, are of a different conformation and belong to a different type. The crudeness which so shocked Europeans in their predecessors they have, with characteristic adaptability, readily and gracefully outgrown. But whether they have improved in other respects, and whether, on other grounds, we have cause to be particularly proud of our countrymen abroad at the present day, is another question.

That Americans are constantly apologizing to foreigners for America, for its institutions, for its social life, and for themselves as belonging to it, is a fact which no one ever thinks of disputing. In this faculty for disparaging our own country we may flatter ourselves that we have no equals. The Chinese may come near us in their obsequious assurances as to the utter unworthiness of everything pertaining to them, but with the difference that they, probably, are inwardly profoundly convinced of the perfection of all that their idea of courtesy obliges them to abuse, and mean nothing of what they say; whereas we do mean everything we say.

The prejudice of the English, and their attempts to transport a miniature England about with them wherever they go, furnish a frequent subject of jest to Americans on the Continent. If the total immunity from any such feeling which characterizes the Americans themselves were the result of breadth of ideas—if they spoke as they do because they measured the faults and follies, the merits and advantages,[Pg 467] of their own institutions with as impartial an eye as they would measure those of other nations, and judged them without either malice or extenuation—we might then have the privilege of condemning narrow-mindedness and prejudice. But we have no such breadth of ideas. On the contrary, we have ourselves—none more so—the strongest sort of prejudices—prejudices which prevent us as a nation from taking wide, cosmopolitan views of things. The only difference is that with us the prejudice, instead of being in favor of everything belonging to our own country, is, in far too many cases, against it, consequently the most objectionable, the least excusable, of prejudices.

It is but rarely that we find a German, a Frenchman, a Spaniard, an Italian, or a Russian, who even having expatriated himself completely for one reason or another, and after years of absence, will not have retained some affection for his native country, some longing for it, some feeling that it is the best place on earth after all. But among any number of Americans who have been on European soil for any period of time, from twenty days to twenty years, those who are burdened with any such affection, any such longing, any such feeling, might be counted with ease. Indeed, if through some inconceivable arrangement of human affairs the Americans abroad were to be prevented from ever returning to their own country, I imagine the majority would bear the catastrophe with great equanimity, and, aside from the natural ties of family and pecuniary interests that might bind them to their home, would think the permanent life in Europe thus enforced the happiest that Fate could have bestowed upon them. For my part, I never met but one American who was anxious to return home—a lady, strange to say—and her chief reason seemed to be that she missed her pancakes, hot breads, etc. for breakfast. All the others, men and women, had but one voice to express how immeasurably more to their taste was everything in Europe—the climate, the life, the people, the country, the food, the manners, the institutions, the customs—than anything in America.

However, all Americans in Europe are not of this class, although it includes the majority. There is a comparatively small number who are as much impressed with the perfection of everything American as the most ardent patriotism could desire. These people go to Europe cased in a triple armor of self-assertion, prepared to poohpooh everything and everybody that may come under their notice, and above all to vindicate under all circumstances their independence as free-born American citizens by giving the world around them the benefit of their opinions upon all topics both in and out of season. They stand before a chef-d'œuvre of some old master and declare in a loud, aggressive voice that they see nothing whatever to admire in it, that the bystanders may know that the judgment of centuries will not weigh with them. They inquire with grim facetiousness, and terrific emphasis on the pronominal adjectives, "Is this what the people in this part of the world call a steamboat?" "Do they call that duckpond a lake?" "Is that stream what they call a river?" And so on, in a perpetual attitude of protest against everything not so large as their steamboats, their lakes, their rivers. When this genus of Americans abroad comes together with the other genus—with the people who think the most wretched daub that hangs in the most obscure corner of a European gallery, labelled with prudent indefiniteness "of the school of ——," better far than the most conscientious work by the most gifted of American artists—and a discussion arises, as it is sure to do, on the relative merits of Europe and America, then indeed does Greek meet Greek, and, both starting from equally false premises and with equally false views, the cross-purposes, the rabid comparing of things between which no comparison is possible, the amount of absurd nonsense spoken on either side, and the profound disdain of one for the other, furnish a great deal of amusement to Europeans, but make an American who has any self-respect suffer no small amount of mortification.[Pg 468]

There is but one ground upon which these two classes of Americans meet in common, and that is in their respect for titles, coronets and coats-of-arms. It is useless to deny the immense impressiveness which this sort of thing has for the average American. Of course, if he be of the aggressive sort he will scout the very idea of any such imputation, one of the favorite jokes of his tasteful stock in trade being precisely to express sovereign contempt for anything and everything smacking of nobility, and to weigh its advantages against the chink of his own dollars and find it wanting. But this does not in the least alter the matter. The people who inveigh the most fiercely against the pretensions of blue blood are generally, the world over, the ones who are devoured by the most ardent retrospective ambitions for grandfathers and grandmothers; and the Americans who cry out loudest against the hollow vanity of the European aristocracy are generally those who have genealogical trees and coats-of-arms of authenticity more or less questionable hanging in their back parlor, and think themselves a step removed from those among their neighbors who boast of no such property.

It may not be pleasant for us to acknowledge to ourselves that our countrymen abroad are cankered with toadyism and are frightful snobs; but so it is, nevertheless. The fact is very visible, veil it as we may. The American who has not had it forced upon his attention in innumerable ways—by the undisguised empressement of those among his compatriots who frankly spend their whole time running after persons with titles, entertaining them and fawning upon them in every possible manner, no more than by the intensely American Americans who profess supreme disregard for all precedence and distinctions established by society, and yet never fail to let you know, quite accidentally, that Count This, Baron That and Marquis the Other are their very particular friends—has had an exceptional experience indeed.

This manner of disposing of all Americans abroad by putting them into one of these two categories may seem somewhat sweeping, and it will be objected that there are hundreds of our countrymen in Europe who could never come under the head of either. Granted. These hundreds undoubtedly exist: they are made up of people of superior mind and intelligence, of people of superior culture, of people who occupy that exceptional social position which, either through associations of hereditary ease, refinement, wealth and elegance, or by contact with "the best" of everything from childhood up, confers on those who belong to it very much the same outward gloss the world over. But it is never among such exceptions that the distinctive characteristics of a nation are to be sought. These are to be looked for in the great mass of the people. Now, the great mass of Americans who go abroad are people of average minds, average education, average positions; and that, thus taken as a mass, they are lamentably lacking both in good taste and dignity, every one must admit who is in any degree familiar with the American colonies in the cities of Europe where our countrymen congregate.

I should perhaps say, to express myself more accurately, "where our countrywomen congregate;" for, after all, the true representatives of America in Europe are the American women. Nine-tenths of all the American colonies consist of mothers who, having left their liege lords to their stocks and merchandise, have come abroad "for the education of their children"—an exceedingly elastic as well as convenient formula, which somehow always makes one think of charity that "covereth a multitude of sins." Occasionally—once in three or four years perhaps—the husband leaves his stocks or merchandise for a brief space of time, crosses the Atlantic and remains with his family a month or two. Occasionally also he fails to appear altogether. I am not very sure but that this last course is the one that foreigners expect him to pursue, and that when he deviates from it it is not rather a surprise to them. Europeans, I fancy, are somewhat apt to look upon the American husband as a myth. At all events, it seems to take the experience of Thomas in many[Pg 469] instances to convince them of his material existence. The American who is content to have his wife and children leave him for an indefinite period ranging anywhere from one year to ten years, and during that time enjoy the advantages of life and travel in Europe, while he himself remains at home absorbed in his business, is a species of the genus Homo that Europeans are at a loss to comprehend. Being so rarely seen in the flesh, he necessarily occupies but a secondary position in their estimation: indeed, I think all American men, those of the class named no more than those that are more frequently seen abroad, such as doctors, clergymen, consuls, etc., may be said—some exception being made for the "leisure class" possessed of four-in-hands and so on, and an unlimited supply of the world's goods—to be considered by Europeans of no great significance, socially speaking. It is madame and mesdemoiselles who are all-important. Monsieur is thought a worthy person, with some excellent qualities, such as freedom from uncomfortable jealousies and suspicions, and both capacity and willingness for furnishing remittances, but a person rather destitute of polish—invaluable from a domestic point of view, from any other somewhat uninteresting. But madame and mesdemoiselles have every possible tribute paid to their charms: their beauty, their wit, their dash and sparkle, their independence, receive as large a share of admiration as the most insatiable among them could desire.

It must be owned that the American spirit, tempered by European education or influences, makes a very delightful compound. And it is astonishing to mark how soon the toning process does its work—how soon the most objectionable American girl of the sort known as "fast," or even "loud," softens into a very charming creature who makes the admiration bestowed upon her by European men quite comprehensible.

That this admiration is returned is perhaps not less comprehensible. American women, as a mass, are better educated than American men, and are particularly their superiors so far as outward grace and polish and the general amenities of life are concerned. These qualities, in which their countrymen are deficient, and the blander manners which accompany them, they are apt to find well developed in European men, whatever other virtues or faults may be theirs; and when to this fact is added the spice of novelty, the strong liking that American girls manifest for foreigners, and which has been the cause of putting so many American youths in anything but a benedictory frame of mind, is easily accounted for, and the marriages which so frequently take place between our girls and European men may be explained, even on other grounds than the common exchange of money on one side and title on the other.

Be the motive of these marriages either mutual interest or mutual inclination, in neither case does the generally-accepted theory that they are never happy bear the test of application. So far as my knowledge goes, the common experience is quite the reverse. The number of matches between American girls and Europeans that turn out badly is small compared to the number of those that are perfectly satisfactory. It is astonishing to see how many of our girls, who have been brought up in the belief of the American woman's prerogative of absolute supremacy in the domestic circle, when they are thus married change and seem quite content to relinquish not a few of their ideas of perfectly untrammelled independence, and to take that more subordinate position in matrimony which European life and customs allot to women. It is still more astonishing to see how contentedly and cheerfully they do so when marrying men, as they often do, whose equals in every point, were they their own countrymen, they would consider decidedly bad partis—men with no advantages of any description, without either position, career or any visible means of livelihood, often passably destitute of education and character as well. How they contrive to be satisfied with their bargain in this case is a puzzle, but satisfied they are.

Marriages of this sort, where the man[Pg 470] has absolutely nothing to offer beyond the charms of his more or less blandly persuasive person, excite no surprise abroad. That a penniless male fortune-hunter should marry a girl with wealth is considered in Europe at the present day not only just, proper and quite as it should be, but rather comme il faut than otherwise. Let the case be reversed, and a man of fortune permit himself the caprice of marrying a portionless girl, and society cries out in horror against the mésalliance.

American women in Europe have two chief aims and occupations. The first is to obtain an entrée into the society of the country in which they are residing, and to identify themselves with that society: the second is to revile one another.

So far as the first aim is concerned, it is certainly most laudable, taken in one sense: the persons who can live in the midst of a people without endeavoring to gain an insight into its character and its customs must be possessed of an exceptionally oyster-like organization indeed. But the majority of American women seek foreign society on other grounds than this—chiefly from that tendency to ape everything European and to decry everything American to which I have already alluded as being characteristic of us as a nation. England and the English are the principal models chosen for imitation. It is marvellous to notice the fondness of American women abroad for the English accent and manner of speech and way of thinking; how enthusiastically they attend all the meets in Rome; how plaintively they tell one if one happens to have arrived quite recently from home, "Really, there is no riding across country in your America, you know." In the cities of the Continent that have large English and American colonies they attend the English church in preference to their own. I believe it is considered more exclusive to do so, and better form. In this mania for all things English we are not alone. John Bull happens to be the fashion of the day quite as much on the continent of Europe as in America, and has quite as many devoted worshippers there as among us.

Naturally, one of the chief reasons why American women have so great a liking for European society is to be found in the fact of the far more important position that married ladies occupy in that society than they do with us. For a woman who feels that she has still attractions which should not be buried in obscurity, but who has found that since her marriage she has, to all intents and purposes, been "laid upon the shelf," it is a very delightful experience to see herself once more the object of solicitous attention, considered as one of the brilliant central ornaments of a ballroom, not as one of its indispensable wall-decorations. The experience seems to be so particularly pleasant to the majority of American women, indeed, that they show the greatest disinclination to sharing it one with the other—a disinclination made manifest by that habit of reviling each other which I mentioned as the second great aim and occupation of our countrywomen abroad. That there should be very little kindness and fellow-feeling, and a great deal of envy, hatred, malice and all uncharitableness among their members, is characteristic of all foreign colonies in every country; but none certainly can, in this respect, surpass the American colonies in Europe, at least in so far as their feminine representatives are concerned. The extent to which these ladies carry their backbiting and slandering, and the abnormal growth which their jealousy of one another attains, fill the masculine mind with amazement.

A lady of a certain age who had lived in Europe twenty years, and who, in addition to being a person of great clearness and robustness of judgment, held a position, as a widow with a comfortable competency, which made her verdict unassailable by any suspicion of its being an interested one, spoke to me once on this subject. "In all my experience of American life in Europe," she said, "I may safely state that I have never met more than half a dozen American women who had anything but ill-natured remarks to make of one another. No American woman need hope, live as she may, do as she may, say what she may, to escape[Pg 471] criticism at the hands of her countrywomen. The mildest manner in which they will treat her in conversation will be to say that she is 'nobody,' 'never goes anywhere,' etc., and thus dismiss her. In every other case it is, 'Mrs. A——? Oh yes, such a charming person! Perhaps just a little bit inclined to put on airs, but then—Oh, a very nice little woman. I don't suppose she has ever really been accustomed to much, you know. They say her mother was a dressmaker, but of course one never knows how true these things may be. She does make frantic efforts to get into society here: it is quite amusing. I think the Von Z——s have rather taken her up. She has plenty of money to spend, oh yes. I can't see how her husband can afford to let her live in the style she does abroad, but then that is his affair. She entertains all these people, and of course they go to her house because she can give them some amusement.'—'Mrs. B——? Do I know anything about her? Well, I think I do. Nice? Oh, I do not know that there is anything to be said against her. To be sure, in Paris people did say some rather ugly things. There was a Count L——. And I heard from a very reliable source that she was not on exactly good terms with her husband. So, having daughters, you know, I was obliged to be prudent and rather to shun her than otherwise. Without wishing to be ill-natured I feel inclined to advise you to do the same: I think you will find it quite as well to do so.'—'Mrs. C——? Oh, my dear, such a coarse, common, vulgar creature! She was never received in any sort of good society in New York. Her husband made money one fine day, and she has come abroad and is trying to impose upon people here. She is perfectly ignorant—no education whatever. And the daughters are horribly mauvais genre.'—'Mrs. D——? I should call her an undesirable acquaintance. Not but what she is a very nice sort of person—in her way—but she does make up so frightfully, and she looks so fast. Always has a crowd of officers dangling about her. Her husband is a stick. They do say that when his relatives came abroad last winter they would not call upon him. They were completely incensed at the way in which he permits his wife to carry on.'—'Mrs. E——? Pray, who is Mrs. E——? and where does she get the money to live as she does? I knew her a few years ago, when she had a thousand a year to live on, she and both her children. And now, the toilettes she makes! And, some people say, the debts! And, really, I don't see how it can be otherwise, knowing, as I do, that all the members of her family are as poor as church mice. Her husband committed suicide, you know.—No! did you never hear that? Oh yes: he was mixed up in some rather shady transactions in business, and put an end to himself in that way.'—'Mrs. F——? Oh yes, I remember. An old thing, with a grown-up son, who dresses as if she were fifteen. Dreadfully affected, and so silly! Moreover, Mrs. I—— lived in the same house with her in Dresden—had the apartment above hers—and she told me the servants said that Mrs. F—— was always in some difficulty with tradespeople.'—'Miss G——? Is it possible you have never heard about her? Why, she ran away with a footman, or something of the kind. Was brought back before she had reached the station, I believe; but you can imagine the scandal! All the girls in that family are rather queer, which, considering the stock they come from, is really not very strange,' etc. etc. etc."

In view of these facts, and of many more of the same nature, when one sees the people who come back from Europe after an absence of a year or two unable to speak their own language fluently, because they have heard and spoken nothing but German or French or Italian during that time, and who cannot stand the climate because they are not used to it; when one sees the young ladies who return home unable to take any interest in American life, and who shut themselves away from its society, which to them is most unpolished and vapid, because they have had a European education; when one sees the hundred follies which a glimpse of Europe will put into the heads of people whom before one had had every[Pg 472] reason to think sensible enough,—one feels inclined to ask one's self the question, Are we to conclude that European life is demoralizing to Americans? Are we to conclude that the innumerable advantages that such a life confers—the wider view and broader knowledge of things, the softening influences gained by contact with a riper civilization, the æsthetic tastes developed by acquaintance with older and more perfect art—are to count as nothing, are to be outweighed by the disadvantages of the same life?

Certainly, out of a hundred Americans who go abroad ninety-nine return with what they have lost in narrowness of experience completely offset by what they have gained in pretentious affectation. So far from being improved in any way are they that their well-wishers are inclined to think it would have been far better had they never gone at all.

I do not wish to draw the ultimate conclusion from all this that it would be better for Americans were their periodical exodus to Europe to cease. Far from it. That cultivated Americans, and Americans particularly of a more reflective than active mind, should find the relative ease, culture and simplicity of European life more congenial to them than the restless, high-pressure life of America, is quite natural. And if there are no interests or ties to make their presence in their own country imperatively necessary, it is certainly a matter of option with them where they take up their abode. There is no law, human or divine, to bind a person to live in one certain spot when the surroundings are uncongenial to him, and when no private duty fetters him to it, for the simple reason that he has chanced to be born there. Every one is certainly at liberty to seek the centre that best suits him and answers to his needs. Again, there are numbers of persons who with moderate means can live according to their taste in Europe when it would be impossible for them to do so in America on the same amount. There are a thousand small gratifications that people can afford themselves on a small income abroad, a thousand small pleasures in life from which in our country they would be hopelessly debarred; and that they should be debarred from them when escape is possible, and not only possible but most simple and easy, would indeed be hard.

But why cannot Americans indulge this preference for life in Europe, why can they not avail themselves of the choice if it is open to them, and yet remember that they are Americans, and that no circumstance can absolve them from a sacred obligation to show respect for their native country, and to stand as its citizens on their own dignity? Men and women may be conscious of faults and weaknesses in their parents, but they are not expected to expose these weaknesses on that account: instinctive delicacy in any one but a churl would keep him from acknowledging any such failings to his own heart. And a similar feeling should teach us, even if our sympathies were not with our own country, to treat it in word and deed with respect. Until we do learn to show this respect before Europeans we must still resign ourselves to the imputation, if they wish to make it, of crudeness, of being still sadly in want of refining.

GLIMPSES OF PORTUGAL AND THE PORTUGUESE.

The mere name of Spain calls up at once a string of flashing, barbaric pictures—Moorish magnificence and Christian chivalry, bull-fights, boleros, serenades, tattered pride and cruel pleasure. All these things go to form that piquant whole, half Eastern, half European, which is the Spain of our imaginations. Our associations with the western part of the Peninsula are, on the other hand, vague and incomplete. Vasco da Gama, the earthquake of Lisbon, port wine and Portuguese plums are the Lusitanian products most readily called to mind. After them would come perhaps the names of Magellan, of Prince Henry the Navigator and of the ill-fated Don Sebastian. One poet of the country, Camoens, is as often referred to as Tasso or Ariosto. Those whose memories go back to the European events of 1830 and thereabouts may recall the Portuguese civil wars, the woes of Dona Maria and the dark infamy of Don Miguel. And more recently have we not heard of the Portuguese Guide to English Conversation and relished its delicious discoveries in our language? All these items do not, however, present a very vivid or finished picture of the country: like the words in a dictionary, they are a trifle disconnected.

Portugal was the first station of Childe Harold's pilgrimage, but it holds no place in the ordinary European tour of to-day. It does not connect with any of the main lines of travel in such a manner as to beguile the tourist insensibly over its border: a deliberate start must be made by steamer from England in order to reach Lisbon from the north. Another and probably stronger reason for our neglect of its scenery is that it is not talked of. We go to Europe to see places and follow up associations with which fame has already made us familiar, and, though Portugal has had a great past of which the records are still extant, it has not been brought to our notice by art.

The two nations living side by side on the Peninsula, though originally of the same stock and subjected to the same influences, present more points of difference than of likeness. Their early history is the same. Hispania and Lusitania both fell successively under the dominion of the Romans and of the Moors, and were modified to a considerable extent by the civilization of each. Moorish influence was predominant in Spain—Portugal retained more deeply the Roman stamp. This is easily seen in the literature of the two countries. Spanish ballads and plays show the Eastern delight in hyperbole, the Eastern fertility of invention: Portuguese literature is completely classic in spirit, avoiding all exaggeration, all offences against taste, and confining itself to classic forms, such as the pastoral, the epic and the sonnet. Many Moorish customs survive in Portugal[Pg 474] to this day, but they have not become so closely assimilated there as in Spain to the character of the people. The cruelty which has always marked the Spanish race is no part of the Portuguese national character, which is conspicuous rather for the "gentler-sexed humanity." True, the bull-fight, that barbarous legacy of the Moors, still lingers among the Portuguese, but the sport is pursued with no such wanton intoxication of cruelty as in the country with which its name is now associated. On the other hand, the Roman tradition has been preserved in Portugal more perfectly than in Italy itself: in the "fairest of Roman colonies," as it was once called, there will be found manners and customs which bring up more vividly the life portrayed by the classic poets than any existing among the peasants of modern Italy.

Both Rome and Arabia stood sponsors for the land they thus endowed. The name Portugal is compounded of the Latin portus, a "port," and the Arabic caläh, a "castle" or "fortress." The first of these names was originally given to the town which still retains it—Oporto—one of the oldest of Portugal, and at one time its capital.

The history of Portugal, when it separates from that of Spain, is the history of a single stupendous achievement. A small nation raising itself in a short time to the power of a great empire, reaching a height which to gain was incredible, to keep impossible, and at the first relaxation of effort suddenly falling with a disastrous crash,—that is the drama of Portugal's greatness. There was no gradual rise or decline: it mounted and fell. There is a tradition that the first king of Portugal, Affonso Henriquez, was crowned on the battlefield with a burst of enthusiasm on the part of the soldiers whom he was leading against the Saracens, and that on the same day he opened his reign by the glorious victory of Ourique. Less than half a century previously the country had been given as a fief to a young knight, Count Henry of Burgundy, on his marriage with a daughter of the king of Castile. The Moors were overrunning it on the one hand, Castile was eying it jealously on the other, yet Affonso Henriquez made it an independent and permanent kingdom. This prince slaughtered Saracens and carried off honors on the field as fast as the Cid, but his deeds were not embalmed in an epic destined to become a storehouse of poetry for all the world. His chronicler did not come till about four centuries later, and then nearer and[Pg 475] vaster achievements than those of Affonso Henriquez lay ready to his pen. At the birth of Camoens, in 1525, Portugal had gained her greatest conquests, and, if the shadows were already falling across her power, she had still great men who were making heroic efforts to retain it. Vasco da Gama had died within the year. Albuquerque, the hero of the Lusiado, the noblest and most far-sighted mind in an age of great men, had been dead ten years. Camoens, like the Greek dramatists, was soldier as well as poet: he was not alone the singer of past adventures—he was the reporter of what took place under his own eyes. His epic was already finished before the defeat of Don Sebastian in the battle of Alcazar put an end to the glory it celebrated, and in dying shortly after the poet is said to have breathed a prayer of thanksgiving at being spared the pain of surviving his country.

The period of Portuguese supremacy lasted then, altogether, less than a century. There is an irresistible temptation to ponder over what results were lost by its sudden downfall, and to seek therein some explanation of the strange fact that Portugal alone among the southern nations of Europe has never had a national art. There was a moment when the foundations for it seemed to be laid: it was the period at which early Spanish art was putting forth its first efforts, while that of Italy was in its prime. Under Emanuel the Fortunate and his successor Portugal was rich and powerful. Its intellect and ambition had been stimulated by the achievements of its great navigators. There was an awakening of interest in art and letters. A school of poets had arisen of which Camoens was to be the crown. The court, mindful of the duties of patronage, was building new churches and convents and decorating the old ones with religious pictures, and in Portugal religious feeling has always been peculiarly strong. Many of these pictures are still preserved. They are not, however, of a high order of merit, and it is not even certain that they are the work of native artists, some authorities inclining to the belief that they were done by inferior Flemish painters visiting the country, and are therefore the lees of the Flemish school, not the flower of a national one. Universal belief among the Portuguese[Pg 476] attributes them to Gran Vasco, a master whose very existence is mythical, and who if he had lived several lives could not have painted all the works of various styles which are ascribed to him. That the artistic sense was not lacking in the Portuguese people is abundantly shown in their architecture, in their repoussé-work of the fifteenth century and the carvings in wood and stone. The church and convent at Belem, the work of this period, are ornamented by Gothic stone-work of exquisite richness and fertility of invention. The church is unfinished, like the epoch it commemorates. To an age of activity and conquest succeeded one of gloom and depression. The last of the kings whom the nation had leaned on, while it supported them so loyally, had fallen at Alcazar, and in the struggle which ensued for the succession Portugal fell an easy prey to the strongest claimant. Philip II. strengthened his claim to the vacant throne by sending an army of twenty thousand men into the country under the command of the duke of Alva, and the other heirs were too weak or too divided to oppose him. The discoveries and conquests made by Portugal had laid the foundations of riches and power for other nations: her own immediate benefit from them was over. The period of prosperous repose which may be expected to follow one of great national activity was denied to her. When the house of Braganza recovered its rights, the impulse to creative art was extinct.

Though it was as a maritime power that Portugal rose to its greatest height, it has been from time immemorial an agricultural nation, and the mass of its people are engaged in tilling the soil. They are a cheerful, industrious race, who, far from meriting Lord Byron's contemptuous epithet of "Lusitanian boors," are gifted with a natural courtesy and refinement of manner. A New-England farmer would be tempted to follow the poet's example and regard them with contempt: weighed in his balance, they would certainly be found wanting. There is no public-school system in operation, and the Portuguese farmer is not likely to be able to read or sign his name. But the want of literature is not felt in a Southern country, where social intercourse is far more cultivated than in our own rural districts. It is not by reading the newspapers, but by talking matters over with his neighbor, that the Portuguese farmer obtains his sound and[Pg 477] intelligent views on the politics of his country. He is a great talker, taking a keen interest in all that goes on, enjoying a joke thoroughly and addressing his comrade with all the ceremonies and distinctions of a language which contains half a dozen different forms of address. The illiterate peasant is no whit behind the man of culture in the purity of his Portuguese. In no country in Europe is the language kept freer from dialect, and this notwithstanding the fact that it is one of involved grammatical forms. In France the use of the imperfect subjunctive is given up by the lower classes and by foreigners, but in Portugal the peasant has still deeper subtleties of speech at the end of his tongue. Add to this that he has a vocabulary of abuse before which the Spaniard or the California mule-driver would be silenced, and you have the extent of his linguistic accomplishments. This profane eloquence was an art imparted no doubt by the Moors. The refinements of syntax come from the Latin, to which Portuguese bears more affinity in form than any other modern language.

From the Romans the Lusitanian received his first lessons in agriculture—lessons which have never been entirely superseded. His plough was given him by the Romans, and he has not yet seen fit to alter the pattern. The ox-cart used in town and country for all purposes of draught is another relic preserved intact. Its wheels of solid wood are fastened to the axle, which revolves with them, this revolution being accompanied by a chorus of inharmonious shrieks and creaks and wails which to the foreign and prejudiced nerve is simply agonizing. Its master hears it with a different ear: he finds it rather cheerful than otherwise, good to enliven the oxen, to dispel the silence of lonely places and to frighten away wolves and bogies, of which enemies he has a childish awe. Instead, therefore, of pouring oil upon this discord, he applies lemon-juice to aggravate the sound! The cart pleases the eye of the stranger more than his ear. When in the vintage season the upright poles forming its sides are bound together by a wickerwork of vine branches with their large leaves, and the inside is heaped with purple grapes, it is a goodly sight, and one which Alma-Tadema might paint as a Roman vintage, for it is doubtless a counterfeit presentment of the grape-laden wains which moved in the season of vintage over the Campagna. The results in both cases were the same, for the vinho verde, a harsh but refreshing wine, made and drunk by the country-people, is made in the same way and is probably identical with that wherewith the Latin farmer slaked his thirst. The recipe may have descended through Lusus, the companion of Bacchus, whom tradition names as the father of the Lusitanian. Be that as it may, the Portuguese is still favored of the wine-god. Wine flows for him even more freely than water, which gift of Nature has to be dug for and sought far and wide. He drinks the ruby liquid at home and carries it afield: he even shares it with his horse, who sinks his nose, nothing loth, in its inviting depths, and neither man nor beast shows any ill effects from this indulgence.

It is in the north-western corner of the[Pg 478] country, in the Minho province, that the highest rural prosperity is to be met with. This little province, scarcely as large as the State of Delaware, but with more than four times its population, has successfully solved the problem of affording labor and sustenance in nearly equal shares to a large number of inhabitants. Bonanza-farming is unheard of there. The high perfection of its culture, which gives the whole province the trim, thriving air of a well-kept garden, comes from individual labor minutely bestowed on small surfaces. No mowing-, threshing- or other machines are used. Instead of labor-saving, there is labor cheerfully expended—in the place of the patent mower, a patient toiler (often of the fair sex), armed with a short, curved reaping-hook. The very water, which flows plentifully in fountains and channels, comes not direct from heaven without the aid of man. It is coaxed down from the hills in tedious miles of aqueduct or forced up from a great depth by a rustic water-wheel worked by oxen, and is then distributed over the land. Except for its aridity, the climate is kind to the small farmer: there is no long inactivity forced upon him by a cold winter. A constant succession of crops may be raised, and all through the year he works cheerfully and industriously, finding his ten acres enough and his curious broad hoe dexterously wielded the equivalent of shovel and pickaxe. If ignorant of our inventions, he is intimately acquainted with some American products. If a Yankee were to walk into a Portuguese farm-house and surprise the family at dinner, he would be sure to see on the table two articles which, however oddly served, would be in their essentials familiar to him—Indian meal and salt codfish. Indian corn has long been cultivated as the principal grain: it is mixed with rye to make the bread in every-day use. The Newfoundland cod, under the name of bacalhau, has crept far into the affections of the nation, its lack of succulence being atoned for by a rich infusion of olive oil, so that the native beef, cheap and good as it is, has no chance in comparison. Altogether, the Portuguese peasant with his wine, his oil and his bacalhau fares better than most of his class. At Christmas-tide he stakes his digestion on rebanadas, a Moorish invention—nothing less than ambrosial flapjacks made by soaking huge slices of wheaten bread in new milk, frying them in olive oil and then spreading them lavishly with honey.

The Portuguese can be industrious, but all work and no play is a scheme of life which would ill accord with his social, pleasure-loving temperament. With a wisdom rare in his day and generation, and an energy unparalleled among Southern races, he manages to combine the two. After rising at dawn and working from twelve to fifteen hours, he does not sit down and fall asleep, but slings a guitar over his shoulder and is off to the nearest threshing-floor to dance a bolero. His dancing is not the more graceful for coming after hours of field-labor, but it lacks neither activity nor picturesqueness: above all, it is the outcome of light-heartedness and enjoyment in capering. The night air, soft yet cool, is refreshing after the intense heat of the day: the too sudden lowering of temperature at sundown which makes the evenings unhealthy in many Southern countries is not experienced in Portugal. Every peasant has his guitar, for a love of music is widely diffused, and some of them not only sing but improvise. In the province of the Minho it is not uncommon at these gatherings for a match of improvisation to be held between two rustic bards. One takes his guitar, and in a slow, drawling recitative sings a simple quatrain, which the other at once caps with a second in rhyme and rhythm matching the first. Verse follows verse in steady succession, and the singer who hesitates is lost: his rival rushes in with a tide of rhyme which carries all before it. In such primitive pleasures the shepherds of the Virgilian eclogue indulged.

As the life of the peasant, so is that of his wife or sweetheart. She shares in the work, guiding the oxen, cutting grass, even working on the road with hoe and basket. "Verse sweetens toil, however rude the sound." Like Wordsworth's reaper, she sings as she works, and the[Pg 479] day's labor over is ready to join in the bolero. On fête-days she is arrayed in all the magnificence of her peasant ornaments, worth, if her family is well-to-do, a hundred dollars or more—gold pendants in her ears, large gold chains of some antique Moorish design falling in a triple row over her gay bodice. The men wear long hooded cloaks of brown homespun, which they sometimes retain for convenience after the rest of the peasant-dress has been thrown aside for the regulation coat and trousers. There is no tendency to eccentricity in the national costume of Portugal, but the Portuguese colony of Madeira have invented a singular head-gear in a tiny skull-cap surmounted by a steeple of tightly-wound cloth, which serves as a handle to lift it by. Like the German student's cap, it requires practice to make it adhere at the required angle. This is a bit of coxcombry which has no match in the simple, unaffected vanity of the Portuguese.

The country is left during the greater part of the year to the exclusive occupancy of the peasantry, the town atmosphere being more congenial in the long run to the social gentry of Portugal. The wealthy class in Lisbon have their villas at Cintra, in which paradise of Nature and art, with its wonderful ensemble of precipices and palaces, forest and garden scenes, they can enjoy mountains without forsaking society. Many Oporto families own country-houses in the Minho, and rusticate there very pleasantly for a month or two in early fall. The gentlemen have large shooting-parties, conducted on widely-different principles from those so unswervingly adhered to by Trollope's indefatigable sporting character, Mr. Reginald Dobbs. In a Portuguese shooting the number of men and dogs is often totally disproportionate to that of the game, and a single partridge may find itself the centre of an alarming volley from a dozen or more guns. The enjoyment is not measured, however, by the success. There is a great deal of talking and laughing, and no discontent with the day's sport is exhibited even if there be little to show for the skill and patience expended. There is further occupation in superintending vintage and harvest, while the orange-groves and luxuriant gardens offer plenty[Pg 480] of resources for exercise or idleness. Plant-life in Portugal is singularly varied even for so warm a country. To the native orange, olive and other trees of Southern Europe have been added many exotics. The large magnolia of our Southern States, the Japanese camellia and the Australian gum tree have made themselves at home there, and grow as if their roots were in their native soil. Geraniums and heliotrope, which we confine easily in flower-pots, assume a different aspect in the public gardens of Lisbon, where the former is seen in flaming trees and hedges twenty or thirty feet high, and the latter distributes its fragrance while covering the high walls with its spreading arms.

The grapes from which port-wine is made are all grown within the narrow compass of a mountain-valley about twenty-seven miles long by five or six wide, where the conditions of soil and climate most favorable to wine-culture—including a large degree of both heat and cold—are found in perfection. Owing to its elevation the frosts in this district are tolerably severe, while in summer the sun looks steadily down with his hot glance into the valley till its vine-clad sides are permeated by heat. The grapes ripened there are of peculiar richness and strength. The trade is all in the hands of a certain number of English merchants at Oporto, who buy the grapes as they hang of the native farmers and have the wine made under their own supervision. The wine-making is conducted in much the same manner as in other countries, a certain quantity of spirits being added to arrest decay and ensure its preservation. All wine has passed through the first stage of decay, fermentation, and is liable at any time to continue the course. It may be made with little or no alcohol if it is to be drunk within the year: to ensure a longer lease of life some antiseptic is necessary. Port is, from its richness, peculiarly liable to decay, and will stand fortification better than sherry, which being a light wine is less in need of it and more apt to be over-fortified. The area in which port is produced being so small, there can be no material difference in the produce of different vineyards, but some slight superiorities of soil or aspect have given the Vesuvio, the Raïda and a few other wines a special reputation.

The history of port is a somewhat curious one. It is associated closely with the old English gentleman of a bygone generation, a staunch and bigoted being who despised French wines as he abhorred the French nation, and agreed with Doctor Johnson that claret was for boys, port for men. The vintage of 1820 was a remarkable one in Portugal. The port made in that season was of a peculiar strength and sweetness, in color nearly black. The old English gentleman would acknowledge no other as genuine, and, as Nature positively refused to repeat the experiment, the practice of dyeing port with dried elderberries and increasing the infusion of brandy to impart strength and flavor was resorted to. It was successful for some time, but after a while the secret oozed out, and the public began to receive the garnet-hued liquid again into favor, and to find, with Douglas Jerrold, that it preferred the old port to the elder. The elderberry is not sufficiently common in Portugal to make the continuation of this process popular with wine-makers. At present port is tolerably free from adulteration, though its casks and those of an inferior red wine of Spain after voyaging to England sometimes find their contents a little mixed.

Oporto is the seat of the wine-trade, and its huge warehouses are filled with stores of port ripening to a good old age, when the garnet will be exchanged for a dark umber tint. A handsome, thriving city is Oporto, mounting in terraces up the slope of a steep hill. A fine quay runs the length of the town along the Douro, and here the active life of Oporto is mainly concentrated. Any stranger watching this stir of movement and color will be struck by the prominent position which women fill in the busy crowd. The men do not absorb all branches of labor. Besides the water-carriers, market-women and fruit-vendors there may be seen straight, stalwart lasses acting as portresses to convey loads to and from[Pg 481] the boats which are fastened to the river-wall. Many of the servants and other laborers through Portugal come from Galicia, the inhabitants of that Spanish province enjoying a reputation for honesty and faithful service combined with stupidity.

A sad contrast to the fertility of the[Pg 482] Minho is presented by the country opposite Lisbon and the adjoining province of Alemtejo. This Portuguese campagna was in Roman days a fertile plain covered with golden wheat-fields. Now it is a barren, melancholy waste, producing only ruins. It is in and about this region that the most important Roman remains in the country are to be found. The soil in the neighborhood of Evora is rich in coins and other relics, and Evora has, besides its great aqueduct, the massive pillars of a temple to Diana, which, sad to say, was once put to ignoble use as a slaughter-house. The ruins of Troia have escaped desecration, if they have not obtained the care and study which they merit. Lying on a low tongue of land which projects into the bay of Setubal, the city of Troia is buried, not in Pompeian lava, but in deep mounds of sand, accumulated there by the winds and waves. A tremendous storm in 1814 washed away a part of this sand and revealed something of its treasure, but it was not till 1850 that the hint was followed up by antiquaries and a regular digging made. A large Roman house was uncovered, together with a vast débris of marble columns, mosaic pavements, baths, urns, and other appurtenances of Roman existence. The excavations have been far from thorough; the peninsular Troy still awaits its Schliemann. The name Troia was probably bestowed by Portuguese antiquaries of the Renaissance period, who mention it thus in their writings. According to Roman records, the city flourished about 300 a.d. as Cetobriga.

We must return to the Minho province—still the most representative section of Portugal—for monuments of Portuguese antiquity. Guimaraens is the oldest town of purely native growth, and is closely associated with the life of Affonso Henriquez. The massive castle in which he was born, and the church which witnessed the christening of the first king of Portugal, are still standing: the old walls of the town date back to the time of the hero; and not far off is the field where he fought the battle which gained him his independence at eighteen. Within a few miles of Guimaraens is Braga, celebrated for centuries as a stronghold[Pg 483] of the Church. Its Gothic cathedral is of grand proportions, containing a triple nave, and belongs to the thirteenth century. The church treasures shut up in its sanctuary are among the richest in the Peninsula.

Portugal presents the curious spectacle of a country in which the customs of antiquity have lasted as long as its monuments. In a certain way the former are the more impressive. As some little familiar trait will sometimes give a fresher insight into a great man than the more important facts of his biography, so the ploughing, harvesting and singing of a Portuguese peasant, with their bucolic simplicity, bring the life of the ancients a little nearer to us than the sight of their great aqueducts and columns. But the nineteenth century is striking the death-blow of the bucolic very fast, the world over, and Portugal is awake and bestirring herself—not the less effectively that she is making no noise about it. Nevertheless, she is becoming better known. Mr. Oswald Crawfurd, the English consul at Oporto, who has lived in Portugal for many years, is writing about it from the best point of view, half within, half without. His book of travels published under the pseudonym of Latouche, and a volume entitled Portugal, Old and New, recently issued under his own name, throw a strong, clear light upon the country and its inhabitants. Another sympathetic and entertaining traveller is Lady Jackson, the author of Fair Lusitania.

The Portugal of Mr. Crawfurd and Lady Jackson is a different land from that which Southey, Byron and other English celebrities visited at the beginning of this century: it is not the same which Wordsworth's daughter, Mrs. Quillinan, travelled through on horseback in 1837, making light of inconveniences and looking at everything with kind, frank eyes. Lisbon is no longer a beautiful casket filled with dirt and filth, but a clean, bright and active city, and Portugal is no longer a sleeping land, but a well-governed country, which will probably be hindered by its small natural proportions, but not by any sluggishness or incapacity of its people, from taking a high place among European nations.[Pg 484]

A GRAVEYARD IDYL.

In the summer of 187-, when young Doctor Putnam was recovering from an attack of typhoid fever, he used to take short walks in the suburbs of the little provincial town where he lived. He was still weak enough to need a cane, and had to sit down now and then to rest. His favorite haunt was an old-fashioned cemetery lying at the western edge of the alluvial terrace on which the town is built. The steep hillside abuts boldly on the salt marsh. One of the cemetery-paths runs along the brink of the hill; and here, on a wooden bench under a clump of red cedars, Putnam would sit for hours enjoying the listless mood of convalescence. Where the will remains passive, the mind, like an idle weathercock, turns to every puff of suggestion, and the senses, born new from sickness, have the freshness and delicacy of a child's. It soothed his eye to follow lazily the undulations of the creek, lying like the folds of a blue silk ribbon on the flat ground of the marsh below. He watched the ebbing tide suck down the water from the even lines of trenches that sluiced the meadows till the black mud at their bottom glistened in the sun. The opposite hills were dark with the heavy foliage of July. In the distance a sail or two speckled the flashing waters of the bay, and the lighthouse beyond bounded the southern horizon.

It was a quiet, shady old cemetery, not much disturbed by funerals. Only at rare intervals a fresh heap of earth and a slab of clean marble intruded with their tale of a new and clamorous grief among the sunken mounds and weatherstained tombstones of the ancient sleepers for whom the tears had long been dried. Now and then a mourner came to put flowers on a grave; now and then one of the two or three laborers who kept the walks and shrubberies in order would come along the path by Putnam's bench, trundling a squeaking wheelbarrow; sometimes a nurse with a baby-carriage found her way in. But generally the only sounds to break the quiet were the songs of birds, the rumble of a wagon over the spile bridge across the creek and the whetting of scythes in the water-meadows, where the mowers, in boots up to their waists, went shearing the oozy plain and stacking up the salt hay.

One afternoon Putnam was in his accustomed seat, whistling softly to himself and cutting his initials into the edge of the bench. The air was breathless, and the sunshine lay so hot on the marshes that it seemed to draw up in a visible steam a briny incense which mingled with the spicy smell of the red cedars. Absorbed in reverie, he failed to notice how the scattered clouds that had been passing across the sky all the afternoon were being gradually reinforced by big fluffy cumuli rolling up from the north, until a rumble overhead and the rustle of a shower in the trees aroused him.

In the centre of the grounds was an ancient summer-house standing amidst a maze of flower-beds intersected by gravel-walks. This was the nearest shelter, and, as the rain began to patter smartly, Putnam pocketed his knife, turned up his coat-collar and ran for it. Arrived at the garden-house, he found there a group of three persons, driven to harbor from different parts of the cemetery. The shower increased to a storm, the lattices were lashed by the rain and a steady stream poured from the eaves. The althæa and snowberry bushes in the flower-pots, and even the stunted box-edges along the paths, swayed in the wind. It grew quite dark in the summer-house, shaded by two or three old hemlocks, and it was only by the lightning-flashes that Putnam could make out the features of the little company of refugees. They stood in the middle of the building, to avoid the sheets of rain blown in at the doors in gusts, huddling around a pump that was raised on a narrow stone platform—not unlike the daughters of Priam[Pg 485] clustered about the great altar in the penetralia: Præcipites atra ceu tempestate columbæ.

They consisted of a young girl, an elderly woman with a trowel and watering-pot, and a workman in overalls, who carried a spade and had perhaps been interrupted in digging a grave. The platform around the pump hardly gave standing room for a fourth. Putnam accordingly took his seat on a tool-chest near one of the entrances, and, while the soft spray blew through the lattices over his face and clothes, he watched the effect of the lightning-flashes on the tossing, dripping trees of the cemetery-grounds.

Soon a shout was heard and down one of the gravel-walks, now a miniature river, rushed a Newfoundland dog, followed by a second man in overalls. Both reached shelter soaked and lively. The dog distributed the contents of his fur over our party by the pump, nosed inquiringly about, and then subsided into a corner. Second laborer exchanged a few words with first laborer, and melted into the general silence. The slight flurry caused by their arrival was only momentary, while outside the storm rose higher and inside it grew still darker. Now and then some one said something in a low tone, addressed rather to himself than to the others, and lost in the noise of the thunder and rain.

But in spite of the silence there seemed to grow up out of the situation a feeling of intimacy between the members of the little community in the summer-house. The need of shelter—one of the primitive needs of humanity—had brought them naturally together and shut them up "in a tumultuous privacy of storm." In a few minutes, when the shower should leave off, their paths would again diverge, but for the time being they were inmates and held a household relation to one another.

And so it came to pass that when it began to grow lighter and the rain stopped, and the sun glanced out again on the reeking earth and saturated foliage, conversation grew general.

"Gracious sakes!" said the woman with the trowel and watering-pot as she glanced along the winding canals that led out from the summer-house—"jest see the water in them walks!"

"Gol! 'tis awful!" murmured the Irishman with the spade. "There'll be a fut of water in the grave, and the ould mon to be buried the morning!"

"Ah, they had a right to put off the funeral," said the other workman, "and not be giving the poor corp his death of cold."

"'Tis warrum enough there where the ould mon's gone, but 'tis cold working for a poor lad like mesilf in the bottom of a wet grave. Gol! 'tis like a dreen." With that he shouldered his spade and waded reluctantly away.

Second laborer paused to light his dhudeen, and then disappeared in the opposite direction, his Newfoundland taking quite naturally to the deepest puddles in their course.

"Hath this fellow no feeling of his business?" asked Putnam, rising and sauntering up to the pump. The question was meant more for the younger than the elder of the two women, but the former paid no heed to it, and the latter, by way of answer, merely glanced at him suspiciously and said "H'm!" She was unlocking the tool-chest on which he had been sitting, and now raised the lid, stowed away her trowel and watering-pot, locked the chest again and put the key in her pocket, with the remark, "I guess I hain't got any more use for a sprinkle-pot to-day."

The old woman looked at him still more distrustfully, and then, drawing up her skirts, showed to his great astonishment a pair of india-rubber boots, in which she stumped away through the water and the mud, leaving in the latter colossal tracks which speedily became as pond-holes in the shallower bed of the stream. The younger woman stood at the door, gathering her dress about her ankles and gazing irresolutely at these frightful vestigia which gauged all too accurately the depth of the mud and the surface-water above it.

"They look like the fossil bird-tracks in the Connecticut Valley sandstone,"[Pg 486] said Putnam, following the direction of her eyes.

These were very large and black. She turned them slowly on the speaker, a tallish young fellow with a face expressive chiefly of a good-natured audacity and an alertness for whatever in the way of amusement might come within range. Her look rested on him indifferently, and then turned back to the wet gravel.

Putnam studied for a moment the back of her head and her figure, which was girlishly slender and clad in gray. "How extraordinary," he resumed, "that she should happen to have rubber boots on!"

"She keeps them in the tool-chest. The cemetery-man gives her a key," she replied after a pause, and as if reluctantly. Her voice was very low and she had the air of talking to herself.

"Isn't that a rather queer place for a wardrobe? I wonder if she keeps anything else there besides the boots and the trowel and the 'sprinkle-pot'?"

"Now, if she only had a Swedish cooking-box and a patent camp-lounge," said Putnam laughing, "she could keep house here in regular style."

"Well, it's an odd taste to live in a burying-ground, but one might do worse perhaps. There's nothing like getting accustomed gradually to what you've got to come to. And then if one must select a cemetery for a residence, this isn't a bad choice. Have you noticed what quaint old ways they have about it? At sunset the sexton rings a big bell that hangs in the arch over the gateway: he told me he had done it every day for twenty years. It's not done, I believe, on the principle of firing a sunset gun, but to let people walking in the grounds know the gate is to be shut. There's a high stone wall, you know, and somebody might get shut in all night. Think of having to spend the night here!"

"I have spent the night here often," she answered, again in an absent voice and as if murmuring to herself.

"You have?" exclaimed Putnam. "Oh, you slept in the tool-chest, I suppose, on the old lady's shake-down."

She was silent, and he began to have a weird suspicion that she had spoken in earnest. "This is getting interesting," he said to himself; and then aloud, "You must have seen queer sights. Of course, when the clock struck twelve all the ghosts popped out and sat on their respective tombstones. The ghosts in this cemetery must be awfully old fellows. It doesn't look as if they had buried any one here for a hundred and thirty-five years. I've often thought it would be a good idea to inscribe Complet over the gate, as they do on a Paris omnibus."

"You speak very lightly of the dead," said the young girl in a tone of displeasure and looking directly at him.

Putnam felt badly snubbed. He was about to attempt an explanation, but her manner indicated that she considered the conversation at an end. She gathered up her skirts and prepared to leave the summer-house. The water had soaked away somewhat into the gravel.

"Excuse me," said Putnam, advancing desperately and touching his hat, "but I notice that your shoes are thin and the ground is still very wet. I'm going right over to High street, and if I can send you a carriage or anything—"

Putnam looked after her till a winding of the path took her out of sight, and then started slowly homeward. "What the deuce could she mean," he pondered as he walked along, "about spending the night in the cemetery? Can she—no she can't—be the gatekeeper's daughter and live in the gate-house? Anyway, she's mighty pretty."

His mother and his maiden aunt, who with himself made up the entire household, received him with small scoldings and twitterings of anxiety. They felt his wet clothes, prophesied a return of his fever and forced him to go immediately to bed, where they administered hot drinks and toast soaked in scalded milk. He lay awake a long time, somewhat[Pg 487] fatigued and excited. In his feeble condition and in the monotony which his life had assumed of late the trifling experience of the afternoon took on the full proportions of an adventure. He thought it over again and again, but finally fell asleep and slept soundly. He awoke once, just at dawn, and lay looking through his window at a rosy cloud which reposed upon an infinite depth of sky, motionless as if sculptured against the blue. A light morning wind stirred the curtains and the scent of mignonette floated in from the dewy garden. He had that confused sense of anticipation so common in moments between waking and sleeping, when some new, pleasant thing has happened, or is to happen on the morrow, which the memory is too drowsy to present distinctly. Of this pleasant, indistinct promise that auroral cloud seemed somehow the omen or symbol, and watching it he fell asleep again. When he next awoke the sunlight of mid-forenoon was flooding the chamber, and he heard his mother's voice below stairs as she sat at her sewing.

In the afternoon he started on his customary walk, and his feet led him involuntarily to the cemetery. As he traversed the path along the edge of the hill he saw in one of the grave-lots the heroine of his yesterday's encounter, and a sudden light broke in on him: she was a mourner. And yet how happened it that she wore no black? There was a wooden railing round the enclosure, and within it a single mound and a tombstone of fresh marble. A few cut flowers lay on the grave. She was sitting in a low wicker chair, her hands folded in her lap and her eyes fixed vacantly on the western hills. Putnam now took closer note of her face. It was of a brown paleness. The air of hauteur given it by the purity of the profile and the almost insolent stare of the large black eyes was contradicted by the sweet, irresolute curves of the mouth. At present her look expressed only a profound apathy. As he approached her eyes turned toward him, but seemingly without recognition. Diffidence was not among Tom Putnam's failings: he felt drawn by an unconquerable sympathy and attraction to speak to her, even at the risk of intruding upon the sacredness of her grief.

"Excuse me, miss," he began, stopping in front of her, "but I want to apologize for what I said yesterday about—about the cemetery. It must have seemed very heartless to you, but I didn't know that you were in mourning when I spoke as I did."

"I am glad you have," said Putnam, rather fatuously. There seemed really nothing further to say, but as he lingered for a moment before turning away a perverse recollection surprised him, and he laughed out loud.

"Oh, I ask your pardon a thousand times," he exclaimed reddening violently. "Please don't think that I was laughing at anything to do with you. The fact is that last idiotic speech of mine reminded me of something that happened day before yesterday. I've been sick, and I met a friend on the street who said, 'I'm glad you're better;' and I answered, 'I'm glad that you're glad that I'm better;' and then he said, 'I'm glad that you're glad that I'm glad that you're better'—like the House that Jack Built, you know—and it came over me all of a sudden that the only way to continue our conversation gracefully would be for you to say, 'I'm glad that you're glad that I've forgotten what you said yesterday.'"

She had listened impatiently to this naïve and somewhat incoherent explanation, and she now said, "I wish you would go away. You see that I am alone here and in trouble. I can't imagine what motive you can have for annoying me in this way," her eyes filling with angry tears.

Putnam was too much pained by the vehemence of her language to attempt any immediate reply. His first impulse was to bow and retire without more words. But a pertinacity which formed one of his strongest though perhaps least amiable traits countermanded his impulse, and he said gravely, "Certainly, I will go at once,[Pg 488] but in justice to myself I must first assure you that I didn't mean to intrude upon you or annoy you in any way."

"You say," he continued, "that you are in trouble, and I beg you to believe that I respect your affliction, and that when I spoke to you just now it was simply to ask pardon for having hurt your feelings yesterday, without meaning to, by my light mention of the dead. I've been too near death's door myself lately to joke about it." He paused, but she remained silent. "I'm going away now," he said softly. "Won't you say that you excuse me, and that you haven't any hard feelings toward me?"

Putnam raised his hat respectfully, and went off down the pathway. On reaching the little gate-house he sat down to rest on a bench before the door. The gatekeeper was standing on the threshold in his shirt-sleeves, smoking a pipe. "A nice day after the rain, sir," he began.

"Yes, I've seen you about. Well, it's a nice, quiet place for a walk, but the grounds ain't kep' up quite the shape they used to be: there ain't so much occasion for it. Seems as though the buryin' business was dull, like pretty much everything else now-a-days."

The gatekeeper spat reflectively upon the centre of the doorstep, and resumed: "There's some that comes here quite reg'lar, but they mostly have folks here. There's old Mrs. Lyon comes very steady, and there's young Miss Pinckney: she's one of the most reg'lar."

"Well, she ain't exactly in mourning. I guess, from what they say, she hain't got the money for black bunnets and dresses, poor gal! But it's her brother that's buried here—last April. He was in the hospital learning the doctor's business when he was took down."

"So they was telling me at the funeral. It was a mighty poor funeral too—not more'n a couple of hacks. But you can't tell much from that, with the fashions now-a-days: some of the richest folks buries private like. You don't see no such funerals now as they had ten years back. I've seen fifty kerridges to onst a-comin' in that gate," waving his pipe impressively toward that piece of architecture, "and that was when kerridge-hire was half again as high as it is now. She must have spent a goodly sum in green-house flowers, though: fresh b[=o]quets 'most every day she keeps a-fetchin'."

Putnam had himself just completed his studies at the medical college when attacked by fever, and he now recalled somewhat vaguely a student of the name of Pinckney, and remembered to have heard that he was a Southerner. The gatekeeper's story increased the interest which he was beginning to feel in his new acquaintance, and he resolved to follow up his inauspicious beginnings to a better issue. He knew that great delicacy would be needed in making further approaches, and so decided to keep out of her sight for a time. In the course of the next few days he ascertained, by visits to the cemetery and talks with the keeper, that she now seldom visited her brother's grave in the forenoon, although during the first month after his death she had spent all her days and some of her nights beside it.

"I hadn't the heart, sir, to turn her out at sundown, accordin' to the regulations; so I'd leave the gate kinder half on the jar, and she'd slip out when she had a mind to."[Pg 489]

Putnam read the inscription on the tombstone, which ran as follows: "To the Memory of Henry Pinckney. Born October 29th, 1852. Died April 27th, 187-;" and under this the text, "If thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him." He noticed with a sudden twinge of pity that the flowers on the grave, though freshly picked every day, were wild-flowers—mostly the common field varieties, with now and then a rarer blossom from wood or swamp, and now and then a garden flower. He gathered from this that the sister's purse was running low, and that she spent her mornings in collecting flowers outside the city. His imagination dwelt tenderly upon her slim, young figure and mourning face passing through far-away fields and along the margins of lonely creeks in search of some new bloom which grudging Nature might yield her for her sorrowful needs. Meanwhile he determined that the shrine of her devotion should not want richer offerings. There was a hot-house on the way from his home to the cemetery, and he now stopped there occasionally of a morning and bought a few roses to lay upon the mound. This continued for a fortnight. He noticed that his offerings were left to wither undisturbed, though the little bunches of field flowers were daily renewed as before.

In spite of the funereal nature of his occupation his spirits in these days were extraordinarily high. His life, so lately escaped from the shadows of death, seemed to enjoy a rejuvenescence and to put forth fresh blossoms in the summer air. As he sat under the cedars and listened to the buzzing of the flies that frequented the shade, the unending sound grew to be an assurance of earthly immortality. His new lease of existence prolonged itself into a fee simple, and even in presence of the monuments of decay his future, filled with bright hazy dreams, melted softly into eternity. But one morning as he approached the little grave-lot with his accustomed offerings he looked up and saw the young girl standing before him. Her eyes were fixed on the flowers in his hand. He colored guiltily and stood still, like a boy caught robbing an orchard. She looked both surprised and embarrassed, but said at once, "If you are the gentleman who has been putting flowers on my brother's grave, I thank you for his sake, but—"

She paused, and he broke in: "I ought to explain, Miss Pinckney, that I have a better right than you think, perhaps, to bring these flowers here: I was a fellow-student with your brother in the medical school."

Her expression changed immediately. "Oh, did you know my brother?" she asked eagerly.

He felt like a wretched hypocrite as he answered, "Yes, I knew him, though not intimately exactly. But I took—I take—a very strong interest in him."

"Every one loved Henry who knew him," she said, "but his class have all been graduated and gone away, and he made few friends, because he was so shy. No one comes near him now but me."

He was silent. She walked to the grave, and he followed, and they stood there without speaking. It did not seem to occur to her to ask why he had not mentioned her brother at their former interview. She was evidently of an unsuspecting nature, or else all other impressions were forgotten and absorbed in the one thought of her bereavement. After a glance at her Putnam ventured to lay his roses reverently upon the mound. She held in her hand a few wild-flowers just gathered. These she kissed, and dropped them also on the grave. He understood the meaning of her gesture and was deeply moved.

"They are a thousand times more beautiful than mine," he exclaimed passionately. "I am ashamed of those heartless affairs: anybody can buy them."

"Oh no: my brother was very fond of roses. Perhaps you remember his taste for them?" she inquired innocently.

"I—I don't think he ever alluded to them. The atmosphere of the medical college was not very æsthetic, you know."

"At first I used to bring green-house flowers," she continued, without much heeding his answer, "but lately I haven't[Pg 490] been able to afford them except on Sundays. Sundays I bring white ones from the green-house."

She had seated herself in her wicker chair, and Putnam, after a moment's hesitation, sat down on the low railing near her. He observed among the wild plants that she had gathered the mottled leaves and waxy blossoms of the pipsissewa and its cousin the shinleaf.

"You have been a long way to get some of those," he said: "that pipsissewa grows in hemlock woods, and the nearest are several miles from here."

"I don't know their names. I found them in a wood where I used to walk sometimes with my brother. He knew all their names. I went there very early this morning, when the dew was on them."

"'Flowers that have on them the cold dews of the night are strewings fittest for graves,'" said Putnam in an undertone.

Her face had assumed its usual absent expression, and she seemed busy with some memory and unconscious of his presence. He recalled the latter to her by rising and saying, "I will bid you good-morning now, but I hope you will let me come and sit here sometimes if it doesn't disturb you. I have been very sick myself lately: I was near dying of the typhoid fever. I think it does me good to come here."

"You may come if you wish to visit Henry. But please don't bring any more of those expensive flowers. I suppose it is selfish in me, but I can't bear to have any of his friends do more for him than I can."

"I won't bring any more, of course, if it troubles you, and I thank you very much for letting me come. Good-morning, Miss Pinckney." He bowed and walked away.

Putnam availed himself discreetly of the permission given. He came occasionally of an afternoon, and sat for an hour at a time. Usually she said little. Her silence appeared to proceed not from reserve, but from dejection. Sometimes she spoke of her brother. Putnam learned that he had been her only near relative. Their parents had died in her childhood, and she had come North with her brother when he entered the medical school. From something that she once said Putnam inferred that her brother had owned an annuity which died with him, and that she had been left with little or nothing. They had few acquaintances in the North, almost none in the city. An aunt in the South had offered her a home, and she was going there in the fall. She looked forward with dread to the time of her departure.

"It will be so cruel," she said, "to leave my poor boy all alone here among strangers, and I never away from him before."

"Don't think of it now," he answered, "and when you are gone I will come here often and see to everything."

Her bereavement had evidently benumbed all her faculties and left her with a slight hold on life. She had no hopes or wishes for the future. In alluding to her brother she confused her tenses, speaking of him sometimes in the past, and sometimes in the present as of one still alive. Putnam felt that in a girl of her age this mood was too unnatural to last, and he reckoned not unreasonably on the reaction that must come when her youth began again to assert its rights. He was now thoroughly in love, and as he sat watching her beautiful abstracted face he found it hard to keep back some expression of tenderness. Often, too, it was difficult for him to tone down his spirits to the proper pitch of respectful sympathy with her grief. His existence was golden with new-found life and hope: into the shadow that covered hers he could not enter. He could only endeavor to draw her out into the sunshine once more.

One day the two were sitting, as usual, in silence or speaking but rarely. It was a day in the very core of summer, and the life of Nature was at its flood. The shadows of the trees rested so heavy and motionless on the grass that they appeared to sink into it and weigh it down like palpable substances.

"Oh, I mean here—ici bas—in the body. I can't conceive of death or of a spiritual existence on such a day as this."

"There is nothing here to live for," she said wearily. Presently she added, "This hot glare makes me sick: I wish those men would stop hammering on the bridge. I wish I could die and get away into the dark."

Putnam paused before replying. He had never heard her speak so impatiently. Was the revulsion coming? Was she growing tired of sorrow? After a minute he said, "Ah, you don't know what it is to be a convalescent and lie for months in a darkened room listening to the hand-organ man and the scissors-grinder, and the fellow that goes through the street hallooing 'Cash paid for rags!' It's like having a new body to get the use of your limbs again and come out into the sunshine."

He remembered with some mortification that he had told her so once or twice before. She had apparently forgotten it. "Yes, I nearly died."

"Well, I can't remember that I had any feelings in particular when I first struck the up-track. It was hard work fighting for life, and I don't think I cared much one way or the other. But when I got well enough to sit up it began to grow interesting. I used to sit at the window in a very infantile frame of mind and watch everything that went by. It wasn't a very rowdy life, as the prisoner in solitary confinement said to Dickens. We live in a back street, where there's not much passing. The advent of the baker's cart used to be the chief excitement. It was painted red and yellow, and he baked very nice leaf-cookies. My mother would hang a napkin in the door-knocker when she wanted him to stop; and as I couldn't see the knocker from my window, I used to make bets with Dummy as to whether the wagon would stop or not."

She asked no further questions, but a few minutes after rose and said, "I think I will go now. Good-evening."

He had never before outstayed her. He looked at his watch and found that it was only half-past four.

"I hope," he began anxiously, "that you are not feeling sick: you spoke just now of being oppressed by the heat. Excuse me for staying so long."

"Oh no," she answered, "I'm not sick. I reckon I need a little rest. Good-evening."

Putnam lingered after she was gone. He found his way to his old bench under the cedars and sat there for a while. He had not occupied this seat since his first meeting with Miss Pinckney in the summer-house, and the initials which he had whittled on its edge impressed him as belonging to some bygone stage of his history. This was the first time that she had questioned him about himself. His sympathy had won her confidence, but she had treated him hitherto in an impersonal way, as something tributary to her brother's memory, like the tombstone or the flowers on his grave. The suspicion that he was seeking her for her own sake had not, so far as Putnam could discover, ever entered her thoughts.

But in the course of their next few interviews there came a change in her behavior. The simplicity and unconsciousness of her sorrow had become complicated with some other feeling. He caught her looking at him narrowly once or twice, and when he looked hard at her there was visible in her manner a soft agitation—something which in a girl of more sanguine complexion might have been interpreted as a blush. She sometimes suffered herself to be coaxed a little way into talking of things remote from the subject of her sorrow. Occasionally she questioned Putnam shyly about himself, and he needed but slight encouragement to wax confidential. She listened quietly to his experiences, and even smiled now and then at something that he said. His heart beat high with triumph: he fancied that he was leading her slowly up out of the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

But the upward path was a steep one. She had many sudden relapses and[Pg 492] changes of mood. Putnam divined that she felt her grief loosening its tight hold on her and slipping away, and that she clung to it as a consecrated thing with a morbid fear of losing it altogether. There were days when her demeanor betokened a passionate self-reproach, as though she accused herself secretly of wronging her brother and profaning his tomb in allowing more cheerful thoughts to blunt the edge of her bereavement. He remarked also that her eyes were often red from weeping. There sometimes mingled with her remorse a plain resentment toward himself. At such times she would hardly speak to him, and the slightest gayety or even cheerfulness on his part was received as downright heartlessness. He made a practice, therefore, of withdrawing at once whenever he found her in this frame of mind.

One day they had been sitting long together. She had appeared unusually content, but had spoken little. The struggle in her heart had perhaps worn itself out for the present, and she had yielded to the warm current of life and hope which was bearing her back into the sunshine. Suddenly the elderly woman who had formed one of the company in the summer-house on the day of the thunderstorm passed along the walk with her trowel and watering-pot. She nodded to Miss Pinckney, and then, pausing opposite the pair, glanced sharply from one to the other, smiled significantly and passed on. This trifling incident aroused Putnam's companion from her reverie: she looked at him with a troubled expression and said, "Do you think you ought to come here so much?"

"If I didn't know him so very intimately when he was living, I feel that I know him well now from all that you have told me about him. And, if you will pardon my saying so, I feel that I know his sister a little too, and have some title to her acquaintance."

"You have been very kind, and I am grateful for it, but perhaps you ought not to come so much."

"I'm sorry if I have come too much," rejoined Putnam bitterly, "but I shall not come much more. I am going away soon. The doctor says I am not getting along fast enough and must have change of air. He has ordered me to the mountains."

There was silence for a few minutes. He was looking moodily down at the turf, pulling a blade of grass now and then, biting it and throwing it away.

"I thank you very much for your sympathy and kindness," she said at length, rising from her chair; "and I hope you will recover very fast in the mountains. Good-bye."

She extended her hand, which Putnam took and held. It was trembling perceptibly. "Wait a moment," he said. "Before I go I should like to show some little mark of respect to your brother's memory. Won't you meet me at the green-house to-morrow morning—say about nine o'clock—and select a few flowers? They will be your flowers, you know—your offering."

The next morning at the appointed hour Putnam descended the steps into the green-house. The gardener had just watered the plants. A rich steam exhaled from the earth and clouded all the glass, and the moist air was heavy with the breath of heliotropes and roses. A number of butterflies were flying about, and at the end of a many-colored perspective of leaves and blossoms Putnam saw Miss Pinckney hovering around a collection of tropical orchids. The gardener had passed on into an adjoining hot-house, and no sound broke the quiet but the dripping of water in a tank of aquatic plants. The fans of the palms and the long fronds of the tree-ferns hung as still as in some painting of an Indian isle.

She greeted him with a smile and held out her hand to him. The beauty of the morning and of the place had wrought in her a gentle intoxication, and the mournful nature of her errand was for the moment forgotten. "Isn't it delicious here?" she exclaimed: "I think I should like to live in a green-house and grow like a plant."[Pg 493]

"A little of that kind of thing would do you no end of good," he replied—"a little concentrated sunshine and bright colors and the smell of the fresh earth, you know. If you were my patient, I would make you take a course of it. I'd say you wanted more vegetable tissue, and prescribe a green-house for six months. I've no doubt this man here would take you. A young-lady apprentice would be quite an attractive feature. You could pull off dead leaves and strike graceful attitudes, training up vines, like the gardener's daughter in Tennyson."

"What are those gorgeous things?" she asked, pointing to a row of orchids hung on nails along the wall.

"Those are epiphytic orchids—air-plants, you know: they require no earth for their roots: they live on the air."

He took down from its nail one of the little wooden slabs, and showed her the roots coiled about it, with the cluster of bulbs. The flower was snow-white and shaped like a butterfly. The fringe of the lip was of a delicate rose-pink, and at the base of it were two spots of rich maroon, each with a central spot of the most vivid orange. Every color was as pronounced as though it were the only one.

"What a daring combination!" she cried. "If a lady should dress in all those colors she'd be thought vulgar, but somehow it doesn't seem vulgar in a flower."

She turned the blossom over and looked at the under side of the petals. "Those orange spots show right through the leaf," she went on, "as if they were painted and the paint laid on thick."

"Do you know," said Putnam, "that what you've just said gives me a good deal of encouragement?"

"Well, it's the first really feminine thing—At least—no, I don't mean that. But it makes me think that you are more like other girls."

"Will you select some of those orchids, please—if you like them, that is?" asked Putnam.

A shade passed over her face. "They are too gay for his—for Henry," she answered.

"Try to tolerate a little brightness to-day," he pleaded in a low voice. "You must dedicate this morning to me: it's the last, you know."

"I will take a few of them if you wish it, but not this one. I will take that little white one and that large purple one."

The gardener reached down the varieties which she pointed out, and they passed along the alley to select other flowers. She chose a number of white roses, dark-shaded fuchsias and English violets, and then they left the place. Her expression had grown thoughtful, though not precisely sad. They walked slowly up the long shady street leading to the cemetery.

"I am dropping some of the flowers," she said, stopping: "will you carry these double fuchsias a minute, please, while I fasten the others?"

He took them and laughed. "Now, if this were in a novel," he said, "what a neat opportunity for me to say, 'May I not always carry your double fuchsias?'"

She looked at him quickly, and her brown cheek blushed rosy red, but she started on without making any reply and walked faster.

"She takes," he said to himself. But he saw the cemetery-gate at the end of the street. "I must make this walk last longer," he thought. Accordingly, he invented several cunning devices to prolong it, stopping now and then to point out something worth noting in the handsome grounds which lined the street. And so they sauntered along, she appearing to have forgotten the speech which had embarrassed her, or at least she did not resent it. They paused in front of a well-kept lawn, and he drew her attention to the turf. "It's almost as dark as the evergreens," he said.

"I reckon they take the bright colors[Pg 494] on it for flowers," she answered, with a certain quaintness of fancy which he had often remarked in her.

As they stood there leaning against the fence a party of school-girls came along with their satchels and spelling-books. They giggled and stared as they passed the fence, and one of them, a handsome, long-legged, bold-faced thing, said aloud, "Oh my! Look at me and my fancy beau a-takin' a walk!"

Putnam glanced at his companion, who colored nervously and looked away. "Saucy little giglets!" he laughed. "Did you hear what she said?"

"Well, I rather like naughty school-girls: they are amusing creatures. When I was a very small boy I was sent to a girls' school, and I used to study their ways. They always had crumbs in their apron-pockets; they used to write on a slate, 'Tommy is a good boy,' and hold it up for me to see when the teacher wasn't looking; they borrowed my geography at recess and painted all the pictures vermilion and yellow." He paused, but she said nothing, and he continued, talking against time, "There was one piece of chewing-gum in that school which circulated from mouth to mouth. It had been originally spruce gum, I believe, but it was masticated beyond recognition: the parent tree wouldn't have known her child. One day I found it hidden away on a window-sill behind the shutter. It was flesh-colored and dented all over with the marks of sharp little teeth. I kept that chewing-gum for a week, and the school was like a cow that's lost her cud."

As Putnam completed these reminiscences they entered the cemetery-gate, and the shadow of its arch seemed to fall across the young girl's soul. The bashful color had faded from her cheek and the animation from her eye. Her face wore a troubled expression: she walked slowly and looked about at the gravestones.

Putnam stopped talking abruptly, but presently said, "You have not asked me for your fuchsias."

"I thought you might be meaning to let me keep them," said Putnam. His heart beat fast and his voice trembled as he continued: "Perhaps you thought that what I said a while ago was said in joke, but I mean it in real earnest."

"Don't you know what I mean?" he said, coming nearer and taking her hand. "Shall I tell you, darling?"

"Oh, please don't! Oh, I think I know. Not here—not now. Give me the flowers," she said, disengaging her hand, "and I will put them on Henry's grave."

He handed them to her and said, "I won't go on now if it troubles you; but tell me first—I am going away to-morrow, and sha'n't be back till October—shall I find you here then, and may I speak then?"

They moved on again along the cemetery-walks. Putnam felt an exultation that he could not suppress. In spite of her language, her face and the tone of her voice had betrayed her. He knew that she cared for him. But in the blindness of his joy he failed to notice an increasing agitation in her manner, which foretold the approach of some painful crisis of feeling. Her conflicting emotions, long pent up, were now in most delicate equilibrium. The slightest shock might throw them out of balance. Putnam's nature, though generous and at bottom sympathetic, lacked the fineness of insight needed to interpret the situation. Like many men of robust and heedless temperament, he was more used to bend others' moods to his own than to enter fully into theirs. His way of approaching the subject had been unfortunate, beginning as he had with a jest. The sequel was destined to be still more unlucky.

They had reached a part of the cemetery which was not divided into lots, but formed a sort of burial commons for the[Pg 495] behoof of the poor. It was used mainly by Germans, and the graves were principally those of children. The headstones were wooden, painted white, with inscriptions in black or gilt lettering. Humble edgings of white pebbles or shells, partly embedded in the earth, bordered some of the graves: artificial flowers, tinsel crosses, hearts and other such fantastic decorations lay upon the mounds. Putnam's companion paused with an expression of pity before one of these uncouth sepulchres, a little heap of turf which covered the body of a "span-long babe."

"Now, isn't that echt Deutsch?" began Putnam, whom the gods had made mad. "Is that glass affair let into the tombstone a looking-glass or a portrait of the deceased—like that 'statoot of a deceased infant' that Holmes tells about? Even our ancestral cherub and willow tree are better than that, or even the inevitable sick lamb and broken lily."

"They do the same sort of thing when they're rich. It's the national Geschmack to stick little tawdry fribbles all over the face of Nature."

"It's a rather old baby by this time," rejoined Putnam, pointing out the date on the wooden slab—"Eighteen fifty-one: it would be older than I now if it had kept on."

Her eyes fell upon the inscription, and she read it aloud. "Hier ruht in Gott Heinrich Frantz, Geb. Mai 13, 1851. Gest. August 4, 1852. Wir hoffen auf Wiedersehen." She repeated the last words softly over to herself.

"Are those white things cobblestones, or what?" continued Putnam perversely, indicating the border which quaintly encircled the little mound. "As I live," he exclaimed, "they are door-knobs!" and he poked one of them out of the ground with the end of his cane.

He dropped his cane and looked at her in wonder. She burst into tears and turned away. "You think I am a heartless brute?" he cried remorsefully, hastening after her.

"Oh, go away, please—go away and leave me alone. I am going to my brother: I want to be alone."

She hurried on, and he paused irresolute. "Miss Pinckney!" he called after her, but she made no response. His instinct, now aroused too late, told him that he had better leave her alone for the present. So he picked up his walking-stick and turned reluctantly homeward. He cursed himself mentally as he retraced the paths along which they had walked together a few moments before. "I'm a fool," he said to himself: "I've gone and upset it all. Couldn't I see that she was feeling badly? I suppose I imagined that I was funny, and she thought I was an insensible brute. This comes of giving way to my infernal high spirits." At the same time a shade of resentment mingled with his self-reproaches. "Why can't she be a little more cheerful and like other girls, and make some allowance for a fellow?" he asked. "Her brother wasn't everybody else's brother. It's downright morbid, this obstinate woe of hers. Other people have lost friends and got over it."

On the morrow he was to start for the mountains. He visited the cemetery in the morning, but Miss Pinckney was not there. He did not know her address, nor could the gatekeeper inform him; and in the afternoon he set out on his journey with many misgivings.

It was early October when Putnam returned to the city. He went at once to the cemetery, but on reaching the grave his heart sank at the sight of a bunch of withered flowers which must have lain many days upon the mound. The blossoms were black and the stalks brittle and dry. "Can she have changed her mind and gone South already?" he asked himself.

There was a new sexton in the gate-house, who could tell him nothing about her. He wandered through the grounds, looking for the old woman with the watering-pot, but the season had grown cold, and she had probably ceased her gardening operations for the year. He continued his walk beyond the marshes. The woods[Pg 496] had grown rusty and the sandy pastures outside the city were ringing with the incessant creak of grasshoppers, which rose in clouds under his feet as he brushed through the thin grass. The blue-curl and the life-everlasting distilled their pungent aroma in the autumn sunshine. A feeling of change and forlornness weighed upon his spirit. As with Thomas of Ercildoune, whom the Queen of Faëry carried away into Eildon Hill, the short period of his absence seemed seven years long. An old English song came into his head:

Soon after arriving at the hills he had written to Miss Pinckney a long letter of explanations and avowals; but he did not know the number of her lodgings, or, oddly enough, even her Christian name, and the letter had been returned to him unopened. The next month was one of the unhappiest in Putnam's life. On returning to the city, thoroughly restored in health, he had opened an office, but he found it impossible to devote himself quietly to the duties of his profession. He visited the cemetery at all hours, but without success. He took to wandering about in remote quarters and back streets of the town, and eyed sharply every female figure that passed him in the twilight, especially if it walked quickly or wore a veil. He slept little at night, and grew restless and irritable. He had never confided this experience even to his mother: it seemed to him something apart.

One afternoon toward the middle of November he was returning homeward weary and dejected from a walk in the suburbs. His way led across an unenclosed outskirt of the town which served as a common to the poor people of the neighborhood. It was traversed by a score of footpaths, and frequented by goats, and by ducks that dabbled in the puddles of rain-water collected in the hollows. Halfway across this open tract stood what had formerly been an old-fashioned country-house, now converted into a soap-boiling establishment. Around this was a clump of old pine trees, the remnant of a grove which had once flourished in the sandy soil. There was something in the desolation of the place that flattered Putnam's mood, and he stopped to take it in. The air was dusk, but embers of an angry sunset burned low in the west. A cold wind made a sound in the pine-tops like the beating of surf on a distant shore. A flock of little winter birds flew suddenly up from the ground into one of the trees, like a flight of gray leaves whirled up by a gust. As Putnam turned to look at them he saw, against the strip of sunset along the horizon, the slim figure of a girl walking rapidly toward the opposite side of the common. His heart gave a great leap, and he started after her on a run. At a corner of the open ground the figure vanished, nor could Putnam decide into which of two or three small streets she had turned. He ran down one and up another, but met no one except a few laborers coming home from work, and finally gave up the quest. But this momentary glimpse produced in him a new excitement. He felt sure that he had not been mistaken: he knew the swift, graceful step, the slight form bending in the wind. He fancied that he had even recognized the poise and shape of the little head. He imagined, too, that he had not been unobserved, and that she had some reason for avoiding him. For a week or more he haunted the vicinity of the common, but without result. December was already drawing to an end when he received the following note:

"Dear Mr. Putnam: You must forgive me for running away from you the other evening: I am right—am I not?—in supposing that you saw and recognized me. It was rude in me not to wait for you, but I had not courage to talk with any one just then. Perhaps I should have seen you before at the cemetery—if you still walk there—but I have been sick and have not been there for a long time. I was only out for the first time when I saw you last Friday. My aunt has sent for me, and I am going South in a few days. I shall leave directions[Pg 497] to have this posted to you as soon as I am gone.

"I promised to be here when you came back, and I write this to thank you for your kind interest in me and to explain why I go away without seeing you again. I think that I know what you wanted to ask me that day that we went to the green-house, and perhaps under happier circumstances I could have given you the answer which you wished. But I have seen so much sorrow, and I am of such a gloomy disposition, that I am not fit for cheerful society, and I know you would regret your choice.

"I shall think very often and very gratefully of you, and shall not forget the words on that little German baby's gravestone. Good-bye.

"Imogen Pinckney."

Putnam felt stunned and benumbed on first reading this letter. Then he read it over mechanically two or three times. The date was a month old, but the postmark showed that it had just been mailed. She must have postponed her departure somewhat after writing it, or the person with whom it had been left had neglected to post it till now. He felt a sudden oppression and need of air, and taking his hat left the house. It was evening, and the first snow of the season lay deep on the ground. Anger and grief divided his heart. "It's too bad! too bad!" he murmured, with tears in his eyes: "she might have given me one chance to speak. She hasn't been fair to me. What's the matter with her, anyhow? She has brooded and brooded till she is downright melancholy-mad;" and then, with a revulsion of feeling, "My poor darling girl! Here she has been, sick and all alone, sitting day after day in that cursed graveyard. I ought never to have gone to the mountains: I ought to have stayed. I might have known how it would turn out. Well, it's all over now, I suppose."

He had taken, half unconsciously, the direction of the cemetery, and now found himself at the entrance. The gate was locked, but he climbed over the wall and waded through the snow to the spot where he had sat with her so many summer afternoons. The wicker chair was buried out of sight in a drift. A scarcely-visible undulation in the white level marked the position of the mound, and the headstone had a snow-cap. The cedars stood black in the dim moonlight, and the icy coating of their boughs rattled like candelabra. He stood a few moments near the railing, and then tore the letter into fragments and threw them on the snow. "There! good-bye, good-bye!" he said bitterly as the wind carried them skating away over the crust.

But what was that? The moon cast a shadow of Henry Pinckney's headstone on the snow, but what was that other and similar shadow beyond it? Putnam had been standing edgewise to the slab: he shifted his position now and saw a second stone and a second mound side by side with the first. An awful faintness and trembling seized him as he approached it and bent his head close down to the marble. The jagged shadows of the cedar-branches played across the surface, but by the uncertain light he could read the name "Imogen Pinckney," and below it the inscription, "Wir hoffen auf Wiedersehen."

STUDIES IN THE SLUMS.

VI.—JAN OF THE NORTH.

"You're wanted at 248, and they said go quick. It's Brita, I shouldn't wonder. Lord pity her, but it's a wild night to go out! Seems like as if the Lord would have hard work to find anybody, with the rain an' sleet pourin' an' drivin' so't you can't see a foot before your face. But He will."

"Yes, He will," the doctor's quiet voice answered. "Poor little Brita! I am glad her trouble is almost over. Will you come? Remember how dreadful the place is."

"Surely, for I have been in the midst of such for twenty years, and among them all have never known a worse den than that in which these poor souls are stranded. If I could only see a way out for them!"

The doctor had not been idle as she spoke, and stood ready now in thick gray waterproof and close bonnet, her face a shade graver than its always steady, gentle calm. Jerry followed, his badge of deputy sheriff hastily put on, for the alley was one of the worst in the Fourth Ward, and, well as she was known through its length and breadth, here the bravest might shrink from going unattended. Out into the night, the wild wind and beating rain seeming best accompaniments to the brutal revelry in the dance-houses and "bucket-shops" all about. Here, one heard the cracked and discordant sounds from the squeaking fiddles or clarionets of the dance-music, and there, were shouts and oaths and the crash of glass as a drunken fight went on, undisturbed by policeman and watched with only a languid interest by the crowd of heavy drinkers. Up Cherry street, past staggering men, and women with the indescribable voice that once heard is never forgotten, all, seemingly regardless of the storm, laughing aloud or shrieking as a sudden gust whirled them on. Then the alley, dark and noisome, the tall tenement-houses rising on either side, a wall of pestilence and misery, shutting in only a little deeper misery, a little surer pestilence, to be faced as it might be.

"It's hell on earth," said Jerry as we passed up the stairs, dark and broken, pausing a moment as the sound of a scuffle and a woman's shrill scream came from one of the rooms. "Do you wonder there's murder, an' worse than murder, done in these holes? Oh, what would I give to tumble them, the whole crop of the devil's own homes, straight into the river!"

"Hush," the doctor said. "Stay, Jerry, a few minutes. You may be wanted, but there is not room for all in there."

As she spoke the door had opened, and a tall, gaunt woman in the distinctive Swedish dress stood before us and mutely pointed us in. It was hard to distinguish anything in the dim light of a flickering tallow candle placed in a corner to screen it from the wind, which whistled through cracks and forced the rain through the broken roof. On a pile of rags lay three children, sleeping soundly. By the table sat a heavy figure, the face bowed and hidden in the arms folded upon it, and on the wretched bed lay the wasted figure of the girl whose life was passing in the storm.

"Poor little Brita!" I said again, for as the doctor bent over her and took her hand the eyes opened and a faint smile came to the sweet, child-like face. Long braids of fair hair lay on the pillow, the eyes were blue and clear, and the face, wearing now the strange gray shadow of death, held a delicate beauty still, that with health and color would have made one turn to look at it again wherever encountered. The mother stood silent and despairing at the foot of the bed. The motionless figure at the table did not stir. There was no fire or sign of comfort in[Pg 499] the naked room, and but the scantiest of covering on the bed.

The girl looked up faintly and put out her hand. "Pray," she said in a whisper—"pray for the mother;" but even as she spoke she gasped, half rose, then fell back, and was gone, the look of entreaty still in the eyes. The doctor closed them gently, the poor eyes that would never need to beg for help any more, and then the mother, still silent, came softly and touched the girl's face, sinking down then by the side of the bed and stroking the dead hands as if to bring back life.

The man had risen too and came slowly to her side. "I thank God she iss gone away from all trouble," he said, "but oh, my doctor, it iss so hard!"

"Hard!" the woman echoed and rose. "I will not hear of God: I hate God. There iss no God, but only a deffil, who does all he vill. Brita iss gone, and Lars and little Jan. Now it must be de oders, and den I know vat you call God vill laugh. He vill say, 'Ah, now I haf dem all. De fool fader and de fool moder, dey may live.'"

"Brita! poor Brita!" the man said softly, and added some words in his own tongue. She pushed him away, then burst into wild weeping and sank down on the floor.

"He will be her best comforter," the doctor said. "We will go now, and I will see them all to-morrow. That money will get the coffin," she added as she laid a bill on the table and then went softly out, "but the coffin would not have been needed if help could have come three months ago."

"I thought it was some drunken home," I said, "but that man can never have gone very far wrong. He has a noble head."

"No, it is only hard times," she answered. "Go again, and you will learn the whole story, unless you choose to hear it from me."

"No," I said as we stood under the shelter of the still unfinished Franklin Square Station on the elevated road, "I will hear it for myself if I can."

The time came sooner than I thought. A month later I went up the dark stairs, whose treacherous places I had learned to know, and found the room empty of all signs of occupation, though the bed and table still stood there.

"They're gone," a voice called from below. "They've come into luck, Pat says, but I don't know. Anyhow, they turned out o' here yesterday, an' left the things there for whoever 'd be wantin' 'em."

"Bad 'cess to the furriner!" said another voice as I passed down. "Comin' here wid his set-up ways, an' schornin' a bit of dhrink!"

"An' if ye'd take patthern of him yerself—" the woman's voice began, and was silenced by a push back into her room and the loud slam of the door.

"They have come to better times surely," the janitor said as I asked their whereabouts at the mission, "an' here's their new number. It's a quiet, decent place, an' he'll have a better soon."

After Cherry and Roosevelt and Water streets, Madison street seems another Fifth Avenue. The old New Yorker knows it as the once stately and decorous abode of old Dutch families, a few of whom still cling to the ancient homes, but most of these are now cheap boarding-Pouses and tenements, while here and there a new genuine tenement-house is sandwiched between the tiled roofs and dormer-windows which still hold suggestions of former better days. The more respectable class of 'longshoremen find quarters here, and some of the mission-people, who, well-to-do enough to seek quieter homes, choose to be as near as possible to the work waiting for them, and for more like them, in that nest of evil and outrage and slime, the Fourth Ward.

Brita's head was bowed on the table as I went in, and Jan's face was sorrowful as he looked toward her. "It iss not so alvay," he said. "She hass made it all so good, and now she dinks of Brita, dat vill not see it, and she say still, 'God iss hard to take her avay.'"

"It iss de last day I vill be here in my home all day," he began, drawing one of the children between his knees and holding its hands fondly. "But see on de vall! It iss dat hass done some vork for me."

I looked to where he pointed. On the wall, near the small looking-glass, hung a round cap with hanging fox's tail—such a cap as the half-bloods of our north-western forests wear, and the peasants of the European North as well.

Jan smiled as he saw my puzzled look. "It iss vy I say I vill tell it all," he went on in his grave, steady voice. "Ven I see dat it iss to see de North. For, see, it vas not alvays I am in de city. No. It iss true I am many years in Stockholm, but I am not Swede: I am Finn—yes, true Finn—and know my own tongue vell, and dat iss vat some Finns vill nefer do. I haf learn to read Swedish, for I must. Our own tongue iss not for us, but I learn it, and Brita dere, she know it too. Brita iss of Helsingfors, and I am of de country far out, but I come dere vid fur, for I hunt many months each year. Den I know Brita, and ve marry, and I must stay in de city, and I am strong; and first I am porter, but soon dey know I read and can be drusted, and it iss china dat I must put in boxes all day, and I know soon how to touch it so as it nefer break.

"But dere is not money. My Brita iss born, and little Jan, and I dink alvay, 'I must haf home vere dey may know more;' and all de days it iss America dat dey say iss home for all, and much money—so much no man can be hungry, and vork iss for all. Brita iss ready, and soon ve come, and all de children glad. Yes, dere are six, and good children dat lofe us, and I say efery day, 'Oh, my God, but you are so good! and my life lofes you, for so much good I haf.' Brita too iss happy. She vork hard, but ve do not care, and ve dink, 'Soon ve can rest a little, for it iss not so hard dere as here;' and ve sail to America.

"But, my lady, how iss it it vas all so bad? For vork iss not. It iss true I haf a little in de beginning. It iss three year ago. I know some English I haf learn in sailing once to England, for de Finns go eferyvere to sail. I am not helpless so, and I am large and strong, and soon I go to de many, many china-stores—so many, I say, dat can nefer be to vant vork—and in one dey take me. But it iss not much money, dough I dink it so, for it iss alvay de rent—so much, and ve are strange and dey cheat us. And ven I am troubled most, and dink to ask for more, den quick it iss dat I haf none. De place iss failed—dat iss vat iss tell me—and I go home to Brita to say vat shall to do? I could dig, I vould go far off, but I haf not money; but I say, 'Ven I get plenty it shall be ve go to vere earth shall gif us to eat, and not starve us as here.' For soon it iss little to eat, and it iss dat ve sell clothes and such as ve must. I get vork—a little on de docks. I unload, and see men dat can steal all day from coffee-bags and much sugar, and soon time iss come dat ve are hungry, and men say, 'Steal too. It's hard times, and you haf to steal.'

"Oh, dere iss one day! It iss here now. My little Jan iss dead, and Carl so sick, and all dat he must be vidout enough to eat, and my Brita vill get a dollar and a half a veek to sew—alvays sew and she is pale and coughs. I pray, 'O God, you know I vill not do wrong, but vat shall I do? Show me how, for I am afraid.' But it vas all dark. I cannot go home, for I haf not money. I cannot vork but one, maybe two, times a veek. And alvays I see my own hungry! I dink I could kill myself; but dat helps not, and I go avay, oh, eferyvere about New York, and beg for vork. And den eferyvere it iss said, 'He is a tramp,' and alvays dey tell me, 'No, ve gif not to tramps. Go to vere you came from.' I say, 'I am not tramps. My children are hungry. Gif me vork: I vant to eat for dem—not money, but to eat if you vill. Gif me a little vork.'

"I am dirty: Brita iss not dere to haf me clean. I vash as I can, in vater anyvere, but I sleep on de ground. I eat not often. I am vild truly, I know, and soon peoples are afraid. Den, my lady, I haf no more faith. I say, 'God, you haf forgotten[Pg 501] me: you haf forgotten vat you promise. It may be God iss not anyvere.' So I come back, and I find dat my little Brita iss sick—so sick she cannot vork—and Brita my vife; she sew all she can, but it iss not enough. I go on de docks once more. 'No vork! no vork!' It iss de vord eferyvere. And one day, all de day long, ve haf nothing—no fire, nothing to eat, and dere iss no more anything to pawn, and I say, 'At last I vill steal, for vat else shall be to do?' And I go out and down to de dock, for I know a boat going out in de night, and I say, 'I too vill go.' But I go down Vater street. I know it not much, for first my home iss on de odder side, but ve are so poor at last ve are in Cherry street, and den vere you see us first. But den I am just come, and I go by de mission and hear all sing, and I say, 'I vill stay a minute and listen, for soon nefer again shall I sit vid any dat sing and pray and haf to do vid God.' So I go in, and listen not much till soon one man stands up, an' he say, 'Friends, I came first from prison, and I meant not efer to do more vat vould take me dere again. But dere iss no vork, even ven I look all day, and I am hungry; and den I dink to steal again. I vait, because perhaps vork come, but at night I go out and say, "I know my old ground. Dere's plenty ready to velcome me if I'm a mind to join 'em." And den, as I go, one says to me, "Come in here;" and I come in and not care, till I hear many tell vat dey vere, and I say, "I vill vait a leetle longer: I cannot steal now." And now vork has come, and if God help me I shall never steal again.'

"I stood up den. I said loud, 'I haf nefer steal. I belief in God, but now how shall I? My heart's dearest, dey starve, dey die before me. Dere iss no vork, dere iss no help. If I steal not, how shall I do?' I vas crying: I could not see. Then Jerry came. 'You shall nefer starve,' he said. 'Stay honest, for God vill care for you, and ve'll all pray Him to keep you so.'

"And so, when meeting iss done, dey go vid me to see, and dere iss food and all dey can. Dey are God's angels to me and to mine.

"But, my lady, you know: you haf seen my little Brita. And efery day I look at her and see her going avay, so fast, so fast, and my heart breaks, for she is first of all. And den she iss gone, and still vork is not. You haf seen us. All de days dey say. 'Dere vill come vork soon,' but it comes not efer. And one morning I look in de chest to see if one thing may still be to pawn, and dere iss only my cap dat I keep—not to vear, no, but only to remember. And I sit, and it iss on my hand, and I hold de fox's tail, and again I am in Finland, and I see de foxes run on de ice, and I know vell dis one dat I hold de tail. Den quick I haf a thought. I look for a stick all about: dere iss but a little one for de fire, and no knife, but I get a knife from a man dat iss at de odder room, and I cut it and tie it. I vill not tell Brita vat I do, but soon I haf de tail vid a handle, and I put it inside my coat, and go to a store vere iss a man I haf seen dat vill make many things, and money sometimes.

"'Ha, Jan,' he said ven I show it, 'dis iss a notion! I'll gif you ten dollar for dat notion.'

"'No,' I say. 'If you say ten dollar I know it vorth more, for I know vat you can do. But let it be more, and I may sell it.'

"Den he talk. Dere is risk, he say, and he must spend much money, but he say it vill take. Oh, I know dat vord, and ven he has talked so much at last he say he vill write a paper and gif me one hundred dollar, and make me a foreman ven he shall make dem. For he says, 'It iss vat all ladies vill vant—so soft to make clean in de beautiful cabinets, and de china on de vall so as dey hang it in great houses. Vid its handle for stiffness, den de soft tail vill go eferyvere and nefer break. It iss a duster, and best of all duster too, for nothing can efer break.'

"So now he hass rooms—dree rooms—and many people are to take dem, and to-morrow I go to show how one must hold all de tails, and dere is vork, all I can do; and ven money iss come I dink to go avay, but not soon, for I must help[Pg 502] some dat haf no help. But oh, I dink of de little ones, and of Brita dat iss gone; and de moder she cannot haf rest, for all day she say, 'Vy must it be dey are gone, ven now iss plenty?'—'My God, it iss your vill. And not fery long, and you vill make us a home vid her.' It iss all right, my lady."

Jan lingers still in his last quarters. The mission holds him fast, and his grave, steady face is known to many a poor wretch just out of prison—many a tramp who has returned despairing of work and been helped to it by this man, himself a workman, but with a sympathy never failing for any sad soul struggling toward a better life or lost in the despair of waiting. Their name is legion, and their rescue must come from just such workers—men who have suffered and know its meaning. Men of this stamp hold the key to a regeneration of the masses, such as organized charities are powerless to effect; and already some who believe in this fact are seeking to make their work easier and to give the substantial aid that it demands. The poor are the best missionaries to the poor, and he who has gone hungry, suffered every pang of poverty and known sharpest temptation to sin can best speak words that will save men and women entering on the same path.

To this end Jan lives—as truly a priest to the people as if hands laid upon him had consecrated him to the work, but all unconscious what power it holds to the on-lookers, and only sure of the one word, the mission watchword—"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, ye have done it unto Me."

UNDER THE GRASSES.

"KITTY."

The Idler was hopelessly becalmed off Thomas's Point. Not a ripple could be seen down the Chesapeake, and the locusts and pines along the shore were shuddering uncomfortably with the heat of a July afternoon, hidden halfway to their tops in the summer haze. What was to be done? Five miles from home in a large sloop yacht filled with strangers from the North, the crew left behind to be out of the way, and every one thoroughly convinced that his neighbor was horribly bored!

Thornton gave the tiller a vicious shove, as if that would wake the yacht up, and glared forward along the row of parasols protecting fair faces from the sun and of hats cocked over noses that were screwed up with feelings too deep for words, and more intense than those produced by heat, he thought. By five o'clock we had sung every song that ever was written, and flirtations were becoming desperate. Mollie Brogden, comfortably lodged against the mast, was dropping her blue parasol lower and lower over one of the New York men as their conversation grew more and more intense with the heat, and Mrs. Brogden was becoming really alarmed.

The situation was maddening! Nothing on board to eat; soft-shell crabs and the best bill of fare of a Southern kitchen ordered at home for seven o'clock; a couple of fiddlers coming from "the Swamp" at nine; and Cousin Susan, the cook, even then promising little Stump Neal "all de bonyclábá he cu'd stow ef he'd jest friz dis yar cream fo' de new missis."

"It is too provoking for anything!" the new missis whispered to Thornton, as he stopped by his wife's side for an instant and moved on to consult with some of the married men who were smoking in luxuriant carelessness forward. Very little consolation he got there. Ellis from Annapolis said he had known calms last two days, and sundry forcible remarks were made when it was discovered that the last cigars were then in our mouths. This was the last straw. Thornton felt furious with every one, and muttered dark wishes that ante-war power might be restored to him over the person of Uncle Brian when we got home—if we ever did—as he reflected that that ancient African had guaranteed a breeze.

Mollie Brogden smiled lazily at him as Donaldson fanned her slowly, and waited until Thornton should pass, so that the talk which was leading up to the inscription of a clever piece of poetry on her fan might be continued.

"By the way, Donaldson," as a sudden inspiration seemed to strike Thornton, "did you ever hear anything more of Kitty after I left you at Christmas?"

The sweetness of that piece of poetry on the fan was never revealed. The blue parasol went up with a jump, and a look assured Donaldson that certain words had better have been left unsaid that afternoon if "Kitty" should not be satisfactorily explained. I felt sorry for him, for every one caught at the idea of something new, and the thought of an explanation to the whole of that boatload, keen for all sorts of badinage, would have tempted me overboard, I am sure. However, Donaldson smiled very composedly, and said he believed the family were still in Texas, although he had heard nothing more than Thornton already knew of their history.

Well, that simply made matters worse: Texas and Kitty were suggestive enough for anything, and I caught a whisper from Miss Brogden that seemed to imply that she doubted whether he had really been so inconsolable for last summer's diversions as he had tried to make her believe. That settled him, for I knew he had come down to Thornton's expressly to see her, and he assured us it was a very small story, but if we cared to hear it perhaps the breeze would come[Pg 504] meanwhile, and he would try to give the facts exactly as they had come to his knowledge.

"We were a few hours out from Liverpool," he began, "and the smoking-room of the Russia was pretty well filled with all sorts of men, none of whom of course felt much at home yet, but who were gradually being shaken together by the civilizing influence of tobacco and the occasional lurches that the cross-chop of the Channel was favoring us with. I was sitting near the door with a man from Boston whom I found on board returning from a wedding-trip, and who, I discovered, had taken orders since leaving Harvard, where I had known him slightly as a bookish sort of fellow and not very agreeable; but as I was alone and his wife was quite pretty, I was glad to meet him.

"Well, we were running over old times, without paying much attention to the guide-book talk that was being poured out round us, when somebody laid a hand on my shoulder and one of the most attractive voices I ever heard asked 'if there was room for a stranger from Texas?' This formal announcement of himself by a newcomer made a little lull in the conversation, but my friend made room for him in our corner, and he quietly enveloped himself in smoke for the rest of the evening.

"He was not inattentive, though, to the drift of our talk, for when Hamilton mentioned having been at the Pan-Anglican, and spoke of the effect such conventions should produce, the Texan's cigar came out of his mouth and his blue eyes grew deeper in their sockets as he interrupted us with the remark: 'The conventions of all the Bible-men in the world would not have made La Junta any better if it had not been for Kitty. You know what Junta was before she came?' he continued, seeing us look a little surprised—'nothing but cards and drink, and—worse; and now'—and he laid his hand on his hip as if from habit—'now we have no trouble there any more.'

"The oddness of the expression 'Bible-men,' I remember, struck me at the time, but Hamilton made some explanatory reply, for the quiet force of the soft voice had a certain persuasiveness about it without the aid of his gesture, although the smoke was so thick that we could not see whether he carried the instruments of his country or not.

"Standing by the aft wheel-house, I found the Texan the next morning throwing biscuits to the gulls and gazing wistfully seaward.

"'Yes, but I would give all last year's herd if I had never come, for Kitty is ill. I have travelled night and day since the telegram reached me, but La Junta is so far away I am afraid I shall be too late.'

"I wish I could give you an idea of his manner: it was more like that of a person who had just learned the language and was afraid of making mistakes, so hesitated before each word, giving every syllable its full value. He explained this simply enough afterward—that Kitty had broken him of swearing by making him think before he spoke."

"But you haven't told us who Kitty was," interrupted the blue parasol. "Was she light or dark?"—"his wife?"—"he wouldn't have dared!"—"a Texan wife?" and Mrs. Brogden looked very grave at the possibilities the flying questions aroused.

"No, she wasn't his wife; only the Yankee schoolmistress of La Junta. I never saw her. She must have been an angel, though, from his description; so I will leave the details for your acquaintance hereafter, Miss Brogden;" which outrageous flattery was received with contemptuous silence.

"She lived at Junta, and would canter over on Saturdays to Trocalara, the Texan's ranch, to teach his herdsmen's families. His partner, Parker, and he had a large cattle-ranch not far from the Mexican frontier, and Kitty could not have lived on a bed of roses, I fancy. Raids, stampedes and other border pleasantries were constantly occurring. I remember we thought him too gentle at first to have really hailed from the Plains; but one night, when Hamilton remonstrated with a man who, I believe, had[Pg 505] allowed himself to get in that state described by the sailors as 'three sheets in the wind, and the fourth fluttering,' and was met with rather an uncivil reply, the Texan shut the offender up like a jack-knife with his heavy grip and the intimation that 'he proposed to settle the Bible-man's scores.'

"He grew quite intimate with Hamilton and me, and proved a delightful companion. He would quote readily from many of the later poets, and knew whole pages of Milton and Shakespeare by heart. Kitty had taught him these, he said, after she married Parker and came to live with him.

"'She made us read history-books first,' he said—'many, many volumes—but we soon got to like them better than anything else. The poetry she read to us; and so we never went to the shows in Junta after she came. Kitty has a good husband, as fine a fellow as ever lassoed a steer, but she is too pure for Junta. Parker loves her, and I love her too, but both of us do not make up for her Eastern comforts. And so last year, as we made a good herd and there were no raids to speak of, I came to New York to get a few luxuries for her. She wrote me then to go to Paris and see the Exposition; so I went because I thought she knew best, and that if I had seen the world a little I should be nearer to her, and it would not be quite so hard for her out there. And now she is ill, and—I am here!'

"He turned impatiently away to ask the quartermaster what we were doing by the last log. The speed appeared to satisfy him, for he sat quietly down again and told us how it was that Kitty had come to live with them.

"'For two years, you know'—assuming that we did know—'she spent Saturdays at Trocalara, teaching our people how to read and write. They were very rough at first—we all are out there—and did not care much; but she interested them, and brought picture-books for the little ones, and by and by she said she would come out on Sunday and we should have church!' with a triumphant look at Hamilton and his Pan-Anglican attendance. 'Yes, we had had a priest there before, but he was shot in a row at Bowler's Paradise, and no one cared to apply for a new one.

"'Kitty came up to the ranch the first Sunday, and asked us to come with her. We refused at first, but after a while, when we heard the singing, we went down to the quarters, and found her sitting under one of the trees with all the young ones clustered round her; and we waited there and listened until we began to feel very sorry that we had played so late at Bowler's the night before.

"'But Parker had been in luck, and he swore he would get her as fine a piano as could be brought from the States (he was a half-Mexican by birth) if she would sing like that for us at the ranch.

"'She stood up then, with all the young ones looking on in amazement, the light and shade playing over her through the cool, dark leaves, and, turning her large gray eyes full on Parker's face, said she would if we would promise never to go to Bowler's again.

"'I think Parker expected her to refuse to come altogether, because we had no women there, and we had heard the people in Junta talking of her quiet, modest ways. But no, she never thought of herself: she only thought of the nights at Bowler's, and wanted to save us from the end she had seen often enough in two years in Junta. At any rate, the piano came, and Parker had it sent as a sort of halfway measure to her house in Junta, where she and her mother lived, and we were as welcome as the light there always.

"'You have no idea of her music. They told me at concerts in Paris that I was hearing the finest musicians in Europe, but they were not like Kitty. They played for our money—Kitty played for our pleasure: it makes so much difference,' he added as his fingers drummed an accompaniment to the air he whistled.

"'One night Parker and I were sitting in a corner at Bowler's when we heard a Greaser—a Mexican, you know—that[Pg 506] Parker had refused to play poker with the night before ask who the señorita was that had taken the spirit out of Parker.

"'We both started forward instantly, but as the man was evidently ignorant of our presence, Parker checked me with a fierce look in his eyes that showed that the spirit of his former days would be very apt to put a different ending on the conversation if it continued in that tone.

"'"Kitty? Ah, your American names are so strange! Kitty! But she is beautiful, is this Kitty! I met her in the Gulch road this afternoon this side of Trocalara. Caramba! how she can ride! The Parker has good taste: I drink to my future acquaintance with her."

"'As he raised the glass to his lips Parker stood behind his chair and whispered, "If you drink that liquor, by God it will be the last drop that shall ever pass your lips!"

"'The next morning they sold the Mexican's horse and traps to pay for burying him and for the damage done, and Parker lay in bed at Kitty's with that in his side you would not have cared to see.

"'Kitty never knew why he fought, and never even looked a reproach. It was not much—I had seen him cut much worse in the stockyard at home—but somehow he did not get well. The weeks slipped by, and each time I called Kitty would say he was a little better, and a little better, and oh yes, he would be back next week; but next week came so often without Parker that at last, when the time came for changing pastures, I went with the herd and left him still at Junta.

"'I would willingly have taken his place, look you, if I had known the result, but perhaps the other way was the best, after all; for now Kitty has two men to serve her,' he added meditatively.

"'When I got back to Junta in October, Parker was quite recovered, I found out at the ranch, but was in town that evening, so I went quietly into Kitty's house to surprise them. As I crossed the hall I heard Parker's voice. Could I have mistaken the house? was it really his voice I heard? Yes: he was telling Kitty how he had broken the three-year-old colt to side-saddle, so when she came to Trocalara she must give up her old pony. I knew then why Kitty had kept him there so long: he had lost his reason and she wished to keep me from knowing it!

"'But no. I stood still and listened, and heard him tell her how he had always loved her, apparently going over an old story to her. My God! I would as soon have told the Virgin I loved her! And then I heard her voice. "When I am your wife—" she began.

"'It all flashed on me in an instant then. I slipped noiselessly out, and if they heard "Odd Trick's" gallop on the turf it was not because his hoofs lingered too long there.

"'I can't remember how I passed that night. The revelation had been so sudden that the words seemed to be written in my heart and to be carried through every vein with each beat. "When I am your wife—" What would the result be? Our Kitty was to be his wife? Could I still stay at the ranch? "When I am your wife—" and I loved her!

"'The next day I went into Junta and saw them both. I told Parker how the herd stood, and how the shooting had been in the mountains, but I never had the courage to look at her.

"'After a while she went to the piano and played "Home:" then she came and sat down by me and said, "I have told Parker I will go home with him: I will try to be a sister to you."

"'He married her the next month, and—and—Trocalara has been heaven ever since.

"'I never knew what a Christian was before she came: you know we have no faith in Texas in things we can't draw a bead on. But when she read me the story of the Scribes and Pharisees and[Pg 507] Christ I felt ashamed to be like those Flat-heads and Greasers in the New Testament who did not believe in him; and now I feel sure of knowing some one in heaven, for Kitty has promised to find me there.'

"I forget a great many of the incidents he told us," Donaldson went on in the quiet that was almost equal to the calm around us; "and I dare say it would bore you to listen. But he certainly was the most extraordinary man I ever met. I can't do justice to his expressions, for they lack his soft voice and curious hesitation. I wish we had him here, though."

"Yes. When we reached New York I found him standing in his old place by the aft wheel-house in a dazed sort of way, with apparently no intention of going ashore; so I asked him what hotel he intended to stop at. His only answer was to hand me a letter dated some days before:

That was all the letter said, but as I looked at his white face and burning eyes I saw it was what he had feared.

"As I bade him good-night at the hotel that evening he asked me, 'Do you really feel sure that I could find her—there?'

"The next morning they found him with a bullet-hole in his temple. He had gone to find Kitty."

"Heads!" said Thornton as the boom swung over and the swirl from the Idler's bow told us the wind had come. As I changed my place I caught Miss Brogden's eye, and felt satisfied that Donaldson was forgiven.

A GREAT SINGER.

There are so few of them! The next generation will hardly understand how great were some of the lately-vanished kings and queens of the lyric drama. We who have passed middle age, who have heard Lablache, and Tamberlik, and Jenny Lind, and Viardot Garcia, and Alboni, and Giuglini in their prime, and Grisi, Mario, Sontag and Persiani with voices but a little the worse for wear, can sadly contrast the vocal glories of the past with those of the present. Who are the great singers of to-day? Two or three prime donne and as many baritones. There is not a single basso living to suggest Lablache, not a tenor to revive the triumphs of Rubini, Mario, Giuglini or the subject of the present article.

Gustave Roger, the celebrated French tenor, who so long reigned a king at the Grand Opéra of Paris, was a born Parisian. He was of gentle blood, his uncle being Baron Roger, who was a member of the Chamber of Deputies in the days of Louis Philippe. He was born in 1815, and was originally destined for the legal profession. But the boy's destiny was the stage. It is on record that, being sent to a provincial town where there was no theatre to complete his studies, he got up a representation on his own account, playing the principal rôles in three comedies. The notary in whose office he had been placed was present on the occasion, and warmly applauded the young actor, but the next day sent his refractory pupil back to Paris. Finally, Roger's relatives decided that his vocation for the stage was stronger than[Pg 508] their powers of combating it, and they placed him at the Conservatoire. He remained there for one year only, at the end of which time he carried off two first prizes—one for singing and the other for declamation.

And here a curious fact must be remarked. Side by side with the great lyric or dramatic celebrities that have won their first renown at the concours of the Conservatoire there is always some other pupil of immense promise, who does as well as, if not better than, the future star at the moment of the competition, but who afterward disappears into the mists of mediocrity or of oblivion. Thus, in the year in which the elder Coquelin obtained his prize the public loudly protested against the award of the jury, declaring that the most gifted pupil of the class was a certain M. Malard, who now holds a third-rate position on the boards of the Gymnase. When Delaunay, the accomplished leading actor of the Comédie Française, left the Conservatoire, it was with a second prize only: the first was carried off by M. Blaisot, who now plays the "second old men" at the Gymnase. So with Roger as first prize was associated one Flavio Ping, a tall, handsome young man with a superb voice. So far as physical advantages were concerned, he was better fitted for a theatrical career than was the future creator of John of Leyden, as Roger was not tall and had a tendency to embonpoint. M. Ping, however, went to Italy, accepted engagements at the opera-houses of Rome, Naples and Milan, sang there with success for a few years, lost his voice, and finally disappeared.

In 1838, Roger made his début at the Opéra Comique in L'Éclair, by Auber. His success was immediate and complete. He remained at that theatre for some years, his favorite character being George Brown in La Dame Blanche. But his greatest triumphs at this period were those which awaited him in the great opera-houses of London, where he sang the leading tenor rôles in the operas of Bellini and Donizetti. In his recently-published diary he gives some interesting details respecting Jenny Lind, then at the height of her fame and the very zenith of her powers. His first impression, after hearing her in Norma, was one of disappointment. It was in June, 1847. The great tenor thus records his impressions of the great prima donna: "She is well enough in Casta Diva—that invocation to the moon suits her dreamy Teutonic nature—but the fury of the loving woman, the deserted mother—No, no! a thousand times no!" But the next season he goes to hear her in Lucia, and at once the verdict is reversed. "She is one of the greatest artists it has ever been my lot to hear," he writes. "Her voice, though charming in the upper notes, is unfortunately a little weak in the middle register; but what intelligence and invention! She imitates no one, she studies unceasingly, both the dramatic situation and the musical phrase, and her ornamentation is of a novelty and elegance that reconcile me to that style of execution. I do not love roulades, I must confess, though I may learn to do so later. Jenny Lind does one thing admirably: during the malediction, instead of clinging to her lover as all the other Lucias never fail to do till the act is ended, as soon as Edgar throws her from him she remains motionless: she is a statue. A livid smile contracts her features, her haggard eyes are fixed on the table where she signed the fatal contract, and when the curtain falls one sees that madness has already seized upon her."

During this season in London, Roger, while singing at the Ancient Concerts, saw in the audience one evening the duke of Wellington, and thus writes of the event: "I had Wellington before me. I heard the voice that commanded the troops at Waterloo. I looked into the eyes that saw the back of the emperor. I cannot express the rage that seized upon me at beholding him. To sing to and give pleasure to that man whom I would fain annihilate!—him, and his past, and his country! As a Frenchman I hate him, but I am forced also to admire him."

The next year Roger, while fulfilling an engagement in London, was requested[Pg 509] to sing at a garden-fête given, under the patronage of the queen, at Fulham, for the benefit of the poor. After the concert Roger, leaning against an acacia, was watching the departure of the royal carriages. "Lavandy came to me," he writes, "and said in a whisper, 'Do you know who is at the other side of this tree?'

"I turned round, and saw a man with an aquiline nose and blue eyes, whose deep yet gloomy gaze was fixed upon the splendors of royalty. 'Who is it?' I asked of Lavandy.

"He had just been elected member of the Chamber of Deputies. As his name appeared to be dangerous, he had been requested to take a vacation, and he had returned to London, where he had formerly lived. I am glad that I saw him: he may be somebody some day."

It was in April of the previous year (1847) that Roger went to a concert, where he records how he heard a comic opera called The Alcove, by Offenbach and Déforges: "A little inexperience, but some charming things. Offenbach is a fellow who will go far if the doors of the Opéra Comique are not closed against him: he has the gift of melody and the perseverance of a demon." It is rather curious to note, in connection with this prophecy, that the doors of the Opéra Comique, which were closed against Offenbach after the failure of his Vert-Vert some years before the war, are to be reopened to him next season, his Contes de Hoffman having proved the "Open, sesame!" to those long-barred portals.

But to return to Roger's reminiscences of Jenny Lind, which are, after all, the most interesting for music-loving readers. We find him writing in July, 1848: "I have again been to see Jenny Lind in Lucia. She is indeed a great, a sublime artist, in whom are united inspiration and industry."

It was during this season that he concluded an engagement with the English impresario Mitchell to become the tenor of the travelling opera-troupe in which Jenny Lind was to be the prima donna, and which was to undertake a tour through Scotland, Ireland and the provincial towns of England. "I am delighted," he writes: "I shall now be able to study near at hand this singular woman, whom Paris has never possessed, but whose reputation, fostered at first in Germany under the auspices of Meyerbeer, has attained in England such proportions that upon her arrival in a certain city the bells were rung and the archbishop went out to meet her and to invite her to his house. She is a noble-hearted creature, and her munificence is royal: she founds hospitals and colleges. In her blue eyes glows the flame of genius. Deprived of her voice, she would still be a remarkable woman. Believing in herself, she is full of daring, and achieves great things because she never troubles herself about the critics. She lives the life of a saint: one would say that she imagines herself sent by God to make the happiness of humanity by the religion of art. Thus she remains cold and chaste in private life, never permitting her heart to become inflamed by the ardent passions wherewith she glows upon the stage. She told me that she could never comprehend the lapse from virtue of Mademoiselle R——, a woman of such lofty talent: 'To fail thus in what was due to one's self!'"

It is pleasing to note how Roger's admiration for this great artist extinguishes all the usual petty jealousy of a fellow-singer. He writes thus frankly respecting a concert which they gave during their tour at Birmingham: "It was a brilliant success, but the final triumph was borne off by Jenny Lind, who fairly carried the audience away with her Swedish melodies, the effect of which is really remarkable. She has a strength of voice in the upper notes that is vast and surprising: without screaming she produces echoes, the loud and soft notes being almost simultaneous. In the artist's green-room she is kind and courteous without being either mirthful or expansive. Moreover, she is indefatigable, which is a precious quality for the manager. She never stays at the same hotel with the rest of[Pg 510] the troupe, which is a rather imperial proceeding; but it is better so: we are more at our ease. She lives her own concentrated life like some old wine that never sees the light excepting on great occasions. I have at last found in Jenny Lind a partner who understands me. On the stage she becomes animated; her hands clasp mine with energy, and the thrill of dramatic fervor possesses her whole being: she becomes thoroughly identified with her part, and yet she never permits herself to be so carried away as to cease to be entirely mistress of her voice."

Roger gives us some brief glimpses of Jenny Lind in private life—her love of dancing, of which she seems to have been as passionately fond as was Fanny Kemble in her youth, and her delight in horseback riding. He gives a comical account of an improvised ball, in which he figured as the prima donna's partner, on board of the steamboat going from Dublin to Holyhead: "Unfortunately, our orchestra fell off one by one; the music finally ceased; and when we stopped waltzing and cast an uneasy glance around us, we beheld all our musicians, their chests pressed against the railings, their arms extended toward the ocean, in the pitiable attitude of Punch when knocked down by the policeman." Some days later, during a performance of La Fille du Regiment at Brighton, in the last act, while the orchestra was playing the prelude to the final rondo, "Jenny Lind said to me in a whisper, 'Listen well to this song, Roger, for these are the last notes of mine that you will hear in any theatre.'"

The next day a farewell ball, to which a supper succeeded, was given by the manager at the Bedford Hotel to celebrate the conclusion and brilliant success of the tour: "That dear Jenny drew from her finger a ring set with a diamond of the finest water, and presented it to me with the words, 'May every sparkle of this stone, Roger, recall to you one of my wishes for your happiness!' In this phrase there was all the woman and a tinge of the Swede."

The next day he takes a final ride with the prima donna and Madame Lablache. "I was very sad," he writes: "the idea of ending this happy day has spoiled my pleasure. How well she looks on horseback, with her great blue eyes and her loosened fair hair! And why does she quit the stage? Is she tired of doing good? As long as she has been an artist she has lived the life of a saint. They tell me of a bishop who has put certain scruples into her head. May Heaven be his judge!

"I know that in Paris people say, 'Why does she not come here to consecrate her reputation? She is afraid, doubtless, of comparisons and recollections.' No, no! she has nothing to fear. She preserves in her heart of hearts, doubtless, some resentment for the indifference—to call it no more—wherewith the last manager of the Opéra received her advances for a hearing when her fresh young talent had just left the hands of Manuel Garcia. But since then Meyerbeer has composed operas for her; Germany, Sweden, England have set the seal upon her reputation: we can add nothing to it. As to homage, what could we give her? Wherever she goes, as soon as she arrives in a city its chief personages hasten to meet her; when she leaves the theatre five or six hundred persons await her exit with lighted torches; every leaf that falls from her laurel-wreaths is quarrelled over; crowds escort her to her hotel; and serenades are organized under her windows. At Paris, when once the curtain falls the emotion is over, the artist no longer exists. A serenade! Who ever saw such a thing outside of the Barber of Seville? It is in bad taste to do anything singular. As to escorting a prima donna home, Malibran could find her way alone very well."

Roger returned to Paris, recording as he did so the fact that he was by no means overjoyed at finding himself at home: "And why? I cannot tell. Perhaps I regret the life of excitement, those great theatres, the audiences that changed every day, the struggle of the singer with new partitions, the boundless admiration I experienced for that strange being, that compound of goodness and coldness, of[Pg 511] egotism and benevolence, whom one might not perhaps love, but whom it is impossible to forget."

The next prominent event in the great tenor's career was his creation of the character of John of Leyden in Meyerbeer's Prophète. There is something very charming in the naïve delight and enthusiasm with which he speaks of this, the crowning glory of his life. Contrary to the usual theory respecting the production of a great dramatic effect, he declares that the grand scene between the prophet and Fides in the third act, where John of Leyden, by the sheer force of intonation of voice and play of feature, forces his mother to retract her recognition of him and to fall at his feet, was created, so to speak, by Madame Viardot and himself on the inspiration of the moment and without any preliminary conference or arrangement. How wonderful this fine dramatic situation appeared when interpreted by these two great artists, I, who had the delight of seeing them both, can well remember. To this day it forms one of the great traditions of the French lyric stage.

In the month of July, 1859, just ten years after that crowning triumph, Roger one day, being then at his country-seat, took his gun and went out to shoot pheasants: an hour later he was brought I back to the house with his right arm horribly shattered by the accidental discharge of his gun. His first action after having the wound dressed was to sing. "My voice is all right," he remarked to his wife: "there is no harm done." Unfortunately, the bones were so shattered that amputation was judged necessary. That accident brought Roger's operatic career to a close. Notwithstanding the perfection of the mechanical arm that replaced the missing limb, he was oppressed by the consciousness of a physical defect. He imagined that the public ridiculed him, and that the critics only spared him out of pity. He retired from the stage, and devoted himself to teaching, his amiable character and great artistic renown gaining him hosts of pupils. In the autumn of 1879 the kindly, blameless life came to a close.

A devoted husband, a generous and unselfish comrade in his profession even to his immediate rivals, and a true and faithful friend, he left behind him a record that shows a singular blending of simple domestic virtues with great artistic qualities, the union adorning a theatrical career which was one series of dazzling triumphs.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

CONSERVATORY LIFE IN BOSTON.

Our aspiring young friend from the rural districts who comes to Boston, the great musical centre, for the art-training she cannot enjoy at home, is full of enthusiasm as she crosses the threshold of that teeming hive, the New England Conservatory of Music. The conflicting din of organs, pianos and violins, of ballad, scale and operetta, though discordant to the actual ear have a harmony which is not lost to her spiritual sense. It is a choral greeting to the new recruit, who gathers in a moment all the moral support humanity derives from sympathy and companionship in a common purpose. Devoutly praying that this inspiration may not ooze out at her fingers' ends, she goes into the director's sanctum to be examined. This trial has pictured itself to her active imagination for weeks past. Of course he will ask her to play one of her pieces, perhaps several. Has she not, ever since her plans for coming to the Conservatory were matured, been engaged in carefully[Pg 512] training, manipulating, her battle-horse for this critical experiment? As the door of that little room closes upon her her knees begin to tremble. But how easy and reassuring is the director's manner! He requests her to be seated at the piano. Will she be able to remember a note at all? That is now the question. Her musical memory is for the nonce obliterated. He may have an intuition of this, for he says quietly, "Now play me a scale and a five-finger exercise." Cecilia does this mechanically, and feels encouraged. Now for the piece, the battle-horse, to be brought out and shown off. She waits quietly a minute. But he asks for nothing more. Her mere touch expresses to his practised ear her probable grade of acquirement, and he assigns her to the instructor he deems best suited to test her abilities and classify her in accordance with them.

In a day or two she finds herself in regular working order, one of a class of four. "And am I only to have fifteen minutes for my lesson," she asks herself, "when I always had an hour from the professor at Woodville?" She knows that recitation is the cream of the lesson. In the actual rendering of her task she can, in justice to her companions, consume but a quarter of the allotted hour, but she soon discovers that she is to a great extent a participant in Misses A——, B—— and C——'s cream. After the master's correction of her own performance, to see and hear the same study played by others with more or less excellence—to compare their faults with her own—is perhaps of greater benefit to her, while in this eminently receptive frame, than a mere personal repetition would be. The horizon is broader: she gets more light on the work in hand.

"And now," she asks of her teacher, "how much would you advise, how much do you wish, me to practise?"

He smiles: memory reverts to his own six hours at Leipsic or Stuttgart, but "milk for babes:" "Certainly not less than two hours a day under any circumstances or obstacles, if you care to learn at all. If you have fair health, and neither onerous household duties nor educational demands upon your time outside of music, let me earnestly recommend you to practise four hours. Less than this cannot show the desired result."

The new pupil accepts the maximum of four hours' daily practice. "I should be ashamed to give less," she generously confides to herself and her room-mate: "it is but a small proportion, after all, of the twenty-four."

But this is not all. There are exercises at the Conservatory apart from her special lessons which are too valuable to a broad musical education to be neglected—the instruction in harmony, sight reading, the art of teaching, analyses of compositions, as well as lectures and concerts. One of the Conservatory exercises strikes her as being alike novel and edifying. This is called "Questions and Answers." A box in one of the halls receives anonymous questions from the pupils from day to day, and once a week a professor of the requisite enlightenment to satisfy the miscellaneous curiosity of six or seven hundred minds devotes a full hour to the purpose. These questions are presumed to relate solely to musical topics, and the custom was instituted for the relief of timid yet earnest inquirers. A motley crew, however, frequently avail themselves of the masquerade privilege to steal in uninvited. Cecilia illustrates these fantastic ramifications of the young idea for the benefit of friends in the interior. She jots down some of these questions and their answers in her note-book:

"How does a polka differ from a schottisch?"—"A schottisch is a lazy polka. A polka is the worst thing in the world: the next worst is a schottisch. A schottisch is so lazy, so slow, that a fire would hardly kindle with it."

"In preparing to play a piece in public should one practise it up to the last moment?"—"Try it and see: you will soon decide in the negative. Lay it aside some time before if you would avoid nervousness."

"What would you give as a first piano-lesson to a young lady who had never taken a lesson before?"—"Make her get the piano-stool at exactly the right height[Pg 513] and place: then ensure a good position of her hands and easy motion of the fingers. Let her practise this for three days."

"How far advanced ought a person to be in music to begin to teach?"—"Teaching involves three things: first, a knowledge of something on the part of the teacher; second, a corresponding ignorance on the part of the learner; third, the ability to impart this knowledge. These conditions fulfilled might sometimes allow a person to begin to teach with advantage at a very early age and with a very moderate range of acquirements, though, as every instructor knows, his earlier methods were very different from his later ones. The difficulty with young teachers in general is that they try to teach too much at once, like the young minister who preached all he knew in his first sermon. Never introduce more than two principles in any one lesson, and as a rule but one."

"Is a mazourka as bad as a polka?"—"No. I think it is not morally so bad as a polka: it has somewhat the grace of the waltz."

"Who is the best music-teacher in Boston?"—"As there are twenty-five hundred persons teaching music in and about this city, and seventy-five regular teachers at this Conservatory alone, both ignorance and delicacy on my part should forbid a definite reply. It were well to remember Paris, the apple of discord and the Trojan war."

"Is Mr. A—— (a young professor at the Conservatory, voted attractive by the feminine pupils in general) married?"—"This being Leap Year, a personal investigation of the subject might be more satisfactory and effectual than a public decision of this point."

At the expiration of her first term Cecilia realizes that her condition is one of constant growth: quickening influences are in the air. She came to Boston to learn music: she is also learning life. She perceives, moreover, that in her musical progress the æsthetic part of her nature has not been permitted to keep in advance of technique. Heretofore she was ever gratifying herself and her friends by undertaking new and more elaborate pieces, not one of which ever became other than a mere superficial possession. Now her taste is inexorably commanded to wait for her muscles: the discipline has been useful to her. After a few more such winters she will return to Woodville a teacher, herself become a quickening influence to others. Musical thought will be truer, will find a more adequate expression, in her vicinity. She will act as a reflector, sending forth rays of light into dark corners farther than she can follow them.

And this is the motive, the mission, of the conservatory system in this country, inasmuch as organized is more potent than individual effort to elevate our national taste, to prepare the way for the future artist, that he may be born under the right conditions, his divine gift fostered and directed to become worthy of its exalted destiny. Already centuries old in Europe, the conservatory is a young thing of comparatively limited experience on our soil. It was introduced here twenty-five years ago by Eben Tourjée. He had longed and vainly sought for the advantages to perfect his own talent, and resolved while a mere boy that those of like tastes who came after him should not have to contend with the obstacles he had fought—that instruction should be brought within the reach of all by a college of music similar to those in Europe, embracing the best elements, attaining the most satisfactory results at the least possible cost to the student. This project, for a youth without capital, dependent upon his abilities for his personal support, was regarded even by sympathetic friends as visionary. But nothing progressive is accepted as a mere optimistic vision by the predestined reformer. Remote Huguenot and immediate Yankee ancestry is perhaps a good combination for pioneer material. However this may be, his efforts were crystallized, shaped, sooner than most schemes of such magnitude. Continuing his classes in piano, organ and voice for a year or two with successful energy, Mr. Tourjée found in 1859 the desired opportunity for his experiment. The principal of a seminary in East Greenwich, Rhode Island, accorded[Pg 514] him the use of his building, and more students presented themselves ultimately than could be accommodated on the grounds of the institution. After a visit to Europe for the purpose of examining the celebrated German, French and Italian schools, Mr. Tourjée returned, and, fired with new zeal, started in 1864 a chartered conservatory at Providence. This proved eminently successful. But Boston was the ideal site: talent gravitates toward large cities, and Boston's acknowledged "love of the first rate" would be the best surety for a lofty standard and approximate fulfilment. In 1867, under a charter from the State, he finally transplanted his school to this metropolis under the name of the New England Conservatory of Music, which it retains to the present date. It has, with characteristic American rapidity, become the largest music-school in the world, having within fifteen years instructed over twenty thousand pupils: in a single term it frequently numbers between eight and nine hundred. It has a connection with Boston University, the only one in the country where music is placed on the same basis with other intellectual pursuits, and the faculty numbers some of the most renowned artists and composers in the land. Eben Tourjée was appointed dean of the College of Music in the University, with the title of Mus. Doctor.

The New England Conservatory deserves this special mention as the parent school in America, and it has been promptly and ably followed by the establishment of others in most of our large cities.

CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE IN THE WEST OF IRELAND.

[The following extract from a private letter just received from Ireland gives a glimpse of the state of affairs in that country which may interest our readers, as indicating, better than any mere partisan statements or newspaper reports, the solid grounds that exist for apprehension in regard to impending disturbances:]

"I have just returned from a tour in the west of Ireland, and I wish I could describe the horrors I have seen—such abject misery and such demoralization as you, no doubt, never came in contact with in your life. The scenery of Connemara beats Killarney in beauty and the Rhine in extent and magnificence, but no tourist could face the hotels: the dirt, the incompetence, the abominableness of every kind are awful. As these people were two hundred years ago, so they are now—ignorant, squalid savages, half naked, living on potatoes such as a Yankee pig would scorn, speaking only their barbarous native tongue, lying and thieving through terror and want, with their children growing up in hopeless squalor. Very few savages lead such lives, while few people are so oppressed and harassed by the pains and penalties of civilization. For they are chin-deep in debt. I saw promissory notes five and six times renewed, with the landlord, away on the Continent, threatening eviction. The selfishness of the landlords is too revolting. They live in England or on the Continent, and confine their duties in life to giving receipts for their rent. Imagine the whole product of the land, in a country destitute of manufactures and commerce, remitted to England, and the utmost farthing of rent exacted from these wretches, no matter what the season is, a valuation of fifty shillings, for example, paying a rent of seven pounds—three hundred per cent.! Some great catastrophe is imminent. Not a gun is left in the gunsmiths' shops in Dublin, and I am told that shiploads are brought in from America weekly. The people are perfectly right in resisting eviction, but Parliament ought to interpose. We must get rid of the landlords, and we must establish compulsory education. Then the priests will go like smoke before the wind. Free trade is another cause of the troubles. That is one of the most specious humbugs extant, and has ruined the Irish farmers. It may be all right in principle, but now and here it is simply mischievous. Professor ——, who is a member of the new Land Commission, went round with me in Connemara, and implored me to write up the state of the district; but before anything[Pg 515] can be published and reach the English ear the autumn rent-day will have come, and the gale will be at its height."

HIGH JINKS ON THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI.

To the Editor of Lippincott's Magazine:

It is a remarkable historical fact that the latest visitor to the Upper Mississippi has always felt it his duty to assail the good faith of every previous traveller. Beltrami (1823) attacked Pike (1806); Schoolcraft (1832) fleshed his pen in Beltrami; Allen, who accompanied Schoolcraft, afterward became his enemy and branded him as a geographical quack; Nicollet (1836) arraigned both Schoolcraft and Allen for incompetency; and so on. And now, at this late day, in a mild way tradition repeats itself. Your great original geographer, Mr. Siegfried, concluded his two essays on the "High Mississippi" by saying, "Beyond reasonable doubt our party is the only one that ever pushed its way by boat up the entire course of the farthermost Mississippi. Beyond any question ours were the first wooden boats that ever traversed these waters." Then, after a slap at poor Schoolcraft, he declares that although I claimed the entire trip in my canoe five years ago, my guide and others told him that my Dolly Varden never was above Brainerd, and that my portages above were frequent. Except that, by implication, he questions my veracity, I would not have taken any notice of the feat on which he prides himself. To the general reader the word "Brainerd" conveys no idea further than the one which the author adroitly tries to convey (without saying so), that I did not travel the entire Upper Mississippi: his use of the word "High" is another trick to cover a very small job, as I shall hereafter show. But the fact is, that Mr. Siegfried has discovered a mare's nest. By stating one fact which has never been disguised, and repeating an allegation which is absolutely false, he would dispose utterly of the very trip that made his journey so easy of accomplishment.

I laid out for myself just one task and no more: I started in May, 1872, for the sources of the Mississippi, thence to descend the entire river. After days of inquiry and two trips over the Northern Pacific Railroad, I decided upon a route to Itasca Lake which no white man had ever traversed. I made an entirely successful journey, marking out the White Earth route so clearly that any child could follow it thereafter. What feat is there to go over ground which I described so explicitly as follows?—First stage, to White Earth; second stage, to the Twin Lakes; third stage, across the prairie to the Wild Rice River; fourth stage, up that stream to the Lake of the Spirit Isle; and fifth stage, of half a day, by the Ah-she-wa-wa-see-ta-gen portage, to the Mississippi, at a point twenty-six miles north of Itasca. The same afternoon and the following day, energetically employed, will suffice to put anybody at the sources of "the Father of Rivers." Anybody could take a tissue-paper boat to Itasca after 1872. Had I had a predecessor over this route to Itasca, as Mr. Siegfried had, and could I have travelled as he did with a roll of newspaper letters telling me where to stop and when, how to go and where, I should have been the first to acknowledge my indebtedness to the man who showed me the way. Why did not Mr. S. take Nicollet's or Schoolcraft's route, or seek a new one? Simply for the reason that my itinerary was so clearly laid down that the journey became merely a Cook's excursion. I had built and took with me to Minnesota a paper boat for the descent of the river, but I have never made any secret of the fact that I bought another one (a twin in name and fitted with the appliances of the New York craft) for the tramp of seventy miles through the wilderness from the railroad to the sources. In this I merely followed the example frequently set by Mr. MacGregor, who is the father of canoeing, and the advice of George A. Morrison, government storekeeper at White Earth, the Hon. Dr. Day, United States Indian commissioner, and other gentlemen of equal prominence. Neither of these gentlemen had been over the ground, but they represented the country as awful in the extreme. I acquainted everybody[Pg 516] who asked with my decision, and, were it desirable to involve others in this matter, could name fifty persons to whom every detail of this initial stage of my trip has been explained. Not a particle of accurate information regarding the road, the number of days required or the distance could be obtained. It was not possible then to contract for forty-one dollars to be landed on the Mississippi! Mr. Siegfried might have seen at every camping-ground and meal-station along the route the blazed trees bearing the deeply-cut Greek "delta," which seven years' precedence cannot have effaced. His descriptions and mine are identical throughout: therefore, he has either not been over the course at all (which I do not insinuate) or he only proves the accuracy of my reports. He disposes of my fourteen hundred and seventy-one miles of canoeing on the Mississippi because, forsooth! I did not make a small part of it in a craft to suit his liking. He claims that his was the first wooden boat that ever pushed up to Itasca. This is something that I don't know anything about: several parties have been there since 1832. What will he do with the claimant of the first sheet-iron boat?

Mr. Siegfried's allegation that I made frequent portages is grossly and maliciously false. That honor belongs to him, as a few facts will show. In giving the guide as his authority he is most illogical, for in his first article (on three separate pages) he wholly discredits this same man. Again, some information: there are five portages above Aitkin, as follows: first, into the western gulf of Lake Cass, saving six miles; second, Little Winnipeg Lake into a stream leading to the Ball Club Lake (missing the great tributary Leech Lake River); third, at White Oak Point, below the Eagle's Nest Savannah; fourth, Pokegama Falls, a carry of two hundred yards on the left bank (a necessity); and fifth, a cut-off above Swan River, saving six miles. This last was the only portage (except the falls) made by my party, and was availed of to reach good camping-ground before dark. Indeed, as to portaging I must yield the palm to my vainglorious successor. Behold his record! He jumped twenty-six miles in the Ball Club Lake portage, and was still unhappy because he could not ride from the landing below Pokegama to Aitkin (one hundred and fifty miles; see p. 288) on the small steamboat that sometimes runs to the lumber-camp. Reaching Muddy River (now Aitkin), in the language of a free pass, he boarded "the splendid railway" for—Minneapolis!—thus again skipping two hundred and forty-four miles of the river at one bound, and escaping the French Rapids, Little Falls, Pike, Wautab and Sauk Rapids, while I was foolish enough to paddle down to Anoka (as near as I cared to go to St. Anthony's Falls). Thence I portaged to Minnehaha Creek, as he did—another strange coincidence—whence, by daily stages, I descended to Alton, seven hundred and seventy-five miles, where I took steamer for St. Louis, New Orleans, and, finally, New York. Mr. Siegfried, on the contrary, in a distance of six hundred and ninety-six miles from the sources to St. Anthony (Nicollet's official measurement; see U. S. Senate Doc. 237, Twenty-sixth Congress, 2d Session, Appendix), jumped exactly two hundred and sixty miles, or about two-fifths of his whole journey! Some of that water, too, which he so conveniently escaped is very unpleasant, even dangerous, especially Pike Rapids, into which I was drawn unawares, and had to run through at considerable risk to my boat.

FATE OF AN OLD COMPANION OF NAPOLEON III.

L'Indépendant, published at Boulogne, gives some interesting details about a personage that played an important rôle in the history of the last emperor of the French, and has not had much cause to be proud of the gratitude of his patron. This personage was the famous tame eagle that accompanied Prince Louis in his ridiculous expedition to Boulogne, and which was taught to swoop down upon the head of the pretender—a glorious[Pg 517] omen to those who did not know that the attraction was a piece of salted pork! This unfortunate eagle was captured at the same time as his master, but while the latter was shut up at Ham, the eagle was sent to the slaughter-house at Boulogne, where he lived many years—an improvement in his fate, says L'Indépendant, since his diet of salt pork was replaced by one of fresh meat. In 1855, Napoleon III. went to Boulogne to review the troops destined for the Crimea and to receive the queen of England. While there some one in his suite spoke to him of this bird, telling him that it was alive and where it was to be found. But the emperor refused to see his old companion, or even grant him a life-pension in the Paris Jardin des Plantes. The old eagle ended his days in the slaughter-house, and to-day he figures, artistically taxidermatized, in one of the glass cases of the museum of Boulogne—immortal as his master, despite the reverses of fortune.

A NATURAL BAROMETER.

Everybody has admired the delicate and ingenious work of the spider, everybody has watched her movements as she spins her wonderful web, but all do not know that she is the most reliable weather-prophet in the world. Before a wind-storm she shortens the threads that suspend her web, and leaves them in this state as long as the weather remains unsettled. When she lengthens these threads count on fine weather, and in proportion to their length will be its duration. When a spider rests inactive it is a sign of rain: if she works during a rain, be sure it will soon clear up and remain clear for some time. The spider, it is said, changes her web every twenty-four hours, and the part of the day she chooses to do this is always significant. If it occurs a little before sunset, the night will be fine and clear. Hence the old French proverb: "Araignée du soir, espoir."

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Nowhere but in Paris could the resources, the technical knowledge and perfect command of all the appliances of bookmaking be found to sustain such a publication as L'Art. In six years it has not abated by one tittle the perfection with which it first burst upon the world. Its standard is as high, its subjects are as inexhaustible, as ever. We hear now and then of a decline in French art: the great artists who carried it to the high-water mark of modern times have all, or nearly all, passed away, but there is certainly no sign of a vacuum. The activity of production is as great as ever, the interest in art as vital. L'Art draws its material from past as well as present; the work of older artists is kept alive in its pages by the most perfect reproductions; and in its special department of black and white there is advancement rather than decline. The importance of such a publication to the interests of art throughout the world is incalculable. It absorbs the best thought and production of the day. Its high standard and breadth of scope render it impossible for any particular clique to predominate in its pages, while its independent tone and encouragement of individual talent make it a powerful counteracting influence to the conventionalism which forms the chief danger to art in a country where technical rules have become official laws. In fact, L'Art has constituted itself a government of the opposition. It has its Prix de Florence for the education in Italy of promising young sculptors—its galleries in the Avenue de l'Opéra, which are used for the purpose of "independent" exhibitions or for the display of work by one or another artist. It examines and reports the progress of art all over the world, rousing the latent Parisian curiosity as to the achievements of foreign[Pg 518] artists, and, what is of more importance (to us at least), it shows the world what is being done and said and thought in the art-circles of Paris. The perusal of its comprehensive index alone will give the reader a clear outline of the state of art in Russia, Japan, Persia and Algeria, as well as in the better-known countries. Such a work is not for the delight of one people alone: it comes home to art-lovers everywhere.

The principal art-event of last spring was the Demidoff sale. About half the etchings in the volume before us are reproductions of pictures in that collection. M. Flameng has forgotten all the perplexities and intricacies of the nineteenth century to render the placid graciousness of a beauty whose portrait was painted in the eighteenth by Drouais. M. Trimolet has etched in a Dutch manner a landscape of Hobbema in the Louvre, but M. Gaucherel translates a Ruysdael from the Demidoff collection into an exquisite delicacy and airiness of line which is the language of etching in its most modern expression. A Demidoff Rembrandt, a Lucrezia, reproduced by the needle of M. Kœpping, is an example of the naïveté of an art which gave itself no thought for archæology. Lucrezia is a simple Dutch maiden in the full-sleeved, straight-bodied Flemish costume. Her innocent, childish face tells of real grief, but not of a tragic history. It is interesting to compare the type with that of Raphael's Lucrezia, with its clinging classic drapery and countenance moulded on that of a tragic mask.

The most striking etching in this volume is that of M. Edm. Ramus, after a portrait in this year's Salon. The name of the painter, Van der Bos, is Flemish, but if his picture had any qualities not distinctively French the genius of the etcher has swept them away. The conception, the character, the pose would all pass for a work of the most advanced French school. Its qualities belong to Paris and to-day. A young woman of a somewhat hard, positive type, neither beautiful nor intellectual, but chic to her finger-tips, jauntily dressed—hat with curling feathers, elbow sleeves, long gloves—standing in an erect and completely unaffected attitude,—that is the subject. The execution is simply superb. Every line is strong and effective: the modelling, the poise of the figure and the breadth of the shadows in dry point, are masterly. The Salon articles, five in number, are from the pen of M. Ph. Burty, the most radical, incisive and original writer on the staff—champion of the Impressionists, bitter enemy of the Academics and warm admirer of any fresh, sincere and individual talent. In his short review of the work of American artists in the Salon his sympathies are frankly with those who have ranged themselves under unofficial leadership in their adopted city. He has warm eulogy both for Mr. Sargent and Mr. Picknell, refusing to believe that the excellence of the latter is due in any way to his instruction at the École des Beaux-Arts. M. Burty concludes the notice of American pictures with a "Hurrah pour la jeune école Américaine! hurrah!" which will be gratefully responded to by those of us who are proud of our growing school.

The "Silhouettes d'Artistes contemporains" are continued in two papers on De Nittis, accompanied by some exquisite reproductions of etchings by that artist; and there are a couple of articles of great interest by M. Véron on Ribot, illustrated by fac-similes of the powerful work of one whom M. Véron unhesitatingly ranks among the greatest names in modern French art. There is both literary and artistic interest in the engravings after pen-and-ink sketches made by Victor Hugo, showing that the poet is able to throw his personality and wonderful imagination into an art which he did not practise till pretty late in life, and then simply as a recreation and without attempting to master its technique. Victor Hugo is stamped as plainly upon these drawings—made, not by line and rule, but by following up the ideas suggested by the direction of a blot of ink—as on the pages of his most deliberate works. In offering homage to the poet L'Art does not depart from its line, which embraces art in its manifold forms. The newest products of the stage are discussed as well as those of the studios, and contemporary literature is reflected in more ways than one in its pages.

Were this story as good as its name or half as good as some of the undeniably clever things it contains, it might be accepted as a very fair book of its kind. It was written with the evident intention of saying brilliant and witty things; but this brilliance and wit sometimes miss their effect, as, for instance, on the very first page,[Pg 519] where Dick Steele's famous compliment is bestowed upon Lady Mary Wortley Montagu instead of the Lady Elizabeth Hastings. We might mention other thwarted attempts, which give much the same jar to our sensibilities as when some one thinks to afford us pleasure by singing a favorite air out of tune. The facility with which the characters are transported from the ends of the earth to meet at a place called Plum Island surpasses any trick in legerdemain. Unless we had read it here we should never have believed that life on the coast of Maine could be so exciting, so cosmopolitan in its scope, so thrilling in its incidents. There is a jumble of notabilities—leaders of Boston and Washington society, a Jesuit Father, an English peer, a brilliant diplomatist on the point of setting out on a foreign mission, a Circe the magic of whose voice and eyes is responsible for most of the mischief which goes on, Anglican priests, a college professor, collegiates, at least one raving maniac, beautiful young girls and representative Yankee men and women. From this company, most of whom conduct themselves in manner which fails to prepossess us, Mrs. Beauchamp Brown alone emerges with a distinct identity. Her zealous adherence to herself, her unconsciousness of weakness or defect even in the most rashly-chosen part, are good points. The writer allows her to express herself without too elaborate canvassing of her character and motives. When the Fifth Avenue Hotel is burning the great lady is amazed at such behavior, and shrieks peremptory orders to have the fire put out immediately. When she reaches Plum Island, and is transferred from the steamboat to the skiff which is to carry her ashore, she is "angrily scared at the seething waters and the grinning rocks."

"'Man! this thing is full of water: my feet are almost in it!' shrieked Mrs. Beauchamp Brown as the gundalow lurched and heaved shoreward.

"The White man looked over his shoulder, and slowly wrinkled his leathern cheeks into an encouraging smile. 'Like ter near killed a woggin,' replied he sententiously. 'Will be ashore in a brace of shakes.'"

The Yankees are all capitally done, and the "local color" is excellent. There is not much to be said for the other characters in the book. Margaret, who is supposed to be irresistible, raises surprise if not disgust. Her conversation is crude and infelicitous, her conduct excessively ill-bred. Indeed, for a company of so-called elegant people, the talk and doings are singularly bald and crude. Even the Jesuit Father seems to have a dull perception about nice points of good behavior, and we have a doubt which amounts to an active suspicion as to the reality of the writer's experience of Jesuitical casuistry and social wiles. Certainly, Father Williams fails to make us understand how his order could have ever been considered dangerous. It seems a pity that the author should have tried such a wide survey of human nature. Her talent does not carry her into melodrama, to say nothing of tragedy, but there are many evidences in her book of very fair powers in the way of light comedy.

It would be impossible to name a better representative of American men of letters, if there be such a class, than the late Bayard Taylor. We have a few writers, easily counted, who are distinctively poets, novelists or essayists; but the common ambition is to unite these titles and add a few others—to enjoy, in fact, a free range over the whole field of literature, exclusive only of the most arid or least attractive portions. Taylor's versatility exceeded that of all his competitors: he attempted a greater variety of tasks than any of them, and he failed in none. And his writings, while so diverse, have a distinct and pervading flavor. Though he travelled so extensively, imbibed so deeply of foreign literature, and wrote so much on foreign themes, his tone of thought and sentiment not only remained thoroughly American, but was always suggestive of his early life and surroundings, his quiet Pennsylvania home and its sober influences. His pictures of these are not the least noteworthy portion of what he has given to the world, but in all his productions the same spirit is visible—not flashing and impulsive, but habituated to just conceptions and exact performance; not to be startled or dazed by novelties, but capable of measuring and assimilating whatever best suited it. On the whole, his nature, while retaining its individuality and poise, was rather a highly receptive than a strongly original one.[Pg 520] Its growth was a steady accretion of knowledge, ideas, experiences and aptitudes, without the exhibition of that power which in minds of a rarer order reacts upon impressions with a transforming influence. There is more appearance of freedom, of spontaneousness—paradoxical as this may seem—in his translation of Faust than in any of his other performances, while deliberate, conscientious workmanship is a leading characteristic of all, not excepting the short notices of books reprinted from the New York Tribune in one of the volumes now before us. The matter of both these volumes is chiefly critical, and the characterizations of men as well as of books are always discriminating, generally just, often happily expressed, but seldom vivid. The articles on Rückert, Thackeray and Weimar, which deal chiefly with personal reminiscences, are especially pleasant reading; but the lectures on Goethe, however well they may have served their immediate purpose, contain little that called for preservation, being neither profound nor stimulating. While, however, these volumes may add nothing to their author's reputation, they are no unworthy memorials of a laborious, well-spent and happy life, of a nature as kindly as it was earnest and sincere, and of talents that had neither been buried nor misapplied. We find in a short paper on Lord Houghton the remark that "there is an important difference between the impression which a man makes who has avowedly done the utmost of which he is capable, and that which springs from the exercise of genuine gifts not so stimulated to their highest development." It cannot be doubted that the former description is that which would apply to Taylor himself, and probably with more force than to almost any of his contemporaries.

These two numbers of the Art Review contain some critical writing of a really high order in a couple of papers by Mrs. M. G. Van Rensselaer, entitled "Artist and Amateur." They present an earnest plea for the pursuit of culture for its own sake in this country. Taking "culture" in the true sense of the word, as the opening and development of all the faculties, a positive and electric not a negative and apathetic force, Mrs. Van Rensselaer points out that it is not the natural birthright of a select few, but is to be won by none without hard endeavor. The endeavor, the intelligence and, to a certain extent, the desire for culture, already exist here, but are constantly misapplied, and this, as Mrs. Van Rensselaer aims to prove, through a misconception of the relative positions of artist and amateur. All instruction is directed toward execution, which is the artist's province, instead of understanding and appreciation, which are the gifts of culture. The effort to make the execution keep pace with the teaching confines the latter, for the majority of learners, to the lowest mechanical rules, leaving intellectual cultivation altogether to artists. Mrs. Van Rensselaer argues that the time and money spent by young ladies of slender talent in learning to paint pottery would, if given to study of the principles of technique and of the history and aims of art, leave them with more trained perceptions, an intelligent delight in works of art and a wider intellectual range. She does not confine the application of her ideas to painting, but extends it to other arts, making the aim in music the substitution of appreciative listeners for mediocre performers. Another interesting article, which the two numbers before us divide between them, is one on Elihu Vedder by Mr. W. H. Bishop. It does not force any very definite conclusions upon the reader, but it gives him some idea of the career of this much talked-of painter, and is finely illustrated with an etching of The Sea-Serpent by Mr. Shoff, an unusually strong full-page engraving of The Sleeping Girl by Mr. Linton, and a very tender and beautiful little cut by Mr. Kruell of The Venetian Model.

Books Received.

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. By Edward Gibbon. With Notes by Dean Milman, M. Guizot and Dr. William Smith. 6 vols. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Health and Healthy Homes. By George Wilson, M. A., M. D. With Notes and Additions by J. G. Richardson, M. D. Philadelphia: Presley Blakiston.

A Model Superintendent: A Sketch of the Life, Character and Methods of Work of Henry P. Haven. By H. Clay Trumbull. New York: Harper & Brothers.

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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880

Lippincott's Magazine

OF

POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.

OCTOBER, 1880.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, by J. B. Lippincott & Co., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

Contents