[Pg 283]

THE SCRAP BOOK.

June,—BUNKER HILL—June,
1775. 1843.

Peroration of the Address Delivered by Daniel Webster,
June 17, 1843, at the Dedication of the
Monument That Now Marks the Scene of
the Famous Revolutionary Struggle.

We have indulged in gratifying recollections of the past, in the prosperity and pleasures of the present, and in high hopes for the future. But let us remember that we have duties and obligations to perform, corresponding to the blessings which we enjoy. Let us remember the trust, the sacred trust, attaching to the rich inheritance which we have received from our fathers. Let us feel our personal responsibility, to the full extent of our power and influence, for the preservation of the principles of civil and religious liberty. And let us remember that it is only religion, and morals, and knowledge, that can make men respectable and happy under any form of government. Let us hold fast the great truth that communities are responsible as well as individuals; that no government is respectable which is not just; that without unspotted purity of public faith, without sacred public principle, fidelity, and honor—no mere forms of government, no machinery of laws, can give dignity to political society. In our day and generation let us seek to raise and improve the moral sentiment, so that we may look, not for a degraded, but for an elevated and improved future. And when both we and our children shall have been consigned to the house appointed for all living, may love of country—and pride of country—glow with equal fervor among those to whom our names and our blood shall have descended! And then, when honored and decrepit age shall lean against the base of this monument, and troops of ingenuous youth shall be gathered round it, and when the one shall speak to the other of its objects, the purposes of its construction, and the great and glorious events with which it is concerned—there shall rise, from every youthful breast, the ejaculation—"Thank God, I—I also—am an American!"

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The Latest Viewpoints of Men Worth While.

Compiled and edited for The Scrap Book.

FEMININE RULE MAY DOOM OUR COUNTRY.

American Women Are Like the Spartans
in Their Desire to Dominate the
American Man.

Dr. Emil Reich has been lecturing to fashionable London on such universally fascinating themes as woman and love. According to the news despatches, so great has been the popularity of his talks that there have not been seats enough to accommodate his titled hearers, and at one lecture the Duchess of Portland sat on the floor. He has said of "Love and Personality":

Complementary to Dr. Reich's praise of the American woman's beauty is his criticism of her love of domination. In that characteristic he reads the doom of America. We quote his reasons from the New York American:

GROWING EMPIRE AT OUR NORTH.

Development of New National Spirit in
the Dominion Discussed by Earl
Grey and Secretary Root.

Canada has been making tremendous strides in the last few years. The opening up of the vast untilled grain lands of the Northwest has been followed by an influx of new blood from other countries, and particularly from the United States. Throughout the Dominion energy is dictating to enterprise. In all the provinces there are stirrings of a new national spirit.

Relations between Canada and the United States are certain to assume a different character in view of the changing local conditions. The future before Canada is so great in its promise that any pronouncement by high authorities as to her newer feelings is at present very important. Such pronouncement[Pg 286] was made at the dinner given in New York by the Pilgrims of the United States to Earl Grey, Governor-General of Canada. The earl and Mr. Root, our Secretary of State, made significant speeches.

Said Earl Grey:

Secretary Root denied the rumor that at this banquet any sensational or unexpected announcement would be made, declaring that all existing questions between Canada and the United States had been settled. "I wish," he said, "it was so." But he pointed out the attitude that must be adopted to facilitate the settlement of disputes—an attitude considerate and just.

Of the changed conditions in Canada he said:

HOW MUCH SOCIALISM DO OUR PEOPLE WANT?

Bryan Suggests that "Individualism"
Best Defines Limit to Be Set
on Socialistic Tendencies.

A tendency toward factional alignment at present characterizes the radical movement which has been sweeping over the country. The different elements of that movement are beginning to offer their individual claims for recognition. At this juncture William Jennings Bryan contributes to the Century an important article on "Individualism versus Socialism," in which he seeks to dispel the fogs which have enveloped the economic situation. First, he defines the two terms opposed in his title:

Mr. Bryan points out that much of the strength shown by socialism is due to the fact that "socialists advocate certain reforms which individualists also advocate."

The civil service, says Mr. Bryan, is our nearest approach to ideal socialism. Does it afford a stimulus to the higher development of the civil servants?

In the substance of his opinion Mr. Bryan's "individualism" does not seem to be very far removed from Fabian socialism—or at least not from such socialism as is expressed, say, by Robert Hunter, who said not long ago, while speaking about the problems of poverty:

FALSE SYMPATHY WITH CRIMINALS.

That Sham Humanitarianism Has Become
a Stench Is the Declaration
of a Leading Humanitarian.

Andrew D. White, ex-president of Cornell University, ex-ambassador to Germany—scholar, publicist, humanitarian—said wholesome words to the Cornell students a few weeks ago on the problem of "High Crime in the United States." The basis of his address was the fact that more murders are committed every year in the United States than in any other country. His attitude in regard to lynch-law is rather startling:

From this he proceeded to decry over-wrought sentiment in favor of criminals:

OLD MALIGNMENTS OF THE CHOSEN PEOPLE.

The Long-Existent Prejudice Against the
Jew Is Explained by a Leading
Rabbi of New York.

No other race has been so vilified as the Jew. Hatred for Hebrews has been endemic in Europe since the Dark Ages, and even to-day in France and Germany the anti-Semitic movements have considerable strength. How can this be? Is the feeling a survival of anger at a race which rejected Jesus? Or is it based on desperate hostility toward a race which can succeed in business where a Gentile fails?

The Rev. Dr. S. Schulman, of the Temple Beth-El, New York City, in a recent sermon sought to answer these questions. Part of his discourse we quote:

MANDATES OF ART TO HER VOTARIES.

A Great Word-Artist Shows That Under
the Levity of Bohemian Life Is a Serious
and Lofty Philosophy.

The late Lafcadio Hearn was one of the great prose-poets of the time. The glimpse into his intimate mind which the Critic affords by printing a sheaf of his letters to H.E. Krehbiel, the music critic, will be appreciated by all who followed his literary wanderings up to the time of his settlement in Japan. The letters were written many years ago, when Hearn was still in his early prime. When he learned of the death of Mr. Krehbiel's child he wrote this exquisite expression of sympathy:

Hearn was ever an artist, and he ever knew what art meant. In advising his friend to break away from the exhausting routine of daily journalism, he gave a typical expression of his philosophy of life:

PURSUIT OF A HUSBAND BY THE MODERN WOMAN.

After All, Says the New York "Times,"
It Is Doubtless Better for Man to Be
Chosen Than for Him to Choose.

Taking up a discussion inaugurated by the St. James Gazette, of London, the New York Times says what it has to say on the subject of choosing wives.

The English paper said frankly that the title would better be "The Choice of a Husband," inasmuch as the male, though unaware of the fact, is generally not the pursuer, but the pursued. This condition, however, is by no means to the discredit of woman.

As the Times remarks, "A young woman whose intentions are both serious and honorable has nothing at all to be ashamed of in endeavoring by all womanly means to acquire the man whom she believes she can make happy and knows that she means to try to."

In America and England there is objection to the man who marries for any other reason than being in love. Yet[Pg 290] the mariage de convenance is not altogether without legitimate recommendations. To quote the Times:

EVERY MAN MASTER OF HIS OWN STOMACH.

Instinct Best Determines What You
Should Eat, So Eat What Your
Normal Instinct Tells You To.

In that series of compromises which we call life there is no compromise more perplexing than the compromise with the stomach. No problem requires more earnest thought than the food problem. It is the stomach that makes men work. There would be no produce exchange were it not for the stomach—no yellow fields of wheat and corn, no grazing herds of cattle, no fleets of white-sailed fishing-vessels. Clothing and shelter are secondary demands. The stomach is master; and, as is ever likely to be the case with autocrats, it is selfish—wherefore we humor it—we hold out crutches to it—we offer it tempting inducements to be lenient with us.

A sense of relief, therefore, is produced by reading Dr. Woods Hutchinson's article, "Some Diet Delusions," in the April McClure's; for therein is advanced the doctrine of "intelligent omnivorousness." Says Dr. Hutchinson:

[Pg 291]

Dr. Hutchinson proceeds to give reasons why spices do not heat the blood, why pork is a most excellent food, why fish is no better for the brain than other things, why vegetarianism is a mistake, and so on. His principal caution is not to eat in a hurry; his principal advice is, virtually, to eat whatever seems to agree with you.

All of which brings to mind the story of the old dyspeptic who, after a long term of misery, one day apostrophized his stomach thus:

"I have humored you for many years. I have coaxed you, coddled you, petted you. I have gone hungry to please you. I have swallowed bad-tasting medicines on your account. I have been your servant—but now I am through. From this time I will eat what I please and drink what I please. If you protest, I shall ignore you. Hereafter you are the servant, I am the master. Now make the best of that!"[Pg 292]

This brave man's stomach, we are told, was so thoroughly cowed by the words that it never again demanded a milk diet.

THE EXPOSURE OF EXPOSURE.

Things That Are Being Said About the
"Journalism of Conscience" by Critics,
Passionate and Dispassionate.

When fire is discovered in a house it sometimes happens that the tenants, in their excitement, hurl fragile bric-à-brac from the windows and with much effort carry the feather beds down-stairs and out to safety. Suppose that the incongruity of such action suddenly becomes apparent. The alarmed tenants may reverse the process. Better still, they may endeavor to put out the fire. But to cease all effort because they stand convicted of excited folly would be absurd.

The inevitable reaction from recent wild exposures in finance and politics has lately shown itself. Prominent men and leading journals have convicted the "yellow" newspapers and magazines, and the people influenced by them, of excited folly. Senator Lodge has said in the Senate, concerning sensational contributors to the magazines:

District Attorney William T. Jerome, speaking at a banquet in New York, referred to magazine articles which have described the Senate as treasonable.

On the other side, Norman Hapgood says, in Collier's:

So the balance of expressed opinion on the subject shifts up and down. In all the confusion we sometimes hear an opinion like that, uttered by Herbert S. Hadley, attorney-general of Missouri:

LEGITIMATE SCOPE OF DRAMATIC ART.

Waxworks May Deceive for a Moment,
But They Do Not Leave the Lasting
Impression of Michelangelo's Moses.

Otis Skinner, the actor, recently made a plea for the teaching of dramatic art in our public schools and colleges. In that way, he urged, public taste can be improved to the point where a better quality of plays and acting will be required to fill the theaters. He was speaking before the Ethical Culture Society, in New York. In beginning he explained at some length what he considered art, drawing his distinctions very carefully:

The charge that the theater gives too much attention to vice was discussed by Mr. Skinner. When used on the stage to heighten the dramatic effect, the simulation of drunkenness, he said, is ethically right. "Mrs. Warren's Profession," he declared flatly, was quite properly suppressed, since there was no reason for it except the exhibition of vice. False and namby-pamby melodrama, on the other hand, is fully as detrimental to dramatic art.

He outlined the plot of a play in which a poor young man, after rescuing the daughter of a multimillionaire by a feat of virtually impossible agility and strength, is promptly provided for by the thankful parent, and marries the girl.

The story, as he told it, was glaringly untrue to life—wherefore he denounced it as immoral. It represented the extreme of romantic falsity, just as "Mrs. Warren's Profession" represented the extreme of disgustingly literal reality.

In art no extreme is acceptable—a lesson which the Greeks, with their supreme intuition of artistic fitness, taught the world once and for all.

WOMAN HAS ALWAYS EARNED HER LIVING.

The New York "Sun" Disposes of the
Old Notion That She is the Mere
"Beneficiary of Man."

The Rev. John L. Scudder, of Jersey City, recently preached a sermon on the subject, "Business Women—Do They Reduce the Number of Marriages, and Do They Make Good Wives?" He said, among other things, that if the business woman marries, she marries "as an equal and not as a dependent"; that, therefore, we must expect fewer marriages in proportion to the population. But he added:

An Equal Partnership.

The New York Sun does not agree with Mr. Scudder. In the course of an editorial on the subject it says:

OUR OPPORTUNITY TO EDUCATE CHINA.

Great Possibilities Lie Ahead for Us if
We Take the Lead in Teaching the
Chinese Western Ways.

Dr. Edmund J. James, president of the University of Illinois, favors the appointment of an educational commission for the study of the social, intellectual, and industrial situation in China. The reasons for his suggestion are contained in a memorandum which he recently submitted to President Roosevelt, and may be briefly stated as follows:

[Pg 295]

LAST WORDS OF FAMOUS MEN.

When a man is in the full flower of health and intellectual activity, his utterances, either guarded or careless, usually are more or less tinctured by his social environments—environments that are rather more artificial than natural. But when the shadow of death falls upon him, and earthly vanities crowd out of the chamber that is marked as the vestibule of his tomb, the language he speaks is that of the man himself—one who realizes that he is nearer eternal truth than human pretense. For this reason the last words he speaks on earth are more significant of his true character than any he has spoken before. No better proof of this fact may be adduced than is to be found in the following collection of sentences uttered by dying men:

OLDEN TIME PUBLICITY.

[Pg 297]

When Vesuvius Destroyed Pompeii.

By THE YOUNGER PLINY—79 A.D.

Letter No. 1.

Your request that I would send you an account of my uncle's death, in order to transmit a more exact relation of it to posterity, deserves my acknowledgments, for if this accident shall be celebrated by your pen the glory of it, I am well assured, will be rendered forever illustrious. And notwithstanding he perished by a misfortune which, as it involved at the same time a most beautiful country in ruins, and destroyed so many populous cities, seems to promise him an everlasting remembrance; notwithstanding he has himself composed many and lasting works, yet I am persuaded the mentioning of him in your immortal writings will greatly contribute to render his name immortal.

Happy I esteem those to be to whom by the provision of the gods has been granted the ability either to do such actions as are worthy of being related or to relate them in a manner worthy of being read; but peculiarly happy are they who are blessed with both these uncommon talents, in the number of which my uncle, as his own writings and your history will evidently prove, may justly be ranked.

It is with extreme willingness, therefore, that I execute your commands, and should indeed have demanded the task if you had not enjoined it. He was at that time with the fleet under his command at Misenum.

On the 24th of August, about one in the afternoon, my mother desired him to observe a cloud which appeared of a very unusual size and shape. He had[Pg 298] just taken a turn in the sun and, after bathing himself in cold water and making a light luncheon, gone back to his books; he immediately arose and went out upon a rising ground from whence he might get a better sight of this very uncommon appearance.

A cloud, from which mountain was uncertain at this distance (but it was found afterward to come from Mount Vesuvius), was ascending, the appearance of which I cannot give you a more exact description of than by likening it to that of a pine-tree, for it shot up to a great height in the form of a very tall trunk, which spread itself out at the top into a sort of branches, occasioned, I imagine, either by a sudden gust of air that impelled it, the force of which decreased as it advanced upward, or the cloud itself being pressed back again by its own weight, expanded in the manner I have mentioned; it appeared sometimes bright and sometimes dark and spotted, according as it was either more or less impregnated with earth and cinders.

The Elder Pliny's Heroism.

This phenomenon seemed to a man of such learning and research as my uncle extraordinary and worth further looking into. He ordered a light vessel to be got ready, and gave me leave, if I liked, to accompany him. I said I had rather go on with my work, and it so happened he had himself given me something to write out.

As he was coming out of the house he received a note from Rectina, the wife of Bassus, who was in the utmost alarm at the imminent danger which threatened her, for her villa lying at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, there was no way of escape by sea; she earnestly entreated him, therefore, to come to her assistance.

He accordingly changed his first intention, and what he had begun from a philosophical he now carried out in a noble and generous spirit. He ordered the galleys to put to sea, and went himself on board with an intention of assisting not only Rectina, but the several towns which lay thickly strewn along the beautiful coast.

Hastening then to the place from whence others fled with the utmost terror, he steered his course direct to the point of danger, and with so much calmness and presence of mind as to be able to make and dictate his observations upon the motion and all the phenomena of that dreadful scene.

He was now so close to the mountain that the cinders, which grew thicker and hotter the nearer he approached, fell into the ships, together with pumice-stones and black pieces of burning rock; they were in danger, too, not only of being aground by the sudden retreat of the sea, but also from the vast fragments which rolled down from the mountain and obstructed all the shore.

Here he stopped to consider whether he should turn back again, to which, the pilot advising him, "Fortune," said he, "favors the brave; steer to where Pomponianus is." Pomponianus was then at Stabiæ (Castellamare), separated by a bay which the sea, after several insensible windings, forms with the shore.

He had already sent his baggage on board, for though he was not at that time in actual danger, yet being within sight of it, and indeed extremely near, if it should in the least increase he was determined to put to sea as soon as the wind, which was blowing dead inshore, should go down.

It was favorable, however, for carrying my uncle to Pomponianus, whom he found in the greatest consternation. He embraced him tenderly, encouraging and urging him to keep up his spirits, and, the more effectually to soothe his fears by seeming unconcerned himself, ordered a bath to be got ready, and then, after having bathed, sat down to supper with great cheerfulness, or at least (what is just as heroic) with every appearance of it.

Meanwhile broad flames shone out in several places from Mount Vesuvius, which the darkness of the night contributed to render still brighter and clearer. But my uncle, in order to soothe the apprehensions of his friend, assured him it was only the burning of the villages, which the country people had abandoned to the flames; after this he retired to rest, and it is most certain he was so little disquieted as to fall into a sound sleep, for his breathing, which on account of his corpulence was rather[Pg 299] heavy and sonorous, was heard by the attendants outside.

The court which led to his apartment being now almost filled with stones and ashes, if he had continued there any time longer it would have been impossible, for him to have made his way out.

So he was awakened and got up and went to Pomponianus and the rest of his company, who were feeling too anxious to think of going to bed. They consulted together whether it would be most prudent to trust to the houses, which now rocked from side to side with frequent and violent concussions as though shaken from their very foundations, or fly to the open fields, where the calcined stones and cinders, though light indeed, yet fell in large showers and threatened destruction.

Tied Pillows on Their Heads.

In this choice of dangers they resolved for the fields, a resolution which, while the rest of the company were hurried into it by their fears, my uncle embraced upon cool and deliberate consideration. They went out then, having pillows tied upon their heads with napkins, and this was their whole defense against the storm of stones that fell round them.

It was now day everywhere else, but there a deeper darkness prevailed than in the thickest night, which, however, was in some degree alleviated by torches and other lights of various kinds. They thought proper to go farther down upon the shore to see if they might safely put to sea, but found the waves still running extremely high and boisterous.

There my uncle, laying himself down upon a sailcloth which was spread for him, called twice for some cold water, which he drank, when immediately the flames, preceded by a strong whiff of sulfur, dispersed the rest of the party and obliged him to rise.

He raised himself up with the assistance of two of his servants, and instantly fell down dead, suffocated, as I conjecture, by some gross and noxious vapor, having always had a weak throat, which was often inflamed.

As soon as it was light again, which was not till the third day after this melancholy accident, his body was found entire, and without any marks of violence upon it, in the dress in which he fell, and looking more like a man asleep than dead.

During all this time my mother and I, who were at Misenum—but this has no connection with your history, and you did not desire any particulars besides those of my uncle's death, so I will end here, only adding that I have faithfully related to you what I was either a witness of myself or received the news of immediately after the accident happened, and before there was time to vary the truth.

You will pick out of this narrative whatever is most important, for a letter is one thing, a history another; it is one thing writing to a friend, another writing to the public. Farewell.

Letter No. 2.

The letter which, in compliance with your request, I wrote to you concerning the death of my uncle has raised, it seems, your curiosity to know what terrors and dangers attended me while I continued at Misenum, for there, I think, my account broke off.

Though my shock'd soul recoils, my tongue shall tell.

My uncle having left us, I spent such time as was left on my studies (it was on their account, indeed, that I had stopped behind) till it was time for my bath. After which I went to supper, and then fell into a short and uneasy sleep.

There had been noticed for many days before a trembling of the earth, which did not alarm us much, as this is quite an ordinary occurrence in Campania, but it was so particularly violent that night that it not only shook but overturned, as it would seem, everything about us.

My mother rushed into my chamber, where she found me rising, in order to awaken her. We sat down in the open court of the house, which occupied a small space between the buildings and the sea. As I was at that time but eighteen years of age, I know not whether I should call my behavior in this dangerous juncture courage or folly; but I took up Livy, and amused myself with turn[Pg 300]ing over that author, and even making extracts from him, as if I had been perfectly at my leisure.

Just then a friend of my uncle, who had lately come to him from Spain, joined us, and, observing me sitting by my mother with a book in my hand, reproved her for her calmness and me at the same time for my careless security; nevertheless, I went on with my author.

Though it was now morning, the light was still exceedingly faint and doubtful; the buildings all around us tottered, and though we stood upon open ground, yet as the place was narrow and confined there was no remaining without imminent danger; we therefore resolved to quit the town.

Effects of the Earthquakes.

A panic-stricken crowd followed us, and (as to a mind distracted with terror every suggestion seems more prudent than its own) pressed on us in dense array to drive us forward as we came out. Being at a convenient distance from the houses, we stood still in the midst of a most dangerous and dreadful scene.

The chariots, which we had ordered to be drawn out, were so agitated backward and forward, though upon the most level ground, that we could not keep them steady even by supporting them with large stones. The sea seemed to roll back upon itself and to be driven from its banks by the convulsive motion of the earth; it is certain at least the shore was considerably enlarged, and several sea animals were left upon it. On the other side a black and dreadful cloud, broken with rapid, zigzag flashes, revealed behind it variously shaped masses of flame; these last were like sheet lightning, but much larger.

Upon this our Spanish friend, whom I mentioned above, addressed himself to my mother and me with great energy and urgency. "If your brother," he said, "if your uncle be safe, he certainly wishes you may be so, too; but if he perished it was his desire, no doubt, that you might both survive him; why, therefore, do you delay your escape a moment?" We could never think of our own safety, we said, while we were uncertain of his.

Upon this our friend left us and withdrew from the danger with the utmost precipitation. Soon afterward the cloud began to descend and cover the sea. It had already surrounded and concealed the island of Capri and the promontory of Misenum.

My mother now besought, urged, even commanded me to make my escape at any rate, which, as I was young, I might easily do; as for herself, she said, her age and corpulency rendered all attempts of that sort impossible; however, she would willingly meet death if she could have the satisfaction of seeing that she was not the occasion of mine. But I absolutely refused to leave her, and, taking her by the hand, compelled her to go with me. She complied with great reluctance, and not without many reproaches to herself for retarding my flight.

The ashes now began to fall upon us, though in no great quantity. I looked back; a dense, dark mist seemed to be following us, spreading itself over the country like a cloud. "Let us turn out of the highroad," I said, "while we can still see, for fear that, should we fall in the road, we should be pressed to death in the dark by the crowds that are following us."

We had scarcely sat down when night came upon us, not such as we have when the sky is cloudy, or when there is no moon, but that of a room when it is shut up and all the lights put out.

The Terror of the People.

You might hear the shrieks of women, the screams of children, and the shouts of men; some calling for their children, others for their parents, others for their husbands, and seeking to recognize each other by the voices that replied; one lamenting his own fate, another that of his family; some wishing to die, from the very fear of dying; some lifting their hands to the gods, but the greater part convinced that there were now no gods at all, and that the final endless night of which we have heard had come upon the world.

Among these there were some who augmented the real terrors by others imaginary or wilfully invented. I remember some who declared that one part of[Pg 301] Misenum had fallen, that another was on fire; it was false, but they found people to believe them.

It now grew rather lighter, which we imagined to be rather the forerunner of an approaching burst of flames (as in truth it was) than the return of day; however, the fire fell at a distance from us; then again we were immersed in thick darkness, and a heavy shower of ashes rained upon us, which we were obliged every now and then to stand up to shake off, otherwise we should have been crushed and buried in the heap.

I might boast that during all this scene of horror not a sigh or expression of fear escaped me, had not my support been grounded in that miserable though mighty consolation that all mankind were involved in the same calamity, and that I was perishing with the world itself.

At last this dreadful darkness was dissipated by degrees, like a cloud or smoke; the real day returned, and even the sun shone out, though with a lurid light, as when an eclipse is coming on. Every object that presented itself to our eyes (which were extremely weakened) seemed changed, being covered deep with ashes as if with snow.

We returned to Misenum, where we refreshed ourselves as well as we could, and passed an anxious night between hope and fear, though indeed with a much larger share of the latter, for the earthquake still continued, while many frenzied persons ran up and down, heightening their own and their friends' calamities by terrible predictions.

However, my mother and I, notwithstanding the danger we had passed, and that which still threatened us, had no thoughts of leaving the place till we could receive some news of my uncle.

You will read this narrative without any view of inserting it in your history, of which it is not in the least worthy, and indeed you must put it down to your own request if it should appear not worth even the trouble of a letter. Farewell.

THE OLDEST CITY IN THE WORLD.

The Damascus Seen by Saul of Tarsus Still Exists, Presenting the Same Scenes and
Cherishing the Same Customs That Characterized It 1,000 Years Ago.

If you were suddenly asked to name the oldest city in the world which is still in a flourishing condition, what would be your answer?

In nine cases out of ten, the person to whom such a query might be propounded would hark back to Egypt, Greece, or Rome. He would be wrong. The oldest city in the world is Damascus.

Tyre and Sidon have crumbled on the shore; Baalbec is a ruin; Palmyra is buried in a desert; Nineveh and Babylon have disappeared from the Tigris and the Euphrates. Damascus remains what it was before the days of Abraham—a center of trade and travel—an isle of verdure in the desert; "a presidential capital," with martial and sacred associations extending through thirty centuries.

It was near Damascus that Saul of Tarsus saw the light above the brightness of the sun; the street which is called Strait, in which it was said "he prayed," still runs through the city.

The city which Mohammed surveyed from a neighboring height and was afraid to enter "because it was given to man to have but one paradise, and for his part he was resolved not to have it in this world," is to-day what Julian called the "Eye of the East," as it was in the time of Isaiah "the head of Syria."

From Damascus came the damson, our blue plums, and the delicious apricot of Portugal called damasco; damask, our beautiful fabric of cotton and silk, with vines and flowers raised upon a smooth, bright ground; the damask rose introduced into England in the time of Henry VIII; the Damascus blade, so famous the world over for its keen edge and wonderful elasticity, the secret of whose manufacture was lost when Tamerlane carried the artist into Persia; and that beautiful art of inlaying wood and steel with gold and silver, a kind of mosaic engraving and sculpture united—called damaskeening—with which boxes, bureaus, and swords are ornamented.[Pg 302]

A FEAST OF AUTO SONG.

The Egotism of the Motor-Car, Even in the Realm of Poesy, Proves More Than a
Match for the Wit of People Who Continue to Traduce It Until
They Decide What Model They Will Buy.

UNCLE HENRY ON THE PASSING OF THE HORSE.

HE BIDED HIS TIME

WHAT THEY CALL IT.

AN "AUTO" IDYL.

SHORT STORY OF SPEED.

SONG OF THE AUTOMOBILE.

By Joe Cone.

GRAVE, GAY, AND EPIGRAMMATIC.

LOVE, THE ILLUSION.

WON HIS BET.

General Miles, in company with a friend, was walking down Pennsylvania Avenue, when a person, entirely unknown to the veteran soldier, rushed up to him, and grasping his hand, said, warmly, "Well, Nelse, old boy, I'll bet anything you don't remember me!"

"You win!" coldly and laconically replied Miles, as he released himself from the grasp of the stranger and resumed his walk.—Woman's Home Companion.

SORRY HE LEARNED IT.

Attorney William S. Barnes, of San Francisco, has a new office boy. The last boy with whom he was associated resigned a few days ago because the law business did not suit his peculiar temperament.

"How long have you been here?" asked Barnes, when the small boy made known his intention to engage in a different vocation.

"Six months," replied the boy.

"And you don't like the law business?"

"Naw. It's no good, and I tell you straight, I'm mighty sorry I learned it."—Technical World.

WHAT FIELD WANTED.

Eugene Field, sad of countenance and ready of tongue, strayed into a New York restaurant and seated himself at a table. To him there came a swift and voluble waiter, who said:

"Coffee, tea-chocolate, ham 'n' 'ggs—beef-steak—mutton—chop—fishballs—hash'n'—beans," and much more to the same purpose.

Field looked at him long and solemnly, and at last replied:

"Oh, friend, I want none of these things. All I require is an orange and a few kind words."

DECIDEDLY "WILLIN'."

Miss Maude Adams has a favorite story about a certain "Miss Johnsing" and an uncertain "Culpeper Pete."

Pete became enamored of the dusky maiden and not having the courage to "pop" face to face, called up the house where she worked and asked for her over the telephone. When he got her on the line he asked:

"Is dat Miss Johnsing?"

"Ya-as."

"Well, Miss Johnsing, I'se got a most important question to ask you."

"Ya-as."

"Will you marry me?"

"Ya-as! Who is it, please?"—Exchange.

A HEROIC RESCUE.

The following sublime paragraph is from one of the latest fashionable novels:

"With one hand he held her beautiful head above the chilling waves, and with the other called loudly for assistance!"—Exchange.

WHY SHE WAS MADE OF A RIB.

A young woman having asked a surgeon why woman was made from the rib of a man in preference to any other bone, he gave the following gallant answer:

"She was not taken from the head lest she should rule over him; nor from his feet, lest he should trample upon her; but she was taken from his side, that she might be his equal; from under his arm, that he might protect her; from near his heart that he might cherish and love her."—Exchange.

A GRACIOUS JUDGE.

Lord Ellenborough once said to a barrister, upon his asking in the midst of a boring harangue: "Is it the[Pg 305] pleasure of the court that I should proceed with my statement?" "Pleasure, Mr. Smith, has been out of the question for a long time, but you may proceed."—Old scrap book.

LIGHT.

CURE FOR A NAGGING WIFE.

Having advertised as a widower in search of Wife No. 2, a man of St. Gall, Switzerland, showed the fifty replies and photographs which he had received to his wife, and, stating that if she did not want him there were others who did, he effectively cured her of her "nagging" habits.—Le Petit Parisien.

A RICH RETORT.

It is said of the late Marquis of Townsend that when a young man and engaged in battle, he saw a drummer at his side killed by a cannon ball, which scattered his brains in every direction. His eyes were at once fixed on the ghastly object, which seemed to engross his thoughts.

A superior officer observing him, supposed he was intimidated by the sight, and addressed him in a manner to cheer his spirits.

"Oh," said the young marquis, with calmness but severity, "I am not frightened; I am only puzzled to make out how any man with such a quantity of brains ever came to be here!"—Old scrap book.

GREELEY ON JOURNALISM.

Horace Greeley's favorite poem of his own make was:

JUST AROUND THE CORNER.

Lloyd Osbourne says that Robert Louis Stevenson once invited a friend to visit him in Samoa. His friend replied that nothing would give him greater pleasure, if he could secure the leisure to do so.

"By the way, Louis," added he, "how do you get to Samoa, anyhow?"

"Oh, easily," responded Stevenson, "you simply go to America, cross the continent to San Francisco, and it's the second turning to the left."—Woman's Home Companion.

THE ANGEL'S KINDNESS.

The recording angel suddenly put his fingers in his ears.

"What was that for?" asked St. Peter, when they had been removed.

"Oh, I saw Brown's new derby hat blow off, just as he was getting on a car," was the explanation of this kind-hearted action.—Smart Set.

DUNBAR'S RESIGNATION.

Paul Laurence Dunbar, the negro poet, is dead. Incomparable in his presentation of his race's language and thoughts, he occupied a unique position in the literary world. W.D. Howells called him the only man of pure African blood and of American civilization to feel the negro life esthetically and express it lyrically. Last year, while he was dying of consumption, he contributed to Lippincott's this verse-sermon of resignation:

A RETORT TURKISH.

The following we take to be of Turkish origin:

"As a woman was walking, a man looked at and followed her.

"'Why,' said she, 'do you follow me?'

"'Because,' he replied, 'I have fallen in love with you.'

"'Why so? My sister, who is coming after me, is much handsomer than I am. Go and make love to her.'

"The man turned back, and saw a woman with an ugly face, and, being greatly displeased, returned, and said:

"'Why should you tell me a falsehood?'

"The woman answered 'Neither did you tell me the truth; for, if you were in love with me, why did you look back for another woman?'"[Pg 306]

FLASHES OF ROYAL REPARTEE.

While there is no royal road to cleverness, the real road, such as it is, frequently is traveled by royal feet. In these days the functions of royalty are not of a nature that is likely to develop merry dispositions.

Rich in sly humor was the reply of Henry IV of France, who one day reached Amiens after a prolonged journey. A local orator was deputed to harangue him, and commenced with a lengthy string of epithets:

"Very great sovereign, very good, very merciful, very magnanimous——"

"Add also," interrupted the weary monarch, "very tired."

The same king, who appears to have been a constant sufferer from the stupid orations of these wordy windbags, was listening to a speech in a small country town, when an ass brayed at a distance.

"Pardon me, gentlemen," said the witty sovereign; "one at a time, please."

Henry's minister, Sully, was a Protestant, and happening to hear that a famous physician had quitted Calvinism for Catholicism, the king said to him:

"My friend, your religion is in a bad way—the doctors give it up."

George III was the author of many clever sayings. Meeting Lord Kenyon at a levée soon after that eminent justice had been guilty of an extraordinary explosion of ill humor in the Court of King's Bench, the king remarked to him:

"My lord chief justice, I hear that you have lost your temper, and from my great regard for you I am glad to hear it, for I hope you will find a better one."

On another occasion, when coming out of the House of Lords after opening the session, he said to the lord chancellor:

"Did I deliver the speech well?"

"Very well indeed," was the reply.

"I am glad of that," said the king, "for there was nothing in it."

When Royalty Had Worst of It.

The laugh, however, has not always been upon the side of royalty. When the Prince-Bishop of Liège was riding to battle at the head of a fine body of troops he was asked by a spectator how he, a minister of religion, could engage in the iniquities of war.

"I wage war," said the prelate, "in my character of prince, not of archbishop."

"And pray," continued the interrogator, "when the devil carries off the prince, what will become of the archbishop?"

Decidedly the worst of the exchanges did an Eastern sovereign receive when, having bought several horses from some merchants, he gave them a lac of rupees to purchase more for him. Soon after they had departed, he, in a sportive humor, ordered his vizier to make out a list of all the fools in his dominions. The vizier did so, and put his majesty's name at the head of them. The king asked why. The vizier replied:

"Because you entrusted a lac of rupees to men you didn't know, and who will never come back."

"Aye, but suppose they should come back?"

"Then," said the vizier, "I shall erase your name and insert theirs."

In the answer which a German prince was given there seems to be a rebuke for his misgovernment implied. Having in a dream seen three rats, one fat, the other lean, and the third blind, he sent for a celebrated Bohemian gipsy and demanded an explanation.

"The fat rat," said she, "is your prime minister, the lean rat your people, and the blind rat yourself."

Court Laureate Too Frank.

One of the Shahs of Persia was more anxious than able to acquire fame as a poet. He had just completed a new performance in very "peculiar meter," and summoned the court poet into the royal presence to hear the poem read.

The laureate, when his opinion was asked (in theatrical language), "damned" the composition.

The Shah, enraged at this uncourtly criticism, gave orders that the court poet should be taken to the stable and tied up in the same stall with a donkey. Here the poor sinner remained until his royal rival had perpetrated another poem, when he was again commanded to appear before the throne and submit to a second infliction of sovereign dulness.

He listened in silence while the new poem was read, and at the conclusion, his opinion being required, he fell upon his knees and significantly exclaimed to the royal author:

"Send me back to the donkey!"[Pg 307]

The Nation's Debt to Mothers.

By GILSON WILLETS.

Great Americans Who Have Achieved World-Wide Reputations By
Reason of the Success That Has Attended Their Careers,
Ascribe Their Triumphs to Maternal Influence.

An original article written for The Scrap Book.

The debt which the United States owes to the mothers of its citizens is one that is beyond the expression of either figures or language. It is a debt on which the republic can only pay the interest—interest that consists of the manifestation of an ever-increasing reverence for American motherhood; for, with all its magnificent resources, the nation is too poor to make even a feeble attempt to pay the principal.

No better evidence of the effect of maternal influence on the careers of successful Americans need be adduced than that which is offered here.

In the lives of the Presidents of the United States, it is found that the nation owes much to American mothers.

George Washington was only eleven years old when his father died, leaving the widowed mother, Mary Washington, with five children to educate and direct. She used daily to gather her children around her and teach them the principles of religion and morality from a little manual in which she wrote all her maxims.

That manual was preserved by Washington as one of his most valued treasures, "and was consulted by me many times in after-life." A French general, on retiring from the presence of Mary Washington, remarked: "It is not surprising that America should produce great men, since she can boast of such mothers."

Andrew Jackson.

A few days previous to the birth of Andrew Jackson his father died, and the widow and her two little sons rode to the churchyard in the wagon with the coffin. The support of the family fell, then, entirely upon the mother. She went to the home of her brother-in-law and there engaged herself as housekeeper.

Until her sons were old enough to take care of themselves she toiled for them, clothed them, and educated them as best she could.

Many stories are told of Mrs. Jackson's benevolence, her thrift, her decision of character, and "a rigid honesty and pride of good name that went hand in hand with a quick and jealous self-respect which was not likely to be patient under any injustice."

When Andrew Jackson became President, he said of his mother:

"One of the last injunctions given me by her was never to institute a suit for assault and battery, or for defamation; never to wound the feelings of others, nor suffer my own to be outraged. These were her words of admonition to me. I remember them well, and have never failed to respect them."

Thomas Jefferson.

Thomas Jefferson's father died when the lad was fourteen, and then his mother became more than ever his companion and adviser. Thomas had, indeed, always lived more under the influence of his mother than of his busy father. She was a woman of unusual refinement of character, having the culture of the best society. Thus equipped, she assumed the training of Thomas. Upon the death of her husband she[Pg 308] found herself her children's guardian, responsible for a vast entailed estate that was to go to the eldest son, Thomas.

John Quincy Adams.

John Quincy Adams's father was devoted to his family; but, engrossed in political activities, he was frequently absent from home for long periods. From the hour in which the boy learned to talk, his mental activities received an uncommon stimulus from his mother.

"Being taught by my mother to love my country," wrote John Quincy Adams, when he became President, "I did it literally by learning to love the actual hills and rocks and trees, and the very birds and animals." And he added elsewhere: "All that I am my mother made me."

It is an interesting coincidence that the three martyred Presidents should each have been peculiarly dominated by a mother's influence.

Abraham Lincoln.

That expression of habitual melancholy in Lincoln's face, for example, was really a reproduction of the features of Nancy Hanks Lincoln, his mother. For, through long drudgery and privation, in cabin after cabin, Mrs. Lincoln had lost all her comeliness, and became bent and care-worn and sad-faced while Abraham was still an impressionable youth.

How Lincoln reverenced that mother is told by all his biographers. She it was who, possessing the accomplishments of reading and writing, not common at that time among the poor people of Kentucky, taught Abraham his letters and gave him his first lessons in writing.

When Mrs. Lincoln died her son spent months roving the woods, vainly trying to recover from his grief. The mother was buried without any funeral service, there being no minister in the vicinity. But Abraham traversed the country for twenty miles in every direction till he found an itinerant preacher and induced him to come to his mother's grave and there preach a funeral sermon.

"Now," he said, "I have henceforth but one purpose in life: to live as she would have me live."

And in after years Lincoln was deeply and visibly affected whenever he heard of any incident involving the love of mother and son.

James A. Garfield.

What a contrast is this experience of Lincoln's to that of General Ulysses S. Grant, whose mother survived his Presidential career, and to that of Garfield, whose mother lived to stand by his side when he read his inaugural address on the steps of the Capitol and then to weep at his tomb! And to that of McKinley, upon whose venerable mother the eyes of the nation were turned with tender interest on March 4, 1897, when she was the first person to whom McKinley spoke as President of the United States!

"Eliza," said the father of James A. Garfield to his wife, on his dying-bed in a log cabin in the wilderness bordering the Ohio River, "I have brought you four young saplings into these woods. Take care of them."

The future President was then only two years old. His mother was left to fight the battle of life alone. She managed, by hard work, to run the little farm, and even found time to give her sons daily lessons in Bible-reading. Upon James in particular she impressed her personality, until her own high nature dominated him deeply.

When James was old enough he drove mules on the tow-path of the Ohio Canal. One pay-day his wages fell short of the proper amount.

"I want every cent for my mother," he said to his employer, insisting upon the few extra pennies.

Finally he earned enough to enable him to enter the seminary at Chester, ten miles from his home. While there, he spent a certain holiday, with his classmates, on a mountain. As darkness gathered about them—they were to remain overnight—Garfield took a Testament from his pocket and said:

"Boys, I read a chapter every night simultaneously with my mother. If you please, I will read it now."

And on the day of his inauguration, he turned to his mother, saying:

"It's all because of you, mother."

William McKinley.

At the outbreak of the Rebellion a "war meeting" was held in Poland,[Pg 309] Ohio, in the Sparrow Tavern. There were speaking and beating of drums, and finally an appeal for volunteers to defend the flag. The first to step forth was William McKinley, Jr.

"No, my son," said the senior McKinley, laying a restraining hand upon his son's arm; "you are too young."

"No, he is not too young—none are too young to carry a light in this dark hour."

The speaker was William's mother.

"And thus, strange to say," wrote William McKinley, years afterward, "the usual order of things was in my case reversed: my father would have held me back from the mighty struggle that was to ensue, on the ground that I was only eighteen years old; and my mother was the one to say 'Go!' For she had, and still has, a strong and passionate patriotism. Next to God, she loves her country. She believed in freedom, and was ready to offer up even a woman's most priceless jewel—her child—to save her country's flag. She had convictions, and the intellectual powers to impress those around her—impressing most of all her son."

McKinley's mother was still living at Canton, Ohio, at the age of eighty-seven, at the time of her son's first inauguration as President. That day a seemingly trifling incident endeared the new President in the hearts of the mothers of the country. For William McKinley, as soon as he had taken the oath of office, went to his mother and kissed her.

Levi P. Morton.

Levi P. Morton once established a dry-goods house in New York, and failed. But to his creditors he gave all he possessed, settling for fifty cents on the dollar. Years afterward he made a great success as a banker, and then he again gave thought to those whom he had not paid in full as a merchant.

One day all his former creditors received invitations to a banquet. His guests took their seats at the table, and as each opened his napkin he found a check for the full amount of his claim, with interest.

"Gentlemen," said Mr. Morton, "the one who deserves the credit for the—shall we say favors of the evening?—is not your host, but the mother who, by her early influence, has guided him through life. My father's salary as the village parson was not sufficient for all the household expenses; so I went to clerking in the village store for a few dollars a month. When I brought my wages to my mother she said:

"'Levi, do you owe any of this money to anybody? Yes? Then go at once and pay it, if it takes every dollar. If you owe money, you are not a free boy.'

"My emancipation to-night, gentlemen, is the direct result of that mother's early counsel."

Rockefeller and Rogers.

"My mother," says John D. Rockefeller, "taught me to make everything count. When I became partner in a grocery, I got some barrels of beans—cheap, because there were many black ones among them. I expected to sell them cheap, too. But my mother said:

"'John, put in all your spare time, night and day, sorting those beans, and then they will be all extra quality and you can sell them at an extra price.'

"For weeks I worked, picking over those beans, by hand, throwing out all the black ones. It was a lesson I have never forgotten. Through me, my mother says to all young men:

"'Throw the worthless out of your life; make everything count.'"

Henry H. Rogers, of the Standard Oil Company, said recently:

"Up to a very few years ago I went to my mother with all my joys and all my woes, just as I did when a boy."

Once a week, in Fairhaven, the model Massachusetts town for which Mr. Rogers has done so much, he drives to the grave of that mother whom he loved.

In his mother's cottage while she lived (she would never consent to move into the great new castle her son built) Mr. Rogers put a long-distance telephone. Then, every morning in his New York office, at eleven o'clock precisely, in the very midst of the battle for millions, he would call a truce for a few minutes "to telephone my mother."

Stephen V. White.

Stephen V. White, "Deacon White," one of the most trusted men in Wall[Pg 310] Street, has a long strip of canvas hanging on his office-wall on which are painted, in large letters, these lines:

"That's my philosophy of life," says Mr. White, "as my mother taught it to me. Every young man should copy those lines and put the copy in the finest frame he can afford. For those lines I owe my mother much; it was she who made me repeat them over and over."

Edwin Markham, "The Man with the Hoe," says:

"It was the influence of my mother—my father having died—that dominated me. She was an extraordinary woman. She kept a general store in Oregon City, and conducted the business with remarkable energy. She was known as the 'Woman Poet of Oregon.'

"It was from her that I got my poetical bent. Her poems were full of feeling and of the earnestness of a strong religious spirit. They were published only in newspapers—and to-day my scrap book containing poems written by my mother is my most precious possession."

John Wanamaker.

"When you marry," said John Wanamaker, to a young men's Bible class, "remember that your mother-in-law is your wife's mother. Never allow a so-called 'mother-in-law joke' to make you forget that you are reading a reflection on some one's mother. My own mother I reverenced. Her maxims taught me forbearance, tolerance, and the homely lesson of live and let live."

The mother of Henry O. Havemeyer, the "Sugar King," urged her son to don overalls and go to work in his father's refinery—though the family was even then very rich.

"So my mother taught me," says Mr. Havemeyer, "to know the joy of work at a time when I might have slipped into a life of idleness."

The Rev. Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst, the well-known New York clergyman, says:

"My father was a farmer, and my mother, with four children on her hands, and no servant, did all the work of a farmer's wife. Her days were long, for she also devoted herself to her children, to their character and education, declining to farm us out to the supervision of nurses or school-teachers. My mother had the old-fashioned notion that children were born of mothers in order that they might have mothers to bring them up."

David Starr Jordan, president of Leland Stanford University, was asked what great man or woman most influenced him as a boy.

He replied, in writing:

"I was far more influenced by my mother than by any other person I ever knew or heard of."

Fulton, Franklin, and Astor.

Robert Fulton was only three years old when his father died. "So that," he said, "I grew up under the care of my blessed mother. She developed my early talent for drawing and encouraged me in my visits to the machine-shops of the town."

Robert was a dull pupil at school, however, and the teacher complained to his mother. Whereupon Mrs. Fulton replied proudly:

"My boy's head, sir, is so full of original notions that there is no vacant chamber in which to store the contents of your musty books."

"I was only ten years old at that time," said Fulton, "and my mother seemed to be the only human being who understood my natural bent for mechanics."

The fact that Fulton's mother let the boy have his own way in his "original notions" had its direct result later in the building of the first steamboat.

Benjamin Franklin many times, in his own story of his life, mentions the powerful influence which his mother had over him, referring to her always with peculiar affection.

"My son," said that mother, "is endowed with more than ordinary talent, and he shall enter one of the professions, perhaps the ministry."

The family was then very poor, the elder Franklin having no ambition be[Pg 311]yond that of making a bare competence as a ship-chandler. Encouraged by his mother, however, young Benjamin "took to books" with such ardor that before he was ten years old his mother spoke of him as "our little professor," and added:

"He shall serve either humanity or his country; the one as a minister of the Gospel, the other as a diplomat."

The first John Jacob Astor said: "Whatever I have accomplished through thrift is due to the teachings of my mother. She trained me to the habit of early rising; she made me devote the first waking hours to reading the Bible. Those habits have continued through my life, and have been to me a source of unfailing comfort. Her death was the greatest grief of my existence."

WHEN THACKERAY WENT ON STRIKE.

In a Letter Written to the Publisher of an English Magazine, the Famous Novelist Demanded
as Good Pay as That of the "Monthly Nurse."

There are authors' clubs and authors' societies in nearly every national literary center in the world, but up to the present time the trade of authorship has not been formally affiliated with that of any kind of trade-unionism. For this very reason, authors are compelled to make their demands individually.

This was the situation that confronted William Makepeace Thackeray at a time when his writings were first beginning to win popularity in England. It was in 1837, the year after his marriage to Isabella Shawe—a chronological sequence which perhaps accounts for his increased need of money. He was contributing "The Yellowplush Papers" to the successive issues of Fraser's Magazine, and he had made up his mind that his work ought to yield him a more satisfactory financial return. The result was he went on strike, as may be seen by the following letter which he wrote to James Fraser, the proprietor of the magazine:

[Pg 312]

MY LADY ON PARADE.

Verses, Old and New, Dealing With Various Phases of That Highly Important Subject,
the Philosophy of Feminine Costume.

WHAT THE CHOIR SANG.

By Harriette Hammond.

AN OMAR FOR LADIES.

By Josephine Dodge Daskam.

SHE FELT OF HER BELT.

REGRETS.

By Carolyn Wells.

MY AUNT.

By Oliver Wendell Holmes.

[Pg 314]

MISMATED MEN OF GENIUS.

Some Distinguished Writers, Artists, and Composers Who Were Rather Less Fortunate
in Choosing Wives With Congenial Temperaments Than in Following
the Paths That Led Them On to Fame.

In writing on the subject of the influence of matrimony on men of genius, E.P. Whipple, the Boston essayist and lecturer, mentioned the cases of several who, like Molière and Rousseau, have had unsympathetic wives. Among these was Sir Walter Scott, who while walking with his wife in the fields called her attention to some lambs, remarking that they were beautiful.

"Yes," echoed she, "lambs are beautiful—boiled!"

That incomparable essayist and chirping philosopher, Montaigne, married but once. When his good wife left him, he shed the tears usual on such occasions, and said he would not marry again, though it were to Wisdom herself.

A young painter of great promise once told Sir Joshua Reynolds that he had taken a wife. "Married!" ejaculated the horrified Sir Joshua; "then you are ruined as an artist."

Michelangelo, when asked why he never married, replied:

"I have espoused my art, and that occasions me sufficient domestic cares; for my works shall be my children."

The wives of Dante, Milton, Dryden, Addison, and Steele shed no glory on the sex, and brought no peace to their firesides.

The list of "unhappily married" is large and brilliant. It includes William Beckford, the author of "Vathek," who, however, does not seem to have deserved a happy life, and whose enormous fortune and great talents were alike wasted.

Lord Lytton was also unhappily, though romantically, married, and a large part, at least, of the subsequent misery was due to his temper and conduct. But perhaps full justice has not been done to the ill effects of the long and hard struggle with poverty, which he maintained with such success, but with such constant labor, during many years.

The temperaments of Charles Dickens and his wife were so different that they lived apart for several years preceding the great novelist's death.

Lord and Lady Byron separated about a year after their marriage, and they never met again.

Sir Henry Irving and his wife spent the last years of their married life in separate homes.

Haydn's marriage was unhappy. In 1758 the young composer had, after great struggles, got so far as to obtain a musical directorship with Count Morzin, and settled in Vienna. His salary was only two hundred florins, but he had board and lodging free. Many pupils came to him, and among others two daughters of the hairdresser Keller.

Haydn fell deeply in love with the younger, but his affection was not returned, for she entered a convent and became a nun.

Father Keller, who was very familiar with Haydn and had helped him oftentimes with small loans in his early struggles, persuaded the young composer to marry his elder daughter, and the marriage, after awhile, was celebrated November 26, 1760.

Maria Anna was, however, no wife for Joseph Haydn. She was extravagant, bigoted, scolded all day, and was utterly uncompanionable to a musician.

Finally she became so bad that she only did what she thought would annoy her husband. She dressed in a fashion quite unsuited to her position, invited clerical men to her table, tore Haydn's written musical scores and made curl-papers of them, etc., and yet the great composer bore it all as well as he could.

In one letter he says: "My wife is mostly sick, and is always in a bad temper. It is the same to her whether her husband is a shoemaker or an artist."

After he had suffered this state of things in a miserable marriage of thirty-two years he seemed exhausted, and wrote, then a renowned composer, to a friend from London:

"My wife, that infernal woman, has written me such horrible things that I will not return home again."

At last Haydn separated from his wife and placed her as a boarder with a schoolmaster in Baden, where she died in 1810. Her memory was always disagreeable to him, even after her death.[Pg 315]

A Chapter on Puns.

By THEODORE HOOK.

There is one class of people who, with a depravity of appetite not excelled by that of the celebrated Anna Maria Schurman, who rejoiced in eating spiders, thirst after puns. If you fall in with these, you have no resource but to indulge them to their heart's content; but in order to rescue yourself from the imputation of believing punning to be wit, quote the definition of Swift, and be, like him, as inveterate a punster as you possibly can, immediately after resting everything, and hazarding all, upon the principle that the worse the pun the better.

In order to be prepared for this sort of punic war (for the disorder is provocative and epidemic), the moment any one gentleman or lady has, as they say in Scotland, "let a pun," everybody else in the room who can or cannot do the same sets to work to endeavor to emulate the example. From that period all rational conversation is at an end, and a jargon of nonsense succeeds which lasts till the announcement of coffee, or supper, or the carriages puts a happy termination to the riot.

Addison says, "One may say of a pun, as the countryman described his nightingale, that it is vox et præterea nihil, a sound, and nothing but a sound;" and in another place he tells us that "the greatest authors in their most serious works make frequent use of puns; the sermons of Bishop Andrews and the tragedies of Shakespeare are full of them; if a sinner was punned into repentance as in the latter, nothing is more usual than to see a hero weeping and grumbling for a dozen lines together;" but he also says, "It is indeed impossible to kill a weed which the soil has a natural disposition to produce. The seeds of punning are in the minds of all men, and though they may be subdued by reason, reflection, and good sense, they will be very apt to shoot up in the greatest genius that is not broken and cultivated by the rules of art."

Here is something like a justification of the enormity; and, as the pupil is to mix in all societies, he may as well be prepared.

Puns may be divided into different classes; they may be made in different ways, introduced by passing circumstances, or by references to bygone events; they may be thrown in anecdotically, or conundrumwise.

It is to be observed that feeling, or[Pg 316] pity, or commiseration, or grief are not to stand in the way of a pun—that personal defects are to be made available, and that sense, so as the sound answers, has nothing to do with the business.

If a man is pathetically describing the funeral of his mother or sister or wife, it is quite allowable to call it a "black-burying party," or to talk of a "fit of coffin"; a weeping relative struggling to conceal his grief may be likened to a commander of "private tears"; throw in a joke about the phrase of "funerals performed" and a re-hearsal; and wind up with the anagram real-fun, funeral.

I give this instance first, in order to explain that nothing, however solemn the subject, is to stand in the way of a pun.

It is allowable, when you have run a subject dry in English, to hitch in a bit of any other language which may sound to your liking. For instance, on a fishing party. You say fishing is out of your line; yet, if you did not keep a float, you would deserve a rod; and if anybody affects to find fault with your joke, exclaim: "Oh, vous bête!"

There you have line, rod, float, and bait ready to your hand.

Call two noodles from the city in a punt, endeavoring to catch small fry, "East Angles"; or, if you please, observe that "the punters are losing the fish," "catching nothing but a cold," or that "the fish are too deep for them." Call the Thames a "tidy" river; but say you prefer the Isis in hot weather.

Personal deformities or constitutional calamities are always to be laid hold of. If anybody tells you that a dear friend has lost his sight, observe that it will make him more hospitable than ever, since now he would be glad to see anybody.

If a clergyman breaks his leg, remark that he is no longer a clergyman, but a lame man. If a poet is seized with apoplexy, affect to disbelieve it, although you know it to be true, in order to say—

Poeta nascitur non fit;

and then, to carry the joke one step farther, add, "that it is not a fit subject for a jest."

A man falling into a tan-pit, you may call "sinking in the sublime"; a climbing boy suffocated in a chimney meets with a sootable death; and a pretty girl having caught the smallpox is to be much pitted.

On the subject of the ear and its defects, talk first of something in which a cow sticks, and end by telling the story of the man who, having taken great pains to explain something to his companion, at last got in a rage at his apparent stupidity, and exclaimed, "Why, my dear sir, don't you comprehend? The thing is as plain as A, B, C." "I dare say it is," said the other; "but I am D, E, F."

It may be as well to give the beginner something of a notion of the use he may make of the most ordinary words, for the purpose of quibbleism. For instance, in the way of observation: The loss of a hat is always felt; if you don't like sugar, you may lump it; a glazier is a panes-taking man; candles are burnt because wick-ed things always come to light; a lady who takes you home from a party is kind in her carriage, and you say "Nunc est ridendum" when you step into it; if it happen to be a chariot, she is a charitable person; birds'-nests and king-killing are synonymous, because they are high trees on; a bill for building a bridge should be sanctioned by the Court of Arches as well as the House of Piers; when a man is dull, he goes to the seaside to Brighton; a Cockney lover, when sentimental, should live in Heigh Hoburn; the greatest fibber is the man most to re-lie upon; a dean expecting a bishopric looks for lawn; a sui-cide kills pigs, and not himself; a butcher is a gross man, but a fig-seller is a grocer; Joshua never had a father or mother, because he was the son of a Nun; your grandmother and great-grandmother were your aunt's sisters; a leg of mutton is better than heaven, because nothing is better than heaven, and a leg of mutton is better than nothing.

Races are matters of course; an ass never can be a horse, although he may be a mayor; the Venerable Bede was the mother of Pearl; a baker makes bread when he kneads it; a doctor cannot be a doctor all at once, because he comes to it by degrees; a man hanged at Newgate has taken a drop too much; the bridle day is that on which a man leads a woman to the halter. Never mind the aspirate; in punning all's fair.[Pg 317]

Puns interrogatory are at times serviceable. You meet a man carrying a hare: ask him if it is his own hare, or a wig?—there you stump him. Why is Parliament Street like a compendium? Because it goes to a bridge. Why is a man murdering his mother in a garret a worthy person? Because he is above committing a crime. Instances of this kind are innumerable; and if you want to render your question particularly pointed, you are, after asking it once or twice, to say "D'ye give it up?"—then favor your friends with the solution.

Puns scientific are effective whenever a scientific man or men are in company, because, in the first place, they invariably hate puns, especially those which are capable of being twisted into jokes which have no possible relation to the science of which the words to be joked upon are terms; and because, in the next place, dear, laughing girls, who are wise enough not to be sages, will love you for disturbing the self-satisfaction of the philosophers, and raising a laugh or titter at their expense.

Where there are three or four geologists of the party, if they talk of their scientific tours made to collect specimens, call the old ones "ninny-hammers," and the young ones "chips of the old block"; and then inform them that claret is the best specimen of quartz in the world.

If you fall in with a botanist who is holding forth, talk of the quarrels of flowers as a sequel to the loves of the plants, and say they decide their differences with pistols.

In short, sacrifice everything to the pursuit of punning, and in the course of time you will acquire such a reputation for waggery that the whole company will burst into an immoderate fit of laughing if you only ask the servants for bread, or say "No" to the offer of a cutlet.

GREAT WRITERS OFTEN POOR TALKERS.

Among Those Who Were Singularly Deficient in the Art of Conversation Were Corneille,
Addison, Milton, Dante, and Goldsmith.

"He wrote like an angel and talked like poor poll," was the manner in which Oliver Goldsmith was described by one of his contemporaries, and all acounts agree that the author of "The Deserted Village" made a sorry figure as a conversationalist. But Goldsmith was far from being the only writer of undoubted genius whose conversation was devoid of charm. Indeed, there is a wealth of evidence to prove that the art of writing well and talking well are not akin.

[Pg 318]

FAMOUS LOVE POEMS.

An Elizabethan Dramatist and One of the Cavaliers of
Charles I Gave to Our Language Two of
Its Most Charming Lyrics.

The English language is particularly rich in poetical expressions of the tender passion, but among these two have long been regarded as preeminent.

One, "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love," was written by Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), the only great predecessor of Shakespeare in the British drama. This lyric, which is described by old Izaak Walton as "that smooth song which was made by Kit Marlowe," is one of the most beautiful of its kind that has come down to us from the Elizabethan period. It has frequently been imitated by minor poets, and a delightful reply to it was made by Sir Walter Raleigh.

The second famous love poem published herewith was from the pen of the gay, loyal, brave, but unfortunate Cavalier, Sir Richard Lovelace (1618-1658). The exquisite verses constituting his address "To Althea from Prison" were written while the young poet was confined as a prisoner, by order of the Puritan Parliament, in the Gatehouse of Westminster, for presenting to the Commons a petition from Kentish royalists in the king's favor. He was released on bail which amounted to two hundred thousand dollars. The young woman to whom the lines "To Althea" were written subsequently became the wife of another. Lovelace died in the most abject poverty.

THE PASSIONATE SHEPHERD TO HIS LOVE.

By CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE.

TO ALTHEA FROM PRISON.

By RICHARD LOVELACE.

Speech on Duluth.

By JAMES PROCTOR KNOTT.

Mr. Speaker: As to those great trunk-lines of railway spanning the continent from ocean to ocean, I confess my mind has never been fully made up. But with regard to the transcendent merits of the gigantic enterprise contemplated in this bill—to construct a railroad from the St. Croix River, or lake, to the west end of Lake Superior and to Bayfield—I never entertained a shadow of a doubt.

Now, sir, who that is not as incredulous as St. Thomas himself will doubt for a moment that the Goshen of America is to be found in the sandy valleys and upon the pine-clad hills of the St. Croix?

Sir, I have been satisfied for years that if there was any portion of the inhabited globe absolutely in a suffering condition for a railroad, it was these teeming pine-barrens of the St. Croix.

At what particular point on that noble stream such a road should be commenced I knew was immaterial, and so it seems to have been considered by the draftsman of this bill. It might be up at the spring or down at the foot-log, or the water-gate, or the fish-dam, or anywhere along the bank, no matter where. But in what direction should it run, or where should it terminate, were always to my mind questions of the most painful perplexity, until I accidentally overheard some gentlemen the other day mention the name of "Duluth."

Duluth! The word fell on my ear with a peculiar and indescribable charm, like the gentle murmur of a low fountain stealing forth in the midst of roses, or the soft, sweet accent of an angel's whisper in the bright, joyous dream of sleeping innocence.

Duluth! 'Twas the name for which my soul had panted for years, as the hart panteth for the water-brooks. But where was Duluth?

Never in all my limited reading had my vision been gladdened by seeing the celestial word in print. And I felt a profound humiliation in my ignorance[Pg 321] that its dulcet syllables had never before ravished my delighted ear. I was certain the draftsman of this bill had never heard of it, or it would have been designated as one of the termini of this road.

I asked my friends about it, but they knew nothing of it. I rushed to the library and examined all the maps I could find. I discovered in one of them a delicate, hair-like line diverging from the Mississippi near a place called Prescott, which I supposed was intended to represent the river St. Croix; but I could nowhere find Duluth.

Nevertheless, I was confident that it existed somewhere, and that its discovery would constitute the crowning glory of the present century, if not of all modern times.

Thanks to the beneficence of that band of ministering angels who have their bright abodes in the far-off capital of Minnesota, just as the agony of my anxiety was about to culminate in the frenzy of despair, this blessed map was placed in my hands; and as I unfolded it a resplendent scene of ineffable glory opened before me, such as I imagine burst upon the enraptured vision of the wandering peri through the opening gates of paradise.

There, there for the first time my enchanted eye rested upon the ravishing word "Duluth."

If gentlemen will examine it, they will find Duluth not only in the center of this map, but represented in the center of concentric circles one hundred miles apart, and some of them as much as four thousand miles in diameter, embracing alike in their tremendous sweep the fragrant savannas of the sunlit South, and the eternal solitudes of snow that mantle the ice-bound North.

I find by reference to this map that Duluth is situated somewhere near the western end of Lake Superior; but as there is no dot or other mark indicating its exact location, I am unable to say whether it is actually confined to any particular spot, or whether "it is just lying around there loose."

But, however that may be, I am satisfied that Duluth is there or thereabout, for I see it stated here on this map that it is exactly thirty-nine hundred and ninety miles from Liverpool, though I have no doubt, for the sake of convenience, it will be moved back ten miles so as to make the distance an even four thousand.

Then, sir, there is the climate of Duluth, unquestionably the most salubrious and delightful to be found anywhere on the Lord's earth. Now, I have always been under the impression, as I presume other gentlemen have, that in the regions around Lake Superior it was cold enough, for at least nine months in the year, to freeze the smoke-stack off a locomotive.

But I see it represented on this map that Duluth is situated exactly half-way between the latitudes of Paris and Venice; so that gentlemen who have inhaled the exhilarating airs of the one or basked in the golden sunlight of the other may see at a glance that Duluth must be a place of untold delights, a terrestrial paradise, fanned by the balmy zephyrs of an eternal spring, clothed in the gorgeous sheen of ever-blooming flowers, and vocal with the silvery melody of Nature's choicest songsters.

As to the commercial resources of Duluth, sir, they are simply illimitable and inexhaustible, as shown by this map. I see it stated here that there is a vast scope of territory, embracing an area of over two million square miles, rich in every element of material wealth and commercial prosperity, all tributary to Duluth.

Look at this map; do not you see from the broad brown lines drawn around this immense territory, that the enterprising inhabitants of Duluth intend some day to enclose it all in one vast corral, so that its commerce would be bound to go there whether it would or not? And on this map, sir, I find within a convenient distance the Piegan Indians, which of all the many accessories to the glory of Duluth I consider the most inestimable.

For, sir, I see vast "wheat-fields" represented on this map in the immediate neighborhood of the buffaloes and the Piegans; and though the idea of there being these immense wheat-fields in the very heart of a wilderness, hundreds and hundreds of miles beyond the utmost verge of civilization, may appear to some gentlemen as rather incongruous, as rather too great a strain on the "blan[Pg 322]kets" of veracity, to my mind there is no difficulty in the matter whatever.

Here, you will observe, are the buffaloes, directly between the Piegans and Duluth, and here, on the right of Duluth, are the Creeks. Now, sir, when the buffaloes are sufficiently fat from grazing on these immense wheat-fields, you see it will be the easiest thing in the world for the Piegans to drive them on down, stay all night with their friends, the Creeks, and go into Duluth in the morning.

Sir, I might stand here for hours and hours and expatiate with rapture upon the gorgeous prospects of Duluth as depicted upon this map. But human life is far too short and the time of this House far too valuable to allow me to linger longer upon the delightful theme. Nevertheless, sir, it grieves my very soul to be compelled to say that I cannot vote for the grant of lands provided for in this bill.

Ah, sir, you can have no conception of the poignancy of my anguish that I am deprived of that blessed privilege! There are two insuperable obstacles in the way. In the first place, my constituents for whom I am acting here have no more interest in this road than they have in the great question of culinary taste now perhaps agitating the public mind of Dominica as to whether the illustrious commissioners who recently left this capital for that free and enlightened republic would be better fricasseed, boiled, or roasted; and in the second place, these lands which I am asked to give away, alas! are not mine to bestow.

My relation to them is simply that of trustee to an express trust. And shall I ever betray that trust?

Never, sir! Rather perish Duluth! Perish the paragon of cities! Rather let the freezing cyclones of the bleak Northwest bury it forever beneath the eddying sands of the raging St. Croix.

NATURE'S WILDERNESS COMPASSES.

Some Simple Facts Concerning Woodcraft Which Will Enable Wanderers in a Forest to
Get Their Bearings and Find Their Camps.

With the coming of vacation time, men's thoughts turn to woods and streams, and there is a general rush for "the tall timber."

That many will wander far afield and lose themselves in "trackless forests" is inevitable, but there is a sure way of finding oneself which is well worth remembering, for it is a serious matter to be actually lost in dense woods.

[Pg 323]

ALL KINDS OF THINGS.

FRENCH MILLIONAIRES OF OTHER CENTURIES.

GREATER EXTRAVAGANCE TO-DAY.

Prior to the Seventeenth Century No
Frenchman Had an Income That
Touched the Seven-Figure Mark.

Tales of the magnificent extravagances of France under the Bourbons have led a wondering later age to think that never since has gold been lavished upon luxury with so free a hand. But a French writer, the Vicomte Georges d'Avenel, has taken the trouble to make comparisons, and he has found that the incomes of to-day are relatively much larger than they were one, two, and three hundred years ago. The New York World has summarized from the Revue des Deux Mondes M. d'Avenel's discoveries:

The conclusion of this investigator is that the very rich of to-day are six times as rich, or those of equal fortune are twelve times as many, as the richest men of the old régime; and they are ten times as rich, or twenty times as many, as the rich princes of the feudal period.

SERIOUS EXPLOSIONS ARE CAUSED BY DUST.

GRAVE DANGER LURKS IN SUGAR.

Particles of Cork Floating in the Atmosphere
of Linoleum Factories Must Be
Kept from Unprotected Lights.

Almost every kind of dust which is composed of inflammable material will explode when touched by a flame. For instance, the house-maid who uses the contents of the sugar bowl to light the fire knows that nothing burns more easily than powdered sugar. Proprietors of large sweetmeat factories have learned that there is danger from this source.

SOME ECCENTRICITIES OF LIGHTNING BOLTS.

TARGETS OF HEAVEN'S ARTILLERY.

Belief That the Electric Fluid Never
Strikes Twice in the Same Place Is
Shown to Be Wrong.

Among the duties assigned to the students of the Agricultural College at Guelph, Ontario, is that of gathering statistics concerning loss and damage from lightning in the province. The results thus obtained seem to show the value of lightning-rods, if properly adjusted, and the desirability of having trees standing near buildings. Summarizing the last annual report from the college, the Free Press, of London, Ontario, gives out the following novel facts:

LIVING LANGUAGES ARE STILL A BABEL.

MODERN CONFUSION OF TONGUES.

Linguists Attempt an Impossible Task if
They Try to Master the Hundreds of
Languages Still Spoken.

Language is, of course, a wonderful telegraph system between minds; but what a multiplicity of codes! The living languages to-day number eight hundred and sixty, to say nothing of five thousand dialects. This is a Babel indeed.

Europe has eighty-nine languages; Asia, one hundred and twenty-three; Africa, one hundred and fourteen; America, one hundred and seventeen; and the islands of the Pacific and Indian oceans have four hundred and seventeen.

THE FLIGHT OF TIME CAUSES MANY ERRORS.

PAINTERS AND WRITERS MIX DATES.

Artists Have Portrayed Abraham Threatening
Isaac with a Blunderbuss, and
Romans Smoking Pipes.

Whether it be due to ignorance or careless impatience, it is true that many of the greatest writers and painters have been guilty of the most surprising anachronisms. Thus Shakespeare introduces cannon into the play of "Hamlet," and in "Julius Cæsar" reference is made to the striking of the clock, though striking clocks were not invented until fourteen hundred years after Cæsar's death. Schiller, in his "Piccolomini," refers to lightning-conductors—at least one hundred and fifty years before they were invented. Instances might be added almost indefinitely.

The anachronisms of painters are more noticeable, as a rule, than those of writers. In "The Fancies of Fact" is the following compilation of blunders by artists:

A PIN SCRATCH LED TO NELSON'S VICTORY.

DISCOVERY OF THE FRENCH FLEET.

The Noting of the Distress of a French
Maid by Sir John Acton Had a
Strange Result.

The good points of pins have been generally appreciated, but never did a pin point to a greater result than the one that made possible Nelson's great victory of the Nile on August 1 and 2, 1798.

It was at this fight that Nelson, with his usual intrepidity, forced a passage with half of his fleet of fifteen vessels between a small island, near Aboukir in Egypt, and the French line of battle, while the other half attacked the enemy in front, completely defeating the French fleet and capturing or sinking thirteen of its seventeen ships.

The part that the pin played in the story came about in this way:

HOW COLUMBUS WAS MISLED BY PARROTS.

MISSED DISCOVERY OF MAINLAND.

The Fate of the Most Important Exploring
Expedition in History Was Decided
by a Flight of Birds.

A flight of birds, coupled with a sailor's superstition, robbed Columbus of the honor of discovering the continent.

When the great Italian navigator sailed westward over the unknown Atlantic, he expected to reach Zipangu (Japan). After several days' sail from Gomera, one of the Canary Islands, he became uneasy at not discovering Zipangu, which, according to his reckonings, should have been two hundred and sixteen nautical miles more to the east.

MORE NUTRITION IN GRASS THAN POTATOES.

VALUES OF STOCK-RAISING FOODS.

One Hundred Pounds of Hay Produce a
Better Effect Than Six Times That
Weight of Beets.

The relative values of different foods in stock-raising are shown by the following table, in which the given number of pounds of the various articles named produces the same effect as one hundred pounds of hay:

Hay, it will be seen, is rated as being more nutritious than potatoes or beets.

GREAT FORCE USED TO WRITE LETTERS.

ENERGY SPENT IN LITTLE WAYS.

Every Time the Typewriter Key Is
Pressed, Several Ounces of Manual
Power Are Used.

If a man realized at the end of the day how much energy he had expended in normal and almost unconscious physical activities, he would be thankful for the chance to sleep. The writer who pushes his pen over the paper for several hours at a stretch would doubtless think he had worked[Pg 327] hard if he had excavated a well in the same time; yet it is believed that the sum of the energy he uses daily in writing would be enough easily to dig a well. The following figures are quoted from Answers:

TRIALS OF AN EDITOR IN OLD CALIFORNIA.

SPANISH TYPE HAS ITS FAILINGS.

Publishers of the State's First Newspaper
Found It Difficult to Express Themselves
Typographically.

Makeshifts of pioneer journalism have taxed the ingenuity of many a great mind. Writing for the Bookman, J.M. Scanland tells the story of early California newspapers. The first paper, the Californian, was published at Monterey by Robert Semple, a Kentuckian, who acted as editor, and the Rev. Walter Colton, a navy chaplain, who was then stationed at Monterey, as typesetter and pressman. These two men brought out their first issue on August 15, 1846. Semple went to the village of Yerba Buena (now called San Francisco) a short time later, and during his absence Colton printed the following paragraph:

ODDEST JAIL IN THE UNITED STATES.

IT IS CUT FROM THE SOLID ROCK.

Eternal Cliffs Form the Safe Walls That
Confine Convicts at Clifton, County
Seat of Graham County, Arizona.

Troglodytes of history have lived in their caves from choice. At Clifton, Graham County, Arizona, are a number of unwilling troglodytes who are kept within their rocky home by officers of the law. Clifton is one of the centers of copper mining in Arizona. In one sense it may be inferred that the queer jail has its advantages, for the temperature of that part of Arizona frequently rises in summer as high as one hundred and twenty degrees in the shade.

[Pg 328]

FROM THE LIPS OF ANANIAS.

Some Interesting Results Attained by Narrators Who Talked or Wrote While Seated
Between Fancy and Fact and Who Might Have Been More Happy
"Were T'other Dear Charmer Away."

THE MEETING OF EXTREMES.

In a hunter's camp different men began to unfold their yarns. Among others a Kentuckian said he once shot a buck in such a way that the bullet, after hitting the right ear, passed through the heel of the right hind foot. Jeering and laughter greeted the story.

"Brown," called the Kentuckian to his companion, "tell these fellows if what I say is not as true as gospel!"

"Why, yes," replied the other, "I saw it myself. You see, gentlemen, when he pulled the trigger of his rifle, the buck was just scratching his head with his hoof."

Then he whispered to his friend:

"That was a narrow escape. Another time don't lie so far apart."—New York Times.

A DAKOTA CYCLONE.

A southeast wind hurled tumble weeds and Russian thistle through the air at a twenty-nine-mile gait, and the gait went too. Many stoves were drawn out of the chimneys; the strong wind blew in at the neck of a bottle and blew the bottom out. Nebraska wagon tracks passed over the town by the thousands.

The strain on the wire fences was so great that staples were drawn out of the north side of the posts. A kerosene barrel standing in front of a grocery store was sucked out of the bunghole and turned inside out, like a lady's slipper. The dirt blew from a post-hole in the hillside and left the hole sticking out of the ground about two feet with no dirt around it.—Estelline (South Dakota) Bell.

NATURAL CHEMISTRY.

Senator Butt, of the Arkansas Senate, had just finished one of his droll stories about feeding morphine to a pointer pup and watching him as he indulged in the ensuing pipe-dream occasioned by the opium, when Representative De Rossit, known as one of the most veracious men in the State, said:

"Senator, your dog reminds me of my hen. Needing quinine one day, as we often do in the bottom, I mixed up an ounce of the drug with molasses and rolled it out into pills. Leaving the stuff to dry on the front porch, I went into the house.

"Returning, I saw the last of my pills swallowed by my hen.

"Of course I thought her silly head would burst wide open. She simply commenced cackling, and has been laying two eggs per day ever since. And do you know, senator, those eggs are the best chill tonic on the market. One of them taken internally will knock the spots from any case of malaria in the State, and shaking ague can't stand before 'em an hour after they are eaten. I keep that hen dosed; I do, and——"—Memphis Commercial Appeal.

A DISJOINTED NARRATIVE.

I have read with much interest the discussion about the joint snake, and propose to give my experience with it. I have been familiar with the "joint," or, as we call it here, the "hook-and-eye," snake since I was a boy.

It is a snake of a brownish-yellow color, and grows to be about three feet long, but at any stage of its growth it can be unjointed or unhooked. It is fastened together by a hook-and-eye arrangement, exactly like those used on ladies' dresses.

On one occasion while out taking a walk I saw a joint snake crawling slowly along the top of an old stone wall; taking my cane, I gave it a smart jerk about the middle of the body, and it immediately unhooked into sixteen pieces, each about two inches long.

Taking the head part and putting it in my hat for safe keeping, I gathered up the joints, and laying them along in a row in just the reverse order in which they came apart, with all the eyes in contact, and also the hooks, I took the head part out of my hat, and laid it alongside of the middle of the row of joints.

It immediately began to move along the line, and without a moment's hesitation[Pg 329] backed up to the first joint, when a little snap was heard and the first joint was hooked on. It repeated the process, and in the course of sixty-five seconds by the watch it was again a complete snake.

Again catching it I took out the ninth joint and also the fourteenth, and changed places with them, putting the ninth in place of the fourteenth and then let the snake go on.

He gave one or two wriggles, but finding there was something wrong commenced examining its joints from his head down, and when he came to the ninth took it out and laid it on one side, then crawling along the rest of his joints until he came to where the fourteenth ought to be, but where I had put the ninth, took that out and hooked it on to the eighth and then put the fourteenth back in its place, all of which was done in an incredibly small space of time.

Again I separated him, mixing the joints up promiscuously and hooking them together, having some difficulty in hooking the tail joint on to the head part, as the hook and eye did not get very well.

Letting the snake loose, in one hundred and fifteen seconds he was again properly jointed and I let him go.—Chicago Inter-Ocean.

OFF THE FARM.

"Yes, sir," said the Dakota man, as a crowd of agriculturists seated themselves around a little table, "yes, sir; we do things on rather a sizable scale. I've seen a man start out in the spring and plow a furrow until fall. Then he turned around and harvested back. We have some big farms up there, gentlemen. A friend of mine owned one on which he had to give a mortgage, and the mortgage was due on one end before they could get it recorded on the other. You see it was laid off in counties."

There was a murmur of astonishment, and the Dakota man continued:

"I got a letter from a man who lives in my orchard just before I left home, and it had been three weeks getting to the dwelling house, although it had traveled day and night."

"Distances are pretty wide up there, ain't they?" inquired one.

"Reasonably, reasonably," replied the Dakota man. "And the worst of it is, it breaks up families so. Two years ago I saw a whole family prostrated with grief. Women yelling, children howling, and dogs barking. One of my men had his camp truck packed on seven four-mule teams, and he was going around bidding everybody good-by."

"Where was he going?" asked a Gravesend man.

"He was agoing half-way across the farm to feed the pigs," replied the Dakota man.

"And did he ever get back to his family again?"

"It isn't time for him yet," replied the Dakota man.—Detroit Free Press.

A SHELL'S STRANGE EXPLOIT.

The late Major Merrill, of Lawrence, was well known in military circles all over the country. When the G.A.R. encampment was held in Kansas City, some years ago, the soldiers of the East and those of the West vied with each other in telling stories of the war. After listening to some pretty tough yarns, Major Merrill related the following, and carried off the honors:

"You know, boys, that I served throughout the war in a Massachusetts light battery. During the fighting at Malvern Hill our ammunition was running low, and I was sent to the rear for powder.

"I had an open express wagon and four mules. I got about a ton and a half of loose powder into the wagon and started for the front. About half-way back to my battery a rebel shell landed right in the middle of the powder, and, would you believe it, it burned up a bushel and a half before I could stamp out the fire!"—Boston Herald.

VITALITY OF A DUCK.

A correspondent at West Point writes as follows:

"Some time since, while out ducking on Dividing Creek, a tributary of Chesapeake Bay, a hen duck, known as the dipper species, came within easy range of my gun. I discharged both barrels, completely covering and breaking her wing with No. 4 shot.

"Being determined to capture the game, a friend and myself secured a boat and went in pursuit. Getting again in gunshot reach, I discharged two more barrels, killing the duck to all appearances.

"We picked her up and removed the feathers and entrails, cut her head off and put her in the water for the purpose of washing the blood off, when, to our astonishment, she swam away, giving us another pursuit, which was successful after some trouble. I can prove this."—Richmond Dispatch.[Pg 330]

JUNE, THE MONTH OF BATTLES.

In the Season of Roses Have Been Fought Some of the Most Sanguinary and Decisive
Contests of Modern Times—It Was a Period Fatal to Charles I and Napoleon.

Though June is frequently called the "Month of Roses," it might with just as much propriety be designated the "Month of Battles." In it have been fought some of the most memorable battles of history. Among these were Naseby, Bunker Hill, Marengo, and Waterloo. In the following list will be found the names of some of the more important engagements that have been fought in this month:

June.

[Pg 331]

How They Got On In The World.

Brief Biographies of Successful Men Who Have Passed Through
the Crucible of Small Beginnings and Won Out.

SUBDUED ARMED PUPILS.

Young Teacher, Destined to Be a Famous
Statesman, Enforced Discipline in the
Class-Room.

James G. Blaine's early youth was spent on the banks of the Monongahela, where he received the rudiments of his education from his father, an extremely cultivated man. A common-school course followed, and in due time he entered Washington College, from which he was graduated at the age of eighteen.

A few years later he became a teacher of mathematics in a college in Kentucky, where he gained the respect of his neighbors by quelling, unarmed, a serious rebellion against his authority, notwithstanding the fact that his opponents were armed with guns and knives.

It was in Maine, however, as half owner of the Kennebec Journal, in Augusta, and later of the Portland Advertiser, at a salary of two thousand dollars a year, that he first entered the political field. Possessed of a remarkable memory for facts, and having the minutiæ of local politics at his tongue's end, he was handicapped by a dislike for stump-speaking. One of his first speeches was made under especially trying circumstances.

A celebrated orator billed to speak on campaign issues had failed to put in an appearance; and Blaine, being present, was forced by some of his Augusta friends to ascend the platform. Nervous and entirely unprepared, he began, however, by telling a story. He likened his situation to that of a farmer, who had a horse for which he asked five hundred dollars. A horse-trader offered him seventy-five dollars for the animal.

"It's a devil of a drop," said the farmer; "but I'll take it."

This anecdote caused much laughter, and at once put him in close touch with his audience.

From that time the "Man from Maine" began to be heard of. His political advance was rapid. The fact that he was not born a New Englander was not a detriment to him, for, as one of his contemporaries said, "There was a sort of Western dash about him that took with us Down-Easters." In 1862 he was elected to Congress, and began his long and distinguished career of public service at Washington.

BUILT HUDSON TUNNEL.

Resourceful Engineer Also Completed the
Bore Under the East River from
Manhattan to Brooklyn.

Charles M. Jacobs, the builder of the Pennsylvania Railroad tunnel under the Hudson River, is an Englishman, fifty-six years of age. His father wished him to go to Cambridge University, but the youth preferred to go to work, and he did so when sixteen years old.

He entered the office of a ship-building and engineering firm in Hull, England, and there he became thoroughly grounded in mechanical work and drafting. He was an earnest worker, and he established a precedent in the office by getting work to do that was usually assigned to the head men. It was not customary then to place such reliance on young men.

"Jacobs can do it," his employers were accustomed to say when surprise was expressed at his being placed in command of big operations. "He knows what is to be done, and he knows how to handle his men."

When he was twenty-one he went to India as the firm's representative in some big engineering work, and he did so well[Pg 332] that he was sent to China, Australia, and the European continent. He helped build several tunnels in London, and in 1889 Austin Corbin, then president of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, brought him to this country to superintend several important changes that were to be made in the road.

Jacobs liked this country so well and was so favorably impressed by the outlook for big engineering work that he has remained here, and has become a citizen.

His First American Success.

He made his first notable success in the construction of the East River gas tunnel. It was a difficult piece of work, for instead of the river-bed of solid rock that was supposed to exist, it was found that the bed was full of fissures through which flowed the mud and water of the river. The contractors wished to give the bore up and try one fifty feet deeper. Jacobs refused to do it, and the board of directors of the company, after listening to his arguments, sided with him.

"Can it be done at the present depth?" he was asked.

"Give me the men and plant, and I'll put it through myself," he answered.

The contractors sued the company and produced a score of experts to prove that the tunnel could not possibly be built in the way Jacobs wanted it built.

While the courts were considering the question Jacobs kept right on digging. He had to encounter difficulties that would have turned most engineers back. But in the end he pushed the bore through, and the courts, with this evidence before them, decided against the contractors. He built the tunnel big enough for trolley-cars in case it might be wanted for that purpose, and he constructed it so solidly that none of the silt or water of the East River has been able to filter in.

Another Difficult Task.

In 1877 an attempt was made to tunnel the Hudson River, but the work moved along fitfully. In July, 1880, an accident that resulted in the death of twenty men temporarily put an end to it. Two more attempts were made, and again the work was abandoned. A fourth company revived the scheme, and made Jacobs the engineer. The work was just in his line, for it gave him the opportunity to overcome big obstacles and to carry through a project that would be of big benefit to humanity.

It was an appalling task, for the course was through shifting sand, mud, and rock, and before it was completed it was necessary to make more than nine thousand blasts. All these were in the tunnel direct, under the mud and sand and fifty or sixty feet of river water. Yet the undertaking resulted in few accidents, for Jacobs knew how to take care of his men, and he has established a reputation for never sending one where he will not go himself.

In his early days of wandering in India, China, and Australia he had learned how to accomplish much by simple means. It was simply learning to do what he called the obvious thing. But the simple, little, obvious thing is often the hardest for most people, including engineers, to see.

How He Met an Emergency.

In the building of one of the trolley tunnels under the Hudson, a careless opening of the doors of the shield—the cylindrical cup pushed along at the head of the bore, and by means of which all the digging is done—caused the flooding of one hundred feet of the tunnel. It would be as hopeless a task to try to bail that mixture of mud and water out as it would be to drain the Hudson River and the bay adjacent thereto. Jacobs saved the situation by a very simple expedient.

The cup defender Reliance had just been stripped of her canvas, and Jacobs got this big spread of sail, sank it flat over the flooded part of the tunnel, weighted it with a mixture of clay and stone, and thus mended the bottom of the river so that it didn't continue to leak in mud and water. It was so very simple that few people would have thought of it.

He completed his first Hudson tunneling work on the 11th of March, 1905, and all he said when the work was done and he had walked through was:

"There isn't much to tell, except that[Pg 333] Henry Hudson was the first man who crossed over the river and Jacobs was the first man who crossed under it."

WAS INSULTED BY POE.

Romantic Life-Story of Poor Boy Who
Heard the Voice of the Muse in
an Iron Foundry.

Richard Henry Stoddard, who won fame as a poet, critic, and journalist, fought his way upward through conditions that would have discouraged most men. His parents were miserably poor and his father died while the boy was still young. His mother was of a restless, wandering disposition, and when Richard was ten years old she left her New England home and brought him to New York. "Here," he says, "we landed at or near the Battery one bright Sunday morning late in the autumn of 1835, and wandered up Broadway, which was swarming with hogs."

His step-father's brother-in-law kept an oyster bar, and he at once put the boy to work learning to open oysters, attending to customers, and keeping the place clean. The work and the surroundings were rough, and Stoddard was so manifestly unfitted for his work that he was finally taken away from the bar and sent into the streets to sell matches. After a few months of this he was placed in a cheap second-hand clothing store, but here his earnings were not sufficient to satisfy his family, and though he was of frail physique his mother apprenticed him to a blacksmith.

"I was put to work at once on the anvil," he says, "and before the day was over my right hand was so blistered that I had to open its fingers with my left hand, and detach them from the handle of the sledge hammer that I wielded."

He was eighteen years old when he was sent to work in an iron foundry, and he remained at this occupation several years, studying and writing incessantly at night. One poem, "Ode on a Grecian Flute," was accepted by the Broadway Journal, a little weekly edited by Edgar Allan Poe. Later the originality of the poem was doubted. Stoddard went to assure Poe that it was original. He found him asleep in an office chair. On being awakened and told by Stoddard that the poem was original, Poe jumped up and yelled:

"You lie! Get out before I throw you out."

Stoddard fled, and the poem was not published. The last glimpse he ever had of Poe was one cold and stormy autumn day. Stoddard was hurrying along Broadway, well sheltered by an umbrella, when he noticed Poe, thinly clad, crouching against the side of a building in an attempt to find refuge from the storm. Stoddard walked around the corner and paused. He wanted to go back and offer Poe the shelter of his umbrella, but he did not dare. The following summer Poe died in Baltimore. Afterward Stoddard wrote the first genuinely fair and appreciative life of him.

A MIGHTY ELECTRICIAN.

Steinmetz Is Not Yet Forty Years Old and
Has Taken Out Over One Hundred
Patents.

Charles P. Steinmetz, chief expert at the Schenectady Electrical Works, was born in Breslau, Germany. Though he is only forty years old, he has already taken out more than one hundred patents for electrical devices, and some of these are of immense value.

His father was a railroad employee, and on German railroads the pay is small and the duties exacting. But the father managed to send his son to the University of Breslau, and here he distinguished himself in mathematics and chemistry, and spent his leisure time in chemical and mechanical experiments at home.

At that time the German government was making an effort to stamp out socialism, and laws of unusual severity were passed against those who advocated it. Bismarck, who headed the anti-socialist movement, saw to it that the laws were vigorously enforced. The natural result was a reaction against the conduct of the government, and the universities became permeated with socialism.

Steinmetz, then a boy of seventeen,[Pg 334] was drawn into the work of socialistic agitation, and he became the editor of a paper during a period when the real editor was in prison for lèse majesté.

The paper was finally suppressed, and Steinmetz's connection with it was reported to the university authorities. Then he received information that a warrant was out for his arrest and he fled to Zurich, Switzerland. Here he supported himself by tutoring, and by writing for electrical magazines and for a daily paper.

The articles for the daily paper paid him two dollars a week. His income was pitifully small, but he managed to save a few dollars, and, meeting with a young American from San Francisco, he decided to relinquish his ambition to become a professor of mathematics in some German university. He then emigrated to America.

Lands as a Poor Immigrant.

Steinmetz and his American friend landed in New York with just twenty dollars between them. They hired a small room in Brooklyn, where they started housekeeping together. Steinmetz had acquired this knack during his Zurich days, and through his first year in America he lived with his friend in one room, doing their cooking and washing on a gas-stove, and at the same time conducting electrical and chemical experiments.

Steinmetz had with him when he arrived in this country a couple of letters of introduction, one to a man who manufactured electrical and chemical supplies on a small scale. This letter was the first presented, but on visiting the place Steinmetz was unable to see the manufacturer. He was, however, told to call again. He called again, and was once more put off with a polite invitation to return. After two more calls Steinmetz realized that he was an unwelcome visitor. He thought it over for a few moments, then laughed and, turning to the clerk, said:

"Oh, well, all right. He'll have to call on me, now, if he wants me—and I think he will."

Eventually the manufacturer did want Steinmetz, but never got him, for Steinmetz took the second letter of introduction to Rudolph Eickemeyer, head of the Eickemeyer Elevator Company, of Yonkers. Eickemeyer sized the young man up, and at once put him to work as a draftsman, at twelve dollars a week.

It was while in Yonkers that Steinmetz drew attention to his ability by a series of articles in an American electrical magazine on alternating currents. This was followed by the first of the inventions and improvements that laid the foundation of Steinmetz's substantial fortune.

From the first Steinmetz had taken a lively interest in America and everything American, and the views for which he was forced to fly from Europe were so modified that they agreed with the new conditions in which he found himself. Speaking of them, he said:

"In this country they would be theories without any chance of practical application, and there is no use in a theory merely for theory's sake."

When the Eickemeyer concern was taken over by the General Electric Company Steinmetz went with it and was hailed as its greatest asset. He was first sent to the Thomson-Houston Company—the Lynn, Massachusetts, branch of the General Electric—and there he worked out the first successful plan for transmitting power and light, on a large scale, over long distances, and for controlling currents.

Incidentally he made several important discoveries and improvements in the arc and incandescent lights and in electric motors.

A Mathematical Wonder.

In addition to being a thorough electrician, Steinmetz is a mathematical wonder, and there are few tricks of the lightning calculator that he cannot duplicate and go one better. It had been his intention to become a professor of mathematics, and doubtless he would have done so had he remained in Germany. The salary and fees of the professorship would have given him at best a couple of thousand dollars a year. His work in this country pays him a big salary, and this is supplemented by a large income from patents.

Personally he is one of the most popular men in the business. "The pro[Pg 335]fessor," as he is generally known, has been generous in offering assistance to young electricians, and he has patiently spent his time in aiding in the development of their ideas. He has shown the same skill in bringing the best out of men that he has used to such effect in handling machinery.

THE FIRST ROTHSCHILD.

Founder of the House of Rothschild Had
Vainly Attempted to Reconcile Himself
to Being a Rabbi.

Mayer Amschel Bauer, founder of the house of Rothschild, was born in the Ghetto of Frankfort, Germany. This section was set off for the Jews with barriers, and at night these barriers were closed and no one was permitted to leave the street. His father was a merchant in poor circumstances, and it was the dream of his life to make the son a rabbi. So he sent him to study with the rabbis learned in the law of Moses. The studies continued a few weeks, and then young Bauer rebelled. He would go no more. His father entreated and threatened. It was useless, for the boy took the few gulden he possessed and set up as a money-lender.

There, on the sidewalk of the squalid Judengasse, or street of the Jews, began the power of the richest and most famous banking family in the world.

The business under the sign with the red shield prospered so that the owner dropped his own name and adopted that of his emblem, Rothschild. Around him there were men equally prosperous. Mayer Amschel Rothschild was not only a lender and changer of money, but he was also a student of coins. The Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel was also an enthusiastic student of numismatics, so when he heard of the collector in the Judengasse he made his acquaintance. This acquaintance enabled Rothschild to step out from among his fellows and begin operations on a larger and different scale. He became a negotiator of national loans, and his success brought him into prominence with the nations fighting against Napoleon.

Napoleon invaded Hesse-Cassel, and the Landgrave fled, after entrusting Rothschild with his money and treasures. At the risk of being shot Rothschild buried the treasure in his own garden, and it remained there until Napoleon swept on and the Landgrave returned to his home. Then Rothschild restored the property, adding five per cent interest on the money.

The first Rothschild remained to the end of his life in the old house in the narrow Ghetto. Even when he had monarchs in his grip, when he was parceling out Europe for the financial operations of his sons, he continued there, and, when he died, his wife, the mother of all the Rothschilds, remained there, and in the forties of the last century, when the old woman was approaching her ninetieth year, it was one of the sights of Frankfort to see her carriage, resplendent in crimson velvet and decorated with monograms, drive through the street and stop before the dilapidated house that was her home.

GOT SIXTY CENTS A DAY.

The Head of the American Locomotive
Works Began His Career as a Machinist's
Apprentice.

Albert J. Pitkin, president of the American Locomotive Works, began his business life as a machinist's apprentice at the age of sixteen. His wages were sixty cents a day, and the little shop in which he was employed turned out one small stationary engine each week. He is now the head of the American Locomotive Company, which manufactures three thousand locomotives a year, or ten for each working day, and is capitalized at fifty million dollars. Seven men were employed in the shop where he learned his trade. He has now control of sixteen thousand men.

Pitkin's father was in poor circumstances, and at twelve years of age the boy went to live with his grandfather at Granville, Ohio. The grandfather was a cabinet-maker and wood-turner, and before long he had taught his grandson many of the secrets of the trade and had developed in the youth an understanding and appreciation of what machinery could be made to do.[Pg 336]

"There is no use using hand tools if you can make a machine do the work," said the boy.

Then, from an old spinning-wheel which he found in the attic of the house, he made a machine that sawed wood and saved labor in the cabinet-shop. He also constructed other machines out of wood, and the cleverness with which they were fashioned and adapted to the needs of the little shop enabled him and his grandfather to turn out an increased amount of work.

At sixteen years of age it became necessary for young Pitkin to choose some trade, and he selected that of machinist. He was regularly indentured for three years, and received sixty cents a day for the first year, ninety cents a day for the second, and one dollar and twenty-five cents a day for the third. His father was disabled by ill health during this period, and the greater part of the son's meager earnings went to help support the family.

Economy and Hard Study.

All this time he was forced to live on a few cents a day, and the only money he spent besides the cost of his board and clothing was what went for books on mechanics and material for mechanical drawing. When his apprenticeship was finished he was not only a thorough machinist, but he was also a mechanical draftsman.

His next position was in the locomotive repair-shops of the Cleveland, Akron and Columbus Railroad. The year he spent here was one of hard work and hard study, for he continued his drawing more assiduously than before. At the end of the year he obtained a place in the drawing department of the Baldwin Locomotive Works, having prepared himself for the stiff examination given there without one bit of outside assistance.

He spent five years with the Baldwin company, worked up from the lowest position in the drawing department to the highest, and during that five years he introduced nearly one hundred improvements in locomotive construction.

The training he had received in a small machine-shop was repaying him with interest, and his determination to make machines do as much work as possible was bearing fruit. Wherever he could, he introduced automatic machines.

He was only twenty-five years old when he was promoted to the position of chief draftsman in the Rhode Island Locomotive Works.

"Rather a responsible position for a young man," one of his friends suggested dubiously.

"Not if the young man knows his business," replied Pitkin. "And I think I do. I've thought of nothing else for the last nine years."

Became Superintendent.

After two years in Providence, he went to the Schenectady Locomotive Works, and in two years he became superintendent of the shops. Here he was free to put into operation many of the ideas he could not use before, while he was working in subordinate positions, and it was largely due to him that the Schenectady company became one of the most prosperous in the country.

When the American Locomotive Company was organized, Pitkin was made vice-president, for it was recognized that he was probably the most thoroughly equipped man in the business. There was not a department with which he was not acquainted, nor a mechanical operation in the shops that he could not perform.

Two years ago Samuel R. Callaway, president of the company, died, and Pitkin was unanimously chosen as his successor. It took him thirty years to climb to that height, and the thirty years were marked by hundreds of improvements in locomotive construction and by wonderful records in turning out locomotives against time.

There were many mechanics who started with him and had an equal chance, but they were soon distanced in the race.

"They were content," he said, "with a steady, plodding, uniform way of doing things, and while they were methodical and obtained good results, I tried to figure out some way of getting better results and getting them more easily. I took chances on doing a thing in other than the prescribed way, but often the new way was the better way."[Pg 337]

Little Glimpses of the 19th Century.

The Great Events in the History of the Last One Hundred Years, Assembled
so as to Present a Nutshell Record.

[Continued from page 260.]

FOURTH DECADE.

1831

Political disorder in Greece becoming increasingly serious, the President, Capo d'Istria, attempted restrictive measures which were violently resented. His opponents burned the Greek fleet at Hydra to prevent it falling into his hands. On October 9 Capo d'Istria was assassinated; his brother succeeded him and headed the government for a short time.

To suppress the Polish rebellion, Russia sent an army of one hundred and twenty thousand men into Poland, under Diebitsch. A bloody but indecisive campaign followed. The Russians were defeated in several battles, but Polish expeditions into Lithuania and Volhynia failed completely; and cholera, which had spread from India, devastated both armies, General Diebitsch being among the first to die. The Polish struggle for independence, however, was a hopeless one. The Russians received assistance from Prussia and Austria, while the Poles ruined their cause by their internal dissensions. On September 7 Paskievitch, who had succeeded Diebitsch, took Warsaw, and the rebellion was crushed. The Polish language was forbidden in the schools, and all who had taken part in the rising were ruthlessly punished.

In Italy, a revolt of Modena and Bologna against Papal rule was put down by Austria, Metternich insisting on extirpating all attempts at reform; but France, which had approved Austrian intervention, compelled both the Papal States and Austria to grant a few concessions to the people. The disputed status of Belgium was settled by a conference in London, the country being separated from Holland and established as a kingdom, with Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg as king. Luxembourg was claimed by both Holland and Belgium, and a Dutch army advanced to support the pretensions of the former. France thereupon sent an expedition into Belgium to defend her neighbor and protégé; but the other powers compelled both forces to withdraw, the question of Luxembourg being left for future settlement.

The rulers of the German states sought to stamp out liberalism, and there began a heavy emigration, many of the emigrants coming to America. Riots in England because the House of Lords rejected a bill to reform the election system, which the Commons had passed; the houses of several of the opponents of reform were burned. Trade in England unsettled, and cholera was added to destitution.

In the United States, general prosperity prevailed, and there was a heavy westward migration. The Black Hawk War was fought to suppress a rebellion of the Sacs and Foxes on the upper Mississippi. The abolitionist movement progressed; Garrison's Liberator was founded. France agreed to pay the United States five million dollars for damage to shipping during the Napoleonic wars. Schoolcraft discovered the source of the Mississippi. Chicago organized as a town. New York the first of the States to abolish imprisonment for debt.

Alizarin, the foundation of anilin dyes, was separated by Robiquet and Colin, of Paris, and Michael Faraday made his great discovery of magneto-electric induction. Deaths: James Monroe; G.W.F. Hegel, German philosopher; Barthold Niebuhr, German historian; Mrs. Siddons, English actress; James Northcote, English painter.

RULERS—United States, Andrew Jackson; Great Britain, William IV; France, Louis Philippe; Spain, Ferdinand VII; Prussia, Frederick William III; Russia, Nicholas I; Austria, Francis I; the Papacy vacant at beginning of year; on February 2 Cardinal Capellari became Pope, with the title of Gregory XVI.

1832

Otto, son of the King of Bavaria, became King of Greece. Switzerland divided into two antagonistic federations of cantons; federal government intervened, and tranquillity was restored. Failure of the Duchesse de Berry[Pg 338] to incite rebellion against the rule of Louis Philippe. Disturbances in Portugal, owing to the misrule of Dom Miguel, who was acting as regent for the girl queen, Maria da Gloria, daughter of Dom Pedro, Emperor of Brazil. Miguel impoverished the country and persecuted legitimists and foreigners; fleets were sent by France and England to protest; and with their support Dom Pedro, who had resigned the crown, landed in Portugal and attacked Miguel.

President Jackson opposed "wild cat" banks, and vetoed bill for a renewal of the charter of the United States Bank at Philadelphia. Nullification in South Carolina, and the Federal tariff laws repudiated. Calhoun resigned as Vice-President and was immediately elected United States Senator from South Carolina. Jackson sent troops to Charleston to collect the Federal revenues. Renewed trouble with the Seminoles, on an attempt being made to remove them from Florida. The Sacs and Foxes also rose in Wisconsin, but were defeated.

Egyptians, under Mehemet Ali, invaded Turkish territory and defeated the Turks. Repressive measures in Germany against the press and political meetings. The actions of Papal soldiers caused renewed disturbances in Italy; Austria sent troops again, and France landed a force at Ancona to check Austria.

The Chartist movement in England assumed a definite organized form; Lord Grey's ministry resigned; insistent demands for reform; rioters tried, and several condemned to death; King William attacked by a mob; the Duke of Wellington insulted; Wellington tried to form a new ministry, failed, and Lord Grey was recalled; twenty new peers were created, and the Reform Bill was finally forced through the Lords.

Sir Walter Scott, Goethe, Duke of Reichstadt, son of Napoleon; Charles Carroll, last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence; Georges Cuvier, naturalist; Sir James Mackintosh, philosopher, and George Crabbe, poet, died.

RULERS—The same as in the previous year.

1833

Opposition to the abolitionist movement bitter in America. Northern travelers in the South subjected to violence; antislavery meetings broken up; office of Berry's Philanthropist, at Cincinnati, and Lovejoy's Observer, at Alton, Illinois, destroyed. Wendell Phillips became a leader of the antislavery movement. Nullification ordinance in South Carolina repealed; on the other hand, Congress adopted the Compromise Tariff, reducing duties on imports.

In Portugal, Dom Miguel was driven from Lisbon, and his navy destroyed by Dom Pedro's fleet, commanded by Sir Charles Napier. Civil war also arose in Spain, Don Carlos claiming the throne upon the death of Ferdinand VII. Peace treaty between Turkey and Egypt; Russia obtained concessions from Turkey by the treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, and thereby aroused the opposition of other European powers. Tractarian movement in England. A Quaker was admitted to Parliament on affirmation, but a bill to relieve Jews of civil disabilities was thrown out. Slavery abolished in all British territory, twenty million pounds being voted as reimbursement to slave-owning planters in the colonies. On this bill Gladstone made his maiden speech, defending his father's record as a slaveholder.

The "Young Italy" party active; Mazzini exiled. German states continued to use stringent methods for stamping out radicalism. Polish refugees expelled from Germany, and many come to America.

Electromagnetic telegraph set up at Göttingen, Germany. Legendre, French mathematician; William Wilberforce, English statesman; John Randolph of Roanoke; Edmund Kean, English actor, and Hannah More, English author, died.

RULERS—The same as in the previous year, except that Isabella succeeded Ferdinand VII as ruler of Spain.

1834

South Carolina Railroad built from Charleston, South Carolina, to Hamburg, South Carolina, a distance of one hundred and thirty-four miles—the longest line then in existence. Indian Territory set apart, and several tribes transferred to it. Jackson censured by Congress for removing government deposits from the United States Bank; specie payments resumed after thirty years' suspension. Abolitionist movement gained in strength, and bitter debates resulted in Congress.

China took from the British East India Company its monopoly of the opium trade; British ships on the Canton River fired on. Trade-union strikes general throughout England. The Houses of Parliament almost totally destroyed by fire. Violence and labor troubles in France. Civil disorders continued in Spain and Portugal; but the strife in the latter country was ended by the submission of Dom Miguel on May 22.[Pg 339] In Spain the cause of Don Carlos was maintained by Zumalacarregui, a guerrilla chieftain of Navarre.

Charles Lamb and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English authors; Joseph Jacquard, inventor of the Jacquard loom; the Marquis de Lafayette; Schleiermacher, German theologian; Thomas Robert Malthus, English economist; Thomas Stothard, English artist, died.

RULERS—The same as in the previous year.

1835

Attempt made to remove the Seminoles from Florida, and war followed; Micanopy and Osceola, Indian leaders, were successful in fights at Fort King and near Wahoo Swamp, but were defeated by General Clinch on the Big Withlacoochee. Inhabitants of Texas successfully resisted a Mexican force under Santa Anna. Fire in New York City caused a loss of twenty million dollars. Colt revolver patented.

In England, Peel's ministry was wrecked on the Irish Church question; Melbourne again formed a cabinet. Orange lodges abolished by the Duke of Cumberland, head of the Orange order, it having been charged that the duke was conspiring to seize the crown on the death of his brother, William IV. South Australia became an English crown colony; Melbourne founded. War between the English and Kaffirs in South Africa; friction between the Dutch and English settlers; Dutch migration over the Orange River.

John Marshall, American jurist; Karl von Humboldt, German philologist and statesman; William Cobbett, English reformer and journalist, and Mrs. Hemans, English poet, died.

RULERS—The same as in the previous year, except that Ferdinand succeeded Francis I as Emperor of Austria.

1836

Fighting with the Creeks in Georgia and Alabama added to the trouble with the Seminoles; Creeks subdued, and many forced beyond the Mississippi; Seminoles driven to the Everglades. "Gag law" to exclude antislavery petitions passed by Congress. In Texas, the Mexicans under Santa Anna captured the Alamo at San Antonio, and slaughtered its defenders, including Bowie and Crockett; but on April 21 the Mexican general was decisively defeated at San Jacinto, and taken prisoner. Texas became an independent republic. Arkansas admitted to the Union. James Smithson, an English merchant, left half a million dollars to the United States, "for the diffusion of knowledge"; it was used to establish the institution now bearing his name.

The French met with reverses in Algeria. Louis Bonaparte attempted an insurrection against the government of Louis Philippe, but failed, and fled to the United States. Magyar and Slav opposition to Austrian rule; Louis Kossuth sentenced to imprisonment for circulating speeches in the Magyar language. First railroad in Canada opened. Continuation of Carlist rebellion in Spain; Portugal abolished its slave trade.

The British Parliament passed a bill for municipal reform in Ireland, granted the right of counsel to persons accused of felony, and abolished the law ordering the execution of a murderer within forty-eight hours of his conviction. Wheatstone sent messages for a distance of four miles with his electromagnetic telegraph.

Among the famous people who died in 1836 were Aaron Burr, ex-President James Madison, James Hogg, Scottish poet; André Ampère, French scientist, and Mme. Malibran, Spanish singer.

RULERS—The same as in the previous year.

1837

A year of financial panic and specie stringency in the United States. Attempt in the Senate to censure ex-President John Quincy Adams, who had become a Congressman from Massachusetts, for his attitude on antislavery petitions. Henry Clay began a movement for international copyright. Michigan admitted to the Union. Chicago incorporated as a city. Work begun on the Croton aqueduct, to supply New York with water. First railroad in Cuba opened.

Queen Victoria's reign began June 20, her first prime minister being Lord Melbourne. The kingdom of Hanover was now separated from the British crown; Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland and brother of William IV, became its king.

A rebellion broke out in Canada, under the leadership of Papineau in Lower Canada (Quebec) and of Mackenzie in Upper Canada (Ontario). Froebel opened his first kindergarten at Blankenburg. Constantine, Algeria, captured by the French. In South Africa, the Boers, under Maritz and Potgieter, defeated Dingaan's Zulus, December 16; the anniversary of the battle has ever since been celebrated as Dingaan's Day.

François Fourier, French socialist; Alessandro Leopardi, Italian poet, and Alexander Pushkin, Russian author, died.[Pg 340]

RULERS—The same as in the previous year, except that Martin Van Buren became President of the United States, and Queen Victoria succeeded her uncle, William IV, as sovereign of England.

1838

The remainder of the Cherokees ejected from their lands in Georgia by State troops in violation of treaties with the Federal government. Nearly five thousand of the Indians died of hunger and exposure in making their way to the Indian Territory. The Seminoles renewed war in Florida; Osceola treacherously captured, and died in Fort Moultrie; Zachary Taylor, leader of the American troops, forced the Indians back to the Everglades. The Mormons were driven out from their settlement at Nauvoo, Illinois, and started westward to the Great Salt Lake.

Papineau's rebellion in Canada suppressed by loyalists and British troops; Lord Durham, sent out as special commissioner to investigate the causes of Canadian discontent, proclaimed an amnesty. Father Theobald Mathew began his temperance crusade in Cork, Ireland. Chartist movement strong in England; demands for the ballot and other reforms presented to Parliament. Heroic action of Grace Darling in rescuing survivors of the wrecked vessel Forfarshire, in the Farne Islands.

Mexico and the Argentine Republic became involved in war with France; the French bombarded Vera Cruz and blockaded Buenos Ayres. The steamer Great Western crossed from Bristol to New York in fifteen days.

Talleyrand, French diplomat, and John Stevens, American engineer, died.

RULERS—The same as in the previous year.

1839

Anti-rent disturbances in New York State; settled by the Dutch patroonates of tenants being permitted to purchase the ground. Abolitionists met at Warsaw, New York, and planned to form a political party. Goodyear patented his method of vulcanizing rubber. First normal school for teachers started in Massachusetts.

Queen Victoria betrothed to her cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Chinese Emperor tried to stop the opium trade, and ordered the destruction of eighteen million dollars' worth of the drug, imported from British India, at Canton. Several encounters ensued between the Chinese and British, and a strong naval force was ordered to the scene of the trouble. England also at war with Afghanistan; Candahar and Kabul captured; Shah Shuja made ruler under British protection. Aden, in Arabia, captured and annexed to the British dominions.

In England, a uniform penny postal rate was introduced by Sir Rowland Hill. Civil war in Spain temporarily ended; Spain almost ruined financially and industrially. France withdrew from Mexico, having received six million dollars indemnity; revolt in Paris suppressed with much bloodshed. Austria and France withdrew their troops from the Papal States. War between Egypt and Turkey; Egypt victorious. Perpetual neutrality of Belgium guaranteed.

Dr. Theodore Schwann published his theory of the cellular construction of plants and animals. Daguerre announced his invention of the sun prints, since known as daguerreotypes. Letizia Ramolino, mother of Napoleon; Lady Hester Stanhope, Joseph Schelling, German philosopher, and John Galt, Scottish author, died.

RULERS—The same as in the previous year.

1840

Famous "hard cider and log cabin" campaign in the United States, ending in the defeat of Van Buren and the election of William Henry Harrison as President, with John Tyler as Vice-President. New Mexico declared itself independent of Mexico. Upper and Lower Canada reunited. Hawaii recognized as an independent kingdom.

On February 10 Queen Victoria was married to Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg. Young Ireland movement started. Continuation of the war between China and England; England successful in many engagements. Khelat, in Baluchistan, lost by the British in July, regained in November. Chartist petition with a million and a quarter signatures presented to Parliament; demands refused. Sir James Brooke helped the Sultan of Borneo to quell a native uprising.

In France, Louis Napoleon landed at Boulogne and made another attempt at insurrection; captured and imprisoned in the fortress of Ham. Napoleon's body removed from St. Helena to Paris. Maria Cristina, Queen Regent of Spain, forced to leave the country; General Espartero made regent.

Among the celebrities who died in 1840 were Nicolo Paganini, Italian violinist; Marshal MacDonald, French soldier; Lucien Bonaparte, brother of the great Napoleon, and George Bryan, famous as Beau Brummel.[Pg 341]

Hunting the Grizzly.

By THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

I spent much of the fall of 1889 hunting on the head-waters of the Salmon and Snake in Idaho, and along the Montana boundary line from the Bighorn Basin and the head of the Wisdom River to the neighborhood of Red Rock Pass and to the north and west of Henry's Lake. During the last fortnight my companion was the old mountain man, already mentioned, named Griffeth or Griffin—I cannot tell which, as he was always called either "Hank" or "Griff." He was a crabbedly honest old fellow, and a very skilful hunter; but he was worn out with age and rheumatism, and his temper had failed even faster than his bodily strength. He showed me a greater variety of game than I had ever seen before in so short a time; nor did I ever before or after make so successful a hunt. But he was an exceedingly disagreeable companion on account of his surly, moody ways. I generally had to get up first, to kindle the fire and make ready breakfast, and he was very quarrelsome. Finally, during my absence from camp one day, while not very far from Red Rock Pass, he found my whisky-flask, which I kept purely for emergencies, and drank all the contents. When I came back he was quite drunk. This was unbearable, and after some high words I left him, and struck off homeward through the woods on my own account. We had with us four pack and saddle horses; and of these I took a very intelligent and gentle little bronco mare, which possessed the invaluable trait of always staying near camp, even when not hobbled. I was not hampered with much of an outfit, having only my buffalo sleeping-bag, a fur coat, and my washing kit, with a couple of spare pairs of[Pg 342] socks and some handkerchiefs. A frying-pan, some salt, flour, baking-powder, a small chunk of salt pork, and a hatchet, made up a light pack, which, with the bedding, I fastened across the stock saddle by means of a rope and a spare packing cinch. My cartridges and knife were in my belt; my compass and matches, as always, in my pocket. I walked, while the little mare followed almost like a dog, often without my having to hold the lariat which served as halter.

The country was for the most part fairly open, as I kept near the foot-hills where glades and little prairies broke the pine forest. The trees were of small size. There was no regular trail, but the course was easy to keep, and I had no trouble of any kind save on the second day. That afternoon I was following a stream which at last "cañoned up," that is, sank to the bottom of a cañon-like ravine impassable for a horse. I started up a side valley, intending to cross from its head coulées to those of another valley which would lead in below the cañon.

However, I got enmeshed in the tangle of winding valleys at the foot of the steep mountains, and as dusk was coming on I halted and camped in a little open spot by the side of a small, noisy brook, with crystal water. The place was carpeted with soft, wet, green moss, dotted red with the kinnikinic berries, and at its edge, under the trees where the ground was dry, I threw down the buffalo bed on the mat of sweet-smelling pine-needles. Making camp took but a moment. I opened the pack, tossed the bedding on a smooth spot, knee-haltered the little mare, dragged up a few dry logs, and then strolled off, rifle on shoulder, through the frosty gloaming, to see if I could pick up a grouse for supper.

For half a mile I walked quickly and silently over the pine-needles, across a succession of slight ridges, separated by narrow, shallow valleys. The forest here was composed of lodge-pole pines, which on the ridges grew close together, with tall slender trunks, while in the valleys the growth was more open. Though the sun was behind the mountains there was yet plenty of light by which to shoot, but it was fading rapidly.

At last, as I was thinking of turning toward camp, I stole up to the crest of one of the ridges, and looked over into the valley some sixty yards off. Immediately I caught the loom of some large, dark object; and another glance showed me a big grizzly walking slowly off with his head down. He was quartering to me, and I fired into his flank, the bullet, as I afterward found, ranging forward and piercing one lung. At the shot he uttered a loud, moaning grunt and plunged forward at a heavy gallop, while I raced obliquely down the hill to cut him off. After going a few hundred feet he reached a laurel thicket, some thirty yards broad, and two or three times as long, which he did not leave. I ran up to the edge and there halted, not liking to venture into the mass of twisted, close-growing stems and glossy foliage. Moreover, as I halted, I heard him utter a peculiar, savage kind of whine from the heart of the brush. Accordingly, I began to skirt the edge, standing on tiptoe and gazing earnestly to see if I could not catch a glimpse of his hide. When I was at the narrowest part of the thicket, he suddenly left it directly opposite, and then wheeled and stood broadside to me on the hillside, a little above. He turned his head stiffly toward me; scarlet strings of froth hung from his lips; his eyes burned like embers in the gloom.

I held true, aiming behind the shoulder, and my bullet shattered the point or lower end of his heart, taking out a big nick. Instantly the great bear turned with a harsh roar of fury and challenge, blowing the bloody foam from his mouth, so that I saw the gleam of his white fangs; and then he charged straight at me, crashing and bounding through the laurel bushes, so that it was hard to aim. I waited until he came to a fallen tree, raking him as he topped it with a ball, which entered his chest and went through the cavity of his body, but he neither swerved nor flinched, and at the moment I did not know that I had struck him. He came steadily on, and in another second was almost upon me. I fired for his forehead, but my bullet went low, entering his open mouth, smashing his lower jaw and going into the neck. I leaped to one side[Pg 343] almost as I pulled the trigger; and through the hanging smoke the first thing I saw was his paw as he made a vicious side blow at me. The rush of his charge carried him past. As he struck he lurched forward, leaving a pool of bright blood where his muzzle hit the ground; but he recovered himself and made two or three jumps onward, while I hurriedly jammed a couple of cartridges into the magazine, my rifle holding only four, which I had fired. Then he tried to pull up, but as he did so his muscles seemed to give way, his head drooped, and he rolled over and over like a shot rabbit. Each of my first three bullets had inflicted a mortal wound.

It was already twilight, and I merely opened the carcass, and then trotted back to camp. Next morning I returned and with much labor took off the skin. The fur was very fine, the animal being in excellent trim, and unusually bright-colored. Unfortunately, in packing it out I lost the skull, and had to supply its place with one of plaster. The beauty of the trophy, and the memory of the circumstances under which I procured it, make me value it perhaps more highly than any other in my house.

This is the only instance in which I have been regularly charged by a grizzly. On the whole, the danger of hunting these great bears has been much exaggerated. At the beginning of the present century, when white hunters first encountered the grizzly, he was doubtless an exceedingly savage beast, prone to attack without provocation, and a redoubtable foe to persons armed with the clumsy small-bore, muzzle-loading rifles of the day. But at present bitter experience has taught him caution. He has been hunted for sport, and hunted for his pelt, and hunted for the bounty, and hunted as a dangerous enemy to stock, until, save in the very wildest districts, he has learned to be more wary than a deer, and to avoid man's presence almost as carefully as the most timid kind of game. Except in rare cases he will not attack of his own accord, and, as a rule, even when wounded, his object is escape rather than battle.

Still, when fairly brought to bay, or when moved by a sudden fit of ungovernable anger, the grizzly is beyond peradventure a very dangerous antagonist. The first shot, if taken at a bear a good distance off and previously unwounded and unharried, is not usually fraught with much danger, the startled animal being at the outset bent merely on flight. It is always hazardous, however, to track a wounded and worried grizzly into thick cover, and the man who habitually follows and kills this chief of American game in dense timber, never abandoning the bloody trail whithersoever it leads, must show no small degree of skill and hardihood, and must not too closely count the risk to life or limb. Bears differ widely in temper, and occasionally one may be found who will not show fight, no matter how much he is bullied; but, as a rule, a hunter must be cautious in meddling with a wounded animal which has retreated into a dense thicket, and has been once or twice roused; and such a beast, when it does turn, will usually charge again and again, and fight to the last with unconquerable ferocity. The short distance at which the bear can be seen through the underbrush, the fury of his charge, and his tenacity of life make it necessary for the hunter on such occasions to have steady nerves and a fairly quick and accurate aim.

It is always well to have two men in following a wounded bear under such conditions. This is not necessary, however, and a good hunter, rather than lose his quarry, will, under ordinary circumstances, follow and attack it, no matter how tangled the fastness in which it has sought refuge; but he must act warily and with the utmost caution and resolution, if he wishes to escape a terrible and probably fatal mauling. An experienced hunter is rarely rash, and never heedless; he will not, when alone, follow a wounded bear into a thicket, if by the exercise of patience, skill, and knowledge of the game's habits he can avoid the necessity; but it is idle to talk of the feat as something which ought in no case to be attempted.

While danger ought never to be needlessly incurred, it is yet true that the keenest zest in sport comes from its presence, and from the consequent exercise of the qualities necessary to overcome it. The most thrilling moments of[Pg 344] an American hunter's life are those in which, with every sense on the alert, and with nerves strung to the highest point, he is following alone into the heart of its forest fastness the fresh and bloody footprints of an angered grizzly; and no other triumph of American hunting can compare with the victory to be thus gained.

These big bears will not ordinarily charge from a distance of over a hundred yards; but there are exceptions to this rule. In the fall of 1890 my friend Archibald Rogers was hunting in Wyoming, south of the Yellowstone Park, and killed seven bears. One, an old he, was out on a bare table-land, grubbing for roots, when he was spied. It was early in the afternoon, and the hunters, who were on a high mountain slope, examined him for some time through their powerful glasses before making him out to be a bear. They then stalked up to the edge of the wood which fringed the table-land on one side, but could get no nearer than about three hundred yards, the plains being barren of all cover. After waiting for a couple of hours Rogers risked the shot, in despair of getting nearer, and wounded the bear, though not very seriously. The animal made off, almost broadside to, and Rogers ran forward to intercept it. As soon as it saw him it turned and rushed straight for him, not heeding his second shot, and evidently bent on charging home. Rogers then waited until it was within twenty yards, and brained it with his third bullet.

In fact bears differ individually in courage and ferocity precisely as men do, or as the Spanish bulls, of which it is said that not more than one in twenty is fit to stand the combat of the arena. One grizzly can scarcely be bullied into resistance; the next may fight to the end, against any odds, without flinching, or even attack unprovoked. Hence men of limited experience in this sport, generalizing from the actions of the two or three bears each has happened to see or kill, often reach diametrically opposite conclusions as to the fighting temper and capacity of the quarry. Even old hunters—who indeed, as a class, are very narrow-minded and opinionated—often generalize just as rashly as beginners. One will portray all bears as very dangerous; another will speak and act as if he deemed them of no more consequence than so many rabbits.

I knew one old hunter who had killed a score without ever seeing one show fight. On the other hand, Dr. James C. Merrill, U.S.A., who has had about as much experience with bears as I have had, informs me that he has been charged with the utmost determination three times. In each case the attack was delivered before the bear was wounded or even shot at, the animal being roused by the approach of the hunters from his day bed, and charging headlong at them from a distance of twenty or thirty paces. All three bears were killed before they could do any damage.

There was a very remarkable incident connected with the killing of one of them. It occurred in the northern spurs of the Bighorn range. Dr. Merrill, in company with an old hunter, had climbed down into a deep, narrow cañon. The bottom was threaded with well-beaten elk trails. While following one of these the two men turned a corner of the cañon and were instantly charged by an old she-grizzly, so close that it was only by good luck that one of the hurried shots disabled her and caused her to tumble over a cut bank where she was easily finished. They found that she had been lying directly across the game trail, on a smooth, well-beaten patch of bare earth, which looked as if it had been dug up, refilled, and trampled down. Looking curiously at this patch they saw a bit of hide only partially covered at one end; digging down they found the body of a well-grown grizzly cub. Its skull had been crushed, and the brains licked out, and there were signs of other injuries. The hunters pondered long over this strange discovery, and hazarded many guesses as to its meaning. At last they decided that probably the cub had been killed, and its brains eaten out, either by some old male grizzly or by a cougar, that the mother had returned and driven away the murderer, and that she had then buried the body and lain above it, waiting to wreak her vengeance on the first passer-by.

Old Tazewell Woody, during his thir[Pg 345]ty years' life as a hunter in the Rockies and on the great plains, killed very many grizzlies. He always exercised much caution in dealing with them; and, as it happened, he was by some suitable tree in almost every case when he was charged. He would accordingly climb the tree (a practise of which I do not approve, however), and the bear would look up at him and pass on without stopping. Once, when he was hunting in the mountains with a companion, the latter, who was down in a valley, while Woody was on the hillside, shot at a bear. The first thing Woody knew the wounded grizzly, running up-hill, was almost on him from behind. As he turned it seized his rifle in its jaws. He wrenched the rifle round, while the bear still gripped it, and pulled trigger, sending a bullet into its shoulder; whereupon it struck him with its paw, and knocked him over the rocks. By good luck he fell in a snow-bank and was not hurt in the least. Meanwhile the bear went on and they never got it.

Once he had an experience with a bear which showed a very curious mixture of rashness and cowardice. He and a companion were camped in a little teepee or wigwam, with a bright fire in front of it, lighting up the night. There was an inch of snow on the ground. Just after they went to bed a grizzly came close to camp. Their dog rushed out and they could hear it bark round in the darkness for nearly an hour; then the bear drove it off and came right into camp. It went close to the fire, picking up the scraps of meat and bread, pulled a haunch of venison down from a tree, and passed and repassed in front of the teepee, paying no heed whatever to the two men, who crouched in the doorway talking to one another. Once it passed so close that Woody could almost have touched it. Finally his companion fired into it, and off it ran, badly wounded, without any attempt at retaliation. The next morning they followed its tracks in the snow, and finally found it a quarter of a mile away. It was near a pine-tree, and had buried itself under the loose earth, pine-needles, and snow; Woody's companion almost walked over it, and putting his rifle to its ear blew out its brains.

In all his experience Woody had personally seen but four men who were badly mauled by bears. Three of these were merely wounded. One was bitten terribly in the back. Another had an arm partially chewed off. The third was a man named George Dow, and the accident happened to him on the Yellowstone about the year 1878. He was with a pack animal at the time, leading it on a trail through a wood. Seeing a big she-bear with cubs he yelled at her; whereat she ran away, but only to cache her cubs, and in a minute, having hidden them, came racing back at him. His pack animal being slow, he started to climb a tree; but before he could get far enough up she caught him, almost biting a piece out of the calf of his leg, pulled him down, bit and cuffed him two or three times, and then went on her way.

The only time Woody ever saw a man killed by a bear was once when he had given a touch of variety to his life by shipping on a New Bedford whaler which had touched at one of the Puget Sound ports. The whaler went up to a part of Alaska where bears were very plentiful and bold. One day a couple of boats' crews landed; and the men, who were armed only with an occasional harpoon or lance, scattered over the beach, one of them, a Frenchman, wading into the water after shell-fish. Suddenly a bear emerged from some bushes and charged among the astonished sailors, who scattered in every direction; but the bear, said Woody, "just had it in for that Frenchman," and went straight at him. Shrieking with terror he retreated up to his neck in the water; but the bear plunged in after him, caught him, and disemboweled him. One of the Yankee mates then fired a bomb lance into the bear's hips, and the savage beast hobbled off into the dense cover of the low scrub, where the enraged sailor-folk were unable to get at it.

The truth is that while the grizzly generally avoids a battle if possible, and often acts with great cowardice, it is never safe to take liberties with him; he usually fights desperately and dies hard when wounded and cornered, and exceptional individuals take the aggressive on small provocation.[Pg 346]

BALZAC'S VIEWS OF WOMEN.

Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) has been pronounced by many eminent critics the most truly great of all the writers of fiction that France has produced. This judgment has been questioned at times by admirers of Hugo and Dumas, but on one point all students of French literature agree—that as an analyst of human character Honoré de Balzac never has had a peer.

As might have been expected of such a profound student of human nature, Balzac on various occasions attempted to analyze the character of woman. Many millions of men had essayed this task before Balzac's time and had failed, as millions of other men have been failing ever since. Philosophers have been the first to despair, for they contend that no woman ever thoroughly understands herself or any other member of her sex—in short, that she is to be understood only by the angels. But it is generally believed that Balzac came nearer the truth in his estimate of woman than any other novelist has done. Naturally his views were conflicting. The Scrap Book herewith presents some of them.

When a woman pronounces the name of a man but twice a day, there may be some doubt as to the nature of her sentiment—but three times!

In courting women, many dry wood for a fire that will not burn for them.

No man has yet discovered the means of successfully giving friendly advice to women—not even to his own.

A man who can love deeply is never utterly contemptible.

Women are constantly the dupes, or else the victims, of their extreme sensitiveness.

A man must be a fool who does not succeed in making a woman believe that which flatters her.[Pg 347]

A woman when she has passed forty becomes an illegible scrawl; only an old woman is capable of divining old women.

A woman full of faith in the one she loves is but a novelist's fancy.

The mistakes of a woman result almost always from her faith in the good and her confidence in the truth.

Woman is a charming creature, who changes her heart as easily as her gloves.

The man who can govern a woman can govern a nation.

In the elevated order of ideas, the life of man is glory; the life of woman is love.

Marriage has its unknown great men as war has its Napoleons and philosophy its Descartes.

The Indian axiom "Do not strike even with a flower a woman guilty of a hundred crimes," is my rule of conduct.

Most women proceed like the flea, by leaps and jumps.

When women love us, they forgive us everything, even our crimes. When they do not love us, they give us credit for nothing, not even for our virtues.

Marriage should combat without respite or mercy that monster which devours everything—habit.

There is one thing admirable in women: they never reason about their blameworthy actions; even in their dissimulation here is an element of sincerity.[Pg 348]

THE WORLD'S RICHEST HUNDRED.

Of the Five Score Men and Women Among Whom $6,760,000,000 is Divided Fifty
are Citizens of the United States—England is Represented by Thirteen—Oil
Yielded the Largest Individual Fortune.

When the average present-day millionaire is bluntly asked to name the value of his earthly possessions he finds it difficult to answer the question correctly. It may be that he is not willing to take the questioner into his confidence. It is doubtful whether he really knows.

If this is true of the millionaire himself, it follows that when others attempt the task of estimating the amount of his wealth, the results must be conflicting. Still, excellent authorities are not lacking on this subject, and the list of the world's richest hundred persons, which is printed herewith, has been compiled from the best.

[Pg 349]

[Pg 350]

WIT OF THE ANCIENT GREEKS.

A Garnering of Old Jokes from the Classics Impresses the Reader with the Fact that
Modern Wit Isn't as New as It Ought to Be.

We moderns find it hard to improve on the ancients, except in such insignificant conveniences as speed in traveling. Even our humor is in large part no more than the re-tailored mummies of Roman, Greek, and Egyptian humor—which means, of course, that those ancients merely resurrected the jokes of their own dim ancestors. Humor comes before speech.

The Greeks had a pretty wit. And how modern the old Greek jokes do sound!

A number of apothegms, proverbs, or sayings of more or less wit occur in the collected works of Plutarch, although Schneidewin does not hesitate to attribute most of them to some impostor usurping his name. At any rate, they are handily classified, and form a bulky addition to Mr. Paley's translated specimens.

Here is a brief and bright saying which this writer attaches to King Archelaus, when a talkative barber, trimming his beard, asked him, "How shall I cut it?"

"In silence," replied the king.

The anecdote recalls one of Charles II's bragging barbers, who boasted to him he could cut his majesty's throat when he would—a boast for which he was only dismissed; though for a like rash vaunt, according to Peter Cunningham, the barber of Dionysius was crucified.

To return to Plutarch, he tells the following stories, both good in their way, of Philip of Macedon.

In passing sentence on two rogues, he ordered one to leave Macedonia with all possible speed, and the other to try to catch him.

No less astute was his query as to a strong position he wished to occupy, which was reported by the scouts to be almost impregnable.

"Is there not," he asked, "even a pathway to it wide enough for an ass laden with gold?"

Philip, too, according to Plutarch, is entitled to the fatherhood of an adage which retains its ancient fame about "calling a spade a spade."

Another story tells how Philip removed a judge, because he discovered that the man's hair and beard were dyed.

"I could not believe," Plutarch reports the king as saying, "that one who was false in his hair could be honest in his judgments."

Another sample of a witty saying from Plutarch's mint is one attributed to Themistocles, that his son was the strongest man in Greece.

"For," said he, "the Athenians rule the Hellenes, I rule the Athenians, your mother rules me, and you rule your mother."

Yet another is a retort attributed to Iphicrates, the celebrated Athenian general. Harmodius, a young aristocrat who bore a name famous in the early history of Athens, had reproached Iphicrates, who was the son of a cobbler, with his mean birth.

"My nobility," the soldier replied, "begins with me, but yours ends with you."

Another Athenian general, Phocion, was a man who preferred deeds to words. He compared the eloquent speeches of one of his political opponents to cypress-trees.

"They are tall," he said, "but they bear no fruit."

Elsewhere Plutarch tells of a man who plucked the feathers from a nightingale, and, finding it a very small bird, exclaimed:

"You little wretch, you're nothing but voice!"

And again, the repartee of a Laconian to a man of Sparta who twitted him with being unable to stand as long as himself on one leg.

"No," replied the other, "but any goose can."

An anecdote of Strabo gives a vivid picture of the clashing of a harper's performances with the sounding of a bell for opening of the fish-market. All the audience vanished at once save a little deaf man.

The harper expressed himself unutterably flattered at his having resisted the importunity of the bell.

"What!" cried the deaf man, "has the fish-bell rung? Then I'm off, too. Good-by!"[Pg 351]

Tournament Scene From "Ivanhoe."

By SIR WALTER SCOTT.

The lists now presented a most splendid spectacle. The sloping galleries were crowded with all that was noble, great, wealthy, and beautiful in the northern and midland parts of England; and the contrast of the various dresses of these dignified spectators rendered the view as gay as it was rich, while the interior and lower space, filled with the substantial burgesses and yeomen of merry England, formed, in their more plain attire, a dark fringe, or border, around this circle of brilliant embroidery, relieving, and at the same time setting off, its splendor.

The heralds finished their proclamation with the usual cry of "Largesse, largesse, gallant knights!" and gold and silver pieces were showered on them from the galleries, it being a high point of chivalry to exhibit liberality toward those whom the age accounted at once the secretaries and the historians of honor.

The bounty of the spectators was acknowledged by the customary shouts of "Love of Ladies—Death of Champions—Honor to the Generous—Glory to the Brave!"—to which the more humble spectators added their acclamations, and a numerous band of trumpeters the flourish of their martial instruments.

When these sounds had ceased, the heralds withdrew from the lists in gay and glittering procession, and none re[Pg 352]mained within them save the marshals of the field, who, armed cap-a-pie, sat on horseback, motionless as statues, at the opposite end of the lists.

Meantime, the enclosed space at the northern extremity of the lists, as it was, was now completely crowded with knights desirous to prove their skill against the challengers, and, when viewed from the galleries, presented the appearance of a sea of waving plumage, intermixed with glistening helmets, and tall lances, to the extremities of which were, in many cases, attached small pennons of about a span's breadth, which, fluttering in the air as the breeze caught them, joined with the restless motion of the feathers to add liveliness to the scene.

At length the barriers were opened, and five knights, chosen by lot, advanced slowly into the area; a single champion riding in front, and the other four following in pairs. All were splendidly armed, and my Saxon authority (in the Wardour Manuscript) records at great length their devices, their colors, and the embroidery of their horse-trappings.

It is unnecessary to be particular on these subjects. To borrow lines from a contemporary poet, who has written but too little—

Their escutcheons have long moldered from the walls of their castles. The castles themselves are but green mounds and shattered ruins—the place that once knew them knows them no more—nay, many a race since theirs has died out and been forgotten in the very land which they occupied with all the authority of feudal proprietors and feudal lords. What, then, would it avail the reader to know their names, or the evanescent symbols of their martial rank!

Now, however, no whit anticipating the oblivion which awaited their names and feats, the champions advanced through the lists, restraining their fiery steeds, and compelling them to move slowly, while, at the same time, they exhibited their paces, together with the grace and dexterity of the riders.

As the procession entered the lists the sound of a wild barbaric music was heard from behind the tents of the challengers, where the performers were concealed. It was of Eastern origin, having been brought from the Holy Land; and the mixture of the cymbals and bells seemed to bid welcome at once, and defiance, to the knights as they advanced.

With the eyes of an immense concourse of spectators fixed upon them, the five knights advanced up the platform upon which the tents of the challengers stood, and there separating themselves, each touched slightly, and with the reverse of his lance, the shield of the antagonist to whom he wished to oppose himself.

The lower orders of spectators in general—nay, many of the higher class, and it is even said several of the ladies—were rather disappointed at the champions choosing the arms of courtesy. For the same sort of persons who, in the present day, applaud most highly the deepest tragedies were then interested in a tournament exactly in proportion to the danger incurred by the champions engaged.

Having intimated their more specific purpose, the champions retreated to the extremity of the lists, where they remained drawn up in a line; while the challengers, sallying each from his pavilion, mounted their horses, and, headed by Brian de Bois-Guilbert, descended from the platform, and opposed themselves individually to the knights who had touched their respective shields.

At the flourish of clarions and trumpets they started out against each other at full gallop; and such was the superior dexterity or good fortune of the challengers that those opposed to Bois-Guilbert, Malvoisin, and Front-de-Bœuf rolled on the ground.

The antagonist of Grantmesnil, instead of bearing his lance-point fair against the crest or the shield of his enemy, swerved so much from the direct line as to break the weapon athwart the person of his opponent—a circumstance which was accounted more disgraceful than that of being actually unhorsed; because the latter might happen from accident, whereas the former evinced awkwardness and want of management of the weapon and of the horse.

The fifth knight alone maintained the[Pg 353] honor of his party, and parted fairly with the knight of St. John, both splintering their lances without advantage on either side.

The shouts of the multitude, together with the acclamations of the heralds and the clangor of the trumpets, announced the triumph of the victors and the defeat of the vanquished. The former retreated to their pavilions, and the latter, gathering themselves up as they could, withdrew from the lists in disgrace and dejection, to agree with their victors concerning the redemption of their arms and their horses, which, according to the laws of the tournament, they had forfeited.

The fifth of their number alone tarried in the lists long enough to be greeted by the applause of the spectators, among whom he retreated, to the aggravation, doubtless, of his companions' mortification.

A second and a third party of knights took the field; and although they had various success, yet, upon the whole, the advantage decidedly remained with the challengers, not one of whom lost his seat or swerved from his charge—misfortunes which befell one or two of their antagonists in each encounter. The spirits, therefore, of those opposed to them seemed to be considerably damped by their continued success.

Three knights only appeared on the fourth entry who, avoiding the shields of Bois-Guilbert and Front-de-Bœuf, contented themselves with touching those of the three other knights who had not altogether manifested the same strength and dexterity. This politic selection did not alter the fortune of the field; the challengers were still successful. One of their antagonists was overthrown, and both the others failed in the attaint—that is, in striking the helmet and shield of their antagonist firmly and strongly, with the lance held in a direct line, so that the weapon might break unless the champion was overthrown.

After this fourth encounter there was a considerable pause; nor did it appear that any one was very desirous of renewing the contest. The spectators murmured among themselves; for, among the challengers, Malvoisin and Front-de-Bœuf were unpopular from their characters, and the others, except Grantmesnil, were disliked as strangers and foreigners.

But none shared the general feeling of dissatisfaction so keenly as Cedric the Saxon, who saw in each adventure gained by the Norman challengers a repeated triumph over the honor of England. His own education had taught him no skill in the games of chivalry, although with the arms of his Saxon ancestors he had manifested himself, on many occasions, a brave and determined soldier.

He looked anxiously to Athelstane, who had learned the accomplishments of the age, as if desiring that he should make some personal effort to recover the victory which was passing into the hands of the Templar and his associates. But, though both stout of heart and strong of person, Athelstane had a disposition too inert to make the exertions which Cedric seemed to expect from him.

"The day is against England, my lord," said Cedric in a marked tone; "are you not tempted to take the lance?"

"I shall tilt to-morrow," answered Athelstane, "in the mêlée; it is not worth while for me to arm myself to-day."

Two things displeased Cedric in this speech. It contained the Norman word mêlée (to express the general conflict), and it evinced some indifference to the honor of the country; but it was spoken by Athelstane, whom he held in such profound respect that he would not trust himself to canvass his motives or his foibles. Moreover, he had no time to make any remark, for Wamba thrust in his word, observing, "It was better, though scarce easier, to be the best man among a hundred than the best man of two."

Athelstane took the observation as a serious compliment; but Cedric, who better understood the Jester's meaning, darted at him a severe and menacing look; and lucky it was for Wamba, perhaps, that the time and place prevented his receiving, notwithstanding his place and service, more sensible marks of his master's resentment.

The pause in the tournament was still uninterrupted excepting by the voices of[Pg 354] the heralds exclaiming, "Love of ladies, splintering of lances! stand forth, gallant knights, fair eyes look upon your deeds!"

The music also of the challengers breathed from time to time wild bursts expressive of triumph or defiance, while the clowns grudged a holiday which seemed to pass away in inactivity; and old knights and nobles lamented in whispers the decay of martial spirit, spoke of the triumphs of their younger days, but agreed that the land did not now supply dames of such transcendent beauty as had animated the jousts of former times.

Prince John began to talk to his attendants about making ready the banquet, and the necessity of adjudging the prize to Brian de Bois-Guilbert, who had, with a single spear, overthrown two knights and foiled a third.

At length, as the Saracenic music of the challengers concluded one of those long and high flourishes with which they had broken the silence of the lists, it was answered by a solitary trumpet, which breathed a note of defiance from the northern extremity. All eyes were turned to see the new champion which these sounds announced, and no sooner were the barriers opened than he paced into the lists.

As far as could be judged of a man sheathed in armor, the new adventurer did not greatly exceed the middle size, and seemed to be rather slender than strongly made. His suit of armor was formed of steel, richly inlaid with gold, and the device on his shield was a young oak-tree pulled up by the roots, with the Spanish word Desdichado, signifying Disinherited. He was mounted on a gallant black horse, and as he passed through the lists he gracefully saluted the prince and the ladies by lowering his lance.

The dexterity with which he managed his steed, and something of youthful grace which he displayed in his manner, won him the favor of the multitude, which some of the lower classes expressed by calling out: "Touch Ralph de Vipont's shield—touch the Hospitaler's shield; he has the least sure seat; he is your cheapest bargain."

The champion, moving onward amid these well-meant hints, ascended the platform by the sloping alley which led to it from the lists, and, to the astonishment of all present, riding straight up to the central pavilion, struck with the sharp end of his spear the shield of Brian de Bois-Guilbert until it rung again. All stood astonished at his presumption, but none more than the redoubted knight whom he had thus defied to mortal combat, and who, little expecting so rude a challenge, was standing carelessly at the door of the pavilion.

"Have you confessed yourself, brother," said the Templar, "and have you heard mass this morning, that you peril your life so frankly?"

"I am fitter to meet death than thou art," answered the Disinherited Knight; for by this name the stranger had recorded himself in the books of the tourney.

"Then take your place in the lists," said Bois-Guilbert, "and look your last upon the sun, for this night thou shalt sleep in paradise."

"Gramercy for thy courtesy," replied the Disinherited Knight; "and to requite it I advise thee to take a fresh horse and a new lance, for by my honor you will need both."

Having expressed himself thus confidently, he reined his horse backward down the slope which he had ascended, and compelled him in the same manner to move backward through the lists till he reached the northern extremity, where he remained stationary in expectation of his antagonist. This feat of horsemanship again attracted the applause of the multitude.

However incensed at his adversary for the precautions which he recommended, Brian de Bois-Guilbert did not neglect his advice, for his honor was too nearly concerned to permit his neglecting any means which might insure victory over his presumptuous opponent. He changed his horse for a proved and fresh one of great strength and spirit. He chose a new and a tough spear, lest the wood of the former might have been strained in the previous encounters he had sustained.

Lastly, he laid aside his shield, which had received some little damage, and re[Pg 355]ceived another from his squires. His first had only borne the general device of his rider, representing two knights riding upon one horse, an emblem expressive of the original humility and poverty of the Templars, qualities which they had since exchanged for the arrogance and wealth that finally occasioned their suppression. Bois-Guilbert's new shield bore a raven in full flight, holding in its claws a skull, and bearing the motto, Gare le Corbeau.

When the two champions stood opposed to each other at the two extremities of the lists, the public expectation was strained to the highest pitch. Few augured the possibility that the encounter could terminate well for the Disinherited Knight, yet his courage and gallantry secured the general good wishes of the spectators.

The trumpets had no sooner given the signal than the champions vanished from their posts with the speed of lightning, and closed in the center of the lists with the shock of a thunderbolt. The lances burst into shivers up to the very grasp, and it seemed at the moment that both knights had fallen, for the shock had made each horse recoil backward upon its haunches.

The address of the riders recovered their steeds by use of the bridle and spur; and having glared at each other for an instant with eyes which seemed to flash fire through the bars of their vizors, each made a demivolte, and, retiring to the extremity of the lists, received a fresh lance from the attendants.

A loud shout from the spectators, waving of scarfs and handkerchiefs, and general acclamations attested the interest taken by the spectators in this encounter; the most equal, as well as the best performed, which had graced the day. But no sooner had the knights resumed their station than the clamor of applause was hushed into a silence so deep and so dead that it seemed the multitude were afraid even to breathe.

A few minutes' pause having been allowed, that the combatants and their horses might recover breath, Prince John with his truncheon signed to the trumpets to sound the onset. The champions a second time sprung from their stations and closed in the center of the lists, with the same speed, the same dexterity, the same violence, but not the same equal fortune as before.

In this second encounter the Templar aimed at the center of his antagonist's shield, and struck it so fair and forcibly that his spear went to shivers, and the Disinherited Knight reeled in his saddle. On the other hand, that champion had, in the beginning of his career, directed the point of his lance toward Bois-Guilbert's shield, but, changing his aim almost in the moment of encounter, he addressed it to the helmet, a mark more difficult to hit, but which, if attained, rendered the shock more irresistible.

Fair and true he hit the Norman on the vizor, where his lance's point kept hold of the bars. Yet, even at this disadvantage, the Templar sustained his high reputation, and had not the girths of his saddle burst he might not have been unhorsed. As it chanced, however, saddle, horse, and man rolled on the ground.

To extricate himself from the stirrups and fallen steed was to the Templar scarce the work of a moment, and, stung with madness both at his disgrace and at the acclamations with which it was hailed by the spectators, he drew his sword and waved it in defiance of his conqueror. The Disinherited Knight sprung from his steed and also unsheathed his sword. The marshals of the field, however, spurred their horses between them, and reminded them that the laws of the tournament did not, on the present occasion, permit this species of encounter.

"We shall meet again, I trust," said the Templar, casting a resentful glance at his antagonist; "and where there are none to separate us."

"If we do not," said the Disinherited Knight, "the fault shall not be mine. On foot or horseback, with ax, or with sword, I am alike ready to encounter thee."

More and angrier words would have been exchanged, but the marshals, crossing their lances between them, compelled them to separate. The Disinherited Knight returned to his first station, and Bois-Guilbert to his tent, where he remained for the rest of the day in an agony of despair.

Without alighting from his horse, the[Pg 356] conqueror called for a bowl of wine, and opening the beaver, or lower part of his helmet, announced that he quaffed it "to all true English hearts, and to the confusion of foreign tyrants." He then commanded his trumpet to sound a defiance to the challengers, and desired a herald to announce to them that he should make no election, but was willing to encounter them in the order in which they pleased to advance against him.

The gigantic Front-de-Bœuf, armed in sable armor, was the first who took the field. He bore on a white shield a black bull's head, half defaced by the numerous encounters which he had undergone, and bearing the arrogant motto, Cave, adsum. Over this champion the Disinherited Knight obtained a slight but decisive advantage. Both knights broke their lances fairly, but Front-de-Bœuf, who lost a stirrup in the encounter, was adjudged to have the disadvantage.

In the stranger's third encounter with Sir Philip Malvoisin, he was equally successful, striking that baron so forcibly on the casque that the laces of the helmet broke, and Malvoisin, only saved from falling by being unhelmeted, was declared vanquished like his companions.

In his fourth encounter, with De Grantmesnil, the Disinherited Knight showed as much courtesy as he had hitherto evinced courage and dexterity. De Grantmesnil's horse, which was young and violent, reared and plunged in the course of the career so as to disturb the rider's aim, and the stranger, declining to take the advantage which this accident afforded him, raised his lance, and, passing his antagonist without touching him, wheeled his horse and rode back again to his own end of the lists, offering his antagonist, by a herald, the chance of a second encounter. This De Grantmesnil declined, avowing himself vanquished as much by the courtesy as by the address of his opponent.

Ralph de Vipont summed up the list of the stranger's triumphs, being hurled to the ground with such force that the blood gushed from his nose and mouth, and he was borne senseless from the lists.

The acclamations of thousands applauded the award of the prince and marshals, announcing that day's honors to the Disinherited Knight.

NICKNAMES OF OUR STATES AND TOWNS.

Yankee humor and high-flown oratory are responsible for most of the nicknames by which the States and many of the cities in the United States have come to be known. As these nicknames are frequently encountered by readers, it may be just as well to recognize the fact that a knowledge of them is more or less of a necessity. For this reason the accompanying list is given:

STATES.

Virginia, the Old Dominion,
Massachusetts, the Bay State.
Maine, the Border State.
Rhode Island, Little Rhody.
New York, the Empire State.
New Hampshire, the Granite State.
Vermont, the Green Mountain State.
Connecticut, the Land of Steady Habits.
Pennsylvania, the Keystone State.
North Carolina, the Old North State.
Ohio, the Buckeye State.
South Carolina, the Palmetto State.
Michigan, the Wolverine State.
Kentucky, the Corn-cracker.
California, the Golden State.
Indiana, the Hoosier State.
Illinois, the Sucker State.
Iowa, the Hawk-Eye State.
Wisconsin, the Badger State.
Florida, the Peninsular State.
Texas, the Lone Star State.

CITIES.

Philadelphia, the Quaker City.
Boston, the modern Athens; the Hub.
New York, Gotham.
Baltimore, the Monumental City.
Cincinnati, the Queen City.
New Orleans, the Crescent City.
Washington, the City of Magnificent Distances.
Chicago, the Garden City.
Detroit, the City of the Straits.
Cleveland, the Forest City.
Pittsburgh, the Smoky City.
New Haven, the City of Elms.
Indianapolis, the Railroad City.
St. Louis, the Mound City.
Keokuk, the Gate City.
Louisville, the Falls City.
Nashville, the City of Rocks.
Hannibal, the Bluff City.
[Pg 357]

THE LAST WORD—POET TO POET.

JOAQUIN MILLER'S FAREWELL TO BRET HARTE, HIS FAMOUS
CONTEMPORARY IN THE LITERATURE OF THE FAR WEST.

From his cabin on the heights back of Oakland, California, the gray poet of the Sierras, Joaquin Miller [pronounced "Hwah-keen"], looks down across San Francisco Harbor and through the Golden Gate.

When word came to Joaquin Miller, in May, 1902, that his friend, Bret Harte, was dead, he embalmed his grief in the wonderful poem of farewell here printed. He pictured the somber ship of death traveling silently at sunset out through the Golden Gate.

The poem originally appeared in the Overland Monthly for September, 1902. The issue was devoted to the memory of Bret Harte, and included reprints of "The Luck of Roaring Camp," "The Outcasts of Poker Flat," "Plain Language from Truthful James," and other of Harte's best work.

GOOD-BY, BRET HARTE!

By JOAQUIN MILLER.

"THE LITTLE CHURCH 'ROUND THE CORNER."

In Twenty-Ninth Street, New York, and only a few paces distant from Fifth Avenue, stands a low, rambling, picturesque brown structure that has the appearance of a modest chapel to which various additions have been built from time to time. Between this building and the street is a well-shaded lawn, and there is scarcely a day in the year on which the twittering of birds among the boughs of the big trees does not attract the attention of passers-by. There is a sort of rural atmosphere about the quaint church and its yard that seems so singularly out of place in the heart of a big city that strangers invariably glance curiously at the board on which are inscribed the hours of service and the name "Church of the Transfiguration."

To most strangers this means nothing more than the name of any other church. But were some friend to add, "It is also known as the 'Little Church 'Round the Corner,'" a new light would dawn on the stranger's mind, and he would know that he was standing before one of the most celebrated church edifices in the United States—a church supported largely by members of the theatrical profession—a church that has been famous for many romantic wedding ceremonies, and from which hundreds of dead actors and actresses have been borne to the grave.

The manner in which this church came by the name by which it is now popularly known is as follows:

In 1870 the veteran actor, George Holland, died in New York, and Mrs. Holland's sister desired the funeral to be held at her own church—a fashionable place of worship in Fifth Avenue. Joseph Jefferson, as an old friend of the family, went to the minister with one of Holland's young sons. Mr. Jefferson told the rector that his friend was an actor, and the rector replied that under the circumstances he should have to decline holding the services at the church.

The boy was in tears. Mr. Jefferson was too indignant to say a word, but as he and the boy left the room he asked if there was any other church from which his friend might be buried. The rector replied that there was a little church around the corner where it might be done.

Mr. Jefferson said: "Then if this be so, God bless 'the little church around the corner.'"

And it was in "The Little Church 'Round the Corner" that the ceremony was performed by the Rev. George H. Houghton, its rector, who, beloved by all members of the theatrical profession, continued in this pulpit until his death in 1897, when he was succeeded by his son.

The author of the following lines was a New York playwright who won popularity a generation ago.

By A.E. LANCASTER.

Captain Obstinate.

ANONYMOUS.

One fine evening in the month of July, an old soldier of the "grand army," who had left one of his arms on the field of battle, was seated at the door of his pretty cottage.

He was surrounded by a group of young villagers, who were clamorously reminding him of his promise to tell them some of his military adventures.

After a moment of pretended resistance to their wishes, the old man took his pipe from his mouth, passed the back of his remaining hand across his lips, and thus commenced his tale:

"In my time, my friends, the French would have disdained to fight against Frenchmen in the streets, as they do in these days. No, no, when we fought it was for the honor of France, and against her foreign enemies.

"But my story commences on the 6th of November, 1812, a short time after the battle of Wiazma. We beat a retreat, not before the Russians, for they were at a respectful distance from our camp, but before the sharp and bitter cold of their detestable country, a cold more terrible to us than the Russians, Austrians, and Bavarians all put together.

"During the preceding days our officers had told us that we were approaching Smolensko, where we should get food, fire, brandy, and shoes; but in the meantime we were perishing in the glaciers, and continually harassed by the Cossacks.

"We had marched for six hours without stopping to take breath, for we knew that repose was certain death. An icy wind blew the drifting snow in our faces, and from time to time we stumbled over the frozen corpse of a comrade. We neither spoke nor sang, even complaints were no longer heard, and that was a bad sign.

"I marched by the side of my captain; short, strongly built, rough, and severe, but brave and true as the blade of his sword; we called him 'Captain Obstinate'; for when once he said a thing, it was fixed; he never changed his opinions. He had been wounded at Wiazma, and his usually crimson face was then ghastly pale, while a ragged white handkerchief, all stained with blood, was bound round his head, and added to the pallor of his countenance.

"All at once I saw him stagger on his legs like a drunken man, then fall like a block to the ground.

"'Morbleu! captain,' said I, bending over him, 'you can not remain here.'

"'You see that I can, since I do it,' replied he, showing his legs.

"'Captain,' said I, 'you must not give way.' Lifting him in my arms, I tried to put him on his feet. He leaned on me, and attempted to walk, but in vain; he fell again, dragging me with him.

"'Jobin,' he said; 'all is over. Leave me here, and rejoin your company as quickly as possible. One word before you go: at Voreppe, near Grenoble, lives a good woman, eighty-two years of age, my—my mother. Go and see her, embrace her for me, and tell her that—that—tell her what you will, but give her this purse and my cross. It is all I have! Now go.'

"'Is that all, captain?'

"'That is all. God bless you! Make haste. Adieu!' My friends, I do not know how it was, but I felt two tears roll down my cheeks.

"'No, captain,' I cried, 'I will not leave you; either you come with me, or I will remain with you.'

"'I forbid you to remain.'

"'You may put me under arrest, then, if you like, but at present you must let me do as I please.'

"'You are an insolent fellow.'

"'Very good, captain, but you must come with me.'[Pg 361]

"He bit his lips with rage, but said no more.

"I lifted him, and carried him on my shoulders like a sack. You can easily imagine that with such a burden I could not keep pace with my comrades. In fact, I soon lost sight of their columns, and could discern nothing around me but the white and silent plain.

"I still walked on, when presently appeared a troop of Cossacks galloping toward me, with furious gesticulations and wild cries.

"The captain was by this time completely insensible, and I resolved, whatever it might cost me, not to abandon him. I laid him down on the ground, and covered him with snow; then I crept beneath a heap of dead bodies, leaving, however, my eyes at liberty.

"Presently the Cossacks came up, and began to strike with their lances right and left, while their horses trampled us under their feet. One of these heavy beasts set his foot upon my right arm, and crushed it.

"My friends, I did not speak, I did not stir; I put my right hand into my mouth to stifle the cry of torture which nearly escaped from me, and in a few minutes the Cossacks had dispersed.

"When the last of them had disappeared, I quitted my refuge, and proceeded to disinter the captain. To my joy he gave some signs of life; I contrived to carry him with my one arm toward a rock which offered a sort of shelter, and then I laid myself by his side, wrapping my cloak round us both.

"The night had closed in, and the snow continued to fall.

"The rear-guard had long since disappeared, and the only sound that broke the stillness of the night was the whistle of a bullet, or the howling of the wolves feasting on the corpses that lay stretched around.

"God knows what thoughts passed through my soul during that dreadful night, which, I felt sure, would be my last upon earth. But I remembered the prayer which my mother had taught me long before, when I was a child at her knee, and bending low, I repeated it with fervor.

"My children, that did me good, and remember always that a sincere and fervent prayer is sure to comfort you. I felt astonishingly calmed when I returned to my place by the captain. But the time passed, and I had fallen into a state of half stupor, when I saw a group of French officers approach. Before I had time to speak to them, their chief, a little man, dressed in a furred pelisse, stepped forward toward me, and said:

'What are you doing here? Why are you away from your regiment?'

"'For two good reasons,' said I, pointing first to the captain, and then to my bleeding arm.

"'The man says true, Sire,' said one of those who followed him; 'I saw him marching in the rear of his regiment, and carrying this officer on his back.'

"The emperor—for, my friends, it was he!—gave me one of those glances that only he, or the eagle of the Alps, could give, and said: 'It is well. You have done very well.' Then opening his pelisse, he took the cross which decorated his green coat, and gave it to me. At that instant I was no longer hungry, no longer cold; I felt no more pain from my arm than if that awkward beast had never touched it.

"'Davoust,' added the emperor, addressing the officer who had spoken to him, 'see this man and his captain placed in one of the baggage-wagons. Adieu!' And making me a motion of the hand, he went away."

Here the veteran ceased, and resumed his pipe.

"But tell us what became of 'Captain Obstinate,'" cried many impatient voices.

"The captain recovered, and is now a general on the retired list. But the best of the joke was, that as soon as he got well, he put me under arrest for fifteen days, as a punishment for my infraction of discipline.

"This circumstance came to the ears of Napoleon, and after laughing heartily, he not only caused me to be set free, but promoted me to the rank of sergeant. As to the decoration, my children, here is the ribbon at my button-hole, but the cross I wear next my heart."

And opening his vest, he showed his eager audience the precious relic, suspended from his neck in a little satin bag.—Harper's Magazine, 1854.[Pg 362]

THE ISLE OF THE LONG AGO.

By BENJAMIN FRANKLIN TAYLOR.

[Pg 363]

Niagara, the June Bride's Paradise.

The Eloquent Language in Which the Great Cataract Was Described by Sir
Edwin Arnold, and John Galt's Romantic Account
of Its Discovery.

THE SPLENDOR OF NIAGARA.

By SIR EDWIN ARNOLD.

Before my balcony the great cataract is thundering, smoking, glittering with green and white rollers and rapids, hurling the waters of a whole continent in splendor and speed over the sharp ledges of the long, brown rock by which Erie, "the Broad," steps proudly down to Ontario, "the Beautiful."

The smaller but very imposing American Falls speaks with the louder voice of the two, because its coiling spirals of twisted and furious flood crash in full impulse of descent upon the talus of massive boulders heaped up at its foot.

The resounding impact of water on rocks, the clouds of water-smoke which rise high in the air, and the river below churned into a whirling cream of eddy and surge and backwater, unite in a composite effect, at once magnificent and bewildering.

Far away, Niagara River is seen winding eagerly to its prodigious leap. You can discern the line of the first breakers, where the river feels the fatal draw of the cataracts, its current seeming suddenly to leap forward, stimulated by mad desire, a hidden spell, a dreadful and irresistible doom.

Far back along the gilded surface of the upper stream, these lines of dancing, tossing, eager, anxious, and fate-impelled breakers and billows multiply their[Pg 364] white ranks, and spread and close together their leaping ridges into a wild chaos of racing waves as the brink is approached. And then, at the brink, there is a curious pause—the momentary peace of the irrevocable. Those mad upper waters—reaching the great leap—are suddenly all quiet and glassy, and appear rounded and green as the border of a field of young rye, at the moment when they turn the angle of the dreadful ledge and hurl themselves into the snow-white gulf of noise and mist and mystery underneath.

There is nothing more translucently green, nor more perennially still and lovely, than Niagara the greater. At this, her awful brink, the whole architrave of the main abyss gleams like a fixed and glorious work wrought in polished aquamarine or emerald. This exquisitely colored cornice of the enormous waterfall—this brim of bright tranquillity between fervor of rush and fury of plunge—is its principal feature, and stamps it as far more beautiful than terrible. Even the central solemnity and shudder-fraught miracle of the monstrous uproar and glory is rendered exquisite, reposeful, and soothing by the lovely rainbows hanging over the turmoil and clamor.

From its crest of chrysoprase and silver, indeed, to its broad foot of milky foam and of its white-stunned waves, too broken and too dazed to begin at first to float away, Niagara appears not terrible, but divinely and deliciously graceful, glad and lovely—a specimen of the splendor of water at its finest—a sight to dwell and linger in the mind with ineffaceable images of happy and grateful thought, by no means to affect it in seeing or to haunt it in future days of memory with any wild reminiscences of terror or of gloom.

THE DISCOVERY OF NIAGARA.

By JOHN GALT.

Among the earliest missionaries sent to convert the Indians to the Christian belief was Joseph Price, a young man who had received directions to penetrate farther into the vast forests which clothe the continent of America toward the north than had been at that time accomplished. In this hazardous undertaking he was accompanied by Henry Wilmington, who, actuated by the same religious motives, had volunteered to attend him.

They had been landed at Boston, then a very small but thriving village, about a month previous, where they made the necessary preparations for their expedition, and recruited themselves after a passage of thirteen weeks from Plymouth, for so long a passage was not uncommon in those times in traversing the Atlantic.

It was a fine morning in the latter end of May when they bade adieu to the inhabitants, by whom they had been hospitably entertained, and, accompanied by the good wishes of all, proceeded toward the hitherto unexplored forest.

The buds were now beginning to expand into leaves, and the sun was often darkened by the vast flocks of migratory pigeons, which, when the woods allowed, sometimes flew so close to the ground that the travelers could beat them down with their sticks. Before sailing from England they had often heard persons who had crossed the Atlantic mention this circumstance, but they suspected them of exaggeration until they witnessed it themselves.

It was their intention to visit a distant tract of country, of which nothing was known except vague reports of sheets of water so immense that, but for the circumstance of their being fresh, might have led them to suppose they were on an island. These reports were for the most part gathered from the Indians, on whose testimony little reliance could be placed, as none of their informers could speak from their own knowledge.

Into the Wilderness.

To aid them in their pursuit, they were provided with compasses and armed with fowling-pieces. They, directing their course toward the place to[Pg 365] which most of the Indians alluded, had, it is true, but slight grounds on which to rest their hopes of success; animated, however, with the desire of fulfilling what they had undertaken, they thought little of the difficulties which might attend it: accordingly, it was without regret that they were now leaving the settled part of the country.

Having traveled several days without seeing anything worthy of notice, they arrived at the ultimate farm they could expect to meet with before their return. After remaining there for the night, they continued their journey through the forest, which had most likely never been previously trodden by the feet of civilized man. The startled deer frequently crossed their path, and a few birds were the only objects that varied the silent solitude around.

Guided by their compasses, they continued their progress many days until they arrived at the banks of a large and rapid river, which they in vain attempted to pass, as its breadth and swiftness precluded the hope of their being able to swim across it.

After proposing many expedients, all of which they soon found to be impracticable, they determined on trusting themselves to some one of the many fallen trees which lay in every eddy along its banks; and having selected one whose branches lay in such a manner as would prevent it from turning over, they entwined boughs to form a small kind of basket, into which, having provided themselves with stout poles, they entered, taking care that neither their guns nor ammunition suffered from the water; they then steadily pushed it from the shore into the stream, and continued doing so until the water grew so deep that the poles were of no avail, and they were obliged to trust to Providence to carry them to the other side.

For some time they continued in the middle of the river, without inclining toward either bank, when they perceived that, by the help of the wind, they were quickly gaining on a large pine, which was slowly floating downward. On reaching it, they stretched out their poles with a great effort, and succeeded in pushing themselves into water where they could again find bottom.

After much labor, our travelers touched the bank, on which they quickly leaped, and having taken out their arms they continued their journey rejoicing.

A Battle of Stags.

They soon after arrived at a spot where they deemed it fit to wait till the following morning, and, it being their custom, they went out hunting in order to provide provision for the next day's wants, at that time easily accomplished, as the forests abounded with herds of deer, which, having been seldom disturbed, were exceedingly tame.

On this occasion they soon beheld a great number watching a furious encounter between two large bucks, which, with the utmost animosity, were endeavoring to gore each other. Surprised at a sight they had never before seen, they determined to await the result; and after some time one of the combatants, by an amazing leap, sprang past the other, and, swiftly turning round, drove his horns into the side of his adversary and instantly killed him.

The missionaries, running to the spot, frightened away the remainder of the herd, while they took possession of the fallen one, and, having taken what would serve them for several days, left the carcass to the wolves.

In about a week after, they reached a chain of mountains, where they rested for the night, and next morning proceeded to ascend their steep and sandy sides, up which they were enabled to drag themselves by grasping the trees; nevertheless, they were several times nearly precipitated into the gulf below.

Wilmington, on one occasion in particular, when they were ascending a very dangerous part of the mountain, inadvertently seized a rotten branch, which, giving way, caused him to be hurried downward to the very brink of a precipice, where he saved himself by catching hold of a projecting bough. Thus they advanced for the remainder of that day, in the evening of which they took advantage of a small space of level ground, to remain until the morning.

About noon they succeeded in gaining the summit of the ridge; and, in order that they might view the surround[Pg 366]ing country, they ascended a barren crag that reared itself high above the others; for, without having met with this, the trees would have excluded every prospect.

Climbed Tree to See Lakes.

Having reached its loftiest pinnacle, they turned their eager eyes to see if they could behold any traces of the mighty seas of fresh water which had been described to them by the Indians; but to their sorrow, as far as their sight could stretch, only vast woods met their anxious gaze.

While thus engaged, they sometimes heard the piercing cries of the hawk in pursuit of his prey; far under them, and among the trees, the drumming of the partridge and the tapping of the woodpecker could be clearly distinguished.

Being somewhat disappointed, they silently commenced wending their lonely way down the side of the mountain; but, notwithstanding their utmost exertions, they could not succeed in descending the range that evening, and were compelled by the approaching darkness to seek a spot where they might safely rest.

Early in the morning they awoke, and, continuing their descent with renewed energy, soon surpassed the formidable obstacle which the hills had opposed.

Having rested for the remainder of that day, they again began to cross the level country, and continued doing so for many days, without having seen a single human being since their departure from the farm, when, one day, in a glade of the woods, they saw a band of Indians among the trees, who, having approached, spoke in a pleasant but to them unknown language. Their gestures betokened their surprise at beholding people so different in color to themselves, and armed with what appeared to them only polished sticks.

While thus employed, a flock of wild geese flew high above their heads, at which the Indians discharged their arrows, but they fell short of their intended mark; when Price and Wilmington, raising their guns, fired, and to the astonishment of the natives two of the flock came fluttering to their feet.

The spectators crowded around the Europeans, and with much curiosity began to admire the weapons which they had formerly despised. Their wonder was not diminished when they saw what they imagined pounded cinders put into the muzzles of the guns, and then, on pulling a small piece of iron, a flash of fire, accompanied with smoke and a loud report, immediately followed.

The chief, by signs, appeared to ask them to accompany him, that the rest of his tribe might see what seemed to them exceedingly wonderful, and having followed him they soon arrived at a place where several Indians were engaged in erecting small wigwams of bark.

The chief, however, made them understand that this was only their hunting-ground, and told them that their village lay far off, in the direction of the sun, which was then sinking behind the trees, and to which they should soon return.

From this time the missionaries commenced learning the language of their entertainers, in which they were able to converse with some facility by the time that the Indians returned to their village, which was situated on the Oneida. Having arrived there, Price began to teach them; but they, having patiently listened to his first sermon, to his great sorrow, never assembled to hear him again; and, in consequence, he told Wilmington that he would try to discover whether there was any truth in the reports they had heard at Boston concerning the inland waters, and asked him if he was willing to be his companion.

Had Heard Great Roaring.

Wilmington assented, and having endeavored to inform the Indians of their intention, the chief, who had conducted them to the village, made them understand that the river which flowed past led to an immense basin, which they supposed was formed by the continual running of several large rivers, but that few of his tribe had ever paddled far round its borders.

There was, however, an old man who in his youth had ventured to proceed in his canoe for many suns along it, and returned with the report that he had arrived at an immense river which ran into the fresh sea, where, having landed for the purpose of hunting, he had heard a terrific roaring, as he thought, of[Pg 367] waters, and, advancing through the woods toward the sound, for some miles the stream became so rapid that no canoe could go up against it. Being very much alarmed, he had hurried back to his bark and instantly commenced his return; but he was the only one of the tribe who had ever dared to sail so far, and from his account they supposed it the source of the lake.

Having learned this, they asked the chief, whose name was Maiook, whether he would allow any of his Indians to accompany them down the river to the lake and ascertain from whence the sound that had alarmed the aged Indian arose. He at first tried to dissuade them by every argument in his power, but, finding his endeavors of no avail, he said that he would himself join them in their expedition. It was, therefore, agreed that they should sail down the river the week following; but, before the time determined on, an event occurred that considerably delayed their departure.

On rising one morning they remarked that large clouds of smoke were drifting over their heads, accompanied by an overpowering pressure of heat, which the Indians said was occasioned by the woods being on fire; and as the wind was high, showers of ashes frequently fell around them.

To avoid these, they took shelter in their wigwams, but the hotness of the air, together with the smoke, increased so much that, being in danger of suffocation, the chief proposed that they should cast themselves into the Oneida; and as no better proposition could be made, they hurried into it, and remained with only their heads above water, being often obliged to immerse them likewise. They were thus situated many hours, while the water was black with the ashes that fell around them.

First View of Lake Ontario.

The wind at last, to their great joy, changed, and relieved them from their perilous position, by driving the flames in the contrary direction. They did not, however, quit the water, as the ground was still covered with burning embers. On leaving the river, they saw, to their mortification, that the village was on fire in several places, and it was some time before they succeeded in stopping the progress of the burning; the canoes which they had drawn up on the shore were also consumed.

After repairing the damage and making other canoes, they began their expedition; and, having paddled for several days, one calm and beautiful evening they were astonished at the sight of Lake Ontario.

As far as the eye could reach they could only see what appeared to them boundless water, which lay without the slightest ripple on its glassy surface, undisturbed by the softest breath of wind. They then continued paddling round the shore, looking out for a place where they might safely moor their canoes during the night, and, among the many small inlets, they soon discovered one fitted for their purpose, which they immediately entered.

At sunrise they again advanced on their adventurous expedition. As they coasted along, the deer would sometimes look at them from among the thickets which fringed the borders of the lake; and at other times they saw them swimming across the mouths of the various creeks or rivers which they passed in their progress. They were, however, too much engaged in admiring the lonely magnificence of the surrounding scenery to interrupt the playful gambols of the deer by endeavoring to wound them, which they did only when their necessities compelled.

Thus they paddled onward for several days without perceiving anything that might lead them to suppose they were approaching the spot to which the old Indian had alluded, when one hazy morning, having proceeded many miles before the sun had power to dispel the thick mists, they were delighted at seeing themselves, as the air at noon cleared, about to enter a large river, which flowed rapidly into the lake.

As this in some measure coincided with the first part of what had been related to them, they determined on entering it; but after paddling up it for some time the current grew so strong that they were compelled to disembark and continue their journey by land on the edge of the high precipitous bank.[Pg 368]

The wind, softly blowing, rustled among the trees, but sometimes they fancied that a distant rumbling could be distinguished.

Having followed the course of the stream along the edge of the cliff for some distance, Price proposed that one of them should ascend a tree and follow the course of the river upward with his eye, and try if he could discover whence the sound that reached them arose.

Maiook, therefore, told one of his Indians to climb up a lofty pine which grew apart from the rest, and he had hardly ascended half-way when, uttering a cry of astonishment, he hastened to the ground and told his comrades that he had seen immense clouds of spray rising far above the trees, but he could not perceive from what cause they arose.

The Cataract at Last!

Encouraged by this report, after refreshing themselves (being much wearied by their toilsome march), they hastened along the edge of the cliffs, while the rushing sound that had been gradually increasing was every instant becoming more and more tremendous, and the velocity of the stream made them imagine that they were in the vicinity of a furious rapid, when, on advancing from the thick bushes, they suddenly found themselves on a bare ledge of rock which overhung an immense chasm into which two streams and a mighty river were tumbling with a noise that drowned all their exclamations of surprise, and which was louder than the voice of the ocean in a storm.

Springing back with terror from the edge of the precipice over which they had so nearly plunged, they eyed the thundering and foaming torrent with amazement, not noticing that part of the rock on which they had just been standing was tottering, and slowly separating itself from the adjoining mass, till they were roused by the crash with which it was precipitated into the gulf below, shaking the living rock from whence it had been detached, and resounding through the woods, far above the roaring of the stupendous cataract.

The missionaries involuntarily leaped back among the trees, not daring to return to the place where they had been, and viewed with more composure the awful prospect before them. The river above the falls was for some distance a furious rapid, rushing with incredible force toward the precipice; but when on its very brink it, in some parts of the great stream, became calm, other parts were white with foam.

While thus engaged, Maiook, with a loud cry, directed their attention to a large deer, which, in vain struggling against the overpowering suction of the falls, was rapidly coming to destruction. They watched its fruitless endeavors to reach the shore; but, on arriving at the deceitful calm, it looked wildly, with distended nostrils and outstretched neck, and seemed to be crying; but the roar of the cataracts drowned its voice, and it was soon precipitated into the boiling abyss.

The French, from the province of Quebec, may have reached as far before, but Price and his companion believed they were the first who had penetrated to that spot; and when they returned back to the settlements their description of the unparalleled magnificence of the cataracts to which Maiook gave the name of Niagara, or the thundering waters, was deemed incredible.

But the wilderness has now been banished, and festivity and commerce have there established themselves amidst the simple sublimity that distinguishes this, the most impressive spectacle of the kind to be seen on the whole earth.

[Pg 369]

THE GLORY OF THE CORN.

An Eloquent Appreciation of the Greatest and Most Typical of All the Agricultural
Staples of America, to Which Richard J. Oglesby, the Famous Old War
Veteran and Governor of Illinois, Gave Expression.

The corn! The corn! The corn, that in its first beginning and in its growth has furnished aptest illustration of the tragic announcement of the chiefest hope of man! If he die he shall surely live again. Planted in the friendly but somber bosom of mother earth, it dies. Yea, it dies the second death, surrendering up each trace of form and earthly shape until the outward tide is stopped by the reacting vital germs which, breaking all the bonds and cerements of its sad decline, come bounding, laughing into life and light, the fittest of all the symbols that make certain promise of the fate of man. And so it died, and then it lived again.

See it—look on its ripening, waving field. See how it wears a crown, prouder than monarch ever wore; sometimes jauntily, and sometimes, after the storm, the dignified survivors of the tempest seem to view a field of slaughter and to pity a fallen foe. And see the pendent caskets of the cornfield filled with the wine of life, and see the silken fringes that set a form for fashion and for art.

And now the evening comes, and something of a time to rest and listen. The scudding clouds conceal the half and then reveal the whole of the moonlit beauty of the night; and then the gentle winds make heavenly harmonies on a thousand thousand harps that hang upon the borders, and the edges, and the middle of the field of ripening corn, until my very heart seems to beat responsive with the rising and the falling of the long, melodious refrain. The melancholy clouds sometimes make shadows on the field and hide its aureate wealth; and now they move, and slowly into sight there comes the golden glow of promise for an industrious land.

Aye, the corn, the royal corn, within whose yellow hearts there is of health and strength for all the nations. The corn triumphant! That with the aid of man hath made victorious procession across the tufted plain and laid foundation for the social excellence that is and is to be. This glorious plant, transmitted by the alchemy of God, sustains the warrior in battle, the poet in song, and strengthens everywhere the thousand arms that work the purposes of life.

Oh, that I had the voice of song or skill to translate into tone the harmonies and symphonies and oratorios that roll across my soul when, standing, sometimes by day and sometimes by night, upon the borders of the verdant sea, I note a world of promise; and then before one-half the year is gone I view its full fruition and see its heaped gold await the need of man!

Majestic, fruitful, wondrous plant! Thou greatest among the manifestations of the wisdom and the love of God that may be seen in all the fields, or upon the hillsides, or in the valleys. Glorious corn that, more than all the sisters of the field, wears tropic garments. Nor on the shore of Nilus nor of Ind does Nature dress her forms more splendidly. My God, to live again that time, when half the world was good and the other half unknown![Pg 370]

And now again the corn! The corn, which in its kernel holds the strength that shall (in the body of the man refreshed) subdue the forest and compel response from every stubborn field; or, shining in the eye of beauty, make blossoms of her cheeks and jewels of her lips, and thus make for man the greatest of all inspirations to well-doing, the hope of companionship of that sacred, warm, and well-embodied soul, a woman.

OUR INTEREST IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

Among the Impressive Memorials in the Ancient Edifice in Which England Lays the
Bodies of Her Honored Dead Are Many That Possess
Peculiar Interest for Americans.

To be buried in Westminster Abbey, or to be honored there by a memorial bust or tablet, is one of the highest posthumous honors that can be accorded an Englishman. The noble old structure enshrines many of the good and the great; and it is gratifying to Americans that a number of their fellow countrymen are there remembered. In the Poets' Corner is a beautiful bust of Longfellow, set up in 1884 by English admirers of the poet.

Before the tomb of Major André the American visitor pauses, and doubtless he agrees with the inscription, which says that the ill-fated André was "lamented even by his foes." André's remains were taken to England in 1821 from Tappan, New York, where he was originally buried.

Another memorial of the Revolutionary War is a monument to the memory of William Wragg, of South Carolina. Wragg stuck to the fortunes of England when the colonies revolted. On his way to England he was drowned. The monument was erected by his sister in 1779. A very beautiful urn surmounts it, on which is pictured the incident of the shipwreck in which Mr. Wragg was drowned.

The visitor who does not penetrate to the remotest corner of the Abbey will look in vain for the James Russell Lowell memorial. It has been erected in the vaulted vestibule of the old chapter-house. This chapter-house is the most interesting feature of the entire Abbey. It is the oldest part of the building.

Originally the assembly-hall of the members of the convent and the scene of the floggings of the older monks, it became the meeting-place of the Commons soon after the separation of the two houses of Parliament, in the reign of Edward I, and it remained their meeting-place until they removed to the Chapel of St. Stephen, in the old Westminster Palace, in 1547.

The chapter-house itself is dark and gloomy. Far more so is the passageway which leads to it, and in the dimness of its obscurity one who looks closely will find a small tablet bearing the bust of James Russell Lowell in bas-relief. Above this tablet is a beautiful triple stained-glass window to the memory of Mr. Lowell, erected by his friends in England.

The tributes to Americans which appear in the Abbey are the tributes of their English friends and admirers. Colonel Joseph Lemuel Chester, an American little known to his countrymen, who edited the Westminster Abbey Register, figures among the distinguished dead. He was a native of Norwich, Connecticut, but lived for many years in London, and died there in 1882. The dean and chapter of Westminster erected the memorial to his memory.

Though the monuments in Westminster to Americans are the gifts of Englishmen, the old church of St. Margaret's, which stands close beside the Abbey, holds two memorials to famous Englishmen erected by Americans. These are a fine stained-glass window commemorating Sir Walter Raleigh, who was buried in St. Margaret's in 1618, and another beautiful window in honor of John Milton, whose second wife and infant child also rest in the church. The Milton window was erected by the late George W. Childs, of Philadelphia; the Raleigh memorial by several American subscribers.[Pg 371]

The Beginnings of Stage Careers.

By MATTHEW WHITE, Jr.

A Series of Papers That Will Be Continued from Month to Month
and Will Include All Players of Note.

BREESE EMULATED ANANIAS.

Former Farm Boy and Swimming Instructor
Told a Weird Yarn About Francis
Wilson to Get Behind Footlights.

Some very unusual experiences form the foundation-stones upon which rests the stage career of Edmund Breese, who has become widely known for his work as the Lion (a multimillionaire supposed to typify Rockefeller) in the season's success, "The Lion and the Mouse."

Breese was a Brooklyn boy, with no tinge of the theater in any of his forebears or surroundings. Before he reached his 'teens the members of his family were in the habit of making frequent trips to Atlantic City, via Philadelphia, where they had relatives, who now and then took young Edmund to the play.

On one of these journeys the boy chanced to spy a notice outside the Eleventh Street Opera House, where the Carncross Minstrels were holding forth. This announced that a number of boys were wanted for a certain production about to be made. Instantly young Breese was fired with the determination to apply for a job on the stage.

Presenting himself at the box-office he made known his desires. A man inside looked him over and said he thought he would do, and told him to present himself on a certain day in the following week. Breese returned home to Brooklyn all aglow with anticipation, informed his mother of his good luck, and—well, was made very clearly to realize that school and home and the keeping of early hours were his métier just then.

It was some little time after this stirring of the Thespian bug in his blood that he received another inoculation—also in the City of Brotherly Love. He saw Dore Davidson in a performance of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," and the characterization made such an impression on him that after he reached home he took the first opportunity of showing his mother a duplication of it.

At first she listened with the complaisant toleration of a parent anxious to appear interested in a child's enthusiasms, but presently young Breese became aware that she was following his depiction with absorbed attention.

"I really must have it in me to do something in the acting-line," he told himself.

Becomes a Farm Boy.

But soon after this a big change in his life occurred. He left Brooklyn and went West to study—what do you suppose? Nothing short of farming. It was decided that he should learn to become a tiller of the soil, although he had been born and brought up in a city.

At twenty dollars a month, then, he started in to milk the cows, do the chores and make himself generally useful about the place. But it did not take him long to discover that for a young fellow of eighteen, the prospects in such a life were not very illuminating.

Finally he decided to give it up, and he went to Kansas City, where he had a friend who obtained for him a post as bookkeeper in a mercantile establishment. He continued in this environment for several months, but one day he awoke to the fact that the more satisfactory he proved himself as a bookkeeper, the more likelihood there was that he would never rise to anything higher.

At this time he had twenty-one dollars in the bank, but it availed him little, as the bank failed. With what he had in his clothes, he set out for St. Louis, where he hadn't a friend, determined to find out if fate could not do something for him in a city so big as that.

Made a Swimming Instructor.

He was walking about the streets on his arrival, his hands in his almost empty pockets, wondering if anything would turn up for him or whether he was expected[Pg 372] to set to work and turn it, when his eyes were attracted by a gaudy advertising wagon, emblazoned on both sides with the announcement of a new swimming-school. The sight set a train of possibilities stirring in the youth's mind. He was a swimmer and a good one; he hadn't neglected his opportunities in having been reared so close to Coney's isle.

Noting the address of the swimming-school, he hunted out the place, obtained an interview with the manager, and set forth his own accomplishments with such success that he was forthwith engaged as one of the swimming-masters at a salary of four dollars a week. This was afterward increased to seven, and when one day he saved the life of a man who was drowning in the pool, he was raised to the munificent wage of ten dollars a week.

But now, in a city atmosphere again, the bug of acting began to stir within him once more. The sight of the billboards and of the theaters themselves, reawakened the old craving to strut behind the footlights. One day, in poring over the columns of the papers devoted to amusements, he came across the advertisement of one Lillian Graves, who desired a comedian to join the Wild Rose Company at Eureka Springs, Arkansas.

Breese determined to apply for the post, but as the advertisement requested that all applicants should state salary expected, he was stumped to know at what figure to rate his services, having, of course, no criterion by which to gage them. He consulted a friend in the swimming-school, who advised him to ask fifteen a week, and then come down to ten, if they kicked.

So Breese sat down and proceeded to concoct a letter which should have recommended him as a novelist, whatever might have been its merits as an application for a theatrical job. For fiction played the biggest part in its composition. He boldly stated (in reply to the ad's request for information as to experience) that he had been with Francis Wilson, with whom he had played important rôles, and he hoped that Miss Graves would consent to give him a trial.

Imagine the elation of the youth when back came the answer that he was engaged. He was directed to report in Eureka Springs at once. Arrived there, he discovered that his mention of Francis Wilson had filled his new employers with awe. He had been billed to play the leading rôle in "My Awful Dad" and everything in the outfit was supposed to revolve about him.

A reporter from the local paper waited upon him soon after his arrival, eager to interview a man who had consented to appear with so humble an organization as the Wild Rose after having played with Francis Wilson.

How He "Left Wilson."

"Why, Mr. Breese," asked the young scribe, "did you come to leave Wilson?"

This was a poser for the Münchausen who had never even been with the man whom "Erminie" had made famous.

"Well, you see it was this way," replied Breese, speaking slowly, so as to gain time to think. "There was a man named Plunkett in the company. He became a good friend of mine. He came to me one day and said, 'Breese, I want to warn you. You know you made a hit with the public and Wilson doesn't like it. In short, he is jealous, and is apt to make things very uncomfortable for you at a time when you are least prepared for it.' So I decided it was better for me to quit when I saw my way clear to make connections elsewhere."

The Eureka Springs reporter was duly impressed and went away to write up an article in which merit sidetracked through envy was the keynote. Meantime, Breese, who knew absolutely nothing about makeup, was floundering through his preparations for the evening, in which the learning of his lines was not the least of his troubles.

How he finally managed to "fix his face" he has no clear recollection. The one thing that stands out in his memory is a period midway in one of the early acts when he became conscious that he was absolutely ignorant of what he had either to say or do next.

In this emergency he suddenly remembered that he had been told that he, as the leading man, was to address the audience during the evening and tell them what the program was to be for the remainder of the week, as was the custom in repertoire companies. So what did he do, but step out of his character then and there, and, walking up to the footlights, start to apprise the spectators of what they would see if they came to the "opera house" during the other nights of the Wild Rose troupe's engagement.

As it happened, there was no second performance, and Breese has now no inkling of how that unhappy first one was ever brought to a conclusion. He does know, however, that he never received any pay for his services, that the company went smash then and there, and that the hotel held his trunk for board.[Pg 373]

By good luck he met a friend in the town who took him to his home to stay until he secured connection with another management, and began a legitimate career which brought him, by way of Danglas and Nortier in "Monte Cristo" with O'Neill, on through the Indian and the football trainer in "Strongheart," to Jefferson Ryder in "The Lion and the Mouse."

WAGER BROUGHT EDESON ON.

"Soldier of Fortune" Was in Box Office
Until His Employer's Lamentations
Drove Figures Out of His Head.

Although he is the son of an actor, this fact was the means of an attempt to keep Robert Edeson off the stage rather than an aid to him in getting on it. His father, George R. Edeson, who died while comedian and stage manager of the Philadelphia Girard Avenue stock company, in 1899, was so convinced that the actor's calling brought principally heart-sickness and disappointment that he used every means to dissuade his son from taking up with it.

As a sort of compromise, when young Robert finished school (he was born in New Orleans, and the family now lived in Brooklyn) he went into the front of the house and obtained a position with Colonel Sinn as guardian of the box-office at the Park Theater.

It was just nineteen years ago that Cora Tanner was booked to appear there in a new play, "Fascination." The first performance was set down for Monday night, and at a rehearsal on the Friday previous the player of a minor part failed to show up. He sent word that he was ill.

Colonel Sinn strolled into the box-office where young Edeson was trying to balance his accounts, and began to bemoan the ill luck of the thing. To a fellow engaged in the task of adding figures this running accompaniment of self-commiseration was not conducive to accuracy in the totals, So, finally, Edeson turned on his employer with the exclamation:

"Look here, Colonel Sinn, if you will keep quiet and allow me to straighten out this account in peace, I'll play that part."

Dazed into silence by this daring proposition, his employer remained speechless long enough to permit Edeson to complete his task. Taking his coat and hat, he was in the act of leaving the box-office when Colonel Sinn called after him:

"Young man, I'll bet you one hundred dollars you can't make good on that bluff."

"I'll go you," was Edeson's reply. "Get me a substitute here and give me the part."

Concerning the outcome, Edeson himself has since observed:

"I remember very little of that first performance. However, I believe I was not offensive and therefore was allowed to play the week out. The following season, not being able to come to terms with Colonel Sinn, I determined to adopt the stage as a profession and was fortunate enough to secure the juvenile part in a small company playing Daly's 'A Night Off.' Then came 'The Dark Secret,' in which the villains and myself were the only members of the company who escaped the tank."

A few seasons later he was with Charles Dickson in "Incog," which came to be called in the profession "the matrimonial play," as no less than four couples met their affinities while acting therein, viz.: Charles Dickson and Lillian Burkhardt, Louis Mann and Clara Lipman, Harry Davenport and Phyllis Rankin, and Mr. Edeson and Ellen Burg.

Ten years ago Mr. Edeson was in the Empire stock company, understudy to William Faversham, and making a particularly good impression when he played the latter's part in "Under the Red Robe," which ran so far into the spring that the leaders in the cast became tired out and left their parts to the next in line, Ida Conquest falling heir to Viola Allen's Renée.

The aftermath of the Spanish-American War nearly lost Edeson to the stage, as for a time he seriously thought of going to Porto Rico as the agent for a house selling sporting goods. Luckily he changed his mind and accepted a position as leading man in the splendid cast Amelia Bingham collected for "The Climbers."

This play, in the estimation of some critics, made Mr. Edeson, and in the winter of 1902 he became a star on his own account, with Augustus Thomas's dramatization of Richard Harding Davis's "Soldiers of Fortune" as the vehicle.

HITCHCOCK SOLD DRY GOODS.

His Original Assets Consisted of a Shirt,
a Pair of Shoes, a Trunk, and
Much Cheerful Impudence.

The other day I happened to run across Raymond Hitchcock at lunch in the Players' Club. I reminded him of the request I had made him for material with which to enrich this department of The Scrap Book.[Pg 374]

"Yes, you'll get it," he assured me, in that rugged intonation which does so much to infuse fun into his remarks on the stage, "I spent a good hour over the typewriter yesterday, pouring into it the story of my life. May you survive the reading thereof."

He had "poured" to such good purpose that not only did I survive the reading of his autobiography, but the screed itself was found worthy of survival in its original form, and I am giving it to the reader herewith.

The Actor's Own Story.

I came down from Auburn, New York, with twenty-five dollars in my clothes, and the "absolute certainty" that New York was clamoring for me—as I had been a hit in an amateur performance in Auburn and everybody said I "just ought to go on the stage." The twenty-five dollars was soon only a bright spot in my memory, and I found that, while I was well known in Auburn, not even the street-car drivers knew me in New York.

After a bit, I fell in with a fellow who was a regular "theatrical agency." He had just about as much money as I had, and as we were doubtful pay in the boarding-house where we were stopping, we were relegated to the attic, where we roomed together, at five per week, which was charged against us on Saturday night.

He took me over and introduced me to Colonel T. Allston Brown, who had an office on Union Square, and from his office I received my first postal-card telling me "to call." Of course, I applied for nothing but the "leading part." Knowing nothing of the business I, naturally, was a "leading man."

I called promptly. I think I was there a little early. The card said ten o'clock, but I think I got there at nine. I was engaged by a man by the name of Davidson to play in a Western drama the leading part, at a salary of twenty-five dollars per week. I packed a shirt and a pair of shoes in a trunk, which I managed to get hold of somehow, but just how I don't remember. I had come down to New York with only a satchel, and later had to leave my satchel for unpaid board.

When I arrived at rehearsal the next morning, I found it was a "ten-twent-thirt" repertory company, and that the Western drama had not yet been written. I was cast for Ingomar, Pygmalion, in "Pygmalion and Galatea"; Hardness Craig, in "The Colleen Bawn"; Hawkshaw, the detective, in "The Ticket-of-Leave-Man"; and George Markston, in "The Pink Domino."

I could see at a glance I was not suited for Ingomar, as I only weighed about one hundred and fourteen pounds, with the sun shining on me. In spite of all my confidence as to my ability as an actor, I could not see myself as Ingomar, and I don't think the management could either. I only rehearsed three days, when I found out that we were not suited to each other. Then, I was all alone in Philadelphia without a nickel.

I went to work in Wanamaker's store, stayed there a year, and then found myself once again on the street without a cent.

I made some acquaintances in the musical line while in Wanamaker's, and one of these chaps, knowing my desire to go on the stage, took me over to William T. Carleton, who was then rehearsing the opera "The Brigand." I applied as a chorus tenor, and was asked to sing the scales.

I got half-way up the ladder and went all to pieces, but informed Mr. Carleton that I had been ill, and after he had looked me all over he engaged me "on general appearances," so he told me, at sixteen dollars per week.

We went on the road doing one-night stands, and during such journeys on the train I used to play on the banjo and sing little songs which amused Mr. Carleton very much. He would frequently call me and ask me to get out the banjo and sing to him.

Takes Bigelow's Place.

Our first week's stand was in Montreal, and here the comedian, who was Charles A. Bigelow, was taken ill and unable to play. After having rehearsed all the possible understudies, and none of them being competent to take the rôle, it was first thought they would have to close the theater, when Mr. Carleton said: "Where is that chap who plays the banjo? I think he could do it."

I was, fortunately, blessed with a wonderful memory. I knew every song, every number of the music and every word of the dialogue in the opera; in fact, starting from the opening lines I could read it right through. They found me about half past five in the afternoon, and I went over to the theater.

Mr. Carleton met me, and came at me with the rather surprising question: "Can you play Bigelow's part?"

I said, "Yes, sir."

He said: "Do you want a rehearsal?" I said: "No, sir."

"All right," he said; "then be here at seven o'clock."[Pg 375]

I went on that night and never missed a number. In the middle of the performance, Mr. Carleton said to me:

"Now, let loose. Do anything you like."

Being exceedingly limber, I did a slide down the run, stumbling over everything, and made a hit from the start. From that time on I took liberties that no one else in the company dared.

Mr. Carleton was a very strict disciplinarian, but he always encouraged me to go ahead. After two or three years playing leading rôles in the principal opera companies, I determined to step forward and go after "the big things." So back to New York I came, still unknown.

After waiting around for three months, I decided that the world was against me; that a bright and shining light was being crushed. Also, that a law ought to be passed whereby no Englishman could come to this country and play.

Took Bull by the Horns.

I remember standing on the corner of Twenty-Eighth Street and Broadway, with my head just full of such anarchistic ideas, when something plainly said to me:

"If you are as darn good as you think you are, why don't you go out and get a job? There is room for every one."

I immediately walked over to the office of Jesse Williams, a dramatic agent, and said, "I want a job. I will play prima-donna rôles or old men's rôles. I want a job, and I don't care what it is."

He said, "I don't think I have anything for you."

"You MUST have something for me, and I have got to have it," I replied.

"Well, call around and see me later," said he.

"I will do anything, and if I am not all right, and don't prove satisfactory, it won't cost you a cent," I persisted.

"Well, you come around and see me to-morrow."

There was a little fat man sitting in the office—and he turned to me and said:

"Wait a minute."

Then he went over and had a talk with Mr. Williams.

Mr. Williams came out and said: "Mr. Hitchcock, this is Mr. Fred Miller, the composer of 'The Golden Wedding.'"

Mr. Miller then asked me if I could play the part of an English lord, and I said I did not know any one in the whole world who could play it any better than I could.

It was a little after twelve o'clock. Mr. Miller looked at his watch and said: "Can you catch the one o'clock train?"

"If it is necessary, I can catch the twelve o'clock train," I replied.

He then gave me a ticket to Boston, and a ten-dollar bill. It was so long since I had seen a ten-dollar bill I had to ask what it was. I caught the one o'clock train, and in two days was playing the part of Sir Tobin Tobax in "The Golden Wedding" before an enthusiastic audience in Worcester, Massachusetts, and from that time to the present day I have not asked for an engagement.

It is true I have been without ten-dollar bills—in fact, have been without most everything—except an engagement. I was a poor boy, and started out in life at three dollars per week in a shoe store. The first one-hundred-dollar-a-week engagement I ever had seemed like millions of money to me, so I never saved a cent.

I soon found out that I had to learn the value of money, and how true the old adage: "Any fool can make money, but it takes a wise man to save it." I wonder if I am growing wise?

SOME OF THE CHANCES OF MARRIAGE.

The minimum age at which marriage is permitted varies in different countries. In Spain, Switzerland, Hungary, and Greece a boy may marry at fourteen, a girl at twelve years of age. In Austria the age is fourteen for both sexes. In France, Belgium, and Germany the age is eighteen for a youth and fifteen for a girl, though the rule in Germany is modified by the special law in Saxony, where girls are required to be at least sixteen before marriage. The minimum in Russia is eighteen for the youth and sixteen for the girl.

A physician drew up an exhibit of the registered cases of 878 married women in France. Of that number there were married—

Of 878 women only three were married at thirty-six or later.[Pg 376]

A HOROSCOPE OF THE MONTHS.

BY MARION Y. BUNNER.

What the Old Astrological Traditions Say as to the Characteristics and the Destiny of
Those Born Under the Sign "Gemini."

Compiled and edited for The Scrap Book.

GEMINI: THE TWINS.
MAY 20 to JUNE 18.
CUSP: RUNS MAY 20 to MAY 26.

The constellation Gemini—the third sign of the zodiac—is the positive pole of the Air Triplicity, governing the shoulders, arms, and hands. It is a masculine, common, double-bodied, commanding sign. The higher attributes are reason and sensation.

A person born in the period of the cusp, when the sun is on the edge of the sign, does not receive the full benefits of the individuality of either sign, but partakes of the characteristics of both Gemini and Taurus.

Most Gemini persons have two natures, and these are of a contradictory character. They are affectionate, generous, courteous, and kind to all. They are endowed with probity, an accommodating disposition, a temper quickly irritated but just as quickly calmed. The sign gives its subjects natural inventive genius, and with it a love of science and a talent for commerce.

In judgment they can be relied upon to give a far-sighted view, supported by argument of a very clear and convincing nature. They are intensely aspiring and energetic; are great lovers of education, and set great value upon attainments in literature, science, and art. They take a practical and philosophical view of things.

The Gemini people are usually well-formed, of dark hair and bright complexion, with a round forehead, and a cold, but intellectual and restless expression of the eyes. The physical temperament is sanguine-bilious in a southern latitude, and bilious-nervous in a northern one.

The chief fault of this sign is impatience. Gemini people are prone to scatter their forces. They are continually finding fault, and they are prone to look upon the dark side of life.

The union of these with persons born under Aquarius or Virgo will be harmonious, and the offspring is usually very bright and quick of intellect. Children born in this sign should be associated with persons who are quiet and restful.

The governing planet is Mercury, and the gems are beryl, aquamarine, and dark-blue stones. The astral colors are red, blue, and white.

April and August are the lucky months for a Gemini subject, and Wednesday the fortunate day of the week. The ancient Hebrew tribe over which this sign rules is that of Issachar. The ruling angel of the sign is Ambriel. The floral emblem is the mayflower.

June, according to Ovid, was named in honor of Juno. Others connect the term with the consulate of Junius Brutus. Without doubt, it has an agricultural reference, and originally denoted the month in which crops grow to ripeness.

At the time of the Julian reform of the calendar its days were only twenty-nine. To these Julius Cæsar added the thirtieth. The Saxons had several names for the month of June. They called it "the dry month," "midsummer month," and in contradistinction to July, "the earlier mild month."

In modern times June has been called "the month of roses," and "the month of brides." There is an old rhyme to the effect that—

A prediction which, unfortunately, has not always been carried out.

The summer solstice occurs in June. The principal days now observed are: June 11, St. Barnabas; June 24, Midsummer Day (Nativity of St. John the Baptist); and June 29, St. Peter.

Jay Gould, born during the Gemini period, was a type of the mental ability and restless aspirations of this sign. Julia Ward Howe, Emerson, Margaret Fuller Ossoli, and Alexander Pope are excellent illustrations of the literary genius of Gemini people. Queen Victoria was born upon the cusp of the sign.