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ATLANTIC
CLASSICS
The Atlantic Monthly Company
Boston
COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY
TO
The Pleasantest of Companions,
Most Constant of Friends,
Who Seeks not Flattery but Counsel,
Provoked on Occasion only
And never Vexing beyond Endurance,
Wise with Ancient Wisdom,
And Fresh from the Fountain of Youth--
THE
ATLANTIC CONTRIBUTOR
Preface
This volume, composed of essays which on their appearance in the
_Atlantic_ have met with especial favor and which from their character
seem to deserve a longer life than the paper covers of a magazine
permit, is published out of deference to a multitude of requests. Many
readers have asked that this essay or that be preserved in permanent
form, while many teachers both in college and high school have written
us that the usefulness of the _Atlantic_ in the classroom would be
enhanced by the appearance of an edition which, selecting from the
selection already made from month to month, should constitute a kind of
_Atlantic Anthology_, preserving the magazine's flavor and character and
offering, as it were, a sample of what it aims to be.
To give to this collection that variety which is the spice of a
magazine's life, the editor has selected a single contribution from each
of sixteen characteristic _Atlantic_ authors, making his choice from
material not greatly affected by the interests of the moment. In two or
three instances appears an essay which has already been published in
some collection of an author's work, and the _Atlantic_ wishes to
acknowledge with thanks permission from Houghton Mifflin Company to
print once again Professor Sharp's delightful "Turtle Eggs for Agassiz,"
which has been included in his volume "The Face of the Fields," and Mr.
Nicholson's agreeable delineation of the "Provincial American"; while it
gratefully adds its acknowledgment to Henry Holt and Company for the
reappearance of Mr. Strunsky's "The Street," already published in his
inimitable little volume, "Belshazzar Court."
Our chief thanks, now and always, are due to the _Atlantic's_
contributors, to whom we owe all we have or hope for. Were not our
design limited, we should gladly enrich this collection with much
material from our file, which is quite as worthy to represent the
magazine, but which, for one reason or another, we judge less suitable
for the purposes of the present volume.
THE EDITOR.
Contents
FIDDLERS ERRANT _Robert Haven Schauffler_ 1
TURTLE EGGS FOR AGASSIZ _Dallas Lore Sharp_ 23
A FATHER TO HIS FRESHMAN SON _Edward Sanford Martin_ 45
INTENSIVE LIVING _Cornelia A. P. Comer_ 59
REMINISCENCE WITH POSTSCRIPT _Owen Wister_ 87
THE OTHER SIDE _Margaret Sherwood_ 110
ON AUTHORS _Margaret Preston Montague_ 124
THE PROVINCIAL AMERICAN _Meredith Nicholson_ 130
OUR LADY POVERTY _Agnes Repplier_ 153
ENTERTAINING THE CANDIDATE _Katharine Baker_ 173
THE STREET _Simeon Strunsky_ 181
FASHIONS IN MEN _Katharine Fullerton Gerould_ 201
A CONFESSION IN PROSE _Walter Prichard Eaton_ 225
IN THE CHAIR _Ralph Bergengren_ 243
THE PASSING OF INDOORS _Zephine Humphrey_ 252
THE CONTENTED HEART _Lucy Elliot Keeler_ 265
Fiddlers Errant
By Robert Haven Schauffler
I
MUSICAL adventures largely depend on your instrument. Go traveling with
a bassoon or clarionet packed in your trunk, and romance will pass you
by. But far otherwise will events shape themselves if you set forth with
a fiddle.
The moment I turned my back upon the humdrum flute and embraced the
'cello, that instrument of romance, things began happening thick and
fast in a hitherto uneventful life. I found that to sally forth with
your 'cello couchant under your arm, like a lance of the days of
chivalry, was to invite adventure. You tempted Providence to make things
interesting for you, up to the moment when you returned home and stood
your fat, melodious friend in the corner on his one leg--like the stork,
that other purveyor of joyful surprises.
One reason why the 'cellist is particularly liable to meet with musical
adventures is because the nature of his talent is so plainly visible.
The parcel under his arm labels him FIDDLER in larger scare-caps than
Mr. Hearst ever invented for headlines. It is seen of all men. There is
no concealment possible. For it would, indeed, be less practicable to
hide your 'cello under a bushel than to hide a bushel under your 'cello.
The non-reducible obesity of this instrument is apt to bring you
adventures of all sorts: wrathful sometimes, when urchins recognize it
as a heaven-sent target for snowballs; or when adults audibly quote Dean
Swift's asinine remark, 'He was a fiddler and therefore a rogue.'
Absurd, sometimes, as when the ticket-chopper in the subway bars your
path under the misapprehension that you are carrying a double-bass; and
when the small boys at the exit offer you a _Saturday Evening Post_ in
return for 'a tune on that there banjo.' But more often the episodes are
pleasant, as when your bulky trademark enables some kindred spirit to
recognize you as his predestined companion on impromptu adventures in
music.
I was at first almost painfully aware of my 'cello's conspicuousness
because I had abandoned for it an instrument so retiring by nature that
you might carry it till death in your side pocket, yet never have it
contribute an unusual episode to your career. But from the moment when I
discovered the exaggerated old fiddle in the attic, slumbering in its
black coffin, and wondered what it was all about, and brought it
resurrection and life,--events began. I have never known exactly what
was the magic inherent in the dull, guttural, discouraged protests of
the strings which I experimentally plucked that day. But their
songs-without-words-or-music seemed to me pregnant with promises of
beauty and romance far beyond the ken of the forthright flute. So then
and there I decided to embark upon the delicate and dangerous enterprise
of learning another instrument.
It was indeed delicate and dangerous because it had to be prosecuted as
secretly as sketching hostile fortifications. Father must not suspect. I
feared that if he heard the demonic groans of a G string in pain, or the
ghoulish whimperings of a manhandled A, he would mount to the attic,
throw back his head, look down upon me through those lower crescents of
his spectacles which always made him look a trifle unsympathetic, and
pronounce that baleful formula: 'My son, come into my study!' For I knew
he labored under the delusion that I already 'blew in' too much time on
the flute, away from the companionship of All Gaul, _enteuthen
exelaunei_, and Q.E.D. As for any additional instrument, I feared that
he would reduce it to a pulp at sight, and me too.
My first secret step was to secure a long strip of paper to be pasted on
the finger-board under the strings. It was all pockmarked with black
dots and letters, so that if the music told you to play the note G, all
you had to do was to contort your neck properly and remove your left
hand from the path of vision, then gaze cross-eyed and upside down at
the finger-board until you discovered the particular dot labeled G. The
next move was to clap your fingertip upon that dot and straighten out
your neck and eyes and apply the bow. Then out would come a triumphant
G,--that is, provided your fingers had not already rubbed G's
characteristically undershot lip so much as to erase away the letter's
individuality. In that case, to be sure, all your striving for G might
result only in C after all.
It was fascinating work, though. And every afternoon as the hour of
four, and father's 'constitutional,' approached, I would 'get set' like
a sprinter on my mark in the upper hall. The moment the front door
closed definitely behind my parent I would dash for the attic and
commence my cervical and ocular contortions. It was dangerous, too. For
it was so hard to stop betimes that one evening father made my blood run
cold by inquiring, 'What were you moaning about upstairs before dinner?'
I fear that I attributed these sounds to travail in Latin scholarship,
and an alleged sympathy for the struggles of the dying Gaul.
The paper finger-board was so efficacious that in a week I felt ready to
taste the first fruits of toil. So I insinuated a pair of musical
friends into the house one afternoon, to try an easy trio. They were a
brother and sister who played violin and piano. Things went so
brilliantly that we resolved on a public performance within a few days,
at the South High School. Alas, if I had only taken the supposed
rapidity of my progress with a grain of attic salt! But my only
solicitude was over the problem how to smuggle the too conspicuous
instrument to school, on the morning of the concert, without the
knowledge of a vigilant father. We decided at last that any such attempt
would be suicidal rashness. So I borrowed another boy's father's 'cello,
and, in default of the printed strip, I penciled under the strings notes
of the whereabouts of G, C, and so forth, making G shoot out the lip
with extra decision.
Our public performance was a _succès fou_,--that is, it was a _succès_
up to a certain point, and _fou_ beyond it, when one disaster followed
another. My fingers played so hard as to rub out G's lower lip. They
quite obliterated A, turned E into F, and B into a fair imitation of D.
These involuntary revisions led me to introduce the very boldest modern
harmonies into one of the most naïvely traditional strains of Cornelius
Gurlitt. Now, in the practice of the art of music one never with
impunity pours new harmonic wine into old bottles. The thing is simply
not done.
Perhaps, though, we might have muddled through somehow, had not my
violinist friend, during a rest, poked me cruelly in the ribs with his
bow and remarked in a coarse stage whisper, 'Look who's there!'
I looked, and gave a gasp. It might have passed for an excellent
rehearsal of my last gasp. In the very front row sat--father! He
appeared sardonic and businesslike. The fatal formula seemed already to
be trembling upon his lips. The remnants of B, C, D, and so forth
suddenly blurred before my crossed eyes. With the most dismal report our
old bottle of chamber music blew up, and I fled from the scene.
'My son, come into my study.'
In an ague I had waited half the evening for those hated words; and with
laggard step and miserable forebodings I followed across the hall. But
the day was destined to end in still another surprise. When father
finally faced me in that awful sanctum, he was actually smiling in the
jolliest manner, and I divined that the rod was going to be spared.
'What's all this?' he inquired. 'Thought you'd surprise your old dad,
eh? Come, tell me about it.'
So I told him about it; and he was so sympathetic that I found courage
for the great request.
'Pa,' I stammered, 'sometimes I think p'raps I don't hold the bow just
right. It scratches so. Please might I take just four lessons from a
regular teacher so I could learn all about how to play the 'cello?'
Father choked a little. But he looked jollier than ever as he replied,
'Yes, my son, on condition that you promise to lay the flute entirely
aside until you have learned _all_ about how to play the 'cello.'
I promised.
I have faithfully kept that promise.
II
Fiddlers errant are apt to rush in and occupy the centre of the stage
where angels in good and regular practice fear even to tune up. One of
the errant's pet vagaries is to volunteer his services in orchestras too
good for him. Not long after discovering that I would need more than
four lessons to learn quite all there was to know about the 'cello,--in
fact, just nine months after discovering the coffin in the attic,--I
'rushed in.' Hearing that _The Messiah_ was to be given at Christmas, I
approached the conductor and magniloquently informed him that I was a
'cellist and that, seeing he was he, I would contribute my services
without money and without price to the coming performance.
With a rather dubious air my terms were accepted. That same evening at
rehearsal I found that the entire bass section of the orchestra
consisted of three 'cellos. These were presided over by an inaudible,
and therefore negligible, little girl, a hoary sage who always arrived
very late and left very early, and myself. I shall never forget my
sensations when the sage, at a crucial point, suddenly packed up and
left me, an undeveloped musical Atlas, to bear the entire weight of the
orchestra on one pair of puny shoulders. Under these conditions it was a
memorable ordeal to read at sight 'The Trumpet Shall Sound.' The trumpet
sounded, indeed. That was more than the 'cello did in certain passages!
As for the dead being raised, however, that happened according to
programme.
After this high-tension episode, I pulled myself together, only to fall
into a cruel and unusual pit which the treacherous Händel dug for
'cellists by writing one single passage in that unfamiliar alto clef
which looks so much like the usual tenor clef that before the least
suspicion of impending disaster dawns, you are down in the pit,
hopelessly floundering.
I emerged from this rehearsal barely alive; but I had really enjoyed
myself so much more than I had suffered, or made others suffer, that my
initial impulse to rush at sight into strange orchestras now became
stereotyped into a habit. Since then what delightful evenings I have
spent in the old Café Martin and in the old Café Boulevarde where my
'cellist friends in the orchestras were ever ready to resign their
instruments into my hands for a course or two, and the leader always let
me pick out the music!
But one afternoon in upper Broadway I met with the sort of adventure
that figures in the fondest dreams of fiddlers errant. I had strolled
into the nearest hotel to use the telephone. As I passed through the
restaurant, my attention was caught by a vaguely familiar strain from
the musicians' gallery. Surely this was unusual spiritual provender to
offer a crowd of typical New York diners! More and more absorbed in
trying to recognize the music, I sank into an armchair in the lobby, the
telephone quite forgotten. The instruments were working themselves up to
some magnificent climax, and working me up at the same time. It began to
sound more and more like the greatest of all music,--the musician's very
holiest of holies. Surely I must be dreaming! My fingers crooked
themselves for a pinch. But just then the unseen instruments swung back
into the opening theme of the Brahms piano quartette in A major.
Merciful heavens! A Brahms quartette in Broadway? Pan in Wall Street?
Silence. With three jumps I was up in the little gallery, wringing the
hands of those performers and calling down blessings upon their
quixotism as musical missionaries. 'Missionaries?' echoed the leader in
amusement. 'Ah, no. We could never hope to convert those down there.' He
waved a scornful hand at the consumers of lobster below. 'Now and then
we play Brahms just in order that we may save our own souls.' The
'cellist rose, saluted, and extended his bow in my direction, like some
proud commander surrendering his sword. 'Will it please you,' he
inquired, 'to play the next movement?' It pleased me.
III
Fiddlers errant find that traveling with a 'cello is almost as good--and
almost as bad--as traveling with a child. It helps you, for example, in
cultivating friendly relations with fellow passengers. Suppose there is
a broken wheel, or the engineer is waiting for Number 26 to pass, or you
are stalled for three days in a blizzard,--what more jolly than to
undress your 'cello and play each of those present the tune he would
most like to hear, and lead the congregational singing of 'Dixie,'
'Tipperary,' 'Drink to me only,' and 'Home, Sweet Home'? A fiddle may
even make tenable one of those railway junctions which Stevenson cursed
as the nadir of intrinsic uninterestingness, and which Mr. Clayton
Hamilton praised with such _brio_.
But this is only the bright side. In some ways traveling with a 'cello
is as uncomfortable as traveling, not only with a baby, but with a
donkey. Unless indeed you have an instrument with a convenient hinged
door in the back so that you may pack it full of pyjamas, collars,
brushes, MSS, and so forth, thus dispensing with a bag; or unless you
can calk up its _f_ holes and use the instrument as a canoe on occasion,
a 'cello is about as inconvenient a traveling companion as the corpse in
R.L.S.'s tale, which would insist on getting into the wrong box.
Some idea of the awkwardness of taking the 'cello along in a sleeping
car may be gathered from its nicknames. It is called the 'bull-fiddle.'
It is called the 'dog-house.' But, unlike either bulls or kennels, it
cannot safely be forwarded by freight or express. The formula for
Pullman travel with a 'cello is as follows: First ascertain whether the
conductor will let you aboard with the instrument. If not, try the next
train. When successful, fee the porter heavily at sight, thus softening
his heart so that he will assign the only spare upper birth to your
baby. And warn him in impressive tones that the instrument is priceless,
and on no account to touch it. You need not fear thieves. Sooner than
steal a 'cello, the light-fingered would button his coat over a baby
white elephant and let it tusk his vitals.
I have cause to remember my first and only holiday trip with the
Princeton Glee, Mandolin, and Banjo Clubs. My function being to play
solos and to assist the Mandolin Club, I demanded for the 'cello an
upper berth in the special car. But I was overwhelmed with howls of
derision and assurances that I was a very fresh soph indeed. The first
night, my instrument reposed in some mysterious recess under a leaky
cooler, where all too much water flowed under its bridge before the
dawn. The second night it was compressed into a strait and narrow closet
with brushes and brooms, whence it emerged with a hollow chest, a stoop,
a consumptive quality of voice, and the malady known as _compressio
pontis_. Thereafter it occupied the same upper with me. Twice I overlaid
it, with well-nigh fatal consequences.
Short-distance travel with a 'cello is not much more agreeable. In
trolleys you have to hold it more delicately than any babe, and be ready
to give a straight-arm to any one who lurches in your direction, and to
raise it from the floor every time you jolt over cross-tracks or run
over pedestrians, for fear of jarring the delicate adjustment of the
sound-post. As for a holiday crush down town, the best way to negotiate
it with a 'cello is to fix the sharp end-pin in place, and then, holding
the instrument at charge like a bayonet, impale those who seem most
likely to break its ribs.
After my full share of such experiences, I learned that if you are a
fiddler errant it is better to leave your instrument at home and live on
the country, as it were, trusting to the fact that you can beg, borrow,
or rent some kind of fiddle and of chamber music almost anywhere, if you
know how to go about it.
IV
Only don't try it in Sicily!
For several months I had buried the fiddler in the errant pure and
simple, when, one sunset, across a gorge in Monte Venere, my first
strain of Sicilian music floated, to reawaken in me all the primeval
instincts of the musical adventurer. The melody came from the reed pipe
of a goat-herd as he drove his flock down into Taormina. Such a pipe was
perhaps to Theocritus what the fiddles of Stradivarius are to us. It was
pleasant to imagine that this goat-herd's music might possibly be the
same that used to inspire the tenderest of Sicilian poets twenty-three
hundred years ago.
Piercingly sweet, indescribably pathetic, the melody recalled the Largo
in Dvorák's New World Symphony. Yet, there on the mountain-side, with
Ætna rosy on the right, and the purple Mediterranean shimmering far
below, the voice of the reed sounded more divine than any English horn
or Boehm flute I had ever heard singing in the depths of a modern
orchestra. And I began to doubt whether music was so completely a
product of the last three centuries as it purported to be.
But that evening, when the goat-herd, ensnared by American gold, turned
himself into a modern chamber musician in our hotel room, I regained
poise. Removed from its properly romantic setting, like seaweed from the
sea, the pastoral stop of Theocritus became unmistakably a penny
whistle, with an intonation of the whistle's conventional purity. Our
captured Comatas seemed to realize that the environment was against him
and that things were going 'contrairy'; for he refused to venture on any
of the soft Lydian airs of Monte Venere, and confined himself strictly
to tarantellas, native dances, which he played with a magnificent
feeling for rhythm (if not for in-tuneness) while, with a pencil, I
caught--or muffed--them on the fly. One was to this effect:--
[Illustration: musical notation]
While this was going on, a chance hotel acquaintance dropped into the
room and revealed himself as a professor by explaining that the
tarantella was named for its birthplace, the old Greek city of Taranto
over yonder in the heel of the Italian boot; that dancing it was once
considered the only cure for the maddening bite of the spider known as
the Lycosa Tarantula; and that some of the melodies our goat-herd was
playing might possibly be ancient Greek tunes, handed down traditionally
in Taranto, and later dispersed over Calabria and Sicily.
This all sounded rather academic. But his next words sent the little
professor soaring in our estimation. He disclosed himself as a fiddler
errant by wistfully remarking that all this made him long for two
things: his violin, and a chance to play trios. Right heartily did we
introduce ourselves as pianist and 'cellist errant at his service. And
he and I decided to visit Catania next day to scout for fiddles and
music. We thought we would look for the music first.
Next day, accordingly, we invaded the largest music store in Catania.
Did they have trios for violin, violoncello, and piano? 'Certainly!' We
were shown a derangement of La Somnambula for violin and piano, and
another for 'cello and piano. If we omitted one of the piano parts, we
were assured, a very beautiful trio would result, as surely as one from
four makes three.
Finding us hard to please, the storekeeper referred us to the conductor
of the Opera, who offered to rent us all the standard works of chamber
music. The 'trios' he offered us turned out to be elementary pieces
labeled 'For Piano and Violin or 'Cello.' But nothing we could say was
able to persuade our conductor that 'or' did not mean 'and.' To this day
I feel sure that he is ready to defend his interpretation of this word
against all comers.
We turned three more music stores upside down and had already abandoned
the hunt in despair when we discovered a fourth in a narrow side street.
There were only five minutes in which to catch the train; but in thirty
seconds we had unearthed a genuine piece of chamber music. Hallelujah!
it was the finale of the first Beethoven trio!
Suddenly the oil of joy curdled to mourning. The thing was an
arrangement for piano solo! We left hurriedly when the proprietor began
assuring us that the original effect would be secured if the piano was
doubled in the treble by the violin and in the bass by the 'cello.
This piano solo was the nearest approach to chamber music that a
thorough search and research revealed in the island of Trinacria. But
afterwards, recollecting the misadventure in tranquility, we concluded
that it was as absurd to look for chamber music in Sicily as to look for
'Die Wacht am Rhein' among the idylls of Theocritus.
V
SCENE: a city composed of one department store and three houses, on the
forbidding shores of Newfoundland.
TIME: one of those times when a fellow needs a friend,--when he's in a
stern, strange land on pleasure bent--and has to have a check cashed. I
don't know why it is that one always runs out of ready money in
Newfoundland. Perhaps because salmon flies are such fleeting creatures
of a day that you must send many postal orders to St. Johns for more.
Perhaps because the customs officials at Port au Basques make you
deposit so much duty on your fishing tackle. At any rate, there I was
penniless, with the burly storekeeper scowling in a savage manner at my
check and not knowing at all whether to take a chance on it. Finally he
thought he wouldn't, but conceded that I might spend a night under his
roof, as there was really nowhere else to go.
At this pass something made me think of music. Perhaps it was the parlor
piano which, when new, back in the stone age, had probably been in tune.
I inquired whether there were any other instruments. The wreckage of a
violin was produced. With two pieces of string and a table fork I set up
the prostrate sound-post. I glued together the bridge and put it in
position. The technique of the angler proved helpful in splicing
together some strange-looking strings. The A was eked out with a piece
of salmon leader, while an old mandolin yielded a wire E.
When all was at last ready, a fresh difficulty occurred to me. The
violin was an instrument which I had never learned to play! But
necessity is the mother of pretension. I thought of that check. And
placing the small fiddle carefully between my knees, I pretended that it
was a 'cello.
So the daughter of the house seated herself at the relic of the stone
age, and we had a concert. Newfoundland appeared not to be over-finicky
in the matter of pitch and tone-quality. And how it did enjoy music! As
the audience was of Scotch-English-Irish descent, we rendered equal
parts of 'Comin' Through the Rye,' 'God Save the King,' and 'Kathleen
Mavourneen.' Then the proprietor requested the Sextette from _Lucia_.
While it was forthcoming he toyed furtively with his bandana. When it
ceased he encored it with all his might. Then he slipped out storewards
and presently returned with the fattest, blackest, most
formidable-looking cigar I ever saw, which he gravely proffered me.
'We like' he remarked in his quaint idiom, 'to hear music at scattered
times.' He was trying to affect indifference. But his gruff voice shook,
and I knew then that music hath charms to cash the savage check.
VI
This essay has rambled on an unconscionable while. The shades of
editorial night are already descending; and still I have not yet
described one of those unexpected and perfect orgies of chamber
music,--one of those little earthly paradises full of
Soul-satisfying strains--alas! too few,--
which true fiddlers errant hope to find in each new place they visit,
but which usually keep well in advance of them, like the foot of the
rainbow.
One such adventure came to me not long ago in a California city, while I
was gathering material for a book of travel. On my first evening there I
was taken to dine with a well-known writer in his beautiful home, which
he had built with his own two hands in the Spanish mission style during
fourteen years of joyous labor. This gentleman had no idea that I was to
be thrust upon him. But his hospitality went so far as to insist, before
the evening was over, that I must stay a week. He would not take no for
an answer. And for my part I had no desire to say no, because he was a
delightful person, his home with its leaf-filled patio was most
alluring, and I had discovered promising possibilities for fiddlers
errant in the splendid music-room and the collection of phonograph
records of Indian music which mine host had himself made in Arizona and
New Mexico. Then too there were rumors of skillful musical vagabonds in
the vicinity.
Such an environment fairly cried aloud for impromptu fiddling. So, armed
with a note to the best violinist in that part of California, I set
forth next morning on the trail of the ideal orgy. At the address given
I was told that my man had moved and his address was not known. That was
a setback, indeed! But determined fiddlers errant usually land on their
feet. On the way back I chanced to hear some masterly strains of
Bach-on-the-violin issuing from a brown bungalow. And ringing at a
venture I was confronted by the very man I sought.
Blocking the doorway, he read the note, looking as bored as
professionals usually do when asked to play with amateurs. But just as
he began to tell me how busy he was and how impossible, and so forth, he
happened to glance again at the envelope, and a very slight gleam came
into his eye.
'You're not by any chance the fellow who wrote that thing about fiddlers
in the _Atlantic_, are you?' he inquired. At my nod he very flatteringly
unblocked the doorway and dragged me inside, pumping my hand up and down
in a painful manner, shouting for his wife, and making various kind
representations, all at the same time. And his talk gradually simmered
down into an argument that of course the only thing to do was to fiddle
together that very night.
I asked who had the best 'cello in town. He told me the man's name, but
looked dubious. 'The trouble is, he loves that big Amati as if it were
twins. I doubt if he could bring himself to lend it to any one. Anyway,
let's try.'
He scribbled a card to his 'cellist friend and promised, if I were
successful, to bring along a good pianist and play trios in the evening.
So I set forth on the trail of the Amati. Its owner had just finished
his noonday stint in a hotel orchestra and looked somewhat tired and
cross. He glanced at the card and then assumed a most conservative
expression and tried to fob off on me a cheap 'cello belonging to one of
his pupils, which sounded very much as a three-cent cigar tastes. At
this point I gave him the secret thumb-position grip and whispered into
his ear one of those magic pass words of the craft which in a trice
convinced him that I was in a position to dandle a 'cello with as tender
solicitude as any man alive. On my promising, moreover, to taxicab it
both ways with the sacred burden, he passed the Amati over, and the orgy
of fiddlers errant was assured.
And that night how those beautiful Spanish walls did resound to
Beethoven and Dvorák and Brahms, most originally interspersed with the
voice of the Mexican servant's guitar, with strange, lovely songs of the
aboriginal West and South,--and with the bottled sunshine of Californian
hill-slopes; while El Alcalde Maiore, the lone gnarled tree-giant that
filled the patio, looked in through the open windows and contributed, by
way of accompaniment, leafy arpeggios _sotto voce_. And sometimes,
during rests, I remembered to be thankful that I had once snapped my
fingers at the howling wolf, and at fat pot-boilers, while I scribbled
for the _Atlantic_ that little essay on fiddlers which had gained me
this priceless evening.
Turtle Eggs for Agassiz
By Dallas Lore Sharp
It is one of the wonders of the world that so few books are written.
With every human being a possible book, and with many a human being
capable of becoming more books than the world could contain, is it not
amazing that the books of men are so few? and so stupid!
I took down, recently, from the shelves of a great public library, the
four volumes of Agassiz's _Contributions to the Natural History of the
United States_. I doubt if anybody but the charwoman, with her duster,
had touched those volumes for twenty-five years. They are an excessively
learned, a monumental, an epoch-making work, the fruit of vast and
heroic labors, with colored plates on stone, showing the turtles of the
United States, and their embryology. The work was published more than
half a century ago (by subscription); but it looked old beyond its
years--massive, heavy, weathered, as if dug from the rocks. It was
difficult to feel that Agassiz could have written it--could have built
it, grown it, for the laminated pile had required for its growth, the
patience and painstaking care of a process of nature, as if it were a
kind of printed coral reef. Agassiz do this? The big, human, magnetic
man at work upon these pages of capital letters, Roman figures,
brackets, and parentheses in explanation of the pages of diagrams and
plates! I turned away with a sigh from the weary learning, to read the
preface.
When a great man writes a great book he usually flings a preface after
it, and thereby saves it, sometimes, from oblivion. Whether so or not,
the best things in most books are their prefaces. It was not, however,
the quality of the preface to these great volumes that interested me,
but rather the wicked waste of durable book-material that went to its
making. Reading down through the catalogue of human names and of thanks
for help received, I came to a sentence beginning:--
'In New England I have myself collected largely; but I have also
received valuable contributions from the late Rev. Zadoc Thompson of
Burlington; ... from Mr. D. Henry Thoreau of Concord; ... and from Mr.
J. W. P. Jenks of Middleboro'.' And then it hastens on with the thanks
in order to get to the turtles, as if turtles were the one and only
thing of real importance in all the world.
Turtles no doubt are important, extremely important, embryologically, as
part of our genealogical tree; but they are away down among the roots
of the tree as compared with the late Rev. Zadoc Thompson of Burlington.
I happen to know nothing about the Rev. Zadoc, but to me he looks very
interesting. Indeed any reverend gentleman of his name and day who would
catch turtles for Agassiz must have been interesting. And as for Henry
Thoreau, we know he was interesting. The rarest wood-turtle in the
United States was not so rare a specimen as this gentleman of Walden
Woods and Concord. We are glad even for this line in the preface about
him; glad to know that he tried, in this untranscendental way, to serve
his day and generation. If Agassiz had only put a chapter in his turtle
book about it! But this is the material he wasted, this and more of the
same human sort, for the Mr. Jenks of Middleboro' (at the end of the
quotation) was, years later, an old college professor of mine, who told
me some of the particulars of his turtle contributions, particulars
which Agassiz should have found a place for in his big book. The preface
says merely that this gentleman sent turtles to Cambridge by the
thousands--brief and scanty recognition. For that is not the only thing
this gentleman did. On one occasion he sent, not turtles, but turtle
_eggs_ to Cambridge--_brought_ them, I should say; and all there is to
show for it, so far as I could discover, is a sectional drawing of a bit
of the mesoblastic layer of one of the eggs!
Of course, Agassiz wanted to make that mesoblastic drawing, or some
other equally important drawing, and had to have the fresh turtle egg to
draw it from. He had to have it, and he got it. A great man, when he
wants a certain turtle egg, at a certain time, always gets it, for he
gets someone else to get it. I am glad he got it. But what makes me sad
and impatient is that he did not think it worth while to tell about the
getting of it, and so made merely a learned turtle book of what might
have been an exceedingly interesting human book.
It would seem, naturally, that there could be nothing unusual or
interesting about the getting of turtle eggs when you want them. Nothing
at all, if you should chance to want the eggs as you chance to find
them. So with anything else,--good copper stock, for instance, if you
should chance to want it, and should chance to be along when they chance
to be giving it away. But if you want copper stock, say of C & H
quality, _when_ you want it, and are bound to have it, then you must
command more than a college professor's salary. And likewise, precisely,
when it is turtle eggs that you are bound to have.
Agassiz wanted those turtle eggs when he wanted them--not a minute over
three hours from the minute they were laid. Yet even that does not seem
exacting, hardly more difficult than the getting of hen eggs only three
hours old. Just so, provided the professor could have had his private
turtle-coop in Harvard Yard; and provided he could have made his
turtles lay. But turtles will not respond, like hens, to meat-scraps and
the warm mash. The professor's problem was not to get from a mud
turtle's nest in the back yard to the table in the laboratory; but to
get from the laboratory in Cambridge to some pond when the turtles were
laying, and back to the laboratory within the limited time. And this, in
the days of Darius Green, might have called for nice and discriminating
work--as it did.
Agassiz had been engaged for a long time upon his _Contributions_. He
had brought the great work nearly to a finish. It was, indeed, finished
but for one small yet very important bit of observation: he had carried
the turtle egg through every stage of its development with the single
exception of one--the very earliest--that stage of first cleavages, when
the cell begins to segment, immediately upon its being laid. That
beginning stage had brought the _Contributions_ to a halt. To get eggs
that were fresh enough to show the incubation at this period had been
impossible.
There were several ways that Agassiz might have proceeded: he might have
got a leave of absence for the spring term, taken his laboratory to some
pond inhabited by turtles, and there camped until he should catch the
reptile digging out her nest. But there were difficulties in all of
that--as those who are college professors and naturalists know. As this
was quite out of the question, he did the easiest thing--asked Mr.
Jenks of Middleboro' to get him the eggs. Mr. Jenks got them. Agassiz
knew all about his getting of them; and I say the strange and irritating
thing is, that Agassiz did not think it worth while to tell us about it,
at least in the preface to his monumental work.
It was many years later that Mr. Jenks, then a gray-haired college
professor, told me how he got those eggs to Agassiz.
'I was principal of an academy, during my younger years,' he began, 'and
was busy one day with my classes, when a large man suddenly filled the
door-way of the room, smiled to the four corners of the room, and called
out with a big, quick voice that he was Professor Agassiz.
'Of course he was. I knew it, even before he had had time to shout it to
me across the room.
'Would I get him some turtle eggs? he called. Yes, I would. And would I
get them to Cambridge within three hours from the time they were laid?
Yes, I would. And I did. And it was worth the doing. But I did it only
once.
'When I promised Agassiz those eggs I knew where I was going to get
them. I had got turtle eggs there before--at a particular patch of sandy
shore along a pond, a few miles distant from the academy.
'Three hours was the limit. From the railroad station to Boston was
thirty-five miles; from the pond to the station was perhaps three or
four miles; from Boston to Cambridge we called about three miles. Forty
miles in round numbers! We figured it all out before he returned, and
got the trip down to two hours,--record time:--driving from the pond to
the station; from the station by express train to Boston; from Boston by
cab to Cambridge. This left an easy hour for accidents and delays.
'Cab and car and carriage we reckoned into our time-table; but what we
didn't figure on was the turtle.' And he paused abruptly.
'Young man,' he went on, his shaggy brows and spectacles hardly hiding
the twinkle in the eyes that were bent severely upon me, 'young man,
when _you_ go after turtle eggs, take into account the turtle. No! no!
that's bad advice. Youth never reckons on the turtle--and youth seldom
ought to. Only old age does that; and old age would never have got those
turtle eggs to Agassiz.
'It was in the early spring that Agassiz came to the academy, long
before there was any likelihood of the turtles laying. But I was eager
for the quest, and so fearful of failure, that I started out to watch at
the pond, fully two weeks ahead of the time that the turtles might be
expected to lay. I remember the date clearly: it was May 14.
'A little before dawn--along near three o'clock--I would drive over to
the pond, hitch my horse near by, settle myself quietly among some
thick cedars close to the sandy shore, and there I would wait, my kettle
of sand ready, my eye covering the whole sleeping pond. Here among the
cedars I would eat my breakfast, and then get back in good season to
open the academy for the morning session.
'And so the watch began.
'I soon came to know individually the dozen or more turtles that kept to
my side of the pond. Shortly after the cold mist would lift and melt
away, they would stick up their heads through the quiet water; and as
the sun slanted down over the ragged rim of tree-tops, the slow things
would float into the warm, lighted spots, or crawl out and doze
comfortably on the hummocks and snags.
'What fragrant mornings those were! How fresh and new and unbreathed!
The pond odors, the woods odors, the odors of the ploughed fields--of
water-lily, and wild grape, and the dew-laid soil! I can taste them yet,
and hear them yet--the still, large sounds of the waking day--the
pickerel breaking the quiet with his swirl; the kingfisher dropping
anchor; the stir of feet and wings among the trees. And then the thought
of the great book being held up for me! Those were rare mornings!
'But there began to be a good many of them, for the turtles showed no
desire to lay. They sprawled in the sun, and never one came out upon the
sand as if she intended to help on the great professor's book. The
embryology of her eggs was of small concern to her; her contribution to
the Natural History of the United States could wait.
'And it did wait. I began my watch on the 14th of May; June first found
me still among the cedars, still waiting, as I had waited every morning,
Sundays and rainy days alike. June first was a perfect morning, but
every turtle slid out upon her log, as if egg-laying might be a matter
strictly of next year.
'I began to grow uneasy,--not impatient yet, for a naturalist learns his
lesson of patience early, and for all his years; but I began to fear
lest, by some subtile sense, my presence might somehow be known to the
creatures; that they might have gone to some other place to lay, while I
was away at the school-room.
'I watched on to the end of the first week, on to the end of the second
week in June, seeing the mists rise and vanish every morning, and along
with them vanish, more and more, the poetry of my early morning vigil.
Poetry and rheumatism cannot long dwell together in the same clump of
cedars, and I had begun to feel the rheumatism. A month of morning mists
wrapping me around had at last soaked through to my bones. But Agassiz
was waiting, and the world was waiting, for those turtle eggs; and I
would wait. It was all I could do, for there is no use bringing a china
nest-egg to a turtle; she is not open to any such delicate suggestion.
'Then came a mid-June Sunday morning, with dawn breaking a little after
three: a warm, wide-awake dawn, with the level mist lifted from the
level surface of the pond a full hour higher than I had seen it any
morning before.
'This was the day: I knew it. I have heard persons say that they can
hear the grass grow; that they know by some extra sense when danger is
nigh. That we have these extra senses I fully believe, and I believe
they can be sharpened by cultivation. For a month I had been watching,
brooding over this pond, and now I knew. I felt a stirring of the pulse
of things that the cold-hearted turtles could no more escape than could
the clods and I.
'Leaving my horse unhitched, as if he, too, understood, I slipped
eagerly into my covert for a look at the pond. As I did so, a large
pickerel ploughed a furrow out through the spatter-docks, and in his
wake rose the head of an enormous turtle. Swinging slowly around, the
creature headed straight for the shore, and without a pause, scrambled
out on the sand.
'She was about the size of a big scoop-shovel; but that was not what
excited me, so much as her manner, and the gait at which she moved; for
there was method in it and fixed purpose. On she came, shuffling over
the sand toward the higher open fields, with a hurried, determined
see-saw that was taking her somewhere in particular, and that was bound
to get her there on time.
'I held my breath. Had she been a dinosaurian making Mesozoic
footprints, I could not have been more fearful. For footprints in the
Mesozoic mud, or in the sands of time, were as nothing to me when
compared with fresh turtle eggs in the sands of this pond.
'But over the strip of sand, without a stop, she paddled, and up a
narrow cow-path into the high grass along a fence. Then up the narrow
cow-path, on all fours, just like another turtle, I paddled, and into
the high, wet grass along the fence.
'I kept well within sound of her, for she moved recklessly, leaving a
trail of flattened grass a foot and a half wide. I wanted to stand
up,--and I don't believe I could have turned her back with a rail,--but
I was afraid if she saw me that she might return indefinitely to the
pond; so on I went, flat to the ground, squeezing through the lower
rails of the fence, as if the field beyond were a melon-patch. It was
nothing of the kind, only a wild, uncomfortable pasture, full of
dewberry vines, and very discouraging. They were excessively wet vines
and briery. I pulled my coat-sleeves as far over my fists as I could get
them, and with the tin pail of sand swinging from between my teeth to
avoid noise, I stumped fiercely, but silently, on after the turtle.
'She was laying her course, I thought, straight down the length of this
dreadful pasture, when, not far from the fence, she suddenly hove to,
warped herself short about, and came back, barely clearing me, at a clip
that was thrilling. I warped about, too, and in her wake bore down
across the corner of the pasture, across the powdery public road, and on
to a fence along a field of young corn.
'I was somewhat wet by this time, but not so wet as I had been before,
wallowing through the deep, dry dust of the road. Hurrying up behind a
large tree by the fence, I peered down the corn-rows and saw the turtle
stop, and begin to paw about in the loose, soft soil. She was going to
lay!
'I held on to the tree and watched, as she tried this place, and that
place, and the other place--the eternally feminine!--But _the_ place,
evidently, was hard to find. What could a female turtle do with a whole
field of possible nests to choose from? Then at last she found it, and
whirling about, she backed quickly at it, and, tail first, began to bury
herself before my staring eyes.
'Those were not the supreme moments of my life; perhaps those moments
came later that day; but those certainly were among the slowest, most
dreadfully mixed of moments that I ever experienced. They were hours
long. There she was, her shell just showing, like some old hulk in the
sand alongshore. And how long would she stay there? and how should I
know if she had laid an egg?
'I could still wait. And so I waited, when, over the freshly awakened
fields, floated four mellow strokes from the distant town clock.
'Four o'clock! Why, there was no train until seven! No train for three
hours! The eggs would spoil! Then with a rush it came over me that this
was Sunday morning, and there was no regular seven o'clock train,--none
till after nine.
'I think I should have fainted had not the turtle just then begun
crawling off. I was weak and dizzy; but there, there in the sand, were
the eggs! and Agassiz! and the great book! And I cleared the fence, and
the forty miles that lay between me and Cambridge, at a single jump. He
should have them, trains or no. Those eggs should go to Agassiz by seven
o'clock, if I had to gallop every mile of the way. Forty miles! Any
horse could cover it in three hours, if he had to; and upsetting the
astonished turtle, I scooped out her round, white eggs.
'On a bed of sand in the bottom of the pail I laid them, with what care
my trembling fingers allowed; filled in between them with more sand; so
with another layer to the rim; and covering all smoothly with more sand,
I ran back for my horse.
'That horse knew, as well as I, that the turtles had laid, and that he
was to get those eggs to Agassiz. He turned out of that field into the
road on two wheels, a thing he had not done for twenty years, doubling
me up before the dashboard, the pail of eggs miraculously lodged between
my knees.