Momong, Ipi, and Cadio, who will nominate you as the candidate of our
party for the coming election," said Ittong. "I thank you for your
kindness," said Andong, and bade good-bye to his future advocate,
Ittong.
Andong was nominated as the candidate of Ittong's party for
gobernadorcillo. Ambeng, the candidate of the opposing party, was more
popular than Ittong, consequently he was more sure to succeed in the
coming election. The critical day was approaching. Many of the cabezas
de barangay went to pay their contributions to the municipal treasurer,
in order to be allowed to vote. On the eve of the election the drum
of the tribunal never stopped beating and the voters of the town kept
flocking to the polling-place. On the morning of the election, all
the principales in their holiday dresses awaited the governor at the
tribunal. When the governor came, they took off their hats and followed
him. They entered the tribunal, and sat around a long table, presided
over by the governor. Before beginning the election, the governor
delivered a short speech of welcome and he emphasized that they
must elect that man who was rich, honest, and capable. After a long
discussion, Ambeng was elected by a big majority.
Andong was disappointed and disgusted over his defeat. But while
Ambeng's party was still celebrating their triumph the governor of the
province received a telegram from the central government, announcing
Andong's nomination as gobernadorcillo of Tuao. Ambeng was elected by
the people, but Andong had been recommended to the governor-general by
the curate of the town, the governor of the province, and the chief of
the _guardia civil_; so Andong was appointed to the office he sought.
On the day of Andong's possession, the people of Tuao held a holiday in
his honor. There was a land parade in which all the princapales of the
town took part. After the parade, Andong went to the tribunal to take
his oath before the justice of the peace. After this ceremony the chief
of police read his administrative program, in which he obliged every
one of his people to go to mass on Sundays and holidays, and prohibited
gambling, drunkenness, and stealing.
Time flew. After three months' administration, Andong became worried
over his business; for he was compelled to visit every day his
superiors, and to go to mass on Sundays and holidays. However, he was
a zealous ruler. He organized a militia. He succeeded in pacifying the
Igorrotes, who were fighting one another, and he caught many of the
bandits, who were ravaging the neighboring towns.
Everything was going all right, when, unexpectedly, Andong received an
order from the court of justice to appear before the judge to answer
all the complaints of the people about his abuses in the government.
Andong, before going to court went to see Ittong, his old advocate.
Ittong advised him not to be afraid. "Call officially your witnesses,"
he said, "and tell them that you will put them into prison if they
declare against you." The wind was strong against Andong. Nobody
could save him from his trouble. The prison was awaiting him. Andong
was perplexed; he did not know what to do. While he was looking at
the neighboring mountains, a wise thought came to his mind. "I will
go and live in those woods with the Igorrotes, rather than to suffer
the oppression of my superiors and the hatred of my own people!" he
exclaimed. Meanwhile, he received an urgent despatch from a friend,
announcing that the government had discharged him from his office, and
had sentenced him to be put into prison. Immediately, Andong and one
of his servants fled from Tuao and sought refuge in the neighboring
forests, there to live like wild men, with no ambition above that of
the brute, caring only for their next meal, but harboring in their
hearts a deadly hatred of Spanish rule.
--Justo E. Avila.
PART II
NARRATIVES OF ACTUAL EVENTS
CHAPTER VII
PARTICULAR ACCOUNTS
The second large division heading explains itself. In an atmosphere
of facts all the true narrative types stand. Whether these types are
used as retainers of truth only is another question. Manifestly they
are not. Manifestly there is much fiction that succeeds merely because
it is cast in the true story mold. But the concern of the writer who
chooses any one of these forms is to pour truth into it, whether the
truth be historical actualities or only artistic probabilities.
It is more helpful to consider the types on their simplest basis;
hence in a study like this, one would assume for content always
real happenings. The necessity that the story go unquestioned does
not, however, excuse the recorder of actual events from using his
imagination. Indeed, only by using it can he come to write true history
or true biography. Without "the inward eye" one cannot see the past.
Without sympathy--which is another word for imagination--one cannot
know his fellowman. A biographer, an historian, above all else should
be able to see the unseen, not the unseen of the unreal, but the unseen
of the real, a vastly different thing! The two are exact opposites,
the what-is and the what-was set over against the what-was-not and the
what-could-not-be.
In this chapter five types of narratives of actual events are grouped
as particular accounts, or adventitious history, in contrast with
continuous personal history, and continuous impersonal, or community
history.
Particular accounts have to do with those small happenings that seem
to come by chance, those events that form, as it were, complete and
detachable bits of life. That is to say, each relation is of something
that has taken place or been witnessed in a comparatively short
time--an incident of a trip downtown, a characteristic action of a
great man, an important political event, an adventure, a brief series
of pleasures.
I. The Incident
[Definition]
The word "incident" comes from the Latin and means "falling upon or
into something, impinging from without;" hence something depending upon
or contained in another thing, as its principal. In narrative, then, it
is the record of a subordinate act or of an event happening at the same
time as some other event and of less importance. Any little occurrence
may be considered an incident. The report of it generally has excuse
for being in the fact that knowledge of it throws light on the main
event or intensifies interest therein. Accordingly every good narrative
of this type possesses a horizon larger than itself. Somewhere within
the story there is a clause connecting the event with other occurrences
or with the prime occurrence.
[How to tell an incident]
An incident may or may not be an eye-witness account. Indeed, an
incident may be told by a person removed the third, the hundredth
degree from the happening. The essential thing is the evidence of
reality. Of course there are fictitious incidents--like those in
"Robinson Crusoe"--but the whole care of the writer in such cases is to
simulate truth. Very often a work of fiction is but a skillful piecing
together of actual small happenings. An incident is valued in itself
for one of two reasons--either for the fact which it records or for the
author's humanity revealed in the narration. Though slight, an incident
should be well told. It need not be pointed, but it should proceed in
an orderly and interesting fashion. The diction should be natural. As
hinted before, an incident should have a setting. The reader ought to
be able to feel something of where the characters have come from and
whither they are going. The more nicely such a coherence is suggested,
the more pleasing the little story will be.
One thinks of the quiet delightfulness of Wordsworth's Incidents which
he calls "Poems on the Naming of Places." They are small stories out of
his life and the lives of his friends--natural records out of natural
living, but as charming and interesting as any tale of
"Naiad by the side
Of Grecian brook, or Lady of the Mere,
Sole-sitting by the shores of old romance."
Robert Browning's "Incident of the French Camp" is an example of the
more stirring small happening. Books of travel are largely series
of incidents, but because of the continued presence of the same
personality fall into a class distinct from this. Good letter-writers
are usually fascinating relators of incidents. Cowper, Jane Welsh
Carlyle, Dorothy Osborne, Gray, Lowell, Edward Fitzgerald, charmed
not only their correspondents but all their later readers. The earlier
accounts of his life away from home that "R. L. S." sent back to his
mother contain exquisite small bits of narration.
=A Near Tragedy=
A most tragical incident fell out this day at sea. While the ship was
under sail, but making, as will appear, no great way, a kitten, one of
four of the feline inhabitants of the cabin, fell from the window into
the water: an alarm was immediately given to the captain, who was then
upon deck, and received it with the utmost concern. He immediately gave
orders to the steersman in favor of the poor thing, as he called it;
the sails were instantly slackened, and all hands, as the phrase is,
employed to recover the poor animal. I was, I own, extremely surprised
at all this; less, indeed, at the captain's extreme tenderness, than at
his conceiving any possibility of success; for, if puss had had nine
thousand instead of nine lives, I concluded they had been all lost. The
boatswain, however, had more sanguine hopes; for, having stript himself
of his jacket, breeches, and shirt, he leapt boldly into the water,
and, to my great astonishment, in a few minutes, returned to the ship,
bearing the motionless animal in his mouth. Nor was this, I observed,
a matter of such great difficulty as it appeared to my ignorance, and
possibly may seem to that of my fresh-water readers: the kitten was
now exposed to air and sun on the deck, where its life, of which it
retained no symptoms, was despaired of by all.
The captain's humanity, if I may so call it, did not so totally
destroy his philosophy as to make him yield himself up to affliction on
this melancholy occasion. Having felt his loss like a man, he resolved
to show he could bear it like one; and, having declared he had rather
have lost a cask of rum or brandy, betook himself to thrashing at
backgammon with the Portuguese friar, in which innocent amusement they
passed nearly all their leisure hours.
But as I have, perhaps, a little too wantonly endeavored to raise the
tender passions of my readers in this narrative, I should think myself
unpardonable if I concluded it without giving them the satisfaction of
hearing that the kitten at last recovered, to the great joy of the good
captain; but to the great disappointment of some of the sailors, who
asserted that the drowning a cat was the very surest way of raising a
favorable wind: a supposition of which, though we have heard several
plausible accounts, we will not presume to assign the true original
reason.
--Henry Fielding.
"Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon."
=Birds Divulge Army Secrets=
During the night, before the battle of Sadowa, an Austrian division
commanded by the archduke, retreating before the Prussian army, had
bivouacked near a town in Bohemia, facing north, says Sir Evelyn Wood,
in the _London Gazette_.
At midnight the archduke, when resting in a peasant's cottage, was
awakened by the arrival of a gypsy, having come to report the advance
of the enemy.
The archduke, who spoke Romany fluently, asked: "How do you know? Our
outposts have not reported any movement."
"That, your highness, is because the enemy is some way off."
"Then how do you know?"
The gypsy, pointing to the dark sky, lighted by the moon, observed:
"You see those birds flying over the woods from north to south?"
"Yes; what of them?"
"Those birds do not fly by night unless disturbed, and the direction of
their flight indicates that the enemy is coming this way."
The archduke put his division under arms and reinforced the outposts,
which in two hours' time were heavily attacked.
=An Incident Related In a Letter=
7:20 P. M.--I must tell you a thing I saw to-day. I was going down to
Portobello in the train, when there came into the next compartment
(third-class) an artisan, strongly marked with smallpox, and with
sunken, heavy eyes--a face hard and unkind, and without anything
lovely. There was a woman on the platform seeing him off. At first
sight, with her one eye blind and the whole cast of her features
strongly plebeian, and even vicious, she seemed as unpleasant as the
man; but there was something beautifully soft, a sort of light of
tenderness, as on some Dutch Madonna, that came over her face when she
looked at the man. They talked for a while together through the window;
the man seemed to have been asking for money. "Ye ken the last time,"
she said, "I gave ye two shillings for your lodgin', and ye said--"it
died off in a whisper. Plainly Falstaff and Dame Quickly over again.
The man laughed unpleasantly, even cruelly, and said something; and the
woman turned her back on the carriage and stood a long while so, and,
do what I might, I could catch no glimpse of her expression, although I
thought I saw the heave of a sob in her shoulders. At last, after the
train was already in motion, she turned and put two shillings into his
hand. I saw her stand and look after us with a perfect heaven of love
on her face--this poor one-eyed Madonna--until the train was out of
sight; but the man, sordidly happy with his gains, did not put himself
to the inconvenience of one glance to thank her for her ill-deserved
kindness.
--Robert Louis Stevenson.
In letter to Mrs. Stillwell, Sept. 16, 1873.
=A Hero Dead=
It was very dark in the east corridor of the Armory, and, save for the
quiet footfall of the ever-watchful orderly, there was no sound in
the silent room where the nation's dead lay wrapped in the great silk
flag. In the shadow of the stairway, a group of secret-service men
were nervously whispering among themselves, with occasional glances
that strove to penetrate the black void that lay beyond the crape-hung
doorway.
Their sergeant stood a little apart from the others, an alert figure,
with a hand that lingered suggestively about his hip-pocket. For three
days he had kept unwearied watch while thousands had paid their last
homage to the dead servant of the people, and the strain was telling
upon him. The nation had lost a hero, but John MacDonald had lost his
idol--and his best friend. Through his mind was sweeping a strong
revulsion at conditions which could have fostered so wanton a murder;
and a sudden and passionate hatred of the dark race to whose salvation
this man had been a martyr threatened almost to unman this stern son of
the service. That very day he had sent away with a curse a paralytic
old negro who had brought his handful of field-lilies to the bier of
the savior of his race. MacDonald had felt no qualm at his action,
and when, later, he had found the poor flowers lying withered outside
the closed door, he kicked them aside with an oath. In a measure, the
stern old Scotchman had not been responsible for his actions at that
time, for it was just then that he had heard the dread rumor which was
spreading its dark wake through the crapehung corridors. That very
night while the whole nation was yet bowed in its sorrow, an attempt
was to be made to steal the body of the dead hero. The crime seemed
scarcely to be believed, but the men of the secret-service, scattered
throughout the dark corridor, were awake and ready.
John MacDonald, striving vainly in his grief-saddened heart to frame
a reason for it all, wondered how he had been able to resist the old
negro with his tear-wet face and pleading voice. That black creature
was a man like himself, and he, also, had loved the great man who was
lying so quietly in the folds of his country's flag. "O Lincoln," he
spoke, raising a clenched hand toward the black doorway, "they have
murdered you, they have taken you from us, but still--" Suddenly his
muscles stiffened, and something very akin to a chill crept about the
roots of his hair. There had come the quiet but unmistakable sound of a
footfall from the room where the dead lay. The Scotchman stood a man
of stone, and while his very hair stiffened with horror, a mighty wrath
swept over his whole being. They were at it, then, those fiends who
dared to desecrate the body of his lord with their filthy touch. With a
movement like a cat, MacDonald drew his ready weapon, and, with a call
to his startled subordinates, stepped boldly over the threshold.
In a moment, the room was filled with the glare of torches, and the
secret-service men, crowding in the doorway, saw the leveled weapon of
their chief sink inertly to his side.
On the black catafalque the hero lay, beneath the outstretched wings
of the eagle of the republic, and at his feet, sobbing out his
grief-stricken heart, knelt an old negro.
--Ida Treat.
=My First Day at School=
The room was not large enough for a schoolroom. The floor, the wall,
and the roof were all made of bamboo. In the center of the room was
a long, narrow, roughly-made table, at which sat closely twenty or
thirty pupils. There were also two or three benches here and there, on
which sat new boys and girls. At the end of the long table sat a rather
old but fierce-looking man, the schoolmaster. In his left hand he
held a book, and in his right, a whip; for at that time the principle
governing schools was that knowledge could not be gained without severe
bodily punishment.
When I entered the schoolroom, my "cartilla" in hand, this was the
first scene that met my eyes. It happened that Titay, a cousin of
mine, had been sent to school on that day also; so we had the same
lesson. In harsh tones the teacher ordered us to study the vowels of
the Spanish alphabet. And with a loud voice we repeated again and
again, _a_, _e_, _i_, _o_, _u_, until we knew them--at least we thought
so--by heart.
At last our turn came; and we were called to go to our teacher. My
cousin (a girl) was at his left side, while I was at his right.
"What is this?" the teacher asked my cousin.
"A," she answered, correctly.
However, at his second, third, and fourth questions, she was confused
and could not answer. But I really knew "_a_, _e_, _i_, _o_, _u_," by
heart, for my kind mother had taught them to me; so I proudly corrected
every mistake she had made. After every correction, the teacher would
say to me, "Tira la oreja" (meaning, "Pull her ears"). And with what
boyish pleasure did I pull her ears! She cried and resolved never to go
to school again.
When I returned home, I was very boastful, and told everybody in the
household of my triumph. Thus I received encouragement in my first
school day, and after that I continued to study with interest till I
myself received some bodily punishment.
--Máximo M. Kalaw.
=The Guinatan Prize=
One day I came to the schoolhouse tardy. When I entered the door, I saw
the pupils standing side by side in a row and facing the teacher. There
was one column of numbers on the blackboard, near which the teacher
stood with a long wooden pointer in his hand. As soon as I saw the
numbers on the board, I knew at once that there would be a contest. So
I laid down my books on the floor, took off my hat, and stood next to
the last boy.
"Teacher, Leopoldo does not belong here. He is the captain-general.
Therefore, he should stand next to Federico," said the last boy as soon
as he saw me.
"No," said the teacher, "he came in tardy. Boys, you must learn to come
to school on time," he continued.
The teacher then gave us names: he named the first boy general, the
second major-general, the third captain-general, and so on. I, being
the last boy, was named ranchero, or the cook of the army.
"He who is the general at the end of the contest will be given a cup of
_guinatan_ as a prize," said the teacher.
"Now begin, Martin," he continued. Martin began to add the numbers
on the board with accuracy, and finished within forty seconds. The
major-general did the same, but he finished within forty-five seconds.
The captain-general added the numbers within forty-two seconds. So he
pulled the ear of the major-general, and they exchanged places. Before,
my turn came, there had been many changes already, a soldier had beaten
a colonel, a sergeant had passed a lieutenant.
"All right, Leopoldo," said the teacher.
"One--six--fourteen--twenty-two--thirty--thirty-six--forty-five. Carry
four. Eight--ten--fifteen--twenty-one--twenty-nine--thirty-five--forty!"
I said without stopping to take a breath.
"Forty seconds!" announced the teacher.
The teacher wanted to try me again, but the boys said they should like
to hear the general first.
"All right. Go on, Martin," said the teacher.
This time Martin failed. He finished within thirty-seven seconds, but
he made a mistake. The boys shouted.
Fortunately, the time was up. So I was pronounced the victor. The
teacher bought a cup of _guinatan_, the sweet fruit mixture that
Filipino children so much love, and gave it to me. I was very proud
then. When I reached home, I told my mother all that had happened. She
was very happy.
--Leopoldo Faustino.
II. The Anecdote
[Meaning of the term]
In the sense in which a proverb is a condensed parable, an anecdote is
a condensed character-sketch or biography. Like many of our other terms
the word "anecdote" itself reveals to an extent its present meaning.
It is derived from the Greek and signifies "something not published."
This is the sense in which Cicero uses it when he speaks of a book of
anecdotes on which he was engaged, but which he talks of confiding to a
single friend only, as if it were not intended ever to be published. In
literature the word has been used to denote either secret histories or
portions of ancient writers which have remained long in manuscript and
are edited for the first time. The anecdotes of Procopius, which were
published in London in 1674 under the title "The Secret History of the
Court of Justinian," are evidence of the first significance; and Dr.
Johnson's reference to the English-French fashion of using the word for
a "biographical minute passage of private life" establishes the second
meaning.
In our day, collections of anecdotes--criticisms and observations,
smart sayings and ludicrous tales, delivered by eminent men in
conversation and recorded by their friends or discovered among their
papers after their death, and put together with historical incidents
concerning them--are published under the term _ana_.
[Ana]
The ancients were in the habit of indulging in this species of
literature. From earliest periods Oriental nations have preserved the
intimate talk of their wise men. From them the Greeks and Romans took
up the practice. Plato and Xenophon recorded the colloquially expressed
ideas of their master Socrates. It appears that Julius Cæsar compiled a
book of apophthegms in which he related the _bon mots_ of Cicero; and
a freedman of that orator, taken with his master's liveliness and wit,
composed three books of a work entitled "De Jocis Ciceronis."
[Eighteenth century collections]
But the term ana seems to have been applied to such collections only
so far back as the fifteenth century. The information and anecdotes
picked up by Poggio and his friend Barthelemi Montepolitiano during a
literary trip in Germany "are to be called," says another friend in a
letter, "Poggiana and Montepolitiana." Perhaps the most typical, and
surely a very famous and interesting, production of this species of
narrative in English is the "Walpoliana," a transcript of the literary
conversation of Horace Walpole, Earl of Oxford. Selden's "Table Talk"
was considered by Dr. Johnson good ana, better than the French. But
incomparably superior to all, a collection the most remarkable in
the English language-and indeed, in any language (as a writer in the
"Britannica" asserts)--is James Boswell's "Life of Samuel Johnson."
Though not conforming to the type of collection either in name or
in form of presentation, this, according to Carlyle, "the greatest
production of the eighteenth century," depends for its value mainly
upon its ana. "Its interest," the same writer goes on to say, "arises,
not from the details it furnishes of the events of Dr Johnson's career,
still less from any attempt at a discriminating estimate of his work
and character, but the graphic representation it gives of his habitual
manner of life and speech. The animate greatness of Johnson appears,
more than in all his writings, in his portrait delineated with the
exactness of sharply-defined photograph, as he appeared, to the eyes of
his admiring biographer, in his daily deshabille."
That is the secret of anecdote--it must get at the real man in however
small a part.
While a book of ana is a collection of short, pointed, true colloquial
relations of more or less detached interesting particulars concerning
a person of consequence, a single anecdote is one of those interesting
particulars entirely detached, short, pointed, true, and colloquial.
A book of anecdotes is a group of stories, miscellaneous so far as
subject matter is concerned. Spence's "Anecdotes" is a very famous
eighteenth century literary set; and Percy's is an early nineteenth,
with the stories selected--as the preface ostensibly gives notice--for
their moral effect, and arranged according to the virtue illustrated
or the subject treated--humanity, generosity, kindness; science, art,
and so on.
[How to write an anecdote]
As we have seen, to be most interesting an anecdote must be singularly
expressive of the peculiarities of the person represented; or if the
event recorded is not in the form of a character episode, but rather
in the form of an unusual happening, it must be consonant with the
accepted popular notion of the man's personality. To write an original
anecdote you will need to pick out of your past experience or the
experience of some one of your acquaintances a story of a more or less
important personage in your neighborhood, a happening that has never
hitherto been written down. If the person concerned is not very well
known or if the trait of character revealed would not be immediately
recognized by his friends, you might prefix a slight statement that
will help point your narrative. Remember, however, that an anecdote
must be very brief; also that it must have a single and complete
climax; and that you must under no circumstance be induced to add
another word after the climax is reached.
=Coleridge's Retort=
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was so bad a horseman that when he mounted he
generally attracted unfavorable notice. On a certain occasion he was
riding along a turnpike road in the country of Durham, when he was met
by a wag, who, mistaking his man, thought the rider a good subject for
sport. "I say, young man," cried the rustic, "did you see a _tailor_
on the road?" "Yes, I did; and he told me that if I went a little
farther, I should meet a _goose_."
=An Inevitable Misfortune=
When Boswell was first introduced to Dr. Johnson, he apologized to him
for being a Scotchman. "I find," said he, "that I am come to London at
a bad time when great popular prejudice has gone forth against us North
Britons; but when I am talking to you, I am talking to a large and
liberal mind, and you know that I cannot help coming from Scotland."
"Sir, replied the doctor, archly, "no more can the rest of your
countrymen."
=A Point Needing to Be Settled=
A Scottish clergyman, being one day engaged in visiting some member
of his flock, came to the door of a house where his gentle tapping
could not be heard for the noise of contention inside. After waiting a
little, he opened the door and walked in, saying with an authoritative
voice, "I should like to know who is the head of this house?"
"Weel, sir," said the husband and father, "if ye sit doon a wee, we'll
may be able to tell ye, for we're just trying to settle that point."
=Patience=
When Lord Chesterfield was one day at Newcastle House, the Duke
happened to be particularly busy, so the Earl was requested to sit
down in an anteroom. "Garnet upon Job," a book dedicated to the Duke,
happened to lie in the window; and his Grace, upon entering found
the Earl so busily engaged in reading, that he asked how he liked the
commentary. "In any other place," replied Chesterfield, "I should not
think much of it; but there is such great propriety in putting a volume
upon patience in the room where every visitor has to wait for your
Grace, that here it must be considered as one of the best books in the
world."
=Preaching and Practice=
Dr. Channing had a brother, a physician, and at one time they both
lived in Boston. One day, a countryman in search of a _divine_, knocked
at the _doctor's_ door, when the following dialogue ensued:
"Does Mr. Channing live here?"
"Yes, sir."
"Can I see him?"
"I am he."
"Who--you?"
"Yes, sir."
"You must have altered considerably since I heard you preach!"
"Oh, I see your mistake now. It's my brother who _preaches_. I
_practice_."
=Johnson's Dictionary=
When Dr. Johnson had completed his dictionary, which had quite
exhausted the patience of Mr. Andrew Millar, his bookseller, the latter
acknowledged the receipt of the last sheet, in the following note:
"Andrew Millar sends his compliments to Mr. Samuel Johnson with the
money for the last sheet of the copy of the dictionary, and thanks God
he has done with him."
To this rude note the doctor returned the following smart answer:
"Samuel Johnson returns his compliments to Mr. Andrew Millar, and is
very glad to find (as he does by his note), that Andrew Millar has the
grace to thank God for anything."
--Percy's "Anecdotes."
=The Boy Kipling=
Rudyard Kipling's keen and sympathetic understanding of all the
diversified and picturesque varieties of human nature found in British
India, is too well recognized as part of his power to need assertion;
but a little anecdote which his mother remembers of his boyhood is
not without a pretty allegorical significance. It was at Nasik,
on the Dekhan plain, not far from Bombay, when the little fellow,
trudging over the ploughed field, with his hand in that of the native
husbandman, called back to her in the Hindustani, which was as familiar
to him as English, "Good-by, this is my brother!"
--Professor Norton, in a biographical sketch.
=Sir Godfrey Kneller=
Pope tells the following story about the great portrait painter:
"As I was sitting by Sir Godfrey Kneller one day, whilst he was drawing
a picture, he stopped and said: 'I can't do so well as I should do,
unless you flatter me a little; pray flatter me, Mr. Pope! you know I
love to be flattered.' I was at once willing to try how far his vanity
would carry him, and, after considering a picture, which he had just
finished, for a good while very attentively, I said to him in French
(for he had been talking for some time before in that language): "On
lit dans les Écritures Saintes, que le bon Dieu faisoit l'homme aprés
son image: mais, je crois, que s'il voudroit faire un autre a présent,
qu'il le feroit apres l'image que voilá.' Sir Godfrey turned round and
said very gravely, 'Vous avez raison, Mons Pope; par Dieu, je le crois
aussi.'"
--Pope.
Here is another: Mr. Pope was with Sir Godfrey Kneller one day, when
his nephew, a Guinea trader, came in. "Nephew," said Sir Godfrey, "you
have the honor of seeing the two greatest men in the world." "I don't
know how great you may be," said the Guinea man, "but I don't like your
looks; I have often bought a man much better than both of you together,
all muscles and bones, for ten guineas."
--Dr. Warburton.
=The Capitan Municipal and the Jokers=
Once there lived in the town of Balanga an old Capitan Municipal who
was nicknamed carabao; for he was a very big man and also a very great
eater.
One day as a land parade was going on in honor of Dr. Rizal, three
well-known jokers of the town were following the procession, when they
suddenly came to a small pond in the street. And one of them said,
"What a nice time our public carabao had taking his mid-day bath in
here." "Oh! yes, he must have had a very good time indeed," replied
the two. But unexpectedly the Capitan was at their back, hearing all
they said about him.
Therefore as soon as the procession was over, they were arrested in the
Municipal building. And on the next day they were tried and sentenced
by the Capitan to fill in all the ponds of the streets around the town,
and also to drain them properly.
--José Feliciano.
=An Instance of Bamboo Spanish=
In the Ateneo de Manila all the pupils are forbidden to speak any
language except Spanish.
One day the pupils of the college went out to the yard to play
baseball. It happened that one of the boys who was watching the game
was hurt at the kneejoint, and fell down on the ground. The boy
cried so loud that the rector at once went hurriedly to see what was
happening in the yard. He saw the boy sitting on the ground with one
of his legs bent. He approached him, and said, "What has happened to
you, my boy?" And the boy feeling yet the pain that the ball had caused
him, answered, "Father, while I was watching my companions who were
playing baseball my--, my--," "What?" said the rector, impatiently.
"Father, my--, my--," answered the boy, showing his kneejoint as
he was pronouncing the word "my." "Do you mean your leg?" said the
rector. "No, father I mean my--," replied the boy. "But your what"
cried the rector, "say what you mean to say." The boy, who was trying
hard to find the word in Spanish for kneejoint, answered at last, "my
_vino-vinohan_, father, was hurt." The rector, though very angry at
the boy's dullness, laughed heartily at his dictionary-making powers.
NOTE--The word in Tagalog for knee-joint is "alak-alakan," which
is similar to the Tagalog word "alak," meaning wine in English and
_vino_ in Spanish. The boy, not knowing the proper word in Spanish
for knee-joint, derived the word "vino-vinohan" from the Spanish word
_vino_, which means _alak_ (wine) in Tagalog.
=Mr. Taft's Mistake=
It was a bright day when a crowd of people stood before a platform
decorated with palm leaves and roofed with a banner of stars and
stripes. The eyes of the spectators, who were all eager to hear the
speech of the well-known eloquent orator and skillful politician, Mr.
William H. Taft, were fixed on the personages on the platform.
At last, after an ovation by the multitude, Mr. Taft rose up and
addressed the audience thus: "_Señoras y caballos_."[8]
--Amando Clemente.
III. The Eye-Witness Account
Eye-witness account is to true story what realism is to fiction.
Exactness is the aim of the narrator. He endeavors to tell precisely
what he saw and heard. A great deal of our newspaper "copy" is supposed
to be of this type, and likewise much court testimony. The attorneys
try to separate distinctly fact from fancy. What a man really must have
seen and what he thought he saw are often very different. It appears
at first that an unembellished account would be the easiest thing in
the world to give, but it takes only a little observation to convince
one that few persons can tell what they see or hear; few indeed know
what they see or hear. With the bare actuality, they are constantly
confounding what they thought or inferred. As a rule, only the man
educated to the work can report truthfully.
A unique and curious ancient document of this type is found in a
little book that was published by the Spanish Academy of History
in 1783, called "El Passo Honroso" or the Passage of Honor. It is
a formal eyewitness account prepared on the spot by Delena, one of
the authorized scribes of John II, and gives minutely the events of
a passage of arms held against all comers in 1434 at the bridge of
Orbigo, near the city of Leon, during thirty days, at a moment when the
road was thronged with knights going over for a solemn festival to the
neighboring shrine of Santiago.[9] Suero de Quiñones, the challenger,
was a true gentleman of chivalry, it seems, and had been wearing in
sentimental bondage to a noble lady a chain of iron around his neck one
day in each week. From his bondage he could be freed only by bringing
to her as ransom a minimum number of real spears broken by him and his
friends in fair fight. So they stood--ten of them--for thirty days
challenging all comers. Delena records sixty-eight opponents; six
hundred and twenty-seven encounters; sixty-six broken lances; one dead
knight; and many wounded, among whom were Quiñones himself and eight
of his fellow-champions. Along with the general narrative is a full
account of the religious and chivalric ceremonies as they were actually
indulged in from day to day. Such a minute and elaborate and fully
authenticated eye-witness record of not fictitious but real "knightly
guists and fierce encounters" is manifestly invaluable to a student of
chivalry.
It is interesting to think of this dapper young scribe sitting on the
side-lines watching the combatants and taking down his notes as the
telling rushes were made by either party; and then sending his copy hot
from the pen to his royal reader. I suppose we might well call Señor
Delena the historical prototype of our modern athletics reporter.
Many of our best literary men have had longer or shorter
apprenticeships at getting "copy." Dickens served for a number of
years. Facts for a reporter do not come at call; he can not turn
them on, so to speak, nor is he permitted to make them up. He must
find them. Consequently to be successful he needs to have an ear for
news, and an eye for the graphic, a simple but full vocabulary, and a
pen made supple by much practice. He must seem to be at home in any
department of human action. All his words must carry with them a large
tone of veracity. He can hardly afford to make slips even on his minor
details, since his brother reporters visit the same scene at the same
time.
Literary eye-witness account, however, need not be devoid of all
expression of personal feeling. It is only necessary that the writer
make clear to his reader which are thoughts and feelings and which
are facts. Indeed, the best effect of such a narration will often
come from the contrast. The artist lets us into his own state of mind,
describes perhaps more or less minutely the stage-setting of his
little occurrence--especially if any part is necessary to complete
understanding later--portrays in general the types of people who were
or might have been concerned, and then drops from his pen one by one
the facts cold, clear-cut, unembellished, orderly in sequence, with
their participants graphically and cleanly outlined, and thus gains his
effect. He is as precise as a lawyer, but he has been also as crafty,
in the good sense of the word. He has prepared us to appreciate his
facts. If he interprets to us afterwards, he does so in a reflective
and an apparently hesitating way that seems to leave us in full
possession of our own opinions, which will prove to be in reality only
corroborative of his.
It will be good practice for you to attempt to give an eye-witness
account of some occurrence. If two or three of your friends were
present at the same happening, you may enjoy comparing reports. There
will probably be more than one incident to relate; if there is, you
must be careful to have sequence and coherence in all that you say.
You should anticipate and answer any questions one would naturally
ask of an oral reporter. Stop when you have finished. Doubtless you
have noticed the unpleasant habit many narrators have of starting over
again and repeating all or part of the tale. The temptation does not so
readily come to a writer, of course, as to a speaker--unless the writer
is paid by the word.
Your readers will not resent interpretation even if it be
philosophical, if it be not mixed with the narration and be only
honest and of the pragmatic school--interrogative and not dogmatic.
Indeed, mankind likes philosophy when it seems to come as an inevitable
though tentative summing-up of our almost bewilderingly multiple
phenomena.
=Story of the Revolution in the Portuguese Capital=
Cherbourg, October 8.--On board the Royal Mail Steam Packet liner
_Asturias_, which arrived from Lisbon this morning, were a number of
passengers who witnessed the fighting in the Portuguese capital on
Wednesday, among them M. Octave Castaigne, a lawyer, of Tournai, who
was among the passengers by the _Asturias_ who ventured to land at
Lisbon on Wednesday.
"On Tuesday evening," said M. Castaigne, "we were informed by a
wireless message that the revolution had broken out in Portugal. From
far out at sea was heard the thunder of the cannon and as we entered
the Tagus the crackle of rifle fire. On our arrival before Lisbon we
noticed that the cruisers _Sao Rafael_ and _Adamastor_, which were
flying the Republican flag, were still firing on the town.
"About ten o'clock the fusillade ceased and a party of five passengers,
including two Americans and myself, went ashore. The lower part of the
town had the appearance of a city of the dead. The houses were shut and
marks of rifle-shots and shells were to be seen everywhere. The centre
of the city, on the contrary, was alive with people. The crowd was
vociferously acclaiming the Republican flag, which was flying, not only
from the public buildings, but from nearly every house. It struck me
very clearly that anyone who had had the courage to shout "Long live
the King!" would have been shot dead on the spot. The crowd was largely
composed of soldiers and sailors under arms, and patrols were also
moving about in automobiles to any part of the town that appeared to be
greatly menaced by the Royalist troops.
"We reached the City Hall, which was surrounded by a huge crowd, just
at the moment when the Republic was being proclaimed. The Republican
leaders from the balcony of the building were haranguing the people,
whose enthusiasm was indescribable. From time to time the cheers of the
crowd were broken by rifle volleys and the reports of cannon.
"When the official ceremony was ended, we succeeded in entering
the City Hall. The new Ministers were receiving visitors and were
conversing with anyone who presented himself. One of the passengers
by the _Asturias_ approached President Braga, and in a short speech
congratulated him on the proclamation of the Republic. Dr. Braga
replied that he was happy to receive our visit, and added that the
Portuguese Republic was definitely established.
"After leaving the City Hall, we proceeded to the most dangerous part
of the city, that is to say, the Avenida do Liberdade and the Dom Pedro
square. The houses showed signs off cannon shots and the roofs of the
majority of them had collapsed. The Avenida do Liberdade was still
occupied by the opposing forces. The Republican troops occupied one
end of the street, while the Royalists were in possession of the other
extremity, being separated by a distance of about five hundred yards.
The battle was still in progress. I admit that I was somewhat afraid,
and as the shots whistled by I hid myself behind the shelter of a house.
"At the risk of being killed any minute our party succeeded in reaching
the Avenida restaurant. That part of the restaurant facing the
Avenida do Liberdade was in ruins, and the walls were full of bullet
holes. (M. Castaigne has saved some of the bullets as souvenirs.) The
Recio railway station had been destroyed by artillery fire and the
railway lines had been torn up. The Necessidades Palace shows traces
of numerous shells, but it is stated that the interior of the royal
residence has suffered even more, shells having simply rained on the
roof.
"The Red Cross Society showed admirable devotion during the fighting. I
saw its members go into the thick of the fight to pick up the wounded,
who on Wednesday were estimated to number over a thousand. The number
of killed is considerable, but at the time it was impossible to obtain
correct figures."
London, October 9.--The Royal Mail Steam Packet Company's steamer
_Asturias_, which left Lisbon on Thursday, arrived at Southampton
yesterday morning, having among her passengers several Englishmen and
South Americans who witnessed many of the episodes of the revolution.
Among these was General Garcia, who has had experience enough of
revolution in South America.
The general told an "Evening News" correspondent that he and six others
went into Lisbon on Wednesday. "We found the streets littered with
wounded," he said. "A body of troops was being moved from one side of
the city to the other, and in the districts through which they passed
people were flying panic-stricken, but otherwise everybody was orderly
and the city was quiet.
"The Republican flags were on the buildings and all trace of resistance
was over. Soldiers were going into shops and houses pulling down
pictures of the king, tearing them up and trampling them underfoot. As
we passed along, a picture of the King came flying out of a doorway
and dropped at our feet. My secretary picked it up. He was immediately
surrounded by soldiers, who ordered him to destroy it at once.
"I went to the municipal buildings and there saw members of the
provisional government, who allowed me to cable to my own government
in Cuba. I should say the estimate of fifty killed and three hundred
wounded is not high enough, but the list is remarkably small, all
considered. I have seen many revolutions, but none so beautifully
carried out as this."
Paris, October 9.--"The abounding joying joy of the people--tempered
by admirable self-control--and repeated evidences of careful
organization--these were the things which impressed me most."
In these words Mr. Charles H. Sherrill, American Minister to Argentina,
told a _Herald_ correspondent at the Hotel Majestic last night, of a
visit he paid to Lisbon on Wednesday, a few hours after the overthrow
of the Portuguese monarchy. With Mrs. Sherrill and their young son he
was a passenger on the _Asturia_, which touched at Lisbon.
"The shooting began about two o'clock on Tuesday morning," he
continued. "It was at six o'clock on Wednesday morning that we came
into the harbor. The bombardment of the palace had ceased, but with our
glasses we could see the dents which the shells had made in the walls.
"I disembarked at about one o'clock in the afternoon and went to the
American Legation to see if it had suffered damage. I found the streets
swarming with inhabitants, who were singing and shouting in their joy.
Save for this celebration there were few evidences of the conflict in
the lower part of the town.
"But it was different in the Avenida, the broad thoroughfare leading
to the elevation back of the city. The insurgents had permitted the
Royalists to form in Rocio square, in the down town district. The
insurgents then took their position on the hills above, holding the
Royalists in a trap, hedged in on the other side by the attacking ships
in the bay.
"From the elevation at the upper end of the field, guns had been aimed
down the Avenida. The avenue had been stripped of trees, windows had
been shattered and the fronts of buildings which projected farther than
others had been partly demolished. The American Legation escaped even
the slightest damage.
"Occasionally I encountered a wall which bore striking evidence of
the battle. Blood was matted upon it and blood had coagulated in the
gutters, indicating only too plainly that several lives had been lost
there. Whole groups in the sidewalk had been mowed down by shell from
the field-guns.
"Nearly every man I saw and many boys carried guns. They were not
rifles of the 'homespun' variety--these arms--but Mausers and equally
effective weapons. These were evidences of preparation. Fully a
thousand people were waving flags--the red and green flag of the new
Republic--a further proof that the revolution had not come just when it
did by accident.
"For the new Portuguese flag is a rather complicated affair. Across
a blue circle in the centre is a curved line in white bearing the
inscription, 'Patria e Liberdade.' Half the space of the background is
red--revolution--and green, symbolizing hope.
"I followed a crowd and a band into the City Hall. There in a large
room I saw the President and his cabinet in session, probably drawing
up one of the new government's addresses to the people. It was plain to
me that these were not men who had been 'pitchforked' into office over
night. Their appearance was that of sober, responsible officials. I was
simply a curiosity-seeker, of course, and kept my identity concealed.
"As I walked along I heard two shots fired in a side street. A moment
later a cart drove by in which lay two bodies. A crowd formed at the
scene of the shooting, but there was no suspicion of a riot. Among
the thousands of people I saw that day there was not a single person
who appeared to be under the influence of liquor. There seemed to
be no looting; no outrages were committed. It was a most impressive
object-lesson of the self-control which a Latin people is able to
maintain when it is imbued with a serious purpose.
"Country folk were pouring into town by the thousands, and these
reflected the joy and satisfaction felt by the residents of the city.
They afforded a rebuke to the suspicion that the revolutionary feeling
was confined to Lisbon itself. The spirit of the people was best
expressed by two words, composing a headline which stretched across the
front page of an afternoon newspaper. Translated, it read simply: 'At
Last!'
"And it was apparent also that the revolution was accomplished with
as little bloodshed as possible. The insurgents were merciful--if that
term is permissible in this connection. Shells fired from the ships in
the bay were directed in such a way that they should explode over the
town, carrying the desired warning, but causing the minimum amount of
damage.
"I was told that the dead and wounded numbered three thousand. I am
certain this was a great exaggeration. My estimate is about 600 or 700,
basing these figures on information obtained at the headquarters of the
Red Cross Society.
"Most of the residents of Lisbon give the greatest share of credit for
the result to the seamen. A hero was made of every sailor who appeared
in the streets. The crowds cheered him heartily, but the army officers
aroused much less enthusiasm.
"Save for these evidences of jubilation Lisbon was quiet and
orderly--think of it, only a few hours after such an uprising as this!
The bodies of the dead had been removed, the wounded were being nursed
and business was proceeding almost normally. In front of every bank was
a guard of sailors to protect the financial interests of the people. It
seems strange that I, who have lived in South America two years, was
forced to come to Europe in order to see a revolution."
=A Contrast=
On the night of February 4, 1910, the eve of the carnival, I went to
take a walk in the Luneta. Already from the distance I could see the
hippodrome in the carnival grounds well illuminated. "What is going
on in there?" I asked myself, and not being able to explain the
matter, and urged by my curiosity to know everything, I walked in that
direction.
Many people, foreigners as well as natives, were crowding up and down
the sidewalk near the fence enclosing the carnival grounds. There were
also constabulary guards at almost every thirty spaces to prevent the
people from peeping through the fence. But in spite of the presence
of these guards some people, nevertheless, seized the opportunity
that offered now and then while the guard was not looking, and peeped
through the fence.
I then saw that I was not the only one who was anxious to know what
was going on in the hippodrome, and, what is more, my anxiety grew
stronger. Then a moment came when I lost a little self-control, and
I, too, shared some of those opportunities that offered. But suddenly
there came the guard who warned us to stop the business. At that very
moment, an American came along and he, too, could not help wanting to
see what was going on inside. But the guard went to him at once and
said: "No se permite eso, si tu quieres ver lo que hay adentro, puede
Vd. pasar por la puerta central." "Vd. sabi muy bein que eso no verdad,
sabi," replied the American angrily. Then the guard told him that he
had received orders to see that people did not peep through the fence.
"To h---- with your orders!" said the American. "Well, este habla el
commanding officer," replied the guard. "Oh, nom porta!" At this moment
an American policeman came along and asked the American what was the
matter. "This fellow wants to prevent me from peeping through this
fence when I am on neutral ground," "Well, that is just what I am going
to do," replied the policeman, and he again explained him the order.
"I don't care for that order!" "Well, if you don't shut up, I shall
take you to the police station!" "You may!" Then the policeman told him
to walk on; for he did not know what he was talking about. "All right,"
said the gentleman, and he walked away; but he came back and asked the
policeman what his number was. "It makes no difference what my number
is," said the officer of the law. "Well, I want to know it." "My number
is----, and my name is----; and what's your name?" "My name is----,
and I am the _secretary in the public_----"(!). "All right," said the
policeman, and both men took opposite directions.
Two bystanders who witnessed this incident began to argue as to what
would have happened had the American gentleman been a Filipino. One
of them said that if the man were a Filipino and had argued with the
officer of the law in that way, he would have received a good knock
on his head. The other said that he was satisfied with the way the
American policeman behaved himself.
I then returned and walked toward the central gate of the carnival
grounds, and there, to my surprise, I saw the very same American
gentleman come and walk straight inside without saying a word to the
guard. Then a Filipino came along and asked the guard to be allowed
to go in, but, unfortunately, according to the guard, only the
stockholders were allowed to enter.
Was the American gentleman a stockholder? He alone knows.
--Adolfo Scheerer.
IV. The Tale of Actual Adventure
Tales of actual adventure differ from the other true narratives in
the fact of the necessary presence of an exciting occurrence. Danger
at hand and overcome is the keynote of the action. The happening may
be slight or tremendous, or serious or humorous; but in every case it
acquires a certain amount of dignity from the possible disaster.
The narration is usually in the first person, though not necessarily.
In the "Library of Universal Adventure," compiled by William Dean
Howells and Thomas Sergeant Perry eighteen years ago, the larger
number of the stories are autobiographic in form. This book is a
quaint comment on Howells's non-sensationalistic attitude of today.
Though purporting to be true, these stories are almost lurid in their
romanticism. They present man in the familiar struggle with untimely
death, led thither by various motives and accidents. We see Pliny the
Elder with insatiable curiosity sailing calmly toward the destructive
volcano; we see the lonely scientist Audubon on his Western trip in
early America weighing his chance of life against his watch, that is
coveted by a murderous hag and her two drunken sons; we see the runaway
slave Frederick Douglass, attempting to slip along the very precarious
underground railroad to safety; of course, there is mutiny at sea, and
shipwreck on unknown shores. Indeed, here we find all the despised
paraphernalia of blood-curdling romance, true, with Mr. Howells's name
signed on the package.[10]
Obviously such stories are written to climaxes, though any manifest
straining for emphasis in a true narrative is resented by the reader.
All the skill you have got from your former attempts to write
realistically ought to help you here. You should put in enough minutiæ
to convince, but omit enough to be interesting. The general effect of
your style should be that of directness and swiftness. Whatever power
of psychological analysis you have, should come to your aid, but it
should appear only in keen and brief flashes as you hurry along with
the events. Descriptive touches of objective nature may be used for
emphasis in harmony or contrast, especially at the end or the beginning
of the adventure, though these are a somewhat trite device. Whatever
else you do, try to write simply and naturally. Do not exaggerate. You
will be judged chiefly on your tone of veracity.
There is a large and interesting field here for the amateur writer.
This type of story allies itself with the probable adventure, and in
fact is generally lost therein. The successful authors of boys' books
for the most part make use of the coalescence. Boys at a certain age
are extremely exacting, and when their entertainers have to relate
their stories orally as well as pen them, they are often as solicitous
to find authority for their fictions as were Macpherson and Chatterton.
=The Bear-Hunt=
(The adventure here narrated is one that happened to Tolstoy
himself in 1858. More than twenty years later he gave up hunting on
humanitarian grounds.)
We were out on a bear-hunting expedition. My comrade had shot at a
bear, but only gave him a flesh wound. There were traces of blood on
the snow, but the bear had got away.
We all collected in a group in the forest to decide whether we ought
to go after the bear at once or wait two or three days till he should
settle down again. We asked the peasant bear-drivers whether it would
be possible to get round the bear that day.
"No. It's impossible," said an old bear-driver. "You must let the bear
quiet down. In five days' time it will be possible to surround him; but
if you followed him now, you would only frighten him away and he would
not settle down."
But a young bear-driver began disputing with the old man, saying that
it was quite possible to get round the bear now.
"On such snow as this," said he, "he won't go far, for he is a fat
bear. He will settle down before evening; or, if not, I can overtake
him on snow-shoes."
The comrade I was with was against following up the bear, and advised
waiting. But I said:
"We need not argue. You do as you like, but I will follow up the track
with Damian. If we get round the bear, all right. If not, we lose
nothing. It is still early, and there is nothing else for us to do
to-day."
The others went back to the sledges and returned to the village.
Damian and I took some bread and remained behind in the forest.
When they had all left us, Damian and I examined our guns, and after
tucking the skirts of our warm coats into our belts, we started off,
following the bear's tracks.
The weather was fine, frosty and calm; but it was hard work
snow-shoeing. The snow was deep and soft; it had not caked together at
all in the forest, and fresh snow had fallen the day before, so that
our snow-shoes sank six inches deep in the snow, and sometimes more.
The bear's tracks were visible from a distance, and we could see how
he had been going; sometimes sinking in up to his belly and ploughing
up the snow as he went. At first, while under large trees, we kept in
sight of his track; but when it turned into a thicket of small firs,
Damian stopped.
"We must leave the trail now," said he. "He has probably settled
somewhere here. You can see by the snow that he has been squatting
down. Let us leave the track and go round; but we must go quietly.
Don't shout or cough, or we shall frighten him away."
Leaving the track, therefore, we turned off to the left. But when he
had gone about five hundred yards, there were the bear's traces again
right before us. We followed them and they brought us out onto the
road. There we stopped, examining the road to see which way the bear
had gone. Here and there in the snow were prints of the bear's paw,
claws and all, and here and there the marks of a peasant's bark shoes.
The bear had evidently gone towards the village.
As we followed the road, Damian said:
"It's no use watching the road now. We shall see where he has turned
off, to right or left, by the marks in the soft snow at the side.
He must have turned off somewhere, for he won't have gone on to the
village."
We went along the road for nearly a mile, and then saw, ahead of us,
the bear's track turning off the road. We examined it. How strange!
It was a bear's track right enough, only not going from the road into
the forest, but from the forest onto the road! The toes were pointing
towards the road.
"This must be another bear," I said.
Damian looked at it and considered a while.
"No," said he. "It's the same one. He's been playing tricks, and walked
backwards when he left the road."
We followed the track and found it really was so! The bear had gone
some ten steps backwards, and then, behind a fir tree, had turned round
and gone straight ahead. Damian stopped and said:
"Now, we are sure to get round him. There is a marsh ahead of us and he
must have settled down there. Let us go round it."
We began to make our way round through a fir thicket. I was tired out
by this time, and it had become still more difficult to get along. Now
I glided onto juniper bushes and caught my snow-shoes in them, now a
tiny fir tree appeared between my feet, or, from want of practice, my
snow-shoes slipped off; and now I came upon a stump or a log hidden by
the snow. I was getting very tired, and was drenched with perspiration,
and I took off my fur cloak. And there was Damian all the time, gliding
along as if in a boat, his snow-shoes moving as if of their own accord,
never catching against anything, nor slipping off. He even took my fur
and slung it over his shoulders, and still kept urging me on.
We went on for two more miles, and came out on the other side of the
marsh. I was lagging behind. My snow-shoes kept slipping off, and my
feet stumbled. Suddenly Damian, who was ahead of me, stopped and waved
his arm. When I came up to him, he bent down, pointing with his hand
and whispered:
"Do you see the magpie chattering above that undergrowth? It scents the
bear from afar. That is where he must be."
We turned off and went on for more than another half-mile, and
presently we came onto the old track again. We had, therefore, been
right round the bear, who was now within the track we had left. We
stopped, and I took off my cap and loosened all my clothes. I was as
hot as in a steam bath, and as wet as a drowned rat. Damian, too, was
flushed, and wiped his face with his sleeve.
"Well, sir", he said, "we have done our job, and now we must have a
rest."
The evening glow already showed red through the forest. We took off our
snow-shoes and sat down on them, and get some bread and salt out of our
bags. First I ate some snow, and then some bread; and the bread tasted
so good that I thought I had never in my life had any like it before.
We sat there resting until it began to grow dusk, and then I asked
Damian if it was far to the village.
"Yes," he said, "it must be above eight miles. We will go on there
tonight, but now we must rest. Put on your fur coat, sir, or you'll be
catching cold."
Damian flattened down the snow, and breaking off some fir branches made
a bed of them. We lay down side by side, resting our heads on our arms.
I do not remember how I fell asleep. Two hours later I woke up, hearing
something crack.
I had slept so soundly that I did not know where I was. I looked
around me. How wonderful! I was in some sort of a hall, all glittering
and white with gleaming pillars, and when I looked up I saw, through
delicate white tracery, a vault, raven black and studded with coloured
lights. After a good look I remembered that we were in the forest and
that what I took for a hall and pillars were trees covered with snow
and hoar-frost, and the coloured lights were stars twinkling between
the branches.
Hoar-frost had settled in the night; all the twigs were thick with
it, Damian was covered with it, it was on my fur coat, and it dropped
down from the trees. I woke Damian, and we put on our snow-shoes and
started. It was very quiet in the forest. No sound was heard but that
of our snow-shoes pushing through the soft snow, except when now and
then a tree, cracked by the frost, made the forest resound. Only once
we heard the sound of a living creature. Something rustled close to us
and then rushed away. I felt sure it was the bear, but when we went to
the spot whence the sound had come we found the footmarks of hares, and
saw several young aspen trees with their bark gnawed. We had startled
some hares while they were feeding.
We came out on the road and followed it, dragging our snow-shoes behind
us. It was easy walking now. Our snow-shoes clattered as they slid
behind us from side to side of the hard-trodden road: The snow creaked
under our boots, and the cold hoar-frost settled on our faces like
down. Seen through the branches, the stars seemed to be running to meet
us, now twinkling, now vanishing, as if the whole sky were on the move.
I found my comrade sleeping, but woke him up and related how we had got
round the bear. After telling our peasant host to collect beaters for
the morning, we had supper and lay down to sleep.
I was so tired that I could have slept on till midday if my comrade had
not roused me. I jumped up and saw that he was already dressed and busy
doing something to his gun.
"Where is Damian?" said I.
"In the forest long ago. He has already been over the tracks you made,
and been back here, and now he has gone to look after the beaters."
I washed and dressed and loaded my guns, and then we got into a sledge
and started.
The sharp frost still continued. It was quiet and the sun could not
be seen. There was a thick mist above us and hoar-frost still covered
everything.
After driving about two miles along the road, as we came near the
forest, we saw a cloud of smoke raising from a hollow, and presently
reached a group of peasants, both men and women, armed with cudgels.
We got out and went up to them. The men sat roasting potatoes and
laughing and talking with the women.
Damian was there, too, and when we arrived the people got up and Damian
led them to place them in the circle we had made the day before. They
went along in single file, men and women, thirty in all. The snow was
so deep that we could only see them from their waists upwards. They
turned into the forest and my friend and I followed in their track.
Though they had trodden a path, walking was difficult; but, on the
other hand, it was impossible to fall; it was like walking between two
walls of snow.
We went on in this way for nearly half a mile, when all at once we
saw Damian coming from another direction--running towards us on his
snow-shoes and beckoning us to join him. We went towards him and he
showed us where to stand. I took my place and looked round me.
To my left were tall fir trees, between the trunks of which I could see
a good way, and, like a black patch just visible behind the trees, I
could see a beater. In front of me was a thicket of young firs about
as high as a man, their branches weighed down and stuck together with
snow. Through this copse ran a path thickly covered with snow, and
leading straight up to where I stood. The thicket stretched away to the
right of me and ended in a small glade where I could see Damian placing
my comrade.
I examined both my guns and considered where I had better stand. Three
steps behind me was a tall fir.
"That's where I'll stand," thought I, "and then I can lean my second
gun against the tree;" and I moved towards the tree, sinking up to
my knees in the snow at each step. I trod the snow down, and made a
clearance about a yard square to stand on. One gun I kept in my hand;
the other, ready cocked, I placed leaning up against the tree. Then I
unsheathed and replaced my dagger, to make sure that I could draw it
easily in case of need.
Just as I had finished these preparations, I heard Damian shouting in
the forest:
"He's up! He's up!"
And as soon as Damian shouted, the peasants round the circle all
replied in their different voices.
"Up, up, up! Ou! Ou! Ou!" shouted the men.
"Ay! Ay! Ay!" screamed the women in high pitched tones.
The bear was inside the circle, and as Damian drove him on, the
people all round kept shouting. Only my friend and I stood silent and
motionless, waiting for the bear to come towards us. As I stood gazing
and listening, my heart beat violently. I trembled, holding my gun fast.
"Now, now," I thought. "He will come suddenly. I shall aim, fire, and
he will drop--"
Suddenly, to my left, but at a distance, I heard something falling on
the snow. I looked between the tall fir trees, and, some fifty paces
off, behind the trunks, saw something big and black. I took aim and
waited, thinking:
"Won't he come any nearer?"
As I waited I saw him move his ears, turn and go back, and then I
caught a glimpse of the whole of him in profile. He was an immense
brute. In my excitement I fired and heard my bullet go "flop" against a
tree. Peering through the smoke I saw my bear scampering back into the
circle and disappearing among the trees.
"Well," thought I, "My chance is lost. He won't come back to me.
Either my comrade will shoot him or he will escape through the line of
beaters. In any case he won't give me another chance."
I reloaded my gun, however, and again stood listening. The peasants
were shouting all round, but to the right, not far from where my
comrade stood, I heard a woman screaming in a frenzied voice:
"Here he is! Here he is! Come here, come here! Oh! Oh! Ay! Ay!"
Evidently she could see the bear. I had given up expecting him and was
looking to the right at my comrade. All at once I saw Damian with a
stick in his hand, and without his snow-shoes, running along a footpath
towards my friend. He crouched down beside him, pointing his stick as
if aiming at something, and then I saw my friend raise his gun and aim
in the same direction. Crack! He fired.
"There," thought I, "he has killed him."
But I saw that my comrade did not run towards the bear. Evidently he
had missed him, or the shot had not taken full effect.
"The bear will get away," I thought. "He will go back, but he won't
come a second time towards me. But what is that?"
Something was coming towards me like a whirlwind, snorting as it came,
and I saw the snow flying up quite near me. I glanced straight before
me, and there was the bear, rushing along the path through the thicket
right at me, evidently beside himself with fear. He was hardly half a
dozen paces off; and I could see the whole of him--his black chest and
enormous head with a reddish patch. There he was, blundering straight
at me and scattering the snow about as he came. I could see by his
eyes that he did not see me, but, mad with fear, was rushing blindly
along, and his path led him straight at the tree under which I was
standing. I raised my gun and fired. He was almost upon me now, and I
saw that I had missed. My bullet had gone past him, and he did not even
hear me fire, but still came headlong towards me. I lowered my gun and
fired again, almost touching his head. Crack! I had hit but not killed
him.
He raised his head and, laying his ears back, came at me, showing his
teeth.
I snatched at my other gun, but almost before I had touched it he had
flown at me and, knocking me over into the snow, had passed right over
me.
"Thank goodness, he has left me," thought I.
I tried to rise, but something pressed me down and prevented my getting
up. The bear's rush had carried him past me, but he had turned back and
had fallen on me with the whole weight of his body. I felt something
heavy weighing me down and something warm above my face, and I realized
that he was drawing my whole face into his mouth. My nose was already
in it, and I felt the heat of it and smelt his blood. He was pressing
my shoulders down with his paws so that I could not move; all I could
do was to draw my head down towards my chest, away from his mouth,
trying to free my nose and eyes, while he tried to get his teeth into
them. Then I felt that he had seized my forehead just under the hair
with the teeth of his lower jaw and the flesh below my eyes with his
upper jaw, and was closing his teeth. It was as if my face were being
cut with knives. I struggled to get away, while he made haste to close
his jaws, like a dog gnawing. I managed to twist my face away, but he
began drawing it again into his mouth.
"Now," thought I, "my end has come!"
Then I felt the weight lifted and, looking up, I saw that he was no
longer there. He had jumped off me and run away.
When my comrade and Damian had seen the bear knock me down and begin
worrying me, they rushed to the rescue. My comrade, in his haste,
blundered and, instead of following the trodden path, ran into the deep
snow and fell down. While he was struggling out of the snow the bear
was gnawing at me. But Damian, just as he was, without a gun and with
only a stick in his hand, rushed along the path shouting:
"He's eating the master! He's eating the master!"
And, as he ran, he called to the bear:
"Oh, you idiot! What are you doing? Leave off! Leave off!"
The bear obeyed him and, leaving me, ran away. When I rose there was
as much blood on the snow as if a sheep had been killed, and the flesh
hung in rags above my eyes, though in my excitement I felt no pain.
My comrade had come up by this time, and the other people collected
round; they looked at my wound and put snow on it. But I, forgetting
about my wounds, only asked:
"Where's the bear? Which way has he gone?"
Suddenly I heard:
"Here he is! Here he is!"
And we saw the bear again running at us. We seized our guns, but before
any one had time to fire he had run past He had grown ferocious and
wanted to gnaw me again, but, seeing so many people, he took fright.
We saw by his track that his head was bleeding, and we wanted to follow
him up, but, as my wounds had become very painful, we went, instead, to
the town to find a doctor.
The doctor stitched up my wounds with silk and they soon began to heal.
A month later we went to hunt that bear again, but I did not get a
chance of finishing him. He would not come out of the circle, but went
round and round, growling in a terrible voice.
Damian killed him. The bear's lower jaw had been broken and one of his
teeth knocked out by my bullet. He was a huge creature and had splendid
black fur.
I had him stuffed and he now lies in my room. The wounds on my forehead
healed up so that the scars can scarcely be seen.
--Leo M. Tolstoy.
"Twenty-three Tales from Tolstoy." (Oxford.) Written about 1872.
=Saladin and I Fight an Alupong=
As I remember, it was a windy afternoon in April, 1906, that I was
nearly bitten by an _alupong_, a very poisonous snake, when I was out
on our farm during harvest. The day was beginning to cool. The men and
women were busy cleaning the rice that had been threshed the night
before.
I went out with my dog, Saladin, to play with the other boy on the
farm. While we were running and jumping on the great, long pile of hay
I heard my dog barking. I quickly ran to see what was the matter.
Saladin was leaping and running as he barked. He was after a big snake,
which from time to time stopped and raised its crested head to bite.
I was very much excited. I shouted to encourage my dog. I took a
good-sized lump of dried earth and threw it with all my might at the
snake. Then I cried to the boys, "A snake, a snake! Come, here is a big
snake! Look!"
All the boys came, but when they reached the place the poisonous animal
was gone. Saladin was standing on his hind legs and was barking as he
scratched the side of an ant hill. I went near the dog. I saw what was
the matter. Then I turned to the boys and said, "It is gone into this
hole. Let us make it come out."
I pulled up one of the poles of the fence surrounding the place where
the rice was being cleaned, and with it I hastened back to the ant
hill. Then I pushed this pointed pole, about one and one-half inches in
diameter and four feet in length, into the hole. The other boys were
far from me, but my dog was alert near the place. I heard the snake
spit and hiss inside. Then I suddenly pulled away the pole. When I saw
the animal coming out quickly, I speedily turned to run, but I missed
my first step and fell to the ground.
You may fancy how greatly I was frightened. During that short, critical
moment I expected the deadly bite, but to my great relief I had time
to stand up without being bitten. I looked back and saw how my dog had
saved my life. He was fighting with the snake. In that very place the
two killed each other, after a short time.
--Cecilio R. Esquivel.
=I Get Two Beatings=
One afternoon my mother beat me for some cause which I have forgotten.
After I had wiped my tears I went into our orchard just across the
road. It was very nice to stay under the orange and cocoa trees because
of the sweet breeze which was coming from the river at the end of the
orchard.
As I was rambling about I came to the river bank, which is about thirty
feet high. When I looked down I saw two wild tomato plants full of red
fruit. "Ah!" I exclaimed, "what good tomato plants. I will take the
fruit home to appease mother's anger." Accordingly I began to look for
a path down to the water. The path which I found was very steep, and so
it was hard for me to go down. When I reached the edge of the water I
saw a man catching insects to use for bait.
"Where are you going, my lad?" he said.
"I am going to get the fruit of those two tomato plants. Can't you see
them?" I asked, pointing to the plants.
"I tried to get those this morning, but I could not."
"Anyhow, I will try," I continued.
So I began to climb the steep slope with both hands and feet. While I
was climbing the man said, "Look out. If you fall, you will surely roll
into the water." My desire to appease my mother's anger was so great
that I paid no heed to what he said. After struggling for a few minutes
I caught hold of a long root of the _madre cacao_ tree, which was
growing on the bank. With the help of this and several others I reached
the place where the tomatoes were. When I had filled one of my pockets
with the red fruits the root to which I was holding broke in two and
down I rolled, with my head foremost, into the water. I should have
drowned had not the man saved me. When I was carried on land I found
out that my back was badly hurt. I had received two wounds, one over
the left eyebrow and one in the forehead, from some thorns. The scars
can be seen to this day. When I went home my mother asked me why I had
my clothes wet. I told her the whole story, but when she saw my wounds
she became so angry that she beat me again.
--Facundo Esquivel.
=The Fall of Juan=
One day while Juan, Pedro and I were in the church tower looking at a
procession, we saw a nest hanging from the _cogon_ roof. For a while
no one of us seemed to want it, but soon Juan said, "That is mine."
Then Pedro approached him, saying, "I will have it," and he pushed Juan
away. As I was very much interested in the beautiful nest, I went near
them and said, "The first one that can get it shall have it." So I
jumped and grabbed it. Then Pedro said, "Let us divide the eggs so that
each of us will have a share."
"No, no," I cried, "I must have it all."
For a long time the quarrel grew worse and worse until it finally
became a fight. Then a sad thing occurred. Pedro rushed toward me and
snatched at the nest, but I pushed him away. Then Juan came with the
same intention. Seeing that I was in danger, I laid the nest on the
floor and grasped Juan by the neck. As he tried to throw me, I pushed
him out of the door. Down, down he went as fast as an arrow. Now all of
us thought that he would be dashed to pieces, but when, by scrambling
and sliding, we at last reached the bottom of the long, dark, winding
stairs, we found him swelling with pride and boasting of himself as a
brave boy.
--Gregorio Farrales.
=A Narrow Escape from a Wild Carabao=
In 1903 I narrowly escaped being killed by a wild carabao. There were
many of us pursuing this animal, but, after seeing that the buffalo was
very fierce, all of my companions got so afraid that they withdrew.
Since I had the best horse, I continued following the wild beast.
My ambition to distinguish myself both in horseback riding and in
catching wild cattle was great. So, at the time when we were pursuing
the animal, I had in mind that if I alone could succeed in catching
the wild carabao, it would surely be an honor to me. So I followed the
animal closely. When I was just a few feet behind it it suddenly turned
back and fell upon my pony. I also tried to turn back, but in vain; the
carabao overcame us. At this time I was entirely hopeless of my life.
The sharp horn of the cruel beast stuck deeply into the thighs of my
poor pony. I did not know what to do then, for the cruel beast would
surely pursue me if I should dismount. So I grasped my saddle with all
my might. But after a while my poor pet languished and fell. Then I
did my best to get away from danger. The carabao would have pursued
me at once, but its horns stuck tight into the muscles of my horse,
and consequently it was delayed a little. Meanwhile I got into a cell
of a big rock, and exactly at the very moment I squeezed in the mad
buffalo struck the opening with its horns. Fortunately, the aperture
was too small for the head of the animal to enter. But still the sharp
points of its horns could reach me and I received a wound at the back
of my neck. Luckily, I had a bolo with me, and reaching out bravely, I
stabbed the nose of the cruel beast. It surely received a severe wound.
But, instead of running away, the animal became angrier than before and
butted again and again at the opening. My eyes were nearly struck by
the sharp pointed horns. In order to save myself from further injury I
stabbed this time one of the glowing eyes of the buffalo. Blood gushed
out at me. When the wild beast felt the pains of the wounds it began to
move away with regret. After the carabao had gone I bemoaned the death
of my favorite pony. I decided to take revenge upon the beast. In order
to accomplish this I first went home. When I told my parents about
the accident they at once consented to my taking their gun. So the
next morning I set out with many companions. We easily found the same
wild carabao roaming in the broad forest. It was still very mad, for
it began to chase us immediately, coming swiftly towards us, looking
sidewise with its one eye. Without hesitation I let my bullet go and
the beast fell dead.
--José M. Cariño.
V. The Traveler's Sketch
A traveler's sketch is an orderly and extended account of the
incidents of a journey--the sights, sounds, experiences, impressions
and conclusions of the writer. Incidents and anecdotes may be given
by the narrator in the first or third person; but a traveler's sketch
is always first person. There may be the other forms included,
together with descriptions and historical references; but what makes
a traveler's sketch a traveler's sketch is the personal flavor. The
question the reader always asks is, not what kind of city is Lisbon,
but what impression did it make on Fielding.
[Great travel books]
There have been only a few great travel books written. Perhaps, because
the people that are worth while are not gadabouts; perhaps, because
only a few men are generous enough or idle enough to give themselves
over completely to impressions; surely, because not every one who
travels has the ability to see what ought to be seen or to express
himself entertainingly after he has seen it. The narrator needs an eye
made quiet, that looks into the heart of things. He needs also wit and
a wide humanity. If he stalks his way through a place as an Englishman
only, or if he buys it through lavishly as an American, he will have
nothing to tell that we care to listen to. The public is not won by a
string of foreign names merely. A little trip from New York to Boston
would furnish a Smollet or a Sterne with more observations than a
journey around the world would a dull-minded pedant. George Borrow
could tell of distributing Bibles in Spain, and yet give us one of
the best travel books in any language. Henry Fielding could be on his
death journey, as he was on his voyage to Lisbon, and well know it, as
he did, and yet he could write with such an 'indomitable gallantry of
spirit, such an irrepressible joy of life, such an insatiably curious
eye for humanity,' such a new relish for every fresh face, that the
reader could easily imagine that the laughing, genial, ironic, but
altogether compassionate and broad-minded, manly fellow had not a care
in the world.
The "Voyage and Travaille of Sir John Mandeville" is a book very
precious to the English language, if not to the history of facts. It
was intended as a road-book to the Holy Land, and was produced as
early as 1356. It is precious not only because of the marvelous tales
skillfully woven in as reports of the belief of various cities--stories
which have been inspirations to hundreds of romancers--but because of
the fact that it was, so far as we know, the first piece of English
prose of any considerable extent to depart from the beaten track of
medieval theology and philosophy, and the first piece of original prose
to reveal any personality, to have any style, any flavor of the author.
Altho because of its stooping to the delight that men of that day took
in marvels it places itself really in the class of imaginary voyages,
it yet belongs with good travel books in this one essential--vivacity
and personal charm.
Marco Polo, the Venetian traveler of the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, because of his irresponsibility in padding his account
with marvelous tales, placed himself with Mandeville and the wonder
books; but the result of his "Travels" was scientific in the effect his
evidence that he had really been to the far East had upon Columbus and
the earlier navigators.
An interesting bit of Anglo-Saxon actual travel account is the story of
Ohthere and Wulfstan inserted by King Alfred into his translation of
the "History of Orosius," and told as the king took it down from the
lips of these sea-rovers themselves sometime during the ninth century.
Sturdy old Sam Johnson by his "Journey to the Western Isles" added a
substantial volume to the very short eight-or-ten-inch shelf of great
travel book.
In many ways Bayard Taylor was the ideal traveler, putting himself
into sympathy with the people whom he went among, wearing their dress,
eating their food, speaking their language. But he failed to produce
great literature, for some reason or other--perhaps because he wrote
for the newspapers. His "Views Afoot, or Europe seen with Knapsack and
Staff" and other "copy" of the sort are interesting reading, however.
Darwin's record of the Voyage of the Beagle is invaluable to science.
Richard Henry Dana's "Two Years Before the Mast" is an excellent boys'
book, and has a fine feeling of adventure about it. But we may not
mention the work of any more travel writers, Stevenson, James, Curtis,
Stanley, Roosevelt, or others in other languages.
[Fielding's gentle warning]
Many of our travel books were written as letters and journals; some,
as notes or strict diaries. You might put your sketch into the form of
a letter to a friend. The chief thing you need to remember in relating
any journey, however long or short, is Fielding's gentle warning to
know what to omit: "To make a traveler an agreeable companion to a man
of sense, it is necessary, not only that he should have seen much,
but that he should have overlooked much of what he hath seen.... [A
motto for the narrator] [Some voyage-writers] waste their time and
paper with recording things and facts of so common a kind that they
challenge no other right of being remembered than as they had the
honor of having happened to the author, to whom nothing seems trivial
that in any manner happens to himself. Of such consequence do his own
actions appear to one of his kind that he would probably think himself
guilty of infidelity should he omit the minutest thing in the detail of
his journal. That the fact is true, is sufficient to give it a place
there without any consideration whether it is capable of pleasing or
surprising, of diverting or informing the reader." By implication
Fielding gives the travel book its motto: to please and surprise,
divert and inform.
="On the Way to Talavera"=
The next day's journey brought me to a considerable town, the name
of which I have forgotten. It is the first in New Castile, in this
direction. I passed the night as usual in the manger of the stable,
close beside the Caballeria; for, as I traveled upon a donkey, I deemed
it incumbent upon me to be satisfied with a couch in keeping with my
manner of journeying, being averse, by any squeamish and over delicate
airs, to generate a suspicion amongst the people with whom I mingled
that I am aught higher than what my equipage and outward appearance
might lead them to believe. Rising before daylight, I again proceeded
on my way, hoping ere night to be able to reach Talavera, which I was
informed was ten leagues distant. The way lay entirely over an unbroken
level, for the most part covered with olive trees. On the left,
however, at the distance of a few leagues, rose the mighty mountains
which I have already mentioned. They run eastward in a seemingly
interminable range, parallel with the route which I was pursuing; their
tops and sides were covered with dazzling snow, and the blasts which
came sweeping from them across the wide and melancholy plains were of
bitter keenness.
"What mountains are those?" I inquired of a barber-surgeon, who,
mounted like myself on a grey burra, joined me about noon, and
proceeded in my company for several leagues. "They have many names,
Caballero," replied the barber; "according to the names of the
neighbouring places so they are called. Yon portion of them is styled
the Serriania of Plasencia; and opposite to Madrid they are termed the
Mountains of Guadarama, from a river of that name which descends from
them; they run a vast way, Caballero, and separate the two kingdoms,
for on the other side is Old Castile. They are mighty mountains, and
though they generate much cold, I take pleasure in looking at them,
which is not to be wondered at, seeing that I was born among them,
though at present, for my sins, I live in a village of the plain.
Caballero, there is not another such range in Spain; they have their
secrets, too--their mysteries--strange tales are told of those hills,
and of what they contain in their deep recesses, for they are a broad
chain, and you may wander days and days amongst them without coming
to any termino. Many have lost themselves on those hills, and have
never again been heard of. Strange things are told of them; it is
said that in a certain place there are deep pools and lakes in which
dwell monsters, huge serpents as long as a pine tree, and horses of
the flood, which sometimes come out and commit mighty damage. One
thing is certain, that yonder, far away to the west, in the heart
of those hills, there is a wonderful valley, so narrow that only at
midday is the face of the sun to be descried from it. That valley lay
undiscovered and unknown for thousands of years; no person dreamed of
its existence, but at last, a long time ago, certain hunters entered
it by chance, and then what do you think they found, Caballero? They
found a small nation or tribe of unknown people, speaking an unknown
language, who perhaps, had lived there since the creation of the
world, without intercourse with the rest of their fellow creatures,
and without knowing that other beings besides themselves existed!
Caballero, did you never hear of the valley of the Batuecas? Many books
have been written about that valley and those people, Caballero, I am
proud of yonder hills; and were I independent, and without wife or
children, I would purchase a burra like that of your own, which I see
is an excellent one, and far superior to mine, and travel amongst them
till I knew all their mysteries, and had seen all the wondrous things
they contain."
Throughout the day I pressed the burra forward, only stopping once in
order to feed the animal; but, notwithstanding that she played her
part very well, night came on, and I was still about two leagues from
Talavera. As the sun went down, the cold became intense; I drew the
old Gypsy cloak, which I still wore, closer around me, but I found it
quite inadequate to protect me from the inclemency of the atmosphere.
The road, which lay over a plain, was not very distinctly traced, and
became in the dusk rather difficult to find, more especially as cross
roads leading to different places were of frequent occurrence.
I however, proceeded in the best manner I could, and when I became
dubious as to the course which I should take, I invariably allowed the
animal on which I was mounted to decide. At length the moon shone out
faintly, when suddenly by its beams I beheld a figure moving before
me at a slight distance. I quickened the pace of the burra, and was
soon close at its side. It went on, neither altering its pace nor
looking round for a moment. It was the figure of a man, the tallest and
bulkiest that I had hitherto seen in Spain, dressed in a manner strange
and singular for the country. On his head was a hat with a low crown
and broad brim, very much resembling that of an English waggoner; about
his body was a long loose tunic or slop, seemingly of coarse ticken,
open in front, so as to allow the interior garments to be occasionally
seen; these appeared to consist of a jerkin and short velveteen
pantaloons. I have said that the brim of the hat was broad, but broad
as it was, it was insufficient to cover an immense bush of coal-black
hair, which, thick and curly, projected, on either side; over the left
shoulder was flung a kind of satchel, and in the right hand was held a
long staff or pole.
There was something peculiarly strange about the figure, but what
struck me the most was the tranquility with which it moved along,
taking no heed of me, though of course aware of my proximity, but
looking straight forward along the road, save when it occasionally
raised a huge face and large eyes toward the moon, which was now
shining forth in the eastern quarter.
"A cold night," said I at last. "Is this the way to Talavera?"
"It is the way to Talavera, and the night is cold."
"I am going to Talavera," said I, "as I suppose you are yourself."
"I am going thither, so are you, _Bueno_."
The tones of the voice which delivered these words were in their
way quite as strange and singular as the figure to which the voice
belonged; they were not exactly the tones of a Spanish voice, and
yet there was something in them that could hardly be foreign; the
pronunciation also was correct, and the language, though singular,
faultless. But I was most struck with the manner in which the last
word, _bueno_, was spoken. I had heard something like it before, but
where or when I could by no means remember. A pause now ensued; the
figure stalking on as before with the most perfect indifference, and
seemingly with no disposition either to seek or avoid conversation.
"Are you not afraid," said I at last, "to travel these roads in the
dark? It is said that there are robbers abroad."
"Are you not rather afraid," replied the figure, "to travel these roads
in the dark?--you who are ignorant of the country, who are a foreigner,
an Englishman?"
"How is it that you know me to be an Englishman?" demanded I, much
surprised.
"That is no difficult matter," replied the figure; "the sound of your
voice was enough to apprise me of that."
"You speak of voices," said I; "suppose the tone of your own voice were
to tell me who you are?"
"That it will not do," replied my companion; "you know nothing about
me--you can know nothing about me."
"Be not sure of that, my friend; I am acquainted with many things of
which you have little idea."
"For example," said the figure.
"For example," said I, "you speak two languages."
The figure moved on, seemed to consider a moment and then said slowly,
_bueno_.
"You have two names," I continued; "one for the house and the other for
the street; both are good, but the one by which you are called at home
is the one which you like best."
The man walked on about ten paces, in the same manner as he had
previously done; all of a sudden he turned, and taking the bridle
of the burra gently in his hand, stopped her. I had now a full view
of his face and figure, and those huge features and Herculean form
still occasionally revisit me in my dreams. I see him standing in the
moonshine, staring me in the face with his deep calm eyes. At last he
said:
"Are you then one of us?"
--George Borrow.
"The Bible in Spain." The World's Classics (Oxford Press).
="Smyrna: First Glimpses of the East"=
"I am glad that the Turkish part of Athens was extinct, so that I
should not be baulked of the pleasure of entering an Eastern town by an
introduction to any garbled or incomplete specimen of one. Smyrna seems
to me the most Eastern of all have seen; as Calais will probably remain
to the Englishman, the most French town in the world. The jack-boots
of the postilions don't seem so huge elsewhere, or the tight stockings
of the maid-servants so Gallic. The churches and the ramparts and
the little soldiers on them, remain forever impressed upon your
memory; from which larger temples and buildings, and whole armies have
subsequently disappeared; and the first words of actual French heard
spoken, and the first dinner at 'Quillacq's' remain after twenty years
as clear as on the first day. Dear Jones, can't you remember the exact
smack of the white hermitage, and the toothless old fellow singing
'Largo al factotum?'"
The first day in the East is like that. After that there is nothing.
The wonder is gone, and the thrill of that delightful shock, which so
seldom touches the nerves of plain men of the world, though they seek
for it everywhere. One such looked out at Smyrna from our steamer and
yawned without the least excitement, and did not betray the slightest
emotion, as boats with real Turks on board came up to the ship. There
lay the town with minarets and cypresses, domes and castles; great guns
were firing off, and the blood-red flag of the Sultan flaring over
the gulf's edge, and as you looked at them with the telescope, there
peered out of the general mass a score of pleasant episodes of Eastern
life--there were cottages with quaint roofs; silent cool kioska, where
the chief of the eunuchs brings down the ladies of the harem. I saw
Hassan, the fisherman, getting his nets; and Ali Baba going off with
his donkey to the great forest for wood. Smith looked at these wonders
quite unmoved; and I was surprised at his apathy; but he had been at
Smyrna before. A man only sees the miracle once: though you yearn after
it ever so, it won't come again. I saw nothing of Ali Baba and Hassan
the next time we came to Smyrna, and had some doubts (recollecting
the badness of the inn) about landing at all. A person who wishes to
understand France and the East should come in a yacht to Calais or
Smyrna, land for two hours, and never afterward go back again.
But those two hours are beyond measure delightful. Some of us were
querulous up to that time and doubted of the wisdom of making the
voyage. Lisbon, we owned, was a failure. Athens a dead failure;
Malta very well, but not worth the trouble and seasickness; in fact,
Baden-Baden or Devonshire would be a better move than this; when
Smyrna came and rebuked all mutinous Cockneys into silence. Some men
may read this who are in want of a sensation. If they love the odd
and picturesque, if they loved the "Arabian Nights" in their youth,
let them book themselves on board one of the Peninsular and Oriental
vessels and try one _dip_ into Constantinople or Smyrna. Walk into the
bazaar and the East is unveiled to you; how often and often have you
tried to fancy this, lying out on a summer holiday at school! It is
wonderful, too, how _like_ it is; you may imagine that you have been in
the place before, you seem to know it so well!
"The beauty of that poetry is, to me, that it was never too handsome;
there is no fatigue of sublimity about it. Schacabac and the little
Barber play as great a part in it as the heroes; there are no
uncomfortable sensations of terror; you may be familiar with the great
Afreet, who was going to execute the travelers for killing his son with
a date stone. Morgiana, when she kills the Forty Robbers with boiling
oil, does not seem to hurt them in the least; and though King Schahrier
makes a practice of cutting off his wives' heads, yet you fancy they
got them on again in some of the back rooms of the palace, where they
are dancing and playing on dulcimers. How fresh, easy, good-natured is
all this! How delightful is that notion of the pleasant Eastern people
about knowledge, where the height of science is made to consist in the
answering of riddles and all the mathematicians and magicians bring
their great beards to bear on a conundrum!
"When I got into the bazaar among this race, somehow I felt as if they
were all friends. There sat the merchants in their little shops, quiet
and solemn, but with friendly looks. There was no smoking, it was the
Ramazan; no eating--the fish and meats fizzing in the enormous pots
of the cook-shops are only for the Christians. The children abounded;
the law is not so stringent upon them, and many wandering merchants
were there selling figs (in the name of the Prophet, doubtless),
for their benefit, and elbowing onward with baskets of grapes and
cucumbers. Countrymen passed bristling over with arms, each with a
huge bellyful of pistols and daggers in his girdle; fierce, but not
the least dangerous. Wild swarthy Arabs, who had come in with the
caravans, walked solemnly about, very different in look and demeanor
from the sleek inhabitants of the town. Greeks and Jews squatted and
smoked, their shops tended by sallow-faced boys, with large eyes, who
smiled and welcomed you in; negroes bustled about in gaudy colors; and
women, with black nose-bags and shuffling yellow slippers chattered and
bargained at the doors of the little shops. There was the rope quarter
and the sweetmeat quarter, and the pipe bazaar and the arm bazaar, and
the little turned-up shoe quarter, and the shops where ready-made
jackets and pelisses were swinging, and the region where, under the
ragged awnings, regiments of tailors were at work. The sun peeps
through these awnings of mat or canvas, which are hung over the narrow
lanes of the bazaar and ornaments them with a thousand freaks of light
and shadow. Cogia Hassan Alhabbal's shop is in a blaze of light; while
his neighbor, the barber and coffee-house keeper, has his premises, his
low seats and narghilés, his queer pots and basins, in the shade. The
cobblers are always good-natured; there was one who, I am sure, has
been revealed to me in my dreams, in a dirty old green turban, with a
pleasant wrinkled face like an apple; twinkling his little gray eyes as
he held them up to the gossips, and smiling under a delightful old gray
beard, which did the heart good to see. You divine the conversation
between him and the cucumber man, as the Sultan used to understand the
language of birds. Are any of those cucumbers stuffed with pearls,
and is that Armenian with the black square turban Haroun Alraschid
in disguise, standing yonder by the fountain where the children are
drinking--the gleaming marble fountain, checked all over with light and
shadow, and engraved with delicate Arabesques and sentences from the
Koran?
"But the greatest sensation of all is when the camels come. Whole
strings of real camels, better even than in the procession of Blue
Beard, with soft rolling eyes and bended necks, swaying from one side
of the bazaar to the other to and fro, and treading gingerly with their
great feet. Oh, you fairy dreams of boyhood! Oh, you sweet meditations
of half-holidays, here you are realized for half an hour! The genius
which presides over youth led up to do a good action that day. There
was a man sitting in an open room ornamented with fine long-tailed
sentences of the Koran; some in red, some in blue; some written
diagonally over the paper; some so shaped as to represent ships,
dragons, or mysterious animals. The man squatted on a carpet in the
middle of this room, with folded arms, waggling his head to and fro,
swaying about, and singing through his nose choice phrases from the
sacred work. But from the room above came a clear voice of many little
shouting voices, much more musical than that of Naso in the matted
parlor, and the guide told us it was a school, so we went upstairs to
look.
"I declare, an my conscience, the master was in the act of bastinadoing
a little mulatto boy; his feet were in a bar, and the brute was laying
on with a cane; so we witnessed the howling of the poor boy, and the
confusion of the brute who was administering the correction. The other
children were made to shout, I believe, to drown the noise of their
little comrade's howling; but the punishment was instantly discontinued
as our hats came up over the stair-trap, and the boy cast loose, and
the bamboo huddled into a corner, and the schoolmaster stood before us
abashed. All the small scholars in red caps, and the little girls in
gaudy handkerchiefs turned their big wondering dark eyes toward us; and
the caning was over for _that_ time, let us trust. I don't envy some
schoolmasters in a future state. I pity that poor little blubbering
Mahometan; he will never be able to relish the 'Arabian Nights' in the
original as long as he lives.
"From this scene we rushed off somewhat discomposed to make a
breakfast off red mullets and grapes, melons, pomegranates, and Smyrna
wine, at a dirty little comfortable inn to which we were recommended;
and from the windows of which we had a fine, cheerful view of the gulf
and its busy craft, and the loungers and merchants along the shore.
There were camels unloading at one wharf, and piles of melons much
bigger than the Gibraltar cannon-balls at another. It was the fig
season, and we passed through several alleys encumbered with long rows
of fig-dressers, children and women for the most part, who were packing
the fruit diligently into drums, dipping them in salt water first, and
spreading them neatly over with leaves; while the figs and leaves are
drying, large white worms crawl out of them and swarm over the decks
of the ships which carry them to Europe and to England, where small
children eat them with pleasure--I mean the figs, not the worms--and
where they are still served at wine parties at the universities.
When fresh they are not better than elsewhere; but the melons are
of admirable flavor, and so large that Cinderella might almost be
accommodated with a coach made of a big one, without any very great
distention of its original proportions.
"Our guide, an accomplished swindler, demanded two dollars as the fee
for entering the mosque, which others of our party subsequently saw
for sixpence, so we did not care to examine that place of worship. But
there were other cheaper sights, which were to the full as picturesque,
for which there was no call to pay money, or indeed, for a day,
scarcely to move at all. I doubt whether a man who would smoke his pipe
on a bazaar counter all day, and let the city flow by him, would not
be almost as well employed as the most active curiosity hunter.
"To be sure he would not see the women. Those in the bazaar were
shabby people for the most part, whose black masks nobody would feel a
curiosity to remove. You could see no more of their figure than if they
had been stuffed in holsters; and even their feet were brought to a
general splay uniformity by the double yellow slippers which the wives
of true believers wear. But it is in the Greek and Armenian quarters,
and among those poor Christians who were pulling figs, that you see the
beauties; and a man of a generous disposition may lose his heart half
a dozen times a day in Smyrna. There was the pretty maid at work at
a tambour frame in an open porch, with an old duenna spinning by her
side, and a goat tied up to the railings of the little court garden;
there was the nymph who came down the stair with the pitcher on her
head, and gazed with great calm eyes, as large and stately as Juno's;
there was the gentle mother, bending over a queer cradle, in which lay
a small crying bundle of infancy. All these three charmers were seen in
a single street in the Armenian quarter, where the house doors are all
open, and the women of the families sit under the arches in the court.
There was the fig girl, beautiful beyond all others, with an immense
coil of deep black hair twisted round a head of which Raphael was
worthy to draw the outline, and Titian to paint the color. I wonder the
Sultan has not swept her off, or that the Persian merchants, who come
with silks and sweetmeats have not kidnapped her for the Shah of Tehean.
"We went to see the Persian merchants at their khan, and purchased
some silks there from a swarthy, black-bearded man with a conical cap
of lambswool. Is it not hard to think that silks bought of a man in
a lambswool cap, in a caravanseria, brought hither on the backs of
camels, should have been manufactured after all at Lyons? Others of our
party bought carpets, for which the town is famous; and there was one
absolutely laid in a stock of real Smyrna figs, and purchased three or
four real Smyrna sponges for his carriage; so strong was his passion
for the genuine article.
"I wonder that no painter has given us familiar views of the East; not
processions, grand sultans, or magnificent landscapes, but faithful
transcripts of everyday Oriental life, such as each street will supply
to him. The camels afford endless motives, couched in the market
places, lying by thousands in the camel square, snorting and bubbling
after their manner, the sun blazing down on their backs, their slaves
and keepers lying behind them in the shade; and the Caravan Bridge,
above all, would afford a painter subjects for a dozen of pictures.
Over this Roman arch, which crosses the Meles river, all the caravans
pass on their entrance to the town. On one side, as we sat and looked
at it, was a great row of plane trees; on the opposite bank a deep
wood of tall cypresses, in the midst of which rose up innumerable gray
tombs, surmounted with the turbans of the defunct believers. Beside
the stream the view was less gloomy. There was under the plane trees
a little coffee house, shaded by a trellis-work, covered over with a
vine and ornamented with many rows of shining pots and water-pipes, for
which there was no use at noonday now, in the time of Ramazan.
"Hard by the coffee house was a garden and a bubbling marble fountain,
and over the stream was a broken summerhouse, to which amateurs may
ascend for the purpose of examining the river, and all round the plane
trees plenty of stools for those who were inclined to sit and drink
sweet, thick coffee or cool lemonade made of fresh green citrons. The
master of the house, dressed in a white turban and light blue pelisse,
lolled under the coffee-house awning; the slave in white with a crimson
striped jacket, his face as black as ebony, brought up pipes and
lemonade again, and returned to his station at the coffee house, where
he curled his black legs together and began singing out of his flat
nose to the thrumming of a long guitar with wire string. The instrument
was not bigger than a soup ladle, with a long straight handle, but its
music pleased the performer, for his eyes rolled shining about, and his
head wagged, and he grinned with an innocent intensity of enjoyment
that did one good to look at. And there was a friend to share his
pleasure; a Turk dressed in scarlet and covered all over with dagger
and pistols, sat leaning forward on his little stool, rocking about and
grinning quite as eagerly as the black minstrels. As he sang and we
listened, figures of women bearing pitchers went passing over the Roman
bridge which we saw between the large trunks of the planes; or gray
forms of camels were seen stalking across it, the string preceded by
the little donkey, who is always here their long-eared conductor.
"These are very humble incidents of travel. Wherever the steamboat
touches the shore adventure retreats into the interior, and what is
called romance vanishes. It won't bear the vulgar gaze; or rather the
light of common day puts it out, and it is only in the dark that it
shines at all. There is no cursing and insulting of Giaours now. If a
cockney looks or behaves in a particularly ridiculous way, the little
Turks come out and laugh at him. A Londoner is no longer a spittoon for
true believers; and now that dark Hassan sits in his divan and drinks
champagne, and Selim has a French watch, and Zuleika perhaps takes
Morrison's pills, Byronism becomes absurd instead of sublime, and is
only a foolish expression of cockney wonder. They still occasionally
beat a man for going into a mosque, but this is almost the only sign
of ferocious vitality left in the Turk of the Mediterranean coast,
and strangers may enter scores of mosques without molestation. The
paddlewheel is the great conqueror. Wherever the captain cries 'Stop
her!' civilization stops, and lands in the ship's boat, and makes
a permanent acquaintance with the savages on shore. Whole hosts of
crusaders have passed and died and butchered here in vain. But to
manufacture European iron into pikes and helmets was a waste of metal;
in the shape of piston rods and furnace pokers it is irresistible; and
I think an allegory might be made showing how much stronger commerce is
than chivalry, and finishing with a grand image of Mahomet's crescent
being extinguished in Fulton's boiler.
"This I thought was the moral of the day's sights and adventures. We
pulled off the steamer in the afternoon--the Inbat blowing fresh and
setting all the craft in the gulf dancing over its blue waters. We
were presently under weigh again, the captain ordering his engines to
work only at half power, so that a French steamer which was quitting
Smyrna at the same time might come up with us and fancy she could beat
the irresistible _Tagus_. Vain hope! Just as the Frenchman neared us,
the _Tagus_ shot out like an arrow and the discomfited Frenchman went
behind. Though we all relished the joke exceedingly, there was a French
gentleman on board who did not seem to be by any means tickled with
it; but he had received papers at Smyrna containing news of Marshal
Bugeaud's victory at Isley and had this land victory to set against our
harmless little triumph at sea.
"That night we rounded the Island of Mitylene, and next day the coast
of Troy was in sight, and the tomb of Achilles--a dismal-looking
mound that rises on a low, dreary, barren shore--less lively and not
more picturesque than the Schelot or the mouth of the Thames. Then we
passed Tenedos and the forts and town at the mouth of the Dardanelles.
The weather was not too hot, the water as smooth as at Putney, and
everybody happy and excited at the thought of seeing Constantinople
tomorrow. We had music on board all the way from Smyrna. A German
_commis voyageur_, with a guitar, who had passed unnoticed until
that time, produced his instrument about midday and began to whistle
waltzes. He whistled so divinely that the ladies left their cabins and
men laid down their books. He whistled a polka so bewitchingly that
two young Oxford men began whirling round the deck and performed that
popular dance with much agility until they sank down tired. He still
continued an unabated whistling, and as nobody would dance, pulled
off his coat, produced a pair of castanets and whistling a mazurka,
performed it with tremendous agility. His whistling made everybody
gay and happy--made those acquainted who had not spoken before, and
inspired such a feeling of hilarity in the ship that that night, as
we floated over the Sea of Marmora, a general vote was expressed for
broiled bones and a regular supper party. Punch was brewed and speeches
were made, and, after a lapse of fifteen years, I heard the 'Old
English Gentleman' and 'Bright Chanticleer Proclaims the Morn,' sung in
such style that you would almost fancy the proctors must hear and send
us all home."
--William Makepeace Thackeray.
"A Journey from Cornhill to Cairo."
=A Trip from Currimao to Laoag=
Late in the afternoon of last April third, Mr. C. Guia and I left
Currimao for San Nicolas and Laoag, respectively. We traveled in a cart
drawn by a fat gray cow.
At first it was not altogether pleasant to go now up then down the
irregular road, and besides, the cart--a shoe-box-shaped sort of buggy
with bamboo sides and floor--was far from being comfortable. The
driver was a sturdy broad-shouldered country fellow, dressed in a red
home-spun shirt worn outside of his tight dark-green trousers, rolled
up above his knees. His big bolo, suspended from his tough belt that he
wore outside, was at his left; while his callugung--a saucer-shaped hat
made from a dried wild squash--was dangling at his right.
Since we left Currimao he had not addressed us a single word, but all
of a sudden when the cart stopped in front of a ragged cottage, he
cried out loud as if we were deaf, "Apu, arac quen maiz," which means,
"Sirs, wine and corn." Mr. Guia and I rose from our squatting posture
on the floor by the side of our steamer trunks and suit cases and got
down to buy for our driver the things that he needed.
When we entered, the inner appearance of the cottage in the dim light
of a small oil lamp hanging from the middle of the ceiling aroused
somewhat my pity for the occupants. In one corner a rather old though
fat woman was cooking supper, while in another corner were fishing
nets, a new plow, a hunting spear and a callugung. In the corner near
the door were rough boxes on which were ragged mats and red pillows. In
the middle of the room was a basket of corn which an old, muscular man
was husking when we entered and which he left to attend to our needs.
We were invited to sit on a long bamboo bench which occupied one side
of the room and where we remained as mute as statues until our driver,
having filled his stomach with vino and having given his animal enough
corn, summoned us to continue our journey.
We went out, and as the moon was now shining brightly, we had a front
view of the cottage. The cogon roof, on which were perched some
chickens, was pyramid-like, and the walls, broken at places but patched
with rice-sacks through which the dim light of the lamp was visible,
were made of bamboo. The porch, at the middle of which was a wooden
staircase shaded by broad eaves, was piled full of corn.
After we paid the old man for what he supplied our now half-drunk
driver, we again assumed our uncomfortable position in the cart. The
road was now smooth and I was surprised to find ourselves suffering
still the disagreeable upward and downward movement of the cart. I
examined the two solid wooden wheels, and I found that they were not
round, but oval. But the beautiful panorama of the country soon made
me forget my discomfort in the cart. On our left and right were square
rice-fields--some yellow with ripe grain and others green with young
leaves--dotted here and there with hamlets or solitary trees so that
they resembled a checker-board.
All the while that I was admiring this view, Mr. Guia seemed to
be buried in deep thought. We were cabin-mates in the steamship
_Bustamante_ that brought us from Manila, and therefore I had known him
for but three days, during which he was always cheerful and gay. But
now what a sad and mournful countenance! His youthful and oval face,
hitherto jovial and beaming with health, was pale. I was very sorry to
see my companion thus afflicted with grief, and I said in a sympathetic
voice, "Mr. Guia, are you sick?" He answered, "No, I am not. But, my
friend, my mo-mo-mother died nine days ago, and that's why, as you
see, I am mourning." Indeed, he was mourning, for he wore a black cap,
suit, tie and shoes. I dared not continue our conversation along that
line, for I knew it would but grieve him the more. So I expressed my
condolence by silence. After a moment of quietude he told the driver
something in Ilocano which I did not understand.
Suddenly the driver began to sing with a tremulous voice a common
country ditty called "Dalla-dalluc." As it was getting late, I was soon
lulled into a sound sleep. I think I had slept for about two hours when
a loud barking of five dogs awoke me. When I looked around, I found
that we were in a town, for we were passing by a church whose stone
wall was black with moss and at whose rear a river was flowing. I asked
Mr. Guia in what town we were and he answered, "Why, we are in San
Nicolas now." I replied, "Then here we part." He exclaimed, "Oh, no!
You are very tired, and it would be better for you to spend the rest of
the night at my house. Besides you will not, I am sure, be able to wake
the _banquero_ (boatman), for it is now past midnight. To-night is also
the celebration of what we call _Umbras_ in honor of my dead mother,
and I should like you to be my special guest." I thanked him very much
for his kind invitation, and, of course, in the face of the obstacle he
foretold, I was glad enough to accept.
The cart turned a corner and stopped suddenly in front of a somewhat
large wooden corrugated iron roofed house--a typical town residence in
the Philippines. We got down immediately from the cart, and we were met
at the gate by a boy of about fifteen years of age. After Mr. Guia told
the boy to look to our baggage, he conducted me to the sala, where he
met his relatives.
While the affectionate greetings were going on between Mr. Guia and
his family, I had time to observe all that was in the room. In one
corner were young women and young men playing cards around a circular
marble table, while in another corner were old women, talking of the
high merits of the departed one. In the corner near the door where
I was standing, a crowd of old fellows were drinking _basi_--a wine
made from sugar cane--and I noticed our driver joining them. The walls
seemed to be very plain; indeed all the decorations were covered with
black cloth. In the center of the _sala_ was a large rectangular table
on which were different kinds of food ready to be eaten. The viands,
however, were cold, so I judged that the table must have been set early
in the evening.
As I was wondering why the table was placed there, Mr. Guia came and
took me into his room where my baggage was put. My thought was still
centered upon the table, and my curiosity led me to ask my friend
about it. Before he answered me, he smiled, and then said, "You must
know that it is the custom of the Ilocanos the ninth night after the
death of any grown-up person to celebrate a mourning festival called
_Umbars_. Each friend of the dead person brings during that day food
either cooked or uncooked. That on the table is the cooked food, which
is considered to be sacred and which, as you have just seen, is being
watched by the people in the room. Nobody is supposed to touch the food
before the prayer, which will begin at three o'clock. After the prayer
is over, which will last for about two hours, then all the guests will
eat the food, but at the head of the table a vacant seat is left for
the spirit of the dead to sit. After the feast the guests depart, and
the festival ends."
During the time that Mr. Guia was explaining to me the _Umbras_, I
was able to wash myself and to change my traveling suit. So after he
finished, he conducted me into the dining-room where we both ate a
hearty meal. Naturally, after we had finished eating, we joined the
company of young men and young women, to each of whom I was introduced
and with whom we played cards until the time for prayers. In the midst
of the prayer I asked the permission of Mr. Guia to go to his room to
pack up my things so that I should be able to leave after the prayer.
When all the guests had departed, I bade good-bye to my friend and his
sorrow-stricken relatives. Within fifteen minutes I reached Laoag,
and was once more safe in the hands of a brother with whom I spent a
pleasant three weeks' sojourn.
--Fernando M. Maramág.
CHAPTER VIII
PERSONAL ACCOUNTS
Within the group of personal accounts come the more-or-less extended
records of the sayings and doings of men and women in their most acute
individuality. It is intimate, detailed living that is expressed in
a diary, in memoirs, or a biography. These have a peculiar charm.
We expect endearing things in a diary, interesting ones in an
autobiography, and, if not surprisingly informing, then surely upright
and praiseworthy ones, often patriotic, in a biography.
I. Journal and Diary
[Definition]
As words, journal and diary mean the same thing. They both denote a
daily record. Journal comes immediately from the French _jour_ meaning
day, and remotely from the same Latin word from which we get diurnal.
Diary comes directly from the Latin _dies_. If there be any difference
in the use of the titles, it lies in the object the maker of the daily
record has in mind. A journal is written for a reader. A diary is kept
for the writer's own amusement or profit. Both mix little and great
affairs promiscuously.