give the signal for the departure of this fearless expedition. This
signal will not be given until Mr. Ekholm finds a northern breeze
blowing briskly and with all the known signs of permanency--a frequent
occurrence, however, in those regions and in such a season. As a
professional aeronaut, I may be allowed to say that Mr. Ekholm will not
be mistaken in his prognostications, and that, once started, Mr.
Andrée's aerial craft will be carried away for hours in the direction of
the North Pole. It would be almost unreasonable to hope that the aerial
travellers will float exactly above the foremost point of our globe from
the tropics. It would be enough for Mr. Andrée to make such a nearing as
would enable him to bring back to civilization hundreds or thousands of
photographs recording all the features of those unattainable regions.
His most ambitious desires will be wholly satisfied, I am sure, if he
obtains a clear view of the rocky mountains that Lieutenant Peary is
said to have seen from the top of the Greenland glaciers on a far
distant horizon.
[Illustration: SPITZBERGEN, THE STARTING-POINT.]
For my own part, I believe that the three aerial explorers will have no
difficulty in running the greater part of the 600 miles separating
Norskoärna from the North Pole. If by some unaccountable misfortune
there should be a notable change in the moving paths of cloudland, it is
certain that Mr. Andrée will be able to direct his balloon in a suitable
siding. Then he will resort to his ingenious combination of guide-roping
and sailing which I described in a previous article. Since his first
trial, in 1894, he has realized great improvements, as will be seen by
comparing the aspect of his new balloon with that of the Swea sailing
above the Swedish lake country, already published in HARPER'S ROUND
TABLE. Instead of using only one medium-sized guide-rope, he will drag
in the Polar solitudes not less than three heavy hemp lines. With the
aid of these gigantic and ponderous guide-ropes, each one measuring 1200
feet and weighing 600 pounds, he can set three sails, supplied with
yards and moved by rigging, and attached to the upper part of the
balloon, independent of the netting, so that they may receive their full
expanse. Their total surface amounts to more than 700 square feet, and
they will, if skilfully managed, impart a remarkable deviating power to
the balloon. So The Northern Pole will skip along like a sailing-craft
with a stern wind.
It must be remembered that in summer-time the winds and storms of the
North Pole are far less treacherous than those of the most attractive
parts of the tropical, or even those of the temperate zones. The north
polar regions are never visited by cyclones or thunder. The only danger
to be encountered is a slight fall of snow, not more than four or five
inches in the whole season. For meeting this almost trivial danger Mr.
Andrée has had the upper part of his balloon covered with a silk canvas,
so that the meshes of the net will be free from any accumulation of
falling snowflakes.
[Illustration: THE COURSE OF THE SUN IN THE ARCTIC REGIONS.]
In the desolate northern lands the sun is a trusty friend to the
aeronaut. By constantly shining over the horizon during a number of
months he develops almost a comfortable degree of heat, while without
any intermission during the twenty-four hours of each day he supplies a
sufficient quantity of light for all photographic purposes. In the mean
time, owing to his moderate altitude, even when he crosses the meridian
line at noon, he is never elevating the unfortunuate aeronaut against
his will to a dangerous distance from the more than half-frozen soil.
The real difficulty is for the balloon, loaded with numberless precious
documents, to find its way out before winter sets in with its long cold
nights and horrors. This exit must be made at any cost by directing the
balloon into a wind tending to some part of the south. Mr. Andrée will
certainly not pay attention to the geographical position of the spot
where he is to alight. He will not care whether he lands on land or on
sea. It will make no difference to him whether he sets foot on rocks or
on cracking ice. He will trust equally to the frozen Atlantic or to the
congelated Pacific if he can descend from cloudland above the horizon of
a whaler. Russia, Siberia, Alaska, or the Northern Dominions are as good
as his own country, if it is not beyond his power to reach some locality
inhabited by Esquimos, Laplanders, or Samoyeds. The main point is to see
The Northern Pole afloat for a long period, say a month. At all events,
Mr. Ekholm calculates that the balloon will remain in the air at least
fifteen or twenty days, and that during this time it will have passed
over a distance of nearly four thousand miles.
[Illustration: The NORTHERN POLE.]
In order to be quite sure to navigate in the atmosphere twelve times
longer than any aeronautical run performed up to the present day (the
thirty-six hours' voyage made in 1892 by M. Maurice Mallet, who has
drawn the accompanying sketches), Mr. Andrée is having his balloon made
absolutely impermeable, of the best and most costly material, with a new
varnish and exceptional sewing. He has replaced even the usual valve at
the top by two others a great deal smaller and fixed to the equator of
the balloon, to be used only for ordinary manoeuvres during the
prolongation of the voyage, for he is determined not to make any pause,
decided to fall from cloudland like a thunderbolt to the very spot
selected by instantly opening his monstrous sphere with a tearing rope,
to which will be attached a dagger for the grand and final moment.
EARLY DAYS OF SUCCESSFUL MEN.
WILLIAM EUSTIS RUSSELL.
BY LLOYD McKIM GARRISON.
If you have ever attended the Harvard-Yale football game at Springfield,
and sat upon the Harvard side of the field, you must have been struck by
the enthusiasm that ran along the crowded benches as a certain slender,
youthful-looking gentleman passed by them looking for his seat. You
might have seen the same enthusiasm break forth along those densely
packed New York streets through which the great Columbian parade marched
nearly two years ago, or, in Chicago, all the way from Lincoln Park to
the White City, whenever among the group of Governors of the different
States there appeared the same young-looking gentleman, managing his
black horse with a strong hand, and sitting him with a firmness that
showed the muscles of his lithe figure under his black official coat.
That gentleman was William Eustis Russell, then Governor of
Massachusetts, the leader of the Democratic party in his State, and the
possessor of a personal popularity which is not limited by her
boundaries.
When you are a Freshman in college you are apt to look upon the big
Senior Captain of the university crew as a person of unusual strength
and size. You never imagine that he could have been different when he
was a Freshman. You think he must have been born so, and grieve because
in your class there are no Freshmen like him. It is only when you
yourself wake up one morning and find that you are no longer a Freshman,
but a Senior and Captain of the crew, that you realize that all great
men are first boys before they are anything else, and that what
afterwards makes them great is pluck and character and their admiration
and emulation of other great men. This is true of the greatest generals
and statesmen, just as of 'varsity oarsmen. They were not always solemn
men with black coats and white cravats, but boys, and probably jolly
ones; and so it was with Governor Russell, whose boyhood was such a
happy and hearty one that it has kept in his face the appearance of
youth, which makes his accomplishments seem so remarkable.
He was born in 1857 in the old college town of Cambridge, Massachusetts,
where Harvard College is. His father was Charles Theodore Russell, a
leading lawyer in the town, and in politics a stanch Democrat. William,
or, as he was then called (and as some of his older friends still dare
to call him), "Billy" Russell, was the youngest of seven children,
having three brothers and three sisters older than himself; and the
traditional luck of a seventh son has followed him accordingly.
His father was a man of small income, which his interest in public life
kept him from increasing. So his large family of children, brought up in
what was then a small country town, were left largely to themselves for
their amusement. He was strict in exacting from them industry,
obedience, and truthfulness. On Sundays they went punctually to church
near where the old Washington elm stands. Every evening they settled
down to study, which came easily to them; but on holidays, and during
the long afternoons after school hours, they were given almost absolute
liberty, which taught them self-reliance, the greater because their
father, who had a horror of extravagance, gave them no such allowance of
spending-money as spoils too many a boy to-day; so they had to get their
fun out of the fields, woods, and ponds, wherever it was most wholesome.
They were passionately fond of animals, and always had a quantity of
pets about, all of which, except a pony, they had either bought with
their own savings or had given to them. They built hutches, in which
they kept delightful lop-eared rabbits, guinea-pigs, and big fluffy gray
squirrels from the Waverly oaks, and many good-natured dogs of no known
breed, which followed them on their expeditions.
Billy Russell was a delicate boy, and therefore was encouraged to lead
an out-of-door life from earliest childhood. When he was but eight years
old his father, who was a great fisherman, took him to the Maine woods
for a summer at the forks of the Kennebec. He began to grow stronger
then and there, and was soon as hearty as any boy, and much more nimble
than most. There was scarcely any kind of sport at which he did not
become expert, particularly the natural sports--skating, coasting, and
swimming; and he rode the family pony till he went to college, and got a
seat he never lost afterwards.
He loved the water, his boat, and his fish-lines, but most of all he
longed for a gun; and as his father could not spare a small boy money
for such a luxury, he determined to make it himself--and he did. From
the inlet at Fresh Pond, and from the little green bays of Spy Pond near
Arlington, two miles from Cambridge, he picked great bunches of
water-lilies, and sold them for five cents a bunch to passers-by. He
collected old horseshoes for the rag-man and did odd jobs for neighbors;
and on the other side of the Charles River, where the bare-foot boy
shouting at and belaboring some unruly steer was not likely to be
recognized as a son of "Lawyer Russell," he many a time drove a herd of
cattle from Boston to Brighton yards for a quarter of a dollar; and he
was so industrious and clever that he had soon saved quite a handsome
sum, and the coveted gun was at last bought; and he never afterwards had
any possession that gave him such pleasure.
The ownership of a real gun made Billy the leader of a small set of
boys, who went bushwhacking with him through all the neighboring
country. They used to camp out on the shores of Walden Pond, cooking
their own game, and learning to sleep in the open air in spite of the
strange noises of the woods. They shot and fished the whole country-side
over, from the Waverly Oaks and the woods towards Watertown out to
Weston and Wayland; and in the other direction around Spy Pond, Spot
Pond, the Mystic River, and the Middlesex Fells; they gathered nuts in
big sacks along the old Concord Road, where the red-coats ran away in
April, 1775, and sometimes even plundered the orchards around Lexington
village, the leader of the young outlaws being the future Governor of
the State.
Although he was such an excellent student, he was the despair of his
teachers by reason of his mischievousness, which was usually of a most
ingenious kind, but because of his excellent record they never did much
more than take his Saturday afternoons away from him. His followers and
he still kept up their sport ardently, and some of his achievements at
this time were wonderful feats of daring. He was "stumped" to climb up
the scaffolding surrounding the tall steeple of Dr. MacKenzie's church,
and did so; and on another "dare" he climbed up the scaffolding to the
top of the tower of Memorial Hall, then being built--a feat any one will
appreciate who has ever seen that tremendous pile. In these undertakings
he was aided, as he was in all athletic sports, by the fact of having
the equal use of both hands. He prefers the left hand, and commonly uses
it, but the right is equally strong; and when I last saw him he was
writing with his right hand because he had just sprained his left thumb.
When he entered Harvard College in the class of '77, which has gone down
to fame as the most brilliant (and disorderly) class that ever was, he
was only sixteen, but quite old for his age. Just as at school, he
treated all his classmates alike, without regard to what team or what
society they were on, never himself belonging to any particular set or
clique, but to the class at large, where he was universally known and
liked. He kept up his studies only fairly well, as the prescribed
courses did not interest him; but in the electives, where he chose
history and political economy, he reached such high marks that his
general average kept him in the first quarter of his class, and he did a
great deal of independent reading along his favorite lines of study that
was not counted in marks, but, nevertheless, was of the greatest service
to him.
In the social life of the class he went along with the rest, without
particular eminence, belonging to the "Institute," the "Dickey," and the
"Hasty Pudding Club," whose initiations which were then quite elaborate
he survived; the men who were "running" him, and calling out to him to
"hit 'er up" when he was speeding through the Yard for them, little
guessing whom they were ordering about. He kept up his athletics, and
played half-back on the Harvard football team against Yale and
All-Canada in the days when they played fifteen on a side, and Harvard
teams won the games as much as a matter of course as Yale teams do
nowadays. Young Russell's athletics made him quite a "horrible example"
for parents to hold up, for before he was through college he had twice
fractured his arm skating and coasting, broken a finger at baseball, and
his nose at football; but his athletics had also given him a sound and
sinewy body which has kept him in such good health that he has been able
to undertake tasks such as no one else has ever attempted--as, for
instance, when he travelled the length of Cape Cod and spoke to twenty
different audiences in the same day, and to most of them from the steps
of a car. So he is still devoted to athletics in spite of all his
accidents, and is an enthusiastic wearer of the crimson at all its great
games in spite of its recent ill-success.
In the summer of his Junior year he nearly lost his life in a sailing
accident which attracted great attention at the time. He, three
classmates of his, a New York boy and his tutor, were at Nantucket, and
went out sailing in a twenty-five-foot centre-board on a very rough day,
with the wind coming in puffs, and the sea, which had been raised by a
storm the day before, running very high. About four miles from the shore
the boat was caught in a squall, and in a moment had capsized and sunk,
leaving all six struggling in the water. By the merest chance a
fisherman who was crossing the bluffs above the beach on his way to his
nets saw the white sail disappear in the water, and carried an alarm to
the light-house, which was answered as soon as possible, though it was
an hour and a half before the dories had made their way out through the
surf and picked up the scattered swimmers, each one of whom thought
himself to be the sole survivor. Russell was the last to be picked up,
and had swum three miles with the help of a strong flood-tide during the
two hours he was in the water. One of the party, the New York boy, was
found clinging unconscious to an oar, the only bit of wreckage left from
the lost boat. His tutor and he were poor swimmers, and neither dared to
try the long swim to the shore which the others all undertook, so the
boy clung to the oar, and the tutor tried to keep afloat without it.
After a few moments, however, he felt himself weakening, and called out,
"Frank, pass me the oar or I'll sink!" The boy did so, and the frail
stick sank beneath their combined weight.
The tutor never hesitated. "Frank," he said, "this will only drown us
both;" and deliberately releasing his hold on the oar, he gave it up,
with his life, to the boy whose life had been intrusted to him.
The accident and the rescue caused great excitement in the little island
town. The old crier with his bell cried the news of the rescue about the
place before the newspaper had out its extras, and every one was deeply
moved by the heroism of Sampson, the brave fellow who had so cheerfully
died to save his friend.
This experience was a very memorable one to young Russell, and it
sobered and matured him, as a great struggle should; and from that
moment his life became more settled and serious.
In his Senior year at college, which followed it, he did far better work
than he had done in the three years before; and when he entered the
law-school of Boston University he began to show his true measure; for
he was not only first in his class, but such a first that, as with the
old yacht America, there was no second. He took the only prize in the
school--the William Beach Lawrence prize-essay--the first degree _summa
cum laude_ ever awarded, and was elected valedictorian of his class by
unanimous vote of his classmates.
During all this time he had been working in his father's law-office,
supporting himself from the day he left college, and had made six
hundred dollars a year alone by revising and correcting the proofs of
Wharton's books on criminal law, and verifying the references, which was
the most tedious of tasks, but served him a good lesson in care and
minuteness.
In 1879 he was a practising lawyer, with a small practice, and no
particular ambition, except to increase it; and so he continued for two
years, when, to his enormous surprise, he found that without his
knowledge or permission he had been nominated for the Common Council of
his native city of Cambridge. This was in the fall of 1881. The election
was a hot one, and Russell was elected by one vote over his former
High-school principal, which was said to have chagrined the latter
excessively.
Russell was now twenty-four years old and at the beginning of his
political career, which during the next dozen years was destined to be
remarkable.
He had always had an interest in politics because of his father's
interest in them, and in the Hayes-Tilden campaign of 1876 he spoke for
Tilden as a sort of experiment in public speaking, which gave him
confidence enough to do considerable speaking during the
Garfield-Hancock campaign in 1880. All this had been excellent training,
but Russell had to show that he had other good qualities when he was
elected to office.
Cambridge at this time had a dishonest government under Mayor Fox, who
had put in office corrupt and incapable men, whose idea was that public
officers were not elected to make a city pleasant and safe to live in,
but to have an easy life on other people's money.
Young Russell was an American born, fresh from the ennobling
associations of Harvard College, who knew what American government had
been and ought to be, and he at once made himself so outspoken against
this corrupt crowd as a Councilman that in the following year he was
elected Alderman, a position of far greater power.
He was no sooner in office than the ring began its warfare against him
and he against it, in which he gave as hard blows as he took. There were
two rival horse railroads in the city. The Mayor was interested in one,
and determined to destroy the other. Russell opposed him, and so
skilfully and boldly that he carried the Aldermen with him, after one of
the bitterest and most difficult fights in his long career.
In 1883 the ring carried every district but Mr. Russell's, and he was
re-elected by forty plurality, and remained during the year a minority
of one in the Board of Aldermen, but powerful for good because of his
unsparing opposition to and exposure of the corruption he could not
prevent.
His identification with opposition to the ring had become so absolute
that when, in 1884, the citizens of Cambridge, without regard to party,
united to overthrow it and set up a businesslike government, Mr. Russell
became the natural candidate. He made speeches in all parts of the city,
and his knowledge of the facts was so great that his speeches had deadly
effect. His victory was complete, and the ring was so badly beaten that
it has never regained power since. As Mayor Mr. Russell's course was
most honorable and successful. Though not thirty years old, his thorough
study of government, his reverence for American institutions, and his
knowledge of the peculiar needs of Cambridge made him better able to
serve the city than an older man of a different bringing up. He
destroyed the ring, root and branch, and made his own appointments to
office for fitness only. He saw that the laws were obeyed, even though
they were laws he personally opposed. He reduced the city's debt,
lowered its taxes, and made its name as respectable as it had been
before the days of its local Tweed.
Indeed, so grateful were the citizens to him that they re-elected him
without any opposition in 1885, 1886, and 1887; and in 1888, although he
desired to retire, he withdrew his declination on being presented with a
petition of three thousand names, and was elected again by two thousand
majority, carrying every ward and every precinct but two, in spite of
hostility to him because of his firmness in stopping disorder during the
great railroad strike during the winter before.
His administration as Mayor had made him so conspicuous a leader in his
own party that in 1886 he was offered the Congressional nomination for
his district, which he declined to accept; and in 1888 he was made the
Democratic candidate for Governor--city and State elections coming in
different months in Massachusetts. As Massachusetts is strongly
Republican, he did not expect to win, but his personal popularity gave
him more votes for Governor than Mr. Cleveland received for President.
In 1889 he was renominated by acclamation, and made a brilliant campaign
of the State, which established his reputation as a debater of the
highest ability; but although he made great gains in the Republican part
of the State, he lost it by a small majority. In 1890 he was again
renominated, and made his third canvass of the State, which was more
thorough than ever, and resulted in his triumphant election as Governor.
His administration of his new office was like that of his other one. He
never made a promise he did not keep, nor did he ever make a promise he
could not keep; so he became the "reform Governor," and put out bad men
to put in good ones, kept the taxes down, saw the State funds were
properly spent, and that the government was the people's and not the
politicians'. He accomplished a great deal, but most of all the
converting of political opponents into personal followers, for he won
over enough Republicans to make him Governor again in 1891, and still a
third time in 1892; and he might, it would seem, have kept on being
Governor as long as he had kept on being Mayor except that he refused,
in spite of many entreaties to do so, to run again after his third term.
So he left public office, which he had had to undertake for a dozen
years, and went quietly back to his law practice, which he makes as
successful as his campaigns, and to his home, for he was married while
he was Mayor, in 1885, and has a charming wife and three jolly children.
You may see him any day in Boston going quietly about the streets, or
riding his horse out to Cambridge over the Milldam. He spends his
vacations, as he always did from boyhood, in the Maine woods, and loves
fishing and shooting as much as if he were still a boy.
CAMERA CLUB PRIZE COMPETITION.
Never since the ROUND TABLE first offered prizes for best specimens of
photographic work has the competition been so widespread or so many
pictures submitted for prizes. The pictures sent have been, as a rule,
much finer than in former years, showing that our club is raising its
standard of work, and that the members profit by the hints given in the
Camera Club Department. This was shown especially in the finishing and
mounting, very few pictures being sent in on small cards. The picture
which won first prize in marines had no name. This picture is well
finished and mounted, and justly merits first prize. The second prize
for marines was won by a Lady of the ROUND TABLE, and this also having
no name, it has been called "A Good Take," and is a picture of a number
of fishermen just shaking out the last fishes from their net on a huge
pile which lies on the ground; the boat is drawn up on the beach, and a
number of interested spectators, fishermen, are looking on.