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McCLURE'S MAGAZINE
VOL. I AUGUST, 1893 No. 3
_Copyright, 1893, by S. S. McClure, Limited. All rights reserved._
Table of Contents
PAGE
A Dialogue Between Eugene Field and Hamlin Garland. Recorded
by Hamlin Garland. 195
The Shadow Boatswain. By Bliss Carman. 205
The Slapping Sal. By Conan Doyle. 206
"Human Documents." 213
Some Professional Adventures of Karl Hagenbeck. By Raymond
Blathwayt. 219
The Story I Heard on the Cars. By Mrs. E. V. Wilson. 224
Mrs. Gladstone and Her Good Works. By Mary G. Burnett. 235
A Boys' Republic. By Alfred Balch. 242
The Happy Life. By Sir Henry Wotton. 254
Edwin Booth. On and Off the Stage. By Adam Badeau. 255
Burglars Three. By James Harvey Smith. 268
Stranger Than Fiction. By Dr. William Wright. 277
Illustrations
PAGE
The Old Homestead at Fayetteville, Vermont. 196
Eugene Field's Home at Buena Park, Chicago. 197
The Hall. 198
A Bit of Library. 199
The Dining-Room. 199
The Drawing-Room. 201
Field's "Treasures." 203
Hairy Hudson. 206
Captain Johnson and Mr. Wharton. 207
The Action. 209
Aboard the "Leda." 210
Oliver Wendell Holmes. 214
J. J. Ingalls. 216
Jules Verne. 218
Karl Hagenbeck's Father and His First Show in Berlin. 220
The Scramble in Munich. 223
The Old and New Castle of Hawarden. 236
Miss Glynne (Mrs. Gladstone), 1838. 237
The Orphanage, Hawarden. 237
The Inmates of Woodsford Hall in the Forest. 239
The Annual Lunch Party of the Notting Hill School Girls. 240
Mrs. Gladstone To-day. 241
The Chapel. 243
The Camp on March. 249
A Halt for Supper. 250
The Barge. 250
Captain Cairn's House. 253
The Death Mask of Edwin Booth. 267
"I Ain't No Missionary!" 269
"Excellent Claret," Said Harry. 271
"No Violence, Jim!" 272
"What Is Your Annual Income as a Burglar?" 273
REAL CONVERSATIONS.--II.
A DIALOGUE BETWEEN EUGENE FIELD AND HAMLIN GARLAND.
RECORDED BY HAMLIN GARLAND.
One afternoon quite recently two men sat in an attic study in one of
the most interesting homes in the city of Chicago. A home that was a
museum of old books, rare books, Indian relics, dramatic souvenirs and
bric-a-brac indescribable, but each piece with a history.
[Illustration]
It was a beautiful June day, and the study window looked out upon a
lawn of large trees where children were rioting. It was a part of
Chicago which the traveler never sees, green and restful and
dignified, the lake not far off.
The host was a tall, thin-haired man with a New England face of
the Scotch type, rugged, smoothly shaven, and generally very
solemn--suspiciously solemn in expression. His infrequent smile
curled his wide, expressive mouth in fantastic grimaces which seemed
not to affect the steady gravity of the blue-gray eyes. He was
stripped to his shirt-sleeves and sat with feet on a small stand. He
chewed reflectively upon a cigar during the opening of the talk.
His voice was deep but rather dry in quality.
The other man was a rather heavily built man with brown hair and beard
cut rather close. He listened, mainly, going off into gusts of
laughter occasionally as the other man gave a quaint turn to some very
frank phrase. The tall host was Eugene Field, the interviewer a
Western writer by the name of Garland.
"Well now, brother Field," said Garland, interrupting his host as he
was about to open another case of rare books. "You remember I'm to
interview you to-day."
Field scowled savagely.
"O say, Garland, can't we put that thing off?"
"No. Must be did," replied his friend decisively. "Now there are two
ways to do this thing. We can be as literary and as deliciously select
in our dialogue as Mr. Howells and Professor Boyesen were, or we can
be wild and woolly. How would it do to be as wild and woolly as those
Eastern fellers expect us to be?"
"All right," said Field, taking his seat well upon the small of his
back. "What does it all mean anyway? What you goin' to do?"
"I'm goin' to take notes while we talk, and I'm goin' to put this
thing down pretty close to the fact, now, you bet," said Garland,
sharpening a pencil.
"Where you wan'to begin?"
"Oh, we'll have to begin with your ancestry, though it's a good deal
like the introductory chapter to the old-fashioned novels. We'll start
early, with your birth for instance."
"Well, I was born in St. Louis."
[Illustration: THE OLD HOMESTEAD AT FAYETTEVILLE, VERMONT.]
"Is that so?" the interviewer showed an unprofessional surprise. "Why,
I thought you were born in Massachusetts?"
"No," said Field, reflectively. "No, I'm sorry of course, but I was
born in St. Louis; but my parents were Vermont people." He mentioned
this as an extenuating circumstance, evidently. "My father was a
lawyer. He was a precocious boy,--graduated from Middlebury College
when he was fifteen, and when he was nineteen was made States-Attorney
by special act of the legislature; without that he would have had to
wait till he was twenty-one. He married and came West, and I was born
in 1850."
"So you're forty-three? Where does the New England life come in?"
"When I was seven years old my mother died, and father packed us boys
right off to Massachusetts and put us under the care of a maiden
cousin, a Miss French,--she was a fine woman too."
Garland looked up from his scratchpad to ask, "This was at Amherst?"
"Yes. I stayed there until I was nineteen, and they were the sweetest
and finest days of my life. I like old Amherst." He paused a moment,
and his long face slowly lightened up. "By the way, here's something
you'll like. When I was nine years old father sent us up to
Fayetteville, Vermont, to the old homestead where my grandmother
lived. We stayed there seven months," he said with a grim curl of his
lips, "and the old lady got all the grandson she wanted. She didn't
want the visit repeated."
He sat a moment in silence, and his face softened and his eyes grew
tender. "I tell you, Garland, a man's got to have a layer of country
experience somewhere in him. My love for nature dates from that visit,
because I had never lived in the country before. Sooner or later a man
rots if he lives too far away from the grass and the trees."
"You're right there, Field, only I didn't know you felt it so deeply.
I supposed you hated farm life."
"I do, but farm life is not nature. I'd like to live in the country
without the effects of work and dirt and flies."
The word "flies" started him off on a side-track. "Say! You should see
my boys. I go up to a farm near Fox Lake and stay a week every year,
suffering all sorts of tortures, in order to give my boys a chance to
see farm life. I sit there nights trying to read by a vile-smelling
old kerosene lamp, the flies trooping in so that you can't keep the
window down, you know, and those boys lying there all the time on a
hot husk bed, faces spattered with mosquito bites and sweating like
pigs--and happy as angels. The roar of the flies and mosquitoes is
sweetest lullaby to a tired boy."
"Well, now, going back to that visit," said the interviewer with
persistency to his plan.
"Oh, yes. Well, my grandmother was a regular old New England
Congregationalist. Say, I've got a sermon I wrote when I was nine. The
old lady used to give me ten cents for every sermon I'd write. Like to
see it?"
[Illustration: EUGENE FIELD'S HOME AT BUENA PARK, CHICAGO.]
"Well, I should say. A sermon at nine years! Field, you started in
well."
"Didn't I?" he replied, while getting the book. "And you bet it's a
corker." He produced the volume, which was a small bundle of
note-paper bound beautifully. It was written in a boy's formal hand.
He sat down to read it:
"I would remark secondly that conscience makes the way of
transgressors hard; for every act of pleasure, every act of Guilt
his conscience smites him. The last of his stay on earth will
appear horrible to the beholder. Some times, however, he will be
stayed in his guilt. A death in a family of some favorite object
or be attacked by Some disease himself is brought to the portals
of the grave. Then for a little time perhaps he is stayed in his
wickedness, but before long he returns to his worldly lust. Oh, it
is indeed bad for sinners to go down into perdition over all the
obstacles which God has placed in his path. But many I am afraid
do go down into perdition, for wide gate and broad is the way that
leadeth to destruction and many there be that go in thereat."
He stopped occasionally to look at Garland gravely, as he read some
particularly comical phrase: "'I secondly remark'--ain't that
great?--'that the wise man remembers even how near he is to the
portals of death.' 'Portals of death' is good. 'One should strive to
walk the narrow way and not the one which leads to perdition.' I was
heavy on quotations, you notice."
"Is this the first and last of your sermons?" queried Garland, with an
amused smile.
"The first and last. Grandmother soon gave me up as bad material for a
preacher. She paid me five dollars for learning the Ten Commandments.
I used to be very slow at 'committing to memory.' I recall that while
I was thus committing the book of Acts, my brother committed that book
and the Gospel of Matthew, part of John, the thirteenth chapter of
First Corinthians and the Westminster Catechism. I would not now
exchange for any amount of money the acquaintance with the Bible that
was drummed into me when I was a boy. At learning 'pieces to speak' I
was, however, unusually quick, and my favorites were: 'Marco
Bozzaris,' 'Psalm of Life,' Drake's 'American Flag,' Longfellow's
'Launching of the Ship,' Webster's 'Action,' Shakspeare's 'Clarence's
Dream' (Richard III.), and 'Wolsey to Cromwell,' 'Death of Virginia,'
'Horatius at the Bridge,' 'Hymn of the Moravian Nuns,' 'Absalom,'
'Lochiel's Warning,' 'Maclean's Revenge,' Bulwer's translation of
Schiller's 'The Diver,' 'Landing of the Pilgrims,' Bryant's
'Melancholy Days,' 'Burial of Sir John Moore,' and 'Hohenlinden.'"
"I remember when I was thirteen, our cousin said she'd give us a
Christmas tree. So we went down into Patrick's swamp--I suppose the
names are all changed now--and dug up a little pine tree, about as
tall as we were, and planted it in a tub. On the night of Christmas
Day, just when we were dancing around the tree, making merry and
having a high-old-jinks of a time, the way children will, grandma came
in and looked at us. 'Will this popery never cease?' was all she said,
and out she flounced."
"Yes, that was the old Puritan idea of it. But did live----"
"Now hold on," he interrupted. "I want to finish. We planted that tree
near the corner of Sunset Avenue and Amity Street, and it's there now,
a magnificent tree. Sometime when I'm East I'm going to go up there
with my brother and put a tablet on it--'Pause, busy traveller, and
give a thought to the happy days of two Western boys who lived in old
New England, and make resolve to render the boyhood near you happier
and brighter,' or something like that."
"That's a pretty idea," Garland agreed. He felt something fine and
tender in the man's voice which was generally hard and dry but
wonderfully expressive.
[Illustration: THE HALL.]
"Now, this sermon I had bound just for the sake of old times. If I
didn't have it right here, I wouldn't believe I ever wrote such stuff.
I tell you, a boy's a queer combination," he ended, referring to the
book again.
"You'll see that I signed my name, those days, 'E. P. Field.' The 'P.'
stands for Phillips.
"As I grew old enough to realize it, I was much chagrined to find I
had no middle name like the rest of the boys, so I took the name of
Phillips. I was a great admirer of Wendell Phillips, am yet, though
I'm not a reformer. You'll see here,"--he pointed at the top of the
pages,--"I wrote the word 'sensual.' Evidently I was struck with the
word, and was seeking a chance to ring it in somewhere, but failed."
They both laughed over the matter while Field put the book back.
"Are you a college man?" asked Garland. "I've noticed your deplorable
tendency toward the classics."
"I fitted for college when I was sixteen. My health was bad, or I
should have entered right off. I had pretty nearly everything that was
going in the way of diseases," this was said with a comical twist
voice, "so I didn't get to Williams till I was eighteen. My health
improved right along, but I'm sorry to say that of the college did
not." He smiled again, a smile that meant a very great deal.
"What happened then?"
"Well, my father died, and I returned West. I went to live with my
guardian, Professor Burgess, of Knox College. This college is situated
at Galesburg, Illinois. This is the college that has lately conferred
A. M. upon me. The Professor's guardianship was merely nominal,
however. I did about as I pleased.
"I next went to the State University at Columbia, Missouri. It was an
old slave-holding town, but I liked it. I've got a streak of Southern
feeling in me." He said abruptly, "I'm an aristocrat. I'm looking for
a Maecenas. I have mighty little in common with most of the wealthy,
but I like the idea of wealth in the abstract." He failed to make the
distinction quite clear, but he went on as if realizing that this
might be a thin spot of ice.
"At twenty-one, I came into sixty thousand dollars, and I went to
Europe, taking a friend, a young fellow of about my own age, with me.
I had a lovely time!" he added, and again the smile conveyed vast
meaning.
Garland looked up from his pad.
"You must have had. Did you 'blow in the whole business'?"
"Pretty near. I _swatted_ the money around. Just think of it!" he
exclaimed, warming with the recollection. "A boy of twenty-one,
without father or mother, and sixty thousand dollars. Oh, it was a
lovely combination! I saw more things and did more things than are
dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio," he paraphrased, looking at his
friend with a strange expression of amusement, and pleasure, and
regret. "I had money. I paid it out for experience--it was plenty.
Experience was laying around loose."
"Came home when the money gave out, I reckon?"
[Illustration: A BIT OF LIBRARY.]
"Yes. Came back to St. Louis, and went to work on the 'Journal,' I had
previously tried to 'enter journalism' as I called it then. About the
time I was twenty-one, I went to Stilson Hutchins, and told him who I
was, and he said:
"'All right. I'll give you a chance, but we don't pay much.' Of
course, I told him pay didn't matter.
[Illustration: THE DINING-ROOM.]
"'Well!' he said, 'go down to the Olympia, and write up the play there
to-night,' I went down, and I brought most of my critical acumen to
bear upon an actor by the name of Charley Pope, who was playing
Mercutio for Mrs. D. P. Bowers. His wig didn't fit, and all my best
writing centred about that wig. I sent the critique in, blame fine as
I thought, with illuminated initial letters, and all that. Oh, it was
lovely! and the next morning I was deeply pained and disgusted to find
it mutilated,--all that about the wig, the choicest part, was cut out.
I thought I'd quit journalism forever. I don't suppose Hutchins
connects Eugene Field with the ---- fool that wrote that critique. I
don't myself," he added with a quick half-smile, lifting again the
corner of his solemn mouth. It was like a ripple on a still pool.
"Well, when did you really get into the work?" his friend asked, for
he seemed about to go off into another by-path.
"Oh, after I came back from Europe I was busted, and had to go to
work. I met Stanley Waterloo about that time, and his talk induced me
to go to work for the 'Journal' as a reporter. I soon got to be city
editor, but I didn't like it. I liked to have fun with people. I liked
to have my fun as I went along. About this time I married the sister
of the friend who went with me to Europe, and feeling my new
responsibilities, I went up to St. Joseph as city editor." He mused
for a moment in silence. "It was terrific hard work, but I wouldn't
give a good deal for those two years."
"Have you ever drawn upon them for material?" asked Garland with a
novelist's perception of their possibilities.
"No, but I may some time. Things have to get pretty misty before I can
use 'em. I'm not like you fellows," he said, referring to the
realists. "I got thirty dollars a week; wasn't that princely?"
"Nothing else, but you earned it, no doubt."
"Earned it? Why, Great Scott! I did the whole business except turning
the handle of the press.
"Well, in 1877 I was called back to the 'Journal' in St. Louis, as
editorial writer of paragraphs. That was the beginning of my own line
of work."
"When did you do your first work in verse?" asked Garland.
The tall man brought his feet down to the floor with a bang and thrust
his hand out toward his friend. "_There!_ I'm glad you said _verse_.
For heaven's sake don't ever say I call my stuff poetry. I never do. I
don't pass judgment on it like that." After a little he resumed. "The
first that I wrote was 'Christmas Treasures.' I wrote that one night
to fill in a chink in the paper."
"Give me a touch of it?" asked his friend.
He chewed his cigar in the effort to remember. "I don't read it much.
I put it with the collection for the sake of old times." He read a few
lines of it, and read it extremely well, before returning to his
history.
CHRISTMAS TREASURES.
I count my treasures o'er with care,--
The little toy my darling knew,
A little sock of faded hue,
A little lock of golden hair.
Long years ago this holy time,
My little ones--my all to me--
Sat robed in white upon my knee,
And heard the merry Christmas chime.
"Tell me, my little golden-head,
If Santa Claus should come to-night,
What shall he bring my baby bright,--
What treasure for my boy?" I said.
Then he named this little toy,
While in his round and mournful eyes
There came a look of sweet surprise,
That spake his quiet, trustful joy.
And as he lisped his evening prayer,
He asked the boon with childish grace,
Then, toddling to the chimney-place,
He hung this little stocking there.
That night, while lengthening shadows crept,
I saw the white-winged angels come
With singing to our lowly home,
And kiss my darling as he slept.
They must have heard his little prayer,
For in the morn with rapturous face,
He toddled to the chimney-place,
And found this little treasure there.
They came again one Christmas-tide,--
That angel host, so fair and white!
And singing all that glorious night,
They lured my darling from my side.
A little sock, a little toy,
A little lock of golden hair,
The Christmas music on the air,
A watching for my baby boy!
But if again that angel train
And golden head come back to me,
To bear me to Eternity,
My watching will not be in vain!
"I went next to the Kansas City 'Times' as managing editor. I wrote
there that 'Little Peach,' which still chases me round the country."
THE LITTLE PEACH.
A little peach in the orchard grew,
A little peach of emerald hue;
Warmed by the sun and wet by the dew,
It grew.
One day, passing that orchard through,
That little peach dawned on the view
Of Johnny Jones and his sister Sue,
Them two.
Up at that peach a club they threw,
Down from the stem on which it grew,
Fell that peach of emerald hue.
Mon Dieu!
John took a bite and Sue a chew,
And then the trouble began to brew,
Trouble the doctor couldn't subdue.
Too true!
Under the turf where the daisies grew,
They planted John and his sister Sue,
And their little souls to the angels flew,
Boo hoo!
What of that peach of the emerald hue,
Warmed by the sun, and wet by the dew?
Ah, well, its mission on earth is through.
Adieu!
[Illustration: THE DRAWING-ROOM.]
"I went to the 'Denver Tribune' next, and stayed there till 1883. The
most conspicuous thing I did there, was the burlesque primer series.
'See the po-lice-man. Has he a club? Yes he has a club,' etc. These
were so widely copied and pirated that I put them into a little book
which is very rare, thank heaven. I hope I have the only copy of it.
The other thing which rose above the level of my ordinary work was a
bit of verse, 'The Wanderer,' which I credited to Modjeska, and which
has given her no little annoyance."
THE WANDERER.
Upon a mountain height, far from the sea,
I found a shell,
And to my listening ear the lonely thing
Ever a song of ocean seemed to sing,
Ever a tale of ocean seemed to tell.
How came the shell upon that mountain height?
Ah, who can say
Whether there dropped by some too careless hand,
Or whether there cast when Ocean swept the Land,
Ere the Eternal had ordained the day?
Strange, was it not? Far from its native deep,
One song it sang,
Sang of the awful mysteries of the tide,
Sang of the misty sea, profound and wide,
Ever with echoes of the ocean rang.
And as the shell upon the mountain height
Sings of the sea,
So do I ever, leagues and leagues away,
So do I ever, wandering where I may,
Sing, O my home! sing, O my home! of thee.
"That brings you up to Chicago, doesn't it?"
"In 1883 Melville Stone asked me to join him on the 'News,' and I did.
Since then my life has been uneventful."
"I might not think so. Did you establish the column 'Sharps and Flats'
at once?"
"Yes. I told Stone I'd write a good deal of musical matter, and the
name seemed appropriate. We tried to change it several times, but no
go."
"I first saw your work in the 'News.' I was attracted by your
satirical studies of Chicago. I don't always like what you write, but
I liked your war against sham."
Field became serious at once, and leaned towards the other man in an
attitude of great earnestness. The deepest note in the man's voice
came out. "I hate a sham or a fraud; not so much a fraud, for a fraud
means brains very often, but a sham makes me mad clear through," he
said savagely. His fighting quality came out in the thrust of the
chin. Here was the man whom the frauds and shams fear.
"That is evident. But I don't think the people make the broadest
application of your satires. They apply them to Chicago. There is
quite a feeling. I suppose you know about this. They say you've hurt
Chicago art."
"I hope I have, so far as the bogus art and imitation culture of my
city is concerned. As a matter of fact the same kind of thing exists
in Boston and New York, only they're used to it there. I've jumped on
that crowd of faddists, I'll admit, as hard as I could, but I don't
think anyone can say I've ever willingly done a real man or woman an
injury. If I have, I've always tried to square the thing up." Here was
the man's fairness, kindliness of heart, coming to the surface in good
simple way.
The other man was visibly impressed with his friend's earnestness, but
he pursued his course. "You've had offers to go East, according to the
papers."
"Yes, but I'm not going--why should I? I'm in my element here. They
haven't any element there. They've got atmosphere there, and it's
pretty thin sometimes, I call it." He uttered "atmosphere" with a
drawling attenuated nasal to express his contempt. "I don't want
literary atmosphere. I want to be in an _element_ where I can tumble
around and yell without falling in a fit for lack of breath."
The interviewer was scratching away like mad--this was his chance.
Field's mind took a sudden turn now, and he said emphatically:
"Garland, I'm a newspaper man. I don't claim to be anything else. I've
never written a thing for the magazines, and I never was asked to,
till about four years ago. I never have put a high estimate upon my
verse. That it's popular is because my sympathies and the public's
happen to run on parallel lines just now. That's all. Not much of it
will live."
"I don't know about that, brother Field," said Garland, pausing to
rest. "I think you underestimate some of that work. Your reminiscent
boy-life poems and your songs of children are thoroughly American, and
fine and tender. They'll take care of themselves."
"Yes, but my best work has been along lines of satire. I've
consistently made war upon shams. I've stood always in my work for
decency and manliness and honesty. I think that'll remain true, you'll
find. I'm not much physically, but morally I'm not a coward."
"No, I don't think anybody will rise up to charge you with time-serving.
By the way, what a rare chance you have in the attitude of the
Chicago people toward the Spanish princess!"
The tall man straightened up. His whole nature roused at this point,
and his face grew square. His Puritan grandfather looked from his
indignant eyes and set jaw as he said:
"I don't know what's coming upon us."
"Aha!" Garland exulted, "even you are bitten with the same."
He flung his hand out in quick deprecation.
"Oh, I don't pretend to be a reformer. I leave that to others. I hate
logarithms. I like speculative astronomy. I am naturally a lover of
romance. My mind turns toward the far past or future. I like to
illustrate the foolery of these society folks by stories which I
invent. The present don't interest me--at least not taken as it is.
Possibilities interest me."
"That's a good way to put it," said the other man. "It's a question of
the impossible, the possible, and the probable. I like the probable. I
like the near-at-hand. I feel the most vital interest in the average
fact."
"I know you do, and I like it after you get through with it, but I
don't care to deal with the raw material myself. I like the archaic."
"Yet some of your finest things, I repeat, are your reminiscent verses
of boy-life," pursued Garland, who called himself a veritist and
enjoyed getting his friend as nearly on his ground as possible.
[Illustration: FIELD'S "TREASURES:" THE GLADSTONE AXE, C. A. DANA'S
SHEARS, THE HORACES.]
"Yes, that's so, but that's in the far past," Field admitted. Garland
took the thought up.
"Time helps you then. Time is a romancer. He halves the fact, but we
veritists find the _present_ fact haloed, with significance if not
beauty."
Field dodged the point.
"Yes, I like to do those boy-life verses. I like to live over the joys
and tragedies--because we had our tragedies."
"Didn't we! Weeding the onion-bed on circus day, for example."
"Yes, or gettin' a terrible strappin' for goin' swimming without
permission. Oh, it all comes back to me, all sweet and fine somehow.
I've forgotten all the unpleasant things. I remember only the best of
it all. I like boy-life. I like children. I like young men. I like the
buoyancy of youth and its freshness. It's a God's pity that every
young child can't get a taste of country life at some time. It's a
fund of inspiration to a man." Again the finer quality in the man came
out in his face and voice.
"Your life in New England and the South, and also in the West, has
been of great help to you, I think."
"Yes, and a big disadvantage. When I go East, Stedman calls me a
typical Westerner, and when I come West they call me a Yankee--so
there I am!"
"There's no doubt of your being a Westerner."
"I hope not. I believe in the West. I tell you, brother Garland, the
West is the coming country. We ought to have a big magazine to develop
the West. It's absurd to suppose we're going on always being tributary
to the East!"
Garland laid down his pad and lifted his big fist in the air like a
maul. His enthusiasm rose like a flood.
"Now you touch a great theme. You're right, Field. The next ten years
will see literary horizons change mightily. The West is dead sure to
be in the game from this time on. A man can't be out here a week
without feeling the thrill of latent powers. The West is coming to its
manhood. The West is the place for enthusiasm. Her history is
making."
Field took up the note. "I've got faith in it. I love New England for
her heritage to you. I like her old stone walls and meadows, but when
I get back West--well, I'm home, that's all. My love for the West has
got blood in it."
Garland laughed in sudden perception of their earnestness. "We're both
talking like a couple of boomers. It might be characteristic, however,
to apply the methods of the boomers of town lots to the development of
art and literature. What say?"
"It can be done. It will come in the course of events."
"In our enthusiasm we have skated away from the subject. You are
forty-three, then--you realize there's a lot of work before you, I
hope."
"Yes, yes, my serious work is just begun. I'm a man of slow
development. I feel that. I know my faults and my weaknesses. I'm
getting myself in hand. Now, Garland, I'm with you in your purposes,
but I go a different way. You go into things direct. I'm naturally
allusive. My work is almost always allusive, if you've noticed."
"Do you write rapidly?"
"I write my verse easily, but my prose I sweat over. Don't you?"
"I toil in revision even when I have what the other fellows call an
inspiration."
"I tell you, Garland, genius is not in it. It's work and patience, and
staying with a thing. Inspiration is all right and pretty and a
suggestion, but it's when a man gets a pen in his hand and sweats
blood, that inspiration begins to enter in."
"Well, what are your plans for the future--your readers want to know
that?"
His face glowed as he replied, "I'm going to write a sentimental life
of Horace. We know mighty little of him, but what I don't know I'll
make up. I'll write such a life as he _must_ have lived. The life we
all live when boys."
The younger man put up his notes, and they walked down and out under
the trees with the gibbous moon shining through the gently moving
leaves. They passed a couple of young people walking slow--his voice a
murmur, hers a whisper.
"There they go. Youth! Youth!" said Field.
NOTE.--A series of portraits of Mr. Field at different ages will
be printed among the "Human Documents" in the September number.
THE SHADOW BOATSWAIN.
BY BLISS CARMAN.
Don't you know the sailing orders?
It is time to put to sea,
And the stranger in the harbor
Sends a boat ashore for me.
With the thunder of her canvas,
Coming on the wind again,
I can hear the Shadow Boatswain
Piping to his shadow men.
Is it firelight or morning
That red flicker on the floor?
Your good-bye was braver, Sweetheart,
When I sailed away before.
Think of this last lovely summer!
Love, what ails the wind to-night?
What's he saying in the chimney
Turns your berry cheek so white?
What a morning! How the sunlight
Sparkles on the outer bay,
Where the brig lies waiting for me
To trip anchor and away.
That's the Doomkeel. You may know her
By her clean run aft; and, then,
Don't you hear the Shadow Boatswain
Piping to his shadow men?
Off the freshening sea to windward,
Is it a white tern I hear
Shrilling in the gusty weather
Where the far sea-line is clear?
What a morning for departure!
How your blue eyes melt and shine!
Will you watch us from the headland
Till we sink below the line?
I can see the wind already
Steer the scruf marks of the tide,
As we slip the wake of being
Down the sloping world, and wide.
I can feel the vasty mountains
Heave and settle under me,
And the Doomkeel veer and tremor,
Crumbling on the hollow sea.
There's a call, as when a white gull
Cries and beats across the blue;
That must be the Shadow Boatswain
Piping to his shadow crew.
There's a boding sound, like winter,
When the pines begin to quail;
That must be the gray wind moaning
In the belly of the sail.
I can feel the icy fingers
Creeping in upon my bones;
There must be a berg to windward
Somewhere in these border zones.
Stir the fire.... I love the sunlight,
Always loved my shipmate sun.
How the sunflowers beckon to me
From the dooryard one by one!
How the royal lady-roses
Strew this summer world of ours.
There'll be none in Lonely Haven,
It is too far north for flowers.
There, Sweetheart! And I must leave you.
What should touch my wife with tears?
There's no danger with the Master,
He has sailed the sea for years.
With the sea-wolves on her quarter,
And the white bones in her teeth,
He will steer the shadow cruiser,
Dark before and doom beneath,
Down the last expanse till morning
Flares above the broken sea,
And the midnight storm is over,
And the isles are close alee.
So some twilight, when your roses
Are all blown, and it is June,
You will turn your blue eyes seaward,
Through the white dusk of the moon.
Wondering, as that far sea-cry
Comes upon the wind again,
And you hear the Shadow Boatswain
Piping to his shadow men.
THE SLAPPING SAL.
BY CONAN DOYLE.
PICTURES BY A. BRENNAN.
[Illustration: HAIRY HUDSON.]
It was in the days when France's power was already broken upon the
seas, and when more of her three-deckers lay rotting in the Medway
than were to be found in Brest Harbor. But her frigates and corvettes
still scoured the ocean, closely followed ever by those of her rival.
At the uttermost ends of the earth these dainty vessels, with sweet
names of girls or of flowers, mangled and shattered each other for the
honor of the four yards of bunting that flapped from their gaffs.
It had blown hard in the night, but the wind had dropped with the
dawning, and now the rising sun tinted the fringe of the storm wrack
as it dwindled into the west, and glinted on the endless crests of the
long green waves. To north and south and west lay a sky-line which was
unbroken, save by the spout of foam when two of the great Atlantic
seas dashed each other into spray. To the east was a rocky island,
jutting out into craggy points, with a few scattered clumps of
palm-trees, and a pennant of mist streaming out from the bare conical
hill which capped it. A heavy surf beat upon the shore, and at a safe
distance from it the British 32-gun frigate "Leda," Captain A. P.
Johnson, raised her black, glistening side upon the crest of a wave,
or swooped down into an emerald valley, dipping away to the nor'ard
under easy sail. On her snow-white quarter-deck stood a stiff, little,
brown-faced man, who swept the horizon with his glass.
"Mr. Wharton," he cried, with a voice like a rusty hinge.
A thin, knock-kneed officer shambled across the poop to him.
"Yes, sir."
"I've opened the sealed orders, Mr. Wharton."
A glimmer of curiosity shone upon the meagre features of the first
lieutenant. The "Leda" had sailed with her consort the "Dido" from
Antigua the week before, and the admiral's orders had been contained
in a sealed envelope.
"We were to open them on reaching the deserted island of Sombriero,
lying in north latitude eighteen, thirty-six, west longitude
sixty-three, twenty-eight. Sombriero bore four miles to the northeast
from our port bow when the gale cleared, Mr. Wharton."
The lieutenant bowed stiffly. He and the captain had been bosom
friends from childhood. They had gone to school together, joined the
navy together, fought again and again together, and married into each
other's families; but as long as their feet were on the poop the iron
discipline of the service struck all that was human out of them, and
left only the superior and the subordinate. Captain Johnson took a
blue paper from his pocket, which crackled as he unfolded it.
"The 32-gun frigates, 'Leda' and 'Dido' (Captains A. P. Johnson
and James Munro), are to cruise from the point at which these
instructions are read to the mouth of the Caribbean Sea, in the
hope of encountering the French frigate 'La Gloire' (48), which
has recently harassed our merchant ships in that quarter. H. M.
frigates are also directed to hunt down the piratical craft known
sometimes as the 'Slapping Sal' and sometimes as the 'Hairy
Hudson,' which has plundered the British ships as per margin,
inflicting barbarities upon their crews. She is a small brig
carrying ten light guns, with one twenty-four pound carronade
forward. She was last seen upon the 23d ult., to the northeast of
the island of Sombriero."
(Signed)
JAMES MONTGOMERY,
Rear-Admiral.
H. M. S. "Colossus," Antigua.
"We appear to have lost our consort," said Captain Johnson, folding up
his instructions and again sweeping the horizon with his glass. "She
drew away after we reefed down. It would be a pity if we met this
heavy Frenchman without the 'Dido,' Mr. Wharton, eh?"
The lieutenant twinkled and smiled.
"She has eighteen-pounders on the main and twelves on the poop, sir,"
said the captain. "She carries four hundred to our two hundred and
thirty-one. Captain de Milon is the smartest man in the French
service. O Bobby, boy, I'd give my hopes of my flag to rub my side up
against her!" He turned on his heel, ashamed of his momentary lapse.
"Mr. Wharton," said he, looking back sternly over his shoulder, "get
those square sails shaken out, and bear away a point more to the
west."
"A brig on the port bow," came a voice from the forecastle.
"A brig on the port bow," said the lieutenant.
[Illustration: CAPTAIN JOHNSON AND MR. WHARTON.]
The captain sprang up on the bulwarks, and held on by the mizzen
shrouds, a strange little figure with flying skirts and puckered eyes.
The lean lieutenant craned his neck and whispered to Smeaton, the
second, while officers and men came popping up from below and
clustered along the weather-rail, shading their eyes with their hands,
for the tropical sun was already clear of the palm trees. The strange
brig lay at anchor in the throat of a curving estuary, and it was
already obvious that she could not get out without passing under the
guns of the frigate. A long rocky point to the north of her held her
in.
"Keep her as she goes, Mr. Wharton," said the captain. "Hardly worth
while clearing for action, Mr. Smeaton, but the men can stand by the
guns in case she tries to pass us. Cast loose the bowchasers, and send
the small arm men on to the forecastle."
A British crew went to its quarters in those days with the quiet
serenity of men on their daily routine. In a few minutes, without
fuss or sound, the sailors were knotted round their guns, the marines
were drawn up and leaning on their muskets, and the frigate's bowsprit
pointed straight for her little victim.
"Is it the 'Slapping Sal,' sir?"
"I have no doubt of it, Mr. Wharton."
"They don't seem to like the look of us, sir. They've cut their cable
and are clapping on sail."
It was evident that the brig meant struggling for her freedom. One
little patch of canvas fluttered out above another, and her people
could be seen working like mad men in the rigging. She made no attempt
to pass her antagonist, but headed up the estuary. The captain rubbed
his hands.
"She's making for shoal water, Mr. Wharton, and we shall have to cut
her out, sir. She's a footy little brig, but I should have thought a
fore-and-after would have been more handy."
"It was a mutiny, sir."
"Ah, indeed!"
"Yes, sir, I heard of it at Manilla--a bad business, sir. Captain and
two mates murdered. This Hudson, or Hairy Hudson, as they call him,
led the mutiny. He's a Londoner, sir, but a cruel villain as ever
walked."
"His next walk will be to Execution Dock, Mr. Wharton. She seems
heavily manned. I wish I could take twenty topmen out of her, but they
would be enough to corrupt the crew of the ark, Mr. Wharton."
Both officers were looking through their glasses at the brig. Suddenly
the lieutenant showed his teeth in a grin, while the captain flushed
to a deeper red.
"That's Hairy Hudson on the afterrail, sir."
"The low, impertinent blackguard! He'll play some other antics before
we are done with him. Could you reach him with the long eighteen, Mr.
Smeaton?"
"Another cable length will do it, sir."
The brig yawed as they spoke, and as she came round, a spurt of smoke
whiffed out from her quarter. It was a pure piece of bravado, for the
gun could scarce carry half way. Then with a jaunty swing the little
ship came into the wind again and shot round a fresh curve of the
winding channel.
"The water's shoaling rapidly, sir," reported the second lieutenant.
"There's six fathoms, by the chart."
"Four, by the lead, sir."
"When we clear this point we shall see how we lie. Ha! I thought as
much! Lay her to, Mr. Wharton. Now we have got her at our mercy."
The frigate was quite out of sight of the sea now, at the head of this
river-like estuary. As she came round the curve the two shores were
seen to converge at a point about a mile distant. In the angle, as
near shore as she could get, the brig was lying with her broadside
towards her pursuer, and a wisp of black cloth streaming from her
mizzen. The lean lieutenant, who had reappeared upon deck with a
cutlass strapped to his side and two pistols rammed into his belt,
peered curiously at the ensign.
"Is it the 'Jolly Roger,' sir?" he asked.
But the captain was furious. "He may hang where his breeches are
hanging before I have done with him," said he. "What boats will you
want, Mr. Wharton?"
"We should do it with the launch and the jolly-boat."
"Take four and make a clean job of it. Pipe away the crews at once,
and I'll work her in and help you with the long eighteens."
With a rattle of ropes and a creaking of blocks the four boats
splashed into the water. Their crews clustered thickly into
them--bare-footed sailors, stolid marines, laughing middies, and in
the sheets of each the senior officers with their stern, schoolmaster
faces. The captain, his elbows on the binnacle, still watched the
distant brig. Her crew were tricing up the boarding netting, dragging
round the starboard guns, knocking new portholes for them, and making
every preparation for a desperate resistance. In the thick of it all a
huge man, bearded to the eyes, with a red night-cap upon his head, was
straining and stooping and hauling. The captain watched him with a
sour smile, and then snapping up his glass he turned upon his heel.
For an instant he stood staring.
"Call back the boats!" he cried, in his thin, creaking voice. "Clear
away for action there! Cast loose those main-deck guns. Brace back the
yards, Mr. Smeaton, and stand by to go about when she has weigh
enough."
Round the curve of the estuary was coming a huge vessel. Her great
yellow bowsprit and white-winged figure-head were jutting out from the
cluster of palm-trees, while high above them towered three immense
masts, with the tricolor flag floating superbly from the mizzen. Round
she came, the deep-blue water creaming under her fore-foot, until her
long, curving, black side, her line of shining copper beneath, and of
snow-white hammocks above, and the thick clusters of men who peered
over her bulwarks were all in full view.
Her lower yards were slung, her ports triced up, and her guns run out
all ready for action. Lying behind one of the promontories of the
island the look-out men of the "Gloire" upon the shore had seen the
_cul-de-sac_ into which the British frigate had headed, so that
Captain de Milon had observed the "Leda" as Captain Johnson had the
"Slapping Sal."
[Illustration: THE ACTION.]
But the splendid discipline of the British service was at its best in
such a crisis. The boats flew back, their crews clustered aboard, they
were swung up at the davits, and the fall-ropes made fast. Hammocks
were brought up and stowed, bulkheads sent down, ports and magazines
opened, the fires put out in the galley, and the drums beat to
quarters. Swarms of men set the head-sails and brought the frigate
round, while the gun-crews threw off their jackets and shirts,
tightened their belts, and ran out their eighteen-pounders, peering
through the open portholes at the stately Frenchman. The wind was
very light. Hardly a ripple showed itself upon the clear blue water,
but the sails blew gently out as the breeze came over the wooded
banks. The Frenchman had gone about also, and both ships were now
heading slowly for the sea under fore-and-aft canvas, the "Gloire" a
hundred yards in advance. She luffed up to cross the "Leda's" bows,
but the British ship came round also, and the two rippled slowly on in
such a silence that the ringing of the ramrods, as the French marines
drove home their charges, clanged quite loudly upon the ear.
"Not much sea room, Mr. Wharton," remarked the captain.
"I have fought actions in less, sir."
"We must keep our distance, and trust to our gunnery. She is very
heavily manned, and if she got alongside we might find ourselves in
trouble."
"I see the shakoes of soldiers aboard of her--two companies of light
infantry from Martinique. Now we have her! Hard a port, and let her
have it as we cross her stern!"
The keen eye of the little commander had seen the surface ripple which
told of a passing breeze. He had used it to dart across behind the big
Frenchman and to rake her with every gun as he passed. But, once past
her, the "Leda" had to come back into the wind to keep out of shoal
water. The manoeuvre brought her on the starboard side of the
Frenchman, and the trim little frigate seemed to heel right over under
the crashing broadside which burst from the gaping ports. A moment
later her topmen were swarming aloft to set her topsails and royals,
and she strove to cross the "Gloire's" bows and rake her again. The
French captain, however, brought his frigate's head round, and the two
rode side by side within easy pistol shot, pouring broadsides into
each other in one of those murderous duels which, could they all be
recorded, would mottle our charts with blood.
[Illustration: ABOARD THE "LEDA."]
In that heavy tropical air, with so faint a breeze, the smoke formed a
thick bank round the two vessels, from which the topmasts only
protruded. Neither could see anything of its enemy save the throbs of
fire in the darkness, and the guns were sponged and trained and fired
into a dense wall of vapor. On the poop and the forecastle the
marines, in two little red lines, were pouring in their volleys, but
neither they nor the seamen-gunners could see what effect their fire
was having. Nor, indeed, could they tell how far they were suffering
themselves, for standing at a gun one could but hazily see that upon
the right and left. But above the roar of the cannon came the sharper
sound of the piping shot, the crashing of riven planks, and the
occasional heavy thud as spar or block came hurtling onto the deck.
The lieutenants paced up and down behind the line of guns, while
Captain Johnson fanned the smoke away with his cocked hat, and peered
eagerly out.
"This is rare, Bobby," said he, as the lieutenant joined him. Then,
suddenly restraining himself, "What have we lost, Mr. Wharton?"
"Our main-topsail yard and our gaff, sir."
"Where's the flag?"
"Gone overboard, sir."
"They'll think we've struck. Lash a boat's ensign on the starboard arm
of the mizzen cross jack-yard."
"Yes, sir."
A round shot dashed the binnacle to pieces between them. A second
knocked two marines into a bloody, palpitating mass. For a moment the
smoke rose, and the English captain saw that his adversary's heavier
metal was producing a horrible effect. The "Leda" was a shattered
wreck. Her deck was strewed with corpses. Several of her portholes
were knocked into one, and one of her eighteen-pounder guns had been
thrown right back onto her breech, and pointed straight up to the sky.
The thin line of marines still loaded and fired, but half the guns
were silent, and their crews were piled thickly around them.
"Stand by to repel boarders!" yelled the captain.
"Cutlasses, lads, cutlasses!" roared Wharton.
"Hold your volley till they touch!" cried the captain of marines.
The huge loom of the Frenchman was seen bursting through the smoke.
Thick clusters of boarders hung upon her sides and shrouds. A final
broadside leapt from her ports, and the mainmast of the "Leda,"
snapping short off a few feet above the deck, spun into the air and
crashed down upon the port guns, killing ten men and putting the
whole battery out of action. An instant later the two ships scraped
together, and the starboard bower anchor of the "Gloire" caught the
mizzen chains of the "Leda" upon the port side. With a yell the black
swarm of boarders steadied themselves for a spring.
But their feet were never to reach that blood-stained deck. From
somewhere there came a well-aimed whiff of grape, and another, and
another. The English marines and seamen, waiting with cutlass and
musket behind the silent guns, saw with amazement the dark masses
thinning and shredding away. At the same time the port broadside of
the Frenchman burst into a roar.
"Clear away the wreck!" roared the captain. "What the devil are they
firing at?"
"Get the guns clear!" panted the lieutenant. "We'll do them yet,
boys!"
The wreckage was torn and hacked and splintered until first one gun
and then another roared into action again. The Frenchman's anchor had
been cut away, and the "Leda" had worked herself free from that fatal
hug. But now suddenly there was a scurry up the shrouds of the
"Gloire," and a hundred Englishmen were shouting themselves hoarse.
"They're running! They're running! They're running!"
And it was true. The Frenchman had ceased to fire, and was intent only
upon clapping on every sail that she could carry.
But that shouting hundred could not claim it all as their own. As the
smoke cleared, it was not difficult to see the reason. The ships had
gained the mouth of the estuary during the fight, and there, about
four miles out to sea, was the "Leda's" consort bearing down under
full sail to the sound of the guns. Captain de Milon had done his part
for one day, and presently the "Gloire" was drawing off swiftly to the
north, while the "Dido" was bowling along at her skirts, rattling away
with her bowchasers, until a headland hid them both from view.
But the "Leda" lay sorely stricken, with her mainmast gone, her
bulwarks shattered, her mizzen topmast and gaff shot away, her sails
like a beggar's rags, and a hundred of her crew dead and wounded.
Close beside her a mass of wreckage floated upon the waves. It was the
stern post of a mangled vessel, and across it, in white letters on a
black ground, was printed "The Slapping Sal."
"By the Lord, it was the brig that saved us!" cried Mr. Wharton.
"Hudson brought her into action with the Frenchman, and was blown out
of the water by a broadside."
The little captain turned on his heel and paced up and down the deck.
Already his crew were plugging the shot-holes, knotting and splicing
and mending. When he came back the lieutenant saw a softening of the
stern lines about his mouth and eyes.
"Are they all gone?"
"Every man. They must have sunk with the wreck."
The two officers looked down at the sinister name and at the stump of
wreckage which floated in the discolored water. Something black washed
to and fro beside a splintered gaff and a tangle of halyards. It was
the outrageous ensign, and near it a scarlet cap was floating.
"He was a villain, but he was a Briton," said the captain at last. "He
lived like a dog, but, by God, he died like a man!"
"HUMAN DOCUMENTS."
"For of the soule the bodie forme doth take,
For soule is forme and doth the bodie make."
--From "An Hymne in Honour of Beautie."--SPENSER.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES was born eighty-four years ago on the 29th of
August, 1809. He was educated at the Phillips Andover Academy, and
graduated at Harvard in 1829, and was one of the founders of the _Phi
Beta Kappa_ Society of that university. His first general reception as
a poet was gained by his successful lyrical effort to save the old
frigate, "The Constitution," from being broken up. He graduated in
medicine in 1836 (after studying law in the Cambridge Law School), and
in the same year published his first volume of verse. In 1839 he was
made Professor of Anatomy and Physiology at Dartmouth, and in 1847 he
filled the same position at Harvard. He has published several volumes
of poems, and the famous books known, respectively, as "The Autocrat,"
"The Poet," and the "Professor at the Breakfast Table." He has written
many medical works, and of his novels, "Elsie Venner" and "The
Guardian Angel" are best known.
JOHN JAMES INGALLS was born in Middleton, Massachusetts, on December
29th, 1833. He graduated at Williams College in 1855. He then studied
law, and was admitted to the bar in 1857. Going to Atchison, Kansas,
in the following year, he there practised his profession, and from
that time to the present has been closely connected with the
development of his adopted State and that of the country. In 1862 he
was elected a Senator in the State of Kansas, and in 1863 and 1864 was
defeated for the Lieut.-Governorship. For some years he was editor of
the Atchison "Champion." In 1873 he was chosen United States Senator,
and served without interruption until 1889.
JULES VERNE was born at Nantes in France on February 8, 1828, and was
educated there. After leaving school he studied law in Paris, but,
while still very young, he became known as a popular writer of dramas,
comedies and burlesques for the Parisian theatres. "Les Pailles
Rompues" was produced at the Gymnase Theatre in 1850, when Jules was
but twenty-two years old, and "Onze Jours de Siege" shortly
afterwards. He first became known as a writer of highly imaginative
stories with a strong current of science in them in 1863, when his
"Five Weeks in a Balloon" made a great success. Since then he has
produced more than sixty novels of the same class, the most noted of
which are "The Voyage to the Moon," "20,000 Leagues under the Sea,"
and "Michael Strogoff." Many of his works have been successfully
dramatized, and he has been translated into almost every modern
language, including Arabic and Japanese.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
[Illustration: ALL FROM DAGUERREOTYPES--THE TWO LAST ONES, BETWEEN 1845
AND 1855. THE FIRST IS THE EARLIEST PICTURE OF DOCTOR HOLMES, AND HE IS
UNABLE TO PLACE A DATE UPON IT.]
[Illustration: MARCH, 1869. AGE 60.]
[Illustration: AUGUST, 1874. AGE 65.]
[Illustration: ABOUT 1882. AGE 73.]
[Illustration: NOVEMBER, 1891. AGE 82.]
J. J. INGALLS.
[Illustration: 1847. AGE 14.]
[Illustration: 1853. AGE 20.]
[Illustration: 1865. AGE 32.]
[Illustration: 1873. AGE 40.]
[Illustration: 1877. AGE 44.]
[Illustration: TO-DAY. AGE 60.]
JULES VERNE.
[Illustration: 1848. AGE 20.]
[Illustration: 1858. AGE 30.]
[Illustration: 1868. AGE 40.]
[Illustration: 1886. AGE 58.]
SOME PROFESSIONAL ADVENTURES OF KARL HAGENBECK.
BY RAYMOND BLATHWAYT.
As Karl Hagenbeck stood with me, in his Hamburg Wild Beast Emporium,
before the great cage of the boa constrictors and pythons, he
naturally fell to relating some of the curious adventures that have
befallen him with snakes and other brutes.
There was a great ugly looking boa constrictor coiled up in a corner
by itself, a most repulsive looking animal.
"He's a beauty, isn't he?" said Mr. Hagenbeck, looking fondly on him.
"He swallowed four whole sheep in one day, and only nine days after
that he got another, and seemed to enjoy it as much as if he had been
fasting for months. Come and look at this cage, where you can see a
revengeful member of the species. He once had a companion, but now
he's alone through his own fault. He and his companion were peculiarly
fond of rabbits, and we threw one into their cage one day. They both
darted for it, and, while the poor little shivering animal crept into
a corner in a fright, the snakes quarrelled as to whose 'bonne bouche'
the rabbit was to be. The smaller one won, and this great wretch
retired to a corner and watched his foe devour the rabbit, and then
lie down in that state of repleteness which it is the highest ambition
of these great snakes to attain. The big fellow then, seeing his
rival's helpless condition, roused himself, and a moment afterwards he
vigorously attacked the creature that lay gorged in the corner. We all
rushed to see what would happen, and I declare to you, that in a very
short time the big snake had swallowed the small snake, rabbit and
all."
"Would you like to see them in action?" said Mr. Hagenbeck to me, and,
as he spoke, he opened a cage door and boldly stepped in amongst a
number of big sleepy reptiles. He coolly began lifting them up by
their enormous coils, just as one would lift up great coils of rope,
and there was soon a mighty stirring amongst the previously inert
masses. They writhed to and fro, their scales glittering in the pale
light of the winter sun, and with a great hissing, an irritated
rearing back of their heads and a constant projection of their long
forked tongues, they began to move about the cage--a hideous, mixed-up
mass of repulsive life, that made one involuntarily step back from
their bars.
"You don't like the look of them," said Mr. Hagenbeck, with a smile,
as he stepped out and rejoined me. "They are queer fellows, certainly,
and gave me a big fright once."
"I should have imagined more than once," I said, as we turned from the
ugly mass of twisted snakes.
"Well, perhaps," said Mr. Hagenbeck, "but this particular once was
something to remember. In one cage I had eight full-grown pythons,
which I wanted to put into one huge box to send them off to a
menagerie. I handled the first six all right enough, catching them,
as is usual, by the back of the neck and dropping them into the box.
Then I went for number seven, but as soon as I entered the cage she,
the lady of the flock, flew at me with open mouth. Seeing her coming I
took off my hat and thrust it at her. She bit her teeth into it. I
then seized her with the right hand at the back of her neck, and I
dragged her down into the lower partition of the cage. Just when I was
going to fetch her out she reared her head to attack me again. I then
made a cautious movement forward, and at the same moment she darted
her head at me. I met the second attack with my hat in the same way
that I had the first. With a quick dart I grabbed her by the back of
the neck, only to find, to my horror, that I couldn't let her go if I
wanted to, as she had coiled herself firmly round my legs. One of my
assistants, standing near, heard me yell, and he came rushing up to me
with all the speed he could, for I fancy my shout told everybody
within hearing that I had to do with a matter of life and death. I
managed, however, to retain my nerve, and gave the order to the helper
to try and uncoil the serpent, which with great difficulty and my
assistance he at last managed to do."
Mr. Hagenbeck laughed a little as he recalled the experience, but I
confess I didn't feel like laughing much. The horror of having those
massive coils pressing tightly on your legs and bruising your muscles
with irresistible strength seemed very real to me.
"I wasn't done even then," Mr. Hagenbeck resumed, "for just as I
thought that I could get the big snake safely in the cage, another
python, and really an enormous fellow, attacked me. I had just time to
shout to my man to throw a blanket over it, and this he luckily
managed to do. At the same moment I moved backwards out of the cage
and got free of it altogether, and then I had a little rest. My men
tried to dissuade me from going back, each of them saying he would do
it. I felt very exhausted, but my temper was fairly up, and I
determined I wouldn't be beaten. So, after a few moments, I stepped
again into the cage, caught them both round the backs of their necks,
dragged them as quickly as I could to the edge of the cage, and then,
all helping, we flung them into the box waiting for them. Had not my
assistant been near me, nothing could have saved me from being
squeezed to death."
The wild-beast tamer then motioned me away from the serpent cages, and
we went to those of their cousins, the crocodiles and alligators. We
passed by an aviary of very great size, where parrots and other
beautifully plumed birds chattered, laughed, quarrelled, and made love
in a long, ear-piercing enjoyment of their captivity; and further on
we came to a large tank, in which were slowly paddling round some
spiteful-looking alligators--huge-jawed, soulless-eyed, each one a
waiting, watching destroyer of life.
[Illustration: KARL HAGENBECK'S FATHER AND HIS FIRST SHOW IN BERLIN.]
We looked at them for a little while, and then Mr. Hagenbeck said:
"Once I had to pack sixteen of these fellows up for the Duesseldorf
Zoological Gardens. I grappled hold of the first one and was pulling
him ashore, when he gave me a frightful blow with his tail and
knocked me into the tank, where, for a brief moment, I was alone with
fifteen alligators. Those who were standing by told me that as soon as
I splashed in a number of them made a rush, but I was out again like
an India-rubber ball. The swirl of the water and the open jaws of the
disappointed beasts told me that I had not been one second too smart.
This was a very narrow escape, as, if one of the crocodiles had
happened to get hold of me, all the rest would have attacked me,
snapping and biting at me at one and the same moment, until there
would have been little, if anything, left of me at all. They are the
most determined fighters even amongst themselves. Six of them, each
about fourteen feet long, had a fight amongst themselves once, and so
desperately did they set to, that within fourteen days they were all
dead. Three of them had their jaws broken, and in some cases their
legs were torn right out of their bodies. This occurred at night, and
one of the keepers, happening to hear the frightful noise which was
made by the clashing of their jaws, rushed off to tell me what was
happening. We lit our lanterns and hurried to the scene of action,
but, beyond trying to separate them with long poles, it was little we
could do. When we managed to part them for a time they only renewed
the fight with greater fierceness than ever, and so terribly were they
wounded, that, as I said, they were all dead in a fortnight. Nowadays,
when I get a new consignment of alligators I always muzzle them for
four days with a rope. They then calm down, and I cut the rope off;
otherwise, if I did not do that they would begin fighting as soon as
they came out of the box, for the first sight of day-light after the
long journey always seems to excite them. A fight amongst the snakes,
also, is a terrible thing. I had once five big pythons in one cage.
One of the keepers flung a dead rabbit amongst them, and two of them,
being very hungry, attacked it at once. At the same moment the other
four flew for the prey, and in one moment all the six were in one big
writhing lump. The keepers fetched me, and I at once attempted to
uncoil them. I succeeded, but hardly had I done so when the fight
began again between the first two. The larger one threw his tail round
the small one's neck and squeezed it with such force against the wall
that it lost all power. Then the bigger snake got hold of the rabbit
and swallowed it, after which it gradually loosened its hold of the
smaller snake. The little one then sought revenge, and flew at the big
python, which was rendered almost helpless by its huge meal, bit it in
the back, coiled round and round it, and squeezed it till it could
hardly breathe, although it screamed as I had never heard any living
creature scream before. The funny thing was that when I went to see
them next morning they were all right and perfectly good friends.
"Talking of fights, I was once turned out of bed at one o'clock in the
morning by one of my keepers, who came in with the news that the big
kangaroo had jumped a six-foot fence into the next stable, in which
there was a large hippopotamus. When I came down there was the
queerest kind of a duel going on. The kangaroo stood up to his belly
in water, whilst the hippopotamus, with wide-open jaws, snapped at him
right and left. However, the kangaroo managed to 'get in' a good right
and left with his front legs, and scratched the hippopotamus in the
face tremendously. When the amphibian came to close quarters, the
kangaroo jumped up, gave him a tremendous blow with his hind legs, and
then managed to get on to dry land. I caught the kangaroo with a big
net, and after all the fighting there wasn't so very much harm done."
Just as Mr. Hagenbeck finished talking, the Polar bear at our rear
began growling. Mr. Hagenbeck went up to soothe and pet him. Then he
said:
"I expect I am pretty well the only man in the world who can say that
he ever cut the toe nails of a Polar bear. It was this very beast, and
I will tell you how it all happened. The poor beast's nails had grown
into its foot, causing it a great deal of pain. We tried to get the
feet into a sling and pull them through the bars, but this proved to
be too awkward an arrangement. So I got him into a narrow cage which
had an iron barred front, and this I turned upside down so that the
bear had to stand on the bars of the cage, which we lifted up about
four feet above the ground. I went underneath with a sharp pair of
pincers, and, as he stood there with his toes pressed through the
bars, I managed to pull the nails out. Then I stood him in water to
wash and cool his wounds, and in a few days he was all right. On yet
another occasion a royal Bengal tiger was suffering very much from
toothache, so two of my men held him by the collar and, whilst one of
my attendants opened his mouth, my brother-in-law and I took some
pincers and pulled out the teeth which had been giving him so much
pain, and which, indeed, had grown so badly that they had hindered him
from biting his food properly.
"The most risky thing, however, that ever occurred to me happened in
Munich during the Centennial Fete in 1888. I was passing in the long
procession with eight elephants, and the streets were very much
crammed. It chanced that we had to pass a great big iron dragon,
which, by some mechanical contrivance, began to spit fire as soon as
we got near it. Four of the elephants at once took fright and ran
away, which was only natural, and the other four followed suit. The
people rushed after them with sticks and loud cries, which of course
only made matters worse. I managed to get between two of them, and
caught hold of them, but it was of no use, as they ran with me for at
least a mile. I was badly hurled from side to side and, indeed, at one
moment I was very nearly crushed to death by them against the walls of
a house. At last two other elephants came up, and I managed to
persuade the lot of them to stand still; just as I had done so the
stupid crowd again came rushing up, and away the elephants went again.
I was too tired to do anything more. All four of them rushed into a
house; the bottom gave way and the excited creatures fell into the
cellar. A new house has now been built there which is called to this
day 'The four wild elephants.' A lot of people were hurt, some indeed
were killed, but, as the Police President had seen all that had
happened, I was held free of blame. That was, however, the worst
trouble with my captive friends I ever have had, and how I escaped
being crushed to death then I cannot understand to this day."
[Illustration: THE SCRAMBLE IN MUNICH.]
THE STORY I HEARD ON THE CARS.
BY MRS. E. V. WILSON.
It was very tiresome riding on the cars all day, with the same
monotonous stretch of prairie to be seen from the window; so I am sure
it was pardonable in me to listen to the conversation of my
fellow-passengers.
Just in front of me (their bundles on a seat before them) sat two
elderly women, old friends, it seemed, who had chanced to meet in
their journeying; and it was a sentence or two of their talk that
caught my attention, and presently I became so interested that I no
longer felt my weariness.
"And so," said one, "you say they are livin' all alone in that big
house of their'n! I knowed the girls was all married an' gone, but I
heerd Jim had tuk a wife home to live with the old folks, and I said
to Simon, says I, 'Well, it'll take more'n a mortal woman to live with
Mary Ann Curtis onless she's mightily changed sence I use ter know
her,' says I."
"Well," said the other voice, and a sweet, patient-sounding voice it
was--so sweet, indeed, that I glanced over to look at its owner. She
was a little, quaint old woman, with soft brown eyes and a pathetic,
lovable face. I fell in love with her at once. Her companion was a
younger woman, with shrewd, black, observing eyes and sharp nose and
chin. From appearances and manner, I judged both were wives of
well-to-do farmers.
"Well," said the sweet voice, "Jim did marry a mortal woman, but Mary
Ann soon made a angel out of her. I knowed Jim Curtis's wife as well
as if she'd ben my own child; and no wonder, seein' as she boarded
with me and Jonathan nigh on to a year. You see, she was left an
orphan, and her uncle that raised her, not bein' well off, give her
what schoolin' he could, an' then when she was about sixteen year old
he got her first the summer school in our deestric, and then, as she
suited the folks, the d'rectors they let her have it fur the winter. I
was sort o' feared for her to tackle the winter school, seein' as some
of the big boys, and girls, too, for that matter, 's pritty
obstreperous; but Rhody she laughed and tossed her head an' said,
'I'll get along, Aunt Nancy!' (You know everybody in the neighborhood
calls me Aunt Nancy, and Rhody she picked it up as natral as could
be.)
"Well, she did manage somehow, an' never had a bit of trouble. An' I
use ter watch o' evenin's for her to come, allus smilin', and with
somethin' funny to tell about the scholars. I declare to you, Mis'
Johnson, if she'd ben our own, Jonathan an' me couldn't a sot more by
her. Why, whenever it was rainy or snowy the ole man would saddle a
horse an' go for her, an' she'd look that cute, settin' behin' on ole
Molly an' holdin' on to the ole man!
"One cold evenin' (it was a Friday evenin', too--I'll never
forgit it), jist as Jonathan got the saddle on the mare, we heard
sleigh-bells, for I was out at the fence talkin' to the ole man, an'
who should come sailin' up the road, large as life, but Jim
Curtis in his new sleigh, with our Rhody, smilin' and rosy,
beside him. 'There, ole man,' says I, 'your cake's dough.' And I
declare fur it, ef he warn't that cut up he could scarce be civil
to the youngsters.
"Of course you know how it was after that--no needcessity fur the ole
man botherin' any more; not 'at it was bother, for he allus liked
goin' fur Rhody; but laws! Jim was allus on hand, no matter how the
weather was, an' he tuk her to her uncle's two or three times, an' to
meetin' Sundays, an' I up an' tole her one day that I b'lieved I'd ask
Jim to board with us, an' her face got mighty red, an' she stepped up
an' put both arms roun' my neck, she was such a lovin' leetle critter,
an' she says, 'You aint mad, Aunt Nancy, are you? You like Jim, don't
you?'
"'Well,' says I, 'ef I don't, somebody else does; but I'd like to
know what this deestric's goin' to do fur a teacher.'
"'Oh,' she says, blushin' more 'an ever, 'I am goin' to teach my
school out.'
"'An' then what?' says I.
"'Then I'll tell you,' she says, and run off laughin'.
"So I says to the ole man that night, after we'd gone to bed, says I,
'Jonathan, Rhody is goin' to marry Jim Curtis, an' I dunno whether to
be glad or sorry.'
"An' he laughed till the bed shuk, an' says he, 'Why, whot on 'arth is
ther' to be sorry 'bout?' says he; 'ther' aint a likelier feller'n the
neighborhood than Jim, an' as for Rhody, pshaw! she's good enough an'
purty 'nough for anybody.'
"'Oh,' says I, ''tain't that--they're both well 'nough; but how's our
little girl goin' to git along with Mis' Curtis?'"
"Yes," interrupted Mrs. Johnson, appreciatively, "that was a question.
What did you let 'em go there to live for? That's what I want to know,
Nancy Riley."
"Well," sighed Aunt Nancy, "I did try to prevent it. I talked to
Rhody, but she thought she could surely git along with Jim's
mother--said she loved her already, pore thing! Then I tuk Jim to
task, an' he said the ole folks weren't willin' fur him to leave 'em;
his father was gittin' old, an' ther' were lots 'o rooms in the house,
an' his mother was glad he was goin' to marry an' bring his wife
there, she was so lonesome now all her girls was gone, an' a heap more
sich stuff."
"Lonesome, indeed!" snapped Mrs. Johnson. "She was glad to git rid of
her girls, so she was! Laws! don't I mind what times them poor girls
had to git decent clothes? She jist grudged 'em everything, an' kep'
'em workin' like--I was goin' to say darkys, but no darky ever worked
like old Mis' Curtis made her girls. No wonder they up an' tuk the
first feller 'at came along an' asked 'em. But I stopped you, Aunt
Nancy--excuse me--for I knowed Mis' Curtis so well. The idea of her
a-bein' lonesome! She wanted somebody to help with the work, she did.
Her own girls got away soon's they could. That Jim must 'a' been a
fool!"
"Oh, no, he wasn't," went on the soft voice. "It's mighty little a
young feller like him knows about housework, an' his mother's work
never bothered him. So as soon as Rhody's school was out in the spring
they was married. You see, her uncle thought for a pore girl she was
doin' purty well, an' I 'low she was ef she had been jes' marryin' Jim
Curtis, but she warn't--she was a tyin' of herself to his mother."
"More fool Jim!" snarled Mrs. Johnson.
"Now, Mis' Johnson," said Aunt Nancy, "Jim meant well, an' he
worshipped the very ground Rhody walked on; but, you see, old Mis'
Curtis she didn't believe in young folks makin' simpletons of
theirselves, and when she see Jim slip his arm 'roun' Rhody, or her
run her hand through his curly hair, she'd snap out something sort o'
hateful; so Rhody she got afraid of her, an' there's where the trouble
begun, in my 'pinion, fur if my pore child had let Jim see how she was
imposed on, he certingly'd have made a change, but to keep peace she
jist made believe she was happy 'nough. I use' ter go over sometimes,
though I knowed Mis' Curtis set no store by my comin', but Rhody was
allus that glad, and I tell you it riled me to see how she was
treated. It was: 'Rhody, bring the milk out of the suller'; 'Rhody,
fetch some wood'; 'Rhody, set the table,' till I wondered she didn't
drop.
"One awful hot day I was there, an' Rhody she was ironin' in the back
porch, an' Mis' Curtis she was makin' pies; she was a master-hand at
cookin'; you'll 'low that, Mis' Johnson."
"Oh, yes," snapped Mrs. Johnson, "Mary Ann Curtis was a master at
anything she put her hand to."
"As I was sayin'," went on Aunt Nancy meekly, "Rhody was ironin'; and
sich a pile of clothes!--white winder-curtains starched like boards,
an' table-cloths, let alone shirts and other things--an' I was
thinkin' how pale she was, an' peaked-lookin', when Mis' Curtis calls
out, 'Rhody, the fire's goin' down. I wonder if you 'spect to iron
with cold irons. Ef you do, you kin quit, for I don't have my ironin'
done that way, if some folks does.'
"Rhody never said a word, but jist went to the wood-pile for more
wood, an' I says to Mis' Curtis, says I, 'Ef I was you, I'd hev some
of the men-folks bring in the wood. Rhody don't look well.'
"You oughter seen her look at me; her eyes fairly scared me. 'Our
men-folks,' says she, ''s tired enough when they come in, 'thout
havin' women's work to do. Ef they was shiftless as some I knows,
that's all they'd be fit fur.'
"I tell you, that sort o' riled me," went on the gentle voice; "but
Rhody came in with a big armful of wood, so I didn't say anything."
"As if you would have said anything, you good soul!" said Mrs.
Johnson.
"You don't know me," said Aunt Nancy. "Jonathan says I am right smart
when I get riled--scares him;" and a mellow laugh rippled over her
thin lips, which sounded so sweet that more than one passenger turned
to see the laugher. Mrs. Johnson joined in the merriment, and I smiled
too--the idea of that voice scolding was so absurd. And now it went on
again:
"I thought I'd say something to Jim about Rhody, for I felt oneasy
about her; an' so when he was helpin' me on my horse in the evenin'
(Rhody couldn't come to the fence, 'cause Mis' Curtis called her back
when she started), I says to him, 'Jim,' says I, 'Rhody looks mighty
bad; I'm feered she's doin' too much this hot weather.' You see, it
was September, an' you know what tirin' weather we sometimes have in
September.
"'Oh, she's all right,' says Jim.
"'No, she ain't,' says I.
"Jim laughed, and his face reddened up, and says I,
"'You better take good care of her, Jim; she's not a strong woman like
your mother; she can't stand everything,' an' no more she couldn't,
pore little thing.
"Well, the very nex' Sunday, here came Jim and Rhody to see us. An' I
tell you the ole man an' me was that glad he would have Rhody sing for
us, an' she sang some of the songs he liked, but not many; she said
she hadn't sung any fur so long it tired her.
"'Why don't you sing, Rhody?' says the ole man; 'you used to sing like
a bird.'
"'I guess I'm not like a bird any more, Uncle Jonathan,' she says. An'
then she sighed, but catchin' Jim lookin' at her, she lightened up and
says, 'I am an old married woman now.'
"After a while Jim an' the ole man they went out to the stable, and
then the pore little darlin' says,
"'Oh, Aunt Nancy, I'd be the happiest woman in the world if Jim and me
was livin' by ourselves! Mother Curtis is a good woman, but somehow I
can't please her, an' I try so hard. Sometimes I'm so tired I can't
sleep or eat, an' she thinks I'm puttin' on airs, she calls it, an'
she's allus saying she pities a man with a do-nothin', whiny wife.'
"'It's a shame!' says I; 'why don't you tell Jim, and coax him to get
another place?'
"'Oh, Aunt Nancy,' she says, wipin' her purty eyes, 'I can't bear to
make trouble, and what would Pap Curtis do? He's awful good to us. He
brings me candy and sometimes oranges from town, and gives 'em to me
when she don't see him, and he often helps me, too; gets wood and
water and milks the cows--but there's Jim with the buggy,' and off she
went.
"I made up my mind to have another talk with Jim Curtis, but laws! we
never can tell. The ole man he took the bed with rheumatiks in
October, and I never seen anybody much fur three months, and then our
Sarah's baby was born, and I was over there awhile, an' my own
worriments drove other people's clean out of my head, till one day
'long the last of February Jonathan came in (he'd be'n to town for
somethin' or other), an' says he,
"'Nancy, Rhody's got a boy!'
"Laws! I was jist as s'prised as ef I'd never thought of sich a thing,
an' says I, 'Who tole you?'
"'Ole man Curtis,' says he, 'an' he's that sot up he wants you to come
right over.'
"'An' so I will,' says I. 'The blessed darlin'; an' it's a boy, an'
our Sarah's is a boy, too. Well, that beats me.' An' I 'low 'twas odd,
Mis' Johnson;" and Mrs. Johnson "'lowed" it was, too, and the story
went on:
"In a day or two I managed to go over to the Curtis place, an' though
Mary Ann Curtis didn't seem over-pleased to see me, I'll say that for
her, she treated me well enough, and asked me right up stairs to see
Rhody and the baby. My! but my girl was glad to see me!
"'Aunt Nancy,' she says, 'is Sarah's baby bigger'n mine?' and she
turned down the kiver and showed me the littlest mite of a boy, with
such a wrinkled old face! I wonder what does make a pore weakly baby
look so much like old folks, anyhow. Did you ever notice it, Mis'
Johnson?"
"Oh, yes, often," said Mrs. Johnson. "There was my Silas, looked just
like his Grandfather Johnson when he was born. But was her baby
weakly?"
"I saw it was in a minute," said Aunt Nancy, "but I never let on. I
looked at the baby an' praised it all I could--said it wasn't as big
as Sary's, but size was nothin'.
"Mis' Curtis she sniffed sort o' scornful, an' says she, 'The child
might have been bigger ef its mother'd knowed how to take keer of
herself;' an' then she says, 'Well, I ain't no time to be a-foolin'. I
must go to work.'
"'I suppose you've got a girl?' says I.
"'No, I ain't,' says she; 'an' what's more, I don't want one. I never
seen one yet that they didn't eat an' waste more than their work came
to, let alone their wages;' an' off she went down-stairs.
"Rhody said nothing for a minute, an' I didn't, either. We just looked
at the baby, an' it begun to pucker its face and cry a little, 'bout
as loud as a young kitten. I thought of Sary's squaller of a boy, but
I didn't say anything, and when it was quiet Rhody says:
"'Aunt Nancy, is my baby like Sary's baby?' and she looked so pitiful
I felt as if I could cry.
"'Well,' I says, 'Sary's is bigger. Why do you ask that?'
"Her lips quivered, an' she says:
"'Everybody 'at sees it says, "What an old-fashioned baby! Poor little
thing! Re'ly it's so odd-looking." Is it odd, Aunt Nancy? An' is there
fashions in babies? I thought babies were all alike;' an' she tried to
smile while tears rolled down her white face.
"I tried to cheer her up. She was a baby herself--only a little over
eighteen, you know; an' I went down and made her some toast and tea,
and then fed the baby and got it to sleep, an' left her feelin' pretty
cheerful.
"After that I went over as often as ever I could, and sometimes
carried a little somethin' I cooked to Rhody, but I saw Mis' Curtis
didn't thank me. Once she's good as said so--said her victuals was
good 'nough for anybody. Says I, 'Sick folks like strange cookin'
sometimes, Mis' Curtis, an' Rhody allus liked my ways.' Which was an
unfortunate thing for me to say, fur Mis' Curtis she flew all to
pieces, and said I put mischief in Rhody's head.
"'Here,' she says, 'is her baby three weeks old, an' her barely
settin' up. Your Sary was at work afore her baby was that old, an' I
know it; an' if Mis' Rhody can't wait on herself now, she can go
'thout waitin' on for all of me,' she says.
"'Mis' Curtis,' says I, 'my Sary's a different woman from Rhody.'
"'I guess she is,' says Mis' Curtis, mad as fire.
"'An,' says I, 'Jim ought to get somebody to help wait on Rhody and
take care of the baby,' says I, 'or else it's my 'pinion he won't have
'em long; fur,' says I, 'Rhody's gettin' weaker instead of stronger,
and she ain't got milk fur that pore baby.'
"Then Mis' Curtis she jes' let loose, an' I ketched it. She said it
was all my doin's that Jim married that pore no-'count, stuck-up
school-mistress, an' brought her there to be waited on, an' she knowed
it all along, and now I needn't come a-tryin' to make out as Rhody
wasn't treated well, fur she had wore herself out trottin' up and
down stairs, an' she didn't mean to do it any longer.
"Just then the kitchen door was opened, and old Mr. Curtis came in.
"'Why, howdy, Aunt Nancy?' says he as cheerful, though I knowed he
must have seen somethin' was up."
"Yes," interrupted Mrs. Johnson angrily, "that's the way people do,
and call it keepin' peace. I despise sich ways. Why didn't he make her
behave herself? Suppose there was a fuss; ef she'd found he was goin'
to be boss, she'd soon give up."
"I guess not, Mis' Johnson," said the other; "she had sich a temper."
"As if I didn't know that! an' I know when folks give up to sich
tempers they make 'em worse. Wouldn't it been better if ole man Curtis
had jes' let her see from the first that he didn't care for her
temper? Why, she jesso natrally drove her girls to marry; and think of
poor Molly tied to that drunken, shiftless Ned Pelton, and Betsy
married to a old widower with seven or eight children, and him nearly
as old as her father! I tell you, Aunt Nancy, Curtis is to blame."
"Well," said the old lady gently, "I went up-stairs and found Rhody
looking better'n I expected, with that midget of a baby with its eyes
wide open on her lap. She was glad to see me.
"'O Aunt Nancy!' she cried before I got my bunnit off, 'Jim has rented
the old Duncan place, and as soon as I am able we are going there to
live. He is over there now, fixing up.'
"'Aha!' thought I, 'that's what's up!' but I said I was glad, and that
I had brought her some sponge cake and other things; an' I 'mused the
baby while she et a little--a mighty little, I was sorry to see; but
she went on to tell me Jim had been to the doctor about her, an' he
said she needed tonics, and he sent her some, an' she was goin' to
take the med'cin' an' would soon be well and strong, an' so happy!
'But, Aunt Nancy,' she says, 'baby don't grow a bit. I'm afraid he is
too old-fashioned. Mother Curtis says I don't stir 'round enough to
get an appetite. Do you think that's it--that baby don't get enough to
make him grow because I can't eat?' She looked so weak and pitiful.
"I says, 'Well, it ain't your fault; I reckon you can't make yourself
eat.'
"She laughed a little. 'You are such a comfort, auntie!' she says;
'but that wonderful tonic'll set me up again.'
"An' so I left her an' went home, promising to be back in a day or two
an' take her home with me for a little visit if she was strong enough.
You'd jes' oughter to seen her face when I said that; it jes' lit up.
"'Mother Curtis?' she whispered.
"'Oh,' says I, 'she'll be glad to get rid of you for a while,' an' I
went off plannin' how I'd see Jim and make him bring her over. But it
did seem as if there was a spite to be worked out agin me, for that
very evenin' it set in to rain, an' that stiffened the ole man up bad,
an' for days he could not move hisself, an' I was kep' close at home
for three weeks, hearin' from the neighbors every once in a while that
Rhody was gainin' slowly, but the baby wasn't right somehow.
"Well, Jonathan got able to hobble round again, an' a purty spell of
weather sot in, but there was garden to make, an' soap to bile, an'
another week slipped away, an' I says to Jonathan, says I, 'As sure as
I live I am going to see Rhody to-morrer ef old Mis' Curtis'll let me
in;' an' the words wasn't hardly out of my mouth when somebody knocked
at the door. 'Come in,' says I, and who was it but old man Curtis,
looking like a ghost. 'What's the matter?' says I. He r'al'y couldn't
speak for a minit, an' then he got out somethin' 'bout Rhody an' the
baby, and comin', but I sensed it all, an' in less'n a minit I was
ready an' in the buggy with him.
"From what I could make out as we druv as fast as we could, Jim had
been away from home over to the Duncan place from airly in the mornin'
till about five o'clock that afternoon. When he got home he run right
up to Rhody's room, an' found her a-settin' there with the baby in her
arms, asleep he thought, but when he spoke to Rhody she began to
scream, so that he was scared an' tuk hold of the baby an' it was
dead.
"'Then he hollered,' said the old man, 'an' me an' Mary Ann an' Tom
(that's the hired man) ran up there, fur we was jes' settin' down to
supper, an' when we saw what it was Tom went for the doctor and I came
for you.'
"An' oh, Mis' Johnson, I never want to see such sights agin! The baby
was dead, sure enough, poor little thing, an' out of its misery, but
Rhody, she jes' went out o' one faint into another till the doctor
came, an' then we worked over her a long time, an' when she quit
faintin' she was ravin' in a high fever. Dangerous, the doctor said,
an' turned everybody but Jim an' me out o' the room. Such an awful
time! Rhody would scream, 'Oh, do come, Mother! Mother! Mother! Baby's
dyin'!' till she couldn't scream any more, an' then she'd ask for the
baby, an' lie still, waitin' like, an' then scream again.
"It was midnight before the doctor got her quiet, and then she lay in
a stupor like, with Jim settin' watchin' her. Then I thought of the
pore baby an' went to see about it, but some of the other neighbors
hed come in, an' I found they had it laid out nice in the parlor.
"Mis' Curtis was settin' by the kitchen stove, fur it was a cool
evenin', an' I says to her, 'Mary Ann,' says I, 'what ailed the child?
It was tuk suddent, wasn't it?'
"She looked at me. I knowed she was mad as well as feelin' bad, but
she didn't want to show it then, an' she says,
"'Yes, I reckon you might say it was, 'though I never spected the
child to live from the first. What'd Jim marry that no-'count spindly
girl fur? He might 'a 'knowed.'
"'Mis' Curtis,' says I, 'Rhody'll not trouble you long; and it's my
belief,' says I, 'you've hurried her into her grave.'
"'It's no sich thing,' says she. 'I waited on her as good as if she
was my own; but I had lots to do to-day, an' I tole her this mornin' I
was done packin' victuals up stairs for a lazy trollop like her, an'
she could come down to dinner if she wanted any. She's plenty able to,
Nancy Riley, an' it's my 'pinion she didn't take half care of that
baby. An' she set Jim agin me. He's fixin' to go off to live by
hisself.'
"I jes' turned round and left her, an' she bounced up an' says to one
of the women, 'I spect you're all hungry, an' I'll get supper'; an' in
spite of all they could do, to work she went."
"Oh, yes," said Mrs. Johnson, "the madder she got the harder she'd
work, an' a mighty good worker, too, she was; but how did that poor
Rhody get along?"
"Well, she lay quiet all that mornin', but about the middle of the
afternoon she roused up and seemed to know me an' Jim, an' asked for
the baby.
"'It's down stairs, Rhody,' says I.
"She looked at me so queer.
"'Is it?' she said. 'Mother was mad, Jim, an' wouldn't come up stairs;
an' baby was so sick, an' I tried to call her, an' I couldn't make her
hear, an' then I tried to go down stairs an' I couldn't, an' baby got
so stiff and cold, an' I couldn't get him warm.' An' then, O Mis'
Johnson, she began to scream again. It was awful, but after a while
she was still again for several hours, an' I tried to get Jim to lay
down, but he wouldn't leave her; an' his mother come up for him to get
him to go down an' eat somethin', but he jes' looked at her, an' she
went an' left him.
"It was night when Rhody roused up agin', an' she looked so much
better out of her eyes that I felt sort a cheered.
"'Jim,' she says, whispering, 'is that Aunt Nancy?'
"'Yes, dear,' he says.
"'An' has she got the baby?' she went on.
"Well, Jim didn't say nothin', pore feller, an' she says,
"'Aunt Nancy, when Jim an' me's keepin' house you'll come an' see
us?'
"'Yes, dear,' I says. 'Now go to sleep, like a good girl.'
"'All right,' she says, 'you keep the baby, an', Jim, kiss me good
night. I love you--Jim. We'll be--so happy--by--ourselves.'
"The last words were a long time comin', an' Jim, after he kissed her,
looked at me an' whispered, 'Send for the doctor.' I hurried out, but
before the doctor came he was not needed. Rhody had said her last good
night."
"How did Mary Ann take it?" said Mrs. Johnson, wiping her eyes.
"Laws, she tuk on like all possessed, cried and hollered till I
thought she'd go inter fits; but somehow I felt sorrier for the ole
man. He'd stan' an' look at the pore thing after she was laid out, an'
the big tears'd run down his wrinkled face, an' he says to me, 'She's
too good fur this world, Nancy, Rhody was.'"
Just then the brakeman shouted the name of the town at which I was to
stop, and I must gather up my traps. I leaned over and whispered to
"Aunt Nancy," "What did poor Jim do?"
The old lady's face flushed. "Was you a-listenin'?" says she.
"I couldn't help it," I said. "Poor Rhoda! But what about Jim, Aunt
Nancy?"
"This way, Madam," said the conductor briskly. "Let me have your
valise."
"Jim?" she whispered excitedly, "he like to went wild, but he was
mighty quiet, an' soon's the funeral was over he sold everything he
had and went to Californy."
"Did he forgive his mother?" I asked, but the conductor took my arm
and marched me out, and to this day I am wondering about "Jim" and his
mother and "ole man Curtis." If I knew where "Aunt Nancy" lived, I
would write to her.
MRS. GLADSTONE AND HER GOOD WORKS.
BY MARY G. BURNETT.
The mistress of Hawarden Castle is something more than the devoted
wife of the great statesman who sways the destinies of Great Britain.
She has a notable personality of her own, worthy in its energy and
sagacity of him with whom her life is linked. While the husband's
career has always been interwoven with the highest affairs of state,
the wife has shown her genius for administration by the charitable
enterprises in which she has taken so active a part. Most things come
about naturally as the effect of growth; and it is interesting to go
back to the childhood of Mrs. Gladstone to trace the influences which
directed her mind to deeds of beneficence. Things have changed since
Mrs. Gladstone was a little girl, living with her sister and brothers
at Hawarden Castle, nearly eighty years ago.
Mrs. Gladstone's father, Sir Stephen Glynne, died young, when his
eldest daughter Catherine (Mrs. Gladstone) was scarcely five years
old. Tradition remembers him as a very handsome, lively-minded man,
and it is said that Catherine Glynne grew up very like her father. One
of Mrs. Gladstone's first vivid impressions is of the fright she got
by seeing the "mutes," then the fashion at important funerals,
standing about the castle while her dead father lay in state. It gave
her a life-long horror of elaborate and expensive funerals. Her father
was succeeded in the baronetcy and estates by his eldest son, Stephen
Richard, then but a little boy of eight. Lady Glynne, a daughter of
Lord Brabrooke, was left with the sole charge of the property and the
children. She was a beautiful woman of strong character. Fortunately
about this time her brother, the Honorable George Neville, came to be
rector of Hawarden parish. The castle and rectory were within a
quarter hour's walk of each other, and it was a precious boon for Lady
Glynne to have her brother's judicious help in the management of the
large estates, and in the education of her two boys and her two
girls.
This was about the year 1813. At that date Hawarden, in common with a
village in Cheshire, had the deserved reputation of being the most
wicked place in all the country round. Mr. Neville, with Lady Glynne's
consent, closed the worst of the public houses, and inaugurated a
system of education for the parish, setting up schools in Hawarden
village and in the districts round.
MRS. GLADSTONE'S EARLY TRAINING.
It was a serious problem at the outset to obtain either teachers or
scholars. It was necessary to employ bribery to get the mothers to
send their children to school, and the aid of Lady Glynne and her
young girls was brought to bear, in the first place, to talk the
mothers over; and, secondly, to prepare a store of frocks, coats,
cloaks, and other useful garments. These were given away as Christmas
prizes, to recompense the mothers for remitting the services of their
little girls, and the pence which the boys could pick up at scaring
crows and such like juvenile occupations.
It was a matter of still greater difficulty to find teachers who knew
anything of the art of instruction; this was long before the day of
colleges for elementary teachers. An old woman at Hawarden boasted to
me that she had received for many years a Christmas prize for regular
attendance at school. Naturally the question was asked: "How was it,
then, Mrs. Catheral, you never learned either to read or write?"
"Oh, I never wanted to," said she. "I never tried. But I liked the
pretty frock or warm cloak the Miss Glynnes always gave us for prizes
at Christmas time, if we went to school regular." Then she added,
"Bless you! you should have seen the prizes in those days! They were
worth looking at; none of your books and rubbish, like what children
get in these days." In such an atmosphere did the children of Lady
Glynne grow up, systematically trained to assist their mother and
uncle in everything they projected for the parish good. Then came the
full tide of the Oxford movement, which swept like a wave of light and
heat through the sluggish heart of English religious and social
reform, though it landed some of its brightest lights afterwards in
Romanism. The names of Pusey, Keble, Manning, and Newman were
household words at Hawarden Castle. Catherine's brothers were then at
Christ Church, Oxford; and, in the midst of it all, intimate with the
leaders of the movement, amongst whom were young Gladstone and many
other brilliant young men, destined to be friends through life of
those two bright and beautiful young girls at Hawarden.
[Illustration: THE OLD AND NEW CASTLE OF HAWARDEN.]
Thus a happy childhood matured into womanhood, under revolutionary
influences. The breezes of intellectual and spiritual awakening
stirred the air. Theirs never was a life of mere social excitement
which so often plunges the _debutante_ into a whirl of pleasure
without feeding the better life. They entered, it is true, into all
the pleasures of London seasons, their beauty and bright minds fitting
them to enjoy these to the full. But behind and above it all was the
intelligence which kept them in touch with the movement of their
day--a movement which, when turned into practical channels, brought
about, for example, the great work of Florence Nightingale, who
re-created the hospital-nursing service. The same potency inspired the
establishment of homes and refuges and many of the philanthropic
schemes which have made the last forty years so notable. Certain it is
that Catherine Glynne came under the influence of the Oxford movement,
and was predisposed by it to take a leading part in the philanthropic
work of the day.
MARRIAGE AND PHILANTHROPY.
[Illustration: MISS GLYNNE (MRS. GLADSTONE), 1838.]
In 1839 she married William Ewart Gladstone, whose great genius
already foreshadowed his future eminence. The same day her younger
sister married Lord Lyttleton. Those who were eye-witnesses of that
double wedding, and all the wonderful festivities in the village, are
becoming few, indeed. In her married life Mrs. Gladstone found
occupation to the full. She was always the true and careful mother who
would not give over her duties to another, even to the best of nurses.
She was devoted to her husband in his incessant political toils. She
did not need to look around her for work. Still her assistance was
from the first prompt to the furtherance of any schemes where a
helping hand was needed.
Mrs. Gladstone soon became a centre for philanthropic work of all
kinds. She and Mr. Gladstone started Newport Market Refuge, which is
now carried on at Westminster, with an industrial school attached.
Begun in Soho in 1863, it was Mr. Gladstone's idea, for he saw many
friendless wanderers as he went at night between the House of Commons
and his home. Mrs. Gladstone threw herself into his scheme, and the
work was started with an efficient committee. From the beginning Mr.
Gladstone has been president and his wife a regular visitor. The
object of the refuge is to give shelter to persons out of work and in
temporary distress, to enable them to tide over their difficulties,
and to find fresh employment. It does not take in the practised
casual, or loafer, but weary, sore-footed travellers, who have walked
far in search of work and found none. Such are always admitted as far
as room permits, and have the assurance of a week's lodging free, with
the prospect of an extension of time if the committee see a reasonable
chance of their getting work.
[Illustration: THE ORPHANAGE, HAWARDEN.]
In the course of a single year about thirteen thousand nights'
lodgings and thirty thousand rations have been granted, and three
hundred and nine men and women have obtained employment, or else have
been sent home to their friends.
It need scarcely be said to those who have kept pace with recent
events that the most vital feature of General Booth's great work in
London follows closely the model set by the Gladstone institution.
It was soon found advisable to add a Boys' Industrial School to the
work of the Refuge. Many lads in distress were constantly being
discovered, who would certainly drift into a life of idleness and
dishonesty if not taken in hand. So the managers of the Refuge
determined to try this novel combination--refuge and school--which,
hazardous as it was at its commencement, has proved an entire
success.
In 1866 a sharp epidemic of cholera reached England, and the East End
of London was severely attacked. Mrs. Gladstone came in contact with
it, in her regular visits to the London hospital. Whole families were
brought in together, some to die, others to recover. Parents dying
left their children behind them, friendless and helpless. Mrs.
Gladstone carried away many of the poor little wretches virtually in
her arms. They were naked, for their only clothing had to be burned,
but she found cloaks and blankets to wrap them in, and took them with
her to her own house or to lodgings which she had provided.
She induced her friends to furnish fresh garments without delay, and
she rented an empty house at Clapton, wherein to lodge her orphans.
She set about raising money to provide for their needs and those of
other cholera patients. She wrote a letter to the "Times," asking
subscriptions for this object, and speedily five thousand pounds
rolled in. With this she was able to keep her little cholera orphans
in comfort. One who saw the sight, when she accompanied Mrs. Gladstone
to Clapton, says she can never forget it. As soon as the door was
opened she was surrounded by the little ones, who clung to her and
almost overwhelmed her in their eagerness to obtain a caress from the
one they loved so dearly.
VARIED ENTERPRISES OF AN ACTIVE LIFE.
Her Free Convalescent Home had its genesis in the necessities of
the sick poor, brought to light by this cholera epidemic. It was
forced upon her notice that many, who had passed safely through the
dangers of acute disease, relapsed into serious, and sometimes fatal,
illness for lack of that timely change of air, wholesome food and
comfortable lodging which they were unable to find at home. There were
convalescent establishments in operation, but it was found that
they were already full, or else admission was hampered by such
conditions of privileged tickets, weekly payments, and distance,
that, before these could be complied with, the evils sought to be
averted had actually occurred.
Mrs. Gladstone determined to establish a Convalescent Home, where
admission could be quickly arranged, free of cost. She called to her
aid a committee of ladies and gentlemen, qualified by business
experience, professional knowledge, or familiarity with the needs of
the poor, to cooperate with her. Such confidence did she inspire, that
a beginning was quickly made in a house at Snaresbrook, the remainder
of the lease being made over to Mrs. Gladstone and her committee. When
the lease came to an end, the convalescents were transferred for a
short time to the houses which Mrs. Gladstone had at Clapton, but in
1868 a freehold property, known as Woodsford Hall, most healthily
situated in Essex, was bought by the committee. Here this good work
has been carried on ever since. It is a charming house close to the
forest, surrounded by lawns and trees and flowers. In fine weather the
house is nearly empty all day long. The invalids from the squalid city
lanes spend their time in the forest, gathering wild flowers, and
drinking in the perfumed air which pours rich draughts of health and
strength into their wasted bodies.
When in London, Mrs. Gladstone has for nearly a quarter of a century
gone down to the London Hospital every Monday morning, to examine into
the circumstances of those who apply to go down to Woodsford. The
clergy and ministers of all denominations in the parishes around the
London Hospital have a right to send their sick poor with a note of
recommendation, but those who are recovering in the London Hospital
have the special claim. The business is carefully supervised by Mrs.
Gladstone and her assistants, even to the day of going, and the train.
Attention is always directed to the express object of the home--as a
resort solely for those who have been ill, are slowly recovering, and
require, for complete restoration to health, change of air, good food,
rest, and kindly treatment.
Every year more than a thousand men, women, and children enjoy the
benefit of this retreat. One report gives the numbers at six hundred
and thirty-nine men, three hundred and sixty-nine women, seventy
boys, and forty girls. The large excess of men and boys over women and
girls has revealed the fact that working men are much more liable than
are women, not only to accidents, but to disease. This holds good
among the children, as more sickness rages among the boys than among
the girls. In this great undertaking Mrs. Gladstone has been ably
assisted by many friends, among whom may be specially mentioned her
niece, Lady Frederick Cavendish, whose terribly imposed sorrow has
always found relief in works of love and charity. It is impossible,
too, to say good-by to the Free Convalescent Home at Woodsford without
mentioning Miss Simmons, the superintendent for many years--an ideal
mother for such a home. To see her play games with the patients is
something one remembers, for the humor with which it is done and the
mirth it creates. Mrs. Gladstone herself delights the patients on her
visits by playing dance music to them. Her country dances and Sir
Roger de Coverely are special favorites.
[Illustration: THE INMATES OF WOODSFORD HALL IN THE FOREST.]
Another prominent feature of her charities is the orphanage at
Hawarden, which arose out of the American war of 1862, and the
subsequent cotton famine in Lancashire.
Mrs. Gladstone's brother, Sir Stephen Glynne, was alive, and Mr. and
Mrs. Gladstone lived at Hawarden Castle with him. When the distress
was most severe, Mr. Gladstone collected a number of men who were idle
in Lancashire, and found them employment in cutting foot-paths
through the park and woods of Hawarden--as he could not give them work
which would displace any of the permanent laborers on the estates. At
the same time Mrs. Gladstone sent for some of their young daughters,
and her brother, Sir Stephen, gave her the use of a nice old house
which stood in the courtyard, formerly the dower house belonging to
the Ravenscrofts, who in time past had owned Hawarden Castle, then
called "Broad Lane Hall." (The heiress of the Ravenscrofts had married
Mrs. Gladstone's great-grandfather, Sir John Glynne.) This dower house
Mrs. Gladstone converted into a training home for the girls, under the
charge of a very charming nurse of her own children, who had lately
married. The experiment proved a great success. The girls had all
worked in the mills, but they learned quickly something of domestic
work. Then Mrs. Gladstone found them places amongst her own friends in
the neighborhood, whereupon she was able to send for more girls to be
similarly assisted. Some of them were lovely young women, and most of
them married extremely well while in service.
[Illustration: THE ANNUAL LUNCH PARTY OF THE NOTTING HILL SCHOOL GIRLS.]
In the autumn of 1867 Mrs. Gladstone brought down about a dozen of her
orphans from Clapton and lodged them in another small house, which her
brother had lent to her. These she put under the care of a widow with
a little boy of her own. There they dwelt happily, going every day up
to the village to attend the infant school. When the Lancashire
distress was quite over, and all need of the old dower house at an end
for the mill girls, Mrs. Gladstone transferred her Clapton orphans
there, and added to their number other children whose fathers and
mothers had died in the London Hospital. When the orphanage was
properly established in the larger house, it accommodated comfortably
about thirty children. Experience taught Mrs. Gladstone that poor
parents found it more difficult to provide for and manage their boys
than their girls. So the Hawarden orphanage has come to be filled by
boys. They attend the parish schools till they are old enough to be
apprenticed to trades. There is now a whole army of well-doing young
men who have been brought up in the Hawarden Castle orphanage. It is
still in full tide of the work it has carried on for over twenty-five
years.
About 1880 a home for training young women for service was opened at
Notting Hill, London, under the management of a committee of ladies.
The object of the home was to take girls under its protection who had
bad homes, and were therefore likely to be totally neglected and to
drift into a life of uselessness and vice. Mrs. Gladstone was asked to
become the president, and consented. It is organized on a small scale,
a fact much in favor of its purpose. Not more than fifteen girls are
there at one time, and a few lady boarders are taken in, as this works
well for training the girls in the various branches of domestic
service. The proud characteristic of the school is its determination
never to despair of any pupil, however discouraging she may be in her
first trial of service. The reward seems great when a girl, who has
failed in several places, at last finds a mistress who understands her
and draws out the best in her, when she receives praise as a good
servant instead of the fault-finding hitherto her portion. There are
now numbers of respectable, well-doing servants who have been trained
here, and the institution has proved a boon to employers as well as
the employed.
A CROWN OF HONOR.
[Illustration: MRS. GLADSTONE TO-DAY.]
Mrs. Gladstone gives the girls who are in service an annual treat
every summer down at the Convalescent Home at Woodsford. About a year
ago a party of them enjoyed luncheon and tea on the lawn there, under
the shadow of a rare kind of sycamore which their hostess had brought
in a flower-pot, as a little seedling, from an old tree which spreads
its ample branches close to her orphanage at Hawarden. Mrs. Gladstone
told the girls that, when she planted it, she never thought to live so
long as to see it large enough to shelter a party of forty in the
shadow of its foliage. Such works of beneficence as have just been
sketched are only a few of those forming a crown of honor and glory
for the head of the great Premier's wife. She was in that early band
who began penitentiary work at Clewer before it took shape under Mrs.
Monsel's management. That must have been soon after her marriage. To
that early time, too, belong the beginnings of the House of Charity
for distressed persons in London, which is carried on at Soho, and
rejoices in its forty-sixth annual report. This is to help persons a
little higher than the working-class, who have fallen into temporary
distress from sickness or other vicissitudes.
As for the deeds of private kindness, it can truly be said that Mrs.
Gladstone has sown them on all sides, and it is characteristic of that
noble woman's nature that she is loyal to the last to those who need
her help, even if it be for a lifetime.
A BOYS' REPUBLIC.
THE STORY OF CAMP CHOCORUA.
BY ALFRED BALCH.
There is an island in Big Asquam Lake, New Hampshire, lying almost
under the shadow of Mount Chocorua, and on it there are many
buildings, rough but weather-tight; paths which have been carefully
built to grade; a boat-yard, with ways leading to the water; a long
wharf projecting out toward a swimming raft which is floating
where there is depth for diving; a sea wall of heavy stone, against
which the ice is powerless. Down by the water's edge, and squatting
on a wooden stage within easy reach, a group of boys are washing
dishes. From time to time one of them, who while working as hard as
any, keeps his eye on the others, gives a short order which is
instantly obeyed. Other boys are sitting on the porch, polishing
lantern and lamps, while yet others are sweeping up the litter which
disfigures the open space. There are buildings to the right and
left, there are canvas canoes and boats floating near the wharf, and a
great flat boat--somewhat rudely made--is moored in front of the sea
wall. With each group of boys is a young man, busily employed in
the same work, but it is noticeable that he gives no orders.
From the island itself the view is exquisitely beautiful. To the north
the White Mountains rest like a mighty barrier, walling in the valley
at their feet. The lake itself lies smiling under the sunlight of the
perfect day, or darkening under the shadow of the drifting cloud. The
breeze is barely enough to fill the sails of the white canoe outside
there, while the scarlet cap of the boy sailing it makes a patch of
color. There are other islands with long vistas of water between them,
relieving the vivid green of the trees which cover them with foliage,
and coming toward the wharf is a boat filled with girls; in the
stillness their gay laughter sounds pleasantly. Everywhere is the
beauty of the mountains and the lake, and the voices of the boys at
work fill the very air with life.
Big Asquam Lake was more picturesque during the summers from 1881 to
1889, because Camp Chocorua was there, than it has been since. The
camp was founded by Mr. Ernest Berkeley Balch as a summer camp for
boys, in which they could have plenty of outdoor sport, a reasonable
amount of work, and abundant opportunity to enjoy themselves in their
own way. Starting with five boys and a small frame shanty in 1881, it
grew into one of the oddest institutions that may be imagined. It was
different in many ways from anything else of the kind, and its great
success was due to the fact that it was modelled on real life as men
see it. The motive underlying all of its pleasant features and most
quaint customs was twofold: first, responsibility, personally and for
others; and, second, work--not only the work which each one must do
for himself, but also that extra work which brings with it a tangible
reward. The boys were encouraged in everything that would tend to
develop them physically, to make them strong and healthy, but they
also found themselves members of a little world that had a high
standard of honor, a world in which the laws governing the conflicting
interests of men were recognized and obeyed. How this was done, how
Camp Chocorua was governed and run, and why the boys who were there
still look on it so affectionately is not an uninteresting story.
"The Camp," as it is always called by those who were there, took in
all of the space on the island. In 1889, the last year, the buildings
included the office; the big dormitory--in the upper story of which
was the library, with a large room below, having at one end the great
fireplace, where the camp-fire blazed and burned; the dining-house--an
open shed; the cook-house, with the ice-house at its back; the
store-house and faculty quarters--the upper story of this was the
hospital; and the carpenter's shop, down by the boat-yard. There were
many paths built carefully to grade, and one of these led to the grove
of silver birches, in the midst of which was the chapel. I think this
was one of the prettiest places I ever saw. The walls were the living
trees, the seats were rustic benches, and the reading-desk was a rock,
oddly fashioned, of the stone of the Granite State, into the form of a
lectern. Every Sunday afternoon when it was fair weather the service
was held here.
It is not, however, in the buildings, on the island, nor in the trees
that one can find the interest of Camp Chocorua. It was in the life
led by the boys, in their customs and laws, in their courts and
contracts, that this resides.
[Illustration: THE CHAPEL.]
One of the fundamental rules of the place was that every boy or man
there should do his own work and his share of the common work of the
camp. Many of the boys who came had never in their lives done anything
for themselves, and the first thing demanded of them, that they should
make up their own beds and take care of their own clothes, came very
hard. The boy was careless, he lost his waterproof, he could not put
on his shoes, or could not remember to put away his clothes. There was
no punishment for his fault; he was simply ranked as an "Incapable."
An Incapable was a boy who did no work of any kind, who belonged to no
crew, who had no part in the busy life of the camp except that of a
spectator. More than this, an Incapable was forbidden to refuse
assistance from any member of a crew, and as it speedily became the
fashion to help an Incapable, he had no lack of such assistance. Any
one who can remember the scorn a boy feels for another who, he thinks,
is less manly than himself will understand the sort of blistering sore
applied to an Incapable. It was not without a pathetic side, the way
in which these little chaps would work to learn how to dress
themselves and lace their own shoes, and the anxiety they showed to
keep their clothes and bed in order; and as an Incapable had the right
to an examination, by a member of the faculty, at any time, as to his
capability, few there were who were not assigned to a crew within two
weeks.
The supreme power in Camp Chocorua resided in the founder, although he
could not, except in extreme cases, traverse one of the customs of the
camp, for these were, in fact, unwritten laws. Associated with him
were the members of the faculty, generally four in number, and it was
their duty to oversee and watch the boys. One of the faculty was
always with a crew, and he had the right to give general orders and to
inspect the work done, as a whole. He had no power, however, over the
individual members of that crew, for this resided wholly in the
stroke, or, in his absence, in the sub-stroke. To compare one thing
with another, the member of the faculty was the general commanding the
brigade, and the stroke was the colonel in command of a regiment. The
general could give his orders and comment on how they were carried
out, but it was the colonel who decided on details. The member of the
faculty with a crew worked as they worked, taking such part of the
labor as he saw fit, or doing that which the stroke asked him to. The
boys in the camp were divided into four crews, and at the beginning of
the camp year the strokes were appointed by the faculty. As soon as a
stroke was named, he had the power of appointing his sub-stroke, or
second in command of the crew, on the principle that as he was
responsible for all the sub-stroke did, it was but fair he should have
his choice.
The crews did all the routine work of the camp, three being on duty
every day and one off. These three were the kitchen crew, which
supplied the cook's boy to prepare vegetables and run errands, and
which cleaned all the pots, pans, and kitchen utensils; the police
crew, which cleaned the lamps, swept the rooms, and removed all litter
from the grounds; and the dish crew, which washed all the larger
dishes used on the table, as well as the plate, cup, knife, fork, and
spoon of any guest for the first three days of his stay on the island.
After that the guest did his own work. The dish crew supplied the
inspector of dishes--generally the sub-stroke--and visitors, I
remember, got useful lessons on what constituted cleanliness as they
stood meekly before him. It was safe to say that any article passing
inspection was in a condition to be used again. Each crew in turn
became kitchen, police, and dish, during three days, and on the
fourth, the off crew. This was expected to do any work outside of the
regular duties of the day, such as manning a boat for visitors,
handling express matter or supplies, or, in short, anything not done
by the others. The milk boat was manned by the kitchen crew, and the
mail boat by the police. Practically speaking, each crew worked about
five hours a day.
It was a cardinal principle in Camp Chocorua that the boys should
govern the boys. The strokes were to all intents and purposes supreme
over their crews, and under no circumstances did a member of the
faculty give an order to a member of a crew. The order was given to
the stroke or sub-stroke in command, and he carried it out as he saw
fit. The stroke was expected not only to rule his crew and see they
did the work, he must also set them an example by doing as much or
more than any one of them. In point of fact, the stroke and sub-stroke
were generally the two most efficient boys in a crew. But in such a
system as this, that a member of a crew might be disobedient, or a
stroke might be tyrannical, was not lost sight of. The stroke had no
power to punish, but he could, were his orders disobeyed, direct a boy
to report to the faculty. On the other hand, although the presence of
a member of the faculty prevented any open bullying, it was within the
power of a stroke to "work" a boy, and that boy had an appeal to the
faculty. As in Camp Chocorua in proportion to the power was the
responsibility, the appeal was a much more serious thing than the
report. When the latter was made by order of a stroke, the boy might
be reprimanded, given a good talking, or be shifted into another crew.
In extreme cases he might be declared an Incapable--than which nothing
was more detested. If it were found that a boy could not get along
with any stroke he might be sent home, because this meant he refused
to submit to the discipline of the camp.
The position of stroke was the most sought for in Camp Chocorua. It
was understood the stroke had to get the work done perfectly, rule his
crew justly and without friction, and personally be a model of a camp
boy. If he failed in either of these, the inference was obvious--he
was unfit for the position; the faculty had made a mistake in putting
him into it. If a complaint of tyranny was proved, there was but one
thing to do--the stroke was reduced in rank. He lost all the
privileges of his position, and in the eyes of all, men and boys
alike, he was disgraced; he was officially declared to be unfit to
govern others. It is difficult to find among the possible experiences
of men anything equal in severity, and the boys in the camp dreaded
such punishment as they dreaded nothing else. It was bad enough when a
sub-stroke was reduced, but to a stroke it was terrible. The system,
however, was in itself almost enough to prevent this punishment. A
stroke was expected to keep his crew happy and contented, and there
were keen eyes watching him all the while, and kindly men ready to
give a hint.
Under its curious double government by faculty and boys, Camp Chocorua
prospered and grew. The personal and routine work was done, the boys
played baseball or tennis, they swam and dived, and went sailing,
rowing and paddling. No ambition was greater in the mind of a camp boy
than that of owning a canoe, and as many of them were not rich enough
to buy, the boat-yard was established in the cove. Here was the
carpenter shop, with a full set of tools and a bench, and outside its
open door were the ways on which the canoes were built. At one time
the yard was full of the pretty little boats in all stages, from the
keel with its newly joined ribs to the completed canoe on whose canvas
cover the paint was slowly drying. Exceedingly good canoe builders
some of the boys turned out to be, and their models were not only fast
but safe. Here, too, was the floor on which they cut their sails, or
sat and talked as they stitched in the leach lines or fastened the
reef points in place. Many of the canoes were the work of their
owners' hands in every part--hull, paddle, sails, and rigging. When
the fleet came in, paddling in open order, I never saw anything
prettier in my life than the white hulls gliding so easily over the
placid water, the boys singing and keeping stroke, while beyond lay
the green islands, casting the long shadows from their trees under the
setting sun. It was in this yard that the great flatboat was built in
which the whole camp moved about the lake, ten oars on a side, and
every boy tugging for all he knew. An unwieldy craft, in which one
earned his passage. It was in this yard, too, that the best canoe
designers earned much money from their less skilful comrades.
The financial system of Camp Chocorua was as odd, when one thinks
of it as applied to boys from eight to fourteen years, as were
many other things about the place. Each boy had an allowance of
twenty-five cents a week paid by the camp, and no boy, no matter what
the wealth of his parents, was allowed to bring money given him to
the camp. His outfit might include fishing-tackle, but a canoe was
barred. If, as was generally the case, he wanted more money than his
allowance, he could get it by working during his own time. While
the boys did the routine work of the camp as a part of their duty,
they had nothing to do with permanent improvements, yet there were
many of these made during the nine years. These were paid for by the
camp, and it was a cardinal principle that when work of this kind was
to be done, the boys should earn the money if they chose. Out of this
rose the system of contracts. The work to be done was announced
beforehand, and then sold to the lowest bidder, who was required
to sign a contract. This was printed in legal form, with the camp
as party of the first part, and the contractor as party of the
second, the price to be paid and the time being duly entered. The
book of contracts is one of the most curious things to study. One
of the pages reads "building one yard on the chapel path to grade,"
price five cents, and time one week. "Removing a stump in front of
the office and filling the hole," is another, price twenty-five cents.
Some of the contracts were taken by firms and others by companies.
"The Goodwill Contract Company" takes a contract to do the washing
of the camp, and the president's signature is affixed. If a contract
was performed, the price was credited to the contractor in the
bank. It might be that, owing to circumstances, the time was
extended, or the contract might be forfeited for non-performance.
In the latter case it was sold again to the lowest bidder, and the
difference--if any--between the original contract price and the sum
charged to finish the work was charged to the contractor. It was
very rarely that an old camp boy either underestimated the amount
of work necessary or the time required, and the forfeitures were for
the most part among the new boys. They learned quickly, however.
Under this contract system the paths were made, the wharf built, and,
in fact, the majority of the permanent improvements carried out.
The contracts were not always with the camp. The boys made them with
each other, as in the building of canoes, and as the boys had no
power to put up a forfeited contract at auction, the courts became
necessary. The camp, the men or the boys were all alike subordinate
to the courts; either could sue or be sued, and each was bound by
the result.
In the court of first instance one of the faculty presided as judge,
and there might or might not be a jury. The parties to the cause could
argue their own cases, or they could appear by counsel chosen from the
boys or the faculty. In case plaintiff or defendant chose, he could
appeal from the decision, providing he deposited a check for the full
amount of damages and costs. The Appellate Court consisted of a
majority of the members of the faculty--not less than three--and in
this there was no jury. It must be acknowledged that in appeal cases
the judges took cognizance of the facts as well as the law. But the
law of the camp was so well known to every boy there, and it was so
simple, that no boy could fail to see the justice of the decision. It
must be remembered when these courts are considered that to the boys
they were very real. It cost five cents to bring a suit, and fifteen
for an appeal, and the sums sued for were lost or won in reality. The
costs went to the officers of the court, excluding the judges, who
served for honor. If counsel were employed they had to be paid, unless
they volunteered, and it came to be naturally understood that a
plaintiff or defendant in the wrong could not get volunteer counsel.
The verdict--when there was a jury--was that of the boys themselves;
they condemned or approved of what other boys had done. As the boys
were trusted to rule each other, so they were the guardians of each
other's rights, while the power of appeal made it impossible that any
wave of temporary unpopularity should bring injustice to any boy. Camp
Chocorua was builded on this idea of the boys managing themselves, but
there was ever present the superior authority to prevent wrong being
done, and the very existence of this authority made it rarely called
on.
[Illustration: THE CAMP ON MARCH.]
The keenness in business of these boys is well illustrated by the
story of the Soda-Water Trust. Whenever the boys went to the store in
Holderness they generally bought soda-water. This went on until some
one suggested the apparatus could be bought and the soda-water made in
the camp. Two firms--one of three boys and the other of two--each firm
having a bank account large enough to purchase the apparatus and
supplies, were formed at once. But the privileges or monopolies in the
camp were always sold for the benefit of the Charity Fund, and it was
promptly announced the soda-water franchise would be put up at
auction. The two firms were rich, but they were not willing to enter a
contest of this kind. The members got together and talked matters over
at length, finally resolving to form a trust. When the time came the
trust bid one cent for the franchise, and there being no other bid it
was sold at this price. When their apparatus came the trust did a
rushing business.
[Illustration: A HALT FOR SUPPER.]
[Illustration: THE BARGE.]
In the Camp Chocorua bank, each man and boy had an account. Payments
of all kinds were made by check. The allowance was added to the
account each week, and as the boys made money the credits grew larger.
At the end of the camp season the depositor could either draw out his
balance or have it carried over to the next summer. During the winter
he was allowed to earn money by work, provided he received no more for
it than would have been paid to anyone else, and this money could be
added to the bank account. One boy brought nine dollars and
seventy-five cents as the result of shovelling snow, but the canoe his
father gave him could only be kept when he showed himself able to pay
for it. This he could only do by borrowing from the bank the necessary
balance; but his credit was good, and the summer was not half over
before he had paid back the loan. I have often laughed when I have
thought of the feeling with which that father must have looked on his
son's check, and realized what it meant. If the boys in Camp Chocorua
learned anything, they learned not to be ashamed of labor in any form.
The dignity of work was silently taught them, even as they were taught
to expect the tangible rewards.
It was towards the middle of the second term of the camp that the
sports took place. For days before, the boys were at work cleaning the
camp up, and the cooks--two of the boys--were busy getting the lunch
ready. To the sports all the friends and relations of the boys were
invited, and there were usually many grown people present. There was a
game at baseball, some sets at tennis; there were sailing, rowing, and
paddling matches, swimming and diving contests, foot races, and the
like. The prizes were simple enough, bits of ribbons with the name of
the camp, the contest, and the date painted on, yet they were valued
very highly. Splendid work the boys did in these sports, and
conclusive was the evidence of their thorough training during the
summer. Those who attended the sports once were always glad to come
again, for long as the days were, they were filled with fun and
frolic. In the evening the boys and their visitors gathered around the
great fireplace in the dormitory building, and there, in the light of
the camp fire, joined in the camp songs. The last song of all was "The
Battle Hymn of the Republic," the verses being sung as a solo, and the
chorus by everyone present; and it was with the grand old melody still
ringing in their ears that the guests took the boats which carried
them home.
There was one prize awarded at the sports which might come to any
boy. This was the "C. C." pin in silver. Those who won it were the
boys who had in their own way shown themselves to have got the
greatest good out of the camp, and who had done the most good to
others. The pins were not common; two or three, perhaps, were given
in a summer, and sometimes none at all. It is most difficult to define
the conditions under which the pin was given; it came as the result
of a unanimous feeling in the faculty that it had been won, rather
than as the result of rules obeyed. A conscious effort to win it was
enough to prevent success. The boy had to show the manliness,
justice, truth, conscientiousness in him, not for reward, but
because he had them in him; and then the reward, or rather the
recognition, came. Intrinsically these little pins are worth
nothing; but those who have them value them as they value few
things, and they are right.
The cruise which marked the end of the summer's camp life was one of
the most picturesque things imaginable. An ox-cart with four oxen
carried the blankets, dishes, and stores; Porgus, the great,
slobbering bloodhound, was fastened to the rear axle, the Infant--the
youngest boy in camp--mounted the donkey, and with faculty and boys on
foot, the camp set out. The routes taken during the nine cruises
included all the best known roads in the White Mountains. Generally,
those boys who wished to made up a separate party, and climbed some
one of the great peaks, while the rest confined themselves to lower
levels. At night they all slept in some barn. The routine work of the
cooks and crews went on as usual, and the whole thing was pick-nicking
on a grand scale. Sometimes the ox-cart would stall, or the oxen be
unable to haul it up a hill, and then the rope was fastened on, and
the whole camp toiled on and pulled. It was an experience to pass them
at this time, to listen to the orders of the strokes, to hear the
chaff flying back and forward, and to watch the crowd, all clad in
gray knickerbockers and jackets, gray stockings and flannel shirts,
and wearing the scarlet knit Scotch caps which completed the camp
uniform.
There is a story about Porgus, the big bloodhound, which is worth
telling. When they first got him everyone supposed he was exceedingly
fierce, and, lest he should bite, he was tied up on another island,
and his food taken to him twice a day. Suddenly, one day, Porgus was
seen swimming towards Chocorua, and, the alarm being given, everyone
except the man who knew him took refuge in the house. The dog was
taken back and tied up, but as he could gain nothing by howling he
broke away once more. The fact of the matter was, that Porgus was
lonely, and that so far from being fierce, he was one of the most
good-natured beasts in the world. This having been found out, he was
added to the list of camp pets. These at various times included a
flying squirrel that had a habit of jumping on your shoulder as you
passed his tree; a black sheep called Billy, who learned to butt
anyone in the neighborhood; the donkey, and the kyuse--the latter a
mustang pony. All of these in their time were important members of the
camp. Old Captain Cairns, too, a man who lived alone in a most curious
house on one of the islands, was one of the greatest friends of the
boys, and always came to the sports. The captain was a curiosity in
his way, and he never got tired of telling yarns about the places he
had been to or the people he had seen.
[Illustration: CAPTAIN CAIRN'S HOUSE.]
The story of Camp Chocorua, of the healthy, open-air life, of the high
standards so rigidly lived up to, of the fun they had, of the work
they did, and of the lessons in manliness they so unconsciously
learned, is really written in the memories of the boys who, during
those nine summers, spent their time on that little island. This
article is but a brief account of the methods through which so much
was done. The place now belongs to the founder, and a custodian is
kept there to look after it. The buildings are open to the old camp
boys, and many of them spend their vacation time there. For the most
part, they are men in the world now, but none the less do they look
back at the camp with pleasant memories, feeling and realizing, as
they never did then, all that the camp life meant to them. Everything
is ready for them; they have but to hang up the great Chinese gong on
which the hours were struck, and the camp is open. They can sail, row,
and swim, and at night, sitting before the "camp fire," they can bring
back the days when they were boys; they can tell their stories of the
contracts and the trials, the sports and the cruises; they can laugh
over half-forgotten jokes, or speak in lower tones of the boys who are
now dead. For although Camp Chocorua has ceased to be, Camp Chocorua
lives in the memories of the camp boys.
THE HAPPY LIFE.
BY SIR HENRY WOTTON.
(1568-1639.)
How happy is he, born and taught,
That serveth not another's will,
Whose armor is his honest thought,
And simple truth his utmost skill.
Whose passions not his masters are;
Whose soul is still prepared for death,
Untied unto the worldly care
Of public fame or private breath!
Who envies none that chance doth raise,
Or vice; who never understood
How deepest wounds are given by praise,
Nor rules of state, but rules of good.
Who hath his life from humors freed,
Whose conscience is his strong retreat;
Whose state can neither flatterers feed,
Nor ruin make accusers great.
Who God doth late and early pray
More of his grace than gifts to lend,
And entertains the harmless day
With a well-chosen book or friend.
This man is freed from servile bands
Of hope to rise, or fear to fall--
Lord of himself, though not of lands;
And having nothing yet hath all.
EDWIN BOOTH.
ON AND OFF THE STAGE.
Personal Recollections.
BY ADAM BADEAU.
The Friday before Booth was taken ill, I spent two or three hours with
him in his rooms at the Players' Club, and while there it occurred to
me that a picture, not of the actor merely, but of the man whom I had
known for more than thirty years, in the glow of youth and the prime
of manhood, down to the weary invalid, stricken before his time, in
the characters that were not assumed--of husband, father, brother,
son, and friend--would have an interest far beyond any critical
analysis of his performances or historical account of his engagements.
He did not object to my painting him as I had known him in the most
intimate relations of his life--an actor is always used to being
described and criticised--and he gave me incidents and information,
all that I sought. Thus in what I have to say there will be nothing
second-hand, nothing that he has not himself told me at one time or
another, or that I have not observed in the friendship of a lifetime.
I first met him when he was twenty-three, and I only twenty-five years
old, and from that time till his marriage and my own entrance into the
army we were as intimate as it is possible for two young men to be. I
have the right, therefore, to tell what I shall unfold, for he gave it
to me, and I have a further right in the certainty that nothing I can
tell will depreciate his fame. If I portray all that I know, no one
who reads will fail to think more highly and tenderly of the nature
that was cloaked under Richard and Iago, suggested perhaps by points
in Othello and Lear, but only really indicated in Hamlet, the
melancholy, moody, dreamy, filial, tender Dane.
He was born in 1833, in the night of the historical meteoric
display--the "star-shower," he always called it. His father was a
famous actor in the parts which the son so often played. I never saw
the elder, but others assured me he possessed a tragic genius perhaps
at times even more tremendous than that of the Booth I knew. He was an
Englishman, and the rival of Edmund Kean. The family tradition is that
he was driven from London by a cabal of Kean's admirers, and came to
America in 1821, almost immediately after his marriage.
Junius Brutus Booth must have been an extraordinary person off the
stage; erratic almost to insanity, gloomy, given to fits of
passion, but full of warm affections; a man with a temper almost
uncontrollable, yet more often morose than violent, who refused to
play, even when announced, unless he was in the vein, and walked
the streets for hours after acting, and sometimes before. His wife
for years accompanied him to the theatre, acting as dresser, and
Edwin was taken with them. He thus received his first impressions of
the stage when he was three or four years old. The wife remained in
the dressing-room during the play, and when the child grew sleepy
he was put to bed in a chest of drawers that held his father's
wardrobe. If he wakened he had the theatrical wigs and paint-pots
for his toys. A few years later he took his mother's place and
dressed his father for the stage.
[Illustration: _From photo by F. Gutekunst._
_Copyright by F. Gutekunst, Philadelphia._]
There were several children, and three of the sons became actors. I
asked him whether he was the favorite, but he said no: his father
always preferred John Wilkes. Yet Edwin had the greatest influence
with the tragedian when the gloomy fits came on, and followed him
many a night through the streets to see that he got no harm. He
could prevail on him to act when no other could, and often told me
of his attempts to direct their wanderings so that they might reach
the stage-door in time. He himself was melancholy and moody, and
lived very much in the imagination. It must have been a strange
spectacle--this erratic genius and his anxious child, both slightly
formed, with the same wonderful piercing eyes, stumbling about the
streets at dark, the boy trying to persuade the father, sometimes
succeeding, sometimes failing altogether.
The story of Edwin's first appearance on any stage has often been
told. It was as Tressel to his father's Richard III. He was not yet
sixteen and received no encouragement nor sign of approval from his
strangely constituted parent, but a little later the two were walking
in Broadway, when they met a Mr. Conway, an English actor well known
to play-goers of the last generation. Booth stopped to talk, and
Conway, who was pompous in speech, inquired rather elaborately:
"Upon which of your sons do you intend to confer your mantle?"
The great player did not reply in words, but laid his hand on Edwin's
head with a sort of solemnity, perhaps suggested by Conway's tone. The
lad attached little significance to the action at the moment, but
afterward felt certain that his father meant all that the gesture
implied. I asked him how old he was when this occurred. "Only a
stripling," he said, "about as high as the top of that candle," and he
pointed to the mantelpiece.
"Why," I exclaimed, "you are not as high as that now."
"Ah! but I wore a hat," he replied; "and my father had to reach up to
put his hand on me. I was taller than he."
He first played Richard III. at the old Chatham Street Theatre in New
York, as a substitute for his father, who either could not be found or
refused to act. When the manager learned this fact he said to Edwin:
"Then you must play Richard." The lad, just seventeen, was naturally
unwilling, but he knew the text from having heard his father so often
in the part, and their figures were not unlike. The assistants dressed
him in his father's clothes, and he made up his face as like as
possible to the great actor in Richard III. The audience was surprised
when he appeared, but allowed him to go on, and he must have played
with a certain degree of power, for he was called out at the end of
the first act, and went through the entire exacting tragedy. When the
play was over he hastened home and found his father, who offered
neither comment nor inquiry. In this way the strange pair went on,
leading a life as curious as any of the mimic ones they portrayed on
the stage; for Edwin now played at times, even in prominent parts, but
made no especial mark, being dwarfed, of course, by his father's
superlative ability.
In 1852 they went to California, but the wayward elder remained only a
few months, then suddenly returned to the Atlantic States, leaving
Edwin behind with his brother Junius, also an actor of some
prominence. The brothers played together occasionally, but the times
were rough and their success was small. Edwin was soon reduced to the
hard straits of a strolling player's life: borrowing a few dollars now
and then, walking hungry through mountain snows, living sometimes in a
ranch, sometimes on the pittance of a stock-actor's salary, but
sometimes making a hit, drawing crowded houses and filling his purse
for a while.
In November, 1852, he got word of the death of his father, a terrible
blow to him, whose relations with the great actor were so peculiar.
Throughout his life he retained the liveliest memories of his father's
character and presence. He liked to talk of him, and spent hours with
me describing the peculiarities that left so profound an impression on
him. But though he saw their strangeness, the reverent tone in which
he told of them was always marked.
Doubtless he inherited the dramatic genius and some of the temperament
of his parent. He was not so wildly passionate on the stage, and his
temper was never so uncontrollable, but his brooding melancholy, the
sensitiveness of his nature, the depth of his affections, the quaint
humor so strange in a tragic actor, his vivid imagination--many,
indeed, of his especial gifts and faults--were unquestionably
transmitted with his blood by him who was at once the author of his
physical being and the begetter of his genius. The likeness extended
to feature and gesture. I have a picture of the father given me by the
son, which might easily be taken for one of Edwin in Richard III.; and
older play-goers always declared that in the great tragic scenes the
son recalled, in tone and look and power, the peculiar magnetic
quality that made the elder so remarkable. I have thought sometimes
that the awful bursts of passion of his younger days were more
effective even than the elaborate manner of his later art. He told me
more than once that his life-long friend and comrade, Joseph
Jefferson, often warned him against refining away his power, and
thought the classic finish hardly compensated for the natural
intensity which it replaced.
His feeling for his father certainly added to the power of his
performance of Hamlet. His greatest scenes in this tragedy were those
with the ghost, and when Booth addressed the shade, and exclaimed:
"I'll call thee Hamlet,
King, _Father_, royal Dane,"
there was a pathos in the word "father" which those who ever heard him
utter it must recall. He dropped on one knee as he spoke it, and bowed
his head, not in terror, but in awe and love, and tender memory of the
past; he had a feeling that he was actually in the presence of that
weird shade whom he had known on earth, and he was not afraid.
The fatherless son remained in California, playing with varied
success, sometimes as leading-man with Miss Heron, Laura Keene, or
Mrs. Forrest Sinclair, sometimes as a star, sometimes in the stock
company of those days, taking any part to which he was assigned. The
experience was doubtless valuable to him, and he acknowledged that he
owed to it much of his ease on the stage, his familiarity with the
business, his self-possession under all circumstances, and his
readiness in emergencies.
During his stay on the Pacific Coast he once visited the Sandwich
Islands, and with an impromptu company gave a few performances. He had
great trouble in announcing his plays, for the boys who were employed
to post the bills ate up all the paste; but the houses were full, and
the audience included the king. The court, however, was in mourning,
and His Majesty could not be seen in front, so a chair was draped with
theatrical robes behind the scenes, and there the real king applauded
the mimic one in "Richard III." The throne was needed for the
coronation scene, and Kamehameha kindly abdicated for that occasion.
In 1851 young Booth, as he was now called, returned to the Eastern
States and played in Baltimore, Richmond, Boston--everywhere with
great success. He was at once recognized as the dramatic descendant of
his father, and the future head of the American stage.
In May, 1857, he entered upon his first engagement in New York, and on
one of the earlier nights I strolled into the theatre while he was
playing Richard III. I had seen his name in the bills, but he was
heralded as the "Hope of the Living Drama," and I had no great
expectations from such an announcement. But I was struck at once with
his dramatic fire, his grace, his expressive eye and mobile mouth, his
natural elocution, and the decided genius he displayed. I remember
even now, after the lapse of thirty-six years, the prodigious effect
in the fourth act, when Richard exclaims:
"What do they in the North
When they should serve their sovereign in the West?"
His whole face and form were ablaze with expression--literally
transfigured; and his voice embodied a majestic terrible rage that
electrified the listeners. Men rose in all parts of the house and
shouted with delight. I had seen Rachel and Forrest and Cushman and
Grisi then, and I have seen Bernhardt and Irving and Salvini and
Ristori since, but I never saw or heard on the stage anything more
tremendous than the picture he presented and the passion he portrayed
in his youth in Richard III.
I went the next night and the next, and found the fascination
increase. I saw him in Petruchio, Brutus, Hamlet, Richelieu, Lear,
Iago, Claude Melnotte, Sir Giles Overreach, Romeo, and Pescara. He was
uneven and fitful in everything, but in every part he played he did
something that no other actor could rival. His youth, too, had a
charm; the very crudeness of his acting gave a certain interest--it
left room for anticipation. I was very much attracted by the stage at
that time, so I called on young Booth and told him what I thought of
his acting. He had plenty of admirers, but my enthusiasm seemed to
touch him, and we struck up a friendship at once. At the end of a week
he consented to spend Sunday with me; and from that time dated a
peculiar intimacy. I had a good deal of leisure and could pass my days
as well as nights in his company, and I knew no greater pleasure than
he gave me, either on or off the stage. He was not then a finished
scholar, nor by any means the great artist that he afterward became,
and I was anxious that he should be both. I used to hunt up books and
pictures about the stage, the finest criticisms, the works that
illustrated his scenes, the biographies of great actors, and we
studied them together. We visited the Astor Library and the Society
Library to verify costumes, and every picture or picture-gallery in
New York, public or private, that was accessible. He discussed his
parts with me, and with the conceit of youth I often ventured to
differ with him on points in his art where he should have been an
authority. Often we quarrelled all day about an interpretation or a
rendering, and I went to the theatre at night to be convinced that he
was right and I was wrong. Sometimes he gave me a private box, and I
took notes of the performance, and of the criticisms or changes that
occurred to me. Next day we went over them together, and at night he
would play Richard or Iago according to my suggestions--perhaps as
much to gratify me as because he thought my judgment correct.
Oftener I went to his dressing-room. It was very fascinating to watch
the face of the character he was to play grow and vary beneath his
hand. The character itself seemed to grow at the same time. When we
entered at the stage door he was my friend--"Ned," I always called
him; but as the paint and the cotton eyebrows, the wig and the tights,
were put on, the stage personage appeared; and when Hamlet or Romeo
was ready his manner assumed all the grace and dignity of the Prince
or the Montagu. After he had played a scene or two the transformation
was complete, and lasted till the stage clothes were taken off.
How completely he personated the characters that he assumed I can
testify from comparison with what may be called his originals, the
actual Hotspurs and Hamlets, the soldiers and princes, of the real
world. One night in Louisiana before a battle I was with General T. W.
Sherman while he was giving orders to his officers and aides-de-camp.
It was nearly midnight, and there was to be an attack at dawn. First
came in one messenger, then another, next the leader of the advance,
last the captain of the reserves. The night was warm and the tent was
thrown open; a candle burned on a table within, while the general
paced up and down in the darkness outside. There was a hush and a
bustle combined, a subdued intensity and a dramatic haste, as the
commander gave his different orders and received his successive
subordinates, that brought to my mind at the moment the tent scene in
"Richard III." I thought, just then, "How like all this is to what I
have seen on the stage." Yet Booth had never witnessed actual war.
In the same way in Europe: I often thought of him when princes and
sovereigns were holding levees or processions, receiving homage or
conferring honors; no Guelph or Bourbon of them all went through his
part with greater dignity or grace than the young American who had
never been at court; and sometimes the magic of genius arrayed him in
a majesty which all the reality of their grandeur could not inspire.
There was one character, however, that he could not play--the lover.
He was the poorest of Romeos, and he knew it. He looked the part, of
course, in his youth; the women always wanted to see him play it, and
the actresses all wanted to be Juliet; but there was a lack of
tenderness in his eye, and of ardor in his tone; even the gestures
were tame. He was not anxious or persuasive enough; he was too
confident, or too indifferent. The only point in the play where he
rose to his usual level was in the fight with Tybalt; but then there
was killing to be done, and this was passion of a different sort--this
was tragedy. Then he became inspired, and looked for a moment like one
of the demi-gods in Homer's battles. But in the scenes with the friar
and with Juliet, even in the balcony scene, he was comparatively
spiritless. Whether he was not actually a good lover, or whether he
felt a certain delicacy about love-making in public, the fact remains
that he was always more effective in parts that represent harsh or
violent emotions than in tender ones with women.
So, too, though he had a keen sense of humor, and was full of jokes
and funny stories off the stage, and told them with a genuine comic
power, he could not act a comic part. I once saw him in "Little
Toddlekins," in white trousers and a high hat, and I never wanted to
see him in farce again. Even in high comedy he was not so interesting
as in tragedy. Benedick himself was not to his taste, and his nearest
approach to success in comedy was as Don Caesar de Bazan; but there the
fascination was in his superb appearance and irresistible grace quite
as much as in dramatic power. His Don Caesar, however, was a wonderful
picture, an embodied romance. He delighted in the caustic speeches of
Shylock or Hamlet, or the irony of Iago, but these can hardly be
called comedy. His Petruchio was a game of romps; but it was Donatello
romping with Miriam, or Bacchus with Ariadne.
Yet, I repeat, he was bubbling over with a grim sort of humor in real
life, like that which Shakespeare sprinkles over his tragedies. Behind
the scenes he would mock and gibe at himself, had odd remarks to make
about his face or his costume, and was alive with waggeries and
witticisms. I once pulled aside his robes in Richelieu as he sat
smoking between the acts, and he shrank back and screamed, "How dare
you, sir?" in a shrill tone, exactly like a woman. The next moment he
was the stately cardinal again.
I was very anxious that Booth should receive a social recognition.
Thirty years ago actors had not overleaped the barriers which had
existed for centuries, to anything like the extent we know at present,
and I wanted him to meet people of distinction, to hold the position
which Garrick once occupied in England; but he hardly shared my
ambition for him. If people wanted him they had to seek him, and even
then were not sure of getting him. Social attentions sometimes
gratified, but quite as often bored him. But his genius was so
positive and so attractive, that the most prominent people all over
the country courted his society. I had the pleasure of putting up his
name at the Century Club, where he was more than cordially welcomed.
The wits, the scholars, artists, authors, all were glad to know the
man who had given them so refined a pleasure. Bancroft, Bryant,
Curtis, and their families, Sumner, Mrs. Ward Howe, men and women of
the first social position, as well as cultivation, were his personal
friends, even at that early day. But he seemed indifferent to his
fame.
He had no trace of personal vanity. He said to me once he only cared
for his good looks as the tools of his trade. Hundreds of women flung
themselves at him in those days; they sent him notes in verse and
prose, flowers, presents of jewels, shawls, feathers, to wear on the
stage; they asked for appointments; they invited him to their houses,
they offered to go to his; but he cared nothing for any of them.
Sometimes they amused, but more often disgusted him. More than once he
saved some foolish child from what might have been disgrace, and sent
her home to her family. And he never injured a pure woman in his life.
Off the stage he had no care for his looks; even in his youth his
dress was more than plain; he was positively indifferent to his
appearance.
He always continued to have fits of sadness and silence; a feeling
that evil was hanging over him, that he could not come to good. These
moods would pass, but would return. Still, when he inclined to talk he
was profoundly interesting. He had a wonderful fund of stories, and
recollected the most minute and the most salient circumstances,
showing the actor's power of observation. He studied character
incessantly; not deliberately, but because he could not help seeing
peculiar traits of character or peculiar circumstances. He acted all
his stories, comic or tragic, without meaning to do it, and often just
as well off as on the stage. I used to get him to make the faces he
did on the stage, to look like Richelieu in the "curse of Rome," or
Richard in "What do they in the North?" But it was only when he was in
a very good humor that he would do this. Once or twice he painted his
face to assume his father's appearance.
But he hated to act off the stage, and even at rehearsal seldom raised
his voice above the conversational tone, or struck an attitude. I
often went to rehearsal with him and wondered at the calmness of his
tones when he struck down Iago, or smothered Desdemona. One morning in
Buffalo I missed him when we started, and followed him to the theatre;
I entered at the stage door and went to the wings, looking for him. It
was a minute or two before I recognized him, with a high hat and a
cane, reciting passages from "Macbeth." But that night he was more
tremendous than ever. His first entrance in the play he made by
leaping from the rocks, as he exclaimed, "So foul and fair a day I
have not seen"; and it was the very Highland thane that came upon the
scene--full of his future dignity and oppressed by the feeling of Fate
that fills this tragedy as it does the plays of Euripides. That
feeling, indeed, almost illustrates the depression that settled over
his nature at intervals, and seemed a premonition of some awful
future. It was appalling to witness, and must have been still more
appalling to endure. Doubtless he inherited it from his father. It was
like a veil that shrouded him from other mortals, and he walked behind
it, apart. He strove to describe his emotions at such times to me, for
he wanted me to know all he felt; but the effort was like those sad
ones of his later days, when he attempted to utter words and gave only
inarticulate sounds. I cannot portray him unless I make this sadness
apparent; it was so strange and weird.
And yet this introspective, distant man, so old when he was young,
so cold though gifted with every personal charm--was a warmly
affectionate son, devoted to his mother, and generous to his family;
he lived with his mother and sister for years, and provided for them
after his marriage; he lent money not only to his brothers, but to
hosts of friends, actors and others, for his profession brought him
in large sums, and he gave away much in charity, especially to
actors. His friendships, though steadfast, were not usually ardent
or demonstrative. He who was gifted with such wonderful power to
express the emotions of others was often unable or unwilling to give
utterance to his own. When he was called out after the play, the
man who had just enthralled an audience as Richard or Othello, or
hurled the imprecations of Richelieu or Lear, stood modest and
shrinking, only able to stammer a few words of thanks in his own
person, on the very boards where he was most at home.
He was not a good hater; when he was injured he felt it keenly, and I
am not sure that he ever forgave a wrong, but the memory of it was
not always keen, and I doubt if he ever revenged himself--he relented
when it came to inflicting pain. In his business relations he more
than once fell into foul hands, and he had himself little business
faculty; but he was slow in making reprisals, even if opportunity
offered. For he had a noble, gentle nature; I never knew him do a mean
or vulgar thing. He was no backbiter; he refrained, even with me, from
hostile criticism of other actors. I sometimes drew out opinions that
were not favorable, but he never offered them, and always seemed to
utter them unwillingly, as if he would not refuse to tell me what he
thought, and yet was loath to speak severely of a brother artist.
No one ever charged him with desertion of a friend or backwardness in
time of need; and I have known of sacrifices that he made for others,
greater than most men are capable of. He submitted to much from some
members of his family, because he deemed it his duty, or from
affectionate pity, and endured even cruel wrongs rather than resent
them publicly. He was most averse to bringing his private affairs
before the world, and disliked to extend the publicity of the stage to
his every-day life. His friendships in his youth were almost confined
to members of his own profession. Joseph Jefferson, and John Sleeper
Clarke, who married his sister, were always very close to him, and in
later years, Barrett. In time, however, he had many associates among
artists and cultivated men, who naturally sought his company, and some
of these he regarded as personal friends.[1]
[1] His three executors, Messrs. Benedict, Bispham, and McGonigle,
were, I suppose, as intimate with him as any one in later years;
he certainly showed them the most absolute confidence in his
will, and for years had consulted them on the management of his
affairs. Mr. McGonigle married the sister of his first wife.
I once visited with him the place where he was born. It was a
farmhouse twenty-five or thirty miles from Baltimore. We drove out in
a one-horse vehicle, and he was Phaeton. The house was partly
furnished but unoccupied, and an old negro in an outbuilding gave us
the keys. His father's library remained, and a part of his stage
wardrobe, and we spent hours ransacking them both, studying old
play-bills, even English ones of his father, examining rare copies of
Shakespeare, and trying on trappings of Shylock or Lear. I made him
put on a wig and act the parts for a single auditor. He was very
complaisant that day, or night rather, for we sat up till late into
the morning, and then made beds out of Caesar's mantle and Macbeth's
robes. He picked out three volumes of Shakespeare which he had used in
playing, full of his own stage directions written in, and variations
of the text, and gave them to me as a memento of the visit, inscribing
some lines from one of the sonnets. It was Verplanck's illustrated
edition, and some of the plates were marked: "Form this picture." I
remember afterward noticing that he made the picture on the stage.
Many a night in those days we sat together till morning, for he had
the actor's habit of turning night into day. Playing till nearly
midnight, and supping still later, the excitement of the stage kept
him awake afterward, and he never wanted to go to bed. He was never
more animated in thought and look and gesture than after acting. Of
course, he rose late, and during an engagement his only leisure hours
were one or two in the afternoon; for in those early days he went
regularly to rehearsal. That was before the era of long runs, and he
played a range of parts in each engagement, changing them nearly every
night. He sometimes slept after his early dinner, so as to be
refreshed and ready for evening.
Then there were the painters and sculptors and photographers, always
one or two in every town, who wanted to take him, either in a popular
part, or "in his habit as he lived." He never dined out while he was
playing, except on Sundays, and a walk or a drive was almost his only
exercise or amusement; there was not time for more; he had to reserve
himself for the night. For he had to work when other men played; his
work was their amusement. It was a life utterly unlike that of other
men, and it is not strange that his character was unlike theirs. He
was exposed to the temptations of youth, and he had his peculiar
faults, but no gross vices, and he did no harm or wrong to man or
woman--ever, that I knew. Of how many can this be said?
In 1860 he married Miss Mary Devlin, a young actress, who retired from
the stage as soon as she became engaged to him. She was a sweet gentle
woman, of great natural refinement, and every way fit to be his wife.
A year before he had told me he meant to marry, and I encouraged this
intention. I thought he would be happier, that he needed the constant
companionship and solace of a wife's society, though I knew that
marriage must, to a certain extent, disturb the intimacy which I
valued and enjoyed so highly. No man could be so intimate with two
people at once as he had been with me. They were married at the
clergyman's house on the afternoon of July 7. He and I went together
to the simple ceremony; there were no other witnesses except his
wife's sister and her husband and John Wilkes Booth. After it was
over, Wilkes threw his arms about Edwin's neck and kissed him.
In a week Booth wrote to me and wanted me to join them at Niagara.
They had a cottage on the Canada side, and there I spent two weeks of
his honeymoon with my friend. He was most anxious to show me that his
marriage had made no difference in his feeling toward me, and his wife
was quite as anxious that I should perceive none. In the autumn Booth
played in New York, and I was with him almost as much as ever. We sat
up late into the night as of old, and Mrs. Booth was often so good as
to leave us together. I had the pleasure of accompanying them to
distinguished houses, for Mrs. Booth was much invited, as well as he,
and bore herself with quiet grace and modest dignity, as "to the
manner born." We continued our studies, too. Mrs. Booth was as anxious
as I for the artistic success of her husband; she and I went to the
play together and discussed his performances. Their union was complete
and their happiness unalloyed.
But the currents of our lives ran different ways. In 1861 I entered
the army and Booth went to England. His success in London at this
time was not marked; he could not obtain the theatre he wanted, and
English feeling just then was hostile to Americans. He played only a
short engagement, and it was not until the second or third week that
he made any impression. Then his Richelieu created a sensation, but it
was late in the season, and he only acted a few nights afterward. In
December his only child, Edwina, was born at Fulham, England.
He returned to America early in 1862, and in September I was passing
through New York and went to see them. I found the same dear friend I
had known of old, with a sweet tender woman by his side, and a child
of nine months playing on the floor. Mrs. Booth made me remark that
the little one, creeping in its play, fell instinctively into the
attitude of Richard III. in the terrible fight with Richmond; and the
likeness was laughable. I left the same day for New Orleans, happy for
this glimpse at their domestic happiness.
They took a house in Boston, and the next year, in February, 1863,
Booth was playing in New York, having left his wife at home because of
her delicate health. During a performance at the Winter Garden a
despatch was handed him, summoning him to her side. He left at the
close of the play, but before he could reach her the dearest thing on
earth to him was gone forever. The shock almost unbalanced his mind.
His wife had been all that a perfect wife could be to a man of his
peculiar temperament and needs. She sustained him, encouraged him,
soothed him when the sad moods came on, and exorcised the evil spirit
absolutely. She inspired his work, and comforted him in weariness,
trouble, or physical pain. He wrote me, at once, the saddest letter I
ever received. He was crushed, and saw no hope, no reason for living.
The black cloud that she had lifted was lowered again; not even his
child at first could interest or distract him. But he turned to me in
his bereavement, for I had known her, and I did what I could to
comfort him; at least, I could grieve with him.
The young wife was buried at Mount Auburn, near Boston, at a spot
which they had selected together. He built a tomb in which both
were to lie; it was lined with brick, and when her remains were
transferred, before the coffin was lowered Booth jumped into the grave
as Hamlet did into Ophelia's. He joined her there last June, after
thirty years.
In May, 1863, I was seriously wounded, and it was his turn to solace
me. I lay in hospital for many weeks, and he wrote me constantly. In
July I was taken to New York, and arrived just before the riots of
that year. I was carried to Booth's house. He and his brother Wilkes
bore me to Edwin's bed, which he gave up for me, and there I was left
alone with my distracted friend. I may not disclose all that he said
in his grief, but, with his unusual nature, it can be imagined. He was
inclined to think the spirit near him of her who had been so much to
him in life, and I said nothing to disturb the impression. I remained
at his house until it was possible to remove me to the country; both
he and his brother dressed my wounds, and tended me with the greatest
care.
I saw much of him during the months of my convalescence, and early in
1865, when I was again taken to New York after an attack of camp
fever; Wilkes Booth was once more at his brother's house. He was
excessively handsome, even physically finer than Edwin, but less
intellectual in his manliness. I never saw him on the stage, but under
Edwin's roof I thought him very captivating, though not so thoroughly
distinguished as his greater brother.
Two months later came the terrible event which plunged the nation, and
especially the Booth family, into such awful sorrow. Edwin was playing
in Boston, but at once gave up his engagement and returned to his home
in New York. Numbers of the most eminent people hastened to assure him
of their sympathy and their belief in his loyalty. He had indeed been
stanch for the Union, and the only vote he ever cast was for Lincoln
in 1864. But he was overwhelmed by this fresh misfortune, this new
cloud that had settled on his house. His brother Junius and his
brother-in-law were thrown into prison in Washington, and he felt
himself an object of suspicion. I had returned to the field, and was
in Richmond when the news reached me. I wrote to him at once, but my
letter was withheld. All letters to him for awhile were kept back, and
I suppose especially any from Richmond. I could not leave my post
immediately, and it was a month or more before I reached New York,
where I went, of course, direct to him. The first shock was over, but
the old gloom was greater than ever.
He told me he had seen nothing in his brother to excite suspicion, and
I have always believed that the awful act was the result of a
disturbed brain. It was so theatrical in plan and performance; the
conspiracy, the dagger, the selection of a theatre, the brandishing of
the weapon, the cry "_Sic Semper Tyrannis_" to the audience--all was
exactly what a madman brought up in a theatre might have been expected
to conceive; a man, too, of this peculiar family, the son of Junius
Brutus Booth, used all his life to acting tragedies. He had not only
nursed me tenderly, a soldier wounded for the cause he should have
hated, but in all the exciting period of the riot he said no word that
indicated sympathy with the South. He went out daily to inquire the
news, and was indignant at the outrages he reported; he even assisted
to shield my negro servant who remained hidden in the cellar for
nearly a week. Two months before the end of the war he wished me well
when I set out to rejoin Grant.
After a few months Booth returned to the stage, and was welcomed back
with an enthusiasm which showed that not only his genius but his
nobility of character, his elevation of thought, his refinement of
manner had all been appreciated. In 1869 he remarried--this time a
Miss McVicker, an actress of Chicago, whom I never saw. She left the
stage upon her marriage. In the same year he opened Booth's Theatre.
His pecuniary success had been very brilliant, and he had long been
ambitious to build and control a theatre where the most elevating
influences of the drama should be exemplified. It was a beautiful
tribute to his art. Everything was done that taste and study and care
and elaborate expenditure could accomplish, to produce the greatest
plays in the most admirable manner; but Booth had no business talent,
and some of those with whom he was brought into contact had a large
share of this talent, and used it to injure or betray his interests.
He lost largely, and finally was obliged to declare himself a
bankrupt. He gave up all he had in the world, his personal and private
property, his theatre, his library and theatrical wardrobe, and many
treasures of his profession, and became once more a travelling star.
His performances, however, proved more attractive than ever; he was
soon able to repay all his creditors, and afterward remained a man of
fortune.
Meanwhile the vicissitudes of life had drifted us far apart. I was in
Europe officially for many years, but in 1880 had a leave of absence.
During the month of June a public breakfast was offered Booth at
Delmonico's by many of the most eminent men in New York, and I then
met him for the first time since 1867. After the breakfast I went to
his rooms, and he put his arms around me and begged that we should be
to each other all we had ever been. Each promised, and each kept his
word.
But he started for England a few days afterward, and it was not till
the next year that I returned there. Then I saw much of him. He played
this time with great success, at Irving's theatre. The great English
actor gave him every facility; relinquished his house to him for a
while, and treated him with a distinguished courtesy worthy of his own
position as head of the British stage. Irving had been in the stock
company that supported Booth during his first English engagement, but
now they were equals, and played on alternate nights, and sometimes
together, in Othello and Iago. Booth's houses were crowded with the
most cultivated and important people in England; and his acting,
despite a certain national jealousy, was by many pronounced superior
to that of the Englishman. Invitations came to him from aristocratic
quarters, in which his daughter was included; but his wife was in
miserable health and unable to go at all into the world, or even to
receive any one but her own family. This marred the gratification at
his success, and in 1881, after lingering in great suffering, both for
herself and those about her, the second wife of Edwin Booth also died.
I had returned from Europe and passed the night after her funeral in
his rooms at New York. His mother and sister also passed away, and his
daughter married, so that he was left, in a great degree, alone.
His profession, however, remained to him. It was about this time that
he began those remarkable dramatic tours with Barrett which were more
successful from a pecuniary point of view than any other of his
enterprises. It is even said, by those competent to pronounce, that
the financial results surpassed any known in the history of the stage.
Everywhere he was recognized as the head of the American theatre. His
acting was ripened and chastened by study and long experience, by the
development of his own powers, and the opportunities he had enjoyed of
comparison with his greatest foreign rivals. He was accepted as the
equal in America of what Garrick had been in his palmiest days--the
peer and companion of whatever was best in American society.
It is four or five years since he conceived the idea of founding the
Players' Club, and, having become a man of more than ordinary means,
he was able to gratify this ambition. He bought and rebuilt a fine
house in a desirable position in New York, and filled it with choice
books and pictures and relics of the stage, and then invited men of
distinction and culture to meet actors of character and ability on an
equal footing. The club has been eminently successful, and for several
years Booth, its founder and president, made it his home. He had a
suite of rooms, modestly but tastefully furnished, and among his
friends and books and pictures passed the last days of his life. When
he wrote the extracts from the Shakespearian sonnets in the volume he
gave me thirty years ago, I think he felt some consciousness of the
ban that the world then put upon his profession, but he could not have
retained the feeling, for there was no ban applied to him. Exclusive
English aristocrats invited him and his daughter, and visited them in
return; and Edwin Booth voted to admit Grover Cleveland to the Century
Club, and invited General Sherman to become a member of the Players'.
I was very much struck, on my return from Europe in 1881, with the
dignity and composure which years of recognition had given to his
bearing. The glowing beauty of his youth, of course, was gone, his
features bore traces of his own sorrows and experiences, and besides
were worn and hardened by those terrible passions of the stage which
were for the time so real to him. I have indeed no doubt that it was
the intense strain on brain and nerve which his acting demanded, and
not any private grief or anxiety, that broke him down before his
time.
Years, however, had enhanced his innate nobility. He was always
reverent to religion, and had warm friends among the clergy of various
denominations. A Catholic priest and the Protestant Bishop of New York
were among the first to call after his paralysis was known. I never
heard him speak disrespectfully of sacred themes or of good women. His
character in later years took on a softer phase; his irritability was
rarer, indeed it almost disappeared, while the range of his
friendships was wider.
When he received a foreign actor who came to call on him, as they all
did, or welcomed some distinguished visitor to his club, he did it
with a calm dignity and gracious courtesy that was very natural and
yet imposing, while his more intimate bearing when we were alone was
inexpressibly confiding and affectionate, though more subdued than in
the earlier days.
In his acting also there was something of the same inevitable change
that time brings to all things and all men; but to me he always
remained the most powerful and consummate tragedian I have ever seen.
Some of the old force may have faded, but it flashed out at intervals
in every performance with all its ancient brilliancy.
The last time that I saw him on the stage,
"Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,"
was also the last night that Barrett ever played. The piece was
"Richelieu," and it seemed to me that Booth excelled himself in the
finish of the earlier scenes and in the tempest of passion at the
climax. During this engagement I went behind the scenes as I had used
to go a quarter of a century before, and found all the old fascination
still, subdued and softened by his more chastened dignity. But he
played only a few times after his friend Barrett was stricken, and
then his own ailings increased.
After this I never met him out of his own rooms but once. I called
just as he was about to try to walk, and he asked me to go with him.
He had to be assisted to the door, and when he reached the street I
offered him my arm. He took it and leaned heavily. He stumbled as he
walked, and it took us half an hour to move around the block of
buildings in which the club-house stands. Then he was tired, and
wanted to go in, and I knew that my friend would not recover.
In his rooms at the Players' Club I saw my last of him. For a year or
two he seldom left them except to visit his daughter in town or
country, or perhaps to accompany her to a play. But he spent many
hours in her society and that of her husband and children--his
greatest solace. I fortunately was near him during this period, and we
often passed a morning talking of our early manhood or his later
career.
But there was something inexpressibly painful in the spectacle of him,
whose physical faculties had been so inextricably bound up with the
intellectual, whose bodily gifts had been the incarnation of passion
and romance and poetry, his corporal charm the fit embodiment of a
noble soul--to see him decay, his powers crumble and waste away; to
see him decrepit, weary, worn, who had been alive with expression,
captivating in bearing, majestic, terrible, tender, by turns. Only his
eyes retained their marvellous beauty, like a lamp burning in a
deserted temple, or the soul looking out through the windows of that
body it was soon to leave.
[Illustration: THE DEATH MASK OF EDWIN BOOTH.]
Farewell! beloved spirit! Thou hast given tens, nay hundreds of
thousands pleasure by thy genius, expressed for them the subtlest and
most delicate thoughts and sublimest conceptions of the greatest of
poets, elevated their imaginations, refined their fancy, charmed their
taste, subdued their moods, and soothed their weary hours; and never
once, in all thy art, suggested an impure or vicious thought, never
stimulated an evil desire, nor insinuated a wanton or vulgar feeling.
Thou hast done much to elevate the profession thou hast adorned; hast
assisted the needy, hast stretched out a hand to aid the worthy in
arriving at thy own position, and introduced thy brethren to the
company which sought and welcomed thee. Thou hast been a loving son, a
reverent, filial admirer of him whose mantle fell upon thee, a
faithful, devoted husband, a brother worthy of the name, a tender,
bountiful father, a loyal, stanch, confiding friend. The world has
been happier and better for thy passage across its stage.
BURGLARS THREE.
BY JAMES HARVEY SMITH
As a usual thing, when they cracked a crib, one of the three remained
outside to warn with a whistle, or some other previously concerted
signal, his companions inside. But on this occasion, when Jim Baxter
opened the simple catch that fastened the woodshed door, and thence
gained access to the interior of the house, Wilson Graham and Harry
Montgomery followed softly after him. This breach of burglarious
custom was probably due to the fact that the Braithwait mansion was in
the suburbs, some distance from the road, and several hundred yards
from the nearest house.
Once inside, Mr. Graham lighted the gas, and it was then the work of a
very few minutes to open the sideboard and subtract therefrom the
family silver and place it in a bag brought for that purpose. While
this operation was taking place, Montgomery made a tour of the upper
rooms.
"I don't exactly like to trust Harry up-stairs," remarked Baxter, in a
surly tone, after he had securely tied the mouth of the bag. "He is
too soft. Like as not he'll go and git sentimental over a picture or
somethin', or maybe git a-thinkin' of his mother, and leave half the
ornyments."
Graham, who had just opened a pearl inlaid _secretaire_, and was
possessing himself of numerous valuable trinkets, laughed softly, as
he replied:
"I don't think so, Jim. Only yesterday I gave the boy a good talking
to, and he promised to attend strictly to business in future. You must
remember he is young, and, unless we give him a chance, how is he to
learn? Of course, if there was a young girl in the house--but there
isn't," he added quickly, observing the wrathful frown on his
companion's face. "I made certain that the only people who sleep in
the house are Mr. Braithwait and the housekeeper, who is rather old
and nearly deaf; the rest of the family are in Florida for their
health. If Braithwait makes a disturbance I reckon Harry can settle
him without any sentimental nonsense."
"I'd settle him," muttered Baxter, surlily.
"You're a savage, Jim," said Graham, reproachfully. "How often have I
told you that there is no virtue in violence. Haven't I convinced you
that the easy way is the safe way?"
"Yah! Don't give me no more of that!" said Baxter, contemptuously. "I
ain't no missionary."
At this juncture, when the argument threatened to develop into a
quarrel, peace was restored by the reappearance of the young burglar,
carrying a considerable quantity of jewelry, loose and in boxes, while
he softly whistled "M'Appari."
"Not a bad haul," observed Graham, turning over the plunder as it lay
on the table. "_Two_ watches?"
"They're them little tickers what the girls carry," said Baxter,
scornfully. "We won't get two dollars apiece for 'em."
"Won't we, though!" said Graham, smiling. "They are gold, and there is
an inscription on each; that means a fancy reward, or I don't know
human feminine nature. Two brooches, a necklace--h'm--h'm--very good,
indeed."
"There was no money," remarked Harry, adjusting his necktie before the
mirror, and giving his small blonde mustache a curl.
"I expected as much," commented Graham, storing away the trinkets in
his pockets. "Braithwait has a hundred with him, I dare say, but it
isn't worth the risk. If we kill a man in the city it's soon
forgotten, but in the suburbs it creates a regular panic. The
neighbors hire detectives and follow a man all over creation, and you
can't buy them off or compromise the matter--money is no object.
That's why I keep telling Jim--"
"Let up, will ye!" exclaimed Baxter, roughly. "I ain't killin' nobody,
am I?"
"Certainly not; but I only say----"
[Illustration: "I AIN'T NO MISSIONARY!"]
"Say nothin'! where's the feed box?"
Mr. Graham groaned, and looked at his young accomplice in comical
alarm.
"I knew how it would be! Jim, these luncheons will be the ruin of us
all some night."
"Can't help it," retorted Baxter, doggedly. "It's a good four-mile
walk from the city and as much back, and we hadn't anything but a
snack for supper. A man's got to eat, and when I'm hungry----"
"Well, well," said the other, with a gesture of impatience, "if it
must be, it must. Harry, see to the wine, and we will find the
substantials. Now, Jim, _do_ be careful of the dishes, and _don't_
grunt and puff while you're eating. It's vulgar."
Jim Baxter grunted and puffed at this, but made no other reply as he
busied himself spreading the contents of the refrigerator on the
dining-room table, while Harry from the sideboard produced a decanter
of whiskey and three bottles of claret. There was a nice piece of cold
ham, some tongue, cheese and pickles, bread and butter, anchovies and
sardines, a bottle of olives, and the remains of an oyster pie.
"Quite a lay-out," remarked Baxter, with a ravenous chuckle. "D'ye
remember the house at Barleytown where there wasn't nothin' but graham
crackers and winegar in the box?"
"I should say so," exclaimed Graham, with a look of disgust.
"Some people are too mean to live," returned Baxter, savagely. "Come,
shove over that decanter, and let's pitch in. Fingers, gents, 'cause
there ain't nothin' but silver knives and forks in this house, unless
I take 'em out of the bag, which I ain't doin'. Here's luck!"
"Excellent claret, Wilson," said the young burglar, holding his glass
up to the light.
"Genuine Medoc," returned Graham, with the air of a connoisseur.
"That's the worst of this business; not one gentleman out of ten is a
judge of wine. Now, the whiskey----"
"The whiskey's all right," interrupted Baxter, curtly. "All whiskey's
good; some's better'n others, but it's all good. Blow claret!"
"No style about Jim," said Harry, with a smile that was half a sneer.
"No, you bet there ain't," said Baxter, stolidly. "You oughter call me
'Old Business,' 'cause that's what I am. Pass them pickles."
It was a most interesting sight. At the head of the table sat Graham,
a smooth-faced, well-fed man of forty, who might have passed for a
prosperous banker, or a man living on an annuity; to his right
reclined, rather than sat, young Montgomery, a spruce and slender
fellow, with soft blue eyes, tremulous lips, and light hair neatly
brushed; while opposite Graham sat Baxter, a coarse, shaggy, grimy man
of uncertain age, with small, shifty eyes, a heavy beard, and a
general air of brutal strength. Had it not been for the fact that each
man wore his hat, and that the bag of stolen goods lay on one corner
of the table, it might have been taken for a small stag party, Graham
personating the host to perfection.
The resemblance was lost, however, a moment later. The door leading to
the back stairway, directly behind Jim Baxter, opened and revealed a
spare man with long blonde whiskers, wearing gold eye-glasses, and a
flowered dressing-gown.
Graham was the first to see the intruder, and his exclamation of
astonishment caused Baxter to turn his head. In an instant that worthy
was on his feet, with a pistol in his hand. Graham was quicker,
however, and before his companion could raise the weapon he seized his
arm and pushed him aside.
"No violence, Jim," he said, sternly.
"I warn't goin' to shoot," growled Jim. "I was only goin' to give him
a crack on the head."
"I won't have it," returned Graham, authoritatively. "Sit down."
Baxter put up his pistol and sat down. Graham then turned to the spare
gentleman, who had not moved from the doorway during this episode.
"Mr. Braithwait, I presume?"
"That is my name," was the composed reply. "Burglars, I presume?"
"The presumption is correct. Will you take a seat?"
Mr. Braithwait sat down opposite young Montgomery, to whom he bowed
gravely. There was then a moment of silence, broken by Graham, who had
resumed his place at the head of the table.
"I am sorry," said he, "you have made your appearance, as we can't
very well apologize for our intrusion."
"No, I suppose not," said Mr. Braithwait, smiling. "Yet I am rather
pleased that I did come, since I always enjoy an unusual experience."
"Glad you enjoy it," muttered Baxter; but no one listened to him.
"I was aroused by the reflection of the gaslight in the upper hall,"
explained Mr. Braithwait, "and I supposed that the housekeeper had
left it burning--she has done so more than once. I came down to
extinguish it. I heard voices in this room, and I entered."
"At the risk of your life," observed Graham, with a significant glance
at Baxter, who had resumed eating.
"I did not think of that," said Mr. Braithwait, simply. "My life has
been threatened so often--you know I am a railroad man--that I give
little thought to the risk of an undertaking. Professionals, I
suppose?"
He looked at Montgomery, who nodded nonchalantly and lighted a
cigarette.
Mr. Braithwait coughed.
"I wish you wouldn't," he said, deprecatingly. "Apart from the looks,
I can't bear cigarette-smoke. There's a box of very fine Conchas on
the sideboard. Thank you"--to Graham--"if you will join me?--thank you
again."
Graham laughed with genuine enjoyment, yet without vulgarity.
"I like you," he said, frankly, "and I am sorry that, in the line of
business----" He waved his cigar at the bag.
[Illustration: "EXCELLENT CLARET," SAID HARRY.]
"Of course, yes, of course, I know that can't be helped," said Mr.
Braithwait, smoking away easily, "and that's another reason why I'm
glad I came. I suppose you have in that bag some trinkets belonging to
my wife and daughters that have a special value as mementos. I hear
that you gentlemen are frequently forced to sell your plunder at a
simply ruinous sacrifice, and it occurred to me that if we could come
to some arrangement--you understand?"
"Perfectly," answered Graham. "It can be done, and I will open
negotiations at an early date. Provided, of course," he added,
severely, "that you play fair."
"That is understood. As a business man I accept the situation. My loss
is your gain."
At this the youngest burglar broke silence for the first time.
"You are a philosopher," he said, in a tone of admiration.
"What sensible man is not?" responded Mr. Braithwait, cheerfully. "I
suppose it is capable of proof that the accumulated wisdom of the
ancients amounts simply to the homely proverb: 'What can't be cured
must be endured.' My business is a sort of war, and I have my defeats
as well as my victories. I must bear them both with equanimity."
"So is ours," said the youngest burglar. "As Horace says in his
'Epistles': 'Caedimur, et totidem plagis consumimus hostem.'"
"Permit me," returned Mr. Braithwait, "to reply with Catullus: 'Nil
mihi tam valde placeat, Rhamnusia virgo, quod temere invitis
suscipiatur heris.'"
Montgomery flushed slightly, and Baxter growled an incoherent protest
against the use of foreign languages.
"Of course, I do not claim that I enjoy being robbed," continued Mr.
Braithwait, "but I realize that it is not as bad as it might be. Last
week you would have caught me with two thousand in cash in the house,
and last month you would have horribly scared my wife and daughters."
"Not for worlds," murmured Mr. Montgomery.
"Well, you might have done so--women have such a detestation of
robbers, except when they are in jail. The pleasure of your visit--I
hinted that I could extract pleasure from adversity--lies in the fact
that it brings me in contact with a profession I have previously known
only by hearsay. I suppose I may take it for granted you gentlemen are
experts?"
[Illustration: "NO VIOLENCE, JIM!"]
"We've been there before," said Baxter, coarsely.
"If an experience of fourteen years is any guaranty, then I am an
expert," said Graham, with a certain air of pride in his tones. "Our
friend there," nodding at Baxter, "has, I believe, been in the
profession since childhood; while Mr."--indicating Montgomery with his
cigar--"you'll excuse my not mentioning names?--is a beginner. A
skilled workman, I admit, but this is only his second year."
"I don't wonder that he"--and Mr. Braithwait glanced slightly at
Baxter,--"remains in the business, but that you should follow the
vocation for fourteen years surprises me greatly."
"Indeed?" queried Graham, with perceptible stiffness. "Why?"
"Because you appear to be a sensible man, and I should not think the
business would pay. What is your annual income as a burglar?"
"On an average, I should say three thousand a year."
"And you are an expert! I receive six thousand a year, and I am only
Assistant General Freight Agent, and have been but twelve years in the
business. Then I may infer that these two gentlemen make much less
than three thousand?"
"I've seen the week when I didn't make hod-carrier's wages," growled
Baxter, who had now finished eating, and was preparing to smoke a
black wooden pipe.
"You're not so sensible as I thought," rejoined Mr. Braithwait,
frankly. "I can easily imagine a man exposing himself to dreadful
dangers and cruel privations when there is a great prize in view. An
explorer like Stanley, a pioneer like Pike or Fremont, a conqueror
like Cortez, or a revolutionist like Washington, could well brave
hardship and peril when success meant wealth as well as the
plaudits of their fellow men. The early settlers of this and every
other country, the gold hunters of '49, the pirates who ravaged the
seas, all were actuated by the hope of a fortune at one swoop; but
to risk prison, to say nothing of life itself, for a day laborer's
wages!----"
"But," spoke up Montgomery, quickly, "there is fame, if not fortune."
"Pardon me. In what way?"
"In the usual way. Who has not heard of Hickey, the man who cracked
twenty banks before they tripped him up; Peters, the New England
cracksman; Bronthers, the Chicago expert?"
"I hope," said Mr. Braithwait, gently, "I won't offend you when I say
I never heard of those gentlemen."
"Is it possible!"
"Honestly, I never did."
"You have surely heard of Red Leary?"
"I can't recall his name."
"George Post? Louis Ludlum? Pete McCartney? Miles Ogle?"
"Don't know them."
"Perhaps," sarcastically, "you don't read the papers?"
"Yes, I do, and I have a good memory. I can say without boasting that
I have on my tongue's end all the professional, literary and artistic
names in America, and many in Europe. In my library I have many
biographies, but none of which a burglar is the theme, nor do I recall
the name of a celebrated criminal, unless," pleasantly, "he has been
hanged."
"Yet there _are_ famous names in our profession," persisted the young
burglar, somewhat sullenly.
"Oh, yes," admitted Mr. Braithwait, taking a small drink of claret.
"Literature has preserved Claude Duval, Jack Sheppard, Dick
Turpin--all hung--Fra Diavolo, who was shot, and even our own James
and Younger boys; and I have heard vaguely of one Billy the Kid
somewhere out West. In a general sense, literature and the drama are
saturated with bandits, brigands and outlaws, sometimes comical,
sometimes heroic, but you will excuse me if I maintain that you stand
on a different footing. Those fellows always had a poetical backing;
somebody or something had driven them to their illegal calling, but
you can scarcely make a similar claim."
[Illustration: "WHAT IS YOUR ANNUAL INCOME AS A BURGLAR?"]
"I don't know about that," protested Baxter, doggedly. "Who'd give
_me_ a job?"
"Did you ever try?"
"No; nor I ain't goin' to!"
"As I supposed. Honest work is plentiful, therefore you are absolutely
without excuse. No one has usurped your name and fortune, stolen your
ancestral home or intended bride; neither have you been outlawed for
your political or religious beliefs, or unjustly accused of crime."
The big burglar looked extremely blank at this pointed address, and
took a grumbling drink of whiskey. Mr. Graham promptly came to his
companion's relief.
"You have made out a _prima facie_ case, as the lawyers say, but the
fact remains that there _is_ a fascination in the life we lead, and
some romance. There is mystery about it, for one thing, and danger
for another. Then we certainly have the sympathy of a certain class of
society, when we are prisoners."
"Is not the sympathy to which you allude confined to murderers,
especially those who kill their wives?"
"As a rule, yes," admitted Graham; "but the people, who have sympathy
for murderers, generally have such a superabundance that they can
spare some for us. I have known burglars to receive six bouquets in a
single day, and from real ladies, too."
"I am afraid," said Mr. Braithwait, with a smile, "that the sympathy
extended with such small discretion has little market value. But let
us pass that by and glance at the disagreeable side of your
profession. For instance, this night you have walked from the city,
the nearest point of which is three miles."
"We come four," growled Baxter.
"Well, four; and four back is eight. It could not have been a pleasant
walk, as the night is cloudy and the roads are heavy from recent
rains."
"There warn't no choice," said Baxter, savagely. "We _had_ to walk."
"There it is," said Mr. Braithwait, triumphantly, "you _had_ to walk.
Now, I don't have to walk; I ride in the train or my carriage at any
hour of the day or night. No honest man has to walk, if he has
money--and, of course, you have."
"The point," admitted Mr. Graham, reluctantly, "is well taken."
"I feel certain of it. Nor is this the only instance in which your
pleasure is marred by fear. The very fame for which you strive is a
constant bar to your enjoyment. If you take lodging at a hotel you are
ejected; you may be refused admittance to any respectable theatre; in
any place of entertainment, except the very lowest, you cannot make a
new acquaintance for fear he may be a detective plotting your capture;
you are compelled to eat, drink, and sleep among vile associates and
vulgar surroundings; and all for a pitiful three thousand a year! By
heaven! it is worth thirty!"
"You use strong language, sir," exclaimed the youngest burglar,
rising and pacing the floor in an agitated way.
"I do," admitted the master of the house, "because my business sense
is outraged by your stupidity."
"Stupidity!" echoed Graham, sharply.
"That is the word," returned Mr. Braithwait, sternly. "Your profession
requires acuteness, courage, skill, caution, and endurance. Gentlemen,
these are admirable traits, and with them you might be anything but
burglars. The banking institutions, railways, private and civic
corporations, are eager for such men; they pay them large wages and
grant them great privileges. The governments, State and National, want
such men, and are looking for them, while they are skulking through
city alleys or walking miry roads at midnight. Gentlemen, with all
your qualifications, you lack the one essential to success--common
sense."
"Permit me," said Graham, leaning over the table and speaking with
much force, "to call your attention to the fact that we are bright
enough to keep society eternally on the defensive."
"Granted," said Mr. Braithwait.
"Small in numbers though we are, we necessitate the employment of a
police force in every village, town, and city in the Union, to say
nothing of special constables and private watchmen. We force every
bank and corporation to sink thousands in costly safes, locks, and
other safeguards, and no householder is ever free from apprehension on
our account. We are one against many, so to speak, but we make the
many tremble! Could we exercise this power without brains?"
"Ay! could we?" supplemented Montgomery, with flashing eyes.
"Granted again," said Mr. Braithwait, cheerfully, "but quite foreign
to the point at issue. Society is terrorized through its inertness,
and when society enters on an active warfare you gentlemen cannot make
a show of resistance. And even under our present policy of passive
resistance there is but one thing that will save a criminal from the
eventual clutch of the law, and that is--death."
The youngest burglar turned white and Baxter cursed softly.
"You cannot, with all your brightness, commit a crime without leaving
a trace," went on Mr. Braithwait, impassively, "and every modern
appliance is a stumbling-block in your path. The modern bank safe,
equipped with time-locks, is impregnable; the electric light has made
our streets as safe by night as day; and the telegraph has lengthened
the arm of justice until it encircles the globe."
"And yet," retorted Graham, with a slight sneer, "_you_ have been
robbed."
"And yet I have been robbed," repeated Mr. Braithwait, calmly.
"Without interfering sadly with my comfort and ease, I cannot make my
house a bank or surround myself with an army of watchmen. And I don't
like dogs. So I have been robbed. Yet"--Mr. Braithwait looked Mr.
Graham quietly in the eye--"yet I am not entirely defenceless."
"Hello!" said Baxter, breathing hard. "Have you been up to somethin'?"
"You shall judge whether I have rightly accused you of lack of common
sense. Before attacking this house, did you make yourself acquainted
with the surroundings?"
"I did," answered Graham, confidently.
"Do you know that I am a railroad man?"
"Certainly."
"Did you notice a wire running through the woods at the rear of my
house?"
"No!" cried Graham, violently.
"A strange oversight on your part. Very stupid. It is a telephone
wire, and leads from my chamber above to my office in the city. Now
for the application of my remarks. From the moment of your entrance I
was aware of your movements, and instantly explained the situation to
the night operator. He, of course, notified the police----"
"And while you kept us engaged in conversation--" cried Graham,
advancing threateningly.
"The police were coming on a special train to my assistance," said Mr.
Braithwait, taking a second cigar.
"Damn you!" exclaimed Baxter, threateningly.
"Stop!" cried Graham, interposing. "We have no time for that. Let us
run!"
"Don't!" said the host, warningly. "The house is surrounded, and you
will certainly be shot. Accept the situation, as I did. You gentlemen
have been my guests this evening, and I have been highly entertained.
May I hope that the pleasure has been mutual?"
Before anyone could answer, the door leading to the woodshed was
thrown open, and four policemen appeared on the threshold. Montgomery
sank helplessly into a chair. Baxter made a dash for the door,
while Graham remained impassive, but all were alike handcuffed
expeditiously.
"Sir," said Graham, taking a cigar from the box, "our misfortune is
directly due to the uncontrollable appetite of our companion, but none
the less I congratulate you upon your ingenuity."
"Thanks," said Mr. Braithwait. "Did I not tell you that you were
stupid?"
Mr. Graham bowed.
"You have taught us a lesson," he said gravely. "I think it is time to
abandon the business."
"Well, I'll be----" Baxter gasped, and could say no more.
"We are disgraced!" exclaimed the youngest burglar, bitterly.
Mr. Braithwait waved his hand.
"I am sleepy," he said, with a yawn. "Gentlemen, good-night; I will
see you again--in court."
STRANGER THAN FICTION.
UNPUBLISHED CHAPTERS FROM "THE BRONTES IN IRELAND."
BY DR. WILLIAM WRIGHT.
INTRODUCTION.
The sources of information regarding the Bronte family in England have
been studiously investigated, and everything known about them there
has been described with great wealth of literary skill and ingenuity;
but the eager guesses and surmises as to what lay beyond the English
boundaries have been mostly erroneous.
Mrs. Gaskell's "Life of Charlotte Bronte" is an exquisite tribute from
a gifted hand, but Mrs. Gaskell's dreary moorlands are as inadequate
to account for the Bronte genius, as the general picture of suppressed
sadness is unwarranted by the Bronte letters, or by the living
testimony of Miss Ellen Nussey, Charlotte's life-long friend and
confidante.
Mr. Wemyss Reid has given us a picture of this singular family in
brighter, truer colors; but his theory as to the "disillusioning" of
Charlotte at Brussels is a pure assumption, and repudiated with
indignation by Miss Nussey.
Mr. Augustine Birrell's brilliant "Life of Charlotte Bronte" contains
some additional facts gleaned in England, and deserves to be read, if
only for the generous indignation called forth by the "Quarterly
Reviewer," who sought to assassinate the reputation of the author of
"Jane Eyre."
A feeling of dissatisfaction was felt in some degree by each of these
writers in turn, but by none more clearly expressed than by Mr. J. A.
Erskine Stuart in his most useful book, "The Bronte Country." He
writes: "For our own part, we desire a fuller biography of the family
than has yet been written, and we trust, and are confident, that such
will yet appear, and that there are many surprises yet in store for
students of this Celtic circle."
I now proceed, but not without misgivings, to justify the confidence
thus expressed, and to fulfill the prediction implied, so far as
regards the Brontes in Ireland. I propose in the following pages to
supply the Irish straws of Bronte history which I have been
accumulating for nearly half a century. I have waited in hopes that
some more skillful hand might undertake the task, but as no one else,
since the death of Captain Mayne Reid, has the requisite information,
the story of the Irish Brontes must be told by me, or remain untold.
My first classical teacher was the Reverend William McAllister, of
Ryans, near Newry, a man of brilliant imagination, who under favorable
conditions might have taken rank with John Bunyan or William Blake. He
had known Patrick Bronte (Charlotte's father), and had often heard old
Hugh, the grandfather, narrate to a spell-bound audience, the
incidents which formed the ground-work of "Wuthering Heights." He used
to take me for long walks in the fields, and tell me the story of Hugh
Bronte's early life, or narrate other Bronte adventures, which he
assured me were just as worthy to be recounted as the wrath of
Achilles or the wanderings of Pius AEneas. It thus happened that I
wrote screeds of the Bronte novels myself before a line of them had
been penned at Haworth. I do not think that Branwell Bronte really
meant to deceive when he spoke of having written "Wuthering Heights,"
for the story in outline must have been common property at Haworth,
and the children of the vicarage were all scribblers.
Through my teacher's relatives, who lived quite near to the Brontes, I
was able to verify facts and incidents, and the pains thus taken has
fixed them indelibly upon my mind. At a later period, I had still
better opportunities for forming a sound judgment concerning the Irish
Brontes, for the pleasantest part of my undergraduate holidays was
spent at the manse of the Reverend David McKee of Ballynaskeagh. Mr.
McKee was a great educationalist, and prepared many students for
college who afterwards became famous.
This great and noble man, who stood six feet six inches high, was
the friend of the Brontes, as well as their near neighbor. He
recognized the Bronte genius, where others only saw what was wild
and unconventional. Mr. McKee's home was the center of mental
activity in that neighborhood, and the early copies of the novels
that came to the "Uncle Bronte's" were cut, read, and criticised by
Mr. McKee, and his criticisms forwarded to the Haworth nieces. Great
was the joy of those uncles and aunts when Mr. McKee's approval
was enthusiastically given.
There are also several other persons, some of them still living, who
knew the Brontes, and have kindly communicated to me the information
they possessed, so that I have had illumination from various points on
this many-sided family.
CHAPTER I.
THE DARK FOUNDLING.
Hugh Bronte's grandfather, the great-great-grandfather of the English
novelist, formerly lived upon a farm on the banks of the Boyne, above
Drogheda. He was a cattle-dealer, and often crossed to Liverpool to
dispose of his stock. Once, when he was returning therefrom, a strange
child was found in a bundle in the hold of the vessel. It was very
young, very black, very dirty, and almost destitute of clothing. No
one knew whence it had come, nor cared what became of it. There was no
doctor in the ship, and no woman save Mrs. Bronte, who had accompanied
her husband. The child was thrown on deck. Some one said, "Toss it
overboard," but nobody would touch it, and its cries were distressing.
From sheer pity Mrs. Bronte was obliged to succor the abandoned
infant.
On reaching Drogheda, it was taken ashore for food and clothing, with
the intention of returning it to Liverpool; but the captain refused to
allow it to be brought aboard of his ship again. As no one in Drogheda
had an interest in the child, it was left in Mrs. Bronte's hands. To
be sure, there was a vestry tax at that time for the removal of
illegitimate children, but Mrs. Bronte found it much easier to take
the child home than to Dublin, where it might possibly be refused
admission amongst the authorized foundlings--there being no hospital
nearer than that point.
When the infant was carried up out of the hold of the vessel, it was
declared to be a Welsh child on account of its color. It might,
doubtless, have laid claim to a more Oriental descent, but, when it
became a Bronte, it was called "Welsh." The Brontes, who were all
golden-haired, exceedingly disliked the swarthy infant, but "pity
melts the heart to love," and Mrs. Bronte brought it up amongst her
own children. Little Welsh was a weak, delicate, and fretful thing,
and being generally despised and pushed aside by the vigorous young
Brontes, he grew up morose, envious, and cunning. He used secretly to
play many spiteful tricks upon the children, so that they were
continually chastising him. On his part, he maintained a moody, sullen
silence, except when Mr. Bronte was present to protect him. With Mr.
Bronte he became a favorite, because he always ran to meet him on his
return home, as if glad to see him, and anxious to render him any
possible assistance. He followed his master about, while at home, with
dog-like fidelity, telling him everything he knew to the other
children's disadvantage, and thus succeeded in securing a permanent
place between them and their father.
Old Bronte took Welsh with him to fairs and markets, instead of his
own sons, as soon as he was able to go, and found him of the greatest
service. His very insignificance added to his usefulness. He would
mingle with the people from whom Bronte wished to purchase cattle, and
find out from their conversation the lowest price they would be
willing to take, and then report to his master. Bronte would then
offer the dealers a little less than he knew they wanted, and secure
the cattle without the usual weary process of bargaining. The same
course was repeated in Liverpool, and in the end Bronte became a rich
and prosperous dealer. Welsh was now indispensable to him, and
followed him like a shadow; but the more Bronte became attached to
Welsh, the more the children hated the interloper. As time went on,
Bronte's affairs passed more and more into his assistant's hands,
until at last he had the entire management. They were returning from
Liverpool once, after selling the largest drove of cattle that had
ever crossed the channel, when suddenly Bronte died in mid-ocean.
Welsh, who was with him at the time of his death, professed ignorance
of his master's money; and, as all books and accounts had disappeared,
no one could tell what had become of the cash received for the
cattle.
The young Brontes, who were now almost men and women, had been brought
up in comparative luxury. They were well educated, but they understood
neither farming nor dealing, and the land had been so neglected that
it could not support a family, even if the requisite capital for its
cultivation had not been lost. In this emergency Welsh requested an
interview with the whole family. He declared that he had a proposal to
make which would restore their fallen fortunes. He had been forbidden
the house, but, as it was supposed that he was going to give back the
money which he must have stolen, his request was reluctantly granted.
Welsh appeared at the interview dressed up in broadcloth, black and
shiny as his well-greased hair, and in fine linen, white and
glistening as his prominent teeth. The effect was ludicrous to those
who had always known the man. His sinister expression was intensified
by a smile of satisfaction which gave emphasis to the cast in both
eyes, and to his jackal-like mouth.
He began at once, in the grand cattle-dealer style, to express
sympathy with the family, and to declare that upon one condition only
would he continue the dealing and supply their wants. This condition
was that Mary, the youngest sister, should become his wife--a proposal
which was rejected with indignant scorn. Many hot and bitter words
were exchanged, but as Welsh was leaving the house, he turned and
said, "Mary shall yet be my wife, and I will scatter the rest of you
like chaff from this house, which shall be mine also." With these
words he passed out into the darkness.
The interview had two immediate results. It revealed the threatened
dangers, and roused the brothers to an earnest effort to save their
home. Welsh had robbed them, but he must not be permitted to ruin and
disgrace them. They had many friends, and in a short time the three
brothers were employed in remunerative occupations, two of them in
England and one in Ireland. They were thus able to send home enough to
pay the rent of the farm, and to maintain the family in comfort.
The landlord of Bronte's farm was an "absentee," the estate being
administered by an agent. He was the great man of the district, local
magistrate, grand juror, and "Pasha" in general. A parliament of
landlords had given him despotic powers in the collection of rent, and
in all matters of property, limb, and life. The agent of those days
was served by attorneys, bailiffs and sub-agents. Welsh was appointed
to a vacancy as sub-agent, in return for a large bribe paid to the
agent.
The sub-agent's business was to act as buffer between the tenant and
the "Squire," as the agent was called. He was generally a man without
heart, conscience, or bowels. Selected from the basest of the people,
he had nominal wages, never paid and never demanded; but he managed to
squeeze a large amount out of the tenants, first by alarming them, and
then by promising to stand their friend with the rapacious agent. He
cringed and grovelled before the "Squire," but at the same time was
the chief medium of information concerning the condition of the
tenants, and their ability to pay their rents. One of his duties was
to mix in their festivities, when whiskey had opened their hearts and
loosened their tongues, and discover their ability to pay an increased
rent.
Welsh was the very man for this post. He had lived by cunning and
treachery, and in his new occupation had great scope for serving both
himself and his master. He seldom saw his tenants without letting
drop the fatal word, "eviction." But, while serving the "Squire,"
and recouping himself from the tenants for the bribe he had paid
him, he never forgot for a moment his double purpose of securing his
late master's farm, and with it, the person of Mary Bronte. He
straightway drew the agent's attention to the derelict condition of
the farm, and to the likelihood of the rent falling into arrears,
and declared himself willing to undertake the burden of his late
master's desolate homestead. The agent promised Welsh that the farm
should be transferred to him, on payment of a certain sum, in case
the Brontes were not able to pay the rent; but the rent did not
fall into arrears. The agent's demands were punctually met, and
besides this, considerable sums of money were spent in improving the
house and the land. In consequence of this the rent was raised, but
the increased rent was paid the day it fell due, and again raised.
Finding himself foiled, Welsh changed his tactics, and turned his
attention to the other object of his quest, Mary Bronte.
In the neighborhood there lived a female sub-agent called Meg, as base
and unprincipled as himself. Her services were utilized in many ways;
in conveying bottles of whiskey to farmers' wives who were getting
into drinking habits, and in aiding farmers' sons and daughters to
dispose of eggs and apples and meal purloined from their parents in
return for trinkets which they wished to possess. She had also great
skill in furthering the wicked designs of rich but immoral men. She
was the "spey-woman" who told fortunes to servant-girls, and lured
them to their destruction. Like the male sub-agents, such women were
supposed to have the black art, and to have sold themselves to the
devil.
Meg came often to tell the servants' fortunes, and had many
opportunities of assuring Mary of Welsh's love and goodness. She told
how he had restrained the agent for several years from evicting them,
by the payment of large sums. All of this seemed incredible to the
simple-minded girl, but the harpy was able to show receipts for the
money thus expended.
After a time, Mary listened to the vile woman's tale. Welsh could
not be so bad as they believed him to be. Flowers taken from
tenants' gardens found their way to Mary's room, and trinkets wrung
from the anguish-stricken, in fear of eviction, were laid on her
dressing-table. At length, she consented to meet Welsh in a lonely
part of the farm, in company with the harpy, that she might express to
him her gratitude for protecting the dear old home.
That meeting sealed Mary's fate, and she was forced to consent to
marry Welsh. The marriage was secretly performed by one of the
"buckle-beggars" of the time, and then publicly proclaimed. Welsh was
now the husband of one of the ladies on the farm, and, for a
substantial bribe, the agent accepted him as tenant.
The brothers on hearing the news hurried back to the old home, but
arrived too late. The agent received them with great courtesy. They
reminded him that their ancestors had reclaimed the place from mere
bog and wilderness; that their father had expended large sums in
building the houses and draining the land; that they themselves had
paid exorbitant rents without demur; and that now their old home with
all of these improvements had been confiscated, without cause or
notice, by the man who had robbed and degraded the family.
The agent seemed greatly pained, but of course he was only an agent,
and obliged to do whatever the landlord desired. Failing to get
redress from the agent, the brothers unfortunately took the law into
their own hands, and were arrested for trespass and assault. They were
tried before the agent, and sent to prison and hard labor.
Thus the man Welsh, who afterward assumed the name Bronte, carried out
his purpose. His threat of vengeance was also fulfilled. Mother,
sisters, were scattered abroad, and so effectively that I have not
been able, after much searching, to find a single trace of any of them
save Hugh and his descendants.