we appoint an ambassador or a minister, we ought to confer upon him the
temporary rank of admiral or general, and allow him to wear the
corresponding uniform at public functions in foreign countries. I would
recommend this for the reason that it is not consonant with the dignity
of the United States of America that her representative should appear
upon occasions of state in a dress which makes him glaringly conspicuous;
and that is what his present undertaker-outfit does when it appears, with
its dismal smudge, in the midst of the butterfly splendours of a
Continental court. It is a most trying position for a shy man, a modest
man, a man accustomed to being like other people. He is the most
striking figure present; there is no hiding from the multitudinous eyes.
It would be funny, if it were not such a cruel spectacle, to see the
hunted creature in his solemn sables scuffling around in that sea of
vivid colour, like a mislaid Presbyterian in perdition. We are all aware
that our representative's dress should not compel too much attention; for
anybody but an Indian chief knows that that is a vulgarity. I am saying
these things in the interest of our national pride and dignity. Our
representative is the flag. He is the Republic. He is the United States
of America. And when these embodiments pass by, we do not want them
scoffed at; we desire that people shall be obliged to concede that they
are worthily clothed, and politely.
Our Government is oddly inconsistent in this matter of official dress.
When its representative is a civilian who has not been a solider, it
restricts him to the black swallow-tail and white tie; but if he is a
civilian who has been a solider, it allows him to wear the uniform of his
former rank as an official dress. When General Sickles was minister to
Spain, he always wore, when on official duty, the dress uniform of a
major-general. When General Grant visited foreign courts, he went
handsomely and properly ablaze in the uniform of a full general, and was
introduced by diplomatic survivals of his own Presidential
Administration. The latter, by official necessity, went in the meek and
lowly swallow-tail--a deliciously sarcastic contrast: the one dress
representing the honest and honourable dignity of the nation; the other,
the cheap hypocrisy of the Republican Simplicity tradition. In Paris our
present representative can perform his official functions reputably
clothed; for he was an officer in the Civil War. In London our late
ambassador was similarly situated; for he, also, was an officer in the
Civil War. But Mr. Choate must represent the Great Republic--even at
official breakfasts at seven in the morning--in that same old funny
swallow-tail.
Our Government's notions about proprieties of costume are indeed very,
very odd--as suggested by that last fact. The swallow-tail is recognised
the world over as not wearable in the daytime; it is a night-dress, and a
night-dress only--a night-shirt is not more so. Yet, when our
representative makes an official visit in the morning, he is obliged by
his Government to go in that night-dress. It makes the very cab-horses
laugh.
The truth is, that for awhile during the present century, and up to
something short of forty years ago, we had a lucid interval, and dropped
the Republican Simplicity sham, and dressed our foreign representatives
in a handsome and becoming official costume. This was discarded
by-and-by, and the swallow-tail substituted. I believe it is not now
known which statesman brought about this change; but we all know that,
stupid as he was as to diplomatic proprieties in dress, he would not have
sent his daughter to a state ball in a corn-shucking costume, nor to a
corn-shucking in a state-ball costume, to be harshly criticised as an
ill-mannered offender against the proprieties of custom in both places.
And we know another thing, viz. that he himself would not have wounded
the tastes and feelings of a family of mourners by attending a funeral in
their house in a costume which was an offence against the dignities and
decorum prescribed by tradition and sanctified by custom. Yet that man
was so heedless as not to reflect that all the social customs of
civilised peoples are entitled to respectful observance, and that no man
with a right spirit of courtesy in him ever has any disposition to
transgress these customs.
There is still another argument for a rational diplomatic dress--a
business argument. We are a trading nation; and our representative is a
business agent. If he is respected, esteemed, and liked where he is
stationed, he can exercise an influence which can extend our trade and
forward our prosperity. A considerable number of his business activities
have their field in his social relations; and clothes which do not offend
against local manners and customers and prejudices are a valuable part of
his equipment in this matter--would be, if Franklin had died earlier.
I have not done with gratis suggestions yet. We made a great deal of
valuable advance when we instituted the office of ambassador. That lofty
rank endows its possessor with several times as much influence,
consideration, and effectiveness as the rank of minister bestows. For
the sake of the country's dignity and for the sake of her advantage
commercially, we should have ambassadors, not ministers, at the great
courts of the world.
But not at present salaries! No; if we are to maintain present salaries,
let us make no more ambassadors; and let us unmake those we have already
made. The great position, without the means of respectably maintaining
it--there could be no wisdom in that. A foreign representative, to be
valuable to his country, must be on good terms with the officials of the
capital and with the rest of the influential folk. He must mingle with
this society; he cannot sit at home--it is not business, it butters no
commercial parsnips. He must attend the dinners, banquets, suppers,
balls, receptions, and must return these hospitalities. He should return
as good as he gets, too, for the sake of the dignity of his country, and
for the sake of Business. Have we ever had a minister or an ambassador
who could do this on his salary? No--not once, from Franklin's time to
ours. Other countries understand the commercial value of properly lining
the pockets of their representatives; but apparently our Government has
not learned it. England is the most successful trader of the several
trading nations; and she takes good care of the watchmen who keep guard
in her commercial towers. It has been a long time, now, since we needed
to blush for our representatives abroad. It has become custom to send
our fittest. We send men of distinction, cultivation, character--our
ablest, our choicest, our best. Then we cripple their efficiency through
the meagreness of their pay. Here is a list of salaries for English and
American ministers and ambassadors:
City Salaries
American English
Paris $17,500 $45,000
Berlin 17,500 40,000
Vienna 12,000 40,000
Constantinople 10,000 40,000
St. Petersburg 17,500 39,000
Rome 12,000 35,000
Washington -- 32,500
Sir Julian Pauncefote, the English ambassador at Washington, has a very
fine house besides--at no damage to his salary.
English ambassadors pay no house rent; they live in palaces owned by
England. Our representatives pay house-rent out of their salaries. You
can judge by the above figures what kind of houses the United States
of America has been used to living in abroad, and what sort of
return-entertaining she has done. There is not a salary in our list
which would properly house the representative receiving it, and, in
addition, pay $3,000 toward his family's bacon and doughnuts--the strange
but economical and customary fare of the American ambassador's household,
except on Sundays, when petrified Boston crackers are added.
The ambassadors and ministers of foreign nations not only have generous
salaries, but their Governments provide them with money wherewith to pay
a considerable part of their hospitality bills. I believe our Government
pays no hospitality bills except those incurred by the navy. Through
this concession to the navy, that arm is able to do us credit in foreign
parts; and certainly that is well and politic. But why the Government
does not think it well and politic that our diplomats should be able to
do us like credit abroad is one of those mysterious inconsistencies which
have been puzzling me ever since I stopped trying to understand baseball
and took up statesmanship as a pastime.
To return to the matter of house-rent. Good houses, properly furnished,
in European capitals, are not to be had at small figures. Consequently,
our foreign representatives have been accustomed to live in garrets
--sometimes on the roof. Being poor men, it has been the best they could
do on the salary which the Government has paid them. How could they
adequately return the hospitalities shown them? It was impossible. It
would have exhausted the salary in three months. Still, it was their
official duty to entertain their influentials after some sort of fashion;
and they did the best they could with their limited purse. In return for
champagne they furnished lemonade; in return for game they furnished ham;
in return for whale they furnished sardines; in return for liquors they
furnished condensed milk; in return for the battalion of liveried and
powdered flunkeys they furnished the hired girl; in return for the fairy
wilderness of sumptuous decorations they draped the stove with the
American flag; in return for the orchestra they furnished zither and
ballads by the family; in return for the ball--but they didn't return the
ball, except in cases where the United States lived on the roof and had
room.
Is this an exaggeration? It can hardly be called that. I saw nearly the
equivalent of it, a good many years ago. A minister was trying to create
influential friends for a project which might be worth ten millions a
year to the agriculturists of the Republic; and our Government had
furnished him ham and lemonade to persuade the opposition with. The
minister did not succeed. He might not have succeeded if his salary had
been what it ought to have been--$50,000 or $60,00 a year--but his
chances would have been very greatly improved. And in any case, he and
his dinners and his country would not have been joked about by the
hard-hearted and pitied by the compassionate.
Any experienced 'drummer' will testify that, when you want to do
business, there is no economy in ham and lemonade. The drummer takes his
country customer to the theatre, the opera, the circus; dines him, wines
him, entertains him all the day and all the night in luxurious style; and
plays upon his human nature in all seductive ways. For he knows, by old
experience, that this is the best way to get a profitable order out of
him. He has this reward. All Governments except our own play the same
policy, with the same end in view; and they, also, have their reward.
But ours refuses to do business by business ways, and sticks to ham and
lemonade. This is the most expensive diet known to the diplomatic
service of the world.
Ours is the only country of first importance that pays its foreign
representatives trifling salaries. If we were poor, we could not find
great fault with these economies, perhaps--at least one could find a sort
of plausible excuse for them. But we are not poor; and the excuse fails.
As shown above, some of our important diplomatic representatives receive
$12,000; others, $17,500. These salaries are all ham and lemonade, and
unworthy of the flag. When we have a rich ambassador in London or Paris,
he lives as the ambassador of a country like ours ought to live, and it
costs him $100,000 a year to do it. But why should we allow him to pay
that out of his private pocket? There is nothing fair about it; and the
Republic is no proper subject for any one's charity. In several cases
our salaries of $12,000 should be $50,000; and all of the salaries of
$17,500 ought to be $75,000 or $100,000, since we pay no representative's
house-rent. Our State Department realises the mistake which we are
making, and would like to rectify it, but it has not the power.
When a young girl reaches eighteen she is recognised as being a woman.
She adds six inches to her skirt, she unplaits her dangling braids and
balls her hair on top of her head, she stops sleeping with her little
sister and has a room to herself, and becomes in many ways a thundering
expense. But she is in society now; and papa has to stand it. There is
no avoiding it. Very well. The Great Republic lengthened her skirts
last year, balled up her hair, and entered the world's society. This
means that, if she would prosper and stand fair with society, she must
put aside some of her dearest and darlingest young ways and
superstitions, and do as society does. Of course, she can decline if she
wants to; but this would be unwise. She ought to realise, now that she
has 'come out,' that this is a right and proper time to change a part of
her style. She is in Rome; and it has long been granted that when one is
in Rome it is good policy to do as Rome does. To advantage Rome? No--to
advantage herself.
If our Government has really paid representatives of ours on the Paris
Commission $100,000 apiece for six weeks' work, I feel sure that it is
the best cash investment the nation has made in many years. For it seems
quite impossible that, with that precedent on the books, the Government
will be able to find excuses for continuing its diplomatic salaries at
the present mean figure.
P.S.--VIENNA, January 10.--I see, by this morning's telegraphic news,
that I am not to be the new ambassador here, after all. This--well, I
hardly know what to say. I--well, of course, I do not care anything
about it; but it is at least a surprise. I have for many months been
using my influence at Washington to get this diplomatic see expanded into
an ambassadorship, with the idea, of course th--But never mind. Let it
go. It is of no consequence. I say it calmly; for I am calm. But at
the same time--However, the subject has no interest for me, and never
had. I never really intended to take the place, anyway--I made up my
mind to it months and months ago, nearly a year. But now, while I am
calm, I would like to say this--that so long as I shall continue to
possess an American's proper pride in the honour and dignity of his
country, I will not take any ambassadorship in the gift of the flag at a
salary short of $75,000 a year. If I shall be charged with wanting to
live beyond my country's means, I cannot help it. A country which cannot
afford ambassador's wages should be ashamed to have ambassadors.
Think of a Seventeen-thousand-five-hundred-dollar ambassador!
Particularly for America. Why it is the most ludicrous spectacle, the
most inconsistent and incongruous spectable, contrivable by even the most
diseased imagination. It is a billionaire in a paper collar, a king in a
breechclout, an archangel in a tin halo. And, for pure sham and
hypocrisy, the salary is just the match of the ambassador's official
clothes--that boastful advertisement of a Republican Simplicity which
manifests itself at home in Fifty-thousand-dollar salaries to insurance
presidents and railway lawyers, and in domestic palaces whose fittings
and furnishings often transcend in costly display and splendour and
richness the fittings and furnishings of the palaces of the sceptred
masters of Europe; and which has invented and exported to the Old World
the palace-car, the sleeping-car, the tram-car, the electric trolley, the
best bicycles, the best motor-cars, the steam-heater, the best and
smartest systems of electric calls and telephonic aids to laziness and
comfort, the elevator, the private bath-room (hot and cold water on tap),
the palace-hotel, with its multifarious conveniences, comforts, shows,
and luxuries, the--oh, the list is interminable! In a word, Republican
Simplicity found Europe with one shirt on her back, so to speak, as far
as real luxuries, conveniences, and the comforts of life go, and has
clothed her to the chin with the latter. We are the lavishest and
showiest and most luxury-loving people on the earth; and at our masthead
we fly one true and honest symbol, the gaudiest flag the world has ever
seen. Oh, Republican Simplicity, there are many, many humbugs in the
world, but none to which you need take off your hat!
LUCK
[NOTE.--This is not a fancy sketch. I got it from a clergyman who was
an instructor at Woolwich forty years ago, and who vouched for its truth.
--M.T.]
It was at a banquet in London in honour of one of the two or three
conspicuously illustrious English military names of this generation.
For reasons which will presently appear, I will withhold his real name
and titles, and call him Lieutenant-General Lord Arthur Scoresby, V.C.,
K.C.B., etc., etc., etc. What a fascination there is in a renowned name!
There say the man, in actual flesh, whom I had heard of so many thousands
of times since that day, thirty years before, when his name shot suddenly
to the zenith from a Crimean battle-field, to remain for ever celebrated.
It was food and drink to me to look, and look, and look at that demigod;
scanning, searching, noting: the quietness, the reserve, the noble
gravity of his countenance; the simple honesty that expressed itself all
over him; the sweet unconsciousness of his greatness--unconsciousness of
the hundreds of admiring eyes fastened upon him, unconsciousness of the
deep, loving, sincere worship welling out of the breasts of those people
and flowing toward him.
The clergyman at my left was an old acquaintance of mine--clergyman now,
but had spent the first half of his life in the camp and field, and as an
instructor in the military school at Woolwich. Just at the moment I have
been talking about, a veiled and singular light glimmered in his eyes,
and he leaned down and muttered confidentially to me--indicating the hero
of the banquet with a gesture,--'Privately--his glory is an accident
--just a product of incredible luck.'
This verdict was a great surprise to me. If its subject had been
Napoleon, or Socrates, or Solomon, my astonishment could not have been
greater.
Some days later came the explanation of this strange remark, and this is
what the Reverend told me.
About forty years ago I was an instructor in the military academy at
Woolwich. I was present in one of the sections when young Scoresby
underwent his preliminary examination. I was touched to the quick with
pity; for the rest of the class answered up brightly and handsomely,
while he--why, dear me, he didn't know anything, so to speak. He was
evidently good, and sweet, and lovable, and guileless; and so it was
exceedingly painful to see him stand there, as serene as a graven image,
and deliver himself of answers which were veritably miraculous for
stupidity and ignorance. All the compassion in me was aroused in his
behalf. I said to myself, when he comes to be examined again, he will be
flung over, of course; so it will be simple a harmless act of charity to
ease his fall as much as I can.
I took him aside, and found that he knew a little of Caesar's history;
and as he didn't know anything else, I went to work and drilled him like
a galley-slave on a certain line of stock questions concerning Caesar
which I knew would be used. If you'll believe me, he went through with
flying colours on examination day! He went through on that purely
superficial 'cram', and got compliments, too, while others, who knew a
thousand times more than he, got plucked. By some strangely lucky
accident--an accident not likely to happen twice in a century--he was
asked no question outside of the narrow limits of his drill.
It was stupefying. Well, although through his course I stood by him,
with something of the sentiment which a mother feels for a crippled
child; and he always saved himself--just by miracle, apparently.
Now of course the thing that would expose him and kill him at last was
mathematics. I resolved to make his death as easy as I could; so I
drilled him and crammed him, and crammed him and drilled him, just on the
line of questions which the examiner would be most likely to use, and
then launched him on his fate. Well, sir, try to conceive of the result:
to my consternation, he took the first prize! And with it he got a
perfect ovation in the way of compliments.
Sleep! There was no more sleep for me for a week. My conscience
tortured me day and night. What I had done I had done purely through
charity, and only to ease the poor youth's fall--I never had dreamed of
any such preposterous result as the thing that had happened. I felt as
guilty and miserable as the creator of Frankenstein. Here was a
wooden-head whom I had put in the way of glittering promotions and
prodigious responsibilities, and but one thing could happen: he and his
responsibilities would all go to ruin together at the first opportunity.
The Crimean war had just broken out. Of course there had to be a war, I
said to myself: we couldn't have peace and give this donkey a chance to
die before he is found out. I waited for the earthquake. It came. And
it made me reel when it did come. He was actually gazetted to a
captaincy in a marching regiment! Better men grow old and gray in the
service before they climb to a sublimity like that. And who could ever
have foreseen that they would go and put such a load of responsibility on
such green and inadequate shoulders? I could just barely have stood it
if they had made him a cornet; but a captain--think of it! I thought my
hair would turn white.
Consider what I did--I who so loved repose and inaction. I said to
myself, I am responsible to the country for this, and I must go along
with him and protect the country against him as far as I can. So I took
my poor little capital that I had saved up through years of work and
grinding economy, and went with a sigh and bought a cornetcy in his
regiment, and away we went to the field.
And there--oh dear, it was awful. Blunders? why, he never did anything
but blunder. But, you see, nobody was in the fellow's secret--everybody
had him focused wrong, and necessarily misinterpreted his performance
every time--consequently they took his idiotic blunders for inspirations
of genius; they did honestly! His mildest blunders were enough to make a
man in his right mind cry; and they did make me cry--and rage and rave
too, privately. And the thing that kept me always in a sweat of
apprehension was the fact that every fresh blunder he made increased the
lustre of his reputation! I kept saying to myself, he'll get so high
that when discovery does finally come it will be like the sun falling out
of the sky.
He went right along up, from grade to grade, over the dead bodies of his
superiors, until at last, in the hottest moment of the battle of ...
down went our colonel, and my heart jumped into my mouth, for Scoresby
was next in rank! Now for it, said I; we'll all land in Sheol in ten
minutes, sure.
The battle was awfully hot; the allies were steadily giving way all over
the field. Our regiment occupied a position that was vital; a blunder
now must be destruction. At this critical moment, what does this
immortal fool do but detach the regiment from its place and order a
charge over a neighbouring hill where there wasn't a suggestion of an
enemy! 'There you go!' I said to myself; 'this is the end at last.'
And away we did go, and were over the shoulder of the hill before the
insane movement could be discovered and stopped. And what did we find?
An entire and unsuspected Russian army in reserve! And what happened?
We were eaten up? That is necessarily what would have happened in
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. But no; those Russians argued that
no single regiment would come browsing around there at such a time. It
must be the entire English army, and that the sly Russian game was
detected and blocked; so they turned tail, and away they went, pell-mell,
over the hill and down into the field, in wild confusion, and we after
them; they themselves broke the solid Russia centre in the field, and
tore through, and in no time there was the most tremendous rout you ever
saw, and the defeat of the allies was turned into a sweeping and splendid
victory! Marshal Canrobert looked on, dizzy with astonishment,
admiration, and delight; and sent right off for Scoresby, and hugged him,
and decorated him on the field in presence of all the armies!
And what was Scoresby's blunder that time? Merely the mistaking his
right hand for his left--that was all. An order had come to him to fall
back and support our right; and instead he fell forward and went over the
hill to the left. But the name he won that day as a marvellous military
genius filled the world with his glory, and that glory will never fade
while history books last.
He is just as good and sweet and lovable and unpretending as a man can
be, but he doesn't know enough to come in when it rains. He has been
pursued, day by day and year by year, by a most phenomenal and
astonishing luckiness. He has been a shining soldier in all our wars for
half a generation; he has littered his military life with blunders, and
yet has never committed one that didn't make him a knight or a baronet or
a lord or something. Look at his breast; why, he is just clothed in
domestic and foreign decorations. Well, sir, every one of them is a
record of some shouting stupidity or other; and, taken together, they are
proof that the very best thing in all this world that can befall a man is
to be born lucky.
THE CAPTAIN'S STORY
There was a good deal of pleasant gossip about old Captain 'Hurricane'
Jones, of the Pacific Ocean--peace to his ashes! Two or three of us
present had known him; I, particularly well, for I had made four
sea-voyages with him. He was a very remarkable man. He was born on a
ship; he picked up what little education he had among his ship-mates;
he began life in the forecastle, and climbed grade by grade to the
captaincy. More than fifty years of his sixty-five were spent at sea.
He had sailed all oceans, seen all lands, and borrowed a tint from all
climates. When a man has been fifty years at sea, he necessarily knows
nothing of men, nothing of the world but its surface, nothing of the
world's thought, nothing of the world's learning but it's a B C, and that
blurred and distorted by the unfocussed lenses of an untrained mind.
Such a man is only a gray and bearded child. That is what old Hurricane
Jones was--simply an innocent, lovable old infant. When his spirit was
in repose he was as sweet and gentle as a girl; when his wrath was up he
was a hurricane that made his nickname seem tamely descriptive. He was
formidable in a fight, for he was of powerful build and dauntless
courage. He was frescoed from head to heel with pictures and mottoes
tattooed in red and blue India ink. I was with him one voyage when he
got his last vacant space tattooed; this vacant space was around his left
ankle. During three days he stumped about the ship with his ankle bare
and swollen, and this legend gleaming red and angry out from a clouding
of India ink: 'Virtue is its own R'd.' (There was a lack of room.) He
was deeply and sincerely pious, and swore like a fish-woman. He
considered swearing blameless, because sailors would not understand an
order unillumined by it. He was a profound Biblical scholar--that is, he
thought he was. He believed everything in the Bible, but he had his own
methods of arriving at his beliefs. He was of the 'advanced' school of
thinkers, and applied natural laws to the interpretation of all miracles,
somewhat on the plan of the people who make the six days of creation six
geological epochs, and so forth. Without being aware of it, he was a
rather severe satirist on modern scientific religionists. Such a man as
I have been describing is rabidly fond of disquisition and argument; one
knows that without being told it.
One trip the captain had a clergyman on board, but did not know he was a
clergyman, since the passenger list did not betray the fact. He took a
great liking to this Rev. Mr. Peters, and talked with him a great deal:
told him yarns, gave him toothsome scraps of personal history, and wove a
glittering streak of profanity through his garrulous fabric that was
refreshing to a spirit weary of the dull neutralities of undecorated
speech. One day the captain said, 'Peters, do you ever read the Bible?'
'Well--yes.'
'I judge it ain't often, by the way you say it. Now, you tackle it in
dead earnest once, and you'll find it'll pay. Don't you get discouraged,
but hang right on. First you won't understand it; but by-and-by things
will begin to clear up, and then you wouldn't lay it down to --ear.'
'Yes, I have heard that said.'
'And it's so too. There ain't a book that begins with it. It lays over
'em all, Peters. There's some pretty tough things in it--there ain't any
getting around that--but you stick to them and think them out, and when
once you get on the inside everything's plain as day.'
'The miracles, too, captain?'
'Yes, sir! the miracles, too. Every one of them. Now, there's that
business with the prophets of Baal; like enough that stumped you?'
'Well, I don't know but--'
'Own up, now; it stumped you. Well, I don't wonder. You hadn't any
experience in ravelling such things out, and naturally it was too many
for you. Would you like to have me explain that thing to you, and show
you how to get at the meat of these matters?'
'Indeed, I would, captain, if you don't mind.'
Then the captain proceeded as follows: 'I'll do it with pleasure. First,
you see, I read and read, and thought and thought, till I got to
understand what sort of people they were in the old Bible times, and then
after that it was clear and easy. Now, this was the way I put it up,
concerning Isaac[1] and the prophets of Baal. There was some mighty
sharp men amongst the public characters of that old ancient day, and
Isaac was one of them. Isaac had his failings--plenty of them, too; it
ain't for me to apologise for Isaac; he played a cold deck on the
prophets of Baal, and like enough he was justifiable, considering the
odds that was against him. No, all I say it, 't' wa'n't any miracle, and
that I'll show you so's 't you can see it yourself.
'Well, times had been getting rougher and rougher for prophets--that is,
prophets of Isaac's denomination. There were four hundred and fifty
prophets of Baal in the community, and only one Presbyterian; that is, if
Isaac was a Presbyterian, which I reckon he was, but it don't say.
Naturally, the prophets of Baal took all the trade. Isaac was pretty low
spirited, I reckon, but he was a good deal of a man, and no doubt he went
a-prophesying around, letting on to be doing a land-office business, but
't' wa'n't any use; he couldn't run any opposition to amount to anything.
By-and-by things got desperate with him; he sets his head to work and
thinks it all out, and then what does he do? Why he begins to throw out
hints that the other parties are this and that and t'other,--nothing very
definite, may be, but just kind of undermining their reputation in a
quiet way. This made talk, of course, and finally got to the King. The
King asked Isaac what he meant by his talk. Says Isaac, "Oh, nothing
particular; only, can they pray down fire from heaven on an altar? It
ain't much, maybe, your majesty, only can they do it? That's the idea."
So the King was a good deal disturbed, and he went to the prophets of
Baal, and they said, pretty airy, that if he had an altar ready, they
were ready; and they intimated he better get it insured, too.
'So next morning all the Children of Israel and their parents and the
other people gathered themselves together. Well, here was that great
crowd of prophets of Baal packed together on one side, and Isaac walking
up and down all alone on the other, putting up his job. When time was
called, Isaac let on to be comfortable and indifferent; told the other
team to take the first innings. So they went at it, the whole four
hundred and fifty, praying around the altar, very hopefully, and doing
their level best. They prayed an hour--two hours--three hours--and so
on, plumb till noon. It wa'n't any use; they hadn't took a trick. Of
course they felt kind of ashamed before all those people, and well they
might. Now, what would a magnanimous man do? Keep still, wouldn't he?
Of course. What did Isaac do? He graveled the prophets of Baal every
way he could think of. Says he, "You don't speak up loud enough; your
god's asleep, like enough, or may be he's taking a walk; you want to
holler, you know," or words to that effect; I don't recollect the exact
language. Mind I don't apologise for Isaac; he had his faults.
'Well, the prophets of Baal prayed along the best they knew how all the
afternoon, and never raised a spark. At last, about sundown, they were
all tuckered out, and they owned up and quit.
'What does Isaac do, now? He steps up and says to some friends of his,
there, "Pour four barrels of water on the altar!" Everybody was
astonished; for the other side had prayed at it dry, you know, and got
whitewashed. They poured it on. Says he, "Heave on four more barrels."
Then he says, "Heave on four more." Twelve barrels, you see, altogether.
The water ran all over the altar, and all down the sides, and filled up a
trench around it that would hold a couple of hogsheads--"measures," it
says: I reckon it means about a hogshead. Some of the people were going
to put on their things and go, for they allowed he was crazy. They
didn't know Isaac. Isaac knelt down and began to pray: he strung along,
and strung along, about the heathen in distant lands, and about the
sister churches, and about the state and the country at large, and about
those that's in authority in the government, and all the usual programme,
you know, till everybody had got tired and gone to thinking about
something else, and then, all of a sudden, when nobody was noticing, he
outs with a match and rakes it on the under side of his leg, and pff! up
the whole thing blazes like a house afire! Twelve barrels of water?
Petroleum, sir, PETROLEUM! that's what it was!'
'Petroleum, captain?'
'Yes, sir; the country was full of it. Isaac knew all about that. You
read the Bible. Don't you worry about the tough places. They ain't
tough when you come to think them out and throw light on them. There
ain't a thing in the Bible but what is true; all you want is to go
prayerfully to work and cipher out how 'twas done.'
[1] This is the captain's own mistake.
STIRRING TIMES IN AUSTRIA
I. THE GOVERNMENT IN THE FRYING-PAN.
Here in Vienna in these closing days of 1897 one's blood gets no chance
to stagnate. The atmosphere is brimful of political electricity. All
conversation is political; every man is a battery, with brushes overworn,
and gives out blue sparks when you set him going on the common topic.
Everybody has an opinion, and lets you have it frank and hot, and out of
this multitude of counsel you get merely confusion and despair. For no
one really understands this political situation, or can tell you what is
going to be the outcome of it.
Things have happened here recently which would set any country but
Austria on fire from end to end, and upset the Government to a certainty;
but no one feels confident that such results will follow here. Here,
apparently, one must wait and see what will happen, then he will know,
and not before; guessing is idle; guessing cannot help the matter. This
is what the wise tell you; they all say it; they say it every day, and it
is the sole detail upon which they all agree.
There is some approach to agreement upon another point: that there will
be no revolution. Men say: 'Look at our history, revolutions have not
been in our line; and look at our political map, its construction is
unfavourable to an organised uprising, and without unity what could a
revolt accomplish? It is disunion which has held our empire together for
centuries, and what it has done in the past it may continue to do now and
in the future.'
The most intelligible sketch I have encountered of this unintelligible
arrangement of things was contributed to the 'Traveller's Record' by Mr.
Forrest Morgan, of Hartford, three years ago. He says:
'The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy is the patchwork-quilt, the Midway
Plaisance, the national chain-gang of Europe; a state that is not a
nation, but a collection of nations, some with national memories and
aspirations and others without, some occupying distinct provinces
almost purely their own, and others mixed with alien races, but each
with a different language, and each mostly holding the others
foreigners as much as if the link of a common government did not
exist. Only one of its races even now comprises so much as
one-fourth of the whole, and not another so much as one-sixth; and
each has remained for ages as unchanged in isolation, however
mingled together in locality, as globules of oil in water. There
is nothing else in the modern world that is nearly like it, though
there have been plenty in past ages; it seems unreal and impossible
even though we know it is true; it violates all our feeling as to
what a country should be in order to have a right to exist; and it
seems as though it was too ramshackle to go on holding together any
length of time. Yet it has survived, much in its present shape, two
centuries of storms that have swept perfectly unified countries
from existence and others that have brought it to the verge of
ruin, has survived formidable European coalitions to dismember it,
and has steadily gained force after each; forever changing in its
exact make-up, losing in the West but gaining in the East, the
changes leave the structure as firm as ever, like the dropping off
and adding on of logs in a raft, its mechanical union of pieces
showing all the vitality of genuine national life.'
That seems to confirm and justify the prevalent Austrian faith that in
this confusion of unrelated and irreconcilable elements, this condition
of incurable disunion, there is strength--for the Government. Nearly
every day some one explains to me that a revolution would not succeed
here. 'It couldn't, you know. Broadly speaking, all the nations in the
empire hate the Government--but they all hate each other too, and with
devoted and enthusiastic bitterness; no two of them can combine; the
nation that rises must rise alone; then the others would joyfully join
the Government against her, and she would have just a fly's chance
against a combination of spiders. This Government is entirely
independent. It can go its own road, and do as it pleases; it has
nothing to fear. In countries like England and America, where there is
one tongue and the public interests are common, the Government must take
account of public opinion; but in Austria-Hungary there are nineteen
public opinions--one for each state. No--two or three for each state,
since there are two or three nationalities in each. A Government cannot
satisfy all these public opinions; it can only go through the motions of
trying. This Government does that. It goes through the motions, and
they do not succeed; but that does not worry the Government much.'
The next man will give you some further information. 'The Government has
a policy--a wise one--and sticks to it. This policy is--tranquillity:
keep this hive of excitable nations as quiet as possible; encourage them
to amuse themselves with things less inflammatory that politics. To this
end it furnishes them an abundance of Catholic priests to teach them to
be docile and obedient, and to be diligent in acquiring ignorance about
things here below, and knowledge about the kingdom of heaven, to whose
historic delights they are going to add the charm of their society
by-and-by; and further--to this same end--it cools off the newspapers
every morning at five o'clock, whenever warm events are happening.'
There is a censor of the press, and apparently he is always on duty and
hard at work. A copy of each morning paper is brought to him at five
o'clock. His official wagons wait at the doors of the newspaper offices
and scud to him with the first copies that come from the press. His
company of assistants read every line in these papers, and mark
everything which seems to have a dangerous look; then he passes final
judgment upon these markings. Two things conspire to give to the results
a capricious and unbalanced look: his assistants have diversified notions
as to what is dangerous and what isn't; he can't get time to examine
their criticisms in much detail; and so sometimes the very same matter
which is suppressed in one paper fails to be damned in another one, and
gets published in full feather and unmodified. Then the paper in which
it was suppressed blandly copies the forbidden matter into its evening
edition--provokingly giving credit and detailing all the circumstances in
courteous and inoffensive language--and of course the censor cannot say a
word.
Sometimes the censor sucks all the blood out of a newspaper and leaves it
colourless and inane; sometimes he leaves it undisturbed, and lets it
talk out its opinions with a frankness and vigour hardly to be surpassed,
I think, in the journals of any country. Apparently the censor sometimes
revises his verdicts upon second thought, for several times lately he has
suppressed journals after their issue and partial distribution. The
distributed copies are then sent for by the censor and destroyed. I have
two of these, but at the time they were sent for I could not remember
what I had done with them.
If the censor did his work before the morning edition was printed, he
would be less of an inconvenience than he is; but, of course, the papers
cannot wait many minutes after five o'clock to get his verdict; they
might as well go out of business as do that; so they print and take their
chances. Then, if they get caught by a suppression, they must strike out
the condemned matter and print the edition over again. That delays the
issue several hours, and is expensive besides. The Government gets the
suppressed edition for nothing. If it bought it, that would be joyful,
and would give great satisfaction. Also, the edition would be larger.
Some of the papers do not replace the condemned paragraphs with other
matter; they merely snatch they out and leave blanks behind--mourning
blanks, marked 'Confiscated'.
The Government discourages the dissemination of newspaper information in
other ways. For instance, it does not allow newspapers to be sold on the
streets: therefore the newsboy is unknown in Vienna. And there is a
stamp duty of nearly a cent upon each copy of a newspaper's issue. Every
American paper that reaches me has a stamp upon it, which has been pasted
there in the post-office or downstairs in the hotel office; but no matter
who put it there, I have to pay for it, and that is the main thing.
Sometimes friends send me so many papers that it takes all I can earn
that week to keep this Government going.
I must take passing notice of another point in the Government's measures
for maintaining tranquillity. Everybody says it does not like to see any
individual attain to commanding influence in the country, since such a
man can become a disturber and an inconvenience. 'We have as much talent
as the other nations,' says the citizen, resignedly, and without
bitterness, 'but for the sake of the general good of the country, we are
discouraged from making it over-conspicuous; and not only discouraged,
but tactfully and skillfully prevented from doing it, if we show too much
persistence. Consequently we have no renowned men; in centuries we have
seldom produced one--that is, seldom allowed one to produce himself. We
can say to-day what no other nation of first importance in the family of
Christian civilisations can say--that there exists no Austrian who has
made an enduring name for himself which is familiar all around the globe.
Another helper toward tranquillity is the army. It is as pervasive as
the atmosphere. It is everywhere. All the mentioned creators,
promoters, and preservers of the public tranquillity do their several
shares in the quieting work. They make a restful and comfortable
serenity and reposefulness. This is disturbed sometimes for a little
while: a mob assembles to protest against something; it gets noisy
--noisier--still noisier--finally too noisy; then the persuasive soldiery
comes charging down upon it, and in a few minutes all is quiet again, and
there is no mob.
There is a Constitution and there is a Parliament. The House draws its
membership of 425 deputies from the nineteen or twenty states heretofore
mentioned. These men represent peoples who speak eleven different
languages. That means eleven distinct varieties of jealousies,
hostilities, and warring interests. This could be expected to furnish
forth a parliament of a pretty inharmonious sort, and make legislation
difficult at times--and it does that. The Parliament is split up into
many parties--the Clericals, the Progressists, the German Nationalists,
the Young Czechs, the Social Democrats, the Christian Socialists, and
some others--and it is difficult to get up working combinations among
them. They prefer to fight apart sometimes.
The recent troubles have grown out of Count Badeni's necessities. He
could not carry on his Government without a majority vote in the House at
his back, and in order to secure it he had to make a trade of some sort.
He made it with the Czechs--the Bohemians. The terms were not easy for
him: he must issue an ordinance making the Czech tongue the official
language in Bohemia in place of the German. This created a storm. All
the Germans in Austria were incensed. In numbers they form but a fourth
part of the empire's population, but they urge that the country's public
business should be conducted in one common tongue, and that tongue a
world language--which German is.
However, Badeni secured his majority. The German element in Parliament
was apparently become helpless. The Czech deputies were exultant.
Then the music began. Badeni's voyage, instead of being smooth, was
disappointingly rough from the start. The Government must get the
Ausgleich through. It must not fail. Badeni's majority was ready to
carry it through; but the minority was determined to obstruct it and
delay it until the obnoxious Czech-language measure should be shelved.
The Ausgleich is an Adjustment, Arrangement, Settlement, which holds
Austria and Hungary together. It dates from 1867, and has to be renewed
every ten years. It establishes the share which Hungary must pay toward
the expenses of the imperial Government. Hungary is a kingdom (the
Emperor of Austria is its King), and has its own Parliament and
governmental machinery. But it has no foreign office, and it has no
army--at least its army is a part of the imperial army, is paid out of
the imperial treasury, and is under the control of the imperial war
office.
The ten-year arrangement was due a year ago, but failed to connect. At
least completely. A year's compromise was arranged. A new arrangement
must be effected before the last day of this year. Otherwise the two
countries become separate entities. The Emperor would still be King of
Hungary--that is, King of an independent foreign country. There would be
Hungarian custom-houses on the Austrian border, and there would be a
Hungarian army and a Hungarian foreign office. Both countries would be
weakened by this, both would suffer damage.
The Opposition in the House, although in the minority, had a good weapon
to fight with in the pending Ausgleich. If it could delay the Ausgleich
a few weeks, the Government would doubtless have to withdraw the hated
language ordinance or lose Hungary.
The Opposition began its fight. Its arms were the Rules of the House.
It was soon manifest that by applying these Rules ingeniously it could
make the majority helpless, and keep it so as long as it pleased. It
could shut off business every now and then with a motion to adjourn. It
could require the ayes and noes on the motion, and use up thirty minutes
on that detail. It could call for the reading and verification of the
minutes of the preceding meeting, and use up half a day in that way. It
could require that several of its members be entered upon the list of
permitted speakers previously to the opening of a sitting; and as there
is no time-limit, further delays could thus be accomplished.
These were all lawful weapons, and the men of the Opposition (technically
called the Left) were within their rights in using them. They used them
to such dire purpose that all parliamentary business was paralysed. The
Right (the Government side) could accomplish nothing. Then it had a
saving idea. This idea was a curious one. It was to have the President
and the Vice-Presidents of the Parliament trample the Rules under foot
upon occasion!
This, for a profoundly embittered minority constructed out of fire and
gun-cotton! It was time for idle strangers to go and ask leave to look
down out of a gallery and see what would be the result of it.
II. A MEMORABLE SITTING.
And now took place that memorable sitting of the House which broke two
records. It lasted the best part of two days and a night, surpassing by
half an hour the longest sitting known to the world's previous
parliamentary history, and breaking the long-speech record with Dr.
Lecher's twelve-hour effort, the longest flow of unbroken talk that ever
came out of one mouth since the world began.
At 8.45 on the evening of the 28th of October, when the House had been
sitting a few minutes short of ten hours, Dr. Lecher was granted the
floor. It was a good place for theatrical effects. I think that no
other Senate House is so shapely as this one, or so richly and showily
decorated. Its plan is that of an opera-house. Up toward the straight
side of it--the stage side--rise a couple of terraces of desks for the
ministry, and the official clerks or secretaries--terraces thirty feet
long, and each supporting about half a dozen desks with spaces between
them. Above these is the President's terrace, against the wall. Along
it are distributed the proper accommodations for the presiding officer
and his assistants. The wall is of richly coloured marble highly
polished, its paneled sweep relieved by fluted columns and pilasters of
distinguished grace and dignity, which glow softly and frostily in the
electric light. Around the spacious half-circle of the floor bends the
great two-storied curve of the boxes, its frontage elaborately ornamented
and sumptuously gilded. On the floor of the House the 425 desks radiate
fanwise from the President's tribune.
The galleries are crowded on this particular evening, for word has gone
about that the Ausgleich is before the House; that the President, Ritter
von Abrahamowicz, has been throttling the Rules; that the Opposition are
in an inflammable state in consequence, and that the night session is
likely to be of an exciting sort.
The gallery guests are fashionably dressed, and the finery of the women
makes a bright and pretty show under the strong electric light. But down
on the floor there is no costumery.
The deputies are dressed in day clothes; some of the clothes neat and
trim, others not; there may be three members in evening dress, but not
more. There are several Catholic priests in their long black gowns, and
with crucifixes hanging from their necks. No member wears his hat. One
may see by these details that the aspects are not those of an evening
sitting of an English House of Commons, but rather those of a sitting of
our House of Representatives.
In his high place sits the President, Abrahamowicz, object of the
Opposition's limitless hatred. He is sunk back in the depths of his
arm-chair, and has his chin down. He brings the ends of his spread
fingers together, in front of his breast, and reflectively taps them
together, with the air of one who would like to begin business, but must
wait, and be as patient as he can. It makes you think of Richelieu. Now
and then he swings his head up to the left or to the right and answers
something which some one has bent down to say to him. Then he taps his
fingers again. He looks tired, and maybe a trifle harassed. He is a
gray-haired, long, slender man, with a colourless long face, which, in
repose, suggests a death-mask; but when not in repose is tossed and
rippled by a turbulent smile which washes this way and that, and is not
easy to keep up with--a pious smile, a holy smile, a saintly smile, a
deprecating smile, a beseeching and supplicating smile; and when it is at
work the large mouth opens, and the flexible lips crumple, and unfold,
and crumple again, and move around in a genial and persuasive and angelic
way, and expose large glimpses of the teeth; and that interrupts the
sacredness of the smile and gives it momentarily a mixed worldly and
political and satanic cast. It is a most interesting face to watch. And
then the long hands and the body--they furnish great and frequent help to
the face in the business of adding to the force of the statesman's words.
To change the tense. At the time of which I have just been speaking the
crowds in the galleries were gazing at the stage and the pit with rapt
interest and expectancy. One half of the great fan of desks was in
effect empty, vacant; in the other half several hundred members were
bunched and jammed together as solidly as the bristles in a brush; and
they also were waiting and expecting. Presently the Chair delivered this
utterance:
'Dr. Lecher has the floor.'
Then burst out such another wild and frantic and deafening clamour as has
not been heard on this planet since the last time the Comanches surprised
a white settlement at night. Yells from the Left, counter-yells from the
Right, explosions of yells from all sides at once, and all the air sawed
and pawed and clawed and cloven by a writhing confusion of gesturing arms
and hands. Out of the midst of this thunder and turmoil and tempest rose
Dr. Lecher, serene and collected, and the providential length of his
enabled his head to show out of it. He began his twelve-hour speech. At
any rate, his lips could be seen to move, and that was evidence. On high
sat the President, imploring order, with his long hands put together as
in prayer, and his lips visibly but not hearably speaking. At intervals
he grasped his bell and swung it up and down with vigour, adding its keen
clamour to the storm weltering there below.
Dr. Lecher went on with his pantomime speech, contented, untroubled.
Here and there and now and then powerful voices burst above the din, and
delivered an ejaculation that was heard. Then the din ceased for a
moment or two, and gave opportunity to hear what the Chair might answer;
then the noise broke out again. Apparently the President was being
charged with all sorts of illegal exercises of power in the interest of
the Right (the Government side): among these, with arbitrarily closing an
Order of Business before it was finished; with an unfair distribution of
the right to the floor; with refusal of the floor, upon quibble and
protest, to members entitled to it; with stopping a speaker's speech upon
quibble and protest; and with other transgressions of the Rules of the
House. One of the interrupters who made himself heard was a young fellow
of slight build and neat dress, who stood a little apart from the solid
crowd and leaned negligently, with folded arms and feet crossed, against
a desk. Trim and handsome; strong face and thin features; black hair
roughed up; parsimonious moustache; resonant great voice, of good tone
and pitch. It is Wolf, capable and hospitable with sword and pistol;
fighter of the recent duel with Count Badeni, the head of the Government.
He shot Badeni through the arm and then walked over in the politest way
and inspected his game, shook hands, expressed regret, and all that. Out
of him came early this thundering peal, audible above the storm:
'I demand the floor. I wish to offer a motion.'
In the sudden lull which followed, the President answered, 'Dr. Lecher
has the floor.'
Wolf. 'I move the close of the sitting!'
P. 'Representative Lecher has the floor.' [Stormy outburst from the
Left--that is, the Opposition.]
Wolf. 'I demand the floor for the introduction of a formal notion.
[Pause]. Mr. President, are you going to grant it, or not? [Crash of
approval from the Left.] I will keep on demanding the floor till I get
it.'
P. 'I call Representative Wolf to order. Dr. Lecher has the floor.'
Wolf. 'Mr. President, are you going to observe the Rules of this House?'
[Tempest of applause and confused ejaculations from the Left--a boom and
roar which long endured, and stopped all business for the time being.]
Dr. von Pessler. 'By the Rules motions are in order, and the Chair must
put them to vote.'
For answer the President (who is a Pole--I make this remark in passing)
began to jangle his bell with energy at the moment that that wild
pandemonium of voices broke out again.
Wolf (hearable above the storm). 'Mr. President, I demand the floor. We
intend to find out, here and now, which is the hardest, a Pole's skull or
a German's!'
This brought out a perfect cyclone of satisfaction from the Left. In the
midst of it someone again moved an Adjournment. The President blandly
answered that Dr. Lecher had the floor. Which was true; and he was
speaking, too, calmly, earnestly, and argumentatively; and the official
stenographers had left their places and were at his elbows taking down
his words, he leaning and orating into their ears--a most curious and
interesting scene.
Dr. von Pessler (to the Chair). 'Do not drive us to extremities!'
The tempest burst out again: yells of approval from the Left, catcalls
and ironical laughter from the Right. At this point a new and most
effective noise-maker was pressed into service. Each desk has an
extension, consisting of a removable board eighteen inches long, six
wide, and a half-inch thick. A member pulled one of these out and began
to belabour the top of his desk with it. Instantly other members
followed suit, and perhaps you can imagine the result. Of all
conceivable rackets it is the most ear-splitting, intolerable, and
altogether fiendish.
The persecuted President leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes,
clasped his hands in his lap, and a look of pathetic resignation crept
over his long face. It is the way a country schoolmaster used to look in
days long past when he had refused his school a holiday and it had risen
against him in ill-mannered riot and violence and insurrection. Twice a
motion to adjourn had been offered--a motion always in order in other
Houses, and doubtless so in this one also. The President had refused to
put these motions. By consequence, he was not in a pleasant place now,
and was having a right hard time. Votes upon motions, whether carried or
defeated, could make endless delay, and postpone the Ausgleich to next
century.
In the midst of these sorrowful circumstances and this hurricane of yells
and screams and satanic clatter of desk-boards, Representative Dr.
Kronawetter unfeelingly reminds the Chair that a motion has been offered,
and adds: 'Say yes, or no! What do you sit there for, and give no
answer?'
P. 'After I have given a speaker the floor, I cannot give it to another.
After Dr. Lecher is through, I will put your motion.' [Storm of
indignation from the Left.]
Wolf (to the Chair). 'Thunder and lightning! look at the Rule governing
the case!'
Kronawetter. 'I move the close of the sitting! And I demand the ayes
and noes!'
Dr. Lecher. 'Mr. President, have I the floor?'
P. 'You have the floor.'
Wolf (to the Chair, in a stentorian voice which cleaves its way through
the storm). 'It is by such brutalities as these that you drive us to
extremities! Are you waiting till someone shall throw into your face the
word that shall describe what you are bringing about?[1] [Tempest of
insulted fury from the Right.] Is that what you are waiting for, old
Grayhead?' [Long-continued clatter of desk-boards from the Left, with
shouts of 'The vote! the vote!' An ironical shout from the Right, 'Wolf
is boss!']
Wolf keeps on demanding the floor for his motion. At length--
P. 'I call Representative Wolf to order! Your conduct is unheard of,
sir! You forget that you are in a parliament; you must remember where
you are, sir.' [Applause from the Right. Dr. Lecher is still peacefully
speaking, the stenographers listening at his lips.]
Wolf (banging on his desk with his desk-board). 'I demand the floor for
my motion! I won't stand this trampling of the Rules under foot--no, not
if I die for it! I will never yield. You have got to stop me by force.
Have I the floor?'
P. 'Representative Wolf, what kind of behaviour is this? I call you to
order again. You should have some regard for your dignity.'
Dr. Lecher speaks on. Wolf turns upon him with an offensive innuendo.
Dr. Lecher. 'Mr. Wolf, I beg you to refrain from that sort of
suggestions.' [Storm of hand-clapping from the Right.]
This was applause from the enemy, for Lecher himself, like Wolf, was an
Obstructionist.
Wolf growls to Lecher, 'You can scribble that applause in your album!'
P. 'Once more I call Representative Wolf to order! Do not forget that
you are a Representative, sir!'
Wolf (slam-banging with his desk-board). 'I will force this matter! Are
you going to grant me the floor, or not?'
And still the sergeant-at-arms did not appear. It was because there
wasn't any. It is a curious thing, but the Chair has no effectual means
of compelling order.
After some more interruptions:
Wolf (banging with his board). 'I demand the floor. I will not yield!'
P. 'I have no recourse against Representative Wolf. In the presence of
behaviour like this it is to be regretted that such is the case.' [A
shout from the Right, 'Throw him out!']
It is true he had no effective recourse. He had an official called an
'Ordner,' whose help he could invoke in desperate cases, but apparently
the Ordner is only a persuader, not a compeller. Apparently he is a
sergeant-at-arms who is not loaded; a good enough gun to look at, but not
valuable for business.
For another twenty or thirty minutes Wolf went on banging with his board
and demanding his rights; then at last the weary President threatened to
summon the dread order-maker. But both his manner and his words were
reluctant. Evidently it grieved him to have to resort to this dire
extremity. He said to Wolf, 'If this goes on, I shall feel obliged to
summon the Ordner, and beg him to restore order in the House.'
Wolf. 'I'd like to see you do it! Suppose you fetch in a few policemen
too! [Great tumult.] Are you going to put my motion to adjourn, or not?'
Dr. Lecher continues his speech. Wolf accompanies him with his
board-clatter.
The President despatches the Ordner, Dr. Lang (himself a deputy), on his
order-restoring mission. Wolf, with his board uplifted for defence,
confronts the Ordner with a remark which Boss Tweed might have translated
into 'Now let's see what you are going to do about it!' [Noise and tumult
all over the House.]
Wolf stands upon his rights, and says he will maintain them until he is
killed in his tracks. Then he resumes his banging, the President jangles
his bell and begs for order, and the rest of the House augments the
racket the best it can.
Wolf. 'I require an adjournment, because I find myself personally
threatened. [Laughter from the Right.] Not that I fear for myself;
I am only anxious about what will happen to the man who touches me.'
The Ordner. 'I am not going to fight with you.'
Nothing came of the efforts of the angel of peace, and he presently
melted out of the scene and disappeared. Wolf went on with his noise
and with his demands that he be granted the floor, resting his board at
intervals to discharge criticisms and epithets at the Chair. Once he
reminded the Chairman of his violated promise to grant him (Wolf) the
floor, and said, 'Whence I came, we call promise-breakers rascals!'
And he advised the Chairman to take his conscience to bed with him and
use it as a pillow. Another time he said that the Chair was making
itself ridiculous before all Europe. In fact, some of Wolf's language
was almost unparliamentary. By-and-by he struck the idea of beating out
a tune with his board. Later he decided to stop asking for the floor,
and to confer it upon himself. And so he and Dr. Lecher now spoke at the
same time, and mingled their speeches with the other noises, and nobody
heard either of them. Wolf rested himself now and then from
speech-making by reading, in his clarion voice, from a pamphlet.
I will explain that Dr. Lecher was not making a twelve-hour speech for
pastime, but for an important purpose. It was the Government's intention
to push the Ausgleich through its preliminary stages in this one sitting
(for which it was the Order of the Day), and then by vote refer it to a
select committee. It was the Majority's scheme--as charged by the
Opposition--to drown debate upon the bill by pure noise--drown it out and
stop it. The debate being thus ended, the vote upon the reference would
follow--with victory for the Government. But into the Government's
calculations had not entered the possibility of a single-barrelled speech
which should occupy the entire time-limit of the setting, and also get
itself delivered in spite of all the noise. Goliath was not expecting
David. But David was there; and during twelve hours he tranquilly pulled
statistical, historical, and argumentative pebbles out of his scrip and
slung them at the giant; and when he was done he was victor, and the day
was saved.
In the English House an obstructionist has held the floor with
Bible-readings and other outside matters; but Dr. Lecher could not have
that restful and recuperative privilege--he must confine himself strictly
to the subject before the House. More than once, when the President
could not hear him because of the general tumult, he sent persons to
listen and report as to whether the orator was speaking to the subject or
not.
The subject was a peculiarly difficult one, and it would have troubled
any other deputy to stick to it three hours without exhausting his
ammunition, because it required a vast and intimate knowledge--detailed
and particularised knowledge--of the commercial, railroading, financial,
and international banking relations existing between two great
sovereignties, Hungary and the Empire. But Dr. Lecher is President of
the Board of Trade of his city of Brunn, and was master of the situation.
His speech was not formally prepared. He had a few notes jotted down for
his guidance; he had his facts in his head; his heard was in his work;
and for twelve hours he stood there, undisturbed by the clamour around
him, and with grace and ease and confidence poured out the riches of his
mind, in closely reasoned arguments, clothed in eloquent and faultless
phrasing.
He is a young man of thirty-seven. He is tall and well-proportioned, and
has cultivated and fortified his muscle by mountain-climbing. If he were
a little handsomer he would sufficiently reproduce for me the Chauncey
Depew of the great New England dinner nights of some years ago; he has
Depew's charm of manner and graces of language and delivery.
There was but one way for Dr. Lecher to hold the floor--he must stay on
his legs. If he should sit down to rest a moment, the floor would be
taken from him by the enemy in the Chair. When he had been talking three
or four hours he himself proposed an adjournment, in order that he might
get some rest from his wearing labours; but he limited his motion with
the condition that if it was lost he should be allowed to continue
his speech, and if it was carried he should have the floor at
the next sitting. Wolf was now appeased, and withdrew his own
thousand-times-offered motion, and Dr. Lecher's was voted upon--and lost.
So he went on speaking.
By one o'clock in the morning, excitement and noise-making had tired out
nearly everybody but the orator. Gradually the seats of the Right
underwent depopulation; the occupants had slipped out to the
refreshment-rooms to eat and drink, or to the corridors to chat. Some
one remarked that there was no longer a quorum present, and moved a call
of the House. The Chair (Vice-President Dr. Kramarz) refused to put it to
vote. There was a small dispute over the legality of this ruling, but
the Chair held its ground.
The Left remained on the battle-field to support their champion. He went
steadily on with his speech; and always it was strong, virile,
felicitous, and to the point. He was earning applause, and this enabled
his party to turn that fact to account. Now and then they applauded him
a couple of minutes on a stretch, and during that time he could stop
speaking and rest his voice without having the floor taken from him.
At a quarter to two a member of the Left demanded that Dr. Lecher be
allowed a recess for rest, and said that the Chairman was 'heartless.'
Dr. Lecher himself asked for ten minutes. The Chair allowed him five.
Before the time had run out Dr. Lecher was on his feet again.
Wolf burst out again with a motion to adjourn. Refused by the Chair.
Wolf said the whole Parliament wasn't worth a pinch of powder. The Chair
retorted that that was true in a case where a single member was able to
make all parliamentary business impossible. Dr. Lecher continued his
speech.
The members of the Majority went out by detachments from time to time and
took naps upon sofas in the reception-rooms; and also refreshed
themselves with food and drink--in quantities nearly unbelievable--but
the Minority stayed loyally by their champion. Some distinguished
deputies of the Majority stayed by him too, compelled thereto by
admiration of his great performance. When a man has been speaking eight
hours, is it conceivable that he can still be interesting, still
fascinating? When Dr. Lecher had been speaking eight hours he was still
compactly surrounded by friends who would not leave him, and by foes (of
all parties) who could not; and all hung enchanted and wondering upon his
words, and all testified their admiration with constant and cordial
outbursts of applause. Surely this was a triumph without precedent in
history.
During the twelve-hour effort friends brought to the orator three glasses
of wine, four cups of coffee, and one glass of beer--a most stingy
re-enforcement of his wasting tissues, but the hostile Chair would permit
no addition to it. But, no matter, the Chair could not beat that man.
He was a garrison holding a fort, and was not to be starved out.
When he had been speaking eight hours his pulse was 72; when he had
spoken twelve, it was 100.
He finished his long speech in these terms, as nearly as a permissibly
free translation can convey them:
'I will now hasten to close my examination of the subject. I conceive
that we of the Left have made it clear to the honourable gentlemen of the
other side of the House that we are stirred by no intemperate enthusiasm
for this measure in its present shape....
'What we require, and shall fight for with all lawful weapons, is a
formal, comprehensive, and definitive solution and settlement of these
vexed matters. We desire the restoration of the earlier condition of
things; the cancellation of all this incapable Government's pernicious
trades with Hungary; and then--release from the sorry burden of the
Badeni ministry!
'I voice the hope--I know not if it will be fulfilled--I voice the deep
and sincere and patriotic hope that the committee into whose hands this
bill will eventually be committed will take its stand upon high ground,
and will return the Ausgleich-Provisorium to this House in a form which
shall make it the protector and promoter alike of the great interests
involved and of the honour of our fatherland.' After a pause, turning
towards the Government benches: 'But in any case, gentlemen of the
Majority, make sure of this: henceforth, as before, you find us at our
post. The Germans of Austria will neither surrender nor die!'
Then burst a storm of applause which rose and fell, rose and fell, burst
out again and again and again, explosion after explosion, hurricane after
hurricane, with no apparent promise of ever coming to an end; and
meantime the whole Left was surging and weltering about the champion, all
bent upon wringing his hand and congratulating him and glorifying him.
Finally he got away, and went home and ate five loaves and twelve baskets
of fish, read the morning papers, slept three hours, took a short drive,
then returned to the House, and sat out the rest of the thirty-three-hour
session.
To merely stand up in one spot twelve hours on a stretch is a feat which
very few men could achieve; to add to the task the utterance of a hundred
thousand words would be beyond the possibilities of the most of those
few; to superimpose the requirement that the words should be put into the
form of a compact, coherent, and symmetrical oration would probably rule
out the rest of the few, bar Dr. Lecher.
III.--CURIOUS PARLIAMENTARY ETIQUETTE.
In consequence of Dr. Lecher's twelve-hour speech and the other
obstructions furnished by the Minority, the famous thirty-three-hour
sitting of the House accomplished nothing. The Government side had made
a supreme effort, assisting itself with all the helps at hand, both
lawful and unlawful, yet had failed to get the Ausgleich into the hands
of a committee. This was a severe defeat. The Right was mortified, the
Left jubilant.
Parliament was adjourned for a week--to let the members cool off,
perhaps--a sacrifice of precious time; for but two months remained in
which to carry the all-important Ausgleich to a consummation.
If I have reported the behaviour of the House intelligibly, the reader
has been surprised by it, and has wondered whence these law-makers come
and what they are made of; and he has probably supposed that the conduct
exhibited at the Long Sitting was far out of the common, and due to
special excitement and irritation. As to the make-up of the House, it is
this: the deputies come from all the walks of life and from all the
grades of society. There are princes, counts, barons, priests, peasants,
mechanics, labourers, lawyers, judges, physicians, professors, merchants,
bankers, shopkeepers. They are religious men, they are earnest, sincere,
devoted, and they hate the Jews. The title of Doctor is so common in the
House that one may almost say that the deputy who does not bear it is by
that reason conspicuous. I am assured that it is not a self-granted
title, and not an honorary one, but an earned one; that in Austria it is
very seldom conferred as a mere compliment; that in Austria the degrees
of Doctor of Music, Doctor of Philosophy, and so on, are not conferred by
the seats of learning; and so, when an Austrian is called Doctor, it
means that he is either a lawyer or a physician, and that he is not a
self-educated man, but is college-bred, and has been diplomaed for merit.
That answers the question of the constitution of the House. Now as to
the House's curious manners. The manners exhibited by this convention of
Doctors were not at that time being tried as a wholly new experiment. I
will go back to a previous sitting in order to show that the deputies had
already had some practice.
There had been an incident. The dignity of the House had been wounded by
improprieties indulged in in its presence by a couple of the members.
This matter was placed in the hands of a committee to determine where the
guilt lay and the degree of it, and also to suggest the punishment. The
chairman of the committee brought in his report. By this it appeared
that in the course of a speech, Deputy Schrammel said that religion had
no proper place in the public schools--it was a private matter.
Whereupon Deputy Gregorig shouted, 'How about free love!'
To this, Deputy Iro flung out this retort: 'Soda-water at the Wimberger!'
This appeared to deeply offend Deputy Gregorig, who shouted back at Iro,
'You cowardly blatherskite, say that again!'
The committee had sat three hours. Gregorig had apologised. Iro
explained that he didn't say anything about soda-water at the Wimberger.
He explained in writing, and was very explicit: 'I declare upon my word
of honour that I did not say the words attributed to me.'
Unhappily for his word of honour, it was proved by the official
stenographers and by the testimony of several deputies that he did say
them.
The committee did not officially know why the apparently inconsequential
reference to soda-water at the Wimberger should move Deputy Gregorig to
call the utterer of it a cowardly blatherskite; still, after proper
deliberation, it was of the opinion that the House ought to formally
censure the whole business. This verdict seems to have been regarded as
sharply severe. I think so because Deupty Dr. Lueger, Burgermeister of
Vienna, felt it a duty to soften the blow to his friend Gregorig by
showing that the soda-water remark was not so innocuous as it might look;
that, indeed, Gregorig's tough retory was justifiable--and he proceeded
to explain why. He read a number of scandalous post-cards which he
intimated had proceeded from Iro, as indicated by the handwriting, though
they were anonymous. Some of them were posted to Gregorig at his place
of business and could have been read by all his subordinates; the others
were posted to Gregorig's wife. Lueger did not say--but everybody knew
--that the cards referred to a matter of town gossip which made Mr.
Gregorig a chief actor in a tavern scene where siphon-squirting played a
prominent and humorous part, and wherein women had a share.
There were several of the cards; more than several, in fact; no fewer
than five were sent in one day. Dr. Lueger read some of them, and
described others. Some of them had pictures on them; one a picture of a
hog with a monstrous snout, and beside it a squirting soda-siphon; below
it some sarcastic doggerel.
Gregorig dealt in shirts, cravats, etc. One of the cards bore these
words: 'Much-respected Deputy and collar-sewer--or stealer.'
Another: 'Hurrah for the Christian-Social work among the
women-assemblages! Hurrah for the soda-squirter!' Comment by Dr. Lueger:
'I cannot venture to read the rest of that one, nor the signature,
either.'
Another: 'Would you mind telling me if....' Comment by Dr. Lueger: 'The
rest of it is not properly readable.'
To Deputy Gregorig's wife: 'Much-respected Madam Gregorig,--The
undersigned desires an invitation to the next soda-squirt.' Comment by
Dr. Lueger: 'Neither the rest of the card nor the signature can I venture
to read to the House, so vulgar are they.'
The purpose of this card--to expose Gregorig to his family--was repeated
in others of these anonymous missives.
The House, by vote, censured the two improper deputies.
This may have had a modifying effect upon the phraseology of the
membership for a while, and upon its general exuberance also, but it was
not for long. As has been seen, it had become lively once more on the
night of the Long Sitting. At the next sitting after the long one there
was certainly no lack of liveliness. The President was persistently
ignoring the Rules of the House in the interest of the government side,
and the Minority were in an unappeasable fury about it. The ceaseless
din and uproar, the shouting and stamping and desk-banging, were
deafening, but through it all burst voices now and then that made
themselves heard. Some of the remarks were of a very candid sort, and I
believe that if they had been uttered in our House of Representatives
they would have attracted attention. I will insert some samples here.
Not in their order, but selected on their merits:
Mr. Mayreder (to the President). 'You have lied! You conceded the floor
to me; make it good, or you have lied!'
Mr. Glockner (to the President). 'Leave! Get out!'
Wolf (indicating the President). 'There sits a man to whom a certain
title belongs!'
Unto Wolf, who is continuously reading, in a powerful voice, from a
newspaper, arrive these personal remarks from the Majority: 'Oh, shut
your mouth!' 'Put him out!' 'Out with him!' Wolf stops reading a moment
to shout at Dr. Lueger, who has the floor but cannot get a hearing,
'Please, Betrayer of the People, begin!'
Dr. Lueger, 'Meine Herren--' ['Oho!' and groans.]
Wolf. 'That's the holy light of the Christian Socialists!'
Mr. Kletzenbauer (Christian Socialist). 'Dam--nation! Are you ever
going to quiet down?'
Wolf discharges a galling remark at Mr. Wohlmeyer.
Wohlmeyer (responding). 'You Jew, you!'
There is a moment's lull, and Dr. Lueger begins his speech. Graceful,
handsome man, with winning manners and attractive bearing, a bright and
easy speaker, and is said to know how to trim his political sails to
catch any favouring wind that blows. He manages to say a few words, then
the tempest overwhelms him again.
Wolf stops reading his paper a moment to say a drastic thing about Lueger
and his Christian-Social pieties, which sets the C.S.S. in a sort of
frenzy.
Mr. Vielohlawek. 'You leave the Christian Socialists alone, you
word-of-honour-breaker! Obstruct all you want to, but you leave them
alone! You've no business in this House; you belong in a gin-mill!'
Mr. Prochazka. 'In a lunatic-asylum, you mean!'
Vielohlawek. 'It's a pity that such man should be leader of the Germans;
he disgraces the German name!'
Dr. Scheicher. 'It's a shame that the like of him should insult us.'
Strohbach (to Wolf). 'Contemptible cub--we will bounce thee out of
this!' [It is inferable that the 'thee' is not intended to indicate
affection this time, but to re-enforce and emphasise Mr. Storhbach's
scorn.]
Dr. Scheicher. 'His insults are of no consequence. He wants his ears
boxed.'
Dr. Lueger (to Wolf). 'You'd better worry a trifle over your Iro's word
of honour. You are behaving like a street arab.'
Dr. Scheicher. 'It is infamous!'
Dr. Lueger. 'And these shameless creatures are the leaders of the German
People's Party!'
Meantime Wolf goes whooping along with his newspaper readings in great
contentment.
Dr. Pattai. 'Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! You haven't the floor!'
Strohbach. 'The miserable cub!'
Dr. Lueger (to Wolf, raising his voice strenuously above the storm).
'You are a wholly honourless street brat!' [A voice, 'Fire the
rapscallion out!' But Wolf's soul goes marching noisily on, just the
same.]
Schonerer (vast and muscular, and endowed with the most powerful voice in
the Reichsrath; comes ploughing down through the standing crowds, red,
and choking with anger; halts before Deputy Wohlmeyer, grabs a rule and
smashes it with a blow upon a desk, threatens Wohlmeyer's face with his
fist, and bellows out some personalities, and a promise). 'Only you
wait--we'll teach you!' [A whirlwind of offensive retorts assails him
from the band of meek and humble Christian Socialists compacted around
their leader, that distinguished religious expert, Dr. Lueger,
Burgermeister of Vienna. Our breath comes in excited gasps now, and we
are full of hope. We imagine that we are back fifty years ago in the
Arkansas Legislature, and we think we know what is going to happen, and
are glad we came, and glad we are up in the gallery, out of the way,
where we can see the whole thing and yet not have to supply any of the
material for the inquest. However, as it turns out, our confidence is
abused, our hopes are misplaced.]
Dr. Pattai (wildly excited). 'You quiet down, or we shall turn ourselves
loose! There will be cuffing of ears!'
Prochazka (in a fury). 'No--not ear boxing, but genuine blows!'
Vieholawek. 'I would rather take my hat off to a Jew than to Wolf!'
Strohbach (to Wolf). 'Jew flunky! Here we have been fighting the Jews
for ten years, and now you are helping them to power again. How much do
you get for it?'
Holansky. 'What he wants is a strait-jacket!'
Wolf continues his reading. It is a market report now.
Remark flung across the House to Schonerer: 'Die Grossmutter auf dem
Misthaufen erzeugt worden!'
It will be judicious not to translate that. Its flavour is pretty high,
in any case, but it becomes particularly gamy when you remember that the
first gallery was well stocked with ladies.
Apparently it was a great hit. It fetched thunders of joyous enthusiasm
out of the Christian Socialists, and in their rapture they flung biting
epithets with wasteful liberality at specially detested members of the
Opposition; among others, this one at Schonerer, 'Bordell in der
Krugerstrasse!' Then they added these words, which they whooped, howled,
and also even sand, in a deep-voiced chorus: 'Schmul Leeb Kohn! Schmul
Leeb Kohn! Schmul Leeb Kohn!' and made it splendidly audible above the
banging of desk-boards and the rest of the roaring cyclone of fiendish
noises. [A gallery witticism comes flitting by from mouth to mouth
around the great curve: 'The swan-song of Austrian representative
government!' You can note its progress by the applausive smiles and nods
it gets as it skims along.]
Kletzenbauer. 'Holofernes, where is Judith?' [Storm of laughter.]
Gregorig (the shirt-merchant). 'This Wolf-Theatre is costing 6,000
florins!'
Wolf (with sweetness). 'Notice him, gentlemen; it is Mr. Gregorig.'
[Laughter.]
Vieholawek (to Wolf). 'You Judas!'
Schneider. 'Brothel-knight!'
Chorus of Voices. 'East-German offal tub!'
And so the war of epithets crashes along, with never-diminishing energy,
for a couple of hours.
The ladies in the gallery were learning. That was well; for by-and-by
ladies will form a part of the membership of all the legislatures in the
world; as soon as they can prove competency they will be admitted. At
present, men only are competent to legislate; therefore they look down
upon women, and would feel degraded if they had to have them for
colleagues in their high calling.
Wolf is yelling another market report now.
Gessman. 'Shut up, infamous louse-brat!'
During a momentary lull Dr. Lueger gets a hearing for three sentences of
his speech. The demand and require that the President shall suppress the
four noisiest members of the Opposition.
Wolf (with a that-settles-it toss of the head). 'The shifty trickster of
Vienna has spoken!'
Iro belonged to Schonerer's party. The word-of-honour incident has given
it a new name. Gregorig is a Christian Socialist, and hero of the
post-cards and the Wimberger soda-squirting incident. He stands vast and
conspicuous, and conceited and self-satisfied, and roosterish and
inconsequential, at Lueger's elbow, and is proud and cocky to be in such
a great company. He looks very well indeed; really majestic, and aware
of it. He crows out his little empty remark, now and then, and looks as
pleased as if he had been delivered of the Ausgleich. Indeed, he does
look notably fine. He wears almost the only dress vest on the floor; it
exposes a continental spread of white shirt-front; his hands are posed at
ease in the lips of his trousers pockets; his head is tilted back
complacently; he is attitudinising; he is playing to the gallery.
However, they are all doing that. It is curious to see. Men who only
vote, and can't make speeches, and don't know how to invent witty
ejaculations, wander about the vacated parts of the floor, and stop in a
good place and strike attitudes--attitudes suggestive of weighty thought,
mostly--and glance furtively up at the galleries to see how it works; or
a couple will come together and shake hands in an artificial way, and
laugh a gay manufactured laugh, and do some constrained and
self-conscious attitudinising; and they steal glances at the galleries to
see if they are getting notice. It is like a scene on the stage--by-play
by minor actors at the back while the stars do the great work at the
front. Even Count Badeni attitudinises for a moment; strikes a reflective
Napoleonic attitude of fine picturesqueness--but soon thinks better of it
and desists. There are two who do not attitudinise--poor harried and
insulted President Abrahamowicz, who seems wholly miserable, and can find
no way to put in the dreary time but by swinging his bell and discharging
occasional remarks which nobody can hear; and a resigned and patient
priest, who sits lonely in a great vacancy on Majority territory and
munches an apple.
Schonerer uplifts his fog-horn of a voice and shakes the roof with an
insult discharged at the Majority.
Dr. Lueger. 'The Honourless Party would better keep still here!'
Gregorig (the echo, swelling out his shirt-front). 'Yes, keep quiet,
pimp!'
Schonerer (to Lueger). 'Political mountebank!'
Prochazka (to Schonerer). 'Drunken clown!'
During the final hour of the sitting many happy phrases were distributed
through the proceedings. Among them were these--and they are strikingly
good ones:
'Blatherskite!'
'Blackguard!'
'Scoundrel!'
'Brothel-daddy!'
This last was the contribution of Dr. Gessman, and gave great
satisfaction. And deservedly. It seems to me that it was one of the
most sparkling things that was said during the whole evening.
At half-past two in the morning the House adjourned. The victory was
with the Opposition. No; not quite that. The effective part of it was
snatched away from them by an unlawful exercise of Presidential force
--another contribution toward driving the mistreated Minority out of their
minds.
At other sittings of the parliament, gentlemen of the Opposition, shaking
their fists toward the President, addressed him as 'Polish Dog'. At one
sitting an angry deputy turned upon a colleague and shouted,
'----------!'
You must try to imagine what it was. If I should offer it even in the
original it would probably not get by the editor's blue pencil; to offer
a translation would be to waste my ink, of course. This remark was
frankly printed in its entirety by one of the Vienna dailies, but the
others disguised the toughest half of it with stars.
If the reader will go back over this chapter and gather its array of
extraordinary epithets into a bunch and examine them, he will marvel at
two things: how this convention of gentlemen could consent to use such
gross terms; and why the users were allowed to get out the place alive.
There is no way to understand this strange situation. If every man in
the House were a professional blackguard, and had his home in a sailor
boarding-house, one could still not understand it; for, although that
sort do use such terms, they never take them. These men are not
professional blackguards; they are mainly gentlemen, and educated; yet
they use the terms, and take them too. They really seem to attach no
consequence to them. One cannot say that they act like schoolboys; for
that is only almost true, not entirely. Schoolboys blackguard each other
fiercely, and by the hour, and one would think that nothing would ever
come of it but noise; but that would be a mistake. Up to a certain limit
the result would be noise only, but, that limit overstepped, trouble
would follow right away. There are certain phrases--phrases of a
peculiar character--phrases of the nature of that reference to
Schonerer's grandmother, for instance--which not even the most spiritless
schoolboy in the English-speaking world would allow to pass unavenged.
One difference between schoolboys and the law-makers of the Reichsrath
seems to be that the law-makers have no limit, no danger-line.
Apparently they may call each other what they please, and go home
unmutilated.
Now, in fact, they did have a scuffle on two occasions, but it was not on
account of names called. There has been no scuffle where that was the
cause.
It is not to be inferred that the House lacks a sense of honour because
it lacks delicacy. That would be an error. Iro was caught in a lie, and
it profoundly disgraced him. The House cut him, turned its back upon
him. He resigned his seat; otherwise he would have been expelled. But
it was lenient with Gregorig, who had called Iro a cowardly blatherskite
in debate. It merely went through the form of mildly censuring him.
That did not trouble Gregorig.
The Viennese say of themselves that they are an easy-going,
pleasure-loving community, making the best of life, and not taking it
very seriously. Nevertheless, they are grieved about the ways of their
Parliament, and say quite frankly that they are ashamed. They claim that
the low condition of the parliament's manners is new, not old. A
gentleman who was at the head of the government twenty years ago confirms
this, and says that in his time the parliament was orderly and
well-behaved. An English gentleman of long residence here endorses this,
and says that a low order of politicians originated the present forms of
questionable speech on the stump some years ago, and imported them into
the parliament.[2] However, some day there will be a Minister of
Etiquette and a sergeant-at-arms, and then things will go better. I mean
if parliament and the Constitution survive the present storm.
IV.--THE HISTORIC CLIMAX
During the whole of November things went from bad to worse. The
all-important Ausgleich remained hard aground, and could not be sparred
off. Badeni's government could not withdraw the Language Ordinance and
keep its majority, and the Opposition could not be placated on easier
terms. One night, while the customary pandemonium was crashing and
thundering along at its best, a fight broke out. It was a surging,
struggling, shoulder-to-shoulder scramble. A great many blows were
struck. Twice Schonerer lifted one of the heavy ministerial fauteuils
--some say with one hand--and threatened members of the Majority with it,
but it was wrenched away from him; a member hammered Wolf over the head
with the President's bell, and another member choked him; a professor was
flung down and belaboured with fists and choked; he held up an open
penknife as a defence against the blows; it was snatched from him and
flung to a distance; it hit a peaceful Christian Socialist who wasn't
doing anything, and brought blood from his hand. This was the only blood
drawn. The men who got hammered and choked looked sound and well next
day. The fists and the bell were not properly handled, or better results
would have been apparent. I am quite sure that the fighters were not in
earnest.
On Thanksgiving Day the sitting was a history-making one. On that day
the harried, bedevilled, and despairing government went insane. In order
to free itself from the thraldom of the Opposition it committed this
curiously juvenile crime; it moved an important change of the Rules of
the House, forbade debate upon the motion, put it to a stand-up vote
instead of ayes and noes, and then gravely claimed that it had been
adopted; whereas, to even the dullest witness--if I without immodesty may
pretend to that place--it was plain that nothing legitimately to be
called a vote had been taken at all.
I think that Saltpeter never uttered a truer thing than when he said,
'Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.' Evidently the
government's mind was tottering when this bald insults to the House was
the best way it could contrive for getting out of the frying-pan.
The episode would have been funny if the matter at stake had been a
trifle; but in the circumstances it was pathetic. The usual storm was
raging in the House. As usual, many of the Majority and the most of the
Minority were standing up--to have a better chance to exchange epithets
and make other noises. Into this storm Count Falkenhayn entered, with
his paper in his hand; and at once there was a rush to get near him and
hear him read his motion. In a moment he was walled in by listeners.
The several clauses of his motion were loudly applauded by these allies,
and as loudly disapplauded--if I may invent a word--by such of the
Opposition as could hear his voice. When he took his seat the President
promptly put the motion--persons desiring to vote in the affirmative,
stand up! The House was already standing up; had been standing for an
hour; and before a third of it had found out what the President had been
saying, he had proclaimed the adoption of the motion! And only a few
heard that. In fact, when that House is legislating you can't tell it
from artillery practice.
You will realise what a happy idea it was to side-track the lawful ayes
and noes and substitute a stand-up vote by this fact: that a little
later, when a deputation of deputies waited upon the President and asked
him if he was actually willing to claim that that measure had been
passed, he answered, 'Yes--and unanimously.' It shows that in effect the
whole House was on its feet when that trick was sprung.
The 'Lex Falkenhayn,' thus strangely born, gave the President power to
suspend for three days any deputy who should continue to be disorderly
after being called to order twice, and it also placed at his disposal
such force as might be necessary to make the suspension effective. So
the House had a sergeant-at-arms at last, and a more formidable one, as
to power, than any other legislature in Christendom had ever possessed.
The Lex Falkenhayn also gave the House itself authority to suspend
members for thirty days.
On these terms the Ausgleich could be put through in an hour--apparently.
The Opposition would have to sit meek and quiet, and stop obstructing, or
be turned into the street, deputy after deputy, leaving the Majority an
unvexed field for its work.
Certainly the thing looked well. The government was out of the
frying-pan at last. It congratulated itself, and was almost girlishly
happy. Its stock rose suddenly from less than nothing to a premium. It
confessed to itself, with pride, that its Lex Falkenhayn was a
master-stroke--a work of genius.
However, there were doubters--men who were troubled, and believed that a
grave mistake had been made. It might be that the Opposition was
crushed, and profitably for the country, too; but the manner of it--the
manner of it! That was the serious part. It could have far-reaching
results; results whose gravity might transcend all guessing. It might be
the initial step toward a return to government by force, a restoration of
the irresponsible methods of obsolete times.
There were no vacant seats in the galleries next day. In fact,
standing-room outside the building was at a premium. There were crowds
there, and a glittering array of helmeted and brass-buttoned police, on
foot and on horseback, to keep them from getting too much excited. No
one could guess what was going to happen, but every one felt that
something was going to happen, and hoped he might have a chance to see
it, or at least get the news of it while it was fresh.
At noon the House was empty--for I do not count myself. Half an hour
later the two galleries were solidly packed, the floor still empty.
Another half-hour later Wolf entered and passed to his place; then other
deputies began to stream in, among them many forms and faces grown
familiar of late. By one o'clock the membership was present in full
force. A band of Socialists stood grouped against the ministerial desks,
in the shadow of the Presidential tribune. It was observable that these
official strongholds were now protected against rushes by bolted gates,
and that these were in ward of servants wearing the House's livery. Also
the removable desk-boards had been taken away, and nothing left for
disorderly members to slat with.
There was a pervading, anxious hush--at least what stood very well for a
hush in that House. It was believed by many that the Opposition was
cowed, and that there would be no more obstruction, no more noise. That
was an error.
Presently the President entered by the distant door to the right,
followed by Vice-President Fuchs, and the two took their way down past
the Polish benches toward the tribune. Instantly the customary storm of
noises burst out, and rose higher and higher, and wilder and wilder, and
really seemed to surpass anything that had gone before it in that place.
The President took his seat and begged for order, but no one could hear
him. His lips moved--one could see that; he bowed his body forward
appealingly, and spread his great hand eloquently over his breast--one
could see that; but as concerned his uttered words, he probably could not
hear them himself. Below him was that crowd of two dozen Socialists
glaring up at him, shaking their fists at him, roaring imprecations and
insulting epithets at him. This went on for some time. Suddenly the
Socialists burst through the gates and stormed up through the ministerial
benches, and a man in a red cravat reached up and snatched the documents
that lay on the President's desk and flung them abroad. The next moment
he and his allies were struggling and fighting with the half-dozen
uniformed servants who were there to protect the new gates. Meantime a
detail of Socialists had swarmed up the side steps and overflowed the
President and the Vice, and were crowding and shouldering and shoving
them out of the place. They crowded them out, and down the steps and
across the House, past the Polish benches; and all about them swarmed
hostile Poles and Czechs, who resisted them. One could see fists go up
and come down, with other signs and shows of a heady fight; then the
President and the Vice disappeared through the door of entrance, and the
victorious Socialists turned and marched back, mounted the tribune, flung
the President's bell and his remaining papers abroad, and then stood
there in a compact little crowd, eleven strong, and held the place as if
it were a fortress. Their friends on the floor were in a frenzy of
triumph, and manifested it in their deafening way. The whole House was
on its feet, amazed and wondering.
It was an astonishing situation, and imposingly dramatic. Nobody had
looked for this. The unexpected had happened. What next? But there can
be no next; the play is over; the grand climax is reached; the
possibilities are exhausted; ring down the curtain.
Not yet. That distant door opens again. And now we see what history
will be talking of five centuries hence: a uniformed and helmeted
battalion of bronzed and stalwart men marching in double file down the
floor of the House--a free parliament profaned by an invasion of brute
force!
It was an odious spectacle--odious and awful. For one moment it was an
unbelievable thing--a thing beyond all credibility; it must be a
delusion, a dream, a nightmare. But no, it was real--pitifully real,
shamefully real, hideously real. These sixty policemen had been
soldiers, and they went at their work with the cold unsentimentality of
their trade. They ascended the steps of the tribune, laid their hands
upon the inviolable persons of the representatives of a nation, and
dragged and tugged and hauled them down the steps and out at the door;
then ranged themselves in stately military array in front of the
ministerial estrade, and so stood.
It was a tremendous episode. The memory of it will outlast all the
thrones that exist to-day. In the whole history of free parliaments the
like of it had been seen but three times before. It takes its imposing
place among the world's unforgettable things. It think that in my
lifetime I have not twice seen abiding history made before my eyes, but I
know that I have seen it once.
Some of the results of this wild freak followed instantly. The Badeni
government came down with a crash; there was a popular outbreak or two in
Vienna; there were three or four days of furious rioting in Prague,
followed by the establishing there of martial law; the Jews and Germans
were harried and plundered, and their houses destroyed; in other Bohemian
towns there was rioting--in some cases the Germans being the rioters, in
others the Czechs--and in all cases the Jew had to roast, no matter which
side he was on. We are well along in December now;[3] the next new
Minister-President has not been able to patch up a peace among the
warring factions of the parliament, therefore there is no use in calling
it together again for the present; public opinion believes that
parliamentary government and the Constitution are actually threatened
with extinction, and that the permanency of the monarchy itself is a not
absolutely certain thing!
Yes, the Lex Falkenhayn was a great invention, and did what was claimed
for it--it got the government out of the frying-pan.
[1] That is, revolution.
[2] 'In that gracious bygone time when a mild and good-tempered spirit
was the atmosphere of our House, when the manner of our speakers was
studiously formal and academic, and the storms and explosions of to-day
were wholly unknown,' etc.--Translation of the opening remark of a
leading article in this morning's 'Neue Freie Presse,' December 11.
[3] It is the 9th.--M.T.
PRIVATE HISTORY OF THE 'JUMPING FROG' STORY
Five or six years ago a lady from Finland asked me to tell her a story in
our Negro dialect, so that she could get an idea of what that variety of
speech was like. I told her one of Hopkinson Smith's Negro stories, and
gave her a copy of 'Harper's Monthly' containing it. She translated it
for a Swedish newspaper, but by an oversight named me as the author of it
instead of Smith. I was very sorry for that, because I got a good
lashing in the Swedish press, which would have fallen to his share but
for that mistake; for it was shown that Boccaccio had told that very
story, in his curt and meagre fashion, five hundred years before Smith
took hold of it and made a good and tellable thing out of it.
I have always been sorry for Smith. But my own turn has come now. A few
weeks ago Professor Van Dyke, of Princeton, asked this question:
'Do you know how old your "Jumping Frog" story is?'
And I answered:
'Yes--forty-five years. The thing happened in Calaveras County, in the
spring of 1849.'
'No; it happened earlier--a couple of thousand years earlier; it is a
Greek story.'
I was astonished--and hurt. I said:
'I am willing to be a literary thief if it has been so ordained; I am
even willing to be caught robbing the ancient dead alongside of Hopkinson
Smith, for he is my friend and a good fellow, and I think would be as
honest as any one if he could do it without occasioning remark; but I am
not willing to antedate his crimes by fifteen hundred years. I must ask
you to knock off part of that.'
But the professor was not chaffing: he was in earnest, and could not
abate a century. He offered to get the book and send it to me and the
Cambridge text-book containing the English translation also. I thought I
would like the translation best, because Greek makes me tired. January
30th he sent me the English version, and I will presently insert it in
this article. It is my 'Jumping Frog' tale in every essential. It is
not strung out as I have strung it out, but it is all there.
To me this is very curious and interesting. Curious for several reasons.
For instance:
I heard the story told by a man who was not telling it to his hearers as
a thing new to them, but as a thing which they had witnessed and would
remember. He was a dull person, and ignorant; he had no gift as a
story-teller, and no invention; in his mouth this episode was merely
history--history and statistics; and the gravest sort of history, too;
he was entirely serious, for he was dealing with what to him were austere
facts, and they interested him solely because they were facts; he was
drawing on his memory, not his mind; he saw no humour in his tale,
neither did his listeners; neither he nor they ever smiled or laughed; in
my time I have not attended a more solemn conference. To him and to his
fellow gold-miners there were just two things in the story that were
worth considering. One was the smartness of its hero, Jim Smiley, in
taking the stranger in with a loaded frog; and the other was Smiley's
deep knowledge of a frog's nature--for he knew (as the narrator asserted
and the listeners conceded) that a frog likes shot and is already ready
to eat it. Those men discussed those two points, and those only. They
were hearty in their admiration of them, and none of the party was aware
that a first-rate story had been told in a first-rate way, and that it
brimful of a quality whose presence they never suspected--humour.
Now, then, the interesting question is, did the frog episode happen in
Angel's Camp in the spring of '49, as told in my hearing that day in the
fall of 1865? I am perfectly sure that it did. I am also sure that its
duplicate happened in Boeotia a couple of thousand years ago. I think it
must be a case of history actually repeating itself, and not a case of a
good story floating down the ages and surviving because too good to be
allowed to perish.
I would now like to have the reader examine the Greek story and the story
told by the dull and solemn Californian, and observe how exactly alike
they are in essentials.
[Translation.]
THE ATHENIAN AND THE FROG.[1]
An Athenian once fell in with a Boeotian who was sitting by the road-side
looking at a frog. Seeing the other approach, the Boeotian said his was
a remarkable frog, and asked if he would agree to start a contest of
frogs, on condition that he whose frog jumped farthest should receive a
large sum of money. The Athenian replied that he would if the other
would fetch him a frog, for the lake was near. To this he agreed, and
when he was gone the Athenian took the frog, and, opening its mouth,
poured some stones into its stomach, so that it did not indeed seem
larger than before, but could not jump. The Boeotian soon returned with
the other frog, and the contest began. The second frog first was
pinched, and jumped moderately; then they pinched the Boeotian frog. And
he gathered himself for a leap, and used the utmost effort, but he could
not move his body the least. So the Athenian departed with the money.
When he was gone the Boeotian, wondering what was the matter with the
frog, lifted him up and examined him. And being turned upside down, he
opened his mouth and vomited out the stones.
And here is the way it happened in California:
FROM 'THE CELEBRATED JUMPING FROG OF CALAVERAS COUNTY'
Well, thish-yer Smiley had rat-tarriers and chicken cocks, and tom-cats,
and all of them kind of things, till you couldn't rest, and you couldn't
fetch nothing for him to bet on but he'd match you. He ketched a frog
one day, and took him home, and said he cal'lated to educate him; and so
he never done nothing for three months but set in his back yard and learn
that frog to jump. And you bet you he did learn him, too. He'd give him
a little punch behind, and the next minute you'd see that frog whirling
in the air like a doughnut--see him turn one summerset, or maybe a couple
if he got a good start, and come down flat-footed and all right, like a
cat. He got him up so in the matter of ketching flies, and kep'him in
practice so constant, that he'd nail a fly every time as fur as he could
see him. Smiley said all a frog wanted was education, and he could do
'most anything--and I believe him. Why, I've seen him set Dan'l Webster
down here on this flor--Dan'l Webster was the name of the frog--and sing
out, 'Flies, Dan'l, flies!' and quicker'n you could wink he'd spring
straight up and snake a fly off'n the counter there, and flop down on the
floor ag'in as solid as a gob of mud, and fall to scratching the side of
his head with his hind foot as indifferent as if he hadn't no idea he'd
been doin' any more'n any frog might do. You never see a frog so modest
and straightfor'ard as he was, for all he was so gifted. And when it
come to fair and square jumping on a dead level, he could get over more
ground at one straddle than any animal of his breed you ever see.
Jumping on a dead level was his strong suit, you understand; and when it
came to that, Smiley would ante up money on him as long as he had a red.
Smiley was monstrous proud of his frog, and well he might be, for fellers
that had travelled and been everywheres all said he laid over any frog
that ever they see.
Well, Smiley kep' the beast in a little lattice box, and he used to fetch
him down-town sometimes and lay for a bet. One day a feller--a stranger
in the camp, he was--come acrost him with his box, and says:
'What might it be that you've got in the box?'
And Smiley says, sorter indifferent-like, 'It might be a parrot, or it
might be a canary, maybe, but it's ain't--it's only just a frog.'
And the feller took it, and looked at it careful, and turned it round
this way and that, and says, 'H'm--so 'tis. Well, what's he good for?'
'Well,' Smiley says, easy and careless, 'he's good enough for one thing,
I should judge--he can outjump any frog in Calaveras County.'
The feller took the box again and took another long, particular look, and
give it back to Smiley, and says, very deliberate, 'Well,' he says, 'I
don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog.'
'Maybe you don't,' Smiley says. 'Maybe you understand frogs and maybe
you don't understand 'em; maybe you've had experience, and maybe you
ain't only a amature, as it were. Anyways, I've got my opinion, and I'll
resk forty dollars that he can outjump any frog in Calaveras County.'
And the feller studies a minute, and then says, kinder sad like, 'Well,
I'm only a stranger here, and I ain't got no frog, but if I had a frog
I'd bet you.'
And then Smiley says: 'That's all right--that's all right; if you'll hold
my box a minute, I'll go and get you a frog.' And so the feller took the
box and put up his forty dollars along with Smiley's and set down to
wait.
So he set there a good while thinking and thinking to hisself, and then
he got the frog out and prized his mouth open and took a teaspoon and
filled him full of quail shot--filled him pretty near up to his chin--and
set him on the floor. Smiley he went to the swamp and slopped around in
the mud for a long time, and finally he ketched a frog and fetched him in
and give him to this feller, and says:
'Now, if you're ready, set him alongside of Dan'l, with his fore-paws
just even with Dan'l's, and I'll give the word.' Then he says, 'One
--two--three--git!' and him and the feller touched up the frogs from
behind, and the new frog hopped off lively; but Dan'l give a heave, and
hysted up his shoulders--so--like a Frenchman, but it warn't no use--he
couldn't budge; he was planted as solid as a church, and he couldn't no
more stir than if he was anchored out. Smiley was a good deal surprised,
and he was disgusted, too, but he didn't have no idea what the matter
was, of course.
The feller took the money and started away; and when he was going out at
the door he sorter jerked his thumb over his shoulder--so--at Dan'l, and
says again, very deliberate: 'Well,' he says, 'I don't see no p'ints
about that frog that's any better'n any other frog.'
Smiley he stood scratching his head and looking down at Dan'l a long
time, and at last he says, 'I do wonder what in the nation that frog
throw'd off for--I wonder if there ain't something the matter with him
--he 'pears to look mighty baggy, somehow.' And he ketched Dan'l by the
nape of the neck, and hefted him, and says, 'Why, blame my cats if he
don't weigh five pound!' and turned him upside down, and he belched out a
double handful of shot. And then he see how it was, and he was the
maddest man--he set the frog down and took out after that feeler, but he
never ketched him.
The resemblances are deliciously exact. There you have the wily Boeotain
and the wily Jim Smiley waiting--two thousand years apart--and waiting,
each equipped with his frog and 'laying' for the stranger. A contest is
proposed--for money. The Athenian would take a chance 'if the other
would fetch him a frog'; the Yankee says: 'I'm only a stranger here, and
I ain't got a frog; but if I had a frog I'd bet you.' The wily Boeotian
and the wily Californian, with that vast gulf of two thousand years
between, retire eagerly and go frogging in the marsh; the Athenian and
the Yankee remain behind and work a best advantage, the one with pebbles,
the other with shot. Presently the contest began. In the one case 'they
pinched the Boeotian frog'; in the other, 'him and the feller touched up
the frogs from behind.' The Boeotian frog 'gathered himself for a leap'
(you can just see him!), but 'could not move his body in the least'; the
Californian frog 'give a heave, but it warn't no use--he couldn't budge.'
In both the ancient and the modern cases the strangers departed with the
money. The Boeotian and the Californian wonder what is the matter with
their frogs; they lift them and examine; they turn them upside down and
out spills the informing ballast.
Yes, the resemblances are curiously exact. I used to tell the story of
the 'Jumping Frog' in San Francisco, and presently Artemus Ward came
along and wanted it to help fill out a little book which he was about to
publish; so I wrote it out and sent it to his publisher, Carleton; but
Carleton thought the book had enough matter in it, so he gave the story
to Henry Clapp as a present, and Clapp put it in his 'Saturday Press,'
and it killed that paper with a suddenness that was beyond praise. At
least the paper died with that issue, and none but envious people have
ever tried to rob me of the honour and credit of killing it. The
'Jumping Frog' was the first piece of writing of mine that spread itself
through the newspapers and brought me into public notice. Consequently,
the 'Saturday Press' was a cocoon and I the worm in it; also, I was the
gay-coloured literary moth which its death set free. This simile has
been used before.
Early in '66 the 'Jumping Frog' was issued in book form, with other
sketches of mine. A year or two later Madame Blanc translated it into
French and published it in the 'Revue des Deux Mondes,' but the result
was not what should have been expected, for the 'Revue' struggled along
and pulled through, and is alive yet. I think the fault must have been
in the translation. I ought to have translated it myself. I think so
because I examined into the matter and finally retranslated the sketch
from the French back into English, to see what the trouble was; that is,
to see just what sort of a focus the French people got upon it. Then the
mystery was explained. In French the story is too confused and chaotic
and unreposeful and ungrammatical and insane; consequently it could only
cause grief and sickness--it could not kill. A glance at my
retranslation will show the reader that this must be true.
[My Retranslation.]
THE FROG JUMPING OF THE COUNTY OF CALAVERAS
Eh bien! this Smiley nourished some terriers a rats, and some cocks of
combat, and some cats, and all sorts of things: and with his rage of
betting one no had more of repose. He trapped one day a frog and him
imported with him (et l'emporta chez lui) saying that he pretended to
make his education. You me believe if you will, but during three months
he not has nothing done but to him apprehend to jump (apprendre a sauter)
in a court retired of her mansion (de sa maison). And I you respond that
he have succeeded. He him gives a small blow by behind, and the instant
after you shall see the frog turn in the air like a grease-biscuit, make
one summersault, sometimes two, when she was well started, and refall
upon his feet like a cat. He him had accomplished in the art of to
gobble the flies (gober des mouches), and him there exercised
continually--so well that a fly at the most far that she appeared was a
fly lost. Smiley had custom to say that all which lacked to a frog it
was the education, but with the education she could do nearly all--and I
him believe. Tenez, I him have seen pose Daniel Webster there upon this
plank--Daniel Webster was the name of the frog--and to him sing, 'Some
flies, Daniel, some flies!'--in a fash of the eye Daniel had bounded and
seized a fly here upon the counter, then jumped anew at the earth, where
he rested truly to himself scratch the head with his behind-foot, as if
he no had not the least idea of his superiority. Never you not have seen
frog as modest, as natural, sweet as she was. And when he himself
agitated to jump purely and simply upon plain earth, she does more ground
in one jump than any beast of his species than you can know.
To jump plain--this was his strong. When he himself agitated for that
Smiley multiplied the bests upon her as long as there to him remained a
red. It must to know, Smiley was monstrously proud of his frog, and he
of it was right, for some men who were travelled, who had all seen, said
that they to him would be injurious to him compare to another frog.
Smiley guarded Daniel in a little box latticed which he carried bytimes
to the village for some bet.
One day an individual stranger at the camp him arrested with his box and
him said:
'What is this that you have then shut up there within?'
Smiley said, with an air indifferent:
'That could be a paroquet, or a syringe (ou un serin), but this no is
nothing of such, it not is but a frog.'
The individual it took, it regarded with care, it turned from one side
and from the other, then he said:
'Tiens! in effect!--At what is she good?'
'My God!' responded Smiley, always with an air disengaged, 'she is good
for one thing, to my notice (a mon avis), she can better in jumping (elle
peut batter en sautant) all frogs of the county of Calaveras.'
The individual retook the box, it examined of new longly, and it rendered
to Smiley in saying with an air deliberate:
'Eh bien! I no saw not that that frog had nothing of better than each
frog.' (Je ne vois pas que cette grenouille ait rien de mieux qu'aucune
grenouille.) [If that isn't grammar gone to seed, then I count myself no
judge.--M.T.]
'Possible that you not it saw not,' said Smiley; 'possible that you--you
comprehend frogs; possible that you not you there comprehend nothing;
possible that you had of the experience, and possible that you not be but
an amateur. Of all manner (de toute maniere) I bet forty dollars that
she batter in jumping no matter which frog of the country of Calaveras.'
The individual reflected a second, and said like sad:
'I not am but a stranger here, I no have not a frog; but if I of it had
one, I would embrace the bet.'
'Strong, well!' respond Smiley; 'nothing of more facility. If you will
hold my box a minute, I go you to search a frog (j'irai vous chercher.)'
Behold, then, the individual who guards the box, who puts his forty
dollars upon those of Smiley, and who attends (et qui attendre). He
attended enough longtimes, reflecting all solely. And figure you that he
takes Daniel, him opens the mouth by force and with a teaspoon him fills
with shot of the hunt, even him fills just to the chin, then he him puts
by the earth. Smiley during these times was at slopping in a swamp.
Finally he trapped (attrape) a frog, him carried to that individual, and
said:
'Now if you be ready, put him all against Daniel, with their before-feet
upon the same line, and I give the signal'--then he added: 'One, two
three--advance!'
Him and the individual touched their frogs by behind, and the frog new
put to jump smartly, but Daniel himself lifted ponderously, exhalted the
shoulders thus, like a Frenchman--to what good? He could not budge, he
is planted solid like a church, he not advance no more than if one him
had put at the anchor.
Smiley was surprised and disgusted, but he not himself doubted not of the
turn being intended (mais il ne se doutait pas du tour bien entendre).
The indidivual empocketed the silver, himself with it went, and of it
himself in going is that he no gives not a jerk of thumb over the
shoulder--like that--at the poor Daniel, in saying with his air
deliberate--(L'individu empoche l'argent, s'en va et en s'en allant
est-ce qu'il ne donne pas un coup de pouce pas-dessus l'epaule, comme ca,
au pauvre Daniel, en disant de son air delibere).
'Eh bien! I no see not that that frog has nothing of better than
another.'
Smiley himself scratched longtimes the head, the eyes fixed upon Daniel,
until that which at last he said:
'I me demand how the devil it makes itself that this beast has refused.
Is it that she had something? One would believe that she is stuffed.'
He grasped Daniel by the skin of the neck, him lifted and said:
'The wolf me bite if he no weigh not five pounds.'
He him reversed and the unhappy belched two handfuls of shot (et le
malheureux, etc.). When Smiley recognised how it was, he was like mad.
He deposited his frog by the earth and ran after that individual, but he
not him caught never.
It may be that there are people who can translate better than I can, but
I am not acquainted with them.
So ends the private and public history of the Jumping Frog of Calaveras
County, an incident which has this unique feature about it--that it is
both old and new, a 'chestnut' and not a 'chestnut;' for it was original
when it happened two thousand years ago, and was again original when it
happened in California in our own time.
P.S.
London, July, 1900.--Twice, recently, I have been asked this question:
'Have you seen the Greek version of the "Jumping Frog"?'
And twice I have answered--'No.'
'Has Professor Van Dyke seen it?'
'I suppose so.'
'Then you supposition is at fault.'
'Why?'
'Because there isn't any such version.'
'Do you mean to intimate that the tale is modern, and not borrowed from
some ancient Greek book.'
'Yes. It is not permissible for any but the very young and innocent to
be so easily beguiled as you and Van Dyke have been.'
'Do you mean that we have fallen a prey to our ignorance and simplicity?'
'Yes. Is Van Dyke a Greek scholar?'
'I believe so.'
'Then he knew where to find the ancient Greek version if one existed.
Why didn't he look? Why did he jump to conclusions?'
'I don't know. And was it worth the trouble, anyway?'
As it turns out, now, it was not claimed that the story had been
translated from the Greek. It had its place among other uncredited
stories, and was there to be turned into Greek by students of that
language. 'Greek Prose Composition'--that title is what made the
confusion. It seemed to mean that the originals were Greek. It was not
well chosen, for it was pretty sure to mislead.
Thus vanishes the Greek Frog, and I am sorry: for he loomed fine and
grand across the sweep of the ages, and I took a great pride in him.
M.T.
[1] Sidgwick, Greek Prose Composition, page 116
MY MILITARY CAMPAIGN
You have heard from a great many people who did something in the war; is
it not fair and right that you listen a little moment to one who started
out to do something in it, but didn't? Thousands entered the war, got
just a taste of it, and then stepped out again, permanently. These, by
their very numbers, are respectable, and are therefore entitled to a sort
of voice--not a loud one, but a modest one; not a boastful one, but an
apologetic one. They ought not to be allowed much space among better
people--people who did something--I grant that; but they ought at least
to be allowed to state why they didn't do anything, and also to explain
the process by which they didn't do anything. Surely this kind of light
must have a sort of value.
Out West there was a good deal of confusion in men's minds during the
first months of the great trouble--a good deal of unsettledness, of
leaning first this way, then that, then the other way. It was hard for
us to get our bearings. I call to mind an instance of this. I was
piloting on the Mississippi when the news came that South Carolina had
gone out of the Union on December 20, 1860. My pilot-mate was a New
Yorker. He was strong for the Union; so was I. But he would not listen
to me with any patience; my loyalty was smirched, to his eye, because my
father had owned slaves. I said, in palliation of this dark fact, that I
had heard my father say, some years before he died, that slavery was a
great wrong, and that he would free the solitary Negro he then owned if
he could think it right to give away the property of the family when he
was so straitened in means. My mate retorted that a mere impulse was
nothing--anybody could pretend to a good impulse; and went on decrying my
Unionism and libelling my ancestry. A month later the secession
atmosphere had considerably thickened on the Lower Mississippi, and I
became a rebel; so did he. We were together in New Orleans, January 26,
when Louisiana went out of the Union. He did his full share of the rebel
shouting, but was bitterly opposed to letting me do mine. He said that I
came of bad stock--of a father who had been willing to set slaves free.
In the following summer he was piloting a Federal gun-boat and shouting
for the Union again, and I was in the Confederate army. I held his note
for some borrowed money. He was one of the most upright men I ever knew;
but he repudiated that note without hesitation, because I was a rebel,
and the son of a man who had owned slaves.
In that summer--of 1861--the first wash of the wave of war broke upon the
shores of Missouri. Our State was invaded by the Union forces. They
took possession of St. Louis, Jefferson Barracks, and some other points.
The Governor, Claib Jackson, issued his proclamation calling out fifty
thousand militia to repel the invader.