O.M. Very well. You have conceded the reasoning power in two instances.

I come now to a mental detail wherein the ant is a long way the superior

of any human being. Sir John Lubbock proved by many experiments that an

ant knows a stranger ant of her own species in a moment, even when the

stranger is disguised--with paint. Also he proved that an ant knows

every individual in her hive of five hundred thousand souls. Also, after

a year's absence one of the five hundred thousand she will straightway

recognize the returned absentee and grace the recognition with a

affectionate welcome. How are these recognitions made? Not by color,

for painted ants were recognized. Not by smell, for ants that had been

dipped in chloroform were recognized. Not by speech and not by antennae

signs nor contacts, for the drunken and motionless ants were recognized

and the friend discriminated from the stranger. The ants were all of the

same species, therefore the friends had to be recognized by form and

feature--friends who formed part of a hive of five hundred thousand! Has

any man a memory for form and feature approaching that?

Y.M. Certainly not.

O.M. Franklin's ants and Lubbuck's ants show fine capacities of putting

this and that together in new and untried emergencies and deducting smart

conclusions from the combinations--a man's mental process exactly. With

memory to help, man preserves his observations and reasonings, reflects

upon them, adds to them, recombines, and so proceeds, stage by stage, to

far results--from the teakettle to the ocean greyhound's complex engine;

from personal labor to slave labor; from wigwam to palace; from the

capricious chase to agriculture and stored food; from nomadic life to

stable government and concentrated authority; from incoherent hordes to

massed armies. The ant has observation, the reasoning faculty, and the

preserving adjunct of a prodigious memory; she has duplicated man's

development and the essential features of his civilization, and you call

it all instinct!

Y.M. Perhaps I lacked the reasoning faculty myself.

O.M. Well, don't tell anybody, and don't do it again.

Y.M. We have come a good way. As a result--as I understand it--I am

required to concede that there is absolutely no intellectual frontier

separating Man and the Unrevealed Creatures?

O.M. That is what you are required to concede. There is no such

frontier--there is no way to get around that. Man has a finer and more

capable machine in him than those others, but it is the same machine and

works in the same way. And neither he nor those others can command the

machine--it is strictly automatic, independent of control, works when it

pleases, and when it doesn't please, it can't be forced.

Y.M. Then man and the other animals are all alike, as to mental

machinery, and there isn't any difference of any stupendous magnitude

between them, except in quality, not in kind.

O.M. That is about the state of it--intellectuality. There are

pronounced limitations on both sides. We can't learn to understand much

of their language, but the dog, the elephant, etc., learn to understand a

very great deal of ours. To that extent they are our superiors. On the

other hand, they can't learn reading, writing, etc., nor any of our fine

and high things, and there we have a large advantage over them.

Y.M. Very well, let them have what they've got, and welcome; there is

still a wall, and a lofty one. They haven't got the Moral Sense; we have

it, and it lifts us immeasurably above them.

O.M. What makes you think that?

Y.M. Now look here--let's call a halt. I have stood the other infamies

and insanities and that is enough; I am not going to have man and the

other animals put on the same level morally.

O.M. I wasn't going to hoist man up to that.

Y.M. This is too much! I think it is not right to jest about such

things.

O.M. I am not jesting, I am merely reflecting a plain and simple

truth--and without uncharitableness. The fact that man knows right from

wrong proves his INTELLECTUAL superiority to the other creatures; but the

fact that he can DO wrong proves his MORAL inferiority to any creature

that CANNOT. It is my belief that this position is not assailable.

Free Will

Y.M. What is your opinion regarding Free Will?

O.M. That there is no such thing. Did the man possess it who gave the

old woman his last shilling and trudged home in the storm?

Y.M. He had the choice between succoring the old woman and leaving her

to suffer. Isn't it so?

O.M. Yes, there was a choice to be made, between bodily comfort on the

one hand and the comfort of the spirit on the other. The body made a

strong appeal, of course--the body would be quite sure to do that; the

spirit made a counter appeal. A choice had to be made between the two

appeals, and was made. Who or what determined that choice?

Y.M. Any one but you would say that the man determined it, and that in

doing it he exercised Free Will.

O.M. We are constantly assured that every man is endowed with Free Will,

and that he can and must exercise it where he is offered a choice between

good conduct and less-good conduct. Yet we clearly saw that in that

man's case he really had no Free Will: his temperament, his training, and

the daily influences which had molded him and made him what he was,

COMPELLED him to rescue the old woman and thus save HIMSELF--save himself

from spiritual pain, from unendurable wretchedness. He did not make the

choice, it was made FOR him by forces which he could not control. Free

Will has always existed in WORDS, but it stops there, I think--stops

short of FACT. I would not use those words--Free Will--but others.

Y.M. What others?

O.M. Free Choice.

Y.M. What is the difference?

O.M. The one implies untrammeled power to ACT as you please, the other

implies nothing beyond a mere MENTAL PROCESS: the critical ability to

determine which of two things is nearest right and just.

Y.M. Make the difference clear, please.

O.M. The mind can freely SELECT, CHOOSE, POINT OUT the right and just

one--its function stops there. It can go no further in the matter. It

has no authority to say that the right one shall be acted upon and the

wrong one discarded. That authority is in other hands.

Y.M. The man's?

O.M. In the machine which stands for him. In his born disposition and

the character which has been built around it by training and environment.

Y.M. It will act upon the right one of the two?

O.M. It will do as it pleases in the matter. George Washington's

machine would act upon the right one; Pizarro would act upon the wrong

one.

Y.M. Then as I understand it a bad man's mental machinery calmly and

judicially points out which of two things is right and just--

O.M. Yes, and his MORAL machinery will freely act upon the other or the

other, according to its make, and be quite indifferent to the MIND'S

feeling concerning the matter--that is, WOULD be, if the mind had any

feelings; which it hasn't. It is merely a thermometer: it registers the

heat and the cold, and cares not a farthing about either.

Y.M. Then we must not claim that if a man KNOWS which of two things is

right he is absolutely BOUND to do that thing?

O.M. His temperament and training will decide what he shall do, and he

will do it; he cannot help himself, he has no authority over the mater.

Wasn't it right for David to go out and slay Goliath?

Y.M. Yes.

O.M. Then it would have been equally RIGHT for any one else to do it?

Y.M. Certainly.

O.M. Then it would have been RIGHT for a born coward to attempt it?

Y.M. It would--yes.

O.M. You know that no born coward ever would have attempted it, don't

you?

Y.M. Yes.

O.M. You know that a born coward's make and temperament would be an

absolute and insurmountable bar to his ever essaying such a thing, don't

you?

Y.M. Yes, I know it.

O.M. He clearly perceives that it would be RIGHT to try it?

Y.M. Yes.

O.M. His mind has Free Choice in determining that it would be RIGHT to

try it?

Y.M. Yes.

O.M. Then if by reason of his inborn cowardice he simply can NOT essay

it, what becomes of his Free Will? Where is his Free Will? Why claim

that he has Free Will when the plain facts show that he hasn't? Why

content that because he and David SEE the right alike, both must ACT

alike? Why impose the same laws upon goat and lion?

Y.M. There is really no such thing as Free Will?

O.M. It is what I think. There is WILL. But it has nothing to do with

INTELLECTUAL PERCEPTIONS OF RIGHT AND WRONG, and is not under their

command. David's temperament and training had Will, and it was a

compulsory force; David had to obey its decrees, he had no choice. The

coward's temperament and training possess Will, and IT is compulsory; it

commands him to avoid danger, and he obeys, he has no choice. But

neither the Davids nor the cowards possess Free Will--will that may do

the right or do the wrong, as their MENTAL verdict shall decide.

Not Two Values, But Only One

Y.M. There is one thing which bothers me: I can't tell where you draw

the line between MATERIAL covetousness and SPIRITUAL covetousness.

O.M. I don't draw any.

Y.M. How do you mean?

O.M. There is no such thing as MATERIAL covetousness. All covetousness

is spiritual

Y.M. ALL longings, desires, ambitions SPIRITUAL, never material?

O.M. Yes. The Master in you requires that in ALL cases you shall

content his SPIRIT--that alone. He never requires anything else, he

never interests himself in any other matter.

Y.M. Ah, come! When he covets somebody's money--isn't that rather

distinctly material and gross?

O.M. No. The money is merely a symbol--it represents in visible and

concrete form a SPIRITUAL DESIRE. Any so-called material thing that you

want is merely a symbol: you want it not for ITSELF, but because it will

content your spirit for the moment.

Y.M. Please particularize.

O.M. Very well. Maybe the thing longed for is a new hat. You get it and

your vanity is pleased, your spirit contented. Suppose your friends

deride the hat, make fun of it: at once it loses its value; you are

ashamed of it, you put it out of your sight, you never want to see it

again.

Y.M. I think I see. Go on.

O.M. It is the same hat, isn't it? It is in no way altered. But it

wasn't the HAT you wanted, but only what it stood for--a something to

please and content your SPIRIT. When it failed of that, the whole of its

value was gone. There are no MATERIAL values; there are only spiritual

ones. You will hunt in vain for a material value that is ACTUAL,

REAL--there is no such thing. The only value it possesses, for even a

moment, is the spiritual value back of it: remove that end and it is at

once worthless--like the hat.

Y.M. Can you extend that to money?

O.M. Yes. It is merely a symbol, it has no MATERIAL value; you think

you desire it for its own sake, but it is not so. You desire it for the

spiritual content it will bring; if it fail of that, you discover that

its value is gone. There is that pathetic tale of the man who labored

like a slave, unresting, unsatisfied, until he had accumulated a fortune,

and was happy over it, jubilant about it; then in a single week a

pestilence swept away all whom he held dear and left him desolate. His

money's value was gone. He realized that his joy in it came not from the

money itself, but from the spiritual contentment he got out of his

family's enjoyment of the pleasures and delights it lavished upon them.

Money has no MATERIAL value; if you remove its spiritual value nothing is

left but dross. It is so with all things, little or big, majestic or

trivial--there are no exceptions. Crowns, scepters, pennies, paste

jewels, village notoriety, world-wide fame--they are all the same, they

have no MATERIAL value: while they content the SPIRIT they are precious,

when this fails they are worthless.

A Difficult Question

Y.M. You keep me confused and perplexed all the time by your elusive

terminology. Sometimes you divide a man up into two or three separate

personalities, each with authorities, jurisdictions, and responsibilities

of its own, and when he is in that condition I can't grasp it. Now when

_I_ speak of a man, he is THE WHOLE THING IN ONE, and easy to hold and

contemplate.

O.M. That is pleasant and convenient, if true. When you speak of "my

body" who is the "my"?

Y.M. It is the "me."

O.M. The body is a property then, and the Me owns it. Who is the Me?

Y.M. The Me is THE WHOLE THING; it is a common property; an undivided

ownership, vested in the whole entity.

O.M. If the Me admires a rainbow, is it the whole Me that admires it,

including the hair, hands, heels, and all?

Y.M. Certainly not. It is my MIND that admires it.

O.M. So YOU divide the Me yourself. Everybody does; everybody must.

What, then, definitely, is the Me?

Y.M. I think it must consist of just those two parts--the body and the

mind.

O.M. You think so? If you say "I believe the world is round," who is

the "I" that is speaking?

Y.M. The mind.

O.M. If you say "I grieve for the loss of my father," who is the "I"?

Y.M. The mind.

O.M. Is the mind exercising an intellectual function when it examines

and accepts the evidence that the world is round?

Y.M. Yes.

O.M. Is it exercising an intellectual function when it grieves for the

loss of your father?

Y.M. That is not cerebration, brain-work, it is a matter of FEELING.

O.M. Then its source is not in your mind, but in your MORAL territory?

Y.M. I have to grant it.

O.M. Is your mind a part of your PHYSICAL equipment?

Y.M. No. It is independent of it; it is spiritual.

O.M. Being spiritual, it cannot be affected by physical influences?

Y.M. No.

O.M. Does the mind remain sober with the body is drunk?

Y.M. Well--no.

O.M. There IS a physical effect present, then?

Y.M. It looks like it.

O.M. A cracked skull has resulted in a crazy mind. Why should it happen

if the mind is spiritual, and INDEPENDENT of physical influences?

Y.M. Well--I don't know.

O.M. When you have a pain in your foot, how do you know it?

Y.M. I feel it.

O.M. But you do not feel it until a nerve reports the hurt to the brain.

Yet the brain is the seat of the mind, is it not?

Y.M. I think so.

O.M. But isn't spiritual enough to learn what is happening in the

outskirts without the help of the PHYSICAL messenger? You perceive that

the question of who or what the Me is, is not a simple one at all. You

say "I admire the rainbow," and "I believe the world is round," and in

these cases we find that the Me is not speaking, but only the MENTAL

part. You say, "I grieve," and again the Me is not all speaking, but

only the MORAL part. You say the mind is wholly spiritual; then you say

"I have a pain" and find that this time the Me is mental AND spiritual

combined. We all use the "I" in this indeterminate fashion, there is no

help for it. We imagine a Master and King over what you call The Whole

Thing, and we speak of him as "I," but when we try to define him we find

we cannot do it. The intellect and the feelings can act quite

INDEPENDENTLY of each other; we recognize that, and we look around for a

Ruler who is master over both, and can serve as a DEFINITE AND

INDISPUTABLE "I," and enable us to know what we mean and who or what we

are talking about when we use that pronoun, but we have to give it up and

confess that we cannot find him. To me, Man is a machine, made up of

many mechanisms, the moral and mental ones acting automatically in

accordance with the impulses of an interior Master who is built out of

born-temperament and an accumulation of multitudinous outside influences

and trainings; a machine whose ONE function is to secure the spiritual

contentment of the Master, be his desires good or be they evil; a machine

whose Will is absolute and must be obeyed, and always IS obeyed.

Y.M. Maybe the Me is the Soul?

O.M. Maybe it is. What is the Soul?

Y.M. I don't know.

O.M. Neither does any one else.

The Master Passion

Y.M. What is the Master?--or, in common speech, the Conscience?

Explain it.

O.M. It is that mysterious autocrat, lodged in a man, which compels the

man to content its desires. It may be called the Master Passion--the

hunger for Self-Approval.

Y.M. Where is its seat?

O.M. In man's moral constitution.

Y.M. Are its commands for the man's good?

O.M. It is indifferent to the man's good; it never concerns itself about

anything but the satisfying of its own desires. It can be TRAINED to

prefer things which will be for the man's good, but it will prefer them

only because they will content IT better than other things would.

Y.M. Then even when it is trained to high ideals it is still looking out

for its own contentment, and not for the man's good.

O.M. True. Trained or untrained, it cares nothing for the man's good,

and never concerns itself about it.

Y.M. It seems to be an IMMORAL force seated in the man's moral

constitution.

O.M. It is a COLORLESS force seated in the man's moral constitution. Let

us call it an instinct--a blind, unreasoning instinct, which cannot and

does not distinguish between good morals and bad ones, and cares nothing

for results to the man provided its own contentment be secured; and it

will ALWAYS secure that.

Y.M. It seeks money, and it probably considers that that is an advantage

for the man?

O.M. It is not always seeking money, it is not always seeking power, nor

office, nor any other MATERIAL advantage. In ALL cases it seeks a

SPIRITUAL contentment, let the MEANS be what they may. Its desires are

determined by the man's temperament--and it is lord over that.

Temperament, Conscience, Susceptibility, Spiritual Appetite, are, in

fact, the same thing. Have you ever heard of a person who cared nothing

for money?

Y.M. Yes. A scholar who would not leave his garret and his books to

take a place in a business house at a large salary.

O.M. He had to satisfy his master--that is to say, his temperament, his

Spiritual Appetite--and it preferred books to money. Are there other

cases?

Y.M. Yes, the hermit.

O.M. It is a good instance. The hermit endures solitude, hunger, cold,

and manifold perils, to content his autocrat, who prefers these things,

and prayer and contemplation, to money or to any show or luxury that

money can buy. Are there others?

Y.M. Yes. The artist, the poet, the scientist.

O.M. Their autocrat prefers the deep pleasures of these occupations,

either well paid or ill paid, to any others in the market, at any price.

You REALIZE that the Master Passion--the contentment of the

spirit--concerns itself with many things besides so-called material

advantage, material prosperity, cash, and all that?

Y.M. I think I must concede it.

O.M. I believe you must. There are perhaps as many Temperaments that

would refuse the burdens and vexations and distinctions of public office

as there are that hunger after them. The one set of Temperaments seek

the contentment of the spirit, and that alone; and this is exactly the

case with the other set. Neither set seeks anything BUT the contentment

of the spirit. If the one is sordid, both are sordid; and equally so,

since the end in view is precisely the same in both cases. And in both

cases Temperament decides the preference--and Temperament is BORN, not

made.

Conclusion

O.M. You have been taking a holiday?

Y.M. Yes; a mountain tramp covering a week. Are you ready to talk?

O.M. Quite ready. What shall we begin with?

Y.M. Well, lying abed resting up, two days and nights, I have thought

over all these talks, and passed them carefully in review. With this

result: that . . . that . . . are you intending to publish your notions

about Man some day?

O.M. Now and then, in these past twenty years, the Master inside of me

has half-intended to order me to set them to paper and publish them. Do

I have to tell you why the order has remained unissued, or can you

explain so simply a thing without my help?

Y.M. By your doctrine, it is simplicity itself: outside influences moved

your interior Master to give the order; stronger outside influences

deterred him. Without the outside influences, neither of these impulses

could ever have been born, since a person's brain is incapable or

originating an idea within itself.

O.M. Correct. Go on.

Y.M. The matter of publishing or withholding is still in your Master's

hands. If some day an outside influence shall determine him to publish,

he will give the order, and it will be obeyed.

O.M. That is correct. Well?

Y.M. Upon reflection I have arrived at the conviction that the

publication of your doctrines would be harmful. Do you pardon me?

O.M. Pardon YOU? You have done nothing. You are an instrument--a

speaking-trumpet. Speaking-trumpets are not responsible for what is said

through them. Outside influences--in the form of lifelong teachings,

trainings, notions, prejudices, and other second-hand importations--have

persuaded the Master within you that the publication of these doctrines

would be harmful. Very well, this is quite natural, and was to be

expected; in fact, was inevitable. Go on; for the sake of ease and

convenience, stick to habit: speak in the first person, and tell me what

your Master thinks about it.

Y.M. Well, to begin: it is a desolating doctrine; it is not inspiring,

enthusing, uplifting. It takes the glory out of man, it takes the pride

out of him, it takes the heroism out of him, it denies him all personal

credit, all applause; it not only degrades him to a machine, but allows

him no control over the machine; makes a mere coffee-mill of him, and

neither permits him to supply the coffee nor turn the crank, his sole and

piteously humble function being to grind coarse or fine, according to his

make, outside impulses doing the rest.

O.M. It is correctly stated. Tell me--what do men admire most in each

other?

Y.M. Intellect, courage, majesty of build, beauty of countenance,

charity, benevolence, magnanimity, kindliness, heroism, and--and--

O.M. I would not go any further. These are ELEMENTALS. Virtue,

fortitude, holiness, truthfulness, loyalty, high ideals--these, and all

the related qualities that are named in the dictionary, are MADE OF THE

ELEMENTALS, by blendings, combinations, and shadings of the elementals,

just as one makes green by blending blue and yellow, and makes several

shades and tints of red by modifying the elemental red. There are

several elemental colors; they are all in the rainbow; out of them we

manufacture and name fifty shades of them. You have named the elementals

of the human rainbow, and also one BLEND--heroism, which is made out of

courage and magnanimity. Very well, then; which of these elements does

the possessor of it manufacture for himself? Is it intellect?

Y.M. No.

O.M. Why?

Y.M. He is born with it.

O.M. Is it courage?

Y.M. No. He is born with it.

O.M. Is it majesty of build, beauty of countenance?

Y.M. No. They are birthrights.

O.M. Take those others--the elemental moral qualities--charity,

benevolence, magnanimity, kindliness; fruitful seeds, out of which

spring, through cultivation by outside influences, all the manifold

blends and combinations of virtues named in the dictionaries: does man

manufacture any of those seeds, or are they all born in him?

Y.M. Born in him.

O.M. Who manufactures them, then?

Y.M. God.

O.M. Where does the credit of it belong?

Y.M. To God.

O.M. And the glory of which you spoke, and the applause?

Y.M. To God.

O.M. Then it is YOU who degrade man. You make him claim glory, praise,

flattery, for every valuable thing he possesses--BORROWED finery, the

whole of it; no rag of it earned by himself, not a detail of it produced

by his own labor. YOU make man a humbug; have I done worse by him?

Y.M. You have made a machine of him.

O.M. Who devised that cunning and beautiful mechanism, a man's hand?

Y.M. God.

O.M. Who devised the law by which it automatically hammers out of a

piano an elaborate piece of music, without error, while the man is

thinking about something else, or talking to a friend?

Y.M. God.

O.M. Who devised the blood? Who devised the wonderful machinery which

automatically drives its renewing and refreshing streams through the

body, day and night, without assistance or advice from the man? Who

devised the man's mind, whose machinery works automatically, interests

itself in what it pleases, regardless of its will or desire, labors all

night when it likes, deaf to his appeals for mercy? God devised all

these things. _I_ have not made man a machine, God made him a machine. I

am merely calling attention to the fact, nothing more. Is it wrong to

call attention to the fact? Is it a crime?

Y.M. I think it is wrong to EXPOSE a fact when harm can come of it.

O.M. Go on.

Y.M. Look at the matter as it stands now. Man has been taught that he

is the supreme marvel of the Creation; he believes it; in all the ages he

has never doubted it, whether he was a naked savage, or clothed in purple

and fine linen, and civilized. This has made his heart buoyant, his life

cheery. His pride in himself, his sincere admiration of himself, his joy

in what he supposed were his own and unassisted achievements, and his

exultation over the praise and applause which they evoked--these have

exalted him, enthused him, ambitioned him to higher and higher flights;

in a word, made his life worth the living. But by your scheme, all this

is abolished; he is degraded to a machine, he is a nobody, his noble

prides wither to mere vanities; let him strive as he may, he can never be

any better than his humblest and stupidest neighbor; he would never be

cheerful again, his life would not be worth the living.

O.M. You really think that?

Y.M. I certainly do.

O.M. Have you ever seen me uncheerful, unhappy.

Y.M. No.

O.M. Well, _I_ believe these things. Why have they not made me unhappy?

Y.M. Oh, well--temperament, of course! You never let THAT escape from

your scheme.

O.M. That is correct. If a man is born with an unhappy temperament,

nothing can make him happy; if he is born with a happy temperament,

nothing can make him unhappy.

Y.M. What--not even a degrading and heart-chilling system of beliefs?

O.M. Beliefs? Mere beliefs? Mere convictions? They are powerless.

They strive in vain against inborn temperament.

Y.M. I can't believe that, and I don't.

O.M. Now you are speaking hastily. It shows that you have not

studiously examined the facts. Of all your intimates, which one is the

happiest? Isn't it Burgess?

Y.M. Easily.

O.M. And which one is the unhappiest? Henry Adams?

Y.M. Without a question!

O.M. I know them well. They are extremes, abnormals; their temperaments

are as opposite as the poles. Their life-histories are about alike--but

look at the results! Their ages are about the same--about around fifty.

Burgess had always been buoyant, hopeful, happy; Adams has always been

cheerless, hopeless, despondent. As young fellows both tried country

journalism--and failed. Burgess didn't seem to mind it; Adams couldn't

smile, he could only mourn and groan over what had happened and torture

himself with vain regrets for not having done so and so instead of so and

so--THEN he would have succeeded. They tried the law--and failed.

Burgess remained happy--because he couldn't help it. Adams was

wretched--because he couldn't help it. From that day to this, those two

men have gone on trying things and failing: Burgess has come out happy

and cheerful every time; Adams the reverse. And we do absolutely know

that these men's inborn temperaments have remained unchanged through all

the vicissitudes of their material affairs. Let us see how it is with

their immaterials. Both have been zealous Democrats; both have been

zealous Republicans; both have been zealous Mugwumps. Burgess has always

found happiness and Adams unhappiness in these several political beliefs

and in their migrations out of them. Both of these men have been

Presbyterians, Universalists, Methodists, Catholics--then Presbyterians

again, then Methodists again. Burgess has always found rest in these

excursions, and Adams unrest. They are trying Christian Science, now,

with the customary result, the inevitable result. No political or

religious belief can make Burgess unhappy or the other man happy. I

assure you it is purely a matter of temperament. Beliefs are

ACQUIREMENTS, temperaments are BORN; beliefs are subject to change,

nothing whatever can change temperament.

Y.M. You have instanced extreme temperaments.

O.M. Yes, the half-dozen others are modifications of the extremes. But

the law is the same. Where the temperament is two-thirds happy, or

two-thirds unhappy, no political or religious beliefs can change the

proportions. The vast majority of temperaments are pretty equally

balanced; the intensities are absent, and this enables a nation to learn

to accommodate itself to its political and religious circumstances and

like them, be satisfied with them, at last prefer them. Nations do not

THINK, they only FEEL. They get their feelings at second hand through

their temperaments, not their brains. A nation can be brought--by force

of circumstances, not argument--to reconcile itself to ANY KIND OF

GOVERNMENT OR RELIGION THAT CAN BE DEVISED; in time it will fit itself to

the required conditions; later, it will prefer them and will fiercely

fight for them. As instances, you have all history: the Greeks, the

Romans, the Persians, the Egyptians, the Russians, the Germans, the

French, the English, the Spaniards, the Americans, the South Americans,

the Japanese, the Chinese, the Hindus, the Turks--a thousand wild and

tame religions, every kind of government that can be thought of, from

tiger to house-cat, each nation KNOWING it has the only true religion and

the only sane system of government, each despising all the others, each

an ass and not suspecting it, each proud of its fancied supremacy, each

perfectly sure it is the pet of God, each without undoubting confidence

summoning Him to take command in time of war, each surprised when He goes

over to the enemy, but by habit able to excuse it and resume

compliments--in a word, the whole human race content, always content,

persistently content, indestructibly content, happy, thankful, proud, NO

MATTER WHAT ITS RELIGION IS, NOR WHETHER ITS MASTER BE TIGER OR

HOUSE-CAT. Am I stating facts? You know I am. Is the human race

cheerful? You know it is. Considering what it can stand, and be happy,

you do me too much honor when you think that _I_ can place before it a

system of plain cold facts that can take the cheerfulness out of it.

Nothing can do that. Everything has been tried. Without success. I beg

you not to be troubled.

THE DEATH OF JEAN

The death of Jean Clemens occurred early in the morning of December 24,

1909. Mr. Clemens was in great stress of mind when I first saw him, but

a few hours later I found him writing steadily.

"I am setting it down," he said, "everything. It is a relief to me to

write it. It furnishes me an excuse for thinking." At intervals during

that day and the next I looked in, and usually found him writing. Then

on the evening of the 26th, when he knew that Jean had been laid to rest

in Elmira, he came to my room with the manuscript in his hand.

"I have finished it," he said; "read it. I can form no opinion of it

myself. If you think it worthy, some day--at the proper time--it can end

my autobiography. It is the final chapter."

Four months later--almost to the day--(April 21st) he was with Jean.

Albert Bigelow Paine.

Stormfield, Christmas Eve, 11 A.M., 1909.

JEAN IS DEAD!

Has any one ever tried to put upon paper all the little happenings

connected with a dear one--happenings of the twenty-four hours preceding

the sudden and unexpected death of that dear one? Would a book contain

them? Would two books contain them? I think not. They pour into the

mind in a flood. They are little things that have been always happening

every day, and were always so unimportant and easily forgettable

before--but now! Now, how different! how precious they are, now dear, how

unforgettable, how pathetic, how sacred, how clothed with dignity!

Last night Jean, all flushed with splendid health, and I the same, from

the wholesome effects of my Bermuda holiday, strolled hand in hand from

the dinner-table and sat down in the library and chatted, and planned,

and discussed, cheerily and happily (and how unsuspectingly!)--until

nine--which is late for us--then went upstairs, Jean's friendly German

dog following. At my door Jean said, "I can't kiss you good night,

father: I have a cold, and you could catch it." I bent and kissed her

hand. She was moved--I saw it in her eyes--and she impulsively kissed my

hand in return. Then with the usual gay "Sleep well, dear!" from both,

we parted.

At half past seven this morning I woke, and heard voices outside my door.

I said to myself, "Jean is starting on her usual horseback flight to the

station for the mail." Then Katy [1] entered, stood quaking and gasping

at my bedside a moment, then found her tongue:

"MISS JEAN IS DEAD!"

Possibly I know now what the soldier feels when a bullet crashes through

his heart.

In her bathroom there she lay, the fair young creature, stretched upon

the floor and covered with a sheet. And looking so placid, so natural,

and as if asleep. We knew what had happened. She was an epileptic: she

had been seized with a convulsion and heart failure in her bath. The

doctor had to come several miles. His efforts, like our previous ones,

failed to bring her back to life.

It is noon, now. How lovable she looks, how sweet and how tranquil! It

is a noble face, and full of dignity; and that was a good heart that lies

there so still.

In England, thirteen years ago, my wife and I were stabbed to the heart

with a cablegram which said, "Susy was mercifully released today." I had

to send a like shot to Clara, in Berlin, this morning. With the

peremptory addition, "You must not come home." Clara and her husband

sailed from here on the 11th of this month. How will Clara bear it?

Jean, from her babyhood, was a worshiper of Clara.

Four days ago I came back from a month's holiday in Bermuda in perfected

health; but by some accident the reporters failed to perceive this. Day

before yesterday, letters and telegrams began to arrive from friends and

strangers which indicated that I was supposed to be dangerously ill.

Yesterday Jean begged me to explain my case through the Associated Press.

I said it was not important enough; but she was distressed and said I

must think of Clara. Clara would see the report in the German papers,

and as she had been nursing her husband day and night for four months [2]

and was worn out and feeble, the shock might be disastrous. There was

reason in that; so I sent a humorous paragraph by telephone to the

Associated Press denying the "charge" that I was "dying," and saying "I

would not do such a thing at my time of life."

Jean was a little troubled, and did not like to see me treat the matter

so lightly; but I said it was best to treat it so, for there was nothing

serious about it. This morning I sent the sorrowful facts of this day's

irremediable disaster to the Associated Press. Will both appear in this

evening's papers?--the one so blithe, the other so tragic?

I lost Susy thirteen years ago; I lost her mother--her incomparable

mother!--five and a half years ago; Clara has gone away to live in

Europe; and now I have lost Jean. How poor I am, who was once so rich!

Seven months ago Mr. Roger died--one of the best friends I ever had, and

the nearest perfect, as man and gentleman, I have yet met among my race;

within the last six weeks Gilder has passed away, and Laffan--old, old

friends of mine. Jean lies yonder, I sit here; we are strangers under

our own roof; we kissed hands good-by at this door last night--and it was

forever, we never suspecting it. She lies there, and I sit

here--writing, busying myself, to keep my heart from breaking. How

dazzlingly the sunshine is flooding the hills around! It is like a

mockery.

Seventy-four years ago twenty-four days ago. Seventy-four years old

yesterday. Who can estimate my age today?

I have looked upon her again. I wonder I can bear it. She looks just as

her mother looked when she lay dead in that Florentine villa so long ago.

The sweet placidity of death! it is more beautiful than sleep.

I saw her mother buried. I said I would never endure that horror again;

that I would never again look into the grave of any one dear to me. I

have kept to that. They will take Jean from this house tomorrow, and

bear her to Elmira, New York, where lie those of us that have been

released, but I shall not follow.

Jean was on the dock when the ship came in, only four days ago. She was

at the door, beaming a welcome, when I reached this house the next

evening. We played cards, and she tried to teach me a new game called

"Mark Twain." We sat chatting cheerily in the library last night, and

she wouldn't let me look into the loggia, where she was making Christmas

preparations. She said she would finish them in the morning, and then

her little French friend would arrive from New York--the surprise would

follow; the surprise she had been working over for days. While she was

out for a moment I disloyally stole a look. The loggia floor was clothed

with rugs and furnished with chairs and sofas; and the uncompleted

surprise was there: in the form of a Christmas tree that was drenched

with silver film in a most wonderful way; and on a table was prodigal

profusion of bright things which she was going to hang upon it today.

What desecrating hand will ever banish that eloquent unfinished surprise

from that place? Not mine, surely. All these little matters have

happened in the last four days. "Little." Yes--THEN. But not now.

Nothing she said or thought or did is little now. And all the lavish

humor!--what is become of it? It is pathos, now. Pathos, and the

thought of it brings tears.

All these little things happened such a few hours ago--and now she lies

yonder. Lies yonder, and cares for nothing any more.

Strange--marvelous--incredible! I have had this experience before; but

it would still be incredible if I had had it a thousand times.

"MISS JEAN IS DEAD!"

That is what Katy said. When I heard the door open behind the bed's head

without a preliminary knock, I supposed it was Jean coming to kiss me

good morning, she being the only person who was used to entering without

formalities.

And so--

I have been to Jean's parlor. Such a turmoil of Christmas presents for

servants and friends! They are everywhere; tables, chairs, sofas, the

floor--everything is occupied, and over-occupied. It is many and many a

year since I have seen the like. In that ancient day Mrs. Clemens and I

used to slip softly into the nursery at midnight on Christmas Eve and

look the array of presents over. The children were little then. And now

here is Jean's parlor looking just as that nursery used to look. The

presents are not labeled--the hands are forever idle that would have

labeled them today. Jean's mother always worked herself down with her

Christmas preparations. Jean did the same yesterday and the preceding

days, and the fatigue has cost her her life. The fatigue caused the

convulsion that attacked her this morning. She had had no attack for

months.

Jean was so full of life and energy that she was constantly is danger of

overtaxing her strength. Every morning she was in the saddle by half

past seven, and off to the station for her mail. She examined the

letters and I distributed them: some to her, some to Mr. Paine, the

others to the stenographer and myself. She dispatched her share and then

mounted her horse again and went around superintending her farm and her

poultry the rest of the day. Sometimes she played billiards with me

after dinner, but she was usually too tired to play, and went early to

bed.

Yesterday afternoon I told her about some plans I had been devising while

absent in Bermuda, to lighten her burdens. We would get a housekeeper;

also we would put her share of the secretary-work into Mr. Paine's hands.

No--she wasn't willing. She had been making plans herself. The matter

ended in a compromise, I submitted. I always did. She wouldn't audit the

bills and let Paine fill out the checks--she would continue to attend to

that herself. Also, she would continue to be housekeeper, and let Katy

assist. Also, she would continue to answer the letters of personal

friends for me. Such was the compromise. Both of us called it by that

name, though I was not able to see where my formidable change had been

made.

However, Jean was pleased, and that was sufficient for me. She was proud

of being my secretary, and I was never able to persuade her to give up

any part of her share in that unlovely work.

In the talk last night I said I found everything going so smoothly that

if she were willing I would go back to Bermuda in February and get

blessedly out of the clash and turmoil again for another month. She was

urgent that I should do it, and said that if I would put off the trip

until March she would take Katy and go with me. We struck hands upon

that, and said it was settled. I had a mind to write to Bermuda by

tomorrow's ship and secure a furnished house and servants. I meant to

write the letter this morning. But it will never be written, now.

For she lies yonder, and before her is another journey than that.

Night is closing down; the rim of the sun barely shows above the sky-line

of the hills.

I have been looking at that face again that was growing dearer and dearer

to me every day. I was getting acquainted with Jean in these last nine

months. She had been long an exile from home when she came to us

three-quarters of a year ago. She had been shut up in sanitariums, many

miles from us. How eloquent glad and grateful she was to cross her

father's threshold again!

Would I bring her back to life if I could do it? I would not. If a word

would do it, I would beg for strength to withhold the word. And I would

have the strength; I am sure of it. In her loss I am almost bankrupt,

and my life is a bitterness, but I am content: for she has been enriched

with the most precious of all gifts--that gift which makes all other

gifts mean and poor--death. I have never wanted any released friend of

mine restored to life since I reached manhood. I felt in this way when

Susy passed away; and later my wife, and later Mr. Rogers. When Clara

met me at the station in New York and told me Mr. Rogers had died

suddenly that morning, my thought was, Oh, favorite of fortune

--fortunate all his long and lovely life--fortunate to his latest moment!

The reporters said there were tears of sorrow in my eyes. True--but they

were for ME, not for him. He had suffered no loss. All the fortunes he

had ever made before were poverty compared with this one.

Why did I build this house, two years ago? To shelter this vast

emptiness? How foolish I was! But I shall stay in it. The spirits of

the dead hallow a house, for me. It was not so with other members of the

family. Susy died in the house we built in Hartford. Mrs. Clemens would

never enter it again. But it made the house dearer to me. I have

entered it once since, when it was tenantless and silent and forlorn, but

to me it was a holy place and beautiful. It seemed to me that the

spirits of the dead were all about me, and would speak to me and welcome

me if they could: Livy, and Susy, and George, and Henry Robinson, and

Charles Dudley Warner. How good and kind they were, and how lovable

their lives! In fancy I could see them all again, I could call the

children back and hear them romp again with George--that peerless black

ex-slave and children's idol who came one day--a flitting stranger--to

wash windows, and stayed eighteen years. Until he died. Clara and Jean

would never enter again the New York hotel which their mother had

frequented in earlier days. They could not bear it. But I shall stay in

this house. It is dearer to me tonight than ever it was before. Jean's

spirit will make it beautiful for me always. Her lonely and tragic

death--but I will not think of that now.

Jean's mother always devoted two or three weeks to Christmas shopping,

and was always physically exhausted when Christmas Eve came. Jean was

her very own child--she wore herself out present-hunting in New York

these latter days. Paine has just found on her desk a long list of

names--fifty, he thinks--people to whom she sent presents last night.

Apparently she forgot no one. And Katy found there a roll of bank-notes,

for the servants.

Her dog has been wandering about the grounds today, comradeless and

forlorn. I have seen him from the windows. She got him from Germany.

He has tall ears and looks exactly like a wolf. He was educated in

Germany, and knows no language but the German. Jean gave him no orders

save in that tongue. And so when the burglar-alarm made a fierce clamor

at midnight a fortnight ago, the butler, who is French and knows no

German, tried in vain to interest the dog in the supposed burglar. Jean

wrote me, to Bermuda, about the incident. It was the last letter I was

ever to receive from her bright head and her competent hand. The dog will

not be neglected.

There was never a kinder heart than Jean's. From her childhood up she

always spent the most of her allowance on charities of one kind or

another. After she became secretary and had her income doubled she spent

her money upon these things with a free hand. Mine too, I am glad and

grateful to say.

She was a loyal friend to all animals, and she loved them all, birds,

beasts, and everything--even snakes--an inheritance from me. She knew

all the birds; she was high up in that lore. She became a member of

various humane societies when she was still a little girl--both here and

abroad--and she remained an active member to the last. She founded two

or three societies for the protection of animals, here and in Europe.

She was an embarrassing secretary, for she fished my correspondence out

of the waste-basket and answered the letters. She thought all letters

deserved the courtesy of an answer. Her mother brought her up in that

kindly error.

She could write a good letter, and was swift with her pen. She had but an

indifferent ear music, but her tongue took to languages with an easy

facility. She never allowed her Italian, French, and German to get rusty

through neglect.

The telegrams of sympathy are flowing in, from far and wide, now, just as

they did in Italy five years and a half ago, when this child's mother

laid down her blameless life. They cannot heal the hurt, but they take

away some of the pain. When Jean and I kissed hands and parted at my

door last, how little did we imagine that in twenty-two hours the

telegraph would be bringing words like these:

"From the bottom of our hearts we send out sympathy, dearest of friends."

For many and many a day to come, wherever I go in this house,

remembrancers of Jean will mutely speak to me of her. Who can count the

number of them?

She was in exile two years with the hope of healing her malady--epilepsy.

There are no words to express how grateful I am that she did not meet her

fate in the hands of strangers, but in the loving shelter of her own

home.

"MISS JEAN IS DEAD!"

It is true. Jean is dead.

A month ago I was writing bubbling and hilarious articles for magazines

yet to appear, and now I am writing--this.

CHRISTMAS DAY. NOON.--Last night I went to Jean's room at intervals,

and turned back the sheet and looked at the peaceful face, and kissed the

cold brow, and remembered that heartbreaking night in Florence so long

ago, in that cavernous and silent vast villa, when I crept downstairs so

many times, and turned back a sheet and looked at a face just like this

one--Jean's mother's face--and kissed a brow that was just like this one.

And last night I saw again what I had seen then--that strange and lovely

miracle--the sweet, soft contours of early maidenhood restored by the

gracious hand of death! When Jean's mother lay dead, all trace of care,

and trouble, and suffering, and the corroding years had vanished out of

the face, and I was looking again upon it as I had known and worshipped

it in its young bloom and beauty a whole generation before.

About three in the morning, while wandering about the house in the deep

silences, as one does in times like these, when there is a dumb sense

that something has been lost that will never be found again, yet must be

sought, if only for the employment the useless seeking gives, I came upon

Jean's dog in the hall downstairs, and noted that he did not spring to

greet me, according to his hospitable habit, but came slow and

sorrowfully; also I remembered that he had not visited Jean's apartment

since the tragedy. Poor fellow, did he know? I think so. Always when

Jean was abroad in the open he was with her; always when she was in the

house he was with her, in the night as well as in the day. Her parlor was

his bedroom. Whenever I happened upon him on the ground floor he always

followed me about, and when I went upstairs he went too--in a tumultuous

gallop. But now it was different: after patting him a little I went to

the library--he remained behind; when I went upstairs he did not follow

me, save with his wistful eyes. He has wonderful eyes--big, and kind,

and eloquent. He can talk with them. He is a beautiful creature, and is

of the breed of the New York police-dogs. I do not like dogs, because

they bark when there is no occasion for it; but I have liked this one

from the beginning, because he belonged to Jean, and because he never

barks except when there is occasion--which is not oftener than twice a

week.

In my wanderings I visited Jean's parlor. On a shelf I found a pile of

my books, and I knew what it meant. She was waiting for me to come home

from Bermuda and autograph them, then she would send them away. If I

only knew whom she intended them for! But I shall never know. I will

keep them. Her hand has touched them--it is an accolade--they are noble,

now.

And in a closet she had hidden a surprise for me--a thing I have often

wished I owned: a noble big globe. I couldn't see it for the tears. She

will never know the pride I take in it, and the pleasure. Today the

mails are full of loving remembrances for her: full of those old, old

kind words she loved so well, "Merry Christmas to Jean!" If she could

only have lived one day longer!

At last she ran out of money, and would not use mine. So she sent to one

of those New York homes for poor girls all the clothes she could

spare--and more, most likely.

CHRISTMAS NIGHT.--This afternoon they took her away from her room. As

soon as I might, I went down to the library, and there she lay, in her

coffin, dressed in exactly the same clothes she wore when she stood at

the other end of the same room on the 6th of October last, as Clara's

chief bridesmaid. Her face was radiant with happy excitement then; it

was the same face now, with the dignity of death and the peace of God

upon it.

They told me the first mourner to come was the dog. He came uninvited,

and stood up on his hind legs and rested his fore paws upon the trestle,

and took a last long look at the face that was so dear to him, then went

his way as silently as he had come. HE KNOWS.

At mid-afternoon it began to snow. The pity of it--that Jean could not

see it! She so loved the snow.

The snow continued to fall. At six o'clock the hearse drew up to the

door to bear away its pathetic burden. As they lifted the casket, Paine

began playing on the orchestrelle Schubert's "Impromptu," which was

Jean's favorite. Then he played the Intermezzo; that was for Susy; then

he played the Largo; that was for their mother. He did this at my

request. Elsewhere in my Autobiography I have told how the Intermezzo

and the Largo came to be associated in my heart with Susy and Livy in

their last hours in this life.

From my windows I saw the hearse and the carriages wind along the road

and gradually grow vague and spectral in the falling snow, and presently

disappear. Jean was gone out of my life, and would not come back any

more. Jervis, the cousin she had played with when they were babies

together--he and her beloved old Katy--were conducting her to her distant

childhood home, where she will lie by her mother's side once more, in the

company of Susy and Langdon.

DECEMBER 26TH. The dog came to see me at eight o'clock this morning.

He was very affectionate, poor orphan! My room will be his quarters

hereafter.

The storm raged all night. It has raged all the morning. The snow drives

across the landscape in vast clouds, superb, sublime--and Jean not here

to see.

2:30 P.M.--It is the time appointed. The funeral has begun. Four

hundred miles away, but I can see it all, just as if I were there. The

scene is the library in the Langdon homestead. Jean's coffin stands where

her mother and I stood, forty years ago, and were married; and where

Susy's coffin stood thirteen years ago; where her mother's stood five

years and a half ago; and where mine will stand after a little time.

FIVE O'CLOCK.--It is all over.

When Clara went away two weeks ago to live in Europe, it was hard, but I

could bear it, for I had Jean left. I said WE would be a family. We

said we would be close comrades and happy--just we two. That fair dream

was in my mind when Jean met me at the steamer last Monday; it was in my

mind when she received me at the door last Tuesday evening. We were

together; WE WERE A FAMILY! the dream had come true--oh, precisely true,

contentedly, true, satisfyingly true! and remained true two whole days.

And now? Now Jean is in her grave!

In the grave--if I can believe it. God rest her sweet spirit!

----- 1. Katy Leary, who had been in the service of the Clemens family

for twenty-nine years.

2. Mr. Gabrilowitsch had been operated on for appendicitis.

THE TURNING-POINT OF MY LIFE

I

If I understand the idea, the BAZAR invites several of us to write upon

the above text. It means the change in my life's course which introduced

what must be regarded by me as the most IMPORTANT condition of my career.

But it also implies--without intention, perhaps--that that turning-point

ITSELF was the creator of the new condition. This gives it too much

distinction, too much prominence, too much credit. It is only the LAST

link in a very long chain of turning-points commissioned to produce the

cardinal result; it is not any more important than the humblest of its

ten thousand predecessors. Each of the ten thousand did its appointed

share, on its appointed date, in forwarding the scheme, and they were all

necessary; to have left out any one of them would have defeated the

scheme and brought about SOME OTHER result. It know we have a fashion of

saying "such and such an event was the turning-point in my life," but we

shouldn't say it. We should merely grant that its place as LAST link in

the chain makes it the most CONSPICUOUS link; in real importance it has

no advantage over any one of its predecessors.

Perhaps the most celebrated turning-point recorded in history was the

crossing of the Rubicon. Suetonius says:

Coming up with his troops on the banks of the Rubicon, he halted for a

while, and, revolving in his mind the importance of the step he was on

the point of taking, he turned to those about him and said, "We may still

retreat; but if we pass this little bridge, nothing is left for us but to

fight it out in arms."

This was a stupendously important moment. And all the incidents, big

and little, of Caesar's previous life had been leading up to it, stage by

stage, link by link. This was the LAST link--merely the last one, and no

bigger than the others; but as we gaze back at it through the inflating

mists of our imagination, it looks as big as the orbit of Neptune.

You, the reader, have a PERSONAL interest in that link, and so have I; so

has the rest of the human race. It was one of the links in your

life-chain, and it was one of the links in mine. We may wait, now, with

bated breath, while Caesar reflects. Your fate and mine are involved in

his decision.

While he was thus hesitating, the following incident occurred. A person

remarked for his noble mien and graceful aspect appeared close at hand,

sitting and playing upon a pipe. When not only the shepherds, but a

number of soldiers also, flocked to listen to him, and some trumpeters

among them, he snatched a trumpet from one of them, ran to the river with

it, and, sounding the advance with a piercing blast, crossed to the other

side. Upon this, Caesar exclaimed: "Let us go whither the omens of the

gods and the iniquity of our enemies call us. THE DIE IS CAST."

So he crossed--and changed the future of the whole human race, for all

time. But that stranger was a link in Caesar's life-chain, too; and a

necessary one. We don't know his name, we never hear of him again; he

was very casual; he acts like an accident; but he was no accident, he was

there by compulsion of HIS life-chain, to blow the electrifying blast

that was to make up Caesar's mind for him, and thence go piping down the

aisles of history forever.

If the stranger hadn't been there! But he WAS. And Caesar crossed.

With such results! Such vast events--each a link in the HUMAN RACE'S

life-chain; each event producing the next one, and that one the next one,

and so on: the destruction of the republic; the founding of the empire;

the breaking up of the empire; the rise of Christianity upon its ruins;

the spread of the religion to other lands--and so on; link by link took

its appointed place at its appointed time, the discovery of America being

one of them; our Revolution another; the inflow of English and other

immigrants another; their drift westward (my ancestors among them)

another; the settlement of certain of them in Missouri, which resulted in

ME. For I was one of the unavoidable results of the crossing of the

Rubicon. If the stranger, with his trumpet blast, had stayed away (which

he COULDN'T, for he was the appointed link) Caesar would not have

crossed. What would have happened, in that case, we can never guess. We

only know that the things that did happen would not have happened. They

might have been replaced by equally prodigious things, of course, but

their nature and results are beyond our guessing. But the matter that

interests me personally is that I would not be HERE now, but somewhere

else; and probably black--there is no telling. Very well, I am glad he

crossed. And very really and thankfully glad, too, though I never cared

anything about it before.

II

To me, the most important feature of my life is its literary feature. I

have been professionally literary something more than forty years. There

have been many turning-points in my life, but the one that was the link

in the chain appointed to conduct me to the literary guild is the most

CONSPICUOUS link in that chain. BECAUSE it was the last one. It was not

any more important than its predecessors. All the other links have an

inconspicuous look, except the crossing of the Rubicon; but as factors in

making me literary they are all of the one size, the crossing of the

Rubicon included.

I know how I came to be literary, and I will tell the steps that lead up

to it and brought it about.

The crossing of the Rubicon was not the first one, it was hardly even a

recent one; I should have to go back ages before Caesar's day to find the

first one. To save space I will go back only a couple of generations and

start with an incident of my boyhood. When I was twelve and a half years

old, my father died. It was in the spring. The summer came, and brought

with it an epidemic of measles. For a time a child died almost every

day. The village was paralyzed with fright, distress, despair. Children

that were not smitten with the disease were imprisoned in their homes to

save them from the infection. In the homes there were no cheerful faces,

there was no music, there was no singing but of solemn hymns, no voice

but of prayer, no romping was allowed, no noise, no laughter, the family

moved spectrally about on tiptoe, in a ghostly hush. I was a prisoner.

My soul was steeped in this awful dreariness--and in fear. At some time

or other every day and every night a sudden shiver shook me to the

marrow, and I said to myself, "There, I've got it! and I shall die."

Life on these miserable terms was not worth living, and at last I made up

my mind to get the disease and have it over, one way or the other. I

escaped from the house and went to the house of a neighbor where a

playmate of mine was very ill with the malady. When the chance offered I

crept into his room and got into bed with him. I was discovered by his

mother and sent back into captivity. But I had the disease; they could

not take that from me. I came near to dying. The whole village was

interested, and anxious, and sent for news of me every day; and not only

once a day, but several times. Everybody believed I would die; but on

the fourteenth day a change came for the worse and they were

disappointed.

This was a turning-point of my life. (Link number one.) For when I got

well my mother closed my school career and apprenticed me to a printer.

She was tired of trying to keep me out of mischief, and the adventure of

the measles decided her to put me into more masterful hands than hers.

I became a printer, and began to add one link after another to the chain

which was to lead me into the literary profession. A long road, but I

could not know that; and as I did not know what its goal was, or even

that it had one, I was indifferent. Also contented.

A young printer wanders around a good deal, seeking and finding work; and

seeking again, when necessity commands. N. B. Necessity is a

CIRCUMSTANCE; Circumstance is man's master--and when Circumstance

commands, he must obey; he may argue the matter--that is his privilege,

just as it is the honorable privilege of a falling body to argue with the

attraction of gravitation--but it won't do any good, he must OBEY. I

wandered for ten years, under the guidance and dictatorship of

Circumstance, and finally arrived in a city of Iowa, where I worked

several months. Among the books that interested me in those days was one

about the Amazon. The traveler told an alluring tale of his long voyage

up the great river from Para to the sources of the Madeira, through the

heart of an enchanted land, a land wastefully rich in tropical wonders, a

romantic land where all the birds and flowers and animals were of the

museum varieties, and where the alligator and the crocodile and the

monkey seemed as much at home as if they were in the Zoo. Also, he told

an astonishing tale about COCA, a vegetable product of miraculous powers,

asserting that it was so nourishing and so strength-giving that the

native of the mountains of the Madeira region would tramp up hill and

down all day on a pinch of powdered coca and require no other sustenance.

I was fired with a longing to ascend the Amazon. Also with a longing to

open up a trade in coca with all the world. During months I dreamed that

dream, and tried to contrive ways to get to Para and spring that splendid

enterprise upon an unsuspecting planet. But all in vain. A person may

PLAN as much as he wants to, but nothing of consequence is likely to come

of it until the magician CIRCUMSTANCE steps in and takes the matter off

his hands. At last Circumstance came to my help. It was in this way.

Circumstance, to help or hurt another man, made him lose a fifty-dollar

bill in the street; and to help or hurt me, made me find it. I

advertised the find, and left for the Amazon the same day. This was

another turning-point, another link.

Could Circumstance have ordered another dweller in that town to go to the

Amazon and open up a world-trade in coca on a fifty-dollar basis and been

obeyed? No, I was the only one. There were other fools there--shoals

and shoals of them--but they were not of my kind. I was the only one of

my kind.

Circumstance is powerful, but it cannot work alone; it has to have a

partner. Its partner is man's TEMPERAMENT--his natural disposition. His

temperament is not his invention, it is BORN in him, and he has no

authority over it, neither is he responsible for its acts. He cannot

change it, nothing can change it, nothing can modify it--except

temporarily. But it won't stay modified. It is permanent, like the

color of the man's eyes and the shape of his ears. Blue eyes are gray in

certain unusual lights; but they resume their natural color when that

stress is removed.

A Circumstance that will coerce one man will have no effect upon a man of

a different temperament. If Circumstance had thrown the bank-note in

Caesar's way, his temperament would not have made him start for the

Amazon. His temperament would have compelled him to do something with

the money, but not that. It might have made him advertise the note--and

WAIT. We can't tell. Also, it might have made him go to New York and buy

into the Government, with results that would leave Tweed nothing to learn

when it came his turn.

Very well, Circumstance furnished the capital, and my temperament told me

what to do with it. Sometimes a temperament is an ass. When that is the

case of the owner of it is an ass, too, and is going to remain one.

Training, experience, association, can temporarily so polish him, improve

him, exalt him that people will think he is a mule, but they will be

mistaken. Artificially he IS a mule, for the time being, but at bottom

he is an ass yet, and will remain one.

By temperament I was the kind of person that DOES things. Does them, and

reflects afterward. So I started for the Amazon without reflecting and

without asking any questions. That was more than fifty years ago. In

all that time my temperament has not changed, by even a shade. I have

been punished many and many a time, and bitterly, for doing things and

reflecting afterward, but these tortures have been of no value to me; I

still do the thing commanded by Circumstance and Temperament, and reflect

afterward. Always violently. When I am reflecting, on these occasions,

even deaf persons can hear me think.

I went by the way of Cincinnati, and down the Ohio and Mississippi. My

idea was to take ship, at New Orleans, for Para. In New Orleans I

inquired, and found there was no ship leaving for Para. Also, that there

never had BEEN one leaving for Para. I reflected. A policeman came and

asked me what I was doing, and I told him. He made me move on, and said

if he caught me reflecting in the public street again he would run me in.

After a few days I was out of money. Then Circumstance arrived, with

another turning-point of my life--a new link. On my way down, I had made

the acquaintance of a pilot. I begged him to teach me the river, and he

consented. I became a pilot.

By and by Circumstance came again--introducing the Civil War, this time,

in order to push me ahead another stage or two toward the literary

profession. The boats stopped running, my livelihood was gone.

Circumstance came to the rescue with a new turning-point and a fresh

link. My brother was appointed secretary to the new Territory of Nevada,

and he invited me to go with him and help him in his office. I accepted.

In Nevada, Circumstance furnished me the silver fever and I went into the

mines to make a fortune, as I supposed; but that was not the idea. The

idea was to advance me another step toward literature. For amusement I

scribbled things for the Virginia City ENTERPRISE. One isn't a printer

ten years without setting up acres of good and bad literature, and

learning--unconsciously at first, consciously later--to discriminate

between the two, within his mental limitations; and meantime he is

unconsciously acquiring what is called a "style." One of my efforts

attracted attention, and the ENTERPRISE sent for me and put me on its

staff.

And so I became a journalist--another link. By and by Circumstance and

the Sacramento UNION sent me to the Sandwich Islands for five or six

months, to write up sugar. I did it; and threw in a good deal of

extraneous matter that hadn't anything to do with sugar. But it was this

extraneous matter that helped me to another link.

It made me notorious, and San Francisco invited me to lecture. Which I

did. And profitably. I had long had a desire to travel and see the

world, and now Circumstance had most kindly and unexpectedly hurled me

upon the platform and furnished me the means. So I joined the "Quaker

City Excursion."

When I returned to America, Circumstance was waiting on the pier--with

the LAST link--the conspicuous, the consummating, the victorious link: I

was asked to WRITE A BOOK, and I did it, and called it THE INNOCENTS

ABROAD. Thus I became at last a member of the literary guild. That was

forty-two years ago, and I have been a member ever since. Leaving the

Rubicon incident away back where it belongs, I can say with truth that

the reason I am in the literary profession is because I had the measles

when I was twelve years old.

III

Now what interests me, as regards these details, is not the details

themselves, but the fact that none of them was foreseen by me, none of

them was planned by me, I was the author of none of them. Circumstance,

working in harness with my temperament, created them all and compelled

them all. I often offered help, and with the best intentions, but it was

rejected--as a rule, uncourteously. I could never plan a thing and get

it to come out the way I planned it. It came out some other way--some

way I had not counted upon.

And so I do not admire the human being--as an intellectual marvel--as

much as I did when I was young, and got him out of books, and did not

know him personally. When I used to read that such and such a general

did a certain brilliant thing, I believed it. Whereas it was not so.

Circumstance did it by help of his temperament. The circumstances would

have failed of effect with a general of another temperament: he might see

the chance, but lose the advantage by being by nature too slow or too

quick or too doubtful. Once General Grant was asked a question about a

matter which had been much debated by the public and the newspapers; he

answered the question without any hesitancy. "General, who planned the

the march through Georgia?" "The enemy!" He added that the enemy

usually makes your plans for you. He meant that the enemy by neglect or

through force of circumstances leaves an opening for you, and you see

your chance and take advantage of it.

Circumstances do the planning for us all, no doubt, by help of our

temperaments. I see no great difference between a man and a watch,

except that the man is conscious and the watch isn't, and the man TRIES

to plan things and the watch doesn't. The watch doesn't wind itself and

doesn't regulate itself--these things are done exteriorly. Outside

influences, outside circumstances, wind the MAN and regulate him. Left

to himself, he wouldn't get regulated at all, and the sort of time he

would keep would not be valuable. Some rare men are wonderful watches,

with gold case, compensation balance, and all those things, and some men

are only simple and sweet and humble Waterburys. I am a Waterbury. A

Waterbury of that kind, some say.

A nation is only an individual multiplied. It makes plans and

Circumstances comes and upsets them--or enlarges them. Some patriots

throw the tea overboard; some other patriots destroy a Bastille. The

PLANS stop there; then Circumstance comes in, quite unexpectedly, and

turns these modest riots into a revolution.

And there was poor Columbus. He elaborated a deep plan to find a new

route to an old country. Circumstance revised his plan for him, and he

found a new WORLD. And HE gets the credit of it to this day. He hadn't

anything to do with it.

Necessarily the scene of the real turning-point of my life (and of yours)

was the Garden of Eden. It was there that the first link was forged of

the chain that was ultimately to lead to the emptying of me into the

literary guild. Adam's TEMPERAMENT was the first command the Deity ever

issued to a human being on this planet. And it was the only command Adam

would NEVER be able to disobey. It said, "Be weak, be water, be

characterless, be cheaply persuadable." The latter command, to let the

fruit alone, was certain to be disobeyed. Not by Adam himself, but by

his TEMPERAMENT--which he did not create and had no authority over. For

the TEMPERAMENT is the man; the thing tricked out with clothes and named

Man is merely its Shadow, nothing more. The law of the tiger's

temperament is, Thou shalt kill; the law of the sheep's temperament is

Thou shalt not kill. To issue later commands requiring the tiger to let

the fat stranger alone, and requiring the sheep to imbue its hands in the

blood of the lion is not worth while, for those commands CAN'T be obeyed.

They would invite to violations of the law of TEMPERAMENT, which is

supreme, and take precedence of all other authorities. I cannot help

feeling disappointed in Adam and Eve. That is, in their temperaments.

Not in THEM, poor helpless young creatures--afflicted with temperaments

made out of butter; which butter was commanded to get into contact with

fire and BE MELTED. What I cannot help wishing is, that Adam had been

postponed, and Martin Luther and Joan of Arc put in their place--that

splendid pair equipped with temperaments not made of butter, but of

asbestos. By neither sugary persuasions nor by hell fire could Satan have

beguiled THEM to eat the apple. There would have been results! Indeed,

yes. The apple would be intact today; there would be no human race;

there would be no YOU; there would be no ME. And the old, old

creation-dawn scheme of ultimately launching me into the literary guild

would have been defeated.

HOW TO MAKE HISTORY DATES STICK

These chapters are for children, and I shall try to make the words large

enough to command respect. In the hope that you are listening, and that

you have confidence in me, I will proceed. Dates are difficult things to

acquire; and after they are acquired it is difficult to keep them in the

head. But they are very valuable. They are like the cattle-pens of a

ranch--they shut in the several brands of historical cattle, each within

its own fence, and keep them from getting mixed together. Dates are hard

to remember because they consist of figures; figures are monotonously

unstriking in appearance, and they don't take hold, they form no

pictures, and so they give the eye no chance to help. Pictures are the

thing. Pictures can make dates stick. They can make nearly anything

stick--particularly IF YOU MAKE THE PICTURES YOURSELF. Indeed, that is

the great point--make the pictures YOURSELF. I know about this from

experience. Thirty years ago I was delivering a memorized lecture every

night, and every night I had to help myself with a page of notes to keep

from getting myself mixed. The notes consisted of beginnings of

sentences, and were eleven in number, and they ran something like this:

"IN THAT REGION THE WEATHER--"

"AT THAT TIME IT WAS A CUSTOM--"

"BUT IN CALIFORNIA ONE NEVER HEARD--"

Eleven of them. They initialed the brief divisions of the lecture and

protected me against skipping. But they all looked about alike on the

page; they formed no picture; I had them by heart, but I could never with

certainty remember the order of their succession; therefore I always had

to keep those notes by me and look at them every little while. Once I

mislaid them; you will not be able to imagine the terrors of that

evening. I now saw that I must invent some other protection. So I got

ten of the initial letters by heart in their proper order--I, A, B, and

so on--and I went on the platform the next night with these marked in ink

on my ten finger-nails. But it didn't answer. I kept track of the

figures for a while; then I lost it, and after that I was never quite

sure which finger I had used last. I couldn't lick off a letter after

using it, for while that would have made success certain it also would

have provoked too much curiosity. There was curiosity enough without

that. To the audience I seemed more interested in my fingernails than I

was in my subject; one or two persons asked me afterward what was the

matter with my hands.

It was now that the idea of pictures occurred to me; then my troubles

passed away. In two minutes I made six pictures with a pen, and they did

the work of the eleven catch-sentences, and did it perfectly. I threw

the pictures away as soon as they were made, for I was sure I could shut

my eyes and see them any time. That was a quarter of a century ago; the

lecture vanished out of my head more than twenty years ago, but I would

rewrite it from the pictures--for they remain. Here are three of them:

(Fig. 1).

The first one is a haystack--below it a rattlesnake--and it told me where

to begin to talk ranch-life in Carson Valley. The second one told me

where to begin the talk about a strange and violent wind that used to

burst upon Carson City from the Sierra Nevadas every afternoon at two

o'clock and try to blow the town away. The third picture, as you easily

perceive, is lightning; its duty was to remind me when it was time to

begin to talk about San Francisco weather, where there IS no

lightning--nor thunder, either--and it never failed me.

I will give you a valuable hint. When a man is making a speech and you

are to follow him don't jot down notes to speak from, jot down PICTURES.

It is awkward and embarrassing to have to keep referring to notes; and

besides it breaks up your speech and makes it ragged and non-coherent;

but you can tear up your pictures as soon as you have made them--they

will stay fresh and strong in your memory in the order and sequence in

which you scratched them down. And many will admire to see what a good

memory you are furnished with, when perhaps your memory is not any better

than mine.

Sixteen years ago when my children were little creatures the governess

was trying to hammer some primer histories into their heads. Part of

this fun--if you like to call it that--consisted in the memorizing of the

accession dates of the thirty-seven personages who had ruled England from

the Conqueror down. These little people found it a bitter, hard

contract. It was all dates, and all looked alike, and they wouldn't

stick. Day after day of the summer vacation dribbled by, and still the

kings held the fort; the children couldn't conquer any six of them.

With my lecture experience in mind I was aware that I could invent some

way out of the trouble with pictures, but I hoped a way could be found

which would let them romp in the open air while they learned the kings.

I found it, and they mastered all the monarchs in a day or two.

The idea was to make them SEE the reigns with their eyes; that would be a

large help. We were at the farm then. From the house-porch the grounds

sloped gradually down to the lower fence and rose on the right to the

high ground where my small work-den stood. A carriage-road wound through

the grounds and up the hill. I staked it out with the English monarchs,

beginning with the Conqueror, and you could stand on the porch and

clearly see every reign and its length, from the Conquest down to

Victoria, then in the forty-sixth year of her reign--EIGHT HUNDRED AND

SEVENTEEN YEARS OF English history under your eye at once!

English history was an unusually live topic in America just then. The

world had suddenly realized that while it was not noticing the Queen had

passed Henry VIII., passed Henry VI. and Elizabeth, and gaining in length

every day. Her reign had entered the list of the long ones; everybody

was interested now--it was watching a race. Would she pass the long

Edward? There was a possibility of it. Would she pass the long Henry?

Doubtful, most people said. The long George? Impossible! Everybody said

it. But we have lived to see her leave him two years behind.

I measured off 817 feet of the roadway, a foot representing a year, and

at the beginning and end of each reign I drove a three-foot white-pine

stake in the turf by the roadside and wrote the name and dates on it.

Abreast the middle of the porch-front stood a great granite flower-vase

overflowing with a cataract of bright-yellow flowers--I can't think of

their name. The vase of William the Conqueror. We put his name on it

and his accession date, 1066. We started from that and measured off

twenty-one feet of the road, and drove William Rufus's state; then

thirteen feet and drove the first Henry's stake; then thirty-five feet

and drove Stephen's; then nineteen feet, which brought us just past the

summer-house on the left; then we staked out thirty-five, ten, and

seventeen for the second Henry and Richard and John; turned the curve and

entered upon just what was needed for Henry III.--a level, straight

stretch of fifty-six feet of road without a crinkle in it. And it lay

exactly in front of the house, in the middle of the grounds. There

couldn't have been a better place for that long reign; you could stand on

the porch and see those two wide-apart stakes almost with your eyes shut.

(Fig. 2.)

That isn't the shape of the road--I have bunched it up like that to save

room. The road had some great curves in it, but their gradual sweep was

such that they were no mar to history. No, in our road one could tell at

a glance who was who by the size of the vacancy between stakes--with

LOCALITY to help, of course.

Although I am away off here in a Swedish village [1] and those stakes did

not stand till the snow came, I can see them today as plainly as ever;

and whenever I think of an English monarch his stakes rise before me of

their own accord and I notice the large or small space which he takes up

on our road. Are your kings spaced off in your mind? When you think of

Richard III. and of James II. do the durations of their reigns seem about

alike to you? It isn't so to me; I always notice that there's a foot's

difference. When you think of Henry III. do you see a great long stretch

of straight road? I do; and just at the end where it joins on to Edward

I. I always see a small pear-bush with its green fruit hanging down.

When I think of the Commonwealth I see a shady little group of these

small saplings which we called the oak parlor; when I think of George

III. I see him stretching up the hill, part of him occupied by a flight

of stone steps; and I can locate Stephen to an inch when he comes into my

mind, for he just filled the stretch which went by the summer-house.

Victoria's reign reached almost to my study door on the first little

summit; there's sixteen feet to be added now; I believe that that would

carry it to a big pine-tree that was shattered by some lightning one

summer when it was trying to hit me.

We got a good deal of fun out of the history road; and exercise, too. We

trotted the course from the conqueror to the study, the children calling

out the names, dates, and length of reigns as we passed the stakes, going

a good gait along the long reigns, but slowing down when we came upon

people like Mary and Edward VI., and the short Stuart and Plantagenet, to

give time to get in the statistics. I offered prizes, too--apples. I

threw one as far as I could send it, and the child that first shouted the

reign it fell in got the apple.

The children were encouraged to stop locating things as being "over by

the arbor," or "in the oak parlor," or "up at the stone steps," and say

instead that the things were in Stephen, or in the Commonwealth, or in

George III. They got the habit without trouble. To have the long road

mapped out with such exactness was a great boon for me, for I had the

habit of leaving books and other articles lying around everywhere, and

had not previously been able to definitely name the place, and so had

often been obliged to go to fetch them myself, to save time and failure;

but now I could name the reign I left them in, and send the children.

Next I thought I would measure off the French reigns, and peg them

alongside the English ones, so that we could always have contemporaneous

French history under our eyes as we went our English rounds. We pegged

them down to the Hundred Years' War, then threw the idea aside, I do not

now remember why. After that we made the English pegs fence in European

and American history as well as English, and that answered very well.

English and alien poets, statesmen, artists, heroes, battles, plagues,

cataclysms, revolutions--we shoveled them all into the English fences

according to their dates. Do you understand? We gave Washington's birth

to George II.'s pegs and his death to George III.'s; George II. got the

Lisbon earthquake and George III. the Declaration of Independence.

Goethe, Shakespeare, Napoleon, Savonarola, Joan of Arc, the French

Revolution, the Edict of Nantes, Clive, Wellington, Waterloo, Plassey,

Patay, Cowpens, Saratoga, the Battle of the Boyne, the invention of the

logarithms, the microscope, the steam-engine, the telegraph--anything

and everything all over the world--we dumped it all in among the English

pegs according to it date and regardless of its nationality.

If the road-pegging scheme had not succeeded I should have lodged the

kings in the children's heads by means of pictures--that is, I should

have tried. It might have failed, for the pictures could only be

effective WHEN MADE BY THE PUPIL; not the master, for it is the work put

upon the drawing that makes the drawing stay in the memory, and my

children were too little to make drawings at that time. And, besides,

they had no talent for art, which is strange, for in other ways they are

like me.

But I will develop the picture plan now, hoping that you will be able to

use it. It will come good for indoors when the weather is bad and one

cannot go outside and peg a road. Let us imagine that the kings are a

procession, and that they have come out of the Ark and down Ararat for

exercise and are now starting back again up the zigzag road. This will

bring several of them into view at once, and each zigzag will represent

the length of a king's reign.

And so on. You will have plenty of space, for by my project you will use

the parlor wall. You do not mark on the wall; that would cause trouble.

You only attach bits of paper to it with pins or thumb-tacks. These will

leave no mark.

Take your pen now, and twenty-one pieces of white paper, each two inches

square, and we will do the twenty-one years of the Conqueror's reign. On

each square draw a picture of a whale and write the dates and term of

service. We choose the whale for several reasons: its name and William's

begin with the same letter; it is the biggest fish that swims, and

William is the most conspicuous figure in English history in the way of a

landmark; finally, a whale is about the easiest thing to draw. By the

time you have drawn twenty-one wales and written "William

I.--1066-1087--twenty-one years" twenty-one times, those details will be

your property; you cannot dislodge them from your memory with anything

but dynamite. I will make a sample for you to copy: (Fig. 3).

I have got his chin up too high, but that is no matter; he is looking for

Harold. It may be that a whale hasn't that fin up there on his back, but

I do not remember; and so, since there is a doubt, it is best to err on

the safe side. He looks better, anyway, than he would without it.

Be very careful and ATTENTIVE while you are drawing your first whale from

my sample and writing the word and figures under it, so that you will not

need to copy the sample any more. Compare your copy with the sample;

examine closely; if you find you have got everything right and can shut

your eyes and see the picture and call the words and figures, then turn

the sample and copy upside down and make the next copy from memory; and

also the next and next, and so on, always drawing and writing from memory

until you have finished the whole twenty-one. This will take you twenty

minutes, or thirty, and by that time you will find that you can make a

whale in less time than an unpracticed person can make a sardine; also,

up to the time you die you will always be able to furnish William's dates

to any ignorant person that inquires after them.

You will now take thirteen pieces of BLUE paper, each two inches square,

and do William II. (Fig. 4.)

Make him spout his water forward instead of backward; also make him

small, and stick a harpoon in him and give him that sick look in the eye.

Otherwise you might seem to be continuing the other William, and that

would be confusing and a damage. It is quite right to make him small; he

was only about a No. 11 whale, or along there somewhere; there wasn't

room in him for his father's great spirit. The barb of that harpoon

ought not to show like that, because it is down inside the whale and

ought to be out of sight, but it cannot be helped; if the barb were

removed people would think some one had stuck a whip-stock into the

whale. It is best to leave the barb the way it is, then every one will

know it is a harpoon and attending to business. Remember--draw from the

copy only once; make your other twelve and the inscription from memory.

Now the truth is that whenever you have copied a picture and its

inscription once from my sample and two or three times from memory the

details will stay with you and be hard to forget. After that, if you

like, you may make merely the whale's HEAD and WATER-SPOUT for the

Conqueror till you end his reign, each time SAYING the inscription in

place of writing it; and in the case of William II. make the HARPOON

alone, and say over the inscription each time you do it. You see, it

will take nearly twice as long to do the first set as it will to do the

second, and that will give you a marked sense of the difference in length

of the two reigns.

Next do Henry I. on thirty-five squares of RED paper. (Fig. 5.)

That is a hen, and suggests Henry by furnishing the first syllable. When

you have repeated the hen and the inscription until you are perfectly

sure of them, draw merely the hen's head the rest of the thirty-five

times, saying over the inscription each time. Thus: (Fig. 6).

You begin to understand how how this procession is going to look when it

is on the wall. First there will be the Conqueror's twenty-one whales

and water-spouts, the twenty-one white squares joined to one another and

making a white stripe three and one-half feet long; the thirteen blue

squares of William II. will be joined to that--a blue stripe two feet,

two inches long, followed by Henry's red stripe five feet, ten inches

long, and so on. The colored divisions will smartly show to the eye the

difference in the length of the reigns and impress the proportions on the

memory and the understanding. (Fig. 7.)

Stephen of Blois comes next. He requires nineteen two-inch squares of

YELLOW paper. (Fig. 8.)

That is a steer. The sound suggests the beginning of Stephen's name. I

choose it for that reason. I can make a better steer than that when I am

not excited. But this one will do. It is a good-enough steer for

history. The tail is defective, but it only wants straightening out.

Next comes Henry II. Give him thirty-five squares of RED paper. These

hens must face west, like the former ones. (Fig. 9.)

This hen differs from the other one. He is on his way to inquire what

has been happening in Canterbury.

How we arrive at Richard I., called Richard of the Lion-heart because he

was a brave fighter and was never so contented as when he was leading

crusades in Palestine and neglecting his affairs at home. Give him ten

squares of WHITE paper. (Fig. 10).

That is a lion. His office is to remind you of the lion-hearted Richard.

There is something the matter with his legs, but I do not quite know what

it is, they do not seem right. I think the hind ones are the most

unsatisfactory; the front ones are well enough, though it would be better

if they were rights and lefts.

Next comes King John, and he was a poor circumstance. He was called

Lackland. He gave his realm to the Pope. Let him have seventeen squares

of YELLOW paper. (Fig. 11.)

That creature is a jamboree. It looks like a trademark, but that is only

an accident and not intentional. It is prehistoric and extinct. It used

to roam the earth in the Old Silurian times, and lay eggs and catch fish

and climb trees and live on fossils; for it was of a mixed breed, which

was the fashion then. It was very fierce, and the Old Silurians were

afraid of it, but this is a tame one. Physically it has no

representative now, but its mind has been transmitted. First I drew it

sitting down, but have turned it the other way now because I think it

looks more attractive and spirited when one end of it is galloping. I

love to think that in this attitude it gives us a pleasant idea of John

coming all in a happy excitement to see what the barons have been

arranging for him at Runnymede, while the other one gives us an idea of

him sitting down to wring his hands and grieve over it.

We now come to Henry III.; RED squares again, of course--fifty-six of

them. We must make all the Henrys the same color; it will make their

long reigns show up handsomely on the wall. Among all the eight Henrys

there were but two short ones. A lucky name, as far as longevity goes.

The reigns of six of the Henrys cover 227 years. It might have been well

to name all the royal princes Henry, but this was overlooked until it was

too late. (Fig. 12.)

This is the best one yet. He is on his way (1265) to have a look at the

first House of Commons in English history. It was a monumental event,

the situation in the House, and was the second great liberty landmark

which the century had set up. I have made Henry looking glad, but this

was not intentional.

Edward I. comes next; LIGHT-BROWN paper, thirty-five squares. (Fig. 13.)

That is an editor. He is trying to think of a word. He props his feet

on a chair, which is the editor's way; then he can think better. I do

not care much for this one; his ears are not alike; still, editor

suggests the sound of Edward, and he will do. I could make him better if

I had a model, but I made this one from memory. But is no particular

matter; they all look alike, anyway. They are conceited and troublesome,

and don't pay enough. Edward was the first really English king that had

yet occupied the throne. The editor in the picture probably looks just

as Edward looked when it was first borne in upon him that this was so.

His whole attitude expressed gratification and pride mixed with

stupefaction and astonishment.

Edward II. now; twenty BLUE squares. (Fig. 14.)

Another editor. That thing behind his ear is his pencil. Whenever he

finds a bright thing in your manuscript he strikes it out with that.

That does him good, and makes him smile and show his teeth, the way he is

doing in the picture. This one has just been striking out a smart thing,

and now he is sitting there with his thumbs in his vest-holes, gloating.

They are full of envy and malice, editors are. This picture will serve

to remind you that Edward II. was the first English king who was DEPOSED.

Upon demand, he signed his deposition himself. He had found kingship a

most aggravating and disagreeable occupation, and you can see by the look

of him that he is glad he resigned. He has put his blue pencil up for

good now. He had struck out many a good thing with it in his time.

Edward III. next; fifty RED squares. (Fig. 15.)

This editor is a critic. He has pulled out his carving-knife and his

tomahawk and is starting after a book which he is going to have for

breakfast. This one's arms are put on wrong. I did not notice it at

first, but I see it now. Somehow he has got his right arm on his left

shoulder, and his left arm on his right shoulder, and this shows us the

back of his hands in both instances. It makes him left-handed all

around, which is a thing which has never happened before, except perhaps

in a museum. That is the way with art, when it is not acquired but born

to you: you start in to make some simple little thing, not suspecting

that your genius is beginning to work and swell and strain in secret, and

all of a sudden there is a convulsion and you fetch out something

astonishing. This is called inspiration. It is an accident; you never

know when it is coming. I might have tried as much as a year to think of

such a strange thing as an all-around left-handed man and I could not

have done it, for the more you try to think of an unthinkable thing the

more it eludes you; but it can't elude inspiration; you have only to bait

with inspiration and you will get it every time. Look at Botticelli's

"Spring." Those snaky women were unthinkable, but inspiration secured

them for us, thanks to goodness. It is too late to reorganize this

editor-critic now; we will leave him as he is. He will serve to remind

us.

Richard II. next; twenty-two WHITE squares. (Fig. 16.)

We use the lion again because this is another Richard. Like Edward II.,

he was DEPOSED. He is taking a last sad look at his crown before they

take it away. There was not room enough and I have made it too small;

but it never fitted him, anyway.

Now we turn the corner of the century with a new line of monarchs--the

Lancastrian kings.

Henry IV.; fourteen squares of YELLOW paper. (Fig. 17.)

This hen has laid the egg of a new dynasty and realizes the magnitude of

the event. She is giving notice in the usual way. You notice I am

improving in the construction of hens. At first I made them too much

like other animals, but this one is orthodox. I mention this to

encourage you. You will find that the more you practice the more

accurate you will become. I could always draw animals, but before I was

educated I could not tell what kind they were when I got them done, but

now I can. Keep up your courage; it will be the same with you, although

you may not think it. This Henry died the year after Joan of Arc was

born.

Henry V.; nine BLUE squares. (Fig. 18)

There you see him lost in meditation over the monument which records the

amazing figures of the battle of Agincourt. French history says 20,000

Englishmen routed 80,000 Frenchmen there; and English historians say that

the French loss, in killed and wounded, was 60,000.

Henry VI.; thirty-nine RED squares. (Fig. 19)

This is poor Henry VI., who reigned long and scored many misfortunes and

humiliations. Also two great disasters: he lost France to Joan of Arc

and he lost the throne and ended the dynasty which Henry IV. had started

in business with such good prospects. In the picture we see him sad and

weary and downcast, with the scepter falling from his nerveless grasp.

It is a pathetic quenching of a sun which had risen in such splendor.

Edward IV.; twenty-two LIGHT-BROWN squares. (Fig. 20.)

That is a society editor, sitting there elegantly dressed, with his legs

crossed in that indolent way, observing the clothes the ladies wear, so

that he can describe them for his paper and make them out finer than they

are and get bribes for it and become wealthy. That flower which he is

wearing in his buttonhole is a rose--a white rose, a York rose--and will

serve to remind us of the War of the Roses, and that the white one was

the winning color when Edward got the throne and dispossessed the

Lancastrian dynasty.

Edward V.; one-third of a BLACK square. (Fig. 21.)

His uncle Richard had him murdered in the tower. When you get the reigns

displayed upon the wall this one will be conspicuous and easily

remembered. It is the shortest one in English history except Lady Jane

Grey's, which was only nine days. She is never officially recognized as

a monarch of England, but if you or I should ever occupy a throne we

should like to have proper notice taken of it; and it would be only fair

and right, too, particularly if we gained nothing by it and lost our

lives besides.

Richard III.; two WHITE squares. (Fig. 22.)

That is not a very good lion, but Richard was not a very good king. You

would think that this lion has two heads, but that is not so; one is only

a shadow. There would be shadows for the rest of him, but there was not

light enough to go round, it being a dull day, with only fleeting

sun-glimpses now and then. Richard had a humped back and a hard heart,

and fell at the battle of Bosworth. I do not know the name of that

flower in the pot, but we will use it as Richard's trade-mark, for it is

said that it grows in only one place in the world--Bosworth Field--and

tradition says it never grew there until Richard's royal blood warmed its

hidden seed to life and made it grow.

Henry VII.; twenty-four BLUE squares. (Fig. 23.)

Henry VII. had no liking for wars and turbulence; he preferred peace and

quiet and the general prosperity which such conditions create. He liked

to sit on that kind of eggs on his own private account as well as the

nation's, and hatch them out and count up their result. When he died he

left his heir 2,000,000 pounds, which was a most unusual fortune for a

king to possess in those days. Columbus's great achievement gave him the

discovery-fever, and he sent Sebastian Cabot to the New World to search

out some foreign territory for England. That is Cabot's ship up there in

the corner. This was the first time that England went far abroad to

enlarge her estate--but not the last.

Henry VIII.; thirty-eight RED squares. (Fig. 24.)

That is Henry VIII. suppressing a monastery in his arrogant fashion.

Edward VI.; six squares of YELLOW paper. (Fig. 25.)

He is the last Edward to date. It is indicated by that thing over his

head, which is a LAST--shoemaker's last.

Mary; five squares of BLACK paper. (Fig. 26.)

The picture represents a burning martyr. He is in back of the smoke.

The first three letters of Mary's name and the first three of the word

martyr are the same. Martyrdom was going out in her day and martyrs were

becoming scarcer, but she made several. For this reason she is sometimes

called Bloody Mary.

This brings us to the reign of Elizabeth, after passing through a period

of nearly five hundred years of England's history--492 to be exact. I

think you may now be trusted to go the rest of the way without further

lessons in art or inspirations in the matter of ideas. You have the

scheme now, and something in the ruler's name or career will suggest the

pictorial symbol. The effort of inventing such things will not only help

your memory, but will develop originality in art. See what it has done

for me. If you do not find the parlor wall big enough for all of

England's history, continue it into the dining-room and into other rooms.

This will make the walls interesting and instructive and really worth

something instead of being just flat things to hold the house together.

----- 1. Summer of 1899.

THE MEMORABLE ASSASSINATION

Note.--The assassination of the Empress of Austria at Geneva, September

10, 1898, occurred during Mark Twain's Austrian residence. The news came

to him at Kaltenleutgeben, a summer resort a little way out of Vienna.

To his friend, the Rev. Jos. H. Twichell, he wrote:

"That good and unoffending lady, the Empress, is killed by a madman, and

I am living in the midst of world-history again. The Queen's Jubilee

last year, the invasion of the Reichsrath by the police, and now this

murder, which will still be talked of and described and painted a

thousand a thousand years from now. To have a personal friend of the

wearer of two crowns burst in at the gate in the deep dusk of the evening

and say, in a voice broken with tears, 'My God! the Empress is murdered,'

and fly toward her home before we can utter a question--why, it brings

the giant event home to you, makes you a part of it and personally

interested; it is as if your neighbor, Antony, should come flying and

say, 'Caesar is butchered--the head of the world is fallen!'

"Of course there is no talk but of this. The mourning is universal and

genuine, the consternation is stupefying. The Austrian Empire is being

draped with black. Vienna will be a spectacle to see by next Saturday,

when the funeral cort`ege marches."

He was strongly moved by the tragedy, impelled to write concerning it.

He prepared the article which follows, but did not offer it for

publication, perhaps feeling that his own close association with the

court circles at the moment prohibited this personal utterance. There

appears no such reason for withholding its publication now.

A. B. P.

The more one thinks of the assassination, the more imposing and

tremendous the event becomes. The destruction of a city is a large

event, but it is one which repeats itself several times in a thousand

years; the destruction of a third part of a nation by plague and famine

is a large event, but it has happened several times in history; the

murder of a king is a large event, but it has been frequent.

The murder of an empress is the largest of all events. One must go back

about two thousand years to find an instance to put with this one. The

oldest family of unchallenged descent in Christendom lives in Rome and

traces its line back seventeen hundred years, but no member of it has

been present in the earth when an empress was murdered, until now. Many

a time during these seventeen centuries members of that family have been

startled with the news of extraordinary events--the destruction of

cities, the fall of thrones, the murder of kings, the wreck of dynasties,

the extinction of religions, the birth of new systems of government; and

their descendants have been by to hear of it and talk about it when all

these things were repeated once, twice, or a dozen times--but to even

that family has come news at last which is not staled by use, has no

duplicates in the long reach of its memory.

It is an event which confers a curious distinction upon every individual

now living in the world: he has stood alive and breathing in the presence

of an event such as has not fallen within the experience of any traceable

or untraceable ancestor of his for twenty centuries, and it is not likely

to fall within the experience of any descendant of his for twenty more.

Time has made some great changes since the Roman days. The murder of an

empress then--even the assassination of Caesar himself--could not

electrify the world as this murder has electrified it. For one reason,

there was then not much of a world to electrify; it was a small world, as

to known bulk, and it had rather a thin population, besides; and for

another reason, the news traveled so slowly that its tremendous initial

thrill wasted away, week by week and month by month, on the journey, and

by the time it reached the remoter regions there was but little of it

left. It was no longer a fresh event, it was a thing of the far past; it

was not properly news, it was history. But the world is enormous now,

and prodigiously populated--that is one change; and another is the

lightning swiftness of the flight of tidings, good and bad. "The Empress

is murdered!" When those amazing words struck upon my ear in this

Austrian village last Saturday, three hours after the disaster, I knew

that it was already old news in London, Paris, Berlin, New York, San

Francisco, Japan, China, Melbourne, Cape Town, Bombay, Madras, Calcutta,

and that the entire globe with a single voice, was cursing the

perpetrator of it. Since the telegraph first began to stretch itself

wider and wider about the earth, larger and increasingly larger areas of

the world have, as time went on, received simultaneously the shock of a

great calamity; but this is the first time in history that the entire

surface of the globe has been swept in a single instant with the thrill

of so gigantic an event.

And who is the miracle-worker who has furnished to the world this

spectacle? All the ironies are compacted in the answer. He is at the

bottom of the human ladder, as the accepted estimates of degree and value

go: a soiled and patched young loafer, without gifts, without talents,

without education, without morals, without character, without any born

charm or any acquired one that wins or beguiles or attracts; without a

single grace of mind or heart or hand that any tramp or prostitute could

envy him; an unfaithful private in the ranks, an incompetent

stone-cutter, an inefficient lackey; in a word, a mangy, offensive,

empty, unwashed, vulgar, gross, mephitic, timid, sneaking, human polecat.

And it was within the privileges and powers of this sarcasm upon the

human race to reach up--up--up--and strike from its far summit in the

social skies the world's accepted ideal of Glory and Might and Splendor

and Sacredness! It realizes to us what sorry shows and shadows we are.

Without our clothes and our pedestals we are poor things and much of a

size; our dignities are not real, our pomps are shams. At our best and

stateliest we are not suns, as we pretended, and teach, and believe, but

only candles; and any bummer can blow us out.

And now we get realized to us once more another thing which we often

forget--or try to: that no man has a wholly undiseased mind; that in one

way or another all men are mad. Many are mad for money. When this

madness is in a mild form it is harmless and the man passes for sane; but

when it develops powerfully and takes possession of the man, it can make

him cheat, rob, and kill; and when he has got his fortune and lost it

again it can land him in the asylum or the suicide's coffin. Love is a

madness; if thwarted it develops fast; it can grow to a frenzy of despair

and make an otherwise sane and highly gifted prince, like Rudolph, throw

away the crown of an empire and snuff out his own life. All the whole

list of desires, predilections, aversions, ambitions, passions, cares,

griefs, regrets, remorses, are incipient madness, and ready to grow,

spread, and consume, when the occasion comes. There are no healthy

minds, and nothing saves any man but accident--the accident of not having

his malady put to the supreme test.

One of the commonest forms of madness is the desire to be noticed, the

pleasure derived from being noticed. Perhaps it is not merely common,

but universal. In its mildest form it doubtless is universal. Every

child is pleased at being noticed; many intolerable children put in their

whole time in distressing and idiotic effort to attract the attention of

visitors; boys are always "showing off"; apparently all men and women are

glad and grateful when they find that they have done a thing which has

lifted them for a moment out of obscurity and caused wondering talk.

This common madness can develop, by nurture, into a hunger for notoriety

in one, for fame in another. It is this madness for being noticed and

talked about which has invented kingship and the thousand other

dignities, and tricked them out with pretty and showy fineries; it has

made kings pick one another's pockets, scramble for one another's crowns

and estates, slaughter one another's subjects; it has raised up

prize-fighters, and poets, and villages mayors, and little and big

politicians, and big and little charity-founders, and bicycle champions,

and banditti chiefs, and frontier desperadoes, and Napoleons. Anything to

get notoriety; anything to set the village, or the township, or the city,

or the State, or the nation, or the planet shouting, "Look--there he

goes--that is the man!" And in five minutes' time, at no cost of brain,

or labor, or genius this mangy Italian tramp has beaten them all,

transcended them all, outstripped them all, for in time their names will

perish; but by the friendly help of the insane newspapers and courts and

kings and historians, his is safe and live and thunder in the world all

down the ages as long as human speech shall endure! Oh, if it were not

so tragic how ludicrous it would be!

She was so blameless, the Empress; and so beautiful, in mind and heart,

in person and spirit; and whether with a crown upon her head or without

it and nameless, a grace to the human race, and almost a justification of

its creation; WOULD be, indeed, but that the animal that struck her down

re-establishes the doubt.

In her character was every quality that in woman invites and engages

respect, esteem, affection, and homage. Her tastes, her instincts, and

her aspirations were all high and fine and all her life her heart and

brain were busy with activities of a noble sort. She had had bitter

griefs, but they did not sour her spirit, and she had had the highest

honors in the world's gift, but she went her simple way unspoiled. She

knew all ranks, and won them all, and made them her friends. An English

fisherman's wife said, "When a body was in trouble she didn't send her

help, she brought it herself." Crowns have adorned others, but she

adorned her crowns.

It was a swift celebrity the assassin achieved. And it is marked by some

curious contrasts. At noon last, Saturday there was no one in the world

who would have considered acquaintanceship with him a thing worth

claiming or mentioning; no one would have been vain of such an

acquaintanceship; the humblest honest boot-black would not have valued

the fact that he had met him or seen him at some time or other; he was

sunk in abysmal obscurity, he was away beneath the notice of the bottom

grades of officialdom. Three hours later he was the one subject of

conversation in the world, the gilded generals and admirals and governors

were discussing him, all the kings and queens and emperors had put aside

their other interests to talk about him. And wherever there was a man, at

the summit of the world or the bottom of it, who by chance had at some

time or other come across that creature, he remembered it with a secret

satisfaction, and MENTIONED it--for it was a distinction, now! It brings

human dignity pretty low, and for a moment the thing is not quite

realizable--but it is perfectly true. If there is a king who can

remember, now, that he once saw that creature in a time past, he has let

that fact out, in a more or less studiedly casual and indifferent way,

some dozens of times during the past week. For a king is merely human;

the inside of him is exactly like the inside of any other person; and it

is human to find satisfaction in being in a kind of personal way

connected with amazing events. We are all privately vain of such a thing;

we are all alike; a king is a king by accident; the reason the rest of us

are not kings is merely due to another accident; we are all made out of

the same clay, and it is a sufficient poor quality.

Below the kings, these remarks are in the air these days; I know it well

as if I were hearing them:

THE COMMANDER: "He was in my army."

THE GENERAL: "He was in my corps."

THE COLONEL: "He was in my regiment. A brute. I remember him well."

THE CAPTAIN: "He was in my company. A troublesome scoundrel. I remember

him well."

THE SERGEANT: "Did I know him? As well as I know you. Why, every morning

I used to--" etc., etc.; a glad, long story, told to devouring ears.

THE LANDLADY: "Many's the time he boarded with me. I can show you his

very room, and the very bed he slept in. And the charcoal mark there on

the wall--he made that. My little Johnny saw him do it with his own

eyes. Didn't you, Johnny?"

It is easy to see, by the papers, that the magistrate and the constables

and the jailer treasure up the assassin's daily remarks and doings as

precious things, and as wallowing this week in seas of blissful

distinction. The interviewer, too; he tried to let on that he is not

vain of his privilege of contact with this man whom few others are

allowed to gaze upon, but he is human, like the rest, and can no more

keep his vanity corked in than could you or I.

Some think that this murder is a frenzied revolt against the criminal

militarism which is impoverishing Europe and driving the starving poor

mad. That has many crimes to answer for, but not this one, I think. One

may not attribute to this man a generous indignation against the wrongs

done the poor; one may not dignify him with a generous impulse of any

kind. When he saw his photograph and said, "I shall be celebrated," he

laid bare the impulse that prompted him. It was a mere hunger for

notoriety. There is another confessed case of the kind which is as old as

history--the burning of the temple of Ephesus.

Among the inadequate attempts to account for the assassination we must

concede high rank to the many which have described it as a "peculiarly

brutal crime" and then added that it was "ordained from above." I think

this verdict will not be popular "above." If the deed was ordained from

above, there is no rational way of making this prisoner even partially

responsible for it, and the Genevan court cannot condemn him without

manifestly committing a crime. Logic is logic, and by disregarding its

laws even the most pious and showy theologian may be beguiled into

preferring charges which should not be ventured upon except in the

shelter of plenty of lightning-rods.

I witnessed the funeral procession, in company with friends, from the

windows of the Krantz, Vienna's sumptuous new hotel. We came into town

in the middle of the forenoon, and I went on foot from the station.

Black flags hung down from all the houses; the aspects were Sunday-like;

the crowds on the sidewalks were quiet and moved slowly; very few people

were smoking; many ladies wore deep mourning, gentlemen were in black as

a rule; carriages were speeding in all directions, with footmen and

coachmen in black clothes and wearing black cocked hats; the shops were

closed; in many windows were pictures of the Empress: as a beautiful

young bride of seventeen; as a serene and majestic lady with added years;

and finally in deep black and without ornaments--the costume she always

wore after the tragic death of her son nine years ago, for her heart

broke then, and life lost almost all its value for her. The people stood

grouped before these pictures, and now and then one saw women and girls

turn away wiping the tears from their eyes.

In front of the Krantz is an open square; over the way was the church

where the funeral services would be held. It is small and old and

severely plain, plastered outside and whitewashed or painted, and with no

ornament but a statue of a monk in a niche over the door, and above that

a small black flag. But in its crypt lie several of the great dead of

the House of Habsburg, among them Maria Theresa and Napoleon's son, the

Duke of Reichstadt. Hereabouts was a Roman camp, once, and in it the

Emperor Marcus Aurelius died a thousand years before the first Habsburg

ruled in Vienna, which was six hundred years ago and more.

The little church is packed in among great modern stores and houses, and

the windows of them were full of people. Behind the vast plate-glass

windows of the upper floors of the house on the corner one glimpsed

terraced masses of fine-clothed men and women, dim and shimmery, like

people under water. Under us the square was noiseless, but it was full

of citizens; officials in fine uniforms were flitting about on errands,

and in a doorstep sat a figure in the uttermost raggedness of poverty,

the feet bare, the head bent humbly down; a youth of eighteen or twenty,

he was, and through the field-glass one could see that he was tearing

apart and munching riffraff that he had gathered somewhere. Blazing

uniforms flashed by him, making a sparkling contrast with his drooping

ruin of moldy rags, but he took not notice; he was not there to grieve

for a nation's disaster; he had his own cares, and deeper. From two

directions two long files of infantry came plowing through the pack and

press in silence; there was a low, crisp order and the crowd vanished,

the square save the sidewalks was empty, the private mourner was gone.

Another order, the soldiers fell apart and enclosed the square in a

double-ranked human fence. It was all so swift, noiseless, exact--like a

beautifully ordered machine.

It was noon, now. Two hours of stillness and waiting followed. Then

carriages began to flow past and deliver the two and three hundred court

personages and high nobilities privileged to enter the church. Then the

square filled up; not with civilians, but with army and navy officers in

showy and beautiful uniforms. They filled it compactly, leaving only a

narrow carriage path in front of the church, but there was no civilian

among them. And it was better so; dull clothes would have marred the

radiant spectacle. In the jam in front of the church, on its steps, and

on the sidewalk was a bunch of uniforms which made a blazing splotch of

color--intense red, gold, and white--which dimmed the brilliancies around

them; and opposite them on the other side of the path was a bunch of

cascaded bright-green plumes above pale-blue shoulders which made another

splotch of splendor emphatic and conspicuous in its glowing surroundings.

It was a sea of flashing color all about, but these two groups were the

high notes. The green plumes were worn by forty or fifty Austrian

generals, the group opposite them were chiefly Knights of Malta and

knights of a German order. The mass of heads in the square were covered

by gilt helmets and by military caps roofed with a mirror-like gaze, and

the movements of the wearers caused these things to catch the sun-rays,

and the effect was fine to see--the square was like a garden of richly

colored flowers with a multitude of blinding and flashing little suns

distributed over it.

Think of it--it was by command of that Italian loafer yonder on his

imperial throne in the Geneva prison that this splendid multitude was

assembled there; and the kings and emperors that were entering the church

from a side street were there by his will. It is so strange, so

unrealizable.

At three o'clock the carriages were still streaming by in single file.

At three-five a cardinal arrives with his attendants; later some bishops;

then a number of archdeacons--all in striking colors that add to the

show. At three-ten a procession of priests passed along, with crucifix.

Another one, presently; after an interval, two more; at three-fifty

another one--very long, with many crosses, gold-embroidered robes, and

much white lace; also great pictured banners, at intervals, receding into

the distance.

A hum of tolling bells makes itself heard, but not sharply. At

three-fifty-eight a waiting interval. Presently a long procession of

gentlemen in evening dress comes in sight and approaches until it is near

to the square, then falls back against the wall of soldiers at the

sidewalk, and the white shirt-fronts show like snowflakes and are very

conspicuous where so much warm color is all about.

A waiting pause. At four-twelve the head of the funeral procession comes

into view at last. First, a body of cavalry, four abreast, to widen the

path. Next, a great body of lancers, in blue, with gilt helmets. Next,

three six-horse mourning-coaches; outriders and coachmen in black, with

cocked hats and white wigs. Next, troops in splendid uniforms, red,

gold, and white, exceedingly showy.

Now the multitude uncover. The soldiers present arms; there is a low

rumble of drums; the sumptuous great hearse approaches, drawn at a walk

by eight black horses plumed with black bunches of nodding ostrich

feathers; the coffin is borne into the church, the doors are closed.

The multitude cover their heads, and the rest of the procession moves by;

first the Hungarian Guard in their indescribably brilliant and

picturesque and beautiful uniform, inherited from the ages of barbaric

splendor, and after them other mounted forces, a long and showy array.

Then the shining crown in the square crumbled apart, a wrecked rainbow,

and melted away in radiant streams, and in the turn of a wrist the three

dirtiest and raggedest and cheerfulest little slum-girls in Austria were

capering about in the spacious vacancy. It was a day of contrasts.

Twice the Empress entered Vienna in state. The first time was in 1854,

when she was a bride of seventeen, and then she rode in measureless pomp

and with blare of music through a fluttering world of gay flags and

decorations, down streets walled on both hands with a press of shouting

and welcoming subjects; and the second time was last Wednesday, when she

entered the city in her coffin and moved down the same streets in the

dead of the night under swaying black flags, between packed human walls

again; but everywhere was a deep stillness, now--a stillness emphasized,

rather than broken, by the muffled hoofbeats of the long cavalcade over

pavements cushioned with sand, and the low sobbing of gray-headed women

who had witnessed the first entry forty-four years before, when she and

they were young--and unaware!

A character in Baron von Berger's recent fairy drama "Habsburg" tells

about the first coming of the girlish Empress-Queen, and in his history

draws a fine picture: I cannot make a close translation of it, but will

try to convey the spirit of the verses:

I saw the stately pageant pass:

In her high place I saw the Empress-Queen:

I could not take my eyes away

From that fair vision, spirit-like and pure,

That rose serene, sublime, and figured to my sense

A noble Alp far lighted in the blue,

That in the flood of morning rends its veil of cloud

And stands a dream of glory to the gaze

Of them that in the Valley toil and plod.

A SCRAP OF CURIOUS HISTORY

Marion City, on the Mississippi River, in the State of Missouri--a

village; time, 1845. La Bourboule-les-Bains, France--a village; time,

the end of June, 1894. I was in the one village in that early time; I am

in the other now. These times and places are sufficiently wide apart,

yet today I have the strange sense of being thrust back into that

Missourian village and of reliving certain stirring days that I lived

there so long ago.