There is a quaintly pious inscription in Dunvegan graveyard, chiseled as
if by a hand that trembled, upon the gray tombstone farthest back of all
those by the side of the Little Church in Under the Oaks. It reads:
ERVIN McARTHUR,
From Whom the Daemon Was Cast Out.
A General in the Army of God.
It was only the last line which was not so directed to be inscribed by
the will of him who lies beneath it.
The visitor smiles as he reads until he hears of the prowess of the youth
who won fame and honor and glory in the city by the sea and meditates
upon how great his after life must have been to have merited so pleasant
a comparison. The story is still easy to hear in Dunvegan, where his
name is often coupled with Dr. Allerton’s, but not to the curious and
gossiping. One must first have left the parlor and have become a boon
companion of the living-room—and one must be a lover of Dunvegan. Then if
the night be dark, so dark that Tawiskara may seem to have come back to
Attacoa, the story is his, the story of Ervin McArthur, out of whom the
Daemon was cast.
They say in Dunvegan that somewhere in the heart of every man there
dwells Tawiskara, the Daemon of Darkness. According to his own way and
in his own time, he manifests his power. To one he suggests, to another
he promises, and the third he compels—and he must needs go whom the
Daemon drives. At the wrong moment, the psychological moment of weakness,
he takes hold of a man and a deed is done, a tiny indiscretion or a
horrible crime, as the Daemon wills.
They believe in Dunvegan that McArthur was but a type of all men,
that the evil heritage of the Shadow of the Attacoa came upon him in
exaggerated form because it was needful that the works of God might be
manifested in him. They still speak with such pious quaintness in the
dreamy village. And they tell their child who shows the evil heart of
how Ervin McArthur fought in his awful death-struggle on Attacoa with
Tawiskara, the Dark One, and endured unto blood, striving against his
sin; of how he, as all men may do, in the strength of Ioskeha, cast the
Daemon out.
It is thus that they apologize for the horror with which his life-story
was laden, it being in their eyes like the black, ill-odored ink of
the press which is yet needful to make the page of each story perfect.
They shudder in the telling of it, as the reader must have shuddered in
hearing—these are they who hear the mutterings of Tawiskara in their
own hearts. And there must be those who dwell in Dunvegan who call the
story precious because that through it they have been delivered from much
tribulation and anguish of spirit which comes to all those who would
perfect the light of their souls by exorcising the Daemons that infest
it. These consider that in the horror of the story lies its true meaning
and value, and they discountenance the softer versions which have sprung
up with the newer generation in the village. If their souls have known
deeper night than that of Ervin McArthur, let them love the parable of
how they were delivered.
So there are pilgrims who sometimes visit the little graveyard where
the shadows are dense at noonday, and where Ervin McArthur lies. They
tread lightly upon the blue periwinkle, and there are those who loose
reverently the sandals from their feet for fear that God may be near in
some wayside bush.
THE END.
HISTORY OF THE HALS
CHAPTER XVIII—HOW THE BISHOP BROKE THE RECORD
By John Trotwood Moore
GREELEY, COL., Jan. 10, 1907.
Editors Taylor-Trotwood Magazine, Nashville, Tenn.
Gentlemen:—I write to ask that in the very interesting “History
of the Hals,” now running in your magazine, you will persuade
Mr. Moore to include the famous story, “How the Bishop Broke
the Record.” This was published years ago in the “_Horse
Review_,” and is the best thing of its kind ever written. I
know hundreds of people who have said they would like to see
it again and it ought to be in the “History of the Hals.” Very
truly yours,
A. L. CAMP, JR.
* * * * *
(Old Wash is a Baptist and it was with great difficulty and
many misgivings that I induced him to go out to the Episcopal
church recently and hear the Bishop of Tennessee preach. The
old man went wild over the sermon and this is the peculiar way
he took to tell about it.)
“Wal, sah, I went in dar an’ sot down in dat part of de gran’stand set
off fur de colored folks. I look erroun’ an’ seed leetle bannisters an’
things runnin’ ’roun’ ’bout de pooties’ an’ neates’ mile track you eber
seed, wid de fence all painted wid gold an’ lit up wid ’lectric lights.
B’utiful pictures hung up in de club house gallery an’ de soft light cum
in through de painted winders. I tell you, sah, dese yere Piscolopiums
kno’ how to keep up dey church track, if dey do stick to de high-wheel
sulky, an’ kinder think dat er record made dar, at dat way ob gwine, will
’title ’em to registration in de final year book quicker’n enny yudder
track. An’ it wuz er good un—for it run erroun’ es smooth es er widder’s
courtship, an’ it hed bin harrered an’ scraped an’ rolled till it wus es
slick as er carpet ob banana peels.
“You ain’t nurver noticed how dese church tracks differ frum one
ernudder, hes you, Boss?” asked the old man, with a sly smile. “Wal, dey
do. Now, ef dat hed bin er Mefodis’ track it wouldn’t er had no fence
erroun’ it, kinder free fur all, no money to be paid at de gate, and
free lunch fur ebrybody. If it hed er bin a Baptis’ track it would er
bin out in some big medder bottom, an’ stid ob bein’ roun’ it would jes’
foller de meanderin’s ob de ribber, handy fur spungin’ off de horses.
An’ dey wouldn’t ’low nuffin’ to go on dat track but pacers, either,
an’ dey must all be ob de Hal fambly—kinder close kin, yer kno’. De
Presberterians would er hed dey track es roun’ es it cu’d be, an’ sech
er high, whitewashed fence ’roun’ it dat nobody cu’d see ober it, an’
’bout ebry ha’f hour dey would run out er big fo’-hoss sprinkler, furever
sprinklin’ it, eben fur de yearlin’ races. Oh, it’s funny ter see how dey
all differ!” he said.
“But dar dis one wuz, es pooty es it cu’d be, an’ free fur all. An’ jes’
off to de lef’ dey hed de nices’ leetle jedges’ stan’, all painted in
silver an’ trimmed wid gold, while de timers’ box sat on de right, wid
leetle peep-holes in it an’ pictures ob flyin’ things wid wings jes’
erbove—hosses dat hed broke de records, I ’spec. Jes’ den de ban’ in
de ban’ stan’ struck up de sweetes’ music I urver heerd. It went all
through my soul an’ made me feel like I wus er chile ergin an’ my good
ole mammy, long dead an’ gone, wus singin’ me ter sleep at de cabin on
de ole plantashun to de tune ob ‘De Ole Folks at Home.’ Den de perfume
floated out like de smell ob de jess’mins I useter smell by de cabin do’,
an’ de candles flickered on de quarter posts like de fireflies in de dusk
ob my childhood days, an’ all dese things jes’ made me hongry to heah
sum gospil ergin. Bimeby sum leetle angel boys, all dressed in white,
wid shinin’ collars, cum marchin’ in, singin’ an’ bringin’ programs fur
de races in dey han’s—leastwise dat’s whut I tuk ’em to be. I tell you,
sah, it wuz gran’, an’ es I sot dar an’ tuck it all in an’ looked at dat
shinin’ track wid de golden fence, I sed to myself:
“‘Great Scott! but ef dey can’t go fast on dis track, I lakter kno’ whut
de yuse ob tryin’ enny yudder!’
“When de music stopped, de feller in de jedges’ stan’ made some
’nouncements, an’ den he ’lowed dat de Bishop ob Tennessee would go er
exerbishun mile ergin time, an’ den I heerd de bell ring _tingerling,
tingerling_, an’ de ban’ struck up lively lak, an’ de Bishop cum pacin’
in. Soon es I looked at ’im, sez I:
“‘He’ll do—he’s er good un! Got mos’ too much riggin’ on ’im to suit my
taste, but den ebry man knows whut’s bes’ fur his own hoss. Ef he wuz
mine I’d take off dat sweater an’ white blankit wid red embroidery, dem
knee boots an’ dat obercheck. His gait’s all right an’ true es clockwork,
an’ he don’t need nuffin’ but er pair ob quarter boots an’ fo’-ounce
shoes. But dat’s all right,’ I said ergin, ‘eberybody knows whut’s bes’
fur his own hoss, an’ dem fancy riggin’s am pooty, ter-be-sho’.’
“Graceful? He wus es graceful es er swan on er silver lake, an’ es he
paced up de quarter stretch to sco’ down I seed dat he wuz gwinter gib de
recurd er close call. Down he cum so smooth you cudden’t see his riggin’,
an’ es nachul es er eagle draps frum his mountin’ peak in de valley
belo’. Dey didn’t hafter say ‘go’ to him but onc’t, an’ den he went erway
lak er winged angel on de top spar ob er flyin’ yot.
“‘He that loseth his life for my sake shall save it,’ he said, an’ ebry
lick he hit went home to de ole man’s hart. Oh, hit wuz er clip. He tuck
up Greek art an’ literachure an’ he painted it so beautiful you cu’d
see de statue ob Diana beam outen his eyes an’ de grace ob Apollo fall
frum his hands. Away he went at dat pooty clip till he sud’n’y shifted
his gait an’ struck de follies ob dis wurl, an’ den I seed whut all dat
riggin’ wus fur, fur he turned it into er toga an’ he looked like Jupiter
es he shook de roof wid his speed an’ his stride.
“‘He’s gwine too fast fur de fus’ quarter,’ I sed, as I sot holdin’ my
bref; but befo’ de wurds wuz out he seed it, too, an’ he check up er
leetle, an’ he cum down es gently es de summer winds play—but er-gittin’
dar all de time!—an’ den he tell us how all dis art an’ all dis interlect
wa’nt nuffin’ ef we didn’t lub God an’ do right an’ lib pure libes, an’
his voice wus lak de music ob de winds in de valley, an’ ebrything he
say jes’ peer to be dat way an’ no argyment—and all de time he wuz jes’
er-gittin’ dar—an’ es he passed de fus’ quarter I cudden’t help it,
I jes’ tuck out my ole watch an’ snapped it, an’ dar it stood—thirty
seconds, holy Moses!
“But dat didn’t wind ’im, fur he started in de naixt quarter so fas’ I
tho’t sho’ he gwine fly in de air. But he didn’t. He fairly burnt up de
track ob sin an’ folly an’ littleness an’ meanness, an’ he made de leetle
rail birds ob selfishness fly to de woods, an’ de touts ob scandal slunk
erway, an’ de drivers of trick an’ cheat hunted fer ernuther track,
an’ de timers of folly throwed erway dey watch—an’ all de time he wus
er-gittin’ dar—an’ he nurver teched hissef nur struck er boot nur missed
his clip, an’ he made de ole high wheel sulky trimble all over lak er
leaf in de storm, an’ he showed how ebrybody reap whut dey sow; how de
artis’ lib in art, an’ de poit in poltry, an’ de patriot in de harts ob
his countrymen, all arter dey dun dead an’ buried. An’ ‘Oh,’ he ses, so
sarchin’ lak I see de folks trimble, ‘ef you lib fur de wurl you’ll die
wid de wurl; but ef you lib fur God you’ll nurver die!’ An’ I cu’d see it
all so plain an’ so quick an’ so terribul an’ so true I jes’ pulled out
my ole timer ergin es he passed de ha’f, an’ click! dar she stood—59½!
“‘By de horn ob de tabbernacle,’ sez I, ‘he can’t keep up dat clip! Dat’s
de ha’f dat burnt up Joe Patchen!’
“But I tell you, Boss, his name was P’inter—he had no noshun ob
quittin’. He spun erlong on de straight stretches lak he had er runnin’
mate, an’ you’d wonder whut hilt ’im to de yearth. Den he ease up gently
on de turns ob de track—whar he hit de doubters an’ de ’siety an’ de
fools dat grasp at de bubbles ob wealth an’ folly on de ribber, an’ let
de mighty stream wid all its depth an’ grandeur pass onnoticed to de
ocean’—as he sed, he ease up dar an’ ketch his bref so gently lak, an’
sorrerful, you’d think he gwine stop an’ weep fur ’em, an’ you feel lak
weepin’ yourse’f, fur yore own follies an’ de follies ob de wurl—but all
de time he wus gittin’ dar!—an’ ef he did ease up es he went up de hill,
it wus only jes’ long enuf ter let de light shine down on ’im frum heben,
an’ he seemed ter linger jes’ er minnit in de sweetnes’ ob its glory.
“I wiped erway a tear an’ snapped my ole timer ergin—1:30½! ‘Dat’s good
Baptis’ doctrine,’ sez I, ‘ef it am a trifle speedy. Lord, ef he do
bust de recurd I hope you’ll gib ’im de Atlantic Ocean to spunge off
in—sumpin’ in keepin’ wid his own nachur.’ An’ I sing sof’ly to myse’f
dat good ole hymn, sung by Moses an’ de profets so long ergo:
Baptis’, Baptis’ is my name,
I’m Baptis’ till I die;
I’ve been baptized in de Baptis’ church,
Gwinter eat all de Baptis’ pie!
Hard trials,
Great tribelashuns, chilluns,
Hard trials,
I’m gwine ter leab dis wurl’.
“But bless you, honey, he wus jes’ playin’ on dem yudder quarters; he
commenced ter pace now. He got right down on de groun’, an’ dough he
didn’t make no fuss an’ you cudn’t see er moshun, nur eben de spokes ob
de sulky, he talked lak er dyin’ muther to her wayward boy. He scorned
de track ob dis wurl an’ seemed ter be pacin’ in de pure air ob God, an’
yit he didn’t rouse er angry wind, nur bring out de loud shouts frum de
wurldly gran’ stan’, nur de hoozars of victory, nur de wild frenzy ob
delight—but des tears, sweet tears. I cried lak er baby. I furgot ter
time ’im. De sof’ light cum in frum de winder ob God an’ got inter de
winder ob de ole man’s hart. De smell ob de yearthly flowers wus turned
to heabenly ones, an’ when his sof’, ’pealin’ voice died away an’ de
sweet, ’pealin’ music commenced, I cudn’t tell whar de sermin ended an’
de music begun, dey run togedder so. I sot in er sort ob er dream; I
wanted ter go ter heaben; I heerd de white folks all pass quietly out; I
heerd de notes ob de organ die erway, but I sot in de cornder, way off
by mysef, an’ thanked God dat I’d seed de light an’ heerd de recurd ob
salvation busted.”
THE QUEST OF POAQUITA
By Horatio Lankford King
“Traditions?” repeated Buck Eye Pete with inimitable scorn, as he deftly
balanced a battered coffee pot over the camp fire, “them was once
the bane an’ joy o’ my life. I fair radiated with dreams o’ romance,
hidden treasure, an’ sich like. Why, there was a pre-historic time in
my credulous natur when I was looney on Pirate Morgan an’ babbled o’
Montezuma’s sarcophagus o’ buried valuables an’ heagern wives with unholy
an’ covetious eye. An’ that’s what sent me an’ Chinook Bill on that
foolhardy adventcher into darkest Sonora in the quest o’ the fabled city
o’ Poaquita.”
Buck Eye Pete went back to his seat beyond the hot glare of the camp
fire, puffed tentatively at a villainous looking pipe and gazed
mournfully and with lack-lustre eye into the surrounding wall of
darkness. Then, seeing no objection, he continued:
“An’ if this hyere august body votes a majority I’ll be the wag es wags a
tale, es Shakespeare said.”
We settled ourselves in divers comfortable positions and nodded a
unanimous consent.
“To begin, this deed o’ valor, gents an’ fellow mavericks,” pursued Buck
Eye Pete, “was committed in the year of our Lord 1880, an’ me an’ Chinook
Bill deserted the peaceful path o’ cow-punchin’ an’ chucked the fair dame
o’ nameless peril under her purty chin. But be the consequence o’ that
deed o’ valor on my own head, fer Chinook Bill was one o’ them trustin’
children es would turn an indignant rattler from a devilish purpose.
Chinook Bill had that ca’m eye o’ the poet, the voice o’ the south wind
an’ a hankerin’ fer the beauties o’ virgin natur an’ was gifted with a
most marvelous arrangement in his inside which would belch information,
mediaeval er otherwise, like a heifer’s cud, which he would afterwards
masticate with great an’ convincin’ effusion. So this is how it come
about. We had been grazin’ a bunch o’ cattle on the Bear Paw Plateaus,
an’ was some seven weeks out an’ sure lonesome fer company when in a
fit o’ desperation I made a suggestion to allay the fevered angwee o’
our fettered sperits. An’ Chinook Bill fell to with a spontaniety an’
enthusiasm es was plum disgustin’ in a man es had full possession o’ his
mental faculties. But that ain’t sayin’ es how I was took with the dreams
o’ averice myself. It was one fair day, the name an’ date o’ which has
been lost in the remorseless flight o’ time, we come upon a Mexican’s
cabin down in the El Raso Pass, which is still an unknown quantity in
them beautifully colored railroad posters. This Mex had a helpmate, two
ragged urchins in the way o’ off-spring with a mixture o’ mangy sheep an’
a pack o’ dawgs es would back ’emselves agin a convenient angle o’ the
hut, scratch their ears an’ growl while me an’ Chinook Bill held forth
in intellectual conversation with the Mex. They was ha’f Injuns an’ had
lived there since they didn’t know when, but it was some time conjoinin’
that mystic period when the Jesuits evacuated suddent from their mission,
the noble ruins o’ said mission still liftin’ majestic columns o’ doby
brick in the purple haze o’ a poetic twilight a little ways down the
valley. Well, whilst we was enjoyin’ our repast o’ tortillas an’ goat’s
milk in the main dinin’ room Chinook Bill’s artistic eye discovered
a incongruous dis-sim-oo-larity in the Mex’s selection o’ household
furnitcher, which was sure marvelous to look upon to the unconverted
eye o’ good taste, which consisted o’ sacred emblems in onyx, a gilded
throne chair which was fit for a pope, a carved mahogany altar table an’
a stately array o’ books bound in stained sheep skin. Chinook Bill takes
down one o’ them tomes o’ learnin’ an’ grows exultant yet arful perplexed
at the contents thereof. An’ on the cover o’ every one o’ them books was
a mouth with two fingers placed over it, which Chinook Bill opines was
meant to convey their secret import an’ was forbidden knowledge excep’
to them es wore the cassock an’ paced the sacred patio o’ righteous an’
worldly exclusion.
“‘Where you get these?’ says Chinook Bill, polite.
“‘Mission,’ says the Mex.
“‘Buy,’ says Chinook Bill, ‘five dollars’.
“‘_Bueno_,’ says the Mex, an’ we peel him a fiver. Then we packed our
purchases on a burro an’ hikes fer the range.
“It was that night before the camp-fire I was translatin’ the Spanish in
one o’ them tomes o’ learnin’ when I ups suddent like with a yell an’
slaps Chinook Bill a ponderous blow o’ enlightment.
“‘Attention!’ says I, ‘here is an unexpurgated account o’ the mysterious
city o’ Poaquita which lies in the far interior o’ the Sonora wilderness
an’ was once ruled by the descendants o’ Montezuma an’ to which some
monks was led captive in that distant time when the mind o’ man runneth
not to the contrary! Then I read the glowin’ account, and Chinook Bill
waddles his cud an’ looks attentive.
“‘Well’, says he, final, ‘what’s the color in yer pan?’
“‘Gold and hidden treasure’, says I, an’ I read some more from the
forbidden book.
“‘Do you believe it?’ says Chinook Bill arter a pause an’ a long breath,
like a woman.
“‘Believe?’ says I. ‘Is there anything to dispute it? Have you happened
to peroose anything in the way o’ discursive literatchure es would
substantiate the impunity o’ a bitter denial?’
“‘I cyaint say es I have,’ says Chinook Bill.
“‘Well, then,’ says I, ‘it stands that Poaquita is a potent factor es
regyards conjective research, an’ I’m the man es would re-continue that
search with joyful alacrity.’
“Then Chinook Bill, the trustin’ child, rose up an’ voiced to the
impassioned stars a like sentiment.
“‘Here’s the map an’ general directions’, says I, ‘an it’s left fer the
valorous to finish a chapter in this splendid drama es was enacted under
the opalescent skies o’ a new world.’
“So the next sun seen us pushin’ fer headquarters with them long horns,
an’ with our resignations in our pockets.
“Ol’ Señor Mendez meets us ten mile off, demandin’ explanations abundant
an’ sooperfulous forthwith.
“‘What’s this?’ says he, when I hands him the resignations, pompous.
“‘Them es read may run,’ quoths I sweetly.
“‘Then run, in the name of a goat, you _Americanos sin verguenza_! I keel
you, dogs, beasts for bring here back my cattles to starve!’ Then he outs
with a gun an’ begins to punctuate his wrath with methodic cracks at my
boot heels.
“‘This is a shame,’ says Chinook Bill, ‘an’ a arful breach o’ ediket,’
an’ he prompt starts in to retaliate; then I picks up courage an’ adds my
relay o’ lead an’ fluent invective.
“Ol’ José Mendez sets up a howl, an’ says:
“‘How much I owe you _Americanos_?’
“‘Three months apiece,’ says I, ‘which is two hundred an’ forty dol’ fer
the two o’ us, an’ mighty quick.’
“‘_Caramba!_’ says he, ‘I pay you, then you skeep _inmediatamente_.’
“‘We’re arful obliged,’ says I, sarcastic. Then we mounts an’ makes trail
fer Carbola, which was situate about forty miles away, due south. We hit
terra firma only where elevation was considerable an’ generally porphyry
rock, an’ rode into that little unsanctified hamlet in a hooricane cloud
o’ dust.
“‘Whew!’ says I, ‘a golden sunset an’ sich a ’ristocratic quietoode! One
would natcherally concloode they was arful stuck-up.’
“‘Maybe they don’t happen to remember us,’ says Chinook Bill, ominous an’
his feelin’s hurt.
“‘It sure is a insult,’ says I.
“‘An’ nobody to give us a ovation,’ says Chinook Bill, almost tearful.
“‘It’s a snub,’ says I, ‘an’ Greasers at that!’
“It’s too quiet to be real,’ comments Chinook Bill, still ominous.
“‘Terrible oppressive,’ I agrees.
“Then we stops at the edge o’ town an’ shakes hands solemn like. Chinook
Bill gets poetic an’ weeps copious.
“‘Maybe it will be the last chance,’ says he in a small voice, ‘an’ we
will be eat up by cruel Injuns. We cyaint let the opportunity pass,’ says
he. Then he recites some poetry es says opportunity never knocks but
oncet. ‘An’ it ’ud be a shame not to do it.’
“‘A arful shame,’ concedes I, then we shakes hands again.
“‘Are you ready?’ says Chinook Bill.
“‘I’m dancin’ with suppressed hylarity,’ says I.
“Then we put spurs an’ whoops her up, shootin’ promiscuous. When we come
to a halt an’ the smoke cleared, I says:
“‘Did you see anything, Bill?’
“‘Nope,’ says he, ‘but things is lightin’ up.’
“‘Folks is so curious,’ says I.
“‘Plum disgustin’,’ says Chinook Bill. ‘Al’ays interruptin’ an’ no
privacy fer a healthy, robust body.’
“‘It’s a second insult,’ says I, an’ we whoops her up again.
“We uncovered _aguardiente_ an’ keno sommers an’ anchored fer the night.
We played fast an’ keerless, but somehow we couldn’t get shet o’ any o’
our wealth. So we give it up es a bad job an’ apologized fer shuckin’
the dealers. It was arful unsocial, an’ I was fer layin’ over next day
to show ’em we was gentlemen, but Chinook Bill was fer findin’ Poaquita.
So we laid in a stock o’ provisions an’ packed ’em on some burros. Then
we held a conference back o’ the liquor shop with the _alcalde_ o’ the
town. This gent plentytentiary carried a small-sized totem pole in one
hand which was called in Mex a official staff, an’ exoodes a treatise on
the statutes es he wipes the perspiration from his aesthetic brow. We
leans back agin our assortment o’ Chicago tins an’ listens grave. Final
he ceases his harrabaloo an’ says:
“‘The _señores_ will kindly consider theirselves under arrest.’
“‘Fer what?’ asks Chinook Bill, with a snap o’ his baby blue eyes.
“‘Fer disturbin’ the peace,’ says the aesthetic one, wavin’ his totem
pole.
“‘What’s the penalty?’ says I.
“‘Imprisonment er twenty _pesos_,’ says the _alcalde_.
“‘Nixey,’ says Chinook Bill, ‘here’s a fiver.’
“‘_Mil gracias_,’ says the aesthetic one, an’ he bows to the earth humble
an’ kisses his fingers coquettish. ‘An’ may I inquire fer where the
_señores_ mean to depart?’
“‘Sure,’ says Bill, with a wink, ‘Africa.’
“‘_Bueno_,’ says the _alcalde_. ‘Var good. A beautiful country I hear,
_señores_. _Adios._ Now git, _pronto_!’
“So we mounts, gives a last partin’ salute, an’ hits them burros up.
We druv constant fer ten days, an’ it was sure a God forsooken country
we pushed into. First it was mesquite an’ cactus, then cactus and
mesquite, an’ a few deflections in the way o’ hills. Then we begun to
climb devious into regions o’ supernal ca’m, an’ the beautiful panorama
changed its garment ... right in the middle o’ day, gents, an’ there we
was with the tropics below us an’ a numerous supply o’ strange fauna in
the way o’ monkeys an’ green parrots an’ yaller panthers. Then we started
down devious on tother side and hit the deep timber, an’ us cow punchers.
Imagine! An’ every day Chinook Bill got more an’ more worrit an’ turrible
reticent.
“‘You ain’t a-skeered?’ says I, tauntin’.
“‘Huh, me?’ says he. ‘No, suh, but it’s sure annoyin’, this. Here we
are in a natcheral temperate latitoode an’ hotter’n South Ameriky. It’s
Chinook Bill who’s been up agin all the varyin’ shades o’ topographical
insanity, but this is the infinitism o’ phantasy. It will get me nervous
yet, an’ I hate to get nervous. But, in defiance o’ my cringin’ natur
I’m bound to view the ancient glories o’ the fabled city o’ Poaquita.’
Then he takes another swag at that _aguardiente_ an’ shrinks into a state
o’ pensive isolation, fightin’ _stegomyia_ as big as yer fist with meek
fortitoode. Then there come a earthquake, which seismic convulsion yanked
one o’ our pack mules down a chasm, our coolinary implements attached.
Me an’ Chinook Bill sits down on the brink to listen to the musical
cantinkerlations o’ tin kitchen ware fer ha’f a hour afterwards.
“‘If there be any Injuns within a radius o’ fifty miles,’ says Chinook
Bill, ‘that infernal racket will start ’em on the war path.’ An’ we
sure soon come across the immegiate signs o’ them savages, an’ Chinook
Bill got more reticent an’ lookin’ arful pale under the gills an’ wild
in the eye, a drinkin’ o’ that _aguardiente_ an’ the chills. Oncet we
was lyin’ in the shade o’ some rocks tryin’ to get some sleep. Chinook
Bill dozes off an’ his pipe tilts between his teeth an’ the ashes burns
a hole in his jeans. When it struck the sensitive tissue he ups with a
wild screech, both guns cocked, an’ fires promiscuous. I see the light o’
the fever in his eye an’ the tremblin’ frenzy an’ I rolls over behind a
convenient boulder. It was sure distractin’ to witness sich a waste o’
energy an’ precious ammunition, an’ I begins to yell frantic. He glares
tragic in my direction, flops on his stummick an’ begins to wiggle, them
Colts barkin’ tuneful. Then I has a arful presentment o’ homicide an’
shies down the mountain with becomin’ velocity, Chinook Bill in hot an’
lusty pursuit. But it wasn’t no use to run. So I intrenches an’ lets him
burn powder. Arter he’d gone through his cartridge belt I bombarded him
with capsules de quinine an’ demanded him to partake.
“‘Are you the chief?’ says he.
“‘Shame on you, Chinook Bill,’ says I, ‘to want ter assassinate yer bosom
friend.’
“Bill looks sheepish an’ says, defiant:
“‘I been shot in the laig by a atrocious vision what sneaked up from
behint me.’
“‘Shoo!’ says I, ‘it was the fire of yer pipe.’
“Chinook Bill looks at the hole in his jeans an’ grows absent.
“‘If you’ll never tell on me, Pete,’ says he, ‘I’ll bless yer ol’ age
with my gratitoode. Come out an’ shake hands.’
“‘Have another capsule de quinine,’ says I, doubtful.
“‘You don’t trust your bosom friend,’ says he, reproachful.
“I put a hand to my heart an’ repeats:
“‘Your sad plight bereaves me much, dear friend, but I am guided by the
light o’ a deeper understandin’. Have another capsule de quinine an’ rest
yer tired bones in yon cool shade.’
“‘Well, all right,’ says Chinook Bill, meek. ‘I shore do feel like I
swallowed a horned toad frog with a hoss collar adornin’ his neck. I’m a
sick man haunted by turrible hallucinations. But it ain’t the fire water,
Pete, er cowardice. Maybe it’s the curse that visits the avaricious. I’m
sore perplexed,’ an’ Chinook Bill taps his forehead sorrowful.
“‘You been readin’ that forbidden book too much,’ says I.
“‘It’s been a great revelation to me,’ says Chinook Bill, ‘the
sufferings o’ them captured monks es went crazy with the fever an’ tried
to manslaughter one another.’
“‘Suppose I got took down?’ says I.
“‘It’s what been troublin’ me,’ says Chinook Bill, ‘an’ es a matter
o’ precaution I vote we fill our shootin’ irons with blanks before we
retire.’
“‘Chinook Bill,’ says I, ‘that was the voice o’ genius what spoke.’
“‘Arter that we made vows o’ constancy an’ took a swag at the
_aguardiente_ to seal the compact. Then we courted the arms o’ Morpheus.
But it wasn’t long afore I woke up suddent, feelin’ light in the top o’
my head an’ grabbed my brace o’ pistols. I begun to stare wild, same
es Chinook Bill, an’ seein’ Chinook Bill sleepin’ sound an’ a little
elephant sittin’ on his nose I rose up an’ fired, indignant. Then a
whole lot more little elephants jumped down from the trees, an’ there
was some es played jews-harps an’ others es blowed trombones, an’ I
grew speechless and frantic. Chinook Bill wakes up out of a unpleasant
nightmare, an’ takin’ in the sitchooation at a glance, joins in the
fusillade afore inquirin’ politely what might be the natur o’ the
disturbance. An’ it soon oozes through my gray matter that Bill ain’t
taking no notice o’ them little elephants, but makin’ deadly an’ sinister
skirmishes at my sacred person.
“‘You infernal idjit,’ yells I, ‘shoot the elephants!’
“‘I knowed you was the chief,’ says he, ‘but you won’t fool me no more.’
“‘Chinook Bill,’ says I, ‘I have fer you a deep an’ all absorbin’
compassion.’
“‘You was that atrocious vision what sneaked up from behint and shot me
in the laig,’ says he.
“‘Shame on you, Chinook Bill,’ says I. ‘I was only tryin’ to save you
from the vicious tusks o’ them elephants.’ Then there was some more
skirmishin’ an’ parley an’ we agreed to shake hands over a glass of
_aguardiente_ and quinine.
“About sundown we discovered ancient ruins in the side o’ a cliff with
heagern idols in shockin’ dissa_bille_ sittin’ on their hams a-grinnin’
pleasant from their pedestals. We passed the time o’ day with them,
then Chinook Bill, like the great Balboa, poured _aguardiente_ on the
haid o’ one an’ dedicated our discovery in the name o’ the Society o’
Natural History and Palezoic Research. We proceeds thence deeper into
the unknown by the pallid light o’ the moon. Ruins an’ heagern idols was
now plentiful, an’ Chinook Bill opines we was nearin’ our goal fast,
an’ the while the topography was gettin’ queerer. Chinook Bill, still
with the fever in his eye, recites Shakespeare blatant an’ called to
the wilderness to deliver his Desdemona to his grievin’ heart. I laughs
scornful, an’ whilst we was rejoicin’ thus we was suddenly confronted
by a pack o’ ha’f naked Injuns es rose up out o’ the cañon an’ begun to
chunk poisoned arrows at us. Chinook Bill bids me stay my wrath an’ lifts
a imperious hand.
“‘Hold!” says he, ‘noble red men. Do I address the illustrious
descendants o’ the Montezumas?’
“‘Ickle-hickle-juicy-woosy, eat ’em alive,’ says one what wore a Queen
Anne collar o’ his ancestor’s teeth an’ dances fantastic on his painted
toes. Then a big fat one takes the boards an’ shows a covetable row o’
white molars in a kingly grin. Him an’ Bill swap secret lodge signs, then
his Nibbs approaches an’ pinches Chinook Bill on the arm, then he dances
on his toes like the one with the Queen Anne collar.
“‘Iggle-woggle-plenty-good-fer-soup,’ says he, an’ makes some more
goo-goo eyes at Chinook Bill while Bill gets out that forbidden book an’
reads some heagern Sanscrit therefrom. His Nibbs rolls on the ground
joyful, then he waves his spear an’ holds a animated confab with his
faithful subjects.
“‘You maverick,’ says I to Chinook Bill, ‘what you givin’ these pore
benighted sons o’ the forests?’
“‘I’m repeatin’ the golden text o’ the god Itchlatichlahoola,’ says
Chinook Bill, ‘an’ they are plumb skally-dasted at my marvelous display
o’ heagern eridition. We’re the children o’ the sun due to make a
visitation to this world every hundred years to deliver the compliments
o’ Itchlatichlahoola. Now we shall be conveyed into Poaquita with pomp
an’ eat o’ the fat o’ the land.’
“After a hurried confab his Nibbs dances back an’ says es how glad he
was to see us an’ pinches Chinook Bill on the arm again. Bill does the
spine curvitoore an’ says es how glad he was to be back jest fer the
sake o’ ol’ lang syne, but allowed it didn’t do his dignity no credit
to be sampled as a special kind o’ eatable an’ wouldn’t be pinched no
more, then elaborated es how he wouldn’t stand fer it, no how, he bein’
a natcheral high-strung, free American durin’ them decades es when he
wasn’t employed by Itchlatichlahoola as a winged Mercury, an’ lived in
the more temporal clime o’ Arizona by choice, all of which was evident
mistook by his Nibbs who shies up to me an’ takes a pinch at my biceps.
I succumbs to consumin’ wrath immegiate an’ lands the high chieftain
between the eyes unceremonious. Then there was revolution an’ carnage in
the air, an’ me an Chinook Bill went down before the heagern horde, but
to show our bravery Bill recites Horatius at the Bridge an’ annihilates
a portion o’ his Nibbs’ faithful subjects in his dramatic gesticulations
o’ same. We was tied to a chariot which had no wheels but was drug like a
snow-scrape over the ground an’ conveyed into Poaquita. We reached that
metropolis about sun-up where we was tied to a stone pillar in the square
an’ exhibited to a pack o’ screechin’ hags es played May-pole around us
an’ jabbered worse nor green parrots. Of all wild things es live next
to the bosom o’ natur there ain’t anything es beats the make-up o’ the
gentle sex. They’re a four-flush always.
“‘What’s up?’ says I to Chinook Bill, who was gazin’ mournful on the
heagern rites.
“‘We’re the blumdest idjits es ever roped a stray maverick, that’s what,’
says he. ‘Why didn’t we think of it?’
“‘Think o’ what?’ says I.
“‘That them messengers from Itchlatichlahoola must in course be sent back
from whence they come ... ergo, we perish on the sacrificial altar like
them pore priests did.’
“‘You move me to expostulation,’ says I.
“‘But there shines the glimmer o’ hope,’ says Chinook Bill.
“‘Eloocidate,’ says I.
“‘His Nibbs, the king, has discovered the rejuvenatin’ properties o’
that remainin’ jug o’ _aguardiente_. From my place o’ vantage I observe
that he retires to the rear o’ his palace an’ is fast lubricatin’ his
system with that highly soperiferous nectar. The harem is in an uproar
an’ the foundation o’ a great nation is totterin’ an’ his women folks is
desolvin’ rapidly in the ether landscape. The chamberlain, the secretary
o’ war an’ the House o’ Lords is holdin’ special session. I think the
whole city is contemplatin’ a ignominious flight. His Nibbs is a regular
Nero an’ is callin’ fer Rome to be burnt to banish the monotony o’ his
moody reflections. Such is the potency o’ the Greaser’s _mescal_!’
“‘Then there is indeed hope,’ says I, es the next moment his Nibbs, the
king, gives a bibulous war whoop an’ emerges into the open with that
jug o’ _aguardiente_ strapped to his middle, a bloody spear held aloft
an’ a glitter in his eye. The special session o’ the House o’ Lords
adjourns immegiate an’ takes to the tall timber, the noble kinsman o’
the great Montezuma givin’ obligin’ chase. Then a new inspiration o’
sacrilege an’ carnage hatches in his Majesty’s volatile brain an’ with
a turrible war whoop he wheels right about an’ charges into the temple
o’ Itchlatichlahoola es the high priest an’ his retinue o’ lesser lights
bolts from another door with the sacred emblems o’ that gracious divinity
tucked under their arms, an’ they went the way o’ the House o’ Lords
likewise. His Nibbs re-appears snortin’ in triumph an’ circles like a
vexed steer, a-lookin’ fer something to dispute the bloody laurels o’
his victory. When he sights us he is shaken by a great felicity an’ his
attitoode is one o’ blandishin’ uncertitoode, es if he entertained a
fearful idee we was tantalizin’ visions an’ would melt at the touch. The
agony o’ his suspense was something prostratin’ an’ I lets out a yell
o’ ‘Whoa, Buck!’ just to relieve his mind, an’ then hyere he come, fust
on one side the square, then the other, dancin’ mad. Chinook Bill gives
another encouragin’ whoop, an’ his Nibbs cuts the pigeon wing an’ begins
to circle, that jug o’ _aguardiente_ cuttin’ heraldic devices in the much
disturbed atmosphere, his fat arms pluggin’ chaos an’ his feet comin’
down an’ combustin’ with terra firma like the rattle o’ a ore chute, an’
a-lookin’ fer the world like one o’ them hell vultures es picked our
trail through the Sonora Mountains.
“‘What’s the natcheral sequence o’ these French ballet fantastics?’ says
I.
“‘It’s the unconscious promptin’s o’ great mental endowment,’ says
Chinook Bill. ‘Jest at present he’s executin’ the Circle o’ Archimedes
an’ formin’ a planetary tablet o’ the high heavens; incident’ly he’s
performin’ our heagern rituals which precedes a quick an’ horrible
despatch o’ the soul from the mortal coil.’
“‘Then, alas! It’s death!’ says I.
“‘But we might divert his mind,’ says Bill.
“‘Eloocidate,’ says I again.
“Fer answer Chinook Bill draws forth with his free hand a bottle o’
Arizona Snake Bite to be took in drops diluted with much water an’
swallowed instant so es to lessen the convulsions o’ agony.
“‘I been tryin’ fer the last two months to get strong enough to ease
the cork an’ enjoy the heavenly odor o’ this, but I ain’t been robust
enough,’ says he, sorrowful. ‘So let them es are more agile an’ spry
inherit what the gods bequeath to the valorous.’
“‘It ’ud be cruelty to animals,’ says I.
“‘I ain’t offerin’ it es a nerve tonic,’ says Chinook Bill, snappish,
‘an’ I ain’t dilatin’ on its many virchores, but if there is any heagern
about es would defy the components o’ this devilish concoction o’ ancient
alchemy let him beware,’ says he.
“His Nibbs no sooner sets his eye on that bottle o’ yaller perdition
liquified afore he wants it, an’ licks his lips voracious.
“‘I cyaint endoore that look o’ deep reproach,’ says Chinook Bill; ‘he
must have it.’
“‘It ’ud be cruelty to animals not to,’ says I, ‘an’ we ain’t runnin’ no
Keely cure, fer a fact. Besides, he’ll resort to physical violence if we
don’t hand over the dream maker prompt.’
“‘An’ whilst he is pluckin’ purple poppies from sweet fancy’s lurid
canvas,’ says Chinook Bill softly, ‘we’ll leave our respects to the House
o’ Lords an’ depart instant. It’s me who’s pinin’ fer the range.’
“‘The dream o’ avarice no longer disturbs the tranquillity o’ my
peace-lovin’ natur’,’ says I. ‘Me fer the sweet alfalfa of the cowland.’
“Thereon, we viewed the mad potations o’ his Nibbs in anxious silence,
an’ when he begun to fight invisible cobras an’ pluck bits o’ poetic
thought from space we took opportunity by the forelock an’ broke fer
sweet freedom, an’ was soon lickin’ time out o’ the landscape. After we’d
chucked two days behind us we slowed up fer observation an’ to get our
bearin’s by the water shed. Ten more moons an’ we sights Californy Gulf
an’ civilization. We sold antique relics an’ old Chippendale furnitchur,
with the forbidden books throwed in fer good measure, to a private
expedition headed by a Harvard professor. Then we got a full supply o’
the paraphernalia o’ railroad travel, takes forcible possession o’ the
rear coach an’ begins a long deferred celebration. It ’ud be trivial to
say es how we blowed in to Phoenix, it bein’ said the dust ain’t settled
there yet—exceptin’ in the extreme sooburbs o’ that thrivin’ town. But
I know we found white man’s whiskey an’ was shucked clean—exceptin’
to our irreproachable character—in a protracted game o’ monte, an’
was chiefly delayed by them indispensable altercations es come up in
the course o’ one’s sojourn through them deludin’ hazes an’ prismatic
colorin’s o’ a magnificent jag. After we’d drowned the contagion o’
heagernism in our orthidox constitutions we mounts the broncos bought
previous to that little escapade an’ hikes fer the range. We follers
our noses across the El Pinto country until we struck the Bar Y outfit,
implores a ice-bound individgooal es was _chef_ and bottle washer fer a
hand-out an’ incident’ly asks the foreman fer a job. We gets both, an’
fer two months pursooes the quiet paths o’ temperance an’ thrift until a
worldly maverick by the name o’ O’Hooley drifts into camp an’ tells how
he’d struck it rich in the Little Pecan country an’, guided by a impulse
of philanthropy, was ridin’ cross territory a-tellin’ o’ his great
discovery—. But that’s another story,” said Buck Eye Pete, “an’ it’s me
fer a cup o’ Mocha-Java an’ a _siesta_.”
NAPOLEON
PART VII—NAPOLEON III
By Anna Erwin Woods
The year 1848 came bearing revolution on its wings. Again France cast
aside the Bourbon dynasty, and declared for a republic. Once more began
the exile of King Louis Philippe; driven from his native land in old age,
as in youth.
The man of Boulogne and Strasbourg waited and watched his opportunity.
A republican, a great minister, a member of the provisional government
declared, “The renown of Napoleon remains as one of those immense
souvenirs which extend over the history of a people, and cover it with
an eternal splendor. All that is popular in this glory we accept with
eagerness; the proscription of his family by the France of to-day would
be a shame.” France gave heed to these words and the National Assembly
declared: “Article 6 of the law of April 10, 1852, relative to the
banishment of the Bonaparte family is abrogated.”
Another republican leader made the following assertion: “The Republic is
like the sun. Allow the nephew of the Emperor to approach it, I am sure
he will disappear in its beams.” Events proved that it was not the nephew
of the emperor who was to disappear. But, in fact, the real antagonist of
the republic was not the living nephew—it was the dead emperor himself,
the ever-living name—Napoleon. Living or dead, France belonged to him.
After thirty-three years of proscription and exile, Louis Napoleon was
elected by his native city of Paris to a seat in the National Assembly.
On December 20, 1848, Charles Louis Napoleon was declared President of
the Republic of France. The question arose, “Will he take the oath of
office wearing the costume of Napoleon as First Consul, or appear in
military dress?” Upon taking his oath the Prince-President wore a black
coat with the star of the Legion of Honor.
During the year 1852, the vote of the people of France was taken as
to whether or not the imperial dignity should be re-established in
the person of Prince Louis Napoleon. And “by the grace of God and the
National Will” Charles Louis Napoleon became “Napoleon III, Emperor of
the French.” On the night of December 1, 1852, the dignitaries of the
new Empire went to the Palace of St. Cloud carrying the Imperial Crown,
and the next day the proclamation of the empire was made in Paris with
stately ceremony. The Emperor Napoleon III rode from the palace of
St. Cloud to the Tuileries. The procession marched between lines of
soldiers with arms presented; the cannon roared, the bells rang gaily,
and the military bands played “_Partant pour la Syrie_,” the stirring air
composed by Queen Hortense.
Mrs. Jessie Benton Fremont (whom it is scarcely necessary to mention as
being the daughter of Thomas H. Benton and the wife of John C. Fremont)
says in “Souvenirs of My Life”: “We saw the official entrance into
Paris of the Emperor, our position on the Champs Elysées being about
midway between the Arc de Triomphe and the Tuileries. On that 2nd day of
December, 1852, the courage of Louis Napoleon was tested. The republicans
who had put him in power, had warned him that he should die if he altered
the republican form of government. Whether he had courage or not I do
not know. What I do know is that I saw him ride, alone, no troops, not a
single officer within forty feet of him to his front or rear, and open
space on either side of him, along the broad avenue densely lined by
crowds. Quite separated and alone, his head bare, holding in one hand the
reins, in the other his hat. Only his horse was to share any harm that
might come to him. To us the thrill of response to such evident courage
came with sudden conviction and the applause from our balcony was strong
and sincere.”
England hastened to recognize the new Emperor, and the other Great Powers
promptly followed her example. Immense sums of money were voted by the
National Assembly to be placed at the disposal of the Emperor in order to
maintain the splendor of his position. The prisoner of Ham had become the
absolute ruler of the foremost nation of continental Europe.
In the hour of triumph, in the midst of his state and magnificence the
friends of his years of adversity were not forgotten. Charles Thelin, the
devoted valet, became Treasurer of the Privy Purse—a purse much heavier
than the one from which Thelin had paid for the workman’s costume at Ham!
None of the adherents of the evil days of Louis Napoleon were forgotten;
in his heart there seemed to rest a grateful memory of every kindness.
“Now, too, the joy most like divine,
Of all I ever dreamed or knew;
To see thee, hear thee, call thee mine—
Oh, Fate, and wilt thou give that, too?”
To most men comes love’s young dream, and then ambition. To this, which
is the common fate, this man of strange destiny, Louis Napoleon, was to
offer a contradiction. His life was now passed under triumphal arches,
listening to words of adulation. It was at Fontainebleau that the great
Emperor had signed his abdication and taken leave of his guard as he
departed for his first captivity upon the Island of Elba. And it was
at Fontainebleau that Napoleon III sat unmoved and listened to these
words: “Our single wish is that, having been the last to salute Napoleon
I, we may be the first to salute Napoleon III.” But it is with emotion
which he could not control that on the spot where he and his mother had
stood together, sad pilgrims (1831), he heard these words in her honor:
“Crowned artist, queen of grace and genius, mother of a glorious child,
preserved by her through exile and danger to give repose to France.”
With his wildest dreams realized, he felt that to be admired is
nothing; the thing is to be loved. His heart was filled with reveries
and longings; he aspired after the greatest happiness in life—love in
marriage. His words were: “Until now my position has prevented me from
marrying; amidst the cares of government, I have, alas! at this hour, in
my own country, from which I have so long been absent, neither intimate
friends nor acquaintances of childhood, nor relatives who could give me
the sweetness of family life!”
After the coup d’état the friends and ministers of Louis Napoleon greatly
desired that he should form an alliance with some princess of royal or
imperial blood. The daughter of his cousin, the Grand Duchess of Baden,
had married Prince Gustavus Vasa of Sweden, son of King Gustavus IV. The
daughter of this marriage, Princess Caroline Vasa (afterwards Queen of
Saxony), was the person selected to become the wife of Napoleon III. It
seems that the Emperor of Austria had to be consulted, and his refusal
was positive, in consideration of the fate of the two Archduchesses,
Marie Antoinette and Marie Louise, who had been placed by Austria upon
the throne of France. Louis Napoleon seemed to feel no regret as to the
failure of the negotiation, as his heart was by no means engaged in it.
There was at this time in Paris a young Spanish lady of noble birth and
high position and of very extraordinary beauty, Mademoiselle de Montijo,
Comtesse de Teba. Like all foreigners of distinction, she and her mother,
the Comtesse of Montijo, were received at the Elysée Palace by the
Prince-President with the attention due their rank. When first he met
her, in 1849, he was very deeply impressed by her great beauty, elegance
and grace, and this feeling seemed constantly to increase. Although he
treated her with the most marked reserve and dignity, his happiness was
in being at her side. He inaugurated a series of sojourns at his palaces
at Compiègne and Fontainebleau, where she and her mother were among his
guests.
Her manner was full of charm and grace, and her nature of enthusiasm and
poetry. Her conversation was bright and glowing, and the Emperor could
not conceal the joy he felt in listening to her, nor the admiration
aroused by her graceful and intrepid horsemanship. He was himself a bold
and elegant rider, and in the forests of his country palaces he ordered
that hunts should be given with the most brilliant surroundings.
Although her radiant beauty attracted the attention of all, none dreamed
that in Mademoiselle de Montijo they saw their future Empress. The
Emperor never departed from the most correct reserve; accustomed, as
he was, to master and conceal his emotions, although softened, subdued
and fascinated, his attitude throughout towards his lovely guest was
irreproachable. Possibly his projected marriage was already settled in
his own mind. Although an Emperor, and a man who wore a mask of gentle
calmness in most trying moments, he was, at this time, above all else, a
lover.
One bright autumnal morning, as they walked in the park, the beautiful
Spaniard, full of poetical fancy, admired the magical effect of the
dewdrops upon the clover leaves. The Emperor quietly drew aside one of
his courtiers, who left in a few moments for Paris. The next evening
there was a lottery drawn, and it was managed that Mademoiselle de
Montijo should draw a clover leaf sparkling with superb diamonds. Simply,
the Emperor was desperately in love; to him, as to any other man of deep
sentiment, above all things earthly, even crowns and sceptres, was a
beautiful face, the most beautiful sight of all, and the sweetest harmony
was the tone of voice of the woman he loved.
On January 1st, 1853, he asked her in marriage, and on January 22nd,
he summoned before him, in the throne-room of the Tuileries, the great
constituent bodies of the empire to receive his announcement. In a clear
and emphatic manner and voice he spoke:
“Gentlemen, I comply with the wish so often manifested by the country
by coming to announce to you my marriage.... For the last seventy years
foreign princesses have ascended the steps of the throne, only to see
their offspring scattered by war or revolution. One woman alone has
seemed to bring happiness and to live longer than others in the people’s
memory; and this woman, the good and modest wife of General Bonaparte,
was not the issue of royal blood.” This homage paid to his grandmother,
the Empress Josephine, was greeted with applause and cries of “Long live
the Emperor!” After speaking at length with regard to matters of state,
with great emotion he expressed all his affection for his betrothed: “She
who has become the object of my preference is of lofty birth.... Gifted
with all the qualities of the soul, she will be the ornament of the
throne, as in the hour of danger she would become one of its courageous
supporters.... Catholic and pious, she will address to Heaven the same
prayers that I do for the welfare of France; gracious and good, she will,
in the same position, I firmly hope, renew the virtues of the Empress
Josephine.”
He ended with these heartfelt words: “I come, then, gentlemen, to say to
France, I have preferred a woman whom I love and respect to an unknown
person, the advantages of an alliance with whom would be mingled with
sacrifices. In placing independence, the qualities of the heart, family
happiness above dynastic prejudices, I shall not be less strong, because
I shall be more free. Very soon, in betaking myself to Nôtre Dame, I
shall present the Empress to the people and the army; the confidence they
have in me will assure their sympathy for her whom I have chosen, and
you, gentlemen, in learning to know her, will be convinced that this time
also I have been inspired by Providence.”
As soon as the announcement was made Mme. de Montijo and her daughter
were installed in the Elysée Palace, where they were to reside until the
marriage should take place, and where the Emperor went every day to pay
court to his betrothed and to carry her bouquets. He laid not only his
crown, but his heart, at her feet. This man, daring in deeds and gentle
in feeling, had undergone deep pangs of suffering. Venerating his father,
devotedly loving his brother and idolizing his mother, he had, one by
one, been bereft of all near and dear to him. He seemed to long to take
in his protecting arms and in his loving heart a woman whom he could love
and honor and cherish as his wife, one worthy to be at his side upon a
throne.
The Municipal Council of Paris had determined to offer to the Emperor’s
betrothed a magnificent set of diamonds. The Prefect of the Seine
received the following letter:
M. Prefect: I am much affected on learning the generous
decision of the Municipal Council of Paris, which thus
displays its sympathetic adhesion to the union the Emperor is
contracting. Nevertheless, I experience a painful sentiment
when I think that the first public act attaching to my name
at the moment of the marriage is to be a considerable expense
for the city of Paris. Permit me then not to accept your
gift, however flattering to me; you would make me happier
by employing in charity the sum you have fixed upon for the
purchase of the ornaments the Municipal Council wished to offer
me. I desire that my marriage shall not be the occasion of any
new expense to the country to which I belong henceforward; and
the sole thing I aspire to is to share with the Emperor the
love and esteem of the French people. I beg you, M. Prefect,
to express all my gratitude to the Council, and to receive for
yourself the assurance of my distinguished consideration.
EUGENIE, COMTESSE DE TEBA.
_Elysée Palace, January 26, 1855._
The money was employed in founding an establishment where poor young
girls should receive a professional education, and which they would leave
only when provided with suitable positions. This establishment was to
bear the name of the Empress and be placed under her protection.
[Illustration: _To be continued_]
[Illustration: With Bob Taylor]
SENTIMENT AND STORY
Oh, what a wonderful magician and what a tyrant king is Love, the King of
Kings!
Look at the care-worn faces in the offices and counting rooms and on
the business marts of the world. Look out yonder at the millions in
the factories and fields, with beaded brows, and knotted muscles, and
calloused hands, coining thought into gold, and sweat into silver. There
is a mighty power moving on those restless tides; they are sowing and
reaping for the helpless and the innocent; Love hath written his name in
every heart, and in every life there is a love story. Now look yonder in
the purple glow of eventide, how the millions dissolve and vanish among
the shadows. The law of the King has been obeyed, and labor finds its
sweet reward in the palace of love, by the brawling brook of laughter, on
the brink of the river of song.
But, Lord, how soon the palace crumbles! And how surely the vibrant
streams run dry when labor leaves his task undone, or toil takes his gold
to other shrines!
If you would keep the loom of love in motion, you must be a flying
shuttle of industry by day and spend your evenings at home. The shuttle
delivers the thread; you must deliver the bread and grease the bobbins
with butter.
The shuttle is always in its place. Art thou, O King? When the light is
smiling through the window out into the darkness, and thy home is ringing
with the laughter and song of children within, art thou there to laugh
and sing with them? And when the baby cries in the dead hours of the
night, dost thou meekly wear thy yoke of love and walk the floor and
sweetly sing to thy screaming progeny?
Alas! too often thou art found where sherry glows and champagne flows and
the night is very, very merry, O King!
* * * * *
I saw a truant old gentleman vanish from his labors to a carousal one
evening, and that night he went home as drunk as a lord, with unsteady
steps and slow, dreading the storm within, and softly singing to himself
as he went:
“I wish my wife was an angel, far, far away!”
The queen of the household, who had been nursing her rage, met him at the
door with a face like a drawn tomahawk; and the clock struck one, and she
struck, too, as he entered.
“How dare you come home to me at this hour of the night?” she shouted in
her anger.
“Why, my dear, it was jis’ ten o’clock when I left prayer meetin’, an’ I
come right straight home.”
“Yes, prayer meeting! You look like prayer meeting! Look at the hands on
the dial of that clock; it has just struck one.”
“Well, now, madam,” he said, “if you propose to believe a durned little
dollar-and-a-half clock before you’ll believe your husband, that’s all
right; but I shall certainly think that I have not found the amiable
spirit in this palace of love which I expected to find on my arrival.”
And the threads of love popped, and the loom stopped for several hours.
* * * * *
An uncrowned old King went to his little palace one night under the
influence of King Alcohol, as usual. His unhappy wife let him in at the
door and burst into tears and said:
“Husband, why do you come home every night in this drunken condition?”
“Why,” he said, “my dear, you are so pretty that I jist naturally love to
look at you double!”
* * * * *
Did you ever see a tramp tramping by and pausing at your door to beg a
benediction—not of love, but of bread? What cared this wandering boy for
love? His heart was in the grave; he was the “somnambulist of a shattered
dream;” he was a romance in rags, a seedy poem, a tattered song, crumpled
by the hand of fate and thrown into the waste-basket of oblivion.
He halted at a farmhouse one rainy day and proposed to kill all the
rats on the place for his dinner. “Very well,” said the farmer, “it’s a
bargain.” He called his neighbors in to see the killing. The tramp ate
for an hour, and when he had finished he called for a spade. Seating
himself in the middle of the room, he raised the spade over his shoulder
and shouted: “Now fetch on your rats!”
He stopped at an old fellow’s door and told him he was a dentist, and
smilingly proposed to put a good set of teeth in a fresh apple pie for
nothing.
* * * * *
I saw love enter the gubernatorial door to plead for love one day, and
the old mother sat and wept in the presence of the Governor, while the
aged father told the story of a love that was wrecked long ago, a life
that was ruined, and a lover that wandered away with the death wound in
his heart. Then I heard him tell the story of a tramp whose journey had
ended at last within the prison walls; and I went out with them and stood
at the gate of hell. I looked in and saw the ghastly stripes of shame and
the pallid faces of crime moving to and fro, laboring under the lash of
justice and shrinking from the scorn of their fellow man. I entered and
looked again; there was not a smile nor a single peal of laughter, but
melancholy’s ghost of song still lingered behind the iron bars to comfort
languishing love.
I saw children of tender age in that vortex of living death, and I said,
“Hell was not made for children;” and I dragged them out and delivered
them to their mothers. I saw youths who had committed crime in the heat
of passion, dying in disgrace, and I dragged them out and sent them
home, some with a new hope and some to die. I saw repentant men who had
suffered long enough, and I dragged them out and gave them to their wives
and their children. I saw the erstwhile tramp, the romance in rags, the
tattered song, now the striped doxology of a misspent life; two trembling
hands pointed to him. I turned to the old folks and said: “His crime was
not great, and you are old and feeble;” and I dragged him out and left
them weeping upon his bosom.
* * * * *
An overbearing lawyer once shouted to an old lady whom he was examining
on the witness stand:
“Madam, please confine yourself to the facts!”
The old lady turned around to him and said:
“Well, sir, you are no gentleman; that’s a fact.”
* * * * *
An old doctor examined his patient one afternoon and coldly said to him:
“You are dying, sir; have you any wish to express before you pass over
the river?”
“Yes,” said the patient, feebly, “I wish I had employed another doctor.”
* * * * *
The world loves us if we succeed; it despises us if we fail; it piles
ice around its benefactors, and gives the meed of praise to genius only
when genius is in the grave. But what do words of praise avail to lift
the shadows from a path no longer pressed by weary feet? Why fill the
hands of the dead with flowers which you have withheld from the living?
Who would not rather have one smile, one tender word to-day, than to
know that a million roses would be heaped upon his coffin? Who would
not rather live and dream among the flowers of love than to sleep the
dreamless sleep beneath a wilderness of flowers?
Then why not let the Gulf Stream of love flow on? For its warm current
breathes upon the icy shores of mortal life and makes them blossom with
laughter and song. Love is the soul of the beautiful, the true and the
good; it is all there is of happiness.
* * * * *
But “the course of true love never did run smooth.” Listen to my tale of
woe. An absent-minded old bachelor once fell in love with a beautiful
girl and instantly prepared for battle with the flounced and powdered
enemy. At first his plans worked well, and he was about to win a great
victory over all the swells in town; but an accident happened which
changed his destiny and wrecked his hopes of conquest and happiness. The
church bell rang one bright Sabbath morning, and he knew that his idol
would be there; and he diked himself in faultless style and curled his
sorrel moustache till it looked like the tail of a pug. The excitement of
the occasion made him more absent-minded than ever, and he waited until
the worshipers had assembled, and then walked down the aisle in triumph,
the observed of all observers, with his overcoat hanging on his arm; but
the maiden looked at his overcoat and blushed; the preacher looked at it
and smiled, and the congregation looked at it and broke into laughter;
and the old bachelor looked down, and it was his every-day pantaloons.
His hope exploded like a bubble in the air, and he dropped the garment
and flew.
* * * * *
We have stepped over the threshold of the twentieth century. What greater
wonders will it unfold to us? It may be that another magician, greater
even than Edison, the “Wizard of Menlo Park,” will rise up and coax the
very laws of nature into easy compliance with his unheard-of dreams. I
think he will construct an electric railway in the form of a huge tube,
and call it the “electro-scoot,” and passengers will enter it in New York
and touch a button and arrive in San Francisco two hours before they
started!
I think a new discovery will be made by which the young man of the future
may stand at his “kiss-o-phone” in New York and kiss his sweetheart in
Chicago with all the delightful sensations of the “aforesaid and the
same.”
I think some Liebig will reduce foods to their last analyses, and, by
an ultimate concentration of their elements, will enable the man of the
future to carry a year’s provisions in his vest pocket. The dude will
store his rations in the head of his cane, and the commissary department
of a whole army will consist of a mule and a pair of saddlebags. A
trainload of cabbage will be transported in a sardine box and a thousand
fat Texas cattle in an oyster can.
Power will be condensed from a forty-horse engine to a quart cup. Wagons
will roll by the power in their axles, and the cushions of our buggies
will cover the force that propels them. The armies of the future will
fight with chain lightning, and the battlefields will be in the air.
Some dreaming Icarus will perfect the flying machine, and upon the
aluminum wings of the swift Pegasus of the air social, civic and military
parades will be held.
The rainbow will be converted into a Ferris wheel; all men will be
bald-headed; the women will run the government—and then I think the end
of time will be near at hand!
* * * * *
A great many youths think that if a man has brain-power he can accomplish
anything. So he can, but a study of the men who are failures, the men
who fill our penitentiaries and our sanitariums, will show that unless
ability is ballasted with character, its possessor is unstable and
untrustworthy. There is a tremendous power in ability, boys, when added
to character.
THE PARADISE OF FOOLS
PART XII
I saw a poor old bachelor live all the days of his life in sight of
paradise, too cowardly to put his arm around it and press it to his
bosom. He shaved and primped and resolved to marry every day in the year
for forty years. But when the hour for love’s duel arrived, when he stood
trembling in the presence of rosy cheeks and glancing eyes, and beauty
shook her curls and gave the challenge, his courage always oozed away,
and he fled ingloriously from the field of honor.
Far happier than the bachelor is old Uncle Rastus in his cabin, when he
holds Aunt Dinah’s hand in his and asks: “Who’s sweet?” And Dinah drops
her head over on his shoulder and answers, “Bofe uv us.”
A thousand times happier is the frisky old widower with his pink bald
head, his wrinkles and his rheumatism, who
Wires in and wires out,
And leaves the ladies all in doubt.
As to what is his age and what he is worth,
And whether or not he owns the earth.
He “toils not, neither does he spin,” yet Solomon in all his glory was
not more popular with the ladies. He is as light-hearted as “Mary’s
little lamb.” He is acquainted with every hog path in the matrimonial
paradise and knows all the nearest cuts to the _sanctum sanctorum_ of
woman’s heart. But his jealousy is as cruel as the grave. Woe unto the
bachelor who dares to cross his path!
An old bachelor in my native mountains once rose in church to give his
experience, in the presence of his old rival, who was a widower, and with
whom he was at dagger’s points in the race to win the affections of one
of the sisters in Zion. Thus the pious old bachelor spake: “Brethren,
this is a beautiful world. I love to live in it just as well to-day as I
ever did in my life. And the saddest thought that ever crossed this old
brain of mine is, that in a few short days at best, these old eyes will
be glazed in death and I’ll never get to see my loved ones in this world
any more.” And his old rival shouted from the amen corner:
“Thank God!”
* * * * *
Oliver Wendell Holmes says:
“Our brains are seventy year clocks. The angel of life winds them up
once for all, closes the case, and gives the key into the hand of the
resurrection angel.” When I read this I thought, what a stupendous task
awaits the angel of the resurrection, when all the countless millions of
old rickety, rusty, worm-eaten clocks are to be resurrected, and wiped,
and dusted, and repaired, for mansions in the skies! There will be every
kind and character of clock and clockwork resurrected on that day. There
will be the Catholic clock with his beads, and the Episcopalian clock
with his ritual. There will be an old clock resurrected on that day
wearing a broadcloth coat buttoned up to the throat; and when he is wound
up he will go off with a whizz and a bang. He will get up out of the dust
shouting, “Hallelujah!” and he will proclaim “_sanctification!_” and
“_falling from grace!_” as the only true doctrine by which men shall go
sweeping through the pearly gates into the new Jerusalem. And he will be
recognized as a Methodist preacher, a little noisy, a little clogged with
chicken feathers, but ripe for the Kingdom of Heaven.
There will be another old clock resurrected on that day, dressed like the
former, but a little stiffer and straighter in the back, and armed with
a pair of gold spectacles and a manuscript. When he is wound up he will
break out in a cold sepulchral tone with, firstly: “_foreordination!_”
secondly: “_predestination!_” and, thirdly: “_the final perseverance of
the saints!_” He will be recognized as a Presbyterian preacher, a little
blue and frigid, a little dry and formal, but one of God’s own elect,
and he will be labeled for Paradise.
There will be an old Hard-shell clock resurrected, with throat whiskers,
and wearing a shad-bellied coat and flap breeches. And when he is wound
up a little, and a little oil is poured into his old wheels, he will
swing out into space on the wings of the gospel with:
“My Dearly Beloved Brethren-ah; I was a-ridin’ along this mornin’
a-tryin’ to study up somethin’ to preach to this dyin’ congregation-ah;
and as I rid up by the old mill pond-ah; lo and behold! there was an
old snag a-stickin’ up out of the middle of the pond-ah; and an old mud
turtle had clim up out uv the water and was a settin’ up on the old snag
a-sunnin’ uv himself-ah; and lo! and behold-ah! when I rid up a leetle
nearer to him-ah, he jumped off of the snag, ‘ker chug’ into the water,
thereby proving emersion-eh!”
Our brains _are_ clocks, and our hearts are the pendulums. If we live
right in this world, when the Resurrection Day shall come, the Lord God
will polish the wheels, and jewel the bearings, and crown the casements
with stars and with gold. And the pendulums will be harps encrusted with
precious stones. They will swing to and fro on angel wings, making music
in the ear of God, and flashing His glory through all the blissful cycles
of eternity!
* * * * *
The mornings come, the evenings go,
Till raven locks turn white as snow;
The evenings go, the mornings come,
Till hearts are still and lips are dumb;
The morning steals the stars in vain,
For evening steals them back again.
The mornings are the rapturous thoughts of God; the evenings are His
glorious dreams. We think within His thoughts, and dream within His
dreams. The sun and stars are His mighty looms on which he weaves the
lights and shadows that tint the earth and sky with colors divine. But
let those looms of light for a moment stop; let their blissful shuttles
cease to fly, and instantly, this beautiful world of ours, with all its
bloom and beauty blighted, with all its mirth and music hushed, would lie
naked and dead on the cold bosom of eternal night.
So it is with human life. It hath its spirit looms, and its throbbing
shuttles forever delivering to the warp and woof of hope and memory, the
shining threads of human kindness, and weaving them into gossamer webs
of love around our hearts and in our homes. Every tender word we speak;
every blessing we bestow is a thread of sunshine woven into somebody’s
life; and all the smiles and sympathies which come to us from other
hearts are threads of light and love woven into our own. But let the loom
of love for a moment stop; let its blissful shuttle cease to fly, and
that moment happiness will lie dead on the hearthstone, and laughter will
perish among the roses at the door.
All men are Kings, but love is King of Kings. His imperial chariot
rumbles over the cobblestones of human hearts, and the sighing millions
are his worshipers. Wealth bows its haughty head before his throne, and
pays penance with jewels and gold; labor bends the reverent knee and
counts its beads of sweat; commerce folds its snowy wings and kneels on
the billows in mute but eloquent adoration, and art chisels down the cold
white prison walls of shapeless marble and leads dumb beauty forth, a
breathless prayer to love.
Love is the only despot against whose tyranny no nation ever rebels;
his yoke is the twining of tender arms, and the crack of his whip is
a guileless kiss. Love is a regal anarchist; he climbs the ladder of
laughter and throws bomb shells of mirth into the palace of the heart.
Love is a royal minstrel; he scales the harp strings of song and
serenades the soul. Love rides on the wings of butterflies, and, with
his silken lariat, lassoes strolling lovers, and leads them down among
the golden rod and clover blossoms. The dimples in the chin of mirth are
the tell-tale tracks of love; and he lurks among the roses that bloom on
beauty’s cheek.
[Illustration: With Trotwood]
THE RIGHTS OF CHILDHOOD
[This address, delivered January 18th, 1907, before the
convention of the Tennessee County Superintendents and
Teachers, is compiled from notes by Mr. Settle of the _Daily
American_, and from memory after delivery by its author, Mr.
Moore having made no notes at the time, the speech being the
occasion of extemporaneous talks at the close of an educational
rally. From many sources has come the request that it be
reproduced here.—EDITOR.]
I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your very kind introduction concerning
my “Bishop of Cottontown,” and the fact that you see in it an appeal
for the childhood of the land. And I thank you, ladies and gentlemen,
for the privilege of addressing you on this subject, so full of great
and far reaching interest. And in the beginning permit me to say to you
that I, myself, have been a teacher, and that I consider it the grandest
profession of all those which make for the uplifting of the human race,
save, perhaps, one. If you doubt that I have been there—to use the
pungent vernacular of the times—if you doubt that I am familiar with the
hardships, trials, ay, and the triumphs of the average teacher, permit me
to relate this anecdote as the stamp of the coin, the chip of the block
of the profession.
In my younger days, when the Alabama law required that a teacher should
teach hygiene and physiology along with other studies—the object being to
show the effects of alcohol on the human body—there came to my school a
big, double-jointed plow boy, whose opportunities for education had been
few, but he was of that stuff from which many of the great men of the
republic have been made. After six months of grammar and hygiene, when
the class was required to write a composition on the human anatomy, this
is the marvelous work of art handed into me by the man of the plow:
“The human anatermy is devided into three parts, the Head, the Chist and
the Stummic. The Head contains the brains, if any. The Chist contains the
lights and the liver. The Stummic contains the bowels. There are five
bowels, a, e, i, o, u and sometimes w and y.”
Have I not been there, my friends?
The rights of childhood—that is the subject you have given me, Mr.
Chairman. Why, you might as well have asked me to speak upon the rights
of God. You know, and I know, and all within the sound of my voice know,
what are the rights of childhood—the right to an education, to health, to
play, to work in proportion to its age and strength, to a fair chance and
a square deal in this greatest country of the world’s greatest age.
We know, I say, what are the rights of a child. The question I wish to
put to you is, are they getting those rights?
The distinguished gentleman and ex-Governor who has just preceded me, has
said most eloquently much that I myself do most heartily endorse. And
while I dislike to sound in this assembly one discordant note—to strike
one chord of the minor here—where all seem so satisfied, I feel that I
shall not be true to the great cause of childhood if I fail to say what I
do know. It is good for us, now and then, to be shown our shortcomings.
It is well for us to see at times into our soul of souls. It is progress
to search after better things. Self-sufficiency is retrogression;
self satisfaction is decay, and contentment is the sure messenger of
degeneracy and death. There is no god as great as the God of Discontent.
False glory is the masque of ignorance and self-conceit is the gaudy
mantle of the king’s fool.
In telling you then, as the collected teachers and county superintendents
of this state, that you have done nobly and performed your solemn duties,
the distinguished gentleman has used an hyperbole which strikes me with
ironical exaggeration and which has aroused in me this flow of bitterness
and gall which I shall now pour out upon your complacent heads. And I
do if with this amendment—that if you are doing your duty, if you have
fought for the rights of childhood as you should and failed, then the
law makers of this state, and the people of the state who send that kind
every two years to this capitol are fearfully, wonderfully and criminally
derelict in their duty to the children of their own firesides. For I
have it from the lips of your chairman himself, in a speech he delivered
in Columbia last fall, that in all the forty-five members of the great
United States, in numbers of natural born illiterates, North Carolina
stands at the very bottom and Tennessee, your own Tennessee, in which you
are doing such noble, uplifting work, stands next to her, holding in her
hand the black flag of illiteracy.
Does the full force of this get into your peripatetic souls to ruffle
the feathers of your immaculate conceit? Great God, it hurts me to think
of North Carolina, the birthplace of my father and all his fathers
before him that I know anything of, the birthplace of Polk and Shelby
and Robertson and a host of others as great sons as ever God gave to
the republic, the land of the Anglo-Celt, of patriotism and tar-heel
gameness—it hurts me, I repeat, to learn that she stands at the foot, and
Tennessee, her daughter and her equal in past grandeur, patriotism and
principles, stands next!
Don’t look at me as if you did not want to hear it! Neither do I want to
hear it, but it is sometimes good for us to hear the truth—the truth even
to crucifixion.
You may be ignorant, but God knows you will fight! Then fight for the
white children of your state—fight these laws and the politicians who
made them with strings to them—made them to be evaded. Fight for more and
better schools and the abolition of child labor until your state stands
in the column where its pedigree and its past record entitles it to stand!
For you will fight, thank the Lord!
I journeyed last spring to New Orleans just to see the plain upon
which Tennesseans stood and fought to a bloody finish the bullies of
beef-eating England and secured by their victory to our nation the
Louisiana Purchase and a century of foreign peace, which the memory of
that battle strengthens yet in the minds of their children. The old
ditch was a swamp of water lilies; the breastworks had gone back to
the plain; but the great Mississippi flowed on to the sea, unhampered
by Spaniard or Briton, the great artery of a boundless, unbroken and
undivided country. And I stood upon a soil made American by the blood
of Tennesseans; I looked up at a sky purple, blue and beautiful, thrown
over the landscape by the God of our fathers, even as a king of old would
throw his royal purple over the masterpieces of the great master. And
on the sky and on the land and on the bosom of the mighty river I read:
JACKSON—JACKSON—JACKSON!
As I stood there the fighting spirit of my Irish sires came back to me
as I saw the ghosts of those long-haired Tennesseans standing behind
that bloody ditch fighting for the country which God had ordained should
belong to them and the oppressed of the world. The hot blood surged
in my cheek as I thought of the 60,000 little white children of the
South and the 2,000,000 in the cotton mills and factories and mines and
sweatshops of the nation, robbed of their rights of childhood by the
greed of gold, the graft of politicians and the low ignorance and lazy
debasement of their own parents, stealing from them not only the rights
of an education, but even the right of life! And as the blood surged in
my head, beating drumbeats in my brain and marshalling in the fine frenzy
of prophetic visions the gray host that stood shoulder to shoulder there,
I saw again that sallow-faced leader, with the form of a battle spear and
the eyes of a god, riding up and down the long lines—bloody, blasphemous
and brave—and forever settling with the invaders the issue they had
postponed, but not abandoned, at Yorktown. And, seeing him, I saw again
that pitiful picture in the Waxhaw Settlement—the Irish immigrant mother,
her husband but a week ago buried in a poor white’s grave, two babes at
her knees and this one at her breast, with no money and no home and no
bread for their mouths, and I said: “Thank God, there were no cotton
mills in South Carolina then, or Andrew Jackson would have died there
before he was grown, in the lint and the dust and the grind of them,
robbed of his childhood and of his chance in life!”
For he also was a poor white, just the meat for a nice, religious
director of a cotton mill!
I thought of another Tennessean, and this time I stood in the Alamo,
and again I saw ghosts—for who that has blood in his veins can stand
there and not see them? And this was another poor white who died there
before he would pull down the flag that floated above him, or could notch
on the stock of his rifle the dead Mexicans who were piled up before
him—dead—giving to his country an empire and to her coming children an
inspiration that is greater than land and gold, “yea, than much fine
gold.” And I thanked God again that in his youth there had been no cotton
mills in Tennessee to do for Davy Crockett what the bear and panther and
Indian could never do.
For he, too, was a poor white, and in his day would have been as good
for a cotton mill as a coonskin for a pint of whiskey. And his little
life would have gone out behind their shuttles of steel instead of the
invader’s bayonet, and the mention of his name would have brought no
trumpet-blast from the lips of fame: “Thermopylae had her messenger of
defeat. The Alamo had none!”
Again I thought of a fighting Tennessean, also a poor white, in his
youth, and the legitimate prey of the cotton mills—running his gunboats
up Mobile Bay in spite of the bellowing forts and the broadsides of death
and the hell of the hidden torpedo. And suddenly the engine stopped and
a faint heart shouted from below: “_Back—back—torpedoes!_” But Farragut,
from the greatest post of danger, shouted down: “Damn the torpedoes—go
ahead!”
My friends, a man who would steal from a child his childhood, that which
makes all his after life worth living, who would filch from it its
body, brain and soul, is a human torpedo—a torpedo of hell. And, in the
language of Farragut, I say unto you: “_Damn them and go ahead!_”
There was Forrest, another fighting Tennessean and a poor little white
trash, one with fifteen brothers and sisters—just the ideal family made
for the maw of a cotton mill—for upon such families do they declare their
dividends. And if there had been mills in his day there would doubtless
have been no Fort Donelson, Tishomingo Creek and Streight’s Raid. He
also, like all his fighting predecessors, was a swearing Tennessean.
And so I thank heaven for a good, honest, mouth-filling oath in a noble
cause. And again I say unto you: “_By the Eternal, stand up for the
children of your land!_”
They tell me that certain animals in the lower forms of life eat their
young—a form of disease which we recognize in the sick hen which eats
her egg and the swine which devours its young. Good God! Has our boasted
civilization reached the sick and abnormal stage of its existence that
it would live upon its young? Has too much wealth and too much glory and
too much selfishness and high living made again of some men the man-eater
that lived before Adam, except that the hair of his body and his tusks
and his claws are gone, and now he is the clean-looking, well-fed,
well-groomed son of hell that would fatten on the blood of his own
breed? Talk not about his being a Christian, a follower of the sweet and
beautiful Savior—the Christ, who, when he had hunted in all the mystic
chambers of his God-like mind for some simile to express perfect purity
and what we might hope to see in heaven, took the little poor ones in
his arms and said: “This is what you must become—this is the kingdom of
heaven.”