An amusing eccentricity of feeling, certainly a very nice distinction,

was shown during slave times by a woman belonging to a friend of ours.

Some disturbance had taken place on the premises of a neighbor, Mr.

H----, who, being a severe old man, forthwith forbade that any negro

should again visit his place. This result was very dispiriting to Judy,

the slave above referred to, for she had a cousin belonging to Mr. H----

to whom she was in the habit of paying frequent visits, and for whom she

felt undoubtedly very great affection; and as time passed and Mr. H----

continued implacable, her indignation grew and her wrath waxed exceeding

strong. It came to pass that the cousin one night fared over-sumptuously

on cold cabbage and beans, and when the mists of dawn had fled she too

had left to join her friends over Jordan.

Presently a messenger came from Mr. H----: "Would Mrs. S---- be so kind

as to allow Judy to come over and prepare the body for burial?"--that

being one of Judy's specialties.

The family was at table when the message was delivered, and Judy was

serving cakes and muffins, with short parentheses sacred to the memory

of her cousin. Mrs. S---- had respected her affliction and given her

permission to retire, but Judy continued to return with more cakes and

more muffins, and, as soon as they were handed, to retire to a corner

with her apron at her eyes, even after Mr. H----'s message had been

delivered and she had been told to go. During one of her temporary

absences Mr. S---- asked his wife, "Why don't you tell her to go, if she

is going? It seems nobody can be 'laid out' without Judy, but any of the

rest can wait at table."

"But this is her cousin, and she may not wish to perform so trying a

service; so I will leave it to her.--Judy, if you prefer not going to

Mr. H----'s just at present, I will send word that I cannot spare you."

Judy threw her apron over her head with a vari-toned cry issued in the

keys of grief, anger and scorn. Then she stiffened her neck and rolled

her eyes from side to side till the whites glistened again. "Go dar,

indeed!" she indignantly exclaimed. "Ef I couldn't go on de lot to see

my own dear cousin, I know I ain't gwine to dress up his dead nigger!"

The leading trait of the negro is his instability, his superficiality.

It is superlative. His emotions are as easily aroused and as evanescent

as those of children, flowing in a noisy and tumultuous current, but

utterly without depth and volatile as ether. To this may in a measure be

attributed his lack of progress, but I doubt whether he be capable of

any high order of development without an infusion of Caucasian blood

which will dissipate his simian type, improving the shape of his

retreating forehead, changing the contour of his heavy jaw, giving

weight and measurement to his now inferior and inactive brain. Since the

surrender and the institution of public schools, and the opportunities

for improvement afforded him, we seem to have all around us evidence of

this utter instability of character. Never since the world began has he

had, and never will he have again, the incentives and aids to

improvement which at that time fell into his hands. There was, as one

spur to ambition, the spirit of resentment which he was supposed

naturally to entertain at having been kept in servitude by even the

kindest of masters; but the negro is amiable and forgiving, and not only

during but after the war conducted himself with admirable good feeling

and moderation. Granting, then, that he indulged no feeling of

resentment, there must have been, should have been, there was, a

sentiment of rivalry with the whites which was pardonable and proper to

the most amiable and forgiving nature; and at first the young negroes

applied themselves with assiduity, and learned with an avidity which

delighted some classes, and was no doubt a discomfiting surprise to

others. It was astonishing to see the rapidity with which they mastered

the alphabet of progress, and white mothers said to their indolent or

refractory children, "Are you not ashamed to see little negroes more

studious than yourself, making even greater progress according to their

advantages, and in matters with which you should be already familiar?"

As time went on even the indolent or refractory white boy to some extent

improved, and seemed conditionally sure of further improvement; but the

negro, having arrived at a certain point--and that usually no high

one--seemed incapable of further progress, as a man, though not

afflicted with dimness of vision, is prevented by natural causes from

seeing beyond the horizon. Doubtless the spirit of rivalry already

mentioned, born of defiance and resentment in a mild form, was to some

extent the incentive to application, and its brief duration serves to

illustrate the instability of which we speak. Doubtless, also, many

others, by reason of poverty, which necessitated manual labor, were

unable to continue the pursuit of an education to any great advantage;

but what numbers of white children, by the losses of war placed on the

same footing--placed identically on the same footing, because they also

and their parents were compelled to earn by labor their daily

bread--have yet continued to improve! The negro had the same privilege

of night study and (immediately after the war) as many teachers at his

service as any white child. He had also one advantage over the white: he

had never learned the difference between _meum_ and _tuum_, and the

silver lining to this cloud of ignorance lay in the fact that he was

thereby enabled more speedily to increase his store of worldly goods,

thus leaving time for greater devotion to the particular of mental

development.

But take the minority of instances, where every advantage has been given

him; where, freed from the relations of master and slave, he has been

thrown with whites and the spirit of emulation naturally excited; where

his parents have made every sacrifice necessary to procure him tutors

(numbers of them had private teachers, and very competent ones too, just

after the war) and books and all the paraphernalia of learning, and even

the best social position possible to him in the section where he

happened to be, themselves retreating into the background with the

pathetic humility and self-abnegation of parents who believe and desire

their offspring to be of a higher order than themselves,--does the

highest culture of which he seems capable make him more than the peer of

the mediocre white? I and hundreds of others have read with pleasure the

speech of Rev. William D. Johnson, A.M., colored delegate to the

Methodist Episcopal Conference which some months ago met in Georgia. It

was a good speech for a colored man--a capitally, wonderfully good

speech--and I applaud it with cordial pleasure and reciprocation of the

good feeling which pervades it; but is it more than the address of the

average white? As the address of any one of the white members would it

have been reported, or have attracted attention, save for its animus?

There are exceptional cases among the negroes as among the whites; but

because we have a Cuvier, a Webster, a Dupuytren, are we prepared to

assert as a general fact that the brain of the white man weighs

sixty-four ounces? And I speak of the negroes as a class. I refer to the

negro of the South, not to the barbarian of Africa, who really exists,

nor to the negro of the Northern mind, who is only "founded on fact." I

refer to the negro as he is in our day and generation, not as he will or

may be after centuries of revolution in his circumstances which will

produce Heaven knows what changes in his mental, moral and physical

nature. Many believe that these negroes, whom and whose children we have

civilized, having with their freedom received ideas of social equality

and personal ambition which except in isolated cases can never be

realized on this continent, will gradually return, as in South Carolina

they are now doing, to their original land, and thus eventually civilize

their own race. Were they to return in a body, they would all probably

relapse into barbarism, but if a clear stream be kept running, though

the pool through which it flow be stagnant, it will in time become pure.

And there is material in this country for a pretty continuous flow.

I do not say that the negro is incapable of progress, but his mental

horizon is very limited, and seems bounded by natural causes as

immovable (except by aid of foreign blood, which having he ceases to be

a genuine negro) as the chains of mountains which in some localities

limit the horizon in material Nature; and that as a people they will

become the peer of the white race is simply impossible, for if progress

be a law of Nature, it will be obeyed by the white man also, and he is

already centuries ahead of the black, with advantages of every possible

nature. Also, that they should now be competent to fill the offices many

of them occupy is a pure absurdity, as demonstrated all around us--at

the polls, in the jury-box, in the chair of the magistrate. A very cruel

absurdity it has sometimes proved.

But speaking of their mercurial nature: I was once spending the summer

at a village in the mountains, and not far from my chamber-window were

three or four cabins occupied by very cleanly, orderly negroes, who had

hitherto been a source of no annoyance, for I am very fond of negroes

and like to have them about me. These cabins were situated near the

mouth of a deep ravine heavily wooded and producing echoes of beautiful

distinctness. One evening negroes began to assemble in and around the

largest cabin, and there was evidently to be a meeting of some very

mournful--or at any rate solemn--character, for they came quietly, shook

hands silently, and crept into their places with a stealthy gliding

motion. It was a weird, uncanny scene. The moon rose slowly behind the

great black mountains, and cast its rays upon the tree-tops and

shimmered its light on the whitewashed cabins, and only half revealed

the dark figures that glided like spectres in and out; but nothing could

pierce the depths of that black ravine, and it was easy to believe it

the abode of spirits blest or otherwise--especially otherwise. There was

a long, oppressive silence: then they began to sing. What remarkable

voices they have, especially the men--so full, so rich, so deep and

sonorous! If the mental development of the negro is to involve change in

his physical conformation, it is to be hoped it will not interfere with

his chest and lungs, nor with that wonderful cavern in the back of his

mouth and at the base of the nose. Some should be kept barbarians that

they may continue to be vocal instruments. No one who has heard him only

as a "minstrel" can have any conception of the exquisite mournfulness,

the agonizing pathos, which the negro voice is capable of expressing;

nor, we may fairly add, of the wild, devil-may-care jollity; but this

last is more truly represented on the stage, the invariable adjuncts of

caricature not only contributing to stimulate the comedian, but

broadening the effect of his voice on the hearer. Why is it that we

always have caricature in negro delineations--that we never have any

simple representations of the reality or any touches of unalloyed

pathos? In all Nature there is nothing more pathetic than a pitiful

negro. You may paint the negro's lips and roach his hair, and even

exaggerate the peculiarities of his feet, but I can pick you up one, out

on the suburbs or down in the alleys, who has become old and feeble and

cannot work any more, whose old master is dead and whose children have

kicked him out, who steals and struggles and starves in ignorant terror

of the poorhouse; and for yours people will raise their opera-glasses to

their eyes--for mine, their handkerchiefs.

But to return. Oh how inexpressibly mournful were their chants that

night! I remember one especially. It began with a wailing recitative--a

prolonged, mournful recitative in the minor key by female voices only,

and at its close the men joined them in a full, deep chorus, slow and

solemn, the last words of which were "Dead and gone!" The black ravine

took up the sound, and from its deep, mysterious heart came back the

solemn echo, "Dead and gone!" It was simply horrible. I never felt so

homesick in my life; and as the mournful chant rolled toward the

mountain, and then came floating back again like a corpse upon the

ebbing tide, I leaned my head upon the window-sill and cried heartily.

One by one my friends died and were buried, my children became orphans,

and, by a curious freak of circumstances, their father and I were left

to a childless old age. All possible accidents were put in requisition,

all manner of possible misfortunes called upon to contribute their quota

of woe. Then I fell to wondering how people could like to sing mournful

things and make themselves and other people miserable; and that made me

think of what negroes liked, and that naturally led to watermelons; so I

dried my eyes and summoned my maid: "Betty, what is it they are singing

about? Is anybody dead?"

"It's de las' en' of a funerul, I b'lieve, m'm--somebody whar dey didn't

git done preachin' over him, 'count of a storm."

"Betty, the singing does make me feel so badly. Just step over and say I

will send them a barrel of watermelons and cantaloupes, and those Mrs.

Brown sent me too, if they will get up a dance or make any kind of

cheerful noise. There is a tambourine among the children's toys: you can

beat it as you go."

Betty laughed, and went over. There was a pause in the singing: then I

heard a man's voice: "Go 'way wid dat fool talk! Whar she gwine git

watermillions an' mushmillions by de bar'l, an' dey ain't more'n fa'rly

ripe?"

"Mr. Smith sent 'em from de city," simpered Betty, who liked to put on

airs with the country-folk; "an' Mrs. Brown, of your nabority, reposed

her some to-day."

"Dat's so 'bout dem from town, 'cos I helped to tote 'em up to de

house," said another.

"Huk kum she ain't et 'em?"

"The baby conwulshed, an' Mrs. Smith's mind disbegaged of de melons,"

replied Betty.

"Huk kum he sen' so many?" asked the first speaker, who appeared to be

business-manager, and duly afraid of being swindled--fervid in fair

speech, and correspondingly suspicious. "His wife mus' be a mons'ous

hearty 'ooman!"

"He knowed she were goin' to resperse 'em to her village fren's too, of

course. Which we all know dere ain't no place where you carn't" (Betty

was from Cumberland county, and pronounced the _a_ broad, to the envious

disgust of the Rockbridge darkies) "git fruit like you carn't git it in

the country. It is always five miles off, an' de han's is busy, or de

creek is riz an' you carn't cross it."

"Come now, town-nigger, we don't want none o' yo' slack-jaw; an' ain't

gwine take it, nudder!"

"Mos' incertny not," sang out a high-pitched female voice from some

unseen point.

"Comin' here wid yo' half-white talk an' half-nigger!"

"But who'll git up de fus' larf?" inquired the metropolitan, suavely

waiving personal discussion.

"Yo' git de 'millions, an' de laf's boun' ter foller. Don't be skeered

'bout de laf."

And his veracity proved unimpeachable, for as the melons were

distributed the air became vocal with rude wit and noisy laughter, and

the deep ravine gave back loud "yah-yahs" which sounded truly demoniac

in the darkness, and were no doubt the reproachful, sneering laughter of

the late lamented, whose obsequies were for the second time

abbreviated--the resentful, mocking laughter of him who was "dead and

gone."

But the negro, as said before, has one advantage over his impecunious

white brother--a genius for theft. The white man may not have, as a

general thing, sterner principle or a softer conscience, but it cannot

be said, except in isolated cases, that he has a passion for stealing.

The Chinaman is regarded by severe moralists as somewhat lax in the

matter of honesty, and indeed, to be candid, he has been accused of

cultivating theft as one of the fine arts; but even he has the grace to

be, or to affect to be, ashamed of it, and indignantly resentful at

being suspected of the immorality. The negro, on the other hand, is only

terribly afraid of being punished, and on being forgiven feels

immediately purified and free from sin. He has, in fact, no moral

principle, and his code of honesty is comprised in a conversation I

overheard this winter. Our youngest child seemed to have a vague,

indefinite fear of rogues, and a very imperfect idea of what a rogue

might be, and was always asking questions on the subject. One morning,

while his nurse was dressing him, I heard him inquire, "How big is a

rogue, Betty? Can he hear a mile?"

Before she could reply, his brother, very little older, rose to explain:

"Why, Bob, you've seen a many a rogue. A rogue is thes' a man. Papa an'

Uncle Bob looks ezactly like other rogues."

"Is papa an' Unker Bob rogues?" asked the youngest with innocent wonder.

"No, chile--dat dey ain't!" said Betty as she filled his eyes with soap.

"Yo' papa an' yo' uncle Borb is jes' as ornes' as anybody, 'cos rogues

is folks what steals an' _gits cotch_!"

JENNIE WOODVILLE.

THE AFTER-DINNER SPEECH OF THE BARONESS CONTALETTO.

In one of the most salubrious sections of Alaska there exists--or did

exist in December, 1876--a society named "The Irreparables." It was

composed of women only. For this there were several reasons. The

subjects discussed were not supposed to interest men, but this might

have been remedied had not the men, already in a minority in the

village, absolutely refused to have anything to do with a society in

which they were sure to be voted down without any very promising power

of appeal. It was at one time suggested that they could become associate

members, but the notary, upon examining their prospective position in

the club, declared that their taxes would be so many and their rights so

few that it was an offer not to be considered. So the matter was

dropped, and an "Irreparable" was always a creature of the gentler sex.

The most important event in the year to this society was its annual

meeting and festive celebration in December. Upon this occasion the

members reviewed their accounts, perhaps voted in a new member, acted

upon delinquents, and, in a word, settled up the business of the year.

The festivities sometimes took the shape of a mothers' meeting, a

quilting-party or a cozy little tea. In 1876 they were, however,

affected by the excitement that prevailed throughout the whole United

States, and which fairly reached them in December. Alaska, it was true,

was not one of the thirteen colonies, but neither was Ohio nor Colorado.

It was much larger than Rhode Island or Delaware. It had great

possibilities, and it had cost money, which was more than could be said

of the original thirteen, leaving out Pennsylvania, which even then

could not be counted as a very expensive investment on the part of Mr.

Penn. These patriotic reasons fired the hearts of the "Irreparables,"

and they determined that Alaska should celebrate the Centennial of their

country, and that the celebration should be theirs.

Then the question arose of what nature this celebration should be. An

Exposition was clearly out of the question, and even a school-fair was

voted troublesome. Some of the younger members favored a dance, but this

was objected to, because of the absurdity of a roomful of women waltzing

and treading the light, fantastic German by themselves. It would seem,

said the Baroness Contaletto, like a burlesque of merriment; and so the

dance fell through. A service of song, a tea-drum, a cream-cornet, and a

pound-party met the same fate; and finally all minds gently but firmly

centred upon a dinner-party; and so it _was_ a dinner with courses.

Naturally enough, it was not at first easy to arrange, but the admirable

spirit of organization pervading the society soon brought everything

into shape. There was a committee upon the bill of fare, upon the

toasts, upon invitations, upon the room and upon the general

arrangements. It was true that the only room in the village that was

suitable was the little hall back of the tavern, and the invitations

were verbally given at the meeting when the matter was decided upon; but

as one never knows what emergencies may arise, it is always well to have

a committee ready to act.

The chairwoman of most of the committees was the Baroness Contaletto.

This was not because of her rank, as, in fact, she had no claim to her

title either from birthright or marriage. Her claim rested upon the fine

sense the village had of the fitness of things. She _looked_ like a

baroness: she always made it a point to behave like one. In the course

of time they called her so, and when she added the name of Contaletto,

the village acknowledged the fitness of _that_, and very soon the

Baroness Contaletto was universally accepted, and Thisba Lenowski

forgotten. The reason of her being so many chairwomen also rested on her

fitness. She was a woman of ideas and of deeds. The minister's plans

might come to naught, the editor's predictions be falsified, and the

schoolmaster's reforms die out; but the enterprises undertaken by the

baroness went through to a swift success. Her ideas were both contagious

and epidemic, and she was always a known quantity in the place.

And so when she pooh-poohed the dance, laughed at the tea-drum and

shivered at the idea of the cream-cornet, declaring for the dinner, the

matter was settled, and each of the younger members promptly decided who

she would ask to escort her and deliberated as to what she should wear.

Then the baroness arose. She glanced around. She read the thoughts of

the members. She looked at two women. One was the sister of the county

clerk: she was a woman of the most appreciative character, the clearest

sense, and--she was the faithful echo of the baroness. The second was a

pretty girl. She represented the other pretty girls. Then the baroness

spoke. She said it was of the first importance to do this thing

decorously and in order. When men had suppers they never invited women.

They wanted to have a good time, and women spoiled it. She was not in

favor of an "invitation entertainment." She supposed that what they

wanted was a society, an "Irreparable," dinner. Therefore, _she_ did not

propose to invite men.

"But," said the pretty girl, with a rosy color mounting to her cheeks

and an ominous flash in her eyes, "when I was in New Moscow _I_ was

invited to the Hercules dinner."

"To the table?" asked the baroness.

"Well--no," replied the pretty girl.

"Did you get anything to eat?" pursued the baroness.

"Oh no," answered the victim, as if this was something preposterous--"of

course I didn't. We did not expect anything. But I had a splendid seat,

and I heard all the toasts and everything."

"That _was_ very nice," answered the baroness, grimly; "but I think we

can do quite as well. We will invite the gentlemen to the

gallery--fortunately, there is one--we will have toasts, and _we_ will

be very entertaining."

Of course the baroness had her way. Here, at once, was an advantage in

the absence of associate members. Rosy cheeks and pretty eyes now

counted in the society for nothing, and when the sister of the county

clerk promptly moved that no gentleman be invited to the floor, the

sexton's wife seconded the motion. It was carried, and on the night

appointed the "Irreparables" had their dinner, and up in the gallery sat

the minister, the sheriff, the county clerk, the editor of the

_Snow-Drift_, the head-teacher and a dozen other gentlemen, all in

strict evening--if still Alaskian--toilettes. At first it was funny.

Then it wasn't funny. It became tiresome, and the sheriff went away. His

boots creaked, the ladies looked up, and then not a married man but

smiled delightedly and settled himself in his seat.

They paid much attention to the wine. It had been bought in New Moscow

of the Hercules Club, and was of course all right. Yet it was over the

wine that the county clerk grew restless. It was not that he wished for

it particularly, but when the "Irreparables" drank champagne with their

soup, sauterne with the meat, ate their nuts and made their toasts with

sherry, his patience was put to a severe test. It was something to see

that most of the glasses went away almost untasted, but the head-teacher

found it best to keep a steady eye upon him and save him from doing more

than mutter his opinions.

But when the toasts came the gallery visibly brightened up. The

"Irreparables" toasted the country and its resources, the United States,

Mrs. Seward, the Centennial, Mrs. Grant, and the widow the chief

alderman was to marry. They drank to Queen Victoria, and, with a

remembrance of past loyalty, to the czarina. To each toast a member

responded in terms fitting and witty, and when the pretty girl arose

and, with a glance at the gallery, gave "The gentlemen--God bless them!"

the baroness stood up and made reply. She thanked the company in the

name of the gentlemen. She spoke of them in high and eloquent terms. She

alluded to their usefulness, their courage, their good looks. She did

them full justice as resources in times of trouble, of war and of

midnight burglaries.

The county clerk ran his fingers through his hair, the color came into

the cheeks of the clergyman, and a subdued murmur as of pleasure ran

through the little group in the gallery.

Then the baroness continued. She said she was not a woman-suffragist--at

least she wasn't sure that she was. She had, she thanked her stars, her

own opinion upon most matters, but while she had no positive objection

to right-minded women having any real or fancied wrongs redressed, and

in their own way, she had not yet thought clearly enough upon the

subject to be sure that the ballot was the remedy. She knew there was a

great deal of nonsense talked about the moral influence women would

exert in politics: perhaps they would, but to her it seemed very much

like watering potato-blossoms to get rid of the worms at the root.

Here the county clerk half rose, but the head-teacher held him with his

disciplining eye, and he sat down again.

What was needed, said the baroness, was not mending, regenerating,

giving freedom or doing justice. These things were all very good, but

more was necessary. "There is no remedy," she said with rising

inflections and with emphasis--"no remedy but a total change. What we

want is not an extension of the suffrage, but a _limitation_!"

She wished it, however, distinctly understood that she in no way meant

to affirm that woman was man's superior: she did not think so. In his

own place man could not be surpassed. The sciences, the arts, the

industrial pursuits, religion, civilization, all owed a deep debt to

man, and it could not be ignored. She was the last person in the world

to wish to ignore it. Properly governed, disciplined and educated, his

development might outrun hope, defy prophecy. Out of his place he was a

comet without an orbit. Drawn hither and thither by sinister stars, he

was an eccentricity beyond calculation and full of harm. For this reason

the interests of humanity demanded that the place of man in the conduct

of affairs should be well defined and limited. It was well to look this

matter in the face.

"Now," proceeded the baroness, "I leave it to any class of men, to any

one man, to declare whether the world is, or ever has been, well

governed. Is there any age, any country upon record, where justice has

reigned, where the interests of every class have been consulted, and

where the people have lived together in mutual esteem, in unity and in

prosperity? If we look through the world to-day, we find but one country

that is governed in anything like a satisfactory manner. It is loved by

some classes of its people, and admired by very many foreigners. When we

reflect that it is governed by a queen, and that history tells us that

its most prosperous period in the past was under Queen Elizabeth, it is

certainly safe to assume--No, no, my friends," she said, hastily, "do

not applaud. That is not my point. It is possible that women may govern

better than men, but that is yet to be tested. This illustration proves

but one thing--_that a country is better for not being governed by a

man_."

Her point was this: she did not appear as an advocate of suffrage for

women, but as an earnest petitioner against its being any longer held by

men. The one thing a man could _not_ do was--to govern! This was no

assertion. It was a fact proved by all history. Since the beginning of

the world men had had the governing power in their hands, and what a

mess they had always made of it! There had never been a decent

government. Oppression, rebellion, anarchy, war, bloodshed, slavery and

tyranny,--this was their record.

If women could do anything better, she was in favor of giving them the

opportunity of proving it, but it was not her purpose to propose the

after-treatment. She was not a physician in charge, but the surgeon for

the moment.

She had made suggestions: she freely confessed it. She had, for

instance, proposed to their talented townsman, the editor of the

_Snow-Drift_, a series of articles upon the existing Presidential

contest. As far as she could learn, there was a great lack of unanimity

regarding the vote, and it was not clear to the Hayes party that Tilden

was elected. Now, she had suggested that there were certain classes

concerned but _not_ consulted in the election, and to them she proposed

leaving the decision. The legal voters had blundered horribly in some

way, and she would have been in favor of allowing the Indians, the

Chinese, the convicts, the idiots _and_ the women to decide the matter.

It could not be made worse, and it might be made better.

But leaving all these questions of a past hour, she would put the axe

where George Washington did not put it--at the root of the tree--near

enough also, she would remark, to leave no stump, and so at once place

politics upon a new basis by taking the governing power away from the

gentlemen, God bless them!

LOUISE STOCKTON.

MUSIC IN AMERICA

England and America have long been classed among the unmusical countries

of the world, and for good reasons. Their history so far records the

names of no composers of a high rank; and although in both countries

there are plenty of amateurs and minor musicians who fully appreciate

the best there is in the art, yet the people as a whole are not

influenced by it in the same way as the Germans and the Italians, to

whose hungry souls music is as necessary as is oxygen to their lungs. If

we adopt the good old-fashioned classification of instrumental and vocal

pieces into "music for the feet," or dance music, "music for the ear,"

or drawing-room music, "and music for the head and heart," or classical

music, we are forced to admit that so far only the first of these

classes has found general favor with our masses. Waltzes, quick-steps,

galops, quadrilles, are the daily food of our people, and there are

thousands of pianos scattered throughout the country which are never

used for any other purpose than to play this dance music, which occupies

about the same place in relation to the higher forms of music as dancing

on the stage does to artistic acting. Next comes the somewhat more

elevated branch of drawing-room or _salon_ music, which in the cities

and towns is very largely cultivated. It is typified by the popular

"Maiden's Prayer," and also includes the more sensational of the French

and Italian opera melodies with all their vocal pyrotechnics, as well as

the pianoforte fantasias on these same melodies--in short, all music

written with a view to giving the performer an opportunity of displaying

facility of execution rather than genuine feeling.

It is only in our centres of culture, the largest of our cities, that

sufficient interest is taken in the highest products of musical genius

to call into life and to support respectable orchestras and choruses;

and even in these centres of culture there is no excess of devotion, as

is perhaps best shown by the great rarity of amateur string quartettes,

those most intellectual and most enjoyable of all musical clubs, whose

sphere is classical chamber music, the direct opposite in most respects

of the drawing-room music just spoken of. How different all this is

from the state of affairs in Germany, where every town of ten thousand

inhabitants has its well-managed opera-house and its various kinds of

musical clubs for public and private amusement! The difference may best

be realized by reading Wagner's admirable little essay, _Ueber Deutsches

Musikwesen_, republished in the first volume of his collected works.

Perhaps there is no better way of arriving at a just estimate of the

present state of general musical culture in this country than by looking

at what may be called the creative department, and examining the vocal

and instrumental sheet-music of native composers continually issued in

such large quantities by our publishers. Were we to follow an old maxim,

that the best way of judging the inner life of a nation is to listen to

its music, and accordingly judge of the sentiments and emotions of

Americans by their sheet-music, we should arrive at very discouraging

results. The characteristics of our sheet-music, briefly summed up, are:

(1) trite and vulgar melody, devoid of all originality, repeating what

has been heard a thousand times already; (2) equally trite and

monotonous accompaniments, the harmony limited to half a dozen

elementary chords, the rhythm mechanical and commonplace, and the

cadences unchanging as the laws of Nature; (3) insipid, sensational

titles; (4) words usually so silly that a respectable country newspaper

would refuse to print them in its columns--true to the French _bon-mot_,

that what is too stupid to be spoken or read must be sung.

This may seem too sweeping a condemnation, but it is not. There are some

honorable exceptions of course, but only just enough of them to attract

notice by the contrast, and thus to prove the rule. If an aspiring young

composer wishes to appear in print, the point to which he must direct

his attention is to secure, not a good original melody or a piquant

accompaniment, but a "catching" title, like "Timber-Thief Galop,"

"Silver Bill Polka," or "Sitting Bull March." If his choice in this

respect does not please the publisher, his manuscript may yet escape the

paper-basket if its title-page happens to be embellished with a

grotesque cartoon or a sentimental picture of a couple of lovers or cats

who have met by moonlight alone. From these external and all-essential

attributes an experienced agent can form an accurate estimate of how

large the sale of a new piece will be; and he will tell you that so

little does the excellence of the music contribute to its success that

in general the sale of compositions in this country stands in inverse

ratio to their merits.

The sheet-music nuisance seems to be a phenomenon peculiar to this

country; for, although France, England, Italy, and even Germany,

annually produce much music which is not worth the printer's ink, yet in

comparison with ours it might almost be called classical. And the

melancholy thing about it is, that specimens of these flimsy productions

may be seen lying about freely on the pianos of people who would blush

at the mere thought of having books of the same intellectual and

aesthetic level lying on their parlor-tables for general inspection and

for the entertainment of guests. For, while the corrupting influence of

an impure story or a bad picture has long since been recognized, it

still seems to be imagined by many educated people that music being the

"divine art" any form of it must of course be desirable, and better than

nothing at all. This is the form of Philistinism which before all others

must be combated ere we can hope to materially purify our musical

atmosphere. The error naturally arose from the great amount of silly

talk about music, which is usually represented as being incapable of

lending itself to the expression of any but the noblest sentiments and

emotions. Quite the contrary. If good music has all those wonderful

powers which have been ascribed to it from time immemorial, it follows

necessarily that bad music must exert equal powers in an opposite

direction. In fact, bad music is even a more demoralizing agent than,

for instance, a miserable newspaper. The latter is once hastily read

through and then thrown away, while a poor musical composition is apt to

be preserved in the parlor--perhaps, neatly bound with some others of

like value, is carefully studied, or even memorized, and repeatedly sung

at evening parties; and in this way it cannot but slowly vitiate the

taste of performer and hearer alike, and make them deaf to the beauties

of better things.

If we turn from this aspect of music in America to our concert-halls,

the prospect is much brighter. In this department we have achieved more

than in any other, and no one is now obliged to go abroad in order to

hear a good concert, as he is if he wishes to enjoy a respectable

operatic performance. How much of this is due to the energy of one man,

Mr. Theodore Thomas, everybody knows, and it is not too much to say that

the "new departure" he is about to make may be expected to mark an epoch

in the history of American music. Cincinnati will henceforth claim the

position of musical metropolis, and whether its pre-eminence be conceded

or a vigorous rivalry maintained, the whole country must feel the good

effect of that generous ambition which has rescued a noble enterprise

from an uncertain and fluctuating condition, and offered it a secure

haven.

Americans have already good reasons for being proud of their concerts,

for except in Berlin there are perhaps no audiences in Europe which have

the advantage of us in this respect. This can be seen by comparing our

programmes with those offered in continental cities, as recorded every

week in the _Neue Zeitschrift fuer Musik_, published at Leipsic. I have

repeatedly seen paragraphs in leading German papers calling attention to

Mr. Thomas's programmes, and hinting that their own conductors might

learn something from them. What is particularly noticeable about them is

their cosmopolitanism, and this has contributed much to their success.

It has been said, however, by some that Thomas's sole aim seems to be to

offer as many novelties as possible, and that he disregards artistic

perspective in the arrangement of his programmes. He has indeed never

followed the illiberal principle that it is bad taste to perform the

works of living masters--a principle which has done much to bring to the

brink of ruin a certain association in Boston--but he has endeavored to

do justice to all the composers from Bach to Berlioz and Wagner. If Mr.

Thomas makes an effort to introduce to his audience a new symphony by

Brahms or a new symphonic poem by Saint Saeens immediately after its

issue from the press, we certainly ought to be very grateful to him for

his enterprise. When a prominent author writes a new book everybody is

eager to get sight of it as soon as possible, and no one has any fault

to find with this curiosity. But when a similar eagerness is manifested

to hear a new symphony, the conservatives at once cry out, "For shame!

Would you neglect the old masters for the sake of pieces which the wear

and tear of time have not yet proved to possess permanent value?" The

Messrs. Conservatives evidently do not perceive the ludicrous aspect of

their position. If their influence were not fortunately losing instead

of gaining in strength, we might soon look for the extinction of art

through the infanticide of genius. Mr. Thomas is not a conservative,

and, thanks to this fact, we are often enabled to hear a new composition

even before it has been performed in all the German capitals.

Of the condition of our operatic affairs it is impossible to speak in

the same terms of self-congratulation as of our concerts, and will

remain impossible as long as our opera troupes differ in no essential

respects--except in being less sure of their parts--from travelling

bands of negro minstrels. An orchestra may with impunity travel from one

city to another: it always remains the same, and only needs a good hall

to appear to advantage. But an operatic performance is such a

complicated affair that excellence can only be attained after years of

constant practice under the same conditions and with the same materials,

and without constant changes in the chorus, orchestra and stage

surroundings. European experience seems to show that without government

assistance good dramatic and operatic performances are not possible. In

France and Germany, where such assistance is given, the theatres are

good: in England and America, where none is given, they are bad. Perhaps

in course of time our national or city governments will come to

recognize and support the theatre as an educational institution, or at

least as a good means of suppressing intemperance and other vices by

supplying a harmless mode of amusement. There is little prospect,

however, that this will happen soon. It is more likely that some of our

rich men will at last come to see the folly of founding so many new

colleges, and devote their money to other uses. Had Mr. Samuel Wood left

his money for the establishment of a permanent first-class opera instead

of a conservatory, he would have done a wiser thing. The importance of a

good opera-house as an institution for promoting musical culture is not

yet generally understood--naturally enough, considering the wretched

performances we have so far been obliged to endure. The opera has one

great advantage over concerts: it is more attractive to the uninitiated.

It appeals to the eye as well as the ear. The scenic splendors will

attract many unmusical and semi-musical people who shun the purely

intellectual atmosphere of a classical concert as a great bore; and

while they gaze at the wonders of the scenery they unconsciously drink

in the music, so that in course of time they learn to appreciate that

for its own sake. When _Lohengrin_ was first performed in the German

cities the masses attended it chiefly to see the new and brilliant

scenic effects. They found the music stupid, devoid of melody and form,

and bristling with "algebraic" harmonies. But they went so often to see

the swan drawing the mysterious knight through the waters of the Rhine

that they finally learned that the opera is a rich storehouse of the

most exquisite melody, that a wonderful unity of forms pervades the

whole, and that the algebraic harmonies serve to express depths of

emotion hitherto unknown. In the same way the Vienna people have been

lately crowding the theatre to see the Rhine-daughters in their long

blue robes swimming about under the surface of the river, to see the

fight with the dragon, the march of the gods over the rainbow, the ride

of the walkyries on their wild steeds, the burning Walhalla, etc., and

have gradually discovered that their critics at Bayreuth again hoaxed

them when they wrote that the music of the _Trilogy_ was "atomic," that

it was devoid of melody, and that the harmony was in defiance of all the

laws of euphony.

These illustrations show the value of good scenery. Independently of its

artistic value, it is a legitimate bait for enticing people to a place

where they are obliged to hear good music. Good scenery, however, has

never been the strong point of our opera troupes. They never had more

than one strong point. Formerly, some of the great _prime donne_ used to

pay us an occasional visit, but now even they have learned to avoid us,

because we are no longer willing to pay five dollars for an evening's

amusement. London, Paris and St. Petersburg are at present the

head-quarters of the costly "stars." Nor is this fact to be regretted.

The decline of the star system is rather to be greeted as the dawn of a

better era. It has always been the curse of the opera and the greatest

obstacle to improvement. There was a time when the prima donna was so

omnipotent that even the composers were her slaves, being frequently

obliged to alter passages to suit the taste of the stage goddess; and

there are instances on record of whole operas having been composed in

vain because she did not happen to be pleased with them, and refused to

sing. This evil period we have happily out-grown, but an equally great

nuisance remains. The exorbitant prices still demanded by the "stars"

are out of all proportion to their deserts, and show that even if the

composers are their slaves no longer, the spectators and managers still

are so. In Paris and elsewhere it is often found impossible to do

justice to the secondary stage appointments because the salaries of the

soprano and the tenor swallow the whole income. The Germans, on the

other hand, are too artistic and rational to endure such an imposition.

To them the one-star-and-ten-satellites system seems an abomination, and

doubtless Emperor William had the sympathies and approval of all his

subjects when he refused to engage Patti at a price that would have

proved disastrous to the high aims of the imperial opera, which are to

preserve an evenly-balanced and uniform excellence of all the parts of a

performance. There are signs that even England is outgrowing the star

system. Carl Rosa has adopted the German system of dispensing with

"phenomenal" singers, putting the minor roles into good hands, and

keeping a well-trained chorus and orchestra; and his success, as

everybody knows, has been enormous. Now let some competent manager in

this country follow his example: let him show that he does not merely

aim at getting the people's money, but that he has also the ambition of

honestly interpreting the works of the masters and developing a healthy

taste for good dramatic music and acting, and there can be little doubt

that instead of increasing the number of failures now recorded, the

enterprise would prove a success, and show, as Carl Rosa's has done,

that in this way opera can be made to pay even without government

assistance.

Although our rulers have not yet recognized the theatre as a possible

source of culture, they have done something which to the country at

large is of even greater importance than this would be. They have been

gradually introducing vocal music as a regular branch of study in our

public schools. In this matter we seem to have anticipated England, for

while singing was introduced in the schools of Boston more than forty,

and in Baltimore more than thirty, years ago, in the British House of

Commons only twenty-five years ago, when a member proposed that singing

should be taught in all schools, as in Germany, "the suggestion was

received with ridicule, and was deemed deserving of no other response

than a loud laugh." But there has also been, and still is, some

opposition to its general introduction in this country. Only a few

months ago the St. Louis press urged its removal from the schools on the

ground that it is one of the "ornamental" studies, and that more time is

in that city, for instance, devoted to it than to the practical subjects

of geography and arithmetic. This last objection has not much force. All

that is really practical and generally useful in geography and

arithmetic can be learned in a few years, whereas to make progress in

the difficult art of music it is necessary to begin early and continue

for many years. The true answer to such an objection is, that there is

no need of neglecting either of these branches. There is time enough for

all of them if only a proper method of instruction be pursued. Still

more untenable is the idea that music is merely an ornamental study and

of no practical value. This idea rests on the mistaken theory of

education which holds that only the intellect needs training. If our

sole aim is to get something to eat and to drink, and a house to shelter

us from the weather, then we need only cultivate the intellect so that

we may be able to compete with others. But if we care for beautiful

homes, if we wish to enjoy life in a higher sense than that in which a

savage enjoys it, and to make ourselves and others happy, then the

training of the emotions through music is as important as the training

of the intellect in a practical and not an "ornamental" sense.

Fortunately, none of the objections hitherto urged against singing in

public schools have been able to effect any change for the worse. Vocal

music is now taught in the common schools of nearly every city and large

town in New England and the Northern and Western States. In

Boston--which has always been noted for its excellence in this

department--thanks to the intelligent labors of Mr. Lowell Mason and Mr.

Julius Eichberg, it is now possible, on occasion, to raise a chorus of

five thousand well-trained juvenile voices. And it is gratifying to

observe with what unanimity the good influence of public-school singing

is attested by the commissioners of all those States which have given it

a fair trial. The grounds on which it is usually commended are that it

puts life and variety into the dull routine of studies--that it promotes

order and discipline, stimulates the social feelings, electrifies the

wearied nervous system, conduces to health by the regular and vigorous

exercise of the lungs, trains the moral sentiments by refining the

aesthetic emotions, and tends to improve the congregational singing in

our churches. To quote the language of the Commissioner of Education

(_Report for 1873_): "Experience proves that as music is perfected and

used in the daily routine of school duties, just in that proportion are

the deportment and general appearance of the schools improved." Indeed,

it is difficult to calculate all the good results that in course of time

must follow from general musical instruction in our schools. It is

certainly the only effective method of removing in a few generations the

reproach that we are not a musical people. In Germany--which perhaps has

done more for music than all other countries combined--the foundation

for musical culture is laid in the schools by the singing of folk-songs

(_Volkslieder_) and chorals in three-or four-part harmony. And those who

have read the history of music know that these same folk-songs and

chorals were the first musical fruits grown on German soil: they were

the fruits on which in past centuries the people lived and formed their

taste. It is evident, therefore, that in now teaching these folk-songs

and chorals to their children the Germans are guided by that important

law of evolution which shows that the development of the child partly

does, and partly should be made to, conform to the development of the

race, step by step.

There is no reason why we should not follow this same principle. Of

course it will not be necessary to confine ourselves to German

folk-songs, although these are on the whole the best. We are a mixed

people, compounded of all nationalities, and hence the folk-songs of

Italy, France, Scotland, Russia and various other countries should all

be acclimated in our schools. There is something peculiarly healthy and

fresh about folk-songs which one only finds again in the very highest

efforts of individual creative genius. They are like flowers that have

grown up in virgin forests, nurtured by rain and sunshine, fanned by

vigorous breezes and shielded from all the hot-house influences of a

morbid civilization. So rich and spontaneous are many of these melodies

that they can be thoroughly enjoyed even when sung without harmony or

accompaniment, while for advanced classes it is easy to write second and

third vocal parts, thus adding to their interest and value.

While early familiarity with the best of these songs would have a good

effect in refining the popular sense of melody, the appreciation of what

came last and is highest in music--of harmonic progressions--could best

be taught by a similar familiarity with the German four-part chorals.

They are the very embodiment of vigorous, soul-stirring harmony, the

basis of sacred, as the _Volkslied_ is of secular, music. "Each of our

churches," says Thibaut, the author of the celebrated little book on

_Purity in Musical Art_, "had a period of the highest enthusiasm, which

will never return, and each of them has at this very period of the most

ardent religious zeal done its utmost for the development of its song."

The German choral is the result of the intense devotional feelings which

existed among the early Protestant congregations, and it is evident that

a wholesome religious spirit could with it be introduced in our schools

in a manner which could be objectionable to no denomination. In course

of time these chorals might then be transferred to our churches, where

they might well take the place of the easier but very eccentric melodies

and incorrect harmonies now too often heard there.

HENRY T. FINCK.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

A SUCCESSFUL ENTERPRISE.

In one of the side streets of a city which fronts on Long Island Sound

is to be found a curiosity-shop whose show-window challenges the

attention of all lovers of the quaint and queer by its jumble of cracked

and ancient porcelain, old-fashioned brasses and small articles of more

or less valuable bric-a-brac. Inside, the three small rooms are crowded

with sets of delft and willow china, old candlesticks, clocks, andirons,

fenders, high-backed chairs and the like. The whole aspect of the place

is shabby and dingy, and the antique furniture has no chance of showing

either its worth or its dignity amid such surroundings; yet the traffic

which goes on in this "curiosity-shop" has already brought a respectable

fortune to the owner, and promises, if the rage for revivals of ancient

fashions continues, to make him a capitalist. Knapp, as we will call

this dealer in second-hand furniture and bric-a-brac, began his trade

some five or six years ago. He was originally a tin-peddler, travelling

up and down the country with his wagon, offering tin and glass ware in

return for rags, feathers and old metals. Knapp probably had, to start

with, a touch of that original genius which transmutes the most ordinary

conditions of life into means of personal aggrandizement. He laid the

stepping-stone to his fortune when it one day occurred to him to accept

a piece of old-fashioned Wedgwood ware in return for half a dozen

shining tins. It was an inspiration which he considered half a weakness,

but he yielded to it, and afterward had cause to congratulate himself

when he found an opportunity for disposing of the cup at a remunerative

rate. This gave him an impulse of curiosity toward any heirlooms in the

way of china and pottery to be found among the farmers' wives in the

section of New England he traversed; and his activities soon had their

reward. At that date the passion for ceramics was but just beginning to

invade our cities, and not a suspicion of it stirred the minds of the

good women who artlessly opened their cupboards and displayed their

treasures of Worcester china and willow-ware to the ingratiating Knapp.

No man in the world was ever better calculated to drive good bargains

for himself, yet leave an impression on his victim's mind that the

peddler's interest in a "sort of china which matched a set his

grandmother used to have" was running away with his better judgment.

Knapp became shortly a most interesting personage to people who were

making collections, and he attained, besides ingenuity, genuine taste

and skill in detecting marks and discerning values. In a year he had as

nice a knowledge of china and pottery as any one in the country, and if

the farmers' wives were so much the poorer by the loss of what had been

in the family for generations, they did not recognize their loss.

However, it was by old clocks and brass andirons and fenders that Knapp

made his fortune. A gentleman asked him to procure him some

old-fashioned articles of this sort, and the peddler at once went into

the matter on speculation, and bought up all the old brasses he could

find within a radius of fifty miles. These fenders and andirons were

gladly parted with, growing rusty as they had been for years, and almost

forgotten in garrets and cellars. New England farmers remember too

distinctly the shiverings and burnings of their youth not to feel an

insurmountable prejudice against open fires. So Knapp, whose wider

knowledge made him master of the fact that this present generation,

sickened of stoves and dreary black holes in the wall and burnt dead

heat, and longing for some cheerful household centre, were restoring the

old fireplaces and open fires, where the flames could leap and roar,

and the logs burn and glow and smoulder,--Knapp, I say, humored this

fancy by opening his shop and offering his old-fashioned fenders and

andirons to the public. He had bought them at a mere song, and sold them

again at a price so reasonable that any purchaser might be suited, yet

still at a profit of five hundred to a thousand per cent.

Once started as a regular dealer, he went steadily on: his activity was

incessant, and always productive. His energies seemed to have been

shaped by an unerring and divining instinct. He found old sideboards,

chests, wardrobes, brought from England two centuries ago, dropping to

pieces in barns and cellars. He found an "almost priceless Elizabethan

cabinet" serving as a hen-house in a farmer's barnyard, and another in a

little better condition used as a receptacle for pies in his cellar. He

bought them both for five dollars, had them "restored," and sold one for

eight hundred and the other for five hundred dollars. It is true that

this process of "restoration" was an expensive one, and in his next

venture of the sort he demanded higher prices without offering articles

so valuable or so unique. At present he is engaged in refurnishing a

North River mansion of colonial times with suitable furniture and

decorations, and will be handsomely rewarded for his pains. But he is

too well known now to find rare and curious articles as freely parted

with as they were a few years ago. Still, the hard times help him. Then,

too, in New England old families are constantly passing away, and

leaving what small possessions belonged to the last surviving maiden of

the race to far-away relations. These possessions, consisting of good

solid old furniture, are certain to become Knapp's if he finds anything

desirable among them. He has been known to go to a house within twelve

hours of the death of the last surviving member of the family, and offer

to negotiate with a servant or friend of the deceased for a chair,

table, clock or sideboard he coveted. I doubt if an auction of old

furniture has occurred for four years within one hundred miles of him

where he has not been the first and the most privileged buyer.

L.W.

SMALL-WAISTED WOMEN.

If the truth be fairly stated, women have many excuses for their

infatuation regarding small waists. It is Mrs. Haweis who says, "The

reason why a small waist is a beauty is because, when it is natural, it

goes together with the peculiar litheness and activity of a

slenderly-built figure. All the bones are small, the shoulders and arms

_petite_, and the general look is dainty and youthful." In other words,

a small waist is only a beauty when it is in proportion to the rest of

the figure. The common mistake lies in considering it a beauty in a

large woman of massive proportions. A few centuries ago women did not

take a scientific view of things, and fell into delusions which in this

age are a disgrace to the sex. They knew nothing of anatomy, of the law

of proportion or of the curve of beauty, and they misunderstood the

language of admiration. The latter I suspect to be at the root of the

whole matter. Poets were, as we shall presently see, everlastingly

praising small waists, and women fell into the error of supposing that a

small waist was, in the abstract, a beauty and an attraction. When or

where the mistake originated I cannot tell, but here are the words of

praise of probably a fourteenth-century lover: "Middel heo hath menskful

smal," or, "She hath a graceful small waist." At a later day Master

Wither included in the attractions of her who had left him,

Her wast exceeding small,

The fives did fit her shoo;

But now, alasse! sh'as left me.

This suits exactly the modern view of a small waist and a No. 5 shoe.

In the well-known Scotch ballad "Edom o' Gordon" the Lady Rodes is

represented as being shut up by Gordon in her burning castle. The smoke

was suffocating when,

Oh than bespaik her dochter dear:

She was baith jimp and sma', etc.

Here it might be said that the evident youth of the girl, who was

dropped over the wall and fell on the point of the cruel Gordon's spear,

accounts for her being "jimp and sma'." The explanation will not apply

to "The Cruel Sister," as given by Sir Walter Scott:

She took her by the middle sma',

Binnorie, O Binnorie!

So fascinated was the rhymer by that special feature of her beauty that

he returns to it after recounting how the elder sister drowned the

younger:

You could not see her middle sma',

Binnorie, O Binnorie!

Her gouden girdle was so bra,

By the bonny milldams of Binnorie.

Another instance is in the opening verse of Sir Walter Scott's version

of "The Lass of Lochroyan:"

Oh wha will shoe my bonny foot?

And wha will glove my hand?

And wha will lace my middle jimp

Wi' a lang, lang linen band?

The last line appears to indicate the use of a linen band, as the Roman

ladies used the _strophium_, a broad ribbon tied round the breast as a

support. From this it may be inferred that the "Lass of Lochroyan" did

not owe her "middle jimp" to any very deadly artificial means of

compression.

One of the most remarkable instances that can be adduced is in the

original version of "Annie Laurie," by William Douglas, a Scottish poet

of the seventeenth century. It has been so completely displaced by a

later version that few are probably acquainted with the song as written

by Douglas:

She's backit like a peacock,

She's breisted like a swan,

She's jimp about the middle,

Her waist ye weel micht span;

Her waist ye weel micht span,

And she has a rolling ee, etc.

In view of all these passages is there any wonder that it is hard to

persuade women that men do not admire "wasp" waists? How are they to

know that the "jimp middle" of the ballads was in its jimpness in

proportion to the shoulders? The trouble is, that the early rhymesters

have used up the only side of the question capable of poetical

treatment. One cannot sing of the reverse: no poet could seriously lift

up his voice in praise of her "ample waist" or "graceful portliness." In

order to reach woman's ear, modern writers must adopt a different

course, and it is curious to contrast their utterances with those of the

ballad-makers. Place Charles Reade by the side of Douglas, and then what

becomes of the "waist ye weel micht span"? After showing how the liver,

lungs, heart, stomach and spleen are packed by Nature, the novelist

asks: "Is it a small thing for the creature (who uses a corset) to say

to her Creator, 'I can pack all this egg-china better than you can,' and

thereupon to jam all those vital organs close by a powerful, a very

powerful, and ingenious machine?"

Every lady should read _A Simpleton_, and learn something of the

monstrous wrong she inflicts upon herself by trying to compass an

artificially-produced "middle sae jimp." It will prepare her for Mrs.

Haweis's lessons upon _The Art of Beauty_. One or two passages will give

a hint of their flavor: "Nothing is so ugly as a pinched waist: it puts

the hips and shoulders invariably out of proportion in width.... In

deforming the waist almost all the vital organs are affected by the

pressure, and the ribs are pushed out of their proper place."

"Tight-lacing is ugly, because it distorts the natural lines of the

figure, and gives an appearance of uncertainty and unsafeness.... Men

seldom take to wife a girl who has too small a waist, whether natural or

artificial." "In architecture, a pillar or support of any kind is called

debased and bad in art if what is supported be too heavy for the thing

supporting, and if a base be abnormally heavy and large for what it

upholds. The laws of proportion and balance must be understood. In a

waist of fifteen inches both are destroyed, and the corresponding effect

is unpleasant to the eye. The curve of the waist is coarse and

immoderate, utterly opposed to what Ruskin has shown to be beauty in a

curve. Real or artificial, such a waist is always ugly: if real, it is a

deformity that should be disguised; if artificial, it is culpable, and

nasty to boot."

No rhyming can withstand such reasoning. If the ballads really had any

effect in fostering an admiration of abnormally small waists, both

science and a truer conception of beauty should by this time have

counteracted their influence. Women cannot much longer, with decency,

plead ignorance of the results of a practice which would be ridiculous

were it less pernicious.

J.J.

VICTOR HUGO AT HOME.

On the steep heights of the Rue de Clichy, at the corner of a street, we

find the number 21. How many heads crowned either with a laurel or a

diadem have passed beneath the arch of this doorway since Victor Hugo

left the Rue Pigalle to take up his abode here! The apartment inhabited

by the poet can hardly be considered either spacious or elegant. Its

dining-room is of cramped dimensions, and the famous red drawing-room,

though handsomely furnished, lacks the air of individuality that one

would naturally expect to find in it. Probably this arises from the

wandering life that Victor Hugo has led for so many years. After the

_coup d'etat_ the furniture of his house in the Rue de la Tour

d'Auvergne was sold at auction. Contrary to custom, and probably through

the interference of some member of the imperial party, no police were at

hand to protect or watch over the articles exposed for sale.

Consequently, the depredations were frightful. Small objects were

carried off bodily, tapestries were cut to pieces and the furniture and

statues were mercilessly mutilated. One well-dressed man walked off with

Columbus's compass--that which the insurrectionists had a few months

before examined so respectfully, their leader remarking, "That compass

discovered America." Many of the poet's household treasures remain at

Hauteville House, in the island of Guernsey.

But the curiosity of the abode is the study. From floor to ceiling it is

one mass of books, letters, newspapers and manuscripts: the chairs, the

mantelpiece, the table have disappeared beneath their burdens. A narrow

path, shaped in the midst of these accumulations, permits the poet to

pass from the door to the window, Victor Hugo's correspondence is

enormous, and is continually increasing. He receives letters from all

sorts of people on all sorts of subjects--letters of homage and letters

of abuse, requests for autographs and demands for money, verses sent by

youthful poets with prayers for his advice, and the wails of the

oppressed who look to him as their sworn champion. Very seldom does

Victor Hugo refuse to answer, though his responses are necessarily

brief. Among these accumulated papers must be cited the vast mass of

Victor Hugo's unpublished works. He never fails to devote a certain

portion of the day to literary work, his brain being as clear, his

imagination as fertile, his pen as ready, as they were twenty-five years

ago. "Nulla dies sine linea" is the motto of his daily life. Yet with

all his industry he has been heard to lament that he will not live long

enough to transfer to paper all the conceptions that crowd his busy

brain. In January, 1876, he remarked to a friend, "Were I to begin

giving to the world my unpublished and completed works, I could issue a

new volume monthly for a year." Among these treasures for posterity are

to be found the tragedies of _Torquemada_ and the _Twins_ (the Iron

Mask); the comedies of the _Grandmother_, _The Sword_, and perchance

_The Brother of Gavroche_; a fairy piece wherein the flowers and trees

play speaking parts; volumes of poems entitled _The Four Winds of the

Mind_, _All the Lyre_, _Just Indignation_, _The Sinister Years_ (a

connecting link between _Les Chatiments_ and a _Terrible Year_); and

even a scientific work on the effects of the sphere. He once said, "I

have more to do than I have yet done. It seems to me that as I advance

in years my horizon grows larger, so I shall depart and leave my work

unfinished. It would take several more lifetimes to write down all that

fills my brain. I shall never complete my task, but I am resigned: I see

in my future more than I behold in my past."

He was once speaking of the denouement of _Marion Delorme_, and remarked

that he had written two last scenes for that tragedy, the first sombre

and terrible, the second tender and touching, and that he had preferred

the former, but had yielded to the counsels of his friends and the

actors in the piece, and had suffered it to be produced with the more

gentle denouement. On being asked if he had destroyed the rejected

scene, he made answer that he preserved everything he had ever written.

"Posterity can destroy what it pleases, and keep what it pleases," he

added with a smile.

Victor Hugo's receptions are delightfully simple and informal. He is at

home one evening in the week, when his friends and admirers gather round

him. No change of toilette is needed: the ladies appear in walking

costume, the gentlemen in frock-coats. "The Master," as his intimate

friends and disciples love to call him, avoids all airs and posing with

the quiet simplicity of true genius. He does not plant himself in the

midst of his company, neither does he assume the consequential manners

of a dictator. Seated in an arm-chair or on a sofa beside some favored

guest, he converses--he does not discourse. At an early hour, in view of

the age and the simple habits of the host, the company separate, the

most enthusiastic raising the hand of the Master to their lips as they

take leave. One of the greatest charms about Victor Hugo's manner is

that he never shrinks from or repels any manifestation of genuine

admiration or homage. Unlike celebrities of far less note, who profess

to be indignant or disgusted at any such manifestations, he lends

himself to what must often be wearisome to him with a kindly

graciousness that often changes the enthusiasm of his admirers into a

passionate personal attachment.

Few men have ever enjoyed so wide-spread and enduring a popularity as

does Victor Hugo among the people of Paris. When, during the dark days

of 1870, he returned from his long exile, he was greeted at the

railway-station by a vast crowd, which escorted his carriage to his

first resting-place, the home of M. Paul Meurice, and he was twice

compelled to address a few words to them in order to appease their

eagerness to hear his voice. When he appears in public on great and

solemn occasions, such as the funeral of M. Thiers, he is invariably

made the object of a popular ovation of the most touching character.

People climb up the sides of his carriage to touch his hand, mothers

lift up their children to the windows imploring his blessing, and the

cry of "Vive Victor Hugo!" goes up from the very hearts of the throng.

On the day of the funeral of Madame Paul Meurice, as the cortege was

going along the exterior boulevards, it passed near a menagerie. Just as

the carriage of Victor Hugo came opposite the door the lions within set

up a tremendous roar. "They know that the _other one_ is passing by,"

said an old workingman beside the carriage ("Ils sentent que l'autre

passe"). The fondness of Victor Hugo for riding about Paris on the top

of an omnibus is well known. It has sometimes happened that on tendering

his fare the conductor has put the coin aside with the remark, "I shall

keep that as a relic." One day, on returning from a session of the

senate at Versailles, he arrived late at the station. It was a snowy

day, the train was full, and he was obliged to climb into a fourth-class

place, a seat on the top of the cars. The benches were covered with

snow. A workingman who recognized the poet would not let him sit down

till with his blouse he had wiped the seat clean and dry. Victor Hugo

thanked him and offered him his hand, and with a naive delight the good

fellow cried, "Ah, monsieur, ah, citizen, how proud I am to have seen

you and touched you!" More than once the cabman employed to take the

poet to his house has refused to accept his fare, declaring that the

honor of having driven Victor Hugo was recompense enough. On the day of

the funeral of M. Thiers so dense a crowd surrounded the carriage of the

poet that it remained for a long time motionless and imprisoned, and the

shouts that greeted him were so wildly enthusiastic that the coachman

who was driving his carriage fairly shed tears, remarking, however, in a

shame-faced manner, "A crying coachman! what a silly sight!"

Naturally, beside this passionate love stands a hate as passionate. The

vindictive fury of the Bonapartists against Victor Hugo can easily be

understood. No writer more than he has contributed to render a

restoration of the Empire impossible. Hence insults of all kinds, from

the calumny openly printed in an imperialist newspaper to the anonymous

letter overflowing with menaces. One of these, received in September,

1877, threatened the poet in no doubtful terms. "Do not imagine,

scoundrel, that we will let you escape us a second time:" so ran one of

its paragraphs. Under the Second Empire all letters written to or by

Victor Hugo were compelled to pass through the ordeal of the Black

Cabinet. Many of his Parisian correspondents evaded this surveillance by

sending their letters under cover to acquaintances in Germany or by

confiding them to travellers who were going to England. But the letters

of the poet to his friends in France were invariably opened and read,

and many of them were confiscated. In a sarcastic mood Victor Hugo

caused a quantity of envelopes to be prepared for his use, in one corner

of which was printed an extract from the law forbidding any agent of the

government to open or to tamper with any letter that passes through the

post-office. On one occasion he wrote across the address of a letter,

"Family matters--useless to open it."

It is said that the empress Eugenie, after perusing _Les Chatiments_,

threw the volume aside with this exclamation: "I do not see what harm we

have ever done to this M. Hugo." This remark was afterward repeated to

the poet. "Tell her that the harm was the second of December," was his

reply.

The bottle that contained the ink used in writing _Napoleon le Petit_

had a curious history. That splendid and fiery piece of invective, so

amply justified by after events, was commenced on the 12th of June,

1852, and finished on the 14th of July, the anniversary of the taking of

the Bastile. With the few drops of ink that remained in the bottle

Victor Hugo wrote upon its label--

Out of this bottle

Came _Napoleon the Little_,

and affixed his signature. The bottle was given by Victor Hugo to Madame

Drouet, who afterward presented it to a young physician who had attended

her through a dangerous illness. This young physician, Dr. Yvan, owed to

the intercession of Prince Jerome Napoleon permission to return to

France to visit his dying father. Having invited the prince to dinner

after his return, he showed him as a curiosity the famous bottle. No

sooner had the prince read the inscription than he insisted upon taking

possession of it, and in spite of the remonstrances of Dr. Yvan he

carried it off in triumph.

Victor Hugo is very hospitable, and delights in having three or four

friends to dine with him, but his appetite, though healthful, is neither

very great nor very dainty: he prefers plain food and drinks only light

claret habitually. He is a very early riser, and on fine spring or

summer mornings he may often be met at six o'clock taking a stroll in

the Champs Elysees. Of his fondness for riding on the tops of omnibuses

I have already spoken. These long rides, when he traverses Paris from

one end to the other, are his periods of composition. He sits plunged in

a profound reverie, with vague eyes gazing unseeing into space. So well

are his moods understood by the conductors and habitual travellers on

those lines that he is always left undisturbed. Sometimes the greater

part of the day will be passed in these excursions, nor does any

severity of the weather ever daunt the aged poet. Yet with all the quiet

simplicity of his habits his daily life has not escaped the shafts of

calumny. The Bonapartist press declared that he was a drunkard who used

often to be picked up insensible from the floor of his own dining-room.

He has been called an assassin because of his sympathy with the

proscribed Communists, a madman because of his enthusiastic and

impassioned utterances, and he has been said to be a hunchback whose

deformity was dissimulated by the skill of his tailor.

Any sketch of the poet's home-life would be incomplete did I not touch

on his passionate fondness for his grand-children, the two little beings

whose prattle and caresses lend a charm of peculiar sweetness to the

waning hours of that illustrious career. For them the world-renowned

genius is but the most loving and tender of grandfathers. Their games,

their studies, their baby caprices, sway the actions of that grand

personality as the zephyrs ruffle the surface of the summer ocean. The

creator of _Marion Delorme_ excels in manoeuvring a puppet-show and in

getting up plays on a dolls' theatre. The author of _Les Miserables_

often lulls these little ones to sleep with improvised tales of

wonderful fascination. For their sakes he becomes a sculptor and moulds

in bread-crumb most marvellous pigs with four matches for legs. They it

is who know best the almost feminine tenderness, the wellnigh maternal

love, of which that powerful nature is capable.

I write in the present tense, yet as I write these things exist no

longer. The red drawing-room is closed, the dwelling on the Rue de

Clichy is deserted. Victor Hugo is in Guernsey, and from that far

retreat come sinister rumors respecting his failing health. These are

denied by his friends, but are stoutly supported by his enemies. Which

of them speak the truth? That is hard to tell. It may be that this grand

career, long and lustrous as a summer day, has reached its evening hour

at last. Perchance we shall see no more the massive head framed in its

snow-white locks and beard, the piercing eyes, the stalwart frame that

bore so lightly the burden of wellnigh fourscore years. It may be so,

and yet we hope, we pray, for the return of him who lights our century

with the lustre of the great creative genius of the world.

L.H.H.

SPIRITS IN SCANDINAVIA.

Although it is generally known that there have been of late great and

peculiar changes in the laws which regulate the sale of intoxicating

drinks in the Scandinavian peninsula, there is not among foreigners an

accurate idea of these changes. It may not therefore be uninteresting

to state them a little in detail, as well as to glance at the results as

gathered from personal experience and observation in different parts of

Sweden and Norway. It should be premised that the peculiar "vanity" of

both the Swedes and the Norwegians is spirits, and that the recent

licensing laws in Scandinavia have been largely levelled against the

sale of these drinks. For about a century prior to 1854, Sweden was so

given to drunkenness that one who has had special opportunities of

judging described it as "the most drunken country in the world." Free

trade in spirits was practically in force: every small land-owner could

distil on payment of a nominal license fee, and in towns every burgher

had the right of sale. The whole country may be said "to have been

deluged with spirits;" but, profiting by the exertions of the apostles

of temperance, a public opinion was created which twenty-four years ago

produced a bill on which the existing _general_ law is based. It

abolished the small stills and imposed a comparatively heavy duty on the

popular drink, _branvin_. It established a sort of threefold control

over the issue of new licenses for the sale of spirits, under which the

communal committee, the commune and the governor of a province have

power to restrict or lessen the number of such licenses, while each

seller of spirits was required to pay to the local rates a tax on the

amount of spirits sold. The licenses were issued for periods of three

years, and sold by auction to the highest bidders. To such an extent has

the sale of spirits been swept under this law from the rural parts of

Sweden that in 1871 there were only four hundred and sixty places for

the sale of spirits in the country, the towns excepted. From observation

and from the report of others the writer is able to say that the effect

of this has been most beneficial in the rural parts, materially

contributing to the sobriety and the moral welfare of the people. The

general law, it may be noticed, had some of the clauses which are

commonly supposed to attach to the later local laws that have been put

into operation. It contained a permissive clause which allowed of the

formation of companies to control the spirit-sale in towns. One company

may take the whole of the licenses allotted to any town, guaranteeing a

certain income to the town from such sale of spirits. In Gothenburg, the

chief port of Sweden, such a company was formed at the suggestion of a

committee appointed in 1865 to inquire into the cause of the constant

increase of pauperism and insanity there, which it charged largely on

the sale of spirits, especially in dark, unhealthy places. This company,

which was called the "Goteborg Utskankings Bolag," began operations in

October, 1865, with forty licenses, and acquired by 1868 the whole of

the public-house licenses for the sale of spirits, with the exception of

about a dozen, the owners of which had life-licenses. The Bolag, or

company, had, with these exceptions, a monopoly of the sale of spirits

in the town in places for consumption on the premises, and a monopoly to

that extent only. It weeded out some of the worst of these

public-houses: it improved the condition of the rest, appointing

salaried managers, who had in addition the profit on the sale of food

and all drinks except spirits, the sale of the latter being under very

stringent regulations for the profit only of the Bolag. The managers

were compelled to sell food, "cooked and hot" if needed; to give no

credit; to keep orderly, clean and well-ventilated houses; to allow no

drunkenness; and not to sell spirits to those "overloaded." In the first

ten years of its existence the Bolag met with opposition, not only from

spirit-sellers who sold for non-consumption on the premises, but also

from the many sellers of ale and porter, who were permitted to sell

those drinks unnoticed by the law. It is claimed that in spite of this

competition the working of the company materially contributed to the

sobriety of the town; and it may be worth while to test this by the

facts.

When the Bolag began in 1865 there were, for the police year, 2070 cases

of drunkenness; in 1866 there were only 1424; and there was a decrease

in the next year, and again in 1868, when the number was 1320, which has

proved the minimum. From that period there has been an increase, until

in 1876--the latest year for which the facts are procurable--the number

of cases was 2357. But during the whole of that time the population has

been increasing: it was 46,557 in 1866, and in 1876 it was over 66,000;

so that the apparent increase in these years is a proportionate though

very small decrease--a decrease of about one per cent. There has been

also a large decrease in the more serious crimes reported to the police

of the town. As to pauperism, there is a decrease in the number of

persons receiving entire relief from the community, but an increase in

the number of those receiving partial relief. The sales of spirits by

the company's agents have materially increased, but it is urged that

this is due to the fact that in its earlier years it had more opposition

to encounter, while in 1875 it had acquired a full monopoly over the

sale of spirits, except in the instances of the life-licenses, which had

been reduced in number. Its gross profits have materially increased,

rising from L7200 in English money in 1865 to L52,850 in 1876, and the

amount of the net profit it paid into the town treasury had increased

from L2800 to L40,100! The authorities of the town are satisfied with

these results; and there is an almost universal belief that the state of

Gothenburg in regard to drunkenness is incomparably better than it would

have been without the operation of the Bolag: at the same time it is

fair to state that some are of opinion that the benefits have not been

so great as they should have been, and that the company has to some

extent been worked rather with a view to money-making for the community

than to the repression of drunkenness. As to the general opinion, it is

indicated by the fact that every large town in Sweden has now followed

in the wake of Gothenburg. In 1871 the Norwegian Storthing passed a law

to enable their towns to follow suit; and about a score have adopted a

similar scheme, modified by allowing the profits of the Norwegian

"associations" to be paid by the members to objects of public utility.

As to personal impressions of the working of the system, it may be first

said that attention having been so fully directed to the provision made

for sale of food in these public-houses, this was tested in many with

satisfactory results--food cheap, plentiful and wholesome being

procurable. The public-houses were found to be generally neat and

orderly, but not equal in comfort or appearance to the public-houses in

other lands, several of them being underground vaults merely. The

company has in Gothenburg twenty-five public-houses now; it leases the

right of sale of spirits to eleven eating-houses and clubs; it has seven

spirit-shops and thirteen wholesale places of sale; so that it makes

ample provision for the satisfying of the thirsty throats of the Swedes.

Unquestionably, Gothenburg has still a larger amount of drunkenness than

is known in towns of equal size elsewhere, and a few minutes'

observation near one of these "model public-houses" shows that there is

a very great sale of drink; but it is also evident that much of the sale

on market-days is to country-people from districts where there are no

public-houses. Finally, the result of some time given to observation and

to the consideration of the question on the spot convinced us that the

stricter regulation and supervision of the sale of spirits in this

method has reduced the proportionate drunkenness so far as it is brought

before police notice; that the public-houses are improved in appearance

and in order; that the grosser evils are to some extent done away with,

and the community pecuniarily benefited; but that the working of this

"experiment" has not succeeded in lessening the exceedingly large local

demand for spirits.

J.W.S.

RUSSIAN RECRUITING.

It is a common observation in the mouths of men who are estimating

Russia's military strength that, although short of money, she has at

least a boundless supply of men; but this idea, though plausible at

first sight, is utterly erroneous. A few years ago the confidence of

the Russian optimists in their "inexhaustible numbers" was rudely shaken

by the discovery that in a single year, out of eighty-four thousand

conscripts sent up to the various recruiting centres, no fewer than

forty-four thousand were rejected as unfitted for service by disease or

other physical defects, _not_ inclusive of short stature. The government

took the alarm, and gave orders for the immediate formation of a medical

commission and the thorough investigation of the sanitary condition of

the population at large. This was promptly done, and the result startled

all Russia with the announcement that her strength was barely one-half

what it had previously been supposed to be.

Nor is this by any means an over-statement of the case. In European

Russia the weakness in productive ages is such that whereas in Great

Britain the proportion of persons alive between the ages of fifteen and

sixty is 548 in the thousand, and in Belgium 518, in Russia it barely

reaches 265. It is computed that in the government of Pultava alone, by

no means a populous district, not less than one hundred thousand persons

are absolutely disabled by various chronic complaints. Out of the

forty-nine millions of the laboring class, the "raw material" of the

Russian army, fully fifty per cent. are practically unfit to serve. The

statistics of the average duration of human life are even more terribly

significant. In England and Northern Germany, according to the best

authorities, every man lives, on an average, about 40 years; in Southern

Germany, 38 years; and in France, 36. In Russia, on the other hand, the

average, even in the healthiest regions (_i.e._ the north and west),

varies from 27 to 22 years. Along the banks of the Volga and in the

south-east provinces generally, where the conditions of life are less

favorable, the proportion falls as low as 20 years, while in the

governments of Perm, Viatka and Orenburg it is only 15.

In whatever way this glaring evil may be explained away by native

apologists, it really springs from two very simple causes--insufficient

wages and popular ignorance. The miserably low scale of wages among the

artisans of the great towns has long since become proverbial, but in the

agricultural districts matters are even worse. The ordinary wages of the

Russian "field-hand" are as follows: Laborers by the day, 37-1/2 kopecks

(about 25 cents) per diem; by the month, 23 kopecks (15 cents); by the

season, 17 kopecks (11 cents); in harvest, 75 kopecks (half a dollar).

For this pittance the peasants toil from twelve to fifteen, and often

sixteen, hours a day; and, thanks to their insufficient food, the

constant strain soon begins to tell. A few seasons of such overwork and

their strength breaks down altogether, while, instead of the substantial

diet needed to recruit it, their scanty fare is still further diminished

by the countless fasts of the Greek Church, occurring twice, or even

thrice, a week. Hence, upon the first outbreak of fever or cholera the

poor creatures perish helplessly, thousands upon thousands, while the

St. Petersburg fashionables, yawning over the printed death-roll,

languidly wonder why the lower classes are so careless of their health.

Nor are the calamities entailed by superstition less deplorable than

those which spring from poverty. Those who have seen, in the villages of

the interior, new-born infants plunged in ice-cold water which it would

be thought sacrilege to warm; children of four and five running about on

a bitter day in the fall of the year with no clothing but a light linen

shirt; cholera-stricken peasants refusing the medicines offered them;

and women employed in hard field-labor three days after their

confinement,--can easily credit the statement, frightful as it is, that

at least fifty, and in some cases eighty-three, per cent. of the

children born in the provinces die in their infancy, and that the

population of certain districts has diminished fully one-third during

the past generation.

D.K.

SOCIETIES OF HEALTH.

That an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure has passed into a

proverb, and yet there is no doubt that the majority of the cases of

sickness, general ill health and debility, especially with women, arise

from a disregard of the simplest rules for health. But how shall the

people learn these rules unless they are taught them? and who so well

fitted to teach them as the doctors?

Does any one say that it is against the interest of the doctors to

prevent disease? The reply would be that such a conception of the

medical profession is a very low one; for doctors were men before they

acquired their profession, and there is little doubt that they would

find their profession a much more agreeable, and possibly a more

profitable, one if, as in China, they were paid for keeping their

patients well, instead of for curing, or trying to cure, them when they

are sick.

At least such a conception of his office has occurred to Dr. George

Dutton of Springfield, Mass., and he has been engaged for some years in

attempting to have the idea practically introduced in that city. About

two years ago he started a Society of Health there with a few members.

The members, who have now reached about fifty, pay him two dollars each

a year for advice and one dollar for the expenses of the society.

Whenever they need his services they call upon him and get his advice

gratis, or he calls upon them at their homes for half price. But this is

the smallest part of the innovation. By the agreement Dr. Dutton binds

himself to give them a free lecture once a month upon matters of hygiene

and cognate subjects, either serving as lecturer himself or obtaining

the services of some competent person for the same duty. When the

society was first formed it was made a part of the agreement that the

members should annually elect their consulting physician, but so far the

society has preferred to elect Dr. Dutton to this position.

In these days of enforced combinations for economy there is no reason

why such societies of health should not multiply, to the manifest

benefit of all parties concerned.

E.H.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

The Cossacks: A Tale of the Caucasus in 1852. By Count Leo Tolstoy.

Translated from the Russian by Eugene Schuyler. New York: Charles

Scribner's Sons.

Russian novels, to judge from the specimens that have been presented to

English readers, are prose poems rather than novels in the English sense

of the word, dealing more with poetic phases than with those details and

events of ordinary life which go to make up English and American novels

of the better class. With whatever elaboration of plot or the reverse,

they are distinctly artistic compositions, in which every part is in

unison with a dominant idea, and their effect, not being scattered or

diluted, is single and more or less forcible. Their method is the

reverse of analytical. Nothing, for example, could be further from the

pregnant sentences, the exhaustive analysis, of George Eliot, whose

books are freighted with the accumulated and ever-accumulating wisdom of

a life, than the poetic suggestiveness of Tourgueneff's creations, in

which a wealth of material is sacrificed to artistic perfection, and the

highest thought often seems to lie between the lines. George Eliot lays

bare the innermost souls of her characters--we enter fully into their

lives and thoughts: with Tourgueneff's it is left to a glance of the

eye, a few passionate words, to reveal the mind within. In _The

Cossacks_ this absence of analysis is still more apparent. It is a

picture of a curious and simple race, painted, not from within, but from

the outside or Russian point of view. But here is no refining, no

affectation of pastoral simplicity. _The Cossacks_ is distinctly a

primitive poem, one which can scarcely be classed either as idyl or

epic, though, in spite of its scenes being mainly rural, it perhaps

approaches more nearly to the epic. There is an Homeric simplicity in

its descriptions of half-drunken warriors with their superb physique,

their bravado, their native dignity and singleness of character.

Marianka, the beautiful heroine, passes from one picture to another in

her quiet, regular toil. Whether, clad in a loose skirt of pink cotton,

she drives the oxen or piles the _kizyak_ or dung-fuel along the fence

with her hoe, or in holiday attire mingles with other girls at evening,

she is always a subject for the artist's brush. What thoughts occupied

this stately figure, in what way ideas circulated in her kerchiefed

head, we are left to divine. Her conduct is a little enigmatical. Had

she any thought of marrying Olenin, or were her actions dictated by

coquetry accompanied by a spice of mischief? We are inclined to the

latter opinion.

The story of _The Cossacks_ exhibits a close similarity to that of a

recent English (or rather Irish) novel, _The Hon. Miss Ferrard_. Both

books transport a man of culture to the midst of a rude and more or less

primitive people: in each, the hero, smitten with the beauty of a native

girl (and in Olenin's case with the wild freshness of the life), is

seized with a desire to throw off his old life, with its polish, its

intellectual disappointments and its limitations, and become a primitive

man among primitive men. In both, the moral and end are substantially

the same. The girl's affections are bestowed naturally in her own class,

and the disconsolate urban discovers that a wide divergence of feelings

and sympathies, a gulf not to be voluntarily bridged over, lies between

the man of the world and the illiterate peasant; that the results of

habit are not lightly to be got rid of; and that a happiness which lies

below us in the social scale may be as unattainable as higher prizes.

The relations of the romantic and dreamy Olenin to his barbaric

neighbors are finely portrayed. Nothing could be more natural than his

presenting the young Cossack Lukashka with a horse in a fit of generous

enthusiasm, and the latter's astonished and suspicious reception of the

gift. Being utterly unable to divine its motive, he suspects some

lurking design of evil, and regards the generosity as a deceit practised

upon him.

But any comparison with an English book would but faintly illustrate

_The Cossacks_. In the novelty of its scenes and characters, in its

poetic simplicity of form and its unconscious picturesqueness, it is

widely different from anything in our literature. It has a certain

coldness, the coldness of an epic; for passion, though not lacking, is

kept in abeyance in its pages, which are indeed chiefly filled with

pictures, a set of literary _chef d'oeuvres_, drawn with great power

and vividness and full, of color and poetic feeling. That the book

should produce such an impression in a translation so uncouth and

blundering as Mr. Schuyler has given us is a strong testimony to its

merit. It is usually thought that a translator ought to be tolerably

familiar with two languages, but readers of _The Cossacks_ will be

forced to doubt if Mr. Schuyler is acquainted with one.

Molly Bawn: A Novel. By the author of "Phyllis." Philadelphia: J.

B. Lippincott & Co.

_Molly Bawn_ disarms criticism by its exuberant gayety, its lusciousness

of description, its imperturbable good-humor and self-satisfaction, and

its utter absence of responsibility. What can an auld _critic_ do wi' a

young _book_? And such a very young book!--so full of sweets and

prettinesses, of audacious coquetries, and of jokes delivered with such

a simple and fatuous joy that the meed of our laughter cannot be denied

them! If we were to suggest that there is rather a surfeit of these good

things, our objection would be liable to be set aside as the acrid

cavilling of one whose taste for sweetmeats has been vitiated by

dyspeptic tendencies. We can only recommend the book with hearty

good-will to those whose sweet tooth still preserves its enamel,

congratulating them upon the acquisition of a novel which may be read

without any of those harassing perplexities or dismal ideas in which

petulant authors embroil our tender susceptibilities--a novel in which

the utmost pathos is in the little poutings of true lovers; in which

kissing goes by favor, and favor is lavishly distributed; in which

ugliness is the only crime, and virtue, or rather beauty (which is the

same thing), is unfailingly triumphant. The stock scenery and

properties, together with the usual characters of a society novel appear

in _Molly Bawn_; and the personages are invested, if not with the divine

gift of life, with a certain wire-strung movement which does not lack

vivacity, and in some cases novelty; the villain, for example, having

but little employment in his original capacity, and being utilized as a

laughing-stock for the amusement of his victims. Even the grammar of the

book can hardly be taken _au serieux_. It exhibits a serene carelessness

of rules, with a tendency to bulls which suggests that the heroine's

nationality is also that of the author. A sentence in which we are told

of a house that it is "larger, at first sight, than it in reality is,"

strikes a blow at the very essence of things, and those much-abused

words _will_ and _would_ usurp the place of their relatives, _shall_ and

_should_, with a uniformity that proves the absence of negligence.

Samuel Johnson. By Leslie Stephen. (English Men of Letters, edited

by John Morley.) New York: Harper & Brothers.

The constant increase of books is not, we are inclined to think, so

great a curse or so wholly to be ascribed to malevolent intentions as

many despondent people suppose. A very considerable, if not the greater,

number of new works have for their aim not to add to, but to diminish,

the literature of the world, and so to lighten the burden imposed on

each successive generation of readers. The great bulk of the writers of

our day are employed not in producing anything new, but in summarizing,

epitomizing, and, as far as possible, suppressing, what their

predecessors produced. Criticisms are offered to us as substitutes for

the works criticised; volumes are tapped that their sap and pith may be

extracted; the analyst takes our labor upon himself and generously

presents us with the fruits. Up to a certain point the process is

unobjectionable, and we have reason to be grateful to those who are

skilful in it. It used, however, to be thought that there were

limitations to the practice of it--that while it was lawful and right to

treat as a _caput mortuum_ any work containing merely a certain amount

of useful information or of original thought, a sacredness attached to

the masterpieces of literature and to books which, having survived the

accidents of time and changes of fashion, were ranked as classics and

[Greek: ktemata es aei]. These were held entitled to a place in every

library, and, far from being subjected to condensation or abridgment,

were too often supplemented by commentaries and illustrative matter

exceeding in bulk the original text. It is less than half a century

since the publication of Croker's edition of Boswell's _Johnson_, "with

numerous additions and notes," excited a prolonged tumult, and the

editor was arrayed at the bar of criticism and solemnly condemned, not

for having contributed elucidations to the text, but for having

mutilated it by insertions which should have been relegated to an

appendix. But now, while one literary craftsman announces an edition

from which all that is "obsolete" or "unimportant" is to be expurgated,

another offers us in lieu of the five venerated tomes a rifacimiento in

a single volume of less than two hundred pages. It is, of course, not to

be denied that Boswell's _Life_ includes a large amount of matter wholly

unimportant in itself, relating to persons and events that have no

independent claim on the interest of readers of the present day. But it

does not follow that such details are superfluous and may properly be

weeded out. They give us the _milieu_, to use M. Taine's word, in which

Johnson's character and intellect were developed and displayed, the

perspective in which his career is to be viewed, the background from

which his figure stands out in bold relief. The impression they make

upon us is an essential part of the effect which is produced by the

book, deepening the sense of reality and the charm of intimate

familiarity which have so much to do with its abiding fascination. And

the style and manner of the narration are no less an integral part of

it. The book is not only a biography, but an autobiography. Johnson

without Boswell is Don Quixote without Sancho, Lear without the Fool,

Orestes without Pylades. It is safe to say, not only that a thousand

incidents of Johnson's life and conversation would never have been

preserved but for Boswell, but that some of the most amusing and

remarkable of them would never have occurred. The tour to Scotland and

the Hebrides, which may be said to have been the one romantic episode of

Johnson's life, bringing him into scenes and among characters widely

contrasted with his habitual surroundings, is one instance, and the

memorable midnight "frisk" in the neighborhood of the Temple is another,

among many that might be cited. To separate these two men, to reduce

Boswell to the status of a mere "reporter" or "authority," to repeat his

stories and records of conversation in any language but his own, to

interlard them with the comments and reflections of a superior wisdom,

seems to us a sort of moral offence as well as an impertinence. Mr.

Leslie Stephen is, without doubt, a very skilful workman, and has

brought to his task all the knowledge, taste and judgment, if not the

perfectly sympathetic tone, which the most exacting reader could

demand. It may, too, be urged on his behalf that he has written for

those who have not the leisure to make themselves acquainted with the

work which he has condensed. We can only reply that his talents would

have found ample scope in a more fitting field, and that people who

cannot spare the time to read Boswell can well afford to be ignorant of

Johnson.

_Books Received._

A Concise History of Music from the Commencement of the Christian Era to

the Present Time. By H.G. Bonavia Hunt. New Edition. Revised. New York:

Charles Scribner's Sons.

Saveli's Expiation: A Russian Story. Translated from the French of Henri

Greville. By Mary N. Sherwood. Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson & Brothers.

International Exhibitions. Paris--Philadelphia--Vienna. By Charles

Gindriez and Prof. James Morgan Hart. New York: A.S. Barnes & Co.

Geographical Surveying: Its Uses, Methods and Results. By Frank de Yeaux

Carpenter, C.E. New York: D. Van Nostrand.

Goethe's Faust. Edited by James Morgan Hart. German Classics for

American Students. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

Catholicity in its Relationship to Protestantism and Romanism. By Rev.

F.C. Ewer, S.T.D. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

The Former and Present Number of our Indians. By Brevet

Lieutenant-Colonel Garrick Mallery. Philadelphia: Collins.

Gaddings with a Primitive People. By W.A. Baillie-Grohman. (Leisure-Hour

Series.) New York: Henry Holt & Co.

How to be Plump; or, Talks of Physiological Feeding. By T.C. Duncan,

M.D. Chicago: Duncan Brothers.

Nobody's Business. By Jeannette Hadermann. (Satchel Series.) New York:

The Authors' Publishing Co.

Railroads: Their Origin and Problems. By Charles Francis Adams, Jr. New

York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

Annual Report of the Chief Signal-Officer for the Year 1877. Washington:

Government Printing-office.

How to Parse. By Rev. Edwin A. Abbott, D.D. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

Lines in the Sand. By Richard E. Day. Syracuse: John T. Roberts.

Roxy. By Edward Eggleston. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] I use the term "soldier" for the sake of definiteness. The soldier

approaches the queen in size, and in many of the specimens the head is

larger than that of the queen.

[2] _Hymenoptera of the British Museum_: Formicidaea, p. 170.

[3] A lofty bed is the Caucasian mountaineer's highest conception of

luxury.

[4] Frere's _Old Deccan Days_, p. 227.

[5] Grimm's _German Popular Tales_, First Series, No. XX.

[6] Mohammedan fasts generally end with the first sight of the new moon.