There are times and seasons for salmon fishing as for all things. But

all times and all seasons are not alike. Nor are all places. The best

time to fish for salmon, where salmon are to be fished for, is the

first hour the water is in condition; that is, as soon as the spring

freshets have subsided, and the water, by falling back into its natural

channel, has become freed from the surface rubbish washed into it, and

sufficiently settled to render your line visible to the eye of the

fish. This time varies on different rivers, according to their length,

their volume, and the character of the soil through which they flow. On

some rivers the drainage is so limited that a fly may be cast

successfully so soon as the ice disappears. There are, however, but few

rivers on either side the Gulf, or in either of the Provinces, where

the best fishing is attainable before the first of June. The "season"

continues from that time on to the middle of August, although there is

often good sport into September, when the last "run" begin their

journey. But no "posted" angler would care to be compelled to take the

chances of sport after the close of August, as only very few fish come

up from the sea later, and those remaining in the river are wearied

from their long journeyings, or are torpid from their protracted

absence from the sea.

Within the period named--June to the middle of August--salmon are gamy

and muscular, wherever found, whether one or fifty miles from the

ocean. But the pools most coveted are those in closest proximity to

salt water. Salmon are at their best when they begin their upward

journey. The fresh element in which they find themselves seems to give

them new life and friskiness, and when hooked they fight with a

strength and fierceness not exhibited in the same measure afterward. A

twenty-pound salmon fresh from the sea gives you the play of a

thirty-pound fish taken weeks after he has made his way far up toward

the headwaters of a fifty or a hundred-mile river.

This fact, however, is not only not perceptible to the novice, but the

sport furnished by the capture of a salmon at any point in a river, or

at any stage of his sojourn in fresh water, is so grandly exhilarating

and so full of the intensest excitement, that it is a matter of but

trifling moment where a fish is struck so long as the angler strikes

him.

But the season _is_ important. The earlier weeks on any river are to be

preferred, not alone because the fish have more vitality, but because,

as a rule, they are more abundant. With an unerring instinct which is

as mysterious as it is wonderful, they seek the rivers where they were

born upon the return of every spring. If the rivers are in condition

for their ascent, they begin their journey at once. But the rivers are

not always in this condition when salmon first come to them; and if

they are not, they wait their opportunity, and then move forward with

the regularity and steadiness of an army under marching orders. Hence

they are ordinarily found in greatest numbers at the first rush; and

they are most fortunate who are duly placed, at favorite pools, to bid

them welcome.

What I know of this phase of salmon angling I have learned from

experience and observation, under circumstances which enable me to

speak with more confidence than would be otherwise becoming. I have

fished for three years on what I believe to be one of the very best

rivers on the continent; best not merely because of the abundance and

weight of its fish, but because also of its size and length, the

magnificence of its scenery, and the great number of its splendid

pools. My first two seasons extended from July 10 to August 10; and

they are seasons which will be for ever remembered with delight. I did

not deem it possible that I should ever experience any higher pleasure

this side that "pure river of water, clear as crystal," which fills so

large a place in the entrancing picture of the bright hereafter. My

catch exceeded my highest expectations, the sport from first to last

was magnificent and kingly, and the river, and the scenery, and the

surroundings embodied so much of beauty and grandeur, that my cup of

joy was filled to overflowing. If I had left the river with no other

knowledge than I then possessed of what had been and of what might be,

I would have lived on content with the happy impression that I had

experienced the highest possibilities of the gentle art. Every hour was

an hour of sunshine--whether casting, or striking, or killing--whether

slowly ascending or swiftly schuting the rapids--whether shouting in

very ecstasy of delight or quietly discoursing of the pleasures of

angling, around the camp fire, grateful to a kind Providence which had

"cast my lines in such pleasant places," and filled with devout

thanksgiving that time and opportunity had been given me to understand

why the good men, and the thoughtful men, and the simple wise men of

all ages had written so enthusiastically and sung so glowingly of the

gentle art.

But, while thus pluming myself upon what I had achieved and

experienced, fancying that I had reached the highest pleasure

attainable from the art of angling, I learned that while I had done

well I could do much better earlier in the season. And so I found; for

by a combination of circumstances as fortunate as they were gratifying,

my third season gave me the first "run" and such experience and sport

as will for ever remain a golden memory.

III.

With a companion as venerable in years and as full of enthusiasm as

myself, we set our faces toward the bay of Chaleur on as bright and

beautiful a June morning as ever gladdened the world. Hitherto the

journey had been tedious and circuitous--by rail and steamer. But, like

the world in general, the Provinces are progressive, and on this

occasion an "all-rail" route enabled us to do in two days what it

formerly took six to accomplish, and the 10th of June found us encamped

in a beautiful valley encircled by magnificent mountains, with a

majestic river at our feet grandly marching to the sea, but in

unwelcome volume and raging with frightful turbulence. The melted snow

was pouring down from the hills in such torrents as to overflow banks

and lowlands, and to preclude all hope of angling until an abatement of

the flood. It only remained for us to imitate the patriotic Germans on

the Rhine, and "watch and wait." And for ten days we watched and waited

with such patience as we could muster, and with such diversion as could

be found in casting for trout in a neighboring brook which found its

way to the river in our immediate neighborhood.

IV.

It was the tenth day of our waiting, and while the river was rushing

with such fury as to render holding a canoe in the current with any

appliances at our command impracticable, that I succeeded in reaching

an eddy caused by a huge bowlder still buried beneath the waters. I

could not anchor, and my frail bark was kept in constant motion by the

swirling eddy, when, after repeated casts, I had a rise. The fish

leaped to such an unusual height, and with such seeming determination

that the lure should not escape him, that I was startled and barely

escaped a backward plunge in my anxiety to make a sure "strike." From

the "feel," which ran like electricity from my submerged fly to the

tips of my fingers, I knew that the hook had effectively performed its

work, and was "fastened in a sure place." With this conviction I felt

bold to begin the work resolutely, although I knew that if I succeeded

in making a capture, I must do so under circumstances more difficult

than any I had ever before encountered in any waters or with any fish.

I was literally hemmed in. I dared not allow the monster to get outside

the restricted circle of the eddy, for if he should reach the current,

which was sweeping downward at the rate of ten miles an hour, I would

be utterly powerless to check him, because it would be impossible to

prevent him from rushing over the boiling rapids, which were thundering

within fifty feet of the lower edge of the eddy. My only hope of fish

or canoe was to hold both under the shelter of the rock which caused

the eddy. To do this required a shorter line than it is ever wise to

retain at the opening of a fight with a thirty-pound salmon. But

everything--fish, rod, and line--had to be risked. It was hold all or

lose everything; and with a shout which made the whole camp lookers-on,

I began the fight; now hopeful, now in despair; now with the fish

leaping within fifty feet of the canoe, and now lashing the water with

the fierceness of a tiger; now dashing toward the current as if

determined to break off or drag the canoe with him, and anon sullenly

permitting himself to be reeled up to within ten feet of the gaff; now

sinking and sulking, and now rushing and leaping as if he would twist

off his own neck in his attempts to shake the cruel barb from his

lacerated jaw; now at handsome holding distance, peaceful as a lamb,

and seemingly ready for the _coup de grace_, and anon dashing hither

and thither, as if looking for some open door to freedom; but all in

vain. If his mettle was up, so was mine, and at that moment I would

sooner have lost a fortune than that fish. I had kept him within bounds

and well in hand; had got him within a foot of the gaff, sure of

victory, and was shouting to my gaffer, "Now then, let him have it!"

when, like a flash, he shot under the canoe, and would have smashed

everything in a moment had not my watchful guide, seeing the situation

and the danger in the twinkling of an eye, swung round our boat so that

I could place the tip of my rod beyond the stern of the canoe, and thus

escaped the greatest misfortune that can befall a salmon angler. It was

quickly and skilfully done, and in five minutes more the first salmon

of the season was gaffed, and the first victory achieved. The shout

from my own canoe was caught up by the excited lookers-on, and we

paddled to camp thrilled with the excitement of the contest, and happy

as it is possible for an angler to be--and there are possibilities of

happiness to anglers inconceivable to any who have never killed a

salmon.

We accepted this first fish as the forerunner of the good time hoped

for. And the good time came of which, for the delectation of those who

have been or would like to be "there" themselves, I subjoin a few

samples.

V.

I had as my immediate companion an enthusiastic angler in all waters,

but who had not as yet had the good fortune to take a salmon. The flood

had somewhat receded; but it was still necessary to place our canoes in

the eddies, and cast crosswise into the edges of the current. I had

landed a fish of moderate size, and was watching my friend trying his

'prentice hand, at salmon casting, occasionally directing him by my

fancied superior knowledge of the art, when a very large fish rose to

his fly, and he struck him with a suddenness and force which was

certainly complimentary to his muscle if not so illustrative of his

skill. For it is always dangerous to strike too hard. It does not

require a great pressure to force the barb home, while a heavy strike

or a too sudden twitch is apt either to break something or tear the

hook from the fish's jaw. In this case the hook held. For a moment fish

and fisher seemed alike astonished, and neither stirred; but it was

only for a moment. Directly away flew the fish--the line spinning from

the reel as if harnessed to a locomotive. Fortunately the eddy, which

made out from the point of an island, extended some quarter of a mile,

and before it was passed over, the Judge began to appreciate the

situation, the magnitude of the work in hand, and the difficulties he

was likely to encounter before he could call the fish his own. He held

him with a steady hand. He answered every call for line with a

promptness and caution which indicated great tact, and he lost no

opportunity to reel in when practicable. For a time it seemed probable

that he would kill his fish without being carried into the central

current. But no such luck awaited him; for after two hours of patient

waiting and working--of rushing, and leaping, and sulking--the frenzied

fish made for the centre of the river with such impetuosity that it

would have been as easy to stop the flow of the river itself as to

check him in his mad career. Where he led the canoe was obliged to

follow; and follow it did for more than two miles, with occasional

respites at available eddies, and occasional dashes up stream, putting

the canoe men to their best trumps to prevent the reel from becoming

exhausted by these upward flights.

Thus the battle progressed for more than three hours, when the fish

approached the canoe of one of the party, which was anchored near a

bank covered with overhanging brush. He rushed with such speed that the

Indians in the anchored canoe had barely time to get out of the way,

when the fish dashed between them and the bank, but so closely that

when he halted for an instant near the surface, one of the Indians,

whose movements were as quick as those of the fish himself, gaffed him

and so saved him "as by fire," for in an instant more he would have

been caught in the overhanging brush toward which he was moving, and

where, had he reached it, he would have been inevitably lost. He

weighed thirty-six pounds--the largest fish taken during our month's

sojourn on the river. But the most marvelous part of the story is that

the brute was hooked foul in the side, rendering the fight and the

capture of so large a fish a double victory.

Many events in the Judge's life will be forgotten, but this first fight

with his first salmon will remain a pleasant memory for ever.

VI.

Here is another experience which all anglers will appreciate. I was

anchored in an eddy at the head of a favorite pool while the current in

the channel of the river was so strong that it was deemed impossible to

make headway against it. The pool in which I was casting was full of

hidden rocks; but for that very reason it was one of the very best on

the river. After an unusually long cast, a fish rose to my fly and was

hooked. On the instant he dashed for the head of the pool, but by the

time the anchor was shipped he reversed his movement with a rush,

carrying with him more than two hundred feet of line. The canoe, having

been forced into the channel, was sweeping downward with great

rapidity, when I became conscious that my line was hitched. The only

hope of rescue was to force the canoe back against the heavy

current--and the order to do so was answered by such a display of skill

and muscle as I had never before and have never since witnessed. The

paddles bent like withs, and for a moment not an inch of headway was

obtained. "We can't move her," was the mournful wail of my faithful

Indians. "You can and must. Away with her!" was all I could say to

them; and "away" it was. After a desperate struggle the canoe reached a

point on a line with the rock on which I was caught, when off the line

flew with a spring which indicated the great tension to which it had

been subjected. "Now let her go!" and down we went, swept by the

current, past rocks, into eddies and over rapids for a mile before I

succeeded in getting the fish in a position where I could check him or

place him where I desired. This I did, however, in time, by getting

below him and holding the canoe broadside to the current. This enabled

me to handle him at will, and the gaffer soon brought him to book. He

weighed twenty-nine pounds.

VII.

One other incident. To have it appreciated, however, I must premise

that the manner in which an angler plays a fish depends largely upon

the condition of the river. Where, after a strike, you can pass into

still water or into a moderate current, the position of your canoe is

of no great moment. But if you are forced into very swift water, to

allow a fish to have his way, and to make no attempt to gaff him until

he is exhausted or until you can force him up to within gaffing

distance against the current, is to find yourself at the end of the

battle so far from your pool as to render a return unpleasantly

tedious. Under such circumstances the order of battle with experts is

as follows: The moment the fish starts down stream push below him with

all possible despatch, reeling up the attained slack as the distance

decreases. When the desired position is reached the canoe is thrown

across the current and allowed to float with it. As the fish is above

you, it is comparatively easy, with the aid of the current, to guide

him downward with a very moderate pressure. In this position, with the

exercise of proper caution and skill, the fish can generally be brought

near enough to be gaffed long before he is the least exhausted.

This mode of killing is not only exciting, but very hazardous. The

fish, when brought close up to the canoe, sometimes dashes beneath it,

to the great peril of rod, reel, and leader, if not to the

perpendicularity of the canoe itself. To illustrate: I had struck a

large fish, and was playing him in the manner detailed, to my entire

satisfaction. I had never been better pleased with the behavior of any

fish, and I had him under such perfect control that I foolishly began

to deem myself perfect master of the situation. In his strugglings the

fish had crossed and recrossed the channel a hundred times--had rushed

up stream and dashed down stream with the speed and eccentricity of a

boomerang, but had failed to get beyond the restraint of a steady

tension. I had reached a point in the struggle where I would not have

given a farthing to be insured against accidents, when, while holding

him within twenty feet of my tip, he turned his head down stream and

dashed directly under the centre of the canoe, bearing my rod with him,

and bending it double before I knew whether I stood on my head or my

heels. And then came a crack, and a tear, and a snap, splintering the

second joint of my rod, and breaking my tip like a pipe stem. I

supposed, of course, that the wrench had released the fish, and I began

to reel in as disconsolate as a defeated candidate for office. But,

hollo! the fish is not off! When the crash came the line had rendered

so freely that there was no unusual strain upon the hook, and he was

still fast. But what of that? How could I save him with such a wreck?

The idea that it was possible, with skilful handling, added a

hundredfold to the excitement, and put me on my mettle. So, finding

that the line was free, and that by keeping the dangling pieces in

proper position I could still manipulate the reel, I renewed the

contest, and after floating a mile or two with the current, brought him

to gaff. I mourned, of course, the destruction of my favorite rod--the

best I ever handled, which had served me, without a crack, for two

years, and which I would not have exchanged for any rod I ever saw.

There was nothing gorgeous about it; but it had life in every fibre,

and responded with every cast, from tip to butt, with such spring and

elasticity as rendered casting with it a real pleasure.

VIII.

And apropos of the old adage that wise men learn from experience. After

this fish had thus made shipwreck of my favorite rod, the Judge, with a

generosity which is characteristic of the true angler--and no man has

the spirit of the true angler who is not generous--proffered me the use

of his untried bamboo. It was, and still is, the handsomest piece of

salmon rod workmanship I ever saw, and felt in the handling as if it

were as good to go as it was handsome to look at. He had hesitated,

with the excusable timidity of the novice, to use it himself, and

wished it tried, that he might report the result to its maker. I, of

course, felt complimented by this proof of confidence in my skill, and

consented, with the promise that I would do my best to preserve it

intact, but that I must save my fish if I had to risk every inch of my

harness.

The pool in which the test was to be made was directly in front of our

camp, and the water was still in excessive volume, and the flow

unpleasantly impetuous. I soon caught the hang of the rod, and was

making experimental casts of a hundred feet or more, quite delighted

with its spring and play, when I had a rise from the most dangerous

spot in the pool. Afraid to strike with my usual force, I simply raised

my tip an inch or two, and felt that he was as securely hooked as if I

had a "double hitch" around him. And it is curious this instinctive

consciousness of a secure or of a frail hold of your fish the instant

you strike him. Every observant angler has this consciousness; and

nothing is more common at such a moment than the remark, "I am afraid

he is not well hooked"; or, "Ah! that struck home"; and all the after

play--whether timidly or fearlessly--depends largely upon the "feel" of

the strike.

At the outset I knew that if my fish escaped, it would not be because

he was not well hooked; and, with this assurance, the play began. He

took to the swiftest water at the first dash; he fairly leaped over the

rapids at the foot of the pool, the canoe following with the speed of a

race-horse, for half a mile, when he cried a halt, much to my

satisfaction, for was I not entrusted with the finest rod that had ever

wet its tip in the Cascapedia? Unlike my old companion, with which I

had fought an hundred such battles, I was ignorant of the strain this

elegant bamboo would bear, and so fought this battle as timidly as if I

had never before broken a lance or captured a salmon. But a necessity

was upon me. Its power of resistance must be tested, and the monster I

was fighting must be kept in hand, if every joint in the rod should be

reduced to splinters. So, ounce by ounce, the pressure was increased.

Every new rush of the fish was met by augmented resistance on my part,

until I found the rod capable of as hard work and as heavy a pressure

as I had ever placed upon any rod I had ever handled. With what

mathematical precision it curved from tip to reel! How grandly it took

the butt, and with what grace it resumed its original form when

relieved of an unusual pressure! To handle it soon became a delight,

and I found myself procrastinating the contest from the mere pleasure I

experienced in watching its perfect movement.

When at length I concluded to make a finish of the struggle, had placed

my canoe below the fish, and was gathering him in, by slow approaches,

not dreaming of disaster or defeat, the ferocious brute dashed for the

canoe, passing under it near the stern like a flash, and threatening to

make as complete shipwreck of the Judge's bamboo as the fish of the day

previously had made of my own lance-wood. But, like others before me, I

had learned from the enemy how to fight. The moment I saw what was

coming I threw my rod down parallel with the side of the canoe,

allowing the tip to extend beyond it, with the reel outward, so as to

give the line free play. The experiment was a success. The line

followed the fish without a hitch, and the beautiful rod remained

intact! The furious brute was outflanked, and, as if in despair, he

gave up the battle, and in ten minutes was gaffed.

The rod was a success. It had passed every ordeal grandly, and it was

handed back to its owner with the comforting assurance, "It will do."

* * * * *

These are but specimen illustrations of the pleasure and exhilaration

which come to those who "go-a-fishing" for salmon. But the pastime

holds its votaries for other reasons than the mere excitement it

affords them. A diversion which reaches only to the material of our

natures can never acquire a permanent place in the affections of men of

thoughtful habit. It is proof, therefore, of the satisfying and

elevating character of the gentle art, that its disciples never weary

of the pleasure it affords them. Indeed, the most enthusiastic anglers,

and those who best illustrate its refining and invigorating influence,

are those who have passed into "the sere and yellow leaf" with rod and

reel as their inseparable companions. Like the virtues, it grows by

what it feeds upon; and as the sun becomes more and more attractive in

its mellow beauty, as it silently and gently sinks from view, so do the

pleasures of angling become increasingly fascinating to its happy

votaries as they near the gateway of their final rest. Ah! unhappy they

who, in making haste to be rich, fail to avail themselves of the

opportunity which angling affords to garner up such pleasant memories

as would cast perennial rays of refreshing sunshine upon the too often

sombre pathway of old age!

GEORGE DAWSON.

EXECUTIVE PATRONAGE AND CIVIL SERVICE REFORM.

Late writers on the English Constitution draw a contrast rather

unfavorable to us between their Parliamentary and our Presidential

Government. Our Executive is a fixture for four years and reeligible.

He is responsible, and not shielded by any such legal fiction as "The

king can do no wrong." In Great Britain, the cabinet, selected from the

legislature, is the real executive body. "In its origin it belongs to

the legislative part of the State; in its functions it belongs to the

executive part." By a conventional code, the ministry or "the

Government" can be changed by a vote of want of confidence, or by a

defeat of the ministry in the House of Commons on a governmental

measure. Our Cabinet holds a subordinate position. The Constitution

contemplates, but does not define, "executive departments." Seven have

been established by law, some of which have been divided into inferior

departments called bureaus. The Cabinet is the political family of the

President. The "heads of departments" are his constitutional advisers,

and aid in the execution of his high functions. They are not held

responsible for good government, are not liable to votes of censure for

their policy, although for convenience sake, a kind of semi-official

connection subsists betwixt them and the Federal Legislature.

The "principal officer in each of the executive departments" has a

staff of subordinates. The various officers of the United States

constitute the machinery of government, and the appointment of a large

proportion of them is vested in the President. These various civil

officers, so appointed, are for the execution of public business. The

conduct of public business and the care of the public interests are,

under the President's supervision and control, largely committed to

these functionaries. With the growth of the country in territorial

area, population, and wealth, the enormous increase of taxation and

expenditures and the assumption by the Federal Government of State

duties and prerogatives, the number of officials has increased to

100,000. The civil list in 1859 numbered 44,527; in 1875, 94,119. The

rolls show a larger list of paid dependents since the war than there

was during the war. All these officers hold their places by the tenure

of the President's will. They are to be found in every neighborhood in

the Union, and constitute a large army, dangerous to the welfare and

perpetuity of the republic.

The theory is that all public offices are for administrative efficiency

and the public weal. Up to the beginning of General Jackson's term of

office, there had been, during the forty years of his six predecessors,

112 removals of such officers as required for their appointment "the

advice and consent of the Senate." These few removals were not made

from caprice, or to punish enemies, or to reward partisans, but for

cause and by strict rule. The power of removal was exerted so

exceptionally, only for just and salutary purposes, and was never used

as an instrument of party success. Public policy dictated its exercise.

Offices were not regarded as the private property of the President, or

as the perquisites of a party, but as trusts for the general good.

General Jackson's accession to the Presidency began a revolution.

Differences of opinion were punished by removal from office, and

partisanship was rewarded with places of profit. His successors have

adhered too closely to a precedent which has almost solidified into a

party law, or a principle of American politics. No party can claim

exemption from the sin of using the civil list for party ends. The

Whig, Democratic, and Republican parties, in the distribution of

"patronage," in Federal, State, and municipal governments, are alike

obnoxious to censure. The poison has infiltrated every vein and artery

of the body politic. Every branch of federal and of State service has

suffered from the vicious maxim that offices are spoils to be divided

among the victors in a party contest. Too often the condition precedent

to appointment is unquestioning submission to party decrees,

indiscriminate support of party candidates and party measures. The

right to remove incumbents is now a conceded Presidential prerogative,

acquiesced in by all parties.

The power of removal, under the influence of a false political

philosophy, has been perverted into the duty of removal so as to give

the offices to the winning party. A new President of different politics

from his predecessor is expected to make sweeping changes, amounting

even to a "total administrative cataclysm." The appointment of a

political antagonist excites surprise, and requires an explanation or

apology. Experience of the working of an office, ability, honesty,

fitness, are not conclusive. "Off with his head," is the remorseless

decree when a place is needed for a partisan. Each incoming

administration is bedeviled by hordes of applicants, as greedy as the

daughters of the horseleech. The plagues of Egypt scarcely symbolize

the number and clamorousness of the mendicants. General Harrison,

honest old man, in one month fell a victim to the tormentors, and

General Taylor's death was probably hastened by a similar infliction.

Executive patronage is dependent on the revenue and expenditures of the

Government and on the number of persons employed by the Government, or

who receive money from the public treasury. To appoint and remove at

will is a dangerous prerogative, royal in its proportions. Some of the

ablest statesmen and constitutional lawyers have denied the right of

the President to remove without cause, especially in such appointments

as required the concurrence of the Senate.[3] The practice of the

Government seems to have settled the question differently. Conceding

_pro hoe vice_ the constitutionality, the evils, as illustrated in our

history, are none the less great.

[3] Reports to the Senate in 1825, 1835, and 1844, contain able

discussions of "Executive Patronage."

I. There has been a reversal of the theory of our institutions in

respect to officers. In 1835 Mr. Webster said in the United States

Senate:

Government is an agency created for the good of the people, and

every person in office is an agent and servant of the people.

Offices are created not for the benefit of those who are to fill

them, but for the public convenience; and they ought to be no more

in number, nor should higher salaries be attached to them, than the

public service requires. The difficulty in practice is to prevent a

direct reversal of all this; to prevent public offices from being

considered as intended for the use and emolument of those who can

obtain them. There is a headlong tendency to this.... There is

another, and perhaps a greatly more mischievous result, from

extensive patronage in the hands of a single magistrate, and that

is, that men in office have begun to think themselves mere agents

and servants of the appointing power, and not agents of the

Government or the country.

Offices are looked upon as the prey of political parties, as spoils to

be distributed. The well-being of the country, with appointer and

appointees, becomes a secondary consideration. Office-holders, holding

by the "tenure of partisan zeal and service" are regarded as receiving

pap from the party, and therefore under special obligations to make

sacrifices for its success. Hence federal officers, holding their

places for the benefit of the party, are assessed for contributions for

electioneering purposes and the recalcitrants are dismissed or tabooed.

This system is unfavorable to manly independence. Fearing removal,

incumbents become parasites, with chameleon facility adapting the

complexion of their politics to the color of the appointing power.

Government becomes also an almoner to bestow charities. Pensioning,

never justifiable except in special exigencies, becomes the rule. Some

apprehension of the evils of governmental allowances without an

equivalent possibly induced Dr. Johnson, in the first edition of his

dictionary, to define "Pensioner, a slave of the State, hired by a

stipend to obey his master."

II. Government becomes a kind of close corporation for the benefit of

the party in power. Party adherents, pets, favorites, get the

dividends; civil service thus affording, as Mr. Bright phrased it for

England, "a system of out-door relief to the poorer saplings of

aristocracy." As a necessary consequence, patriotism and attachment to

principles among those corporators become feebler, and servility to

party stronger.

III. The Government suffers in its administration. In appointments

other tests than the Jeffersonian, "Is he honest, is he faithful, is he

capable?" are applied. The right to employment should grow solely out

of superior capacity and attainments. Official patronage is a trust for

promoting the general welfare. The present system, forgetful of general

interests, instead of securing the best men, often gets instead the

incapable. A good official system is hardly possible with constant

changes in the _personnel_. If continuance in office be dependent on

other considerations than discharge of duties, a stimulus to diligence

and fidelity is taken away. The best motive for learning a task

thoroughly should be furnished. Not unfrequently one defeated in his

aspirations for Congress receives a Federal appointment. A popular

condemnation becomes a stepping stone to a higher position. What should

be regarded as a rebuke is made a plea for promotion.

IV. The tendency of the abuse of Executive patronage is to make those

in the civil service mere placemen and mere tools or willing servitors

of the President. To quote again from Mr. Webster:

A competition ensues, not of patriotic labors, not of rough and

severe toils for the public good, not of manliness, independence,

and public spirit, but of complaisance, of indiscriminate support

of executive measures, of pliant subserviency and gross adulation.

By personal effort, by money contributions, through the press, in

nominating assemblies, at the polls, office-holders work for him in

whom they have their official being. An incumbent of the Presidency, a

candidate for reelection, has a large number of men and their families

interested in his success, and swayed by the temptation of interest to

secure his renomination and reelection; add to these the hungry

expectants, whose eyes and hopes are fixed on Washington, and it can be

seen that the power and the practice of giving offices to partisans

operate on the fears of all who are in and the hopes of those who wish

to get in. The Executive himself is armed with undue influence and

power and subjected to a temptation to dishonesty if he covets a

reelection. The "spoils" in the hands of a President, granted or

withdrawn at pleasure, give fearful odds in a popular or party contest.

Our Presidential elections are pervaded by an element not favorable to

fairness or purity. A dangerous mass of private and personal interest

is thrown into the scale, and selfishness usurps the place of

patriotism and a sense of public duty.

V. Distribution of so many and such valuable offices as party rewards

degrades parties from organizations upon principle, for patriotic

political ends, to mere combinations for expediency and for personal

ends. Because of the power and patronage of the President; and the

centralizing effects of federal legislation, all State and local

elections are subordinate to the quadrennial agitation for the highest

federal officer. So ramifying is this federal influence, the election

of a constable in Montana is decided by his relation to a "national"

party. State and county officers are nominated upon "national"

platforms, and support of Hayes or Tilden determines governors,

Congressmen, judges, superintendents of education, mayors, sheriffs,

policemen. Local interests are subordinated to the Presidential

struggle. The attention and ability of the people of a State are

diverted from State development to national concerns, or rather to the

question, who is to be empowered to bestow Executive patronage? In the

mind of the masses the President is the government. A Presidential

election has ceased to be a contest of ideas, or to decide a political

policy. It is a gigantic party struggle. Overwhelming importance

attaches to it, because the victor has a cornucopia of "patronage

bribery" to give to whom he likes. In other days, the canvass which

preceded elections was educatory. Able men, on opposite sides, face to

face, discussed grave questions of constitutional law or federal

policy. In the nullification controversy of South Carolina there was a

war of giants. The speeches of O'Neal, Harper, Johnston, Hamilton,

Hayne, Preston, McCuffie, and Calhoun were such masterly expositions of

the relations of the States to the general Government as would have

done credit to Edmund Burke. In other contests, North and South, were

discussions by our ablest statesmen of fundamental principles of higher

abstractions. In the last contest much of the "stump" speaking was the

veriest twaddle, an appeal to prejudice, and hate, and sectionalism,

full of scurrility, personality, and vulgar anecdote. The press, so

essential to free institutions, partakes of the degeneracy, and thus

politics is degraded from a noble science to a disgusting scramble for

spoils.

VI. Treating the civil service as legitimate rewards for partisan zeal

diminishes official responsibility, lowers the standard of official

integrity, and stimulates corruption by augmenting the means of

corruption. The rapid growth of patronage, far beyond what is required

for efficiency of administration, is readily suggestive of evil. A

spirit of subserviency is not favorable to the growth of the highest

qualities. Ceasing to regard office as a trust for the public good, the

holder loses a strong motive for integrity. Favoring servility, or

sycophancy, to conciliate superiors, very easily loosens the restraints

of conscience. Vigorous attachment to principles yields to devotion to

party. Public morals are corrupted by false maxims, by increase of

temptation, by loss of patriotism. Places are multiplied for partisans.

Contracts are let to partisans. Frauds, the logical consequence of

lowering office to be mere pay for party services, are covered up, or

palliated, to prevent damage to "the party."

If these evils be not greatly exaggerated, reform seems an imperative

necessity. It is hard to correct governmental abuses. Society is prone

to run in ruts. To suggest the supernumerariness of an office, or a

reduction of salaries, raises a howl among the _ins_ as if the

liberties of the country were imperilled. Those useful legislators,

like George W. Jones of Tennessee, and Holman of Indiana, who watch for

abuses and scent afar a "ring," are always unpopular. It is needful to

get back to first principles and to indoctrinate the public anew with

correct notions as to the object of an office and the duties of a

public officer. The Koran says: "A ruler who appoints any man to an

office when there is in his dominions another man better qualified for

it sins against God and against the State." To dismiss a faithful and

capable incumbent to gratify party resentment, or to gratify a friend,

is utterly in disharmony with the purpose of administrative machinery.

Our Government is an agency for the public weal. It is not in an

antagonistic position to "the people of the United States," but their

servant to accomplish their legal will and to promote their prosperity.

People were not created for offices, but offices for the people. As

soon as the public service ceases to be subserved the offices should at

once cease. While the office is necessary, and the incumbent discharges

its duties satisfactorily, there should be no needless change. A

citizen accepting a public trust, and doing his duty faithfully, should

be allowed to enjoy his manhood and be protected from the exactions of

a superior power. If, as has been asserted, "no vacancies" greet the

eyes of applicants for places in Washington, it is a hopeful sign and

most praiseworthy.

When vacancies do occur, or new offices are created, some competition

among the candidates for employment would ensure more efficient

service. Superiority of parts or attainments is a better qualification

for bureau or clerical duties than activity in a ward meeting. Men of

the best energy and capacity are not likely to be obtained by an

arbitrary partition of places among the districts whose representatives

sustain the Administration. England has reached the competitive test by

slow steps. Employees in the several departments were, for a long time,

clerks to the minister, and were paid out of the fees received from

those who had business with the department. The sale of offices and

exaction of fees occasioned serious abuses. By several acts of

Parliament in this century, a civil service has been established, a

public status assigned to clerks, and their salaries are now paid out

of the public exchequer. By the test of competitive examinations, and

by placing on a better basis the relation betwixt public servants and

the nation, the service has been much improved.

The application of some competitive test for certain grades of office

might be supplemented by requiring the President, in all cases of

nominations to the Senate to fill vacancies, to state the reasons for

removal, if any had been made. Laws might be passed modifying the

absoluteness of the right of removal. In 1789, in a discussion in the

House of Representatives, Mr. Madison said:

To displace a man from office whose merits require that he should

be continued in it would be an act of maladministration, and the

wanton removal of meritorious officers would subject the President

to impeachment and removal from his own high trust.

The Constitution of the Confederate States had this provision:

The principal officer in each of the executive departments, and all

persons connected with the diplomatic service, may be removed from

office at the pleasure of the President. All other civil officers

of the executive departments may be removed at any time by the

President, or other appointing power, when their services are

unnecessary, or for dishonesty, incapacity, inefficiency,

misconduct, or neglect of duty; and when so removed, the removal

shall be reported to the Senate, together with the reasons

therefor.

A further provision forbade the President to reappoint to the same

office, during the recess, any person who had been rejected by the

Senate.

To make the President ineligible, as was done in the Confederate States

Constitution, and as President Hayes recommends, would take from the

Executive the temptation to use the appointing power to receive a

renomination or reelection. As the term of a Chief Magistrate draws

near its end, and he becomes more deeply interested in being his own

successor, he may make his appointments and direct his administration

to increase popularity and accomplish his own ambitious ends. He might

look to party management, and ward meetings, and manipulated caucuses,

rather than to the general welfare. The evil of re-eligibility is

increased by the failure of our electoral colleges to effect what was

designed. These colleges have no independence, and most mechanically

register the decrees of caucuses. What was intended to be a check on

party has become its pliant instrument.

As essential to reduction of Executive patronage, and disarming the

President of the dangerous influence and power growing out of it, there

should be a persevering and a large reduction of federal expenditures.

General Jackson, in 1836, truly said, "No political maxim is better

established than that which tells us that an improvident expenditure of

the public money is the parent of profligacy, and that no people can

hope to perpetuate their liberties who long acquiesce in a policy which

taxes them for objects not necessary to the legitimate and real wants

of their government." Large revenue and expenditure give an excuse if

they do not make the necessity for increasing the number of persons

employed by the government. With expenditure comes an army of agents,

contractors, officers interested in keeping up extravagance and

multiplying officials. Patronage flows from the fountain of public

income. To reduce patronage and ensure honest government, it is

indispensable that the Government should extort no more money from the

people than is needful for a just and economical administration. Our

governments, federal, State, and municipal, need to be taught, by

constitutional limitation and a sound public opinion, that a citizen's

property is his as against every demand, except for a just, honest, and

economical administration of the government.

As helping reform and growing out of it, a reorganization of parties is

needed. The present parties have "played out." Parties are essential in

republics, but they should represent intelligent patriotism, be

organized on practical, living issues, and be vitalized by principles.

Who is wise enough to tell what differentiates the Republican and the

Democratic parties? What distinctive principles divide them? Who can

"locate" the parties on such questions as tariff, currency, expenditure,

civil service reform, character of the government, boundary between

reserved and delegated powers? Issues like secession and slavery, no

longer disputed or doubted, should have no influence in forming or

keeping alive parties. Obsolete shibboleths should not alienate those

who are otherwise agreed. A party not crystallizing around vital issues,

not having "the dignity of contention" for principles, becomes a machine

to put up A or put down B. The _ins_ and the _outs_ make now the two

centres of the dividing parties, which have become cliques and cabals

controlled by caucuses.

This is a most opportune season for reorganization of political

parties, and a readjustment on broad and living issues. It is wrong to

be carrying about the dead corpse of the past. A new generation has

grown up since 1860. The spirit of the age is not what it was two

decades since. The young men know next to nothing of Whiggery and

Democracy. To make secession, or slavery, or the "bloody shirt" a

rallying cry, is as absurd as to exhume the embargo or the alien and

sedition laws. The inertia of society is great, and men cohere from

traditions of the past. The reform bill of 1832 was long delayed in

England, in its practical results, because the statesmen of 1832

continued in public life. So now effete parties are kept alive for

partisan or patriotic ends by those who seem not to have realized that

we are living in a new America.

It seems a plain duty to gather up what survives of our constitutional

federal republic, of the labors of the past, and with a catholic spirit

to combine for reformation of abuses, for national conciliation, for

purifying parties, for saving the republic. A party equally of order

and of progress, in favor of retrenchment, economy, low taxes, sound

currency, civil service reform, preservation of State and of federal

honor, strict adherence to the Constitution, keeping federal and State

governments within their separate and defined spheres of action, while

encountering the hostility of extremists, would rally to its support

enough of intelligence and patriotism to repress sectionalism and hate,

and bring our lately discordant States into a fraternal union, based on

fixed law, mutual toleration and respect, and exact justice.

J. L. M. CURRY.

THREE PERIODS OF MODERN MUSIC.

In "Punch's Almanack" for this year is an illustration, in three

compartments, of the subject "Music at Home." The first is called

"Drawing-room Music of the Past." A young lady sits at one of those

little spindle-legged piano-fortes, hardly larger than a large

washstand, and somewhat shaped like one, with which our grandmothers

and great grandmothers, and the men who composed music for them, were

not only satisfied, but delighted. Her hands are moving, light and

level, over the little key-board, and the dainty turn of her head shows

that she is captivated by the sounds that she is eliciting. Around her

is gathered a family group of some dozen people, old and young, from

the grandfather to the little grandchild who sits upon a hassock at her

lovely mother's knee. They are all entranced by the music. Plainly

there is not a sound in the room but that which is produced by the fair

performer. The souls of all that company are enchained; their hearts if

not their eyes are brimming with emotion. A spell of tenderness and

grace has been cast upon them; and they have given themselves up to him

who has woven it. The faces of all are lightly tinged with sadness, but

it is an elevated and elevating sadness; a sadness that is mingled with

a joy silent, deep, and strong, a joy far above hilarity. The most

impressive figure of the group is the grandfather, who sits with his

arm lying listlessly across the instrument and his head slightly bowed,

as, we may be sure, he is carried back by the sweet strains to a time

when one who does not appear in the group was by his side in all the

charms of early womanhood. The composition is so touching, so filled

with purest, sweetest sentiment, that it is impossible to look at it

long without being moved almost to tears by the tender and serene

pathos with which it is pervaded. The legend tells us that the music

which has wrought this spell is "A Melody by Mozart."

In the second compartment of the triptique, which is labelled

"Drawing-room Music of the Present," a young lady also sits at a

piano-forte. It is a grand, a very grand piano-forte; a tremendous

institution, the invisible end of which stretches far into infinitude.

Plainly it is one of those awful instruments which have received a gold

medal at all the expositions. The lid is propped up so that it looks

like a gigantic trap set to catch some gigantic bird or vermin. The

performer's shoulders and arms, which emerge in a somewhat alarming

manner from their scanty covering, are in violent agitation. Her hands

are flung into the air as they poise for an instant over the upper part

of the long key-board, ready to pounce down upon the shuddering notes

below, and from the great gaping instrument a flock of startled and

affrighted quavers, semiquavers, and demisemiquavers is pouring out

pell-mell over the assembled hearers. Hearers! No. The great

drawing-room is filled with a crowd of people who have evidently been

bidden to listen to the music. But they are undergoing it with stolid

indifference as they talk or try to talk, either almost shouting or

whispering into each other's deafened ears and bewildered brains. The

only person who takes any interest in the performance is the performer

herself. The motive power here is "A brilliant fantasia for the piano

by Signor Rumblestominski."

The third compartment is entitled "Drawing-room music of the Future."

Here five performers are laboring at and around the piano-forte, the

top of which has been taken off. They are all men; tough-brained-looking

fellows: one a violinist, one a violoncellist; two are at the key-board,

and one stands music in hand and mouth wide open. They are toiling as if

at day's work by the piece; and all are singing. They are engaged upon

"Twenty-four consecutive interdependent Logarithmic studies for Violin

and Violoncello, with Double Differential and Integral accompaniment for

the Piano-forte, supplemented by Unisonal Descriptive and Corroborative

vocal exposition in five modern languages." They have evidently got well

into harness, and have dragged their hearers some distance over their

rugged road, which is a "hard road to travel." The mass of the assembled

company are rushing madly for the door. On an ottoman in the foreground

sit five victims, four young ladies and a bald-headed old gentleman, who

are all fast asleep. At one side a determined fellow sits with his

elbows on his knees grasping his head with both hands, resolved to

endure unto the end. Not even in the faces of the performers is there

the slightest manifestation of the soothing, the elevating, or even the

pleasurably exciting influence which belongs peculiarly to music. With

dogged determination they are working out a knotty intellectual problem.

They do not exhibit even the tickled vanity of musical virtuosity; they

are there--to use a cant phrase of musical criticism--to "interpret"

what the composer has with infinite toil and trouble put upon paper; and

very tough work they find it; somewhat like reading mathematics written

in the Basque language. And their souls are unmoved. The musical sounds

go through their ears straight to their brains, leaving their hearts

untouched. They are engaged in an intellectual process.

Of these designs, the last two, although they are laughable

caricatures, express with very little exaggeration (allowing for the

notes made visible in the second) the character, the quality, and the

effect of certain schools of musical composition. The first is not a

caricature, as any one will see; but although it is quite the contrary,

it is not on the other hand idealized. It merely represents with

skilful touch and felicitous arrangement what might have actually

occurred and what doubtless did many times occur in drawing-rooms at

the end of the last century and the first years of this; indeed, what

might happen and even does happen now. There has been a change in

costume and in manners; but there is none in the effect upon musical

souls of a melody by Mozart.

And these designs illustrate three periods in modern music: two through

which it has passed and one upon which it seems now to be entering. By

modern music I mean music since the days of Palestrina. What was

written before that time, nearly or remotely, although it may have

historical importance and interest, is of little or no value as music.

Indeed, it hardly is music as we know and feel it. Not that I would

imply that Palestrina invented modern music, or even that he alone of

contemporary composers was a gifted and accomplished master of his art.

Roland de Lattre, called Orlandus Lassus, chief of the Gallo-Belgic

school, might dispute the palm with him.[4] But this conceded, it

remains that in Orlandus Lassus we have the best product of the ancient

school, adhering to the ancient style and bringing it to its highest

perfection; while in Palestrina we have the beginning of the modern

school and style, the distinctive trait of which may broadly be said to

be the use of melody and harmony of independent value under constant

governance of the principle of tonality. Before the time of

Palestrina--say A.D. 1550, he having been born about 1524 and having

died about 1594, which year closed the life of Orlandus Lassus, who was

born in 1520--before that time music was polyphonic. But it was not

merely, as that term implies, many-voiced, or in several parts; for

that it is now; but the parts moved without any aesthetic relation to

each other, and with the same independence of the aesthetic effect of

the whole. Their progression was according to certain rules; but these

conformed to, the object of the composer seemed to be to make his work

as intricate as possible. Certain figures--for they could hardly be

called melodies--one or two or three or more--were repeated again and

again and again by the various voices, each one going or seeming to go

its own way, entirely regardless of the others--regardless of anything

except the rules of the counterpoint of the day. The combining result

was a tangled skein of sound which could be unravelled only as it had

been put together, by rule. Instead of an emotional expression it was

an intellectual puzzle in sound. Moreover the whole composition was

without any bond of unity; it was, so to speak, and in its effect it

was really, in no particular key.

[4] For an able setting forth of the claims of Orlandus Lassus,

see Frederic Louis Ritter's excellent "History of Music," First

Series, published by Oliver Ditson & Co.

Upon music in this condition there came about three hundred years ago a

great change. Polyphonetic writing gave way, gradually but with some

rapidity, to the movement of parts in a harmony of independent absolute

beauty--that is, beauty, in the simple succession of its chords--and to

the union with this harmony of a leading melody, also valuable for its

independent, absolute beauty. Thus came into being what I have

heretofore called "absolute music," which has been known to the world

only about three hundred years, and in its full and complete

development only about one hundred and fifty. At the same time, with

this use of harmony and melody of absolute beauty and value, came in a

great controlling principle or law, upon the operation and influence of

which, in fact, the aesthetic effect of the new music chiefly if not

entirely depended. This law or principle was tonality. I have been told

that in a publication which I have never seen--although most probably

it has been sent to me, to go, with the greater part of the printed

matter and not a few of the letters that I receive, unread into my

waste-basket--I have been held up as a dreadful example of musical

incompetence on the ground that I cannot "appreciate Wagner's

magnificent [or splendid, or something of that sort] tonality." Of

course it cuts me to the heart to show that my criticaster was

thoroughly ignorant of the very meaning of the word that he used--a

word which is the name of a principle of paramount importance and

significance in the art of music, which, I believe, he in some sort

professes. But the demands of truth are inexorable.

Tonality is something which cannot be magnificent or splendid; nor can

it be attributed to a composer as being in the slightest degree a claim

to admiration. Indeed, one composer can hardly possess it in a greater

degree than another; and the writer of an ephemeral ballad, or of

"Thou, thou reignest in this bosom," has it, although not more largely,

with stronger manifestation than Mozart or Beethoven. And yet it so

happens that Wagner is in his later works _less_ governed by the law of

tonality than any other known composer of the day.

Tonality is simply the relation of a musical phrase, or air, or longer

composition, to a keynote or tonic chord. To this tonic chord the

harmonies of the composition must bear a close and constantly felt

relationship. The harmony almost always opens with this chord, and

continually recurs to it; and either in its simple form or in some of

its inversions, it, its dominant and subdominant, are the perceptibly

ruling harmonies of the composition; and upon this tonic chord the

composition always ends. That is tonality; nothing more nor less; and

to the influence of this principle of tonality is due the distinctive

character of modern music. Strange as it will probably seem to most

amateurs, news as we have already seen it is to one professor, it was

not until after Palestrina's time that the law of tonality asserted

itself in music, and that compositions were clearly written with any

tonic, that is, manifestly and strikingly in any particular key.[5] But

it so happens that Wagner's method of composition has actually led him

somewhat away from this principle of tonality. Any musical person will

see that in recitative there is much less relation of harmony to the

tonic than in airs or in choruses; and Wagner's prolonged, almost

endless recitatives are wearisome partly from the very fact that we are

so long at sea drifting hither and thither without the rudder of

tonality. But what did this matter to the criticaster? He had heard the

word tonality, and it was a round, mouth-filling word, somewhat new

withal, and therefore good for use against an ignoramus. Perhaps he

thought it meant sonority or something of the kind; or he connected it

with that lovely phrase "tone-poem." Well, in any case, it has served

his purpose astonishingly.

[5] It is not necessary that I should give authority for this to

any competent person who is acquainted with the music of the

ancient composers; but whoever chooses to do so may find the

subject fully discussed in Helmholtz's great work, _passim_.

After the introduction of the principle of tonality music developed

with remarkable rapidity. In one hundred and fifty years it made more

progress toward an ideal beauty and as a means of emotional expression

than it had made in the thousands of years that had passed since the

first note was sung. For by this principle of tonality, melody and

harmony as we know them became possible. All that went before was

either the vague, formless, unsymmetrical production of popular mood

and fancy, or the dry formula-work of musical pedants. And yet within a

century we have such a result as Stradella's divine _Aria di chiesa Se

i miei sospiri_, which, whether for its melody, its harmony, or its

emotional expression, intense yet kept within the bounds of a lofty and

almost serene dignity, is unsurpassed by any vocal work which has been

since produced. It has been said by some that this air was not written

by Stradella. M. Fetis, however, does not doubt it; and the result of

the discussion is that it is assigned to the great Italian singer. The

story of his having saved his life by singing it--two assassins who

followed him into a cathedral to put him to death for having robbed a

nobleman of his beautiful mistress having been disarmed and sent off

repentant by the charm of his voice and of the music--is probably known

to many of my readers. Did any of them ever hear in a composition by

Wagner or Liszt, or any of that crew, a melody of which it could be

believed or for a moment supposed that it would produce such an effect,

even if it were sung by a seraph?

It was not, however, until the first quarter of the last century that

what is in a large sense the modern school of music came to full

growth. Then appeared Bach and Handel. They came suddenly; as suddenly

as Marlow and Shakespeare into the field of dramatic poetry, as

suddenly as Raphael and Titian into that of painting. Not indeed

without roots in the past and a growth from them, but with a

marvellously quick and strong development, and an unfolding of flower

and fruit that seemed as if it were--as indeed it was--the blooming of

a century plant. And as is ever the case in art, the utmost limit of

attainment seems to have been reached at the first bound. What was

dramatic poetry before the half century which began with Marlow and

Shakespeare? What was painting before the like period of its glory? And

what have either been since? This position may be claimed for Handel,

with the fullest recognition of the genius of Mozart (Haydn, great,

enchanting, truly inspired as he was, is yet out of the question), and

even of the almost awful genius of Beethoven. But when we remember that

the Hallelujah Chorus, _Lascia chio pianza_, the renowned _Largo_ in G

so grandly performed by Mr. Thomas's orchestra at his last subscription

concert, are from the same hand, and that these are only examples

(which I cite because they are so well known) of a creative power which

seems to have been equally great and various in its manifestations--when

we take into consideration the healthiness, the virility of Handel's

tone of thought, there being, I believe, in all his known works, not a

single passage marked by morbid feeling or even exaggerated sentiment,

although of intensest feeling there is overpowering expression, as for

example in the _Largo_ just referred to, and when we give due weight to

the copiousness of his production, he being the most voluminous of all

the great composers, if we measure his works by their quantity and not

by their numbers, in which an oratorio or an opera would count only one,

we can hardly hesitate, except in favor of Beethoven, in reckoning him

as the greatest creative mind in music. And as to Beethoven, deeply as

he sunk his shaft into the profound of human emotion, mightily as he

moves us, deftly as he expresses even the lighter moods of feeling

(rarely, however, without some passing touch which, if pushed a little

further, might become almost fierceness), is there not sometimes, and

perhaps more than sometimes, a morbidness, noble, magnificent, but still

morbidness, in his moods? We are overwhelmed by the grandeur, and are

swallowed up in the gloom of his graver compositions; but when we emerge

are we in as healthy a state of mind as that in which we find ourselves

after listening to Handel or reading Shakespeare--even if we read such

tragedies as "Hamlet," "Othello," and "King Lear"? Then, too, it must be

remembered how carefully Beethoven nursed his genius; how regardless he

was of every consideration except the expression of his own thought; and

how comparatively limited was his productiveness, or certainly his

production.

As to his moodiness, it must, on the other hand, be considered that it

is the peculiar function of music to express moods. Man's soul is

stirred by emotions which cannot be given utterance in words, and which

would remain unexpressed but for music, which to the musically

organized is a means of communication and of sympathy. There is a

question at least whether an art whose function it is to give

expression to inward feeling too subtle for words, an expression which

is above all words, which gives form to the formless and utterance to

the unspeakable, is not rightfully and of necessity at times morbid and

moody; whether if it were not so it would not fail in doing that which

is the very reason of its being. The supremacy lies between Handel and

Beethoven; and we shall find ourselves inclined to assign it now to one

and now to the other, according to the mood in which we are, which will

depend greatly on which of the two we have just heard.

And yet, as to pure music, irrespective of psychological

significance--that is, the expression of an ideal of beauty in musical

form--Mozart stands first among all composers. Another mind so fertile

in thoughts of the finest and highest kind of beauty is unknown in the

history of any art, Shakespeare being of course always excepted.

Writing, like Shakespeare, always for money, and not hesitating to put

his hand to any task that would bring him a return, driven by sharp

necessity almost to the prostitution of his genius, driven in his

boyhood, by an exacting father, to write as an infant prodigy for the

support of the family, dying at the early, and, as far as the mind is

concerned, the immature, age of thirty-seven, he left behind him, in

the mass of his compositions, much that was hastily produced merely to

meet the needs of the moment. And yet in it all what transcendent

beauty of form! He had rarely even a fitting occasion for the exercise

of his faculties. Rarely is he not superior to the subject which he

undertakes to illustrate. Like Shakespeare, he throws away beautiful

thoughts upon mean and trivial subjects. Contrary to the supposition of

the Roman Pope, with Mozart it was the jug that was begun to be made

and the vase that issued from his hand.[6] "Don Giovanni" his greatest

or at least his richest work, is full of examples of this incongruity

between the occasion and the production. In a previous paper I pointed

out an example in the _andante_ of Leporello's catalogue song. Another

is the trio in masks. Only elsewhere in his own works can be found

examples of an equally enchanting beauty of musical form. In its

thought, and in the elevation and finish of that thought, it reaches

the highest attainable pitch of perfection. This single trio is of more

worth than all that many composers of repute have written in all their

lives. For example: If it were a question between the destruction of

this brief passage and all of Mendelsohn's compositions, the trio

should be preserved without a moment's hesitation. Just as the Madonna

Sixtina is worth ten times over all the canvases of Giulio Romano; and

as a single mutilated figure of the frieze of the Parthenon, or the

Venus of Milo, outweighs all the perfect marbles of Canova and of

Thorwaldsen. Such is the transcendent value of the supreme in art.

[6] Amphora cepit Institui, currente rota cur urceus exit?--_Hor.

Ad Pisones._

In all the works of the great composers of the modern school--the only

real school--of music, from Bach to Beethoven, including Haydn, there

is a supreme dominant feeling for beauty of form, shown chiefly in

melody, but hardly less apparent in harmony. Indeed, without this

feeling they would not have been great. The rule is absolute: no form,

no art; for art is proportion, symmetry. Melody is a series of musical

proportions; like a series of arches the lines of which are harmonious.

These melodic ideas they elaborated with the utmost care. It is

generally supposed that ideas in art come spontaneously; and of all

this might seem truest of musical ideas, which are not, like those

expressed in language, in painting, in sculpture, or in architecture,

required to conform themselves to a type or a purpose. They do come

indeed to the musical artist, but not spontaneously in the form in

which he presents them. They would not come up if they were not in the

soil; but the soil must be cultivated and the growth must be pruned and

trained into seeming naturalness and spontaneousness of beauty.

Milton's lines--

Where the bright seraphim in burning row

Their loud, uplifted angel trumpets blow--

seem like a splendid spontaneous outburst of poetical expression. But

we know that their splendor and their spontaneous seeming is the result

of elaboration, of erasure, of interlineation, of recasting. The

thought we may believe came in a moment, but it was worked with

consummate care and art into the form in which the poet gave it to the

world. So it is even with melody, the most spontaneous-seeming part of

music. We may be sure that even Mozart, most fertile of all composers

in melody, the greatest master of instrumentation, elaborated his

themes and his treatment of them, if not on paper, at least in his mind

before he put his conceptions into score. And the reason, the occasion

for this elaboration was the desired attainment of the highest possible

perfection of form. I need hardly say to any musician that I am not

speaking of technical form, either of harmonic progression or of the

cast of a composition, as for example the sonata form, the symphonic

form, the dramatic form, but of the form of intrinsic absolute value

which appeals to the general craving for and appreciation of beauty.

This beauty of form cannot be disregarded in any art without failure to

attain the highest place in the world's estimation, no matter how

marvellous and admirable the powers displayed in another direction. For

lack of this excellence Rembrandt can never take the highest place, but

must be content with the admiration of those who can appreciate his

mastery of manipulation, a technical excellence. Of all great painters,

Turner is most imperfect in this respect. But Turner can hardly be said

to have dealt with form at all. Hence a certain weakness amid all his

glory. He painted distance, light. Among painters he is the king of

space, the prince of the powers of the air.

Absolutely essential as beauty of form is in music, the reason of it,

unlike that of the same quality in other arts, is beyond our

apprehension. I at least find it so. I have heard it, and seen it upon

paper, and considered it all my life. I have taken it in at eye and ear

together. I have read and have pondered; but I never have been able to

detect musical genius in its working, as I have, or have fancied that I

have, done in other arts. I can find no reason for the existence of

this beauty except that it is beautiful. I can see clearly, and I have

sometimes thought that I could with some satisfactory approach to

clearness tell in words, what the composer has done; but the how, and

above all the why, is as much hidden from me as it was from him. For

that it was unknown to him I am sure, not because I could not discover

it, but from the very nature of the case.

Beauty of form in music is absolute, independent, self-existent. This

is true of all natural beauty. There is no obligation upon beauty as

there is, for instance, upon mathematical truth or moral goodness. But

in all imitative art there is an obligation of conformity at least to

an ideal type of what is represented. But music the moment it becomes

imitative becomes ridiculous; it steps out of the proper limits of the

art. For example, Haydn's "cheerful roaring lion" and "flexible tiger"

in the "Creation." But it should be remembered that what is imitative

and false in that aspect may have an essential beauty given by the

genius of the composer. For example, the second and the fourth

movements of the "Pastoral Symphony," and Haydn's own illustration of

the passage, "softly purling glides through silent glades the limpid

brook," in Raphael's song, "Rolling in foaming billows."

Music in its higher forms--I will not say its highest, but those which

bring it within the pale of consideration in aesthetics--is without

relations of any kind, except those which it bears to the soul of the

composer and to that of the hearer. Even words are only the occasion of

it, the suggestion. An embroidery of music with words is like the

semi-pictorial explanatory addition to the Egyptian temples. The

hieroglyphics tell us the story indeed, but if we are near enough to

distinguish them, they only mar the effect of the architecture. So if

in song the words are for any reason sufficiently salient to attract

attention to themselves, they mar the music. In sacred music

innumerable foolish and canting verses have become associated with

fervor of feeling and sublimity of aspiration because of the music of

which they have been made the vehicle. We do not really think of the

words. And so in "Don Giovanni," in "Fidelio," we overlook the

childishness of the poetry, if it must be called poetry, and regard it

only as affording suggestions and occasions for the music.

Modern music was presented under these conditions until about half a

century ago, when beauty of form and emotional expression began to be

disregarded in favor of finish and brilliancy of execution. This was

brought about in a great measure by the mechanical improvement of the

pianoforte and the extension of its scale. This improvement and

extension were made, it is true, in part to meet the demands of

performers; but on the other hand, they made performance possible. I

believe that there has been no more pernicious influence upon music

than the transformation which the piano-forte has undergone since

Beethoven's time, and its diffusion over all the world. I do not refer

to the cruelties which it is daily the means of inflicting upon

inoffensive families and true lovers of music, but to the effect that

it has had upon composition and upon performance. The former it has

helped to be at once flashy, dull, intricate, and shallow; the latter

it has led to be astonishing. Brilliancy, a crowd of notes, sonority,

all without beauty of form or emotional suggestiveness--this is the

music which the modern grand piano-forte has brought upon us. Not only

piano-forte music, but in a measure all music, has become a brilliant

fantasia by Signor Rumblestominski. We do not sit in passive silence to

listen to it; we talk, or are tempted to talk, against it; and the

praise we give it is not a look of serene joy, with that tinge of

sadness which Shakespeare had in mind when he made Jessica say, "I'm

never merry when I hear sweet music," but a clapping of the hands and

congratulation upon a brilliant triumph. And then we turn aside and go

on again with our society gabble. Orchestral leaders and performers are

not content unless they have a very full score to "interpret." They

must have a big brilliant noise. The pitch has been raised until

singers shriek, in order that the tone of the instruments may be

brilliant. Our ears must be shot through and through with piercing

shafts of sound. The time is quickened until _allegro_ has become

_presto_, and _presto_ a maddened, indistinguishable rush. Even

Theodore Thomas loses some of the majesty of the final movement of the

"Fifth Symphony" by too quick a movement; and in the Trio of the

Scherzo he drives the basses into a headlong scramble up and down the

scale. When the clear succession of notes becomes indistinguishable,

musical form, and with it musical beauty, is lost; and the performance

becomes a mere victory over musical difficulties. And this quickening

of the time is exactly what should not have taken place. Our orchestras

have increased in size and in volume of sound since the days of Mozart

and Beethoven. As larger bodies, therefore, their movement should be a

little slower to produce the effect which the great composers had in

mind. But in our rage for brilliancy we have hastened the movement; as

if we should make an elephant gallop like a horse. Moreover we have

fallen into the fatal error of making the finish, if not the difficulty

of execution, superior to the presentation of beauty in form and in

expression.

This condition of musical taste has been accompanied or followed--we

cannot surely say as effect from cause--by a withering of the creative

musical faculty in all its fairest, highest branches. After Weber's

death, which deprived the world of the only musician who promised to be

worthy to follow Beethoven, came Schubert and Mendelssohn, neither of

them very strong men; the latter decidedly weak, and deficient in

creative faculty; the former far more fertile and original. Since their

time there has been a blank in the annals of music of the higher kind.

The creative faculty seems to be dead. It is not so; for nature is

exhaustless, and in his due time the new composer will come. But new

conceptions of beautiful musical forms are unknown to the present

generation--indeed, were so to the foregoing. There is Schumann; but

Schumann is only the strongest and best of the non-creative composers.

He writes very elegantly, with harmonies unexceptionable and pleasing;

his taste is generally exquisite; his handling of his themes masterly.

But to what great end? None. He could not create a melody; and his

harmony is plainly contrived, not conceived. All of Schumann's music

that I ever heard, from symphony down to piano-forte music, is not

worth Beethoven's Sonata in C sharp minor, or Mozart's quartet in C.[7]

They have a certain sort of beauty and charm while you are hearing

them, but you don't hanker after them; passages from them don't come to

you when you are alone with troubled thoughts, and comfort you, hearten

you, and build you up, as the remembered strains of Handel, Mozart, and

Beethoven do. Simply, they are without real melody: they have only a

well manufactured imitation of melody. Such enjoyment as they give is

in a great measure intellectual. We admire the composer's skilful

musical processes. Hence he is admired by professional musicians. And I

remark, in passing, that professional criticism in any art, although it

has a certain value, has not valid, determining power, and is not very

trustworthy as a guide. It too generally runs on methods, processes,

technicalities. If you would learn to paint, listen to the criticisms

of a well instructed, capable painter; but if you would know and feel

the highest things in art, remain an amateur and study nature and

Raphael and Titian and Tintoretto.

[7] No. 6, Breitkopf and Haertel.

As to the other composers who were Schumann's contemporaries, they

wrote in a condition of hopeless incapacity, except as to their

acquired mastery of their craft. They are ever uncertain themselves

what they would be at. Compare them with the real composers. Those men

knew they had something to do, and they did it. They felt that they had

something to say, and they said it. These are always about doing

something; they are ever entangled in some complicated toil of sound,

out of which they cannot find their way; they are hanging by the very

eyelids upon some discord that they are afraid to resolve; they are

always sounding a note of preparation, announcing that they are about

to do something, which they never do. Their music is written in the

paulo-post-future tense.

Under such circumstances it is not surprising that music, ceasing to be

merely beautiful and emotional, has, in its decay, sprouted a fungus

and monstrous intellectuality. Wagner's musical figures have become as

intricate, and often as ugly, as those of a Chinese puzzle; and the

entertainment is to see how they fit each other and the words to which

they are adapted. In his orchestral work we have the most masterly

instrumental coloring; a knowledge and an elaboration which is

unsurpassed, and also uninspired. It is great technical work, and no

wonder that professional musicians admire it. But what is its real

value? Take, for example, the finale to the overture to the

"Meistersinger." It is very impressive materially, and as a work of

instrumental art. It becomes tremendous from mere muscular activity and

accumulation of physical force. The violins rush frantically up and

down the finger-board; the violoncellos are ready to jump over their

bridges; the trumpets blow blood out of their eyes; and there is

general frenzy. But what is all this hurly-burly about? What are the

ideas? Look at them. There are, after all, but three, or it may be

four, notes in a chord, and a melody is--well, a melody; an

unmistakable sort of thing, one would think, although so hard to

define. What is there here of harmony or of melody that would be

valuable for its own sake? Strip this music of all its instrumental

elaboration, tone down its noisy self-assertion, and look at the bare

ideas as they can be played with two hands upon a piano-forte, or with

four strings in a quartet, and what are they worth? Would a circle of

cultivated musical people sit entranced by them if they were played

upon an old harpsichord! No, I take it. And if not, their worth is

little.

Instrumentation, and all manner of elaboration--orchestral and

choral--is of value only when it enhances and sets forth ideas,

melodies, harmonies--in a word, musical forms which in themselves have

the value which belongs to beauty and expression. Else, like the gift

of tongues without the spirit of love, it is literally sounding brass

and tinkling cymbals. There is in some of this work--notably in

Wagner's--an evidence of sustaining power which deserves and commands a

certain respect. But such sustaining power, so applied, is like figures

of caryatides supporting some poor decadent frieze. They bend and

strain and keep it up. But why, we are tempted to say to them, do you

strain to keep up that poor, commonplace stuff, which would not be

looked at if it stood not upon your heads? Let it fall! You are all

that keep it from tumbling into a dust-heap and seeming the rubbish

that it is. It seems to be a consciousness of their deficiency in

melody and in emotional expression which drives such composers of the

present day as aim to write in the higher style to make their music

"interdependent, logarithmic, differential, integral, and

corroborative," and to strive to make up in intellectual elaboration

what they lack in inspiration.

This condition of things in music is not to be bettered by endeavor.

Genius alone can do that, when brought into contact with the power of

appreciating genius. And genius, although conscious of its power, is

ever ignorant of its tendency, and never works but for its own ends;

while those who hear and understand its utterances do so with no higher

purpose than the delight they bring them. When I hear a man talk of

doing something to elevate his art, however much I may respect his

taste, his acquirements, or his aims, I then begin to doubt, if I have

not before doubted, his ability to write a sentence worth reading, to

make a picture worth looking at, or a song worth hearing.

RICHARD GRANT WHITE.

SPRING.

Spring gives the order, "Forward, march!"

'Tis borne along the eager line;

Breathes through the boughs of rustling larch,

And murmurs in the pine.

"March!" At the sound, impatient, springs

The mountain rill, with rippling glee,

And rolling through the valley, brings

Its tribute to the sea.

"March!" and upon each sunny hill

Old winter's allies, ice and snow,

Start at the music of the rill,

And join its onward flow.

"March!" Down among the fibrous roots

Of oaks we hear the summons ring.

The long-chilled life-blood upward shoots

To hail the coming spring.

"March!" and along each narrow neck,

Across the plain, and up the steep,

The spring tide clears the winter's wreck

With its resistless sweep.

Advancing in unbroken lines,

New allies rush to join its bands,

Till winter, in despair, resigns

The sceptre to its hands.

On southern slopes, in quiet glades,

And where the brooklets murmuring run,

The grass unsheathes its tiny blades

To temper in the sun.

Flora unfurls her banner bright

Above the field of flashing green,

And crocus blooms in lines of light

Throw back the sunlight's sheen.

The birds on every budding tree

Take up anew the old refrain:

The spring has come: rejoice all ye

Who breathe its air again.

H. R. H.

DRIFT-WOOD.

THE TRAVELLERS.

May brings the travelling season. Thanks to steam and Cook, we can all

find time for a trip to Florida or Labrador, if not to Lapland and

Thibet. Travel is a pastime of both sexes, all ages, all sorts and

conditions of men. Lord Bateman was a noble lord, a noble lord he was

of high degree; and, adds the ballad, "he determined to go abroad,

strange countries for to see." Cheek by jowl with Lord Bateman, in the

railroad car, is Samuel Shears, Esq., his lordship's tailor, on the

same errand.

"Pa, I think we ought to go to Paris," says matronly Mrs. Brood.

"Why do you think that, my dear?" asks paterfamilias.

"Because I do," rejoins the lady, wheeling in a circle of small radius.

Impressed by that logic, Brood has his trunks mended, and embarks his

family on the first available steamer.

Mrs. B's spring of action is that the Breeds have started, or that the

McBrides went last year. Fashion pries us out of our comfortable

domesticity, our cozy home-keeping ruts, which we exchange for the

miseries of inns and the perils of voyaging; precisely as custom,

gathering at length the force of law, "moves" a hundred thousand

hapless New Yorkers, more or less, every May, with smash of household

goods, cost, loss, hurry, flurry, and worry--they exchange houses as in

the children's game everybody changes "chairs" or "corners" to see who

will get the worst of it. This is a species of May travelling with all

its curses and none of its compensations.

Presently our European voyagers will be sending home the tale of their

misadventures. They fell among the London servants--soft and sweet to

the face, perfect devils behind your back; stealing all your provisions

under pretence of perquisites, and drinking enough beer in a week to

last an American a year; whereas, if you yourself so much as send for a

glass of ice-water at the hotel, the butler grumbles at the messenger,

"Those Americans lap water like dogs!" At Paris our pilgrims fall a

prey to landlords who charge the price of new furniture for every

microscopic scratch on a chair, besides cheating them out of a thousand

francs extra rent, as a parting token, on the ground that the laws

require a certain notice of quitting.

A more agreeable theme will be the people our travellers meet. Whoever

goes from another American city to New York is struck by the strange

faces he sees--phizzes and figures that make Hans Breitmann commonplace

and Nast a portrait painter instead of a caricaturist. Could one have

suspected such oddities in human shape, such outlandish rigs? The New

Yorker going to London is still more surprised at the queer-looking

specimens he sees there, surpassing the fancy of Dickens and

Cruikshank: plenty of Bagstocks, Peggotys and Skewtons; perfumed old

beaux, with enormous gloves, too long in the fingers, and with an

eyeglass held muscularly in one eye socket by screwing up the face; and

all sorts of people belonging to the last century, and magically coming

out of bandboxes a hundred years old.

So, at least, writes Augustus from London; and presently, as if whisked

off by an enchanter, we hear of the youth in Naples, "the noisiest city

in Europe," he says, where all the people chatter incessantly--"the

dirtiest city, too, and one of the most delightful." There is something

enviable to us desk-tethered mortals in these wide-striding rovers who

one week are in Copenhagen and the next in Constantinople. "Hang it,"

says Brown, coming down to breakfast in Brussels and finding that Smith

has gone, "I meant to bid Smith good-by, and forgot it. But I shall run

across him in Smyrna next month, and can do it then."

Before we have digested the Neapolitan missive of Augustus, and its

funny account of his fellow voyagers--how the men kissed all their male

friends at parting, as women do with us, and, after kissing, ran again

to the car windows to blow and throw last kisses--we see the traveller

in Toledo, and reeling off his diary to us in some such fashion as

this: "Here we find Burgos, formerly the capital of Castile and Leon,

showing signs of former greatness, but now fallen to decay. It has a

magnificent cathedral, a convent, and a nunnery, in which the people

seem to have spent all their money, the rest of the city being mostly

in ruins. Next we come to the Escurial, that vast pile, embracing

palace, monastery, and cathedral, with burying place for the reigning

kings. Leaving Madrid for a few moments, we will look at Toledo. Toledo

is one of the old cities of Spain, and was a place of some importance

when taken by the Romans, about 200 B.C. It had at one time 200,000

inhabitants; now but 17,000. What struck me so strangely was, why they

should build up such a city among these rocky hills, not a tree or

shrub to be seen outside the city, and very few inside," etc.

I quite like to read these travellers' letters, with their odd jumpings

from city to city and century to century. True, a man might girdle the

earth as many times as the Wandering Jew, without reaping a tithe of

the instruction that Xavier de Maistre got from his "Voyage Autour de

Ma Chambre"; and again, one untravelled, humorous pen made a small

Connecticut town more talked of than any other of its size in the

United States--I mean, of course, Danbury. Still, the exhilaration of

travel, and its habit of observation, do lend freshness to writing.

Then the returned traveller has a fund of new ideas for us

stay-at-homes, and his story is agreeable provided he does not

pronounce his French and German too abominably. He corrects our fancies

by his experience. Who does not know Mrs. Norton's "A soldier of the

Legion lay dying in Algiers," and has not conjured up an image of "fair

Bingen on the Rhine"? "_Fair_ Bingen!" cries Miss Kate contemptuously,

when we ask her memory of the place. "Why, Bingen is nothing--not

handsome, not picturesque, not poetic, not even clean. In fact, it is

the smelliest place on earth, except Cologne." So the traveller

modifies our stay-at-home impressions.

Again, we always notice signs of mental growth and widening in our

returned travellers. Besides, for a time they are less anxious over

details, less overcome by trivial mishaps; they have an agreeable

_aplomb_; they bring a certain refreshing atmosphere of leisure to our

round of careful routine. One palpable danger of the traveller is

becoming a slave to his guide-book, as some opera-goers are to the

libretto; he is verifying the assertions of his Murray, when he should

be seeing the landscape or the cathedral; he spends the time he has for

picture galleries in checking off the catalogue, as if hired to certify

that the alleged contents are there. Travellers who see only what the

books tell them to see bring us home no facts and opinions of value.

The earth has now been so tracked from pole to equator that the

traveller, to gain the world's attention, must see old things with new

eyes, or must ferret out new paths and places. Still, for a Stanley

and a Cameron mankind has immeasurable wonder; so has it for some

tremendous exploring sportsman like Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Cumming,

who takes only an ordinary paragraph to describe such an episode as the

crunching to death of his gun-bearer on a certain Indian "nullah,"

adding: "This was a sad termination to what had been a brief but

successful _chasse_--my bag during the trip consisting of seven tigers,

a panther, and a bear."

As to types of travellers, they have nearly all been drawn--the

irascible, the erratic, the English, the _nil admirari_, the

enthusiastic, and so on. Travelling is bad for some people, like Jack

Peters, who had his cards in Europe printed "Mr. Jacques Petersilli,"

pretending it to be easier for his European friends to get the hang of

that title, of which the "silly" part was all acquired across the sea.

The ex-Reverend Christopher Cheeseman, tutor and philosopher, is a

voyager of a sort perhaps destined to be more generally known among us.

He visits Europe as often as he can procure his passage and pocket

money in return for his valuable services as escort and adviser. He

arranges the preliminaries of purchasing the tickets and outfits, but,

once afloat, allows little to burden him with anxiety. Aboard ship he

is recognized as a good teller of stories, some serious but not

truthful, some comic but not truthful, these last being nicely

graduated in delicacy from the boudoir to the mess table. Reaching

England, he has prayers put up in the established church for the safe

arrival of "Christopher Crozier Cheeseman and party"--the humor being

that he is only the courier or nominally useful man of the persons who

pay for him, and whom he lumps as "party." He studies the peerage

attentively, carefully deciphering the mysteries of the coats of arms

on the equipages. In England, when visiting the cathedrals, he

expresses a great desire to be a monk (probably of the _bon vivant_

sort), and actually pushes his asceticism to the point of attending

religious services with great regularity; but at Rome the rogue will do

as Romans do, and may be found any Sunday afternoon listening to the

band on the Pincio. He likes best to travel as tutor to some ingenuous

youth, because it comes handy to leave the lad to fight a duel in

France, or gamble in Germany, or fall in love in Switzerland, while the

judicious mentor is supplied with funds to take a little diversion on

his own account, after his arduous duties. But let us stop at the

threshold of this sketch, because it is plainly one for the skilled

novelist, rather than the rambling, loitering prattler, to undertake.

* * * * *

SWINDLERS AND DUPES.

The number of people ready to buy $200 watches for $20, and then to

find them not worth $10, was made known by a recent exposure of

pretended Kansas "lotteries." A like eagerness maintains "gift

concerts" and similar swindles. Conducted honestly, they would earn

fortunes for their projectors, whose instinct, however, is for a total

swindle.

The gift swindle is known by its circular, with its voluble assurances

that "ticket-holders can confide in our honor"; that the drawing is to

be done from two boxes, a securely blindfolded deacon at one and a real

blind girl at the other; that all funds received will "remain

inviolably pledged for prizes and donations"; that the result of the

drawing of the 9,999 prizes by the 99,990 ticket-holders will be

telegraphed the same night to all parts of the United States and to

Mexico and Canada, and the prizes distributed the day following; that

agents may trust the honesty of the enterprise, "as its founders are

men of high standing," and so on.

One trick is the "cash assessment on prizes." The investor is notified

that he has drawn a $150 prize, deliverable on the payment of "the

usual five per cent. for handling," which sum he will "please forward"

to the Grand Atlantic and Great Western Monster Gift Carnival and

Bottle Washer's Library Fund Association. The gudgeon protests that

there was no such condition on his ticket, but not liking to lose $150

by grudging $7.50, "forwards" this sum, and receives $150 worth of

stock in the Seashore Gold-Mining Company, or 3 undivided acres in the

Atahualpa Swamp--"the directors of the association having recently

decided to invest the receipts for their wards, the ticket-holders, in

this splendid property." There really need be no ticket drawing or

tickets for this swindle, as people who never heard of the enterprise

can be informed of their luck, and will all the more quickly forward

their "five per cent."

Some readers may remember B. Sharp & Co.'s fine "gift enterprise,"

whose drawing was postponed so many times on the plea that "the last

drawn numbers are as fortunate as the first," as indeed they were. It

begged ticket-holders to "exhibit to your friends and neighbors the

many rich presents we have so generously bestowed upon you." The

"committee" were engaged in the herculean labors of "drawing and

registering tickets at the rate of 6,000 per week, and in packing and

expressing prizes"; but alas! "owing to unforeseen expenses we have

been put to in purchasing presents for our ticket-holders," this is

what happened:

_We are compelled to make an assessment of_ 5 PER CENT. _on all

prizes over fifty dollars_ ($50) awarded to them; and in order to

expedite the business of the distribution in packing and forwarding

the gifts, ticket-holders must within _ten days_ after notification

of the value of the gift awarded to them, forward to us the amount

of per centage, with directions for the packing and expressing of

their gift, or else at the expiration of that time it will be

forfeited.

Then there was B. Flat's "National Engineers Gift Enterprise," which

with a spice of humor announced that it was controlled by the class of

men for whose benefit it was devised--"all engineers." It had as

"references" a "State senator" of New York and another of Illinois, a

lithographer, an editor, a hardware merchant, and other like

distinguished personages, whose callings were proudly set forth,

presumably to show that they were not mere adventurers. An enlightened

press, if we may believe the circulars, backed up this "association."

"Its managers are men of the strictest integrity," said one Milwaukee

paper; "We believe they will discharge all their obligations to

purchasers of tickets with punctuality and integrity," said a second;

"An institution above suspicion, and worthy in every respect of public

patronage. The managers we believe to be honest, reliable, and

trustworthy," said a third. "The safest investment of the kind in

America," said one Chicago paper, unless the circular falsifies;

"Considered as a sure success," said a second. One New York paper is

quoted as commending the enterprise, and another as thinking that

"$30,000 for $2.00 is worth chancing." But when the thing went to

pieces, and B. Flat escaped on bail, it was announced that "the swindle

had been exposed by the press," as indeed it was.

* * * * *

PEGASUS IN HARNESS.

The muse that in our day quits Parnassus to pay gossiping visits among

the pill-kneaders, and to lounge in the haunts of trade, has of late

been pressed into service by the guild of beggars. Perceiving,

doubtless, that fortunes are got in teas, trousers, and tooth washes by

sheer dint of literary advertising, the mendicants too have quaffed the

Pierian spring, and now leave their sheets of verses at our doors for

the accommodating price of "whatever you choose to give." The rogues

have learned wisdom by experience. When a long-winded legislator

troubles his fellow Solons with an unwelcome speech, he is sometimes

gently rebuked by cries of "Oh, print the rest!" That is what the

professional beggars have learned to do. Habitually cut off in their

tale of woe at the door sill by an unfeeling "There's nothing for you!"

they have learned to print the rest, and now before Dora the doormaid

can utter her formula of rejection, a neat circular is in her hand, on

which is printed: "Please give this to the lady or gentleman. Will call

in an hour."

Such, in fact, was the inscription on a printed page left at the Maison

Quilibet this very morning, purporting to be a "copy of verses by a

party of mechanics," as indeed one may easily believe that it is, from

the internal evidence of such stanzas as these:

For many weeks we work have sought,

But work we cannot procure.

Sad distress has been our lot,

To go from door to door.

May want upon you never frown,

Nor in your dwelling come;

May Heaven pour its blessings down

On every friendly soul.

Lord Jesus, thou hast shed thy blood

For thousands such as we;

Many despise the poor tradesman's lot,

But to Thy Cross I flee.

Suddenly shifting then from poesy to prose, the circular continues:

A BLESSING.--May the blessings of God await you; may the bright sun

of glory shine above thy bed; may the gates of plenty, honor, and

happiness be ever open to thee; may no sorrow distress thy days,

and when the dim curtain of death is closing around thy last sleep,

and the lamp of life extinguishing, may it not receive one rude

blast to hasten its extinction.