THE EXILE OF DAPITAN
About this was nothing sinister, illegal, revolutionary, affrighting,
or incendiary, but the Spanish colony chose to view it with alarm. If
Rizal had organized a prayer meeting or a branch of the Young Men’s
Christian Association these nervous folk would have seen in it only
treason, stratagems, and spoils. On the Filipinos the effect was
different. To the deliberate judgment of the intelligentsia the plan of
the league appealed as the first practical suggestion of relief through
peaceful agitation. With a novel sensation of hope, they took it to
their bosoms. [170] Rapidly the membership increased; at last there was
a promise of union and directed effort. And then the powers that stood
behind the puppet governor-general and manipulated his movements
decided that the ripe time had come to spring the trap; before this
dangerous man should have back of him an organization able to realize
his dreams he must be put to silence. Despujol sent for Rizal, leaped
upon him as if from a machine with the leaflet, “The Poor Friars,” that
men said had been found in Lucia’s baggage, and without trial or
hearing ordered him to prison. From the spot where he stood in the
governor-general’s office a guard took him to Fort Santiago and thrust
him into a cell. Another generation will not believe that this was
done; and even in our own era, in which invasions of personal rights at
times of great public excitement are not unknown, an act of such rank
and impudent despotism seems improbable. There was not even a pretense
of any legal proceeding, no warrant, no magistrate, no commitment.
“Take this man to jail!” commands the governor-general. With an
obedient start the guard sweeps away the prisoner, helpless in a square
of rifles. It is enough to cause us to wonder if democracy and liberty
are or can be more than veneer upon any old frame of European monarchy
and whether time, in this conception of human society, must not
necessarily stand stock-still.
At Santiago guard was mounted [171] upon the mild reformer and man of
peace as if he had been some ferocious bandit captured red-handed and
likely to burst his bars. Sentinels stood day and night over his cell
door; no communication was allowed with his friends; and grown men in
the official service went through the theatrics of pretending that
there was danger of an attempt to rescue him.
The next day a decree was issued ordering his exile to Dapitan, a town
on the northeastern coast of the island of Mindanao. Upon what charge?
The charge of sacrilege and sedition made against him the day he sailed
from Hong-Kong, reinforced with Lucia’s damnable pillow-cases. On these
he had been adjudged guilty offhand, as one would drown cats or blind
puppies. He was not even allowed to know who were his accusers; for
that matter, he did not even know that he was accused. “This fellow has
committed sacrilege and sedition,” says some one in the ear of the
governor-general. “Exile him,” replies the governor-general, and signs
the order committing him to a living death. It is like the scene
between the governor-general and his secretary in “El Filibusterismo”;
if a man may have foreknowledge of his fate, Rizal had glimpsed this in
his novel.
There was the matter of the safe-conduct, the promise of protection,
given by this same governor-general, under which Rizal had left
Hong-Kong. It seems to have been not a feather-weight against the
Interests that cried for his blood. There need be no mystery as to the
source of these perfidies. Exile was the price Rizal paid for writing
“Noli Me Tangere”; the powers that now pushed him upon the savage coast
of Mindanao as an outcast sent there to die was the power of the
friars, enraged by these pictures of themselves. They demanded Rizal’s
blood; Despujol seems to have been incapable of the firing-squad and
only wicked enough to consent to exile.
A chorus of protest rose from the civilized world as soon as men
learned of this latest assault by a stupidly malignant Government upon
the foundation principles of modern liberty. In hugger-mugger Rizal
might be snatched away to banishment, but the time had gone by when
such things could continue to be hid. It was speedily known throughout
Europe that he had been decoyed from Hong-Kong by promises now shown to
have been deliberate inventions; that the governor-general had violated
his own safe-conduct; that, even if Lucia had possessed a seditious
document, proceedings should have lain against her and not against
Rizal; that in any society above that of the jungle he would have had a
hearing or some form of trial. Some such storm of resentment seems to
have been foreseen by Despujol. For the issue of the “Official Gazette”
that announced Rizal’s banishment he had prepared a long article
defending the Government’s course and describing Rizal as a dangerous
person. But he sufficiently betrayed himself by writing to the governor
of Santiago prison a personal letter instructing him to take every
precaution that Rizal should not see this number of the “Gazette,” and
beyond this in cowardice and infamy it seemed hardly possible to go.
[172]
For three days the victim of the aroused wrath of the governing class
lay in prison, being still denied any communication with friend or
relative. Then at night he was hustled aboard a steamer and started for
Dapitan.
So far as we can determine now, even in these conditions he lost
nothing of that serenity that has made him so admirable to some
investigators and so inexplicable to others. “Sustained and soothed by
an unfaltering trust” seems to have been literally the state of this
brown man from the ends of the earth. Many a white man far less tried
might have envied his self-possession. Dwell with some patience and
care, if you will, upon this his own record of his arrest and
deportation and see if you do not deem this remarkable that in such
conditions not a complaint, not a suggestion of resentment or of
bitterness, not a hint of fear occurs in his narrative. It is a plain,
blunt story written only for his friends. Here if anywhere he would
have exhibited wrath; and the story reads with a kind of chill, so
perfect is the unconcern. You can hardly say it reads as if it were
written about the sufferings of somebody else. For anybody else in the
like conditions this man would have made protest. Concerning himself he
had nothing to say except to record the facts. Here is what his
memorandum says of all this:
Wednesday he [the governor-general] asked me if I persisted in my
intention of returning to Hong-Kong. I told him “yes.” After some
conversation he said that I had brought political circulars in my
baggage. I replied that I had not. He asked me who was the owner of
the roll of pillows and petates [173] with my baggage. I said that
they belonged to my sister. He told me that because of them he was
going to send me to Fort Santiago. Don Ramón Despujol, his nephew
and aide, took me in one of the palace carriages. At Fort Santiago,
Don Enrique Villamor, the commander, received me. The room assigned
to me was an ordinary chamber. It had a bed, a dozen chairs, a
table, a wash-stand, and a mirror. There were three windows. One,
without bars, looked out on a court; another had bars, and
overlooked the wall and beach; the third served also as a door and
had a padlock. Two artillerymen were on guard as sentinels. These
had orders to fire on any one that tried to make signs from the
beach. I could neither write nor converse with the officer of the
guard.
Don Enrique Villamor, the commander of the fort, gave me books from
the library.
Each day the corporal of the guard proved to be a sergeant. They
cleaned the room every morning. For breakfast, I had coffee with
milk, a roll, and coffee-cake. Luncheon at 12:30 was of four
courses. Dinner was at 8:30 and similar to the luncheon. Commander
Villamor’s orderly waited on me.
On Thursday, the 14th, about 5:30 or 6 P.M., the nephew notified me
that at 10 that night I should sail for Dapitan. I prepared my
baggage, and at 10 was ready, but as no one came to get me, I went
to sleep.
At 12:15, the aide arrived with the same carriage that had brought
me there. By way of Santa Lucia Gate, they took me to the Malecon,
where there were General Ahumada and some other people. Another
aide and two of the Guardia Veterana were awaiting me in a boat.
The Cebu sailed in the morning at 9. They gave me a good
state-room, on the upper deck. Above the doors could be read,
“Chief.” Next my cabin was that of Captain Delgras, who had charge
of the party.
Ten soldiers from each branch of the military service comprised the
expedition. There were artillery, infantry of five regiments,
carbineers, cavalry, and engineers, and the Civil Guard.
We were carrying prisoners, loaded with chains, among whom were a
sergeant and a corporal, both Europeans. The former was to be shot
for having ordered the tying up of his superior officer who had
misbehaved while in Mindanao. The officer, for having let himself
be tied, was dismissed from the service. The soldiers who obeyed
orders, were sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment.
It appears that the misbehavior noted here by Rizal consisted of the
seduction of the sergeant’s wife by the officer, and the tying up of
the officer was the sergeant’s revenge. It is an interesting side-light
on the prevailing code that the officer was dismissed from the service
for allowing himself to be tied but not for dishonoring the poor
sergeant, whose recompense was to be shot. The privates were to be
punished for laying hands upon an officer, although they were but
obeying orders. [174]
I ate in my state-room, the food being the same as the officers
had. I always had a sentinel and a corporal on guard. Every night
Captain Delgras took me for a promenade till 9 o’clock. We passed
along the east coast of Mindanao and the west coast of Panay. We
came to Dapitan on Sunday at 7 in the evening.
Captain Delgras and three artillerymen accompanied me in a boat
rowed by eight sailors. There was a heavy sea.
The beach seemed very gloomy. We were in the dark, except for our
lantern, which showed a roadway grown with weeds.
In the town we met the governor or commandant, Captain Ricardo
Carnicero. There was also a Spanish exile, and the practicante,
[175] Don Cosme. We went to the town hall, which was a large
building.
That is all there is of this laconic narrative. Under the conditions it
can hardly be equaled for philosophical phlegm. “The beach seemed very
gloomy”; “As no one came to get me, I went to sleep.” It sounds like
casual notes on a holiday jaunt. In point of fact, he was in danger at
all times of assassination and knew it well. He must have rather
wondered at his fortune when he saw the beach at Dapitan and realized
that he had arrived without being murdered. [176]
It was a little town on the border of a savage country, known to be
unhealthful, and at that time so difficult of access from Manila that
he might have been nearer at Yokohama. It is charitable but hardly
necessary to believe that the men that consigned him to such a place
were unaware of its repute. With so little concealment they had sought
in other ways for his life, we have no reason to think now of a sudden
they had acquired mercy. To a thousand places more salubrious he might
as easily have been sent; none would satisfy them but this.
At Dapitan were a military station, a convento, and several priests.
Rizal was informed that if he would make a declaration of sympathy and
admiration for Spain he could reside at the convento with the priests.
Even for that privilege, dear to an intellectual man, hungry for the
company of his educated fellows, he would not lay perjury on his soul.
[177] Strange as the temptation seems to us in these days, the tempters
knew well what they had in view. With such a declaration they could
nullify much of Rizal’s influence upon his countrymen and possibly
allay something of the spirit of revolt that on all sides was rising in
the colony.
To the commandant’s house, accordingly, he was assigned. It was but
rude commons and a primitive environment. The sudden and cold plunge
from the place of respect he had held in Europe and his profitable
position in Hong-Kong would have overwhelmed a weaker spirit. Rizal
accepted the stern mutations with the unruffled composure that was
always his strong anchor in whatsoever difficulties. “No man bears
sorrow better,” says the antique Roman of himself; but you would not
look for a recrudescence of Marcus Brutus in a Malay of the nineteenth
century.
In the same spirit he now arranged his time upon a schedule after his
invariable custom, and resumed cheerfully a life of study and work.
Under the parole he had given that he would make no attempt to escape,
he was allowed to go about as he pleased and without observation, for
it is singular that this traitor and dangerous character was implicitly
trusted even by his enemies so far as any question of personal honor
was concerned. He had never a guard in Dapitan. Not only so, but the
commandants, one after another, and all the soldiery, from private to
highest officers, fell under the potent charm of his manner and became
his friends and admirers. The commandants were frequently changed. Each
in turn came to Dapitan warned against the perilous prisoner there and
therefore bristling with dislike; each went away swearing he was the
prince of good fellows and sorry for his fate.
At all times he was the most industrious of exiles; he must have had a
spirit akin to the genius of perpetual motion. Day after day he plunged
into the woods to study the animal life of the region, collect
specimens and write elaborate notes about shells, bugs, crawling
things, trees, and flowers. He explored the coasts of Mindanao and
visited the native villages. With evident enthusiasm he revived his
ethnological pleasures and collected native implements, weapons and
manufactures, many of which from his hands are now in the museum of
Dresden, for instance. [178] True to his natural inclinings, one of his
first employments had been to look about him at the chances the
children of that region had to gain even the rudiments of education.
Finding they had next to nothing, he gathered them about him and began
to teach. He was also busy at times with his professional
ministrations. Patients began to seek him from Manila, from Hong-Kong,
and even from more distant places, so great was his reputation as an
oculist. With the fees they paid him he embarked upon beneficent
enterprises that revealed another reserve in his resourceful mind.
The first of these was a lighting system for Dapitan; the next,
waterworks, which he devised, planned, and superintended in person,
going back to the engineering lore he had learned at the Ateneo and
then laid aside. Much of the construction was difficult, and engineers
still wonder at the skill and courage he showed in meeting its
problems. He and his workmen were without the proper tools; they must
improvise their own materials, and bring the water a long distance over
valleys and around hills; but they conquered every obstacle. [179]
When this task was done he bought him a tract of land close by the
town, built a house on it, and established there adequate quarters for
his school.
This may be a good place to say what this singular person was in some
of the sciences to which he gave so much of himself. As a physician,
while still a student at Madrid University, he had made commentaries of
remarkable merit, “Apuntes de Obstetricia” and “Apuntes Clinicos.” As
an ophthalmologist he seemed to win at once to distinction as soon as
he left the university. This Dr. de Weckert of Paris, to whom he went
first, was of too great repute and too well supplied with candidates to
have selected him for chief laboratory assistant if he had not been of
unusual attainments. It appears that de Weckert was so much impressed
with this brown man from Malaya that they began a warm friendship that
lasted until Rizal’s death, and so long as he remained in Paris he was
the great oculist’s favorite companion and collaborateur. In
Heidelberg, Leipzig, and Berlin he was the associate and assistant of
men like Galezowsky and Schulzer. In the few months that elapsed
between his first return to the Philippines and his departure thence at
the veiled order of Terrero, he received in fees more than five
thousand pesos, a sum equivalent to about fifteen thousand pesos of the
present day. At Hong-Kong, for the short time he was there, his office
was overrun with patients from all that part of the world. As we have
seen, they followed him even to far Dapitan. One of them was an
Englishman that made him a present of five hundred pesos, brown man and
Malay as he was.
As an ethnologist, he was an honored member of the leading ethnological
societies of Europe, and his close friendship with Blumentritt we have
noted. Dr. Meyer, director of the Royal Saxony Ethnographical Institute
of Dresden, regarded him with admiration as a great scholar and great
investigator. With Meyer and with Virchow he was on terms of
confidential intimacy. These were men in whom ordinarily confidence was
a plant of slow growth. They were drawn to and believed in Rizal
because he had mastered their specialty and could meet them in it on
their own footing. All those rare and abstruse works of Müller,
Perschel, Ratzel, and the other great leaders in ethnological research
he knew well [180] and, what was better, he had ideas of his own about
them. Not only then but long before; he had been mulling over
ethnological principles while he was teaching Filipino boys at the
Ateneo the best way to land on the solar plexus of a young Spanish
bully.
As a naturalist he enriched the museums of Europe and Manila with
hundreds of specimens of his gathering and preparing. Flowers, plants,
crustaceans and all forms of animal life attracted his study. The
German museums were so well pleased with his work that they offered
him, while he was in Dapitan, a remunerative salary to devote himself
entirely to gathering specimens for them, and they still exhibit his
collections among their most valued possessions. Three creatures,
previously unknown to science, now bear his name because he discovered
them. One is a frog called the Rhacoperus Rizali; the second is a
coleopter called the Apogonis Rizali; and the third, a dragon called
the Draco Rizali.
In philology, Rizal won the friendship and esteem of Dr. Reinhold Rost,
said to have been the greatest philologist of the nineteenth century,
and was himself one of its most wonderful polyglots. While he was at
Dapitan, to baffle the censor, he wrote a letter to his sister that he
began in colloquial German, carried on in colloquial English, and
concluded in colloquial French. [181] But this was for him a most
trifling exploit and hardly worth noticing. Besides these and Spanish,
of which he was a master, he spoke Latin, Greek, Arab, Sanskrit,
Hebrew, Swedish, Dutch, Catalan, Italian, Chinese, Japanese,
Portuguese, Russian, Tagalog, Visayan, and the Moro dialects of
Dapitan. One of his papers, a scientific treatise on the Visayan
language, was read before the Ethnographical Society of Berlin. He was
associated with Dr. Meyer and Dr. Blumentritt in the annotation of a
Chinese codicil of the Middle Ages. While at Dapitan he began to write
a scientific Tagalog grammar and a treatise on the resemblances between
Tagalog and Visayan speech. To amuse himself he would sometimes adorn a
title-page or drawing with quotations in Hebrew, Sanskrit, Japanese,
Spanish, and English.
As to other sciences, for example, he excelled in chemistry. Before he
was twenty-one he had obtained degrees as surveyor and agricultural
expert. He was an excellent engineer and so scientific an educator that
when the Philippine Republic came to be erected the plan of the
educational department and work was taken from his writings. In Leipzig
he went deeply into psychology, in which he was fellow-student with
Hugo Münsterberg. While he was at Dapitan he learned how to sail a
ship, and taught their trade to the fishermen, because he showed them
how to make and how to handle a better kind of net.
Incidentally, he had the makings of a great journalist.
Concerning his place as a poet, most of his poetry was written in
Spanish and after the approved Spanish manner. Like other poetry it is
virtually incapable of translation. The thought may be indicated but
not the melodic significance, so important in Spanish, and of which he
was a facile master. How impossible it is to reproduce this in
translation is apparent to one that will compare the five-line Spanish
stanza as Rizal left it and the best English version of the same
stanza. A poem that he wrote at Dapitan, “My Retreat,” [182] dedicated
to his mother, is an adequate expression of the reverent attitude
toward nature that he managed to carry with him unimpaired in so many
vicissitudes and long inhumations in the sordid dust of cities. This is
the first stanza in Mr. Derbyshire’s version: [183]
By the spreading beach where the sands are soft and fine,
At the foot of the mount in its mantle of green,
I have built my hut in the pleasant grove’s confine
From the forest seeking peace and a calmness divine,
Rest for the weary brain and silence to my sorrow keen.
From poetry, we pass to sociology, a transition that might seem violent
enough in one of less versatility. The commandants, of course, must be
parts of the general machinery of espionage and report to Manila what
they observed in this evil sprite that might show dangerous
machinations against the peace and dignity of our lord the king. Some
of the reports they made are still extant. One of them sent about this
time by a commandant, the Captain Ricardo Carnicero, to
Governor-General Despujol contains this account of a conversation:
Carnicero. Tell me, Rizal, what reforms seem to you most vital for
this country?
Rizal. First of all, to secure representation for it in the Cortes
[Spanish parliament] that there may be an end to the despotisms now
committed upon it.
Next to secularize the priesthood, [184] abolishing the power the
friars now exercise over the Government and the country. To
distribute the parishes as they become vacant, among the body of
the clergy, so that the clergy may be both Spanish and Philippine.
To reform the administration in all its branches.
To promote primary instruction, to end the interference of the
friars in the control of education, to give better salaries to both
men and women teachers.
To divide civil appointments equally between the Spaniards and the
Filipinos.
To cleanse the administration of justice.
To establish in capitals of more than 16,000 inhabitants schools of
arts and crafts.
These are my chief reforms. Once established in the right spirit,
the Philippines would be the happiest country in the world.
Carnicero. Friend Rizal, these reforms of yours do not seem to me
at all bad; but you seem to forget that the friars have as much
influence in Madrid as in Manila, and for this reason it would be
practically impossible at this time to put these changes into
effect.
Rizal. Do not think so. The influence of the friars is waning in
all parts of the world. I am bold enough to assure you that
wherever a government, even a little advanced, would give a free
hand to five or six honest and patriotic men, the power of the
friars would disappear. In Madrid it is perfectly well known what
the friars are doing here. So true is this that in the first
interview I had with Pi y Linares Rivas, when he was a member of
the Liberal party of Spain, he told me of things in this country of
which, although I was born here, I had been in ignorance. I can
cite to you many other instances of men in Spain that have exact
data on the lives and characters of the friars in the Philippines.
These gentlemen said to me: “The bad governments that in Spain are
following one another are blamed for many abuses that in reality
are wrought by the religious corporations. On the day when things
change we shall not forget the real offenders.” Excuse me for
saying this to you, but the friars are not wanted in the
Philippines. Always they become more repugnant and hateful as
always they interfere the more in conditions and affairs that do
not belong to them. [185]
Where lay the sedition that Rizal plotted is evident from this report,
and equally evident what power pulled the strings behind puppet king
and manikin premier.
He must have had reason, even in far Dapitan, to wonder if there were
any place out of range of the malicious or the dull. Persons that
thought they had a call to reform him and other persons that believed
they had been appointed to torture him would not leave him alone even
here. It was a place with what was called a mail service; in the course
of time almost any letter that had passed the censor would come limping
in. Among such freight arrived one day a laborious effort from the
superior of the Jesuits in the Philippines, the Rev. Father Pastells,
in which he took occasion to offer disagreeable remarks. Rizal might
have responded in kind, if he had pleased; as to which, take note of
some of the sarcastic passages in “Noli Me Tangere.” Instead of
flouting his reverend critic, he chose to favor him with a serious
letter in which the faith that guided his course was set forth with the
eloquence of honesty. He wrote:
You exclaim: “What a pity that so gifted a youth should not have
used his talents in a better cause.” Possibly there are other
causes better than mine. But my cause is good, and that is enough
for me.
Others, perhaps, may gain more honors and greater glory. But I am
like the bamboo, which is also a native of this soil. It is used
for cottages of light material and not for heavy European
buildings. So I regret neither my humble cause nor its small
rewards. I only regret the little talent that God has given me to
use in its service. If instead of being weak bamboo I had been
solid hardwood, I should have been able to give better aid. But He
that made me what I am never makes mistakes in any of His acts. He
knows very well how useful are even the smallest cottages.
As to any fame, honor, or profit that I might have gained, I admit
all that to sound attractive, for I am a young man of flesh and
blood with a full share of human weaknesses. But no one chooses the
nationality or race into which he is born. With his birth he
profits by the privileges or suffers the disadvantages that race
and nationality bring. So I accept the cause of my country.
I have confidence that He that created me a Filipino will know how
to pardon in me mistakes due to our hard position and the poor
education we receive from our birth.
I am not working for fame or glory. I have no ambition to rival
others that are born into conditions very different from my own.
My only desire is to do all I can within the limits of my powers. I
wish most to do what is needed most. I have received a little
learning and I think I ought to teach it to my countrymen. Others
more fortunate than I may work for the great things. [186]
He had letters of a different tenor from members of his family, toward
whom he yearned all his life with an almost singular devotion; but for
his strong sense of family duty he might then be receipting for great
fees and living sweetly in Hong-Kong instead of facing the miseries of
Dapitan. Of this fact he never made a mention to any one, if he thought
of it himself. Among the letters from these relatives that he held so
dear came one from a nephew in Luzon to which he made the following
characteristic reply:
I think I ought to mention to you a slight fault that you have
committed in your letter. It is a little error that many in society
make.
One does not say, “I and my sister greet you,” but “my sister and I
greet you.” Always you have to put yourself last. You should say,
“Emilio and I,” “you and I,” and so on. For the rest, your letter
leaves nothing to be desired in clearness, conciseness, and
spelling. Then keep on advancing. Learn, learn, and think much
about what you learn. Life is a very serious matter. It only goes
well for those that have intelligence and heart. To live is to be
among men, and to be among men is to strive.
But this strife is not a brute-like, selfish struggle, nor with men
alone. It is a strife with them, and at the same time with one’s
own passions. It is a struggle with the proprieties, with errors,
with prejudices. It is a never ending striving, with a smile on the
lips and the tears in the heart.
On this battle-field man has no better weapon than his
intelligence. He possesses no more force than he has heart. Bring
it out, then. Improve it, keep it prepared, and strengthen and
educate yourself for this.
Upon such a spirit the horrors of exile must have weighed little. In a
region strange, at that time uncouth and, compared with many in “your
Oriental Eden Isles,” unattractive, he offers to the world an
unaccustomed figure of the outcast. He went without repining to regular
and useful work while he understood well enough that he was a
sacrificial offering and fated to be so; the hatred and contempt of the
reactionary Interests were concentrated upon him; he was victimized for
his countrymen. Only two privations seemed poignant to him. He longed
for his family; he missed his books. With these, it appears, he would
have been content, eying cheerfully the fate that seemed to have at
last defined his career; for he had little doubt he should end his days
on this lonely shore. For consolation in his spiritual lack, he turned
to his arts and modeled assiduously; some of the most marvelous of his
sculptures belong to this period. Among them the bust of Father
Guerrico [187] that was exhibited years afterward at the St. Louis
Exposition, and won a gold medal there. [188] He was the spontaneous
artist that without conscious effort descries beauty in commonplace
things. Opposite his dwelling a native woman, bent upon one knee, was
cleaning the street for a coming festival. Something in her pose and
garmenture struck him as a graceful characteristic; he modeled her as
she labored. [189] From memory he modeled busts and medallions of men
he had known in Europe and Asia; in his sketch-book he preserved
effects he noticed in sky, sea, and woods. He returned to poetic
composition and produced now some of the most beautiful of his works.
More than this in armor of patience the Stoics themselves could demand
nothing. How many Highland Scotch have stood upon the sands of France
and sighed away their souls northward? And how often have the
sympathetic thought with compassion of the English pioneers in early
America, of the Pilgrim fathers that first bleak winter, of Hugo in
Jersey and Napoleon chained to his rock? This man hunted out the
beauties of exile, made them his friends and companions, taught his
pupils, made poetry, carved statues, loved his fellows, and thanked
God.