Miss Rodman hesitated a moment. "Yes, dear," she replied; and she

added, with an aunt's prerogative, "Why?"

"I wished him to know," answered Olivia, simply. "And I preferred not

to speak of it myself. I am glad you told him."

Miss Rodman flushed a little. She was about to speak, apparently, but

her niece interrupted her.

"He's coming to take us over to the Pines before supper, if he

finishes his map. It seems to me that a government geologist has a

very easy time, Auntie. Or isn't Mr. Allan a serious-minded

geologist?"

Her tone was deliciously quizzical; she was conscious of a secret

happiness that made her words come fast and sure.

"I should think the field work would always be interesting," replied

Miss Rodman, with more literalness than was demanded by the occasion.

"The preparation of the maps seems to me purely mechanical drudgery.

If the Survey had a respectable appropriation, Dr. Allan would be left

free for other things. Some of his work has been very brilliant."

The girl laughed. It always amused her to hear Miss Rodman, Ph.D.,

give Elbridge Allan his Munich title. It was like that old story of

the Roman augurs bowing solemnly to each other with a twinkle in the

eye.

_"Hoho! hahei! hoho!"_ sang a big, boyish voice from the direction of

the Morraway Hotel.

_"Hoho! hahei! Hahei! hoho!"_

Olivia turned and waved her hand toward the voice. "He doesn't get the

intervals of that Sword-song exactly according to Wagner," she

commented. "But what a Siegfried he would make for size!"

He came striding down the woodland path, shouting out the Sword-song

and waving his pipe; a superb, tan-faced fellow of twenty-five,

clean-built, clean-shaven, clear-eyed. His heavy hob-nailed field

shoes were noiseless upon the moss. The loose, gray golf suit--with

coat unbuttoned--showed every line of his athlete's figure, as he kept

time to the rhythm of that splendid chant. When he neared the ladies,

he lifted his cap, and all the sunlight that strayed through the

balsam branches seemed to fall upon his face.

Miss Rodman gazed at him admiringly. "Isn't he magnificent!" she

murmured.

Olivia did not hear her. "He knows!" she kept saying to herself. "And

yet he is coming!"

"Hail!" cried Allan, waving cap and pipe together. "O ye idle women!"

"But we've been reading," explained Miss Rodman.

He picked up the _Journal of Folklore_ and flung it down again. "Worse

yet!" he insisted. "You ought to be tramping. Come, let's go over to

the Pines."

"Is the map finished?" asked Olivia.

"Done, and despatched to an ungrateful government. I'm going to strike

work for two days, to celebrate; then we begin triangulations on the

north side of the lake. Well, aren't you coming?"

He put out his hand and swung Miss Rodman to her feet. Olivia had

risen without assistance and was looking around for her hat. Allan

handed it to her.

"I have some letters to write," said Miss Rodman. "I believe I won't

go."

The geologist's face expressed polite regret. Olivia was busied with

her hat-pins.

"But Miss Lane may go," continued her aunt. "You might take Dr. Allan

over in the canoe, Olivia. That would save time."

The girl nodded, outwardly demure, inwardly dancing toward that

bright, wave-thrown shell. "Very well," she said, "if Mr. Allan will

trust himself again to the Water-Witch."

"Either of us could swim ashore with the Water-Witch in our teeth,"

laughed the geologist. "Come ahead!"

They started down the steep, shadowy path to the lake, the two tall,

lithe figures swaying away from each other, toward each other, as they

wound in and out among the trees.

Miss Rodman felt a trifle uncomfortable. She had not been altogether

honest when Olivia asked her if Mr. Allan knew about her eyes. In fact

she realized that she had been rather dishonest. She had indeed told

the geologist--what he might have guessed for himself--that Miss

Lane's eyes gave her serious trouble, and that she had been forbidden

to use them. But she had not told him that Olivia was going blind. It

was obvious that he liked the girl, and Miss Rodman shrank from

letting the tragic shadow of Olivia's future darken these summer

months unnecessarily. She recognized instinctively that the

geologist's attitude toward her ward might be altered if he were

conscious of the coming catastrophe. She wanted--yes, she owned to

herself that she wanted--to have Elbridge Allan so deeply in love with

Olivia that even if the worst came true he would but love her the

better for her blindness. But to tell him prematurely might have

spoiled everything. So reasoned Miss Rodman, Ph.D.

Yet, as she stood watching the disappearing pair, she was conscious of

a certain irritation. If only he had not come singing through the

woods at just the moment when she was about to explain to Olivia that

she had not told him the worst! For she felt sure, now, that she would

have explained, if they had not been interrupted. Well, she would

confess to Olivia after supper! And Miss Rodman gathered up the

_Journal of Folklore_ and the other reviews, and sauntered back to the

hotel. Ethics, after all, had been only her minor subject when she

took her doctor's degree; she felt strongest in ethnology.

Meanwhile old Felix, at the boat-house, sponged out the tiny birch

canoe, and scowled as Allan stepped carelessly into the bow with his

big hob-nailed shoes. Miss Lane tucked up the cuffs of her shirt-waist

to keep them from the drip of the paddle, and Allan pocketed her

sleeve-buttons. Then old Felix pushed them off. He had rented boats

there for thirty years, ever since those first grand seasons of the

Morraway Hotel, when the Concord coaches ran, and before the railroad

had gone up the other valley, and left the Morraway region to a mild

decay. Thirty years; but he had never seen a girl whom he fancied as

much as Olivia Lane. He had pushed so many couples off from the old

wharf in his time, and never a finer pair than this, yet he liked

Olivia better alone. He did not know why he disliked the geologist,

except that Allan had broken an oar in June and had forgotten to pay

for it.

The pair in the Water-Witch grew rather silent, as the canoe crept

over the deep, mountain-shadowed water. Allan smoked his pipe

vigorously, his eyes upon Miss Lane; she seemed wholly occupied with

her paddling. As they neared the shore he warned her once or twice

when the canoe grazed the sharp edges of protruding basalt; but each

time she avoided them with what appeared to him extraordinary skill.

In reality she could not see them, and thought he understood.

She gave him her hand as she stepped ashore, and was conscious that he

retained it a moment longer than mere courtesy demanded. He kept close

to her side as they breasted the steep mountain-path. Whenever they

stopped to rest, each could hear the other's breathing. Now and then,

at a rock-strewn rise, he placed his fingers beneath her elbow, to

steady her. He had never done it before.

"He knows!" she kept saying to herself, deep down below all words. "He

knows! And he wants me to feel that it makes no difference!" It

thrilled her like great music. Let the dark wave break, if it must; it

could not rob her of the shining treasure. She could yet be loved,

like other women. The darkness without would not be so dreadful, if

all those lamps that Heaven meant to be lighted in a woman's soul were

glowing!

They reached the crest of the knoll, where a dozen ragged white pines

towered. Beneath them curved the lake, growing darker already as the

western sky began to blaze. Olivia seated herself against one of the

pines, and, removing her hat, leaned back contentedly. It was so good

to breathe deep and free, to feel the breeze at her temples, to have

the man who loved her reclining at her feet. All this could yet be

hers, whatever happened!

And all at once, upon one of the lower branches of the pine, she was

aware of a white blackbird. The utter surprise sent the color from her

face; then it came flooding back again. In a tumult of unreasoning

joy, of girlish superstition, she bent forward and caught Allan by the

shoulder, pointing stealthily at the startled bird.

"The white blackbird!" she whispered, rapturously.

He glanced upward indifferently, wondering at Miss Lane's ecstatic

face. He did not know that she cared particularly for birds.

"It's an albino," he remarked. "I've seen him three or four times this

summer. They have one in the museum at St. Johnsbury."

"Hush!" exclaimed, Olivia, with a low, intense utterance that almost

awed him. "It may sing!"

But the bird fluttered its cream-white wings, and disappeared into the

upper branches of the pine.

"It's too late," said the geologist. "Blackbirds don't sing after

midsummer."

"Oh, you don't understand!" she cried, half-starting from her seat and

peering upward into the dusky, breeze-swept canopy. "The white

blackbird is the Restorer of Sight!"

He looked puzzled.

"There's a legend!" she exclaimed. "Auntie and I learned it this very

afternoon. The singing of a white blackbird restores sight to the

blind!"

"Well," he said, carelessly, rapping the ashes out of his pipe, "what

of that?" And he looked up in her face again, thinking that her

luminous brown eyes had never been so lovely.

He saw them change and grow piteous, even as he spoke.

"Didn't Auntie tell you?" she demanded.

He shook his head.

She grew white, and a moan escaped her lips. The truth dawned, clear

and pitiless. Aunt Jane had failed to tell him plainly, and Elbridge

Allan--her lover, as she had believed--was yet in ignorance of her

fate.

But the girl had had a long training in courage, and she spoke

instantly. "Mr. Allan, I am in all probability going to be absolutely

blind. They said that in Paris and London last summer, and they gave

me a year. Dr. Sands told me a month ago that I had but one chance in

fifty."

Her voice was quiet and even, but she did not trust herself to look at

Elbridge Allan. She gazed out over the gloomy lake toward the

sun-tipped peak of Morraway Mountain, and waited. She would know, now.

So many times had she waited, like this, for a verdict from the

doctors, but her heart had never seemed to stop quite still before.

She heard him make a surprised movement, but he did not speak.

"I knew Billy Sands in college," he said awkwardly at last. "He was

too lazy then to walk across the yard when the bell rang."

"He is an old friend of ours," she replied, in swift loyalty. "No one

could have been more kind----"

She stopped, realizing that he was embarrassed.

"Miss Lane," he broke out, "it's terrible! I had no idea it was as

serious as that. I'm sorrier than I can say. Is Billy Sands really the

best man to go to? There used to be a wonderful oculist in Munich. By

Jupiter, it's too bad! Do you know, I think you're immensely brave.

I--I wish I might be of some service."

Slowly she turned her eyes from the mountain-top, and looked straight

into his face. It was a handsome face, full of boyish trouble, of

genuine sympathy, of tenderness, even. And that was all there was

there. His eyes fell. The stillness was so great that she could hear

overhead the sleepy flutter and chirp of the white blackbird, the

Restorer of Sight. And she was blind no longer: she comprehended, in

that one instant, that he did not love her.

"I am so sorry----" he began again.

"I am sure of that, Mr. Allan," she interrupted. "But it is really

better not to talk about it. It cannot be helped. And Auntie and I

seldom speak of it." She wished to be loyal to her aunt, through all.

Allan nodded his head. He was thinking that it was a little unfair in

Miss Rodman to let a young fellow go on--well, yes, liking a

girl--without telling him that she was liable to be blind.

Olivia found herself trembling. Oh, if he would only go away! She

could bear it, if she were alone! If he only would not lie there and

look regretful and pathetic!

From far up the valley to the southward floated the faint whistle of

the evening express. "Mr. Allan," said Olivia, suddenly, "you _can_ do

me a great service. Dr. Sands is coming on that train, and I promised

Auntie to have a carriage sent for him. I forgot it. Would you mind

attending to it? You might take the footpath down to Swayne's, and

telephone, and I'll bring over the canoe."

Allan rose, with a look of relief which he could not quite disguise.

"You're sure you don't mind going back alone?" he asked.

"Not at all."

With a long troubled look at the girl's downcast face he turned away

and hurried down the slope toward Swayne's. His own dream-castle was

in ruins, too; for a month past he had begun to picture Olivia's tall

charming figure in the castle entrance. She had all that he could

possibly have desired in a woman: beauty, grace, humor, wealth--and

she had seemed to like him--and now she was going blind! It was too

bad--too bad. He felt very hard hit. He stopped to light his pipe, and

then strode on, discontentedly.

Olivia threw herself face downward upon the soft, sun-warmed

pine-needles, and lay there sobbing. It was hard to give him up;

harder still to feel that he had never loved her at all. She had

simply been mistaken. Childlike, she had fancied it was the sea-shell

that was singing, when in reality the music was only the echo from her

own pulse-beats. Wave after wave of maidenly shame throbbed to her

cheeks and throat. She had wanted to be loved, before that pall was

flung over her life, and while she could still be to her lover as

other women were to theirs. But she had had no right--no right!

Moment by moment her girlhood seemed to slip away from her, like some

bright vision that flees at day-break. She felt already the terrible

helplessness of her doom, the loneliness of a blind woman who is

growing old. High overhead the solitary, mateless white blackbird

smoothed his creamy wings and settled himself to rest among the

soughing branches. Morraway Mountain grew gray and distant. The mist

began to rise from the swarthy lake. Between the trunks of the ancient

pines the sunset glowed more and more faintly. The wind began to

whisper solemnly in the woods. And still the girl lay prostrate

between the roots of the great pine, praying to be forgiven for her

selfishness.

* * * * *

It was quite dusk when she arose. With some difficulty she found the

path and hurried downward, stumbling often and once falling. But her

courage rose with the very play of her muscles. She had to grope with

her hands to find the canoe, so thickly hung the mist already above

the lake. There were lights moving at old Felix's boat-house, but

Olivia could not see them. She seated herself in the Water-Witch, took

her bearing from the vague masses of mountain shadow, and began to

paddle with long, firm strokes. As the canoe shot into deep water, she

was conscious that something scraped its frail side. In another moment

the water was pouring over her ankles and knees. She stopped paddling

to feel for the leak, and instantly the canoe began to settle.

With a powerful effort the girl freed herself from it as it sank,

although she went under once and lost her hold upon the paddle. But

she was a practised swimmer, and though the water chilled her through

and through she struck out in what she fancied was the right

direction. After a dozen strokes the shore seemed farther away, and

she swam back in growing fear to the spot where she thought the canoe

had sunk, in the hope of picking up the paddle. Round and round she

swam, with a slow side-stroke, trying to find it, but it had drifted

away.

She was getting bewildered in the mist, and the huge shadows that

loomed above the lake seemed all alike. She called once or twice, and

then remembered that Felix had probably gone home, and that no one

could possibly hear her at the hotel. She turned on her back and

floated awhile, to collect herself, and then, keeping her eyes on a

certain shadowy outline in the fog, she struck out again with

desperate coolness. Even if she were quite wrong, the lake was only

half a mile wide here, and she had made a half mile so often.

If only her clothing did not pull her down so terribly! She had to

turn over and float, in order to rest, and in so doing she lost her

wavering landmark. A cry of terror escaped her, and with that the

water slapped over her face for the first time. She shook it out of

her nostrils and began to swim in a circle, peering vainly through the

curtain of fog. The shadows had all melted again into one vast shadow.

Her strength was going now; every stroke was an agony. She called--not

knowing that she did so--all the life-passion of youth vibrating in

the clear voice; then she turned on her back to float once more,

making a gallant, lonely, losing fight of it to the very last....

She felt quite warm now, and all of a sudden she ceased to have any

fear. This was the way God was taking to keep her from growing blind;

she had been as brave as she could, but now that nightmare of

life-long helplessness was over. It was not to be Blindness, after

all. Death, beautiful, silent-footed, soft-voiced Death had

outstripped Blindness, and was enfolding her--murmuring to

her--murmuring----

And as she closed her eyes contentedly, old Felix, swearing

tremulously, leaned out of his boat and drew her in.

* * * * *

But it was the two men in the other boat who carried Miss Lane up to

the Morraway Hotel. One of them was Elbridge Allan, pale and

disconcerted; the other a dark, quick-eyed, square-lipped man, who

dismissed the geologist rather abruptly, after Olivia had been taken

to Miss Rodman's room.

"But she's my friend, Dr. Sands," he pleaded.

"And mine. And my patient besides, Mr. Allan," pronounced Dr. Sands.

"Then, Doctor," said Allan, nervously, "you must let me ask you a

question. Miss Lane told me three hours ago that she was going blind.

I was--I don't mind saying--very much upset by it. Is it true?"

"Miss Lane's eyes are in a very serious condition," replied Dr. Sands,

in his slightly bored, professional voice, while he measured the other

man from head to foot.

"There is no chance?"

"I would not say that," was the brusque answer. "There is always a

chance. You will of course pardon me for not discussing my patient?"

There was a quiet finality about this query which did not invite

conversation, and Allan turned irresolutely away.

It was in the middle of the next forenoon before Dr. Sands allowed

Olivia to talk. She lay on the couch in her aunt's room, a fire of

maple logs roaring on the hearth, a cold fine rain whistling against

the shaking windows. The turn of the year had come. Miss Rodman had

gone off to get some sleep. The famous young oculist was poking

determinedly at the fire and calling himself hard names. He might have

known that that handsome geologist would make himself obnoxious to

Olivia Lane!

"Doctor," spoke Olivia.

"Yes, Miss Lane." He was at her side in a moment.

"Do you know," she said, "I saw a white blackbird yesterday, just as

clearly! It restores sight by its singing, only it was too late in the

year for it to sing." There was a gentle irony in her voice, like the

echo of her old bravery.

"Was it you who took me out of the water?" she asked, after a pause.

He shook his head. "I wasn't lucky enough. It was Felix."

"Last night," said Miss Lane, slowly, "I didn't want to be taken out.

The water seemed just the place for me. But this morning I feel very

much stronger--Oh, very strong indeed!" She lifted one hand, to show

how powerful she was, but it fell back upon the rug that covered her.

The doctor nodded. He was wondering about Elbridge Allan.

"I can bear anything," she went on. "You see I have had to think it

all through. You are going to tell me that there is no chance, are you

not? There was but one in fifty, you said." It was not hope, but only

a great patience, that shone softly in her eyes.

"If you have held your own for the last month, we'll call it one in

forty-nine," he replied. "But you see I don't know yet whether you

have held your own. I don't know anything to-day, Olivia, except that

I love you. I have loved you ever since I sent you to London."

She moved her head wearily, as if she could not comprehend.

"Of course it's very stupid in me to say so this morning," he

exclaimed, ruefully. "But I have waited too long already." He was

still thinking of Elbridge Allan.

"But I am going blind!" she cried, flinging out her hands.

"Very likely, dear," he replied. "Yet that has nothing to do with

this."

She gave him a long, long look, the tears starting.

"It is _you_ that I am in love with," he said, slowly. "But of course

we will keep on making a good fight for the eyes."

"I--can't--think," cried Olivia. And indeed she seemed to be back in

the unsounded water again, shrouded by shadowy forms, surrendering

herself helplessly to a power mightier than her own. Only it was not

Death that was murmuring now; it was Life, gallant, high-hearted,

all-conquering Life, whose most secret name is Love. And as in that

other supreme moment it was awe that the girl felt rather than fear.

"Not--now--," she whispered. "Not--yet. I--can't--think."

"Well, don't!" he exclaimed, eagerly, "I don't wish you to think. If

you stop to think, you'll refuse me."

Olivia smiled faintly.

"I want you to go to sleep again," he declared. In an instant he had

drawn down the shades and placed the screen before the fire. "And when

you wake up," he continued, "I shall be right here, Olivia;--and

always--right--here.--I think that's about what I want to say," he

added, with a curious husky little laugh.

The room was too dark for him to see the delicate color surge into

Olivia's pale face. But her eyelids closed slowly, obediently, and he

went softly out.

THE ENDURING

By James Whitcomb Riley

A misty memory--faint, far away

And vague and dim as childhood's long-lost day--

Forever haunts and holds me with a spell

Of awe and wonder indefinable:--

A shoeshop-wall.--An ancient temple, drawn

Of crumbling granite, sagging portico

And gray, forbidding gateway, grim as woe;

And o'er the portal, cut in antique line,

The words--cut likewise in this brain of mine--

_"Would'st have a friend?--Would'st know what friend is best?

Have GOD thy friend: He passeth all the rest."_

Again the old shoemaker pounds and pounds

Resentfully, as the loud laugh resounds

And the coarse jest is bandied round the throng

That smokes about the smoldering stove; and long,

Tempestuous disputes arise, and then--

Even as all like discords die again;

The while a barefoot boy more gravely heeds

The quaint old picture, and tiptoeing reads

There in the rainy gloom the legend o'er

The lowering portal of the old church door--

_"Would'st have a friend?--Would'st know what friend is best?

Have GOD thy friend: He passeth all the rest."_

So older--older--older, year by year,

The boy has grown, that now, an old man here,

He seems a part of Allegory, where

He stands before Life as the old print there--

Still awed, and marvelling what light must be

Hid by the door that bars Futurity;--

Though ever clearer than with eyes of youth,

He reads with his old eyes--and tears forsooth--

_"Would'st have a friend?--Would'st know what friend is best?

Have GOD thy friend: He passeth all the rest."_

SEARCH-LIGHT LETTERS

LETTER TO A YOUNG MAN WISHING TO BE AN AMERICAN

By Robert Grant

I.

I wrote this once as a definition of Americanism: "It seems to me to

be, first of all, a consciousness of unfettered individuality coupled

with a determination to make the most of self." In short, a compound

of independence and energy. To you, in the earnest temper of mind

which your letter of inquiry suggests, this definition may seem a

generality of not much practical value; declarative of essential

truth, yet only vaguely helpful to the individual. Yet I offer it as a

starting-point of doctrine, for to my thinking the people of the

United States who have impressed themselves most notably on the world

have possessed these two traits, independence and energy, in marked

degree. And to you, whatever your condition in life, if you consider,

it must be apparent that manly self-respect and enterprising force are

essential to character and good citizenship, and that the prominence

accorded to these qualities by those who have analyzed the component

parts of our nationality is a distinction which should be perpetuated

and reinforced by succeeding generations.

Nevertheless, the counsel seems to approximate a glittering generality

for the reason that the opportunities for acting upon it no longer

sprout on every bush as in the forties, fifties, sixties, and seventies

of the present century when we were a budding nation and much of our

territory was still virgin soil. I write "seems to approximate"

advisedly, for the opportunities are just as plenty, merely less

obvious. Yet here again I must make this qualification--one which

recalls doubtless the favorite aphorism employed to meet the plea that

the legal profession is over-crowded--that there is always an

abundance of room on the top benches. Indisputably the day has passed

when the ambitious and enterprising American youth could have fruit

from the tree of material fortune almost by stretching out his hand.

Now he has to climb far, and the process is likely to be slow and

discouraging. The conditions peculiar to a sparse population in a new

country rich in resources have almost ceased to exist, and, though a

young nation still, we are face to face with the problems which

concern a seething civilization where almost every calling seems full.

Now and again some lucky seeker for fortune still finds it in a brief

twelve-month, but for the mass of American young men the opportunities

for speedy, dazzling prosperity have ceased to exist. Those who win

the prizes of life among us nowadays owe their success, in all but

sporadic cases, to unusual talents, tireless zeal and unremitting

labor, almost as in England, and France, and Germany. So also, with

the passing of the period when enterprise and ambition were whetted by

the promise of sudden and vast rewards, have disappeared many of the

traits, both external and psychological, which were characteristic of

our early nationality. The buffalo is nearly extinct, and with him is

vanishing much of the bluff, graceless assertiveness of demeanor which

was once deemed essential by most citizens to the display of native

independence. Our point of view has changed, broadened, evolved in so

many ways that it were futile to do more than indicate by a general

description what is so obvious. Partly by the engrafting and adoption

of foreign ideas and customs, partly by the growth among us of new

conditions beyond the simple ken of our forefathers, our national life

has become both complex and cosmopolitan. If we, who were once prone

to believe our knowledge, our manners, and our customs to be

all-sufficient, have been borrowing from others, so we in our turn

have been imitated by the older nations of Europe, and the result is

an approximation in sympathies and a blurring of distinctions.

Political differences and race superficialities of expression seem a

larger barrier than they really are, for in its broader faiths and

vision the civilized world is becoming homogeneous. The ocean cable

and the facilities for travel have palsied insular prejudice and

lifted the embargo on the free interchange of ideas. The educated

American sees no resemblance to himself in the caricatures of

twenty-five years ago, and rejoices in the consciousness that the best

men the world over are essentially alike. This, perhaps, is only

another way of reasserting that human nature is always human nature,

but this old apothegm has a clearer significance to-day than ever

before.

Yet the opportunities for the display of enterprise and independence

remain none the less distinct because we are becoming a cosmopolitan

community and the old spectacular flavor has been kneaded out of the

national life. Much of our free soil has been appropriated by an army

of emigrants from Europe, and in connection with this fact the saying

is rife that every foreigner seems infused with a new dignity from the

moment that he becomes an American. This may be bathos in individual

cases, yet it is the offspring of truth. Still it remains equally true

that we have an enormous foreign population whose ideas and standards

are those which they brought with them. Proud as these men and women

may be of their new nationality, and eager as they may be to aid in

the promotion of good citizenship, their very existence here in large

numbers has altered the conditions of the problem of Americanism. The

problem involved is no longer that of the winning of a new land by a

free, spirited people under a republican form of government, but the

larger equation of the evolution of the human race. Americanism to-day

stands in a sense more accurate than before as the experiment of

government of the people, for the people, and by the people, and for

the most complete amalgamation of the blood of Christendom which the

human race has ever known. We have lately been celebrating our

centennial anniversaries. Already the great figures of our early

history seem remote. The struggle with which we are concerned is more

intense and broader than theirs: It is the progress of human society.

You, whom I am addressing, find yourself a unit in a vast,

heterogeneous population and a complex civilization. You live in the

midst of the most modern aspirations and appliances, and cheek by jowl

with the joy and sorrow, the comfort and distress, the virtue and vice

of a great democracy. Your birthright of independence and energy finds

itself facing essentially the same perplexities as those which

confront the inhabitants of other civilizations where the tide of

existence runs strong and exuberant. If our nationality is to be of

value to the world, Americanism must stand henceforth for a

rectification of old theories concerning, and an application of fresh

vitality to the entire problem of human living.

Love of country should be a part of the creed both of him who counsels

and him who listens, yet I deem it my duty, considering the nature of

our topic, to suggest that there are not a few in the world,

foreigners chiefly, who would be disposed to answer your inquiry how

best to be an American, by citing _Punch's_ advice to persons about to

marry, "don't!" It does credit to your love of country that you have

assumed a true American to be a consummation devoutly to be emulated.

Humility on this subject has certainly never been a national trait,

and I cannot subscribe to any such doubt myself. But yet again let me

indicate that across the water the point is at least mooted whether

the seeker for perfect truth would not be nearer success if incarnated

under almost any other civilized name. Let me hasten to add that I

believe this to be due to national prejudice, envy, and lack of

intelligent discrimination, especially the latter, in that the

foreigner is mistaken as to the identity of the true American. It

behooves you therefore to ascertain carefully who the true American

is, for even my defence seems to hint at the suggestion that all

Americans are not equally admirable. Forty years ago an intimation

that all Americans were not the moral and intellectual, to say nothing

of the physical, superiors of any Englishman, Frenchman, German or

Italian alive would have subjected a writer to beetling criticism;

but, as I have already intimated, we have learned a thing or two since

then. And it is not a little thing to have discovered that, though

their hearts were right and their intentions good, our forefathers

were not so abnormally virtuous and wise as to entitle them or us to

an exclusive and proscriptive patent of superiority. We glory in them,

but while we revere them as the fosterers and perpetuators of that

fine, energetic, high-minded, probing spirit which we call the

touch-stone of Americanism, we are prepared, with some reluctance, yet

frankly, when cornered, to admit that they did not possess a monopoly

of righteousness or knowledge.

I shall assume, then, that you, in common with other citizens, have

reached this rationally patriotic point of view and are willing to

agree that we are not, as a nation, above criticism. If you are still

inclined to regard us, the plain people of these United States, as a

mighty phalanx of Sir Galahads in search of the Holy Grail, the

citation of a few facts may act aperiently on your mind and wash away

the cobwebs of hallucination. For instance, to begin from the

political standpoint, our acquirement of Texas and other territory

once belonging to Mexico suggests the predatory methods of the Middle

Ages rather than an aspiring and sensitive national public temper. The

government of our large cities has from time to time been so

notoriously corrupt as to indicate at least an easy-going, shiftless,

civic spirit in the average free-born municipal voter. It is a matter

of common knowledge that in the legislative bodies of all our States

there is a certain number of members whose action in support of or

against measures is controlled by money bribes. From the point of view

of morals, statistics show that poverty and crime, drunkenness and

licentiousness in our large cities are little less rife than in the

great capitals of Europe; and you have merely to read the newspapers

to satisfy yourself that individuals from the population of the small

towns and of the country districts from the eastern limit of Maine to

the southwestern coast of California are capable of monstrous murders,

rank thefts, and a sensational variety of ordinary human vices. It

were easy to illustrate further, but this should convince you that the

patriotic enthusiast who would prove the people of the United States

to be a cohort of angels of light has verily a task compared with

which the labors of Sisyphus and other victims of impossibility fade

into ease. Even our public schools, that favorite emblem of our

omniscience, have been declared by authority to merit interest, but by

no means grovelling admiration, on the part of the effete peoples of

Europe.

We will proceed then on the understanding that, whatever its past, the

present civilization of the United States reveals the every-day human

being in his or her infinite variety, and that the true American must

grasp this fact in order to fulfil his destiny. If our nation is to be

a lamp to the civilized world, it will be because we prove with time

that poor human nature, by virtue of the leaven called Americanism,

has reached a higher plane of intelligent virtue and happiness than

the world has hitherto attained. Who then is the true American? And

what are the signs which give us hope that the people of the United

States are capable of accomplishing this result? What, too, are the

signs which induce our censors and critics to shake their heads and

refuse to acknowledge the probability of it?

II

I will begin with the inverse process and indicate a list of those who

are not true Americans, and yet who are so familiar types in our

national community that the burden of proof is on the patriot to show

that they are not essentially representative.

No. 1. _The Plutocratic Gentleman of Leisure who Amuses

Himself._--Here we have a deliberate imitation of a well-known figure

of the older civilizations. The grandfather by superior ability,

industry, and enterprise has accumulated a vast fortune. His

grand-children, nurtured with care, spend their golden youth in mere

extravagant amusement and often in dissipation. There are many

individuals in our so-called leisure class who devote their lives to

intelligent and useful occupation, but there is every reason for

asserting that the point of view of the child of fortune in this

country is significantly that of the idler--and a more deplorable

idler than he of the aristocracies of Europe whom he models himself

on, for the reason that the foreigner is less indifferent than he to

intellectual interests. Is there any body of people in the world more

contemptible, and anybody among us more useless as an inspiring

product of Americanism, than the pleasure-seeking, unpatriotic element

of the very rich who, under the caption of our best society, arrogate

social distinction by reason of their vulgar ostentation of wealth,

their extravagant methods of entertainment and their aimless

pleasure-loving lives? To vie with each other in lavish outlay, to

visit Europe with frequency, to possess steam-yachts, to bribe

custom-house officers, to sneer at our institutions and, save by an

occasional check, to ignore all the duties of citizenship, is an

off-handed epitome of their existence. And in it all they are merely

copy-cats--servile followers of the aristocratic creed, but without

the genuine prestige of the old-time nobilities. And in the same

breath let me not forget the women.

(_Note._--"I was afraid you were going to," said my wife, Josephine.

"Women count for so much here, and yet their heads seem to become

hopelessly turned as soon as they are multi-millionnaires.")

Women indeed count for much here, and yet it is they even more than

the men who are responsible for and encourage the mere pleasure-loving

life among the leisure class. A ceaseless round of every variety of

money-consuming, vapid amusement occupies their days and nights from

January to January, and for what purpose? To marry their daughters to

foreign noblemen? To breed scandal by pursuing intimacies with other

men than their husbands? To demonstrate that the American woman, when

she has all the opportunities which health, wealth, and leisure can

bestow, is content to become a mere quick-witted, shallow voluptuary?

You will be told that these people are very inconsiderable in number,

that they really exercise a small influence, and that one is not to

judge the men and women of the United States by them. It is true that

they are not very numerous, though their number seems to be

increasing, and I am fain to believe that they are not merely out of

sympathy with, but alien in character to, the American people as a

whole; and yet I cannot see why an unfriendly critic should not claim

that they are representative, for they are the lineal descendants of

the men from every part of the land who have been the most successful

in the accumulation of wealth. Their grandfathers were the pioneers

whose brains and sinews were stronger than their fellows in the

struggle of nation-building; their fathers were the keenest and not

presumptively the most dishonest men of affairs in the country. Not

only this; but though the plain people of the nation affect to

reprobate this class as un-American and evil, yet the newspapers, who

aim to be the exponents of the opinions of the general mass and to

cater to their preferences, are constantly setting forth the doings of

the so-called multi-millionnaires and their associates with a

journalistic gusto and redundancy which reveals an absorbing interest

and satisfaction in their concerns on the part of the everyday public.

Undeniably there are no laws which prohibit the wealthy from

squandering their riches in futile extravagance and wasting their time

in empty frivolities, nor is our leisure class peculiar in this when

compared with the corresponding class in other countries, unless it be

in a more manifest bent toward civic imbecility. But, from the point

of view of human progress, is it not rather discouraging that the most

financially prosperous should aspire merely to mimic and outdo the

follies of courts, the heartless levity and extravagance of which have

been among the instigators of popular revolution? Surely, if this is

the best Americanism, if this is what democracy proffers as the flower

of its crown of success, it were more satisfactory to the sensitive

citizen to owe allegiance to some country where the pretensions to

omniscient soul superiority were more commensurate with the results

produced.

No. 2. _The Easy-going Hypocrite._--Here is another slip from the tree

of human nature, which flourishes on this soil with a sturdy growth. A

large section of the American people has been talking for buncombe,

not merely since years ago the member of Congress from North Carolina

naïvely admitted that his remarks were uttered solely for the

edification of the town of that name, and so supplied a descriptive

phrase for the habit, but from the outset of our national

responsibilities. To talk for effect with the thinly concealed purpose

of deceiving a part of the American people all of the time has been

and continues to be a favorite practice with many of the politicians

of the country. Yet this public trick of proclaiming sentiments and

opinions with the tongue in the cheek is the conspicuous

surface-symptom of a larger vice which is fitly described as

hypocrisy. There is a way of looking at this accusation which deprives

it of part of its sting, yet leaves us in a predicament not very

complimentary to our boasted sense of humor. It is that the free-born

American citizen means so well that he is habitually dazzled by his

own predilections toward righteousness into utterances which he as a

frail mortal cannot hope to live up to, and consequently that he is

prone to express himself in terms which none but the unsophisticated

are expected to believe. In other words, that he is an unconscious

hypocrite. However harmless this idiosyncrasy may have been as a

preliminary trick of expression, there is no room for doubt that the

plea of unconsciousness must cease to satisfy the most indulgent moral

philosopher after a very short time. Yet we have persevered in the

practice astonishingly, until it may be said that hyperbole is the

favorite form of public utterance on almost any subject among a large

class of individuals, in the expectation that only a certain

percentage will not understand that the speaker or writer is not

strictly in earnest. In this manner the virtuous and the patriotic are

enabled to give free vent to their emotions and to set their

fellow-citizens and themselves highest among the people of the earth

without other expenditure than words, resolutions, or empty laws. The

process gently titillates the self-esteem of the performer so that he

almost persuades himself for the time being that he believes what he

is saying: He appreciates that his hearers like better to have their

hopes rehearsed as realities at the expense of veracity than to be

reminded of imperfections at the expense of pride: And he rejoices in

those whom he has fooled into believing that their hopes have been

realized, and that all the virtue which he tremendously stands for is

part and parcel of the national equipment. Under the insidious

influence of this mode of enlightenment the everyday keen American

citizen goes about with his head in the air, knowing in his secret

heart that one-half of what he hears from the lips of those who

represent him in public is buncombe, but content with the shadow for

the substance, and wearing a chip on his shoulder as a warning to

those who would assert that we are not really as virtuous and as noble

as our spokesmen have declared.

For instance, to return to the concrete, consider the plight of a

police commissioner in most of our large cities. Those interested in

the suppression of vice appear before the legislature and urge the

maintenance of a vigorous policy. Acts are passed by the law-makers

manifesting the intention of the community to wage vigorous war

against the social evil and the sale of liquor, and prescribing

unequivocal regulations. The appointing power is urged to select a

strong man to enforce these laws. Supposing he does, what follows?

Murmurs and contemptuous abuse. Murmurs from what is known as the

hard-headed, common-sense portion of the community, who complain that

the strong man entrusted with authority does not show tact; that what

was expected of him was judicious surface enforcement of the law

sufficient to beguile reformers and cranks, and give a semblance of

improvement, not strict, literal compliance. They will tell you that

the social evil can no more be suppressed than water can be prevented

from running down hill, and that the explicit language of the statutes

was framed for the benefit of clergymen, and that no one else with

common sense supposed it would be enforced to the letter by any

intelligent official. The very legislators who voted to pass the laws

will shrug their shoulders rancorously and confide to you the same

thing; yet in another breath assert to their constituents that they

have fought the fight in defence of white-robed chastity and the

sacred sanctity of the home.

Now, is this Americanism, the very best Americanism? Surely not. It

has an Anglo-Saxon flavor about it which it is easy to recognize as

foreign and imported. Englishmen have been asserting for centuries

that they were fighting the fight in defence of white-robed chastity

and the sanctity of the home, to the amusement of the rest of the

world, for in spite of the fact that the laws demand a vigorous policy

and the British matron and the Sunday-school Unions declare that the

home is safe, those familiar with facts know that London is one of the

most disgustingly impure cities in the world, and that the youth let

loose upon its streets is in very much the same predicament as Daniel

in the den of lions, without the same certainty of rescue. And why?

Because the hard-headed, common-sense British public sanctions

hypocrisy. They tell you that they are doing their utmost to crush the

evil. This is for the marines, the British matron, and the

Sunday-school Unions. But let a strong man attempt to banish from the

streets the shoals of women of loose character, and what an

unmistakable murmur would arise. How long would he remain in office?

It may be that the social evil can no more be suppressed than water

can be prevented from running down hill. That is neither here nor

there for the purposes of this illustration. But to demand the passage

of laws, and then to abuse and undermine the influence of those who

try to enforce them is a vice more subversive to national character

than the fault of Mary Magdalene and her unpenitent successors, both

male and female.

Take, again, our custom-house regulations concerning persons returning

home from abroad. The law demands a certain tariff, yet it is

notorious that a large number of so-called respectable people are able

to procure free entry for their effects by bribes to the subordinates.

And why? Because those who passed the law devised it to cajole a

certain portion of the community; but those charged with the

enforcement of it, in deference to its unpopularity, are expected to

make matters at the port smooth for travellers with easy-going

consciences. Hence the continued existence at the New York

Custom-house of the shameless bribe-taker in all his disgusting

variety. Authority from time to time puts on a semblance of integrity

and discipline, but the home-comer continues to gloat over the old

story of double deceit, his own and another's. Is this the best

Americanism? Yet these are American citizens who offer the bribe, who

pocket it, and who allow the abuse to exist by solemnly or

good-naturedly ignoring it. Consider the diversity of our divorce

laws. It is indeed true that opinions differ as to what are and what

are not suitable grounds for divorce, so that uniformity of

legislation in the different States is difficult of attainment; yet

there is reason to believe that progress toward this would be swifter

were it not for the convenience of the present system which allows men

and women who profess orthodoxy a loop-hole of escape to a less

rigorous jurisdiction when the occasion arises. Similarly, in the case

of corporation laws, it is noticeable that not far removed from those

communities where paid-up capital stock and other assurances of good

faith are required from incorporators, some State is to be found where

none of these restrictions exist. Thus an appearance of virtue is

preserved, self-consciousness of virtue flattered, a certain number

deluded, and yet all the conveniences and privileges of a hard-headed,

easy-going civilization are kept within reaching distance.

No. 3. _The Worshipper of False Gods._--It is a commonplace of foreign

criticism that the free-born American is insatiate for money, and that

everything else pales into insignificance before the diameter of the

mighty dollar. That is the favorite taunt of those who do not admire

our institutions and behavior, and the favorite note of warning of

those who would fain think well of us. No one can deny that the

influence and power of money in this country during the last thirty

years have been enormous. One reason for this is obvious. The

magnificent resources of a huge territory have been developed during

that period. Men have grown rich in a night, and huge fortunes have

been accumulated with a rapidity adapted not merely to dazzle and stir

to envy other nations, but to turn the heads of our own people. We

have become one of the wealthiest civilizations, and our

multi-millionnaires are among the money magnates of the world. Yet

popular sentiment in public utterance affects to despise money, and

inclines to abuse those who possess it. I write "affects," for here

again the point of hypocrisy recurs to mind, and even you very likely

would be prompt to remind me that, according to our vernacular, to

make one's pile and make it quickly is a wide-spread touch-stone of

ambition. True enough it is that there has been, and is, room for

reproach in the aggressiveness of this tendency, and yet the seeming

hypocrisy is once more unconscious in that the popular point of view

intends to be sincere, but the situation has been too dazzling for

sober brains and high resolves. For let it be said that keenness of

vision and a capacity for escaping from the trammels of conventional

and inveterate delusions are essentially American traits, and as a

consequence no one more clearly than the American citizen appreciates

the importance of material resources as a factor of happy living, and

none so definitely as he refuses to be discouraged by the priestly

creed that only a few can be comfortable and happy in this life and

that the poor and miserable will be recompensed hereafter for their

earthly travails. His doctrine is that he desires, if possible, to be

one of that comfortable and happy few, and in the exuberance of his

consciousness that human life is absorbing, he fortifies the capacity

to make the most of it by the quaint, convincing statement that we

shall be a long time dead. His quick-witted, intelligent repugnance to

the old theory that the mass should be cajoled into dispensing with

earthly comforts has helped to give a humorous, material twist to his

words; and yet, I venture to assert, has left his finer instincts

unperverted, except in the case of the individual. This combination of

an extraordinary opportunity and a shrewd intelligence has, however,

it must be admitted, produced a considerable and sorry crop of these

individuals guided by the principle that wealth is the highest good,

and should be sought at the expense of every scruple. Their many

successes in the accomplishment of this single purpose have served to

create the impression that the whole nation is thus diseased, and have

done the greater harm of dwarfing many an aspiring nature, spell-bound

by the cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces which sheer

money-making has established. As a result the best Americanism is

menaced both by the example of accumulation without conscience, and

the dangerous public atmosphere which this generates, in that the

common eye is caught by the brilliance of the spectacle, and the

common mind lured to meditate imitation at every sacrifice. So they

say of us that the American hero is the man of material successes,

"the smart man" who "gets there" by hook or crook, and that we are

content to ask no embarrassing questions as to ways and means,

provided the pecuniary evidences of attainment are indisputable. The

patriotic American resents this as a libel, and maintains that this

type of hero-worship is but a surface indication of the public soul,

just as the horrors of the divorce court are but a surface indication

of the general conditions of married life. Yet the patriot must admit

that there is danger to the noble aspirations which we claim to

cherish as Americans from the bright, keen, easy-going, metallic,

practical, hard-headed, humorous citizen, male and female, whose aim

is simply to push ahead, at any cost, and who in the process does not

hesitate to part with his spiritual properties as being cumbersome,

unremunerative and somewhat ridiculous. The materialist is no new

figure in human civilization. "Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow

we die," is but the ancient synonyme for "we shall be a long time

dead." A deep, abiding faith in the serious purposes of humanity has

ever been obvious to us Americans as a national possession, however

foreigners may deny it to us, but the American nature is at the same

time, as I have suggested, essentially practical, level-headed, and

inquiring, and is ever ready with a shrewd jest to dispute the sway of

traditions founded on cant or out-worn ideas. It behooves you then, if

you would be a true American, to beware overstepping the limit which

separates aspiring, intelligent, winsome common-sense from the

philosophy of mere materialism. There lies one of the great perils of

democracy; and unless the development of democracy be toward higher

spiritual experiences, Americanism must prove a failure. Keen

enjoyment of living is a noble thing, so too is the ambition to

overcome material circumstances, and to command the fruits of the

earth. A realization of the possibility of this, and an emancipation

from dogmas which foreordained him to despair, has evolved the alert,

independent, progressive American citizen, and side by side with him

the individual whom the less enlightened portion of the community have

enshrined in their hearts under the caption of a smart man. This

popular hero, with his taking guise of easy-going good nature,

assuring his admirers by way of flippant disposition of the claims of

conscience and aspiration that "it will be all the same a hundred

years hence" is the kind of American whom every patriot should seek to

discredit and avoid imitating.

III

The foregoing suggestions will suffice, I think, to demonstrate to you

that we are not uniformly a nation of Sir Galahads, and that certain

types of Americanism, if encouraged and perpetuated, are likely to

impair the value and force of our civilization. But having dispelled

the hallucination that we are uniformly irreproachable, I would remind

you that, in order to be a good American, it is even more necessary

for you to appreciate the fine traits of your countrymen than to be

keenly alive to their shortcomings. There are two ways of looking at

any community, as there are two ways of looking at life. The same

landscape may appear to the same gaze brilliant, inspiring, and

interesting, or flat, homely, and unsuggestive, according as the eye

of the onlooker be healthy or jaundiced. It is easy to fix one's

attention on the vulgar and heartless ostentation of the rich, on the

cheapness and venality of some of our legislators, on the evidences of

hypocrisy and false hero-worship, materialism, and superficiality of a

portion of our population, and in doing so to forget and overlook the

efficacy and finer manifestations of the people whose lives are the

force and bulwark of the state. It is easy to go through the streets

of a large city and note only the noise and smoke and stir, coarse

circumstance and coarser crime, neglecting to remember that beneath

this kernel of hard, real life the human heart is beating high and

warm with the hopes and desires of the spirit. It is not necessary for

a human being, it is essentially not necessary for an American, to

look at life from the point of view of what the eye beholds in the

hours of soul-torpor. True is it that Americanism stands to-day as

almost synonymous with the struggle of democracy, and that the equal

development of the life of the whole people for the common good is

what most deeply concerns us; but this does not mean that it is right

or American to adhere to what is ordinary and low, because it is still

inevitable that the ideals and standards of the mass should not be

those of the finest spirits. It was an American who bade you hitch

your wagon to a star, and you have only to reflect in order to recall

the spiritual vigor, the righteous force of will, the strength of

aspiring mind, the patriotic courage, the tireless soul-struggle of

the early generations of choicely educated, simply nurtured Americans.

Their thought and conscience, true and star-seeking even in its

limitations, laid the foundations of law and order, of civic liberty

and private welfare, of national honor and domestic repute. Their

enterprise and perseverance, their grit and suppleness of intelligence

wrested our broad Western acreage from the savage and--

* * * * *

(_Note._--I was here interrupted in the fervor of this genuine

peroration by my wife Josephine's exclamation, "Oh, how atrociously

they abused and persecuted those poor Indians, shunting them off from

reservation to reservation, cheating them out of their lands and

furs!"

It is not agreeable to be held up in this highwayman fashion when one

is warming to a subject, but there is a melancholy truth in

Josephine's statement which cannot be utterly contradicted. Still this

is what I said to her: "My dear, I had hoped you understood that I had

referred sufficiently to our national delinquencies, and that I was

trying to depict to my correspondent the other side of the case.

However just and appropriate your criticism might be under other

circumstances, I can only regard it now as misplaced and unfortunate."

I spoke with appropriate dignity. "Hoity, toity, toity me!" she

responded. "I won't say another word.")

* * * * *

--wrested our broad Western acreage from the savage, and in less than

half a century transformed it into a thriving, bustling, forceful

civilization. Their ingenuity, their restless spirit of inquiry, their

practical skill, their impatience of delay and love of swift decisive

action have built countless monuments in huge new cities in the

twinkling of an eye, in the marvellous useful inventions which have

revolutionized the methods of the world, the cotton-gin, the

steamboat, the telegraph, the telephone, the palace-car--in the eager

response made to the call of patriotism when danger threatened the

existence of their country, and in the strong, original,

clear-thinking, shrewdly acting, quaint personalities which have

sprung from time to time from the very soil, as it were, in full

mental panoply like the warriors of the Cadmean seed. Their stern

sense of responsibility, their earnest desire for self-improvement,

their ambitious zeal to acquire and to diffuse knowledge have founded,

fostered, and supported the system of public schools and

well-organized colleges which exist to-day in almost every portion of

the country. The possessors of these qualities were Americans--the

best Americans. Their plan of life was neither cheap nor shallow, but

steadfast, aspiring, strong, and patient. From small beginnings, by

industry and fortitude, they fought their way to success, and produced

the powerful and vital nation whose career the world is watching with

an interest born of the knowledge that it is humanity's latest and

most important experiment. The development of the democratic principle

is at the root of Americanism, but whoever, out of deference to what

may be called practical considerations, abates one jot the fervor of

his or her desire to escape from the commonplace, or who, in other

words, forsakes his ideals and is content with a lower aim and a lower

outlook, in order to suit the average temper, is false to his

birthright and to the best Americanism.

It has been one of the grievances of those whose material surroundings

have been more favorable and who have possessed more ostensible social

refinement than the mass of the population, that they were regarded

askance and excluded from public service and influence. There used to

be some foundation for this charge, but the counter plea of the

complainants of lack of sympathy and distrust of country was still

more true, and an explanation and, in a large measure, a justification

of the prejudice. True strength and refinement of character has always

in the end commanded the respect and admiration of our people, but

they have been roughly suspicious of any class isolation or assumption

of superiority. It has been difficult accordingly for that type of

Americans who arrogated tacitly, but nevertheless plainly, the

prerogatives of social importance, to take an active part in the

responsibilities of citizenship. They have been mistrusted, and

sneered at, and not always unjustly, for they have been prone to

belittle our national institutions and to make sport of the social

idiosyncrasies of their unconventional countrymen for the

entertainment of foreigners. And yet the people have never failed to

recognize and to reverence the fine emanations of the spirit as

evidenced by our poets, historians, thinkers, or statesmen. Our

forceful humanitarian and ethical movements, our most earnest reforms

found their most zealous and untiring supporters among the rank and

file of the people. Abraham Lincoln was understood last of all by the

social aristocracy of the nation. Emerson's inspiration found an

answering chord in every country town in New England. True it is that

on the surface the popular judgment may often seem superficial and

cheap in tone, but the wise American is chary of accepting surface

ebullitions as the real index of the public judgment. He understands

that mixed in with the unthinking and the degenerate is a rank and

file majority of sober, self-respecting men and women, whose instincts

are both earnest and original, and who are to be depended on in every

serious emergency to think and act on the side of civilizing progress.

It is the inability to appreciate this which breeds our civic censors,

who are led by their lack of perspective to underestimate the

character of the people and to foretell the ultimate failure of our

experiment.

The increase of wealth and a wider familiarity with luxury and comfort

through the country has made a considerable and more important class

of those whose material and social surroundings are exceptional. The

participation of the citizens of this class in the affairs of

government is no longer discouraged--on the contrary, it is welcomed

by the community. Indeed, many men have secured nomination and

election to office solely because of their large means, which enabled

them to control men and caucuses in their own favor.

(_Note._--An appearance of spontaneity is preserved in these cases by

the publication of a letter from leading citizens requesting the

candidate to stand for office. He thereupon yields to the overwhelming

invitation of the voters of the district, and his henchmen do the

rest.)

But though the possession of wealth and social sophistication are no

longer regarded as un-American, the public sentiment against open or

tacit assumption of social superiority, or a lack of sympathy with

democratic principles, is as strong as ever. It is incumbent,

therefore, on you, if you would be an American in the best sense, to

fix your ideal of life high, and at the same time to fix it in

sympathy with the underlying American principle of a broad and

progressive common humanity, free from caste or discriminating social

conventions. It is not necessary for you to accept the standards and

adopt the behavior of the superficial and imperfectly educated, but it

is indispensable that you accept and act on the faith that your

fellow-man is your brother, and that the attainment of a freer and

more equal enjoyment of the privileges of life is essential to true

human progress. We have, as I have intimated, passed through the

pioneer stage of national development; we have tilled our fields,

opened our mines, built our railroads, established our large

cities--in short, have laid the foundations of a new and masterful

civilization; it now remains for us to show whether we are capable of

treating with originality the old problems which confront complex

societies, and of solving them for the welfare of the public and the

consequent elevation of individual character.

The originality and clearness of the American point of view has always

been a salient national characteristic. Hitherto its favorite scope

has been commercial and utilitarian. Yankee notions have been

suggestive of sewing-machines, reapers, and labor-saving contrivances,

or the mechanism of rushing trade. Now that we have caught up with the

rest of the world in material progress and taught it many tricks, it

remains for the true American to demonstrate equal sagacity and

clear-headedness in dealing with subtler conditions. To be sure the

scope of our originality has not been entirely directed to things

material, for we have ever asserted with some vehemence our devotion

to the things of the spirit, squinting longingly at them even when

obliged to deplore only a passing acquaintance with them because of

lack of time. The splendid superficiality of the army of youth of both

sexes in the department of intellectual and artistic exertion, which

has been one of the notable features of the last thirty years, has

shown clearly enough the true temper and fibre of our people. To

regard this superficiality as more than a transient symptom, and

thereby to lose sight of the genuine intensity of nature which has

animated it, would indicate the shallow observer. Our youth has been

audacious, self-confident, and lacking in thoroughness because of its

zeal to assert and distinguish itself, and thus has justly, in one

sense, incurred the accusation of being superficial, but it has

incurred this partially because of its disposition to maintain the

privileges of individual judgments.

Our young men and women have been blamed for their lack of reverence

and their readiness to form conclusions without adequate knowledge or

study in the teeth of venerable opinion and convention. Indisputably

they have erred in this respect, but indisputably also the fault is

now recognized, and is being cured in the curriculum of education.

Yet, evil as the fault is, the traits which seem to have nourished

it--unwillingness to accept tradition and a searching, honest

clearness of vision--are virtues of the first water, and typical of

the best national character. There are many persons of education and

refinement in our society who accept as satisfactory and indisputable

the old forms and symbols which illustrate the experience, and have

become the final word of the older civilizations in ethics, politics,

and art. They would be willing that we should become a mere complement

to the most highly civilized nations of Europe, and they welcome every

evidence that we are becoming so. As I have already suggested to you,

the nations of the world are all nearer akin in thought and impulse

than formerly, but if our civilization is to stand for anything, it

must be by our divergence from the conclusions of the past when they

fail to pass the test of honest scrutiny, not by tame imitation.

Profoundly necessary as it is that we should accept with reverence the

truths of experience, and much as our students and citizens may learn

from the wisdom and performance of older peoples, it behooves the

American to prize and cherish his birthright of independent judgment

and freedom from servile adherence to convention. Almost everything

that has been truly vital in our production has borne the stamp of

this birthright.

The American citizen of the finest type is essentially a man or woman

of simple character, and the effect of our institutions and mode of

thought, when rightly appreciated, is to produce simplicity. The

American is free from the glamour or prejudice which results from the

conscious or unconscious influence of the lay figures of the old

political, social, or religious world, from the glamour of royalty and

vested caste, of an established or dominant church, of aristocratic,

monkish, or military privilege. He is neither impelled nor allured to

subject the liberty of conscience or opinion to the conventions

appurtenant to these former forces of society. For him the law of the

state, in the making of which he has a voice, and the authority of his

own judgment are the only arbiters of his conduct. He accords neither

to fineness of race nor force of intellect the right of aristocratic

exclusiveness which they have too often hitherto claimed. To the

cloistered nun he devotes no special reverence; he sees in the haughty

and condescending fine gentleman an object for the exercise of his

humor, not of servility; he is indifferent to the claim of all who by

reason of self-congratulation or ancient custom arrogate to themselves

special privileges on earth, or special privileges in heaven. This

temper of mind, when unalloyed by shallow conceit, begets a quiet

self-respect and simple honesty of judgment, eminently serviceable in

the struggle to live wisely.

To the best citizens of every nation the most interesting and vital of

all questions is what we are here for, what men and women are seeking

to accomplish, what is to be the future of human development. For

Americans of the best type, those who have learned to be reverent

without losing their independence and without sacrifice of

originality, the problem of living is simplified through the

elimination of the influence of these symbols and conventions. Their

outlook is not confused or deluded by the specious dogmas of caste.

They perceive that the attainment of the welfare and happiness of the

inhabitants of earth is the purpose of human struggle, and that the

free choice and will of the majority as to what is best for humanity

as a whole is to be the determining force of the future. To those who

argue that the majority must always be wrong, and that as a corollary

the will of the cheap man will prevail, this drift of society is

depressing. The good American in the first place, recognizing the

inevitability of this drift, declines to be depressed; and in the

second, without subscribing to the doctrine that the majority must be

wrong, exercises the privilege of his own independent judgment,

subject only to the statute law and his conscience.

There is a noble strength of position in this; there is a danger, too,

in that it suggests a lack of definiteness of standard. Yet this want

of precision is preferable to the tyranny of hard and fast

prescription. It is clear, for instance, that if the men and women of

civilization are determined to modify their divorce laws so as to

allow the annulment of marriage when either party is weary of the

compact, no canon or anathema of the church will restrain them. Nor,

on the other hand, will the mere whim or volition of an easy-going

majority force them to do so. The judgment of men and women

untrammelled by precedent and tradition and seeking simply to

ascertain what is best and wisest for all will settle the question.

Though the majority will be the force that puts any law into effect,

the impulse must inevitably come from the higher wisdom of the few,

and that higher wisdom in America works in the interest of a broad

humanity, free from the delusions of outworn culture. The wisdom of

the few may not seem to guide, but in the end the mass listens to true

counsel. Honesty toward self and toward one's fellow-man, without fear

or favor, is the leavening force of the finest Americanism, and, if

persevered in, will lead the many, sooner or later, with a compelling

power far beyond that of thrones and hierarchies. The wise application

of this doctrine of the search for the common good in the highest

terms of earthly condition to the whole range of economic, social, and

political questions is what demands to-day the interest and attention

of earnest Americans. The problems relating to capital and labor, to

the restraint of the money power, to the government of our cities, to

the education of all classes, to the status of divorce, to the

treatment of paupers and criminals, to the wise control of the sale of

liquor, to equitable taxation, and to a variety of kindred matters are

ripe for the scrutiny of independent, sagacious thought and action. To

the consideration of these subjects the best national intelligence is

beginning to turn with a fresh vigor and efficiency, but none too

soon. Though democracy and Americanism have become largely identical,

the spread of the creed of a broader humanity in the countries of

civilization where autocratic forms of government still obtain, has

been so signal and productive of results that the American may well

ask himself or herself if our people have not been slovenly and

vain-glorious along the paths where it seemed to be their prerogative

to lead. Certainly in the matter of many of the civic and humanitarian

problems which I have cited, we may fitly borrow from the recent and

modern methods of those to whom we are apt to refer, in terms of

condescending pity, as the effete dynasties of Europe. They have in

some instances been more prompt than we to recognize the trend of ours

and the world's new faith.

IV

In this same connection I suggest to you that in the domain of

literary art an Englishman--a colonist, it is true, and so a little

nearer allied to us in democratic sentiment--has more clearly and

forcibly than anyone else expressed the spirit of the best

Americanism--of the best world-temper of to-day. I refer to Rudyard

Kipling. Human society has been fascinated by the virility and

uncompromising force of his writings, but it has found an equal

fascination in the deep, simple, sham-detesting sympathy with common

humanity which permeates them. He has been the first to adopt and

exalt the idea of the brotherhood of man without either condescension

or depressing materialistic realism. He has interpreted the poetry of

"the trivial round and common task" without suggesting impending soup,

blankets, and coals on earth and reward in heaven on the one hand, or

without emphasizing the dirtiness of the workman's blouse on the

other. His imagery, his symbols and his point of view are essentially

alien to those of social convention and caste. Yet his heroes of the

engine-room, the telegraph-station, the Newfoundland Banks, and the

dreary ends of the earth, democratic though they are to the core,

appeal to the imagination by their stimulating human qualities no less

than the bearers of titles and the aristocratic monopolists of culture

and aspiration who have been the leading figures in the poetry and

fiction of the past. Strength, courage, truth, simplicity and

loving-kindness are still their salient qualities--the qualities of

noble manhood--he expounds them to us by the force of his sympathy,

which clothes them with no impossible virtues, yet shows them, in the

white light of performance, men no less entitled to our admiration

than the Knights of King Arthur or any of the other superhuman figures

of traditional æsthetic culture. He recognizes the artistic value of

the workaday life in law courts and hospitals and libraries and mines

and factories and camps and lighthouses and ocean steamers and

railroad trains, as a stimulus to and rectifier of poetic imagination,

negativing the theory that men and women are to seek inspiration

solely from what is dainty, exclusive, elegantly romantic, or

rhapsodically star-gazing in human conditions and thought. This is of

the essence of the American idea, which has been, however, slow to

subdue imagination, which is the very electric current of art, to its

use by reason chiefly of the seeming discord between it and common

life, and partly from the reluctance of the world to renounce its diet

of highly colored court, heaven and fairy-land imagery; partly, too,

because so many of the best poets and writers of America have adopted

traditional symbols. The school of great New England writers which has

just passed away were, however, the exponents of the simple life, of

high religious and intellectual thought amid common circumstance. They

stood for noble ideals as the privilege of all. Yet their mental

attitude, though scornful of pomp and materialism, was almost

aristocratic; at least it was exclusive in that it was not wholly

human, savoring rather of the ascetic star-gazer than the full-blooded

appreciator of the boon of life. Their passion was pure as snow, but

it was thin. Yet the central tenet of their philosophy, independent

naturalness of soul, is the necessary complement to the broad human

sympathy which is of the essence of modern art. The difficulty which

imagination finds in expressing itself in the new terms is natural

enough, for the poet and painter and musician are seemingly deprived

of color, the color which we associate with mystic elegance and

aristocratic prestige. Yet only seemingly. Externals may have lost the

dignity and lustre of prerogative; but the essentials for color

remain--the human soul in all its fervor--the striving world in all

its joy and suffering. There is no fear that the tide of existence

will be less intense or that the mind of man will degenerate in

æsthetic appreciation, but it must be on new lines which only a master

imbued with the value and the pathos of the highest life in the common

life as a source for heroism can fitly indicate. There lies the future

field for the poet, the novelist, and the painter--the idealization of

the real world as it is in its highest terms of love and passion,

struggle, joy, and sorrow, free from the condescension of superior

castes and the mystification of the star-reaching introspective

culture which seeks only personal exaltation, and excludes sympathy

with the every-day beings and things of earth from its so-called

spiritual outlook.

ANNE

By Fanny V. de G. Stevenson

Anne was walking down the slope of a hill at the time of the first

stirring of dawn on a spring morning. She was an old woman, now, her

youth lying years behind her; but she had not been one to fall easily

into the sere and yellow leaf. Though frail in health, she had kept

her manifold interests sharp and lively; pictures gave her pleasure

keen as of yore, and there was no critic of literature more quick than

she to detect a lapse in taste or art, nor with a readier appreciation

of style, originality, or even intention. She was, at last, however,

forced to believe that she was growing old. She _was_ old, and the

days were flying past her with an incredible rapidity. She rebelled

with passionate fierceness against the inevitable, approaching end. As

bitterly as for herself (she was sixty and past), she resented the

fact that John, her husband, stood even nearer the final catastrophe

than she; John, whom, though ten years her senior, she had petted and

spoiled like a child. Hers had always been the dominant mind. John,

older and aging more rapidly than she, had now become absolutely

dependent on her, almost for his thoughts. Their marriage was blessed

with no children, wherefore all the motherly instincts of the wife had

been lavished on the husband. "My very love has made him helpless,"

thought Anne; "pray God he be called before me."

She walked more quickly, in time with her thoughts, which now wandered

along devious pathways through the past. The scenes she recalled were

nothing in themselves, no more than most elderly people keep stored in

their memories; but to her, who had played the principal parts, they

were of the liveliest interest. The day she and John took possession

of the house that had been their own ever since was as vivid as

yesterday. Nay, more vivid, for she was not at all sure concerning

yesterday; she had had a headache, and was stupid, and had slept a

good deal; and John dozed in his chair; there was nothing to remember

in yesterday.

But that first day in the new house, both so proud, so fond, so full

of plans; and it was all over. The plans matured or failed, and they

were only two old people, conscious of ever-failing strength, careful

of draughts, easily tired--well, no, not so very easily tired after

all, at least not Anne, or at least not to-day. It must be the early

morning, or the spring weather. She had heard of old people who

recovered their faculties in a sort of Indian summer, possibly her

Indian summer was about to burst into a mature blossoming. She felt so

light on her feet, so uplifted as with a wholesome, altogether

delightful intoxication. The sensation carried her far back to her

childhood, to a first day in the garden after a winter's illness. How

she skipped, and ran, and laughed. She was conscious to-day of the

same pure joy in living. It was like being a child again. And those

sad, querulous days, yesterday, and the days and years before--that

was the child's illness; such a long illness, ever-increasing, with

but one terrible cure.

But not even that fancy could depress Anne to-day, glorious to-day,

this day of ten thousand! She laughed aloud, pretending, as children

pretend, that she had, unknowing, drunk of the golden elixir; her eyes

should be unclouded, her cheeks flower-fresh, her scant, white locks

changed to rings of softest brown; a tall, slim slip of a girl, as

John first met her. At the foot of the meadow where she kept tryst

with John there used to be a still pool where she preened her feathers

while waiting for her gallant. She looked about for a pool, smiling at

this vanity in an old woman; but suppose--suppose--?

Of course she was always properly dressed and coifed as became one of

her station and fortune, with a certain well-bred deference to the

prevailing modes, and she owned to a nice taste in lace and jewels.

Jane, her maid, had been very much remiss when she laid out the gown

her mistress wore this morning. It must be a new one, by the way, or

an old one remodelled; it was not in her usual style, but of a

singular cut, stiff, plain, and ungraceful in its prim folds. However,

it was white, and white was still Anne's color. And what matters a

gown when one is in so high a humor?

The valley below was everywhere covered with a white rime which ran in

sparkles as the sun touched it. It should be sharply cold, Anne

thought, but she felt no chill. Frost generally passed over the high

ground, while it nipped the lower. She hoped it had spared the tender

plants in her garden, and the budding peaches. Already the crocuses

were in bloom, and the lilacs showed a few timid, scented leaves. Anne

was very fond of her garden, and it was one of her grievances against

time that she could no longer tend it in person.

She had forgotten why she searched for the pool; she was a little

confused, doubtless the effect of yesterday's headache--nothing

unpleasant, rather a delightful, dizzy jumbling of thoughts, ideas,

remembrances. At any rate, here was the pool, clear and unruffled; new

grass was springing on its banks, and here and there woolly brown

bosses showed where ferns were sprouting. She would fetch John here

one day--if he were able to walk so far. John used to like a pool when

his sight was stronger; not in Anne's way; her liking was innocent and

sentimental. John would bring his microscope and discover the most

wonderful things in water that appeared absolutely pure. Decidedly she

must manage to fetch John.

Anne leaned over and looked into the pool. She leaned farther, lower,

turned her head this way and that, and then drew back in utter

bewilderment. There was no reflection of her face in the water! She

was overwhelmed with disappointment. This enchanting rejuvenation,

then, was only a dream. She could almost have wept; not quite, for the

dream still held her as in an embrace of joyousness. She wondered what

her body looked like, lying on its bed while its soul was roaming the

fields. She pitied it, the worn, frail, old body, as though it were a

thing separate from herself. It had suffered in its fairly long life,

and had endured many contrarieties, but there had been more than

compensating happinesses, and no great sorrows. She hoped it slept

well. John's dear, white head would be lying on the pillow beside it.

"Oh," she thought, "I wish I could give my dream to John. Well, it

shall be the best dream in the world if John is only to have it at

second hand."

In the certainty that she was dreaming, Anne now gave her imagination

a free rein. False shame is out of place in a dream. She gambolled

like a prisoned kid set free, and sang--softly, lest the dream should

be shattered. As the day advanced wild things came out of the wood;

squirrels, and other animals so shy by nature that she had only seen

them, heretofore, at a distance, stopped beside her and conversed

together in their own language. She saw what no naturalist has ever

beheld, God's creatures at home and unafraid. She laid her hand on the

head of a doe as it drank at a pool, and ran with it feather-footed.

She spurned the earth and took long, smooth flights over the

undergrowth like a bird sailing on the wing.

Suddenly she became aware of a voice, clear and penetrating, that

spoke the name--_Anne_. A face was before her, vaguely familiar, a

face of her childhood.

"Marian!" she cried; "my mother's cousin, Marian."

"You remember me, dear Anne."

"You--you went to India," murmured Anne in a maze; "I thought--mother

talked of you to us children--your portrait in the school-room----"

"Yes, I went to the Indies; I died there when you were a little child.

You were always much in my mind, for I loved your mother, and you were

her favorite. So she did not allow my name to be forgotten? She talked

of me to her children, and she kept my portrait."

"Did you say--died!" repeated Anne, who had given an involuntary start

at the word. "I wonder if I am really meeting your spirit in a dream?

It might be. Why should it not?"

"You certainly are meeting my spirit, which is myself, but not in a

dream, dear."

Anne felt a thrill of terror. What if this were not a dream? "_I_ am

not dead?" She looked at Marian with frightened, questioning eyes.

"You must be dead," was the answer, "else how should you be here? Your

mother used to write me that you had unusual powers; I never had. You

might, as a mortal, possibly see me, but I could not be conscious of

you unless you were as real as myself."

Anne stared hard at her companion. "I have, it is true," said she,

"imagined I saw spirits, but they were not like you; they were

phantoms, ghosts, immaterial." She hesitated, and then took Marian's

hand in hers. "This hand is as solid as my own. If I believed you were

dead--if I thought I was--dead--myself, oh, it would be appalling!"

"My dear Anne," said Marian, "we are both spirits; we were always

spirits, only in the body we were chained spirits. Material or

immaterial only means a point of view, not a difference."

"I am no spirit," said Anne. "I am of the earth, and the flesh; all my

thoughts are with, and on the earth, and of the earth. As to you,

Marian, I don't know. There is an uncertainty in my mind--no, I mean

an enlightenment; I don't know what to call it--an apprehension.

Marian, do you mind? I thought heaven was a very different place. I

should expect something more serious, more solemn. The idea of an

everlasting sabbath used to depress me. I have no desire for such a

state----"

"Heaven! Heaven! Did you think you were in heaven? Oh, no, this is not

heaven. I trust there may be a heaven, and a future life, but this is

not heaven. I only _know_ about this world in which I exist, and that

it is immeasurably better than that other world we have both happily

left."

"It is all so different from one's dreams," said Anne. "Dreams," she

repeated; "dreams. Marian, did you long for those you left behind?

Were you lonely without them? Or were you with them, following all

their affairs with sympathy and understanding?"

"No," replied Marian, "I knew no more of my loved ones in the past

life than they knew of me. That is the worst of it, both now and

before; the separation, the waiting. I wish I had had more faith in

the old days. I wish my faith were greater now. My dearest ones left

me when I was no more than thirty, and I was eighty when I died. It

was a long waiting. You were a little child, then, and you must have

been well in years when----"

"Don't, don't!" cried Anne; "don't repeat that dreadful word! I am

not, I cannot be! And yet I know, and hate the knowledge, that it must

come to me very soon, for I am, as you say, an old woman. Let me enjoy

this beautiful dream wherein I am still young. But is this youth? When

I look at you, Marian, you are not old, but you are not young. My

intellect will not conceive it what it is."

"If you would only believe me," said Marian, "that we are both

relieved of the burden of the flesh with all its infirmities and

limitations. It is that, only that. There can be no pain where there

is no flesh to suffer."

"And no sorrow?" asked Anne.

"Sorrow," replied Marian, "that is of the mind, and the mind is part

of ourselves."

"Separation is the worst," replied Anne. "Separation." "Suppose," she

thought, "that I am really in another existence, where then is my

dear, old John, my husband?"

"Marian," she cried out, "I must go home; at once!"

"But my dear," said Marian, "you cannot; as a mortal you could not

come here; how then can you now go there? Oh, Anne, there are many

loved ones waiting for you here. Many who loved you. We knew you would

arrive suddenly; we were warned of that; I came first--it was thought

best--to prepare you for the great meeting."

"I tell you," said Anne, sharply, "I am going home. John will miss me.

I have been too long away already."

"Your mother, Anne, she is coming," pleaded Marian.

"Not mother, nor father, nor friends beloved can come between John and

me. I must see John first. Something may have happened."

She looked about her. "I don't quite know where I am. There should be

people about. I see no one to put me on the road."

"Anne," said Marian, "neither you nor I can find that road."

"Oh, come with me," cried Anne, "help me to find John; I must find

John."

The two women moved together hand in hand down the hill into the

valley.

"I can make out nothing in this bewildering fog," said Anne, peering

out from under her hand. "Whenever I seem just about to recognize a

familiar place or object, it is to be blotted out by the fog. There

was no fog before. Oh, Marian, it should be hereabouts; our house

should be here!"

Marian withdrew her hand from Anne's.

"You disturb me," she said; "what you are doing is unlawful. Come

away; something mortal might appear. If you will not, Anne, you drive

me from you; I dare not stay."

Anne stood alone, trying to pierce with her gaze the fog which grew

perceptibly thinner. The elm, and then the shrubbery of her garden

began to show darkly, like shadows. She drew closer, for now the house

itself loomed up, large and imposing, but in some intangible way

different. The walls, the doors, the windows, all were there, all in

their appointed places. What, then, was the indefinable change? It

used to be considered such a pleasant house, so cheerful, so gay with

its hanging creepers, and the bright curtains at the windows. Two

years running a bird had nested in the cornice over the porch. But

to-day it presented an aspect of gloom that was forbidding in the

extreme. It gave the impression of a house to be avoided, a place

where wrong things had happened, or might happen. Anne, now that she

was so near that a word spoken aloud would reach her husband's ear,

and she had only to lift the knocker and enter her own door, shrank

back with an odd reluctance. She would walk round to the study first,

and look through the window. Perhaps John would be there, reading, or

writing a letter, and, without doubt, wondering what had become of his

wife. The blinds were closed. How like John not to think of opening

them. With all the blinds down like that, people would think there was

a death----

John was sitting by the table, leaning forward, apparently asleep. He

was so still, so quiet. Oh, if anything had happened to John! No; he

raised his head as though he heard someone call, looking straight in

his wife's eyes. Why did he not speak? What ailed him to look like

that? Anne remembered that she was behind the closed blinds. His eyes

had a strained look as though he almost saw her.

"John! John!" she cried.

The old man shivered and looked vaguely round him. Anne noticed that

he had no fire. The hoar-frost of the morning, that looked so

beautiful, he would feel that; he was very sensitive to changes of

temperature and weather. His clothes, too, looked thinner than he was

in the habit of wearing--and with a great black patch on one sleeve!

Anne must see to this at once. John was less fit than ever to take

care of himself. He looked so feeble, so old, so much older than she

had thought. Ah, what would John do without her? Her heart yearned

over him with the tender compassion of the strong for the weak, the

deep affection that belongs to the habit of a lifetime--stronger than

the love of youth.

"John, John, my husband!"

Again he turned his face toward the window, a leaden gray face. Slow

tears ran down his furrowed cheeks and fell on his breast.

"Oh, what is it? Oh, my poor old husband!"

Anne flew to the closed door and snatched at the knocker. Her hands

closed on vacancy. Her own house, her home, John's home, and she could

not get in! Back she ran to the window. He was still there, his head

lying on his clenched hands. As though from a long distance, thin and

faint, his voice came to Anne, broken with weeping. He was calling on

her name--"_Anne, Anne!_"

"Oh, my dear old husband, do you miss me so sorely? John, John, open

the window and let me in!"

He moved, as though in answer, but sank back again with a weary shake

of his head. Anne lifted her arms and struck at the wall. That it

should prove "such stuff as dreams are made on" gave her no surprise.

She was beside John; nothing else was of importance. A shadowy

serving-maid opened a door, looked wildly round, shuddered, and fled.

John seemed conscious of her presence; oh, why not, then, of Anne's?

She knelt beside him, she laid her hands on his, she murmured all the

foolish endearing phrases that were their own; but he saw nothing, he

heard nothing.

"Oh, my dear old husband," she said; "husband of my youth and of my

old age; we are one; we cannot be parted. I will not leave you. I

shall wait beside you."

John turned with seeing eyes. "_Anne!_" he cried, with a loud voice,

as his head fell on her breast.

Together they passed out of the house, paying no heed to what was left

behind, nor to the terrified call of the serving-maid, "Help, help,

master is dead!"

HUSH!

By Julia C. R. Dorr

O hush thee, Earth! Fold thou thy weary palms!

The sunset glory fadeth in the west;

The purple splendor leaves the mountain's crest;

Gray twilight comes as one who beareth alms,

Darkness and silence and delicious calms.

Take thou the gift, O Earth! on Night's soft breast

Lay thy tired head and sink to dreamless rest,

Lulled by the music of her evening psalms.

Cool darkness, silence, and the holy stars,

Long shadows when the pale moon soars on high,

One far, lone nightbird singing from the hill,

And utter rest from Day's discordant jars;

O soul of mine! when the long night draws nigh

Will such deep peace thine inmost being fill?

THE POINT OF VIEW

It is more than a full generation, it is going on for half a century,

since Thackeray, lecturing on Charity and Honor, in New York, paid the

street-manners of the city the pretty compliment that all readers

ought to remember:

[Sidenote: American Urbanities]

I will tell you when I have been put in mind of the courteous

gallantry of the noble knight, Sir Roger de Coverley, of

Coverley Manor, of the noble Hidalgo Don Quixote of la Mancha:

here, in your own omnibus-carriages and railway-cars, when I

have seen a woman step in, handsome or not, well-dressed or

not, and a workman in hob-nailed shoes, or a dandy in the

height of the fashion, rise up and give her his place.

"Omnibus-carriages" have given way altogether to the horse-car; and

the horse-car has ceded to the elevated train, to the cable-car, to

the under-ground trolley. These vehicles subsist, but in what one of

them could the admiring tourist see repeated as a rule what was,

without question, the rule in 1852?

"The age of chivalry is gone" from the public conveyances of New York.

Apparently it has gone farther from New York than from any other

American city. At least that is the conclusion to which a New Yorker

is reluctantly driven who has occasion to visit other American cities.

The boorishness of New York is now what impresses the British tourist.

Stevenson made his first appearance in New York a matter of seventeen

years after Thackeray's last appearance, and he in turn recorded his

observation. It was that he was received in casual places where he was

personally unknown with a surprising mixture of "rudeness and

kindness." But what struck him first, struck him in the face, so to

say, was the rudeness. The healing kindness came after, and the final

conclusion was that New Yorkers (he was careful not to say Americans)

were well-meaning and kind-hearted people who had no manners. The good

intentions and the kind hearts may be questioned by any spectator of

the scramble at a station of any one of the elevated roads during the

crowded hours, where male creatures may be seen using the superior

strength of their sex to arrive at seats in advance of women. Even

where this is not put too grossly in evidence, it is plain to the

spectator of the scramble that the age of chivalry is gone.

The travelling New Yorker becomes aware that this is largely local. A

Southern newspaper man, writing from New York to his paper, not long

ago, noted its manners with even a touch of horror. "When I saw a man

sitting in a car in which a woman was standing," he says, "I knew that

I was far from home." A very recent British observer, the clever

author of "The Land of The Dollar," proceeding from New York to

Philadelphia, recorded his refreshment at happening upon an American

town where the inhabitants were not too busy, when the stranger

thanked them for a piece of information, to answer "You're very

welcome."

When the New Yorker goes abroad at home, he finds unwelcome

confirmation of the suggestion that his own city is the most

unmannerly of all. The New Englander has undoubtedly a way, as Anthony

Trollope noted, of giving you a piece of information as if he were

making you a present of a dollar. But for all that, the sensitive

stranger finds himself much less rasped at the end of a day in Boston,

than at the end of a day in New York. As you go Southward, the level

of manners rises in proportion almost to the respective stages of

social culture reached in the colonial times, when Josiah Quincy found

in Charleston a degree of "civility" and "elegance" such as the good

Bostonian recorded that he had never seen, nor expected to see, on

this side of the Atlantic. One is driven, in view of the Southern

courtesy, to wonder whether there may not be something in Goethe's

defence of the duello, to the effect that it is more desirable that

there should be some security in the community against a rude act than

that all men should be secure of dying in their beds.

But this explanation does not account for the fact that in whatever

direction the New Yorker goes from home he finds better manners of the

road, manners of the street-car, manners of the elevator, than those

he left. Western cities, unless they be Southwestern also, have not

the soothing softness and deference of Southern manners, but there is

in these a recognition on the part of the human brother whom you

casually encounter, of your human brotherhood which you are by no

means so sure of eliciting from the casual and promiscuous New Yorker.

The Chicagoan will tell you in detail what you want to know, even

though, as Mr. Julian Ralph has remarked, he makes you trot alongside

of him on the sidewalk while he is telling it. And in an elevator in

which there is a woman, the Chicagoan hats are as promptly and

automatically doffed as the Bostonese, while in this regard it is New

York and not Philadelphia that is the Quaker city.

"Ethnic" explanations of the bad manners of New York will occur to

many readers, which "it may be interesting not to state." These mostly

fall to the ground before the appalling fact that Chicago is

better-mannered. The elevated roads are great demoralizers. It is

barely that primitive human decency escapes from the "Sauve qui peut"

and "Devil take the hindmost" of that mode of transit, to say nothing

of the fine flower of courtesy. Let us hope it is all the doing of the

elevated roads.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The Public Manners of Women]

It is painful to have to say that inquiry among males for an

explanation of the degeneration just mentioned reveals yet another

lamentable decline in chivalry. For it is a fact that the current

masculine hypothesis attributes it to the women themselves. This is a

reversion to a state of things which prevailed long before the age of

chivalry had come. The scandalous behavior of Adam, in devolving upon

the partner and fragment of his bosom the responsibility for his

indulgence in the "_malum prohibitum_" of Eden, has been frequently

cited in assemblages of Woman in proof of the innate and essential

unchivalrousness of Man. It is there regarded as, to say the least of

it, real mean.

The citation may not appear germane to an appeal for merely equal

rights, which is the professed object of the "woman-women," but it is

surely pertinent to the male contention that woman would get more by

throwing herself upon the mercy of man than by appealing to his

justice. If we take a more modern view of the origin of the relations

of the sexes, it is evident that only that minimum of courtly

consideration for the weaker vessel which was needful for the

preservation of the species was to be expected from a gentleman whose

habits had only just ceased to be arboreal, and that the age of

chivalry must have been a very long time in coming.

It is, all the same, a fact that, when a son of Adam of the younger

generation is asked how, in a public conveyance, he can retain both

his seat and his equanimity while a daughter of Eve is standing, he is

apt to recur to the third chapter of Genesis, and to put the blame on

"the woman thou gavest to be with me." "You don't even get thanked for

it," he will say. His father, and much more his grandfather, would

have been ashamed to offer that excuse. It would have been ruled out

as invalid, even if accurate; and the heir of all the ages who makes

it does not put it to the proof often enough to know whether it is

accurate or not.

But it must be owned that there is too much truth in it. Woman's

inhumanity to man is a good deal in evidence. The late Senator Morton,

of Indiana, was, it will be remembered, an invalid and a cripple. He

came into a company at the capital one day in a state of great

indignation because, in a street-car crowded with young women, not one

had offered him a seat, and he had been compelled to make the journey

painfully and precariously supported upon his crutches. The like of

this may very often be seen. Humanity, consideration for weakness and

helplessness, is the root of which chivalry is the fine flower. The

Senator's experience was not unique, was not even exceptional. It is a

startling proposition that man's inhumanity to man is less than

woman's, but the time seems to give it some proof. At any rate, a man

evidently disabled would not be allowed to stand in a public

conveyance in which able-bodied men were seated, even in the most

unchivalrous part of our country, which I have given some reasons for

believing to be the city of New York. And, if that be true, it seems

that the assumption of the right of an able-bodied woman to remain

seated while a disabled man is standing is an assumption that the

claims of chivalry are superior to those of humanity. On the other

hand, it may fairly be said that the selfishness of women with regard

to the wayfaring man is more thoughtless and perfunctory than the

selfishness of men with regard to the wayfaring woman. In this

country, at least, this latter is in all cases felt to be a violation

of propriety and decency. The native American feels himself to be both

on his defence and without defence, when he is arraigned for it. This

was illustrated one day in a car of the New York elevated road, in

which a middle-aged woman was standing in front of a young man who was

sitting. Fixing him with her glittering eye, she said, calmly but

firmly, "Get up, young man, I want that seat." The conscience-stricken

youth rose meekly and automatically at the summons, and left his seat

the spoil of the Amazonian bow and spear.

However it may be with woman's inhumanity to man, there can be no

question about her inhumanity to woman. It does "make countless

thousands mourn." And this not alone in the familiar sense in which

Every fault a tear may claim,

Except an erring sister's shame.

Whatever male has assisted at a function at which males are not

supposed to assist, and at which the admixture of males is so small as

to be negligible, has seen sights as astonishing in their way as the

sights witnessed by the rash males who, at the peril of their lives,

smuggled themselves into those antique mysteries from which they were

expressly excluded. Nowhere in the gatherings of men does shameless

selfishness find so crude an expression as, say, at a crowded matinée.

It could not be exhibited at a prize-fight, for the exhibitor would

subject himself to prompt personal assault. But the female bully is

without fear as without shame. She elbows her way through and past her

timid sisters, takes tranquil possession of the standing-places they

have reserved by occupation, and scatters them to flight as the fierce

hawk the pavid doves. Of course the bullies are a small minority, but

one hawk suffices to flutter the most populous dove-cote, and to

characterize the assemblage which it dominates. The young man who

excuses his own bad manners by blaming "the woman" only emphasizes his

want of chivalry; but the validity of his plea is more deniable than

its accuracy.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The English Voice on the American Stage]

In the play of "Pudd'nhead Wilson," made out of Mark Twain's book by

Frank Mayo, the evil genius combines in his veins the bad blood and

craven instincts of two races. The _rôle_ was given, when first

presented, a remarkable impersonation in which there was a subtle

mingling of a white man's presumption and a negro's animalism. But the

creator of the part was the brother of a leading English poet! An

American actor essayed the _rôle_ in the second season with decidedly

less success. In "The Heart of Maryland," a strenuous developing of

Civil War emotions and events, the fate of the hero, a soldier whose

devotion to the North alienates him from father and sweetheart, was

given in both its first two seasons to actors of good schooling

indeed, but distinctly English. The "leading juvenile," supposedly a

Confederate officer with all a Southron's manner of speech, was also

most pronouncedly a Briton in tongue, build, and carriage. In that

exciting coil about a lovable spy--"Secret Service"--not exactly the

villain, but the chief meddler with the hero's plans, was on the

programme a Virginia gentleman, but on the stage entirely British.

Multiplying examples is unnecessary; there is enough food for

reflection in these three recent plays. They are all marked with

particular Americanism, and a prominent share of that Americanism is

entrusted to actors foreign-born and foreign-bred.

We are so used here to accepting certain mannerisms of speech as

indigenous to, and proper to, the theatre, and so many of our actors

follow British pronunciation and inflection, that we hardly see the

extent to which the natively English voice prevails on our stage. Once

the thing gets on one's nerves, however, it is most noticeable.

Indeed, the presence of English actors on the American stage is so

pervasive of everything, from farce-comedy to society-tragedy, that

they fairly invest our national drama.

Now of all insularities the most abominable, the one most to be

shunned by this country is artistic insularity. It is an excellent

cosmopolitanism that gives our patronage so generously to the greatest

foreign stars, although it is bald snobbery that often leads us to

favor mediocre importations over native genius. But it is surely

carrying our worldliness too far when we accept and approve the

hopeless incapacity of foreigners to enact _rôles_ demanding American

local color. This may substantiate our proverbial patience, but it

deals hard with our boasted sense of the incongruous. So much have

unlike environments in a hundred years differentiated the two races

that an English impersonation of an American character can never be

acceptable to real criticism.

The reason for the sway of English actors over our stage is not far to

seek. It is not that the best of them can act better than our best,

for we have in our little day produced a very few of the greatest

actors, tragic and comic. And we still have an excellent array of the

plebs of the stage. It is the middle class--which is ever the grand

average and backbone of any organization--that is not satisfactory and

must draw on foreign aid. The average middle-class actor in England

supplies the demand, for he is far above our similar caste in training

and finish, and for good reason. In England the stage is taken more

seriously than here, at least by the players. There an actor enters

upon his career with the same desire for the thoroughness that comes

from humble beginnings and complete experience as anyone entering upon

any other profession. He may cherish vague hopes of greatness--as

every American lawyer hopes to be President--but he is content if his

lot is cast in respectable places, where the labor is agreeable and

the compensation decent. The result is an army of thoroughly drilled

actors that can do almost anything well, though they may do nothing

brilliantly.

In the United States, however, where opinion still maligns the

business of the actor, he is likely to look on his career as a mere

trade or as a too, too high art. Our actor is either one whose

ambitions lead him to hitch his wagon to a star and scorn all

sublunary things, or one stolidly content to please--not the

aristocratic groundlings, but the skylings. Of these two sorts of

actor, the former thinks a legitimate minor part too far beneath him

to justify serious preparation, the latter thinks it too far above

him. There is, consequently, an inadequate list of native actors

sufficiently prepared in technic to do well anything that comes to

hand. The tendency, too, of an American actor, having hit upon a

success in one kind of character, to make an exclusive specialty of it

and devote a lifetime to one range of parts, is both due to the

besetting commercialism of our stage and responsible for much of its

lack of versatility. The manager, finding no well-equipped, highly

adaptable rank-and-file at home, turns naturally to the one source of

unfailing supply--England.

In the few stock companies that survive the old _régime_, the English

voice is particularly prevalent. For the English origin of these

actors essaying American _rôles_ is discoverable by the voice almost

more than by the bearing. Though we of the United States and they of

the United Kingdom approximate considerably in language, we are

radically different in speech. The British actor rather modifies than

accentuates the arpeggios of Piccadilly, but it is only a long life in

America and a plasticity uncommon in his race that can disguise him.

His curious scale-singing is an unfailing wonder to the American. In

the American play it can never be anything but a hopeless incongruity.

THE FIELD OF ART

[Illustration: Venetian Balcony. Close of Fifteenth Century: Modern

Arcade.]

_ONE WAY OF DESIGNING A MODERN HOUSE_

This is set forth in a monograph, the title of which may be translated

and abbreviated thus: Drawings of the house of the brothers Bagatti

Valsecchi in Milan at No. 7 Via di Santo Spirito. One very general,

very abstract, very little detailed ground-plan explains what the

house is, considered as a building occupying a piece of ground, and

doing certain definite work. Evidently it was thought that more should

not be allowed the public, concerning a house of habitation. From this

it appears that the house is a single very large dwelling of which the

dimensions on the ground may be taken at one hundred feet of frontage

by sixty feet or rather less of depth. This, however, is the

measurement of the whole plot of ground; for the house covers it all,

and light for the rearmost rooms and corridors is obtained by three

separate courts surrounded by arcades. The front on the street is

deeply recessed so as to give a façade of some fifty-five feet at the

bottom of the court; with two projecting wings of different widths;

the projection, or depth of the court, being of about eighteen feet.

And now comes the essential thing--that which forms the peculiarity of

the building, and the immense and radical diversity between the scheme

proposed by its designer and that adopted by any Parisian

master-workman who may have a _hotel privé_ to build. The Milan house

is in every respect, in its general design and in the minutest detail,

that which might have been built about 1475 in the same town and on

the same street. The front is of brick and terra-cotta, except that

the door-piece in the middle of the recessed façade, the podium, so to

speak, or sub-wall of the basement story, standing some four feet

high, is of stone; and that a part of one of the wings where it is

opened up in the large doorway below communicating with a kind of shop

or business-room, and, above, into arcades with a projecting balcony,

is also of cut stone. This stone would have been taken to be marble

but that the legends expressly speak of _pietra_, and it is probable

that Istrian or some other hard white or light gray stone is used. Of

stone also are the pillars which carry the vaulting of the cloisters,

or galleries, which surround the courts within, and many pilasters,

jamb-pieces, dadoes, parapets, and balustrades of the interior; as

well as the columns of the _logetta_ which crowns one of the wings

projecting on the street, and a similar and larger one on the court

within. The walls of the courts, except for the stone work above

described and for certain cornice bands which are evidently of

terra-cotta, are entirely finished in _sgraffito_; or scratched

decoration on hard plaster, fit to bear the moderate climate of Milan,

together with certain modelling in very low relief, which is

intermingled with the scratched or incised work, and closely

harmonizes with it. One interesting detail of the undertaking must be

mentioned here: pieces of ancient work have been built into the

structure rather freely, and these are so perfectly in the style that

they do not attract attention to themselves. They need, in fact, the

legends which announce their presence. This is one way of saying that

the collected fragments of antiquity have been carefully chosen with

the view to being of one style, of one epoch, of one character, and

that the building has been built in the style so fixed. At the

principal doorway there are four ancient medallions of the character

which sculptors of the fifteenth century enjoyed; that is to say, they

are enlargements of Roman coins. The secondary or wing doorway, spoken

of above as communicating with what seems to be a kind of shop, is

entirely antique, with pilasters filled with carving in the sunken

panels. In the spandrels of the arch above are two more antique

medallions, and an antique pilaster in marble from Mantua is set in

the small reëntrant angle formed between this piece of the front and

the adjoining house, which projects slightly beyond the Casa Bagatti.

Ancient iron work is used for the two windows which flank the central

doorway, and by way of emphasis the other windows on that story are

without grilles. Iron work in the head of the side doorway already

described as antique is announced as made up of ancient parts; and it

may be admitted here that all this wrought iron is of somewhat earlier

date than the structure generally; a breach of that harmony which has

been insisted on above, but one which might easily be considered as

quite characteristic of good, fine, imaginative fifteenth century

work, when the Renaissance builders would have rejected carvings in

the Gothic spirit, but would have admitted iron work of that character

without trouble. Above this ancient doorway an ancient Venetian

balcony, also of stone, is worked into the double arcade, of which

mention has been made. Two large and elaborate wooden ceilings are

used in the open cloisters which surround the courts, and it is worthy

of commendation that they seem to have been put in place without

restoration, with nothing more than necessary repairs or necessary

strengthening, and that no attempt has been made to give them a

freshly finished modern look. An ancient doorway of carved wood opens

upon one of these porticoes; an ancient _vera di pozzo_, or cistern

head, from Venice stands in the middle of that court; an ancient

marble fountain and basin; an ancient triple tabernacle with

sculptured figures of saints; another tabernacle with an Adoration,

and a multiplicity of minor pieces of carving, are worked into the

building, including an admirable lion, of heraldic character and

supporting a shield of arms, set upon a newel at the foot of the great

staircase; and, finally, a very great amount of ancient ironwork in

the way of hinges, door-handles, knockers, awning-rings, and the

like, is used in the work.

[Illustration: Graffito: the Certosa near Pavia. Unfinished; from an

Old Picture.]

The use of this ancient material suggests the true solution of the

difficulty which every one must feel; how such a thing as this can be

fine when we generally find such imitative work rather mean, rather

lazy, rather expressive of the disposition to shirk one's duty than a

thing to be commended. It might be objected in the first place that

here evidently there has been no reluctance to undertake hard work,

for the fitting of old and new details into the same general design,

while the character of the old decoration has not been marred in the

least, is difficult work enough for any workman. This, however, it is

not necessary to urge. The essential thing in the whole situation is

this: The reproduction of the fifteenth century house is practicable

where the real fifteenth century house might have stood. In Milan, on

a quiet by-street of the old city, we can imagine this house having

remained intact and unaltered from some time in the second half of the

fifteenth century until now. Had any family been rich enough and

possessed of the spirit of continuity, that building would have been

so preserved. The climate allows of it; the habits of the people would

make it easy; one family, or, as perhaps in this case, the families of

two brothers, may inhabit such a mansion, and might have inhabited it

at any time from 1575 onward for three hundred years. Moreover, there

is no time when such a house might not have been built. At least, if

we admit that the artists of earlier days were incapable of deliberate

and faithful copying of details--that is all that would separate a

house built on these lines in the eighteenth century from this one of

to-day. The traditions have remained, the masons have worked on these

lines, the stone-cutters have wielded the chisel just as their

forefathers did before them; nothing but a deliberate resolve to call

into prominence the traditional knowledge and the traditional habits

which have lingered among the workmen has been necessary in order to

call into existence this memory of the past.

[Illustration: Largest Inner Court with Graffiti; Vestibule with

Ancient Wooden Ceiling.]

You could not build in that way in another country. This house on the

streets of Paris would have been an absurdity. In Milan it represents

the wholesome feeling of national and local sentiment, family pride

perhaps, a sense of what is fitting, a sense of continuity, all that

is noble and dignified in the sentimental or theoretical side of fine

art--it is this and nothing worse or lower than this which has

directed this interesting piece of work. In France, as we have said,

and still more strongly in the United States, such a piece of work

would have been a mere _tour de force_, a mere piece of deliberate

copying, and, still more, a deliberate avoidance of the critical

problem--how to plan and build an American city house. In north Italy

it is the legitimate and wholly sensible scheme of building an

old-fashioned Milanese house to serve new Milanese purposes--and

anyone may respect and sympathize with such an undertaking as that.

[Illustration: Smaller Inner Court: Graffiti and Stucco Ornaments in

Low Relief.]

The full title of the work above-mentioned is as follows:

QUI SI CONTENGONO LE TAVOLE RAPPRESENTANTI LI DISEGNI DE LA

CASA DE LI FRATELLI BAGATI VALSECHI CHE RITROVASI IN MILANO AL

Ñ. 7 DE LA VIA DE SAN SPIRITO FEDEL RIPRODOTTI DAL VERO CON LA

NUOVA INVENTIONE DE LA ELIOTIPIA.

Fausti et Iosephi Frarum de Bagatis Opus An. Dei. MDCCCXCV.

The reader will note in the Italian title the difference in spelling,

as of the proper names, caused by the antique form in which it is

cast.