of what an old plantation home should be. It is an immense square
building with double galleries, tall white columns and green shutters;
it faces the Mississippi, which, however, cannot be seen from the
ground floor on account of the levee. The architecture is of engaging
simplicity--four large rooms, each exactly twenty-five feet square,
upstairs and down, with a hall eighteen feet wide between. At the
rear is a long wing, perhaps a later addition, with the inevitable
and delightful gallery around it. The house contains many treasures
of beautiful antique workmanship and mementos of a by-gone time. Our
hostess pointed with pride to an immense pair of glass candle shields,
about two feet high, which had belonged to her grandmother. They stood
on each side of the mantelpiece, over tall silver candlesticks, whose
flame they could protect from all possible draughts. We slept in a high
four-poster bed, with a canopy, lined with red pleated cloth, like the
inside of a mushroom, which would have done credit to a lady of the
ancient régime.
Though the sugar-making season was over on our host's plantation, he
took us to one in the neighborhood that was still in operation. The
equipment was of the most up-to-date kind--great iron claws to rake the
cane from the cars to a sort of traveling trough, called a conveyor,
which carries it up to the chopper: from whence it travels through
several crushers until all the juice is squeezed out and the remaining
pulp is as dry as tinder. This is carried off to be used as fuel or
fertilizer. The cane juice goes from one boiling vat to another, being
purified with lime and sulphur, and refined again and again, smelling
more and more delicious at every stage of its progress. We watched the
syrup being changed to sugar by a very interesting centrifugal process,
and then shaken into barrels. Two barrels at a time were placed upon
metal plates, and by means of an electric current, were made to dance
gaily, shaking down the sugar as it fell until it was firmly packed.
It was an absurd sight, and the writer was reminded at once of dancing
furniture at a spiritualistic séance. We were surprised to learn that
one-third of the ground has to be planted in corn to supply the stock;
the crops are rotated so as to allow sugar-cane for two successive
years, then corn the third, etc.
Our host and hostess and their family were true types of southern
hospitality. The occasion of our visit was a wedding, and the old house
was crowded to its utmost capacity, with new guests arriving on every
train. Yet there was no stir of nervous excitement: everything moved
with a tranquil gaiety, and we felt a delightful sense of informality
as if we were a part of the household. Perhaps the strongest
sense-impression which remains with the writer, is the memory of waking
in the early morning and looking out, at the dawn-flushed sky beyond
the white pillars of the verandah and the gray Spanish moss draping the
live-oak trees. That tender, peaceful moment, full of color and soft
brightness, seemed to seal upon the mind something of the poetry and
the romance of the old South.
THE LORELEI: by a Student-Traveler
Just where the river Rhine narrows and inclines, making a drop of
five feet which causes the water to flow more swiftly, towers the
Rock of the Lorelei, four hundred and fifty feet high and nearly
perpendicular, at the base of which sunken rocks form a whirlpool in
the rapidly flowing stream. At the top of the high rock in olden days,
so the legend runs, a maiden sat and sang, and as she sang she combed
her golden hair. And her song was so full of magic that boatmen on
the river below, falling under the spell of her enchantment, as they
listened to the song, forgot the dangers of the whirling waters and
were dashed to pieces on the sunken rocks underneath.
Is the tale of the Lorelei a mere poetical personification of the
whirlpool and rocks? If so, how account for the tale being universal?
Who does not know the story of Ulysses and the Sirens? Virgil's Harpies
had the faces of maidens, but ended in foul feathers and talons. And
so with many another destructive enchantress in ancient myth. People
seem to have loved to trace out in the topography of their native land
its analogies with that internal region wherein the Soul goes its
pilgrimage. In every land there were sacred mountains, healing founts,
caves of the Sibyl, rocks of the Lorelei, etc. The eternal drama of the
human Soul has been allegorized again and again, always with the same
features, though the topography is changed to suit the race and time.
Every man knows the luring enchantress, for who has not been seduced
by the captivating charms of promised pleasure, only to be mocked and
punished?
And why these cheating experiences of the Soul? Are they the chiding
hand of a God or the mocking malice of a fiend; or are we the sport
of a Chance whose utter indifference outclasses alike the wrath of
deity and the malice of devil? The answer is a commonsense one. Life
is not a cradle of down nor a pleasure-garden. It is a drama full of
incident, an enterprise full of adventure, a world full of people.
In it we find the helper and the adversary; and if there are sirens
and wicked giants, there are also the meed of victory, the bride won,
the warrior's home-coming. Life is worth while, for the triumphs it
contains; and it is because we aspire to the triumphs that we engage in
the fights, though our lower nature, the mere varlet, may cry out at
the discomfort. The Dragon, once defeated, becomes our ally.
If we would win beauty and truth, we must not seek in them mere balm
for the senses, but rise in our strength and be worthy of them. What is
worth having is not to be had for the taking.
Beauty rhymes with duty.
Truth rhymes with ruth.
Tarry not in the pleasure grounds of sense, heed not the sweet voices
of illusion, thou who aspirest to wisdom--say the ancient teachings.
It is the illusion produced by the senses and desires that we have to
overcome, if we would not be dashed on the rocks of the Lorelei.
LORELEI
(Heinrich Heine)
Ich weisz nicht was soll es bedeuten
Dass ich so traurig bin,
Ein Märchen von alten Zeiten
Das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn.
Die Luft ist kühl und es dunkelt
Und ruhig flieszt der Rhein,
Der Gipfel des Berges funkelt
Im Abendsonnenschein.
Die schönste Jungfrau sitzet
Dort oben wunderbar,
Ihr gold'nes Geschmeide blitzet,
Sie kämmt ihr goldenes Haar;
Sie kämmt es mit goldenem Kamme
Und singt ein Lied dabei
Das hat eine wundersame
Gewaltige Melodei.
Den Schiffer im kleinen Schiffe
Ergreift es mit wildem Weh'
Er sieht nicht die Felsenriffe
Er schaut nur hinauf in die Höh'.
Ich glaube die Wellen verschlingen
Am Ende Schiffer und Kahn,
Und das hat mit ihrem Singen
Die Lorelei gethan.
[Illustration: Lomaland Photo. and Engraving Dept. THE ROCK OF THE
LORELEI]
[Illustration: Lomaland Photo. and Engraving Dept. THE WESTERN
FOUR-TOED SALAMANDER (_Batrachoseps attenuatus_)]
THE WESTERN FOUR-TOED SALAMANDER: by Percy Leonard
The Batrachians occupy a place between the reptiles proper and the
fishes. They are distinguished from the fishes by the possession of
paired limbs furnished with four fingers and a thumb, and though
their early days are passed beneath the water, breathing like fishes
through their gills, yet when fully grown, almost without exception
they breathe through well-developed lungs. There is a superficial
resemblance between the reptilian lizard and the batrachian newt or
salamander, and they are often confounded together in the popular mind.
True reptiles, however, are easily distinguished from batrachians by
their overlapping scales, quite different from the smooth moist skins
of the latter. Reptiles breathe as we do by expanding the ribs and
drawing the air into the hollow thus formed; but batrachians, lacking
ribs, are obliged to swallow their air, and a glance at a toad or a
salamander will reveal the incessant palpitation of the throat as the
air is forced into the lungs. Reptiles are hatched, or born, as the
case may be, perfect copies in miniature of their parents and never go
through the tadpole stage. Batrachians are divided into two groups: the
Salientia (or Jumpers), and the Urodela. The Salientia (or Jumpers)
comprise the frogs and toads; and the Urodela include the numerous
tribes of newts, water-dogs, efts, and salamanders.
The illustration shows one of the lowliest of the order of Urodela, the
western four-toed salamander (_Batrachoseps attenuatus_). The legs are
ridiculously small in comparison to the long, unwieldy body. That the
tail is fat and cylindrical is only to be expected, because being a
terrestrial salamander, it has no need of a flat tail for swimming like
the water-haunting newts. Probably the bulky tail serves as a store
of nourishment in reserve for use in time of famine, as does the hump
of a camel under similar circumstances. Here at Point Loma these odd
creatures may be found under stones in the damp cañons. In the absence
of pools they cannot pass through the tadpole stage under water and so
the various phases of tadpole transformation are gone through while
in the egg. The males are glossy black; but the female figured in the
picture has a light brown skin with irregular blotches of flesh color
on the tail.
A male once captured by the writer exhibited a curious case of mimicry.
He coiled up just like a rattlesnake and looked so venomous and
threatening as to inspire terror in anyone who was unaware of his utter
powerlessness to do an injury.
The abnormal humidity of the air enables this delicate animal to
survive the rainless months of summer, and probably he never ventures
from his shelter till the sun goes down and the dew provides a little
moisture. The mere contact of his skin with a dewy surface would
probably be as refreshing as a draught of water to a thirsty man; but
the salamander, like the frog, does not drink: he simply "blots up" his
water through the skin.
Thus the four-toed western salamander passes his uneventful days
and nights. His pleasures are few and simple and his sorrows
correspondingly light.
According to Theosophy, the inner Essence of every creature in this
broad universe either is, was, or prepares to become, man; but the mind
staggers in the attempt to conceive the enormous stretches of time
before such dull, inert, insensitive beings will arrive at the human
stage. But pain is a grand stimulant and spur to advance, and perchance
when the salamander gets eaten by a snake or a stoat, he gains as
compensation for the pangs of death some slight promotion to a higher
order of batrachians in his next rebirth! So mote it be.
THE REAL MAN: by H. Coryn, M. D., M. R. C. S.
"Now we know the real man," is the usual comment when some heretofore
respectable citizen is convicted of forgery and sent to jail: "_Now_ we
know his real character."
Do we?
A fire breaks out in the prison and the forger reveals himself a hero,
risking life without a second's hesitation for the rescue of his jailer
or fellow-prisoners.
Do we _now_ know his "real character"?
Later on, his confinement, throwing him in upon himself, provides
opportunity for the manifestation of a marked vein of poetry, and from
his prison he issues a volume which at once takes high rank in the
literature of the day.
Some will now put away their _moral_ standard of measurement, produce
another, and remark that the "real man" after all turns out to have
been a poet.
You can photograph half of a man's face, right or left, throw the
picture over upon itself and get a whole face composed of two lefts,
and another of two rights--often quite different.
We judge character in that way, taking any one aspect of it upon which
we choose to dwell or which alone we see, and of that one constructing
a whole. Thus the same man viewed by various knowers of him is a
philosopher, a sharp lawyer, a skilful amateur actor, or an ever-ready
helper and friend in times of trouble or perplexity. To his cook he may
be solely a grumbler, and to his son at school a supply-machine whose
crank is not always easy to turn.
To come back to the prisoner. The "respectable citizen" was evidently
not the whole of him. Under stress he revealed the weakness and
dishonesty which led to the forgery. Environment, the temptation,
brought them to the surface. We need not say that his character
changed. Nevertheless, as we all know, a change of character is
possible--so thorough that after emergence from prison no stress of
temptation and no assurance from discovery would provoke another theft.
On the other hand we cannot conceive of his change from a hero into a
coward, nor hardly of his loss of the poetic vein. Environment--the
fire and the conditions of prison life--brought those traits out too.
But, once out they are out.
Being in search of the essence of character, the _really_ "real man,"
we cannot accept anything which may vanish or be surmounted, nothing
which in the normal course of individual evolution, gone far enough,
will for certain be surmounted. No man is essentially a thief, but he
may be essentially a hero or a poet or both.
Consider the question in the light of evolution, the evolution of each
of us. We sometimes make imaginary pictures of the ripened humanity
of the far future, a noble flower of which there are as yet but
indications of the bud. Let us add another touch. Let us recognize in
that far humanity, however godlike, _ourselves_. Many, many births and
lifetimes and deaths lie between this and that for all of us. But the
lines of continuity are unbroken. It is we ourselves who shall be that
splendid and radiant humanity. The evolution of the human race means
the evolution of the present members of the human race. We shall "meet
each other in heaven" because we are always children of the earth that
will _be_ that heaven.
We note that some qualities, such as a tendency to theft, have every
encouragement to vanish. Sooner or later, in one or another lifetime,
they bring about so much disgrace and pain or are found so incompatible
with an ever increasing love of right and inner peace, that they are
cast out and away, are outgrown and done with. The last dirty fiber is
ripped out of the ever perfecting pattern.
On the other hand the germs of some other qualities will have a
constant and in the long run irresistible tendency to grow, root and
branch.
Shall we say "real character" of traits destined to grow or of those
destined to disappear? So far we only use the words of so much as
we can see of a man: a poor enough application. We talk of the
"respectable citizen," and behold a thief. In the next change the thief
"turns out to be a hero"; and whilst we are admiring the hero we are
invited to read a volume of poetry.
We had better restrict the words "real character" to that which time
shall at last unveil and develop, to the permanent germs and their
ripened product; not to the spores and fungi which, however noticeable
now, will sometime be entirely cleaned away. _There is no thief; there
are men who thieve_--at present, but who will cease to do so. There
_are_ poets and heroes; for these men will not only not cease to create
and do, but will create and do more and more worthily as they go
forward through time to the great light. There are some men whom _no_
stress of temptation would force into theft. Are there any men in whom
_no_ circumstances would evoke some smallest gleam of heroism?
Still we are not clear about real character. For there some qualities,
for example courage and love of the race and sensitiveness to the
supernal light, which time will perfect in _all_ men. We must put
aside all the elements, however splendid, in whose possession men will
_resemble_ each other and seek for what will be peculiar to each.
Within the unity of essence, apart from common sensitiveness to the
great light, there will be essential diversity. And it is to this
finally appearing individuality, this uniqueness of each, that the
words "real character" properly belong. In a few men only has this germ
of true individuality yet achieved much manifestation.
The end of man, said Carlyle, is not a thought, were it the noblest,
but a deed.
The aphorism cries aloud for completion. What sort of a deed would
be that which had no thought behind it? The end of man is a deed
faithfully manifesting a worthy "thought," and the mere writing down
of a thought is often its sufficient and only possible manifestation.
Even the careful nurture of a thought may be a deed. The universe is
the ideation of the divine getting itself written down on the face of
substance. Man's entire business is to aid that, to make manifest as
much of the divine, the light, as he can come at or get aware of in
his inner conscience or consciousness. If he constantly tries to live
in that way, the divine will presently take turns and come at _him_.
Inspiration is the final reward of aspiration. But the light has a
separate and special ray or aspect of itself in store for each man, so
that the _whole_ of it can only shine through _all_ men.
There is a part of the divine essence unborn as yet into the world,
unmanifest. And there is a part of it which men and gods have wrought
into the manifest, each according to his nature and comprehension of
his duty. From the highest to the lowest departments of human life this
way of work is possible, to search out duty and do it.
But "duty" has here a very full meaning. The soul of the Beethoven
searches, and is illumined by, the divine essence, _whatever his name
for it or thought of it_. Then he renders it or manifests it for the
world. The craftsman might search it as he designed a wall-paper; he
who did so, who worked that he might manifest it for men, would find
his invention grow ever richer and readier. The divine has no _one_
kind of manifestation or inspiration. The mother might search it to
learn the highest ways of conduct with her children, not even waiting
for their birth; and their souls would in time show her what she had
done for them. The gardener might thus work among his flowers and would
find in them a new responsiveness. There is no one who has not some
work which can be fruitfully done in this spirit of bringing forth for
the world. This use of will in no metaphoric sense is the real magic.
When all men and women work in this way the world will begin to be for
the first time an expression of the divine plan, governed--through them
and of their will and choice--by the divine. By that time work will
have been raised to its highest terms and there will be modes of work
as inconceivable to us now as the work of Beethoven to a savage. Each
of us will have found _his_ work--that is, will have found that aspect
of the divine which he is uniquely constituted to deliver forth to the
rest. No one can be spared. All will need all the others. All will
stand unveiled as artists, creators, or showers-forth or thinkers-out
of something good and necessary for the work of their fellows. We have
ourselves made life dark and work monotonous, stifled the latent or
nascent craftsman or thinker in ourselves and the others, and created
forms of work that should never have been to do at all. Now we must
live them through and be thankful that some few, the thinkers, the
musicians, the poets, the artists, have in some sort broken through
into a corner of their heritage and can serve us and lighten our lives
and make the day nearer when we too can break through.
Here then is what we may mean by "real character." It is the veiled
creator or shower-forth. No man is what he seems. He is waiting for
his own nature, and the divine in nature is waiting for him, to give
him the ray he alone can transmit. Neither Händel nor Beethoven could
have given us the music of the other; and the music of both was made
possible by every bit of divine-serving and divine-revealing work that
was ever done since man began. That principle holds throughout, in
small and great. The humblest work, if it have one ray of the divine
put into it, helps the whole world for all time to come. And no work
need lack that ray, no life need lack such work.
REVIEWS
"Life of Leonardo da Vinci" by Professor Osvald Sirén
by Carolus
We have just received another important work from the indefatigable and
accomplished pen of Professor Osvald Sirén, PH. D., of the Stockholm
University. It is a study of Leonardo da Vinci's life and work, a
most complete and thorough monograph of 468 pages, magnificently
illustrated by hundreds of full-page and smaller reproductions, the
majority taken from Leonardo's pictures, sketches and diagrams; the
rest are mostly from the works of other painters which throw light upon
the special points discussed; there are also some pleasing views of
places referred to. The first edition consists of 700 numbered copies,
beautifully printed on thick paper, and is in all respects but one a
perfect example of what such a book should be; the one thing lacking
is an index to the subject-matter and illustrations. This can easily
be remedied in the next edition, for there is no doubt that another
will immediately be called for, as the work will be invaluable to all
lovers of art who wish to read the latest and most complete analysis of
Leonardo's career and to learn the results of the most recent research.
This edition is, of course, written in Swedish, but we understand that
in response to the demand, it will soon appear in other languages, and
so be made accessible to a much larger public. Dr. Sirén has spent a
long time in Italy and elsewhere studying everything connected with
Leonardo and his contemporaries, and this volume is largely the result
of his original researches. It has been very favorably received by the
most competent Swedish critics.
The monograph is founded upon a series of lectures lately given in
the University of Stockholm (in which Dr. Sirén occupies the chair
of Art-history) and it has been the author's aim to show the great
master as he appears in his works and writings, with as little of the
"personal equation" of the writer visible as possible--to make Leonardo
tell his own story--but at the same time, one cannot help feeling and
approving of the warm glow of appreciation which inspires every word
Dr. Sirén writes about his hero. His admiration for the master seems
to have influenced his style, for there is a greater simplicity and
clearness, and a more easy flow of words and sentences than we have
observed in previous works from his able pen.
The book is arranged in four main sections. The first consists of
extracts from the famous Italian art-historian, Vasari's almost
contemporary life of Leonardo, translated into Swedish and freely
commented upon and greatly expanded by Dr. Sirén. Many illustrations
are given showing Leonardo's extraordinary knowledge of mechanics,
engineering, architecture, fortification, anatomy, etc. Dr. Sirén
finally demolishes one of our pet illusions, i. e., that Leonardo died
in the arms of Francis I of France, by showing that King Francis was
at St. Germain-en-Laye, attending the birth of a son, at the moment
when Leonardo was breathing his last at Cloux in Touraine. It appears
this was one of Vasari's occasional "decorations of the truth" for the
sake of picturesqueness. Another myth was that Leonardo prostrated
himself at the feet of the church at his last hour with tears and
cries of repentance for the independence of thought for which he
had consistently stood. In this connexion it is noteworthy that he
studiously avoided introducing halos or nimbuses round the figures in
his religious pictures! Neither is there more than one example of the
cross in any of his undoubted works, and that may have been added by
another hand afterwards. His object was plainly to accentuate the
simple human and natural side in everything that he touched. Even the
head of the Christ in _The Last Supper_ has no radiance; the Teacher
is painted just as he might have been seen by ordinary vision. The
distinction of Leonardo's sacred figures depends upon the superior
beauty and majesty of expression and bearing. This was a very daring
innovation on Leonardo's part.
The second portion of Dr. Sirén's learned volume treats of Leonardo's
pictures and sculptures in more detail; his scientific work is
sufficiently dealt with in the earlier part of the volume, for after
all, his fame depends mainly upon his standing as an artist. Special
chapters are devoted, respectively, to the work of his youth: _The
Adoration of the Magi_, the _Madonna among the Rocks_, _The Last
Supper_, _The Battle of the Standard_, _Leda and the Swan_, _John the
Baptist_, _St. Anne_, and his studies for equestrian statues, etc.