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Transcriber’s Notes
This e-text is based on ‘The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine,’
from October, 1913. The table of contents, based on the index
from the May issue, has been added by the transcriber.
Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation have been retained, but
punctuation and typographical errors have been corrected. Passages
in English dialect and in languages other than English have
not been altered. The footnote has been moved to the end of the
corresponding article.
_Underscores_ have been used to indicate italic text in the
original; ~tilde characters~ have been applied to denote small
capitals.
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[Illustration:
Better is a dinner of herbs where love is
than a stalled ox and hatred therewith
Proverbs XV. 17
From the painting in water color by Edmund Dulac]
~The Century Magazine~
~Vol. LXXXVI~ OCTOBER, 1913 ~No. 6~
Copyright, 1913, by ~The Century Co.~ All rights reserved.
CONTENTS
PAGE
~Americans, New-Made.~ Drawings by _W. T. Benda_ Facing page 894
~Auto-Comrade, The~ _Robert Haven Schauffler_ 850
~Cartoons.~
Died: Rondeau Rymbel. _Oliver Herford_ 955
A Triumph for the Fresh Air Fund. _F. R. Gruger_ 957
Newport Note. _Reginald Birch_ 960
~Casus Belli.~ 955
~Devil, The, his Due~ _Philip Curtiss_ 895
~Dinner of Herbs,” “Better is a.~
Picture by _Edmund Dulac_
Facing page 801
~Garage in the Sunshine, A~ _Joseph Ernest_ 921
Picture by Harry Raleigh.
~“Ghosts,” “Dey Ain’t No”~ _Ellis Parker Butler_ 837
Pictures by Charles Sarka.
~Home.~ I. An Anonymous Novel. 801
Illustrations by Reginald Birch.
~Homer and Humbug.~ _Stephen Leacock_ 952
~Nemours: A Typical French Provincial
Town.~ _Roger Boutet de Monvel_ 844
Pictures by Bernard Boutet de
Monvel.
~Paderewski at Home.~ _Abbie H. C. Finck_ 900
Picture from a portrait by
Emil Fuchs.
~Paris.~ _Theodore Dreiser_ 904
Pictures by W. J. Glackens.
~Progressive Party, The~ _Theodore Roosevelt_ 826
Portrait of the author.
~Sculpture.~ _Charles Keck_ 917
~Senior Wrangler, The~ 958
Snobbery--America vs. England.
Our Tender Literary Celebrities.
~Summer Hills,” the, In “The
Circuit of~ _John Burroughs_ 878
Portrait of the author by Alvin
L. Coburn.
~Sunset on the Marshes.~ From the
painting by _George Inness_
Facing page 824
~Trade of the World Papers, The~ _James Davenport Whelpley_
XVIII. The Foreign Trade of the
United States 886
~T. Tembarom.~ _Frances Hodgson Burnett_ 929
Drawings by Charles S. Chapman.
~White Linen Nurse, The~ _Eleanor Hallowell Abbott_ 857
Pictures, printed in tint, by
Herman Pfeifer.
~Year, The Most Important~ _Editorial_ 951
VERSE
~Beggar, The~ _James W. Foley_ 877
~Emergency.~ _William Rose Benét_ 916
~Husband Shop, The~ _Oliver Herford_ 956
Picture by Oliver Herford.
~Mother, The~ _Timothy Cole_ 920
Picture by Alpheus Cole.
~Myself,” “I Sing of~ _Louis Untermeyer_ 960
~Parents, Our~ _Charles Irvin Junkin_ 959
Pictures by Harry Raleigh.
~Socratic Argument.~ _John Carver Alden_ 960
HOME
AN ANONYMOUS NOVEL
(TO BE COMPLETED IN FOUR LONG INSTALMENTS)
CHAPTER I
Red Hill drowses through the fleeting hours as though not only time,
but mills, machinery, and railways were made for slaves. Hemmed in
by the breathing silences of scattered woods, open fields, and the
far reaches of misty space, it seems to forget that the traveler,
studying New England at the opening of the nineteenth century through
the windows of a hurrying train, might sigh for a vanished ideal, and
concede the general triumph of a commercial age.
For such a one Red Hill held locked a message, and the key to the lock
was the message itself: “Turn your back on the paralleled rivers and
railroads, and plunge into the byways that lead into the eternal hills,
and you will find the world that was and still is.”
Let such a traveler but follow a lane that leads up through willow and
elderberry, sassafras, laurel, wild cherry, and twining clematis--a
lane alined with slender wood-maples, hickory, and mountain-ash, and
flanked, where it gains the open, with scattered juniper and oak, and
he will come out at last on the scenes of a country’s childhood.
At right angles to the lane, a broad way cuts the length of the hill,
and loses itself in a dip at each end toward the valleys and the new
world. The broad way is shaded by one of two trees, the domed maple or
the stately elm. At the summit of its rise stands an old church the
green shutters of which blend with the caressing foliage of primeval
trees. Its white walls and towering steeple dominate the scene. White,
too, are the houses that gleam from behind the verdure of unbroken
lawns and shrubbery--all but one, the time-stained brick of which glows
blood-red against the black green of clinging ivy.
Not all these homes are alive. Here a charred beam tells the story of
a fire, there a mound of trailing vines tenderly hides from view the
shame of a ruin, and there again stands a tribute to the power of the
new age--a house the shutters of which are closed and barred. White
now only in patches, its scaling walls have taken on the dull gray of
neglected pine.
For generations the houses of Red Hill have sent out men, for
generations they have taken them back. Their cupboards guard trophies
from the seven seas, paid for with the Yankee nutmeg, swords wrought
from plowshares and christened with the blood of the oppressor, a long
line of collegiate sheepskins, and last, but by no means least, recipes
the faded ink and brittle paper of which sum the essence of ages of
culinary wisdom.
Some of these clustered homes live the year round at full swing, but
the life of some is cut down to a minimum in the winter, only to spring
up afresh in summer, like the new stalk from a treasured bulb. Of such
was the little kingdom of Red Hill. Upon its long, level crest it bore
only three centers of life and a symbol: Maple House, the Firs, and Elm
House, half hidden from the road by their distinctive trees, but as
alive as the warm eyes of a veiled woman; and the church.
The supper call had sounded, and the children’s answering cries had
ceased. Along the ribbon of the single road scurried an overladen
donkey. Three lengths of legs bobbed at varying angles from her fat
sides. Behind her hurried a nurse, aghast for the hundredth time at the
donkey’s agility, never demonstrated except at the evening hour.
Half-way between Maple House and the Firs stood two bare-legged boys,
working their toes into the impalpable dust of the roadway and rubbing
the grit into their ankles in a final orgy of dirt before the evening
wash. They called derisively to the donkey-load of children, bound to
bed with the setting sun.