no difficulty in serving the Gett upon me. I will not throw it in the
messenger’s face. And thou wilt marry her?”
“Assuredly. People will no longer talk. And she must bide with me. It
is my one desire.”
“It is mine likewise. Thou must atone and save thy soul.”
He lingered uncertainly.
“And thy dowry?” he said at last. “Thou wilt not make claim for
compensation?”
“Be easy--I scarce know where my cesubah [marriage certificate] is.
What need have I of money? As thou sayest, I have all I want. I do not
even desire to purchase a grave--lying already so long in a charity
grave. The bitterness is over.”
He shivered. “Thou art very good to me,” he said. “Good-by.”
He stooped down; she drew the bedclothes frenziedly over her face.
“Kiss me not!”
“Good-by, then,” he stammered. “God be good to thee!” He moved away.
“Herzel!” She had uncovered her face with a despairing cry. He slouched
back toward her, perturbed, dreading she would retract.
“Do not send it--bring it thyself. Let me take it from thy hand.”
A lump rose in his throat. “I will bring it,” he said, brokenly.
The long days of pain grew longer; the summer was coming, harbingered
by sunny days, that flooded the wards with golden mockery. The evening
Herzel brought the Gett, Sarah could have read every word on the
parchment plainly if her eyes had not been blinded by tears.
She put out her hand toward her husband, groping for the document
he bore. He placed it in her burning palm. The fingers closed
automatically upon it, then relaxed, and the paper fluttered to the
floor. But Sarah was no longer a wife.
Herzel was glad to hide his burning face by stooping for the fallen
bill of divorcement. He was long picking it up. When his eyes met hers
again, she had propped herself up in her bed. Two big round tears
trickled down her cheeks, but she received the parchment calmly, and
thrust it into her bosom.
“Let it lie there,” she said stonily, “there, where thy head hath lain.
Blessed be the true Judge!”
“Thou art not angry with me, Sarah?”
“Why should I be angry? She was right--I am but a dead woman. Only no
one may say Kaddish for me--no one may pray for the repose of my soul.
I am not angry, Herzel. A wife should light the Sabbath candles, and
throw in the fire the morsel of dough. But thy house was desolate;
there was none to do these things. Here I have all I need. Now thou
wilt be happy, too.”
“Thou hast been a good wife, Sarah,” he murmured, touched.
“Recall not the past, we are strangers now,” she said, with recurrent
harshness.
“But I may come and see thee--sometimes?” He had stirrings of remorse
as the moment of final parting came.
“Wouldst thou reopen my wounds?”
“Farewell, then.”
He put out his hand timidly. She seized it and held it passionately.
“Yes, yes, Herzel! Do not leave me! Come and see me here--as a friend,
an acquaintance, a man I used to know. The others are thoughtless--they
forget me--I shall lie here--perhaps the Angel of Death will forget me,
too.” Her grasp tightened till it hurt him acutely.
“Yes, I will come--I will come often,” he said, with a sob of physical
pain.
Her clasp loosened. She dropped his hand.
“But not till thou art married,” she said.
“Be it so.”
“Of course, thou must have a ‘still wedding.’ The English Synagogue
will not marry thee.”
“The Maggid will marry me.”
“Thou wilt show me her cesubah when thou comest next?”
“Yes, I will borrow it of her.”
A week passed. He brought the marriage certificate.
Outwardly she was calm. She glanced through it.
“God be thanked!” she said, and handed it back.
They chatted of indifferent things, of the doings of the neighbors.
When he was going she said: “Thou wilt come again?”
“Yes, I will come again.”
“Thou art so good to spend thy time on me thus. But thy wife. Will she
not be jealous?”
He stared, bewildered by her strange, eery moments.
“Jealous of thee!” he murmured.
She took it in its contemptuous sense, and her white lips twitched. But
she only said: “Is she aware thou hast come here?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Do I know? I have not told her.”
“Tell her.”
“As thou wishest.”
There was a pause. Presently the woman spoke.
“Wilt thou not bring her to see me? Then she will know that thou hast
no love left for me.”
He flinched as at a stab. After a painful moment he said, “Art thou in
earnest?”
“I am no marriage jester. Bring her to me. Will she not come to see an
invalid? It is a Mitzvah [good deed] to visit the sick. It will wipe
out her trespass.”
“She shall come.”
She came. Sarah stared at her for an instant with poignant curiosity;
then her eyelids drooped to shut out the dazzle of her youth and
freshness. Herzel’s wife moved awkwardly and sheepishly. But she was
beautiful; a buxom, comely country girl from a Russian village, with a
swelling bust and a cheek rosy with health and confusion.
Sarah’s breast was racked by a thousand needles; but she found breath
at last.
“God bless--thee, Mrs.--Kretznow,” she said gaspingly. She took the
girl’s hand. “How good thou art to come and see a sick creature!”
“My husband willed it,” the new wife said, in clumsy deprecation. She
had a simple, stupid air that did not seem wholly due to the constraint
of the strange situation.
“Thou wast right to obey. Be good to him, my child. For three years he
waited on me, when I lay helpless. He has suffered much. Be good to
him!”
With an impulsive movement she drew the girl’s head down to her and
kissed her on the lips. Then, with an anguished cry of “Leave me for
to-day!” she jerked the blanket over her face and burst into tears. She
heard the couple move hesitatingly away. The girl’s beauty shone on her
through the opaque coverings.
“O God!” she wailed, “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, let me die now!
For the merits of the patriarchs take me soon, take me soon!”
Her vain, passionate prayer, muffled by the bedclothes, was wholly
drowned by ear-piercing shrieks from the ward above--screams of agony
mingled with half-articulate accusations of attempted poisoning--the
familiar paroxysm of the palsied woman who clung to life.
The thrill passed again through Sister Margaret. She uplifted her
sweet, humid eyes.
“Ah, Christ!” she whispered, “if I could die for her!”
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
“HUMAN DOCUMENTS.”
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES.
A. CONAN DOYLE, whose father was an artist, was born in Edinburgh, in
1859. He began to write at the early age of seventeen, while studying
medicine. He wrote some sixty short stories in the ten years before
he became known through his widely-read “Sherlock Holmes” tales, and
he has since given to the reading world such sustained efforts as
“The White Company,” “Micah Clarke,” “The Refugees,” and “The Great
Shadow.” Conan Doyle has given up the practice of medicine, in order
to devote himself to literature exclusively. He is a close student of
old romances, a great admirer of Scott and Fenimore Cooper, and has
lectured on George Meredith, whom he places at the head of contemporary
novel writers.
The Arctic explorer, R. E. PEARY, C. E., U. S. N., was born in
Pennsylvania, forty years ago. His family having removed to Maine in
his childhood, he lived there till after reaching manhood. He was
graduated at Bowdoin College, and, eight years ago, was selected by
competitive examination to be one of the civil engineers of the United
States Navy, with the same rank and pay as that of lieutenant. But he
is improperly called “Lieutenant” in the press. He has written for
magazines, geographical journals, and newspapers. His report on his
experiences in Nicaragua as a civil engineer appeared in the “National
Geographical Magazine.” His report on his reconnoissance of the
Greenland inland ice in 1886, and especially his reports and articles
on the North Greenland Expedition, have made him widely known. His book
on this last expedition was nearly completed when he again started on
another Greenland expedition a few months ago.
CAMILLE FLAMMARION, the French astronomer, was born in 1842. He
received his education in ecclesiastical seminaries; first at Langres
and afterwards in Paris. He was a student in the Imperial Observatory
from 1858 till 1862, when he became editor of the “Cosmos.” In 1865 he
was made scientific editor of “Siècle.” He began about this time to
lecture on astronomy, and a few years later his giving in his adhesion
to spiritualism brought him great notoriety. In 1868 he made a number
of balloon ascents, in order to study the condition of atmosphere
at high altitudes, but he is above all an astronomer. He is called
in France a “_vulgarisateur_” of astronomy, which means that he has
presented to the people, in a picturesque and easily comprehended
manner, the science of astronomy. His notable works are: “The Imaginary
World and the Real;” “Celestial Marvels;” “God in Nature;” “History
of Heaven;” “Scientific Contemplations;” “Aerial Voyages;” “The
Atmosphere;” “History of this Planet;” and “The Worlds of Heaven.”
F. HOPKINSON SMITH was born in Baltimore, Md., October 23, 1838. By
profession Mr. Smith is a civil engineer, and he has built a number of
public edifices, many under contract with the United States. It was
Mr. Smith who built the Race Rock Lighthouse, off New London Harbor,
in Long Island Sound, between 1871 and 1877. In 1879 he built the
Block Island breakwater. Mr. Smith has achieved success as a writer
and lecturer. His best known water colors are “In the Darkling Wood”
(1876); “Pegotty on the Harlem” (1881); “Under the Towers, Brooklyn
Bridge” (1883); “In the North Woods” (1884); and “A January Thaw”
(1887). Mr. Smith has also illustrated his own books, the books of
others, and many magazine articles. Mr. Smith’s well-read books are:
“Col. Carter of Cartersville;” “A White Umbrella in Mexico;” “Well-worn
Roads of Spain, Holland, and Italy”; “Old Lines in New Black and
White;” “A Day at Laguerre’s, and Other Days;” and “The Tile Club.”
A. CONAN DOYLE.
[Illustration: AGE 4.]
[Illustration: AGE 14.]
[Illustration: AGE 22.]
[Illustration: AGE 28.]
[Illustration: A. CONAN DOYLE IN 1892. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY ELLIOTT
& DOYLE, LONDON.]
R. E. PEARY, C. E., U. S. N.
[Illustration: AGE 3.]
[Illustration: AGE 22. 1875.]
[Illustration: AGE 31. 1884.]
[Illustration: AGE 33. 1886.]
[Illustration: AGE 36. 1889.]
CAMILLE FLAMMARION.
[Illustration: AGE 18.]
[Illustration: AGE 22.]
[Illustration: TO-DAY.]
F. HOPKINSON SMITH.
[Illustration: AGE 17.]
[Illustration: AGE 25.]
[Illustration: AGE 45.]
[Illustration: TO-DAY.]
THE PERSONAL FORCE OF CLEVELAND.
BY E. JAY EDWARDS.
In his eulogium upon President Garfield, Mr. Blaine touched with
impressive emphasis upon the rapidity with which honors came to him.
Within six years after Williams College had sent Garfield forth
equipped, “he was successively president of a college, State Senator
of Ohio, Major-General of the Army of the United States, and a
Representative-elect to the national Congress. A combination of honors
so varied, so elevated, within a period so brief and to a man so young,
is without precedent or parallel in the history of the country.”
Those whose privilege it was to hear that matchless eulogy will not
forget the meaning glance with which Mr. Blaine, lifting his eyes from
his manuscript, swept that splendid company before him, the President
and his Cabinet, the Justices of the Supreme Court, in their silken
robes, the deliberate Senate and impetuous House, and the remaining
distinguished heroes of the war, in brilliant uniform, as though saying
to them, “You at least can understand how wonderful a thing it is to so
speedily gain such honors as these.”
Yet before the echoes of this eulogy had ceased, a political career had
been begun which was to be more marvellous in its successes and the
celerity of its successive achievements than that of Garfield. Within
ten years after Mr. Blaine pronounced this eulogy, a man then unknown
beyond the city in which he lived had been chosen Governor of New York
by a plurality unparalleled in the history of any State; had stepped
from that office before its term was ended to the chair of the Chief
Executive of the nation, and had again been elected to the presidency;
and elected the second time while a private citizen--an unmatched
political honor.
The swiftly succeeding successes of Garfield are no longer unparalleled
and unprecedented; that distinction is now Grover Cleveland’s. Carrying
a torch as a private in evening campaign processions in 1880, he was to
be four years later the successful presidential candidate of his party.
He had gained no distinction for subtle or extraordinary strategy;
he had not sat as a member in a legislative hall; his name had been
associated with no important measure conceived and executed for public
good; not of social inclination, not greatly learned, possessing
no wide acquaintance, and having somewhat limited experience, he,
nevertheless, revealed himself to the American people within the short
space of two years as a man of extraordinary personal force, the
quality of which is a puzzling mystery, which men of intellectual power
seem to find a fascination in trying to analyze.
What is this mysterious and impressive quality? We may tell its
manifestations; its influence has made history.
“What is it that is so impressive and overwhelming about your friend
Governor Cleveland?” said a distinguished politician to the late Daniel
Manning, at a time when Mr. Manning was with great skill directing the
politics that had Cleveland’s first presidential nomination in view.
“I do not know what it is, but I know that it is there,” was Mr.
Manning’s reply.
“My political intuitions are infallible,” said Governor Tilden, after a
single interview with Mr. Cleveland; “and I am of opinion that this man
is of somewhat coarse mental fibre and disposition, but of great force
and stubbornly honest in his convictions.”
“His name should be Petros,” Mr. Blaine once said of Mr. Cleveland,
“for when he has once formed opinions he stands upon them with the
firmness of a granite foundation.”
It would be possible to quote many similar opinions uttered by able
men who have had opportunity to see and study Mr. Cleveland. Some of
these opinions do not wholly compliment Cleveland’s mental powers. But
all of the opinions, whether uttered by political friends or enemies,
have this in common: they express amazement, not so much at the swift
successes of his career, as for that mystic personal quality which has
made him able to hold the politicians of his party in the hollow of
his hand, to defy political conventionalities, to break down machines,
and, above all, to gain the confidence of the American people. This
personal quality, which has given him these victories, he seems to have
furnished no hint of in his childhood or youth. Before he came to his
majority he must have led an unimpressive life, for those who knew him
in those early days have no anecdote to tell of him which suggests that
anything he did or said was of uncommon quality.
[Illustration: GROVER CLEVELAND. FROM THE LATEST PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN BY
PACK BROTHERS OF NEW YORK.]
The Buffalo bar at that time was a brilliant one. The leaders of it
were men of great ambition. It would have been impossible for a young
man, and especially for a young Democrat, to have gained influence with
those men had there not been even then some personal quality which won
their respect; and Mr. Cleveland gained a great measure of respect
while he was still a very young man, and he seems to have been able to
form close and permanent intimacies with young men whose advantage in
beginning life had been much greater than his. He passed swiftly from
the ranks of the poor law-student to the companionship of such men.
When young Bissell, fresh from his successful career at Yale College,
blessed with some wealth, and possessing all the advantages which
gentle social relations give, returned to Buffalo from his college
life, one of his closest intimacies was developed with Grover
Cleveland. Mr. Folsom, one of the brightest men at the Buffalo bar,
must have been early impressed by this quality of Cleveland’s, for he
took the young man into partnership, and before Cleveland was thirty
years of age he had established, with men of intellectual power, a
standing not due to unusual mental gifts, but to this same personal
quality which has made him conspicuous above other Americans for the
past twelve years.
In 1884, after Mr. Cleveland’s nomination for the presidency, President
Arthur was asked if he knew the man whom the Democratic party had
nominated.
“I know him slightly, and have heard much of him,” was the President’s
reply. “I know that he is a good companion among the rather worldly men
at the Buffalo bar, or was when he was there; but I also know this of
him: he is a man of splendid moral fibre, and I have been told that his
fidelity to his convictions and professional duties is regarded by his
associates at the Buffalo bar as something wonderful. I do not think
that he is a man of strong, original mind, but he is the faithfullest
man to what he believes to be right and his duty that his party has--at
least in New York State.”
Roscoe Conkling, not long after Mr. Cleveland’s nomination, was asked
if he knew the Democratic candidate, and Mr. Conkling replied, with
more of emphasis than he was accustomed to employ in speaking of any
public man at that time:
“I do not know much about Mr. Cleveland as a politician, but my
impression is that he is no politician, as the word is commonly
understood. But I do know this about him. As a lawyer he prepares his
cases well, as thoroughly, perhaps, as any man whom I have known in my
practice.”
Mr. Manning said, after he had retired from Mr. Cleveland’s cabinet:
“Whatever may be said of the President as to his relations with the
politicians, this much must be said, that he has never done anything
since he has been in the White House for any selfish, personal motive,
and that he is the most conscientious man in his adherence to what he
believes to be his duty, and in his attempts to make out his duty when
he is not entirely clear about it, that I have ever seen; and I do not
believe any President has ever exceeded him in these respects.”
One of the greater powers in one of the greatest railway systems of the
United States, not long ago meeting a company of friends at a private
dinner in the Union League Club, sat for some time listening to the
very interesting and acute analyses of Cleveland which were made by
many brilliant men who were in that party.
This railway prince, for that word justly describes him, at last said:
“I do not think any of you has touched upon what is, after all, the
quality which has made Mr. Cleveland what he is in American politics.
I had some reason to know wherein his power lies, at a time when he
probably had no other thought of his future than the expectation of
earning a competence at the bar. It so happened that I was associated
with certain litigations in which Mr. Cleveland was employed as
counsel. He was not employed either for or against the interests which
I represented, for they were merely incidental to these suits. I was
amazed, after a little experience with him, to see the way in which
he worked. I thought I had seen hard work and patient fidelity, but
I never saw a lawyer so patient and so faithful to his clients as
Cleveland was. I remember speaking about it to an eminent lawyer who
has since become a judge, and he told me that Grover Cleveland was the
most conscientious man in his relations with his clients that he had
ever met. I spoke of it to somebody else, and that man told me that
Cleveland had once actually lost a case by over-conscientiousness and
too thorough preparation. He had examined his witnesses so persistently
and exhaustively in private, and had pursued the case in all its
details with such supreme drudgery, that when his witnesses went upon
the stand their testimony seemed to the jury to be almost parrot-like;
to be so glib, so perfectly consistent, that it seemed as though there
must be a weakness in the case, and that such perfection must have
come from rehearsals. For that reason the jury decided against him,
although he won the case afterwards on appeal.
“Now, I am satisfied that it is just this quality in that man which
made it possible for him, in Buffalo, where the Republican party was
predominant, to gain minor political victories, and it certainly was
that which brought to him such Republican support as enabled him to
carry the city in a mayoralty election. We have been seeing just
this thing manifested throughout the country since Cleveland became
prominent. There probably never was a President since Washington who
so completely gained the confidence of a great element in the opposing
party as Mr. Cleveland has done; and you can’t explain it in any other
way than that just as in Buffalo, in his professional struggles, or
in political contests, he was believed to be a faithful man, rigid
and true in his convictions; so the opinion has spread throughout
the United States, and is entertained by a great many members of the
opposing political party, that here is a man who is absolutely true
to his own convictions and who is faithful to his responsibilities as
he understands them. Now, I have seen enough of American politics to
know that while our people admire talent, and sometimes go into spasms
of enthusiasm over men who have emotional qualities which appeal to
the masses, and which make them personally popular, yet, after all,
there is an abiding faith in sincerity, fidelity, and character which
compels the American masses to choose the man who has these qualities
rather than that one who has brilliant talents; and I think there is
no doubt that it was a latent suspicion that Mr. Blaine did not always
possess that higher character, while endowed with far more brilliant
genius than Mr. Cleveland possesses, which caused the people to choose
Cleveland rather than Blaine in 1884.”
We had some indication that this railway prince was correct in his
estimate, at a time during the past summer when Mr. Cleveland was in
some peril of physical ailment. The greatest of American advocates,
himself an ardent Republican, a man whom his party would be delighted
to honor if he would permit it, having heard of Mr. Cleveland’s
illness, said to a friend:
“I am more deeply interested in these reports about Mr. Cleveland’s
health than I can tell you. I have every confidence in Mr. Cleveland’s
integrity of purpose, and in the sincerity of his desire to lift these
financial questions above the range of partisanship, and it would be
a terrible misfortune for this country if he were to be disabled by
illness at this time.”
This from a man who did not vote for Cleveland, who had never met
him more than once or twice, but who had intuitively recognized
that quality which is Cleveland’s power. Again, another man, one of
preëminent genius in the world of finance, a very strong Republican,
having also heard that Mr. Cleveland was seriously ill, went to a
friend who had intimacy with the President, and said:
“I wish you would find out for me whether it is true that the
President is in danger. I have heard that it is so, and if it is, it
is the blackest cloud upon our horizon to-day. I did not vote for
Mr. Cleveland, for I do not believe in some of the principles of his
party, and I do not agree with him in some of his views. Yet if he had
been the candidate of my party I would gladly have voted for him, for
I think he is the most conscientious man I ever knew. I have perfect
faith in his fidelity to his sense of duty, and I have never seen an
action of his as President which I thought was inspired simply by a
desire for partisan advantage. I think he is the faithfullest public
man that we have had since Lincoln in his adherence to his convictions.”
There is only one word that will give a name to this quality that
distinguishes Mr. Cleveland, and that is, CHARACTER--that quality which
Emerson describes as a reserve force which acts directly and without
means, whose essence, with Mr. Cleveland, is the courage of truth.