THE SULTAN (_by telegraph_)—Your Majesty, would you be so good as to
lend a poor fellow the price of a few American missionaries?
THE CZAR—God forbid! You must be more economical. Do you think I’m made
of money?
SULTAN—But really——
CZAR—Yes, yes, I know. Your creditors are pressing you, and all that.
And you’ll promptly repay the loan—in a Golden Horn. I’ve heard it
before.
SULTAN—By the toe-nails of the Prophet! if I get not the money, that
dog of darkness, the American President, will be after me with a
sharp stick; and he’ll do, and he’ll do, and he’ll do! He has already
delivered his ultimatum.
CZAR—What! Is it so serious as that? My poor friend, I am sorry for
you. You are in for it, sure! In American diplomacy the ultimatum is a
prophecy of doom; you will be talked to death!
SULTAN—Then lend me the money.
CZAR—It is decreed otherwise. Kismet.
SULTAN—But what am I to do? Talked to death!—that is disagreeable.
CZAR—Build a mosque in which to pray that Heaven may put it into his
heart to send a fleet to Constantinople and commute your punishment to
bombardment.
SULTAN—May jackals whelp in his harem!—that is what he says he will do.
CZAR—Build two mosques.
FOR INTERVENTION
_President McKinley._ _Envoy Fischer._ _Secretary Gage._ _Voices._
PRESIDENT MCKINLEY—Well, Meinherr, what can we do for each other?
ENVOY FISCHER—Haf your Egcellenzy not vas inform of vhat I vants?
P. MCK.—My Secretary of State says you bear a petition for promoting
missionary work in Africa, but he is a great diplomat and not always to
be believed.
E. F.—Your Egcellenzy, I coom to ask for Amerigan onterventionings
between der Soud Ofrigan Ropoobligs und der dom Preetish.
P. MCK.—Jeewhillikins!
E. F.—Vas?
P. MCK.—Did my Secretary of State know that? And he let you in?
E. F.—Yaw, your Egcellenzy.
P. MCK.—Well, I’ll be gam doodled!—pardon; I mean I’ll be delighted. We
call it gam doodled.
E. F.—Yaw, I shbeak der Amerigan longvidge very goot meinself all der
vhile somdimes yet.
P. MCK.—Beautifully.
E. F.—Der Soud Ofrigan Ropoobligs dey sooffer demselfs mooch. As your
Segretary of Shtate he say, Gread Bridain she don’d do a teeng to us.
Sheneral Yowbert——
P. MCK.—Zhoobair.
E. F.—Yowbert he is die of belly ache again, und Sheneral Cronje gif
oop som more, und Sheneral Botha he droonk like a fittler’s——
P. MCK.—And larrups the soldiers with a slambangbok.
E. F.—Yaw, yaw, und Bresident Kruger he vas vun olt ladies, und der
Preetish is aferyvheres, und Vebster Dafis don’d vas wort his monies,
und——
P. MCK.—“Oond,” in short, you fellows are licked out of your boots.
E. F.—Vas?
P. MCK.—I was saying that, in the sympathetic judgment of this country,
your admirable people are experiencing an unforeseen adversity.
E. F.—Lort Roperts haf onvaded our sagred soil und he vil nod led go.
P. MCK.—My great and good friend, pardon me, but didn’t your people
begin that?
E. F.—We haf tvice unpology made, but Lort Soolsbury he vill not occept.
P. MCK.—How strange!
E. F.—Ve oppeals on der great und goot Yongee heart, vich lofes us. It
vas vun grand receptions vich der Amerigan beobles vas gif us under Ny
Yark som day!
P. MCK.—Yes, it was. I have here a list of names of the Reception
Committee, which [_enter Secretary Gage_] I will read to you.
[_Reads_].
SECRETARY GAGE—Mr. President, may I ask if that list of names was
copied from the books of the Commissioner of Immigration at Ellis
Island?
P. MCK.—O, no: they are names of exponents of American public
sentiment. They “received” this honest gentleman.
S. G. (_eyeing honest gentleman_)—Well, I fancy it would be more
blessed to give him than receive.
E. F.—But, your Egcellenza, shall ve haf der onterventionings alreaty
yet? I burn mit ombatience!
P. MCK. (_to servant_)—The gentleman burns. Put him out.
[_Exit Envoy Fischer, pursued._]
VOICES (_within_)—Hurrah! Hurrah for the Boer Republic!
P. MCK.—There must be an unusual number of Congressmen in the waiting
room.
THE ORDEAL
_An Historian._ _Clio._
HISTORIAN (_writing_)—“The Yanko-Spanko war was brief, but very
destructive. In the two or three months that it lasted the Americans
had more than three thousand soldiers and a half-dozen sailors killed
by the Spaniards and—”
CLIO—Tut-tut! no romancing; less than three hundred were killed.
H. (_writing_)—“Their own officers. Armed with repeating incompetences,
the latter were indeed formidable.”
Did you speak?
C.—No.
H. (_writing_)—“An effort was made to hold the commanding officers of
the expeditionary forces responsible for the mortality among their
troops, but ended in failure, for it could not be determined who was in
command.”
Clio, dear, who was in command at Santiago?
C.—First Linares, then Toral.
H.—I mean, who commanded the Americans.
C.—I don’t know.
H.—What are you the Muse of History for if you don’t know such a thing
as that?
C.—Ask me who really built the Great Pyramid, and why. Ask me who
wrote the “Junius” letters. Ask me who was the Man in the Iron Mask.
Ask me what Browning meant. Ask me anything in reason, but don’t ask
me who commanded the American army in the Yanko-Spanko war. Settle it
by turning a coin. You’ll be as likely to be right as wrong, and in
History that will give good results. The historian who in the long run
tells the truth half the time is a great historian.
H. (_turning coin_)—Head, Miles; tail, Shafter.
C.—Well?
H.—It is a smooth coin! (_Writes_) “The army before Santiago had no
commander.”
FROSTING A BUD
_McKinley, President._ _Hay, Secretary of State._ _Mark Hanna,
Senator and Dictator Politicus._
MCKINLEY—John, I am greatly troubled.
HAY—Permit me to send for the head of the Bureau of Exculpation and
Avoidance.
MCK.—Not to-day; it is another kind of matter.
H.—Ah, then; the Lord High Disheartener of the Importunate——
MCK.—No, no, John, it is about you.
H.—About me? Surely, you do not mean—you cannot think that another
change in the Cabinet——
MCK.—May you be Secretary of State for a thousand years.
H.—Then speak it out. I have a heart for any fate except one.
MCK.—Well, it is this: I have not seen nor heard of anybody who seems
to want you for Vice-President. Actually, your name has not been
mentioned except by myself.
H.—And to whom were you pleased to mention it, if I may ask?
MCK.—To Senator Hanna.
H.—And am I worthy to know what he said?
MCK.—It will pain you, John. Mr. Hanna is a strong, coarse man who says
what he thinks and never stops to think what he says.
H.—What did he say?
MCK.—That you would make a good running mate for a lame tortoise.
H.—Indeed!
MCK.—He added that you had been drowned by the British Ambassador in
the Nicaragua Canal.
H.—Anything more?
MCK.—He said that you parted your beard on the Greenwich meridian.
H.—Yes.
MCK.—He said that if asininity had not been invented you would invent
it.
[_Enter Mark Hanna. Exit, McKinley._]
MARK HANNA—Good-morning, Mr. Secretary.
H.—What is your business with me, sir?
M. H.—Why, John, I came to ask you if you would accept the nomination
for Vice-President.
H.—After what you said to the President on that subject, sir——
M. H.—It has never been mentioned between us.
H.—Ho-o-o-wat!
[_Falls in a fit of shivers._]
M. H.—The gentleman appears to be indisposed. Guess he was struck by a
draft from the Open Door.
A BAFFLED AMBITION
_McKinley, President._ _Roosevelt, Vice-President._ _Hay, Secretary
of State._ _Doorkeeper._
ROOSEVELT—Mr. President, I have come to consult with you about——
MCKINLEY—Why, yes, of course. I expect always to consult with the
leading men of the party—you and the others.
R.—Others?
MCK.—In the great scheme of the universe Heaven has provided others.
R.—There are also snakes and flies, but we do not accord them a voice
in the ordering of large affairs.
MCK.—There is my Cabinet.
R.—Nice chaps—they will, no doubt, be glad to carry out any policy that
we may decide upon.
MCK.—Then I understand that in the guidance and direction of this
administration you have the goodness to care to be the Whole Thing?
R.—You do me the greatest injustice (_lifting his eyes to the sky and
reverently pointing in the same direction_). There is a greater than I.
MCK.—Have you any other news?
R.—I have read your message from start to finish.
MCK.—Indeed! And what do you think of it?
R.—The worst I ever! It does not at all express my views on the——
MCK.—The views expressed are supposed to be those of the President.
R.—The devil!
MCK.—I beg pardon. The President.
R.—But where do I come in?
MCK.—Into what? The White House? Where the cat does, I think. The other
entrances are guarded.
R.—Look here, pardner, I mean to be a part of this administration.
MCK.—With that hat?
R.—What’s the matter with the hat?
MCK.—The head. [_Rings bell, enter Hay._] Mr. Secretary, this
gentleman has the goodness to wish to resign and become a part of the
administration. Is there a vacancy in the Cabinet?
HAY—You can easily make one, sir, by appointing him.
[_Exit Roosevelt, swearing._]
The Russian Ambassador has called to talk of a concerted movement on
Peking, to rescue the besieged legations.
MCK.—Never mind that now—let us have peace.
[_Enter Doorkeeper, pale and agitated._]
DOORKEEPER—O, if you please, sir, the gentleman with the teeth!
MCK.—Well?
D.—He—he showed ’em!
MCK.—Well?
D.—He—he drawed a bowie knife! If you please, sir, I—I’d like another
place.
MCK.—You are right, my good man. You shall be Minister to China.
THE GENESIS OF A NATION
_Hay, Secretary of State._ _Morgan, a Southern Senator._
_Telephone._
MORGAN—Mr. Secretary, I have startling and important news: the State of
Panama has seceded from Colombia!
HAY—You don’t say so!—this is so sudden!
MOR.—Yes, sir, it is true.
HAY—Well, well! Who would have thought it?
MOR.—I trust, sir, this removes the last scruple that the
Administration may have had against immediate construction of the
Nicaraguan Canal. The war down there will——
HAY—War? Is there also a war?
MOR.—Sir, you astonish me! Am I to suppose that you do not know that
secession entails war? I learned that more than forty years ago.
HAY—Dear me! Then we shall have to protect American interests. How do
you think it would do to send word to our Consul at Colon to be duly
vigilant in the matter? Or perhaps it would be better to have our
Minister at Bogota notify Colombia that there must be no bloodshed.
MOR.—I think, if you want to know, that that would be taking the side
of Panama.
HAY—We cannot, of course, do that: it would look like a violation
of neutrality. Really, the situation is embarrassing. I wish those
hot-headed southern Republics would be good.
MOR.—Well, sir, if you have nothing to propose, I shall speak of the
matter in the Senate.
HAY—Oh, thank you so much. I promise you that we will await the
conclusion of your remarks before taking any action in the Nicaraguan
matter.
MOR. (_aside_)—Hoist with my own petard!
[_Exit Morgan; Hay goes to telephone._]
HAY—Hello! Give me the Secretary of the Navy.
TELEPHONE—Br-r-r-r-r-rrr.
HAY—That you, Moody? Have you sent those fifteen warships to the
Isthmus?—and the two thousand marines? And have they orders that if any
Colombian soldier set foot on the sacred soil of Panama they are to
shoot him on the spot?
TEL.—Br-r-r-r-rzz—spot him on the snoot.
HAY—All right. I’ll draft a canal treaty with the Panaman Junta at
once. The President has his ear to the ground and says that there is
a pretty strong sentiment down there in favor of admittance into this
Union. Truly this is a wonderful century.
TEL.—People are saying that we fomented this Panama rebellion.
HAY—Oh, Moody; how unjust!
A WHITE HOUSE IDYL
_President Roosevelt._ _Shonts, Engineer of the Panama Canal._
_Loeb, Private Secretary to the President._ _The Adversary of
Souls._ _The Press._
ACT I
PRESIDENT (_solus_):
There!—’tis to be a lock canal. Now let
The dirt fly.
[_Enter Shonts._]
SHONTS:
Very well, sir, don’t you fret;
It will, right speedily, I’m sure. But I—
I’m getting out of this concern. I fly!
[_Exit Shonts._]
PRESIDENT:
Now let the heathen rage: their pet sea-level
Canal has gone a-glimmering to the devil.
[_Enter Loeb with a card._]
What’s this? “The Adversary.” Just my luck—
Without a rake I get all kinds of muck.
Always that Democrat appears if I
But mention him—I really wonder why.
Of one too many he’s the one. Go say
(_sighing_)
That I’ll not see him—I’ve seen Shonts to-day.
LOEB:
The gentleman is in the waiting room.
I think he wants to talk about your “boom.”
PRESIDENT:
Wants an appointment in my Cabinet,
And there’s no vacancy.
LOEB:
O you forget—
There’s Hitchcock.
[_Enter Adversary._]
PRESIDENT:
Ah, good morning, sir. Delighted!
(_aside_)
The fellow never waits till he’s invited.
ADVERSARY:
Sir, we have overlooked the unwritten law
Forbidding a third term. You must withdraw.
PRESIDENT (_aside_):
Come to torment me! How this horrid shape,
Grinning behind his hand like any ape,
Maddens to candor. (_Aloud_) Brute! you might delay
Your triumph until I have had my day
And nations weep, in slow procession walking——
ADVERSARY:
For him who dug the great canal by talking!
’Twere long to wait unless your tongue were made
By miracle divine into a spade.
PRESIDENT:
Take that, you beast!
[_Beats him and chases him off the stage, losing his temper in the
scuffle._]
LOEB (_solus_):
The rogues fall out—_sic semper_.
As honest man, I will annex his temper.
[_Puts President’s temper under his coat and exit._]
ACT II
THE PRESS (_solum_):
The President “received” last night—all smiles,
Charming the throng with amiable wiles.
But Loeb, with flaming eyes and flying feet,
Sprang in and kicked them all into the street!
TWO FAVORITES
_Wood, a Medicated Warrior._ _Miles, a Soldier._ _Satan, a
Statesman._ _Chorus of Citizens._
MILES (_to Wood_):
Sir, I have ventured to observe with what
I hope is a becoming modesty, that not
In vain have been your sacrifices, nor
Quite thrown away your aptitude for war.
Service and genius—these are things that count,
With (if you’re cavalry) the skill to mount.
Somewhat, too, doubtless, it promotes your gains
In rank and honors to possess the brains
To know enough to go in when it rains.
WOOD:
Some know enough to note the fine effect
Of sunshine on their uniform.
MILES:
Correct:
I’ve keener joy to see the daybeam smite
My gay attire than you to see it light
Your military record. Let’s get through—
I’d rather bandy swords than words with you.
But you’re a man of peace—a doctor, sir;
To save life, not to take it, you prefer;
And in the Spanish War your taste was shown
In saving with consummate skill your own.
By that you earned, according to my notion,
More leather medals, not so much promotion.
CHORUS OF CITIZENS:
By that he earned, according to our notion,
More leather medals, not so much promotion.
MILES:
When you’re a general in chief command,
May peace dwell ever in this happy land!
CHORUS OF CITIZENS:
When he’s a general in chief command,
May peace dwell ever in this happy land!
WOOD:
From Santiago’s veins I drained the fever.
MILES:
When shown by Lawton how to make it leave her.
WOOD:
I washed Havana.
MILES:
Yes, you made the mud flow
Right lively when you had been taught by Ludlow.
WOOD:
My service——
MILES:
’Twas of silver, was it not?—
Given you by gamblers for the Lord knows what!
Well, take your honors—they’re well earned, I think,
By working for yourself with printer’s ink
And feats of fawning—all the arts, in fine,
Whereby our peace-time heroes rise and shine.
Rather than witness more of your intrigues
I’ll mount a bronco and ride thirty leagues!
WOOD:
Well, two Administrations, you’ll agree,
I have been served and honored by.
SATAN:
Dear me,
I’ve had the favor and support of three.
A DIPLOMATIC TRIUMPH
_President Roosevelt._ _Secretary of State Hay._
THE PRESIDENT—Say, John, I wish you would see the Chinese Minister
and tell him that Russia is complaining that China does not observe a
strict neutrality. Tell him that she is imperiling her administrative
entity.
SECRETARY HAY—I have already done so, sir; and I ventured to add that
an oyster schooner that had just arrived from below had a very large
mast.
THE P.—What the dickens had that to do with it?
S. H.—Ah, you are not skilled in the language of diplomacy; it was an
oblique reference to the “big stick.” The Chink understood; he was born
on one of the days before yesterday.
THE P.—And what did he say?
S. H.—Everything: put his hands into his long sleeves, crossed them on
his breast and bowed three times, profoundly silent. Then he retired.
THE P.—I am from Wyoming and you’ll have to explain.
S. H.—It’s all right. I at once summoned the other Ambassadors (except
the Russian and the Japanese) and told them that you had made the most
forcible representations to the Chinese Empress regarding her Majesty’s
breaches——
THE P.—Her what? You said _that_?
S. H.—Of neutrality. They were greatly impressed.
THE P.—What did they say?
S. H.—What could they say? They bowed and went out, one by one, leaving
the door open. The Open Door is what we stand for. It is all over.
THE P.—Except the shouting.
S. H.—Secretary Loeb will see to that. He has prepared a statement of
the incident for the press.
[_Tumult within—cheers and fishhorns._]
THE P.—What’s that?
S. H.—The shouting.
A SUCKED ORANGE
_The President._ _Root, Secretary of State._
ROOT:
O world-power President, strenuous, mighty-mouthed, audible, able,
Director of destiny, _arbiter morum_, compeller of princes,
Why this dejected demeanor, this sighing that signifies something
Gone wrong with the organ wherewith you were happy aforetime? O, keep
me
No longer a-guessing: divulge to your faithful Elihu the hidden
Vermicular monster that gnaws at the core of the executive bosom—
Nay, feeds on the damask of that which mainly attests your
distinction.
PRESIDENT:
Alas, ’tis no worm that is secretly plying the hardy incision;
From troubles intestinal I and my country have present exemption—
Albeit the Democrats, turbulent ever and always disloyal,
Continue to shout of political contributions, demanding
A needless accounting, and some hint at restitution. My sorrow
Has better foundation. King Edward of England has joined the Mikado
In making a shameless alliance to tighten their grip upon Asia!
ROOT:
Why, surely, my master, we have the advantage: this compact secures us
Continuous peace in the Orient, gives us the door that is open.
Prevents the partition of China—in brief it establishes firmly
All that my great predecessor
(_aside_)
(whom the Angel of Death, in his wisdom,
Removed from my path to the White House)
(_aloud_)
so gallantly strove to accomplish.
PRESIDENT:
What’s that got to do with it, idiot? A
broad-minded statesman (behold him!)
O’erlooks, like a man on a stepladder, trivial and transient
advantage,
Discerning the meaning and menace of methods that mark the
achievement.
Not once in all the proceedings that led to this hardy alliance
Was uttered, or written, or thought of, the name of Theodore
Roosevelt!
[_Exit._]
ROOT (_solus_):
O, dammit! why should they consult him?— there wasn’t a roasting
chestnut
To pull from the fire—and his fingers still smart from the Peace of
Portsmouth.
A TWISTED TALE
_Roosevelt, President._ _Hay, Secretary of State._ _Cassini,
Russian Ambassador._
HAY:
Good morning, Count. Sir, are you well to-day?
CASSINI:
Quite well, I thank your Excellency. Pray
Inform me if your physical condition
Is satisfactory to your physician.
HAY:
O no, indeed: I’m sounder than an apple.
CASSINI (_aside_):
The fellow’s wormy.
HAY:
Now, then, let us grapple
With “Bessarabian outrages” and such.
Some recent—ah—um—er—have pained us much.
Christians and Jews alike are up in arms
Here in America, and this alarms
The President. He tells me I’m expected
To take a firm stand till the thing’s corrected.
CASSINI:
So good of him! That means there’s trouble brewing:
If we stay wicked there’ll be “something doing.”
If, for example, we ignore your cross talk
You’ll send a monitor to Vladivostok.
HAY:
O no, my friend, it might mean more than play
If public sentiment could have its way.
Our people are so wroth it might mean war
Did naught prevent—but that’s what _I_ am for.
As ’tis, it means that an election’s coming,
And to succeed we’ve got to keep things humming.
CASSINI:
In other words, it means just nothing.
HAY:
Yes,
That is about the size of it, I guess.
The Jewish vote, you understand——
CASSINI:
I see:
To help you get it you apply to me;
And my Imperial Master is the cat
To pull your chestnuts from the fire. Well, “Scat,
You beast!” is not the right command.
HAY:
My noble friend, you do not understand.
What I shall offer to you for transmission
Is nothing but a courteous petition,
Which if you pocket (_winking_) on your own head be it.
I shall have done my duty as I see it.
CASSINI:
But how about your master?
HAY:
He’s all right;
He must make faces, but he need not fight.
CASSINI:
Hand in the document without delay—
’Twill go on file. I bid you, sir, good day.
[_Exit Cassini; enter Roosevelt._]
ROOSEVELT:
Well, John, I trust you broke no bones. Did you
Caution that candle-eater what we’ll do
If one more Hebrew they annoy? Does he
Clearly perceive they’ll have to deal with Me?
HAY:
Well, I should say so! Sir, I plainly said
You’d heap their land with tumuli of dead;
Hang by the heels the Czar until he’d weep
His shoes full; load the sanguinary deep
With battleships until ’twould overwhelm
The seaboard cities of their monkey realm;
Encumber it with wrecks and floating carcasses!
ROOSEVELT:
That programme is more strenuous than Marcus’s—
Hanna, my master. _He_ would never dare
To twist the tail of the fierce Russian bear.
I’m big enough to tackle any brute!
[_Exit Roosevelt._]
HAY (_solus_):
I too am quite a sizable galoot.
POST MORTEM
_The President._ _Miles, Commander of the Army._ _Root, Secretary
of War._ _Loeb, Private Secretary to President._ _Hull, Chairman of
Committee on Military Affairs._ _An Orderly._
ACT I
_Headquarters of the Army._
MILES (_in bed_):
What ho, there! orderly—I say, I say!
Bring in my breakfast. What’s the time o’ day?
What? six o’clock!—and day’s already broke?
I’m too late to escape him. Holy smoke!
I think I hear his footstep on the stair—
But no, it is not his: there is no blare
Of a great trumpet strenuously blown—
That veritable _tuba mirum_ known
To have sounded once the charge at Kettle Hill
(After ’twas made) and to be sounding still.
ORDERLY:
Perhaps he will not come.
MILES:
Perhaps, perhaps—
Yet well I know those War Department chaps
Have told him of my novel plan that places
The Army on a military basis.
Ne’er mind the breakfast; I’ll get up and fly
Before the sun’s another minute high.
If I can by a masterly retreat
Escape him trust me to come back and eat.
ORDERLY:
There’s some one, sir, a-tryin’ to break in.
MILES:
O Lord, forgive my every little sin!
Seeing that I was going to be late
Developing my Plan, he would not wait,
He’s risen with the lark, alas, and brought
His answer to my unperfected thought.
He always was forehanded. [_Enter President._]
PRESIDENT:
I’ve no time
To let the punishment await the crime.
Take that, and that, and that! (_beating him._)
MILES:
Of course, of course;
I’m firm in judgment, but I yield to force.
“Submission is a military virtue,”
The Regulations say, “howe’er it hurt you.”
I’ll now submit to buffets with sobriety,
And, later on, my view of their propriety,
Together with some pertinent suggestions
Touching important military questions.
PRESIDENT:
You may, and touching civil ones to boot;
Submit them, though, to Secretary Root.
[_Enter Root._]
MILES:
Yes, but ’twould hearten me if you’d agree
To signify your mind to him, not me.
Seeing him lame I’ll know the views I deem
Correct are held by you in light esteem.
ROOT:
Don’t rub your bruises, man; that’s mutiny!
PRESIDENT:
And it demands official scrutiny.
I’ll summon a court-martial, sir, to “fire” you;
And if it finds you guiltless I’ll retire you.
You huff me anyhow. Dashnation, man,
The battle spirit, like a black-and-tan
Ranch dog, sits up and howls within my breast,
And it’s O, to bust a bronco in the West!
Fetch me that broomstick, soldier. Golly me!
I must ride something or I die.
ROOT (_on hands and knees_):
Ride me.
ACT II
_The White House_
LOEB:
O Mr. President, depress your ear
Till it enfold me, so that you may hear
Strange news of one departed—one that you
Have done to death: old Nelson Miles.
ROOSEVELT:
Go to!
There is no news of him; he’s dead as nails.
LOEB:
About him, though, they tell alarming tales.
’Tis said that he has moved an inch or so.
ROOSEVELT:
Go put a heavier stone upon him—go!
Confound the fellow! will he ne’er stay dead?
LOEB:
The worst is yet to come: they say his head
Is half-protruded from the tomb!
ROOSEVELT:
Quick, quick!
Go rap it roundly with the big, big stick.
LOEB:
Nay, that’s a weapon I’m too weak to wield.
(_aside_)
For anything I know, the corpse is “heeled.”
ROOSEVELT:
Where’s Colonel Hull? Command him to attack.
He’s brave and generous enough to crack
The skull of any dead man living. Take the stick.
[_Exit Loeb._]
That rogue’s obedient, but he makes me sick.
[_An hour elapses. Enter Hull._]
HULL:
The work is done: again he is no more—
He was half out. These red stains are his gore.
ROOSEVELT:
I trust you gave him a conclusive whack.
HULL:
Well, not exactly, but—I bit his back!
A STRAINED RELATION
_The President._ _Root, Secretary of State._ _Taft, Secretary of
War._ _Bonaparte, Secretary of the Navy._ _Metcalf, Secretary of
Commerce and Labor._ _Dewey, an Admiral._ _Loeb, Private Secretary
to the President._
ACT I
_The White House, October, 1906._
ROOT—Mr. President, the Japanese Minister complains that the children
of his countrymen in California are denied admittance to the public
schools.
PRESIDENT—That will be bad for their education.
ROOT—He regards this as an unfriendly discrimination.
PRES.—I should suppose that would be a painful conviction.
ROOT—He says his countrymen in Japan are greatly excited about it.
PRES.—What a jabbering they must make.
ROOT—He is making a good deal of noise himself.
PRES.—Dare say. Let’s ask Metcalf about it; he’s from California.
[_Taps the bell nine times—enter Secretary Metcalf._] Mr. Secretary,
how about the exclusion of Japs from the Californian public schools,
poor little things!
METCALF—There are separate schools for them. The average age of the
poor little things is about thirty years.
PRES.—How affecting! Many of them must be orphans. I was once an orphan.
ROOT (_aside_)—His levity fatigues. (_To the President_) Among the
Japanese there are no orphans: those of them that have lost their
parents have an official father in the Minister of War.
PRES.—What’s that?
ROOT—Their actual guardian is the ranking admiral of the navy.
PRES.—The devil!
ROOT—No; Togo.
PRES.—This is a mighty serious matter, as I said. Go at once to the
Japanese Minister and disavow everything. [_Exit Secretary Root,
smiling aside._] Metcalf, tell Loeb to prepare apologies for Japan,
for publication in the newspapers. Take the first train to California,
and——
[_Exit Secretary Metcalf. Enter Secretary Bonaparte, breathless._]
BONAPARTE—Mr. President, the J-J—the Mapanese Jinister is in the offing
with all his s-suite! He is sailing up the gravel walk this very
m-minute! For heaven’s sake, go to the window and show your teeth.
[_Exit Secretary Bonaparte, running. Tumult within: “Banzai!
Banzai!”_]
PRES. (_solus_)—What under the sun can I say to appease the pirates?
This is what comes of the Peace of Portsmouth! It is this to be a world
power with a contumacious province.
[_Has had a bad half-hour._]
ACT II
_The Same, August, 1907._
PRES.—Mr. Secretary, it is reported that the Japanese in Hawaii are
rising.
MET.—You don’t say so! Why, it is hardly six o’clock by their time.
They are early risers.
PRES.—I learn from Secretary Root that Admiral Togo’s battleships are
coaling. Now, what can that mean?
MET.—Let us ask Dewey. [_Enter, thoughtfully, Admiral Dewey._] Admiral,
the President has learned that the Japanese battleships at Tokio are
taking on coal. What, in your judgment as a sailor, are they going to
do with it?
DEWEY—Burn it.
[_Enter Secretary Root._]
ROOT—Mr. President, California is about to secede—we shall lose
Metcalf! The entire Pacific Coast will follow. I go to glory or the
grave!
[_Exit Secretary Root. Enter Secretary Taft, with bottle._]
TAFT—In this supreme crisis of the nation let us fortify our souls
(_filling glasses_) for any trial.
PRES. (_lifting glass_)—Here’s confusion to the memory of the late
Commodore Matthew Perry!
[_They drink. Tumult within: “Banzai! Banzai!” Enter Loeb._]
LOEB—Mr. President——
PRES.—Where’s Root?
LOEB—In the East Room, playing draw poker with the Japanese Minister.
[_Renewed tumult within_: “_Banzai Nippon!_”] The Jap seems to be
winning.
A WIRELESS ANTEPENULTIMATUM
_The President._ _Hay, Secretary of State._ _Bowen, Minister to
Venezuela._
PRESIDENT:
John Hay, where are you on the great, gray sea?
I beg you will at once return to me.
This wireless business is the devil’s own,
And Castro’s playing him with me alone!
Venezuela sneering at my threat;
Santo Domingo more and more in debt;
Their foreign creditors dispatching fleets
With duns and guns and sons of guns—it beats
The Dutch, the devil and the band! I swear
From sheer distraction I could pull your hair!
’Twixt Castro and the Doctrine of Monroe,
My fears are nimble and my wits are slow.
I know not where to go nor how to stop—
Stand fast or, like old Saul of Tarsus, “flop.”
Nothing I know, and everything I doubt—
Dear John, in God’s name put your prow about!
HAY:
Though the skies fall upon the hills beneath
Be resolute. If needful show your teeth.
PRESIDENT:
Dear Bowen, go to Castro. Tell him straight
He must make up his mind to arbitrate.
Say if he won’t—here swing the big, big stick—
We’ll do a little stunt to make him sick.
BOWEN:
Your words I’ve put into his ear. Said he:
“I’m sick already—to the mountains, me.”
PRESIDENT:
Tell him again; then if he won’t, why, add
We’ll give him ninety days to wish he had.
BOWEN:
I’ve told him that, sir, and he says if you
Are pressed for time a single day will do,
For he’s a rapid wisher. What shall I
Say further, to provoke a coarse reply?
PRESIDENT:
Tell him that when the time allowed is up
We’ll press against his lips the bitter cup.
We’ll waste no further words in this. Don’t fail
To send the scalawag’s reply—by mail.
A PRESIDENTIAL PROGRESS
FIRST AMERICAN SOVEREIGN—Hurrah! Hooray! Hurroo!
SECOND AMERICAN SOVEREIGN—What’s the matter with you?
F. A. S.—What’s the matter with me? What’s the matter with all of us?
Don’t you see the President’s train? Don’t you hear him speaking from
the rear platform?
S. A. S.—What’s to prevent?
F. A. S.—Nothing could prevent—not all the crowned heads of Europe, nor
all their sycophant courtiers and servile subjects!
S. A. S.—No, nothing—just nothing at all—excepting personal
self-respect and a decent sense of the dignity of American citizenship.
F. A. S.—What! You think it base and undignified to pay honor to the
President’s great office?
S. A. S.—It is easy to call it “honoring his great office.” I believe
we commonly do give the name of some virtue to our besetting vice. I
observe that the President, too, honors our own great office by the
most sickening flattery of the people every time he opens his mouth.
His reasons are better than ours, for we really rank him: his great
office is of our own making and bestowal. But I wish he wouldn’t lick
my boots.
F. A. S.—Sir, you have no right to use such language of the ruler of
the nation!
S. A. S.—It is “ruler” when you want an excuse to grovel; in your more
austere moods it is “servant of the people”—and that is his own name
for the thing that he has the distinction to be. I don’t cheer my
butler, nor throw flowers at my coachman, nor crush the hand of my cook.
F. A. S. (_aside_)—This must be a millionaire! (_Aloud_) I see great
wisdom, sir, in what you say. I’ll never again abase myself before
any one. Listen to the senseless applause! (_Aside, as loud as he can
bawl_) Hooray! Hooray!
S. A. S.—Ah, that was the fellow’s expiring platitude. He has finished
waving the red flag and is coming this way.
[_President passes, shaking hands with both._]
F. A. S. (_gazing at his hand with deep emotion_)—God bless him!
S. A. S.—Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!
MISCELLANEOUS
THE SAMPLE COUNTER
OUR HISTORICAL NOVELS
_From “The First Man in Rome.”_
No sooner had Cæsar crossed the Rubicon than all Rome was ablaze with
excitement and terror. Horatius, who all by himself had held the bridge
until outnumbered, retreated to the Tiber, where he was joined by the
new levies, imperfectly armed and equipped, and some of the Prætorian
Guards. There, behind such defenses as they could improvise, they swore
to resist until all were dead. Sacrifices were offered to the gods, and
the augurs, removing the hearts of the victims, consulted the auricles.
Meantime Cæsar’s leading legion, with Scipio Africanus marching proudly
at its head, came into view beyond the Tarpeian Rock—the same from
which the unhappy Sappho, one of the most prominent poets of her time,
had cast herself—and advanced without delay in a shower of catapults.
Precisely what occurred during the next half-hour we are without the
data to state with confidence: all the historical novels of the three
or four centuries immediately following were destroyed in the accident
at Pompeii; but at three o’clock in the afternoon of that fateful
day Brutus lay dead upon the field of honor and the beaten forces of
Horatius were in tumultuous retreat along the Claudian aqueduct. Then
Cleopatra came forth from her place of concealment, resolved to throw
herself at the feet of her conquering lover and intercede for the
doomed city.
_From “Court and Camp.”_
Through a tangled wild as dense as death the martial forced his way,
despite the wounds that the Russian forces had inflicted upon his aged
frame. Suddenly he departed from the undergrowth and found himself
in an open glade of inconsiderable dimensions, and before his vision
stood the widely known figure of Napoleon, with folded arms and in a
greatcoat falling to his heels. The king was apparently oblivious to
his environment, but instinctively “the bravest of the brave,” ever
considerate and genteel, drew back into cover, unwilling to interrupt
the royal revery. Apparently Napoleon was immersed in meditations.
What these were we have not the temerity to conjecture. Waterloo had
been fought and lost!—the last die had been cast to the winds and
the dream of universal empire had gone down in gloom! Did he realize
that all was over? Was he conjuring up the future and forecasting the
judgment of posterity—the figure that he was destined to cut in the
historical novels of a later age? Did visions of St. Helena float
before his prophetic gaze? Alas, we know not!
At the sound of a breaking twig beneath the martial’s foot the king
started from his revery and said in French: “Live the France!” Then,
deriving a slender stiletto from his regalia, he plunged it into the
left ventricle of his heart and fell dead before the martial, who was
greatly embarrassed, could summon medical assistance.
Josephine was avenged!
_From “The Crusader.”_
It was midnight beneath the walls of the beleaguered city. Sir Guy de
Chassac de Carcassonne leaned heavily upon his great two-handed sword,
fatigued with slaughter. Hardly had he closed his eyes in slumber when
the seven Saracens chosen by Saladin for the perilous emprise stole
forth from the postern gate and stealthily surrounded him. Then at a
preconcerted signal they flashed their scimitars in air and rushed upon
their prey!
But it was fated to be otherwise. At the first stroke of the Toledo
blades Sir Guy awoke. To pluck his long weapon from the soil was the
work of a comparatively short time; then with one mighty circular sweep
of the steel he clove them all asunder at the waist!
Jerusalem was delivered and remains a Christian city to this day!
_From “Blood and Beer.”_
The booming of the cannon awakened Bismarck with a start. Vaulting
into the saddle with remarkable grace, he was soon in the thickest
of the fray, and many a foeman fell beneath his genius. Yet even in
the terrible din and confusion of battle his mental processes were
normal, and he thought only of the countess, while absently dealing
death about him. Suddenly he was roused from his revery by the impact
of a battle-axe upon his helmet, and turning his eyes in the direction
whence it seemed to have been delivered, he beheld the sneering visage
of De Grammont on a black steed.
Here was an opportunity that might satisfy the most exacting—an
opportunity to rid his country of a traitor and himself of a rival;
to serve at once his ambition and his love. His noble nature forbade.
Waving his enemy aside, he thoughtfully withdrew from the field,
resolved to press his suit otherwise.
_From “The Iron Duchess.”_
As Wellington rode moodily away from the fatal field of Blenheim,
meditating upon the wreck of his ambition, he encountered the seer whom
he had met the day before.
“Wretch!” he exclaimed, drawing his scimitar, “it is you that have done
this! But for your accursed predictions I should have won the battle
and the Swiss king would now be flying before my victorious legends.
Die, therefore!”
So saying, he raised his armed hand to smite, but the blow did not
fall. Even while the blade was suspended in the air the seer’s long
black cloak fell away, the white hair and concealing beard were flung
aside, and the Iron Duke found himself gazing into the laughing eyes of
Madame de Maintenon! Speechless with astonishment, he thundered: “What
is the meaning of this?”
“Ah, monsieur,” she replied, with that enchanting smile which had lured
Louis XIV to the guillotine, “it means that I amuse myself.”
_From “The Noddle of Navarre.”_
When Henry of Navarre saw the ruin he had wrought he elevated his
helmet from his marble brow and stepped three paces to the rear. The
priest advanced with flashing eyes and, lifting both hands to the
zenith, explained that vengeance was the Lord’s—He would repay!
“It is better so,” assented the king—“I prefer it thus.”
But even as he spake a shot from the moat pierced his brain and he
fell, to reign no more!
_From “Louis the Luckless.”_
Observing that his presence was not suspected, Richelieu remained with
his eye glued to the keyhole. It was well that he did so, for the
conspirators now laid off their masks, and among them he recognized
the king himself! Here was a situation that he believed unique; in all
his experience in court and camp there was no precedent A sovereign
conspiring for his own overthrow, his assassination! Richelieu was
deeply affected by so striking an instance of unselfishness. He reeled
and fell to the floor in an agony of admiration.
_From “The Road to Tusculum.”_
No sooner did Cicero perceive his legions retreating than he spurred
impetuously from the field, thundering that all was lost. Passing
swiftly across the Tiber by a secret bridge, he proceeded to the
Forum, and entering the senate unannounced, communicated the news of
the disaster. This was Pompey’s opportunity; he rose in his place and
extending his index finger in the direction of the defeated warrior
exclaimed in sarcastic accents: “Romans, behold your liberator from
the chains of the Volscians! Behold the orator-general to whom you
owe so much! Let him hereafter (if we have a hereafter) oppose to
his country’s armed invaders the power of his matchless tongue. The
sword is too heavy for a hand trained in the light calisthenics of
gesticulation!” Maddened by this artful arraignment, the senators rose
as one Roman and, headed by Marcus Aurelius, fell upon the unfortunate
commander, tearing him limb from limb!
_From “The Loves of Cromwell.”_
Night fell darkly over the city of Worcester.
Cromwell had marched all day to reach it by seven roads, and at nine in
the evening besieged it with a hundred thousand men.
A desperate struggle ensued, at the close of which Cromwell rose from
his knees victorious over the forces of his king.
“Bring that son of Belial before me!” he roared, “that I may deal with
him according to his sins.”
Charles, pale and trembling, with manacled hands and bowed head, was
led in.
The lord protector eyed him haughtily, then addressing a brief prayer
to Heaven sprang forward and with one stroke of his blade severed the
royal head from the royal shoulders.
Thus ended the War of the Roses, and England was again a republic.
OUR TALES OF SENTIMENT
_From “One Woman.”_
Gladys climbed to the balustrade of the bridge and, adjusting her
skirts, plunged into the gloomiest forebodings.
“Why,” she said, “should the future look so dark to one possessing all
that fortune can donate?”
She added a number of profound reflections on the vanity of life,
ending with a brilliant epigram. It had scarcely died upon her lips
when Armitage arrived upon the tapis and took in the situation at a
glance. Striding hastily forward, he bowed gracefully and signified
a desire to know the cause of her abstraction. She burst into tears
and complied with his wish. Then she flung herself about his neck and
accorded full expression to her grief, which he delicately professed
not to observe; for this noble figure had been educated in the best
schools of European gentility.
_From “But a Single Thought.”_
Seeing her proceeding away from him, perhaps forever, Auvergne
intercepted her with an expression of regret for his rudeness, coupled
with a plea for pardon. For a breathless instant she stayed her
progress as if uncertain as to the degree of his offense, then resumed
her pace till she reached the river’s brim. With an unconscious prayer
she sprang swooning into the breakers and was with difficulty prevented
from meeting a watery grave.
_From “A Belle of Castile.”_
Josephina had progressed but a brief distance into the garden when
some inner sense proclaimed that she was followed: the crunching of a
gentleman’s heel upon the gravel was indisputable. Partially terrified,
she sought concealment in the shrubbery that bordered the path on the
one side and the other. It passed by her there in the moonlight, that
dreadful sound, yet no one visible! It went on and on, growing fainter
and fainter, like herself, and was lost to hearing. Then she remembered
the tradition of the Invisible Knight and her heart smote her for the
absence of faith with which she had so often greeted it.
“I am fitly punished,” she conceded, “for my sceptical attitude.
Henceforth, so far as the constitution of my mind will permit, I will
be more hospitable to the convictions of the simple.”
How she adhered to this expiational resolution we shall behold.
_From “The Queen’s Chaperon.”_
The duke stepped from his carriage to a neighboring hill and cast
his eye athwart his ancestral domain. “All this,” he mused, “I must
renounce if I comply with the queen’s royal suggestion to fly with her
to Rome. Is she worth the privation? I must have time to consider a
transaction of such great importance.”
Hastily entering his carriage, he haughtily bade the coachman drive him
to some expensive hotel, whence he dispatched a delicately perfumed
note to her Majesty, saying that he should be detained a few days by
affairs of state, but assuring her of his uncommon fidelity. Then he
retired to his couch and thought it all over in Italian. The next day
he arose and fled rapidly.
_From “The Uplifting of Lennox.”_
On hearing the terrible news Myra fell supine to earth without delay!
“Is it nothing?” inquired Lennox. “Is it only a temporary
indisposition?—will it soon pass?”
But Myra replied only with a significant pallor which told all too
plainly what the most accomplished linguist would vainly have striven
to express.
How long she lay unconscious we know not, but promptly on becoming her
previous self she let fall a multitude of tears.
Lennox yielded to the requirements of etiquette and stole away.
_From “Bertha of Bootha.”_
As they strolled along the Riviera the setting sun was just touching
the summit of the Alps and firing them with an electrical glow. Turning
to her, he looked into her beautiful eyes and thus expressed himself:
“Dearest, I am about to make an important statement.”
She almost instantly divined the character of the communication that he
referred to, and it affected her with perturbation. It was so sudden.
“If,” she remarked, “you could postpone the statement above mentioned
until a more suitable occasion I should regard your forbearance with
satisfaction.”
“Very well,” he replied, with coldness, “I will wait until we are not
alone.”
“Thank you, ever so much,” she blushed, and all was silence. Later in
the season he explained to her the trend of his affections, and she
signified the pleasure that she derived from his preference.
_From “Hertha of Hootha.”_
The moon rose in the east without a sound and the ripples on the bosom
of the main ran silently to the beach. Hertha and Henri, having similar
sensibilities, were equally overcome by the solemnity of the scene,
and neither inaugurated a conversation. Their love was too true for
utterance by human tongue. Thus they paced for a considerable period,
when suddenly the silence was cut asunder by a woman’s scream!
“I know that voice,” cried Henri, hastily divesting himself of as many
of his upper garments as, under the circumstances, he deemed it proper
to do; “it is Minetta committing suicide!”
He immediately plunged into the Atlantic, while Hertha stood rooted to
the sand, endeavoring to regulate her emotions. In a few moments, which
seemed an age, he emerged from the deep, bearing the deceased, whom he
tenderly flung at her rival’s feet.
Then the survivors knelt and prayed in both English and French.
_From “Ethel Shanks.”_
Ethel hastened slowly along the path leading to the cliff above the
lake. The full moon was rising in the east, for the hour was midnight,
and her warm radiance bathed the landscape in a blue languor.
To Ethel the sky had never seemed so blue, nor the Polyanthes tuberosa
in her corsage so white. She drank joy with her every breath, and
she breathed quickly from her exertion in climbing the eminence on
which she stood. Hearing footprints approaching, she turned, and the
baron stood before her! “I was hasty,” he explained. “I should not
have disclosed my love with such abruption. Permit me to withdraw my
inconsiderate declaration.”
Ethel’s heart sank within her! She could not refuse him the desired
permission; that would not have been genteel: and Ethel was under all
circumstances the lady. So she beat back the tears and said:
“Please, sir, dismiss it from attention.”
The cry of her broken heart was unheard by that callous ear,
unaccustomed to the sad, sweet chords evoked from the harp of a dead
hope. The nobleman lit his pipe and, his cruel errand performed,
returned to his ancestral mansion. For one or two moments Ethel stood
on the brink of eternity. Precipitating herself from the extreme edge,
she awaited death with composure; she had done her full duty and had no
fear of the Hereafter.... At the base of the precipice she came into
violent contact with a large granite boulder and was no more.
They found her body at the feet of the cliff, and the baron was torn by
conflicting emotions, for the head lay at some distance from the trunk,
a truly melancholy spectacle.
“Can it be possible,” he remarked, “that she is no more?”
Assured by the physician that such was the fact, he signified a high
degree of regret and strode from the spot unattended; and to this day
his fate is cloaked in the impenetrable waters of oblivion.
_From “A Demising Love.”_
James endeavored ineffectually to ascertain the trend of her
affections: her expression remained a blank. He erroneously attributed
his failure to poor skill in physiognomy and inwardly bewailed his
youthful neglect of the advantages of education. While so engaged he
fancied he detected in her look something significant of an interest in
his personality. Could he be mistaken? No, there it was again!
Arising from his sedentary attitude to the full stature of his young
manhood, he crossed the intervening Persian rug and possessed himself
of her hand.
“Mabel,” he inquired, “do you not experience the promptings of a
dawning tenderness for one to whom you are much?”
Receiving no negative answer he kissed her simultaneously on both
cheeks, and, falling rapidly upon one knee, poured out his soul
in beautiful language, mostly devoted to commendation of her fine
character and disposition.
Mabel did not at once respond. She was deceased.
_From “March Hares.”_
Mrs. Rorqual deposited her embroidery on the sofa by her side and,
slightly changing color, said, “No, my ideals are not unchangeable;
they have undergone memorable alteration within the last hour.”
“Let us hope,” said D’Anchovi, uncrossing his hands, and putting one
forefinger into a buttonhole of his coat, “that they are still high.”
She resumed her embroidery and, looking at a painting of the martyrdom
of St. Denis over the mantel, replied, “Would it matter?”
“Surely,” said he, lightly beating the carpet with the heel of his
well-fitting shoe; “for ideals are more than thoughts. I sometimes
think they are things—that _we_ are _their_ thoughts.”
She did not immediately reply. A curtain at an open window moved
audibly. A sunbeam crept through the lattice of the piazza outside and
fell upon the window-ledge. The fly previously mentioned now walked
indolently along the top of the Japanese screen, then fearlessly
descended the face of it to within an inch of the mouth of a painted
frog. D’Anchovi, with a lifting of his eyebrows, maintained a
determined silence.
“I should think that an uncomfortable creed,” Mrs. Rorqual said at
last, withdrawing the tip of her shoe, which had been visible beneath
the edge of her gown, and shifting her gaze from St. Denis to one of
the crystal ornaments of the candelabrum pendent from the ceiling.
He passed the fingers of his right hand through his hair, slightly
shifted his position on his chair and said: “Mrs. Rorqual, I have to
thank you for a most agreeable hour. Shall I see you on the golf-links
to-morrow?”
So they parted, but when he was gone she toyed thoughtfully with
a spray of heliotrope growing in a jardinière and then ran her
forefinger along a part of the pattern of the wallpaper.
_From “A Study in Dissection.”_
Captain Gerard introspected. He spread his heart, as it were, upon the
dissecting-table of conscience and examined it from several points of
view. It is a familiar act—we call it analysis of motive. When he had
concluded he knew why he had accepted the invitation of the countess
to dinner. He knew why he had insulted the count. Equally obvious were
his reasons for mentioning to Iphigeneia the holy bonds of matrimony.
In all his conduct since his last introspection but one act baffled
him: why, alas, had he spoken to Iphigeneia of the bar-semester in his
crest?
As he pondered this inexplicable problem a footfall fell upon his ear
and he shuddered as if the hand of death had stepped in.
It was the countess!
_From “Her Diplodocus.”_
“Sir!” Miss Athylton drew herself up to her full height and looked her
interlocutor squarely in the visage. For an instant he returned her
scrutiny; then his eyes fell to the earth, stammering apologies. With a
sweeping curtsey she passed out of the room, hand over hand.
_From “L’Affaire Smith.”_
As they sat there wrapping their arms about each other, she advanced
the belief that they had loved in a former state of existence.
“But not as now, Irene, surely not as now.”
She was well content to let him feel so about it, and did not seek
to alter the character of his emotion. To have done so would have
cut her to the heart. On the contrary, a little bird perched in the
passion-vine above them and sang several thrilling passages.
_From “Clarisse.”_
He gazed into her beautiful eyes for a considerable period, during
which he did not converse; then he said, with an effort to be
sociable: “It has been represented to me that you are a lady of great
wealth. May I inquire if I have been rightly informed?”
Blushing energetically at the compliment, she replied in silence, and
for a few minutes there was an embarrassing hiatus in the exchange of
thought and feeling.
Fearing that he had offended her, the duke arose, and striding to the
grand piano began to improvise diligently. At that moment there came in
through the open window a sound of wheels on the gravel outside.
He ceased in the middle of a nocturne and would have left the room, but
she restrained him:
“It is only my father returning from India,” smiled she; “I shall be so
glad to introduce you.”
The full horror of the situation burst upon him like a thunderbolt out
of a clean sky.
“Madam,” he thundered, “your father is dead! He died of the plague in
Bombay, and I attended the funeral, although he had cursed me with his
last breath. I cannot—cannot meet him!”
With those words falling from his white lips he flung himself out of
the room. A servant entered and handed Clarisse the visiting card of
Mrs. Delahanty.
_From “Mary Ann & Co.”_
As they neared each other on the narrow bridge Paul observed that she
was profoundly agitated.
“Darling,” he said, “please to signify the cause of your perturbation.
It is not impossible that I may be able to remove it. You know,” he
added, “that I have studied medicine.”
She blushed deeply, then turned pale and continued to tremble. He
seized her hand and laid two fingers upon her wrist.
“The pulse,” he said, “is abnormally frequent and irregular.”
With a barely audible expression of disapproval, she withdrew her
hand and endeavored to pass him on the narrow footway of the bridge.
A misstep precipitated her into the stream, from which with no small
difficulty she was taken in a dying condition, a half-mile below. The
person that drew her forth from the waters was Paul’s aged uncle.
“Tell Paul Dessard,” she said with her last breath, “that I love him,
die for him! Tell him how I strove successfully to hide my love from
him lest he think me unmaidenly; but it cannot matter now if he know
it. Tell him all, I pray you tell him all, and add that in that Better
Land whither I go my spirit will await him with impatience, prepared to
explain all.”
The good old man bent over her, placed his open hand behind his ear and
ejaculated:
“Hay?”
She shook her head with an infinite pathos and suspired.
_From “Ideals.”_
Where the grand old Hudson river rolls its floods seaward between the
rugged Palisades and the agricultural country of its eastern bank
Janey Sewell dwelt in a little vine-covered cottage in one of the most
picturesque spots of the latter.
Janey was beautiful all day long. Her hair was as dark as the pinion of
a crow, and her brown eyes rivaled in lustre the sheen of the sunlight
on the bosom of the river. She was also a fine French scholar.
Janey’s parents had dwelt in Yonkers from time immemorial, and sweet
to her was her native environment, whence no proffers of a marriage
into the aristocracy or nobility of England could entice her. Many
coroneted hearts had been flung at her feet—many were the impassionate
pleas that ducal lips had poured into her ear; she remained fancy
free, determined to bestow her affection upon some worthy member of an
American labor union or die a maid. We shall see with what indomitable
tenacity she adhered through disheartening trials to that commendable
policy.
_From “Oopsie Mercer.”_
For a long time—it seemed an eternity—they sat there hand in hand,
in the gloaming. The sheep-bells tinkled faintly in the glen, and
from an adjacent thicket the whip-poor-will sang rapturously. The
katydid grated out her mysterious accusation from the branch of an oak
overhead; the cricket droned among the glow-worms underfoot. All these
vocal efforts were conspicuously futile; in their newly found happiness
the lovers heeded nothing but each other. O love!
Suddenly, on the dew-starred sward, a loud oath rang out behind them.
Harold rose promptly to his own feet, the lady remaining in session on
the log, her hands demurely folded in her lap. The report of a firearm
illuminated the gloom, and ere Harold could intercept the deadly
missile it had pierced Miss Mercer’s heart! She fell forward and died
without medical assistance.
Harold mounted the log and obtained a fairly good view of the
aggressor; it was James Wroth, and he was engaged in taking a second
aim. With the lightning-like intuition of a brave man in an emergency
Harold inferred that he was the intended victim.
“Fiend!” sprang he, and a death struggle was inaugurated without delay.
Let us go back to the time when we left James Wroth nourishing the
fires of an intellectual tempest implanted by Miss Mercer’s rejection
of his suit, and embarking for Europe in another tongue.
_From “Lance and Lute.”_
The faint booming of the distant cannon grew more and more deafening;
the thunder of the charging cavalry reverberated o’er the field of
battle: the enemies were evidently making a stand.
Plympton arrived at the scene of action just as the commanding general
ordered an advance along the entire front. Spurring his steed to the
centre of the line he rang out his voice in accents of defiance and was
promoted for gallantry.
Bertram who was an eye-witness, immediately withdrew his objection to
the marriage. This took place shortly afterward and was attended with
the happiest results.
_From “Sundry Hearts.”_
When presented to the object of his devotion the earl could not
suppress his sentiments. The Lady Gwendolin saw them as plainly as if
they had been branded upon his brow. Her agitation was comparable to
his. All the pent-up emotion of her deep, womanly nature surged to her
countenance and paralyzed her so that she was unable to offer her hand.
She consequently contented herself with a graceful inclination of the
head. The Earl was excessively disappointed. Turning upon his heel he
bowed and walked away.
Gwendolin retired to the conservatory and uttered a deep-drawn sigh,
then, returning to the ballroom, flung herself into the waltz with an
assumed ecstasy that elicited wide comment.
_From “La Belle Damn.”_
Under the harvest moon, now at its best, the corpse of Ronald showed
ghastly white, the frost sparkling in its beard and hair. Clementine’s
consciousness of its impulchritude was without a flaw. Had she ever
really experienced an uncommon, an exceptional, tenderness for an
object boasting so little charm? She was hardly able to take that view
of the matter. All seemed unreal, indistinct and charged with dubiety.
A sudden rustling in the circumjacent vegetation startled her from her
dream, suggesting considerations of personal safety. Surveying the body
for the last time, she impelled the stiletto into a contiguous tarn and
left the scene with measured tread.
_From “The Recrudescence of Squollander.”_
“Clifford,” said Isabel, earnestly yet softly, “are you sure that you
truly love me?”
Clifford presented such testimony and evidence as he could command, and
requested her decision on the sufficiency of what he had advanced.
“Oh, Clifford,” she said, laying her two little hands in one of
his comparatively large ones, “you have extirpated my ultimate
uncertainty.”
THE GREAT STRIKE OF 1895
NEW YORK, July 2, 1895.—The strike of the American Authors’ Guild
continues to hold public attention. No event in the history of
trades-unionism since the great railroad strike of last year has
equaled it in interest. Nothing else is talked of here. In some parts
of the city all business is suspended and the excitement grows more
intense hourly.
At about 10 o’clock this morning a non-union author attempting to enter
the premises of D. Appleton & Co. with a roll of manuscript was set
upon by a mob of strikers and beaten into insensibility. The strikers
were driven from their victim by the police, but only after a fight in
which both sides suffered severely.
——————
NEW YORK, July 3.—Rioting was renewed last night in front of the
boycotted publishing house of Charles Scribner’s Sons, 153–157 Fifth
avenue. Though frequently driven back by charges of the police, who
used their clubs freely, the striking authors succeeded in demolishing
all the front windows by stone-throwing. One shot was fired into the
interior, narrowly missing a young lady typewriter. Mr. William D.
Howells, a member of the Guild’s board of managers, declares that he
has irrefragable proof that this outrage was committed by some one
connected with the Publishers’ Protective League for the purpose of
creating public sympathy.
It has been learned that the non-union author so severely beaten
yesterday died of his injuries last night. His name is said to have
been Richard Henry (or Hengist) Stoddard, formerly a member of the
Guild, but expelled for denouncing the action of President Brander
Matthews in ordering the strike.
LATER.—Matters look more and more threatening. A crowd of ten thousand
authors, headed by Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, is reported to be
marching upon the Astor Library, which is strongly guarded by police,
heavily armed. Many book-stores have been wrecked and their contents
destroyed.
Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, who was shot last night while setting fire to the
establishment of Harper & Bros., cannot recover. She is delirious, and
lies on her cot in the Bellevue Hospital singing “The Battle Hymn of
the Republic.”
——————
BOSTON, July 3.—Industrial discontent has broken out here. The members
of the local branch of the American Authors’ Guild threw down their
pens this morning and declared that until satisfactory settlement of
novelists’ percentages should be arrived at not a hero and heroine
should live happily ever afterward in Boston. The publishing house of
Houghton, Mifflin & Co. is guarded by a detachment of Pinkerton men
armed with Winchester rifles and a Gatling gun. The publishers say that
they are getting all the manuscripts that they are able to reject, and
profess to have no apprehension as to the future. Mr. Joaquin Miller,
a non-union poet from Nevada, visiting some Indian relatives here,
was terribly beaten by a mob of strikers to-day. Mr. Miller was the
aggressor; he was calling them “sea-doves”—by which he is said to have
meant “gulls.”
——————
CHICAGO, July 3.—The authors’ strike is assuming alarming dimensions
and is almost beyond control by the police. The Mayor is strongly
urged to ask for assistance from the militia, but the strikers
profess to have no fear of his doing so. They say that he was once an
author himself, and is in sympathy with them. He wrote “The Beautiful
Snow.” In the mean time a mob of strikers numbering not fewer than
one thousand men, women and children, headed by such determined
labor leaders as Percival Pollard and Hamlin Garland, are parading
the streets and defying the authorities. A striker named Opie Reed,
arrested yesterday for complicity in the assassination of Mr. Stone, of
the publishing firm of Stone & Kimball, was released by this mob from
the officers that had him in custody. Mr. Pollard publishes a letter
in the _Herald_ this morning saying that Mr. Stone was assassinated
by an emissary of the Publishers’ Protective League to create public
sympathy, and strongly hints that the assassin is the head of the house
of McClurg & Co.
——————
NEW YORK, July 4.—All arrangements for celebrating the birthday of
American independence are “off.” The city is fearfully excited, and
scenes of violence occur hourly. Macmillan & Co.’s establishment was
burned last night, and four lives were lost in the flames. The loss
of property is variously estimated. All the publishing houses are
guarded by the militia, and it is said that Government troops will
land this afternoon to protect the United States mails carrying the
manuscripts of strike-breaking authors, in transit to publishers.
The destruction of the Astor Library and the Cooper Union and the
closing of all the book-stores that escaped demolition in yesterday’s
rioting have caused sharp public distress. No similar book-famine has
ever been known in this city. Novel-readers particularly, their needs
being so imperative, are suffering severely, and unless relieved soon
will leave the metropolis. While beating a noisy person named E. W.
Townsend last night, one Richard Harding Davis had the misfortune to
break two of his fingers. He said Townsend was a strike-breaker and had
given information to the police, but it turns out that he is a zealous
striker, and was haranguing the mob at the time of the assault. His
audience of rioting authors, all of whom belonged to the War Story
branch of the Guild, mistook Mr. Davis for an officer of the peace and
ran away. Mr. Townsend, who cannot recover and apparently does not wish
to, is said to be the author of a popular book called _The Chimney
Fadder_. Advices from Boston relate the death of a Pinkerton spy named
T. B. Aldrich, who attempted to run the gauntlet of union pickets and
enter the premises of The Arena Publishing Company, escorting Walter
Blackburn Harte. Mr. Harte was rescued by the police and sailed at once
for England.
——————
PHILADELPHIA, July 5.—A mob of striking authors attacked the publishing
house of J. B. Lippincott & Co. this morning and were fired on by the
militia. Twenty are known to have been killed outright—the largest
number of writers ever immortalized at one time.
——————
NEW YORK, July 5.—In an interview yesterday Mrs. Louise Chandler
Moulton, treasurer of the Guild, said that notwithstanding the heavy
expense of maintaining needy strikers with dependent families, there
would be no lack of funds to carry on the fight. Contributions are
received daily from sympathetic trades. Sixty dollars have been sent in
by the Confederated Undertakers and forty-five by the Association of
Opium-Workers. President Brander Matthews has telegraphed to all the
Guild’s branches in other cities that they can beat the game if they
will stand pat.
——————
NEW YORK, July 6.—Sympathy strikes are the order of the day, and
“risings” are reported everywhere. In this city the entire East Side is
up and out. Shantytown, Ballyspalpeen, Goatville and Niggernest are in
line. Among those killed in yesterday’s conflict with the United States
troops at Madison-square was Mark Twain, who fell while cheering on a
large force of women of the town. He was shot all to rags, so as to be
hardly distinguishable from a human being.
——————
CHICAGO, July 7.—John Vance Cheney was arrested at 3 o’clock this
morning while placing a dynamite bomb on the Clark-street bridge. He is
believed to have entertained the design, also, of setting the river on
fire. Two publishers were shot this morning by General Lew Wallace, who
escaped in the confusion of the incident. The victims were employed as
accountants in the Methodist Book Concern.
——————
NEW YORK, July 8.—The authors’ strike has collapsed, and the strikers
are seeking employment as waiters in the places made vacant by the
lockout of the Restaurant Trust. The Publishers’ Protective League
declares that no author concerned in the strike will ever again see
his name upon a title-page. The American Authors’ Guild is a thing of
the past. Arrests are being made every hour. As soon as he can procure
bail, President Brander Matthews will go upon the vaudeville stage.
1894.
A THUMB-NAIL SKETCH
Many years ago I lived in Oakland, California. One day as I lounged in
my lodging there was a gentle, hesitating rap at the door and, opening
it, I found a young man, the youngest young man, it seemed to me, that
I had ever confronted. His appearance, his attitude, his manner, his
entire personality suggested extreme diffidence. I did not ask him in,
instate him in my better chair (I had two) and inquire how we could
serve each other. If my memory is not at fault I merely said: “Well,”
and awaited the result.
“I am from the San Francisco _Examiner_,” he explained in a voice like
the fragrance of violets made audible, and backed a little away.
“O,” I said, “you come from Mr. Hearst.”
Then that unearthly child lifted its blue eyes and cooed: “I am Mr.
Hearst.”
His father had given him a daily newspaper and he had come to hire
me to write for it. Twenty years of what his newspapers call “wage
slavery” ensued, and although I had many a fight with his editors
for my right to my self-respect, I cannot say that I ever found Mr.
Hearst’s chain a very heavy burden, though indubitably I suffered
somewhat in social repute for wearing it.
If ever two men were born to be enemies he and I are they. Each stands
for everything that is most disagreeable to the other, yet we never
clashed. I never had the honor of his friendship and confidence, never
was “employed about his person,” and seldom entered the editorial
offices of his newspapers. He did not once direct nor request me to
write an opinion that I did not hold, and only two or three times
suggested that I refrain for a season from expressing opinions that
I did hold, when they were antagonistic to the policy of the paper,
as they commonly were. During several weeks of a great labor strike
in California, when mobs of ruffians stopped all railway trains,
held the state capital and burned, plundered and murdered at will,
he “laid me off,” continuing, of course, my salary; and some years
later, when striking employees of street railways were devastating St.
Louis, pursuing women through the street and stripping them naked, he
suggested that I “let up on that labor crowd.” No other instances of
“capitalistic arrogance” occur to memory. I do not know that any of
his other writers enjoyed a similar liberty, or would have enjoyed it
if they had had it. Most of them, indeed, seemed to think it honorable
to write anything that they were expected to.
As to Mr. Hearst’s own public writings, I fancy there are none: he
could not write an advertisement for a lost dog. The articles that he
signs and the speeches that he makes—well, if a man of brains is one
who knows how to use the brains of others this amusing demagogue is
nobody’s dunce.
If asked to justify my long service to journals with whose policies I
was not in agreement and whose character I loathed I should confess
that possibly the easy nature of the service had something to do with
it. As to the point of honor (as that is understood in the profession)
the editors and managers always assured me that there was commercial
profit in employing my rebellious pen; and I—O well, I persuaded myself
that I could do most good by addressing those who had greatest need of
me—the millions of readers to whom Mr. Hearst was a misleading light.
Perhaps this was an erroneous view of the matter; anyhow I am not
sorry that, discovering no preservative allowable under the pure food
law that would enable him to keep his word overnight, I withdrew,
and can now, without impropriety, speak my mind of him as freely as
his generosity, sagacity or indifference once enabled me to do of his
political and industrial doctrines, in his own papers.
In illustration of some of the better features of this man’s strange
and complex character let this incident suffice. Soon after the
assassination of Governor Goebel of Kentucky—which seemed to me a
particularly perilous “precedent” if unpunished—I wrote for one of Mr.
Hearst’s New York newspapers the following prophetic lines:
The bullet that pierced Goebel’s breast
Can not be found in all the West.
Good reason: it is speeding here
To stretch McKinley on the bier.
The lines took no attention, naturally, but twenty months afterward the
President was shot by Czolgosz. Every one remembers what happened then
to Mr. Hearst and his newspapers. His political enemies and business
competitors were alert to their opportunity. The verses, variously
garbled but mostly made into an editorial, or a news dispatch with a
Washington date-line but usually no date, were published all over the
country as evidence of Mr. Hearst’s complicity in the crime. As such
they adorned the editorial columns of the New York _Sun_ and blazed
upon a bill-board in front of Tammany Hall. So fierce was the popular
flame to which they were the main fuel that thousands of copies of the
Hearst papers were torn from the hands of newsboys and burned in the
streets. Much of their advertising was withdrawn from them. Emissaries
of the _Sun_ overran the entire country persuading clubs, libraries and
other patriotic bodies to exclude them from the files. There was even
an attempt made to induce Czolgosz to testify that he had been incited
to his crime by reading them—ten thousand dollars for his family to be
his reward; but this cheerful scheme was blocked by the trial judge,
who had been informed of it. During all this carnival of sin I lay ill
in Washington, unaware of it; and my name, although appended to all
that I wrote, including the verses, was not, I am told, once mentioned.
As to Mr. Hearst, I dare say he first saw the lines when all this
hullabaloo directed his attention to them.
With the occurrences here related the incident was not exhausted. When
Mr. Hearst was making his grotesque canvass for the Governorship of
New York the Roosevelt Administration sent Secretary Root into the
state to beat him. This high-minded gentleman incorporated one of the
garbled prose versions of my prophecy into his speeches with notable
effect and great satisfaction to his conscience. Still, I am steadfast
in the conviction that God sees him; and if any one thinks that Mr.
Root will not go to the devil it must be the devil himself, in whom,
doubtless, the wish is father to the thought.
Hearst’s newspapers had always been so unjust that no injustice could
be done to them, and had been incredibly rancorous toward McKinley, but
no doubt it was my luckless prophecy that cost him tens of thousands of
dollars and a growing political prestige. For anything that I know (or
care) they may have cost him his election. I have never mentioned the
matter to him, nor—and this is what I have been coming to—has he ever
mentioned it to me. I fancy there must be a human side to a man like
that, even if he is a mischievous demagogue.