CHAPTER I.

[Illustration: A SCENE ON THE FAST DRIVE OF CENTRAL PARK ON A SEPTEMBER

AFTERNOON.

DRAWN BY ALEXANDER COLES.]

MUNSEY’S MAGAZINE.

VOL. VI. OCTOBER, 1891. NO. 1.

SNAP SHOTS IN CENTRAL PARK.

_By J. Crawford Hamilton._

[Illustration: THE TERRACE—STEPS LEADING DOWN TO THE BETHESDA FOUNTAIN

AND THE LAKE.]

The provincial, who knows all about Central Park and regards it as the

eighth wonder of the modern world, is more nearly right than the New

Yorker, who is inclined to take it as a matter of course. There are

comparatively few who remember the unpromising aspect of the rocky,

swampy waste which, thirty five years ago, occupied the midmost portion

of Manhattan Island. The designers of the park have been so signally

successful in overcoming the difficulties that confronted them when they

took their task in hand, that the visitor of today hardly gives them due

credit for the remarkable result, or realizes the vast expenditure of

money, labor, and skill that has here created the most beautiful park

possessed by any of the world’s great capitals.

[Illustration: THE CENTRAL PARK MENAGERIE ON A SUMMER AFTERNOON.]

For where can Central Park’s charms be matched? Not beneath the smoky

sky of London, where vegetation cannot attain anything like the variety

and luxuriance possible in our clear, pure atmosphere. Besides, little

attempt at landscape gardening has been made in any of the parks of the

British metropolis. They may be termed useful rather than ornamental,

and are valued more for their practical hygienic effect as breathing

spots in a vast and crowded city than as fields for the artistic

reproduction of natural beauties. And in Paris, the _allées_ of the Bois

de Boulogne, prim and formal in their straightness, lack the charm of

Central Park’s winding drives with their changing vistas of bordering

woodland and meadow. Philadelphia and Chicago—if we admit those cities

to a comparison—have parks of larger acreage, but inferior attractions.

Quantity can never atone for defects of quality.

Central Park is not so very small, either. It is over half a mile in

width, and more than two and a half miles in length. It covers 840 acres,

which will hardly compare with Fairmount’s 2740 or the Bois de Boulogne’s

2150, but is enough to rank it with other large metropolitan parks, and

to afford ample scope to the various arts that have contributed to make

it what it is. Londoners call Hyde and Regent’s Parks large, but their

united extent is but five acres more than that of Central Park.

Indeed, one of the most wonderful and attractive features of Central Park

is the skill with which its apparent size has been magnified. A stranger

driving or walking through it would never suppose that in his entire

journey he had never been more than four hundred and fifty yards away

from the streets of New York. The almost total exclusion of the outer

world, and the production of effects of distance, are really remarkable

triumphs of landscape gardening.

[Illustration: ON THE DRIVE.]

Another great charm of Central Park is the marvelous variety of its

scenery and embellishments. In the Mall, and especially in the terrace

that leads from it to the lake, we find the highest development of

artificial decoration. The broad promenade and the straight avenue of

trees, the work of masons and sculptors, the plashing fountain and the

lake below—all these combine to produce the appearance of the garden

of some old French chateau. On the other hand, on the banks of the

Harlem Mere, in the North Park, sylvan nature reigns in almost primeval

wildness. Here and there in the park are broad, level meadows, divided

by stretches of thick wood. The Ramble, with its labyrinth of winding

paths, its rustic bridge, its cave, and its miniature water falls, is

an ideal Arcadian spot, while the lawn tennis ground presents a _fin de

siècle_ contrast. Then there are over thirty buildings, put to almost

as many different uses, from the monkey house in the menagerie to the

lofty tower of the Belvedere, which seems like a picturesque corner of

a Rhine castle. As further evidence of the amount of work that has been

done to perfect the park, and of the variety of its contents, it may be

stated that it can boast of nine sheets of water, forty eight bridges and

archways, nine miles of drives, five miles of bridle path, and nearly

thirty miles of walks; that it has nineteen gates, and that over half a

million trees have been set out within its limits.

[Illustration: THE OBELISK IN CENTRAL PARK.]

The list of statues to be found in Central Park is a long and rather

curiously mixed one. Daniel Webster, Alexander Hamilton, FitzGreene

Halleck, S. F. B. Morse—these names are well worthy to be thus

commemorated. It is not inappropriate that the marble image of Columbus,

the discoverer of the New World, should stand in the chief pleasure

ground of its metropolis. Nor can there be any objection to the ideal

figures—that of Commerce, the cleverly modeled Indian Hunter, and the

memorial to the soldiers of the Seventh Regiment who fell in the civil

war. But strangely enough, all the other statues in the park are those

of foreigners. The German residents of New York presented the busts of

Humboldt and Schiller. Citizens of Italian birth erected the bust of

Mazzini, while sons of stern Caledonia contributed the statues of Burns

and Scott. From South America came the equestrian bronze of Bolivar, and

the list of monuments is completed by those of Shakespeare and Beethoven.

Great men as all these worthies were, and laudable as is the desire of

their fellow countrymen to do them honor, it is somewhat unfortunate

that the erection of a statue in Central Park should have come to be the

recognized method of giving expression to this feeling. If the process

is continued indefinitely, the park will become so thickly dotted with

the monuments of foreigners that the statues of Webster and Hamilton may

have to be removed to make room for the images of the deceased poets and

scientists of England and France, Finland and Kamskatka.

Of this tendency to cosmopolitanism the Mall seems to be headquarters.

Halleck (the poet, not the general), is the solitary American represented

in its statuary. The visitor may listen there to imported music

discoursed by a band principally composed of imported musicians, or

stroll to the terrace to admire the most ambitious ornament of the

park—the Bethesda fountain, which, although designed by a New York

artist—Miss Emma Stebbins—was modeled in Rome and cast in Munich.

[Illustration: IN THE NORTH PARK—A SOLITARY STROLL.]

In its vegetation, too, Central Park has a cosmopolitan tone. Much has

been done to make it a sort of Jardin d’Acclimatation for the trees and

shrubs indigenous to other climes. The commissioners’ efforts in this

direction have had good results in varying its flora with exotics whose

foliage or flowers make them pleasing to the eye as well as interesting

to the botanist. They have not always been equally fortunate, however,

and have been criticised for an apparent partiality to foreign trees

in preference to natives of sturdier growth and better suited to the

climate. It is not every European plant that will flourish here. For

instance, six years ago a splendid row of English hawthorn bushes lined a

long stretch of the park’s western edge between Sixtieth and Seventieth

Streets, and in May bore a wealth of the white blossoms that take their

name from the month. They are there no more, killed by the severity of

our winters.

[Illustration: AN AFTERNOON GATHERING ON THE MALL.]

Asia, and especially Japan, have contributed some valuable additions to

Central Park’s woods and shrubbery. The most conspicuous of these is the

Rose of Sharon, whose pink and white blossoms are the park’s chief floral

ornament in the latter days of summer—for it is in spring that most of

the other shrubs and creepers flower.

In the spring, indeed, Central Park reaches its acme of natural beauty

and artificial attraction. In the spring its drives are thronged by

the equipages of the Four Hundred who later in the year are scattered

over two or three continents. In the spring the trees and meadows are

clothed with a fresh garb of green, and the Park policeman in a new

suit of gray, the cynosure of admiring nursemaids. In the spring the

wistaria, the honeysuckle, the jasmine, and the guelder rose make the

landscape gay with color. In the spring the dogwood, the most beautiful

and characteristic of our lesser trees, sends down its falling petals in

a snow white shower. In the spring the New Yorker may be pardoned if for

once he feels positively poetical as he witnesses in Central Park the

annual miracle of nature’s rejuvenation.

[Illustration: THE BRIDGE ACROSS THE STRAIT BETWEEN THE UPPER AND LOWER

LAKES.]

But more observers’ eyes, probably, are turned upon the driveways and

their wonderful parade of vehicles than upon the panorama of wood and

meadow. Such a sight as the wheeled procession that pours through the

entrance at Fifty Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue cannot be found elsewhere

in America, and is indeed only matched by the displays of Rotten Row

and the Champs Elysées. Other American cities admittedly look to New

York as their leader and mentor in the matter of fine horseflesh and

smart equipages. The very latest and handsomest products of the carriage

builders’ skill are here to be seen whirling along behind teams whose

value represents a small fortune. There comes the banker’s victoria,

drawn by a pair of horses whose clock-like gait and well fed aspect of

sleekness show that they appreciate their position in the establishment

to which they belong. Behind this comes a trim, light phaeton; then a

family party in a barouche; these predominating types of vehicle being

interspersed with the tall and ostentatious four in hand, the more

unconventional buckboard, the natty dogcart, and the democratic park

coach, whose passengers take in all the beauties of the scene at twenty

five cents a trip.

The bridle path, too, on a sunny afternoon in May, is a spectacle to

be remembered. Its pictures come and pass more swiftly than those of

the drive, where moderation of speed is a necessity, and is promptly

enforced, in the rare cases of its infraction, by the mounted policemen.

And, by the way, these sublimated graycoats are themselves worthy of a

second glance. Their animals are a really beautiful and well groomed

set—most of them bays—and the riders’ horsemanship is of such uniform

excellence that a stranger in the park can hardly distinguish one

member of the mounted force from another. And in their patrol over

fourteen miles of driveway and bridle path their duty is by no means a

sinecure. Their courage and promptitude have often been tried by the

accidents caused from time to time by untrained horses or reckless or

inexperienced drivers and riders. At the season and the hour when it

is most frequented, the bridle path is no place for the careless or

unskilled horseman. As much space has been given to it as can well be

spared, but its width is so comparatively small that at some of the bends

serious accidents might easily occur. The rule against riding more than

two abreast is a highly necessary one.

The separation of the drives and the bridle paths is a point in which

convenience has been subordinated to other considerations. If they lay

close together throughout their length, instead of winding through the

park on wholly divergent lines, the enjoyment of both riders and drivers

would be increased. A radical alteration in the plan of the park,

however, would be necessary to effect such a change.

Nearly a quarter of Central Park is occupied by its various bodies of

water. These have their ornamental and their practical side. The latter

is of course represented by the reservoirs that receive the principal

portion of the water supply brought down by the Croton aqueduct. There

is a smaller double basin (now being deepened) in the center of the park

opposite Eightieth Street, overlooked by the Belvedere, and the main

reservoir that fills nearly the whole of the space between Eighty Sixth

and Ninety Sixth Streets, and forms the division between the North Park

and the South Park. That this big pond, pretty nearly half a mile in

length and in width, adds nothing to the attractions of the park, few who

have walked or ridden along its border will maintain.

[Illustration: CHILDREN AND NURSES IN THE PARK.]

Of the ornamental waters the Lake—so called _par excellence_—is the

chief. The effect with which irregularity of outline may be used to

add to apparent size is well exemplified by comparing this with the

reservoir. Take a boat on the upper part of the Lake, near the foot

of the Terrace, row under the bridge across the strait into its lower

expanse, and continue to the furthest extremity of the creeks that open

into it, and you will hardly guess that the whole sheet of water measures

but twenty acres, while the Croton reservoir covers more than a hundred.

You will also be likely to think that you have found a remarkably

pleasant place for a row, especially if your expedition is made in the

dusk of a summer evening, when the red lanterns that glow dimly in the

bows of the boats make a picturesque scene which is often pronounced to

be “just like Venice” by those who have never been in that city of watery

streets.

[Illustration: A “TALLY HO” IN CENTRAL PARK—THE FAVORITE VEHICLE OF THE

JEUNESSE DORÉE.]

The other lakes are the Pond, near the Fifty Ninth Street entrance, on

which ply the swan boats; the Conservatory water near Fifth Avenue and

opposite Seventy Fourth Street; and three in the North Park—Harlem Mere,

in the northwestern corner, and the two miniature lakelets called the

Pool and the Lock.

The swan boats are by no means the park’s only attraction especially

designed for children. There are the swings and merry-go-round of the

carrousel, and the little carriages that are drawn up and down the Mall

by well trained goats. The menagerie, too, is a source of never failing

wonder and amusement. There is always a crowd, in which young people

predominate, watching the monkeys, gazing with something like awe at

Tip, the huge elephant who has murdered more than one of his keepers, or

throwing peanuts and similar esculents to the more docile pachyderm whose

quarters are in the neighboring cage.

The enjoyment of the children would be greater yet if the grass covered

lawns were not forbidden territory to them. In a few places, indeed, they

are allowed to play upon nature’s green carpet, and the privilege might

well be extended without injury to the park.

[Illustration]

PLAYS AND PLAYERS OF THE DAY.

_By Morris Bacheller._

[Illustration: FRANCIS WILSON.]

Of the two great divisions of the drama, tragedy is today surprisingly

similar to what it was in the days of the ancient Greeks, while comedy

has in the mean time been the subject of a remarkable evolution. That

evolution has proceeded with especial rapidity within recent years. To

find the best and noblest exemplifications of tragedy we have to go back

two centuries to the master works of Shakespeare. A few exceptional

comedies there are of Sheridan’s or Goldsmith’s, whose popularity has not

diminished with the lapse of time, though many generations have come and

gone since they were penned. But they may be counted upon the fingers of

a single hand, and only serve to emphasize the rarity of comedies that

can hold the boards for more than a few seasons.

The development of comedy, and especially of its more farcical branches,

is, indeed, the chief feature of recent dramatic history. Attribute

it to a reaction from the increased tension of modern business life,

or assign what sociological cause you will, the fact remains that the

general demand is for plays whose aim and object is to amuse. It cannot

be maintained that this tendency is restricted to the less educated class

of theater goers. On the contrary, it is at houses that are especially

frequented by people of wealth and fashion that the supremacy of comedy

is most assured. Melodrama is still the most drawing card in the theaters

patronized by the lower million.

The advance of comedy has been multiform. Farces of greater ingenuity and

more sustained brilliance of workmanship are written by the playwrights

of today than by their forerunners. They are interpreted upon the boards

by more finished artists, and with a stage setting that constantly

becomes more complete and costly. The comedian has a higher professional

and even social standing now than a generation ago, and he may secure

a much greater degree of renown, with its financial accompaniment of

ample earnings. And all this arises from the workings of the old law of

supply and demand. Every art that can contribute to the embellishment of

its presentation becomes the handmaid of comedy. Music is pressed into

its service, and the result is that characteristic phase of latter day

theatricals, the burletta.

There was a time, and not so very long ago, when the predecessors of

Francis Wilson and De Wolf Hopper were set down as “low comedians,” and

relegated to an artistic rank slightly superior to that of the circus

clown. Every one knows the contrast in the position of the modern

apostles of Momus. Attend the theaters, read the newspapers, listen

to the comment of the club rooms, and you will speedily be convinced

that they are the theatrical lions of the hour, that among all the

constellations of the dramatic firmament their planet is in the

ascendant. Nor is there anything in this state of affairs to justify the

pessimistic philosopher in an outcry against the alleged decadence of the

stage. The popular taste for comedy is neither a degraded nor a perverted

one, and the success of its leading exponents has been won upon their

merits.

The comic star rises to the zenith by an ascent as difficult and

laborious as that which leads to high rank in any other profession. _Ars

est celare artem_, and the apparently easy spontaneity with which he

develops the humor of a stage situation is the fruit of conscientious

study and persistent practice. There are no more painstaking actors

than the two typical burlesquers who as the Regent of Siam and the

Merry Monarch have during the recent months reigned successively at the

Broadway Theater, New York.

Francis Wilson, who recently succeeded his brother potentate, has worked

his way up from the lowest rounds of the theatrical ladder. His first

appearance was with Sandford’s minstrel company in a sketch called “The

Brians,” which was played in Philadelphia. Young as he was—only a boy in

his teens—Wilson made something of a hit. This was enough to secure him

plenty of remunerative engagements with minstrel troupes, as a member

of which he traveled all over the country. He was ambitious, however,

for work of a higher order, and to secure a foothold upon the legitimate

stage he undertook a minor part in a company that appeared at the

Chestnut Street Theater, in Philadelphia. Here again his talents declined

to conceal themselves under a bushel. In the role of _Lamp_, a broken

down actor in “Wild Oats,” he carried with him upon the stage an old

foil, the last relic of better days, and from this seemingly unpromising

article he managed to extract so much quiet humor that the audience was

convulsed and the star of the piece entered a formal complaint at this

interference with his supremacy.

[Illustration: DE WOLF HOPPER.]

The following years saw the young actor steadily advancing in his art,

but experiencing various ups and downs of fortune, which wound up with

the “stranding” of his company, Mitchell’s Pleasure Party, in San

Francisco. Next he reappeared in Philadelphia—let us hope that he was not

obliged to reach it on foot—as a member of the McCaull troupe, with which

he played in his first comic opera, “The Queen’s Lace Handkerchief.”

From this point his career has been one of uncheckered prosperity. He was

speedily recognized as a comic opera star of no ordinary luster. In such

standard parts as that of _Cadeaux_ in Erminie he achieved a reputation

and a popularity that finally led him to organize a company of his own,

with which he has even eclipsed his previous successes in “The Oolah” and

“The Merry Monarch.”

De Wolf Hopper’s popularity has been won still more rapidly than that

of his brother comedian. He is the youngest of our successful actors,

as well as one of the most original in his methods, but he has been

upon the boards long enough to gain a thorough dramatic training and a

varied experience. It was his enthusiasm for private theatricals, and his

success in them, that led him upon the professional stage—in spite of the

fact that he had been educated for the law. He was only twenty when, in

1880, he appeared as the leading spirit of the Criterion Comedy Company,

which had a fair measure of prosperity, presenting such standard plays

as “Caste” and “Our Boys.” When it disbanded he was successively with

Edward Harrigan in “The Blackbird,” and at the Madison Square Theater

under the management of Daniel Frohman. At this latter house, in the

parts of _Pittacus Green_ in “Hazel Kirke,” and _Oliver Hathaway_ in

“May Blossom,” he gained the approbation of metropolitan theater goers

to a degree that was greatly enhanced during the next five years, which

he passed as a member of the McCaull opera company. His last season with

that organization was marked by a success as _Casimir_ in “Clover” that

showed an advance upon anything he had previously done. “Wang,” which was

so notably well received at the Broadway Theater during the past summer,

was his first independent venture.

[Illustration: MODJESKA AS ROSALIND.]

There are those who cherish the idea that the continued success of actors

like Messrs. Wilson and Hopper is largely due to the prestige of their

reputation and the indulgence shown by the public toward established

favorites. They tell us that it matters little what may be the merits of

the piece or its staging, the star is sure to have a following sufficient

to fill the box office with a golden stream. He might almost as well

dispense with the libretto altogether, they say, for as soon as he opens

his lips to speak the audience roars with laughter.

[Illustration: MODJESKA AS PORTIA.]

So far as it denies the necessity for care and labor, thought and

skill, in the preparation and presentation of a farce, this theory is

fundamentally mistaken. It has again and again been proved that no names

upon the playbill, however eminent, can make a poor play successful. The

theater going public may not be infallible, but it is too discriminating

to accept an unpalatable article because it bears a title of repute. The

later popularity of “The Oolah” has obliterated recollection of the fact

that on its first night its reception was not enthusiastic. The critics

thought and said that Wilson had made a mistake. But the comedian set

himself at work to improve the piece, cutting here, adding there, and

interlining and changing until in a hundred small but yet not unimportant

points it was a different and a better play. This is merely a single

example of those expenditures of thought and care that escape the hasty

critic, and many similar incidents might be cited. For instance, the

remarkably flexible voice of which De Wolf Hopper makes such effective

use has received almost as careful training as a prima donna’s.

[Illustration: MADAME HELENA MODJESKA.]

It would hardly be fair to the theatrical situation of the day to picture

it only as a regime of farce comedy. The burlesque is indeed the most

characteristic phase of the _fin de siècle_ dramatic development, but it

is not by any means sole monarch of the stage. The avenue that leads to

the applause of the world of culture is still open to interpreters of

the art that can call forth tears as well as laughter.

[Illustration: MODJESKA AS JULIE DE MORTIMER.]

No better proof of this can be given than the marked favor with which

Madame Modjeska has been everywhere received during her comparatively

brief career upon the American stage. It is true that she had already

gained a wide reputation in Europe when she abandoned her profession

and came to the New World with her husband, Count Bozenta. They had in

view the establishment of a colony of their Polish fellow countrymen

in Southern California. The scheme was probably somewhat Utopian. At

any rate it was abandoned, and the countess, under her earlier name of

Modjeska, fitted herself for the English speaking stage.

San Francisco was the scene of her debut, and “Adrienne Lecouvreur” the

play. She has since acted in all the leading cities of America, besides

making two visits to London. Her repertory includes a wide range of

pieces of the highest intellectual order. As a delineator of Shaksperian

heroines she is unsurpassed, and her appearances with Edwin Booth in the

great dramatic classics have been among the most notable events of recent

seasons. The intensity of her _Juliet_, the grace and dignity of her

_Portia_, the pathos of her _Ophelia_, and the Arcadian _naïveté_ of her

_Rosalind_ have borne witness to her rare endowment of histrionic talent.

Among other plays in which she has taken the leading part are “Camille,”

“Mary Stuart,” “Juanna,” “Frou-Frou,” “Odette,” and “Richelieu.” In the

last named, which she played in conjunction with Booth, she scored one of

her most notable successes as _Julie de Mortimer_.

Long as she has been upon the stage of two continents, Madame Modjeska’s

impersonations of _Juliet_ or _Beatrice_ have all the fresh charm

of youth. With exceptional skill in the portrayal of strong emotion

she combines a lightness of touch and a graceful refinement that are

peculiarly characteristic. The fact that she has never succeeded in

removing from her English speech the last faint trace of a foreign

accent, is to many of her parts rather an added interest than a blemish.

[Illustration: MODJESKA AS OPHELIA.]

A DAUGHTER OF THE DESERT.

_By Thomas Winthrop Hall._

A tired horse ambled slowly up to the solitary adobe house, or rather

hut, that meets the sight of the dusty traveler who journeys between a

certain station on the Southern Pacific railroad and the famous Indian

station at San Carlos. One hundred miles of dusty road that wound over

a naked, sandy plain sparsely dotted with hideous cactus, a stretch of

the desert on either side, and on the horizon walls of gray mountains

treeless as the desert itself—these were the uncheerful surroundings of

McCoy’s ranch. Worse than a prison, more remote than a Siberian mine,

lonelier than the grave, here two human souls, father and daughter, had

lived for more than twelve years, and during that twelve years they had

been away from that adobe oasis, the girl at least, not one single day,

and the father never longer than it would take him to ride over to the

mountains for a short hunt. It was a watering station on the stage road.

An artesian well had been sunk there in the early days. Like every other

work of man it had to have its human slaves, and from the day the last

adobe had been laid these slaves had been McCoy and his daughter Sis. The

latter was a child of six when she was lifted out of the ox wagon at the

door of the house. She was now a girl of eighteen.

What a life hers had been! One unvarying monotony of cooking and of

washing, of chopping wood and feeding the horses and of looking anxiously

one day up the road for the stage to come down and the next day down

the road for the stage to come up so that she might have dinner (a

pretentious name for a meal that consisted always of bacon, eggs, coffee

and hot bread) prepared for the stage driver and what unfortunate

companions in misery he might be transporting to or from the agency.

These, alas, gulped down their food as hastily as possible and hastened

away at once, only too anxious to get the thing over with. That was all

she saw of them. Once in a while she caught sight of a muffled figure

in an ambulance that stopped for water for its thirsty mules and knew

that it was a woman because it did not get out and swear at the heat and

dust, an officer’s wife probably—ah! how she longed to speak to her. The

rough freighters often camped there. This was the sum total of the girl’s

experience with beings of her kind save one.

That was the man who sat carelessly erect on the tired horse that ambled

up to the adobe house. Lieutenant Jack Harding was he, of Uncle Sam’s —th

regiment of cavalry. And what a man he was, to be sure! Handsome as a

Greek god, stalwart as a Norse warrior, reckless, brave, accomplished, as

gentle as a girl until aroused, then as wild and defiant as an Apache, he

was a Bayard in the eyes of most women and a demi-god in the estimation

of poor Sis. He had stopped over night at the watering station six times

in four years. Sis dreamed of his coming months before he appeared, and

dreamed, too, of his going months after he went. She worshiped him from

the moment she first saw him. That was all. She had read many books, for

her father had taught her to read, and Jack Harding served in turn as

the hero of each novel she became possessed of, and, of course, (O dear

little trait of woman’s nature) she as the heroine.

Lieutenant Jack jumped from his horse as lightly as though a ride of

fifty miles were a mere bagatelle, and walked smilingly up to the door.

Just as he reached it Sis came bashfully to the doorway.

“Hello, Sis,” said the lieutenant cheerfully.

“O——,” replied Sis. She never could talk to him.

“Dad home?”

“Nope.”

“Hunting?”

“Yep.”

“Well, I’ve come to make my party call for the last time I was here. Got

anything to eat?”

“Only bacon and eggs.”

“Good enough for a prince—if the prince is as hungry as I am. All right,

get them ready. I’ll go and take care of Noche. Come, Noche—want some

water, old girl?” He led off the horse, and Sis turned from the doorway

to the kitchen. As she did so she stepped just for one moment into a

little room that, were she a lady, she would call her boudoir, though it

was but little larger than a good sized piano box, and looked searchingly

at her own face in a bit of broken looking glass. What did she see? No

thing of beauty, I assure you. This girl had not been dowered by God

with that divine gift that makes every woman who possesses it a queen.

Far from it. But so ignorant of the world was she, so much an utter

stranger to the appearance of others of her sex, that she did not know

that she was remarkably homely. Freckle faced, pug nosed, red haired,

rough and worn with work, she was in appearance positively ugly. She had

often asked her father whether or not she was good looking, and he had

invariably replied “Yes.” But he always said it in such a way that poor

Sis began at last to suspect that she was not really as beautiful as the

heroines of Scott’s novels (she knew the descriptions of them by heart.)

Still it might be, and she hoped—a thing that a woman does almost as

easily as she forgives.

The supper was eaten in the usual wondering silence on her part and the

running fire of nonsense on the part of the lieutenant. He accused her

of being in love with “Peg-leg,” the mule driver, and was cheerfully

unconscious of the fact that his words tortured her heart until she

almost broke down and cried before him. He told her all the news of the

post and the latest jokes on the officers in an endeavor—a vain one—to

make her laugh. People who have lived ten years in a desert do not laugh.

At last it was over, and she cleared away and washed the dishes. He

smoked his pipe the while, wondering how in the world she came to be so

homely, wondering how she managed to exist in such a place, and coming

to a mental conclusion as to how long he himself could stand such a life

before committing suicide. Then he went out and took a stroll on the

sandy desert. Old McCoy was not in sight, and though it was moonlight it

was hardly probable that he would return that night. He congratulated

himself, too, that Sis had not been brought up to the ideas of good

society, else he would have to make his bed in the hay that night and

leave the house, double barred and locked, to Sis. He even thoughtlessly

muttered to himself, “What a wonderful protection a homely face is!”

Then he went back to the kitchen to talk to Sis a while before going

to bed. As he entered a sight met his astonished eyes that almost made

him burst with laughter. It was nothing more nor less than Sis arrayed

in a gown that would have been an absurdity in caricature. Green satin

trimmed with red ribbons and a red sash, formless, shapeless, it was

her pitiful attempt to appear beautiful. Her great hands hung from the

sleeves like baskets from the branches of an apple tree. Her red face and

hair looked redder still by the contrast with the gaudy colors of the

dress, and she stood in the habitual slouching attitude so characteristic

of her. Yet there was something in her gray eyes that told him it was

a supreme moment in her life—the wearing of this dress—and he did not

laugh. Indeed, for a moment he almost felt sad. He tried to sit down

as unconcernedly as possible, and busied himself filling his pipe. He

did not dare to look at her. He hoped she would do something or say

something, but she did not. She stood there silent, intense, looking at

him so earnestly that it was but too manifest that she was trying to read

his thoughts. He must do something.

“Where did you get that dress, Sis?” he said as quietly as he could.

“Dad gave it to me,” she answered. “He always promised me a satin dress,

and so last Christmas he sent and got the satin. I made it. This is the

first time I have worn it before any one.”

She spoke as though the words were choking her. She seemed to be nerving

herself for something unusual. She was.

“Tell me,” she cried, almost fiercely, “tell me honestly, am I beautiful?”

He tried not to do it. He felt like a cur, a second afterwards, for

having done it. But he could not help it, do what he could to control

himself. He laughed aloud.

“O don’t—don’t—don’t——” she almost screamed. Then she fell on the floor

in a green and red heap and wept. Jack had seen women weep before (a

number of them had wept at different times when he had come to say “good

by”), but never before had he seen such a torrent of tears as this. There

was no stemming it, though he tried very hard. It seemed an age before

it ceased, and then it seemed another age that she sat there motionless

with her face in her hands as though she was trying to hide it. He felt

horribly nervous. It took him sixteen matches, as he afterwards said, to

smoke one pipe. Finally she broke the silence. Her voice was calm enough

as she asked:

“What is a beautiful woman like?”

He did not answer in words. It was just a little hard to speak at all.

He unbuttoned his blouse and took from the inside pocket a photograph

and handed it to her. She held it fiercely in her two great rough hands

and gazed at it steadily for a long time. Poor woman, she learned what

beauty was, and she learned of the love of this man whom she worshiped.

Then she got up, handed back the photograph to its owner and walked

silently and slowly from the room.

It was hard for Jack Harding to sleep that night. He got into a fitful

slumber along towards morning, and he had not been sleeping for an hour

when he found himself standing awake in the middle of the room feeling

for his revolver in the gray light of the early dawn.

“Nothing but a shot could wake me like that,” he said to himself, and

hastily pulling on his clothes and taking his revolver in his hand he

went through the house. The fire had been built and breakfast, already

cooked, was waiting for him. “I guess Sis didn’t sleep much either,” he

thought. He knocked at her door but received no answer. “Milking the cow,

I guess,” he thought, but there was beginning to be a horrible dread in

his heart. He ran hastily out of the house, and there—there under his

own window lay Sis, again a green and red heap, but there was red on the

dress now that was not ribbon. She had shot herself in the breast. He

ran to her and picked her up. He carried her into the house and swore at

himself for never having had the energy to study a little surgery in all

the long years of his army idleness. Presently she revived a little and

he heard her murmur faintly: “Tell dad good by—tell him I can’t help him

any longer.”

“Oh, Sis!” he pleaded, “why did you do this?”

“Because you laughed at me,” she answered.

“But I did not mean it. You are beautiful, Sis, indeed you are very

beautiful.”

“Oh no, I’m not,” she said. “I know what beauty is now.”

He could say nothing for a time. He hardly knew why he said what he did

when he spoke.

“Sis,” he asked her gently, “tell me, why did you want to be beautiful?”

“Because—because I loved you,” she answered slowly and with a sob.

And when her father got home that afternoon and walked gayly into the

little adobe house, he found them still together, one dead—one weeping.

A BRIEF BURLESQUE.

_As Performed Upon the Modern Stage._

_She_—You love me?

_He_— Aye, I do indeed,

How can I prove it?

_She_— Is there need?

_He_—Nay, not for some, but you are cold—

Ah, would our life were that of old

That I might prove by feat of arms

My wish to shield you from all harms—

As knight of thine I could not fail!

_She_—There’s safety in a coat of mail.

_He_—True, so there is; but take the case

Of Orpheus—give to me his place.

For Orpheus left this world above,

At Pluto’s throne he showed his love—

_She_—But that’s mythology, you know—

_He_—To Pluto I would go to show—

_She_—Ah, thanks; but is it just to trace

Comparisons between his Grace

Of the Inferno and _mon père_?

You’d hardly find the latter there,

But in that room with door ajar

You’ll see him deep in his cigar;

Which after dinner smoke, I find,

Brings him a happy frame of mind.

Go to him, therefore, and confess—

Then I am yours if he says _yes_.

(_She watches him as he hurries away_)

Poor boy, without a single cent

Upon an empty errand bent!

THE MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY.

_By Warren Taylor._

The completion of the new building of the American Museum of Natural

History marks the second step toward the realization of one of the most

colossal schemes ever formed for the promotion of science. The plan

will not be fully carried out until the whole of Manhattan Square, on a

part of which the present edifice stands, is covered with a structure

of imposing extent and immense capacity, which is to become the great

headquarters of natural science on this continent, and to rank on at

least an equality with any similar institution in the world.

Natural history is a department of knowledge that should be of especial

interest to the inhabitants of a country where nature displays her

wonders on so tremendous a scale and her riches in such exhaustless

variety. And indeed America’s contributions to that branch of science

have already been great. Of this the names of Alexander Wilson, Charles

Lucien Bonaparte, James E. DeKay, James Dwight Dana, and others no less

noteworthy, will serve as sufficient evidence.

Scientific societies were among the earliest developments of American

intellectual life, and in our leading cities they have received a

constant and growing support. Oldest of all is the Philosophical Society

of Philadelphia, which issued scientific works as long ago as 1769.

In 1780 the American Academy of Arts and Sciences was organized in

Boston, and in 1812 the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Science began

its useful existence. New York was later in entering the field. The

Lyceum of Natural History, the germ of the present establishment, was

originated in 1817. In 1869 its collections were destroyed by fire, but

the disaster proved to be the beginning of its expansion. Some prominent

and public spirited members of the society, realizing the importance of

securing for it safer and more extended quarters, took steps to establish

it upon a broader basis as one of the recognized institutions of the

metropolis. The American Museum of Natural History was incorporated by

the Legislature, and an ample and well situated plot of ground, covering

four entire city blocks, was assigned to its use by the municipal park

department, which has also paid for the erection and maintenance of the

museum building.

Of the immense structure designed by the incorporators of the museum, an

interior wing, about one twentieth part of the whole mass, was the first

erected. The corner stone was laid by President Grant in June, 1874, and

the building was opened in December, 1877. Its external appearance is

by no means unattractive, although in its design architectural beauty

was subordinated to practical considerations of light and arrangement.

Its collections are displayed in three great halls, one of which has its

floor space almost doubled by a capacious balcony. Above these is an

attic story, containing the library of the institution and a number of

chambers set apart as lecture rooms, laboratories, and the like.

[Illustration: THE NEW BUILDING OF THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL

HISTORY.]

The board walk that runs diagonally from Seventy Seventh Street and

Central Park to Eighty First Street and Columbus Avenue—the two points at

which visitors usually approach the museum—passes, midway, the present

entrance, whose unpretentious aspect is a most decided contrast to

the solid magnificence of the newly finished front. It leads directly

to the first great hall, on the ground floor, which is mainly occupied

by the Jesup collection of American woods. This is an assemblage of

specimens of trees indigenous to North America, wonderfully complete and

well arranged. Each is cut so as to display the bark and the polished

and unpolished timber, with a colored map that shows at a glance the

geographical distribution of the species. In most instances an entire

section of the trunk is exhibited, and on the west side of the hall there

are two colossal specimens, worthy to serve as round tables for King

Arthur, which may prompt the unobservant visitor to exclaim, “Those must

be the Big Trees of California!” Such is not the case, though both of

them hail from the Pacific coast, being respectively the Yellow and the

Sugar Pine. A specimen of the _Sequoia gigantea_ is in an adjoining case,

where it attracts less attention because it is but a comparatively small

fragment of the trunk of one of those famous monarchs of the vegetable

kingdom.

In the same hall, in cases that stand along the center of the room and

in the window alcoves, are some bird groups that receive a plentiful

share of admiration. They deserve it, for as specimens of accurate and

artistic taxidermy they have rarely been equaled and never excelled.

They reproduce feathered life and its surroundings with a fidelity that

bespeaks thorough knowledge, remarkable skill, and almost infinite

patience. There are birds in every attitude—perching, swimming, walking,

and even flying—each in a setting that very picturesquely shows its

habitation and habits. The uninitiated visitor can hardly persuade

himself that the foliage, the herbage, and the flowers that he sees

through the glass can be the imperishable product of an artificer’s

ingenuity, and not the work of nature herself. Some of the best of

the groups are the robins, with their nest among the pink blossomed

apple boughs; the grebes, swimming in a happy family upon a glassy

imitation of water; the laughing gulls with their nest in the bent

grass; the Louisiana water thrush, domiciled under an overhanging bank;

the cat birds, the clapper rails, and the ruffed grouse, these last so

life-like that the visitor can almost fancy he hears the brown leaves

rustle beneath the feet of the chickens. Great credit is due to Jenness

Richardson, the museum’s chief taxidermist, and Mrs. E. S. Mogridge, who

jointly prepared this beautiful series of exhibits.

[Illustration: THE BELLA BELLA INDIAN WAR CANOE.]

A specimen that calls for a word of notice, as one of the most valuable

in the museum, stands on the right hand side of the entrance to this

lower hall. It is an awkward looking bird of medium size, dark plumage,

and disproportionately large bill, and its label designates it as the

Great Auk. It is, in fact, one of the very few extant relics of a species

that has within the memory of living man disappeared from the earth.

There are but three others in this country—one in the National Museum

at Washington, one in the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Science, and

one in the collection belonging to Vassar College. The money value of a

specimen of such rarity is hard to fix precisely, but it undoubtedly runs

into the thousands of dollars.

[Illustration: A DETHRONED IDOL.]

The second floor—the main story of the building—is principally devoted

to cases of stuffed birds. These multitudinous rows of single specimens,

each perched upon its neat stand of cherry wood, are, of course, less

picturesque than the grouped figures, but are nevertheless of great

interest and value. The martial aspect of the eagles, the curious

structure of the pelicans and secretary birds, and the bright plumage of

the flamingoes, the peacocks, and the argus pheasant attract attention

and admiration.

Here, too, are the osseous remains of the late lamented Jumbo, to whom

has fallen the rare privilege of achieving a double immortality; for

while his pachydermatous hide, stuffed with straw, is still a feature of

the “Greatest Show on Earth,” his skeleton stands majestically on the

visitor’s right hand as he enters the second hall of the museum. Sea

lions, walruses and other marine monsters are also to be found on this

floor, besides a few stuffed groups. One of these last shows a family of

screech owls, with their nest deep in a hollow tree. Another—one of the

best in the museum—represents a scene in the tree tops of Borneo, and

includes five fine specimens of the orang-utan, or Wild Man of the Woods,

the great simian that disputes with the African chimpanzee and gorilla,

the honor of being the brute’s nearest approach to man. Playing among the

branches and eating the fruit of the durian, we see here a group that

shows the orang-utan (we follow the spelling adopted by the museum) at

various periods of its life and growth. There are a baby, a young female,

a full grown male, and two veterans—one of either sex—with long, black

hair and hideously wrinkled faces.

Ascending to the gallery above, we find a large and varied collection of

implements of savage tribes and relics of prehistoric man. A huge case

of skulls, whose owners lived and breathed thousands of years ago, is a

ghastly reminder of the continuity of human history. Implements of stone

and flint from France, from Denmark, and from the Mississippi valley are

silent witnesses of the days before the discovery of the art of working

iron. There are also a couple of notable groups—one of opossums and one

of muskrats. The latter is a singularly faithful reproduction of nature.

It shows a muskrat swimming by the bank of a pond, whose glassy surface

is blurred by the ripples that mark his course. White and yellow lilies

float on the water, from which rises a muskrat house, opened at the side

to show one of its inmates lunching upon a reed stem. The sandy bank of

the pond is pierced by galleries from which there peeps a young rat.

From the ceiling, in the center of the hall, there hangs a huge Indian

war canoe, which once bore the warriors of the Bella Bella tribe, in

British Columbia, over the waters of Queen Charlotte’s Sound. Though

capacious enough to carry a small regiment, it was made from the wood of

a single tree.

[Illustration: THE MASTODON—AN EXTINCT INHABITANT OF NORTH AMERICA.]

The third floor of the museum is devoted to collections of shells and

minerals, which include a wealth of interesting specimens. There is a

sheet of itacolumite, or flexible sandstone, from North Carolina, so

arranged that its power of bending can be tested by turning a screw;

there are stibnite (antimony ore) from Japan, galenite (lead ore) from

Missouri, gold quartz from California, calamine from New Jersey, as well

as chalcopyrite, marcasite, and a host of other minerals of strange name

and form. On one small tray are grouped reproductions of the world’s

most famous diamonds, showing the exact size and appearance of these

little pebbles for which dynasties have been overthrown. One of them is

labeled “the Koh-i-noor, value $1,000,000.” It is safe to say that Queen

Victoria is not offering the original for sale at that price. And if the

Koh-i-noor, which weighs 125 karats, is worth a million, what must be the

value of the Great Mogul diamond, of 297 karats?

Further down the same row of cases are amethysts, beryls, agates, and

other semi-precious stones. Among these is a curious section of an

agatized tree from Chalcedony Park, Arizona. It was mineralized by the

waters of a hot silicated spring, the silica replacing the wood as it

decayed, particle by particle.

In the center of the hall stands a remarkably perfect skeleton of a

mastodon, the huge prehistoric elephant that once roamed over Europe and

North America. This specimen was found in a peaty swamp near Newburgh,

New York, in 1879. Compared with the bony framework of Jumbo on the

floor below—the two monsters were separated, perhaps, in order to

prevent jealousy between them—the mastodon is shorter in stature, but

considerably longer. He stands 8 feet 5 inches from the ground, while his

length “over all” is 18 feet, and his immense curved tusks measure 7 feet

5 inches. Near the entrance there is the skeleton of a moa, the great

extinct ostrich of New Zealand, and at the further end of the hall that

of another animal that existed in the dawn of man’s history—the great

Irish elk, found in a peat bog near Limerick.

The raised map of New Hampshire, which stands in an alcove on the left

hand side of the entrance, is the product of an immensity of care and

labor. It is constructed to a scale of a mile to the inch, the elevation

being exaggerated about five times, or to a scale of a thousand feet to

the inch. It is a good illustration of the value of this sort of map

in giving a graphic and comprehensive idea of the topographical and

geological formation of a country.

[Illustration: A SCREECH OWL FAMILY.]

On the wall on the other end of the hall are two large tablets

of triassic rock from Massachusetts, showing the foot prints—or

“au-toe-graphs,” as James Russell Lowell once ventured to call them—of

some huge reptile, and of tiny insects and shellfish.

Throughout his inspection of the museum’s contents, the visitor will have

noticed that every inch of available space has been occupied, and that

the exhibits are in some cases cramped for lack of room. The opening

of the new building will effectually remedy this, and provide ample

accommodations for the collections and their probable augmentation

for some time to come. Its halls are now being fitted up with cases.

Its appearance is imposing, and not devoid of a solid and substantial

style of architectural beauty. Its general character is Romanesque. The

front, which faces Seventy Seventh Street, is of a rough, light reddish

stone, with a lofty and rather heavy looking roof of red tiles. It is

approached by two wide flights of stone steps, connected with a spacious

arched portico by a bridge that passes over a basement entrance below—a

very convenient and symmetrical arrangement. Like the older building,

the newly finished structure has unusually ample window light, and is

altogether well adapted to the purpose for which it is designed.

[Illustration]

NO BARGAIN.

We were riding home together,

When I told her of my love;

It was gentle summer weather,

And the moon looked down above

With a very bashful brightness,

Just as though it wished to say

“If I could, for sheer politeness,

I would look the other way;”

And the little pony trotted

On with such a leisure gait,

I believe that he had plotted

To be lazy, kind and late;

So I told her how my breast hid—

Like a bee within the hive—

Love, and hopefully suggested

She might drive.

In her hands the ribbons fluttered,

And the pony seemed to know

There was something tender uttered,

And he took it very slow;

Then I leaned a trifle nearer

To the maiden at my side,

And I told my pretty hearer

How delightful ’twere to ride

On and on with her forever

If she would but be my wife—

How ’twould be my one endeavor

To make happy all her life;

And the brief reply that met me

In my memory remains

Like a thorn—“If you will let me

Hold the reins.”

I said,

Discreetly, “No.”

And so

We didn’t wed.

BROOKLYN’S STATUE OF BEECHER.

_By R. H. Titherington._

“Let the sound of those he wrought for,

And the feet of those he fought for,

Echo round his bourne forevermore.”

Tennyson’s lines on the Duke of Wellington may well be applied to the

monument that Brooklyn has set up to commemorate her greatest citizen and

the foremost of all American preachers. The recently unveiled statue of

Beecher could hardly be better placed than at the junction of two main

arteries of traffic, and facing the City Hall. It stands at the heart

of Brooklyn, as in another sense Beecher stood, during his life, at the

heart of Brooklyn and of the nation. Its location is in keeping with the

character of the statue, and with those sides of the great man’s nature

which it especially typifies. It should, perhaps, have been set so as

to face away from the City Hall, rather than toward it. It is certainly

somewhat unfortunate that that which meets the eye of most of those who

see it should be the back of the statue, draped in the folds of a heavy

cloak.

[Illustration: THE STATUE IN FRONT OF THE BROOKLYN CITY HALL.]

The monument itself, as may be inferred from the mention of John

Quincy Adams Ward as its designer, is one that shows intelligent and

conscientious work besides much technical skill. It is animated by a

definite conception of its subject, and partakes of the character of an

ideal group as well as that of an actual likeness. The subsidiary portion

is of course wholly ideal; while the central figure itself is something

more than a reproduction of the form and features of its original. Those

who remember Mr. Beecher only in the last few years of his life may be

inclined to think that the lines of the statue’s face are too deep and

emphatic, that its expression has too much positiveness and strength, and

too little gentleness and benignity. There is truth in this criticism,

if criticism it can be called. The sculptor prepared for his task by

taking a death mask of Mr. Beecher’s face; but from the more rounded

outlines of the preacher’s later years he deliberately went back to show

him as he was in the prime of life, in those stirring times when he led

the vanguard of freedom’s forces. The statue is Beecher as he will live

in the grateful memory of posterity, rather than as he lives in the

affectionate recollection of surviving friends. It is the Beecher of

history.

[Illustration: HENRY WARD BEECHER.]

Indeed, the designer has struck the very keynote of Beecher’s

immortality. He has given us the man who voiced the cause of

emancipation in the days when it was the protest of the minority against

a great wrong firmly intrenched in the possession of power; the man who

faced anti-abolition mobs in New York and the prejudice of a nation in

England; the man who all through his life seemed to delight in facing

unjust opposition and in fighting the battle of the weak against the

strong.

He was born during the war of 1812, a perilous crisis in our national

history. To quote from the memoir compiled by members of his family,

“he carried war in him as a birthmark, but with him it was war against

wickedness and wrong.” He was an abolitionist in his undergraduate days

at Amherst, where his first attacks upon human slavery were made in the

college debating society. Then, as a young minister in an Ohio River

town, he was brought into close contact with the institution, and saw its

actual horrors. He returned east to Brooklyn to lift up in that city a

voice that presently made itself heard from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

He would accept no compromise, and fought with all his powers against

that offered in 1850 by Henry Clay. “For every free State,” he cried, “it

demands one State for slavery. One dark orb must be swung into its orbit,

to groan and travail in pain, for every new orb of liberty over which the

morning stars shall sing for joy.”

He knew full well the strength of the forces arrayed against him. “An

Abolitionist,” he said later in life, “was enough to put the mark of Cain

upon any young man that arose in my early day, and until I was forty

years of age it was punishable to preach on the subject of liberty. It

was enough to expel a man from church communion if he insisted on praying

in prayer meeting for the liberation of the slaves. If a man came to be

known as an anti-slavery man it almost preluded bankruptcy in business.”

Several times angry crowds gathered near Plymouth Church and threatened

to attack it, but Beecher cared nothing for personal danger. When the

irrepressible conflict between liberty and slavery was reddening the

plains of bleeding Kansas, he took up a collection in the church to buy

rifles for the free soilers. Some of them were sent through the enemy’s

lines in Missouri in boxes marked “bibles,” and though this was done

without his knowledge, “Beecher’s bibles” became a proverbial synonym for

improved firearms.

When the flame first kindled in Kansas spread to blaze forth into the

war of the Rebellion, none realized more fully than he the stern duties

of the hour. Beecher was away from Brooklyn when the news came that Fort

Sumter had been attacked. On reaching home he was greeted by his eldest

son with the question, “Father, may I enlist?” “If you don’t I’ll disown

you,” he replied.

He threw himself heart and soul into the work of arming for the defense

of the Union. Plymouth Church became a rendezvous for regiments passing

to the front, and its pastor’s house at 124 Columbia Heights a veritable

storehouse for military goods. He was largely instrumental in raising and

equipping three regiments for the Union army. The third of these, which

he organized almost unaided, was the Long Island Volunteer regiment,

afterward enrolled as the Sixty Seventh New York. In this his son, Henry

Barton Beecher, held a lieutenant’s commission.

Indeed, Beecher’s enthusiasm outran the government’s unreadiness. Lack of

necessary funds compelled the army authorities to delay the acceptance of

his volunteers; and in the summer of 1862, after McClellan had made his

fruitless attempt to reach Richmond, Beecher gave voice to his impatience

at what seemed to him the inactivity of the authorities at Washington.

He hated half measures, and believed that the nearest way to peace lay

through a vigorous prosecution of the war.

In June, 1863, he sought to find, in a brief visit to England, rest

and recuperation for bodily and mental powers exhausted by the strain

they had endured. Those were the darkest days of the war. Two years

of campaigning, and vast expenditures of blood and treasure, had done

little or nothing to break down the rebellion. Vicksburg was defying the

desperate efforts of Grant, while in the East Lee, at the head of his

veteran army, was pressing forward to invade Pennsylvania and outflank

Washington. All the world looked upon the United States as on the eve of

splitting asunder. In England the sympathy of the laboring men was with

the North, but the upper social and official classes were solidly on the

other side. Even such a man as Gladstone declared that “Jefferson Davis

had created a nation,” and only a few tribunes of the people like John

Bright and Richard Cobden publicly pleaded the cause of freedom.

With his love of battling against unjust opposition, it is not strange

that Beecher was drawn into a crusade against the prejudices that he

found prevalent in England—a crusade undertaken without premeditation,

but one whose results proved it to be one of his most notable services to

his country. It was begun in the Free Trade Hall at Manchester, where he

faced a great and hostile assemblage, secured a hearing by sheer pluck

and persistence, and then, by his magnificent oratorical power and the

conscious justice of his cause, won a victory that was afterward repeated

in the other chief cities of England and Scotland. His speeches turned

the balance of British sentiment, and warned the government from the path

that might have led to intervention in the struggle.

“I believe I did some good,” Beecher himself said, in speaking of his

missionary work in England. A New York journal of that time put it more

strongly. “The administration at Washington,” it remarked, “has sent

abroad more than one man to represent the cause of the North and press

it upon the minds of foreign courts and citizens; but here is a person

who goes abroad without official prestige, on a mere private mission to

recruit his health, and yet we doubt whether his speeches in England

have not done more for us by their frank and manly exposition of our

principles, our purposes, and our hopes, than all the other agencies

employed.”

The value of Beecher’s work in England was fully recognized by President

Lincoln and Secretary Stanton. With these leaders, whom he had never

hesitated to criticise when he believed it his duty to do so, he now

entered into warm relations. It was he who was invited to deliver the

address at the raising of the old flag over the regained Fort Sumter.

His active participation in public affairs continued up to his death.

His part in the election of 1884 is of course fresh in the memory

of readers—so fresh, indeed, that it can hardly be reviewed without

intrenching upon the prejudices of present day partisanship.

Henry Ward Beecher was a great man—one of the greatest and most

remarkable men of his day. His personality was so large, his gifts so

varied, his mental and moral composition so multiform, that a volume

would be needed to give a complete character sketch of the man. We can

only attempt within the limits of this article to bring out the two

main elements of his character that seem to have inspired Mr. Ward’s

conception of his subject. On the one hand is the positive, almost

militant expression that typifies Beecher’s fearless championship of the

oppressed; on the other his universal sympathy, his unselfish kindliness,

and his especial love for children, betokened by the figures beside the

pedestal. His heart was as great as his brain. He was intensely human.

Artificiality he hated, and dissembling and deception he could not

understand. He was sometimes called a great actor, but sincerity was his

very breath of life. “Some men,” he once said, “are like live springs

that bubble and flow perpetually, while others are like pumps—one must

work the handle for all the water he gets.” And rare indeed are such live

springs of imagination and eloquence, of intellect and of affection, as

that which welled in Beecher’s own heart. “He was quite as likely,” says

one of his biographers, “to burst out into splendid eloquence amid a

small group of chatting friends, or even to a single listener, as before

a vast audience. One would as soon suspect the Atlantic of holding back a

particularly grand roll of surf at Long Branch until people should come

down to see it, as to imagine Mr. Beecher keeping a fine thought or a

striking figure till he had an audience.”

Or again, as Oliver Wendell Holmes says in his essay on Beecher’s English

speeches: “He has the simple frankness of a man who feels himself to be

perfectly sound in bodily, mental, and moral structure; and his self

revelation is a thousand times nobler than the assumed impersonality

which is a common trick with cunning speakers who never forget their own

interests. Thus it is that wherever Mr. Beecher goes, everybody feels,

after he has addressed them once or twice, that they know him well,

almost as if they had always known him; and there is not a man in the

land who has such a multitude who look upon him as their brother.”

When Beecher was a man, he was a man; when he was a boy, he was a boy.

Brought up in the rigid atmosphere of an old time New England parsonage,

there was nothing sanctimonious or unhealthy about his boyhood religion.

Plain living and high thinking was the regime of his youth, but withal

he was a warm blooded, high spirited lad. At school Hank Beecher, as his

playmates called him, was a leader in outdoor sports, and at college

he was an enthusiastic athlete. Dr. Holmes called him, later in life,

“the same lusty, warm hearted, strong fibered, bright souled, clear eyed

creature, as he was when the college boys at Amherst acknowledged him

as the chiefest among their football kickers.” Strangely characteristic

was a document that he drew up on leaving the school at Amherst that

bore the high sounding title of Mount Pleasant Collegiate Institute.

It was a covenant between him and his chief schoolboy “chum,” wherein

Henry W. Beecher and Constantine F. Newell formally undertook, “in

the presence of God and his holy angels,” to be “real, lawful, and

everlasting brothers”—an agreement that was faithfully kept, in spite of

long separations, until the death of Beecher’s boyhood friend in 1842.

Another touch of nature that may be cited from the annals of his early

career was his trial sermon at Lawrenceburg. No less than a hundred

souls—an unprecedented assemblage—had gathered to hear the young college

graduate, who is said to have been so nervous that his address was a

total failure—rather a contrast to the flow of noble thoughts clad in

impressive language that afterward held many a vast audience spell bound.

His forty years’ ministry at Plymouth Church will always remain a unique

landmark in the annals of the American pulpit. It was in June, 1847,

that Beecher, then in the prime of early manhood, received an invitation

to become the first pastor of the newly formed Congregational church,

which had indeed been organized only the day before, with a membership

of twenty one. Coming to his charge four months later, the first thing

he did was characteristic. He had the pulpit cut away, and a simple desk

set in its place, upon a broad platform. He wanted to draw nearer to

his audience—literally as well as figuratively. He wished to “get at”

his hearers—to grasp them closely. He was a fisher of men’s hearts and

souls. Of the wonderful powers that made his preaching so remarkable in

its effectiveness and so world wide in its fame it is hard to give a

precise analysis. Among the component elements were a vividly creative

imagination, a mind richly stocked by reading and observation, a ripe

judgment, a deep sympathy, a remarkable adaptability to occasions and

situations, and an unfailing earnestness and enthusiasm. He was an

accomplished elocutionist, with the natural advantages of a commanding

presence and a voice of great power and flexibility.

From its small original nucleus, Plymouth Church expanded to be larger

than any other similar body in the country, with a membership of fifteen

hundred. Scores came to it from widely variant sects, and found in its

broad and liberal Christianity a common ground whereon they could stand

together and work shoulder to shoulder. It has often been said that

nowadays churches are filled with women, almost to the exclusion of their

husbands, brothers and fathers. Such was not the case with Beecher’s

congregation. Men always flocked to hear him, and felt themselves

irresistibly drawn toward the sunlight of his strong nature.

Intense as was his interest in the growth and success of Plymouth Church,

it was to him a means, and not an end in itself. He sought to make not

a prominent church, but one active and powerful in all good works. The

success of its schools and missions, its meetings and societies, was the

outward evidence of the inspiration it received from the master mind

around which it was focused.

Lesser men have ventured to criticise Beecher as deficient in theology.

Such criticism implies inability to understand the great preacher’s

breadth. He was thoroughly grounded in theological lore by his father,

who was one of the leading controversialists of the day. In Lyman

Beecher’s home dogma and doctrine reigned supreme. “Of him I learned,”

his son says, “all the theology that was current at that time. In the

quarrels between Andover and East Windsor and New Haven and Princeton—I

was at home in all these distinctions. I got the doctrines just like

a row of pins on a paper of pins. I knew them as a soldier knows his

weapons. I could get them in battle array.” After graduating at Amherst,

he studied at the Lane Theological Seminary, of which his father had

become president. He entered into Dr. Beecher’s controversy against

Unitarianism in Boston, and the subsequent conflict between the so called

old and new schools of Presbyterianism, of which latter his father was

the protagonist.

But the more he saw of these doctrinal battles, the less he believed in

their real utility and importance. “I will never be a sectary,” was a

resolve that he formed very early in his independent ministry. “Others,”

he once said, “may blow the bellows, and turn the doctrines in the fire,

and lay them on the anvil of controversy, and beat them with all sorts of

hammers into all sorts of shapes; but I shall busy myself with _using_

the sword of the Lord, not in _forging_ it.” His religious sympathy was

as wide as humanity, and his ardor for the good of mankind partook of the

divine, for to quote his own words again—and the thought they express is

a fine one—the love of God for man comes “not from a ‘law’ or ‘plan of

salvation,’ but from the fullness of His great heart.”

TO PRISCILLA.

I know, since you my dreams are haunting—

So purely fair, so winsome faced—

Though Love the gift of sight is wanting,

He hasn’t lost the sense of taste.

_Stephen Decatur Smith, Jr._

[Illustration]

MY PRETTY LIBRARY VIS A VIS.

I.

Across the table meekly sat—

I could not, would not choose but see—

With charms a monk might wonder at,

My pretty library _vis a vis_!

II.

I tried in vain to turn the page—

Romance and rhyme had lost their spell;

When mind and heart a warfare wage

The victory is not hard to tell.

III.

O sixteen summered rosy lass,

I came to read the hour away;

But not a sentence could I pass,

Save in a make believing way.

IV.

For glancing up from time to time

Filled me with tremors and surprise;

The heroines of tales and rhyme

Vanished before those dazzling eyes!

V.

I wonder if she archly knew

How fast I grew illiterate;

And when _she_ looked off, listless, too,

Was it for pity of my fate?

VI.

The hour went by. She would not leave

I tried to seem absorbed and wise.

To glance at her was to receive

Quick notice from her answering eyes.

VII.

O bookish nymph, say, was it fair

To capture so my holiday?

Before your beauty who would dare

To turn a leaf, or go away?

VIII.

But on the morrow when I went

To make amends, whom should I see

Face me again? (O time misspent!)

My pretty library _vis a vis_!

_Joel Benton._

CORNELIUS VANDERBILT.

_By William S. Bridgman._

Seventy five years ago the earthly property of the house of Vanderbilt

consisted of a sandy farm on Staten Island, and a sail boat that plied up

and down New York Harbor. These modest possessions have since grown until

they now form the immense estate which, held together as a sort of family

trust by the sons of the late William H. Vanderbilt, runs far into the

hundreds of millions of dollars. The entire previous history of the world

cannot show a parallel to this financial romance of nineteenth century

America. The gathered treasures of the Lydian Croesus and the Roman

Crassus would sink into insignificance beside the bond laden safes of the

Vanderbilts, and Midas, whose magic touch turned stones into gold, was,

in comparison with these latter day rivals, a mere plodding novice in the

art of multiplying riches.

It is not enough to cite, as the cause of this marvelous accumulation

of wealth, the wonderful abilities and remarkable good luck of its

founder, the “Commodore.” Difficult as it is to make a great fortune, it

has often been proved that it is a still rarer achievement to increase

one inherited from its maker. And so vast have been the additions to

the estate left by the first millionaire Vanderbilt, that his bequests,

great as they were, have become overshadowed by the acquisitions of his

son and grandsons. The late William H. Vanderbilt made twice as many

millions in seven years as did the Commodore in the whole course of his

long career of business and speculation. The former’s sons are adding to

the family “pile” at a rate which though less sensational is still rapid,

and of necessity gathers momentum as the “pile” and its power of earning

interest become greater. Miserliness is one of the last faults of which

they could be accused, but there is no doubt that their expenditures,

ample as they are, amount to but a comparatively small share of the

revenue that rolls in from their colossal investments.

“To what extent is public discussion of the private affairs of

individuals legitimate?” has become a question of contemporary interest

and importance. The ultra inquisitiveness of the daily press has produced

a feeling of revulsion against the excesses in this direction of which

the “personal journalism” of the day must plead guilty. Attempts have

even been made to restrain the progress of modern intrusiveness by means

of the law, as being an invasion of the constitutional privileges of the

citizen. Whether such a right can be established by writ or injunction

is doubtful. But if a man cannot invoke the courts to keep the details

of his private life from the wagging tongues of a tattling public, yet

a gentleman, among gentlemen, will find his right to individual privacy

universally recognized. It is not our purpose to pry into the personal

affairs of a family that enjoys the respect of all its fellow citizens,

with the possible exception of a few wild eyed socialists to whom the

word “millionaire” is as a red rag to an ill tempered bull. But as

the mention of political leaders is inseparable from an intelligent

discussion of national affairs, so also is it legitimate and proper to

discuss the growth of a vast fortune that has become apart of the history

of modern finance, and to canvass the tremendous possibilities involved

in its possession. The possessors themselves would readily admit that

in the control of these possibilities they are, in a certain sense,

trustees for the people at large—though not in the sense insisted upon by

the visionaries who, in their hostility to individual ownership, would

destroy the foundations upon which society rests.

[Illustration: CORNELIUS VANDERBILT.]

There is but one parallel to the marvelous inheritance of financial

ability that has distinguished the Vanderbilt family. That one is to be

found in the house of Rothschild, whose colossal fortune has had much

longer to grow, and has been fostered by the support of most of the

crowned heads of Europe. In spite of these facts, the united wealth of

all the branches of the Rothschild family is estimated at not more than

half as much again as that of the four Vanderbilt brothers. The landed

possessions of the Astors, preserved intact for four generations and

augmented by the unearned increment of New York’s development, hardly

afford a parallel case. The rising generation of the Gould family has yet

to prove its ability to manage a fortune which was probably as great as

Commodore Vanderbilt’s at the time of the latter’s death, but has since

been far surpassed by the acquisitions of the Commodore’s successors.

[Illustration: CORNELIUS VANDERBILT’S RESIDENCE AT FIFTY SEVENTH STREET

AND FIFTH AVENUE.]

Seventy five years ago, as has already been stated, Mr. Cornelius

Vanderbilt’s grandfather and namesake was captain of a Staten Island

sail boat. In 1817 he took the bold step of putting upon his route

one of the new fangled vessels that went by steam. It paid him well,

and the enterprising young man—he was then twenty three—branched out

rapidly. He appeared on Wall Street with a scheme which took shape as

the Nicaragua Transit Company. The capital of the concern was placed at

the ambitious figure of $4,000,000, to which the future railroad king

apparently contributed little except his persuasive eloquence and his

wonderful administrative ability. This latter talent was employed so

effectually that the young financier, who acted as president of the

company, soon grew to an importance that dwarfed all his colleagues into

utter insignificance. The enterprise was finally wound up with little

profit to the stockholders; but the Commodore stepped from its ruins to

more extensive ventures in the same line. During the rush to California

his steamers divided with those of the Pacific Mail Company the traffic

of the Isthmus route to the far Western gold fields. Others crossed the

Atlantic, and at one time he had more than sixty vessels in commission.

But he was one of the first to foresee the coming subordination of

steamboats to railroads, and to realize the immense possibilities of

the latter system of transportation, which was then hardly out of

its infancy. Gradually abandoning his marine interests, he sought a

firm footing upon land by buying up the stock of the Harlem Railroad.

Getting a controlling interest, he used his power to inflict merciless

punishment upon the Wall Street speculators who ventured to interfere

with his plans, and to meddle with the securities of his road. From the

comparatively insignificant Harlem, he went on to the New York Central,

the nucleus of the far reaching highways of steel that are now known as

“the Vanderbilt system of railroads.”

When the Commodore died, in January, 1887, in his eighty third year, he

left two sons. The younger, Cornelius Jeremiah, was the nearest approach

to a black sheep among his numerous posterity. This statement must not

be interpreted too severely, for together with utter lack of financial

ability, “young Corneel” possessed many amiable traits of character,

and retained to the last the friendship of some of the foremost of his

contemporaries, notably Horace Greeley. His father, who regarded his

peccadilloes with unrelenting severity, bequeathed him only the interest

upon the sum of $200,000. After other legacies amounting in all to about

$15,000,000, the remainder of the Commodore’s accumulations were left to

his other son, William H. Vanderbilt.

The man who thus, at the age of fifty six, inherited a fortune estimated

at seventy five millions of dollars, was perhaps the most remarkable

member of a remarkable family. He was born during his father’s early days

of comparative poverty, on Staten Island, and brought up there under

a household regime of rigid strictness. For years after the Commodore

became a power in the financial world, William H. lived the prosaic

life of a plain Richmond County farmer, and the multiplication of the

father’s millions brought no luxury or ostentation to the homestead of

the son. The Commodore had undoubtedly determined his choice of an heir

and successor long before he gave his son any encouragement to count upon

the prospect of great wealth. He tested the young man’s capacity for

railroad management by having him appointed receiver of a little bankrupt

line on Staten Island. The experiment was so successful that William was

promoted to be Vice President of the Harlem road, a position in which he

proved himself invaluable to his father and to the property. Thereafter

he kept pace with every forward step of the Commodore and was a very

important factor in building up the prosperity of his undertakings. As

Vice President of the consolidated New York Central and Hudson River

he performed an amount of work which, as some of his friends think,

contributed to his death—a comparatively premature one in a family

distinguished for longevity.

In many minds millions breed envy, and it is only natural that while

William H. Vanderbilt’s wonderful ability has been universally

recognized, his personal qualities should have been misrepresented. Four

hasty and injudicious words of his seem to have made a deeper impression

upon the public mind than his many notable acts of generosity and public

spirit. The circumstances under which that famous epigram, “the public be

d——d!” was uttered, are thus narrated by Henry Clews, in his interesting

volume of reminiscences, which has also been the authority for other

facts cited in this article:

The subject [of Mr. Vanderbilt’s interview with a Chicago

newspaper reporter] was the fast mail train to Chicago. Mr.

Vanderbilt was thinking of taking this train off because it did

not pay.

“Why are you going to stop this fast mail train?” asked the

reporter.

“Because it doesn’t pay,” replied Mr. Vanderbilt; “I can’t run

a train as far as this permanently at a loss.”

“But the public find it very convenient and useful. You ought

to accommodate them,” rejoined the reporter.

“The public!” said Mr. Vanderbilt. “How do you know, or how

can I know, that they want it? If they want it, why don’t they

patronize it and make it pay? That’s the only test I have as to

whether a thing is wanted or not. Does it pay? If it doesn’t

pay I suppose it isn’t wanted.”

“Are you working,” persisted the reporter, “for the public or

for your stockholders?”

“The public be damned!” exclaimed Mr. Vanderbilt. “I am working

for my stockholders. If the public want the train why don’t

they support it?”

The expression, when placed in its real connection in the

interview, does not imply any slur upon the public. It simply

intimates that he was urging a thing on the public which it did

not want and practically refused. The “cuss” word might have

been left out, but the crushing reply to the reporter would not

have been so emphatic, and that obtrusive representative of

public opinion might have gone away unsquelched.

William H. Vanderbilt never sought notoriety for his acts of munificence,

but they were neither few nor small. He voluntarily paid to his brother

Cornelius an annuity five times as large as that named by his father’s

will. He presented each of his sisters with half a million in United

States bonds. He added $300,000 to the million given by the Commodore to

the Vanderbilt University at Nashville, Tennessee. He bore the expense

of bringing the obelisk that now stands in Central Park from Alexandria

to New York—which cost over $100,000. He gave $500,000 to the College

of Physicians and Surgeons. His will distributed another million among

various charities.

That will, which disposed of the greatest fortune ever yet bequeathed,

was a remarkable document in more ways than one. It followed the

Commodore’s policy of maintaining the bulk of the family wealth

practically intact and united, and at the same time it satisfied

the participants in the distribution, and was commended as politic

and equitable by public opinion. Ten million dollars and one of the

Vanderbilt houses on Fifth Avenue were given to each of the testator’s

eight children. Then, after a long list of smaller legacies to relatives,

friends, employees, and charitable and religious institutions, the

residuary estate was equally divided between the two elder sons.

William H. Vanderbilt’s family consisted of four sons—Cornelius, William

Kissam, Frederick W., and George—and four daughters—Mrs. Elliott F.

Shepard, Mrs. William Sloane, Mrs. H. McK. Twombly, and Mrs. W. S. Webb.

All of them were—no doubt fortunately for themselves—born and brought up

while their father was a comparatively poor man, and in their childhood

they knew little of the luxury of wealth. Never was there a better

ordered household than the severely simple one where these eight children

received a training that has been of inestimable value to them. Rarely

has so large a family turned out so notably well. The four sons are,

mentally and physically, excellent specimens of the American gentleman.

There is a saying that it takes three generations of wealth to make a

gentleman. There is about as much truth in this as in some other accepted

sayings. It is doubtful whether three generations of wealth do not unmake

as many gentlemen as they make. Millionaires’ sons and grandsons do not

usually compare favorably, either in brain power or culture, with their

fathers and grandfathers. We have all heard of the rich man who declined

to let his son travel abroad, not because he objected to letting his boy

see the world, but because he was unwilling to allow the world to see his

boy. In the admirable manhood of Cornelius Vanderbilt and his brothers we

see not the exemplification of a rule so much as an agreeable exception

to the customary order of social evolution.

Cornelius Vanderbilt was forty years old when the sudden death of his

father, on the 8th of December, 1885, raised him to the head of New

York’s greatest moneyed family. That headship is not merely an empty

phrase, it may be remarked, for the wealth of the Vanderbilts, though

not held in common as that of the Rothschilds is said to be, is yet

kept together by strong bonds of family alliance, and is practically

controlled as a unit by the elder brothers. Entering the world of

business in his teens, as a clerk in the Shoe and Leather Bank, Cornelius

was always, like his father, a hard worker. He left the bank to fulfill

the duties of a subordinate position in the office of the New York

Central, and worked his way up the ladder until, at his father’s death,

he was ready to take the vacant place at the head of the management of

his great railroad interests. To the duties that this position entails

his attention has been unremitting. Not only does he deal with large

questions of general policy, but he gives personal attention to details

that many would consider trifling—for the reason that no one else can

attend to them equally well.

There are few more public spirited men than Cornelius Vanderbilt. His

charities, as well as his wife’s, are numerous and unostentatious. He

takes an especially deep interest in all movements for the benefit of

boys and young men. Of the New York Young Men’s Christian Association he

is an active supporter, and its branches for railroad men are largely

his own creation. He gives to these worthy institutions something more

valuable than money contributions—he gives them a share of his time and

his personal effort, and is a frequent attendant and speaker at their

meetings. He also gave to the Metropolitan Museum of Art one of its

finest and most valuable paintings—Rosa Bonheur’s famous “Horse Fair.”

Mr. Vanderbilt is a churchwarden of St. Bartholomew’s, the handsome

Episcopal house of worship on Madison Avenue. He succeeded to the

office at the death of his father, who had held it for many years, and

whose name is now graven on a bronze memorial tablet on the wall of

the edifice. He is active in the work of the church, and a liberal and

cheerful giver to the missions connected with it.

In his home life, too, Mr. Vanderbilt is most happily situated. He is a

model husband and father, and is very fortunate in his family relations.

He was married eighteen years ago to Miss Alice Gwinn of Cincinnati,

and has four children. The eldest, who is named William H., after his

grandfather, is a Yale student, and a very promising boy.

His New York residence, at the northwest corner of Fifth Avenue and

Fifty Seventh Street, was built for him by his father, and is considered

one of the handsomest houses in the country. Its well chosen pictures

and extensive library show the cultured mind of its owner, whose tastes

are as refined and intellectual as his habits are severely simple and

unostentatious. Still, he is far from being an ascetic, and enjoys the

good things of life, as he has a right to enjoy them. His cottage at

Newport, The Breakers, is one of the finest of the summer capital’s

palaces. His holiday trips abroad are spent amid the social gayeties of

Paris and London or the art treasures of the historical cities of Italy.

None of the Vanderbilt brothers is actively interested in the

speculations of Wall Street. Great as is the power they might yield in

the battle of bulls and bears, they prefer, wisely indeed, to stand aloof

from the fray and to devote themselves to the management of their vast

and substantial property. It is fortunate for the public that their great

moneyed possessions are in hands where they have been proved to be a

benefit and not a menace to the body politic.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

A MATTER OF CONSCIENCE.

_By Elliott E. Shaw._

I think I must have been dreaming these last few hours. It is all so

strange. I wonder if it is always so terrible to do what is right! I

don’t believe she ever suffered before in her life. The look that came

from those dark eyes of hers when I pushed her away and began to speak

will haunt me to my dying day. She almost fainted. Well, it is all

over—and there is left for me—nothing but the remembrance of her love and

the one thing that I shall ever have to my credit on the books of heaven.

Waiter, some brandy—was that brandy that I just swallowed?—it was? How

long have I been at this table? What? Twenty four hours? Ah! I remember

now that you are not the first waiter who brought me brandy, nor yet the

second, and I think you tried to get me to go home and get some sleep.

It was kind of you—but I have no home—and I cannot sleep. I can never do

anything more in this world but remember—remember.

By heaven, it was hard to do! But she will see some day that I was right,

and perhaps years from now when she is a woman—a mother, perhaps, with a

red cheeked boy in her arms repeating his innocent prayers—she may think

of me and forgive me. And I may be dead, then. And if I am not dead,

I’ll—I’ll be a broken, haggard old man with a chain on my leg and a

brand on my shoulder just as I have one now on my soul.

How she cried! I felt like a brute. Ah, I know that feeling well, but it

is strange that I should have despised myself so for the first decent

thing I have done since I was a laughing boy! How I love her—I who have

laughed so at love. Thirty eight years of cynical disbelief against one

year of absolute love. Thirty eight years, eleven months, and thirty

days of disreputable life against one day of self sacrifice. That is my

record. And what a sacrifice it was! To give up the woman one loves and

make her despise you, that she may not suffer.

How happy we could have been, but for——it was happiness to me just to sit

beside her and watch her at some little womanly act, to see her smile, to

know that her soul was as white as the feathers of a swan, and to say to

myself, “This woman actually loves me—me, a”—pshaw, I don’t like to say

the word even to myself. How sweet she was! She used to put her little

hand on my head and stroke my hair and ask me what it was that worried me

so much (for with her woman’s intuition she soon learned that there was

something that troubled me) and I would laugh and tell her that it was

the fear that some day she might cease to love me. Then she would kiss me

and tell me that I need never fear such a thing as that. Then she would

call me foolish and laugh and kiss me again. I can feel her faint breath

on my brow now.

I am sure I could have made her happy, even though I am what I am. If

I could have married her I would have guarded her as carefully as the

Creator guards the angels. She would never have learned even the alphabet

of the black side of human life. We would have been rich and respected

and happy—oh, so happy! But that man—that man with the gold rimmed

spectacles whom I see everywhere, frightens me. I can feel the atmosphere

of Scotland Yard about him, although he looks almost benign. If I could

ever catch him looking at me, I should be satisfied that he is not what

I fear. But although he seems to be everywhere I go, he apparently pays

no attention to me—and therefore I know that he _has been looking at

me_, and has turned away as suddenly as I have turned to look at him.

It was the only thing I had to warn me. It may be after all that he has

no interest in the capture of an escaped—but I could not run the risk,

for her sake. After all, I am well disguised. I have changed a good deal

in a year. It is nearly a month since I first noticed him, and he has

evidently been unable to make up his mind yet. I suppose, too, that it is

a little hard for him to believe that I could ever have been introduced

into the society of the most respectable people in all New England,

and be engaged to the daughter of a millionaire. Ha! Ha! These English

detectives are slow—but, confound it! They—are—most—disagreeably—sure.

Well—I don’t care about it now. It is almost over.

It has been a strange story. To come here a hunted criminal—a convicted

one, too—with my ill gotten money in my pocket and my identity a

secret—to have been introduced to good society through a chance

acquaintance—to have been introduced by that same acquaintance to a woman

I could actually love—what is more wonderful still, to win that woman’s

love—to be on the point of marrying her and then to fear arrest—to fear

far more than that—to fear breaking her heart! It has been a strange

story, all of it. I did something, though, that very few men could have

done—very few, indeed, of those who have never known a temptation and

never done a wrong. I gave her up, that she might not be unhappy—that she

might not be disgraced as she would have been some day—for after all, I

am certain that my time has almost come. I can wear the hideous clothes

of a convict—I can bear disgrace, for I am used to it—I can stand the

hard, unceasing, degrading labor, and the disgusting food—but I cannot

disgrace her—I cannot!

And I did it all yesterday. I went to her. She greeted me with a loving

smile, the memory of which will solace me in the long years of suffering.

She was entertaining, with the aid of her sister, some intimate friends.

They were all delighted to see me. Ah, how happy people must be who are

respectable! She came to me with outstretched arms as I entered the room,

and I pushed her roughly away. Oh, it was agonizing—she burst into tears

and threw herself into the arms of her sister. I could not tell her that

I was a forger, a professional criminal, but I told her that I was an

adventurer—that I did not love her, and that I had intended to marry her

merely for her money. I told her, too, that I had learned that her father

was on the point of bankruptcy (it was a lie, of course, all of it) and

that I wished to be released from my engagement. I said it before them

all. I acted splendidly. It broke her heart, it disgusted the rest, it

almost killed me—but, thank heaven, it saved her future. Then I mockingly

took my leave.

And since then I have not slept, nor eaten, nor felt the effect of the

brandy I have poured down my throat—and what is more, I have not cared

whether that man with the gold rimmed spectacles was watching me or not.

I have done what was right—I have actually done what was right once in my

life, thank God!

Ah—there—is—that—man—again! And—he is coming toward me. There are—other

men with him. He is looking at me now—deliberately. He knows me. It

is all up. Come on, Avenger, come on. I welcome you with both my

outstretched hands. Where are the irons?

YESTERDAY AND TODAY.

“Last night, dear Antoinette,”

(’Tis thus a wooer writes,

Whose thoughts are deeply set

On love’s profound delights,)

“Asleep within my chair

Thy vision I did greet,

And, joy beyond compare,

I dreamed I kissed thee, sweet.”

Ah, she was hurt, I fear,

For, seeming ill at ease,

She wrote, “To me it’s clear

Thou’rt taking liberties.

Such notions overthrow,

Pray take to other schemes;

’Tis well that thou shouldst know

I don’t believe in dreams.”

Yet strange that when today

I kissed her—oh, the bliss,

The charm, the spell, that lay

In that ecstatic kiss,—

No fault she found; it seems,

O maid of mysteries,

That though she likes not dreams

She courts realities!

_Nathan M. Levy._

AN EPISODE OF NUGGET BAR.

_By H. L. Wilson._

The mining camp of Nugget Bar, with its twenty or thirty tents and

cabins, did not present a particularly inviting scene to the anxious gaze

of Julius Anderly, as he urged his tired beast, with its conglomerate

burden of camping utensils and mining implements, over the last half mile

of his journey. The mountains seemed to cower down as low as possible

before the blaze of the setting sun, and their rugged sides and bald tops

were marked with shadows and sun pictures, quaint, curious, and fantastic.

The scene was wildly picturesque, after its own primitive style, and

Julius Anderly was rather disconcerted by the novelty of its rough

grandeur; but he was more disconcerted by the group of some half dozen

men he discerned lounging in front of what he rightly supposed was the

only hotel in the camp.

As he drew nearer he was quite positive that the big burly man with the

bushy beard would prove anything but an agreeable companion; he was

probably one of those men he had been told about who always carried a

loaded pistol in a convenient pocket, and who regarded a refusal to drink

whisky with him as an insult sufficiently deadly to justify said pistol’s

immediate and destructive discharge upon and against the person of the

audacious abstainer.

And the portly gentleman, who wore a battered “plug” hat, and was seated

upon an empty claret case, had a marked magisterial bearing, more

autocratic than reassuring.

The landlord, tall, thin and lazy, who occupied the doorway, was the

least ferocious in appearance. The other members of the group seemed

to Julius to be only passively dangerous—safe as long as they were let

alone.

The big burly man who formed one of the group in front of the “Golden

Nugget,” and whom _we_ know to be Hank Purdy (designated by certain

envious and despicable residents of Nugget Bar as “Windy Purdy”), paused

in the narration of the details of a sanguinary combat between himself

and six stalwart Apaches, alleged to have occurred in some remote section

of the West at some remote period, and interjected the word, “Tenderfut!”

As the term fell from his lips at the instant his eyes fell upon Julius,

who had now approached quite near, we cannot do otherwise than consider

the term as applied to the latter.

Yes, Julius was undeniably a tenderfoot steeped in all the infamy

that the term implies. The newness of his outfit, his awkward manner

of strapping the same to the animal’s back, and his own genial and

unsuspecting countenance, all united to insult every acclimated

Californian, and particularly the group before which he now paused.

Julius was short, rather fat, and benevolent looking; with a big head,

slightly bald, and a smooth, round face and blue eyes, expressive of

utter and perfect confidence in all mankind.

He stood irresolute a moment, and then, with an appealing look upon his

face, said, tentatively, “How do you do, gentlemen? I presume this is

Nugget Bar.”

Now according to all preconceived notions of Julius, the tall, thin

landlord, who was apparently very lazy, and whose name, by the way, was

Sam Turner, should have been bluff and hearty looking, and should have

at once replied in the bluff, hearty manner of landlords (in the books

Julius had read), “Right ye air, stranger, and who mout ye be?”

But the owner in fee simple of Nugget Bar’s sole hostelry was shamefully

ignorant of the social requirements of a man in his position; indeed

he was distinctly permeated by an air of social irresponsibility, and

he only said, in a very deliberate way, without evincing the slightest

curiosity regarding a possible patron:

“Ya-a-s, I presume ’tis; leastwise what’s left uv it.”

Again spoke Julius, with the unuttered appeal for comradeship still his

predominant facial expression:

“Well, I’m Julius Anderly. ‘Jule’ mother always calls me at home, and

that’s way back in Ohio, you know.”

The company remained unmoved by this piece of family intelligence, with

the exception of a little dark man, lacking, physically, an eyebrow, and

mentally, a happy disposition, who volunteered the remark that he “wunst

had a cousin die in Ohio.” Julius ventured to lean against one of the

supports of the wooden awning and continued:

“Things have been going pretty bad with our folks back there for some

time. Pa died—let me see, this is July—three years ago last March, and

after that the support of ma and the girls fell to me, which was about

all pa had to leave, except the home. I guess we’d pulled through all

right enough if the firm I had been keeping books for for over ten years

hadn’t up and failed—went clean under and hadn’t a cent left.”

The various members of the group here expressed to each other, ocularly,

their contempt for any man who “kept books,” all except the little dark

man, whose face plainly expressed an inward conviction to the effect that

the failure of that firm was due solely to Julius’s defective method of

keeping said books.

It was rather discouraging, but Julius continued: “And there I was out of

a job, which was pretty bad, I call it. Times were hard all round there

and I couldn’t seem to get in anywhere else.

“We heard a good deal of talk about Californy, how so many were striking

it rich here—I b’lieve that’s what you call it when a man finds a lot of

gold—and we thought, that is ma and the girls and I did, that perhaps I’d

better come out here, even if it was a long ways off, and see if I could

find a gold mine or buy an interest in one or something. We sat up nights

and talked it over and read a whole lot about how to come and what to

do, and finally ma mortgaged the house for twelve hundred dollars, and I

started out here with a thousand—round by the isthmus, you know.”

Another ocular expression of contempt from all parties for a man who

would make the trip from the States in a boat instead of pushing straight

across the continent as they had done; the little dark man showing by the

same means his belief that there was some secret and cogent reason for

that route being chosen.

“Well, I got to San Francisco, and the first person I got acquainted

with there was a very kind gentleman named Walker Smith, who had known

of my folks back in Ohio. He knew all about mines and owned a great many

himself. I told him what I was after, that I’d come out to make a little

money, and as a friend of his up at Sacramento had a valuable mine that

Mr. Smith thought he could buy, I gave him five hundred dollars to go and

buy it for me.”

Julius was visibly affected at this point, and in a most gentle

manner, intended to be brutal in the extreme, called to his burro that

had strayed a few yards away and was leisurely cropping the scanty

vegetation, to “come up there.”

Thus having given vent to his pent up emotion (though the animal was

utterly deaf to the command), Julius went on:

“Well, that was over six months ago, and I’ve never seen anything of Mr.

Smith since that day I gave him my money—all in gold, too.”

This time the expressions of contempt were not confined to looks, but

broke forth audibly from all sides. Only the little dark man remained

silent, and he nodded his head in a very knowing manner, thereby

suggesting that he attributed to Julius a voluminous catalogue

of atrocities, which he could specify if it became necessary; and

furthermore that he caviled at the others for their deplorable lack of

insight into character.

Apprehending that he had placed Mr. Walker Smith in a bad light before

these gentlemen, Julius made haste to defend him.

“Yes, and there were some men in San Francisco that I’m sure were enemies

of Mr. Smith, and _they_ tried to make me believe he was dishonest and

was lying about the mine; but I didn’t mind them, because he had told me

just where the mine was and everything about it; why, he even showed me a

piece of gold that had been taken from it. At last I made up my mind that

he had been murdered and robbed of my money, so I’ve come up this way

to find some gold for myself. But you can’t tell me,” he added, after a

second’s reflection, “that Smith was dishonest. He knew of ’most all our

folks.”

Having thus disposed of the matter of Mr. Smith’s probity, Julius began

unstrapping his outfit, and by his general demeanor gave the others to

understand that he had at last found a home and friends.

This time the limited vocabulary of the group would not admit of any

adequate expression of their contempt, so they were obliged to resort to

looks again, the little dark man intimating, by a peculiar expression

of mingled horror and distrust, that this was positively the most

insinuating villain he had ever met.

“An so yu think this yur’s ’bout the place whur yu kin make yer pile, do

yu?” queried Hank Purdy, as he emptied the ashes from his pipe by rapping

it against the palm of his left hand.

“Well, they told me down below that there was gold up here and that I was

to be careful and not be taken in. And perhaps you gentlemen will tell me

where to dig—kind of advise me, you know.

“I’m very anxious to find some gold in a little while—I don’t care for so

very much, only a few thousand dollars—and I don’t want to dig very deep

for it, ’cause I’m not used to hard work. And besides I’ve got to get it

quick, for I must start back home before fall, or ma and the girls will

think I’m sick or something.

“Just tell me some place where I can get it quick; some place close

around here, if you know any.”

Mr. Purdy was the first of the party to recover his mental equilibrium

after the preferment of this extraordinary request, and lost no time

in stating emphatically that he would be something which could only be

expressed here by a long dash, in the event of Mr. Anderly not being

about the freshest thing he had ever seen.

“An’ so yu hain’t got no more’n a couple a days to spare, an’ yu’d

like to make a snug little pile and git out a here by ’bout day arfter

tomorrow, would yu?” again queried Mr. Purdy.

“Why, isn’t that a little soon?” asked Julius.

“Not a bit uv it. People air comin’ in an’ goin’ out a here every day

er so. All they hav’ to do is to jes scratch eroun’ a little mite, ’n

they’re sure to turn up a whole pile a nuggets.”

“No? You don’t mean to tell me so!” exclaimed the now radiant and

delighted Julius.

“Fact; you betchu!” asseverated Mr. Purdy. “Leave ’t the jedge there if

’taint.”

The “jedge,” he of the damaged head gear, claret nose and judicial

bearing, confirmed Mr. Purdy’s statement with regard to the abundant

natural resources of Nugget Bar, in a manner admitting no doubt of his

sincerity, so that Julius did not require the concurrent statements of

the other members of the party, which were nevertheless given.

Julius now felt his troubles to be at an end. A few days more and he

would be a comparatively rich man. He expressed his astonishment that

fortunes were picked up so easily.

“Ya-a-h, minin’ ain’t what ’t chused to be,” went on Mr. Purdy. “Why,

when I was first out, ther was four uv us a prospectin’ up on the divide

one time, ’n she set in to snow fer all git out, ’n we got lost ’n

wandered eround ther fer ’leven days, all uv us on foot, ’n not a blamed

horse in the crowd. The on’y thing we had to eat was snow and stewed

saddle, yessir, fact. We cut up that (dashed) saddle ’n biled ’er ’n used

to chew on’t fer hours ’t a time, ’n she saved all our (dashed) lives

too. Nowadays these yur people kim in yur ’n git it jest fer pickin’ it

up.”

This tradition of Mr. Purdy’s had come to be looked upon as apocryphal,

inasmuch as he had never been able to explain satisfactorily how the

party had obtained the saddle, since they were all on foot and had

no horse. His reply to any question touching upon the source of that

appetizing article was always conceived in a spirit of the profoundest

irritation, and delivered with vehemence, disgust, scorn and contempt.

But the present recital being solely for the delectation of Julius

Anderly, this defect was not touched upon.

Julius was duly impressed by the incident and said as much, and again

expressed a willingness to be directed to some spot close at hand where

untold gold, easy to access, was waiting to be put to good use by

deserving mortals.

“Wal,” said Mr. Purdy, “I s’pose the jedge there knows a more good places

to find gold eround yur than a’most any ether man. I ekspects he’s

prob’ly the best man fer yu.”

The judge, who was usually drunk, and commonly thought to be incompetent

on that account, had got himself elected as Justice of the Peace by

keeping the coming election and his candidacy a secret from all save

his most intimate friends, and so long as he had nothing to do he was

permitted to do it.

With the worried air of a man who controlled the affairs of the universe,

and withal, a look of pretended sagacity, the judge opined that there

was a “splen’d place to dig out there,” with a sweep of his right hand

comprehending most of the western hemisphere.

Mr. Purdy, at this striking proof of the soundness of his judgment,

assumed a triumphant expression and said, “Ther! wha’d I tell yu?”

Julius gazed blankly out over the bar and up the gulch, and down over the

trail he had traveled, and then with the utmost delicacy, and with all

due deference to the dignity of the bench, suggested that perhaps the

direction given by the judge was not sufficiently definite to be of any

practical utility; but he was none the less hopeful for all that.

Mr. Purdy was on the point of requesting the judge to confine himself to

some given spot, when the face of Mr. Turner lighted up with the fire

of inspiration. He said: “Now look a here, Anderly, they’s a spot right

out back a this here shanty where I think you’d find whuchu want. I been

a goin’ to dig there myself fer a long time now, but I’ll jest turn ’er

over to you, an’ by gun, you can have whuchu find there.”

Mr. Turner did not state that the spot he referred to was where he

had projected a cellar in which to store surplus provisions; that, if

there had existed any means of getting said cellar there otherwise than

by hard work, he would have had it there long ago; and that there was

about as much likelihood of finding elephants’ teeth there as gold. But,

nevertheless, this all passed through his mind.

“But, my dear sir,” said Julius, “you are not laboring under the delusion

that I want to take any man’s mine and use it to my own advantage, I

hope. I couldn’t think of taking what another man had found. I just

thought some of you could kind of advise me.”

The absurdity of supposing that Mr. Turner would labor under any

circumstances, not even excepting a delusion, was so apparent to the

judge that he was moved to smile knowingly; but at an indignant look from

Hank Purdy he straightened himself up and stared hard at the mountains,

as if he were possessed of some recondite knowledge concerning their

origin and manner of construction.

“Wal, I admit it’s mighty gen’rous in me,” said Mr. Turner, with a

sublime look of self abnegation upon his honest face, “but I tell you

we’r’ none uv us mean around these here diggin’s, not if we know it; and

’sides thet, I got a dozen or so places jest as good as thet ’t I kin go

to any time, so I guess you jest better go to work there t’morrow an’ git

whuchu kin out uv it.”

Julius was profuse in his earnest expressions of gratitude, but Mr.

Turner waved him off and magnanimously said it was nothing—which was

quite true.

Then Julius had his supper and was shown to the back room, where he was

to pass the night.

Upon Mr. Turner’s explaining his object in inducing Julius to dig back

of the hotel, whereby he was to be a new cellar the gainer, he was

unsparingly praised for bringing about his object by this poetical

idealization of a cold, hard reality, in the mind of Julius, and then

the gentlemen drank something, the little dark man, as he ordered his

without any water, wishing every one to remember, when Julius Anderly’s

true character became known, that he had warned them against him from the

first.

As they drank to the completion of the new cellar, Julius was heard in

his room, musically entreating some person, evidently a female, to lay

her brown head upon his breast, which vocal effort was not favorably

received, especially by the little dark man, who muttered, as he ambled

off toward his tent, that they “didn’t want no layin’ of heads on breasts

around there.”

The next morning found Julius digging laboriously in the hard ground back

of the hotel, within the space marked off by Mr. Turner, with a song upon

his lips and the firm conviction in his breast that in a few days he

would be on his way to Ohio with the money that was to make ma and the

girls comfortable.

All day long he worked assiduously, never pausing to note the looks of

contempt and ridicule that were cast upon him by the passing miners who

were working up the gulch with pick, shovel and pan.

That night Mr. Turner’s cellar was half done, and Julius was as hopeful

as ever, confidently remarking to Mr. Purdy that he would surely find

the gold tomorrow, as he was getting the space narrowed down now. He

jubilantly dilated upon the manner in which he would apply his fortune,

not forgetting to mention that the whole party were to have a big supper

at his expense—which caused the judge to regret, momentarily, that the

whole thing was a practical joke upon the Easterner.

Julius rose betimes the following morning, and again proceeded to work,

as confident that the sun would set upon him a rich man that night as he

was that a temperance movement was the one thing needful in Nugget Bar.

That afternoon about four o’clock, as the usual group were gathered in

front of the “Golden Nugget,” indolently discussing various abstract

moral and social problems, of which this story does not take cognizance,

and Mr. Turner was inwardly congratulating himself on the imminent

completion of his cellar, Julius Anderly suddenly appeared around the

corner of the house, his pick and shovel on his shoulder. He had the air

of a man who had finished his day’s work.

“Well, I suppose I’ll have to leave you in the morning,” he said.

“There’s a party of miners from up the gulch going down, and I can go

with them; I found the gold all right enough, thanks to you, Mr. Turner,

and my other friends here.”

“You wha-a-t?” screamed Mr. Turner, evidencing more energy than had ever

before characterized any remark of his made within the hearing of any of

the assembled residents of Nugget Bar. “You found _wha-a-t_?”

“Why, I’ve found the gold, you know,” answered Julius, slightly

bewildered by the general paralytic attitude of the group, and by this

unexpected and unprecedented display of energy on Mr. Turner’s part.

“I’ve got a whole pile of gold round here—found it just as you said—and a

man that saw me says I may go down with his party tomorrow.”

Consternation was written upon the faces of all the group. Consternation?

Yes, and wild alarm, terrified surprise, and incredulity and anger and

sheepishness, and many other emotions too numerous and heterogeneous to

admit of specification. With one accord they dashed off to the scene of

Julius’s labors.

Yes, there was a pile of golden nuggets, just as they had been taken from

their strange, unthought of hiding place, where some fanciful freak of

nature had stowed them—a most convincing proof of nature’s whimsicality.

There was no doubt but what a rich pocket had been struck, and yet the

good citizens of Nugget Bar, and especially those who had lately served

Julius in an advisory capacity, seemed prone to discredit the evidence of

their sight and touch, and handled the precious fragments as if they were

something intangible.

And in the midst of all the flurry and excitement stood Julius, radiant

and joyful, his cherubic face wreathed in a quiet smile of contentment,

and not one bit excited or surprised, because had not these rough but

honest men told him he would find a lot of gold there, and he had found

it as a matter of course?

Resuscitative measures were now in order, and were inaugurated at

Julius’s expense. Nugget Bar ate and drank late and deeply that night,

but as Julius left next morning with the party “down below,” most of it

was up with its aching head and bitter tasting mouth to see him off, and

the little dark man was heard to remark that he had told them so from the

first, and now he supposed they were satisfied—which they were not.

The landscape in the rear of the “Golden Nugget” was soon terribly

disfigured by Nugget Bar picks and shovels, and Sam Turner’s cellar was

enlarged to proportions that no self respecting cellar would be guilty of

assuming; but I never heard that Nugget Bar found another pocket there.

A DILEMMA.

Hello! why here’s a note from May—

For well that dainty hand I know—

I wonder what she has to say,

When last she wrote ’twas long ago.

My heart I swore was hers alone—

And so it was for that brief time—

I humbly worshiped at her throne

And vowed my perfect faith in rhyme.

But ’twas not that which made us part—

Although my verse was not the best—

We soon were cured of Cupid’s dart

And then—you well can guess the rest.

What news now will this letter bring?

It’s friendly at the start: _Dear Jack,_

_I’m to be married in the spring,_

_And so please send my picture back._

Well, that’s a nice request to make—

Her picture—what else does she say?

Ah, so she wants it _for my sake_

And signs it, _Yours, as ever, May._

Not mine now, that time long has passed—

Her picture—two hearts o’er it crossed—

Where was it now I saw it last?

Confound the thing, it must be lost!

_Flavel Scott Mines._

THE COLLEGES OF NEW YORK.

_By Judson Newman Smith._

I.—COLUMBIA COLLEGE.

While the highest prestige of age and renown attaches to those of our

American universities that are located in lesser towns, the tendency of

recent times seems to be rather toward the development of fully equipped

educational institutions in the great urban centers of population.

Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, it will generally be admitted, still

stand foremost, but New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore have built

up universities whose subordination needs to be qualified in some

particulars—for the scientific department of Johns Hopkins and the

medical branch of the University of Pennsylvania rank at least as high

as those of the older colleges, while Columbia’s rapidly increasing

wealth has enabled it to advance with greater rapidity than any of its

sisters. Established in prerevolutionary times, generously fostered by

the State, by the Trinity Church corporation, and by private munificence,

the development of New York has so augmented its revenue that it has now

become a university in the fullest sense of the term, and possesses among

its schools three that are unequaled in the United States.

From the time it was chartered, in 1754, until 1857, its extensive

college grounds were situated on what is now one of the most crowded

commercial districts of the city—that between College Place and the

North River. It was chartered under the name of King’s College, and was

supported and controlled by Church of England influences. For this reason

it was disfavored by other religious denominations, and a hard struggle

existence ensued until the corporation of Trinity Church came to the

rescue, by granting it the tract of land already mentioned and enabling

the college to erect its first buildings.

Misfortune was again encountered at the breaking out of the Revolution.

The college was regarded as a nest of Toryism, and the committee of

public safety essayed to suppress it by ordering the buildings to be

prepared for occupation by the troops. Under this misuse the college had

been reduced to a state almost requiring recreation, when in 1784 the

Legislature reincorporated it under its later name. In 1857 the site was

removed to the present location at Madison Avenue and Forty Ninth Street.

The five departments of Columbia College are those of Arts, of Mines,

of Law, of Political Science, and of Medicine, and in addition there is

an annex for women, known as Barnard College, in honor of the lately

retired president, Frederick A. P. Barnard. The schools of Law, Mines and

Medicine are the leading ones of the country.

The School of Arts provides the usual classical education, at a cost to

students of $150 for the annual fee. There are a number of free and prize

scholarships, and seven three year fellowships of $500 per annum. There

is also a post graduate course of wide scope.

Seven parallel courses of engineering are pursued in the School of Mines,

the fee for which is $200 for each of the four years of study; and there

is besides a post graduate course of two years for the degree of Bachelor

of Philosophy. The work done in this department is of the most exact

and thorough character. A feature of it is the regular excursions of

parties of students under the supervision of their instructors into the

foundries and work shops of the city, or to the scene of some large field

construction for the purpose of “carrying the chain” and of surveying.

[Illustration: COLUMBIA COLLEGE—THE LAW SCHOOL BUILDING.]

The School of Law, since its organization in 1858, has sent forth the

major portion of the great legal lights of the country. The course

occupies three years, at an annual fee of $200, which, in common with the

fees of the other departments, may be remitted at the discretion of the

Faculty.

Political science furnishes another department extending over three

years. At the end of the first year the degree of Bachelor of Philosophy

is conferred; that of Master of Arts at the end of the second year, and

at completion the student receives the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Barnard College, organized a few years ago, is kindred in scope to the

School of Arts, and requires an equally severe entrance examination for

qualification to matriculate. Already in its short history it begins to

evince a high standard of scholarship, and bids fair to take a leading

position in the ranks of college annexes for women.

All the foregoing, except the last named, are located on the ground

between Forty Ninth and Fiftieth Streets and Madison and Fourth Avenues.

The remaining branch, the College of Physicians and Surgeons, has lately,

through the royal munificence of private individuals, been enabled

to secure a splendid extension of its facilities. The late William

H. Vanderbilt in 1885 presented to the college the sum of $500,000,

with which an ample site was purchased at Fifty Ninth Street and Ninth

Avenue and suitable buildings erected. This princely gift was followed

by another from the donor’s daughter, Mrs. W. D. Sloane, who, with her

husband, built, and equipped, at a cost of $250,000, the Sloane Maternity

Hospital, controlled by the college. Yet again, the four sons of Mr.

Vanderbilt established a free clinic, known as the Vanderbilt clinic,

which also called for an expenditure of a quarter of a million dollars.

Though since its foundation in 1807 the P. & S., as it is popularly

called, has been the leading school of medicine of the western world,

these superb examples of philanthropic liberality have placed it in a

position to compare with the foremost schools of Europe.

The income of Columbia is mainly derived from the rentals of extensive

grants of real estate received from Trinity Church and the State.

These holdings are situated both in the crowded districts of trade and

the neighborhood of wealthy residence, and their values have largely

increased with time.

As guardian in chief of this vast estate and director of the progress of

a modern university, the president of Columbia needs to be a man of rare

qualifications. High scholarship he should have as the head of a learned

institution, and rare business ability he must have as the manager of the

various interests intrusted to his care. The college is fortunate indeed

to have at its helm one who so eminently combines the qualifications of

the scholar, the gentleman, and the practical man of affairs as does Dr.

Seth Low.

Unlike the majority of colleges, Columbia provides no living quarters

for its undergraduates, who, separating each day to their widely

distributed homes or lodgings, enjoy nothing of that unique existence

known as “college life,” so dear to the recollection of the alumnus.

This does not, however, banish an intense college spirit, fostered by

Greek letter fraternities, literary societies, many subdivisions of

athletic organization and scores of little cliques or clubs, like so many

branching roots of a noble loyalty.

The college, on its removal to its present site, consisted of a now

venerable and imposing building, in style approaching the Colonial,

and occupying the center of a full city square, admitting of extensive

grounds and an ample campus. On this space there have from time to time

been erected various additional buildings for the accommodation of

the fast growing schools, until now the original structure is almost

completely surrounded with these modern edifices, a compact mass of

impressive appearance and great capacity. The buildings of the medical

school combine the results of modern ingenuity in the attainment of the

most perfect convenience with pleasing architectural effects.

II.—THE UNIVERSITY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK.

A noteworthy Gothic structure of white freestone, situated on the once

aristocratic Washington Square, is the principal seat of the University

of the City of New York. To the many pleasing associations of the past

that cluster around this locality, the University building contributes

the lion’s share. Besides lending its academic dignity to the spot, its

studios and apartments were long the abiding place of the leaders of

the artistic and literary coteries of the city. It is memorable, too,

as the scene of the world famed achievements of two of the University’s

professors—Professors Samuel F. B. Morse and John W. Draper, the former

of whom here invented the recording telegraph, and the latter first

applied photography to the representation of the human countenance.

The origin of the university was philanthropic. In 1829 seven prominent

New Yorkers—bankers, merchants, and professional men—met to consider the

establishing of a liberal university, designed to comprise a graduate

division for the pursuit of advanced studies, and an undergraduate

division devoted to classical and scientific courses. Calls for

subscriptions met a liberal response, and the college was speedily

launched. The building, which was erected in 1835, is now occupied by the

Department of Arts and Sciences, the Schools of Law and Pedagogy, besides

the chairs of several post graduate courses in line with the intentions

of the founders.

A medical department of high rank dates from 1841; it is situated in an

ample building in East Twenty Sixth Street, opposite Bellevue Hospital,

where practical instruction is obtained by the students. Among its

noteworthy features is the Loomis laboratory, occupying a five story

wing, which was erected at a cost of $100,000. This money was received

from an unknown donor, through Dr. Alfred L. Loomis, one of its best

known professors; and among the conditions of the gift was the strange

proviso that the name of the giver should be kept secret.

Some of the branches of the university are liberally endowed; others are

supported by the fees of the students. Among the latter is one whose

recent establishment is indicative of the breadth of plan contemplated by

the governors. This is the School of Pedagogy, ably presided over by Dr.

Jerome Allen.

The Chancellor of the University is Dr. John Hall, who succeeded Dr.

Howard Crosby in the office. The institution does efficient work in all

its branches, and has been eminently successful in the achievement of the

founders’ design—“to diffuse knowledge.”

[Illustration: THE UNIVERSITY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK, ON WASHINGTON

SQUARE.]

III.—THE COLLEGE OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK.

The third of the great general educational institutions of the metropolis

is entirely distinct from the one last described, in spite of the

confusion between them that exists in the minds of many New Yorkers

who should be better informed. The similarity of name is certainly

misleading, and for that reason a little unfortunate.

[Illustration: THE COLLEGE OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK, AT TWENTY THIRD

STREET AND LEXINGTON AVENUE.]

The College of the City of New York is a public institution in the

fullest sense of the term. It is a supplement to the municipal system

of common schools, and with those schools is under the control of the

Board of Education. It was established in 1848 by the authority of the

Legislature; its first class matriculated in the following January and

graduated in 1853. It was not, however, until 1854 that the Legislature

bestowed upon the Free Academy, as it was then called, full collegiate

powers and privileges as regards conferring upon graduates the usual

degrees in the arts and sciences. In 1866 it was admitted to the circle

of the State’s colleges that are scrutinized by State Regents. At the

same time was adopted the modern and more dignified name that it has

since borne.

The curriculum at this institute is divided into three courses, the

classical, the scientific and the mechanical, each occupying four years,

and preceded by a preparatory course of one year. The classical course

gives especial attention to Latin and Greek, but includes one modern

language. The scientific course comprises mathematics and the modern

languages as the leading subjects of study. The mechanical course differs

from the scientific in that it gives more prominence to the applications

of mechanical science, and calls for practice in the workshop and the

chemical laboratory during the whole course. There is also a post

graduate course in civil engineering, extending over two years.

The College of the City of New York has always been a target for the

assaults of politicians, and many attempts have been made to secure

its abolition on various pretexts. Through all of them, however, the

institution has triumphantly marched, and under the presidency of General

Alexander S. Webb it has gained increased scope and efficiency with every

year. It has long been remarked that the names of its graduates are more

than ordinarily prominent among the leaders of post graduate departments

elsewhere.

The College is situated at Lexington Avenue and Twenty Third Street. The

buildings are constructed of brick, and are valued at $225,000. They

contain a library of 26,180 volumes, a natural history cabinet of 7,500

specimens, and scientific apparatus to the value of $28,000.

On the accession of General Webb in 1869 the College had on its rolls 27

instructors and 447 students, at a cost to the city of $125,000 a year.

At the present time there are 44 instructors and 1,450 students, while

the increase of the annual expense has been but $23,000. The faculty

has comprised some famous names: Horace Webster was the institution’s

first president and professor of philosophy, and Gerardus B. Docharty

its professor of mathematics. Charles Edward Anthon was professor of

history and belles lettres from 1852 until his decease in 1883. Other

notable names on the roll are those of Oliver W. Gibbs, General William

B. Franklin, John C. Draper, Russell Sturgis, and R. Ogden Doremus.

New York’s system of public education has received severe, and

unfortunately not unjust criticism, which has been called forth by

defects in the common schools, and especially by their inadequate

seating capacity. The advanced department of the system, however, is

recognized as a model of efficiency. Its very completeness and success

have often been used to emphasize by contrast the imperfections of the

common schools, to whose pupils it offers gratuitously the benefits of a

collegiate course and collegiate degrees.

LOVE IS BLIND.

I.

From ancient Roma o’er the sea

This ring, sweet maid, I bring to thee.

Pray treasure it for friendship’s sake,

And prize the symbol it doth make.

A sweet suggestion would it lend,

For like my love it has no end;

These letters tell thee whence it came,

And proud it is to bear the name—

“ROMA.”

II.

She clasped it ’tween her fingers fair;

In conscious pride it nestled there.

Upon its jeweled plates her eyes

Cast star-like beams in sweet surprise;

Then turned she with a modest smile,

And pointing at the ring meanwhile,

“Love, thou art blind,” the dear one said,

“Else wouldst thou read as I have read—

AMOR!”

_Jean La Rue Burnett._

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

THE JAPANESE NOVELTY STORE.

I.

Each morning, at nine,

I pass under the sign—

A fan with a stork flying o’er—

And see, as I go,

A remarkable show,

At the Japanese Novelty Store.

II.

There’s an odd little man,

From the booths of Japan,

Who walks to and fro on the floor;

His eyes are oblique,

And he talks with a squeak,

At the Japanese Novelty Store.

III.

There are teacups and trays,

And boxes ablaze

With lacquer and gilding galore;

Individual “butters,”

And bronze paper cutters,

At the Japanese Novelty Store.

IV.

You ask the expense,

It is twenty five cents

For a lantern as big as a door;

But a dollar won’t buy

A vase an inch high

At the Japanese Novelty Store.

V.

Cranes, fishes, and dragons,

And Cloisonné flagons,

No man can say what they are for;

But—down to the stork—

They’re all made in New York

For the Japanese Novelty Store.

_Allanson Goodwin._

HORSEMANSHIP—A POPULAR FAD.

_By Frank A. Munsey._

[Illustration]

Healthful outdoor sports and exercises have in the last few years grown

to a remarkable vogue and popularity in this country. Their cultivation

has indeed been one of the most notable social developments of the past

quarter of a century. England has led the world in the various branches

of athletics, and the general participation in them by her people has

done much to make the English race distinguished among nations for the

best standard of physical development.

But already we are fairly dividing the honors with her. In yachting we

have built the boats and reared the sailors that have outsailed, time and

again, the best yachts England has ever produced. American riflemen and

American oarsmen have held their own against the best talent of England.

Even in cricket, their great national game, picked teams of Englishmen

have been met and vanquished by transatlantic invaders. Of running,

walking and bicycling records America holds her share, and of those for

short distances she has the great majority. In high jumping, throwing the

hammer and putting the weight, American athletes are in the lead. Tennis

and polo are newer games here than in England, but our standards in them

are of the highest. Baseball is peculiarly our own, and it has been

developed to a wonderful degree of scientific skill reached by no other

outdoor sport.

“The pleasure of exercise,” says Dr. Holmes, “is due first to a purely

physical impression, and secondly to a sense of power in action. The

first source of pleasure varies, of course, with our condition, and the

state of the surrounding circumstances; the second with the amount and

kind of power, and the extent and kind of action. In all forms of active

exercise there are three powers simultaneously in action—the will, the

muscles and the intellect. Each of these predominates in different kinds

of exercise.” The Autocrat discusses the relative merits of walking,

riding and rowing, concluding with the statement that rowing “is the

nearest approach to flying that man has ever made or perhaps ever will

make. As the hawk sails without flapping his pinions, so you drift

with the tide, when you will, in the most luxurious form of locomotion

indulged to an embodied spirit. You can row easily and gently all day,

and you can row yourself blind and black in the face in ten minutes,

just as you like. It is in the boat, then, that man finds the largest

extension of his volitional and muscular existence.”

[Illustration: ON PARADE—A REPRESENTATIVE CLASS OF ONE OF NEW YORK’S

RIDING SCHOOLS.]

In a later edition of the “Autocrat of the Breakfast Table,” from which

the foregoing quotation is made, Dr. Holmes adds in a foot note: “Since

the days when this was written, the bicycle has appeared as the rival

of the wherry. The boat flies like a sea bird with its long, narrow,

outstretched pinions; the bicycle rider, like feathered Mercury with his

wings on his feet.”

[Illustration: THE GIRL OF THE PERIOD CAN RIDE AS WELL AS DANCE.]

These are eloquent tributes to boating and to cycling, and well deserved

they are; but after all, for refined sport in its highest development one

must turn to that most exhilarating of all pleasures—horseback riding.

That this view is held by those whose income is sufficient to warrant

the indulgence of their tastes is evidenced by the enormous growth in

horsemanship in America within the last few years. It is hardly too much

to say that it is now regarded as quite as important in a social sense

for young men and young women to be proficient in riding as in dancing.

Rowing, yachting, swimming, and tennis, it is true, share its popularity

in the midsummer months, but riding is an all the year round sport—a

sport that in the cool months of spring and fall, and the colder months

of winter, has no rival among all the forms of outdoor exercise. And,

indeed, I know of no other pleasure on a brisk, cool day that gives the

physical invigoration, the keen enjoyment, and the ruddy glow to be

obtained from a gallop in the park. But to get the fullest pleasure the

rider must be well mounted and well trained in his art. He should have

his own horse—an animal with light, springy action and graceful movement,

one that pleases the eye, too, for pleasure comes not alone from a sense

of exercise. Furthermore, the rider and his horse should be on good

terms. The latter, if an animal of good temper and intelligence, is sure

to do his part well when the proper overtures are made to him—when he is

treated kindly and wisely, and is made to understand clearly what he is

expected to do. With such an understanding between rider and horse each

enters into the sport with spirit and zest, with a mutual confidence and

mutual desire for an exhilarating dash that rewards each alike with—as

Dr. Holmes says of boating—“the most luxurious form of locomotion

indulged to an embodied spirit.”

[Illustration: THE PROPRIETOR OF A NEW YORK ACADEMY.]

This degree of pleasure is not within the compass of the novice—not

within the grasp of the man of bad temper and coarse mental composition,

who hasn’t the confidence and love of his horse—not within the bounds of

possibility to him who rides a school horse, which is, as a rule, little

more than a hack—a horse in appearance, to be sure, but not a horse in

the finer instincts and finer feelings of the carefully bred and well

cared for animal.

[Illustration: YOUNG AMERICA ON HIS PONY.]

The school horse, which is ridden by riders of all grades, by men of

varying moods and widely different tempers, is sometimes treated kindly,

but more frequently abused, and is too often pushed to the point of

exhaustion—such a horse soon loses its spirit, and forgetting its better

nature settles down into a plodding, unintelligent machine.

[Illustration: AN EASY TROT.]

To become an expert oarsman one must give months, even years, to

practice. This holds true of all sports in which one wishes to excel,

and yet the average man evidently thinks, from the assurance he displays

in sallying forth to ride, that he can without any training mount a

horse and forthwith become a perfect horseman, when the only equipment

he has for the undertaking consists of his two legs which enable him

to sit astride the saddle. But this does not constitute riding in its

true sense. That is an accomplishment to be acquired only by the most

painstaking training and long practice. When one sees the men—and

women too, for that matter—who, having had no training and possessing

no knowledge of the horse, yet insist upon attempting to ride, he is

reminded forcibly of the old adage that every man thinks he can run a

newspaper or keep a hotel. So it is with horsemanship. If the novices who

venture into Central Park on horseback and out upon the road could see

themselves as the true horseman sees them, they would perhaps conclude

that riding is an accomplishment in which they are wofully deficient.

[Illustration: SOCIETY IN THE SADDLE—A RIDING ACADEMY CLASS.]

But the ridiculous features in the riding of the novice are of little

importance as compared with the danger to the rider and a greater

danger to others, for it is the horse of the novice, for the most part,

that makes riding on the Central Park bridle path, or any crowded

thoroughfare, so hazardous. Anything that gains the stamp of social

approbation is sure to be taken up by a veritable army of would-be

fashionables. This latter set, which in a city like New York is a

numerous one, moved by an intense eagerness to “do the correct thing,”

immediately takes it up and makes a “fad” of it, regardless of such

considerations as fitness or lack of fitness for the thing attempted. But

fortunately for horsemanship this superficial class does not constitute

the great body of riders in the metropolis. Horsemanship has taken too

firm a hold of the intelligent and wealthy portion of the community, who

as a rule do things well, to be in danger of such declension. It has

awakened an interest that has prompted the establishment of not less

than half a dozen large training schools and several riding clubs, of

which many of the best citizens of the city are members. The work of

the training schools—and all of them are kept busy—includes individual

instruction during the day and class riding in the evening. A few years

ago but one or two riding schools had been established in New York,

and their recent increase shows how rapidly horsemanship has gained in

popularity. The riding teachers, and each school has a number, are almost

without exception drawn from the best European institutions of the kind.

With such instructors the schools of New York are turning out as fine

riders as the English or French academies. The number of enthusiastic

equestrians and equestriennes who own their own horses and ride with

painstaking care to perfect themselves in the accomplishment, is growing

larger every year. Class riding has become one of the most enjoyable

evening recreations of New York during the winter months. Every night

in the week different classes fill the big riding academies and ride to

the accompaniment of music. The classes are led by professors of the

school, and are put through many fancy figures, which are varied with

plain riding, sometimes the gallop, sometimes the sitting trot and more

frequently the rising trot. On special nights jumping and exhibition

riding of the most difficult sort are given. There are galleries for

spectators in all the schools, and these are usually filled by friends of

those in the ring. Class riding in the Park is very popular, and during

the spring and fall excursions into the country in the cool of the day,

returning by moonlight, after dining at some suburban hostelry, are

frequent and highly pleasurable to the participants.

[Illustration: ANOTHER RIDING ACADEMY CLASS.]

Central Park, on a September afternoon, when the expensive equipages

of the wealth and fashion of the city are to be seen on the East Drive,

presents much the appearance of Rotten Row. This similarity has been

greatly enhanced by the increased number of fine riders—men and women—who

fly gayly along the bridle path that skirts the favorite drive.

Riding is almost universally commended by physicians, and their

indorsement of its health giving qualities has certainly contributed

to the firm hold it has upon a great and growing constituency. The

passion for outdoor exercise that has so thoroughly taken possession of

American men is shared fully by their young wives and sisters. It is

doubtful if any other form of sport in the open air appeals to them with

anything approaching the same force. They have not the physical strength

necessary for rowing and the active games whose votaries are animated

by the reckless enthusiasm exhibited, for instance, in the gentle game

of football. But they can ride, and ride well, and with quite as keen

enjoyment as their brothers. Another cause, perhaps, of the pastime’s

rapid growth in popularity among women lies in the fact of the wonderful

improvement in riding habits. The old time habit, with its tremendous

skirt, was an enormity—a thing to transform a handsome woman into a being

so ill proportioned and so ungainly that it is a wonder she ever had

the courage to disfigure herself with such an outrageous garb. But the

habit of today is a thing of beauty and a joy forever—when the right girl

wears it. There is, perhaps, no costume in which a good figure appears to

better advantage than in the latest style of snug fitting, short skirt

habit.

[Illustration: A MORNING RIDE IN THE COUNTRY.]

If the art of more skillful tailors figures to any extent in luring fair

woman into horsemanship, then much honor to the tailor, though he be,

as tradition has it, but one ninth of a man. The fact that more women

ride now than formerly is good enough reason why more men are at present

enthusiastic riders; for where the girls are there shall the men be also.

HALLOWE’EN.

(October 31st.)

I.

At Hallowe’en, so calm and still,

All frisky spirits are astir:

The fairies haunt the vale and hill,

And witch-like elves meet to confer.

II.

But we can well keep free from those,

For by the fireside round about

Sweet rosy maids meet with their beaux

To spell their future fortune out.

III.

Chestnuts or walnuts, pair by pair,

Are put upon the living coals,

And if they lie contented there

They represent two happy souls.

IV.

Some eat an apple, while they stare

Within the telltale looking glass:

And as they eat and comb their hair

The fated face is sure to pass

V.

Before their eyes. Some pull the kale;

Some try the oats, or size the sack;

Some seek the rivulet in the vale,

Some hemp seed sow for answer back.

VI.

Ah, me! How many spells of old

To tell our fortunes I have seen;

No sweeter charm does memory hold,

Than those past hours of Hallowe’en.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

A LIFE’S SPECULATIONS.

When a wee child I used to wonder why

The bright stars fell not from the bending sky,

For I no sky line saw to hold them by,

When told of angels up beyond the blue,

I used to wonder if the winged crew

Flew races, when they’d nothing else to do.

A little later, as around I played,

And saw that young girls were so frail and ’fraid,

I wondered why on earth a maid was made.

No mortal use the timid things could be

That a philosopher of six could see—

So great a mystery was the sex to me.

A few years more, when youth’s expansive flame

Put my philosophy of six to shame,

A greater mystery the sex became.

Next into college I for knowledge went

And wondered at the time so vainly spent—

Four years for learning things not worth a cent!

A year of lounging in that sacred place,

Then round the world to see the human race

I wandered, and my wonder grew apace.

More than seven marvels had the world for me,

And this the greatest: why the poor should be

Slaves of the rich men, when they might be free.

But having had sufficient time to cool

My fancy in this tough world’s roughest school

I give up life’s conundrums—as a rule.

Yet such is habit—howsoe’er we try—

The other day I fell to wondering why

In Yankee taverns they serve cheese with pie.

_Henry W. Austin._

AN ACCIDENTAL ROMANCE.

_By Matthew White, Jr._

His friends called Radnor Hunt a cynic. He laughed lightly when accused

of being cold and unresponsive, and declared that he must have imbibed

the trait unconsciously from the nature of his work, for winter

landscapes were his specialty. But now and then when he was alone, in the

little studio over the stable in Fifty Fifth Street, where he worked by

day and slept by night, he would look at himself in the mirror over his

dressing case and—laugh again, such a hard, bitter laugh, that sometimes

he shuddered on hearing it, and glanced fearfully around him as if

dreading to see the author of the sound.

“I, a cynic, a woman hater!” he would mutter, putting his hand above

his eyebrows and leaning forward to peer more closely at himself in the

glass. “Bah! how blind the world is! Who would believe from _this_ what

rages _here_?”

And with a quick motion he would sweep his hand across his face and place

it for an instant over his heart. Then, as if in utter disgust with

himself, he would hastily turn out the light, fling himself on his bed,

just as he was, and sleep thus till morning.

And yet Radnor Hunt was reckoned a moderately fortunate young man. He had

come to New York knowing no one, and now, after a two years’ residence,

he had had a picture in the Water Color which brought him orders for

three others, while half a dozen periodicals were always ready to pay

well for his “pot boilers,” the pen and ink work which Radnor despised.

He was an only child. His father had been a country doctor in a

Connecticut town, who, contrary to the usual rule, had been proud of his

son’s artistic tastes and had encouraged him in them. This, instead of

being grateful for it, Radnor frequently recalled with bitter regret.

“If he had only laughed at my first attempt, taken my paints away from me

and put me to some business,” he would sigh. “Then perhaps——”

But here he usually broke off his reflections, while a strange light

would come into his eyes. It was in this mood that he frequently sprang

up from his work to jam his hat fiercely over his brows and go out to

take a long walk that was utterly aimless.

Mr. and Mrs. Hunt had both died within a few months of one another the

winter before Radnor left home. He was twenty three then, and that summer

he had passed with his cousin, Mrs. Stilton Barnes, in the Adirondacks.

Mrs. Stilton Barnes was a Philadelphian who lived south of Market

Street and who had at once conceived a great fondness for the handsome

young relative whom she met for the first time in thirteen years at his

mother’s funeral.

Radnor well remembered having worshiped her at a respectful distance when

he was a small boy. She was then a happy hearted girl just leaving her

teens behind her, and with her head too full of lovers, one of whom might

turn out to be a husband, to pay much attention to the little fellow

in knickerbockers whom she often caught looking at her with unveiled

admiration in his great blue eyes.

Now positions were reversed. Camilla Hunt had become Mrs. Stilton

Barnes, the wife of the well to do jeweler. The plumpness that had been

the beauty of her youth had transformed itself into a buxomness that

positively shocked Radnor when he first beheld it. He wondered how he

could ever have found this woman charming and—here she was becoming

really enthusiastic over him.

“My dear cousin,” she exclaimed, “why did you not let me know what I was

missing? Why, you would have been a treasure indeed at my Friday evenings

last winter,” and she would put up her lorgnettes for another survey

which sent the blood surging to poor Radnor’s cheeks and made him look

handsomer than ever.

Camilla Barnes was thoroughly candid and outspoken. Before she left

Cheltenham she told Radnor that if she had had the slightest idea that he

had developed into such a presentable specimen of humanity she would have

had him out of that sleepy old town long before.

“It’s too late in the season to do anything now,” she added, “but I must

insist on your spending the month of August with us at Lorimac. We shall

then have plenty of opportunity to talk over the future.”

Nor would she go away until Radnor had given his consent. After all, she

was his cousin, and if she chose to extend to him the hospitality of a

hotel, why should he not accept it, as he would have done at her own home?

Radnor’s pride was the most notable element in his make up. It was

indomitable, unyielding. Even as a boy it permeated his life, and made

him miserable whenever in his studies he fell short of the high standard

he had set for himself.

But for the reasons given he finally decided to accept his cousin

Camilla’s invitation. If he could have read the future and foreseen the

consequences of that Adirondack visit, he would have shunned the place as

a plague spot.

At least this was what he told himself almost always when he recalled it.

At other times he felt that he would not have had the experience left out

of his life for all the joys that the entire span of three score and ten

might have in store for him.

Even before this period he had gained some fame and a little money as an

illustrator of children’s books, and now that the last tie that bound

him to Cheltenham was severed by his mother’s death, he decided that

he would take the step which the nature of his work rendered almost a

necessity—settlement in some city close to his markets.

However, this could now easily be deferred till fall, and meantime he

had the estate to close up, and then the month with Mrs. Barnes would

doubtless do much toward the shaping of his plans.

Radnor had traveled but little, still he possessed that quality of

adaptiveness that made him seem easy and at home wherever he was. His

mother had been a Bournie, of Huguenot descent, and of the most delicate

refinement. Radnor inherited this quality from her in very large degree,

tempered with the rugged persistency and vigor of his father.

Her cousin’s arrival at the Lorimac House created all the sensation Mrs.

Stilton Barnes could have wished. With the tact of a true diplomatist she

had said but little about him beforehand. Expectations too fully roused,

she well knew, were almost invariably doomed to disappointment. So she

had merely told a few of her most particular friends that she expected a

cousin of hers from New England.

“A young artist,” she added, “who has recently lost his mother, so I

shall not be expected to give him a gay time.”

Men, of course, were scarce at this distance from the cities. There were

any number of boys in their teens, and several dudes, who spent almost

as much time as the ladies in devising new combinations of sash and hat

bands, outing jackets and shirts. This fact had been uppermost in Camilla

Barnes’s mind when she asked Radnor to come to Lorimac. She felt that he

would tower head and shoulders above all the other males at the hotel.

“And who knows but he may make a rich catch?” she even whispered to

herself.

It was a reversal of things, she knew, this exploiting of a man, but then

the very uniqueness of the process added zest to it for this woman whose

nature craved excitement of this sort above all other things.

When Radnor’s train came in she walked across the road to the station to

meet him. She had seen to it that he took the express, which would bring

him to Lorimac just before the supper hour, when everybody was on the

piazzas, looking out for the new arrivals.

“You are very welcome, Radnor,” she said, when he came up to her amid the

crowd.

She gave him both her hands, forcing him to drop his valise while he

took them for a moment. Then they walked across to the hotel together,

and while he registered, Mrs. Barnes tapped her jeweled fingers together

and glanced half carelessly around the great office, with its big fire

place in one corner and the many groups scattered about. And she saw in

that apparently casual glance all she wanted, and knew that the first

impression Radnor had made was an extremely favorable one.

That evening, however, she introduced him to no one. They sat together in

a remote corner of the piazza, talking over old times, the future, the

walks and drives around Lorimac.

Radnor said but very little. It was not necessary. His cousin was fond of

talking, and she certainly found Radnor a most attentive listener. The

only fault she had to find with him was that he did not ask questions

enough. There were dozens of pretty girls in the dining room at supper

time, in a few of whom it might be supposed he would have some little

interest. But he always allowed Camilla to speak of them first, except in

one instance, and then he asked about a young lady whom she did not know

and had not observed.

“She came up on the train with me,” Radnor explained then, and Mrs.

Barnes made a resolve to find out the entire facts about the new comer

before she went to sleep that night.

This was not difficult to do. Pleading fatigue from his journey, Radnor

went to his room before ten, leaving his cousin to join a group of ladies

who each evening occupied the same corner of the drawing room, and

gossiped—gossiped of all that went on before their eyes, and of much else

that never went on at all, with indefatigable zeal.

“Oh, didn’t you see her?” exclaimed Mrs. General Barentham when Mrs.

Barnes mentioned the matter. “Ah, of course, you were absorbed in that

charming cousin of yours. I trust you are not going to make a practice

of keeping him entirely to yourself. But about Miss Bellman; you must

have heard of her coming. She is that New York girl who is so immensely

wealthy in her own right, and with it all is so sublimely beautiful. Did

you ever, Mrs. Penford, see more exquisite coloring?”

“Never,” was Mrs. Penford’s emphatic acquiescence.

“And such repose of manner,” went on Mrs. Barentham.

“Are you sure about that heiress part of it?” inquired Mrs. Barnes

earnestly. “You know how often these rumors get out without one particle

of foundation.”

“Oh, that is perfectly trustworthy, my dear,” rejoined the general’s

wife. “The Bellman estate in New York is one of the best known of the

vested interests in the metropolis.”

“With whom is she here?” Mrs. Barnes now wanted to know.

“With her uncle’s family, the Grants; very distinguished people, too. The

McBrintons know them, so I suppose we shall all be presented tomorrow.”

It was very seldom that Camilla Barnes’s conscience troubled her, and on

this particular night it was not that which kept her awake long after

she had sought rest. The single instance of Radnor’s manifestation of

interest in the girls of the Lorimac, the exalted position financially

occupied by Olive Bellman, the coincidence of their having come up on

the same train—these three facts combined kept Camilla’s brain in busy

ferment for many hours.

“But I must be cautious,” she kept reminding herself. “I must make haste

very slowly. I wonder how long they are going to stay—how much time they

will give me?”

She was introduced to the Grants the next morning by Miss McBrinton,

while the ladies were all gathered with their fancy work in a shady

corner of the piazza. Olive was included in the presentation, but she

seemed scarcely to heed the ceremony.

She had no work in her lap, but sat there with one hand on the railing

of the piazza, while her eyes were fixed most of the time on the hills

across the lake.

Radnor had gone by himself for a row. Mrs. Barnes never ventured on the

water except for a few minutes in the evening. She had told him where to

look for her when he came back. Everything had turned out so far exactly

as she had planned. She hoped he would not stay out too long. With this

one thought she returned to active participation in the discussion of

Mrs. Dorrington’s nursemaid, who insisted on calling herself a governess,

and hence declared that she had a perfect right to sit at the first table

with the others.

Olive rose presently and walked towards the front door, where she

remained standing for a while, evidently drinking in to the full the

exquisite view of the lake from this point.

“My dear,” called her aunt, “you are in the sun. Let me send for your

hat.”

“Don’t bother, Aunt Elizabeth. I was just going up stairs, and I’ll get

it myself.”

The girl disappeared, and at that moment Mrs. Barnes caught sight of

Radnor returning in his boat.

And the same thing happened during the next two days. It seemed as if

fate had decreed that the two were not to meet.

But Camilla had ascertained that the Grants were to remain through the

month, and she endeavored to possess her soul in patience, feeling that

after all this was the very best of beginnings.

“How like him she is,” she said to herself more than once, when noticing

traits in Olive that made her seem different from the other girls. “They

say that men always find their ideal in their opposites, but then it is

the exceptions that prove the rule.”

Of Olive herself she never once spoke to Radnor, but then so far as the

girl’s position and prospects went there was no need for her to say a

word. By nightfall of the day succeeding her arrival the facts were known

throughout the hotel. Radnor had played two or three games of billiards

with General Barentham, and the general was almost as great a gossip as

his wife.

It was not until the third evening that the meeting took place, and

then, oddly enough, it came about without the agency of Camilla at all,

and while she was working hard to compass it in an entirely different

way—seated in the writing room with Mr. McBrinton trying to persuade him

to join her in getting up a launch party.

Radnor meanwhile was in the parlor, entertaining a large company of boys

with stories of his bicycling experiences. It was while thus engaged that

Mrs. McBrinton touched him on the shoulder and asked him if he would not

make up a hand at whist.

When Mrs. Barnes came in a few moments later she caught her breath

quickly on beholding her cousin seated _vis-a-vis_ to Olive Bellman at

the card table.

After that the acquaintance progressed as rapidly as she could have

desired. Nearly every morning found the two on the tennis courts, where

they were the most evenly matched pair of players that the Lorimac had

seen that season. Then in Olive Radnor found as enthusiastic a lover of

the water as himself, and the afternoons were devoted to exploring tours

around the shores of the lake.

Mrs. Grant or Mrs. McBrinton generally accompanied them on these

expeditions, and it was odd to hear them sing Radnor’s praises among

themselves.

He was naturally chivalric towards all, and the little attentions he

bestowed on the chaperones were so self evidently spontaneous and

disinterested that the hearts of the old ladies were completely won.

Mrs. Barnes felt as though she were on wings. It was a real effort for

her to keep her exultation under. Indeed, even now she never trusted

herself to mention Olive’s name to her cousin.

Thus affairs went on till the last week in August, when the grand

Venetian Carnival was held on the lake. General Barentham took the

greatest possible interest in the celebration and was determined that the

Lorimac House should outdo all competitors in the grand procession. He

constructed a Lohengrin swan boat out of his naphtha launch, and after

begging and entreating for three days, almost on his knees, succeeded in

obtaining Olive Bellman’s consent to be the Venus who should sail in it.

“But you don’t want a Venus, General Barentham,” she protested. “Venus

belongs to Tannhaeuser. You want a Lohengrin if you are going to have a

swan boat.”

“I want nothing of the kind,” the general responded. “I want you, and I

am going to have you,” and in the end he triumphed.

Radnor was selected to be Olive’s companion in the launch and do the

steering in the dress of the Swan Knight, while the engineer, concealed

as deftly as possible by the counterfeited wings, was tucked away in the

stern. General Barentham was here, there and everywhere, managing the

rest of his flotilla, and the guests of the Lorimac not in the “show,”

as Radnor insisted on terming it, were accommodated on the steam launch

Meteor.

The procession started at four o’clock to make the tour of the lake,

and the plaudits that greeted the swan barge everywhere were loud and

prolonged. But the engine of the launch worked badly, and once the

engineer was forced to run ashore to see what he could do at easing

matters.

This put them behind, and when they started on again it was already

beginning to grow dark.

The wind was rising too, and presently the boat was tossing in quite a

sea. Radnor took off his coat and insisted on wrapping it around the

“Venus,” and they both cowered behind the windward wing of the Swan to

escape as much as possible the pelting rain that now began to descend.

Not a very romantic situation truly, but nevertheless Radnor found in it

his perilous turning point. Olive was so brave, so patient, so confident

in his ability to bring them safely into port, showed to him, in short, a

side of her character that had not yet been presented to him, that—well,

he went down before it as so many men before him have done before their

fates, and when he helped a wet, bedraggled Venus out of the boat at the

Lorimac pier he realized that the sooner he got out of the Adirondack

woods the better for his peace of mind.

It had all come on him like a lightning stroke, or, as he preferred

to compare it himself, with the swiftness of the flash in night time

photography. He had gone on so joyously, so confidently, with no thought

beyond the contentment of the present.

“But why should I not go on and be happy?” he asked himself that night as

he tried calmly to review the situation.

To be sure there were Miss Bellman’s millions, contrasted with his own

poverty. The world would be sure to talk, but then he would wait and

work, and perhaps some day he would feel that the gulf between them

was not too wide to be spanned by their clasped hands. And with this

ravishing possibility for his last waking thought he fell asleep.

He woke early, and with the new hope strong within him, he felt he could

not endure the confinement of four walls until his customary rising time.

He dressed and went out to walk beside the lake, which now reflected

back the overshadowing hills from a mirror-like surface that it seemed

could not be the same on which the swan boat had been so rudely tossed

but yesterday. He had never seen the Lorimac so peaceful; all was quiet

in the early morning; even the birds seemed to have hushed their music

for the moment. There was not a sound but the tiniest lap of the ripples

against the stony shore at his feet and—yes, here was a jarring discord

overhead as his walk brought him just beneath the summer house.

Two French nursemaids were sitting there, talking in their own language,

in which Radnor was well versed.

“See there!” one of them exclaimed. “Here he comes now. Madame Barnes

arranged it well, did she not, that they go off in the swan boat? Such

a fortune is not to be trapped every day, and as she couldn’t marry it

herself, she wanted to have it in the family somewhere. It’s the talk of

the house how she’s been playing off the handsome cousin for the——”

But by this time Radnor was out of hearing, his cheeks flaming with

indignation, his teeth set fiercely together, his fingers tightly pressed

against his palms.

So he had been a puppet in the hands of the scheming Camilla. “A very

docile and obedient little puppet,” as he told himself, for he had gone

and done the very thing expected of him.

As he would have scorned and loathed another man who would have

deliberately lent himself to such a scheme, he now scorned and loathed

himself, all innocent as he was. And his cousin Camilla? He felt that he

could not bring himself even to see her again.

The common talk of the house, forsooth! Aye, this was easily believable,

for had he not heard it with his own ears from the very nursemaids? The

Bournie pride rose tumultuously in Radnor’s breast. He wanted to get away

from Lorimac, from men and women, from himself, from everything that

could remind him of his humiliation.

His walk had now brought him to the fence which separated the hotel

grounds from the forest adjoining. Placing his hands on the topmost rail

Radnor vaulted lightly over and plunged into the underbrush, taking a

certain sort of satisfaction in trampling down the low bushes that lay in

his path.

For an hour he roamed on, by some instinct always holding the lake in

view. It seemed that he must keep in motion or be overwhelmed by the

wild, maddening thoughts that were surging through his brain.

He could liken himself only to Tantalus, about to drink of the life

giving draught, to have it dashed from his very lips. But in his own case

another cup had been substituted—a cup so bitter and revolting that,

strong man as he was, he shuddered at the realization of its existence.

When or why he turned around he knew not, but presently he found himself

approaching the hotel again. As soon as he caught sight of its outlines

he paused, half determined to strike off into the deeper woods. And at

that instant he heard his name called.

It was his cousin Camilla. She had been out looking for him, and now came

forward, keen anxiety on her face and in her voice, as she exclaimed: “My

dear Radnor, what has come over you? I have been really concerned about

you. Here it is almost ten and you have not been to breakfast yet. A maid

said you had come into the woods, and you can imagine how eager I was to

find you when I ventured here myself.”

She held up her gown, to the trimming of which a many forked twig had

fastened itself, shaking it at him suggestively. But he neither answered

her smile with another, nor made any motion to disengage the dress. His

face took on a hard, stern look Camilla had never seen on it before, and

if Radnor had not been too fully preoccupied to notice it he would have

been interested in observing the fading out of the smile on hers and the

creeping into its place of a strange expression of commingled fear and

defiance.

There was a moment’s pause, the silence broken only by the stirring of

the leaves overhead in the gentle breeze that had just sprung up, and by

the shrill voice of one of the Carew boys calling out—“Love, fifteen,” on

the tennis grounds. Then Radnor spoke.

“Why did you do this, Camilla?” he said. “No,” he went on hurriedly, as

she opened her eyes in real or assumed mystification. “You need not waste

time in asking what. I shall tell you all. You wanted me to marry rich,

deliberately planned to have me do it, as any silly match making mother

with a daughter to get off her hands would have done, and now the whole

scheme is the talk of the servants’ hall and the sculleries. I am sorry

to have to disoblige a lady, but under the circumstances I must make my

adieux to you at once.”

He lifted his hat and struck off towards the hotel.

“Radnor, you are mad,” Camilla called after him, but he never turned

his head; and it was the talk of the house for the rest of the day that

Radnor Hunt and his cousin had breakfasted separately.

But the gossips had a yet richer feast in store. Radnor left on the noon

train, and—how it got out no one exactly knew—but it was rumored for a

fact that he had insisted on paying his own bill. Mrs. Stilton Barnes

took her departure almost immediately afterwards, and the following week

the Grants left for Au Sable Chasm, Miss Bellman of course accompanying

them.

All this, as has been explained, happened two years previous to the

opening of the present account of Radnor Hunt. He had gone straight from

Lorimac to New York, and plunged into work with desperate earnestness.

And so well had he succeeded that, starting in the metropolis without a

friend, he had now not only a comfortable income, but would have been

warmly welcomed at a dozen homes had he chosen to accept the invitations

he received.

He was even chary of companionship with his own sex. It seemed as if his

faith in the entire human species had been shaken, and while his fellow

artists and the literary men with whom he came in contact, all liked him,

none ever succeeded in becoming more than an acquaintance.

And thus, lonesome as a hermit, Radnor lived on, taking his successes

without enthusiasm, for there was no one else to reap the benefit of

them. He suffered as one without hope, for no matter now what fame or

riches he might attain, he felt that after what had happened he could

never make any attempt to secure the only thing in the world that was

precious to him.

Sometimes during his long solitary vigils in the studio he would try

and plan how things might have gone if he had not chanced to understand

French. Already before the Carnival he had received an invitation to call

if he made up his mind to settle in New York. He might have been very

intimate at the great house on Madison Avenue by this time. He passed it

now and then in his walks, and once he met Olive just as she was crossing

the sidewalk to step into the carriage.

She smiled as she bowed, and turned partially as if she expected he was

going to stop, but he walked on rapidly, and always after that avoided

the avenue whenever possible.

The first summer after his settlement in New York he spent in Europe,

traveling and sketching; the second he went to Labrador with a scientific

expedition. From this he had now returned, as the early October frosts

were sending the reddened leaves skurrying to earth, and the out of town

sojourners were hurrying back to their city homes.

Radnor experienced a strange feeling of gladness when he caught sight of

the uneven roof lines of the Knickerbocker town as he steamed up the bay.

And yet he expected no one to meet him, and anticipated taking up the old

life just where he had left off.

Nevertheless this sense of odd contentment abided with him all through

the turmoil and confusion of arriving, and sent him for the night to one

of the new palace hotels instead of to his lonely quarters in the studio.

Had time cured the old wound, he asked himself? But no; he knew that

could not be, and he expected to wake up the next morning his old self

again.

But the morrow found him still with the same inexplicable buoyancy of

spirit, and the business friends whom he called on during the forenoon

congratulated him on the great good his trip had done him. Among the

orders he received was one for a sketch in Central Park, and early in the

afternoon he went up to the city’s great pleasure ground to refreshen his

memory of it.

It was Saturday, and children were everywhere. A crowd of them of all

sizes were eagerly gathering around the Lohengrin boats as Radnor

strolled along the path that skirts the pond.

The swan-like craft sent the young man’s mind backward with a rush; and

yet in his present mood he did not try to stem the current of thought.

On the other hand, he astonished himself by stepping aboard one of the

boats for a sail. A nurse with three young charges occupied the seat with

him, and had her hands and eyes fully occupied in keeping them all out of

the water. Radnor took pity on her at length, and offered to take one of

them, a little girl, on his knee.

This arrangement delighted the child, to say nothing of relieving the

nurse, and presently the little thing began to prattle away to Radnor as

though he were an old acquaintance.

“I’ve seen you before,” she presently announced, turning her gaze from

the water in front of them to look up earnestly into his face.

“Oh, I guess not,” he answered, smiling down into the deep blue eyes, the

brows of which now began to knit in perplexed thought. “I never saw you

in my life before today, so how could you see me?”

“Yes, I did!” she persisted, “and it was in a boat with a swan to it just

like this.”

Radnor started. What could the child mean? She was certainly not over

six. It was not possible she could remember that Lake Lorimac incident of

two years before.

“Where was it?” he asked. “Here in Central Park?”

“Oh no, it was in a picture, and Cousin Olive wouldn’t tell me where

the boat was, but she was in it too, all dressed in white and—why, then

you must know Cousin Olive. I wonder if you like her as well as I do.

Only she was cross—almost, when Flo and I found that picture. It was all

wrapped up and—oh dear, she told me never to tell anybody and it would be

all right, and now I’ve told you. But you won’t tell, will you?”

Radnor, however, was not compelled to make a promise. The boat at this

point reached the landing stage again, and the nurse carried all her

charges ashore with small ceremony, the “polite gentleman” seeming

scarcely to notice that they were gone.

He sat there perfectly still while the boat made another tour of the

lake. He was recalling incidents which he had thought never to recollect

again. One of them, that of the photograph Miss Carew took of the swan

boat just before they started. So Olive Bellman had kept this secretly as

a treasure, not as a forbidden object. Radnor had met Mr. Grant more than

once and had been asked why he did not call. What if—well, what if there

were two sides to the picture, and money were to stand in the way of the

happiness of the one who possessed it because of pride in the other?

How should he, Radnor Hunt, deal with the problem?

This was the question that kept the young artist’s thoughts active as he

strode homewards that afternoon. The air was coming on chill as the sun

dipped towards the west, and the dead leaves blew up about him spitefully

as he walked rapidly along, but somehow it seemed to Radnor, as one

struck him in the face now and then, as if they were not the withered

remnants of a dead summer, but the hopeful blossoms of a dawning spring.

UNBROKEN.

I.

At a quaint shop, wherein were sold

All curious objects rare and old,—

Books, carvings, porcelain and plate

Of fashion odd and out of date—

I found this china drinking cup,

And, for a trifle, picked it up.

II.

See, ’tis a wine cask, wreathed about

With broad, green vineyard leaves without,

Round which a ring of peasants dance

With vigor more than elegance,

While laughter, loud and long, is seen

Breaking their parted lips between.

III.

Maddest of all the merry group

Which thus encircles stave and hoop,

The farmer in his cap and blouse

Roars a right jovial vintage rouse,

Nor heeds—so drowned in wine is he—

How Jean with Julie’s cheek makes free.

IV.

Midway around the leafy cask

His goodwife’s face, like some old mask

Of Laughter, glows beneath the vine

The while she foots it, warm with wine

And, like her frolic comrades, bent

On festal mirth and merriment.

V.

Standing upon my mantel there,

No blood of grape, or dark or fair,

Exhales its balmy breath for me;

And, save a carven rosary

From some spoiled convent, three or four

Odd trinkets are its only store.

VI.

Yet, on their swift unending round—

Without a motion or a sound—

These noisy peasants will keep up

Their revels round my drinking cup,

Until, by some uncareful maid,

In fragments on the floor they’re laid.

_Charles H. Lüders._

VERA SHAMARIN.

_A STORY OF SIBERIAN EXILE._

_By William Murray Graydon._

CHAPTER I.

INSPECTOR SANDOFF.

Victor Sandoff, the Inspector of that famous and dreaded branch of the

Russian police known as the “Third Section,” was seated in a cheerful

room at his headquarters. These, for the sake of secrecy, were located

in the second floor of an old building which stood on a narrow and

little frequented street not far from the Admiralty Place. The house was

guarded day and night by police spies, and a secret entrance in the rear

permitted Sandoff to enter and depart at will. As the history of Sandoff

is a somewhat remarkable one, a few words concerning him will not be out

of place at this point.

He was a man of tall and slender build, with a light beard and mustache,

deep blue eyes, a ruddy complexion, and an expression that had a charm

all its own. It betokened a strong individuality and a rare depth of

character. At the time when this history opens he was just thirty

years of age, and though possessed of a fortune that yielded an ample

income, his time was devoted to the service of the Bureau of Police.

He had already made his name dreaded among the revolutionary classes

of St. Petersburg, and more than one unhappy prisoner immured in the

Fortress dungeons, or plodding the snows of Siberia, owed his arrest and

conviction to Victor Sandoff. He found a keen zest in the pursuit of

criminals. In devoting his life to this work he was actuated by motives

which none could question, for his father, Colonel Sandoff, who was

Minister of Police at St. Petersburg during a long period, had been

brutally assassinated ten years before, presumably by the Nihilists whose

enmity he had incurred.

Though the assassins were never discovered, Victor Sandoff became more

attached to his chosen profession each year, partly from a desire to

avenge his father’s death indirectly—for he had lost hope of finding

the real criminals after this lapse of time, and partly because he had

inherited a natural aptitude for police work, his grandfather, as well

as his father, having been identified with that branch of the ministry

in his time. Sandoff was well educated and possessed a fluent knowledge

of French and English, as well as his own language. He was well fitted

to assume the high position that was his in the social and military

circles of the Russian metropolis. He had wealth, for the fortune left

him by his deceased mother yielded an annual income of thirty thousand

rubles. But only on rare occasions was he seen in the clubs or salons

of St. Petersburg, for the present state of Russia kept the Bureau of

Police constantly on the alert. If Victor in his own heart preferred the

gayer side of life he made no sign. He was untiring in his labors, and

possessed the full confidence of the Czar and of the ministry.

He had an uncle in St. Petersburg with whom he was not on good terms

owing to causes which will appear later. This was Count Sandoff, his

father’s brother, a man sixty years of age, who divided his time

between the clubs, the gaming table, and his yachts. He was reputed to

be wealthy, but though ostensibly the owner of a mansion on the Court

Quay and a country house on the Gulf of Finland, his losses at cards had

covered his property with mortgages to the full extent of its value.

Count Sandoff was living on the edge of a volcano into which he was

liable to be precipitated at any day.

To return to Victor. His position in St. Petersburg was a peculiar one.

As chief of the terrible Third Section his power was almost unlimited. He

had his own force of men, and every month a large sum of money was placed

to his credit in the Bank of Russia for current expenses. He was directly

responsible to no one but the Minister of Police. His assistant and

confidant in the affairs of the Third Section was Serge Zamosc—himself a

very clever police agent. Zamosc was a short, spare man, and always wore

his face smooth shaven, the better to assume needed disguises. He was

about forty years old, and had been in the service for nearly one half of

that period. It was he who ferreted out information for Sandoff, and then

acted upon it according to the latter’s instructions.

On this particular evening Inspector Sandoff was in a complacent frame of

mind as he sat smoking a fragrant cigar and sipping vodka and water from

a glass standing on the table beside him. He was momentarily expecting

to hear of an important arrest that would bring no little credit to him

and his department. Felix Shamarin, a leader of the revolutionary party,

and the publisher of its most incendiary newspaper, had long evaded the

utmost vigilance of the police, who had been endeavoring to arrest him

for a dozen offenses of which he was believed to be guilty or cognisant.

Victor Sandoff’s men had at length discovered that he had found a refuge

in a densely populated part of St. Petersburg, lying between two of

the canals that intersect it. Since early morning the cordon of police

had been tightening its lines about the locality in which Shamarin was

supposed to be hiding, and it was almost impossible that he could escape.

As he sat and waited for the expected news, Sandoff’s thoughts went back

to a previous encounter he had had with the set of Nihilists to which

Shamarin belonged—an encounter so remarkable that every incident of

it was indelibly graven upon his memory. He leaned back in his chair,

contemplating the bluish haze of cigar smoke that dimmed the ceiling, and

dreamily reviewed the scene as it passed before him.

At an early hour one morning, a little more than a year before, he had

gone, with four of his men, to an obscure quarter of the town to raid a

house believed to be the headquarters of Shamarin’s seditious journal.

An entrance was forced, but the police encountered a more stubborn

resistance than they had expected. There was a fierce fight, and in the

struggle Sandoff’s forces became divided. The leader himself laid low

two of the men who sprang upon him, and a third antagonist turned and

fled before him. Sandoff’s blood was up, and, his zeal outrunning his

discretion, he pursued the fleeing Nihilist along a dark passageway,

at the further end of which the fugitive was lost to sight. Stumbling

blindly forward in the almost total darkness, Sandoff passed through a

doorway. Instantly the door closed behind him, and he heard the sharp

click of a key turning in the lock.

The sound told him the peril of his situation. He turned and grasped the

handle of the door, but could not budge it. He felt along the wall—for

there was not a ray of light—and to his dismay found that he was in a

small, square room, with no means of exit—no avenue of escape from the

cruel and unscrupulous men who held him prisoner.

As minutes passed by his hope of rescue grew fainter and fainter. The

sounds of strife gave way to a complete silence. His men must have been

outnumbered and overpowered by the Nihilists, and it would be hours

before his absence would be discovered by the police and reinforcements

sent to ascertain what had become of him. Before that time his fate was

sure to be sealed. He could expect no mercy from his relentless enemies,

who would wreak upon him a terrible vengeance for their losses in the

fight with the police.

Sandoff had almost abandoned himself to despair when he heard a slight

sound that seemed to come from the wall behind him. He was nerving

himself to meet what he supposed must be his executioner, when a soft

voice whispered:

“Make no noise as you value your life!”

A hand grasped his arm, and drew him toward a secret door that had opened

in the wall of his prison. A faint gleam of light shone through it, dimly

revealing to Sandoff’s astonished eyes the figure of a woman.

Mindful of her injunction, he followed her noiselessly through the secret

doorway into a narrow passage. She led the way around several corners and

down a winding flight of stairs, finally pausing in a small paved court

hemmed in by lofty brick walls.

The light here was still too dim to reveal her face, but her figure was

slight and her voice was of singular sweetness.

“I have saved your life, Victor Sandoff,” she said to him, “and at great

peril to my own, as you will believe. Some day I may exact a similar

favor of you. Will you grant it if that time ever comes?”

Sandoff was influenced by the tinge of romance that invested the

situation. He was deeply grateful to the woman who had saved him, so he

readily promised to grant whatever she might ask him.

“Swear it!” she said, and without hesitation he took the required oath.

Then she led him by more than one barred and bolted gate to a street

on the canal bank, and left him there, vanishing without a word and as

mysteriously as she had come. He knew his surroundings, and quickly made

his way to the nearest police bureau, gathered a force of officers, and

returned as speedily as possible to the house from which he had just

escaped. All was quiet there. Sandoff’s four men were found lying in the

hallway, bound and gagged, and all of them more or less severely wounded.

The Nihilists, who had no doubt taken alarm on discovering Sandoff’s

escape, had fled from the house, and disappeared in the mazes of the

great city.

It was a year ago that these things had happened, and though Sandoff

made diligent inquiry through his men as to the identity and whereabouts

of the girl—for he was convinced that she must be very young—he never

discovered the slightest trace of her. Tonight, under the fragrant

influence of his cigar—which may have been stronger than usual—he found

himself wondering vaguely if the fulfillment of his oath would ever be

exacted, and trying to recall the girl as she appeared to him that night.

From this train of reveries he was aroused by footsteps in the hall. Then

came a sharp rap on the door. As the command to enter left Sandoff’s lips

Serge Zamosc stepped into the room, followed by a short thick set man,

muffled to his ears in a great coat. Zamosc’s manner gave evidence of

excitement. He glanced at Sandoff, and then turned to his companion, who

stood awkwardly in the center of the floor with his eyes downcast and his

hands pulling nervously at his fur coat.

“This is the Honorable Inspector,” he cried impatiently. “Now speak! Tell

him what you know. If you have brought me here for nothing, it will fare

ill with you.

“I found this fellow in the street a few moments ago,” he added to

Sandoff. “He insisted that he had something of importance to communicate,

and as he would have nothing to say to me, but insisted on seeing you,

I thought it best to let him have his way. Possibly he brings some news

bearing on the Shamarin affair.”

Sandoff turned to the man, whose dress and appearance showed him to

belong to the lower classes.

“Well, what is it?” he said kindly. “I am Inspector Sandoff.”

“I—I beg pardon, your honor,” stammered the fellow appealingly. “I—I must

see you alone.”

“Very well,” replied Sandoff. “That is easily arranged.”

He led the man into the adjoining apartment, which was the middle one

of the suite of three rooms which formed the headquarters of the Third

Section. A third room adjoined this, and like the one into which Sandoff

had just ushered his visitor, it had a few chairs, a table, and a cot,

and was lighted by a small barred window high up in the wall. These two

rear apartments had witnessed many a tragic scene, for here prisoners

were often brought for secret examination, and sometimes confined for a

day or two. The walls were thick and the doors massive.

When Sandoff had shut off communication with the front room by closing

the door, he turned questioningly to the stranger, who was sitting on the

edge of a chair, with a very pale face.

“Is it true, your honor,” began the man finally, in a weak, quavering

voice, “that a reward of five thousand rubles is offered for information

that will cause the arrest of Felix Shamarin, the Nihilist?”

The fellow spoke the last words glibly enough. He had evidently committed

them to memory.

“Ah!” thought Sandoff, “an informer?

“Yes,” he said aloud, “it is true that such a sum will be paid—not for

any indefinite information, though. We have already located our man

within a certain radius. Who are you, and what do you know?”

“My name is Poussin,” replied the fellow. “I have come to claim the

reward. Felix Shamarin is in hiding at the house of one Lyapin, a

locksmith, who dwells on the bank of the Fontana Canal, near the Ostroff

bridge. He intends to escape before the break of another day, so you must

lose no time if you wish to take him.”

Sandoff’s eyes sparkled.

“Are you sure this information is correct?” he asked.

“You can rely on it,” said Poussin. “I am in a position to know. But I

trust that your honor will keep my share in the matter a secret,” he

continued imploringly. “If it were known, my life would not be worth a

kopec.”

“Have no fear,” said Sandoff. “If you are betrayed it will be your own

doing. As for the reward, you will get it in good time, provided your

information proves to be correct.”

He was interrupted by a sudden rap on the door, and when he walked over

and opened it slightly he saw the face of his man Ivan, whose duty it was

to stand guard in the hall.

“Beg pardon, your honor,” said the servant, “but a lady is outside

demanding to see you. I told her that you were busy, but she would take

no denial. She insists on speaking with you, and refuses to go away.”

“What does she look like?” asked Sandoff, wrinkling his brow. “Has she

ever been here before?”

“Not to my knowledge,” replied Ivan. “Her face is covered with a thick

veil, but she appears to be young.”

Sandoff hesitated for an instant. The wrinkles deepened on his forehead,

and his hands trembled slightly as they rested on each side of the

doorway.

“I will see her in a few moments,” he announced abruptly. “Give her that

message, Ivan, and bid her wait in the hall.”

As Ivan went back to the front room, Sandoff closed the door and turned

to Poussin.

“You must excuse me for a moment,” he said. “Some one is waiting for a

private interview with me. I am going to put you in here,” leading the

way to the rear apartment, “and as my agent Zamosc will be with you,

I must caution you to be silent and to make no reply to any questions

he may ask you,” for it was Sandoff’s custom to permit the identity

of informers to be known to none but himself. “I know better than to

open my lips,” returned the fellow shrewdly, and the reply thoroughly

satisfied Sandoff. He left his companion and passed through to the outer

room. Zamosc was sitting there by the desk, perusing a newspaper.

“I must ask you to retire to the rear room for a little while,” said

Sandoff hurriedly. “You heard Ivan state that a lady wishes to see me. I

think I know what she wants. It is some personal affair that should have

been arranged at my house, but since she is here I may as well see her.”

“Don’t apologize, I beg of you,” replied Zamosc. He walked quietly back

and entered the rear room, where Poussin was already seated.

Sandoff followed him, and then returned to the front apartment, closing

both doors. He walked to the hall door and threw it open. “You may come

in,” he said. “I am at leisure now.”

With a soft rustling of skirts a woman entered. She glided to the center

of the room without a word, and quickly removed her cloak and veil.

Sandoff was thrilled with amazement and admiration. His eyes were riveted

upon the slender figure standing opposite him—so close that he could

have touched her by extending his hand. He had seen many beautiful

women in his time, but never one to match this young girl—for she was

scarcely more than twenty. Her hair was of a rich golden brown, her eyes

gleamed with a slightly darker shade of the same color, from beneath long

drooping lashes; her cheeks were faintly tinged with a hue like the early

bloom of a peach, and the ivory whiteness of her neck and throat was only

equaled by the pearly rows of teeth that showed through her parted lips

as she breathed quickly and deeply. She wore a close fitting dress, made

of dark material and richly trimmed with sable fur.

The two stood in silence for a moment, and then, meeting Sandoff’s eye,

the girl blushed.

“You don’t know me?” she said abruptly. “Do you remember the night of

the 30th of December, one year ago——”

The sweet voice, the accent, revealed the truth to Sandoff instantly.

“Yes; I remember now,” he said gravely. “It was you who saved my life.”

“And you remember the promise you made me?” she continued.

Sandoff inclined his head. He was greatly troubled by this visit, now

that he began to guess its import. Yet he had no thought of breaking his

oath.

“What can I do for you?” he said. “Speak! Don’t be afraid.”

The girl’s eyes sought the floor for a moment, and then were turned to

Sandoff entreatingly.

“It is not for myself that I have come here tonight,” she said. “I want

you to save the life of a friend—as I once saved yours. Unless he can

leave the city before daylight he is lost. Only one thing can aid him,

and that is a passport.”

“His name?” demanded Sandoff quickly. “Tell me his name!”

The girl sank upon a chair and buried her face in her hands. She sobbed

audibly for an instant, and then looked up appealingly through her tears.

“His name,” she replied in a broken voice, “is Felix Shamarin. He is my

brother. I am Vera Shamarin.”