WE have as yet hardly spoken of the infa_Library of the best American literature Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers

whose innocent life had sprung, by the inscrutable decree of

Providence, a lovely and immortal flower, out of the rank luxuriance

of a guilty passion. How strange it seemed to the sad woman, as

she watched the growth, and the beauty that became every day more

brilliant, and the intelligence that threw its quivering sunshine over

the tiny features of this child! Her Pearl!――For so had Hester called

her; not as a name expressive of her aspect, which had nothing of

the calm, white, unimpassioned lustre that would be indicated by

the comparison. But she named the infant “Pearl,” as being of great

price,――purchased with all she had,――her mother’s only treasure! How

strange, indeed! Men had marked this woman’s sin by a scarlet letter,

which had such potent and disastrous efficacy that no human sympathy

could reach her, save it were sinful like herself. God, as a direct

consequence of the sin which was thus punished, had given her a lovely

child, whose place was on that same dishonored bosom, to connect her

parent forever with the race and descent of mortals, and to be finally

a blessed soul in heaven! Yet these thoughts affected Hester Prynne

less with hope than apprehension. She knew that her deed had been evil;

she could have no faith, therefore, that its result would be good.

Day after day, she looked fearfully into the child’s expanding nature,

ever dreading to detect some dark and wild peculiarity, that should

correspond with the guiltiness to which she owed her being.

Certainly, there was no physical defect. By its perfect shape, its

vigor, and its natural dexterity in the use of all its untried limbs,

the infant was worthy to have been brought forth in Eden; worthy to

have been left there, to be the plaything of the angels, after the

world’s first parents were driven out. The child had a native grace

which does not invariably coexist with faultless beauty; its attire,

however simple, always impressed the beholder as if it were the very

garb that precisely became it best. But little Pearl was not clad in

rustic weeds. Her mother, with a morbid purpose that may be better

understood hereafter, had bought the richest tissues that could be

procured, and allowed her imaginative faculty its full play in the

arrangement and decoration of the dresses which the child wore before

the public eye. So magnificent was the small figure, when thus arrayed,

and such was the splendor of Pearl’s own proper beauty, shining

through the gorgeous robes which might have extinguished a paler

loveliness, that there was an absolute circle of radiance around her,

on the darksome cottage floor. And yet a russet gown, torn and soiled

with the child’s rude play, made a picture of her just as perfect.

Pearl’s aspect was imbued with a spell of infinite variety; in this

one child there were many children, comprehending the full scope

between the wild-flower prettiness of a peasant-baby, and the pomp,

in little, of an infant princess. Throughout all, however, there was

a trait of passion, a certain depth of hue, which she never lost; and

if, in any of her changes she had grown fainter or paler, she would

have ceased to be herself,――it would have been no longer Pearl!

One peculiarity of the child’s deportment remains yet to be told. The

very first thing which she had noticed, in her life, was――what?――not

the mother’s smile, responding to it, as other babies do, by that

faint embryo smile of the little mouth, remembered so doubtfully

afterwards, and with such fond discussion whether it were indeed a

smile. By no means! But that first object of which Pearl seemed to

become aware was――shall we say it?――the scarlet letter on Hester’s

bosom! One day, as the mother stooped over the cradle, the infant’s

eyes had been caught by the glimmering of the gold embroidery about

the letter; and, putting up her little hand, she grasped at it,

smiling, not doubtfully, but with a decided gleam, that gave her face

the look of a much older child. Then, gasping for breath, did Hester

Prynne clutch the fatal token, instinctively endeavoring to tear it

away; so infinite was the torture inflicted by the intelligent touch

of Pearl’s baby-hand. Again, as if her mother’s agonized gesture were

meant only to make sport of her, did little Pearl look into her eyes,

and smile! From that epoch, except when the child was asleep, Hester

had never felt a moment’s safety; not a moment’s calm enjoyment of her.

Weeks, it is true, would sometimes elapse, during which Pearl’s gaze

might never once be fixed upon the scarlet letter; but then, again, it

would come at unawares, like the stroke of sudden death, and always

with that peculiar smile and odd expression of the eyes.

* * * * *

SIGHTS FROM A STEEPLE.

HOW various are the situations of the people covered by the roofs

beneath me, and how diversified are the events at this moment

befalling them! The new-born, the aged, the dying, the strong in

life, and the recent dead, are in the chambers of these many mansions.

The full of hope, the happy, the miserable, and the desperate, dwell

together within the circle of my glance. In some of the houses over

which my eyes roam so coldly, guilt is entering into hearts that

are still tenanted by a debased and trodden virtue――guilt is on the

very edge of commission, and the impending deed might be averted;

guilt is done, and the criminal wonders if it be irrevocable. There

are broad thoughts struggling in my mind, and, were I able to give

them distinctness, they would make their way in eloquence. Lo! the

rain-drops are descending.

The clouds, within a little time, have gathered over all the sky,

hanging heavily, as if about to drop in one unbroken mass upon

the earth. At intervals the lightning flashes from their brooding

hearts, quivers, disappears, and then comes the thunder, traveling

slowly after its twin-born flame. A strong wind has sprung up, howls

through the darkened streets, and raises the dust in dense bodies, to

rebel against the approaching storm. All people hurry homeward――all

that have a home; while a few lounge by the corners, or trudge on

desperately, at their leisure.

And now the storm lets loose its fury. In every dwelling I perceive

the faces of the chambermaids as they shut down the windows, excluding

the impetuous shower, and shrinking away from the quick, fiery glare.

The large drops descend with force upon the slated roofs, and rise

again in smoke. There is a rush and roar, as of a river through the

air, and muddy streams bubble majestically along the pavement, whirl

their dusky foam into the kennel, and disappear beneath iron grates.

Thus did Arethusa sink. I love not my station here aloft, in the midst

of the tumult which I am powerless to direct or quell, with the blue

lightning wrinkling on my brow, and the thunder muttering its first

awful syllables in my ear. I will descend. Yet let me give another

glance to the sea, where the foam breaks in long white lines upon a

broad expanse of blackness, or boils up in far-distant points, like

snowy mountain-tops in the eddies of a flood; and let me look once

more at the green plain, and little hills of the country, over which

the giant of the storm is riding in robes of mist, and at the town,

whose obscured and desolate streets might beseem a city of the dead;

and turning a single moment to the sky, now gloomy as an author’s

prospects, I prepare to resume my station on lower earth. But stay! A

little speck of azure has widened in the western heavens; the sunbeams

find a passage, and go rejoicing through the tempest; and on yonder

darkest cloud, born, like hallowed hopes, of the glory of another

world, and the trouble and tears of this, brightens forth the Rainbow!

* * * * *

A REMINISCENCE OF EARLY LIFE.

(FROM AMERICAN NOTE BOOKS.)

SALEM, Oct. 4th.

_Union Street, [Family Mansion.]_

... Here I sit in my old accustomed chamber, where I used to sit in

days gone by.... Here I have written many tales,――many that have been

burned to ashes, many that doubtless deserved the same fate. This

claims to be called a haunted chamber, for thousands upon thousands

of visions have appeared to me in it; and some few of them have become

visible to the world. If ever I should have a biographer, he ought to

make great mention of this chamber in my memoirs, because so much of

my lonely youth was wasted here, and here my mind and character were

formed; and here I have been glad and hopeful, and here I have been

despondent. And here I sat a long, long time, waiting patiently for

the world to know me, and sometimes wondering why it did not know me

sooner, or whether it would ever know me at all,――at least, till I

were in my grave. And sometimes it seemed as if I were already in the

grave, with only life enough to be chilled and benumbed. But oftener

I was happy,――at least, as happy as I then knew how to be, or was

aware of the possibility of being. By and by, the world found me out

in my lonely chamber, and called me forth,――not, indeed, with a loud

roar of acclamation, but rather with a still, small voice,――and forth

I went, but found nothing in the world that I thought preferable to

my old solitude till now.... And now I begin to understand why I was

imprisoned so many years in this lonely chamber, and why I could never

break through the viewless bolts and bars; for if I had sooner made

my escape into the world, I should have grown hard and rough, and been

covered with earthly dust, and my heart might have become callous by

rude encounters with the multitude.... But living in solitude till

the fulness of time was come, I still kept the dew of my youth, and

the freshness of my heart.... I used to think that I could imagine

all passions, all feelings, and states of the heart and mind; but how

little did I know!... Indeed, we are but shadows; we are not endowed

with real life, and all that seems most real about us is but the

thinnest substance of a dream,――till the heart be touched. That touch

creates us,――then we begin to be,――thereby we are beings of reality

and inheritors of eternity....

When we shall be endowed with our spiritual bodies, I think that they

will be so constituted that we may send thoughts and feelings any

distance in no time at all, and transfuse them, warm and fresh, into

the consciousness of those whom we love.... But, after all, perhaps it

is not wise to intermix fantastic ideas with the reality of affection.

Let us content ourselves to be earthly creatures, and hold communion

of spirit in such modes as are ordained to us.

Illustration: SOUVENIR OF HAWTHORNE

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

EDWARD EVERETT HALE.

“THE ROBINSON CRUSOE OF AMERICA.”

EDWARD EVERETT HALE is to-day one of the best known and most beloved

of American authors. He is also a lecturer of note. He has probably

addressed as many audiences as any man in America. His work as a

preacher, as a historian and as a story-teller, entitles him to

fame; but his life has also been largely devoted to the formation of

organizations to better the moral, social and educational conditions

of the young people of his own and other lands. Recently he has been

deeply interested in the great Chatauqua movement, which he has done

much to develop.

His name is a household word in American homes, and the keynote of his

useful life may be expressed by the motto of one of his most popular

books, “Ten Times One is Ten:”――“Look up and not down! Look forward

and not backward! Look out and not in! Lend a hand!”

Edward Everett Hale was born in Boston, Massachusetts, April 3, 1822.

He graduated at Harvard University in 1839, at the age of seventeen

years. He took a post graduate course for two years in a Latin school

and read theology and church history. It was in 1842 that he was

licensed to preach by the Boston Association of Congregational

Ministers. During the winter of 1844–45 he served a church in

Washington, but removed the next year to Worcester, Massachusetts,

where he remained for ten years. In 1856 he was called to the South

Congregational (Unitarian) Church in Boston, which he has served for

more than three decades.

When a boy young Hale learned to set type in his father’s printing

office, and afterwards served on the “Daily Advertiser,” it is said,

in every capacity from reporter up to editor-in-chief. Before he was

twenty-one years old he wrote a large part of the “Monthly Chronicle”

and “Boston Miscellany,” and from that time to the present has done an

immense amount of newspaper and magazine work. He at one time edited

the “Christian Examiner” and also the “Sunday School Gazette.” He

founded a magazine entitled “The Old and the New” in 1869, which was

afterwards merged into “Scribner’s Monthly.” In 1866 he began the

publication of “Lend a Hand, a Record of Progress and Journal of

Organized Charity.”

As a writer of short stories, no man of modern times, perhaps, is his

superior, if indeed he has any equals. “My Double and How He Undid

Me,” published in 1859, was the first of his works to strike strongly

the popular fancy; but it was “The Man Without a Country,” issued in

1863, which entitled its author to a prominent place among the classic

short story-tellers of America, and produced a deep impression on

the public mind. His “Skeleton in a Closet” followed in 1866; and,

since that time his prolific pen has sent forth in the form of books

and magazine articles, a continuous stream of the most entertaining

literature in our language. He has the faculty of De Foe in giving to

his stories the appearance of reality, and thus has gained for himself

the title of “The Robinson Crusoe of America.”

Mr. Hale is also an historical writer and a student of great

attainment, and has contributed many papers of rare value to the

historical and antiquarian societies of both Europe and America. He is,

perhaps, the greatest of all living authorities on Spanish-American

affairs. He is the editor of “Original Documents from the State Paper

Office, London, and the British Museum; illustrating the History of

Sir Walter Raleigh’s First American Colony at Jamestown,” and other

historical works.

Throughout his life, Mr. Hale has always taken a patriotic interest

in public affairs for the general good of the nation. While he dearly

loves his native New England hills, his patriotism is bounded by no

narrow limits; it is as wide as his country. His voice is always the

foremost among those raised in praise or in defence of our national

institutions and our liberties. His influence has always been exerted

to make men and women better citizens and better Americans.

* * * * *

LOST.¹

(FROM “PHILIP NOLAN’S FRIENDS.”)

¹ Copyright, Roberts Bros.

BUT as she ran, the path confused her. Could she have passed that

flaming sassafras without so much as noticing it? Any way she should

recognize the great mass of bays where she had last noticed the

panther’s tracks. She had seen them as she ran on, and as she came up.

She hurried on; but she certainly had returned much farther than she

went, when she came out on a strange log flung up in some freshet,

which she knew she had not seen before. And there was no clump of bays.

Was this being lost? Was she lost? Why, Inez had to confess to herself

that she was lost just a little bit, but nothing to be afraid of; but

still lost enough to talk about afterwards she certainly was.

Yet, as she said to herself again and again, she could not be a

quarter of a mile, nor half a quarter of a mile from camp. As soon as

they missed her――and by this time they had missed her――they would be

out to look for her. How provoking that she, of all the party, should

make so much bother to the rest! They would watch her now like so many

cats all the rest of the way. What a fool she was ever to leave the

knoll! So Inez stopped again, shouted again, and listened and listened,

to hear nothing but a swamp-owl.

If the sky had been clear, she would have had no cause for anxiety. In

that case they would have light enough to find her in. She would have

had the sunset glow to steer by; and she would have had no difficulty

in finding them. But with this horrid gray over everything she dared

not turn round, without fearing that she might lose the direction

in which the theory of the moment told her she ought to be faring.

And these openings which she had called trails――which were probably

broken by wild horses and wild oxen as they came down to the bayou to

drink――would not go in one direction for ten paces. They bent right

and left, this way and that; so that without some sure token of sun

or star, it was impossible, as Inez felt, to know which way she was

walking.

And at last this perplexity increased. She was conscious that the

sun must have set, and that the twilight, never long, was now fairly

upon her. All the time there was this fearful silence, only broken

by her own voice and that hateful owl. Was she wise to keep on in her

theories of this way or that way? She had never yet come back, either

upon the fallen cottonwood tree, or upon the bunch of bays which was

her landmark; and it was doubtless her wisest determination to stay

where she was. The chances that the larger party would find her were

much greater than that she alone would find them; but by this time

she was sure that, if she kept on in any direction, there was an even

chance that she was going farther and farther wrong.

But it was too cold for her to sit down, wrap herself never so closely

in her shawl. The poor girl tried this. She must keep in motion.

Back and forth she walked, fixing her march by signs which she could

not mistake even in the gathering darkness. How fast that darkness

gathered! The wind seemed to rise, too, as the night came on, and a

fine rain, that seemed as cold as snow to her, came to give the last

drop to her wretchedness. If she were tempted for a moment to abandon

her sentry-beat, and try this wild experiment or that, to the right

or left, some odious fallen trunk, wet with moss and decay, lay just

where she pressed into the shrubbery, as if placed there to reveal to

her her absolute powerlessness. She was dead with cold, and even in

all her wretchedness knew that she was hungry. How stupid to be hungry

when she had so much else to trouble her! But at least she would make

a system of her march. She would walk fifty times this way, to the

stump, and fifty times that way; then she would stop and cry out and

sound her war-whoop; then she would take up her sentry-march again.

And so she did. This way, at least, time would not pass without her

knowing whether it was midnight or no.

“Hark! God be praised, there is a gun! and there is another! and there

is another! They have come on the right track, and I am safe!” So she

shouted again, and sounded her war-whoop again, and listened,――and

then again, and listened again. One more gun! but then no more! Poor

Inez! Certainly they were all on one side of her. If only it was not

so piteously dark! If she could only walk half the distance in that

direction which her fifty sentry-beats made put together! But when

she struggled that way through the tangle, and over one wet log and

another, it was only to find her poor wet feet sinking down into mud

and water! She did not dare keep on. All that was left for her was to

find her tramping-ground again, and this she did.

“Good God, take care of me! My poor dear father――what would he say

if he knew his child was dying close to her friends? Dear mamma, keep

watch over your little girl!”――

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

WM. DEAN HOWELLS.

(THE REALISTIC NOVELIST OF AMERICA.)

THE West has contributed many notable men to our nation within the

last half of the present century. There seems to be something in the

spirit of that developing section to stimulate the aspirations and

ambitions of those who grow up in its atmosphere. Progress, Enterprise,

“Excelsior” are the three words written upon its banner as the motto

for the sons of the middle West. It is there we go for many of our

leading statesmen. Thence we draw our presidents more largely than

from any other section, and the world of modern literature is also

seeking and finding its chiefest leaders among the sons and daughters

of that region. True they are generally transplanted to the Eastern

centres of publication and commercial life, but they were born and

grew up in the West.

Notably among the examples which might be cited, we mention William

Dean Howells, one of the greatest of modern American novelists, who

was born at Martin’s Ferry, Ohio, March 1st, 1837. Mr. Howells did

not enjoy the advantage of a collegiate education. At twelve years

of age he began to set type in his father’s printing office, which he

followed until he reached manhood, employing his odd time in writing

articles and verses for the newspapers, and while quite young did

editorial work for a leading daily in Cincinnati. At the age of

twenty-one, in 1858, he became the editor of the “Ohio State Journal”

at Columbus. Two years later he published in connection with John

James Piatt a small volume of verse entitled “Poems of two Friends.”

These youthful effusions were marked by that crystal like clearness of

thought, grace and artistic elegance of expression which characterize

his later writings. Mr. Howells came prominently before the public

in 1860 by publishing a carefully written and most excellent “Life of

Abraham Lincoln” which was extensively sold and read during that most

exciting presidential campaign, and no doubt contributed much to the

success of the candidate. Mr. Lincoln, in furnishing data for this

work, became well acquainted with the young author of twenty-three

and was so impressed with his ability in grasping and discussing state

affairs, and good sense generally, that he appointed him as ♦consul

to Venice.

♦ ‘cousul’ replaced with ‘consul’

During four years’ residence in that city Mr. Howells, in addition

to his official duties, learned the Italian language and studied

its literature. He also here gathered, the material for two

books, “Venitian Life” and “Italian Journeys.” He arranged for the

publication of the former in London as he passed through that city

in 1865 on his way home. The latter was brought out in America on

his return, appearing in 1867. Neither of these works are novels.

“Venetian Life” is a delightful description of the manners and

customs of real life in Venice. “Italian Journeys” is a charming

portrayal――almost a kinetoscopic view――of his journey from Venice

to Rome by the roundabout way of Genoa and Naples, with a visit to

Pompeii and Herculaneum, including artistic etchings of notable scenes.

The first attempt of Mr. Howells at story-telling, “Their Wedding

Journey,” appeared in 1871. This, while ranking as a novel, was really

a description of an actual bridal tour across New York. “A Chance

Acquaintance” (1873) was a more complete novel, but evidently it was

a venture of the imagination upon ground that had proven fruitful in

real life. It was modeled after “The Wedding Journey,” but described a

holiday season spent in journeying up the St. Lawrence River, stopping

at Quebec and Saguenay.

Since 1874 Mr. Howells has published one or more novels annually,

among which are the following: “A Foregone Conclusion” (1874), “A

Counterfeit Presentment” (1877), “The Lady of the Aroostook” (1878),

“The Undiscovered Country” (1880), “A Fearful Responsibility” (1882),

“A Modern Instance” and “Dr. Breen’s Practice” (1883), “A Woman’s

Reason” (1884), “Tuscan Cities” and “The Rise of Silas Lapham” (1885),

“The Minister’s Charge” and “Indian Summer” (1886), “April Hopes”

(1887), “Annie Kilburn” (1888), “Hazard of New Fortune” (1889). Since

1890 Mr. Howells has continued his literary activity with increased,

rather than abating, energy. Among his noted later novels are “A

Traveler from Altruria” and “The Landlord at Lion’s Head” (the latter

issued in 1897). Other notable books of his are “Stops at Various

Quills,” “My Literary Passion,” “Library of Universal Adventure,”

“Modern Italian Poets,” “Christmas Every Day” and “A Boy’s Town,” the

two last mentioned being for juvenile readers, with illustrations.

Mr. Howells’ accurate attention to details gives to his stories a

most realistic flavor, making his books seem rather photographic than

artistic. He shuns imposing characters and thrilling incidents, and

makes much of interesting people and ordinary events in our social

life. A broad grasp of our national characteristics and an intimate

acquaintance with our institutions gives him a facility in producing

minute studies of certain aspects of society and types of character,

which no other writer in America has approached. For instance, his

“Undiscovered Country” was an exhaustive study and presentation of

spiritualism, as it is witnessed and taught in New England. And those

who admire Mr. Howells’ writings will find in “The Landlord at Lion’s

Head” a clear-cut statement of the important sociological problem yet

to be solved, upon the other; which problem is also characteristic of

other of his books. Thoughtful readers of Mr. Howells’ novels gain

much information on vital questions of society and government, which

broaden the mind and cannot fail to be of permanent benefit.

From 1872 to 1881 Mr. Howells was editor of the “Atlantic Monthly,”

and since 1886 he has conducted the department known as the “Editor’s

Study” in “Harper’s Magazine,” contributing much to other periodicals

at the same time. He is also well known as a poet, but has so

overshadowed this side of himself by his greater power as a novelist,

that he is placed with that class of writers. In 1873 a collection

of his poems was published. While in Venice he wrote “No Love Lost;

a Romance of Travel,” which was published in 1869, and stamped him as

a poet of ability.

* * * * *

THE FIRST BOARDER.

(FROM “THE LANDLORD AT LION’S HEAD.” 1897.)

_By Permission of Messrs. Harper & Brothers, Publishers._

THE table was set for him alone, and it affected him as if the

family had been hurried away from it that he might have it to himself.

Everything was very simple; the iron forks had two prongs; the knives

bone handles; the dull glass was pressed; the heavy plates and cups

were white, but so was the cloth, and all were clean. The woman

brought in a good boiled dinner of corned beef, potatoes, turnips

and carrots, from the kitchen, and a teapot, and said something about

having kept them hot on the stove for him; she brought him a plate of

biscuit fresh from the oven; then she said to the boy, “You come out

and have your dinner with me, Jeff,” and left the guest to make his

meal unmolested.

The room was square, with two north windows that looked down the lane

he had climbed to the house. An open door led into the kitchen in

an ell, and a closed door opposite probably gave access to a parlor

or a ground-floor chamber. The windows were darkened down to the

lower sash by green paper shades; the walls were papered in a pattern

of brown roses; over the chimney hung a large picture, a life-size

pencil-drawing of two little girls, one slightly older and slightly

larger than the other, each with round eyes and precise ringlets, and

with her hand clasped in the other’s hand.

The guest seemed helpless to take his gaze from it, and he sat fallen

back in his chair gazing at it, when the woman came in with a pie.

“Thank you, I believe I don’t want any dessert,” he said. “The fact is,

the dinner was so good that I haven’t left any room for pie. Are those

your children?”

“Yes,” said the woman, looking up at the picture with the pie in her

hand. “They’re the last two I lost.”

“Oh, excuse me!” the guest began.

“It’s the way they appear in the spirit life. It’s a spirit picture.”

“Oh! I thought there was something strange about it.”

“Well, it’s a good deal like the photographs we had taken about a year

before they died. It’s a good likeness. They say they don’t change a

great deal, at first.”

She seemed to refer the point to him for his judgment; but he answered

wide of it:

“I came up here to paint your mountain, if you don’t mind, Mrs.

Durgin――Lion’s Head, I mean.”

“Oh, yes. Well I don’t know as we could stop you, if you wanted to

take it away.” A spare glimmer lighted up her face.

The painter rejoined in kind. “The town might have something to say,

I suppose.”

“Not if you was to leave a good piece of intervale in place of it.

We’ve got mountains to spare.”

“Well, then, that’s arranged. What about a week’s board?”

“I guess you can stay, if you’re satisfied.”

“I’ll be satisfied if I can stay. How much do you want?”

The woman looked down, probably with an inward anxiety between the

fear of asking too much and the folly of asking too little. She said,

tentatively, “Some of the folks that come over from the hotels say

they pay as much as twenty dollars a week.”

“But you don’t expect hotel prices?”

“I don’t know as I do. We’ve never had any body before.”

The stranger relaxed the frown he had put on at the greed of her

suggestion; it might have come from ignorance or mere innocence, “I’m

in the habit of paying five dollars for farm board, where I stayed

several weeks. What do you say to seven for a single week?”

“I guess that’ll do,” said the woman, and she went out with the pie,

which she had kept in her hand.

* * * * *

IMPRESSIONS ON VISITING POMPEII.¹

FROM “ITALIAN JOURNEYS.” 1867.

¹ Copyright, Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

THE cotton whitens over two-thirds of Pompeii yet interred: happy the

generation that lives to learn the wondrous secrets of that sepulchre!

For, when you have once been at Pompeii, this phantasm of the past

takes deeper hold on your imagination than any living city, and

becomes and is the metropolis of your dream-land forever. O marvellous

city! who shall reveal the cunning of your spell? Something not

death, something not life,――something that is the one when you turn

to determine its essence as the other! What is it comes to me at

this distance of that which I saw in Pompeii? The narrow and curving,

but not crooked streets, with the blazing sun of that Neapolitan

November falling into them, or clouding their wheel-worn lava with

the black, black shadows of the many-tinted walls; the houses, and

the gay columns of white, yellow, and red; the delicate pavements of

mosaic; the skeletons of dusty cisterns and dead fountains; inanimate

garden-spaces with pygmy statues suited to their littleness; suites of

fairy bed-chambers, painted with exquisite frescos; dining-halls with

joyous scenes of hunt and banquet on their walls; the ruinous sites

of temples; the melancholy emptiness of booths and shops and jolly

drinking-houses; the lonesome tragic theatre, with a modern Pompeian

drawing water from a well there; the baths with their roofs perfect

yet, and the stucco bass-reliefs all but unharmed; around the whole,

the city wall crowned with slender poplars; outside the gates, the

long avenue of tombs, and the Appian Way stretching on to Stabiæ;

and, in the distance, Vesuvius, brown and bare, with his fiery breath

scarce visible against the cloudless heaven; these are the things that

float before my fancy as I turn back to look at myself walking those

enchanted streets, and to wonder if I could ever have been so blest.

For there is nothing on the earth, or under it, like Pompeii....

THE HOUSES OF POMPEII AND THEIR PAINTED WALLS.

_From “Italian Journeys.”_

The plans of nearly all the houses in the city are alike: the

entrance-room next the door; the parlor or drawing-room next that;

then the _impluvium_, or unroofed space in the middle of the house,

where the rains were caught and drained into the cistern, and where

the household used to come to wash itself, primitively, as at a pump;

the little garden, with its painted columns, behind the _impluvium_,

and, at last, the dining-room.

* * * * *

After referring to the frescos on the walls that have remained for

nearly two thousand years and the wonder of the art by which they were

produced, Mr. Howells thus continues:

Of course the houses of the rich were adorned by men of talent; but it

is surprising to see the community of thought and feeling in all this

work, whether it be from cunninger or clumsier hands. The subjects

are nearly always chosen from the fables of the gods, and they are

in illustration of the poets, Homer and the rest. To suit that soft,

luxurious life which people led in Pompeii, the themes are commonly

amorous, and sometimes not too chaste: there is much of Bacchus and

Ariadne, much of Venus and Adonis, and Diana bathes a good deal with

her nymphs,――not to mention frequent representations of the toilet of

that beautiful monster which the lascivious art of the time loved to

depict. One of the most pleasing of all the scenes is that in one of

the houses, of the Judgment of Paris, in which the shepherd sits upon

a bank in an attitude of ineffable and flattered importance, with

one leg carelessly crossing the other, and both hands resting lightly

on his shepherd’s crook, while the goddesses before him await his

sentence. Naturally, the painter has done his best for the victress

in this rivalry, and you see

“Idalian Aphrodite beautiful,”

as she should be, but with a warm and piquant spice of girlish

resentment in her attitude, that Paris should pause for an instant,

which is altogether delicious.

“And I beheld great Here’s angry eyes.”

Awful eyes! How did the painter make them? The wonder of all these

pagan frescos is the mystery of the eyes,――still, beautiful, unhuman.

You cannot believe that it is wrong for those tranquil-eyed men and

women to do evil, they look so calm and so unconscious in it all; and

in the presence of the celestials, as they bend upon you those eternal

orbs, in whose regard you are but a part of space, you feel that here

art has achieved the unearthly. I know of no words in literature which

give a _sense_ (nothing gives the idea) of the _stare_ of these gods,

except that magnificent line of Kingsley’s, describing the advance

over the sea toward Andromeda of the oblivious and unsympathizing

Nereids. They floated slowly up and their eyes

“Stared on her, silent and still, like the eyes in the house

of the idols.”

* * * * *

VENETIAN VAGABONDS.¹

(FROM “VENETIAN LIFE.” 1867.)

¹ By special permission of the author and of Houghton,

Mifflin & Co.

THE lasagnone is a loafer, as an Italian can be a loafer, without

the admixture of ruffianism, which blemishes lost loafers of northern

race. He may be quite worthless, and even impertinent, but he cannot

be a rowdy――that pleasing blossom on the nose of our fast, high-fed,

thick-blooded civilization. In Venice he must not be confounded

with other loiterers at the café; not with the natty people who talk

politics interminably over little cups of black coffee; not with those

old habitués, who sit forever under the Procuratie, their hands folded

upon the top of their sticks, and stare at the ladies who pass with a

curious steadfastness and knowing skepticism of gaze, not pleasing in

the dim eyes of age; certainly, the last persons who bear any likeness

to the lasagnone are the Germans, with their honest, heavy faces

comically anglicized by leg-of-mutton whiskers. The truth is, the

lasagnone does not flourish in the best café; he comes to perfection

in cheaper resorts, for he is commonly not rich.

It often happens that a glass of water, flavored with a little

anisette, is the order over which he sits a whole evening. He knows

the waiter intimately, and does not call him “Shop!” (Bottéga) as

less familiar people do, but Gigi, or Beppi, as the waiter is pretty

sure to be named. “Behold!” he says, when the servant places his

modest drink before him, “who is that loveliest blonde there?” Or

to his fellow-lasagnone: “She regards me! I have broken her heart!”

This is his sole business and mission, the cruel lasagnone――to break

the ladies’ hearts. He spares no condition――neither rank nor wealth

is any defence against him. I often wonder what is in that note he

continually shows to his friend. The confession of some broken heart,

I think. When he has folded it and put it away, he chuckles, “Ah,

cara!” and sucks at his long, slender Virginia cigar. It is unlighted,

for fire consumes cigars. I never see him read the papers――neither

the Italian papers nor the Parisian journals, though if he can

get “Galignani” he is glad, and he likes to pretend to a knowledge

of English, uttering upon the occasion, with great relish, such

distinctively English words as “Yes” and “Not,” and to the waiter,

“A-little-fire-if-you-please.” He sits very late in the café, he

touches his hat――his curly French hat――to the company as he goes out

with a mild swagger, his cane held lightly in his left hand, his coat

cut snugly to show his hips, and genteely swaying with the motion

of his body. He is a dandy, of course――all Italians are dandies――but

his vanity is perfectly harmless, and his heart is not bad. He would

go half an hour to put you in the direction of the Piazza. A little

thing can make him happy――to stand in the pit at the opera, and gaze

at the ladies in the lower boxes――to attend the Marionette or the

Malibran Theatre, and imperil the peace of pretty seamstresses and

contadinas――to stand at the church doors and ogle the fair saints

as they pass out. Go, harmless lasagnone, to thy lodging in some

mysterious height, and break hearts if thou wilt. They are quickly

mended.

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

GENERAL LEWIS WALLACE.

AUTHOR OF “BEN HUR.”

THERE is an old adage which declares “without fame or fortune at forty,

without fame or fortune always.” This, however is not invariably true.

Hawthorne became famous when he wrote “Scarlet Letter” at forty-six,

Sir Walter Scott produced the first Waverly Novel after he was forty;

and we find another exception in the case of the soldier author who

is made the subject of this sketch. Perhaps no writer of modern times

has gained so wide a reputation on so few books or began his literary

career so late in life as the author of “The Fair God;” “Ben Hur” and

“The Prince of India.” It was not until the year 1873 that General

Lewis Wallace at the age of forty-six became known to literature.

Prior to this he had filled the double position of lawyer and soldier,

and it was his observations and experiences in the Mexican War, no

doubt, which inspired him to write “The Fair God,” his first book,

which was a story of the conquest of that country.

Lew. Wallace was horn at Brookville, Indiana, in 1827. After receiving

a common school education, he began the study of law; but on the

breaking out of the Mexican War, he volunteered in the army as a

lieutenant in an Indiana company. On his return from the war, in 1848,

he took up the practice of his profession in his native state and

also served in the legislature. Near the beginning of the Civil War

he became colonel of a volunteer regiment. His military service was of

such a character that he received special mention from General Grant

for meritorious conduct and was made major-general in March, 1862. He

was mustered out of service when the war closed in 1865 and resumed

his practice of law at his old home in Crawfordsville. In 1873, as

stated above, his first book, “The Fair God,” was published; but it

met with only moderate success. In 1878, General Wallace was made

Territorial Governor of Utah and in 1880, “Ben Hur; a Tale of The

Christ” appeared. The scene was laid in the East and displayed such a

knowledge of the manners and customs of that country and people that

General Garfield――that year elected President――considered its author

a fitting person for the Turkish Ministry, and accordingly, in 1881,

he was appointed to that position. It is said that when President

Garfield gave General Wallace his appointment, he wrote the words

“Ben Hur” across the corner of the document, and, as Wallace was

coming away from his visit of acknowledgement at the White House, the

President put his arm over his friend’s shoulder and said, “I expect

another book out of you. Your duties will not be too onerous to allow

you to write it. Locate the scene in Constantinople.” This suggestion

was, no doubt, General Wallace’s reason for writing “The Prince of

India,” which was published in 1890 and is the last book issued by its

author. He had in the mean time, however, published “The Boyhood of

Christ” (1888).

None of the other books of the author have been so popular or

reached the great success attained by “Ben Hur,” which has had the

enormous sale of nearly one-half million copies without at any time

being forced upon the market in the form of a cheap edition. It is

remarkable also to state that the early circulation of “Ben Hur,”

while it was appreciated by a certain class, was too small to warrant

the author in anticipating the fortune which he afterwards harvested

from this book. Before General Wallace was made Minister to Turkey,

the book-sellers bought it in quantities of two, three or a dozen at

a time, and it was not until President Garfield had honored the author

with this ♦significant portfolio that the trade commenced to call for

it in thousand lots.

♦ ‘significent’ replaced with ‘significant’

* * * * *

DESCRIPTION OF CHRIST.¹

(FROM “BEN HUR.” 1880.)

¹ Selections printed here are by special permission of the

author. Harper Brothers, Publishers.

THE head was open to the cloudless light, except as it was draped with

long hair and slightly waved, and parted in the middle, and auburn in

tint, with a tendency to reddish golden where most strongly touched by

the sun. Under a broad, low forehead, under black well-arched brows,

beamed eyes dark blue and large, and softened to exceeding tenderness

by lashes of great length sometimes seen on children, but seldom, if

ever, on men. As to the other features, it would have been difficult

to decide whether they were Greek or Jewish. The delicacy of the

nostrils and mouth was unusually to the latter type, and when it was

taken into account with the gentleness of the eyes, the pallor of the

complexion, the fine texture of the hair and the softness of the beard,

which fell in waves over His throat to His breast, never a soldier

but would have laughed at Him in encounter, never a woman who would

not have confided in Him at sight, never a child that would not, with

quick instinct, have given Him its hand and whole artless trust, nor

might any one have said He was not beautiful.

The features, it should be further said, were ruled by a certain

expression which, as the viewer chose, might with equal correctness

have been called the effect of intelligence, love, pity or sorrow,

though, in better speech, it was a blending of them all――a look

easy to fancy as a mark of a sinless soul doomed to the sight and

understanding of the utter sinfulness of those among whom it was

passing; yet withal no one could have observed the face with a thought

of weakness in the man; so, at least, would not they who know that

the qualities mentioned――love, sorrow, pity――are the results of a

consciousness of strength to bear suffering oftener than strength to

do; such has been the might of martyrs and devotees and the myriads

written down in saintly calendars; and such, indeed, was the air of

this one.

* * * * *

THE PRINCE OF INDIA TEACHES REINCARNATION.¹

(FROM THE “PRINCE OF INDIA.” 1890.)

¹ Selections printed here are by special permission of the

author. Harper Brothers, Publishers.

“THE Holy Father of Light and Life,” the speaker went on, after a

pause referable to his consummate knowledge of men, “has sent His

Spirit down to the world, not once, merely, or unto one people, but

repeatedly, in ages sometimes near together, sometimes wide apart, and

to races diverse, yet in every instance remarkable for genius.”

There was a murmur at this, but he gave it no time.

“Ask you now how I could identify the ♦Spirit so as to be able to

declare to you solemnly, as I do in fear of God, that in several

repeated appearances of which I speak it was the very same Spirit? How

do you know the man you met at set of sun yesterday was the man you

saluted and had salute from this morning? Well, I tell you the Father

has given the Spirit features by which it may be known――features

distinct as those of the neighbors nearest you there at your right and

left hands. Wherever in my reading Holy Books, like these, I hear of

a man, himself a shining example of righteousness, teaching God and

the way to God; by those signs I say to my soul: ‘Oh, the Spirit, the

Spirit! Blessed ♠is the man appointed to carry it about!’”

♦ ‘Spiritt’ replaced with ‘Spirit’

♠ ‘in’ replaced with ‘is’

Again the murmur, but again he passed on.

“The Spirit dwelt in the Holy of Holies set apart for it in the

Tabernacle; yet no man ever saw it here, a thing of sight. The soul is

not to be seen; still less is the Spirit of the Most High; or if one

did see it, its brightness would kill him. In great mercy, therefore,

it has come and done its good works in the world veiled; now in one

form, now in another; at one time, a voice in the air; at another, a

vision in sleep; at another, a burning bush; at another, an angel; at

another, a descending dove”――

“Bethabara!” shouted a cowled brother, tossing both hands up.

“Be quiet!” the Patriarch ordered.

“Thus always when its errand was of quick despatch,” the Prince

continued. “But if its coming were for residence on earth, then its

habit has been to adopt a man for its outward form, and enter into

him, and speak by him; such was Moses, such Elijah, such were all

the Prophets, and such”――he paused, then exclaimed shrilly――“such was

Jesus Christ!”

* * * * *

THE PRAYER OF THE WANDERING JEW.¹

(FROM THE “PRINCE OF INDIA.”)

¹ Copyright, Harper & Bros.

“GOD of Israel――my God!” he said, in a tone hardly more than speaking

to himself. “These about me, my fellow-creatures, pray thee in the

hope of life, I pray thee in the hope of death. I have come up from

the sea, and the end was not there; now I will go into the Desert in

search of it. Or if I must live, Lord, give me the happiness there is

in serving thee.

“Thou hast need of instruments of good: let me henceforth be one of

them, that by working for thy honor, I may at last enjoy the peace of

the blessed――Amen.”

* * * * *

DEATH OF MONTEZUMA.¹

(FROM “THE FAIR GOD.”)

¹ Copyright, Harper & Bros.

THE king turned his pale face and fixed his gazing eyes upon the

conqueror; and such power was there in the look that the latter added,

with softening manner, “What I can do for thee I will do. I have

always been thy true friend.”

“O Malinche, I hear you, and your words make dying easy,” answered

Montezuma, smiling faintly.

With an effort he sought Cortes’ hand, and looking at Acatlan and

Tecalco, continued:

“Let me intrust these women and their children to you and your

lord. Of all that which was mine but now is yours――lands, people,

empire,――enough to save them from want and shame were small indeed.

Promise me; in the hearing of all these, promise, Malinche.”

Taint of anger was there no longer on the soul of the great Spaniard.

“Rest thee, good king!” he said, with feeling. “Thy queens and their

children shall be my wards. In the hearing of all these, I so swear.”

The listener smiled again; his eyes closed, his hand fell down; and so

still was he that they began to think him dead. Suddenly he stirred,

and said faintly, but distinctly,――

“Nearer, uncles, nearer.” The old men bent over him, listening.

“A message to Guatamozin,――to whom I give my last thought, as king.

Say to him, that this lingering in death is no fault of his; the aim

was true, but the arrow splintered upon leaving the bow. And lest the

world hold him to account for my blood, hear me say, all of you, that

I bade him do what he did.

“And in sign that I love him, take my sceptre, and give it to him――”

His voice fell away, yet the lips moved; lower the accents stooped,――

“Tula and the empire go with the sceptre,” he murmured, and they were

his last words,――his will. A wail from the women pronounced him dead.

* * * * *

DESCRIPTION OF VIRGIN MARY.¹

(FROM “BEN HUR.”)

¹ Copyright, Harper & Bros.

SHE was not more than fifteen. Her form, voice and manner belonged to

the period of transition from girlhood. Her face was perfectly oval,

her complexion more pale than fair. The nose was faultless; the lips,

slightly parted, were full and ripe, giving to the lines of the mouth

warmth, tenderness and trust; the eyes were blue and large, and shaded

by drooping lids and long lashes, and, in harmony with all, a flood of

golden hair, in the style permitted to Jewish brides, fell unconfined

down her back to the pillion on which she sat. The throat and neck

had the downy softness sometimes seen which leaves the artist in

doubt whether it is an effect of contour or color. To these charms

of feature and person were added others more indefinable――an air of

purity which only the soul can impart, and of abstraction natural to

such as think much of things impalpable. Often, with trembling lips,

she raised her eyes to heaven, itself not more deeply blue; often she

crossed her hands upon her breast, as in adoration and prayer; often

she raised her head like one listening eagerly for a calling voice.

Now and then, midst his slow utterances, Joseph turned to look at her,

and, catching the expression kindling her face as with light, forgot

his theme, and with bowed head, wondering, plodded on.

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

EDWARD EGGLESTON.

“THE HOOSIER SCHOOL-BOY.”

HERDER says with truth that “one’s whole life is but the

interpretation of the oracles of his childhood,” and those who are

familiar with the writings of Edward Eggleston see in his pictures of

country life in the Hoosier State the interpretation and illustration

of his own life with its peculiar environment in “the great interior

valley” nearly a half-century ago. The writers who have interpreted

for us and for future generations the life and the characteristic

manners which prevailed in the days when our country was new and the

forests were yielding to give place to growing cities and expanding

farms have done a rare and peculiar service, and those sections which

have found expression through the genius and gifts of novelist or poet

are highly favored above all others.

Edward Eggleston has always counted it a piece of good-fortune to

have been born in a small village of Southern Indiana, for he believes

that the formative influences of such an environment, the intimate

knowledge of simple human nature, the close acquaintance with nature

in woods and field and stream, and the sincere and earnest tone of

the religious atmosphere which he breathed all through his youth, are

better elements of culture than a city life could have furnished.

He was born in 1837 in Vevay, Indiana, and his early life was spent

amid the “noble scenery” on the banks of the Ohio River. His father

died while he was a young boy, and he himself was too delicate to

spend much time at school, so that he is a shining example of those

who move up the inclined plane of self-culture and self-improvement.

As he himself has forcefully said, through his whole life two men have

struggled within him for the ascendency, the religious devotee and

the literary man. His early training was “after the straitest sect

of his religion”――the fervid Methodism of fifty years ago, and he was

almost morbidly scrupulous as a boy, not even allowing himself to read

a novel, though from this early period he always felt in himself a

future literary career, and the teacher who corrected his compositions

naively said to him: “I have marked your composition very severely

because you are destined to become an author.”

At first the religious element in his nature decidedly held sway

and he devoted himself to the ministry, mounting a horse and going

forth with his saddle-bags as a circuit preacher in a circuit of ten

preaching places. This was followed by a still harder experience in

the border country of Minnesota, where in moccasins he tramped from

town to town preaching to lumbermen and living on a meagre pittance,

eating crackers and cheese, often in broken health and expecting an

early death.

But even this earnest life of religious devotion and sacrifice was

interspersed with attempts at literary work and he wrote a critical

essay on “Beranger and his Songs” while he was trying to evangelize

the red-shirted lumbermen of St. Croix. It was in such life and amid

such experiences that Eggleston gained his keen knowledge of human

nature which has been the delight and charm of his books.

He began his literary career as associate editor of the “Little

Corporal” at Evanston, Illinois, in 1866, and in 1870 he rose to the

position of literary editor of the New York “Independent,” of which

he was for a time superintending editor. For five years, from 1874 to

1879, he was pastor of the Church of Christian Endeavor in Brooklyn,

but failing health compelled him to retire, and he made his home at

“Owl’s Nest,” on Lake George, where he has since devoted himself to

literary work.

His novels depict the rural life of Southern Indiana, and his

own judgment upon them is as follows: “I should say that what

distinguishes my novels from other works of fiction is the prominence

which they give to social conditions; that the individual characters

are here treated to a greater degree than elsewhere as parts of

a study of a society, as in some sense the logical result of the

environment. Whatever may be the rank assigned to these stories

as works of literary art, they will always have a certain value as

materials for the student of social history.”

His chief novels and stories are the following: “Mr. Blake’s Walking

Stick” (Chicago, 1869); “The Hoosier School-master” (New York, 1871);

“End of the World” (1872); “The Mystery of Metropolisville” (1873);

“The Circuit Rider” (1874); “School-master’s Stories for Boys and

Girls” (1874); and “The Hoosier School-boy” (1883). He has written

in connection with his daughter an interesting series of biographical

tales of famous American Indians, and during these later years of his

life he has largely devoted himself to historical work which has had

an attraction for him all his life.

In his historical work as in his novels he is especially occupied with

the evolution of society. His interest runs in the line of unfolding

the history of life and development rather than in giving mere facts

of political history.

His chief works in this department are: “Household History of the

United States and its People” (New York, 1893); and “The Beginners of

a Nation” (New York, 1897).

Though possessed of a weak and ailing body and always on the verge of

invalidism, he has done the work of a strong man. He has always

preserved his deep and earnest religious and moral tone, but he has

woven with it a joyous and genuine humor which has warmed the hearts

of his many readers.

* * * * *

SPELLING DOWN THE MASTER.¹

(FROM “THE HOOSIER SCHOOLMASTER.”)

(ORANGE JUDD CO., PUBLISHERS.)

¹ Copyright, Orange Judd Co.

EVERY family furnished a candle. There were yellow dips and white

dips, burning, smoking, and flaring. There was laughing, and talking,

and giggling, and simpering, and ogling, and flirting, and courting.

What a dress party is to Fifth Avenue, a spelling-school is to

Hoophole County. It is an occasion which is metaphorically inscribed

with this legend, “Choose your partners.” Spelling is only a blind

in Hoophole County, as is dancing on Fifth Avenue. But as there are

some in society who love dancing for its own sake, so in Flat Creek

district there were those who loved spelling for its own sake, and

who, smelling the battle from afar, had come to try their skill in

this tournament, hoping to freshen the laurels they had won in their

school-days.

“I ’low,” said Mr. Means, speaking as the principal school trustee,

“I ’low our friend the Square is jest the man to boss this ere consarn

to-night. Ef nobody objects, I’ll appint him. Come, Square, don’t be

bashful. Walk up to the trough, fodder or no fodder, as the man said

to his donkey.”

There was a general giggle at this, and many of the young swains took

occasion to nudge the girls alongside them, ostensibly for the purpose

of making them see the joke, but really for the pure pleasure of

nudging.

The squire came to the front.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, shoving up his spectacles, and

sucking his lips over his white teeth to keep them in place, “ladies

and gentlemen, young men and maidens, raley I’m obleeged to Mr. Means

fer this honor,” and the Squire took both hands and turned the top

of his head round several inches. Then he adjusted his spectacles.

Whether he was obliged to Mr. Means for the honor of being compared

to a donkey, was not clear. “I feel in the inmost compartments of my

animal spirits a most happyfying sense of the success and futility of

all my endeavors to sarve the people of Flat Creek deestrick, and the

people of Tomkins township, in my weak way and manner.” This burst of

eloquence was delivered with a constrained air and an apparent sense

of danger that he, Squire Hawkins, might fall to pieces in his weak

way and manner, and of the success and futility (especially the latter)

of all attempts at reconstruction. For by this time the ghastly pupil

of the left eye, which was black, was looking away round to the left

while the little blue one on the right twinkled cheerfully toward the

front. The front teeth would drop down so that the Squire’s mouth was

kept nearly closed, and his words whistled through.

“I feel as if I could be grandiloquent on this interesting occasion,”

twisting his scalp round, “but raley I must forego any such exertions.

It is spelling you want. Spelling is the corner-stone, the grand,

underlying subterfuge of a good eddication. I put the spellin’-book

prepared by the great Daniel Webster alongside the Bible. I do raley.

The man who got up, who compounded this little work of inextricable

valoo was a benufactor to the whole human race or any other.” Here

the spectacles fell off. The Squire replaced them in some confusion,

gave the top of his head another twist, and felt for his glass eye,

while poor Shocky stared in wonder, and Betsy Short rolled from side

to side at the point of death from the effort to suppress her giggle.

Mrs. Means and the other old ladies looked the applause they could not

speak.

“I appint Larkin Lanham and Jeems Buchanan fer captings,” said the

Squire. And the two young men thus named took a stick and tossed it

from hand to hand to decide who should have the “first chice.” One

tossed the stick to the other, who held it fast just where he happened

to catch it. Then the first placed his hand above the second, and so

the hands were alternately changed to the top. The one who held the

stick last without room for the other to take hold had gained the

lot. This was tried three times. As Larkin held the stick twice out

of three times, he had the choice. He hesitated a moment. Everybody

looked toward tall Jim Phillips. But Larkin was fond of a venture on

unknown seas, and so he said, “I take the master,” while a buzz of

surprise ran round the room, and the captain of the other side, as if

afraid his opponent would withdraw the choice, retorted quickly, and

with a little smack of exultation and defiance in his voice: “And _I_

take Jeems Phillips.”

And soon all present, except a few of the old folks, found themselves

ranged in opposing hosts, the poor spellers lagging in, with what

grace they could at the foot of the two divisions. The Squire opened

his spelling-book and began to give out the words to the two captains,

who stood up and spelled against each other. It was not long before

Larkin spelled “really” with one _l_, and had to sit down in confusion,

while a murmur of satisfaction ran through the ranks of the opposing

forces. His own side bit their lips. The slender figure of the young

teacher took the place of the fallen leader, and the excitement made

the house very quiet. Ralph dreaded the loss of influence he would

suffer if he should be easily spelled down. And at the moment of

rising he saw in the darkest corner the figure of a well-dressed

young man sitting in the shadow. It made him tremble. Why should his

evil genius haunt him? But by a strong effort he turned his attention

away from Dr. Small, and listened carefully to the words which the

Squire did not pronounce very distinctly, spelling them with extreme

deliberation. This gave him an air of hesitation which disappointed

those on his own side. They wanted him to spell with a dashing

assurance. But he did not begin a word until he had mentally felt

his way through it. After ten minutes of spelling hard words, Jeems

Buchanan, the captain of the other side, spelled “atrocious” with

an _s_ instead of a _c_, and subsided, his first choice, Jeems

Phillips, coming up against the teacher. This brought the excitement

to fever-heat. For though Ralph was chosen first, it was entirely on

trust, and most of the company were disappointed. The champion who now

stood up against the school-master was a famous speller.

Jim Phillips was a tall, lank, stoop-shouldered fellow, who had never

distinguished himself in any other pursuit than spelling. Except in

this one art of spelling he was of no account. He could neither catch

a ball well nor bat well. He could not throw well enough to make his

mark in that famous Western game of Bull-pen. He did not succeed well

in any study but that of Webster’s Elementary. But in that――to use the

usual Flat Creek locution――he was “a hoss.” The genius for spelling is

in some people a sixth sense, a matter of intuition. Some spellers are

born and not made, and their facility reminds one of the mathematical

prodigies that crop out every now and then to bewilder the world. Bud

Means, foreseeing that Ralph would be pitted against Jim Phillips, had

warned his friend that Jim could spell “like thunder and lightning,”

and that it “took a powerful smart speller” to beat him, for he knew

“a heap of spelling-book.” To have “spelled down the master” is next

thing to having whipped the biggest bully in Hoophole County, and Jim

had “spelled down” the last three masters. He divided the hero-worship

of the district with Bud Means.

For half an hour the Squire gave out hard words. What a blessed

thing our crooked orthography is. Without it there could be no

spelling-schools. As Ralph discovered his opponent’s mettle he became

more and more cautious. He was now satisfied that Jim would eventually

beat him. The fellow evidently knew more about the spelling-book than

old Noah Webster himself. As he stood there, with his dull face and

long sharp nose, his hands behind his back, and his voice spelling

infallibly, it seemed to Hartsook that his superiority must lie in his

nose. Ralph’s cautiousness answered a double purpose; it enabled him

to tread surely, and it was mistaken by Jim for weakness. Phillips

was now confident that he should carry off the scalp of the fourth

school-master before the evening was over. He spelled eagerly,

confidently, brilliantly. Stoop-shouldered as he was, he began to

straighten up. In the minds of all the company the odds were in his

favor. He saw this, and became ambitious to distinguish himself by

spelling without giving the matter any thought.

Ralph always believed that he would have been speedily defeated

by Phillips had it not been for two thoughts which braced him. The

sinister shadow of young Dr. Small sitting in the dark corner by the

water-bucket nerved him. A victory over Phillips was a defeat to one

who wished only ill to the young school-master. The other thought that

kept his pluck alive was the recollection of Bull. He approached a

word as Bull approached the raccoon. He did not take hold until he

was sure of his game. When he took hold, it was with a quiet assurance

of success. As Ralph spelled in this dogged way for half an hour the

hardest words the Squire could find, the excitement steadily rose in

all parts of the house, and Ralph’s friends even ventured to whisper

that “maybe Jim had cotched his match after all!”

But Phillips never doubted of his success.

“Theodolite,” said the Squire.

“T-h-e, the, o-d, od, theod, o, theodo, l-y-t-e, theodolite,” spelled

the champion.

“Next,” said the Squire, nearly losing his teeth in his excitement.

Ralph spelled the word slowly and correctly, and the conquered

champion sat down in confusion. The excitement was so great for some

minutes that the spelling was suspended. Everybody in the house had

shown sympathy with one or other of the combatants, except the silent

shadow in the corner. _It_ had not moved during the contest, and did

not show any interest now in the result.

“Gewhilliky crickets! Thunder and lightning! Licked him all to smash!”

said Bud, rubbing his hands on his knees. “That beats my time all

holler!”

And Betsy Short giggled until her tuck-comb fell out, though she was

on the defeated side.

Shocky got up and danced with pleasure.

But one suffocating look from the aqueous eyes of Mirandy destroyed

the last spark of Ralph’s pleasure in his triumph, and sent that awful

below-zero feeling all through him.

“He’s powerful smart is the master,” said old Jack to Mr. Pete Jones.

“He’ll beat the whole kit and tuck of ’em afore he’s through. I know’d

he was smart. That’s the reason I tuck him,” proceeded Mr. Means.

“Yaas, but he don’t lick enough. Not nigh,” answered Pete Jones. “No

lickin’, no larnin’, says I.”

It was now not so hard. The other spellers on the opposite side

went down quickly under the hard words which the Squire gave out.

The master had mowed down all but a few, his opponents had given

up the battle, and all had lost their keen interest in a contest

to which there could be but one conclusion, for there were only the

poor spellers left. But Ralph Hartsook ran against a stump where

he was least expecting it. It was the Squire’s custom, when one of

the smaller scholars or poorer spellers rose to spell against the

master, to give out eight or ten easy words that they might have some

breathing spell before being slaughtered, and then to give a poser or

two which soon settled them. He let them run a little, as a cat does a

doomed mouse. There was now but one person left on the opposite side,

and as she rose in her blue calico dress, Ralph recognized Hannah,

the bound girl at old Jack Means’s. She had not attended school in

the district, and had never spelled in spelling-school before, and was

chosen last as an uncertain quantity. The Squire began with easy words

of two syllables, from that page of Webster, so well-known to all

who ever thumbed it, as “Baker,” from the word that stands at the top

of the page. She spelled these words in an absent and uninterested

manner. As everybody knew that she would have to go down as soon as

this preliminary skirmishing was over, everybody began to get ready to

go home, and already there was a buzz of preparation. Young men were

timidly asking girls if they could “see them safe home,” which is the

approved formula, and were trembling in mortal fear of “the mitten.”

Presently the Squire, thinking it time to close the contest, pulled

his scalp forward, adjusted his glass eye, which had been examining

his nose long enough, and turned over the leaves of the book to the

great words at the place known to spellers as “Incomprehensibility,”

and began to give out those “words of eight syllables with the accent

on the sixth.” Listless scholars now turned round, and ceased to

whisper, in order to be in the master’s final triumph. But to their

surprise, “ole Miss Meanses’ white nigger,” as some of them called her,

in allusion to her slavish life, spelled these great words with as

perfect ease as the master. Still, not doubting the result, the Squire

turned from place to place and selected all the hard words he could

find. The school became utterly quiet, the excitement was too great

for the ordinary buzz. Would “Meanses’ Hanner” beat the master? Beat

the master that had laid out Jim Phillips? Everybody’s sympathy was

now turned to Hannah. Ralph noticed that even Shocky had deserted him,

and that his face grew brilliant every time Hannah spelled a word. In

fact, Ralph deserted himself. If he had not felt that a victory given

would insult her, he would have missed intentionally.

“Daguerreotype,” sniffled the Squire. It was Ralph’s turn.

“D-a-u, dau――――”

“Next.”

And Hannah spelled it right.

Illustration: POPULAR AMERICAN NOVELISTS.

_EDWD. BELLAMY._

_F. MARION CRAWFORD._ • _GEO. W. CABLE._ • _E. P. ROE._

_THOS. NELSON PAGE._ • _FRANK STOCKTON._

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

THOMAS NELSON PAGE.

AUTHOR OF “IN OLE VIRGINIA.”

AN old adage declares it “an ill wind that blows nobody good;” and

certainly the world may take whatever consolation it can find out of

the fact that the long and bloody war between the North and South has

at least afforded the opportunity for certain literary men and women

to rise upon the ruins which it wrought, and win fame to themselves as

well as put money in their purses by embalming in literature the story

of times and social conditions that now exist only in the history of

the past.

Thomas Nelson Page was born in Oakland, Hanover county, Virginia,

on the twenty-third day of April, 1853, consequently, he was only

eight years old when Fort Sumter was fired upon, and, during the

imaginative period of the next few years, he lived in proximity to the

battle fields of the most fiercely contested struggles of the war. His

earliest recollections were of the happiest phases of life on the old

slave plantations. That he thoroughly understands the bright side of

such a life, as well as the Negro character and dialect, is abundantly

established by the charming books which he has given to the world.

His childhood was passed on the estate which was a part of the

original grant of his maternal ancestor, General Thomas Nelson, a

signer of the Declaration of Independence, for whom he was named.

His early education was received in the neighborhood “subscription”

schools (there were no free public schools in the South at that time),

and at the hand of a gentle old aunt of whom Mr. Page tells in one of

his stories. The war interfered with his regular studies but filled

his mind with a knowledge schools cannot give, and, as stated above,

it was out of this knowledge that his stories have grown. After the

war, young Page entered the Washington and Lee University and later

studied law, taking his degree in this branch from the University of

Virginia, in 1874, and after graduating, practiced his profession in

Richmond, Virginia, until 1884, when his first story of Virginia life

“Marse Chan,” a tale of the Civil War, was printed in the “Century

Magazine.” He had previously written dialectic poetry, but the above

story was his first decided success, and attracted such wide attention

that he forsook law for literature. In 1887, a volume of his stories

was brought out under the title “In Ole Virginia,” which was followed

in 1888 by “Befo’ de War; Echoes in Negro Dialect,” which was written

in ♦collaboration with Mr. A. C. Gordon. The next year a story

for boys entitled, “Two Little Confederates,” appeared in the “St.

Nicholas Magazine,” and was afterward published in book form. A

companion volume to this is “Among the Camps or Young People’s Stories

of the War.”

♦ ‘colaboration’ replaced with ‘collaboration’

Mr. Page has been a frequent contributor to the current magazines for

many years, and has also lectured extensively throughout the country.

In 1897 he went abroad for a tour of England and the Continent of

Europe. It is announced that on his return he will issue a new novel

which we understand, he has been engaged upon for some time and

expects to make the most pretentious work of his life up to this date.

* * * * *

OLD SUE.¹

(FROM “PASTIME STORIES.”)

¹ Copyright, Harper & Bros.

JUST on the other side of Ninth Street, outside of my office window,

was the stand of Old Sue, the “tug-mule” that pulled the green car

around the curve from Main Street to Ninth and up the hill to Broad.

Between her and the young bow-legged negro that hitched her on,

drove her up, and brought her back down the hill for the next car,

there always existed a peculiar friendship. He used to hold long

conversations with her, generally upbraiding her in that complaining

tone with opprobrious terms which the negroes employ, which she used

to take meekly. At times he petted her with his arm around her neck,

or teased her, punching her in the ribs and walking about around her

quarters, ostentatiously disregardful of her switching stump of a tail,

backed ears, and uplifted foot, and threatening her with all sorts of

direful punishment if she “jis dyarred to tetch” him.

“Kick me――heah, kick me; I jis dyah you to lay you’ foot ’g’inst me,”

he would say, standing defiantly against her as she appeared about to

let fly at him. Then he would seize her with a guffaw. Or at times,

coming down the hill, he would “hall off” and hit her, and “take out”

with her at his heels her long furry ears backed, and her mouth wide

open as if she would tear him to pieces; and just as she nearly caught

him he would come to a stand and wheel around, and she would stop dead,

and then walk on by him as sedately as if she were in a harrow. In

all the years of their association she never failed him; and she never

failed to fling herself on the collar, rounding the sharp curve at

Ninth, and to get the car up the difficult turn.

Last fall, however, the road passed into new hands, and the management

changed the old mules on the line, and put on a lot of new and green

horses. It happened to be a dreary, rainy day in November when the

first new team was put in. They came along about three o’clock. Old

Sue had been standing out in the pouring rain all day with her head

bowed, and her stubby tail tucked in, and her black back dripping.

She had never failed nor faltered. The tug-boy in an old rubber suit

and battered tarpauling hat, had been out also, his coat shining with

the wet. He and old Sue appeared to mind it astonishingly little. The

gutters were running brimming full, and the cobble-stones were wet and

slippery. The street cars were crowded inside and out, the wretched

people on the platforms vainly trying to shield themselves with

umbrellas held sideways. It was late in the afternoon when I first

observed that there was trouble at the corner. I thought at first that

there was an accident, but soon found that it was due to a pair of

new, balking horses in a car. Old Sue was hitched to the tug, and was

doing her part faithfully; finally she threw her weight on the collar,

and by sheer strength bodily dragged the car, horses and all, around

the curve and on up the straight track, until the horses, finding

themselves moving, went off with a rush, I saw the tug-boy shake his

head with pride, and heard him give a whoop of triumph. The next car

went up all right; but the next had a new team, and the same thing

occurred. The streets were like glass; the new horses got to slipping

and balking, and old Sue had to drag them up as she did before. From

this time it went from bad to worse: the rain changed to sleet, and

the curve at Ninth became a stalling-place for every car. Finally,

just at dark, there was a block there, and the cars piled up. I

intended to have taken a car on my way home, but finding it stalled,

I stepped into my friend Polk Miller’s drug-store, just on the corner,

to get a cigar and to keep warm. I could see through the blurred

glass of the door the commotion going on just outside, and could

hear the shouts of the driver and of the tug-boy mingled with the

clatter of horses’ feet as they reared and jumped, and the cracks of

the tug-boy’s whip as he called to Sue, “Git up, Sue, git up, Sue.”

Presently, I heard a shout, and then the tones changed, and things

got quiet.

A minute afterwards the door slowly opened, and the tug-boy came in

limping, his old hat pushed back on his head, and one leg of his wet

trousers rolled up to his knee, showing about four inches of black,

ashy skin, which he leaned over and rubbed as he walked. His wet face

wore a scowl, half pain, half anger. “Mist’ Miller, kin I use you’

telephone?” he asked, surlily. (The company had the privilege of using

it by courtesy.)

“Yes; there ’tis.”

He limped up, and still rubbing his leg with one hand, took the ’phone

off the hook with the other and put it to his ear.

“Hello, central――hello! Please gimme fo’ hund’ an’ sebenty-three on

three sixt’-fo’――fo’ hund’ an’ sebent’-three on three sixt’-fo’.

“Hello! Suh? Yas, suh; fo’ hund’ an’ sebent’-three on three sixt’-fo’.

_Street-car stables_ on three sixt’-fo’. Hello! Hello! Hello! Dat you,

streetcar stables? Hello! Yas. Who dat? Oh! Dat you, Mist’ Mellerdin?

Yas, suh; yes, suh; Jim; _Jim_; dis Jim. G-i-m, Jim. Yas, suh;

whar drive Ole Sue, in Mist’ Polk Miller’ drug-sto’――. Yas, suh.

‘Matter’?――Ole Sue――she done tu’n fool; done gone ’stracted. I can’t

do nuttin’ ’tall wid her. She ain’ got no sense. She oon pull a poun’.

Suh? Yas, suh. Nor, suh. Yas, suh. Nor, suh; I done try ev’ything. I

done beg her, done cuss her, done whup her mos’ to death. She ain’

got no reasonment. She oon do nuttin’. She done haul off, an’ leetle

mo’ knock my brains out; she done kick me right ’pon meh laig――’pon my

right laig.” (He stooped over and rubbed it again at the reflection.)

“Done bark it all up. Suh? Yas, suh. Tell nine o’clock? Yas,

suh; reckon so; ’ll try it leetle longer. Yas, suh; yas, suh.

Good-night――good-bye!”

He hung the ’phone back on the hook, stooped and rolled down the leg

of his breeches. “Thankee, Mist’ Miller! Good-night.”

He walked to the door, and opened it. As he passed slowly out, without

turning his head, he said, as if to himself, but to be heard by us,

“I wish I had a hundred an’ twenty-five dollars. I boun’ I’d buy dat

durned ole mule, an’ cut her dog-goned th’oat.”

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

EDWARD PAYSON ROE.

AUTHOR OF “BARRIERS BURNED AWAY.”

MR. ROE is not considered as one of the strongest of American

novelists; but that he was one of the most popular among the masses

of the people, from 1875 to the time of his death, goes without

saying. His novels were of a religious character, and while they were

doubtless lacking in the higher arts of the fictionist, he invariably

told an interesting story and pointed a healthy moral. “Barriers

Burned Away” is, perhaps, his best novel, and it has been declared

by certain critics to be at once one of the most vivid portrayals and

correct pictures of the great Chicago fire that occurred in 1871 which

has up to this time been written.

Edward Payson Roe was born at New Windsor, New York, in 1838, and died,

when fifty years of age, at Cornwall, the same State, in 1888. He was

being educated at Williams College, but had to leave before graduating

owing to an affection of the eyes. In consequence of his literary

work, however, the college in after years gave him the degree of

A. B. In 1862, he volunteered his services in the army and served as

chaplain throughout the Civil War. From 1865 to 1874 he was pastor

of the Presbyterian Church at Highland Falls, New York. In 1874 he

resigned his pastorate, and, to the time of his death, gave himself

to literature and to the cultivation of a small fruit farm.

Other works of this author, after “Barriers Burned Away,” are “Play

and Profit in my Garden” (1873); “What Can She Do?” (1873); “Opening

a Chestnut Burr” (1874); “From Jest to Earnest” (1875); “Near to

Nature’s Heart” (1876); “A Knight of the Nineteenth Century” (1877);

“A Face Illumined” (1878); “A Day of Fate” (1880); “Success with Small

Fruits” (1880); “Without a Home” (1880); “His Sombre Rivals” (1883);

“A Young Girl’s Wooing” (1884); “Nature’s Serial Story” (1884); “An

Original Belle” (1885); “Driven Back to Eden” (1885); “He Fell in

Love with His Wife” (1886); “The Earth Trembled” (1887); “Miss Lou”

(1888); “The Home Acre” (1889) and “Taken Alive” (1889), the two last

mentioned being published after the death of the author.

* * * * *

CHRISTINE, AWAKE FOR YOUR LIFE!¹

¹ Copyright, Dodd, Mead & Co.

FOR a block or more Dennis was passively borne along by the rushing

mob. Suddenly a voice seemed to shout almost in his ear, “The north

side is burning!” and he started as from a dream. The thought of

Christine flashed upon him, perishing, perhaps, in the flames. He

remembered that now she had no protector, and that he for the moment

had forgotten her; though in truth he had never imagined that she

could be imperiled by the burning of the north side.

In an agony of fear and anxiety he put forth every effort of which he

was capable, and tore through the crowd as if mad. There was no way of

getting across the river now save by the La Salle street tunnel. Into

this dark passage he plunged with multitudes of others. It was indeed

as near Pandemonium as any earthly condition could be. Driven forward

by the swiftly pursuing flames, hemmed in on every side, a shrieking,

frenzied, terror-stricken throng rushed into the black cavern. Every

moral grade was represented there. Those who led abandoned lives were

plainly recognizable, their guilty consciences finding expression in

their livid faces. These jostled the refined and delicate lady, who,

in the awful democracy of the hour, brushed against thief and harlot.

Little children wailed for their lost parents, and many were trampled

underfoot. Parents cried for their children, women shrieked for their

husbands, some praying, many cursing with oaths as hot as the flames

that crackled near. Multitudes were in no other costumes than those

in which they had sprung from their beds. Altogether it was a strange,

incongruous, writhing mass of humanity, such as the world had never

looked upon, pouring into what might seem, in its horrors, the mouth

of hell.

As Dennis entered the utter darkness, a confused roar smote his ear

that might have appalled the stoutest heart, but he was now oblivious

to everything save Christine’s danger. With set teeth he put his

shoulder against the living mass and pushed with the strongest till he

emerged into the glare of the north side. Here, escaping somewhat from

the throng, he made his way rapidly to the Ludolph mansion, which to

his joy he found was still considerably to the windward of the fire.

But he saw that from the southwest another line of flame was bearing

down upon it.

The front door was locked, and the house utterly dark. He rang the

bell furiously, but there was no response. He walked around under the

window and shouted, but the place remained as dark and silent as a

tomb. He pounded on the door, but its massive thickness scarcely

admitted of a reverberation.

“They must have escaped,” he said; “but merciful heaven! there must be

no uncertainty in this case. What shall I do?”

The windows of the lower story were all strongly guarded and

hopeless, but one opening on the balcony of Christine’s studio seemed

practicable, if it could be reached. A half-grown elm swayed its

graceful branches over the balcony, and Dennis knew the tough and

fibrous nature of this tree. In the New England woods of his early

home he had learned to climb for nuts like a squirrel, and so with no

great difficulty he mounted the trunk and dropped from an overhanging

branch to the point he sought. The window was down at the top, but

the lower sash was fastened. He could see the catch by the light

of the fire. He broke the pane of glass nearest it, hoping that the

crash might awaken Christine, if she were still there. But, after the

clatter died away, there was no sound. He then noisily raised the sash

and stepped in....

There was no time for sentiment. He called loudly: “Miss Ludolph,

awake! awake! for your life!”

There was no answer. “She must be gone,” he said. The front room,

facing toward the west, he knew to be her sleeping-apartment. Going

through the passage, he knocked loudly, and called again; but in the

silence that followed he heard his own watch tick, and his heart beat.

He pushed the door open with the feeling of one profaning a shrine,

and looked timidly in....

She lay with her face toward him. Her hair of gold, unconfined,

streamed over the pillow; one fair, round arm, from which her

night-robe had slipped back, was clasped around her head, and a

flickering ray of light, finding access at the window, played upon

her face and neck with the strangest and most weird effect.

So deep was her slumber that she seemed dead, and Dennis, in his

overwrought state, thought she was. For a moment his heart stood

still, and his tongue was paralyzed. A distant explosion aroused him.

Approaching softly he said, in an awed whisper (he seemed powerless to

speak louder), “Miss Ludolph!――Christine!”

But the light of the coming fire played and flickered over the still,

white face, that never before had seemed so strangely beautiful.

“Miss Ludolph!――O Christine, awake!” cried Dennis, louder.

To his wonder and unbounded perplexity, he saw the hitherto motionless

lips wreathe themselves into a lovely smile, but otherwise there was

no response....

A louder and nearer explosion, like a warning voice, made him wholly

desperate, and he roughly seized her hand.

Christine’s blue eyes opened wide with a bewildered stare; a look of

the wildest terror came into them, and she started up and shrieked,

“Father! father!”

Then, turning toward the as yet unknown invader, she cried piteously:

“Oh, spare my life! Take everything; I will give you anything you ask,

only spare my life!”

She evidently thought herself addressing a ruthless robber.

Dennis retreated towards the door the moment she awakened; and this

somewhat reassured her.

In the firm, quiet tone that always calms excitement, he replied, “I

only ask you to give me your confidence, Miss Ludolph, and to join

with me, Dennis Fleet, in my effort to save your life.”

“Dennis Fleet! Dennis Fleet! save my life! O ye gods, what does it all

mean?” and she passed her hand in bewilderment across her brow, as if

to brush away the wild fancies of a dream.

“Miss Ludolph, as you love your life, arouse yourself and escape! The

city is burning!”

When Dennis returned, he found Christine panting helplessly on a chair.

“Oh, dress! dress!” he cried. “We have not a moment to spare.”

The sparks and cinders were falling about the house, a perfect storm

of fire. The roof was already blazing, and smoke was pouring down the

stairs.

At his suggestion she had at first laid out a heavy woolen dress and

Scotch plaid shawl. She nervously sought to put on the dress, but her

trembling fingers could not fasten it over her wildly throbbing bosom.

Dennis saw that in the terrible emergency he must act the part of a

brother or husband, and, springing forward, he assisted her with the

dexterity he had learned in childhood.

Just then a blazing piece of roof, borne on the wings of the gale,

crashed through the window, and in a moment the apartment, that had

seemed like a beautiful casket for a still more exquisite jewel, was

in flames.

Hastily wrapping Christine in the blanket shawl, he snatched her,

crying and wringing her hands, into the street.

Holding his hand she ran two or three blocks with all the speed her

wild terror prompted; then her strength began to fail, and she

pantingly cried that she could run no longer. But this rapid rush

carried them out of immediate peril, and brought them into the flying

throng pressing their way northward and westward.

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD.

(OUR MOST COSMOPOLITAN NOVELIST.)

ANDREW Lang has pronounced Marion Crawford “the most versatile of

modern novelists.” It may also be truly said that he is the most

cosmopolitan of all our American authors. One feels after reading his

stories of life and society in India, Italy, England and America that

the author does not belong anywhere in particular, but is rather a

citizen of the world in general.

He drew from nearly every country of culture for his education, and

the result is clearly apparent in his voluminous and varied works.

He is one of the rare and favored few who have stumbled almost by

accident upon fame and who have increased their early fame by later

labors.

Marion Crawford was born in Italy in 1854. His father was a native

of Ireland, a sculptor of repute, and his mother was an American, a

sister of Julia Ward Howe. His father died when he was three years old,

and he was put with relatives on a farm in Bordentown, N. J., where

he had a French governess. At a suitable age he was sent to St. Paul’s

School in New Hampshire, and later he studied with a country clergyman

in England. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he showed an

aptitude for mathematics.

After studying in the Universities of Heidelberg, Carlesruhe and Rome,

he went to India to make a thorough study of Sanscrit. Here his funds

gave out and left him nearly stranded with no prospects of improvement.

Just as he was on the point of joining the Anglo-Indian army, he

was offered the position of editor on the “Allahabad Herald,” in an

unhealthy town a thousand miles from Bombay. The work was extremely

difficult and absorbing for one who had never had previous connection

with a newspaper, requiring sixteen hours of daily work in a climate

of excessive heat.

After resigning this position he returned to Italy and took passage

on a “tramp” steamer for America. He was wrecked, after a six

weeks’ voyage, and thrown on the coast of Bermuda. With these varied

experiences he had stored up in a fertile memory material for his

numerous novels. It was his first intention to continue his Sanscrit

studies at Harvard, but a circumstance of the simplest nature revealed

to him and to the world his remarkable powers as a story-teller.

He has himself told how he came to write “Mr. Isaacs,” his first novel.

“On May 5, 1882, Uncle Sam (Samuel Ward) asked me to dine with him at

the New York Club, which was then in the building on Madison Square

now called the Madison Square bank building. We had dined rather early

and were sitting in the smoking-room, while it was still light. As

was natural we began to exchange stories while smoking, and I told him

with a good deal of detail my recollections of an interesting man whom

I had met in Sinila. When I finished he said to me, ‘That is a good

two-part magazine story, and you must write it out immediately.’ He

took me round to his apartments, and that night I began to write the

story of ‘Mr. Isaacs.’ I kept at it from day to day, getting more and

more interested in the work as I proceeded. I was so amused with the

writing of it that it occurred to me that I might as well make Mr.

Isaacs fall in love with an English girl, and then I kept on writing

to see what would happen. By and by I remembered a mysterious Buddhist

whom I had once met, so I introduced him to still further complicate

matters.”

He was in Canada working on “Dr. Claudius” when “Mr. Isaacs” was

issued by the publisher. When he reached Boston on his return he

found the news-stands covered with posters announcing the famous story

of “Mr. Isaacs,” and he himself was “interviewed,” and solicited by

magazine publishers to give them a new story at once. “Dr. Claudius,”

was soon ready and though less romantic found a host of readers. His

constructive powers increased as he devoted himself to his art and

books came from his pen in rapid succession. In 1883 he went to Italy

and in the following year he married the daughter of General Berdan

and established himself in a lovely villa at Sorrento where he has

since lived, writing either in his villa or on board his yacht.

His third book, a tragic tale of Roman society, is called “To Leeward.”

His most popular novels is the trilogy, describing the fortunes of a

noble Italian family, woven in with the history of Modern Rome, from

1865 to 1887. They are in their order “Saracinesca,” “Sant’ Ilario”

and “Don Orsino.” This historical trilogy depicts with much power the

last struggle of the papacy for temporal power.

In 1885 he issued “Zoroaster,” a story of ancient Persia, with King

Darius and the prophet Daniel for characters.

“Marzio’s Crucifix” (1887) was written in ten days. Marion Crawford

had studied silver carving with a skilful workman and the idea

suggested itself to him to write a story of an atheist who should put

his life and soul into the carving of a crucifix.

“The Lonely Parish” was written in twenty-four days. The author had

promised a novel at a certain date and the imperious publisher held

him to his promise. He had studied with a clergyman in the little

English village of Hatfield Regis, and to make his story he simply

lifted that little village bodily out of his memory and put it into

his novel, even to the extent of certain real names and localities.

His other chief works are: “Witch of Prague” (1892), “Greifenstein,”

“Paul Patoff” (1887), “The Three Fates,” “Katherine Lauterdale,” “The

Ralstones,” and “Pietro Ghisleri.”

* * * * *

HORACE BELLINGHAM.¹

(FROM “DR. CLAUDIUS.”)

¹ Copyright, MacMillan & Co.

AY, but he was a sight to do good to the souls of the hungry and

thirsty, and of the poor and in misery!...

There are some people who turn gray, but who do not grow hoary, whose

faces are furrowed but not wrinkled, whose hearts are sore wounded in

many places, but are not dead. There is a youth that bids defiance to

age, and there is a kindness which laughs at the world’s rough usage.

These are they who have returned good for evil, not having learned it

as a lesson of righteousness, but because they have no evil in them

to return upon others. Whom the gods love die young because they never

grow old. The poet, who, at the verge of death, said this, said it of

and to this very man.

* * * * *

IN THE HIMALAYAS.¹

(FROM “MR. ISAACS.”)

¹ Copyright, MacMillan & Co.

THE lower Himalayas are at first extremely disappointing. The scenery

is enormous but not grand, and at first hardly seems large. The lower

parts are at first sight a series of gently undulating hills and

wooded dells; in some places it looks as if one might almost hunt the

country. It is long before you realize that it is all on a gigantic

scale; that the quick-set hedges are belts of rhododendrons of full

growth, the water-jumps rivers, and the stone walls mountain-ridges;

that to hunt a country like that you would have to ride a horse at

least two hundred feet high. You cannot see at first, or even for

some time, that the gentle-looking hill is a mountain of five or

six thousand feet above the level of the Rhigi Kulm in Switzerland.

Persons who are familiar with the aspect of the Rocky Mountains are

aware of the singular lack of dignity in those enormous elevations.

They are merely big, without any superior beauty until you come to the

favored spots of nature’s art, where some great contrast throws into

appalling relief the gulf between the high and the low. It is so in

the Himalayas. You may travel for hours and days amidst vast forests

and hills without the slightest sensation of pleasure or sense of

admiration for the scene, till suddenly your path leads you out on to

the dizzy brink of an awful precipice――a sheer fall, so exaggerated

in horror that your most stirring memories of Mont Blanc, the

Jungfrau, and the hideous arête of the Pitz Bernina, sink into vague

insignificance. The gulf that divides you from the distant mountain

seems like a huge bite taken bodily out of the world by some voracious

god; far away rise snow-peaks such as were not dreamt of in your Swiss

tour; the bottomless valley at your feet is misty and gloomy with

blackness, streaked with mist, while the peaks above shoot gladly to

the sun and catch his broadside rays like majestic white standards.

Between you, as you stand leaning cautiously against the hill behind

you, and the wonderful background far away in front, floats a strange

vision, scarcely moving, but yet not still. A great golden shield

sails steadily in vast circles, sending back the sunlight in every

tint of burnished glow. The golden eagle of the Himalayas hangs in

mid-air, a sheet of polished metal to the eye, pausing sometimes in

the full blaze of reflection, as ages ago the sun and the moon stood

still in the valley of the Ajalon; too magnificent for description,

as he is too dazzling to look at. The whole scene, if no greater name

can be given to it, is on a scale so Titanic in its massive length

and breadth and depth, that you stand utterly trembling and weak

and foolish as you look for the first time. You have never seen such

masses of the world before.

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

FRANCIS RICHARD STOCKTON.

POPULAR among the writers of lighter fiction in modern times, who

have delighted the multitudes from the realms of childhood to almost

every walk of life, few authors have been more prolific and generally

popular than the illustrator of “Vanity Fair” and the author of “The

Lady or the Tiger.”

Frank Stockton (for with the masses he is plain “Frank”) was born

in Philadelphia, Pa., April 5, 1834. He had the benefit of only

such educational training as the public schools and the Central High

School of that city afforded. Originally, his ambition was to be an

engraver, and he devoted a number of years to that calling,――engraving

and designing on wood for the comic paper published in New York

City, before the war, under the title of “Vanity Fair.” He also made

pictures for other illustrated periodicals; and at the same time

he also did literary and journalistic work, his first connection

being with the Philadelphia “Post.” In 1872 he abandoned his

engraving altogether to accept an editorial position on the New York

“Hearthstone,” and later he joined the staff of “Scribner’s Monthly,”

which has since been converted into the “Century Magazine.” He was

also made assistant editor of “St. Nicholas Magazine,” when it was

established in 1873, in connection with Mary Mapes Dodge, the famous

child writer. In 1880 Mr. Stockton resigned his editorial position to

devote himself to purely literary work. Since that time he has been

before the world as a contributor to magazines on special topics and

as a writer of books.

Few authors have been more industrious than Frank Stockton. During

the last thirty years his fertile imagination and busy pen have

contributed at least one new book almost every year, frequently two

volumes and sometimes three coming out in the course of twelve months.

His first published volume was a collection of stories for children

issued in 1869 under the title of “Ting-a-Ling Stories.” Then came

“Round About Rambles;” “What Might Have Been Expected;” “Tales Out

of School;” “A Jolly Fellowship;” “The Floating Prince;” “The Story

of Viteau;” and “Personally Conducted.” The above are all for young

people and were issued between 1869 and 1889. Many now grown-up men

and women look back with pleasant recollections to the happy hours

spent with these books when they were boys and girls.

Of the many other volumes of novels and short stories which Mr.

Stockton has written, the following are, perhaps, the best known:

“Rudder Grange” (1879); “Lady or the Tiger and Other Stories” (1884);

“The Late Mrs. Mull” (1886); “The Christmas Wreck and Other Tales”

(1887); “The Great War Syndicates” (1889); “Stories of Three Burglars”

(1890); “The Merry Chanter” (1890); and following this came “Ardis

♦Claverden,” and since that several other serial novels have been

published in the magazines.

♦ ‘Cloverden’ replaced with ‘Claverden’

Mr. Stockton has also written some poetry; but he is pre-eminently a

story-teller, and it is to his prose writings that he is indebted for

the popularity which he enjoys. His stories are direct and clear in

method and style, while their humor is quiet, picturesque and quaint.

* * * * *

THE END OF A CAREER.¹

(FROM “THE MERRY CHANTER.”)

¹ The Century Co., New York. Copyright, Frank R. Stockton.

FOR two years Doris and I had been engaged to be married. The first of

these years appeared to us about as long as any ordinary year, but the

second seemed to stretch itself out to the length of fifteen or even

eighteen months. There had been many delays and disappointments in

that year.

We were both young enough to wait and both old enough to know we ought

to wait; and so we waited. But, as we frequently admitted to ourselves,

there was nothing particularly jolly in this condition of things.

Every young man should have sufficient respect for himself to make him

hesitate before entering into a matrimonial alliance in which he would

have to be supported by his wife. This would have been the case had

♦Doris and I married within those two years.

♦ ‘Dorris’ replaced with ‘Doris’

I am by profession an analyzer of lava. Having been from my boyhood

an enthusiastic student of mineralogy and geology, I gradually became

convinced that there was no reason why precious metals and precious

stones should not be found at spots on the earth where nature herself

attended to the working of her own mines. That is to say, that I can

see no reason why a volcano should not exist at a spot where there

were valuable mineral deposits; and this being the case, there is no

reason why those deposits should not be thrown out during eruptions

in a melted form, or unmelted and mixed with the ordinary lava.

Hoping to find proof of the correctness of my theory, I have analyzed

lava from a great many volcanoes. I have not been able to afford to

travel much, but specimens have been sent to me from various parts of

the world. My attention was particularly turned to extinct volcanoes;

for should I find traces of precious deposits in the lava of one of

these, not only could its old lava beds be worked, but by artificial

means eruptions of a minor order might be produced, and fresher and

possibly richer material might be thrown out.

But I had not yet received any specimen of lava which encouraged me to

begin workings in the vicinity in which it was found.

My theories met with little favor from other scientists, but this did

not discourage me. Should success come it would be very great.

Doris had expectations which she sometimes thought might reasonably be

considered great ones, but her actual income was small. She had now no

immediate family, and for some years lived with what she called “law

kin.” She was of a most independent turn of mind, and being of age

could do what she pleased with her own whenever it should come to her.

My own income was extremely limited, and what my actual necessities

allowed me to spare from it was devoted to the collection of the

specimens on the study of which I based the hopes of my fortunes.

In regard to our future alliance, Doris depended mainly upon her

expectations, and she did not hesitate, upon occasion, frankly and

plainly to tell me so. Naturally I objected to such dependence, and

anxiously looked forward to the day when a little lump of lava might

open before me a golden future which I might honorably ask any woman

to share. But I do not believe that anything I said upon this subject

influenced the ideas of Doris.

The lady of my love was a handsome girl, quick and active of mind and

body, nearly always of a lively mood, and sometimes decidedly gay. She

had seen a good deal of the world and the people in it, and was “up,”

as she put it, in a great many things. Moreover, she declared that she

had “a heart for any fate.” It has sometimes occurred to me that this

remark would better be deferred until the heart and the fate had had

an opportunity of becoming acquainted with each other.

We lived not far apart in a New England town, and calling upon her one

evening I was surprised to find the lively Doris in tears. Her tears

were not violent, however, and she quickly dried them; and, without

waiting for any inquiries on my part, she informed me of the cause of

her trouble.

“The _Merry Chanter_ has come in,” she said.

“Come in!” I ejaculated.

“Yes,” she answered, “and that is not the worst of it; it has been in

a long time.”

I knew all about the _Merry Chanter_. This was a ship. It was her ship

which was to come in. Years ago this ship had been freighted with the

ventures of her family, and had sailed for far-off seas. The results

of those ventures, together with the ship itself, now belonged to

Doris. They were her expectations.

“But why does this grieve you?” I asked. “Why do you say that the

coming of the ship, to which you have been looking forward with so

much ardor, is not the worst of it?”

“Because it isn’t,” she answered. “The rest is a great deal worse. The

whole affair is a doleful failure. I had a letter to-day from Mooseley,

a little town on the sea-coast. The _Merry Chanter_ came back there

three years ago with nothing in it. What has become of what it carried

out, or what it ought to have brought back, nobody seems to know. The

captain and the crew left it the day after its arrival at Mooseley.

Why they went away, or what they took with them, I have not heard,

but a man named Asa Cantling writes me that the _Merry Chanter_ has

been lying at his wharf for three years; that he wants to be paid the

wharfage that is due him; and that for a long time he has been trying

to find out to whom the ship belongs. At last he has discovered that

I am the sole owner, and he sends to me his bill for wharfage, stating

that he believes it now amounts to more than the vessel is worth.”

“Absurd!” I cried. “Any vessel must be worth more than its wharfage

rates for three years. This man must be imposing upon you.”

Doris did not answer. She was looking drearily out of the window at

the moonlighted landscape. Her heart and her fate had come together,

and they did not appear to suit each other.

I sat silent, also, reflecting. I looked at the bill which she had

handed to me, and then I reflected again, gazing out of the window at

the moonlighted landscape.

It so happened that I then had on hand a sum of money equal to the

amount of this bill, which amount was made up not only of wharfage

rates, but of other expenses connected with the long stay of the

vessel at Asa Cantling’s wharf.

My little store of money was the result of months of savings and a

good deal of personal self-denial. Every cent of it had its mission

in one part of the world or another. It was intended solely to carry

on the work of my life, my battle for fortune. It was to show me, in

a wider and more thorough manner than had ever been possible before,

what chance there was for my finding the key which should unlock for

me the treasures in the storehouse of the earth.

I thought for a few minutes longer, and then I said, “Doris, if you

should pay this bill and redeem the vessel, what good would you gain?”

She turned quickly towards me. “I should gain a great deal of good,”

she said. “In the first place I should be relieved of a soul-chilling

debt. Isn’t that a good? And of a debt, too, which grows heavier every

day. Mr. Cantling writes that it will be difficult to sell the ship,

for it is not the sort that the people thereabout want. And if he

breaks it up he will not get half the amount of his bill. And so there

it must stay, piling wharfage on wharfage, and all sorts of other

expenses on those that have gone before, until I become the leading

woman bankrupt of the world.”

“But if you paid the money and took the ship,” I asked, “what would

you do with it?”

“I know exactly what I would do with it,” said Doris. “It is my

inheritance, and I would take that ship and make our fortunes. I would

begin in a humble way just as people begin in other businesses. I

would carry hay, codfish, ice, anything, from one port to another.

And when I had made a little money in this way I would sail away to

the Orient and come back loaded with rich stuffs and spices.”

“Did the people who sailed the ship before do that?” I asked.

“I have not the slightest doubt of it,” she answered; “and they ran

away with the proceeds. I do not know that you can feel as I do,”

she continued. “The _Merry Chanter_ is mine. It is my all. For years

I have looked forward to what it might bring me. It has brought me

nothing but a debt, but I feel that it can be made to do better than

that, and my soul is on fire to make it do better.”

It is not difficult to agree with a girl who looks as this one looked

and who speaks as this one spoke.

“Doris,” I exclaimed, “if you go into that sort of thing I go with you.

I will set the _Merry Chanter_ free.”

“How can you do it?” she cried.

“Doris,” I said, “hear me. Let us be cool and practical.”

“I think neither of us is very cool,” she said, “and perhaps not very

practical. But go on.”

“I can pay this bill,” I said, “but in doing it I shall abandon all

hope of continuing what I have chosen as my life work; the career

which I have marked out for myself will be ended. Would you advise

me to do this? And if I did it would you marry me now with nothing

to rely upon but our little incomes and what we could make from your

ship? Now, do not be hasty. Think seriously, and tell me what you

would advise me to do.”

She answered instantly, “Take me, and the _Merry Chanter_.”

I gave up my career.

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

EDWARD BELLAMY.

THE AUTHOR OF “LOOKING BACKWARD.”

THE most remarkable sensation created by any recent American author

was perhaps awakened by Edward Bellamy’s famous book, “Looking

Backward,” of which over a half million copies have been sold in this

country alone, and more than as many more on the other side of the

Atlantic. This book was issued from the press in 1887, and maintained

for several years an average sale of 100,000 copies per year in

America alone. In 1897 a demand for sociological literature in England

called for the printing of a quarter of a million copies in that

country within the space of a few months, and the work has been

translated into the languages of almost every civilized country on

the earth. Its entire sale throughout the world is probably beyond

two million copies.

Mr. Bellamy’s ideal as expressed in this book is pure communism, and

the work is no doubt the outgrowth of the influence of Emersonian

teaching, originally illustrated in the Brook Farm experiment. As

for Mr. Bellamy’s dream, it can never be realized until man’s heart

is entirely reformed and the promised millennium shall dawn upon the

earth; but that such an ideal state is ♦pleasant to contemplate is

evinced by the great popularity and enormous sale of his book. In

order to give his theory a touch of human sympathy and to present the

matter in a manner every way appropriate, Mr. Bellamy causes his hero

to go to sleep, at the hands of a mesmerist, in an underground vault

and to awake, undecayed, in the perfect vigor of youth, one hundred

years later, to find if not a new heaven, at least a new earth so far

as its former social conditions were concerned. Selfishness was all

gone from man, universal peace and ♠happiness reigned over the earth,

and all things were owned in common. The story is well constructed and

well written, and captivates the reader’s imagination.

♦ ‘pleasent’ replaced with ‘pleasant’

♠ ‘happines’ replaced with ‘happiness’

Edward Bellamy was born in Boston, ♦Massachusetts, on March 26th,

1850. He attended Union College, but did not graduate. After studying

in Germany he read law and was admitted to the bar in 1871 and has

since practiced his profession, at the same time doing journalistic

and literary work. For several years he was assistant editor of the

“Springfield (Mass.) Union” and an editorial writer for the New York

“Evening Post.” He has also contributed a number of articles to the

magazines. His books are “Six to One, a Nantucket Idyl” (1877); “Dr.

Heidenhoff’s Process” (1879); “Miss ♠Ludington’s Sister: a romance of

Immortality” (1884); “Looking Backward” (1887); “Equality: a Romance

of the future” (1897). The last named is a continuation of the same

theme as “Looking Backward,” being more argumentative and entering

into the recent conditions of society and new phases of politics and

industrial questions. It is a larger book and a deeper study than its

predecessor. The work was issued simultaneously in the United States,

Great Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Spain, and other

countries. Owing to the recent interest in sociological literature

it is believed by Mr. Bellamy and his publishers that this book

will attain as wide a popularity as his other work on the subject.

Mr. Bellamy’s writings have caused the founding of nationalist and

communistic clubs throughout the United States, and his influence for

the last few years has been powerfully felt in European countries.

If this movement should continue to grow there is little doubt but

Mr. Bellamy will be honored in the future for the impetus his books

have given to communistic doctrines.

♦ ‘Massachsetts’ replaced with ‘Massachusetts’

♠ “Luddington’s” replaced with “Ludington’s”

The home of this author, near Boston, is said to be an ideal one,

presided over by a most amiable wife, who is in hearty sympathy

with her literary husband, both in his ideals and in his work. They

have several bright children, and their home has been pointed out

by reviewers as a remarkably happy one, constituting within itself

something of a miniature illustration of the ideal community which his

theory portrays, if, indeed, it may not be said to heartily advocate.

* * * * *

MUSIC IN THE YEAR 2000.

(FROM “LOOKING BACKWARD.”)

_By Permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co._

WHEN we arrived home, Dr. Leete had not yet returned, and Mrs. Leete

was not visible. “Are you fond of music, Mr. West?” Edith asked.

I assured her that it was half of life, according to my notion. “I

ought to apologize for inquiring,” she said. “It is not a question we

ask one another nowadays; but I have read that in your day, even among

the cultured class, there were some who did not care for music.”

“You must remember, in excuse,” I said, “that we had some rather

absurd kinds of music.”

“Yes,” she said, “I know that; I am afraid I should not have fancied

it all myself. Would you like to hear some of ours now, Mr. West?”

“Nothing would delight me so much as to listen to you,” I said.

“To me!” she exclaimed, laughing. “Did you think I was going to play

or sing to you?”

“I hoped so, certainly,” I replied.

Seeing that I was a little abashed, she subdued her merriment and

explained. “Of course, we all sing nowadays as a matter of course

in the training of the voice, and some learn to play instruments for

their private amusement; but the professional music is so much grander

and more perfect than any performance of ours, and so easily commanded

when we wish to hear it, that we don’t think of calling our singing or

playing music at all. All the really fine singers and players are in

the musical service, and the rest of us hold our peace for the main

part. But would you really like to hear some music?”

I assured her once more that I would.

“Come, then, into the music-room,” she said, and I followed her into

an apartment finished, without hangings, in wood, with a floor of

polished wood. I was prepared for new devices in musical instruments,

but I saw nothing in the room which by any stretch of imagination

could be conceived as such. It was evident that my puzzled appearance

was affording intense amusement to Edith.

“Please look at to-day’s music,” she said, handing me a card, “and

tell me what you would prefer. It is now five o’clock, you will

remember.”

The card bore the date “September 12, 2000,” and contained the longest

programme of music I had ever seen. It was as various as it was long,

including a most extraordinary range of vocal and instrumental solos,

duets, quartettes, and various orchestral combinations. I remained

bewildered by the prodigious list until Edith’s pink finger-tip

indicated a peculiar section of it, where several selections were

bracketed, with the words “5 P. M.” against them; then I observed that

this prodigious programme was an all-day one, divided into twenty-four

sections answering to the hours. There were but a few pieces of

music in the “5 P. M.” section, and I indicated an organ piece as my

preference.

“I am so glad you like the organ,” said she.

“I think there is scarcely any music that suits my mood oftener.”

She made me sit down comfortably, and, crossing the room, so far as I

could see, merely touched one or two screws, and at once the room was

filled with the music of a grand organ anthem; filled, not flooded,

for, by some means, the volume of melody had been perfectly graduated

to the size of the department. I listened, scarcely breathing, to the

close. Such music, so perfectly rendered, I had never expected to hear.

“Grand!” I cried, as the last great wave of the sound broke and ebbed

away into silence. “Bach must be at the keys of that organ; but where

is the organ?”

“Wait a moment, please,” said Edith; “I want to have you listen to

this waltz before you ask any questions. I think it is perfectly

charming;” and as she spoke the sound of violins filled the room

with the witchery of a summer night. When this also ceased, she said:

“There is nothing in the least mysterious about the music, as you

seem to imagine. It is not made by fairies or genii, but by good,

honest, and exceedingly clever good hands. We have simply carried

the idea of labor-saving by co-operation into our musical service as

into everything else. There are a number of music rooms in the city,

perfectly adapted acoustically to the different sorts of music. These

halls are connected by telephone with all the houses of the city

whose people care to pay the small fee, and there are none, you may be

sure, who do not. The corps of musicians attached to each hall is so

large that, although no individual performer, or group of performers,

has more than a brief part, each day’s programme lasts through the

twenty-four hours. There are on that card for to-day, as you will see

if you observe closely, distinct programmes of four of these concerts,

each of a different order of music from the others, being now

simultaneously performed, and any one of the four pieces now going

on that you prefer, you can hear by merely pressing the button which

will connect your house-wire with the hall where it is being rendered.

The programmes are so co-ordinated that the pieces at any one time

simultaneously proceeding in the different halls usually offer a

choice, not only between instrumental and vocal, and between different

sorts of instruments; but also between different motives from grave to

gay, so that all tastes and moods can be suited.”

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

GEORGE W. CABLE.

“THE DEPICTOR OF CREOLE LIFE IN THE SOUTH.”

IT is said “Circumstances make the man;” and, again, “Seeming

misfortunes are often blessings in disguise.” Whether this is

generally true or not, at least in the case of George W. Cable, it

has so turned out; for it was poverty and necessity that drove him

through a vicissitude of circumstances which stored his mind with

observations and facts that enabled him to open a new field of fiction,

introducing to the outside world a phase of American life hitherto

unsuspected save by those who have seen it. His rendering of the

Creole dialect with its French and Spanish variations and mixtures is

full of originality. He has depicted the social life of the Louisiana

lowlands, with its Creole and negro population, so vividly that many

whose portraits he has drawn have taken serious offence at his books.

But it is no doubt _the truth that hurts_, and if so, it should be

borne for the sake of history, and it is to the credit of Mr. Cable’s

integrity as an author that he has not sacrificed the truth to please

his friends. His books have also been the means of effecting wholesome

changes in the contract system of convict labor in several Southern

States.

George W. Cable was born October 12, 1844, in New Orleans, Louisiana.

His father was a Virginian and his mother a New Englander. They

removed to New Orleans in 1837. In 1859 Mr. Cable failed in business

and died soon after, leaving the family in a straightened condition,

and the son――then fifteen years of age――was compelled to leave school

and take a clerkship in a store. This he retained until, at the age

of nineteen, he volunteered in the service of the Confederate Army,

joining the Fourth Mississippi Cavalry, and followed the fortunes

of the Southern cause until it was lost. He was said to have been a

gallant soldier, was once wounded and narrowly escaped with his life.

All his spare moments in camp were given to study.

After the surrender of General Lee, Cable――a young man of

twenty-one――returned to New Orleans, penniless, and took employment

as an errand boy in a store. From there he drifted to Kosciusko,

Mississippi, where he studied civil engineering, and joined a

surveying party on bayous Têche and Atchafalaya――the native heath

of the Creole――and it was here that his keen observation gathered

the material which has since done him so much service.

Cable first began writing to the “New Orleans Picayune” under the

_nom-de-plume_ of “Drop Shot,” and his articles evinced a power which

soon opened the way to a regular place on the editorial staff of

the paper. This position he retained until he was asked to write a

theatrical criticism. Cable had rigid religious scruples――piety being

one of his marked characteristics――always avoided attendance of the

theatre, and he now refused to go, and resigned his position rather

than violate his conscience.

Leaving the editorial rooms of the “Picayune,” Cable secured a

position as accountant in a cotton-dealer’s office, which he retained

until 1879, when the death of his employer threw him out of position.

Meantime his sketches of Creole life had been appearing in “Scribner’s

Monthly,” and were received with so much favor that he determined

to leave business and devote his life to literature. Accordingly, in

1885, he removed North, living at Simsbury, Connecticut, Northampton,

Massachusetts, and New York, which he has since made his headquarters,

with a continual growing popularity, his books bringing him an ample

competency.

Among the published works of this author we mention as the most

prominent: “Old Creole Days” (1879–1883); “The Grandissimes” (1880);

“Madame Delphine” (1881); “Dr. Sevier” (1883); “The Creoles of

Louisiana” (1884); “The Silent South” (1885); “Bonaventure” (1888);

“Strange True Stories of Louisiana” (1889); “The Negro Question” and

“Life of William Gilmore Sims” (1890); “John March Southerner,” and

some later works which the author continues to add at the rate of one

book a year.

Mr. Cable has also successfully entered the lecture field, in common

with other modern authors, and never fails to interest Northern

audiences with his readings or recitations, from his writings or the

strange wild melodies and peculiar habits of life current among the

French speaking negroes of the lower Mississippi.

* * * * *

THE DOCTOR.¹

(FROM “DR. SEVIER.”)

¹ Copyright, George W. Cable.

THE main road to wealth in New Orleans has long been Carondelet Street.

There you see the most alert faces; noses――it seems to one――with

more and sharper edge, and eyes smaller and brighter and with less

distance between them than one notices in other streets. It is there

that the stock and bond brokers hurry to and fro and run together

promiscuously――the cunning and the simple, the headlong and the

wary――at the four clanging strokes of the Stock Exchange gong. There

rises the tall façade of the Cotton Exchange. Looking in from the

sidewalk as you pass, you see its main hall, thronged but decorous,

the quiet engine-room of the surrounding city’s most far-reaching

occupation, and at the hall’s farther end you descry the “Future

Room,” and hear the unearthly ramping and bellowing of the bulls and

bears. Up and down the street, on either hand, are the ship-brokers

and insurers, and in the upper stories foreign consuls among a

multitude of lawyers and notaries.

In 1856 this street was just assuming its present character. The

cotton merchants were making it their favorite place of commercial

domicile. The open thoroughfare served in lieu of the present

exchanges; men made fortunes standing on the curbstone, and during

bank hours the sidewalks were perpetually crowded with cotton factors,

buyers, brokers, weighers, reweighers, classers, pickers, pressers,

and samplers, and the air was laden with cotton quotations and

prognostications.

Number 3½, second floor, front, was the office of Dr. Sevier. This

office was convenient to everything. Immediately under its windows lay

the sidewalks where congregated the men who, of all in New Orleans,

could best afford to pay for being sick, and least desired to die.

Canal Street, the city’s leading artery, was just below, at the near

left-hand corner. Beyond it lay the older town, not yet impoverished

in those days,――the French quarter. A single square and a half off

at the right, and in plain view from the front windows, shone the

dazzling white walls of the St. Charles Hotel, where the nabobs of

the river plantations came and dwelt with their fair-handed wives

in seasons of peculiar anticipation, when it is well to be near the

highest medical skill. In the opposite direction a three minutes’

quick drive around the upper corner and down Common Street carried the

Doctor to his ward in the great Charity Hospital, and to the school of

medicine, where he filled the chair set apart to the holy ailments of

maternity. Thus, as it were, he laid his left hand on the rich and his

right on the poor; and he was not left-handed.

Not that his usual attitude was one of benediction. He stood straight

up in his austere pure-mindedness, tall, slender, pale, sharp of voice,

keen of glance, stern in judgment, aggressive in debate, and fixedly

untender everywhere, except――but always except――in the sick chamber.

His inner heart was all of flesh; but his demands for the rectitude of

mankind pointed out like the muzzles of cannon through the embrasures

of his virtues. To demolish evil!――that seemed the finest of aims;

and even as a physician, that was, most likely, his motive until later

years and a better self-knowledge had taught him that to do good was

still finer and better. He waged war――against malady. To fight; to

stifle; to cut down; to uproot; to overwhelm,――these were his springs

of action. That their results were good proved that his sentiment

of benevolence was strong and high; but it was well-nigh shut out of

sight by that impatience of evil which is very fine and knightly in

youngest manhood, but which we like to see give way to kindlier moods

as the earlier heat of the blood begins to pass.

He changed in later years; this was in 1856. To “resist not evil”

seemed to him then only a rather feeble sort of knavery. To face

it in its nakedness, and to inveigh against it in high places and

low, seemed the consummation of all manliness; and manliness was the

key-note of his creed. There was no other necessity in this life.

“But a man must live,” said one of his kindred, to whom, truth to tell,

he had refused assistance.

“No, sir; that is just what he can’t do. A man must die! So, while he

lives, let him be a man!”

How inharmonious a setting, then, for Dr. Sevier, was 3½ Carondelet

Street! As he drove each morning, down to that point, he had to pass

through long, irregular files of fellow-beings thronging either

sidewalk――a sadly unchivalric grouping of men whose daily and yearly

life was subordinated only and entirely to the getting of wealth, and

whose every eager motion was a repetition of the sinister old maxim

that “Time is money.”

“It’s a great deal more, sir, it’s life!” the Doctor always retorted.

Among these groups, moreover, were many who were all too well famed

for illegitimate fortune. Many occupations connected with the handling

of cotton yielded big harvests in perquisites. At every jog of the

Doctor’s horse, men came to view whose riches were the outcome of

semi-respectable larceny. It was a day of reckless operation; much of

the commerce that came to New Orleans was simply, as one might say,

beached in Carondelet Street. The sight used to keep the long, thin,

keen-eyed doctor in perpetual indignation.

“Look at the wreckers!” he would say.

It was breakfast at eight, indignation at nine, dyspepsia at ten.

So his setting was not merely inharmonious; it was damaging. He grew

sore on the whole matter of money-getting.

“Yes, I have money. But I don’t go after it. It comes to me, because

I seek and render service for the service’s sake. It will come to

anybody else the same way; and why should it come any other way?”

He not only had a low regard for the motives of most seekers of wealth,

he went further, and fell into much disbelief of poor men’s needs.

For instance, he looked upon a man’s inability to find employment, or

upon a poor fellow’s run of bad luck, as upon the placarded woes of a

hurdy-gurdy beggar.

“If he wants work he will find it. As for begging, it ought to be

easier for any true man to starve than to beg.”

The sentiment was ungentle, but it came from the bottom of his belief

concerning himself, and a longing for moral greatness in all men.

“However,” he would add, thrusting his hand into his pocket and

bringing out his purse, “I’ll help any man to make himself useful.

And the sick――well, the sick, as a matter of course. Only I must know

what I’m doing.”

Have some of us known want? To have known her――though to love her

was impossible――is “a liberal education.” The Doctor was learned; but

this acquaintanceship, this education, he had never got. Hence his

untenderness. Shall we condemn the fault? Yes. And the man? We have

not the face. To be _just_, which he never knowingly failed to be,

and at the same time to feel tenderly for the unworthy, to deal kindly

with the erring――it is a double grace that hangs not always in easy

reach even of the tallest. The Doctor attained to it――but in later

years; meantime, this story――which, I believe, had he ever been poor

would never have been written.

He had barely disposed of the three or four waiting messengers that

arose from their chairs against the corridor wall, and was still

reading the anxious lines left in various handwritings on his slate,

when the young man entered. He was of fair height, slenderly built,

with soft auburn hair, a little untrimmed, neat dress, and a diffident,

yet expectant and courageous, face.

“Dr. Sevier?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Doctor, my wife is very ill; can I get you to come at once and see

her?”

“Who is her physician?”

“I have not called any; but we must have one now.”

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WE have as yet hardly spoken of the infant; that little creature,