“‘Dat’s needer here ner dar, Brer Buzzard,’ sezee. ‘I lef’ you yer

fer ter watch dish yer hole en I lef’ Brer Rabbit in dar. I comes back

en I fines you at de hole, en Brer Rabbit ain’t in dar,’ sezee. ‘I’m

gwinter make you pay fer’t. I done bin tampered wid twel plum down ter

de sap sucker’ll set on a log en sassy me. I’m gwinter fling you in a

bresh-heap en burn you up,’ sezee.

“‘Ef you fling me on der fier, Brer Fox, I’ll fly ’way,’ sez Mr.

Buzzard, sezee.

“‘Well, den, I’ll settle yo’ hash right now,’ sez Brer Fox, sezee, en

wid dat he grab Mr. Buzzard by de tail, he did, en make fer ter dash

’im ’gin de groun’, but des ’bout dat time de tail fedders come out,

en Mr. Buzzard sail off like wunner dese yer berloons, en ez he riz,

he holler back:

“‘You gimme good start, Brer Fox,’ sezee, en Brer Fox sot dar en watch

’im fly outer sight.”

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

ROBERT J. BURDETTE.

THE American people have a kindly feeling for the men who make

them laugh, and in no other country does a humorist have a more

appreciative public. The result has been, that in a country in which

the average native has a clearly marked vein of humor, the genuine

“funny man” is always sure of a hearty welcome. We have a long list of

writers and lecturers who have gained a wide popularity through their

mirth-provoking powers, and “Bob Burdette” holds an honorable place in

this guild of “funny men.”

He was born in Greensborough, Pennsylvania, July 30, 1844, though he

removed early in life to Peoria, Ill., where he received his education

in the public schools.

He enlisted in the Civil War and served as a private from 1862 to the

end of the war.

He began his journalistic career on the Peoria “Transcript,” and,

after periods of editorial connection with other local newspapers,

he became associate editor of the Burlington “Hawkeye,” Iowa. His

humorous contributions to this journal were widely copied and they

gave him a general reputation. His reputation as a writer had prepared

the way for his success as a lecturer, and in 1877 he entered the

lecture field, in which he has been eminently successful. He has

lectured in nearly all the cities of the United States, and he never

fails to amuse his listeners.

He is a lay preacher of the Baptist Church, and it is often a surprise

to those who have heard only his humorous sayings to hear him speak

with earnestness and serious persuasiveness of the deeper things of

life, for he is a man of deep experiences and of pure ideals.

His most popular lectures have been those on “The Rise and Fall of

the Mustache,” “Home,” and “The Pilgrimage of the Funny Man.” He has

published in book-form, “The Rise and Fall of the Mustache and Other

Hawkeyetems” (Burlington, 1877), “Hawkeyes” (1880), “Life of William

Penn” (New York, 1882), a volume in the series of “Comic Biographies;”

and “Innach Garden and other Comic Sketches” (1886).

He has been a frequent contributor to the _Ladies’ Home Journal_ and

other current literature, and he has recently written a convulsive

description of “How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle,” which appeared in

the _Wheelmen_.

He has for some years made his home at Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and he

enjoys a large circle of friends.

* * * * *

THE MOVEMENT CURE FOR RHEUMATISM.¹

¹ Copyright, R. J. Burdette.

ONE day, not a great while ago, Mr. Middlerib read in his favorite

paper a paragraph copied from the _Præger Landwirthschaftliches

Wochenblatt_, a German paper, which is an accepted authority on such

points, stating that the sting of a bee was a sure cure for rheumatism,

and citing several remarkable instances in which ♦people had been

perfectly cured by this abrupt remedy. Mr. Middlerib did not stop to

reflect that a paper with such a name as that would be very apt to say

anything; he only thought of the rheumatic twinges that grappled his

knees once in a while, and made life a burden to him.

♦ ‘peo-’ replaced with ‘people’

He read the article several times, and pondered over it. He understood

that the stinging must be done scientifically and thoroughly. The bee,

as he understood the article, was to be gripped by the ears and set

down upon the rheumatic joint, and held there until it stung itself

stingless. He had some misgivings about the matter. He knew it would

hurt. He hardly thought it could hurt any worse than the rheumatism,

and it had been so many years since he was stung by a bee that he had

almost forgotten what it felt like. He had, however, a general feeling

that it would hurt some. But desperate diseases required desperate

remedies, and Mr. Middlerib was willing to undergo any amount of

suffering if it would cure his rheumatism.

He contracted with Master Middlerib for a limited supply of bees.

There were bees and bees, humming and buzzing about in the summer air,

but Mr. Middlerib did not know how to get them. He felt, however, that

he could depend upon the instincts and methods of boyhood. He knew

that if there was any way in heaven or earth whereby the shyest bee

that ever lifted a 200-pound man off the clover, could be induced to

enter a wide-mouthed glass bottle, his son knew that way.

For the small sum of one dime Master Middlerib agreed to procure

several, to-wit: six bees, age not specified; but as Mr. Middlerib was

left in uncertainty as to the race, it was made obligatory upon the

contractor to have three of them honey, and three humble, or in the

generally accepted vernacular, bumble bees. Mr. Middlerib did not tell

his son what he wanted those bees for, and the boy went off on his

mission, with his head so full of astonishment that it fairly whirled.

Evening brings all home, and the last rays of the declining sun fell

upon Master Middlerib with a short, wide-mouthed bottle comfortably

populated with hot, ill-natured bees, and Mr. Middlerib and a dime.

The dime and the bottle changed hands and the boy was happy.

Mr. Middlerib put the bottle in his coat pocket and went into the

house, eyeing everybody he met very suspiciously, as though he had

made up his mind to sting to death the first person that said “bee” to

him. He confided his guilty secret to none of his family. He hid his

bees in his bedroom, and as he looked at them just before putting them

away, he half wished the experiment was safely over. He wished the

imprisoned bees didn’t look so hot and cross. With exquisite care he

submerged the bottle in a basin of water, and let a few drops in on

the heated inmates, to cool them off.

At the tea-table he had a great fight. Miss Middlerib, in the artless

simplicity of her romantic nature said: “I smell bees. How the odor

brings up――――”

But her father glared at her, and said, with superfluous harshness and

execrable grammar:

“Hush up! You don’t smell nothing.”

“Whereupon Mrs. Middlerib asked him if he had eaten anything that

disagreed with him, and Miss Middlerib said: “Why, pa!” and Master

Middlerib smiled as he wondered.

Bedtime came at last, and the night was warm and sultry. Under

various false pretences, Mr. Middlerib strolled about the house until

everybody else was in bed, and then he sought his room. He turned the

night-lamp down until its feeble rays shone dimly as a death-light.

Mr. Middlerib disrobed slowly――very slowly. When at last he was ready

to go lumbering into his peaceful couch, he heaved a profound sigh, so

full of apprehension and grief that Mrs. Middlerib, who was awakened

by it, said if it gave him so much pain to come to bed, perhaps he had

better sit up all night. Mr. Middlerib checked another sigh, but said

nothing and crept into bed. After lying still a few moments he reached

out and got his bottle of bees.

It is not an easy thing to do, to pick one bee out of a bottle

full, with his fingers, and not get into trouble. The first bee Mr.

Middlerib got was a little brown honey-bee that wouldn’t weigh half an

ounce if you picked him up by the ears, but if you lifted him by the

hind leg as Mr. Middlerib did, would weigh as much as the last end of

a bay mule. Mr. Middlerib could not repress a groan.

“What’s the matter with you?” sleepily asked his wife.

It was very hard for Mr. Middlerib to say; he only knew his

temperature had risen to 86 all over, and to 197 on the end of his

thumb. He reversed the bee and pressed the warlike terminus of it

firmly against his rheumatic knee.

It didn’t hurt so badly as he thought it would.

It didn’t hurt at all!

Then Mr. Middlerib remembered that when the honey-bee stabs a human

foe it generally leaves its harpoon in the wound, and the invalid knew

then the only thing the bee had to sting with was doing its work at

the end of his thumb.

He reached his arm out from under the sheet, and dropped this disabled

atom of rheumatism liniment on the carpet. Then, after a second of

blank wonder, he began to feel around for the bottle, and wished he

knew what he had done with it.

In the meantime, strange things had been going on. When he caught

hold of the first bee, Mr. Middlerib, for reasons, drew it out in

such haste that for the time he forgot all about the bottle and its

remedial contents, and left it lying uncorked in the bed. In the

darkness there had been a quiet but general emigration from that

bottle. The bees, their wings clogged with the water Mr. Middlerib had

poured upon them to cool and tranquilize them, were crawling aimlessly

about over the sheet. While Mr. Middlerib was feeling around for it,

his ears were suddenly thrilled and his heart frozen by a wild,

piercing scream from his wife.

“Murder!” she screamed, “murder! Oh, help me! Help! help!”

Mr. Middlerib sat bold upright in bed. His hair stood on end. The

night was very warm, but he turned to ice in a minute.

“Where, oh, where,” he said, with pallid lips, as he felt all over the

bed in frenzied haste――“where in the world are those infernal bees?”

And a large “bumble,” with a sting as pitiless as the finger of scorn,

just then lighted between Mr. Middlerib’s shoulders, and went for his

marrow, and said calmly: “Here is one of them.”

And Mrs. Middlerib felt ashamed of her feeble screams when Mr.

Middlerib threw up both arms, and, with a howl that made the windows

rattle, roared:

“Take him off! Oh, land of Scott, somebody take him off!”

And when a little honey-bee began tickling the sole of Mrs.

Middlerib’s foot, she shrieked that the house was bewitched, and

immediately went into spasms.

The household was aroused by this time. Miss Middlerib, and Master

Middlerib and the servants were pouring into the room, adding to

the general confusion, by howling at random and asking irrelevant

questions, while they gazed at the figure of a man, a little on in

years, pawing fiercely at the unattainable spot in the middle of his

back, while he danced an unnatural, weird, wicked-looking jig by the

dim religious light of the night lamp.

And while he danced and howled, and while they gazed and shouted, a

navy-blue wasp, that Master Middlerib had put in the bottle for good

measure and variety, and to keep the menagerie stirred up, had dried

his legs and wings with a corner of the sheet, after a preliminary

circle or two around the bed, to get up his motion and settle down to

a working gait, fired himself across the room, and to his dying day Mr.

Middlerib will always believe that one of the servants mistook him for

a burglar, and shot him.

No one, not even Mr. Middlerib himself, could doubt that he was, at

least for the time, most thoroughly cured of rheumatism. His own boy

could not have carried himself more lightly or with greater agility.

But the cure was not permanent, and Mr. Middlerib does not like to

talk about it.

POPULAR WRITERS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

Illustration: POPULAR WRITERS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

EDWARD S. ELLIS

MARTHA FINLEY • HORATIO ALGER JR.

“OLIVER OPTIC”

LOUISA M. ALCOTT • SARA JANE LIPPINCOTT

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

LOUISA MAY ALCOTT.

AUTHOR OF “LITTLE WOMEN.”

THE famous author of “Little Women,” “Little Men,” and “Old-Fashioned

Girls,” made her beginning, as have many who have done any good or

acquired fame in the world, by depending on herself. In other words,

she was the architect of her own fortune, and has left behind her

works that will endure to gladden the hearts of millions of boys and

girls. But she has done more. She has left behind her a record of a

life within itself, a benediction and inspiration to every thoughtful

girl who reads it.

While Miss Alcott always considered New England her home, she was

actually born in Germantown, Philadelphia, November 29, 1832. Her

father, Amos Bronson Alcott, after his marriage in New England,

accepted a position as principal of a Germantown Academy, which he

occupied from 1831 to 1834, and afterwards taught a children’s school

at his own residence, but he was unsuccessful and he returned to

Boston in 1835, when Louisa was two years old.

From this time forward, Mr. Alcott was a close friend and associate of

the poet and philosopher Emerson, sharing with him his transcendental

doctrines, and joining in the Brook-Farm experiment of ideal communism

at Roxbury, Mass. The Brook-Farm experiment brought Mr. Alcott to

utter financial ruin, and after its failure he removed to Concord,

where he continued to live until his death. It was at this time that

Louisa, although a mere child, formed a noble and unselfish purpose

to retrieve the family fortune. When only fifteen years of age, she

turned her thoughts to teaching, her first school being in a barn

and attended by the children of Mr. Emerson and other neighbors.

Almost at the same time she began to compose fairy stories, which were

contributed to papers; but these early productions brought her little

if any compensation, and she continued to devote herself to teaching,

receiving her own education privately from her father. “When I was

twenty-one years of age,” she wrote many years later to a friend, “I

took my little earnings ($20) and a few clothes, and went out to seek

my fortune, though I might have sat still and been supported by rich

friends. All those hard years were teaching me what I afterwards put

into books, and so I made my fortune out of my seeming misfortune.”

Two years after this brave start Miss Alcott’s earliest book, “Fairy

Tales,” was published (1855). About the same time her work began to be

accepted by the “Atlantic Monthly” and other magazines of reputation.

During the winters of 1862 and ’63 she volunteered her services and

went to Washington and served as a nurse in the government hospitals,

and her experiences here were embodied in a series of graphic

letters to her mother and sisters. These letters she revised and

had printed in the “Boston Commonwealth” in the summer of 1863. They

were afterwards issued in a volume entitled “Hospital Sketches and

Camp-Fire Stories.” This was her second book, which, together with her

magazine articles, opened the way to a splendid career as an author.

Being naturally fond of young people, Miss Alcott turned her attention

from this time forward to writing for them. Her distinctive books

for the young are entitled “Moods” (1864); “Morning Glories” (1867);

“Little Women” (1868), which was her first decided success; “An

Old-Fashioned Girl” (1869); “Little Men” (1871); “Work” (1873); “Eight

Cousins” (1875), and its sequel, “Rose in Bloom” (1877), which perhaps

ranks first among her books; “Under the Lilacs” (1878); “Jack and

Jill” (1880), and “Lulu’s Library” (1885). Besides these she has put

forth, at different times, several volumes of short stories, among

which are “Cupid and Chow-Chow,” “Silver Pitchers” and “Aunt Joe’s

Scrap-bag.”

From childhood Miss Alcott was under the tutelage of the Emersonian

school, and was not less than her father an admirer of the “Seer of

Concord.” “Those Concord days,” she writes, “were among the happiest

of my life, for we had the charming playmates in the little Emersons,

Channings, and Hawthornes, with their illustrious parents, to enjoy

our pranks and join our excursions.”

In speaking of Emerson she also wrote to a young woman a few years

before her death: “Theodore Parker and Ralph Waldo Emerson have done

much to help me see that one can shape life best by trying to build

up a strong and noble character, through good books, wise people’s

society, and by taking an interest in all reforms that help the world,

... believing always that a loving and just Father cares for us,

sees our weakness, and is near to help if we call.” Continuing she

asks: “Have you read Emerson? He is called a Pantheist, or believer in

nature, instead of God. He was truly a Christian and saw God in nature,

finding strength and comfort in the same sweet influence of the great

Mother as well as the great Father of all. I, too, believe this, and

when tired, sad or tempted, find my best comfort in the woods, the sky,

the healing solitude that lets my poor, weary soul find the rest, the

fresh hopes, the patience which only God can give us.”

The chief aim of Miss Alcott seemed to have been to make others happy.

Many are the letters treasured up by young authors who often, but

never in vain, sought her advice and kind assistance. To one young

woman who asked her opinion on certain new books, in 1884, she wrote:

“About books; yes, I’ve read ‘Mr. Isaacs’ and ‘Dr. Claudius,’¹ and

like them both. The other, ‘To Leeward,’ is not so good; ‘Little

Pilgrim’ was pretty, but why try to paint heaven? Let it alone and

prepare for it, whatever it is, sure that God knows what we need and

deserve. I will send you Emerson’s ‘Essays.’ Read those marked. I hope

they will be as helpful to you as they have been to me and many others.

They will bear study and I think are what you need to feed upon now.”

The marked essays were those on “Compensation,” “Love,” “Friendship,”

“Heroism,” and “Self-Reliance.”

¹ These are the books that made F. Marion Crawford famous.

Miss Alcott’s kindness for young people grew with her advancing years.

Being a maiden lady without daughters of her own, she was looked up to

and delighted in being considered as a foster-mother to aspiring girls

all over the land. How many times she wrote similar sentences to this:

“Write freely to me, dear girl, and if I can help you in any way be

sure I will.” This was written to one she had never seen and only four

years before her death, when she was far from well.

Miss Alcott died in Boston, March 6, 1888, at the age of fifty-six

years, and just two days after her aged father, who was eighty-five

years old, and who had depended on her many years, passed away. Though

a great advocate of work for the health, she was, no doubt, a victim

of overwork; for it is said she frequently devoted from twelve to

fifteen hours a day to her literary labors, ... besides looking after

her business affairs and caring personally for her old father, for

many years an invalid. In addition to this, she educated some of her

poor relatives, and still further took the place of a mother to little

Lulu, the daughter of her sister, May, who died when the child was an

infant.

* * * * *

HOW JO MADE FRIENDS.¹

(FROM “LITTLE WOMEN.”)

¹ Copyright, Roberts Bros.

“THAT boy is suffering for society and fun,” she said to herself. “His

grandpa don’t know what’s good for him, and keeps him shut up all

alone. He needs a lot of jolly boys to play with, or somebody young

and lively. I’ve a great mind to go over and tell the old gentleman

so.”

The idea amused Jo, who liked to do daring things, and was always

scandalizing Meg by her queer performances. The plan of “going over”

was not forgotten; and, when the snowy afternoon came, Jo resolved

to try what could be done. She saw Mr. Laurence drive off, and then

sailed out to dig her way down to the hedge, where she paused and took

a survey. All quiet; curtains down to the lower windows; servants out

of sight, and nothing human visible but a curly black head leaning on

a thin hand, at the upper window.

“There he is,” thought Jo; “poor boy, all alone, and sick, this dismal

day! It’s a shame! I’ll toss up a snowball, and make him look out, and

then say a kind word to him.”

Up went a handful of soft snow, and the head turned at once, showing

a face which lost its listless look in a minute, as the big eyes

brightened, and the mouth began to smile. Jo nodded, and laughed, and

flourished her broom, as she called out,――

“How do you do? Are you sick?”

Laurie opened the window and croaked out as hoarsely as a raven,――

“Better, thank you. I’ve had a horrid cold, and have been shut up a

week.”

“I’m sorry. What do you amuse yourself with?”

“Nothing; it’s as dull as tombs up here.”

“Don’t you read?”

“Not much; they won’t let me.”

“Can’t somebody read to you?”

“Grandpa does, sometimes; but my books don’t interest him, and I hate

to ask Brooke all the time.”

“Have some one come and see you, then.”

“There isn’t any one I’d like to see. Boys make such a row, and my

head is weak.”

“Isn’t there some nice girl who’d read and amuse you? Girls are quiet,

and like to play nurse.”

“Don’t know any.”

“You know me,” began Jo, then laughed and stopped.

“So I do! Will you come, please?” cried Laurie.

“I’m not quiet and nice; but I’ll come, if mother will let me. I’ll go

ask her. Shut that window, like a good boy, and wait till I come....

“Oh! that does me lots of good; tell on, please,” he said, taking his

face out of the sofa-cushion, red and shining with merriment.

Much elevated with her success, Jo did “tell on,” all about their

plays and plans, their hopes and fears for father, and the most

interesting events of the little world in which the sisters lived.

Then they got to talking about books; and to Jo’s delight she found

that Laurie loved them as well as she did, and had read even more than

herself.

“If you like them so much, come down and see ours. Grandpa is out, so

you needn’t be afraid,” said Laurie, getting up.

“I’m not afraid of anything,” returned Jo, with a toss of the head.

“I don’t believe you are!” exclaimed the boy, looking at her with much

admiration, though he privately thought she would have good reason to

be a trifle afraid of the old gentleman, if she met him in some of his

moods.

The atmosphere of the whole house being summer-like, Laurie led the

way from room to room, letting Jo stop to examine whatever struck her

fancy; and so at last they came to the library, where she clapped her

hands, and pranced, as she always did when specially delighted. It was

lined with books, and there were pictures and statues, and distracting

little cabinets full of coins and curiosities, and Sleep-Hollow

chairs, and queer tables, and bronzes; and, best of all, a great, open

fireplace, with quaint tiles all round it.

“What richness!” sighed Jo, sinking into the depths of a velvet chair,

and gazing about her with an air of intense satisfaction. “Theodore

Laurence, you ought to be the happiest boy in the world,” she added

impressively.

“A fellow can’t live on books,” said Laurie, shaking his head, as he

perched on a table opposite.

Before he could say any more, a bell rang, and Jo flew up, exclaiming

with alarm, “Mercy me! it’s your grandpa!”

“Well, what if it is? You are not afraid of anything, you know,”

returned the boy, looking wicked.

“I think I am a little bit afraid of him, but I don’t know why I

should be. Marmee said I might come, and I don’t think you are any the

worse for it,” said Jo, composing herself, though she kept her eyes on

the door.

“I’m a great deal better for it, and ever so much obliged. I’m afraid

you are very tired talking to me; it was so pleasant, I couldn’t bear

to stop,” said Laurie gratefully.

“The doctor to see you, sir,” and the maid beckoned as she spoke.

“Would you mind if I left you for a minute? I suppose I must see him,”

said Laurie.

“Don’t mind me. I’m as happy as a cricket here,” answered Jo.

Laurie went away, and his guest amused herself in her own way. She was

standing before a fine portrait of the old gentleman, when the door

opened again, and, without turning, she said decidedly, “I’m sure now

that I shouldn’t be afraid of him, for he’s got kind eyes, though his

mouth is grim, and he looks as if he had a tremendous will of his own.

He isn’t as handsome as _my_ grandfather, but I like him.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” said a gruff voice behind her; and there, to her

great dismay, stood old Mr. Laurence.

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

WILLIAM TAYLOR ADAMS.

THE WELL-BELOVED WRITER FOR YOUNG PEOPLE.

PROBABLY no literary man in America has ministered to the pleasure of

a greater number of our young people than William Taylor Adams, who

is a native of Massachusetts and was born in Medway in 1822. He has

devoted his life to young people; for more than twenty years as a

teacher in the public schools of Boston, for many years a member of

the school board of Dorchester, and since 1850 as a writer of stories.

In his earlier life, he was the editor of a periodical known as “The

Student and Schoolmate.” In 1881 he began the publication of “Our

Little Ones,” and later “Oliver Optic’s Magazine for Boys and Girls.”

His first book was published in 1853; it was entitled “Hatchie, the

Guardian Slave,” and had a large sale. It was followed by a collection

of stories called “In Doors and Out,” and in 1862 was completed “The

Riverdale Series” of six volumes of stories for boys. Some of his

other books are “The Boat Club;” “Woodville;” “Young America Abroad;”

“Starry Flag;” “Onward and Upward;” “Yacht Club;” and “Great Western.”

In all he has written at least a thousand stories for newspapers,

and published about a hundred volumes. Among these are two novels for

older readers: “The Way of the World” and “Living Too Fast.”

Mr. Adams’ style is both pleasing and simple. His stories are

frequently based upon scenes of history and their influence is always

for good.

* * * * *

THE SLOOP THAT WENT TO THE BOTTOM.¹

(FROM “SNUG HARBOR,” 1883.)

¹ Copyright, Lee & Shepard.

“STARBOARD your helm! hard a-starboard!” shouted Dory Dornwood, as he

put the helm of the “Goldwing” to port in order to avoid a collision

with a steam launch which lay dead ahead of the schooner.

“Keep off! you will sink me!” cried a young man in a sloop-boat, which

lay exactly in the course of the steam launch. “That’s just what I

mean to do, if you don’t come about,” yelled a man at the wheel of the

steamer. “Why didn’t you stop when I called to you?”

“Keep off, or you will be into me!” screamed the skipper of the sloop,

whose tones and manner indicated that he was very much terrified at

the situation.

And he had reason enough to be alarmed. It was plain, from his

management of his boat, that he was but an indifferent boatman; and

probably he did not know what to do in the emergency. Dory had noticed

the sloop coming up the lake with the steam launch astern of her. The

latter had run ahead of the sloop, and had come about, it now appeared,

for the purpose of intercepting her.

When the skipper of the sloop realized the intention of the helmsman

of the steamer, he put his helm to port; but he was too late. The

sharp bow of the launch struck the frail craft amidships, and cut

through her as though she had been made of cardboard.

The sloop filled instantly, and, a moment later, the young man in

her was struggling on the surface of the water. The boat was heavily

ballasted, and she went down like a lump of lead. It was soon clear to

Dory that the skipper could not swim, for he screamed as though the

end of all things had come.

Very likely it would have been the end of all things to him, if Dory

had not come about with the “Goldwing,” and stood over the place

where the young man was vainly beating the water with his feet and

hands. With no great difficulty the skipper of the “Goldwing,” who

was an aquatic bird of the first water, pulled in the victim of the

catastrophe, in spite of the apparent efforts of the sufferer to

prevent him from doing so.

“You had a narrow squeak that time,” said Dory Dornwood, as soon as

he thought the victim of the disaster was in condition to do a little

talking. “It is lucky you didn’t get tangled up in the rigging of your

boat. She went to the bottom like a pound of carpet-tacks; and she

would have carried you down in a hurry if you hadn’t let go in short

metre.”

“I think I am remarkably fortunate in being among the living at this

moment,” replied the stranger, looking out over the stern of the

“Goldwing.” “That was the most atrocious thing a fellow ever did.”

“What was?” inquired Dory, who was not quite sure what the victim

meant by the remark, or whether he alluded to him or to the man in the

steam launch.

“Why, running into me like that,” protested the passenger, with no

little indignation in his tones.

“I suppose you came up from Burlington?” said Dory, suggestively, as

though he considered an explanation on the part of the stranger to be

in order at the present time.

“I have just come from Burlington,” answered the victim, who appeared

to be disposed to say nothing more. “Do you suppose I can get that

boat again?”

“I should say that the chance of getting her again was not first-rate.

She went down where the water is about two hundred and fifty feet deep;

and it won’t be an easy thing to get hold of her,” replied Dory. “If

you had let him run into you between Diamond Island and Porter’s Bay,

where the water is not more than fifty or sixty feet deep, you could

have raised her without much difficulty. I don’t believe you will ever

see her again.”

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

SARAH JANE LIPPINCOTT.

FAVORITE WRITER FOR LITTLE CHILDREN.

ONE of the earliest papers devoted especially to young children was

“The Little Pilgrim,” edited for a number of years under the name of

“Grace Greenwood,” by Mrs. Lippincott. It had a very wide popularity,

and its little stories, poems, and page of puzzles brought pleasure

into very many home circles. Mrs. Lippincott is the daughter of Doctor

Thaddeus Clarke. She was born in Pompey, New York, in September,

1823, and lived during most of her childhood in Rochester. In 1842 she

removed with her father to New Brighton, Pennsylvania, and in 1853 she

was married to Leander K. Lippincott, of Philadelphia. She had early

begun to write verses, and, in 1844, contributed some prose articles

to “The New York Mirror,” adopting the name “Grace Greenwood,” which

she has since made famous. Besides her work upon “The Little Pilgrim,”

she has contributed for many years to “The Hearth and Home,” “The

Atlantic Monthly,” “Harper’s Magazine,” “The New York Independent,”

“Times,” and “Tribune,” to several California journals, and to at

least two English periodicals. She was one of the first women to

become a newspaper correspondent, and her letters from Washington

inaugurated a new feature in journalism. She has published a

number of books: “Greenwood Leaves;” “History of My Pets;” “Poems;”

“Recollections of My Childhood;” “Haps and Mishaps of a Tour in

Europe;” “Merrie England;” “Stories from Many Lands;” “Victoria, Queen

of England,” and others.

Mrs. Lippincott has lived abroad a great deal, and has been made

welcome in the best literary circles in England and on the continent.

During the war she devoted herself to the cause of the soldiers, read

and lectured to them in camps and hospitals, and won the appreciation

of President Lincoln, who used to speak of her as “Grace Greenwood,

the Patriot.” Although devoted to her home in Washington, she has

spent much time in New York City, and has lived a life whose activity

and service to the public are almost unequalled among literary women.

* * * * *

THE BABY IN THE BATH-TUB.¹

(FROM “RECORDS OF FIVE YEARS,” 1867.)

¹ Copyright, Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

“ANNIE! Sophie! come up quick, and see baby in her bath-tub!” cries

a charming little maiden, running down the wide stairway of an old

country house, and half-way up the long hall, all in a fluttering

cloud of pink lawn, her soft dimpled cheeks tinged with the same

lovely morning hue. In an instant there is a stir and a gush of light

laughter in the drawing-room, and presently, with a movement a little

more majestic and elder-sisterly, Annie and Sophie float noiselessly

through the hall and up the soft-carpeted ascent, as though borne

on their respective clouds of blue and white drapery, and take their

way to the nursery, where a novel entertainment awaits them. It is

the first morning of the eldest married sister’s first visit home,

with her first baby; and the first baby, having slept late after its

journey, is about to take its first bath in the old house.

“Well, I declare, if here isn’t mother, forgetting her dairy, and

Cousin Nellie, too, who must have left poor Ned all to himself

in the garden, lonely and disconsolate, and I am torn from my

books, and Sophie from her flowers, and all for the sake of seeing a

nine-month-old baby kicking about in a bath-tub! What simpletons we

are!”

Thus Miss Annie, the _proude layde_ of the family; handsome, haughty,

with perilous proclivities toward grand socialistic theories,

transcendentalism, and general strong-mindedness; pledged by many a

saucy vow to a life of single dignity and freedom, given to studies

artistic, æsthetic, philosophic and ethical; a student of Plato, an

absorber of Emerson, an exalter of her sex, a contemner of its natural

enemies.

“Simpletons, are we?” cries pretty Elinor Lee, aunt of the baby on the

other side, and “Cousin Nellie” by love’s courtesy, now kneeling close

by the bath-tub, and receiving on her sunny braids a liberal baptism

from the pure, plashing hands of babyhood,――“simpletons, indeed! Did I

not once see thee, O Pallas-Athene, standing rapt before a copy of the

‘Crouching Venus?’ and this is a sight a thousand times more beautiful;

for here we have color, action, radiant life, and such grace as the

divinest sculptors of Greece were never able to entrance in marble.

Just look at these white, dimpled shoulders, every dimple holding

a tiny, sparkling drop,――these rosy, plashing feet and hands,――this

laughing, roguish face,――these eyes, bright and blue and deep as lakes

of fairy-land,――these ears, like dainty sea-shells,――these locks of

gold, dripping diamonds,――and tell me what cherub of Titian, what

Cupid of Greuze, was ever half so lovely. I say, too, that Raphael

himself would have jumped at the chance of painting Louise, as she

sits there, towel in hand, in all the serene pride and chastened

dignity of young maternity,――of painting her as _Madonna_.”

“Why, Cousin Nellie is getting poetical for once, over a baby in a

bath-tub!”

“Well, Sophie, isn’t it a subject to inspire _real_ poets, to call

out and yet humble the genius of painters and sculptors? Isn’t it

an object for the reverence of ‘a glorious human creature,’――such

a pure and perfect form of physical life, such a starry little soul,

fresh from the hands of God? If your Plato teaches otherwise, Cousin

Annie, I’m glad I’ve no acquaintance with that distinguished heathen

gentleman; if your Carlyle, with his ‘soul above buttons’ and babies,

would growl, and your Emerson smile icily at the sight, away with

them!”

“Why, Nellie, you goose, Carlyle is ‘a man and a brother,’ in spite

of his ‘Latter-day Pamphlets,’ and no ogre. I believe he is very

well disposed toward babies in general; while Emerson is as tender

as he is great. Have you forgotten his ‘Threnody,’ in which the sob

of a mortal’s sorrow rises and swells into an immortal’s pean? I see

that baby is very lovely; I think that Louise may well be proud of

her. It’s a pity that she must grow up into conventionalities and all

that,――perhaps become some man’s plaything, or slave.”

“O _don’t_, sister!――‘sufficient for the day is the _worriment_

thereof.’ But I think you and Nellie are mistaken about the _pride_.

I am conscious of no such feeling in regard to my little Florence, but

only of joy, gratitude, infinite tenderness, and solicitude.”

Thus the young mother,――for the first time speaking, but not turning

her eyes from the bath-tub.

“Ah, coz, it won’t go! Young mothers are the proudest of living

creatures. The sweetest and saintliest among you have a sort of

subdued exultation, a meek assumption, an adorable insolence, toward

the whole unmarried and childless world. I have never seen anything

like it elsewhere.”

“_I_ have, in a bantam Biddy, parading her first brood in the hen-yard,

or a youthful duck, leading her first little downy flock to the water.”

“Ha, blasphemer! are you there?” cries Miss Nellie, with a bright

smile, and a brighter blush. Blasphemer’s other name is a tolerably

good one,――Edward Norton,――though he is oftenest called “Our Ned.”

He is the sole male representative of a wealthy old New England

family,――the pride and darling of four pretty sisters, “the only son

of his mother, and she a widow,” who adores him,――“a likely youth,

just twenty-one,” handsome, brilliant, and standing six feet high in

his stockings. Yet, in spite of all these unfavorable circumstances,

he is a very good sort of a fellow. He is just home from the model

college of the Commonwealth, where he learned to smoke, and, I blush

to say, has a cigar in hand at this moment, just as he has been

summoned from the garden by his pet sister, Kate, half-wild with

delight and excitement. With him comes a brother, according to the law,

and after the spirit,――a young, slender, fair-haired man, but with an

indescribable something of paternal importance about him. He is the

other proprietor of baby, and steps forward with a laugh and a “Heh,

my little water-nymph, my Iris!” and by the bath-tub kneeling, catches

a moist kiss from smiling baby lips, and a sudden wilting shower on

shirt-front and collar, from moister baby hands.

Young collegian pauses on the threshold, essaying to look lofty and

sarcastic, for a moment. Then his eye rests on Nellie Lee’s blushing

face, on the red, smiling lips, the braids of gold, sprinkled with

shining drops,――meets those sweet, shy eyes, and a sudden, mysterious

feeling, soft and vague and tender, floods his gay young heart. He

looks at baby again. “’Tis a pretty sight, upon my word! Let me throw

away my cigar before I come nearer; it is incense too profane for

such pure rites. Now give me a peep at Dian-the less! How the little

witch revels in the water! A small Undine. Jolly, isn’t it, baby? Why,

Louise, I did not know that Floy was so lovely, such a perfect little

creature. How fair she is? Why, her flesh, where it is not rosy, is of

the pure, translucent whiteness of a water-lily.”

No response to this tribute, for baby has been in the water more

than long enough, and must be taken out, willy, nilly. Decidedly

nilly it proves; baby proceeds to demonstrate that she is not

altogether cherubic, by kicking and screaming lustily, and striking

out frantically with her little, dripping hands. But Madonna wraps her

in soft linen, rolls her and pats her, till she grows good and merry

again, and laughs through her pretty tears.

But the brief storm has been enough to clear the nursery of all save

grandmamma and Auntie Kate, who draw nearer to witness the process of

drying and dressing. Tenderly the mother rubs the dainty, soft skin,

till every dimple gives up its last hidden droplet; then, with many

a kiss, and smile, and coo, she robes the little form in fairy-like

garments of cambric, lace, flannel, soft as a moth’s wing, and

delicate embroidery. The small, restless feet are caught, and encased

in comical little hose, and shod with Titania’s own slippers. Then

the light golden locks are brushed and twined into tendril-like curls,

and lo! the beautiful labor of love is finished. Baby is bathed and

dressed for the day.

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

HORATIO ALGER.

AS a writer of books at once entertaining and at the same time of a

healthy and earnest character a parent cannot recommend to his boys a

more wholesome author than Horatio Alger, Jr. Mr. Alger always writes

with a careful regard to truth and to the right principles. His heroes

captivate the imagination, but they do not inflame it, and they are

generally worthy examples for the emulation of boys. At the same

time he is in no sense a preacher. His books have the true juvenile

flavor and charm, and, like the sugar pills of the homœopathist,

carry the good medicine of morality, bravery, industry, enterprise,

honor――everything that goes to make up the true manly and noble

character, so subtly woven into the thread of his interesting

narrative that the writer without detecting its presence receives

the wholesome benefit.

Mr. Alger became famous in the publication of that undying book,

“Ragged Dick; or, Street Life in New York.” It was his first book for

young people, and its success was so great that he immediately devoted

himself to writing for young people, which he has since continued. It

was a new field for a writer when Mr. Alger began, and his treatment

of it at once caught the fancy of the boys. “Ragged Dick” first

appeared in 1868, and since then it has been selling steadily until

now it is estimated that over two hundred thousand copies of the

series have passed into circulation. Mr. Alger possesses in an eminent

degree that sympathy with boys which a writer must have to meet with

success. He is able to enter into their plans, hopes, and aspirations.

He knows how to look upon life as they do. He writes straight at them

as one from their ranks and not down upon them as a towering fatherly

adviser. A boy’s heart naturally opens to a writer who understands

him and makes a companion of him. This, we believe, accounts for the

enormous sale of the books of this writer. We are told that about

three-quarters of a million copies of his books have been sold and

that all the large circulating libraries in the country have several

complete sets of them, of which but few volumes are found on the

shelves at one time.

Horatio Alger, Jr., was born in Revere, Massachusetts, January 13,

1834. He graduated at Harvard University in 1852, after which he spent

several years in teaching and newspaper work. In 1864 he was ordained

as a Unitarian minister and served a Massachusetts church for two

years. It was in 1866 that he took up his residence in New York and

became deeply interested in the street boys and exerted what influence

he could to the bettering of their condition. His experience in this

work furnished him with the information out of which grew many of his

later writings.

To enumerate the various volumes published by this author would be

tedious. They have generally been issued in series. Several volumes

complete one subject or theme. His first published book was “Bertha’s

Christmas Vision” (1855). Succeeding this came “Nothing to Do,” a tilt

at our best society, in verse (1857); “Frank’s Campaign; or, What a

Boy Can Do” (1864); “Helen Ford,” a novel, and also a volume of poems

(1866). The “Ragged Dick” series began in 1868, and comprises six

volumes. Succeeding this came “Tattered Tom,” first and second series,

comprising eight volumes. The entire fourteen volumes above referred

to are devoted to New York street life of boys. “Ragged Dick” has

served as a model for many a poor boy struggling upward, while the

influence of Phil the fiddler in the “Tattered Tom” series is credited

with having had much to do in the abolishment of the _padrone_ system.

The “Campaign Series” comprised three volumes; the “Luck and Pluck

Series” eight; the “Brave and Bold” four; the “Pacific Series” four;

the “Atlantic Series” four; “Way to Success” four; the “New World”

three; the “Victory Series” three. All of these were published prior

to 1896. Since the beginning of 1896 have appeared “Frank Hunter’s

Peril,” “The Young Salesman” and other later works, all of which have

met with the usual cordial reception accorded by the boys and girls to

the books of this favorite author. It is perhaps but just to say, now

that Oliver Optic is gone, that Mr. Alger has attained distinction as

the most popular writer of books for boys in America, and perhaps no

other writer for the young has ever stimulated and encouraged earnest

boys in their efforts to rise in the world or so strengthened their

will to persevere in well-doing, and at the same time written stories

so real that every one, young and old, delights to read them. He not

only writes interesting and even thrilling stories, but what is of

very great importance, they are always clean and healthy.

* * * * *

HOW DICK BEGAN THE DAY.¹

(FROM “RAGGED DICK; OR, STREET LIFE IN NEW YORK.”)

¹ Copyright, Porter & Coates.

“WAKE up, there, youngster,” said a rough voice.

Ragged Dick opened his eyes slowly and stared stupidly in the face of

the speaker, but did not offer to get up.

“Wake up, you young vagabond!” said the man a little impatiently; “I

suppose you’d lay there all day if I hadn’t called you.”

“What time is it?” asked Dick.

“Seven o’clock.”

“Seven o’clock! I oughter’ve been up an hour ago. I know what ’twas

made me so precious sleepy. I went to the Old Bowery last night and

didn’t turn in till past twelve.”

“You went to the Old Bowery? Where’d you get your money?” asked the

man, who was a porter in the employ of a firm doing business on Spruce

Street.

“Made it on shines, in course. My guardian don’t allow me no money for

theatres, so I have to earn it.”

“Some boys get it easier than that,” said the porter, significantly.

“You don’t catch me stealing, if that’s what you mean,” said Dick.

“Don’t you ever steal, then?”

“No, and I wouldn’t. Lots of boys does it, but I wouldn’t.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear you say that. I believe there’s some good in

you, Dick, after all.”

“Oh, I’m a rough customer,” said Dick. “But I wouldn’t steal. It’s

mean.”

“I’m glad you think so, Dick,” and the rough voice sounded gentler

than at first. “Have you got any money to buy your breakfast?”

“No; but I’ll soon have some.”

While this conversation had been going on Dick had got up. His

bed-chamber had been a wooden box, half full of straw, on which the

young bootblack had reposed his weary limbs and slept as soundly as

if it had been a bed of down. He dumped down into the straw without

taking the trouble of undressing. Getting up, too, was an equally

short process. He jumped out of the box, shook himself, picked out one

or two straws that had found their way into rents in his clothes, and,

drawing a well-worn cap over his uncombed locks, he was all ready for

the business of the day.

Dick’s appearance, as he stood beside the box, was rather peculiar.

His pants were torn in several places, and had apparently belonged

in the first instance to a boy two sizes larger than himself. He

wore a vest, all the buttons of which were gone except two, out of

which peeped a shirt which looked as if it had been worn a month. To

complete his costume he wore a coat too long for him, dating back, if

one might judge from its general appearance, to a remote antiquity.

Washing the hands and face is usually considered proper in commencing

the day; but Dick was above such refinement. He had no particular

dislike to dirt, and did not think it necessary to remove several

dark streaks on his face and hands. But in spite of his dirt and rags

there was something about Dick that was attractive. It was easy to

see that if he had been clean and well-dressed he would have been

decidedly good-looking. Some of his companions were sly, and their

faces inspired distrust; but Dick had a straightforward manner that

made him a favorite.

Dick’s business hours had commenced. He had no office to open. His

little blacking-box was ready for use, and he looked sharply in the

faces of all who passed, addressing each with, “Shine your boots,

sir?”

“How much?” asked a gentleman on his way to his office.

“Ten cents,” said Dick, dropping his box, and sinking upon his knees

on the sidewalk, flourishing his brush with the air of one skilled in

his profession.

“Ten cents! Isn’t that a little steep?”

“Well, you know ’taint all clear profit,” said Dick, who had already

set to work. “There’s the _blacking_ costs something, and I have to

get a new brush pretty often.”

“And you have a large rent, too,” said the gentleman, quizzically,

with a glance at a large hole in Dick’s coat.

“Yes, sir,” said Dick, always ready for a joke; “I have to pay such a

big rent for my manshun up on Fifth Avenue that I can’t afford to take

less than ten cents a shine. I’ll give you a bully shine, sir.”

“Be quick about it then, for I am in a hurry. So your house is on

Fifth Avenue, is it?”

“It isn’t anywhere else,” said Dick, and Dick spoke the truth there.

“What tailor do you patronize?” asked the gentleman, surveying Dick’s

attire.

“Would you like to go to the same one?” asked Dick, shrewdly.

“Well, no; it strikes me that he didn’t give you a very good fit.”

“This coat once belonged to General Washington,” said Dick, comically.

“He wore it all through the Revolution, and it got tore some, ’cause

he fit so hard. When he died he told his widder to give it to some

smart young fellow that hadn’t got none of his own: so she gave it to

me. But if you’d like it, sir, to remember General Washington by, I’ll

let you have it reasonable.”

“Thank you, but I wouldn’t like to deprive you of it. And did your

pants come from General Washington, too?”

“No, they was a gift from Lewis Napoleon. Lewis had outgrown ’em and

sent ’em to me; he’s bigger than me, and that’s why they don’t fit.

“It seems you have distinguished friends. Now, my lad, I suppose you

would like your money.”

“I shouldn’t have any objection,” said Dick.

* * * * *

And now, having fairly introduced Ragged Dick to my young readers, I

must refer them to the next chapter for his further adventures.

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

EDWARD S. ELLIS.

WRITER OF POPULAR BOOKS FOR BOYS.

EDWARD S. ELLIS is one of the most successful of the large group of

men and women who have made it their principal business to provide

delightful books for our young people.

Mr. Ellis is a native of northern Ohio, born in 1840, but has lived

most of his life in New Jersey. At the age of seventeen, he began his

successful career as a teacher and was attached for some years to the

State Normal School of New Jersey, and was Trustee and Superintendent

of the schools in the city of Trenton. He received the degree of

A. M. from Princeton University on account of the high character of

his historical text-books; but he is most widely known as a writer of

books for boys. Of these, he has written about thirty and continues to

issue two new ones each year, all of which are republished in London.

His contributions to children’s papers are so highly esteemed that

the “Little Folks’ Magazine,” of London, pays him double the rates

given to any other contributor. Mr. Ellis’s School Histories have

been widely used as text-books and he has also written two books on

Arithmetic. He is now preparing “The Standard History of the United

States.”

Besides those already mentioned, the titles of which would make

too long a list to be inserted here, he has written a great many

miscellaneous books.

Mr. Ellis abounds in good nature and is a delightful companion, and

finds in his home at Englewood, New Jersey, all that is necessary to

the enjoyment of life.

* * * * *

THE SIGNAL FIRE.¹

(FROM “STORM MOUNTAIN.”)

¹ Copyright, Porter & Coates.

TALBOT FROST paused on the crest of Storm Mountain and looked across

the lonely Oakland Valley spread out before him.

He had traveled a clean hundred miles through the forest, swimming

rapid streams, dodging Indians and Tories, and ever on the alert for

his enemies, who were equally vigilant in their search for him.

He eluded them all, however, for Frost, grim and grizzled, was a

veteran backwoodsman who had been a border scout for a score of years

or more, and he knew all the tricks of the cunning Iroquois, whose

ambition was to destroy every white person that could be reached with

rifle, knife, or tomahawk.

Frost had been engaged on many duties for the leading American

officers, but he was sure that to-day was the most important of all;

for be it known that he carried, hidden in the heel of his shoe, a

message in cipher from General George Washington himself.

Frost had been promised one hundred dollars in gold by the immortal

leader of the American armies, if he would place the piece of cipher

writing in the hands of Colonel Nick Hawley, before the evening of the

tenth day of August, 1777.

To-day was the tenth, the afternoon was only half gone, and Fort

Defiance, with its small garrison under the command of Hawley, was

only a mile distant in Oakland Valley. The vale spread away for many

leagues to the right and left, and was a couple of miles wide at the

point where the small border settlement was planted, with its stockade

fort and its dozen families clustered near.

“Thar’s a good three hours of sunlight left,” muttered the veteran,

squinting one eye toward the sultry August sky, “and I orter tramp to

the fort and back agin in half that time. I’ll be thar purty quick,

if none of the varmints trip me up, but afore leavin’ this crest, I’d

like to cotch the signal fire of young Roslyn from over yender.”

General Washington considered the message to Colonel Hawley so

important that he had sent it in duplicate; that is to say, two

messengers concealed the cipher about their persons and set out by

widely different routes to Fort Defiance, in Oakland Valley.

Since the distance was about the same, and it was not expected that

there would be much variation in speed, it was believed that, barring

accidents, the two would arrive in sight of their destination within a

short time of each other.

The other messenger was Elmer Roslyn, a youth of seventeen, a native

of Oakland, absent with his father in the Continental Army, those two

being the only members of their family who escaped an Indian massacre

that had burst upon the lovely settlement some months before.

It was agreed that whoever first reached the mountain crest should

signal to the other by means of a small fire――large enough merely to

send up a slight vapor that would show against the blue sky beyond.

The keen eyes of Talbot Frost roved along the rugged mountain-ridge

a couple of miles distant, in search of the tell-tale signal. They

followed the craggy crest a long distance to the north and south of

the point where Roslyn had promised to appear, but the clear summer

air was unsustained by the least semblance of smoke or vapor. The day

itself was of unusual brilliancy, not the least speck of a cloud being

visible in the tinted sky.

“That Elmer Roslyn is a powerful pert young chap,” said the border

scout to himself. “I don’t think I ever seed his ekal, and he can

fight in battles jes’ like his father, Captain Mart, that I’ve heerd

Gineral Washington say was one of the best officers he’s got; but

thar’s no sense in his puttin’ himself agin an old campaignor like

_me_. I don’t s’pose he’s within twenty mile of Oakland yit, and he

won’t have a chance to kindle that ere signal fire afore to-morrer.

So I’ll start mine, and in case he should accidentally reach the

mountain-top over yender afore sundown, why he’ll see what a foolish

younker he was to butt agin me.”

Talbot Frost knew that despite the perils through which he had forced

his way to this spot, the greatest danger, in all probability, lay in

the brief space separating him from Fort Defiance in the middle of the

valley.

It was necessary, therefore, to use great care lest the signal fire

should attract the attention of unfriendly eyes.

“I’ll start a small one,” he said, beginning to gather some dry twigs,

“just enough for Elmer to obsarve by sarchin’――by the great Gineral

Washington!”

To explain this exclamation of the old scout, I must tell you that

before applying the flint and tinder to the crumpled leaves, Talbot

Frost glanced across the opposite mountain-crest, two miles away.

As he did so he detected a fine, wavy column of smoke climbing from

the rocks and trees. It was so faint that it was not likely to attract

notice, unless a suspicious eye happened to look toward that part of

the sky.

“By gracious! It’s him!” he exclaimed, closing his mouth and resuming

command of himself. “That ere young Roslyn is pearter than I thought;

if he keeps on at this rate by the time he reaches my years he’ll be

the ekal of me――_almost_. Wall, I’ll have to answer him; when we meet

I’ll explanify that I give him up, and didn’t think it was wuth while

to start a blaze.”

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

MARTHA FINLEY.

THE GIRLS’ FRIEND.

MARTHA FINLEY, author of the “Elsie Books,” etc., amounting in all

to about one hundred volumes, was born in Chillicothe, Ohio, April 26,

1828, in the house of her grandfather, Major Samuel Finley, of the

Virginia Cavalry, in the War of the Revolution, and a personal friend

of Washington, who, while President, appointed him “Collector of

Public Monies” for the Northwestern Territory of which Ohio was then

a part. In the war of 1812–14 Major Finley marched to Detroit to

the assistance of General Hull, at the head of a regiment of Ohio

volunteers in which his eldest son, James Brown Finley, then a lad

of eighteen, was a lieutenant. On Hull’s disgraceful surrender those

troops were paroled and returned to their homes in Ohio. James Finley

afterwards became a physician and married his mother’s niece, Maria

Theresa Brown. Martha was their sixth child. In the spring of 1836 Dr.

Finley left Ohio for South Bend, Indiana, where he resided until his

death in 1851.

Something more than a year later Martha joined a widowed sister in New

York city and resided there with her for about eighteen months. It was

then and there she began her literary career by writing a newspaper

story and a little Sunday-school book. But she was broken down in

health and half blind from astigmatism; so bad a case that the oculist

who years afterward measured her eyes for glasses, told her she would

have been excusable had she said she could not do anything at all.

But she loved books and would manage to read and write in spite of

the difficulty of so doing; and a great difficulty it was, for in

the midst of a long sentence the letters would seem to be thrown

into confusion, and it was necessary to look away from the book or

close her eyes for an instant before they would resume their proper

positions.

But orphaned and dependent upon her own exertions, she struggled

on, teaching and writing, living sometimes in Philadelphia with a

stepmother who was kind enough to give her a home, sometimes in

Phœnixville, Pa., where she taught a little select school. It was

there she began the Elsie Series which have proved her most successful

venture in literature. The twenty-second volume, published in 1897, is

entitled Elsie at Home. The author has again and again proposed to end

the series, thinking it long enough, but public and publishers have

insisted upon another and yet another volume. The books have sold

so well that they have made her a lovely home in Elkton, Maryland,

whither she removed in 1876 and still resides, and to yield her a

comfortable income.

But her works are not all juveniles. “Wanted a Pedigree,” and most of

the other works in the Finley Series are for adults, and though not so

very popular as the Elsie Books, still have steady sales though nearly

all have been on the market for more than twenty years.

* * * * *

ELSIE’S DISAPPOINTMENT.¹

(FROM “ELSIE DINSMORE.”)

¹ Copyright, 1893, Dodd, Mead & Co.

THE school-room at Roselands was a very pleasant apartment. Within sat

Miss Day with her pupils, six in number.

“Young ladies and gentlemen,” said she, looking at her watch, “I

shall leave you to your studies for an hour; at the end of which time

I shall return to hear your recitations, when those who have attended

properly to their duties will be permitted to ride out with me to

visit the fair.”

“Oh! that will be jolly!” exclaimed Arthur, a bright-eyed,

mischief-loving boy of ten.

“Hush!” said Miss Day sternly; “let me hear no more such exclamations;

and remember that you will not go unless your lessons are thoroughly

learned. Louise and Lora,” addressing two young girls of the

respective ages of twelve and fourteen, “that French exercise must be

perfect, and your English lessons as well. Elsie,” to a little girl

of eight, sitting alone at a desk near one of the windows, and bending

over a slate with an appearance of great industry, “every figure of

that example must be correct, your geography lesson recited perfectly,

and a page in your copy-book written without a blot.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said the child meekly, raising a pair of large soft eyes

of the darkest hazel for an instant to her teacher’s face, and then

dropping them again upon her slate.

“And see that none of you leave the room until I return,” continued

the governess. “Walter, if you miss one word of that spelling, you

will have to stay at home and learn it over.”

“Unless mamma interferes, as she will be pretty sure to do,” muttered

Arthur, as the door closed on Miss Day, and her retreating footsteps

were heard passing down the hall.

For about ten minutes after her departure, all was quiet in the

school-room, each seemingly completely absorbed in study. But at

the end of that time Arthur sprang up, and, flinging his book across

the room, exclaimed, “There! I know my lesson; and if I didn’t, I

shouldn’t study another bit for old Day, or Night either.”

“Do be quiet, Arthur,” said his sister Louise; “I can’t study in such

a racket.”

Arthur stole on tiptoe across the room, and coming up behind Elsie,

tickled the back of her neck with a feather.

She started, saying in a pleading tone, “Please, Arthur, don’t.”

“It pleases me to do,” he said, repeating the experiment.

Elsie changed her position, saying in the same gentle, persuasive tone,

“O Arthur! _please_ let me alone, or I never shall be able to do this

example.”

“What! all this time on one example! you ought to be ashamed. Why, I

could have done it half a dozen times over.”

“I have been over and over it,” replied the little girl in a tone

of despondency, “and still there are two figures that will not come

right.”

“How do you know they are not right, little puss?” shaking her curls

as he spoke.

“Oh! please, Arthur, don’t pull my hair. I have the answer――that’s the

way I know.”

“Well, then, why don’t you just set the figures down. I would.”

“Oh! no, indeed; that would not be honest.”

“Pooh! nonsense! nobody would be the wiser, nor the poorer.”

“No, but it would be just like telling a lie. But I can never get it

right while you are bothering me so,” said Elsie, laying her slate

aside in despair. Then, taking out her geography, she began studying

most diligently. But Arthur continued his persecutions――tickling her,

pulling her hair, twitching the book out of her hand, and talking

almost incessantly, making remarks, and asking questions; till at last

Elsie said, as if just ready to cry, “Indeed, Arthur, if you don’t let

me alone, I shall never be able to get my lessons.”

“Go away, then; take your book out on the veranda, and learn your

lessons there,” said Louise. “I’ll call you when Miss Day comes.”

“Oh! no, Louise, I cannot do that, because it would be disobedience,”

replied Elsie, taking out her writing materials.

Arthur stood over her criticising every letter she made, and finally

jogged her elbow in such a way as to cause her to drop all the ink in

her pen upon the paper, making quite a large blot.

“Oh!” cried the little girl, bursting into tears, “now I shall lose my

ride, for Miss Day will not let me go; and I was so anxious to see all

those beautiful flowers.”

Arthur, who was really not very vicious, felt some compunction when he

saw the mischief he had done. “Never mind, Elsie,” said he, “I can fix

it yet. Just let me tear out this page, and you can begin again on the

next, and I’ll not bother you. I’ll make these two figures come right,

too,” he added, taking up her slate.

“Thank you, Arthur,” said the little girl, smiling through her tears;

“you are very kind, but it would not be honest to do either, and I had

rather stay at home than be deceitful.”

“Very well, miss,” said he, tossing his head, and walking away, “since

you won’t let me help you, it is all your own fault if you have to

stay at home.”

Elsie finished her page, and, excepting the unfortunate blot, it all

looked very neat indeed, showing plainly that it had been written with

great care. She then took up her slate and patiently went over and

over every figure of the troublesome example, trying to discover where

her mistake had been. But much time had been lost through Arthur’s

teasing, and her mind was so disturbed by the accident to her writing

that she tried in vain to fix it upon the business in hand; and before

the two troublesome figures had been made right, the hour was past and

Miss Day returned.

“Oh!” thought Elsie, “if she will only hear the others first;” but

it was a vain hope. Miss Day had no sooner seated herself at her desk

than she called, “Elsie, come here and say that lesson; and bring your

copy-book and slate, that I may examine your work.”

Elsie tremblingly obeyed.

The lesson, though a difficult one, was very tolerably recited; for

Elsie, knowing Arthur’s propensity for teasing, had studied it in her

own room before school hours. But Miss Day handed back the books with

a frown, saying, “I told you the recitation must be perfect, and it

was not. There are two incorrect figures in this example,” said she,

laying down the slate, after glancing over its contents. Then taking

up the copy-book, she exclaimed, “Careless, disobedient child! did I

not caution you to be careful not to blot your book? There will be no

ride for you this morning. You have failed in everything. Go to your

seat. Make that example right, and do the next; learn your geography

lesson over, and write another page in your copy-book; and mind, if

there is a blot on it, you will get no dinner.”

Weeping and sobbing, Elsie took up her books and obeyed.

During this scene Arthur stood at his desk pretending to study, but

glancing every now and then at Elsie, with a conscience evidently ill

at ease. She cast an imploring glance at him, as she returned to her

seat; but he turned away his head, muttering, “It’s all her own fault,

for she wouldn’t let me help her.”

As he looked up again, he caught his sister Lora’s eyes fixed on him

with an expression of scorn and contempt. He colored violently, and

dropped his upon his book.

“Miss Day,” said Lora, indignantly, “I see Arthur does not mean to

speak, and as I cannot bear to see such injustice, I must tell you

that it is all his fault that Elsie has failed in her lessons; for she

tried her very best, but he teased her incessantly, and also jogged

her elbow and made her spill the ink on her book; and to her credit

she was too honorable to tear out the leaf from her copy-book, or to

let him make her example right; both which he very generously proposed

doing after causing all the mischief.”

“Is this so, Arthur?” asked Miss Day, angrily.

The boy hung his head, but made no reply.

“Very well, then,” said Miss Day, “you too must stay at home.”

“Surely,” said Lora, in surprise, “you will not keep Elsie, since I

have shown you that she was not to blame.”

“Miss Lora,” replied her teacher, haughtily, “I wish you to understand

that I am not to be dictated to by my pupils.”

Lora bit her lip, but said nothing, and Miss Day went on hearing the

lessons without further remark.

In the meantime the little Elsie sat at her desk, striving to conquer

the feelings of anger and indignation that were swelling in her breast;

for Elsie, though she possessed much of “the ornament of a meek and

quiet spirit,” was not yet perfect, and often had a fierce contest

with her naturally quick temper. Yet it was seldom, very seldom that

word or tone or look betrayed the existence of such feelings; and it

was a common remark in the family that Elsie had no spirit.

The recitations were scarcely finished when the door opened and a lady

entered dressed for a ride.

“Not through yet, Miss Day?” she asked.

“Yes, madam, we are just done,” replied the teacher, closing the

French grammar and handing it to Louise.

“Well, I hope your pupils have all done their duty this morning, and

are ready to accompany us to the fair,” said Mrs. Dinsmore. “But what

is the matter with Elsie?”

“She has failed in all her exercises, and therefore has been told that

she must remain at home,” replied Miss Day with heightened color and

in a tone of anger; “and as Miss Lora tells me that Master Arthur was

partly the cause, I have forbidden him also to accompany us.”

“Excuse me, Miss Day, for correcting you,” said Lora, a little

indignantly; “but I did not say _partly_, for I am sure it was

_entirely_ his fault.”

“Hush, hush, Lora,” said her mother, a little impatiently; “how can

you be sure of any such thing; Miss Day, I must beg of you to excuse

Arthur this once, for I have quite set my heart on taking him along.

He is fond of mischief, I know, but he is only a child, and you must

not be too hard upon him.”

“Very well, madam,” replied the governess stiffly, “you have of course

the best right to control your own children.”

Mrs. Dinsmore turned to leave the room.

“Mamma,” asked Lora, “is not Elsie to be allowed to go too?”

“Elsie is not my child, and I have nothing to say about it. Miss Day,

who knows all the circumstances, is much better able than I to judge

whether or no she is deserving of punishment,” replied Mrs. Dinsmore,

sailing out of the room.

“You will let her go, Miss Day?” said Lora, inquiringly.

“Miss Lora,” replied Miss Day, angrily, “I have already told you I was

not to be dictated to. I have said Elsie must remain at home, and I

shall not break my word.”

“Such injustice!” muttered Lora, turning away.

Miss Day hastily quitted the room, followed by Louise and Lora, and

Elsie was left alone.

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

MARY MAPES DODGE.

EDITOR OF “ST. NICHOLAS” MAGAZINE.

IT would be difficult to name a writer of later years who has done

more to delight the children with bright and chatty sunny-day stories

than this estimable woman. While her mind has all the maturity, power,

good judgment and strength of our best writers, her heart seems never

to have grown out of the happy realm of childhood. It is for them that

she thinks, and it is for them that she writes her charming stories

when she is in her happiest moods. Not that she cannot write for grown

up people, for she has given them several books――very good ones too.

She edited “Hearth and Home” at one time, and many a mother remembers

her good advice in bright and cheerful editorials, on the art of

home-making, and on the care and training of children. She is also a

humorous writer of considerable ability. “Miss Maloney on the Chinese

Question” is one of her most amusing sketches. Mary Mapes was born

in New York city, in 1838. Prof. James Mapes, the scientist, was her

father. She married Mr. William Dodge, a lawyer, who lived only a

few years, and it was after his death that she began to write for

the “Hearth and Home” to which Donald G. Mitchell (Ik Marvel) and

Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe were at that time, also, contributors.

In 1864 Mrs. Dodge’s first volume entitled, “Irving Stories,” for

children, appeared. It met with great success, and in 1865 she issued

her second volume, “Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates,” a charming

story for boys and girls. The scene was laid in Holland. The book was

so popular that it was translated into French, German, Dutch, Russian

and other languages and became a little classic. She wrote a number

of other books, among which are “A Few Friends, and How They Amused

Themselves” (1869); “Rhymes and Jingles” (1874); “Theophilus and

Others;” “Along the Way,” a volume of poems, and “Donald and Dorothy.”

In 1873 the “St. Nicholas” Magazine for young folks was commenced and

Mrs. Dodge was made its editor, which position she still retains in

1897, and its popularity and brightness have given her a permanent

place in the hearts of the boys and girls for the last quarter century.

Mrs. Dodge has long been a leader in the literary and artistic circles

in New York, where she has a pleasant home. She had two fine boys

of her own and it is said her first stories were written for their

amusement. One of her sons died in 1881. The other, a successful

inventor and manufacturer, lives in Philadelphia.

* * * * *

TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING.¹

(FROM “DONALD AND DOROTHY.”)

¹ Copyright, Mary Mapes Dodge.

JUST as Donald and Dorothy were about to end the outdoor visit to the

Danbys, described in our last chapter, Coachman Jack was seen in a

neighboring field, trying to catch Mr. Reed’s spirited mare, “Lady,”

that had been let out to have a run. He had already approached her

without difficulty and slipped a bridle over her head, but she had

started away from him, and he, feeling that she had been allowed

playtime enough, was now bent on recapturing her.

Instantly a dozen Danby eyes were watching them with intense interest.

Then Donald and Ben, not being able to resist the impulse, scampered

over to join in the race, closely followed by Dan and Fandy. Gregory,

too, would have gone, but Charity called him back.

It was a superb sight to see the spirited animal, one moment standing

motionless at a safe distance from Jack, and the next, leaping about

the field, mane and tail flying, and every action telling of a defiant

enjoyment of freedom. Soon, two grazing horses in the same field

caught her spirit; even Don’s pony, at first looking soberly over a

hedge in the adjoining lot, began frisking and capering about on his

own account, dashing past an opening in the hedge as though it were as

solid a barrier as the rest. Nor were Jack and the boys less frisky.

Coaxing and shouting had failed, and now it was an open chase, in

which, for a time, the mare certainly had the advantage. But what

animal is proof against its appetite? Clever little Fandy had rushed

to Mr. Reed’s barn, and brought back in his hat a light lunch of oats

for the mare, which he at once bore into her presence, shaking it

temptingly, at the same time slowly backing away from her. The little

midget and his hatful succeeded, where big man and boys had failed.

The mare came cautiously up and was about to put her nose into the cap,

when Jack’s stealthy and sudden effort to seize the bridle made her

start sidewise away from him. But here Donald leaped forward at the

other side, and caught her before she had time to escape again.

Jack was too proud of Don’s quickness to appear surprised; so,

disregarding the hilarious shout of the Danby boys, he took the bridle

from the young master with an off-hand air, and led the now gentle

animal quietly towards the stable.

But Dorothy was there before him. Out of breath after her brisk run,

she was panting and tugging at a dusty side-saddle hanging in the

harness-room, when Jack and the mare drew near.

“Oh, Jack!” she cried, “help me to get this down! I mean to have some

fun. I’m going to ride that mare back to the field!”

“Not you, Miss Dorry!” exclaimed Jack. “Take your own pony, an’ your

own saddle, an’ it’s a go; but this ’ere mare’d be on her beam ends

with you in no time.”

“Oh, no, she wouldn’t, Jack! She knows me perfectly. Don’t you, Lady?

Oh, do, Jack! That’s a good Jack. _Please_ let me! Don’s there, you

know.”

Dorry said this as if Don were a regiment. By this time, the

side-saddle, yielding to her vigorous efforts, had clattered down

from its peg, with a peculiar buckle-and-leathery noise of its own.

“Won’t you, Jack? Ah, _won’t_ you?”

“No, miss, I won’t!” said Jack, resolutely.

“Why, Jack, I’ve been on her before. Don’t you know? There isn’t

a horse on the place that could throw me. Uncle said so. Don’t you

remember?”

“So he did!” said Jack, his eyes sparkling proudly.

“The Capt’n said them very words. An’,” glancing weakly at the mare,

“she’s standin’ now like a skiff in a calm. Not a breath in her

sails――”

“Oh, do――_do_, Jack!” coaxed Dorry, seizing her advantage, “quick!

They’re all in the lot yet. Here, put it on her!”

“I’m an old fool,” muttered Jack to himself, as, hindered by Dorry’s

busy touches, he proceeded to saddle the subdued animal; “but I can’t

never refuse her nothin’――that’s where it is. Easy now, miss!” as

Dorry, climbing up on the feed-box in laughing excitement, begged him

to hurry and let her mount. “Easy now. There! You’re on, high and dry.

Here” (tugging at the girth), “let me tauten up a bit! Steady now!

Don’t try no capers with her, Miss Dorry, and come back in a minute.

Get up, Lady!――get up!”

The mare left the stable so slowly and unwillingly, that Jack slapped

her flank gently as she moved off. Jog jog went Lady out through

the wide stable doorway, across the yard into the open field. Dorry,

hastily arranging her skirts and settling herself comfortably upon the

grand but dingy saddle (it had been Aunt Kate’s in the days gone by),

laughed to herself, thinking how astonished they all must be to see

her riding Lady back to them. For a moment she playfully pretended to

be unconscious of their gaze. Then she looked up.

Poor Dorry! Not a boy, not even Donald, had remained in the field!

He and the little Danbys were listening to one of Ben’s stories of

adventure. Even the two horses and Don’s pony were quietly nosing the

dry grass in search of green tufts.

“I don’t care,” she murmured gayly, overcoming her disappointment. “I

mean to have a ride, any way. Get up, Lady!”

Lady _did_ get up. She shook her head, pricked up her ears, and

started off at a beautiful canter across the fields.

“How lovely!” thought Dorry, especially pleased at that moment to see

several figures coming toward her from the Danby yard; “it’s just like

flying!”

Whether Lady missed her master’s firm grip upon the rein, or whether

she guessed her rider’s thought, and was inspired by the sudden shouts

and hurrahs of the approaching boys, can never be known. Certain

it is that by the next moment Dorry, on Lady’s back, was flying in

earnest,――flying at great speed round and round the field, but with

never an idea of falling off. Her first feeling was that her uncle and

Jack wouldn’t be pleased if they knew the exact character of the ride.

Next came a sense of triumph, because she felt that Don and the rest

were seeing it all, and then a wild consciousness that her hat was off,

her hair streaming to the wind, and that she was keeping her seat for

dear life.

Lady’s canter had become a run, and the run soon grew into a series of

leaps. Still Dorry kept her seat. Young as she was, she was a fearless

rider, and at first, as we have seen, rather enjoyed the prospect of

a tussle with Lady. But as the speed increased, Dorry found herself

growing deaf, dumb and blind in the breathless race. Still, if she

could only hold on, all would be well; she certainly could not consent

to be conquered before “those boys.”

Lady seemed to go twenty feet in the air at every leap. There was

no merry shouting now. The little boys stood pale and breathless.

Ben, trying to hold Don back, was wondering what was to be done, and

Charity was wringing her hands.

“Oh, oh! She’ll be thrown!” cried the girls.

“Not a bit of it!” insisted Donald. “I’ve seen Dot on a horse before.”

But his looks betrayed his anxiety. “See! the mare’s trying to throw

her now! But she can’t do it――she can’t do it! Dot understands herself,

I tell you,――Whoa-o!――Let me go!” and, breaking from Ben, he tore

across the field, through the opening in the hedge, and was on his

pony’s back in a twinkling. How he did it, he never knew. He had

heard Dorry scream, and somehow that scream made him and his pony one.

Together, they flew over the field; with a steady, calm purpose, they

cut across Lady’s course, and soon were at her side. Donald’s “Hold on,

Dot!” was followed by his quick plunge toward the mare. It seemed that

she certainly would ride over him, but he never faltered. Grasping his

pony’s mane with one hand, he clutched Lady’s bridle with the other.

The mare plunged, but the boy’s grip was as firm as iron. Though

almost dragged from his seat, he held on, and the more she struggled,

the harder he tugged,――the pony bearing itself nobly, and quivering

in eager ♦sympathy with Donald’s every movement. Jack and Ben were now

tearing across the field, bent on rescue; but they were not needed.

Don was master of the situation. The mare, her frolic over, had

yielded with superb grace, almost as if with a bow, and the pony was

rubbing its nose against her steaming side.

♦ ‘smypathy’ replaced with ‘sympathy’

“Good for you, Dot!” was Donald’s first word. “You held on

magnificently.”

Dorothy stroked Lady’s hot neck, and for a moment could not trust

herself to look up. But when Jack half-pulled, half-lifted her from

the saddle, and she felt the firm earth beneath her, she tottered and

would have fallen, had not Donald, frightened at her white face,

sprung to the ground just in time to support her.

“Shiver my timbers!” growled Jack, “if ever I let youngsters have

their way again!” But his eyes shone with a strange mixture of

self-reproach and satisfaction as he looked at Dorry.

NOTED JOURNALISTS AND MAGAZINE CONTRIBUTORS

Illustration: NOTED AMERICAN JOURNALISTS AND MAGAZINE CONTRIBUTORS.

HORACE GREELEY • MURAT HALSTEAD • ALBERT SHAW

LYMAN ABBOTT • CHAS. A. DANA • HENRY W. WATTERSON

WHITELAW REID • JULIAN HAWTHORNE • RICHARD HARDING DAVIS

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

HORACE GREELEY.

THE FOUNDER OF MODERN JOURNALISM.

THE men of whom we love to read are those who stand for some great

principle, whose lives and deeds exemplify its power. When we think

of patriotism, the figure of Washington rises before us, as the man

whose life, above all others, was controlled by pure love of country.

Practical wisdom, shrewdness, and thrift are embodied in Benjamin

Franklin. Astor and Girard represent the power of accumulation;

Stewart, Carnegie, and Pullman, the power of organization; and so,

when we consider the power of the press, the image which comes up

before our mental view is that of Horace Greeley. In almost every

personal quality there have been men who far surpassed him,――men who

were greater as politicians, as organizers, as statesmen, as speakers,

as writers,――but in the one respect of influencing public opinion

through the press, of “making his mind the mind of other men,” no man

in America has ever wielded such power as the great editor and founder

of the New York “Tribune.”

Horace Greeley was one of the poor country boys who have afterward

become the bone and sinew of the Republic. He was born in Amherst,

New Hampshire, in 1811. His father, Zaccheus Greeley, was a struggling

farmer. He moved to Vermont in 1821, and a few years later to the

western part of Pennsylvania. Horace was a precocious child; and his

mother, Mary Woodburn, who was of Scotch-Irish stock, used to recite

to him ballads and stories, so that he really acquired a taste for

literature before the age at which many children conquer the alphabet.

In his fifteenth year Horace felt that he could endure farming no

longer, and at last procured from his father a reluctant consent

that he should definitely seek employment as a printer. He found the

longed-for opportunity at East Poultney, Vermont, in the office of the

“Northern Spectator.”

In 1830, before Horace’s apprenticeship ended, the “Spectator”

collapsed, and he was again set adrift. His father had removed to

Western Pennsylvania, and the boy turned his face in that direction.

After working for a few months on different country papers, he

resolved to try his fortune in New York, and went to that city in

August, 1831.

After two years of labor as a printer, so arduous that during much of

the time it extended to fourteen hours a day, Mr. Greeley commenced

his first editorial work upon a weekly paper called the “New Yorker”

of which he was part owner and which lasted until March, 1841, when it

went under, with a credit on its books of $10,000 due to Mr. Greeley

for editing the paper, all of which was sunk with the wreck.

In the famous campaign of 1840, when Harrison was “sung and shouted

into the presidential chair,” Greeley started a small weekly called

the “Log Cabin.” He threw all his spirit and energy into it; he made

it lively, crisp, and cheap. It attained an almost unheard-of success,

reaching editions of eighty and ninety thousand. It was continued for

several months after the triumphant election of Harrison, and then

merged into the New York “Tribune,” which Greeley started at this time,

the first issue appearing April 10, 1841.

The new enterprise soon became successful. It was helped at the

start by a bitter attack from the “Sun,” then in the hands of Moses

Y. Beach. The defense and rejoinders were equally pungent and amusing.

Mr. Greeley always throve best upon opposition. His spicy retorts, and

especially his partisan enthusiasm, forced the attention of the public,

and the subscription-list of the “Tribune” soon rose from hundreds to

thousands; by the third week in May it had 10,000 names on its books.

One thing in particular gave the “Tribune” eminence; that was

Greeley’s policy of employing as contributors the best writers of the

time. To name all the able men and women who thus won fame for both

themselves and the “Tribune,” would make a list too long to print; but

among them may be mentioned Bayard Taylor, whose “Views Afoot” first

appeared in the form of letters to the “Tribune;” Margaret Fuller,

whose articles gave her a wide reputation; George Ripley, Moncure D.

Conway, Sydney Howard Gay, and George W. Smalley; and for years Thomas

Hughes, the popular author of “Tom Brown at Oxford,” sent frequent

and able letters from London. The result of this liberal policy was

to make the “Tribune” indispensable to people of intelligence, even

though utterly opposed to its political views.

In 1848 Mr. Greeley was elected to Congress, but his strength was

as a journalist, not as a legislator. At the close of his brief term

he retired from Congress, and during the stormy decade preceding the

Civil War he made the “Tribune” a mighty power. He warmly espoused

the cause of freedom, and denounced the Fugitive Slave Law, the

Kansas-Nebraska Bill, and the endless aggressions of the slave power

with a vigor and pertinacity which made him one of the best-hated men

in America. His course was not always consistent; and he often brought

upon his head the wrath of friends as well as enemies. Moreover, in

the conduct of a great daily paper much must be left to the judgment

of subordinates; and all their mistakes were, of course, laid to

the charge of their chief. Many of the old readers of the “Tribune”

supposed that every line in the paper was actually written by Horace

Greeley. He rarely took the trouble to justify or explain; and,

therefore, while in one sense one of the best-known men in the country,

he was one of the most misunderstood. Mr. Greeley had no time or

thought for personal explanations; he was bent upon saving the

country,――individuals could take care of themselves.

During the war Mr. Greeley’s course was somewhat erratic and unstable,

but he kept a hold upon a large class of readers who believed in him,

to whom he was a mental and moral lawgiver, who refused to believe

any evil of him; and, if some visitor to the city――for a large

proportion of “Tribune” readers were country, and particularly Western,

people――on coming back, reported that in an interview with Mr. Greeley

the editor had indulged in unlimited profanity, the unlucky individual

was incontinently discredited and voted a calumniator.

In the years following the war, Greeley’s pen was more busy than ever.

Beside his editorial writing in the “Tribune,” he prepared the second

volume of his war history, “The American Conflict,” and his delightful

autobiography, “Recollections of a Busy Life.” He was always intensely

interested in the growth of the West, where he had made a memorable

tour in 1859, extending to Salt Lake City; and now he unceasingly

advocated western emigration. His terse advice, “Go West, young man,

and grow up with the country,” became a sort of national watchword,

and many thousands of Eastern people resolved to turn their faces

toward the empire of the West.

In 1872 a curious political combination was made. Probably such a

surprise was never sprung upon the country as the nomination of Horace

Greeley for the Presidency, by a convention of “Liberal Republicans”

and bolting Democrats. That he should be defeated at the polls

was inevitable. He worked hard through the canvass, traveling and

addressing meetings; body and mind suffered from the fatigue and

excitement. To add to his troubles, Mrs. Greeley, who had been out

of health for a considerable time, died at this period; his health

gave way; he became unable to sleep; and sleeplessness was followed

by inflammation of the brain, which soon ended his life.

Horace Greeley sleeps in Greenwood Cemetery, Long Island, on a hill

overlooking the beautiful bay of New York, and within sight of the

great city where his busy life was spent.

* * * * *

A DEBTOR’S SLAVERY.

(FROM “RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE.”)

THE _New Yorker_ was issued under my supervision, its editorials

written, its selections made for the most part by me, for seven

years and a half from March 22, 1834. Though not calculated to enlist

partisanship, or excite enthusiasm, it was at length extensively liked

and read. It began with scarcely a dozen subscribers; these steadily

increased to 9,000; and it might under better business management

(perhaps I should add, at a more favorable time), have proved

profitable and permanent. That it did not was mainly owing to these

circumstances: 1. It was not extensively advertised at the start,

and at least annually thereafter, as it should have been. 2. It was

never really published, though it had half-a-dozen nominal publishers

in succession. 3. It was sent to subscribers on credit, and a large

share of them never paid for it, and never will, while the cost

of collecting from others ate up the proceeds. 4. The machinery of

railroads, expresses, news companies, news offices, etc., whereby

literary periodicals are now mainly disseminated, did not then exist.

I believe that just such a paper issued to-day, properly published

and advertised, would obtain a circulation of 100,000 in less time

than was required to give the _New Yorker_ scarcely a tithe of that

aggregate, and would make money for its owners, instead of nearly

starving them, as mine did. I was worth at least $1,500 when it was

started; I worked hard and lived frugally throughout its existence;

it subsisted for the first two years on the profits of our job-work;

when I, deeming it established, dissolved with my partner, he taking

the jobbing business and I the _New Yorker_, which held its own pretty

fairly thenceforth till the commercial revulsion of 1837 swept over

the land, whelming it and me in the general ruin.

I had married in 1836, deeming myself worth $5,000, and the master

of a business which would thenceforth yield me for my labor at least

$1,000 per annum; but, instead of that, or of any income at all, I

found myself obliged throughout 1837 to confront a net loss of about

$100 per week――my income averaging $100, and my inevitable expenses

$200. It was in vain that I appealed to delinquents to pay up; many of

them migrated; some died; others were so considerate as to order the

paper stopped, but very few of these paid; and I struggled on against

a steadily rising tide of adversity that might have appalled a stouter

heart. Often did I call on this or that friend with intent to solicit

a small loan to meet some demand that could no longer be postponed nor

evaded, and, after wasting a precious hour, leave him, utterly unable

to broach the loathsome topic. I have borrowed $500 of a broker late

on Saturday, and paid him $5 for the use of it till Monday morning,

when I somehow contrived to return it. Most gladly would I have

terminated the struggle by a surrender; but, if I had failed to pay

my notes continually falling due, I must have paid money for my weekly

supply of paper――so that would have availed nothing. To have stopped

my journal (for I could not give it away) would have left me in debt,

beside my notes for paper, from fifty cents to two dollars each, to at

least three thousand subscribers who had paid in advance; and that is

the worst kind of bankruptcy. If anyone would have taken my business

and debts off my hands, upon my giving him my note for $2,000, I would

have jumped at the chance, and tried to work out the debt by setting

type, if nothing better offered. If it be suggested that my whole

indebtedness was at no time more than $5,000 to $7,000, I have only

to say that even $1, 000 of debt is ruin to him who keenly feels his

obligation to fulfil every engagement yet is utterly without the means

of so doing, and who finds himself dragged each week a little deeper

into hopeless insolvency. To be hungry, ragged, and penniless is

not pleasant; but this is nothing to the horrors of bankruptcy. All

the wealth of the Rothschilds would be a poor recompense for a five

years’ struggle with the consciousness that you had taken the money or

property of trusting friends――promising to return or pay for it when

required――and had betrayed this confidence through insolvency.

I dwell on this point, for I would deter others from entering that

place of torment. Half the young men in the country, with many

old enough to know better, would “go into business”――that is, into

debt――to-morrow, if they could. Most poor men are so ignorant as to

envy the merchant or manufacturer whose life is an incessant struggle

with pecuniary difficulties, who is driven to constant “shinning,” and

who, from month to month, barely evades that insolvency which sooner

or later overtakes most men in business; so that it has been computed

that but one in twenty of them achieve a pecuniary success. For my

own part――and I speak from sad experience――I would rather be a convict

in a State prison, a slave in a rice swamp, than to pass through life

under the harrow of debt.

Let no young man misjudge himself unfortunate, or truly poor, so

long as he has the full use of his limbs and faculties, and is

substantially free from debt. Hunger, cold, rags, hard work, contempt,

suspicion, unjust reproach, are disagreeable; but debt is infinitely

worse than them all. And, if it had pleased God to spare either or

all of my sons to be the support and solace of my declining years,

the lesson which I should have most earnestly sought to impress upon

them is――“Never run into debt! Avoid pecuniary obligation as you would

pestilence or famine. If you have but fifty cents, and can get no more

for a week, buy a peck of corn, parch it, and live on it, rather than

owe any man a dollar!” Of course I know that some men must do business

that involves risks, and must often give notes and other obligations,

and I do not consider him really in debt who can lay his hands

directly on the means of paying, at some little sacrifice, all that he

owes; I speak of _real_ debt――which involves risk or sacrifice on the

one side, obligation and dependence on the other――and I say, from all

such, let every youth humbly pray God to preserve him evermore.

* * * * *

THE PRESS.

LONG slumbered the world in the darkness of error,

And ignorance brooded o’er earth like a pall;

To the sceptre and crown men abased them in terror,

Though galling the bondage, and bitter the thrall;

When a voice, like the earthquake’s, revealed the dishonor――

A flash, like the lightning’s, unsealed every eye,

And o’er hill-top and glen floated liberty’s banner,

While round it men gathered to conquer or die!

’Twas the voice of the Press, on the startled ear breaking,

In giant-born prowess, like Pallas of old;

’Twas the flash of intelligence, gloriously waking

A glow on the cheek of the noble and bold;

And tyranny’s minions, o’erawed and affrighted,

Sought a lasting retreat from its powerful control,

And the chains which bound nations in ages benighted,

Were cast to the haunts of the bat and the mole.

Then hail to the Press! chosen guardian of Freedom!

Strong sword-arm of justice! bright sunbeam of truth;

We pledge to her cause (and she has but to need them),

The strength of our manhood, the fire of our youth;

Should despots e’er dare to impede her free soaring,

Or bigot to fetter her flight with his chain,

We pledge that the earth shall close o’er our deploring,

Or view her in gladness and freedom again.

But no!――to the day-dawn of knowledge and glory,

A far brighter noontide-refulgence succeeds,

And our art shall embalm, through all ages, in story,

Her champion who triumphs――her martyr who bleeds,

And proudly her sons shall recall their devotion,

While millions shall listen to honor and bless,

Till there bursts a response from the heart’s strong emotion,

And the earth echoes deep with “Long Life to the Press!”

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

CHARLES A. DANA.

THE FAMOUS EDITOR OF THE “SUN.”

THE man who with Greeley made the New York “Tribune” one of the

greatest powers in the land, and who, from 1868 to 1897, was the chief

and managing editor of the New York “Sun,” is certainly entitled to

rank among our foremost men. Charles A. Dana lived a remarkable life,

a life of strenuous effort and of continuous and notable achievement.

He was born at Hinsdale, New Hampshire, in 1819, but his early life

was passed at the village of Gaines, in Western New York, in Buffalo,

and at Guildhall, Vermont. One of his earliest recollections was of

being tied to a post with his mother’s garter because he had run away

and gotten himself very muddy, thus displaying, at three years old,

the restless spirit of enterprise which did much to make him the man

he was. When he was eleven years old he returned to Buffalo to be

a clerk in his uncle’s dry goods store. He was very successful as a

salesman, and remained in the establishment until the failure of the

business, in 1837, when he determined to prepare himself for college.

He said that he found the elements of Latin very hard and disagreeable

work, and he had the greatest difficulty in remembering the paradigms.

Two winter terms at a country school, in his early boyhood, and

two years at Harvard completed Mr. Dana’s systematic education,

as too close application affected his eyesight, and he was obliged

to withdraw from college at the end of his sophomore year. He had

cultivated such a taste for languages, however, that no year since

passed which he did not devote in part to serious study, and he became

master of most spoken languages except the Slavonic and Oriental, and

he began, at the age of seventy-five, the study of Russian. Harvard

College afterward conferred upon him the degree which he was prevented

from earning in the regular way, and is proud to count him among her

most honored sons.

After leaving college Mr. Dana joined that remarkable body of men

and women who conducted the Brook Farm experiment. He distinguished

himself as one of the very few practical men among that band of

philosophers, and gained, while at Brook Farm, a little experience

in the newspaper business in conducting a publication known as “The

Harbinger,” which was the organ of the association.

In 1844 his eyes had sufficiently recovered to enable him to

do regular work, and he obtained employment under Elizur Wright,

better known as an insurance actuary than as an editor, but who then

conducted “The Chronotype,” an orthodox newspaper, which was a great

favorite with the Congregational ministers of New England. Mr. Wright

used to enjoy telling how “Dana always had a weakness for giving

people with fixed convictions something new to think about,” and

how he illustrated this weakness during the absence of his chief by

writing strong editorials against the doctrine of a bill. This piece

of enterprise involved the editor-in-chief in the labor of writing a

personal letter to each of his ministerial subscribers, and to many

others explaining how the paper “had been left in charge of a young

man without mellow journalistic experience.” Mr. Dana’s compensation

was five dollars per week, and at this amount it remained until 1847,

when he joined the staff of the New York “Tribune” at ten dollars,

a figure which was gradually increased to fifty dollars, which was

the highest salary he ever received on the “Tribune.” Many delightful

stories are told of the intercourse of Dana and Greeley. The part they

took in politics, the fight against slavery, the organization of the

Republican Party, Mr. Dana’s loyal support of Greeley’s aspirations

for political preferment, all these are a part of the political

history of our country. Just before joining the “Tribune” staff

Mr. Dana was married to Miss Eunice MacDaniel, of New York. Of his

delight in family life no testimony can be stronger than his own words

written during a brief interval of leisure: “I have been busy with my

children, drawing them about in old Bradley’s one-horse wagon, rowing

and sailing with them on the bay and sound, gathering shells on the

shore with them, picking cherries, lounging on the grass with the

whole tribe about me. There’s no delight like that in a pack of young

children of your own.... A house without a baby is inhuman.”

During these busy years Mr. Dana, together with Mr. Ripley, edited

“The American Cyclopedia,” a work which is a monument of his care

and learning and patient labor; and he also prepared and published

a “Household Book of Poetry,” one of the very best collections of

its kind, and one which has found its way into a very large number

of American homes and contributed in no small measure to further

the cause of good literature. In 1862 there came about a radical

difference between Mr. Greeley and Mr. Dana as to the proper policy

of the “Tribune” in regard to the war. The result was Mr. Dana’s

withdrawal from the paper. He was immediately asked by Mr. Stanton to

audit a large number of disputed claims in the quartermaster’s office

at Cairo. This led to his appointment as Assistant Secretary of War,

which position he held until the end of the Rebellion. About one-third

of his time during this period was spent with the armies at the front.

In this way he served as the confidential agent of the administration,

and was once styled by Mr. Lincoln “the eyes of the Government at

the front.” His reports were remarkable for their unconventional

form, their brevity, and the completeness and accuracy with which they

placed Stanton and Lincoln in possession of the exact facts. “Miles of

customary military reports,” says a recent writer, “were worth less to

Lincoln than half a dozen of Dana’s vivid sentences.”

After the close of the war Mr. Dana spent one year in Chicago as

editor of “The Republican.” He had been deceived about the financial

basis of the enterprise, and was in no way responsible for its failure.

Returning to New York, he organized the company which purchased the

old “Sun” property, and started the paper on a long career of success

and of influence. He was probably the most independent man who ever

managed a great newspaper. He possessed the power of working without

that conscious effort which characterizes the activity of most men,

and which seems to be the source of so many early break-downs. He

was not easily disturbed. At the “Sun” office, they like to tell

a doubtful story of the old days when the work of the paper was

conducted in four small rooms. The city editor came hurriedly in

exclaiming, “Mr. Dana, there’s a man out there with a cocked revolver.

He is very much excited. He insists on seeing the editor-in-chief.”

“Is he very much excited?” said Mr. Dana, hardly looking up from

his work, “if you think it worth the space, ask Amos Cummings if he

will kindly see the gentleman and write him up.” A noted sensational

clergyman once volunteered to write, under an assumed name, for the

“Sun.” He foolishly tried to adapt himself to what he imagined was the

irresponsible tone of a Sunday paper, and there can be no doubt that

Mr. Dana enjoyed writing in blue pencil across the back of his first

article, “This is too wicked.”

During the winter the great editor occupied his house on Madison

Avenue and Sixtieth Street, but his summer house was on a little

island, two or three miles from Glen Cove, which his wide knowledge

of trees and fruits and flowers enabled him to make a singularly

delightful spot. In the summer of 1897, when Mr. Dana was approaching

his eightieth year, and still continued to manage his great newspaper,

surrounded by a corps of trained and efficient men, he was attacked

with a serious illness, and passed away on the afternoon of October

17th. It is doubted whether any other man has left his mark more

deeply on the nineteenth century than has the famous editor of the

“Sun.”

* * * * *

ROSCOE CONKLING.

(THE NEW YORK “SUN,” APRIL 18, 1888.)

THE most picturesque, striking, and original figure of American

politics disappears in the death of Roscoe Conkling. Alike powerful

and graceful in person, he towered above the masses of men in the

elasticity of his talents and the peculiarities and resources of his

mental constitution as much as he did in form and bearing. Yet his

career cannot be called a great success, and he was not a great man.

But he was an object of great love and admiration to an extraordinary

circle of friends, including not alone those who shared his opinions,

but many who were utterly opposed to them. He was by nature a zealous

partisan, and it was his inclination to doubt the good sense and

the disinterestedness of those who were on the other side; but,

nevertheless, the strongest instinct of his nature was friendship, and

his attachments stood the test of every trial except such as trenched

upon his own personality. This he guarded with the swift jealousy of

most intense selfhood, and no one could in any way impinge upon it

and remain his friend. Then, his resentments were more lasting and

more unchangeable than his friendships. This, in our judgment, was

the great weakness of the man. Who can say that in his innermost heart

Conkling did not deplore it? At any rate, the candid observer who

sums up his history must deplore it for him. “And the recording angel,

as he wrote it down, dropped a tear upon the word and blotted it out

forever.”

For a long period Mr. Conkling was a great political power in New York

and in the country. This was during the culmination of General Grant.

Originally Conkling was not friendly to Grant, and when the latter

appointed his first Cabinet, the Senator’s condemnation was unreserved

and stinging. This attitude was maintained during nearly the whole

of Grant’s first year in the Presidency. At that time Senator Fenton

stood near the President and dispensed the political bounty of the

Administration. This Conkling could not endure, and when Congress

met in December, 1869, he was full of war. But it soon got abroad

that Fenton was a candidate for the Presidency. This settled the

difficulty and brought the rival Senator into intimate relations with

the President. This position he ever afterwards maintained, and it

formed the most successful and to him the most satisfactory portion

of his life. When Grant was finally defeated at Chicago in 1880, and

all hopes of his restoration to the White House was obliterated, the

Senator soon abandoned the field of his renown, and went back to the

disappointments and struggles of private life.

As we have said, friendship was the greatest positive force in

Mr. Conkling’s character, and there never was any hesitation or

any meanness in his bestowal of it. In this respect he was the most

democratic of men. He was just as warmly devoted to persons holding

low places in the social scale as to the great and powerful, and

he was just as scrupulous in his observation of all the duties of a

friend toward the one kind of people as toward the other. There was

nothing snobbish about him. He would go as far and exert himself as

greatly to serve a poor man who was his friend as to serve one who

was rich and mighty. This disposition he carried into politics. He

had very little esteem for office-giving as a political method; but if

a friend of his wanted a place, he would get it for him if he could.

But no important politician in New York ever had fewer men appointed

on the ground that they were his friends or supporters. His intense

and lofty pride could not thus debase itself.

It is esteemed a high thing that with all the powers he wielded and

the opportunities opened to him under a President the least scrupulous

ever known in our history as regards jobbery and corruption, Mr.

Conkling never pocketed a copper of indecent and dishonorable gain

in the course of his public life. It is a high thing, indeed, and his

bitterest enemies cannot diminish the lustre of the fact. The practice

of public robbery was universal. Thievery was rampant everywhere

in the precincts of the Administration. The Secretary of the Navy

plundered millions. The Secretary of War sold public places and put

the swag in his pocket. The Secretary of the Interior was forced

by universal indignation to resign his ill-used office. The private

secretaries of the President dealt in whiskey and defrauded the

revenue. The vast gambling scheme of Black Friday had its fulcrum

within the portals of the White House, and counted the President’s own

family among its conspirators. It was a period of shameless, ineffable,

unblushing villainy pervading the highest circles of public power.

And while all Republican statesmen, leaders, and journalists knew it,

condoned it, defended it even, the best they could, Mr. Conkling was

the special spokesman, advocate, and orator of the Administration

which was the creator of a situation so unprecedented and revolting.

But while he thus lived and moved in the midst of corruption, he was

not touched by it himself. The protector of brigands and scoundrels

before the tribunal of public opinion, he had no personal part in

their crimes and no share in their spoils. As the poet went through

hell without a smutch upon his garments, so the proud Senator, bent

chiefly upon the endurance of the Republican party, came out of that

epoch of public dishonesty as honest and as stainless as he entered it.

In the records of the higher statesmanship it can be said that

there is very much to the credit of Mr. Conkling’s account. As a

parliamentary champion he had perhaps no superior; but others appear

to have originated and perfected the measures to which in either House

of Congress he gave the support of potent logic, fertile illustration,

aggressive repartee, and scathing sarcasm. We do not recall a single

one of the great and momentous acts of Congress which were passed in

his time, of which he can certainly be pronounced the author. Yet his

activity was prodigious, and it was a strange freak of his complicated

character to bring before the House or Senate, through others,

propositions which he thought essential. His hand could often be

recognized in motions and resolutions offered on all sides of the

chamber, and often by members with whom he was not known to be

familiar.

The courage of Mr. Conkling, moral as well as personal, was of a

heroic strain. After his mind was made up, he feared no odds, and he

asked no favor. He dared to stand out against his own party, and he,

a Republican, had the nerve to confront and defy the utmost power of

a Republican administration. There was something magnanimous, too,

in the way he bore misfortune. After the death of a distinguished

man, with whom he had been very intimate, it was ascertained that his

estate instead of being wealthy, was bankrupt. Mr. Conkling was an

endorser of his notes for a large sum of money, and saying calmly,

“He would have done as much for me,” he set himself to the laborious

task of earning the means to pay off the debt. He paid it in no long

time, and we don’t believe that any man ever heard him murmur at the

necessity.

In social life Mr. Conkling endeared himself to his intimates,

not only by the qualities which we have endeavored to describe and

indicate, but by the richness of his conversation, and the wit and

humor――sometimes rather ponderous――with which it was seasoned, and

by the stores of knowledge which he revealed. His reading had been

extensive, especially in English literature, and his memory was

surprisingly tenacious. Many of the most impressive passages of

oratory and of literature he could repeat by heart. He was fond of

social discussion on all sorts of questions, and liked no one the less

who courteously disagreed with him.

As a lawyer, we suppose that his great ability was in

cross-examination and with juries. The exigencies and the discussive

usage of political life prevented that arduous, persevering

application to pure law which is necessary to make a great jurist; but

his intellectual powers were so vigorous and so accurate that he made

up the deficiency of training and habit and no one can doubt that, if

he had given himself to the law alone, he would have gained a position

of the very highest distinction. As it was, the most eminent counsel

always knew that he had a formidable antagonist when Mr. Conkling was

against him; and every court listened to his arguments, not merely

with respect, but with instruction.

We shall be told, of course, that the supreme fault of this

extraordinary mind was in perfection of judgment; and when we

consider how largely his actions were controlled by pride and passion,

and especially by resentment, we must admit that the criticism is

not wholly without foundation. There was also in his manner that

which might justify the belief that often he was posing for effect,

like an actor on the stage; and we shall not dispute that so at

times it may have been. But there are so few men who are entirely

free from imperfection, and so many who inherit from their ancestors

characteristics which ought to be disapproved, that we may well

overlook them when they are combined with noble and admirable

gifts. And after all has been said, even those whom he opposed most

strenuously, and scorned or resisted most unrelentingly, may remember

that we are all human, while they let fall a tear and breathe a prayer

to heaven as the bier of Roscoe Conkling passes on its way to the

grave.

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

LYMAN ABBOTT.

PASTOR OF PLYMOUTH CHURCH, EDITOR OF “THE OUTLOOK.”

WIDE sympathies and broad Christian charity are potent factors in

the uplifting of men, and there have been many in America who have

exhibited these characteristics, but few possess them to a greater

degree than the present pastor of the Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, Lyman

Abbott. He comes of good New England stock, and was born December 18,

1835, at Roxbury, Massachusetts. He is the third son of Jacob Abbott,

so dear to the children of the past generation, as the author of

those books which were the delight of the childhood of many still

living――the “Rollo Books,” the “Jonas Books,” and the “Lucy Books.”

The plain, practical, broad common sense in Jacob Abbott, which

dictated the composition of these attractive realistic stories, has

been inherited in large measure by his son. Lyman Abbott was graduated

from the University of the City of New York, in 1853, then studied

law and was admitted to the bar. He soon found that the ministry had

greater attraction for him than the law, and after studying theology

with his uncle, John S. C. Abbott, so well-known as the author of the

“Life of Napoleon Bonaparte,” he was ordained in 1860, a minister of

the Congregational Church. He went the same year to take charge of a

congregation at Terre Haute, Indiana. After five years’ work he became

discouraged, for there seemed to be little or no fruit from his labors.

He came to the conclusion that, after all, he had mistaken his calling,

and so in 1865 he accepted the position of Secretary to the American

Freedman’s Commission, an office which took him to New York. Returning

to Terre Haute on a visit, he saw that his previous labors had not

been in vain, but had brought forth abundant fruit in the lives of

former members of his congregation. It was perhaps this fact that

induced him to re-enter the ministry, and for three years to be the

pastor of the New England Church in New York. He did not, however,

lay aside the literary work he had taken up while connected with

the Freedman’s Association. He conducted the “Literary Record” in

“Harper’s Monthly,” and became editor of “The Illustrated Christian

Weekly” in 1871. Resigning his connection with other papers he became

joint editor with Henry Ward Beecher of the “Christian Union” in

1876, and its chief editor in 1881. After some years the name of the

paper was changed to “The Outlook,” as indicating more nearly the

character of the journal. In October, 1887, after the death of Henry

Ward Beecher, he was chosen temporary Pastor of the Plymouth Church in

Brooklyn, and later he was invited to remain permanently at the head

of that large congregation. He has written much, and has published

a number of volumes, nearly all upon religious subjects, but his

influence has been chiefly exerted through the pulpit, and especially

through the columns of the “Christian Union” and “The Outlook,” one

of the most ably conducted weeklies in the country. Popular in its

presentation, trenchant in its comments upon contemporary men and

events, clear and unmistakable in its position, few papers have a

more decided influence upon their readers. Its tone is high, and its

view of what is going on in the world is wide and comprehensive. All

subjects are treated fearlessly and independently, and truth, purity,

and earnestness in religion and politics are insisted upon. Not the

least interesting columns of the paper are those devoted to “Notes

and Queries,” where, in a few well-chosen words, the difficulties of

correspondents are answered, and at the same time valuable lessons

are enforced. Lyman Abbott is one of the leaders of liberal Christian

thought, is sympathetic with every movement for the advancement of

mankind, a strong believer in practical Christianity, and a hater of

all kinds of cant.

As a speaker differing widely from his great predecessor in the

Plymouth pulpit, Lyman Abbott’s success is due to the clearness

with which he presents his subject, to his earnestness, and to his

practical way of putting things.

* * * * *

THE JESUITS.¹

(FROM “DICTIONARY OF RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE.”)

¹ Copyright, Harper & Bros.

JESUITS is the popular name of a Society more properly entitled “The

Society of Jesus”――of all the Religious Orders of the Roman Catholic

Church the most important. The Society of Jesus was founded in 1554

by Ignatius Loyola. He was a Spanish cavalier; was wounded in battle;

was by his wounds, which impaired the use of one of his legs, deprived

of his military ambition, and during his long confinement found

employment and relief in reading a Life of Christ, and Lives of

the Saints. This enkindled a new ambition for a life of religious

glory and religious conquest. He threw himself, with all the ardor of

his old devotion, into his new life; carried his military spirit of

austerity and self-devotion into his religious career; exchanged his

rich dress for a beggar’s rags; lived upon alms; practiced austerities

which weakened his iron frame, but not his military spirit; and thus

he prepared his mind for those diseased fancies which characterized

this period of his ♦extraordinary career.

♦ ‘extraordinay’ replaced with ‘extraordinary’

He possessed none of the intellectual requirements which seemed

necessary for the new leadership which he proposed to himself. The

age despised learning, and left it to the priests; and this Spanish

cavalier, at the age of thirty-three, could do little more than read

and write. He commenced at once, with enthusiasm, the acquisition of

those elements of knowledge which are ordinarily acquired long before

that age. He entered the lowest class of the College of Barcelona,

where he was persecuted and derided by the rich ecclesiastics, to

whose luxury his self-denial was a perpetual reproach. He fled at

last from their machinations to Paris, where he continued his studies

under more favorable auspices. Prominent among his associates here

was Francis Xavier, a brilliant scholar, who at first shrunk from

the ill-educated soldier; yet gradually learned to admire his intense

enthusiasm, and then to yield allegiance to it and its possessor.

Several other Spaniards were drawn around the ascetic. At length, in

1534, Loyola, and five associates, in a subterranean chapel in Paris,

pledged themselves to a religious life, and with solemn rites made

sacred their mutual pledges to each other and to God.

Loyola introduced into the new order of which he was the founder,

the principle of absolute obedience which he had acquired in his

military career. The name given to its chief was the military title

of “General.” The organization was not perfected, so as to receive

the sanction of the Pope, until 1541. Its motto was _Ad Majorem Dei

Gloriam_――“To the greater Glory of God.” Its vows embraced not only

the obligations of Chastity, Poverty, and Obedience, but also a pledge

on the part of every member to go as missionary to any country which

the Pope might designate. Loyola was himself the first General of the

new Order. Its Constitution, due to him, is practically that of an

Absolute Monarchy. The General is elected by a General Congregation,

selected for the purpose by the whole body of professed members in

the various Provinces. He holds his office for life. A Council of

Assistants aid him, but he is not bound by their vote. He may not

alter the Constitution of the Society; and he is subject to deposition

in certain contingencies; but no instance of the deposition of a

General has ever occurred. Practically his will is absolute law, from

which there is no appeal.

The Jesuits are not distinguished by any particular dress or peculiar

practices. They are permitted to mingle with the world, and to conform

to its habits, if necessary for the attainment of their ends. Their

widest influence has been exhibited in political circles, where, as

laymen, they have attained the highest political positions without

exciting any suspicion of their connection with the Society of

Jesus; and in education they have been employed as teachers, in

which position they have exercised an incalculable influence over

the Church.... It should be added that the enemies of the Order

allege that, in addition to the public and avowed Constitution of

the Society, there is a secret code, called _Monita Secreta_――“Secret

Instructions”――which is reserved exclusively for the private guidance

of the more advanced members. But as this Secret Code is disavowed by

the Society――and since its authority is at least doubtful――it is not

necessary to describe it here in detail.

* * * * *

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN.¹

(FROM “OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS.”)

¹ Copyright, Harper & Bros.

THE story of Sodom and Gomorrah epitomizes the Gospel. Every act in

the great, the awful drama of life is here foreshadowed. The analogy

is so perfect that we might almost be tempted to believe that the

story is a prophetic allegory, did not nature itself witness its

historic truthfulness. The fertile plain contained, imbedded in its

own soil, the elements of its own destruction. There is reason to

believe that this is true of this world on which we live. A few years

ago an unusually brilliant star was observed in a certain quarter

of the heavens. At first it was thought to be a newly discovered

sun; more careful examination resulted in a different hypothesis. Its

evanescent character indicated combustion. Its brilliancy was marked

for a few hours――a few nights at most――then it faded, and was gone.

Astronomers believe that it was a burning world. Our own earth is

a globe of living fire. Only a thin crust intervenes between us and

this fearful interior. Ever and anon, in the rumbling earthquake,

or the sublime volcano, it gives us warning of its presence. These

are themselves gospel messengers. They say if we would but hear

them――“Prepare to meet thy God.” The intimations of science confirm

those of Revelation: “The heavens and the earth ... are kept in store,

reserved unto the fire against the Day of Judgment and perdition of

ungodly men.” What was true of Sodom and Gomorrah――what was true of

the earth we live on――is true of the human soul. It contains within

itself the instruments of its own punishment. There is a fearful

significance in the words of the Apostle: “After thy hardness and

impenitent heart treasureth up to thyself wrath against the day of

wrath.” Men gather, with their own hands, the fuel to feed the flame

that is not quenched; they nurture in their own bosoms the worm that

dieth not. In habits formed never to be broken; in words spoken,

incapable of recall; in deeds committed, never to be forgotten; in a

life wasted and cast away that can never be made to bloom again, man

prepares for himself his own deserved and inevitable chastisement.

“Son, remember!”――to the soul who has spent its all in riotous living,

there can be no more awful condemnation.

Illustration: (‡ decoration)

HENRY WATTERSON.

EDITOR OF THE LOUISVILLE “COURIER-JOURNAL.”

FEW men connected with modern journalism have wider influence than

Henry Watterson. He was born in Washington, D. C., in 1850, and

because of defective eyesight, was educated chiefly by a private tutor.

Entering journalism, at first in Washington and later in Tennessee, he

made his reputation as editor of the “Republican Banner,” in Nashville.

He served in the Confederate Army in various capacities, being a

staff officer at one time and Chief of Scouts in General Joseph E.

Johnston’s army in 1864. After the war he returned to Nashville,

but soon removed to Louisville, Kentucky, where he succeeded George

D. Prentice as editor of the “Journal.” In the following year he

succeeded in uniting with the “Journal,” the “Courier” and the “Times,”

thus founding the “Courier-Journal,” of which he has since been

editor, and which, under his management, has come to be one of the

foremost papers of the country.

Mr. Watterson has taken a prominent part in politics, having been a

member of every Presidential convention beginning with 1876. He was

a personal friend and a resolute follower of Samuel J. Tilden. He

has often appeared as a public speaker, particularly in political

campaigns, and his judgment has had great weight in the councils of

the Democratic party. Mr. Watterson is a pronounced “free-trader,” but

has had no sympathy with the political movements under the leadership

of Grover Cleveland.

He has been a frequent contributor to periodicals and has edited

one or two books, notably that entitled “Oddities of Southern Life

and Character.” The sustained vigor of his mind, the force of his

personality and the wide-spread admiration for his abilities, make

Mr. Watterson one of the leading men, not only of his party, but of

the country.

* * * * *

THE NEW SOUTH.