IN SOCIETY.
Mr. Money was not a very regular visitor at his wife's little
receptions out of the season. In the season, and when they had larger
and more formal gatherings, he showed himself as much as was fitting
and regular; for many of the guests then were virtually his guests,
persons who desired especially to see him, and of whose topics he could
talk. A good many foreign visitors were there usually--scientific men,
and railway contractors, and engineers, and shipbuilders, from Germany,
Italy, and Russia, and of course the United States, who looked upon Mr.
Money as a person of great importance and distinction, and would not
have cared anything about most of Mrs. Money's guests.
The foreigners were curiously right and wrong. Mr. Money was a person
of importance and distinction. Every Londoner who knew anything knew
his name, and knew that he was clever and distinguished. If a Russian
stranger of rank were dining with a Cabinet minister, and were to
express a wish to see and know Mr. Money, the minister would think the
wish quite natural, and would take his friend down to the lobby of the
House of Commons, and make him acquainted with Mr. Money. We have all
been foreigners ourselves somewhere, and we know how our longing to see
some celebrity, as we suppose, of the land we are visiting, some one
whose name was familiar to us in England, has been occasionally checked
and chilled by our finding that in the celebrity's own city no one
seems to have heard of him. There are only too many celebrities of this
kind which shine, like the moon, for those who are a long way off. But
Mr. Money was a man of mark in London, as well as in St. Petersburg and
New York. Therein the foreigners found themselves right. Yet Mr.
Money's position was somewhat peculiar for all that, in a manner no
stranger could well appreciate. The Cabinet minister did not ask Mr.
Money to meet his friend at dinner; or, at all events, would never have
been able to say to his friend, "Money? Oh, yes! Of course you ought to
know him. He is coming to-morrow to dine with us. Won't you come and
meet him?" The most the Cabinet minister would do would be to get up a
little dinner party, suitably adjusted for the express purpose of
bringing his friend and Mr. Money together. It would be too much to say
that Mr. Money was under a cloud. There rather seemed to be a sort of
faint idea abroad that he ought to be, or some day would be, under a
cloud, no one knew why.
No such considerations as these, however, would have affected the
company who gathered round Mrs. Money in the out-of-season evenings, or
could have been appreciated by them. They were, for the most part,
entirely out of Mr. Money's line. He came among them irregularly and at
intervals; and if he found there any man or woman he knew or was taken
with, he talked to him or her a good deal, and perhaps, if it were a
man, he carried him and one or two others off to his own study or
smoking-room, where they discoursed at their ease. Sometimes Lucelet
was sent to her papa, if he was not making his appearance in the
drawing-room, to beg him to accomplish some such act of timely
intervention. Somebody, perhaps, presented himself among Mrs. Money's
guests who was rather too solid, or grave, or scientific, or political,
to care for the general company, and to be of any social benefit to
them; or some one, as we have said, in whose eyes Mr. Money would be a
celebrity, and Mrs. Money's guests counted for nothing. Then Lucy went
for her father, if he was in the house, and drew him forth. He was
wonderfully genial with his womankind. They might disturb him at any
moment and in any way they chose. He seemed to have as little idea of
grumbling if they disturbed him as a Newfoundland dog would have of
snapping at his master's children if they insisted on rousing him up
from his doze in the sun.
Mr. Money talked very frankly of his daughters and their prospects
sometimes.
"My girls are going to marry any one they like," he would often say;
"the poorer the better, so far as I am concerned, so long as they like
the girls and the girls like them." As chance would have it, a rich man
fell in love with Theresa, and she, in her quiet, sanctimonious way,
loved him, and that was settled.
"Now, Lucelet, look out for yourself," Mr. Money would, say to his
blushing daughter. "If you fall in love with some fine young fellow, I
don't care if he hasn't sixpence. Only be sure, Mrs. Lucelet, that you
are in love with him, and that he is in love with you, and not with
your expectations."
Lucelet generally smiled and saucily tossed her head, as one who should
say that she considered herself a person quite qualified to make an
impression without the help of any expectations.
"I sometimes wish the right man would come along, Lucelet," Mr. Money
said one day, throwing his arm round his pretty daughter's shoulder,
and drawing her to him.
"Papa! do you want to get rid of me so soon? I wonder at you. I know I
don't want to get rid of you."
"No, no, dear; it isn't that. Never mind. Where's your mamma? Just run
and ask her"--and Mr. Money started something else, and put an end to
the conversation.
Mr. Money's ideas with regard to the future of his daughters did not
fail to become known among his acquaintances in general, and would
doubtless have drawn young men in goodly numbers around his home, even
if Lucelet were far less pretty than she really was. But in any case
Mrs. Money loved to be friendly to young people, and her less formal
parties were largely attended, almost always, by the young. Miss
Theresa's future husband did not come there often. He had known the
family chiefly through Mr. Money and Parliament; and, coming once to
dine with Mr. Money, he fell fairly in love with the dove-like eyes and
saintly ways of Theresa. Theresa was therefore what her father would
have called "out of the swim." She looked tolerantly upon her mother's
little gatherings of poets _en herbe_, artists who were great to
their friends, patriots hunting for constituencies, orators who had not
yet caught the speaker's eye, and persons who had tried success in all
these various paths and failed. She looked on them tolerantly, but her
soul was not in them; it floated above them in a purer atmosphere. It
was now, indeed, floating among the spires of the church which her
lover was to build.
One peculiarity seemed common to the guests whom Mrs. Money gathered
around her. On any subject in which they felt the slightest interest
they never felt the slightest doubt. The air they breathed was that
of conviction; the language they talked was that of dogma. The men
and women they knew were the greatest, most gifted, and most
beautiful in the world; the men and women they did not know were
nothing--were beneath contempt. Every one had what Lowell calls an
"I-turn-the-crank-of-the-universe air." In that charmed circle every
one was either a genius destined yet to move the world, or a genius
too great for the dull, unworthy world to comprehend. It was a happy
circle, where success or failure came to just the same.
All in a flutter of delight was Mary Blanchet when preparing to enter
that magical circle. She was going at last to meet great men and
brilliant women. Perhaps, some day, she might even come to be known
among them--to shine among them. She could never be done embracing
Minola for having brought her to the gate of that heaven. She spent all
the day dressing herself and adjusting her hair; but as the hours went
on she became almost wretched from nervousness. When it was nearly time
for them to go she was quivering with agitation. They went in a
brougham hired specially for the occasion, because, although Mrs. Money
offered to send her carriage, and Mary would have liked it much, Minola
would hear of nothing of the kind. Mary was engaged all the way in the
brougham in the proper adjustment of her gloves. At last they came to
the place. Minola did the gentleman's part, and handed her agitated
companion out. Mary Blanchet saw a strip of carpet on the pavement, an
open door with servants in livery standing about, blazing lights,
brightly dressed women going in, a glimpse of a room with a crowd of
people, and then Minola and she found themselves somehow in a ladies'
dressing-room.
"Minola, darling, don't go in without me. I am quite nervous--I should
never venture to go in alone."
Minola did not intend to desert her palpitating little companion, who
now indeed clung to her skirts and would not let her go had she been
inclined. Miss Blanchet might have been a young beauty just about to
make her _début_ at a ball, so anxious was she about her appearance,
about her dress, about her complexion; and at the same time she was so
nervous that she could hardly compel her trembling fingers to give the
finishing touches which she believed herself to need. Minola looked on
wondering, puzzled, and half angry. The poetess was unmistakably a
little, withered, yellowing old maid. She had not even the remains of
good looks. No dressing or decoration possible to woman could make her
anything but what she was, or deceive any one about her, or induce any
one to feel interested in her. The handsome, stately girl who stood
smiling near her was about to enter the drawing-room quite unconcerned
as to her own appearance, and indeed not thinking about it; and the
homely little old maid was quite distressed lest the company generally
should not sufficiently admire her, or should find any fault with her
dress.
"Come along, you silly poetess," said Minola at last, breaking into a
laugh, and fairly drawing her companion away from the looking-glass.
"What do you think anybody will care about you or me? We'll steal in
unnoticed, and we'll be all right."
"It's the first time I ever was in London society, Minola, dear, and
I'm quite nervous."
"It's the first time I ever was in London society, and I'm not a bit
nervous. No one knows us, dear--and no one cares. So come along."
She fairly carried Mary Blanchet out of the dressing-room, along a
corridor lined with seats, on which people who had been in the
drawing-room and had come out, were chattering, and flirting, and
lounging--and at last over the threshold of the drawing-room, and into
the presence of the hostess. A few friendly words were got through, and
Minola dragged her companion along through the crowd into the recess
formed by a window where there were some unoccupied seats.
"Now, Mary, that's done. The plunge is made, dear! We are in society!
Let us sit down here--and look at it."
"This," said Mary faintly--"this, at last, is society."
"I suppose it is, dear. At least it will do very well for you and me.
We should never know any difference. Imagine all these people marquises
and countesses, and what more can we want to make us happy? They may be
marquises and countesses for all I know."
"I should think there must be some great poets, and authors, and
artists, Minola. I am sure there must be. Oh, there is my brother!"
In effect Mr. Herbert Blanchet had already fixed his dark eyes on
Minola, and was making his way up to her retreat, rather to Minola's
distress. He addressed Minola at once with that undefinable manner of
easy and kindly superiority which he always adopted toward women, and
which, it must be owned, impressed some women a great deal. To his
sister he held out, while hardly looking at her, an encouraging hand of
recognition.
"Have you seen Delavar's picture?" he asked Minola.
"No. Who is Delavar?"
"Delavar? He _was_ the greatest painter of our time--at least of his
school; for I don't admit that his school is the true one."
"Oh, is his picture here?"
"In the other room--yes. He painted it for Mr. Money--for Mrs. Money
rather I should say--and it has just been sent home. Come with me and I
will show it to you."
"And Mary?"
"We'll come back for Mary presently. The rooms are too full. We
couldn't all get through. If you'll take my arm, Miss Grey!"
Minola rose and took his arm, and they made their way slowly through
the room. They moved even more slowly than was necessary, for Herbert
Blanchet was particularly anxious to show off his companion and himself
to the fullest advantage. The moment Minola entered the room he saw
that she was the handsomest girl there, and that her dressing was
simple, graceful, and picturesque. He knew that before a quarter of an
hour had passed everybody would be asking who she was, and he resolved
to secure for himself the effect of being the first to parade her
through the rooms. He was a singularly handsome man--as has been said
before--almost oppressively handsome; and a certain wasted look about
his eyes and cheeks added a new and striking effect to his appearance.
He was dark, she was fair; he was a tall man, she was a rather tall
girl; and if his face had a worn look, hers had an expression of
something like habitual melancholy, which was not perhaps in keeping
with her natural temperament, and which lent by force of contrast an
additional charm to her eyes when they suddenly lit up at the opening
of any manner of animated conversation. No combination could be more
effective, Mr. Blanchet felt, than that of his appearance and hers; and
then she was a new figure. So he passed slowly on with her, and he knew
that most people looked at them as they passed. He took good care, too,
that they should be engaged in earnest talk.
"I am delighted to have you all to myself for a moment, Miss Grey--to
tell you that I know all about your goodness to Mary. That is why I
would not bring her with us now. No--you must let me speak--I am not
offering you my thanks. I know you would not care about that. But I
must tell you that I know what you have done. I have no doubt that you
are her sole support--poor Mary!"
"I am her friend, Mr. Blanchet--only that."
"Her only friend too. Her brother has not done much for her. To tell
you the truth, Miss Grey, it isn't in his power now. You don't know the
struggles of us, the unsuccessful men in literature, who yet have faith
in ourselves. I am very poor. My utmost effort goes in keeping a decent
dress-coat and buying a pair of gloves; I don't complain--I am not one
bit deterred, and I only trouble you with this confession, because
whatever I may have been in the past I had rather you knew me to be
what I am--a wretched, penniless struggler--than believe that I left my
sister to be a burden on your friendship."
"Mary is the only friend I have," said Minola. "It is not wonderful if
I wish to keep her with me. And you will make a great success some
time."
He shook his head.
"If one hadn't to grind at things for bare living, one might do
something. I am not bad enough, or good enough; and that's the truth of
it. I dare say if I were mean enough to hunt after some woman with
money, I might have succeeded as well as others--but I couldn't do
that."
"No, I am sure you could not."
"I am not mean enough for that. But I am not high-minded enough to
accept any path, and be content with it and proud of it. Now I shan't
bore you any more about myself. I wanted you to know this that you
might not think too harshly of me. I know you felt some objection to me
at first; you need not try politely to deny it."
"Oh, no; I don't want to deny it. I prefer truth to politeness, a great
deal. I did think you had neglected your sister; but really I was not
surprised. I believe other men do the same thing."
"But now you see that I have some excuse?"
"I am glad to hear it, Mr. Blanchet."
"Glad to hear that I am so wretchedly poor, Miss Grey?" he said with a
smile, and bending his eyes on her. "Glad to hear that your friend's
brother is such a failure?"
"I would rather a thousand times hear that you were poor than that you
were heartless. I don't call it a failure to be poor. I should call it
a failure to be selfish and mean."
She spoke in a low tone, but very earnestly and eagerly, and she
suddenly thought she was speaking too eagerly, and stopped.
"Well," he said, after a moment's pause, "here is the picture. We shall
get to it presently, when these people move away."
They had entered, through a curtained door, a small room which was
nearly filled with people standing before a picture, and admiringly
criticising it. Minola, with all her real or fancied delight in noting
the jealousies and weaknesses of men and women, could hear no words of
detraction or even dispraise.
"Is the painter here?" she asked of her companion in a whisper.
"No; I haven't seen him. Perhaps he'll come in later on."
"Would you think it cheap cynicism if I were to ask why they all praise
the picture--why they don't find any fault with it?"
"Oh, because they are all of the school, and they must support their
creed. Our art is a creed to us. I don't admit that I am of Delavar's
school any more; in fact, I look upon him as a heretic. He is going in
for mere popularity; success has spoilt him. But to most of these
people here he is still a divinity. They haven't found him out yet."
"Oh!"
This little exclamation broke from Minola as some people at length
struggled their way outward, and allowed her to see the whole of the
picture.
"What is it called?" she asked.
"Love stronger than death."
The scene was a graveyard, under a sickly yellow moon, rising in a
livid and greenish sky. A little to the left of the spectator was seen
a freshly-opened grave. In the foreground were two figures--one that of
a dead girl, whom her lover had just haled from her coffin, wrapped as
she was in her cerements of the tomb; the other that of the lover. He
had propped the body against the broken hillock of the grave, and he
was chanting a love-song to it which he accompanied on his lute. His
face suggested the last stage of a galloping consumption, further
enlivened by the fearsome light of insanity in his eyes. Some dreary
bats flopped and lollopped through the air, and a few sympathetic toads
came out to listen to the lay of the lover. The cypresses appeared as
if they swayed and moaned to the music; and the rank weeds and grasses
were mournfully tremulous around the sandalled feet of the forlorn
musician.
Minola at first could not keep from shuddering. Then there followed a
shocking inclination to laugh.
"What do you think of it?" Blanchet asked.
"Oh, I don't like it at all."
"No? It is trivial. Mere prettiness; just a striving after drawing-room
popularity. No depth of feeling; no care for the realistic power of the
scene. Pretty, pleasing--nothing more. Surface only; no depth."
"But it is hideous," Minola said.
"Hideous? Oh, no! Decay is loveliness; decay is the soul of really high
art when you come to understand it. But there is no real decay there.
That girl's face is pretty waxwork. There's no death there," and he
turned half away in contempt. "That is what comes of being popular and
a success. No; Delavar is done. I told him so."
"He is quite new to me," said Minola. "I never heard of him before."
"He's getting old now," Blanchet said. "He must be quite thirty. Let me
see--oh, yes; fully that. He had better join the pre-Raphaelites now;
or send to the Royal Academy; or hire a gallery and exhibit his
pictures at a shilling a head. I fancy they would be quite a success."
Some of this conversation took place as they were making their way
through the crowd with the intention of entering the drawing-room
again. Minola was greatly amused, and in a manner interested. The whole
thing was entirely new to her. As they passed into the corridor there
were one or two vacant seats.
"Will you rest for a moment?" Blanchet said, motioning toward a seat.
"Hadn't we better go back for Mary?"
"We'll go back presently. She is very happy; she loves above all things
observing a crowd."
Minola would have liked very much to observe the crowd herself and to
have people pointed out to her. Blanchet, however, though he saluted
several persons here and there, did not seem particularly interested in
any of them. Minola sat down for a while to please him, and to show
that she had no thought of giving herself airs merely because she was
enabled to be kind to his sister.
Blanchet threw himself sidelong across his chair and leaned toward
Minola's seat. He knew that people were looking at him and wondering
who his companion was, and he felt very happy.
"I wish I might read some of my poems to you, Miss Grey," he said. "I
should like to have your opinion, because I know it would be sincere."
"I should be delighted to hear them, but I don't think I should venture
to give an opinion; my opinion would not be worth anything."
"When may I come and read one or two to you and Mary? To-morrow
afternoon?"
"Oh, yes; we are staying here tonight, but we shall be at home in the
afternoon. Are these published poems? Pray, excuse me--I quite forgot;
you don't publish. You don't care for fame--the fame that sets other
people wild."
He smiled, and slightly shrugged his shoulders.
"We don't care for the plaudits of the stupid crowd," he said; "that is
quite true. We don't care for popularity, and to have our books lying
on drawing-room tables, and kept by the booksellers bound in morocco
ready to hand, to be given away as gift books to young ladies. But we
should like the admiration of a chosen few. The truth is, that I don't
publish my poems because I haven't the money. They would be a dead
loss, of course, to any one who printed them; I am proud to say that. I
would not have them printed at all if they couldn't be artistically and
fitly brought out; and I haven't the money, and there's an end. But if
I might read my poems to you, that would be something."
Minola began to be full of pity for the poor poet, between whom and
possible fame there stood so hard and prosaic a barrier. She was
touched by the proud humility of his confession of ambition and
poverty. Three sudden questions flashed through her mind. "I wonder how
much it would cost? and have I money enough? and would it be possible
to get him to take it?"
Her color was positively heightening, and her breath becoming checked
by the boldness of these thoughts, when suddenly there was a rushing
and rustling of silken skirts, and Lucy Money, disengaging herself from
a man's arm, swooped upon her.
"You darlingest, dear Nola, where have you been all the night? I have
been hunting for you everywhere! Oh--Mr. Blanchet! I haven't seen you
before either. Have you two been wandering about together all the
evening?"
Looking up, Minola saw that it was Mr. Victor Heron who had been with
Lucy Money, and that he was now waiting with a smile of genial
friendliness to be recognized by Miss Grey. It must be owned that
Minola felt a little embarrassed, and would rather--though she could
not possibly tell why--not have been found deep in confidential talk
with Herbert Blanchet.
She gave Mr. Heron her hand, and told him--which was now the
truth--that she was glad to see him.
"Hadn't we better go and find Mary?" Blanchet said, rising and glancing
slightly at Heron. "She will be expecting us."
"No, please don't take Miss Grey away just yet," Victor said,
addressing himself straightway, and with eyes of unutterable cordiality
and good-fellowship, to the poet. "I haven't spoken a word to her yet;
and I have to go away soon."
"I'll go with you to your sister, Mr. Blanchet," said Lucy, taking his
arm forthwith. "I haven't seen her all the evening, and I want to talk
to her very much."
So Lucy swept away on Mr. Blanchet's arm, looking very fair, and
_petite_, and pretty, as she held a bundle of her draperies in one
hand, and glanced back, smiling and nodding, out of sheer good-nature,
at Minola.
Victor Heron sat down by Minola, and at once plunged into earnest talk.
TRIED AND TRUE.
Year after year we'll gather here,
And pass the night in merry cheer.
Through storm and war, o'er sea and land,
We'll come each year to Neckar's strand:
In war and storm, on land and sea,
To this our pledge we'll faithful be,
_And each to all be true_.
So sang three students one March night--
Without the storm wind blew,
Within were wine and warmth and light
And three hearts brave and true.
"To-morrow morn we all go hence,"
Said Wilhelm, speaking low.
"For Emil fights for Fatherland,
Franz o'er the sea doth go,
"And I in Berlin, with my books,
Will lead a scholar's life--
In toil, and war, and foreign land,
We thus begin the strife."
Three glasses then with Rhineland wine
Unto the brim were filled,
And to the sacred parting pledge
Each heart responsive thrilled.
Three years went by, and so the friends
Unto their faith were true,
And spent the night in merry song
And lived the past year through.
When came the fourth reunion night
Without the March wind blew,
Within were wine, and warmth, and light,
And one heart brave and true.
For Emil died for Fatherland,
And Franz went down at sea--
In war and storm, in life and death,
They said they'd faithful be:
And so Wilhem three glasses filled.
Of one he kissed the edge;
Two shadow hands the others raised--
The friends had kept their pledge!
SYLVESTER BAXTER.
ABOUT CIGARETTES.
Ten or fifteen years ago we rarely saw cigarettes in this country,
their use being confined to the few natives who had acquired the habit
during a residence abroad, and to foreigners, French, Italian, and
Cuban settlers, who followed the practices of their youth. So slight
was the general demand that, excepting in the large cities, cigarettes
were rarely found for sale. To-day there are probably few small towns
in the thickly settled portions of the country where cigarettes are not
readily obtained; while in the large cities the stores vie with each
other in giving us varied assortments of leading brands. Indeed, recent
statistics state that nearly thirty per cent. of the entire smoking
tobacco consumed in the United States is in this form. Cigarettes are
now imported from all portions of Europe, but principally from France.
Several factories have of late years been started in our own country,
but the cigarette _par excellence_ is made in Havana. Nowhere else do
we find capital so largely invested, labor so diversified, or such
attention to details. There certainly you can take your
choice--Honoradez, Havana, Astrea, Cherito, Henriquez, and dozens of
others of lesser note.
The tobacco used in the making of the Havana cigarettes is bought from
the cigar factors, but only from those who have the most assured
reputation. It consists of the leaves left from the making of cigars.
The necessity of securing the best grades of tobacco cannot be
overestimated. The judgment of the cigarette smoker is formed solely
from the sense of taste. He is totally unaffected by sight, which in
the cigar enables a clever workman to so roll bad tobacco that we are
predisposed in favor of an inferior article. While absolute inferiority
is intolerable in either, mediocrity, in Cuba at all events, is much
more readily tolerated in the cigar than in the cigarette.
The tobacco for the cigarette is not, as is generally supposed with us,
raised on the plantations of the various leading cigar factors.
"Bartegas," "Cobania," "Upman," or whatever be the name of our favorite
brand, does not depend for its success upon any one plantation. The
practice on the part of the leading houses is to send their purchasing
agents into the tobacco district as soon as the crop begins to ripen.
Sales are then and there arranged, immense sums sometimes being offered
in advance, by way of retainer, for a specially likely plantation. The
Vuelto Abago district is the favorite one, the planters there holding a
position not unlike that occupied by the proprietors of the "Sea
Island" plantations in days when "cotton was king." The ability to
control the market so as to bring to their own manufactories the
choicest tobacco is the main secret of the success of the larger
houses, not, as is frequently supposed, any particular superiority in
the workmen.
The principal cigarette factory is, as is well known, the factory of M.
Susini, "La Honoradez," "Honoradez" signifying in Spanish, honesty, the
motto of the house. It consists of a series of irregular buildings,
covering an area in space about equal to that occupied by the usual
Broadway block. On the upper floor of the principal building we find a
lot of tobacco, which has just arrived, and is being prepared for
inspection; the first requisite being to remove from it any leaves that
are either dead or in any way injured. The tobacco lays loosely
scattered over an immense wooden tray, which is kept continually
moving, by means of machinery, from one end of a table to the other.
Around this table are seated some twelve or fourteen Cuban workmen, all
good judges of tobacco. Each one throws aside such leaves as he deems
unfit for use, while the slow but yet continual motion given to the
tray brings each imperfection successively before the eyes of all. The
next step is to free the tobacco from any particles of sand or earth
that may adhere to it. This is done by moving the tray by machinery,
until it is over a large bin, into which the tobacco is allowed to
fall, being subjected in its passage to a powerful current of air
induced by means of an immense fan, likewise worked by machinery. One
step more, and a very simple one--that of drying--and the tobacco is
ready for a change of form. The tobacco is dried by simply exposing it
on the roof, for a few hours, to the heat of the sun. For cigarettes it
can scarcely be too dry, or for cigars too damp. A Cuban would not
think of smoking other than a damp cigar. In the factories one sees the
workmen smoking cigars they have just rolled, and no native could
understand why one should smoke dry cigars in which so much of the
natural flavor has been lost.
Thus far the process has been entirely one of cleansing or of freeing
from impurities. The next step is that of cutting the leaves into fine
particles in order to adapt the tobacco for cigarettes. The scattered
leaves are first collected and subjected to powerful hydraulic
pressure, from which they come out looking for all the world like a
pile of snuff-colored brick. The moulded tobacco next goes to the
cutting machine, falling from thence into a sieve, the meshes of which
pass only such pieces as have been reduced to the proper size. The
remainder is passed into a hopper, and thence goes for a second
cutting. One step more, and the tobacco will be issued to the
"rollers." Some half a dozen Chinese enter the room, each carrying with
him a small vessel containing an aromatic liquid, with which the loose
tobacco is carefully sprinkled. The preparation of this liquid is not
known. It is doubtless the desire to keep it secret that leads to the
preference of Chinese over native labor.
Before following the tobacco furher, let us look at the remaining
portion of the cigarette, the wrapper. The original envelope for the
tobacco was doubtless composed of leaves, the followers of Columbus
carrying back to Spain accounts of the strange custom existing among
the natives of San Salvador, the smoking of tobacco wrapped in the
leaves of the palm, which was doubtless the primitive cigarette. In
France to this day new straws are much used, but generally paper has
become the popular envelope. This paper must be specially manufactured.
Most of it comes from Barcelona, where the making of cigarette paper
constitutes an important industry. All of that used at the "Honoradez"
factory, after inspection, is carefully stamped with the name "Susini."
By unrolling any of this brand of cigarettes this mark can be readily
seen, and serves as the readiest means of detecting counterfeits. A
portion of the paper is sprinkled with various preparations to give to
it the flavor of tea, licorice, or such other taste as may suit certain
consumers. This explains the variation in the color of the wrapper,
which is sometimes straw-color, sometimes brown, but more usually
white, the latter color distinguishing the paper which has not been
artificially flavored. In the cutting machine the paper is rapidly
converted into the proper size for envelopes, while another machine
close at hand is turning out little bits of pasteboard for such of the
cigarettes as are to be made with a mouthpiece.
Both tobacco and paper are now ready to be given out to the "rollers."
Let us go down and watch them as they come pouring in. Both sexes and
all ages have representations here. Each one awaits his turn, and then
receives, after it has been carefully weighed, his or her allowance of
tobacco, some five thousand papers, and a large wooden hoop. The hoop
serves as a rude but very accurate gauge, its circumference being of
such a size as to properly encompass five thousand cigarettes of such
size as will contain the entire amount of tobacco issued. A slight
excess of both tobacco and paper, say sufficient to make forty or fifty
cigarettes, is usually given, intended for the personal consumption of
the employee. When their work is completed and returned to the factory,
they receive in exchange therefor a small copper check payable on
demand. So common are these checks in Havana that a few years
since--possibly it may be so still--they were constantly given to one
at the various stores, and were commonly received as current coin.
Physically the cigar and cigarette makers are a sorry lot. The
continual odor of tobacco, their constant labor, with bodies bent over
tables, calling into play no muscle, no exertion, indeed, whatever,
excepting the exercise of their fingers--this cannot fail to have its
effect. The cigarette makers are injured, too, by the inhalation of an
almost invisible dust arising from the small particles of tobacco. The
compensation received appears very small. Four or five cigarettes a
minute is accounted good work, and even at this rate two days' steady
labor is required to fill a hoop, for which they receive less than two
dollars.
The larger number of cigarettes manufactured at Havana are made by
machinery which is exceedingly ingenious, and has proved thoroughly
successful. The cigarettes made by machinery are not only more tightly
wrapped, but also manufactured at a much reduced cost. Each machine is
capable of making thirty cigarettes per minute, 1,800 per hour, or
43,200 per day, thus replacing the labor of fourteen men, presuming
them to be capable of working ten hours per day. For such persons as
prefer making their own cigarettes, pressed packages of tobacco, with
little paper books containing the envelopes, are sold. The tobacco is
so neatly put up that were it not for the accompanying book, one would
almost fancy it to be a package of the most delicate French chocolate.
As illustration of the consumption of cigarettes it may be of interest
to state that three million cigarettes are made in the Honoradez
factory each year, while it is estimated that in their manufacture over
six million dollars is annually expended in the city of Havana alone.
The Cuban, indeed, is much more of a cigarette than a cigar smoker; the
cigarette is his constant companion. Even after dinner the cigarette
seems to be preferred. I remember once, at a very charming dinner
party, being quite astonished--for it was shortly after my arrival in
Havana--to find myself and the host the only cigar smokers. The rest of
our number, some six or seven, all Cubans, took to their accustomed
cigarette with a unanimity which has always led me to believe that my
good host himself felt called upon by his sense of politeness to do
violence to his own preference.
In connection with the manufacture of cigarettes, nothing strikes one
with more astonishment than the many industries which form accessories
to a factory. The printing and lithographic work, a large quantity of
which is required for the paper bundles or tasteful pasteboard boxes in
which the various packages are put up, is all done by the employees,
and even a photograph gallery is at hand for such persons as may desire
their own likeness to accompany each package. So cleverly is all this
work executed, that until very recently the bank notes and lottery
tickets, both of which are largely circulated, were here printed.
Rather odd to our American ideas, it must be confessed, is the
spectacle of bank notes and lottery tickets being printed side by
side--that too in a cigarette factory.
Boxes of tin, of wood, of all shapes and sizes, as well as kegs for
exportation to distant points, are made within these same walls, where
moulders, machinists, blacksmiths, tinmen, printers, lithographers,
engravers, painters, and carpenters, are all furnished with work. Two
hundred out of the twenty-five hundred employees are Chinese, and for
them is provided a separate dormitory, kitchen, and even bathrooms.
THE HARD TIMES.
WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH OUR CHEAP LABOR?
"WANTED.--
_Work for a thousand starving Immigrants!_"
Such is our advertisement. _Cheap labor!_ that is the boon our
"society" seeks. We wish to "develop our resources"; and as rapidly as
possible, for in that lies all blessedness--real "sweetness and light."
Has not this delightful gospel been preached to us from pulpit and
forum now full fifty good years, and does any one doubt its divine
origin? Yes; I fear there is now and then to be found one of those
antiquated infidels who scorns our "cheap cotton" and holds fast to
manhood; who sniffs at our great new factory and says, "Give me a
_man_!"
It is some two years ago that one of these benighted men told me--I
pity him--he told me he had been into our beautiful Berkshire county to
enjoy the delicious air and the delightful mountains. He went to North
Adams, which lies so calm and basks so peacefully in the embraces of
its sheltering hills. He said that when the noonday bell clanged out, a
living torrent of men and women, boys and girls, poured forth from one
of the gorgeous temples which have been there raised for the worship of
the new god. In that temple were created cheap shoes. He said these men
and women, boys and girls, were haggard, old, squalid, dirty; they
showed traces--so it seemed to his jaundiced eyes--of drink,
hopelessness, lechery, and vileness. He asked who they were. He was
told--and they said it with glee--
"_That is our cheap labor!_"
And where does it come from--from the homes of New England? Oh, no!
From Ireland, from Germany, from Portugal, from China, from
Canadian-Acadie, that pastoral spot of which poets sing!
"Vileness, filth, baseness!" he said. "My God, has Berkshire come to
this!"
It was a very foolish thing to say, and his calling upon his antiquated
God was not only foolish, but useless. His God is not the God now.
He took a ride through the winding roads and wooded hills of that
delightful land. His driver proposed to take him round by the
"Limestone brook" to show him the new factory.
"And what do they make there?"
"Why, didn't you know? They are grinding up the white limestone, and
they send away tons and tons on't every day."
"And what is it used for?"
"Used for? It's used for mixin'. They make three grades: the sody
grade, and the flour grade, and the sugar grade."
"The deuce they do!"--that was a foolish exclamation. "Do you mean that
they use this to mix with flour and sugar?"
The man laughed pityingly. "Of course they do. It makes 'em healthier.
Flour and sugar is healthier and goes further with a little of this
'ere limestone dust mixed in--you see. It's cheaper too. This stuff is
sold for fifty cents a hundred, and flour, you know, costs six dollars
a hundred. Don't you see?"
The benighted infidel did see, and he indulged in some internal
ejaculations; but he fled from the simple and sincere hills of
Berkshire, and sought a solace in the coarse vulgarity and vice of
Boston.
But I am neglecting to say what our _society_ proposes to do; and when
I have told you _of course_ we shall expect you to subscribe.
"The Cheap Labor Society" proposes to introduce from Africa and China,
in batches of one thousand each, as rapidly as possible, able-bodied
men who will work cheap.
"To _develop the resources_" of the country is the end and aim of
all honorable men. In other words, we want cheap men so that we may
make cheap shoes, cheap hats, cheap mutton, and--cheap women.
We who are now here--_we_ do not wish to work at all. Work is a
_curse_. The Bible has said so, and every noble-minded man has said so,
and the clergy has said so, and we know it is and must be so. But yet
there are people existing in the depths of Africa and China who it is
believed will work rather than starve; and these we propose to bring as
rapidly as our means will permit.
We head our appeal, as you see, "Work wanted for a thousand starving
men," because we know that we can get more work out of men who are just
on the edge of starvation than from any other, and in that way we shall
"develop our resources" most effectively and rapidly.
It is quite true that we already produce more cotton cloth and more
boots and shoes than we can possibly sell; but we know--for have we not
political economy to teach us?--that when we get them cheap enough, say
to one-half their present starvation prices--every man, and every
woman, and every child will wear two shirts, and two hats, and two
pairs of shoes; and thus we shall have in a superior way that
blessedness of which poets write--the making "two blades of grass grow
where one grew before." Now, I ask any liberal-minded man if "two pairs
of shoes in place of one" is not higher and nobler than two blades of
grass? That goes without talking.
If work be indeed the curse of curses, why, let the sons of Ham
(Africa) and the sons of Shem (Asia) do it; for it is well known they
are accursed, and have been since the days of "good old Noah"; besides
which, having colored skins, we know just how to mark the helots; can
import them as fast as needed; can put all labor upon them, and can
thus keep our own Japhetic skins and hands clean and white.
Deferring to a not wholly extinct public opinion, which is now and then
announced by some orator to some small schoolboys, in words like these,
_Labore est honore_, and in the vernacular, "_Labor is honorable_," I
am compelled to deny it clearly and distinctly. Almost all know it, but
it may be best to say to those who do not:
If labor is honorable, why does every man refuse to hoe in his garden,
to make his fire, to raise his food? Why does every woman refuse to
cook her food, to make her clothes, to take care of her children? Why
do every father and every mother take special pains to so bring up and
educate their children that they can do no sort of hand work? Why is it
that high schools, and academies, and colleges are held as the most
majestic of blessings, except that they are intended to wholly unfit
boys and girls for the _necessary work of life_?
Why is it that those who do no work are always called "upper classes,"
and those who do much work are called "the masses," unless it is so?
Being so, let us agree to import "the masses" as rapidly as we can.
Permit me to here lay down another corner-stone: As cheapness is a
boon, of course cheap labor is a boon; if labor, even at a dollar a
day, is a blessing, it follows that labor at half a dollar a day is a
greater blessing; and if we can only get it to a quarter of a dollar a
day, will not mankind be four times as happy as when it is at a dollar
a day? And then, oh blessed time! When we get it down to one cent a day
shall we not be standing just in the portals of Paradise?
Let all men take heart, for we approach that time. I learned last
summer, in the lovely State of Connecticut, that the Messrs. Sprague
were hiring able-bodied men to work eleven hours a day, sometimes in
water and mud, at rebuilding their great Baltic dam, for eighty-three
cents a day, and that thousands more were ready to rush in. I may
recall to mind the dark ages, when ignorance prevailed, and men boasted
of a land (if there was one) where
All the men were brave and all the women virtuous.
_All_ of that kind! Then there could have been no cheap labor, and the
boon which we now know to be the greatest vouchsafed to man could not
be enjoyed. There have been times when strong, honest men and strong,
honest (and permit me to say clean) women were thought to be the
fruition of a perfect and Christian civilization--when cheap cotton was
not thought to be the "one thing needful."
The good King Henri of Navarre is said to have hoped for the day when
in France the poorest peasant might have a fowl in his pot.
Besotted king! he did not know that in the good time coming, when we
shall bring in our one to ten thousand cheap Chinese per week, the
white man will be happy indeed who can get a pound of rice or potatoes
in his pot. A fowl in his pot! Foolish king!
"Progress"--what a lovely word!--progress has shown all mankind what a
glorious thing cheap labor is and must be. How great and happy are the
people who preach and practise it! "Progress"--a beautiful word
certainly, if we do really understand it. But I remember me of a man--a
brewer--who rather late in life had fallen in love with the word
"docile." He thought it a beautiful word. One day his partner returned,
having failed to collect a doubtful debt. My friend essayed it, but
returned red in the face.
"Well," said his partner, "have you got it?"
"Got it! The fellow won't do a thing. He's as _docile_ as hell!"
_Progress!_ Its meaning once was,
"Intellectual or moral advancement; improvement in knowledge or in
virtue."
Now it means _cheap cotton and cheap men and women_. To the enlightened
and prosperous English nation belongs the credit of this radical
discovery.
To England too belongs the invention or creation of our new god. She--I
am happy to say it--she invented and created the god we now worship. We
call him
TRADE!
The first, last, and only commandment of our new god is,
"_Buy cheap and sell dear._"
Whatever nation or man worships this god, and obeys this first and
great commandment, is sure of blessedness; for that man or that nation
will get more money than other men and other nations, as England has;
and will be happy, _as she is_!
Swiftly and surely the belief and worship of the new god and the new
gospel is spreading into all lands. Men _fancy_ they still worship "the
Trinity," "Confucius," "Zoroaster," "Mohammed," "Mumbo-jumbo." It is
wholly a fancy. Men still _say_, "I believe in God the Father," etc.
They still say, "Do to others as you would have them do to you," is the
first and great commandment. But what they _do_ do, and wish to do, and
mean to do, is,
"To buy cheap and sell dear."
We need no missionaries to drive this gospel into heathen minds. It has
the charming vitalizing power of going itself. The Chinese have
received it, and have immediately taken the whole tea business out of
the hands of Messrs. Russell & Co. and Jardine, Matheson & Co.; have
quite put an extinguisher upon _their_ money-making. Indeed, do we not
know that _almost_ every European, Chinese, and Indian merchant has
failed, and the heathen Chinee sits in their seats.
How England came to invent this new gospel is known to many, though not
to all. Let me briefly sketch the amazing creation:
A century ago the strength and power of England was based upon her
yeomanry. They possessed much land; and upon the lovely rolling fields
of that lovely country their stone farm-houses and their small farms
were the homes and habitations of millions. From this strong and hardy
yeomanry were drawn the bowmen and the pike-men who made the armies of
the Edwards and the Henrys invincible; from them came the "jolly tars"
who seized victory for Drake and Nelson.
Then Liverpool was not, and Manchester was not, and _creation_ did
not pay tribute to England's god.
But a century ago Watt, the keen, canny Scotsman, discovered that
_steam_ was a giant, and could he but capture him and harness him into
his machine, what work might he not do? He did capture him, and he did
harness him to his machine; and now he works on, on, up, down, here,
there, not ceasing by night and day, by summer and winter; he tires
not, he rests not; for ever and for ever he toils on. He saws, he
grinds, he spins, he weaves, he ploughs, he thrashes, he drags, he
lifts. Such a giant he is!
_One_ man with the steam machine now does the work which once was done
by _ten_, _twenty_, _fifty_! He files, he cuts, he sews, he polishes,
he brews, he bakes, he washes, he irons. Is all this nothing?
It is vast--it is a _revolution_! And no man yet sees the end.
Trade now was exaggerated beyond all former measure, and henceforth was
to be the god of England and of the world. "Let us produce, let us buy
cheap and sell dear, and so we shall be blessed." England had coal deep
down in her bowels. Let her send her sons by thousands into the slime
and darkness to dig it out. Let her make steam, and cheap cotton, and
infinite iron, and let her make all mankind buy of her. "Let us," she
cried, "demand free trade! for _we_ can make cheap and sell dear, and
none can rival us."
She did demand free trade. She demanded it in India by seizing a
kingdom. She demanded it in China at the cannon's mouth. She got it.
She said to all peoples, "You may make corn, and cotton, and wool for
us, and we will make everything you want cheaper than you can make it
for yourselves, and happy you will be. We will make all the ships, will
bring your corn, and cotton, and wool to us, and we will carry all our
lovely manufactures to you, to the uttermost ends of the earth--at
_your_ cost. We will take toll of you both ways; we will make fair
profit on _your_ cotton, and on _our_ manufactures, and that will be
just and even, and we shall both be happy."
And so it has gone on for a hundred years, and gold has poured into
England's stomach, a flowing stream, until her eyes stick out with
fatness; she has even sought Turkish bonds for investment, and has lent
much money to the good Khedive of Egypt--_which she can't get back_!
Let us look at England for a moment, as she is to-day. She has built
magnificent temples dedicated to her great god all over England: at
Birmingham and Manchester, at Glasgow and Paisley; at Birkenhead and
Liverpool, at Preston and Salford, at Leeds and Nottingham--and where
not? England has become a great workshop in which the god of trade is
ministered to.
Her land? Yes, it is beautiful, but her _yeoman have disappeared_--all
have been drawn into the maw of the manufacturing monster. Forty
millions of people now has England, and only some seven per cent. of
them raise the food they eat. And how do the rest get their food? It is
quite simple: by selling to other nations the things they make, and
bringing back the food which other nations make.
It has been the boast of England that she had a larger population to
the square mile--389 human bodies--than any other land except one, and
more great cities than any other land but the "far Cathay"--if even she
be an exception.
That "inspired idiot" Goldsmith once sang in his pretty, sentimental
way,
Ill fares the land to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates and men decay:
Princes and lords may flourish or may fade;
A breath can make them as a breath has made:
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroyed, can never be supplied.
"Bold peasantry," "stalwart yeomen," "hard-handed farmers"--what
preposterous phrases these seem now when we have the immense advantages
of "cheap labor"!
And we here in America--we too? But of us, anon, anon.
Great factories, great halls, great shops, abound--abound and magnify
that English land, so that a glamour has come over mankind, and
moon-faced idiots in all lands have cried, "Behold the glory of
England. Let us do likewise." Those great cities have glorified
themselves and have glorified England, and who has cared to look deeper
down into the mire? Have we seen these men and women, childhood and
age, reeking in squalor and vile with filth in the purlieus of every
temple? Have we looked into the slums of Liverpool and Glasgow, of
Edinburgh and Newcastle, to see men and women, childhood and age, in
all their divinity--or their damnation? Is all lovely--is it indeed? Is
this "progress"? Is it civilization? Is it Christianity? Of course it
is, all three.
I have mentioned the word _revolution_--social revolution. What is it?
Is it at hand? It is quite clear that this amazing power of steam and
machinery is doing _something_. It is quite clear that every machine
does the work of twenty men, and nineteen of these have got to seek
other means of support--they and their wives and their little ones.
It is well known that every man out of work means four mouths bare of
food. Who fills them? The rates (taxes) of course, and in London, the
last winter I was there, some six years ago, 80,000 paupers and beggars
were receiving public aid. "The laws of trade" is to make things right.
I think that is the name of the modern redeemer of men. If work is not
there and food is not there, man will flow at his own sweet will, like
water seeking its level, until he finds his food and his work
somewhere. But if man's "sweet will" decides not to flow, but to lie
down and make his bed in your _pockets_, and feed on the contents in
the shape of taxes--what is to come then? Why, he must be depleted, or
he will deplete _you_. How to deplete him is a most interesting
question? He does not deplete himself, for it is manifest to men that
paupers in England and America get children as fast as they can; and
the clergy applaud and say, "Be fruitful and multiply." There is no
continence among them--none anywhere except in wicked France.
In the "good time coming" in England, the pauper will lie down with the
prince, and there will be peace while the pauper devours the prince; or
there will be pestilence, which is a sure depleter; or the idle army
may be used to deplete the mob. Who can say?
"But there is no danger! Of course not. Why croak?"
What has been will be, under the benign influence of cheap labor and
free trade--perhaps! Let me go on with my pleasant tale--do not
interrupt--I have the word--by and by you.
At this moment, to-day, this year of our Lord 1877, the merchant
princes of London, the manufacturing barons of Manchester are at their
wits' ends; for people refuse to buy the products of their mills.
Germany will not have them, and France will not, and America chooses to
make her own; and even India, ungrateful that she is, has gone to
spinning her own cotton. Mills are being closed in England, furnaces
are blown out, wages are reduced, and workmen are threatening to
_strike_, or have struck, and are settling down for a comfortable
winter upon the _rates_. All right! England has "developed her
resources," and trade is free. Let her sing hosannahs, and cry, "Glory
be to our god," for no such beautiful "progress" was ever seen on earth
before.
What is to happen to the 300,000 or half million land-owners of
England, if outside pig-headed peoples wilfully and maliciously refuse
to buy the mill products of England and so to feed the 37,200,000
people of England who have no land upon which to raise their own food?
What is to happen if some fine day the 37,200,000 take it into their
foolish heads to say:
"We do not like to starve. We are many, you are few. We will take the
land and raise our own food, and you can emigrate if you like, or you
can stand out in the cold as we have done. We don't like it."
It is not quite easy to shoot those people; and if they choose to stay
in England, it is not quite easy to _make_ them emigrate--not even if
the "laws of trade" tell them they really ought to go.
And besides, it is so easy for 100,000 paupers to emigrate--to take
their wives and their children, their flocks and their herds, their
camels and their asses, their beds and their tents, and go forth to
seek the promised land--the land flowing with milk and honey. It is so
simple, so pleasant, that one is lost in amazement that they do not
go--that they wickedly persist in staying where they are paupers, and
refuse to obey the law of "supply and demand."
Such conduct is quite unworthy of enlightened Britons who "never will
be slaves."
It is too bad--it really is--and political economy ought to be preached
at them severely. Why is it too that outside barbarians refuse to buy
the divine productions of England? Some think we may do well to take a
look at this part of the problem before _we_ go on with our plans for
introducing more cheap labor into our own happy land.
A century ago, as has been said, England discovered the wonderful way
of applying the _steam giant_ to the creation of manufactured goods,
and for three-quarters of the century she has had a practical monopoly;
has turned the golden streams of the whole world to enrich herself; has
preached free trade; has said, "Buy cheap and sell dear," and has set
her god on a high throne. But slowly and haltingly other and stupider
nations have caught the tricks of the new Cultus; have caught little
steam giants, and have set them to work to turn their mills and grind
their grists. Germany and the United States are two of these dull
nations who have done a stroke of work in this way. France has really
been too stupid to do much at it--has indeed gone back to a tariff
after having tasted of the new gospel, and now obstinately refuses to
live by it--_will_ pay her debts, and will _not_ enjoy unlimited
pauperism.
Germany has, however, done well. She now makes woollens, cottons,
linens, irons, steels, penknives, and Bibles quite as cheap as England,
and, as some say (one of her own Centennial Commission), "cheaper and
nastier." Now _her_ traders are ubiquitous; they go, with the wandering
Jew, the fascinating Englishman, the penetrating Yankee, into all
heathen lands, carrying everywhere the new gospel of trade, and
introducing to youthful minds the civilizing influences of lager beer
and free lunches. Aided by the persuasive tones of the patient and
soothing Yankee, they are doing wonders in teaching the value of time,
by founding establishments for "stand-up drinks" in every lazy and
luxurious land, by giving prizes to all who _smoke while they work_,
thus making labor cheerful if not respectable. So patient and
indefatigable has Germany been, that at Manchester in England, which
may perhaps be termed the Delos of the new faith, I was told some five
years ago that she had just taken the contract, had bought from Germany
the iron beams and rafters for a new city building, and had put them up
under the very noses of the worshippers who burn their sacred fires at
Birmingham and Wolverhampton. And so, in the whirligig of time, Trade
brings his pleasant revenges.
I was told also--the newspapers said it, and it must be true--that Mr.
Mundella, an enterprising M.P., and a devout worshipper of the new
god, who is a vast producer at Nottingham of stockings and hosiery of
every sort--had found it best--well, absolutely necessary--in order to
compete with the new disciples in Germany, to remove a part of his
machines and machinery to Germany, and make his stockings there, in
order that those ridiculous and cheap Germans should not quite put a
stop to his trade. It was whispered about that French-made tools were
being bought and brought into England for use there, and it was said
openly that American saws, vises, and axes were playing the very deuce;
and now, just after the triumphs of the "Centennial," Englishmen are
writing home that Yankee silks will also play another very deuce with
them if they don't get more and cheaper labor. I see too, by late
letters from England, that they propose to cheapen iron by putting
cheap Chinese labor into the iron works!
And yet in Germany they cry out that _they_ have a panic, and that
trade is dull, and people will persist in failing, and that other
people won't buy all they can make; they too are at their wits' ends.
There must be something wrong, the "doctrinaires" say, about the gases.
Trade is not free enough, or labor is not cheap enough, or they have
too much or too little paper money, or they don't try woman suffrage.
At any rate the new gospel is right--_must be right_, because if
you obey the laws of trade and buy cheap and sell dear, you are sure to
be happy.
And France--it is frightful to think of France. Steeped in stupidity
and enveloped in Cimmerean fog, she resists the new gospel. She will
not send her missionaries abroad over the world; she will not build
great factories and temples; she will not take her whole people from
their small farms, where they raise great surpluses of food, to put
them into the new temples; she does not even work her land with steam,
nor does she hanker for the cheap (and nasty) things which England and
Germany are so ready, willing, and anxious to pour into every
household; indeed, will not have them at all. Oh, the economic
condition of France makes the heart of the enlightened priest of the
new gospel weep. France has taken no steps to introduce the cheap labor
of Ireland or China, or even of Africa--right at her doors--into her
own wretched country, and there is no sign that she will. What feeling
but contempt can the sincere doctrinaire entertain for France?
It would be indeed strange--and yet it is not wholly impossible--that
England and Germany and the United States, all of whom have for
centuries been cursing work, and crying out against work, and doing all
manner of things to get rid of work, and educating their best and
wisest not to do it--it would be indeed strange if some day they should
be crying out, "Give us work, in God's name." Strange, but not wholly
impossible.
We come back now to our own country--to the
Land of the free, and the home of the blest.
We are the child of England, and we revere, we love, we emulate her. We
adopt her methods, we worship her god. We follow in her footsteps, and
emulating her example, we send out missionaries to extend the gospel of
trade; we love to buy cheap and sell dear; we love to scheme; we
delight in speculation, for that is an intellectual operation. We have
been taught for centuries that the mind is divine, the body devilish.
We do well, therefore, to despise the devilish body and exalt the
godlike soul. We do well to depress and belittle the hand, and to
glorify and enlarge the head. We do well to say it, and to make men
believe it if we can, that the "pen is mightier than the sword" or the
plough. We do well to convert our boys and girls into exaggerated
heads, even if they are useless, because we thus exalt them toward
gods. We do well to leave out of view all just balance between head and
hand because that is common and vulgar. We do well to say that the man
who _says_ a good thing is greater than he who _does_ a good thing, for
the spiritual _is_ divine, and the earthly _is_ base!
Keeping in view the short time we have possessed this land, we may
fairly arrogate to ourselves what England has long claimed for herself,
great "progress." We have created more great cities, more luxurious
habits, more free whiskey, more useless railroads, more brokers'
boards, more wild-cat banks, more swindling mining companies, more
political jobs, more precocious boys and more fast girls, more bankrupt
men and more nervous women than any country known in history. Following
the "example of our illustrious predecessor"--England--we have done one
thing of which we are justly proud, and the full account of which,
illustrated with pictures, our "Government" (as we facetiously call it)
has published in some ten fine volumes. And what is the example we
followed? It is this: England, having possessed herself of the vast
kingdom of India, found a production there of opium very lucrative to
her and very desirable to many of the Chinese, who enjoyed the smoking
of the pleasing drug. England greatly desired to sell this drug to
China, for it was all in the interest of trade. One fine day some
Chinese emperor or mandarin took it into his meddling head to check or
forbid the freedom of this trade: and then the virtue, the religious
fervor of the devoted Briton was roused. Ninety-three thousand chests
of good merchantable opium, worth many taels, was not a dogma to be
trifled with, not even by the Emperor of the Flowery Kingdom. What!
Should trade be impeded by this yellow Mantchu, this devotee of
Confucius, this long-eyed heathen, because he had some sentimental
notions about his people's morals or manners? Good heavens! Could trade
stand that? By no means. Persuasion must bring him to his senses if he
had any. Persuasion was tried, and various iron arguments were used.
They battered down Canton, they assaulted and took the cities of Amoy,
Chusan, Ningpo, Woosung, Shanghai, Nanking; and thus the English
missionaries kept on persuading until at last the heathen Chinee
yielded: was persuaded to pay $12,000,000, to open the ports of Canton,
Amoy, Foochoo, Ningpo, Shanghai to trade; to welcome all future opium
with open arms; to make the good Queen Victoria a present of the port
of Hong Kong; and so on and on. Thus, under the persuasion of a
fraternal war, "trade, civilization, and Christianity" made themselves
safe in the high places of China; since which happiness has bourgeoned
there if not in England!
Could our youthful but pious nation do better than follow this
illustrious example? Certainly not. Something must be done. If China
could thus be persuaded to trade by the English, poor little Japan
might be persuaded to trade by the United States. We could but try. We
did, and Perry sailed away, with his ships and his cannons, to try. The
Japs were benighted, foolish, and weak. They declined, and said, "No,
we don't want any of your trade. We make _all we want_, and don't care
either for your religion, your opium, your whiskey, or your stovepipe
hats."
"But," said the gallant Perry, "that is a wicked sentiment. The
brotherhood of nations is the cornerstone of modern civilization. Trade
is divine, and stovepipe hats mark the intellectual races. We are your
brothers. God has made of one blood all the nations of the earth. If
you will not be our brothers, and trade, we shall be obliged to shoot.
Don't want to, but must. One--two--three. Bang!"
Well, the Japs also yielded to these arguments, and thenceforth have
been happy. Trade has prevailed. Rice has gone up, and a good many
Japs have gone to the ethereal spaces, overcome with hunger. Railways
have been built, national debts have been created; the Mikado and
Tycoon have fought, the Daimios have quarrelled, white men have been
assassinated, beggary has begun, taxes press upon the people; and
indeed all the signs which mark the high civilization of trade have
appeared. "Progress," we are assured, is now certain, and Japan is
"developing her resources." Bliss ensues. All of which is written down
and printed in many volumes for all men to read. And "Perry's
Expedition" can be read in beautiful volumes which cost you, we'll say,
$50 for the books and a million for the glorious expedition.
We make any sacrifices for the new religion, and are willing to waste
the filthy lucre of gold to extend a divine idea.
We did it!
We opened their ports!
We extended the blessing of trade!
We have made the Japs into Yankees!
They are learning the benefits of cheap and nasty!
Glory be to the new god!
Massachusetts! Massachusetts has held herself and has been held as the
heart and the brain of New England. She has had (so she has believed)
the heart to feel a moral principle and the head to accept a great
thought. She has had brave-hearted men and clear-eyed women. Once--let
us make a brief retrospect--she had "pilgrim fathers." She had what she
and the world too thought a religion, which she believed in. She had a
people of sound English stock, who in this clear New England air grew
to hate squalor, vice, beggary, debt, and damnation. Once, fifty years
ago, she had no great cities; her "Hub," Boston, in 1830 had but the
poor population of 61,392, nearly all born on her soil, few of them
dirty or beggared. Once, fifty years ago, all through Massachusetts
were clean, decent, white-housed towns, such as Worcester, and
Springfield, and Northampton, and Concord, and Salem, and Newburyport,
centres of small but most cultivated and earnest social life.
Then small farms were cultivated by families of New England birth, out
of whom came able men and handsome women. Children lived with parents,
and did not tyrannize them. Silk gowns were rare, and pianos unknown;
"art" and "culture" had not become household words, but butter was made
at home, and the mystery of bread was known to ladies. Few then had
been to Paris, and few therefore knew how vulgar they were. But "where
ignorance is bliss," etc. They got on, and did not know what poor
creatures they were.
Every child was expected to learn the three R's at the little red
school-house, and to _perfect_ his education by taking hold of material
nature with his hands, and learning what it was by mastering it. That
was education. The parson knew a little Latin, and he was all. They
thought this worked well. Lamentable indeed!
The man expected to marry a capable wife, and to bring up children; he
expected to work on his land or in his shop, to dress decently in
clothes which his wife had made, securing a reasonable support in this
world by his own labor, not by _hocus-pocus_; he provided for his
future salvation by imbibing the five points of Calvin through
fifty-four sermons a year, with now and then a Thursday lecture to fill
in the cracks. Thus he was sure of his food here and of salvation
hereafter--through the merciful providence of God, and not his own
righteousness. New England thus produced a breed of people unlike and
they fancied not inferior to any that history tells of.
But it would not do. There was no progress--it was a lamentable
condition of things. They had _not_ got a population of 211.78 to the
square mile, raked together from the four corners of creation, making
the State the sixth in density of all in the world, as she now boasts
she has, and thus she had totally failed to secure the higher and
better civilization.
They had not "developed their resources"; they had not built up
splendid great cities; they had little knowledge of the delights of
trade. Things could not get on so--that was not "progress." Here was
water power running to waste all over Massachusetts; there were keen
and able heads who believed they knew how to set these powers to work
to grind their grists; it was quite ridiculous that these tumbling
streams should not be turning millwheels and spinning cheap cotton. And
then too not a railroad ran through Massachusetts--no transportation
except in wagons. "Good God!" the pious people naturally exclaimed;
"what misery, what a slow set!" Money--money was then loaned at only
six per cent.! Things must be changed. They were changed. Mill after
mill was built, among them the "_Atlantic_." Railway after railway was
built, among them the "_Eastern_," and the stock was quickly paid up,
and all went merry as a marriage bell. But some people own those stocks
now, and do _not_ find themselves happy!
What is the cure for these shrivelled dividends? Clearly, is it not,
_to bring in cheap labor_? Let every man who has nothing and wants
much, take shares in
"THE CHEAP LABOR SOCIETY."
Seeing what has been done for Massachusetts, it is easy to see what can
be done. And what has been done? In fifty years she has built up
Lowell, and Lawrence, and Worcester, and Holyoke, and many more great
towns. She has increased Boston to a population of 341,919 souls--or
bodies--in the year of grace 1875. She has "improved" things so, has
made such progress, that Boston now spends yearly $15,114,389.73
(auditor's report 1875-6), which means that out of every man, woman,
and child of Boston was taken in 1875, for public expenses, the sum of
_forty-four dollars_! The happiness resulting from this may be partly
understood when I relate that this tax is some four hundred per cent.
greater than the "effete aristocracies" of Europe have ever got out of
their down-trodden serfs, or have even dared to try to get. One other
charming effect of this style of self-government (?), as we please to
call it, is, that it has driven out of Boston a set of bloated money
getters, who fancy it is not pleasant to pay large taxes, so they go to
Nahant, and Barnstable, and Concord for a few months, and rid Boston of
themselves and--their taxes! Shrewd fellows those Boston Democrats!
They know how to _govern_ a city. So they do in New York. So they do in
Cambridge.
But let us look at another of the evidences of true progress. Every man
votes, you must know, whether he owns any property or not. Now, Mr.
Daniel L. Harris has discovered, in his researches at Springfield, that
of the voters there, _four_ pay taxes and _five_ do not; that is,
four-ninths of the voters pay the taxes and five-ninths who pay none
outvote the four who pay all. This is so generous on the part of the
four that we ought to try to see what it is the four really are about.
Applying the same ratio to Boston, we find that every tax-payer, every
man of the four-ninth party, really paid to the yearly expenditures of
the city of Boston, in the blessed year 1875-6, the neat little sum of
three hundred and ninety-nine dollars, money of this realm.[1]
[1] Total polls of Boston, 85,243. Four-ninths of these will go
into $15,114,389--total expenditure of the year 1875-6--$399
times.
And yet the business men of Boston complain that they have made no
money for three years, and that they can't make any. How absurd that
is, when they can pay such taxes as these! And then think what they do
in Boston for the intellect (as it is called). While they stupidly
complain that they can't make any money, they spend on their common
schools every year--over two millions of good dollars (2,015,380)--and
they teach what--what don't they teach? I counted, I think, _thirty-six
branches_ as being taught in the Boston schools last year. "Art" and
"culture," you know! And in those brutal old times of fifty years ago,
they taught only the three R's. Unhappy and despicable! Did they not
deserve it?
And then the generosity of these Boston merchants who can't, as they
pretend, make anything. Look for a moment at that!
They paid in 1865 for the teaching of each one of those children those
thirty-six branches, so necessary to salvation, the sum of $21.16; in
1875 the sum of $35.23. That is, they voluntarily and gladly paid
somebody sixty-six per cent. more for their work in 1875 than in 1865,
and all the while those merchants pretend they are making no money. Do
they expect us to believe that?
If they want to make money, why not at once bring in more cheap labor?
The Chinese are ready to come, and the negroes, even if Ireland can
spare no more of her enlightened people. And then what a boon this
class of people would be to our aspiring statesman. For the sum of two
dollars they are entitled to vote, and then any man who feels a desire
to be a governor or an M.C. can, by paying this paltry pittance,
secure the votes of a grateful constituency. Is it not, therefore, our
supreme duty to bring in this class of voters as rapidly as possible?
We need _population_ and we need _voters_. England has a population of
389 to the square mile and we in Massachusetts have only 211! Should we
not hide our faces with shame while such an inferiority lasts?
There are people now who are getting up a scare about the wonderful
growth of the Holy Catholic Church, claiming that that church demands
of all its members (as it does) allegiance _first_ to the Church, and
then _second_ to the government where its subjects happen to be. I
do not think much of this now that Antonelli is dead; but there may be
something in it. I question whether Massachusetts can any longer put
forth pretensions to being a Puritan or a Unitarian or religious State
of any sort unless it be a Catholic one. Go with me to the U.S. census
report of 1870:
The whole population of Massachusetts in 1870 was 1,457,351
Of these were born in foreign lands 353,319
Born of foreign parents in Massachusetts 626,211 979,530
Thus, it seems, the population of Massachusetts is already foreign-born
and of foreign parents, _over two-thirds_. What number of these foreign
people are Roman Catholics, any other person can guess as well as I
can. But it is quite certain that this blessing, such as it is, has
reached us incidentally through our cheap labor; that is, it is a sort
of superadded bliss, coming as an unexpected reward of unconscious
virtue. In the words of Shakespeare, "We are twice blessed." We have
got cheap labor and we have got the Catholic church crowning every hill
and blooming in every valley.
At any rate it is quite certain that few if any of this class of the
Massachusetts people are either Puritans, Unitarians, or Episcopalians;
and some of them I strongly suspect are like the good sailor, neither
Catholics nor Protestants, but "captains of the fore-top!" In
Massachusetts, as I have said, there was in 1870 of this kind of
population sixty-six per cent., and all have votes. In the whole United
States there was forty-five per cent. of this sort, all of whom have
votes. It is known also that New York, and Boston, and Lowell, and Fall
River are intrinsically foreign cities. It is known that the majority
of voters in those cities have no property which pays taxes; it is
known that this class of voters are now well organized, and can and do
vote and do elect such men as will _please them_--men who "will tickle
me if I'll tickle you"--that is the sort of statesman we now welcome
with effusion; indeed, we seek no other. We mean to deplete all
over-grown fortunes; we mean through the taxes to equalize things and
make Saturday afternoons pleasant. I have not at hand, just this
moment, the figures to tell what good was done in Boston last year to
the class called "the poor." But I have them for Cambridge, a small
city almost a part of Boston. In that small select and intellectual
city the expenditures in direct aid of "the poor," not counting work
which was _made_ for them, was in dollars, $80,000, and that does not
count a large sum besides given in private charity. This help was given
to some 5,400 persons; stating it simply, in the words of political
economy, one person in seven or eight of that cultivated and select
community was a pauper. Another feature of this new and peculiar social
state is this: that the voters who have no property and pay no taxes do
not enjoy the possibility of starving, nor do they look with favor upon
advice which tells them to "Go West." Why should they go West? They do
not know where to go--indeed, they have no money to go with--nor do
they know that there would be any work for them there. They _choose_ to
stay where they are, and they will vote for people who will help them
to stay; and they have five votes to the tax-payer's four, which
significant little fact should not be lost sight of!
In our laudable desire for "progress," in our vital wish "to develop
our resources," we have produced many results, some interesting ones,
quite unexpected. We have got cheap labor and we have got cheap cotton
cloth and cheap boots and shoes, and a good deal of all of them. The
smart little city of Lowell was begun by the most capable and
enterprising of Boston's "solid men"; it was begun upon a theory that
men and women in New England ought to be clean, decent, and virtuous.
In its beginning nearly all the operatives were of New England birth,
descendants of Puritans who were used to decency, cleanliness, and
virtue. Then they lived and lodged in houses belonging to the mills,
which were _regulated_--the men in their own boarding houses, the women
in theirs. All were expected to be in their houses by or before a
certain hour, say ten o'clock at night.
Then every young lady had a green silk parasol for Sunday's use, and
she wrote poetry for the "Lowell Offering," if she felt the divine
movement. At that early undeveloped time an English gentleman, one
Anthony Trollope, visited the nascent city. He lamented the
narrow-mindedness of the projectors, and predicted it would not work;
that the little Lowell could never compete with such highly developed
cities as Manchester and Preston, where they knew the magic of "cheap
labor." In other words, Lowell could not be a great success.
That Arcadian simplicity worked for a while, but inevitably the magic
of cheap labor made itself felt--it was potent--it came, it saw, it
conquered. And now the best information I have convinces me that the
squalor, filth, recklessness, and happiness are nearly or quite equal
to what they are in the noble cities of Manchester and Glasgow in
England. Should Mr. Trollope revisit those scenes of his youth, he
would be as much delighted as any Englishman could permit himself to be
with anything outside his "Merrie England" at the delectable advances
made there.
He would find labor cheap and cotton cheap--as cheap as they are in his
beloved Manchester. He would find, as in his beloved Manchester, that
they made more than they could sell; which is the secret of cheapness.
He would find that in that small elysium, in the year 1874, they made
135,000,000 yards of cotton cloth, which gospel of cotton they were
then spreading abroad over all the earth, sending some of it to his
beloved Manchester. He would learn also that there was invested there
some $20,000,000 of good money of the realm, a large proportion of
which paid no dividends; which also is an excellent method of securing
cheapness. He would find all "narrow-minded regulations" quite done
away with, and the full liberty of the subject enjoyed by all; that
people staid "out nights" according to their own sweet wills; that men
slept when they pleased and where they pleased, and with whom they
pleased--women too for that matter; and that life was as free and
pleasant as his good English heart could wish. He would find that the
old-fashioned, narrow-minded New England stock had disappeared--not
being cheap enough--and their places were fully supplied with a
delightful conglomeration of gentlemen and ladies who had fled from
poor Ireland, from the Azores, from Germany, from pastoral Acadie; and
here and there he would note the pigtail of the frugal Chinese, the
_avant courier of a better time coming_.
Thus he would find that Lowell, having rid herself of narrow-minded
notions, having followed reverently in the footsteps of his illustrious
Manchester, was _a success indeed_.
And _Lynn_ too. She discovered thirty years ago the surprising
swiftness of "teams," whereby six or eight men working in partnership,
each one doing only one thing, say one a welt, and another a bottom,
and another the eyelets, etc., could put a shoe through in one-eighth
the time of the old "one-man" way. Millions of shoes were made, and
shoes were cheap. Much money flowed in, and life was lovely at Lynn.
But Paradise pales if too long continued. The sewing-machines came, and
McKaye was a god--for the master. One man with his machine could do the
work of twenty or forty men in the teams. Shoes were now amazingly
cheap. The Crispins wept, the master laughed, and the making of shoes
went merrily on. And what became of the Crispins? They struck! and
then--they disappeared, vanished, went too "where the woodbine
twineth." They too were not wanted. Let them get themselves out of the
way! the Chinese are coming!
They got much consolation from a certain set of preachers, who assured
them it was all right--"Laws of trade, you know," "cheap shoes good for
the masses," "water will find its level," "the masses in Africa will
now be able to wear shoes," "the best government is _no_ government,"
"all one great brotherhood," "every man for himself and the devil take
the hindmost."
Paradise was just beyond their noses, and it lay just here: "When
things get very cheap every man will only work three hours a day. All
men can play the rest of the time, or they can cultivate their
_minds_!" "Beautiful! Beautiful! Hosannah to the highest!" was what
every disbanded Crispin ought to have said; but, foolish man as he was,
he kept saying, "My _body_ is hungry, and I have no work, and I will
steal some food--or become a broker! You had better look out."
But luckily the Southern war came, and it made places for a good many
men, and the "Government" (not us men and women)--the Government paid
_the bills_, and so we were tided over. And now we have got the bills,
and we have got cheap labor too! And we are as near to "no government"
as any people ever was except wild Indians; and that we know--for the
doctrinaires say so--is Paradise. If it is not that, what in Heaven's
name is it?
There was once a notion that the men who had knowledge, and experience,
and strength, should think for and act for those who had not; in short,
that those who were strong should protect and care for the weak. The
father in some countries--not all--yet does pursue this plan; he is
head and master of his household, and is expected to know how to act
and what to do better than his boys and girls.
We have exploded that idea. Under this "best government upon which the
sun ever shone," we have made discoveries. We find that children know
what _they_ want better than their fathers; that women are really
stronger than men, have larger brains, more sense, more heart, and more
purity; and that when women and children both vote (mistress Biddy too)
the world will go right--for they--the pure, the honest--_will_ "holler
out gee!"
This old paternal or family government was a _despotism_, tempered
with love, to be sure, but a despotism not to be tolerated in an
enlightened age. Shovel it out, shovel it out!
It is a sad fact that children now, while wiser and purer than their
fathers, are not physically quite so strong. But it is found that the
pistol puts the holders upon a _perfect equality_, and that is the
thing to be aimed at. The redress of the weak is therefore in the
pistol, which I expect to see in every child's pocket soon. The tyrant
man will then be degraded to his place. With women voting, and children
holding pistols, men and fathers will be pulled down from the pedestal
they have usurped so long.
We know that women have more virtue than men (?), and that children
have more purity, and therefore, knowing well the "good, the true, and
the beautiful," they must and shall govern the land. They shall be
tyrannized no longer.
And so, as New England has cut into old England, and has set her own
machinery and steam to work making many things cheaper than old England
can make them, and bids fair to starve out some of her garrisons of
workers, just in the same way have Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati, and
Chicago taken it into their heads to set their machinery and steam to
work; and now torrents of hats, and shoes, and woollens, and cottons,
and clothing, and furniture, and stoves, and pots are pouring out of
those nests of industry, so that even they are beginning to cry out,
"Why don't you buy what we want to sell, and thus make _us_ rich?"
If, then, we in New England refuse to buy--refuse to buy at profitable
prices the productions of old England--what does England propose to do
with her millions of non-food-producing workmen? She demands free
trade; says we are fools for not opening our ports and accepting with
effusion the blessings of cheap goods she would so willingly send us?
She does not quite like to open _our_ ports, as she did those of China,
nor does she incline at present to carry into France the civilizing
influences of her cheap looms at the point of the bayonet. _She_ must
answer the question, not I.
And in New England--if that "West," with its fertile fields and its
surplus food, will go to making cheap shoes and cheap cotton, and will
not see how much happier she would be if she would only make corn and
pork and swap them with New England for shoes and cotton--what will New
England, what will Massachusetts do with her 507,034 workers who do not
produce their own food? This is rather a vital question to those men
and women who have no food. It is rather vital too to the capital
invested in mills and machines in Lowell and elsewhere.
I come back now to my first proposition for the cure of the ills of
life--_cheap labor_.
If trade be the true god, let us worship him; if to buy cheap and sell
dear be the true gospel, let us extend that; if to convert men and
women into tenders to machines be really the perfection of human
nature, let us import the wild African and the heathen Chinee rapidly,
largely, for nothing can be cheaper than they. Let us get ready our
ships; let us open the ports of Dahomey, and Congo, and Canton, and
Shanghai; let us exchange whiskey and tobacco for able-bodied men and
women; let us fill this land with the black men and the copper men; let
us perfect our civilization, for those men and those women can live
cheap and work cheap; and if _white_ men and _white_ women do go to the
wall--why should they not?
Gentle reader, you ask what is the _moral_?
I reply, Does not our civilization demand _cheap cotton_ and not great
_men and women_? Clearly it does.
Does it not demand free _pauper immigration_? Clearly it does.
Does it not demand cheap _Chinese immigration_? Clearly it does.
Does it not demand free _pauper_ and free _Chinese voting_? Clearly it
does.
Does it not demand that "Trade" shall be god, and the _laws of supply
and demand_ shall rule? Clearly it does.
Does it not call this "progress"? Clearly it does.
And is not all this leading us directly to--_Heaven_ or to _Hell_?
Clearly they are.
And you, gentle reader, can decide which.
CHARLES WYLLY ELLIOTT.
THE TWO WORLDS.
Two mighty silences, two worlds unseen
Over against each other lie:
For ever boundlessly apart have been,
For ever nigh.
In one is God Himself, and angels bright
Do congregate, and spirits fair;
And, lost in depths of mystic light,
Our Dead dwell there.
All things that cannot fade, nor fall, nor die,
Voices beloved, and precious things foregone,
Float up and up, and in that silence high,
With God grow one.
No barren silence, nay, but such as over
Lips that we love its spell may fling,
Where tender words like nested swallows hover,
Ere they take wing.
Sometimes from that far land there comes a breeze,
Soft airs surprise us on our way,
As dew-drops from above; then on our knees
We fall and pray.
And oft in some low crimson coast of cloud
We deem we see its far-off strand:
Our hearts, like shipwrecked sailors, cry aloud,
"The Land! the Land!"
And side by side that other world unknown,
Drenched in unbroken silence lies,
World of ourselves, where each one lives alone,
And lonely dies.
With our unuttered griefs, our joys untold,
Our multitudinous thoughts swift throng,
We dwell; one silence them and us doth fold
All our life long.
Out from those depths there comes a cry of pain.
Ah, pitifully, Lord, it calls,
"Behold the sorrows of our hearts!" and then--
A silence falls.
Nought but the narrow strip doth lie between
Of sounding surf that men call life;
Yet none can pass between those worlds unseen,
And end the strife.
Die down, die down, O thou tormented sea!
Suffer my silent world to fill
With voices from that land which cry to me,
"We love thee still."
In vain: I hear them not! but o'er my loss
Comes an apocalyptic voice,
"There shall be no more sea, and thou canst cross."
Rejoice! rejoice!
ELICE HOPKINS.
SISTER ST. LUKE.
They found her over there. "This is more than I expected," said
Carrington as they landed--"seven pairs of Spanish eyes at once."
"Three pairs," answered Keith, fastening the statement to fact and the
boat to a rock in his calm way; "and one if not two of the pairs are
Minorcan."
The two friends crossed the broad white beach toward the little stone
house of the light-keeper, who sat in the doorway, having spent the
morning watching their sail cross over from Pelican reef, tacking
lazily east and west--an event of more than enough importance in his
isolated life to have kept him there, gazing and contented, all day.
Behind the broad shoulders of swarthy Pedro stood a little figure
clothed in black; and as the man lifted himself lazily at last and came
down to meet them, and his wife stepped briskly forward, they saw that
the third person was a nun--a large-eyed, fragile little creature,
promptly introduced by Melvyna, the keeper's wife, as "Sister St.
Luke." For the keeper's wife, in spite of her black eyes, was not a
Minorcan at all; not even a southerner. Melvyna Sawyer was born in
Vermont, and, by one of the strange chances of this vast, many-raced,
motley country of ours, she had travelled south as nurse, and a very
good, energetic nurse too, albeit somewhat sharp-voiced, to a delicate
young wife, who had died in the sunny land, as so many of them die; the
sun, with all his good will and with all his shining, not being able to
undo in three months the work of long years of the snows and the bleak
east winds of New England.
The lady dead, and her poor thin frame sent northward again to lie in
the hillside churchyard by the side of bleak Puritan ancestors, Melvyna
looked about her. She hated the lazy tropical land, and had packed her
calf-skin trunk to go, when Pedro Gonsalvez surprised her by proposing
matrimony. At least that is what she wrote to her Aunt Clemanthy, away
up in Vermont; and although Pedro may not have used the words, he at
least meant the fact, for they were married two weeks later by a
justice of the peace, whom Melvyna's sharp eyes had unearthed, she of
course deeming the padre of the little parish and one or two attendant
priests as so much dust to be trampled energetically under her shoes,
Protestant and number six and a half double-soled mediums. The justice
of the peace, a good natured old gentleman who had forgotten that he
held the office at all, since there was no demand for justice and the
peace was never broken in the small lazy village, married them as well
as he could in a surprised sort of a way, and instead of receiving a
fee gave one, which Melvyna, however, promptly rescued from the
bridegroom's willing hand, and returned with the remark that there was
no "call for alms" (pronounced as if it rhymed with hams), and that two
shilling, or mebbe three, she guessed, would be about right for the
job. This sum she deposited on the table, and then took leave, walking
off with a quick, enterprising step, followed by her acquiescent and
admiring bridegroom. He had remained acquiescent and admiring ever
since, and now, as light-house keeper on Pelican island, he admired and
acquiesced more than ever; while Melvyna kept the house in order,
cooked his dinners, and tended his light, which, although only third
class, shone and glittered under her daily care in the old square tower
which was founded by the Spaniards, heightened by the English, and now
finished and owned by the United States, whose light-house board said
to each other every now and then that really they must put a
first-class Fresnal on Pelican island and a good substantial tower
instead of that old-fashioned beacon. They did so a year or two later;
and a hideous barber's pole it remains to the present day. But when
Carrington and Keith landed there the square tower still stood in its
gray old age, at the very edge of the ocean, so that high tides swept
the step of the keeper's house. It was originally a lookout where the
Spanish soldier stood and fired his culverin when a vessel came in
sight outside the reef; then the British occupied the land, added a
story, and placed an iron grating on the top, where their
coastguardsman lighted a fire of pitch-pine knots that flared up
against the sky, with the tidings, "A sail! a sail!" Finally the United
States came into possession, ran up a third story, and put in a
revolving light, one flash for the land and two for the sea, a
proportion unnecessarily generous now to the land, since nothing came
in any more, and everything went by, the little harbor being of no
importance since the indigo culture had failed. But ships still sailed
by on their way to the Queen of the Antilles, and to the far Windward
and Leeward islands, and the old light went on revolving, presumably
for their benefit. The tower, gray and crumbling, and the keeper's
house, were surrounded by a high stone wall with angles and
loopholes--a small but regularly planned defensive fortification built
by the Spaniards; and odd enough it looked there on that peaceful
island, where there was nothing to defend. But it bore itself stoutly
nevertheless, this ancient little fortress, and kept a sharp lookout
still over the ocean for the damnable Huguenot sail of two centuries
before.
The sea had encroached greatly on Pelican island, and sooner or later
it must sweep the keeper's house away; but now it was a not unpleasant
sensation to hear the water wash against the step--to sit at the narrow
little windows and watch the sea roll up, roll up, nearer and nearer,
coming all the way landless in long surges from the distant African
coast only to never quite get at the foundations of that stubborn
little dwelling, which held its own against them, and then triumphantly
watched them roll back, roll back, departing inch by inch down the
beach, until, behold! there was a magnificent parade-ground, broad
enough for a thousand feet to tread--a floor more fresh and beautiful
than the marble pavements of palaces. There were not a thousand feet to
tread there, however; only six. For Melvyna had more than enough to do
within the house, and Pedro never walked save across the island to the
inlet once in two weeks or so, where he managed to row over to the
village, and return with supplies, by taking two entire days for it,
even Melvyna having given up the point, tacitly submitting to loitering
she could not prevent, but recompensing herself by a general cleaning
on those days of the entire premises, from the top of the lantern in
the tower to the last step in front of the house.
You could not argue with Pedro. He only smiled back upon you as sweetly
and as softly as molasses. Melvyna, endeavoring to urge him to energy,
found herself in the position of an active ant wading through the downy
recesses of a feather bed, which well represented his mind.
Pedro was six feet, two inches in height, and amiable as a dove. His
wife sensibly accepted him as he was, and he had his two days in
town--a very mild dissipation, however, since the Minorcans are too
indolent to do anything more than smoke, lie in the sun, and eat salads
heavily dressed in oil. They said, "The serene and august wife of our
friend is well, we trust?" And, "The island--does it not remain
lonely?" And then the salad was pressed upon him again. For they all
considered Pedro a man of strange and varied experiences. Had he not
married a woman of wonder--of an energy unfathomable? And he lived with
her alone in a light-house, on an island; alone, mind you, without a
friend or relation near!
The six feet that walked over the beautiful beach of the southern ocean
were those of Keith, Carrington, and Sister St. Luke.
"Now go, Miss Luke," Melvyna had said, waving her energetically away
with the skimmer as she stood irresolute at the kitchen door. "'Twill
do you a power of good, and they're nice, quiet gentlemen who will see
to you, and make things pleasant. Bless you, _I_ know what they are.
They ain't none of the miserable, good-for-nothing race about here!
Your convent is fifty miles off, ain't it? And besides, you were
brought over here half dead for me to cure up--now, warn't you?"
The Sister acknowledged that she was, and Melvyna went on.
"You see, things is different up north, and I understand 'em, but you
don't. Now you jest go right along and hev a pleasant walk, and I'll
hev a nice bowl of venison broth ready for you when you come back. Go
right along now." The skimmer waved again, and the Sister went.
"Yes, she's taken the veil, and is a nun for good and all," explained
Melvyna to her new guests the evening of their arrival, when the shy
little Sister had retreated to her own room above. "They thought she
was dying, and she was so long about it, and useless on their hands,
that they sent her up here to the village for sea air, and to be red of
her, I guess. 'T any rate, there she was in one of them crowded, dirty
old houses, and so--I jest brought her over here. To tell the truth,
gentlemen--the real bottom of it--my baby died last year--and--and Miss
Luke she was so good I'll never forget it. I ain't a Catholic--fur from
it; I hate 'em. But she seen us coming up from the boat with our little
coffin, and she came out and brought flowers to lay on it, and followed
to the grave, feeble as she was; and she even put in her little black
shawl, because the sand was wet--this miserable half-afloat land, you
know--and I couldn't abear to see the coffin set down into it. And I
said to myself then that I'd never hate a Catholic again, gentlemen. I
don't love 'em yet, and don't know as I ever shell; but Miss Luke,
she's different. Consumption? Well, I hardly know. She's a sight better
than she was when she come. I'd like to make her well again, and,
someway, I can't help a-trying to, for I was a nurse by trade once. But
then what's the use? She'll only hev to go back to that old convent!"
And Melvyna clashed her pans together in her vexation. "Is she a good
Catholic, do you say? Heavens and earth, yes! She's _that_
religious--my! I couldn't begin to tell! She believes every word of all
that rubbish those old nuns have told her. She thinks it's beautiful to
be the bride of heaven; and, as far as that goes, I don't know but
she's right: 'tain't much the other kind is wuth," pursued Melvyna,
with fine contempt for mankind in general. "As to freedom, they've as
good as shoved her off their hands, haven't they? And I guess I can do
as I like any way on my own island. There wasn't any man about their
old convent, as I can learn, and so Miss Luke, she hain't been taught
to run away from 'em like most nuns. Of course, if they knew, they
would be sending over here after her: but they don't know, and them
priests in the village are too fat and lazy to earn their salt, let
alone caring what has become of her. I guess, if they think of her at
all, they think that she died, and that they buried her in their
crowded, sunken old graveyard. They're so slow and sleepy that they
forget half the time who they're burying! But Miss Luke, she ought to
go out in the air, and she is so afraid of everything that it don't do
her no good to go alone. I haven't got the time to go; and so, if you
will let her walk along the beach with you once in a while, it will do
her a sight of good, and give her an appetite--although what I want her
to hev an appetite for I am sure I don't know; for ef she gets well, of
course she'll go back to the convent. Want to go? _That_ she does.
She loves the place, and feels lost and strange anywhere else. She was
taken there when she was a baby, and it is all the home she has.
_She_ doesn't know they wanted to be red of her, and she wouldn't
believe it ef I was to tell her forty times. She loves them all dearly,
and prays every day to go back there. Spanish? Yes, I suppose so; she
don't know herself what she is exactly. She speaks English well though,
don't she? Yes, Sister St. Luke is her name; and a heathenish name it
is for a woman, in my opinion. _I_ call her Miss Luke. Convert
her? Couldn't any more convert her than you could convert a white gull,
and make a land bird of him. It's his nature to ride on the water and
be wet all the time. Towels couldn't dry him--not if you fetched a
thousand!"
"Our good hostess is a woman of discrimination, and sorely perplexed,
therefore, over her _protégée_," said Keith, as the two young men
sought their room, a loft under the peaked roof, which was to be their
abode for some weeks, when they were not afloat. "As a nurse she feels
a professional pride in curing, while as a Calvinist she would almost
rather kill than cure, if her patient is to go back to the popish
convent. But the little Sister looks very fragile. She will probably
save trouble all round by fading away."
"She is about as faded now as a woman can be," answered Carrington.