The two friends, or rather companions, plunged into all the phases of

the southern ocean with a broad, inhaling, expanding delight which only

a superb natural or an exquisitely cultured physique can feel. George

Carrington was a vigorous young Saxon, tall and broad to a remarkable

degree, feeling his life and strength in every vein and muscle. Each

night he slept his eight hours dreamlessly, like a child, and each day

he lived four hours in one, counting by the pallid hours of other men.

Andrew Keith, on the other hand, represented the physique cultured and

trained up to a high point by years of attention and care. He was a

slight man, rather undersized, but his wiry strength was more than a

match for Carrington's bulk, and his finely cut face, if you would but

study it, stood out like a cameo by the side of a ruddy miniature

painted in oils. The trouble is that but few people study cameos. He

was older than his companion, and "One of those quiet fellows, you

know," said the world. The two had never done or been anything

remarkable in all their lives. Keith had a little money, and lived as

he pleased, while Carrington, off now on a vacation, was junior member

of a firm in which family influence had placed him. Both were city men.

"You absolutely do not know how to walk, señora," said Keith. "I will

be doctor now, and you must obey me. Never mind the crabs, and never

mind the jelly fish, but throw back your head and walk off briskly. Let

the wind blow in your face, and try to stand more erect."

"You are doctor? They told me, could I but see one, well would I be,"

said the Sister. "At the convent we have only Sister Inez, with her

small and old medicines."

"Yes, I think I may call myself doctor," answered Keith gravely. "What

do you say, Carrington?"

"Knows no end, Miss, Miss--Miss Luke--I should say, Miss St. Luke. I am

sure I do not know why I should stumble over it when St. John is a

common enough name," answered Carrington, who generally did his

thinking aloud.

"No end?" repeated the little Sister inquiringly. "But there is an end

in this evil world to all things."

"Never mind what he says, señora," interrupted Keith, "but step out

strongly and firmly, and throw back your head. There now, there are no

crabs in sight, and the beach is hard as a floor. Try it with me: one,

two; one, two."

So they treated her, partly as a child, partly as a gentle being of an

inferior race. It was a new amusement, although rather a mild one,

Carrington said, to instruct this unformed, timid mind, to open the

blinded eyes, and train the ignorant ears to listen to the melodies of

nature.

"Do you not hear? It is like the roll of a grand organ," said Keith as

they sat on the doorstep one evening at sunset. The sky was dark; the

wind had blown all day from the north to the south, and frightened the

little Sister as she toiled at her lace work, made on a cushion in the

Spanish fashion, her lips mechanically repeating prayers meanwhile; for

never had they such winds at the inland convent, embowered in its

orange trees. Now, as the deep, low roll of the waves sounded on the

shore, Keith, who was listening to it with silent enjoyment, happened

to look up and catch the pale, repressed nervousness of her face.

"Oh, not like an organ," she murmured. "This is a fearful sound; but an

organ is sweet--soft and sweet. When Sister Teresa plays the evening

hymn it is like the sighing of angels."

"But your organ is probably small, señora."

"We have not thought it small. It remains in our chapel, by the window

of arches, and below we walk, at the hour of meditation, from the lime

tree to the white rose bush, and back again, while the music sounds

above. We have not thought it small, but large--yes, very large."

"Four feet long probably," said Carrington, who was smoking an evening

pipe, now listening to the talk awhile, now watching the movements of

two white heron who were promenading down the beach. "I saw the one

over in the village church. It was about as long as this step."

"Yes," said the Sister, surveying the step, "it is about as long as

that. It is a very large organ."

"Walk with me down to the point," said Keith--"just once and back

again."

The docile little Sister obeyed; she always did immediately whatever

they told her to do.

"I want you to listen now; stand still and listen--listen to the sea,"

said Keith, when they had turned the point and stood alone on the

shore. "Try to think only of the pure, deep, blue water, and count how

regularly the sound rolls up in long, low chords, dying away and then

growing louder, dying away and then growing louder, as regular as your

own breath. Do you not hear it?"

"Yes," said the little Sister timorously.

"Keep time, then, with your hand, and let me see whether you catch the

measure."

So the small brown hand, nerveless and slender, tried to mark and

measure the roar of the great ocean surges, and at last succeeded,

urged on by the alternate praises and rebukes of Keith, who watched

with some interest a faint color rise in the pale, oval face, and an

intent listening look come into the soft, unconscious eyes, as, for the

first time, the mind caught the mighty rhythm of the sea. She listened,

and listened, standing mute, with head slightly bent and parted lips.

"I want you to listen to it that way every day," said Keith, as he led

the way back. "It has different voices: sometimes a fresh, joyous song,

sometimes a faint, loving whisper; but always something. You will learn

in time to love it, and then it will sing to you all day long."

"Not at the dear convent; there is no ocean there."

"You want to go back to the convent, I suppose?"

"Oh, could I go? Could I go?" said the Sister, not impatiently, but

with an intense yearning in her low voice. "Here, so lost, so strange

am I, so wild is everything---- But I must not murmur"; and she crossed

her hands upon her breast and bowed her head.

* * * * *

The young men led a riotous life; they rioted with the ocean, with the

winds, with the level island, with the sunshine and the racing clouds.

They sailed over to the reef daily and plunged into the surf; they

walked for miles along the beach, and ran races over its white floor;

they hunted down the centre of the island, and brought back the little

brown deer who lived in the low thicket on each side of the island's

backbone. The island was twenty miles long, and a mile or two broad,

with a central ridge of shell-formed rock about twenty feet in height,

that seemed like an Appalachian chain on the level waste; below, in the

little hollows on each side, spread a low tangled thicket, a few yards

wide; and all the rest was barren sand, with moveable hills here and

there--hills a few feet in height, blown up by the wind, and changed in

a night. The only vegetation besides the thicket was a rope-like vine

that crept over the sand, with few leaves far apart, and now and then a

dull purple blossom, a solitary tenacious vine of the desert, satisfied

with little, its growth slow, its life monotonous; yet try to tear it

from the surface of the sand, where its barren length seems to lie

loosely like an old brown rope thrown down at random, and behold, it

resists you stubbornly. You find a mile or two of it on your hands,

clinging and pulling as the strong ivy clings to a stone wall; a giant

could not conquer it, this seemingly dull and half dead thing; and so

you leave it there to creep on in its own way over the damp,

shell-strewn waste. One day Carrington came home in great glory; he had

found a salt marsh. "Something besides this sand, you know--a stretch

of saw-grass away to the south, the very place for fat ducks. And

somebody has been there before us, too, for I saw the mast of a

sailboat some distance down, tipped up against the sky."

"That old boat is ourn, I guess," said Melvyna. "She drifted down there

one high tide, and Pedro he never would go for her. She was a mighty

nice little boat, too, ef she _was_ cranky."

Pedro smiled amiably back upon his spouse, and helped himself to

another hemisphere of pie. He liked the pies, although she was obliged

to make them, she said, of such outlandish things as figs, dried

oranges, and pomegranates. "If you could only see a pumpkin, Pedro,"

she often remarked, shaking her head. Pedro shook his back in sympathy;

but, in the mean time, found the pies very good as they were.

"Let us go down after the boat," said Carrington. "You have only that

old tub over at the inlet. Pedro and you really need another boat"

(Carrington always liked to imagine that he was a constant and profound

help to the world at large). "Suppose anything should happen to the one

you have." Pedro had not thought of that; he slowly put down his knife

and fork to consider the subject.

"We will go this afternoon," said Keith, issuing his orders, "and you

shall go with us, señora."

"And Pedro, too, to help you," said Melvyna. "I've always wanted that

boat back, she was such a pretty little thing: one sail, you know, and

decked over in front; you sat on the bottom. I'd like right well to go

along myself; but I suppose I'd better stay at home and cook a nice

supper for you."

Pedro thought so, decidedly.

When the February sun had stopped blazing down directly overhead, and a

few white afternoon clouds had floated over from the east to shade his

shining, so that man could bear it, the four started inland toward the

backbone ridge, on whose summit there ran an old trail southward, made

by the fierce Creeks three centuries before. Right up into the dazzling

light soared the great eagles--straight up, up to the sun; their

unshrinking eyes fearlessly fixed full on his fiery ball.

"It would be grander if we did not know they had just stolen their

dinners from the poor hungry fish-hawks over there on the inlet," said

Carrington.

Sister St. Luke had learned to walk quite rapidly now. Her little black

gown trailed lightly along the sand behind her, and she did her best to

"step out boldly," as Keith directed; but it was not firmly, for she

only succeeded in making a series of quick, uncertain little paces over

the sand-like bird tracks. Once Keith had taken her back and made her

look at her own uneven footsteps. "Look--no two the same distance

apart," he said. The little Sister looked and was very much mortified.

"Indeed, I _will_ try with might to do better," she said. And she did

try with might; they saw her counting noiselessly to herself as she

walked, "One, two; one, two." But she had improved so much that Keith

now devoted his energies to teaching her to throw back her head, and

look about her. "Do you not see those soft banks of clouds piled up in

the west?" he said, constantly directing her attention to objects above

her. But this was a harder task, for the timid eyes had been trained

from childhood to look down, and the head was habitually bent, like a

pendant flower on its stem. Melvyna had deliberately laid hands upon

the heavy veil and white band that formerly encircled the small face.

"You cannot breathe in them," she said. But the Sister still wore a

light veil over the short dark hair, which would curl in little rings

upon her temples in spite of her efforts to prevent it; the cord and

heavy beads and cross encircled her slight waist, while the wide

sleeves of her nun's garb fell over her hands to the finger tips.

"How do you suppose she would look dressed like other women?" said

Carrington one day. The two men were drifting in their small yacht,

lying at ease on the cushions, and smoking.

"Well," answered Keith slowly, "if she was well dressed--very well I

mean, say in the French style--and if she had any spirit of her own,

any vivacity, you might, with that dark face of hers and those

eyes--you _might_ call her piquant."

"Spirit? She has not the spirit of a fly," said Carrington, knocking

the ashes out of his pipe and fumbling in an embroidered velvet pouch,

one of many offerings at his shrine, for a fresh supply of the strong

aromatic tobacco he affected, Keith meanwhile smoking nothing but the

most delicate cigarettes. "The other day I heard a wild scream; and

rushing down stairs I found her half fainting on the steps, all in a

little heap. And what do you think it was? She had been sitting there,

lost in a dream--mystic, I suppose, like St. Agnes--

Deep on the convent roof the snows

Are sparkling to the moon:

My breath to heaven like vapor goes.

May my soul follow soon--

and that sort of thing."

"No," said Keith, "there is nothing mystical about the Luke maiden; she

has never even dreamed of the ideal ecstasies of deeper minds. She says

her little prayers simply, almost mechanically, so many every day, and

dwells as it were content in the lowly valleys of religion."

"Well, whatever she was doing," continued Carrington, "a great sea crab

had crawled up and taken hold of the toe of her little shoe. Grand

tableau--crab and Luke maiden! And the crab had decidedly the better of

it."

"She _is_ absurdly timid," admitted Keith.

And absurdly timid she was now, when, having crossed the stretch of

sand and wound in and out among the low hillocks, they came to the

hollow where grew the dark green thicket, through which they must pass

to reach the Appalachian range, the backbone of the island, where the

trail gave them an easier way than over the sands. Carrington went

first and hacked out a path with his knife; Keith followed, and held

back the branches; the whole distance was not more than twelve feet;

but its recesses looked dark and shadowy to the little Sister, and she

hesitated.

"Come," said Carrington; "we shall never reach the salt marsh at this

rate."

"There is nothing dangerous here, señora," said Keith. "Look, you can

see for yourself. And there are three of us to help you."

"Yes," said Pedro--"three of us." And he swung his broad bulk into the

gap.

Still she hesitated.

"Of what are you afraid?" called out Carrington impatiently.

"I know not indeed," she answered, almost in tears over her own

behavior, yet unable to stir. Keith came back, and saw that she was

trembling--not violently, but in a subdued, helpless sort of a way

which was pathetic in its very causelessness.

"Take her up, Pedro," he ordered; and before she could object, the

good-natured giant had borne her in three strides through the dreaded

region, and set her down safely upon the ridge. She followed them

humbly now, along the safe path, trying to step firmly, and walk with

her head up, as Keith had directed. Carrington had already forgotten

her again, and even Keith was eagerly looking ahead for the first

glimpse of green.

"There is something singularly fascinating in the stretch of a salt

marsh," he said. "Its level has such a far sweep as you stand and gaze

across it, and you have a dreamy feeling that there is no end to it.

The stiff drenched grasses hold the salt which the tide brings in twice

a day, and you inhale that fresh, strong, briny odor, the rank, salt,

invigorating smell of the sea; the breeze that blows across has a tang

to it like the snap of a whip lash across your face, bringing the blood

to the surface, and rousing you to a quicker pace."

"Ha!" said Carrington; "there it is. Don't you see the green? A little

further on, you will see the mast of the boat."

"That is all that is wanted," said Keith. "A salt marsh is not complete

without a boat tilted up aground somewhere, with its slender dark mast

outlined against the sky. A boat sailing along in a commonplace way

would blight the whole thing; what we want is an abandoned craft, aged

and deserted, aground down the marsh with only its mast rising above

the green."

"_Bien!_ there it is," said Carrington; "and now the question is, how

to get to it."

"You two giants will have to go alone," said Keith, finding a

comfortable seat. "I see a mile or two of tall wading before us, and up

to your shoulders is over my head. I went duck-shooting with that man

last year, señora. 'Come on,' he cried--'splendid sport ahead, old

fellow; come on.'

"'Is it deep?' I asked from behind. I was already up to my knees, and

could not see bottom, the water was so dark.

"'Oh no, not at all; just right,' he answered, striding ahead. 'Come

on.'

"I came; and went in up to my eyes."

But the señora did not smile.

"You know Carrington is taller than I am," explained Keith, amused by

the novelty of seeing his own stories fall flat in dead failure.

"Is he?" said the Sister vaguely.

It was evident that she had not observed whether he was or not.

Carrington stopped short, and for an instant stared blankly at her.

What every one noticed and admired all over the country wherever he

went, this little silent creature had not even seen!

"He will never forgive you," said Keith laughing, as the two tall forms

strode off into the marsh. Then, seeing that she did not comprehend in

the least, he made a seat for her by spreading his light coat on the

Appalachian chain, and leaning back on his elbow, began talking to her

about the marsh. "Breathe in the strong salt," he said, "and let your

eyes rest on the green, reedy waste. Supposing you were painting a

picture, now--does any one paint pictures at your convent?"

"Ah, yes," said the little nun, rousing to animation at once. "Sister

St. James paints pictures the most beautiful on earth. She painted for

us Santa Inez with her lamb, and Santa Rufina of Sevilla, with her

palms and earthen vases."

"And has she not taught you to paint also?"

"Me! Oh, no. I am only a Sister, young and of no gifts. Sister St.

James is a great saint, and of age she has seventy years."

"Not requisites for painting, either of them, that I am aware," said

Keith. "However, if you were painting this marsh, do you not see how

the mast of that boat makes the feature of the landscape the one human

element; and yet, even that abandoned, merged as it were in the

desolate wildness of the scene?"

The Sister looked over the green earnestly, as if trying to see all

that he suggested, Keith talked on. He knew that he talked well, and he

did not confuse her with more than one subject, but dwelt upon the

marsh: stories of men who had been lost in them, of women who had

floated down in boats and never returned; descriptions clear as

etchings; studies of the monotone of hues before them--one subject

pictured over and over again, as, wishing to instruct a child, he would

have drawn with a chalk one letter of the alphabet a hundred times,

until the wandering eyes had learned at last to recognize and know it.

"Do you see nothing at all, feel nothing at all?" he said. "Tell me

exactly."

Thus urged, the Sister replied that she thought she did feel the salt

breeze a little.

"Then take off that shroud and enjoy it," said Keith, extending his arm

suddenly, and sweeping off the long veil by the corner that was nearest

to him.

"Oh!" said the little Sister; "oh!" and distressfully she covered her

head with her hands, as if trying to shield herself from the terrible

light of day. But the veil had gone down into the thicket, whither she

dared not follow. She stood irresolute.

"I will get it for you before the others come back," said Keith. "It is

gone now, however, and what is more, you could not help it; so sit

down, like a sensible creature, and enjoy the breeze."

The little nun sat down, and confusedly tried to be a sensible

creature. Her head, with its short rings of dark hair, rose childlike

from the black gown she wore, and the breeze swept freshly over her;

but her eyes were full of tears, and her face so pleading in its pale,

silent distress, that at length Keith went down and brought back the

veil.

"See the cranes flying home," he said, as the long line dotted the red

of the west. "They always seem to be flying right into the sunset,

sensible birds."

The little Sister had heard that word twice now; evidently the cranes

were more sensible than she. She sighed as she fastened on the veil;

there were a great many hard things out in the world, then, she

thought. At the dear convent it was not expected that one should be as

a crane.

The other two came back at length, wet and triumphant, with their

prize. They had stopped to bail it out, plug its cracks, mend the old

sail after a fashion, and nothing would do but that the three should

sail home in it; Pedro, for whom there was no room, returning by the

way they had come. Carrington, having worked hard, was determined to

carry out his plan; and said so.

"A fine plan to give us all a wetting," remarked Keith.

"You go down there and work an hour or two yourself, and see how _you_

like it," answered the other, with the irrelevance produced by aching

muscles and perspiration dripping from every pore.

This conversation had taken place at the edge of the marsh where they

had brought the boat up through one of the numerous channels.

"Very well," said Keith. "But mind you, not a word about danger before

the Sister. I shall have hard enough work to persuade her to come with

us as it is."

He went back to the ridge, and carelessly suggested returning home by

water. "You will not have to go through the thicket then," he said.

Somewhat to his surprise, Sister St. Luke consented immediately, and

followed without a word as he led the way. She was mortally afraid of

the water, but, during his absence, she had been telling her beads, and

thinking with contrition of two obstinacies in one day: that of the

thicket and that of the veil; she could not, she would not have three.

So, commending herself to all the saints, she embarked.

"Look here, Carrington, if ever you inveigle me into such danger again

for a mere fool's fancy, I will show you what I think of it. You knew

the condition of that boat, and I did not," said Keith sternly as the

two men stood at last on the beach in front of the light-house. The

Sister had gone within, glad to feel land underfoot once more. She had

sat quietly in her place all the way, afraid of the water, of the wind,

of everything, but entirely unconscious of the real danger that menaced

them. For the little craft would not mind her helm; her mast slipped

about erratically; the planking at the bow seemed about to give way

altogether; and they were on a lee shore, with the tide coming in, and

the surf beating roughly on the beach. They were both good sailors, but

it had taken all they knew to bring the boat safely to the lighthouse.

"To tell the truth, I did not think she was so crippled," said

Carrington. "She really is a good boat for her size."

"Very," said Keith sarcastically.

But the younger man clung to his opinion; and in order to verify it, he

set himself to work repairing the little craft. You would have supposed

his daily bread depended upon her being made seaworthy by the way he

labored. She was made over from stem to stern: a new mast, a new sail;

and, finally, scarlet and green paint were brought over from the

village, and out she came as brilliant as a young paroquet. Then

Carrington took to sailing in her. Proud of his handy work, he sailed

up and down, over to the reef, and up the inlet, and even persuaded

Melvyna to go with him once, accompanied by the meek little Sister.

"Why shouldn't you both learn how to manage her?" he said in his

enthusiasm. "She's as easy to manage as a child----"

"And as easy to tip over," replied Melvyna, screwing up her lips

tightly and shaking her head. "You don't catch me out in her again,

sure as my name's Sawyer."

For Melvyna always remained a Sawyer in her own mind, in spite of her

spouse's name; she could not, indeed, be anything else--_noblesse

oblige_. But the Sister, obedient as usual, bent her eyes in turn

upon the ropes, the mast, the sail, and the helm, while Carrington,

waxing eloquent over his favorite science, delivered a lecture upon

their uses and made her experiment a little to see if she comprehended.

He used the simplest words for her benefit, words of one syllable, and

unconsciously elevated his voice somewhat, as though that would make

her understand better; her wits seemed to him always of the slowest.

The Sister followed his directions and imitated his motions with

painstaking minuteness. She did very well until a large porpoise rolled

up his dark, glistening back close alongside, when, dropping the

sail-rope with a scream, she crouched down at Melvyna's feet and hid

her face in her veil. Carrington from that day could get no more

passengers for his paroquet boat. But he sailed up and down alone in

his little craft, and when that amusement palled he took the remainder

of the scarlet and green paint and adorned the shells of various

sea-crabs and other crawling things, so that the little Sister was met

one afternoon by a whole procession of unearthly creatures, strangely

variegated, proceeding gravely in single file down the beach from the

pen where they had been confined. Keith pointed out to her, however,

the probability of their being much admired in their own circles as

long as the hues lasted, and she was comforted.

They strolled down the beach now every afternoon, sometimes two,

sometimes three, sometimes four when Melvyna had no cooking to watch,

no bread to bake; for she rejected with scorn the omnipresent hot

biscuit of the South, and kept her household supplied with light loaves

in spite of the difficulties of yeast. Sister St. Luke had learned to

endure the crabs, but she still fled from the fiddlers when they

strayed over from their towns in the marsh; she still went carefully

around the great jelly fish sprawling on the beach, and regarded from a

safe distance the beautiful blue Portuguese men-of-war, stranded

unexpectedly on the dangerous shore, all their fair voyagings over.

Keith collected for her the brilliant sea-weeds, little flecks of color

on the white sand, and showed her their beauties; he made her notice

all the varieties of shells, enormous conches for the tritons to blow,

and beds of wee pink ovals and cornucopias, plates and cups for the

little web-footed fairies. Once he came upon a sea bean.

"It has drifted over from one of the West Indian islands," he said,

polishing it with his handkerchief--"one of the islands--let us say

Miraprovos--a palmy tropical name, bringing up visions of a volcanic

mountain, vast cliffs, a tangled gorgeous forest, and the soft lapping

wash of tropical seas. Is it not so, señora?"

But the señora had never heard of the West Indian islands. Being told,

she replied, "As you say it, it is so. There is, then, much land in the

world?"

"If you keep the sea bean for ever, good will come," said Keith,

gravely presenting it; "but if after having once accepted it, you then

lose it, evil will fall upon you."

The Sister received the amulet with believing reverence. "I will lay it

up before the shrine of Our Lady," she said, carefully placing it in

the little pocket over her heart, hidden among the folds of her gown,

where she kept her most precious treasures--a bead of a rosary that had

belonged to some saint who lived somewhere some time, a little faded

prayer copied in the handwriting of a young nun who had died some years

before and whom she had dearly loved, and a list of her own most

vicious faults, to be read over and lamented daily; crying evils such

as a perverse and insubordinate bearing, a heart froward and evil,

gluttonous desires of the flesh, and a spirit of murderous rage. These

were her own ideas of herself, written down at the convent. Had she not

behaved herself perversely to the Sister Paula, with whom one should be

always mild on account of the affliction which had sharpened her

tongue? Had she not wrongfully coveted the cell of the novice Felipa,

because it looked out upon the orange walk? Had she not gluttonously

longed for more of the delectable marmalade made by the aged Sanchita?

And worse than all, had she not, in a spirit of murderous rage, beat

the yellow cat with a palm branch for carrying off the young doves, her

especial charge? "Ah, my sins are great indeed," she sighed daily upon

her knees, and smote her breast with tears.

Keith watched the sea bean go into the little heart-pocket almost with

compunction. Many of these amulets of the sea, gathered during his

winter rambles, had he bestowed with formal warning of their magic

powers, and many a fair hand had taken them, many a soft voice had

promised to keep them "for ever." But he well knew they would be

mislaid and forgotten in a day. The fair ones well knew it too, and

each knew that the other knew, so no harm was done. But this sea bean,

he thought, would have a different fate--laid up in some little nook

before the shrine, a witness to the daily prayers of the simple-hearted

little Sister. "I hope they may do it good," he thought vaguely. Then,

reflecting that even the most depraved bean would not probably be much

affected by the prayers, he laughed off the fancy, yet did not quite

like to think, after all, that the prayers were of no use. Keith's

religion, however, was in the primary rocks.

Far down the beach they came upon a wreck, an old and long hidden relic

of the past. The low sand-bluff had caved away suddenly and left a

clean new side, where, imbedded in the lower part, they saw a ponderous

mast. "An old Spanish galleon," said Keith, stooping to examine the

remains. "I know it by the curious bolts. They ran ashore here,

broadside on, in one of those sudden tornadoes they have along this

coast once in a while, I presume. Singular! This was my very place for

lying in the sun and letting the blaze scorch me with its clear

scintillant splendor. I never imagined I was lying on the bones of this

old Spaniard."

"God rest the souls of the sailors," said the Sister, making the sign

of the cross.

"They have been in--wherever they are, let us say, for about three

centuries now," observed Keith, "and must be used to it, good or bad."

"Nay; but purgatory, señor."

"True. I had forgotten that," said Keith.

One morning there came up a dense, soft, southern-sea fog, "The kind

you can cut with a knife," Carrington said. It lasted for days,

sweeping out to sea at night on the land breeze, and lying in a gray

bank low down on the horizon, and then rolling in again in the morning

enveloping the water and the island in a thick white cloud which was

not mist and did not seem damp even, so freshly, softly salt was the

feeling it gave to the faces that went abroad in it. Carrington and

Keith, of course, must needs be out in it every moment of the time.

They walked down the beach for miles in the fog, hearing the muffled

sound of the near waves, but not seeing them. They sailed in the fog,

not knowing whither they went, and they drifted out at sunset and

watched the land breeze lift it, roll it up, and carry it out to sea,

where distant ships on the horizon line, bound southward, and nearer

ones, sailing northward with the Gulf stream, found themselves

enveloped for the night and bothered by their old and baffling foe.

They went over to the reef every morning, these two, and bathed in the

fog, coming back by sense of feeling, as it were, and landing not

infrequently a mile below or above the light-house; then what appetites

they had for breakfast. And if it was not ready, they roamed about

roaring like young lions. At least that is what Melvyna said one

morning when Carrington had put his curly head into her kitchen door

six times in the course of one half hour.

The Sister shrank from the sea fog; she had never seen one before, and

she said it was like a great soft white creature that came in on wings,

and brooded over the earth. "Yes, beautiful, perhaps," she said in

reply to Keith, "but it is so strange--and--and--I know not how to say

it--but it seems like a place for spirits to walk, and not of the

mortal kind."

They were wandering down the beach, where Keith had lured her to listen

to the sound of the hidden waves. At that moment Carrington loomed into

view coming toward them. He seemed of giant size as he appeared, passed

them, and disappeared again into the cloud behind, his voice sounding

muffled as he greeted them. The Sister shrank nearer to her companion

as the figure had suddenly made itself visible. "Do you know it is a

wonder to me how you have ever managed to live, so far?" said Keith

smiling.

"But it was not far," said the little nun. "Nothing was ever far at the

dear convent, but everything was near, and not of strangeness to make

one afraid; the garden wall was the end. There we go not outside, but

our walk is always from the lime tree to the white rosebush and back

again. Everything we know there--not roar of waves, not strong wind,

not the thick, white air comes to give us fear, but all is still and at

peace. At night I dream of the organ, and of the orange trees, and of

the doves. I wake, and hear only the sound of the great water below."

"You will go back," said Keith.

He had begun to pity her lately, for her longing was deeper than he had

supposed. It had its roots in her very being. He had studied her and

found it so.

"She will die of pure homesickness if she stays here much longer," he

said to Carrington, "What do you think of our writing down to that old

convent and offering--of course unknown to her--to pay the little she

costs them, if they will take her back?"

"All right," said Carrington. "Go ahead."

He was making a larger sail for his paroquet boat. "If none of you will

go out in her, I might as well have all the sport I can," he said.

"Sport to consist in being swamped?" Keith asked.

"By no means, croaker. Sport to consist in shooting over the water like

a rocket; I sitting on the tilted edge, watching the waves, the winds,

and the clouds, and hearing the water sing as we rush along."

Keith took counsel with no one else, not even with Melvyna, but

presently he wrote his letter and carried it himself over to the

village to mail. He did good deeds like that once in a while, "to help

humanity," he said; they were tangible always, like the primary rocks.

At length one evening the fog rolled out to sea for good and all, at

least as far as the shore was concerned. In the morning there stood the

light-house, and the island, and the reef, just the same as ever.

Someway they had almost expected to see them altered or melted a

little.

"Let us go over to the reef, all of us, and spend the day," said Keith.

"It will do us good to breathe the clear air, and feel the brilliant,

dry, hot sunshine again."

"Hear the man!" said Melvyna laughing. "After trying to persuade us all

those days that he liked that sticky fog too!"

"Mme. Gonsalvez, we like a lily; but is that any reason why we may not

also like a rose?"

"Neither of 'em grows on this beach as I'm aware of," answered Melvyna

dryly.

Then Carrington put in his voice, and carried the day. Women never

resisted Carrington long, but yielded almost unconsciously to the

influence of his height, and his strength, and his strong, hearty will.

A subtler influence over them, however, would have waked resistance,

and Carrington himself would have been conquered far sooner (and was

conquered later) by one who remained unswayed by those mere outer

influences, to which the crowd of fair ones, however, paid involuntary

obeisance.

Pedro had gone to the village for his supplies and his two days of mild

Minorcan dissipation, and Melvyna, beguiled and cajoled by the chaffing

of the two young men, at last consented, and not only packed the

lunch-basket with careful hand, but even donned for the occasion her

"best bonnet," a structure trimmed in Vermont seven years before by the

experienced hand of Miss Althy Spears, the village milliner, who had

adorned it with a durable green ribbon and a vigorous wreath of

artificial flowers. Thus helmeted, Mme. Gonsalvez presided at the stern

of the boat with great dignity. For they were in the safe

well-appointed little yacht belonging to the two gentlemen, the daring

paroquet having been left at home tied to the last of a low heap of

rocks that jutted out into the water in front of the light-house, the

only remains of the old stone dock built by the Spaniards long before.

Sister St. Luke was with them of course, gentle and frightened as

usual. Her breath came quickly as they neared the reef, and Carrington

with a sure hand guided the little craft outside into the surf, and

rounding a point, landed them safely in a miniature harbor he had noted

there. Keith had counted the days, and felt sure that the answer from

the convent would come soon. His offer--for he had made it his alone

without Carrington's aid--had been munificent; there could be but one

reply. The little Sister would soon go back to the lime tree, the white

rosebush, the doves, the old organ that was "so large"--all the quiet

routine of the life she loved so well; and they would see her small

oval face and timid dark eyes no more for ever. So he took her for a

last walk down the reef, while Melvyna made coffee, and Carrington,

having noticed a dark line floating on the water, immediately went out

in the boat, of course to see what it was.

The reef had its high backbone, like the island. Some day it would be

the island with another reef outside, and the light-house beach would

belong to the mainland. Down the stretch of sand toward the sea the

pelicans stood in rows, toeing a mark, solemn and heavy, by the

hundreds--a countless number--for the reef was their gathering place.

"They are holding a conclave," said Keith. "That old fellow has the

floor. See him wag his head."

In and out among the pelicans, and paying no attention to them and

their conclave, sped the sickle-bill curlews, actively probing

everywhere with their long, grotesque, sickle-shaped bills; and woe be

to the burrowing things that came in their way. The red-beaked oyster

bird flew by, and close down to the sea skimmed the razor-bill

shear-water, with his head bent forward and his feet tilted up, just

grazing the water with his open bill as he flew, and leaving a shining

mark behind, as though he held a pencil in his mouth and was running a

line. The lazy gulls, who had no work to do, and would not have done it

if they had, rode at ease on the little wavelets close in shore. The

Sister, being asked, confessed that she liked the lazy gulls best.

Being pressed to say why, she thought it was because they were more

like the white doves that sat on the old stone well-curb in the convent

garden.

Keith had always maintained that he liked to talk to women. He said

that the talk of any woman was more piquant than the conversation of

the most brilliant men. There was only one obstacle: the absolute

inability of the sex to be sincere, or to tell the truth, for ten

consecutive minutes. To-day, however, as he wandered to and fro whither

he would on the reef, he also wandered to and fro whither he would in

the mind, and the absolutely truthful mind too, of a woman. Yet he

found it dull! He sighed to himself, but was obliged to acknowledge

that it _was_ dull. The lime tree, the organ, the Sisters, the Sisters,

the lime tree, the organ; it grew monotonous after a while. Yet he held

his post, for the sake of the old theory, until the high voice of

Melvyna called them back to the little fire on the beach and the white

cloth spread with her best dainties. They saw Carrington sailing in

with an excited air, and presently he brought the boat into the cove

and dragged ashore his prize, towed behind--nothing less than a large

shark, wounded, dead, after a struggle with some other marine monster,

a sword fish probably. "A man-eater," announced the captor. "Look at

him, will you? Look at him, Miss Luke!"

But Miss Luke went far away, and would not look. In truth he was an

ugly creature; even Melvyna kept at a safe distance. But the two men

noted all his points; they measured him carefully; they turned him

over, and discussed him generally in that closely confined and

exhaustive way which marks the masculine mind. Set two women to

discussing a shark, or even the most lovely little brook trout, if you

please, and see how far off they will be in fifteen minutes!

But the lunch was tempting, and finally its discussion called them away

even from that of the shark. And then they all sailed homeward over the

green and blue water, while the white sand hills shone silvery before

them, and then turned red in the sunset. That night the moon was at its

full. Keith went out and strolled up and down on the beach. Carrington

was playing fox-and-goose with Mme. Gonsalvez on a board he had

good-naturedly constructed for her entertainment when she confessed one

day to a youthful fondness for that exciting game. Up stairs gleamed

the little Sister's light. "Saying her prayers with her lips, but

thinking all the time of that old convent," said the stroller to

himself, half scornfully. And he said the truth.

The sea was still and radiant; hardly more than a ripple broke at his

feet; the tide was out, and the broad beach silvery and fresh. "At home

they are buried in snow," he thought, "and the wind, is whistling

around their double windows." And then he stretched himself on the

sand, and lay looking upward into the deep blue of the night, bathed in

the moonlight, and listening dreamily to the soft sound of the water as

it returned slowly, slowly back from the African coast. He thought many

thoughts, and deep ones too, for his mind was of a high order; and at

last he was so far away on ideal heights that, coming home after

midnight, it was no wonder if, half unconsciously, he felt himself

above the others; especially when he passed the little Sister's closed

door, and thought, smiling not unkindly, how simple she was.

The next morning the two men went off in their boat again for the day,

this time alone. There were still a few more questions to settle about

that shark, and, to tell the truth, they both liked a good day of

unencumbered sailing better than anything else.

About four o'clock in the afternoon Melvyna, happening to look out of

the door, saw a cloud no bigger than a man's hand low down on the

horizon line of the sea. Something made her stand and watch it for a

few moments. Then, "Miss Luke! Miss Luke! Miss Luke! Miss Luke!" she

called quickly. Down came the little Sister, startled at the cry, her

lace work still in her hand.

"Look!" said Melvyna.

The Sister looked, and this is what she saw: a line white as milk

coming toward them on the water, and behind it a blackness.

"What is it?" she asked.

"A tornader," said Melvyna with white lips. "I've only seen one, and

then I was over in the town; but it's awful! We must run back to the

thicket," Seizing her companion's arm, the strong Northern woman

hurried her across the sand, through the belt of sand hills, and into

the thicket, where they crouched on its far side close down under the

protecting backbone. "The bushes will break the sand, and the ridge

will keep us from being buried in it," she said. "I dursn't stay on the

shore, for the water'll rise."

The words were hardly spoken before the tornado was upon them, and the

air was filled with the flying sand, so that they could hardly breathe.

Half choked, they beat with their hands before them to catch a breath.

Then came a roar, and for an instant, distant as they were, they caught

a glimpse of the crest of the great wave that followed the whirlwind.

It seemed to them mountains high, and ready to engulf the entire land.

With a rushing sound it plunged over the keeper's house, broke against

the lower story of the tower, hissed across the sand, swallowed the

sand hills, and swept to their very feet, then sullenly receded with

slow, angry muttering. A gale of wind came next, singularly enough from

another direction, as if to restore the equipoise of the atmosphere.

But the tornado had gone on inland, where there were trees to uproot,

and houses to destroy, and much finer entertainment generally.

As soon as they could speak, "Where are the two out in the sail boat?"

asked the Sister.

"God knows!" answered Melvyna. "The last time I noticed their sail they

were about a mile outside of the reef."

"I will go and see."

"Go and see! Are you crazy? You can never get through that water."

"The saints would help me, I think," said the little Sister.

She had risen, and now stood regarding the watery waste with the usual

timid look in her gentle eyes. Then she stepped forward with her

uncertain tread, and before the woman by her side comprehended her

purpose she was gone, ankle-deep in the tide, knee-deep, and finally

wading across the sand up to her waist in water toward the light-house.

The great wave was no deeper, however, even there. She waded to the

door of the tower, opened it with difficulty, climbed the stairway, and

gained the light room, where the glass of the windows was all

shattered, and the little chamber half full of the dead bodies of

birds, swept along by the whirlwind and dashed against the tower, none

of them falling to the ground or losing an inch of their level in the

air as they sped onward, until they struck against some high object,

which broke their mad and awful journey. Holding on by the shattered

casement, Sister St. Luke gazed out to sea. The wind was blowing

fiercely and the waves were lashed to fury. The sky was inky black. The

reef was under water, save one high knob of its backbone, and to that

two dark objects were clinging. Further down she saw the wreck of the

boat driving before the gale. Pedro was over in the village; the tide

was coming in over the high sea, and night was approaching. She walked

quickly down the rough stone stairs, stepped into the water again, and

waded across where the paroquet boat had been driven against the wall

of the house, baled it out with one of Melvyna's pans, and then,

climbing in from the window of the sitting-room, she hoisted the sail,

and in a moment was out on the dark sea.

Melvyna had ascended to the top of the ridge, and when the sail came

into view beyond the house she fell down on her knees and began to pray

aloud: "Oh, Lord, save her; save the lamb! She don't know what's she is

doing, Lord. She's as simple as a baby. Oh, save her, out on that

roaring sea! Good Lord, good Lord, deliver her!" Fragments of prayers

she had heard in her prayer-meeting days came confusedly back into her

mind, and she repeated them all again and again, wringing her hands as

she saw the little craft tilt far over under its all too large sail, so

that several times, in the hollows of the waves, she thought it was

gone. The wind was blowing hard but steadily, and in a direction that

carried the boat straight toward the reef; no tacks were necessary, no

change of course; the black-robed little figure simply held the sail

rope, and the paroquet drove on. The two clinging to the rock, bruised,

exhausted, with the waves rising and falling around them, did not see

the boat until it was close upon them.

"By the great heavens!" said Keith.

His face was pallid and rigid, and there was a ghastly cut across his

forehead, the work of the sharp-edged rock. The next moment he was on

board, brought the boat round just in time, and helped in Carrington,

whose right arm was injured.

"You have saved our lives, señora," he said abruptly.

"By Jove, yes," said Carrington. "We could not have stood it long, and

night was coming." Then they gave all their attention to the hazardous

start.

Sister St. Luke remained unconscious of the fact that she had done

anything remarkable. Her black gown was spoiled, which was a pity, and

she knew of a balm which was easily compounded and which would heal

their bruises. Did they think Melvyna had come back to the house yet?

And did they know that all her dishes were broken--yes, even the cups

with the red flowers on the border? Then she grew timorous again, and

hid her face from the sight of the waves.

Keith said not a word, but sailed the boat, and it was a wild and

dangerous voyage they made, tacking up and down in the gayly painted

little craft, that seemed like a toy on that angry water. Once

Carrington took the little Sister's hand in his, and pressed his lips

fervently upon it. She had never had her hand kissed before, and looked

at him, then at the place, with a vague surprise, which soon faded,

however, into the old fear of the wind. It was night when at last they

reached the light-house; but during the last two tacks they had a light

from the window to guide them; and when nearly in they saw the lantern

shining out from the shattered windows of the tower in a fitful,

surprised sort of a way, for Melvyna had returned, and with the true

spirit of a Yankee, had immediately gone to work at the ruins.

The only sign of emotion she gave was to Keith. "I saw it all," she

said. "That child went right out after you, in that terrible wind, as

natural and as quiet as if she was only going across the room. And she

so timid a fly could frighten her! Mark my words, Mr. Keith, the good

Lord helped her to do it! And I'll go to that new mission chapel over

in the town every Sunday after this, as sure's my name is Sawyer!" She

ceased abruptly, and going into her kitchen, slammed the door behind

her. Emotion with Melvyna took the form of roughness.

Sister St. Luke went joyfully back to her convent the next day, for

Pedro, when he returned, brought the letter, written, as Keith had

directed, in the style of an affectionate invitation. The little nun

wept for happiness when she read it. "You see how they love me--love me

as I love them," she repeated with innocent triumph again and again.

"It is all we can do," said Keith. "She could not be happy anywhere

else, and with the money behind her she will not be neglected. Besides,

I really believe they do love her. The sending here up here was

probably the result of some outside dictation."

Carrington, however, was dissatisfied. "A pretty return we make for our

saved lives," he said. "I hate ingratitude." For Carrington was half

disposed now to fall in love with his preserver.

But Keith stood firm.

"Adios," said the little Sister, as Pedro's boat received her. Her face

had lighted so with joy and glad anticipation that they hardly knew

her. "I wish you could to the convent go with me," she said earnestly

to the two young men. "I am sure you would like it." Then, as the boat

turned the point, "I am sure you would like it," she called back,

crossing her hands on her breast. "It is very heavenly there--very

heavenly."

That was the last they saw of her.

Carrington sent down the next winter from New York a large silver

crucifix, superbly embossed and ornamented. It was placed on the high

altar of the convent, and much admired and reverenced by all the nuns.

Sister St. Luke admired it too. She spoke of the island occasionally,

but she did not tell the story of the rescue. She never thought of it.

Therefore, in the matter of the crucifix, the belief was that a special

grace had touched the young man's heart. And prayers were ordered for

him. Sister St. Luke tended her doves, and at the hour of meditation

paced to and fro between the lime tree and the bush of white roses.

When she was thirty years old her cup was full, for then she was

permitted to take lessons and play a little upon the old organ.

Melvyna went every Sunday to the bare, struggling little Presbyterian

mission over in the town, and she remains to this day a Sawyer.

But Keith remembered. He bares his head silently in reverence to all

womanhood, and curbs his cynicism as best he can, for the sake of the

little Sister--the sweet little Sister St. Luke.

CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON.

CLEOPATRA'S SOLILOQUY.

What care I for the tempest? What care I for the rain?

If it beat upon my bosom, would it cool its burning pain--

This pain that ne'er has left me since on his heart I lay,

And sobbed my grief at parting as I'd sob my soul away?

O Antony! Antony! Antony! when in thy circling arms

Shall I sacrifice to Eros my glorious woman's charms,

And burn life's sweetest incense before his sacred shrine

With the living fire that flashes from thine eyes into mine?

O when shall I feel thy kisses rain down upon my face,

As, a queen of love and beauty, I lie in thine embrace,

Melting--melting--melting, as a woman only can

When she's a willing captive in the conquering arms of man,

As he towers a god above her, and to yield is not defeat,

For love can own no victor if love with love shall meet?

I still have regal splendor, I still have queenly power,

And--more than all--unfaded is woman's glorious dower.

But what care I for pleasure? what's beauty to me now,

Since Love no longer places his crown upon my brow?

I have tasted its elixir, its fire has through me flashed,

But when the wine glowed brightest from my eager lip 'twas dashed.

And I would give all Egypt but once to feel the bliss

Which thrills through all my being whene'er I meet his kiss.

The tempest wildly rages, my hair is wet with rain,

But it does not still my longing, or cool my burning pain.

For Nature's storms are nothing to the raging of my soul

When it burns with jealous frenzy beyond a queen's control.

I fear not pale Octavia--that haughty Roman dame--

My lion of the desert--my Antony can tame.

I fear no Persian beauty, I fear no Grecian maid:

The world holds not the woman of whom I am afraid.

But I'm jealous of the rapture I tasted in his kiss,

And I would not that another should share with me that bliss.

No joy would I deny him, let him cull it where he will,

So, mistress of his bosom is Cleopatra still;

So that he feels for ever, when he Love's nectar sips,

'Twas sweeter--sweeter--sweeter when tasted on my lips;

So that all other kisses, since he has drawn in mine,

Shall be unto my loved as "water after wine."

Awhile let Cæsar fancy Octavia's pallid charms

Can hold Rome's proudest consul a captive in her arms.

Her cold embrace but brightens the memory of mine,

And for my warm caresses he in her arms shall pine.

'Twas not for love he sought her, but for her princely dower;

She brought him Cæsar's friendship, she brought him kingly power.

I should have bid him take her, had he my counsel sought.

I've but to smile upon him, and all her charms are nought;

For I would scorn to hold him by but a single hair,

Save his own longing for me when I'm no longer there;

And I will show you, Roman, that for one kiss from me

Wife--fame--and even honor to him shall nothing be!

* * * * *

Throw wide the window, Isis--fling perfumes o'er me now,

And bind the Lotus blossoms again upon my brow.

The rain has ceased its weeping, the driving storm is past,

And calm are Nature's pulses that lately beat so fast.

Gone is my jealous frenzy, and Eros reigns serene,

The only god e'er worshipped by Egypt's haughty queen.

With Antony--my loved--I'll kneel before his shrine

Till the loves of Mars and Venus are nought to his and mine;

And down through coming ages, in every land and tongue,

With them shall Cleopatra and Antony be sung.

Burn Sandal-wood and Cassia, let the vapor round me wreathe,

And mingle with the incense the Lotus blossoms breathe.

Let India's spicy odors and Persia's perfumes rare

Be wafted on the pinions of Egypt's fragrant air.

With the sighing of the night breeze, the river's rippling flow,

Let me hear the notes of music in cadence soft and low.

Draw round my couch its curtains: I'd bathe my soul in sleep;

I feel its gentle languor upon me slowly creep.

O let me cheat my senses with dreams of future bliss,

In fancy feel his presence, in fancy taste his kiss,

In fancy nestle closely against his throbbing heart,

And throw my arms around him, no more--no more to part.

Hush! hush! his spirit's pinions are rustling in my ears:

He comes upon the tempest to calm my jealous fears;

He comes upon the tempest in answer to my call.

Wife--fame--and even honor--for me he leaves them all;

And royally I'll welcome my lover to my side.

I have won him--I have won him from Cæsar and his bride.

MARY BAYARD CLARKE.

THE DRAMATIC CANONS.

II.

In our late inquiry[2] into the secrets of dramatic success, our

researches were principally directed toward the ascertainment of such

general and technical rules as might recommend themselves for the

treatment of all dramas, whatever the nature of their subject, tragic,

comic, or melodramatic. The limits of space unavoidable in a magazine

article prevented anything more than a fragmentary treatment of that

part of the subject, indicating the general line of argument that

seemed to be the soundest in the light of the present day, and

presenting for consideration twelve technical rules, more or less

general, which we shall here summarize for the sake of convenience, to

make clear what follows:

[2] "The Galaxy" for March, 1877.

I. The subject of a play should be capable of full treatment in fifteen

scenes at most.

II. It should be acted without the aid of narrative.

III. It should have a connected plot, one event depending on the other.

IV. The interest should hinge on a single action or episode.

V. Furniture and set-pieces should be kept out of front scenes if

possible.

VI. The best dialogue should be put in front scenes.

VII. They should end in suspense to be relieved by the full scenes.

VIII. Fine points should be avoided in opening a play.

IX. Act I. should open with a quiet picture, to be disturbed by the bad

element, the other characters successively coming in, the excitement

increasing.

X. Act I. should end in a partial climax of suspense.

XI. Each act should lead to the other, the interest increasing.

XII. The interest should be concentrated on few characters.

The reasons for some of these arbitrary rules will appear plain to even

a cursory observer. The others will recommend themselves, I think,

after an examination of the models cited in the article itself, to

which the reader is referred. It must not be supposed, however, even by

the lay reader, that a subject so extensive can be exhausted in so

short an essay. Old actors and dramatists, in the light of their own

experience, may even doubt whether a theme so abstruse and difficult

can be treated at all, save by one of lifelong experience, and may be

inclined to sneer at the presumption of any person who attempts to

write on methods of attaining dramatic success before having attained

it himself by a grandly popular drama. It seems to the present writer,

however, that the inquiry is open to all, and if conducted on the

inductive method, with plays of acknowledged popularity for a basis,

may result in the settlement of some points around which he, in common

with other hitherto unsuccessful dramatists, has been groping for

years.

In closing the first part of our inquiry, we remarked on the fact that

the interest of a successful play increases gradually from act to act,

and that it is usually concentrated on a few people. The next question

that presents itself in our treatment of the play as a whole is as to

the best method of attaining this increase of interest from act to act,

and how it is done in successful plays. The suggestion in rule X. seems

to be the one most generally used by old dramatists for this

purpose--that is, the employment of the partial climax as a means of

exciting suspense. It may be said to be one of the most difficult

points in dramatic construction to decide when to bring the curtain

down at the end of a play; and the fall of the drop at the end of each

act offers nearly equal difficulties. Is there any guide to a solution

of this question in the handling of well-known plays? If there is, let

us endeavor to find it.

The first thing to be remarked is that we cannot apply to Shakespeare

for the information. The experience of nearly three centuries in the

acting of Shakespeare's plays has resulted in making the acting

editions very different from the original plays in arrangement, in

the suppression of whole scenes and acts, the substitution of others,

the amalgamation of plays, the taking of all sorts of liberties with

the action. Only in one thing do they remain at all times faithful to

the original author, in the preservation, for the most part, of his

language. Familiar instances will occur in the "Merchant of Venice,"

where the play is now always closed with the trial scene; a few

sentences between Bassanio and Portia, clumsily tacked on, being

regarded as preferable to the original closing in a final act of light

comedy. The amalgamation, in the acting edition of "Richard III.," of

parts of "Henry V." and "Henry VI.," and the suppression of the

historical ending after Richard's death, were changes made by Colley

Cibber, which have stood the test of time, and have made the play a

traditional success whenever well acted. In each case experience

showed that the following up of a scene of tragic intensity by either

comedy or narrative made the scene drag. In other words, it was an

_anti-climax_.

It is noticeable, by the by, that these instances of clumsy construction

and consequent alteration occur most frequently in Shakespeare's

historic dramas, where he was fettered by familiar facts, and thought

less of the play than of the chronicle. Such plays of his as deal with

popular legend or stories, already polished by tradition into poetic

justice, and moulded by instinct into a dramatic form, have suffered

much less in the adaptation; some, such as "Midsummer Night's Dream,"

"As You Like It," hardly needing alteration. While I do not suppose

that in these or any other play Shakespeare consciously worked on any

philosophic principle of construction, previously thought out, it is

evident that his artistic instinct, left to itself, prevented his

making any serious mistakes in technique, a matter which has advanced

considerably since his day. I believe that, had Shakespeare lived

to-day, he would have written much more perfectly constructed acting

plays, while at the same time his vast knowledge, or rather lightning

appreciation of the various phases of human nature, would have been

just as great. When he wrote, the English drama was in its infancy, but

three centuries of actors, managers, scene painters, and carpenters

have made great advances in technical experience since those days; and

no genius, however great in the essentials of painting the passions,

can to-day attain success if ignorant of the technical secrets of

managing scenes. We have noticed the changes made in "Richard" and the

"Merchant of Venice," to avoid the anti-climax. Let us take a modern

stock play, the "Lady of Lyons," to illustrate the opposite of dramatic

construction. The first act ends with Claude scornfully rejected by

Pauline, burning for revenge, offered a chance, ready to grasp it. Down

goes the drop. The second act closes with his revenge almost completed,

his remorse beginning. He is _going_ to be married--_not married yet_.

Down goes the drop. Third act--he is married, and his remorse has come.

He has deceived a loving woman, and resolves to atone by giving her up.

Down goes the drop on his resolve, still unaccomplished. Fourth act--he

expiates his crime and sees a chance to regain happiness after a long,

weary probation. Again the drop falls on a _suspense_. The question

is--Will he stand the test, and will Pauline be faithful? The fifth act

opens in gloom, and closes with the reward of virtue and punishment of

vice. The reader will mark in each case how the acts end in suspense,

and how, as soon as the suspense is clearly indicated, down comes the

drop. This was Bulwer's first successful play, and we shall come to it

again in looking at the inner secrets that guide the motives of a

drama. The good construction of the "Lady of Lyons" and the faulty

original construction of the "Merchant of Venice" must not blind us to

the fact that Shylock was the work of a lofty genius, Claude merely the

polished production of a man of talent and erudition. From the preface

to "The Caxtons," and other sources, we know that Bulwer was fond of

ascertaining rules and principles, and that he always did good work

when once he had found them out. Shakespeare as clearly worked from

pure instinct, and defied almost all rules, except to hold "the mirror

up to nature." Could we only join to-day the brains of old William and

the research and learning of old "Lytton," what a drama might we have

at last! But lest we further wander away from our theme, it is time to

propose the canon which the reader must by this time have anticipated

as self-evident:

XIII. Avoid anti-climax. When you have reached suspense bring down the

drop or close the scene. When the last climax has come bring down the

curtain.

Before passing to the more particular secrets of handling scenes in a

dramatic success, one other general point remains to be treated, which

is the respective merits of Greek and Gothic dramatic construction, as

developed, in modern times, into the French and English methods. The

distinction is broad and simple. The French write all their plays, or

almost all, in single-scene acts, and never employ front scenes in a

regular play; the English of the old school use front scenes, and

multiply the divisions of an act into as many as five in some

instances. Each method has its strong and weak points. The French

method is apt to become stiff and formal, the English to fritter away

the action of the drama into a mass of subordinate pictures. On the

other hand, the French method gives a degree of realism to each act in

a drama to which it cannot pretend where the scenes are shifted. Each

act becomes a living picture, revealed by the rising of the curtain and

closed by its fall. As long as it lasts it is perfect, and every year

of advance in the mechanical part of theatricals increases the

resources of the stage in the direction of realism. In interiors

particularly the advance has become very great, since the general

introduction of box scenes, with a regular ceiling and walls,

simulating the appearance of a room with complete fidelity. Such a

scene is barely practicable and always clumsy if set in sight of the

audience, and its removal is hardly possible, save as hidden by the

curtain. Open-air scenes may be enriched with all sorts of heavy

set-pieces, when acts are composed of one scene, which must be

dispensed with if the scenes are numerous, or their removal will entail

such a noise as seriously to disturb the illusion. The removal of

scenes, moreover, always disturbs, more or less, the action of a drama,

and unless that action be very complex, requiring several sets of

characters, to be introduced in different places simultaneously, is

unwise.

On the other hand, the breaking up of acts into three or more scenes

offers one great advantage, that of variety, and prevents many a play

from dragging. If there are two sets of characters in a play, the

virtuous and the wicked, it is a very good device to keep them apart,

acting simultaneously in different scenes, during the action of a play,

to be brought together only at the climax; and such a method has been

employed by the best artists, with a gain in interest that could not

have been obtained with the single-scene act for a basis.

The greatest masters of dramatic construction that have made their

appearance in the present century are probably Bulwer Lytton and Dion

Boucicault; and each has left good examples of treatment in both

schools. Bulwer, in the "Lady of Lyons" and "Richelieu," both romantic

plays, with the regular villanous element, has used the front scene to

advantage wherever he found it necessary. In "Money," on the other

hand, a scientific comedy of the very first order, the five pictures

succeed each other with no disturbance but that of the curtain. The

plot of "Money," be it observed, is quite simple, the characters few,

the intention that of the old Greek comedy--a satire on manners.

Boucicault, in his latest success--the "Shaughraun"--and in his other

Irish dramas, notably the "Colleen Bawn," uses three and even five

scenes in an act, with perfect freedom, while in others, almost as

successful in their day, such as "Jessie Brown," "Octoroon," the French

form seemed to him to be preferable. Some principle must have guided

him in this distinction, as it did Bulwer, and the same elements

probably decided both to tell one story in one way, the other in

another. It is observable that both treat a romantic and complicated

story, with numerous characters and considerable of the villanous

element, in numerous scenes, whereas a realistic picture of actual

manners, such as "Money," "Octoroon," "Jessie Brown," falls naturally

into few scenes. The climax of each of these last mentioned plays, be

it observed, is produced by the operation of general causes, the laws

of society in "Money" and "Octoroon," the operation of a historical

fact in "Jessie Brown," while in the romantic plays the climax depends

on the action of the characters, determined by accidental

circumstances, irrespective of general laws. The respective rank of

"Money" and the "Lady of Lyons" in the lapse of years can hardly, I

think, be doubted. The first will hold its own with the "School for

Scandal," when the "Lady of Lyons" is forgotten, along with "The

Duenna." The recent success of Augustin Daly in adapting the "School

for Scandal" to mono-scenic acts shows how readily that form lends

itself to the exigencies of legitimate comedy. The single fault of that

adaptation is that the first act drags, just as Sardou's first acts

always drag, but the audience forgets that as the story progresses. The

result of our ramble through the instances mentioned seems to be this

canon:

XIV. Mono-scenic acts are best for high comedy, realistic and society

dramas; multi-scenic acts succeed best with romantic and complicated

plots.

We have now explored, with more or less success, some of the general

and broad principles that underlie dramatic construction taken as a

whole, without regard to particular forms and instances. It would seem

that a brief excursion into the domain of particulars may not be out of

place, partly as a recreation, partly to test the accuracy of our past

conclusions. Let us take, for instance, the greatest popular successes

of late years, and try to find wherein lies their secret, following

these by an inquiry into the cause why some stock plays hold the boards

while others are dead. What is the secret of the "Black Crook"? Of

Boucicault's Irish dramas? Of Bulwer's renowned trio, "Lady of Lyons,"

"Richelieu," "Money"? Of "School for Scandal" and "Rivals"? Of "Richard

III.," "Macbeth," "Othello," "Lear," "Hamlet," and the Shakespeare

comedies? I put out of the question now such plays as the "Dundreary"

drama, depending as those do on a different element of success, apart

from the drama itself, to which we shall come before we finish.

First, what is the secret of the "Black Crook"? No other drama ever had

such a run in the United States, in spite of all sorts of abuse, in

spite of numerous literary faults, and it has always succeeded wherever

it has been properly put on the stage. What is its secret? The

stereotyped answer of the disappointed dramatist and carping newspaper

critic used to be "legs"; but that answer will not do now. There have

been plenty of "leg" dramas put on since that day, and as far as the

display of feminine anatomy is concerned, the "Black Crook" was a

paragon of prudery compared with many of its followers; yet they only

ran a few weeks, while the "Black Crook" ran nearly three years, all

over the Union, with hardly a serious break. It was not the dancing,

for we have had better since, as far as gymnastics are concerned; it

was not the dresses and scenery, for both have been excelled since that

day; it was not the beauty of the tableaux, for they also have been

excelled; it was something in the drama itself, quite different from

its predecessors and followers. The "Black Crook" was a strong,

exaggerated melodrama, with plenty of the weird element in the

incantation scene, relieved by the broadest of broad farce in the

person of the magician's comic slave. It was full of _variety_. There

was a little of everything, and nothing very long at one time. When it

first came out I remember very young gentlemen making learned

criticisms on the powerful acting of the man who played the "Black

Crook" himself. The same class also raved about the "terrible"

incantation scene, which was worked up till the passion was torn to

tatters. But I feel convinced that the incantation scene, the dances,

the novelty of ladies in tights, would have failed to make the "Black

Crook" a success but for the broad humor and farce of that comic slave

and the old housekeeper and steward. That humor was so simple, so like

the well remembered ringmaster and clown of our childhood, that we all

laughed at it, wise as well as foolish. I remember well during the

second run of the venerable Herzog and his slave, talking to a very

acute and learned gentleman--a man of the world too--who actually had

never seen the "Black Crook" till the previous evening, and he was

convulsed with laughter every time he recalled the figure of the man

who shouts, "I want to go home!" That figure remained with him out of

all the play, in his memory, as something irresistibly comic, just as

the weird and uncanny elements remained with the minds of smaller

calibre. For the children who saw it, I will venture to say that the

parts which pleased them most were the parts which made the success of

the play, the obtrusion of broad farce in one place, the beauty of the

grotto scene and really poetical dancing of Bonfanti in another.

Strange that of all the dancers, many more agile and supple, no one

should ever have replaced Bonfanti, or even come near her in the "Black

Crook." She gave the play what it lacked, poetical beauty and grace,

and thus completed the secret of its success, which was--_variety_. Its

rivals and followers tried to beat up the narrow channel that leads to

public favor, in one or two long tacks, and ended by running aground,

while the "Black Crook" kept hands at the braces all the time, and

"went about" as often as the water showed a symptom of shoaling.

The same secret of _variety_ accounts for the great success of

Boucicault's Irish dramas as compared with those of other dramatists,

and even with his own plays on other subjects. The regular

old-fashioned Irish drama had interest only to an Irishman. It dealt

with rebellions of half a century and more gone by, stamped out, and in

which few took interest outside of Ireland. A certain element, that of

traditional abuse of the traditional Briton, who was supposed to be

always wandering over the United States with his pockets full of

_Berrritish gold_, trying to corrupt patriotic Americans and regain

King George's colonies, gave a certain interest to the Irish drama in

America for the half century before the dedication of the Bunker Hill

monument, but that faded out as time obliterated early jealousies. Then

came Boucicault and did a wonderful thing, taking hackneyed and

ridiculous Fenianism and making out of it one of the greatest successes

of modern times, that bids fair to remain a stock play for years--the

"Shaughraun." In "Arrah-na-Pogue" he took the old thin story of the

Irish patriot of '98, and achieved an equal success, while in the

"Colleen Bawn" he made a tremendous hit with even poorer materials. The

secret of the success of all three plays is found in _variety_,

produced by contrasting the broad unctuous humor and sharp wit of the

Irish peasant, familiar to the English-speaking world, with the quiet

delicacy and refinement of the Irish upper classes, by using a few

strong melodramatic situations, but nothing very long, the pathos

always relieved by humor before it drags. The whole play--any of the

three--rattles off without a hitch. In the last and most perfect, the

"Shaughraun," a very happy hit is made with the _comic_ villain, a new

creation in the drama, though as old in the pantomime as Clown and

Pantaloon.

If variety be the leading element of success in the "Black Crook" and

the Irish dramas of Boucicault, wherein lies that of Bulwer's trio of

stock plays by which he will be remembered? The first of his successes

was the "Lady of Lyons," and we have already seen how skilful is the

mechanical construction of this play, leading the suspense from act to

act; but that will not account for the whole of the interest. A saying

of Boucicault as to this play gives us also a key to the whole three

Bulwer plays, for we find the same element pervading them all--the

central idea of two, and only slightly modified in the third. Boucicault

has remarked that the interest of the "Lady of Lyons" really depends on

the fact that the completion of Claude's marriage is delayed from the

second to the end of the fifth act; and a little reflection will show

this to be the case. The whole interest of the play before the close of

the second act turns on whether Claude will obtain his lady-love; the

interest thereafter on his resistance to the temptations that draw him

toward Pauline against honor. Look at "Richelieu," and the same element

intensified pervades it. Adrian de Mauprat marries Julie at the close

of the first act, only to be separated from her all the rest of the

play till the climax. Richelieu himself, as far as the main action of

the play is concerned, is secondary to Adrian, the end of all plays

being "to make two lovers happy." In "Money" nearly the same motive

runs through the play. In the first act Evelyn finds that Clara loves

him, and all real obstacle to their marriage is removed by his sudden

accession to fortune; yet all the rest of the play sees them kept apart

by the most flimsy obstacles, just to tantalize the audience, and make

them wonder if those two fools will ever come together. The means are

very simple, and yet quite powerful enough, as much so as the first

part of "Romeo and Juliet," where, by the by, almost all the interest

dies out after the balcony scene. The main secret of Bulwer then

reveals itself, like that of flirtation, to reside in the _art of

tantalization_.

We next come to Sheridan, the man who wrote the best comedy in the

English language, "School for Scandal." The secret of that play and the

"Rivals" has been thought by some to consist in the dialogue, but

dialogue alone never made a play run before a mixed audience. The worst

dialogue in the "Black Crook"--and God knows it was bad enough--could

not kill that play any more than the finest dialogue could make

Tennyson's "Queen Mary" into a real play, or galvanize it into a

semblance of interest before an audience. Sheridan has more than witty

dialogue. His situations are always capital, and his characters are

without exception real living beings, only very slightly caricatured.

To be sure they are rather too sharp and clever as a class, for we

seldom or never meet in society such a perfect galaxy of smart,

keen-witted people, Mrs. Malaprop not excepted; but the secret of

Sheridan lies below dialogue and character. It lies, I think, in the

natural sympathy felt by all mixed audiences in favor of youth and high

spirits, through all their pranks, as exemplified in Captain Absolute,

Charles Surface, Lydia Languish, and Lady Teazle, against

respectability, honest or the reverse, embodied in Sir Anthony

Absolute, Sir Peter Teazle, and Joseph Surface. It is the protest of

honest animal spirits against conventionality, ending in the

reconciliation of the rebels to society. Some people talk of the bad

moral of the "School for Scandal," never thinking that it is identical

in spirit with that of the parable of the Prodigal Son. A broad feeling

of charity and toleration for honest error, with a grimly sarcastic

treatment of all shams, pervade Sheridan's work just as they do those

of all the great satirists, whether novelists or dramatists. Goldsmith,

Fielding, Dickens, Thackeray, all run in the same track when they once

get started, and we must confess that they have pretty high authority

for their kindness toward the returning prodigal and their sneers at

his eminently respectable brother, Joseph Surface, Esq.

This secret of Sheridan in the "School for Scandal" is the main element

of only one modern drama that I now remember--"Rip Van Winkle"--but it

is quite common in the "old comedies," as they are called. These old

comedies generally make their appearance at least once in two years at

such theatres as Wallack's and Daly's of New York and the Arch Street

at Philadelphia. I forget the name of the Boston "legitimate" place.

When well acted they always "take," and there are so many stage

traditions of how to act them that they are seldom badly done. The

forgiveness of repentant prodigals, it will be remembered, forms the

basis of most of them, an element which has gradually disappeared from

the modern drama in deference to the increasing Philistine element,

represented by the Y.M.C.A. and the T.A.B.

Ascending from the modern English drama to its parents in the

Elizabethan era, we encounter the only dramatist of those times whose

works still hold the stage, and ask what is the secret of "Richard

III.," "Macbeth," "Othello," "Lear," "Hamlet," and the Shakespeare

comedies. The first general answer that most people will give is--the

genius of Shakespeare; his power of drawing character, his wonderful

language, his mastery of human passion. All these, it seems to me, are

true, but it is to the last element that the success of Shakespeare's

plays _on the stage_ is mainly due. No other dramatist, French,

English, or German, with the single exception of Goethe in "Faust," has

succeeded in making men and women, under the influence of tremendous

passion, talk and act so _truly_, so _realistically_. We notice this on

the stage when we see "Richard III." well acted. The man becomes a real

live man, a great scamp no doubt, but an able scamp, so able that he

actually excites our sympathy, when a really good actor plays him. The

main power of Shakespeare's tragedies to-day, and their superiority to

the tragedies of any other dramatist, lies in their _realism_. Where a

modern dramatist like Boucicault confines his realistic treatment to

matters with which most of us are familiar, Shakespeare flies at any

game, no matter how high, and impresses us with the presence of _real_

men and women, whether they be kings and queens or only common folk.

This seems to be Shakespeare's one secret which makes his plays hold

the stage to-day in spite of faulty construction, in spite of all the

modern advances in stage management. Modern dramas are realistic, but

they deal with common emotions, cramped by the restraints of an

artificial state of society, where all our feelings are more or less

artificial. Shakespeare takes human nature untrammelled, and paints it

as it is, unshackled by the commonplace laws of modern society. Compare

his pathos with modern pathos, and see the difference. The staple

element of modern pathos is the contrast between poverty and riches,

hunger and fulness, cold and warmth. The greatest pathos of

Shakespeare, in "Lear," comes out not in the storm scene, but in the

meeting of Lear and Cordelia amid luxury and comfort. The old king

hurls curses and contempt at the mere physical discomforts of the

tempest; they serve to divert his thoughts from the far greater torture

of his mind; but when his conscience makes him crave pardon of his own

child, then indeed the limit of human pathos is reached. There is

nothing artificial there. Lear might be any old man as well as a king,

and the situation would be just as terrible in its justice of

atonement. It is _truth_.

That _realism_ is the whole secret of Shakespeare's success as a

dramatist, is made more evident by the fact that he avows it himself in

"Hamlet," as the mainspring of dramatic success, in the celebrated

"advice to the players." This being the only passage on record in which

Shakespeare lays down his principles of art, has always been held as of

great value, and has probably done more to improve the English stage

than most people imagine. It has been always available as a canon to

which to refer unnatural ranters, and to prevent the robustious school

from tearing a passion to tatters. It sobered down Forrest in his old

age into a model Othello, and constitutes the secret that has placed

Lester Wallack and Joseph Jefferson at the head of their respective

lines of light comedy. I think, however, it has hardly been recognized

fully enough as the principle on which Shakespeare worked, for here at

least he does seem to have held to a rigidly defined and artificial

principle of action. This was to take a given passion and treat it with

the utmost realism from every point of view, making that the _motive_

of a play, being otherwise careless of construction.

This principle appears very clearly in "Lear," the most artificial in

construction of all Shakespeare's tragedies. His theme was _filial

ingratitude_, and hardly a scene in the whole drama turns aside from

that theme. It appears in the two plots about Lear and Gloucester, both

having exactly the same lines of actors, the last obviously a reflex of

the first. It is perhaps the only play of Shakespeare in which the

_moral_ obtrudes itself forcibly all through the action, as plainly as

in the stories of an old-fashioned primer, and I cannot help thinking

that if the whole story of Edgar and Edmund had been left out, the play

would have gained in unity and nature.

In "Richard III." ambition is the ruling passion, treated in the same

realistic fashion, conjoined with the extreme sensitiveness of personal

deformity to strictures on itself. In "Macbeth" ambition pure and

simple is treated from every point, first in man, then in woman;

afterward remorse is dissected with equal skill. The ruling passion in

"Hamlet" is somewhat more difficult to analyze than the rest, but I

think that the renowned soliloquy of "To be or not to be" discloses it

more clearly than any other part of the play. It is _fear_. Fear

appears in Hamlet all through the play, from the first ghost scene to

the death of Ophelia--an excessive caution, a hesitation, a timidity, a

want of resolution, mental more than physical, which lasts till he

returns from his travels and is stung into manliness over poor

Ophelia's grave. Then at last he does what he ought to have done at

first, but for his lack of good, honest pluck--gets savage and breaks

things, and so works poetical justice.

If the tragedies of Shakespeare reveal their principal secret to be the

realistic treatment of master passions, what shall we say to such

comedies as "Midsummer Night's Dream," "As You Like It," "Much Ado

About Nothing," and such? It is very difficult to define in what

consists their success, apart from the beauty of their love stories,

their dainty language, their charming feminine characters, and a cloud

of accessories, none of which can properly be called the main secret.

The first two, I think, owe their beauty principally to the dissection

of that passion of love which forms the motive of "Romeo and Juliet."

The author treats us to nothing but love scenes and scenes in mockery

of love, and yet we never tire of them. In "Much Ado About Nothing," to

be sure, there is an artificial plot of villany to hinder the

love-making, but after all it is Benedick and Beatrice, making fun of

love and getting caught in its toils, that make the charm of the piece,

and the same device, minute analysis of love, makes "Twelfth Night"

what it is. When we come to look below the surface we find, in the

comedies as in the tragedies of Shakespeare, that the realistic

treatment of some ruling passion forms the ultimate secret on which he

works.

To sum up in the aphoristic form the secrets affecting the motives of

the greatest dramatic successes of the English stage, we can, I think,

partially agree on one more canon:

XV. Variety, suspense, satire, and realistic analysis of human passion

are the secrets, so far discovered, of lasting dramatic successes.

The subject of dramatic success, however, has one more very important

branch, still to be considered. As an artist cannot work without colors

and brushes, so a dramatist cannot work without actors. Good actors

cannot permanently lift a bad play out of the mud, but bad actors can

murder the best drama ever written, and even the best actor cannot make

a hit if his part does not fit him and his physical appearance. I

remember once a ludicrous instance of this, with Boucicault's "Flying

Scud," which I happened to see in Buffalo. Nat Gosling, the venerable

jockey, was there played by a man weighing at least a hundred and

eighty pounds, in the dress of an old farmer; and the absurdity was so

glaring that the whole play fell as dead as ditchwater, though by no

means badly played. The same play in New York was first fitted exactly

with Young for its Nat Gosling--a little, dried-up, weazen-faced man,

who identified himself so perfectly with the character that the piece

became quite a _furore_. It is a very common superstition among actors

that a good actor can act anything, and can "make up" to look like

anything, and no doubt this is partially, but only partially, true.

There are actors, with flat, commonplace faces, figures of medium size,

voices of no particular character, who, by dint of a little paint and

pomatum, some false hair, some padding, and considerable study, can

adapt themselves to play almost any character after a fashion; but it

is a significant fact that such men are not to be found among the

leaders of their profession, but only in the second rank. _Great_

actors take a line and stick to it, one that exactly suits their

individuality, and such find their mark. If they leave it, they

deteriorate, if they stick to it, they become identified with it, and

no one can rival them in their specialty. They become _real_ "stars."

Jefferson found in Rip Van Winkle his _fit_, and has been wise enough

never to leave it. Sothern did the same in Lord Dundreary. Lester

Wallack has his own recognized line, the _blasé_ man of the world,

which he never leaves, save to his misfortune. Edwin Booth keeps his

face, figure, and voice the same in all his characters, and people

crowd to see him. Why? Because he has a delicately handsome face and

figure, a melodious voice, and a clear, intellectual conception of

every part. They go to see Booth, not Bertuccio, or Brutus, or Othello,

and it is noticeable that his Hamlet is one of his most successful

pieces, because in it he is less disguised than anywhere else. The

greatest success Barrett ever made was in Cassius, because the part

fitted him, and no one has ever come near him in that part, where his

face and figure appeared as nature made them. Any one who has ever seen

Charles Fisher act Triplet in "Masks and Faces" must have realized the

same sense of entire completeness and fitness which attended Barrett's

Cassius, Jefferson's Rip Van Winkle, Lester Wallack's Elliott Gray,

Sothern's Dundreary, Harry Placide's Monsieur Tourbillon, Booth's Iago

and Richard III., Mrs. Scott-Siddons's Viola, Fanny Davenport's

Georgette in "Fernande," Mary Gannon's "Little Treasure," Maggie

Mitchell's "Fanchon" and "Little Barefoot."

In all these undoubted successes, old and new, with the sole exception

of Sothern's Dundreary, the actors and actresses appeared and appear

undisguised, talk in a natural voice, and fit their characters like

a glove, face, figure, and all. This essential of fitness between

character and physique is sometimes ignored by managers, with

disastrous effects, while its observance has made a success of many

a play, bolstered up by the influence of a single character. T. P.

Cooke's Long Tom Coffin in the "Pilot" was such an instance of

phenomenal success attained by the physique of one actor, carrying a

rubbishy play through. Charlotte Cushman's Meg Merrilies was another

such instance, the mere power of face, figure, and voice making a

triumph, spite of poor play, and even spite of unmitigated and

unnatural rant on the part of the actress. I have mentioned one

instance in my own observation of the consequences of putting actors

into ill fitting parts, in "Flying Scud." If the reader can imagine

Lester Wallack in Rip Van Winkle, Jefferson in Elliott Gray or Hugh

Chalcote, Barrett in Dundreary, Sothern in Cassius, Booth as Monsieur

Tourbillon or Solon Shingle, Owens as Iago, he will have the salient

points of our argument in strong light. The best example of a well

fitted play I ever saw was Lester Wallack's "Veteran," as first acted,

with James W. Wallack for Colonel Delmar, Mrs. Hoey for Amina, Mary

Gannon for the other young woman, Mrs. Vernon for Mrs. MacShake. Every

part, down to the very slaves, was perfectly fitted, and nothing has

since come near it in completeness except Boucicault's plays, written

at different times for the same theatre, "Jessie Brown" and the

"Shaughraun." The full consideration of all these facts, and especially

a retrospect of the relative rank of versatile actors and of

specialists, has led to the following further aphorism:

XVI. If the actors fit the play, expect success; if they do not,

disaster.

The consideration of actors as affecting the success of a play brings

us to the last branch of the whole subject affected by the dramatic

canons, which is _the qualifications required by the dramatist_ to

secure success. When we have considered them we shall have finished our

task--the completion of an essay to arouse thought in others. When we

consider the literary construction of such plays as "Black Crook,"

"Buffalo Bill," as well as the hosts of nameless dramas that are

constantly making their appearance at minor and first-class theatres,

their flat dialogue and general insipidity when merely read, not acted,

we begin to realize that genius or even talent in the author are not

the first requisite. He may lack both and still succeed. He must,

however, have one thing, or he might as well keep out of the box office

altogether, for his plays will be there pigeon-holed for good if he

possesses it not. This something is _stage experience_. He may be an

actor, no matter how bad, a scene painter, a carpenter, a musician, but

he must have been about a theatre in some capacity, no matter how

humble, to see how things work. One week behind the curtain is worth a

year in front. The mere acquaintance with the ways of managers and

actors is worth a good deal of time, but the familiarity with the

working of a piece is the main thing. The most successful American

comedy that has yet appeared was written by a walking lady who never

would have made an actress if she had staid on the stage forty years,

but who utilized her experience to some purpose on quitting the stage.

The most successful money-making sensational piece of late years was

written by a scene painter, and the poorest actors frequently write

very good pieces, while good actors who possess talent for scribbling,

almost always do well as playwrights. Only one fault do they all

exhibit, without any exception, so far as my experience has run: they

are all utterly oblivious of the meaning of the eighth commandment, and

seem to regard plagiarism not as theft, but as a favor to the author

whose literary property they steal. This is the worst that can be said

about actor-authors, and to the rule there are no exceptions that ever

I heard of. Actor-authors are unmitigated pirates of the most utterly

unscrupulous sort, who crib whole chapters out of novels, word for

word, without shame or acknowledgment, and write successful plays by

filching other men's ideas, making a patchwork. Perhaps the most

shameless of the whole raft of these actor-authors is Lester Wallack,

whose two plays, the "Veteran" and "Rose-dale," are marvels of

patchwork of this sort. In the first all the Arab characters and

several scenes, language and all, are taken straight out of Captain

James Grant's nearly forgotten novel of the, "Queen's Own," and in the

second most of the plot and the most successful comic scene of the play

come bodily from Colonel Hamley's "Lady Lee's Widowhood," another

military novel. The provoking part of all this thieving in Wallack is,

that other parts of his plays show that the man has talent enough to

write, if he were not too lazy to work; but this preference of theft to

labor is so common among actor-authors that nothing will ever check it

but an extension of the copyright law in the interests of justice; for

moral sense in the direction of the eighth commandment seems to be

utterly unknown among them. The truth of the old adage about "hawks

pikeing out hawks 'een" is, however, curiously exemplified in the

scruples which the same men display as managers toward appropriating a

play, no matter how much of a piracy in itself, without payment to the

playwright, unless he be a Frenchman, when the case at once becomes

altered. Novelists and foreign dramatists having no legal rights,

actor-authors appear to think they have also no moral rights entitled

to respect. This is the one stain on the character of actor-authors

from which not one of them is free, or ever has been free, no matter

what his time and nation. From Shakespeare to Brougham, from Molière to

Boucicault, the lustre of all their talents has been dimmed by this one

dirty vice of filching the product of other men's brains; and the only

dramatists free from the reproach have been those who have come to the

boards from outside, like Bulwer and Sheridan. I do not here mean to

include avowed translations like "Pizarro" and the "Stranger," nor

avowed dramatizations of novels like Boucicault's "Heart of Mid

Lothian." Such things are not thefts, any more than the use of history

for the basis of a novel; they are open to all. But the unavowed

stealing of unknown French plays, the surreptitious filching of

chapters from forgotten novels, no more becomes right after quoting

Shakespeare and Molière as exemplars, than cowardice and treason become

noble because St. Peter sneaked out of Caiaphas's petty sessions once

on a time.

Spite of this degrading meanness, however, there is no doubt that

actor-authors have so far written the greatest number of good plays

that hold the stage, in consequence of just one thing, their

_experience_, which reveals itself as the first quality necessary

in the dramatist. After experience of the stage, the next qualification

that meets us in such dramatists as Shakespeare, Dumas, Lope de Vega,

and Boucicault, is their marvellous fecundity of invention, implying an

amount of information on various subjects simply amazing. Nothing comes

amiss to them, and they seem to have a smattering of every science, to

have skimmed the private history of the whole world. Variety of

information comes next after stage experience. A man may be a great

fool on most subjects, and yet write a fair acting play from stage

experience alone, if he filches enough, but if he have plenty of

general information, he will be able to double the value of his play,

while some plays have been made quite successful by the use of nothing

but stage experience and some special line of information, by men who

could not have written an original story to save their necks.

Last of the qualifications for dramatic success come _ideas_, and the

possession of ideas implies also genius or at least talent, without

which, after all, the really successful dramatist cannot work and leave

enduring work behind him. All the ephemeral successes of the stage lack

this one element, the one thing that cannot be taught, but must be born

in a man. With genius, with real talent, everything is at last possible

to a writer ambitious of stage success. Like Bulwer, he may make

failure after failure, before he gets the _entrée_ to theatrical life,

but once there he will get past the portal and command success at last.

Experience and information will be acquired with more or less labor,

but he will get them at last, and then will be content to add his voice

to the last canon of theatrical conditions to success:

XVII. Stage experience, varied information, and talent, are the _sine

quâ non_ of the dramatist who hopes for success.

FREDERICK WHITTAKER.

SAINT LAMBERT'S COAL.

Wild hordes had sacked the minster: scattered

Upon the broken pavement, lay

The crash of blazon'd windows, shattered

By barbarous knights in wanton fray,

Who wrought the wreck and went their way.

Across pale, pictur'd faces, gashes

Showed where their godless blades had thrust

Profane defiance; and with ashes

Strewn was the altar, and encrust

Was chalice, pyx, and urn with rust.

No lamp shed forth its sacred glimmer,

No incense breathed its hallowed fume;

And as the rudded eve grew dimmer,

Shadows as ghostly as the tomb

Wrapped choir and nave and aisle in gloom.

Anon athwart the murk came stealing

Far floatings of a chanted hymn,

Up-borne in gusto from floor to ceiling,

As faintly a procession dim

Out of the darkness seemed to swim.

Onward it wended--nor did falter,

Till from their midmost, one cried--"Who

Bethought him of the quenchéd altar?

Alas! how guide the service through?

Would God might light the lamp anew!"

"_Amen!_" came through the silence drifting:

And from the train, therewith, out stole

A little acolyte, who, lifting

His surplice hem, displayed a coal

That glowed, yet left the garment whole.

"_Christus illuminator!_" kneeling,

The astonied Bishop cried. "From whom

Can light else come? Thyself revealing.

Flash forth that faith to chase our gloom,

Which burns and yet doth not consume!

"Such faith is thine, O Lambert! Kindle

Thereat the altar-lamp, and let

Its lustre, henceforth, never dwindle!"

He took the coal, the light reset,

And there, they tell, 'tis burning yet.

MARGARET J. PRESTON.

ENGLISH TRAITS.

One of the earliest records of modern history in regard to the race

which peopled the old England and the New refers to its beauty. Most of

us have heard the story: how three young captives, brought from an

almost unknown island on the verge of civilization, and indeed at the

western limit of the then known world, were exposed for sale in Rome,

and how Gregory the Great, not yet Pope, seeing them, was struck by

their beauty and asked what they were, and being told, _Angli_

(English), replied "_Non Angli, sed angeli_" (not Angles, but angels);

which was a tolerable pun for a future Pope and saint. This was twelve

hundred years ago; and since that time the English race has enjoyed the

reputation (subject to some carping criticism, due to the self-love of

other peoples) of being the handsomest in the world. It is well

deserved; indeed, if it were not, it would long ago have been jealously

extinguished. Not improbably, however, the impression made upon Gregory

was greatly due to the fair complexion, blue eyes, and golden brown

hair of the English captives, which, indeed, are mentioned in the

story. For southern Europe is peopled with dark-skinned, dark-haired

races; and the superior beauty of the blonde type was recognized by the

painters, who always, from the earliest days, represented angels as of

that type. The Devil was painted black so much as a matter of course

that his pictured appearance gave rise to a well-known proverb;

ordinary mortals were represented as more or less dark; celestial

people were white and golden-haired; whence the epithet "divinely

fair." When therefore the good Gregory saw the fair, blue-eyed English

youths, his comparison was at once suggested, and his pun was almost

made to his hand. And I am inclined to believe that it is of much later

origin, although he ought to have made it; just as Sidney Smith ought

to have said to Landseer, when he asked the Reverend wit to sit for his

portrait, "Is thy servant a dog that he should do the thing?" and as

the innkeeper ought to have said to Mr. Seward that he was not Governor

of New York, but "Thurlow Weed, by thunder?" but did not. In each of

these cases, however, and in all such, a significant fact is at the

bottom of the story, which otherwise would have no reason for its

being.

It is hardly true, however, that other races do not produce individuals

approaching as nearly to an ideal standard of beauty as any that are

seen among the English. These are found, as we all know, among the

various Latin races, the Celts and the Sclaves, and even, as Mr. Julian

Hawthorne himself would hardly venture to deny, among the Teutons, the

very Saxons themselves. Who has not seen French women and French men,

Italians, Spaniards, Russians, Poles, Irish, and even Germans of both

sexes, distinguished by striking and captivating personal beauty both

of face and figure? But the average beauty of the English race appears

to be in a marked degree above that of all others. Among a thousand men

and women of that race there will not only be found more "beauties"

than among the same number of other races, but the majority will be

handsomer, "finer," more symmetrically formed, better featured, with

clearer skins, and a more dignified bearing and presence than the

majority of any other European race with which they may be compared.

A notion was for some time in vogue that this English distinction did

not obtain in America, but that the race had degenerated here. It was a

mere notion, having its origin in a prejudiced perversion of isolated

facts; in the desire of book-writing travellers to find something

strange, and also derogatory, with which to spice their pages; and in a

craving, which amounts to a mild insanity, among European people, and

particularly among all classes of the British nation, to lay hold of

some distinctive "American" quality, whether physiological, literary,

political, or other, and label it, and file it away, and pigeon-hole it

for reference by way of differencing "Americans" from themselves.

The notion, I venture to say, was essentially absurd. That a race of

men should materially change its physical traits in the course of two

centuries, under whatever conditions of climate or other external

influence, is inconsistent with all that we know upon that subject. The

very pyramids protest against it by their pictured records. According

to the history of mankind, as it is thus far known to us, such a change

could not take place within such a period, unless to external

influences of great modifying power there were added such an

intermingling of races as has not yet taken place here more than in

England itself, although plainly it is to come in future generations.

Up to thirty years ago the intermarriage of Yankees--by which name, for

lack of another, I designate people of English blood born in this

country--with Irish and Germans was so rare as practically, in regard

to this question, not to exist; and at that period there was not in

England itself a more purely English people than that of New England.

This notion of English degeneracy in "America" has, however, been

rapidly dying out in Europe, and even in England during the last ten or

fifteen years. The change has been brought about partly by the events

of our civil war; for the blindest prejudice saw that that war was not

fought by a physically degenerate people; and partly by the increase of

knowledge obtained, not from carping travellers writing books to please

a carping public, but from personal observation. This I know, not by

inference, but from Englishmen and others who have been here, and who

have not written books. The belief, formerly prevalent, that "American"

women had in their youth pretty doll faces, but at no period of life

womanly beauty of figure, is passing away before a knowledge of the

truth, and I have heard it scouted here by Englishmen, who, pointing to

the charming evidence to the contrary before their eyes, have expressed

surprise that the travelling book-writers, who had given them their

previous notions on the subject, could have so misrepresented the

truth. A colonel in the British army, who had been all over the world,

and with whom I was in New England during the war, at a time when a

large number of our volunteers were home on furlough, expressed

constantly his surprise at the "fine men" he saw going about in

uniform, the equals of whom he said that he had never seen as a whole

in any army; although he did not hesitate to express his dislike of

their uniform, or his disgust at the slouchy, slovenly way in which

they carried themselves. I was ready to believe what he said; for I had

then just seen the Coldstreams in Montreal; and I had before seen the

Spanish regular troops in Cuba, who, even the regiment of the Queen,

were so small that they looked to me like toy soldiers to be kept in a

box; and a very bad box they soon got into. During my recent visit to

England, after I had been in London a week or two, having previously

visited other places, a London friend who had twice visited "the

States," said to me, "Well, I suppose you've been looking at the people

here and comparing them with those you've left at home?" "Yes, of

course." "Do you find much difference in them really?" "No; very

little; almost none." "You're right--quite right. There may be a little

more fulness of figure and a little more ruddiness; but it's been

greatly exaggerated--greatly." One reason for this exaggeration I

learned from the remarks of two English friends to me in this country.

Some years ago I took one, a gentleman who had travelled a good deal,

and who held an important position in the Queen's household--and a very

outspoken man he was--to a "private view," at which for a wonder there

was not a miscellaneous throng, but just enough people to fill the

rooms pleasantly. As we sat together after a tour, looking at the

company, I asked him to tell me the difference between the people he

saw there and those he would see on a like occasion at the Royal

Academy. He sat looking around him in silence for so long a time that I

thought he was going to pass my question unnoticed, when he said, "I

can see no difference; none at all; except that there would not be

quite so many pretty women there, and that there would be more stout

old people." The other, a lady, who also did not hesitate in her

criticisms, remarked that the chief difference in appearance between

people of the same condition here and in England was that here she

"didn't see any fat old men." _She_ said nothing about fat old women;

not, however, that she herself was either fat or old.

There is this difference among old people; although even this has been

exaggerated; and it is this which gives a certain color of truth to the

notion I have referred to. English men and women do not always grow

stout and red-faced as they grow old; but after they have passed middle

age more of them do tend to rubicundity and to protuberant rotundity of

figure than people of the same age do in "America." The cause, I am

quite sure, is simply--beer. Both the color and the rotundity come to a

large proportion of the Americans who live in England and drink English

beer, in English allowance; which, it need hardly be said, could not be

the case if there had been any essential change in the type of the

race. But among men under forty and women under thirty, the difference

either in complexion or figure is almost inappreciable.