McClure’s Magazine

Copyright by Arnold Genthe

[pg 241]

GUARDIANS
OF
THE PUBLIC HEALTH

BY
SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS

John Chinaman is the logician of hygiene.
To his family doctor he says: “I
pay you to keep me well. Earn your
money.” Let him or his fall sick, and the
physician’s recompense stops until health
returns to that household. Being fair-minded
as well as logical, the Oriental obeys his physical
guardian’s directions. Now, it may be possible
to criticize certain Chinese medical
methods, such as burning parallel holes in a
man’s back to cure him of appendicitis, or banging
for six hours a day on a brass tom-tom to
eliminate the devil of headache; but the underlying
principle of “No health, no pay” is
worthy of consideration.

This principle it is which, theoretically, we
have adopted in the matter of the public health.
To our city, State, or national doctors we pay
a certain stipend (when we pay them at all) on
the tacit understanding that they are to keep us
free from illness. With the cure of disease they
have no concern. The minute you fall ill, Mr.
Taxpayer, you pass into the hands of your private
physician. No longer are you an item of
interest to your health officer, except as you may
communicate your disease to your fellow citizens.
If he looks after you at all, it is not that
you may become well, but that others may not
become ill through you. Being less logical in
our conduct than the Chinese, we, as a people,
pay little or no heed to the instructions of the
public doctors whom we employ. We grind
down their appropriations; we flout the wise
and by no means over-rigorous regulations
which they succeed in getting established, usually
against the stupid opposition of unprogressive
legislatures; we permit—nay, we influence
our private physicians to disobey the
laws in our interest, preferring to imperil our
neighbors rather than submit to the inconvenience
necessary to prevent the spread of disease;
and we doggedly, despite counsel and warning,
continue to poison ourselves perseveringly with
bad air, bad water, and bad food, the three B’s
that account for 90 per cent. of our unnecessary
deaths. Then, if we are beset by some well-deserved
epidemic, we resentfully demand to
know why such things are allowed to occur.
For it usually happens that the virtuous public
which fell asleep with a germ in its mouth,[pg 242]
wakes up with a stone in its hand to throw at
the health officer. Considering what we, as a
people, do and fail to do, we get, on the whole,
better public health service than we deserve,
and worse than we can afford.

Our Health Boards and Their Powers

As a nation, we have no comprehensive health
organization.
The crying
need for one I
shall point out
in a future article.
Our only
Federal guardianship
is vested
in the United
States Public
Health and
Marine Hospital
Service,
which, by some
mystery of governmental
construction,
got
itself placed in
the Treasury
Department,
where it certainly
does not
belong. It is,
with the exception
of a few
ancient political
appointees
now relegated
to unimportant
posts, a highly
trained and efficient
body of
hygienists and
medical men,
the best of
whom have also
qualified as diplomats
in trying
crises. Any
germ-beleaguered city may call upon this
Service for aid. It is a sort of flying squadron
of sanitative defence. When yellow fever
broke out in New Orleans, it was the M. H. S.
men who, working quietly and inconspicuously
with the local volunteers, mapped out the campaign
which rid the city of the scourge. In the
San Francisco panic eight years ago, when
bubonic plague beset the city, it was the Marine
Hospital Service which restored confidence: and
a Service man has been there ever since as the
city’s chief adviser. The Federal “surgeons,”
as they are called, may be in St. Louis helping
to check smallpox, or in Seattle, blocking the
spread of a plague epidemic, or in Mobile, Alabama,
fighting to prevent the establishment of
an unnecessary and injurious quarantine against
the city by outsiders, because of a few cases of
yellow jack; and all the while the Service is
studying and planning a mighty “Kriegspiel”
against the endemic
diseases
in their respective
strongholds—malaria,
typhoid, tuberculosis,
and the
other needless
destroyers of
life which we
have always
with us. In the
Marine Hospital
Service is
the germ of a
mighty force
for national
betterment.

DR. CHARLES HARRINGTON

SECRETARY OF THE MASSACHUSETTS STATE BOARD OF HEALTH,
WHICH, BY THE DISTRIBUTION OF VACCINE AND ANTITOXIN
ALONE, HAS SAVED THE STATE $210,000

Of the State
boards, perhaps
a fourth may
be regarded as
actively efficient.
The rest
are honorary
and ornamental.
Undoubtedly
a majority
would be ready
and willing to
perform the services
for which
they are not (as
a rule) paid
anything; but
they lack any
appropriation
upon which to
work. South
Carolina, for example, has an excellent State
board. Its president, Dr. Robert Wilson, is an
able and public-spirited physician of the highest
standing; an earnest student of conditions, and
eager for the sanitary betterment of his State.
But when he and his board undertook to get one
thousand dollars from the legislature to demonstrate
the feasibility of enforcing the pure food
law and of turning away the decayed meat for
which the State is a dumping-ground, they were
blandly informed that there was no money
available for that purpose. It was in South Carolina,
[pg 243]
by the way, that a medical politician who
served on the public health committee of the
legislature addressed this question to a body of
physicians who had come there to appeal for
certain sanitary reforms: “What do you want
of laws to prevent folks being sick? Ain’t that
the way you make your livin’?” Which is, I
fear, typical of the kind of physicians that go
into politics and
get into our
legislatures,
where, unhappily,
they are
usually assigned
to the
public health
committees.

DR. THOMAS DARLINGTON

COMMISSIONER OF HEALTH FOR NEW YORK CITY, WHICH HAS THE
MOST THOROUGHLY ORGANIZED CITY HEALTH DEPARTMENT
IN THE UNITED STATES

Under the
State boards, in
the well-organized
States, are
the county
boards and officers,
who report
to the State
boards and may
call upon the
latter for advice
or help in time
of epidemic or
danger.

In certain circumstances
the
State officials
may arbitrarily
take charge.
This is done
in Indiana, in
Maryland, in
Pennsylvania,
and in Massachusetts.
The
last State not
only grants extraordinary
powers to its
health executive,
Dr. Charles Harrington, but it appropriated
last year for the work the considerable sum of
$136,000. By the issuance alone of vaccine and
antitoxin, the Board saved to the citizens of
the State $210,000, or $74,000 more than the
total appropriation for all the varied work of the
institution. Some vague idea of the economy in
lives which it achieves may be gained from the
established fact that death results in only sixteen
out of every thousand cases of diphtheria,
when the antitoxin is given on or before the
second day of the illness; 110, when given on the
third day; and 210 when the inoculation is performed
later. The old death rate from diphtheria,
before antitoxin was discovered, ranged
from 35 to 50 per cent. of those stricken.

DR. CHARLES V. CHAPIN

SUPERINTENDENT OF HEALTH IN PROVIDENCE, RHODE
ISLAND, ONE OF THE CITIES WHICH HAS BEEN FOREMOST
IN PROSECUTING PHYSICIANS FOR FAILURE TO
GIVE NOTICE OF INFECTIOUS DISEASE

Finally, there are the city bureaus, with
powers vested, as a rule, in a medical man designated
as “health officer,” “agent,” or “superintendent.”
What Massachusetts is to the
State boards,
New York City
is to the local
boards, but
with even
greater powers.
Under the
charter it has
full power to
make a sanitary
code. Matters
ranging
from flat wheels
on the Metropolitan
Street
Railway Company’s
antiquated
cars, to
soft coal smoke
belched forth
from factory
chimneys, are
subject to control
by the New
York City
Department of
Health. The
Essex Street
resident who
keeps a pig in
the cellar, and
the Riverside
Drive house-holder
who
pounds his
piano at 1 a.m.
to the detriment
of his
neighbor’s
slumber, are alike amenable to the metropolis’
hired doctors.

The province of the city, State, and Federal
health organization is broad. “Control over
all matters affecting the public health” is a
comprehensive term. “All the powers not
already given to the school committees,” observed
a Massachusetts judge, “are now ceded
to the Boards of Health.” In theory, then,
almost unlimited powers are vested in the authorities.
But how carefully they must be exercised
in order not to excite public jealousy and[pg 244]
suspicion, every city health official well knows.
More serious than interference and opposition,
however, is the lack of any general equipment.
At the very outset the loosely allied army of the
public health finds itself lacking in the primal
weapon of the campaign; comprehensive vital
statistics.

Our Absurd Vital Statistics

Vital statistics in this country are an infant
science. Yet they are the very basis and fundament
of any attempt to better the general
health. Knowledge of what is killing us before
our time is the first step toward saving our
lives. The Census Bureau does its best to
acquire this essential information. For years
Director North has been persistently hammering
away at this point. But progress is slow.
Only fifteen States, representing 48 per cent.
of our population, are comprised in the “registration
area”; that is, record all deaths, and
forbid burial without a legal permit giving the
cause of death and other details. Outside of
this little group of States, the decedent may be
tucked away informally underground and no
one be the wiser for it. This is convenient for
the enterprising murderers, and saves trouble
for the undertakers. Indeed, so interested are
the latter class, that in Iowa they secured the
practical repeal of a law which would have
brought that State within the area; and in Virginia
this year they snowed under a similar bill
in the legislature, by a flood of telegrams.
Ohio, the third largest State in the Union, keeps
no accurate count of the ravages of disease.
Probably not more than 60 per cent. of its
deaths are reported. Why? Inertia, apparently,
on the part of the officials who should take
the matter in charge. Governor Harris in his
January message made a strong plea for registration,
but without result. As for births,
there is no such thing as general registration of
them. So this matter is neglected, upon which
depend such vital factors as school attendance,
factory employment, marriage, military duty,
and the very franchise which is the basis of citizenship.
It is curious to note that Uruguay,
in its official tables of comparative statistics,
regrets its inability to draw satisfactory conclusions
regarding the United States of America,
because that nation has not yet attained to any
scientific method of treating the subject. Patriotism
may wince; but let us not haughtily demand
any explanation from our sneering little[pg 245]
neighbor. Explanations might be embarrassing.
For the taunt is well founded.

DR. JOHN N. HURTY

SECRETARY OF THE BOARD OF HEALTH IN INDIANA,
WHICH HAS RECENTLY PASSED A LAW FORBIDDING
THE MARRIAGE OF IMBECILES, EPILEPTICS, AND PERSONS
SUFFERING FROM CONTAGIOUS DISEASE

Is it strange that, having no basis in national
statistics, our local health figures “speak a
varied language”? We have no standards even
of death on which to base comparisons. But a
dead man is a dead man, isn’t he, whether in
Maine or California? Not necessarily and unqualifiedly.
In some Southern cities he may
be a “dead colored man,” hence thrown out of
the figures on the “white death rate” which
we are asked to regard as the true indication of
health conditions. In New Orleans, until recently,
he might be a “death in county hospital,”
and as such not counted—this to help
produce a low death rate. In Salt Lake City
he’s a “dead stranger,” and unpopular on account
of raising the total figures for the city.
They reckon their total rate there as 16.38, but
their home rate or “real” rate as 10.88. That
is to say, less than 11 out of every 1,000 residents
die in a year. If this be true, the Salt Lake
citizens must send their moribund into hasty
exile, or give them rough on rats, so that they
may not “die in the house.” As for the
“strangers within our gates” who raise the rate
over 50 per cent. by their pernicious activity in
perishing, the implication is clear: either Salt
Lake City is one of the deadliest places in the
world to a stranger, or else the newcomers
simply commit suicide in large batches out of
a malevolent desire to vitiate the mortality figures.
The whole thing is an absurdity; as absurd
as the illiterate and fallacious three-page
leaflet which constitutes this community’s total
attempt at an annual health report.

DR. GEORGE W. GOLER

HEALTH OFFICER OF ROCHESTER, NEW YORK, WHO
REFUSES CHILDREN CERTIFICATES TO WORK IN FACTORIES,
UNLESS THE APPLICANTS ARE IN SOUND
PHYSICAL CONDITION

St. Joseph, Missouri, claimed, one year, a rate
of 6.5 deaths out of every 1,000 inhabitants.
Were this figure authentic, the thriving Missouri
city, by the law of probability, should be full of
centenarians. It isn’t. I essayed to study the
local reports, hoping to discover some explanation
of the phenomenon, but was politely and
regretfully informed that St. Joseph’s health
authorities issued no annual reports. The
natural explanation of the impossibly low rate
is that the city is juggling its returns. In the
first place, that favorite method of securing a
low per capita death rate—estimating a population
greatly in advance of its actual numbers—is
indicated; since the community has fewer
lines of sewers and a smaller area of parks than
other cities of the size it claims—two elements
which, by the way, would in themselves tend to
militate against a low mortality. Perhaps, too,
the city has that ingenious way of eliminating
one disturbing feature, the deaths under one[pg 246]
week or ten days, by regarding them as “still-births.”
Chicago used to have this habit; also
the trick of counting out non-residents, who
were so thoughtless as to die in the city. At
present, it is counting honestly, I believe. Buffalo
used to pad for publication purposes. One
year it vaunted itself as the healthiest large city
in the country. The boast was made on the
original assumption of a population nearly
25,000 in excess of the United States Census
figures, to which 20,000 more was added arbitrarily,
the given reason being a “general belief”
that the city had grown to that extent.

Perhaps as complete returns as any are obtained
in Maryland, where the health official,
Dr. Price, culls the death notices from 60 papers,
checks up the returns from the official registrars,
and if any are missing, demands an explanation
by mail. It behooves the registrar to present
a good excuse. Otherwise he is haled to
court and fined. The Board has thus far never
failed to secure a conviction.

Now, if the most concrete and easily ascertainable
fact in public health statistics, the total
of deaths, is often qualified or perverted, it follows
that dependent data, such as the assigned
causes of death, as required by law, are still
more unreliable; so I shall keep as far away
from statistics as possible except where some
specific condition can be shown by approved
figures or by figures so inherently self-disproved
that they carry their own refutation.

The Criminal Negligence of Physicians

This unreliability may be set down to the account
of the medical profession. Realizing
though they do the danger of concealment from
the proper authorities, and in the face of the
law which, as it gives them special privileges,
requires of them a certain return, a considerable
percentage of physicians falsify the returns
to protect the sensibilities of their patrons.
That they owe protection rather to the lives of
the public, they never stop to think. Tuberculosis
is the disease most misreported. In
many communities it is regarded as a disgrace to
die of consumption. So it is. But the stigma
rests upon the community which permits the
ravage of this preventable disease; not upon
the victims of it, except as they contribute to
the general lethargy. In order to save the feelings
of the family, a death from consumption
is reported as bronchitis or pneumonia. The
man is buried quietly. The premises are not
disinfected, as they should be, and perhaps
some unknowing victim moves into that germ-reeking
atmosphere, as into a pitfall. Let me
give an instance. A clergyman in a New York
city told me of a death from consumption in
his parish. The family had moved away, and
the following week a young married couple with
a six-months-old baby moved in.

DR. J. MERCIER GREEN

HEALTH OFFICER OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA,
WHO STAMPED OUT A SMALLPOX EPIDEMIC AND REFORMED
THE CITY’S WATER SUPPLY

“What can I do about it?” asked the clergyman.
“Mr. Blank’s death was said to be from
pneumonia; but that was only the final cause.
He had been consumptive for a year.”

“Warn the new tenants,” I suggested, “and
have them ask the Health Board to disinfect.”

More than a year later I met the clergyman
on a train and recalled the case to him. “Yes,”
he said, “those people thought it was too much
trouble to disinfect, particularly since the reports
did not give tuberculosis as the cause of
death. Now their child is dying of tuberculosis
of the intestines.”

In this case, had the death been properly reported
by the dead man’s physician, as the law
required, the City Board would have compelled
disinfection of the house before the new tenants
were allowed to move in. The physician who
obligingly falsified that report is morally guilty
of homicide through criminal negligence.

In Salt Lake City, in 1907, 43 deaths were
ascribed to tuberculosis—undoubtedly a broad
understatement. And in the face of the ordinance
requiring registration of all cases of consumption,
only five persons were reported as ill
of the disease. By all the recognized rules of
proportion, 43 deaths in a year meant at least
500 cases, which, unreported, and hence in
many instances unattended by any measures
for prevention of the spread of infection, constituted
so many separate radiating centers of peril
to the whole community.

Why is such negligence on the part of physicians
not punished? Because health officials
dread to offend the medical profession. In this
respect, however, a vast improvement is coming
about. Pennsylvania, Maryland, Indiana,
Massachusetts, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and other
States are not afraid to prosecute and fine delinquents;
nor are a growing number of cities,
among them Boston, New York, Rochester,
Providence, and New Orleans. The great majority
of such prosecutions, however, are for
failure to notify the authorities of actively contagious
diseases, such as scarlet fever, diphtheria,
and smallpox.

“Business Interests” and Yellow Fever

Epidemics are, nevertheless, in the early stages,
often misreported. If they were not—if early
knowledge of threatening conditions were made
public—the epidemics would seldom reach
formidable proportions. But—and here is
the national hygienic failing—the first instinct
is to conceal smallpox, typhoid, or any other
disease that assumes epidemic form. Repeated
[pg 247]
observations of this tendency have deprived
me of that knock-kneed reverence for
Business Interests which is the glorious heritage
of every true American. As a matter of fact,
Business Interests when involved with hygienic
affairs are always a malign influence, and usually
an incredibly stupid one. It was so in
New Orleans, where the leading commercial
forces of the city, in secret meeting, called the
health officer before them and brow-beat him
into concealing the presence of yellow fever,
lest other cities quarantine against their commerce.
And “concealed” it was, until it had
secured so firm a foothold that suppression was
no longer practicable, and the city only averted
a tremendously disastrous epidemic by the
best-fought and most narrowly won battle ever
waged in this country against an invading
disease.

THE SCAVENGERS OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA

It is interesting to note, by the way, that this
epidemic, with its millions of dollars of loss to
the city of New Orleans, might have been
averted at a comparatively small cost, had the
city fathers possessed the intelligence and foresight
to adopt a plan devised by Dr. Quitman
Kohnke, the city health officer. New Orleans
gets its drinking water from private cisterns.
Each of these is a breeding place for the yellow-fever-bearing
mosquito. Dr. Kohnke introduced
a bill a year before the epidemic, providing
for the screening of all the cisterns, so that
the mosquitos might not spread abroad; and
also for the destruction by oil of the insects in
the open pools. The total cost would hardly
have exceeded $200,000. But there was no
yellow fever in the city then; the public had
recovered from its latest scare; and the bill was
voted down with derision. I suppose the saving
of that $200,000 cost New Orleans some
forty or fifty million dollars in all.

Seldom does a Southern State discover yellow
fever within its own borders. It is always Mississippi
that finds the infection in New Orleans,
and Louisiana that finds it in Galveston. This
apparently curious condition of affairs is explicable
readily enough, on the ground that no
State wishes to discover the germ in its own
veins, but is quite willing, for commercial reasons,
[pg 248]
to point out the bacillus in the system of
its neighbor. In 1897 Texas was infected
pretty widely with yellow fever; but pressure
on the boards of health kept them from reporting
it for what it was. In light cases they called
it dengue or breakbone fever. Now, dengue
has this short-coming: that people do not die
of it. Disobliging sufferers from the alleged
“dengue” began to fill up the cemeteries,
thereby embarrassing the local authorities,
until one of the health officers had a brilliant
idea. “When they die,” he said, “we’ll call it
malarial fever.” And as such it went upon the
records. Two recalcitrant members of the
Galveston Health Board reported certain extremely
definite cases as yellow fever. They
were forced to resign, and the remainder of the
Board passed resolutions declaring that there
was no yellow fever, there never had been any
yellow fever, and there never would be any
yellow fever as long as they held their jobs—or
words to that effect. San Antonio also had
the epidemic; so much of it that the mail service
was suspended; but nothing worse than
dengue was permitted to go on the records.
Later a Marine Hospital Service surgeon was
sent by the government to investigate and report
on the Texas situation. He told the truth
as he found it and became exceedingly unpopular.
Lynching was one of the mildest things
they were going to do to him in Texas. And
all this time, while Texas was strenuously claiming
freedom from the yellow plague, her emissaries
were discovering cases in New Orleans
that the local authorities there had somehow
carelessly overlooked. The game of quarantine,
as played by the health authorities of the far
Southern States, and played for money stakes,
if you please, is not an edifying spectacle in
twentieth century civilization.

Newspapers, Politicians, and the
Bubonic Plague

But if it is bad in the South, it is worse in the
West. To-day California is paying for her sins
of eight years ago in suppressing honest reports
of bubonic plague, when she should have been
suppressing the plague itself. That the dreaded
Asiatic pest maintains its foothold there is due
to the cowardice and dishonesty of the clique
then in power, which constituted a scandal unparalleled
in our history, a scandal that, with
the present growing enlightenment, can never
be repeated.

Early in 1900 the first case of the present
bubonic plague onset appeared in San Francisco’s
Chinatown. I say “present” because I
believe it has never wholly died out in the last
eight years. A conference of the managing editors
of the newspapers, known as the “midnight
meeting,” was held, at which it was decided
that no news should be printed admitting the
plague. The Chronicle started by announcing
under big headlines: “Plague Fake Part of
Plot to Plunder.” “There Is No Bubonic Plague
in San Francisco.” This was “in the interest
of business.” Meantime the Chinese, aided by
local politicians, were hiding their sick. Out
of the first 100 cases, I believe only three were
discovered otherwise than by the finding of the
dead bodies. Sick Chinamen were shipped
away; venal doctors diagnosed the pest as
“chicken cholera,” “septemia hemorrhagica,”
“diphtheria” and other known and unknown
ailments.

In May, 1900, came the blow that all San
Francisco had dreaded: Texas and New Orleans
quarantined against the city, and business
languished. At this time two men were
in control of the plague situation: Dr. Williamson
of the City Board of Health and Dr. J. J.
Kinyoun of the Marine Hospital Service. Dr.
Williamson and Dr. Kinyoun both declared
plague to be present in the city. The business
interests represented in the Merchants’ Association
appealed to Kinyoun to suppress his reports
to Washington. In return he invited them
to read the law which compelled him to make
reports. They then tackled Dr. Williamson,
who replied that he’d tell the truth as he found
it, and if it was distasteful to them, they needn’t
listen. They went to Mayor Phelan demanding
Williamson’s head on a salver. Mayor
Phelan stuck by his man. Governor Gage they
found more amenable. He issued a proclamation
declaring that there was no plague. Governor
Gage is not a physician or a man of scientific
attainment. There is nothing in his record
or career to show that he could distinguish between
a plague bacillus and a potato-bug.
Nevertheless he spent considerable of the
State’s money wiring positive and unauthorized
statements to Washington. His State
Board of Health refused to stand by him and
he cut off their appropriation; whereupon they
resigned, and he secured another and more servile
board, remolded nearer to the heart’s desire.
Meantime the newspapers were strenuously
denying all the real facts of the epidemic, their
policy culminating in the complete suppression
of plague news. Before this, however, they so
inflamed public opinion against Dr. Kinyoun
and Dr. Williamson that these two gentlemen
became pariahs. Here are a few of the amenities
of journalism in the golden West, culled
from the display heads of the papers:

“Kinyoun, Enemy of the City.”

“Has Kinyoun Gone Mad?”[pg 249]

“Desperate, Kinyoun Commits Another Outrage
on San Francisco.”

“Board of Health for Graft and Plunder.”

“Our Bubonic Board.”

One gentle patriot in the State Senate suggested
in a thoughtful and logical speech that
Dr. Kinyoun should be hanged. This practical
spirit so appealed to the Chinese organizations
(it was Chinatown that suffered chiefly from the
quarantine rigors) that those bodies put a price
of $10,000 on Kinyoun’s head—not his political
head, understand, but the head which was
very firmly set on a pair of broad shoulders.
Some of the officer’s friends went to the Chinese
Consul-General and explained unofficially that
they would hold him responsible for any accident
to Dr. Kinyoun. That personage, supposing
that they were suggesting the slow accounting
of diplomacy, smiled blandly and
said:

“Gentlemen, I sympathize with you; but
what can I do?” “Do?” said the spokesman,
“Why, you can climb a lamp-post at the end of a
rope within one hour of the time that Kinyoun
is killed. That’s what you can and will do.”

The bland smile disappeared from the Oriental’s
face. He summoned a conference of the
secret societies, and the reward for Kinyoun’s
death was abrogated. Next, the white politicians
of Chinatown tried their hand and organized
a lynching bee, but the intrepid doctor
fortified his quarters, armed his men, and was so
obviously prepared for trouble that the mob did
nothing more than gather. Arrested twice on
trumped-up charges, threatened for contempt
of court, he continued to fulfill his duties. Governor
Gage and the Republican State Committee
now inaugurated a campaign of influence upon
President McKinley, which resulted in a Federal
Commission, consisting of Drs. Flexner, Barker,
and Novy, all eminent scientists, being sent to
the troubled city; where, instead of being received
with honors, they were abused by the
newspapers; insulted by the Governor; and
had the humiliation of seeing the doors of the
University of California slammed in their faces
after they had been invited there. Of course,
the Commission found bubonic plague, because
it was there for any one to find.

Thus far the United States Marine Hospital
authorities had stood back of their men. Now
they began to weaken. The findings of the
Federal Commission were kept out of the weekly
service reports, and data of the epidemic were
edited out of the public health bulletins, in disregard
of the law. Even this subserviency did
not satisfy the California delegation; they
wanted Kinyoun out.

And, on April 6, 1901, after a year’s brave
fight in the face of public contumely and constant
physical danger, Dr. Kinyoun was kicked
up-stairs into a soft berth at Detroit. He resigned.
So the M. H. S. lost a brave, faithful,
and able public servant and for once blackened
its own fine record.

There isn’t space to give the rest of the plague
history; how it cropped out in other parts of
California; how it was shipped to Matanza,
Mexico, and all but ruined that town; how the
hated local Health Board, in the face of the
Governor of the State, and the Federal authorities,
stuck to their guns and won the fight, for
San Francisco finally admitted the presence of
the plague, and asked for governmental aid.
Rupert Blue, one of the best surgeons in the
Marine Hospital Service, was assigned to the
terrified city, and though he has not been able
to wipe out the pestilence, the fact that the
smoldering danger has not broken into devastating
flame is due largely to his unremitting watchfulness
and his unhampered authority. “Business
Interests” have had their trial in San Francisco.
And San Francisco has had enough of
“suppression.” To-day the truth is being told
about bubonic plague in the public health reports,
and, I believe, in the newspapers.

Rochester, New York, one of the most progressive
cities in the country in hygienic matters,
has established an excellent system of
school inspection and free treatment. But the
children who most need attention lack it through
the carelessness or negligence of their parents.
Now, it is this very “submerged tenth” who are
set to work early in life. Under the law, the
health officer cannot say, “Unless you are
sound, you shall not attend school.” But there
is an ordinance providing that, without a certificate
of good physical condition, no child shall be
permitted to work in a store or factory. So Dr.
Goler refuses these certificates, not only in cases
of low vitality and under-nutrition, but for any
defect in the applicant’s teeth, sense-apparatus,
or tonsils, a fertile source of future debility.
What is the result? There is a rush of these
neglected youngsters to the clinics, and the
Rochester schools graduate every year into the
world of labor a class of young citizens in splendid
physical condition, unhandicapped by the
taints which make, not for death alone, but for
vice and crime. For the great moral lesson of
modern hygiene is that debility and immorality
run in a vicious parallel.

As I have said, the most thoroughly organized
city department is that of New York City, and
this is so because public opinion in New York,
taught by long experience that its trust will not
be betrayed, is, in so far as it turns upon sanitary
matters at all, solidly behind its health department.
[pg 250]
Hence its guardians work with a
free hand.

Fighting Prejudice and the Death Rate
in Charleston

But what is the guardian to do when the guarded
refuse to bear their share of the burden; refuse,
indeed, to manifest any calculable interest,
except in the way of occasional opposition?
Such is the case in Charleston, South Carolina,
where every man aspires to do just as his remotest
recognizable ancestor did, and the best
citizens would all live in trees and eat nuts if
they were fully convinced of the truth of the
Darwinian theory. Charleston, lovely, romantic,
peaceful Charleston, swept by ocean breezes
and the highest death rate of any considerable
American city; breathing serenely the perfume
of its flowers and the bacilli of its in-bred tuberculosis;
Charleston, so delightful to the eye, so
surprising to the nose!

By accident Charleston got an efficient health
officer not long ago. A deserved epidemic of
smallpox had descended upon the unvaccinated
negroes and scared the tranquil city. Dr.
J. Mercier Green was called from private practice
to tackle the situation. For weeks he
waded in the gore of lacerated arms, and his
path through darkest Charleston could be followed
by rising and falling waves of Afro-American
ululations; but he checked the epidemic,
and when three months later the city physician
died, he got the place. Now, had Dr. Green
been wise in his generation, he would have been
content to keep his municipal patient reasonably
free from smallpox and live a quiet life.
But he straightway manifested an exasperating
interest in other ailments. He stirred up the
matter of the water supply, regardless of the
fact that all Charleston’s great-great-grandfather
had drunk water from polluted cisterns
and died of typhoid as a gentleman should. He
pitched into doctors nearly old enough to be his
own great-great-grandfather because they failed
to report diseases properly. He answered back,
in the public prints, the unanswerable Good-Old-Way
argument. He opined, quite openly,
that there was too much tuberculosis, too high
an infant mortality, too prevalent a habit of
contagious disease, and he more than hinted
that the city itself was at fault.

In the matter of the cisterns, for instance.
Charleston now has a good city water supply,
fairly free from contamination where it starts,
and safely filtered before it reaches the city.
But a great many of “our best citizens” prefer
their own cisterns, on the grandfather principle.
These are underground, for the most part, and
are regularly supplied from the roof-drainage.
Also, they are intermittently supplied by leakage
from adjacent privy-vaults, Charleston having
a very rudimentary and fractional sewerage-system.
Therefore typhoid is not only logical
but inevitable. I have no such revolutionary
contempt for private rights as to deny the privilege
of any gentleman to drink such form of
sewage as best pleases him; but when it comes
to supplying the public schools with this poison,
the affair is somewhat different. Yet, as far as
the Charleston Board of School Commissioners
has felt constrained to go, up to date, is this:
they have written to the City Physician asking
that “occasional inspection” of the cisterns be
made, and decorating their absurd request with
ornamental platitudes.

With sewage it is the same situation. There
is, indeed, a primitive sewer system in part of
the city. But any attempt to extend it meets
with a determined and time-rooted opposition.
The Charlestonians are afraid of sewer-gas, but
apparently have no fear of the filth which generates
sewer-gas; said filth accumulating in
Charleston’s streets, subject only to the attention
of the dissipated-looking buzzards, which
are one of the conservative and local features of
the place. I have seen these winged scavengers
at work. It is not an appetizing sight. But
with one exception they afford the only example
of unofficial effort toward the betterment of
sanitary conditions, that I witnessed in Charleston.
The other came from a policeman, patiently
poking with his club at the vent of one of
the antediluvian sewers, which had—as usual—become
blocked. Yet, despite public indifference
and opposition, Dr. Green, without any
special training or brilliant ability as a sanitarian,
is, by dogged, fighting persistency lowering
the death-rate of his city.

There is also a non-medical legislator to
whom Charleston owes a debt of unacknowledged
gratitude. Mr. James Cosgrove succeeded
in getting the Charleston Neck marshes, wherein
breeds the malaria-mosquito, drained. Since
then the death rate from malaria, which was
nothing less than scandalous, has dwindled to
proportions that are almost respectable—if,
indeed, it were respectable to permit any deaths
from an easily destructible nuisance like the
mosquito. Nearly all our cities, by the way, are
curiously indifferent to the depredations of this
man-eater. Suppose, for an example, that Trenton,
New Jersey, were suddenly beset by a brood
of copperhead snakes, which killed, let us say,
two or three people a week and dangerously poisoned
ten times that number. What an anti-snake
campaign there would be in that aroused
and terrified community! Well, that much
more dangerous wild creature, the Anopheles[pg 251]
mosquito, in a recent year slew more than 100
people in Savannah, Georgia, without arousing
any public resentment. And Jacksonville’s
home brood in 1901 slaughtered 90 of its 30,000
citizens and dangerously poisoned probably
1000 more. New Orleans, by the way, having
executed a triumphant massacre of the yellow
fever mosquito (stegomyia) is now undertaking
to rid itself of all the other varieties. And Baltimore’s
health bureau has succeeded in obtaining
a grant of $10,000 for the purpose of demonstrating
the feasibility of mosquito-extermination.

Killing Off the City Negro

Throughout the South, figures and conditions
alike are complicated by the negro problem.
Southern cities keep a separate roster of mortalities;
one for the whites, one for the blacks. In
so far as they expect to be judged by the white
rate alone, this is a manifestly unfair procedure,
since, allowing for a certain racial excess of liability
to disease, the negro in the South corresponds,
in vital statistics, to the tenement-dweller in the
great cities. If New Orleans is to set aside its
negro mortality, that is; the death rate among
those living in the least favorable environment,
New York should set apart the deaths in the
teeming rookeries east of the Bowery, the most
crowded district in the world, and ask to be
judged on the basis of what remains after that
exclusion. New York, however, would be glad
to diminish the mortality in its tenements.
New Orleans, Atlanta, Charleston, or Savannah
would be loath to diminish their negro
mortality. That is the frank statement of
what may seem a brutal fact. The negro is
extremely fertile. He breeds rapidly. In
those cities where he gathers, unless he also
died rapidly, he would soon overwhelm the
whites by sheer force of numbers. But, as it
is, he dies about as rapidly as he breeds.
Recent statistics in Savannah, for instance,
showed this curious situation:

Excess of births over deaths among the
whites, 245.

Excess of births over deaths among the
blacks, 10.

Health Officer Brunner has stated the case,
in a manner which, I fancy, required no little
courage in an official of a Southern community:

We face the following issues: First: one set of
people, the Caucasian, with a normal death-rate of
less than 16 per thousand per annum, and right alongside
of them is the Negro race with a death-rate of
25 to 30 per thousand. Second: the first named race
furnishing a normal amount of criminals and paupers
and the second race of people furnishing an abnormal
percentage of lawbreakers and paupers.

Is the Negro receiving a square deal? Let this
commission investigate the houses he lives in; why,
in his race, tuberculosis is increasing; why he furnishes
his enormous quota to the chain-gang and the
penitentiary. Observe the house he must live in, the
food that he must eat, and learn of all his environments.
The negro is with you for all time. He is
what you will make him and it is “up” to the white
people to prevent him from becoming a criminal and
to guard him against tuberculosis, syphilis, etc. If
he is tainted with disease you will suffer; if he develops
criminal tendencies you will be affected.

Will not the white South, eventually, in order
to save itself from disease, be forced to save its
negroes from disease? It would seem an inevitable
conclusion.

Private Interests in Public Murder

Always and everywhere present are the private
influences which work against the public health.
Individuals and corporations owning foul tenements
or lodging-houses resent, by all the evasions
inherent in our legal system, every endeavor
to eliminate the perilous conditions from
which they take their profit. For the precious
right to dump refuse into streams and lakes,
sundry factories, foundries, slaughter-houses,
glue works, and other necessary but unsavory
industries send delegations to the legislature and
oppose the creation of any body having authority
to abate the nuisances.

Purveyors of bad milk decline to clean up
their dairies until the outbreak of some disease
which they have been distributing by the can
brings down the authorities upon them. Could
the general public but know how often minor
accesses of scarlet fever, diphtheria, and typhoid
follow the lines of a specific milk route, there
would be a tremendous and universal impetus
to the needed work of milk inspection. In this
respect the country is the enemy of the city:
the country, which, with its own overwhelming
natural advantages, distributes and radiates
what disease it does foster among its urban
neighbors, by sheer ignorance or sheer obstinate
resistance to the “new-fangled notions of science.”
Such men as the late Colonel Waring of
New York, Dr. Fulton of Baltimore, and Dr.
Wende of Buffalo have repeatedly pointed out
the debt of death and suffering which the city,
often well organized against infections, owes to
the unorganized and uncaring rural districts.
Reciprocity in health matters can be represented,
numerically, by the figure zero. It occasionally
happens that the conflict between private
and public interests assumes an obviously
amusing phase. The present admirable Food
and Drug Department of the Indiana board was
not established without considerable opposition.
One of the chief objectors was a member of the
legislature, who made loud lamentation regarding
the expense. Up rose another legislator, all[pg 252]
primed for the fight, and asked if the objector
would answer a few questions. The objector
consented.

“Do you know the W—— baking-powder?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know that it would naturally come
to the food laboratory for analysis, were such a
laboratory established?”

“I suppose it might.”

“Do you know that the W—— baking-powder
is 20 per cent. clay?”

“No.”

“Would it surprise you to learn that it contained
a high percentage of clay?”

No answer.

“Are you counsel for the W—— Baking Powder
Co.?”

“Yes.”

“That’s all.”

It was enough. The bill passed.

Everybody’s health is nobody’s business.
There, as I see it, is the bane of the whole situation
at present. To be sure, epidemics occasionally
wake us up. And, really, an epidemic
is a fine thing for a city to have. It is the only
scourge that drives us busy Americans to progress.
It took an epidemic of typhoid, a shameful
and dreadful one, to teach Ithaca that it
must not drink filth. Only after Scranton
faced a thousand cases of the fever did it assert
itself and demand protection for its water supply.
New Orleans would probably be having
(and concealing) yellow fever yet, but for the
paralysis of fright which the onset of three years
ago caused. Boston’s fine system of medical
inspection in the schools is the outcome of a
diphtheria scare. Smallpox is a splendid stimulator
of vaccination; so much so that some of
the country’s leading sanitarians now advocate
the abolition of pest-houses for this avoidable
ailment, and dependence upon the vaccine
virus alone.

But epidemics are only the guerrilla attacks
of the general enemy. It is in the diseases
always with us that the peril lies. Tuberculosis,
carrying off ten per cent. of the entire nation,
and making its worst ravages upon those
in the prime of life, is a more terrible foe than
was ever smallpox, or cholera, or yellow fever,
or any of the grisly sounding bugaboos. Why,
not so long ago, three highly civilized States
went into quite a little frenzy over a poor dying
wretch of a leper who had got loose; whereas
every man that spits on the floor of a building
wherein people live or work is more of an actual
peril, in that one foul act, than the leper in his
whole stricken life. The twin shames of venereal
disease, blinked by every health board in
the country (Detroit possibly deserves a partial
exception) are, in their effect upon the race, in
blindness, deafness, idiocy, and death so dreadful
a menace to-day, that consumption alone
can march beside them in the leadership of the
destroyers. Typhoid, so easily conquerable,
claims its annual thousands of sacrificed victims.
And the slaughter of the innocents goes
endlessly on, recorded only in the dire figures of
infant mortality. To-day, as I write, the whole
nation is thrilled with horror at the tragedy of
150 young lives snuffed out in a needless school
panic in Cleveland. Had my pen the power,
perhaps I could thrill the nation with horror
over the more dreadful fact that some 1100 children
under five years of age die yearly in Fall
River, the vast majority of them sacrificed to
bad food and living conditions that might better
be called dying conditions. One half of the
total mortality of that busy, profit-yielding city
is among children under five years of age, two-fifths
among children under one year. Does no
baneful light shine from those figures?

Yet, over and above the minor discouragements,
failures, and set-backs, looms the tremendous
fact of a universal and gathering
movement. It is still, in any general sense, inchoate,
and, except in certain specific relations,
invertebrate. But one cannot follow the work of
the public health guardians without feeling the
cumulative force of progress. As I have said, the
newspapers have been a vital element in awaking
the public. Associations are being formed
the country over for the prevention of disease.
There is a steady increase in the power and authority
of those officially charged with hygienic
control. Makers of deleterious or poisonous
foods, and the vultures who prey on the sick
through fraudulent patent medicines are being
curbed by pure food and drug laws. Milk inspection
is saving the lives of more children
every year, as meat inspection is prolonging the
lives of the poor. Definite instances of progress
are almost startling: the fact that Massachusetts
has so purified its public waters that for a
year there has been no typhoid epidemic ascribable
to any public supply; the passage of a radical
law in Indiana which forbids the marriage of
imbeciles, epileptics, and persons suffering from
a contagious or venereal disease; the saving of
babies’ lives at $10 a life in Rochester by pure
milk protected and guaranteed by the municipality;
the halving of the diphtheria death rate
by the free distribution of antitoxin; the slow
but sure and universal yearly decrease in the
Great White Plague—all these and more are
the first, slow, powerful evidences of national
progress.

[pg 253]

A LITTLE VICTORY FOR THE GENERAL

BY JOSEPHINE DASKAM BACON

ILLUSTRATIONS BY REGINALD BIRCH

Caroline, Miss Honey, and the
General were taking the morning
air. Caroline walked ahead, her
chin well up, her nose sniffing pleasurably
the unaccustomed asphalt,
the fresh damp of the river, and the watered
bridle path. The starched ties at the back of
her white pinafore fairly took the breeze, as she
swung along to the thrilling clangor of the monster
hurdy-gurdy. Miss Honey, urban and
blasé, balanced herself with dignity upon her
long, boat-shaped roller-skates, and watched
with patronizing interest the mysterious jumping
through complicated diagrams chalked on
the pavement by young persons with whom she
was unacquainted.

The General sucked a clothespin meditatively:
his eyes were fixed on something beyond
his immediate surroundings. Occasionally a
ravishing smile swept up from the dimples at his
mouth to the yellow rings beneath his cap frill;
he flapped his hands, emitting soft, vague
sounds. At such times a wake of admiration
bubbled behind him. Delia, who propelled his
carriage, pursed her lips consciously and affected
not to hear the enraptured comments of
the women who passed them.

To the left the trees, set in a smooth green
carpet, threw out tiny, polished, early May
leaves; graceful, white-coated children dotted
the long park. Beyond them the broad blue
river twinkled in the sun, the tugs and barges
glided down, the yachts strained their white
sails against the purple bluffs of the Palisades.
To the right towered the long, unbroken rows of
brick and stone; story on story of shining windows,
draped and muffled in silk and lace; flight
after flight of clean granite steps, polite, impersonal,
hostile as the monuments in a graveyard.

Immobile ladies glided by on the great pleasure
drive, like large tinted statues, dressed altogether
as the colored pictures in fashion books,
holding white curly dogs in their curved arms;
the coachmen in front of them seemed carved in
plum-colored broadcloth; only by watching
the grooms’ eyelids could one ascertain that they
were flesh and blood. Young girls, two, three,
and four, cantered by; their linen habits rose
and fell decorously, their hair was smooth.
Mounted policemen, glorious in buttons, breathing
out authority, curvetted past, and everywhere
and always the chug-chug-chug of the
gleaming, fierce-eyed motor cars filled one’s
ears. They darted past, flaming scarlet, somber
olive, and livid white; a crouching, masked figure
intent at the wheel, veiled, shapeless women
behind, a whir of dust to show where they had
been a breath before.

And everywhere, as far as the eye could reach,
a thin stream of white and pink and blue, a tumbling
river of curls and caps and bare legs, were
the children. A babble of shrill cries, of chattering
laughter, of fretful screams, an undercurrent
of remonstrance, of soothing patience,
of angry threatening, marked their slow progress
up and down the walk.

To Caroline, fresh from untrammeled sporting
through neighborly suburban yards, this disciplined
procession, under the escort of Delia
and the General, was fascinating to a degree.
Far from resenting the authority she would have
scorned at home, she derived an intense satisfaction
from it, and pranced ostentatiously beside
the perambulator, mimicking Miss Honey’s unconscious
reference to a higher power in the
matter of suitable crossings and preferred playfellows
with the absorbed gravity of the artist.

“See! General, see the wobblybubble,”
Delia murmured affectionately. “(Will you
see that child turn his head just like a grown
person? Did you ever see anything as smart
as that?) Did he like the red one best? So
does Delia. We’ll come over here, and then you
won’t get the sun in your precious eyes. Do
you want me to push you frontwards, so you
can see me? Just wait till we get across, and
I will. Look out, Miss Honey! Take hold of
your cousin’s hand and run across together,
now, like good girls.”

Miss Honey made an obedient snatch at Caroline’s
apron strings, and darted forward with
a long roll of her skates. The road was clear for
a block. Delia, with a quick glance to left and[pg 254]
right, lowered the perambulator to the road
level and forged ahead. Caroline, nose in air,
studied the nearest policeman curiously.

“Look out, there! Look out!“

A man’s voice like a pistol shot crashed behind
them. Caroline heard quick steps and a woman’s
scream, and looked up at a huge, blood-red
bulk that swooped around the corner and dashed
forward. But Miss Honey’s hand was clutching
her apron string, and Miss Honey’s weight as she
fell, tangled in the skates, dragged her down.
Caroline, toppling, caught in one dizzy backward
glance a vision of a face staring down on
her, white as chalk under a black mustache and
staring goggles, and another face, Delia’s, white
too, with eyes more strained and terrible than
the goggles themselves. One second that look
swept her and Miss Honey, and then, shifting,
fell upon the General strapped securely into his
carriage. Even as Caroline caught her breath,
he flew by her like an arrow, his blue eyes round
with surprise under a whirl of white parasol, the
wicker body of the perambulator swaying and
lurching. With that breath still in her nostrils,
she was pushed violently against Miss Honey,
who was dragged over her from the other side by
a large hairy hand. A sharp blow from her
boot heel struck Caroline’s cheek, and she
screamed with the pain; but her cry was lost
in the louder one that echoed around her as the
dust from the red monster blew in her eyes and
shut out Delia’s figure, flat on the ground, one
arm over her face as the car rushed over.

“My God! She’s down!” That was the man.

“Take his number!” a shrill voice pierced the
growing confusion.

Caroline, crying with pain, was forced to her
feet and stumbled along, one apron string
twisted fast in Miss Honey’s hand.

“Here, get out o’ this—don’t let the children
see anything! Let’s get home.”

“No, wait a minute. Let’s see if she’s alive.
Have they got the ambulance?”

“Look out, there, Miss Dorothy, you just
stop by me, or you’ll be run over, too!”

“See! She’s moving her head! Maybe
she’s not——”

Sobbing with excitement, Caroline wrenched
herself free from the tangle of nurses and carriages,
and pushed her way through the crowd.
Against the curb, puffing and grinding, stood
the great red engine; on the front seat a tall
policeman sat; one woman in the back leaned
over another, limp against the high cushions,
and fanned her with the stiff vizor of her leather
cap.

“It’s all right, dear, it’s all right,” she repeated
monotonously, with set lips, “the doctor’s
coming. It’s all right.”

Caroline wriggled between two policemen, and
made for a striped blue and white skirt that lay
motionless on the ground. Across the white
apron ran a broad, dirty smudge.

Caroline ran forward.

“Delia! Delia!” she gulped. “Is she—is
she dead?”

A little man with eye-glasses looked up from
where he knelt beside the blue and white skirt.

“I don’t believe so, my dear,” he said briskly.
“Is this your nurse? See, she’s opening her
eyes now—speak to her gently.”

As he shifted a leather-covered flask from one
hand to the other, Caroline saw a strange face
with drawn, purplish lids where she had always
known two merry gray eyes, and tight thin lips
she could not believe Delia’s. A nervous fear
seized her, and she turned to run away; but she
remembered suddenly how kind Delia had been
to her; how that very morning—it seemed so
long ago, now—Delia had helped her with her
stubby braids of hair, and chided Miss Honey
for laughing at her ignorance of the customs of
the park. She gathered her courage together
and crouched down by the silent, terrifying
figure.

“Hel—hello, Delia!” she began jerkily,
wincing as the eyes opened and stared stupidly
at the ring of anxious faces. “How do you feel,
Delia?”

“Lean down,” said the little man softly, “she
wants to say something.”

Caroline leaned lower.

“General,” Delia muttered, “where’s General?”

The little man frowned.

“Do you know what she means?” he asked.

Caroline patted her bruised cheek.

“Of course I do,” she said shortly. “That’s
the baby. Oh,” as she remembered, “where is
the General?”

“Here—here’s the baby,” called some one.
“Push over that carriage,” and a woman
crowded through the ring with the General,
pink and placid under his parasol.

“Lift him out,” said the little man, and as
the woman fumbled at the strap, he picked the
baby out neatly and held him down by the girl
on the ground.

“Here’s your baby, Delia,” he said, with a
kind roughness in his voice. “Safe and sound—not
a scratch! Can you sit up and take
him?”

And then, while the standing crowd craned
their necks, and even the steady procession,
moving in the way the police kept clear for
them, paused a moment to stare, while the little
doctor held his breath and the ambulance came
clanging up the street, Delia sat up as straight as[pg 255]
the mounted policeman beside her and held out
her arms.

“CAROLINE WALKED AHEAD, HER CHIN WELL UP, HER NOSE SNIFFING PLEASURABLY
THE UNACCUSTOMED ASPHALT”

“General, oh, General!” she cried, and buried
her face in his fat warm neck.

The men coughed, the women’s faces twisted,
but the little doctor watched her intently.

“Move your leg,” he said sharply. “Now the
other. Hurt you? Not at all?”

He turned to the young man in a white jacket,
who had jumped from the back of the ambulance.

“I thought so,” he said. “Though it didn’t
seem possible. I saw the thing go over her.
Right over her apron—never touched her.
Half an inch more——”

“Please, is Miss—the other little girl—is
she——”

This was Delia’s old voice, and Caroline smiled
happily at her.

“She’s all right, Delia—here she is!”

Miss Honey limped across on one roller skate,
pale, but conscious of her dramatic value, and
the crowd drew a long breath of relief.

“You are a very brave girl,” said the doctor,
helping Delia to her feet and tucking the General,
who alternately growled and cooed at his
clothespin, into the perambulator. “You have
undoubtedly saved the lives of all three of these
children, and their parents will appreciate it,
you may be sure. The way you sent that baby
wagon flying across the street—well, any time
you’re out of a job, just come to me, that’s all.
Dr. Gibbs, West Forty-ninth. Can you walk
now? How far do you have to go?”

The crowd had melted like smoke. Only the
most curious and the idlest lingered and watched
the hysteria of the woman in the automobile,
who clutched her companion, weeping and laughing.
The chauffeur sat stolid, but Caroline’s
keen round eyes saw that he shook from the
waist down like a man in a chill.

“Yes, sir, I’m all right. It’s not so very
far.” But Delia leaned on the handle she
pushed, and the chug-chug of the great car sent
the blood out of her cheeks. The little doctor
frowned.

“Look here,” he said, “I’ll tell you what
you’ll do. You come down these steps with me,
there aren’t but three of them, you see, and
we’ll just step in here a moment. I don’t know
what house it is, but I guess it’ll be all right.”

Before Delia could protest, he had pressed the
button, and a man in livery was opening the
door.

“We’ve just escaped a nasty accident out
here,” said the little doctor easily. “You were
probably looking out of the window? Yes.
Well, this young woman is a sort of a patient of
mine—Dr. Gibbs, West Forty-ninth Street—and
though she’s very plucky and perfectly uninjured,
I want her to rest a moment in the hall
here and have a drink of water, if your mistress
doesn’t object. Just take this card up and explain
the circumstances and”—his hand went[pg 256]
into his pocket a moment—”that’s about all.
Sit down, my dear.”

The man took in at a glance the neat uniform
of the nurse, the General’s smart, if diminutive,
apparel, and the unmistakable though somewhat
ruffled exterior of Miss Honey.

“Very well, sir,” he said, politely, taking the
card. “It will be all right, sir, I’m sure.
Thank you, sir. Sit down, please. It will be
all right. I will tell Madame Nicola.”

“Well, well, so this is Madame Nicola’s!”
The little doctor looked around him appreciatively,
as the servant ran up the stairs.

“I wish I could stay with you, chickens, but
I’m late for an appointment as it is. I must
rush along. Now, mind you, stay here half an
hour, Delia, and sit down. You’re no trouble
at all, and Madame Nicola knows who I am—if
she remembers. I sprayed her throat once,
if I’m not mistaken—she was on a tour, at
Pittsburg. She’ll take care of you.” He opened
the door. “You’re a good girl, you biggest
one,” he added, nodding at Caroline. “You do
as you’re told. Good-bye.”

“YOUNG GIRLS … CANTERED BY; THEIR LINEN HABITS ROSE AND FELL DECOROUSLY,
THEIR HAIR WAS SMOOTH”

The door shut, and Caroline, Miss Honey, and
Delia looked at each other in a daze. Tears
filled Delia’s eyes, but she controlled her voice
and only said huskily, “Come here, Miss Honey,
and let me brush you off—you look dreadful.
Did it—were you—are you hurt, dear?”

“No, but you pushed me awful hard, Delia,
and a nasty big man grabbed me and tore my
guimpe—see! I wish you’d told me what you
were going to do,” began Miss Honey irritably.

“And you gave me a big kick—it was me he
grabbed—look at my cheek!” Caroline’s lips
began to twitch; she felt hideously tired, suddenly.

“Children, children, don’t quarrel. General,
darling, won’t you sit still, please? You hurt
Delia’s knees, and you feel so heavy. Oh, I wish
we were all home!”

The man in uniform came down the stairs.
“Will you all step up, madame says, and she has
something for you up there. I’ll take the baby,”
as Delia’s eyes measured the climb. “Lord, I
won’t drop her—I’ve got two o’ my own.
‘Bout a year, isn’t she?”

“He’s a boy,” panted Delia, as she rested her
weight on the rail, “and he’s only eight months
last week,” with a proud smile at the General’s
massive proportions.

“Well, he is a buster, isn’t he? Here is the
nurse, madame, and the children. The doctor
has gone.”

Caroline stretched her eyes wide and abandoned
herself to a frank inspection of her surroundings.
For this she must be pardoned, for
every square inch of the dark, deep-colored room
had been taken bodily from Italian palaces of
the most unimpeachable Renaissance variety.
With quick intuition, she immediately recognized
a background for many a tale of courts
and kings hitherto unpictured to herself, and
smiled with pleasure at the Princess who advanced,
most royally clad in long, pink, lace-clouded
draperies, to meet them.

“You are the brave nurse my maid told me[pg 257]
about,” said the Princess; “she saw it all. You
ought to be very proud of your quick wit. I
have some sherry for you, and you must lie
down a little, and then I will send you home.”

Delia blushed and sank into a high carved
chair, the General staring curiously about him.
“It wasn’t anything at all,” she said awkwardly;
“if I could have a drink——”

Caroline checked the Princess as she moved
toward a wonderful colored decanter with wee
sparkling tumblers like curved bits of rainbow
grouped about it.

“Delia means a drink of water,” she explained
politely. “She only drinks water—sometimes
a little tea, but most usu’lly water.”

“The sherry will do her more good, I think,”
the Princess returned, noticing Caroline for the
first time, apparently, her hand on the decanter.

“THE STANDING CROWD CRANED THEIR NECKS, AS DELIA SAT UP STRAIGHT AND HELD OUT HER ARMS”

At this point Miss Honey descended from a
throne of faded wine-colored velvet, and addressed
the Princess with her most impressive
and explanatory manner.

“It won’t do you any good at all to pour that
out,” she began, with her curious little air of
delivering a set address, prepared in private
some time before, “and I’ll tell you why. Delia
knew a nurse once that drank some beer, and the
baby got burned, and she never would drink
anything if you gave her a million dollars. Besides,
it makes her sick.”

The Princess looked amused and turned to a
maid who appeared at that moment, with apron
strings rivaling Caroline’s.

“Get me a glass of water, please,” she said,
“and what may I give you—milk, perhaps?
I don’t know very well what children drink.”

“Thank you, we’d like some water, too,”
Miss Honey returned primly; “we had some
soda-water, strawberry, once to-day.”

Caroline cocked her head to one side and tried
to remember what the lady’s voice made her
think of. Suddenly it came to her. It was not
like a person talking at all, it was like a person
singing. Up and down her voice traveled,
loud and soft; it was quite pleasant to hear it.

“Do you feel better now? I am very glad.
Bring in that reclining chair, Ellis, from my
room; these great seats are rather stiff,” said
the Princess, and Delia, protesting, was made
comfortable in a large curved lounging basket,
with the General, contentedly putting his
clothespin through its paces, in her arm.

“How old is it?” the Princess inquired after
an interval of silence.

“He’s eight months, madame, last week—eight
months and ten days, really.”

“That’s not very old, now, is it?” pursued the
lady. “I suppose they don’t know very much,
do they, so young?”

“Indeed he does, though,” Delia protested.
“You’ll be surprised. Just watch him, now.
Look at Delia, darlin’; where’s Delia?”

The General withdrew his lingering gaze from[pg 258]
the clothespin, and turned his blue eyes wonderingly
up to her. The corners of his mouth
trembled, widened, his eyelids crinkled, and
then he smiled delightfully, straight into the
eyes of the nurse, stretched up a wavering pink
hand, and patted her cheek. A soft, gurgling
monosyllable, difficult of classification but easy
to interpret, escaped him.

The Princess smiled appreciatively, and
moved with a stately, long step toward them.

“That was very pretty,” she said, but Delia
did not hear her.

“My baby, my own baby!” she murmured
with a shiver, and hiding her face in the General’s
neck she sobbed aloud.

Miss Honey, shocked and embarrassed,
twisted her feet nervously and looked at the inlaid
floor. Caroline shared these feelings, but
though she turned red, she spoke sturdily.

“I guess Delia feels bad,” she suggested
shyly, “when she thinks about—about what
happened, you know. She don’t cry usu’lly.”

“‘I’VE GOT TWO O’ MY OWN'”

The Princess smiled again, this time directly
at Caroline, who fairly blinked in the radiance.
With her long brown eyes still holding Caroline’s
round ones, she patted Delia’s shoulder kindly,
and both children saw her chin tremble.

The General, smothered in that sudden hug,
whimpered a little and kicked out wildly with
his fat, white-stockinged legs. Seen from the
rear he had the appearance of a neat, if excited,
package, unaccountably frilled about with embroidered
flannel. Delia straightened herself,
dabbed apologetically at her eyes, and coughed.

“It’s bottle time,” she announced in horror-stricken
tones, consulting a large nickel watch
hanging from her belt, under the apron. “It’s
down in the carriage. Could I have a little
boiling water to heat it, if you please?”

“Assuredly,” said the Princess. “Ellis, will
you get the—the bottle from the baby’s carriage
and some boiling water, please. Do you
mix it here?”

“Mix—the food is all prepared, madam.”
Delia spoke with repressed scorn. “I only
want to heat it for him.”

“Oh, in that case, Ellis, take it down and have
it heated, or,” as the nurse half rose, “perhaps
you would feel better about it if you attended to
it yourself?”

“Yes, I think I will go down if you don’t
mind—when persons aren’t used to ’em they’re
apt to be a little careless, and I wouldn’t have it
break and him losing his three o’clock bottle, for
the world. You know how it is.”

The Princess shook her head whimsically.
“But surely you will leave the baby,” and she
moved toward them again. “I will hold it,”
with a half grimace at her own condescension.
“It seems so very good and cheerful—I
thought they cried. Will it come to me?”

Delia loosened her arms, but tightened them
again as the little creature leaned forward to
catch at the swinging lace on the lady’s gown.

“I—I think I’ll take baby with me. Thank
you just the same, and he’ll go to any one—yes,
indeed—but I feel sort of nervous, I think
I’d better take him. If anything should happen…. Wave
your hand good-bye, now, General!”

The General flapped his arms violently, and
bestowed a toothless but affectionate grin upon
the wearer of the fascinating, swaying lace, before
he disappeared with the delighted Ellis in
the van.

“And can you buy all that devotion for
twenty, thirty, or is it forty dollars a month, I
wonder?” mused the Princess. “Dear me,”
she added, petulantly. “It really makes one
actually want to hold it! It seems a jolly little
rat—they’re not all like that, are they? They
howl, I’m sure.”

[pg 259]
Again Miss Honey took the floor.

“When babies are sick or you don’t treat
them right,” she announced didactically, “they
cry, but not a well baby, Delia says. I”—with
conscious pride—”screamed night and
day for two weeks!”

“Really!” observed the Princess. “That
must have been—er—trying for your family!”

“Worried to death!” Miss Honey rejoined
airily, with such an adult intonation that the
Princess started.

“The General, he just laughs all the time,”
Caroline volunteered, “unless you tease him,”
she added guiltily, “and then he squawks.”

“Yes, indeed,” Miss Honey bore witness,
jealous of the lady’s flashing smile to Caroline,
“my mother says I’m twice the trouble he is!”

The Princess laughed aloud. “You’re all
trouble enough, I can well believe,” she said
carelessly, “though you particular three are
certainly amusing little duds—for an afternoon.
But for a steady diet—I’m afraid I’d
get a bit tired of you, eh?”

She tapped their cheeks lightly with a cool,
sweet-smelling finger. Miss Honey smiled uncertainly,
but Caroline edged away. There was
something about this beautiful tall lady she
could not understand, something that alternately
attracted and repelled. She was grown
up, certainly; her skirts, her size, and her coiled
hair proved that conclusively, and the servants
obeyed her without question. But what was
it? She was not like other grown-up people
one knew. One moment she sparkled at you
and the next moment she forgot you. It was
perfectly obvious that she wanted the General
only because Delia had not wanted to relinquish
him, which was not like grown people; it
was like—yes, that was it: she was like a little
girl, herself, even though she was so tall and had
such large red and blue rings on her fingers.

Vaguely this rushed through Caroline’s mind,
and it was with an unconscious air of patronage
that she said, as one making allowances for inexperience,
“When you get married, then you’ll
have to get tired of them, you know.”

“But you’ll be glad you’ve got ’em, when
they’re once in bed,” Miss Honey added encouragingly.
“My mother says I’m a real
treasure to her, after half-past seven!”

The Princess flushed; her straight dark eyebrows
quivered and met for an instant.

“But I am married,” she said.

There was an utter silence.

“I was married five years ago yesterday, as it
happens,” she went on, “but it’s not necessary
to set up a day nursery, you know, under those
circumstances.”

Still silence. Miss Honey studied the floor,
and Caroline, after an astonished stare at the
Princess, directed her eyes from one tapestry to
another.

“I suppose you understand that, don’t you?”
demanded the Princess sharply. She appeared
unnecessarily irritated, and as a matter of fact
embarrassed her guests to such an extent that
they were utterly unable to relieve the stillness
that oppressed them quite as much as herself.

The Princess uttered an angry exclamation
and paced rapidly up and down the room, looking
more regal and more unlike other people
than ever.

“For heaven’s sake, say something, you little
sillies!” she cried. “I suppose you want me to
lose my temper?”

Caroline gulped and Miss Honey examined
her shoe-ties mutely.

Suddenly a well-known voice floated toward
them.

“Was his nice bottle all ready? Wait a
minute, only a minute now, General, and
Delia’ll give it to you!”

The procession filed into the room, Delia and
the General, Ellis deferentially holding a tiny
white coat, the man in livery bearing a small
copper saucepan in which he balanced a white
bottle with some difficulty. His face was full of
anxious interest.

Delia thanked them both gravely, seated herself
on the foot of the basket-chair, arranged the
General flat across her knees, and, amid the excited
silence of her audience, shook the bottle
once or twice with the air of an alchemist on the
brink of an epoch-making discovery.

“Want it? Does Delia’s baby want it?” she
asked enticingly. The General waved his arms
and legs wildly; wreathed in smiles, he opened
and shut his mouth in quick alternation, chirping
and clucking, as she held it up before him;
an ecstatic wriggling pervaded him, and he
chuckled unctuously. A moment later only his
deep-drawn, nozzling breaths could be heard in
the room.

“He takes it beautiful,” said Delia, in low
tones, looking confidentially at the Princess.
“I didn’t know but being in a strange place
might make a difference with him, but he’s the
best-baby!——”

She wiped his mouth when he had finished,
and lifting him, still horizontal, approached her
hostess.

“You can hold him now,” she said superbly,
“but keep him flat for twenty minutes, please.
I’ll go and take the bottle down, and get his carriage
ready. He’ll be good. He’ll take a little
nap, most likely.”

She laid him across the rose-colored lap of the
Princess, who looked curiously down on him,[pg 260]
and offered him her
finger tentatively.
“I never held one
before,” she explained.
“I—I
don’t know.” …
The General smiled
lazily and patted the
finger, picking at
the great sapphire.

“How soft its
hands are,” said the
Princess. “They
slip off, they are so
smooth! And how
good—does it never
cry?” This she said
half to herself, and
Caroline and Miss
Honey, knowing
there was no need to
answer her, came
and leaned against
her knee unconsciously,
and twinkled
their fingers at
the baby.

“Hello, General!
Hello!” they cried
softly, and the General
smiled impartially
at them and
caressed the lady’s
finger.

The Princess
stroked his cheek.
“What a perfectly exquisite skin!” she said,
and bending over him, kissed him delicately.

“How good it smells—how—how different!”
she murmured. “I thought they—I
thought they didn’t.”

Miss Honey had taken the lady’s other hand,
and was examining the square ruby with a diamond
on either side.

“My mother says that’s the principal reason
to have a baby,” she remarked, absorbed in the
glittering thing. “You sprinkle ’em all over
with violet powder—just like doughnuts with
sugar—and kiss ’em. Some people think they
get germs that way, but my mother says if she
couldn’t kiss ’em she wouldn’t have ’em!”

The Princess bent over the baby again.

“It’s going to sleep here!” she said, half fearfully,
with an inquiring glance at the two.
“Oughtn’t one to rock it?”

Miss Honey shook her head severely. “Not
General,” she answered, “he won’t stand it.
My mother tried again and again—could I take
that blue ring a minute? I’d be awful careful—but
he wouldn’t.
He sits up and he
lies down, but he
won’t rock.”

“I might sing to
him,” suggested the
Princess, brushing a
damp lock from the
General’s warm forehead
and slipping
her ringless finger
into his curved fist
carefully. “Would
he like it?”

“No, he wouldn’t,”
said Miss
Honey bluntly,
twisting the ring
around her finger.
“He only likes two
people to sing—Delia
and my
mother. Was that
ruby ring a ‘ngagement
ring?”

Caroline interfered
diplomatically,
“General would
be very much
obliged,” she explained
politely,
“except that my
Aunt Deedee is a
very good singer
indeed, and Uncle
Joe says General’s
taste is ruined for just common singing.”

The Princess stared at her blankly.

“Oh, indeed!” she remarked. Then she
smiled, again in that whimsical, expressive way.
“You don’t think I could sing well enough for
him—as well as your mother?”

Miss Honey laughed carelessly. “My mother
is a singer,” she said, “a real one. She used to
sing in concerts—real ones. In theaters.
Real theaters, I mean,” as the lady appeared
to be still amused.

“If you know where the Waldorf Hotel is,”
Caroline interrupted, “she has sung in that, and
it was five dollars to get in. It was to send the
poor children to a Fresh Air Fund. It—it’s
not the same as you would sing—or me,” she
added politely.

The lady arose suddenly and deposited the
General, like a doll, with one swift motion, in
the basket-chair. Striding across the room she
turned, flushed and tall, and confronted the
wondering children.

“‘WHO—WHO—WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?’
HE WHISPERED HOARSELY”

[pg 261]
“I will sing for you,” she said haughtily,
“and you can judge better!”

With a great sweep of her half bare arm, she
brushed aside a portiére and disappeared. A
crashing chord rolled out from a piano behind
the curtains and ceased abruptly.

“What does your mother sing?” she demanded,
not raising her voice, it seemed, and
yet they heard her as plainly as when they had
leaned against her knee.

“She sings, ‘My Heart’s Own Heart,'” Miss
Honey called back defiantly.

“And it’s printed on the song, ‘To Madame
Edith Holt’!” shrilled Caroline.

The familiar prelude was played with a firm,
elastic touch, the opening chords struck, and a
great, shining voice, masterful, like a golden
trumpet, filled the room. Caroline sat dumb;
Miss Honey, instinctively humming the prelude,
got up from her foot-stool and followed the
music, unconscious that she walked. She had
been privileged to hear more good singing in her
eight years than most people in twenty-four,
had Miss Honey, and she knew that this was no
ordinary occasion. She did not know she was
listening to one of the greatest voices her country
had ever produced—perhaps in time to be
known for the head of them all—but her sensitive
little soul swelled in her, and her childish
jealousy was drowned deep in that river of wonderful
sound.

Higher and sweeter and higher yet climbed
the melody; one last triumphant leap, and it
was over.

“My heart—my heart—my heart’s own
heart!“

The Princess stood before them in the echoes
of her glory, her breath quick, her eyes brilliant.

“Well?” she said, looking straight at Miss
Honey, “do I sing as well as your mother?”

Miss Honey clenched her fists and caught her
breath. Her heart was breaking, but she could
not lie.

“You—you”—she motioned blindly to
Caroline, and turned away.

“You sing better,” Caroline began sullenly,
but the lady pointed to Miss Honey.

“No, you tell me,” she insisted remorselessly.

Miss Honey faced her.

“You—you sing better than my m—mother,”
she gulped, “but I love her better, and she’s
nicer than you, and I don’t love you at all!”

She buried her face in the red velvet throne,
and sobbed aloud with excitement and fatigue.
Caroline ran to her: how could she have loved
that cruel woman? She cast an ugly look at
the Princess as she went to comfort Miss Honey,
but the Princess was at the throne before her.

“Oh, I am abominable!” she cried. “I am
too horrid to live! It wasn’t kind of me,
chérie, and I love you for standing up for your
mother. There’s no one to do as much for me,
when I’m down and out—no one!” Sorrow
swept over her flexible face like a veil, and seizing
Miss Honey in her strong, nervous arms, she
wept on her shoulder.

Caroline, worn with the strain of the day,
wept too, and even the General, abandoned in
the great chair, burst into a tiny warning wail.

Quick as thought the Princess was upon him,
and had raised him against her cheek.

“Hush, hush, don’t cry—don’t cry, little
thing,” she whispered, and sank into one of the
high carved chairs with him.

“No, no, I’ll hold him,” she protested, as
Delia entered, her arms out. “I’m going to
sing to him. May I? He’s sleepy.”

Delia nodded indulgently. “For half an
hour,” she said, as one allowing a great privilege,
“and then we must go.”

“What do you sing to him?” the Princess
questioned humbly.

“I generally sing ‘Flow Gently Sweet Afton,'”
the nurse answered. “Do you know it?”

“I think so,” and the Princess began a sort of
glorified humming, like a great drowsy bee, all
resonant and tremulous.

Soft the great voice was, soft and widely flowing:
to Caroline, who had retreated to the further
end of the music-room, so that Delia should
not see her tears, it seemed as if Delia herself, a
wonderful new Delia, were singing her, a baby
again, to sleep. She felt soothed, cradled, protected
by that lapping sea of melody that
drifted her off her moorings, out of the room….

Vaguely she saw Miss Honey, relaxed on the
red throne, smile in her sleep, one arm falling
over the broad seat. Was it in her dream that
some one in a blue and white apron—not Delia,
for Delia was singing—leaned back slowly in
the long basket-chair and closed her tired eyes?
Who was it that held the General close in her
arms, and smiled as he patted her cheek at the
familiar song, and mumbled her fingers with
happy, cooing noises?

The General’s head was growing heavy, but
he smiled confidingly into the dark eyes above
him and stretched himself out in full-fed,
drowsy content. One hand slipped through
the lace under his cheek and rested on the
singer’s soft breast. She started like a frightened
woman, and her voice broke.

[pg 262]
Down in the hall the butler and the maid sat
on the lower stair.

“Ain’t it grand?” she whispered, and Haddock
nodded dreamily.

“Mother used to sing us that in the old country,”
he said. “There was Tom and ‘Enry an’
me—Lord, Lord!”

The General was asleep. Sometimes a tiny
frown drew his eyebrows together. Sometimes
he clenched and uncurled his warm hands.
Sometimes he sucked softly at nothing with
moist, reminiscent lips. But on and on, over
and over, rose and fell the quaint old song.

It flooded the hushed house, it spread a net of
dreams about the listening people there and
coaxed them back to childhood and a child’s
protected sleep. It seemed a song that could
not stop, that must return on its simple refrain
so long as there were arms to encircle and
breasts to lean upon.

Two men came softly up a smaller stair than
the grand entrance flight, and paused in amazement
at sight of Caroline stretched full length
across the threshold. The older and smaller of
the men had in fact stepped on her, and confused
and half awake, she listened to his apologies.

“Sh! sh!” he whispered excitedly, “not a
vordt! not a vordt! Mein Gott! but it is marvelous!
My friend, vot is this?”

He peeped behind the drawn curtains and
withdrew a face of wonder.

“It is nodding but children—and they
sleep!” he hissed. “Oh, but listen, listen!
And I offered her fifteen hundert dollars for two
hours only of that!”

The other man peeped behind the curtains in
his turn, and seizing Caroline by the arm tiptoed
with her to a farther room.

“What—who—what is the meaning of
this?” he whispered hoarsely. “That child—where——”

Caroline rubbed her eyes. The golden voice
rose and fell around her.

“General—Delia,” she muttered, and stumbled
against him. He lifted her limp little body
and laid it gently on a leather sofa.

“Another time,” he said softly to the other
man, “I—we cannot talk with you now. Will
you excuse us?”

The man looked longingly at the curtains.

“She will never do more well than that.
Never!” he hissed. “Oh, my friend, hear it
grow soft! Yes, yes, I am going.”

It seemed to Caroline that in a dream some
one with a red face and glasses askew shook her
by the shoulder and said to her sternly, “Sh!
sh! Listen to me. To-day you hear a great
artist—hey? Vill you forget it? I must go
because they do not vant me, but you vill stay
and listen. There is here no such voice. Velvet!
Honey! Sh! sh!” and he went the way
of dreams.

The man who stayed looked long through the
curtains.

As a swing droops slow and slower, as the
ripples fade from a stone thrown in the stream,
the song of the Princess softened and crooned
and hushed. Now it was a rich breath, a resonant
thread.

The man stepped across the room and sank
below the General at her feet. With her finger
on her lips she turned her eyes to his and looked
deep into them. He caught his breath with a
sob, and wrapping his arm about her as he knelt,
hid his face on her lap, against the General. She
laid her hand on his head, across the warm little
body, and patted it tenderly. Around them lay
the sleepers; the General’s soft breath was in
their ears. The man lifted his head and looked
adoringly at the Princess; her hand caressed his
cheek, but her eyes looked beyond him into the
future.

[pg 263]

AMERICAN IMPRESSIONS

BY
ELLEN TERRY

ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS AND WITH A DRAWING BY ERIC PAPE

Copyright, 1908, by Ellen Terry (Mrs. Carew)

It is only human to make comparisons between
American and English institutions,
although they are likely to turn out as
odious as the proverb says! The first institution
in America that distressed me was
the steam heat. It is far more manageable
now than it was, both in hotels and theatres,
because there are more individual heaters. But
how I suffered from it at first I cannot describe.
I used to feel dreadfully ill, and when
we could not turn the heat off at the theatre,
the play always went badly. My voice was
affected, too. At Toledo, once, it nearly
went altogether. Then the next night, after
a good fight, we got the theatre cool, and
the difference to the play was extraordinary.
I was in my best form, feeling well and
jolly!

If I did not like steam heat, I loved the ice
which is such a feature at American meals.
Everything is served on ice. I took kindly to
their dishes—their cookery, at its best, is
better than the French—and I sadly missed
planked shad, terrapin, and the oyster—at
its best and at its cheapest in America—when
I returned to England.

Travelling in America

The American hotels seemed luxurious even
in 1883; but it only takes ten years there for an
hotel to be quite done, to become old-fashioned
and useless as a rusty nail. Hotel life in
America is now the perfection of comfort.
Hotels as good as the Savoy, the Ritz, the Carlton,
and Claridge’s can be counted by the dozen
in New York, and are to be found in all the
principal cities.

I liked the travelling, but then we travelled
in a very princely fashion. The Lyceum Company
and baggage occupied eight cars, and
Henry’s private parlour-car was lovely. The
only thing that we found was better understood
in England, so far as railway travelling is concerned,
was privacy. You may have a private
car, but all the conductors on the train, and
there is one to each car, can walk through it.[pg 264]
So can any official, baggage-man, or newsboy
who has the mind!

There were, of course, people ready to say
that the Americans did not like Henry Irving as
an actor, and that they only accepted him as a
manager—that he triumphed in New York,
as he had done in London, through his lavish
spectacular effects. This is all moonshine.
Henry made his first appearance in “The
Bells,” his second in “Charles I,” his third
in “Louis XI.” By that time he had conquered,
and without the aid of anything at all
notable in the mounting of the plays. It was
not until we did “The Merchant of Venice”
that he gave the Americans anything of a
“production.”

My first appearance in America in Shakespeare
was as Portia, and I could not help feeling
pleased by my success. A few weeks later I
played Ophelia at Philadelphia. It is in
Shakespeare that I have been best liked in
America, and I consider that Beatrice was
the part about which they were most enthusiastic.

During our first tour we visited in succession
New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore,
Brooklyn, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Detroit,
and Toronto. To most of these places
we paid return visits. I think it was in Chicago
that a reporter approached Henry Irving
with the question: “To what do you attribute
your success, Mr. Irving?”

“To my acting,” was the simple reply.

HENRY IRVING AS CARDINAL WOLSEY IN “HENRY VIII.”

FROM A DRAWING BY ERIC PAPE

We never had poor houses except in Baltimore
and St. Louis. Our journey to Baltimore
was made in a blizzard. They were clearing
the snow before us all the way from New Jersey,
and we took forty-two hours to reach Baltimore.
The bells of trains before us and behind
us sounded very alarming. We opened in Baltimore
on Christmas Day. The audience was
wretchedly small, but the poor things who were
there had left their warm firesides to drive or
tramp through the slush of melting snow, and
each one was worth a hundred on an ordinary
night.

At the hotel I put up holly and mistletoe,
and produced from my trunks a real Christmas
pudding that my mother had made. We had
it for supper, and it was very good.

Burned Hare Soup and Camphor
Pudding in Pittsburg

It never does to repeat an experiment. Next
year at Pittsburg my little son Teddy brought
me out another pudding from England. For
once we were in an uncomfortable hotel, and
the Christmas dinner was deplorable. It began
with burned hare soup.

“It seems to me,” said Henry, “that we
aren’t going to get anything to eat, but we’ll
make up for it by drinking!”

He had brought his own wine out with him
from England, and the company took him at
his word and did make up for it.

“Never mind!” I said, as the soup was followed
by worse and worse. “There’s my pudding!”

It came on blazing and looked superb. Henry
tasted a mouthful.

“Very odd,” he said, “but I think this is a
camphor pudding.”

He said it so politely—as if he might easily
be mistaken. My maid in England had packed
the pudding with my furs! It simply reeked of
camphor.

So we had to dine on Henry’s wine and L. F.
Austin’s wit. This dear, brilliant man, now
dead, acted for many years as Henry’s secretary,
and one of his gifts was the happy knack
of hitting off people’s peculiarities in rhyme.
This dreadful Christmas dinner at Pittsburg
was enlivened by a collection of such rhymes,
which Austin called a “Lyceum Christmas
Play.”

Everyone roared with laughter until it
came to the verse of which he was the victim,
when suddenly he found the fun rather
laboured.

The first verse was spoken by Loveday, who
announces that the “Governor” has a new play
which is “wonderful“—a great word of Loveday’s.

George Alexander replies:

Norman Forbes:

[pg 265]
T. Mead (of whom much has already been
written in these pages):

ELLEN TERRY

FROM A PAINTING, NEVER BEFORE REPRODUCED, BY GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS

H. Howe (the “agricultural” actor, as Henry
called him):

J. H. Allen (our prompter):

ELLEN TERRY

WITH HER FOX-TERRIERS, DUMMY AND FUSSIE; FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN 1889

Louis Austin’s little “Lyceum Play” was
presented to me with a silver water-jug, a souvenir
from the company, and ended up with the
following pretty lines spoken by Katie Brown,
a clever little girl who played all the small
pages’ parts at this time:

How nice of Louis Austin! It quite made up
for my mortification over the camphor pudding!

[pg 267]

MISS ROSA CORDER

FROM THE PAINTING BY JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

Reproduced from an approved print in the possession of the Lenox Library.

[pg 268]

The Best Ophelia
of My Life

When I played
Ophelia for the first
time in Chicago, I
played the part
better than I had
ever played it before,
and I don’t believe
I ever played
it so well again.
Why, it is almost
impossible to say.
I had heard a good
deal of the crime of
Chicago, that the
people were a rough,
murderous, sand-bagging
crew. I ran
on to the stage in
the mad scene, and
never have I felt
such sympathy.
This frail wraith,
this poor demented
thing could hold
them in the hollow
of her hand! The
audience seemed to
me like wine that
I could drink, or
spill upon the
ground…. It
was splendid!
“How long can I
hold them?” I
thought. “For ever!” Then I laughed.
That was the best Ophelia laugh of my life—my
life that is such a perfect kaleidoscope,
with the people and the places turning round
and round.

At Chicago I made my first speech. The
Haverley Theatre, at which we first appeared in
1884, was altered and rechristened the “Columbia”
in 1885. I was called upon for a speech
after the special performance in honour of the
occasion, consisting of scenes from “Charles I.,”
“Louis XI.,” “The Merchant of Venice,” and
“The Bells,” had come to an end. I think it
must be the shortest speech on record:

“Ladies and Gentlemen, I have been asked to
christen your beautiful theatre. ‘Hail Columbia’!”

“Lonesome Brooklyn”

When we acted in Brooklyn, we used to stay in
New York and drive over that wonderful bridge
every night. There were no trolley cars on it
then. I shall never
forget how it looked
in winter, with the
snow and ice on
it—a gigantic trellis
of dazzling white, as
incredible as a
dream. The old
stone bridges were
works of art—this
bridge, woven of
iron and steel for a
length of over five
hundred yards, and
hung high in the air
over the water so
that great ships can
pass beneath it, is
the work of science.
It is like the work
of some impersonal
power.

SIR HENRY IRVING

FROM A SNAP-SHOT TAKEN IN THE UNITED STATES

It was during our
week at Brooklyn in
1885 that Henry was
ill, too ill to act, for
four nights. Alexander
played Benedick
and got through
it wonderfully well.
Then old Mr. Mead
did (did is the word)
Shylock. There was
no intention behind
his words or what
he did.

I had such a
funny batch of letters on my birthday that
year: “Dear, sweet Miss Terry, etc., etc.
Will you give me a piano?” etc., etc.; another:
“Dear Ellen. Come to Jesus. Mary”;
another, a lovely letter of thanks from a poor
woman in the most ghastly distress; and lastly
an offer of a two years’ engagement in America.
There was a simple coming-in for one woman
acting at Brooklyn on her birthday!

Brooklyn is as sure a laugh in New York as
the mother-in-law in a London music-hall. “All
cities begin by being lonesome,” a comedian explained,
“and Brooklyn has never got over it.”

My only complaint against Brooklyn was
that they would not take Fussie in at the hotel
there. Fussie was still my dog during the early
American tours. Later on he became Henry’s.
He had his affections alienated by a course of
chops, tomatoes, strawberries, “ladies’ fingers”
soaked in champagne, and a beautiful fur rug
of his very own presented by the Baroness Burdett-Coutts.

[pg 269]

Fussie

How did I come by
Fussie? I went to
Newmarket with
Rosa Corder, whom
Whistler painted.
She was one of those
plain-beautiful
women who are so
far more attractive
than some of the
pretty ones. She
had wonderful
hair,—like a fair,
pale veil,—a white,
waxen face, and a
very good figure;
and she wore very
odd clothes. She
had a studio in
Southampton Row,
and another at Newmarket,
where she
went to paint horses.
I went to Cambridge
once and drove back
with her across the
heath to her studio.

MISS ELLEN TERRY

FROM A SNAP-SHOT TAKEN IN THE UNITED STATES

“How wonderfully
different are
the expressions on
terriers’ faces,” I
said to her, looking
at a painting of hers
of a fox-terrier pup.
“That’s the only
sort of dog I should like to have.”

“That one belonged to Fred Archer,” Rosa
Corder said. “I daresay he could get you one
like it.”

We went out to find Archer. Curiously
enough, I had known the famous jockey at
Harpenden, when he was a little boy, and I believe
used to come round with vegetables.

“I’ll send you a dog, Miss Terry, that won’t
be any trouble. He’s got a very good head, a
first-rate tail, stuck in splendidly, but his legs
are too long. He’d follow you if you went to
America.”

Prophetic words! On one of our departures
for America, Fussie was left behind by mistake
at Southampton. He found his way back from
there to his own theatre in the Strand, London.

Fred Archer sent him originally to the stage
door at the Lyceum. The man who brought
him out to my house in Earl’s Court said:

“I’m afraid he gives tongue. Miss, he don’t
like music anyway. There was a band at the
bottom of your road,
and he started hollering.”

Fussie and
“Charles I.”

We were at luncheon
when Fussie
made his début into
the family circle,
and I very quickly
saw that his stomach
was his fault. He
had a great dislike
to “Charles I.,” we
could never make
out why. Perhaps
it was because
Henry wore armour
in one act—and
Fussie may have
barked his shins
against it. Perhaps
it was the firing off
of big guns. But
more probably it
was because the
play once got him
into trouble. As a
rule, Fussie had the
most wonderful
sense of the stage,
and at rehearsal
would skirt the edge
of it, but never cross
it. But at Brooklyn
one night when we
were playing “Charles I.,” the last act, and
that most pathetic part of it where Charles
is taking a last farewell of his wife and
children, Fussie, perhaps excited by his run
over the bridge from New York, suddenly
bounded on to the stage! The good children
who were playing Princess Mary and Prince
Henry didn’t even smile; the audience remained
solemn; but Henry and I nearly went into hysterics.
Fussie knew directly that he had done
wrong. He lay down on his stomach, then
rolled over on his back, a whimpering apology,
while carpenters kept on whistling and calling
to him from the wings. The children took him
up to the window at the back of the scene, and
he stayed there cowering between them until
the end of the play.

America seems to have been always fatal to
Fussie. Another time when Henry and I were
playing in some charity performance in which
John Drew and Maude Adams were also acting,
he disgraced himself again. Henry having[pg 270]
“done his bit” and put on hat and coat to leave
the theatre, Fussie thought the end of the performance
must have come; the stage had no
further sanctity for him, and he ran across it to
the stage door barking! John Drew and Maude
Adams were playing “A Pair of Lunatics.”
Maude Adams, sitting looking into the fire, did
not see Fussie, but was amazed to hear John
Drew departing madly from the text:

She began to think he had really gone mad!

From the collection of Robert Coster

AUGUSTIN DALY AND HIS COMPANY OF PLAYERS

ADA REHAN, MRS. GILBERT, AND JOHN DREW FORM THE GROUP DIRECTLY FACING DALY

When Fussie first came, Charlie was still
alive, and I have often gone into Henry’s dressing-room
and seen the two dogs curled up in
both the available chairs, Henry standing while
he made up, rather than disturb them!

When Charlie died, Fussie had Henry’s idolatry
all to himself. I have caught them often
sitting quietly opposite each other at Grafton
Street, just adoring each other. Occasionally
Fussie would thump his tail on the ground to
express his pleasure.

Irving’s Strategy

Wherever we went in America, the hotel people
wanted to get rid of the dog. In the paper
they had it that Miss Terry asserted that Fussie
was a little terrier, while the hotel people regarded
him as a pointer; and funny caricatures
were drawn of a very big me with a very tiny
dog, and a very tiny me with a dog the size of an
elephant. Henry often walked straight out of
an hotel where an objection was made to Fussie.
If he wanted to stay, he went in for strategy.
At Detroit the manager of the hotel said that
dogs were against the rules. Being very tired,
Henry let Fussie go to the stables for the night,
and sent Walter to look after him. The next
morning he sent for the manager.

“Yours is a very old-fashioned hotel, isn’t
it?”

“Yes, sir, very old and ancient.”

“Got a good chef? I didn’t think much of
the supper last night—but still—the beds are
comfortable enough—I am afraid you don’t
like animals?”

“Yes, sir, in their proper place.”

“It’s a pity,” said Henry meditatively, “because
you happen to be overrun by rats!”

“Sir, you must have made a mistake. Such
a thing couldn’t——”

“Well, I couldn’t pass another night here
without my dog,” Henry interrupted. “But
there are, I suppose, other hotels?”

“If it would be any comfort to you to
have your dog with you, sir, do, by all[pg 271]
means, but I assure you that he’ll catch no rat
here.”

“I’ll be on the safe side,” said Henry calmly.

And so it was settled. That very night Fussie
supped off, not rats, but terrapin and other
delicacies in Henry’s private sitting room.

Photograph by Sarony

AUGUSTIN DALY

It was the 1888 tour, the great blizzard year,
that Fussie was left behind by mistake at
Southampton. He jumped out at the station,
just outside where they stopped to collect
tickets. After this long separation, Henry
naturally thought that the dog would go nearly
mad with joy when he saw him again. He described
to me the meeting in a letter:

“My dear Fussie gave me a terrible shock on
Sunday night. When we got in, J——, H——,
and I dined at the Câfé Royale. I told Walter
to bring Fussie there. He did, and Fussie burst
into the room while the waiter was cutting some
mutton, when, what d’ye think—one bound
at me—another instantaneous bound at the
mutton, and from the mutton nothing would
get him until he’d got his plateful.

“Oh what a surprise it was indeed! He never
now will leave my side, my legs, or my presence,
but I cannot but think, alas, of that seductive
piece of mutton!”

The Death of Fussie

Poor Fussie! He met his death through the
same weakness. It was at Manchester, I think.[pg 272]
A carpenter had thrown down his coat with a
ham sandwich in the pocket, over an open trap
on the stage. Fussie, nosing and nudging after
the sandwich, fell through and was killed instantly.
When they brought up the dog after
the performance, every man took his hat off.
Henry was not
told until the
end of the play.
He took it so
very quietly
that I was
frightened, and
said to his son
Laurence, who
was on that
tour:

“Do let’s go
to his hotel and
see how he is.”

We drove
there and found
him sitting, eating
his supper,
with the poor
dead Fussie,
who would
never eat supper
any more,
curled up in his
rug on the sofa.
Henry was talking
to the dog
exactly as if it
were alive. The
next day he
took Fussie
back in the
train with him
to London, covered
with a coat.
He is buried in
the dog’s cemetery,
Hyde
Park.

His death
made an enormous
difference
to Henry.
Fussie was his
constant companion. When he died, Henry
was really alone. He never spoke of what
he felt about it, but it was easy to know.

We used to get hints how to get this and that
from watching Fussie. His look, his way of
walking! He sang, whispered eloquently and
low—then barked suddenly, and whispered
again. Such a lesson in the law of contrasts!

The first time that Henry went to the Lyceum
after Fussie’s death, every one was anxious and
distressed, knowing how he would miss the dog
in his dressing-room. Then an odd thing happened.
The wardrobe cat, who had never been
near the room in Fussie’s life-time, came down
and sat on Fussie’s cushion! No one knew how
the “Governor”
would
take it. But
when Walter
was sent out to
buy some meat
for it, we saw
that Henry was
not going to
resent it! From
that night onwards
the cat
always sat,
night after
night, in the
same place, and
Henry liked its
companionship.
In 1902, when
he left the theatre
for good, he
wrote to me:

“The place is
now given up to
the rats—all
light cut off,
and only Barry
(the stage door-keeper)
and a
foreman left.
Everything of
mine I’ve
moved away,
including the
Cat!”

Photograph by Sarony

JOHN DREW

AS PETRUCHIO IN “THE TAMING OF THE SHREW”

The Old Daly
Company

The Daly
players were a
revelation to
me of the pitch
of excellence
which American acting had reached. My
first night at Daly’s was a night of enchantment.
I wrote to Mr. Daly and said:
“You’ve got a girl in your company who is
the most lovely, humorous darling I have ever
seen on the stage.” It was Ada Rehan! Now,
of course I didn’t “discover” her or any rubbish
of that kind; the audience were already mad
about her; but I did know her for what she was,[pg 273]
even in that brilliant “all-star” company and
before she had played in the classics and got enduring
fame. The audacious, superb, quaint
Irish creature! Never have I seen such splendid
high comedy. Then the charm of her voice,—a
little like Ethel Barrymore’s when Miss
Ethel is speaking
very nicely,—her
smiles,
and dimples,
and provocative,
inviting
coquetterie! Her
Rosalind, her
Country Wife,
her Helena, her
Railroad of
Love, and above
all, her Katharine
in “The
Taming of the
Shrew!” I can
only ejaculate.
Directly she
came on I knew
how she was going
to do the
part. She had
such shy, demure
fun—she
understood, like
all great comedians,
that you
must not pretend
to be serious
so sincerely
that no one in
the audience
sees through it.

Photograph by Sarony

ADA REHAN

AS KATHARINE IN “THE TAMING OF THE SHREW”

As a woman
off the stage
Ada Rehan was
even more wonderful
than as
a shrew on. She
had a touch of
dignity, of nobility,
of
beauty, rather
like Eleonora
Duse’s. The mouth and the formation of the
eye were lovely. Her guiltlessness of make-up
off the stage was so attractive! She used to
come in to a supper with a lovely shining face
which scorned a powder-puff. The only thing
one missed was the red hair which seemed
such a part of her on the stage.

Here is a dear letter from the dear, written in
1890:

“My dear Miss Terry:

“Of course, the first thing I was to do when I
reached Paris was to write and thank you for
your lovely red feathers. One week is gone.
To-day it rains and I am compelled to stay at
home, and at last I write. I thought you had
forgotten me
and my feathers
long ago. So
imagine my delight
when they
came at the
very end. I
liked it so. It
seemed as if I
lived all the
time in your
mind; and they
came as a good-bye.

“I saw but
little of you,
but in that little
I found no
change. That
was gratifying
to me, for I am
over-sensitive,
and would never
trouble you if
you had forgotten
me. How I
shall prize those
feathers—Henry
Irving’s
presented by
Ellen Terry to
me for my
Rosalind Cap.
I shall wear
them once and
then put them
by as treasures.
Thank you so
much for the
pretty words
you wrote me
about ‘As You
Like It.’ I was
hardly fit on
that matinée. The great excitement I went
through during the London season almost
killed me. I am going to try and rest,
but I fear my nerves and heart won’t let
me.

“You must try and read between the lines
all I feel. I am sure you can if anyone ever did;
but I cannot put into words my admiration for
you—and that comes from deep down in my[pg 274]
heart. Good-bye, with all good wishes for your
health and success.

“I remain,

“Yours most affectionately,
“Ada Rehan”

I wish I could just once have played with Ada
Rehan. When Mr. Tree could not persuade
Mrs. Kendal to come and play in “The Merry
Wives of Windsor” a second time, I hoped that
Ada Rehan would come and rollick with me as
Mrs. Ford,—but it was not to be.

From the collection F. H. Meserve

HELENA MODJESKA

Mr. Daly himself interested me greatly. He
was an excellent manager, a man in a million.
But he had no artistic sense. The
productions of Shakespeare at Daly’s were
really bad from the pictorial point of view.
But what pace and “ensemble” he got from his
company!

May Irwin was the low comedian who played
the servants’ parts in Daly’s comedies from
the German. I might describe her—except
that she was far more genial—as a kind of
female Rutland Barrington. On and off the
stage her geniality distinguished her like a
halo. It is a rare quality on the stage, yet
without it the comedian has up-hill work.
Generous May Irwin! Lucky those who have
her warm friendship and jolly, kind companionship!

The John Drew Family

John Drew, the famous son of a famous
mother, was another Daly player whom I loved.
With what loyalty he supported Ada Rehan!
He never played for his own hand, but for the
good of the piece. His mother, Mrs. John
Drew, had the same quiet methods as Mrs.
Alfred Wigan. Everything that she did told.
I saw Mrs. Drew play Mrs. Malaprop, and it
was a lesson to people who overact. Her
daughter, Georgie Drew, Ethel Barrymore’s
mother, was also a charming actress. Maurice
Barrymore was a brilliantly clever actor. Little
Ethel, as I still call her, though she is a big
“star,” is carrying on the family traditions.
She ought to play Lady Teazle. She may take
it from me that she would make a success
in it.

Modjeska, who, though she is a Polish actress,
is associated with the American stage, made
a great impression on me. She was exquisite
in many parts, but in none finer than in
“Adrienne Lecouvreur.” Her last act electrified
me. I have never seen it better acted,
although I have seen all the great ones do it
since. Her Marie Stuart, too, was a beautiful
and distinguished performance. Her Juliet had
lovely moments, but I did not so much care
for that, and her broken English interfered with
the verse of Shakespeare. Some years ago I[pg 275]
met Modjeska and she greeted me so warmly
and sweetly, although she was very ill.

During my more recent tours in America,
Maude Adams is the actress of whom I have
seen most, and “to see her is to love her!” In
“The Little Minister” and in “Quality Street”
I think she is at her best, but above all parts
she herself is most adorable. She is just worshipped
in America, and has an extraordinary
effect—an educational effect—upon all American
girlhood.

Mary Anderson

From the collection of Robert Coster

MARY ANDERSON

I never saw Mary Anderson act. That seems
a strange admission, but during her wonderful
reign at the Lyceum Theatre, which she rented
from Henry Irving, I was in America, and
another time when I might have seen her act,
I was very ill and ordered abroad. I have,
however, had the great pleasure of meeting her
and she has done me many little kindnesses.
Hearing her praises sung on all sides, and her
beauties spoken of everywhere, I was particularly
struck by her modest evasion of publicity
off the stage. I personally only knew her as a
most beautiful woman—as kind as beautiful—constantly
working for her religion—always
kind, a good daughter, a good wife, a good
woman.

She cheered me before I sailed for America
by saying that her people would like me.

“Since seeing you in Portia and Letitia,” she
wrote, “I am convinced you will take America
by storm.” Certainly she took England by
storm! But she abandoned her triumphs
almost as soon as they were gained. They
never made her happy, she once told me, and I
could understand her better than most, since I[pg 276]
had had success too, and knew that it did not
mean happiness.

Henry and I were so fortunate as to gain the
friendship and approval of Dr. Horace Howard
Furness, perhaps the finest Shakespearean
scholar in America, and editor of the Variorum
Shakespeare, which Henry considered the best
of all editions—”the one which counts.” It
was in Boston, I think, that I disgraced myself
at one of Dr. Furness’ lectures. He was discussing
“As You Like It” and Rosalind, and
proving with much elaboration that English in
Shakespeare’s time was pronounced like a broad
country dialect, and that Rosalind spoke Warwickshire!
A little girl who was sitting in the
front of me had lent me her copy of the play a
moment before, and now, absorbed in Dr. Furness’
argument, I forgot the book wasn’t mine
and began scrawling controversial notes in it
with my very thick and blotty fountain pen.

“Give me back my book! Give me my
book!” cried the little girl. “How dare you
write in my book!” she cried with rage.

Her mother tried to hush her up: “It’s Miss
Ellen Terry.”

“I don’t care! She’s spoilt my nice book!”

I am glad to say that when the little girl
understood, she forgave me. Still, it was dreadful
of me and I did feel ashamed at the time.

From the collection of F. H. Meserve

JOSEPH JEFFERSON AS RIP VAN WINKLE

Joseph Jefferson

In November, 1901, I wrote in my diary:
“Philadelphia. Supper at Henry’s. Jefferson
there, sweeter and more interesting than ever—and
younger.”

Dear Joe Jefferson—actor, painter, courteous
gentleman, profound student of Shakespeare!
When the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy
was raging in America (it really did rage
there!) Jefferson wrote the most delicious
doggerel about it. He ridiculed, and his ridicule
killed the Bacon enthusiasts all the more
dead because it was barbed with erudition.

He said that when I first came into the box
to see him as “Rip,” he thought I did not like
him, because I fidgetted and rustled and moved
my place, as is my wicked way. “But I’ll get
her, and I’ll hold her,” he said to himself. I
was held indeed—enthralled!

The Night of the Great Blizzard

Our first American tours were in 1883-1884;
the third was in 1887-88, the year of the great
blizzard. We were playing in New York when
the storm began, and Henry came to fetch us
at half-past ten in the morning. His hotel was
near the theatre where we were to play at
night. He said the weather was stormy, and
we had better make for his hotel while there
was time. The German actor, Ludwig Barnay,
was to open in New York that night, but the
blizzard affected his nerves to such an extent
that he did not appear at all and returned to
Germany directly the weather improved!

Most of the theatres closed for three days,
but we remained open, although there was a
famine in the town and the streets were impassable.
The cold was intense. Henry sent
Walter out to buy some violets for Barnay, and
when he brought them in to the dressing-room—he
had only carried them a few yards—they
were frozen so hard that they could have
been chipped with a hammer.

We rang up on “Faust” three-quarters of an
hour late. This was not bad, considering all
things. Although the house was sold out,
there was hardly any audience, and only a harp
and two violins in the orchestra. But discipline
was so strong in the Lyceum Company that
every member of it reached the theatre by eight
o’clock, although some of them had had to walk
from Brooklyn Bridge. The Mayor of New
York and his daughter managed to reach their
box somehow. Then we thought it was time
to begin. A few members of Daly’s company,
including John Drew, came in, and a few
friends. It was the oddest, sparsest audience!
But the enthusiasm was terrific.

Five years went by before we visited America
again. Five years in a country of rapid changes
is a long time, long enough for friends to forget.
But they didn’t forget. This time we made
new friends, too, in the Far West. We went to
San Francisco, among other places. We attended
part of a performance at the Chinese
theatre. Oh, those rows of impenetrable faces
gazing at the stage with their long, shining, inexpressive
eyes. What a look of the everlasting
the Chinese have! “We have been before
you—we shall be after you,” they seem to say.

The chief incident of the fifth American tour
was our production at Chicago of Laurence
Irving’s one-act play “Godefroi and Yolande.”
I regard that little play as an inspiration. By
instinct the young author did everything right.

In 1900-1 I was ill and hated the parts I was
playing in America. The Lyceum was not
what it had been. Everything was changed.

In 1907—only the other day—I toured in
America for the first time on my own account—playing
modern plays for the first time. I
made new friends and found my old ones still
faithful.

But this tour was chiefly momentous to me
because at Pittsburg I was married for the
third time, and married to an American, Mr.
James Usselman of Indiana, who acts under the
name of James Carew.

[pg 277]

THE HERITAGE OF HAM

BY
LIEUTENANT HUGH M. KELLY, U. S. A.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ARTHUR S. COVEY

“To be hanged by the neck until
dead.” Well, no one was surprised.
It was a foregone conclusion.
Desertion to the enemy
in time of war is one of the crimes
military that cuts a man off from any chance
for clemency. When he lifts his hands against
his former comrades, he is as one already dead;
that is, if he is caught. Private Wilson made
the fatal mistake of being caught. The result
was inevitable.

Though Private Wilson was expecting these
very words, the sound of them, cutting the
absolute silence, sent a cold contraction to his
heart, and his thick lips drew themselves over
his white teeth. Doubtless, if it had been possible,
he would have turned pale; but since he
was as black as the proverbial ace of spades,
this was out of the question. Private Wilson
belonged to the 19th Cavalry, which, as the
initiated know, is a negro regiment.

There was no movement in the still line of the
squadron when the fatal order was read, except
a slight tremor, almost imperceptible, like the
first faint rustling of leaves in the dead quiet
that precedes a storm. Then from the right of
“B” Troop there came a deep, indrawn breath,
and the first sergeant’s horse sprang sideways,
in amazement, against that of the guidon. The
animal was accustomed to being treated as
tenderly as an infant, and now, for no fault
whatever, he had received a rough pressure
from his rider’s knees, and a sharp dig from the
spurs. The first sergeant was old Jeremiah
Wilson, and the prisoner, standing to the
“front and center” in the gathering dusk, and
hearing his fate pronounced, was Jeremiah’s son.

Sergeant Wilson was the one man in the
squadron who had hoped against hope, and now
that hope was dead. It died hard, and its
death was recorded in that contraction of the
knees and dig of the spurs. The guidon paid
no attention. In his heart he believed that the
sentence was just; but his pity went out to the
old soldier on his right. His eyes, however,
were fixed on Private Wilson, as were those of
the rest of the squadron. The prisoner had acquired
a new status. Here was a human being
within two weeks of the solution of the greatest
of all mysteries. He was worth looking at.
The condemned man saw the interest shown in
him, and, upheld by the feeling of self-importance
inherent in the negro character, and
always brought to the surface by applause or
other manifestation of unusual attention, bore
himself jauntily.

There was nothing of this to sustain his
old father. He had participated in executions
before. For him there were no visions of walking
to death with a “firm tread,” as the papers
say, and “dying game” before the admiring
eyes of soldiers and natives. With him it was
steel-ribbed facts. He could hear the bang of
the trap, the snap of the rope, and the quivering
creak of the scaffold. And afterward, the
lonely, hopeless years. Besides, the dishonor
of it. What irony to parade with thirty years
of service chevrons on his sleeves, and be
pointed out as the father of a man hanged for
deserting to the Filipinos!

The officers went to the front and center and
the formation was over. Private Wilson departed
to his closely guarded prison, and old
Jeremiah took the troop to quarters and dismissed
it. For the first time in twenty years
he forgot to “open chamber and magazine,” and
publish the details for the next day. He
wanted to be alone; away from the pitying eyes
of the black men of the troop.

He had honestly believed that there were
grounds for hope. He could not see now, in the
face of the evidence, how the court could have
given “Buff” the extreme penalty. He thought
he had explained the circumstances so clearly.
Hadn’t he told the tribunal of the baleful influence
of Mercedes Martinez? how this mestiza,
had lured his boy to his downfall? He thought
he had shown positively, by his testimony, that[pg 278]
this woman had terrible “voodoo” powers and
had conjured “Buff.” Hadn’t they apparently
listened with wonder while he related the
charms that had been brought to bear on his
son? the devils that had pursued him; the angels
that had beckoned him away to the hills; the
divine call he had received to be the George
Washington of the Filipinos, and lead them to
freedom?

“ALL DAY LONG OLD SERGEANT WILSON SAT IN THE CORNER OF THE SQUAD ROOM, CLASPING
AND UNCLASPING HIS STRAINING HANDS”

The old soldier’s pride in his son’s physical
perfection had always blinded him to the fact
that the private was constantly in trouble, and
was known as a “bad egg.” If any one had
told him that he was an object of pity because
of his boy’s worthlessness, he would have sputtered
with indignation. He never realized that
Buff escaped many a “bawling out” because the
officers respected the father’s long years of faithful
service and did not want to humiliate him.
He knew that his boy flew high occasionally,
but that was because he was “jess nachally
sprightly and full o’ devilment.” No one could
deny that Private Wilson was one of the finest
animals, physically, that ever wore the uniform;
or that he had gained a wide reputation among
his comrades and the Filipinos on account of
his terrible abilities in a hand-to-hand engagement.
It was this very notoriety that had attracted
the insurgents’ attention to him, and led
to his downfall.

[pg 279]

“CABLE THE PRESIDENT! WHAT A JOKE!”

The little brown men stood in awe of this
black demon, and wanted him on their side.
His military training and reputation as a fighter
would be of inestimable value. With their
usual craft the insurgent officials went about to
wean the soldier from his allegiance, and by the
aid of the mestiza beauty, Mercedes Martinez,
succeeded in their purpose. Between retreat
and reveille of one July night, Private Wilson,
led by visions of love and a brigadier-general’s
star, took to the hills. He longed to emulate
the black renegade, Fagan, but having none of
Fagan’s “foxiness” or ability, he was soon laid
by the heels. Men of his own squadron took
him. He demanded at first to be treated as
befitted his rank; but none of his self-importance
went with his black captors. “We’ll
brigidiale-gene’al yer, yer black scound’al,”
they remarked cheerfully, as they stripped off
his tinsel stars. “Yer oughter be lynched.”

They “Gen’al Wilsoned” him until he was
sick of it and begged them to stop. Then,
when they got back to the station, they popped
him into the “jigger” along with privates
charged with sassing the cook and other heinous
offenses—a most humiliating experience
for a brigadier general. Now he must die;
and it came to him that it was as hard
for a general officer to die as ever it was for a
private.

[pg 280]

“THE CIRCLE CLOSED IN AS THE SEA SURGES UP UPON THE LAND”

[pg 281]
When his son had disappeared, old Sergeant
Wilson had borne himself proudly, even in the
face of rumors and insinuations. His boy
would not desert. That he might have gone
outside the lines to see some “lady friend” and
been captured, yes; but no desertion. Even
when tales of his lurid doings out in the province
began to come in, old Jeremiah had not faltered
in his faith. They were lies, all of them, or it
was some other man. Nor when Buff was
taken, with his patent-leather boots and tin
stars, was the old man shaken; for the explanation
that the private gave as to how he had
been conjured was easier for Wilson to believe
than that his “baby” had been false to his salt.
But now the case was different. The disgrace
of being parent to a “bobtailed” and condemned
criminal was as the bitterness of
death.

Up to now, for all his hard sixty years of life,
he had carried himself like a lance. The whiteness
of age in his woolly hair was not reflected
in the iron spirit that upheld his wrinkled body.
But the shame of those words spoken on parade
had undone that, as suddenly as ashes crumble
before the touch.

The days immediately following the publishing
of Buff’s sentence were nightmares of pain
and humiliation. The old negro could hardly
bring himself to go to headquarters at first
sergeant’s call. When he did go, he moved
heavily, like a man asleep, and with his eyes
fixed on the ground, that he might not meet the
curious, pitying glances of his fellow soldiers.

After a week of this, old Jeremiah began to
make mistakes at drill and mistakes in his troop
papers; a thing hitherto unknown. Finally
Lieutenant Perkins, the troop commander, lost
his patience at some bull the old sergeant made,
and called him down roughly, in the presence of
the troop.

“Look here, Sergeant Wilson, I won’t have
any more of this. I’ll bust you higher than a
kite. I don’t care if you’ve had fifty years of
service. If you are mooning about that worthless
boy of yours, you had better get over it.
It’s a damn good riddance, and you know it as
well as I do. You’ll have to take a brace or
something will drop.”

If Perkins had not been born several degrees
north of Mason and Dixon’s line he would have
known better than that; as it was, he did not
understand these negroes. He hadn’t the faintest
conception of how to handle these simple-hearted
black men. He was not popular with
them at any time, and this unheard-of piece
of cruelty cut every tender-hearted trooper as
deeply as if it had been aimed at him personally.
This was the first break, and, as a consequence,
something did drop, in a way that Perkins
hardly expected.

The old sergeant made no reply to this reprimand,
but simply stood at attention, though
his black, weazened face worked and his lips
trembled. It was the first time since he was a
buck private that he had been spoken to in such
a manner. For the first time, the yoke of discipline
galled him. The bitterness of his inferiority
and servitude was as wormwood within
him. The harsh injustice of such treatment in
this, his black hour, after years of faithful work,
aroused in him a demon of resentment that
made him long to strike back.

The occurrence startled him from his lethargy.
He suddenly realized that his son’s few
remaining hours on earth were slipping by, and
the boy had not been comforted. When this
came to him, his self-reproach cut him sharply,
and he resolved to make amends at once. He obtained
permission from the officer of the day, and
that evening, after retreat, went to see Buff.

He found the general plucked of his plumage.
The prospect of death so close to him had
narrowed the black boy’s perspective. “The
worldly hope men set their hearts upon” had
turned ashes, and it were hard to find “a man
who looked so wistfully on the day” as this
doomed soldier. He wanted to live. Every
atom of animal strength in his perfect body
was charged with a desire to exist. This living,
day after day, in close proximity to the grave
had tended to a simplification of ideas. He had
harked back to childhood, and when his father
came, the prisoner, in his clanking irons, turned
to him as a pickaninny might have done for
protection from some bugaboo.

Old Jeremiah sat on the cot, while Buff occupied
a small stool directly in front of him. They
talked in low tones, of ordinary subjects, at first;
then gradually went back through the years.
The white-haired old negro and the young soldier
both smiled as they recalled childish escapades
of the latter, ‘way back in “God’s
country.” They lost themselves in reminiscence,
and forgot the present, until the wan
moon, coming up, cast the shadows of the bars
in the window across them. Then with a shiver
they remembered.

Suddenly the private began to talk of his
death, and as he spoke the terror of it grew on
him. This man, known to have killed more
than one American soldier and to be absolutely
fearless in battle, quaked with abject fright.
He would contend gladly in a contest against
hopeless odds; but at the thought of his end
creeping on him thus, slowly, inexorably his
soul writhed in terror. He leaned forward and
pressed his face on his father’s knees.

[pg 282]
“Oh, paw, ain’t yer gwine ter help me? Won’t
you do somethin’ fer me? Ah doan’ wanter die
yit. Tain’t my time ter die. Ah nevah meant
no hahm, paw. Ef they’ll just give me one
moah chanst, ah’ll do anything they say.
Honest, ah will. Gawd! paw, yer ain’t gwine
ter let ’em kill me, is yer?”

The soldier raised his head and looked into
the sergeant’s black face as though the latter
were omnipotent, and only had to say the word
to make him free. Then, with a shivering sigh,
he laid his head on his father’s knees again.

“Sh—sh,” the old sergeant said softly,
“Sh—sh”; and that was all he could do; but
his wrinkled hand wandered tenderly over the
prisoner’s black, kinky hair, and tears rolled
down his seamed face.

When Buff’s panic wore off a bit, he was made
to lie down, and Jeremiah, sitting beside him,
crooned softly, as the old black mammies
do to the little children. By the time call to
quarters sounded, the condemned man’s quiet
breathing told that his earthly troubles were
forgotten, for a time at least.

After this visit, Sergeant Wilson’s apparent
neglect of his duties became more pronounced
than ever. The simplest orders and directions
received from his troop’s commander, he either
forgot to perform or executed in such a bunglesome
manner as to drive Lieutenant Perkins’
irritable nature to the verge of hysteria. The
latter, with his narrow sympathies, could make
no allowance for the old negro’s state of mind,
and his “roasts” became more frequent and
rougher with each repetition. The sergeant
took it all with apparent resignation; but within
him the troubled spirit was surging to and fro.
How could he be expected to copy troop returns
and muster rolls, with that cry—”Gawd,
paw, yer ain’t gwine ter let ’em kill me, is yer?”
ringing in his ears, hour by hour? It was the
unfairness of it that aroused his resentment.

If the “ole Cap’n” were only here, all would
be well. It was another cruel stroke that he
should be absent on detached service just when
Jeremiah needed him most.

Soldiers are a peculiar breed. They are more
nearly like children in certain characteristics
than any other class of men. They are so accustomed
to being taken care of by their officers
that they look to the latter for everything.
When they find one who they know will stand
up for them, and whom they can trust, their
faith and confidence in him are absolute. They
will follow him through fire and flood, and obey
any order that he may give, in the blind belief
that he knows what is best for them. This is
true of white soldiers, and much more so of the
darkies. This is the feeling that old Jeremiah
and the men of the troop held for Captain
North, whom they all called the “ole Cap’n.”

In all the years these two had served together,
since the battle of the Rosebud, when
Lieutenant John T. North earned a medal of
honor for “bringing in Private J. Wilson, 19th
Cavalry, who was wounded, under a heavy fire
from the Indians, at the imminent risk of his
own life,” the sergeant had never received a
harsh word or a rebuke that he did not know
was merited. But the sullen fury that this
young prig aroused in him was unbearable. He
felt that his inherent subordination to discipline
was being torn to shreds.

This went on for three days. The discipline
in the troop was growing ragged with startling
rapidity, and Perkins felt it. The men, under
the constant abuse heaped upon one whom they
respected and pitied, were growing sullen and
restive. Each of these soft-hearted troopers
was gradually acquiring and nursing a personal
grudge. They were forgetting their ideas of
the fitness of things. They lost sight of everything
except a clearly monumental piece of injustice.

Instead of meeting the issue fairly, and acknowledging
the error of his position, Perkins
became obstinately harsher and harsher. Not
only was he unnecessarily abusive to old Jeremiah,
but his treatment of the whole troop was
stern to a degree. Finally, on this third day,
after a violent harangue in presence of the
troop, he reduced the old negro from first sergeant
to sergeant.

This was the second break, and when Perkins
went that morning to inspect the old church
that served as quarters, he found the men congregated
in little groups in the squad room.
There was not the usual loud-voiced chatter
and laughter, but a sullen murmur that dropped
to quick silence when he entered. This was
bad. There was nothing specific, but he instinctively
felt that he was losing his hold. He
chafed to do something to “smash these niggers,”
but there was nothing to seize upon; so
he swore at a man loudly for not having his
clothing arranged properly, and ordered him to
the guard-house. When the officer left, the
same ominous murmur arose in the quarters.

It was evident, also, that outside influences
were beginning to work—the sign of the Katapunan.
There was hardly a man in “B”
Troop but had his querida or sweetheart among
the native women. As one of the black soldiers
remarked: “Ef de gem’men Filypinos had ‘a’
been as complacent as de ladies, der nevah
would ‘a’ bin no insurrecshun nohow.” In their
off hours the men, in their grim anger, confided
their troubles to these dusky females, and[pg 283]
the crafty women began to work upon the spirit
of rebellion amongst the simple colored soldiers.

Why did they submit themselves to such a
wretch as this Teniente Perkins? Why didn’t
they show him that they were men to be feared?
Why did they allow that magnificent black
comrade, Wilson, to be hanged, without making
an effort to save him; when doing so would be
the one thing that would make Teniente Perkins
wild with rage? They were too cunning to
urge open mutiny, but the seed they sowed gave
growth to thought.

The darkies of “B” Troop were, first of all,
soldiers. Subordination to the wills of their
superiors was ingrained in their natures. They
did not want to “buck,” but it seemed as if the
troop commander were trying to force them to
rebel. They endeavored to forget the words
of the Filipino women; but how could they,
when all day long old Sergeant Wilson sat in the
corner of the squad room, clasping and unclasping
his straining hands; while on his sleeves
were the marks where his first sergeant’s chevrons
had been ripped off?

Two more days dragged by, and conditions
in the troop grew worse. Perkins had heard
some loud-mouthed private baying forth incendiary,
not to say uncomplimentary remarks;
had placed the troop on the straight ration, and
suppressed the pass list. The men wandered
about the quarters with a nervous, preoccupied
air. They did not look at each other. They
felt that if they gave rein to their feelings, something
horrible would happen. They did not
want it to happen; they wanted to be good soldiers.
But this man was forcing them; forcing
their hands. There is a limit to everything.
What he had done was nothing if they had deserved
it. It was the rank injustice that made
them furious. They felt that they must have
some escape for their feelings or they would
burst through the bonds. Consequently, when
Sergeant Potter broached his scheme, they
hailed it with acclamation. A little conference
was held in one end of the quarters, and after it
was over Potter went to speak to old Jeremiah.

The ex-first sergeant had taken no part in
the proceedings—in fact, he knew nothing of
them. He had stayed in his corner, where he
had sat for the last three days, with his eyes
fixed on the floor, clasping and unclasping his
hands. Sergeant Potter sat down on a bunk
beside him and touched him on the shoulder.
The old man started.

“Look a yere, sarge, yer oughter take a brace.
Me and the res’ of de boys is mighty sorry fer
yer—we showly is. But yer mussent grieve
so, cause yer showly gwineter be sick ef yer
does.”

“I’se obleeged to yer, Potter, you and de
boys.”

“Yes, suh, me an de boys feels mighty bad
cause yer got busted, an’—an’ about the other
things. Ef yer’ll ‘scuse me, sarge, fer talkin’
about it, we wondered ef dere wahnt somethin’
yer could do fur—fur Buff.”

Seeing the drawn look come back to the older
man’s face, Potter continued hurriedly——

“Thar now, sarge, I’se powerful sorry ef I’se
hu’t yoh feelin’s, but me an’ de boys thought
ef yer’d telegraph to Division Headquatahs,
dey might do somethin’. ‘Twon’t do no hahm,
nohow.”

He then went on and talked in such a persuasive
strain that, in spite of his common-sense,
a gleam of hope began to burn in Jeremiah’s
eyes. Yes, it would cost something,
but the boys had got together a little purse to
defray the expenses of the telegram. This
could be turned over to the Lieutenant, who
would doubtless have no difficulty in getting
the necessary permission from the squadron
commander. The old man had been inactive
and without hope for so long that the idea of
any effort embracing a chance of success
aroused in him a fierce energy. Once persuaded,
he was impatient to be at work. If
anything were to be done, it must be done at
once. In the next day and the next, Private
Wilson’s sands would have run out.

It was apparently a good omen that Lieutenant
Perkins should walk into the quarters
while they were talking. Potter and Jeremiah
went to him without loss of time and respectfully
broached their request. The rest of the
men stood around at attention, trying to look
as though they were not listening, but straining
their ears to catch every word. The officer
heard them through, and then burst out impatiently——

“Well, of all the wild-cat schemes I ever
heard of, that is the worst. The idea, Wilson,
of a man of your length of service proposing
such a thing. Hanging is too good for that son
of yours, and you know it. I’ll have nothing to
do with this, and don’t want to hear any more
of it. That’ll do now.”

The silence that followed these words was
silence indeed. Every man in the room caught
them, and there was not one of the fifty present
who did not feel a hot, uncomfortable throbbing
at his temples.

In the old sergeant, the last connecting link
of discipline was strained nearly to the breaking
point. An angry gleam appeared in his eyes,
and he said in a low, shaking voice:

“Ve’ly well, Suh, I shall go to de commandin’
officah.”

[pg 284]
“All right, you can do as you please about
that; but you will hear from it,” and Perkins
walked into the orderly room, where he
proceeded to make life miserable for the subdued
wretch who was acting first sergeant of the
troop.

In a few minutes the commanding officer’s
orderly presented the commanding officer’s
compliments to Lieutenant Perkins, and informed
him that the commanding officer would
like to see him at the office.

Major Don Carlos Bliss, who was known
throughout the service as a splendid soldier, did
not think much of Perkins. He had had his
eye on “B” Troop lately, and did not like the
looks of things a little bit. He was a man of
strong convictions and never hesitated to
express them. He had known old Jeremiah
Wilson for years, and when he learned of the
latter’s reduction, his opinion that Perkins
was a fool was duly confirmed. He knew
that much of the lieutenant’s irritability was
due to “nerves” acquired by a steady and conscientious
course of drinking, with which procedure
he had no patience.

Perkins, when he entered, found the sergeant
standing at the desk.

“Mr. Perkins,” the Major said shortly, “while
Sergeant Wilson’s request is a little out of the
ordinary, I have no objection to his sending a
telegram through this office. I can put no
recommendation for clemency in it, however,
for I consider the sentence a just one. When
you get this message drafted the way Sergeant
Wilson wants it, bring it to me, and let me see
it, and,” he concluded, looking Perkins steadily
in the eye from under his bushy brows, “I advise
you to do it at once.”

The telegram went that afternoon. The plea
for clemency was based, principally, upon Sergeant
Wilson’s years of faithful service, and the
fact that his son was too young to appreciate
the enormity of his crime.

Twenty-four hours passed, and there was no
answer to the message. In that time Sergeant
Jeremiah Wilson drank deeply of the bitter cup.
He had aged suddenly in the last two weeks.
Brooding in the hot, sticky, tropical days is not
good for a man, especially when that man is
no longer young. Shapes and shadows in the
brain grow rapidly, and soon assume enormous
proportions. Now the fluctuating tides of
hope and despair gnawed steadily at the weakened
foundation of his reason. The men of the
troop were more restless and ill at ease than
ever. They had lost sight of the fact that the
prisoner’s guilt was as black as the mouth of the
pit. All they saw was a darky soldier clinging
tenaciously to his life, and the agony of that
darky’s father. Each sympathetic trooper had
begotten a personal interest that ruled him completely.
Besides, the mad hatred they bore
Perkins and the hope of backsetting him led
them on. Shapes and shadows were growing
in their minds also.

Twenty-seven hours after the appeal was sent
to Division Headquarters a signal corps private
walked into “B” Troop’s barracks and asked
for Sergeant Jeremiah Wilson. When the latter
was pointed out, the man handed him the
familiar yellow envelope, with the crossed signal
flags on the cover, and the burning torch. An
instant quiet fell in the room, as Jeremiah received
the crackling paper. He took it deliberately,
and with trembling fingers fumbled for
his glasses. Deliberately he put them on, and
deliberately abstracted the message from the
envelope, while the silent troopers watched him
with fascinated gaze. He unfolded the paper
and stared at it, then, taking off his glasses,
wiped them and stared again; but it was no use,
the mist dimmed the lenses.

“Heah, Potter, you read hit,” he said finally
with unsteady voice. “De light’s too bad. Ah
can’t see.”

Sergeant Potter took the telegram and spelled
it out slowly:

Manila, P. I., Oct. 2, 1900.
5.30 p.m.

Sergeant J. Wilson,
Tr, “B,” 19th Cav.

(Thro the Commanding Officer Guinibongbong, P. I.)

The Division Commander will take no action nor
grant any delay in case of Private B. Wilson,
Nineteenth Cavalry. Has no objection to laying of
case before President provided cable is without expense
to government. Upon receipt of cable through
this office indicating that such action is contemplated
order of suspension will be issued.

By order Major General Wheatley,
Castin, Adjutant General.

So that was the end of it. The irony, the
humor of giving permission to lay the case before
the President; by cable, too, with cable-grams
only costing fifty cents a word! What
magnanimity, what sarcasm, in sending such
permission to a negro sergeant drawing twenty-six
dollars a month! It would have been better
for Jeremiah’s peace of mind if that part had
been left out. After it was over, and in the
years to come, he would never be able to escape
the thought that one thing more might have
been done to save Buff’s life—that once chance
was left untried because of the lack of a few
paltry dollars. Potter handed back the telegram
slowly, and Jeremiah walked out into the
darkness to fight his fight alone.

The sergeant stopped on the small stone porch
and looked out into the town plaza. The clouds[pg 285]
were low and dark in the late twilight, and as he
stood, a few big drops fell, slowly increasing
until there was a heavy down-pour. The rains
had come, and soon the monotonous roar on the
metal roofs, steady as the beating of a giant
heart, told that the earth was receiving its
semi-annual deluge.

Jeremiah stood in a small niche where he was
partially exposed to the rain. When it and
the water from a broken gutter, striking a balustrade
beside him, splashed him with fine
spray, he made no effort to move. Why should
he care? He was only a worthless old nigger.
A little wetness more or less would make no difference.
A carelessness for all things earthly
and pertaining to his own worn-out old body
grew upon him. Then he suddenly ceased to
think of himself. The sound of the rain in his
ears seemed to be boring into his brain. Steady,
inexorable, unanswerable as fate, it weighed
upon him like a giant hand, and it came to him
that he was comparing that roar to the death
that was approaching his son.

When old Jeremiah left the squad room, there
had been general silence for a time, and then
events began to move rapidly, as they continued
to do until the end of this peculiar episode.
Sergeant Potter stood for a moment, with his
hands behind his back, gazing at the floor, then
he looked up, and cried out to the whole room:

“Look a heah, boys, is yer gwine ter be beat
dis a way? Is yer gwine ter tuck yer tails
atween yer laigs, and say ‘let ‘er go!’ as long as
dere is a chanst? Is yer goin’ to ‘low dat
monkey-faced lootinint to grin at yer sarcastic?
Yer know me. I’se as strong fur discipline as
any pu’son; but dere’s a eend to every man’s
patience.” He jerked a hat off a bunk near
him, and threw it down. “Dis is all de dough
I got in de worl’,” he said, holding up two silver
dollars, “but she’ll send fo’ words to de Presydent
of dese United States, so heah she goes,”
and he tossed them into the hat at his feet.
“Come on, boys, dem as wants to be high-tone
and pass de time o’ day with de Presydent, chip
in.”

As soon as they grasped the idea, the appeal
was effectual. Out came all the cash the black
men had. It was mostly Mex. medio pesos
and pesetas, for “pay day, pay day” had not
sounded for over a month. The silver jingled
merrily into the hat, and the affair became a
sort of jollification, each man vying with the
others to see how much more he could “dig up.”
Their volatile natures, guided solely by impulse
and an undercurrent of generosity, led them to
give all they had without thinking. Man after
man, in high good-humor, plunged his hands
into some corner of his box locker and raked up
little hoards of cash that he had saved for tobacco,
soap, and such necessities. However,
when the silver was poured on the bed and
counted, Sergeant Potter scratched his woolly
head.

“Tain’t no kinder use, boys. Twenty-fo’
dollars an’ ten cents. Dat’ll sen’ fo’ty-eight
big words and one little ‘un. Dat ain’t nowhere
near a’nuf. He’d show’ly feel mightly
slighted, de Presydent would, ef we did’n sen’
‘im no mo’ talk dan dat. We gotter ‘spress dis
thing logical an’ ellygant, ur he won’t take no
notice uf it, none whatever. We nacherally
gotter have mo’ uf de muzuma.”

This was very discouraging, and produced
more deep thought and head rubbing, until
Private Andy Smith broke out:

“Well, dis ain’t no time fer tu back out.
Damn de 17th Article uv Wah[4]! Jess watch
my smoke, niggers.”

The rest of the men observed him curiously
as he shouldered his way out of the circle. He
went to his gold medal cot, and jerking off one
of the fine, heavy army blankets, spread it on
the floor. Then he rummaged amongst the
clothing in his locker, and taking out a pair of
extra shoes, a flannel shirt, and a white stable
suit, rolled them into his blanket. Throwing
the bundle thus made over his shoulder, he
stalked out into the rain.

The effect of this eminently lawless example
was instantaneous. The splendid regulation
blankets and flannel shirts were at a premium
among the natives, and the market was never
dull. They could be coined into pesos on sight.
There was a grand rush, and soon the blankets
and spare articles of clothing went forth into
the night, lugged by their respective owners.
Shortly the darkies, wet and steaming, began to
stamp back into the quarters, and the “dobie
dollars” again clinked into the crown of Potter’s
old campaign hat.

Lieutenant Roger Williams Perkins was what
is known as a solitary drinker. They are the
worst kind. They drink by themselves, and
purely for the effect. Doubtless their mental
processes at such times are curious indeed.

The rain was falling steadily outside. There
was no chance that any of the other men would
come in to-night. Perkins sat alone at his
table, as he had sat since six o’clock. It was
now eight, and as he reached to take “another
one,” he heard two persons coming up the steps.[pg 286]
He swore to himself and set the glass down.
Turning, he found Sergeants Potter and Wilson
at the head of the stairs, their dripping hats in
their hands. Their ponchos glistened in the
lamp-light, and from them ran little streams of
water that gathered in globular pools, like
quick-silver, on the oiled floor.

Perkins, of course, had heard of the answer
to the telegram, and had thought the matter
closed; but now these niggers had come to
trouble him again. They came forward, trailing
their streams of water behind them. He
heard them through. He answered them
craftily, smiling behind his hand, with the cunning
born of the fog in his brain. Shortly they
went away again, leaving on the table a pile of
silver. Cable the President! What a joke! and
he chuckled aloud. He would teach them to
come and worry him with their foolishness.

Still the rain roared on the roof. Still he sat
and drank, and drank again, until the lamp-light
grew sick and wan in the damp gray day.

The first sergeant, with the Morning Report,
found Perkins seated in the same place. Perkins
signed the book in a sprawling scrawl, and
the sergeant went his way. The Chino cook
brought the meals, and then came and took
them off again. The day dragged through, the
gray evening fell; the rain streamed down; and
still the officer sat as before.

At eight fifteen he looked up to find Wilson
and Potter before him. There were the same
glistening ponchos, the same little streams of
water, the same pools on the oiled floor. He
himself sat in the same place. The soldiers
might have been gone ten minutes instead of
twenty-four hours, for all the change there was
in the scene. Only the pile of silver had disappeared.

No, no answer to the cablegram had been
received, and Perkins could hardly conceal his
desire to roar with laughter, as the two turned
and trailed their streams of water back down
the stairs.

At four o’clock he wobbled to the bed and
threw himself down with all his clothes on.
He awoke at six, and, getting up uncertainly,
went to the window and looked out. Still rain
and murky grayness everywhere. As he stood,
the assembly went; for when a man is to be
hanged, a little thing like rain does not interfere.
Perkins turned from the window quickly, and
plunged his head into a basin of cold water.
Then, in spite of the early hour, he took a stiff
“bracer,” and throwing on his slicker, went
out. At the foot of the stairs he found the
orderly with the horses, and, mounting with
suspicious care, he rode to the stables.

The troop was in ranks and waiting. Before
the roll was called, Sergeant Wilson, his face
drawn and wrinkled like old parchment, came
forward and asked hesitatingly if there were any
news from Washington. The officer shook his
head. The cords in the old negro’s throat
worked convulsively, and he requested rather
brokenly that he might be excused from this
formation, and be allowed to remain in charge
of quarters.

“No,” the Lieutenant replied thickly; “there
is no reason why you should be excused any
more than any one else. The regular man will
remain in charge of quarters.” The whole
troop heard, as he intended they should. The
“bracer” was getting in its work, and Perkins
was feeling good again. The wily schemes, the
shapes and shadows of the previous night, were
growing in his brain once more. He would
teach these niggers who was who.

And so they took Private Buff Wilson out
into the falling rain and hanged him. In the
center of the square, formed by the squadron he
had disgraced, he paid the price. The solemn
hills, shrouded in mist, looked down, sadly, impassively.
They were not more motionless on
their everlasting foundations than was Sergeant
Jeremiah Wilson, sitting his big bay like a
granite statue, the tragedy of the ages and of his
race deep in the hollow sockets of his eyes. For
is it not written: “A servant of servants shall
he be unto his brethren“?

The signal was given. The trap fell with a
bang; the spray flew from the snapping rope;
and Private Wilson was jerked unceremoniously
into the presence of his Maker. Justice
was satisfied, and the account was balanced.

When a man is hanged, he must be buried.
To bury a man it takes a detail in charge of a
non-commissioned officer. The non-commissioned
officer is designated by name from the
sergeant-major’s office. He is also chosen by
roster in his proper order. It happened to be
Sergeant Jeremiah Wilson’s turn for duty.
Consequently Sergeant Jeremiah Wilson was
told off to bury his own son.

There was no detachment, no ceremony, no
firing squad—only an escort wagon containing
a black Q. M. coffin, upon which were perched
four or five wet, disconsolate troopers armed
with picks and shovels. Old Jeremiah followed,
mounted, a feverish light in his eyes and drops
of moisture standing on his grizzled mustache.
So he went forth and saw them consign to earth
the clod that had been his son—or rather, consign
to water, for the grave was half full when
they reached it. He did not see it, either; but
he heard it.

He heard the splash as the casket was dropped
into the half-filled grave. He heard the grating[pg 287]
of the bamboo poles used to hold it down until
the earth could be placed upon it. He heard
the sucking and bubbling as the water forced its
way in and the air forced its way out. He
heard the splash of the muddy clay until the
heaviness of it seemed to descend upon his own
heart. The shapes and shadows struggled to
and fro in his aching brain until they triumphed.
Sergeant Wilson, to the naked eye as sane as any
man, was mad; mad as a hatter.

He went back to the quarters and to his
old corner. There, as before, he sat hour after
hour, clasping and unclasping his hands. At
times he startled all in hearing by throwing
back his head and laughing harshly. The men
regarded him furtively and with uneasiness.

The dreary night, with its drearier unending
rain, had dropped once more. Lieutenant Perkins
was seated in his old place. He had been
there since the execution in the morning. This
was the longest session he had ever indulged in;
but the moral fiber degenerates rapidly in the
tropics. Besides, the friendly rain had curtained
him and kept away the spoil-sports. All
day he had sat communing with the shapes and
shadows. And it was very pleasant. He had
triumphed.

Lately, however, an unpleasant idea had been
flitting elusively through his consciousness—a
something that marred the full measure of
his achievement. Time and again he almost
grasped it, only to have it slip from him. What
was it? What was it?

Ah, yes; he had it. They were, as yet, ignorant
of how he had fooled them! They must
know it to make the joy complete. What
sport to take their money back to them and tell
them to their faces what monkeys he had made
of them! Why not do it now? Yes; what a
brilliant idea! He would do it at once.

Just before call to quarters Perkins staggered
into the main squad room. The men stood to
attention and observed him with wonder. He
was soaking wet, and the water was streaming
down from his uncovered hair. Without speaking,
he walked to the end of the big nara-wood
table in the center of the room, and began to
take silver coins from his bulging pockets. He
clawed out handfuls of them and planked them
down in a pile; the smaller ones leaking through
his fingers and falling to the stone floor, where
they rolled away with musical tinklings, or hid
themselves in the cracks. Finally, when he had
succeeded, with laborious care, in extracting
one last dime from the depths of his pocket, he
said thickly, waving his arms with an all-embracing
oratorical gesture:

“All you men come here.” The troopers
moved close, and formed on three sides of the
table. They stepped quietly, some hint of what
was to be having come to them.

“Got somethin’ to tell you. You think
you are very smart, doncher? You think
you—” he rubbed his forehead reflectively and
struggled for words. What was it he wanted to
tell them? Oh, yes; that was it. “You think
you’re smart, doncher?” and he leaned forward
on the table, peering around the circle; “but
‘cher all damn fools. Me, I’m a smart man,”
and he indicated the center button of his blouse
with his thumb, drawing himself up haughtily.

“You thought I cabled to the President,
din’cher?” he continued, leaning forward again,
and returning to his confidential tone. “Not
on your life. See, there’s the money. What a
joke,” and he burst into drunken hilarity, reeling
from side to side, while the tears ran down
his face.

The quiet in the room was absolute, except for
the officer’s unholy mirth, and the steady fall of
the rain. At the sound of that laughter, old
Jeremiah, who had sat in his corner unmindful
of the officer’s presence, got up and came forward
to the opposite end of the table. There
was a dazed look in his face as though he were
just waking from a deep sleep. He glanced
around at the other negroes, standing silently
with wide eyes, then at the drunken officer, and
finally at the pile of silver. Then he knew. As
soon as Perkins saw the old soldier, he chuckled
with renewed glee.

“Hallo, sergeant, you ole fool. The joke’s
on you. Yessir, the joke’s on you. You
thought I cabled to the President; but I did’n’.
Nosir, I did’n’.” And he went off into renewed
peals of laughter.

Suddenly he stopped short. He saw that
there was no appreciation of his witticisms; only
a blur of blank black faces and white, rolling eyes.

“Why don’t you laugh, you damn apes?
You damn black idiots, why don’t you laugh?
You——you——”

He ceased quickly, for another voice broke
the silence. It was old Sergeant Wilson speaking.
No one could tell when he had begun. He
stood slightly crouched, with his hands on the
edge of the table. His face was absolutely
blank and expressionless, while his eyes were
fixed on the officer with a tense, glassy stare.
His voice was cold and monotonous, without
rise or fall, halt or intonation, and seemed to be
more the wail of the spirit rising from somewhere
deep within him than the voice of the flesh.

“You heah that, boys? You heah what he
says? He calls us apes; us that God made as
well as him. ‘Cause we ahr black he calls us
apes. We ahr no better dan de dirt undah his
feet. He tooken ouh money an’ fooled us, an’[pg 288]
now he is laughin’ ’cause he fooled us. He
tooken ouh money and lied to us. An’ while he
wuz a-foolin’ us, us apes, dey taken mah boy,
mah baby, out an’ killed him. Out in de rain.
An’ ah heered de trap fall, an’ de rope snap. An’
he heered it, an’ laughed when he heered it!”

As he spoke, the sergeant never took his eyes
from the officer’s face, and moved slowly around
the table, crouching a little, and creeping
stealthily as a beast of prey might move upon
an animal that it was attempting to fascinate.
And the officer was being fascinated. He stood
as though transfixed, his jaw hanging and his
straining glance bent on the approaching
soldier.

The body of troopers was getting restless.
Their eyes, too, had taken on a peculiar shine,
and were all focused upon the white face of the
officer.

The wail of that dead, monotonous voice was
to these negroes as the call of the wild. It
touched a chord in them that antedated the
deluge. They moved closer, imperceptibly, and
moistened their dry lips with their tongues.
There is something mortally appalling in that
simple action. The dead voice continued:
“An’ dey sent me out to bury him, my own
baby. An’ he laughed when ah went. Ah seen
‘im laugh. An’ dey tooken mah boy and put
‘im in a deep black grave; an’ de col’, col’ watah
wuz on ‘im an’ raoun’ ‘im, an’ ah heerd it splash
when dey put ‘im thar. An’ he is thar now, in
de col’ black grave, an’ de watah is on ‘im, an’
ah kin feel de watah; an’ de dirt is a-weighin’
me down. Heah on my ches’. An’ dis man is
a-laughin’ at us an’ says hit is a joke!”

The old sergeant was now within three feet
of the officer. The latter was gray as putty,
and sober. It did not take the inclosing circle,
the heavy breathing, the wild, staring eyes and
tight-drawn lips to tell him his danger. He felt
the Presence. The air was pregnant with it.
He took a step backward and moved his stiff
lips as though to speak; but there was no sound.
The voice went on:

“He laughed at us; but he won’t laugh no
moah. God done made ‘im to look lak a man;
but he ain’t no man. He is a snake an’ creeps
in de grass. God sez in his book dat all snakes
mus’ be killed an’—” the sergeant took another
step; the officer took a step backward, and the
crowd surged forward with a quick, hoarse gasp.
Then the terror gripped him, and turning, the
officer made a dash for the door.

Again the circle closed in as the sea surges up
upon the land. There were tossing arms; there
was the hissing of breath through clenched
teeth, the sickening thud of blows, and a gurgling
cry of mortal agony. Then the sea surged
out again, and there on the floor lay the thing
that had been Lieutenant Roger Williams Perkins.

The ring of negroes stood fast. Their shoulders
rose and fell as their convulsive breaths
were indrawn and exhaled. They seemed to be
wondering what had happened. Several raised
their hands and observed them curiously, first
one and then the other, as though they were
strange objects never seen before. One placed
his fingers to his nose and smelt them furtively.
Another tried to rub off the thick, dark stain,
but with little success. The “moving finger”
had written.

When the catastrophe occurred, five or ten
of the weak-kneed had rushed from the building,
and even as these guilty ones stood there, there
was a clatter of arms outside. Some one yelled:
“the guahd,” and they knew that their deeds
had overtaken them.

In the momentary pandemonium that followed,
old Sergeant Wilson was heard calling
above the din: “Out with dem lights! Pile
de bunks agin’ de doahs an’ winders!” They
had learned to obey that voice before, in many
a tight place, and now it had its old-time ring.
So they went and did. A saber hilt rattled on
the portal. “Open the door! This is the
officer of the guard.”

“To hell wiff de officah of de guahd. Open
hit yo’se’f!” was bellowed in reply. The strain
was relieved, and the sally was greeted with a
wild yapping from the rest, such as might have
risen from a den of trapped wolves. Several ran
to the windows. There was a sputtering volley
of carbine shots, and Troop “B,” 19th U.S.
Cavalry, was in open mutiny.

Now when a troop of United States cavalry
rises against those in authority, incidents begin
to occur at once. The times when such a thing
has happened can be counted on the fingers of
one hand, with some digits to spare. There
was, in this case, no room for parley or exchange
of flags of truce. The thing with which the
ants were already busy there on the floor was
an uncontrovertible fact. Consequently, there
being no grounds upon which to arbitrate the
matter, the mutineers blazed away cheerfully at
anything that showed itself on the plaza. They
had now nothing to lose.

Then, shortly, there sounded from the guard-house,
through the rain-drenched night, the call
that jerks the soldier out of his bunk, all standing,
from any sleep but that of death: the “call
to arms.”

In fifteen minutes “B” Troop’s quarters were
surrounded on all sides by the other troops of
the squadron, the men of which, from safe cover,
observed the carbine flashes and wild yells[pg 289]
emanating therefrom with mild surprise, and
wondered “what de hell had broke loose.”

Major Bliss sat under the smoky lantern at
the guard-house, surrounded by the officers of
the station. He questioned sharply the men
who had escaped from “B” Troop’s barracks.
At intervals he swore mightily and cursed the
day that Roger Williams Perkins was born.

“And to think that old Wilson should be at
the head of this! Old Wilson, of all men!
Why, he is worth fifty thousand Perkinses, dead
or alive. I am only sorry that Perkins didn’t
get away. I should like to have got hold of
him myself, damn him.”

There was no hesitation in the makeup of
Major Bliss. He intended to suppress this outbreak
in a manner that would tend to discourage
any such ebullitions in the future. Consequently,
he made his dispositions with grimness and
determination. His plan was simple, his orders
being to “rush ’em and give ’em hell.” His
greatest regret was that the interests of discipline
should make such a step necessary, since
he was sure that a majority of the mutineers
had acted upon impulse, and were already excessively
sorry for themselves.

In the midst of these untoward events, the
“Tarlac,” coastwise transport blew into the bay
through the murk and rain, and Captain North,
of “B” Troop, the “Ole Cap’n,” returned to the
station. Hearing the shots and yells, he concluded
that the Major was “shooting up the
town,” and splashed hurriedly to his quarters for
his saber and revolver. There in the darkness he
stumbled over his muchacho, who had deposited
himself at the foot of the steps and was earnestly
beseeching his patron saint to have him spared
this once; promising an altar cloth and innumerable
candles if he should be allowed to exist long
enough to secure them, thus putting on that
gentleman’s intercession a premium that he
trusted would be effective. The Captain being
naturally impulsive, the accident did not improve
his temper to any appreciable extent.
Besides this, the matches were wet, and there
was no oil in the lamp. Consequently he had
to search for his weapons in the dark. After
falling over his bunk and numberless chairs, and
upsetting his field desk, he found his saber and
revolver, only to discover that both, owing to
the neglect of that same sanctified muchacho on
the stairs, were covered with rust; that the
cylinder of the revolver would not revolve; and
that at least two strong men and a boy would be
required to coax the saber from its scabbard!

All this while the shooting and yelling were
going on, and by the time he splashed out into
the rain once more, the good Captain was what is
technically known as “mad as a hornet!” He
started on a run to “B” Troop’s quarters, to
take command of his men, only to be stopped
by a sentinel, who informed him that “B”
Troop was in no mood to be taken command of,
and that he had “bettah go to de guahd-house.”
Being ordered to the guard-house by a private
did not tend to quiet his state of mind any, even
when the situation was explained. By the time
he burst in on the assembled officers at the post of
the guard, Captain North was madder than ever.

“What the devil is going on here, Bliss?
What’s this I hear about ‘B’ Troop’s busting
loose? This is a hell of a state of affairs.”

“That is just what I think, North, and very
neatly expressed,” the Major replied dryly.
“Lovely discipline you have in that band of
Indians of yours. They’ve mutinied, no less, and
apparently they have got Perkins. A nice——”

“Mutinied, have they? Why, the infernal
black scoundrels,” almost roared the irate officer,
striding up and down the room. “Mutinied,
have they? What the devil do they mean
by doing a thing like that without saying anything
to me about it? I’ll mutiny ’em! Don’t
you interfere with me, Bliss,” he continued,
halting in his walk, “don’t you interfere with
me. This is my troop, and I can handle them.
Don’t you interfere with me.”

“My dear North, no one has shown any inclination
to interfere with you, has he?”

“That’s right,” and the Captain continued his
march, “that’s right. I can attend to these
gentlemen. This plan of rushing them, though,
is all wrong, all wrong”; and he stopped again.
“They’ll fight, fight like the devil. I ought to
know. I’ve seen them do it often enough.
You’ll lose good men. In opposing them with
force you recognize the strength in them. What
you need is moral force. One man power.
Same principle in training lions. Same principle.
If a lion-tamer went into a cage of ten
lions with ten men, he’d have trouble on his
hands from the jump; but he can go alone and
bluff ’em. Same principle here. If I could get
into the middle of that bunch over there without
their seeing me until I was there, I’d scare
them out of ten years’ growth. How to get
there, that’s the question.”

“Why, North, you are crazy. They’d get
you, sure. They’d eat you up, man.”

“Eat me up? Why, they’d as soon think of
tackling the late Mr. Peter Jackson. They
know me. How to get there, that’s the question.
Walking across the plaza they couldn’t
tell me from any one else.”

“Beg yoah pahdin’, sah,” and Private Massay
of “B” Troop, who was the commanding officer’s
orderly for the day, spoke up, “Ef de
Cap’n could git in through de little doah in[pg 290]
de stoah-room, and go through de kitchen, I
speck he could git in widout bein’ ketched.”

“Right, Massay, the very thing. Somebody
give me a lantern. Confound it, one of you men
get me a lantern, and be quick about it.” A
member of the guard gave him the required
article, and concealing it carefully under his
poncho, he went quickly out. The Major and
other officers jumped up and followed. All the
way down the dreary, rain-swept street the
Major attempted to persuade the Captain to
give up his foolhardy enterprise, but without
result. Finally, when they reached the cordon
of surrounding troops, the senior officer said:

“Well, North, this is absolutely absurd, and
out of the question. If you insist, I shall have
to give you an order not to go.”

“No, you won’t do that, Bliss.” The Captain’s
anger had left him now, and he spoke
quietly. “We have known each other a long
time, and seen a lot of service together. You
won’t take advantage of your rank to stop me
now. I am only doing what you would do in
my place. It is my troop. The shame and disgrace
are mine. You won’t stop me now.”

The Major hesitated a moment and then
spoke slowly, and with evident feeling:

“Well—well. Have your way; but be careful,
John, be careful.”

They saw him move quietly along under the
shadow of a wall, cross the street, and disappear
in a small side door of “B” Troop’s quarters.
He was not discovered.

For the last half hour the silence and the
blackness of the grave had existed in “B”
Troop’s big squad room. The “shouting and
the tumult” had died a lingering death. One
cannot yell and hurl challenge indefinitely, and
shouting up one’s courage begins to lose its
efficacy if long continued. One big-lunged
mutineer had held out with his firing and bellowing
until the nerves of the rest could stand it
no longer. They then rudely suppressed him. He
sounded so absurdly and pathetically foolish. He
was typical of their own status. “One nigger
shootin’ a bluff at de whole United States Army!”
They realized that with fifty it was no less idiotic.

If it had not been for old Wilson passing
stealthily to and fro among them, with that
wild light in his eyes, and those crazy mumblings,
doubtless there would have, already, been
breaks in the ranks. But no; there was that
other thing, lying over there where it fell.
There was no use now; there could be no looking
back. Each turned wearily to his door or
window and renewed his wide-eyed effort to
pierce the web of blackness over the square.
And the everlasting rain still fell.

A door swung cautiously somewhere. There
was the sound of some one moving with steady,
determined step down the center of the room.
Then, without warning, their unaccustomed
eyes were momentarily blinded by a light taken
suddenly from under a poncho; and there in the
center of the room stood a lone officer; in one
hand a lantern, in the other a big blue revolver.

For an instant there was no movement. Then
there was a counter reaction. With the snarl
of wild animals, the fifty negroes sprang toward
the center of the room. Sergeant Wilson was
first. With a cry of: “Kill him! kill him!”
he bounded over a bunk, and landed within
three feet of the officer, revolver upraised. As
he did so, the officer lifted the lantern to a level
with his own face. The sergeant stopped. The
whole circle halted, as though Circe had transfixed
them. They had recognized the “Ole
Cap’n.”

“Well, Wilson.” At the sound of the voice
the old negro’s countenance changed instantly.
It became the face of a man in mortal anguish,
as indeed he was. In that moment the scales
had fallen from his vision. He saw his position
clearly in the light of the sorrowful glance from
the “ole Cap’n’s” eyes. It was as though the
main pillar of the heavens had been pulled out,
and the skies were thundering down about his
dazed old ears.

“Oh, Gawd, oh, Gawd!” he groaned, putting
one hand to his head, and rocking it from side
to side, as though the pain there were more than
he could stand.

“Oh, Gawd, oh, Gawd.” The revolver was
lowered slowly from its upraised position, and
suddenly, before the officer could stop him, the
sergeant turned it against himself. There was
a flash, an earsplitting report, and the old soldier
sank to the floor. There he stretched himself
wearily, as though for a long sleep, and
Sergeant Jeremiah Wilson, of the “old Army,”
was gathered to his fathers.

The Captain turned away abruptly. He knew
that old Wilson was a good shot.

“Open the doors,” he said to the troopers, as
though he had been telling them good morning.
Compliance to that voice, raised in command,
was to these soldiers a second nature. There
was not the slightest hesitation. With eager
alacrity they hastened to obey, like children
who had been caught misbehaving.

In the first faintness of the dawn the tired-faced
troopers cheerfully filed out and formed
in front of the quarters, each one, as he passed
through the door, depositing his arms at the
officer’s feet. Oh, but it was good to be on
the right side again; and the “ole Cap’n”
would take care of his own.

FOOTNOTES:

[pg 291]

THE SINGER’S HEART

BY
HARRIS MERTON LYON

ILLUSTRATIONS BY J. B. MASTERS

These are a few films from the human
biograph of Harry Barnes, old
actor. You know, when you are old,
you accept life with more or less of a
sigh of quiet acquiescence, and by
your cozy fire you sit and nod to an inner voice,
a gentle old voice which over and over whispers
and murmurs—”Once upon a time, once upon
a time.” And possibly Barnes would have
nodded, too, but he lacked the cozy fire. Life
has its dramatic unities, it would seem, and if
one thing or another is awry we are apt not to
perform as the book says we should. No cozy
fire, says the Great Stage Manager; no nodding
acquiescence, replies the Mummer in the Play.

Barnes listened, it is true, over and over to
the voice which murmured “Once upon a time,”
but he sat not by a comfortable open grate,
amid grandchildren. Instead, he lurked in
East Fourteenth Street amid decaying agents’
offices, hunting a chance to do a bad monologue
in a worse vaudeville show. He had outlasted
his time; he could not get work. He lived on
those two heartless things, Hope and Memory.
And for all I know he is living on them yet.

Now, you will not in your careless youth or
your sceptical maturity find beauty in this
story, you will not “get under the skin” of it, as
the saying is, unless you have stopped sometime
in your busy going, to consider, aside and with
understanding, the pathos of the old actor. It
is a curiously poignant human thing, written
about by a few, suffered by many, and ignored
by the loud, inordinate world.

The old actor out of employment! A target
for jokes, a piece of battered, ancient “property”
cluttering up a new and very busy stage.
You smile at his curious figure, unconscious of
the broken misery that aches beneath, where
life has died and living goes paradoxically on;[pg 292]
and only sometimes late at night do you get a
part of that hidden ache when you hear old legs
drag weary feet up the boarding-house stairs,
past your door and on up into the skylight room
on the roof, despondently to bed; and you
know that the old man has had another unsuccessful
day among the agents and the managers.
You can sometimes interpret the querulous little
laugh over the thin oatmeal at breakfast, sometimes
you can guess the water in the rapidly
winking eyes; but of course you do not proclaim
your deductions. Civilization is a process
of making less noise about things.

This is a segment of the life-film of Harry
Barnes, old actor, as he traveled the stones of
Fourteenth Street. Not the Rialto, where fat
men adorned with fat diamonds smoke fat
cigars in order to narcotize fat consciences; but
Fourteenth Street, grimy with old, sparsely-tenanted
buildings, where theatrical offices
three flights up bargain for the driblets of trade
among the low music-halls and the cheapest
vaudeville houses, where niggardly, gray-haired
agents have for two generations sat among their
dusty contracts and their rusty pens, haggling
over bread-and-water salaries with the jetsam
of a too-volatile profession.

Harry was old and dropsical with drink, a sad
hero for a careless story. The only ideal he had
ever had, besides one, was to arrive at the fine
fame of printer’s ink: headlines, bill-boards,
critical notices, reproductions of his photograph.
But this was long ago. He had longed to be
chronicled in his time, preëminent and large;
this he had desired with that hungry passion
for display which only an actor can feel. But
this, remember, was once
upon a time. His other
ideal—no need to mention
it amid Momus and
his mimes!—was to sway
people with laughter and
tears, to burn them with
romance, to chasten them
with tragedy, to carry them
with him in his frenzy, to
play upon them with his art.

Art! Do you care for a
grotesque, serious evening
in its humblest presence?
Have you time to listen,
over beer glass and cigarette,
to a broken-down old
actor out of a job?

HARRY BARNES, OLD ACTOR

Barnes was incongruously
named when he was given
the name of Harry. It is a
flippant name. It calls up
merriness, youth, bravado,
color, song. Barnes was forty-nine, streaked
with grey, heart-sick, pallid, shuffling, timorous,
sorry, and forlorn. Three decades of grease
paint had made his skin flabby; and three decades
of what the grease paint stood for had
done likewise by his soul. It was thus that he
drifted from doorway to doorway in Fourteenth
Street, down by the Elevated, where dry little
agents told him in dry little voices that there
was nothing for him from day to day. It was
thus that he dragged his feet up the boarding-house
stairs to his skylight room, night after
night, carrying the two heartless fardels, Hope
and Memory.

It was approaching a certain holiday, a holiday
which came on Sunday.

“Harry,” said old Tony Sanderson, after he
had finished informing the actor that there was
no news for him, “why don’t you do a little
press-agent work for yourself? Get your name
in the paper. That might help you get something
to do.”

The other listened despondently.

“Now here’s a chance,” went on the agent, in
a confidential tone. “No money in it, of
course, but, as I said, there’s a chance to get into
print. Some sort of a newsboys’ benefit bunch
is going to get together Sunday night and give a
little entertainment fer the kids up in Beals’
gymnasium on the Bowery. They’re callin’ for
volunteers among the actors. You take your
monologue stunt down there and get onto the
program. The newspapers always plays up this
newsboy dope strong and you’ll get a good mention
sure. Clip the notices and then you’ve got
somethin’ to flash. See?”

Barnes stood uneasily by
the desk. “I—I don’t
know, Tony,” he answered.
“To tell yuh the truth, I’d
be a little bit scared to try
it. Yuh see, I—well, if
you wasn’t an old friend of
mine, I couldn’t say it—but,
confidentially, Tony,
I—I’ve kind o’ lost my
grip. I’m a—a back number,
Tony. I’m afraid o’
them kids; they’re too wise.
My old act wouldn’t go.”
He waited, awkwardly;
then, as if he hoped he
were wrong, he asked:
“Would it?”

Sanderson snapped his
grim eyes. “What’re yuh
tryin’ to put it on fer, at
all, then—if yuh think it
won’t take with a gang of[pg 293]
kids at a free doin’s?” Then his tone softened.
“Look here, Harry. It’ll only be ten or twenty
minutes. Go ahead. You’ll get through all
right. You ain’t as much of a dead one as
you think you are.”

Barnes straightened up. It was all right for
him to make a slight confession, but Sanderson
had wounded his professional vanity. “A dead
one!” he exclaimed. “Certainly not. Harry
Barnes a dead one! After a thirty years’ career
in the companies of the best——”

The agent shoved a card in his hand and cut
him off short. “Go around there and tell ’em to
put you down for a monologue.” And Harry
went, with dignity and misgivings.

His misgivings were all the more increased
when he saw the list of promised performers:
La Belle Marie, the famous little toe dancer in
her attractive transformations; the Brothers
Zincatello, Risley experts at the Hippodrome;
Julian Jokes, “in his inimitable Hebrew monologue”;
the Seven Sebastians, the world’s most
marvelous Herculean acrobatic performers;
Mlle. Joujou, the popular singing comedienne,
Prima Donna and Star, direct from her unusual
and most distinguished triumph at the Palace
Theater, London; and a dozen more of the
younger and more popular people of the stage,
all adorned, with adjectives and hyperbole.
Down at the bottom of the list with a trembling
pencil he wrote: “Harry Barnes, Singing and
Talking.” Then he shook hands with the secretary
of the organization and walked back to his
boarding-house in a mild fever of excitement.

In his room he went eagerly about his work.
He rehearsed again and again his meager little
bag of tricks, his funny Irishman, his Chinaman—no,
the Chinaman came first, because he used
the queue afterward to wrap around his chin and
simulate Irish “galloways”—his Dutch comedian
monologue about married life, his old-time
songs and dances. He furbished up some old
“patter” and injected new anecdotes. And
this he kept up morning and evening until the
notable Sunday came.

“HE GRINNED AND WINKED AND FRISKED AND CAPERED”

He was so nervous, this old actor of a thousand
parts, that he could eat no supper that
night. He almost trotted to the gymnasium in
his excitement, and, though his pockets bulged
with grease paint, mustaches, wigs, and other
paraphernalia, he forgot almost half of his material.
At the door he had to push his way
through a wriggling, impish mass of small boys
who blocked the steps and the sidewalk. Inside
[pg 294]
the hall, young faces packed the place to the
window-sills. To the old man the newsboys
seemed as so many antagonistic bits of the
younger generation, the generation which evidently
would have none of him, which relegated
him carelessly to the warehouse for old
scenery and old settings.

He stood in dismay behind an extemporized
“wing” and peered out at the restless little
bodies. He fancied already that he could see
grins on their sophisticated faces, ridicule in
their eyes; he remembered once hearing a gallery
god shout “Twenty-three!” in the middle
of an actor’s monologue, and what had then
seemed humorous precocity now seemed hard,
bitter cruelty. He fumbled at his make-up in
his pockets, shuffled uneasily, and waited.

It was almost time to begin. Where were the
other actors who had promised to come? The
boys out front were whistling, kicking their feet
upon the floor, clapping their hands, and shouting
to one another. A distracted official raced
here and there among other officials, asking
some sort of exasperated question. Barnes
could not hear what it was; but telepathically
he felt that there was a hitch in the program.

At last, after waiting a quarter of an hour, the
manager stepped forward and said:

“Boys, we had arranged a fine program for
you to-night——”

“Good fer you!” yelled a voice.

The speaker held up his hand. “But it
seems that actors are better promisers than they
are actors.” He smiled at his own joke, but the
audience gave one long “Aw-w-w!”

“However,” he continued, “we are all here
now and we intend to do the best we can. If
we make up our mind to, we can have a bully
good time just the same. We have with us at
least one kind gentleman who appreciates what
a celebration like this means to the boys.” …
Barnes heard and saw things as if through a fog.
The arms of the speaker were gyrating and a
voice shouted in the ear of the old actor:
“What’s your name?”

“Harry Barnes,” he said, moistening his lips.
Nobody had shown up except him, he kept thinking
over and over to himself: nobody except
him. He had the thankless job of “opening the
show.”

“… Harry Barnes,” echoed the speaker at
the end of some sort of practical talk concerning
the newsboys’ organization and its management.
“Mister Harry Barnes”—he squinted
at the program—”in singing and talking.”

He turned and smiled at the old man, and to
Barnes the smile seemed diabolical. Somebody
clapped him on the back. There was a hurricane
of whistles and shouts, and before he knew it he
was in the middle of the rostrum.

Mechanically he had made his old comic entrance,
tripping his right toe over his left heel,
and turning to shake his fist at an imaginary
enemy. The boys, determined to be pleased,
giggled appreciatively.

“How—how are you, boys?” Barnes asked,
seriously.

The audience snickered with delight. He
was such a funny-looking old man!

“I hope you’ll like my work,” he went on,
desperately, “or else we might as well go
home. I guess I’m the whole show, for a little
while, at least, as the feller said when he fell
out o’ the balloon.” The house roared with
approval.

“Go wan, Barnesy,” shouted a young pair of
lungs in the front row.

He straightened up, turned his back for a moment,
stuck a queer set of mustaches on his upper
lip, faced the crowd again, and began: “I was
walkin’ down the street the other day when my
friend J. Pierpoint Morgan stepped up to me
an’ says, ‘Barney, my boy'”….

The show had begun. Harry Barnes, singing
and talking, had opened his carefully rehearsed
bag of tricks.

There is some peculiar psychology about
humor. If people make up their minds that
they are going to laugh and that a performance
is bound to be funny, nothing on earth can keep
them from enjoying themselves. The most serious
remark will be greeted with howls of approval;
the most ancient joke takes on a novel
and present sprightliness. In the slang of the
stage, Barnes’ line of patter took.

Four hundred boys simpered, smirked,
grinned, giggled, tittered, chuckled, and guffawed.
A wine of merriment flushed the crowd
and mounted to the old mummer’s brain and
heart. He skipped and danced and sang; he
went through all the drollery and tomfoolery,
all the old comic business he could recall.

The children nudged each other, dug their
fists into each other, and cheered: “Oh, you
Barnesy!” “Kill it, Kid!” “Whatcha know
about dat!” “Sand it down, Barnesy!” The
old-timer was doing the famous lock-step jig he
had done with Pat Rooney in “Patrice” fifteen
or twenty years before. It was so old that it
was new. Encore followed encore. The perspiration
cascaded through his pores; he
grinned and winked and frisked and capered.
They would not let him stop. At the end of
twenty-five minutes he bowed himself off the
stage, and still they called him back. When he
gave them, for the “call,” the Little Johnny
Dugan pantomime from “The Rainmakers,” the[pg 295]
East Side children, born since the day of such
things, were suffocated with delight.

sang Barnes with a quizzical flirt of his head;
and lungs that were wont to fill the city streets
with news could not even gasp for laughter.

The secretary of the organization followed
with a speech about future entertainments;
another official read a letter from a prominent
financier promising the boys a swimming-pool
and a half dozen summer excursions.

“Somebody bang de box!” suggested a
voice, after a pause.

Nobody could—except Barnes; and he volunteered.
The whole affair was now like one
big family circle, each one secure in the amity of
the other, and when the old man sat down at the
cracked piano, he sang as if he were singing to
himself, easily and without restraint. A quiet
held the house, and even the children were
touched; for Harry Barnes was quavering
through the simple lines
of “Should Auld Acquaintance
Be Forgot.”
After that he gave them
the Lullaby Song from
“Erminie,” and somehow
it did not at all
appear incongruous that
a careworn mimic of fifty
should be singing to careworn
workingmen of ten,
down on the Bowery, in
a gymnasium, a verse
about pretty little eyelids
and sleeping darlings.
The world, fortunately,
is not always
with us; and the song
ended in a silent applause.

For two hours the entertainment
went on,
speeches and official
plans interspersed with
the antics of Barnes.

“‘OH, YOU DIVVIL, YOU! YOU OLD,
BLATHERSKITING DIVVIL'”

Was there anything he
could not do? He mimicked
birds and animals;
he imitated a
wheezy phonograph
playing “When We Were
a Couple of Kids”; he
recited “The Raven”
and “Paul Revere’s
Ride”; he gave a cutting from Dickens and
one from Sheridan Knowles; he showed how
Joe Jefferson played Rip Van Winkle, how Sol
Smith Russell did “A Poor Relation.”

And all through his soul and body, as he
watched his haphazard audience follow him in
his moods and changes, ran the quiet magic of
Art Satisfied. It is a noble braggart madness,
this glorification of a cheap art by an old actor.

“Barnes, my boy,” he said to himself, with a
glow of rapid blood, “you have not lost them
yet! See them laugh with you! Feel them
cry! What does it matter if you eat watery
oatmeal and live in a skylight room; are you not
an artist, a resonant instrument of poetry and
music and mirth, a true actor of the best parts?
You are; and these are matters of the undying
soul. A boarding-house is a vulgar, temporal
thing. You were right to come here to-night,
and do this thing without pay, for Art’s sake.
You uphold the honor of a calling which is
founded upon Art. And, oh, most of all, you
have not lost your power, you have not outlived
your time! Sanderson intimated that you
were a dead one—very well, to-morrow you
shall triumphantly cut
the acquaintance of Sanderson!
To have lived
until this evening before
the youth of this land;
to have caught the right
intonation, the proper
gesture; to have swept
through the hearts of
your hearers like a vibration
of music—this is to
have transcended, this is
to have justified yourself!
And justified yourself
to whom? To Sanderson?
To the world?
No! You have justified
Harry Barnes to Harry
Barnes! You carry this
human throng over the
footlights and into your
soul with a Chinaman’s
queue and a putty nose.
Your Art is still that
fine, secure Art which
you have carried in your
memory as you traversed
dingy stairways
on Fourteenth Street.
Barnes, you live, you
act, you accomplish!
Bravo!”

He shook hands abstractedly
all around[pg 296]
when the affair
came to
a close. He
remembered
bundling his
make-up and
trinkets into
a piece of
newspaper
and tucking
it under
his arm. A
pleased face
presented itself
at one
time before
his eyes and
a voice said, confidentially, “Mr. Barnes, I
congratulate you; and the dramatic critic of
the Star was here to-night.”

He found himself at last out in the cool darkness
of the street, and he had to stop a moment
to think which way his boarding-house lay.
Then he walked home, to save carfare. All the
way up the silent streets his brain sang with
triumph. His blood jumped in gladness; he
could hardly keep from running. He declaimed
aloud bits of Shakespeare, tag ends of poems;
he snapped his fingers and flung out his arms in
sheer excess of enthusiasm. He smiled, threw
back his head, even made faces at the passersby.
He boomed into a solo from an opera, and kicked
his foot at a cigar stub on the sidewalk. And
had anybody wished to observe when he
reached his house, the spectacle would have
presented itself of a caricature, funny-paper
barn-stormer tramping merrily up the rattling
stairs and humming, “The flowers that bloom
in the spring, tra-la, have nothing to do with
the case.”

All the next day he did not leave his room,
save at meal times; for he wished to be alone
and hug his exultation. To the four flat walls
he repeated snatches of the things he had done
the night before; up and down the rag carpet he
smirked and grimaced and laughed and jigged.
He sang the songs that had “taken” so well.
He went through certain gestures and then deliberately
exaggerated them, in a high good-humor.
He was as young again as on the day
when he had signed his first contract. He
puffed out his chest, looked at himself in the
glass with mock seriousness, and then, when
the pent-up good feeling burst out in his merry
eye, he winked it gleefully and said: “Oh, you
divvil, you! You old blatherskiting divvil!”

At half-past four he went down to the corner
and bought a copy of the Star, the late edition
which had the dramatic news in it.

There it
was! He felt
like jumping
up in the air
and whooping
the length of
the street.
On the editorial
page it
was. His
name was in
the headlines!
Beneath, in
the article itself,
almost
every other
word seemed
to be Barnes. It praised him here, it admired
him there, it thanked him, it congratulated him,
it asserted that he had saved the night for four
hundred newsboys. He was so anxious to read
it through and to read it fast that he skipped
from paragraph to paragraph. There was over a
column of it! He hurried back up to the room;
and then regretted that he had not stopped to
buy more copies of the paper. He locked the
door and spread the paper out on the little center-table.
His heart and breath almost stopped
as he read the good words slowly through.
When he had finished, he threw the paper
aside and bounded into the middle of the room.

“Press agent, hey?” he laughed. “Press
agent! I guess yes! A small matter of a column
and a quarter; that’s all. Only a column
and a quarter about Harry Barnes! Wonder
what Sanderson will think about that? Wonder
if he won’t get me something to do? Oh,
no; I guess not. A column and a quarter!”

He sat down again and smoothed out the
paper before him. This time he began noticing
little niceties of the critic’s phrasing … “entertaining,
not to say pathetic rendition,” etc.,
etc…. “Not to say?” Funny; look at it
a moment, and it seems to mean it wasn’t pathetic.
But here it said: “Infectious and
heart-tickling old-time Irish humor” … “excellent
characterization of Uriah Heep” …
and so on.

“HE SAT STARING INTO THE BLANKNESS OF THE LITTLE ROOM”

After a few minutes he ceased reading and sat,
picking at the edge of the paper, staring into the
blankness of the little room. He stayed thus
immovable for a long, long time, and then slowly
the tears slipped across his cheeks, down on the
forgotten “notice,” his throat ached with a tender
sobbing, and he bowed his head into the
newspaper.

He was thinking of the children; he had
made them laugh and cry. And this was the
thrill, once more, of the singer’s heart.

[pg 297]

THE REPUDIATION
OF
JOHNSON’S POLICY

BY
CARL SCHURZ

ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS

In consequence of the threatening situation
which the President’s reactionary policy
had precipitated, the belief grew stronger
and stronger in the Northern country that
the predominance of the Republican party
was—and would be for a few years, at least—necessary
for the safety and the honor of the
Republic; and steps taken to insure that predominance,
even such as would have in less
critical times evoked strong criticism, were now
looked upon with seductive leniency of judgment.
Mr. Stockton of New Jersey was unseated
in the Senate upon grounds which would
hardly pass muster in ordinary times, to make
room for a Republican successor, and even Mr.
Fessenden approved the transaction. Advantage
was taken in the same body of the sickness
or casual absence of some Democratic senator
to rush through a vote when a two-thirds majority
was required to kill a veto; and other proceedings
were resorted to at a pinch which were
hardly compatible with the famous “courtesy
of the Senate.” But there was more thorough
and lasting work to be done to prepare for the
full restoration of the States lately in rebellion.
The Republican majority was by no means of
one mind as to the constitutional status of the
communities that had been in insurrection
against the National Government. I have
already spoken of the theory of State-suicide
advanced by Mr. Stevens and a comparatively
small school of extremists. The theory most
popular with most of the Republicans, which
was finally formulated by the Joint Committee
on Reconstruction, was that the rebel States
had not been out of the Union, but had lost
their working status inside of the Union, and
had to be restored to their regular constitutional
relations to the Union by action of Congress,
upon such conditions as Congress might deem
proper.

To meet the dangers which so far had become
visible on the horizon, the Joint Committee on
Reconstruction devised the Fourteenth Amendment
to the Constitution, which was long and
laboriously debated in both Houses. In the
form in which it was finally adopted it declared
(1) that all persons born or naturalized in the
United States are citizens of the United States
and of the States in which they reside, and that
no State shall make or enforce any law abridging
the privileges or immunities of citizens, nor
deprive any person of life, liberty, or property
without due process of law, nor deny to any
person the equal protection of the laws; (2)
that if in any State the right to vote at any[pg 298]
election for the choice of national or State officers
is denied or in any way abridged, except for
participation in rebellion, or other crime, the
basis of representation in Congress or the electoral
college shall be reduced in the proportion
which the number of such male citizens shall
bear to the whole number of male citizens
twenty-one years of age in such State; (3) that
no person who had taken part in the rebellion,
having previously, as a national or State officer,
military or civil, sworn to support the Constitution
of the United States, shall be a Senator or
Representative in Congress or hold any office,
civil or military, under the United States, or any
State, unless relieved of that disability by a
two-thirds vote of each house of Congress; (4)
that the validity of the public debt of the
United States shall not be questioned, nor shall
any debt or obligation contracted in aid of rebellion,
or any claim for emancipated slaves be
paid.

The Fourteenth Amendment

Thus the Fourteenth Amendment stopped short
of the extension of the suffrage to negroes—a
subject which many Republicans were still
afraid to touch directly. But by implication it
punished the States denying that extension by
reducing the basis of representation; it excluded
from office, unless relieved of the disability by a
two-thirds vote of Congress, the most influential
class of those who had taken an active part in
the rebellion; and it safeguarded the public
debt. With only one of its provisions serious
fault could be found;—not with that which
guaranteed to the freedmen the essential civil
rights of free men, nor with that which excluded
the freedmen from the basis of representation—so
long as they were not permitted to vote.
Only the advocates of negro suffrage might
logically have objected to this clause; inasmuch
as it by implication recognized the
right of a State to exclude the colored people
from the suffrage if the State paid a certain
penalty for such exclusion. Neither could the
clause safeguarding the public debt and prohibiting
the payment of debts incurred in aid
of the rebellion be objected to. The really exceptionable
provision was that which excluded
so large a class of Southern men from public
office, and just that class with which a friendly
understanding was most desirable. The provision
that their disqualification could be removed
by a two-thirds vote in each House of
Congress mended the mischief thus done a
little, but not enough for the public good.

It was not expressly enacted, but it was generally
understood, that those of the States lately
in rebellion, which ratified the Fourteenth
Amendment, would thereby qualify themselves
for full restoration in the Union. Tennessee,
where a faction of the Union party hostile to
President Johnson had gained the ascendency,
did so, and was accordingly fully restored by
the admission to their seats in Congress of its
Senators and Representatives. The full restoration
of the other late rebel States would probably
have been expedited in the same way, had
they followed the example of Tennessee. But
President Johnson, as became publicly known
in one or two instances, obstinately dissuaded
them from doing so, and the fight went on. He
also vetoed a second Freedmen’s Bureau bill in
which some of the provisions he had objected to
in his veto of the first were remedied. But
things had now come to such a pass between
Congress and the President that his veto messages
were hardly considered worth listening to,
but were promptly overruled almost without
debate by two-thirds votes in each House.

A Campaign to Destroy a President

Under such circumstances the Congressional
election of 1866 came on. The people were to
pronounce judgment between the President and
Congress. The great quarrel had created excitement
so intense as to affect men’s balance
of mind. About the time of the assembling of
Congress Mr. Preston King of New York (the
same rotund gentleman with whom, in the
National Convention of 1860, I conducted Mr.
Ashmun to the chair), who had been a Senator
of the United States and had been appointed
Collector of Customs by President Johnson,
committed suicide by jumping into the North
River from a ferry-boat. He had been a Republican
of the radical type, and when he
took the office he supposed the President to
be of the same mind; but Mr. Johnson’s
course distressed him so much that he became
melancholy; his brain gave way, and he
sought relief in death. Another suicide which
greatly startled the country a few months later,
that of Senator Lane of Kansas, was attributed
to a similar cause. “Jim” Lane had been one
of the most famous free-State fighters in Kansas
Territory. Since then he was ranked among
the extreme anti-slavery men and as a Senator
he was counted upon as a firm opponent of
President Johnson’s policy. To the astonishment
of everybody he voted against the Civil
Rights bill. This somewhat mysterious change
of front, which nobody seemed able satisfactorily
to explain, cost him his confidential intercourse
with his former associates in the Senate,
and brought upon him stinging manifestations
of disapproval from his constituents. He
was reported to have expressed profound repentance
[pg 299]
of what he had done and finally made
away with himself as one lost to hope. He was
still in the full vigor of manhood—only fifty-one
years old—when he sought the grave.

JOHN POTTER STOCKTON

THE DEMOCRATIC SENATOR FROM NEW JERSEY WHO WAS UNSEATED
IN THE SENATE OF 1866 TO MAKE ROOM FOR A REPUBLICAN SUCCESSOR.
HE WAS LATER REELECTED TO THE SENATE

The campaign of 1866 was remarkable for its
heat and bitterness. In canvasses carried on
for the purpose of electing a President, I had
seen more enthusiasm, but in none so much
animosity and bad blood as in this, an incidental
object of which was politically to destroy a
president. Andrew Johnson had not only manifested
a disposition to lean upon the Democratic
party in the pursuit of his policy, but he
had also begun to dismiss public officers who refused
to coöperate with him politically and to
put in their places men who adhered to him.
This touched partisan spirit in an exceedingly
sensitive spot. The so-called “bread-and-butter
brigade” was looked down upon with a contempt
that could hardly be expressed in words.

[pg 300]

Killing of Negroes at Memphis and
New Orleans

But there were more serious things to inflame
the temper of the North. The Southern whites
again proved themselves their own worst enemies.
Early in May news came from Memphis
of riots in which twenty-four negroes were
killed and one white man was wounded. The
conclusion lay near and was generally accepted
that the whites had been the aggressors and the
negroes the victims. In the last days of July
more portentous tidings arrived from New
Orleans. An attempt was made by Union men
to revive the constitutional convention of 1864
for the purpose of remodeling the constitution
of the State. The attempt was of questionable
legality, but, if wrong, it could easily have been
foiled by legal and peaceable means. The
municipal government of New Orleans was in
possession of the ex-Confederates. It resolved
that the meeting of the remnant of the convention
should not be held. When it did meet, the
police, consisting in an overwhelming majority
of ex-Confederate soldiers, aided by a white
mob, broke into the hall and fired upon those
assembled there. The result was thirty-seven
negroes killed and one hundred and nineteen
wounded, and three of the white Union men
killed and seventeen wounded, against one
of the assailants killed and ten wounded.
General Sheridan, the commander of the Department,
telegraphed to General Grant: “It
was no riot; it was an absolute massacre by the
police which was not excelled in murderous
cruelty by that of Fort Pillow. It was a murder
which the Mayor and the police of this city perpetrated
without the shadow of necessity.” A
tremor of horror and rage ran over the North.
People asked one another: “Does this mean
that the rebellion is to begin again?” I heard
the question often.

The Administration felt the blow, and to neutralize
its effects a national convention of its
adherents, North and South, planned by Thurlow
Weed and Secretary Seward, was to serve as
the principal means. This “National Union Convention”
met in Philadelphia on August 14th.
It was respectably attended in point of character
as well as of numbers. It opened its proceedings
with a spectacular performance which
under different conditions might have struck
the popular imagination favorably. The delegates
marched into the Convention Hall in
pairs, one from the South arm in arm with one
from the North, Massachusetts and South Carolina
leading. But with the Memphis riot and
the New Orleans “massacre” and Andrew Johnson’s
sinister figure in the background, the
theatrical exhibition of restored fraternal feeling,
although calling forth much cheering on the
spot, fell flat, and even became the subject of
ridicule, since it earned for the meeting the
derisive nickname of the “arm-in-arm convention.”
The proceedings were rather dull, and
much was made by the Republicans of the fact
that the Chairman, Senator Doolittle from Wisconsin,
was careful not to let Southern members
say much lest they say too much. It was also
noticed and made much of that among the members
of the convention the number of men supposed
to curry favor with the Administration
for the purpose of getting office—men belonging
to the “bread-and-butter-brigade”—was
conspicuously large. Among the resolutions
passed by the convention was one declaring
slavery abolished and the emancipated negro
entitled to equal protection in every right of
person and property, and another heartily endorsing
President Johnson’s reconstruction
policy.

No doubt many of the respectable and patriotic
men who attended that convention thought
they had done very valuable work for the general
pacification by getting their Southern
friends publicly to affirm that slavery was dead
never to be revived, and that the civil rights of
the freedmen were entitled to equal protection
and would have it. But the effect of such declarations
upon the popular mind at the North
was not as great as had been expected. Such
affirmations by respectable Southern gentlemen,
who were perfectly sincere, had been
heard before. In fact, almost everybody in the
South was ready to declare himself likewise,
and with equal sincerity, as to the abolition of
the old form of chattel slavery. But the question
of far superior importance was, what he
would put in the place of the old form of chattel
slavery. There was the rub, and this had come
to be well understood at the North in the light
of the reports from the South, which the advocates
of President Johnson’s policy could not
deny nor obscure. The moral effect of the National
Union Convention was therefore very
feeble.

[pg 301]

From the collection of Joseph Keppler

SENATOR CARL SCHURZ

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN ABOUT 1879

Johnson “Swings Around the Circle”

If the members of the National Union Convention
thought that their conciliatory utterances
would pour oil on the angry waves of the campaign,
they reckoned without their host. When
a committee appointed for that purpose presented
to President Johnson a copy of its proceedings,
there was rather a note of defiance to
his opponents, than of conciliation, in his response.
“We have witnessed in one department
of the government every endeavor to prevent
[pg 302]
the restoration of peace, harmony, and
union,” he said. “We have seen hanging upon
the verge of the government, as it were, a body
called, or which assumes to be, the Congress of
the United States, while, in fact, it is a Congress
of only a part of the United States. We have
seen a Congress in a minority assume to exercise
power which, allowed to be consummated,
would result in despotism or monarchy itself.”
Here was again the thinly veiled threat that,
because certain States were not represented in
it, the validity of the acts of Congress might be
attacked. But worse was to follow. It is a
well-known fact that presidents, under the influence
of the Washington atmosphere, are apt
to become victims of the delusion that they are
idolized by the American people. Even John
Tyler is said to have thought so. It may have
been under a similar impression that President
Johnson, who had great confidence in the power
of his influence over the masses when he personally
confronted them, accepted an invitation
requesting his presence at the unveiling of
a Douglas statue in Chicago, and he made this
an occasion for a “presidential progress”
through some of the States. He started late in
August. Several members of his cabinet,
Seward among others, accompanied him, and
so did General Grant and Admiral Farragut, by
command, to give additional luster to the appearance
of the chief.

Reproduced by permission of the New York Customs House

SENATOR PRESTON KING

WHOM PRESIDENT JOHNSON APPOINTED COLLECTOR OF THE PORT OF
NEW YORK. HIS SUICIDE IN 1865 WAS ATTRIBUTED TO WORRY OVER
THE PRESIDENT’S RECONSTRUCTION POLICY

[pg 303]
His journey, the famous “swinging around
the circle,”—a favorite phrase of his to describe
his fight against the Southern enemies of the
Union, the Secessionists, at one time, and
against the Northern disunionists, the radical
Republicans, at another—was a series of the
most disastrous exhibitions. At Philadelphia
he was received with studied coldness. At
New York he had an official reception, and he
used the occasion to rehearse his often-told
story of his wonderful advancement from the
position of alderman in his native town to the
presidency of the United States, with some insignificant
remarks about his policy attached.
At Cleveland he appeared before a large audience,
according to abundant testimony, in a
drunken condition. Indeed, the character of
his speech cannot be explained in any other
way. He descended to the lowest tone of partizan
stump speaking. He bandied epithets
with some of his hearers who interrupted him.
The whole speech was a mixture of inane
drivel and reckless aspersion. His visit at
Chicago passed without any particular scandal.
But the speech he made at St. Louis fairly
capped the climax. He accused the Republicans
in Congress of substantially having
planned the New Orleans massacre. He indulged
himself in a muddled tirade about Judas, Christ,
and Moses. He declared that all his opponents
were after was to hold on to the offices; but
that he would kick them out; that they wanted
to get rid of him, but that he defied them.
And so on. At Indianapolis a disorderly crowd
hooted him down and would not let him speak
at all.

Lent by the Century Co.

SENATOR JAMES LANE

ONE OF THE MOST FAMOUS FREE-STATE FIGHTERS IN KANSAS TERRITORY.
HIS DEFECTION TO THE SIDE OF PRESIDENT JOHNSON WAS BITTERLY
CRITICISED BY HIS CONSTITUENTS, AND WAS THOUGHT TO BE
RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS SUICIDE IN 1866

[pg 304]

New Congress Overwhelmingly Anti-Johnson

He returned to Washington an utterly discomfited
and disgraced man, having gone out to
win popular support, and having earned only
popular disgust. The humorists, pictorial as
well as literary, pounced upon the “swinging
around the circle” as a fruitful subject for caricature
or satire, turning serious wrath into a
bitter laugh. Andrew Johnson became the
victim not only of detestation but of ridicule.

The campaign was then—about the middle
of September—virtually decided. There was
no longer any doubt that the election would not
only preserve, but materially increase, the anti-Johnson
majority in Congress. But before
President Johnson started on his ill-starred
journey, arrangements had been made for the
other national conventions. One of them was
designed to bring Southern loyalists, that is,
Southern men who had stood loyally by the
National Government, together with Northern
Republicans. It met at Philadelphia on the
3rd of September. Senator Zachariah Chandler
and myself attended it as delegates sent
there by the Republicans of Michigan. It was
a large gathering, the roll of which bore many
distinguished names from all parts of the country.
Southern members having been permitted
to say but very little in the Johnson convention
a fortnight before, it was a clever stroke of
policy on the part of our managers to give the
floor to the Southern loyalists altogether. They
availed themselves of the opportunity to lay
before the people of the country an account of
their experiences and sufferings, since the promulgation
of the Johnson policy, which could
not fail to stir the popular heart. Their recitals
of the atrocities committed in the South
were indeed horrible. Over a thousand Union
citizens had been murdered there since the surrender
of Lee and in no case had the assassins
been brought to judgment. But after Mr.
Johnson’s “swing around the circle” no further
exertions could have saved his cause, and no
further exertion could have very much augmented
the majority against him. I am convinced
he would have been beaten without his
disgraceful escapade. But his self-exhibitions
made his defeat overwhelming. The Republicans
won in one hundred and forty-three Congressional
districts, the Democrats in only forty-nine.
President Johnson was more at the
mercy of Congress than ever.

During the canvass I was somewhat in demand
as a speaker and addressed large meetings
at various places. One of my speeches, delivered
at Philadelphia on the 8th of September,
was printed in pamphlet form and widely circulated
as a campaign document. I have read
it again—thirty-nine years after its delivery—and
I may say that after the additional light
and the experience which this lapse of time has
given us, I would now draw the diagnosis
of the situation then existing substantially as I
did in that speech—barring some, not many—extravagances
of oratorical coloring, and the
treatment of the disqualification clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

The Movement Toward Negro Suffrage

It was in this campaign that the matter of negro
suffrage was first discussed on the hustings with
a certain frankness. Efforts have since been
made, and are now being made, to make the
Southern people believe—and, I deeply regret
to say, many of them actually do believe—that
the introduction of negro suffrage was a
device of some particularly malignant and vindictive
radicals, to subject the South to the extreme
of distress and humiliation. Nothing
could be farther from the truth. Admitting
that there were people in the North who, before
the passions of the War had subsided, wished
to see the rebels and their sympathizers and
abettors in some way punished for what they
had done, negro suffrage never was thought of
as a punitive measure. I may say that in all
my intercourse with various classes of people—and
my opportunities were large—I have
never heard it mentioned or suggested, still less
advocated, as a punitive measure. It never
was in itself popular with the masses—reason
enough for the ordinary politicians to be afraid
of openly favoring it. There were only two
classes of men who at all thought of introducing
it generally; those whom, without meaning any
disparagement, I would for the sake of convenience
call the doctrinaires,—men who, like Mr.
Sumner, would insist as a general principle that
the negro, being a man, was as a matter of right
as much entitled to the suffrage as the white
man; and those who, after a faithful and somewhat
perplexed wrestle with the complicated
problem of reconstruction, finally landed—or,
it might almost be said, were stranded—at the[pg 305]
conclusion that to enable the negro to protect
his own rights as a free man by the exercise of
the ballot was after all the simplest way out of
the tangle, and at the same time the most in
accordance with our democratic principles of
government.

SENATOR ZACHARIAH CHANDLER

WHO WAS SENT, TOGETHER WITH CARL SCHURZ,
TO THE PHILADELPHIA CONVENTION OF 1866, BY
THE REPUBLICANS OF MICHIGAN

This view of the matter grew rapidly in popular
appreciation as the results of reconstruction
on the Johnson plan became more and
more unsatisfactory.
It
gained very
much in strength
when it appeared
that the
tremendous rebuke
administered
to the
President’s policy
by the Congressional
elections
of 1866
had not produced
any effect
upon Mr. Johnson’s
mind, but
that, as his annual
message delivered
on December
3rd
showed, he was
doggedly bent
upon following
his course. It
was still more
strengthened
when all the
Southern legislatures
set up
under the President’s
plan, save
that of Tennessee,
rejected the
Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution,—some
unanimously, or nearly so,—and even
with demonstrations of contemptuous defiance.
Then the question was asked at the North
with great pertinency: Are we to understand
that the white people of the States
lately in rebellion will not agree that all
persons born or naturalized in the United
States shall be constitutionally recognized as
citizens entitled in their civil rights to the equal
protection of the laws? That those States insist,
not only that the colored people shall not
have the right of suffrage, but that those people
so excluded from the franchise shall even serve
to increase the basis of representation in favor
of the whites—or in other words, that the
white people of the South shall come out of the
rebellion politically stronger than they were
when they went into it? That all those who
engaged in the rebellion and fought to destroy
the Union shall be entitled to participate on
even more favorable terms than ourselves in
the government of the same Union which but
yesterday they sought to destroy? That they
refuse to safeguard the public debt incurred
for saving the
Union and wish
to keep open the
possibility of an
assumption of
the debts incurred
by the
rebel States for
destroying the
Union?

The fact was
not overlooked
that the great
mass of the
Southern negroes
were
grossly ignorant
and in other respects
ill-fitted
for the exercise
of political privileges.
Many
who then favored
negro suffrage
would have
greatly preferred
its gradual introduction,
first
limiting it, as
Mr. Lincoln suggested
to Governor
Hahn of
Louisiana, to
those who had
served as soldiers in the Union army and
those who were best fitted for it by intelligence
and education. But this would have reduced
the negro vote to so small a figure as to
render it insufficient to counteract or neutralize
the power of the reactionary element. To that
end the whole vote was required; and for that
reason it was demanded, in spite of the imperfections
it was known to possess and of the
troubles it threatened—which, however, at
that period were much underestimated, as is apt
to be the case under similar circumstances.

Reconstruction Under Military Control

When the session of Congress opened on the 3rd
of December, it was virtually certain that unrestricted
[pg 306]
negro suffrage would come and that
President Johnson’s reconstruction policy would
be swept out of the way. The Republican majority
without delay passed a bill extending the
suffrage to the negroes in the District of Columbia,
which then had a municipal government of
its own. The President put his veto on the
bill, but the veto was promptly overruled by
two-thirds majorities in both Houses. Then
followed a series of legislative measures designed
substantially to substitute for the reconstruction
work done by the President a method
of reconstruction based upon universal suffrage
including the negro vote, and to strip the President
as much as possible of all power to interfere.
The first, upon the ground that life and
property were not safe under the existing provisional
governments, divided the late rebel
States into five military divisions, each to be
under the command of a general officer who
was to have the power to declare martial law
and to have offenders tried by military commission,
as the condition of public safety and order
might seem to them to require. Under their
protection conventions were to be elected by
universal suffrage including the negro vote and
excluding the disqualified “rebel” vote, to
frame new State constitutions containing provision
for the same sort of universal suffrage,
such constitutions to be subject to the approval
of the people of the respective States and of
Congress. The State officers to be elected
under these new constitutions were, of course,
to be elected by the same electorate, and the
States were to be regarded as entitled to representation
in Congress, after having ratified the
Fourteenth Amendment to the National Constitution,
and after that Amendment had been
ratified by a sufficient number of the States generally
to make it a valid part of the Constitution.
A supplementary reconstruction act gave the
military commanders very extensive control over
the elections to be held, as to the registration of
voters, the mode of holding the elections, the
appointment of election officers, the canvassing
of results, and the reporting of such results to
the President and through him to Congress. In
order to strip President Johnson of all power to
interfere with the execution of this measure
beyond the appointment of the commanders of
the various military divisions, a provision was
introduced in the Army Appropriation bill
which substantially ordained that all military
orders and instructions should be issued through
the General of the Army (General Grant), who
was to have his headquarters at Washington;
and that all orders and instructions issued otherwise
should be null and void. And when the
generals commanding the several divisions had
expressed some doubt as to the interpretation
of some provisions of the Reconstruction Act,
and the President had issued instructions concerning
those points which displeased Congress,
another act was passed, which, by way of explanation
of the meaning of its predecessors,
still further enlarged the powers of the military
commanders and made them virtually rulers
over everything and everybody in those States.
In the mean time, to tie the President’s hands
still farther, the Tenure of Office Act had been
passed, which was to curtail or hamper President
Johnson’s power to dismiss office-holders
from their places so as to reduce as much as
possible his facilities for punishing the opponents
and for rewarding the friends of his policy,
and thus, as it would now be called, for building
up an office-holders’ machine for his use.

The Public Fear of Johnson

President Johnson in every case promptly
vetoed the bills objectionable to him or fulminated
his protests against what he considered
unwarrantable encroachments upon his constitutional
prerogatives. Some of his messages, reported
to have been written either by Mr.
Seward or by Mr. Jeremiah Black, a man of
brilliant abilities, were strong in argument as
well as eloquent in expression. But they were
not listened to—much less considered. Mr.
Johnson had personally discredited himself to
such a degree that the connection of his personality
with anything he advocated fatally
discredited his cause. The air, not only in
Washington, but throughout the country, was
buzzing with rumors of iniquities which Andrew
Johnson was meditating and would surely attempt
if he were not disarmed. He was surely
plotting a coup d’état; he had already slyly
tried to get General Grant out of the way by
sending him on a trumped-up diplomatic errand
to Mexico. When, therefore, the news came
from Washington that Andrew Johnson was to
be impeached, to deprive him of his office, it was
not only welcomed by reckless partizanship, but
as everybody who has lived through those times
will remember, it struck a popular chord. There
was a widespread feeling among well-meaning
and sober people that the country was really in
some sort of peril, and that it would be a good
thing to get rid of that dangerous man in the
presidential chair.

But for this vague feeling of uneasiness approaching
genuine alarm, I doubt whether Congress
would ever have ventured upon the tragi-comedy
of the impeachment.

It explains also the fact that so many lawyers
in Congress, as well as in the country, although
they must have seen the legal weakness of the[pg 307]
case against Andrew Johnson, still labored so
hard to find some point upon which he might be
convicted. It was for political, not for legal
reasons that they did so—not reasons of political
partizanship, but the higher political reason
that they thought the public interest made
the removal of Andrew Johnson from his place
of power eminently desirable. I have to confess
that I leaned somewhat to that opinion
myself—not that I believed in the sinister
revolutionary designs of Mr. Johnson, but because
I thought that the presence of Mr. Johnson
in the presidential office encouraged among
the white people of the South hopes and endeavors
which, the longer they were indulged
in, the more grievous the harm they would do to
both races. It can indeed not be said that
President Johnson failed to execute the reconstruction
laws enacted by Congress by refusing
to perform the duties imposed upon him, such
as the appointment of the commanders of military
divisions. He even effectively opposed,
through his able and accomplished Attorney-General,
Mr. Stanbery, the attempts of two
Southern governors to stop the enforcement of
the Reconstruction Act by the legal process of
injunction. But the mere fact that he was believed
to favor the reactionary element in the
South and would do all in his power to let it
have its way was in itself an influence constantly
inflaming the passions kindled by mischievous
hopes.

The Fatal Bungling of Reconstruction

The condition of things in the South had become
deplorable in the extreme. Had the reconstruction
measures enacted by Congress,
harsh as they were, been imposed upon the
Southern people immediately after the War,
when the people were stunned by their overwhelming
defeat, and when there was still some
apprehension of bloody vengeance to be visited
upon the leaders of the rebellion—as was the
case, for instance, in Hungary in 1849 after the
collapse of the great insurrection—those measures
would have been accepted as an escape
from something worse. Even negro suffrage in
a qualified form, as General Lee’s testimony
before the Reconstruction Committee showed,
might then have been accepted as a peace-offering.

But the propitious moment was lost. Instead
of gently persuading the Southerners, as
Lincoln would have done, that the full restoration
of the States lately in rebellion would necessarily
depend upon the readiness and good faith
with which they accommodated themselves to
the legitimate results of the War, and that there
were certain things which the victorious Union
government was bound to insist upon, not in a
spirit of vindictiveness, but as a simple matter
of honor and duty—instead of this President
Johnson told them that their instant restoration
to their old status in the Union, that is, to
complete self-government and to participation
in the National Government, on equal terms
with the other States, had become their indefeasible
constitutional right as soon as the insurgents
laid down their arms and went through
the form of taking an oath of allegiance, and
that those who refused to recognize the immediate
validity of that right were no better than
traitors and public enemies. Nothing could
have been more natural, under such circumstances,
than that the master class in the
South should have seen a chance to establish
something like semi-slavery, and that, pressed
by their economic perplexities, they should
have eagerly grasped at that chance. No wonder
that what should have been as gentle as
possible a transition from one social state into
another degenerated into an angry political
brawl, which grew more and more furious as it
went on. No wonder, finally, that when at last
the Congressional reconstruction policy, which
at first might have been quietly submitted to as
something that might have been worse, and
that could not be averted, came at last in the
midst of that brawl, it was resented in the
South as an act of diabolical malice and tyrannical
oppression not to be endured. And the
worst outcome of all was, that many white
people of the South who had at first cherished
a kindly feeling for the negroes on account of
their “fidelity” during the War, now fell to
hating the negroes as the cause of all their woes;
that, on the other hand, the negroes, after all
their troubles, raised to a position of power, now
were tempted to a reckless use of that power;
and that a selfish partizan spirit growing up
among the Republican majority, instead of endeavoring
to curb that tendency, encouraged,
or, at least, tolerated it for party advantage.

I have to confess that I took a more hopeful
view of the matter at the time, for I did not
foresee the mischievous part which selfish partizan
spirit would play in that precarious situation.
I trusted that the statesmen of the Republican
party would prove clear-sighted
enough to perceive in time the danger of excesses
which their reconstruction policy would
bring to the South, and that they would be
strong enough in influence to combat that danger.
Nothing could have been farther from my
mind than the expectation that before long it
would be my lot to take an active part in that
combat on the most conspicuous political stage
in the country.

[pg 308]

THE THIRTEENTH MOVE

BY ALBERTA BANCROFT

ILLUSTRATIONS BY M. J. SPERO

Ikey stood on the street corner and fingered
her veil to keep passersby from seeing
her lips tremble. She was sure that
she was going to cry right there in the open,
and she was furious about it, because she
did not approve of weepy females.

“If you dare,” she whispered fiercely, “if
you dare, I’ll—I’ll—you shan’t have that
nickel’s worth of peanut candy, or those currant
buns, either.”

This threat proving effective, she turned,
head held high, and entered the bakery.

There was the usual Saturday afternoon
crowd, jostling on the shoddy thoroughfare.
To-day the jostling was intensified; for the car
strike was on in full blast, feeling ran high, and
demonstrations were being made against the
company. Now and again a car passed slowly
up or down the street, drays and express wagons
blocking its progress wherever possible, scab
conductor and motorman hooted at by San
Francisco men and beplumed ladies for their
pains.

Ikey looked at the mob in disgust. Then she
hurried around the corner and away from the
scene of commotion.

“And to think that it has come to this, that
I can’t ride up and down in those cars all day
long—just to show ’em.”

The beach was what she really wanted—one
of those little sand hummocks with juicy plants
sprawling over it, that protect one from the
wind and yet reveal beyond ravishing glimpses
of cliff and breaker and sapphire shining sea.

But the beach was not to be found in the
heart of town. And she was too tired to walk
there—not having had any lunch and being
very angry besides. And she would lose her
“job”—her miserable, wretched, disgusting,
good-for-nothing job (Ikey loved adjectives), if
she rode. For any and all women connected
with any and all union men had been forbidden
to use the company’s cars. And business
houses—who had anything to gain from it—had
promised their employees instant dismissal
for even one ride. And the firm that employed
Ikey would lose three-fourths of its trade if the
union boycotted it.

So the sand-dunes would have to wait. But
there were some vacant lots, backed by a scraggle
of rough, red rock, only half a dozen blocks
away. If luck were with her, the loafers might
be in temporary abeyance and the refugee tents
not unduly prominent.

Luck was with her. And Ikey sat down on
the lea of the little cliff, quite alone, spread out
her buns,—you got three for ten cents these
catastrophe days,—and faced the situation.

The landlady had raised the rent.

Ikey could have screamed with laughter over
the situation—if only the matter were not so
vital.

“This’ll make the thirteenth move for you,
Ikey, my love, since the eighteenth of April—and
the thirteenth move is bound to be unlucky.
But you’ll have to go, sure as Fate; for you can’t
stand another raise. The Wandering Jew gentleman
takes the road again.”

She pursed her lips as she said it. She had
invented the appelation for herself after nine
moves in three months. “I don’t know what
his name really was,” she confessed—there
was no one else to talk to, no one she cared for,
so she talked, sub voice, to herself—”but it
must have been Ikey. I’m sure it was Ikey—and
that I look just like him.” And deriving
much comfort from this witticism, she went on
her way.

“Ikey, the Wandering Jew, on the move
again,” she repeated. “But where to move to,
that is the question. It’s funny what a difference
money makes”—her eyebrows went up—”or
rather, lack of it. I’ve never considered
that until recently.”

Then her eyes fell on her shoes.

They had been very swagger little shoes in
the beginning—Ikey had made rather a specialty
of footgear—but they were her “escape”
shoes; and their looks told the tale of their wanderings.
Also, she had had no others since.

She wriggled her toes.

“You’ll be poking through before long, looking
[pg 309]
at the stars,” she told them severely.
“Imagine your excitement.”

And her suit.

“‘I’VE BEEN FOLLOWING YOU EVER SINCE YOU LEFT YOUR OFFICE,’ HE SAID”

Ikey looked away so as not to see the perfect
cut of it, the perfect fit of it, the utter shabbiness
of it. It was her “escape” suit, too. She
had slept on the hills in it to the tune of dynamiting
and the flare of the burning city. She
would never have another like it—never. For
her job——

Her job.

She leaned back suddenly and closed her
eyes. Her job. The rage of this noon was
coming back again; rage, and with it a
strange, new sensation—fear. She had never
known fear before, not even during the earthquake
days. “Only at the dentist’s,” she told
herself, giggling half hysterically behind closed
lids.

And back of it all—back of the landlady’s
unconcealed dislike and latest slap, back of the
disintegration of a wardrobe that could not be
replaced, and the question as to whether her
“job” had not become an impossibility since
to-day—and that job simply could not become
an impossibility: one had to live—back of all
this was the dull hurt, smothered and always
coming again, that Bixler McFay had not taken
the trouble to look her up when his regiment
came through on the way to Manila.

“You may as well face that, too, while you’re
about it,” Ikey observed sarcastically. She
opened her eyes with a snap and bit into the
first bun.

“The regiment was only here three days,” a
little voice inside of her whispered fearfully.

“Three days!” Ikey’s scorn was unbounded.
“If he had cared, he could have found you
in three hours—and he always said he
cared. It’s a thing you’ve got to live with.
It’s nothing so unusual. It happens every
day. Why can’t you treat it like a poor relation?”

And her thoughts went back to Fort Leavenworth,
and the gowns on gowns she had worn,
all burned up at the St. Francis last spring, with
the rest of her things, a week after she had
reached the city; and Cousin Mary, suave and
elegant and impressive as her chaperon; and
herself, petted and made much of on all sides,
and incidentally pointed out as the richest girl
on the field, and an orphan; and Bixler McFay,
handsome, brilliant, devoted, always on hand,
always protesting——

A whimsical, sarcastic little smile curved her
lips for a moment. The earthquake had certainly
made a difference. A vision of Cousin
Mary arose—not the suave and elegant chaperon
of a wealthy young relative, but a frightened,
self-centered, middle-aged woman, who
had taken the earthquake as a personal affront
put upon her by her young charge and insisted
on being the first consideration in no matter
what environment she found herself.

[pg 310]

“‘IT’S A DESPICABLE LETTER,’ SHE TOLD HERSELF”

[pg 311]
Then came another vision. She recalled her
parting with Bixler McFay in the late winter,
when she had left Leavenworth for the Coast,
saying it wasn’t decent not to know anything
about the place where all your income came
from, and he had left Leavenworth to rejoin
his regiment in Arizona. How his voice had
trembled that morning as he bade her good-bye,
declaring he should always consider himself engaged
to her, even if she did not consider herself
engaged to him; begging that she wear his
class pin, or at least keep it for him if she would
not wear it, because the thought of its being in
her possession would comfort him in his loneliness.

It had comforted her in those first dreadful
days after the fire to think that he was alive
and on his way to her. It never entered her
head but what he would come at once: when
friends were looking for friends and enemies
were succoring one another, how should he fail
her?

And then—not one word. Not even an inquiry
in the paper; when that was about all
the papers were made up of for days after—column
after column of addresses and inquiries,
along with the death notices.

And afterwards—not one word——

II

“I won’t pretend this is accidental, Miss
Stanton.”

Ikey looked up startled, began to curl her
feet up under her skirt, decided that it was not
worth while,—he was only one of the boarders,—and
offered buns and candy with indifferent
promptness.

“There’s a gang of toughs coming down over
the hill. Strikers, maybe. I thought they
might startle you.”

He seated himself unceremoniously on a rock
near by.

Ikey settled back with a little comfortable
movement against her own rock and raised her
eyebrows.

“The proper thing for me to do at this stage
is to inquire in a haughty voice how you happened
to know I was here.”

“I followed you.”

There was no hint of apology, and she looked
at him more closely. She had sat opposite him
at the unesthetic boarding-house dining-table
for the past six weeks now. He ate enormously,—but
in cultured wise,—never said
anything, was something over six feet tall, wore
ready-made, dust-colored clothes, and was
utterly inconspicuous. “Like a big gray wall.”
Just now it was the expression of his face, intangibly
different—or had she never taken the
trouble to notice him before?—that fixed her
attention.

He was looking straight at her.

“I’ve been following you ever since you left
your office,” he said after a deliberate pause;
and Ikey’s eyes grew large and frightened as she
took in his meaning.

“Then you saw——”

“I did.” There was another pause. “It
won’t happen again.” His tone was quite
final. “Why do you lay yourself open to that
sort of thing? Don’t you know that the burnt
district is no place for any woman at all these
days—not even one block of it? Why don’t
you ride?”

His voice was quite cross, and Ikey could
have laughed aloud. This, to her, who had the
burnt district on her nerves to such an extent
that she dreamed of the brick-and-twisted-iron
chaos by night—the miles of desolation, punctuated
by crumbling chimneys and tottering
walls—dreamed of it by night and turned sick
at the sight of it by day. Did this stupid hulk
of a person think she liked the burnt district—and
to walk there?

After all, his attitude was less funny than impertinent.
She would be angry. It was better.
She would respond icily and put him in his
place.

At least, such was her intention. But she
discovered to her amazement that she was
trembling—her encounter of the noon was
responsible for that—and her teeth seemed
inclined to hit against each other rapidly with a
little clicking noise. So it seemed on the whole
more expedient to blurt out her remarks without
any attempt at frills or amplification.

“Why don’t you ride?”

Ikey gathered herself together.

“My dear Mr. Hammond, there is a street car
strike on here in San Francisco. No union
wagons run out this way—and I lose my position
if I use the cars.”

He was welcome to that. She looked off into
the distance while he assimilated it.

“I had not thought of that,” he said at last
slowly. “In that case there is but one thing to
do. You must stop that work at once.”

“And stand in the bread line? Now? Along
with—those others?” A little smile twisted
her lips. “I should look handsome doing that.”

“But surely——”

His tone was beginning to be puzzled. So
was his expression. Ikey ascertained this by
allowing a glance to brush past him.

[pg 312]

“‘HOW DO YOU SUPPOSE I FEEL, BEING IN THIS POSITION—TO YOU?'”

[pg 313]
Suddenly he had changed his position. He
was beside her on the ground, facing her, staring
her out of countenance.

“We may as well get the clear of this right
now——”

“It is needlessly clear to me, Mr. Hammond.”

“But not to me. In the first place——”

“I will not trouble you——”

“It is no trouble. In the first place, has
that fellow followed you, spoken to you before?”

“Never—never like that.”

She wondered whether he had noticed her
unsuccessful effort to rise and put an end to the
interview.

“Do you know who he is?”

“He is the junior member of the firm I work
for.”

“What! Well, I am glad I smashed him.”
Then he added quickly, “This, of course, puts
an end to your going there, at once. You’ve
been at it too long anyway. It’s stopped being
a joke, and as a pose——”

“‘Pose.'”

The intonation was subtle. A moment’s bewilderment,
and he burst out, “You’re not doing
this because you—have to?”

“That—or something.”

“But—but—Good Lord, child! Where is
your money?”

With pomp and ceremony—but languidly
withal, for her head was beginning to ache, and
she wanted desperately to cry—she laid her
purse in his hand. But she did not look at him.

The big hand closed over the flat little thing
impatiently.

“I am referring to your bank account.”

“And by what right——”

“We’ll settle that later. The banks have
opened up again——”

“That’s all I have.”

“But what has become—You’re not going
to faint?”

“No.”

“Then what has become——”

Quite against her will she was beginning to
find herself faintly amused. Of all pigheaded,
impertinent people, this individual with whom
she had hardly had more than five minutes’
conversation, except at meal times during the
past six weeks, was certainly the worst.

“I really must know, Miss Stanton, what has
become——”

“I gave it away.”

“You—gave it—away!” Italics could
never do justice to his intonation. He was
staring at her as though he considered her demented.
“To whom?” came his indignant
question.

After all, why not tell him? It was none of
his business; and he was desperately impertinent;
but she was desperately forlorn; and,
though it could not better the situation to talk
about it, it might better her feelings.

She slipped farther down against her rock;
and he bent forward, listening intently.

“I gave it to—a relative. She was living
with me at the time of the fire. We had only
just come up from Los Angeles—because I
wanted to—I had some property here; all my
income came from it; and I felt I ought to know
more about it—in case anything happened.
And after the earthquake she acted as though
I had led her up to the—jaws of death—and
pushed her in—and later she was so afraid of
typhoid—and everything. And so—at last,
when the banks opened up again—I gave her
all the money I had in the bank—and she went
East right away—and I stayed here.”

“With nothing?”

“I had fifty dollars. I was doing relief work
at the Presidio, waiting for the vaults to cool
off—I had a lot of paper money in a box
there—and for the insurance companies to
pay—and for the man who looked after my
affairs to get well: he’d been hurt in the earthquake.
But he didn’t get well: he had a stroke,
instead, and died. And his partner—they
were lawyers—went away; all their books and
papers and everything had been burnt up, and
he didn’t seem to think he could ever straighten
things out; and when the vaults were opened,
the paper money I had in the box was all dust—and
the insurance companies haven’t paid.”

She shrugged her shoulders delicately over the
situation, already disgusted with herself at having
descended to disclosing her private affairs
to a stranger.

Meanwhile, “So that’s it,” the stranger was
saying. “I’ve wondered a lot.”

“You needn’t have troubled.”

“No trouble,” he blandly assured her.
“Houghton always was an ass”—(Houghton
was the younger lawyer. How had he known?
the girl wondered)—”lighting out for Goldfield
when he ought to be here, straightening out his
clients’ business. And so you went to work on
some beggarly salary, instead of seeing about
having your property put in shape again. Why
didn’t you lease, or——”

“I couldn’t find out where it was,” she retorted,
furious. “I’d only been here a week
when the fire came; and not for years before
that.”

——”and not put yourself in a position where
you get insulted by some little scrub who isn’t
fit for you to walk on.—Are you going to
faint?”

“No.”

[pg 314]
“Then what’s the matter?” inquired the
clod at her side.

“Nothing,” she fibbed promptly. How different
this creature was from Bixler McFay!
Bixler had never pried into her private affairs,
or evinced an interest in her possessions, or insisted
on answers she did not wish to give, or
pursued topics she did not care for. Bixler had
none of the bluntness, the pigheadedness, the
brutality of this—but then, there was no comparing
the two. Only, she had vowed not to
think of Bixler any more. He was not worth
it.

“Nothing’s the matter with me,” she said.
“Only, when I got back to the boarding-house
after—after downtown to-day, the landlady
said I’d have to pay sixty a month or leave at
once, and—and she hadn’t saved any lunch
for me, and——”

“And you’ve been eating——”

He looked at the candy-bag and the morsel
of bun with horror.

“I thought they’d cheer me up,” Ikey murmured
meekly, “but they’ve made me feel—kind
of queer.”

“That settles it.” The big hand came down
forcefully upon his knee. “We’ll get the thickest
steak you ever laid your eyes on in about
two minutes. But first—we’ll get married.”

“What!”

III

What happened after that Ikey could never
clearly remember. Bits of the ensuing conversation
came back to her, memories of the sickening
rage, the stupefying bewilderment that
possessed her, and the exhaustion that followed.
But order there was none. And she
was sure she never got the whole of it.

At one stage in the proceedings she had observed
in a haughty voice that she did not care
to have his sympathy—or pity—take that
form.

“Oh, it’s not that,” he assured her pleasantly;
“but I’m tired of knocking around the
world alone. I need an anchor. I think you”—he
looked at her impersonally, but politely—”would
make a good anchor.”

“You mean you want me to reform you!”

He smiled a careful smile.

“No-o. I don’t feel the need of reforming.
There’s nothing the matter with me——”

“How lovely to have such a high opinion of
oneself.”

“Yes. Isn’t it? But as I was saying——”

At another stage she tried to take refuge behind
the usual platitude: she did not love him.

He considered this—at ease before her, his
hands in his pockets.

“Well, when it comes to that, I don’t love
you, either”—Ikey gasped—”but I don’t consider
that that makes any difference.”

Another break.

Then, “What’ll you do, if you don’t?” he had
asked her in a businesslike manner. “You’re
just on the verge of a breakdown”—She
knew it; and his tone of conviction did not add
to her sense of security—”Another scene like
to-day’s would upset you completely. You say
you have no friends or relatives here; and there’s
no one you want to go to away from here. And
besides, I can look after you a great deal better
than you can look after yourself.”

There must have been much arguing after
that. There must have; for she had not the
slightest intention of being disposed of in this
medieval fashion. But in the midst of some
determined though shaky sentence of hers, he
had said quite kindly and finally that they need
not discuss the matter any further—besides,
she had to have a good stiff lunch right off—and
had piloted her carefully, but with no over-powering
air of devotion, out of the empty lots,
around the corner, and into an automobile.

“It was all the fault of that wretched beefsteak,”
mourned Ikey an hour or two later. “If
I’d only had it before, it never would have happened—never.
I shall always have a grudge
against it. What am I to do now?”

The automobile had conveyed them smoothly,
first, to a clergyman’s, of all people; next, to a
restaurant; then, to the boarding-house, where
her few belongings had found their way into a
telescope basket; and now it was conveying
them through the bedraggled outskirts of the
city into the country beyond.

A hatchet-faced chauffeur was manipulating
things in front; while the unspeakable man in
gray sat unemotionally beside her in the tonneau
and looked the other way.

“What am I to do now?” The bewildered
girl found no answer to the one question of her
mind. “Why don’t you faint?” she asked herself
severely. “Why don’t you faint? If you
had an idea of helping me out of this pickle,
you’d do it at once, and never come to at all,
and then have brain fever. It’s the only decent
solution. Instead of that, here you are, feeling—actually
comfortable.”

She stared ahead of her with miserable eyes.

“It was all that miserable beefsteak. The
thing must have been six inches thick. Beast;
why couldn’t he have taken me to the restaurant
first? Then I’d never have gone to the clergyman’s.
And that license. Where did he get
it? We never stopped for one—he just pulled
it out of his pocket, as though it had been a
handkerchief. Ikey, you’re married, married—do[pg 315]
you quite understand?—to a man who
wears ready-made clothes and doesn’t love you
and lives in an attic boarding-house bed-room.
And what is he doing with this automobile?
And what is his business? Oh, he’s probably a
chauffeur; and he’s borrowed his employer’s
bubble; and this other chauffeur in front’s his
best friend and ashamed of him on account of
the beefsteak business. He’d better be. But
what shall I say to him? What shall I say?—Oh—h”—heaven-sent
inspiration—”I’ll say
nothing at all. I will be—so different.”

On and on and on went the machine. The
girl closed her eyes upon the dusty, dun-colored
landscape.

“Serves me right for turning over my bank
account to Cousin Mary and—and——”

She had fallen asleep, propped up in her
corner of the machine—worn out by this
climax to the weeks that had gone before.

The man at her side turned and looked at her.
His face no longer wore its placidly and conventionally
polite expression.

IV

“The thirteenth move. Didn’t I say it would
be unlucky!”

Ikey had fled to the garden, letter in hand, to
review the situation. The low clouds threatened
rain. But what did that matter? The
house stifled her with its large, low, mannish
rooms and continued reminder of Arthur Hammond;
and she had to think—think—think
everything out from the very beginning.

That first evening—when she wakened in
the dusk at his side in the automobile and
stared bewildered at the dim outline of the low,
rambling brown house tucked away among
shrubbery under a load of vines—how quick
he had been to reassure her, to explain that a
friend of his, who had expected to come here
with his bride, had had to go to Mexico instead
and had asked him to occupy the bungalow
until their return. A woman and a Chinaman
went with the place; and she would have the
run of a large garden. She could get rested
there; and he could go to and from town every
day.

And the days that followed—how careful he
had been; how matter-of-fact and unemotional;
never touching her; never making any sudden
motion towards her; never referring to that
short ten minutes at the clergyman’s; never
going near the two rooms the respectable English
housekeeper had conducted her to that first
evening.

“Almost as though he were trying to tame a
bird,” she had thought half whimsically, after
the first days, when the feeling of weariness and
fright had worn down and a great relief and
great thankfulness had taken its place, that she
should never see the boarding-house again with
its sneering, insulting landlady, or the office
where that man with the eager, shifty, cruel
little eyes held rule.

And so she had set herself about it, resolutely,
though bewildered, to be an anchor to this big,
unemotional young man who had so suddenly
come out of the background of her existence and
was occupying all possible space immediately
behind the footlights.

She did not at all know what an anchor did,
or said, or how it acted. But the very perplexity
for some reason or other sent her spirits sky-high.
And she pottered about the garden with
him, and whizzed about the country in the automobile,—it
belonged to the same friend who
wanted him to look after the place,—and poked
about the queer, rambling house, content to see
no one else and talk to no one else and amazed at
herself that this should be so.

Only once had he made any reference to their
situation, when he suggested that it might be as
well under the circumstances for her to call him
Arthur.

“I shall never call you Arthur. Never,” she
told him hotly. “I loathe the name. Always
have. It sounds so deadly respectable.”

“You don’t care for respectability?” His
tone was so affable.

Ikey considered. “It may have advantages,
in some cases. But——”

“Then what am I to be called?”

She might have retorted that she should call
him nothing at all: he never addressed her by
any name. Instead, she answered, “Boobles.”

“Boobles?”

“Boobles,” she repeated firmly. And then
came laughter. Ikey’s rages had a way of
breaking up in inconvenient bursts of hilarity
these days.

But what difference did that make now?
What difference did anything make?

“I don’t see,” Ikey said to herself desperately,
“what makes me so stupid. I’m afflicted
with chronic mental nearsightedness. Most
distressing. This is really a tragedy I’m mixed
up in—a tragedy. And tragedy’s a thing I
never cared for.”

She collapsed miserably on a bench and stared
at the letter.

“It’s queer how tragedy and going to sea
give you the same feeling.”

It was not pity—oh, no—that had made
him want to marry her. And it was not love.
And it was not because he needed an anchor.
Not he. He was not that kind. It was simply[pg 316]
because she was his opportunity. Yes; that
was the word. And she had never suspected.

Not that afternoon in the vacant lot, when he
had inquired so exhaustingly as to her bank
account.

Not the next week, when he appeared from
town in the middle of the afternoon, all unheralded
and paler than ordinary, with papers to
sign, and the exhilarating news that the insurance
companies had paid up, and a new bank-book
with her name and comforting fat figures
in it.

How desperately glad she had been over that.
For hot shame possessed her at her appearance—shabby
clothes and hardly any of them,
when his ready-made dust-colored garments had
immediately been replaced by the well-fitting
blue serge that was her special weakness in
masculine attire. She had invested heavily in
frills and slowly regained her self-respect.

And not when he had appeared with a list of
her property—how had he come by that list?—stating
that he had made arrangements to
lease certain pieces and rebuild at once on the
others, and asking her approval of the final arrangements.

She had not suspected him then, either, idiot
that she was. She had been too busy being
rested, being thankful, being happy in the big
garden, tucked away from the people who had
failed her and the ghastly city and the memory
of its great disaster.

She turned to the letter again. Bixler McFay
had always written a good letter. This time he
quite surpassed himself.

Heart-broken, unreconciled; his hopes shipwrecked;
his faith destroyed. How could she
have treated him so? She had been practically
engaged to him; and she had left him a prey to
every horrible emotion at a time when one word
would have put his mind at rest. No clew as
to her whereabouts by which he could trace her.

She passed that over with her little crooked,
sarcastic smile. She had telegraphed and written
both—and the second letter had been
registered. He had probably forgotten that
little fact. But it was of little consequence
now. The sting lay in what followed.

And then what did he learn? the letter inquired.
That a man he supposed to be his
friend, a fellow he had met daily in Arizona for
a couple of months at a time, had systematically
pumped him about her; had taken means of ascertaining
her financial status, and, recognizing
her as his opportunity (that was where the word
came from) had rushed off to San Francisco,
married her hand over fist, and launched himself
as a capitalist—on her capital. And she
had allowed it.

The girl dropped the pages in her lap. Her
little fist came down on top of them.

“It’s a despicable letter,” she told herself
hotly. “And what he thinks to gain by it, I
don’t know. He just wants to make trouble.—And
he has,” she breathed with a downward
sigh.

The question was, what to do now. And
pride stood at her elbow and pointed out the
only course.

This Arthur Hammond, this big, quiet, self-contained,
efficient, indifferent young man—whose
opportunity she was—must never know
that she knew, or, knowing, cared.

That was the only solution. Pride forbade a
scene—on his account; on hers; on Bixler
McFay’s; on everybody’s, when it came to that.
No one should know—anything.

“After a while I shall get quite old and pin-cushiony,”
she assured herself, “and pricks
won’t prick; and nothing will matter. I must
be quite affable, and quite indifferent, and
always polite—for women are only rude to men
they care about.” Her lips trembled. “It’s
all happened before, hundreds of times to hundreds
of women—and money is very interesting
to men—and there’s no reason why this
shouldn’t happen to you, Ikey, dear—and a
hundred of years from now it won’t make any
difference anyway.

“But I’ll never tell him anything again——”

For latterly she had told him many things
about herself—young lonesomenesses that nothing
could dispel; family hunger for brothers and
sisters and all the ramifications of a home; and,
half unconsciously, her utter content with the
present. She turned hot at the thought of it all.

“But one thing I won’t stand.” She jumped
up and made for the house. “He shan’t have
my photograph on his dressing-table.”

She had seen it there one day on passing his
open door, and had wondered, wide-eyed, how
he came by it—it was one she had had taken in
the East—and had felt unaccountably shy at
the thought of asking him about it.

She tore into the house, to get it, to destroy
it, to tear it into tiny bits, and trample upon it—at
once, without a moment to lose—when,
rushing up the porch steps, she collided with
the one person of all others she least expected
to see.

V

Late afternoon. The house was very still.
Outside, the rain was falling, falling, and the
shrubs bent under their burden of shining
drops. Inside, the fire crackled and whispered
and the girl lay in the big armchair and looked
around the room.

[pg 317]
The fireplace; the big, rich rugs; the dark
paneling; the fine, unemotional pictures—no
wonder the whole place had reminded her of
Arthur Hammond. She ought to have known.
She ought to have known.

She heard his step in the hall. His door
banged, once; twice; again. Then, his voice,
asking Eliza some question, and the murmur of
the housekeeper’s reply.

Then he came in.

She did not speak or move, and his, “Good-evening”
was presently followed by the easy
question: “What’s the matter?”

Then she turned on him.

“Is it true that this house belongs to you?”

A pause. Then he answered slowly,

“Yes.”

“And the grounds?”

“Yes.”

“And the automobile—is yours?”

“Yes.”

He stood quietly watching her. She knew it,
though she did not look at him. She took a
deep breath.

“Those insurance companies have not paid,”
she said in a stifled voice. “You told me they
had. You—you gave me—Where did all
that money come from I’ve been spending?”

“Well, I suppose originally it was mine.”

“Then it’s true you are a millionaire?”

“Ye-es. Just about, I guess.”

“And my property—all those buildings that
burnt up were mortgaged and—and I couldn’t
have rebuilt—and everybody knew it—except
me. The money that’s putting them up
again——”

“I arranged about that. But what difference
does it make?”

“What did you do it for?”

“I thought you’d feel better to have an income
again—and on account of other people,
too. It made me hot to have you treated as
though you were—just anybody at all—simply
because your income happened to be short
for a time. And—and I thought you’d rather
have it that way than take it from me—at the
first,” he ended lamely.

She jumped up and confronted him, white
with rage.

“How dared you do that? How dared you?
How do you suppose I feel, being in this position—to
you?”

“I hope you don’t feel at all. And besides—But
how did you find out about this?”

“Cousin Mary has been here,” the girl burst
out, losing all idea of keeping anything back.
“She had all sorts of things to say: how badly
she’d been treated—how she was shipped off
East, and I never wrote to her, nothing about
my affairs, or that I was married, or anything.
She couldn’t talk enough. She said everybody
sympathized with her, because her prospects
were ruined, because the companies I’d insured
in wouldn’t pay and my land was mortgaged
so I couldn’t rebuild. She knew that—and
she’d never told me. And then she spoke a
piece about my conduct in getting married and
never telling her a word about it beforehand.
She said she was mortified to death to have to
learn about my marriage from strangers—strangers—just
accidentally. But there wasn’t
anything she didn’t know: that you were a millionaire,
but very eccentric and not given to
going around like a rational being—in society;
and that you had places around in different
States and always made it a point not to know
your neighbors, so you wouldn’t have them
come dropping in interfering with you; and that
you were amusing yourself now with putting
my affairs on their legs again; and how lucky it
was for me; and how strange it was, when I was
making a brilliant marriage, not to make it, at
least, in a dignified, even if not in a brilliant
manner, with a church wedding and all. There
wasn’t anything she didn’t know. I believe she
used detectives to find out. And she ended up
by saying that she had a lovely disposition and
would forgive me—I could have killed her—I
was her only first cousin’s only child—and
she was coming here to live.”

“The deuce she did!”

“But what did you do it for?” She turned
on him furiously. “What did you do it for?”

“Yes—but where’s this Cousin Mary?”

“We had a scene—at least, part of one: we
didn’t either of us say half we wanted to—and
she’s left. She’ll probably decide in the end,
though, that her disposition’s lovely enough to
overlook it, and insist on making her home with
her eccentric millionaire cousin-in-law—What
did you do this for?”

He stood there, frowning in perplexity.
Then with a sigh of relief, “Supposing we sit
down,” he said, as one who has a happy inspiration.
“I don’t know as I can explain this to
your satisfaction—exactly. But I’ll try. It
seemed to me—Don’t you know, I thought—Hang
it all, that King Cophetua business—was
that the chap’s name?—never did appeal
to me a little bit. I’m dead sure that Beggar
Maid had it in for him from the start for his
beastly condescending ways to her. And I was
afraid you might think—you see, it seemed to
me that when your affairs were back in the
position they ought to be, perhaps you’d feel
better towards me.”

He looked at her with boyish entreaty in his
eyes. It was as though she were suddenly in[pg 318]
the room with a new person. The expression
of his face left her breathless.

“Then you came to that boarding-house deliberately
to——”

“I did. Deliberately to let you get a bit
used to me. It might have upset you to have
a perfect stranger come up and marry you offhand.”

“But—but”—she gasped.

She was flushed to the eyes. Suddenly he
turned and switched on the electric lights. Then
he turned back and looked at her—hard. The
rose deepened.

“Surely, you’re not pretending to tell me,”
he said slowly, as one thoroughly bedazed,
“that you don’t know I’m so looney about you
my hand shakes whenever you come into the
room?”

The girl looked away.

“You said that day—that day—that day,
you know——”

“Well?”

“You said most distinctly that—you didn’t
love me.”

He turned an exasperated face toward her.

“Said that? Of course I said it. What did
you expect me to say? How apt would you
have been to have taken me——”

“Taken you!”

“——if I’d come up with the confession that
your eyes set me crazy and the impudent tilt of
your little nose was very much on my nerves?
Supposing I’d told you that you bowled me over
the moment I saw you—It’s God’s truth. I saw
you at the theater in New York just before you
left for Fort Leavenworth. I followed you
there, but nothing that wasn’t brass buttons
seemed to be having an inning; and I didn’t care
to meet you at all, unless I could win out. So I
left and went down to Arizona, where there was
some land business I had to look after. Then
McFay came down there and talked a good deal
with his mouth; and I was sure it was all off and
was doubly glad I hadn’t met you. Then came
the news of the earthquake and the fire; and I
kept waiting for the beggar to get leave and go
to you—and he didn’t go. And then one night
he—well, he was drunk, or he wouldn’t have
done it—but he talked some more with his
mouth; and so I knew what to expect from him
and—er, removed your photograph from his
rooms—he hadn’t any business having it
around for men to stare at, anyway—and then
I came here to find you; and—and that’s about
all, I guess.”

He laughed an embarrassed laugh.

“I was pretty well done for before—it seems
to me everybody I met kept talking about you—but
the boarding-house business finished
me completely. There were you—you’d lost
more than all that trash put together, and had
been badly treated, and all—but you held
your head high and never peeped and made
that dining-table a thing to look forward to beyond
everything. No wonder the landlady
hated you. I could have kneeled down and
kissed your little boots—not that you’d have
cared about it especially.”

He laughed his boyish, embarrassed laugh
again.

“But to go back a bit—how apt would you
have been to have taken me—after your experiences
and that cur down at your office,
besides—if I’d have trotted up and told you
how I felt and asked you please to have me?
How apt would you have been? I got the
license and kept it dark and bided my time.
There was nothing else to do—then.”

They were standing again, facing one another,
wide-eyed, and both rather breathless.

The girl turned away.

“I won’t be humble,” she whispered to herself
tremulously. “I won’t. It’s a wretched
policy for women, and the effects are dreadful
on men.”

She trailed away towards the other end of the
room.

“I’m not Ikey any more. I’m not the Wandering
Jew. The thirteenth move is a glorious
move, and I’ve come home—to a man in a
million.”

Aloud she observed disdainfully, “The whole
performance from beginning to end has been unspeakable—simply
unspeakable; and I insist——”

She had reached the bay-window and pressed
her little nose tight against the window-pane.

“I insist you’re no gentleman,” came her
muffled, shaky voice from behind the curtains,
“or I wouldn’t have to be standing here quite
by myself, waiting for you to come over here
and—and kiss me.”

[pg 319]

GIFFORD PINCHOT, FORESTER

BY WILL C. BARNES

ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS

For almost a century the unoccupied
government lands of the West have
been used as a public commons. The
stockmen have used the grass and
water; the mining, sawmill, and railroad
men the timber; until—simply because
no one made it his business to object to the
spoliation that was going on—what had been
done wholly on the suffrance of the national
government had come to be regarded and most
lustily defended
as an
inherent
privilege and
right.

GIFFORD PINCHOT

And so
when, a decade
ago, the
tall, pleasant-voiced
young man
from the far
East, now
known
throughout
the United
States as
Gifford Pinchot,
the national
forester,
appeared
in the West,
and suggested
to the
stockmen
that they
were ruining
the country
by over-grazing,
they
laughed him
to scorn.

He told
the mining
and sawmill
men that
through
reckless and extravagant methods of lumbering
they were bringing on a timber famine by great
strides; he characterized their whole policy as
one of utter disregard for the future of the country;
and he demanded forcible and immediate
action on the part of the Federal authorities.
These pioneers had seen uncounted millions of
buffalo melt away because no one took enough
interest in the matter to stop the wanton waste.
They had seen great billowy prairies, once knee-deep
in the
most splendid
covering
of grass and
vegetation,
grazed down
until they
were hardly
more than
dust heaps;
and mountains
that
were clothed
with magnificent
forests
swept bare—first
by the
woodsman’s
ax and later
by forest fires
that burned
each year
millions and
millions of
feet of the
finest timber
a country
ever possessed,
while
no one raised
a hand even
to quench
the fire because
“it
was only
government
land.”

[pg 320]

The Fight against the “Pinchot Policies”

These hard-headed, adventurous Western pioneers,
indignant at the thought of any curtailment
of their freedom; resentful of interference
in what they were pleased to call their “inalienable
right” to do as they pleased with the
country they had conquered; utterly regardless
of its future, and thinking but of the present
and their own selfish interests, arose in their
wrath and protested vigorously against what
they called the “Pinchot policies” of the government.

That the writer, then a range cattle-raiser in
Arizona, was one of the first to feel the effects of
the new forest policy gives him all the more
right to speak as he does of these things; that
he joined with loud tongue and bitter pen in the
general denunciation of the “Pinchot policies”
makes it all the more a pleasure to him now to
defend and explain them in so far as he can.

Although there had been a small start toward
forest preservation, it was not until Mr. Pinchot
was placed at the head of the movement in 1898
(six years after the first reserve was made), and
organized and reconstructed the force of officials,
that we really had any national forest policies
worth mentioning.

His enemies first attacked his motives. He
was a “notoriety seeker,” a “political adventurer”
looking for personal advancement. To
their surprise they found that he showed not the
slightest disposition to exploit himself; that,
having millions at his command, he could expect
to gain nothing financially by his course;
and that he was absolutely devoid of any political
ambitions.

They then took another point of attack. “He
is an Eastern swell who knows nothing of forests,
or the West and its needs. By what
right does he tell us how to use the public
lands?”

And again they found him invulnerable, for,
after graduating from Yale in 1889, he had
made a systematic and thorough study of forestry.
He traveled in Europe, through Russia,
on the great steppes of Siberia, in the Philippines,
and in every part of the United States
where there were forests he investigated conditions
and studied the water problem, the grazing
of cattle and sheep, and the effect of lumbering
and forest fires. There is hardly a corner of our
whole Western country from the Missouri to
the Pacific where forests are found that he
has not visited and inspected. Days, weeks,
and months spent on horseback and on foot in
the roughest, most inaccessible portions of the
Rocky Mountain region from the Canadian to
the Mexican line have made him familiar with
every problem of forest preservation. He has
studied the attendant and equally important
question of watershed protection and utilization
of the mountains for conserving the sources of
all our great Western streams, by which millions
of acres are to be irrigated and millions of
homes built up in the West. He was from the
first no “tenderfoot” adventurer, no visionary
enthusiast, but a practical, hard-headed man
far more earnestly and disinterestedly concerned
in the Westerners’ future than they themselves
had ever been.

Born in Simsbury, Connecticut, in 1865, of
old New England ancestry, Mr. Pinchot is just
in the prime of life. A man of tremendous energy
and resourcefulness, tactful, quick to see a
point, frank to admit his errors, open and
friendly in his intercourse with all men, and in
the game of politics the equal of any one in
Washington, he is giving the best years of his
life to a cause that will bring him no personal
advantage save a place in our national history
greater than that of great generals and war captains.
For while their armies destroy, his little
army is saving and preserving; while their
forces are ever non-productive, he and his small
force are making “two blades of grass grow
where one grew before”; are building up and
developing to the uttermost the great region
lying around and about the national forest
areas.