McClure’s Magazine

September, 1893.

Vol. I. No. 4

Copyright, 1893, by S. S. McClure, Limited. All rights reserved.

Table of Contents

Illustrations

When General Ward
drove the British
out of Roxbury
in the reign of
George the Third,
the valuation of
the town was
about sixty thousand
dollars. I do not know at what
high figure the historic city that guards
the ashes of John Eliot is held now,
but I do know that, in this age of
rapacious corporations and untrustworthy
trusts, genius outranks gold,
and that Roxbury receives no small increment
of her value from the fact that
Edward E. Hale is one of her most
distinguished citizens. To one fond of
perceiving the innate or accidental fitness
of things, it is, perhaps, more than
a coincidence that Doctor Hale lives on
Highland Street, and that his house reminds
one, with its massive front and
Ionic columns, of a Greek temple.

This large house was built, about
sixty years ago, by Mr. Bradford, for his
brother-in-law, Reverend Mr. Kent, and
was used for a young ladies’ boarding-school.
Even now, on some of the upper
panes, girls’ names and girlish sentiments
are to be read. When Doctor
Hale took the house, some twenty years
ago, he introduced a carpenter to make
what are called “modern improvements.”

“Mr. Hale,” said the carpenter, after
a thorough inspection, “you are fortunate
in your bargain. This house was
built on honor.” Mr. Hale has had a
great mind to make this reply the motto
over his doorway.

When Doctor Hale once described his
house to an eminent editor of one of
our leading magazines, he said: “You
cannot mistake it; it is a Greek temple
just above Eliot Square.”

The editor, with the gentle blush that
frisky memory will bring to the cheeks
of the staidest, quickly answered:
“Yes, I have often worshipped there.”

This is not a biographical paper.
The readers of the “Atlantic” will remember
Doctor Hale’s description of
his father, the first of New England’s
great railroad pioneers. Every one
knows that our Mr. Hale was named
after his uncle, the great Edward Everett;
but perhaps it is not so generally
known that Mrs. Hale is the granddaughter
of Lyman Beecher, and the
niece of Mrs. Stowe. What may not be
expected of Doctor Hale’s boys, with
Beecher, Hale, and Everett blood in
their veins? There is no better selection,
and the problem is an interesting
one.

But, to many of us, the most interesting
of Doctor Hale’s connections is his
distant relation, Helen Kellar. The first
time that wonderful, blind, deaf-mute
292
child, then not eight years old, came to
his home, there happened to be an
Egyptian statuette of the god Terminus
outside the piazza steps. The child
touched it, and, with her marvellous discernment,
starting back, said in her
own way: “Oh, the ugly old man!”

Helen was then taken to the beautiful
alto-relievo of Bernini, representing
the infants Christ and John playing together.
It is a little thing, and slowly
the child ran her eye-fingers over the
chubby babes. Suddenly her sightless
face lighted with the rarest smile. Her
soul had understood the significance of
the holy group by an intuition that
science cannot gauge, and she bent
over and kissed the sacred children.

After all, every home exhibits a
clinging pananthropoism, if one may be
permitted to coin the word. Books
and pictures and statuary are the man,
just as much as his style. They are
his most subtile expression. They
are his unlying interpreters. As you
walk into Doctor Hale’s parlor, resting
upon the floor, there confronts you a
realistic colored photograph of the
compelling Matterhorn. That picture,
with its glacier, its precipices, and its
summit, conquered only by coöperative
achievement, is a fit emblem of a family
climbing from height to height.

We left the table, and Lyman Beecher’s
splendid portrait, that formed a
strong background for Doctor Hale’s
impressive head, and stopped for a
moment in the boys’ study, opposite
the parlor. There is the portrait of
Edward Everett, by Stuart Newton:
of Alexander Everett, by Alexander,
and of Mrs. Hale, by Ransom, and a
striking picture of the doctor himself.
How many of these sedate portraits
have been shocked by shuttlecock and
bumped by football at the hands of
Doctor Hale’s rollicking boys, only
one of whom, Robert, of rising literary
reputation, is left with his father in the
home!

Across the narrow back hall one
takes a quick glimpse of the four
phases of the moon on the stairway,
then of hundreds of volumes lining
293
the walls, billows of books, breaking
upon one everywhere—five thousand
of them.

“That is Thomas Arnold’s portrait—father
of Matthew,” said Doctor Hale,
pointing from his sofa, and then
settling back into reminiscences:—“Longfellow
over there, and Dean
Stanley. I liked Stanley, and I think
Stanley liked me. We were on very
cordial terms. He sat at the desk
where you are, and I gave him Gladstone’s
article on America, published
that fall. There was a carriage at the
door. I was to show him some historical
places. It was October, and
cold. I told the boys to bring some
rugs. They came to the carriage with
a lot of Arab shawls. Stanley had
just come from the desert, and with
marvellous dexterity he wound a shawl
about him so that he looked like an
Arab sheik. I got a little frightened
at the oriental look of it, and said:
‘Oh, we shall be in all the newspapers.’
With reluctance he consented to throw
a cape over his shoulders instead. But
I always regretted that I did not allow
him to go through the streets as an
Arab dean. When I bade him good-by
that night, he said, with his wonted
thoughtfulness, ‘Let me pay for this
carriage; you would never have had it
if it hadn’t been for me.’

“‘No,’ said I, ‘when I go to Westminster
you shall pay for me. When
you are in Boston, I shall pay for you.’

“When we got out of the carriage
the hackman took off his hat and
said: ‘If the carriage were mine, you
shouldn’t pay a cent. Doctor Stanley
is a good and great man, and I am
proud to have carried him.’ That’s
pretty good for a Boston hackman.”

As my eyes roamed over the mass of
portfolios stacked in an orderly manner
in the case at the foot of his lounge,
my imagination conjured many an interview
that Mr. Hale must have had
with immortals, contemporaries, and
friends of the man before me.

And what invaluable letters must
those portfolios contain! Doctor
Hale evidently caught my curiosity
and my glance.

“You would like to see some autographs?”
he generously asked.

“Yes, indeed, but I am afraid there
is not time now. Tell me about some
of your most interesting ones.”

Then it proved that Doctor Hale
had advantages in the line of presidential
autographs, because of his eminent
and political ancestry. His collection
in this respect is complete, and in this
way, he says, he began it.

“I was sitting one evening tearing
up old papers, after my father’s death,
and among them noticed a letter on
the character of Washington. Not
considering it worth keeping, I took
it to tear it up, when out dropped a
yellow paper, ancient and faded. It
proved to be a letter of George Washington
himself, which had been enclosed
in the other letter by my father,
evidently to illustrate a point in character
which the writer had raised.
Then and there I resolved to make
a collection of presidential autographs.
I don’t dare to tell you how many
family commissions I hold in my portfolio.
To me the collection is almost
the history of my family. I have been
tempted to publish a couple of volumes
of national history of the nineteenth
century, to be taken bodily from my
own portfolio of autographs. It might
be rather interesting.”

“Changing the subject, when did
you first meet Emerson?”

“Let me see, I first heard Emerson
when I was eleven years old. He was
delivering his lecture on Mohammed.
I first spoke to him in Harvard College
chapel, when a mutual acquaintance
had just taken the highest honors.
Emerson said of him, with his keenest
look:

“‘I didn’t know he was so fine a
fellow. Now, if some misfortune could
only happen to him; if he could be
turned out of college, or could be unpopular
in his class, or his father could
fail in business, all would be well with
him.’

“This seemed at the time cynical,
but when I read of the hardships of
Emerson’s early life, and heard of the
unhappy end of the man of college
honors, I understood it and was astounded
at his penetration.

“I have a letter of Emerson’s (and
you can take a copy of it if you like)
294
which cleared up an anecdote that was
told of him at the time. It was said
that on one of his ocean trips he committed
‘Alaric’ or some other long
poem to memory, in order to while
away a few otherwise unprofitable
days. It proved to be ‘Lycidas,’ and
I never heard of any one else who has
committed ‘Lycidas’ to memory on
an ocean trip for pastime. Who else
but Emerson would have thought of
it?”

Concord, January 26.

My Dear Hale:—I know by much experience
of my own what it is to have Everett
on the brain, and you, who have it in the blood,
may easily believe that it could only be “Alaric”
that I was crooning at sea. But it was not
that, but Milton’s “Lycidas,” which I told of in
a lecture on Memory, to which I must think
you refer; though nothing of it was ever printed
or reported that I know, and it must have
been read (i.e., the lecture) when you were
very young. I ought to be proud that the anecdote
could reach you, but the mystery of the
memory interested me much.

I wrote you yesterday about Stirling’s pamphlet,
which I hope will come speedily to you.
I do not recall the title, but it was, perhaps,
“Remarks on Mr. Huxley’s Protoplasm.”

Yours,

R. W. Emerson.

“Here’s another story of Emerson,”
continued my host, with a twinkle,
“that reminds me of the story of the
man who said he couldn’t make a speech
like Henry Clay, but he had once held
the statesman’s hat when Clay was
speaking. When Mr. Emerson delivered
his second Phi Beta address, the
desk had been removed from the pulpit
of the church, so that he had at the
beginning to kneel uncomfortably to
read his manuscript. I went back in
the vestry and found the desk, and, in
the first pause in Emerson’s address,
placed it before him. The audience of
course applauded. When the oration
was over, Lowell, who presided, congratulated
Mr. Emerson on his success,
and Emerson’s first words were,
‘Where’s that saint, Edward Hale?’”

“Have you any special reminiscence
of Hawthorne?”

“Hardly any at all. Personally, Hawthorne
was very reticent in society.
My own recollections of him, when I
first saw him, were that he hardly spoke
a word to anybody. This little scrap
of Hawthorne’s, which you may use,
if you care to, was sent to the ‘Boston
Miscellany,’ a magazine that my
brother edited, and to which all Young
America at that time contributed.
Lowell published his first stories and
articles in the ‘Miscellany,’ after those
in ‘Harvardiana.’

“But with Lowell my relations were
singularly intimate. He was also intimate
with my brother Nathan. Our
295
room in college was convenient for
him, as his was at a distance from recitations.
He was a class in advance
of me. Those were the days when we
borrowed Emerson’s volume of Tennyson’s
first poems, and copied the poems
in our scrap-books. Lowell was deep
in the old dramatists then, and read
papers on them in the Alpha Delta,
which was the literary club to which
we both belonged. The intimacy which
was then begun lasted through our
lives. He edited ‘The Atlantic’ when
I published my first stories there.

“By the way, it is reported that Ruskin
will be made poet laureate! My
candidate, however, is Jean Ingelow.
The Queen ought to have named a
woman. Talking on the subject, I have
seen with these eyes the original correspondence
with which Prince Albert
offered the laureateship to Samuel
Rogers. Rogers was greatly pleased,
but after consideration declined, because
he was so old. The Prince then
wrote to Rogers to ask him to name the
laureate. Rogers named Tennyson.
Then came a letter from the prime
minister, in which he said: ‘We are
not acquainted with the works of this
gentleman, and will you be good enough
to let me know whether he has ever
written anything which would make
it improper for a woman to name him
for this post?’”

Mr. Hale stopped and laughed heartily.
“Just think of that!” he added,
with glee.

After some skirmishing about the
bush—for the office of “interlocutor”
is not very familiar to me—I asked
Doctor Hale:

“What do you consider the best
thing you ever did?” He did not seem
annoyed or perplexed by the question.
He thrust his arms behind his head,
extended himself the full length of the
lounge, and regarded me with his deep-set
eyes. Doctor Hale’s face wrinkles
in a curious way around his eyes.
These are the features of his face.
They are fine, deep, sad, careless of
human opinion—except it has to be
conciliated for a high purpose—and
alert as a boy’s, ready for a truth or for
a friend. I believe that a divine physiognomist
would read Doctor Hale’s
career in his gray eyes and their high
ramparts. “Why, the young man’s
head has an entirely different shape,”
said the elder Darwin of his son Charles,
on the young man’s return from his
voyage in the “Beagle.” It struck me
oddly that in a like manner Doctor
Hale’s eyes had been a mirror of his life.

“I think,” began Doctor Hale
thoughtfully, “that ‘In His Name,’ as
a bit of literary work, is to be regarded
as the best book I ever wrote. The
story of ‘The Man Without a Country’
has circulated in much larger numbers.
It was forged in the fire, and I think
296
its great popularity is due to the subject.”

“And what is your best literary work
at present?”

After some hesitation Doctor Hale
answered:

“I think my sermons are the best.”

This serious answer caused no little
astonishment; for one naturally thinks
of Doctor Hale as an author rather than
as a hard-working minister.

“I attach a great deal of importance
to the weekly printing and circulating
of sermons,” he continued. “It is more
than fifteen years since I began printing
them for our people. It keeps a
man at his best work. It does away
with slipshod carelessness. I should
advise every minister to print his sermons.
The fact of it is,” he continued,
with increasing vivacity, “five-sixths of
my work in this office is parish work.
I am a person who has never lost sight
of my profession. People complain
that my books always carry a moral.
I wouldn’t write if they didn’t.”

“How did you come to write—as an
author, I mean?”

“Until 1861 I was only known in
Boston as an energetic minister of an
active church. I didn’t want anything
else. I believe now, as then, that if
anything is going to be done, it is to be
done through that agency. Then the
war came along. I was in the Massachusetts
Rifle Corps, and,” he said this
with a pardonable twinkle of pride, “I
have drilled a major-general. Then I
was on the Sanitary Commission. To
save the country—that brought me into
public life, and I have never got back
into simple parish life again. Then
came ‘The Man Without a Country.’
In 1871 ‘Ten Times One is Ten’ was
published. From that book came a
peculiarity of my life. It brought
me into close contact with all parts of
the world. From it sprang the ‘Lend
a Hand’ and the ‘King’s Daughters,’
and a dozen such working societies,
and indirectly the Epworth League
and the Christian Endeavor. They
297
copied the idea, with many of my
mottoes.”

The speaker stopped while the writer
pondered how many a girl, from East to
West and North to South, carried upon
her throat a plain silver cross tied with
a purple ribbon, her proudest ornament.
It is an inspiring picture and comes
quickly to call. To make an era in
Christian self-surrender, to girdle the
world with unselfish crosses, to hammer
high purposes into young souls, that is
a better life than to have written the
best novel of the decade.

“Yes,” said Doctor Hale, with the
authority of his threescore years and
eleven, “the parish is at the basis of
my life, and takes five-sixths of my
time. All this would have been impossible
without it.”

In these days, when some of our eminent
critics consider a moral purpose
detrimental to the literary value of a
story, it is refreshing to learn from the
mouth of one of our most popular authors
that his success is due entirely to
the inspiration of a Christian ideal. It
takes the modern school of critics to
pat the Lord Jesus Christ upon the
back. Charles Kingsley and Doctor
Hale will not be snuffed out by them
because they have chosen to Christianize
their literary work.

Edward E. Hale regards the ministry
as the most practical business in the
world. The theory that the minister
spends his mornings reading Hebrew,
and his afternoons praying with dying
old women, is exploded in his career.
He knocks about in the most active of
city life. It came out that the day before
I called he went up to the State
House to argue in favor of an honest
bill of some kind. He then signed the
lease of the “Noonday Rest,” a club
where working girls are to get good
food. He made himself responsible
for fifteen hundred dollars a year because
the poor girls had to be cared
for, and he “knew it would come back
to him all right.” Then the duties of
Vice-President of the Industrial Aid
called for his attention. “I am the
man of business,” he said, with flashing
eyes. Of such are the charities of
his life.

Even while the writer was sitting in
the chair that Dean Stanley occupied,
and revolving the problem whether
Doctor Hale summoned from some
other planet the time in which to write
his sermons, we were interrupted by a
messenger from the Society for Prevention
of Cruelty to Animals, who came
for about fifty pounds of stories which
Doctor Hale had read in order to determine
the four winners of prizes.

“I was a little taken in,” he said,
with a boyish laugh, after the messenger,
stunned dumb by that kindly reception
of Doctor Hale’s (which is
denied to no one), had departed
staggering; “I thought they were to
be short stories, and they turned out
to be sixty-thousand-word books.”

Doctor Hale’s study, which he calls
his office, was once used as the school-room
for day scholars, and had a piazza,
on one side of it. This Mr. Hale has
boarded up and uses the space—three
feet wide—for his thousands of pamphlets.
I stepped in there while the
messenger from the society with the
long name was occupying our host’s
attention, and, for all the world, it
seemed like a touch from Dickens or
a section from the Athenæum. That
pamphlet alcove, narrow, musty, yet
busy, a composite of the stage-coach
days and our electric era, gave me a
graver suspicion of Doctor Hale’s cosmopolitan
interests than any word he
had uttered or anything I had hitherto
seen in the temple.

When I came back Doctor Hale was
again stretched upon the lounge. He
began almost fiercely upon his favorite
topic, and I can do no better than to
give his own words:

“I have written twenty-five books,
but I’m not an author; I’m a parish
minister. I don’t care a snap for the
difference between Balzac and Daudet.
That isn’t important in life. I do care
about the difference between the classes
of men who migrate to this country of
mine.”

Here I interrupted him:

“Is it better to do twenty things
than one?”

“Not best for every one; but for a
man who writes forty sermons a year,
it is better not to get into one rut. To
write those sermons well he must come
298
into touch with forty things or forty
men. As a man of letters, I say the
same thing. An author must be an all-around
man and take a many-sided
view of life. My friends think it
harms me. I say it does not.”

Although I was burning to ask a
vital and perhaps an impertinent question—for
as he was so kind to me I
wished not to be intrusive—I waited
while he chatted about his connection
with Harvard.

It is one of Doctor Hale’s happiest
memories that he was an overseer of
Harvard University when the modern
plan was introduced of having more
than one person to take charge of the
chapel services. The new custom was
initiated by appointing the clerical
members of the overseers and faculty
to take the chapel in turn. Doctor
Hale thinks there were nine of them.
So he took a ninth part. That system
in turn gave way to the present system,
by which five or six men are appointed
annually. Each in turn is
given a room in college, so as to enter
into intimate pastoral relationship with
the boys. This system has proved
wonderfully successful. In the inauguration
of each of its phases Doctor
Hale was senior in the board, and
heavily influential in the working of
the experiment. It is not to be wondered
at, that of the experiences of his
long life he values making the acquaintance
of a “couple of thousand
of as fine young men as the day can
produce.”

This is only another illustration of
Doctor Hale’s wide sweep and influence.

“Doctor Hale, you yourself have
hinted at it, namely, that the worst
thing your friends say about you is,
that you have too many irons in the
fire. Do you think that thereby you
have missed an opportunity in life?”

“I am glad you asked that question,”
he reassured me with his most
winning smile. “I don’t think I have,”
he said slowly. “I might have written
better verses; by the way”—I thought
he was changing the subject—“I am
just editing a collection of my verses
for Roberts Brothers, to be called
‘For Fifty Years.’ On the title-page
this quotation from the ‘Ingham
299
Papers’ will be printed as
a motto for the poems.
Read it aloud to me.”

Judge how I was moved
as I read the following
words to him:

“Poor Ingham was painfully
conscious that he had
no peculiar genius for one
duty rather than another.
If it were his duty to write verses, he
wrote verses; to lay telegraph, he laid
telegraph; to fight slavers, he fought
slavers; to preach sermons, he preached
sermons. And he did one of these
things with just as much alacrity as
the other; the moral purpose entirely
controlling such mental aptness or
physical habits as he could bring to
bear.”

As my voice died away among the
volumes, it flashed across me that in
these words could be found Doctor
Hale’s mental and spiritual biography.

“Is this your epitaph?” I asked,
very soberly.

“I am willing to stand by this as my
epitaph,” he repeated after me, in his
gravest tones.

Now this scene was not an interview,
but a revelation, and I felt that
it “was good to be there.” But, as an
engagement called us to go out together,
we arose.

“I wish you could have seen more of
my parish work,” he said, as we walked
in the rain. He recurred to his favorite
topic eagerly. “For that is my real
life.”

“Sermons?” The word started
him off.

“I have no patience with the idea
that it takes six days of grinding to
write a sermon. What nonsense! A
sermon consists of about two thousand
five hundred words. I take a cup of
coffee before breakfast and write about
six pages—that is, six hundred and fifty
words. In the morning I dictate to
my amanuensis one thousand five hundred
words. I am intensely interested
in the subject, and this takes only a
quarter of an hour. In the afternoon
I look it over and add five or six hundred
words, and the sermon is done.
In all, I haven’t put my hand for over
two hours to paper.”

Although I have written a sermon or
two myself, and had a different experience,
I did not argue the point. I
have a faint suspicion that it would
take most people fifty years of experience
to arrive at such a wonderful
facility.

Power? Where did Doctor Hale
get the strength to carry through his
hundred duties?—editing—writing—aiding
public work and public and private
charities—correspondence—for he
300
is the busiest man in Boston, and his
business increases upon him week by
week in an appalling ratio.

“How on earth do you do it all?
Where do you get the power? What
is it?”

“The simple truth is,” and I quote
his words exactly, “that any child of
God, who in any adequate way believes
that he can partake of the divine
nature, knows that he has strength
enough for any business which looks
the right way; that is, which helps to
bring God’s kingdom into the world.
Well, if you are working with Aladdin’s
lamp, or with Monte Cristo’s treasures,
you are not apt to think you will fail.
Far less will you think you will fail if
you are working with the omnipotence
of the Lord God behind you. When
people talk to me, therefore, about
optimism or good spirits or expecting
success, if I know them well enough I
say that I am promised infinite power
to work with, and that whenever I
have trusted it fairly and squarely,
I have found that the promise was
true.”

He stopped, and under the shelter of
a high steeple we separated: and the
parish priest, the author, the eager
citizen, the helper of poor girls and
struggling young men, the man of
power, the Christian cosmopolitan,
strode down the street, and was lost in
the mist.

I could not help calling to mind a
pretty story told of him while he was
travelling in the West. As the train
stopped at some forsaken hamlet in
California, twenty girls were seen upon
the platform. On hearing that Edward
E. Hale was to pass through, they had
begged off from school in order to greet
him. They were “King’s Daughters,”
and Doctor Hale was their inspiration
and their chief. Each girl was loaded
with a different flower, with which she
garlanded her hero.

Such a tender and reverential free-masonry
as this, founded by himself,
greets him daily through the mail, and
overwhelms him when he travels from
his own home.

As the author of “The Man Without
a Country,” “In His Name,” and “Ten
Times One is Ten,” he sways our
imagination and our hearts. But let
him also be known as a man content to
be a parish minister, and as one who
never fails to lend a hand when the
chance is given to him.

The last good-by had been said, and the comfortable
country carriage, drawn by its two glossy bay horses,
had disappeared around a knoll.

“They is do’rn,” remarked the baby, as if just in
possession of a solemn fact.

“Torse they is do’rn, you blessed baby,” answered
Florence, his fifteen-year-old sister, stooping down and
lifting him in her strong
arms and kissing him.

The baby, let me remark,
was a sturdy boy of
four, with bright brown
eyes and red cheeks—cheeks
so plump that when
you had a side view of his
face you could only see the
tip of his little pug nose.

“Well, if ever anybody has earned a holiday, they are
father and mother,” said Cassie.

“Cassie, dear, your sentiment is better than your
grammar,” laughed Rose, the eldest of the three sisters.

“Never you mind my grammar, Miss Eglantine. I mayn’t
have much ‘book larnin’,’ but I’ve got a head on my shoulders,
as father frequently remarks—which is a good thing, for I
couldn’t bear to look at myself in the glass if I hadn’t—and besides, how
could I do my hair up so neatly, (Cassie’s hair was the joke of the family) if
I hadn’t? And now I’m going up-stairs to cry, and I’ll be down in three minutes
to help with the dishes,” and the giddy girl flew into the house and disappeared.

At the expiration of the three minutes
which Cassie had set apart as
sacred to her grief, she reappeared,
sniffing audibly, but otherwise cheerful.

“Now, girls, I say let us buzz through
the work like a swarm of industrious
bumble-bees, and then go down to the
creek lots and put in the day gathering
nuts. Last night, as Ned and I
came through them, the nuts were falling
like hail, and we can pick up our
winter’s supply in a few hours.”

This was favorably received, for
they were all—even Rose—children
enough to enjoy a long day in the
autumn woods. We all know that
willing hands
make light
work, and
the morning’s
task was
quickly done;
a basket of
lunch was
put up, and
the girls, with
the baby,
were soon
scampering
through the
meadow toward the little creek, whose
borders for miles around were famous
for their wealth of nuts.

The harvest was indeed bountiful,
and they worked merrily and untiringly
until bags and baskets were filled
and deposited by a great log, where
their brother would next day find them
and cart them home. So busy and
happy had they been that they could
scarcely believe that the day had ended
until the woods began to fill with shadows,
and the baby declared he was
sleepy and wanted his supper.

“Who would ever have believed it
so late?” cried Rose, peering from
under the low boughs toward the west,
“and there are all those cows to milk
and the chickens to feed! Come,
come, girls, not another nut; we’ll
have to go home at once if we want
to get through before dark. Cassie,
you are the quickest, do run ahead
and let the bars down, and get the
pails ready, and I’ll carry the baby—he’s
so tired, poor little fellow, he can
hardly stand. Florence can start the
fire and begin the supper while you
and I do the chores.”

Away sped the light-footed Cassie,
while the others made such haste as
they could with the tired baby, who
wept in a self-pitying way upon Rose’s
shoulder.

“Oo dirls is ’tarvin’ me an’ walkin’
me most to pieces, an’ I want my
mover,” he wailed, as he finally dozed
off.

Rose laid him upon the lounge in
the cozy sitting-room, and, waiting for
a moment to see Florence started with
the supper, for which they were all
ready, hurried away to the barn, where
she could hear Cassie whistling, and
talking to the cows as she milked.

Out from the kitchen’s open door
appetizing odors of coffee and frying
ham stole to greet the two girls, as they
303
came towards the house with their
brimming pails of frothy milk.

“It smells good,” said Cassie, “and
I’m as hungry as a tramp——”

“Oh, Cassie! why did you say that?
I’ve just been trying not to think about
tramps. I always feel creepy when I’m
about the barn after dark, anyway, and
now——”

“Well, my saying that won’t bring
any along.”

“They are positively the only things
in the world that I’m afraid of.”

“Well, then, I’m not afraid of them.
And suppose one should come? Surely
three great stout girls ought to be able
to take care of themselves.”

“Oh, Cassie, dear, please stop talking
about them! I feel as if one were
stepping on my heels. Let’s run.”

“And spill the milk? Not much.”

The kitchen looked so bright and
cheery as they entered it that Rose
seemed to leave her fears outside with
the duskiness, and by the time she had
strained the milk and put it away, she
had forgotten that tramps existed.

Cassie had gone up-stairs to make
some needed changes in her toilet, the
baby had roused from a short nap and
was taking a rather mournful interest
in the preparations for supper, when
Rose, who had just stopped to ask him
whether he would rather have honey or
preserves, heard a stealthy step upon
the porch. A moment later, the door
was pushed slowly open and a man
walked in.

“Good evening, ladies. Is your pa
at home?”

“N—no,” faltered Rose, trying to
settle to her own satisfaction whether
this dirty-looking stranger might be
some new neighbor, who had come
upon legitimate business, or whether he
was her one horror—a tramp.

“Any of your big brothers in?” with
rather a jocular manner.

“N—no, sir.”

“And I don’t see any bull-dog loafin’
round,” he added.

“Our dord, he is dead,” explained
the baby solemnly.

“Well, that’s a good thing. Will the
old gentleman be in soon?”

“I—I don’t know—yes—I—I hope
304
so. Is there any message you would
like to leave for him?”

Before the man could answer, the
baby’s voice was again heard.

“My fahver he’s dorn orf.”

“Where’s he gone, sonny?”

“He’s dorn on the tars, so’s my
mohver; and my bid brover he putted
yem on, and he
won’t be home
’til I’m asleep,
and he’s doin’ to
brin’ me a drum
and put it in my
bed.”

(Oh, how
Rose longed to
shake the baby!)

“Well, then,
ladies, since you
are likely to be
alone, I think
I’ll stay and
keep you company;
and since
you press me, I
will take tea and
spend the evening.
Don’t go
to any extra
work for me,
though; it all
looks very nice.
I’m rather hungry,
so you may
dish up that ham
at once, my
dear”—this to
poor Florence,
who had shrunk
almost into invisibility
behind
the stove-pipe,
and who seemed
glued to the
spot—“I’ve usually
a very fair appetite, and I am sure
I will relish it.”

He tossed his hat down beside the
chair which he drew up to the table.

With the light falling full upon his
dirty, insolent face, Rose knew that her
greatest dread was before her. With
her knees almost sinking under her,
she started toward the stairs, for she
felt that she must let the intrepid Cassie
know, and find out what she advised.

“Where are you going, my dear?”
asked the tramp, suspiciously. “You’ve
not got any big cousin or uncle or anything
of that kind up-stairs that you
are going to call to tea, have you?”

“Oh, no, there is no one up-stairs
but my poor sister,” she managed to
gasp. She could not have told why
she said “poor
sister,” unless it
was from the
sense of calamity
which had
overtaken them
all.

“In that case
be spry, for I’m
hungry, and I
want you to
pour out my tea
for me. I like
to have a pretty
face opposite me
at table.”

Rose dragged
herself up the
narrow enclosed
stairs and into
Cassie’s room.

“Well, Rose,
you must be
about tuckered
out. You come
up-stairs as
if you were
eighty,” said
Cassie, looking
up from the shoe
she was fastening.
“Why,
what ails you?
You look as if
you had seen a
ghost!”

“Oh, Cassie,
there is one of
them down-stairs!” came in a whisper.

“What do you mean, Rose Bostwick?
A ghost down-stairs!”

“No—no—a tramp.”

“Whew!” and Cassie gave a low
whistle. “And I suppose you’re
scared?”

“Oh, Cassie, I feel as if I were choking!
Do hurry down, he may be killing
poor little Florence and the baby.
305
What shall we do? The baby has told
him we are all alone.”

“The baby ought to be soundly
spanked for that.”

“What can we do? Try to think.”

Cassie sat swinging the button-hook
in her hand and thinking very hard
and fast.

“Does he know I’m here?”

“Yes, I’ve told him.”

“Then it would be no use for me to
pretend to be Ned,” thinking aloud.

“I’m afraid not.”

Another silence dedicated to thought.

“Rose?”

“Yes.”

“I’m going to be crazy. I’m going
to chase him off the farm.”

“Oh, Cassie, you can’t! He’s a great,
big, impudent wretch. What folly to
talk about chasing him off the farm!”

“It’s our only chance.”

“Don’t count on me. I can’t help
you. My teeth are chattering with
terror, and my legs are doubling up
under me this very minute. I couldn’t
help chase a fly.”

“You can scream, I s’pose?”

“Oh, yes, I can do that.”

“Well, you do the screaming and I’ll
do the chasing. Rush down-stairs and
scream and scream, and bang the door
to, and just shriek: ‘She’s out—she’s
out—she’s coming down stairs!’ And
you’ll see what a perfectly beautiful
lunatic I will be. It’s a good thing
I have this old dress on, and only
one shoe. Now make a rush, and
scream.”

Rose’s over-strained nerves were her
best allies, and as she flew down the
stairs it was the easiest thing in the
world for her to give one piercing
shriek after another. They resounded
from the narrow stairway through the
kitchen, and for the moment seemed to
paralyze its inmates. As she burst in
upon them, Florence was transfixed
midway of the table and the stove with
the platter of ham in her hands, the
baby had climbed upon a chair, and
the tramp had arisen with a bewildered
air from the table. As her skirts
cleared the door, she turned and
dashed it shut, and flung herself against
it, shrieking, “She’s out—she’s out of
her room!”

To the mystified Florence there came
but one solution to her behavior—fright
had overthrown her sister’s reason,
and with a wail she rushed toward
her, crying, “She’s crazy! Oh, she’s
crazy!”

“Who’s crazy?” yelled the tramp.

The baby, now wildly terrified, set
up a loud weeping, while from the
stairway came a succession of blows
and angry demands that the door be
opened. A moment later it was forced
ajar, and a head
crowned with a mass
of tossed hair was
thrust out and quickly
followed by a hand in
which was clutched a
gun.

“She’s got the gun!
Oh, Florence, run to
the baby!” cried Rose.

“Who’s that?” demanded
the apparition,
making a rush
toward the tramp.

“Here, keep off!
Leave me alone!”
backing away and
warding off an expected
blow.

She stood before
him, tall, strong, and
agile.

“I won’t leave you
alone. What do you
mean by locking me in
that room? I’m no
more crazy than you
are. What’s this?” as
she stumbled over the
hat which the tramp
had put beside the
chair, and into which
he had deposited the
silver spoons from the
table. “Oh, I see, you
are all in league to
rob me of my gold and
precious stones!” and
catching the hat up on
the muzzle of the gun
she gave it a whirl which sent the
spoons glittering in every direction;
then, advancing upon him, she thrust
hat and gun into the face of the horrified
man. With a volley of oaths he
sprang backwards, upsetting his chair
and falling over it.

“Oh, don’t kill him, Cassie! don’t
kill him!”

“We’ll have a merry time,” gaily
dancing about him and prodding him
sharply with the gun, as he tried to
scramble to his feet.

“Keep off with that gun, can’t you!”
he yelled. “Can’t you hold her, you
screaming idiots?” and half crawling,
half pushed, he gained the kitchen
door, which had stood partly open since
he had entered.

“Where are you going, my pretty
maid? Don’t you try to get away,”
shouted Cassie, as she lilted lightly
after him. The tramp stayed not to
answer her question nor to obey her
command, but clearing the door fled
wildly away through the dusk.

“Here’s your hat; I’ll fire it after
you,” she called, and a sharp report
307
rang out on the quiet evening air, then
all was still.

The three girls stood for a moment
in the door, watching the dim outline
fleeing across the meadow in the direction
of the highway.

“He’ll think twice before inviting
himself to supper another time,” quietly
remarked Cassie with a satisfied
smile.

“Oh, Cassie, darling, you have saved
our lives,” cried Florence, flinging her
arms around her sister.

“I don’t know about that; but I’ve
saved the spoons, anyway.”

“There, there, baby,” going to the
still afflicted boy; “don’t cry any
more. Sister Cassie was just making
a dirty old tramp hop; she didn’t
really shoot him, she was just playing
shoot.”

“Oh, Cassie, you splendid, brave
girl! How did you ever happen to
think to go crazy?” asked Rose, as
she looked over her shoulder from the
door which she was barricading.

“Well, I knew something had to be
done, and that just popped into my
mind. I was doing ‘Ophelia’ the
other day up in my room, so I was in
practice; and didn’t I make a sweetly
pensive maniac? Now I hope you
girls will never again make disrespectful
comments upon any little private
theatricals of mine. If I had never
cultivated my dramatic talents, what
would have become of you, I’d like to
know?”

It was some time before the tidal
wave of excitement subsided sufficiently
for the girls to settle down for the
evening, or for the baby to go to sleep.
Again and again they thought they
heard footsteps, and, although the door
was locked and double-locked, they
drew up into battle line whenever the
autumn wind shook down a shower of
leaves upon the roof.

Just as the clock was on the stroke
of eight, a pleasant sound came fitfully
to them. It was a softly whistled
tune, and the cheery cadence told of a
mind free from unpleasant doubts of
welcome.

“Surely that can’t be Ned back already;
he wasn’t to start home until
nine,” said Rose, going to the window
and cautiously peeping from under the
curtain.

“Right you are there, sister Rose,”
assented Cassie. “It surely can’t be,
especially as Ned could no more whistle
‘Marching through Georgia’ than you
could have done the marching. It
sounds uncommonly like young Farmer
Dunscomb’s whistle to me.”

“Well, whoever it is, I am deeply
thankful that somebody besides a tramp
is coming,” interrupted Florence.

“And so am I,” demurely agreed
Rose. “Do go to the door, Cassie,
and peep out, and make sure that it
isn’t that dreadful creature coming
back.”

“Are you a dreadful creature coming
to murder us all?” demanded Cassie
of the whistler, setting the door
slightly ajar, and thrusting her head
out.

“Well, I don’t go round giving myself
out as a dreadful creature,” responded
a jolly voice from the porch.
“Hello! What’s this I’m breaking my
neck over?” as the owner of the voice
tripped upon an old slouch hat.

“Bring that article of wearing apparel
to me, if you please,” requested
Cassie as she opened the door, letting
a flood of light out upon the visitor.
“That is a little token of remembrance
308
which I wish to keep. There!” holding
the hat out at arm’s length, “I
have long wanted a gilt toasting-fork
or rolling-pin, or something artistic, for
my room; now I shall embroider these
shot-holes and gild the brim and hang
it up by long blue ribbons, just where
my waking orbs can rest upon it as
they open in the morning. Ah, this
hat will ever have stirring memories
for me, friend George,” eying the
young man dramatically.

He looked at her a moment, then
burst into a hearty laugh. “Is she
crazy, Rose?”

“Yes, she’s the dearest and bravest
lunatic in the world, George,” answered
Rose.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES.

William II., Emperor of Germany, was
born January 27, 1859, and received an education
chiefly at home, under the supervision of
his parents, his tutors, and his military instructors.
On March 9, 1888, his grandfather, the
first emperor, died. On June 15 of the same
year Emperor Frederick also died, and William
II. succeeded. After spending some time in
personally visiting the courts of European sovereigns,
the young emperor took a decisive
step towards his future standing as a leader
in European politics, by severing relations
with his grandfather’s right-hand man, Prince
Bismarck. From that time, he has himself
been the most prominent and dominating figure
in the administration of Germany’s affairs.
He has, without regard to imperial precedent,
personally connected himself with such questions
as concern the population of the whole
world, notably the Socialistic and Labor problems.
He has made himself, also, a master of
the smallest details concerning the government
of his people, and even of his household. As
yet without experience of actual warfare, he is
an alert and constant inspector of both his
army and navy, and, in his determined enforcement
of the “Army Bill,” has given evidence
of his desire to uphold Germany as a military
power second to none. With the exception of
slight colonial difficulties in Samoa and Africa,
he has had as yet no foreign trouble to contend
with. He is a close student and an eager
inquirer; he is a good shot, a skilled horseman,
and interested in all forms of sport.

Eugene Field, poet and journalist, was born
in St. Louis in 1850, but spent the greater part
of his youth in Massachusetts. He was educated
at Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois, and the
State University at Columbia, Missouri. After
a visit to Europe, he commenced work as a
journalist on the “St. Louis Journal.” From
that time to the present he has been continually
connected with the western newspaper press of
America, having occupied editorial positions in
St. Joseph, Kansas City, and Denver, and finally
on the Chicago “News.” His humorous and
satirical studies in that newspaper have made
him widely known, and his occasional verses
have become very popular. His best work has
been published in book form under the titles:
“A Little Book of Western Verse,” “A Second
Book of Verse,” and “A Little Book of Profitable
Tales.” (See “Dialogue between Eugene
Field and Hamlin Garland,” in the August
number of McClure’s Magazine.)

Colonel Albert Augustus Pope, President
of the Pope Manufacturing Company, was born
in Boston in 1843. He received an ordinary
public-school education, and at nineteen years
of age entered the Union army as a volunteer,
with the appointment of second lieutenant in
the 35th Massachusetts Infantry, serving with
distinction, and being gazetted lieutenant-colonel
“for gallant conduct in the battles of
Knoxville, Poplar Springs Church, and front of
Petersburg.” At the close of the war he commenced
business in Boston, and, becoming interested
in the development of the bicycle, he
began to introduce the machines into the United
States, commencing the manufacture of them in
1878. The Pope Manufacturing Company are
the proprietors of the “Columbia” bicycle, and
their works are among the largest of the kind
in the world. Colonel Pope has taken an active
interest in affairs of public moment both in his
native State and throughout the country, notably
so in the movement for establishing better roads,
and in the welfare and education of factory
employees.

EMPEROR WILLIAM OF GERMANY.

Born January 27, 1859.

EUGENE FIELD.

Born in St. Louis, 1850.

COLONEL ALBERT A. POPE.

Born in Boston, 1843.

“I don’t want to hurry
any one,” remarked
our host, shaking the
ashes out of a well-blackened
meerschaum,
“but we have
a long day before us to-morrow,
and if any one
wants any sleep this
is the time to take it.”

No response from any one of the half-dozen
men lounging in the snug armchairs
of that most perfectly appointed
smoking-room.

“I don’t mind,” said Sir Alan. “Two
or three hours in bed are enough for
me at any time. Please pass the spirit
case, Jones. I wonder you’re not
sleepy, Tom Everton. You used always
to be in bed by eleven when you
had an early morning in prospect, but
I suppose matrimony has cured you of
that along with other failings.”

“Tom says he isn’t going,” some one
remarked.

“Not going! Pooh, nonsense! I
thought he’d made up his mind to bring
down a hart royal, at least, or leave
his bones on Balmaquidder Brae.”

Mr. Everton looked decidedly uncomfortable.

“I—I should like to try of all things,”
he stammered, “but—well—I won’t—at
least I think—I—I shan’t go with
you to-morrow—that is, if Sir Alan will
excuse me.”

“Please yourself and you’ll please
me,” replied the hospitable baronet;
“but if it isn’t any secret I’d like to
know what has made you change your
mind so suddenly.”

“He promised Mrs. Everton he
wouldn’t go,” broke in the previous
speaker. “She dreamed a dream, and,
like Pharaoh’s chief baker, she thought
there was something in it.”

“Do be quiet, Jones,” interrupted
Everton, irritably. “My wife had a
rather odd dream last night, and she’s
a bit nervous, you know, and—well,
after all, it’s not much to give up one
day’s deer-stalking, if any one’s going
to make herself miserable over it.”

We all knew each other pretty well,
this little circle of guests collected by
Sir Alan to help him to shoot his Scotch
mountain, and very free and outspoken
was the “chaff” that flew around poor
Tom Everton’s devoted head. He bore
it with great good-humor for some time,
till Jones made a rather uncalled-for remark
involving questions of free will
and “petticoat government.” Then
Tom flared up.

“I don’t stay at home because I’m
afraid of anything, but simply because
I have promised. My wife dreamed
that I went out with this party, and it
grew late without any of us coming
back. Then she thought she saw me
lying face down in the Balmaquidder,
and she seemed to know I was dead.
I don’t remember the details, but I
know she worked herself up into a
shocking nervous state about it till I
promised not to go. Of course it’s all
nonsense, I know that, but what can
I do?”

“Do as you promised!” It was
Colonel Eyre’s deep voice that uttered
the words, and we all glanced round at
the speaker. He had remained silent
319
during the badinage occasioned by
Everton’s determination, sitting with
his tumbler of Scotch whiskey-and-water
in front of him, puffing away
silently at the short brier-root, whose
bowl scarcely cleared the sweep of his
heavy, grizzled mustache. He was
holding the pipe in his hand now, sitting
erect and speaking with unmistakable
earnestness of manner. “Do as
you promised, and don’t be too sure it’s
all nonsense, either. I have known
cases in which men have lived to be
very thankful that they yielded to a
presentiment.”

“But this was a dream, colonel,”
broke in the irrepressible Jones.

“Dream be it, then! Stay at home,
Everton. As you say, it’s not much to
miss a day’s shooting. And if you
neglect this warning the chances are
you may never live to regret it.” The
speaker took a sip from the tumbler in
front of him, replaced his pipe between
his lips, and leaned back as if the subject
were at an end.

But the colonel, an Indian officer of
many years’ service, was popularly supposed
to have led a life of adventure,
and to have figured in more than one
story whose exciting incidents could
well bear repetition. As a rule, he was
a taciturn man, and it was by no means
easy to “set him talking,” as the story
goes. The present seemed an opportunity
too good to be lost, and several
voices demanded the experience by
whose authority he had spoken so
decidedly.

“Well, yes,” said Colonel Eyre slowly,
“I have seen a presentiment very remarkably
fulfilled. I am not much of
a hand at yarning, but, if you wish, I
have no objection to give you a leaf
out of my own book, if it’s only that
you may leave my friend Tom here in
peace to follow his own course, without
badgering him about it. Yes, I mean
you, Mr. Jones,” he went on, impaling
that helpless youngster with a glance
that sent him nervously to the spirit
case, while the rest of us settled ourselves
320
comfortably to listen, and Sir
Alan, with a “Fire ahead, colonel,”
drew his chair forward into a better
position.

“It was a good while after the breaking
of the monsoon in ’68,” began the
colonel, slowly; “the weather was cool
and pleasant enough, so that, on the
face of it, it seemed no great hardship
when I was ordered to take a detachment
down to Sumbalpar. I was stationed
at Raipur at the time, in the
Orissa district, and word came of some
trouble with the Zemindars above Sumbalpar.
The only thing that seemed
inconvenient was the suddenness of the
order. It was just ‘Fall in and march
out’ without delay of an hour. I was
a young married man in those days,
pretty much in the position of my
friend Tom Everton, with a wife of
two years and a bit of a baby a few
months old. It wasn’t pleasant to
leave them behind me in a place like
Raipur, and, of course, it was out of the
question to start them at an hour’s
notice. I spoke to my bearer, Josein,
one of the best native servants I ever
saw, and directed him to make arrangements
for an early march on the following
morning. He was to see my
family driven quietly over to Sumbalpar
in the tonga. They were to
travel by easy stages under the charge
of a careful bilewallah. If there are
any ‘griffs’ in this company, I may explain
for their benefit that a tonga is a
kind of bullock wagon, and a bilewallah
is the driver of the same. Well,
I had just time for a few words of comfort
and farewell—Tom will appreciate
all that—before I rode out of Raipur
at the head of my column. We camped
that night in the jungle, after a march
of about twenty miles, and it was under
canvas that I was visited with the
dream or presentiment, or whatever
you choose to call it, that gives such
point as it may possess to this old-time
yarn of mine.”

The colonel paused to refill his glass,
but every one’s interest was now awakened,
and no one broke the momentary
silence that ensued.

“It was pretty late before I fell
asleep,” resumed Colonel Eyre, setting
down his tumbler, “and it was still
dark when I awoke, or seemed to awake,
with my wife’s voice ringing in my ears—a
shriek of agony that made me start
up from my pillow and listen breathlessly.
There was a lantern burning
in my tent—I had left it so when I lay
down—and by the glimmer of light I
saw a large, dark mass spread itself
between me and the canvas roof and
gradually settle down on my head. I
did not know what it was—it was
vague and formless in outline—but I
had a consciousness that it was something
of a dangerous nature—something
that threatened my life—and I
struggled to throw myself to one side
or the other. In vain. I could not
move hand or foot. I lay as if chained
to the bed, and still the dark mass descended,
shutting out light and air and
seeming to suffocate me.”

“Nightmare!” remarked Sir Alan.

“Very possibly,” returned the colonel.
“Suddenly, just as I gave myself
up for lost, and sank back on the pillow
exhausted, I heard my wife’s voice
again, this time clear and articulate.
‘Save yourself, Gerald,’ it cried. ‘Make
one more effort for my sake.’ I glanced
up at the threatening outline, nerving
myself for a final struggle. It was no
longer formless; its approach had
ceased to be slow. Swift as the swoop
of a falcon it descended upon me—the
immense body of a tiger on the spring—its
cruel jaws agape, its enormous
paws with every claw unsheathed,
and its hot, fetid breath on my very
brow!”

“A decidedly uncomfortable dream,”
observed Jones.

“Of course all this passed in one-tenth
of the time I take to tell it. I
rolled out from under the hungry jaws,
and just as I reached the ground I
heard the angry growl of the baffled
monster, followed by a shattering roar
loud enough to waken the Seven Sleepers.
As my senses came back to me,
I found myself lying half on the
ground, half on my low camp bed,
my body bathed in perspiration, and
trembling in every limb. Just then
my batman put his head inside the
tent-flap and asked me if I had heard
the roar, adding that there was a tiger
in the camp. I pulled on my clothes,
321
and I could hear the men walking
about among the tents, searching and
whispering—but no trace of a tiger
could we discover.”

“Then it was a real tiger?” inquired
Tom.

“It would seem so, as the whole
camp had heard the roar as well as myself.
However, it was almost morning
by this time, and as every one was afoot
and moments were precious I gave
orders to push on at once. A hurried
chota hazree was quickly prepared and
despatched, and by the time the sun
rose we were fairly on our way, with a
good prospect of reaching Sumbalpar
before nightfall. I couldn’t shake off
the impression of the dream, however,
try as I would. Besides, some
natives who had come in before
we broke camp told us of a man-eater
which had been infesting the
district. A tiger that has once
tasted human flesh, as you may
have heard, is never content with
beef or venison afterwards, and
they sometimes make themselves
the terror of a whole country-side
before they are shot. What with
the vague misgivings suggested
by my dream, and the tangible
danger of the man-eater, I found
myself growing more and more uneasy
with every mile we marched.
Finally, I determined to turn back
and meet my wife. I was well
mounted, and I believed I could
gallop to the rear, assure myself
that all was well with her, and
pick up my command again before
it reached Sumbalpar. I left the
detachment in charge of a sergeant—poor
old Busbee, he died
322
of jungle fever that same year—and
rode back as fast as King Tom, a
very speedy chestnut, could lay leg to
ground. I passed the spot where we
had spent the night, and kept on several
miles beyond without seeing anything
to cause uneasiness. My fears
were beginning to disperse, and common
sense made itself heard. I realized
that I might find it very difficult
to give a satisfactory explanation of
my absence if the men reached Sumbalpar
without me—they do not pay
much attention to dreams at headquarters.
This view of the case became
more impressive with each mile
I rode, and I determined that if the
next turn in the path did not bring my
family into view, or show me some
other good reason for pushing on, I
would turn back and rejoin my command.
Thus resolved, I cantered forward,
swung round the tangled angle
of brush that limited my view, and
saw——”

Here the colonel stopped for another
sip of whiskey-and-water.

“What did you see?” cried Sir Alan.
“Your wife?”

“Yes, sir, I saw her. She was sitting
with the baby in her lap in the tonga—pale—I
have never seen such an expression
of strained terror on any human
countenance. The bilewallah was in
front, trying to keep the bullocks, which
seemed almost frantic with fear, to the
path. I knew the man well—one of the
best hands with a team at the station—but
just then his face was so distorted
with fright that I hardly recognized
him. You know that lilac-grayish tinge
a native’s face gets when he is scared
almost to death——”

“I know, I know,” broke in Sir Alan.
“But what was the matter—what was
frightening them? Could you see anything?”

“Indeed I could,” replied the colonel.
“Cause enough they had; not five yards
behind them trotted the largest tiger
it has ever been my fortune to see.”

Various exclamations testified to the
completeness of the surprise to which
Colonel Eyre had treated his audience.

“Was it a man-eater?” I asked.

“At first I supposed it was, but if it
had been I never should have seen
them alive. After I shot the beast——”

“Oh, you did shoot him?”

“Don’t ask me how! I am counted
a fair shot—I was far better then; but
when I levelled my rifle at that brute’s
heart, when I realized how much hung
on the result—for if I had missed, or if
I had merely wounded him, he would
have been in the tonga at a single
spring, and nothing under heaven itself
could have saved those dearest to me
from a horrible death—when I realized
all this, I don’t know how I found the
nerve to pull the trigger. I suppose I
knew it was the only chance. My appearance
had enraged the animal and
he was just preparing to spring. This
I do know, and I’m not ashamed to
own it: when I saw that I had laid the
tiger out with a single shot—a thing
that doesn’t happen twice in a lifetime—I
fell flat beside the tonga in the act
of helping my wife down; for the first
and last time in my life I fainted.

“Yes, it was a pretty hard trial on the
nerves,” resumed the colonel, as our
discussion of the situation sank into
silence, “but nothing to what my wife
had gone through. That tiger had followed
them for more than four miles
through the jungle. The bilewallah,
with rare presence of mind, had managed
to keep the bullocks to their
steady jog-trot—any increase of pace
or appearance of flight would have
provoked a spring. She, poor woman,
had succeeded in hushing her baby, for
had the child cried, nothing is surer
than that the sound would have led to
an attack. It must have been an awful
323
four miles for her. It was years before
she recovered from the effect.”

“And why did not the tiger attack
them?” inquired Jones. “Does any one
know?”

“The animal was doubtless waiting
to kill them till they got into the vicinity
of water,” explained Colonel Eyre.
“Tigers often do that with cattle and
other large quarry. There was water
a mile or less further on. I had noticed
it myself in passing. If I had not come
upon the ground, another ten minutes
would have sealed their fate.”

“So it may fairly be said that your
dream was the means of saving their
lives,” observed Tom Everton, who,
although the most silent, had not been
the least attentive of the listeners.

“I think we may fairly admit so
much,” replied Colonel Eyre. “If it
had not been for my dream, I do not
think the report of the man-eater would
have brought me back. On the other
hand, but for hearing about the man-eater
and actually being awakened by
the roar of a tiger, I am not sure that
the dream would have had weight
enough with me to induce me to leave
a detachment on the march—a serious
thing, gentlemen, as some of you who
are soldiers know well enough.”

“It’s a very curious circumstance,
certainly,” observed Sir Alan; and then
there was a pause.

“But see here, colonel,” Tom broke
in again, “the dream, if a warning at all,
was a warning of danger to you, yourself,
and though you certainly heard
Mrs. Eyre’s voice calling to you, yet it
was urging you to save yourself, and
not summoning you to her assistance.”

“That is very true, and it puzzled me
at the time. But, as I argued, it is
wonderful enough to get a warning of
danger in the future at all; you must
not expect to have it spelled out to you
in large print. Now, as to this dream
of Mrs. Everton’s—it prefigures danger
to you, as I understand?”

“You must go to Mrs. Everton herself
for the details. All that I remember
is that she saw me lying drowned
in the Balmaquidder, and read the vision
as a warning that some accident would
befall me if I joined the shooting-party
to-morrow. But, by the light of your
experience, it would seem the danger is
to her, not to me.”

“I’m not quite so sure of that,” returned
the colonel, thoughtfully.

“Well, I think there can be no question
that your dream saved your wife’s
life,” observed Jones, upon whose scepticism
the colonel’s narrative had made
some impression.

“No question at all,” rejoined that
officer, rising, “and therefore, young
man, pay attention to dreams, whether
they be your own or those of your better
half, which should be, a fortiori,
better and more reliable than your
own. Good-night, gentlemen. It’s
past one o’clock, and we have an early
start before us.”

In ten minutes more silence and
darkness reigned in the smoking-room
of Balmaquidder Lodge.

Next morning the men of the party
were up and stirring betimes. As I
left my bedroom, candle in hand, I
heard voices proceeding from the
apartment occupied by Mr. and Mrs.
Everton. “Ah, ha,” thought I, “Tom’s
curtain lecture is not over yet.” However,
our friend’s absence was forgotten
in the enjoyment of a substantial
Highland breakfast, and by the time
the sun asserted his power against the
mist we were bravely breasting a steep
mountain side, spurred on by the hope
of a good day’s sport.

Only one incident occurred at our
start. Sir Alan was setting his face
against a steep brae when he was
324
stopped by the bare-legged gillie who
acted as our guide. “Dinna gae yon
gait, Sir Alan. We must win ower by
the brig below.”

“Can’t we get across by the stepping-stones
at the ford?” inquired our host,
impatiently. “The bridge is a mile of
a round.”

“I dinna ken that the stanes’ll be
ower muckle safe, Sir Alan, forbye ye
canna see them at a’ wi’ the white
water swirling
ower them, and
the pool maybe
ten feet deep
close in under
them. We
mought win
ower recht
enoo, an’ again
we mought na—ye
ken——”

“Yes, I ken,”
interrupted Sir
Alan. “We’ll
go round by the
bridge, gentlemen.
There’s
a flood in the
river, it appears—a
cheerful
habit the Balmaquidder
has
when you least
want it or expect
it.”

By the bridge
accordingly we
went, and when
I saw the brown
water whirling
down in swift
eddies I was
thankful that
we had not attempted the stepping-stones.

It was evening, and fast growing
dark, when we reached the glen on our
return, wet, tired, and hungry, but
thoroughly satisfied with the day’s result.
We were stepping out briskly,
for we knew we were close to home,
when a big mountain hawk swooped
right in front of us. Jones, who had
not drawn the cartridge from his rifle,
let fly on the instant, without remembering
how small was his chance with
a bullet at quarry on the wing. We
were amusing ourselves chaffing Jones
as the bird flew off untouched when
Colonel Eyre, who was a few steps to
the rear, pulled up short and raised his
hand to signal for silence.

We all heard it then—a shrill, lamentable
voice ringing sharply from the hillside;
there was no mistaking the purport
of that appeal, it was a cry for
help. But the mist was beginning to
settle and the
echo baffled us.
For a moment
we looked
blankly at each
other and
around, not
knowing whither
to turn.

Again the
cry, “Help,
help, help!”
with a note of
agony in it
that stirred the
blood like a
trumpet. “God
guide us—’tis at
the foord above
you,” cried the
gillie, and, tired
as we were,
none of us were
far behind him
when he reached
the stepping-stones.

They were
hidden by a
mass of swirling,
broken water,
but just below
them lay
the pool of which the guide had spoken—calm
by comparison with the ford,
but agitated nevertheless with a swift
current that flashed between steep
banks faced with granite; as ugly a
place for an accident as might be found
in the whole length of the brawling
Balmaquidder.

And an accident had happened,
plainly enough. On one of the granite
boulders knelt Mrs. Everton, leaning
back with all her might against the
drag of a plaid, one end of which she
325
held, while the other was lost in the
black shadows of the pool.

She heard our footsteps as we ran up,
but did not turn her head. “Help,
help!” she cried again. “I can’t hold
on much longer, and he—oh——”

She broke off with a sob, as strong
hands relieved her of the extemporized
life-line, and Colonel Eyre, bending forward,
peered down into the obscurity of
the pool. I was one of those who had
grasped the shore end of the plaid, and
the strain told me that whoever was below
still maintained his grasp. “Can
you hold on another moment?” asked
the colonel; then, without waiting for a
reply, “Cling close for dear life. Now,
boys, gently does it. A steady, slow
pull—no jerking;” and in another moment
the dripping, half-senseless form
of Tom Everton was drawn out on the
bank, his drowning grip of the plaid
still unloosened, and laid beside the
fainting form of his wife.

“It was this way,” Tom explained
some hours later, when we were all assembled
for our usual smoking-room
symposium. “I dare say I was pretty
cross all day, thinking of the sport you
fellows were having, and all I was missing,
and towards evening my wife suggested
that we should walk out and try
to meet you. We kept along the river
up to the stepping-stones, but the crossing
there looked so bad that my wife
would not hear of my attempting it.
I did not think it so very dangerous,
but I dare say I’d have let her have her
own way——”

“As you usually do,” interjected
Jones.

“——when all of a sudden I heard a
shot close by on the other side. Then
I started over at once. I’ve been
across the ford a dozen times, but before
I had taken three steps I found
the stream was too strong for me. I
tried to turn back, but the current
seemed to whirl me right off my feet;
I went sliding over the slippery stones,
and in two seconds I was soused well
over my head into the pool below, and
spinning round like a troll in a brook.
I tried to grasp hold of something on
the bank, but that was the only result”—showing
his lacerated hands—“and
I think I must have been very
close to kingdom come, when something
or another flapped in my face.
I clutched it and hung on like grim
death; it was Jenny’s plaid, which she
had the presence of mind to fling me
and the pluck and strength to hold on
to till you came to help. God bless
her, I say”—Tom’s voice faltered a
little—“she’s a wife to be proud of;
and the next time she has a dream and
wants me to stay at home, she shan’t
have to ask me twice.”

“Oh, by the by, the dream!” broke
in Sir Alan. “Is this accident to Tom
to be regarded as the fulfilment of his
wife’s dream or not?”

“Mrs. Everton’s dream was a warning,”
said the colonel. “I should say
that, having profited by the warning——”

“But stay,” I argued, “did she profit
by the warning? She persuaded
her husband to stay at home. Now,
if he had gone with us he would have
crossed by the bridge and been as safe
as any of us. The dream did not save
him. On the contrary, it very nearly
drowned him.”

“She acted for the best, and all’s
well that ends well,” replied the colonel.
“Look at my dream, now. If I
had not gone to my wife’s help and
326
shot that tiger I should never have
seen her again. No, no, as I said before,
you can’t expect these warnings
to be printed out in big type.
You must just take them as they
come, and chance your reading them
aright.”

“And come within an ace of drowning
yourself, or some one else,” interjected
Jones.

“It only bears out the old saying
that ‘Dreams go by contraries,’” I
remarked. “Still, these are a very remarkable
pair of coincidences.”

“Here’s my view,” said Sir Alan.
“Eat light suppers, go to bed healthily
tired, and you won’t dream at all; or, if
you must, forget all about it as soon
as possible. You can torture a warning
out of almost anything, and make
yourself wretched trying to find out
where the hidden danger is, and very
likely rush right into it, as Everton
did, trying to avoid it. Half the time
dreams do go by contraries, and it’s
dangerous meddling with what we
don’t understand.”

And by the time the spirit case had
completed its next round, we all agreed
with Sir Alan.

“Institut Pasteur.” The
coachman nodded.
The cab door
slammed. The vehicle
rattled across
the Seine, left the
grand boulevards,
passed the garden of the Luxembourg,
and fell into a long, narrow street running
off into the southwestern corner
of Paris. The high, dignified house-fronts
and the stately portals were soon
passed; busy little shops took their
place. We were in an industrial quarter
whose commonplace was only varied
here and there by a fine old hôtel, the
country house of some rich proprietor,
probably, in the days, not so very long
ago, when all this portion of the city
was without the walls, and when an industrial
invasion was undreamed of.

The cab left the Rue Vaugirard,
crossed a superb boulevard, entered the
Rue Dutot, and stopped. Behind a long,
high, black grille, and separated from it
by a hedge of shrubbery, a grass plot,
and a broad gravelled drive-way, rose
a red-brick, stone-trimmed façade.
Across the front, above the handsome
doorway, one read Institut Pasteur;
and, still higher, Subscription Publique,
MDCCCLXXXVIII.

On the grass plot in front of the
stately marble steps stood a small
bronze statue mounted on a high
granite pedestal. It represented a boy
of twelve or fourteen years in a life-and-death
struggle with a mad dog.
He has succeeded in fastening about
the neck of the furious animal the
thong of a long whip. He is strangling
him. Beside the boy, or the ground,
is a wooden shoe. With it he will beat
the beast to death. The statue tells
the story of one of the earliest subjects
treated by M. Pasteur for hydrophobia,
Jean-Baptiste Jupille, a shepherd lad,
who, seeing a group of children attacked
by a mad dog, throttled the animal and
beat it dead with his sabot. He carried
away a dozen or more bites from
the conflict, was sent to Paris, inoculated,
and cured. A fitting subject to place
before the doorway of the Pasteur Institute!

Statue, façade and lawn are new.
The bricks have not yet lost their
glare. One can almost see the dust
still on the stone. The bronze has not
lost its fresh lustre. Even the lawn has
the unevenness of new sod, the horse-chestnut
trees are small, the ivy has
not had time to climb far up the walls.

Everything is still and sealed in front,
but to the right, from the concierge’s
328
lodge back to a solid, practical, dark
stone building in the rear of the main
hall, is a throng of idle people, chatting
in clusters, sunning themselves on
the benches, walking up and down. It
is a strikingly cosmopolitan company.
There are Arabs in red, brown, blue, or
white; Italian women in aprons and
lace head-dresses; Spanish peasants in
dark cloaks and broad-brimmed hats;
Yankees, Zouaves, Russians. The low
babel of a multitude of tongues fills
the air.

One only brushes the edge of this
crowd as he makes his way to the doorway
in the end of the main building,
the entrance to the private apartment
of M. Pasteur.

Narrow winding stairs lead up to a
suite of lofty rooms, furnished with
solid, dignified woods, carpeted with
soft, dark rugs, windows and doors hung
with heavy stuffs. The immediate impression
is one of comfort, warmth and
quiet. The impression deepens as one
enters the library, where, before a desk,
sits the great French savant, Madame
Pasteur near by. There is something
home-like here. This might be the
sitting-room of some well-to-do New
England squire or judge. Involuntarily
one searches in the face of the
eminent savant, eying him so keenly
and so kindly, for traces of relationship
with the Puritan type. There is the same
square determination, the same obstinacy
of purpose, the same direct sincerity;
but it is mellowed by Latin tenderness,
kindled by French brilliancy.

This is a great man, one feels instinctively—a
man so great that he despises
notoriety—and a journalist. It is reassuring.

The great master does not look to
be seventy years of age as he sits behind
his desk, his elbow on the table,
his hand supporting his head. His hair
and beard are still iron-gray; the hair
is concealed largely by the silk skullcap
he always wears, but the beard is
abundant. The eyes are as penetrating,
as full of ardor, as ever. It is only
when he speaks or moves that one sees
the ravages of the paralysis which overtook
him twenty-five years ago, after
his terrible three years of labor in the
little house at Alais, investigating the
disease of the silk-worm. The whole
left side has been since then nearly
useless. His speech is hesitating, his
motion difficult, but in spite of his feebleness
he spares no pains to interest
his guest. One talks with M. Pasteur
with the ease and naturalness of the
fireside.

“Look at my birthplace,” he says,
329
rising, and taking from the mantel a
photograph of the humble home at
Dôle, Jura, where he was born. “My
village gave it to me at my fête.”

I happen to know the story of the
picture, and examine it with pleasure.
There was, indeed, no more touching
feature in the great Pasteur jubilee of
last December than the presentation of
this photograph by the Mayor of Dôle.

The little village has always had a
loyal pride in the fact that M. Pasteur
was born there. Ten years ago it celebrated
the French Fourth of July (July
14) by placing a plaque on the façade
of the house, bearing the inscription:

Ici est né Louis Pasteur,
Le 22 Dec., 1822.

M. Pasteur was present and made a
speech. In the course of it he referred
to his parents, their ambition
for him, their self-sacrifice, their faith
in him. He recalled his father’s words:
“Louis, if I see you one day a professor
in the college of Arbois I shall be
the happiest man on earth.” Overpowered
by his recollections, he broke
down, sobbing.

The villagers of Dôle have never
forgotten the scene. When the great
Pasteur jubilee was celebrated they
sent up their mayor, commissioned to
present the picture of the early home,
together with a facsimile of the register
of M. Pasteur’s birth. That
they were not mistaken in thinking
that he would be pleased, it is easy to
see as he stands before me, eying the
humble house with tender pride.

“Have you no picture of yourself
taken in your boyhood at Dôle?”

“No,” he answered. “The earliest
picture I have is much later. Let me
see, I must have been decorated then.
Where is the old album?”

The album is brought, a small
square book, looking as if it had just
come off the table in the best room of
a New England farm-house. There is
the same high-relief decoration, the
same gilt lines edging the photograph
apertures. And these people? Verily,
they might have lived in New England
forty years ago!

M. Pasteur turns the leaves. Madame
Pasteur leans over his shoulder.
They stop now and then and exchange
a smile as they come upon an old
friend. At last the sought-for photograph
is found. M. Pasteur at thirty—a
great man already, for already he
has made discoveries in crystallography
which have won him a name among
scientists.

The plans for investigation which
filled the head of the young man who
sits up so straight in the old photograph
were never completed. The enthusiastic
student of crystallography
was forced to change the subject of his
studies. Even now the great savant
laments the change.

“If I have a regret,” he says, “it is
that I did not follow that route, less
rude, it seems to me, and which would
have led, I am convinced, to wonderful
discoveries. A sudden
turn threw me into the
study of fermentations,
fermentations set me at
diseases, but I am still inconsolable
to think that I
have never had time to go
back to my old subject.”

Beside the hero of the
studies in crystallography
M. Pasteur places his latest
picture. It lacks in
youthfulness, but it has
gained in ripeness. This
photograph has much of
the vigor and the alertness
one sees in the splendid
bust by Paul Dubois displayed
330
in the Salon of 1880, and now
in a gallery at Copenhagen. This bust
is the most satisfactory portrait of M.
Pasteur ever made, unless it be the
painting by Edelfelt displayed in the
Salon of 1886. In the same Salon appeared
Bonnat’s portrait of M. Pasteur
and his granddaughter.

As I look at M. Pasteur in his library,
however, I see only the old model of
Bonnat. I have difficulty in believing,
indeed, as I watch him bending smilingly
over the old album, now and then
laughing aloud at the discovery of
some forgotten picture, that this man,
over fifty years ago, for the sake of an
education, made himself a jack-of-all-trades
in the college of Besançon, and
was aroused every morning at four
o’clock with the night-watchman’s cry:
“Come, Pasteur, chase the demon of laziness.”
It is difficult to picture him in
the intoxication of scientific enthusiasm
and discovery, sacrificing health, leisure,
pleasure, to the passion of learning
which had taken possession of him.

He is so gentle, it seems incredible
that he has had to meet coldness, contempt,
opposition of every species, in
his life; that, when he asked the most
modest of appropriations from the
government, he met the contemptuous
reply that “there was no rubric in the
budget for allowing three hundred dollars
a year for experiments;” that for
every step in his discoveries he has had
literally to fight, contending with Pouchet
and Joly on the subject of spontaneous
generation, with Liebig on
fermentations, with the Germans and
Italians on the attenuation of virus,
with the popular opinion of his own
compatriots when he dared vaccinate
for hydrophobia, and when his supporters
dared erect the present Institute
to facilitate his work.

One cannot picture him tête-à-tête
with mad dogs. It is hard to believe
him capable of that astonishing self-mastery
which made him withhold for
months, and sometimes even years, the
results of incomplete investigations,
and of the equal hardihood which, when
he was convinced of a truth, led him to
accept the most severe and most public
tests of its exactness.

I make an attempt to find the scientist
and venture a question.

“Oh,” says M. Pasteur, “if you
want to know that, you must go and
331
see M. Roux. You will find him in the
laboratory.”

We rise and go into the long hall. At
the opposite end from the library two
large doors open into the spacious vestibule
which occupies the centre of the
main building.

“You can go out by the main hall and
directly into the laboratory, or down
the private stairs.” I hesitated. No,
I would not spoil my impression of M.
Pasteur at home. I would keep laboratory
and home separate. I descended
to the private entrance, and, as I went
down, two kindly faces looked over at
me, and the gentle, hesitating voice of
the great savant said:

“Take care, it is dark. Don’t slip.
Take care.” On the last step I stopped
and looked up. The two friendly faces
were still looking down.

I had come to see the destroyer of
the theory of spontaneous generation,
the demonstrator of the microbe origin
of disease, the conqueror of hydrophobia.
I had found something greater,
perhaps, than them all—a perfectly
gentle soul.

IN M. PASTEUR’S WORKSHOP.

I crossed the lawn and entered a
large waiting-room occupying the middle
of the building devoted to laboratory
work. The room is flooded with
light, seated with benches, and decorated
with no other ornaments than a
series of photographs of the Pasteur
Institute at Rio Janeiro, two great
maps on which are marked the cities
where institutions similar to this at
Paris are to be found, and cards containing
certain rules applicable to patients
coming for treatment against
hydrophobia. Among
these latter the important
ones are that the treatment
is gratuitous, that
each patient must bathe
before coming for inoculation,
that board and
lodging are not furnished,
and that the grateful may,
if they wish, leave a gift
at the end of their term
of treatment.

There were sixty or
seventy persons in the
room. They had come
to be vaccinated against
hydrophobia. They were
of the greatest contrast
in age, in condition, in
culture. Beside a shrivelled,
leather-brown Arab
woman from the desert
was a pink and white little
miss from London. A
young man with the refined
face, correct dress
and distinguished manners
of a gentleman sat
beside a huge and none-too-clean
German laborer.
As a rule, it was a friendly,
cheerful company. It
was only here and there
that one saw a person
who seemed conscious
332
that in his veins a hideous poison was
at work. Most of them took it for
granted that their cure was certain.
Some of them scoffed at the nonsense
of going to the trouble of being vaccinated.

A dignified liveried servant entered,
calling “Attention.” The company
bestirred itself and disappeared. I
made my way to the inoculating room.

The operation of inoculating for
hydrophobia is founded on the theory
that if an “attenuated” microbe, that
is a microbe so treated that its power
of doing harm has been reduced to a
low degree, is introduced into a body,
it will produce an indisposition which
is not itself serious, but which is sufficient
to render the body proof against
attacks of the original microbe.

Now M. Pasteur has discovered
that it is possible to so treat a microbe
that its power of evil is of any degree;
that is, to “exalt” as well as to
“attenuate” it. Having these microbes
of varying strengths he invented
a method of graduated vaccination;
that is, by beginning with a virus of
low degree, and increasing each day
the strength of the virus, an operator
arrives at a point where he can vaccinate
a body with a virus stronger
than there is any danger of its ever
being exposed to in nature. He thus
secures lasting immunity.

Thus, in vaccinating against rabies,
the patient is treated first with a weak
virus; this is followed by one more
powerful, and so on, until at the end
a highly “exalted” one is injected
safely.

It is this treatment which is practised
daily at the Pasteur Institute, in
the inoculation room where I found
myself.

Gathered in a kind of pen formed by
a little fence were three members of
the institution: a secretary, whose business
it is to keep track of the number
of persons to be treated with each
particular virus; an assistant, who has
prepared the virus for the day’s use;
twelve small wine glasses of cloudy
liquid protected by small paper funnels;
and, by a table, the inoculator.
The roll was called and a half dozen
men entered the room. They were to
be inoculated with a virus of the lowest
strength, most of them for the first
time. They showed a bewildered and
comic embarrassment as the attendant
directed them to bare the hypogastrium.
The embarrassment changed
to a momentary look of distress as
they felt their arms pinned behind
their backs, and the sharp needle
injected a syringeful of virus into the
delicate flesh. The first class of men
and boys passed out, and the women
and little children entered. They
were succeeded by a second class, and
so on until all had been treated.

The simplicity of the operation
seemed out of proportion to the horror
of the disease. I remembered the
shrugs I had seen and the doubts I had
heard expressed over the treatment.
“It is not sure yet.” “It does not
always work; such-a-one died, you
know.” “They have not found the
microbe either.” My faith was shaking.
Evidently I must see Doctor
Roux.

On the second floor of the building I
found the office and private laboratory
333
of the under-director of the Pasteur
Institute, a man whose researches in
connection with Pasteur, whose devotion
in the cholera mission in Egypt in
1883, and whose independent investigations
on diphtheria, have made him
famous in the medical world. The office
was small, and it had something of
the attraction of a curio shop. There
was none of the precision of the man
of small affairs here. It was the confusion
of the man of big affairs, who
cannot endure to have his things meddled
with. Over a table where culture
tubes, blow-pipes, virus glasses and
bottles filled with suspicious-looking
fluids were scattered promiscuously
around a valuable microscope, hung a
gem of a painting—a dashing charge
of cavalry. Beside a case of books,
and partly concealing a fine portrait of
Pasteur, hung the gray-white laboratory
blouses of M. Roux. Under an
exquisite etching askew in a corner
stood a cage of brown-and-white guinea-pigs,
martyrs to science, probably.

Curiosity was cut short, for a quick
step was heard in the outer room, and
Doctor Roux entered. A slight figure,
bent a little from a life spent over
books, tubes and microscopes, but
tingling to the finger-tips with nervous
energy; a face a little pale, but fresh in
color; brown hair and beard, glowing
brown eyes, perhaps forty years—such
is this eminent associate of Pasteur.
As he runs over the pile of letters cut
and awaiting him, he talks.

“So you have just seen the inoculation?
Do I believe it a sure cure?”
The doctor lays down his letters as he
repeats the latter question in an astonished
tone. “Of course I do. There
is nothing surer in medical science.
Look at these figures.” He rises and
draws out from the midst of a pile of
papers a big black serviette, fumbles for
a moment among the documents it contains,
and pulls out the latest report
made by the Institute on the results of
vaccination for hydrophobia, that for
1891.

“Now listen to these figures. In
1886 the Pasteur made its first report:
2,671 persons were vaccinated that year
against hydrophobia; 25 of them died—.94
of one per cent. In 1887, 1,770
persons were treated; 13 died—.73 of
one per cent. In 1888, 1,622 were
treated; 9 died—.55 of one per cent.
In 1889, 1,830 were treated; 7 died—.38
of one per cent. In 1890, 1,540
were treated; 5 died—.32 of one per
cent. In 1891, 1,559 were treated; 3
died—.19 of one per cent. You notice
each year the per cent. of deaths has
been lower. In the six years the treatment
has been reported, we average just
about one-half of one per cent of loss.
Tell me where you find a treatment
surer?”

“But you have not found the microbe?”

“Humph! that does not prevent the
method working. It is aggravating
not to have found him. It prevents,
possibly, the simplification of the inoculation
process. Nevertheless it works.
So does vaccination for small-pox. We
do not know the microbe of small-pox.
There is much we do not know yet.
Remember, too, that it was only in 1880
that M. Pasteur made up his mind to
begin an exhaustive study of hydrophobia,
and that all he foresaw at first
was the possibility of vaccinating dogs
334
against rabies, and that it was only in
1885 that the first person, little Joseph
Meister, was inoculated, after a council
of physicians had decided that his
death was certain, and that his life was
saved.”

PORTRAITS OF M. PASTEUR.

The newness of the Pasteur doctrines
and treatment is, indeed, one of
the most striking things about the Institute.
One rubs his eyes to remember
that, thirteen years ago, very few
people admitted the rôle of bacteria in
the world, and that those who did admit
their existence were very much at
sea about what to do with them.

The doctrine of microbe, the theory
that ferments and virus are living beings,
that a vaccine is an attenuated
virus, that medicine is based on the
artificial attenuation of virus—all this
is now so widely received, is so thoroughly
a part of popular belief, that
one is bewildered in remembering that
twelve years ago the general theory of
disease was that it is “in us, from us,
by us.” Especially is all this astonishing,
standing in the Pasteur Institute,
the crystallization of the microbe doctrine.

“Yes,” continued Doctor Roux, “we
have conquered hydrophobia; nothing
is more certain.”

“And you hope to conquer other
diseases in the same way?”

The doctor made a fine nervous
gesture. “In science one does not
hope; one proves. In every thirty
thousand experiments one succeeds.
We study diseases here. Each physician
has his special line of investigation.
We hope for nothing. We simply
report what we find.”

“But you yourself, Doctor Roux,
have certainly hopes that diphtheria is
almost conquered?”

The doctor pursed up his mouth.

“The investigations in diphtheria
are in just this condition. We have
proved at the Pasteur Institute” (Doctor
Roux is modest and says ‘we,’
which means himself and his assistant,
M. Versin) “that diphtheria is a toxic
disease; that is, that it results from
a poison. The microbe of diphtheria
335
does not penetrate throughout the system
as in the case of most other microbic
diseases. It exists only in the
mucus found on the pharynx. This
microbe does not cause death, but it
secretes a poison which penetrates
throughout the body and kills. This
being proved, of course the next step
is to find what will destroy the poison.

“Doctor Behring, working at Berlin,
has found that the blood of animals
vaccinated for diphtheria gives a therapeutic
serum which destroys the diphtheric
poison. We are now testing the
practical value of the serum at the
Institute. This is absolutely our ‘last
word’ on diphtheria.”

“And as for cholera! What is the
last word?”

“The bacillus virgula of Doctor
Koch is believed, by the great majority
of savants, to be the true cholera
germ. We are trying here, as experimenters
are trying elsewhere, to give
immunity to animals against the microbe.
It is absolutely all that one
can say authoritatively on the cholera.”

“And the method of vaccination
which Doctor Haffkine believes he has
discovered?”

“It has not been proved yet that it
will give immunity. Until we have
that proof we neither hope nor fear.
We simply work and wait. Doctor
Haffkine has, you know, severed his
connection with the Pasteur Institute
and gone to India to continue his researches.”

“But he has had faith enough in his
method to try its effects on himself,
has he not?”

“Very true, and so have perhaps a
hundred others tried its effects. But
that proves nothing.”

There is a self-repression about these
severe statements which has something
of the heroic in it. Who would be so
glad to announce absolute safeguards
against diphtheria and cholera as this
man who has risked his life to find them?
Yet, until he is sure, he will not even
say “hope.”

I remember the words of Pasteur
himself: “To believe that one has
found an important scientific fact, to
be in a fever to announce it, to compel
one’s self for days, weeks, sometimes
years, to be silent, to force one’s self to
destroy his own experiments and to
announce nothing until he has exhausted
all contrary hypotheses—that is
hard.”

It is hard, but it is one of the strongest
elements in the Pasteur spirit of scientific
research. Evidently Doctor Roux
has learned to practise it vigorously.

“In the same way that we are investigating
diphtheria and cholera,”
continues the doctor, “we are studying
other diseases. But one cannot get a
fair idea of what the Pasteur Institute
does by any other means than looking
at its organizations. There is a great
deal done here besides original investigation.
In the first place, we are an
absolutely independent and free institution.
The money was given by popular
subscription and without conditions.

“The entire lower floor is devoted to
practical work. There are performed
the inoculations for hydrophobia on an
average of some seventy a day. The
practical department is not, however,
confined to the treatment of hydrophobia.
There are prepared the vaccines
for all those diseases of animals which
M. Pasteur has proved can be cured by
inoculation, such as chicken cholera,
splenic fever, and rouget of swine.

“Quantities of virus are sold constantly
to farmers for vaccinating their
stock. It is these sales which help support
the institution. It is an example
of science living by science.

“Here on this floor we do our instructing.
In the lecture hall across
the way M. Ducloux gives his lessons
on microbic chemistry, studies the process
of fermentation, microbic poisons,
all phases, in short, of biological chemistry.

“My work is lectures on, and experiments
illustrating, the technique of the
microbic method. Those who follow
the courses are divided into two classes,
students who simply follow the courses
and repeat the experiments in the
general laboratory, and the savants
who conduct original researches here.
The latter are furnished each with a
private laboratory in the third story.
Here for a merely nominal rent they
can have the exclusive use of a laboratory
furnished with all necessary apparatus,
and can pursue whatever class
of investigation pleases them.”

“And you have many students?”

“We have always fifteen
or twenty, and from all
parts of the world. Look
at my roll.”

The doctor rose and
drew out from the mass of
pamphlets and papers on
his table a big roll-book.

“I have the names of
those who have taken my
lectures. Here is an Egyptian,
many Russians, a
Turk, numbers from South
America, from Canada,
from the East, from everywhere.
Let us look for
your compatriots.”

Doctor Roux ran his finger
down the pages. “Here
is one, Doctor Orchinard
of New Orleans. Here
another, Doctor Tabadie
of New York; and then
there is Kenyoun of the
337
United States Marine Service. But
there have been more students in the
institution from South America than
from North.

“The department of original work is
in the third story, and is under Doctor
Metchnikoff, who is, you know, a Russian
who has established himself here
in order to devote himself to scientific
investigation. Doctor Metchnikoff is
aided by his wife, who acts as preparateur.
She is an assistant of great
skill and delicacy. He receives no
salary for his labor. There are, in fact,
three of the leading members of our
faculty who receive no salary—M.
Pasteur himself, M. Ducloux, and M.
Metchnikoff. They have resigned the
award they deserve because of our insufficient
income.”

“But the common opinion is that
you are rich here.”

“I know, but it is a mistake. The
Pasteur Institute is very poorly endowed.
Its yearly income is only about
twenty-four thousand dollars. This
revenue comes from three sources: the
small appropriations made by the government,
the income from the remnant
of the private subscription with which
it was built, and the product of the
sales of vaccine. The fact that we can
partly support ourselves,” added the
doctor, laughingly, “is the best proof
one can have of the practicability of
bacteriology.

“The most surprising feature about
it is, that in the case of almost every
institution copied after us, and there
are some eighteen or twenty of them in
various parts of the world, the income
is much larger than ours. At Berlin
and St. Petersburg the incomes are four
or five times as large as ours, and, excepting
Berlin, we are the only Pasteur
Institute doing practical work. It is
the old story,” said the doctor resignedly,
“one sows and another reaps.”

There is certainly injustice and
short-sightedness in such a state of
things. The investigations of Pasteur
have taken too heavy a bundle from
the load of horrors which humanity
carries, to be allowed to be limited for
lack of money:

Immunity from infectious diseases,
and nothing else is the logical outcome
of the Pasteur doctrines, means too
338
much to make economy on the part of
purse-holders excusable, when it is a
question of funds for the investigations.
When men like Doctor Roux
and his associates, men trained in the
severe Pasteur spirit and passionate
for truth, are ready to sacrifice their
lives to this work, overcoming the
earth’s plagues, money is the last
thing they should be wanting. Especially
is this true now, when the work
on two of the most terrible scourges of
humanity—diphtheria and cholera—stands
at critical stages.

There is something harshly ironical,
too, in the idea that the institution of
Louis Pasteur, whose discoveries have,
declares Professor Huxley, made good
the war indemnity of five thousand
million francs paid by France to Germany,
should be crippled for funds.

The doctor’s confidences were cut
short by an imperative summons from
without. I rose to go.

“Take a stroll through the building,”
advised he as he said good-by.
I followed his advice.

From the library one naturally passes
to the laboratories. They open from
the long halls in numbers. One wonders
how so much room can be utilized,
but none seems to be going to waste.
In each some step of the microbic process
is going on. Here is a doctor inoculating
a rabbit with the poison of a
mad dog sent to the Institute only the
day before. The little animal lies on the
table insensible, chloroformed, while
with the sharp-toothed little trephine
the operator makes a tiny hole in its
skull, lays bare the brain, and inserts
the virus. By the time the aperture is
closed Brer Rabbit is sitting up, looking
about, none the worse for his experience,
339
save a bald spot on his forehead,
a tiny tin tag covered with hieroglyphics
hanging from his ear. Two
minutes later he was nibbling a carrot;
fifteen days later he died “mad as a
March hare.”

It is not only rabbits which undergo
this operation. Guinea-pigs, chickens,
mice and rats are used in quantities.
In the laboratory of autopsy there are
to be seen aquariums filled with the
dainty axolotl of Mexico, glasses of
odd fish, even cages of birds.

In another room an experimenter is
dissecting a rabbit which has died of
rabies, and from whose spinal cord he
expects to get material for vaccinal
virus.

In a small dark room, whose temperature
is never allowed to vary, which
is never swept nor dusted for fear of
arousing tranquil microbes, and whose
door is never opened except when absolutely
necessary, are arranged rows
of drying bottles, in which hang bits
of the marrow. These bottles are
marked with the degree of violence of
the rabies from which the animal died,
and with the date when the marrow
was put up to dry.

Here, attendants are preparing the
veal broth and the gelatines in which
the infected marrows will be cultivated.

Thus as one goes from room to room
he can follow the whole method of
successive cultures, that method which
is “the key-stone of the arch, and
without which there could be no vigorous
demonstration of the Pasteur
method.”

On every hand one sees the interesting
“ways of doing things” which
characterize the Institute. Here, the
cleaning of jars, syringes and tubes is
going on; not a simple washing and
drying. In the Pasteur household
articles are sterilized as well as cleaned—that
is, burned in the flames of a
spirit lamp, or in an oven. There, a
man is blowing bulbs, droll balloon
pipettes, all the multitude of glass
contrivances the laboratories demand.
Here, under a microscope, an investigator
has the diphtheria pest, an inoffensive
speck; there, another has in
his field a whole colony of lively little
straight and bent sticks; it is a company
of Doctor Koch’s cholera microbes.

Wherever one goes in the building
there is a busy intentness, an absorption,
an absolute blindness to everything
but the work in hand, be it the
contents of a culture tube, or the film
on a microscope slide. One can easily
believe of these workers the story told
340
of M. Pasteur himself, that he had to
be hunted up on his wedding morning
and pulled away from his microscope,
in order to be got into his
dress-coat and gloves in time for the
ceremony.

Evidently, too, they have not forgotten
the words their master spoke
on the day of the inauguration of the
Institute:

“All the enthusiasm you have had
since the beginning, my dear co-laborers,
I beg of you to keep; but give it,
as an inseparable companion, a severe
control. Announce nothing that you
cannot prove in a simple, decisive
fashion.

“Cultivate the critical spirit. Left
to itself it neither awakens ideas nor
stimulates to great deeds, but without
it all is lost.”

As one goes from room to room,
and talks with one and another of the
busy, courteous savants, he realizes
finally that it is here that Pasteur the
scientist is to be found. The labors
that made the great savant famous are
all summed up here. Here his methods
are at work, here is his spirit alive in
the men who have best comprehended
him, and whom he has been able most
deeply to inspire. It is a great thing
to achieve. It is a greater thing to
inspire others to achieve. Louis Pasteur
has done both.

Note.—“The Brontës in Ireland” will be issued in book form by D. Appleton & Co., after the serial publication
is concluded in McClure’s Magazine.

I.

LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT.

The visit to McClory’s
in County Down
was another momentous
step in the
life of Hugh Brontë.
He had shaken off
the nightmare of
cruel slavery. His
work, mostly in the open air, suited him.
He was well paid, had good food and
clothing, and in two years the starved
and ragged boy had become a large,
handsome, well-dressed man. Like
most handsome people, Hugh knew
that he was handsome, and the resources
of Dundalk were taxed in those
days to the utmost to set off to perfection
his manly and stately figure.

On Christmas Eve Hugh Brontë
drove up furiously in a Newry gig to
the house of McClory in Ballynaskeagh.
He was a somewhat vain man,
and fond of admiration, and, no doubt,
as he approached McClory’s thatched
cottage, with his pockets full of money,
and with the self-confidence which
prosperity breeds, he meant to flutter
the house with his greatness.

But a surprise was in store for him.
The cottage door was opened, in response
to his somewhat boisterous
knock, by a young woman of dazzling
beauty. Hugh Brontë, previous to his
flight, had seen few women except his
Aunt Mary, and in the days of his freedom
he had become acquainted only
with lodging-house keepers and County
Louth women who carried their fowl
and eggs to Dundalk fairs and markets.
He had scarcely ever seen a
comely girl, and never in his life any
one who had any attractions for him.

The simply dressed, artless girl who
opened the door was probably the
prettiest girl in County Down at the
time. The rector of Magherally, who
married her, pronounced her the most
beautiful woman he had ever seen.
Her hair, which hung in a profusion of
ringlets round her shoulders, was luminous
gold. Her forehead was Parian
marble. Her evenly set teeth were
lustrous pearls, and the roses of health
glowed on her cheeks. She had the
long brown eyelashes that in Ireland
so often accompany golden hair, and
her deep brown eyes had the violet
tint and melting expression which, in
a diluted form, descended to her granddaughters,
and made the plain and
irregular faces of the Brontë girls
really attractive. The eyes also contained
the lambent fire that Mrs. Gaskell
noticed in Charlotte’s eyes, ready
to flash indignation and scorn. She
had a tall and stately figure, with
head well poised above a graceful neck
and well-formed bust; but she did not
communicate these graces of form to
her granddaughters. There are people
still living who remember the
stately old woman, “Alys Brontë,” as
she was called by her neighbors in her
old age.

Hugh Brontë was completely unmanned
by the radiant beauty of the
simple country girl who stood before
him. He stood awkwardly staring at
her with his mouth open, working with
his hat, and trying in vain to say something.
At last he stammered out a
question about Mr. McClory, and the
girl, who was Alice McClory, told him
that her brother would soon be home,
and invited him into the house.

He entered, blushing and feeling
uncomfortable, but the unaffected simplicity
of Alice McClory’s manner soon
put him at his ease, and before the
brother Patrick, known afterwards as
“Red Paddy,” had returned home, he
was madly and hopelessly in love with
his sister.

Like his son, the Reverend Patrick
Brontë, in England, and like the Irish
curate who proposed marriage to Charlotte
on the strength of one night’s acquaintance,
Hugh, dazzled by beauty
and blinded by love, declared his passion
before he had discovered any signs
of mutual liking, or had any evidence
that his advances would be agreeable.

Alice, in simple, but cold and business-like
manner, told him that she did
not yet know him; but that as he was
a Protestant, and she a Catholic, there
was an insuperable bar between them.

Hugh urged that he himself had no
religion, never having darkened a
church door, and that he was quite
willing to be anything she wished him
to be.

Alice met his earnest pleadings with
playful sallies which disconcerted him,
and little by little she led him to the
story of his life, episodes of which she
had heard from her brother. Pity
melts the heart to love, and Alice was
moved greatly by Hugh’s simple narrative.

II.

PURE LOVE AND PARTY STRIFE.

The Christmas holidays passed pleasantly
under the hospitable roof of the
McClory family. The chief amusement
of the neighborhood was drinking
in the shebeen, or local public
house, but Hugh declined to accompany
Paddy to the shebeen, preferring
solitude with his sister.

Before the holidays had come to a
close, Hugh and Alice had become engaged,
but the course of true love in
their case was destined to the proverbial
fate. All Miss McClory’s friends
were scandalized at the thought of her
consenting to marry a Protestant.

Religion, among Catholics and
Orangemen, in those days, consisted
largely of party hatred. He was a
good Protestant who, sober as well as
drunk, cursed the Pope, and on the
12th of July wore orange colors, and
played with fife and drum a tune
known as “The Battle of the Boyne.”
And he was a good Catholic who, in
whatever condition, used equally emphatic
language regarding King William.
No more genuine expression of
religious feeling was looked for on
either side.

There is a story told in the McClory
district which illustrates the current
religious sentiment. Two brother
Orangemen, good men after their lights,
had long been fast friends. They seldom
missed an opportunity, in the
presence of Catholics, of consigning
the Pope to an uncomfortable place, to
which he himself has been wont to consign
heretics.

It happened that one of the two
Orangemen fell sick, and when he
was at the point of death his friend
became greatly concerned about his
spiritual state, and visited him. He
found him in an unconscious condition,
and sinking fast; and putting his lips
close to the ear of his sick friend, he
asked him to give him a sign that he
felt spiritually happy. The dying man,
with a last supreme effort, raised his
voice above a whisper, and in the venerable
and well-known formula cursed
the Pope. His friend was comforted,
believing that all was well.

Whether this gruesome story be true
or not, it goes to illustrate the fact
that blasphemous bigotry had largely
usurped the place of religion. But
bitter party feeling did not end with
mere words. Bloody battles between
Orangemen and Catholics were periodically
fought on the 12th of July, the
anniversary of the battle of the Boyne,
343
and on the 17th of March, Saint Patrick’s
day. Within six miles of McClory’s
house more than a dozen
pitched battles were fought, sometimes
with scythes tied on poles, and sometimes
with firearms. One of these
murderous onsets, known as the battle
of Ballynafern, took place within sight
of McClory’s house.

At Dolly’s Brae a battle was fought
in 1849, in presence of a large body of
troops, who remained neutral spectators
of the conflict till the Catholics
fled, and then joined with the victors
in firing on the flying foe.

The scenes of these struggles, such
as Tillyorier, Katesbridge, Hilltown,
The Diamond, etc., are classic spots
now. Each has had its poet, and ballads
are sung to celebrate the prowess
of the victors, who were uniformly the
Orangemen, inasmuch as they used
firearms, while the Catholics generally
fought with pikes and scythes.

Hugh Brontë had not yet discovered
the deep and wide gulf that yawned between
Protestants and Catholics, and so
he made light of the religious objections
of which he had heard so much
from Alice. But the Catholic friends
of Miss McClory, who had heard the
Pope cursed by Protestant lips almost
every day of their lives, could not
stand by and see a Catholic lamb removed
into the Protestant shambles.
They came to look on Brontë as a
Protestant emissary, more influenced
by a fiendish desire to plunder the
Catholic fold than by love for their
beautiful relative.

Hugh Brontë, in his eager simplicity,
wanted to supersede all opposition by
getting married immediately, but so
great a commotion ensued that he had
to return to the kilns at Mount Pleasant,
leaving his matrimonial prospects
in a very unsatisfactory condition.

Troops of relatives invaded the
McClory house daily, and ardent Catholics
tried in vain to argue down Alice
McClory’s newly kindled love. All the
Roman Catholic neighbors joined in
giving copious advice, and little was
talked of in fairs and markets, and at
chapel, but the proposed marriage of
Alice McClory with an unknown Protestant
heretic.

The priest, also, as family friend, was
drawn into the matter. In those days
Irish priests were educated in France
or Italy, and were generally men of
culture and refinement. Their horizon
had been widened. They had come in
contact with the language, literature,
and social habits of other peoples, and
they had become courteous men of the
world. They had to some extent got
out of touch with the fierce fanaticism
of party strife.

The priest called on Miss McClory.
Everybody knew that he had, and
awaited the result; but Alice’s beauty
and simplicity and tears made such
an impression on the kind-hearted old
priest that his chivalrous instinct was
aroused, and he was almost won to
the lady’s side. The centre of the
agitation then shifted from McClory’s
cottage to the priest’s manse, and so
hot was the anger of the infuriated
Catholics that the good-natured priest
promised, sorely against his will, that
he would not consent to marry the
pair.

Hugh Brontë was nominally a Protestant,
but he had not been in a church
of any kind from the time he was five
years of age. He had received no religious
instruction. He could not read
the Bible for himself, and no one had
ever read it to him, and he was as innocent
of any religious bias or bigotry
as a savage in Central Africa. Suddenly
he found himself the central
figure in a fierce religious drama.

At first he was greatly amused, and
laughed at the very suggestion of his
religion being considered a stumbling-block.
From the time he left his
father’s house he had seldom heard the
divine name except in some form of
malediction, and religion had brought
no consolation to his hard life. He
had never presumed to think that he
had any relationship to the church, its
priests were so gorgeous, and its people
so well-to-do. Gallagher had made
him familiar with the dread powers
of the infernal world, and with the
“Blessed Virgin and the saints” in
their malevolent capacity, but the malignant
hypocrisy of Gallagher was
quite as repulsive to him as the vindictive
blasphemy of his uncle. In fact,
344
he had lived in an atmosphere untouched
by the light or warmth of
religion.

Hugh’s bondage and suffering had
made him neither cringing nor cruel,
and his freedom had come in time to
permit the full development of a large
and generous heart in a robust and
healthy body. In his simplicity of
heart he prevailed on Alice to invite
her friends to meet him. He would
soon remove their dislike with regard
to his religion. Under the impulse of
his enthusiasm he thought he could
disarm prejudice by a frank and open
avowal of his absolute indifference to
all religions.

Nothing, perhaps, in the whole history
of the Brontës exceeded in interest
that meeting. A dozen wily Ulster
Catholics gathered round simple-hearted
Hugh Brontë in Paddy McClory’s
kitchen. How the Orange champions
would have trembled for the Protestant
cause if they had been aware of Hugh’s
danger!

The preliminary salutations over, a
black bottle was produced, and a glass
of whiskey handed round. Hugh had
never learned to drink whiskey, and,
at that time, detested the very smell of
it. His refusal to drink with McClory’s
friends was a first ground of offence,
but the whiskey had not yet brought
the drinkers into the quarrelsome mood.

When several bottles of McClory’s
whiskey had been drunk, and the temperature
of the guests had risen, the
religious question was approached.
Brontë was urged, in peremptory tones,
to abjure Protestantism. He had his
answer ready. He was no more a
Protestant than they were, and he had
no Protestantism to abjure. “Will you
then curse King William?” said a fiery
little man, who had taken much liquor,
and seemed to be the spokesman of the
party.

There is a principle in human nature
which has been taken far too little
account of by both philosophers and
peasants. It has been the dominant
principle in many of the important decisions
that have sealed the fate of
nations as well as of individuals. The
principle is expressed by a word which
is always pronounced in one way by
the cultured, and in quite a different
way by the unlettered. The word in
its illiterate use is “contrairyness,” and
but for the principle expressed by this
word the Brontë girls would never
have made their mark in literature,
and this history would never have
been written.

“Curse King William,” shouted the
fiery little man, supported by a hoarse
shout from the other half-tipsy guests,
all of whom had turned fierce and glaring
eyes on the supposed Protestant.

“I cannot curse King William,” replied
Hugh, smiling. “He never did
me any harm; besides, he is beyond the
region of my blessings and cursings.
But,” added he, warming with his subject,
“I should not mind cursing the
Pope, if he is the author of your fierce
and besotted religion.”

Alice first saw the danger, and uttered
a sharp cry. Suddenly the family
party sprang upon Hugh, as the ambushed
Philistines once flung themselves
on Samson, but he shook them
off, and left them sprawling on the
floor. Alice drew him from the house,
bleeding and disheveled, and after a
tender parting in the grove beside the
stream, he started on foot for Mount
Pleasant.

Two immediate results followed that
conflict. Hugh Brontë became a furious
Protestant and a frantic lover.
There was no lukewarmness or indifference
as to his Protestantism. The
Brontë contrairyness had met the kind
of opposition to give it a stubborn set,
and he there and then became a Protestant,
double-dyed, in the warp and
in the woof. The process of his conversion,
such as it was, was prompt,
decisive, effectual. It was somewhat
orange in hue and militant in fibre, and
was a genuine product of the times.

Hugh’s love for Alice was fanned
into a fierce flame by the events of that
night. When he first met her he had
been dazzled by her rare beauty. He
had seen few women, and never one
like Alice. For the first time he had
come under the spell of a simple but
beautiful girl. They were young, shy
lovers; very happy in each other’s
company, but each sufficiently self-possessed
to be happy enough in self.

From the crucible of contradiction
on that night the jewel love had leaped
forth. Each was drawn out from the
self-centre in which each had been concentrated
in self; he to declare his
love in the face of relentless foes, and
she to cling to him, and protect him,
when bruised and torn by her friends.
Beneath the pines, that night, they
pledged, with mingling tears, undying
love. They parted, but their hearts
were one; and persecution, poverty
and bereavement only welded them
more closely together in the changing
years.

III.

LOVE’S SUBTERFUGES.

Hugh returned to the Mount Pleasant
kilns, but his heart was no longer
in his work. The burning of lime requires
incessant care. The limestones
must be broken to a proper size, layers
of coal in due proportion must be
added, and there must be constant
watchfulness lest the fires should die
out. Farmers’ sons and servants started
generally from County Down about
midnight, and after traveling all night
arrived at the kilns for their loads
about dawn. A badly burnt kiln of
lime was a grave loss to the owners, as
well as a serious disappointment to the
customers, and likely to result in loss
of custom.

There were many complaints as to
the character of the lime immediately
after Christmas, and the farmers on
several occasions found, on slaking their
loads at home, that only the surface of
the stones was burnt, and that they had
paid for, and imported, heaps of raw
limestone.

Hugh’s thoughts were not in his
business. He had made several Sunday
journeys to Ballynaskeagh, to have
secret meetings with Alice. They met
in the grove by the brook, in a spot
still pointed out as the “Lovers’ Arbor”
or “Courting Bower,” and there, under
willows festooned with ivy and honeysuckle
and sweetbriers, they spent
lonely but happy Sundays.

They were at last betrayed by a
Catholic servant who had been intrusted
with a message to Alice. Then
began a system of espionage and petty
persecution, and all the forces of the
McClory clan were united in an effort
to compel Alice to marry a Catholic
neighbor, called Joe Burns.

At this time Hugh began to learn to
read and write, and he succeeded so
far, by the light from the eye of the
kiln at night, as to be able to write love
letters which Alice was able to read.
He also, about the same time, succeeded
in spelling his way through the New
Testament.

Like many other professions, a lime-kiln
is a jealous mistress, and requires
constant attentions. Young Brontë
brought to it a divided mind, and gave
it the second place in his thoughts.
He was constantly leaving the kilns in
the care of a companion on Saturday
evenings and making long journeys to
see Alice, returning on Monday morning,
after a fatiguing night’s journey.
At first his companions did all they
could to make up for his absence and
absent-mindedness; but a change came,
and they did their best to throw the
light of exaggeration on his deficiencies.

News had reached them from the
North that he was a Protestant firebrand,
that he had cursed the Pope,
and made a savage attack on some
harmless Catholics. At the kilns his
manner had changed, and he had become
moody and morose. Besides, he
was constantly reading a little book by
the light of the burning lime at night,
instead of telling stories and singing
songs, as in former times. The book
was said to be the Bible, but it was in
fact a New Testament that he was
learning to read.

A plot was immediately hatched to
get rid of so dangerous a colleague.
One of the Catholics undertook, as
usual, to look after the kilns while he
made an expedition to County Down;
but he not only failed to charge the
kilns properly, but he sent for the
owner on Monday morning early, that
he might see for himself the condition
of things. The northern carts arrived
by dawn, to find that there was nothing
for them but unburnt lime. While the
matter was being explained Hugh
346
arrived, haggard and weary after his
night’s journey, and was peremptorily
dismissed, without any explanation
from either side being tendered or
accepted.

I have no record of Hugh’s proceedings
immediately after his dismissal,
but he must have been reduced to considerable
straits, for he went to the
hiring ground in Newry, and engaged
himself, as a common servant-boy, to
a farmer who resided in Donoughmore.
As a farm laborer in those
days he would receive about six pounds
per annum, with board and lodging;
but then he was near his Alice, and
that made every burden light.

Hugh’s new master, James Harshaw,
was not an ordinary farmer. The
Harshaws had occupied the farm from
early in the fifteenth century, and
James, who had received the education
of a gentleman, had behind him the
traditions of an old and respectable
family. In the Harshaw home shrewd
and steady industry was brightened
by culture and refinement. The wheel
of fortune had brought Hugh Brontë
into a family where mental alacrity
had full play.

Brontë seems to have been treated
with consideration and kindness by the
Harshaws, who probably recognized in
him something superior to the ordinary
farm servant. At any rate, in those
days the walls of class distinction were
not raised so high as they are now, and
the Harshaw children taught him to
read.

Hugh was much with the family.
He drove them to Donoughmore
Presbyterian Meeting House on Sundays,
and sat with them in their pew,
and he accompanied them to rustic
singing parties, and such local gatherings.
He used also to drive them in
the summer time to Warrenpoint and
Newcastle, and other watering-places,
and remain with them as their attendant.

In such treatment of a servant there
was nothing unusual, and Mr. John
Harshaw, the present proprietor of the
ancestral home, has no very decisive
information regarding this particular
servant. He says, “The probability is
that Hugh Brontë hired with my
grandfather, whose land touched the
Lough, but I fear it is too true that he
passed through my grandfather’s service
and left no permanent record
behind him.”[1]

I think it is more than probable that
Brontë repaid his young masters and
mistresses for their teaching, by telling
them stories. Under Harshaw’s roof
he found not only work and shelter,
but a home and comfort, and it is inconceivable
that under those circumstances
he allowed the gift that was in
him, of charming by vivid narration, to
lie dormant.

As long as he lived he spoke of the
Harshaws with gratitude and affection,
and I do not believe he could
have been so glad and happy without
contributing to the general enjoyment.

In the latter part of last century, the
raconteur occupied the place in Ireland
now taken by the modern novelist, and
I believe Hugh Brontë dropped doctrines
into the minds of the young Harshaws
which produced far-reaching
results. Such was the fixed conviction
of my old teacher, the Reverend W.
McAllister.

It happened that the Martins, another
ancient family, lived quite near
to the Harshaws. The land of the
two families enclosed Loughorne
round. The Martins were rich and
slightly aristocratic, but the two families
were thrown much together, and
Samuel Martin, the son of the one
house, married Jane Harshaw, the
daughter of the other.

She was a deeply religious and resolute
woman, with a stern sense of duty.
One of her nephews tells me she always
conducted family worship after the
death of her husband. She died of a
fever, caught while ministering to the
dying, in accordance with her high
sense of Christian duty. Her life was
given for others, and, at her funeral,
the Reverend S. J. Moore said: “She
was a woman who knew her duty and
did it.”

Her second son, John Martin, inherited
his mother’s great mental capacity
and strong sense of duty. At school,
in Newry, he met young John Mitchel,
and inspired him with something of his
own enthusiasm, and the two youths
came to the conclusion that it was their
duty to put right Ireland’s wrongs.
John Mitchel was sent to penal servitude
for fifteen or twenty years, and then
John Martin stepped into the place
vacated by his friend, and was transported
to Van Diemen’s Land for ten
years.

The conviction of “honest John
Martin” gave a blow to the old system
in Ireland from which it has never
recovered. Even his enemies were
shocked at the ferocity of the sentence;
but then he had written a
pamphlet under the text: “Your land,
strangers devour it in your presence, and
it is desolate.” (Isaiah, i. 7.) He had
proclaimed from the housetops Hugh
Brontë’s tenant-right doctrines, of
which more anon. He had attacked
the sacred rights of landlordism, and
he was sent to a safe and distant place
for quite a different offence, called
treason felony.

John Martin was a man of large
property, but he devoted his life and
all his income to what he considered
the good of others.

He had taken his B.A. degree at
Trinity College, Dublin, and studied
medicine, and for many years he gave
advice and medicine gratuitously to all
who came to him. The poor were
passionately attached to him.

I remember seeing him and speaking
to him once, after he had received a
free pardon, and become a member of
parliament. No one could have looked
on the great, capacious head, and the
handsome, benevolent face, without
questioning the system that had no
better use for such a man than sending
him to rot in penal servitude. Lord
Palmerston beheld the ex-convict with
profound admiration, and expressed
deep sympathy with him as the victim
of a bad system.

John Martin preached and suffered
for the very doctrines that Hugh
Brontë enunciated with such passionate
conviction. Where did he get those
doctrines? I have a profound belief,
though I have no positive proofs, that
John Martin’s beliefs and principles
grew from seeds sown by Hugh Brontë,
the servant boy. In this belief the
Reverend W. McAllister and the Reverend
David McKee shared, or, rather,
my faith has grown from their convictions.

Jane Harshaw, however she got them,
carried the doctrines into the Martin
family. They mingled with and
strengthened her strong sense of duty,
and they added passion to her lust
after justice and the thing that was
right. With her son John, the feeling
of obligation to break the ban of Ireland’s
curse became irresistible. He
was dowered with an inexhaustible
grace of pity for all sufferers, and the
impulse to redress the wrongs of the
oppressed overpowered him and led
him to acts of impatience and imprudence,
which gave his cool-headed
enemies the opportunity they were
ready enough to embrace. But the
revolutionary doctrines for which John
Martin suffered came from the same
seed that produced Charlotte Brontë’s
radical sentiments, and it is interesting
to note that in both cases the seed
produced its fruit about the same
period (1847-1848).

I must now leave these historical
speculations, however plausible and
probable they may be, and return to
the direct narration of known facts.

Hugh Brontë had disappeared forever
from the Mount Pleasant kilns.
Those who had plotted his dismissal
exaggerated every foible of his life,
and invented others, after he was gone,
until, by a spiteful blending of fact
and fancy, they made him into a monster.

The farmers’ sons and servants who
carted lime from Mount Pleasant to
County Down brought with them
wonderful tales of his misdeeds and
disgrace. And Alice McClory’s guardians
believed that he had disappeared
forever into the distant South, from
whence he had emerged. They never
suspected that he was actually living
in their neighborhood, and that he and
Alice had met at Warrenpoint, Newcastle,
and elsewhere.

IV.

THE ELOPEMENT.

Under restraint, Alice had drooped
and pined, but now that Brontë had left
the country she was permitted to ride
about the neighborhood quite alone.
She enjoyed horse exercise greatly, but
no matter in what direction she left home
her way lay always through Loughorne.
Perhaps the roads were better in that
direction, but she always exchanged
salutations with a handsome working-man,
by the expanse of water in Loughorne.
When he was not about she
used very humanely to take her horse
down to the lake to drink, and from a
hole in an old tree she used to remove
a scrap of paper, leaving something
instead. The tree used to be pointed
out as “Brontë’s post-box,” but
the lake has recently been drained,
and the trees have, I believe, disappeared.

Everything that could be done was
done, to please Miss McClory, but no
opportunity was missed to further
Farmer Burns’s suit. He was a prosperous
man. He had a good farm, a good
house, plenty of horses and cows, and
was a very desirable husband for Alice.
He was also a Catholic. Brontë had
shown that he did not care for her by
going away, and never thinking of her
more. The priest joined with Alice’s
female friends in pleading for Burns.
At length, by incessant perseverance,
they prevailed on her to consent to
marry Burns, and forget Brontë. The
incessant drip had made an impression
at last, and the crafty relatives had
gained their end.

There was joy in the Catholic camp
when it was publicly announced that
Miss McClory and Mr. Burns were soon
to be married. McClory’s house was
thatched anew, and whitewashed and
renovated throughout. The roses were
nailed up around the windows; the
street was strewn with fresh sand; new
window-blinds and bed-curtains were
provided, and pots and pans were burnished.
Never before had McClory’s
house been subjected to such an outburst
of sweeping and brushing and
washing and scouring; the whole place
became redolent of potash and suds.
It was spring cleaning in excelsis.

The local dressmaker, Annie McCabe,
whose granddaughter, of the
same name, is now dressmaker in the
same place, assisted by Miss McClory’s
female relatives, was busily engaged
on the bridal dress. Burns used to look
in daily on the incessant preparations,
his countenance beaming with joy, but
Alice would not permit him to destroy
the pleasures of imagination by approaching
near to her. She would lift
her finger coyly, and warn him off, if he
presumed on any familiarities, but she
allowed him to sit on the other side of
the fire from that graced by herself.

At length the wedding-day arrived.
Such signs of feasting had never before
been seen in Ballynaskeagh. New
loaves had been procured from Newry,
fresh beef from Rathfriland, whiskey
from Banbridge. A great pudding,
composed of flour and potatoes, and
boiled for many hours over a slow
fire, with hot coals on the lid of the
oven, had been prepared. Two of
the largest turkeys had been boiled,
and laid out on great dishes with an
abundant coating of melted butter, and
a huge roll of roasted beef was served
up as a burnt offering. Signs of abundance
stood on table and dresser and
hob, while rows of bottles peeped from
behind the window-curtains; and neither
envy nor spite could say that Red Paddy
McClory was not providing a splendid
wedding for his sister. The morning
rose glorious, and, as the custom
then was, Burns and his friends,
mounted on their best horses, raced to
the house of the bride “for the broth,”
first in being the winner. On such occasions
crowds of neighbors crowned
the hilltops. The cavalcade was greeted
with ringing cheers, as it swept in a
cloud of dust down the road from the
Knock Hill. Several riders were unhorsed,
but the steeds arrived in McClory’s
court, champing their bits and
covered with foam. A covered car
from Newry stood near the house, on
the road, to take Alice to the chapel,
but she was to ride away from the
chapel mounted on the pillion, behind
her husband.

There was an unexpected pause; no
349
one knew why. Some dismounted and
stood by their stirrups, ready to mount
when the bride had entered her carriage.
Glasses of whiskey were handed
round, and then the pause became more
awkward and the suspense more intense.
At last it became known that
Alice, who had been up nearly all
night finishing her new gowns, had
felt weary, and fitting on her wedding
dress, had gone out on her mare for a
spurt, to shake off drowsiness. Messengers
were sent in different directions to
search for her, but they had not returned.
Some accident must have befallen
her.

Burns, who rode a powerful black
horse, and who had won the broth,
galloped off wildly towards Loughbrickland.
The other cavaliers scoured
the country in different directions; but,
while all kinds of surmises were being
hazarded, a messenger on foot from
Banbridge, with dainties for the feast,
arrived, and reported that he had met
Miss McClory and a tall gentleman
galloping furiously toward the river
Bann, near Banbridge. There was
great excitement among the guests,
and whiskey and strong language without
measure. After a hurried consultation
the mounted guests agreed to
pursue the fugitives and bring Miss
McClory back; but, while they were
tightening their girths and getting
ready for a gallop of five or six miles,
a boy rode up to the house on the mare
that had been ridden by Alice, bearing
a letter to say she had just been married
to Hugh Brontë in Magherally church.
She sent her love and grateful thanks
to her brother, hoped the party would
enjoy the wedding dinner, and begged
them to drink her health as Mrs. Brontë.

The plucky manner in which the
lady had carried out her own plan, outwitting
the coercionists by her own
cleverness, called forth admiration in
the midst of disappointment, and the
cheery message touched every heart.
The calamity that had befallen Burns
did not weigh heavily on the hearts of
the guests, in presence of the splendid
dinner before them, and especially as it
was now clear that the lady was being
forced to marry him against her will.

At this juncture the kind and courteous
old priest rose, and with great
skill and good-humor talked about the
events of the day. He brought into
special prominence the humorous and
heroic episode in a manner that appealed
to the chivalry of his hearers,
and then, with tender pathos, referring
to the beautiful daughter of the house,
called upon the guests to drink her
health. The toast was responded to
with a hearty ringing cheer. Burns, who
has left a good reputation behind him,
promptly proposed prosperity to the
new-married couple, and Red Paddy,
always kind and generous, promised to
send the united good wishes of the
whole party to the bride and bridegroom,
and to assure them of a hearty
welcome, in which the past would be
forgotten. Paddy, as we shall see,
kept his word. Thus the grandfather
and grandmother of the great novelists
were married in 1776, in the Protestant
church of Magherally, the clergyman
who officiated pronouncing the
bride the most beautiful woman he had
ever seen.

The following verses have always
been known as the product of Hugh
Brontë’s muse. I am inclined to think
they may have, in an original form,
been produced by Hugh, and smoothed
down by his son Patrick. And perhaps,
in the refining process, they have lost
in strength more than they have gained
in sound.

I do not think old Hugh would have
known anything, at first hand, of “the
peach bloom,” or of “the blood-red
Mars.” The poem, forty years ago,
had many variations, but there is one
line of special interest, as it shows that
the verses were known to Charlotte
Brontë. The verse, with a slight variation,
is put into the mouth of Jane
Eyre. Rochester says: “Jane suits
me; do I suit her?” Jane answers:
“To the finest fibre of my nature,
sir.”
350

ALICE AND HUGH.

Copyright, 1893, by Henry M. Stanley.

It was a custom with us, when crossing
Africa in 1874-77, to meet after
dinner around the camp-fire, to while
away the evening with pleasant gossip,
reminiscences, curious African legends.
Sunset in the tropics is soon
followed by darkness, and the heavy
vapors rising from the hot, steaming
ground appear to give thickness and
substance to it. A large fire is then
very agreeable, as it drives away the
damp and dew; and it is a comfort to
look into its flames and glowing embers,
wherein each man sees what he sees.
No doubt the drift of the mind at such
times, to think of such things as are
driven away by the needs of the stirring
day, suggested that we could be
more sociable and more interested if
we related to one another such stories
as were told to us by the old folks at
home. On trial it was found that there
were some of our men who were most
accomplished in the art of narration,
and I fancied, after writing one or two
out, that there was some kind of a
moral of an African character in each,
after which I paid more attention to
them, and, on retiring from the circle, I
would hastily jot down what I had
heard. If there were some points still
obscure in the story I would invite its
narrator to relate it to me at the first
halting-place. But then I would find
also that there was a great deal of
difference between the story told to me
alone and that related to the audience
round the fire—there was then less
local color, less detail, and less animation.

At a camp on the Upper Congo, in
1877, Chakanja drew near our fire as
story-telling was about to begin, and
was immediately beset with eager demands
for a tale from him. Like a
singer, who always professes to have
a cold before indulging us, Chakanja
needed more than a few entreaties;
but finally, after vowing that he never
could remember anything, he consented
to gratify us with the legend
of the Elephant and the Lion.

“Well,” he answered, with a deep
sigh, “if I must, I must. You must
know we Waganda are fond of three
things—to have a nice wife, a pleasant
farm, and to hear good news, or a
lively story. I have heard a great
many stories in my life, but, unlike
Kadu, my mind remembers them not.
Men’s heads are not the same, any
more than men’s hearts are like. But
I take it that a poor tale is better
than none. It comes back to me like
a dream, this tale of the Elephant and
the Lion. I heard it first when on a
visit to Gabunga’s; but who can tell
it like him? If you think the tale is
not well told, it is my fault; but then,
do not blame me too much, or I shall
think I ought to blame you to-morrow,
when it will be your turn to amuse the
party.

“Now open your ears. A huge and
sour-tempered elephant went and wandered
in the forest. His inside was
slack for want of juicy roots and succulent
reeds, but his head was as full
of dark thoughts as a gadfly is full of
blood. As he looked this way and
that, he observed a young lion asleep
at the foot of a tree. He regarded it
for a while, then, as he was in a wicked
mind, it came to him that he might as
well kill it, and he accordingly rushed
at it, and impaled it with his tusks.
He lifted it with his trunk, swung it
about, dashed it against the tree,
and afterwards kneeled on the body
352
until it became as shapeless as a
crushed banana pulp. He then
laughed, and said, ‘Ha! ha! This
is a proof that I am strong. I have
killed a lion, and people will say proud
things of me, and will wonder at my
strength.’

“Presently a brother elephant came
up and greeted him.

“‘See,’ said the first elephant, ‘what
I have done. It was I that killed him.
I lifted him on high, and, lo! he lies
like a rotten banana. Do you not
think I am very strong? Come, be
frank now, and give me some credit
for what I have done.’

“Elephant No. 2 replied: ‘It is true
that you are strong, but that was only
a young lion. There are others of
his kind, and I have seen them, who
would give you considerable trouble.’

“‘Ho, ho!’ laughed the first elephant.
‘Get out, stupid! You may
bring his whole tribe here, and I will
show you what I can do. Ay, and to
your dam to boot.’

“‘What! My own mother, too!’

“‘Yes. Go and fetch her if you
like.’

“‘Well, well,’ said No. 2, ‘you are
far gone, there is no doubt. Fare you
well.’

“No. 2 proceeded on his wanderings,
resolved in his own mind that, if he
had an opportunity, he would send
some one to test the boaster’s strength.
No. 1 called out to him:

“‘Away you go. Good-by to you.’

“A little way on, No. 2 elephant met
a lion and lioness, full grown, and
splendid creatures, who turned out
to be the parents of the youngster
which had been slain, and he said to
them, after a sociable chat:

“‘If you go further on along the
path I came, you will meet a kind of
game which requires killing badly.
He has just mangled your cub.’

“Meantime elephant No. 1, chuckling
to himself very conceitedly, proceeded
to the pool near by to bathe
and cool himself. At every step he
went you could hear this: ‘Ha, ha,
ha! Lo! I have killed a lion.’ While
he was in the pool, spurting the water
in a shower over his back, he suddenly
looked up, and at the water’s edge beheld
a grown lion and lioness regarding
him sternly.

“‘Well, what do you want?’ he
asked. ‘Why are you standing there
looking at me?’

“‘Are you the rogue who killed our
child?’ they asked.

“‘Perhaps I am,’ he answered.
‘Why do you want to know?’

“‘Because we are in search of him.
If it be you that did it, you will have
to do the same to us before you leave
this ground.’

“‘Ho! ho!’ laughed the elephant
loudly. ‘Well, hark! It was I who
killed your cub. Come now, it was I.
Do you hear? And if you do not leave
here mighty quick, I shall have to
serve you both as I served him.’

“The lions roared aloud in their
fury, and switched their tails violently.

“‘Ho, ho!’ laughed the elephant
gayly. ‘This is grand! There is no
doubt I shall run soon, they make me
so skeery;’ and he danced round the
pool, and jeered at them, then drank
a great quantity of water and blew it
in a shower over them.

“The lions stirred not, but kept
steadfastly gazing at him, planning
how best to attack him.

“Perceiving that they were obstinate,
he threw another stream of
water over the lions and then backed
into the deepest part of the pool, until
there was nothing seen of him but the
tip of his trunk. When he arose again
the lions were still watching him and
had not moved.

“‘Ho, ho!’ he trumpeted, ‘still
there? Wait a little, I am coming
to you.’ He advanced towards the
shore, but, when he was close enough,
the lion sire sprang into the air, and
alighted on the elephant’s back, and
furiously tore at the muscles of the
neck, and bit deep into the shoulder.
The elephant retreated into the deepest
part of the pool again, and submerged
himself and his enemy, until
the lion was compelled to abandon his
back and begin to swim ashore. No
sooner had he felt himself relieved
than the elephant rose to the surface,
and hastily followed and seized the
lion with his trunk. Despite the lion’s
353
struggles, he was pressed beneath the
surface, dragged under the elephant’s
knees, and trodden into the mud, and
in a short time the lion sire was
dead.

“The elephant laughed triumphantly,
and cried, ‘Ho, ho! am I not
strong, Ma Lion? Did you ever see
the like of me before? Two of you,
Young Lion and Pa Lion, are now
killed. Ma Lion, you had better try
now, just to see if you won’t have
better luck. Come on, old woman,
just once.’

“The lioness fiercely answered,
while she retreated from the pool,
‘Hold on where you are. I am going
to find my brother, and will be back
shortly.’

“The elephant trumpeted his scorn
of her kind, and seizing the carcass of
her lord, flung it on shore after her,
and declared his readiness to abide
where he was, that he might make
mash of all the lion family.

“In a short time the lioness had
found her brother, who was a mighty
fellow, and full of fight. As they advanced
near the pool together, they
consulted as to the best means of getting
at him. Then the lioness sprang
forward to the edge of the pool. The
elephant retreated a short distance.
The lioness upon this crept along the
pool, and pretended to lap the water.
The elephant moved towards her. The
lion waited his chance, and finally, with
a great roar, sprang upon his shoulders
and commenced tearing away at the
very place which had been wounded by
lion sire.

“The elephant backed quickly into
deep water, and submerged himself,
but the lion maintained his hold and
bit deeper. The elephant then sank
down until there was nothing to be
seen but the tip of his trunk, upon
which the lion, to avoid suffocation,
relaxed his hold, and swam vigorously
toward shore. The elephant rose up,
and as the lion was stepping on shore,
seized him, and drove one of his tusks
through his body; but, as he was in the
act, the lioness sprang upon the elephant’s
neck, and bit and tore so furiously
that he fell dead, and with his
fall crushed the dying lion.

“Soon after the close of the terrible
combat, elephant No. 2 came up, and
discovered the lioness licking her chops
and paws, and said:

“‘Hello, it seems there has been
quite a quarrel here lately. Three
lions are dead, and here lies one of my
own kind, stiffening.’

“‘Yes,’ replied the lioness gloomily,
‘the rogue elephant killed my cub
while the little fellow was asleep in
the woods. He then killed my husband
and brother, and I killed him; but I
do not think the elephant has gained
much by fighting with us. I did not
have much trouble in killing him.
Should you meet any friends of his,
354
you may warn them to leave the lioness
alone, or she may be tempted to
make short work of them.’

“Elephant No. 2, though a patient
person generally, was annoyed at this,
and gave a sudden kick with one of his
hind feet which sent her sprawling a
good distance off; and asked:

“‘How do you like that, Ma Lion?’

“‘What do you mean by that?’ demanded
the enraged lioness.

“‘Oh, because I hate to hear so
much bragging.’

“‘Do you also wish to fight?’ she
asked.

“‘We should never talk about doing
an impossible thing, Ma Lion,’ he answered.
‘I have travelled many years
through these woods, and I have never
fought yet. I find that when a person
minds his own business he seldom
comes to trouble, and when I meet one
who is even stronger than myself, I
greet him pleasantly, and pass on, and
I should advise you to do the same,
Ma Lion.’

“‘You are saucy, elephant. It
would be well for you to think upon
your stupid brother there, who lies
so stark under your nose, before you
trouble one who slew him, with your
insolence.’

“‘Well, words never yet made a
plantation; it is the handling of a hoe
that makes fields. See here, Ma Lion,
if I talked to you all day I could not
make you wise. I will just turn my
back to you. If you will bite me
you will soon learn how weak you
are.’

“The lioness, angered still more by
the elephant’s contempt, sprang at his
shoulders, and clung to him; upon
which he rushed at a stout tree, and,
pressing his shoulders against it,
crushed the breath out of her body,
and she ceased her struggles. When
he relaxed his pressure, the body fell
to the ground, and he knelt upon it,
and kneaded it until every bone was
broken.

“While the elephant was meditatively
standing over the body, and
thinking what misfortunes happen to
boasters, a man came along, carrying
a spear; and seeing that the elephant
was unaware of his presence, he
thought what great luck had happened
to him.

“Said he, ‘Ah, what fine tusks he
has! I shall be rich with them, and
shall buy slaves and cattle, and with
these I will get a wife and a farm,’
saying which he advanced silently,
and when he was near enough, darted
his spear into a place behind the shoulder.

“The elephant turned around
quickly, and, on beholding his enemy,
rushed after him, and, overtaking him,
mauled him until in a few moments he
was a mangled corpse.

“At this time a woman approached,
and seeing four lions and one elephant
and her husband dead, she raised up
her hands wonderingly, and cried,
‘How did all this happen?’ The elephant,
hearing her voice, came from
behind a tree, with a spear quivering
in his side, and bleeding profusely.
At the sight of him the woman turned
round to fly, but the elephant cried
out to her, ‘Nay, run not, woman, for
I can do you no harm. The happy days
in the woods are ended for all the
tribes. The memory of this scene will
never be forgotten. Animals will be
at constant war one with another.
Lions will no more greet elephants,
the buffaloes will be shy, the rhinoceroses
will live apart, and man,
when he comes within the shadows,
will think of nothing else than his terrors,
and he will fancy an enemy in
every shadow. I am sorely wounded,
for thy man stole up to my side and
drove his spear into me, and soon I
shall die.’

“When she had heard these words
the woman hastened home, and all the
villagers, old and young, hurried into
the woods, by the pool, where they
found four lions, two elephants, and
one of their own tribe lying still and
lifeless.

“The words of the elephant have
turned out to be true, for no man goes
nowadays into the silent and deserted
woods but he feels as though something
was haunting them, and thinks
of goblinry, and starts at every sound.
Out of the shadows, which shift with
the sun, forms seem crawling and
phantoms appear to glide, and we are
355
in a fever almost from the horrible
illusions of fancy. We breathe quickly
and fear to speak, for the smallest
vibration in the silence would jar on
our nerves. I speak the truth, for when
I am in the woods near the night, there
swim before my eyes a multitude of
terrible things which I never see by the
light of day. The flash of a firefly is
a ghost, the chant of a frog becomes a
frightful roar, the sudden piping of a
bird signalizes murder, and I run. No,
no, no woods for me when alone.”

And Chakanja rose to his feet and
went to his own quarters, solemnly
shaking his head. But we all smiled
at Chakanja, and thought how terribly
frightened he would be if any one suddenly
rose from behind a dark bush
and cried “Boo!” to him.

“See the huge creature with muscles of steel, his heart a furnace of glowing coal,
and the strength of a thousand horses nerving his sinews. See him strut forth from
his stable, and, saluting the train of cars with a dozen sonorous puffs from his iron
nostrils, stand panting to be gone. He would drag the pyramids across the Desert of
Sahara if they could be hitched on.”

The average New
Yorker who
rides to Chicago
in twenty
hours on
the World’s
Fair flyer
does an easy
day’s work,
in fact, does
no work at
all. He rests
comfortably
at night, enjoys
well-served
meals, and
reaches his destination
almost
before he
knows it. Having
paid the
price, such is
the arrogance of money,
he takes all that is done
for him quite as a matter
of course, and knows
no more of the workings
of this wonderful train than a school-boy,
while he cares rather less. An engine
pulls the cars, steam works the
engine, and as for the engineer, the
New Yorker never thinks of him except
to growl at him when the train is
late, and to advocate hanging him if
there is an accident.

Meantime, what is the engineer of
this fastest train in the world doing for
the passenger? In the first place, the
Chicago flyer is not driven by one but
by many engineers. In order to cover
the nine hundred and sixty-four miles
between the two cities in twenty hours,
including nine stops, there are required
seven huge engines in relays, driven by
seven grimy heroes. A run of less than
one hundred and fifty miles is the limit
per day for each engine, while three
hours of the plunging rush wears out
the strongest engineer. Sixty, seventy,
eighty miles an hour—what does that
mean to the man at the throttle? It
means that the six and a half feet drivers
turn five times every second and
advance one hundred feet. Tic-tic-tic,
and the train has run the length of
New York’s highest steeple. The engineer
turns his head for five seconds
to look at the gauges, and in that time
the terrible iron creature, putting forth
the strength of a thousand horses, may
have shot past a red signal with its
danger warning five hundred feet away.
Ten seconds, and one thousand feet
are left behind—one-fifth of a mile.
Who knows what horrors may lie
within that thousand feet! There may
be death lurking round a curve, death
spreading its arms in a tunnel, and the
engineer must see and be responsible
for everything. Not only must he note
instantly all that is before him, the
signals, switches, bridges, the passing
trains, and the condition of the rails,
but he must act at the same moment,
working throttle, air-brakes, or reversing-lever,
not as quick as thought, but
quicker, for there is no time to think.
His muscles must do the right thing automatically
under circumstances where
a second is an age. In the three hours
of his vigil there are ten thousand eight
hundred seconds, during each one of
which he must watch with the mental
alertness of an athlete springing for
357
a flying trapeze from the roof of an
amphitheatre, with the courageous self-possession
of a matador awaiting the
deadly rush of a maddened bull; and
far more depends upon the engineer’s
watching well, because, if he fails by
a hair’s breadth in coolness or precision
of judgment, there may come destruction,
not only to himself, but to
hundreds of passengers, who, while he
stands guard, are perhaps grumbling at
the waiters in the dining-car or telling
funny stories in the smoker.

In addition to this constant mental
tension the engineer on this hurling
train has to endure material discomfort,
often bodily suffering. The air
sweeps back in his face with the breath
of a hurricane, blowing smoke and cinders
into his eyes. Most people know
the intense pain a cinder causes in a
man’s eye, particularly a hot cinder.
The suffering is almost unbearable, and
yet, suffering or no suffering, the engineer
who gets a cinder in his eye can
have no relief until the end of his relay.
They shut their lips, these unflinching
men, keep looking ahead, and bear it.
Long after they leave the cab, the
burning sensation in their eyes and eyelids
continues, and even persists after
hours of sleep. “It seems as if nothing
would rest my eyes, sir,” said one
of the new men after his first week on
the flyer. No wonder the eyesight of
engineers fails rapidly, no wonder many
of them are removed from their positions
every year because the examining
doctors find them unable to distinguish
the signals. The engineer suffers
also from the plunging and tossing of
the monster locomotive, which bruises
his whole body with its violent rocking,
and causes sharp pains in the back,
particularly where there is any tendency
to kidney trouble. One has only to
watch these strong men as they stumble
down from their engines at the end
of a relay, has only to observe their
white faces and unsteady gait, and see
the condition of physical collapse which
follows, to understand what it costs in
vitality and grit to give the ease-loving
public this incomparable train service.

Thus it is that while the New Yorker
gets to Chicago with scarcely more
discomfort than if he had remained at
home, the same journey wears out seven
engineers, all picked men; for many of
them who have seen years of service
on trains running forty miles an hour,
break down entirely when put upon the
flyer. So exhausted are these seven
engineers by their comparatively short
relays that they are obliged to lay off
entirely during the following day to
recover from the shock. They do not
even take the opposite-bound flyer
back over their stretch, but return
with their engines to their respective
starting-points, drawing slower trains.
Thus, seven strong men do two days’
work every time the flyer runs from
New York to Chicago, and seven other
men do two days’ work every time it
runs back. Each engineer works three
hours on the flyer, returns home on an
easy train, and then rests forty hours
before his muscles and nerves and
brain are in condition to repeat the
operation.

So it results that twenty-eight engineers,
one at a time, are required to
run this wonderful train from New
York to Chicago and back again.
Fourteen veterans drive the great engines
one way, and fourteen brother
veterans drive them the other. Twenty-eight
men for a single complete trip of
a single train, and they the flower of
American engineers, splendid fellows
every one of them, with cool heads,
stanch hearts, and the experience of
years at the throttle. The fact is,
these men of iron, who, after all, are
made of flesh and blood, have been
called upon of late years to bear a
mental and physical strain which has
increased steadily as the speed rates
have advanced. Forty, fifty, sixty,
seventy, and now eighty miles an hour,
each greater velocity has meant greater
pressure, not only on the boilers and
cylinders, but on men’s brains; has
meant greater expenditure, not only of
coal and dollars, but of nerve force,
until now experts recognize with concern
that the limit of human endurance
has been almost reached. Science
may remove the mechanical difficulties
in the way of running a hundred miles
an hour, or more, for such a rate has
already been predicted; money may
buy better axles, wheels, lubricators,
358
and machinery, but where are the men
who will run these trains of the future
when they are built? Can science
breed us a race of giants? Can money
purchase an immunity against suffering
or eyes that are indestructible? If
twenty-eight engineers are required to-day
on the Chicago flyer, how many,
pray, will be necessary on a train running
fifty or one hundred per cent.
faster?

I gained a vivid impression of what
it means to drive one of these monster
engines, by actually travelling from
New York to Albany, a few days ago, in
the cab of Engine 870, which takes the
Empire State express over the first
stretch of its journey—one hundred and
forty-two miles—at a rate rather faster
than that of the Chicago flyer. At the
throttle was Archie Buchanan, a silent
man with gray eyes and earnest face,
who comes of a family of engineers,
and is one of the most trusted of the
New York Central employees. Buchanan’s
brother John, a skilled engineer
in his time, was cut in two some
years ago in an accident near East
Albany. His brother James is a master
mechanic at the shops at West Albany,
and his brother William, after serving
for years as a New York Central engineer,
was made Superintendent of
Rolling Stock, a position he still
holds.

Buchanan smiled quietly as I climbed
upon the fireman’s seat at the left. It
was a perfect July morning, and at 8.39
the shrill whistle sounded, worked by
the conductor’s bell-rope, and we were
off, nine minutes behind time on account
of some trouble with the air-brakes.

“We must make up the delay, Al,”
said the engineer to his fireman, as the
wheels began to turn. Those were the
only words he spoke until we reached
Albany, and, had he spoken, neither Al
nor I could have heard him for the
roar.

Now the slow, heavy pant of the
engine quickens, and we shoot under
bridges and streets, passing out of New
York. For a few minutes Buchanan,
working the reversing-lever, lets the
pistons go the full length of the cylinders,
but he gradually cuts down their
stroke to eight inches, making the
steam expansion do the rest. This
lessens the noise from the exhaust, but
the noise from the pounding of the
mountain of iron on the rails increases
in geometrical ratio. A shower of
cinders blows in with black smoke, and
a hot one settles in my neck. The
smoke tastes of oil, the cinder burns—this
is but a foretaste of things to
come. I turn my head to avoid suffocation
and get a scorching blast from
the fire-box, whose door is swung wide
open. The fireman’s orders are to
make up the lost time, and he proposes
to do it. In goes coal at the rate of
two shovelfuls a minute for the first
half-hour. Before we reach Albany
he has shovelled in more than three
tons, and had the day been windy it
would have taken more. In the intervals
he rakes and prods the white-hot
crater and rings the bell as we shoot
past towns and cities. Buchanan tends
to the whistle and air-brakes. The
noise is dreadful, as if a thousand
devils were dancing in one’s head.
The motion is so violent from side to
side that we all have to hold on tightly.
A little more and one would be seasick.

As the hundred-ton engine pounds
along with horrible din, a strange sense
of exhilaration succeeds that of physical
discomfort. One becomes indifferent
to everything, and, courting now the
smoke-laden hurricane, thrusts one’s
head from the window into the sweeping
air-billows, which dash against the
face like breakers and with the same
strangling force. I was seized with a
wild desire to go faster; seventy miles
an hour was not enough, and I would
fain have opened everything to its full
capacity, stop-cocks, levers, throttle,
and all, and taken part in a furious,
splendid runaway. Strange thoughts
chased through my mind; the houses
of flying towns seemed to be rushing
at each other in battle from either side,
a long line of loose ties between the
tracks suggested an endless procession
of turtles, the trees seemed to be dancing
down the hills, and the people who
stared up at us while stepping away
from the dangerous suction seemed to
be creatures of another race. I have
359
learned since that engineers often have
that feeling of belonging to some other
world, and it comes upon them particularly
at night. A man of highly strung
organization could easily go mad riding
on an engine running seventy miles an
hour.

These curious illusions of the senses
were presently succeeded
by a period of
intense and perfectly
normal curiosity. I
counted the number
of strokes made by
the piston in a minute,
and found there were
about three hundred.
I counted the number
of puffs from the
smoke-stack, and decided
correctly that
there were four times
as many of these as
there were piston-strokes,
that is, about
twenty to the second.
Then I counted the
oil-cans, the gauges,
and made mental photographs
of the inside
of the cab.

From start to finish
we made no stop and
only slackened our
speed twice to “pick
up water,” this important
operation being
accomplished with
a great splashing by
a scoop under the
tender, which drops
into a trough running
lengthwise of the track
for about twelve hundred
feet, and always
kept full to the brim.
The scoop is controlled
by a lever in the tender, which
the fireman directs. In the winter,
steam-pipes through the troughs keep
the water from freezing. During the
whole distance Buchanan scarcely
changed his position, and never turned
his head. For two hours and thirty-six
minutes he stood at the right of the
boiler, an immovable figure in gray
overalls and black skullcap, his left
hand on the throttle, while his right
clutched the window to steady him. I
never once saw his eyes, which were
fixed on the track ahead as if held there
by a magnet. No matter how the
smoke and cinders poured in through
the open windows in front, no matter
the bridges and tunnels nor the mad
rush of air, his eyes stayed forward
always, sweeping the line before us
anxiously, constantly on the alert for
signals, for switches, for obstructions,
for the long tunnel, for the train side-tracked
near Poughkeepsie, for the
water troughs, for a score of things,
the missing any one of which might
mean disaster. And, as he watched,
silent and motionless, there was one
360
thought in his mind and only one,
whether we would make up the lost
nine minutes and get into Albany on
time. Al’s thoughts were the same,
and, like one of Dante’s demons, he
worked at the coal and the fire and the
water, now oiling the drivers, now looking
at the gauges, ever busy and ever
growing blacker and oilier in hands
and face.

Very proud we were as we ran into
Albany at 11.15 A.M. on time to the
minute, having made the run of one
hundred and forty-two miles in
one hundred and fifty-six minutes, an
average of 53.8 miles an hour. This
exceeds the average of the Chicago
flyer, which is 48.2 miles an hour, although
for a much greater distance.
Several times our speed had reached
seventy miles an hour, and with better
coal and other conditions equally favorable,
Buchanan has driven 870 up to
the eighty-mile point. With the sound
devils still dancing in my head, I
watched the engineer as he rubbed
down his iron horse after the hard run.
He was tired himself, and his face was
white, but he went over the rods and
cylinders as tenderly and carefully as
if he was refreshing the muscles and
sinews of a living creature.

“She’s a beauty, isn’t she?” he said,
in a tone which bore witness to the
love felt by the man for the machine.
“You see, she has always been true to
me, 870 has, and I’ve run her ever since
she was built. She’s never cranky or
sick, and she makes her three hundred
miles a day three hundred and sixty-five
times a year, and does her duty
every time. That’s more than you can
say of many men, or women either,
isn’t it?”

It seems that there are about fifty
engines in constant use on the New
York Central with the power and dimensions
of 870, and only the peerless
999, with her heavier build and smoke-consuming
device, can boast any points
of superiority. The life of an engine
like 870 is about twenty years, during
which time she makes several visits to
the hospital for new cylinders, new
flues, and a new fire-box. Aside from
that, the engine needs about an hour’s
care morning and night, and a washout
and blowout of her boilers at the
end of alternate weeks. Only at these
periods is the engine’s fire allowed to
go out.

I asked Buchanan what were the
principal qualifications for a first-class
engineer, and what was the training
necessary to become one. “To begin
with,” he said, “a man must be a first-class
fireman, which is no easy matter.
He must know just how much coal to
put on the fire and when to put it on,
so as to keep the steam at full pressure
without burning too much fuel. The
great secret of good firing is to put
coal on often and a little at a time.
You noticed Al did that on our run
up. When a fireman has shown himself
worthy of it, he is given a chance
to drive an engine for switching work
or on a freight train. The first years
of his life as an engineer are very
hard, for he has to run at all sorts of
hours, day and night, winter and summer,
and on the meanest kinds of trains.
If this does not kill him he finally becomes
engineer on an express and has
a better time of it, but a good many of
the boys prefer to remain firemen all
their lives rather than stand such hardships.
My man Al has tried driving
an engine twice, and come back to me
both times. You can be pretty sure
that a man who gets to be an engineer
on one of the fine trains to-day has
earned his position. He must know
his engine like a book, backwards and
forwards, must know how to manage
her when she is sick and well, and what
to do if an eccentric breaks or a piston
gets leaking or a valve-spindle is
bent. He must know how to work the
injector so as to keep water enough in
the boiler without wasting any by the
steam blowing off. He must be able
to save power by working the steam
expansively and yet keeping up his
speed; he must know every inch of
the road, the grades, bridges, switches,
curves, and tunnels, and all the trains
he has to pass or which may pass him.
He must be able to control his train
and engine at full speed, must understand
the effect of the weather on the
rails, must know how to use the air-brakes
and the reversing-lever, and
when not to use them.”

I listened and marvelled.

“What would you do in a collision?”
I asked.

The engineer pushed back the little
black skullcap from his iron-gray hair
and said, in the low tone which is usual
with him:

“It is pretty hard to say what a man
should do when he hears the whistle of
danger ahead or sees that a crash is
coming. Even the best of us are liable
to get confused at such a moment.
What would you do if you woke up in
the night and found a burglar holding
a pistol at your head? There are no
rules for such cases. What I would
not do, though, is to reverse my
engine, although many engineers are
liable to lose their heads at a critical
moment and make that mistake. It is
a curious thing that reversing your
engine suddenly when going at high
speed makes the train go faster instead
of slower. The reason is that the
drivers slip and the locomotive shoots
ahead as if she were on skates. The
only thing to do is to put on the air-brakes
and pray hard.”

The man’s words, all the more impressive
for their rugged simplicity,
brought to my mind again the thought
of danger, for in spite of the wonderful
system by which these flying trains
are run, in spite of the elaborate precautions
taken and the many eyes forever
watching to see that they are carried
out, it is impossible to go through
such an experience as mine without
realizing that there is danger in these
desperate dashes. Suppose something
goes wrong on the track ahead while
the train is making sixty or seventy
miles an hour. Suppose, as the whirling
caravan rounds a curve or plunges
through a tunnel, another whirling caravan
is seen blocking the path. Then
what? Would there be time to stop?
Could the engineer, with all his skill
and bravery, prevent disaster? With
the old trains running forty miles an
hour, seven hundred and sixty feet of
track was necessary to bring the locomotive
and six cars to a dead stop
from full speed. No one has ever
made the experiment with the Chicago
flyer or the Empire State express, but
unquestionably it would take at least
a thousand feet of track to stop either
of them, and many things can happen
in a thousand feet. There are never
more than a thousand feet, and very
often only a few hundred, between the
three sets of signals, with their red,
green, and yellow bars, which are shown
at each station of the block system all
along the route. As there are a hundred
of these stations between New
York and Albany, that gives three hundred
sets of signals to be instantly
recognized and obeyed on this relay
alone, and a man had better die than
make a mistake. Now there are two
difficulties with these signals; in the
first place, some of them are so close
together that no human power could
stop the train in the space between
them; and in the second place, going at
such a speed, it is almost impossible to
distinguish the green signals against
the background of foliage. Already
it has been found necessary to substitute
yellow signals for green ones in a
number of cases.

While we were talking, a trainman
drew a dead chicken from between two
bars of the cowcatcher, where its head
was wedged. It had been struck so
suddenly that the feathers were scarcely
rumpled, and the lucky finder evidently
proposed to have broiled poulet
for dinner. I had noticed the poor
fowl on the way up, scurrying along in
front of the engine, and pitied its stupidity
in refusing to leave the track, as
it might perfectly well have done.
Buchanan told me that they often catch
chickens in this way, and find them
excellent eating. Then he went on to
describe the sensations of running over
animals and men.

“It always seems to me, sir, that
the engine hates to kill a man as
much as we do. Of course, it’s only
a fancy, but once, up at Germantown,
when the sheet-iron flange around the
tender cut off a man’s head clean as a
razor, the fireman and I both felt the
engine tremble in a queer way. Another
time there was a man on the track who
had just come out of a hospital, and, instead
of killing him, old 870 just caught
him gently on her cowcatcher and
threw him off the track without doing
him any injury except a broken arm.
362
It’s curious about animals. The ones
we dread most are hogs. A fat hog
will throw a train off the track quicker
than a horse or a cow. When we see a
cow or horse ahead we put on full speed
and try to hurl them clear of the track.
If we strike them going slow we are
apt to get the worst of it.”

There is a sympathy which draws
together two men who have ridden side
by side on an engine running seventy
miles an hour, and I was glad to accept
Engineer Buchanan’s invitation to
pay him a visit at his place up the Hudson.
No contrast could be greater or
more charming than that between the
engineer at his post of danger and endurance,
and the father and husband,
in his pretty vine-covered home by the
river. Mr. Buchanan in private life is a
prosperous resident of Morris Heights,
where he owns valuable property, and
enjoys alternate days among the
flowers, fruits, and vegetables of his
garden. This garden is the pride of
his life, and, next to bringing a train in
on time, I believe he takes more pride
in his roses, grapes, peas, and onions
than in anything in the world. We sat
for a long time on the engineer’s favorite
bench, under a cool grape arbor,
with the river running lazily at our
feet. Buchanan, looking like a different
man in citizen’s dress, talked unpretentiously
of his life. There was
no posing as a hero, no complaining
about hardships, just a simple, straight-forward
story of twenty-six years passed
almost entirely on an engine—twenty-six
years of constant danger. Surely
that ought to have some curious influence
on the human mind and character.
In Buchanan’s case this influence certainly
has been for good, for he told me
how, as a young man, he had come out
of the war with shiftless, lazy habits,
fond of wasting his time and money in
Eighth Avenue saloons, and then how
he had become steady and saving, when
he began to run regularly on an engine.

“When I used to be away on long
stretches,” he said, “with nothing to
do but think, I saw how foolish it was
giving my money to a saloon keeper
for him to put in the bank instead of
putting it there myself. It used to come
to me at night, as the engine ran along
through the shadows, that the friends I
had down in the city were not good
for much, and that, if I lost my job or
was hurt in an accident, they would
be the first to turn their backs on me.
At last I decided to get away from all
my bad associations and from New York
too; so I scraped together what money
I could and bought this land, where I
have lived ever since with my wife and
children. That was the best day’s work
I ever did. It was a hard-looking
place when I bought it, nothing but
rocks and weeds, but I was proud of it,
and put in all my spare time fixing it
up until I have made it what it is to-day.”

As he spoke the engineer’s eyes wandered
complacently over the gardens,
the trim gravel walks, and the pretty
house—everything as neat and spic-span
as the kitchen of a Dutch house-wife.

When not busy with his garden Buchanan’s
favorite occupation is reading
histories of the war and reminiscences
of its great generals. He will
sit in his rocking-chair on the shady
piazza for hours, reading of Lincoln
and McClellan and the stirring scenes
in which he himself took part—the battles
of Second Bull Run, Seven Days,
Big Bethel, and Bristol Station. He
has fought these battles over again
hundreds of times in his fancy, and
many a lonely hour on the track has
been brightened by the memories of
what he saw and did in the great struggle.
His admiration for General McClellan
knows no bound, and he entered
into quite an argument to show that
“McClellan did all the work, sir, and the
other fellows got all the glory.” The
only vacation Buchanan has taken
in a quarter of a century was a few
years ago, when he went South for a
month to see the old battlefields once
more; but they were all changed, and
he came back saddened. “I shall
never lay off again,” he said, “until I
lay off for good.”

Archie Buchanan is but a fair type
of the loyal fellows who drive the
flying engines of to-day. Many of
them are as thrifty as he is; he told
me of one veteran in the company’s
employ, Thomas Dormatty, who has
363
property in Schenectady valued at
one hundred thousand dollars, and who,
in spite of his seventy years, does his
regular run between Albany and Syracuse.
It is easy to see what that means
of saving and prudent investment,
when one remembers that the best engineers
receive only from one hundred
and forty to one hundred and sixty
dollars per month. And when they
have finished their terms of usefulness,
and are unable to run any
longer, that same day their pay stops,
as it stops when they are ill; for railway
companies are not philanthropists
and have no pension system.

I was glad to learn that there is no
truth in the popular notion that engineers
are full of superstition. Buchanan
told me he had never experienced
any such feeling, and had never
known a superstitious engineer, with
the exception of Nat Sawyer, the
veteran who is now at Chicago with
Engine 999. It is Nat who runs “the
bosses’ engine”—that is, the luxurious
observation car which takes the directors
and officials of the road on their
tours of inspection. In spite of his
well-proven courage, Engineer Sawyer
always hesitates to go out on his engine
if he meets a cross-eyed person in the
morning on his way to the roundhouse.
That, however, is only the exception
which proves the rule.

As he was showing me about his
house, which is furnished with taste and
comfort, Buchanan stopped before two
large portraits of his father and mother.
Both of them are alive. His father is
eighty-seven, his mother four years
younger. Speaking of his parents, the
engineer said reverently: “My father
was a blacksmith and gave me a strong
body, but my mother did more for me
than that, because she has prayed for
me every day of her life, and I have
never had an accident on a train and
never got so much as a scratch in the
war.”

When I spoke of religion Buchanan
showed some reticence. “How can I
get time to go to church,” he said,
“when I run my engine every other
day in the year, Sundays, holidays, and
all? I guess my religion is hard work,
and I don’t know but it’s as good as
any other.”

The religion of hard work! Is it
possible for the man who drives one
of our great modern trains to have
any other religion than that? Fifteen
days in the month, twelve months in
the year, he runs his engine three
hundred miles; and besides that, does
extra work when a sick comrade must
be replaced, or the occasion demands.
The remaining days of the year he is
resting for the strain and responsibility
of the morrow. He worships in the
same place that he does his duty, under
the broad arch of heaven; his creed is
to keep the train on time, his prayer
that danger may be averted. And when
his eyes fail or his health breaks down,
he says good-by to the old engine
which has been his comrade on many
a thrilling ride, and spends the years
that remain in some quiet, vine-covered
home like the one I saw up the Hudson.

An article written from the wilds of
Africa may be expected to contain
long tales of bloody deeds and
great perils, of narrow escapes from
hungry lions, battles with hordes of
gory cannibals, and dramatic rescue in
the nick of time, followed by a swift
revenge and a grand flourish of trumpets;
but as I have never been so
fortunate in my travels as to meet with
the romantic events that are so common
to many travellers, I must ask my
readers to be content with some plain
facts, set forth in simple prose; and as
my mission to Africa is in search of
the truth in certain lines, I feel excused
from any attempt to paint, in the rosy
hues of fancy, such thrilling scenes as
some depict.

I shall omit some details of travel
which are full of interest, but as many
of my detours have been over routes
that have been travelled by others and
described by some, in various tints of
truth and fiction, I shall pass, with
long strides, over the time since my
arrival on the coast to the present.

As the chief object of my visit to
this wilderness is to study the habits
of the gorilla and chimpanzee in a
state of nature, I shall confine myself
chiefly to them, and to such things as
I find among the natives in common
with them.

After a long voyage of thirty-six
days from England, I arrived in Gaboon,
the capital of the French Congo,
where I was kindly received by the
governor and others, and assured of
any aid that they could render me.
They manifested great interest in my
work and anxiety for its success.

During my stay of some weeks there
I acquired much information, of great
value to me, about the distribution of
various tribes, and also of the apes.
In the meantime I paid a visit to the
king of the M’pongwè people, in his
country called Denni, lying on the
south side of the Gaboon River. The
name of the king is Adandè Repontjombo,
which means the son of Repontjombo,
who was king when Paul du
Chaillu was in Africa.

The dignity of king, in Africa, does
not rank with such a title in Europe.
Here his powers are but little superior
to those of any other native. He
works, hunts, loafs, begs and lies just
as others do. I must make an exception
of the King of Denni, who is, by
far, the best of all the royal Africans
I have met, much of which is due to a
good education, and his contact with
white men. King Adandè is an intelligent
man, and well informed on many
subjects. He reads, writes and speaks
English and French in addition to his
native tongue.

A visit to the king, here, is not a
matter of so much pomp and ceremony
as such a visit to the sovereign of Great
Britain, but to me it was novel and
full of deep interest.

Leaving Gaboon near the beginning
of the year, I came to this section,
known as Fernan Vaz, but by the
natives called Eliüe
N’Ka̤mi.
The
portion to which this name belongs
extends from about one degree south
latitude to about one degree forty-five
minutes south along the coast, and
thence, toward the interior, about three
or four days’ journey up the Rembo
N’Ka̤mi,
embracing the great lake and
surrounding country; and this is the
365
true habitat of the gorilla, which the
natives called n’jina (n’geena).

After arranging here for a sojourn
of a few months, I placed the most of
my heavy effects in the custody of the
Ste. Anne Mission, and began a journey
up the Ogowe. I proceeded as
far as N’djolè, which is about two
hundred and twenty miles from the
coast. Along the way I made many
inquiries about the gorilla, but elicited
little information of any value. At a
village called Ouimbiana, near an outlet
of a lake called Ezhanga, a native
offered me quite a fine skull of a gorilla
in exchange for rum or tobacco,
but, not having either of these current
articles of trade, I could not make the
purchase. The animal had been killed
near Lake Ezhanga, which lies on the
south side of the Ogowe, and about
four days from the coast. At Lambarenè,
about one day higher up the
river, I was presented with a fine skull
from near that same lake. At N’djolè
I was assured that five gorillas had
been seen near there only a few weeks
before my visit, and that two native
Pangwès had been killed by them, on
the south side of the river. But it is
very rare that one is ever seen so far
away from the coast. I did not hear
of one on the north side of the river,
and the natives all along told me that
they were all on the south side.

On my return I went into the Lake
Ezhanga section, where I had heard
they were abundant, but, on reaching
the south side of the lake, I was told
that they lived far away in the bush,
and that ten boys and a canoe could
take me in one day to the very spot
where schools of them revel all the
day and howl most of the night; but I
didn’t go.

I must digress for a moment to tell
you what a superb lake the Ezhanga
is, dotted with islands, among which
366
are some perfect gems of wild and
varied beauty. It is a sublime panorama.
Down to the very edge of the
water hang perfect walls of trailing
vines and weeping trees, which look
like the ivy-clad ruins of mediæval
England. Towers of green, of every
shade the most vivid fancy can depict;
crumbling turrets and broken arches,
hung with garlands of flowers. Here
are some of the most brilliant flowers
and gorgeous foliage I have yet seen
in this tropical land. In one part of
the lake is a vast archipelago, which
forms a gigantic labyrinth of coves
and grottos. At places the boughs
from island to island almost meet
overhead, forming a grand archway of
varied green set with the jewels of the
floral queen, and looking as though
Dame Nature and her maids had decked
it for their own triumphal arch. Within
the deep and solemn shadows of these
sylvan naves no sunbeams kiss the
limpid waters, and not a voice disturbs
their quiet, save the harsh scream of
the eagle or the wail of the lone ibis.
Now and then is seen some bird with
plumage of most brilliant tint, which
looks as if its costume were designed
for such a place, and here and there
the fish disport in some retired nook.

When once this fairy land is passed,
the waters broaden to an inland sea,
with only a few islands of a larger
size. Some of these are skirted with
wide bands of grass, sometimes sweeping
away between the trees in a long
vista, on whose green expanse stands,
perhaps, a solitary hut, and on which
feed the herds of hippopotami which
lead a life of idle luxury along these
fertile shores and in the lonely waters
of this sea of dreams.

Coming on down the Ogowe, I spent
four days in a native village of the
Orungo tribe. The town is called
M’biro, but I do not know what the
name signifies unless it is mud. I was
kindly treated by the people, who delighted
in hearing of some of the wonders
of my country. The old king was
in ecstasies at my efforts to speak a
few phrases of his language, and vowed
that nothing except a former betrothal
restrained him from offering me his
daughter for a wife, to go with me to
my country and see some of the things
of which I had told him. At this
place I was again assured that the
gorilla lived on the south side of the
river.

My next point was Fernan Vaz,
which I reached in two days’ journey
along the Jimbogombi, one of the
most beautiful rivers one can imagine.
It is bordered with myriads of stately
palms, bamboos, and ferns, relieved by
vines, orchids, and flowers. Here the
monkey revels in the plenitude of wild
fruits, and the pheasant finds a safe
retreat from crafty woodsmen, while
birds of diverse kinds invoke the spirit
of nature with the voice of song.

On reaching Ste. Anne I selected a
site for my cage and erected it at once.
It is located in the heart of the jungle,
a trifle more than a mile from any
human habitation, and I named it Fort
Gorilla. It is in a spot where nothing
but the denizens of the bush has any
cause to come. It is near a grove of
plantains, on which the gorilla feasts
with the gusto of a charter member of
the Gourmand Club. He does not care
so much for the fruit, but takes out
the tender heart of the young stalk,
which is quite succulent, and eats it
with an appetite peculiar to his race.

Before my cage was quite in order
to receive, I had my first call from a
young gorilla, who came within about
ten yards, as if to see what was going
on. I had my rifle in my hand, but did
not fire at him, as I desired to have him
call again and bring his friends. He
didn’t tarry long, but hurried off into
the bush as though he had something
to tell.

The third day after my cage was
complete, a family of ten gorillas
crossed the rear of the open grounds
belonging to the mission, and not more
than two hundred yards from the
house. A small native boy was within
some twenty yards of them when they
crossed the path in front of him.
Within a few minutes I was notified
of the fact, and took my rifle and followed
them into the bush until I lost
their trail. A few hours later they
were seen again by some natives, not
far away from my cage, but they did
not call on me. The next day, however,
367
I had a visit from a group who
came within some thirty yards of the
cage. The bush was so dense that I
could not see them, but I could easily
distinguish four or five voices, which
seemed to be engaged in a family broil
of some kind. I suppose that they
were the same family that had been
seen the day before.

Père Buleon, le père supérieur of Ste.
Anne, tells me that he has twice seen
a family of gorillas feeding in a plantain
grove, and that, on both occasions,
the father gorilla sat quietly eating the
fruit which the others gathered and
brought to him. I have learned from
other reliable sources that gorillas are
often seen in groups or families of
twelve or fifteen, and always have one
which seems to be chief among them,
and this one the natives call ekombo
n’jina, which means gorilla king.

It is the current belief that these
groups consist of one adult male, and
a number of females and their young.
The gorilla is evidently polygamous,
but when he once adopts a wife she
remains so for years, and a certain
degree of marital fidelity is observed.
The same practice prevails with the
natives, with one exception in favor of
the gorilla, and that is that I have
never heard of one selling one of his
wives, which the natives frequently do.

As far as it can be said that the
gorilla has any form of government, it
is strictly patriarchal, and there are
reasons to justify the belief that they
have some fixed ideas of order and
justice. Many of the natives declare
that they have seen the gorillas holding
a palaver, at which the king always
presided, while the others stood
or sat in a semicircle, talking in an
excited manner. They do not claim
to have interpreted what was said or
understood the nature of the quarrel,
but, as a rule, all natives believe that
the gorilla has a language which is
understood among themselves, and
used in the same manner as man uses
his speech.

To my mind it is quite evident that
the habit of the gorilla is to go in
groups, although it is a very common
thing to see one quite alone, or to see
a single pair of them. I think, as a
rule, when you see one alone it is a
young male who has set out in the
world for himself, and the pair is perhaps
a bridal couple.

The next visit I received was by a
fine young chimpanzee, who came to
an opening in the bush, where he
stopped and took quite a look at the
situation. He betrayed no sign of
alarm, and seemed half-way tempted
to come nearer, but after a halt of
nearly a minute he resumed his march
with an air of great leisure, nor did he
deign to turn his head to see if I followed
him.

On the day after this a young gorilla
came within six or seven yards of my
cage and took a good peep at me. He
stood for a few seconds, holding on to
a bush with one hand; his lips were
relaxed and his mouth half open, as if
surprised and perplexed at what he
beheld. His countenance did not portray
either fear or anger, but utter
amazement. I heard him creeping
through the bush before I saw him, and
I don’t think he was aware of my presence
until he was so near. During
this short visit I sat as still as a statue,
and I think he was in doubt as to
whether I was alive or not; but when
he turned away into the bush he lost
no time in getting out of reach. He
uttered no sound except a suppressed
umph!

A day or two later I heard a couple
among the plantains, but could only
get the faintest glimpse of them. They
were talking but little, and I don’t
think they broke any of the stalks.
As well as I could determine, there
were only two, but they were of good
size and alike in color.

At this moment I hear one tearing
a plantain stalk within about thirty
yards of me. I can only hear one
voice, but as they do not talk much
when alone, I presume there are more
of them not far away. He is uttering
a low murmuring sound which seems
to express pleasure, but I am not yet
able to translate it into English. Time
and patience, however, will accomplish
that, and much more.

It is a fact worthy of notice that
some of the sounds uttered by the gorilla
and chimpanzee are identical with
368
certain sounds in the native language,
and it is quite as easy to find letters
to represent them. One word in
N’Ka̤mi,
meaning yes or assent, is exactly
the same as one sound that is much
used by the chimpanzee, but is not
within the scope of any known system
of phonetic symbols. The same is
true of the word for five in one dialect
of Kroo speech.

My visitor has gone from the plantain
grove without calling to pay his
respects, but I am now being closely
inspected by a young porcupine, who
doesn’t appear to be so shy as his
elders are; and just in the rear of my
domicile is a large school of mangaby
monkeys who come frequently to visit
me. There are about twenty of them,
some very large, and as I have never
disturbed them, they seem to be getting
more familiar. In fact, I am
seldom without something to interest,
amuse, or edify me. Parrots, toucans,
and scores of other birds keep up a
constant babel, and it is no longer
such a novelty to me to hear a gorilla
near my fort. At night I frequently
have a leopard or bush-cat visit me;
it is then too dark to shoot them, but
my interest is centr——s—s—st!—s—s—st!
Oh, the precious moment!
I have just had a new and grand experience.
I am a trifle nervous, but I
must tell you. While writing the last
few lines above, a large dog from the
mission came to pay me a visit. He
has become attached to me, and has
learned the way to my retreat. He
soon found a bone which I had thrown
into the bush, and began to gnaw with
great vigor. Within a few feet of my
cage is a small, rough path cut through
the bush to mark the boundary of the
mission lands. Suddenly there appeared
on the edge of this path a huge
female gorilla, carrying a young one
on her back. She was not more than
thirty feet from me when I first saw
her, and her tread was so stealthy that
I did not hear the rustle of a leaf. She
peeped along the edge of the bush with
the greatest caution, with her whole
attention fixed upon the dog. In a
few moments she advanced very softly
towards him, with the evident purpose
of attack, until she was within a measured
distance of eleven feet of me,
without having observed my presence,
I think. The dog was not aware of
her approach, and she was now within
fourteen feet of him. With my rifle
at my elbow I was prepared for action
in an instant, as I did not want her to
kill the dog. As I cocked my gun she
stopped, sat down on the ground for a
few seconds, and gave me such a look
of scorn that I almost felt that I had
done wrong to interfere. She then
turned away uneasily and retraced her
steps with moderate haste, but she did
not run, or betray much sign of fear.
In an instant she was lost in the bush,
and not the faintest sound was uttered.
There were doubtless more of them
near by, as the natives say it is very
rare to find one female and babe alone,
but so far as I could see she was all
alone. She may have been a widow,
and if so, I should think her chances
to remain so were very fine, if beauty
goes at par among her beaux, for she
certainly was one of the most hideous-looking
things I have ever seen.

The temptation to shoot her was
almost too great to resist, and the desire
to capture the babe made it all
the more so, but I have refrained, so
far, from firing my gun anywhere near
my cage. I could have shot this one
to-day with such ease and safety that
I almost regret that I did not, but she
may return.

I have had the pleasure this afternoon
of hearing three others howling
in different directions, one of which
appears to be a very large one.

I have been told that the gorilla
builds a rude hut or shelter in which he
makes his home, but, so far, I have
found no trace of any kind of structure
built by them, nor can any native tell
me where one can be found. I do not
believe that he has the most remote
idea of a home. He is nomadic in
habit, and I doubt if he ever spends two
nights in the same place. During the
day gorillas wander about from place
to place in quest of food, and wherever
night finds them they remain till
morning. They are not nocturnal in
habit, and the stories of their howling
and talking all night are not well
founded. They do sometimes yell at
369
night, I have no doubt, but I think it is
not common with them, though at the
first sign of dawn they make their presence
known, and no one will mistake
the cause of the sound. One morning,
about five o’clock, I was startled from
my sleep by one of the most terrific
yells, within about one hundred feet of
my cage. It was not simply one great
shout, but a long series of sounds of
varying pitch and loudness, and at
intervals of something like a minute
they were repeated, for about ten or
twelve times, and to my ear appeared
to be exactly the same each time. I
quietly turned out of bed and dressed
myself; I took my rifle and sat down,
and watched until long after sunrise, in
the hope that they would pass by my
cage. All the sounds came from one
direction until the last two, which indicated
to me that the author of them
was changing his location. My interpretation
of the sound was that it was
from the king gorilla, to arouse his
family, who were doubtless scattered off
into different trees for the night. The
sound did not suggest to my mind any
idea of fear, anger, or mirth, but business,
and I am inclined to believe that
the chief of the clan summons all to
the march when he thinks it time to
move. The succeeding morning I
heard the same sounds repeated in another
direction, and, I suspect, by the
same gorilla.

The usual pictures of the gorilla do
not represent him as I have seen him.
He has not only a crouching habit, but
he walks on all four of his legs, and has
the motion of most quadrupeds, using
his right arm and left leg at the same
time, and alternates with the left arm
and right leg. It is not exactly a walk
or a trot, but a kind of ambling gait,
while the chimpanzee uses his arms as
crutches, but lifts one foot from the
ground a little in advance of the other.
They do not place the palm of the hand
on the ground, but use the back of the
fingers from the second joint, and at
times the one I have described above
seemed to touch only the back of the
nails, but this was when she was scarcely
moving at all. I am now preparing to
photograph some of them, and I think
I can give a more reliable picture of
this animal than I have ever seen heretofore.

As to the stories about their howling
all night, I would add that there is a
large bird here which makes a sound
very much like one sound made by the
gorilla, and it is a very easy matter to
mistake it. When I first came I was
often deceived by it myself, but now I
can detect it very easily. This bird
cries at all hours, and I think it has imposed
upon the honest credulity of
many strangers.

It is said that at night the king
gorilla selects a large tree in which he
places his family, and then takes up
position at the base of the tree to ward
off any harm during the night. I very
much doubt this story. I think it quite
probable that the gorillas habitually
sleep in trees at night, but from all I
can learn of the king, he looks after
his own comfort and safety first, and
lets his family do as they can. I have
also heard that the king always finds a
place of safety for them before he will
attack a foe, but this is not confirmed
by any fact that I can obtain. The
gorilla will avoid an attack unless surprised
or wounded, and in such an
event he wastes no time in formalities.

Two stories of the gorilla are in
stereotype, and every native will furnish
you with a certified copy, without the
slightest variation of the text. One is,
that when a gorilla kills a man he
tears open the breast and drinks the
blood of his victim; and the other,
that a gorilla seizes the barrel of a gun
and crushes it with his teeth. The uniform
version of these two stories is
such as to make one believe that they
have been taught by rote, and I am in
doubt as to their authorship; they have
a strong tincture of the white man’s
yarns.

The thrilling stories about gorillas
stealing women and holding them as
captives in the bush, and of their taking
children and holding them for ransom,
are mere freaks of fancy, and I can find
no native of the land in which the gorilla
is found who believes that such a thing
ever occurred, but all assert that man,
woman, and child fare alike in the hands
of this cruel beast. Such stories abound
in the parts where no gorillas were
370
ever seen, but when you get into his
true range his real history loses much
of its poesy.

Many of the stories told of him, however,
in his own land, are novel and
curious, but conflicting, and some of
them absurd; yet all agree in one
respect, and that is that his savage
instincts and great strength make him
the terror of the forest, and I have no
doubt that when he is in a rage he is
both fierce and powerful; but I am
still inclined to believe that both his
ferocity and his strength are rated far
above their true value, and it is stated
as a current fact that in combat with
the chimpanzee the gorilla always gets
whipped, and often killed. I cannot
testify to this, as I have not seen such
a fight, and they seldom occur, yet I
have reason to believe it to be true.

I have heard a story of the origin of
man and the gorilla, which I shall relate
as a queer bit of native lore. It
is confined to the Galoi tribe, and appears
to be of recent origin, and, to
my mind, has a strong Caucasian flavor;
besides, no vestige of such a tale
is found in any other tribe that I have
seen.

They say that Einyambie (God) had
four sons who lived with him in some
aërial abode, and three of them came
to the earth, leaving the oldest one
with Einyambie. On their arrival here
they held a big palaver as to what mode
of life they should adopt. The oldest
of the three wanted to build a town
and plant some fruit, but the other
two preferred to live in the forest and
subsist upon the wild products of nature.
Accordingly they separated, and
the oldest went and built him a town,
and planted some bananas and manioc,
while the other two roamed about
through the primeval bush, and ate
such wild fruits as they could find, but
they had no fire. After some talk
about the matter, it was agreed that
the older of the two should go to the
brother in the town, and ask him for
fire, while the younger should remain in
the bush and gather up sticks of dry
wood to burn. The one who had gone
to town soon returned with fire, and
the two got on quite well for a time,
but when the wet season came on they
found it more difficult to procure food,
and at last it was decided that the
elder should again visit the town to
ask their brother to supply them, and
the younger should remain to keep up
the fire; but the youth went to sleep
and let it die out, so, when the other
returned with food, they had no fire to
cook it. This vexed the elder very
much and a quarrel ensued, in consequence
of which they separated. The
youngest brother was left alone in the
deep bush, and, thus cut off from all
fellowship with his brethren, he wandered
about until he became wild and
fierce, and for want of clothing was
exposed to the weather, until a coat of
hair grew all over him, and in this
wise came the gorilla into the world.

The next older brother, on leaving
the remote forest, took up his abode
near the town, and by this means came
in contact at times with his brother in
the town, from whom he learned a few
useful things, and thus became more
wise and civil than the one left in
the bush; and from this one came the
“bushman;” while the progeny of the
one who built the town are the people
of the world. Such is the origin on
earth of these three kindred races, as
told by the sages of Galoi.

You will observe that this novel has
no woman in it, and her origin remains
a question in Galoi.

As a rule, the natives do not eat the
gorilla, and very seldom kill one, but
this I attribute more to fear than to
respect. That great tribe of cannibals
known as Pangwe, however, slay
and eat him without compunction.
This tribe was scarcely known on the
coast a few years ago, but they are
shifting like the desert sands from the
interior, northeast of the Gaboon, to
the coast southwest, until to-day they
are found throughout the valley of the
Ogowe, and as far south as Selle Kama,
on the coast. They are the Jews of
West Africa, and the life and soul of
the trade of this part. They go into
the bush for ivory, ebony, piassava, and
dye-woods, and carry them for days to
find sale for them. They drink much
less rum than other natives, and deprecate
slavery in all forms, except as
hostage; but they are cruel, savage,
371
and treacherous, and hold human life
at small value.

Up to this time I have not told you
of the chimpanzee, which I have long
believed to be the social and mental
superior of the gorilla. My opinion
was based upon a study of their skulls,
and I was aware that many great men
of science held opposite views; but
all the evidence that I can find here,
where they are best known, tends to
confirm my belief. Every instinct of
the gorilla seems to be averse to all
human society; he delights in a life
of seclusion in the most remote and
desolate parts of the jungle, and I
have never heard of but one gorilla
that became even tolerant to man,
much less attached to him, and this
one was a mere infant. I have seen a
few in captivity, but all of them are
vicious, and devoid of any sense of
gratitude whatever. On the other
hand, the chimpanzee delights in the
society of man, and displays many
good traits. It is not at all rare to
find tame ones on this coast, going
about the premises at large, and quite
as much at home as any resident.
With this short preface I desire to introduce
my own young friend, who
lives with me in my forest home. He
is a fine specimen of the chimpanzee
race, and I call him Moses, because he
was found in a papyrus swamp of the
Ogowe. He is devoted to me, and
cries after me like a spoiled baby, and
follows me like a pet dog. I do not
confine him, so he goes about in the
bush near the cage, and selects some
of the tender buds of young plants and
vines, and returns to me to be petted
and caressed. He is a great pleasure
to me as well as a great plague, for he
wants to hug me all the time, and never
wants me to put him down. About
ten o’clock every day he comes for a
nap, and when I wrap him up and lay
him on a box by my side, he sleeps
quietly till noon. After a good sleep
he climbs on my lap and embraces me
with devotion, until I really tire of him.
Much of the time I write with him on
my lap, and when I put him outside
the cage he climbs up near me, and
begs and pulls my sleeve until I relent,
and let him come inside again. When
I leave my cage I usually take him
with me, and when he sees me take my
rifle he begins to fret, until I let him
mount my back, which he does with
great skill, and hangs on to me like
the ivy to a church wall. A few days
since, as we were returning from a
short tour, I saw a young chimpanzee
crossing the path about thirty yards
from us, and I tried to induce Moses to
call his little cousin; but he declined
to do so, and I accused him of being
proud because he was mounted and
the other was afoot, and hence he
would not speak to him.

I am trying to teach Moses to speak
English, but up to this time he has not
succeeded. He tries to move his lips
as I do, but makes no sound. However,
he has only been in school a very
short term, and I think he will learn by
and by. I am also trying him on some
simple problems with blocks, and sometimes
I think he is doing quite well. I
am giving him some lessons in cleanliness,
and he listens with profound
silence to my precepts, but when it
comes to taking a bath, Moses is a
rank heretic. He will allow his hands
to be washed, but when it comes to
wetting his face, no logic will convince
him that he needs it. He has a great
horror for large bugs, and when one
comes near him he will talk like a
phonograph, and brush at it with his
hands until he gets rid of it. When he
sees or hears anything strange, he always
tells me in a low tone, unless it
comes too near, and then he announces
it with a yell. At times I refuse to
pay any attention to him, and he will
fall down, scream, and sulk like a very
naughty child. He is extremely jealous,
and does not want any one to come
near me. I have made him a neat little
house, with hammock and mosquito-bar,
and at night I tuck him in, when
he sleeps quietly until late in the morning.
Then he crawls out, rubbing his
eyes, and wants his breakfast. He
wants to try everything he sees me eat.

I must now tell you of the most
novel and singular thing known of the
chimpanzee, the native name of which
is “n’tyigo” (n’cheego). All native
tribes in this part of Africa use some
species of drum to make the music for
372
their frequent dances. The drum used
by the
N’Ka̤mi
is called n’gäma, and
the dance is called
ka̤njo.
The chimpanzees
have a similar fête, and set to
similar music. They meet in great
numbers at a certain place in the bush,
and beat their strange tum-tum, which
the natives call the n’gäma n’tyigo. The
performer makes a peculiar humming
vocal sound while he beats on his
mysterious drum with great zeal, during
which time all the others go
through a series of frantic motions
which resemble a dance, and which the
natives call the
ka̤njo
n’tyigo. When
the music ceases, the dance ends for
the time, and all the group join in a
loud, wild shout. After a brief pause
the dance is resumed, and these festivities
are often continued for two or
three hours. At intervals the musician
is relieved by another taking his place,
and two at a time have been known to
beat and hum.

I have heard of this in many parts
of Africa with some slight changes of
detail, but have as often been assured
that it had defied the skill of all woodsmen
to ascertain the real character of
the drum used by them in this unique
n’ka̤njo.
Some assert that they beat
upon a dead tree, others that they use
a concave piece of wood or bark, while
some contend that they strike the
breast with their hands; but, during
my sojourn here, I have been shown
what I believe is the genuine n’gäma
n’tyigo. It is a peculiar spot of sonorous
earth, of irregular shape but
usually about two feet in diameter, and
formed of clay superimposed upon a
soil resembling peat. It appears to be
artificial, but the natives cannot tell
whether it is natural or made by the
n’tyigo, but it is fairly certain that it
is used by the chimpanzee as described,
and it is not a bad imitation of the
native n’gäma. I have examined one
of these with much care, and I am inclined
to believe that it is artificial, as
it is isolated from all similar clay, and
appears to have been kneaded.

I have, as yet, seen but few chimpanzees
since I have taken up my
abode at Fort Gorilla, but I hope to
enjoy some private interviews with
them before I decamp.

It is difficult for me to tell you what
it is to be alone in the bosom of the
N’Ka̤mi
forest. No fancy can portray
the solitude of such a time and place.
Just now the elements are in an angry
mood; the thunder rolls along the sky,
until the earth recoils and trembles at
the sound; the wind shrieks through
the jungle as if to find a refuge from
impending wrath; the pouring rain
pursues it with the speed of fear; the
lightning waves its torch, and glowing
chains of fire fall. Such is the way
in which the long and dreary nights
approach my hermitage. And yet, I
am content among the dismal shadows
of the wilderness, for Nature makes me
her confidant, and every hour divulges
some new secret; and my cage affords
me such immunity from danger that I
can sit quiescently and witness all her
sports, as no one ever witnessed them
before.