McClure’s Magazine

When I was requested to furnish
a dramatic biography of Mr.
Howells, I was confronted with what
seemed an insuperable difficulty. The
more I thought of William Dean Howells,
the less dramatic did he seem to
me. The only way that occurred to
me of introducing a dramatic element
into our proposed interview was for me
to assault him with tongue or pen, in
the hope that he might take energetic
measures to resent my intrusion; but
as, notwithstanding his unvarying kindness
to me, and many unforgotten benefits,
I cherished only the friendliest
feelings for him, I could not persuade
myself to procure dramatic interest at
such a price.

My second objection, I am bound
to confess, arose from my own sense
of dignity which rebelled against the
rôle of an interviewer, and it was not
until my conscience was made easy
on this point that I agreed to undertake
the present article. I was reminded
that it was an ancient and
highly dignified form of literature I
was about to revive; and that my
precedent was to be sought not in
the modern newspaper interview, but in
the Platonic dialogue. By the friction
of two kindred minds, sparks of thought
may flash forth which owe their origin
solely to the friendly collision. We
have a far more vivid portrait of
Socrates in the beautiful conversational
turns of “The Symposium” and the
first book of “The Republic,” than in
the purely objective account of Xenophon
in his “Memorabilia.” And
Howells, though he may not know it,
has this trait in common with Socrates,
that he can portray himself, unconsciously,
better than I or anybody else
could do it for him.

If I needed any further encouragement,
I found it in the assurance that
what I was expected to furnish was to
be in the nature of “an exchange of
confidences between two friends with a
view to publication.” It was understood,
of course, that Mr. Howells was
to be more confiding than myself, and
that his reminiscences were to predominate;
for an author, however
unheroic he may appear to his own
modesty, is bound to be the hero of
his biography. What made the subject
so alluring to me, apart from the
personal charm which inheres in the
man and all that appertains to him,
was the consciousness that our friendship
was of twenty-two years’ standing,
and that during all that time not
a single jarring note had been introduced
to mar the harmony of our relation.

Equipped, accordingly, with a good
4
conscience and a lead pencil (which
remained undisturbed in my breast-pocket),
I set out to “exchange confidences”
with the author of “Silas Lapham”
and “A Modern Instance.” I
reached the enormous human hive on
Fifty-ninth Street where my subject,
for the present, occupies a dozen most
comfortable and ornamental cells, and
was promptly hoisted up to the fourth
floor and deposited in front of his door.
It is a house full of electric wires and
tubes—literally honeycombed with
modern conveniences. But in spite of
all these, I made my way triumphantly
to Mr. Howells’s den, and after a proper
prelude began the novel task assigned
to me.

“I am afraid,” I remarked quite en
passant, “that I shall be embarrassed
not by my ignorance, but by my knowledge
concerning your life. For it is
difficult to ask with good grace about
what you already know. I am aware,
for instance, that you were born at
Martin’s Ferry, Ohio, March 11, 1837;
that you removed thence to Dayton,
and a few years later to Jefferson,
Ashtabula County; that your father
edited, published, and printed a country
newspaper of Republican complexion,
and that you spent a good part of your
early years in the printing office.
Nevertheless, I have some difficulty in
realizing the environment of your boyhood.”

Howells. If you have read my “Boy’s
Town,” which is in all essentials autobiographical,
you know as much as I
could tell you. The environment of
my early life was exactly as there described.

Boyesen. Your father, I should judge,
then, was not a strict disciplinarian?

Howells. No. He was the gentlest
of men—a friend and companion to
his sons. He guided us in an unobtrusive
way without our suspecting it.
He was continually putting books into
my hands, and they were always good
books; many of them became events
in my life. I had no end of such literary
passions during my boyhood. Among
the first was Goldsmith, then came
Cervantes and Irving.

Boyesen. Then there was a good deal
of literary atmosphere about your childhood?

Howells. Yes. I can scarcely remember
the time when books did not play
a great part in my life. Father was by
his culture and his interests rather
5
isolated from the community
in which we lived, and
this made him and all of
us rejoice the more in a
new author, in whose world
we would live for weeks
and months, and who colored
our thoughts and conversation.

Boyesen. It has always
been a matter of wonder to
me that, with so little regular
schooling, you stepped
full-fledged into literature
with such an exquisite and
wholly individual style.

Howells. If you accuse me of that
kind of thing, I must leave you to account
for it. I had always a passion
for literature, and to a boy with a mind
and a desire to learn, a printing office
is not a bad school.

Boyesen. How old were you when
you left Jefferson, and went to Columbus?

Howells. I was nineteen years old
when I went to the capital and wrote
legislative reports for Cincinnati and
Cleveland papers; afterwards I became
one of the editors of the “Ohio
State Journal.” My duties gradually
took a wide range, and I edited the
literary column and wrote many of the
leading articles. I was then in the
midst of my enthusiasm for Heine, and
was so impregnated with his spirit,
that a poem which I sent to the “Atlantic
Monthly” was mistaken by Mr.
Lowell for a translation from the German
poet. When he had satisfied himself,
however, that it was not a translation,
he accepted and printed it.

Boyesen. Tell me how you happened
to publish your first volume, “Poems
by Two Friends,” in partnership with
John J. Piatt.

Howells. I had known Piatt as a
young printer; afterwards when he
began to write poems, I read them
and was delighted with them. When
he came to Columbus I made his
acquaintance, and we became friends.
By this time we were both contributors
to the “Atlantic Monthly.” I may as
well tell you that his contributions to
our joint volume were far superior to
mine.

Boyesen. Did Lowell share that
opinion?

Howells. That I don’t know. He
wrote me a very charming letter, in
which he said many encouraging things,
and he briefly reviewed the book in the
“Atlantic.”

Boyesen. What was the condition of
society in Columbus during those days?

Howells. There were many delightful
and cultivated people there, and society
was charming; the North and South
were both represented, and their characteristics
united in a kind of informal
Western hospitality, warm and cordial
in its tone, which gave of its very best
without stint. Salmon P. Chase, later
Secretary of the Treasury, and Chief
Justice of the United States, was then
Governor of Ohio. He had a charming
family, and made us young editors
welcome at his house. All winter long
there was a round of parties at the
different houses; the houses were large
and we always danced. These parties
were brilliant affairs, socially, but besides,
we young people had many informal
gayeties. The old Starling
Medical College, which was defunct
as an educational institution, except
for some vivisection and experiments
6
on hapless cats and dogs that went on
in some out-of-the-way corners, was
used as a boarding-house; and there
was a large circular room in which we
often improvised dances. We young
fellows who lodged in the place were
half a dozen journalists, lawyers, and
law-students; one was, like myself, a
writer for the “Atlantic,” and we saw
life with joyous eyes. We read the
new books, and talked them over with
the young ladies whom we seem to have
been always calling upon. I remember
those years in Columbus as among the
happiest years of my life.

Boyesen. From Columbus you went
as consul to Venice, did not you?

Howells. Yes. You remember I had
written a campaign “Life of Lincoln.”
I was, like my father, an ardent Anti-slavery
man. I went myself to Washington
soon after President Lincoln’s
inauguration. I was first offered the
consulate to Rome; but as it depended
entirely upon perquisites, which
amounted only to three or four hundred
dollars a year, I declined it, and
they gave me Venice. The salary was
raised to fifteen hundred dollars, which
seemed to me quite beyond the dreams
of avarice.

Boyesen. Do not you regard that
Venetian experience as a very valuable
one?

Howells. Oh, of course. In the first
place, it gave me four years of almost
uninterrupted leisure for study and literary
work. There was, to be sure,
occasionally an invoice to be verified,
but that did not take much time.
Secondly, it gave me a wider outlook
upon the world than I had hitherto
had. Without much study of a systematic
kind, I had acquired a notion of
English, French, German, and Spanish
literature. I had been an eager and
constant reader, always guided in my
choice of books by my own inclination.
I had learned German. Now,
my first task was to learn Italian; and
one of my early teachers was a Venetian
priest, whom I read Dante with.
This priest in certain ways suggested
Don Ippolito in “A Foregone Conclusion.”

Boyesen. Then he took snuff, and
had a supernumerary calico handkerchief?

Howells. Yes. But what interested
me most about him was his religious
skepticism. He used to say, “The
saints are the gods baptized.” Then
he was a kind of baffled inventor;
though whether his inventions had the
least merit I was unable to determine.

Boyesen. But his love story?

Howells. That was wholly fictitious.

Boyesen. I remember you gave me, in
1874, a letter of introduction to a Venetian
friend of yours, named Brunetta,
whom I failed to find.

Howells. Yes, Brunetta was the first
friend I had in Venice. He was a distinctly
Latin character—sober, well-regulated,
and probity itself.

Boyesen. Do you call that the Latin
character?

Howells. It is not our conventional
idea of it; but it is fully as characteristic,
if not more so, than the light,
7
mercurial, pleasure-loving type which
somehow in literature has displaced
the other. Brunetta and I promptly
made the discovery that we were congenial.
Then we became daily companions.
I had a number
of other Italian
friends too, full of
beautiful bonhomie and
Southern sweetness of
temperament.

Boyesen. You must
have acquired Italian
in a very short time?

Howells. Yes; being
domesticated in that
way in the very heart
of that Italy, which was
then Italia irridente, I
could not help steeping
myself in its atmosphere
and breathing in the
language, with the rest
of its very composite
flavors.

Boyesen. Yes; and
whatever I know of
Italian literature I owe
largely to the completeness
of that soaking
process of yours. Your
book on the Italian
poets is one of the most
charmingly sympathetic
and illuminative bits of
criticism that I know.

Howells. I am glad
you think so; but the
book was never a popular
success. Of all the
Italian authors, the one
I delighted in the most
was Goldoni. His exquisite realism
fascinated me. It was the sort of thing
which I felt I ought not to like; but
for all that I liked it immensely.

Boyesen. How do you mean that you
ought not to like it?

Howells. Why, I was an idealist in
those days. I was only twenty-four or
twenty-five years old, and I knew the
world chiefly through literature. I was
all the time trying to see things as
others had seen them, and I had a
notion that, in literature, persons and
things should be nobler and better than
they are in the sordid reality; and this
romantic glamour veiled the world to
me, and kept me from seeing things as
they are. But in the lanes and alleys
of Venice I found Goldoni everywhere.
Scenes from his plays were enacted
before my eyes, with all
the charming Southern
vividness of speech and
gesture, and I seemed
at every turn to have
stepped at unawares
into one of his comedies.
I believe this was the
beginning of my revolt.
But it was a good while
yet before I found my
own bearings.

Boyesen. But permit
me to say that it was an
exquisitely delicate set
of fresh Western senses
you brought with you to
Venice. When I was in
Venice in 1878, I could
not get away from you,
however much I tried.
I saw your old Venetian
senator, in his august
rags, roasting coffee;
and I promenaded about
for days in the chapters
of your “Venetian
Life,” like the Knight
Huldbrand, in the Enchanted
Forest in “Undine,”
and I could not
find my way out. Of
course, I know that,
being what you were,
you could not have
helped writing that
book, but what was
the immediate cause of your writing
it?

Howells. From the day I arrived in
Venice I kept a journal in which I
noted down my impressions. I found
a young pleasure in registering my sensations
at the sight of notable things,
and literary reminiscences usually
shimmered through my observations.
Then I received an offer from the
“Boston Daily Advertiser,” to write
weekly or bi-weekly letters, for which
they paid me five dollars, in greenbacks,
a column, nonpareil. By the
time this sum reached Venice, shaven
8
and shorn by discounts for exchange
in gold premium, it had usually
shrunk to half its size or less. Still I
was glad enough to get even that, and
I kept on writing joyously. So the book
grew in my hands until, at the time I
resigned in 1865, I was trying to have
it published. I offered it successively
to a number of English publishers;
but they all declined it. At last Mr.
Trübner agreed to take it, if I could
guarantee the sale of five hundred
copies in the United States, or induce
an American publisher to buy that
number of copies in sheets. I happened
to cross the ocean with Mr.
Hurd of the New York firm of Hurd &
Houghton, and repeated Mr. Trübner’s
proposition to him. He refused to
commit himself; but some weeks after
my arrival in New York, he told me
that the risk was practically nothing at
all, and that his firm would agree to
take the five hundred copies. The
book was an instant success. I don’t
know how many editions of it have
been printed, but I should say that its
sale has been upward of forty thousand
copies, and it still continues. The
English weeklies gave me long complimentary
notices, which I carried about
for months in my pocket like love-letters,
and read surreptitiously at odd
moments. I thought it was curious
that other people to whom I showed
the reviews did not seem much interested.

Boyesen. After returning to this country,
did not you settle down in New
York?

Howells. Yes; I was for a while a
free lance in literature. I did whatever
came in my way, and sold my articles
to the newspapers, going about from
office to office, but I was finally offered
a place in “The Nation,” where I
obtained a fixed position at a salary.
I had at times a sense that, by going
abroad, I had fallen out of the American
procession of progress; and,
though I was elbowing my way energetically
through the crowd, I seemed
to have a tremendous difficulty in recovering
my lost place on my native
soil, and asserting my full right to it.
So, when young men beg me to recommend
them for consulships, I always
feel in duty bound to impress on them
this great danger of falling out of the
procession, and asking them whether
they have confidence in their ability to
reconquer the place they have deserted,
for while they are away it will be
pretty sure to be filled by somebody
else. A man returning from a residence
of several years abroad has a sense of
superfluity in his own country—he has
become a mere supernumerary whose
presence or absence makes no particular
difference.

Boyesen. What year did you leave
“The Nation” and assume the editorship
of “The Atlantic”?

Howells. I took the editorship in
1872, but went to live in Cambridge six
or seven years before. I was first
assistant editor under James T. Fields,
who was uniformly kind and considerate,
and with whom I got along perfectly.
It was a place that he could
have made odious to me, but he made
it delightful. I have the tenderest regard
and the highest respect for his
memory.

Boyesen. I need scarcely ask you
if your association with Lowell was
agreeable?

Howells. It was in every way charming.
He was twenty years my senior,
but he always treated me as an equal
and a contemporary. And you know the
difference between thirty and fifty is
far greater than between forty and
sixty, or fifty and seventy. I dined
with him every week, and he showed
the friendliest appreciation of the work
I was trying to do. We took long
9
walks together; and you know what
a rare talker he was. Somehow I got
much nearer to him than to Longfellow.
As a man, Longfellow was flawless.
He was full of noble friendliness and
encouragement to all literary workers
in whom he believed.

Boyesen. Do you remember you once
said to me that he was a most inveterate
praiser?

Howells. I may have said that; for in
the kindness of his heart, and his constitutional
reluctance to give pain, he
did undoubtedly often strain a point
or two in speaking well of things. But
that was part of his beautiful kindliness
of soul and admirable urbanity.
Lowell, you know, confessed to being
“a tory in his nerves;” but Longfellow,
with all his stateliness of manner, was
nobly and perfectly democratic. He
was ideally good; I think he was without
a fault.

Boyesen. I have never known a man
who was more completely free from
snobbishness and pretence of all kinds.
It delighted him to go out of his way
to do a man a favor. There was, however,
a little touch of Puritan pallor
in his temperament, a slight lack of
robustness; that is, if his brother’s
biography can be trusted. What I
mean to say is, that he appears there
a trifle too perfect; too bloodlessly,
and almost frostily, statuesque. I have
always had a little diminutive grudge
against the Reverend Samuel Longfellow
for not using a single one of those
beautiful anecdotes I sent him illustrative
of the warmer and more genial
side of the poet’s character. He evidently
wanted to portray a Plutarchian
man of heroic size, and he therefore
had to exclude all that was subtly individualizing.

Howells. Well, there is always room
for another biography of Longfellow.

Boyesen. At the time when I made
your acquaintance in 1871, you were
writing “Their Wedding Journey.” Do
you remember the glorious talks we had
together while the hours of the night
slipped away unnoticed? We have
no more of those splendid conversational
rages now-a-days. How eloquent
we were, to be sure; and with what
delight you read those chapters on
“Niagara,” “Quebec,” and “The St.
Lawrence;” and with what rapture I
listened! I can never read them without
supplying the cadence of your voice,
and seeing you seated, twenty-two years
younger than now, in that cosey little
library in Berkeley Street.

Howells. Yes; and do you mind our
sudden attacks of hunger, when we
would start on a foraging expedition
into the cellar, in the middle of the
night, and return, you with a cheese
and crackers, and I with a watermelon
and a bottle of champagne? What
jolly meals we improvised! Only it is
a wonder to me that we survived them.

Boyesen. You will never suspect what
10
an influence you exerted upon my fate
by your friendliness and sympathy in
those never-to-be-forgotten days. You
Americanized me. I had been an alien,
and felt alien in every fibre of my soul,
until I met you. Then I became domesticated.
I found a kindred spirit
who understood me, and whom I understood;
and that is the first and indispensable
condition of happiness. It was
at your house, at a luncheon, I think,
that I met Henry James.

Howells. Yes; James and I were constant
companions. We took daily walks
together, and his father, the elder Henry
James, was an incomparably delightful
and interesting man.

Boyesen. Yes; I remember him well.
I doubt if I ever heard a more brilliant
talker.

Howells. No; he was one of the best
talkers in America. And didn’t the immortal
Ralph Keeler appear upon the
scene during the summer of ’71 or ’72?

Boyesen. Yes; your small son “Bua”
insisted upon calling him “Big Man
Keeler” in spite of his small size.

Howells. Yes, Bua was the only one
who ever saw Keeler life-size.

Boyesen. I remember how he sat in
your library and told stories of his
negro minstrel days and his wild adventures
in many climes, and did not
care whether you laughed with him or
at him, but would join you from sheer
sympathy, and how we all laughed in
chorus until our sides ached!

Howells. Poor Keeler! He was a
sort of migratory, nomadic survival;
but he had fine qualities, and was well
equipped for a sort of fiction. If he
had lived he might have written the
great American novel. Who knows?

Boyesen. Was not it at Cambridge
that Björnstjerne Björnson visited you?

Howells. No; that was in 1881, at
Belmont, where we went in order to be
in the country, and give the children
11
the benefit of country air. When I met
Björnson before, we had always talked
Italian; but the first thing he said to me
at Belmont, was: “Now we will speak
English.” And when he had got into
the house, he picked up a book and
said in his abrupt way: “We do not
put enough in;” meaning thereby,
that we ignored too much of life in
our fiction—excluded it out of regard
for propriety. But when I met him,
some years later, in Paris, he had
changed his mind about that, for he
detested the French naturalism, and
could find nothing to praise in Zola.

Boyesen. I am going to ask you one
of the interviewer’s stock questions,
but you need not answer, you know:
Which of your books do you regard as
the greatest?

Howells. I have always taken the
most satisfaction in “A Modern Instance.”
I have there come closest to
American life as I know it.

Boyesen. But in “Silas Lapham” it
seems to me that you have got a still
firmer grip on American reality.

Howells. Perhaps. Still I prefer “A
Modern Instance.” “Silas Lapham”
is the most successful novel I have
published, except “A Hazard of New
Fortunes,” which has sold nearly twice
as many copies as any of the rest.

Boyesen. What do you attribute that
to?

Howells. Possibly to the fact that
the scene is laid in New York; the
public throughout the country is far
more interested in New York than in
Boston. New York, as Lowell once
said, is a huge pudding, and every
town and village has been helped to
a slice, or wants to be.

Boyesen. I rejoice that New York has
found such a subtly appreciative and
faithful chronicler as you show yourself
to be in “A Hazard of New
Fortunes.” To the equipment of a great
city—a world-city as the Germans say—belongs
a great novelist; that is to
say, at least one. And even though
your modesty may rebel, I shall persist
in regarding you henceforth as the
novelist par excellence of New York.

Howells. Ah, you don’t expect me to
live up to that bit of taffy!

It lay in the sharp angle of a wooded shore near Pontiac.
When the river was high it had all the temper
of a maelstrom, but in the hot summer, when the logs
had ceased to run, and the river wallowed idly away
to the rapids, it was like a molten mirror which, with the regularity
of a pulse, resolved itself into a funnel, as though somewhere beneath
13
there was a blowhole. It had a look of hunger. Even the children
noticed that, and they fed it with many things. What it passed into
its rumbling bowels you never saw again. You threw a stick upon
the shivering surface, and you saw it travel, first slowly, then very
swiftly, round and round the sides, till the throat of the eddy seemed
to open suddenly, and it ran straight down into darkness, and presently
the funnel filled up again. It was shadowed by a huge cedar
tree. If you came suddenly into the thicket above it, you were stilled
with wonder. The place was different from all others on the river.
It looked damp, it was so strangely green; the grass and trees
showed so juicy; you fancied you could slice the fallen logs through
with a penknife. Every sound there carried with a peculiar distinctness,
yet the air was almost painfully still. Through the stillness
there ran ever a sound, metallic, monotonous, pleasant—a clean cling-clung,
cling-clung. It never varied, was the river high or low. If
you lay down in the mossy grass you were lulled by that sing-song
vibration, behind which you heard the low sucking breath of the
eddy. The two sounds belonged to each other, and had a peculiar
sympathy of tone. The birds never sang in the place, not because
it was gloomy, maybe, but as though not to break in upon other
rights.

There was nothing mysterious about that unceasing cling-clung,
it was merely the ram of a force-pump. If you followed the pipe
that led from the ram up the hill, you came to a large white house.

Many a summer day, and especially of a morning, a young girl
came dancing down to the eddy, to sit beside it. She and it were
very good friends; she used to tell it her secrets, and she made up a
little song about it—a simple, almost foolish little song such as a
clever young girl can write—Laure had been to the convent in Montreal,
so she was not a common village maid.

It was very foolish. But she had such a soft, thrilling voice that
you would have thought it beautiful. She was young—about sixteen—and
her hair was so light that it fell about her like spray. But
suddenly she ceased to be quite happy.

Armand, the avocat’s clerk, was a Protestant, and she had been
meeting him at the eddy secretly. What did she care about the Catechism,
or the curé, or an unblessed marriage, if Armand blessed her?
She was afraid of nothing; she would dare anything while she was
certain of him. But the curé discovered something—she ceased to
go to confession, and, though he was a kind man, he had his duty
to do.

There was trouble, and the ways of Laure’s people were devious
and hard. It was said that she must go to the convent again, and
they kept her prisoner in the house. One day they brought her a
letter which, they said, was from Armand. It told her that he was
going away, and that he had given her up. She had never seen his
writing—they had trusted nothing to the village post-office—and she
believed that the letter was from him. She had wept so much that
tears were all done; her eyes only ached now. At first she thought
that she would get away and go to him, and beg him not to give her
up—what does a child know of pride all at once? But the pride
came to her a little later, and she tried to think what she must do.
While her thoughts went waving to and fro, and she could make
nothing of them, she heard all the time the long, sighing breath of
the eddy and the cling-clung of the force-pump. She never slept,
and after a time it grew in her mind that she never would sleep till
she went down to the cedar tree and the eddy; they seemed always
calling her. She had said her Ave Marias over and over again, but
they seemed to do her no good. Nothing could quiet her, not even
the music of the twelfth mass, played on the little reed organ by
the organist of St. Savior’s, when they took her to church against
15
her will—a passive rebel. The next day she was to go to the convent
again.

That night she stole from the house into the light of the soft harvest
moon, and ran down through the garden, over the road, and
into the cedar thicket. She did not hear behind her the footsteps of
a man who, night after night, had watched the house, hoping that she
would come out. She hastened to the cedar tree, and looked down
into the eddy. From far up the river there came the plaintive cry
of a loon; but she heard no other sound in the night, save this and
the cling-clung of the ram muffled by fallen branches, and the loud-breathing
eddy which invited—until an arm ran round her waist and
held her fast.

A minute later he said: “You will come, then? And we shall be
man and wife very quick.”

“Wait a minute,” she said, and she picked up handfuls of leaves
and dropped them softly into the funnel of water.

“What’s that for?” he asked.

“I am a cock-robin,” she said with her old gayety. “There’s a
girl drowned there. Yes, but it’s true. She was a good Catholic
and unhappy. I’m a heretic now, and happy.”

But she said her Ave Marias again just the same; being happy,
they did her more good. And she says that the eddy is spiteful to
her now. It had counted on a different end to her wooing.

To give to the world a collection of
the successive portraits of a man
is to tell his affairs openly, and so betray
intimate personalities. We are often
found quarrelling with the tone of the
public press, because it yields to what
is called the public demand to be told
both the private affairs of noteworthy
persons and the trivial details and circumstances
of those who are insignificant.
Some one has said that a sincere
man willingly answers any questions,
however personal, that are asked out of
interest, but instantly resents those that
have their impulse in curiosity; and
that one’s instinct always detects the
difference. This I take to be a wise
rule of conduct; but beyond lies the
wider subject of our right to possess
ourselves of personal information, although
we have a vague remembrance,
even in these days, of the belief of old-fashioned
and decorous people, that
subjects, not persons, are fitting material
for conversation.

But there is an honest interest, which
is as noble a thing as curiosity is contemptible;
and it is in recognition of
this, that Lowell writes in the largest
way in his “Essay on Rousseau and
the Sentimentalists.”

“Yet our love of minute biographical
details,” he says, “our desire to make
ourselves spies upon the men of the
past, seems so much of an instinct in
us, that we must look for the spring of
it in human nature, and that somewhat
deeper than mere curiosity or love of
gossip.” And more emphatically in
another paragraph: “The moment he
undertakes to establish … a rule
of conduct, we ask at once how far are
his own life and deed in accordance
with what he preaches?”

This I believe to be at the bottom of
even our insatiate modern eagerness to
know the best and the worst of our
contemporaries; it is simply to find out
how far their behavior squares with
their words and position. We seldom
stop to get the best point of view, either
in friendly talk or in a sober effort, to
notice the growth of character, or, in
the widest way, to comprehend the
traits and influence of a man whose life
in any way affects our own.

Now and then, in an old picture gallery,
one comes upon the grouped portraits
of a great soldier, or man of letters,
or some fine lady whose character still
lifts itself into view above the dead
level of feminine conformity which
prevailed in her time. The blurred
pastel, the cracked and dingy canvas,
the delicate brightness of a miniature
which bears touching signs of wear—from
these we piece together a whole
life’s history. Here are the impersonal
baby face; the domineering glance of
the school-boy, lord of his dog and gun;
the wan-visaged student who was just
beginning to confront the serried ranks
of those successes which conspired to
hinder him from his duty and the fulfilment
of his dreams; here is the mature
man, with grave reticence of look and
a proud sense of achievement; and at
last the older and vaguer face, blurred
and pitifully conscious of fast waning
powers. As they hang in a row they
seem to bear mute witness to all the
successes and failures of a life.

This very day, perhaps, you chanced
to open a drawer and take in your
hand, for amusement’s sake, some old
family daguerreotypes. It is easy
enough to laugh at the stiff positions
and droll costumes; but suddenly you
find an old likeness of yourself, and
walk away with it, self-consciously, to
the window, with a pretence of seeking
a better light on the quick-reflecting,
faintly impressed plate. Your earlier,
half-forgotten self confronts you seriously;
the youth whose hopes you
17
have disappointed, or whose dreams
you have turned into realities. You
search the young face; perhaps you
even look deep into the eyes of your
own babyhood to discover your dawning
consciousness; to answer back to
yourself, as it were, from the known
and discovered countries of that baby’s
future. There is a fascination in reading
character backwards. You may or
may not be able easily to revive early
thoughts and impressions, but with an
early portrait in your hand they do
revive again in spite of you; they
seem to be living in the pictured face
to applaud or condemn you. In these
old pictures exist our former selves.
They wear a mystical expression. They
are still ourselves, but with unfathomable
eyes staring back to us out of the
strange remoteness of our outgrown
youth.

It is somehow far simpler and less startling
to examine a series of portraits of
some other face and figure than one’s
own. Perhaps it is most interesting to
take those of some person whom the
whole world knows, and whose traits
and experiences are somewhat comprehended.
You say to yourself, “This was
Nelson before ever he fought one of
his great sea battles; this was Washington,
with only the faintest trace of
his soldiering and the leisurely undemanding
aspect of a country gentleman!”
Human Documents—the phrase
is Daudet’s, and tells its own story,
with no need of additional attempts of
suggestiveness.

It would seem to be such an inevitable
subject for sermon writing, that
no one need be unfamiliar with warnings,
lest our weakness and wickedness
leave traces upon the countenance—awful,
ineffaceable hieroglyphics, that
belong to the one universal primitive
language of mankind. Who cannot
read faces? The merest savage, who
comprehends no written language,
glances at you to know if he may
expect friendliness or enmity, with a
quicker intelligence than your own.

The lines that are written slowly
and certainly by the pen of character,
the deep mark that sorrow once left, or
the light sign-manual of an unfading
joy, there they are and will remain; it
is at length the aspect of the spiritual
body itself, and belongs to the unfolding
and existence of life. We have
never formulated a science like palmistry
on the larger scale that this character-reading
from the face would need;
but to say that we make our own faces,
and, having made them, have made
pieces of immortality, is to say what
seems trite enough. A child turns with
quick impatience and incredulity from
the dull admonitions of his teachers,
about goodness and good looks. To
say, “Be good and you will be beautiful,”
is like giving him a stone for a lantern.
Beauty seems an accident rather
than an achievement, and a cause instead
of an effect; but when childhood has
passed, one of the things we are sure
to have learned, is to read the sign-language
of faces, and to take the
messages they bring. Recognition of
these things is sure to come to us more
and more by living; there is no such
thing as turning our faces into unbetraying
masks. A series of portraits is
a veritable Human Document, and the
merest glance may discover the progress
of the man, the dwindled or developed
personality, the history of a
character.

These sentences are written merely
as suggestions, and from the point of
view of morals; there is also the point
of view of heredity, and the curious
resemblance between those who belong
to certain professions. Just what it is
that makes us almost certain to recognize
a doctor or a priest at first glance
is too subtle a question for discussion
here. Some one has said that we
usually arrive, in time, at the opposite
extreme to those preferences and opinions
which we hold in early life. The
man who breaks away from conventionalities,
ends by returning to them,
or out of narrow prejudices and restrictions
grows towards a late and
serene liberty. These changes show
themselves in the face with amazing
clearness, and it would seem also, that
even individuality sways us only for a
18
time; that if we live far into the autumnal
period of life we lose much of
our individuality of looks, and become
more emphatically members of the
family from which we spring. A man
like Charles the First was already less
himself than he was a Stuart; we should
not fail in instances of this sort, nor
seek far afield. The return to the
type compels us steadily; at last it has
its way. Very old persons, and those
who are dangerously ill, are often
noticed to be curiously like their nearest
of kin, and to have almost visibly
ceased to be themselves.

All time has been getting our lives
ready to be lived, to be shaped as far
as may be by our own wills, and
furthered by that conscious freedom
that gives us to be ourselves. You
may read all these in any Human Document—the
look of race, the look of
family, the look that is set like a seal
by a man’s occupation, the look of the
spirit’s free or hindered life, and success
or failure in the pursuit of goodness—they
are all plain to see. If we
could read one human face aright, the
history not only of the man, but of
humanity itself, is written there.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES TO ACCOMPANY THE “HUMAN DOCUMENTS” GIVEN IN THIS NUMBER.

General Lew Wallace was born
in Brookville, Indiana, in 1827. After
receiving a common school education,
he studied law. He distinguished himself
in the Civil War, and was made a
brigadier-general. After the war he
practised law in Crawfordsville, Indiana.
A few years later he was for a
time Governor of New Mexico. From
1878-81 he was Governor of Utah, and
from 1881-85 Minister to Turkey.
His first book, “A Fair God,” appeared
in 1877. “Ben Hur,” published in
1880, has reached a sale of several
hundred thousand copies. General
Wallace’s home is in Crawfordsville,
Indiana.

William Dean Howells was born
in Martin’s Ferry, Ohio, March 11, 1837.
His father was the editor of a country
newspaper, and young Howells learned
the printer’s trade. He began to write
at an early age. At nineteen he was
Columbus correspondent of the “Cincinnati
Gazette,” and at twenty-two,
news editor of the “Ohio State Journal.”
A campaign “Life of Lincoln,”
gained him the consulship at Venice,
where he seriously devoted his leisure
hours to literature. “Venetian Life”
gave him reputation. On his return
to America in 1865, he wrote for newspapers
and magazines. In 1866 Mr.
Howells joined the editorial staff of
“The Atlantic.” In 1872 he became
the editor. About this time the success
of “Their Wedding Journey” determined
his career as a novelist.

Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen was born
at Frederiksværn, Norway, September
23, 1848. When twenty-one years of
age he came to the United States. In
1874 he was appointed professor of
German at Cornell University, and is
now professor of Germanic languages
and literature at Columbia College, New
York. It was in the early seventies
that Professor Boyesen’s name began
to appear in the magazines. In 1873
he published his first long romance,
“Gunnar,” and other novels followed,
well known to the reading world.

Alphonse Daudet was born at
Nîmes, May 13, 1840. His early life
was full of hardship and deprivation.
In 1857 he arrived in Paris, with some
manuscript poems and no money. He
almost starved, but kept on writing and
hoping. His volume of verse, “Les
Amoureuses” (1858), attracted some
attention. He persisted, took to writing
novels, and achieved greatness.
The story of his life and struggles, as
told by himself, will be given in an early
number of McClure’s Magazine.

GENERAL LEW WALLACE.

Born in Brookville, Indiana, April 10, 1827.

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS.

HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN.

Born September 23, 1847, Frederiksværn, Norway.

ALPHONSE DAUDET.

The greatest wild animal
trader in the
world is Karl Hagenbeck
of Hamburg.
To hear,
therefore, how he
captures and transports
the brutes that
compose his stock in trade, how he
trains them, and some of the peculiarly
strange adventures which have befallen
him in dealing with them, cannot fail to
be of interest. A few days ago I went
to his Hamburg menagerie, where, on
opening a door, I found myself in a
great shed full of caged wild beasts.
As visitors, except those on business,
are not allowed within those notable
precincts, my unexpected appearance
excited the cages’ occupants to set up
a grand concerto of roars and howls.
Awestruck at
the sight and
sounds, I
stood dazed
until suddenly
recalled to
myself by a
Nubian lion,
who laid hold
of my cloak-flaps
with unsheathed
claws. At
once I leaped
forward,
while the
beast retired
snarling to
the farthest
corner of its
cage, where
in the dark
shadows its
eyes glared
like two living coals. At this moment
Mr. Hagenbeck came forward and gave
me a hearty welcome, coupled with a
word of warning against venturing too
near the cages. He is a tall man, singularly
pleasant looking, with keen eyes
and a decisive manner. Later we sat
in his office, and there I heard many
incidents of the interesting life which
he has led for so many years.

“My father,” said he, “who started
in life as a fish dealer in this very
town, never dreamed that he would
one day be the founder of the greatest
menagerie in the world. But it chanced
that, in the year 1848, some fishermen,
who usually traded with him, brought
27
him some seals which they had caught
in their sturgeon nets. They were fine
animals, and he could not help being
delighted with them, and straightway
resolved to take them to Berlin. There
he opened a small exhibition in Kroll’s
Gardens, charging an admission fee.
But there came a revolution; business
was at a standstill, and he was glad
enough to get rid of the seals for a
small sum of money, and to return to
his fish-dealer’s shop in Hamburg. But
he was bitten with the wild-beast fever;
live animals had more attractions for
him than dead fish, and so he told the
fishermen that he would always be
ready to buy any queer animals they
might choose to bring him. A short
time after that a sailor from a whaling
vessel brought him a polar bear; this
he exhibited here in Hamburg. It was
a great novelty, and the people flocked
in crowds to see it. From that time
forward, sailors from all parts of the
world would bring him animals for
sale—monkeys, parrots, deer, snakes,
and so on; once a young lion. Gradually
he got together quite a small
menagerie, but I am bound to say that
at first there was not much profit in
the business. When I left school in
1859, at the age of fifteen, father asked
me which of his two callings I would
rather choose as mine. Of course,
being a boy, I chose the wild beasts.
He gave me a hundred and fifty pounds
to spend as best I could in buying animals.
Fortune favored me from the
start. I made some capital bargains,
increased the business rapidly, and in
1866 father handed the whole business
over to me.”

HAGENBECK AND BARNUM.

At this moment my
eye fell upon a
large photograph
of the
celebrated Mr.
P. T. Barnum,
which hung upon
the wall.
Mr. Hagenbeck, noting the direction
of my gaze, said: “I suppose you
know who that is?”

I replied, “Why, it’s P. T. Barnum.”

“Exactly,” said he. “I was walking
about the menagerie one day in
1872, when Mr. Barnum was announced.
He said: ‘I’ve just come to have a
look round. I’ve got an hour or two
to spare, and I thought I might as well
spend it here as anywhere else.’ Well,
sir,” continued Mr. Hagenbeck, smiling
at the recollection of his first momentous
interview with the great showman,
“he stayed fourteen days, and he filled
two big note-books before he left me.
He was delighted with all he saw, and
still more so with all I told him. I
spoke about ostrich riding, suggested
that it would be a splendid thing if he
got up a regular wild-beast hunt in his
hippodrome. He was immensely taken
with the idea, and wanted me to join
him as partner, but this I was not able
to do. For many years I supplied him
with his animals.”

“Why,” I said, “Mr. Hagenbeck,
that opened up quite a new field.”

“Exactly,” he replied. “The training
of wild animals is now one of the
most important parts of my business.
I also undertake the establishment of
menageries all over the world. I supply
people with their buildings, with
their animals, with their keepers, with
their trainers. Take, for instance, the
Zoölogical Gardens at Cincinnati. I
filled them from top to bottom. I
recently made one in Rio Janeiro.”

THE PRICES OF WILD ANIMALS.

“And can you tell me anything about
the prices of wild animals, Mr. Hagenbeck?”
said I.

“Well,” he replied, “prices differ
from time to time, according to the
fashion; for I can assure you that there
is as much fashion in wild animals as
there is in ladies’ dresses. Prices are
also rising and falling, according as
the market supply is high or low. I
can remember that once I sold in one
day a cargo of African beasts for thirty
thousand dollars. A full grown hippopotamus
is now worth £1,000. A two-horned
rhinoceros, which was worth
£600 in 1883, cannot now be obtained
29
at any price. An Indian tapir costs
£500, an American tapir £150. Elephants
vary according to size and training,
from £250 to £500. A good
forest-bred lion, full grown, will fetch
from £150 to £200, according to species.
Tigers run from £100 to £150,
according to their variety. Do you
know,” he continued, “that there are
five varieties of royal tigers? And, besides
them, there are the tigers which
come from Java, Sumatra, Penang, and
even from the wastes of Siberia, Snakes
are very much down in the market at
present. Those which formerly fetched
£5 or £10, you can now get for £2.
Very large ones sometimes run up to
£50. Leopards £30. Black panthers
£40 to £60. Striped and spotted
panthers £25. Jaguars run from £30
to £100. A good polar bear will fetch
from £30 to £40. Brown bears from
£6 to 10£. Black American bears
from £10 to £20. A sloth from Thibet
£25 to £30. Monkeys run from six
shillings apiece. They are most expensive
in the spring, when they will sometimes
fetch as much as £1 6s. Giraffes
are altogether out of the market,”
continued Mr. Hagenbeck with a sigh,
“for there are none now to be obtained.
I have sold one as low as £60, whilst
the last one which I sold, four years
ago, to the Brazils, I was paid upwards
of £1,100 for.

“And now you might just have a
look round at some of the animals.
Here,” said he, as we stood before a
cage of very charming monkeys, “are
some very clever little animals. They
can ride horses in a circus, they jump
through hoops; in fact, they are trained
exactly like human beings, and can do
almost everything but talk. I have just
sent people to Abyssinia to fetch me
some big silver-gray lion-monkeys,
sometimes called hamadryads. I said
just now,” continued Mr. Hagenbeck,
with a laugh, “that monkeys can’t talk;
and yet I must believe in Professor
Garner, for you give me any monkey,
you like to name, and I’ll guarantee
I’ll make it talk. But you can only
do it by imitating them closely.
Take, for instance, that chimpanzee
over there,” continued the clever
trainer, pointing to a little animal fast
asleep on a crossbar. “Now listen,”
he went on, making a peculiar noise
with his lips. At once the animal
woke up, jabbered a reply in chimpanzee,
flew to the bars of the cage, put
his tiny paw out ready for the nuts
which he knew were forthcoming.
“There,” said Mr. Hagenbeck, “don’t
tell me monkeys can’t talk.”

A little farther on we came across a
tiny baby elephant, two feet nine inches
in height. It was as black as coal, and
had just arrived from Singapore. It
was very playful, but when I began
pushing it about, as one might roll a
big beer barrel, it indulged in a fretful
growling, which much amused us.
Seven beautiful elephants stood in one
big stable together, and as I admired
their huge proportions and wondered
at their entire gentleness, I said to Mr.
Hagenbeck, “Is it true, as the great
English circus proprietor George
Sanger told me last summer, that the
Asiatic elephant is far more intelligent
than its African brother?”

“Certainly not,” replied Mr. Hagenbeck.
“The African elephants are just
as clever, just as gentle, just as intelligent
as the Asiatic elephants. There’s
no difference between them; and I ought
to know, for I have had to do with them
for thirty years, and in only one year
I have imported as many as seventy-six
of them.”

HOW WILD BEASTS ARE CAPTURED.

Karl Hagenbeck and I stood in his
beautiful gardens, beside the enclosure
in which the lions and tigers spend
the long, hot summer days so frequent
in Hamburg. Most artistically
this enclosure has been made to resemble
an African desert. In the foreground
there are bushes and a few
small palm trees, whilst in the far-off
distance there rise, towering to a blue
tropical sky, grim mountains and sun-stricken
rocks. There is thus conveyed
to the mind an impression of the great
Nubian deserts—an impression whose
force and reality is strengthened by
the appearance of the wild beasts themselves,
basking in the heat of the sun, or
restlessly prowling about the enclosure.

“I should very much like to hear,
Mr. Hagenbeck,” said I, “everything
you can tell me of the way in which
your wild beasts are captured.”

“Well,” he replied, “I
will tell you as much as
I can. Let us begin with
the animals from the deserts
of Nubia, for I have
hunting parties all over
the world. I send out a
special messenger, who
goes provided with a lot
of silver coin. Nubians
know my courier, who goes
on ahead of this special
messenger. When the
courier reaches Suakim,
it is announced that my
messenger is coming, and
a great fête is proclaimed.
Guns are fired off, tom-toms
are beaten, and for
at least two days before
he arrives there are the
greatest rejoicings. Then
the people go out to
meet him, and conduct
him with great state to a
place on the borders of
the desert where they have
built a zereba. My messenger
then gives advance
money to the hunters, who
go into Abyssinia to buy
horses for the great hunt.
As soon as the whole
party is collected, business begins.
They are armed with assegais and
long hunting-swords like the old German
swords. They are as broad as
your hand, sharp at both ends, and two
handled. Men upon fast horses hunt
up the animals. Large animals, such
as elephants and rhinoceroses, with
sucklings, are the best game. The
hunters, forming a circle, follow them.
Having caught a rhinoceros with its
young one, a man jumps down from
his horse and cuts the old beast in a
vein, whilst some of the other men
chase another animal in front to distract
attention. Then the black fellow
lets go the big rhinoceros, catches the
little one, ties its legs, and after it has
calmed down brings it to my collector,
who is waiting for him in the zereba.
The old one is killed, skinned, and
eaten. The natives make their best
shields from the hide. Elephants and
giraffes are hunted in the same manner.
31
I have
been describing
to
you chiefly
the old
method of
hunting
animals in
Nubia. Of
late years
they generally
use
guns. The
young animals
are
always
brought up
with goat’s
milk.”

At this
moment we were passing a large cage
full of the finest lions I had ever seen.
As soon as they caught sight of Mr.
Hagenbeck, they began to purr loudly,
and when he spoke, came up to the bars
of the cage to be stroked and petted.

“There,” said my host, “these are
some very beautiful lions from Nubia.
You can see that they are in perfect
condition, and this is chiefly owing to
the fact that they are being trained for
their performances. There is nothing
that keeps them in good health so
much as constant exercise; that, I
think,” added Mr. Hagenbeck, with a
laugh, “is a very
good argument in
favor of training wild
beasts, and goes a
long way to prove
that there really is
very little cruelty in
it. Now, I’ll tell you
how lions are caught
in the Nubian desert.
The Kauri negroes,
when my messenger
arrives, form parties
to go in search of
young lions. When
they discover the
spoor of a lioness,
they creep about the
bush until they find
the animal’s lair. It
is usually one man
alone who does this,
and he has only a bundle of assegais
under his left arm. Before the lioness
can spring upon him, she has these
spears in her body. Look at this skin,”
continued Mr. Hagenbeck, pointing to
a magnificent tawny skin hanging up
in the hall. “There,” said he, “that
skin has no less than twenty-four holes
in it. The poor mother made a brave
fight for her young ones. Well,” continued
Mr. Hagenbeck, “when the old
lioness is killed he takes the young
ones to the zereba. The little lions are
suckled by goats three times a day, and
get quite fond of their foster-mothers.

“Leopards and
hyenas are caught in
Nubia in traps which
are made out of
wood or cut out of
stone in the mountains.
These traps
are baited with meat,
and catch the big
cats precisely as a
mouse-trap catches a
mouse. Once trapped,
the hunters can
tie the creature’s
legs, and bear it in
triumph to the zereba.”

“And how are the
Asiatic animals
caught?” I asked
Mr. Hagenbeck.

“Well,” he replied,
32
“very much the same method is pursued
there that we adopt in Africa.
For instance, in Borneo and Java, animals
are caught in trapfalls and pitfalls,
and some in huge mouse-traps.
In these we often catch full-grown
tigers, black panthers, and leopards.
In the pitfalls we find two horned
rhinoceroses and saddlebacked tapirs.
The animals, running through the forest,
run over these pitfalls and drop in.
The greater part of these unfortunately
die directly after they are caught; some
kill themselves
in their
excitement,
others won’t
feed, and so
pine away. A
rhinoceros or
a tapir dies
because it is
often hurt internally,
although
we frequently
do not
discover that
they have been
hurt until they
have been with
us for one or
two months.
I can remember
that I
once imported
seven big rhinoceroses,
and
I sold only one
of them, as
the other six
died. Bengal
tigers are
caught young,
brought up by
the natives in
much the same way as the young lions
in Africa, on milk and fowls. Most
of these come by way of Calcutta.”

Standing in front of a great glass
cage full of snakes, I said to Mr.
Hagenbeck: “Now, how do you manage
to get hold of these reptiles? They
must be very dangerous.”

“Ah!” he replied, with a thoughtful
look, “I’ll tell you later on one or two
stories of dreadful adventures that I
myself have had with snakes. In the
meantime this is the way they are
caught in India. In the dry season
the jungle is set on fire. As the
snakes run out in all directions, they
are caught by the natives with long
sticks having a hoop at the end, to
which is attached a big bag, a sort of
exaggerated butterfly net. After that
the reptiles are packed in sacks made
of matting, which are fastened to long
bamboos, and carried to Calcutta on
the shoulders of the natives. When
Calcutta is reached, they are packed
in big boxes,
from twelve to
sixteen in a
box, that is
when they are
only eight or
ten feet long;
big snakes,
from fourteen
to sixteen feet
in length, are
only packed
from two to
three in a box.
They are then
sent direct to
Europe without
food or
water on the
journey, for
they require
neither. The
principal thing
is to keep
them warm.
Cold gives
them mouth
disease, which
is certain
death. I remember
once,”
continued Mr.
Hagenbeck, “that I had one hundred
and sixty-two snakes reach London in
perfect condition; a violent snow-storm
then came on, and when the
boxes were opened in Hamburg every
snake was dead.

“The majority of my Asiatic elephants
come from Ceylon, although a
few of them are exported from Burma.
I remember one year there was a great
demand in the American market for
Asiatic elephants; Barnum and Forepaugh
33
each wanted twelve. I couldn’t
get enough from Burma, so sent direct
to Ceylon, and got no less than sixty-seven
elephants, all of which I disposed
of in the next twelve months.
Most of these were caught by noosing.
This is done by Afghans who take out
a license from the Ceylon Government.
They go out with dogs, find a herd,
follow it up, and drive the elephants
into different flights; they then give
their attention to the younger elephants.
Each man has a long raw-hide
rope with a noose in the end of
it. He chases an elephant, throws the
noose round its hind legs, and follows
it until a tree is reached, round which
the line is fastened. When the elephant
drops down in despair, the rope
is fastened round its other legs, and
it is left for several days until calmed
down; it is then taken and easily tamed.
I can well remember,” said Mr. Hagenbeck,
“how interested Prince Bismarck
was when I told all about the capture
of my elephants.

“I was sitting in my room one day,
when a servant came in and told me
that he believed that Prince Bismarck
was in the menagerie. I went out, and
as soon as I saw his tall, erect figure
and white moustache, I knew it was
the great man himself. I never came
across so intelligent a man, or one who
asked so many questions. I should
think he must be something like your
Gladstone.”

“And how did you first start buying
animals on such a big scale, Mr.
Hagenbeck?” said I.

“Well,” he replied, “it was in this
way. In 1863 the first big lot of animals
that ever appeared in Europe at
one time were brought over by an
Italian named Casanova. He couldn’t
sell them, and we had not the money
to buy them, so they were sold to a
menagerie at Kreutzburg, then the biggest
in Germany. Next year Casanova
came over with a few from Egypt,
which I bought for the Dresden Zoo.
This was the beginning of the African
business. I then gave Casanova a big
order, and arranged that he should
bring over elephants, giraffes, and
young lions at a fixed price. It’s
always cheaper,” added Mr. Hagenbeck,
with a laugh, “to get your dinner
at the table d’hôte than by the card, and
I thought it would be cheaper and
better to get all these animals in one
lot. Well, in 1866 he returned with a
large cargo, in which there were seven
African elephants. At that time an
African elephant was a great novelty,
both in Europe and in America. I
sold these elephants to America, where
they excited great interest, as they were
the first African elephants that had
ever been seen in that country.” As
we were going back to Mr. Hagenbeck’s
office he pointed out to me some
very beautiful zebu bulls which he was
going to send out to South America
to be used for agricultural and breeding
purposes. “There,” said he, “you
can see those animals nowhere else in
Europe except in my place. I got
them from Central India; I have been
after them for ten years, and succeeded
in getting them only two years ago.”
Just then we passed a slaughter-yard,
where a couple of horses were being
cut up for the carnivorous animals.

“It must be a very difficult matter,”
said I, “to know how to feed all these
animals properly.”

“I should think it was,” he replied.
“Animals are most dainty and delicate
as regards their food. Now, for instance,
those lions and tigers which
were exhibiting at the Crystal Palace
last year were fed on such bad food
that they were quite ill when they
came back here. Besides, a number of
young animals were seized with what
appeared to be cholera. I lost three
thousand pounds’ worth of them in
three weeks. It is a very anxious
business, indeed, I can tell you.”

Note.—In the July number will be published an article on “The Training of Wild
Animals,” which includes a description of a special performance given by Mr. Hagenbeck, at
which Mr. Blathwayt, the writer of the articles, was the only spectator.

By mandate of law, Rick wore a muzzle, not
often on his nose, but generally hanging
under his chin. It was not because his
present character was a vicious one that
Rick was thus distinguished, but owing to
an awkward circumstance in early life. For
Rick had been tried in a court of law for
the crime of murder, convicted, and sentenced
to death. I believe Canton Grison
is the only province in Switzerland where
the law enforcing capital punishment has not
been repealed; and in Canton Grison it applies
to beasts as well as men.

Rick first appeared,
a starveling puppy
with a large frame and
weak, shambling legs,
before the windows of
a charitable Scotswoman,
who was a
lover of dogs and a
person of sensibility.
Rick, whatever his intellectual shortcomings,
was a shrewd judge of human nature, and
knew where to
find a sure welcome.
Naturally
he soon discovered
the hour for meals, and seldom failed
to be on hand in good season. Once he found
the glass door shut through which he was accustomed
to enter. Spectators on the other
side saw his discomfiture, but, before they
could reach the door, Master Rick had lifted
the latch and was walking triumphantly in.
A later friend of his declared that, when he
asked, “What has become of that enormous
dish of meat?” Rick tipped him an arch wink
and touched his corpulent stomach with a
hind paw. Another instance of his supposed
intelligence was his habit of accompanying
intending customers to the confectioner’s
shop, where he gorged himself at their expense.
This indulgence in sweets, and his
visits to adjacent villages, where he dined
at the hotels à la carte, his bills to be sent
35
to the Belvedere, induced early obesity, which was particularly observable
in his great tail. I always thought the general belief in Rick’s mental
capacity rested on insufficient grounds. I have lived too much
with dogs not to know a dull fellow,
though kindly, when I see him; but,
as an individual, I loved Rick, and
could not deny him a certain charm.
The fact that one day Rick (who
at that time belonged to a butcher)
did not put in an appearance simultaneously
with the ringing of the
luncheon-bell caused the charitable
Scotswoman misgivings. She
should have known him better. Fortunately she happened to glance
out of the window in the nick of time, for there was poor Rick, flat on
his side, his head turned piteously
towards the door of his
friend, being dragged along the
road at the tail of a terrible
cart—the cart of a man who
bought dead and living cats and
dogs for the sake of their skins.
A maid was hastily despatched
to the rescue, and Rick was
bought for the price of his hide.
His trials were over (it was little he cared for the trial and sentence),
for he was now adopted by the Hotel Belvedere.

Here he passed several uneventful, greedy years, until the day when
the Belvedere was startled by the appearance
of the officers of the law with
an official document—a summons for
Rick. How it was served I cannot imagine,
but Rick was cited to appear, on
a given date, at the Rathhaus, under the
appellation of Tiger Hund. Tiger Hund was a fine, dashing name,
but hardly applicable to Rick, who
had more of the characteristics of
the sheep than of the tiger. The
two leading hotels, the Belvedere
and the Bual, were shaken to their
base by the threatened danger to
Rick. Foreign counsel was appointed
to plead his cause; I cannot
now remember whether the
chosen advocate was Herr Coester
of the Belvedere, or Mr. J. Addington
Symonds of the Bual. One, I
know, appeared for Rick at the
trial; while the other, after conviction,
got up a petition for his pardon.

The eventful day arrived; the learned gentleman, honest Rick at
his heels, took his way to the ancient Rathhaus, the gloomy aspect of
whose exterior, with its narrow, barred, windowy and high-pitched roof
under the eaves of which were many a row of wolves’ heads now dried
into mummies, should have thrilled with apprehension the heart of the
36
least imaginative dog. But Rick, poor innocent, trotted through the
portals as he would have trotted into the confectioner’s, and curled
himself up for a nap at the feet of his counsel.

His affection for the accused, and the
sympathy of the large audience assembled
to hear his pleading, inspired the learned
gentleman with unwonted eloquence. The
only creature unconcerned was Rick, who,
having finished his nap, thought it a fitting
occasion to make a little excursion into the
next canton.

After a brilliant peroration in which he
dilated on the fidelity of the accused, who,
he asserted, never left the Hotel Belvedere
except in company with some of the guests,
Rick’s advocate wound up with these words:
“Behold at my feet the Tiger Hund!”
But, alas!
Rick was not
at his feet,
nor could he
be found in
any of his
usual haunts,
though eager
searchers beat the precincts for him.
And so, through Rick’s own fault, his
case was lost and his friends put to open
shame. Sentence of death was passed in
the absence of the culprit, and things
for a time looked black for Rick. Strenuous
efforts, however, were made to secure
a pardon; and finally, after the
presentation of a petition pleading for
mercy, numerously signed by the foreign
and native residents, the magistrate
was induced to commute the sentence to muzzlement for life.
I cannot myself believe that Rick had the courage to attack a sheep,
even in company. I know that his first meeting with a donkey threw
him into such fits of terror that his reason was despaired of for days.

I.

Thomas A. Edison, when he
was congratulated upon his forty-sixth
birthday, declared that he did
not measure his life by years, but by
achievements or by campaigns; and he
then confessed that he had planned
ahead many campaigns, and that he
looks forward to no period of rest, believing
that for him, at least, the happiest
life is a life of work. In speaking
of his campaigns Mr. Edison said: “I
do not regard myself as a pure scientist,
as so many persons have insisted that
I am. I do not search for the laws of
nature, and have made no great discoveries
of such laws. I do not study
science as Newton and Kepler and
Faraday and Henry studied it, simply
for the purpose of learning truth. I
am only a professional inventor. My
studies and experiments have been
conducted entirely with the object of
inventing that which will have commercial
utility. I suppose I might be
called a scientific inventor, as distinguished
from a mechanical inventor,
although really there is no distinction.”

When Mr. Edison was asked about
his campaigns and those achievements
by which he measured his life, he said
that in the past there had been first
the stock-ticker and the telephone, upon
the latter of which he worked very
hard. But he regarded the greatest
of his achievements, in the early part
of his career, as the invention of the
phonograph. “That,” said he, “was
an invention pure and simple. No
suggestion of it, so far as I know, had
ever been made; and it was a discovery
made by accident, while experimenting
upon another invention, that led to the
development of the phonograph.

“My second campaign was that
which resulted in the invention of the
incandescent lamp. Of course, an incandescent
lamp had been suggested
before. There had been abortive attempts
to make them, even before I
knew anything about telegraphing.
The work which I did was to make
an incandescent lamp which was commercially
valuable, and the courts have
recently sustained my claim to priority
of invention of this lamp. I worked
about three years upon that. Some of
the experiments were very delicate and
very difficult; some of them needed
help which was very costly. That
so far has been, I suppose, my chief
achievement. It certainly was the first
one which made me independent, and
left me free to begin other campaigns
without the necessity of calling for
outside capital, or of finding my invention
subjected to the mysteries of
Wall Street manipulation.”

The hint contained in Mr. Edison’s
reference to Wall Street, and the mysteries
of financiering which prevail
there, led naturally enough to a question
as to Mr. Edison’s future purpose with
regard to capitalists, and he said:

“In my future campaigns I expect
myself to control absolutely such inventions
as I make. I am now fortunate
enough to have capital of my
own, and that I shall use in these
campaigns. The most important of
the campaigns I have in mind is one in
which I have now been engaged for
several years. I have long been satisfied
that it was possible to invent an
ore-concentrator which would vastly
simplify the prevailing methods of extracting
iron from earth and rock, and
which would do it so much cheaper
than those processes as to command
38
the market. Of course I refer to magnetic
iron ore. Some of the New Jersey
mountains contain practically inexhaustible
stores of this magnetic ore,
but it has been expensive to mine. I
was able to secure mining options
upon nearly all these properties, and
then I began the campaign of developing
an ore-concentrator which would
make these deposits profitably available.
This iron is unlike any other
iron ore. It takes four tons of the ore
to produce one ton of pure iron, and
yet I saw, some years ago, that if some
method of extracting this ore could be
devised, and the mines controlled, an
enormously profitable business would
be developed, and yet a cheaper iron
ore—cheaper in its first cost—would be
put upon the market. I worked very
hard upon this problem, and in one
sense successfully, for I have been able
by my methods to extract this magnetic
ore at comparatively small cost, and
deliver from my mills pure iron bricklets.
Yet I have not been satisfied
with the methods; and some months
ago I decided to abandon the old
methods and to undertake to do this
work by an entirely new system. I
had some ten important details to
master before I could get a perfect
machine, and I have already mastered
eight of them. Only two remain to be
solved; and when this work is complete,
I shall have, I think, a plant and mining
privileges which will outrank the
incandescent lamp as a commercial
venture, certainly so far as I am myself
concerned. Whatever the profits
are, I shall myself control them, as I
have taken no capitalists in with me in
this scheme.”

Mr. Edison was asked if he was
willing to be more explicit respecting
this invention, but he declined to be,
further than to say: “When the machinery
is done as I expect to develop
it, it will be capable of handling twenty
thousand tons of ore a day with two
shifts of men, five in a shift. That is
to say, ten workmen, working twenty
hours a day in the aggregate, will be
able to take this ore, crush it, reduce
the iron to cement-like proportions,
extract it from the rock and earth, and
make it into bricklets of pure iron, and
do it so cheaply that it will command
the market for magnetic iron.”

Mr. Edison, in speaking of this campaign,
referred to it as though it was
practically finished; and it was evident
in the conversation that already
his mind turns to a new campaign,
which he will take up as soon as his
iron-ore concentrator is complete and
its work can be left to competent subordinates.

He was asked if he would be willing
to say what he had in mind for the
next campaign, and he replied: “Well,
I think as soon as the ore concentrating
business is developed and can take
care of itself, I shall turn my attention
to one of the greatest problems that I
have ever thought of solving, and that
is, the direct control of the energy
which is stored up in coal, so that it
may be employed without waste and
at a very small margin of cost. Ninety
per cent. of the energy that exists in
coal is now lost in converting it into
power. It goes off in heat through
the chimneys of boiler-rooms. You
perceive it when you step into a room
where there is a furnace and boiler;
it is also greatly wasted in the development
of the latent heat which is
created by the change from water to
steam. Now that is an awful waste,
and even a child can see that if this
wastage can be saved, it will result in
vastly cheapening the cost of everything
which is manufactured by electric
or steam power. In fact, it will vastly
cheapen the cost of all the necessaries
and luxuries of life, and I suppose the
results would be of mightier influence
upon civilization than the development
of the steam-engine and electricity have
been. It will, in fact, do away with
steam-engines and boilers, and make
the use of steam power as much of a
tradition as the stage-coach now is.

“It would enable an ocean steamship
of twenty thousand horse-power
to cross the ocean faster than any of
the crack vessels now do, and require
the burning of only two hundred and
fifty tons of coal instead of three
thousand, which are now required; so
that, of course, the charges for freight
and passenger fares would be greatly
reduced. It would enormously lessen
39
the cost of manufacturing and of traffic.
It would develop the electric current
directly from coal, so that the cost of
steam-engines and boilers would be
eliminated. I have thought of this
problem very much, and I have already
my theory of the experiments, or some
of them, which may be necessary to
develop this direct use of all the power
that is stored in coal. I can only say
now, that the coal would be put into a
receptacle, the agencies then applied
which would develop its energy and
save it all, and through this energy
electric power of any degree desired
could be furnished. Yes, it can be
done; I am sure of that. Some of
the details I have already mastered, I
think; at least, I am sure that I know
the way to go to work to master them.
I believe that I shall make this my
next campaign. It may be years before
it is finished, and it may not be a
very long time.”

Mr. Edison looks farther ahead than
this campaign, for he said: “I think it
quite likely that I may try to develop
a plan for marine signalling. I have the
idea already pretty well formulated in
my mind. I should use the well-known
principle that water is a more perfect
medium for carrying vibrations than
air, and should develop instruments
which may be carried upon sea-going
vessels, by which they can transmit or
receive, through an international code
of signals, reports within a radius of
say ten miles.”

Mr. Edison believes that Chicago is
to become the London of America early
in the next century, while New York
will be its Liverpool, and he is of
opinion that very likely a ship canal
may connect Chicago with tide water,
so that it will itself become a great seaport.

There is a common impression that
Mr. Edison is an agnostic, but he denies
it; and he said, in closing the conversation,
“I tell you that no person can be
brought into close contact with the
mysteries of nature, or make a study of
chemistry, without being convinced that
behind it all there is supreme intelligence.
I am convinced of that, and I
think that I could, perhaps I may some
time, demonstrate the existence of such
intelligence through the operation of
these mysterious laws with the certainty
of a demonstration in mathematics.”

II.

Professor Graham Bell is not like
some pedantic wise men who talk as if
they believed that the end of knowledge
in their particular line had been
already reached. On the contrary,
this distinguished inventor is convinced
that the discovery and inventions
of the past will seem but trivial
things when compared with those which
are to come. Nor does he think that
the day of man’s greater knowledge is
so very far distant.

THE AIR-SHIP OF THE NEAR FUTURE.

“I have not the shadow of a doubt”—these
are his own words, spoken to me
quite recently at Washington—“that
the problem of aerial navigation will
be solved within ten years. That means
an entire revolution in the world’s
methods of transportation and of making
war. I am able to speak with more
authority on this subject from the fact
of being actively associated with Professor
Langley of the Smithsonian Institution
in his researches and experiments.
I am not at liberty to speak in
detail of these experiments, but will
say that the calculations of scientific
men in regard to the amount of power
necessary to maintain an air-ship above
the earth have been strangely erroneous;
I may say ridiculously so. According
to these, Nature would have
given the birds and insects a muscular
40
force vastly greater and superior in its
qualities to that bestowed upon man.
That seems unreasonable in the first
place, when one reflects that man is at
the head of creation, and we have found
practically that such is not the case.
The power required to lift and propel an
air-ship is very much less than has been
supposed; indeed, Professor Langley
concludes that when the air-ship has
once been lifted above the earth to the
proper height, it will be possible to
maintain it there with proportionately
no greater effort than that expended
by hawks and eagles in sailing about
with extended wings. The air strata
will do the bulk of the lifting, if a
small propelling power is provided.
Of course, a greater power will be
necessary to lift the air-ship originally,
and it may be some time before the art
of managing an air-ship is discovered;
but the final result, I am convinced,
will allow men to sail about in the air
as easily and as safely as the birds do.
I predict that we will see the beginning
of this modern miracle by the end of
the nineteenth century.

“Of course the air-ship of the future
will be constructed without any balloon
attachment. The discovery of the balloon
undoubtedly retarded the solution
of the flying problem for over a hundred
years. Ever since the Montgolfiers
taught the world how to rise in the
air by means of inflated gas-bags, the
inventors working at the problem of
aerial navigation have been thrown on
the wrong track. Scientific men have
been wasting their time trying to steer
balloons, a thing which in the nature
of the case is impossible to any great
extent, inasmuch as balloons, being
lighter than the resisting air, can never
make headway against it. The fundamental
principle of aerial navigation is
that the air-ship must be heavier than
the air. It is only of recent years that
men capable of studying the problem
seriously have accepted this as an
axiom. Electricity in one form or another
will undoubtedly be the motive
power for air-ships, and every advance
in electrical knowledge brings us one
step nearer to the day when we shall
fly. It would be perfectly possible,
to-day, to direct a flying machine by
means of pendant electric wires which
would transmit the necessary current
without increasing the load to be borne.
Perhaps a feasible means of propelling
such an air-ship would be by a kind
of trolley system where the rod would
hang down from the car to the stretched
wire, instead of extending upward. This
is an idea which I would recommend to
inventors.”

It is most interesting to watch Professor
Bell as he talks about the great
inventions which he sees with prophetic
eye in store for the world. He has the
happy faculty of expressing great ideas
in simple words, and there is nothing
ponderous in his speech. He is as enthusiastic
as a school-boy thinking of
the kite he will make as big as a barn-door.
His black eyes flash, and they
seem all the blacker contrasted with
his white hair; the words tumble out
quickly, and those who have the good
fortune to listen are carried away by
the magnetism of this great inventor.

SEEING BY ELECTRICITY.

The mention of electricity brought
up new possibilities for future discovery,
some of them so amazing as to
almost pass the bounds of credibility.
He said:

“Morse taught the world years ago
to write at a distance by electricity;
the telephone enables us to talk at
a distance by electricity; and now
scientists are agreed that there is no
theoretical reason why the well-known
principles of light should not be applied
in the same way that the principles of
sound have been applied in the telephone,
and thus allow us to see at a
distance by electricity. It is some ten
years since the scientific papers of the
world were greatly exercised over a report
that I had filed at the Smithsonian
Institution a sealed packet supposed to
contain a method of doing this very
thing; that is, transmit the vision of
persons and things from one point on
the earth to another. As a matter of
fact, there was no truth in the report,
but it resulted in stirring up a dozen
scientific men of eminence to come out
with statements to the effect that they
too had discovered various methods of
41
seeing by electricity. That shows what
I know to be the case, that men are
working at this great problem in many
laboratories, and I firmly believe it will
be solved one day.

“Of course, while the principle of
seeing by electricity at a distance is
precisely that applied in the telephone,
yet it will be very much more difficult
to construct such an apparatus, owing
to the immensely greater rapidity with
which the vibrations of light take place
when compared with the vibrations of
sound. It is merely a question, however,
of finding a diaphragm which will
be sufficiently sensitive to receive these
vibrations and produce the corresponding
electrical variations.”

THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE BY
ELECTRICITY.

After he had spoken of this idea for
some time, Professor Bell stopped suddenly,
and, with an amused twinkle in
his eyes, exclaimed: “But while we are
talking of all this, what is to prevent
some one from discovering a way of
thinking at a distance by electricity?”

Having said this, the genial professor
threw himself back and laughed
heartily at the amazement his words
awakened. Was he joking? Apparently
not, for he proceeded seriously
to discuss one of the most astounding
conceptions that ever entered an inventor’s
mind. Thinking by electricity!
Imagine two persons, one
thousand or ten thousand miles apart,
placed in communication electrically,
in such a way that, without any spoken
word, without sounding-board, key, or
any bodily movement, the one receives
instantly the thoughts of the other, and
instantly sends back his own thoughts.
The wife in New York knows what is
passing in the brain of her husband in
Paris. The husband has the same
knowledge. What boundless possibilities,
to be sure, this arrangement offers
for business men, lovers, humorous
writers, and the police authorities!

Preposterous as such an idea appears
in its first conception, it certainly assumes
an increasing plausibility when
one listens to Professor Bell’s reasoning.

“After all,” he says, “what would
there be in such a system more mysterious
than in the processes of the
mind reader? You substitute a wire
and batteries for a strange-eyed man
in a dress suit, that is all.”

The logical basis of Professor Bell’s
scheme is clear, and its details quite
beautiful in their simplicity, when you
admit his major premise. That premise
is that the human brain is merely
a kind of electrical reservoir, and that
thinking is nothing more than an
electrical disturbance, like the aurora
borealis or the sparks from a Holtz
machine. The nerves are the wires
leading from the central battery in
the head. The reasonableness of this
assumption is increased when one remembers
that electricity may be made
to act upon the nerves, even in a lifeless
body, so as to produce the same
muscular contractions which are produced
by the brain force, whatever that
may be. We talk of animal magnetism.
What if it were the same as any other
kind of magnetism? If these two
forces are identical in one respect, why
may they not be so in all respects? So
Professor Bell reasons, and granting
that the human brain is merely a store-house
of electricity for our bodily
needs, of electricity not essentially different
from that which we know elsewhere,
it must be possible to apply the
same electrical laws to the brain as
to any other electric apparatus and to
get similar results.

“Do you begin to see my idea?”
said Professor Bell, growing more and
more enthusiastic as he proceeded.
Then he gave a rapid outline of what
might be a system of thinking by electricity.

Everyone knows, who knows anything
about the subject, that an electric
current passing inside of a coil of wire
induces an electric current in that wire.
Now, if the human brain be taken as a
battery, then currents are constantly
passing from it to various parts of the
body, and the head may be considered
in a state of constant electrical excitement,
the intensity varying with the
character of the thought processes.
Now, suppose a coil of wire properly
prepared in the shape of a helmet, and
42
fitted about the head of one person,
with wires attached and connected with
a helmet similarly fitted upon the head
of another person at any convenient
distance. Every electric current in the
one human battery must induce a current
in the coil around the head, which
current must be transmitted to the
other coil. This other coil must then,
by the reversed process, induce a current
in the brain within helmet No. 2,
and that person must receive some
cerebral sensation. This cerebral sensation
might be a thought, and probably
would be, if it turns out to be true
that brain force is identical with electricity.
In that case, the thought of
the one person would have produced a
thought in the other person, and there
is, if we go as far as this, every reason
to believe that it would be the same
thought. Thus the problem of thinking
at a distance by electricity would
be solved.

So much for a curious theory of
what might be, if so and so were true;
but Professor Bell has not stopped
with theories, but has actually begun
to put them to the test. Not that he
is over-sanguine as to the result, but
he believes the experiment worth the
making, and that seriously. He has
actually had two helmets, such as those
described, constructed, and has begun
a series of experiments in his laboratory.
Thus far, the results have been
for the most part negative, but not so
much so as to prevent him hoping that
more perfect appliances may lead to
something more conclusive. It is true
that the thought in one brain has produced
a sensation in the other, through
the two helmets, but what the relation
was between the thought and the sensation
could not be determined.

MAKING THE DEAF HEAR BY THE USE
OF ELECTRICITY.

By quick stages the conversation
ran into another channel with new
wonders possible in the future. Professor
Bell has conceived of a method
of making the deaf hear, which is certainly
startling. He proposes to do
away with ears entirely, and produce
the sensations of hearing by direct communication
with the brain, through the
bones of the head. As a matter of
fact, the brains of deaf people are
usually in a perfectly healthy condition,
and the only thing which prevents
them from hearing is some defect in
communication with the vibrating air.
If their brains could be excited artificially
in the same way that the brains
of ordinary persons are excited by vibrations
communicated through the various
chambers and passages of the
ear, then the deaf would hear in the
same way that other persons do.

It is, of course, a fact, that hearing
in every instance is merely an illusion
of the senses, a sort of tickling of the
brain. This tickling of the brain is
ordinarily accomplished by the nerve
force passing from the third chamber
of the ear to the brain itself. If this
nerve force is nothing more or less
than ordinary electricity, and if science
can train electricity to tickle the brain
artificially in the same way and at the
same points that the nerves from the
ear usually do, then the ordinary sensations
of hearing must result, whether
the person has ears or not. The problem
here is to discover the proper way
of tickling the brain. The gentlemen
who seat themselves in electrocution
chairs have their brains tickled in a
way which would not be generally satisfactory.

THERE IS DANGER IN SUCH EXPERIMENTS.

In his desire to bring relief to the
deaf—and his whole life has been devoted
to that object—Professor Bell
has begun a series of remarkable experiments
in this line. Some time ago,
he determined to study the effects produced
upon the brain by turning an
electric current into it through the side
of the head. With this end in view, he
arranged a dynamo machine with a
feeble current, giving a varying number
of interruptions per second, and attached
one of the poles to a wet sponge
which he placed in one of his ears.

“I risked one of my ears,” he said
simply, “in making this experiment,
but I could not risk them both, so I
held the second pole of the machine
43
in my hand and turned on the current.”

Fortunately no harm resulted, but
immediately Professor Bell experienced
the sensation of a pleasant sound
whose pitch he was able to vary by
increasing or diminishing the number
of interruptions in the dynamo machine.
His assistant standing beside him could
detect no sound at all, so that what
Professor Bell heard must have been
the effect of the electric current upon
his brain. This effect he found could
be varied by varying the character of
the current. Now he argues that
greater variations might be produced
in the sounds heard by the brain if the
current turned into it were varied in
the proper manner. For instance, suppose
the current from a long distance
telephone to be turned through the
head of the deaf mute, a sponge connected
with either pole being placed in
each ear. Then let some one talk into
the telephone in the ordinary way, the
infinite variations in the current produced
by the voice vibrations being
passed into the brain directly. Is it
not conceivable that such a variety of
brain sensations or tones might then
be caused in the head of the deaf mute
as to make it possible to establish a
system of sound signals, so to speak,
which would be the equivalent of ordinary
language? Indeed, is it not possible
that the deaf mute might actually
hear spoken words?

Professor Bell’s experiments upon
himself have been so encouraging as to
make him disposed to try more complete
experiments in the same line
upon persons who have lost all sense
of hearing, and who would doubtless
be willing to take the inevitable risk
for the sake of the great blessing which
a successful issue would bring to them.

We talked a long time about these
strange fancies, and finally I said to
Professor Bell:

“But on this principle of brain tickling,
what is to prevent a blind man
from seeing by electricity?”

“I do not know that there is anything
to prevent it.”

By permission from “The Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Poet Laureate,” Macmillan &
Co., New York and London, 1893.

I am often asked what is the secret of
Mr. Gladstone’s extraordinary length
of days and of the perfection of his
unvarying health. It may be partly
attributed to the remarkable longevity
of the Gladstone family, a hardy Scottish
stock with fewer weak shoots and
branches than perhaps any of the ruling
families of England. But it has
depended mainly on Mr. Gladstone
himself and on the undeviating regularity
of his habits. Most English
statesmen have been either free livers
or with a touch of the bon vivant in
them. Pitt and Fox were men of the
first character; Melbourne, Palmerston,
and Lord Beaconsfield were of the last.
But Mr. Gladstone is a man who has
been guilty of no excesses, save perhaps
in work. He rises at the same hour
every day, uses the same fairly generous,
but always carefully regulated,
diet, goes to bed about the same hour,
pursues the same round of work and
intellectual and social pleasure. An
extraordinarily varied life is accompanied
by a certain rigidity of personal
habit I have never seen surpassed.
The only change old age has witnessed
has been that the House of Commons
work has been curtailed, and that Mr.
Gladstone has not of late years been
seen in the House after the dinner hour,
which lasts from eight till ten, except on
nights when crucial divisions are expected.
With the approach of winter
and its accompanying chills, to which
he is extremely susceptible, he seeks the
blue skies and dry air of the Mediterranean
coasts and of his beloved Italy.
With this exception his life goes on in
its pleasant monotony. At Hawarden,
of course, it is simpler and more private
than in London. In town to-day
Mr. Gladstone avoids all large parties
and great crushes and gatherings where
he may be expected to be either mobbed
or bored or detained beyond his usual
bed-time.

HIS PERSONALITY.

Personally Mr. Gladstone is an example
of the most winning, the most
delicate, and the most minute courtesy.
He is a gentleman of the elder English
school, and his manners are grand and
urbane, always stately, never condescending,
and genuinely modest. He
affects even the dress of the old school,
and I have seen him in the morning wearing
an old black evening coat, such as
Professor Jowett still affects. The humblest
passer-by in Piccadilly, raising
his hat to Mr. Gladstone, is sure to
get a sweeping salute in return. This
courtliness is all the more remarkable,
because it accompanies and adorns a
very strong temper, a will of iron, and
a habit of
being regarded
for the
greater part
of his lifetime
as a personal
force
of unequalled
magnitude.
Yet the most
foolish, and
perhaps one
may add the
most impertinent,
of Mr.
Gladstone’s
dinner-table
questioners is
sure of an
45
elaborate reply, delivered with the air
of a student in deferential talk with
his master. To the cloth Mr. Gladstone
shows a reverence that occasionally
woos the observer to a smile. The
callowest curate is sure of a respectful
listener in the foremost Englishman
of the day. On the other hand,
in private conversation the premier
does not often brook contradiction.
His temper is high,
and though, as
George Russell has
said, it is under vigilant
control, there
are subjects on
which it is easy to
arouse the old lion.
Then the grand eyes
flash, the torrent of
brilliant monologue
flows with more
rapid sweep, and
the dinner table is
breathless at the
spectacle of Mr.
Gladstone angry. As
to his relations with
his family, they are
very charming. It
is a pleasure to hear
Herbert Gladstone—his
youngest, and
possibly his favorite
son—speak of “my
father.” All of them,
sons and daughters,
are absolutely devoted
to his cause,
wrapped up in his
personality, and enthusiastic
as to
every side of his
character. Of children
Mr. Gladstone
has always been
fond, and he has more than one favorite
among his grandchildren.

MR. GLADSTONE’S MORNING.

Mr. Gladstone’s day begins about
7.30, after seven hours and a half of
sound, dreamless sleep, which no disturbing
crisis in public affairs was ever
known to spoil. At Hawarden it usually
opens with a morning walk to
church, with which no kind of weather—hail,
rain, snow, or frost—is ever allowed
to interfere. In his rough slouch hat
and gray Inverness cape, the old man
plods sturdily to his devotions. To
the rain, the danger of sitting in wet
clothes, and small troubles of this kind,
he is absolutely impervious, and Mrs.
Gladstone’s solicitude has never availed
to change his lifelong custom in this
respect. Breakfast over, working time
commences. I am often astonished at
the manner in which Mr. Gladstone
manages to crowd his almost endlessly
varied occupations into the forenoon,
for when he is in the country he has
practically no other continuous and
regular work-time. Yet into this space
he has to condense his enormous correspondence—for
which, when no private
secretary is available, he seeks the help
46
of his sons and daughters—his political
work, and his varied literary pursuits.
The explanation of this extreme orderliness
of mind is probably to be found
in his unequaled habit of concentration
on the business before him. As
in matters of policy, so in all his private
habits, Mr. Gladstone thinks of one
thing and of one thing only at a time.
When home rule was up, he had no eyes
or ears for any political subject but
Ireland, of course excepting his favorite
excursions into the twin subjects of
Homer and Christian theology. Enter
the room when Mr. Gladstone is reading
a book; you may move noisily about
the chamber, ransack the books on the
shelves, stir the furniture, but never for
one moment will the reader be conscious
of your presence. At Downing
Street, during his earlier ministries,
these hours of study were often, I
might say usually, preceded by the famous
breakfast at which the celebrated
actor or actress, the rising poet, the
well-known artist, the diplomatist halting
on his way from one station of the
kingdom to another, were welcome
guests. Madame Bernhardt, Miss Ellen
Terry, Henry Irving, Madame Modjeska,
have all assisted at these pleasant
feasts.

HIS AFTERNOON.

Lunch with Mr. Gladstone is a very
simple meal which neither at Hawarden
nor Downing Street admits of much
form or publicity. The afternoon
which follows is a very much broken
and less regular period. At Hawarden
a portion of it is usually spent out of
doors. In the old days it was devoted
to the felling of some giant of the
woods. Within the last few years, however,
Sir Andrew Clark, Mr. Gladstone’s
favorite physician and intimate friend,
has recommended that tree-felling be
given over; and now Mr. Gladstone’s
recreation, in addition to long walks,
in which he still delights, is that of
lopping branches off veterans whose
trunks have fallen to younger arms.

AS A READER.

Between the afternoon tea and dinner
the statesman usually retires again,
and gets through some of the lighter
and more agreeable of his intellectual
tasks. He reads rapidly, and I think I
should say that, especially of late years,
he does a good deal of skipping. If a
book does not interest him, he does not
trouble to read it through. He uses a
rough kind of memoria technica to enable
him to mark passages with which
he agrees, from which he dissents,
which he desires to qualify, or which he
reserves for future reference. I should
say the books he reads most of are
those dealing with theology, always
the first and favorite topic, and the history
of Ireland before and after the
Act of Union. Indeed, everything dealing
with that memorable period is
greatly treasured. I remember one
hasty glance over Mr. Gladstone’s
book table in his town house. In
addition to the liberal weekly, “The
Speaker,” and a few political pamphlets,
there were, I should say, fifteen
47
or twenty works on theology, none of
them, as far as I could see, of first-rate
importance. Of science Mr. Gladstone
knows little, and it cannot be said that
his interest in it is keen. He belongs,
in a word, to the old-fashioned Oxford
ecclesiastical school, using the controversial
weapons which are to be found
in the works of Pusey and of Hurrell
Froude. In his reading, when a question
of more minute and out-of-the-way
scholarship arises, he appeals to
his constant friend and assistant, Lord
Acton, to whose profound learning he
bows with a deference which is very
touching to note.

MR. GLADSTONE’S LIBRARY.

Mr. Gladstone’s library is not what
can be called a select or really first-rate
collection. It comprises an undue
proportion of theological literature, of
which he is a large and not over-discriminating
buyer. I doubt, indeed,
whether there is any larger private
bookbuyer in England. All the book-sellers
send him their catalogues, especially
those
of rare and
curious
books. I
have seen
many of
these lists,
with a brief
order in
Mr. Gladstone’s
own
handwriting
on the
flyleaf, with
his tick
against
twenty or
thirty volumes
which
he desires
to buy.
These usually
range
round classical works, archæology,
special periods of English history, and,
above all, works reconciling the Biblical
record with science. Of late, as is
fairly well known, Mr. Gladstone has
built himself an octagonal iron house
in Hawarden village, a mile and a half
from the castle, for the storage of his
specially valuable books and a collection
of private papers which traverse a
good many of the state secrets of the
greater part of the century. The importance
of these is great, and the
chances are that before Mr. Gladstone
dies they will all be grouped and indexed
in his upright, a little crabbed,
but perfectly plain, handwriting. By
the way, a great many statements have
been made about Mr. Gladstone’s
library, and I may as well give the
facts which have never before been
made public. His original library consisted
of about twenty-four thousand
volumes. In the seventies, however,
he parted with his entire collection
of political works, amounting to some
eight thousand volumes, to the late
Lord Wolverton. The remaining fifteen
thousand or so are now distributed
between the little iron house to which
I have referred, and the Hawarden
library. Curiously enough, Mr. Gladstone
is not a worshiper of books for
the sake of their outward adornments.
He loves them for what is inside rather
than outside. He even occasionally
sells extremely rare and costly editions
for which he has no special use.
In all money matters, indeed, he is a
thrifty, orderly Scotchman. He has
48
never been rich, though his affairs have
greatly improved since the time when
in his first premiership he had to sell
his valuable collection of china.

AT THE DINNER TABLE.

Dinner with Mr. Gladstone is the
stately ceremonial meal which it has
become to the upper and upper-middle
class Englishman. Mr. Gladstone invariably
dresses for it, wearing the
high crest collar which Harry Furniss
has immortalized, and a cutaway coat
which strikes one as of a slightly old-fashioned
pattern. His digestion never
fails him, and he eats and drinks with
the healthy appetite of a man of thirty.
A glass of champagne is agreeable to
him, and if he does not take his glass
or two of port at dinner, he makes it
up by two or three glasses of claret,
which he considers an equivalent.
Oysters he never could endure, but,
like Schopenhauer and Goethe and
many another great man, he is a consistently
hearty and unfastidious eater.
He talks much in an animated monologue,
though the common complaint
that he monopolizes the conversation
is not a just one. You cannot easily
turn Mr. Gladstone into a train of ideas
which does not interest him, but he is
a courteous and even eager listener;
and if the subject is of general interest,
he does not bear in it any more than
the commanding part which the rest
of the company invariably allows him.
His speaking voice is a little gruffer
and less musical than his oratorical
notes, which, in spite of the invading
hoarseness, still at times ring out with
their old clearness. As a rule he does
not talk on politics. On ecclesiastical
matters he is a never wearied disputant.
Poetry has also a singular charm for
him, and no modern topic has interested
him more keenly than the discussion
as to Tennyson’s successor to the
laureateship. I remember that at a
49
small dinner at which I recently met
him, the conversation ran almost entirely
on the two subjects of old English
hymns and young English poets.
His favorite religious poet is, I should
say, Cardinal Newman, and his favorite
hymn, Toplady’s “Rock of Ages,” of
which his Latin rendering is to my
mind far stronger and purer than the
original English. When he is in town,
he dines out almost every day, though,
as I have said, he eschews formal and
mixed gatherings, and affects the small
and early dinner party at which he can
meet an old friend or two, and see a
young face which he may be interested
in seeing. One habit of his is quite
unvarying. He likes to walk home,
and to walk home alone. He declines
escort, and slips away for his quiet stroll
under the stars, or even through the fog
and mist on a London winter’s night.
Midnight usually brings his busy, happy
day to a close. Sleeplessness never
has and never does trouble him, and at
eighty-three his nights are as dreamless
and untroubled as those of a boy
of ten.

IN THE HOUSE.

His afternoons when in town and
during the season are, of course, given
up pretty exclusively to public business
and the House of Commons,
which he usually reaches about four
o’clock. He goes by a side door
straight to his private room, where he
receives his colleagues, and hears of
endless questions and motions, which
fall like leaves in Vallambrosa around
the head of a prime minister. Probably
steps will be taken to remove
much of this irksome and somewhat
petty burden from the shoulders of the
aged minister. But leader Mr. Gladstone
must and will be at eighty-three,
quite as fully as he was at sixty. Indeed,
the complaint of him always has
been that he does too much, both for
his own health and the smooth manipulation
of the great machine which,
as was once remarked, creaks and
moves rather lumberingly under his
masterful but over-minute guidance.
During the last two or three years it
has been customary for the Whigs to
so arrange that Mr. Gladstone speaks
early in the evening. He is not always
able to do this while the Home Rule
Bill is under discussion, but I do not
think he will ever again find it necessary
to follow the entire course of a
Parliamentary debate. He never needed
to do as much listening from the
Treasury Bench as he was wont to do
in his first and second ministries. I do
not think that any prime minister ever
spent half as much time in the House
of Commons as did Mr. Gladstone;
certainly no one ever made one-tenth
part as many speeches. Indeed, it requires
all Mrs. Gladstone’s vigilance to
avert the physical strain consequent
upon overwork. With this purpose she
invariably watches him in the House
of Commons, from a corner seat in the
right hand of the Ladies’ Gallery which
is always reserved for her, and which I
have never known her to miss occupying
on any occasion of the slightest
importance.

SPEECH-MAKING.

I have before me two or three examples
of notes of Mr. Gladstone’s
speeches; one of them refers to one of
the most important of his addresses on
50
the customs question. It was a long
speech, extending, if I remember rightly,
to considerably over an hour. Yet
the memoranda consist purely of four
or five sentences of two or three words
apiece, written on a single sheet of
note paper, and no hint of the course
of the oration is given. Occasionally,
no doubt, especially in the case of the
speech on the introduction of the Home
Rule Bill, which was to my mind the
finest Mr. Gladstone has ever delivered,
the notes were rather more extensive
than this, but as a rule they are extremely
brief. When Mr. Gladstone
addresses a great public meeting, the
most elaborate pains are taken to insure
his comfort. He can now only
read the very largest print, and careful
and delicate arrangements are made to
provide him with lamps throwing the
light on the desk or table near which
51
he stands. Sir Andrew Clark observes
the most jealous watchfulness over his
patient. A curious instance of this occurred
at Newcastle, when Mr. Gladstone
was delivering his address to the
great liberal caucus which assembles
as the annual meeting of the National
Liberal Federation. Sir Andrew had
insisted that the orator should confine
himself to a speech lasting only an hour.
Fearing that his charge would forget
all about his promise in the excitement
of speaking, the physician, slipped
onto the platform and timed Mr.
Gladstone, watch in hand. The hour
passed, but there was no pause in the
torrent of words. Sir Andrew was in
despair. At last he pencilled a note to
Mr. Morley, beseeching him to insist
upon the speech coming to an end.
But Mr. Morley would not undertake
the responsibility of cutting a great
oration, and the result was that Mr.
Gladstone stole another half hour from
time and his physician. The next day
a friend of mine went breathlessly up
to Sir Andrew, and asked how the
statesman had borne the additional
strain. “He did not turn a hair,” was
the reply. Practically the only sign of
physical failure which is apparent in
recent speeches has been that the voice
tends to break and die away after about
an hour’s exercise, and for a moment
the sound of the curiously veiled notes
and a glance at the marble pallor of
the face gives one the impression that
after all Mr. Gladstone is a very, very
old man. But there is never anything
like a total breakdown. And no one
is aware of the enormous stores of
physical energy on which the prime
minister can draw, who has not sat
quite close to him, and measured the
wonderful breadth of his shoulders
and heard his voice coming straight
from his chest in great bouffées of
sound. Then you forget all about
the heavy wrinkles in the white
face, the scanty silver hair, and the
patriarchal look of the figure before
you.

One of the most humorous sights in
nature, less common in America
than Europe, is a snail wandering about
with a shell on its back. The progenitors
of snails once lived in the sea, and
when they evolved themselves ashore
they carried this relic of the water with
them,—an anomaly which, seen to-day,
seems as ridiculous as if one were to
meet an Indian in Paris with his canoe
on his back. But there are more animals
besides snails that once lived in
the water. If embryology is any guide
to the past, nothing is more certain
than that the ancient progenitors of
Man once lived an aquatic life. As the
traveller, wandering in foreign lands,
brings back all manner of curios to remind
him where he has been—clubs
and spears, clothes and pottery, which
represent the ways of life of those
whom he has met, so the body of Man,
returning from its long journey through
the animal kingdom, emerges laden
with the spoils of its watery pilgrimage.
These relics are not mere curiosities;
they are as real as the clubs
and spears, the clothes and pottery.
Like them, they were once a part of
life’s vicissitude; they represent organs
which have been outgrown; old
forms of apparatus long since exchanged
for better, yet somehow not
yet destroyed by the hand of time.
The physical body of Man, so great is
the number of these relics, is an old
curiosity-shop, a museum of obsolete
anatomies, discarded tools, outgrown
and aborted organs. All other animals
also contain among their useful
organs a proportion which are long
past their work; and so significant are
these rudiments of a former state of
things, that anatomists have often expressed
their willingness to stake the
theory of Evolution upon their presence
alone.

Prominent among these vestigial
structures, as they are called, are those
which smack of the sea. At one time
there was nothing else in the world but
water-life; all the land animals are late
inventions. One reason why animals
began in the water is that it is easier
to live in the water—anatomically and
physiologically cheaper—than to live
on the land. The denser element supports
the body better, demanding a less
supply of muscle and bone; and the
perpetual motion of the sea brings the
food to the animal, making it unnecessary
for the animal to move to the food.
This and other correlated circumstances
call for far less mechanism in the body,
and, as a matter of fact, all the simplest
forms of life at the present day
are inhabitants of the water.

A successful attempt at coming
ashore may be seen in the common
worm. The worm is still so unacclimatized
to land life that instead of
living on the earth like other creatures,
it lives in it, as if it were a thicker water,
and always where there is enough
moisture to keep up the traditions of
its past. Probably it took to the shore
originally by exchanging, first the water
for the ooze at the bottom, then by
wriggling among muddy flats when the
tide was out, and finally, as the struggle
for life grew keen, it pushed further
and further inland, continuing its migration
so long as dampness was to be
found. Its cousin the snail, again, goes
even further, for it not only carries its
shell ashore but when it cannot get
moisture, actually manufactures it.

When Man left the water, however,—or
what was to develop into Man—he
took very much more ashore with
him than a shell. Instead of crawling
ashore at the worm stage, he remained
in the water until he evolved into something
like a fish; so that when, after
an amphibian interlude, he finally left
it, many “ancient and fish-like” characters
remained in his body to tell the
tale. Now, it is among these piscine
characteristics that we find the clue to
where Man got his ears. The chief
characteristic of a fish is its apparatus
for breathing the air dissolved in the
water. This consists of gills supported
on strong arches, the branchial arches,
which in the Elasmobranch fishes are
from five to seven in number and uncovered
with any operculum, or lid.
Communicating with these arches, in
order to allow the water which has
been taken in at the mouth to pass out
at the gills, an equal number of slits or
openings are provided in the neck.
Without these holes in their neck all
fishes would instantly perish, and we
may be sure Nature took exceptional
care in perfecting this particular piece
of the mechanism. Now it is one of
the most extraordinary facts in natural
history that these slits in the fish’s
neck are still represented in the neck
of Man. Almost the most prominent
feature, indeed, after the head, in every
mammalian embryo, are the four clefts
or furrows of the old gill-slits.[1] They
are still known in embryology by no
other name—gill-slits—and so persistent
are these characters that children
have been known to be born with them
not only externally visible—which is a
common occurrence—but open, through
and through, so that fluids taken in at
the mouth could pass through them and
trickle out at the neck. This fact was
so astounding as to be for a long time
denied. It was thought that when this
happened, the orifice must have been
accidentally made by the probe of the
surgeon. But Dr. Sutton has recently
met with actual cases where this has
occurred. “I have seen milk,” he says,
“issue from such fistulæ in individuals
who have never been submitted to
sounding.”[2]

In the common case of children
born with these vestiges, the old gill-slits
are represented by small openings
in the skin on the sides of the neck
and capable of admitting a thin probe.
Sometimes the place where they have
been in childhood is marked throughout
life by small round patches of
white skin. These relics of the sea,
these apparitions of the Fish, these
sudden resurrections, are betrayals of
man’s pedigree. Men wonder at mummy-wheat
germinating after a thousand
years of dormancy. But here are ancient
features bursting into life after
unknown ages, and challenging modern
science for a verdict on their affinities.

When the fish came ashore, its water-breathing
apparatus was no longer of
any use to it. At first it had to keep
it on, for it took a long time to perfect
the air-breathing apparatus which was
to replace it. But when this was ready
the problem was, what to do with the
earlier organ? Nature is exceedingly
economical, and could not throw all
this mechanism away. In fact Nature
almost never parts with any structure
she has once made. What she does is
to change it into something else. Conversely,
Nature seldom makes anything
new; her method of creation is
to adapt something old. Now when
Nature started out to manufacture
ears, she made them out of the old
breathing apparatus. She saw that if
54
water could pass through a hole in the
neck, sound could pass likewise, and
she set to work upon the highest up of
the five gill-slits and slowly elaborated
it into a hearing organ.

There never had been an external
ear in the
world till
this was
done, or
any good
ear at all.
Creatures
which live in
water do not
seem to use
hearing
much, and
the sound-waves in fishes are simply conveyed
through the walls of the head to
the internal ear without any definite
mechanism. But as soon as land-life
began, owing to the changed medium
through which sound-waves must now
be propagated, a more delicate instrument
was required. And hence one of
the first things attended to was the
construction and improvement of the
ear.

It has long been a growing certainty
to Comparative Anatomy that the external
and middle ear in Man are simply
a development, an improved edition,
of the first gill-cleft and its surrounding
parts. The tympano-Eustachian passage
is the homologue or counterpart
of the spiracle, associated in the shark
with the first gill-opening. Professor
His of Leipsic has worked out the
whole development in minute detail,
and conclusively demonstrated the
mode of origin of the external ear
from the coalescence of six rounded
tubercles surrounding the first branchial
cleft at an early period of embryonic
life. Haeckel’s account of
the process is as follows: “All the
essential parts of the middle ear—the
tympanic membrane, tympanic cavity,
and Eustachian tube—develop
from the first gill-opening with its
surrounding parts, which in the
Primitive Fishes (Selachii) remains
throughout life as an open blowhole,
situated between the first and second
gill-arches. In the embryos of higher
Vertebrates it closes in the centre, the
point of concrescence forming the tympanic
membrane. The remaining outer
part of the first gill-opening is the
rudiment of the outer ear-canal. From
the inner part originates the tympanic
cavity, and further inward, the Eustachian
tube.
In connection
with
these, the
three bonelets
of the
ear develop
from the
first two
gill-arches;
the hammer
and anvil
from the first, and the stirrup from the
upper end of the second gill-arch.
Finally as regards the external ear,
the ear-shell (concha auris), and the
outer ear-canal, leading from the shell
to the tympanic membrane—these
parts develop in the simplest way from
the skin-covering which borders the
outer orifice of the first gill-opening.
At this point the ear-shell rises in the
form of a circular fold of skin, in
which cartilage and muscles afterwards
form.”[3]

Now bearing in mind this account
of the origin of ears, an extraordinary
circumstance confronts us. Ears are
actually sometimes found bursting out
in human beings half way down the
neck, in the exact position—namely
along the line of the anterior border of
the sterno-mastoid muscle—which the
gill-slits would occupy if they still persisted.
In some human families where
the tendency to retain these special
structures is strong, one member sometimes
illustrates the abnormality by
possessing the clefts alone, another has
a cervical ear, while a third has both a
cleft and an ear,—all these of course
in addition to the ordinary ears. This
cervical auricle has all the characters
of the ordinary ear, “it contains yellow
elastic cartilage, is skin-covered, and
has muscle-fibre attached to it.”[4]

Dr. Sutton further calls attention to
the fact that on ancient statues of
fauns and satyrs cervical auricles are
sometimes found, and he figures the
head of a satyr from the British Museum,
carved long before the days of
anatomy, where a sessile ear on the
neck is most distinct. A still better
illustration may be seen in the Art
Museum at Boston on a full-sized cast
of a faun belonging to the later Greek
period; and there are other examples
in the same building. One interest of
these neck-ears in statues is that they
are not as a rule modelled after the
human ear but taken from the cervical
ear of the goat, from which
the general idea of the
faun was derived. This
shows that neck-ears were
common on the goats of
that period—as they are
on goats to this day—but
the sculptor would hardly
have had the daring to introduce
this feature in the
human subject unless he
had been aware that pathological
facts encouraged
him. The occurrence of
these ears in goats is no
more than one would expect.
Indeed one would
look for them not only in
Man, but in all the Mammalia,
for so far as their
bodies are concerned all
the higher animals are near
relations. Observations on
vestigial structures in animals
are sadly wanting;
but they are certainly
found in the horse, pig, sheep, and
others.

That the human ear was not always
the squat and degenerate instrument it
is at present may be seen by a critical
glance at its structure. Mr. Darwin
records how a celebrated sculptor
called his attention to a little peculiarity
in the external ear, which he had
often noticed both in men and women.
“The peculiarity consists in a little
blunt point, projecting from the inwardly
folded margin or helix. When
present, it is developed at birth, and
according to Professor Ludwig Meyer,
more frequently in man than in woman.
The helix obviously consists of the
extreme margin of the ear folded inwards;
and the folding appears to be
in some manner connected with the
whole external ear being permanently
pressed backwards. In many monkeys
who do not stand high in the order, as
baboons and some species of macacus,
the upper portion of the ear is slightly
pointed, and the margin is not at all
folded inwards; but if the margin were
to be thus folded, a slight point would
necessarily project towards the centre.”[5]

Here then, in this discovery of the
lost tip of the ancestral ear, is further
and visible advertisement of man’s
Descent, a surviving symbol of the
stirring times and dangerous days of
his animal youth. It is difficult to
imagine any other theory than that of
Descent which could account for all
these facts. That evolution should
leave such clues lying about is at least
an instance of its candor.

But this does not exhaust the betrayals
of this most confiding organ.
If we turn from the outward ear to
the muscular apparatus for working it,
fresh traces of its animal career are
brought to light. The erection of the
ear, in order to catch sound better, is
56
a power possessed by almost all mammals,
and the attached muscles are
large and greatly developed in all but
domesticated forms. This same apparatus,
though he makes no use of it
whatever, is still attached to the ears
of Man. It is so long since he relied
on the warnings of hearing, that by a
well-known law the muscles
have fallen into disuse and
atrophied. In many cases,
however, the power of twitching
the ear is not wholly lost,
and every school-boy can point
to some one in his class who
retains the capacity and is apt
to revive it in irrelevant circumstances.

One might run over all the
other organs of the human
body and show their affinities
with animal structures and an
animal past. The twitching of
the ear, for instance, suggests
another obsolete or obsolescent
power—the power, or rather
the set of powers, for twitching
the skin, especially the skin
of the scalp and forehead by
which we raise the eyebrows.
Sub-cutaneous muscles for
shaking off flies from the skin,
or for erecting the hair of the scalp,
are common among quadrupeds, and
these are represented in the human
subject by the still functioning muscles
of the forehead, and occasionally
of the head itself. Everyone has met
persons who possess the power of moving
the whole scalp to and fro, and the
muscular apparatus for effecting it is
identical with what is normally found
in some of the Quadrumana.

Another typical vestigial structure is
the plica semi-lunaris, the remnant of
the nictitating membrane characteristic
of nearly the whole vertebrate sub-kingdom.
This membrane is a semi-transparent
curtain which can be drawn
rapidly across the external surface of
the eye for the purpose of sweeping it
clean. In birds it is extremely common,
but it also exists in fish, mammals,
and all the other vertebrates. Where
it is not found of any functional value
it is almost always represented by vestiges
of some kind. In Man all that is
left of it is a little piece of the curtain
draped at the side of the eye.

When one passes from the head to
the other extremity of the human
body one comes upon a somewhat unexpected
but very pronounced characteristic—the
relic of the tail, and
not only of the tail, but of muscles
57
for wagging it. Everyone who first
sees a human skeleton is amazed at
this discovery. At the end of the
vertebral column, curling faintly outward
in suggestive fashion, are three,
four, and occasionally five vertebræ
forming the coccyx, a true rudimentary
tail. In the adult this is always
concealed beneath the skin, but in the
embryo, both in man and ape, at an
early stage it is much longer than the
limbs. What is decisive as to its true
nature, however, is that even in the embryo
of man the muscles for wagging
it are still found. In the grown-up
human being these muscles are represented
by bands of fibrous tissue, but
cases are known where the actual muscles
persist through life. That a distinct
external tail should not be still
found in Man may seem disappointing
to the evolutionist. But the want of a
tail argues more for the theory of Evolution
than its presence would have
done. It would have been contrary to
the Theory of Descent had he possessed
a longer tail. For all the anthropoids
most allied to Man have long since
also parted with theirs.

It was formerly held that the entire
animal creation had contributed something
to the anatomy of Man, that as
Serres expressed it “Human Organogenesis
is a condensed Comparative
Anatomy.” But though Man has not
such a monopoly of the past as is here
inferred—other types having here and
there emerged and developed along
lines of their own—it is certain that the
materials for his body have been
brought together from an unknown
multitude of
lowlier forms
of life.

Those who
know the Cathedral
of St.
Mark’s will remember
how
this noblest of
the Stones of
Venice owes
its greatness
to the patient
hands of centuries
and centuries
of workers,
how every
quarter of the
globe has been
spoiled of its
treasures to dignify this single shrine.
But he who ponders over the more
ancient temple of the human body will
find imagination fail him as he tries to
think from what remote and mingled
sources, from what lands, seas, climates,
atmospheres, its various parts have been
called together, and by what innumerable
contributory creatures, swimming,
creeping, flying, climbing, each
of its several members was wrought and
perfected. What ancient chisel first
sculptured the rounded columns of the
limbs? What dead hands built the
cupola of the brain, and from what
older ruins were the scattered pieces
of its mosaic-work brought? Who
fixed the windows in its upper walls?
What forgotten looms wove its tapestries
and draperies? What winds and
weathers wrought the strength into its
buttresses? What ocean-beds and forest
glades worked up the colors?
What Love and Terror and Night called
forth the Music? And what Life and
58
Death and Pain and Struggle put all
together in the noiseless workshop of
the past and removed each worker
silently when its task was done? How
these things came to be Biology is one
long record. The architects and builders
of this mighty temple are not anonymous.
Their names, and the work
they did, are graven forever on the
walls and arches of the Human Embryo.
For this is a volume of that Book in
which Man’s members were written,
which in continuance were fashioned,
when as yet there was none of them.

FOOTNOTES

The following letters were written
in 1888 and 1889, by James Parton to
the Honorable Alfred R. Conkling of
New York City. In December, 1888,
Mr. Conkling wrote to Mr. Parton,
making him a formal offer to assist in
the preparation of the “Life and Letters
of Roscoe Conkling.” Mr. Parton
generously declined to accept payment,
but took a great interest in the work,
and during the following year corresponded
frequently with Mr. Conkling,
advising upon specific points and setting
forth the general principles of the
art of biography.

We are indebted to Mr. Conkling for
permission to print these letters, which
are full of wise suggestion to the literary
“recruit,” and of genuine human
interest to all lovers of good reading.
They give us glimpses of Mr. Parton,
not only as a conscientious writer of
biography who had acquired a rare
mastery of his art, but also as a man of
aggressive interest in public affairs, of
broad mind, and a singularly wholesome
nature.

Newburyport, Mass., Dec. 8, 1888.

Dear Sir: I am glad to learn from
yours of yesterday that we are to have
a biography of so interesting and
marked a character as the lamented
Roscoe Conkling, and I should esteem
it a privilege to render any assistance
toward it in my power.

The great charm of all biography is
the truth, told simply, directly, boldly,
charitably.

But this is also the great difficulty.
A human life is long. A human character
is complicated. It is often inconsistent
with itself, and it requires
nice judgment to proportion it in such
a way as to make the book really correspond
with the man, and make the
same impression upon the reader that
the man did upon those who knew him
best.

Your difficulty will be to present
fairly his less favorable side; but upon
this depends all the value, and much
of the interest of the work.

My great rules are:

1, To know the subject thoroughly
myself; 2, to index fully all the knowledge
in existence relating to it; 3, to
determine beforehand where I will be
brief, where expand, and how much
space I can afford to each part; 4, to
work slowly and finish as I go; 5, to
avoid eulogy and apology and let the
facts have their natural weight; 6, to
hold back nothing which the reader
has a right to know.

I have generally had the great advantage
of loving my subjects warmly,
and I do not believe we can do justice
to any human creature unless we love
him. A true love enlightens, but not
blinds, as we often see in the case of
mothers who love their children better,
60
and also know them better, than anybody
else ever does.

With regard to New York, I am
always going there, but never go;
still, I may have to go soon, and I
will go anyway if I can do anything
important or valuable in the way you
suggest—but not “professionally,” except
as an old soldier helps a recruit.

Very truly yours,

James Parton.

Newburyport, Mass., Dec. 24, 1888.

Dear Sir: I have examined with
much interest and pleasure your work
upon Mexico, with a title so extravagantly
modest as almost to efface the
author. Let us accept our fate. It is
our destiny to live in an age when all
human distinctions are abolished, or
about to be abolished, except the advertiser
and his victim. Your work
appears to me to be quite a model, and
I wish I were going to be a tourist in
Mexico that I might have the advantage
of using it.

One word more with regard to your
biography. In the case of a person
like Mr. Conkling, whose vocation it
was to express himself in words, and
whose utterances were often most
brilliant and powerful, I think you
should make great and free use of his
letters and speeches. Is not a volume
of five hundred pages too small? Could
you not make a work in two volumes,
and get Mark Twain to sell it by subscription?

Another: I hope you feel the peculiar
character and importance of that part
of New York of which Utica is the
central point. It does not figure much
in books, but there are many strong
and remarkable families there. I should
like to see it elucidated. The first
questions to be asked of a man are:
Where, and of whom, was he born?

Very truly yours,

James Parton.

P. S.—For example: If you know
fully what a Corsican is, you have the
key to the understanding of Bonaparte.
He was a Corsican above all things
else, and not in the least a Frenchman.

So of Andrew Jackson: He was a
Scotch-Irishman. Alexander Hamilton:
a Scotch-Frenchman.

Newburyport, Mass., March 26, 1889.

My dear Sir: You can give a sufficiently
“complete account” of an event
without giving a long one. Now, the
duel between two such persons as Burr
and Hamilton may be long, because it
can also be interesting. Readers are
interested in the men, in the time, in
the scene, and the whole affair is surcharged
with human interest. In that
Elmira trial, the chief interest will
centre in your uncle’s tact and success.
I should give enough of the
trial to enable the reader to see and
appreciate his part in the affair. My
impression is: Do not expend many
pages upon it, but pack the pages full
of matter. You want all your room
for other scenes in which he displayed
his great power in a striking way.

Many qualities are desirable in a
book, only one is necessary—to be interesting
enough to be read. The art is,
to be short where the interest is small,
and long where the interest is great.

Your uncle’s speeches do not need
much “comment.” Most speeches contain
one passage which includes the
whole.

I fear I shall not be able to visit
New York this spring.

Very truly yours,

James Parton.

Newburyport, Mass., April 3, 1889.

My Dear Sir: As often as possible
I would insert the bright things where
they belong, as they seem to enliven
the narrative. If you have an inconvenient
surplus, or a number of things
undated, you might make a chapter of
them, or reserve them for the final
chapter. It is a good rule, though
only a rule, not to have breaks in the
continuity, like the “Bagman’s Story”
in “Pickwick.” Readers are apt to
skip them, however good they may be
in themselves. You have doubtless
often done so. A good thing is twice
good when it comes in just where it
ought. The modern reader is very
shy, and easily breaks away from you,
if you only give him a pretext.

I merely send my impressions. You
alone can really judge.

Very truly yours,

James Parton.

Newburyport, Mass., April 17, 1889.

My dear Sir: The description of
your uncle’s oratory will be so sure to
interest the reader, that it may come
in almost anywhere, but best, perhaps,
where you mention his first notable
speech. Remember, too, that the author
has, in his last chapter, not only a
chance to “sum up,” but also an opportunity
to slip in anything he may have
omitted. An interesting thing it is
always to know how a strong man
grew old, what changes occurred in his
manner, methods and character.

By all means, use the personal pronoun
sparingly, and allude unfrequently
to your relationship. It is not necessary
wholly to avoid either. Deal
with the reader honestly and openly.
There may come moments when calling
him “my uncle” would be fair,
and in the best taste—but not often.

The ladies have the privilege of
skipping. Make your late chapter
about the law practice in New York
very full and clear. It will very greatly
interest everybody who will be likely
to read the book. It is the intrinsic
worth of a book that is to be considered
before all things else.

I fear you are making the book too
short. Mind: It cannot be what is called
“popular.” It must appeal to the few.
Ought it not to be two volumes at five
dollars?

Very truly yours,

James Parton.

Think of Blaine’s book and its sale
by subscription.

The difference between one volume
published in the ordinary way, and two
volumes by subscription, may be the
difference between a profit of two
thousand dollars and one of two hundred
thousand dollars.

Blaine’s book, sold over the counter,
might have gone to the length of five
thousand copies. Sold by subscription,
it made him rich.

On this point, however, Mr. Appleton’s
opinion is worth ten of mine.

Newburyport, Mass., April 26, 1889.

My Dear Sir: The pamphlet has
only just arrived.

So far as the comments are necessary
to elucidate the text, and to explain
why and how the text came to be
uttered, they are justified—no farther.
Your uncle was such a master of expression
that almost anything placed
in juxtaposition must suffer from the
contrast.

Let him have the whole floor, I say,
and just give the indispensable explanations.
It would be impossible to
enhance the effect of his characteristic
passages. They need, like diamonds,
a quiet setting.

Very truly yours,

James Parton.

Newburyport, Mass., June 4, 1889.

My dear Sir: I return your paper
of questions. Give plenty of the
“light matter” to which you refer,
and I hope you will extract many passages
that show your uncle’s horror of
corruption. The pamphlets you were
so good as to send me are valuable and
interesting. I do not wonder at his
great success before a jury. He was
an awful man to have on the other
side. Is there any one who could describe
for you some of the noted
scenes in which your uncle figured,
but which you did not witness yourself?
There may be available interviews
in the newspapers. I remember
hearing Thomas Nast talk about him
very enthusiastically after returning
from a visit to him in Washington.
You could make a nice chapter about
the Senate—its ways and occupations,
traditions and tone—viewed merely as
a club of gentlemen.

I am glad that Mark Twain is going
to publish the book. Give all the pictures
you dare.

Very truly yours,

James Parton.

Newburyport, Mass., Aug. 5, 1889.

Dear Sir: Would not those “undated
anecdotes” come in well to illustrate
and brighten your summing-up
chapter? If not, then the plan you
suggest might answer very well.

I am glad to hear that you are so
near to the end of your labors, and
that the work is to be published by
the ever victorious firm of Mark
Twain. If I have been able to render
62
you the smallest service I am glad, and
you are heartily welcome.

Very truly yours,

James Parton.

Newburyport, Mass., Dec. 28, 1889.

Dear Sir: Your solid volume reached
me several days ago, and some time
after, your letter of Dec. 20. I have
now read the work pretty carefully,
and shall no doubt often return to it.
Considering the restraints you were
under, as nephew and as Republican,
you have executed your task well and
given to the world the most pathetic
of the tragedies resulting from the system
of spoils. Never again, until that
blighting curse of free institutions is
destroyed, will a man of Roscoe Conkling’s
genius, pride and purity remain
long in the public service, if ever he
enters it. He was the last of the Romans.
My great regret is that he did
not consecrate his whole existence to
the reform of the civil service. I have
such an acute sense of the shame, the
cruelty and the childish folly of the
present system that I sometimes feel
as if we ought to stop all our other
work and enter upon a universal crusade
against it.

You must not expect the public to
remain satisfied with the omissions and
suppressions of your book. Sooner or
later, somebody will supply them, and
you might just as well have told the
whole story.

I am glad to hear of the success of
the book with the public.

Very truly yours,

James Parton.

Paris, April 20, 1893.

Let me say, at the very start, that
it is imperative not to forget the
date which heads this article. This
date has a significance of the highest
importance, for it marks the opening of
a new era. The political situation of
Europe is to-day widely different from
what it was only yesterday. Yesterday
the entire world turned an eye feverishly
intent towards Belgium, upon the
spectacle there of the decisive struggle
between an established government and
an unestablished proletariat. There
was to be seen in Belgium the constitutional
authority of an entire realm,
backed by the force of arms, opposed
by a militant labor democracy. On
the one side, law, authority, armed
force; on the other, lack of authority,
of capital, and of arms; in a word,
vague nothingness struggling against
omnipotence. Yet it is the former
that has won the day. Omnipotence
has belied its name, and has been
driven to the wall; the defeat has
been crushing. But more than this, it
has been significant. I repeat, it marks
the opening of a new era.

For the world-wide association of
laborers now comprehends that it holds
the Old World in its hands. It has
discovered the invincible power of the
strike, in obedience to the watchword
emanating from its irresponsible leaders.
Here is a force which is negative,
perhaps, but one against which nothing
henceforth can prevail. Lo, a silent
word of command, and the towers of
Jericho fall! Before a general strike
of this sort the Old World is to-day
powerless, like the child at the breast
to whom the mother refuses to give
suck.

This is a fact so big with suggestion,
so sudden, so almost terrifying, that it
changes all our former points of view.
I could not have written yesterday
what I can write to-day; for when I
saw unexpectedly breaking out “the
troubles in Belgium,” I could not but
postpone till all was over the writing
of the article for which I had been
asked. No one has as yet fairly grappled
with the meaning of the new social
pact prepared in mystery, a pact of
which the dark elaboration had been
only suspected, but which has just
become so startlingly revealed. The
idea of the strike as applied to political
problems upsets all preconceived notions.
What has hitherto been regarded
as the only real force is now as if paralyzed;
instead, sheer, silent will-power
remains the only sovereign. In such
circumstances who would venture to
draw the horoscope of the Europe of
to-morrow?

For consider the situation. Recognized
constitutional government has
actually thought itself fortunate in
treating with “strikers,” and in attempting
to conceal the reality of its
defeat behind the vain show of an arrangement,
the actual significance of
which deceives nobody. The face of
Europe has changed in an instant.
The Old World is conquered. Socialism
bestirs itself, and begins its conquering
march. The dangerous problems, hitherto
so vague, become instantly pressing.
Yet no one is ready with a solution,
and few care even to discuss these
problems. Even the leaders of the
hostile army, the strike generals, do
not, can not, measure all the consequences
of their orders. Drunk with
their new power they forget for the
moment its unseen bearings. When
first, more used to the sensation of omnipotence,
they look about them to see
what their action may have precipitated,
they will draw back in horror.

The phrase, “the present situation of
Europe,” therefore, can have reference
65
now only to a very indefinite and a
future thing. The present is big with
uncertainties for the morrow, and the
prospect would be really distressing, if
the established wielders of power did
not realize—what now is inevitable—the
imperative necessity of coming to
some understanding with this fresh
force; the hopelessness, henceforward,
of playing with theories of repression,
and the duty of negotiating with this
great amorphous army, which, once it
is on the march, may drink dry the
cisterns at which human society is
accustomed to assuage its thirst. And
it is in the light of these events in
Belgium, that I do not hesitate to say,
that Europe for a long time still will
not be menaced by war. The social
problem is now too pressing. It requires
the entire attention. Woe to the
blind! The hour of rest is past; a new
world awakes. It knows its strength.
It has everything to gain, nothing to
lose. Follow it with anxious eye, ye
who sleep now in possession, for if ye
sleep too long, ye will awake in chains!

But apart from this event, which is
the prelude of a social struggle to be
of long duration, yet absolutely inevitable,
it is possible at this moment,
when the European world is preparing
to turn westward beyond the Atlantic,
there to entrust to the proud loyalty
of the United States immense and untold
treasures, to predict for this continent
a prolonged peace—a peace,
however, which is as the uncertain
tranquillity of an old man heavily
dozing on a bed where there is no real
rest. It is alone one of those incidents,
impossible to anticipate, which seize
whole nations as with madness, driving
them to arms and carnage, and leaving
them at the end of the disillusion of
the struggle stupefied with their victory,
or terrified in their defeat, that
can break the uncertain spell of this
restless sleep. But incidents such as
these, which bring to naught all human
calculation, can, indeed must, be left
out of account, when considering the
character of a given moment, and the
prospects of peace or war.

Europe, just now, is divided up
rather arbitrarily, but none the less
really. This is partly due to a
premeditated combination, partly to
chance, partly also to the bungling or
ignorance of rulers. The Triple Alliance,
due to the decisive action of
Prince Bismarck, is the only truly
scientific conception of the sort, the
only one possessing a stable and
seriously laid foundation. It includes
Austria, which relies on Germany to
shield it from Russia, as its directly
menacing foe, or to bar against Russia
the route to Constantinople whenever
Russia shall appear fatally dangerous
to the existence of the combined empire
of Austria-Hungary. It includes
Germany, which, as careful organizer
of the Alliance, is thus protected
against any possible simultaneous action
of France and Russia. It includes
Italy, which, otherwise weak in the
presence of the disdainful hostility of
France, is thus assured a certain security
and repose. Aside from this great
Triple Alliance, the European states
have no real collective organization;
there are only affinities badly defined,
private interests, or uncertain situations
from which they do not venture
to think of extricating themselves.
What is called the Franco-Russian
understanding is limited at the moment
to an exchange of notes which
might serve as the basis of a military
convention; to demonstrations at once
noisy and platonic, in which France is
playing a sort of Potiphar role; and to
the chance eventuality of Russia’s one
day finding herself engaged in some
formidable struggle when she could
count on the irresistible and unthinking
enthusiasm of France, who would
place blood and treasure at her disposal.

When has human history ever afforded
such a spectacle?

No real alliance exists between Russia
and France, but no French government
could resist popular pressure,
were the question to come up of helping
Russia in the case of a war direct
or indirect against Germany. Yet at a
single gesture of the autocratic czar,
Russia would shoulder arms and fight
in whatever deadly combat France
found itself involved. The Emperor
of Russia is to-day, perhaps, the most
formidable monarch who has ever existed.
66
He has at his unchecked beck
and call the vastest empire in Europe,
but an empire without gold, sunlight,
or liberty. Stop! It is a force, blind and
brutal, and capable of a frightful impact;
a force which the finger of a
single man can set in motion, and
which may be made to fall crushingly
at the exact point designated by the
imperious and imperial gesture. To
this force which does not reason, the
czar can, with a gleam of his sword,
rally the power of France. France, the
country of sunlight and liberty, where
gold flows in rivulets, where every
citizen thinks and wills, and where
every soldier would fight to the death,
conscious that it is only with Russia,
in common struggle against common
enemies, that a great conflict may be
undertaken. The spectacle of such
power, dormant in one human brain,
is almost overwhelming; and the psychologist
who portends that every man
disposing of autocratic power, whether
czar, sultan or pope, must inevitably
go mad, utters a thought perhaps not
so paradoxical after all.

However, this autocrat so formidably
armed is well known to be absolutely
pacific. He turns a constantly listening
ear to the counsels of an experienced
queen, herself full of the spirit
of peace, the Queen of Denmark. This
queen loves Germany; she adores the
young emperor whom she calls “an
angel.” She has already smoothed
down many rough places. It was she
who brought about the Kiel interview
and the visit of the czarevitch to Berlin.
She has strengthened the idea of
peace in the brain of this emperor,
whence, instead, war might spring full-armed;
war fin de siècle; the new, mysterious,
unprecedented form of it; the
war of infinitely multiplied murder,
covering the Old World with corpses
of the slain. The special factor of
armed explosion most to be dreaded in
Europe is thus held in check by an all-powerful
hand gently directed. It is
nothing less than the work of God that
has made him who holds the chief of
the arsenals of power, pacific, and thus
reassuring to the world.

Turn your vision from this tacit
though vague understanding between
France and Russia, and look beyond
the regularly organized Triple Alliance;
the eye falls on three great isolated
powers, directed by various
motives, and the action of which, determined
upon only at the last moment,
is constantly in the thought of the
other ruling nations. Of these three
the first is England. No minister of
foreign affairs in any country would
ever think of committing towards the
English nation the crime of supposing
its policy subservient to that of any
other nation. The dream or the fear
of a quadruple alliance has haunted
only the crudest brains. England remains
free in its movements, and it will
preserve this liberty to the last. This
is, moreover, for the happiness of all;
for, except in those accesses of madness,
a sort of factor of which, as I
said, no account can be taken, no
power will think of taking up a struggle
in which the intervention of England,
on one side or the other, can
determine the issue.

The second great power which remains
free of all entanglement is that
which dominates the Bosphorus. A
strange power, indeed! It has no
friends. There it remains alone on this
European soil, of which it occupies certain
extreme points, like a bit of abandoned
booty tempting the cupidity of
the Christian world. The whole of
Europe looks thither with dull hate,
and each power would willingly bear
away a bit of the trappings and the
hangings that render soft and resplendent
the gilded cage where lies the sick
lion of Yildiz Kiosk. If ever the war
which appears to me so distant breaks
out, Abdul Hamid, or his successor,
will have his hands free; and at the
supreme moment when the conqueror,
whomsoever he may be, cannot reject
them, will impose his conditions. If
the then sultan neglects to seize the
event, it is not at all sure that the crescent
will cease to mark its silhouette
on the firmament of Europe; but at all
events, until then European peace is
the surest safeguard of the Ottoman
Empire, and this Abdul Hamid well
knows.

The third of the great isolated powers
of which I speak is personified to-day
67
by the grand old man whom an heroic
pertinacity, henceforward to be traditional,
keeps a prisoner at the Vatican.
No one can have any idea of the life
and movement which reigns in this
voluntary prison which lies over against
the Quirinal. Thither flow innumerable
missives from every corner of the
world, and could I only tell some of
them, it would be seen how long still
is the arm extending from the shadow
of St. Peter’s; how dreadful still are
the lips that speak in the shade of the
Vatican. I should show the Holy
Father and his cardinals writing to the
Emperor of Austria, directing him by
counsel and advice, and sometimes almost
by their orders. I should show
Prince Bismarck continuing, since his
fall, to hold before the eyes of the
pope, glimpses of the more or less partial
restoration of the temporal power.
I should show Leo XIII. now trying to
unite, now to alienate, France and Russia,
according as at the moment this or
that policy seems to him most propitious
for his own cause or the cause of
peace; and I should show, at the same
time, the Vatican divided within itself,
and Cardinal Vauncelli working, in
secret letters addressed to powerful
sovereigns, against the policy of Cardinal
Rampolla, and acting on the
mind of Leo XIII. to detach him from
his secretary of state, and wean him
from the democratic policy on which
he is now launched. I should show,
also, all the leading politicians of
France, whether in power or out, soliciting
the support, the protection, the
favor of Leo XIII., and the latter
working with astounding insight for
the fusion, more and more complete, of
the liberal monarchical party with the
Republic. I should show again how,
owing to mysterious action, instability
has become the normal state of France;
and how the action of Russia, driven
by the double current from the north
and the south, not only has been not
a source of strength for M. Ribot,
but even forced him to his fall. Not
only did the czar refuse to send the
Russian fleet to France, and to let the
czarevitch pass through Paris under
pretext of going from Berlin to London,
but he has just of late imposed on
the French prime minister exigencies
of such a nature that the latter has
preferred to lay down the power rather
than to submit. When M. Ribot, minister
of foreign affairs, committed the
political stupidity of carrying to the
tribune the name of Baron Mohrenheim
in connection with the Panama
scandal, the Emperor of Russia showed
that he was much irritated and wounded.
M. Develle, minister of foreign
affairs, hurried to the baron with excuses.
But the czar declared these
excuses unsatisfactory. M. Ribot then
went himself to see the ambassador
and give him certain explanations and
excuses. Still the czar was not satisfied.
He demanded a letter written
by the prime minister and addressed
to the Russian minister of foreign
affairs, M. de Giers, who was then
stopping at the gates of France. M.
Ribot could not accept this demand.
He had already endured the insult of
M. Stambouloff during the affair of the
Chadourne expulsion. He did not wish
to leave behind him a letter of excuse
addressed to M. de Giers. He preferred
to fall, and he fell.

This is a fair instance of the hidden
forces which sweep through the side-scenes
of international European politics.
In the preceding rapid summary
of the present state of politics in the
Old World, the conclusion must come
irrefutably, and that is the ground of
these remarks, that no war is in sight,
nor will be for yet a long time. The
Triple Alliance wishes, and necessarily
wishes, peace. The young German emperor,
from whom people have affected
to anticipate some mad and irresponsible
conduct, has no doubt uttered
some imprudent words, but he has
never committed any dangerous action.
Really, his mouth seems a sort of safety-valve
for the boiling steam within. So
far he is satisfied with the conquests
already secured. He is trying to bring
back to him the Emperor of Russia.
The meeting which he is now having
with the pope is intended to bring
about a formal rapprochement between
the Quirinal and Vatican. Leo XIII., in
turning his face towards the democracy,
disquiets all thrones; but he disquiets
especially the throne of Italy, since he
68
is showing the Italians that the Papacy
is not only not an enemy of republics,
but that it might be the protector of
future republics in Italy, if the Italian
fatherland, dreaming of the former brilliant
prosperity, tried to found a democratic
federation, with the pope as the
centre and beneficent father. But at
the same time Leo XIII. will whisper
peace in the ear of William II. The
young emperor wishes for a long era
of peace. The new military law, with
its far-reaching bearings, proves this.
Even to-day he would never think of
undertaking a war which left Prince
Bismarck out of account, and he will
never undertake a war which might
cause his return.

So, too, the Emperor of Austria, King
of Hungary; he too is inclined to
peace. He cannot risk a war. The
bonds which link the different portions
of the empire are too fragile to be exposed
to the rude strain of armed
strife. Italy, perhaps, by a fortunate
war might be a gainer; but it is not
strong enough to provoke one, or even
to carry one on. It would regard the
Papacy at the Vatican as too great a
danger at its back; and, with little
hope of conquering anything without
its borders, it might legitimately fear
to find Rome no longer intact on its
return.

As for the Emperor of Russia, he
is moderate at once in his love for
France and his hatred of Germany.
So far, a man of genius has been wanting
to cement the bonds of alliance
between France and Germany. There
is already an understanding, vague,
platonic, and with no morrow assured
to it. The French Republic will recoil
before the thought of war, so long as
Russian action does not precipitate an
explosion. The Republic knows that
war would be at its peril; that vanquished
it is submerged under floods of
anarchy, that victorious it brings forth
a Cæsar, and it wishes peace.

England, rich, industrial, devoted to
its own internal problems, preserves an
attitude which is an earnest of peace.
So that, when one casts a steady glance
over the Europe of the present hour,
one is minded to say to the world
about to repair to the great centre of
industry, of letters, and of art, which
Chicago is so soon to be: “Go in
peace. War is distant. Gather in
peace the fruit of your peaceful victories.”

Blowitz.

I.

ON THE UNION SIDE.

Private O’Halloran,
detailed for
special duty in advance
of the picket line, sat reclining
against a huge red oak. Within reach
lay a rifle of beautiful workmanship.
In one hand he held a blackened
brier-root pipe, gazing on it with an air
of mock regret. It had been his companion
on many a weary march and
on many a lonely day, when, as now,
he was doing duty as a sharp-shooter.
But it was not much of a companion
now. It held the flavor, but not the
fragrance, of other days. It was empty,
and so was O’Halloran’s tobacco-pouch.
It was nothing to grumble
about, but the big, laughing Irishman
liked his pipe, especially when it was
full of tobacco. The words of an old
song came to him, and he hummed
them to himself:

What with the singing and the far-away
thoughts that accompanied the
song, Private O’Halloran failed to hear
footsteps approaching until they sounded
quite near.

“Halt!” he cried, seizing his rifle
and springing to his feet. The newcomer
wore the insignia of a Federal
captain, seeing which, O’Halloran lowered
his weapon and saluted. “Sure,
sor, you’re not to mind me capers. I
thought the inimy had me complately
surrounded—I did, upon me sowl.”

“And I,” said the captain, laughing,
“thought the Johnnies had caught me.
It is a pleasant surprise. You are
O’Halloran of the Sharp-shooters, I
have heard of you—a gay singer and
a great fighter.”

“Sure it’s not for me to say that
same. I sings a little bechwane times
for to kape up me sperits, and takes
me chances, right and lift. You’re
70
takin’ a good many yourself, sor, so far
away from the picket line. If I make
no mistake, sor, it is Captain Somerville
I’m talkin’ to.”

“That is my name,” the captain said.

“I was touchin’ elbows wit’ you at
Gettysburg, sor.”

The captain looked at O’Halloran
again. “Why, certainly!” he exclaimed.
“You are the big fellow that
lifted one of the Johnnies over the
stone wall.”

“By the slack of the trousers. I
am that same, sor. He was nothin’
but a bit of a lad, sor, but he fought
right up to the end of me nose. The
men was jabbin’ at ’im wit’ their bay’nets,
so I sez to him, says I, ‘Come
in out of the inclemency of the weather,’
says I, and thin I lifted him over.
He made at me, sor, when I put ’im
down, an’ it took two men for to lead
’im kindly to the rear. It was a warm
hour, sor.”

As O’Halloran talked, he kept his
eyes far afield.

“Sure, sor,” he went on, “you stand
too much in the open. They had one
muddlehead on that post yesterday;
they’ll not put another there to-day,
sor.” As he said this, the big Irishman
seized the captain by the arm and
gave him a sudden jerk. It was an
unceremonious proceeding, but a very
timely one, for the next moment the
sapling against which the captain had
been lightly leaning was shattered by
a ball from the Confederate side.

“Tis an old friend of mine, sor,”
said O’Halloran; “I know ’im by his
handwritin’. They had a muddlehead
there yesterday, sor. I set in full
sight of ’im, an’ he blazed at me twice;
the last time I had me fist above me
head, an’ he grazed me knuckles. ‘Be-dad,’
says I, ‘you’re no good in your
place;’ an’ when he showed his mug, I
plugged ’im where the nose says
howdy to the eyebrows. ’Twas no
hurt to ’im, sor; if he seen the flash,
’twas as much.”

To the left, in a little clearing, was
a comfortable farm-house. Stacks of
fodder and straw and pens of corn in
the shuck were ranged around. There
was every appearance of prosperity,
but no sign of life, save two bluebirds,
the pioneers of spring, that were fighting
around the martin gourds, preparing
to take possession.

“There’s where I was born.” The
captain pointed to the farm-house. “It
is five years since I have seen the place.”

“You don’t tell me, sor! I see in the
Hur’ld that they call it the Civil War,
but it’s nothin’ but oncivil, sor, for to
fight agin’ your ould home.”

“You are right,” assented the captain.
“There’s nothing civil about
war. I suppose the old house has
long been deserted.”

“Sure, look at the forage, thin.
’Tis piled up as nately as you please.
Wait till the b’ys git at it! Look at
the smoke of the chimbly. Barrin’ the
jay-birds, ’tis the peacefulest sight
I’ve seen.”

“My people are gone,” said the captain.
“My father was a Union man.
I wouldn’t be surprised to hear of him
somewhere at the North. The day that
I was eighteen he gave me a larrupping
for disobedience, and I ran away.”

“Don’t
spake of it,
sor.” O’Halloran
held up
his hands. “Many’s the time I’ve had
me feelin’s hurted wit’ a bar’l stave.”

“That was in 1860,” said the captain.
“I was too proud to go back
home, but when the war began I remembered
what a strong Union man
my father was, and I joined the Union
army.”

“’Tis a great scheme for a play,”
said the big Irishman solemnly.

“My mother was dead,” the
captain went on, “my oldest sister
was married, and my youngest
sister was at school in Philadelphia,
and my brother, two years older than
myself, made life miserable for me in
trying to boss me.”

“Oh!” exclaimed O’Halloran, “don’t
I know that same? ’Tis meself that’s
been along there.”

Captain Somerville looked at the old
place, carefully noting the outward
changes, which were comparatively
few. He noted, too, with the eye of a
soldier, that when the impending conflict
took place between the forces then
facing each other, there would be a
sharp struggle for the knoll on which
the house stood; and he thought it was
a curious feat for his mind to perform,
to regard the old home where he had
been both happy and miserable as a
strategic point of battle. Private O’Halloran
had no such memories to please
or to vex him. To the extent of his opportunities
he was a
man of business. He
took a piece of white
cloth from his pocket
and hung it on the broken sapling.

“I’ll see, sor, if yon chap is in the
grocery business.”

As he turned away, there was a puff
of smoke on the farther hill, a crackling
report, and the hanging cloth jumped
as though it were alive.

“Faith, it’s him, sor!” exclaimed
O’Halloran, “an’ he’s in a mighty
hurry.” Whereupon the big Irishman
brushed a pile of leaves from an oil-cloth
strapped together in the semblance of
a knapsack.

“What have you there?” asked Captain
Somerville.

“Sure, ’tis me grocery store, sor.
Coffee, tay, an’ sugar. Faith, I’ll make
the devil’s mouth water like a baby
cuttin’ his stomach tathe. Would ye
mind comin’ along, sor, for to kape me
from swindlin’ the Johnny out of all
his belongin’s?”

II.

ON THE CONFEDERATE SIDE.

Three men sat in a gully that had
once been a hillside ditch. Their uniforms
were various, the result of accident
and capture. One of them wore
a very fine blue overcoat which was in
queer contrast to his ragged pantaloons.
This was Lieutenant Clopton,
who had charge of the picket line.
Another had on the uniform of an
artilleryman, and his left arm was in a
sling. He had come out of the hospital
to do duty as a guide. This was
Private John Fambrough. The third
had on no uniform at all, but was
dressed in plain citizen’s clothes, much
the worse for wear. This was Jack
Kilpatrick, scout and sharp-shooter.
Happy Jack, as he was called.

How long since the gully had been
a ditch it would be impossible to say,
but it must have been a good many
years, for the pines had grown into
stout trees, and here and there a black-jack
loomed up vigorously.

“Don’t git too permiscus around
here,” said Happy Jack, as the others
were moving about. “This ain’t no
fancy spot.” He eased himself upward
on his elbow, and made a swift but
careful survey of the woodland vista
that led to the Federal lines. Then he
shook down the breech of his rifle, and
slipped a long cartridge into its place.
“You see that big poplar over yonder?
Well, under that tree there’s a man,
leastways he ought to be there, because
he’s always hangin’ around in front of
me.”

“Why don’t you nail him?” asked
Fambrough.

“Bosh! Why don’t he nail me?
It’s because he can’t do it. Well, that’s
the reason I don’t nail him. You know
what happened yesterday, don’t you?
You saw that elegant lookin’ chap that
came out to take my place, didn’t you?
Did you see him when he went back?”

Lieutenant Clopton replied with a
little grimace, but Fambrough said
never a word. He only looked at Kilpatrick
with inquiring eyes.

“Why, he was the nicest lookin’ man
in the army—hair combed, clothes
brushed, and rings on his fingers. He
was all the way from New ’leans, with a
silver-mounted rifle and a globe sight.”

“A which?” asked Fambrough.

“A globe sight. Set down on yourself
a little further, sonny,” said Happy
Jack; “your head’s too high. I says
to him, says I, ‘Friend, you are goin’
where you’ll have to strip that doll’s
step-ladder off’n your gun, an’ come
down to business,’ says I. I says, says
I, ‘You may have to face a red-headed,
flannel-mouthed Irishman, and you
don’t want to look at him through all
that machinery,’ says I.”

“What did he say?” Fambrough
asked.

“He said, ‘I’ll git him.’ Now, how
did he git him? Why, he come down
here, lammed aloose a time or two, and
then hung his head over the edge of
the gully there, with a ball right spang
betwixt his eyes. I went behind the
picket line to get a wink of sleep, but
I hadn’t more’n curled up in the broom-sage
before I heard that chap a-bangin’
away. Then come the reply, like this—”
Happy Jack snapped his fingers;
“and then I went to sleep waitin’ for
the rej’inder.”

Kilpatrick paused, and looked steadily
in the direction of the poplar.

“Well, dog my cats! Yonder’s a
chap standin’ right out in front of me.
73
It ain’t the Mickey, neither. I’ll see
what he’s up to.” He raised his rifle
with a light swinging movement, chirruped
to it as though it were a horse
or a little child, and in another moment
the deadly business of war would have
been resumed, but Fambrough laid his
hand on the sharp-shooter’s arm.

“Wait,” he said. “That may be my
old man wandering around out there.
Don’t be too quick on trigger. I ain’t
got but one old man.”

“Shucks!” exclaimed Kilpatrick,
pettishly; “you reckon I don’t know
your old man? He’s big in the body,
an’ wobbly in his legs. You’ve spiled
a mighty purty shot. I believe in my
soul that chap was a colonel, an’ he
might ’a’ been a general. Now that’s
funny.”

“What’s funny?” asked Fambrough.

“Why, that chap. He’ll never know
you saved him, an’ if he know’d it he
wouldn’t thank you. I’d ’a’ put a hole
right through his gizzard. Now he’s
behind the poplar.”

“It’s luck,” Lieutenant Clopton suggested.

“Maybe,” said Kilpatrick. “Yonder
he is ag’in. Luck won’t save him
this time.” He raised his rifle, glanced
down the barrel, and pulled the trigger.
Simultaneously with the report an expression
of disgust passed over his
face, and with an oath he struck the
ground with his fist.

“Don’t tell me you missed him,” said
Clopton.

“Miss what?” exclaimed Kilpatrick
scornfully. “If he ain’t drunk, somebody
pulled him out of the way.”

“I told you it was luck,” commented
Clopton.

“Shucks! don’t tell me. Luck’s like
lightnin’. She never hits twice in the
same place.”

Kilpatrick sank back in the gully and
gave himself up to ruminating. He
leaned on his elbows and pulled up
little tufts of grass and weeds growing
here and there. Lieutenant Clopton,
looking across towards the poplar,
suddenly reached for the
sharp-shooter’s rifle, but
Kilpatrick placed his hand
on it jealously.

“Give me the gun. Yonder’s
a Yank in full view.”

Kilpatrick, still holding his rifle,
raised himself and looked.

“Why, he’s hanging out a flag of
truce,” said Clopton. “What does the
fellow mean?”

“It’s a message,” said Kilpatrick,
“an’ here’s the answer.” With that
he raised his rifle, dropped it gently
in the palm, of his left hand, and
fired.

“You saw the hankcher jump, didn’t
you?” he exclaimed. “Well, that lets
us out. That’s my Mickey. He wants
tobacco, and I want coffee an’ tea.
Come, watch me swap him out of his
eye teeth.”

Then Kilpatrick went to a clump of
broom sedge and drew forth a wallet
containing several pounds of prepared
smoking tobacco and a bundle of plug
tobacco, and in a few moments the trio
were picking their way through the
underwood towards the open.

III.

ON NEUTRAL GROUND.

Matters were getting critical for
Squire Fambrough. He had vowed
and declared that he would never be
a refugee, but he had a responsibility
on his hands that he had not counted
on. That responsibility was his daughter
Julia, twenty-two years old, and as
obstinate as her father. The Squire
had sent off his son’s wife and her
children, together with as many negroes
as had refused to go into the
Union lines. He had expected his
daughter to go at the same time, but
when the time arrived, the fair Julia
showed that she
had a mind of
her own. She
made no scene,
she did not go
into hysterics;
but when everything
was ready,
she asked her
father if he was
going. He said
he would follow
along after a
while. She called
to a negro, and
made him take
her trunks and
band-boxes from
the wagon and
carry them into
the house, while
Squire Fambrough
stood
scratching his
head.

“Why don’t
you make her
come?” his
daughter-in-law
asked, somewhat
sharply.

“Well, Susannah,”
the Squire remarked, “I ain’t
been a jestice of the peace and a married
man, off and on for forty year,
without findin’ out when to fool with the
wimen sek an’ when not to fool wi’ ’em.”

“I’d make her come,” said the
daughter-in-law.

“I give you lief, Susannah, freely
an’ fully. Lay your baby some’rs wher’
it won’t git run over, an’ take off your
surplus harness, an’ go an’ fetch her
out of the house an’ put her in the
buggy.”

But the daughter-in-law treated the
courteous invitation with proper scorn,
and the small caravan moved off, leaving
the fair Julia and her father in possession
of the premises. According to
human understanding, the refugees got
off just in the nick of time. A day or
two afterwards, the Union army, figuratively
speaking, marched up, looked
over Squire Fambrough’s front palings,
and then fell back to reflect over the
situation. Shortly afterwards the Confederate
army
marched up,
looked over the
Squire’s back
palings, and also
fell back to reflect.
Evidently
the situation
was one to justify
reflection, for
presently both
armies fell back
still farther.
These movements
were so
courteous and
discreet—were
such a colossal
display of etiquette—that
war seemed to
be out of the
question. Of
course there
were the conservative
pickets,
the thoughtful
videttes, and
the careful
sharp-shooters,
ready to occasion
a little
bloodshed, accidentally or intentionally.
But by far the most boisterously
ferocious appendages of the two armies
were the two brass bands. They were
continually challenging each other, beginning
early in the morning and ending
late in the afternoon; one firing
75
off “Dixie,” and the other “Yankee
Doodle.” It was “Yankee Doodle,
howdy do?” and “Doodle-doodle,
Dixie, too,” like two chanticleers challenging
each other afar off.

This was the situation as it appeared
to Squire Fambrough and his daughter.
On this particular morning the
sun was shining brightly, and the birds
were fluttering joyously in the budding
trees. Miss Julia had brought her book
out into the grove of venerable oaks
which was the chief beauty of the place,
and had seated herself on a rustic
bench that was built around one of the
trees. Just as she had become interested,
she heard a rifle-shot. She
moved uneasily, but fell to reading
again, and was apparently absorbed in
the book, when she heard another shot.
Then she threw the book down and
rose to her feet, making a very pretty
centerpiece in the woodland setting.

“Oh! what is the matter with everything?”
she exclaimed. “There’s the
shooting again! How can I read books
and sit quietly here while the soldiers
are preparing to fight? Oh, me! I
don’t know what to do! If there
should be a battle here, I don’t know
what would become of us.”

Julia, in her despair, was fair to look
upon. Her gown of striped homespun
stuff, simply made, set off to admiration
her strong but supple figure. Excitement
added a new lustre to her eye and
gave a heightened color to the rose
that bloomed on her cheeks. She stood
a moment as if listening, and then a
faint smile showed on her lips. She
heard her father calling:

“Jule! Jule! O Jule!”

“Here I am, father!” she cried.
“What is it?”

“Well, the Lord he’p my soul! I’ve
been huntin’ for you high an’ low. Did
you hear that shootin’? I ’lowed may
be you’d been took prisoner an’ carried
bodaciously off. Didn’t I hear you
talkin’ to somebody?”

Squire Fambrough pulled off his hat
and scratched his head. His face, set
in a fringe of gray beard, was kindly
and full of humor, but it contained not
a few of the hard lines of experience.

“No, father,” said Julia, in reply to
the Squire’s question. “I was only
talking to myself.”

“Jest makin’ a speech, eh? Well, I
don’t blame you, honey. I’m a great
mind to jump out here in the clearin’
an’ yell out my sentiments so that both
sides can hear ’em.”

“Why, what is the matter, father?”

“I’m mad, honey! I’m jest nachally
stirred up—dog my cats ef I ain’t!
Along at fust I did hope there wouldn’t
be no fightin’ in this neighborhood, but
now I jest want to see them two blamed
armies light into one another, tooth and
toe-nail.”

“Why, father!” Julia made a pretty
gesture of dismay. “How can you talk
so?”

“Half of my niggers is gone,” said
Squire Fambrough; “one side has got
my hosses, and t’other side has stole my
cattle. The Yankees has grabbed my
76
grist mill, an’ the Confeds has laid holt
of my corn crib. One army is squattin’
in my tater patch, and t’other one is
roostin’ in my cow pastur’. Do you
reckon I was born to set down here
an’ put up wi’ that kind of business?”

“But, father, what can you do?
How can you help yourself? For heaven’s
sake, let’s
go away from
here!”

“Great
Moses, Jule!
Have you
gone an’ lost
what little bit
of common
sense you
was born
with? Do you
reckon I’m a-goin’
to be
a-refugeein’
an’ a-skee-daddlin’
across the
country like
a skeer’d rabbit
at my time
of life? I
hain’t afeared
of nary two
armies they
can find room
for on these
hills! Hain’t
I got one son
on one side
an’ another
son on t’other
side? Much
good they are
doin’, too. If
they’d a-felt
like me they’d
a fit both
sides. Do
you reckon
I’m a-gwine to be drove off’n the place
where I was born, an’ where your granpappy
was born, an’ where your mother
lies buried? No, honey!”

“But, father, you know we can’t
stay here. Suppose there should be a
battle?”

“Come, honey! come!” There was
a touch of petulance in the old man’s
tone. “Don’t get me flustrated. I
told you to go when John’s wife an’
the children went. By this time you’d
’a’ been out of hearin’ of the war.”

“But, father, how could I go and
leave you here all by yourself?” The
girl laid her hand on the Squire’s
shoulder caressingly.

“No,” exclaimed the Squire, angrily;
“stay you would, stay you did, an’ here
you are!”

“Yes, and now I want to go away,
and I want you to go with me. All the
horses are not taken, and the spring
wagon and the barouche are here.”

“Don’t come a-pesterin’ me, honey!
I’m pestered enough as it is. Lord, if
77
I had the big men here what started
the war, I’d take ’em an’ butt their
cussed heads together tell you wouldn’t
know ’em from a lot of spiled squashes.”

“Now, don’t get angry and say bad
words, father.”

“I can’t help it, Jule; I jest can’t
help it. When the fuss was a-brewin’ I
sot down an’ wrote to Jeems Buchanan,
and told him, jest as plain as the words
could be put on paper, that war was
boun’ to come if he didn’t look sharp;
an’ then when old Buck dropped out, I
sot down an’ wrote to Abe Lincoln an’
told him that coercion wouldn’t work
worth a cent, but conciliation——”

“Wait, father!” Julia held up her
pretty hand. “I hear some one calling.
Listen!”

Not far away they heard the voice of
a negro. “Marse Dave Henry! O
Marse Dave Henry!”

“Hello! Who the nation are you
hollerin’ at?” said Squire Fambrough
as a youngish looking negro man came
in view. “An’ where did you come
from, an’ where are you goin’?”

“Howdy, mistiss—howdy, marster!”
The negro took off his hat as he came
up.

“What’s your name?” asked the
Squire.

“I’m name Tuck, suh. None er you
all ain’t seed nothin’ er Marse——”

“Who do you belong to?”

“I b’longs ter de Cloptons down dar
in Georgy, suh. None er you-all ain’t
seed nothin’——”

“What are you doin’ here?” demanded
Squire Fambrough, somewhat angrily.
“Don’t you know you are liable
to get killed any minute? Ain’t you
makin’ your way to the Yankee army?”

“No, suh.” The negro spoke with
unction. “I’m des a-huntin’ my young
marster, suh. He name Dave Henry
Clopton. Dat what we call him—Marse
Henry. None er you-all ain’t seed ’im,
is you?”

“Jule,” said the Squire, rubbing his
nose thoughtfully, “ain’t that the name
of the chap that used to hang around
here before the Yankees got too
close?”

“Do you mean Lieutenant Clopton,
father?” asked Julia, showing some
confusion.

“Yessum.” Tuck grinned and rubbed
his hands together. “Marse Dave
Henry is sholy a lieutender in de company,
an’ mistiss she say he’d a done
been a giner’l ef dey wa’nt so much enviousness
in de army.”

“I saw him this morning—I mean—”
Julia blushed and hesitated. “I
mean, I heard him talking out here in
the grove.”

“Who was he talking to, Jule?” The
Squire put the question calmly and deliberately.

There was a little pause. Julia, still
blushing, adjusted an imaginary hair-pin.
The negro looked sheepishly from
one to the other. The Squire repeated
his question.

“Who was he talking to, Jule?”

“Nobody but me,” said the young
lady, growing redder. Her embarrassment
was not lessened by an involuntary
“eh—eh,” from the negro. Squire
Fambrough raised his eyes heavenwards
and allowed both his heavy hands to
drop helplessly by his side.

“What was he talkin’ about?” The
old man spoke with apparent humility.

“N-o-t-h-i-n-g,” said Julia, demurely,
looking at her pink finger-nails. “He
just asked me if I thought it would
rain, and I told him I didn’t know; and
then he said the spring was coming on
very rapidly, and I said, ‘Yes, I thought
it was.’ And then he had found a
bunch of violets and asked me if I
would accept them, and I said, ‘Thank
you.’”

“Land of the livin’ Moses!” exclaimed
Squire Fambrough, lifting his
hands above his head and allowing
them to fall heavily again. “And they
call this war!”

“Yessum!” The negro’s tone was
triumphant. “Dat sholy wuz Marse
Dave Henry. War er no war, dat wuz
him. Dat des de way he goes ’mongst
de ladies. He gi’um candy yit, let
’lone flowers. Shoo! You can’t tell
me nothin’ ’tall ’bout Marse Dave
Henry.”

“What are you wanderin’ ’round
here in the woods for?” asked the
Squire. His tone was somewhat severe.
“Did anybody tell you he was here?”

“No, suh!” replied Tuck. “Dey
tol’ me back dar at de camps dat I’d
78
fin’ ’im out on de picket line, an’ when
I got dar dey tol’ me he wuz out dis
a-way, whar dey wuz some sharp-shootin’
gwine on, but I ain’t foun’ ’im
yit.”

“Ain’t you been with him all the
time?” The Squire was disposed to
treat the negro as a witness for the
defence.

“Lor, no, suh! I des now come right
straight fum Georgy. Mistiss—she
Marse Dave Henry’s ma—she hear talk
dat de solyers ain’t got no cloze fer ter
w’ar an’ no vittles fer ter eat, skacely,
an’ she tuck’n made me come an’ fetch
’im a box full er duds an’ er box full er
vittles. She put cake in dar, yit, ’kaze
I smelt it whiles I wuz handlin’ de box.
De boxes, dey er dar at de camp, an’
here me, but wharbouts is Marse Dave
Henry? Not ter be a-hidin’ fum somebody,
he de hardest white man ter fin’
what I ever laid eyes on. I speck I
better be knockin’ ’long. Good-by,
marster; good-by, young mistiss. Ef
I don’ fin’ Marse Dave Henry no
wheres, I’ll know whar ter come an’
watch fer ’im.”

The Squire watched the negro disappear
in the woods, and then turned to
his daughter. To his surprise, her
eyes were full of tears; but before he
could make any comment, or ask any
question, he heard the noise of tramping
feet in the woods, and presently
saw two Union soldiers approaching.
Almost immediately Julia called his
attention to three soldiers coming from
the Confederate side.

“I believe in my soul we’re surrounded
by both armies,” remarked the
Squire dryly. “But don’t git skeer’d,
honey. I’m goin’ to see what they’re
trespassin’ on my premises for.”

IV.

COMMERCE AND SENTIMENT.

“Upon my sowl,” said O’Halloran,
as he and Captain Somerville went forward,
the big Irishman leading the
way, “I’m afeard I’m tollin’ you into
a trap.”

“How?” asked the captain.

“Why, there’s three of the Johnnies
comin’, sor, an’ the ould man an’ the
gurrul make five.”

“Halt!” said the captain, using the
word by force of habit. The two
paused, and the captain took in the
situation at a glance. Then he turned
to the big Irishman, with a queer look
on his face.

“What is it, sor?”

“I’m in for it now. That is my
father yonder, and the young lady is
my sister.”

“The Divvle an’ Tom Walker!” exclaimed
O’Halloran. “’Tis quite a family
rayanion, sor.”

“I don’t know whether to make myself
known or not. What could have
possessed them to stay here? I’ll see
whether they know me.” As they
went forward, the captain plucked
O’Halloran by the sleeve. “I’ll be
shot if the Johnny with his arm in the
sling isn’t my brother.”

“I was expectin’ it, sor,” said the
big Irishman, giving matters a humorous
turn. “Soon the cousins will be
poppin’ out from under the bushes.”

By this time the two were near
enough to the approaching Confederates
to carry on a conversation by
lifting their voices a little.

“Hello, Johnny,” said O’Halloran.

“Hello, Yank,” replied Kilpatrick.

“What’s the countersign, Johnny?”

“Tobacco. What is it on your side,
Yank?”

“Tay an’ coffee, Johnny.”

“You are mighty right,” Kilpatrick
exclaimed. “Stack your arms agin a
tree.”

“The same to you,” said O’Halloran.

The Irishman, using his foot as a
broom, cleared the dead leaves and
twigs from a little space of ground,
where he deposited his bundle, and
Kilpatrick did the same. John Fambrough,
the wounded Confederate,
went forward to greet his father and
sister, and Lieutenant Clopton went
with him. The Squire was not in a
good humor.

“I tell you what, John,” he said to
his son, “I don’t like to be harborin’
nary side. It’s agin’ my principles. I
don’t like this colloguin’ an’ palaverin’
betwixt folks that ought to be by good
79
rights a-knockin’ one another on the
head. If they want to collogue an’ palaver,
why don’t they go som’ers else?”

The Squire’s son tried to explain, but
the old gentleman hooted at the explanation.
“Come on, Jule, let’s go and see
what they’re up to.”

As they approached, the Irishman
glanced at Captain Somerville, and
saw that he had turned away, cap in
hand, to hide his emotion.

“You’re just in time,” the Irishman
said to Squire Fambrough in a bantering
tone, “to watch the continding
armies. This mite of a Johnny will
swindle the Government, if I don’t
kape me eye on him.”

“Is this what you call war?” the
Squire inquired sarcastically. “Who
axed you to come trespassin’ on my
land?”

“Oh, we’ll put the leaves back where
we found them,” said Kilpatrick, “if
we have to git a furlough.”

“Right you are!” said the Irishman.

“It is just a little trading frolic
among the boys!” Captain Somerville
turned to the old man with a
courteous bow. “They will do no
harm. I’ll answer for that.”

“Well, I’ll tell you how I feel about
it!” Squire Fambrough exclaimed
with some warmth. “I’m in here betwixt
the hostiles. They ain’t nobody
here but me an’ my daughter. We
don’t pester nobody, an’ we don’t want
nobody to pester us. One of my sons
is in the Union army, I hear tell, an’
the other is in the Confederate army
when he ain’t in the hospital. These
boys, you see, found their old daddy a-straddle
of the fence, an’ one clomb
down one leg on the Union side, an’
t’other one clomb down t’other leg on
the Confederate
side.”

“That is what I
call an interesting
situation,” said the
captain, drawing a
long breath.
“Perhaps I have
seen your Union
son.”

“Maybe so, maybe
so,” assented the
Squire.

“Perhaps you
have seen him yourself
since the war
began?”

Before the Squire
could make any reply,
Julia rushed at
the captain and
threw her arms
around his neck,
crying, “O brother
George, I know
you!”

The Squire
seemed to be dazed
by this discovery.
He went towards
the captain slowly.
The tears streamed
down his face and the hand he held out
trembled.

“George,” he exclaimed, “God
A’mighty knows I’m glad to see you!”

O’Halloran and Kilpatrick had
paused in the midst of their traffic to
80
watch this scene, but when they saw
the gray-haired old man crying and
hugging his son, and the young girl
clinging to the two, they were confused.
O’Halloran turned and kicked
his bundles.

“Take all the tay and coffee, you
bloody booger! Just give me a pipeful
of the weed.”

Kilpatrick shook his fist at the big
Irishman.

“Take the darned tobacco, you red-mouthed
Mickey! What do I want
with your tea and coffee?” Then both
started to go a little way into the
woods. Lieutenant Clopton following.
The captain would have called them
back, but they wouldn’t accept the invitation.

“We are just turnin’ our backs, sor,
while you hold a family orgie,” said
O’Halloran. “Me an’ this measly
Johnny will just go on an’ complate
the transaction of swappin’.”

At this moment Tuck reappeared on
the scene. Seeing his young master,
he stopped still and looked at him,
and then broke out into loud complaints.

“Marse Dave Henry, whar de namer
goodness you been? You better come
read dish yer letter what yo’ ma writes
you. I’m gwine tell mistiss she come
mighty nigh losin’ a likely nigger,
an’ she’ll rake you over de coals,
mon.”

“Why, howdy, Tuck,” exclaimed
Lieutenant Clopton. “Ain’t you glad
to see me?”

“Yasser, I speck I is.” The negro
spoke in a querulous and somewhat
doubtful tone, as he produced a letter
from the lining of his hat. “But I’d
’a’ been a heap gladder ef I hadn’t
mighty nigh trapsed all de gladness
out’n me.”

Young Clopton took the letter and
read it with a smile on his lips and a
dimness in his eyes. The negro, left
to himself, had his attention attracted
by the coffee and tobacco lying exposed
on the ground. He looked at
the display, scratching his head.

“Boss, is dat sho nuff coffee?”

“It is that same,” said O’Halloran.

“De ginnywine ole-time coffee?” insisted
the negro.

“’Tis nothin’ else, simlin-head.”

“Marse Dave Henry,” the negro
yelled, “run here an’ look at dish yer
ginnywine coffee! Dey’s nuff coffee
dar fer ter make mistiss happy de
balance er her days. Some done spill
out!” he exclaimed. “Boss, kin I have
dem what’s on de groun’?”

“Take ’em,” said O’Halloran, “an’
much good may they do you.”

“One, two, th’ee, fo’, fi’, sick, sev’n.”
The negro counted the grains as he
picked them up. “O Marse Dave
Henry, run here an’ look! I got sev’n
grains er ginnywine coffee. I’m gwine
take um ter mistiss.”

The Irishman regarded the negro
with curiosity. Then taking the dead
branch of a tree he drew a line several
yards in length between himself and
Kilpatrick.

“D’ye see that line there?” he said
to the negro.

“Dat ar mark? Oh, yasser, I sees
de mark.”

“Very well. On that side of the line
you are in slavery—on this side the line
you are free.”

“Who? Me?”

“Who else but you?”

“I been hear talk er freedom, but I
ain’t seed ’er yit, an’ I dunner how she
feel.” The negro scratched his head
and grinned expectantly.

“’Tis as I tell you,” said the Irishman.

“I b’lieve I’ll step ’cross an’ see how
she feel.” The negro stepped over the
line, and walked up and down as if
to test the matter physically. “’Tain’t
needer no hotter ner no colder on dis
side dan what ’tis on dat,” he remarked.
Then he cried out to his young master:
“Look at me, Marse Dave Henry;
I’m free now.”

“All right.” The young man waved
his hand without taking his eyes from
the letter he was reading.

“He take it mos’ too easy fer ter
suit me,” said the negro. Then he
called out to his young master again:
“O Marse Dave Henry! Don’t you
tell mistiss dat I been free, kase she’ll
take a bresh-broom an’ run me off’n de
place when I go back home.”

V.

THE CURTAIN FALLS.

Squire Fambrough insisted that his
son should go to the house and look it
over for the sake of old times, and
young Clopton went along to keep
Miss Julia company. O’Halloran, Kilpatrick,
and the negro stayed where
they were—the white men smoking
their pipes, and the negro chewing the
first “mannyfac” tobacco he had seen
in many a day.

The others were not gone long. As
they came back, a courier was seen riding
through the woods at break-neck
speed, going from the Union lines to
those of the Confederates, and carrying
a white flag. Kilpatrick hailed
him, and he drew rein long enough to
cry out, as he waved his flag:

“Lee has surrendered!”

“I was looking out for it,” said Kilpatrick,
“but dang me if I hadn’t
ruther somebody had a-shot me right
spang in the gizzard.”

Lieutenant Clopton took out his
pocket-knife and began to whittle a
stick. John Fambrough turned away,
and his sister leaned her hands on his
shoulder and began to weep. Squire
Fambrough rubbed his chin thoughtfully
and sighed.

“It had to be, father,” the captain
said. “It’s a piece of news that brings
peace to the land.”

“Oh, yes, but it leaves us flat. No
money, and nothing to make a crop
with.”

“I have Government bonds that
will be worth a hundred thousand dollars.
The interest will keep us comfortably.”

“For my part,” said Clopton, “I
have nothing but this free nigger.”

“You b’lieve de half er dat,” spoke
up the free nigger. “Mistiss been
savin’ her cotton craps, an’ ef she got
one bale she got two hundred.”

The captain figured a moment.
“They will bring more than a hundred
thousand dollars.”

“I have me two arrums,” said O’Halloran.

“I’ve got a mighty fine pack of fox-hounds,”
remarked Kilpatrick with real
pride.

There was a pause in the conversation.
In the distance could be heard
the shouting of the Union soldiers and
the band with its “Yankee Doodle,
howd’y-do?” Suddenly Clopton turned
to Captain Fambrough:

“I want to ask you how many troops
have you got over there—fighting
men?”

The captain laughed. Then he put
his hand to his mouth and said in a
stage whisper:

“Five companies.”

“Well, dang my hide!” exclaimed
Kilpatrick.

“What is your fighting force?” Captain
Fambrough asked.

“Four companies,” said Clopton.

“Think o’ that, sir!” cried the Irishman;
“an’ me out there defendin’ meself
ag’in a whole army.”

“More than that,” said Clopton,
“our colonel is a Connecticut man.”

“Shake!” the captain exclaimed.
“My colonel is a Virginian.”

“Lord ’a’ mercy! Lord ’a’ mercy!”
It was Squire Fambrough who spoke.
“I’m a-goin’ off some’rs an’ ontangle
the tangle we’ve got into.”

Soon the small company separated.
The Squire went a short distance
towards the Union army with his new-found
son, who was now willing to call
himself George Somerville Fambrough.
Kilpatrick and the negro went trudging
back to the Confederate camp, while
Clopton lingered awhile, saying something
of great importance to the fair
Julia and himself.

His remarks and her replies were
those which precede and follow both
comedy and tragedy. The thunders of
war cannot drown them, nor can the
sunshine of peace render them commonplace.

Seated in an arm-chair, now feebly
turning over the leaves of his “Souvenirs
of Forty Years,” now letting his
dimmed eyes wander listlessly over the
broad expanse of fields and woodlands
outside the windows, Ferdinand de
Lesseps, the great Frenchman, drags
out the agony of his old age.

The visitor to him in his retreat
arrives at La Chesnaye to some extent
attuned to melancholy, for the long
diligence ride from the nearest railway
station, twenty-four kilometres away,
is across a most desolate country.
This part of the ancient duchy of Berry
is one of the districts in France which
has most suffered by the ruin of the
vine-culture; the lands seem deserted
and abandoned; the roads are neglected,
and little life is seen anywhere till the
sleepy burgh of Vatan is reached. From
Vatan, which is a market-town on the
old and now disused high-road
from Paris to Toulouse,
to the chateau of La Chesnaye,
there are four more
kilometres of road across an
equally desolate country to
be taken. The buildings of
the home farm
are the first human
habitations
that one sees all
the long way. An
oppressive sense
of desolation imposes
itself on
even the casual
wayfarer, and prepares
for the sorrowful
sight that awaits him who
goes to La Chesnaye to salute the
fallen greatness of the old man who
but two years ago was the greatest
Frenchman in France.

The chateau of La Chesnaye, a
modest country-house of irregular
shape and flanked at the angles with
towers, has been in the possession of
M. de Lesseps for fifty years. Except
for a large modern wing, it stands just
as Agnes Sorel, its first occupant, left it.
In her days it had served as a hunting-box
for her royal patron and the Berry
squires, and at present is still surrounded
with fields scantily timbered.
There is no well-kept lawn, but the
fields of grass are full of violets, and
there is a trim look about the stables.
On a bright day the white of the stone,
contrasted with the green of the grass,
gives a cheerful look to the scene, but
it is indescribably mournful of aspect
in the days of rain and snow and wind.

About half a mile on the road before
the chateau is in sight, an avenue of
trees is reached. “Those trees were
planted by M. de Lesseps himself, forty
years ago, and every time that he passes
this way he relates the fact.”

So spoke to me the English governess
84
of the De Lesseps children, whom
Madame de Lesseps had despatched to
meet me with the pony-carriage at
Vatan.

“The countess is terribly busy to-day
with her papers, for she is expecting
a barrister from Paris, who is to
receive some instructions in view of
the new trial; but she will manage to
give you an hour, and wants you to
drive to church with her, so that you
can talk on the way.” As we entered
the courtyard the countess’s carriage
was in waiting at the front entrance.
It was the landau of the days of triumphant
drives in the Champs Élysées,
and the horses were the same pair which
excited the admiration and envy of the
connoisseurs of the Avenue des Acacias,
“Juliette” and “Panama,” which latter
is now never called by that name. It is
talked about as “the other,” for the
ill-fated word, Panama, is never even
whispered, lest any echo of it should
reach the ears of him to whom this
word has meant ruin and disgrace and
a broken heart. I waited for the countess
at the bottom of the spiral stair-case,
and presently saw a lady descending,
who greeted me in a familiar voice,
but whom I failed to recognize. “But,
yes,” she said, holding out her hand,
“I am Madame de Lesseps. I have
changed, have I not?”

When I last met Madame de Lesseps
in Paris, though at that time the
shadow of the present was already
upon her, she was in the full of her
matronly beauty, large, ample, and
flourishing. It was a wasted woman
who addressed me, pinched and thin.
“If I were to remove my veil,” she
added, “you would see an even greater
change.”

“It is a sad moment that you have
chosen to visit us, and you find us in
terrible circumstances,” she said as we
drove away. Then turning to the lady
who accompanied her, she remarked,
“This is the first time I have been out
for three weeks, and I ought not to
have gone out to-day, except for the
fact that I can’t miss going to church
again. It is the only comfort I have
left to me. All my days and most
of my nights, when not attending on
my husband, are taken up answering
letters and telegrams which keep pouring
in upon me from all parts of the
world. And then I am in constant
correspondence with the lawyers in
Paris as to the prosecution of my son
for corruption, and the revision of the
last judgment of the Court of Appeal.”

The church which is attended by the
La Chesnaye party is situated in a village
about
three miles
off, which
is called
Guilly,
“the mistletoe
hamlet,”
as all
the trees
around are
covered
with this
parasite.
We were
passing a
fine old oak
tree, the
upper part
of which
was loaded
with mistletoe, when the lady who was
with us laughed scornfully, and, pointing,
said: “One would say Herz, Arton,
and the rest,” referring to the
Panama parasites. “Would you believe
me,” said Madame de Lesseps,
“that until these recent revelations I
had never even heard the names of
85
either Arton or Herz or the Baron de
Reinach?”

Outside the church was standing a
char-à-banc drawn by two horses, and
it was in this that, after service, I returned
to La Chesnaye with the children
and the governesses. It was
interesting to see how devoted the
people of Guilly seem to
be to the De Lesseps family,
and how the men and
women bowed and courtesied
as the countess came
out of church. Here, as at
Vatan and in all the district,
the love and respect
for “Monsieur le Comte”
have been increased rather
than diminished by the
persecutions to which he
has been subjected. It
was on the great fair-day
at Vatan that the news
of his condemnation was
made public, and at once
the villagers, in sign of
mourning, stopped the
public ball which is a fête
to which the young people
of the district look forward
for months beforehand.
Sturdy Berrichon
lads have been seen to
flourish their sticks and
heard to say that the Parisians
had better keep their
hands off “Monsieur le
Comte.” Nor is it surprising
that in his own country
M. de Lesseps should be
loved and venerated. Always
delighting in acts of
kindness, his generosity
towards his poor neighbors
throughout the district has been
constant and large-handed. Never a
marriage takes place in any of the
surrounding villages but that a handsome
present from La Chesnaye is
thrown into the bride’s corbeille. The
children are dressed for confirmation
at the expense of the chateau; layettes
are found for poor mothers, and no
case of distress is allowed to pass unrelieved.
Since the heavy losses which
the Panama failure has entailed on the
family, no change nor diminution in
these liberalities has been made. But
perhaps what the people in the district
like the best in the La Chesnaye folk
is their extreme simplicity. Chateau
folk are not generally very popular in
France, and certainly not in republican
circumscriptions, because republican
electors of the peasant class have inherited
prejudices about them; and if
the De Lesseps family is so very popular,
it is because of the extreme simplicity
of their manners and of the way
in which they live the lives of the
people around them. For instance, not
the children alone, but even the elegant
Madame de Lesseps herself, are dressed
in clothes purchased and made in Vatan.
Nothing is got from Paris, and
the Vatan people are highly pleased
with the unusual compliment thus paid
to them. By the church at Guilly is
86
an orphanage, which was founded by
the De Lesseps, and is entirely kept
up at their expense. It is a rule with
Madame de Lesseps to pay a visit to
this orphanage each Sunday after mass,
and, accordingly, as she left church she
asked me to return home with the
children. Of these there are now seven
at home; Matthew, who has just returned
on sick leave from the Soudan,
being in Paris near his stepbrother
Charles. Ismail is serving in the army
as a soldier in a regiment of chasseurs
at St. Germain; and the eldest daughter,
the Comtesse de Gontaut-Biron,
is in Nice, whither she has been sent
by her doctors. Lolo, aged eighteen,
is the eldest girl at home; and Paul, a
handsome lad of twelve, with long
ringlets down his back, is the eldest
boy. The youngest children are mere
babies. There is Zi-Zi, a tiny little
boy, with fair curls and dark eyes; and
Griselle, a charming little mite, who
on that Sunday was dressed in a Kate
Greenaway bonnet and gown, and
looked sweetly pretty. The char-à-banc,
spacious as it was, was quite filled.
Besides all the children from Lolo
down to Zi-Zi, there were the English
and German governesses, Paul and
Robert’s tutor, the niece of Madame
de Lesseps who for many years past
has lived with the family, and an intimate
friend, Mademoiselle Mimaut.

It was a merry party, and yet whenever
the name of the poor old father
at home was mentioned, silence came
over the prattle of the children. “They
all feel it deeply,” said Madame de Lesseps
to me later on, “though their youth
often gets the better of their feelings.
And what grieves them all most is, to
know that their brother Charles, whom
they all love and respect like a second
father, is in prison, whilst they can run
about. Zi-Zi and Griselle write to him
every day at Mazas or the Conciergerie,
and send him violets, and little stories
which they compose for his amusement,
spending long hours inking their fingers
over their paper.”

About half-way home the carriage
passed the rural postman trudging along
on his daily thirty-mile round. The children
would have the carriage stopped,
and, though it was quite full, place
was made for him. Father Pierre
seemed quite a favorite with the children,
for is it not he, as little Griselle
said, who brings letters from brother
Charles? Charles, it seems, writes every
day, and his letters, to judge by what
every member of the family told me,
are admirable in their manly unselfishness.
There is never a word of complaint
about the wretchedness of his
position; his only anxiety is about his
father, and he is ready to undergo
everything so that the old man may
be spared a moment’s pain. Ruined,
disgraced, though not dishonored, having
to face a long period of imprisonment,
which at his age and in his physical
condition may kill him, he affects
in his letters the greatest cheerfulness.
Nor is his heroic unselfishness without
its reward. He is the idol of everybody
at La Chesnaye and for miles
around. Only one complaint has escaped
him since his confinement, and that was
when, during his hurried visit, under
guard, to his father, he went with the
children for a favorite walk to a neighboring
wood. Here, as he was walking
along the avenue which runs
through some magnificent timber, he
looked around at the detectives behind
him, and said with a sigh: “And to-morrow
I shall be again within four
gray walls.” But immediately he
added, that if he could only be allowed
to come and pass an afternoon in the
wood with his brothers and sisters every
month, he would not mind his confinement
in the least, and could resign himself
to the prospect of imprisonment for
the rest of his days. Yet he is past
fifty-three, and his health has suffered
terribly from what he has undergone.

The half hour before lunch was spent
by the children in showing their pets.
A prime favorite with them just now
is a little Newfoundland puppy, which
has quite dethroned in their affections
an old shepherd dog, who, as Zi-Zi relates,
“came one day and liked us so
much that she has never left us.” Another
pet of whom a great deal is made
is an African monkey which Matthew
brought home from the Soudan. It is
called Bou-Bou, and when it is scolded
it hides its face in its hands. It is quite
tame, and runs about without a chain.

Just before lunch the
children set about picking
violets, each a
bunch. This they do
every day. One is for
Charles at Mazas, another for Madame
de Lesseps, but the sweetest is for the
old father to wear in his buttonhole at
lunch, which is the only meal he takes
with the family. The child whose
bouquet is worn by the father is the
proudest child in Berry that day.

I could not refrain from a movement
of the most painful surprise when, after
a few moments spent in the drawing-room,
I was invited by Madame de Lesseps
into the room where her husband
sat. I have known M. de Lesseps for
many years, and though the last time
that I saw him he was already under
the influence of the sorrow of defeat—it
was just after he had been called
before a magistrate, for examination—my
recollection of him had always
been as of a man full of the most surprising
vitality and high spirits, keen,
bright, energetic, defying the wear of
time, a man of eternal youth in spite
of his white hairs. I remembered him
last, erect, with clear voice and flashing
eyes, and now I saw him huddled
together in a chair, a wrap about his
knees, nodding his head as under sleep,
pale, inert, and with all the life gone out
of his eyes. Behind him stood a large
screen tapestried with red stuff, against
which the waxen whiteness of his face
and hands
stood out in
strong relief.
How old he
looked, whom
age had seemed
to spare so
long! For the
most part the
head drooped
forward on his
chest, but now
and then he
raised it listlessly
and let
his eyes wander
round the
room, or across
the panes on
to the fields beyond.
There
was rarely recognition
in his
glance; mostly
a look of unalterable
sadness—of
wonder, it
may be, at the
terrible hazards
of life.
Yet, when now
and then one
of the children, who were crowding
about his chair, pressed his hand or
kissed his cheek or said some words of
endearment to him, the smile which
was one of his characteristics came
over his face, and for a brief moment he
seemed himself again. Himself again—that
is to say, in the goodness and
great-heartedness which more than all
he has ever done for France merited
for him the name of the great Frenchman.
For greatness of heart has always
been the keynote of the character of
Ferdinand de Lesseps. It was the
secret of the indescribable seduction
which he exercised over everyone who
came near him, from emperor to laborer.
It was to this quality of his that
M. Renan, albeit a sceptic himself, rendered
such signal homage in the speech
in which he welcomed M. de Lesseps
to the French Academy on the day of
his admittance.

“You were good to all who came,”
said M. Renan; “you made them feel
88
that their past would be effaced and
that a new life lay before them. In
exchange you only asked them to share
your enthusiasm in the work which
you had devoted to the interest of
France. You held that most people
can amend if only one will forget their
past. One day a whole gang of convicts
arrived at Panama and took work
at the canal. The Austrian consul demanded
that they should be handed
over to him; but you delayed giving
satisfaction to his request, and at the
end of some weeks the Austrian consulate
was fully occupied in remitting
home to Austria, to their families, or, it
may be, to their victims, the moneys
which these outcasts whom you had
transformed into honest workmen
were earning with the work of their
hands. You have declared your faith
in humanity. You have convinced
yourself and tried to convince others
that men are loyal and good if only
they have the wherewithal to live. It
is your opinion that it is only hunger
that makes men bad. ‘Never,’ said
you in one of your lectures, ‘have I
had cause for complaint against any
of the workmen, although I have employed
outcasts, pariahs, and convicts.
Work has redeemed even the most dishonest.
I have never been robbed, not
even of a handkerchief. It is a fact
which I have proved, that men can be
brought to do anything by showing
them kindness and by persuading them
that they are working in a cause of
universal interest.’ Thus you have
made green again what seemed withered
for ever and aye. You have given,
in a century of unbelief, a startling
proof of the efficacy of faith.”

A thousand instances of this kindness
of heart might be cited to show
that M. de Lesseps ever remained a
chivalrous gentleman in the best sense
of the word. A trifling experience of
my own may suffice. A few days after
my first visit to him, at the office of the
Suez Canal, I was dining at a house in
the Cours-la-Reine. It was my first
visit to that house, a fact which somewhat
contributed to my embarrassment
in what was one of my first experiences
in Parisian society. Amongst
the guests was the editor of one of the
principal French papers, and being anxious
to make his acquaintance, I asked
our host to introduce me to my confrère.
The editor in question had no
courtesies to waste upon an insignificant
foreigner, and acknowledged my
bow with a reverence of exaggerated
profundity, bowing almost to the earth,
and then swinging round on his heel to
continue a conversation with another
journalist, which had been interrupted
by the introduction. I was left standing
in the middle of the room, with my
eyes on the editor’s back, suffused
with shame and mortification. M. de
Lesseps saw the slight thus inflicted
on a young man, and from kindness of
heart immediately did what he could to
efface it. From his place at the fire,
where he had been standing surrounded
by the usual crowd of courtiers, he had
noticed the incident, and I saw him
making his way across the drawing-room
towards me, exclaiming to those
around him: “Oh, there is a young
man with whom I must have a few
words!” He then took me by the
hand, drew me aside, and remained
conversing with me until dinner was
announced.

In view of the awful change that,
within so short a time, has been made
in this gentleman, I cannot but think
that it must be attributed to the shock
produced in a very old man by an experience
which shows him that he has
been mistaken all his life long. It is
terrible to wake up at eighty-five and
find that things are not what one
has believed during his past life, and
that the men whom one has loved and
respected are unworthy. I believe
that what has struck Ferdinand de
Lesseps down in his chair, in full vitality,
is an immense disappointment, not
at the failure of his hopes, for he has
always been indifferent to money, and
has never had the wish to leave his
children large fortunes, but at the
falseness of a creed which was optimistic
to the point of blindness. I believe
that Ferdinand de Lesseps is
dying of a broken heart, broken by the
immense ingratitude of men. And if
the loss of all the money that has
been sunk in the Panama mud and the
pockets of the intrigants of the Third
Republic adds to his sorrow, it is certainly
not for himself nor his family,
but for all those who are suffering because
they shared his belief in his star,
and who blindly followed him to ruin.
He knew that they were of the humble,
and often told me so. “Panama will
be carried out with the savings in
woollen stockings of the peasant and
of the workman,” he used to say. He
has never been self-seeking. He presented
France with a concession, that
of the Suez Canal, estimated at one
hundred millions of francs, and with
lands worth another thirty millions,
and fought heroically for years to
render to his gift its greatest value.
In the words of M. Renan, the courage,
the energy, the resources of all
sorts expended by M. de Lesseps in
this struggle were nothing short of
prodigious. In exchange he took for
himself enough to enable him to lead
the life of a gentleman and to do good
around him. Each of his children he
endowed with not more than seventy
thousand francs, the revenues from
which, together with his wife’s private
fortune, are now all that remain to
the family. I firmly believe that all
his life he acted only from feelings of
philanthropy and from patriotism of
the most chivalrous type. He never
had any desire to leave a large fortune,
and I can remember his saying to me,
very emphatically, that his children
must do as he had done; and that they
would do so if they were worthy of his
name; and that he never wished to leave
them large fortunes, but an honorable
name, a love for their country equal to
his, and an example which he hoped
they would follow. “Let them work
as I have done,” said this most tender
of fathers.

It seems that not even this heritage
of an honored name is, if the persecutors
of the old man can have their way,
to be left to his family. Since he has
been down the number of his adversaries
has of course increased tenfold.
Even those who owe him all—many
officials at the Suez Canal Company,
for instance, who owe their positions
and fortunes to his genius—seem glad
to revenge themselves for their obligation.
De Lesseps has done too much
good to men not to be hated, and it is
to be regretted that poor De Maupassant
cannot wield his pen in analysis
of the motives which are actuating his
former dependents in their endeavors
to renounce all solidarity with the
dying octogenarian of La Chesnaye.
I visited the offices of the Suez Canal
Company a few days ago, and, prepared
as one is for human ingratitude, it was
distressing in the extreme to see how
poor a thing to charm with was the
name at the sound of which, as I can
well remember, all the flunkeys of the
90
place in livery or black frock coat
doubled up in the days that are past.
The lion is down, and every ass of
Paris has a heel to kick him with.

On the other hand, the adversities of
the De Lesseps family have revealed to
them the immense number of friends
which they possess in all parts of the
world. Letters and telegrams keep
pouring in from all sides to La Chesnaye,
and all the available pens are
kept busy most of the day and night
in answering
the kindest expressions
of
sympathy,
many from utter
strangers.
“This is the
only thing
that gives me
courage to
bear it all,”
said Madame
de Lesseps.
Helene told
me, with some
amusement,
that a Spanish
banker had
the day before
written to
Madame de
Lesseps to offer
her a present
of a million,
and that
there had been
many similar
offers of pecuniary
assistance
from
people who
believed the family to be totally ruined.
When Charles was down at La Chesnaye,
and was walking in the woods
with his escort behind him, a serious
offer was made to him by friends who
had gathered around him, to effect his
rescue if he would but give the word.
As for tokens of sympathy from all the
country around, they are unending.
The farmer at the home-farm, which
was built by M. de Lesseps, and which
has been in the occupation of the
present tenants from the beginning,
was at dinner when the paper containing
the news of Charles’s conviction
and sentence reached him. “He turned
quite white,” said his wife to me, “and
rushed out of the house and went
roaming about the woods like a demented
man until late at night. And
I have cried every time I have thought
of M. Charles, whom I knew when he
was a baby not higher than my knee.”
But perhaps the most devoted friend
that remains to the family is M. de
Lesseps’s valet, who since his master’s
fall has never
left him for
more than ten
minutes together,
sleeping
on a mattress
in his
bedroom, and
waiting on
him patiently
all day and all
night. “Don’t
let anyone, I
don’t care who
it may be,” he
says, clenching
his fist,
“come near
my master. I
will be killed
before any
offence shall
be put upon
him.” And
though one is
rather sceptical
as to
such professions,
I fully
believe that in
this case they
are sincere. It was touching to note
with what reverence, when lunch was
served, this valet approached his master,
and, mindful of old formalities of
respect, bowed and said that Monsieur
the Count was served; to note with what
womanly gentleness this strong man
lifted his feeble master up and guided
his tottering steps into the adjoining
dining-room.

What a beautiful family it was, to be
sure, that gathered round that table!
Paul with his girlish ringlets, Robert
also in curls. Helene, who sat next to
her father, with her jet-black hair loose
down her back, and her bright eyes
contrasting with the ivory pallor of her
face, worn out as the poor child is with
care and sorrow and hard work as her
mother’s penwoman. Then there was
Lolo, a young lady of eighteen, roughly
dressed, but of great elegance, who
looked even sadder than the rest, but
who tried to be bright and gay; and
on the other side of her, Solange, who
though she is quite a woman in appearance,
hates to be considered so, and
wants to be treated as a child, and
refuses to wear long dresses, and loves
to climb trees in the park and to give
picnics to her little brothers and sisters
in a mud hovel which she has constructed
in the garden. Then there is
Zi-Zi and Griselle—more than twenty
in all around the long oval table. Every
now and then one of the children rises
from its seat, and runs up to the old
father and kisses him on the cheek, or
presses his hand; and I think all envied
Helene who sat next to him and could
caress him when she liked. I was
seated just
opposite
the old
man, and I
am afraid
my presence
disturbed
him; for he
seemed to
listen to
what I said,
and to wonder
who I
was, and
what I
might
want. I
shall never
forget the
sight of
him as he
faced me,
sunk down
in his chair,
with one
trembling
hand holding
his napkin
to his
breast, and feebly with the other guiding
the morsels to his mouth. He
seemed to eat with some appetite,
though under persistent drowsiness,
which was only shaken off for a moment
when his wife, who came in
late, took her seat at the table. Then
his head was lifted, and a bright
look came into his eyes, as if of
salute to the comrade of his life.
Whatever Madame de Lesseps may have
suffered, I am sure that she feels herself
repaid each time that those eyes
are so lifted to hers. The dejeuner
was a simple though ample one, the
menu being in keeping with the manner
of life at Chesnaye, which is that
of comfort without ostentation. The
wine is grown by Madame de Lesseps
herself, on vineyards of her own planting,
and is that “gray wine” which is
so much appreciated by connoisseurs.
It has a beautiful color in a cut-glass
decanter. The conversation was a
halting one. Each tried to be gay,
each tried to forget the deep shadow
that lay over that family gathering.
92
When the old man’s eyes wandered
around the table as if in quest of some
one whom he desired but who was not
there, a silence imposed itself on all,
for all knew whom he was seeking, and
where that dear one was.