N all the history of scientific discovery there
has never been, perhaps, so general, rapid, and dramatic an
effect wrought on the scientific centres of Europe as has
followed, in the past four weeks, upon an announcement made to
the Würzburg Physico-Medical Society, at their December
meeting, by Professor William Konrad Röntgen, professor of
physics at the Royal University of Würzburg. The first
news which reached London was by telegraph from Vienna to the
effect that a Professor Röntgen, until then the possessor
of only a local fame in the town mentioned, had discovered a
new kind of light, which penetrated and photographed through
everything. This news was received with a mild interest, some
amusement, and much incredulity; and a week passed. Then, by
mail and telegraph, came daily clear indications of the stir
which the discovery was making in all the great line of
universities between Vienna and Berlin. Then Röntgen’s own
report arrived, so cool, so business-like, and so truly
scientific in character, that it left no doubt either of the
truth or of the great importance of the preceding reports.
To-day, four weeks after the announcement, Röntgen’s name
is apparently in every scientific publication issued this week
in Europe; and accounts of his experiments, of the experiments
of others following his method, and of theories as to the
strange new force which he has been the first to observe, fill
pages of every scientific journal that comes to hand. And
before the necessary time elapses for this article to attain
publication in America, it is in all ways probable that the
laboratories and lecture-rooms of the United States will also
be giving full evidence of this contagious arousal of interest
over a discovery so strange that its importance cannot yet be
measured, its utility be even prophesied, or its ultimate
effect upon long-established scientific beliefs be even vaguely
foretold.

[pg 404]

PHOTOGRAPH OF A LADY’S HAND SHOWING THE BONES, AND A
RING ON THE THIRD FINGER, WITH FAINT OUTLINES OF THE
FLESH.

From a photograph taken by Mr. P. Spies, director of the
“Urania,” Berlin.

[pg 405]

THE PHYSICAL INSTITUTE, UNIVERSITY OF WÜRZBURG,
WHERE PROFESSOR RÖNTGEN HAS HIS RESIDENCE, DELIVERS
HIS LECTURES, AND CONDUCTS HIS EXPERIMENTS.

From a photograph by G. Glock, Würzburg.

The Röntgen rays are certain invisible rays resembling,
in many respects, rays of light, which are set free when a high
pressure electric current is discharged through a vacuum tube.
A vacuum tube is a glass tube from which all the air, down to
one-millionth of an atmosphere, has been exhausted after the
insertion of a platinum wire in either end of the tube for
connection with the two poles of a battery or induction coil.
When the discharge is sent through the tube, there proceeds
from the anode—that is, the wire which is connected with
the positive pole of the battery—certain bands of light,
varying in color with the color of the glass. But these are
insignificant in comparison with the brilliant glow which
shoots from the cathode, or negative wire. This glow excites
brilliant phosphorescence in glass and many substances, and
these “cathode rays,” as they are called, were observed and
studied by Hertz; and more deeply by his assistant, Professor
Lenard, Lenard having, in 1894, reported that the cathode rays
would penetrate thin films of aluminium, wood, and other
substances and produce photographic results beyond. It was
left, however, for Professor Röntgen to discover that
during the discharge another kind of rays are set free, which
differ greatly from those described by Lenard as cathode rays
The most marked difference between the two is the fact that
Röntgen rays are not deflected by a magnet, indicating a
very essential difference, while their range and penetrative
power are incomparably greater. In fact, all those qualities
which have lent a sensational character to the discovery of
Röntgen’s rays were mainly absent from these of Lenard, to
the end that, although Röntgen has not been working in an
entirely new field, he has by common accord been freely granted
all the honors of a great
discovery.

[pg 406]

SKELETON OF A FROG, PHOTOGRAPHED THROUGH THE FLESH. THE
SHADINGS INDICATE, IN ADDITION TO THE BONES, ALSO THE LUNGS
AND THE CEREBRAL LOBES.

From a photograph by Professors Imbert and Bertin-Sans;
reproduced by the courtesy of the “Presse Medicale,” Paris.
In taking this photograph the experiment was tried of using
a diaphragm interposed between the Crookes tube and the
plate; and the superior clearness obtained is thought to
result from this.

RAZOR-BLADE PHOTOGRAPHED THROUGH A LEATHER CASE AND THE
RAZOR-HANDLE.

From a photograph taken by Dr. W.L. Robb of Trinity
College. The shading in the picture indicates, what was the
actual fact, that the blade, which was hollow ground, was
thinner in the middle than near the edge.

[pg 407]

SKELETON OF A FISH PHOTOGRAPHED THROUGH THE FLESH.

From a photograph by A.A.C. Swinton, Victoria Street,
London. Exposure, four minutes.

Exactly what kind of a force Professor Röntgen has
discovered he does not know. As will be seen below, he declines
to call it a new kind of light, or a new form of electricity.
He has given it the name of the X rays. Others speak of it as
the Röntgen rays. Thus far its results only, and not its
essence, are known. In the terminology of science it is
generally called “a new mode of motion,” or, in other words, a
new force. As to whether it is or not actually a force new to
science, or one of the known forces masquerading under strange
conditions, weighty authorities are already arguing. More than
one eminent scientist has already affected to see in it a key
to the great mystery of the law of gravity. All who have
expressed themselves in print have admitted, with more or less
frankness, that, in view of Röntgen’s discovery, science
must forth-with revise, possibly to a revolutionary degree, the
long accepted theories concerning the phenomena of light and
sound. That the X rays, in their mode of action, combine a
strange resemblance to both sound and light vibrations, and are
destined to materially affect, if they do not greatly alter,
our views of both phenomena, is already certain; and beyond
this is the opening into a new and unknown field of physical
knowledge, concerning which speculation is already eager, and
experimental investigation already in hand, in London, Paris,
Berlin, and, perhaps, to a greater or less extent, in every
well-equipped physical laboratory in Europe.

This is the present scientific aspect of the discovery. But,
unlike most epoch-making results from laboratories, this
discovery is one which, to a very unusual degree, is within the
grasp of the popular and non-technical imagination. Among the
other kinds of matter which these rays penetrate with ease is
the human flesh. That a new photography has suddenly arisen
which can photograph the bones, and, before long, the organs of
the human body; that a light has been found which can
penetrate, so as to make a photographic record, through
everything from a purse or a pocket to the walls of a room or a
house, is news which cannot fail to startle everybody. That the
eye of the physician or surgeon, long baffled by the skin, and
vainly seeking to penetrate the unfortunate darkness of the
human body, is now to be supplemented by a camera, making all
the parts of the human body as visible, in a way, as the
exterior, appears certainly to be a greater blessing to
humanity than even the Listerian antiseptic system of surgery;
and its benefits must inevitably be greater than those
conferred by Lister, great as the latter have been. Already, in
the few weeks since Röntgen’s announcement, the results of
surgical operations under the new system are growing
voluminous. In Berlin, not only new bone fractures are being
immediately photographed, but joined fractures, as well, in
order to examine the results of recent surgical work. In
Vienna, imbedded bullets are being photographed, instead of
being probed for, and extracted with comparative ease. In
London, a wounded sailor, completely paralyzed, whose injury
was a mystery, has been saved by the photographing of an object
imbedded in the spine, which, upon extraction, proved to be a
small knife-blade. Operations for malformations, hitherto
obscure, but now clearly revealed by the new photography, are
already becoming common, and are being reported from all
directions. Professor Czermark of Graz has photographed the
living skull, denuded of flesh and hair, and has begun the
adaptation of the new photography to brain study. The relation
of the new rays to thought rays is being eagerly discussed in
what may be called the non-exact circles and journals; and all
that numerous group of inquirers into the occult, the believers
in clairvoyance, spiritualism, telepathy, and kindred orders of
alleged phenomena, are confident of finding in the new force
long-sought facts in proof of their claims. Professor Neusser
in Vienna has photographed gall-stones in the liver of one
patient (the stone showing snow-white in the negative), and a
stone in the bladder of another patient. His results so far
induce him to announce that all the organs of the human body
can, and will, shortly, be photographed. Lannelougue of Paris
has exhibited to the Academy of Science photographs of bones
showing inherited tuberculosis which had not otherwise revealed
itself. Berlin has already formed a society of forty for the
immediate prosecution of researches into both the character of
the new force and its physiological possibilities. In the next
few weeks these strange announcements will be trebled or
quadrupled, giving the best evidence from all quarters of the
great future that awaits the Röntgen rays, and the
startling impetus to the universal search for knowledge that
has come at the close of the nineteenth century from the modest
little laboratory in the Pleicher Ring at
Würzburg.

[pg 408]

A HUMAN FOOT PHOTOGRAPHED THROUGH THE SOLE OF A SHOE.
THE SHADING SHOWS THE PEGS OF THE SHOE, AS WELL AS TRACES
OF THE FOOT.

From a photograph by Dr. W.L. Robb of Trinity
College.

[pg 409]

PHOTOGRAPHING A FOOT IN ITS SHOE BY THE RÖNTGEN
PROCESS.—A PICTURE OF THE ACTUAL OPERATION WHICH
PRODUCED THE PHOTOGRAPH SHOWN ON PAGE 408.

From a photograph by Dr. W.L. Robb of Trinity College.
The subject’s foot rests on the photographic plate.

On instruction by cable from the editor of this magazine, on
the first announcement of the discovery, I set out for
Würzburg to see the discoverer and his laboratory. I found
a neat and thriving Bavarian city of forty-five thousand
inhabitants, which, for some ten centuries, has made no salient
claim upon the admiration of the world, except for the
elaborateness of its mediæval castle and the excellence
of its local beer. Its streets were adorned with large numbers
[pg 410] of students, all wearing
either scarlet, green, or blue caps, and an extremely
serious expression, suggesting much intensity either in the
contemplation of Röntgen rays or of the beer aforesaid.
All knew the residence of Professor Röntgen
(pronunciation: “Renken”), and directed me to the “Pleicher
Ring.” The various buildings of the university are scattered
in different parts of Würzburg, the majority being in
the Pleicher Ring, which is a fine avenue, with a park along
one side of it, in the centre of the town. The Physical
Institute, Professor Röntgen’s particular domain, is a
modest building of two stories and basement, the upper story
constituting his private residence, and the remainder of the
building being given over to lecture rooms, laboratories,
and their attendant offices. At the door I was met by an old
serving-man of the idolatrous order, whose pain was apparent
when I asked for “Professor” Röntgen, and he gently
corrected me with “Herr Doctor Röntgen.” As it was
evident, however, that we referred to the same person, he
conducted me along a wide, bare hall, running the length of
the building, with blackboards and charts on the walls. At
the end he showed me into a small room on the right. This
contained a large table desk, and a small table by the
window, covered with photographs, while the walls held rows
of shelves laden with laboratory and other records. An open
door led into a somewhat larger room, perhaps twenty feet by
fifteen, and I found myself gazing into a laboratory which
was the scene of the discovery—a laboratory which,
though in all ways modest, is destined to be enduringly
historical.

There was a wide table shelf running along the farther side,
in front of the two windows, which were high, and gave plenty
of light. In the centre was a stove; on the left, a small
cabinet, whose shelves held the small objects which the
professor had been using. There was a table in the left-hand
corner; and another small table—the one on which living
bones were first photographed—was near the stove, and a
Rhumkorff coil was on the right. The lesson of the laboratory
was eloquent. Compared, for instance, with the elaborate,
expensive, and complete apparatus of, say, the University of
London, or of any of the great American universities, it was
bare and unassuming to a degree. It mutely said that in the
great march of science it is the genius of man, and not the
perfection of appliances, that breaks new ground in the great
territory of the unknown. It also caused one to wonder at and
endeavor to imagine the great things which are to be done
through elaborate appliances with the Röntgen rays—a
field in which the United States, with its foremost genius in
invention, will very possibly, if not probably, take the
lead—when the discoverer himself had done so much with so
little. Already, in a few weeks, a skilled London operator, Mr.
A.A.C. Swinton, has reduced the necessary time of exposure for
Röntgen photographs from fifteen minutes to four. He used,
however, a Tesla oil coil, discharged by twelve half-gallon
Leyden jars, with an alternating current of twenty thousand
volts’ pressure. Here were no oil coils, Leyden jars, or
specially elaborate and expensive machines. There were only a
Rhumkorff coil and Crookes (vacuum) tube and the man
himself.

Professor Röntgen entered hurriedly, something like an
amiable gust of wind. He is a tall, slender, and loose-limbed
man, whose whole appearance bespeaks enthusiasm and energy. He
wore a dark blue sack suit, and his long, dark hair stood
straight up from his forehead, as if he were permanently
electrified by his own enthusiasm. His voice is full and deep,
he speaks rapidly, and, altogether, he seems clearly a man who,
once upon the track of a mystery which appealed to him, would
pursue it with unremitting vigor. His eyes are kind, quick, and
penetrating; and there is no doubt that he much prefers gazing
at a Crookes tube to beholding a visitor, visitors at present
robbing him of much valued time. The meeting was by
appointment, however, and his greeting was cordial and hearty.
In addition to his own language he speaks French well and
English scientifically, which is different from speaking it
popularly. These three tongues being more or less within the
equipment of his visitor, the conversation proceeded on an
international or polyglot basis, so to speak, varying at
necessity’s demand.

It transpired, in the course of inquiry, that the professor
is a married man and fifty years of age, though his eyes have
the enthusiasm of twenty-five. He was born near Zurich, and
educated there, and completed his studies and took his degree
at Utrecht. He has been at Würzburg about seven years, and
had made no discoveries which he considered of great importance
prior to the one under consideration. These details were given
under good-natured protest, he failing to understand why his
personality should interest the public. He declined to admire
himself or his results in any degree, and laughed at the idea
of being famous. The professor is too deeply interested in
science to waste any time in thinking about himself. His
emperor had fêted, flattered, and decorated him,
and he was loyally grateful. It was evident, however, that fame
and applause had small attractions for him, compared to the
mysteries still hidden in the vacuum tubes of the other
room.

[pg 411]

BONES OF A HUMAN FOOT PHOTOGRAPHED THROUGH THE
FLESH.

From a photograph by A.A.C. Swinton, Victoria Street,
London. Exposure, fifty-five seconds.

“Now, then,” said he, smiling, and with some impatience,
when the preliminary questions at which he chafed were over,
“you have come to see the invisible rays.”

“Is the invisible visible?”

“Not to the eye; but its results are. Come in here.”

He led the way to the other square room mentioned, and
indicated the induction coil with which his researches were
made, an ordinary Rhumkorff coil, with a spark of from four to
six inches, charged by a current of twenty amperes. Two wires
led from the coil, through an open door, into a smaller room on
the right. In this room was a small table carrying a Crookes
tube connected with the coil. The most striking object in the
room, however, was a huge and mysterious tin box about seven
feet high and four feet square. It stood on end, like a huge
packing-case, its side being perhaps five inches from the
Crookes tube.

The professor explained the mystery of the tin box, to the
effect that it was a device of his own for obtaining a portable
dark-room. When he began his investigations he used the whole
room, as was shown by the heavy blinds and curtains so arranged
as to exclude the entrance of all interfering light from the
windows. In the side of the tin box, at the point immediately
against the tube, was a circular sheet of aluminium one
millimetre in thickness, and perhaps eighteen inches in
diameter, soldered to the surrounding tin. To study his rays
the professor had only to turn on the current, enter the box,
close the door, and in perfect darkness inspect only such light
or light effects as he had a right to consider his own, hiding
his light, in fact, not under the Biblical bushel, but in a
more commodious box.

“Step inside,” said he, opening the door, which was on the
side of the box farthest from the tube. I immediately did so,
not altogether certain whether my skeleton was to be
photographed for general inspection, or my secret thoughts held
up to light on a glass plate. “You will find a sheet of barium
paper on the shelf,” he added, and then went away to the coil.
The door was closed, and the interior of the
[pg 412] box became black darkness.
The first thing I found was a wooden stool, on which I
resolved to sit. Then I found the shelf on the side next the
tube, and then the sheet of paper prepared with barium
platino-cyanide. I was thus being shown the first phenomenon
which attracted the discoverer’s attention and led to the
discovery, namely, the passage of rays, themselves wholly
invisible, whose presence was only indicated by the effect
they produced on a piece of sensitized photographic
paper.

A moment later, the black darkness was penetrated by the
rapid snapping sound of the high-pressure current in action,
and I knew that the tube outside was glowing. I held the sheet
vertically on the shelf, perhaps four inches from the plate.
There was no change, however, and nothing was visible.

“Do you see anything?” he called.

“No.”

“The tension is not high enough;” and he proceeded to
increase the pressure by operating an apparatus of mercury in
long vertical tubes acted upon automatically by a weight lever
which stood near the coil. In a few moments the sound of the
discharge again began, and then I made my first acquaintance
with the Röntgen rays.

The moment the current passed, the paper began to glow. A
yellowish-green light spread all over its surface in clouds,
waves, and flashes. The yellow-green luminescence, all the
stranger and stronger in the darkness, trembled, wavered, and
floated over the paper, in rhythm with the snapping of the
discharge. Through the metal plate, the paper, myself, and the
tin box, the invisible rays were flying, with an effect
strange, interesting, and uncanny. The metal plate seemed to
offer no appreciable resistance to the flying force, and the
light was as rich and full as if nothing lay between the paper
and the tube.

“Put the book up,” said the professor.

I felt upon the shelf, in the darkness, a heavy book, two
inches in thickness, and placed this against the plate. It made
no difference. The rays flew through the metal and the book as
if neither had been there, and the waves of light, rolling
cloud-like over the paper, showed no change in brightness. It
was a clear, material illustration of the ease with which paper
and wood are penetrated. And then I laid book and paper down,
and put my eyes against the rays. All was blackness, and I
neither saw nor felt anything. The discharge was in full force,
and the rays were flying through my head, and, for all I knew,
through the side of the box behind me. But they were invisible
and impalpable. They gave no sensation whatever. Whatever the
mysterious rays may be, they are not to be seen, and are to be
judged only by their works.

I was loath to leave this historical tin box, but time
pressed. I thanked the professor, who was happy in the reality
of his discovery and the music of his sparks. Then I said:
“Where did you first photograph living bones?”

“Here,” he said, leading the way into the room where the
coil stood. He pointed to a table on which was
another—the latter a small short-legged wooden one with
more the shape and size of a wooden seat. It was two feet
square and painted coal black. I viewed it with interest. I
would have bought it, for the little table on which light was
first sent through the human body will some day be a great
historical curiosity; but it was “nicht zu verkaufen.” A
photograph of it would have been a consolation, but for several
reasons one was not to be had at present. However, the
historical table was there, and was duly inspected.

CORK-SCREW, KEY, PENCIL WITH METALLIC PROTECTOR, AND
PIECE OF COIN, AS PHOTOGRAPHED WHILE INSIDE A CALICO
POCKET.

From a photograph by A.A.C. Swinton, Victoria
Street, London.
Four minutes’ exposure through a sheet of aluminium.

“How did you take the first hand photograph?” I
asked.

[pg 413]

The professor went over to a shelf by the window, where lay
a number of prepared glass plates, closely wrapped in black
paper. He put a Crookes tube underneath the table, a few inches
from the under side of its top. Then he laid his hand flat on
the top of the table, and placed the glass plate loosely on his
hand.

“You ought to have your portrait painted in that attitude,”
I suggested.

“No, that is nonsense,” said he, smiling.

“Or be photographed.” This suggestion was made with a deeply
hidden purpose.

The rays from the Röntgen eyes instantly penetrated the
deeply hidden purpose. “Oh, no,” said he; “I can’t let you make
pictures of me. I am too busy.” Clearly the professor was
entirely too modest to gratify the wishes of the curious
world.

“Now, Professor,” said I, “will you tell me the history of
the discovery?”

COINS PHOTOGRAPHED INSIDE A PURSE.

From a photograph by A.A.C. Swinton, Victoria Street,
London.

“There is no history,” he said. “I have been for a long time
interested in the problem of the cathode rays from a vacuum
tube as studied by Hertz and Lenard. I had followed theirs and
other researches with great interest, and determined, as soon
as I had the time, to make some researches of my own. This time
I found at the close of last October. I had been at work for
some days when I discovered something new.”

“What was the date?”

“The eighth of November.”

“And what was the discovery?”

“I was working with a Crookes tube covered by a shield of
black cardboard. A piece of barium platino-cyanide paper lay on
the bench there. I had been passing a current through the tube,
and I noticed a peculiar black line across the paper.”

“What of that?”

“The effect was one which could only be produced, in
ordinary parlance, by the passage of light. No light could come
from the tube, because the shield which covered it was
impervious to any light known, even that of the electric
arc.”

“And what did you think?”

“I did not think; I investigated. I assumed that the effect
must have come from the tube, since its character indicated
that it could come from nowhere else. I tested it. In a few
minutes there was no doubt about it. Rays were coming from the
tube which had a luminescent effect upon the paper. I tried it
successfully at greater and greater distances, even at two
metres. It seemed at first a new kind of invisible light. It
was clearly something new, something unrecorded.”

“Is it light?”

“No.”

“Is it electricity?”

“Not in any known form.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know.”

And the discoverer of the X rays thus stated as calmly his
ignorance of their essence as has everybody else who has
written on the phenomena thus far.

“Having discovered the existence of a new kind of rays, I of
course began to investigate what they would do.” He took up a
series of cabinet-sized photographs. “It soon appeared from
tests that the rays had penetrative power to a degree hitherto
unknown. They penetrated paper, wood, and cloth with ease; and
the thickness of the substance made no perceptible difference,
within reasonable limits.” He showed photographs of a box of
laboratory weights of platinum, aluminium, and brass, they and
the brass hinges all having been photographed from a closed
box, without any indication of the box. Also a photograph of a
coil of fine wire, wound on a wooden spool, the wire having
been photographed, and the wood
[pg 414] omitted. “The rays,” he
continued, “passed through all the metals tested, with a
facility varying, roughly speaking, with the density of the
metal. These phenomena I have discussed carefully in my
report to the Würzburg society, and you will find all
the technical results therein stated.” He showed a
photograph of a small sheet of zinc. This was composed of
smaller plates soldered laterally with solders of different
metallic proportions. The differing lines of shadow, caused
by the difference in the solders, were visible evidence that
a new means of detecting flaws and chemical variations in
metals had been found. A photograph of a compass showed the
needle and dial taken through the closed brass cover. The
markings of the dial were in red metallic paint, and thus
interfered with the rays, and were reproduced. “Since the
rays had this great penetrative power, it seemed natural
that they should penetrate flesh, and so it proved in
photographing the hand, as I showed you.”

A detailed discussion of the characteristics of his rays the
professor considered unprofitable and unnecessary. He believes,
though, that these mysterious radiations are not light, because
their behavior is essentially different from that of light
rays, even those light rays which are themselves invisible. The
Röntgen rays cannot be reflected by reflecting surfaces,
concentrated by lenses, or refracted or diffracted. They
produce photographic action on a sensitive film, but their
action is weak as yet, and herein lies the first important
field of their development. The professor’s exposures were
comparatively long—an average of fifteen minutes in
easily penetrable media, and half an hour or more in
photographing the bones of the hand. Concerning vacuum tubes,
he said that he preferred the Hittorf, because it had the most
perfect vacuum, the highest degree of air exhaustion being the
consummation most desirable. In answer to a question, “What of
the future?” he said:

“I am not a prophet, and I am opposed to prophesying. I am
pursuing my investigations, and as fast as my results are
verified I shall make them public.”

“Do you think the rays can be so modified as to photograph
the organs of the human body?”

In answer he took up the photograph of the box of weights.
“Here are already modifications,” he said, indicating the
various degrees of shadow produced by the aluminium, platinum,
and brass weights, the brass hinges, and even the metallic
stamped lettering on the cover of the box, which was faintly
perceptible.

“But Professor Neusser has already announced that the
photographing of the various organs is possible.”

“We shall see what we shall see,” he said. We have the start
now; the developments will follow in time.”

“You know the apparatus for introducing the electric light
into the stomach?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think that this electric light will become a vacuum
tube for photographing, from the stomach, any part of the
abdomen or thorax?”

The idea of swallowing a Crookes tube, and sending a high
frequency current down into one’s stomach, seemed to him
exceedingly funny. “When I have done it, I will tell you,” he
said, smiling, resolute in abiding by results.

“There is much to do, and I am busy, very busy,” he said in
conclusion. He extended his hand in farewell, his eyes already
wandering toward his work in the inside room. And his visitor
promptly left him; the words, “I am busy,” said in all
sincerity, seeming to describe in a single phrase the essence
of his character and the watchword of a very unusual man.

Returning by way of Berlin, I called upon Herr Spies of the
Urania, whose photographs after the Röntgen method were
the first made public, and have been the best seen thus far.
The Urania is a peculiar institution, and one which it seems
might be profitably duplicated in other countries. It is a
scientific theatre. By means of the lantern and an admirable
equipment of scientific appliances, all new discoveries, as
well as ordinary interesting and picturesque phenomena, when
new discoveries are lacking, are described and illustrated
daily to the public, who pay for seats as in an ordinary
theatre, and keep the Urania profitably filled all the year
round. Professor Spies is a young man of great mental alertness
and mechanical resource. It is the photograph of a hand, his
wife’s hand, which illustrates, perhaps better than any other
illustration in this article, the clear delineation of the
bones which can be obtained by the Röntgen rays. In
speaking of the discovery he said:

“I applied it, as soon as the penetration of flesh was
apparent, to the photograph of a man’s hand. Something in it
had pained him for years, and the photograph at once exhibited
a small foreign object, [pg 415] as you can see;” and he
exhibited a copy of the photograph in question. “The speck
there is a small piece of glass, which was immediately
extracted, and which, in all probability, would have
otherwise remained in the man’s hand to the end of his
days.” All of which indicates that the needle which has
pursued its travels in so many persons, through so many
years, will be suppressed by the camera.

“My next object is to photograph the bones of the entire
leg,” continued Herr Spies. “I anticipate no difficulty, though
it requires some thought in manipulation.”

It will be seen that the Röntgen rays and their
marvellous practical possibilities are still in their infancy.
The first successful modification of the action of the rays so
that the varying densities of bodily organs will enable them to
be photographed, will bring all such morbid growths as tumors
and cancers into the photographic field, to say nothing of
vital organs which may be abnormally developed or degenerate.
How much this means to medical and surgical practice it
requires little imagination to conceive. Diagnosis, long a
painfully uncertain science, has received an unexpected and
wonderful assistant; and how greatly the world will benefit
thereby, how much pain will be saved, and how many lives saved,
the future can only determine. In science a new door has been
opened where none was known to exist, and a side-light on
phenomena has appeared, of which the results may prove as
penetrating and astonishing as the Röntgen rays
themselves. The most agreeable feature of the discovery is the
opportunity it gives for other hands to help; and the work of
these hands will add many new words to the dictionaries, many
new facts to science, and, in the years long ahead of us, fill
many more volumes than there are paragraphs in this brief and
imperfect account.

THE RÖNTGEN RAYS IN AMERICA.

By Cleveland Moffett.

AT the top of the great Sloane laboratory of
Yale University, in an experimenting room lined with curious
apparatus, I found Professor Arthur W. Wright experimenting
with the wonderful Röntgen rays. Professor Wright, a
small, low-voiced man, of modest manner, has achieved, in his
experiments in photographing through solid substances, some of
the most interesting and remarkable results thus far attained
in this country. His success is, no doubt, largely due to the
fact that for years he had been experimenting constantly with
vacuum tubes similar to the Crookes tubes used in producing the
cathode rays.

When I arrived, Professor Wright was at work with a Crookes
tube, nearly spherical in shape, and about five inches in
diameter—the one with which he has taken all his shadow
pictures. His best results have been obtained with long
exposures—an hour or an hour and a half—and he
regards it as of the first importance that the objects through
which the Röntgen rays are to be projected be placed as
near as possible to the sensitized plate.

It is from a failure to observe this precaution that so many
of the shadow pictures show blurred outlines. It is with these
pictures as with a shadow of the hand thrown on the
wall—the nearer the hand is to the wall, the more
distinct becomes the shadow; and this consideration makes
Professor Wright doubt whether it will be possible, with the
present facilities, to get clearly cut shadow images of very
thick objects, or in cases where the pictures are taken through
a thick board or other obstacle. The Röntgen rays will
doubtless traverse the board, and shadows will be formed upon
the plate, but there will be an uncertainty or dimness of
outline that will render the results unsatisfactory. It is for
this reason that Professor Wright has taken most of his shadow
pictures through only the thickness of ebonite in his
plate-holder. A most successful shadow picture taken by
Professor Wright in this way, shows five objects laid side by
side on a large plate—a saw, a case of pocket tools in
their cover, a pocket lense opened out as for use, a pair of
eye-glasses inside their leather case, and an awl. As will be
seen from the accompanying reproduction of this picture, all
the objects are photographed with remarkable distinctness, the
leather case of the eye-glasses being almost transparent, the
wood of the handles of the awl and saw being a little less so,
while the glass in the eye-glasses is less transparent than
either. In [pg 416] the case of the awl and the
saw, the iron stem of the tool shows plainly inside the
wooden handle. This photograph is similar to a dozen that
have been taken by Professor Wright with equal success. The
exposure here was fifty-five minutes.

A more remarkable picture is one taken in the same way, but
with a somewhat longer exposure—of a rabbit laid upon the
ebonite plate, and so successfully pierced with the
Röntgen rays that not only the bones of the body show
plainly, but also the six grains of shot with which the animal
was killed. The bones of the fore legs show with beautiful
distinctness inside the shadowy flesh, while a closer
inspection makes visible the ribs, the cartilages of the ear,
and a lighter region in the centre of the body, which marks the
location of the heart.

Like most experimenters, Professor Wright has taken numerous
shadow pictures of the human hand, showing the bones within,
and he has made a great number of experiments in photographing
various metals and different varieties of quartz and glass,
with a view to studying characteristic differences in the
shadows produced. A photograph of the latter sort is reproduced
on page 401. Aluminium shows a remarkable degree of
transparency to the Röntgen rays; so much so that
Professor Wright was able to photograph a medal of this metal,
showing in the same picture the designs and lettering on both
sides of the medal, presented simultaneously in superimposed
images. The denser metals, however, give in the main black
shadows, which offer little opportunity of distinguishing
between them.

As to the nature of the Röntgen rays, Professor Wright
is inclined to regard them as a mode of motion through the
ether, in longitudinal stresses; and he thinks that, while they
are in many ways similar to the rays discovered by Lenard a
year or so ago, they still present important characteristics of
their own. It may be, he thinks, that the Röntgen rays are
the ordinary cathode rays produced in a Crookes tube, filtered,
if one may so express it, of the metallic particles carried in
their electrical stream from the metal terminal, on passing
through the glass. It is well known that the metal terminals of
a Crookes tube are steadily worn away while the current is
passing; so much so that sometimes portions of the interior of
the tube become coated with a metallic deposit almost
mirror-like.

As to the future, Professor Wright feels convinced that
important results will be achieved in surgery and medicine by
the use of these new rays, while in physical science they point
to an entirely new field of investigation. The most necessary
thing now is to find some means of producing streams of
Röntgen rays of greater volume and intensity, so as to
make possible greater penetration and distinctness in the
images. Thus far only small Crookes tubes have been used, and
much is to be expected when larger ones become available; but
there is great difficulty in the manufacture of them. It might
be possible, Professor Wright thinks, to get good results by
using, instead of the Crookes tube, a large sphere of
aluminium, which is more transparent to the new rays than glass
and possesses considerable strength. It is a delicate question,
however, whether the increased thickness of metal necessary to
resist the air pressure upon a vacuum would not offset the
advantage gained from the greater size. Moreover, it is a
matter for experiment still to determine, what kind of an
electric current would be necessary to excite such a larger
tube with the best results.

Among the most important experiments in shadow photography
made thus far in America are those of Dr. William J. Morton of
New York, who was the first in this country to use the
disruptive discharges of static electricity in connection with
the Röntgen discovery, and to demonstrate that shadow
pictures may be successfully taken without the use of Crookes
tubes. It was the well-known photographic properties of
ordinary lightning that made Dr. Morton suspect that cathode
rays are produced freely in the air when there is an electric
discharge from the heavens. Reasoning thus, he resolved to
search for cathode rays in the ten-inch lightning flash he was
able to produce between the poles of his immense Holtz machine,
probably the largest in this country.

On January 30th he suspended a glass plate, with a circular
window in the middle, between the two poles. Cemented to this
plate of glass was one of hard rubber, about equal in size,
which of course covered the window in the glass. Back of the
rubber plate was suspended a photographic plate in the
plate-holder, and outside of this, between it and the rubber
surface, were ten letters cut from thin copper. Dr. Morton
proposed to see if he could not prove the existence of cathode
rays between the poles by causing them to picture in shadow,
upon the sensitized plate, the letters thus exposed.

In order to do this it was necessary to separate the
ordinary electric sparks from
[pg 417] the invisible cathode rays
which, as Dr. Morton believed, accompanied them. It was to
accomplish this that he used the double plates of glass and
hard rubber placed, as already described, between the two
poles; for while the ordinary electric spark would not
traverse the rubber, any cathode rays that might be present
would do so with great ease, the circular window in the
glass plate allowing them passage there.

DR. WILLIAM J. MORTON PHOTOGRAPHING HIS OWN HAND UNDER
RÖNTGEN RAYS.

In this case the vacuum bulb is charged from Leyden jars
which, in their turn, are excited by an induction coil.

The current being turned on, it was found that the powerful
electric sparks visible to the eye, unable to follow a straight
course on account of the intervening rubber plate, jumped
around the two plates in jagged, lightning-like lines, and thus
reached the other pole of the machine. But it was noticed that
at the same time a faint spray of purplish light was streaming
straight through the rubber between the two holes, as if its
passage was not interfered with by the rubber plate. It was in
company with this stream of violet rays, known as the brush
discharge, that the doctor conceived the invisible Röntgen
rays to be projected at each spark discharge around the plate;
and presently, when the photographic plate was developed, it
was found that his conception was based on fact. For there, dim
in outline, but unmistakable, were shadow pictures of the ten
letters which stand as historic, since they were probably the
first shadow pictures in the world taken without any bulb or
vacuum tube whatever. These shadow pictures Dr. Morton
carefully distinguished from the ordinary blackening effects on
the film produced by electrified objects.

Pursuing his experiments with static electricity, Dr. Morton
soon found that better results could be obtained by the use of
Leyden jars influenced by the Holtz machine, and discharging
into a vacuum bulb, as shown in the illustration on this page.
This arrangement of the apparatus has the advantage of making
it much easier to regulate the electric supply and to modify
its intensity, and Dr. Morton finds that in this way large
vacuum tubes, perhaps twenty inches in diameter, may be excited
to the point of doing practical work without danger of breaking
the glass walls. But certain precautions are necessary. When he
uses tin-foil electrodes on the outside of the bulb, he
protects the tin-foil edges, and,
[pg 418] what is more essential,
uses extremely small Leyden jars and a short spark gap
between the poles of the discharging rods. The philosophy of
this is, that the smaller the jars, the greater their number
of oscillations per second (easily fifteen million,
according to Dr. Lodge’s computations), the shorter the wave
length, and, therefore, the greater the intensity of
effects.

A GROUP OF FAMILIAR ARTICLES UNDER THE RÖNTGEN
RAYS.

From a photograph by Professor Arthur W. Wright of Yale
College, taken through an ebonite plate-holder with
fifty-five minutes exposure. It shows a pair of spectacles
in their leather case; an awl and a saw, with the iron
stem, plainly visible through the wooden handles; a
magnifying-glass; and a combination wooden tool-handle with
metallic tools stored in the head, and the metallic clamp
visible through the lower half.

The next step was to bring more energy into play, still
using Leyden jars; and for this purpose Dr. Morton placed
within the circuit between the jars a Tesla oscillating coil.
He was thus able to use in his shadow pictures the most
powerful sparks the machine was capable of producing (twelve
inches), sending the Leyden-jar discharge through the primary
of the coil, and employing for the excitation of the vacuum
tube the “step up” current of the secondary coil with a
potential incalculably increased.

While Dr. Morton has in some of his experiments excited his
Leyden jars from an induction coil, he thinks the best promise
lies in the use of powerful Holtz machines; and he now uses no
Leyden jars or converters, thus greatly adding to the
simplicity of operations.

In regard to the bulb, Dr. Morton has tested various kinds
of vacuum tubes, the ordinary Crookes tubes, the Geissler
tubes, and has obtained excellent results from the use of a
special vacuum lamp adapted by himself to the purpose. One of
his ingenious expedients was to turn to use an ordinary
radiometer of large bulb, and, having fitted this with tin-foil
electrodes, he found that he was able to get strongly marked
shadow pictures. This application of the Röntgen principle
will commend itself to many students who, being unable to
provide themselves with the rare and expensive Crookes tubes,
may buy a radiometer which will serve their purpose excellently
in any laboratory supply store, the cost being only a few
dollars, while the application of the tin foil electrodes is
perfectly simple.

[pg 419]

In the-well equipped Jackson laboratory at Trinity College,
Hartford, I found Dr. W.L. Robb, the professor of physics,
surrounded by enthusiastic students, who were assisting him in
some experiments with the new rays. Dr. Robb is the better
qualified for this work from the fact that he pursued his
electrical studies at the Würzburg University, in the very
laboratory where Professor Röntgen made his great
discovery. The picture reproduced herewith, showing a human
foot inside the shoe, was taken by Dr. Robb. The Crookes tubes
used in this and in most of Dr. Robb’s experiments are
considerably larger than any I have seen elsewhere, being
pear-shaped, about eight inches long, and four inches wide at
the widest part. It is, perhaps, to the excellence of this tube
that Dr. Robb owes part of his success. At any rate, in the
foot picture the bones are outlined through shoe and stocking,
while every nail in the sole of the shoe shows plainly,
although the rays came from above, striking the top of the foot
first, the sole resting upon the plate-holder. In other of Dr.
Robb’s pictures equally fine results were obtained; notably in
one of a fish, reproduced herewith, and showing the bony
structure of the body; one of a razor, where the lighter shadow
proves that the hollow ground portion is almost as thin as the
edge; and one of a man’s hand, taken for use in a lawsuit, to
prove that the bones of the thumb, which had been crushed and
broken in an accident, had been improperly set by the attending
physician.

THOMAS A. EDISON EXPERIMENTING WITH THE
RÖNTGEN RAYS.

Dr. Robb has made a series of novel and important
experiments with tubes from which the air has been exhausted in
varying degrees, and has concluded from these that it is
impossible to produce the Röntgen phenomena unless there
is present in the tube an almost perfect vacuum. Through a tube
half exhausted, on connecting it with an induction coil, he
obtained merely the ordinary series of sparks; in a tube
three-quarters exhausted, he obtained a reddish
[pg 420] glow from end to end, a
torpedo-shaped stream of fire; through a tube exhausted to a
fairly high degree—what the electric companies would
call “not bad”—he obtained a beautiful steaked effect
of bluish striæ in transverse layers. Finally, in a
tube exhausted as highly as possible, he obtained a faint
fluorescent glow, like that produced in a Crookes tube. This
fluorescence of the glass, according to Dr. Robb, invariably
accompanies the discharge of Röntgen rays, and it is
likely that these rays are produced more abundantly as the
fluorescence increases. Just how perfect a vacuum is needed
to give the best results remains a matter of conjecture. It
is possible, of course, as Tesla believes, that with an
absolutely perfect vacuum no results whatever would be
obtained.

Dr. Robb has discovered that in order to get the best
results with shadow pictures it is necessary to use special
developers for the plates, and a different process in the
dark-room from the one known to ordinary photographers. In a
general way, it is necessary to use solutions designed to
affect the ultra-violet rays, and not the visible rays of the
spectrum. Having succeeded, after much experiment, in thus
modifying his developing process to meet the needs of the case,
Dr. Robb finds that he makes a great gain in time of exposure,
fifteen minutes being sufficient for the average shadow picture
taken through a layer of wood or leather, and half an hour
representing an extreme case. In some shadow pictures, as, for
instance, in taking a lead-pencil, it is a great mistake to
give an exposure exceeding two or three minutes; for the wood
is so transparent that with a long exposure it does not show at
all, and the effect of the picture is spoiled. Indeed, Dr. Robb
finds that there is a constant tendency to shorten the time of
exposure, and with good results. For instance, one of the best
shadow pictures he had taken was of a box of instruments
covered by two thicknesses of leather, two thicknesses of
velvet, and two thicknesses of wood; and yet the time of
exposure, owing to an accident to the coil, was only five
minutes.

Dr. Robb made one very interesting experiment a few days ago
in the interest of a large bicycle company which sent to him
specimens of carbon steel and nickel steel for the purpose of
having him test them with the Röntgen rays, and see if
they showed any radical differences in the crystalline
structure. Photographs were taken as desired, but at the time
of my visit only negative results had been obtained.

Dr. Robb realizes the great desirability of finding a
stronger source of Röntgen rays, and has himself begun
experimenting with exhaustive bulbs made of aluminium. One of
these he has already finished, and has obtained some results
with it, but not such as are entirely satisfactory, owing to
the great difficulty in obtaining a high vacuum without special
facilities.

I also visited Professor U.I. Pupin of Columbia College, who
has been making numerous experiments with the Röntgen
rays, and has produced at least one very remarkable shadow
picture. This is of the hand of a gentleman resident in New
York, who, while on a hunting trip in England a few months ago,
was so unfortunate as to discharge his gun into his right hand,
no less than forty shot lodging in the palm and fingers. The
hand has since healed completely; but the shot remain in it,
the doctors being unable to remove them, because unable to
determine their exact location. The result is that the hand is
almost useless, and often painful.

Hearing of this case, Professor Pupin induced the gentleman
to allow him to attempt a photograph of the hand. He used a
Crookes tube. The distance from the tube to the plate was only
five inches, and the hand lay between. After waiting fifty
minutes the plate was examined. Not only did every bone of the
hand show with beautiful distinctness, but each one of the
forty shot was to be seen almost as plainly as if it lay there
on the table; and, most remarkable of all, a number of shot
were seen through the bones of the fingers, showing that the
bones were transparent to the lead.

In making this picture, Professor Pupin excited his tube by
means of a powerful Holtz machine, thus following Dr. Morton in
the substitution of statical electricity for the more common
induction coil.

Professor Pupin sees no reason why the whole skeleton of the
human body should not be shown completely in a photograph as
soon as sufficiently powerful bulbs can be obtained. He thinks
that it would be possible to make Crookes tubes two feet in
diameter instead of a few inches, as at present.

Thomas A. Edison has also been devoting himself, with his
usual energy, to experiments with the Röntgen rays, and
announces confidently that in the near future he will be able
to photograph the human brain, through the heavy bones of the
skull, and perhaps even to get a shadow picture showing the
human skeleton through the tissues of the body.

[pg 421]

THE HOUSEHOLDERS.

BY “Q,”

Author of “Dead Man’s Rock,” “The Roll-Call of the Reef,”
etc.

WILL say this—speaking as accurately as a
man may, so long afterwards—that when first I spied the
house it put no desire in me but just to give thanks.

For conceive my case. It was near midnight by this; and ever
since dusk I had been tracking the naked moors a-foot, in the
teeth of as vicious a nor’wester as ever drenched a man to the
skin, and then blew the cold home to his marrow. My clothes
were sodden; my coat-tails flapped with a noise like pistol
shots; my boots squeaked as I went. Overhead the October moon
was in her last quarter, and might have been a slice of
finger-nail for all the light she afforded. Two-thirds of the
time the wrack blotted her out altogether; and I, with my stick
clipped tight under my arm-pit, eyes puckered up, and head bent
like a butting ram’s, but a little aslant, had to keep my wits
agog to distinguish the glimmer of the road from the black
heath to right and left. For three hours I had met neither man
nor man’s dwelling, and (for all I knew) was desperately lost.
Indeed, at the cross roads, two miles back, there had been
nothing for me but to choose the way that kept the wind on my
face, and it gnawed me like a dog.

Mainly to allay the stinging of my eyes, I pulled up at
last, turned right-about face, leant back against the blast
with a hand on my hat, and surveyed the blackness I had
traversed. It was at this instant that, far away to the left, a
point of light caught my notice, faint but steady; and at once
I felt sure it burnt in the window of a house. “The house,”
thought I, “is a good mile off, beside the other road, and the
light must have been an inch over my hat-brim for the last half
hour,” for my head had been sloped that way. This
reflection—that on so wide a moor I had come near missing
the information I wanted (and perhaps a supper) by one
inch—sent a strong thrill down my back.

“I … TRIED A STEP TOWARD THE STAIRS, WITH EYES ALERT
FOR ANY MOVEMENT OF THE MASTIFF.”

I cut straight across the heather towards the light, risking
quags and pitfalls. Nay, so heartening was the chance to hear a
fellow-creature’s voice that I broke into a run, skipping over
the stunted gorse that cropped up here and there, and dreading
every moment to see the light quenched. “Suppose it burns in an
upper window, and the family is going to bed, as would be
likely at this hour”—the apprehension kept my eyes fixed
on the bright spot, to the frequent scandal of my legs, that
[pg 422] within five minutes were
stuck full of gorse-prickles.

But the light did not go out, and soon a flicker of
moonlight gave me a glimpse of the house’s outline. It proved
to be a deal more imposing than I looked for—the outline,
in fact, of a tall-square barrack with a cluster of chimneys at
either end, like ears, and a high wall, topped by the roofs of
some outbuildings, concealing the lower windows. There was no
gate in this wall, and presently I guessed the reason. I was
approaching the place from behind, and the light came from a
back window on the first floor.

The faintness of the light also was explained by this time.
It shone behind a drab-colored blind, and in shape resembled
the stem of a wine-glass, broadening out at the foot—an
effect produced by the half-drawn curtains within. I came to a
halt, waiting for the next ray of moonlight. At the same moment
a rush of wind swept over the chimney-stacks, and on the wind
there seemed to ride a human sigh.

On this last point I may err. The gust had passed some
seconds before I caught myself detecting this peculiar note,
and trying to disengage it from the natural chords of the
storm. From the next gust it was absent. And then, to my
dismay, the light faded from the window.

I was half-minded to call out when it appeared again, this
time in two windows—those next on the right to that where
it had shone before. Almost at once it increased in brilliance,
as if the person who carried it from the smaller room to the
larger were lighting more candles; and now the illumination was
strong enough to make fine gold threads of the rain that fell
within its radiance, and fling two shafts of warm yellow over
the coping of the back wall into the night. During the minute
or more that I stood watching, no shadow fell on either
blind.

Between me and the wall ran a ditch, into the black
obscurity of which the ground at my feet broke sharply away.
Setting my back to the storm again, I followed the lip of this
ditch around the wall’s angle. Here was shelter, and here the
ditch seemed to grow shallower. Not wishing, however, to
mistake a bed of nettles or any such pitfall for solid earth, I
kept pretty wide as I went on. The house was dark on this side,
and the wall, as before, had no opening. Close beside the next
angle grew a mass of thick gorse bushes, and pushing through
these I found myself suddenly on a sound high road, with the
wind tearing at me as furiously as ever.

But here was the front; and I now perceived that the
surrounding wall advanced some way before the house, so as to
form a narrow curtilage. So much of it, too, as faced the road
had been whitewashed; which made it an easy matter to find the
gate. But as I laid hand on its latch, I had a surprise.

A line of paving-stones led from the gate to the heavy
porch; and along the wet surface of these fell a streak of
light from the front door, which stood ajar.

That a door should remain six inches open on such a night
was astonishing enough, until I entered the court and found it
was as still as a room, owing to the high wall, and doubtless
the porch gave additional protection. But looking up and
assuring myself that all the rest of façade was
black as ink, I wondered at the inmates who could be thus
careless of their property.

It was here that my professional instincts received the
first jog. Abating the sound of my feet on the paving-stones, I
went up to the door and pushed it softly. It opened without
noise.

I stepped into a fair-sized hall of modern build, paved with
red tiles and lit with a small hanging lamp. To right and left
were doors leading to the ground-floor rooms. Along the wall by
my shoulder ran a line of pegs, on which hung half a dozen hats
and great coats, every one of clerical shape; and full in front
of me a broad staircase ran up, with a staring Brussels carpet,
the colors and pattern of which I can recall as well as
to-day’s breakfast. Under this staircase was set a stand full
of walking-sticks, and a table littered with gloves, brushes, a
hand-bell, a riding-crop, one or two dog-whistles, and a
bed-room candle, with tinder-box beside it. This, with one
notable exception, was all the furniture.

The exception—which turned me cold—was the form
of a yellow mastiff dog, curled on a mat beneath the table. The
arch of his back was towards me, and one forepaw lay over his
nose in a natural posture of sleep. I leant back on the
wainscoting, with my eyes tightly fixed on him, and my thoughts
flying back, with something of regret, to the storm I had come
through.

But a man’s habits are not easily denied. At the end of
three minutes the dog had not moved, and I was down on the
doormat unlacing my soaked boots.
[pg 423] Slipping them off, and
taking them in my left hand, I stood up, and tried a step
towards the stairs, with eyes alert for any movement of the
mastiff; but he never stirred. I was glad enough, however,
on reaching the stairs, to find them newly built and the
carpet thick. Up I went with a glance at every step for the
table which now hid the brute’s form from me, and never a
creak did I wake out of that staircase till I was almost at
the first landing, when my toe caught a loose stair-rod, and
rattled it in a way that stopped my heart for a moment, and
then set it going in double-quick time.

“HE STOOD SIDEWAYS, … AND LOOKED AT ME OVER HIS LEFT
SHOULDER..”

I stood still, with a hand on the rail. My eyes were now on
a level with the floor of the landing, out of which branched
two passages—one by my right hand, the other to the left,
at the foot of the next flight, so placed that I was gazing
down the length of it. And almost at the end there fell a
parallelogram of light across it from an open door.

A man who has once felt it knows there is only one kind of
silence that can fitly be called “dead.” This is only to be
found in a great house at midnight. I declare that for a few
seconds after I rattled the stair-rod you might have cut the
silence with a knife. If the house held a clock it ticked
inaudibly.

Upon this silence, at the end of a minute, broke a light
sound—the clink, clink of a decanter on the rim of
a wine-glass. It came from the room where the light was.

Now, perhaps it was that the very thought of liquor put
warmth into my cold bones. It is certain that all of a sudden I
straightened my back, took the remaining stairs at two strides,
and walked down the passage, as bold as brass, with out caring
a jot for the noise I made.

In the doorway I halted. The room was long, lined for the
most part with books bound in what they call “divinity calf,”
and littered with papers like a barrister’s table on assize
day. Before the fireplace, where a few coals burned sulkily,
was drawn a leathern elbow chair, and beside it, on the corner
of a writing-table, were set an unlit candle and a pile of
[pg 424] manuscripts. At the
opposite end of the room a curtained door led (I guessed) to
the chamber that I had first seen illuminated. All this I
took in with the tail of my eye, while staring straight in
front, where, in the middle of a great square of carpet
between me and the windows, was a table with a red cloth
upon it. On this cloth were a couple of wax candles, lit, in
silver stands, a tray, and a decanter three parts full of
brandy. And between me and the table stood a man.

He stood sideways, leaning a little back, as if to keep his
shadow off the threshold, and looked at me over his left
shoulder—a bald, grave man, slightly under the common
height, with a long clerical coat of preposterous fit hanging
loosely from his shoulders, a white cravat, black breeches, and
black stockings. His feet were loosely thrust into
carpet-slippers. I judged his age at fifty, or thereabouts; but
his face rested in the shadow, and I could only note a pair of
eyes, very small and alert, twinkling above a large expanse of
cheek.

He was lifting a wine-glass from the table at the moment
when I appeared, and it trembled now in his right hand. I heard
a spilt drop or two fall on the carpet, and this was all the
evidence he showed of discomposure.

Setting the glass back, he felt in his breast-pocket for a
handkerchief, failed to find one, and rubbed his hands together
to get the liquor off his fingers.

“You startled me,” he said, in a matter-of-fact tone,
turning his eyes upon me, as he lifted his glass again, and
emptied it. “How did you find your way in?”

“By the front door,” said I, wondering at his unconcern.

He nodded his head slowly.

“Ah! yes; I forgot to lock it. You came to steal, I
suppose?”

“I came because I lost my way. I’ve been travelling this
God-forsaken moor since dusk—”

“With your boots in your hand,” he put in quietly.

“I took them off out of respect to the yellow dog you
keep.”

“He lies in a very natural attitude—eh?”

“You don’t tell me he was stuffed!”

The old man’s eyes beamed a contemptuous pity.

“You are indifferently sharp, my dear sir, for a
housebreaker. Come in. Set down those convicting boots, and
don’t drip pools of water in the very doorway, of all places.
If I must entertain a burglar, I prefer him tidy.”

He walked to the fire, picked up a poker, and knocked the
coals into a blaze. This done, he turned round on me with the
poker still in his hand. The serenest gravity sat on his large,
pale features.

“Why have I done this?” he asked.

“I suppose to get possession of the poker.”

“Quite right. May I inquire your next move?”

“Why,” said I, feeling in my tail pocket, “I carry a
pistol.”

“Which I suppose to be damp?”

“By no means. I carry it, as you see, in an oil-cloth
case.”

He stopped, and laid the poker carefully in the fender.

“That is a stronger card than I possess. I might urge that
by pulling the trigger you would certainly alarm the house and
the neighborhood, and put a halter round your neck. I say, I
might urge this, and assume you to be an intelligent
auditor. But it strikes me as safer to assume you capable of
using a pistol with effect at three paces. With what might
happen subsequently I will not pretend to be concerned. It is
sufficient that I dislike the notion of being perforated. The
fate of your neck—” He waved a hand. “Well, I have known
you for just five minutes, and feel but moderate interest in
your neck. As for the inmates of this house, it will refresh
you to hear that there are none. I have lived here two years
with a butler and a female cook, both of whom I dismissed
yesterday at a moment’s notice for conduct which I will not
shock your ears by explicitly naming. Suffice it to say, I
carried them off yesterday to my parish church, two miles away,
married them, and dismissed them in the vestry without
characters. I wish you had known that butler—but excuse
me; with the information I have supplied, you ought to find no
difficulty in fixing the price you will take to clear out of my
house instanter.”

“Sir,” I answered, “I have held a pistol at one or two heads
in my time; but never at one stuffed with nobler discretion.
Your chivalry does not, indeed, disarm me, but prompts me to
desire more of your acquaintance. I have found a gentleman, and
must sup with him before I make terms.”

The address seemed to please him. He shuffled across the
room to a sideboard, and produced a plate of biscuits, another
[pg 425] of almonds and dried
raisins, a glass and two decanters.

“Sherry and Madeira,” he said. “There is also a cold pie in
the larder, if you care for it.”

“A biscuit will serve,” I replied. “To tell the truth, I’m
more for the bucket than the manger, as the grooms say; and, by
your leave, the brandy you were testing just now is more to my
mind than wine.”

“There is no water handy.”

“There was plenty out of doors to last me with this
bottle.”

I pulled over a chair, and laid my pistol on the table, and
held out the glass for him to fill. Having done so, he helped
himself to a glass and a chair, and sat down facing me.

“I was talking, just now, of my late butler,” he began, with
a sip at his brandy. “Has it struck you that, when confronted
with moral delinquency, I am apt to let my indignation get the
better of me?”

“Not at all,” I answered heartily, refilling my glass.

It appeared that another reply would have pleased him
better.

“H’m. I was hoping that, perhaps, I had visited his offence
too strongly. As a clergyman, you see, I was bound to be
severe; but upon my word, sir, since he went I have felt like a
man who has lost a limb.”

He drummed with his fingers on the cloth for a few moments,
and went on:

“One has a natural disposition to forgive
butlers—Pharaoh, for instance, felt it. There hovers
around butlers that peculiar atmosphere which Shakespeare
noticed as encircling kings, an atmosphere in which common
ethics lose their pertinence. But mine was a rare bird—a
black swan among butlers. He was more than a butler: he was a
quick and brightly-gifted man. Of the accuracy of his taste,
and the unusual scope of his endeavor, you will be able to form
some opinion when I assure you he modelled himself upon
me.”

I bowed over my brandy.

“I am a scholar; yet I employed him to read aloud to me, and
derived pleasure from his intonation. I talk as a scholar; yet
he learned to answer me in language as precise as my own. My
cast-off garments fitted him not more irreproachably than did
my amenities of manner. Divest him of his tray, and you would
find his mode of entering a room hardly distinguishable from my
own—the same urbanity, the same alertness of carriage,
the same superfine deference towards the weaker sex.
All—all my idiosyncrasies I saw reflected in this my
mirror; and can you doubt that I was gratified? He was my
alter ego—which, by the way, makes it the more
extraordinary that it should have been necessary to marry him
to the cook.”

“Look here,” I broke in; “you want a butler.”

“Oh, you really grasp that fact, do you?” he retorted.

“And you wish to get rid of me as soon as may be.”

“I hope there is no impoliteness in complimenting you on
your discernment.”

“Your two wishes,” said I, “may be reconciled. Let me cease
to be your burglar, and let me continue here as your
butler.”

He leant back, spreading out the fingers of each hand as if
the table’s edge was a harpsichord, and he stretching octaves
upon it.

“Believe me,” I went on, “you might do worse. I have been a
demy of Magdalen College, Oxford, in my time, and retain some
Greek and Latin. I’ll undertake to read the Fathers with an
accent that shall not offend you. My knowledge of wine is none
the worse for having been cultivated in other men’s cellars.
Moreover, you shall engage the ugliest cook in Christendom, so
long as I’m your butler. I’ve taken a liking to
you—that’s flat—and I apply for the post.”

“I give forty pounds a year,” said he.

“And I’m cheap at that price.”

He filled up his glass, looking up at me while he did so
with the air of one digesting a problem. From first to last his
face was grave as a judge’s.

“We are too impulsive, I think,” was his answer, after a
minute’s silence. “And your speech smacks of the amateur. You
say, ‘Let me cease to be your burglar, and let me be your
butler.’ The mere aspiration is respectable; but a man might as
well say, ‘Let me cease to write poems; let me paint pictures.’
And truly, sir, you impressed me as no expert in your present
trade, but a journeyman-housebreaker, if I may say so.”

“On the other hand,” I argued, “consider the moderation of
my demands; that alone should convince you of my desire to turn
over a new leaf. I ask for a month’s trial; if, at the end of
that time, I don’t suit, you shall say so, and I’ll march from
your door with nothing in my pocket but my month’s wages. Be
hanged, sir! but [pg 426] when I reflect on the
amount you’ll have to pay to get me to face to-night’s storm
again, you seem to be getting off dirt-cheap!” cried I,
slapping my palm on the table.

“Ah, if you had only known Adolphus!” he exclaimed.

Now, the third glass of clean spirits has always a
deplorable effect on me. It turns me from bright to black, from
lightness of spirits to extreme sulkiness. I have done more
wickedness over this third tumbler than in all the other states
of comparative inebriety within my experience. So now I
glowered at my companion and rapped out a curse.

“Look here, I don’t want to hear any more of Adolphus, and
I’ve a pretty clear notion of the game you’re playing. You want
to make me drunk, and you’re ready to sit prattling there till
I drop under the table.”

“Do me the favor to remember that you came, and are staying,
at your own invitation. As for the brandy, I would remind you
that I suggested a milder drink. Try some Madeira.”

He handed me the decanter, as he spoke, and I poured out a
glass.

“Madeira!” said I, taking a gulp. “Ugh! it’s the commonest
Marsala!”

I had no sooner said the words than he rose up, and
stretched a hand gravely across to me.

“I hope you’ll shake it,” he said; “though, as a man who
after three glasses of neat spirit can distinguish between
Madeira and Marsala, you have every right to refuse me. Two
minutes ago you offered to become my butler, and I demurred. I
now beg you to repeat that offer. Say the word, and I employ
you gladly; you shall even have the second decanter (which
contains genuine Madeira) to take to bed with you.”

We shook hands on our bargain, and catching up a
candlestick, he led the way from the room.

Picking up my boots, I followed him along the passage and
down the silent staircase. In the hall he paused to stand on
tiptoe, and turn up the lamp, which was burning low. As he did
so, I found time to fling a glance at my old enemy, the
mastiff. He lay as I had first seen him—a stuffed dog, if
ever there was one. “Decidedly,” thought I, “my wits are to
seek, to-night;” and with the same, a sudden suspicion made me
turn to my conductor, who had advanced to the left-hand door,
and was waiting for me, with hand on the knob.

“One moment,” I said; “this is all very pretty, but how am I
to know you’re not sending me to bed while you fetch in all the
countryside to lay me by the heels?”

“I’m afraid,” was his answer, “you must be content with my
word, as a gentleman, that never, to-night or hereafter, will I
breathe a syllable about the circumstances of your visit.
However, if you choose, we will return upstairs.”

“No; I’ll trust you,” said I; and he opened the door.

It led into a broad passage, paved with slate, upon which
three or four rooms opened. He paused by the second, and
ushered me into a sleeping-chamber which, though narrow, was
comfortable enough—a vast improvement, at any rate, on
the mumper’s lodgings I had been used to for many months
past.

“You can undress here,” he said. “The sheets are aired, and
if you’ll wait a moment I’ll fetch a nightshirt—one of my
own.”

“Sir, you heap coals of fire on me.”

“Believe me that for ninety-nine of your qualities I do not
care a tinker’s curse: but as a man who, after three tumblers
of neat brandy, can tell Marsala from Madeira you are to be
taken care of.”

He shuffled away, but came back in a couple of minutes with
the nightshirt.

“Good-night,” he called to me, flinging it in at the door;
and without giving me time to return the wish, went his way
upstairs.

Now it might be supposed that I was only too glad to toss
off my clothes and climb into the bed I had so unexpectedly
acquired a right to. But, as a matter of fact, I did nothing of
the kind. Instead, I drew on my boots and sat on the bed’s
edge, blinking at my candle till it died down in its socket,
and afterwards at the purple square of window as it slowly
changed to gray with the coming of dawn. I was cold to the
heart, and my teeth chattered with an ague. Certainly I never
suspected my host’s word; but was even occupied in framing good
resolutions and shaping out an excellent future, when I heard
the front door gently pulled to, and a man’s footsteps moving
quietly to the gate.

The treachery knocked me in a heap for the moment. Then
leaping up and flinging my door wide, I stumbled through the
uncertain light of the passage into the front hall.

There was a fan-shaped light over the door, and the place
was very still and [pg 427] gray. A quick thought, or
rather a sudden prophetic guess at the truth, made me turn
to the figure of the mastiff curled under the hall
table.

I laid my hand on the scruff of his neck. He was quite limp,
and my fingers sank into the flesh on either side of the
vertebrae. Digging them deeper, I dragged him out into the
middle of the hall, and pulled the front door open to see the
better.

His throat was gashed from ear to ear.

How many seconds passed after I dropped the senseless lump
on the floor, and before I made another movement, it would
puzzle me to say. Twice I stirred a foot as if to run out at
the door. Then, changing my mind, I stepped over the mastiff,
and ran up the staircase. The light no longer shone out into
the left-hand passage; but groping down it, I found the study
door open, as before, and passed in. A sick light stole through
the blinds—enough for me to distinguish the glasses and
decanters on the table, and find my way to the curtain that
hung before the room where the light had first attracted
me.

I pushed the curtain aside, paused for a moment, and
listened to the violent beat of my heart; then felt for the
door handle and turned it.

All I could see at first; was that the chamber was small;
next, that the light patch in a line with the window was the
white coverlet of a bed; and next, that somebody, or something,
lay on the bed.

I listened again. There was no sound in the room; no heart
beating but my own. I reached out a hand to pull up the blind,
and drew it back again. I dared not.

The daylight grew, minute by minute, on the dull
parallelogram of the blind, and minute by minute that horrible
thing on the bed took something of distinctness. The strain
beat me at last. I fetched a veritable yell to give myself
courage, and, reaching for the cord, pulled up the blind as
fast as it would go.

“FACE TO FACE WITH THE REAL
HOUSEHOLDER.”

The face on the pillow was that of an old man—a face
waxen and peaceful, with quiet lines about the month and eyes,
and long lines of gray hair falling back from the temples. The
body was turned a little on one side, and one hand lay outside
the bedclothes in a very natural manner. But there were two
dark spots on the coverlet.

Then I knew I was face to face with the real householder;
and it flashed on me that I had been indiscreet in taking
service as his butler, and that I knew the face his ex-butler
wore.

And, being by this time awake to the responsibilities of the
post, I quitted it three steps at a time, not once looking
behind me. Outside the house the storm had died, and white
sunlight broke over the sodden moors. But my bones were cold,
and I ran faster and faster.

[pg 428]

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By Ida M. Tarbell.

LINCOLN’S PROMINENCE AS A WHIG POLITICIAN AT
THIRTY-TWO.—STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS’S REMOVAL TO
SPRINGFIELD.—BEGINNING OF THE RIVALRY BETWEEN LINCOLN AND
DOUGLAS.—LINCOLN’S PART IN THE CAMPAIGN OF
1840.—MARY TODD AND HER ENGAGEMENT TO
LINCOLN.—FALSE STORIES REGARDING LINCOLN’S
COURTSHIP.—THE LINCOLN AND SHIELDS DUEL.—LINCOLN’S
MARRIAGE.

Y the time Abraham Lincoln was thirty-two years
old—that is, in 1841—he was one of the leading Whig
politicians of Illinois. Four times in succession he had been
elected to the General Assembly of the State—in 1834,
1836, 1838, and 1840. Twice he had been a candidate for Speaker
of the House—in 1838 and in 1840—both times against
William L.D. Ewing; and though both times defeated, the vote
had in each instance been close. In 1841 he had been talked of
as a candidate for governor, a suggestion to which he would not
listen.

He had not taken this prominent position because the Whig
party lacked material. Edward Dickinson Baker, Colonel John J.
Hardin, John T. Stuart, Ninian W. Edwards, Jesse K. Dubois,
O.H. Browning, were but a few of the brilliant men who were
throwing all their ability and ambition into the contest for
political honors in the State. Nor were the Whigs a whit
superior to the Democrats. William L.D. Ewing, Ebenezer Peck,
William Thomas, James Shields, John Calhoun, were in every
respect as able as the best men of the Whig party. Indeed, one
of the prominent Democrats with whom Lincoln came often in
contact, was popularly regarded as the most brilliant and
promising politician of the State—Stephen A. Douglas. His
record had been phenomenal. He had amazed both parties, in
1834, by securing appointment by the legislature to the office
of State Attorney for the first judicial circuit, over John J.
Hardin. In 1836 he had been elected to the legislature, and
although he was at that time but twenty-three years of age, he
had shown himself one of the most vigorous, capable, and
intelligent members. Indeed, Douglas’s work in the Tenth
Assembly gave him about the same position in the Democratic
party of the State at large that Lincoln’s work in the same
body gave him in the Whig party of his own district. In 1837 he
had had no difficulty in being appointed register of the land
office, a position which compelled him to make his home in
Springfield. It was only a few months after Lincoln rode into
town, all his earthly possessions in a pair of saddle-bags,
that Douglas appeared. Handsome, polished, and always with an
air of prosperity, the advent of the young Democratic official
was in striking contrast to that of the sad-eyed, ill-clad,
poverty-stricken young lawyer from New Salem.

From the first, Lincoln and Douglas were thrown constantly
together in the social life of the town, and often pitted
against each other in what were the real forums of the State at
that day—the space around the huge “Franklin” stove of
some obliging store-keeper, the steps of somebody’s law office,
a pile of lumber, or a long timber, lying in the public square,
where the new State-house was going up.

In the fall of 1837 Douglas was nominated for Congress on
the Democratic ticket. His Whig opponent was Lincoln’s law
partner, John T. Stuart. The campaign which the two conducted
was one of the most remarkable in the history of the State. For
five months of the spring and summer of 1838 they rode together
from town to town all over the northern part of Illinois
(Illinois at that time was divided into but three congressional
districts; the third, in which Sangamon County was included,
being made up of the twenty-two northernmost counties),
speaking six days out of seven. When the election came off in
August, 1838, out of thirty-six thousand votes cast, Stuart
received a majority of only fourteen; but even that majority
the Democrats always contended was won unfairly. The campaign
was watched with intense interest by the young politicians of
Springfield; [pg 429] no one of them felt a
deeper interest in it than Lincoln, who was himself at the
same time a candidate for member of the State
legislature.

OLD STATE-HOUSE AT SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS.

From a recent photograph made for MCCLURE’S MAGAZINE.
The corner-stone was laid July 4, 1837, about four months
after the passage of the act removing the capital to
Springfield. The event was attended with elaborate
ceremonies. The orator of the day was Colonel E.D. Baker.
It was nearly four years before the building was finally
completed, at a cost of two hundred and forty thousand
dollars. It was first occupied by the legislature during
the regular session of 1840-1841, that body, at two
previous special sessions, being obliged to use the
Methodist church for the Senate, and the Second
Presbyterian church for the House. The Supreme Court found
a meeting place in the Episcopal church. The legislative
committees met in rooms in private houses about town. This
building was the State capitol for more than thirty years,
becoming, upon the completion of the present State-house,
the court-house of Sangamon County.

Lincoln must have learned by the end of 1840, if not before,
something of the power of the “Little Giant,” as Douglas was
called. Certainly no man in public life between 1837 and 1860
had a greater hold on his followers. The reasons for this grasp
are not hard to find. Douglas was by nature buoyant,
enthusiastic, impetuous. He had that sunny boyishness which is
so irresistible to young and old. With it he had great natural
eloquence. When his deep, rich voice rolled out fervid periods
in support of the sub-treasury and the convention system, or in
opposition to internal improvements by the federal government,
the people applauded out of sheer joy at the pleasure of
hearing him. He was one of the few men in Illinois whom the
epithet of “Yankee” never hurt. He might be a Yankee, but when
he sat down on the knee of some surly lawyer, and
confidentially told him his plans; or, at a political meeting,
took off his coat, and rolled up his sleeves, and “pitched
into” his opponent, the sons of Illinois forgot his origin in
love for the man.

Lincoln undoubtedly understood the charm of Douglas, and
realized his power. But he already had an insight into one of
his political characteristics that few people recognized at
that day. In writing to Stuart in 1839, while the latter was
attending Congress, Lincoln said: “Douglas has not been here
since you left. A report is in circulation here now that he has
abandoned the idea of going to Washington, though the report
does not come in a very authentic form, so far as I can learn.
Though, by the way, speaking of authenticity, you know that if
we had heard Douglas say that he had abandoned the contest, it
would not be very authentic.”

In the campaign of 1840 Lincoln and Douglas came more
frequently than ever into conflict. At that time the local
issues, which had formerly engaged Illinois candidates almost
entirely, were lost sight of in
[pg 430] national questions. In
Springfield, where the leaders of the parties were living,
many hot debates were held in private. Out of these grew, in
December, 1839, a series of public discussions, extending
over eight evenings, and in which several of the first
orators of the State took part. Lincoln was the last man on
the list. The people were nearly worn out before his turn
came, and his audience was small. He began his speech with
some melancholy, self-deprecatory reflections, complaining
that the small audience cast a damp upon his spirits which
he was sure he would be unable to overcome during the
evening. He did better than he expected, overcoming the damp
on his spirits so effectually that he made what was regarded
as the best speech of the series; and by a general request,
it was printed for distribution. The speech is peculiarly
interesting from the fact that while there is a little of
the perfervid eloquence of 1840 in it, as well as a good
deal of the rather boisterous humor of the time, a part of
it is devoted to a careful examination of the statements of
his opponents, and a refutation of them by means of public
documents.

A HARRISON BADGE OF 1840.

From the collection of Mr. O.H. Oldroyd of Washington,
D.C.

A HARRISON BUTTON OF 1840.

From the collection of Mr. John C. Browne of
Philadelphia.

As a good Democrat was expected to do, Douglas had explained
with plausibility why the Van Buren administration had in 1838
spent $40,000,000. Lincoln takes up his statements one by one,
and proves, as he says, that “the majority of them are wholly
untrue.” Douglas had attributed a part of the expenditures to
the purchase of public lands from the Indians.

“Now it happens,” says Lincoln, “that no such purchase
was made during that year. It is true that some money was
paid that year in pursuance of Indian treaties; but no
more, or rather not as much, as had been paid on the same
account in each of several preceding years…. Again, Mr.
Douglas says that the removal of the Indians to the country
west of the Mississippi created much of the expenditure of
1838. I have examined the public documents in relation to
this matter, and find that less was paid for the removal of
the Indians in that than in some former years. The whole
sum expended on that account in that year did not exceed
one quarter of a million. For this small sum, although we
do not think the administration entitled to credit, because
large sums have been expended in the same way in former
years, we consent it may take one and make the most of
it.
“Next, Mr. Douglas says that five millions of the
expenditures of 1838 consisted of the payment of the French
indemnity money to its individual claimants. I have
carefully examined the public documents, and thereby find
this statement to be wholly untrue. Of the forty millions
of dollars expended in 1838, I am enabled to say positively
that not one dollar consisted of payments on the French
indemnities. So much for that
excuse.
[pg 431]
“Next comes the post-office. He says that five millions
were expended during that year to sustain that department.
By a like examination of public documents, I find this also
wholly untrue. Of the so often mentioned forty millions,
not one dollar went to the post-office….
“I return to another of Mr. Douglas’s excuses for the
expenditures of 1838, at the same time announcing the
pleasing intelligence that this is the last one. He says
that ten millions of that year’s expenditure was a
contingent appropriation, to prosecute an anticipated war
with Great Britain on the Maine boundary question. Few
words will settle this. First, that the ten millions
appropriated was not made till 1839, and consequently could
not have been expended in 1838; second, although it was
appropriated, it has never been expended at all. Those who
heard Mr. Douglas, recollect that he indulged himself in a
contemptuous expression of pity for me. ‘Now he’s got me,’
thought I. But when he went on to say that five millions of
the expenditure of 1838 were payments of the French
indemnities, which I knew to be untrue; that five millions
had been for the post-office, which I knew to be untrue;
that ten millions had been for the Maine boundary war,
which I not only knew to be untrue, but supremely
ridiculous also; and when I saw that he was stupid enough
to hope that I would permit such groundless and audacious
assertions to go unexposed,—I readily consented that,
on the score both of veracity and sagacity, the audience
should judge whether he or I were the more deserving of the
world’s contempt.”

LINCOLN IN 1860.—NOW FIRST PUBLISHED.

From a first-state proof of an engraving of the Cooper
Institute picture of Lincoln (see McCLURE’S MAGAZINE for
February, 1896, first frontispiece). Made by John C.
Buttre, and now in the collection of W.C. Crane of New York
City, through whose courtesy it is here reproduced.

These citations show that Lincoln had already learned to
handle public documents, and to depend for at least a part of
his success with an audience upon a careful statement of facts.
The methods used in at least a portion of this speech are
exactly those which made the irresistible strength of his
speeches in 1858 and 1859.

LINCOLN IN THE CAMPAIGN OF 1840.

But there was little of as good work done in the campaign of
1840, by Lincoln or anybody else, as is found in this speech.
It was a campaign of noise and fun, and nowhere
[pg 432] more so than in Illinois.
Lincoln was one of the five Whig Presidential electors, and
he flung himself into the campaign with confidence. “The
nomination of Harrison takes first rate,” he wrote to his
partner Stuart, then in Washington. “You know I am never
sanguine, but I believe we will carry the State. The chance
of doing so appears to me twenty-five per cent, better than
it did for you to beat Douglas.” The Whigs, in spite of
their dislike of the convention system, organized as they
never had before, and even sent out a “confidential”
circular of which Lincoln was the author.

Every weapon he thought of possible use in the contest he
secured. “Be sure to send me as many copies of the ‘Life of
Harrison’ as you can spare from other uses,” he wrote Stuart.
“Be very sure to procure and send me the ‘Senate Journal’ of
New York, of September, 1814. I have a newspaper article which
says that that document proves that Van Buren voted against
raising troops in the last war. And, in general, send me
everything you think will be a good ‘war-club.'”

Every sign of success he quoted to Stuart; the number of
subscribers to the “Old Soldier,” a campaign newspaper which
the Whig committee had informed the Whigs of the State that
they “must take;” the names of Van Buren men who were
weakening, and to whom he wanted Stuart to send documents; the
name of every theretofore doubtful person who had declared
himself for Harrison. “Japh Bell has come out for Harrison,” he
put in a postscript to one letter; “ain’t that a caution?”

The monster political meetings held throughout the State did
much to widen Lincoln’s reputation, particularly one held in
June in Springfield. Twenty thousand people attended this
meeting, delegations coming from every direction. It took
fourteen teams to haul the delegation from Chicago, and they
were three weeks on their journey. Each party carried some huge
symbolic piece—the log cabin being the favorite. One of
the cabins taken to Springfield was drawn by thirty yokes of
oxen. In a hickory tree which was planted beside this cabin,
coons were seen playing, and a barrel of hard cider stood by
the door, continually on tap. Instead of a log cabin, the
Chicago delegation dragged across country a government yawl
rigged up as a two-masted ship, with a band of music and a
six-pounder cannon on board.

There are many reminiscences of this great celebration, and
Lincoln’s part in it, still afloat in Illinois. General T.J.
Henderson writes, in the entertaining reminiscences of Lincoln
prepared for this biography:

“The first time I remember to have seen Abraham Lincoln was
during the memorable campaign of 1840, when I was a boy fifteen
years of age. It was at an immense Whig mass-meeting held at
Springfield, Illinois, in the month of June of that year. The
Whigs attended this meeting from all parts of the State in
large numbers, and it was estimated that from forty to fifty
thousand people were present. They came in carriages and
wagons, on horseback and on foot. They came with log cabins
drawn on wheels by oxen, and with coons, coon-skins, and hard
cider. They came with music and banners; and thousands of them
came from long distances. It was the first political meeting I
had ever attended, and it made a very strong impression upon my
youthful mind.

“My father, William H. Henderson, then a resident of Stark
County, Illinois, was an ardent Whig; and having served under
General William Henry Harrison, the then Whig candidate for
President, in the war of 1812-1815, he felt a deep interest in
his election. And although he lived about a hundred miles from
Springfield, he went with a delegation from Stark County to
this political meeting, and took me along with him. I remember
that at this great meeting of the supporters of Harrison and
Tyler there were a number of able and distinguished speakers of
the Whig party of the State of Illinois present. Among them
were Colonel E.D. Baker, who was killed at Ball’s Bluff, on the
Potomac, in the late war, and who was one of the most eloquent
speakers in the State; Colonel John J. Hardin, who was killed
at the battle of Buena Vista, in the Mexican War; Fletcher
Webster, a son of Daniel Webster, who was killed in the late
war; S. Leslie Smith, a brilliant orator of Chicago; Rev. John
Hogan, Ben Bond, and Abraham Lincoln. I heard all of these men
speak on that occasion. And while I was too young to be a judge
of their speeches, yet I thought them all to be great men, and
none of them greater than Abraham Lincoln.”

One of the most prominent members of the Illinois bar has
written out especially for this work his impressions of
Lincoln’s speech at that
gathering.

[pg 433]

ABRAHAM LINCOLN IN 1861.

From a photograph by Klauber of Louisville, Kentucky.
From a photograph owned by Mr. James B. Speed of
Louisville, Kentucky, to whose courtesy we owe the right to
reproduce it here. When Lincoln was visiting Joshua F.
Speed in 1841, Mrs. Speed, the mother of his friend, became
much interested in him. His melancholy was profound, and
she tried by kindness and gentleness to arouse him to new
interest in life. One day before his departure she asked
one of her daughters for the latter’s Oxford Bible, telling
her she wanted it for Mr. Lincoln, and promising to get
another in its place. The gift touched Lincoln deeply, and
after he became President he remembered the giver with the
above portrait—one he had had taken especially for
her, he wrote.

[pg 434]

WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON, NINTH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED
STATES.

From a painting. William Henry Harrison was born at
Berkeley, Virginia, February 9, 1773. He was educated at
Hampden Sidney College, and began to study medicine, but,
excited by Indian outrages, gave it up to enter the army.
He was sent against the Indians of the West, and at once
distinguished himself. After peace was made in 1798, he was
appointed secretary of the Northwest Territory. In 1799 he
was a territorial delegate to Congress, and from 1801 to
1813, territorial governor of Indiana. In the war of 1812
he gained the battles of Tippecanoe and the Thames. From
1816 to 1819 he was a delegate to Congress from Ohio; from
1825 to 1828, a United State Senator; and in 1828 and 1829,
United States Minister to Colombia. In 1836 he was the Whig
candidate for the Presidency, but was defeated. Four years
later (1840) he was elected, but lived for only one month
after his inauguration.

“Mr. Lincoln stood in a wagon, from which he addressed the
mass of people that surrounded it. The meeting was one of
unusual interest because of him who was to make the principal
address. It was at the time of his greatest physical strength.
He was tall, and perhaps a little more slender than in later
life, and more homely than after he became stouter in person.
He was then only thirty-one years of age, and yet he was
regarded as one of the ablest of the Whig speakers in that
campaign. There was that in him that attracted and held public
attention. Even then he was the subject of popular regard
because of his candid and simple mode of discussing and
illustrating political questions. At times he was intensely
logical, and was always most convincing in his arguments. The
questions involved in that canvass had relation to the tariff,
internal public improvements by the federal government, the
distribution of the proceeds of the sales of public lands among
the several States, and other questions that divided the
political parties of that day. They were not such questions as
enlisted and engaged his best thoughts; they did not take hold
of his great nature, and had no tendency to develop it. At
times he discussed the questions of the time in a logical way,
but much time was devoted to telling stories to illustrate some
phase of his argument, though more often the telling of these
stories was resorted to for the purpose of rendering his
opponents ridiculous. That was a style of speaking much
appreciated at that early day. In that kind of oratory he
excelled most of his contemporaries—indeed, he had no
equals in the State. One story he told on that occasion was
full of salient points, and well illustrated the argument he
was making. It was not an impure story, yet it was not one it
would be seemly to publish; but rendered, as it was, in his
inimitable way, it contained nothing that was offensive to a
refined taste. The same story might have been told by another
in such a way that it would probably have been regarded as
transcending the proprieties of popular address. One
characterizing feature of all the stories told by Mr. Lincoln,
on the stump and elsewhere, was that although the subject
matter of some of them might not have been entirely
unobjectionable, yet the manner of telling them was so
peculiarly his own that they gave no offence even to refined
and cultured people. On the contrary, they were much enjoyed.
The story he told on this occasion was much liked by the vast
assembly that surrounded the temporary platform from which he
spoke, and was received with loud bursts of laughter and
applause. It served to place the opposing party and its
speakers in a most ludicrous position in respect to the
question being considered, and gave him a most favorable
hearing for the arguments he later made in support of the
measures he was
sustaining.”

[pg 435]

JOSHUA F. SPEED AND WIFE.

From a painting by Healy, owned by Mrs, Joshua F. Speed
of Louisville, Kentucky, and reproduced here by permission.
Joshua F. Speed was a Kentuckian. At the time Lincoln went
to Springfield he was one of the leading merchants of the
town, and it was he who befriended the young lawyer on his
arrival (see MCCLURE’S MAGAZINE for March). Towards the end
of 1840 Mr. Speed sold his store, and soon after returned
to Louisville. At his urgent invitation Lincoln visited him
in the summer of 1841. He seems not to have gone back with
Speed, as many biographers have stated, for in a letter of
June 19, 1841, to Speed, Lincoln says: “I stick to my
promise to come to Louisville.” He seems, too, to have
stayed a much shorter time than has frequently been stated,
for he wrote back to Speed’s sister, on September 27th, of
his safe arrival in Springfield. The letters quoted from in
this article were given by Speed himself to Mr. Herndon to
publish in his “Life of Lincoln.” Mr. Herndon turned them
over to Lamon, who used them in his volume published in
1872. Joshua Speed and Lincoln remained intimate friends
through life. Although they differed radically in 1855 on
the policy to be pursued in regard to slavery, Lincoln, in
writing Speed a long letter explaining his views, closes:
“And yet let me say I am your friend forever.”

LINCOLN’S ENGAGEMENT TO MISS TODD.

Lincoln had been busy with politics and law in the years
since he left New Salem, but he had by no means neglected the
social side of life. Indeed, he had gone so far as to become
engaged to be married to one of the favorite young women of
Springfield, Miss Mary Todd, the sister-in-law of one of his
political friends, a member of the “Long Nine” and a prominent
citizen, Ninian W.
Edwards.

[pg 436]

MARY TODD LINCOLN.

From a carbon enlargement, by Sherman and McHugh of New
York, of a photograph by Brady. Mary Todd was born in
Lexington, Kentucky, December 13, 1818. Her mother died
when she was young, and she was educated at one of the
best-known schools of the State—Madame Mantelli’s.
She remained there some four years, and as the school was
conducted entirely in French, she spoke the language
fluently. She was afterwards some time in the Ward Academy
of Lexington. Miss Todd first visited Springfield in 1837,
but remained only a few months. In 1839 she returned to
make her home with her sister, Mrs. Edwards. She had two
other sisters in the town, Mrs. William Wallace and Mrs.
C.M. Smith. The story of her life will, of course, be told
in connection with that of Mr. Lincoln in the forthcoming
articles. The photograph used for this reproduction was
kindly loaned by Mrs. S.J. Withington, Warner, New
Hampshire.

Miss Todd came from a well-known family of Lexington,
Kentucky; her father, Robert S. Todd, being one of the leading
citizens of his State. She had come to Springfield in 1839 to
live with her sister, Mrs. Edwards. She was a brilliant, witty,
highly-educated girl, ambitious and spirited, with a touch of
audacity which only made her more attractive, and she at once
took a leading position in Springfield society. There were many
young unmarried men in the town, drawn there by politics, and
Mr. Edwards’s handsome home was opened to them in the
hospitable Southern way. After Mary Todd became an inmate of
the Edwards house, the place was gayer than ever. She received
much attention from Douglas, Shields, Lincoln, and several
others. It was soon apparent, however, that Miss Todd preferred
Lincoln. As the intimacy between them increased, Mr. and Mrs.
Edwards protested. However honorable and able a man Lincoln
might be, he was still a “plebeian.” His family were humble and
poor; he was self-educated, without address or polish, careless
of forms, indifferent to society. How could Mary Todd, brought
up in a cultured home, accustomed to the refinements of life,
and with ambition for social position, accommodate herself to
so grave a nature, so dull an exterior? Miss Todd knew her own
mind, however. She loved Lincoln, and seems to have believed
from the first in his future. Some time in 1840 they became
engaged.

[pg 437]

LINCOLN IN 1858.—HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED.

From a photograph, by Harrison, Galesburg, Illinois, of
an ambrotype owned by Mrs. W.J. Thomson of Monmouth,
Illinois. This picture was taken at Monmouth on October 11,
1858, by W.J. Thomson, after a speech made in the town by
Lincoln that day, and four days after the debate between
Lincoln and Douglas at Galesburg, Illinois, on October 7,
1858.

But it was not long before there came the clashing
inevitable between two persons whose tastes and ambitions were
so different. Miss Todd was jealous and exacting. Lincoln
frequently failed to accompany her to the merry-makings which
she wanted to attend. She resented this indifference, which
seemed to her a purposed slight, instead of simply a lack of
thought on his part, and sometimes she went with Mr. Douglas or
any other escort who offered. Reproaches and tears and
misunderstanding followed. If the lovers made up, it was only
to fall out again. At last Lincoln became convinced that they
were incompatible, and resolved that he must break the
engagement. But the knowledge that the
[pg 438] girl loved him took away
his courage. He felt that he must not draw back, and he
became profoundly miserable.

“Whatever woman may cast her lot with mine, should any ever
do so, it is my intention to do all in my power to make her
happy and contented; and there is nothing I can imagine that
would make me more unhappy than to fail in the effort,” Lincoln
had written Miss Owens three years before. How could he make
this brilliant, passionate creature to whom he was betrothed
happy?

MISS JULIA JAYNE, ONE OF MISS TODD’S BRIDESMAIDS.

From a photograph loaned by Mr. Jesse W. Weik. Miss
Jayne afterward became Mrs. Lyman Trumbull.

ROBERT S. TODD.

Robert S. Todd, father of Mrs. Lincoln, came of
distinguished ancestors. He was the seventh son of
Major-General Levi Todd, and was born at Lexington,
Kentucky, February 25, 1791. He was prominent in the
politics of Kentucky for nearly thirty years. For many
years he was clerk of the Kentucky House of
Representatives; he was three times elected Representative
from Fayette County, and was a State Senator at the time of
his death, which occurred July 15, 1849. He was twice
married—the first time to his near relative, Eliza
Ann Parker, the mother of Mary Todd.

A mortal dread of the result of the marriage, a harrowing
doubt of his own feelings, possessed him. The experience is not
so rare in the lives of lovers that it should be regarded, as
it often has been, as something exceptional and abnormal in
Lincoln’s case. A reflective nature founded in melancholy, like
Lincoln’s, rarely undertakes even the simpler affairs of life
without misgivings. He certainly experienced dread and doubt
before entering on any new relation. When it came to forming
the most delicate and intimate of all human relations, he
staggered under a storm of uncertainty and suffering, and
finally broke the engagement.

So horrible a breach of honor did this seem to him that he
called the day when it occurred the “fatal first of January,
1841,” and months afterward he wrote to his intimate friend
Speed: “I must regain my confidence in my own ability to keep
my resolves when they are made. In that ability I once prided
myself as the only or chief gem of my character; that gem I
lost—how and where you know too well. I have not yet
regained it, and, until I do, I cannot trust myself in any
matter of much importance.”

The breaking of the engagement between Miss Todd and Mr.
Lincoln was naturally known at the time to all their friends.
Lincoln’s melancholy was evident to them all, nor did he,
indeed, attempt to disguise it. He wrote and spoke freely to
his intimates of the despair which possessed him, and of his
sense of dishonor. The episode caused a great amount of gossip,
as was to be expected. After Mr. Lincoln’s assassination and
Mrs. Lincoln’s sad death, various accounts of the courtship and
marriage were circulated. It remained, however, for one of
Lincoln’s law partners, Mr. W.H. Herndon, to develop and
circulate the most sensational of all the versions of the
rupture. His story would not be referred to here were it not
that it has been generally accepted as truthful by even his
most conservative biographers, including Mr. John T. Morse and
Mr. Carl Schurz. According to Mr. Herndon, the engagement
between the two was broken in the most violent and public way
possible, by Mr. Lincoln’s failing to appear at the wedding.
Mr. Herndon even describes the scene in
detail:

[pg 439]

“The time fixed for the marriage was the first day of
January, 1841. Careful preparations for the happy occasion
were made at the Edwards mansion. The house underwent the
customary renovation; the furniture was properly arranged,
the rooms neatly decorated, the supper prepared, and the
guests invited. The latter assembled on the evening in
question, and awaited in expectant pleasure the interesting
ceremony of marriage. The bride, bedecked in veil and
silken gown, and nervously toying with the flowers in her
hair, sat in the adjoining room. Nothing was lacking but
the groom. For some strange reason he had been delayed. An
hour passed, and the guests, as well as the bride, were
becoming restless. But they were all doomed to
disappointment. Another hour passed; messengers were sent
out over town, and each returning with the same report, it
became apparent that Lincoln, the principal in this little
drama, had purposely failed to appear. The bride, in grief,
disappeared to her room; the wedding supper was left
untouched; the guests quietly and wonderingly withdrew; the
lights in the Edwards mansion were blown out, and darkness
settled over all for the night. What the feelings of a lady
as sensitive, passionate, and proud as Miss Todd were, we
can only imagine; no one can ever describe them. By
daybreak, after persistent search, Lincoln’s friends found
him. Restless, gloomy, miserable, desperate, he seemed an
object of pity. His friends, Speed among the number,
fearing a tragic termination, watched him closely in their
rooms day and night. ‘Knives and razors, and every
instrument that could be used for self-destruction, were
removed from his reach.’ Mrs. Edwards did not hesitate to
regard him as insane, and of course her sister Mary shared
in that view.”

GENERAL JAMES SHIELDS.

From a photograph kindly loaned by C.B. Hall, New York.
General Shields was born at Dungannon, County of Tyrone,
Ireland, in 1810; came to the United States in 1826;
located in Randolph County, Illinois, and taught school
there; was admitted to the bar in 1832, and practised at
Kaskaskia. He was elected to the legislature in 1836, and
there became acquainted with Lincoln. In 1841 he was made
auditor of public accounts of Illinois, and it was while
holding this office that he challenged Lincoln to mortal
combat. In 1843 Governor Ford appointed him an associate
justice of the Supreme Court—an office which he
resigned two years later to become commissioner of the
general land-office. His gallantry in the Mexican War was
such that he was brevetted a major-general. The prestige
which his military record gave him made him a United States
Senator in 1849. Defeated for reelection by Lyman Trumbull
in 1855, he removed to Minnesota. There, May 12, 1858, he
was elected to the United States Senate to fill a vacancy,
serving about ten months. Then he went to California for a
year. August 19, 1861, President Lincoln, his old-time
enemy, presented him with a brigadier-general’s commission;
but two years later he gave this up, and settled on a farm
in Missouri. He remained in retirement for a while, but
eventually emerged to become a member of the legislature, a
defeated candidate for Congress, adjutant-general of the
State, and finally, in 1879, once more a United States
Senator, serving about six weeks of an unexpired term. He
thus had the rare distinction to be a United States Senator
from three States. In his later years he delivered
lectures—”Reminiscences of the Mexican War” and
“Recollections of Eminent Statesmen and Soldiers.” He died
suddenly at Ottumwa, Iowa, June 1, 1879. General Shields
has been variously rated by his contemporaries. That he was
a man of considerable ability is conceded, and he possessed
the warmth and generosity common to his race.—J.
McCan Davis.

MRS. NINIAN W. EDWARDS.

From a painting by Healy, owned by her son, Mr. A.S.
Edwards, Springfield, Illinois. Mrs. Ninian W. Edwards was
a sister of Mrs. Lincoln. Her maiden name was Elizabeth P.
Todd. She was born at Lexington, Kentucky, in 1813, and
died at Springfield, Illinois, her home since 1835,
February 22, 1888.

[pg 440]

COURT-HOUSE AT TREMONT WHERE LINCOLN RECEIVED WARNING
OF SHIELDS’S CHALLENGE.

Tremont was about fifty miles north of Springfield, in
Tazewell County. Although the internal improvements scheme
of 1837 ran a railroad through the town, it was only
reached in 1842, at the time of the Shields-Lincoln duel,
by driving. The court-house is a fair example of those in
which Lincoln first practised law.

No one can read this description in connection with the rest
of Mr. Herndon’s text, and escape the impression that, if it is
true, there must have been a vein of cowardice in Lincoln. The
context shows that he was not insane enough to excuse such a
public insult to a woman. To break his engagement was, all
things considered, not in any way an unusual or abnormal thing;
to brood over the rupture, to blame himself, to feel that he
had been dishonorable, was to be expected, after such an act,
from one of his temperament. Nothing, however, but temporary
insanity or constitutional cowardice could explain such conduct
as here described. Mr. Herndon does not pretend to found his
story on any personal knowledge of the affair. He was in
Springfield at the time, a clerk in Speed’s store, but did not
have then, nor, indeed, did he ever have, any social relations
with the families in which Mr. Lincoln was always a welcome
guest. His only authority for the story is a remark which he
says Mrs. Ninian Edwards made to him in an interview: “Lincoln
and Mary were engaged; everything was ready and prepared for
the marriage, even to the supper. Mr. Lincoln failed to meet
his engagement; cause, insanity.” This remark, it should be
noted, is not from a manuscript written by Mrs. Edwards, but in
a report of an interview with her, written by Mr. Herndon.
Supposing, however, that the statement was made exactly as Mr.
Herndon reports it, it certainly does not justify any such
sensational description as Mr. Herndon gives.

If such a thing had ever occurred, it could not have failed
to be known, of course, even to its smallest details, by all
the relatives and friends of both Miss Todd and Mr. Lincoln.
Nobody, however, ever heard of this wedding party until Mr.
Herndon gave his material to the public.

One of the closest friends of the Lincolns throughout their
lives was a cousin of Mrs. Lincoln’s, Mrs. Grimsley, afterwards
Mrs. Dr. Brown. Mrs. Grimsley lived in Springfield, on the most
intimate and friendly relations with Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln, and
the first six months of their life in the White House she spent
with them. She was a woman of unusual culture, and of the
rarest sweetness and graciousness of character. No one could
look on her face without feeling her perfect sincerity and
goodness. Some months before Mrs. Brown’s death, in August,
1895, a copy of Mr. Herndon’s story was sent her, with a
request that she write for publication her knowledge of the
affair. In her reply she said:

“Did Mr. Lincoln fail to appear when the invitations were
out, the guests invited, and the supper ready for the wedding?
I will say emphatically,
‘No.’

[pg 441]

“There may have been a little shadow of foundation for Mr.
Herndon’s lively imagination to play upon, in that, the year
previous to the marriage, and when Mr. Lincoln and my cousin
Mary expected soon to be married, Mr. Lincoln was taken with
one of those fearful, overwhelming periods of depression, which
induced his friends to persuade him to leave Springfield. This
he did for a time; but I am satisfied he was loyal and true to
Mary, even though at times he may have doubted whether he was
responding as fully as a manly, generous nature should to such
affection as he knew my cousin was ready to bestow on him. And
this because it had not the overmastering depth of an early
love. This everybody here knows; therefore I do not feel as if
I were betraying dear friends.”

RESIDENCE OF NINIAN W. EDWARDS, SPRINGFIELD,
ILLINOIS.

From a photograph made for MCCLURE’S MAGAZINE in
February, 1896. At this house Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd
were married November 4, 1842, and here Mrs. Lincoln died
July 16, 1882. The house was built about 1835. It was a
brick structure, and there were few handsomer ones in the
town. The south half (appearing in the left of this
picture) was at first only one story in height; the second
story was but recently added. In this part was the
dining-room. The parlor, in which the marriage ceremony was
performed, was the front room on the first floor of the
north half of the house. The house is now occupied by St.
Agatha’s School (Episcopal).

Mrs. John Stuart, the wife of Lincoln’s law partner at that
time, is still living in Springfield, a refined, cultivated,
intelligent woman, who remembers perfectly the life and events
of that day. When Mr. Herndon’s story first came to her
attention, her indignation was intense. She protested that she
never before had heard of such a thing. Mrs. Stuart was not,
however, in Springfield at that particular date, but in
Washington, her husband being a member of Congress. She wrote
the following statement for this biography:

“I cannot deny this, as I was not in Springfield for some
months before and after this occurrence was said to have taken
place; but I was in close correspondence with relatives and
friends during all this time, and never heard a word of it. The
late Judge Broadwell told me that he had asked Mr. Ninian
Edwards about it, and Mr. Edwards told him that no such thing
had ever taken place.

“All I can say is that I unhesitatingly do not believe such
an event ever occurred. I thought I had never heard of this
till I saw it in Herndon’s book. I have since been told that
Lamon mentions the same thing. I read Lamon at the time he
published, and felt very much disgusted, but did not remember
this particular assertion. The first chapters of Lamon’s book
were purchased from Herndon; so Herndon is responsible for the
whole.

“Mrs. Lincoln told me herself all the circumstances of her
engagement to Mr. Lincoln, of his illness, and the breaking off
of her engagement, of the renewal, and her marriage. So I say I
do not believe one word of this dishonorable story about Mr.
Lincoln.”

[pg 442]

LINCOLN’S MARRIAGE LICENSE AND MARRIAGE
CERTIFICATE.—NOW FIRST PUBLISHED.

Photographed for MCCLURE’S MAGAZINE from the original,
now on file in the county clerk’s office, Springfield,
Illinois. It has hitherto been commonly supposed that the
original marriage license issued to Abraham Lincoln and
Mary Todd in 1842, with the officiating-minister’s
certificate of marriage attached to it, was one of the
interesting documents in what was formerly the Keys Lincoln
Memorial Collection. Nicolay and Hay reproduced it in their
biography of Lincoln, and other publications have made it
appear authentic. Messrs. Keys and Munson, who formed the
collection in which the certificate was first exhibited,
called it a duplicate, and Mr. William H. Lambert of
Philadelphia, who owns it now, supposed, in buying it, that
it was a duplicate. Mr. Lambert, however, in showing us the
certificate, called attention to a suspicious circumstance
connected with the license. The seal of the county court
stamped upon it was dated “1849.” It was difficult to
reconcile this with the fact that the marriage occurred in
1842. The inconsistency was covered up in certain
facsimiles which have been published, by a stroke of the
pen; the date of the seal was changed to fit the date of
the marriage. Mr. Lambert’s suggestion led to an
investigation for this Magazine. A search in the county
clerk’s office at Springfield brought to light the real and
only “original” license, stowed away in a dusty
pigeon-hole, untouched in thirty years. This is the license
which is reproduced above. Beneath the license is the Rev.
Charles Dresser’s certificate of the marriage. The bogus
document was made out on the blank form in use in the
county clerk’s office in 1865—a form quite different
from that used in 1842. This form was not used prior to
1865, and never after February 3, 1866. So it seems most
probable that the spurious license was procured soon after
Mr. Lincoln’s assassination. The handwriting is that of
N.W. Matheny, then, as in 1842, the county clerk, a
gentleman of high character, who no doubt furnished the
copy for a perfectly proper purpose. It will be observed
that the genuine license bears no seal. This is due to the
fact that prior to 1849 the county court did not have a
seal; indeed, before that year, such a tribunal as the
“county court” was unknown to the judiciary system of the
State. The certificate attached to the counterfeit license,
of course, was not written by the Rev. Charles Dresser (for
he was then dead), but, like the license itself, was made
out by the county clerk.—J. McCan Davis.

Another prominent member in the same circle with Mr. Lincoln
and Miss Todd is Mrs. B.T. Edwards, the widow of Judge Benjamin
T. Edwards, and sister-in-law of Mr. Ninian Edwards, who had
married Miss Todd’s sister. She came to Springfield in 1839,
and was intimately acquainted with Mr. Lincoln and Miss Todd,
and knew, as well as another could know, their affairs. Mrs.
Edwards is still living in Springfield,
[pg 443] a woman of the most perfect
refinement and trustworthiness. In answer to the question,
“Is Mr. Herndon’s description true?” she writes:

“I am impatient to tell you that all that he says about this
wedding—the time for which was ‘fixed for the first day
of January’—is a fabrication. He has drawn largely upon
his imagination in describing something which never took
place.

“I know the engagement between Mr. Lincoln and Miss Todd was
interrupted for a time, and it was rumored among her young
friends that Mr. Edwards had rather opposed it. But I am sure
there had been no ‘time fixed’ for any wedding; that is, no
preparations had ever been made until the day that Mr. Lincoln
met Mr. Edwards on the street and told him that he and Mary
were going to be married that evening. Upon inquiry, Mr.
Lincoln said they would be married in the Episcopal church, to
which Mr. Edwards replied: ‘No; Mary is my ward, and she must
be married at my house.’

“If I remember rightly, the wedding guests were few, not
more than thirty; and it seems to me all are gone now but Mrs.
Wallace, Mrs. Levering, and myself, for it was not much more
than a family gathering; only two or three of Mary Todd’s young
friends were present. The ‘entertainment’ was simple, but in
beautiful taste; but the bride had neither veil nor flowers in
her hair, with which to ‘toy nervously.’ There had been no
elaborate trousseau for the bride of the future
President of the United States, nor even a handsome wedding
gown; nor was it a gay wedding.”

Two sisters of Mrs. Lincoln’s who are still living, Mrs.
Wallace of Springfield, and Mrs. Helm of Elizabethstown,
Kentucky, deny emphatically that any wedding was ever arranged
between Mr. Lincoln and Miss Todd but the one which did take
place. That the engagement was broken after a wedding had been
talked of, they think possible; but Mr. Herndon’s story, they
deny emphatically.

“There is not a word of truth in it!” Mrs. Wallace broke
out, impulsively, before the question about the non-appearance
of Mr. Lincoln had been finished. “I never was so amazed in my
life as when I read that story. Mr. Lincoln never did such a
thing. Why, Mary Lincoln never had a silk dress in her life
until she went to Washington.”

REV. CHARLES DRESSER.

From a daguerreotype owned by his son, Dr. T.W. Dresser,
Springfield, Illinois. The Rev. Charles Dresser, who was
the officiating clergyman at the wedding of Abraham Lincoln
and Mary Todd, was born at Pomfret, Connecticut, February
24, 1800. He was graduated from Brown University in 1823,
and went to Virginia, where he studied theology. In 1829 he
became an ordained minister in the Protestant Episcopal
Church. He was married in 1832 in Dinwiddie County,
Virginia, to Louisa W. Withers. Upon his removal to
Springfield, Illinois, in 1838, he became the rector of the
Protestant Episcopal church there, and remained so until
1858, when failing health caused his retirement. In 1855,
Jubilee College elected him Professor of Divinity and
Belles-Lettres, but he held this position only a short
time. He died March 25, 1865.—J. McCan
Davis.

As Mr. Joshua Speed was, all through this period, Mr.
Lincoln’s closest friend, no thought or feeling of the one ever
being concealed from the other, Mrs. Joshua Speed, who is still
living in Louisville, Kentucky, was asked if she knew of the
story. Mrs. Speed listened in surprise to Mr. Herndon’s tale.
“I never heard of it before,” she declared. “I never heard of
it. If it is true, I never heard of it.”

In all of these cases the opinion of only those persons
intimately connected with Mr. Lincoln and Miss Todd has been
asked. Care has been taken, too, to apply only to persons whose
character put them beyond the suspicion of distorting
facts.

Quite unexpectedly, some months ago, a volunteer witness to
the falsity of the story appeared. The Hon. H.W. Thornton of
Millersburg, Illinois, was a member of the Twelfth General
Assembly, which met in Springfield in 1840. During that winter
he was boarding near Lincoln, saw him almost every day, was a
constant visitor at Mr. [pg 444] Edwards’s house, and he
knew Miss Todd well. He wrote to this magazine declaring
that Mr. Herndon’s statement about the wedding must be
false, as he was closely associated with Miss Todd and Mr.
Lincoln all winter, and never knew anything of it. Mr.
Thornton went on to say that he knew beyond a doubt that the
sensational account of Lincoln’s insanity was untrue, and he
quoted from the House journal to show how it was impossible
that, as Lamon says, using Herndon’s notes, “Lincoln went
crazy as a loon, and did not attend the legislature in
1841-1842, for this reason;” or, as Herndon says, that he
had to be watched constantly. According to the record taken
from the journals of the House sent us by Mr. Thornton, and
which we have had verified in Springfield, Mr. Lincoln was
in his seat in the House on that “fatal first of January”
when he is asserted to have been groping in the shadow of
madness, and he was also there on the following day. The
third of January was Sunday. On Monday, the fourth, he
appears not to have been present—at least he did not
vote; but even this is by no means conclusive evidence that
he was not there. On the fifth, and on every succeeding day
until the thirteenth, he was in his seat. From the
thirteenth to the eighteenth, inclusive, he is not recorded
on any of the roll-calls, and probably was not present. But
on the nineteenth, when “John J. Hardin announced his
illness to the House,” as Mr. Herndon says (which
announcement seems not to have gotten into the journal),
Lincoln was again in his place, and voted. On the twentieth
he is not recorded; but on every subsequent day, until the
close of the session on the first of March, Lincoln was in
the House. Thus, during the whole of the two months of
January and February, he was absent not more than seven
days—as good a record as to attendance, perhaps, as
that made by the average member.

Mr. Thornton says further: “Mr. Lincoln boarded at William
Butler’s, near to Dr. Henry’s, where I boarded. The missing
days, from January 13th to 19th, Mr. Lincoln spent several
hours each day at Dr. Henry’s; a part of these days I remained
with Mr. Lincoln. His most intimate friends had no fears of his
injuring himself. He was very sad and melancholy, but being
subject to these spells, nothing serious was apprehended. His
being watched, as stated in Herndon’s book, was news to me
until I saw it there.”

But while Lincoln went about his daily duties, even on the
“fatal first of January,” his whole being was shrouded in
gloom. He did not pretend to conceal this from his friends.
Writing to Mr. Stuart on January 23d, he said: “I am now the
most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally
distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one
cheerful face on the earth. Whether I shall ever be better I
cannot tell; I awfully forebode I shall not. To remain as I am
is impossible. I must die or be better, it appears to me. The
matter you speak of on my account you may attend to as you say,
unless you shall hear of my condition forbidding it. I say this
because I fear I shall be unable to attend to any business
here, and a change of scene might help me.”

In the summer he visited his friend Speed, who had sold his
store in Springfield, and returned to Louisville, Kentucky. The
visit did much to brighten his spirits, for, writing back in
September, after his return, to his friend’s sister, he was
even gay.

A curious situation arose the next year (1842), which did
much to restore Lincoln to a more normal view of his relation
to Miss Todd. In the summer of 1841, his friend Speed had
become engaged. As his marriage approached, he in turn was
attacked by a melancholy not unlike that which Lincoln had
suffered. He feared he did not love well enough to marry, and
he confided his fear to Lincoln. Full of sympathy for the
trouble of his friend, Lincoln tried in every way to persuade
him that his “twinges of the soul” were all explained by
nervous debility. When Speed returned to Kentucky, Lincoln
wrote him several letters, in which he consoled, counselled, or
laughed at him. These letters abound in suggestive passages.
From what did Speed suffer? From three special causes and a
general one, which Lincoln proceeds to enumerate:

“The general cause is, that you are naturally of a
nervous temperament; and this I say from what I have seen
of you personally, and what you have told me concerning
your mother at various times, and concerning your brother
William at the time his wife died. The first special cause
is your exposure to bad weather on your journey, which my
experience clearly proves to be very severe on defective
nerves. The second is the absence of all business and
conversation of friends, which might divert your mind, give
it occasional rest from the intensity of thought which will
sometimes wear the sweetest idea thread-bare and turn it to
the bitterness of death. The third is the rapid and near
approach of that crisis on which all your thoughts and
feelings concentrate.”

Speed writes that his fiancée is ill, and his
letter is full of gloomy forebodings of an early death. Lincoln
hails these fears as an omen of
happiness.

[pg 445]

THE GLOBE HOTEL, SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS.

In a letter to Joshua R. Speed, dated May 18, 1843,
Lincoln wrote: “We are not keeping house, but boarding at
the Globe Tavern, which is very well kept now by a widow
lady of the name of Beck. Our room (the same that Dr.
Wallace occupied there) and boarding only costs us four
dollars a week…. I most heartily wish you and your Fanny
would not fail to come. Just let us know the time, and we
will have a room provided for you at our house, and all be
merry together for a while.” The Globe Hotel stood in
Springfield until about three years ago.

“I hope and believe that your present anxiety and
distress about her health and her life must and will
forever banish those horrid doubts which I know you
sometimes felt as to the truth of your affection for her.
If they can once and forever be removed (and I almost feel
a presentiment that the Almighty has sent your present
affliction expressly for that object), surely nothing can
come in their stead to fill their immeasurable measure of
misery…. I am now fully convinced that you love her as
ardently as you are capable of loving. Your ever being
happy in her presence, and your intense anxiety about her
health, if there were nothing else, would place this beyond
all dispute in my mind. I incline to think it probable that
your nerves will fail you occasionally for a while; but
once you get them firmly guarded now, that trouble is over
forever. I think, if I were you, in case my mind were not
exactly right, I would avoid being idle. I would
immediately engage in some business or go to making
preparations for it, which would be the same thing.”

Mr. Speed’s marriage occurred in February, and to the letter
announcing it Lincoln replied:

“I tell you, Speed, our forebodings (for which you and I
are peculiar) are all the worst sort of nonsense. I
fancied, from the time I received your letter of Saturday,
that the one of Wednesday was never to come, and yet it did
come, and what is more, it is perfectly clear, both from
its tone and handwriting, that you were much happier, or,
if you think the term preferable, less miserable, when you
wrote it than when you wrote the last one before. You had
so obviously improved at the very time I so much fancied
you would have grown worse. You say that something
indescribably horrible and alarming still haunts you. You
will not say that three months from now, I will venture.
When your nerves once get steady now, the whole trouble
will be over forever. Nor should you become impatient at
their being even very slow in becoming steady. Again, you
say, you much fear that that Elysium of which you have
dreamed so much is never to be realized. Well, if it shall
not, I dare swear it will not be the
[pg 446] fault of her who is now
your wife. I now have no doubt that it is the peculiar
misfortune of both you and me to dream dreams of Elysium
far exceeding all that anything earthly can
realize.”

His prophecy was true. In March Speed wrote him that he was
“far happier than he had ever expected to be.” Lincoln caught
at the letter with an eagerness which is deeply pathetic:

“It cannot be told how it now thrills me with joy to
hear you say you are far happier than you ever expected to
be. I know you too well to suppose your expectations were
not, at least, sometimes extravagant, and if the reality
exceeds them all, I say, Enough, dear Lord! I am not going
beyond the truth when I tell you that the short space it
took me to read your last letter gave me more pleasure than
the total sum of all I have enjoyed since the fatal 1st of
January, 1841. Since then, it seems to me, I should have
been entirely happy, but for the never absent idea that
there is one still unhappy whom I have contributed to make
so. That still kills me. I cannot but reproach myself for
even wishing to be happy while she is otherwise. She
accompanied a large party on the railroad cars to
Jacksonville last Monday, and on her return spoke, so that
I heard of it, of having enjoyed the trip exceedingly. God
be praised for that.”

Evidently Lincoln was still unreconciled to his separation
from Miss Todd. In the summer of 1842, only three or four
months after the above letter was written, a clever ruse on the
part of certain of their friends threw the two unexpectedly
together; and an understanding of some kind evidently was come
to, for during the season they met secretly at the house of one
of Lincoln’s friends, Mr. Simeon Francis. It was while these
meetings were going on that a burlesque encounter occurred
between Lincoln and James Shields, for which Miss Todd was
partly responsible, and which no doubt gave just the touch of
comedy necessary to relieve their tragedy and restore them to a
healthier view of their relations.

THE LINCOLN AND SHIELDS DUEL.

Among the Democratic officials then living in Springfield
was one James Shields, auditor of the State. He was a
hot-headed, blustering Irishman, not without ability, and
certainly courageous; a good politician, and, on the whole, a
very well-liked man. However, the swagger and noise with which
he accompanied the execution of his duties, and his habit of
being continually on the defensive, made him the butt of Whig
ridicule. Nothing could have given greater satisfaction to
Lincoln and his friends than having an opponent who, whenever
they joked him, flew into a rage and challenged them to
fight.

At the time when Lincoln was visiting Miss Todd at Mr.
Francis’s house, the Whigs were much excited over the fact that
the Democrats had issued an order forbidding the payment of
State taxes in State bank-notes. The bank-notes were in fact
practically worthless, for the State finances were suffering a
violent reaction from the extravagant legislation of 1836 and
1837. One of the popular ways of attacking an obnoxious
political doctrine in that day was writing letters from some
imaginary backwoods settlement, setting forth in homely
vernacular the writer’s views of the question, and showing how
its application affected his part of the world. These letters
were really a rude form of the “Bigelow Papers” or “Nasby
Letters.” Soon after the order was issued by the Illinois
officials demanding silver instead of bank-notes in payment of
taxes, Lincoln wrote a letter to a Springfield paper from the
“Lost Townships,” signing it “Aunt Rebecca.” In it he described
the plight to which the new order had brought the neighborhood,
and he intimated that the only reason for issuing such an order
was that the State officers might have their salaries paid in
silver. Shields was ridiculed unmercifully in the letter for
his vanity and his gallantry.

It happened that there were several young women in
Springfield who had received rather too pronounced attention
from Mr. Shields, and who were glad to see him tormented. Among
them were Miss Todd and her friend Miss Julia Jayne. Lincoln’s
letter from the “Lost Townships” was such a success that they
followed it up with one in which “Aunt Rebecca” proposed to the
gallant auditor, and a few days later they published some very
bad verses, signed “Cathleen,” celebrating the
wedding.
¹

Springfield was highly entertained, less by the verses than
by the fury of Shields. He would have satisfaction, he said,
and he sent a friend, one General Whitesides, to the paper, to
ask for the name of the writer
[pg 447] of the communications. The
editor, in a quandary, went to Lincoln, who, unwilling that
Miss Todd and Miss Jayne should figure in the affair,
ordered that his own name be given as the author of letters
and poem. This was only about ten days after the first
letter had appeared, on September 2d, and Lincoln left
Springfield in a day or two for a long trip on the circuit.
He was at Tremont when, on the morning of the seventeenth,
two of his friends, E.H. Merryman and William Butler, drove
up hastily. Shields and his friend Whitesides were behind,
they said, the irate Irishman vowing that he would challenge
Lincoln. They, knowing that Lincoln was “unpractised both as
to diplomacy and weapons,” had started as soon as they had
learned that Shields had left Springfield, had passed him in
the night, and were there to see Lincoln through.

It was not long before Shields and Whitesides arrived, and
soon Lincoln received a note in which the indignant auditor
said: “I will take the liberty of requiring a full, positive,
and absolute retraction of all offensive allusions used by you
in these communications in relation to my private character and
standing as a man, as an apology for the insults conveyed in
them. This may prevent consequences which no one will regret
more than myself.”

Lincoln immediately replied that, since Shields had not
stopped to inquire whether he really was the author of the
articles, had not pointed out what was offensive in them, had
assumed facts and hinted at consequences, he could not submit
to answer the note. Shields wrote again, but Lincoln simply
replied that he could receive nothing but a withdrawal of the
first note or a challenge. To this he steadily held, even
refusing to answer the question as to the authorship of the
letters, which Shields finally put. It was inconsistent with
his honor to negotiate for peace with Mr. Shields, he said,
unless Mr. Shields withdrew his former offensive letter.
Seconds were immediately named: Whitesides by Shields, Merryman
by Lincoln; and though they talked of peace, Whitesides
declared he could not mention it to his principal. “He would
challenge me next, and as soon cut my throat as not.”

This was on the nineteenth, and that night the party
returned to Springfield. But in someway the affair had leaked
out, and fearing arrest, Lincoln and Merryman left town the
next morning. The instructions were left with Butler. If
Shields would withdraw his first note, and write another asking
if Lincoln was the author of the offensive articles, and, if
so, asking for gentlemanly satisfaction, then Lincoln had
prepared a letter explaining the whole affair. If Shields would
not do this, there was nothing to do but fight. Lincoln left
the following preliminaries for the duel:

“First. Weapons: Cavalry broadswords of the
largest size, precisely equal in all respects, and such as
now used by the cavalry company at Jacksonville.
“Second. Position: A plank ten feet long, and
from nine to twelve inches broad, to be firmly fixed on
edge on the ground, as the line between us, which neither
is to pass his foot over on forfeit of his life. Next, a
line drawn on the ground on either side of said plank and
parallel with it, each at the distance of the whole length
of the sword and three feet additional from the plank; and
the passing of his own such line by either party during the
fight shall be deemed a surrender of the contest.
“Third. Time: On Thursday evening at five
o’clock, if you can get it so; but in no case to be at a
greater distance of time than Friday evening at five
o’clock.
“Fourth. Place: Within three miles of Alton, on
the opposite side of the river, the particular spot to be
agreed upon by you.”

As Mr. Shields refused to withdraw his first note, the
entire party started for the rendezvous across the Mississippi.
Lincoln and Merryman drove together in a dilapidated old buggy,
in the bottom of which rattled a number of broadswords. It was
the morning of the 22d of September when the duellists arrived
in the town. There are people still living in Alton who
remember their coming. “The party arrived about the middle of
the morning,” says Mr. Edward Levis,
² “and soon crossed the
river to a sand-bar which at the time was, by reason of the
low water, a part of the Missouri mainland. The means of
conveyance was an old horse-ferry that was operated by a man
named Chapman. The weapons were in the keeping of the
friends of the principals, and no care was taken to conceal
them; in fact, they were openly displayed. Naturally, there
was a great desire among the male population to attend the
duel, but the managers of the affair would not permit any
but their own party to board the ferry-boat. Skiffs were
very scarce, and but a few could avail themselves of the
opportunity in this way. I had to content myself with
standing on the levee and watching proceedings at long
range.”

The party had scarcely reached the sand-bar before they were
joined by some unexpected friends. Lincoln and Merryman, on
their way to Alton, had stopped at White Hall for dinner.
Across the street from the hotel lived Mr. Elijah Lott, an
acquaintance [pg 448] of Merryman’s. Mr. Lott was
not long in finding out what was on foot, and as soon as the
duellists had departed, he drove to Carrollton, where he
knew that Colonel John J. Hardin and several other friends
of Lincoln were attending court, and warned them of the
trouble. Hardin and one or two others immediately started
for Alton. They arrived in time to calm Shields, and to aid
the seconds in adjusting matters “with honor to all
concerned.”

That the duellists returned in good spirits is evident from
Mr. Levis’s reminiscences: “It was not very long,” says he,
“until the boat was seen returning to Alton. As it drew near I
saw what was presumably a mortally wounded man lying on the bow
of the boat. His shirt appeared to be bathed in blood. I
distinguished Jacob Smith, a constable, fanning the supposed
victim vigorously. The people on the bank held their breath in
suspense, and guesses were freely made as to which of the two
men had been so terribly wounded. But suspense was soon turned
to chagrin and relief when it transpired that the supposed
candidate for another world was nothing more nor less than a
log covered with a red shirt. This ruse had been resorted to in
order to fool the people on the levee; and it worked to
perfection. Lincoln and Shields came off the boat together,
chatting in a nonchalant and pleasant manner.”

MARRIAGE OF LINCOLN AND MISS TODD.

The Lincoln-Shields duel had so many farcical features, and
Miss Todd had unwittingly been so much to blame for it, that
one can easily see that it might have had considerable
influence on the relations of the two young people. However
that may be, something had made Mr. Lincoln feel that he could
renew his engagement. Early in October, not a fortnight after
the duel, he wrote Speed: “You have now been the husband of a
lovely woman nearly eight months. That you are happier now than
the day you married her I well know, for without you would not
be living. But I have your word for it, too, and the returning
elasticity of spirits which is manifested in your letters. But
I want to ask a close question: Are you now in feelings as well
as judgment glad that you are married as you are?”

We do not know Speed’s answer, nor the final struggle of the
man’s heart. We only know that on November 4, 1842, Lincoln was
married, the wedding being almost impromptu. Mrs. Dr. Brown,
Miss Todd’s cousin, in the same letter quoted from above,
describes the wedding:

“One morning, bright and early, my cousin came down in her
excited, impetuous way, and said to my father: ‘Uncle, you must
go up and tell my sister that Mr. Lincoln and I are to be
married this evening,’ and to me: ‘Get on your bonnet and go
with me to get my gloves, shoes, etc., and then to Mr.
Edwards’s.’ When we reached there we found some excitement over
a wedding being sprung upon them so suddenly. However, my
father, in his lovely, pacific way, ‘poured oil upon the
waters,’ and we thought everything was ‘ship-shape,’ when Mrs.
Edwards laughingly said: ‘How fortunately you selected this
evening, for the Episcopal Sewing Society is to meet here, and
my supper is all ordered.’

“But that comfortable little arrangement would not hold, as
Mary declared she would not make a spectacle for gossiping
ladies to gaze upon and talk about; there had already been too
much talk about her. Then my father was despatched to tell Mr.
Lincoln that the wedding would be deferred until the next
evening. Clergyman, attendants and intimate friends were
notified, and on Friday evening, in the midst of a small circle
of friends, with the elements doing their worst in the way of
rain, this singular courtship culminated in marriage. This I
know to be literally true, as I was one of her bridesmaids,
Miss Jayne (afterwards Mrs. Lyman Trumbull) and Miss Rodney
being the others.”

Footnote 1:
(return)
Mr. Charles Lamb, now passing his declining years
quietly on his farm, a dozen miles from Springfield,
Illinois, was a compositor on the “Sangamo Journal” from
1836 to 1843, and it was he who put into type the poem by
“Cathleen,” which, with the “Lost Townships” letters, led
General Shields to challenge Lincoln. “This poem,” says Mr.
Lamb, “was written by Mary Todd and Julia Jayne, afterward
the wife of Senator Lyman Trumbull. After I had set up the
poem, I took the copy from the hook and put it into my
pocket. When Lincoln was informed by Simeon Francis, the
editor of the ‘Journal,’ that Shields had demanded the name
of the author of the verses, he came around to the office
and asked for the copy. I produced it, and he picked up a
pen and wrote his name across the top of the page. This, of
course, meant that he assumed the responsibility for the
production. I retained this copy until a few years ago,
when, unhappily, it was destroyed. My recollection is that
the ‘Lost Townships’ letters were set up by Mr. Francis
himself. Mr. Lincoln was a frequent contributor to the
‘Journal,’ and it usually fell to my lot to set up his
contributions.”—J. McCan Davis.

Footnote 2:
(return)
Interview with Mr. Edward Levis made for this
Magazine.

[pg 449]

“PHROSO.”

A TALE OF BRAVE DEEDS AND PERILOUS VENTURES.

By Anthony Hope,

Author of “The Prisoner of Zenda,” etc.

CHAPTER I.

A LONG THING ENDING IN POULOS.

QUOT homines, tot sententiæ; so
many men, so many fancies. My fancy was for an island. Perhaps
boyhood’s glamour hung still round sea-girt rocks, and “faery
lands forlorn” still beckoned me; perhaps I felt that London
was too full, the Highlands rather fuller, the Swiss mountains
most insufferably crowded of them all. “Money can buy company,”
and it can buy retirement. The latter service I asked now of
the moderate wealth with which my poor cousin Tom’s death had
endowed me. Everybody was good enough to suppose that I
rejoiced at Tom’s death, whereas I was particularly sorry for
it, and was not consoled even by the prospects of the island.
My friends understood this wish for an island as little as they
appreciated my feelings about poor Tom. Beatrice was most
emphatic in declaring that “a horrid little island” had no
charms for her, and that she would never set foot in it. This
declaration was rather annoying, because I had imagined myself
spending my honeymoon with Beatrice on the island; but life is
not all honeymoon, and I decided to have the island none the
less. In the first place, I was not to be married for a year.
Mrs. Kennett Hipgrave had insisted on this delay in order that
we might be sure that we knew our own hearts. And as I may say
without unfairness that Mrs. Hipgrave was to a considerable
degree responsible for the engagement—she asserted the
fact herself with much pride—I thought that she had a
right to some voice in the date of the marriage. Moreover, the
postponement gave me exactly time to go over and settle affairs
in the island.

For I had bought it. It cost me seven thousand five hundred
and fifty pounds—rather a fancy price, but I could not
haggle with the old lord—half to be paid to the lord’s
bankers in London, and the second half to him in Neopalia, when
he delivered possession to me. The Turkish government had
sanctioned the sale, and I had agreed to pay a hundred pounds
yearly as tribute. This sum, I was entitled, in my turn, to
levy on the inhabitants.

“In fact, my dear lord,” said old Mason to me when I called
on him in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, “the whole affair is settled. I
congratulate you on having got just what was your whim. You are
over a hundred miles from the nearest land—Rhodes, you
see.” (He laid a map before me.) “You are off the steamship
tracks; the Austrian Lloyds to Alexandria leave you far to the
northeast. You are equally remote from any submarine cable;
here on the southwest, from Alexandria to Candia, is the
nearest. You will have to fetch your letters—”

“I shouldn’t think of doing such a thing,” said I,
indignantly.

“Then you’ll only get them once in three months. Neopalia is
extremely rugged and picturesque. It is nine miles long and
five broad; it grows cotton, wine, oil, and a little corn. The
people are quite unsophisticated, but very
good-hearted—”

“And,” said I, “there are only three hundred and seventy of
them, all told. I really think I shall do very well there.”

“I have no doubt you will. By the way, treat the old
gentleman kindly. He is terribly cut up at having to sell. ‘My
dear island,’ he writes, ‘is second to my dead son’s honor, and
to nothing else.’ His son, you know, Lord Wheatley, was a bad
lot, a very bad lot indeed.”

“He left a lot of unpaid debts, didn’t he?”

“Yes, gambling debts. He spent his time knocking about Paris
and London with his cousin Constantine, by no means an
improving companion, if report speaks truly. And your money is
to pay the debts, you know.”

“Poor old chap,” said I. I sympathized with him in the loss
of his island.

“Here’s the house, you see,” said Mason, turning to the map,
and dismissing the sorrows of the old lord of Neopalia. “About
the middle of the island, nearly a
[pg 450] thousand feet above the
sea. I’m afraid it’s a tumble-down old place, and will
swallow a lot of money without looking much better for the
dose. To put it into repair for the reception of the future
Lady Wheatley would cost—”

“The future Lady Wheatley says she won’t go there on any
account,” I interrupted.

“But, my very dear lord,” cried he, aghast, “if she
won’t—”

“She won’t, and there’s an end of it, Mr. Mason. Well, good
day. I’m to have possession in a month?”

“In a month to the very day—on the seventh of
May.”

“All right, I shall be there to take it;” and escaping from
the legal quarter, I made my way to my sister’s house in
Cavendish Square. She had a party, and I was bound to go by
brotherly duty. As luck would have it, however, I was rewarded
for my virtue (and if that’s not luck in this huddle-muddle
world, I don’t know what is): the Turkish ambassador dropped
in, and presently James came and took me up to him. My
brother-in-law, James Cardew, is always anxious that I should
know the right people. The pasha received me with great
kindness.

“You are the purchaser of Neopalia, aren’t you?” he asked,
after a little conversation. “The matter came before me
officially.”

“I’m much obliged,” said I, “for your ready consent to the
transfer.”

“Oh, it’s nothing to us. In fact, our tribute, such as it
is, will be safer. Well, I’m sure I hope you’ll settle in
comfortably.”

“Oh, I shall be all right. I know the Greeks very well, you
know; been there a lot, and, of course, I talk the tongue,
because I spent two years hunting antiquities in the Morea and
some of the islands.”

The pasha stroked his beard as he observed in a calm
tone:

“The last time a Stefanopoulos tried to sell Neopalia the
people killed him, and turned the purchaser—he was a
Frenchman, a Baron d’Ezonville—adrift in an open boat,
with nothing on but his shirt.”

“Good heavens! Was that recently?”

“No; two hundred years ago. But it’s a conservative part of
the world, you know.” And his excellency smiled.

“They were described to me as good-hearted folk,” said I;
“unsophisticated, of course, but good-hearted.”

“They think that the island is theirs, you see,” he
explained, “and that the lord has no business to sell it. They
may be good-hearted, Lord Wheatley, but they are tenacious of
their rights.”

“But they can’t have any rights,” I expostulated.

“None at all,” he assented. “But a man is never so tenacious
of his rights as when he hasn’t any. However, autres temps,
autres moeurs. I don’t suppose you’ll have any trouble of
that kind. Certainly, I hope not, my dear lord.”

“Surely your government will see to that?” I suggested.

His excellency looked at me; then, although by nature a
grave man, he gave a low, humorous chuckle, and regarded me
with visible amusement.

“Oh, of course, you can rely on that, Lord Wheatley,” said
he.

“That is a diplomatic assurance, your excellency?” I
ventured to suggest, with a smile.

“It is unofficial,” said he, “but as binding as if it were
official. Our governor in that part of the world is a very
active man—yes, a decidedly active man.”

The only result of this conversation was that, when I was
buying my sporting guns in St. James’s Street the next day, I
purchased a couple of pairs of revolvers at the same time. It
is well to be on the safe side; and although I attached little
importance to the bygone outrage of which the ambassador spoke,
I did not suppose that the police service would be very
efficient. In fact, I thought it prudent to be ready for any
trouble that the Old World notions of the Neopalians might
occasion. But in my heart I meant to be very popular with them;
for I cherished the generous design of paying the whole tribute
out of my own pocket, and of disestablishing in Neopalia what
seems to be the only institution in no danger of such treatment
here—the tax-gatherer. If they understood that intention
of mine, they would hardly be so shortsighted as to set me
adrift in my shirt like a second Baron d’Ezonville, or so
unjust as to kill poor old Stefanopoulos as they had killed his
ancestor. Besides, as I comforted myself by repeating, they
were a good-hearted race; unsophisticated, of course, but
thoroughly good-hearted.

My cousin, young Denny Swinton, was to dine with me that
evening at the Optimum. Denny (which is short for Dennis) was
the only member of the family who thoroughly sympathized with
me about Neopalia. He was wild with interest in the island, and
I looked forward to telling
[pg 451] him all I had heard about
it. I knew he would listen, for he was to go with me and
help me to take possession. The boy had almost wept on my
neck when I asked him to come; he had just left Woolwich,
and was not to join his regiment for six months. He was
thus, as he put it, “at a loose end,” and succeeded in
persuading his parents that he ought to learn modern Greek.
General Swinton was rather cold about the project; he said
that Denny had spent ten years on ancient Greek, and knew
nothing about it, and would not probably learn much of the
newer sort in three months; but his wife thought it would be
a nice trip for Denny. Well, it turned out to be a very nice
trip for Denny; but if Mrs. Swinton had known—however,
if it comes to that, I might just as well exclaim, “If I had
known, myself!”

Denny had taken a table next but one to the west end of the
room, and was drumming his fingers impatiently on the cloth
when I entered. He wanted both his dinner and the latest news
about Neopalia; so I sat down and made haste to satisfy him in
both respects. Travelling with equal steps through the two
matters, we had reached the first entrée and the
fate of the murdered Stefanopoulos (which Denny, for some
reason, declared was “a lark”) when two people came in and sat
down at the table beyond ours and next to the wall, where two
chairs had been tilted up in token of preëngagement. The
man—for the pair were man and woman—was tall and
powerfully built; his complexion was dark, and he had good,
regular features; he looked, also, as if he had a bit of temper
somewhere about him. I was conscious of having seen him before,
and suddenly recollected that by a curious chance I had run up
against him twice in St. James’s Street that very day. The lady
was handsome; she had an Italian cast of face, and moved with
much grace. Her manner was rather elaborate, and when she spoke
to the waiter, I detected a pronounced foreign accent. Taken
altogether, they were a remarkable couple, and presented a
distinguished appearance. I believe I am not a conceited man,
but I could not help wondering whether their thoughts paid me a
similar compliment, for I certainly detected both of them
casting more than one curious glance toward our table; and when
the man whispered once to a waiter, I was sure that I formed
the subject of his question. Perhaps he, also, remembered our
two encounters.

“I wonder if there’s any chance of a row?” said Denny, in a
tone that sounded wistful. “Going to take anybody with you,
Charlie?”

“Only Watkins. I must have him; he always knows where
everything is; and I’ve told Hogvardt, my old dragoman, to meet
us in Rhodes. He’ll talk their own language to the beggars, you
know.”

“But he’s a German, isn’t he?”

“He thinks so,” I answered. “He’s not certain, you know.
Anyhow, he chatters Greek like a parrot. He’s a pretty good man
in a row, too. But there won’t be a row, you know.”

“I suppose there won’t,” admitted Denny, ruefully.

“For my own part,” said I meekly, “as I’m going there to be
quiet, I hope there won’t.”

In the interest of conversation I had forgotten our
neighbors; but now, a lull occurring in Denny’s questions and
surmises, I heard the lady’s voice. She began a
sentence—and began it in Greek! That was a little
unexpected; but it was more strange that her companion cut her
short, saying very peremptorily, “Don’t talk Greek; talk
Italian.” This he said in Italian, and I, though no great hand
at that language, understood so much. Now why shouldn’t the
lady talk Greek, if Greek were the language that came naturally
to her tongue? It would be as good a shield against idle
listeners as most languages—unless, indeed, I, who was
known to be an amateur of Greece and Greek things, were looked
upon as a possible listener. Recollecting the glances which I
had detected, recollecting again those chance meetings, I
ventured on a covert gaze at the lady. Her handsome face
expressed a mixture of anger, alarm, and entreaty. The man was
speaking to her now in low, urgent tones; he raised his hand
once and brought it down on the table as though to emphasize
some declaration—perhaps some promise—which he was
making. She regarded him with half angry, distrustful eyes. He
seemed to repeat his words; and she flung at him, in a tone
that suddenly grew louder, and in words that I could translate:
“Enough! I’ll see to that. I shall come too!”

Her heat stirred no answering fire in him. He dropped his
emphatic manner, shrugged a tolerant “As you will,” with
eloquent shoulders, smiled at her, and, reaching across the
table, patted her hand. She held it up before his eyes, and
with the other hand pointed at a ring on her finger.

“Yes, yes, my dearest,” said he; and he
[pg 452] was about to say more,
when, glancing round, he caught my gaze retreating in hasty
confusion to my plate. I dared not look up again, but I felt
his scowl on me. I suppose that I deserved punishment for my
eavesdropping.

“And when can we get off, Charlie?” asked Denny, in his
clear young voice. My thoughts had wandered from him, and I
paused for a moment, as a man does when a question takes him
unawares. There was silence at the next table also. The fancy
seemed absurd; but it occurred to me that there also my answer
was being waited for. Well, they could know if they liked; it
was no secret.

“In a fortnight,” said I. “We’ll travel easily, and get
thereon the seventh of next month; that’s the day on which I’m
entitled to take over my kingdom. We shall go to Rhodes.
Hogvardt will have bought me a little yacht, and
then—good-by to all this!” And a great longing for
solitude and a natural life came over me as I looked round on
the gilded cornices, the gilded mirrors, the gilded
flower-vases, and the highly gilded company of the Optimum.

I was roused from my pleasant dream by a high, vivacious
voice, which I knew very well. Looking up, I saw Miss Hipgrave,
her mother, and young Bennett Hamlyn standing before me. I
disliked young Hamlyn, but he was always very civil to me.

“Why, how early you two have dined!” cried Beatrice. “You’re
at the savory, aren’t you? We’ve only just come.”

“Are you going to dine?” I asked, rising. “Take this table;
we’re just off.”

“Well, we may as well, mayn’t we?” said my
fiancée. “Sorry you’re going though. Oh, yes,
we’re going to dine with Mr. Bennett Hamlyn. That’s what you’re
for, isn’t it, Mr. Hamlyn? Why, he’s not listening!”

He was not, strange to say, listening, although, as a rule,
he listened to Beatrice with infinite attention and the most
deferential of smiles. But just now he was engaged in returning
a bow which our neighbor at the next table had bestowed on him.
The lady there had risen already, and was making for the door.
The man lingered and looked at Hamlyn, seeming inclined to back
up his bow with a few words of greeting. Hamlyn’s air was not,
however, encouraging, and the stranger contented himself with a
nod and a careless “How are you?” and with that followed his
companion. Hamlyn turned round, conscious that he had neglected
Beatrice’s remark, and full of penitence for his momentary
neglect.

“I beg your pardon,” said he, with an apologetic smile.

“Oh,” answered she, “I was only saying that men like you
were invented to give dinners; you’re a sort of automatic
feeding-machine. You ought to stand open all day. Really, I
often miss you at lunch time.”

“My dear Beatrice!” said Mrs. Kennett Hipgrave, with that
peculiar lift of her brows that meant, “How naughty the dear
child is! Oh, but how clever!”

“It’s all right,” said Hamlyn, meekly. “I’m awfully happy to
give you a dinner, anyhow, Miss Beatrice.”

Now, I had nothing to say on this subject, but I thought I
would just make this remark:

“Miss Hipgrave,” said I, “is very fond of a dinner.”

Beatrice laughed. She understood my little correction.

“He doesn’t know any better, do you?” said she, pleasantly,
to Hamlyn. “We shall civilize him in time, though. Then I
believe he’ll be nicer than you, Charlie. I really do.
You’re—”

“I shall be uncivilized by then,” said I.

“Oh, that wretched island!” cried Beatrice. “You’re really
going?”

“Most undoubtedly. By the way, Hamlyn, who’s your
friend?”

Surely this was an innocent enough question; but little
Hamlyn went red from the edge of his clipped whisker on the
right to the edge of his mathematically equal whisker on the
left.

“Friend!” said he, in an angry tone. “He’s not a friend of
mine. I only met him on the Riviera.”

“That,” I admitted, “does not, happily, constitute in itself
a friendship.”

“And he won a hundred louis of me in the train between
Cannes and Monte Carlo.”

“Not bad going, that,” observed Denny, in an approving
tone.

“Is he, then, un grec?” asked Mrs. Hipgrave, who
loves a scrap of French.

“In both senses, I believe,” answered Hamlyn, viciously.

“And what’s his name?” said I.

“Really, I don’t recollect,” said Hamlyn, rather
petulantly.

“It doesn’t matter,” observed Beatrice, attacking her
oysters, which had now made their appearance.

“My dear Beatrice,” I remonstrated, “you are the most
charming creature in [pg 453] the world, but not the only
one. You mean that it doesn’t matter to you.”

“Oh, don’t be tiresome. It doesn’t matter to you, either,
you know. Do go away, and leave me to dine in peace.”

“Half a minute,” said Hamlyn. “I thought I’d got it just
now, but it’s gone again. Look here, though; I believe it’s one
of those long things that end in ‘poulos.'”

“Oh, it ends in ‘poulos,’ does it?” said I, in a meditative
tone.

“My dear Charlie,” said Beatrice, “I shall end in Bedlam, if
you’re so very tedious. What in the world I shall do when I’m
married, I don’t know.”

“My dearest!” said Mrs. Hipgrave; and a stage direction
might add: “Business with brows, as before.”

“‘Poulos’?” I repeated.

“Could it be Constantinopoulos?” asked Hamlyn, with a
nervous deference to my Hellenic learning.

“It might, conceivably,” I hazarded, “be Constantine
Stefanopoulos.”

“Then,” said Hamlyn, “I shouldn’t wonder if it was. Anyhow,
the less you see of him, Wheatley, the better. Take my word for
that.”

“But,” I objected—and I must admit that I have a habit
of thinking that everybody follows my train of
thought—”it’s such a small place that, if he goes, I
should be almost bound to meet him.”

“What’s such a small place?” cried Beatrice, with emphasized
despair.

“Why, Neopalia, of course,” said I.

“Why should anybody except you be so insane as to go there?”
she asked.

“If he’s the man I think, he comes from there,” I explained,
as I rose for the last time; for I had been getting up to go,
and sitting down again, several times.

“Then he’ll think twice before he goes back,” pronounced
Beatrice, decisively; she was irreconcilable about my poor
island.

Denny and I walked off together. As we went he observed:

“I suppose that chap’s got no end of money?”

“Stefan—?” I began.

“No, no. Hang it, you’re as bad as Miss Hipgrave says. I
mean Bennett Hamlyn.”

“Oh, yes, absolutely no end to it, I believe.”

Denny looked sagacious.

“He’s very free with his dinners,” he observed.

“Don’t let’s worry about it,” I suggested, taking his arm. I
was not worried about it myself. Indeed, for the moment, my
island monopolized my mind, and my attachment to Beatrice was
not of such a romantic character as to make me ready to be
jealous on slight grounds. Mrs. Hipgrave said the engagement
was based on “general suitability.” Now it is difficult to be
very passionate over that.

“If you don’t mind, I don’t,” said Denny, reasonably.

“That’s right. It’s only a little way Beatrice—” I
stopped abruptly. We were now on the steps outside the
restaurant, and I had just perceived a scrap of paper lying on
the mosaic pavement. I stooped down and picked it up. It proved
to be a fragment torn from the menu card. I turned it over.

“Hullo, what’s this?” said I, searching for my eyeglass,
which was, as usual, somewhere in the small of my back.

Denny gave me the glass, and I read what was written on the
back. It was written in Greek, and it ran thus:

“By way of Rhodes—small yacht there—arrive
seventh.”

I turned the piece of paper over in my hand. I drew a
conclusion or two. One was that my tall neighbor was named
Stefanopoulos; another, that he had made good use of his
ears—better than I had made of mine; for a third, I
guessed that he would go to Neopalia; for a fourth, I fancied
that Neopalia was the place to which the lady had declared she
would accompany him. Then I fell to wondering why all these
things should be so—why he wished to remember the route
of my journey, the date of my arrival, and the fact that I
meant to hire a yacht. Finally, those two chance encounters,
taken with the rest, assumed a more interesting complexion.

“When you’ve done with that bit of paper,” observed Denny,
in a tone expressive of exaggerated patience, “we might as well
go on, old fellow.”

“All right. I’ve done with it—for the present,” said
I. And I took the liberty of slipping Mr. Constantine
Stefanopoulos’s memorandum into my pocket.

The general result of the evening was to increase most
distinctly my interest in Neopalia. I went to bed, still
thinking of my purchase, and I recollect that the last thing
which came into my head before I went to sleep was, “What did
she mean by pointing to the ring?”

Well, I found an answer to that later
on.

[pg 454]

CHAPTER II.

A CONSERVATIVE COUNTRY.

Until the moment of our parting came, I had no idea that
Beatrice Hipgrave felt my going at all. She was not in the
habit of displaying emotion, and I was much surprised at the
reluctance with which she separated from me. So far, however,
was she from reproaching me, that she took all the blame upon
herself, saying that if she had been kinder and nicer to me, I
should never have thought about my island. In this she was
quite wrong; but when I told her so, and assured her that I had
no fault to find with her behavior, I was met by an almost
passionate assertion of her unworthiness, and an entreaty that
I should not spend on her a love that she did not deserve. Her
abasement and penitence compelled me to show, and indeed to
feel, a good deal of tenderness for her. She was pathetic and
pretty in her unusual earnestness and unexplained distress. I
went the length of offering to put off my expedition until
after our wedding; and, although she besought me to do nothing
of the kind, I believe we might in the end have arranged
matters on this footing had we been left to ourselves. But Mrs.
Hipgrave saw fit to intrude on our interview at this point, and
she at once pooh-poohed the notion, declaring that I should be
better out of the way for a few months. Beatrice did not resist
her mother’s conclusion; but when we were alone again, she
became very agitated, begging me always to think well of her,
and asking if I were really attached to her. I did not
understand this mood, which was very unlike her usual manner,
but I responded with a hearty and warm avowal of confidence in
her; and I met her questions as to my own feelings by pledging
my word very solemnly that absence should, so far as I was
concerned, make no difference, and that she might rely
implicitly on my faithful affection. This assurance seemed to
give her very little comfort, although I repeated it more than
once; and when I left her, I was in a state of some perplexity,
for I could not follow the bent of her thoughts, nor appreciate
the feelings that moved her. I was, however, considerably
touched, and upbraided myself for not having hitherto done
justice to the depth and sincerity of nature which underlay her
external frivolity. I expressed this self-condemnation to Denny
Swinton, but he met it very coldly, and would not be drawn into
any discussion of the subject. Denny was not wont to conceal
his opinions, and had never pretended to be enthusiastic about
my engagement. This attitude of his had not troubled me before,
but I was annoyed at it now, and I retaliated by asseverating
my affection for Beatrice in terms of even exaggerated
emphasis, and her’s for me with no less vehemence.

These troubles and perplexities vanished before the zest and
interest which our preparations and start excited. Denny and I
were like a pair of schoolboys off for a holiday, and spent
hours in forecasting what we should do and how we should fare
in the island. These speculations were extremely amusing, but
in the long run they were proved to be, one and all, wide of
the mark. Had I known Neopalia then as well as I came to know
it afterward, I should have recognized the futility of
attempting to prophesy what would happen there. As it was, we
spun our cobwebs merrily all the way to Rhodes, where we
arrived without event and without accident. There we picked up
Hogvardt, and embarked in the smart little steam yacht which he
had hired for me. A day or two was spent in arranging our
stores and buying what more we wanted, for we could not expect
to be able to procure anything in Neopalia. I was rather
surprised to find no letter for me from the old lord, but I had
no thought of waiting for a formal invitation, and pressed on
the hour of departure as much as I could. Here, also, I saw the
first of my new subjects, Hogvardt having engaged a couple of
men who had come to him, saying they were from Neopalia and
were anxious to work their passage back. I was delighted to
have them, and fell at once to studying them with immense
attention. They were fine, tall, capable-looking fellows, and
they, too, with ourselves, made a crew more than large enough
for our little boat; for both Denny and I would make ourselves
useful on board, and Hogvardt could do something of everything
on land or water, whilst Watkins acted as cook and steward. The
Neopalians were, as they stated, in answer to my questions,
brothers; their names were Spiro and Demetri, and they informed
us that their family had served the lords of Neopalia for many
generations. Hearing this, I was less inclined to resent the
undeniable reserve and even surliness with which they met my
advances. I made allowance for their hereditary attachment to
the outgoing family; and their natural want of cordiality
toward the intruder [pg 455] did not prevent me from
plying them with many questions concerning my predecessors
on the throne of the island. My perseverance was ill
rewarded, but I succeeded in learning that the only member
of the family on the island, besides the old lord, was a
girl whom they called “the Lady Euphrosyne,” the daughter of
the lord’s brother, who was dead. Next I asked after my
friend of the Optimum restaurant, Constantine. He was this
lady’s cousin once or twice removed—I did not make out
the exact degree of kinship—but Demetri hastened to
inform me that he came very seldom to the island, and had
not been there for two years.

“And he is not expected there now?” I asked.

“He was not when we left, my lord,” answered Demetri, and it
seemed to me that he threw an inquiring glance at his brother,
who added hastily:

“What should we poor men know of the Lord Constantine’s
doings?”

“Do you know where he is now?” I asked.

“No, my lord,” they answered together, and with great
emphasis.

I cannot deny that something struck me as peculiar in their
manner, but when I mentioned my impression to Denny, he scoffed
at me.

“You’ve been reading old Byron again,” he said, scornfully.
“Do you think they’re corsairs?”

Well, a man is not a fool simply because he reads Byron, and
I maintained my opinion that the brothers were embarrassed at
my questions. Moreover, I caught Spiro, the more
truculent-looking of the pair, scowling at me more than once
when he did not know I had my eye on him.

These little mysteries, however, did nothing but add sauce
to my delight as we sprang over the blue waters; and my joy was
complete when, on the morning of the day I had appointed, the
seventh of May, Denny cried “Land,” and, looking over the
starboard bow, I saw the cloud on the sea that was Neopalia.
Day came bright and glorious, and as we drew nearer to our
enchanted isle, we distinguished its features and conformation.
The coast was rocky, save where a small harbor opened to the
sea; and the rocks ran up from the coast, rising higher and
higher, till they culminated in a quite respectable peak in the
centre. The telescope showed cultivated ground and vineyards,
mingled with woods, on the slopes of the mountain; and about
half way up, sheltered on three sides, backed by thick woods,
and commanding a splendid sea view, stood an old, gray,
battlemented house.

“There’s my house!” I cried, in natural exultation, pointing
with my finger. It was a moment in my life—a moment to
mark.

“Hurrah!” cried Denny, throwing up his hat in sympathy.

Demetri was standing near, and met this ebullition with a
grim smile.

“I hope my lord will find the house comfortable,” said
he.

“We shall soon make it comfortable,” said Hogvardt. “I dare
say it’s half a ruin now.”

“It is good enough now for a Stefanopoulos,” said the
fellow, with a surly frown. The inference we were meant to draw
was plain even to incivility.

At five o’clock in the evening we entered the harbor of
Neopalia and brought up alongside a rather crazy wooden jetty
that ran some fifty feet out from the shore. Our arrival
appeared to create great excitement. Men, women, and children
came running down the narrow, steep street which climbed up the
hill from the harbor. We heard shrill cries, and a hundred
fingers were pointed at us. We landed; nobody came forward to
greet us. I looked round, and saw no one who could be the old
lord; but I perceived a stout man who wore an air of
importance, and, walking up to him, I asked him very politely
if he would be so good as to direct me to the inn, for I had
discovered from Demetri that there was a modest house where we
could lodge that night, and I was too much in love with my
island to think of sleeping on board the yacht. The stout man
looked at Denny and me; then he looked at Demetri and Spiro,
who stood near us, smiling their usual grim smile. And he
answered my question by another, a rather abrupt one: “What do
you want, sir?” And he slightly lifted his tasselled cap and
replaced it on his head.

“I want to know the way to the inn,” I answered.

“You have come to visit Neopalia?” he asked.

A number of people had gathered round us now, and all fixed
their eyes on my face.

“Oh,” I said carelessly, “I am the purchaser of the island,
you know. I have come to take possession.”

Nobody spoke. Perfect silence reigned for half a minute.

“I hope we shall get on well together,” I said, with my
pleasantest smile.

[pg 456]

Still no answer came. The people round still stared.

At last the stout man, altogether ignoring my friendly
advances, said, curtly:

“I keep the inn. Come. I will take you to it.”

He turned and led the way up the street. We followed, the
people making a lane for us, and still regarding us with stony
stares. Denny gave expression to my feelings, as well as his
own:

“It can hardly be described as an ovation,” he observed.

“Surly brutes,” muttered Hogvardt.

“It is not the way to receive his lordship,” agreed Watkins,
more in sorrow than in anger. Watkins had very high ideas of
the deference due to “his lordship.”

The fat innkeeper walked ahead. I quickened my pace and
overtook him.

“The people do not seem very pleased to see me,” I
remarked.

He shook his head, but made no answer. Then he stopped
before a substantial house. We followed him in, and he led us
up-stairs to a large room. It overlooked the street, but,
somewhat to my surprise, the windows were heavily barred. The
door also was massive, and had large bolts inside and out.

“You take good care of your houses, my friend,” said Denny,
with a laugh.

“We like to keep what we have, in Neopalia,” said he.

I asked him if he would provide us with a meal, and,
assenting gruffly, he left us alone. The food was some time in
coming, and we stood at the window, peering through our prison
bars. Our high spirits were dashed by the unfriendly reception;
my island should have been more gracious, it was so
beautiful.

“However, it’s a better welcome than we should have got two
hundred years ago,” I said, with a laugh, trying to make the
best of the matter.

Dinner, which the landlord brought in himself, cheered us
again, and we lingered over it till dusk began to fall,
discussing whether I ought to visit the lord, or whether,
seeing that he had not come to receive me, my dignity did not
demand that I should await his visit; and it was on this latter
course that we finally decided.

“But he’ll hardly come to-night,” said Denny, jumping up. “I
wonder if there are any decent beds here!”

Hogvardt and Watkins had, by my directions, sat down with
us; and the former was now smoking his pipe at the window,
while Watkins was busy overhauling our luggage. We had brought
light bags, the rods, guns, and other smaller articles. The
rest was in the yacht. Hearing beds mentioned, Watkins shook
his head in dismal presage, saying:

“We had better sleep on board, my lord.”

“Not I! What, leave the island, now we’ve got here? No,
Watkins!”

“Very good, my lord,” said Watkins, impassively.

A sudden call came from Hogvardt, and I joined him at the
window.

The scene outside was indeed remarkable. In the narrow,
paved street, gloomy now in the failing light; there must have
been fifty or sixty men standing in a circle, surrounded by an
outer fringe of women and children; and in the centre stood our
landlord, his burly figure swaying to and fro, as he poured out
a low-voiced but vehement harangue. Sometimes he pointed toward
us, oftener along the ascending road that led to the interior.
I could not hear a word he said, but presently all his auditors
raised their hands toward heaven. I saw that the hands held,
some guns, some clubs, some knives; and all the men cried with
furious energy: “Nai, nai!” (“Yes, yes!”) And then the
whole body—and the greater part of the grown men on the
island must have been present—started off, in compact
array, up the road, the innkeeper at their head. By his side
walked another man, whom I had not noticed before, and who wore
an ordinary suit of tweeds, but carried himself with an
assumption of much dignity. His face I did not see.

“Well, what’s the meaning of that?” I exclaimed, looking
down on the street, empty now, save for groups of white-clothed
women, who talked eagerly to one another, gesticulating, and
pointing now toward our inn, now toward where the men had
gone.

“Perhaps it’s their parliament,” suggested Denny. “Or
perhaps they’ve repented of their rudeness, and are going to
erect a triumphal arch.”

These conjectures being obviously ironical, did not assist
the matter, although they amused their author.

“Anyhow,” said I, “I should like to investigate the thing.
Suppose we go for a stroll?”

The proposal was accepted at once. We put on our hats, took
sticks, and prepared to go. Then I glanced at the luggage.

“Since I was so foolish as to waste my money on revolvers,”
said I, with an inquiring glance at
Hogvardt.

[pg 457]

“The evening air will not hurt them,” said he; and we each
stowed a revolver in our pockets. We felt, I think, rather
ashamed of our timidity, but the Neopalians certainly looked
rough customers. Then I turned the handle of the door. The door
did not open. I pulled hard at it. Then I looked at my
companions.

“Queer,” said Denny, and he began to whistle.

Hogvardt got the little lantern, which he always had handy,
and carefully inspected the door.

“Locked,” he announced, “and bolted top and bottom. A solid
door, too!” and he struck it with his hand. Then he crossed to
the window, and looked at the bolts; and finally he said to me:
“I don’t think we can have our walk, my lord.”

Well, I burst out laughing. The thing was too absurd. Under
cover of our animated talk the landlord must have bolted us in.
The bars made the window no use. A skilled burglar might have
beaten those bolts, and a battering-ram would, no doubt, have
smashed the door; we had neither burglar nor ram.

“We are caught, my boy,” said Denny. “Nicely caught. But
what’s the game?”

I had asked myself that question already, but had found no
answer. To tell the truth, I was wondering whether Neopalia was
going to turn out as conservative a country as the Turkish
ambassador had hinted. It was Watkins who suggested an
answer.

“I imagine, my lord,” said he, “that the natives [Watkins
always called the Neopalians “natives”] have gone to speak to
the gentleman who sold the island to your lordship.”

“Gad!” said Denny, “I hope it will be a pleasant
interview.”

Hogvardt’s broad, good-humored face had assumed an anxious
look. He knew something about the people of these islands; so
did I.

“Trouble, is it?” I asked him.

“I’m afraid so,” he answered; and then we turned to the
window again, except Denny, who wasted some energy and made a
useless din by battering at the door, till we beseeched him to
let it alone.

There we sat for nearly two hours. Darkness fell, the women
had ceased their gossiping, but still stood about the street,
and in the doorways of the house.

It was nine o’clock before matters showed any progress. Then
came shouts from the road above us, the flash of torches, the
tread of men’s feet in a quick, triumphant march. Then the
stalwart figures of the picturesque fellows, with their white
kilts gleaming through the darkness, came again into sight,
seeming wilder and more imposing in the alternating glare and
gloom of the torches and the deepening night. The man in tweeds
was no longer visible. Our innkeeper was alone in front. And
all, as they marched, sang loudly a rude, barbarous sort of
chant, repeating it again and again; and the women and children
crowded out to meet the men, catching up the refrain in shrill
voices, till the whole air seemed full of it. And so martial
and inspiring was the rude tune that our feet began to beat in
time with it, and I felt the blood quicken in my veins. I have
tried to put the words of it into English, in a shape as rough,
I fear, as the rough original. Here it is:

“Ours is the land!

Death to the hand

That filches the land!

Dead is that hand,

Ours is the land!

Forever we hold it.

Dead’s he that sold it!

Ours is the land.

Dead is the hand!”

Again and again they hurled forth the defiant words, until
they stopped at last opposite the inn, with one final,
long-drawn shout of savage triumph.

“Well, this is a go!” said Denny, drawing a long breath.
“What are the beggars up to?”

“What have they been up to?” I asked; for I doubted not that
the song we had heard had been chanted over a dead
Stefanopoulos two hundred years before.

At this age of the world the idea seemed absurd,
preposterous, horrible. But there was no law nearer than
Rhodes, and there only Turk’s law. The only law here was the
law of the Stefanopouloi, and if that law lost its force by the
crime of the hand that should wield it, why, strange things
might happen even to-day in Neopalia. And we were caught like
rats in a trap in the inn!

“I do not see,” remarked old Hogvardt, laying a hand on my
shoulders, “any harm in loading our revolvers, my lord.”

I did not see any harm in it either, and we all followed
Hogvardt’s advice, and also filled our pockets with cartridges.
I was determined—I think we were all determined—not
to be bullied by these islanders and their skull-and-crossbones
ditty.

A quarter of an hour passed, and there
[pg 458] came a knock at the door,
while the bolts were shot back.

“I shall go out,” said I, springing to my feet.

The door opened, and the face of a lad appeared.

“Vlacho, the innkeeper, bids you descend,” said he; and
then, catching sight, perhaps, of our revolvers, he turned and
ran down-stairs again at his best speed. Following him, we came
to the door of the inn. It was ringed round with men, and
directly opposite to us stood Vlacho. When he saw me, he
commanded silence with his hand, and addressed me in the
following surprising style:

“The Lady Euphrosyne, of her grace, bids you depart in
peace. Go, then, to your boat, and depart, thanking God for his
mercy.”

“Wait a bit, my man,” said I. “Where is the lord of the
island?”

“Did you not know that he died a week ago?” asked Vlacho,
with apparent surprise.

“Died!” we exclaimed, one and all.

“Yes, sir. The Lady Euphrosyne, lady of Neopalia, bids you
go.”

“What did he die of?”

“Of a fever,” said Vlacho, gravely. And several of the men
round him nodded their heads, and murmured, in no less grave
assent: “Yes, of a fever.”

“I am very sorry for it,” said I. “But as he sold the island
to me before he died, I don’t see what the lady, with all
respect to her, has got to do with it. Nor do I know what this
rabble is doing about the door. Send them away.”

This attempt at hauteur was most decidedly thrown away.
Vlacho seemed not to hear what I said. He pointed with his
finger toward the harbor.

“There lies your boat. Demetri and Spiro cannot go with you,
but you will be able to manage her yourselves. Listen, now!
Till six in the morning you are free to go. If you are found in
Neopalia one minute after, you will never go. Think and be
wise.” And he and all the rest of them, as though one spring
moved them, wheeled round, and marched off up the hill again,
breaking out into the old chant when they had gone about a
hundred yards; and we were left alone in the doorway of the
inn, looking, I must admit, rather blank.

Up-stairs again we went, and I sat down by the window and
looked out on the night. It was very dark, and seemed darker
now that the gleaming torches were gone. Not a soul was to be
seen. The islanders, having put matters on a clear footing,
were gone to bed. I sat thinking. Presently Denny came to me,
and put his hand on my shoulder.

“Going to cave in, Charlie?” he asked.

“My dear Denny,” said I, “I wish you were at home with your
mother.”

He smiled and repeated, “Going to cave in, old chap?”

“No, by Jove, I’m not!” cried I, leaping up. “They’ve had my
money, and I’m going to have the island.”

“Take the yacht, my lord,” counselled Hogvardt, “and come
back with enough force from Rhodes.”

Well, that was sense; my impulse was nonsense. We four could
not conquer the island. I swallowed my pride.

“So be it,” said I. “But, look here; it’s only just twelve.
We might have a look round before we go. I want to see the
place, you know.” For I was very sorely vexed at being turned
out of my island.

Hogvardt grumbled a little at this, but here I overruled
him. We took our revolvers again, left the inn, and struck
straight up the road. For nearly a mile we mounted, the way
becoming steeper with every step. Then there was a sudden turn
off the main road.

“That will lead to the house,” said Hogvardt, who had
studied the map of Neopalia very carefully.

“Then we’ll have a look at the house. Show us a light,
Hogvardt. It’s precious dark.”

Hogvardt opened his lantern, and cast its light in the way.
But suddenly he extinguished it again, and drew us close in to
the rocks that edged the road. We saw coming toward us in the
darkness two figures. They rode small horses. Their faces could
not be seen; but as they passed our silent, motionless forms,
one said in a clear, sweet, girlish voice:

“Surely they will go?”

“Ay, they’ll go, or pay the penalty,” said the other voice,
and at the sound of it I started. For it was the voice of my
neighbor in the restaurant, Constantine Stefanopoulos.

“I shall be near at hand, sleeping in the town,” said the
girl’s voice, “and the people will listen to me.”

“The people will kill them, if they do not go,” we heard
Constantine answer, in tones that witnessed no great horror at
the idea. Then the couple disappeared in the darkness.

“On to the house!” I cried in sudden
[pg 459] excitement. For I was angry
now, angry at the utter, humbling scorn with which they
treated me.

Another ten minutes’ groping brought us in front of the old
gray house which we had seen from the sea. We walked boldly up
to it. The door stood open. We went in, and found ourselves in
a large hall. The wooden floor was carpeted, here and there,
with mats and skins. A long table ran down the middle. The
walls were decorated with mediæval armor and weapons. The
windows were but narrow slits, the walls massive and deep. The
door was a ponderous, iron-bound affair, that shamed even the
stout doors of our inn. I called loudly, “Is any one here?”
Nobody answered. The servants must have been drawn off to the
town by the excitement of the procession and the singing; or
perhaps there were no servants. I could not tell. I sat down in
a large armchair by the table. I enjoyed the sense of
proprietorship. Denny sat on the table by me, dangling his
legs. For a long while none of us spoke. Then I exclaimed,
suddenly:

“By heaven! why shouldn’t we see it through?” And I rose and
put my hands against the massive door, and closed and bolted
it, saying, “Let them open that at six o’clock in the
morning.”

“Hurrah!” cried Denny, leaping down from his table, on fire
with excitement in a moment.

I faced Hogvardt. He shook his head, but he smiled. Watkins
stood by, with his usual imperturbability. He wanted to know
what his lordship decided, that was all; and when I said
nothing more, he asked:

“Then your lordship will sleep here to-night?”

“I’ll stay here to-night, anyhow, Watkins,” said I. “I’m not
going to be driven out of my own island by anybody!”

And I brought my fist down with a crash on the table. And
then, to our amazement, we heard—from somewhere in the
dark recesses of the hall, where the faint light of Hogvardt’s
lantern did not reach—a low, but distinct, groan, as of
some one in pain. Watkins shuddered; Hogvardt looked rather
uncomfortable; Denny and I listened eagerly. Again the groan
came. I seized the lantern from Hogvardt’s hand, and rushed in
the direction of the sound. There, in the corner of the hall,
on a couch, covered with a rug, lay an old man in an uneasy
attitude, groaning now and then, and turning restlessly. And by
his side sat an old serving-woman in weary, heavy slumber. In a
moment I guessed the truth—part of the truth.

“He’s not dead of that fever yet,” said I.

CHAPTER III.

THE FEVER OF NEOPALIA.

I looked for a moment on the old man’s pale, clean-cut,
aristocratic face; then I shook his attendant vigorously by the
arm. She awoke with a start.

“What does this mean?” I demanded. “Who is he?”

“Heaven help us, who are you?” she cried, leaping up in
alarm. Indeed, we four, with our eager, fierce faces, may have
looked disquieting enough.

“I am Lord Wheatley; these are my friends,” I answered in
brisk, sharp tones.

“What, it is you, then—?” A wondering gaze ended her
question.

“Yes, yes, it is I. I have bought the island. We came out
for a walk and—”

“But he will kill you, if he finds you here.”

“He? Who?”

“Ah, pardon, my lord—they will kill you,
they—the people—the men of the island.”

I gazed at her sternly. She shrank back in confusion. And I
spoke at a venture, yet in a well-grounded hazard:

“You mean that Constantine Stefanopoulos will kill me?”

“Ah, hush!” she cried. “He may be here! He may be
anywhere!”

“He may thank his stars he’s not here,” said I grimly, for
my blood was up. “Attend, woman! Who is this?”

“It is the lord of the island, my lord,” she answered.
“Alas, and he is wounded, I fear, to death. And yet I fell
asleep. But I was so weary.”

“Wounded—by whom?”

Her face suddenly became vacant and expressionless.

“I do not know, my lord. It happened in the crowd. It was a
mistake. My dear lord had yielded what they asked. Yet some
one—no, by heaven, my lord, I do not know
whom—stabbed him! And he cannot live.”

“Tell me the whole thing,” I commanded.

“They came up here, my lord, all of them—Vlacho and
all, and with them my Lord Constantine. And the Lady Euphrosyne
was away; she is often away, down on the rocks by the sea,
watching [pg 460] the waves. And they came
and said that a man had landed who claimed our island as
his—a man of your name, my lord. And when my dear lord
said he had sold the island to save the honor of his house
and race, they were furious, and Vlacho raised the death
chant that One-eyed Alexander the Bard wrote on the death of
Stefan Stefanopoulos long ago. And they came near with
knives, demanding that my dear lord should send away the
stranger; for the men of Neopalia were not to be bought and
sold like bullocks or like pigs. At first my lord would not
yield; and they swore they would kill the stranger and my
lord also. Then they pressed closer. Vlacho was hard on him
with drawn knife, and the Lord Constantine stood by him,
praying him to yield, and Constantine drew his own knife,
saying to Vlacho that he must fight him also before he
killed the old lord. But at that Vlacho smiled—and
then—and then—ah, my dear lord!”

For a moment her voice broke, and sobs supplanted words. But
she drew herself up, and, after a glance at the old man, whom
her vehement speech had not availed to waken, she went on:

“And then those behind cried out that there was enough talk.
Would he yield or would he die? And they rushed forward,
pressing the nearest against him. And he, an old man, frail and
feeble—yet once he was as brave a man as any—cried,
in his weak tones: ‘Enough, friends, I yield; I—’ And
they fell back. But my lord stood for an instant; then he set
his hand to his side, and swayed and tottered and fell, and the
blood ran from his side. And the Lord Constantine fell on his
knees beside him, crying: ‘Who stabbed him?’ And Vlacho smiled
grimly, and the others looked at one another. And I, who had
run out from the doorway whence I had seen it all, knelt by my
lord and stanched the blood. Then Vlacho said, fixing his eyes
straight and keen on the Lord Constantine, ‘It was not I, my
lord,’ ‘Nor I, by heaven!’ cried the Lord Constantine; and he
rose to his feet, demanding: ‘Who struck the blow?’ But none
answered, and he went on: ‘Nay, if it were in error, if it were
because he would not yield, speak! There shall be pardon,’ But
Vlacho, hearing this, turned himself round and faced them all,
saying: ‘Did he not sell us like oxen and like pigs?’ and he
broke into the death chant, and they all raised the chant, none
caring any more who had struck the blow. And Lord
Constantine—” The impetuous flow of the old woman’s story
was frozen to sudden silence.

“Well, and Lord Constantine?” said I, in low, stern tones,
that quivered with excitement; and I felt Denny’s hand, that
was on my arm, jump up and down. “And Constantine, woman?”

“Nay, he did nothing,” said she. “He talked with Vlacho a
while, and then they went away, and he bade me tend my lord,
and went himself to seek the Lady Euphrosyne. And presently he
came back with her. Her eyes were red, and she wept afresh when
she saw my poor lord, for she loved him. And she sat by him
till Constantine came and told her that you would not go, and
that you and your friends would be killed if you did not go.
And then, weeping to leave my lord, she went, praying heaven
she might find him alive when she returned. ‘I must go,’ she
said to me; ‘for though it is a shameful thing that the island
should have been sold, yet these men must be persuaded to go
away and not meet death. Kiss him for me if he awakes.’ Thus
she went, and left me with my lord, and I fear he will die.”
And she ended in a burst of sobbing.

For a moment there was silence. Then I said again:

“Who struck the blow, woman? Who struck the blow?”

She shrank from me as though I had struck her. “I do not
know, I do not know,” she moaned.

Then a thing happened that seemed strange and awful in the
gloomy, dark hall. For the stricken man opened his eyes, his
lips moved, and he groaned: “Constantine! You, Constantine!”
and the old woman’s eyes met mine for a moment, and fell to the
ground again.

“Why—why, Constantine?” moaned the wounded man. “I had
yielded—I had yielded, Constantine. I would have sent
them—” His words ceased, his eyes closed, his lips met
again, but met only to part. A moment later his jaw dropped.
The old lord of Neopalia was dead.

Then I, carried away by anger and by hatred of the man who,
for a reason I did not yet understand, had struck so foul a
blow against his kinsman and an old man, did a thing so rash
that it seems to me now, when I consider it in the cold light
of the past, a mad deed. Yet then I could do nothing else; and
Denny’s face, aye, and the eyes of the others, too, told me
that they were with me.

“Compose this old man’s body,” I
[pg 461] said, “and we will watch
it. And do you go and tell this Constantine Stefanopoulos
that I know his crime, that I know who struck that blow, and
that what I know all men shall know, and that I will not
rest day nor night until he has paid the penalty of this
murder. And tell him I swore this on the honor of an English
gentleman.”

“And say I swore it, too!” cried Denny; and Hogvardt and
Watkins, not making bold to speak, ranged up close to me; and I
knew that they also meant what I meant.

The old woman looked at me with searching eyes.

“You are a bold man, my lord,” said she.

“I see nothing to be afraid of up to now,” said I. “Such
courage as is needed to tell a scoundrel what I think of him, I
believe I can claim.”

“But he will never let you go now. You would go to Rhodes,
and tell his—tell what you say of him.”

“Yes, and farther than Rhodes, if need be. He shall die for
it as sure as I live.”

A thousand men might have tried in vain to persuade me; the
treachery of Constantine had fired my heart and driven out all
opposing motives.

“Do as I bid you,” said I, sternly, “and waste no time on
it. We will watch here by the old man till you return.”

“My lord,” she replied, “you run on your own death. And you
are young, and the young man by you is yet younger.”

“We are not dead yet,” said Denny; and I had never seen him
look as he did then; for the gayety was out of his face, and he
spoke from between stern-set lips.

She raised her hands toward heaven—whether in prayer
or in lamentation, I do not know. We turned away and left her
to her sad offices, and going back to our places, waited there
till dawn began to break, and from the narrow windows we saw
the gray crests of the waves dancing and frolicking in the
early dawn. As I watched them the old woman was by my
elbow.

“It is done, my lord,” said she. “Are you still of the same
mind?”

“Still of the same,” said I.

“It is death—death for you all,” she said; and without
more she went to the great door. Hogvardt opened it for her,
and she walked away down the road, between the high rocks that
bounded the path on either side. Then we went and carried the
old man to a room that opened off the hall, and, returning,
stood in the doorway, cooling our brows in the fresh, early
air. And while we stood, Hogvardt said suddenly:

“It is five o’clock.”

“Then we have only an hour to live,” said I, smiling, “if we
do not make for the yacht.”

“You’re not going back to the yacht, my lord?”

“I’m puzzled,” I admitted. “If we go this ruffian will
escape. And if we don’t go—”

“Why, we,” Hogvardt ended for me, “may not escape.”

I saw that Hogvardt’s sense of responsibility was heavy; he
always regarded himself as the shepherd, his employers as the
sheep. I believe this attitude of his confirmed my destiny, for
I said, without hesitation:

“Oh, we’ll chance that. When they know what a villain the
fellow is, they’ll turn against him. Besides, we said we’d wait
here.”

Denny seized on my last words with alacrity. When you are
determined to do a rash thing, there is great comfort in
feeling that you are already committed to it by some previous
act or promise.

“So we did,” he cried. “Then that settles it, Hogvardt.”

“His lordship certainly expressed that intention,” observed
Watkins, appearing at this moment with a large loaf of bread
and a great pitcher of milk. I eyed these viands.

“I bought the house and its contents,” said I. “Come
along.”

Watkins’s further researches produced a large chunk of
native cheese; and when he had set this down, he remarked:

“In a pen behind the house, close to the kitchen windows,
there are two goats; and your lordship sees there, on the right
of the front door, two cows tethered.”

I began to laugh, Watkins was so wise and solemn.

“We can stand a siege, you mean?” I asked. “Well, I hope it
won’t come to that.”

Hogvardt rose, and began to move round the hall, examining
the weapons that decorated the walls. From time to time he
grunted disapprovingly; the guns were useless, rusted, out of
date, and there was no ammunition for them. But when he had
almost completed his circuit, he gave an exclamation of
satisfaction, and came to me, holding an excellent modern rifle
and a large cartridge case.

“See!” he grunted, in huge satisfaction. “C.S. on the stock,
I suspect you can guess whose it is, my
lord.”

[pg 462]

“This is very thoughtful of Constantine,” observed Denny,
who was employing himself in cutting imaginary lemons in two
with a fine damascened scimiter that he had taken from the
wall.

“As for the cows,” said I, “perhaps they will carry them
off.”

“I think not,” said Hogvardt, taking an aim with the rifle
through the window.

I looked at my watch. It was five minutes past six.

“Well, we can’t go now,” said I. “It’s settled. What a
comfort!” I wonder if I had ever in my heart meant to go!

The next hour passed very quietly. We sat smoking pipes and
cigars, and talking in subdued tones. The recollection of the
dead man in the adjoining room sobered the excitement to which
our position would otherwise have given occasion. Indeed, I
suppose that I, at least, who had led the rest into this
imbroglio through my whim, should have been utterly
overwhelmed by the burden on me. But I was not. Perhaps
Hogvardt’s assumption of responsibility relieved me; perhaps I
was too full of anger against Constantine to think of the risks
we ourselves ran; and I was more than half persuaded that the
revelation of what he had done would rob him of his power to
hurt us. Moreover, if I might judge from the words I heard on
the road, we had on our side an ally of uncertain, but probably
considerable, power, in the sweet-voiced girl whom the old
woman called the Lady Euphrosyne; and she would not support her
uncle’s murderer even though he were her cousin.

Presently Watkins carried me off to view his pen of goats,
and, having passed through the lofty, flagged kitchen, I found
myself in a sort of compound formed by the rocks. The ground
had been levelled for a few yards, and the cliffs rose straight
to the height of ten or twelve feet; from the top of this
artificial bank they ran again, in wooded slopes, toward the
peak of the mountain. I followed their course with my eye, and
five hundred or more feet above us, just beneath the summit, I
perceived a little wooden chalet or bungalow. Blue smoke
issued from the chimneys, and, even while we looked, a figure
came out of the door and stood still in front of it, apparently
looking down toward the house.

“It’s a woman,” I pronounced.

“Yes, my lord. A peasant’s wife, I suppose.”

“I dare say,” said I. But I soon doubted Watkins’s
opinion—in the first place, because the woman’s dress did
not look like that of a peasant woman; and, secondly, because
she went into the house, appeared again, and levelled at us
what was, if I mistook not, a large pair of binocular glasses.
Now, such things were not likely to be in the possession of the
peasants of Neopalia. Then she suddenly retreated, and through
the silence of those still slopes we heard the door of the
cottage closed with violence.

“She doesn’t seem to like the look of us,” said I.

“Possibly,” suggested Watkins, with deference, “she did not
expect to see your lordship here.”

“I should think that’s very likely, Watkins,” said I.

I was recalled from the survey of my new domains—my
satisfaction in the thought that they were mine survived all
the disturbing features of the situation—by a call from
Denny. In response to it I hurried back to the hall, and found
him at the window, with Constantine’s rifle rested on the
sill.

“I could pick him off pat,” said Denny, laughingly, and he
pointed to a figure which was approaching the house. It was a
man riding a stout pony. When he came within about two hundred
yards of the house he stopped, took a leisurely look, and then
waved a white handkerchief.

“The laws of war must be observed,” said I, smiling. “This
is a flag of truce.” And I opened the door, stepped out, and
waved my handkerchief in return. The man, reassured, began to
mop his brow with the flag of truce, and put his pony to a
trot. I now perceived him to be the innkeeper Vlacho, and a
moment later he reined up beside me, giving an angry jerk at
his pony’s bridle.

“I have searched the island for you,” he cried. “I am weary
and hot. How came you here?”

I explained to him briefly how I had chanced to take
possession of my house, and added, significantly:

“But has no message come to you from me?”

He smiled with equal meaning as he answered:

“No. An old woman came to speak to a gentleman who is in the
village.”

“Yes, to Constantine Stefanopoulos,” said I with a nod.

“Well, then, if you will, to the Lord Constantine,” he
admitted, with a careless shrug; “but her message was for his
ear only. He took her aside, and they talked
alone.”

[pg 463]

“You know what she said, though.”

“That is between my Lord Constantine and me.”

“And the young lady knows it, I hope—the Lady
Euphrosyne?”

Vlacho smiled broadly.

“We could not distress her with such a silly tale,” he
answered; and he leant down toward me. “Nobody has heard the
message but the lord and one man he told it to; and nobody
will. If that old woman spoke, she—well, she knows, and
will not speak.”

“And you back up this murderer?” I cried.

“Murderer?” he repeated, questioningly. “Indeed, sir, it was
an accident, done in hot blood. It was the old man’s fault,
because he tried to sell the island.”

“He did sell the island,” I corrected. “And a good many
other people will hear of what happened to him.”

He looked at me again, smiling.

“If you shouted in the hearing of every man in Neopalia,
what would they do?” he asked, scornfully.

“Well, I should hope,” I returned, “that they’d hang
Constantine to the tallest tree you’ve got here.”

“They would do this,” he said, with a nod; and he began to
sing softly the chant I had heard the night before.

I was disgusted at his savagery, but I said coolly:

“And the lady?”

“The lady believes what she is told, and will do as her
cousin bids her. Is she not his affianced wife?”

“The deuce she is!” I cried in amazement, fixing a keen
scrutiny on Vlacho’s face. The face told me nothing.

“Certainly,” he said, gently. “And they will rule the island
together.”

“Will they, though?” said I. I was becoming rather annoyed.
“There are one or two obstacles in the way of that. First, it’s
my island.”

He shrugged his shoulders again. “That,” he seemed to say,
“is not worth answering.” But I had a second shot in the locker
for him, and I let him have it for what it was worth. I knew it
might be worth nothing, but I tried it.

“And secondly,” I observed, “how many wives does Constantine
propose to have?”

A hit! A hit! A palpable hit! I could have sung in glee. The
fellow was dumb-founded. He turned red, bit his lip, scowled
fiercely.

“What do you mean?” he blurted out, with an attempt at
blustering defiance.

“Never mind what I mean. Something, perhaps, that the Lady
Euphrosyne might care to know. And now, my man, what do you
want of me?”

He recovered his composure, and stated his errand with his
old, cool assurance; but the cloud of vexation still hung heavy
on his brow.

“On behalf of the lady of the island—” he began.

“Or shall we say her cousin?” I interrupted.

“Which you will,” he answered, as though it were not worth
while to wear the mask any longer. “On behalf, then, of my Lord
Constantine, I am to offer you safe passage to your boat, and a
return of the money you have paid.”

“How’s he going to pay that?”

“He will pay it in a year, and give you security
meanwhile.”

“And the condition is that I give up the island?” I asked;
and I began to think that perhaps I owed it to my companions to
acquiesce in this proposal, however distasteful it might be to
me.

“Yes,” said Vlacho; “and there is one other small condition,
which will not trouble you.”

“And what’s that? You’re rich in conditions.”

“You are lucky to be offered any. It is that you mind your
own business.”

“I came here for the purpose,” I observed.

“And that you undertake, for yourself and your companions,
on your word of honor, to speak not a word of what has passed
in the island, or of the affairs of the Lord Constantine.”

“And if I won’t give my word?”

“The yacht is in our hands; Demetri and Spiro are our men;
there will be no ship here for two months.”

The fellow paused, smiling at me. I took the liberty of
ending his period for him.

“And there is,” I said, returning the smile, “as we know by
now, a particularly sudden and fatal form of fever in the
island.”

“Certainly; you may chance to find that out,” said he.

“But is there no antidote?” I asked; and I showed him the
butt of my revolver in the pocket of my coat.

“It may keep it off for a day or two; not longer. You have
the bottle there, but most of the drug is with your baggage at
the inn.”

[pg 464]

His parable was true enough; we had only two or three dozen
cartridges apiece.

“But there is plenty of food for Constantine’s rifle,” said
I, pointing to the muzzle of it, which protruded from the
window.

He suddenly became impatient.

“Your answer, sir?” he demanded, peremptorily.

“Here it is,” said I. “I’ll keep the island, and I’ll see
Constantine hanged.”

“So be it, so be it!” he cried. “You are warned; so be it!”
and without another word he turned his pony and trotted rapidly
off down the road. And I went back to the house, feeling, I
must confess, not in the best of spirits. But when my friends
heard all that had passed, they applauded me, and we made up
our minds to “see it through,” as Denny said.

That day passed quietly. At noon we carried the old lord out
of his house, having wrapped him in a sheet, and we dug for him
as good a grave as we could, in a little patch of ground that
lay outside the windows of his own chapel, a small erection at
the west end of the house. There he must lie for the moment.
This sad work done, we came back, and—so swift are life’s
changes—we killed a goat for dinner, and watched Watkins
dress it. Thus the afternoon wore away, and when evening came
we ate our goat flesh, and Hogvardt milked our cows, and we sat
down to consider the position of the garrison.

But the evening was hot, and we adjourned out of doors,
grouping ourselves on the broad marble pavement in front of the
door. Hogvardt had just begun to expound a very elaborate
scheme of escape, depending, so far as I could make out, on our
reaching the other side of the island, and finding there a
boat, which we had no reason to suppose would be there, when
Denny raised his hand, saying, “Hark!”

From the direction of the village and the harbor came the
sound of a horn, blown long and shrill, and echoed back in
strange, protracted shrieks and groans from the hillside behind
us; and following on the blast, we heard, low in the distance
and indistinct, yet rising and falling, and rising again in
savage defiance and exultation, the death chant that One-eyed
Alexander the Bard had made on the death of Stefan
Stefanopoulos two hundred years ago. For a few minutes we sat
listening, and I do not think that any of us were very
comfortable. Then I rose to my feet, and I said:

“Hogvardt, old fellow, I fancy that scheme of yours must
wait a little. Unless I’m very much mistaken, we’re going to
have a lively evening.”

Well, and then we shook hands all round, and went in, and
bolted the door, and sat down to wait. We heard the death chant
through the walls now, for it was coming nearer.

(To be continued.)

[pg 465]

A BROOK IN THE DEPARTMENT OF VAR, FRANCE. FROM A
PAINTING BY HENRI HARPIGNIES.

In the galleries of the Luxembourg, Paris. First
exhibited at the Salon of 1888.

A CENTURY OF PAINTING.

NOTES DESCRIPTIVE AND CRITICAL.—COROT AND THE MODERN
PASTORAL.—THE MEN OF 1830.—ROUSSEAU, DIAZ,
DUPRÉ, AND DAUBIGNY.—FOUR FIGURE PAINTERS OF
DIFFERING AIMS.

By Will H. Low.

ICTURES?” boasted Turner. “Give me canvas,
colors, a room to work in, with a door that will lock,
and it is not difficult to paint pictures!” This was the spirit
of the older men, against which Constable rose in his might. It
was the legacy of the past; the principle, or the lack of it,
which permitted Titian (in a picture now in the National
Gallery, London) to paint the shadows of his figures falling
away from the spectator into the picture, and towards
the setting sun in the background. The return to nature,
however, was not accomplished at once. It is doubtful, indeed,
if a painter can ever arrive at a respectable technical
achievement without imbibing certain conventions which prevent
complete submission to nature; absolute
naïveté thus becoming only theoretically
possible. Constable, with all his independence, dared not throw
over all received canons of art. And Géricault, while
daring to paint a modern theme, daring still more to embody it
in forms plausibly like average humanity, and refusing to place
on a raft in mid-ocean a carefully chosen assortment of antique
statues, still did not think, apparently, that the heavily
marked shadows prevalent throughout his picture were never seen
under the far-reaching arch of the sky, but fell from a studio
window. Nor do the early pictures by Corot free themselves from
the influences of the academy at once. In the studies which he
bequeathed to the Louvre—two tiny canvases on which are
depicted the Coliseum and the Castle of St. Angelo at
Rome—the conventional picking out of detail, the painting
of separate objects by themselves, without due relation to each
other, is the effect of early study; and it is only in the as
yet timid reaching for effect of light and atmosphere that we
feel the Corot of the future. These
[pg 466] studies were painted in
1826; and as late as 1835 the same influences are manifest
in the “Hagar and Ishmael in the Desert,” a historical
landscape of the kind dear to the academies, but saved and
made of interest by the native qualities of the painter
struggling to the surface.

Jean Baptiste Camille Corot was born in Paris, July 28,
1796. His father was originally a barber; but, marrying a
dressmaker, he joined forces with his wife to such effect that
they became the fashionable house of their time; and a “dress
from Corot’s” found its place in the comedies of the early part
of the century, very much as the name of Worth has been potent
in later days. The youth’s distaste for business (certain
unfortunate experiences in selling olive-colored cloth leading
directly thereto) at length vanquished the parents’ opposition
to his choice of a career; and after a solemn family conclave,
it was decided that he was to have an allowance of three
hundred dollars a year, and be free to follow his own
inclinations. Procuring materials for work, Corot sat him down
the same day on the bank of the Seine, almost under the windows
of his father’s shop, and began to paint. It is prettily
related that one of the shop-women, Mademoiselle Rose by name,
was the only person of his entourage who sympathized
with the young fellow, and who came to look at his work to
encourage him. Late in life the good Corot said: “Look at my
first study; the colors are still bright, the hour and day
remain fixed on the canvas; and only the other day Mademoiselle
Rose came to see me; and, alas, the old maid and the old man,
how faded they are!”

JEAN BAPTISTE CAMILLE COROT. AFTER A PHOTOGRAPH FROM
LIFE.

This portrait represents “good Papa Corot,” as he was
universally known, at work out of doors.

It was Corot’s good fortune to meet at the start a young
landscape painter, Michallon, who had lately returned from
Rome, where he had gone after winning the prize for historical
landscape, which then formed part of the curriculum of the
École des Beaux Arts. Michallon died in 1824, when only
twenty-eight years old, too soon to have shown the fruits of an
independent spirit which had already revolted against the
trammels of the school. Desiring to save Corot from the
mistakes which he had himself made, he adjured him to remain
naïf, to paint nature as he saw it, and to
disregard the counsels of those who were for the moment in
authority. Gentle, almost timid by nature, having met so far in
life with little but disapproval, Corot disregarded his
friend’s advice at first, and placed himself under the guidance
of Victor Bertin, a painter then in vogue, and, needless to
say, deeply imbued with scholastic tradition. In his company
Corot made his first voyage to Italy, in 1825, and thus came
for the first time under the true classic influence. The
lessons taught in the school of nature, where Claude had
studied, were those best fitted for the temperament of Corot,
who has been called “a child of the eighteenth century, grown
in the midst of that imitation of antiquity so ardent, and so
often unintelligent, where the Directory copied Athens, and the
Empire forced itself to imitate Rome.” It is a curious and
interesting fact that when, as in this case, the spirit of
classicism reveals itself anew, its never-dying influence can
be the motive for work [pg 467] as fresh and modern as that
of Corot. It is also true that the rigid enforcement of the
study of drawing was a healthy influence on Corot’s early
life. All the pictures of his early period show the most
minute attention to form and modelling; and when he had
finally rid himself of the hard manner which it entailed,
there remained the substratum of a constructive basis upon
which his freer brush played at will.

A BY-PATH. FROM A PAINTING BY JEAN BAPTISTE CAMILLE
COROT.

One of Corot’s later works, and treated with greater
freedom than the earlier.

Many years, however, Corot was to wait before the memorable
day when he bewailed that his complete collection of works had
been spoiled, he having sold a picture. Living on his modest
income, which his father doubled when, in 1846, the son was
given the cross of the Legion of Honor, he was happy with his
two loves, nature and painting. Little by little he gained a
reputation among the artists, especially when, after 1835, on
his return from a second voyage to Italy, he found that the
true country of the artist is his native country. After that
period his works are nearly all French in subject, many of them
painted in the environs of Paris; though, with his Theocritan
spirit, he could see the fountain of Jouvence in the woods of
Sèvres, and for him the classic nymph dwelt by the pond
at Ville d’Avray. His life was long—he died February 22,
1875—and completely filled with his work.

After Corot’s death, there was exhibited at the École
des Beaux Arts in Paris a collection of several hundred of his
pictures, and then, perhaps for the first time, the genius of
the man was profoundly felt. To those who were inclined to
undervalue the pure, sweet spirit which shone through his work,
and to complain of the representation of a world in which no
breeze stronger than a zephyr blew, in which the birds always
sang, and the shepherd piped to a flock unconscious of the
existence of wolves, there were shown efforts in so many and
various directions as to forever silence their reproach of
monotony, so often directed against Corot’s work. There were
landscapes, showing the gradual emancipation, due to the most
sincere study of nature, hard and precise, in the early period;
vaporous and filled with suggestion, as the sentiment of the
day and hour represented became important to the painter, and
his technical mastery became more certain in later years. There
were figures, none too well drawn from the point of view of
David or Ingres, but serving, to a painter whose interest in
atmospheric problems never ceased, as objects around which the
luminous light of day played, and which were bathed in
circumambient air.

[pg 468]

EARLY MORNING. JEAN BAPTISTE CAMILLE COROT.

From a painting now in the Louvre. One of the best known
of the works of the master, executed during the
transitional period, when he still gave great attention to
detail. The original is remarkable for its sense of dewy
freshness.

[pg 469]

DIANA’S BATH. JEAN BAPTISTE CAMILLE COROT.

From a painting in the Museum at Bordeaux.

[pg 470]

A SHALLOW RIVER. FROM A PAINTING BY THÉODORE
ROUSSEAU.

With all this variety, however, the true value of Corot’s
work lies in the expression of the spirit of the man himself.
It is often possible, and it is always theoretically desirable,
to separate the personality of a painter from his production in
any critical consideration of his achievement. It is at least
only fair to believe that the light which shines from so many
canvases is the true expression of many a life which is clouded
to our superficial view. With Corot, however, it is impossible
to make this separation. Every added detail of his
life—and they are so numerous that in the difficulty of a
choice they must remain unrecorded here—gives a new
perception of his work. A youthful Virgilian spirit to the day
of his death, as old at his birth as the classic source from
which he sprang, he invented a method essentially his own, in
which to express his new-old message. In our work-a-day,
materialistic age, like a thrush singing in a boiler-shop, he
is the quiet but triumphant vindication of the truth that all
great art has its roots firmly implanted in the earth of
Hellenic civilization, though its expression may be, as in
Corot’s case, through an art unknown to the Greeks, and even,
as in the case of the one greater man of this century than
Corot—Millet—by the presentation of types which the
beauty-loving sons of Hellas disdained to represent.

Millet’s work must be considered later in these papers, but
it is useful here to make this passing comment, that with Corot
he represents what is best in our modern art; that the greatest
quality of our modern art is its steadfast reliance on nature;
and that, paradoxical as it may seem, they are alike in taking
only that from nature which is serviceable to the clarity of
their expression, being in this both at odds with the common
practice of modern painting, which usually adopts a more
servile attitude towards nature. Corot painted out of
[pg 471] doors constantly; but in
the maturity of his art his work was only based upon the
scene before him, a practice dangerous to the student, and
fraught with difficulty to the master. In the fever of
production; in the almost childish joy which the long
neglected painter felt when dealers and collectors besieged
his door; and, finally, in the necessity which arose for
large sums of money to carry on works of charity, which were
his only dissipation, and which it was his pride to sustain
without impairing the patrimony which in the course of time
he had inherited, and which he left intact to his relatives,
Corot undoubtedly weakened his legacy to the future by
over-production. In addition, his work became the prey of
unscrupulous dealers (as there is nothing easier to imitate
superficially than a Corot), and the mediocre pictures
signed by his name are not always of his workmanship. Such
works apart, his art has given us a message from the purest
source of poetry and painting, couched in a language which
is thoroughly of our time; and in this year, which is the
centenary of his birth, it can be said that no other painter
of the century, save the graver Millet, has held fast that
which was good in the art of the past, and so enriched it by
added truth and beauty as Corot. It was fitting that when he
lay dying as cheerfully as he had lived, contented that he
had “had good parents and good friends,” beautiful
landscapes flitted before his eyes, “more beautiful than
painting.” On the morning of February 22, 1875, his servant
urged him to eat to sustain his strength; but he gently
shook his head, saying: “Papa Corot will breakfast in heaven
to-day.”

THE EDGE OF THE FOREST (FONTAINEBLEAU). FROM A PAINTING
BY THÉODORE ROUSSEAU.

Eighteen years before, on December 22, 1867, there had died
at Barbizon, Théodore Rousseau, who, born in Paris, July
15, 1812, had been the leader of the revolution in landscape
painting, in which we to-day count Corot, Daubigny,
Dupré, Troyon, Diaz, Jacque, and others who, with our
mania for classification, we call the “Barbizon school.” The
fact that these men, more than any painters before their time,
had, by direct study from nature, developed strongly individual
characteristics, makes this title, localized as it is by the
name of a village with which a number of them had slight, if
any, connection, a misnomer. The French name for the group,
“the men of 1830,” is more correct; for it was about that time
that their influence in the Salon began to be felt, as a result
of the pictorial invasion of Constable. Lacking the poetic
feeling of Corot, and more realistic in his aims, though not
always in result, Rousseau met with instant success when he
exhibited for the first time at the Salon in 1834. His picture,
“Felled Trees, Forest of Compiègne,” received a medal,
and was purchased by the Due d’Orleans. The following year the
jury, presided over by Watelet, a justly forgotten painter,
refused Rousseau’s pictures, and from that time until 1849,
when the overthrow of Louis Philippe had opened the Salon doors
to all comers, no picture by Rousseau was exhibited at the
Salon.

[pg 472]

ON THE RIVER OISE. FROM A PAINTING BY CHARLES
FRANÇOIS DAUBIGNY.

A typical French river, with the familiar figures of
peasant women washing linen in the stream. Probably painted
during one of the voyages of his house-boat studio “Le
Bottin,” in which the painter passed many summers.

THE STORMY SEA. FROM A PAINTING BY JULES
DUPRÉ.

This powerful picture gives an idea of the dramatic
force of one who has been fitly termed a symphonic
painter.

[pg 473]

A SUNLIT GLADE. FROM A PAINTING BY LÉON GERMAIN
PELOUSE.

A remarkable rendering of intricate detail without
sacrifice of general effect, this picture, nevertheless,
gives somewhat the impression of a photograph from
nature.

In the meantime, however, Rousseau’s fame had grown,
fostered by the more advanced critics of the time. He lived at
Barbizon, on the border of the forest of Fontainebleau; and,
basing his work on the most uncompromising study of nature, his
pictures bore an impress of simple truth, which to our
latter-day vision seems so obvious and easily understood that
nothing could show more clearly the depth of error into which
his opponents had fallen than the systematic rejection of his
work for so many years. He was by nature a leader, and in his
country home he was soon joined by Millet and Charles Jacque,
while in Paris he had the hearty support of Delacroix and his
followers of the Romantic school. While forced by circumstances
to find allies in these men, Rousseau had, however, but little
of the imaginative temperament. He was, above all, the close
student of natural phenomena. He sat, an
[pg 474] impartial recorder of the
phases of nature’s triumphal procession. Early and late, in
the fields, among the rocks, or under the trees of the
forest, his cunning hand noted an innumerable variety of
facts which before him, through ignorance or disdain, the
landscape painter had never seen. It is but fair to say
that, like all pioneers in the untrodden fields of art, his
means of expression at times failed to keep pace with his
intention. His work is occasionally overburdened with
detail, through the embarrassment of riches which nature
poured at his feet. Then, heir to the processes of painting
of former generations, it seemed to him necessary to endow
nature with a warmth of coloring, an abuse of the richer
tones of the palette, which we may presume he would have
discarded but for the fact already noted, that a painter
carries through his earthly pilgrimage a baggage of
early-formed habits difficult to throw off en route.
The belief that color to be beautiful must of necessity be
warm, rich, and deep in tone was shared by all painters of
Rousseau’s time, and lingers still in the minds of many,
despite the fact that nature has created the tea-rose as
well as the orange. When, however, Rousseau was completely
successful—as, for instance, in the “Hoar-frost,” in
the Walters gallery in Baltimore—the reward of his
painstaking methods was measurably great. In such works as
this the rendition of effect, the certainty of modelling,
the sustained power throughout the work, lift it beyond mere
transcription of fact into the realm of typical creations
which appear more true than average reality.

A SHEPHERD AND HIS FLOCK. FROM A PAINTING BY CHARLES
ÉMILE JACQUE.

A typical example of the master, solidly painted,
though, as was often his habit, somewhat forced in
effect.

Of the life of Rousseau as the head of the little colony of
painters who for longer or shorter periods resided at Barbizon,
much could be said if space permitted. It is pleasant to think
that the more prosperous Rousseau helped with purse and
influence his comrades, and that, by nature sad and irritable,
he was always considerate of them in the many discussions which
took place. Corot, ill at ease in the revolutionary atmosphere,
made an occasional appearance. Diaz, he of meridional
extraction, turbulent and emphatic, stamped his wooden leg, and
was as illogical in debate as in
[pg 475] painting. Charles Jacque,
with the keen smile and the facility for absorbing ideas
from the best of them; Ziem even, who painted Venice for
some years in the shades of Fontainebleau; Dupré,
whose nature expresses itself in deep sunsets gleaming
through the oaks of the forest; Daubigny, the youngest of
the group, and the more immediate forerunner of landscape as
it is to-day, then winning his first success; Decamps, who
later sometimes left the Imperial Court, domiciled for the
moment at the palace of Fontainebleau, and brought his
personality of a great painter who failed through lack of
elementary instruction, among them; Daumier, the great
caricaturist, and possibly greater painter, but for the
engrossing character of the work which first fell in his
way—all these and more made up the constantly shifting
group. The first innkeeper of the place and his wife, whose
hyphenated name, Luniot-Ganne, commemorated their union,
kept for many years on the walls, the panels of the doors,
and on odd cabinets and bits of furniture, souvenirs
of the passage of all these men, in the shape of sketches
made by their hands. This little museum, created in sportive
mood, bore all these names and many more, those of men,
often celebrated, who from sympathy or curiosity visited the
place. Millet was in life, as in art, somewhat apart in the
later years; but he was the consistent friend of Rousseau,
whose life closed in the darkness of a disordered mind.

“THE MAN WITH THE LEATHERN BELT.” PORTRAIT OF GUSTAVE
COURBET AS A YOUNG MAN, BY HIMSELF.

From the original, in the Louvre.

Narcisco Virgilio Diaz de la Peña was the noble name
of him who, born at Bordeaux in 1807, the son of a Spanish
refugee, died at Mentone, November 18, 1876. Left an orphan
when very young, he drifted to Paris, and found work, painting
on china, in the manufactory at Sèvres. Here he met
Dupré, employed like himself; and in their work in other
fields it is not fanciful to feel the influence of the delight
in rich translucent color, of the tones employed with
over-emphasis on the surface of faïence. After a
bitter acquaintance with poverty, Diaz produced work which
brought him great popularity. The earlier pictures were studies
in the forest of Fontainebleau, whose venerable tree-trunks,
moss-grown; whose lichen-covered rocks, and gleaming pools
reflecting the sky, he rendered with force of color and
strength of effect. Gradually he began to attempt the figure,
which in his hands never attained a higher plane than an
assemblage of charming though artificial color; and these
little bouquets, which superficially imitated Correggio,
Da Vinci, or Prud’hon, as the fancy seized the painter, bathed
in a color that is undeniably agreeable, were and are to this
day loved by the collector. Of a whimsical temperament, Diaz
was the life of artist gatherings; and his facility in work,
and its popularity, gave him the means of doing many generous
acts, the memory of which lives. But
[pg 476] of the group of men of his
time, he has exercised, perhaps, the least influence.

THE STONE-BREAKERS. FROM A PAINTING BY GUSTAVE
COURBET.

One of Courbet’s early pictures, which, when exhibited
at the Salon, excited considerable discussion, certain
adverse critics finding in it an appeal to the socialistic
elements. It represents a scene common in France, where
stones are piled by the roadsides, to be broken up for
repairing the route.

Jules Dupré rises to a higher plane. But his work,
freed from the colder academical bondage, is pitched in a key
of color which takes us to a world where the sun shines through
smoke; where the clouds float heavily, filled with inky vapors;
and the light shoots from behind the trees explosively. It is a
grave, rhythmic world, however; and if it lacks the dewy
atmosphere of Corot, it has an intensity which the more sanely
balanced painter seldom reached. Dupré, born at Nantes
in 1812, and dying near Paris, at the village of L’Isle-Adam,
in 1889, made his first important exhibit at the Salon in 1835,
after a visit to England, where he met Constable. This picture,
“Environs of Southampton,” was typical of the work he was to
do. A long waste of land near the sea, the middle distance in
deepest shadow, and richly colored storm-clouds racing
overhead; the foreground in sunlight, enhanced by the
artificial contrast of the rest of the picture; a wooden dyke
on which, together with two white horses near by, the gleam of
sunlight falls almost with a sound, so intensified is all the
effect, make up the picture. Dupré’s work is generally
keyed up to the highest possible pitch, and it is no little
merit that, with the constant insistence on this note, it is
seldom or never theatrical.

Constant Troyon, from sympathy of aim, is commonly included
in this group, although it was gradually, and after success
achieved in landscape, that his more powerful cattle pictures
were produced, which alone entitle him to the place. Born at
Sèvres in 1810, where his father was employed at the
manufactory of porcelain, he was thrown in contact with
Dupré and Diaz. He first exhibited at the Salon in 1832,
and for nearly twenty years was known as a landscape painter.
His work at that time was eclectic, sufficiently in touch with
Rousseau, [pg 477] whose acquaintance he had
made, to be of interest, but never revolutionary enough to
alarm the academical juries of the Salon. In 1849, after a
visit to Holland, he turned his attention to animal
painting, and became in that field the first of his time. In
common with his quondam comrades in the porcelain
manufactory, Troyon delighted in warmth and richness of tone
and color; but in the rendering of the texture and color of
cattle the quality availed him greatly, and as objects in
his foreground the landscape environment gained in depth by
its judicious use. Troyon will be chiefly remembered by the
pictures painted from 1846 to 1858. The later years of his
life, until his death in 1865, were passed with a clouded
intellect.

THE GOOD SAMARITAN. FROM A PAINTING BY THÉODULE
RIBOT.

From the Salon of 1870; now in the Luxembourg. The story
of the man who went down to Jericho and fell among thieves
is here treated as a pretext for a forcible effect of light
and shade, though it is also a novel and dramatic
presentation of the scene.

The youngest of the group proper was Charles François
Daubigny, who was born in Paris in 1817, and died there in
1878. He was the son of a well-known miniature painter, and
passed his youth in the country, where he imbibed the love for
simple nature which he afterwards rendered with less of fervor
than Rousseau, with less poetry than either Corot or
Dupré; but, in his way, with as much or more of truth.
His task was easier. In the progress which landscape painting
had made, there were hosts of younger painters, each adding a
particle of truth, each making an advance in technical skill
and daring, and Daubigny profited by it all. Corot, it is true,
had never been afflicted with the preoccupation of combining
the freshness of nature with the patine with which ages
had embrowned the old gallery pictures; but Daubigny, looking
at nature with a more literal eye than Corot, ran a gamut of
color greater than he. It was Daubigny who said of Corot, in
envious admiration: “He puts nothing on the canvas, and
everything is there.” His own more prosaic nature took delight
in enregistering a greater number of facts. Floating quietly
down the rivers of France in a house-boat, he diligently
reproduced the sedgy banks, the low-lying distances the poplars
and clumps of trees lining the shore, and reflected in the
waters. He painted the “Springtime,” now in the Louvre, with
lush grass growing thick
[pg 478] around the apple trees in
blossom; with tender greens, soft, fleecy clouds, and the
moist, humid atmosphere of France; without preoccupation of
rich color, of “brown sauce,” of “low tone,” of the thousand
and one conventions which have enfeebled the work of men
stronger than he. Thus he fills a middle place between the
men who made an honest effort at painting nature as they saw
and felt it, but could not altogether rid themselves of
their early education, and the lawless band who, with the
purple banner of impressionism, now riot joyously in the
fields, with brave show of gleaming color, and fearless
attempt to enlist science in their ranks.

SERVANT AT THE FOUNTAIN. FROM A PAINTING BY
FRANÇOIS SAINT BONVIN.

From the Salon of 1863; now in the Luxembourg galleries.
A quiet scene, essentially French from the type of the
woman to the “fountain” of red copper so often seen in
French kitchens, it recalls the work of the old Holland
masters, and proves that, in our day, and with material
near at hand, one can be thoroughly modern, and yet claim
kinship with the great painters of the past.

It is to these latter that the future must look, and it can
do so with confidence. In all the license which runs ahead of
progress there is less danger than resides in stagnation. The
men of 1830, who by ungrateful youths are now derided, had
their turn at derision, and extravagances were committed in
their name, according to the beliefs of their time. They
carried their work, however, to its full completion, and it
remains the greatest achievement of this century in painting,
the greatest in landscape
[pg 479] art of all time. What the
next century may bring is undoubtedly foreshadowed in the
work of impressionistic tendency. It has the merit of being
a new direction, one as yet hardly opened before us, but
more hopeful, despite certain excesses, than it would be to
see the men of our time settle down to an imitation of the
works, however great, of those men of 1830. The immediate
effect of their example was and can still be seen in the
works of men too numerous to be enregistered here.

AN UNHAPPY FAMILY. FROM A PAINTING BY NICOLAS
FRANÇOIS OCTAVE TASSAERT.

In the Luxembourg catalogue, to which museum the picture
came from the Salon of 1850, is printed a long quotation
from Lamennais’s “Les Paroles d’un Croyant” (The Words of a
Believer), an emphatic work, of great popularity about the
time that the picture was painted. The women represented,
having fallen into poverty, are suffering from cold and
hunger, the obvious end of the tragedy being explained by
these words, “Shortly after there were seen two forms,
luminous like souls, which took their flight towards
Heaven.” The picture, like much of Tassaert’s work, affords
an instance of misguided and morbid talent.

[pg 480]

In Henri Harpignies, a living painter, though now aged, the
influence is felt in the careful attention to form throughout
the landscape. The delicate branching of trees is depicted in
his work with accuracy tempered by a sense of the beauty of
line, which prevents it from becoming photographic. Léon
Germain Pelouse, who was born at Pierrelay in 1838, and died in
Paris, 1891, carried somewhat the same qualities to excess. His
pictures, though undeniably excellent, are marred by the
dangerous facility which degenerates into mere virtuosity.
Charles Jacque, who was born in 1813, and lived until 1894, was
of the original group living for many years in Barbizon. He
was, perhaps, of less original mind than any of the others, but
was gifted with a power of assimilation which enabled him to
form an eclectic style that is now recognized as his own. His
pictures are many in number and varied in character, though his
somewhat stereotyped pictures of sheep, done in the later years
of his life, are best known.

The limits of space render it difficult to make even a
summary enumeration of certain tendencies in figure painting
which marked the years of the growth of this great landscape
school. Gustave Courbet (born at Ornans in 1819, died in
Switzerland, 1877), who might be classed both as a figure and a
landscape painter, would demand by right a longer consideration
than can be here given. Of his career as a champion of realism,
as a past master in the peculiarly modern art of keeping one’s
self before the public, culminating in his connection with the
Commune in Paris in 1871, and the destruction of the column in
the Place Vendôme, there could be much to say. Courbet
was, as a painter, a powerful individuality; of more force,
however, as a painter of the superficial envelope than of the
deeper qualities which nature makes pictorial at the bidding of
one of finer fibre. His claim to be considered modern can be
contested, inasmuch as it was only in subject that his work was
novel. In manner of painting he was of a time long past, of a
school of greater masters than he showed himself to be. With
this reserve, however, as a vigorous painter, both of the
figure and landscape, he is interesting; and as one of the
first to look about him and find his subjects in our daily
life, his work will live.

Curiously enough, the revival of the art of another epoch in
the case of Saint Bonvin remained absolutely modern. By nature
or by choice this painter (born at Vaugirard, near Paris, in
1817, and dying at St. Germain-en-Laye in 1887) is a modern
Pieter de Hooghe; and as the Dutch masters addressed themselves
to a painstaking and sincere representation of the life about
them, in like manner Bonvin, bringing to his work much the same
qualities, choosing as his subjects quiet interiors, with the
life of the family pursuing its even tenor (or the still more
placid progress of conventual life, like the “Ave Maria in the
Convent of Aramont,” in the Luxembourg), remains himself while
resembling his prototypes. It is instructive to look at his
“Servant at the Fountain,” reproduced here, compare it with
many of the pictures of familiar life like those of Wilkie,
Webster, or Mulready, published last month, and note the
unconsciousness of the work before us.

The work of a painter equally able, though suffering
somewhat as representing an art with which we moderns have
little sympathy, falls into comparison here, and undoubtedly
loses by it. The unfortunate painter, Octave Tassaert, who was
born in Paris in 1800, and lived there, undergoing constant
privation, until he voluntarily ended his life in 1874,
possibly found consolation for his hard lot in depicting scenes
like that entitled “An Unhappy Family.”

The lesson of the art of the men considered here is that of
direct inspiration of nature, of reliance on native qualities
rather than those acquired; and the impulse given by them has
continued in force until to day. We have before us, as a
consequence, two strongly defined tendencies which will control
the future of painting. The first and strongest, for the
moment, is the impressionistic tendency, with its negation of
any pictorial qualities other than those based on direct study
from objects actually existing. This would, if carried to a
logical conclusion, eliminate the imaginative quality, and
render the painter a human photographic camera. The other
tendency is that which has existed since art was born, and
which, though temporarily and justly ignored in periods when it
is necessary to recreate a technical standard, always comes to
the surface when men have learned their trade as painters. It
is the desire to create; the instinct which impels one to use
the language given him to express thought. The two tendencies
are not incompatible; and in the end the artist will arise who,
with certainty of expression, will express thought.

[pg 481]

“SOLDIER AN’ SAILOR TOO.”

By Rudyard Kipling,

Author of “Barrack-Room Ballads,” “The Jungle Book,”
etc.

As I was spittin’ into the Ditch aboard o’ the
“Crocodile,”

I seed a man on a man-o’-war got up in the Reg’lars’
style.

‘E was scrapin’ the paint from off of ‘er plates,
an’ I sez to ‘im: “Oo are you?”

Sez ‘e: “I’m a Jolly—’er Majesty’s
Jolly—soldier an’ sailor too!”

Now ‘is work begins by Gawd knows
when, and ‘is work is never through—

‘E isn’t one o’ the Regular line, nor
‘e isn’t one of the crew—

‘E’s a kind of a giddy
herumfrodite—soldier an’ sailor too!

An’ after I met ‘im all over the world, a-doin’ all
kinds o’ things,

Like landin’ ‘isself with a Gatling-gun to talk to
them ‘eathen kings;

‘E sleeps in an ‘ammick instead of a cot, an’ ‘e
drills with the deck on a slue,

An’ ‘e sweats like a Jolly—’er Majesty’s
Jolly—soldier an’ sailor too!

For there isn’t a job on the top o’
the earth the beggar don’t know—nor do!

You can leave ‘im at night on a bald
man’s ‘ead to paddle ‘is own canoe;

‘E’s a sort of a bloomin’
cosmopolot—soldier an’ sailor too.

We’ve fought ’em on trooper, we’ve fought em in
dock, an’ drunk with ’em in betweens,

When they called us the sea-sick scull’ry maids, an’
we called ’em the Ass Marines;

But when we was down for a double fatigue, from
Woolwich to Bernardmyo,

We sent for the Jollies—’er Majesty’s
Jollies—soldier an’ sailor too!

They think for ’emselves, an they
steal for ’emselves, an’ they never ask what’s to
do,

But they’re camped an fed an’ they’re
up an’ fed before our bugle’s blew.

Ho! they ain’t no limpin
procrastitutes—soldier an’ sailor too!

You may say we are fond of an ‘arness cut or ‘ootin’
in barrick-yards,

Or startin’ a Board School mutiny along o’ the Onion
Guards;

But once in a while we can finish in style for the
ends of the earth to view,

The same as the Jollies—’er Majesty’s
Jollies—soldier an’ sailor
too.

[pg 482]

They come of our lot, they was
brothers to us, they was beggars we’d met and
knew;

Yes, barrin’ an inch in the chest an’
the arms, they was doubles o’ me and you,

For they weren’t no special
chrysanthemums—soldier an’ sailor too.

To take your chance in the thick of a rush with
firing all about

Is nothing so bad when you’ve cover to ‘and, and
leave an’ likin’ to shout;

But to stand an’ be still to the “Birken’ead” drill
is a damn tough bullet to chew,

And they done it, the Jollies—’er Majesty’s
Jollies—soldier an’ sailor too.

Their work was done when it ‘adn’t
begun, they was younger nor me an you;

Their choice it was plain between
drownin in ‘eaps an bein mashed by the screw,

An’ they stood an’ was still to the
“Birken’ead” drill, soldier an sailor too!

We’re most of us liars, we’re ‘arf of us thieves,
an’ the rest are as rank as can be,

But once in a while we can finish in style (which I
‘ope it won’t ‘appen to me);

But it makes you think better o’ you an’ your
friends an’ the work you may ‘ave to do

When you think o’ the sinkin’ “Victorier’s”
Jollies—soldier an’ sailor too.

Now there isn’t no room for to say you
don’t know—they ‘ave settled it plain and
true—

That whether it’s Widow or whether
it’s ship, Victorier’s work is to do,

As they done it, the Jollies—’er
Majesty’s Jollies—soldier an sailor too!

[pg 483]

RACHEL.

By Mrs. E. V. Wilson,

Author of “Barbary,” “A Blizzard,” and other stories.

IT was the middle of a short December afternoon.
From the scholars in the little log school-house in the
Stillman district rose a buzzing sound as they bent over their
desks, intent on books or mischief, as the case might be. The
teacher, a good-looking young man of twenty or thereabouts, was
busy with a class in arithmetic when a shrill voice called
out:

“Teacher, Rachel Stillman’s readin’ a story-book.”

“Bring the book to me,” said the teacher quietly; and the
delinquent, a girl of about fourteen, slowly rose and, walking
to him, placed a much-worn volume in his hands.

“Why,” he said, glancing at the open page, “it is ‘The
Pilgrim’s Progress.’ No wonder you are interested. But you must
not read it during school hours.”

The child lifted to his face a pair of large blue eyes,
beautiful with timid wistfulness, as she replied:

“I know I oughtn’t, sir, but I wanted to see how they got
out of Doubting Castle so bad.”

He smiled. “I will give you the book after school; then you
can read it at home.”

“Oh, no,” she whispered; “father won’t let me read
story-books.”

“He surely would not object to this,” answered the young
teacher; “but I will keep it until recess to-morrow, and, never
fear, Christian and Hopeful will outwit the giant yet.”

The wistful eyes brightened, and, with a grateful smile,
Rachel returned to her desk.

“First class in spelling, take your places,” called the
teacher.

Rachel belonged to this class, as did all the larger
scholars, among whom was her brother, Thomas, two years her
elder. The teacher had promised a prize at the end of the term
to the member of the class obtaining the greatest number of
head marks, and consequently a good deal of interest was taken
in the lessons.

Rachel had been at the head of the class the evening before;
therefore she now took her station at its foot. Tom, her
brother, now was head, and for some time no change in position
was made. But finally “somebody blundered,” and Rachel, who was
one of the good spellers, went up in the long line. Presently
another word was missed, and now Rachel walked to the head. Tom
pushed her spitefully.

“Another mark, Rachel,” said the teacher, “for that is the
end of the lesson.”

The class resumed their seats, and, a few minutes after,
school was dismissed for the day.

“Good-evening,” said the teacher, as Rachel and a younger
sister, a pretty, delicate child, passed him at the door. “Now,
no worrying about Christian, Rachel.”

“I won’t,” she laughed. “I guess he’ll get out. Didn’t he
stand up to old Apollyon?”

“Like a good fellow,” was the reply. “Hope I’ll come off as
well.”

She looked at him inquiringly, but he had turned toward his
desk, and the sisters set out on their half-mile walk home.

Let us precede them and see what manner of home it is to
which these children belong.

The farm is a large one, the buildings substantial, and
everything has a prosperous, well-to-do look. Mr. Stillman, the
owner of these broad acres and the father of these three, Tom,
Rachel, and Susy, as well as of three more girls and another
stalwart son, is a stout, comfortable-looking man of forty-five
or fifty. A glance at his close, thin lips and keen gray eyes
would convince an observant person that he would make it very
uncomfortable for any one in his power who might differ from
him in opinion or dispute his authority. Just now he is
chatting pleasantly with his hired man, and pays no attention
to the children, who pass him on the way to the house.

Indoors Mrs. Stillman, a slender, fair-haired woman, who
looks as if she felt she owed the world an apology for living
in it, is preparing supper, assisted by her two daughters,
Elizabeth, a sad-faced woman of twenty-four, and Margaret, a
girl of eighteen, with her father’s determined mouth and chin
and her mother’s large blue eyes and fair hair. The clock
struck five as the school-girls entered the kitchen,
[pg 484] a large room which in
winter did duty as dining-room as well as cooking-room.

“Run in the sitting-room, girls, and get warm,” said the
mother. “Supper is almost ready.”

“Oh, we’re not cold; are we, Susy? I got another head mark,
mother,” said Rachel.

The mother smiled. “I hope you or Tom will get the prize.
Where is he?” She was interrupted by a stamping of feet as the
door was thrown open and Mr. Stillman, followed by the hired
man and Tom, entered the room.

“Supper is ready,” said Mrs. Stillman. “We were just going
to call you.”

“Well, I guess it will keep till we’re ready,” answered her
husband, roughly. “Rachel, get some water; the bucket’s empty,
of course. Margaret, where’s the wash-basin? Nothing in its
place, as usual. Pity there wasn’t two or three more girls
lazyin’ around!”

Nobody replied to this tirade. The hired man picked up the
basin, Margaret handed a towel, Rachel brought the water, and
soon the family were gathered around the well-spread table.

“I tell you,” said Mr. Stillman, after a few mouthfuls of
the savory food had apparently put him in a better humor, “I
think we’ll have fine weather for hog-killin’ next week, and I
never did have a finer lot of hogs.”

“Oh, father,” said Margaret, “don’t butcher next week.
Friday is Christmas day and—”

“Christmas!” interrupted her father. “Well, we always
butcher Christmas week, don’t we?”

“Yes, I know,” she said, her lips trembling in spite of her
effort to control herself. “But we never have enjoyed the
holidays, and I thought maybe this year you—”

“We will do this year as we always have,” broke in the
father, angrily. “I suppose”, with a look at his wife from
which she shrank as from a blow, “this is one of your plans to
have your girls gadding over the country.”

“Mother never said anything about it,” said Margaret, her
temper getting the better of her; “but nobody else takes
Christmas times to do their hardest and dirtiest work.”

“Will you hush?” thundered the father. “What do I care what
anybody else does? I am master here.”

No one spoke again. The assertion could not be denied. He
was master, and well his wife and daughters knew it.

Poor Mrs. Stillman! Two fortunate baby girls had died a few
weeks after their birth, and the tears that fell over the
little coffins were not half so bitter as those she shed when
first she held their innocent faces to her heart. When on this
evening the father had shown his authority, the two elder
daughters rose from the table, and taking a couple of large
buckets, went quietly out to the barnyard, and proceeded to
milk the half dozen cows awaiting them.

It was nearly dark and very cold; but no word was spoken
except to the animals, as the girls hurried through the work
and hastened back to the kitchen, where Rachel and the mother
were clearing away the supper-table and making the needful
preparations for the early breakfast.

When all was finished the mother and daughters entered the
large room adjoining the kitchen, which served as sitting-room
for the family and bed-room for the parents, Mr. Stillman not
permitting a fire kept in any other room in the house. Mrs.
Stillman sat down with her knitting-work as close in the corner
as possible; Elizabeth brought in a large basket of rags, and
she and Margaret were soon busy sewing strips and winding balls
for a carpet. The younger children were absorbed in their
lessons at the table, where the father sat reading his
newspaper.

All were silent, for to have spoken while father was reading
would have been an unforgivable offence. At last, however, Mr.
Stillman lifted his eyes from the paper, and addressing Tom,
said: “Well, how did you get along at school to-day?”

“Oh, first rate,” said the boy; but that lost head mark
rankled in his mind, and he added, “Rachel was called up by the
teacher.”

“How was that, Rachel?” said her father sharply. Poor
girl!—deep in the mysteries of long division, she did not
hear him.

“Rachel,” he repeated, “what were you called up in school
for to-day?”

She glanced reproachfully at Tom. “I read a little in ‘The
Pilgrim’s Progress,’ father. It’s not a story-book—”

“Never mind what it is. I send you to school to study, and
you’re not to touch any but your school-books.”

“May I bring it home?” she faltered.

“Bring it home, indeed! No, miss. I guess you can find
enough to do at home. Not another word more, or you will stay
at home for good.”

The child bent over her slate; but tears would come, and at
last a sob burst forth.

“Clear out to bed, Rachel,” said her father angrily. “I want
no snivelling here.”

Upstairs, in the cold, dark room, what
[pg 485] bitter thoughts surged
through the childish brain!

Mr. Stillman loved his wife and children. He wanted them to
be happy, but in his way. He must choose their pleasures. If
they could not be satisfied with what he chose for them, it was
not his fault; it was their perversity. And as no two souls are
alike, the attempt to fit a number of them by the same pattern
necessarily caused suffering to the souls undergoing the
operation.

Mrs. Stillman’s sensitive organization was completely
crushed; her eldest daughter’s nearly so. Martha, the second
daughter, had escaped by marrying a clever young man, who first
pitied, then loved the daughter of his employer, and persuaded
her to elope with him, assuring her of a happier home than she
had with her father.

The marriage angered Mr. Stillman greatly, and all
intercourse with the disobedient daughter was forbidden.

Margaret, the third daughter, also rebelled at the fitting
process; and having a goodly portion of her father’s
determination, many were the sharp words that passed between
them.

So far Rachel and Susan had given no trouble. He ordered
them about as he did his dumb animals, and with no more regard
to their feelings. With his sons it was different. They would
be men some day. They must be treated with some consideration.
At an early age, John, two years older than Elizabeth, was
given a share in the stock and land to cultivate; so that when,
at the age of twenty-four, he married, he had a “right good
start in the world.”

But his sister toiled early and late, washing, ironing,
milking, churning, baking, nursing the younger children,
sharing her mother’s labors, and paid as her mother
was—with her board and a scanty, grudgingly given
wardrobe. She was now twenty-four, and had never had a
five-dollar bill to spend as she pleased in her life—for
that matter, neither had the mother. There are many Mr.
Stillmans, “Are they honest men?” If father and son have the
right to be paid for their labor, have not the mother and
daughter? I leave the question with you.

Rachel carried a heavy heart to school next morning. The
tinker’s wonderful allegory to her was very real, and to leave
her hero in that awful dungeon was almost more than she could
bear. When at recess the teacher offered her the book, she did
not take it.

“Father said,” she began—then sobs choked her
utterance. He understood, and after a moment’s silence said: “I
am interested in Christian as well as you, Rachel, and if you
will sit here I will read to you.” In all her after life Rachel
never forgot these readings at intermission, which were
continued not only until Christian reached the Celestial city,
but until Christiana and the children completed their wonderful
journey to the same place. Her gratitude to her young teacher
would certainly have become love had she been a few years
older. As it was, when in March the term closed, not even the
prize as the best speller—a beautiful copy of “Pilgrim’s
Progress”—consoled her for the cessation of school.

As for the teacher, he was glad the winter’s
work—which had been undertaken and conscientiously
carried through solely for the purpose of obtaining means to
pursue the study of his profession—was over. He liked
some of his scholars very much, Rachel especially; she was so
interested in her studies, so intelligent and grateful, that
when, with eyes swimming in tears, she bade him good-by, he
felt a moment’s sorrow at leaving her, and comforted her by
telling her what a good girl she had been and that he would not
forget her.

“You ought to have seen Rache an’ Suse cry when old Gray bid
us good-by,” said Tom that evening at home.

“Did you cry?” asked Margaret.

“Guess not! Glad school’s out; an’ I’m never goin’ any
more.”

“I wouldn’t if I were you, bub,” said Margaret; “you know
enough now.” She always called him “bub” when she wanted to vex
him, “But old Gray, as you call him, will be somebody yet, see
if he don’t.”

The entrance of Mr. Stillman closed the conversation, and
Tom went out, banging the door after him. No wonder Margaret
was getting ill-natured.

The winter was a long, dull season at Stillman’s. Even her
enjoyment at the few social gatherings she was permitted to
attend in the neighborhood was marred by the knowledge that she
could not entertain her young friends in return. She had
attempted once to fix up the “spare room” and have a fire for
some company, but her father had peremptorily forbidden it.
“I’d like to know,” he said, “why the settin’-room ain’t good
enough! If your company is too nice to be with the rest of the
family they can stay away, miss.”

And “they” generally did stay away after one visit. Mr.
Stillman was not a success as a host, young people thought; and
a young minister who came home from meeting one Sunday with
Elizabeth was so [pg 486] completely abashed by the
cool reception he met that not even the daughter’s pleading
eyes could persuade him to remain in her father’s presence.
A few weeks after, he went to a distant appointment; and
Elizabeth’s sad face grew sadder than ever.

Jim Lansing, the son of a widow who managed a farm and two
grown sons with equal skill, was more successful. He usually
brought his mother with him; and, while she entertained Mr. and
Mrs. Stillman, Jim, the girls, and the carpet rags escaped to
the kitchen.

But spring was near, and Margaret thought: “He can’t keep us
out of the spare room in summer; and, besides, we can be
out-of-doors.”

June came, with her blue skies, her singing birds, her
wealth of beauty. But there was no time at Stillman’s to enjoy
it. A larger crop than usual had been put in, and extra hands
employed, but not in the house. Why, there were five women,
counting frail little ten-year-old Susy as one, and poor,
delicate Mrs. Stillman as another! What extra help could they
need, although washing and cooking must be done for all the
men? You see, “hands” could be got much cheaper if they were
boarded—and what else had the women to do?

It was true, mother was not as strong as she used to be; but
she did not complain. She was only more shadowy and quiet; and
Mr. Stillman told his daughters to “stir around” themselves,
and not let their mother do all the work.

“Oh, dear,” said Margaret one morning, as she and Rachel
were bending over the wash-tubs, while Susy labored at the
heavy churning and the mother and Elizabeth were preparing
dinner. “I wish we could go to the picnic on the Fourth;
everybody’s going.”

“Maybe we can,” said Rachel, hopefully. “I heard father say
the wheat was late this year, and he did not believe it would
do to cut before the sixth. And oh, Margaret, I heard him say
your calf would bring at least ten dollars; and if he gives you
the money, you can get a new white dress and give me your old
one. It is lots too small for you.”

Margaret laughed. “Yes,” she said; “father said if I could
raise the calf I might have it. Didn’t I have a time with it,
though, it was so near dead! Of course I will fix my old dress
up for you—that is, if I get the money. Sometimes I think
father’s queer; he did not give Elizabeth the money when he
sold that colt he had given her.” And both girls were
silent.

Out in the barnyard, as the girls worked, Mr. Stillman and
Tom were putting the pretty calf in the wagon preparatory to
taking it to the butcher in the town a few miles distant. When
the girls went in to dinner the men had finished theirs, and
were lounging in the shady yard enjoying their nooning.

As they were about to sit down at the table, Mr. Stillman
handed Margaret a package, saying, “There’s your share of that
spotted calf, Margaret.”

“My share!” she exclaimed. “Why, you gave me the calf; you
had no right to it.”

As she spoke she opened the package and unrolled a piece of
cheap lawn—yellow ground dotted with blue. She flung it
angrily on the floor, and ran out of the room.

Mr. Stillman turned to Rachel after a moment of dumb
amazement, and said: “You can have the dress, Rachel. I’ll
teach Margaret a lesson.”

“I don’t want it,” she said. “You had no right to take
Margaret’s money. You did give her the calf, and when you sold
Tom’s pig you gave him his money.”

“Nice girls you’re raising, mother,” said Mr. Stillman to
his frightened wife. “They’ll be turning us out of doors next.
You pick up that lawn, miss.”

Rachel did so. As she folded it, he went on: “That calf was
mine. I only meant to pay her for caring for it.”

“You should have told her so, then,” said his daughter,
facing him with eyes keen as his own; “but you told her if she
could raise it she might have it, and, of course, she believed
you.”

He raised his hand as if to strike her; then, as she did not
move or drop her eyes, he turned and left the room.

July came, but the Stillman girls did not go to the picnic.
Tom and the “hands” did; and Mrs. Lansing and her boys stopped
at Stillman’s on their way and offered the girls seats in their
wagon. But Mr. Stillman said his women had to get ready for the
harvest hands who were coming next day, and Margaret said to
Rachel bitterly: “We have no decent clothes to go in anyhow.”
And there was much washing, ironing, cooking, and churning done
as the days went on. No wonder Mrs. Stillman grew paler and
weaker, until even her husband noticed it, and brought her a
bottle of bitters, and told the girls to “keep mother out of
the kitchen,” which they indeed tried to do. But how could the
mother rest when there was so much to do? The girls could not
manage as she could, and Elizabeth seemed “so poorly;” for the
patient elder daughter, as the summer dragged along, had a
pitifully hopeless look on her pale face,
[pg 487] and went about listlessly,
as if life had lost all interest for her.

At last there came a morning when the mother did not rise
for breakfast.

“Hadn’t we better send for Dr. Lewis, father?” said
Elizabeth.

“Oh, no; your mother did not sleep much, it was so hot last
night. She’ll be up directly. You keep her out of the kitchen,
and see you have dinner on time. We want to finish to-day, for
I expect we’ll have a storm, from the feel of the air.”

Noon came. Dinner for a dozen hungry men was on the table,
and still Mrs. Stillman was in bed. While the men were eating,
Rachel slipped in to her mother. She was awake, but her flushed
face and wild, bright eyes startled the girl.

“Oh, mother!” she cried, “you are very sick; you must have
the doctor.”

“No, dear,” the mother answered; “father is too busy now.
I’ll be better after awhile. You go help wait on the
table.”

Rachel returned to the dining-room. “Take that fly-brush,
Rachel,” said her father. “Susy’s no account; she’s too lazy to
keep it going.”

Poor, tired little Susy, who had done a large churning that
morning, crimsoned to the roots of her hair as she handed
Rachel the brush and hurried out of the room.

When dinner was over Mr. Stillman glared into the room where
his wife lay. “She is asleep,” he said. “I guess she’s all
right.”

“She hasn’t eaten a thing to-day,” said Rachel. “Hadn’t she
better have the doctor?”

“Well,” said her father, impatiently, “if she’s no better in
the morning, I’ll send for him;” and he went back to the
field.

Rachel went for Mrs. Lansing, for she and her sisters grew
frightened as the mother’s fever increased. When that good
woman came she saw at once the serious condition of her
friend.

“I saw Dr. Lewis coming down the road in his buggy as I
came,” she said. “One of you hurry out and stop him.”

When, about five o’clock, the rain began to fall in
torrents, Mr. Stillman had the satisfaction of seeing the last
load of grain driven inside the barn door; and, taking off his
hat, he wiped the moisture from his face, saying: “Well, boys,
we beat the rain; and I don’t care if it pours down now.”

He walked toward the house, and, to his surprise, saw the
well-known figure of Dr. Lewis on the front porch. “Driven in
by the rain,” he thought. “I’ll get him to give mother a little
medicine.”

“How are you, doctor?” he said, as he stepped upon the
porch. “Lucky getting my wheat in, wasn’t I?”

“Very,” said the doctor, gravely; “but I am sorry to say I
find Mrs. Stillman a very sick woman. You should have sent for
me long ago.” The husband was startled.

“Why,” he said, “she has been going about until to-day. I
guess it’s this weather has made her so weak. She can’t be very
sick.”

The physician was silent for a moment; then he said: “If
there is not a change for the better soon, I fear she will live
but a few days. I cannot understand how she has kept up;” and
he turned and went into the sick-room.

For once the men at Stillman’s ate a cold supper and did the
milking. Mrs. Lansing took things into her own capable hands.
John and his wife were sent for and came, and Jim Lansing
quietly hitched up a team and went for Martha and her
husband—poor Martha, who had not seen her mother for more
than a year!

All night Mr. Stillman watched by the bedside or walked up
and down the long back porch. It could not be she would
die—his wife. It was the hot weather; she was just weak
and tired. That was it, Mr. Stillman—worn out, tired; and
rest was coming. When Martha came, the mother who had so longed
for her did not recognize her.

“Mother, only speak to me!” cried the daughter in anguish;
but the mother looked at her with dimming eyes that saw no more
of earth, and muttered as she turned upon her couch, “Hurry,
girls, it’s nearly noon. Hurry! Father will be angry if he has
to wait.”

Then she grew quiet; only her restless hands, which her
daughters vainly strove to hold, kept reaching out as if to
grasp that unknown land she was so soon to enter; and before
the sun was high in the morning Mrs. Stillman had found
rest.

Her husband was stunned. With haggard face he bent over his
dead. “If I had known,” he said. “Oh, my wife, if I had known,
I would have taken better care of you.”

Ah, Mr. Stillman, you are not the only one who with
remorseful heart cries, “If I had only known, if I had only
known!”

Life went on as usual at Stillman’s after the mother had
left them. For a while the father was kinder, but as time went
on the old habit was resumed. Elizabeth went mechanically about
her work, and her father did not notice her evidently failing
health. [pg 488] Her quietness was a relief
to him; for Margaret was growing more defiant toward him,
and quarrelled constantly with Tom, who, now that his
mother’s influence was withdrawn, became more and more
meddlesome and overbearing in his conduct toward his
sisters. The summer following Mrs. Stillman’s death Mrs.
Lansing’s eldest son, Frank, took unto himself a wife; and
late in the fall the neighborhood was electrified by the
unexpected marriage of Mrs. Lansing and Mr. Stillman. Her
boys, on learning her intention, had remonstrated; but she
said: “You boys do not need me, and these girls do. Think of
a young girl like Rachel saying, ‘God had nothing to do with
my mother’s death. It was hard work killed her!’ And when I
tried to tell her of His goodness to His creatures, she
said: ‘Yes; He is good enough to men. All He cares for women
is to create them for men’s convenience,’ And then there’s
little Susy, with a face like her mother’s. Why, it just
haunts me!”

“Well,” said Jim, “things are in a bad fix over there; but
it isn’t Susy’s face that haunts me, by any means.”

His mother laughed. “I shall take care of Margaret,” she
said; “she and Elizabeth need some one to look after them. They
are being worked to death.”

Four years have slipped over the heads of the
Stillmans—years well improved by Rachel and Susy at the
academy in the town near their father’s farm; years which gave
Margaret’s happiness into Jim Lansing’s keeping, and made Jim a
young man of whom his sisters were extremely proud. Even
Elizabeth’s sad face looks as if life might be worth living;
for, under the second wife, life at Stillman’s had taken on a
different color. The spare room is a pretty sitting-room for
the young folks.

“We don’t want them always with us,” says Mrs. Stillman, as
she shows her husband the change she has made; for one of her
peculiarities is that she manages her household affairs as she
thinks best, taking it for granted that her husband will
approve. As for Rachel, she enjoyed the change for the better;
but now, to the bitter feeling which she cherished toward her
father, was added a touch of contempt “See,” she thought, “how
he can be flattered into doing things; if my mother could have
managed him so, she might have lived.”

Rachel was mistaken; the new wife did not manoeuvre or
flatter, she simply took her proper place as mistress of the
house—not as a sort of upper servant, to be snubbed or
praised at the master’s humor.

Another summer had been added to Rachel’s years when, one
evening, Tom came home from town, and entering the dining-room,
where she was preparing the table for supper, exclaimed:
“Rachel, do you remember old Gray, as I used to call him, who
taught our school the winter before mother died?”

“Yes,” she said, “I remember him. Mother liked him.”

“Well, I met him in town to-day. He’s on that Sanders case.
He knew me right off, and he’s coming out here this evening; so
fix up nice and be looking your sweetest. They say he’s smart.
I heard some of the old lawyers talking about him.” And Tom
caught his sister about the waist and waltzed her out on the
porch.

“Rachel,” said Susy, as in their own room the girls were
dressing after supper, “you are very hard to please to-night
and you seem nervous. What ails you?”

Rachel smiled. “I am thinking of old days, that is all,” she
said. But she entered the little parlor, where Tom and the
guest were seated, in a perfectly self-possessed manner,
saying, as she held out her hand:

“Good-evening, teacher. How goes the battle with
Apollyon?”

And the young lawyer sprang to his feet, exclaiming:
“Rachel! is it possible?” and he retained her hand and looked
into her eyes so long that Susy, who had followed her into the
room, and Tom declared that he fell in love then and there.
However that may be, it is certain Mr. Gray showed a wonderful
interest in Stillman’s district. The trial in progress at
Meywood was tedious, but his patience did not give out; and
when some of the lawyers proposed to hold night sessions of
court he objected earnestly, saying: “It would be too hard on
the old judge.”

But all things must end, and the case was at last decided in
favor of Mr. Gray’s client. As Rachel congratulated him on his
victory, he said, with a look that brought the color to her
face:

“How long must I stay in Doubting Castle, Rachel?”

“Why, dear me,” she answered, saucily, “I did not think a
promising young lawyer, as father calls you, ever got into such
a dismal place!”

Then Susy came in, and the young man bade her good-by, but
he whispered promise of speedy return to Rachel, and as he
travelled homeward those wonderful eyes of hers seemed to haunt
him.

“Who would have thought,” he said to himself, “she could
have become such a woman? No wonder I could not find a
[pg 489] girl to suit me when she
has been my ideal.”

You see, he was trying to persuade himself he had thought of
her ever since that term of school; and it may be, unknown to
himself, those eyes had held him. At any rate, he says they
did; and when, time after time, they drew him back to
Stillman’s, he at last made Rachel believe it, and with the
little key of promise she delivered him from Doubting
Castle.

Let us take one more look, two years later, at the Stillman
homestead. There is a family gathering, and all the girls are
present—Martha and Margaret, with their sturdy boys and
rosy girls; Rachel, with her baby; and Susy, a gay young aunt,
flits to and fro, playing with and teasing the little ones.
Elizabeth, with unwonted brightness in her eyes, looks on,
enjoying the merriment.

“Doesn’t it seem odd,” whispers Margaret, “that Lizzie’s
minister should come back after all these years.”

“Yes,” answers Rachel, in the same low tone. “I am so glad.
She seems so happy.”

The husbands are all present in the evening, and the old
house is full of light and gayety. Rachel slips upstairs to put
baby to bed; and as she sits in the room where so many
miserable hours of her childhood were spent, her tears fall,
thinking of herself and the dear, patient mother, who had
suffered and died; and the old bitterness rises in her heart.
Baby stirs and she hushes him, then lays him gently in the old
cradle, and goes downstairs. Some impulse prompts her to enter
the sitting-room instead of the parlor, where she thinks the
family are all gathered.

As she opens the door she sees her father sitting, as of
old, by the table on which the lamp is burning, and she half
turns to go out; but something in his attitude touches her. He
is not reading, for the newspaper lies untouched—he is
looking at something in his hand.

She notices how gray his hair is, and how age is tracing
lines on his face. “Are you feeling sick, father?” she
asks.

“Oh, no,” he says. “Look here, Rachel;” and he hands her a
faded daguerreotype of her mother taken when she was a fair
young bride. “I was thinking about her.”

“How much like Susy,” she said, with tears falling on the
lovely face.

“Yes, only she was prettier,” he answers. “I have been
thinking of her so much lately, Rachel. I am going to do
something that would please her. I have bought that pretty
little place of Perry’s, and I will put Martha and her husband
on it. Dick’s a good industrious fellow; but it’s hard to make
anything on a rented farm, and Martha’s worried too much. You
don’t think any of the children will object?” and he looked
anxiously in her face.

“Object? Why, they will be glad, father!” And dropping her
head on his shoulder, she puts her arm around him for the first
time in her life; and as she slips the little daguerreotype in
his hand a sweet peace fills her heart and she thinks: “The
bitterness is gone, and love fills its place.” After awhile she
joins the group in the parlor. They are singing to Susy’s
accompaniment on the organ.

“Sing ‘Coronation,’ Susy,” she says, as she sits down beside
her husband and glances lovingly in his face.

“What is it?” he whispers. “You are unusually happy.”

“Yes,” she answers. “I have had a vision of the land of
Beulah, where Love is king.”

[pg 490]

CHAPTERS FROM A LIFE.

By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps,

Author of “The Gates Ajar,” “A Singular Life,” etc.

THE BURNING OF THE PEMBERTON MILLS.—THE STORY OF “THE
TENTH OF JANUARY.”—WHITTIER AND HIGGINSON.—THE
WRITING AND PUBLICATION OF “THE GATES AJAR.”

THE town of Lawrence was three miles and a half
from Andover. Up to the year 1860 we had considered Lawrence
chiefly in the light of a place to drive to. To the girlish
resources which could, in those days, only include a trip to
Boston at the call of some fate too vast to be expected more
than two or three times a year, Lawrence offered consolations
in the shape of dry goods and restaurant ice-cream, and a slow,
delicious drive in the family carryall through sand flats and
pine woods, and past the largest bed of the sweetest violets
that ever dared the blasts of a New England spring. To the
pages of the gazetteer Lawrence would have been known as a
manufacturing town of importance. Upon the map of our young
fancy the great mills were sketched in lightly; we looked up
from the restaurant ice-cream to see the “hands” pour out for
dinner, a dark and restless, but a patient, throng; used, in
those days, to standing eleven hours and a quarter—women
and girls—at their looms, six days of the week, and
making no audible complaints; for socialism had not reached
Lawrence, and anarchy was content to bray in distant parts of
the geography at which the factory people had not arrived when
they left school.

Sometimes we counted the great mills as we drove up Essex
Street—having come over the bridge by the roaring dam
that tamed the proud Merrimac to spinning cotton—Pacific,
Atlantic, Washington, Pemberton; but this was an idle,
æsthetic pleasure. We did not think about the
mill-people; they seemed as far from us as the coal-miners of a
vague West, or the down-gatherers on the crags of shores whose
names we did not think it worth while to remember. One January
evening, we were forced to think about the mills with curdling
horror that no one living in that locality when the tragedy
happened will forget.

At five o’clock the Pemberton Mills, all hands being at the
time on duty, without a tremor of warning, sank to the
ground.

At the erection of the factory a pillar with a defective
core had passed careless inspectors. In technical language, the
core had “floated” an eighth of an inch from its position. The
weak spot in the too thin wall of the pillar had bided its
time, and yielded. The roof, the walls, the machinery, fell
upon seven hundred and fifty living men and women, and buried
them. Most of these were rescued; but eighty-eight were killed.
As the night came on, those watchers on Andover Hill who could
not join the rescuing parties, saw a strange and fearful light
at the north.

Where we were used to watching the beautiful belt of the
lighted mills blaze,—a zone of laughing fire from east to
west, upon the horizon bar,—a red and awful glare went
up. The mill had taken fire. A lantern, overturned in the hands
of a man who was groping to save an imprisoned life, had
flashed to the cotton, or the wool, or the oil with which the
ruins were saturated. One of the historic conflagrations of New
England resulted.

With blanching cheeks we listened to the whispers that told
us how the mill-girls, caught in the ruins beyond hope of
escape, began to sing. They were used to singing, poor things,
at their looms—mill-girls always are—and their
young souls took courage from the familiar sound of one
another’s voices. They sang the hymns and songs which they had
learned in the schools and churches. No classical strains, no
“music for music’s sake,” ascended from that furnace; no ditty
of love or frolic; but the plain, religious outcries of the
people: “Heaven is my home,” “Jesus, lover of my soul,” and
“Shall we gather at the river?” Voice after voice dropped. The
fire raced on. A few brave girls sang still:

“Shall we gather at the river,

There to walk and worship ever?”

[pg 491]

But the startled Merrimac rolled by, red as blood beneath
the glare of the burning mills, and it was left to the fire and
the river to finish the chorus.

At the time this tragedy occurred, I felt my share of its
horror, like other people; but no more than that. My brother,
being of the privileged sex, was sent over to see the scene;
but I was not allowed to go.

Years after, I cannot say just how many, the half-effaced
negative came back to form under the chemical of some new
perception of the significance of human tragedy.

It occurred to me to use the event as the basis of a story.
To this end I set forth to study the subject. I had heard
nothing in those days about “material,” and conscience in the
use of it, and little enough about art. We did not talk about
realism then. Of critical phraseology I knew nothing; and of
critical standards only what I had observed by reading the best
fiction. Poor novels and stories I did not read. I do not
remember being forbidden them; but, by that parental art finer
than denial, they were absent from my convenience.

It needed no instruction in the canons of art, however, to
teach me that to do a good thing, one must work hard for it. So
I gave the best part of a month to the study of the Pemberton
Mill tragedy, driving to Lawrence, and investigating every
possible avenue of information left at that too long remove of
time which might give the data. I visited the rebuilt mills,
and studied the machinery. I consulted engineers and officials
and physicians, newspaper men, and persons who had been in the
mill at the time of its fall. I scoured the files of old local
papers, and from these I took certain portions of names,
actually involved in the catastrophe; though, of course,
fictitiously used. When there was nothing left for me to learn
upon the subject, I came home and wrote a little story called
“The Tenth of January,” and sent it to the “Atlantic Monthly,”
where it appeared in due time.

This story is of more interest to its author than it can
possibly be now to any reader, because it distinctly marked for
me the first recognition which I received from literary
people.

Whittier, the poet, wrote me his first letter, after having
read this story. It was soon followed by a kind note from
Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Both these distinguished
men said the pleasant thing which goes so far towards keeping
the courage of young writers above sinking point, and which, to
a self-distrustful nature, may be little less than a
life-preserver. Both have done similar kindness to many other
beginners in our calling; but none of these can have been more
grateful for it, or more glad to say so, across this long width
of time, than the writer of “The Tenth of January.”

It was a defective enough little story, crude and young; I
never glance at it without longing to write it over; but I
cannot read it, to this day, without that tingling and numbness
down one’s spine and through the top of one’s head, which
exceptional tragedy must produce in any sensitive organization;
nor can I ever trust myself to hear it read by professional
elocutionists. I attribute the success of the story entirely to
the historic and unusual character of the catastrophe on whose
movement it was built.

Of journalism, strictly speaking, I did nothing. But I often
wrote for weekly denominational papers, to which I contributed
those strictly secular articles so popular with the religious
public. My main impression of them now, is a pleasant sense of
sitting out in the apple-trees in the wonderful Andover Junes,
and “noticing” new books-with which Boston publishers kept me
supplied. For whatever reason, the weeklies gave me all I could
do at this sort of thing. In its course I formed some pleasant
acquaintances; among others that of Jean Ingelow. I have never
seen this poet, whom I honor now as much as I admired then; but
charming little notes, and books of her own, with her
autograph, reached me from time to time for years. I remember
when “The Gates Ajar” appeared, that she frankly called it
“Your most strange book.”

This brings me to say: I have been so often and so urgently
asked to publish some account of the history of this book, that
perhaps I need crave no pardon of whatever readers these papers
may command, for giving more of our space to the subject than
it would otherwise occur to one to do to a book so long behind
the day.

Of what we know as literary ambition, I believe myself to
have been as destitute at that time as any girl who ever put
pen to paper. I was absorbed in thought and feeling as far
removed from the usual class of emotions or motives which move
men and women to write, as Wachusett was from the June lilies
burning beside the moonlit cross in my father’s garden.
Literary ambition is a good thing to possess;
[pg 492] and I do not at all suggest
that I was superior to it, but simply apart from it. Of its
pangs and ecstasies I knew little, and thought less.

I have been asked, possibly a thousand times, whether I
looked upon that little book as in any sense the result of
inspiration, whether what is called spiritualistic, or of any
other sort. I have always promptly said “No,” to this question.
Yet sometimes I wonder if that convenient monosyllable in deed
and truth covers the whole case.

When I remember just how the book came to be, perceive the
consequences of its being, and recall the complete
unconsciousness of the young author as to their probable
nature, there are moments when I am fain to answer the question
by asking another: “What do we mean by inspiration?”

That book grew so naturally, it was so inevitable, it was so
unpremeditated, it came so plainly from that something not
one’s self which makes for uses in which one’s self is
extinguished, that there are times when it seems to me as if I
had no more to do with the writing of it than the bough through
which the wind cries, or the wave by means of which the tide
rises.

The angel said unto me “Write!” and I wrote.

It is impossible to remember how or when the idea of the
book first visited me. Its publication bears the date of 1869.
My impressions are that it may have been towards the close of
1864 that the work began; for there was work in it, more than
its imperfect and youthful character might lead one ignorant of
the art of book-making to suppose.

It was not until 1863 that I left school, being then just
about at my nineteenth birthday. It is probable that the
magazine stories and Sunday-school books and hack work occupied
from one to two years without interruption; but I have no more
temperament for dates in my own affairs than I have for those
of history. At the most, I could not have been far from twenty
when the book was written; possibly approaching twenty-one.

At that time, it will be remembered, our country was dark
with sorrowing women. The regiments came home, but the mourners
went about the streets.

The Grand Review passed through Washington; four hundred
thousand ghosts of murdered men kept invisible march to the
drum-beats, and lifted to the stained and tattered flags the
proud and unreturned gaze of the dead who have died in their
glory.

Our gayest scenes were black with crape. The drawn faces of
bereaved wife, mother, sister, and widowed girl showed
piteously everywhere. Gray-haired parents knelt at the grave of
the boy whose enviable fortune it was to be brought home in
time to die in his mother’s room. Towards the nameless mounds
of Arlington, of Gettysburg, and the rest, the yearning of
desolated homes went out in those waves of anguish which seem
to choke the very air that the happier and more fortunate must
breathe.

Is there not an actual occult force in the existence of a
general grief? It swells to a tide whose invisible flow covers
all the little resistance of common, human joyousness. It is
like a material miasma. The gayest man breathes it, if he
breathe at all; and the most superficial cannot escape it.

Into that great world of woe my little book stole forth,
trembling. So far as I can remember having had any “object” at
all in its creation, I wished to say something that would
comfort some few—I did not think at all about comforting
many, not daring to suppose that incredible privilege
possible—of the women whose misery crowded the land. The
smoke of their torment ascended, and the sky was blackened by
it. I do not think I thought so much about the suffering of
men—the fathers, the brothers, the sons—bereft; but
the women—the helpless, outnumbering, unconsulted women;
they whom war trampled down, without a choice or protest; the
patient, limited, domestic women, who thought little, but loved
much, and, loving, had lost all—to them I would have
spoken.

For it came to seem to me, as I pondered these things in my
own heart, that even the best and kindest forms of our
prevailing beliefs had nothing to say to an afflicted woman
that could help her much. Creeds and commentaries and sermons
were made by men. What tenderest of men knows how to comfort
his own daughter when her heart is broken? What can the
doctrines do for the desolated by death? They were chains of
rusty iron, eating into raw hearts. The prayer of the preacher
were not much better; it sounded like the language of an
unknown race to a despairing girl. Listen to the hymn. It falls
like icicles on snow. Or, if it happen to be one of the old
genuine outcries of the Church, sprung from real human anguish
or hope, it maddens the listener,
[pg 493] and she flees from it, too
sore a thing to bear the touch of holy music.

At this time, be it said, I had no interest at all in any
especial movement for the peculiar needs of women as a class. I
was reared in circles which did not concern themselves with
what we should probably have called agitators. I was taught the
old ideas of womanhood, in the old way, and had not to any
important extent begun to resent them.

Perhaps I am wrong here. Individually, I may have begun to
recoil from them, but only in a purely selfish, personal way,
beyond which I had evolved neither theory nor conscience; much
less the smallest tendency towards sympathy with any public
movement of the question.

In the course of two or three years spent in exceptional
solitude, I had read a good deal in the direction of my ruling
thoughts and feeling, and came to the writing of my little
book, not ignorant of what had been written for and by the
mourning. The results of this reading, of course, went into the
book, and seemed to me, at the time, by far the most useful
part of it.

How the book grew, who can say? More of nature than of
purpose, surely. It moved like a tear or a sigh or a prayer. In
a sense I scarcely knew that I wrote it. Yet it signified labor
and time, crude and young as it looks to me now; and often as I
have wondered, from my soul, why it has known the history that
it has, I have at least a certain respect for it, myself, in
that it did not represent shiftlessness or sloth, but steady
and conscientious toil. There was not a page in it which had
not been subjected to such study as the writer then knew how to
offer to her manuscripts.

Every sentence had received the best attention which it was
in the power of my inexperience and youth to give. I wrote and
rewrote. The book was revised so many times that I could have
said it by heart. The process of forming and writing “The Gates
Ajar” lasted, I think, nearly two years.

I had no study or place to myself in those days; only the
little room whose one window looked upon the garden cross, and
which it was not expected would be warmed in winter.

The room contained no chimney, and, until I was sixteen, no
fire for any purpose. At that time, it being supposed that some
delicacy of the lungs had threatened serious results, my
father, who always moved the sods beneath him and the skies
above him to care for a sick child, had managed to insert a
little stove into the room, to soften its chill when needed.
But I did not have consumption, only life; and one was not
expected to burn wood all day for private convenience in our
furnace-heated house. Was there not the great dining-room where
the children studied?

It was not so long since I, too, had learned my lessons off
the dining-room table, or in the corner by the register, that
it should occur to any member of the family that these
opportunities for privacy could not answer my needs.

Equally, it did not occur to me to ask for any abnormal
luxuries. I therefore made the best of my conditions, though I
do remember sorely longing for quiet.

This, at that time, in that house, it was impossible for me
to compass. There was a growing family of noisy boys—four
of them—of whom I was the only sister, as I was the
oldest child. When the baby did not cry (I have always
maintained that the baby cried pretty steadily both day and
night, but this is a point upon which their mother and I have
affectionately agreed to differ), the boys were shouting about
the grounds, chasing each other through the large house, up and
down the cellar stairs, and through the wide halls, a whirlwind
of vigor and fun. They were merry, healthy boys, and everything
was done to keep them so. I sometimes doubt if there are any
happier children growing anywhere than the boys and girls of
Andover used to be. I was very fond of the boys, and cherished
no objection to their privileges in the house. But when one
went down, on a cold day, to the register, to write one’s
chapter on the nature of amusements in the life to come, and
found the dining-room neatly laid out in the form of a church
congregation, to which a certain proportion of brothers were
enthusiastically performing the duties of an active pastor and
parish, the environment was a definite check to
inspiration.

I wonder if all Andover boys played at preaching? It
certainly was the one sport in our house which never
satiated.

Coming in one day, I remember, struggling with certain
hopeless purposes of my own, for an afternoon’s work, I found
the dining-room chairs all nicely set in the order of pews; a
table, ornamented with Bible and hymn-books, confronted them;
behind it, on a cricket, towered the bigger brother, loudly
holding forth. The little brother represented the
audience—it was usually the little one who was forced to
[pg 494] play this duller
rôle—and, with open mouth, and with
wriggling feet turned in on the rounds of the chair,
absorbed as much exhortation as he could suffer.

“My text, brethren,” said the little minister, “is, ‘Suffer
the little children to come unto me.’

“My subject is, God; Joseph; and Moses in the
bulrushes!”

Discouraged by the alarming breadth of the little preacher’s
topic, I fled up-stairs again. There an inspiration did,
indeed, strike me; for I remembered an old fur cape, or
pelisse, of my mother’s, out of fashion, but the warmer
for that; and straightway I got me into it, and curled up, with
my papers, on the chilly bed in the cold room, and went to
work.

It seems to me that a good part of “The Gates Ajar” was
written in that old fur cape. Often I stole up into the attic,
or into some unfrequented closet, to escape the noise of the
house, while at work. I remember, too, writing sometimes in the
barn, on the haymow. The book extended over a wide domestic
topography.

I hasten to say that no person was to blame for
inconveniences of whose existence I had never complained.
Doubtless something would have been done to relieve them had I
asked for it; or if the idea that my work could ever be of any
consequence had occurred to any of us. Why should it? The girl
who is never “domestic” is trial enough at her best. She cannot
cook; she will not sew. She washes dishes Mondays and Tuesdays
under protest, while the nurse and parlor maid are called off
from their natural avocations, and dusts the drawing-room with
obedient resentment. She sits cutting out underclothes in the
March vacations, when all the schools are closed, and when the
heavy wagons from the distant farming region stick in the
bottomless Andover mud in front of the professor’s house. The
big front door is opened, and the dismal, creaking sounds come
in.

The kind and conscientious new mother, to whom I owe many
other gentle lessons more valuable than this, teaches how
necessary to a lady’s education is a neat needle. The girl does
not deny this elemental fact; but her eyes wander away to the
cold sky above the Andover mud, with passionate entreaty. To
this day I cannot hear the thick chu-chunk! of heavy wheels on
March mud without a sudden mechanical echo of that wild, young
outcry: “Must I cut out underclothes forever? Must I go on
tucking the broken end of the thread into the nick in the
spool? Is this LIFE?”

I am more than conscious that I could not have been an easy
girl to “bring up,” and am sure that for whatever little
difficulties beset the earlier time of my ventures as a writer,
no person was in any fault. They were doubtless good for me, in
their way. We all know that some of the greatest of
brain-workers have selected the poorest and barest of spots in
which to study. Luxury and bric-a-brac come to easy natures or
in easy years. The energy that very early learns to conquer
difficulty is always worth its price.

I used, later, to hear in Boston the story of the gentleman
who once took a friend to see the room of his son at Harvard
College. The friend was a man of plain life, but of rich mental
achievement. He glanced at the Persian rugs and costly
draperies of the boy’s quarters in silence.

“Well,” cried the fond father, “don’t you think my son has a
pretty room?”

“Sir,” said the visitor, with gentle candor, “you’ll
never raise a scholar on that carpet.“

Out of my discomforts, which were small enough, grew one
thing for which I have all my life been grateful—the
formation of fixed habits of work.

I have seldom waited for inspiration before setting about a
task to be done. Life is too short for that. Broken health has
too often interrupted a regimen of study which ought to have
been more continuous; but, so far as I may venture to offer an
opinion from personal experience, I should say that the writers
who would be wise to play hide and seek with their own moods
are few.

According to my custom, I said nothing (so far as I can
remember) to any person about the book.

It cannot be said that I had any hope of success with it; or
that, in my most irrational dreams, anything like the
consequences of its publication ever occurred to my fancy. But
I did distinctly understand that I had set forth upon a venture
totally dissimilar to the safe and respectable careers of my
dozen Sunday-school books.

I was asked only the other day why it was that, having such
a rare critic at first hand as my father, I did not more often
submit my manuscripts to his judgment. It would be difficult to
say precisely why. The professor of rhetoric was a very busy
man; and at that time the illness which condemned him to thirty
years of invalid suffering
[pg 495] was beginning to make
itself manifest. I can remember more often throwing down my
pen to fly out and beg the children to be quiet in the
garden while the sleepless man struggled for a few moments’
rest in the daytime; or stealing on tiptoe to his locked
door, at any hour of the night, to listen for signs of
sudden illness or need of help; these things come back more
easily than the desire to burden him with what I wrote.

Yet perhaps that abnormal pride, whose existence I have
admitted, had quite as much to do with this restraint.

When a thing was published, then quickly to him with it! His
sympathy and interest were unfailing, and his criticism only
too gentle; though it could be a sword of flame when he chose
to smite.

Unknown to himself I had dedicated “The Gates Ajar” to him.
In this dedication there was a slip in good English, or, at
least, in such English as the professor wrote and spoke. I had
used the word “nears” as a verb, instead of its proper synonym,
“approaches.” He read the dedication quietly, thanked me
tenderly for it, and said nothing. It was left for me to find
out my blunder for myself, as I did, in due time. He had not
the heart to tell me of it then. Nor did he insinuate his
consciousness that the dedication might seem to involve
him—as it did in certain citadels of stupidity—in
the views of the book.

The story was sent to its publishers, Messrs. Ticknor and
Fields, and leisurely awaited their verdict. As I had written
somewhat for their magazines, “The Atlantic” and “Our Young
Folks,” I did not come as quite a stranger. Still, the fate of
the book hung upon a delicate scale. It was two years from the
time the story went to its publishers before it appeared
between covers. How much of this period the author was kept in
suspense I cannot remember; but, I think, some time.

I have the impression that the disposal of the book, so far
as that firm went, wavered for a while upon the decision of one
man, whose wife shared the reading of the manuscript. “Take
it,” she said at last, decidedly; and the fiat went forth. The
lady afterwards became a personal friend, and I hope I may not
forfeit the treasure of her affection by this late and public
recognition of the pleasant part she bore in the fortunes of my
life.

The book was accepted, and still this piece of good luck did
not make my head spin. I had lived among book-makers too much
to expect the miracle. I went soberly back to my hack work, and
on with my Sunday-school books.

One autumn day the customary package of gift copies of the
new book made its way to Andover Hill; but: I opened it without
elation, the experience being so far from my first of its kind.
The usual note of thanks was returned to the publishers, and
quiet fell again. Unconscious of either hope or fear, I kept on
about my business, and the new book was the last thing on earth
with which I concerned myself.

One morning, not many weeks after its publication, I
received a letter from Mr. James T. Fields. He, who was the
quickest of men to do a kindness, and surest to give to young
writers the encouraging word for which they had not hope enough
to listen, had hurried himself to break to me the news.

“Your book is moving grandly,” so he wrote. “It has already
reached a sale of four thousand copies. We take pleasure in
sending you—” He enclosed a check for six hundred
dollars, the largest sum on which I had ever set my startled
eyes. It would not, by my contract, have been due me for six
months or more to come.

The little act was like him, and like the courteous and
generous house on whose list I have worked for thirty
years.

[pg 496]

EDITORIAL NOTES.

TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR SHORT STORIES.
We find considerable difficulty in getting the two
hundred first-class short stories that we require each
year. We are delighted to be able to publish so many
stories by eminent authors, but we should like to get more
good stories from writers whose fame is yet to be made. We
therefore announce a liberal policy in regard to payment,
and invite contributions from every one who can write a
good story. The scale of payment will be such as to please
every contributor, whether he is famous or not.
We need every year about fifty stories of from four to
six thousand words in length; about one hundred stories of
from two to three thousand words in length, and not less
than fifty stories a year for young people, about two
thousand words in length. Of these stories thirty or forty
are for McCLURE’S MAGAZINE, and the remainder are for the
newspaper syndicates controlled by the publishers of this
magazine.
A regular manuscript department has been established by
the editors, and it is the intention to report upon every
manuscript within a week after it is received. We also
welcome contributions to every branch of literature
represented in the magazine.
THE McCLURE’S “EARLY LIFE OF LINCOLN.”
This volume contains all the articles published in the
first four Lincoln numbers of McCLURE’S MAGAZINE (November
to February, inclusive). These numbers, although repeatedly
reprinted, are now out of print, and the “Early Life of
Lincoln” was published mainly to meet a demand we could not
fill with the magazine. It contains a great deal more, both
in text and pictures, than appeared in the magazine. It is
mailed to any address for fifty cents; or for one dollar,
if bound in cloth. We intend having our own plant, to
reprint the March and subsequent numbers whenever
necessary.
THE McCLURE’S NEW “LIFE OF GRANT.”
We have been greatly surprised, in preparing our new
“Life of Grant,” to find so much new and valuable material,
especially about Grant’s earlier life. No more fascinating
and dramatic story has ever been lived. We have been
especially fortunate in securing the collaboration of Mr.
Hamlin Garland to write this life of Grant. Mr. Garland was
selected for this work for two reasons—first, he has
always loved and admired Grant; second, he is familiar in
general with the conditions of life in the middle West, and
is especially qualified to tell the truth both in color and
fact. The tastes and training of a realistic novelist are
an admirable equipment for a biographer, provided the hero
of his story and his environment appeal to the
novelist.
We propose to publish the best Life of Grant ever
written.
We have collected a great quantity of pictures and other
illustrations, and we ask our friends to help us as they
are helping us in our “Life of Lincoln.” Every one who has
a contribution, either in picture or incident, to our
knowledge of this great man ought to bring it before the
two or three million readers that McCLURE’S will have when
we begin to publish the “Life of Grant” next
November.
NEW PICTURES OF LINCOLN.
Almost every week we add to our collection of Lincoln
pictures. Many of these ambrotypes and photographs are of
the greatest value in adding to our knowledge of Lincoln.
We hope to reach one hundred before the end of the year. We
had only fifty portraits last November. We have eighty
now.
THE ABRAHAM LINCOLN SCHOOL OF SCIENCE AND PRACTICAL
ARTS.
Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois, was the scene of one
of the most important of the debates between Mr. Lincoln
and Mr. Douglas. The debate took place on a platform at the
east end of the main college building. At this memorable
debate the students carried a banner on which was inscribed
“Knox for Lincoln.” In April, 1860, before he was nominated
for the Presidency, Knox College conferred the degree of
LL.D. on Abraham Lincoln. At their recent midwinter
meeting, the board of trustees unanimously voted to
establish a memorial to Lincoln; and this memorial will be
the scientific department of Knox College, and will be
called “The Abraham Lincoln School of Science and Practical
Arts.”
The founders of this magazine are all alumni of Knox
College, and are particularly pleased at this action of
their alma mater. Knox College affords a splendid
opportunity to young men and women of limited means. The
editors of this magazine can afford to pay the living
expenses and tuition for one year at this college of any
young man or woman who secures five hundred subscribers, as
proposed and explained on the second advertising page of
this number of the magazine.
The editors of McCLURE’S MAGAZINE are thoroughly
acquainted with Knox College, and can recommend it, knowing
that students who go there will live under the best
possible influences and receive a sound education. All
inquiries should be addressed to the president, John
Finley, Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois.
THE HOUSE IN WHICH LINCOLN’S PARENTS WERE
MARRIED.—A CORRECTION.
The picture of the house in which Thomas Lincoln and
Nancy Hanks were married, printed in McCLURE’S MAGAZINE for
November, 1895, was credited by mistake to the Oldroyd
collection. The photograph from which the reproduction was
made came from the Oldroyd collection; but this photograph
is, we are informed, from a negative now in the possession
of Mr. A.D. Miller of Brazil, Indiana, and credit is
therefore due to Mr. Miller.

McClure’s Magazine

April, 1896.

Vol. VI. No. 5

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

PICTURES TAKEN BY PROFESSOR ARTHUR W. WRIGHT OF YALE COLLEGE, SHOWING THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN SUBSTANCES IN PENETRABILITY TO THE RÖNTGEN RAYS.

DR. WILLIAM KONRAD RÖNTGEN, DISCOVERER OF THE X RAYS.

THE NEW MARVEL IN PHOTOGRAPHY.

A VISIT TO PROFESSOR RÖNTGEN AT HIS LABORATORY IN WÜRZBURG.—HIS OWN ACCOUNT OF HIS GREAT DISCOVERY.—INTERESTING EXPERIMENTS WITH THE CATHODE RAYS.—PRACTICAL USES OF THE NEW PHOTOGRAPHY.

By H.J.W. Dam.

PICTURE OF AN ALUMINIUM CIGAR-CASE, SHOWING CIGARS WITHIN.

PHOTOGRAPH OF A LADY’S HAND SHOWING THE BONES, AND A RING ON THE THIRD FINGER, WITH FAINT OUTLINES OF THE FLESH.

THE PHYSICAL INSTITUTE, UNIVERSITY OF WÜRZBURG, WHERE PROFESSOR RÖNTGEN HAS HIS RESIDENCE, DELIVERS HIS LECTURES, AND CONDUCTS HIS EXPERIMENTS.

SKELETON OF A FROG, PHOTOGRAPHED THROUGH THE FLESH. THE SHADINGS INDICATE, IN ADDITION TO THE BONES, ALSO THE LUNGS AND THE CEREBRAL LOBES.

RAZOR-BLADE PHOTOGRAPHED THROUGH A LEATHER CASE AND THE RAZOR-HANDLE.