Reproduced by permission of Braun, Clement & Co. A
facsimile of one of the little drawings which Millet was
accustomed to make for acquaintances and collectors of
autographs, and which he laughingly called his “armes
parlantes.”

PORTRAIT OF JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET, DRAWN BY HIMSELF.

Reproduced by permission of Braun, Clement & Co. Of
this portrait, drawn in 1847, Sensier, in his “Life” of
Millet, says: “It is in crayon, and life-sized. The head is
melancholy, like that of Albert Dürer; the profound
regard is filled with intelligence and goodness.”

[pg 499]

A CENTURY OF PAINTING.

JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET.—PARENTAGE AND EARLY
INFLUENCES.—HIS LIFE AT BARBIZON.—VISITS TO MILLET
IN HIS STUDIO.—HIS PERSONAL APPEARANCE.—HIS OWN
COMMENTS ON HIS PICTURES.—PASSAGES FROM HIS
CONVERSATION.

BY Will H. Low.

hese papers, disclaiming any other
authority than that which appertains to the conclusions of a
practising painter who has thought deeply on the subject of his
art, have nevertheless avoided the personal equation as much as
possible. A conscientious endeavor has been made to consider
the work of each painter in the place which has been assigned
him by the concensus of opinion in the time which has elapsed
since his work was done. In the consideration of Jean
François Millet, however, I desire for the nonce to
become less impersonal, for the reason that it was my privilege
to know him slightly, and in the case of one who as a man and
as a painter occupies a place so entirely his own, the value of
recorded personal impressions is greater, at least for purposes
of record, than the registration of contemporary opinion
concerning him.

I must further explain that, as a young student who received
at his hands the kindly reception which the master, stricken in
health, and preoccupied with his work, vouchsafed, I could only
know him superficially. It may have been the spectacle of
youthful enthusiasm, or the modest though dignified recognition
of the reverence with which I approached him, that made this
grave man unbend; but it is certain that the few times when I
was permitted to enter the rudely built studio at Barbizon have
remained red-letter days in my life, and on each occasion I
left Millet with an impression so strong and vital that now,
after a lapse of twenty years, the work which he showed me, and
the words which he uttered, are as present as though it all had
occurred yesterday. The reverence which I then felt for this
great man was born of his works, a few of which I had seen in
1873 in Paris; and their constant study, and the knowledge of
his life and character gained since then, have intensified this
feeling.

THE SHEEP-SHEARERS. FROM A PAINTING BY JEAN FRANÇOIS
MILLET.

Reproduced by permission of Braun, Clement & Co. A
replica of Millet’s picture in the Salon of 1861, which is
now owned by Mr. Quincy Shaw, Boston, Massachusetts.
Charles Jacque, who had quarrelled with Millet, after
seeing this picture, went to him and said: “We cannot be
friends; but I have come to say that you have painted a
masterpiece.”

Jean François Millet was born October 4, 1814, in the
hamlet of Gruchy, a mere handful of houses which lie in a
valley descending to the sea, in the department of the Manche,
not far from Cherbourg. He was the descendant of a class which
has no counterpart in England or America, and which in his
native France has all but disappeared. The rude forefathers of
our country may have in a degree resembled the French peasant
of Millet’s youth; but their Protestant belief made them more
independent in thought, and the problems of a new country, and
the lack of stability inherent to the colonist, robbed them of
the fanatical love of the earth, which is perhaps the strongest
trait of the peasant. Every inch of the ground up to the cliffs
above the sea, in Millet’s country, represented the struggle of
man with nature; and each parcel of land, every stone in the
walls which kept the earth from being engulfed in the floods
beneath, bore marks of his handiwork. Small wonder, then, that
[pg 500] this rude people should
engender the painter who has best expressed the intimate
relation between the man of the fields and his ally and foe,
the land which he subjugates, and which in turn enslaves
him. The inherent, almost savage, independence of the
peasant had kept him freer and of a nobler type than the
English yokel even in the time before the Revolution, and in
the little hamlet where Millet was born,
[pg 501] the great upheaval had
meant but little. Remote from the capital, cultivating land
which but for their efforts would have been abandoned as
worthless, every man was a land-owner in a small degree, and
the patrimony of Millet sufficed for a numerous family of
which he was the eldest son. Sufficed, that is, for a
Spartan subsistence, made up of unrelaxing toil, with few or
no comforts, save those of a spiritual nature which came in
the guise of religion.

PEASANT REPOSING. FROM A PAINTING BY JEAN FRANCOIS MILLET,
EXHIBITED IN THE SALON OF 1863.

Reproduced by permission of Braun, Clement & Co.
This picture, popularly known as “The man with the hoe,”
was the cause of much discussion at the time of its
exhibition. Millet was accused of socialism; of inciting
the peasants to revolt; and from his quiet retreat in the
country, he defended himself in a letter to his friend
Sensier as follows: “I see very clearly the aureole
encircling the head of the daisy, and the sun which glows
beyond, far, far over the country-side, its glory in the
skies; I see, not less clearly, the smoking plough-horses
in the plain, and in a rocky corner a man bent with labor,
who groans as he works, or who for an instant tries to
straighten himself to catch his breath. The drama is
enveloped in splendor. This is not of my creation; the
expression, ‘the cry of the earth,’ was invented long
ago.”

Millet was reared by his grandmother, such being the custom
of the country; the younger women being occupied in the service
of the mastering earth, and the elders, no longer able to go
afield, bringing up the children born to their children, who in
turn replaced their parents in the never-ending struggle. This
grandmother, Louise Jumelin, widow of Nicolas Millet, was a
woman of great force of character, and extremely devout. The
most ordinary occupation of the day was made the subject not of
uttered prayer, for that would have entailed suspension of her
ceaseless activity, but of spiritual example tersely expressed,
which fell upon the fruitful soil of Millet’s young
imagination, and left such a lasting impression that to the end
of his life his natural expression was almost Biblical in
character of language.

Another formative influence of this young life was that of a
granduncle, Charles Millet, a priest who, driven from his
church by the Revolution, had returned to his native village
and taken up the simple life of his people, without, however,
abandoning his vocation. He was to be seen behind his plough,
his priest’s robe gathered up about his loins, his breviary in
one hand, following the furrow up and down the undulating
fields which ran to the
cliffs.

[pg 502]

THE MILK-CARRIER. FROM A PAINTING BY JEAN FRANÇOIS
MILLET.

Reproduced by permission of Braun, Clement & Co.
Probably commenced at Cherbourg, where Millet took refuge
with his family during the Franco-Prussian War, as Sensier
mentions it on Millet’s return. This picture, or a replica
of it (Millet was fond of repeating his subjects, with
slight changes in each case), was in his studio in 1873,
and called forth the remark quoted in the text, about the
women in his country.

Gifted with great strength, he piled up great masses of
granite, to reclaim a precious morsel of earth from the hungry
maw of the sea; lifting his voice, as he worked, in resonant
chants of the church. He it was who taught Millet to read; and,
later, it was another priest, the Abbé Jean Lebrisseux,
who, in the intervals of the youth’s work in the fields, where
he had early become an efficient aid to his father, continued
his instruction. With the avidity of intelligence Millet
profited by this instruction, not only in the more ordinary
studies, but in Latin, with the Bible and Virgil as text-books.
His mind was also nourished by the books belonging to the
scanty library of his granduncle. These were of a purely
religious character—the “History of the Saints,” the
“Confessions” of St. Augustine, the letters of St. Jerome, and
the works of Bossuet and Fénelon.

THE GLEANERS. FROM A PAINTING IN THE LOUVRE, BY JEAN
FRANÇOIS MILLET, EXHIBITED IN THE SALON OF 1857.

“The three fates of pauperism” was the disdainful
appreciation of Paul de Saint-Victor on the first
exhibition of this picture, while Edmond About wrote: “The
picture attracts one from afar by its air of grandeur and
serenity. It has the character of a religious painting. It
is drawn without fault, and colored without crudity; and
one feels the August sun which ripens the wheat.” Sensier
says: “The picture sold with difficulty for four hundred
dollars. What is it worth to-day?”

In his father, whose strongest characteristic was an intense
love of nature, Millet found an unconscious influence in the
direction which his life was to follow. Millet recalled in
after life that he would show him a blade of grass or a flower,
and say: “See how beautiful; how the petals overlap; and the
tree there, how strong and fine it is!” It was his father who
was attentive to the
[pg 504] youth’s first rude efforts,
and who encouraged him when the decisive step was to be
taken, which Millet, feeling that his labor in the fields
was necessary to the common good of the family, hesitated to
take. The boy was in his eighteenth year when his father
said:

“My poor François, you are tormented between your
desire to be an artist and your duty to the family. Now that
your brothers are growing, they can take their turn in the
fields. I have long wished that you could be instructed in the
craft of the painter, which I am told is so noble, and we will
go to Cherbourg and see what can be done.”

THE ANGELES, MILLET’S MOST FAMOUS PICTURE.

Reproduced by permission of Braun, Clement & Co.
Despite its fame, this is distinctly not Millet’s
masterpiece. During his life it sold for about ten thousand
dollars, and later for one hundred and fifty thousand.

Thus encouraged, the boy made two drawings—one of two
shepherds in blouse and sabots, one listening while the
other played a rustic flute; and a second where, under a
starlit sky, a man came from out a house, carrying bread for a
mendicant at his gate. Armed with these two
designs—typical of the work which in the end, after being
led astray by schools and popular taste, he was to do—the
two peasants sought a local painter named Mouchel at Cherbourg.
After a moment of doubt as to the originality of the youth’s
work, Mouchel offered to teach him all that he knew.

Millet stayed with Mouchel some months. Then his father’s
death recalled him home, where his honest spirit prompted him
to remain as the eldest son and head of the family, although
his heart was less than ever in the fields. But this the
mother, brought up in the spirit of resignation, would not
allow him to do. “God has made you a painter. His will be done.
Your father, my Jean Louis, has said it was to be, and you must
return to Cherbourg.”

Millet returned to Cherbourg, this time to the studio of one
Langlois, a pupil of Gros, who was the principal painter of the
little city. But Langlois, like his first master, Mouchel, kept
him at work copying either his own studies or pictures in the
city museum. After a few months, though, he had the honesty to
recognize that his pupil needed more efficient instruction
[pg 505] than he could give him, and
in August, 1836, he addressed a petition to the mayor and
common council of the city of Cherbourg, who took the matter
into consideration, and, with the authorities of the
department, voted a sum of one thousand francs—two
hundred dollars—as a yearly allowance to Millet, in
order that he might pursue his studies in Paris. Langlois in
his petition asks that he be permitted to “raise without
fear the veil of the future, and to assure the municipal
council a place in the memory of the world for having been
the first to endow their country with one more great name.”
Grandiloquent promise has often been made without result;
but one must admire the hard-headed Norman councillors who,
representing a little provincial city which in 1884 had but
thirty-six thousand inhabitants, gave even this modest sum
to assure a future to one who might reflect honor on his
country.

NESTLINGS. FROM A PAINTING BY JEAN FRANCOIS MILLET, IN THE
MUSEUM AT LILLE.

Reproduced by permission of Braun, Clement & Co. A
notable instance of the scope of Millet’s power, as tender
in depicting children as it is austere in “The
Gleaners.”

With a portion, of this allowance, and a small addition from
the “economies” of [pg 506] his mother and grandmother,
Millet went to Paris in 1837. The great city failed to
please the country-bred youth, and, indeed, until the end of
his life, Millet disliked Paris. I remember his saying that,
on his visits from Barbizon to the capital, he was happy on
his arrival at the station, but when he arrived at the
column of the Bastille, a few squares within the city, the
mal du pays took him by the throat.

At first he spent all his time in the Louvre, which revealed
to him what the little provincial museum of Cherbourg had but
faintly suggested. Before long, however, he entered the studio
of Paul Delaroche, who was the popular master of the time.
There he won the sobriquet of the “man of the woods,” from a
savage taciturnity which was his defence in the midst of the
atelier jokes. He had come to work, and to work he
addressed himself, with but little encouragement from master or
comrades. Strong as a young Hercules, with a dignity which
never forsook him, his studies won at least the success of
attention. When a favorite pupil of the master remonstrated
that his men and women were hewed from stone, Millet replied
tranquilly, “I came here because there are Greek statues and
living men and women to study from, not to please you or any
one. Do I preoccupy myself with your figures made of honey and
butter?”

Delaroche, won by the strength of the man, at length unbent,
and showed him such favor as a commonplace mind could accord to
native superiority. He advised him to compete for the Prix de
Rome, warning him, however, that whatever might be the merit of
his work, he could not take it that year, as it was arranged
that another, approaching the limit of age, must have it. This
revolted the simple nature of Millet, who refused to compete,
and left the school.

A return to Cherbourg, where he married his first wife, who
died at the end of two years; another sojourn in Paris, and a
visit home of some duration; a number of portraits and pictures
painted in Cherbourg and Havre, in which his talent was slowly
asserting itself, brings us to 1845, when he remarried.
Returning to Paris with his wife, he remained there until 1849,
when he went to Barbizon “for a time,” which was prolonged to
twenty-seven years.

In all the years preceding his final return to the country,
Millet was apparently undecided as to the definite character of
his work. Out of place in a city, more or less influenced by
his comrades in art, and forced to follow in a degree the
dictation of necessity in the choice of subject, as his brush
was his only resource and his family constantly increasing, his
work of this period is always tentative. In painting it is
luscious in color and firmly drawn and modelled, but it lacks
the perception of truth which, when once released from the
bondage of the city, began to manifest itself in his work. The
first indication of the future Millet is in a picture in the
Salon of 1848, “The Winnower,” which has, in subject at least,
much the character of the work which followed his establishment
at Barbizon. For the rest, although the world is richer in
beautiful pictures of charmingly painted nymphs, and of rustic
scenes not altogether devoid of a certain artificiality, and in
at least one masterly mythological picture of Oedipus rescued
from the tree, through Millet’s activity in these years, yet
his work, had it continued on this plane, would have lacked the
high significance which the next twenty-five years were to
show.

Having endeavored to make clear the source from which Millet
came, and indicated the formative influences of his early life,
I may permit myself (as I warned my readers I should do) to
return to my recollections of Barbizon in 1873, and the
glimpses of Millet which my sojourn there in that and the
following year afforded me.

Barbizon lies on a plain, more vast in the impression which
it makes on the eye than in actual area, and the village
consists of one long street, which commences at a group of farm
buildings of some importance, and ends in the forest of
Fontainebleau. About midway down this street, on the way to the
forest, Millet’s home stood, on the right of the road. The
house, of two low stories, had its gable to the street, and on
the first floor, with the window breast high from the ground,
was the dining-room. Here, in pleasant weather, with the window
wide open, sat Millet at the head of his patriarchal table, his
children, of whom there were nine, about him; his good wife,
their days of acute misery past, smiling contentedly on her
brood, which, if I remember rightly, already counted a
grandchild or more: as pleasant a sight as one could readily
see. Later, in the autumn evenings, a lamplit replica of the
same picture presented itself. Or, if the dinner was cleared
away, one would see Madame Millet busy with her needle, the
children at their lessons, and the painter, whom even then
tradition
[pg 508] painted a sad and cheerless
misanthrope, contentedly playing at dominoes with one of the
children, or his honest Norman face wreathed in smiles as
the conversation took an amusing turn. This, it is true, was
when the master of the house was free from his terrible
enemy, the headache, which laid him low so often, and which
in these days became more and more frequent.

FIRST STEPS. FROM A PASTEL BY JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET.

Reproduced by permission of Braun, Clement & Co. As
Sensier remarks, Millet, with nine children, had abundant
opportunity to study them. This charming drawing was one of
the collection of Millet’s pastels formed by M. Gavet,
which was unfortunately dispersed by auction soon after the
artist’s death.

The house, to resume the description of Millet’s home, went
back at right angles from the street, and contained the various
apartments of the family, many of them on the ground floor, and
all of the most modest character. It was a source of wonder how
so large a family could inhabit so small a house. The garden
lay in front, and extended back of the house. A high wall with
a little door, painted green, by which you entered, ran along
the street, and ended at the studio, which was, like the
dining-room, on the street. The garden was pleasant with
flowers and trees, the kitchen garden being at the rear. But a
few short years ago, within its walls Madame Millet plucked a
red rose, and gave it to me, saying: “My husband planted this.”
Outside the little green door, on either hand, were stone
benches set against the wall, on which the painter’s children
sometimes sat and played; but it is somewhat strange that I
never remember Millet at his door or on the village street. He
walked a great deal, but always went out of the garden to the
fields back of the house, and from there gained the forest or
the plain. Among the young painters who frequented Barbizon in
those days (which were, however, long after the time when the
men of Millet’s age established themselves there), there were,
strange as it may seem, few who cared for Millet’s work, and
many who knew little or nothing of it. The prejudices of the
average art student are many and indurated. His horizon is apt
to be bounded by his master’s work or the last Salon success,
and as Millet had no pupils, and had ceased to exhibit at the
Salon, he was little known to most of the youths who, as I look
back, must have made Barbizon a most undesirable place for a
quiet family to live in. An accident which made me acquainted
with Millet’s eldest son, a painter of talent, seemed for a
time to bring me no nearer to knowing the father until one day
some remark of mine which showed at least a sincere admiration
for his work made the son suggest that I should come and see a
recently completed picture.

If the crowd of young painters who frequented the village
were indifferent to Millet, such was not the case with people
from other places. The “personally conducted” were then newly
invented, and I have seen a wagon load of tourists, who had
been driven to different points in the forest, draw up before
Millet’s modest door and express indignation in a variety of
languages when they were refused admittance. There were many in
those days who tried with little or no excuse to break in on
the work of a man whose working days were already counted, and
who was seldom free from his old enemy migraine. I was
to learn this when—I hope after having had the grace to
make it plain that, though I greatly desired to know Millet, I
felt no desire to intrude—the son had arranged for a day
when, at last, I was admitted to the studio.

Millet did not make his appearance at once; and when he
came, and the son had said a few kindly words of presentation,
he seemed so evidently in pain that I managed, in a French
which must have been distinguished by a pure New York accent
and a vocabulary more than limited, to express a fear that he
was suffering, and suggested that my visit had better be
deferred.

“No, it will pass,” was his answer; and going to his easel
he placed, with the help of his son, picture after picture, for
my delectation.

It was Millet’s habit to commence a great number of
pictures. On some of them he would work as long, according to
his own expression, as he saw the scene in nature before him;
for, at least at this epoch, he never painted directly from
nature. For a picture which I saw the following summer, where
three great hay-stacks project their mass against a heavy storm
cloud, the shepherd seeking shelter from the impending rain,
and the sheep erring here and there, affected by the changing
weather—for this picture, conveying, as it did, the most
intense impression of nature, Millet showed me (in answer to my
inquiry and in explanation of his method of work) in a little
sketch-book, so small that it would slip into a waistcoat
pocket, the pencilled outline of the three hay-stacks. “It was
a stormy day,” he said, “and on my return home I sat down and
commenced the picture, but of direct studies—voila
tout.” Of another picture, now in the Boston Museum of Fine
Arts, of a young girl, life size, with a distaff, seated on a
hillock, her head shaded by a great straw hat relieved against
the sky, he told [pg 509] me that the only direct
painting from nature on the canvas was in a bunch of grass
in the foreground, which he had plucked in the fields and
brought into his studio.

THE SOWER. FROM A PAINTING BY JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET.

From the original painting, now in the collection of
Mrs. W.H. Vanderbilt; reproduced by permission of Braun,
Clement & Co. In his criticism of the Salon of 1850,
where the picture was first exhibited, Théophile
Gautier thus described it: “The sower advances with
rhythmic step, casting the seed into the furrowed land;
sombre rags cover him; a formless hat is drawn down over
his brow; he is gaunt, cadaverous, and thin under his
livery of misery; and yet life is contained in his large
hand, as with a superb gesture he who has nothing scatters
broadcast on the earth the bread of the future.”

On this first day, it would be difficult to say how many
pictures in various states of advancement I saw. The master
would occasionally say, reflectively: “It is six months since I
looked at that, and I must get to work at it,” as some new
canvas was placed on the easel. At first, fearing that he was
too ill to have me stay, I made one or two motions to leave.
But each time, with a kindly smile, I was bidden to stay, with
the assurance that the headache was “going better.” After a
time I quite forgot everything in enthusiasm at what I saw and
the sense that I was enjoying the privilege of a lifetime. The
life of the fields seemed to be unrolled before me like some
vast panorama. Millet’s comments were short and descriptive of
what he aimed to represent, seldom or never concerning the
method of his work. “Women in my country,” meaning Lower
Normandy, of course, “carry jars of milk in that way,” he said,
indicating the woman crossing the fields with the milk-can
supported by a strap on her shoulder. “When I was a boy there
were great flights of wild pigeons which
[pg 510] settled in the trees at
night, when we used to go with torches, and the birds,
blinded by the light, could be killed by the hundred with
clubs,” was his explanation of another scene full of the
confusion of lights and the whirr of the bewildered
pigeons.

CHURNING. FROM A PASTEL BY JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET, IN
THE LUXEMBOURG GALLERY, PARIS.

Delightful for a sense of air through the cool and
spacious room, and for the sculpturesque solidity of the
group composed of the woman, the churn, and the cat.

“And you have not seen it since you were a boy?” I
asked.

“No; but it all comes back to me as I work,” was his
answer.

From picture to picture, from question to kindly answer, the
afternoon sped, and at length, in response to a question as to
the relative importance of subject, the painter sent his son
into the house whence he returned with a panel a few inches
square. The father took it, wiped the dust from it,
absent-mindedly, on his sleeve, with a half caressing movement,
and placed it on the easel. “Voila! (There!)” was all he
said. The panel represented three golden juicy pears, their fat
sides relieved one against the other, forming a compact group
which, through the magic of color, told of autumn sun, and
almost gave the odor of ripened fruit. It was a lovely bit of
painting, and much interested, I said: “Pardon me, but you seem
as much or more proud of this than anything you have
shown.”

“Exactly,” answered Millet, with an amused smile at my
eagerness. “Everything in nature is good to paint, and the
painter’s business is to be occupied with his manner of
rendering it. These pears, a man or a woman, a flock of sheep,
all have the same qualities for a painter. There are,” with a
gesture of his hands to make his meaning clear, “things that
lie flat, that are horizontal, like a plain; and there are
others which stand up, are perpendicular; and there are the
planes between: all of which should be expressed in a picture.
There are the distances between objects also. But all this can
be found in the simplest thing as in the most complicated.”

“But,” I again ventured, “surely some subjects are more
important than others.”

“Some are more interesting in the sense that they add to the
problems of a painter. When he has to paint a human being, he
has to represent truth of action, the particular character of
an individual; but he must do the latter when he paints a pear.
No two pears are alike.”

I fear at the time I hardly understood the importance of the
lesson which I then received; certainly not to the degree with
which experience has confirmed it. But I have written it here,
the sense, if not the [pg 511] actual language, because
Millet has been so often misrepresented as seeking to point
a moral through the subject of his pictures. When we recall
the manner in which “The Angelus” was paraded through the
country a few years ago, and the genuine sentiment of the
simple scene—where Millet had endeavored to express
“the things that lie flat, like a plain; and the things that
stand up,” like his peasants—was travestied by gushing
sentimentalists, it is pleasant to think of the wholesome
common sense of the great painter.

A YOUNG SHEPHERDESS. FROM A PAINTING BY JEAN FRANCOIS
MILLET.

The background here is typical of that part of the
forest of Fontainebleau which borders the plain of
Barbizon.

The picture which I had specially come to see was meanwhile
standing covered with a drapery, on another easel, and at
length the resources of the studio were apparently exhausted.
Millet asked me to step back a few paces to where a short
curtain was placed on a light iron rod at right angles from the
studio window, so that a person standing behind it saw into the
studio while his eyes were screened from the glare of the
window. The painter then drew the covering, and—I feel
that what I am about to say may seem superlative, and I am
quite willing to-day to account for it by the enthusiasm for
the painter’s work, which had been growing crescendo
with each successive moment passed in the studio. Be that as it
may, the picture which I saw caused me to forget where I was,
to forget painting, and to look, apparently, on a more
enchanting scene than my eyes had
[pg 512] ever beheld—one more
enchanting than they have since seen. It was a landscape,
“Springtime,” now in the Louvre. Ah me! I have seen the
picture since, not once, but many times, and he who will go
to Paris may see it. A beautiful picture; but of the
transcendent beauty which transfigured it that day, it has
but the suggestion. It is still a masterpiece, however, and
still conveys, by methods peculiarly Millet’s own, a
satisfying sense of the open air, and the charm of fickle
spring. The method is that founded on the constant
observation of nature by a mind acute to perceive, and
educated to remember. The method is one which misses many
trivial truths, and thereby loses the superficial look of
reality which many smaller men have learned to give; but it
retains the larger, more essential truths. Though dependence
on memory carried to the extent of Millet’s practice would
be fatal to a weaker man, it can hardly be doubted that it
was the natural method for him.

I left the studio that day, walking on clouds. When I
returned it was always to receive kindly and practical counsel.
For Millet, though conscious, as such a man must be, of his
importance, was the simplest of men. In appearance the portrait
published here gives him in his youth. At the time of which I
speak he was heavier, with a firm nose, eyes that, deeply set,
seemed to look inwards, except, when directly addressing one,
there was a sudden gleam. His manner of speech was slow and
measured, perhaps out of kindness to the stranger, though I am
inclined to think that it was rather the speech of one who
arrays his thoughts beforehand, and produces them in orderly
sequence. In dress he was like the ordinary bourgeois in
the country, wearing generally a woven coat like a cardigan
jacket in the studio, at the door of which he would leave his
sabots and wear the felt slippers, or chaussons,
which are worn with the wooden shoes. This was not the
affectation of remaining a peasant; every one in the country in
France wears sabots, and very comfortable they are.

One more visit stands out prominently in my memory. It came
about in this wise. In the summer of 1874 the “two Stevensons,”
as they were known, the cousins Robert Louis and Robert Alan
Mowbray Stevenson (the author of the recent “Life of
Velasquez,” and the well-known writer on art), were in
Barbizon. It fell that the cousins, in pessimistic vein, were
decrying modern art—the great men were all dead; we
should never see their like again; in short, the mood in which
we all fall at times was dominant. As in duty bound, I argued
the cause of the present and future, and as a clinching
argument told them that I had it in my power to convince them
that at least one of the greatest painters of all time was
still busy in the practice of his art. Millet was not much more
than a name to my friends, and I am certain that that day when
we talked over our coffee in the garden of Siron’s inn, they
had seen little or none of his work. I ventured across the
road, knocked at the little green door, and asked permission to
bring my friends, which was accorded for the same afternoon. In
half an hour, therefore, I was witness of an object lesson of
which the teacher was serenely unconscious. Of my complete
triumph when we left there was no doubt, though one of my
friends rather begged the question by insisting that I had
taken an unfair advantage; and that, as he expressed it, “it
was not in the game, in an ordinary discussion, between
gentlemen, concerning minor poets, to drag in Shakespeare in
that manner.”

I saw Millet but once after this, when late in the autumn I
was returning to Paris, and went, out of respect, to bid him
farewell. He was already ill, and those who knew him well,
already feared for his life. Not knowing this, it was a shock
to learn of his death a few months after—January 20,
1875. The news came to me in the form of the ordinary
notification and convocation to the funeral, which, in the form
of a lettre de faire part, is sent out on the occasion
of a death in France, not only to intimate friends, but to
acquaintances.

Determined to pay what honor I could, I went to Barbizon, to
find, as did many others gone for the same sad purpose, that an
error in the notices sent, discovered too late to be rectified,
had placed the date of the funeral a day later than that on
which it actually occurred. Millet rests in the little cemetery
at Chailly, across the plain from Barbizon, near his lifetime
friend, Theodore Rousseau, who is buried there. I will never
forget the January day in the village of Barbizon. Though
Millet had little part in the village life, and was known to
few, a sadness, as though the very houses felt that a great man
had passed away, had settled over the place. I sought out a
friend who had been Millet’s friend for many years and was with
him at the last, and as he told me of the last sad months,
tears fell from his
eyes.

[pg 513]

CHAPTERS FROM A LIFE.

By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps,

Author of “The Gates Ajar,” “A Singular Life,” etc.

“THE GATES AJAR” WITH THE CRITICS AND THE PUBLIC.—THE
AUTHOR’S FIRST STUDY.—READING REVIEWS OF ONE’S OWN
BOOKS.—CORRESPONDENCE WITH READERS OF “THE GATES
AJAR.”

As was said in the last paper, “The Gates Ajar” was written
without hope or expectation of any especial success, and when
the happy storm broke in truth, I was the most astonished girl
in North America.

From the day when Mr. Fields’s thoughtful note reached the
Andover post-office, that miracle of which we read often in
fiction, and sometimes in literary history, touched the young
writer’s life; and it began over again, as a new form of
organization.

As I look back upon them, the next few years seem to have
been a series of amazing phantasmagoria. Indeed, at the time,
they were scarcely more substantial. A phantom among phantoms,
I was borne along. Incredulous of the facts, and dubious of my
own identity, I whirled through readjustments of scene, of
society, of purposes, of hopes, and now, at last, of ambitions;
and always of hard work, and plenty of it. Really, I think the
gospel of work then, as always, and to all of us, was salvation
from a good deal of nonsense incident to the situation.

I have been told that the American circulation of the book,
which has remained below one hundred thousand, was rather more
than that in Great Britain. Translations, of course, were
manifold. The French, the German, the Dutch, the Italian have
been conscientiously sent to the author; some others, I think,
have not. More applications to republish my books have reached
me from Germany than from any other country. For a while, with
the tenderness of a novice in such experience, I kept all these
foreign curiosities on my book-shelves; but the throes of
several New England “movings” have scattered their ashes.

Not long ago I came across a tiny pamphlet in which I used
to feel more honest pride than in any edition of “The Gates
Ajar” which it has ever been my fortune to handle. It is a
sickly yellow thing, covered with a coarse design of some kind,
in which the wings of a particularly sprawly angel
predominate.

The print is abhorrent, and the paper such as any
respectable publisher would prepare to be condemned for in this
world and in that to come. In fact, the entire book was thus
given out by one of the most enterprising of English pirates,
as an advertisement for a patent medicine. I have never traced
the chemical history of the drug; but it has pleased my fancy
to suppose it to be the one in which Mrs. Holt, the mother of
Felix, dealt so largely; and whose sale Felix put forth his
mighty conscience to suppress.

Of course, owing to the state of our copyright laws at that
time, all this foreign publication was piratical; and most of
it brought no visible consequence to the author, beyond that
cold tribute to personal vanity on which our unlucky race is
expected to feed. I should make an exception. The house of
Sampson, Low and Company honorably offered me, at a very early
date, a certain recognition of their editions. Other reputable
English houses since, in the case of succeeding books, have
passed contracts of a gentlemanly nature, with the
disproportionately grateful author, who was, of course,
entirely at their mercy. When an American writer compares the
sturdy figures of the foreign circulation with the attenuated
numerals of such visible returns as reach him, he is more
puzzled in his mind than surfeited in his purse. But the
relation of foreign publishers to “home talent” is an ancient
and honorable conundrum, which it is not for this paper or its
writer to solve.

Nevertheless, I found the patent medicine “Gates Ajar”
delicious, and used to compare it with Messrs. Fields and
Osgood’s edition de luxe with an undisguised delight,
which I found it difficult to induce the best of publishers to
share.

Like most such matters, the first energy of the book had its
funny and its serious [pg 514] side. A man coming from a
far Western village, and visiting Boston for the first time,
is said to have approached a bartender, in an exclusive
hotel, thus confidentially:

“Excuse me, but I am a stranger in this part of the country,
and I want to ask a question. Everywhere I go, I see posters up
like this—’The Gates Ajar!’ ‘The Gates Ajar!’ I’m sick to
death of the sight of the durn thing; I haven’t darst to ask
what it is. Do tell a fellar! Is it a new kind of
drink?”

There was a “Gates Ajar” tippet for sale in the country
groceries; I have fancied that it was a knit affair of as many
colors as the jewels in the eternal portals, and extremely
openwork. There was a “Gates Ajar” collar—paper, I
fear—loading the city counters. Ghastly rumors have
reached me of the existence of a “Gates Ajar” cigar. I have
never personally set my eyes upon these tangible forms of
earthly fame. If the truth must be told, I have kept a cowardly
distance from them. Music, of course, took her turn at the
book, and popular “pieces” warbled under its title. One of
these, I think, is sung in Sunday-schools to this day. Then
there was, and still exists, the “Gates Ajar” funeral piece.
This used to seem to me the least serious of them all; but, by
degrees, when I saw the persistence of force in that elaborate
symbol, how many mourning people were so constituted as to find
comfort in it, I came to have a tolerance for it which even
grows into a certain tenderness. I may frankly admit that I
have begun to love it since I heard about the two ragged little
newsboys who came to the eminent city florist, with all their
savings clenched in their grimy fists, and thus made known
their case:

“Ye see, Larks he was our pardner—him an’ us sold on
the same beat—and he jes’ got run over by a ‘lectric, and
it went over his back. So they tuk him to the horspittle, ‘n
Larks he up an’ died there yestiddy. So us fellars we’re goin’
to give Larks a stylish funeril, you bet. We liked
Larks—an’ it went over his back. Say, mister, there ain’t
nothin’ mean ’bout us, come to buryin’ of Larks; ‘n
we’ve voted to settle on one them ‘Gates Ajar’
pieces—made o’flowers, doncherknow. So me ‘n him an’ the
other fellars we’ve saved up all our propurty, for we’re agoin’
ter give Larks a stylish funeril—an’ here it is, mister.
I told the kids ef there was more’n enough you’s trow in a few
greens, anyhow. Make up de order right away, mister, and give
us our money’s worf now, sure—for Larks.”

The gamin proudly counted out upon the marble slab of that
fashionable flower store the sum of seventy-five cents.

The florist—blessings on him—is said not to have
undeceived the little fellows, but to have duly honored their
“order,” and the biggest and most costly “Gates Ajar” piece to
be had in the market went to the hospital, and helped to bury
Larks.

Of course, as is customary in the case of all authors who
have written one popular book, requests for work at once rained
in on the new study on Andover Hill. For it soon became evident
that I must have a quiet place to write in. In the course of
time I found it convenient to take for working hours a sunny
room in the farm-house of the Seminary estate, a large,
old-fashioned building adjoining my father’s house. In still
later years I was allowed to build over, for my own purposes,
the summer-house under the big elm in my father’s garden, once
used by my mother for her own study, and well remembered by all
persons interested in Andover scenery. This building had been
for some years used exclusively as a mud-bakery by the boys; it
was piled with those clay turnovers and rolls and pies in whose
manufacture the most select circles of Andover youth
delighted.

But the bakery was metamorphosed into a decent, dear little
room, about nine by eleven, and commanding the sun on the four
sides of its quadrangle. In fact, it was a veritable sun-bath;
and how dainty was the tip-drip of the icicles from the big
elm-bough, upon the little roof! To this spot I used to travel
down in all weathers; sometimes when it was so slippery on the
hill behind the carriage-house (for the garden paths were
impassable in winter) that I have had to return to primitive
methods of locomotion, and just sit down and coast half the way
on the crust. Later still, when an accident and crutches put
this delightful method of travelling out of the question, the
summer-house (in a blizzard I delighted in the name) was moved
up beside my father’s study. I have, in fact, always had an
out-of-door study, apart from the house I lived in, and have
come to look upon it as quite a necessity; so that we have
carried on the custom in our Gloucester house. We heartily
recommend it to all people who live by their brains and pens.
The incessant trotting to and fro on little errands is a
wholesome thing. Proof-sheets, empty ink-stands, dried-up
mucilage, yawning wood-boxes, wet feet, missing scissors,
unfilled kerosene lamps, untimely thirst, or unromantic
lunches, the morning mail, and the dinner-bell, and the
[pg 515] orders of one’s pet
dog—all are so many imperious summonses to breathe the
tingling air and stir the blood and muscle.

Be as uncomfortable or as cross about it as you choose, an
out-of-door study is sure to prove your best friend. You become
a species of literary tramp, and absorb something of the
tramp’s hygiene. It is impossible to be “cooped” at your desk,
if you have to cross a garden or a lawn thirty times a day to
get to it. And what reporter can reach that sweet seclusion
across the distant housemaid’s wily and experienced art? What
autograph or lion hunter can ruin your best chapter by
bombardment in mid-morning?

In the farm-house study I remember one of my earliest
callers from the publishing world, that seems always to stand
with clawing fingers demanding copy of the people least able to
give it. He was an emissary from the “Youth’s Companion,” who
threatened or cajoled me into a vow to supply him with a
certain number of stories. My private suspicion is that I have
just about at this present time completed my share in that
ancient bargain, so patient and long-suffering has this
pleasant paper been with me. I took particular delight in that
especial visit, remembering the time when the “Companion” gave
my first pious little sentence to print, and paid me with the
paper for a year.

“The Gates Ajar” was attacked by the press. In fact it was
virulently bitten. The reviews of the book, some of them,
reached the point of hydrophobia. Others were found to be in a
milder pathological condition. Still others were gentle or even
friendly enough. Religious papers waged war across that girl’s
notions of the life to come as if she had been an evil spirit
let loose upon accepted theology for the destruction of the
world. The secular press was scarcely less disturbed about the
matter, which it treated, however, with the more amused
good-humor of a man of the world puzzled by a religious
disagreement.

In the days of the Most Holy Inquisition there was an old
phrase whose poignancy has always seemed to me to be but half
appreciated. One did not say: He was racked. She was burned.
They were flayed alive, or pulled apart with little pincers, or
clasped in the arms of the red-hot Virgin. One was too
well-bred for so bald a use of language. One politely and
simply said: He was put to the question.

The young author of “The Gates Ajar” was only put to the
question. Heresy was her crime, and atrocity her name. She had
outraged the church; she had blasphemed its sanctities; she had
taken live coals from the altar in her impious hand. The
sacrilege was too serious to be dismissed with cold
contempt.

Opinion battled about that poor little tale as if it had
held the power to overthrow church and state and family.

It was an irreverent book—it was a devout book. It was
a strong book—it was a weak book. It was a religious
book—it was an immoral book (I have forgotten just why;
in fact, I think I never knew). It was a good book—it was
a bad book. It was calculated to comfort the
comfortless—it was calculated to lead the impressionable
astray. It was an accession to Christian literature—it
was a disgrace to the religious antecedents of the author; and
so on, and so forth.

At first, when some of these reviews fell in my way, I read
them, knowing no better. But I very soon learned to let them
alone. The kind notices, while they gave me a sort of courage
which by temperament possibly I needed more than all young
writers may, overwhelmed me, too, by a sense of my own
inadequacy to be a teacher of the most solemn of truths, on any
such scale as that towards which events seemed to be pointing.
The unfair notices put me in a tremor of distress. The brutal
ones affected me like a blow in the face from the fist of a
ruffian. None of them, that I can remember, ever helped me in
any sense whatsoever to do better work.

I quickly came to the conclusion that I was not adapted to
reading the views of the press about my own writing. I made a
vow to let them alone; and, from that day to this, I have kept
it. Unless in the case of something especially brought to my
attention by friends, I do not read any reviews of my books. Of
course, in a general way, one knows if some important pen has
shown a comprehension of what one meant to do and tried to do,
or has spattered venom upon one’s poor achievement. Quite
fairly, one cannot sit like the Queen in the kitchen, eating
only bread and honey—and venom disagrees with me.

I sometimes think—if I may take advantage of this
occasion to make the only reply in a working life of thirty
years to any of the “slashers” with whose devotion I am told
that I have been honored—I sometimes think, good brother
critics, that I have had my share of the attentions of poisoned
weapons.

But, regarding my reviewers with the great good humor of one
who never reads [pg 516] what they say, I can afford
to wish them lively luck and better game in some quivering
writer who takes the big pile of what it is the fashion to
call criticisms from the publisher’s table, and
conscientiously reads them through. With this form of
being “put to the question” I will have nothing to do. If it
gives amusement to the reviewers, they are welcome to their
sport. But they stab at the summer air, so far as any writer
is concerned who has the pertinacity of purpose to let them
alone.

Long after I had adopted the rule to read no notices of my
work, I learned from George Eliot that the same had been her
custom for many years, and felt reënforced in the
management of my little affairs by this great example.
Discussing the question once, with one of our foremost American
writers, I was struck with something like holy envy in his
expression. He had received rough handling from those “critics”
who seem to consider authors as their natural foes, and who
delight in aiming the hardest blows at the heaviest enemy. His
fame is immeasurably superior to that of all his reviewers put
together.

“Don’t you really read them?” he asked, wistfully. “I wish I
could say as much. I’m afraid I shouldn’t have the perseverance
to keep that up right along.”

In interesting contrast to all this discord from the
outside, came the personal letters. The book was hardly under
way before the storm of them set in. It began like a New
England snow-storm, with a few large, earnest flakes; then came
the swirl of them, big and little, sleet and rain, fast and
furious, regular and irregular, scurrying and tumbling over
each other through the Andover mails.

The astonished girl bowed her head before the blast at
first, with a kind of terrified humility. Then, by degrees, she
plucked up heart to give to each letter its due attention.

It would not be very easy to make any one understand, who
had not been through a closely similar experience, just what it
meant to live in the centre of such a whirlwind of human
suffering.

It used to seem to me sometimes, at the end of a week’s
reading of this large and painful mail, as if the whole world
were one great outcry. What a little portion of it cried to the
young writer of one little book of consolation! Yet how the ear
and heart ached under the piteous monotony! I made it a rule to
answer every civil letter that I received; and as few of them
were otherwise, this correspondence was no light load.

I have called it monotonous; yet there was a curious variety
in monotony, such as no other book has brought to the author’s
attention. The same mail gave the pleasant word of some
distinguished writer who was so kind as to encourage a beginner
in his own art, or so much kinder as gently and intelligently
to point out her defects; and beneath this welcome note lay the
sharp rebuke of some obscure parishioner who found the Temple
of Zion menaced to its foundation by my little story. Hunters
of heresy and of autograph pursued their game side by side.
Here, some man of affairs writes to say (it seemed incredible,
but it used to happen) that the book has given him his first
intelligent respect for religious faith. There, a poor colored
girl, inmate of a charitable institution, where she has figured
as in deed and truth the black sheep, sends her pathetic
tribute:

“If heaven is like that, I want to go, and I mean
to.”

To-day I am berated by the lady who is offended with the
manner of my doctrine. I am called hard names in no soft
language, and advised to pray heaven for forgiveness for the
harm I am doing by this ungodly book.

To-morrow I receive a widower’s letter, of twenty-six pages,
rose-tinted and perfumed. He relates his personal history. He
encloses the photographs of his dead wife, his living children,
and himself. He adds the particulars of his income, which, I am
given to understand, is large. He adds—but I turn to the
next.

This correspondent, like scores upon scores of others, will
be told instanter if I am a spiritualist. On this vital point
he demands my confession or my life.

The next desires to be informed how much of the story is
autobiography, and requires the regiment and company in which
my brother served.

And now I am haughtily taken to task by some unknown nature
for allowing my heroine to be too much attached to her brother.
I am told that this is impious; that only our Maker should
receive such adoring affection as poor Mary offered to dead
Roy.

Having recovered from this inconceivable slap in the face, I
go bravely on. I open the covers of a pamphlet as green as
Erin, entitled, “Antidote to the Gates Ajar;” consider myself
as the poisoner of the innocent and reverent mind, and learn
what I may from this lesson in toxicology.

There was always a certain share of abuse in these
outpourings from strangers; it was relatively small, but it was
enough to save my spirits, by the humor of it, or they would
[pg 517] have been crushed with the
weight of the great majority.

I remember the editor of a large Western paper, who enclosed
a clipping from his last review for my perusal. It treated, not
of “The Gates Ajar” just then, but of a magazine story in
“Harper’s,” the “Century,” or wherever. The story was told in
the first person fictitious, and began after this fashion:

“I am an old maid of fifty-six, and have spent most of my
life in boarding-houses.” (The writer was, be it said, at that
time, scarcely twenty-two.)

“Miss Phelps says of herself,” observed this oracle, “that
she is fifty-six years old; and we think she is old enough to
know better than to write such a story as this.”

At a summer place where I was in the early fervors of the
art of making a home, a citizen was once introduced to me at
his own request. I have forgotten his name, but remember having
been told that he was “prominent.” He was big, red, and loud,
and he planted himself with the air of a man about to demolish
his deadliest foe.

“So you are Miss Phelps. Well, I’ve wanted to meet you. I
read a piece you wrote in a magazine. It was about Our Town. It
did not please Me.”

I bowed with the interrogatory air which seemed to be
expected of me. Being just then very much in love with that
very lovable place, I was puzzled with this accusation, and
quite unable to recall, out of the warm flattery which I had
heaped upon the town in cool print, any visible cause of
offence.

“You said,” pursued my accuser, angrily, “that we had odors
here. You said Our Town smelled of fish. Now, you know,
we get so used to these smells we like ’em! It
gave great offence to the community, madam. And I really
thought at one time—feelin’ ran so high—I thought
it would kill the sale of your book!”

From that day to this I do not believe the idea has visited
the brain of this estimable person that a book could circulate
in any other spot upon the map than within his native town.
This delicious bit of provincialism served to make life worth
living for many a long day.

There was fun enough in this sort of thing to “keep one up,”
so that one could return bravely to the chief end of existence;
for this seemed for many years to be nothing less, and little
else, than the exercise of those faculties called forth by the
wails of the bereaved. From every corner of the civilized
globe, and in its differing languages, they came to
me—entreaties, outpourings, cries of agony, mutterings of
despair, breathings of the gentle hope by which despair may be
superseded; appeals for help which only the Almighty could have
given; demands for light which only eternity can supply.

A man’s grief, when he chooses to confide it to a woman, is
not an easy matter to deal with. Its dignity and its pathos are
never to be forgotten. How to meet it, Heaven only teaches; and
how far Heaven taught that awed and humbled girl I shall never
know.

But the women—oh, the poor women! I felt less afraid
to answer them. Their misery seemed to cry in my arms like a
child who must be comforted. I wrote to them—I wrote
without wisdom or caution or skill; only with the power of
being sorry for them, and the wish to say so; and if I said the
right thing or the wrong one, whether I comforted or wearied,
strengthened or weakened, that, too, I shall not know.

Sometimes, in recent years, a letter comes or a voice
speaks: “Do you remember—so many years ago—when I
was in great trouble? You wrote to me.” And I am half ashamed
that I had forgotten. But I bless her because she
remembers.

But when I think of the hundreds—it came into the
thousands, I believe—of such letters received, and how
large a proportion of them were answered, my heart sinks. How
is it possible that one should not have done more harm than
good by that unguided sympathy? If I could not leave the open
question to the Wisdom that protects and overrules well-meaning
ignorance, I should be afraid to think of it. For many years I
was snowed under by those mourners’ letters. In truth, they
have not ceased entirely yet, though of course their visits are
now irregular.

I am so often asked if I still believe the views of another
life set forth in “The Gates Ajar” that I am glad to use this
opportunity to answer the question; though, indeed, I have been
led to do so, to a certain extent, in another place, and may,
perhaps, be pardoned for repeating words in which the question
first and most naturally answered itself:

“Those appeals of the mourning, black of edge and blurred
with tears, were a mass high beneath the hand and heavy to the
heart. These letters had the terrible and unanswerable power of
all great, natural voices; and the chiefest of these are love
and grief. Year upon year the recipient has sat dumb before
these signs of human misery and hope. They have rolled upon the
shore [pg 518] of life, a billow of solemn
inspiration. I have called them a human argument for faith
in the future life, and see no reason for amending the
term.”

But why dwell on the little book, which was only the
trembling organ-pipe through which the music thrilled? Its
faults have long since ceased to trouble, and its friends to
elate me. Sometimes one seems to one’s self to be the least or
last agency in the universe responsible for such a work. What
was the book? Only an outcry of nature—and nature
answered it. That was all. And nature is of God, and is mighty
before Him.

Do I believe in the “middle march” of life, as the girl did
in the morning, before the battle of the day?

For nature’s sake—which is for God’s sake—I
cannot hesitate.

Useless suffering is the worst of all kinds of waste. Unless
He created this world from sheer extravagance in the infliction
of purposeless pain, there must be another life to justify, to
heal, to comfort, to offer happiness, to develop holiness. If
there be another world, and such a one, it will be no theologic
drama, but a sensible, wholesome scene. The largest and the
strongest elements of this experimental life will survive its
weakest and smallest. Love is “the greatest thing in the
world,” and love “will claim its own” at last.

The affection which is true enough to live forever, need
have no fear that the life to come will thwart it. The grief
that goes to the grave unhealed, may put its trust in
unimagined joy to be. The patient, the uncomplaining, the
unselfish mourner, biding his time and bearing his lot, giving
more comfort than he gets, and with beautiful wilfulness
believing in the intended kindness of an apparently harsh force
which he cannot understand, may come to perceive, even here,
that infinite power and mercy are one; and, I solemnly believe,
is sure to do so in the life beyond, where “God keeps a niche
in heaven to hold our idols.”

FOUR-LEAF CLOVER.

By Ella Higginson.

I know a place where the sun is like gold,

And the cherry blooms burst with
snow;

And down underneath is the loveliest nook,

Where the four-leaf clovers grow.

One leaf is for hope, and one is for faith,

And one is for love, you know;

And God put another one in for luck—

If you search, you will find where they
grow.

But you must have hope, and you must have faith;

You must love and be strong—and
so—

If you work, if you wait, you will find the
place

Where the four-leaf clovers grow.

[pg 519]

A LEAP IN THE DARK

By James T. Mckay,

Author of “Stella Grayland,” “Larcone’s Little Chap,” and
other stories.

The Windhams and Mandisons were old neighbors, and Phil
Windham had always been very much at home among the Mandisons,
and especially with Mary, the oldest daughter, who was like a
wise, kind sister to him. Now his own house began to break
up—his brothers went West; his sisters married; his
father, who was a chemist and inventor, was killed one day by
an explosion. In these trying times the Mandison household was
his chief resource, and Mary most of all.

Then the Mandisons moved away. That seemed to Windham like
the end of things. He was awfully lonely, and thought a great
deal about Mary in the months that followed, but was not quite
sure of himself; though he was certain there was no one else he
liked and admired half so much. But in the following winter he
went to spend the holidays with the Mandisons, and when he came
away he and Mary were engaged.

The next summer the Mandisons took a cottage at the shore,
and Windham went to spend some weeks with them. Idly busy and
calmly happy in the pleasant company of Mary and all the
friendly house, the sunny days slipped by till one came that
disturbed his dream. An aunt of Mary’s arrived with her
husband, Dr. Saxon, and his niece, Agnes Maine. At the first
glance Miss Maine challenged Windham’s attention. She was a
tall and striking person, with a keen glance that he felt took
his measure at the first look. She piqued his curiosity, and
interested him more and more.

One day he saw her and Mary together, and caught himself
comparing them, not in Mary’s favor. Panic seized him, and he
turned his back on Miss Maine and devoted himself to Mary. Miss
Maine went to stay with some neighbors, the Colemans. One night
she was caught at the Mandisons by a storm. Mary asked Windham
to entertain her, and he went and asked her to play chess. She
declined coldly, and Windham turned away with such a look that
Mary wondered what Agnes could have said so unkind. And the
next day Miss Maine spoke so gently to him that it warmed him
all through. Still he persistently avoided her.

The Colemans got up a play in the attic of their large old
house. On the night of the performance the place was crowded.
The first two acts went off smoothly.

Windham had been helping to shift the scenes, and was
standing alone, looking over the animated spectacle as the
audience chatted and laughed. Something in the play had made
him think of Agnes Maine, though she was not in the cast, and
he had not seen her. Suddenly, without any notice of her
approach, she stood close to him, looking in his face. Her face
was paler than usual, and her eyes had a startling light in
them. She said only half a dozen low words, but they made him
turn ghastly white. What she said was:

“The house is on fire down-stairs.”

He stood looking at her an instant, long enough to reflect
that any alarm would result in piling those gay people in an
awful mass at the foot of the one steep and fragile stairway.
The stage entrance was little better than an enclosed ladder,
and not to be thought of.

“Go and stand at the head of the stairs,” he said to
her.

The bell rang for the curtain to rise, but he slipped back
behind it, and it did not go up. Instead, Jeffrey Coleman
appeared before it, bowing and smiling with exaggeration, and
announced that the continuation of the performance had been
arranged as a surprise below-stairs, and would be found even
more exciting and interesting than the part already given. The
audience were requested to go below quickly, but at the same
time were cautioned against crowding, as the stair was rather
steep and temporary. As they did not start at once, he came off
the stage and led the way, going on down the stairs, and
calling gayly to the rest to
follow.

[pg 520]

Windham had got to the stairhead by this time. Agnes Maine
stood there, on one side, looking calm and contained, and he
took up his position on the other, and followed the cue given
by young Coleman. He began to call out, extolling the absorbing
and thrilling character of the performance down-stairs, with
the extravagant epithets of the circus posters, laughing all
the while. He urged them on when they lingered, and restrained
them when they came too fast, addressing one and another with
jocularity, laying his hands on some and pushing them on with
assumed playfulness, keeping up the fire of raillery with
desperate resistance. When screams were heard now and then from
below, he made it appear to be only excited feminine merriment,
directing attention to it, and calling out to those yet to
come:

“You hear them? Oh, yes; you’ll scream, too, when you see
it!”

All the time, though his faculties were sufficiently
strained by the effort he was making, he was watching Agnes
Maine, who stood opposite, doing nothing, but looking her calm,
pale self, and now and then smiling slightly at his extravagant
humor. And he thought admiringly that her simple quiet did more
to keep up the illusion than all his labored and violent
simulation.

It seemed as if there never would be an end to the stream of
leisurely people who answered his banter with laugh and joke.
But finally the last of them were fairly on the stair, and he
turned to Agnes Maine with a suddenly transformed face.

“Now—be quick!” he called.

But she gave a low cry, looking away toward the farther end,
where she caught sight of a young couple still lingering. She
ran toward them, calling to them to hurry, and as they did not
understand, she took hold of the girl, and made her run.
Windham had followed her, and the four came together to the
stairhead, but there they stopped, and the young girl broke
into wild screams. The foot of the stairway was wrapped in
smoke and flames.

There was an observatory upon the house, into which Windham
had once gone with Jeffrey Coleman, and he turned to it now,
and made the three go up before him. He stopped and cut away a
rope that held some of the hangings, and took it up with him.
Miss Maine was standing with her arm about Fanny Lee, whom she
had quieted.

“Had she better go first?” he asked.

“Yes, of course,” Miss Maine answered.

He fastened the rope about the girl, assured her they would
let her down safely, and between them they persuaded her,
shrinkingly, to let herself be swung over, and lowered to the
ground. In this Miss Maine gave more help than young Pritchard,
who shook and chattered so much as to be of little use. And as
soon as the girl was down and Windham turned toward Miss Maine,
Pritchard took a turn of the rope around the railing, with a
hasty knot, went over, and slid down it, out of sight. But
before he reached the ground, the rope broke loose, and slipped
out of Windham’s grasp as he tried to catch it.

A cry came up from below. Windham turned toward Miss Maine,
and they looked at one another, but said nothing. She was very
pale and still. Windham glanced down and around; the fire was
already following them up the tower. He made her come to the
other side, where the balcony overhung the ridge of the sloping
roof, got over the railing, and helped her to do the same, and
to seat herself on the narrow ledge outside, holding on by the
bars with her arms behind her. He let himself down by his hands
till within two or three feet of the roof, and dropped safely
upon it. Then he stood up, facing her just below, braced
himself with one foot on each side of the ridge, and told her
to loosen her hold and let herself fall forward. She did so,
and he caught her in his arms as she fell.

It was a struggle for a minute to keep his balance; and
whether in the involuntary stress of the effort, or by an
instinctive impulse, conscious or otherwise, he clasped her
close for a moment, till her face touched his own. Then he put
her down, and they sat on the ridge near each other, flushed,
and short of breath. Below, on the lawn, a throng of people
looked up at them, some motionless, some gesticulating, and
some shouting in dumb show, their voices drowned in the fierce
roar and crackling that raged beneath the roof and shut in the
two above it in a kind of visible privacy. They were still a
while; then Agnes asked: “Can we do anything more?”

“No,” he answered, “nothing but wait.”

Both saw that men were running for ladders and ropes.
Presently he asked quietly:

“Why did you come to me?”

She looked up at him for a moment, then answered:

“I suppose I thought you would know what to
do.”

[pg 33]

“Thank you,” he said, in a grave, low voice.

After a little the tower blazed out above them, and they
moved along the ridge till stopped by a chimney, against which
he made her lean. Then they sat still again. The flames rose
above the eaves on one side, and flared higher and hotter. Soon
they grew scorching, and Agnes said, with quickened
breathing:

“We couldn’t stay here long.”

He looked at her, and the side of her face toward the fire
glowed bright red. He took off his coat, moved close to her,
and held it up between their faces and the flames; and they sat
together so, breathing audibly, but not speaking, till the head
of a ladder rose suddenly above the eaves, and a minute later
the head and shoulders of Jeffrey Coleman. He flung a rope to
Windham, who in another minute had let Miss Maine slip down by
it to the ladder; then, throwing a noose of it over the
chimney, he slid down himself to the eaves, and so to the
ground.

“AGNES SAID, WITH QUICKENED BREATHING, ‘WE COULDN’T STAY
HERE LONG.'”

Miss Maine stood waiting for him, pale and trembling now,
but said nothing. Mary Mandison was with her; she had made no
scene, and made none now.

But there were sharper eyes than Mary’s. That night, as
Windham strolled on the lawn alone, Dr. Saxon confronted him,
grimly puffing at his pipe. Then he said:

“I thought you were an honest fellow.”

Windham leaned against a tree.

“I want to be,” he said feebly.

“Then you’ll have to look sharp,” the doctor retorted.
“You’d better go fishing with me up-country in the
morning.”

He went, Mary making him promise to return in time for an
excursion to Blackberry Island which he had helped her plan. He
got back the night before; and in the morning the party set
out, some going round the shore by stage, and some in the boat
down the bay.

Miss Maine went with those in the boat, and Windham went
with Mary in the stage. Both on the way and after their
arrival, he stayed by her, and did all he could to be useful
and amusing.

They lunched on a grassy bank, in the shade of a cliff, by a
tumbling brook that streamed down from the rocks. By and by
Mary remarked that she would like to see where the little
torrent came from, and Windham said he would try and find out
for her. He scrambled up, and soon passed out of sight among
the bowlders. He found some tough climbing, but kept on, and
after a while traced the stream to a clear pool where a spring
bubbled out of a rock wall in a cave-like chamber near the
top.

As he reached its edge, he caught sight of the reflection in
the pool of a woman’s white dress; and, glancing up, saw Agnes
Maine standing a little above him, on a
[pg 522] sort of natural pedestal,
in a rude niche at one side. She looked so like a statue
that she smiled slightly at the confused thought of it which
she saw for an instant in his face, but she turned grave
then as their eyes met for a moment in a look of intimate
recognition. Then he turned his away, with a sudden terror
at himself, and leaned back against the wall, white in the
face.

She stepped down and passed by him. He half put out his hand
to stop her, but drew it back, and she partly turned at the
gesture, but went on out of his sight.

He stood there for some time; then climbed down the rocks
again, shaping his features into a careless form as he went,
and came back to Mary with a forced smile on his face. But he
forgot what he had gone for, and looked confused when Mary
asked him if he had found it. And she commented:

“Why, Philip, what has happened? You look as if you had seen
a ghost.”

“I have,” he answered.

Mary asked no more, except by her look. Some one came and
proposed a sail, and Windham eagerly agreed, and went out in
the boat with Mary and others.

They sailed down the bay. On the return the wind died away,
and when they got back, the stage had gone with more than half
the party, and Agnes Maine was not among those who were
waiting. They came on board, and the boat headed away for
home.

After landing they had to walk across some fields. When near
the house, Mary missed something, and Windham went back for it.
He had to cross the road, and as he came near it the stage
passed along, with its merry company laughing and singing. They
did not notice him among the trees, but he distinctly saw all
who were in the open vehicle, and Miss Maine was not among
them.

She had climbed up the cliff by a gradual, roundabout path;
and after Windham saw her, she had wandered on, lost herself
for a while, and got back after both stage and boat had left,
each party supposing she had gone with the other.

Windham found a row-boat and started back. He knew nothing
about boats; but the bay was very smooth, it was yet early, and
he got across in due time. As he neared the island he saw her,
in her white dress, standing on the bluff, and looking out
toward him.

Off the shore, rocks and bowlders stood thickly out of the
water, and Windham threaded his way in among them, thinking
nothing of those underneath. The skiff was little better than
an egg-shell, being built of half-inch cedar; and before he
knew what had happened, the point of a sunken rock had cut
through the bows, and the boat was filling with water. With a
landsman’s instinct, he stood up on a thwart; the boat tipped
over and went from under him. In the effort to right it, he
made a thrust downward with one of the oars, but found no
bottom; and the next minute Agnes saw him clinging to the side
of a steep rock, with only his head and shoulders out of
water.

She did not cry out; but after he had struggled vainly to
get up the rock, and found no other support for foot or hand
than the one projection just above him, by which he held, he
looked toward her as he clung there out of breath, and saw her
eagerly watching him from the water’s edge. And her voice
showed the stress of her feeling, though it was quite clear
when she called:

“Can’t you climb up?”

“No, there is nothing to hold by.”

“Can you swim?”

“No.”

She looked all about, then back to him. There was no one in
sight; the island was out of the lines of communication, and a
point just north of them shut off the open water. But she saw
that the reef to which Windham clung trended in to the shore a
little way off, and she called:

“I think I can get out to you—keep hold till I
come.”

She ran along the beach, but not all the way. As soon as she
was opposite a part of the reef that seemed accessible, she
walked straight into the water, and made her way through it,
though it was two or three feet deep near the rocks. He saw her
clamber upon them and start toward him, springing from one to
another, wading across submerged places, climbing around or
over the higher points. And even there, in his desperate
plight, as he watched her coming steadily toward him, her eyes
fixed on the difficult path, and her skirt instinctively
gathered a little in one hand, the sight of her fearless grace
thrilled through him, and filled him with despairing
admiration.

She came presently to the edge of a wider gap with clear
water beneath, and paused for an instant. Windham called
out:

“Don’t jump; you’ll be
lost!”

[pg 523]

She looked at him a moment, studied the rocks again, stepped
back, then forward quickly, and sprang across. She slipped and
fell, but got to her feet again, and came on as before. She
went out of Windham’s sight, but in another minute he heard a
rustle above him, looked up, and saw her standing very near the
edge, and looking down at him, panting a little, but otherwise
calm.

“Don’t stand there; you will fall!” he called to her.

She kneeled down and tried to reach over, but could not. She
raised herself again, and looked all around anxiously, but saw
no one; she had not seen any one since she left him hours
before on the cliff. She looked down at him and asked:

“Can you hold on long?”

“No,” he answered, “not very long.”

She moved back and lay down on the rock, with her face over
the edge. It was wet and slippery, and inclined forward, so
that she had to brace herself with one hand by a projection
just below the brink. Lying so, she could reach down very near
him.

“Take hold of my hand,” she said.

He raised one arm with an effort, so that she caught him by
the wrist, and his fingers closed about hers. She tried to pull
him up slowly, but he felt that it was hopeless, and would only
result in drawing her off the rock; so he settled back as
before. He noticed that she had given him her left hand, and
saw that there was another reason besides the necessity of
bracing herself with her right. Her wrist was cut and
bleeding.

“Oh, you are hurt!” he exclaimed.

“Never mind,” she replied; “that is nothing.”

He looked up in her face with passionate regret. Her lips
were parted, and her breathing came quick and deep. He felt in
her wrist the hot blood with which all her pulses throbbed, and
it went through him as though one current flowed in their
veins. Her eyes looked full into his, and did not turn away
till the lashes trembled over them suddenly, and tears gushed
out upon her face. An agony of yearning took hold of Windham
and wrung his heart.

“Agnes, do you know?” he asked.

And she answered, “Yes.”

When she could see him again, drops stood out on his
forehead, and his eyes looked up at her with a despairing
tenderness. Her lips closed, and her features settled into a
look of answering resolve.

“You must not give up,” she urged. “Don’t let go of my
hand.”

“Oh, I must!” he answered. “You couldn’t hold me; I should
only draw you down.”

She neither looked away nor made any reply.

“It would do no good,” he went on. “I should only drown you
too.”

“I don’t care,” she answered. “I will not let you go.”

“Oh, Agnes!” he responded, the faintness of exhaustion
creeping over him, and mingling with a sharp but sweet
despair.

Mary was standing at the door when the stage arrived, and
she saw that Agnes was not there. She took one of her brothers
who was a good boatman, and started back at once. When their
boat rounded the point of the island she was on the lookout,
and was the first to see the two they came to succor none too
soon. And before they saw her she caught sight, with terrible
clearness, of the look in the two faces that were bent upon one
another. It was she who supported Windham until Agnes could be
taken off, and preparations made for getting him on board; but
she turned her eyes away, and did not speak to him.

On the way back she hardly noticed the dreary and draggled
pair, who had little to say for themselves. Many things that
had puzzled and troubled her ranged themselves in a dreadful
sequence and order now in her unsuspicious mind. On their
arrival she made some arrangements for their comfort, quietly;
then went to her room, and did not come down again.

Windham left early in the morning, went straight back to Dr.
Saxon, and told him the whole story.

“I hardly know whether I’m a villain or not,” Windham
concluded.

“You might as well be,” the doctor growled. “You’ve been a
consummate fool, and one does about as much harm as the other.
Go home now and stay there; and don’t do anything more, for
heaven’s sake, until you hear from me.”

Windham went home, and was very miserable, as may be
supposed. Hearing nothing for some time, he could not bear it,
and wrote to Mary that he honored and admired her, and thought
everything of her that he ever had or could. In a week he got
this reply:

“Mary Mandison has received Philip Windham’s letter, and can
only reply that there is nothing to be
said.”

[pg 524]

This stung him more deeply than silence, and he wrote that
he was going to see her on a certain day, and begged her not to
deny him. He went at the time, and she saw him, simply sitting
still, and hearing what he had to say. He hardly knew what to
say then, but vowed and protested, and finally complained of
her coldness and cruelty. She replied that she was not cold or
cruel, but only, as she had told him, there was nothing to be
said. In the end he found this was true, and rushed away in
despair.

Mary had seemed calm; but when her mother came in that
afternoon and looked for her, she found her in her room, lying
on her face.

When she knew who it was, she raised herself silently,
looked in her mother’s face a moment, put her arms about her
neck, and hid her hot, dry eyes there as she used to do when a
child.

Late that night those two were alone together in the same
place, and, before they parted, the mother said:

“You were always my brave child, and you are going to be my
brave Mary still.”

And Mary answered with a low cry:

“Yes—yes; but not now—not now!”

For a good while Windham felt the sensation of having run
headlong upon a blank wall and been flung back and crippled.
But the feeling wore itself out as the months passed.

It was nearly a year before he heard from Dr. Saxon, and he
had given up looking for anything from him, when he received a
cold note, inviting him to call at the doctor’s home, if he
chose, at a certain date and hour. At the time set he went to
the city, and rang the doctor’s bell as the hour was
striking.

“‘AGNES, DO YOU KNOW?’ HE ASKED. AND SHE ANSWERED, ‘YES.'”

He was shown into the library, and when the door closed
behind him, he fell back against it. Dr. Saxon was not the only
person in the room; at the farther end sat Agnes Maine. She
knew nothing of his coming; and when she glanced round and saw
him, she stood up and faced him, with her hands crossed before
her, her breathing quickened, and her face flushed
blood-red.

The old doctor leaned back and looked from one to the other,
studying them openly and keenly. When he was satisfied, he
ordered Windham to take a chair near the window and told Agnes
she might go out. She faced him a moment; then went away with
her straight, proud carriage. The doctor finished something he
was at, then got his pipe and filled and lighted it, backed up
against the chimney-piece, and stood eying Windham
[pg 525] with something more than
his usual scowl.

“Well, young man,” he asked, finally, “what did you come
here for?”

“I came here because you asked me to.”

“No, sir; you didn’t,” the old man retorted. “I said you
might come if you liked.”

Windham stood up, trembling, and replied with suppressed
passion:

“I came on your invitation. I did not come to be
insulted.”

“Tut, tut,” the doctor rejoined. “You needn’t be so
hoity-toity; you haven’t much occasion; sit down. Have you been
making any more of your ‘mistakes,’ as you call them?”

Windham answered emphatically: “No!”

“Are you going to?” the doctor continued.

“No, sir; I am not,” Windham replied, with angry
decision.

“Well, I wouldn’t; you’ve done enough,” the doctor commented
roughly. “You call it a mistake, but I call it blind stupidity,
worse than many crimes. Mary is worth three of Agnes, to begin
with; but it would be just as bad if she were a doll or a dolt.
Any fellow out of swaddling-clothes, who has brains in his
body, and isn’t made of wood, ought to know that passion is as
hard a fact as hunger, and no more to be left out of account.
You were bound to know the chances were that it would have to
be reckoned with, first or last, and you deliberately took the
risk of wrecking two women’s lives. I don’t say anything about
your own; you richly deserve all you got, and all that’s coming
to you. If law could be made to conform to abstract justice, it
would rank your offence worse than many for which men pay
behind bars.”

He went out abruptly, and after a few minutes returned with
Agnes, who came in lingering, and apparently unwilling.

“Here, Agnes, I am going out,” he said. “I’ve been giving
this young man my opinion of him, and haven’t any more time to
waste. You can tell him what you think of him, and send him
off.”

He went out, and banged the door after him. Agnes leaned
against it, and stood there downcast and perfectly still.
Windham sat sunk together, as the doctor had left him, waiting
for her to speak. But she did not, and after a while he got up
and stood by the high desk, looking at her. Finally he spoke
low:

“Are you going to scold me, too? Mary has discarded me, and
your uncle says I am a miserable sinner, and ought to be in the
penitentiary. I don’t deny it; but if I went there it would be
for your sake. Do you condemn me, too? Have you no mercy for
me?”

A flush spread slowly over her pale face. Then she replied
softly:

“No, I have no right. I am no better than you.”

Two or three hours later Dr. Saxon sat at his desk, when
Agnes entered and came silently and stood beside him. He did
not look up, but asked quietly:

“Well, have you packed him off?”

“No,” she answered under her breath; “you know I
haven’t.”

He smiled up at her. This gruff old man had a rare smile on
occasion for those he liked. And he said:

“Well, he isn’t the worst they make; he’s got spirit, and he
can take a drubbing, too, when it’s deserved. I tried him
pretty well. Didn’t I fire into him, though, hot shot!” He
fairly grinned at the recollection. “I had to, you know, to
keep myself in countenance. I suppose I said rather more than I
meant—but don’t you tell him so.”

She smiled. “I have told him so already; I told him you
didn’t mean a word you said.”

“You presumptuous baggage!” The doctor scowled now. “Then
you told him a tremendous fib. I meant a deal of it. Well,
he’ll get his deserts yet, if he gets you, you deceiving minx.
I told him one thing that was true enough, anyway”—he
smiled broadly again—”I told him Mary was worth half a
dozen of you.”

Agnes turned grave, and put down her head so that she hid
her face.

“So she is,” she answered. “Oh, I’m very sorry—and
ashamed!”

“Well, well,” the old doctor responded soberly, stroking her
cheek, “it is a pity; but I suppose it can’t be helped. Mary’s
made of good stuff, and will pull through. It wouldn’t do her
any good if three lives were spoiled instead of one. It’s lucky
she found out before it was too
late.”

[pg 526]

THE LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By Ida M. Tarbell.

LINCOLN IN CONGRESS

The following article is made up almost entirely of new
matter. It includes six hitherto unpublished letters, all of
them of importance in illustrating Lincoln’s political methods
and his views on public questions from 1843 to 1848, and an
excellent report of a speech delivered in Worcester,
Massachusetts, in 1848, hitherto unknown to Lincoln’s
biographers, discovered in course of a search instituted by
this Magazine through the files of the Boston and Worcester
newspapers of September, 1848. The article also comprises
various reminiscences of Lincoln in the period covered,
gathered especially for this Magazine from associates of his
who are still living.

or eight successive years Lincoln
had been a member of the General Assembly of Illinois. It was
quite long enough, in his judgment. He wanted something better.
In 1842 he declined re-nomination, and became a candidate for
Congress. He did not wait to be asked, nor did he leave his
case in the hands of his friends. He frankly announced his
desire, and managed his own canvass. There was no reason, in
Lincoln’s opinion, for concealing political ambition. He
recognized, at the same time, the legitimacy of the ambition of
his friends, and entertained no suspicion or rancor if they
contested places with him.

“Do you suppose that I should ever have got into notice if I
had waited to be hunted up and pushed forward by older men?” he
wrote his friend Herndon once, when the latter was complaining
that the older men did not help him on. “The way for a young
man to rise is to improve himself every way he can, never
suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him. Allow me to
assure you that suspicion and jealousy never did help any man
in any situation. There may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to
keep a young man down; and they will succeed, too, if he allows
his mind to be diverted from its true channel to brood over the
attempted injury. Cast about, and see if this feeling has not
injured every person you have ever known to fall into it.”

Lincoln had something more to do, however, in 1842, than
simply to announce himself in the innocent manner of earlier
politics. The convention system introduced into Illinois in
1835 by the Democrats had been zealously opposed by all good
Whigs, Lincoln included, until constant defeat taught them that
to resist organization by an every-man-for-himself policy was
hopeless and wasteful, and that if they would succeed they must
meet organization with organization. In 1841 a Whig State
convention had been called to nominate candidates for the
offices of governor and lieutenant-governor; and now, in March,
1843, a Whig meeting was held again at Springfield, at which
the party’s platform was laid, and a committee, of which
Lincoln was a member, was appointed to prepare an “Address to
the People of Illinois.” In this address the convention system
was earnestly defended. Against this rapid adoption of the
abominated system many of the Whigs protested, and Lincoln
found himself supporting before his constituents the tactics he
had once warmly opposed. In a letter to his friend John Bennett
of Petersburg, written in March, 1843, and now for the first
time published,¹he
said:

[pg 527]

“Your letter of this day was handed me by Mr. Miles. It is
too late now to effect the object you desire. On yesterday
morning the most of the Whig members from this district got
together and agreed to hold the convention at Tremont, in
Tazewell County. I am sorry to hear that any of the Whigs of
your county, or of any county, should longer be against
conventions.

“On last Wednesday evening a meeting of all the Whigs then
here from all parts of the State was held, and the question of
the propriety of conventions was brought up and fully
discussed, and at the end of the discussion a resolution
recommending the system of conventions to all the Whigs of the
State was unanimously adopted. Other resolutions also were
passed, all of which will appear in the next ‘Journal.’ The
meeting also appointed a committee to draft an address to the
people of the State, which address will also appear in the next
‘Journal.’ In it you will find a brief argument in favor of
conventions, and, although I wrote it myself, I will say
to you that it is conclusive upon the point, and cannot be
reasonably answered.

“The right way for you to do is to hold your meeting and
appoint delegates anyhow, and if there be any who will not take
part, let it be so.

“The matter will work so well this time that even they who
now oppose will come in next time. The convention is to be held
at Tremont on the fifth of April; and, according to the rule we
have adopted, your county is to have two delegates—being
double the number of your representation.

“If there be any good Whig who is disposed still to stick
out against conventions, get him, at least, to read the
argument in their favor in the ‘Address.'”²

The “brief argument” which Lincoln thought so conclusive,
“if he did write it himself,” justified his good opinion. After
its circulation there were few found to “stick out against
conventions.” The Whigs of the various counties in the
Congressional district met as they had been ordered to do, and
chose delegates. John J. Hardin of Jacksonville, Edward D.
Baker and Abraham Lincoln of Springfield, were the three
candidates for whom these delegates were instructed.

To Lincoln’s keen disappointment, the delegation from
Sangamon County was instructed for Baker. A variety of social
and personal influences, besides Baker’s popularity, worked
against Lincoln. “It would astonish, if not amuse, the older
citizens,” wrote Lincoln to a friend, “to learn that I (a
stranger, friendless, uneducated, penniless boy, working on a
flat-boat at ten dollars per month) have been put down here as
the candidate of pride, wealth, and aristocratic family
distinction.” He was not only accused of being an aristocrat,
he was called “a deist.” He had fought, or been about to fight,
a duel. His wife’s relations were Episcopalian and
Presbyterian. He and she attended a Presbyterian church. These
influences alone could not be said to have defeated him, he
wrote, but “they levied a tax of considerable per cent. upon my
strength.”

The meeting that named Baker as its choice for Congress
appointed Lincoln one of the delegates to the convention. “In
getting Baker the nomination,” Lincoln wrote to Speed, “I shall
be fixed a good deal like a fellow who is made a grooms-man to
a man that has cut him out, and is marrying his own dear
‘gal.'” From the first, however, he stood bravely by Baker. “I
feel myself bound not to hinder him in any way from getting the
nomination; I should despise myself were I to attempt it,” he
wrote certain of his constituents who were anxious that he
should attempt to secure the nomination in spite of his
instructions. It was soon evident to both Lincoln and Baker
that John J. Hardin was probably the strongest candidate in the
district, and so it proved when the convention met in May,
1843, at Pekin.

It has frequently been charged that in this Pekin
convention, Hardin, Baker, and Lincoln agreed to take in turn
the three next nominations to Congress, thus establishing a
species of rotation in office. This charge cannot be sustained.
What occurred at the Pekin convention has been written out for
this magazine by one of the only two surviving delegates, the
Hon. J.M. Ruggles of Havana, Illinois.

“When the convention assembled,” writes Mr. Ruggles, “Baker
was there with his friend and champion delegate, Abraham
Lincoln. The ayes and noes had been taken, and there were
fifteen votes apiece, and one in doubt that had not arrived.
That was myself. I was known to be a warm friend of Baker,
representing people who were partial to Hardin. As soon as I
arrived Baker hurried to me, saying: ‘How is it? It all depends
on you.’ On being told that notwithstanding my partiality for
him, the people I represented
[pg 528] expected me to vote for
Hardin, and that I would have to do so, Baker at once
replied: ‘You are right—there is no other way.’ The
convention was organized, and I was elected secretary. Baker
immediately arose, and made a most thrilling address,
thoroughly arousing the sympathies of the convention, and
ended by declining his candidacy. Hardin was nominated by
acclamation; and then came the episode.

“Immediately after the nomination, Mr. Lincoln walked across
the room to my table, and asked if I would favor a resolution
recommending Baker for the next term. On being answered in the
affirmative, he said: ‘You prepare the resolution, I will
support it, and I think we can pass it.’ The resolution created
a profound sensation, especially with the friends of Hardin.
After an excited and angry discussion, the resolution passed by
a majority of one.”

Lincoln supported Hardin as energetically as he had Baker.
In a letter ³
to the former, hitherto unpublished, written on May 11th,
just after the convention, he says:

“Butler informs me that he received a letter from you in
which you expressed some doubt as to whether the Whigs of
Sangamon will support you cordially. You may at once
dismiss all fears on that subject. We have already resolved
to make a particular effort to give you the very largest
majority possible in our county. From this no Whig of the
county dissents. We have many objects for doing it. We make
it a matter of honor and pride to do it; we do it because
we love the Whig cause; we do it because we like you
personally; and, last, we wish to convince you that we do
not bear that hatred to Morgan County that you people have
seemed so long to imagine. You will see by the ‘Journal’ of
this week that we propose, upon pain of losing a barbecue,
to give you twice as great a majority in this county as you
shall receive in your own. I got up the proposal.
“Who of the five appointed is to write the district
address? I did the labor of writing one address this year,
and got thunder for my reward. Nothing new here.
Yours as ever,
“A. LINCOLN.”
“P.S. I wish you would measure one of the largest of
those swords we took to Alton, and write me the length of
it, from tip of the point to tip of the hilt, in feet and
inches. I have a dispute about the
length ⁴
A. L.”

LINCOLN WORKS FOR THE NOMINATION IN 1846.

Hardin was elected, and in 1844 Baker was nominated and
elected. Lincoln had accepted his defeat by Hardin manfully. He
had secured the nomination for Baker in 1844. He felt that his
duty toward his friends was discharged, and that the nomination
in 1846 belonged to him. Through the terms of both Hardin and
Baker, he worked persistently and carefully to insure his own
nomination. With infinite pains-taking he informed himself
about the temper of every individual whom he knew or of whom he
heard. In an amusing letter to Hardin, hitherto unpublished,
written in May, 1844, while the latter was in Congress, he
tells him of one disgruntled constituent who must be pacified,
giving him, at the same time, a hint as to the temper of the
“Locofocos.”

“Knowing that you have correspondents enough, I have
forborne to trouble you heretofore,” he writes; “and I now
only do so to get you to set a matter right which has got
wrong with one of our best friends. It is old Uncle Thomas
Campbell of Spring Creek (Berlin P.O.). He has received
several documents from you, and he says they are old
newspapers and old documents, having no sort of interest in
them. He is, therefore, getting a strong impression that
you treat him with disrespect. This, I know, is a mistaken
impression, and you must correct it. The way, I leave to
yourself. Robert W. Canfield says he would like to have a
document or two from you.
“The Locos here are in considerable trouble about Van
Buren’s letter on Texas, and the Virginia electors. They
are growing sick of the tariff question, and consequently
are much confounded at Van Buren’s cutting them off from
the new Texas question. Nearly half the leaders swear they
won’t stand it. Of those are Ford, T. Campbell, Ewing,
Calhoun, and others. They don’t exactly say they won’t go
for Van Buren, but they say he will not be the candidate,
and that they are for Texas anyhow.
“As ever yours,
“A. LINCOLN.”

[pg 529]

ABRAHAM LINCOLN IN 1860.—HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED.

From an ambrotype taken in Springfield, Illinois, in
1860, and given by Lincoln to J. Henry Brown, a miniature
artist who had gone to Springfield to paint a portrait of
the President for Judge Read of Pennsylvania. The ambrotype
is now in a collection in Boston. A companion picture, made
at the same time, is owned by Mr. William H. Lambert of
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and was reproduced as the
frontispiece to MCCLURE’S MAGAZINE for March, 1896 (see
note to this frontispiece).

[pg 530]

GENERAL JOHN J. HARDIN.

After a portrait owned by Mrs. Julia Duncan Kirby,
Jacksonville, Illinois. John J. Hardin was born at
Frankfort, Kentucky, January 6, 1810; was educated at
Transylvania University; removed to Jacksonville, Illinois,
in 1830, and there began practising law. He at once became
active in politics, and in 1834 was a candidate for
Prosecuting Attorney, an officer at that time chosen by the
legislature. He was defeated by Stephen A. Douglas, then a
recent arrival from Vermont. In 1836 he was elected to the
lower branch of the General Assembly, and served three
terms. In the session of 1836-37, he was one of the few
members who opposed the internal improvements scheme. He
was elected to Congress from the Sangamon district in 1843,
and served until 1845. For some time he was a general in
the State militia. In the Mexican War, he was colonel of
the First Illinois Regiment, and was killed at the battle
of Buena Vista, February 23, 1847. General Hardin was a man
of brilliant parts. He was an able lawyer, and at the time
of his death had risen to the leadership of the Whig party
in his State. It was through his intercession, aided by Dr.
R.W. English, that the unpleasantness between Lincoln and
Shields in 1842 was amicably settled and a duel
prevented.—J. McCan Davis.

COLONEL EDWARD D. BAKER.

From the Civil War collection of Mr. Robert Coster.
Edward Dickinson Baker was born in London, February 24,
1811. In his infancy his parents emigrated to America, and
his father became a teacher at Philadelphia. There Edward
was apprenticed to a weaver; but he disliked the trade, and
soon gave it up and left home. He drifted to Belleville,
Illinois, about 1826, and was followed a year later by his
parents. For several months he drove a dray in St. Louis,
Missouri; then removed to Carrollton, Illinois, and studied
law. His early experience at the bar was disheartening, and
upon becoming a member of the Christian church he resolved
to enter the ministry; but political success about this
time caused a change of mind, and robbed the pulpit of a
splendid ornament. In 1835 he removed to Springfield, and
in 1837 was elected to the legislature. He achieved
immediate distinction as an orator, and for the ensuing
fifteen years he ranked among the foremost lawyers and
politicians of the State. He was reflected to the House in
1838, served in the State Senate from 1840 to 1844, and was
then elected to Congress. Upon the breaking out of the
Mexican War he returned home, and raised a regiment of
which he was commissioned colonel. After the war he removed
to Galena, and was there sent back to Congress. In 1851 he
went to the Isthmus of Panama with four hundred laborers to
engage in the construction of the Panama Railroad. In 1852
he went to San Francisco, California, where he at once
became the leader of the bar. He was not successful there
in any of his political aspirations, and removed to Oregon.
That State at once made him a United States Senator. The
Civil War coming on, he resigned his seat in the Senate,
raised “the California regiment,” immediately went to the
front, and was killed at Ball’s Bluff, October 20,
1861.—. J. McCan Davis.

In 1844, being a presidential elector, Lincoln entered the
canvass with ardor. Henry Clay was the candidate, and Lincoln
shared the popular idolatry of the man. His devotion was not
merely a sentiment, however. He had been an intelligent student
of Clay’s public life, and his sympathy was all with the
principles of the “gallant Harry of the West.” Throughout the
campaign he worked zealously, travelling all over the State,
speaking and talking. As a rule he was accompanied by a
Democrat. The two went unannounced, simply stopping at some
friendly house. On their arrival the word was sent around, “the
candidates are here,” and the men of the neighborhood gathered
to hear the discussion, which was carried on in the most
[pg 531] informal way, the
candidates frequently sitting tipped back against the side
of the house, or perched on a rail, whittling during the
debates. Nor was all of this electioneering done by
argument. Many votes were still cast in Illinois out of
personal liking, and the wily candidate did his best to make
himself agreeable, particularly to the women of the
household. The Hon. William L.D. Ewing, a Democrat who
travelled with Lincoln in one campaign, used to tell a story
of how he and Lincoln were eager to win the favor of one of
their hostesses, whose husband was an important man in his
neighborhood. Neither had made much progress until at
milking-time Mr. Ewing started after the woman of the house
as she went to the yard, took her pail, and insisted on
milking the cow himself. He naturally felt that this was a
master stroke. But receiving no reply from the hostess, to
whom he had been talking loudly as he milked, he looked
around, only to see her and Lincoln leaning comfortably over
the bars, engaged in an animated discussion. By the time he
had his self-imposed task done, Lincoln had captivated the
hostess, and all Mr. Ewing received for his pains was hearty
thanks for giving her a chance to have so pleasant a talk
with Mr. Lincoln.⁵

THE CARTER SCHOOLHOUSE PRECINCT, INDIANA, WHERE
LINCOLN RENEWED ACQUAINTANCE WITH OLD NEIGHBORS IN 1844.

Lincoln’s speeches at this time were not confined to his own
State. He made several in Indiana, being invited thither by
prominent Whig politicians who had heard him speak in Illinois.
The first and most important of his meetings in Indiana was at
Bruceville. The Democrats, learning of the proposed Whig
gathering, arranged one, for the same evening, with Lieutenant
William W. Carr of Vincennes as speaker. As might have been
expected from the excited state of politics at the moment, the
proximity of the two mass-meetings aroused party loyalty to a
fighting pitch. “Each party was determined to break up the
other’s speaking,” writes Miss O’Flynn, in a description of the
Bruceville meeting prepared for this Magazine from interviews
with those who took part in it. “The night was made hideous
with the rattle of tin pans and bells and the blare of
cow-horns. In spite of all the din and uproar of the younger
element, a few grown-up male radicals and partisan women sang
and cheered loudly for their favorites, who kept on with their
flow of political information. Lieutenant Carr stood in his
carriage, and addressed the crowd around him, while a local
politician acted as grand marshal of the night, and urged the
yelling Democratic legion to surge to the schoolhouse, where
Abraham Lincoln was speaking, and run the Whigs from their
headquarters. Old men now living, who were big boys then,
cannot remember any of the burning eloquence of
[pg 532] either speaker. As they now
laughingly express it: ‘We were far more interested in the
noise and fussing than the success of the speakers, and we
ran backward and forward from one camp to the other.’

Fortunately, the remaining speeches in Indiana were made
under more dignified conditions. One was delivered at Rockport;
another “from the door of a harness shop” near Gentryville,
Lincoln’s old home in Indiana; and a third at the “Old Carter
School” in the same neighborhood. At the delivery of the last
many of Lincoln’s old neighbors were present, and they still
tell of the cordial way in which he greeted them and of the
interest he showed in every familiar spot.

“‘I was a young fellow,’ Mr. Redmond Grigsby says, ‘and took
a long time to get to the speaking. When I got to the
out-skirts of the crowd, Mr. Lincoln saw me, and called out:
“If that isn’t Red Grigsby, then I’m a ghost.” He then came
through the crowd and met me. We shook hands and talked a
little. His speech was good, and was talked about for a long
while around in this section. The last words of his speech at
the Carter schoolhouse were: ‘My fellow-citizens, I may not
live to see it, but give us protective tariff, and we will have
the greatest country on the globe.'”

“After the speaking was over, Mr. Josiah Crawford invited
Abraham Lincoln and John W. Lamar to go home with him. As they
rode along, Mr. Lincoln talked over olden times. He asked about
a saw pit in which he had worked when a young boy. Mr. Crawford
said it was still in existence, and that he would drive around
near it. The three men, Lincoln, Crawford, and Lamar, went up
into the woods where the old pit was. It had partly fallen
down; the northwest corner, where Lincoln used to stand when
working, was propped up by a large forked stick against a tree.
Mr. Lincoln said: ‘This looks more natural than I thought it
would after so many years since I worked here.’ During the time
spent at Mr. Crawford’s home, Mr. Lincoln went around
inspecting everything.”⁶

So vivid were the memories which this visit to Gentryville
aroused, so deep were Lincoln’s emotions, that he even
attempted to express them in verse.

THE REV. PETER CARTWRIGHT.

The Rev. Peter Cartwright, the most famous itinerant
preacher of the pioneer era, was born in Amherst County,
Virginia, on James River, September 1, 1785. His father was a
Revolutionary soldier, and soon after peace was declared the
family moved to the wildest region of Kentucky. The migrating
party consisted of two hundred families, guarded by an armed
escort of one hundred men. Peter was a wild boy; but in his
sixteenth year he was persuaded by his mother to join the
Methodist Church. He at once displayed a wonderful talent for
exhorting, and at the age of seventeen he became a licensed
exhorter. A year later he became a regular travelling preacher.
His reputation soon spread over Kentucky and Ohio. He hated
slavery, and in 1823, to get into a free State, he and his wife
(he had married Frances Gaines in 1808) and their seven
children removed to Illinois. They settled in the Sangamon
valley, near Springfield. For the next forty years he travelled
over the State, most of the time on horseback, preaching the
gospel in his unique and rugged fashion. His district was at
first so large (extending from Kaskaskia to Galena) that he was
unable to traverse the whole of it in the same year. He was
elected to the legislature in 1828 and again in 1832; Lincoln,
in the latter year, being an opposing candidate. In 1846 he was
the Democratic nominee for Congress against Lincoln, and was
badly beaten. Peter Cartwright enjoyed, perhaps, a larger
personal acquaintance with the people of Illinois than any
other man ever had. His name was familiar in every household in
the West. Up to 1856 (he wrote an autobiography in that year)
he had baptized twelve thousand persons and preached five
hundred funeral sermons. His personality was quaint and
original. A native vigor of intellect largely overbalanced the
lack of education. He was a great wit, and often said startling
things. His religion sometimes bordered upon fanaticism. He was
fearless and aggressive, and was no respecter of persons. It
was not a rare thing for him to descend from the pulpit, and by
sheer physical force subdue a disorderly member of his
congregation. On one occasion, attending a dinner given by
Governor Edwards, he requested the governor to “say grace,”
observing that the ceremony was about to be dispensed with. The
wife of a Methodist brother objected to family worship; Peter
Cartwright shut her outdoors and kept her there until she
became convinced of her error. At Nashville, Tennessee, as he
was about to begin a sermon, a distinguished-looking stranger
entered the church; some one whispered to him that it was
Andrew Jackson; whereupon he at once blurted out, “Who is
General Jackson? If he don’t get his soul converted, God will
damn him as quick as he would a Guinea nigger!” Attending the
general conference in New York, he astonished the hotel clerk
by asking for an axe “to blaze his way” up the six flights of
stairs, so that he would not get lost on the return trip. He
died in 1872, after having been a member of the Methodist
Church for more than seventy-one years.—J. McCan
Davis.]

LINCOLN’S POSITION IN 1845 ON THE SLAVERY QUESTION.

In this campaign of 1844 the annexation of Texas was one of
the most hotly discussed questions. The Whigs opposed
annexation, but their ground was not
[pg 533] radical enough to suit the
growing body of Abolitionists in the country, who nominated
a third candidate, James G. Birney. Lincoln was obliged to
meet the arguments of the Abolitionists frequently in his
campaigning. In 1845, while working for Congress, he found
the abolition sentiment stronger than ever. Prominent among
the leaders of the third party in the State were two
brothers, Williamson and Madison Durley of Hennepin,
Illinois. They were outspoken advocates of their principles,
and even operated a station of the underground railroad.
Lincoln knew the Durleys, and, when visiting Hennepin to
speak, solicited their support. They opposed their liberty
principles. When Lincoln returned to Springfield he wrote
Williamson Durley a letter which has never before been
published,⁷
and which sets forth with admirable clearness his exact
position on the slavery question at that period. It must be
regarded, we think, as the most valuable document on the
question which we have up to this point in Lincoln’s
life.

SCHOOLHOUSE AT BRUCEVILLE, INDIANA, WHERE LINCOLN SPOKE FOR
CLAY IN 1844.

“When I saw you at home,” Lincoln began, “it was agreed
that I should write to you and your brother Madison. Until
I then saw you I was not aware of your being what is
generally called an Abolitionist, or, as you call yourself,
a Liberty man, though I well knew there were many such in
your county.
“I was glad to hear that you intended to attempt to
bring about, at the next election in Putnam, a union of the
Whigs proper and such of the Liberty men as are Whigs in
principle on all questions save only that of slavery. So
far as I can perceive, by such union neither party need
yield anything on the point in difference between
them. If the Whig abolitionists of New York had voted with
us last fall, Mr. Clay would now be President, Whig
principles in the ascendant, and Texas not annexed;
whereas, by the division, all that either had at stake in
the contest was lost. And, indeed, it was extremely
probable, beforehand, that such would be the result. As I
always understood, the Liberty men deprecated the
annexation of Texas extremely; and this being so, why they
should refuse to cast their votes [so] as to prevent it,
even to me seemed wonderful. What was their process of
reasoning, I can only judge from what a single one of them
[pg 534] told me. It was this:
‘We are not to do evil that good may
come.’ This general proposition is doubtless correct;
but did it apply? If by your votes you could have
prevented the extension, etc., of slavery, would
it not have been good, and not evil, so to
have used your votes, even though it involved the
casting of them for a slave-holder? By the fruit
the tree is to be known. An evil tree cannot
bring forth good fruit. If the fruit of electing
Mr. Clay would have been to prevent the extension of
slavery, could the act of electing have been evil?
“But I will not argue further. I perhaps ought to say
that individually I never was much interested in the Texas
question. I never could see much good to come of
annexation, inasmuch as they were already a free republican
people on our own model. On the other hand, I never could
very clearly see how the annexation would augment the evil
of slavery. It always seemed to me that slaves would be
taken there in about equal numbers, with or without
annexation. And if more were taken because of
annexation, still there would be just so many the fewer
left where they were taken from. It is possibly true, to
some extent, that, with annexation, some slaves may be sent
to Texas and continued in slavery that otherwise might have
been liberated. To whatever extent this may be true, I
think annexation an evil. I hold it to be a paramount duty
of us in the free States, due to the Union of the States,
and perhaps to liberty itself (paradox though it may seem),
to let the slavery of the other States alone; while, on the
other hand, I hold it to be equally clear that we should
never knowingly lend ourselves, directly or indirectly, to
prevent that slavery from dying a natural death—to
find new places for it to live in, when it can no longer
exist in the old. Of course I am not now considering what
would be our duty in cases of insurrection among the
slaves. To recur to the Texas question, I understand the
Liberty men to have viewed annexation as a much greater
evil than ever I did; and I would like to convince you, if
I could, that they could have prevented it, without
violation of principle, if they had chosen.
“I intend this letter for you and Madison together; and
if you and he or either shall think fit to drop me a line,
I shall be pleased.
“Yours with respect,
“A. LINCOLN.”

LINCOLN AND HARDIN.

As the time drew near for the convention of 1846 Lincoln
learned that Hardin proposed to contest the nomination with
him. Hardin certainly was free to do this. He had voluntarily
declined the nomination in 1844, because of the events of the
Pekin convention, but he had made no promise to do so in 1846.
Many of the Whigs of the district had not expected him to be a
candidate, however, arguing that Lincoln, because of his
relation to the party, should be given his turn. “We do not
entertain a doubt,” wrote the editor of the “Sangamo Journal,”
in February, 1846, “that if we could reverse the positions of
the two men, a very large portion of those who now support Mr.
Lincoln most warmly would support General Hardin quite as
warmly.” Although Lincoln had anticipated that Hardin would
enter the race, it made him anxious and a little
melancholy.

“Since I saw you last fall,” he wrote on January 7, 1846, to
his friend Dr. Robert Boal of Lacon, Illinois, in a letter
hitherto unpublished ⁸,
“I have often thought of writing you, as it was then
understood I would; but, on reflection, I have always found
that I had nothing new to tell you. All has happened as I
then told you I expected it would—Baker’s declining,
Hardin’s taking the track, and so on.

“If Hardin and I stood precisely equal—that is, if
neither of us had been to Congress, or if we both
had—it would not only accord with what I have always
done, for the sake of peace, to give way to him; and I expect I
should do it. That I can voluntarily postpone my
pretensions, when they are no more than equal to those to which
they are postponed, you have yourself seen. But to yield to
Hardin under present circumstances seems to me as nothing else
than yielding to one who would gladly sacrifice me altogether.
This I would rather not submit to. That Hardin is talented,
energetic, unusually generous and magnanimous, I have, before
this, affirmed to you, and do not now deny. You know that my
only argument is that ‘turn about is fair play.’ This he,
practically at least, denies.

“If it would not be taxing you too much, I wish you would
write me, telling the aspect of things in your county, or
rather your district; and also send the names of
[pg 535] some of your Whig neighbors
to whom I might, with propriety, write. Unless I can get
some one to do this, Hardin, with his old franking list,
will have the advantage of me. My reliance for a fair shake
(and I want nothing more) in your county is chiefly on you,
because of your position and standing, and because I am
acquainted with so few others. Let me hear from you
soon.”

HENRY CLAY.

From a carbon reproduction, by Sherman and McHugh of New
York City, of a daguerreotype in the collection of Peter
Gilsey, Esq., and here reproduced through his courtesy.

Lincoln followed the vibrations of feeling in the various
counties with extreme nicety, studying every individual whose
loyalty he suspected or whose vote was not
[pg 536] yet pledged. “Nathan
Dresser is here,” he wrote to his friend Bennett, on January
15, 1846, “and speaks as though the contest between Hardin
and me is to be doubtful in Menard County. I know he is
candid, and this alarms me some. I asked him to tell me the
names of the men that were going strong for Hardin; he said
Morris was about as strong as any. Now tell me, is Morris
going it openly? You remember you wrote me that he would be
neutral. Nathan also said that some man (who, he could not
remember) had said lately that Menard County was again to
decide the contest, and that made the contest very doubtful.
Do you know who that was?

“Don’t fail to write me instantly on receiving, telling me
all—particularly the names of those who are going strong
against me ⁹.”

In January, General Hardin suggested that, since he and Mr.
Lincoln were the only persons mentioned as candidates, there be
no convention, but the selection be left to the Whig voters of
the district. Lincoln refused.

“It seems to me,” he wrote Hardin, “that on reflection you
will see the fact of your having been in Congress has, in
various ways, so spread your name in the district as to give
you a decided advantage in such a stipulation. I appreciate
your desire to keep down excitement; and I promise you to ‘keep
cool’ under all circumstances…. I have always been in the
habit of acceding to almost any proposal that a friend would
make, and I am truly sorry that I cannot in this. I perhaps
ought to mention that some friends at different places are
endeavoring to secure the honor of the sitting of the
convention at their towns respectively, and I fear that they
would not feel much complimented if we shall make a bargain
that it should sit nowhere.”¹⁰

After General Hardin received this refusal he withdrew from
the contest, in a manly and generous letter which was warmly
approved by the Whigs of the district. Both men were so much
loved that a break between them would have been a disastrous
thing for the party. “We are truly glad that a contest which in
its nature was calculated to weaken the ties of friendship has
terminated amicably,” said the “Sangamo Journal.”

ROBERT C. WINTHROP, SPEAKER OF THE THIRTIETH CONGRESS.

Born in Boston in 1809, graduated at Harvard, and
studied law with Daniel Webster. Winthrop’s career as a
statesman began with his election to the Massachusetts
House of Representatives in 1834. He remained there until
elected to Congress in 1840, where he served ten years. In
1847 he was elected Speaker by the Whigs. In 1850 Winthrop
was appointed Senator to take Daniel Webster’s place, but
he was defeated in his efforts to be re-elected. Candidate
for governor in the same year, he was also defeated. He
retired from politics after this, though often offered
various candidacies. Winthrop was especially noted as an
orator.

The charge that Hardin, Baker, and Lincoln tried to ruin one
another in this contest for Congress has often been denied by
their associates, and never more emphatically than by Judge
Gillespie, an influential politician of the State. In an
unpublished letter Judge Gillespie says: “Hardin was one of the
most unflinching and unfaltering Whigs that ever drew the
breath of life. He was a mirror of chivalry, and so was Baker.
Lincoln had boundless respect for, and confidence in, them
both. He knew they would sacrifice themselves rather than do an
act that could savor in the slightest degree of meanness or
dishonor. Those men, Lincoln, Hardin, and Baker, were bosom
friends, to my certain knowledge…. Lincoln felt that they
could be actuated by nothing but the most honorable sentiments
towards him. For although they were rivals, they were all three
men of the most punctilious honor, and devoted friends. I knew
them intimately, and can say confidently that there never was a
particle of envy on the part of one towards the other. The
rivalry between them was of the most honorable and friendly
character, and when Hardin
[pg 537] and Baker were killed
(Hardin in Mexico, and Baker at Ball’s Bluff) Lincoln felt
that in the death of each he had lost a dear and true
friend ¹¹.”

COURTHOUSE AT PETERSBURG, MENARD COUNTY, WHERE LINCOLN WAS
NOMINATED FOR CONGRESS.

After Hardin’s withdrawal, Lincoln went about in his
characteristic way trying to soothe his and Hardin’s friends.
“Previous to General Hardin’s withdrawal,” he wrote one of his
correspondents,¹²
“some of his friends and some of mine had become a little
warm; and I felt … that for them now to meet face to face
and converse together was the best way to efface any remnant
of unpleasant feeling, if any such existed. I did not
suppose that General Hardin’s friends were in any greater
need of having their feelings corrected than mine were.”

In May, Lincoln was nominated. His Democratic opponent was
Peter Cartwright, the famous Methodist exhorter. Cartwright had
been in politics before, and made an energetic canvass. His
chief weapon against Lincoln was the old charges of deism and
aristocracy; but they failed of effect, and in August, Lincoln
was elected.

The contest over, sudden and characteristic disillusion
seized him. “Being elected to Congress, though I am grateful to
our friends for having done it, has not pleased me as much as I
expected,” he wrote Speed.

LINCOLN GOES TO WASHINGTON.

In November, 1847, Lincoln started for Washington. The city
in 1848 was little more than the outline of the Washington of
1896. The Capitol was without the present wings, dome, or
western terrace. The White House, the City Hall, the Treasury,
the Patent Office, and the Post-Office were the only public
buildings standing then which have not been rebuilt or
materially changed. The streets were unpaved, and their dust in
summer and mud in winter are celebrated in every record of the
period. The parks and circles were still unplanted. Near the
White House were a few fine old homes, and Capitol Hill was
partly built over. Although there were deplorable wastes
between these two points, the majority of the people lived in
this part of the city, on or near Pennsylvania
[pg 538] Avenue. The winter that
Lincoln was in Washington, Daniel Webster lived on Louisiana
Avenue, near Sixth Street; Speaker Winthrop and Thomas H.
Benton on C Street, near Third; John Quincy Adams and James
Buchanan, the latter then Secretary of State, on F Street,
between Thirteenth and Fourteenth. Many of the senators and
congressmen were in hotels, the leading ones of which were
Willard’s, Coleman’s, Gadsby’s, Brown’s, Young’s, Fuller’s,
and the United States. Stephen A. Douglas, who was in
Washington for his first term as senator, lived at
Willard’s. So inadequate were the hotel accommodations
during the sessions that visitors to the town were
frequently obliged to accept most uncomfortable makeshifts
for beds. Seward, visiting the city in 1847, tells of
sleeping on “a cot between two beds occupied by
strangers.”

The larger number of members lived in “messes,” a species of
boarding-club, over which the owner of the house occupied
usually presided. The “National Intelligencer” of the day is
sprinkled with announcements of persons “prepared to
accommodate a mess of members.” Lincoln went to live in one of
the best known of these clubs, Mrs. Sprigg’s, in “Duff Green’s
Row,” on Capitol Hill. This famous row has now entirely
disappeared, the ground on which it stood being occupied by the
new Congressional Library.

ROBERT SMITH, COLLEAGUE OF LINCOLN’S IN CONGRESS.

Born in New Hampshire in 1802; removed to Illinois in
1832. A member of the legislature from 1836 to 1840, and of
Congress from 1843 to 1849. During the war, paymaster in
the United States Army at St. Louis. Died at Alton in
1868.

At Mrs. Sprigg’s, Lincoln had as mess-mates several
Congressmen: A.R. McIlvaine, James Pollock, John Strohm, and
John Blanchard, all of Pennsylvania, Patrick Tompkins of
Mississippi, Joshua R. Giddings of Ohio, and Elisha Embree of
Indiana. Among his neighbors in messes on Capitol Hill were
Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia,
and Jefferson Davis of Mississippi. Only one of the members of
the mess at Mrs. Sprigg’s in the winter of 1847-1848 is now
living, Dr. S.C. Busey of Washington, D.C. He sat nearly
opposite Lincoln at the table.

“I soon learned to know and admire him,” says Dr.
Busey ¹³,
“for his simple and unostentatious manners,
kind-heartedness, and amusing jokes, anecdotes, and
witticisms. When about to tell an anecdote during a meal he
would lay down his knife and fork, place his elbows upon the
table, rest his face between his hands, and begin with the
words, ‘That reminds me,’ and proceed. Everybody prepared
for the explosions sure to follow. I recall with vivid
pleasure the scene of merriment at the dinner after his
first speech in the House of Representatives, occasioned by
the descriptions, by himself and others of the Congressional
mess, of the uproar in the House during its delivery.

“LONG JOHN” WENTWORTH, COLLEAGUE OF LINCOLN’S IN CONGRESS.

Wentworth removed to Chicago from New Hampshire in 1836,
where he published the “Chicago Democrat.” He was twice
Mayor of Chicago, and served in Congress from 1843 to 1851.
He was an ardent anti-slavery man. He died in 1888.

“Congressman Lincoln was always neatly but very plainly
dressed, very simple and approachable in manner, and
unpretentious. He attended to his business, going promptly to
the House and remaining till the session adjourned, and
appeared to be familiar with the progress of legislation.”

The town offered then little in the way of amusement. The
Adelphi Theatre was opened that winter for the first
[pg 539] time, and presented a
variety of mediocre plays. At the Olympia were “lively and
beautiful exhibitions of model artists.” Herz and Sivori,
the pianists, then touring in the United States, played
several times in the season; and there was a Chinese Museum.
Add the exhibitions of Brown’s paintings of the heroes of
Palo Alto, Resaca, Monterey, and Buena Vista, and of
Powers’s “Greek Slave,” the performances of Dr. Valentine,
“Delineator of Eccentricities,” a few lectures, and numerous
church socials, and you have about all there was in the way
of public entertainment in Washington in 1848. But of
dinners, receptions, and official gala affairs there were
many. Lincoln’s name appears frequently in the “National
Intelligencer” on committees to offer dinners to this or
that great man. He was, in the spring of 1849, one of the
managers of the inaugural ball given to Taylor. His simple,
sincere friendliness and his quaint humor won him soon a
sure, if quiet, social position. He was frequently invited
to Mr. Webster’s Saturday breakfasts, where his stories were
highly relished for their originality and drollery.

WILLIAM A. RICHARDSON, COLLEAGUE OF LINCOLN’S IN CONGRESS.

Richardson removed to Illinois from Kentucky about 1831.
He was a prominent Democratic politician, serving in the
state legislature and in Congress. He was a captain in the
Mexican War, Governor of the territory of Nebraska in 1858,
and in 1863 the successor of Douglas in the United States
Senate. He died in 1875.

STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS, COLLEAGUE OF LINCOLN’S IN CONGRESS.

Member of the United States House of Representatives
during the twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth Congresses. In
1846 Douglas was chosen Senator by the Democrats.

Dr. Busey recalls his popularity at one of the leading
places of amusement on Capitol Hill.

SIDNEY BREESE, COLLEAGUE OF LINCOLN’S IN CONGRESS.

Sidney Breese was born at Whitesboro, New York, July 15,
1800; graduated from Union College, New York, in 1818; and
at once removed to Illinois, where he was admitted to the
bar. He became active in the Democratic party, and served
in many important positions: United States District
Attorney, Judge of the Supreme Court, and United States
Senator. He died in 1878.

“Congressman Lincoln was very fond of bowling,” he says,
“and would frequently join others of the mess, or meet other
members in a match game, at the alley of James Casparis, which
was near the boarding-house. He was a very awkward bowler, but
played the game with great zest and spirit, solely for exercise
and amusement, and greatly to the enjoyment and entertainment
of the other players and bystanders by his criticisms and funny
illustrations. He accepted success and defeat with like good
nature and humor, and left the alley at the conclusion of the
game without a sorrow or disappointment. When it was known that
he was in the alley, there would assemble numbers of people to
witness the fun which was anticipated by those who knew of his
fund of anecdotes and jokes. When in the alley, surrounded by a
crowd of eager listeners, he indulged with great freedom in the
sport of narrative, some of which were very broad. His
witticisms seemed for the most part to be impromptu, but he
always told the anecdotes and jokes as if he wished to convey
the impression that he had heard them from some one; but they
appeared very [pg 540] many times as if they had
been made for the immediate occasion.”

Another place where he became at home and was much
appreciated was in the post-office at the Capitol. “During the
Christmas holidays,” says Ben: Perley Poore, “Mr. Lincoln found
his way into the small room used as the post-office of the
House, where a few jovial raconteurs used to meet almost
every morning, after the mail had been distributed into the
members’ boxes, to exchange such new stories as any of them
might have acquired since they had last met. After modestly
standing at the door for several days, Mr. Lincoln was reminded
of a story, and by New Year’s he was recognized as the champion
story-teller of the Capitol. His favorite seat was at the left
of the open fireplace, tilted back in his chair, with his long
legs reaching over to the chimney jamb. He never told a story
twice, but appeared to have an endless répertoire
of them always ready, like the successive charges in a magazine
gun, and always pertinently adapted to some passing event. It
was refreshing to us correspondents, compelled as we were to
listen to so much that was prosy and tedious, to hear this
bright specimen of Western genius tell his inimitable stories,
especially his reminiscences of the Black Hawk War.”

ORLANDO B. FICKLIN, COLLEAGUE OF LINCOLN’S IN CONGRESS.

Ficklin was a Kentuckian who settled in Illinois in
1830. He served four terms in the state legislature, four
terms in Congress, and filled many important posts in the
Democratic party, of which he was a leader. He died in
1885.

LINCOLN’S WORK IN THE THIRTIETH CONGRESS.

But Lincoln had gone to Washington for work, and he at once
interested himself in the Whig organization formed to elect the
officers of the House. There was only a small Whig majority,
and it took skill and energy to keep the offices in the party.
Lincoln’s share in achieving this result was generally
recognized. As late as 1860, twelve years after the struggle,
Robert C. Winthrop of Massachusetts, who was elected speaker,
said in a speech in Boston wherein he discussed Lincoln’s
nomination to the Presidency: “You will be sure that I remember
him with interest, if I may be allowed to remind you that he
helped to make me the speaker of the Thirtieth Congress, when
the vote was a very close and strongly contested vote.”

GENERAL JOHN A. MCCLERNAND, COLLEAGUE OF LINCOLN’S IN
CONGRESS.

Came to Illinois from Kentucky when a boy. Served in
Black Hawk War, and was one of the earliest editors of the
State. Served three terms in the state legislature, and in
Congress. Was active in the war, rising to the rank of
major-general. General McClernand is still living in
Springfield, Illinois.

A week after Congress organized, Lincoln wrote to
Springfield: “As you are all so anxious for me to distinguish
myself, I have concluded to do so before long;” and he did
it—but not exactly as his Springfield friends wished. The
United States were then at war with Mexico, a war that the
Whigs abhorred. Lincoln had used his influence against it; but,
hostilities declared, he had publicly affirmed that every loyal
man must stand by the army. Many of his friends, Hardin, Baker,
and Shields, among others, were at that moment in Mexico.
Lincoln had gone to Washington intending to say nothing in
opposition to the war. But the administration wished to secure
from the Whigs not only votes of supplies and men, but a
resolution declaring that the war was just and right. Lincoln,
with others of his party in Congress, refused his sanction,
voting a resolution that the war had been “unnecessarily and
unconstitutionally” begun. On December 22d he made his debut in
the House by the famous “Spot Resolutions,” a series of
searching questions so clearly put, so strong historically and
logically, that they drove
[pg 541] the administration step by
step from the “spot” where the war began, and showed that it
had been the aggressor in the conquest. In January Lincoln
followed up these resolutions with a speech in support of
his position. His action was much criticised in Illinois,
where the sound of the drum and the intoxication of victory
had completely turned attention from the moral side of the
question, and Lincoln found himself obliged to defend his
position with even his oldest friends.

THE CAPITOL AT WASHINGTON IN 1846.

The routine work assigned him in the Thirtieth Congress was
on the Committee on the Post-office and Post Roads. Several
reports were made by him from this committee. These reports,
with a speech on internal improvements, cover his published
work in the House up to July. Then he made a speech which was
at the time quoted far and wide.

In July Zachary Taylor had been nominated at Philadelphia
for President by the Whigs. Lincoln had been at the convention,
and went back to Washington full of enthusiasm. “In my opinion
we shall have a most overwhelming, glorious triumph,” he wrote
a friend. “One unmistakable sign is that all the odds and ends
are with us—Barnburners, Native Americans, Tyler men,
disappointed office-seekers, Locofocos, and the Lord knows
what. This is important, if in nothing else, in showing which
way the wind blows.”

In connection with Alexander H. Stephens, with whom he had
become a warm friend, Toombs, and Preston, Lincoln formed the
first Congressional Taylor Club, known as the “Young Indians.”
Campaigning had already begun on the floor of Congress, and the
members were daily making speeches for the various candidates.
On July 27th Lincoln made a speech for Taylor. It was a
boisterous election speech, full of merciless caricaturing, and
delivered with inimitable drollery. It kept the House in an
uproar, and was reported the country over by the Whig press.
The “Baltimore American,” in giving a synopsis of it, called it
the “crack speech of the day,” and said of Lincoln: “He is a
very able, acute, uncouth, honest, upright man, and a
tremendous wag, withal…. Mr. Lincoln’s manner was so
good-natured, and his style so peculiar, that he kept the House
in a continuous roar of merriment for the last half hour of his
speech. He would commence a point in his speech far up one of
the aisles, and keep on talking, gesticulating, and walking
until he would find himself, at the end of a paragraph, down in
the centre of the area in front of the clerk’s desk. He would
then go back and take another head, and work down
[pg 542] again. And so on, through
his capital speech.”

LINCOLN GOES TO NEW ENGLAND.—A NEW SPEECH.

This speech, as well as the respect Lincoln’s work in the
House had inspired among the leaders of the party, brought him
an invitation to deliver several campaign speeches in New
England at the close of Congress, and he went there early in
September. There was in New England, at that date, much strong
anti-slavery feeling. The Whigs claimed to be “Free Soilers” as
well as the party which appropriated that name, and Lincoln, in
the first speech he made, defined carefully his position on the
slavery question. This was at Worcester, Massachusetts, on
September 12th. The Whig State convention had met to nominate a
candidate for governor, and the most eminent Whigs of
Massachusetts were present. Curiously enough the meeting was
presided over by ex-Governor Levi Lincoln, a descendant, like
Abraham Lincoln, from the original Samuel of Hingham. There
were many brilliant speeches made; but if we are to trust the
reports of the day, Lincoln’s was the one which by its logic,
its clearness, and its humor, did most for the Whig cause.
“Gentlemen inform me,” says one Boston reporter, who came too
late for the exercises, “that it was one of the best speeches
ever heard in Worcester, and that several Whigs who had gone
off on the Free Soil fizzle have come back again to the Whig
ranks.”

A report was made and printed in the Boston “Advertiser,”
though it has hitherto been entirely overlooked by biographers
of Lincoln. A search made for this magazine through the files
of the Boston and Worcester papers of the year brought it to
light, and we reprint it here for the first time. It gives
concisely what Lincoln thought about the slavery question in
1848. The report reads:

“Mr. Lincoln has a very tall and thin figure, with an
intellectual face, showing a searching mind and a cool
judgment. He spoke in a clear and cool and very eloquent manner
for an hour and a half, carrying the audience with him in his
able arguments and brilliant illustrations—only
interrupted by warm and frequent applause. He began by
expressing a real feeling of modesty in addressing an audience
this ‘side of the mountains,’ a part of the country where, in
the opinion of the people of his section, everybody was
supposed to be instructed and wise. But he had devoted his
attention to the question of the coming Presidential election,
and was not unwilling to exchange with all whom he might the
ideas to which he had arrived. He then began to show the
fallacy of some of the arguments against General Taylor, making
his chief theme the fashionable statement of all those who
oppose him (the old Locofocos as well as the new), that he
has no principles, and that the Whig party have
abandoned their principles by adopting him as their candidate.
He maintained that General Taylor occupied a high and
unexceptionable Whig ground, and took for his first instance
and proof of this his statement in the Allison
letter—with regard to the Bank, Tariff, Rivers and
Harbors, etc.—that the will of the people should produce
its own results, without executive influence. The principle
that the people should do what—under the
Constitution—they please, is a Whig principle. All that,
General Taylor not only consents to, but appeals to the people
to judge and act for themselves. And this was no new doctrine
for Whigs. It was the ‘platform’ on which they had fought all
their battles, the resistance of executive influence, and the
principle of enabling the people to frame the government
according to their will. General Taylor consents to be the
candidate, and to assist the people to do what they think to be
their duty, and think to be best in their national affairs; but
because he don’t want to tell what we ought to do, he is
accused of having no principles. The Whigs have maintained for
years that neither the influence, the duress, nor the
prohibition of the executive should control the legitimately
expressed will of the people; and now that on that very ground
General Taylor says that he should use the power given him by
the people to do, to the best of his judgment, the will of the
people, he is accused of want of principle and of inconsistency
in position.

“Mr. Lincoln proceeded to examine the absurdity of an
attempt to make a platform or creed for a national party, to
all parts of which all must consent and agree,
when it was clearly the intention and the true philosophy of
our government, that in Congress all opinions and principles
should be represented, and that when the wisdom of all had been
compared and united, the will of the majority should be carried
out. On this ground he conceived (and the audience seemed to go
with him) that General Taylor held correct, sound republican
principles.

[pg 543]

LEVI LINCOLN, GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS FROM 1825 TO 1834.

From a photograph kindly loaned by Miss Frances M.
Lincoln of Worcester, Massachusetts, after a painting by
Chester Harding. Levi Lincoln was born in Worcester,
Massachusetts, in 1782, and died there in 1868. He was a
fourth cousin of Thomas Lincoln, father of the President,
being descended from the oldest son of Samuel Lincoln of
Hingham, Massachusetts, from whose fourth son, Mordecai,
Abraham Lincoln descended. Levi Lincoln was a graduate of
Harvard, and studied law, practising in Worcester. He
filled many important public positions in the State,
serving in the legislature, and as lieutenant-governor,
judge of the Supreme Court, and from 1825 to 1834 as
governor. He represented the Whigs in Congress from 1835 to
1841, and after the expiration of his term was made
collector of the port of Boston. Levi Lincoln was an active
member of several learned societies, and prominent in all
the public functions of his State. In 1848, when Abraham
Lincoln, then member of Congress, spoke in Worcester,
ex-Governor Lincoln presided.

“Mr. Lincoln then passed to the subject of slavery in the
States, saying that the people of Illinois agreed entirely with
the people of Massachusetts on this subject, except, perhaps,
that they did not keep so constantly thinking about it. All
agreed that slavery was an evil, but that we were not
responsible for it, and cannot affect it in States of this
Union where we do not live. But the question of the
extension of slavery to new territories of this country
is a part of our responsibility and care, and is under our
control. In opposition to this Mr. Lincoln believed that the
self-named ‘Free Soil’ party was far behind the Whigs. Both
parties opposed the extension. As he understood it, the new
party had no principle except this opposition. If their
platform held any other, it was in such a general way that it
was like the pair of pantaloons the Yankee peddler offered for
sale, ‘large enough for any man, small enough for any boy.’
They therefore had taken a position calculated to break down
their single important declared object. They were working for
the election of either General Cass or General Taylor. The
speaker then went on to show, clearly and eloquently, the
danger of extension of slavery likely to result from the
election of General Cass. To unite with those who annexed the
new territory, to prevent the extension of slavery in that
territory, seemed to him to be in the highest degree absurd and
ridiculous. Suppose these gentlemen succeed in electing Mr. Van
Buren, they had no specific means to prevent the
extension of slavery to New Mexico and California; and General
Taylor, he confidently believed, would not encourage it, and
would not prohibit its restriction. But if General Cass was
elected, he felt certain that the plans of farther extension of
territory would be encouraged, and those of the extension of
slavery would meet no check. The ‘Free Soil’ men, in claiming
that name, indirectly attempt a deception, by implying that
Whigs were not Free Soil men. In declaring that they
would ‘do their duty and leave the consequences to God,’ they
merely gave an excuse for taking a course they were not able to
maintain by a fair and full argument. To make this declaration
did not show what their duty was. If it did, we should have no
use for judgment; we might as well be made without intellect;
and when divine or human law does not clearly point out what
is our duty, we have no means of finding out what it is
but using our most intelligent judgment of
[pg 544] the consequences. If there
were divine law or human law for voting for Martin Van
Buren, or if a fair examination of the consequences and
first reasoning would show that voting for him would bring
about the ends they pretended to wish, then he would give up
the argument. But since there was no fixed law on the
subject, and since the whole probable result of their action
would be an assistance in electing General Cass, he must say
that they were behind the Whigs in their advocacy of the
freedom of the soil.

“Mr. Lincoln proceeded to rally the Buffalo convention for
forbearing to say anything—after all the previous
declarations of those members who were formerly Whigs—on
the subject of the Mexican War because the Van Burens had been
known to have supported it. He declared that of all the parties
asking the confidence of the country, this new one had
less of principle than any other.

“He wondered whether it was still the opinion of these Free
Soil gentlemen, as declared in the ‘whereas’ at Buffalo, that
the Whig and Democratic parties were both entirely dissolved
and absorbed into their own body. Had the Vermont
election given them any light? They had calculated on
making as great an impression in that State as in any part of
the Union, and there their attempts had been wholly
ineffectual. Their failure there was a greater success than
they would find in any other part of the Union.

“Mr. Lincoln went on to say that he honestly believed that,
if all those who wished to keep up the character of the Union,
who did not believe in enlarging our field, but in keeping our
fences where they are, and cultivating our present possessions,
making it a garden, improving the morals and education of the
people, devoting the administrations to this purpose—all
real Whigs, friends of good honest government—will unite,
the race was ours. He had opportunities of hearing from almost
every part of the Union, from reliable sources, and had not
heard of a county in which we had not received accessions from
other parties. If the true Whigs come forward and join these
new friends, they need not have a doubt. We had a candidate
whose personal character and principles he had already
described, whom he could not eulogize if he would. General
Taylor had been constantly, perseveringly, quietly standing up,
doing his duty, and asking no praise or reward for it.
He was and must be just the man to whom the interests,
principles, and prosperity of the country might be safely
intrusted. He had never failed in anything he had undertaken,
although many of his duties had been considered almost
impossible.

“Mr. Lincoln then went into a terse though rapid review of
the origin of the Mexican War, and the connection of the
administration and General Taylor with it, from which he
deduced a strong appeal to the Whigs present to do their duty
in the support of General Taylor, and closed with the warmest
aspirations for and confidence in a deserved success.

“At the close of this truly masterly and convincing speech,
the audience gave three enthusiastic cheers for Illinois, and
three more for the eloquent Whig member from that State.”

After the speech at Worcester, Lincoln spoke at Dorchester,
Dedham, Roxbury, and Chelsea, and on September 22d, in Tremont
Temple, Boston,¹⁴
following a splendid oration by Governor Seward. His speech
on this occasion was not reported, though the Boston papers
united in calling it “powerful and convincing.” His success
at Worcester and Boston was such that invitations came from
all over New England asking him to speak, and “The Atlas,”
to which many of these requests were sent, was obliged
finally to print the following note:

HON. ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
In answer to the many applications which we
daily receive from different parts of the State for this
gentleman to speak, we have to say that he left Boston on
Saturday morning on his way home to Illinois.

But Lincoln won something in New England of vastly deeper
importance than a reputation for making popular campaign
speeches. He for the first time caught a glimpse of the utter
irreconcilableness of the Northern conviction that slavery was
evil and unendurable, and the Southern claim that it was divine
and necessary; and he began here to realize that something must
be done. Listening to Seward’s speech in Tremont Temple, he
seems to have had a sudden insight into the truth, a quick
illumination; and that night, as the two men sat talking, he
said gravely to the great anti-slavery advocate:

“Governor Seward, I have been thinking about what you said
in your speech. I reckon you are right. We have got to deal
with this slavery question, and got to give much more attention
to it hereafter than we have been
doing.”

[pg 545]

[BEGUN IN THE APRIL NUMBER.]

A TALE OF BRAVE DEEDS AND PERILOUS
VENTURES

By Anthony Hope,

Author of “The Prisoner of Zenda,” “The Dolly Dialogues,”
etc.

SUMMARY OF CHAPTERS ALREADY PUBLISHED.

Lord Charles Wheatley, having taken leave
in London (in a parting not overcharged with emotion) of
Miss Beatrice Hipgrave, to whom he is to be married in a
year; of her mother, Mrs. Kennett Hipgrave. and of Mr.
Bennett Hamlyn, a rich young man who gives promise of
seeing that Miss Hipgrave does not wholly lack a man’s
attentions in the absence of her lover,—sets put to
enter possession of a remote Greek island, Neopalia, which
he has purchased of the hereditary lord, Stefanopoulos. But
on arriving he finds himself anything but welcome. He and
his companions,—namely, his cousin, Denny Swinton;
his factotum, Hogvardt; and his servant, Watkins,—are
at once locked up; and though released soon, it is with a
warning from the populace, headed by Vlacho, the innkeeper,
that if found on the island after six o’clock the next
morning, their lives will not be worth much. Toward
midnight, little disposed to sleep, and curious to look
about somewhat before leaving the island, they stroll
inland, and come by chance upon the manor-house, still and
apparently deserted. Curiosity drives them to enter. They
find Lord Stefanopoulos, whom Vlacho had reported to them
as recently dead of a fever, not dead, but on the point of
dying—from a dagger wound. And the wound, they learn
from his own lips, was given him by his nephew,
Constantine, in a tumult that arose a few hours before when
the people came up to protest against the sale of the
island, and to persuade the lord to send the strangers
away. Constantine, it further appears, is making them all
their trouble, having come to the island just ahead of them
to that end, after learning their plans by overhearing
Wheatley talking in a London restaurant. In the darkness,
on their way up, they have met a man and a woman going
toward the village. The man, by his voice, they knew to be
Constantine. The woman, they now learn, was the Lady
Euphrosyne, cousin of Constantine and heiress to the
island. From talk overheard between her and Constantine,
she had seemed to be, while desirous of their departure,
also anxious to spare them harm. In full possession of the
house, they decide to stand siege, though scant of
provisions and ammunition, and armed only with their own
revolvers and a rifle left behind by Constantine. Soon
Stefanopoulos dies, and by an old serving-woman they send
warning to Constantine that he shall be brought to justice
for his crime. Thus passes the night. Next morning
Wheatley’s attention is engaged by a woman studying them
through a field-glass from before a small bungalow, higher
up the mountain. Then Vlacho, the innkeeper, presents
himself for a parley, of which nothing comes but the
disclosure that Constantine is pledged to marry Euphrosyne,
while already secretly married to another woman. The
evening falls with the “death-chant” sounding in the
air—a chant made by Alexander the Bard when an
earlier Lord Stefanopoulos was killed by the people for
having tried to sell the island. Lord Wheatley himself
tells the story.

CHAPTER IV.

A RAID AND A RAIDER.

It was between eight and nine o’clock when the first of the
enemy appeared on the road, in the persons of two smart fellows
in gleaming kilts and braided jackets. It was no more than just
dusk, and I saw that they were strangers to me. One was tall
and broad, the other shorter, and of very slight build. They
came on towards us confidently enough. I was looking over
Denny’s shoulder; he held Constantine’s rifle, and I knew that
he was impatient to try it. But inasmuch as might was certainly
not on our side, I was determined that right should abide with
us, and was resolute not to begin hostilities. Constantine had
at least one powerful motive for wishing our destruction; I
would not furnish him with any plausible excuse for indulging
his desire. So we stood, Denny and I at one window, Hogvardt
and Watkins at the other, and watched the approaching figures.
No more appeared; the main body did not show itself, and the
sound of the fierce chant had suddenly died away. But all at
once a third man appeared, running rapidly after the first two.
He caught the shorter by the arm, and seemed to argue or
expostulate with him. For a while the three stood thus talking;
then I saw the last comer make a gesture of protest, and they
all came on
together.

[pg 546]

“Push the barrel of that rifle a little farther out,” said I
to Denny, “It may be useful to them to know it’s there.”

Denny obeyed. The result was a sudden pause in our friends’
advance; but they were near enough now for me to distinguish
the last comer, and I discerned in him, although he wore the
native costume, and had discarded his tweed suit, Constantine
Stefanopoulos himself.

“Here’s an exercise of self-control,” I groaned, laying a
detaining hand on Denny’s shoulder.

As I spoke, Constantine put a whistle to his lips and blew
loudly. The blast was followed by the appearance of five more
fellows. In three of them I recognized old
acquaintances—Vlacho, Demetri, and Spiro. These three all
carried guns; and the whole eight came forward again, till they
were within a hundred yards of us. There they halted, and, with
a sudden, swift movement, three barrels were levelled at the
window where Denny and I were looking out. Well, we ducked.
There is no use in denying it. For we thought that the
fusillade had really begun. Yet no shot followed, and, after an
instant, holding Denny down, I peered out cautiously myself.
The three stood motionless, their aim full on us. The other
five were advancing cautiously, well under the shelter of the
rock, two on one side of the road and three on the other. The
slim, boyish fellow was with Constantine, on our right hand; a
moment later the other three dashed across the road and joined
them. Suddenly what military men call “the objective,” the aim
of these manoeuvres, flashed across me. It was simple almost to
ludicrousness; yet it was very serious, for it showed a
reasoned plan of campaign, with which we were very ill prepared
to cope. While the three held us in check, the five were going
to carry off our cows. And without our cows we should soon be
hard put to it for food. For the cows had formed in our plans a
most important pièce de résistance.

“This won’t do,” said I. “They’re after the cows.” And I
took the rifle from Denny’s hand, cautioning him not to show
his face at the window. Then I stood in the shelter of the
wall, so that I could not be hit by the three, and levelled the
rifle, not at any human enemies, but at the unoffending
cows.

“A dead cow,” I remarked, “is a great deal harder to move
than a live one.”

The five had now come quite near the pen of rude hurdles in
which the cows were. As I spoke, Constantine appeared to give
some order; and while he and the boy stood looking on,
Constantine leaning on his gun, the boy’s hand resting with
jaunty elegance on the handle of the knife in his girdle, the
others leaped over the hurdles. Crack, went the rifle! A cow
fell! I reloaded hastily. Crack! And the second cow fell. It
was very fair shooting in such a bad light, for I hit both
mortally; and my skill was rewarded by a shout of anger from
the robbers (for robbers they were; I had bought the live
stock).

“Carry them off now!” I cried, carelessly showing myself at
the window. But I did not stay there long, for three shots rang
out, and the bullets pattered on the masonry above me. Luckily
the covering party had aimed a trifle too high.

“No more milk, my lord,” observed Watkins, in a regretful
tone. He had seen the catastrophe from the other window.

The besiegers were checked. They leaped out of the pen with
alacrity. I suppose they realized that they were exposed to my
fire, while at that particular angle I was protected from the
attack of their friends. They withdrew to the middle of the
road, selecting a spot at which I could not take aim without
showing myself at the window. I dared not look out to see what
they were doing. But presently Hogvardt risked a glance, and
called out that they were in retreat, and had rejoined the
three, and that the whole body stood together in consultation,
and were no longer covering my window. So I looked out, and saw
the boy standing in an easy, graceful attitude, while
Constantine and Vlacho talked a little apart. It was growing
considerably darker now, and the figures became dim and
indistinct.

“I think the fun’s over for to-night,” said I, glad to have
it over so cheaply.

Indeed, what I said seemed to be true, for the next moment
the group turned, and began to retreat along the road, moving
briskly out of our sight. We were left in the thick gloom of a
moonless evening and the peaceful silence of still air.

“They’ll come back and fetch the cows,” said Hogvardt.
“Could we not drag one in, my lord, and put it where the goat
is, behind the house?”

I approved of this suggestion, and Watkins having found a
rope, I armed Denny with the rifle, took from the wall a large,
keen hunting-knife, opened the door, and stole out, accompanied
by Hogvardt and Watkins, who carried their revolvers. We
reached the pen without interruption,
[pg 547] tied our rope firmly round
the horns of one of the dead beasts, and set to work to drag
it along. It was no child’s play, and our progress was very
slow; but the carcass moved, and I gave a shout of
encouragement as we got it down to the smoother ground of
the road and hauled it along with a will. Alas! that shout
was a great indiscretion. I had been too hasty in assuming
that our enemy was quite gone. We heard suddenly the rush of
feet; shots whistled over our heads; we had but just time to
drop the rope and turn round when Denny’s rifle rang out,
and then—somebody was at us! I really do not know
exactly how many there were. I had two at me, but by great
good luck I drove my big knife into one fellow’s arm at the
first hazard, and I think that was enough for him. In my
other assailant I recognized Vlacho. The fat innkeeper had
got rid of his gun, and had a knife much like the one I
carried myself. I knew him more by his voice, as he cried
fiercely, “Come on,” than by his appearance, for the
darkness was thick now. Parrying his fierce thrusts—he
was very active for so stout a man—I called out to our
people to fall back as quickly as they could, for I did not
know but that we might be taken in the rear also.

But discipline is hard to maintain in such a force as
mine.

“Bosh!” cried Denny’s voice.

“Mein Gott, no!” exclaimed Hogvardt.

Watkins said nothing, but for once in his life he also
disobeyed me.

Well, if they would not do as I said, I must do as they did.
The line advanced—the whole line, as at Waterloo. We
pressed them hard. I heard a revolver fired and a cry follow.
Fat Vlacho slackened in his attack, wavered, halted, turned and
ran. A shout of triumph from Denny told me that the battle was
going well there. Fired with victory, I set myself for a chase.
But, alas! my pride was checked. Before I had gone two yards I
fell headlong over the body for which we had been fighting (as
Greeks and Trojans fought for the body of Hector), and came to
an abrupt stop, sprawling most ignominiously over the cow’s
broad back.

“Stop! stop!” I cried. “Wait a bit, Denny. I’m down over
this infernal cow!” It was an inglorious ending to the exploits
of the evening.

Prudence, or my cry, stopped them. The enemy were in full
retreat; their steps pattered quick along the rocky road, and
Denny observed in a tone of immense satisfaction:

“I think that’s our trick, Charlie,”

“Are you hurt?” I asked, scrambling to my feet.

Watkins owned to a crack from the stock of a gun on his
right shoulder; Hogvardt to a graze of a knife on the arm.
Denny was unhurt. We had reason to suppose that we had left our
mark on at least two of the enemy. For so great a victory it
was cheaply bought.

“We’ll just drag in the cow,” said I—I like to stick
to my point—”and then we might see if there’s anything in
the cellar.”

We did drag in the cow; we dragged it through the house, and
finally bestowed it in the compound behind. Hogvardt suggested
that we should fetch the other also; but I had no mind for
another surprise, which might not end so happily, and I decided
to run the risk of leaving the second animal till the morning.
So Watkins went off to seek for some wine, for which we all
felt very ready, and I went to the door with the intention of
securing it. But before I did so I stood for a moment on the
step, looking out into the night, and snuffing the sweet,
clear, pure air. It was in quiet moments like this, not in the
tumult that had just passed, that I had pictured my beautiful
island; and the love of it came on me now, and made me swear
that these fellows and their arch ruffian Constantine should
not drive me out of it without some more and more serious blows
than had been struck that night. If I could get away safely,
and return with enough force to keep them quiet, I would pursue
that course. If not—well, I believe I had very
blood-thirsty thoughts in my mind, as even the most peaceable
man will have, when he has been served as I had and his friends
roughly handled on his account.

Having registered these determinations, I was about to
proceed with my task of securing the door, when I heard a sound
that startled me. There was nothing hostile or alarming about
it, rather it was pathetic and appealing; and, in spite of my
previous truculence of mind, it caused me to exclaim: “Hullo,
is that one of those poor beggars mauled?” For the sound was a
slight, painful sigh, as of somebody in suffering, and it
seemed to come from out of the darkness about a dozen yards
ahead of me. My first impulse was to go straight to the spot;
but I had begun by now to doubt whether the Neopalians were not
unsophisticated in quite as peculiar a sense as that in which
they were [pg 548] good-hearted; so I called
Denny and Hogvardt, bidding the latter to bring his lantern
with him. Thus protected, I stepped out of the door, in the
direction from which the sigh had come. Apparently we were
to crown our victory by the capture of a wounded enemy.

An exclamation from Hogvardt told me that he, aided by the
lantern, had come upon the quarry; but Hogvardt spoke in
disgust rather than triumph.

“Oh, it’s only the little one!” said he. “What’s wrong with
him, I wonder.” He stooped down, and examined the prostrate
form. “By heaven, I believe he’s not touched! Yes, there’s a
bump on his forehead; but not big enough for any of us to have
given it.”

By this time Denny and I were with him, and we looked down
on the boy’s pale face, which seemed almost death-like in the
glare of the lantern. The bump was not such a very small one,
but it would not have been made by any of our weapons, for the
flesh was not cut. A moment’s further inspection showed that it
must be the result of a fall on the hard, rocky road.

“Perhaps he tripped on the cord, as you did on the cow;”
suggested Denny, with a grin.

It seemed likely enough, but I gave very little thought to
it, for I was busy studying the boy’s face.

“No doubt,” said Hogvardt, “he fell in running away, and was
stunned; and they did not notice it in the dark, or were afraid
to stop. But they’ll be back, my lord, and soon.”

“Carry him inside,” said I. “It won’t hurt us to have a
hostage.”

Denny lifted the lad in his long arms—Denny was a
tall, powerful fellow—and strode off with him. I
followed, wondering who it was that we had got hold of; for the
boy was strikingly handsome. I was last in, and barred the
door. Denny had set our prisoner down in an armchair, where he
sat now, conscious again, but still with a dazed look in his
large, dark eyes, as he looked from me to the rest, and back
again to me, finally fixing a long glance on my face.

“Well, young man,” said I, “you’ve begun this sort of thing
early. Lifting cattle and taking murder in the day’s work is
pretty good for a youngster like you. Who are you?”

“Where am I?” he cried, in that blurred, indistinct kind of
voice that comes with mental bewilderment.

“You’re in my house,” said I, “and the rest of your infernal
gang’s outside, and going to stay there. So you must make the
best of it.”

The boy turned his head away and closed his eyes. Suddenly I
snatched the lantern from Hogvardt. But I paused before I
brought it close to the boy’s face, as I had meant to do, and I
said:

“You fellows go and get something to eat and a snooze, if
you like. I’ll look after this youngster. I’ll call you if
anything happens outside.”

After a few unselfish protests, they did as I bade them. I
was left alone in the hall with the prisoner, and merry voices
from the kitchen told me that the battle was being fought again
over the wine. I set the lantern close to the boy’s face.

“H’m!” said I, after a prolonged scrutiny. Then I sat down
on the table, and began to hum softly that wretched chant of
One-eyed Alexander’s, which had a terrible trick of sticking in
a man’s head.

For a few minutes I hummed. The lad shivered, stirred
uneasily, and opened his eyes. I had never seen such eyes, and
I could not conscientiously except even Beatrice Hipgrave’s,
which were in their way quite fine. I hummed away, and the boy
said, still in a dreamy voice, but with an imploring gesture of
his hand:

“Ah, no, not that! Not that, Constantine!”

“He’s a tender-hearted youth,” said I; and I was smiling
now. The whole episode was singularly unusual and
interesting.

The boy’s eyes were on mine again. I met his glance full and
square. Then I poured out some water, and gave it to him. He
took it with trembling hand—the hand did not escape my
notice—and drank it eagerly, setting the glass down with
a sigh.

“I am Lord Wheatley,” said I, nodding to him. “You came to
steal my cattle, and murder me, if it happened to be
convenient, you know.”

The boy flashed out at me in a minute:

“I didn’t. I thought you’d surrender, if we got the cattle
away.”

“You thought,” said I, scornfully. “I suppose you did as you
were bid.”

“No; I told Constantine that they weren’t to—” The boy
stopped short, looked round him, and said in a questioning
voice: “Where are all the rest of my people?”

“The rest of your people,” said I, “have run away. You are
in my hands. I can do just as I please with
you.”

[pg 549]

His lips set in an obstinate curve, but he made no answer. I
went on as sternly as I could: “And when I think of what I saw
here yesterday—of that poor old man stabbed by your
blood-thirsty crew—”

“It was an accident,” he cried, sharply; the voice had lost
its dreaminess, and sounded clear now.

“We’ll see about that when we get Constantine and Vlacho
before a judge,” I retorted grimly. “Anyhow, he was foully
stabbed in his own house, for doing what he had a perfect right
to do.”

“He had no right to sell the island,” cried the boy; and he
rose for a moment to his feet, with a proud air, only to sink
back again into the chair and stretch out his hand for water
again.

Now at this moment Denny, refreshed by meat and drink, and
in the highest of spirits, bounded into the hall.

“How’s the prisoner?” he cried.

“Oh, he’s all right. There’s nothing the matter with him,” I
said; and, as I spoke, I moved the lantern, so that the boy’s
face and figure were again in shadow.

“That’s all right,” observed Denny, cheerfully. “Because I
thought, Charlie, we might get a little information out of
him.”

“Perhaps he won’t speak,” I suggested, casting a glance at
the captive, who sat now motionless in the chair.

“Oh, I think he will,” said Denny, confidently; and I
observed for the first time that he held a very substantial
looking whip in his hand; he must have found it in the kitchen.
“We’ll give the young ruffian a taste of this, if he’s
obstinate,” said Denny; and I cannot say that his tone
witnessed any great desire that the boy should prove at once
compliant.

I shifted my lantern so that I could see the proud young
face while Denny could not. The boy’s eyes met mine
defiantly.

“You hear what he proposes?” I asked. “Will you tell us all
we want to know?”

The boy made no answer, but I saw trouble in his face, and
his eyes did not meet mine so boldly now.

“We’ll soon find a tongue for him,” said Denny, in cheerful
barbarity; “upon my word, he richly deserves a thrashing. Say
the word, Charlie.”

“We haven’t asked him anything yet,” said I.

“Oh, I’ll ask him something. Look here, who was the fellow
with you and Vlacho?”

The boy was silent; defiance and fear struggled in the dark
eyes.

“You see, he’s an obstinate beggar,” said Denny, as though
he had observed all necessary forms and could now get to
business; and he drew the lash of the whip through his fingers.
I am afraid Denny was rather looking forward to executing
justice with his own hands.

The boy rose again, and stood facing that heartless young
ruffian, Denny—it was thus that I thought of Denny at the
moment—then once again he sank back into his seat, and
covered his face with his hands.

“Well, I wouldn’t go out killing if I hadn’t more pluck than
that,” said Denny, scornfully. “You’re not fit for the trade,
my lad.”

The boy had no retort. His face was buried in those slim
hands of his. For a moment he was quite still. Then he moved a
little; it was a movement that spoke of helpless pain, and I
heard something very like a stifled sob.

“Just leave us alone a little, Denny,” said I. “He may tell
me what he won’t tell you.”

“Are you going to let him off?” demanded Denny,
suspiciously. “You never can be stiff in the back,
Charlie.”

“I must see if he won’t speak to me first,” I pleaded,
meekly.

“But if he won’t?” insisted Denny.

“If he won’t,” said I, “and you still wish it, you may do
what you like.”

Denny sheered off to the kitchen, with an air that did not
seek to conceal his opinion of my foolish tender-heartedness.
Again I was alone with the boy.

“My friend is right,” said I, gravely. “You are not fit for
the trade. How came you to be in it?”

My question brought a new look, as the boy’s hands dropped
from his face.

“How came you,” said I, “who ought to restrain these
rascals, to be at their head? How came you, who ought to shun
the society of men like Constantine Stefanopoulos and his tool
Vlacho, to be working with them?”

I got no answer; only a frightened look appealed to me in
the white glare of Hogvardt’s lantern. I came a step nearer,
and leaned forward to ask my next question:

“Who are you? What’s your name?”

“My name—my name?” stammered the prisoner. “I won’t
tell my name.”

“You’ll tell me nothing? You heard what I promised my
friend?”

“Yes, I heard,” said the lad, with a face utterly pale, but
with eyes that were [pg 550] again set in fierce
determination. I laughed a low laugh.

“I believe you are fit for the trade, after all,” said I;
and I looked with mingled distaste and admiration on him. But I
had my last weapon still, my last question.

I turned the lantern full on his face; I leaned forward
again, and said, in distinct, low tones—and the question
sounded an absurd one to be spoken in such an impressive
way:

“Do you generally wear clothes like these?”

I had got home with that question. The pallor vanished; the
haughty eyes sank. I saw long, drooping lashes and a burning
flush; and the boy’s face once again sought his hands.

At the moment I heard chairs pushed back in the kitchen. In
came Hogvardt, with an amused smile on his broad face; in came
Watkins, with his impassive acquiescence in anything that his
lordship might order; in came Master Denny, brandishing his
whip in jovial relentlessness.

“Well, has he told you anything?” cried Denny. It was plain
that he hoped for the answer “No.”

“I have asked him half a dozen questions,” said I, “and he
has not answered one.”

“All right,” said Denny, with wonderful emphasis.

Had I been wrong to extort this much punishment for my most
inhospitable reception? Sometimes now I think that it was
cruel. In that night much had occurred to breed viciousness in
a man of the most equable temper. But the thing had now gone to
the extreme limit to which it could; and I said to Denny:

“It’s a gross case of obstinacy, of course, Denny; but I
don’t see very well how we can horsewhip the lady!”

A sudden, astounded cry, “The lady!” rang from three pairs
of lips; the lady herself dropped her head on the table, and
fenced her face round about with her protecting arms.

“You see,” said I, “this lad is the Lady Euphrosyne.”

For who else could it be that would give orders to
Constantine Stefanopoulos, and ask where “my people” were? Who
else, I also asked myself, save the daughter of the noble
house, would boast the air, the hands, the face, that graced
our young prisoner? In all certainty it was Lady
Euphrosyne.

CHAPTER V.

THE COTTAGE ON THE HILL.

The effect of my remark was curious. Denny turned scarlet,
and flung his whip down on the table; the others stood for a
moment motionless, then turned tail and slunk back to the
kitchen. Euphrosyne’s face remained invisible. However, I felt
quite at my ease. I had a triumphant conviction of the
importance of my capture, and a determination that no misplaced
chivalry should rob me of it. Politeness is, no doubt, a duty,
but only a relative duty; and, in plain English, men’s lives
were at stake here. Therefore I did not make my best bow, fling
open the door, and tell the lady that she was free to go
whither she would; but I said to her in a dry, severe
voice:

“You had better go, madam, to that room you usually occupy
here, while we consider what to do with you. You know where the
room is; I don’t.”

She raised her head, and said in tones that sounded almost
eager:

“My own room? May I go there?”

“Certainly,” said I. “I shall accompany you as far as the
door; and when you’ve gone in, I shall lock the door.”

This programme was duly carried out, Euphrosyne not favoring
me with a word during its progress. Then I returned to the
hall, and said to Denny:

“Rather a trump card, isn’t she?”

“Yes, but they’ll be back pretty soon to look for her, I
expect.”

Denny accompanied this remark with such a yawn that I
suggested he should go to bed.

“And aren’t you going to bed?” he asked.

“I’ll take first watch,” said I. “It’s nearly twelve now.
I’ll wake you at two, and you can wake Hogvardt at five, and
Watkins will be fit and well at breakfast time, and can give us
roast cow.”

Thus I was left alone again; and I sat, reviewing the
position. Would the islanders fight for their lady? Or would
they let us go? They would only let us go, I felt sure, if
Constantine were outvoted, for he could not afford to see me
leave Neopalia with a head on my shoulders and a tongue in my
mouth. Then they probably would fight. Well, I calculated that
as long as our provisions held out, we could not be stormed;
our stone fortress was too strong. But we could be beleaguered
and starved out, and [pg 551] should be very soon, unless
the lady’s influence could help us. I had just arrived at
the conclusion that I would talk very seriously to her in
the morning, when I heard a remarkable sound.

“There never was such a place for queer noises,” said I,
pricking up my ears.

The noise seemed to come from directly above my head; it
sounded as though a light, stealthy tread were passing over the
roof of the hall in which I sat. But the only person in the
house besides ourselves was the prisoner; she had been securely
locked in her room; how then could she be on the top of the
hall? For her room was in the turret over the door. Yet the
steps crept over my head, going toward the kitchen. I snatched
up my revolver, and trod with a stealth equal to the stealth of
the steps overhead, across the hall and into the kitchen
beyond. My three companions slept the sleep of tired men, but I
ruthlessly roused Denny.

“Go on guard in the hall,” said I; “I want to have a look
round.”

Denny was sleepy, but obedient. I saw him start for the
hall, and went on till I reached the compound behind the house.
Here I stood, deep in the shadow of the wall. The steps were
now over my head again. I glanced up cautiously, and above me,
on the roof, three yards to the right, I saw the flutter of a
white kilt.

“There are more ways out of this house than I know,” I
thought to myself.

I heard next a noise as though of something being pushed
cautiously along the flat roof. Then there protruded from
between two of the battlements the end of a ladder! I crouched
closer under the wall. The light flight of steps was let down;
it reached the ground; the kilted figure stepped on it and
began to descend. Here was the Lady Euphrosyne again! Her
eagerness to go to her own room was fully explained; there was
a way from it across the house and out on to the roof of the
kitchen; the ladder showed that the way was kept in use. I
stood still. She reached the ground, and as her foot touched it
she gave the softest possible little laugh of gleeful triumph.
A pretty little laugh it was. Then she stepped briskly across
the compound, till she reached the rocks on the other side. I
crept forward after her, for I was afraid of losing sight of
her in the darkness, and yet did not desire to arrest her
progress till I saw where she was going. On she went, skirting
the perpendicular drop of rock, I was behind her now. At last
she came to the angle formed by the rock running north and that
which, turning to the east, enclosed the compound.

“How’s she going to get up?” I asked myself.

But up she began to go—her right foot on the north
rock, her left foot on the east. She ascended with such
confidence that it was evident that steps were ready for her
feet. She gained the top. I began to mount in the same fashion,
finding steps cut in the face of the cliff. I reached the top,
and I saw her standing still, ten yards ahead of me. She went
on. I followed. She stopped, looked, saw me, screamed. I rushed
on her. Her arms dealt a blow at me—I caught her hand,
and in her hand there was a little dagger. Seizing her other
hand, I held her fast.

“Where are you going?” I asked in a matter-of-fact tone,
taking no notice of her hasty resort to the dagger. No doubt
that was purely a national trait.

Seeing that she was caught, she made no attempt to
struggle.

“I was trying to escape,” she said. “Did you hear me?”

“Yes, I heard you. Where were you going?”

“Why should I tell you? Shall you threaten me with the whip
again?”

I loosed her hands. She gave a sudden glance up the hill.
She seemed to measure the distance.

“Why do you want to go to the top of the hill?” I asked.
“Have you friends there?”

She denied the suggestion, as I thought she would.

“No, I have not. But anywhere is better than with you.”

“Yet there is some one in the cottage up there,” I observed.
“It belongs to Constantine, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, it does,” she answered, defiantly. “Dare you go and
seek him there? Or dare you only skulk behind the walls of the
house?”

“As long as we are only four against a hundred I dare only
skulk,” I answered. She did not annoy me at all by her taunts.
“But do you think he’s there?”

“There! No, he’s in the town—and he’ll come from the
town to kill you to-morrow.”

“There is nobody there?” I pursued.

“Nobody,” she answered.

“You’re wrong,” said I. “I saw somebody there to-day.”

“Oh, a peasant, perhaps.”

“Well, the dress didn’t look like it. Do you really want to
go there now?”

“Haven’t you mocked me enough?” she burst out. “Take me back
to my prison.”

[pg 552]

Her tragedy air was quite delightful. But I had been leading
her up to something which I thought she ought to know.

“There’s a woman in that cottage,” said I. “Not a
peasant—a woman in some dark-colored dress, who uses
opera glasses.”

I saw her draw back with a start of surprise.

“It’s false,” she cried. “There’s no one there. Constantine
told me no one went there except Vlacho, and sometimes
Demetri.”

“Do you believe all Constantine tells you?” I asked.

“Why should I not? He’s my cousin and—”

“And your suitor?”

She flung her head back proudly.

“I have no shame in that,” she answered.

“You would accept his offer?”

“Since you ask, I will answer. Yes; I have promised my uncle
I would.”

“Good God!” said I, for I was very sorry for her.

The emphasis of my exclamation seemed to startle her afresh.
I felt her glance rest on me in puzzled questioning.

“Did Constantine let you see the old woman whom I sent to
him?” I demanded.

“No,” she murmured. “He told me what she said.”

“That I told him he was his uncle’s murderer?”

“Did you tell her to say that?” she asked, with a sudden
inclination of her body toward me.

“I did. Did he give you the message?”

She made no answer. I pressed my advantage.

“On my honor I saw what I have told you at the cottage,” I
said. “I know what it means no more than you do. But before I
came here I saw Constantine in London. And there I heard a lady
say she would come with him. Did any lady come with him?”

“Are you mad?” she asked; but I could hear her breathing
quickly, and I knew that her scorn was assumed. I drew suddenly
away from her, and put my hands behind my back.

“Go to the cottage if you like,” said I. “But I won’t answer
for what you’ll find there.”

“You set me free?” she cried with eagerness.

“Free to go to the cottage. You must promise to come back.
Or I’ll go to the cottage, if you’ll promise to go back to your
room and wait till I return.”

She hesitated, looking again toward where the cottage was;
but I had stirred suspicion and disquietude in her. She dared
not face what she might find in the cottage.

“I’ll go back and wait for you,” she said. “If I went to the
cottage and—and all was well, I’m afraid I shouldn’t come
back.”

The tone sounded softer. I would have sworn a smile or a
half smile accompanied the words, but it was too dark to be
sure; and when I leaned forward to look, Euphrosyne drew
back.

“Then you mustn’t go,” said I decisively, “I can’t afford to
lose you,”

“But if you let me go, I could let you go,” she cried.

“Could you? Without asking Constantine? Besides, it’s my
island, you see.”

“It’s not,” she cried, with a stamp of her foot. And without
more she walked straight by me and disappeared over the ledge
of rock. Two minutes later I saw her figure defined against the
sky, a black shadow on the deep gray ground. Then she
disappeared. I set my face straight for the cottage under the
summit of the hill. I knew that I had only to go straight, and
I must come to the little plateau, scooped out of the hillside,
on which the cottage stood. I found not a path, but a sort of
rough track that led in the desired direction, and along this I
made my way very cautiously. At one point it was joined at
right angles by another track, from the side of the hill where
the main road across the island lay. This, of course, afforded
an approach to the cottage without passing by my house. In
twenty minutes the cottage loomed, a blurred mass, before me. I
fell on my knees and peered at it.

There was a light in one of the windows; I crawled nearer.
Now I was on the plateau; a moment later I was under the wooden
veranda and beneath the window where the light glowed. My hand
was on my revolver. If Constantine or Vlacho caught me here,
neither side would be able to stand on trifles; even my desire
for legality would fail under the strain. But for the minute
everything was quiet, and I began to fear that I should have to
return empty-handed; for it would be growing light in another
hour or so, and I must be gone before the day began to appear.
Ah! There was a sound—a sound that appealed to me after
my climb—the sound of wine poured into a glass; and then
came a voice I knew.

“Probably they have caught her,” said Vlacho the innkeeper.
“What of that? They will not hurt her. And she’ll be kept
safe.”

[pg 553]

“You mean she can’t come spying about here?”

“Exactly. And that, my lord, is an advantage. If she came
here—”

“Oh the deuce!” laughed Constantine. “But won’t the men want
me to free her by letting that infernal crew go?”

“Not if they think Wheatley will go to Rhodes and get
soldiers and return. They love the island more than her. It
will all go well, my lord. And this other here?”

I strained my ears to listen. No answer came; yet Vlacho
went on as though he had received an answer.

“These cursed fellows make that difficult, too,” he said.
“It would be an epidemic.” Then he laughed, seeming to see wit
in his own remark.

“Curse them, yes. We must move cautiously,” said
Constantine. “What a nuisance women are, Vlacho.”

“Ay, too many of them,” laughed Vlacho.

“I had to swear my life out that no one was here—and
then, ‘If no one’s there, why mayn’t I come?’ You know the sort
of thing.”

“Indeed, no, my lord. You wrong me,” protested Vlacho,
humorously; and Constantine joined in his laugh.

“You’ve made up your mind which, I gather?” asked
Vlacho.

“Oh, this one, beyond doubt,” answered his master.

Now, I thought that I understood most of this conversation,
and I was very sorry that Euphrosyne was not by my side to
listen to it. But I had heard about enough for my purpose, and
I had turned to crawl away stealthily—it is not well to
try fortune too far—when I heard the sound of a door
opening in the house. Constantine’s voice followed directly on
the sound.

“Ah, my darling, my sweet wife,” he cried, “not sleeping
yet? Where will your beauty be. Vlacho and I must plot and plan
for your sake, but you need not spoil your eyes with
sleeplessness.”

Constantine did it uncommonly well. His manner was a pattern
for husbands. I was guilty of a quiet laugh all to myself, in
the veranda.

“For me? You’re sure it’s for me?” came in that Greek tongue
with a strange accent which had first fallen on my ears in the
Optimum restaurant.

“She’s jealous, she’s most charmingly jealous!” cried
Constantine, in playful rapture. “Does your wife pay you such
compliments, Vlacho?”

“She has not cause, my lord. Now my Lady Francesca thinks
she has cause to be jealous of the Lady Euphrosyne.”

Constantine laughed scornfully at the suggestion.

“Where is she now?” came swift and sharp from the woman.
“Where is Euphrosyne?”

“Why, she’s a prisoner to that Englishman,” answered
Constantine.

I suppose explanations passed on this point, for the voices
fell to a lower level, as is apt to happen in the telling of a
long story, and I could not catch what passed till
Constantine’s tones rose again, as he said:

“Oh, yes, we must have a try at getting her out, just to
satisfy the people. For me, she might stay there as long as she
likes, for I care for her just as little as, between ourselves,
I believe she cares for me.”

Really, this fellow was a very tidy villain; as a pair,
Vlacho and he would be hard to beat—in England, at all
events. About Neopalia I had learned to reserve my opinion.
Such were my reflections as I turned to resume my interrupted
crawl to safety. But in an instant I was still
again—still, and crouching close under the wall,
motionless as an insect that feigns death, holding my breath,
my hand on the trigger. For the door of the cottage was flung
open, and Constantine and Vlacho appeared on the threshold.

“Ah,” said Vlacho, “dawn is nearly on us. See, it grows
lighter on the horizon.”

A more serious matter was that, owing to the opened door and
the lamp inside, it had grown lighter on the veranda, so light
that I saw the three figures—for the woman had come
also—in the doorway; so light that my huddled shape would
be seen if any of the three turned an eye towards it. I could
have picked off both men before they could move; but a
civilized education has drawbacks; it makes a man scrupulous; I
did not fire. I lay still, hoping that I should not be noticed.
And I should not have been noticed but for one thing. Acting up
to his part in the ghastly farce which these two ruffians were
playing with the wife of one of them, Constantine turned to
bestow kisses on the woman before he parted from her. Vlacho,
in a mockery that was horrible to me who knew his heart, must
needs be facetious. With a laugh he drew back; he drew back
farther still; he was but a couple of feet from the wall of the
house, and that couple of feet I filled.

In a moment, with one step backward, he would be upon me.
Perhaps he would not have made that step; perhaps I should
[pg 554] have gone, by grace of that
narrow interval, undetected. But the temptation was too
strong for me. The thought of the thing threatened to make
me laugh. I had a penknife in my pocket; I opened it, and I
dug it hard into that portion of Vlacho’s frame which came
most conveniently (and prominently) to my hand. Then,
leaving the penknife where it was, I leaped up, gave the
howling ruffian a mighty shove, and with a loud laugh of
triumph bolted for my life down the hill. But when I had
gone twenty yards I dropped on my knees, for bullet after
bullet whistled over my head. Constantine, the outraged
Vlacho too, perhaps, carried a revolver. And the barrels
were being emptied after me. I rose and turned one hasty
glance behind me. Yes, I saw their dim shapes like moving
trees. I fired once, twice, thrice, in my turn, and then
went crashing and rushing down the path that I had ascended
so cautiously.

I cannoned against the tree trunks; I tripped over trailing
branches; I stumbled over stones. Once I paused and fired the
rest of my barrels; a yell told me I had hit—but Vlacho,
alas! not Constantine. At the same instant my fire was
answered, and a bullet went through my hat. I was defenceless
now, save for my heels, and to them I took again with all
speed. But as I crashed along, one, at least, of them came
crashing after me. Yes, it was only one. I had checked Vlacho’s
career. It was Constantine alone. I suppose one of your heroes
of romance would have stopped and faced him, for with them it
is not etiquette to run away from one man. Ah, well, I ran
away. For all I knew, Constantine might still have a shot in
the locker. I had none. And if Constantine killed me, he would
kill the only man who knew all his secrets. So I ran. And just
as I got within ten yards of the drop into my own territory I
heard a wild cry, “Charlie, Charlie! Where the devil are you,
Charlie?”

“Why, here, of course,” said I, coming to the top of the
bank and dropping over.

I have no doubt that it was the cry uttered by Denny which
gave pause to Constantine’s pursuit. He would not desire to
face all four of us. At any rate the sound of his pursuing feet
died away and ceased. I suppose he went back to look after
Vlacho and show himself safe and sound to that most unhappy
woman, his wife. As for me, when I found myself safe and sound
in the compound, I said, “Thank God!” And I meant it, too. Then
I looked round. Certainly the sight that met my eyes had a
touch of comedy in it.

Denny, Hogvardt, and Watkins stood in the compound. Their
backs were toward me, and they were all staring up at the roof
of the kitchen, with expressions which the cold light of
morning revealed in all their puzzled foolishness. On the top
of the roof, unassailable and out of reach—for no ladder
ran from roof to ground now—stood Euphrosyne, in her
usual attitude of easy grace. And Euphrosyne was not taking the
smallest notice of the helpless three below, but stood quite
still, with unmoved face, gazing up toward the cottage. The
whole thing reminded me of nothing so much as of a pretty,
composed cat in a tree, with three infuriated, helpless
terriers barking round the trunk. I began to laugh.

“What’s all the shindy?” called out Denny. “Who’s doing
revolver practice in the wood? And how the dickens did she get
there, Charlie?”

But when the still figure on the roof saw me, the
impassivity of it vanished. Euphrosyne leant forward, clasping
her hands, and said to me:

“Have you killed him?”

The question vexed me. It would have been civil to accompany
it, at all events, with an inquiry as to my own health.

“Killed him?” I answered gruffly. “No, he’s sound
enough.”

“And—” she began; but now she glanced, seemingly for
the first time, at my friends below. “You must come and tell
me,” she said; and with that she turned and disappeared from
our gaze behind the battlements. I listened intently. No sound
came from the wood that rose gray in the new light behind
us.

“What have you been doing?” demanded Denny, surlily; he had
not enjoyed Euphrosyne’s scornful attitude.

“I have been running for my life,” said I, “from the biggest
scoundrels unhanged. Denny, make a guess who lives in that
cottage.”

“Constantine?”

“I don’t mean him.”

“Not Vlacho—he’s at the inn.”

“No, I don’t mean Vlacho.”

“Who, then, man?”

“Some one you’ve seen.”

“Oh, I give it up. It’s not the time of day for
riddles.”

“The lady who dined at the next table to us at the Optimum,”
said I.

Denny jumped back in amazement, with a long, low
whistle.

“What, the one who was with Constantine?” he
cried.

[pg 555]

“Yes,” said I. “The one who was with Constantine.”

They were all three round me now; and, thinking that it
would be better that they should know what I knew, and four
lives instead of one stand between a ruffian and the impunity
he hoped for, I raised my voice and went on in an emphatic
tone:

“Yes. She’s there, and she’s his wife.”

A moment’s astonished silence greeted my announcement. It
was broken by none of our party. But there came from the
battlemented roof above us a low, long, mournful moan that made
its way straight to my heart, armed with its dart of outraged
pride and trust betrayed. It was not thus, boldly and abruptly,
that I should have told my news. But I did not know that
Euphrosyne was still above us, hidden by the battlements; nor
had I known that she understood English. We all looked up. The
moan was not repeated. Presently we heard slow steps retreating
with a faltering tread across the roof; and we also went into
the house in silence and sorrow. For a thing like that gets
hold of a man; and when he has heard it, it’s hard for him to
sit down and be merry till the fellow that caused it has paid
his reckoning—as I swore then and there that Constantine
Stefanopoulos should pay his.

CHAPTER VI.

THE POEM OF ONE-EYED ALEXANDER.

There is a matter on my conscience which I can’t excuse, but
may as well confess. To deceive a maiden is a very sore
thing—so sore that it had made us all hot against
Constantine; but it may be doubted by a cool mind whether it is
worse, nay, whether it is as bad, as to contrive the murder of
a lawful wife. Poets have paid more attention to the
first—maybe they know more about it; the law finds
greater employment on the whole in respect to the latter. For
me, I admit that it was not till I found myself stretched on a
mattress in the kitchen, with the idea of getting a few hours’
sleep, that it struck me that Constantine’s wife deserved a
share of my concern and care. Her grievance against him was at
least as great as Euphrosyne’s; her peril was far greater. For
Euphrosyne was his object, Francesca (for that appeared from
Vlacho’s mode of address to be her name) was an obstacle that
prevented his attaining that object.

For myself, I should have welcomed a cutthroat if it came as
an alternative to Constantine’s society; but probably his wife
would not agree with me; and the conversation I had heard left
me in little doubt that her life was not safe. They could not
have an epidemic, Vlacho had prudently reminded his master; the
island fever could not kill Constantine’s wife and our party
all in a day or two. Men suspect such obliging maladies, and
the old lord had died of it, pat to the happy moment, already.
But if the thing could be done, if it could be so managed that
London, Paris, and the Riviera would find nothing strange in
the disappearance of one Madame Stefanopoulos and the
appearance of another, why, to a certainty, done the thing
would be, unless I could warn or save the woman in the cottage.
But I did not see how to do either. So (as I set out to
confess) I dropped the subject. And when I went to sleep I was
thinking, not how to save Francesca, but how to console
Euphrosyne, a matter really of less urgency, as I should have
seen had not the echo of that sad little cry still filled my
ears.

The news that Hogvardt brought me, when I woke in the
morning and was enjoying a slice of cow steak, by no means
cleared my way. An actual attack did not seem imminent—I
fancy these fierce islanders were not too fond of our
revolvers—but the house was, if I may use the term,
carefully picketed; and that both before and behind. Along the
road that approached it in front, there stood sentries at
intervals. They were stationed just out of range of our only
effective long-distance weapon, but it was evident that egress
on that side was barred; and the same was the case on the
other. Hogvardt had seen men moving in the wood, and had heard
their challenges to one another, repeated at regular intervals.
We were shut off from the sea; we were shut off from the
cottage. A blockade would reduce us as well as an attack. I had
nothing to offer except the release of Euphrosyne. And to
release Euphrosyne would in all likelihood not save us, while
it would leave Constantine free to play out his ghastly game to
its appointed end.

I finished my breakfast in some perplexity of spirit. Then I
went and sat in the hall, expecting that Euphrosyne would
appear from her room before long. I was alone, for the rest
were engaged in various occupations, Hogvardt being
particularly busy over a large handful of hunting-knives that
he had gleaned from the walls; I did not understand what he
wanted with them, unless he meant to arm himself in porcupine
fashion.

[pg 556]

Presently Euphrosyne came, but it was a transformed
Euphrosyne. The kilt, knee breeches, and gaiters were gone; in
their place was the white linen garment with flowing sleeves
and the loose jacket over it, the national dress of the Greek
woman; but Euphrosyne’s was ornamented with a rare profusion of
delicate embroidery, and of so fine a texture that it seemed
rather like some delicate, soft, yielding silk. The change of
attire seemed reflected in her altered manner. Defiance was
gone and appeal glistened from her eyes as she stood before me.
I sprang up, but she would not sit. She stood there, and,
raising her glance to my face, asked simply: “Is it true?”

In a business-like way I told her the whole story, starting
from the every-day scene at home in the restaurant, ending with
the villainous conversation and the wild chase of the night
before. When I related how Constantine had called Francesca his
wife, Euphrosyne shivered; while I sketched lightly my
encounter with him and Vlacho, she eyed me with a sort of grave
curiosity; and at the end she said: “I’m glad you weren’t
killed.” It was not an emotional speech, nor delivered with any
empressement; but I took it for thanks, and made the
best of it. Then at last she sat down and rested her head on
her hand. Her absent air allowed me to study her closely, and I
was struck by a new beauty which the bizarre boy’s dress had
concealed. Moreover, with the doffing of that, she seemed to
have put off her extreme hostility; but perhaps the revelation
I had made to her, which showed her the victim of an
unscrupulous schemer, had more to do with her softened air. Yet
she bore the story firmly, and a quivering lip was her extreme
sign of grief or anger. And her first question was not of
herself.

“Do you mean that they will kill this woman?” she asked.

“I’m afraid it’s not unlikely that something will happen to
her, unless, of course—” I paused, but her quick wit
supplied the omission.

“Unless,” she said, “he lets her live now, because I am out
of his hands.”

“Will you stay out of his hands?” I asked. “I mean, as long
as I can keep you out of them.”

She looked round with a troubled expression.

“How can I stay here?” she said in a low tone.

“You will be as safe here as you were in your mother’s
arms,” I answered.

She acknowledged my promise with a movement of her head; but
a moment later she cried:

“But I am not with you—I am with the people! The
island is theirs and mine. It is not yours. I will have no part
in giving it to you.”

“I wasn’t proposing to take pay for my hospitality,” said I.
“It’ll be hardly handsome enough for that, I’m afraid. But
mightn’t we leave that question for the moment?” And I
described briefly to her our present position.

“So that,” I concluded, “while I maintain my claim to the
island, I am at present more interested in keeping a whole skin
on myself and my friends.”

“If you will not give it up, I can do nothing,” said she.
“Though they knew Constantine to be all you say, yet they would
follow him and not me if I yielded the island. Indeed, they
would most likely follow him in any case. For the Neopalians
like a man to follow, and they like that man to be a
Stefanopoulos; so they would shut their eyes to much, in order
that Constantine might marry me and become lord.”

She stated all this in a matter-of-fact way, disclosing no
great horror of her countrymen’s moral standard. The
straightforward barbarousness of it perhaps appealed to her a
little; she loathed the man who would rule on those terms, but
had some toleration for the people who set the true dynasty
above all else. And she spoke of her proposed marriage as
though it were a natural arrangement.

“I shall have to marry him, I expect, in spite of
everything,” she said.

I pushed my chair back violently. My English respectability
was appalled.

“Marry him?” I cried. “Why, he murdered the old lord!”

“That has happened before among the Stefanopouloi,” said
Euphrosyne, with a calmness dangerously near to pride.

“And he proposes to murder his wife,” I added.

“Perhaps he will get rid of her without that.” She paused;
then came the anger I had looked for before. “Ah, but how dared
he swear that he had thought of no one but me and loved me
passionately? He shall pay for that.” Again it was injured
pride that rang in her voice, as in her first cry. It did not
sound like love, and for that I was glad. The courtship had
probably been an affair of state rather than affection. I did
not ask how Constantine was to be made to pay, whether before
or after marriage. I was struggling between horror and
amusement at my guest’s point
[pg 557] of view. But I take leave
to have a will of my own, even sometimes in matters that are
not exactly my concern, and I said now, with a composure
that rivalled Euphrosyne’s: “It is out of the question that
you should marry him. I’m going to get him hanged, and,
anyhow, it would be atrocious.”

She smiled at that, but then she leant forward and
asked:

“How long have you provisions for?”

“That’s a good retort,” I admitted. “A few days; that’s all.
And we can’t get out to procure any more; and we can’t go
shooting, because the wood’s infested with these ruff—I
beg pardon—with your countrymen.”

“Then it seems to me,” said Euphrosyne, “that you and your
friends are more likely to be hanged.”

Well, on a dispassionate consideration, it did seem more
likely; but she need not have said so. And she went on with an
equally discouraging good sense:

“There will be a boat from Rhodes in about a month or six
weeks. The officer will come then to take the tribute; perhaps
the governor will come. But till then nobody will visit the
island, unless it be a few fishermen from Cyprus.”

“Fishermen? Where do they land? At the harbor?”

“No. My people do not like them, though the governor
threatens to send troops if we do not let them land. So they
come to a little creek at the opposite end of the island, on
the other side of the mountain. Ah, what are you thinking
of?”

As Euphrosyne perceived, her words had put a new idea in my
mind. If I could reach that creek and find the fishermen and
persuade them to help me, or to carry me and my party off, that
hanging might happen to the right man, after all.

“You’re thinking you can reach them?” she cried.

“You don’t seem sure that you want me to,” I observed.

“Oh, how can I tell what I want? If I help you, I am
betraying the island. If I do not—”

“You’ll have a death or two at your door, and you’ll marry
the biggest scoundrel in Europe,” said I.

She hung her head, and plucked fretfully at the embroidery
on the neck of her dress.

“But, anyhow, you couldn’t reach them,” she said. “You are
close prisoners here.”

That, again, seemed true, so true that it put me in a very
bad temper. Therefore I rose, and, leaving her without much
ceremony, strolled into the kitchen. Here I found Watkins
dressing the cow’s head, Hogvardt surrounded by knives, and
Denny lying on a rug on the floor with a small book, which he
seemed to be reading. He looked up with a smile that he.
considered knowing.

“Well, what does the captive queen say?” he asked with
levity.

“She proposes to marry Constantine,” I answered, and added
quickly to Hogvardt: “What’s the game with those knives,
Hog?”

“Well, my lord,” said Hogvardt, surveying his dozen
murderous instruments, “I thought there was no harm in putting
an edge on them, in case we should find a use for them;” and he
fell to grinding one with great energy.

“I say, Charlie, I wonder what this yarn’s about? I can’t
construe half of it. It’s in Greek, and it’s something about
Neopalia, and there’s a lot about a Stefanopoulos.”

“Is there? Let’s see;” and taking the book I sat down to
look at it. It was a slim old book, bound in calfskin. The
Greek was written in an antique style; it was verse. I turned
to the title-page. “Hullo, this is rather interesting,” I
exclaimed. “It’s about the death of old Stefanopoulos—the
man they sing that song about, you know.”

In fact, I had got hold of the poem which One-eyed Alexander
composed. Its length was about three hundred lines, exclusive
of the refrain which the islanders had chanted, and which was
inserted six times, occurring at the end of each fifty lines.
The rest was written in rather barbarous iambics; and the
sentiments were quite as barbarous as the verse. It told the
whole story, and I ran rapidly over it, translating here and
there for the benefit of my companions. The arrival of the
Baron d’Ezonville recalled our own with curious exactness,
except that he came with one servant only. He had been taken to
the inn, as I had, but he had never escaped from there, and had
been turned adrift the morning after his arrival. I took more
interest in Stefan, and followed eagerly the story of how the
islanders had come to his house, and demanded that he should
revoke the sale. Stefan, however, was obstinate; it lost the
lives of four of his assailants before his house was forced.
Thus far I read, and expected to find next an account of a
mêlée in the hall. But here the story took
a turn unexpected by me, one that might make the reading of the
old poem more than a mere pastime.

“But when they had broken in,” said One-eyed Alexander,
“behold, the hall was empty and the house empty! And they stood
amazed. But the two cousins of the
[pg 558] lord, who had been the
hottest in seeking his death, put all the rest to the door,
and were themselves alone in the house; for the secret was
known to them who were of the blood of the Stefanopouloi.
Unto me, the bard, it is not known. Yet men say they went
beneath the earth, and there in the earth found the lord.
And certain it is they slew him, for in a space they came
forth to the door bearing his head, and they showed it to
the people, who answered with a great shout. But the cousins
went back, barring the door again; and again, when but a few
minutes had passed, they came forth, and opened the door,
and the elder of them, being now by the traitor’s death
become lord, bade the people in and made a great feast for
them. But the head of Stefan none saw again, nor did any see
his body; but the body and head were gone, whither none know
saving the noble blood of the Stefanopouloi; for utterly
they disappeared, and the secret was securely kept.”

I read this passage aloud, translating as I went. At the end
Denny drew a breath.

“Well, if there aren’t ghosts in this house, there ought to
be,” he remarked. “What the deuce did those rascals do with the
old gentleman, Charlie?”

“It says ‘they went beneath the earth.'”

“The cellar,” suggested Hogvardt, who had a prosaic
mind.

“But they wouldn’t leave the body in the cellar,” I
objected; “and if, as this fellow says, they were only away a
few minutes, they couldn’t have dug a grave for it. And then it
says that they ‘there in the earth found the lord’!”

“It would have been more interesting,” said Denny, “if
they’d told Alexander a bit more about it. However, I suppose
he consoles himself with his chant again?”

“He does. It follows immediately on what I’ve read, and so
the thing ends.” And I sat looking at the little yellow volume.
“Where did you find it, Denny?” I said.

“Oh, on a shelf in the corner of the hall, between the Bible
and a Life of Byron.”

I got up and walked back to the hall. I looked round.
Euphrosyne was not there. I inspected the hall door; it was
still locked on the inside. I mounted the stairs, and called at
the door of her room; when no answer came I pushed it open and
took the liberty of glancing round; she was not there. I called
again, for I thought she might have passed along the way over
the hall and reached the roof, as she had done before. This
time I called loudly. Silence followed for a moment. Then came
an answer, in a hurried, rather apologetic tone, “Here I am.”
But then the answer came, not from the direction that I had
expected, but from the hall. And looking over the balustrade, I
saw Euphrosyne sitting in the armchair.

“This,” said I, going down-stairs, “taken in conjunction
with this,” and I patted One-eyed Alexander’s book, which I
held in my hand, “is certainly curious and suggestive.” “Here I
am,” said Euphrosyne, with an air that added, “I’ve not moved.
What are you shouting for?”

“Yes, but you weren’t there a minute ago,” I observed,
reaching the hall and walking across to her.

She looked disturbed and embarrassed.

“Where have you been?” I asked.

“Must I give an account of every movement?” said she, trying
to cover her confusion with a show of haughty offence.

The coincidence was really a remarkable one; it was as hard
to account for Euphrosyne’s disappearance and reappearance as
for the vanished head and body of old Stefan. I had a
conviction, based on a sudden intuition, that one explanation
must lie at the root of both these curious things, that the
secret of which Alexander spoke was a secret still hidden,
hidden from my eyes but known to the girl before me, the
daughter of the Stefanopouloi.

“I won’t ask you where you’ve been, if you don’t wish to
tell me,” said I, carelessly.

She bowed her head in recognition of my indulgence.

“But there is one question I should like to ask you,” I
pursued, “if you’ll be so kind as to answer it.”

“Well, what is it?”

“Where was Stefan Stefanopoulos killed, and what became of
his body?”

As I put my question I flung One-eyed Alexander’s book open
on the table beside her.

She started visibly, crying, “Where did you get that?”

I told her how Denny had found it, and I added:

“Now, what does ‘beneath the earth’ mean? You are one of the
house, and you must know.”

“Yes, I know, but I must not tell you. We are all bound by
the most sacred oath to tell no one.”

“Who told you?”

“My uncle. The boys of our house are told when they are
fifteen, the girls when they are sixteen. No one else
knows.”

“And why is that?”

She hesitated, fearing perhaps that her
[pg 559] answer would itself tend to
betray the secret.

“I dare tell you nothing,” she said. “The oath binds me; and
it binds every one of my kindred to kill me if I break it.”

“But you’ve no kindred left except Constantine,” I
objected.

“He is enough. He would kill me.”

“Sooner than marry you?” I suggested, rather
maliciously.

“Yes, if I broke the oath.”

“Hang the oath!” said I, impatiently. “The thing might help
us. Did they bury Stefan somewhere under the house?”

“No, he was not buried,” she answered.

“Then they brought him up, and got rid of his body when the
islanders had gone?”

“You must think what you will.”

“I’ll find it out,” said I. “If I pull the house down, I’ll
find it. Is it a secret door or—”

She had colored at the question. I put the latter part in a
low, eager voice, for hope had come to me.

“Is it a way out?” I asked, leaning over to her.

She sat mute, but irresolute, embarrassed and fretful.

“Heavens!” I cried, impatiently, “it may mean life or death
to all of us, and you boggle over your oath!”

My rude impatience met with a rebuke that it perhaps
deserved. With a glance of the utmost scorn, Euphrosyne asked,
coldly:

“And what are the lives of all of you to me?”

“True, I forgot,” said I with a bitter politeness. “I beg
your pardon. I did you all the service I could last night, and
now I and my friends may as well die as live! But I’ll pull
this place to ruin but I’ll find your secret.”

I was walking up and down now in a state of some excitement.
My brain was fired with the thought of stealing a march on
Constantine through the discovery of his own family secret.

Suddenly Euphrosyne gave a little soft clap with her hands.
It was over in a minute, and she sat blushing, confused, trying
to look as if she had not done it at all.

“What did you do that for?” I asked, stopping in front of
her.

“Nothing,” said Euphrosyne.

“Oh, I don’t believe that,” said I.

She looked at me. “I didn’t mean to do it,” she said again.
“But can’t you guess why?”

“There’s too much guessing to be done here,” said I,
impatiently; and I started walking again. But presently I heard
a voice say softly, and in a tone that seemed to address nobody
in particular—me least of all:

“We Neopalians like a man who can be angry, and I began to
think you never would.”

“I am not the least angry,” said I, with great indignation.
I hate being told that I am angry when I am merely showing
firmness.

Now, at this protest of mine Euphrosyne saw fit to
laugh—the most hearty laugh she had given since I had
known her. The mirthfulness of it undermined my wrath. I stood
still opposite her, biting the end of my mustache.

“You may laugh,” said I, “but I’m not angry; and I shall
pull this house down—or dig it up—in cold blood, in
perfectly cold blood.”

“You are angry,” said Euphrosyne, “and you say you’re not.
You are like my father. He would stamp his foot furiously like
that and say, ‘I am not angry, I am not angry, Phroso.'”

Phroso! I had forgotten that diminutive of my guest’s
classical name. It rather pleased me, and I repeated it gently
after her, “Phroso, Phroso,” and I’m afraid I eyed the little
foot that had stamped so bravely.

“He always called me Phroso. Oh, I wish he were alive! Then
Constantine—”

“Since he isn’t,” said I, sitting by Phroso (I must write
it, it’s a deal shorter)—by Phroso’s elbow—”since
he isn’t, I’ll look after Constantine. It would be a pity to
spoil the house, wouldn’t it?”

“I’ve sworn,” said Phroso.

“Circumstances alter oaths,” said I, bending till I was very
near Phroso’s ear.

“Ah,” said Phroso, reproachfully, “that’s what lovers say
when they find another more beautiful than their old love.”

I shot away from Phroso’s ear with a sudden backward start.
Her remark, somehow, came home to me with a very remarkable
force. I got off the table, and stood opposite to her, in an
awkward and stiff attitude.

“I am compelled to ask you for the last time if you will
tell me the secret,” said I, in the coldest of tones.

She looked up with surprise. My altered manner may well have
amazed her. She did not know the reason of it.

“You asked me kindly and—and pleasantly, and I would
not. Now you ask me as if you threatened,” she said. “Is it
likely I should tell you
now?”

[pg 560]

Well, I was angry with myself, and with her because she had
made me angry with myself; and, the next minute, I became
furiously angry with Denny, whom I found standing in the
doorway that led to the kitchen, with a grin of intense
amusement on his face.

“What are you grinning at?” I demanded fiercely.

“Oh, nothing,” said Denny, and his face strove to assume a
prudent gravity.

“Bring a pickaxe,” said I.

Denny’s face wandered toward Phroso. “Is she as annoying as
that?” he seemed to ask. “A pickaxe?” he repeated in surprised
tones.

“Yes, two pickaxes! I’m going to have this floor up, and see
if I can find out the great Stefanopoulos secret.” I spoke with
an accent of intense scorn.

Again Phroso laughed; her hands beat very softly against one
another. Heavens, what did she do that for when Denny was
there, watching everything with those shrewd eyes of his?

“The pickaxes!” I roared.

Denny turned and fled; a moment elapsed; I did not know what
to do, how to look at Phroso, or how not to look at her. I took
refuge in flight. I rushed into the kitchen on pretence of
aiding or hastening Denny’s search. I found him taking up an
old pick that stood near the door leading to the compound. I
seized it from his hand.

“Confound you!” I cried, for Denny laughed openly at me; and
I rushed back to the hall! But on the threshold I
paused—and said what I will not write.

For, though there came from somewhere just the last ripple
of a mirthful laugh, the hall was empty! Phroso was gone! I
flung the pickaxe down with a clatter on the boards, and
exclaimed in my haste:

“I wish to heaven I’d never bought the island!”

But I did not mean that really.

(To be continued.)

CLIMBING MONT BLANC IN A BLIZZARD.

CAUGHT IN A BLINDING SNOW STORM ON A NARROW CLIFF, TWO AND
A HALF MILES ABOVE SEA LEVEL.

By Garrett P. Serviss,

Author of “Astronomy with an Opera Glass,” “Climbing the
Matterhorn,etc.¹⁵

tanding on the spindling tower of
the Matterhorn early one August morning in 1894 I saw, for the
first time, the white crown of Europe, Mont Blanc, with its
snows sparkling high above the roof of clouds that covered the
dozing summer in the valleys of Piedmont. Just one year later I
started from Chamonix to climb to that cool world in the
blue.

My guide was Ambroise Couttet, whose family name is famous
in the mountaineering annals of Savoy. An earlier Ambroise
Couttet lies in the icy bosom of Mont Blanc, fallen, years ago,
down a crevasse so profound that his would-be rescuers were
drawn, baffled, awe-struck, and with shaking nerves, from its
horrible depths, whose bottom they could not find. Even before
that time Pierre Couttet had been whirled to death on the great
peak, and his body, embedded and preserved in a glacier, was
found nearly half a century afterward at its foot. And two
other Couttets of past years escaped, by the merest hair of
miraculous fortune, from a catastrophe on the same dreadful
slopes in which three of their comrades were swallowed up. Yet
the Ambroise Couttet of to-day is never so happy as when he is
on the mountain. His eyes sparkle if he hears the thunder of an
avalanche, and he smiles as he watches its tossing white crest
ploughing swiftly across some snowy incline which he has just
traversed.

One porter sufficed, for my only traps consisted of a hand
camera, a field-glass, and a few extra woollen shirts and
stockings. Having had no serious exercise since climbing the
Matterhorn a year before, I deemed it prudent to spare my
strength for the more important work
[pg 561] above by taking a mule to
the Pierre Pointue. It was a fine morning, offering a
promise of favorable weather after several days of mist and
rain. Monsieur Janssen, the French astronomer, who was
waiting at Chamonix for his porters to complete their long
and wearisome labor of transporting piecemeal his telescope
and other instruments of observation to the summit, before
making the ascent himself, said, grasping my arm at
parting:

“I wish you good luck; good weather you are sure of.”

COL DE BLANC, MONT BLANC.

From a photograph loaned by Mr. Frank Hegger, New
York.

It was high authority, for Monsieur Janssen has studied the
weather all his life, and knows the atmosphere of mountain
peaks and of the airy levels where balloons float; yet if he
could have foreseen what was to occur on Mont Blanc within
twenty hours, he would have wished me the good fortune of being
somewhere else.

It was past the middle of the forenoon of the 10th of August
when, with Couttet and the porter, I left Chamonix. Dismissing
my tired mule at the Pierre Pointue, which hangs with its flag
nearly seven thousand feet above sea level, and high over the
séracs of the Glacier des Bossons, we began the ascent
by way of the Pierre a l’Echelle and over the missile-scarred
foot of the Aiguille du Midi. The upper part of this mountain
as seen from Chamonix looks quite sharp-pointed enough to
deserve its name of the “Needle of the South.” The side toward
the Glacier des Bossons is exceedingly steep, and when the
snows are melting the peak becomes a perfect catapult, volleys
of ice and stones being discharged from its lofty precipices.
The falling rocks, dropping, as some of them do, from ledge to
ledge half a mile, acquire the velocity of cannon shots. Nobody
ever lingers on this part of the route, and we had no desire to
pause, although the Aiguille sends comparatively few stones
down so late in the summer.

The sun beat furiously while we were scrambling on the
rocks, and the latter were warm to the touch, although,
thousands of feet below, the immense cleft in the mountain side
was choked with masses of never-melted ice.

“Never mind,” said Couttet, as I stopped to wipe the
perspiration from my face, “it will be cool enough when we get
onto the glacier.”

And it was—so cool in fact that I hastily pulled on my
coat. Having passed out of range of the Aiguille du Midi, we
found comfortable going on the
ice.

[pg 562]

THE MAUVAIS PAS, MONT BLANC.

DIFFICULTIES AND DANGERS OF THE ROUTE.

The northern slope of Mont Blanc is hollowed into a vast
cavernous channel, half filled with glaciers, and edged on the
east by the Mont Maudit, the Aiguille de Saussure, and the
Aiguille du Midi, and on the west by the Dome and Aiguille du
Gouter and the Gros Bechat. Down this tremendous gutter crowd
the eternal snows of Mont Blanc, compressed toward the bottom
into the Glacier des Bossons and the Glacier de Taconnaz. These
immense ice streams are separated by the projecting
[pg 563] nose of the Montagne de la
Cote, which rises from the valley of Chamonix and lies in a
long, dark ridge on the foot of Mont Blanc. Above the
Montagne de la Cote several gigantic rock masses, shooting
into pinnacles, push up through the ice from the bottom and
near the centre of the channel. These are called the Grands
Mulets, from the resemblance which they present, when seen
from Chamonix, to a row of huge black mules tramping up the
white mountain side.

THE GLACIER DES BOSSONS, MONT BLANC.

I mention these features because the best route to the
summit of Mont Blanc lies over the glaciers and snow fields and
between the walls of the great trough I have described, and the
first station is at the Grands Mulets, where a cabin for the
accommodation of climbers has existed for many years. From the
foot of the Aiguille du Midi, at the Pierre a l’Echelle, across
the Glacier des Bossons to the rocks of the Grands Mulets the
distance is about a mile and a quarter, and the perpendicular
increase of elevation nearly two thousand feet. The passage
seldom presents any difficulty, except to inexperienced
persons, although at times many crevasses must be crossed,
particularly at what is called the Junction, just above the
point where the Glacier des Bossons and the Glacier de Taconnaz
are divided by the Montagne de la Cote. Here some underlying
irregularity of the rocks, deep beneath the surface of the
mighty river of ice, causes the formation of a labyrinth of
fissures and crevasses, overhung with towering séracs,
or ice turrets; and the ice descends between the Grands Mulets
and the rock wall in front of the Gros Bechat in a sort of
motionless cascade—motionless, that is to say, except
when cracks break apart into yawning chasms, and massive blocks
tumble into the depths.

Even a practised climber is occasionally compelled to look
to his steps in passing the Junction. On my return I witnessed
an accident in this place which proved at the same time the
reality of the danger and the usefulness in sudden crises of
the mountaineer’s rope. A tourist descending from the Grands
Mulets was passing, under an impending sérac, around the
head of a crevasse, where the only footway was a few inches of
ice hewn with the axe. Being heedless or nervous, his feet shot
from under him, and with a yell he plunged into the pit.
Luckily, he was tied to the rope between two guides, one of
whom had passed the dangerous corner, while the other, behind,
had also a safe footing. As he fell the guides braced
themselves, the rope zipped, and the unfortunate adventurer
hung clutching and kicking at the polished blue wall. He had
really descended but a few feet into the crevasse, though to
him doubtless it seemed a hundred, and with a surprising
display of strength, or skill, the
[pg 564] guides hauled him out by
simply tightening the rope. One of them pulled back and the
other forward, and between them the sprawling victim rose
with the strain to the brink of the chasm, where a third man
dexterously caught and landed him.

REFUGE STATION AT THE GRANDS MULETS, MONT BLANC.

Madame Marke and Olivier Gay were not so fortunate near this
spot in 1870. A bridge of snow spanning a crevasse gave way
beneath them, and, the rope breaking, they disappeared and
perished in the abyss.

We reached the Grands Mulets in the middle of the afternoon.
Here the great majority of amateur climbers are content to
terminate their ascent of Mont Blanc. The experience of getting
as far as this point and back again is, as the incidents just
related show, anything but insignificant, and may prove not
only exciting but even tragic. Yet, of course, the real work,
the tug of war between human endurance and the obstacles of
untamed nature, is above. The Grands Mulets formed the stopping
place in some of the earliest attempts to climb Mont Blanc,
more than a hundred years ago. Here Jacques Balmat, the hero of
the first ascent, passed an awful night alone, amid the
cracking of glaciers and the shaking of avalanches, before his
final victory over the peak in 1786. In the spirit which led
the Romans to surname the conqueror of Hannibal “Scipio
Africanus,” the exultant Chamonniards called their hero “Balmat
de Mont Blanc.” He, too, finally perished by a fall from a
precipice in 1834, and to-day there are those who whisper that
his spirit can be seen flitting over the snowy wastes before
every new catastrophe.

The cabin at the Grands Mulets is furnished with rough bunks
and cooking apparatus, and during the summer a woman,
Adéle Balmat, assisted by the guides, acts as hostess
for this high-perched “inn,” ten thousand feet above sea
level.

It is customary to leave the Grands Mulets for the ascent to
the summit soon after midnight, in order to get over the
immense snow slopes before the action of the sun has loosened
the avalanches and weakened the crevasse bridges. But we did
not start until half-past three in the morning. The waning
moon, hanging over the Dome
[pg 565] du Gouter, gave sufficient
light to render a lantern unnecessary, and dawn was near at
hand. Threatening bands of clouds attracted anxious glances
from Couttet, and it was evident that a change of weather
impended. But we clambered over the rocks to the crevassed
slopes below the Gouter, and pushed upward.

We were now approaching the higher and narrower portion of
the immense cleft or channel in the mountain that I have
described. On our right towered the Dome du Gouter, and on the
left the walls of the Mont Maudit and its outlying pinnacles.
Snowy ridges and peaks shone afar in the moonlight on all
sides. It was a wilderness of white.

ADÉLE BALMAT, HOSTESS AT THE GRANDS MULETS STATION.

At the height of twelve thousand feet we came upon the Petit
Plateau, a comparatively horizontal lap of snow which is
frequently swept clear across with avalanches of ice descending
from the enormous séracs that hang like cornices upon
the precipices above. The frosty splinters of a recent downfall
sparkled and crunched under our feet. It is one of the most
dangerous places on the mountain. “Men have lost their lives
here and will again lose them,” is the remark of Mr. Conway,
the Himalayan climber, in describing his passage of the place.
“Many times I have crossed it,” said Monsieur Vallot, the
mountain meteorologist, last summer, “but never without a
sinking of the heart, and the moment we are over the Petit
Plateau I always hear my guides, trained and fearless men,
mutter, ‘Once more we are out of it.'”

Knowing these things, it is needless to say that I found the
Petit Plateau keenly interesting. The menacing séracs
leaned from the cliffs, glittering icily, and threw black
shadows upon the névé beneath, but
suffered us to pass unmolested.

Above the Petit Plateau is a steep ascent called the Grands
Montées which taxes the breath. Having surmounted this,
we were on the Grand Plateau, a much wider level than the
other, edged with tremendous ice cliffs and crevasses, and
situated at an elevation of thirteen thousand feet. For some
time now it had been broad day, but the clouds had thickened
rapidly, and the summit was wrapped and completely hidden in
them. Blasts of frigid wind began to whistle about us, driving
stinging pellets of ice into our faces. We quickened our steps,
for it would not do to be caught in a storm here. The Grand
Plateau has taken more lives than its ill-starred neighbor
below.

A BLINDING STORM OF SNOW AND WIND.

We now bore off to the right, in order to clamber up the
side of the great channel, or depression, that we had thus far
followed, because at its upper end, where it meets the base of
the crowning pyramid of Mont Blanc, it abuts against
ice-covered precipices that no mortal will ever scale. Snow
commenced to fall, and the wind rose. As we neared the crest of
the ridge connecting the Dome du Gouter with the Bosses du
Dromadaire and the summit, the tempest burst fiercely upon us.
In an instant we were enveloped by a cloud of whirling snow
that blotted out sky and mountains alike. It drove into my
eyes, and half blinded me. It was so thick that objects a few
yards away would have been concealed even without a violent
wind to confuse the vision. At times Couttet, close ahead of
me, was visible only in a kind of gray outline, like a wraith.
On an open plain such a storm in such a temperature would have
had its dangers for a traveller seeking his way. We were
seeking our way, not on an open plain, but two miles and a half
above sea level, in a desert of snow and ice, encompassed with
precipices, chasms, and pitfalls, treading on we knew not what,
assailed by a wild storm, all landmarks obliterated, and our
footsteps filling so fast with drifted snow that in two minutes
we could not see from what direction we had last come.

In such a situation the imagination
[pg 566] becomes dramatic. The night
before I had been reading the account of the loss, in 1870,
of Dr. Bean, Mr. Randall, and the Rev. Mr. Corkendale,
together with five guides and three porters, eleven persons
in all, in just such a storm and within sight of this spot.
And now as we stumbled along I repeated to myself, almost
word for word, Dr. Bean’s message to his wife, found when
his body was discovered:

“September 7, evening—My dear Hessie: We have been two
days on Mont Blanc in the midst of a terrible hurricane of
snow; we have lost our way, and are in a hole scooped in the
snow at an altitude of fifteen thousand feet. I have no longer
any hope of descending. Perhaps this notebook will be found and
sent to you. We have nothing to eat, my feet are already
frozen, and I am exhausted. I have strength to write only a few
words more. I have left means for C.’s education; I know you
will employ them wisely. I die with faith in God and with
loving thoughts of you. Farewell to all. We shall meet again in
heaven—I think of you always.”

The bodies of five of these victims were found but a few
feet aside from the proper route which in clear weather would
have led to safety; the other six had disappeared.

While such cheerful recollections were running through my
mind I noticed that we were no longer ascending, and that
Couttet, whom I had not troubled with questions as long as he
showed no hesitation, was bearing now this way and now that,
and occasionally stopping and peering about with spread
nostrils, like a dog seeking a trail. Clearly we were on the
top of the highest elevation in our neighborhood, for the wind
now came point blank in our faces out of the white abyss of the
atmosphere, and almost blew me off my feet.

“Have you lost the way?” I asked.

“I’ll find it,” Couttet replied.

“Where are we?”

“Near the Bosses.”

“Isn’t there a refuge hut on the Bosses?”

“Yes.”

“Can we reach it?”

Couttet did not immediately reply, but looked up and about,
as if trying to pierce the driving snow with his gaze. “If I
could catch sight of the rocks,” at length he said.

Suddenly the gale seemed to split the clouds, and for an
instant a vision opened of blue sky over our heads, and endless
slopes of snow, falling one below another, under our feet. I
saw that we were standing on the rounded back of a snowy ridge.
Just in front the white surface dipped and disappeared in a
vast gulf of air, where flying clouds were torn against the
black jagged points of lower mountains. Above our level, to the
left, rocks appeared projecting through the covering of snow. I
knew that these must belong to the Bosses du Dromadaire, and
that the hut we sought was perched on one of them.

All this the eye caught in a twinkling, for the storm
curtain was lifted only to be as quickly dropped again,
shutting out both the upper and the lower world, and leaving us
isolated on the slippery roof ridge of Europe. At the same time
the wind increased its violence, and the cold became more
penetrating. I pulled my fingers out of the digits of my
woollen gloves, and gripped my iron-shod baton between thumb
and knuckles. We now had our bearings, thanks to the momentary
glance, and it behooved us not to lose them, for the storm was
every instant growing worse. At times it was not the simplest
thing in the world to keep one’s feet in the face of the
blasts. I was too fresh from reading the history of Mont Blanc
not to remember that a few years ago Count Villanova and two
guides were blown from another nearby ridge into the very abyss
whose jaws had just opened before us, where their bodies lie
undiscovered to this day.

Moving cautiously, we began to descend, in order to cross
the neck which stretches between the Dome du Gouter and the
Bosses. When we wandered a little to the right the surface
commenced to pitch off, and we knew what that
meant—beware! Once when we had veered too far to the
left, staggering down hill under the blows of the storm, and
able to see but a few feet away, we stopped as if a shot had
arrested us. Another step or two would have carried us over a
precipice of ice, whose blue wall fell perpendicularly from the
brittle edge at our feet into cloud-choked depths. We had gone
down our roof to the eaves. Not a word was spoken, but with
instant unanimity we turned and scrambled up again, Couttet in
the lead, and the porter breathing hard at my heels. Such a
scene in the fraction of a second is photographed on the memory
for a lifetime.

In a little while we began to ascend another slope, to which
we had felt our way, and this was surely the swelling hump of
[pg 567] the first of the Bosses,
and the rocks must be near at hand. Another opportune gap in
the clouds, which left us for an instant surrounded with
retreating walls of vapor, confirmed that opinion, and
vindicated the mountaineering skill of Couttet, who had
found the way though way there was none. A quick, breathless
scramble up a confused heap of ice and slippery points of
rock brought us at last to the refuge.

PASSAGE OF A CREVASSE, MONT BLANC.

A NIGHT OF SCANT SHELTER AND NO FOOD.

Couttet shook and banged the door, making a noise that did
not penetrate far through the whistling air, and, with cold
fingers, began fumbling at the latch, when, to my surprise, the
door opened and a muffled voice bade us enter. An Englishman
who had started with his guides at midnight from the Grands
Mulets, and three or four of Monsieur Janssen’s porters, had
already sought refuge in the hut. Icicles hung about my face,
and my clothes were as stiff as chain armor. There was no fire
in the little hut and no means of making any. My watch, when I
was able to get it out of my pocket, showed the time to be a
quarter to nine A.M.

Pulling off our shoes and putting on dry stockings as
quickly as possible, we imitated the example of the man who had
let us in, and who no sooner closed the door than he tumbled
back into his bunk and buried himself in the rough woollen
blankets which the Alpine Club has provided for the use of
those who may need them.

In about an hour the storm lightened, and the Englishman and
the porters started back to the Grands Mulets. I consulted
Couttet about making a dash for the summit; but he thought it
would be better to wait awhile, and better still to follow the
others down the mountain. To this last proposition I decidedly
objected, although Couttet was right, as it turned out; for in
another hour the storm, which had not entirely ceased at any
time, whipped itself into renewed fury, and before noon the
wind was howling and shrieking with demoniac energy, and
flinging gritty snow and ice in blinding clouds against the
hut, which, situated on a ridge, was completely exposed.
Fortunately it is strongly built and solidly anchored. While I
entertained no reasonable doubt of its security, yet when a
blast of extraordinary fierceness made it tremble, as if it
were holding itself with desperate grip upon the rocks, I could
not help picturing it, in imagination, taking flight at last,
and sailing high over the mountains in the wild embrace of the
tempest.

Time moved with a dreadfully slow
[pg 568] pace. The only way to keep
warm was to remain in the bunk under a pile of blankets.
Once, in my impatience, I got out and painfully hauled on my
shoes, which were as cold as ice, and as hard almost; but my
feet were blistered through lack of previous exercise, and
after hobbling and shivering for a few minutes on the narrow
floor, which was partly covered with a constantly
accumulating deposit of snow, as fine and dry as flour and
as frigid as though it had come straight from the Arctic
Circle, I hurried back under the blankets. The invading snow
penetrated through cracks that one could hardly see, around
the door and the little square window.

At last noon came, and we ate our remaining morsels of dry
bread, which finished our provisions. We had brought along only
enough to provide a lunch on the way to the summit, intending
to be back at the Grands Mulets not later than midday. Then the
long afternoon dragged its weary hours, while the storm got
higher, shriller, and colder, and the sense of our isolation
became keener. Finally daylight began to fade. Slowly the light
grew dim in the window at my feet, until it was a mere glimmer.
Since we had to stay, we thanked the storm for hastening the
fall of night. When the gloom became so dense that even the
window had disappeared, Couttet lit a tallow dip, but it would
not remain upright in its improvised holder, and the freezing
draughts that stole through the hut kept it flickering so that
he finally put it out, and we remained in the dark, not “seein’
things,” like Eugene Field’s youthful hero, but hearing things
no less uncanny. The wind whistled, moaned, screeched, growled,
and occasionally shouted with such startling imitation of human
voices that I once asked Couttet if some one were not calling
for help. But investigation showed that we were alone on our
tempestuous perch, and that the cry of agony had been uttered
by the hurricane, or the wind-lashed rocks.

PASSAGE OF A CREVASSE. MONT BLANC.

Supperless, we wrapped our blankets closer, got ears and
noses under, and tried to sleep. I had a few naps, but the roar
outside, and the shaking of the hut as the storm smote it again
and again, rendered continuous sleep impossible. Something had
been loosened on the roof close overhead, and it rattled and
banged as if the destruction of the hut had actually begun. It
was a queer sound, angry, imperious, menacing, and it produced
a quaking sensation. Sometimes it would
[pg 569] die down, and, with a final
rap or two, entirely cease. Then it would resume, with
perhaps five strokes to the second, increasing to ten, then
to twenty, and quickly rising to an ear-splitting r-r-r-h,
terminated with a bang! bang!! bang!!! that made the heart
leap, while the hut seemed to rock on its foundations.

Getting out of the bunk, I found by the sense of touch that
the powdery snow-drifts were becoming steadily deeper on the
floor. This recalled another incident which had greatly
interested me during my preliminary reading at Chamonix. The
winter before, Monsieur Janssen’s men had stored some of the
heavier materials for his observatory near these rocks. At the
opening of summer they could not be found, and no one knew what
had become of them. Finally, as the snows melted and fell from
the peak in slides and avalanches, the missing articles were
uncovered, having been buried in a white grave forty feet
deep.

And so the wild night passed, until with tedious
deliberation the little window made a hole in the darkness, and
I knew that morning was at hand. The howling without was as
loud as ever, and the fine snow was packed high upon the
window, shutting out a good share of the light. The floor was
covered with white drifts, and my shoes had swallowed snow; but
being hard and dry, it was easily shaken out. There was no fire
to be built and no breakfast to be prepared. But it was
impossible to lie still, even for the sake of keeping warm, and
pulling on our shoes we stamped about the floor, and
occasionally opened the door to see what the storm was about.
Along about eight o’clock it began to lighten, and my hopes
rose. We could catch an occasional glimpse of the crowning peak
and of the observatory, which we knew contained two or three of
Janssen’s men and some provisions. An hour later, when the
storm seemed about at an end, and we were preparing to ascend
to the top, we saw the men from the observatory coming down.
They warned us that the snow above was in bad condition, and,
believing that more foul weather was to come, they were
embracing this opportunity to get down. Couttet proposed that
we should accompany them, especially as they reported nothing
left to eat at the observatory, but I declined. Again the event
proved that he was right, for while we waited a little before
starting out, the storm fell upon us once more. Then Couttet
insisted upon descending, and I did not think it wise to oppose
his decision, knowing that it was based upon experience and
that he had nothing to gain and something to lose in returning
without having conducted his “monsieur” to the summit.

A BIRTHPLACE OF AVALANCHES, MONT BLANC.

A SECOND ATTEMPT FOR THE SUMMIT.

We put on the rope and scrambled down, but when we got upon
the neck below the Bosses the clouds whirled off and the
burnished sun stood over the white peak, too splendid to be
looked upon.

“Couttet, we must go up,” I exclaimed.

“As you say,” he replied; and we turned upon our track.

We had got back to the hut and started up the steep
arête above it, when the sun disappeared, the air turned
white, and the wind resumed its wrestle. So powerful was it
that on our narrow ridge it had the advantage of us, and we
crouched behind a projecting point.

“It is too perilous,” said Couttet, “and we must descend. I
will not take the risk.”

I saw it was necessary to yield, and down we went. Hunger
was beginning to [pg 570] tell, and we made haste.
Where the slopes were not seamed with open crevasses we
“glissaded,” which is a very expeditious and exhilarating
method of getting down a mountain, although unsafe unless
one is certain of his ground. Sometimes we slid on our feet,
steadying ourselves with our batons or ice-axes, and
sometimes I sat on the hard snow and glided like a Turk on a
toboggan slide, the tassel of my woollen cap fluttering
behind in the wind. We took the unbridged crevasses with
flying leaps, and so plunged rapidly downward, with frequent
keen regrets on my part, because the weather seemed mending
again. But it would not do to turn back now in our
half-famished condition, and we were glad when the Grands
Mulets hove in sight below, a black squadron in a sea of
snow.

M. JANSSEN’S OBSERVATORY ON TOP OF MONT BLANC.

In Chamonix I took a day or two to thaw out and mend
bruises, and then ran over to Martigny, crossed the Grand St.
Bernard, the St. Gotthard, and the Grimsel passes, spent a week
in William Tell’s country, prowling about the ruins of old
castles and the sites of legendary battles, and finally settled
down in Milan to feast my eyes on the pinnacles of its wondrous
cathedral. But my failure to reach the top of Mont Blanc cast a
perceptible shadow over everything I saw.

One day, the 27th of August, as I stood on the cathedral
spire, the sun lay warm upon the Alps, and Mont Blanc shone in
the distance. “It is time to go,” I said to myself; and
descending, I hurried to my hotel and packed a gripsack. The
night express via Mont Cenis placed me in Geneva the next
morning in time to catch the first train for Cluses. The same
evening the diligence landed me in Chamonix. I sent for
Couttet.

“Mont Blanc in the morning,” I said.

“Delighted, monsieur; we’ll do it this time.”

“Storm or no storm?”

“Yes.”

It so happened that I was to hear one more story of disaster
before getting to the top of Mont Blanc. While I watched the
distant mountain from the Milan cathedral spire the closing
scene of a new tragedy was being enacted amid its merciless
crevasses. Dr. Robert Schnurdreher, an advocate of Prague,
accompanied by Michael Savoye, guide, and Laurent Brou, porter,
ascended Mont Blanc from the Italian side on August 17th, and
passed the night in the hut on the Bosses du Dromadaire where,
six days before, I had had a stormy experience. But now the
weather was superb, and when, on the morning of the 18th, they
started to descend to Chamonix, no thought of impending evil
could have oppressed their minds.

They passed the Grand Plateau and the Petit Plateau in
safety, and reached the labyrinth of crevasses between the
cliffs of the Dome du Gouter and the Grands Mulets. Just what
happened then no one [pg 571] will ever know, but there
they disappeared from the world of the living.

VIEW FROM THE SUMMIT OF MONT BLANC, SHOWING THE MATTERHORN
IN THE DISTANCE.

Eight days went by, and then a telegram was received at
Chamonix from the family of the guide Savoye, in Courmayer,
Italy, inquiring if he and his party had been seen. All
Chamonix comprehended in an instant the significance of that
telegram, and thirty guides started post haste for the
mountains.

The fact was now recalled that several days before some of
Monsieur Janssen’s porters had noticed an ice axe lying on the
snow a little aside from the ordinary route. They thought
nothing of it at the time, supposing that the implement had
either been thrown away, or left behind by some one who would
return to get it. This abandoned axe now became the first
object of the search. Having discovered it, the guides knew
well where to look for its owner. The axe lay on a slope of
snow almost as hard as ice, and at the foot of the slope was
the inevitable crevasse; not one of the largest, being only
fifteen feet wide by two hundred long, and one hundred deep,
but all too sufficient. They crept to the edge, and peered into
the gloomy depths. There lay the missing men, still tied
together. Schnurdreher and Savoye had apparently been killed at
once; but there was heart-rending evidence that Brou had
survived the fall, and made a pitiful effort to scale the
perpendicular walls of the ice chasm. Enclosed in bags of rough
sacking, the bodies were dragged with ropes down to the Pierre
Pointue, and thence carried to Chamonix. This is a time-honored
procedure in such cases. Every boy in Chamonix understands how
a body should be brought down from Mont Blanc.

On the night of my arrival Savoye and Brou had just been
buried at Chamonix, and money was being raised for the relief
of their almost destitute families. But Schnurdreher, in his
mountain dress, with his spiked shoes on his feet, still lay at
the undertaker’s, awaiting the coming of his relatives.

A RACE FOR THE SUMMIT.

The morning of August 29th was cloudless, and with the same
outfit as before, but with a scion of the house of Balmat for
porter in place of the man who had filled that office on the
first occasion, I started once more for the frosty topknot of
Europe. At the Grands Mulets we found two Germans with their
retinue of guides and porters, six persons in all, who were
also bound for the summit. They left the Grands Mulets at
midnight, and we followed them three-quarters of an hour later.
[pg 572] There was no moon, and
Couttet carried a lantern. On reaching the Petit Plateau we
saw the lights of the other party flashing ahead of us, and
at the foot of the Grands Montées we overtook them.
They had talked confidently of making the ascent in
extraordinarily quick time, and some good-natured chaffing
now passed between Couttet and the rival guides. I had had
no thought of a race; but I defy anybody, under the
circumstances in which we were placed, not to experience a
little spurring from the spirit of emulation. Jerking the
rope to attract Couttet’s attention, I told him in a low
voice to pass the others at the first opportunity.

“We’ll do it on the Grand Plateau,” he whispered.

Five minutes later, however, the advance party paused to
take breath. We immediately broke out of their tracks in the
snow and started to pass around them; but they instantly
accepted the challenge, and a scrambling race began up the
steep slope. Sometimes we sank so deep that time was lost in
extricating our legs, and again we slipped back, which was even
more annoying than sticking fast. The powdery snow flew about
like dust, and was occasionally dumped into my face by the
piston-like action of my knees. The lanterns jangled and
flickered wildly, and in their shifting and uncertain light,
with our odd habiliments, we must have resembled a company of
mad demons on a lark.

Such a race in such a place could only last a couple of
minutes, and it was soon over, the American coming out ahead.
Getting upon the Grand Plateau, we did not stop to rest, but
broke into a dog trot.

“Whatever happens, Couttet, we must be first at the
top.”

“Very well, monsieur.”

From the Grand Plateau there are two ways to the summit: one
by the Bosses du Dromadaire, which we followed on the first
attempt; the other, which we now adopted, by the “Corridor.”
This is a steep furrow, crossed by an ice precipice with a
great crevasse near its foot, which leads upward from the
left-hand border of the Grand Plateau to a snowy saddle between
the Mont Maudit and a precipitous out-cropping of rock called
the Mur de la Cote. A faint glimmer of approaching dawn now lay
on part of the rim of mountains surrounding us.

When we reached the foot of the Corridor the lights of the
other party were not visible. But here step-cutting became
necessary, and this delayed us so much that presently I caught
dancing gleams from the pursuing lanterns moving rapidly at the
bottom of the bowl of night out of which we were climbing. They
were fast gaining upon us.

“We must hurry, Couttet!”

“Yes, but no man goes quick here who does not go for the
last time.”

In fact, our position had an appearance of peril. We were
part way up the frozen precipice that cuts across the Corridor,
and were balancing ourselves on an acute wedge of ice which
stood off several feet in front of the precipice, being
separated from it by a deep cleft. The outer side of this
wedge, whose edge we were traversing lengthwise, pitched down
into the darkness and ended, I believe, in a crevasse.
Presently we reached a place where the precipice overhung our
precarious footway, and an inverted forest of icicles depended
above us.

“Make as little noise as possible, and step gently,” said
Couttet.

This is a familiar precaution in the High Alps, where the
vibrations of sound sometimes act the part of the trigger of a
gun and let loose terrific energies ready poised for action.
The clinking of particles of ice that shot from our feet into
the depths distracted attention from the beautiful play of the
light of the lanterns on some of the hanging masses.

At last we attained a point where it was possible, by
swinging round a somewhat awkward corner, to get upon the roof
of the precipice. This we found so steep that occasional steps
had also to be cut there.

The lights of the pursuers had approached the foot of the
wall, and though now invisible, we knew the party was ascending
close behind, taking advantage of the steps we had made. This
spurred us on, although I was beginning to suffer some
inconvenience from the rarity of the air, and had to stop to
breathe much oftener than I liked. In truth, the spurt we had
made, beginning at the Grands Montées, involved an
over-expenditure of energy whose effects I could not escape,
and nature was already demanding usury for the loan.

As we approached the ridge of the saddle, day rose blushing
in the east, and Couttet put out the lantern. Turning to the
right, we hurried in zigzags up the slippery Mur de la Cote,
stopping to cut steps only when strictly necessary. While we
were ascending this wall the sun appeared, and hung for a
moment, a great, dazzling, fire-colored circle, on a distant
mountain rim. Below us for a long time
[pg 573] the great valleys remained
filled with gloom, while out of and around there rose
hundreds of peaks, tipped with pink and gold. But very few
of the towering giants now reached to our level, and in a
little while we should be above them all.

Once on top of the Mur we had level going again for a space,
and hurrying to the base of the crowning dome, which swells
upward another thousand feet, we began its ascent without
stopping. About half way up the dome the highest visible rocks
of Mont Blanc on this side break through the Mur. They are
called the Petits Mulets. We had nearly reached them when,
looking back, I saw the heads of the other party appearing on
the brink of the Mur. They looked up at us hanging right above
them on the white slope, while Couttet carried my handkerchief,
streaming triumphantly in the morning wind, from the end of his
baton. Waving their hands, they sat down and gave up the race.
While they lunched we pushed upward more slowly, and at six
o’clock entered the door of Monsieur Janssen’s observatory,
fifteen thousand seven hundred and seventy-seven feet above the
sea.

My first look was directed to the Matterhorn, which,
thirty-five miles away, pierced the morning sky with its black
spike. Glittering near it were the snow turrets of Monte Rosa,
the Dent Blanche, and all the marvellous circle of peaks that
stand around Zermatt. There was not a cloud to break the view.
On one side lay Italy; on the other France. It would be
impossible to imagine the wild scene immediately below us. The
tremendous slopes of snow falling away on all sides, now in
steep inclines and now in broken precipices, ever down and
down, were not after all so imposing as the jagged pinnacles of
bare rock that sprang out of them.

There was something peculiarly savage, almost menacing, in
the aspect of these lower mountains, pressing in serried ranks
around their white-capped chief. They seemed to shut us far
away from the human world below, and one felt that he had
placed himself entirely in the hands of nature. This was her
realm, where she acknowledged no laws but her own, and was
incapable of sympathy, pity, or remorse.

FAIRY GOLD.

By Mary Stewart Cutting,

Author of “The Coupons of Fortune,” “Henry,” and other
stories.

When Mr. William Belden walked out of his house one wet
October evening and closed the hall door carefully behind him,
he had no idea that he was closing the door on all the habits
of his maturer life and entering the borders of a land as far
removed from his hopes or his imagination as the country of the
Gadarenes.

He had not wanted to go out that evening at all, not knowing
what the fates had in store for him, and being only too
conscious of the comfort of the sitting-room lounge, upon
which, after the manner of the suburban resident who travelleth
daily by railways, he had cast himself immediately after the
evening meal was over. The lounge was in proximity—yet
not too close proximity—to the lamp on the table; so that
one might have the pretext of reading to cover closed eyelids
and a general oblivion of passing events. On a night when a
pouring rain splashed outside on the pavements and the tin
roofs of the piazzas, the conditions of rest in the cosey
little room were peculiarly attractive to a man who had come
home draggled and wet, and with the toil and wear of a long
business day upon him. It was therefore with a sinking of the
heart that he heard his wife’s gentle tones requesting him to
wend his way to the grocery to purchase a pound of butter.

“I hate to ask you to go, William dear, but there really is
not a scrap in the house for breakfast, and the butter-man does
not come until to-morrow afternoon,” she said deprecatingly.
“It really will only take you a few minutes.”

Mr. Belden smothered a groan, or perhaps something worse.
The butter question was a sore one, Mrs. Belden taking only a
stated quantity of that article a week, and always unexpectedly
coming short of it before the day of replenishment, although no
argument ever served to induce her to increase the original
amount for consumption.

“Cannot Bridget go?” he asked weakly,
[pg 574] gazing at the small, plump
figure of his wife, as she stood with meek yet inexorable
eyes looking down at him.

“Bridget is washing the dishes, and the stores will be
closed before she can get out.”

“Can’t one of the boys—” He stopped. There was in this
household a god who ruled everything in it, to whom all
pleasures were offered up, all individual desires sacrificed,
and whose Best Good was the greedy and unappreciative
Juggernaut before whom Mr. Belden and his wife prostrated
themselves daily. This idol was called The Children. Mr. Belden
felt that he had gone too far.

“William!” said his wife severely, “I am surprised at you.
John and Henry have their lessons to get, and Willy has a cold;
I could not think of exposing him to the night air; and it is
so damp, too!”

Mr. Belden slowly and stiffly rose from his reclining
position on the sofa. There was a finality in his wife’s tone
before which he succumbed.

The night air was damp. As he walked along the street
the water slopped around his feet, and ran in rills down his
rubber coat. He did not feel as contented as usual. When he was
a youngster, he reflected with exaggerated bitterness, boys
were boys, and not treated like precious pieces of porcelain.
He did not remember, as a boy, ever having any special
consideration shown him; yet he had been both happy and
healthy, healthier perhaps than his over-tended brood at home.
In his day it had been popularly supposed that nothing could
hurt a boy. He heaved a sigh over the altered times, and then
coughed a little, for he had a cold as well as Willy.

The streets were favorable to silent meditation, for there
was no one out in them. The boughs of the trees swished
backward and forward in the storm, and the puddles at the
crossings reflected the dismal yellow glare of the street
lamps. Every one was housed to-night in the pretty detached
cottages he passed, and he thought with growing wrath of the
trivial errand on which he had been sent. “In happy homes he
saw the light,” but none of the high purpose of the youth of
“Excelsior” fame stirred his heart—rather a dull sense of
failure from all high things. What did his life amount to
anyway, that he should count one thing more trivial than
another? He loved his wife and children dearly, but he
remembered a time when his ambition had not thought of being
satisfied with the daily grind for a living and a dreamless
sleep at night.

“‘Our life is but a sleep and a forgetting,'” he thought
grimly, “in quite a different way from what Wordsworth meant.”
He had been one of the foremost in his class at college, an
orator, an athlete, a favorite in society and with men. Great
things had been predicted for him. Then he had fallen in love
with Nettie; a professional career seemed to place marriage at
too great a distance, and he had joyfully, yet with some
struggles in his protesting intellect, accepted a position that
was offered to him—one of those positions which never
change, in which men die still unpromoted, save when a miracle
intervenes. It was not so good a position for a family of six
as it had been for a family of two, but he did not complain. He
and Nettie went shabby, but the children were clothed in the
best, as was their due.

He was too wearied at night to read anything but the
newspapers, and the gentle domestic monotony was not inspiring.
He and Nettie never went out in the evenings; the children
could not be left alone. He met his friends on the train in
that diurnal journey to and from the great city, and she
occasionally attended a church tea; but their immediate and
engrossing world seemed to be made up entirely of persons under
thirteen years of age. They had dwelt in the place almost ever
since their marriage, respected and liked, but with no real
social life. If Mr. Belden thought of the years to come, he may
be pardoned an unwonted sinking of the heart.

It was while indulging in these reflections that he
mechanically purchased the pound of butter, which he could not
help comparing with Shylock’s pound of flesh, so much of life
had it taken out of him, and then found himself stepping up on
the platform of the station, led by his engrossing thoughts to
pass the street corner and tread the path most familiar to him.
He turned with an exclamation to retrace his way, when a man
pacing leisurely up and down, umbrella in hand, caught sight of
him.

“Is that you, Belden?” said the stranger. “What are you
doing down here to-night?”

“I came out on an errand for my wife,” said Belden sedately.
He recognized the man as a young lawyer, much identified with
politics; a mere acquaintance, yet it was a night to make any
speaking animal seem a friend, and Mr. Belden took a couple of
steps along beside him.

“Waiting for a train?” he said.

“Oh, thunder, yes!” said Mr. Groper,
[pg 575] throwing away the stump of
a cigar. “I have been waiting for the last half hour for the
train; it’s late, as usual. There’s a whole deputation from
Barnet on board, due at the Reform meeting in town to-night,
and I’m part of the committee to meet them here.”

“Where is the other part of the committee?” asked Mr.
Belden.

“Oh, Jim Crane went up to the hall to see about something,
and Connors hasn’t showed up at all; I suppose the rain kept
him back. What kind of a meeting we’re going to have I don’t
know. Say, Belden, I’m not up to this sort of thing. I wish
you’d stay and help me out—there’s no end of swells
coming down, more your style than mine.”

“Why, man alive, I can’t do anything for you,” said Mr.
Belden. “These carriages I see are waiting for the delegation,
and here comes the train now; you’ll get along all right.”

He waited as the train slowed into the station, smiling anew
at little Groper’s perturbation. He was quite curious to see
the arrivals. Barnet had been the home of his youth, and there
might be some one whom he knew. He had half intended, earlier
in the day, to go himself to the Reform meeting, but a growing
spirit of inaction had made him give up the idea. Yes, there
was quite a carload of people getting out—ladies,
too.

“Why, Will Belden!” called out a voice from the party. A
tall fellow in a long ulster sprang forward to grasp his hand.
“You don’t say it’s yourself come down to meet us. Here we all
are, Johnson, Clemmerding, Albright, Cranston—-all the
old set. Rainsford, you’ve heard of my cousin, Will Belden. My
wife and Miss Wakeman are behind here; but we’ll do all the
talking afterward, if you’ll only get us off for the hall
now.”

“Well, I am glad to see you, Henry,” said Mr. Belden
heartily. He thrust the pound of butter hastily into a large
pocket of his mackintosh, and found himself shaking hands with
a score of men. He had only time to assist his cousin’s wife
and the beautiful Miss Wakeman into a carriage, and in another
moment they were all rolling away toward the town hall, with
little Mr. Groper running frantically after them, ignored by
the visitors, and peacefully forgotten by his friend.

The public hall of the little town—which called itself
a city—was all ablaze with light as the party entered it,
and well filled, notwithstanding the weather. There were
flowers on the platform where the seats for the distinguished
guests were placed, and a general air of radiance and joyful
import prevailed. It was a gathering of men from all political
parties, concerned in the welfare of the State. Great measures
were at stake, and the election of governor of immediate
importance. The name of Judge Belden of Barnet was prominently
mentioned. He had not been able to attend on this particular
occasion, but his son had come with a delegation from the
county town, twenty miles away, to represent his interests. On
Mr. William Belden devolved the task of introducing the
visitors; a most congenial one, he suddenly found it to be.

His friends rallied around him as people are apt to do with
one of their own kind when found in a foreign country. They
called him Will, as they used to, and slapped him on the
shoulder in affectionate abandon. Those among the group who had
not known him before were anxious to claim acquaintance on the
strength of his fame, which, it seemed, still survived him in
his native town. It must not be supposed that he had not seen
either his cousin or his friends during his sojourn away from
them; on the contrary, he had met them once or so in two or
three years, in the street, or on the ferry-boat—though
they travelled by different roads—but he had then been
but a passing interest in the midst of pressing business.
To-night he was the only one of their kind in a strange
place—-his cousin loved him, they all loved him. The
expedition had the sentiment of a frolic under the severer
political aspect.

In the welcome to the visitors by the home committee Mr.
Belden also received his part, in their surprised recognition
of him, almost amounting to a discovery.

“We had no idea that you were a nephew of Judge Belden,” one
of them said to him, speaking for his colleagues, who stood
near.

Mr. William Belden bowed, and smiled; as a gentleman, and a
rather reticent one, it had never occurred to him to parade his
family connections. His smile might mean anything. It made the
good committeeman, who was rich and full of power, feel a
little uncomfortable, as he tried to cover his embarrassment
with effusive cordiality. In the background stood Mr. Groper,
wet, and breathing hard, but plainly full of admiration for his
tall friend, and the position he held as the centre of the
group. The visitors referred all arrangements to him.

At last they filed on to the platform—the two cousins
together.

“You must find a place for the girls,”
[pg 576] said Henry Belden, with the
peculiar boyish giggle that his cousin remembered so well.
“By George, they would come; couldn’t keep ’em at
home, after they once got Jim Shore to say it was all right.
Of course, Marie Wakeman started it; she said she was bound
to go to a political meeting and sit on the platform;
arguing wasn’t a bit of use. When she got Clara on her side
I knew that I was doomed. Now, you couldn’t get them to do a
thing of this kind at home; but take a woman out of her
natural sphere, and she ignores conventionalities, just like
a girl in a bathing-suit. There they are, seated over in
that corner. I’m glad that they are hidden from the audience
by the pillar. Of course, there’s that fool of a Jim, too,
with Marie.”

“You don’t mean to say she’s at it yet?” said his cousin
William.

“‘At it yet’! She’s never stopped for a moment since you
kissed her that night on the hotel piazza after the hop, under
old Mrs. Trelawney’s window—do you remember that,
Will?”

Mr. William Belden did indeed remember it; it was a salute
that had echoed around their little world, leading, strangely
enough, to the capitulation of another heart—it had won
him his wife. But the little intimate conversation was broken
off as the cousins took the places allotted to them, and the
business of the meeting began.

If he were not the chairman, he was appealed to so often as
to almost serve in that capacity. He became interested in the
proceedings, and in the speeches that were made; none of them,
however, quite covered the ground as he understood it. His mind
unconsciously formulated propositions as the flow of eloquence
went on. It therefore seemed only right and fitting toward the
end of the evening, when it became evident that his Honor the
Mayor was not going to appear, that our distinguished
fellow-citizen, Mr. William Belden, nephew of Judge Belden of
Barnet, should be asked to represent the interests of the
county in a speech, and that he should accept the
invitation.

He stood for a moment silent before the assembly, and then
all the old fire that had lain dormant for so long blazed forth
in the speech that electrified the audience, was printed in all
the papers afterward, and fitted into a political pamphlet.

He began with a comprehensive statement of facts, he drew
large and logical deductions from them, and then lit up the
whole subject with those brilliant flashes of wit and sarcasm
for which he had been famous in bygone days. More than that, a
power unknown before had come to him; he felt the real
knowledge and grasp of affairs which youth had denied him, and
it was with an exultant thrill that his voice rang through the
crowded hall, and stirred the hearts of men. For the moment
they felt as he felt, and thought as he thought, and a storm of
applause arose as he ended—applause that grew and grew
until a few more pithy words were necessary from the orator
before silence could be restored.

He made his way to the back of the hall for some water, and
then, half exhausted, yet tingling still from the excitement,
dropped into an empty chair by the side of Miss Wakeman.

“Well done, Billy,” she said, giving him a little approving
tap with her fan. “You were just fine.” She gave him an upward
glance from her large dark eyes. “Do you know you haven’t
spoken to me to-night, nor shaken hands with me?”

“Let us shake hands now,” he said, smiling, flushed with
success, as he looked into the eyes of this very pretty
woman.

“I shall take off my glove first—such old friends as
we are! It must be a real ceremony.”

She laid a soft, white, dimpled hand, covered with
glistening rings, in his outstretched palm, and gazed at him
with coquettish plaintiveness. “It’s so lovely to see
you again! Have you forgotten the night you kissed me?”

“I have thought of it daily,” he replied, giving her hand a
hearty squeeze. They both laughed, and he took a surreptitious
peep at her from under his eyelids. Marie Wakeman! Yes, truly,
the same, and with the same old tricks. He had been married for
nearly fourteen years, his children were half grown, he had
long since given up youthful friskiness, but she was “at it”
still. Why, she had been older than he when they were boy and
girl; she must be for—He gazed at her soft, rounded,
olive cheek, and quenched the thought.

“And you are very happy?” she pursued, with tender
solicitude. “Nettie makes you a perfect wife, I suppose.”

“Perfect,” he assented gravely.

“And you haven’t missed me at all?”

“Can you ask?” It was the way in which all men spoke to
Marie Wakeman, married or single, rich or poor, one with
another. He laughed inwardly at his lapse into the expected
tone. “I feel that I really breathe for the first time in
years, now that I’m with you again. But how is it that you are
not married?”

[pg 577]

“What, after I had known you?” She gave him a reproachful
glance. “And you were so cruel to me—as soon as you had
made your little Nettie jealous you cared for me no longer.
Look what I’ve declined to!” She indicated Jim Shore, leaning
disconsolately against the cornice, chewing his moustache. “Now
don’t give him your place unless you really want to; well, if
you’re tired of me already—thank you ever so much, and I
am proud of you to-night, Billy!”

Her lustrous eyes dwelt on him lingeringly as he left her;
he smiled back into them. The lines around her mouth were a
little hard; she reminded him indefinably of “She;” but she was
a handsome woman, and he had enjoyed the encounter. The sight
of her brought back so vividly the springtime of life; his
hopes, the pangs of love, the joy that was his when Nettie was
won; he felt an overpowering throb of tenderness for the wife
at home who had been his early dream.

The last speeches were over, but Mr. William Belden’s
triumph had not ended. As the acknowledged orator of the
evening he had an ovation afterward; introductions and
unlimited hand-shakings were in order.

He was asked to speak at a select political dinner the next
week; to speak for the hospital fund; to speak for the higher
education of woman. Led by a passing remark of Henry Belden’s
to infer that his cousin was a whist player of parts, a
prominent social magnate at once invited him to join the party
at his house on one of their whist evenings.

“My wife, er—will have great pleasure in calling on
Mrs. Belden,” said the magnate. “We did not know that we had a
good whist player among us. This evening has indeed been a
revelation in many ways—in many ways. You would have no
objection to taking a prominent part in politics, if you were
called upon? A reform mayor is sadly needed in our
city—sadly needed. Your connection with Judge Belden
would give great weight to any proposition of that kind. But,
of course, all this is in the future.”

Mr. Belden heard his name whispered in another direction, in
connection with the cashiership of the new bank which was to be
built. The cashiership and the mayoralty might be nebulous
honors, but it was sweet, for once, to be recognized for
what he was—man of might; a man of talent, and of
honor.

There was a hurried rush for the train at the last on the
part of the visitors. Mr. William Belden snatched his
mackintosh from the peg whereon it had hung throughout the
evening, and went with the crowd, talking and laughing in
buoyant exuberance of spirits. The night had cleared, the moon
was rising, and poured a flood of light upon the wet streets.
It was a different world from the one he had traversed earlier
in the evening. He walked home with Miss Wakeman’s
exaggeratedly tender “Good-by, dear Billy!” ringing in his
ears, to provoke irrepressible smiles. The pulse of a free
life, where men lived instead of vegetating, was in his veins.
His footstep gave forth a ringing sound from the pavement; he
felt himself stalwart, alert, his brain rejoicing in its sense
of power. It was even with no sense of guilt that he heard the
church clocks striking twelve as he reached the house where his
wife had been awaiting his return for four hours.

She was sitting up for him, as he knew by the light in the
parlor window. He could see her through the half-closed blinds
as she sat by the table, a magazine in her lap, her attitude,
unknown to herself, betraying a listless depression. After all,
is a woman glad to have all her aspirations and desires
confined within four walls? She may love her cramped quarters,
to be sure, but can she always forget that they are cramped? To
what does a wife descend after the bright dreams of her
girlhood! Does she really like above all things to be absorbed
in the daily consumption of butter, and the children’s clothes,
or is she absorbed in these things because the man who was to
have widened the horizon of her life only limits it by his own
decadence?

She rose to meet her husband as she heard his key in the
lock. She had exchanged her evening gown for a loose, trailing
white wrapper, and her fair hair was arranged for the night in
a long braid. Her husband had a smile on his face.

“You look like a girl again,” he said brightly, as he
stooped and kissed her. “No, don’t turn out the light, come in
and sit down a while longer, I’ve ever so much to tell you. You
can’t guess where I’ve been this evening.”

“At the political meeting,” she said promptly.

“How on earth did you know?”

“The doctor came here to see Willy, and he told me he saw
you on the way. I’m glad you did go, William; I was worrying
because I had sent you out; I did not realize until later what
a night it was.”

“Well, I am very glad that you did
[pg 578] send me,” said her husband.
He lay back in his chair, flushed and smiling at the
recollection. “You ought to have been there, too; you would
have liked it. What will you say if I tell you that I made a
speech—yes, it is quite true—and was applauded
to the echo. This town has just waked up to the fact that I
live in it. And Henry said—but there, I’ll have to
tell you the whole thing, or you can’t appreciate it.”

His wife leaned on the arm of his chair, watching his
animated face fondly, as he recounted the adventures of the
night. He pictured the scene vividly, and with a strong sense
of humor.

“And you don’t say that Marie Wakeman is the same as ever?”
she interrupted, with a flash of special interest. “Oh,
William!”

“She called me Billy.” He laughed anew at the
thought. “Upon my word, Nettie, she beats anything I ever saw
or heard of.”

“Did she remind you of the time you kissed her?”

“Yes!” Their eyes met in amused recognition of the past.

“Is she as handsome as ever?”

“Um—yes—I think so. She isn’t as pretty as you
are.”

“Oh, Will!” She blushed and dimpled.

“I declare, it is true!” He gazed at her with genuine
admiration. “What has come over you to-night, Nettie?—you
look like a girl again.”

“And you were not sorry when you saw her,
that—that—”

“Sorry! I have been thinking all the way home how glad I was
to have won my sweet wife. But we mustn’t stay shut up at home
as much as we have; it’s not good for either of us. We are to
be asked to join the whist club—what do you think of
that? You used to be a little card fiend once upon a time, I
remember.”

She sighed. “It is so long since I have been anywhere! I’m
afraid I haven’t any clothes, Will. I suppose I
might—”

“What, dear?”

“Take the money I had put aside for Mary’s next quarter’s
music lessons; I do really believe a little rest would do her
good.”

“It would—it would,” said Mr. Belden with suspicious
eagerness. Mary’s after-dinner practising hour had tinged much
of his existence with gall. “I insist that Mary shall have a
rest. And you shall join the reading society now. Let us
consider ourselves a little as well as the children; it’s
really best for them, too. Haven’t we immortal souls as well as
they? Can we expect them to seek the honey dew of paradise
while they see us contented to feed on the grass of the
field?”

“You call yourself an orator!” she scoffed.

He drew her to him by one end of the long braid, and
solemnly kissed her. Then he went into the hall and took
something from the pocket of his mackintosh which he placed in
his wife’s hand—a little wooden dish covered with a
paper, through which shone a bright yellow substance—the
pound of butter, a lump of gleaming fairy gold, the quest of
which had changed a poor, commonplace existence into one
scintillating with magic possibilities.

Fairy gold, indeed, cannot be coined into marketable eagles.
Mr. William Belden might never achieve either the mayoralty or
the cashiership, but he had gained that of which money is only
a trivial accessory. The recognition of men, the flashing of
high thought to high thought, the claim of brotherhood in the
work of the world, and the generous social intercourse that
warms the earth—all these were to be his. Not even his
young ambition had promised a wider field, not the gold of the
Indies could buy him more of honor and respect.

At home also the spell worked. He had but to speak the word,
to name the thing, and Nettie embodied his thought. He called
her young, and happy youth smiled from her clear eyes;
beautiful, and a blushing loveliness enveloped her; clever, and
her ready mind leaped to match with his in thought and study;
dear, and love touched her with its transforming fire and
breathed of long-forgotten things.

If men only knew what they could make of the women who love
them—but they do not, as the plodding, faded matrons who
sit and sew by their household fires testify to us daily.

Happy indeed is he who can create a paradise by naming
it!

[pg 579]

FIGURE I.—APPARATUS USED BY PROFESSOR W.F. MAGIE IN
TAKING A SKIAGRAPH OF A HAND.

The Ruhmkorff coil in the background; the Crookes tube
in front of it; under the hand is the photographic plate in
its plate-holder.

THE USE OF THE RÖNTGEN X RAYS IN SURGERY.

By W.W. Keen, M.D., LL.D.

The nineteenth century resembles the sixteenth in many ways.
In or about the sixteenth we have the extensive use of the
mariner’s compass and of gunpowder, the discovery of printing,
the discovery and exploration of America, and the acquisition
of territory in the New World by various European states. In
the nineteenth century we have the exploration of Africa and
the acquisition of territory in its interior, in which the
various nations of Europe vie with each other again as three
centuries before; the discovery of steam, and its ever-growing
application to the transportation of goods and passengers on
sea and land; of the spectroscope, and through it of many new
elements, including helium in the sun, and, later, on the
earth; of argon in the earth’s atmosphere; of anæsthetics
and of the antiseptic methods in surgery, and, lastly, the
enormous recent strides in electrical science.

Not only has electricity been applied to transportation and
the development of light and power; but the latest discovery by
Professor Röntgen of the X rays seems destined, possibly,
not only to revolutionize our ideas of radiation in all its
forms on the scientific side, but also on the practical side to
be of use in the domain of medicine. It is, therefore, with
great pleasure that I accede to the request of the editor of
this Magazine to state briefly what has been achieved in the
department of medicine up to the present time.

The method of investigating the body by means of the X rays
is very simple, as is shown in Figure 1. The Crookes tube,
actuated from a storage battery or other source of electricity
through a Ruhmkorff coil, is placed on one side of the body. If
need be, instead of using the entire tube, the rays from the
most effective portion of it only are allowed to impinge upon
the [pg 580] part of the body to be
investigated, through an opening in a disk of lead
interposed between the Crookes tube and the body. On the
other side of the part to be investigated is placed a quick
photographic plate shut up in its plate-holder, and is
exposed to the rays emanating from the tube for a greater or
less length of time. The parts of the plate not protected by
the body are acted upon by the rays, through the lid of the
plate-holder (to which the rays are pervious), while the
tissues of the body act, feebly or strongly, as the case may
be, as obstacles to the rays. Hence, the part of the plate
thus protected is less acted upon than the rest, and a
shadow is produced upon the plate. The soft tissues of the
body form but a very slight obstacle to the passage of the
rays, and, hence, throw very faint shadows on the plate. The
more dense portions, presenting a greater obstacle to the
passage of the rays, throw deeper shadows; hence the bones
are seen as dark shadows, the soft parts as lighter ones.
That the flesh or soft parts are not wholly permeable to the
rays is well shown in the skiagraph—i.e., a
“shadow picture”—of a foot. (Figure 2.) Where two toes
overlap, it will be observed that there is a deeper shadow,
like the section of a biconvex lens.

FIGURE 2.—SKIAGRAPH OF A FOOT, SHOWING AN EXTRA BONE
IN THE GREAT TOE, WHICH WAS REMOVED BY PROFESSOR MOSETIG.

(From the “British Medical Journal.”)

When we attempt to skiagraph the thicker portions of the
body, for example, the shoulder, the thigh, or the trunk, even
the parts consisting only of flesh obstruct the rays to such an
extent, by reason of their thickness, that the shadows of the
still more dense tissues, like the thigh bone, the arm bone, or
the bones of the trunk, cannot be distinguished from the
shadows of the thicker soft parts. Tesla (“Electrical Review,”
March 11, 1896) has to some extent overcome these difficulties
by his improved apparatus, and has skiagraphed, though rather
obscurely, the shoulder and trunk, and Rowland has been able to
do the same. Doubtless when we are able to devise apparatus of
greater penetration, and to control the effect of the rays, we
shall be able to skiagraph clearly even through the entire
thickness of the body.

It might be supposed that clothing or surgical dressings
would prove an obstacle to this new photography, but all our
preconceived notions derived from the ordinary photograph must
be thrown aside. The bones of the forearm or the hand can be as
readily skiagraphed through a voluminous surgical dressing or
through the ordinary clothing, as when the parts are entirely
divested of any covering. Even bed-ridden patients can be
skiagraphed through the bed-clothes, and, therefore, without
danger from
exposure.

[pg 581]

FIGURE 3.—SKETCH OF A BABY’S FOOT AS SEEN THROUGH THE
SKIASCOPE.

(From the “American Journal of the Medical Sciences,”
March, 1896.)

One of the principal difficulties of the method at present
is the time ordinarily required to obtain a good picture.
Usually this time may be stated at in the neighborhood of an
hour, though many good skiagraphs have been taken in a half
hour or twenty minutes. It is stated that Messrs. McLeennan,
Wright, and Keele of Toronto have reduced the necessary time to
one second, and that Mr. Edison has taken even instantaneous
pictures; but I am not aware of the publication of any pictures
showing how perfect these results are. Undoubtedly, as a result
of the labors of so many scores of physicists and physicians as
are now working at the problem, before long we shall be able to
skiagraph at least the thinner parts of the body in a very
brief interval. The brevity of the exposure will also better
the pictures in another way. At present, if the attempt is made
to skiagraph the shoulder or parts of the trunk, we have to
deal with organs which cannot be kept motionless, since the
movements incident to breathing produce a constant to and fro
movement of the shoulder, the lungs, the heart, the stomach,
the liver, and other organs which, hereafter, may be made
accessible to this process. There is no serious discomfort
excepting the somewhat irksome necessity of remaining
absolutely still.

FIGURE 4.—SKETCH OF A BABY’S KNEE AS SEEN THROUGH THE
SKIASCOPE.

(From the “American Journal of the Medical Sciences,”
March, 1896.)

Another method of seeing the denser tissues of the body is
by direct observation. A means of seeing through the thinner
parts of the body, such as the fingers or the toes, has been
devised simultaneously by Salvioni of Italy, and Professor
Magie of Princeton. Their instruments are practically
identical, consisting of a hollow cylinder a few inches long,
one end of which is applied to the eye, the other end, instead
of having a lens, being covered by a piece of paper smeared
with a phosphorescent salt, the double cyanide of platinum and
barium. When the hand is held before a Crookes tube, and is
looked at through the cylinder, we can see the bones of the
hand or foot almost as clearly as is shown in Figure 2. It has
not yet, I believe, been applied to thicker parts of the body.
Figures 3 and 4 show a baby’s foot and knee as seen through
this tube. The partial development of the bones accounts for
the peculiar appearance. There is no bony knee-pan, or patella,
at birth, and the bones of the toes consist only of cartilage,
which is translucent, and therefore not seen. The name given by
Professor Salvioni to this sort of “spy-glass”—if one may
apply this term to an instrument which has no glass—is
that of “cryptoscope” (seeing that which is hidden). The name
suggested by Professor Magie is “skiascope” (seeing a
shadow.)

This leads me to say a word in reference to the
nomenclature. The very unfortunate name “shadowgraph” has been
suggested and largely used in the newspapers, and even in
medical journals. It has only the merit of clearness as to its
meaning to English-speaking persons. It is, however, an
abominable linguistic crime, being an unnatural compound of
English and Greek. “Radiograph” and its derivatives are equally
objectionable as compounds of Latin and Greek. The Greek word
for shadow is “skia,” and the proper rendering, therefore, of
shadowgraph is “skiagraph,” corresponding to photograph.

The first question that meets us in the use of the method in
medicine is what normal constituents of the body are permeable
or impermeable to the X rays. It may be stated, in a general
way, that all of the fleshy parts of the body are partially
permeable to the rays in a relatively short time; and if the
exposure is long enough, they become entirely permeable, so
that no [pg 582] shadow is cast. Even the
bones, on prolonged exposure, do not present a
sufficient obstacle to the passage of the rays, and the
shadow originally cast becomes obliterated. Hence,
skiagraphs of the same object exposed to the rays for
varying times may be of value in showing the different
tissues. The most permeable of the normal tissues are
cartilage or gristle, and fat. A kidney (out of the body) is
stated by Dr. Reid of Dundee to show the difference between
the rind, or secreting portion, which is more transparent,
and the central portion, consisting chiefly of conducting
tubes, which is less transparent. On the contrary, in the
brain the gray cortex, or rind, is less transparent than the
white nerve tubules in the centre.

The denser fibrous tissues, such as the ligaments of joints
and the tendons or sinews of muscles, cast very perceptible
shadows, so that when we come to a thick tendon like the tendo
Achillis, the shadow approaches even the density of the shadow
cast by bone. I presume that it is for the same reason (the
dense fibrous envelope, or sclerotic coat) that the eye-ball is
not translucent to the rays, as is seen in Figure 5, of a
bullock’s eye.

FIGURE 5.—SKIAGRAPH OF A BULLOCK’S EYE.

(From the “American Journal of the Medical Sciences,”
March 1896.)

Mr. Arthur H. Lea has ingeniously suggested that the
translucency of the soft parts of the living and of those of
the dead body might show a difference, and that, if such were
the case, it might be used as a definite test of death.
Unfortunately Figure 6, of a dead hand, when contrasted with
Figure 11, of a living hand, shows virtually no difference, and
the method cannot be used as a positive proof of death.

That we are not able at present to skiagraph the soft parts
of the body, does not imply that we shall not be able to do it
hereafter; and should this be possible, especially with our
increasing ability to penetrate thick masses of tissue, it is
evident, without entering into details, that the use of the X
rays may be of immense importance in obstetrics.

The bones, however, as is seen in nearly all of the
skiagraphs illustrating this paper, cast well-defined shadows.
This is at once an advantage and a hindrance. To illustrate the
latter first, even one thickness of bone is difficult to
penetrate, so that the attempt to skiagraph the opening which
had been made in a skull of a living person by a trephine
entirely failed, since the bone upon the opposite side of the
skull formed so dense an obstacle that not the slightest
indication of the trephine opening appeared. To take,
therefore, a skiagraph of a brain through two thicknesses of
skull, with our present methods, is an impossibility. Even
should the difficulty be overcome, it is very doubtful whether
there would be any possibility of discovering diseases of the
brain, since diseased tissues, such as cancer, sarcoma, etc.,
are probably as permeable to the X rays as the normal tissues.
Thus Reid (“British Medical Journal,” February 15, 1896) states
that a cancerous liver showed no difference in permeability to
the rays through its cancerous and its normal portions.

Foreign bodies, such as bullets, etc., in the brain may be
discovered when our processes have become perfected. Figure 7
shows two buck-shot skiagraphed inside of a baby’s skull, and
therefore through two thicknesses of bone. It must be
remembered, however, that not only are the bones of a baby’s
skull much less thick than those of an adult’s skull, but they
are much less densely ossified, and so throw far less of a
shadow.

The dense shadows cast by bone are, at least at present, an
insuperable obstacle to skiagraphing the soft translucent
organs of the body which are enclosed within a more or less
complete bony case, as the rays will be intercepted by the
bones. Efforts, therefore, to skiagraph the heart, the lungs,
the liver, and stomach, and all the pelvic organs, probably
will be fruitless to a greater or less extent until our methods
are improved. While a stone in a bladder outside the body would
undoubtedly [pg 583] be perceptible, in the body
the bones of the pelvis prevent any successful picture being
taken.

FIGURE 6.—SKIAGRAPH OF A DEAD HAND AND WRIST, SHOWING
TWO BUCK-SHOT AND A NEEDLE EMBEDDED IN THE FLESH.

(“American Journal of the Medical Sciences,” March,
1896.)

To turn from the hindrances to the advantages of the
application of the method to the bones, one of the most
important uses will be in diseases and injuries of bones. In
many cases it is very difficult to determine, even under ether,
by the most careful manipulations, whether there is a fracture
or a dislocation, or both combined. When any time has elapsed
after the accident, the great swelling which often quickly
follows such injuries still further obscures the diagnosis by
manipulation. The X rays, however, are oblivious, or nearly so,
of all swelling, and the bones can be skiagraphed in the
thinner parts of the body at present, say up to the elbow and
the ankle, with very great accuracy. Thus, Figure 8 shows the
deformity from an old fracture of the ulna (one of the bones of
the forearm) very clearly.

By this means we shall be able to distinguish between
fracture and dislocation in obscure cases. Thus Mr. Gray
(“British Medical Journal,” March 7, 1896), in a case of injury
to an elbow, was enabled to diagnosticate and successfully to
replace a very rare dislocation, which could not be made out by
manipulation, but was clearly shown by the X rays. We may also
possibly be able to determine when the bones are properly
adjusted after a fracture; and all the better, since the
skiagraph can be taken through the dressings, even if wooden
splints have been employed. If plaster of Paris is used (and it
is often the best “splint”) this is impermeable to the
rays.

That this method will come into general use, however, is
very unlikely, since the expense, the time, and the trouble
will be so great that it will be impracticable to use it in
every case, especially in hospitals or dispensaries, where
crowds of patients have to be attended to in a relatively brief
time. In the surgical dispensary alone of the Jefferson Medical
College Hospital, about one hundred patients are in attendance
between twelve and two o’clock every day, and all the time of a
large number of assistants is occupied with dressing the cases.
It would be manifestly an utter impossibility to skiagraph the
many fractures which are seen there daily, considering that it
would take from half an hour to an hour of the time of not less
than two or three assistants skilled not only in surgery, but
also in electricity, to skiagraph a single fracture. Now and
then, in obscure [pg 584] cases, however, the method
will be undoubtedly of great service, as in the case above
described.

FIGURE 7.—SKIAGRAPH OF A BABY’S SKULL, SHOWING TWO
BUCK-SHOT PLACED UNDER THE SKULL.

(“American Journal of the Medical Sciences,” March,
1896.)

Too hasty conclusions, especially in medico-legal cases, may
easily be reached. We do not yet know, by skiagraphs of
successful results after fracture, just how such bones look
during the process of healing, and, therefore, we cannot yet be
sure that the skiagraph of an unsuccessful case is an evidence
of unskilfulness on the part of the surgeon.

In diseases of bone, which are obscure, it has already
proved of great advantage, as in a case related by Mr. Abrahams
(“British Medical Journal,” February 22, 1896). A lad of
nineteen, who had injured his little finger in catching a
cricket ball, had the last joint of the finger bent at a slight
angle, and he could neither flex nor extend it. Any attempt to
do so caused great pain. The diagnosis was made of a fracture
extending into the joint, and that the joint having become
ossified, nothing short of amputation would give relief. Mr.
Sydney Rowland skiagraphed the hand, and showed that there was
only a bridge of bone uniting the last two joints of the
finger. An anaesthetic was administered, and with very little
force the bridge of bone was snapped, the finger saved, and the
normal use of the hand restored.

Deformities of bone can be admirably shown. Thus Figure 9
(“British Medical Journal,” February 15, 1896) shows the
deformity of the last two toes of the foot, due to the wearing
of tight shoes. (Owing to the accidental breaking of the plate,
only a part of the foot is shown.) The lady whose foot was thus
skiagraphed stated that she had suffered tortures from her
boots, so that walking became a penance, and she even wanted
the toes amputated. Relief was obtained by wearing broad-toed
boots, which gave room for the deformed toes. Another admirable
illustration of a similar use of the method is seen in Figure
2, from a case of Professor Mosetig in Vienna. The last joint
of the great toe was double the ordinary size, and by touch it
was recognized that there were two bones instead of one. The
difficulty was to determine which was the normal bone, and
which the extra bone that ought to be removed. The moment the
skiagraph was taken, it was very clear
[pg 585] which bone should be
removed. Bony tumors elsewhere can also be diagnosticated
and properly treated. Possibly, also, we may be able to
determine the presence of dead bone, though I am not aware
of any such skiagraphs having been taken.

FIGURE 8.—SKIAGRAPH OF THE LEFT FOREARM OF A LIVING
SUBJECT, SHOWING AT THE POINT MARKED “B” A DEFORMITY FROM
AN OLD FRACTURE.

(Taken at the State Physical Laboratory, Hamburg, and
published in the “British Medical Journal.”)

Diseases and injuries of the joints will be amenable to
examination by this method. Figure 10 shows an elbow joint with
tuberculous disease. The bones of the arm and forearm are
clearly seen, and between them, is a light area due to
granulation-tissue, or to fluid, probably of tuberculous
nature, which is translucent to the rays. The picture confirms
the prior diagnosis of tuberculous disease, and shows that the
joint will have to be opened and treated for the disease.
Deposits of uric acid in gouty diseases of the joints will
undoubtedly be shown by these methods, but this will scarcely
be of any help in the treatment. Whether light will be thrown
on other diseases of the joints is a problem not yet
solved.

Analogous to the bony tissues are the so-called ossified
(really, calcified) arteries. In the dead body, arteries filled
with substances opaque to the X rays, such as plaster of Paris
or cinnabar mixtures, have already been skiagraphed
successfully. It is not at all improbable that calcified
arteries in the living subject may be equally well shown. So,
too, when we are able to skiagraph through thick tissues, we
may be able to show such deposits in the internal organs of the
body. Stones in various organs, such as the kidney, will be
accessible to examination so soon as our methods have improved
sufficiently for us to skiagraph through the thicker parts of
the trunk. The presence of such stones in the kidney is very
often inferential, and it will be a great boon, both to the
surgeon and the patient, if we shall be able to demonstrate
positively their presence by skiagraphy. For the reason already
given (the pelvic bones which surround the bladder), it is
doubtful whether we can make use of it in stone in the bladder.
Gall stones, being made not of lime and other similar salts, as
are stones in the kidney and bladder, but of cholesterine, are,
unfortunately, permeable to these rays; and it is, therefore,
doubtful whether the X rays will be of any service to us in
determining their presence.

The chief use of the method up to the present time, besides
determining the diseases, injuries, and abnormities of bone,
has been in determining with absolute accuracy the presence of
foreign bodies, especially of needles, bullets, or shot and
glass. It is often extremely difficult to decide whether a
needle is actually present
[pg 586] or not. There may be a
little prick of the skin, and no further positive evidence,
as the needle is often imperceptible to touch. The patient,
when cross-questioned, is frequently doubtful whether the
needle has not dropped on the floor; and it might be, in
some cases, a serious question whether an exploratory
operation to find a possible needle might not do more harm
than the needle. Moreover, though certainly present, to
locate it exactly is often very difficult; and even after an
incision has been made, though it may be embedded in a hand
or foot, it is no easy task to find it.

FIGURE 9.—SKIAGRAPH OF A HUMAN FOOT, SHOWING THE
DEFORMITY IN THE LAST TWO TOES CAUSED BY TIGHT BOOTS.

(Skiagraphed by Mr. Sydney Rowland, and published in the
“British Medical Journal.”)

The new method is a great step in advance in the line of
precision of diagnosis, and, therefore, of correct treatment.
About half a dozen cases have already been reported in the
medical journals in which a needle was suspected to be in the
hand or the foot, and, in some instances, had been sought for
fruitlessly by a surgeon, in which the use of the X rays
demonstrated absolutely, not only its presence, but its exact
location, and it has then been an easy matter to extract it.
So, too, in an equal number of cases, bullets and shot have
been located, even after a prior fruitless search, and have
been successfully extracted. Figure 6 is the skiagraph of the
hand of a cadaver which shows a needle deeply embedded in the
thumb, and also two buck-shot, which were inserted into the
palm of the hand through two incisions. It will be noticed that
their denser shadow is seen even through the bones of
the hand themselves, for the hand was skiagraphed palm
downward.

Professor von Bergmann of Berlin has uttered, however, a
timely warning upon this very point. In many cases, after
bullets or shot have been embedded in the tissues for any
length of time, they become quite harmless. They are surrounded
with a firm capsule of gristly substance which renders them
inert. In 1863, soon after I graduated in medicine, I remember
very well assisting the late Professor S.D. Gross in extracting
a ball from the leg of a soldier who had been wounded at the
Borodino, during Napoleon’s campaign in Russia. It lay in the
leg entirely harmless for almost fifty years, and then became a
source of irritation, and was easily found and removed. There
are many veterans of the Civil War now living with bullets
embedded in their bodies which are doing no harm; and there is
not a little danger that in the desire to find and remove them
greater harm may be done by an operation than by letting them
alone.

Glass is, fortunately, quite opaque to the Röntgen
rays, and it will be of great service to the patient, if the
surgeon shall [pg 587] be able, by skiagraphing
the hand, to determine positively whether any fragment of
glass still remains in a hand from which it is at least
presumed all the fragments have been extracted. Even after
the hand has been dressed, it is possible, through the
dressing, to skiagraph it, and determine the presence or
absence of any such fragments of glass.

FIGURE 10.—-SKIAGRAPH OF A SECTION OF A HUMAN ARM,
SHOWING TUBERCULOUS DISEASE OF THE ELBOW-JOINT.

(“American Journal of the Medical Sciences,” March,
1896.)

Possibly before long we shall be able to determine also the
presence or absence of solid foreign bodies in the larynx or
windpipe. Every now and then, patients, especially children,
get into the windpipe jack-stones, small tin toys, nails, pins,
needles, etc., foreign bodies which may menace life very
seriously. To locate them exactly is very difficult. The X rays
may here be a great help. An attempt has been made by Rowland
and Waggett. to skiagraph such foreign bodies, with encouraging
results. Improvements in our methods will, I think, undoubtedly
lead to a favorable use of the method in these instances.
Beans, peas, wooden toys, and similar foreign bodies, being
easily permeable to the rays, will not probably be
discovered.

If our methods improve so that we can skiagraph through the
entire body, it will be very possible to determine the presence
and location of foreign bodies in the stomach and intestines. A
large number of cases are on record in which plates with
artificial teeth, knives, forks, coins, and other such bodies
have been swallowed; and the surgeon is often doubtful,
especially if they are small, whether they have remained in the
stomach, or have passed into the intestines, or entirely
escaped from the body. In these cases, too, a caution should be
uttered as to the occasional inadvisability of operating, even
should they be located, for if small they will probably escape
without doing any harm. But it may be possible to look at them
from day to day and determine whether or not they are passing
safely through the intestinal canal, or have been arrested, at
any point, and, therefore, whether the surgeon should
interfere. The man who had swallowed a fork which remained in
his stomach (l’homme a la fourchette, as he was dubbed
in Paris) was a noted patient, and would have proved an
excellent subject for a skiagraph, had the method then
existed.

As sunlight is known to be the foe of bacteria, the hope has
been expressed that the new rays might be a means of destroying
the microbes of consumption and other diseases in the living
body. Delépine, Park, and others have investigated this
with a good deal of care. A dozen different varieties of
bacteria have been exposed to the Röntgen rays for over an
hour, but cultures made from the tubes after this exposure have
shown not only that they were not destroyed, but possibly they
were more vigorous than before.

The facts above stated seem to warrant
[pg 588] the following conclusions
as to the present value of the method:

First.—That deformities, injuries, and diseases
of bone can be readily and accurately diagnosticated by the
Röntgen rays; but that the method at present is limited in
its use to the thinner parts of the body, especially to the
hands, forearms, and feet.

Second.—That foreign bodies which are opaque to
the rays, such as needles, bullets, and glass, can be
accurately located and their removal facilitated by this means;
but that a zeal born of a new knowledge almost romantic in its
character, should not lead us to do harm by attempting the
indiscriminate removal of every such foreign body. Non
nocere (to do no harm) is the first lesson a surgeon
learns.

Third.—That at present the internal organs are
not accessible to examination by the X rays for two reasons:
First, because many of them are enclosed in more or less
complete bony cases, which cut off the access of the rays; and,
second, because even where not so enclosed, the thickness of
the body, even though it consists only of soft parts, is such
that the rays have not sufficient power of penetration to give
us any information.

Fourth.—Even if the rays can be made to
permeate the thicker parts of the body, it is doubtful whether
tumors, such as cancers, sarcoma, fatty tumors, etc., which are
as permeable to the rays as the normal soft parts, can be
diagnosticated. Bony tumors, however, can be readily
diagnosticated; and possibly fibrous tumors, by reason of their
density, may cast shadows.

Fifth.—That stones in the kidney, bladder, and
gall bladder cannot be diagnosticated, either (1) because they
are embedded in such parts of the body as are too thick to be
permeable by the rays, or (2) are surrounded by the bones of
the pelvis, or (3) are, in the case of gall stones, themselves
permeable to the Röntgen rays.

Sixth.—That with the improvements which will
soon be made in our methods, and with a better knowledge of the
nature of the rays, and greater ability to make them more
effective, we shall be able to overcome many of the obstacles
just stated, and that the method will then probably prove to be
much more widely useful than at present.

FIGURE 11.—SKIAGRAPH OF A HUMAN WRIST WHICH HAD BEEN
DISLOCATED.

From a photograph taken by Mr. Herbert B. Shallenberger,
Rochester, Pennsylvania, and reproduced by his permission.
This is a particularly interesting picture, because it not
only shows the bones with unusual clearness, but also shows
that the ulna (the small bone of the forearm) has been
broken; a small projection at its lower end, which ought to
appear, being absent from the bone as shown in the
picture.

Footnote 1:
(return)
The term “unpublished” is employed in this series of
articles to cover documents that have never been published
in any authoritative or permanent way. Most of the
documents so designated have never, so far as we know, been
published at all; but a few have been printed in local
newspapers, though so long ago, and under such
circumstances, as to be practically unpublished now.

Footnote 2:
(return)
The original of this letter is owned by E.R. Oeltjen of
Petersburg, Illinois.

Footnote 3:
(return)
The originals of both the letters on this page addressed
by Lincoln to Hardin are owned by the daughter of General
Hardin, Mrs. Ellen Hardin Walworth of New York City.

Footnote 4:
(return)
The swords referred to in this postscript are those used
in the Shields-Lincoln duel. See MCCLURE’S MAGAZINE for
April, 1896.

Footnote 5:
(return)
Interview with Judge William Ewing of Chicago.

Footnote 6:
(return)
Lincoln in Indiana in 1844. Unpublished MS. by Anna
O’Flynn.

Footnote 7:
(return)
This letter is dated October 3, 1845. It is now owned by
the son of Williamson Durley, Mr. A.W. Durley of West
Superior, Wisconsin. Mr. C.W. Durley of Princeton,
Illinois, kindly secured the copy for us from his
brother.

Footnote 8:
(return)
This letter is still in the possession of Dr. Boal of
Lacon, Illinois, and the right of publication was secured
for the Magazine by W.B. Powell of that city.

Footnote 9:
(return)
This letter, hitherto unpublished, is owned by E. R.
Oeltjen of Petersburg, Illinois.

Footnote 10:
(return)
From a letter published in the “Sangamo Journal” of
February 26, 1846, and which is not found in any collection
of Lincoln’s letters and speeches.

Footnote 11:
(return)
From an unpublished letter by Joseph Gillespie, owned by
Mrs. Ellen Hardin Walworth of New York City.

Footnote 12:
(return)
From an unpublished letter to Judge James Berdan of
Jacksonville, Illinois, dated April 26, 1846. The original
is now owned by Mrs. Mary Berdan Tiffany of Springfield,
Illinois.

Footnote 13:
(return)
“Personal Reminiscences and Recollections,” by Samuel C.
Busey, M.D., LL.D., Washington, D.C., 1895.

Footnote 14:
(return)
At this meeting the secretary was Ezra Lincoln, also a
descendant of Samuel Lincoln of Hingham.

Footnote 15:
(return)
See MCCLURE’S MAGAZINE for September, 1895.

McClure’s Magazine

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

A CENTURY OF PAINTING.

BY Will H. Low.

CHAPTERS FROM A LIFE.

By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps,

FOUR-LEAF CLOVER.

By Ella Higginson.

A LEAP IN THE DARK

By James T. Mckay,

THE LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By Ida M. Tarbell.

LINCOLN IN CONGRESS

LINCOLN WORKS FOR THE NOMINATION IN 1846.

LINCOLN’S POSITION IN 1845 ON THE SLAVERY QUESTION.

LINCOLN AND HARDIN.

LINCOLN GOES TO WASHINGTON.

LINCOLN’S WORK IN THE THIRTIETH CONGRESS.

LINCOLN GOES TO NEW ENGLAND.—A NEW SPEECH.

A TALE OF BRAVE DEEDS AND PERILOUS VENTURES

By Anthony Hope,

SUMMARY OF CHAPTERS ALREADY PUBLISHED.

CHAPTER IV.

A RAID AND A RAIDER.

CHAPTER V.

THE COTTAGE ON THE HILL.

CHAPTER VI.

THE POEM OF ONE-EYED ALEXANDER.

CLIMBING MONT BLANC IN A BLIZZARD.

CAUGHT IN A BLINDING SNOW STORM ON A NARROW CLIFF, TWO AND A HALF MILES ABOVE SEA LEVEL.

By Garrett P. Serviss,

DIFFICULTIES AND DANGERS OF THE ROUTE.

A BLINDING STORM OF SNOW AND WIND.

A NIGHT OF SCANT SHELTER AND NO FOOD.

A SECOND ATTEMPT FOR THE SUMMIT.

A RACE FOR THE SUMMIT.

FAIRY GOLD.

By Mary Stewart Cutting,

THE USE OF THE RÖNTGEN X RAYS IN SURGERY.

By W.W. Keen, M.D., LL.D.

A TALE OF BRAVE DEEDS AND PERILOUS
VENTURES

CAUGHT IN A BLINDING SNOW STORM ON A NARROW CLIFF, TWO AND
A HALF MILES ABOVE SEA LEVEL.