DANIEL WEBSTER

Engraved by Gustav Kruell; after a daguerreotype in the possession of Josiah J. Hawes, Boston.

SCRIBNER’S
MAGAZINE

PUBLISHED MONTHLY
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

VOLUME XXVI     JULY-DECEMBER
1899

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS NEW YORK
SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON & Co. Limited LONDON

Copyright, 1899,
By Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Printed by
Trow Directory, Printing and Bookbinding Company,
New York, U. S. A.

CONTENTS
OF
SCRIBNER’S MAGAZINE

Volume XXVI
                           
July-December, 1899.

POETRY

3

Scribner’s Magazine

VOL. XXVI.
          
JULY, 1899.
          
NO. 1.

Copyright, 1899, by Charles Scribner’s Sons. All rights reserved.
Printed in New York.

JOHN LA FARGE

By Russell Sturgis

A Study.

The artist of four
hundred years
ago, or of any
great time for individual
effort as opposed
to the associated
and unrecorded
work of more primitive
times, was a
many-sided man.
He was probably a
traveller, if not a
monk; he was almost
certainly a man of
adventure; a man of
thought, whether
monk or layman.
The artist did not
travel far; but he encountered
more personal
risk between
Florence and Naples
than our contemporary
does in voyaging
to the Isles of Summer;
he encountered
in Sicily, in Hungary,
or in Spain a people
as remote from him as
the Japanese are from us; and he had still
Constantinople and Cairo to visit, places
more distant and as inaccessible to him as
Thibet or Kafiristan in the nineteenth century.
The old artist was something of a
scholar, too, with a habit of study and
meditation, if not master of many books.
And, moreover, the old artist was very
much in love with his work and loved to
play with it as well as to work in it; so
that he touched many materials, handled
many processes, and used many methods of
artistic utterance. Again it is worth noting
that no one had discovered, in 1499,
that architecture was an art to be practised
without regard to the other manifestations
of the artistic spirit; nor yet that
the sculptor and the painter were two
workmen whose art was to be practised
apart from and independent of building or
other industrial occupation.

Study for Browning’s “Men and Women.”

All these things have been so much
changed of late that it is noticeable in
Mr. La Farge’s life that he should be, in
many ways, like a painter of old time, that
is, traveller, reader, collector and student;
colorist and decorator; painter in large
and in little. He has been a working artist
for forty years, and has done many things.
He has made many book illustrations
which have been published and many
which have never been given to the world.
The illustrations to Browning’s book,
“Men and Women,” as it was originally
published in 1855, are among these; and
there are reproduced here the full-page
design for the beginning of Protus and
also two studies for Fra Lippo Lippi:

This was early work. The illustration
to Misconceptions is as mystical as that for
Protus; and that which concludes Bishop
Blougram’s Apology is as realistic as these
studies of children.

4

Study for Browning’s “Men and Women.”

Then, still of his early days, are to be
considered the faithful little studies and
close-to-nature drawings which served as
a foundation for a structure of knowledge
which was to pile itself high enough. Sic
itur ad astra; and with a different result
from the tower-building recorded in Genesis.
The reproduction given [on page 9]
is from a sketch-book of 1860; and the
work has been a careful drawing in black on
white, done in the flat country about Bayou
Têche. These are drawings in values, or
made for values; that is to say, the relative
force of darkness or of light is carefully
preserved. A certain green of the
trees may be lighter than the blue, still
water below, but is very much
darker than the same water
where it reflects the pale evening
sky; the reflection in the
water of those same trees is a
shade or two darker than the
mass of trees themselves; and
so on, forever. Of the same
epoch is this drawing of a beacon
[page 10], a flaming cresset,
a signal light seen against a
night sky. These are warnings
to steamboats on the Mississippi
to avoid a shoal or to make a
landing. Other studies, those
of pure line and those of masses,
those of his youth and those of
his maturity, are scattered over
these pages.

He has produced also a very
great number of water-color
drawings, generally small, and
very commonly having for their
subjects pieces of foreground
detail, such as one or several
blossoms in a pool of water, or
a water-lily or two afloat on the
surface of a still pond. It might
almost be said that his water-colors
were generally of such detail
as this, except that the work
done during his journeys into
tropical and oriental lands has
resulted differently.

Again he has produced, during
those years of work, a few
large pictures painted in oil-color
or by a process which he
learned in his youth and in
which melted wax has a part;
though this is not the encaustic process
of antiquity or of modern revival. One
or two of these are portraits, several are
landscapes, several are studies of interesting
details which he wished to preserve
and which for some reason or other
had struck him as more easily rendered
on a large scale and in the more
solid material; and some are, to all appearance,
concepts for mural decoration—advance
studies for that which was to
be painted on a still larger scale, or in combination
with other parts of a large composition,
and finally to be fixed upon the
wall where it was to remain permanently.
Some, also, of the water-colors produced
5
in recent years are, though not
large in superficies, very large
in treatment. A glowing color
composition suggested by the
mountain country of Fiji, a
monochrome study of a river
landscape in Japan, may be as
grandiose in character and may
contain as much matter, both
in represented detail and in artistic
purpose, as an oil-painting
of four times the surface-measurement.
Some illustrations
given on another page of this
treatise may partly show the
qualities here suggested.

Panel, from One of the Ceilings in Cornelius Vanderbilt’s House. Inlaid glass, ivory, bronze, marble and silver,
and mother-of-pearl.

Figure from the Vanderbilt Ceiling.

He has produced, also, a few
such mural paintings as those
whose intention is assumed in
the last paragraph. Of these,
much the largest is that which
covers the end wall of the
Church of the Ascension in
New York. There are others in
St. Thomas’s Church and in the
Church of the Incarnation, both
in New York City; the interior
of Trinity Church in Boston was
painted by him with a series of
figure subjects, though the
chromatic treatment of this interior
does not include any large
single painting of great importance;
and of late years, two
lunettes in the Villard-Reid
house in New York and one in
the Walker Art Gallery at Bowdoin
College have been added
to this summary list. There is
reproduced here the last-named
picture [page 17]; a picture of fantastic
subject in the “literary” or narrative sense.
Athens is its given name; but it represents
Pallas making a drawing of the
lovely and unadorned genius of the open
country or wood, while the robed and
crowned impersonated City looks affectionately
at both the subject and the recording
goddess. To be classed under
the head of mural paintings also is the remarkable
composition of small pictures involved
in a large design with panels and
arabesques, which decorates the wooden
vaults of that gallery in Mr. Cornelius
Vanderbilt’s house, which used to be called
the Water-Color Room, and which now,
since the alteration of the house and the
removal of this painted vault into the new
building, may be considered the gallery of
entrance for stately entertainments. To
a limited extent, the work of other painters
is associated with his own in the last-named
achievement, as also in Trinity
Church. In this, the work of the artist
comes very near to decoration pure and
simple. The reader is not to understand
that any sharp distinction is made here
between decoration and that painting
which is not so designated. It is to be
hoped that he, the reader, will see as he
reads that to deny this distinction is part
of the life-purpose of John La Farge; a
6
purpose which his critic is glad to recognize
and to second. It is merely with
reference to its placing—to its apparent
intended service—to its fixed location and
its consequent exclusion from the category
of “gallery pictures” or “easel pictures”
that the words decoration
and decorative are here
applied to certain paintings.
For throughout his
career this artist has
leaned strongly toward
the treatment of his expressional
and significant
painting in a decorative
way.

Decoration in the more
usual sense has been also
a large part of his work.
Thus, when in 1878 he
contracted with Mr. Cornelius
Vanderbilt for a
carved ceiling, it appeared
that his intentions
in the matter were those
which could have been
suggested only by a mind
full of the decorative idea.
“A carved ceiling” might
have been almost anything;
but this one was
an elaborate composition
of colored sculpture, or, if
you please, of polychromy
in relief; certainly
one of the most remarkable
undertakings of
the time. What seem to
be (for the true constructional
character of the
ceiling is not here guaranteed) what seem
to be the beams, the constructional part
of the ceiling, were of light-colored walnut.
The panels within were filled with
figures of armed warriors and of draped
women of about half life-size, and these
panels were framed by
rim within rim, moulding
within moulding, of elaborate
sculptured pattern.
All these sculptured patterns,
all these figures,
were invested with color
in a way which it is hard
to describe; for different
chosen woods, alloys of
metal of which some are
of Japanese origin,
opaque and colored glass,
ivory, mother-of-pearl,
and even coral are combined
to give delicately
tinted color and subtle
variety of surface to the
work. That ceiling has
been broken up; but
there has been great good
judgment shown in its rearrangement.
The panels of the ceiling are now
arranged so that they are
well lighted both by day
and by night, and show
admirably. Although the
original design has disappeared,
the separate panels,
each with its enclosing
mouldings and woodwork,
at least four by six
feet in superficies, are

8
well displayed. One of these panels is here
engraved [page 6]. Here also is given
part of a decorative frieze in which castings
specially made of blue glass were used with
ivory and with carvings in solid nacre, in
combination with the carved walnut.

Dry Bed of the Dayagawa River.

Drawn by John La Farge.

Study for Values.

Similar work has been done by Mr. La
Farge in connection with his own paintings,
and sometimes where no paintings
were used. This use, on a large scale, of
rich material, rich in color, in surface and
in lustre, as a medium for sculpture, is almost
peculiar to this artist among modern
men. Others who have cared for color
in sculpture have played with it, rather,
in small objects of the cabinet; and this
remains true in a general way in spite of
a pleasant use of enamel in some French
work in bronze of a more important or,
at least, more pretentious character.

On the Bayou Têche; Study for Values.

At a time not far removed from the undertaking
of the ceiling and the mantelpiece
above mentioned, a monument was
put up in the Newport Cemetery under
the direction of Mr. La Farge [page 16].
He associated with himself in this task the
sculptor, since so widely known, but then
a young man, Augustus St. Gaudens, who
had already worked with him on the
carved and colored ceiling. Every student
of architectural designs will be struck
by the informal character of this design:
the steps which are clearly not meant to
be ascended and which have an obvious
symbolic meaning; the horizontal cross
sunk in the table of the monument in such
a way that few persons can be so placed
as to see it favorably; the inscription
carved upon the butt or foot of that
cross; the apparently disproportionate
slenderness of the upright cross with its
thin cylindrical shaft; the placing of other
inscriptions on the body of the massive
base in which no specially arranged panels
or medallions have been prepared for
them; and, most of all, the treatment of
the leaf sculpture which, though composed
carefully enough and far enough in itself
from being a piece of crude realism, is
yet realistic in its disposition—suggesting
the natural fall of sprays and branches of
leafage allowed to dry and harden in the
sun. No architect—as we now understand
the term—no architect, even one who
had kept himself free from the neo-classic
influence and the teaching of the schools,
could have designed such a piece as this.
It is the more interesting to see how the
highly trained decorative artist who has
not been fettered by the taught maxims
9
of the architect’s school or the architect’s
office has handled this problem—a problem
rarely met by decorators of modern
experience.

Study of a Mullein-stalk.

About 1876 these same demands upon
him for decoration led him to the careful
observation of ancient stained
glass, with a view to providing the
modern world with something
which might be to it what the windows
of Reims Cathedral and Fairford
Church were to the Middle
Ages. It appeared to the modern
artist that there was still a course
open to him which had not been
tried by the decorators of the Middle
Ages, early or late. It appeared
that the modern materials
and processes of glassmaking
might give to the artist in glass a
“palette” such as the mediæval
man had never possessed. What
is called opal glass, opaline, and
also opalescent glass may be said
to have formed the basis of a new
system of window decoration,
though the other essential, the leaden
framework, was to play its own
part in the artistical result. Uncolored
opaline glass has a milky-white
look when seen by reflected
light; but by transmitted light its
color passes from a cloudy bluish-gray
to red, with a yellow spark.
If, now, such glass be charged
with color of many shades, the
chromatic effects producible by the
combination of such translucent
materials, at once contrasting in
color and harmonized by the opaline
quality, might prove successful
beyond what had been known.
To this, then, La Farge set himself;
to obtain glass of richness, depth, and
glow of color hitherto unattempted, and
in a multitude of tints; so that, whereas
the thirteenth-century artist had five or six
colors in all, susceptible of nothing more
than a gradation from darker to lighter, as
the glass was thicker or thinner or more
or less thickly flashed—now, colors were
to be supplied by the score, each color
capable of these same gradations in darker
and lighter, and each color harmonized
with all the other colors by the common
quality of softness and a certain misty
iridescence caused by the opaline stain.
Even in a piece of glass so brilliant in color
that the opalescence is hardly perceptible,
its presence in that part of the general
chromatic scheme will surely be felt.

Study of a Beacon.

A window is, when considered as a
work of fine art in color, a translucent
composition, there being no part of it
which can appeal to the eye by other than
transmitted light. The artist has, then, the
need of something strong to lean upon,
some background, some fond upon which
to relieve his more brilliant pieces of translucency;
for it can be easily understood
that color composition which is wholly
translucent will tend toward feebleness,
toward paleness, toward a certain evanescent
and doubtful character of its colors,
from which it must be saved. This
10
needed background
was found in the
use of the leads;
that is to say, of
those strips of lead
made generally in
the form of a capital
I, in which the
edges of the separate
pieces of glass
are held. By taking
these leads as
the artistic sub-structure
of the
composition, by
placing them where
needed, and by cutting
the glass accordingly,
by combining
the colors of
the glass in such a
way as to allow the
leads to be put
where they were
needed for this purpose
of background,
results were obtained
which no artist
in glass had ever
yet attempted. La
Farge’s use of leads,
in this way, remains
peculiarly his own
in the subtlety and
refinement of the
linear design.
Occasionally,
indeed, a certain amount
of opaque
painting, of
that solid non-translucent
painting which the men of the Middle
Ages used continually, has been used to
increase the area of his lead sash-bars
or to diminish the brilliancy of a background.
All artists recognize the need
of the repentir, of the amendment made
after the work is partly done, or even, to
all eyes but their own, completed; and
painting in opaque color has been used
by La Farge when it has appeared that
the lead-sash was not quite sufficient for
the background needed. In like manner,
painting in translucent colored enamels
has been used by him where it has appeared
to him that no glass available
would produce the tone desired. As such
instances are occasional and rare, these
devices are not a part of the essence of La
Farge’s work in glass, and they are mentioned
here merely because their existence
must be understood as accidental. The
treatment of heads and hands and other
necessarily nude parts of the body, in
order that these surfaces may harmonize
with the generally unpainted drapery and
background, would require pages of discussion
if entered upon at all.

The purpose of this article is not, however,
to dwell in detail upon the historical
development of his art, but to criticise it
in its main features, and to institute an inquiry
into those traits of La Farge’s personality
which have made his work especially
interesting to all persons who care
for the retention of noble design in that
which is obviously novel, original, modern
in art.

Study for a Decoration for a Page of Browning’s “Men and Women,” 1861.

In the first place, then, Mr. La Farge
is very individual as a designer. He hardly
belongs to any school of designers. The
reader will suggest at once that, as there
is no school of designers at the present
day, a man of
force is compelled
to be individual;
and this dictum
will be readily accepted.
Inasmuch
as there has been
no time since La
Farge reached the
age of intelligence
and of interest in
art—no time when
he has not been a
student of Japanese
art; inasmuch
as he began, as
long ago as 1860,
to buy and study
what few pieces of
Japanese art and
handicraft he
could find—it has
been thought that
he is strongly influenced
by Japanese
design; but
11
this it will be hard to establish. His design
is individual and personal, and it is that
whether we take design to mean his way of
conceiving the human figure; or his way of
composing human figures in large groups
with care for the
effect of line and
mass; or whether
we think, rather,
of the filling of
the panel or the
canvas, the parallelogram or the
half-circle, with
masses of color
and tendencies of
line.

Study for the Wolf-Charmer.

Another Study for the Wolf-Charmer.

Now, in this individuality
of his
art, there is a
weaker as well as
a stronger side.
It cannot be ignored
by those
who admire his
larger and statelier
designs that
they lack something
of stateliness.
The figures
in his small woodcuts are carried
out of the strict
and grave system
of academic
drawing into an
extreme of freedom of gesture
and movement,
and that with the
evident purpose
of expressing in
the strongest possible
way the intense meaning of
the artist; but this hardly allows of mention
except as a virtue. Bishop Hatto in his
screaming agony, as the rats attack him
on every side while he crouches at the foot
of the column on the capital of which the
cat has taken refuge (for each and all the
details of which see Southey’s poem)—Bishop
Hatto is almost liquified, has almost
lost the solid substance of his corporeal
form, in his horror and hopelessness.
Enoch Arden, “the long-haired, long-bearded
solitary,” hardly shows the strong
man, the vigorous sailor under his rags and
through his squalor; the emphasis is laid
on the fourteen years’ solitary confinement
in this lonely island, and the “strong
heroic soul” which the poet drew has not
interested the artist as part of this design.
These are small drawings for wood-engraving
and for book illustration; but the
same character of design occurs again and
again in the larger and statelier pieces;
and it may there be less easy to accept.
The impression made upon a student of
mural painting, ancient and modern, by
such a painting as that in the Church of
the Ascension is that it is, in a sense, lacking
12
in repose. The
Adoring Angels
around the risen Saviour
are individual in
their gestures, in the
pose of their bodies,
in the expression of
their faces. They
are personalities rather
than parts of a
“Glory of Angels.”
The figure of Christ
itself has the same
peculiarity and is
marked by a singularly
free and unconventional
pose of the
body and gesture of
the right arm, suggestive rather of the
teacher of men than of the Son taken
up to his Father. Moreover, this effect
as of too much movement and incident,
as of too little stability and gravity, is
heightened by the flowing drapery, which
is so marked a feature of the composition
that it remains uppermost in the
minds of many students to the very end
of their study of the picture. Something
of this may be seen in the illustration given
here of the noble window which was sent
to the Exhibition of 1889 [page 15]. The
subject is the Sealing of the Servants of
God. These groups are of indubitable
truth and power as illustrations of the passage
in the Apocalypse; but as parts of
a solemn color design another standard
needs to be applied to them.

The Floating Head.

So much for the less agreeable side of
this familiar and personal way of designing.
In the favorable aspect there would,
of course, be very much to be said, for he
is no illustrator, he is no story-teller, he is
no composer of pictured fable or pictured
record who does not understand how to
give his figures that life and movement,
that action and expression, which will explain
all that is explainable of their purpose
and their function. Nothing, for instance,
can be more perfect as a bit of mystical
story-telling than the Wolf-Charmer, the
picture in which the gaunt and haggard
magician, with his pipe at his lips,
comes out of the forest surrounded by his
drove of gigantic wolves. Two studies
for the wolves are given here; and the
spirit of the design is interesting to trace in
them. To give the savage creatures something
more than their due size, and, above
all, something more than their due ferocity,
is a natural and obvious device; but to
express, as the artist has expressed, their
familiarity with their leader, their sympathy
with him, their spirit entering into his as
he heads and controls them, is something
admirable in descriptive art. So in that
grim picture in which some part of the
spirit of feudal Japan is contained; the
picture which tells the tale of little Kio-Sai;
the rushing and turbulent stream between
its high banks is gray and sombre
as if with the swollen waters of a flood;
and upon it, whirled along in its course, the
severed head which frightened the child
floats face upward with something of its
living expression still lingering about the
eyes and lips, but still as dead, as corpse-like
as a severed head could be. This
powerful drawing, made within the last
two years, is to be cited as a characteristic
specimen of expressional art. There is
nothing in the picture but whirling water
and floating head; and yet the stern,
fierce, half-savage, feudal system of Japan,
which coexisted with an almost too subtle
refinement of manners and of thought,
both literary and artistic, is expressed in
this little square of grave coloring. So,
in the numerous South Sea Island studies
which have filled many a frame and delighted
so many a student of water-color
drawings, it is hard to say whether the
pictures of movement and action, of fishing
13
with cormorants, of riding and marching,
of bustle and life, or the pictures of
tropical and oriental men and women in
repose, are more delightful—half naked
girls carrying canoes, seated dancers going
through the sacred movements of the siva,
portraits of individuals, and studies of
groups intended to preserve for the artist
the recollection, and for the instruction of
those at home the singular life, of these
brown islanders, so different from the
negroids of the southern groups, so over-civilized
in ceremony and tradition, with
all their lack of policing and of steady social
conditions. In all this work the
artist’s indifference to the accepted conventional
ways of expressing his meaning
is altogether fortunate for his art. He
knows how to tell a story in pictures which
have very much, if not all, of his highest
artistic qualities, and this he would hardly
be capable of were he more fettered than
he is by the rules of the academies as to
how the action of man should be put into
form and color.

A Study.

Study for Bacchanal Drawing.

In connection with this matter, the question
comes up how far Mr. La Farge is a
thorough draughtsman. It hardly becomes
one who is not ready to go into the minute
examination of his work, figure by
figure, to challenge its merit in the way of
anatomical correctness and academic severity
of drawing; but it is to be said, at
least, that the strongest reason exists for
the belief that many of the draped figures
would prove incorrect if an absolutely accurate
drawing of the nude body in the
position assumed by the draped figure
could be laid upon the drapery. It is
difficult here to express one’s exact meaning,
because there is no such thing as an
absolutely correct drawing of the nude
body in any position; but if we take a
draped angel or a draped St. Peter or a
draped Buddhist priest from this gallery
of pictured men and women, we can imagine
the consummate draughtsman, the
Paul Veronese of the present, if there were
such a man, pointing out that a figure seated
or standing in that position could not
get within the drapery which the artist
has pictured. We can even imagine the
painter aware of the fact—in advance of
all criticism by others. It will be observed
14
that La Farge has seldom painted the
nude. His early work involved a great
deal of drawing, both from the nude model
and in the way of designed and composed
nude figures. Naked figures represented
on a small scale, as among his
numerous Eastern subjects, exist, of course,
in his work in great numbers; but the
nude in the larger European sense of elaborately
rendered, well modelled, thoroughly
understood naked figures, male and female,
is rare in his work. Mural painting
in churches hardly allows of that; glass
is, of course, wholly foreign in its purpose
and mission from such art as includes the
nude, and hardly allows even of the naked
hands and head. Now, let it be admitted
for the moment not only that La Farge is
not given to drawing the nude, but even
that he has not done consummate work in
that direction; let that be admitted, and
let us then see how that affects his pictures
and drawings. It need not be asked
whether it affects the decorative value of
his work—considered as a body of art it
cannot affect it badly; we need think,
now, only of fine drawing
considered by itself. It is
a part of the true traditional
doctrine of art that
no man should paint from
the model, nude or draped;
that no man should draw
from the model, nude or
draped, with the intention
of using the drawing upon
his wall surface or canvas.
It is a tradition which
ought to have been left intact
as it came from older
men, that when the artist
composes it is his duty to
forget his anatomy and to
forget the preparatory
drawings which he has
made by hundreds, and to
draw directly upon his canvas
or sheet of paper the
figure which he now conceives
as a part of his design,
the figure which he
desires to put into his composition
as one of its elements.
He is free then to
do what La Farge himself
does freely, to compare this
15
result with the model,
nude or draped, or first
nude and then draped;
but this comparison has
for its purpose, not the
correction of the drawing
or the picture with
reference to its anatomical
correctness nearly so
much as it has in view
the lifelike appearance of
the figure. Given a
draped figure which does
not seem to stand quite
as firmly upon its feet, or
to be moving quite as
freely, as the composer
himself desires, it is required
by consultation of
the model to rectify those
errors in the drawing
which have led to this
unfortunate result and to
give to that figure the
lifelike character which
it does not yet possess.

Study for the Watson Window, 1889.

This is the one carried out and sent to the Paris Exposition.

It is a characteristic of
Mr. La Farge’s art as a
painter that he is primarily
a colorist. Now it is
fairly safe to say that no
man since the great Venetians
has been at once
a consummate draughtsman
of the human figure
and a consummate master
of color; and that apparently
the mind of the
workman cannot lead his
artistic production in
such paths that both of
these excellences may be
attained at once. The
workman, if he is sincere,
and if he is well advised,
follows the course which
is easiest for him, and if
he conceives of every
figure and every group of
figures with their setting
of landscape or architecture
primarily as a
piece of splendid coloring,
to be taken from
nature as an abstract
piece of coloring, and so
16
modified that it will tell as an abstract
piece of coloring on canvas or on wall—if
that is the artist’s object he will not improve
the work produced on these lines
by giving his time and strength to the proposed
consideration of accuracy
of drawing.

To ask whether
La Farge’s
work would be
artistically better
if it were consummate
in drawing
is to ask a
question which
no one can answer.
It is certain
that no wise
student will go
to La Farge to
learn figure drawing
in the technical
sense. It is
not that which
his art offers the
student. There
are, however, two
large pictures,
which can hardly
be challenged—the
two lunettes
in the Villard-Reid
house; and
it is probable that
if these pictures
were within easy
reach of the public,
and could be
seen as the wall
paintings in the Congressional Library
can be seen by all the world and every
day, they would tend to raise the general
opinion of La Farge’s capacity and
range as a painter beyond what even
his admirers now hold. The pictures
represent “The Dance” and “Music.” In
each of them, smiling landscape forms the
background, a landscape not to be called
sunny because the work of the true colorist
hardly allows of sunshine. Sunshine
and full glowing color are not generally
found possible of simultaneous presentation,
and La Farge certainly makes no attempt
to combine them. If, then, we consider
one of these two groups of six or
eight maidens invested in rather bright
and high-lighted colors and set off by a
landscape somewhat deeper in tone than
their own figures—if we consider each of
these pictures as a mural painting intended
to be festal in
character and to
glorify and
heighten the
beauty of the
room which it
adorns, while at
the same time it
is in itself a piece
of coloring of almost
the highest
quality—we
have then, perhaps,
the fairest
and most complete
idea of what
one of these lunettes
is as a
work of art—what
it has been
in the artist’s well-realized purpose.
The beauty of
composition in
line and mass in
either of the pictures,
noticeable
as it is, is not important
in comparison. The
power of line-composition is
not very rare; except
in its very
highest manifestation,
it is almost like correct spelling;
necessary, but deserving no special remark.
But when it is said of any picture
that it is a piece of coloring of the highest
or almost the highest rank, there has
been said of it the utmost that can be
said of a work of graphic art. It is not
claimed that color is essentially greater
or nobler than form, but that color is the
graphic artist’s especial domain, in which
he alone can rule; and further, that color
is peculiarly artistical, ideal, abstract, and
in this way loftier. Is it possible for the
mind of man to conceive of anything
more perfect, more remote from, and, in
a sense, superior to, whatever else there
17
is in the world of humanity than a color composition of the highest quality? There
is only one product of the human mind which can be compared with it;
a musical composition of the highest class; a symphony of
Beethoven, alone, can be compared to a great composition
by Titian. That such a color-gift and such a color-purpose
are to be seen in all of Mr. La Farge’s
work alike would be hardly too much to say.
The touch of the consummate colorist is not
as evident, but is as discoverable by one
who knows how to look, in a piece of
nature-study from Fiji, six inches
square, as it is in a large composition
of saints and angels. The
disposition and the power to give
to tinted paper the glow, the
radiance, the wealth and charm
of that strange and inexplicable
thing, the mingling of
tints into a resulting color-scheme—these
are in small
work the same essentially
that they are in large.
Nor is the background
of the Ascension picture
in the eponymic
church to be exalted
above the bits of hillside
and surf in the
drawings of oceanic
life, otherwise than as
its greater size allows
it greater splendor.

Monument in Newport Cemetery
Erected Under the Direction
of John La Farge
and Augustus St. Gaudens.

That this power over
color is the life and soul
of the decorator need
hardly be urged. Decoration
which is applied to a
flat surface and which is
not in relief, except, perhaps,
to a slight extent and occasionally,
has for its main object,
its main desideratum, richness
or refinement of coloring,
or both. If one has a wall to
decorate, the first idea of the true
decorator is to invest it with splendor
or with delicate strength of color. He
seeks for fresco, or the encaustic process, or
mosaic, or, as in modern times, oil-painting
upon a strained canvas, indifferently and according
to the spirit of his time and the practice
of his contemporaries; but his object is one and the
same—to invest his wall or ceiling with noble color. Little
may he care what the subject of the painting or mosaic may be.
According to the requirements of the epoch or community in which he lives,
it may be a procession of saints or a dance of bacchanals; the primary object which
18
he has in view is to procure a most enjoyable
and delightful piece of color—and
other things are of secondary importance.
Glass, then, would seem to be especially
prepared for La Farge’s work, and La
Farge especially prepared for glass. Consider
the memorial window which fills a
window-opening in a church at North
Easton, Mass., a town which owes much
to the lady whose memory is thus honored.
Upon a background of broken
and changing blue are relieved the three
figures larger than life-size which nearly
fill the opening. Two of these figures are
clothed, one in drapery of the most vivid
green, the other in drapery of orange-brown;
that is to say, these are the general
colors offered to the eye of the spectator
by the infinite number of minor tints, all
passing into one another in subtle gradation,
which make up the general mass of
drapery. It is to be observed, then, that
these figures are also seen to be clothed
in rags, and that the idea, the notion of
wretchedness and tatters is maintained in
spite of the sumptuous clothing of glowing
color which invests it all. That is an instance
as good as can be found of what
the colorist has to do in this world. He
does not ask whether beggars have ever
been dressed in such garments as have
been described, but he has to express the
two-fold image, Beggary and splendid
color, and out of these he makes up his
work of art, as unlike as may be to anything
in nature, but none the worse for
that. To return to mural painting; there
is one merit which all La Farge’s brother-painters
agree in awarding to him, and
that is the power of putting a painting
upon the wall so that it does not change
the character of the wall as a part of
the building. His painting takes nothing
away from the solidity of the wall which
it invests. The upright mass retains its
rigidity and weight, it still carries the roof,
it still holds firmly to the adjoining walls,
it is a massive and trustworthy part of the
construction, and the painted picture has
added to rather than taken from its permanent
and resting quality. How this is
done is fully as inexplicable as is the glow
and splendor of color itself. No one can
say abstractly and without having the picture
immediately before him how any such
result is attained, nor is it easy to explain
the picture, even to the looker-on, in any
such terms as will fully express this quality.
It is one of the most valuable qualities
which mural painting can possess—mural
painting which fluctuates between the flatness
which is also feebleness and a kind
of realism which carries with it the effect
of out-of-doors—of a hole in the wall.
The same thing obtains in his minor work,
and here the background, the temple, or
rock, forty feet away, is as perfectly detached
from the foreground figures as
would be a distant and airy mountain
miles away, while still the picture remains
flat cardboard or flat canvass invested
with light and shade and color.

“Athens.” Mural Painting in the Walker Art Gallery at Bowdoin College.

We are brought naturally to the consideration
of Mr. La Farge’s landscape.
He is not generally considered as a landscape
painter; and yet he has produced
a great deal of landscape in the secondary
or accessory part of his work. He has
also painted landscape of first intention,
so to speak, landscape which is nothing
but landscape, and that, at different times
in his life; always succeeding, and yet
always turning away from landscape to
what seems to be his chosen work of figure
subject used decoratively. Landscape-painting
is unquestionably the art of our
epoch, the one branch of the art of painting
which this century has excelled in;
and, therefore, La Farge was inevitably
drawn toward landscape painting, he being
a man of his time, if also a man of
strong individual peculiarities. It would
be hard for a student of art in the abstract,
a theorizer, a critic and a lover of
the arts of the past, to avoid painting
landscape when everybody around him is painting
landscape; and accordingly La Farge
has turned his attention to that, but the
odd thing is that he has not stayed there,
that he has not continued to be a landscape
painter primarily. It would seem to
the hasty observer of landscape painting
that this department of art alone would
have afforded material for all of his artistic
dreams and for all his artistic purposes,
for what is more truly decorative than
landscape such as is shown in the wonderful
Paradise Valley? That picture is made
up of light and color. The surface of
thick, lush, summer grass, the surface of
rock dimly seen, the surface of ocean, the
hazy sky, all together go to form a mass
19
of glowing and yet delicate color the like
of which it is very hard to find in simple
landscape anywhere in ancient or modern
art. Until recent years there were only
half a dozen such pictures of wide landscape,
numerous as were his studies in that
style; for otherwise his finished landscapes
were chiefly those composed of
foreground rock, of iris seen against a wild-rose
covered bank, of three or four water-lily
blossoms and a dozen little buds floating
on still water; or else they were landscape
backgrounds to figure subjects in
which the landscape was evidently made,
of deliberate purpose, a thing of less intention
and of inferior interest. During
the last ten years, however, La Farge has
produced an immense number of singularly
effective drawings in monochrome and in
color, made either on the spot in Samoa,
in Fiji, in Japan, or elsewhere in the far
East, or made after his return home, from
studies carefully noted during his stay
abroad. Of these landscape drawings,
some are of extended and really vast
stretches of country. Mountains are introduced
which are several miles away,
and show in relief against a pale sky, every
detail of the mountain being rendered as
the eye could have seen it from the point
of view occupied by the painter, and the
whole wrought into a wonderfully glowing
panorama of green passing into blue against
the green mystery of the firmament.
There are also among these drawings
pictures which are Turnerian in their love
of and sympathy with mist and vapor and
their enjoyment of pure and delightful
color produced by sunlight upon such
vapor. Among these are four drawings
of the Valley of Tokio seen from a hill
above the city, the vision of the artist
reaching across the valley and including
its whole extent and the mountains which
form the boundary. In other words, each
of these landscapes includes a range of
one hundred square miles of country at
least, and its investing and overflowing
drapery of cloud and of low-lying vapor;
and yet these were four small drawings,
mere studies on leaves of a sketch-book.
It is the greatest misfortune to Americans
that they have been scattered among four
different owners. If it were possible for
the Boston Museum, under its wise direction,
to gather these four drawings into its
ownership and to exhibit them side by side
well lighted and isolated from other conflicting
art, a real service would be done
to the whole community of art students;
for there is in them an abundance of the
true landscape feeling, of the true landscape
sympathy, of that love of the magnificence,
and the refinement of nature
which no transcript can give, but which
the thought of the artist when stimulated
powerfully by the contemplation of the
glory of nature will transfer to his material
medium.

Much of this character exists in the
sepia drawing of the “Dry Bed of the
Dayagawa River,” [page 7] which hardly
needs analysis in words, since it is capable
of fairly complete reproduction.

A Study.

20

Skerryvore.

THE
LETTERS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
Edited by Sidney Colvin

FROM BOURNEMOUTH: 1884-1885

In order of date the letters now to be quoted follow next on those from
the French Riviera which were printed in the April number. When
in the late spring of 1884 Stevenson was prostrated by the worst of
all his many attacks of hemorrhage from the lung, he was still residing
in that chalet at Hyères which he had hoped to make his permanent
abode. Partly the renewed failure of his health, and partly a bad
outbreak of cholera in the old Provençal town, which occurred in the ensuing summer,
compelled him to abandon this hope. As soon as he recovered strength enough
to be able to travel by even the easiest stages, he moved to Royat in Auvergne, and
thence in the course of July to England. After consultation with several doctors,
all of whom held out good hopes of ultimate recovery in spite of the gravity of his
present symptoms, he moved to Bournemouth. Here he found in the heaths and
pine-woods some distant semblance of the landscape of his native Scotland, and in
sandy curves of the Channel coast a passable substitute for the bays and
promontories of his beloved Mediterranean. At all events he liked the place well enough to
be willing to try it for a home: and such it became for all but three years, from September,
1884, to August, 1887. These, although in the matter of health the worst and
most trying years of his life, were in the matter of work some of the most active and
successful. For the first two or three months the Stevensons occupied a lodging on
the West Cliff called Wensleydale; for the next three or four, from December, 1884,
to March, 1885, they were tenants of a house named Bonallie Towers, pleasantly situated amid
21
the pine-woods of Branksome Park; and lastly, about Easter, 1885, they
entered into occupation of a house of their own, given by the elder Stevenson to his
son, and re-named by the latter Skerryvore, in reminiscence of one of the great lighthouse
works carried out by the family firm off the Scottish coast. During all the
time of Stevenson’s residence at Bournemouth he was compelled to lead the life, irksome
to him above all men, but borne with invincible sweetness and patience, of a
chronic invalid and almost constant prisoner to the house. He was hardly ever free
for more than a few weeks at a time from fits of hemorrhage, fever, and prostration,
accompanied by the nervous exhaustion and general distress consequent equally upon
the attacks themselves and upon the remedies which the physicians were constrained
to employ against them. A great part of his time was spent in bed, and there
almost all his literary work was produced. Often for days, and sometimes for weeks
together, he was forbidden to speak aloud, and compelled to carry on conversation
with his family and friends in whispers or with the help of pencil and paper. The
few excursions to a distance which he attempted—most commonly to my house, at the
British Museum, once to Matlock, once to Exeter, and once in 1886 as far as Paris—these
excursions almost always ended in a break-down and a hurried retreat to home
and bed. Nevertheless, seizing on and making the most of every week, nay, every day
and hour of respite, he contrived to produce work surprising alike, under the circumstances,
by quantity and quality. During the first two months of his life at Bournemouth
the two plays Admiral Guinea and Beau Austin were written in collaboration
with Mr. Henley. In 1885 he published three volumes, viz.: More New Arabian Nights,
the Child’s Garden of Verses, and Prince Otto (the two latter, it is true, having been
for the most part written a year or two earlier, at Hyères). In 1886 appeared The
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Kidnapped, the two books which, together
with Treasure Island, did most to win for him the fame and honor which he
ever afterward enjoyed among readers on both sides of the Atlantic. At the same
time he was a fairly frequent contributor of essays to magazines and of stories to
Christmas annuals and other periodical collections. The year 1887, the last of his
life in the old country, was chiefly, with the exception of the Life of Fleeming Jenkin,
a year of collections and re-prints; in it were published Underwoods, The Merry Men,
Memories and Portraits, and the Black Arrow in volume form.

The correspondence of these three invalid years at Bournemouth is naturally in a
less buoyant key than that of the relatively flourishing and happy year at Hyères
which preceded them. But it is none the less full of interest, and of that vivid play
of mood and character which never failed in him whether he was sick or well. The
specimens which I shall here give will be taken, with a few exceptions, from his communications
with his brother men of letters, including some whose acquaintance or
friendship he had now for the first time formed, as Mr. Henry James, Mr. William
Archer, and Mr. Locker-Lampson, besides such intimate friends and associates of
earlier days as Mr. Henley, Mr. Gosse, Mr. Symonds and myself.

But first come two or three to his parents and other correspondents:

Bournemouth, Sunday, 28th September, 1884.

My dear People,—I keep better, and
am to-day downstairs for the first time.
I find the lockers entirely empty; not a
cent to the front. Will you pray send us
some? It blows an equinoctial gale, and
has blown for nearly a week. Nimbus
Britannicus; piping wind, lashing rain;
the sea is a fine colour, and wind-bound
ships lie at anchor under the Old Harry
rocks, to make one glad to be ashore.

The Henleys are gone, and two plays
practically done. I hope they may produce
some of the ready.—I am, ever affectionate
son,

R. L. S.

Wensleydale, Bournemouth,
October 3rd, 1884.

Dear Mr. Chatto.—I have an offer of
£25 for Otto from America. I do not
know if you mean to have the American
rights; from the nature of the contract, I
think not; but if you understood that you
were to sell the sheets, I will either hand
over the bargain to you, or finish it myself
and hand you over the money if you
22
are pleased with the amount. You see, I
leave this quite in your hands. To parody
an old Scotch story of servant and master:
if you don’t know that you have a
good author, I know that I have a good
publisher. Your fair, open, and handsome
dealings are a good point in my
life, and do more for my crazy health
than has yet been done by any doctor.—Very
truly yours,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

[Mr. Stevenson, the elder, had read the
play of Admiral Guinea, written in September
by his son and Mr. Henley in collaboration,
and had objected, with his usual
energy of expression, to the stage confrontation
of profane blackguarding, in
the person of Pew, with evangelical piety
in that of the reformed slaving captain
who gives his name to the piece.]

Bonallie Towers,
Branksome Park,
Bournemouth,
(The three B’s),
(November 5th, 1884).

My Dear Father,—Allow me to say,
in a strictly Pickwickian sense, that you
are a silly fellow. I am pained indeed,
but how should I be offended? I think
you exaggerate; I cannot forget that you
had the same impression of the Deacon;
and yet, when you saw it played, were less
revolted than you looked for; and I will
still hope that the Admiral also is not so
bad as you suppose. There is one point,
however, where I differ from you very
frankly. Religion is in the world; I do
not think you are the man to deny the importance
of its rôle; and I have long decided
not to leave it on one side in art.
The opposition of the Admiral and Mr.
Pew is not, to my eyes, either horrible or
irreverent; but it may be, and it probably
is, very ill done: what then? This is a
failure; better luck next time; more power
to the elbow, more discretion, more wisdom
in the design, and the old defeat becomes
the scene of the new victory. Concern
yourself about no failure; they do
not cost lives, as in engineering; they are
the pierres perdues of successes. Fame is
(truly) a vapour; do not think of it; if the
writer means well and tries hard, no failure
will injure him, whether with God or
man.

I wish I could hear a brighter account
of yourself; but I am inclined to acquit
the Admiral after having a share in the
responsibility. My very heavy cold is, I
hope, drawing off; and the change to
this charming house in the forest will, I
hope, complete my re-establishment.—With
love to all, believe me, your ever
affectionate,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

[About the same time, Mr. T. Stevenson
was in some hesitation as to letting
himself be proposed for the office of President
of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.]

Bonallie Towers, Bournemouth,
November, 1884.

My Dear Father,—I have no hesitation
in recommending you to let your
name go up; please yourself about an address;
though, I think, if we could meet,
we could arrange something suitable; but
what you propose would be well enough
in a way; but so modest as to suggest a
whine. From that point of view it would
be better to change a little; but this, whether
we meet or not, we must discuss.
Tait, Crystal, the Royal Society, and I, all
think you amply deserve this honour and
far more; it is not the True Blue to call
this serious compliment a “trial”; you
should be glad of this recognition. As
for resigning, that is easy enough if found
necessary; but to refuse would be husky,
unsatisfactory, and a trifle rotten. Sic
subs.

R. L. S.

My cold is still very heavy; but I carry
it well. Fanny is very much out of
sorts, principally through perpetual misery
with me. I fear I have been a little
in the dumps, which, as you know, sir, is
a very great sin. I must try to be more
cheerful; but my cough is so severe—my
uvula, larynx, and pharynx being all
to pot—that I have sometimes most exhausting
nights and very peevish wakenings.
However, this shall be remedied,
and last night I was distinctly better than
the night before. There is, my dear Mr.
Stevenson (so I moralise blandly as we sit
together on the devil’s garden-wall), no
more abominable sin than this gloom, this
plaguey peevishness; why (say I) what
matters it if we be a little uncomfortable—that
23
is no reason for mangling our unhappy
wives. And then I turn and girn
on the unfortunate Cassandra.—Your fellow
culprit,

R. L. S.

With reference to the two following
letters, it should be explained that Stevenson
and his old Edinburgh friend
and comrade, Mr. Baxter (who was also
his man of business), were accustomed in
their correspondence, as the whim took
them, to merge their own identities in
those of two fictitious personages, Johnson-Thomson
and Thomson-Johnson, ex-elders
of the Kirk and types of a certain
cast of Edinburgh character. Their
language is of the broadest Scots; and
for some readers it may be desirable to
mention that “hoast” means cough and
“sculduddery” loose talk.

Bonallie Towers, Branksome Park,
Bournemouth, November 11th.

My Dear Charles,—I am in my new
house, thus proudly styled, as you perceive:
but the deevil a tower ava’ can be
perceived (except out of window); this is
not as it should be; one might have hoped,
at least, a turret. We are all vilely unwell.
I put in the dark watches imitating
a donkey with some success, but little
pleasure; and in the afternoon I indulge
in a smart fever, accompanied by aches
and shivers. There is thus little monotony
to be deplored; and what might still
weigh upon me my wife lightens by various
inexplicable attacks, now in the pleasant
morn, now at the noon of night. I,
at least, am a regular invalid; I would
scorn to bray in the afternoon; I would
indignantly refuse the proposal to fever in
the night. What is bred in the bone will
come out, sir, in the flesh; and the same
spirit that prompted me to date my letter
regulates the hour and character of my
attacks.—I am, sir, yours,

Thomson.

Postmark, Bournemouth,
13th November, 1884.

My dear Thomson,—It’s a maist remarkable
fac’, but nae shüner had I written
yon braggin’, blawin’ letter aboot ma
business habits, when bang! that very
day, my hoast begude in the aifternune.
It is really remaurkable; it’s providenshle,
I believe. The ink wasnae fair dry,
the wards werenae well ooten ma mouth,
when bang, I got the lee. The mair ye
think o’t, Thomson, the less ye’ll like the
looks o’t. Proavidence (I’m no sayin’) is
all verra weel in its place; but if proavidence
has nae mainners, wha’s to learn’t?
Proavidence is a fine thing, but hoo would
you like proavidence to keep your till for
ye? The richt place for proavidence is
in the Kirk; it has naething to do wi’
private correspondence between twa gentlemen,
nor freendly cracks, nor a wee
bit word of sculduddery ahint the door,
nor, in shoart, wi’ ony hole-and-corner
wark, what I would call. I’m pairfec’ly
willin’ to meet in wi’ Proavidence, I’ll be
prood to meet in wi’ him, when my time’s
come and I cannae doe nae better; but
if he’s to come skinking aboot my stairfit,
damned, I might as weel be deid for
a’ the comfort I’ll can get in life. Cannae
he no be made to understand that it’s beneath
him? Gosh, if I was in his business,
I wouldnae steer my heid for a
plain, auld ex-elder that, tak him the way
he taks himsel’, ‘s just aboot as honest as
he can weel afford, an’ but for a wheen
auld scandals, near forgotten noo, is a
pairfectly respectable and thoroughly decent
man. Or if I fashed wi’ him ava’,
it wad be kind o’ handsome like; a punnote
under his stair door, or a bottle o’
auld, blended malt to his bit marnin’, as a
teshtymonial like you ye ken sae weel
aboot, but mair successfu’.

Dear Thomson, have I ony money. If
I have, send it for the loard’s sake.

Johnson.

[The following to Mr. Henry James,
who from about this time began to be a
frequent and ever welcome visitor at the
Bournemouth home, refers to the essay of
R. L. S. called a “Humble Remonstrance,”
which had just appeared in Longman’s
Magazine. Mr. James had written holding
out the prospect of a continuance of
the friendly controversy which had thus
been opened up between them on the
aims and qualities of fiction.]

Bonallie Towers, Branksome Park,
Bournemouth, December 8th, 1884.

My dear Henry James,—This is a
very brave hearing from more points than
24
one. The first point is that there is a hope
of a sequel. For this I laboured. Seriously,
from the dearth of information and
thoughtful interest in the art of literature,
those who try to practice it with any deliberate
purpose run the risk of finding no
fit audience. People suppose it is “the
stuff” that interests them; they think, for
instance, that the prodigious fine thoughts
and sentiments in Shakespeare impress by
their own weight, not understanding that
the unpolished diamond is but a stone.
They think that striking situations, or good
dialogue, are got by studying life; they
will not rise to understand that they are
prepared by deliberate artifice and set off
by painful suppressions. Now, I want the
whole thing well ventilated, for my own
education and the public’s; and I beg
you to look as quick as you can, to follow
me up with every circumstance of defeat
where we differ, and (to prevent the flouting
of the laity) to emphasise the points
where we agree. I trust your paper will
show me the way to a rejoinder; and that
rejoinder I shall hope to make with so
much art as to woo or drive you from
your threatened silence. I would not ask
better than to pass my life in beating out
this quarter of corn with such a seconder
as yourself.

Point the second, I am rejoiced indeed
to hear you speak so kindly of my work:
rejoiced and surprised. I seem to myself
a very rude, left-handed countryman; not
fit to be read, far less complimented, by a
man so accomplished, so adroit, so craftsmanlike
as you. You will happily never
have cause to understand the despair with
which a writer like myself considers
(say) the park scene in Lady Barberina.
Every touch surprises me by its intangible
precision; and the effect when done, as
light as syllabub, as distinct as a picture,
fills me with envy. Each man among
us prefers his own aim, and I prefer mine;
but when we come to speak of performance,
I recognise myself, compared with
you, to be a lout and slouch of the first
water.

Where we differ, both as to the design
of stories and the delineation of character,
I begin to lament. Of course, I am not
so dull as to ask you to desert your walk;
but could you not, in one novel, to oblige
a sincere admirer, and to enrich his shelves
with a beloved volume, could you not,
and might you not, cast your characters
in a mould a little more abstract and academic
(dear Mrs. Pennyman had already,
among your other work, a taste of what I
mean), and pitch the incidents, I do not
say, in any stronger, but in a slightly more
emphatic key—as it were an episode from
one of the old (so-called) novels of adventure?
I fear you will not; and I suppose
I must sighingly admit you to be
right. And yet, when I see, as it were, a
book of Tom Jones handled with your
exquisite precision and shot through with
those side-lights of reflection in which you
excel, I relinquish the dear vision with regret.
Think upon it.

As you know, I belong to that besotted
class of man, the invalid; this puts me to
a stand in the way of visits. But it is
possible that some day you may feel that
a day near the sea and among pinewoods
would be a pleasant change from town.
If so, please let us know; and my wife
and I will be delighted to put you up and
give you what we can to eat and drink (I
have a fair bottle of claret).—On the back
of which, believe me, yours sincerely,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

P.S.—I reopen this to say that I have
re-read my paper, and cannot think I
have at all succeeded in being either veracious
or polite. I knew, of course, that I
took your paper merely as a pin to hang
my own remarks upon; but, alas! what
a thing is any paper! What fine remarks
can you not hang on mine! How I have
sinned against proportion and, with every
effort to the contrary, against the merest
rudiments of courtesy to you! You are,
indeed, a very acute reader to have divined
the real attitude of my mind, and
I can only conclude, not without closed
eyes and shrinking shoulders, in the well-worn words

Lay on, Macduff!

[During a crippling fit of ill-health,
Stevenson had received a commission for
a sensational story for the Christmas number
of the Pall Mall Gazette. The commission
ended in his sending the managers
of the paper a recast of a gruesome tale
which he had written and condemned in
25
the Highlands three years before, The
Body-Snatcher. He rightly thought this
beneath his own standard of merit, and
would not take the full fee which had been
offered for it. Two of the following letters
to Mr. Henley refer to this matter:
Bloody Jack, or Jacques, let it be understood,
was his regular nickname for his
arch-enemy, hemorrhage from the lungs.]

[Dec. 1884.]

Dear Man,—1st Disagreeable. Do try
and lay your hands on these three poems;
they were surely not lost in transmission?
It seems hard I should have to make them
a third time.

2d Disagreeable. I have
done a kind of a damned
machine for the P. M. G.,
and have near died of it—(weakness,
insomnia,
Bloody Jacquerie)—and
am now so dissatisfied that
I have told them not to
pay me till I see a proof. I
think, or I fear I will think,
it is not worth the money
offered; in which case, of
course, I will not take it.—Yours
ever,

[Dec. 1884.]

Dear Lad,—I have made up my mind
about the P. M. G., and send you a copy,
which please keep or return. As for not
giving a reduction, what are we? Are
we artists or city men? Why do we sneer
at stockbrokers? O nary; I will not
take the £40. I took that as a fair price
for my best work; I was not able to produce
my best; and I will be damned if I
steal with my eyes open. Sufficit. This
is my lookout. As for the paper being
rich, certainly it is; but I am honourable.
It is no more above me in money than
the poor slaveys and cads from whom I
look for honesty are below me. Am I
Pepys, that because I can find the countenance
of “some of our ablest merchants,”
that because —— and —— pour forth languid
twaddle and get paid for it, I, too,
should “cheerfully continue to steal”?
I am not Pepys. I do not live much to
God and honour; but I will not wilfully
turn my back on both. I am, like all the
rest of us, falling ever lower from the
bright ideas I began with, falling into
greed, into idleness, into middle-aged and
slippered fireside cowardice; but is it you,
my bold blade, that I hear crying this
sordid and rank twaddle in my ear?
Preaching the dankest Grundyism and
upholding the rank customs of our trade—you,
who are so cruel hard upon the
customs of the publishers? O man, look
at the Beam in our own Eyes; and whatever
else you do, do not plead Satan’s
cause, or plead it for all;
either embrace the bad, or
respect the good when you
see a poor devil trying for
it. If this is the honesty
of authors—to take what
you can get and console
yourself because publishers
are rich—take my name
from the rolls of that association.
‘Tis a caucus
of weaker thieves, jealous
of the stronger.—Ever
yours,

The Roaring R. L. S.

You will see from the
enclosed that I have stuck
to what I think my dues
pretty tightly in spite of
this flourish; these are my words for a
poor ten-pound note!

Stevenson’s Skye Terrier “Bogue.”
From a photograph made at Hyères.

[Christmas, 1884.]

My Dear Lad,—Here was I in bed;
Bloody Jack; not writing, not hearing,
and finding myself gently and agreeably
ill used; and behold I learn you are bad
yourself. Get your wife to send us a word
how you are. I am better decidedly.
Bogue got his Christmas card, and behaved
well for three days after. It may
interest the cynical to learn that I started
this hæmorrhage by too sedulous attentions
to my dear Bogue. The stick was
broken; and that night Bogue, who was
attracted by the extraordinary aching of
his bones, and is always inclined to a
serious view of his own ailments, announced
with his customary pomp that
he was dying. In this case, however, it
26
was not the dog that died. (He had tried
to bite his mother’s ankles.) I have written,
with the aid of bloudie Jack, a long
and peculiarly solemn paper on the technical
elements of style. It is path-breaking
and epoch-making; but I do not
think the public will be readily convoked
to its perusal. Did I tell you that S. C.
had risen to the paper on James? At
last! O but I was pleased; he’s (like
Johnnie) been lang, lang o’ comin’, but
here he is. He will not object to my
future manœuvres in the same field, as he
has to my former. All the family are
here; my father better than I have seen
him these two years; my mother the
same as ever. I do trust you are better,
and I am yours ever,

R. L. S.

[Winter, 1884-5.]

Dear Henley,—We are all to pieces in
health, and heavily handicapped with
Arabs. [Stories for the New Arabian
Nights.] I have a dreadful cough, whose
attacks leave me ætat 90. Fanny is quite
gone up with my bad health. I never let
up on the Arabs, all the same, and rarely
get less than eight pages out of hand,
though hardly able to come downstairs
for twittering knees.

I shall put in ——’s letter. He says
so little of his circumstances that I am in
an impossibility to give him advice more
specific than a copybook. Give him my
love, however, and tell him it is the mark
of the parochial gentleman who has never
travelled to find all wrong in a foreign
land. Let him hold on, and he will find
one country as good as another; and in
the meanwhile let him resist the fatal
British tendency to communicate his dissatisfaction
with a country to its inhabitants.
‘Tis a good idea, but it somehow
fails to please. In a fortnight, if I can
keep my spirit in the box at all, I should
be nearly through this Arabian desert;
so can tackle something fresh.—Yours
ever,

R. L. S.

[Bournemouth, Winter, 1884-5.]

Dear Boy,—I trust this finds you well;
it leaves me so-so. The weather is so
cold that I must stick to bed, which is
rotten and tedious, but can’t be helped.

I find in the blotting book the enclosed,
which I wrote to you the eve of my blood.
Is it not strange? That night, when I
naturally thought I was coopered, the
thought of it was much in my mind; I
thought it had gone; and I thought what
a strange prophecy I had made in jest,
and how it was indeed like to be the end
of many letters. But I have written a
good few since, and the spell is broken.
I am just as pleased, for I earnestly desire
to live. This pleasant middle age
into whose port we are steering is quite
to my fancy. I would cast anchor here,
and go ashore for twenty years, and see
the manners of the place. Youth was a
great time, but somewhat fussy. Now in
middle age (bar lucre) all seems mighty
placid. It likes me; I spy a little bright
café in one corner of the port, in front of
which I now propose we should sit down.
There is just enough of the bustle of the
harbour and no more; and the ships are
close in, regarding us with stern-windows—the
ships that bring deals from Norway
and parrots from the Indies. Let us sit
down here for twenty years, with a packet
of tobacco and a drink, and talk of art
and women. By the by, the whole city
will sink, and the ships too, and the table,
and we also; but we shall have sat for
twenty years and had a fine talk; and by
that time, who knows? exhausted the
subject.

I send you a book which (or I am mistook)
will please you; it pleased me. But
I do desire a book of adventure—a romance—and
no man will get or write me
one. Dumas I have read and re-read
too often; Scott, too, and I am short. I
want to hear swords clash. I want a
book to begin in a good way; a book, I
guess, like Treasure Island, alas! which
I have never read, and cannot though I
live to ninety. I would God that some
one else had written it! By all that I can
learn, it is the very book for my complaint.
I like the way I hear it opens;
and they tell me John Silver is good fun.
And to me it is, and must ever be, a
dream unrealised, a book unwritten: O
my sighings after romance, or even Skeltery,
and O! the weary age which will
produce me neither!

CHAPTER I

The night was damp and cloudy, the
ways foul. The single horseman, cloaked
27
and booted, who pursued his way across
Willesden Common, had not met a traveller,
when the sound of wheels—

CHAPTER I

“Yes, sir,” said the old pilot, “she
must have dropped into the bay a little
afore dawn. A queer craft she looks.”

“She shows no colours,” returned the
young gentleman musingly.

“They’re a-lowerin’ of a quarter-boat,
Mr. Mark,” resumed the old salt. “We
shall soon know more of her.”

“Ay,” replied the young gentleman
called Mark, “and here, Mr. Seadrift,
comes your sweet daughter Nancy tripping
down the cliff.”

“God bless her kind heart, sir,” ejaculated
old Seadrift.

CHAPTER I

The notary, Jean Rossignol, had been
summoned to the top of a great house in
the Isle St. Louis to make a will; and
now, his duties finished, wrapped in a
warm roquelaure and with a lantern
swinging from one hand, he issued from
the mansion on his homeward way. Little
did he think what strange adventures
were to befall him!—

That is how stories should begin. And
I am offered HUSKS instead.

R. L. S.

[The following letters to myself refer to
a project, eagerly embraced at first, but
afterward abandoned for want of time and
strength, for a short life of Wellington to
be contributed to a series edited by Mr.
Andrew Lang for Messrs. Longman. In
the third letter to me, and in that to Mr.
J. A. Symonds which follows it, are expressed
something of the feelings of distress
and bitterness with which, in common
with, but even more deeply than most
Englishmen of sense and spirit, Stevenson
at this time felt the national disgrace
of Gordon’s fate in the Soudan.]

Bonallie Tower, Branksome Park,
Bournemouth, Jan. 4th, 1885.

Dear S. C.,—I am on my feet again,
and getting on my boots to do the Iron
Duke. Conceive my glee: I have refused
the £100, and am to get some sort of royalty,
not yet decided, instead. ‘Tis for
Longman’s English Worthies, edited by
A. Lang. Aw haw!

Now look here, could you get me a loan
of the Despatches, or is that a dream? I
should have to mark passages I fear, and
certainly note pages on the fly. If you
think it a dream, will Bain get me a second-hand
copy, or who would? The sooner,
and cheaper, I can get it the better. If
there is anything in your weird library
that bears on either the man or the period,
put it in a mortar and fire it here instanter:
I shall catch. I shall want, of course,
an infinity of books: among which, any
lives there may be; a life of the Marquis
Marmont (the Maréchal), Marmont’s Memoirs;
Greville’s Memoirs; Peel’s Memoirs;
Napier; that blind man’s history
of England you once lent me; Hamley’s
Waterloo; can you get me any of these?
Thiers, idle Thiers also. Can you help a
man getting into his boots for such a huge
campaign? How are you? A good new
year to you. I mean to have a good one,
but on whose funds I cannot fancy: not
mine, leastways; as I am a mere derelict
and drift beam-on to bankruptcy.

For God’s sake remember the man who
set out for to conquer Arthur Wellesley,
with a broken bellows and an empty
pocket.—Yours ever.

R. L. Shorthouse.

Bournemouth, Jan. or Feb. 1885.

Dear S. C.,—I have addressed a letter
to the G. O. M. à propos of Villainton;
and I became aware, you will be interested
to hear, of an overwhelming respect for
the old gentleman. I can blaguer his failures;
but when you actually address him,
and bring the two statures and records to
confrontation, dismay is the result. By
mere continuance of years, he must impose;
the man who helped to rule England,
before I was conceived, strikes me
with a new sense of greatness and antiquity,
when I must actually beard him with
the cold forms of correspondence. I shied
at the necessity of calling him plain “Sir”!
had he been “My lord,” I had been happier;
no, I am no equalitarian. Honour
to whom honour is due; and if to none,
why, then, honour to the old!
28

These, O Slade Professor, are my unvarnished
sentiments: I was a little surprised
to find them so extreme, and, therefore,
I communicate the fact.

Belabour thy brains, as to whom it
would be well to question. I have a small
space; I wish to make a popular book,
nowhere obscure, nowhere, if it can be
helped, unhuman. It seems to me the
most hopeful plan to tell the tale, so far as
may be, by anecdote. He did not die till
so recently, there must be hundreds who
remember him, and thousands who have
still ungarnered stories. Dear man, to the
breach! Up, soldier of the iron dook, up,
Slades, and at ’em! (which, conclusively,
he did not say: the at ’em-ic theory is to
be dismissed). You know piles of fellows
who must reek with matter; help! help!

R. L. S.

[Bournemouth, Feb. 1885.]

My dear Colvin,—You are indeed a
backward correspondent, and much may
be said against you. But in this weather,
and O dear! in this political scene of
degradation, much must be forgiven. I fear
England is dead of Burgessry, and only
walks about galvanised. I do not love to
think of my countrymen these days; nor
to remember myself. Why was I silent?
I feel I have no right to blame any one:
but I won’t write to the G. O. M. I do
really not see my way to any form of
signature, unless “your fellow criminal in the
eyes of God,” which might disquiet the
proprieties.

About your book, I have always said
go on. [This refers to some kind of a
scheme, I forget what, for the republication
of stray magazine-work of mine under
the title Pictures, Places, and People.]
The drawing of character is a different
thing from publishing the details of a
private career. No one objects to the first,
or should object, if his name be not put
upon it; at the other, I draw the line. In
a preface, if you choose, you might distinguish:
it is besides, a thing for which
you are eminently well equipped, and
which you would do with taste and incision.
I long to see the book. People
like themselves (to explain a little more);
no one likes his life, which is a misgotten
issue, and a tale of failure. To see these
failures either touched upon, or coasted, to
get the idea of a spying eye and blabbing
tongue about the house is to lose all privacy
in life. To see that thing, which we
do love, our character set forth, is ever
gratifying. See how my Talk and Talkers
went; everyone liked his own portrait,
and shrieked about other people’s; so it
will be with yours: if you are the least
true to the essential, the sitter will be
pleased: very likely not his friends, and
that from various motives.

R. L. S.

When will your holiday be? I sent
your letter to my wife, and forget. Keep
us in mind, and I hope we shall be able
to receive you.

Bournemouth, Feb. 1885.

My dear Symonds,—Yes, we have both
been very neglectful. I had horrid luck:
catching (from kind friends) two thundering
influenzas in August and November;
I recovered from the last with difficulty:
also had great annoyance from hæmorrhagic
leaking; but have come through this
blustering winter with some general success;
in the house, up and down. My
wife, however, has been painfully upset
by my health. Last year, of course, was
cruelly trying to her nerves; Nice and
Hyères are bad experiences; and though
she is not ill, the doctors tell me that prolonged
anxiety may do her a real mischief.
She is now at Hyères collecting our
goods; and she has been ill there, which
has upset my liver and driven me to the
friendly calomel on which I now mainly
live: it is the only thing that stops the
bleeding, which seems directly connected
with the circulation of the liver.

I feel a little old and fagged, and chary
of speech, and not very sure of spirit in
my work; but considering what a year I
have passed, and how I have twice sat
on Charon’s pier-head, I am surprising.
The doctors all seem agreed in saying that
my complaint is quite unknown, and will
allow of no prognosis.

My father has presented us with a very
pretty home in this place, into which we
hope to move by May. My Child’s Verses
come out next week. Otto begins to appear
in April. More New Arabian Nights
as soon as possible. Moreover, I am
neck deep in Wellington; also a story on
29
the stocks: The Great North Road. O, I
am busy! Lloyd is at college in Edinburgh.
That is, I think, all that can be
said by the way of news.

Have you read Huckleberry Finn? It
contains many excellent things; above
all, the whole story of a healthy boy’s
dealings with his conscience, incredibly
well done.

My own conscience is badly seared: a
want of piety; yet I pray for it, tacitly, every
day; believing it, after courage, the only
gift worth having; and its want, in a man
of any claims to honour, quite unpardonable.
The tone of your letter seemed to
me very sound. In these dark days of
public dishonour, I do not know that one
can do better than carry our private trials
piously. What a picture is this of a nation!
No man that I can see, on any
side or party, seems to have the least sense
of our ineffable shame: the desertion of
the garrisons. I tell my little parable that
Germany took England, and then there
was an Indian Mutiny, and Bismarck said:
“Quite right: let Delhi and Calcutta and
Bombay fall; and let the women and children
be treated Sepoy fashion,” and people
say: “O, but that is very different!” And
then I wish I were dead. Millais (I hear)
was painting Gladstone when the news
came of Gordon’s death; Millais was much
affected, and Gladstone said: “Why?
It is the man’s own temerity!” But why
should I blame Gladstone, when I too am a
Bourgeois? when I have held my peace?
Why did I hold my peace? Because I am
a sceptic: i.e. a Bourgeois. We believe
in nothing, Symonds; you don’t, and I
don’t; and there are two reasons, out of a
handful of millions, why England stands
before the world dripping with blood and
daubed with dishonour. I will first try to
take the beam out of my own eye; trusting
that even private effort somehow betters
and braces the general atmosphere.
See, for example, if England has shown (I
put it hypothetically) one spark of manly
sensibility, they have been shamed into it
by the spectacle of Gordon. Police-Officer
Cole is the only man that I see to admire.
I dedicate my New Arabs to him
and Cox, in default of other great public
characters.—Yours ever most affectionately,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

Bournemouth, March 16th, 1885.

My dear Hamerton,—Various things
have been reminding me of my misconduct:
First, Swan’s application for your
address; second, a sight of the sheets of
your Landscape book; and last, your note
to Swan, which he was so kind as to forward.
I trust you will never suppose me
to be guilty of anything more serious than
an idleness, partially excusable. My ill-health
makes my rate of life heavier than
I can well meet, and yet stops me from
earning more. My conscience, sometimes
perhaps too easily stifled, but still (for my
time of life and the public manners of the
age) fairly well alive, forces me to perpetual
and almost endless transcriptions. On the
back of all this, any correspondence hangs
like a thunder-cloud; and just when I
think I am getting through my troubles,
crack, down goes my health, I have a long
costly sickness, and begin the world again.
It is fortunate for me I have a father, or I
should long ago have died; but the opportunity
of the aid makes the necessity
none the more welcome. My father has
presented me with a beautiful house here—or
so I believe, for I have not yet seen
it, being a cage bird but for nocturnal
sorties in the garden. I hope we shall
soon move into it, and I tell myself that
some day perhaps we may have the pleasure
of seeing you as our guest. I trust at
least that you will take me as I am, a
thoroughly bad correspondent, and a man,
a hater, indeed, of rudeness in others, but
too often rude in all unconsciousness himself;
and that you will never cease to believe
the sincere sympathy and admiration
that I feel for you and for your work.

About the Landscape [Mr. Hamerton’s
book so called], which I had a glimpse of
while a friend of mine was preparing a review,
I was greatly interested, and could
write and wrangle for a year on every
page; one passage particularly delighted
me, the part about Ulysses—jolly. Then,
you know, that is just what I fear I have
come to think landscape ought to be in
literature; so there we should be at odds.
Or perhaps not so much as I suppose, as
Montaigne says it is a pot with two handles,
and I own I am wedded to the technical
handle, which (I likewise own and
freely) you do well to keep for a mistress.
I should much like to talk with you about
30
some other points; it is only in talk that
one gets to understand. Your delightful
Wordsworth trap I have tried on two
hardened Wordsworthians, not that I am
one myself. By covering up the context,
and asking them to guess what the passage
was, both (and both are very clever
people, one a writer, one a painter) pronounced
it a guide-book. “Do you think
it an unusually good guide-book?” I
asked, and both said, “No, not at all!”
Their grimace was a picture when I showed
the original.

I trust your health and that of Mrs.
Hamerton keep better; your last account
was a poor one. I was unable to make
out the visit I had hoped, as (I do not
know if you heard of it) I had a very violent
and dangerous hæmorrhage last
spring. I am almost glad to have seen
death so close with all my wits about me, and
not in the customary lassitude and disenchantment
of disease. Even thus clearly
beheld I find him not so terrible as we
suppose. But, indeed, with the passing of
years, the decay of strength, the loss of all
my old active and pleasant habits, there
grows more and more upon me that belief
in the kindness of this scheme of things,
and the goodness of our veiled God, which
is an excellent and pacifying compensation.
I trust, if your health continues to
trouble you, you may find some of the
same belief. But perhaps my fine discovery
is a piece of art, and belongs to a character
cowardly, intolerant of certain feelings,
and apt to self-deception. I don’t
think so, however; and when I feel what
a weak and fallible vessel I was thrust
into this hurly-burly, and with what marvellous
kindness the wind has been tempered
to my frailties, I think I should be
a strange kind of ass to feel anything but
gratitude.

I do not know why I should inflict this
talk upon you; but when I summon the
rebellious pen, he must go his own way;
I am no Michael Scott, to rule the fiend
of correspondence. Most days he will
none of me; and when he comes, it is to
rape me where he will,—Yours very sincerely,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

[With Mr. Will H. Low as intermediary,
Stevenson had now been entering into relations
with Messrs. Scribner’s Sons for the
publication of his works in America. The
following letter refers to this matter and
to Mr. Low’s proposed dedication to R.
L. S. of one of the poems of Keats which
he had been illustrating.]

Bonallie Tower, Bournemouth,
March 13th, 1885.

My dear Low,—Your success has been
immense. I wish your letter had come
two days ago: Otto, alas! has been disposed
of a good while ago; but it was
only day before yesterday that I settled
the new volume of Arabs. However, for
the future, you and the sons of the deified
Scribner are the men for me. Really
they have behaved most handsomely. I
cannot lay my hand on the papers, or I
would tell you exactly how it compares
with my English bargain: but it compares
well. Ah! if we had that copyright,
I do believe it would go far to make
me solvent, ill health and all.

I wrote you a letter to the Rembrandt,
in which I stated my views about the dedication
in a very brief form. It will give
me sincere pleasure; and will make the
second dedication I have received: the
other being from John Addington Symonds.
It is a compliment I value much;
I don’t know any that I should prefer.

I am glad to hear you have windows
to do; that is a fine business, I think;
but alas! the glass is so bad nowadays;
realism invading even that, as well as the
huge inferiority of our technical resource
corrupting every tint. Still, anything that
keeps a man to decoration is in this age,
good for the artist’s spirit.

By the way, have you seen James and
me on the novel? James, I think in the
August or September—R. L. S. in the December
Longman. I own I think the école
bête, of which I am the champion, has the
whiphand of the argument; but as James
is to make a rejoinder, I must not boast.
Anyway the controversy is amusing to see.
I was terribly tied down to space, which
has made the end congested and dull. I
shall see if I can afford to send you the
April Contemporary—but I daresay you
see it anyway—as it will contain a paper
of mine on style, a sort of continuation of
old arguments on art in which you have
wagged a most effective tongue. It is a
31
sort of start upon my Treatise on the Art
of Literature: a small, arid book that
shall some day appear.

With every good wish from me and
mine (should I not say “she and hers”?)
to you and yours, believe me yours ever,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

Do you see much of Marius Townsend?
Are you next door to the Doctor’s
Daughter? or does “North” refer
to another “Washington Square” than
Henry James’s?

[The following to Mr. Gosse refers to
the publication of that gentleman’s life of
Gray, in Mr. Morley’s series of English
Men of Letters, and of the writer’s own,
now classic, volume, A Child’s Garden of
Verses.]

Bonallie Tower, Bournemouth,
March 12, 1885.

My dear Gosse,—I was indeed much
exercised how I could be worked into
Gray; and lo! when I saw it, the passage
seemed to have been written with a single
eye to elucidate the … worst?… well,
not a very good poem of Gray’s.
Your little life is excellent, clean, neat,
efficient. I have read many of your notes,
too, with pleasure. Your connection with
Gray was a happy circumstance; it was a
suitable conjunction.

I did not answer your letter from the
States, for what was I to say? I liked
getting it and reading it; I was rather
flattered that you wrote it to me; and then
I’ll tell you what I did—I put it in the fire.
Why? Well, just because it was very natural
and expansive; and thinks I to myself,
if I die one of these fine nights, this is
just the letter that Gosse would not wish
to go into the hands of third parties. Was
I well inspired? And I did not answer
it because you were in your high places,
sailing with supreme dominion, and seeing
life in a particular glory; and I was peddling
in a corner, confined to the house,
overwhelmed with necessary work, which
I was not always doing well, and, in the
very mild form in which the disease approaches
me, touched with a sort of bustling
cynicism. Why throw cold water?
How ape your agreeable frame of mind?
In short, I held my tongue.

I have now published on 101 small
pages The Complete Proof of Mr. R. L.
Stevenson’s Incapacity to Write Verse, in a
series of graduated examples with table of
contents. I think I shall issue a companion
volume of exercises: “Analyse this poem.
Collect and comminate the ugly words.
Distinguish and condemn the chevilles.
State Mr. Stevenson’s faults of taste in regard
to the measure. What reasons can
you gather from this example for your belief
that Mr. S. is unable to write any
other measure?”

They look ghastly in the cold light of
print; but there is something nice in the
little ragged regimen; for all; the blackguards
seem to me to smile; to have a
kind of childish treble note that sounds in
my ears freshly; not song, if you will, but
a child’s voice.

I was glad you enjoyed your visit to the
States. Most Englishmen go there with
a confirmed design of patronage, as they
go to France for that matter; and patronage
will not pay. Besides, in this year of—grace,
said I?—of disgrace, who should
creep so low as an Englishman? “It is
not to be thought of that the flood”—ah,
“Wordsworth,” you would change your
note were you alive to-day!

I am now a beastly householder, but
have not yet entered on my domain.
When I do, the social revolution will probably
cast me back upon my dung heap.
There is a person called Hyndman whose
eye is on me; his step is beHynd me as I
go. I shall call my house Skerryvore
when I get it: Skerryvore: c’est bon
pour la poéshie. I will conclude with my
favourite sentiment: “The world is too
much with me.”

Robert Louis Stevenson,
The Hermit of Skerryvore.

Author of “John Vane Tempest: a Romance,”
“Herbert and Henrietta: or the
Nemesis of Sentiment,” “The Life and
Adventures of Colonel Bludyer Fortescue,”
“Happy Homes and Hairy Faces,”
“A Pound of Feathers and a Pound of
Lead,” part author of “Minn’s Complete
Capricious Correspondent: a Manual of
Natty, Natural, and Knowing Letters,”
and editor of the “Poetical Remains of
Samuel Burt Crabbe, known as the melodious
Bottle-Holder.”

Uniform with the above:

“The Life and Remains of the Reverend
32
Jacob Degray Squah,” author of “Heave-yo
for the New Jerusalem.” “A Box of
Candles; or the Patent Spiritual Safety
Match,” and “A Day with the Heavenly
Harriers.”

[The two following letters refer to the
sudden death of Professor Fleeming
Jenkin, with whom, and with his wife,
Stevenson from his early student days
maintained unbroken kindness and friendship.]

Skerryvore, Bournemouth
[Midsummer, 1885].

My dear Mrs. Jenkin,—You know
how much and for how long I have loved,
respected, and admired him; I am only
able to feel a little with you. But I know
how he would have wished us to feel. I never
knew a better man, nor one to me more
lovable; we shall all feel the loss more
greatly as time goes on. It scarce seems
life to me; what must it be to you? Yet
one of the last things that he said to me
was, that from all these sad bereavements
of yours he had learned only more than
ever to feel the goodness and what we, in
our feebleness, call the support of God;
he had been ripening so much—to other
eyes than ours, we must suppose he was
ripe, and try to feel it. I feel it is better
not to say much more. It will be to me
a great pride to write a notice of him:
the last I can now do. What more in any
way I can do for you, please to think and
let me know. For his sake and for your
own, I would not be a useless friend: I
know, you know me a most warm one;
please command me or my wife, in any
way. Do not trouble to write to me;
Austin, I have no doubt, will do so, if you
are, as I fear you will be, unfit.

My heart is sore for you. At least you
know what you have been to him; how
he cherished and admired you, how he
was never so pleased as when he spoke of
you; with what a boy’s love, up to the
last, he loved you. This surely is a consolation.
Yours is the cruel part: to survive;
you must try and not grudge to him
his better fortune, to go first. It is the
sad part of such relations that one must
remain and suffer; I cannot see my poor
Jenkin without you. Nor you indeed
without him; but you may try to rejoice
that he is spared that extremity. Perhaps
I (as I was so much his confidant) know
even better that you can do, what your loss
would have been to him; he never spoke
of you but what his face changed; it was—you
were—his religion.

I write by this post to Austin and to the
Academy.—Yours most sincerely,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

Skerryvore, Bournemouth.

My dear Mrs. Jenkin,—I should
have written sooner, but we are in a bustle
and I have been very tired, though still
well. Your very kind note was most welcome
to me. I shall be very much pleased
to have you call me Louis, as he has now
done for so many years. Sixteen, you
say? is it so long? It seems too short
now; but of that we cannot judge and
must not complain.

I wish that either I or my wife could
do anything for you; when we can, you
will, I am sure, command us.

I trust that my notice gave you as little
pain as was possible. I found I had so
much to say, that I preferred to keep it for
another place and make but a note in the
Academy. To try to draw my friend at
greater length, and say what he was to me
and his intimates, what a good influence
in life and what an example, is a desire
that grows upon me. It was strange, as
I wrote the note, how his old tests and
criticisms haunted me; and it reminded
me afresh with every few words how much
I owe to him.

I had a note from Henley, very brief
and very sad. We none of us yet feel the
loss; but we know what he would have
said and wished.

Do you know that Dew-Smith has two
photographs of him, neither very bad;
and one giving a lively, though not flattering
air of him in conversation? If you
have not got them, would you like me to
write to Dew and ask him to give you
proofs?

I was so pleased that he and my wife
had at last made friends; that is a great
pleasure. We found and have preserved
one fragment (the head) of the drawing he
made and tore up when he was last here.
He had promised to come and stay with
us this summer. May we not hope, at
least, some time soon to have one from
33
you?—Believe me, my dear Mrs. Jenkin,
with the most real sympathy, your sincere
friend,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

Dear me, what happiness I owe to both
of you!

Skerryvore, Bournemouth,
October 22nd, 1885.

My dear Low,—I trust you are not
annoyed with me beyond forgiveness: for
indeed my silence has been devilish prolonged.
I can only tell you that I have
been nearly six months (more than six) in
a strange condition of collapse when it
was impossible to do any work and difficult
(more difficult than you would suppose)
to write the merest note. I am now
better, but not yet my own man in the way
of brains, and in health only so-so. I turn
more towards the liver and dyspepsia business,
which is damned unpleasant and
paralysing; I suppose I shall learn (I begin
to think I am learning) to fight this
vast, vague feather-bed of an obsession
that now overlies and smothers me; but in
the beginnings of these conflicts, the inexperienced
wrestler is always worsted; and
I own I have been quite extinct. I wish
you to know, though it can be no excuse,
that you are not the only one of my friends
by many whom I have thus neglected; and
even now, having come so very late into the
possession of myself, with a substantial
capital of debts, and my work still moving
with a desperate slowness—as a child
might fill a sandbag with its little handfuls—and
my future deeply pledged, there is
almost a touch of virtue in my borrowing
these hours to write to you. Why I said
‘hours’ I know not; it would look blue
for both of us if I made good the word.

I was writing your address the other
day, ordering a copy of my next, Prince
Otto, to go your way. I hope you have
not seen it in parts; it was not meant to
be so read; and only my poverty (dishonourably)
consented to the serial evolution.

I will send you with this a copy of the
English edition of the Child’s Garden. I
have heard there is some vile rule of the
post-office in the States against inscriptions;
so I send herewith a piece of doggerel
which Mr. Bunner may, if he thinks
fit, copy off the fly leaf.

Sargent was down again and painted a
portrait of me walking about in my own
dining-room, in my own velveteen jacket
and twisting as I go my own moustache;
at one corner a glimpse of my wife, in an
Indian dress and seated in a chair that was
once my grandfather’s, but since some
months goes by the name of Henry
James’s, for it was there the novelist loved
to sit—adds a touch of poesy and comicality.
It is, I think, excellent; but is too
eccentric to be exhibited. I am at one extreme
corner; my wife, in this wild dress and
looking like a ghost, is at the extreme other
end; between us an open door exhibits my
palatial entrance hall and a part of my respected
staircase. All this is touched in
lovely, with that witty touch of Sargent’s;
but of course it looks dam queer as a
whole.

Pray let me hear from you and give me
good news of yourself and your wife, to
whom please remember me.—Yours most
sincerely, my dear Low,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

(To be continued.)

34

“Well, he can’t lead me.”—Page 35.

THE CHRONICLES OF AUNT MINERVY ANN
By Joel Chandler Harris

Illustrated by A. B. Frost

AN EVENING WITH THE KU-KLUX

While in Halcyondale attending
the county fair I had a good many
talks with Aunt Minervy Ann, who
was the cook, housekeeper, and general
superintendent of Major Tumlin Perdue’s
household. Some of these conversations
have been reported on account of the
whiff and flavor of old times which caused
them to live in my mind, while others perhaps
as important have been forgotten.

In the published reports of these conversations
the name of Hamp, Aunt
Minervy’s husband, often occurs. When
a slave, Hamp had belonged to an estate
which was in the hands of the Court of
Ordinary (or, as it was then called, the Inferior
Court), to be administered in the
interest of minor heirs. This was not a
fortunate thing for the negroes, of which
there were above one hundred and fifty.
Men, women, and children were hired
out, some far and some near. They came
back home at Christmas-time, enjoyed a
week’s frolic, and were then hired out
again, perhaps to new employers. But
whether to new or old, it is certain that
hired hands in those days did not receive
the consideration that men gave to their
own negroes.

This experience told heavily on Hamp’s
mind. It made him reserved, suspicious,
and antagonistic. He had few pleasant
memories to fall back on, and these were
of the days of his early youth, when he
used to trot around holding to his old
master’s coat-tails—the kind old master
who had finally been sent to the insane
asylum. Hamp never got over the idea
(he had heard some of the older negroes
talking about it) that his old master had
been judged to be crazy simply because
he was unusually kind to his negroes, especially
the little ones. Hamp’s after-experience
seemed to prove this, for he
35
received small share of kindness, as well
as scrimped rations, from those who hired
him.

It was a very good thing for Hamp that
he married Aunt Minervy Ann, otherwise
he would have become a wanderer and a
vagabond when freedom came. Even as
it was, he didn’t miss it a hair’s breadth.
He “broke loose,” as he described it, and
went off, but finally came back and tried
to persuade Aunt Minervy Ann to leave
Major Perdue. How he failed in this has
already been reported. He settled down,
but he acquired no very friendly feelings
toward the white race.

He joined the secret political societies
strangely called “Union Leagues,” and
aided in disseminating the belief that the
whites were only awaiting a favorable opportunity
to re-enslave his race. He was
only repeating what the carpet-baggers
had told him. Perhaps he believed the
statement, perhaps not. At any rate, he
repeated it fervently and frequently, and
soon came to be the recognized leader of
the negroes in the county of which Halcyondale
was the capital. That is to say,
the leader of all except one. At church
one Sunday night some of the brethren
congratulated Aunt Minervy Ann on the
fact that Hamp was now the leader of
the colored people in that region.

“What colored people?” snapped Aunt
Minervy Ann.

“We-all,” responded a deacon, emphatically.

“Well, he can’t lead me, I’ll tell you
dat right now!” exclaimed Aunt Minervy Ann.

He wore a blue army overcoat and a stove-pipe hat.—Page 36.

Anyhow, when the time came to elect
members of the Legislature (the constitutional
convention had already been held),
Hamp was chosen to be the candidate of
the negro Republicans. A white man wanted
to run, but the negroes said they preferred
their own color, and they had their
36
way. They had their way at the polls,
too, for, as nearly all the whites who would
have voted had served in the Confederate
army, they were at that time disfranchised.

So Hamp was elected overwhelmingly,
“worl’ widout een’,” as he put it, and the
effect it had on him was a perfect illustration
of one aspect of human nature. Before
and during the election (which lasted
three days) Hamp had been going around
puffed up with importance. He wore a
blue army overcoat and a stove-pipe hat,
and went about smoking a big cigar.
When the election was over, and he was
declared the choice of the county, he collapsed.
His dignity all disappeared. His
air of self-importance and confidence deserted
him. His responsibilities seemed
to weigh him down.

He had once “rolled” in the little printing-office
where the machinery consisted
of a No. 2 Washington hand-press, a
wooden imposing-stone, three stands for
the cases, a rickety table for “wetting
down” the paper, a tub in which to wash
the forms, and a sheet-iron “imposing-stone.”
This chanced to be my head-quarters,
and the day after the election
I was somewhat surprised to see Hamp
saunter in. So was Major Tumlin Perdue,
who was reading the exchanges.

“He’s come to demand a retraction,”
remarked the Major, “and you’ll have
to set him right. He’s no longer plain
Hamp; he’s the Hon. Hamp—what’s
your other name?” turning to the negro.

“Hamp Tumlin my fergiven name,
suh. I thought ‘Nervy tol’ you dat.”

“Why, who named you after me?” inquired
the Major, somewhat angrily.

“Me an’ ‘Nervy fix it up, suh. She
say it’s about de purtiest name in town.”

The Major melted a little, but his bristles
rose again, as it were.

“Look here, Hamp!” he exclaimed in
a tone that nobody ever forgot or misinterpreted;
“don’t you go and stick
Perdue onto it. I won’t stand that!”

“No, suh!” responded Hamp. “I
started ter do it, but ‘Nervy Ann say she
ain’t gwine ter have de Perdue name
bandied about up dar whar de Legislatur’s
at.”

Again the Major thawed, and though
he looked long at Hamp it was with
friendly eyes. He seemed to be studying
the negro—”sizing him up,” as the
saying is. For a newly elected member
of the Legislature, Hamp seemed to take
a great deal of interest in the old duties
he once performed about the office. He
went first to the box in which the “roller”
was kept, and felt of its surface carefully.

“You’ll hatter have a bran new roller
‘fo’ de mont’s out,” he said, “an’ I won’t
be here to he’p you make it.”

Then he went to the roller-frame,
turned the handle, and looked at the
wooden cylinders. “Dey don’t look atter
it like I use ter, suh; an’ dish yer frame
monst’us shackly.”

From there he passed to the forms
where the advertisements remained standing.
He passed his thumb over the type
and looked at it critically. “Dey er
mighty skeer’d dey’ll git all de ink off,”
was his comment. Do what he would,
Hamp couldn’t hide his embarrassment.

Meanwhile, Major Perdue scratched off
a few lines in pencil. “I wish you’d get
this in Tuesday’s paper,” he said. Then
he read: “The Hon. Hampton Tumlin,
recently elected a member of the Legislature,
paid us a pop-call last Saturday.
We are always pleased to meet our distinguished
fellow-townsman and representative.
We trust Hon. Hampton Tumlin
will call again when the Ku-Klux are
in.”

“Why, certainly,” said I, humoring the
joke.

“Sholy you-all ain’t gwine put dat in
de paper, is you?” inquired Hamp, in
amazement.

“Of course,” replied the Major; “why
not?”

“Kaze, ef you does, I’m a ruint nigger.
Ef ‘Nervy Ann hear talk ’bout my name
an’ entitlements bein’ in de paper, she’ll
quit me sho. Uh-uh! I’m gwine ‘way
fum here!” With that Hamp bowed and
disappeared. The Major chuckled over
his little joke, but soon returned to his
newspaper. For a quarter of an hour
there was absolute quiet in the room, and,
as it seemed, in the entire building, which
was a brick structure of two stories, the
stairway being in the centre. The hallway
was, perhaps, seventy-five feet long,
and on each side, at regular intervals,
there were four rooms, making eight in
37
all, and, with one exception, variously
occupied as lawyers’ offices or sleeping
apartments, the exception being the printing-office
in which Major Perdue and I
were sitting. This was at the extreme rear
of the hallway.

“Sholy you-all ain’t gwine put dat in de paper, is you?”—Page 36.

I had frequently been struck by the
acoustic properties of this hallway. A
conversation carried on in ordinary tones
in the printing-office could hardly be heard
in the adjoining room. Transferred to the
front rooms, however, or even to the sidewalk
facing the entrance to the stairway,
the lightest tone was magnified in volume.
A German professor of music who for a
time occupied the apartment opposite the
printing-office was so harassed by the
thunderous sounds of laughter and conversation
rolling back upon him that he
tried to remedy the matter by nailing two
thicknesses of bagging along the floor
from the stairway to the rear window.
This was, indeed, something of a help, but
when the German left, being of an economical
turn of mind, he took his bagging
away with him, and once more the
hall-way was torn and rent, as you may
say, with the lightest whisper.

Thus it happened that, while the Major
and I were sitting enjoying an extraordinary
season of calm, suddenly there came
a thundering sound from the stairway. A
troop of horse could hardly have made a
greater uproar, and yet I knew that less
than half a dozen people were ascending
the steps. Some one stumbled and caught
himself, and the multiplied and magnified
reverberations were as loud as if the roof
had caved in, carrying the better part of
the structure with it. Some one laughed
at the misstep, and the sound came to our
ears with the deafening effect of an explosion.
The party filed with a dull roar
into one of the front rooms, the office of a
harum-scarum young lawyer who had
more empty bottles behind his door than
he had ever had briefs on his desk.

“Well, the great Gemini!” exclaimed
38
Major Perdue, “how do you manage to
stand that sort of thing?”

I shrugged my shoulders and laughed,
and was about to begin anew a very old
tirade against caves and halls of thunder,
when the Major raised a warning hand.
Some one was saying——

“He hangs out right on ol’ Major Perdue’s
lot. He’s got a wife there.”

“By jing!” exclaimed another voice;
“is that so? Well, I don’t wanter git
mixed up wi’ the Major. He may be
wobbly on his legs, but I don’t wanter be
the one to run up ag’in ‘im.”

The Major pursed up his lips and looked
at the ceiling, his attitude being one of
rapt attention.

“Shucks!” cried another; “by the time
the ol’ cock gits his bellyful of dram, thunder
wouldn’t roust ‘im.”

A shrewd, foxy, almost sinister expression
came over the Major’s rosy face as
he glanced at me. His left hand went to
his goatee, an invariable signal of deep
feeling, such as anger, grief, or serious
trouble. Another voice broke in here, a
voice that we both knew to be that of
Larry Pulliam, a big Kentuckian who
had refugeed to Halcyondale during the
war.

“Blast it all!” exclaimed Larry Pulliam,
“I hope the Major will come out. Me
an’ him hain’t never butted heads yit, an’
it’s gittin’ high time. Ef he comes out,
you fellers jest go ahead with your rat-killin’.
I‘ll ‘ten’ to him.”

“Why, you’d make two of him, Pulliam,”
said the young lawyer.

“Oh, I’ll not hurt ‘im; that is, not much—jest
enough to let ‘im know I’m livin’ in
the same village,” replied Mr. Pulliam.
The voice of the town bull could not have
had a more terrifying sound.

Glancing at the Major, I saw that he
had entirely recovered his equanimity.
More than that, a smile of sweet satisfaction
and contentment settled on his rosy
face, and stayed there.

“I wouldn’t take a hundred dollars for
that last remark,” whispered the Major.
“That chap’s been a-raisin’ his hackle at
me ever since he’s been here, and every
time I try to get him to make a flutter he’s
off and gone. Of course it wouldn’t do
for me to push a row on him just dry so.
But now——” The Major laughed softly,
rubbed his hands together, and seemed to
be as happy as a child with a new toy.

“My son,” said he after awhile, “ain’t
there some way of finding out who the
other fellows are? Ain’t you got some
word you want Seab Griffin”—this was
the young lawyer—”to spell for you?”

Spelling was the Major’s weakness. He
was a well-educated man, and could write
vigorous English, but only a few days before
he had asked me how many, f‘s there
are in graphic.

“Let’s see,” he went on, rubbing the
top of his head. “Do you spell Byzantium
with two y‘s, or with two i‘s, or with one
y and one i? It’ll make Seab feel right
good to be asked that before company,
and he certainly needs to feel good if he’s
going with that crowd.”

So, with a manuscript copy in my hand,
I went hurriedly down the hall and put
the important question. Mr. Griffin was
all politeness, but not quite sure of the
facts in the case. But he searched in his
books of reference, including the Geographical
Gazette, until finally he was able
to give me the information I was supposed
to stand in need of.

While he was searching, Mr. Pulliam
turned to me and inquired what day the
paper came out. When told that the date
was Tuesday, he smiled and nodded his
head mysteriously.

“That’s good,” he declared; “you’ll
be in time to ketch the news.”

“What news?” I inquired.

“Well, ef you don’t hear about it before
to-morrer night, jest inquire of Major
Perdue. He’ll tell you all about it.”

Mr. Pulliam’s tone was so supercilious
that I was afraid the Major would lose
his temper and come raging down the
hallway. But he did nothing of the kind.
When I returned he was fairly beaming.
The Major took down the names in his
note-book—I have forgotten all except
those of Buck Sanford and Larry Pulliam—and
seemed to be perfectly happy.
They were all from the country except
Larry Pulliam and the young lawyer.

After my visit to the room, the men
spoke in lower tones, but every word
came back to us as distinctly as before.

“The feed of the bosses won’t cost us
a cent,” remarked young Sanford. “Tom
Gresham said he’d ‘ten’ to that. They’re
39
in the stable right now. And we’re to
have supper in Tom’s back room, have a
little game of ante, and along about twelve
or one we’ll sa’nter down and yank that
derned nigger from betwixt his blankets,
ef he’s got any, and leave him to cool off
at the cross-roads. Won’t you go ‘long,
Seab, and see it well done?”

Inquired what day the paper came out.—Page 38.

“I’ll go and see if the supper’s well
done, and I’ll take a shy at your ante,”
replied Mr. Griffin. “But when it comes
to the balance of the programme—well,
I’m a lawyer, you know, and you couldn’t
expect me to witness the affair. I might
have to take your cases and prove an alibi,
you know, and I couldn’t conscientiously
do that if I was on hand at the time.”

“The Ku-Klux don’t have to have alibis,”
suggested Larry Pulliam.

“Perhaps not, still—” Apparently
Mr. Griffin disposed of the matter with a
gesture.

When all the details of their plan had
been carefully arranged, the amateur Ku-Klux
went filing out, the noise they made
dying away like the echoes of a storm.

Major Perdue leaned his head against
the back of his chair, closed his eyes,
and sat there so quietly that I thought he
was asleep. But this was a mistake. Suddenly
he began to laugh, and he laughed
until the tears ran down his face. It was
laughter that was contagious, and presently
I found myself joining in without
knowing why. This started the Major
afresh, and we both laughed until exhaustion
came to our aid.

“O Lord!” cried the Major, panting,
“I haven’t had as much fun since
the war, and a long time before. That
blamed Pulliam is going to walk into a trap
of his own setting. Now you jest watch
how he goes out ag’in.”

“But I’ll not be there,” I suggested.
40

“Oh, yes!” exclaimed the Major,
“you can’t afford to miss it. It’ll be the
finest piece of news your paper ever had.
You’ll go to supper with me—” He
paused. “No, I’ll go home, send Valentine
to her Aunt Emmy’s, get Blasengame
to come around, and we’ll have supper
about nine. That’ll fix it. Some of
them chaps might have an eye on my
house, and I don’t want ’em to see anybody
but me go in there. Now, if you
don’t come at nine, I’ll send Blasengame
after you.”

“I was on the lookout,” the Major explained.

“I shall be glad to come, Major. I
was simply fishing for an invitation.”

“That fish is always on your hook, and
you know it,” the Major insisted.

As it was arranged, so it fell out. At
nine, I lifted and dropped the knocker
on the Major’s front door. It opened so
promptly that I was somewhat taken by
surprise, but in a moment the hand of my
host was on my arm, and he pulled me inside
unceremoniously.

“I was on the lookout,” the Major explained.
“Minervy Ann has fixed to have
waffles, and she’s crazy about havin’ ’em
just right. If she waits too long to make
’em, the batter’ll spoil; and if she puts
’em on before everybody’s ready, they
won’t be good. That’s what she says.
Here he is, you old Hessian!” the
Major cried, as Minervy Ann peeped
in from the dining-room. “Now
slap that supper together and let’s
get at it.”

“I’m mighty glad you come, suh,”
said Aunt Minervy Ann, with a courtesy
and a smile, and then she disappeared.
In an incredibly short
time, supper was announced, and
though Aunt Minervy has since informed
me confidentially that the
Perdues were having a hard time of
it at that period, I’ll do her the
credit to say that the supper she
furnished forth was as good as any
to be had in that town—waffles,
beat biscuit, fried chicken, buttermilk,
and coffee that could not be
surpassed.

“How about the biscuit, Minervy
Ann?” inquired Colonel Blasengame,
who was the Major’s brother-in-law,
and therefore one of the
family.

“I turned de dough on de block
twelve times, an’ hit it a hunderd an
forty-sev’m licks,” replied Aunt
Minervy Ann.

“I’m afeard you hit it one lick too
many,” said Colonel Blasengame,
winking at me.

“Well, suh, I been hittin’ dat away a
mighty long time,” Aunt Minervy Ann
explained, “and I ain’t never hear no
complaints.”

“Oh, I’m not complainin’, Minervy
Ann.” Colonel Blasengame waved his
hand. “I’m mighty glad you did hit the
dough a lick too many. If you hadn’t,
the biscuit would ‘a’ melted in my mouth,
and I believe I’d rather chew on ’em to
get the taste.”

“He des runnin’ on, suh,” said Aunt
Minervy Ann to me. “Marse Bolivar
know mighty well dat he got ter go ‘way
fum de Nunited State fer ter git any better
biscuits dan what I kin bake.”

Then there was a long pause, which
was broken by an attempt on the part of
41
Major Perdue to give Aunt Minervy Ann
an inkling of the events likely to happen
during the night. She seemed to be both
hard of hearing and dull of understanding
when the subject was broached; or she
may have suspected the Major was joking
or trying to “run a rig” on her.
Her questions and comments, however,
were very characteristic.

“I dunner what dey want wid Hamp,”
she said. “Ef dey know’d how no-count
he is, dey’d let ‘im ‘lone. What dey want
wid ‘im?”

“Well, two or three of the country
boys and maybe some of the town chaps
are going to call on him between midnight
and day. They want to take him out to
the cross-roads. Hadn’t you better fix ’em
up a little snack? Hamp won’t want anything,
but the boys will feel a little hungry
after the job is over.”

“Nobody ain’t never
tell me dat de Legislatur’
wuz like de Free Masons,
whar dey have ter ride a
billy goat an’ go down in
a dry well wid de chains
a-clankin’. I done tol’
Hamp dat he better not
fool wid white folks’ do-in’s.”

“Only the colored members have to be initiated,”
explained the Major, solemnly.

“What does dey do wid
um?” inquired Aunt Minervy Ann.

“Well,” replied the
Major, “they take ’em out
to the nearest cross-roads,
put ropes around their
necks, run the ropes over limbs, and pull
away as if they were drawing water from
a well.”

“What dey do dat fer?” asked Aunt
Minervy Ann, apparently still oblivious to
the meaning of it all.

“They want to see which’ll break first,
the ropes or the necks,” the Major explained.

“Ef dey takes Hamp out,” remarked
Aunt Minervy Ann, tentatively—feeling
her way, as it were—”what time will he
come back?”

“You’ve heard about the Resurrection
Morn, haven’t you, Minervy Ann?”
There was a pious twang in the Major’s
voice as he pronounced the words.

“I hear de preacher say sump’n ’bout
it,” replied Aunt Minervy Ann.

“Well,” said the Major, “along about
that time Hamp will return. I hope his
record is good enough to give him wings.”

“Shuh! Marse Tumlin! you-all des
fool’n’ me. I don’t keer—Hamp ain’t
gwine wid um. I tell you dat right now.”

“Oh, he may not want to go,” persisted
the Major, “but he’ll go all the
same if they get their hands on him.”

“My life er me!” exclaimed Aunt
Minervy Ann, bristling up, “does you-all
‘speck I’m gwine ter let um take Hamp
out dat away? De fus’ man come ter
my door, less’n it’s one er you-all, I’m
gwine ter fling a pan er hot embers in his
face ef de Lord’ll gi’ me de
strenk. An’ ef dat don’t
do no good, I’ll scald um
wid b’ilin’ water. You hear
dat, don’t you?”

“Minervy Ann,” said
the Major, sweetly, “have
you ever heard of the Ku-Klux?”

“Yasser, I is!” she exclaimed
with startling emphasis.
She stopped still
and gazed hard at the Major.
In response, he merely
shrugged his shoulders
and raised his right hand
with a swift gesture that
told the whole story.

“Name er God! Marse
Tumlin, is you an’ Marse
Bolivar and dish yer young
genterman gwine ter set
down here flat-footed and let dem Ku-kluckers
scarify Hamp?”

“Dat’s some er ‘Nervy Ann’s doin’s, suh.”—Page 43.

“Why should we do anything? You’ve
got everything arranged. You’re going to
singe ’em with hot embers, and you’re going
to take their hides off with scalding water.
What more do you want?” The Major
spoke with an air of benign resignation.

Aunt Minervy Ann shook her head vigorously.
“Ef deyer de Kukluckers, fire
won’t do um no harm. Dey totes der
haids in der han’s.”

“Their heads in their hands?” cried
Colonel Blasengame, excitedly.
42

“Dat what dey say, suh,” replied Aunt
Minervy Ann.

Colonel Blasengame looked at his watch.
“Tumlin, I’ll have to ask you to excuse
me to-night,” he said. “I—well, the fact
is, I have a mighty important engagement
up town. I’m obliged to fill it.” He
turned to Aunt Minervy Ann: “Did I
understand you to say the Ku-Klux carry
their heads in their hands?”

“Dat what folks tell me. I hear my
own color sesso,” replied Aunt Minervy
Ann.

“I’d be glad to stay with you, Tumlin,”
the Colonel declared; “but—well, under
the circumstances, I think I’d better fill
that engagement. Justice to my family
demands it.”

“Well,” responded Major Perdue, “if
you are going, I reckon we’d just as well
go, too.”

“Huh!” exclaimed Aunt Minervy Ann,
“ef gwine’s de word, dey can’t nobody
beat me gittin’ way fum here. Dey may
beat me comin’ back, I ain’t ‘sputin’ dat;
but dey can’t beat me gwine ‘way. I’m
ol’, but I got mighty nigh ez much go in
me ez a quarter-hoss.”

In the third he placed only powder.—Page 44.

Colonel Blasengame leaned back in his
chair and studied the ceiling. “It seems
to me, Tumlin, we might compromise on
this. Suppose we get Hamp to come in
here. Minervy Ann can stay out there in
the kitchen and throw a rock against the
back door when the Ku-Klux come.”

Aunt Minervy Ann fairly gasped.
“Who? Me? I’ll die fust. I’ll t’ar
down dat do’; I’ll holler twel ev’ybody
in de neighborhood come a-runnin’. Ef
you don’t b’lieve me, you des try me.
I’ll paw up dat back-yard.”

Major Perdue went to the back door
and called Hamp, but there was no answer.
He called him a second time, with
the same result.

“Well,” said the Major, “they’ve
stolen a march on us. They’ve come
and carried him off while we were talking.”

“No, suh, dey ain’t, needer. I know
right whar he is, an’ I’m gwine atter ‘im.
He’s right ‘cross de street dar, colloguin’
43
wid dat ol’ Ceely Ensign. Dat’s right
whar he is.”

We administered to his hurts the best we could.—Page 45.

“Old! Why, Celia is young,” remarked
the Major. “They say she’s the best cook
in town.”

Aunt Minervy Ann whipped out of
the room, and was gone some little time.
When she returned, she had Hamp with
her, and I noticed that both were laboring
under excitement which they strove in
vain to suppress.

“Here I is, suh,” said Hamp. “‘Nervy
Ann say you call me.”

“How is Celia to-night?” Colonel
Blasengame inquired, suavely.

This inquiry, so suddenly and unexpectedly
put, seemed to disconcert Hamp.
He shuffled his feet and put his hand to
his face. I noticed a blue welt over his
eye, which was not there when he visited
me in the afternoon.

“Well, suh, I speck she’s tolerbul.”

“Is she? Is she? Ah-h-h!” cried Aunt
Minervy Ann.

“She must be pretty well,” said the
Major. “I see she’s hit you a clip over
the left eye.”

“Dat’s some er ‘Nervy Ann’s doin’s,
suh,” replied Hamp, somewhat disconsolately.

“Den what you git in de way fer?”
snapped Aunt Minervy Ann.

“Marse Tumlin, dat ar ‘oman ain’t done
nothin’ in de roun’ worl’. She say she
want me to buy some hime books fer de
church when I went to Atlanty, an’ I went
over dar atter de money.”

“I himed ‘er an’ I churched ‘er!” exclaimed
Aunt Minervy Ann.

“Here de money right here,” said
Hamp, pulling a small roll of shinplasters
out of his pocket; “an’ whiles we settin’
dar countin’ de money, ‘Nervy Ann come
in dar an’ frail dat ‘oman out.”

“Ain’t you hear dat nigger holler,
Marse Tumlin?” inquired Minervy Ann.
She was in high good-humor now. “Look
like ter me dey could a-heerd ‘er blate in
de nex’ county ef dey’d been a-lis’nin’.
‘Twuz same ez a picnic, suh, an’ I’m
gwine ‘cross dar ‘fo’ long an’ pay my
party call.”

Then she began to laugh, and pretty
soon went through the whole episode for
44
our edification, dwelling with unction on
that part where the unfortunate victim of
her jealousy had called her “Miss ‘Nervy.”
The more she laughed the more serious
Hamp became.

“I’d a heap rather you’d pull your shot-gun on me than your pen.”—Page 46.

At the proper time he was told of the
visitation that was to be made by the
Ku-Klux, and this information seemed to
perplex and worry him no little. But his
face lit up with genuine thankfulness when
the programme for the occasion was announced
to him. He and Minervy Ann
were to remain in the house and not show
their heads until the Major or the Colonel
or their guest came to the back door and
drummed on it lightly with the fingers.

Then the arms—three shot-guns—were
brought out, and I noticed with some
degree of surprise, that as the Major
and the Colonel began to handle these,
their spirits rose perceptibly. The Major
hummed a tune and the Colonel whistled
softly as they oiled the locks and tried the
triggers. The Major, in coming home,
had purchased four pounds of mustard-seed
shot, and with this he proceeded to
load two of the guns. In the third he
placed only powder. This harmless weapon
was intended for me, while the others
were to be handled by Major Perdue and
Colonel Blasengame. I learned afterward
that the arrangement was made solely
for my benefit. The Major and the
Colonel were afraid that a young hand
might become excited and fire too high
at close range, in which event mustard-seed
shot would be as dangerous as the
larger variety.

At twelve o’clock I noticed that both
Hamp and Aunt Minervy Ann were growing
restless.

“You hear dat clock, don’t you, Marse
Tumlin?” said Minervy as the chimes
died away. “Ef you don’t min’, de Ku-kluckers’ll
be a-stickin’ der haids in de
back do’.”
45

But the Major and the Colonel were
playing a rubber of seven-up (or high-low-Jack)
and paid no attention. It was
a quarter after twelve when the game was
concluded and the players pushed their
chairs back from the table.

“Ef you don’t fin’ um in de yard waitin’
fer you, I’ll be fooled might’ly,” remarked
Aunt Minervy Ann.

“Go and see if they’re out there,” said
the Major.

“Me, Marse Tumlin? Me? I wouldn’t
go out dat do’ not for ham.”

The Major took out his watch. “They’ll
eat and drink until twelve or a little after,
and then they’ll get ready to start. Then
they’ll have another drink all ’round, and
finally they’ll take another. It’ll be a
quarter to one or after when they get in
the grove in the far end of the lot. But
we’ll go out now and see how the land
lays. By the time they get here, our eyes
will be used to the darkness.”

The light was carried to a front room,
and we groped our way out at the back
door the best we could. The night was
dark, but the stars were shining. I noticed
that the belt and sword of Orion
had drifted above the tree-tops in the
east, following the Pleiades. In a little
while the darkness seemed to grow less
dense, and I could make out the outlines
of trees twenty feet away.

Behind one of these trees, near the
outhouse in which Hamp and Aunt Minervy
lived, I was to take my stand, while
the Major and the Colonel were to go
farther into the wood-lot so as to greet
the would-be Ku-Klux as they made their
retreat, of which Major Perdue had not
the slightest doubt.

“You stand here,” said the Major in a
whisper. “We’ll go to the far-end of the
lot where they’re likely to come in. They’ll
pass us all right enough, but as soon as
you see one of ’em, up with the gun an’
lam aloose, an’ before they can get away
give ’em the other barrel. Then you’ll
hear from us.”

Major Perdue and Colonel Blasengame
disappeared in the darkness, leaving me,
as it were, on the inner picket line. I
found the situation somewhat ticklish, as
the saying is. There was not the slightest
danger, and I knew it, but if you ever
have occasion to stand out in the dark,
waiting for something to happen, you’ll
find there’s a certain degree of suspense
attached to it. And the loneliness and
silence of the night will take on shape almost
tangible. The stirring of the half-dead
leaves, the chirping of a belated
cricket, simply emphasized the loneliness
and made the silence more profound. At
intervals, all nature seemed to heave a
deep sigh, and address itself to slumber
again.

In the house I heard the muffled sound
of the clock chime one, but whether it
was striking the half-hour or the hour I
could not tell. Then I heard the stealthy
tread of feet. Some one stumbled over a
stick of timber, and the noise was followed
by a smothered exclamation and a confused
murmur of voices. As the story-writers
say, I knew that the hour had
come. I could hear whisperings, and then
I saw a tall shadow steal from behind
Aunt Minervy’s house, and heard it rap
gently on the door. I raised the gun,
pulled the hammer back, and let drive. A
stream of fire shot from the gun, accompanied
by a report that tore the silence to
atoms. I heard a sharp exclamation of
surprise, then the noise of running feet,
and off went the other barrel. In a moment
the Major and the Colonel opened on
the fugitives. I heard a loud cry of pain
from one, and, in the midst of it all, the
mustard-seed shot rattled on the plank
fence like hominy-snow on a tin roof.

The next instant I heard some one running
back in my direction, as if for dear
life. He knew the place apparently, for
he tried to go through the orchard, but
just before he reached the orchard fence,
he uttered a half-strangled cry of terror,
and then I heard him fall as heavily as if
he had dropped from the top of the house.

It was impossible to imagine what had
happened, and it was not until we had investigated
the matter that the cause of the
trouble was discovered. A wire clothes-line,
stretched across the yard, had caught
the would-be Ku-Klux under the chin, his
legs flew from under him, and he had a fall,
from the effects of which he did not recover
for a long time. He was a young
man about town, very well connected,
who had gone into the affair in a spirit of
mischief. We carried him into the house,
and administered to his hurts the best we
46
could; Aunt Minervy Ann, be it said to
her credit, being more active in this direction
than any of us.

On the Tuesday following, the county
paper contained the news in a form that
remains to this day unique. It is hardly
necessary to say that it was from the pen
of Major Tumlin Perdue.

“Last Saturday afternoon our local editor
was informed by a prominent citizen
that if we would apply to Major Purdue
we would be put in possession of a very
interesting piece of news. Acting upon
this hint, ye local yesterday went to Major
Perdue, who, being in high good-humor,
wrote out the following with his own
hand:

“‘Late Saturday night, while engaged
with a party of friends in searching for a
stray dog on my premises, I was surprised
to see four or five men climb over my
back fence and proceed toward my residence.
As my most intimate friends do
not visit me by climbing over my back
fence, I immediately deployed my party
in such a manner as to make the best of
a threatening situation. The skirmish
opened at my kitchen-door, with two
rounds from a howitzer. This demoralized
the enemy, who promptly retreated
the way they came. One of them, the
leader of the attacking party, carried away
with him two loads of mustard-seed shot,
delivered in the general neighborhood and
region of the coat-tails, which, being on a
level with the horizon, afforded as fair a
target as could be had in the dark. I understand
on good authority that Mr. Larry
Pulliam, one of our leading and deservedly
popular citizens, has had as much
as a quart of mustard-seed shot picked
from his carcass. Though hit in a vulnerable spot,
the wound is not mortal.—T.
Perdue.'”

I did my best to have Mr. Pulliam’s
name suppressed, but the Major would not
have it so.

“No, sir,” he insisted; “the man has
insulted me behind my back, and he’s got
to cut wood or put down the axe.”

Naturally this free and easy card created
quite a sensation in Halcyondale and the
country round about. People knew what
it would mean if Major Perdue’s name
had been used in such an off-hand manner
by Mr. Pulliam, and they naturally
supposed that a fracas would be the outcome.
Public expectation was on tiptoe,
and yet the whole town seemed to take
the Major’s card humorously. Some of
the older citizens laughed until they could
hardly sit up, and even Mr. Pulliam’s
friends caught the infection. Indeed, it
is said that Mr. Pulliam, himself, after the
first shock of surprise was over, paid the
Major’s audacious humor the tribute of a
hearty laugh. When Mr. Pulliam appeared
in public, among the first men he
saw was Major Perdue. This was natural,
for the Major made it a point to be
on hand. He was not a ruffler, but he
thought it was his duty to give Mr. Pulliam
a fair opportunity to wreak vengeance
on him. If the boys about town
imagined that a row was to be the result
of this first meeting, they were mistaken.
Mr. Pulliam looked at the Major and
then began to laugh.

“Major Perdue,” he said, “I’d a heap
rather you’d pull your shot-gun on me
than your pen.”

And that ended the matter.

47

THE SHIP OF STARS
By A. T. Quiller-Couch
(Q.)

XIV
VOICES FROM THE SEA

Before winter and the
long nights came round
again, Taffy had become
quite a clever carpenter.
From the first his quickness
fairly astonished the
Bryanite, who at the best was but a journeyman
and soon owned himself beaten.

“I doubt,” said he, “if you’ll ever
make so good a man as your father; but
you can’t help making a better workman.”
He added, with his eyes on the boy’s
face, “There’s one thing in which you
might copy ’em. He hasn’t much of a
gift, but he lays it ‘pon the altar.”

By this time Taffy had resumed his lessons.
Every day he carried a book or two
in the satchel with his dinner, and read or
translated aloud while his father worked.
Two hours were allowed for this in the
morning, and again two in the afternoon.
Sometimes a day would be set apart during
which they talked nothing but Latin.
Difficulties in the text of their authors they
postponed until the evening, and worked
them out at home, after supper, with the
help of grammar and dictionary.

The boy was not unhappy, on the
whole; though for weeks together he
longed for sight of George Vyell, who
seemed to have vanished into space, or into
that limbo where his childhood lay like
a toy in a lumber-room. Taffy seldom
turned the key of that room. The stories
he imagined now were not about fairies
or heroes, but about himself. He wanted
to be a great man and astonish the world.
Just how the world was to be astonished
he did not clearly see, even in his dreams;
but the triumph, in whatever shape it came,
was to involve a new gown for his mother,
and for his father a whole library of books.

Mr. Raymond never went back to his
books now, except to help Taffy. The
Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews
was laid aside. “Some day!” he
told Humility. The Sunday congregation
had dwindled to a very few, mostly farm
people; Squire Moyle having threatened
to expel any tenant of his who dared to
set foot within the church.

In the autumn two things happened
which set Taffy wondering.

During the first three years at Nannizabuloe
old Mrs. Venning had regularly been
carried downstairs to dine with the family.
The sea-air (she said) had put new life into
her. But now she seldom moved from
her room, and Taffy seldom saw her except
at night, when—after the old childish custom—he
knocked at her door to wish her
pleasant dreams and pull up the weights of
the tall clock which stood by her bed’s
head.

One night he asked, carelessly, “What
do you want with the clock? Lying here
you don’t need to know the time; and its
ticking must keep you awake.”

“So it does, child; but, bless you, I like
it.”

“Like being kept awake?”

“Dear, yes! I have enough of rest and
quiet up here. You mind the litany I used
to say over to you?—Parson Kempthorne
taught it to us girls when I was in service
with him; ’twas made up, he said, by another
old Devonshire parson, years and
years ago—

That’s it. You wouldn’t think how quiet
it is up here all day. But at night, when
you’re in bed and sleeping, all the house
begins to talk; little creakings of the furniture,
you know, and the wind in the
chimney, and sometimes the rain in the
gutters running—it’s all talk to me.
48
Mostly it’s quite sociable too; but sometimes,
in rainy weather, the tune changes,
and then it’s like some poor soul in bed
and sobbing to itself. That’s when the
verse comes in:

“And then the clock’s ticking is a wonderful
comfort. Tick-tack, tick-tack! and I
think of you stretched asleep and happy
and growing up to be a man, and the
minutes running and trickling away to my
deliverance——”

“Granny!”

“My dear, I’m as well off as most;
but that isn’t saying I sha’n’t be glad to
go and take the pain in my joints to a
better land. Before we came here, in militia-time,
I used to lie and listen for the
buglers, but now I’ve only the clock. No
more bugles for me, I suppose, till I hear
them blown on t’other side of Jordan.”

Taffy remembered how he too had lain
and listened to the bugles; and with that
he suddenly saw his childhood, as it were
a small round globe set within a far larger
one and wrapped around with other folks’
thoughts. He kissed his grandmother and
went away wondering; and as he lay
down that night it still seemed wonderful
to him that she should have heard those
bugles, and more wonderful that night
after night for years she should have been
thinking of him while he slept, and he
never have guessed it.

One morning, some three weeks later,
he and his father were putting on their oilskins
before starting to work—for it had
been blowing hard through the night and
the gale was breaking up in floods of rain—when
they heard a voice hallooing in
the distance. Humility heard it too and
turned swiftly to Taffy. “Run upstairs,
dear. I expect it’s someone sent from
Tresedder Farm; and if so, he’ll want to
see your father alone.”

Mr. Raymond frowned. “No,” he
said; “the time is past for that.”

A fist hammered on the door. Mr.
Raymond threw it open.

“Brigantine—on the sands—half a mile
this side of the lighthouse!” Taffy saw
across his father’s shoulder a gleam of yellow
oilskins and a flapping sou-wester’
hat. The panting voice belonged to Sam
Udy—son of old Bill Udy—a laborer at
Tresedder.

“I’ll go at once,” said Mr. Raymond.
“Run you for the coast-guard.”

The oilskins went by the window; the
side gate clashed to.

“Is it a wreck?” cried Taffy. “May
I go with you?”

“Yes, there may be a message to run
with.”

From the edge of the towans, where
the ground dipped steeply to the long
beach, they saw the wreck, about a mile
up the coast and, as well as they could
judge, a hundred or a hundred-and-fifty
yards out. She lay almost on her beam-ends,
with the waves sweeping high across
her starboard quarter, and never less than
six ranks of ugly breakers between her and
dry land. A score of watchers—in the
distance they looked like emmets—were
gathered by the edge of the surf. But
the coast-guard had not arrived yet.

“The tide is ebbing, and the rocket will
reach. Can you see anyone aboard?”

Taffy spied through his hands, but could
see no one. His father set off running and
he followed, half-blinded by the rain, at
every fourth step foundering knee-deep in
loose sand or tripping in a rabbit hole.
They had covered three-fourths of the
distance when Mr. Raymond pulled up
and waved his hat as the coast-guard
carriage swept into view over a ridge to
the right and came plunging across the
main valley of the towans. It passed them
close—the horses fetlock-deep in sand,
with heads down and heaving, smoking
shoulders; the coast-guardsmen with keen
strong faces like heroes’—and the boy
longed to copy his father and send a cheer
after them as they went galloping by. But
something rose in his throat.

He ran after the carriage, and reached
the shore just as the first rocket shot singing
out toward the wreck. By this time
at least a hundred miners had gathered,
and between their legs he caught a glimpse
of two figures stretched at length on the
wet sand. He had never looked on a
dead body before. The faces of these
were hidden by the crowd; and he hung
about the fringe of it, dreading and yet
courting a sight of them.
49

The first rocket was swept down the
wind to leeward of the wreck. The chief
officer judged his second beautifully and
the line fell clean across the vessel and all
but amidships. A figure started up from
the lee of the deckhouse and springing
into the main shrouds grasped it and made
it fast. The beach being too low for
them to work the cradle clear above the
breakers, the coast-guardsmen carried the
shore end of the line up the shelving cliff
and fixed it. Within ten minutes the cradle
was run out, and within twenty, the
first man came swinging shoreward.

Four men were brought ashore alive,
the captain last. The other two of the
crew of six lay on the sands, with Mr.
Raymond kneeling beside them. He had
covered their faces, and, still on his knees,
gave the order to lift them into the carriage.
Taffy noticed that he was obeyed
without demur or question. And there
flashed on his memory a gray morning,
not unlike this one, when he had missed
his father at breakfast: “He had been
called away suddenly,” Humility had explained,
“and there would be no lessons
that day,” and had kept the boy indoors
all the morning and busy with a netting-stitch
he had been bothering her to teach
him.

“Father,” he asked as they followed
the cart, “does this often happen?”

“Your mother hasn’t thought it well
for you to see these sights.”

“Then it has happened often?”

“I have buried seventeen,” said Mr.
Raymond.

That afternoon he showed Taffy their
graves. “I know the names of all but two.
The bodies have marks about them—tattooed,
you know—and that helps. And
I write to their relatives or friends, and
restore whatever small property may be
found on them. I have often wished to
put up some grave-stone, or a wooden
cross, with their names. I keep a book
and enter all particulars, and where each
is laid.”

He went to his chest in the vestry and
took out the volume—a cheap account
book, ruled for figures. Taffy turned over
the pages.

Nov. 3rd. 187-. Brig “James and
Maria:” J. D., fair-haired, height 5 ft. 8
in., marked on chest with initials and cross
swords, tattooed, also anchor and coil of
rope on right fore-arm: large brown mole
on right shoulder-blade. Striped flannel
drawers: otherwise naked: no property of
any kind.

Ditto. Grown man, age 40 or thereabouts:
dark; iron gray beard; lovers’ knot
tattooed on right fore-arm, with initials R. L.,
E. W., in the loops: clad in flannel
shirt, guernsey, trousers (blue sea-cloth),
socks (heather-mixture), all unmarked.
Silver chain in pocket, with free-mason’s
token: a half-crown, a florin, and four-pence——and
so on. On the opposite
page were entered the full names and details
afterwards discovered, with notes of
the Vicar’s correspondence, and position
of the grave.

“They ought to have grave-stones,”
said Mr. Raymond. “But as it is I can
only get about thirty shillings for the funeral
from the county rate. The balance
has come out of my pocket—from two to
three pounds for each. From the beginning
the squire refused to help to bury
sailors. He took the ground that it wasn’t
a local claim.”

“Hullo!” said Taffy: for as he turned
the leaves his eye fell on this entry:—

Jan. 30th, 187-. S. S. “Rifleman” (all
hands). Cargo, China-clay: W. P., Age,
about eighteen, fair skin, reddish hair, short
and curled, height 5 ft. 10¾ in. Initials
tattooed on chest under a three-masted ship
and semi-circle of seven stars; clad in flannel
singlet and trousers (cloth): singlet
marked with same initial in red cotton:
pockets empty——

“But he was in the navy!” cried Taffy,
with his finger on the entry.

“Which one? Yes, he was in the Navy.
You’ll see it on the opposite page. He
deserted, poor boy, in Cork Harbor, and
shipped on board a tramp steamer as
donkey-man. She loaded at Fowey and
was wrecked on the voyage back. William
Pellow he was called; his mother
lives but ten miles up the coast; she never
heard of it until six weeks after.”

“But we—I, I mean—knew him. He
was one of the sailor boys on Toby’s van.
You remember their helping us with the
luggage at Indian Queen’s? He showed
me his tattoo marks that day.”

And again he saw his childhood as it
were set about with an enchanted hedge,
50
across which many voices would have
called to him, and some from near, but
all had hung muted and arrested.

The inquest on the two drowned sailors
was held next day at the Fifteen Balls,
down in Innis village. Later in the afternoon,
the four survivors walked up to the
church, headed by the Captain.

“We’ve been hearing,” said the Captain,
“of your difficulties, sir: likewise
your kindness to other poor sea-faring
chaps. We have liked to make ye a
small offering for your church, but sixteen
shillings is all we can raise between us.
So we come to say that if you can put us
on to a job, why we’re staying over the
funeral, and a day’s work or more after
that won’t hurt us one way or another.”

Mr. Raymond led them to the chancel
and pointed out a new beam, on which
he and Jacky Pascoe had been working
a week past, and over which they had
been cudgelling their brains how to get
it lifted and fixed in place.

“I can send to one of the miners and
borrow a couple of ladders.”

“Ladders? Lord love ye, sir, and begging
your pardon, we don’t want ladders.
With a sling, Bill, hey?—and a couple of
tackles. You leave it to we, sir.”

He went off to turn over the gear salved
from his vessel, and early next forenoon
had the apparatus rigged up and ready.
He was obliged to leave it at this point,
having been summoned across to Falmouth,
to report to his agents. His last
words before starting were addressed to
his crew. “I reckon you can fix it now,
boys. There’s only one thing more, and
don’t you forget it: any man that wants
to spit must go outside.”

That afternoon Taffy learnt for the first
time what could be done with a few ropes
and pulleys. The seamen seemed to spin
ropes out of themselves like spiders. By
three o’clock the beam was hoisted and
fixed; and they broke off work to attend
their shipmates’ funeral. After the funeral
they fell to, again, though more silently,
and before nightfall the beam shone with
a new coat of varnish.

They left early next morning, after a
good deal of handshaking, and Taffy
looked after them wistfully as they turned
to wave their caps and trudged away over
the rise toward the cross-roads. Away to
the left in the wintry sunshine, a speck of
scarlet caught his eye against the blue-gray
of the town. He watched it as it came
slowly toward him, and his heart leapt—yet
not quite as he had expected it to leap.

For it was George Vyell. George had
lately been promoted to “pink” and
made a gallant figure on his strapping
gray hunter. For the first time Taffy felt
ashamed of his working suit and would
have slipped back to the church. But
George had seen him, and pulled up.

“Hullo!” said he.

“Hullo!” said Taffy; and, absurdly
enough, could find no more to say.

“How are you getting on?”

“Oh, I’m all right.” There was another
pause. “How’s Honoria?”

“Oh, she’s all right. I’m riding over
there now; they meet at Tredinnis to-day.”
He tapped his boot with his hunting
crop.

“Don’t you have any lessons now?”
asked Taffy, after awhile.

“Dear me, yes; I’ve got a tutor. He’s
no good at it. But what made you ask?”

Really Taffy could not tell. He had
asked merely for the sake of saying something.
George pulled out a gold watch.

“I must be getting on. Well, good-by!”

“Good-by!”

And that was all.

XV
TAFFY’S APPRENTICESHIP

They could manage the
carpentering now. And
Jacky Pascoe, who in addition
to his other trades
was something of a glazier,
had taken the damaged
east window in hand. For six months
it had remained boarded up, darkening
the chancel. Mr. Raymond removed the
boards and fixed them up again on the
outside, and the Bryanite worked behind
them night after night. He could only be
spied upon through two lancet windows
at the west end of the church, and these
they curtained.

But what continually bothered them
was their ignorance of iron-work. Staples,
51
rivets, hinges were for ever wanted. At
length, one evening toward the end of
March, the Bryanite laid down his tools.

“Tell ‘ee what ’tis, Parson. You must
send the boy to someone that’ll teach ‘er
smithy-work. There’s no sense in this cold
hammering.”

“Wheelwright Hocken holds his shop
and cottage from the Squire.”

“Why not put the boy to Mendarva the
Smith, over to Benny Beneath? He’s a
first-rate workman.”

“That is more than six miles away.”

“No matter for that. There’s Joll’s
Farm close by; Farmer Joll would board
and lodge ‘en for nine shilling a week, and
glad of the chance; and he could come
home for Sundays.”

Mr. Raymond, as soon as he reached
home, sat down and wrote a letter to
Mendarva the Smith and another to Farmer
Joll. Within a week the bargains
were struck, and it was settled that Taffy
should go at once.

“I may be calling before long, to look
you up,” said the Bryanite, “but mind you
do no more than nod when you see me.”

Joll’s Farm lay somewhere near Carwithiel,
across the moor where Taffy had
gone fishing with George and Honoria.
On the Monday morning when he stepped
through the white front gate, with his bag
on his shoulder, and paused for a good
look at the building, it seemed to him a
very comfortable farmstead, and vastly superior
to the tumble-down farms around
Nannizabuloe. The flagged path, which
led up to the front door between great
bunches of purple honesty, was swept as
clean as a dairy.

A dark-haired maid opened the door
and led him to the great kitchen at the
back. Hams wrapped in paper hung from
the rafters, and strings of onions. The
pans over the fireplace were bright as mirrors,
and through the open window he
heard the voices of children at play as well
as the clacking of poultry in the town-place.

“I’ll go and tell the mistress,” said the
maid; but she paused at the door. “I
suppose you don’t remember me, now?”

“No,” said Taffy, truthfully.

“My name’s Lizzie Pezzack. You was
with the young lady, that day, when she
bought my doll. I mind you quite well.
But I put my hair up last Easter, and that
makes a difference.”

“Why, you were only a child.”

“I was seventeen last week. And—I
say, do you know the Bryanite, over to
Innis?—Preacher Jacky Pascoe?”

He nodded, remembering the caution
given him.

“I got salvation off him. Master and
mis’ess, they’ve got salvation too; but
they take it very quiet. They’re very
fond of one another; if you please one
you’ll please both. They let me walk
over to prayer-meetin’ once a week. But
I don’t go by Mendarva’s shop—that’s
where you work—though ’tis the shortest
way; because there’s a woman buried in
the road there, with a stake through her,
and I’m a terrible coward for ghosts.”

She paused as if expecting him to say
something; but Taffy was staring at a
“neck” of corn, elaborately plaited, which
hung above the mantle-shelf. And just
then Mrs. Joll entered the kitchen.

Taffy—without any reason—had expected
to see a middle-aged house-wife.
But Mrs. Joll was hardly over thirty; a
shapely woman, with a plain, pleasant face
and auburn hair, the wealth of which she
concealed by wearing it drawn straight
back from the forehead and plaited in the
severest coil behind. She shook hands.

“You’ll like a drink of milk before I
show you your room?”

Taffy was grateful for the milk. While
he drank it, the voices of the children outside
rose suddenly to shouts of laughter.

“That will be their father come home,”
said Mrs. Joll and going to the side-door
called to him. “John, put the children
down; Mr. Raymond’s son is here.”

Mr. Joll, who had been galloping round
the farmyard with a small girl of three on
his back, and a boy of six tugging at his
coat-tails, pulled up, and wiped his good-natured
face.

“Glad to see you,” said he, coming
forward and shaking hands, while the two
children stared at Taffy.

After a minute, the boy said, “My name’s
Bob. Come and play horses, too.”

Farmer Joll looked at Taffy shyly.
“Shall we?”

“Mr. Raymond will be tired enough
already,” his wife suggested.

“Not a bit,” declared Taffy; and hoisting
52
Bob on his back, he set off furiously
prancing after the farmer.

By dinner-time he and the family were
fast friends, and after dinner the farmer
took him off to be introduced to Mendarva
the Smith.

Mendarva’s forge stood on a triangle
of turf beside the high-road, where a cart-track
branched off to descend to Joll’s
Farm in the valley. And Mendarva was
a dark giant of a man with a beard like
those you see on the statues of Nineveh.
On Sundays he parted his beard carefully
and tied the ends with little bows of scarlet
ribbon; but on week days it curled at
will over his mighty chest. He had one
assistant whom he called “the Dane;” a
red-haired youth as tall as himself and
straighter from the waist down. Mendarva’s
knees had come together with
years of poising and swinging his great
hammer.

“He’s little, but he’ll grow,” said he,
after eying Taffy up and down. “Dane,
come fore and tell me if we’ll make a
workman of ‘en.”

The Dane stepped forward and passed
his hands over the boy’s shoulders and
down his ribs. “He’s slight, but he’ll fill
out. Good pair o’ shoulders. Give’s
hold o’ your hand, my son.”

Taffy obeyed; not very well liking to
be handled thus.

“Hand like a lady’s. Tidy wrist,
though. He’ll do, master.”

So Taffy was passed, given a leathern
apron, and set to his first task of keeping
the forge-fire raked and the bellows going,
while the hammers took up the music he
was to listen to for a year to come.

This music kept the day merry; and beyond
the window along the bright high-road
there was usually something worth
seeing—farm-carts, jowters’ carts, the
doctor and his gig, pedlars and Johnny-fortnights,
the miller’s wagons from the
valley-bottom below Joll’s Farm, and on
Tuesdays and Fridays, the market van
going and returning. Mendarva knew or
speculated upon everybody, and, with half
the passers-by, broke off work and passed
the time of day, leaning on his hammer.
But down at the farm all was strangely
quiet, in spite of the children’s voices;
and at night the quietness positively kept
Taffy awake, listening to the pur-r of the
pigeons in their cote against the house-wall,
thinking of his grandmother awake
at home and listening to the tick-tack of
her tall clock. Often when he woke to
the early summer daybreak and saw
through his attic-window the gray shadows
of the sheep, still and long, on the slope
above the farmstead, his ear was wanting
something, asking for something; for the
murmur of the sea never reached this inland
valley. And he would lie and long
for the chirruping of the two children in
the next room and the drawing of bolts
and clatter of milk-pails below stairs.

He had a plenty to eat, and that plenty
simple and good; and clean linen to sleep
between. The kitchen was his, except on
Saturday nights, when Mrs. Joll and Lizzie
tubbed the children there; and then
he would carry his books off to the best
parlor, or stroll around the farm with Mr.
Joll and discuss the stock. There were
no loose rails in Mr. Joll’s gates, no farm
implements lying out in the weather to
rust. Mr. Joll worked early and late,
and his shoulders had a tell-tale stoop—for
he was a man in the prime of life, perhaps
some five years older than his wife.

One Saturday evening he unburdened
his heart to Taffy. It happened at the
end of the hay-harvest, and the two were
leaning over a gate discussing the yet unthatched
rick.

“What I say is,” declared the farmer,
quite inconsequently, “a man must be able
to lay his troubles ‘pon the Lord. I don’t
mean his work, but his troubles; and go
home and shut the door and be happy
with his wife and children. Now I tell
you that for months—iss, years—after
Bob was born, I kept plaguing mysel’ in
the fields, thinking that some harm might
have happened to the child. Why, I used
to make an excuse and creep home, and
then if I see’d a blind pulled down, you
wouldn’t think how my heart’d go thump;
and I’d stand wi’ my hand on the door-hapse
an’ say, ‘If so be the Lord have
took’n, I must go and comfort Susan—not
my will but Thine, Lord—but, Lord,
don’t ‘ee be cruel this time!’ And then
find the cheeld right as ninepence and the
blind only pulled down to keep the sun
off the carpet! After awhile my wife
guessed what was wrong—I used to make
up such poor twiddling pretences. She
53
said, ‘Look here, the Lord and me’ll see
after Bob; and if you can’t keep to your
own work without poking your nose into
ours, then I married for worse and not for
better.’ Then it came upon me that by
leaving the Lord to look after my job I’d
been treating Him like a farm-laborer.
It’s the things you can’t help He looks
after—not the work.”

A few evenings later there came a knock
at the door, and Lizzie, who went to open
it, returned with the Bryanite skipping behind her.

“Blessings be upon this here house!”
he cried, cutting a sort of double-shuffle
on the threshold. He shook hands with
the farmer and his wife, and nodded toward
Taffy. “So you’ve got Parson Raymond’s
boy here!”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Joll; and turned to
Taffy. “He’ve come to pray a bit; perhaps
you would rather be in the parlor?”

Taffy asked to be allowed to stay; and
presently Mr. Pascoe had them all down
on their knees. He began by invoking
God’s protection on the household;
but his prayer soon ceased to be a prayer.
It broke into ejaculations of praise—”Friends,
I be too happy to ask for
anything—Glory, glory! The blood!
The precious blood! O deliverance! O
streams of redemption running!” The
farmer and his wife began to chime in—”Hallelujah!”
“Glory!” and Lizzie Pezzack
to sob. Taffy, kneeling before a
kitchen chair, peeped between his palms
and saw her shoulders heaving.

The Bryanite sprang to his feet, over-turning
the settle with a crash. “Tid’n no
use. I must skip. Who’ll dance wi’ me?”

He held out his hands to Mrs. Joll.
She took them, and skipped once shamefacedly.
Lizzie, with flaming cheeks,
pushed her aside. “Leave me try, mis’ess;
I shall die if I don’t.” She caught the
preacher’s hands, and the two leapt about
the kitchen. “I can dance higher than
mis’ess! I can dance higher than mis’ess!”
Farmer Joll looked on with a dazed face.
“Hallelujah!” “Amen!” he said at intervals,
quite mechanically. The pair stood
under the bacon rank and began to whirl
like dervishes—hands clasped, toes together,
bodies leaning back and almost
rigid. They whirled until Taffy’s brain
whirled with them.

With a louder sob, Lizzie let go her
hold, and tottered back into a chair, laughing
hysterically. The Bryanite leaned
against the table, panting.

There was a long pause. Mrs. Joll took
a napkin from the dresser and fell to fanning
the girl’s face, then to slapping it
briskly. “Get up and lay the table,” she
commanded; “the preacher’ll stay to
supper.”

“Thank ‘ee, ma’am, I don’t care if I
do,” said he; and ten minutes latter they
were all seated at supper and discussing
the fall in wheat in the most matter-of-fact
voices. Only their faces twitched,
now and again.

“I hear you had the preacher down to
Joll’s last night,” said Mendarva the
Smith. “What’st think of ‘en?”

“I can’t make him out,” was Taffy’s
colorless but truthful answer.

“He’s a bellows of a man. I do hear
he’s heating up th’ old Squire Moyle’s
soul, to knack an angel out of ‘en. He’ll
find that a job and a half. You mark my
words, there’ll be Hamlet’s ghost over in
your parish one o’ these days.”

During work-hours Mendarva bestowed
most of his talk on Taffy. The Dane
seldom opened his lips, except to join in
the Anvil Chorus—

and when the boy took a hammer and
joined in, he fell silent. Taffy soon observed
that a singular friendship knit these
two men, who were both unmarried. Mendarva
had been a famous wrestler in his
day, and his great ambition now was to
train the other to win the County belt.
Often, after work, the pair would try a
hitch together on the triangle of turf, with
Taffy for stickler; Mendarva illustrating
and explaining, the Dane nodding seriously
whenever he understood, but never
answering a word. Afterwards the boy
recalled these bouts very vividly—the
clear evening sky, the shoulders of the
two big men shining against the level sun
as they gripped and swayed, their long
54
shadows on the grass under which (as he
remembered) the poor self-murdered woman
lay buried.

He thought of her at night, sometimes,
as he worked alone at the forge: for
Mendarva allowed him the keys and use
of the smithy overtime, in consideration
of a small payment for coal, and then he
blew his fire and hammered with a couple
of candles on the bench and a Homer
between them; and beat the long hexameters
into his memory. The incongruity
of it never struck him. He was
going to be a great man, and somehow
this was going to be the way. These
scraps of iron—these tools of his forging—were
to grow into the arms and shield
of Achilles. In its own time would come
the magic moment, the shield find its true
circumference and swing to the balance
of his arm, proof and complete.

ἐν δ’ ἐτίθει ποταμοῖο μέγα σθένος Ὠκεανοῖο
ἄντυγα παρ’ πυμάτην σάκεος πύκα ποιητοῖο

XVI
LIZZIE AND HONORIA

His apprenticeship lasted a
year and six months, and
all this while he lived with
the Jolls, walking home
every Sunday morning and
returning every Sunday
night, rain or shine. He carried his deftness
of hand into his new trade, and it was Mendarva
who begged and obtained an extension
of the time agreed on. “Rather than
lose the boy I’ll tache ‘en for love.” So
Taffy stayed on for another six months.

He was now in his seventeenth year—a
boy no longer. One evening, as he blew
up his smithy fire, the glow of it fell on the
form of a woman standing just outside the
window and watching him. He had no
silly fears of ghosts; but the thought of
the buried woman flashed across his mind
and he dropped his pincers with a clatter.

“‘Tis only me,” said the woman. “You
needn’t to be afeared.” And he saw it was
the girl Lizzie.

She stepped inside the forge and seated
herself on the Dane’s anvil.

“I was walking back from prayer-meeting,”
she said. “‘Tis nigher this way, but
I don’t ever dare to come. Might, I dessay,
if I’d somebody to see me home.”

“Ghosts?” asked Taffy, picking up
the pincers and thrusting the bar back into
the hot cinders.

“I dunno; I gets frightened o’ the very
shadows on the road sometimes. I suppose,
now, you never walks out that way?”

“Which way?”

“Why, toward where your home is.
That’s the way I comes.”

“No, I don’t.” Taffy blew at the cinders
until they glowed again. “It’s only
on Sundays I go over there.”

“That’s a pity,” said Lizzie, candidly.
“I’m kept in, Sunday evenings, to look
after the children while farmer and mis’ess
goes to Chapel. That’s the agreement I
came ‘pon.”

Taffy nodded.

“It would be nice now, wouldn’t it—”
She broke off, clasping her knees and
staring at the blaze.

“What would be nice?”

Lizzie laughed confusedly. “Aw, you
make me say ‘t. I can’t abear any of the
young men up to the Chapel. If me and
you——”

Taffy ceased blowing. The fire died
down and in the darkness he could hear
her breathing hard.

“They’re so rough,” she went on, “And
t’other night I met young Squire Vyell
riding along the road, and he stopped me
and wanted to kiss me.”

“George Vyell? Surely he didn’t?”
Taffy blew up the fire again.

“Iss he did. I don’t see why not,
neither.”

“Why he shouldn’t kiss you?”

“Why he shouldn’t want to.”

Taffy frowned, carried the white hot bar
to his anvil and began to hammer. He
despised girls, as a rule, and their ways.
Decidedly Lizzie annoyed him: and yet
as he worked he could not help glancing
at her now and then, as she sat and
watched him. By and by he saw that her
eyes were full of tears.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, abruptly.

“I—I can’t walk home alone. I’m
afeared.”

He tossed his hammer aside, raked out
the fire, and reached his coat off its peg.
55
As he swung round in the darkness to put
it on, he blundered against Lizzie or Lizzie
blundered against him. She clutched at
him nervously.

“Clumsy! can’t you see the doorway?”

She passed out, and he followed and
locked the door. As they crossed the turf
to the highroad, she slipped her arm into
his. “I feel safe, that way. Let it stay,
co!” After a few paces, she added,
“You’re different from the others—that’s
why I like you.”

“How?”

“I dunno; but you be diff’rent. You
don’t think about girls, for one thing.”

Taffy did not answer. He felt angry,
ashamed, uncomfortable. He did not turn
once to look at her face, dimly visible by
the light of the young moon—the Hunter’s
moon—now sinking over the slope of
the hill. Thick dust—too thick for the
heavy dew to lay—covered the cart-track
down to the farm, muffling their footsteps.
Lizzie paused by the gate.

“Best go in separate,” she said;
paused again and whispered, “You may,
if you like.”

“May do what?”

“What—what young Squire Vyell
wanted.”

They were face to face now. She held
up her lips, and as she did so, they parted
in an amorous murmurous little laugh.
The moonlight was on her face. Taffy
bent swiftly and kissed her.

“Oh, you hurt!” With another little
laugh, she slipped up the garden-path and
into the house.

Ten minutes later Taffy followed, hating
himself.

For the next fortnight he avoided her;
and then, late one evening, she came
again. He was prepared for this, and had
locked the door of the smithy and let down
the shutter while he worked. She tapped
upon the outside of the shutter with her
knuckles.

“Let me in!”

“Can’t you leave me alone?” he answered,
pettishly. “I want to work, and
you interrupt.”

“I don’t want no love-making—I don’t
indeed. I’ll sit quiet as a mouse. But I’m
afeared, out here.”

“Nonsense!”

“I’m afeared o’ the ghost. There’s
something comin’—let me in, co!”

Taffy unlocked the door and held it half
open while he listened.

“Yes, there’s somebody coming, on
horseback. Now, look here—it’s no
ghost, and I can’t have you about here,
with people passing. I—I don’t want you
here at all; so make haste and slip away
home—that’s a good girl.”

Lizzie glided like a shadow into the dark
lane as the trample of hoofs drew close,
and the rider pulled up beside the door.

“You’re working late, I see. Is it too
late to make a shoe for Aide-de-camp
here?”

It was Honoria. She dismounted and
stood in the doorway, holding her horse’s
bridle.

“No,” said Taffy; “that is, if you
don’t mind the waiting.”

With his leathern apron he wiped the
Dane’s anvil for a seat, while she hitched
up Aide-de-camp and stepped into the
glow of the forge-fire.

“The hounds took us six miles beyond
Carwithiel: and there, just as they
lost, Aide-de-camp cast his off-hind shoe.
I didn’t find it out at first, and now I’ve
had to walk him all the way back. Are
you alone here?”

“Yes.”

“Who was that I saw leaving as I came
up?”

“You saw someone?”

“Yes.” She nodded, looking him
straight in the face. “It looked like a
woman. Who was she?”

“That was Lizzie Pezzack, the girl who
sold you her doll, once. She’s a servant
down at the farm where I lodge.”

Honoria said no more for the moment,
but seated herself on the Dane’s
anvil, while Taffy chose a bar of iron and
stepped out to examine Aide-de-camp’s
hoof. He returned and in silence began
to blow up the fire.

“I dare say you were astonished to see
me,” she remarked at length.

“Yes.”

“I’m still forbidden to speak to you.
The last time I did it, grandfather beat me.”

“The old brute!” Taffy nipped the
hot iron savagely in his pincers.

“I wonder if he’ll do it again. Somehow
I don’t think he will.”
56

Taffy looked at her. She had drawn
herself up, and was smiling. In her close
riding-habit she seemed very slight, yet
tall, and a woman grown. He took the
bar to the anvil and began to beat it flat.
His teeth were shut, and with every blow
he said to himself “Brute!”

“That’s beautiful,” Honoria went on.
“I stopped Mendarva, the other day, and
he told me wonders about you. He says
he tried you with a hard-boiled egg and
you swung the hammer and chipped the
shell all round without bruising the white
a bit. Is that true?”

Taffy nodded.

“And your learning—the Latin and
Greek, I mean; do you still go on with
it?”

He nodded again, toward a volume of
Euripides that lay open on the work-bench.

“And the stories you used to tell
George and me; do you go on telling
them to yourself?”

He was obliged to confess that he never
did. She sat for awhile watching the
sparks as they flew. Then she said, “I
should like to hear you tell one again.
That one about Aslog and Orm, who ran
away by night across the ice-fields and
took a boat and came to an island with a
house on it, and found a table spread and
the fire lit, but no inhabitants anywhere—You
remember? It began ‘Once upon
a time, not far from the city of Drontheim,
there lived a rich man——'”

Taffy considered a moment and began
“Once upon a time, not far from the city
of Drontheim——” He paused, eyed
the horse-shoe cooling between the pincers,
and shook his head. It was no use.
Apollo had been too long in service with
Admetus, and the tale would not come.

“At any rate,” Honoria persisted,
“you can tell me something out of your
books: something you have just been
reading.”

So he began to tell her the story of Ion,
and managed well enough in describing
the boy and how he ministered before
the shrine at Delphi, sweeping the temple
and scaring the birds away from the precincts;
but when he came to the plot of
the play and, looking up, caught Honoria’s
eyes, it suddenly occurred to him
that all the rest of the story was a sensual
one and he could not tell it to her. He
blushed, faltered, and finally broke down.

“But it was beautiful,” said she, “so far
as it went; and it’s just what I wanted.
I shall remember that boy Ion now, whenever
I think of you helping your father in
the church at home. If the rest of the
story is not nice, I don’t want to hear it.”

How had she guessed? It was delicious,
at any rate, to know that she thought
of him, and Taffy felt how delicious it
was, while he fitted and hammered the
shoe on Aide-de-camp’s hoof, she standing
by with a candle in either hand, the
flame scarcely quivering in the windless
night.

When all was done, she raised a foot
for him to give her a mount. “Good-night!”
she called, shaking the reins.
Taffy stood by the door of the forge, listening
to the echoes of Aide-de-camp’s
canter, and the palm of his hand tingled
where her foot had rested.

XVII
THE SQUIRE’S WEIRD

He took leave of Mendarva
and the Jolls just before
Christmas. The smith was
unaffectedly sorry to lose
him. “But,” said he, “the
Dane will be entered for
the Championship next summer, so I
s’pose I must look forward to that.”

Everyone in the Joll household gave
him a small present on his leaving. Lizzie’s
was a New Testament, with her name
on the fly-leaf, and under it “Converted,
April 19, 187-.” Taffy did not want the
gift, but took it rather than hurt her feelings.

Farmer Joll said, “Well, wish ‘ee well!
Been pretty comfiable, I hope. Now
you’m goin’, I don’t mind telling ‘ee I
didn’t like your coming a bit. But now ’tis
wunnerful to me you’ve been wi’ us less’n
two year’; we’ve made such progress.”

At home Taffy bought a small forge
and set it up in the church, at the west
end of the north aisle. Mr. Raymond, under
his direction, had been purchasing the
necessary tools for some months past; and
now the main expense was the cost of
57
coal, which pinched them a little. But
they managed to keep the fire alight, and
the work went forward briskly. Save that
he still forbade the parish to lend them
the least help, the old Squire had ceased
to interfere.

Mr. Raymond’s hair was grayer; and
Taffy might have observed—but did not—how
readily, toward the close of a day’s
laborious carpentry, he would drop work
and turn to Dindorf ‘s Poetæ Scenici Græci,
through which they were reading their
way. On Sundays, the congregation rarely
numbered a dozen. It seemed that as the
end of the Vicar’s task drew nearer, so the
prospect of filling the church receded and
became more shadowy. And if his was a
queer plight, Jacky Pascoe’s was a queerer.
The Bryanite continued to come by night
and help, but at rarer intervals. He was
discomforted in mind, as anyone could
see; and at length he took Mr. Raymond
aside and made confession.

“I must go away; that’s what ’tis. My
burden is too great for me to bear.”

“Why,” said Mr. Raymond, who had
grown surprisingly tolerant during the
past twelve months, “what cause have
you, of all men, to feel dejected? You
can set the folk here on fire like flax.”
He sighed.

“That’s azackly the reason—I can set
’em afire with a breath; but I can’t hold
’em under. I make ’em too strong for
me—and I’m afeard. Parson, dear, it’s
the gospel truth; for two years I’ve a
been strivin’ agen myself, wrastlin’ upon
my knees, and all to hold this parish in.”
He mopped his face. “‘Tis like fightin’
with beasts at Ephesus,” he said.

“Do you want to hold them in?”

“I do and I don’t. I’ve got to try,
anyway. Sometimes I tell mysel’ ’tis putting
a hand to the plough and turning
back; and then I reckon I’ll go on. But
when the time comes, I can’t. I’m
afeard, I tell ‘ee.” He paused. “I’ve
laid it before the Lord, but He don’t seem
to help. There’s two voices inside o’ me.
‘Tis a terrible responsibility.”

“But the people, what are you afraid
of their doing?”

“I don’t know. You don’t know what
a runaway hoss will do, but you’re afeard
all the same.” He sank his voice. “There’s
wantonness, for one thing—six love-children
born in the parish this year, and
more coming. They do say that Vashti
Clemow destroyed her child. And Old
Man Johns—him they found dead on the
rocks under the Island—he didn’t go there
by accident. ‘Twas a calm day, too.”

As often as not Taffy worked late—sometimes
until midnight—and blew his
forge-fire alone in the church, the tap of
his hammer making hollow music in the
desolate aisles. He was working thus one
windy night in February, when the door
rattled open and in walked a totally unexpected
visitor—Sir Harry Vyell.

“Good-evening! I was riding by and
saw your light in the windows dancing up
and down. I thought I would hitch up
the mare and drop in for a chat. But go
on with your work.”

Taffy wondered what had brought him
so far from his home at that time of night,
but asked no questions. And Sir Harry
placed a hassock on one of the belfry
steps and, taking his seat, watched for
awhile in silence. He wore his long riding
boots and an overcoat with the collar
turned up about a neck-cloth less nattily
folded than usual.

“I wish,” he said at length, “that my
boy George was clever like you. You
were great friends once—you remember
Plymouth, hey? But I dare say you’ve
not seen much of each other lately.”

Taffy shook his head.

“George is a bit wild. Oxford might
have done something for him; made a
man of him, I mean. But he wouldn’t
go. I believe in wild oats to a certain
extent. I have told him from the first he
must look after himself and decide for
himself. That’s my theory. It makes a
youngster self-reliant. He goes and comes
as he likes. If he comes home late from
hunting, I ask no questions; I don’t wait
dinner. Don’t you agree with me?”

“I don’t know,” Taffy answered, wondering
why he should be consulted.

“Self-reliance is what a man wants.”

“Couldn’t he have learnt that at
school?”

Sir Harry fidgeted with the riding-crop
in his hands. “Well, you see, he’s an
only son——. I dare say it was selfish
of me. You don’t mind my talking about
George?”

Taffy laughed. “I like it.”
58

Sir Harry laughed too, in an embarrassed
way. “But you don’t suppose I
rode over from Carwithiel for that?
You’re not so far wrong, though. The
fact is—one gets foolish as one grows old—George
went out hunting this morning,
and didn’t turn up for dinner. I kept to
my rule, and dined alone. Nine o’clock
came; half-past; no George. At ten
Hoskings locked up as usual, and off I
went to bed. But I couldn’t sleep. After
awhile, it struck me that he might be
sleeping here over at Tredinnis; that is,
if no accident had happened. No sleep
for me until I made sure; so I jumped
out, dressed, slipped down to the stables,
saddled the mare and rode over. I left
the mare by Tredinnis great gates and
crept down to Moyle’s stables like a house-breaker;
looked in through the window,
and, sure enough, there was George’s gray
in the loose box to the right. So George
is sleeping there, and I’m easy in my
mind. No doubt you think me an old
fool?”

But Taffy was not thinking anything of
the sort.

“I couldn’t wish better than that. You
understand?” said Sir Harry, slyly.

“Not quite.”

“He lost his mother early. He wants
a woman to look after him, and for him to
think about. If he and Honoria would
only make up a match…. And
Carwithiel would be quite a different
house.”

Taffy hesitated, with a hand on the
forge-bellows.

“I dare say it’s news to you, what I’m
telling. But it has been in my mind this
long while. Why don’t you blow up
the fire? I bet Miss Honoria has thought
of it too; girls are deep. She has a head
on her shoulders. I’ll warrant she’d send
half a dozen of my servants packing within
a week. As it is, they rob me to a
stair. I know it, and I haven’t the pluck
to interfere.”

“What does the old Squire say?”
Taffy managed to ask.

“It has never come to saying anything.
But I believe he thinks of it, too, when
he happens to think of anything but his
soul. He’ll be pleased; everyone will be
pleased. The properties touch, you see.”

“I see.”

“To tell you the truth, he’s failing fast.
This religion of his is a symptom; all of
his family have taken to it in the end. If
he hadn’t the constitution of a horse, he’d
have been converted ten years before this.
What puzzles me is, he’s so quiet. You
mark my words”—Sir Harry rose, buttoned
his coat and shook his riding-crop
prophetically—”he’s brewing up for
something. There’ll be the devil of a flare-up
before he has done.”

It came with the midsummer bonfires.
At nine o’clock on St. John’s Eve, Mr.
Raymond read prayers in the church. It
was his rule to celebrate thus the vigils of
all saints in the English calendar and some
few Cornish saints besides; and he regularly
announced these services on the
preceding Sundays; but no parishioner
dreamed of attending them.

To-night, as usual, he and Taffy had
prayed alone; and the lad was standing
after service at the church door, with his
surplice on his arm (for he always wore a
surplice and read the lessons on these
vigils), when the flame of the first bonfire
shot up from the headland over Innis
village.

Almost on the moment a flame answered
it from the point where the lighthouse
stood; and within ten minutes the horizon
of the towans was cressetted with these
beacon-fires; surely (thought Taffy) with
many more than usual. And he remembered
that Jacky Pascoe had thrown out
a hint of a great revival to be held on
Baal-fire Night (as he had called it).

The night was sultry and all but windless.
For once the tormented sands had rest.
The flame of the bonfires shone yellow—orange-yellow—and
steady. He could
see the dark figures of men and women
passing between him and the nearest, on
the high wastrel in front of Tredinnis
great gates. Their voices reached him
in a confused murmur, broken now and
then by a child’s scream of delight. And
yet a hush seemed to hang over sea and
land: an expectant hush. For weeks the
sky had not rained. Day after day, a dull
indigo blue possessed it, deepening with
night into duller purple, as if the whole
heavens were gathering into one big
thunder-cloud, which menaced but never
broke. And in the hush of those nights a
59
listener could almost fancy he heard, between
whiles, the rabbits stirring uneasily
in their burrows.

By and by, the bonfire on the wastrel
appeared to be giving out specks of light,
which blazed independently; yet without
decreasing its own volume of flame. The
sparks came dancing, nearer and larger;
the voices grew more distinct. The spectators
had kindled torches and were
advancing in procession to visit other
bonfires. The torches, too, were supposed
to bless the fields they passed across.

The procession rose and sank as it came
over the uneven ridges like a fiery snake;
topped the nearest ridge and came pouring
down past the churchyard wall. At
its head danced Lizzie Pezzack, shrieking
like a creature possessed, her hair loose
and streaming, while she whirled her
torch. Taffy knew these torches; bundles
of canvas steeped in tar and fastened
in the middle to a stout stick or piece of
chain. Lizzie’s was fastened to a chain,
and as he watched her uplifted arm swinging
the blazing mass he found time to
wonder how she escaped setting her hair
on fire. Other torch-bearers tossed their
arms and shouted as they passed. The
smoke was suffocating, and across the
patch of quiet graveyard the heat smote
on Taffy’s face. But in the crowd he saw
two figures clearly—Jacky Pascoe and
Squire Moyle; and the Bryanite’s face
was agitated and white in the glare. He
had given an arm to the Squire, who was
clearly the centre of the procession, and
tottered forward with jaws working and
cavernous eyes.

“He’s saved!” a voice shouted.

Others took up the cry. “Saved!”
“The Squire’s saved!” “Saved to-night—saved
to glory!”

The Squire paused, still leaning on the
Bryanite’s arm. While the procession
swayed around him, he gazed across the
gate, as a man who had lost his bearings.
No glint of torchlight reached his eyes;
but the sight of Mr. Raymond’s surpliced
figure, standing behind Taffy’s shoulders
in the full glare, seemed to rouse him. He
lifted a fist and shook it slowly.

“Com’st along, sir!” urged the Bryanite.

But the Squire stood irresolute, muttering
to himself.

“Com’st along, sir!”

“Lev’ me be, I tell ‘ee!” He laid
both hands on the gate and spoke across it
to Mr. Raymond, his head nodding while
his voice rose.

“D’ee hear what they say? I’m saved.
I’m the Squire of this parish, and I’m going
to Heaven. I make no account of you
and your church. Old Satan’s the fellow
I’m after, and I’m going to have him out
o’ this parish to-night or my name’s not
Squire Moyle.”

“That’s of it, Squire!” “Hunt’ en!”
“Out with ‘en!”

He turned on the shouting throng.

“Hunt ‘en? Iss fay I will! Come
along, boys—back to Tredinnis! No,
no”—this to the Bryanite—”we’ll go back.
I’ll show ‘ee sport, to-night—we’ll hunt
th’ould Divvle by scent and view. I’m
Squire Moyle, ain’t I? And I’ve a pack
o’ hounds, ha’n’t I? Back, boys—back,
I tell ‘ee!”

Lizzie Pezzack swung her torch. “Back—back
to Tredennis!” The crowd took
up the cry, “Back to Tredinnis!” The
old man shook off the Bryanite’s hand, and
as the procession wheeled and re-formed
itself confusedly, rushed to the head of it,
waving his hat—

“Back!—Back to Tredinnis!”

“God help them,” said Mr. Raymond;
and taking Taffy by the arm, drew him
back into the church.

The shouting died away up the road.
For three-quarters of an hour father and
son worked in silence. The reddened sky
shed its glow gently through the clear glass
windows, suffusing the shadows beneath
the arched roof. And, in the silence, the
lad wondered what was happening up at
Tredinnis.

Jim the Whip took oath afterward that
it was no fault of his. He had suspected
three of the hounds for a day or two—Chorister,
White, Boy, and Bellman—and
had separated them from the pack. That
very evening he had done the same with
Rifler, who was chewing at the straw in a
queer fashion and seemed quarrelsome.
He had said nothing to the Squire, whose
temper had been ugly for a week past. He
had hoped it was a false alarm—had
thought it better to wait, and so on.
60

The Squire went down to the Kennels
with a lantern, Jim shivering behind him.
They had their horses saddled outside and
ready; and the crowd was waiting along
the drive and up by the great gates.
The Squire saw at a glance that two
couples were missing, and in two seconds
had their names on his tongue. He was
like a madman. He shouted to Jim to
open the doors. “Better not, maister!”
pleaded Jim. The old man cursed, smote
him across the neck with the butt-end of
his whip, and unlocked the doors himself.
Jim, though half-stunned, staggered forward
to prevent him, and took another
blow which felled him. He dropped
across the threshold of Chorister’s kennel,
the doors of all opened outwards, and the
weight of his body kept this one shut.
But he saw the other three hounds run
out—saw the Squire turn with a ghastly
face, drop the lantern and run for it as
White Boy snapped at his boot. Jim
heard the crash of the lantern and the snap
of teeth, and with that he fainted off in the
darkness. He had cut his forehead against
the bars of the big kennel, and when he
came to himself, one of the hounds was
licking his face through the grating.

Men told for years’ after how the old
Squire came up the drive that night, hoof
to belly; his chin almost on mare Nonesuch’s
neck; his face like a man’s who
hears hell cracking behind him; and of
the three dusky hounds which followed
(the tale said) with clapping jaws and
eyes like coach-lamps.

Down in the quiet church Taffy heard
the outcry, and, laying down his plane,
looked up and saw that his father had
heard it too. His mild eyes, shining
through his spectacles, asked, as plainly as
words: “What was that?”

“Listen!”

For a minute—two minutes—they
heard nothing more. Then out of the
silence broke a rapid, muffled beat of
hoofs; and Mr. Raymond clutched Taffy’s
arm as a yell—a cry not human, or if
human, insane—cut the night like a knife
and fetched them to their feet. Taffy
gained the porch first, and just at that
moment a black shadow heaved itself on
the churchyard wall and came hurling
over with a thud—a clatter of dropping
stones—then a groan.

Before they could grasp what was happening,
the old Squire had extricated
himself from the fallen mare, and came
staggering across the graves.

“Hide me!——”

He came with both arms outstretched,
his face turned sideways. Behind him,
from the far side of the wall, came sounds—horrible
shuffling sounds, and in the
dusk they saw the head of one of the
hounds above the coping and his fore-paws
clinging as he strained to heave
himself over.

“Save me! Save——”

They caught him by both arms, dragged
him within and slammed the door.

“Save!——sa—!”

The word ended with a thud as he
pitched headlong on the slate pavement.
Through the barred door, the scream of
the mare Nonesuch answered it.

(To be continued.)

61

Mail Arriving in Foreign Department.

On the left the Chief Clerk is checking off the returns from the clerks, on the right, who have emptied sacks of mail. New loads are
coming in in the rear.

The Foreign Mail Service at New York
By E. G. Chat

“Steamer’s mail!!!” This loud
call, echoing throughout the foreign
room in the Post-office Building, is
the equivalent of the “Clear ship for action”
on the man-of-war. Instantly
distributors leave their separating cases,
stampers abandon their “blocks,” the electric
stamp-cancelling machine temporarily
ceases its humming, buzzing rattle, every
available clerk or porter gets ready for the
fray, and the whole force charges with
alacrity on the fast accumulating pile, as
sack after sack is dumped on a low, large
table, at times entirely hid from sight by
bags with labels indicating their origin,
thousands of miles away, whether from the
confines of Siberia, or the shores of the
Indian Ocean.

The sight, even to men familiar with
the work, is inspiring, especially when at
times two, and on certain occasions three,
steamers land their cargo of sacks at the
same hour. Not infrequently this happens
when some one thousand and odd
sacks have to be made ready for an outgoing
steamer, and then the foreign force
is fairly on its mettle, and may well be
compared again to the crew of a battle-ship
when it has to fight fire inside and
fire from the enemy outside. Here again,
as on the battle-ship, organization and
years’ training tell. The wagon-loads of
sacks melt before the vigorous and steady
onslaught as did the Spanish fleet before
Dewey’s guns, and in a short while the
room is cleared and the “field-day” over.
62

Sea Post-office Room.

One clerk empties the sacks, and throws the letter packages to another clerk at the case while he distributes the papers into the
sack rack.

It would be difficult, in this great cosmopolitan
city of New York, to find a
person who does not make use of this foreign
service, yet strange to relate is the
fact that, outside of the clerks immediately
handling these mails, hardly anyone
can be found who knows, or even has the
slightest idea of the International Postal
Union system. Perhaps this is accounted
for by the comparatively very recent establishment
of said system, and its growth
so immediate and rapid that the public
has not so far “caught up” with it.

The system was aptly described by
Postmaster-General Gary at the opening
of the Washington Postal Congress, in
1897, as “one of the grandest projects
of the century.” No other agency is responsible
to such an extent for the tremendous
expansion of great ideals and
the exchange of views between nations
characteristic of the last quarter of this
century.

Previous to 1875, when the Treaty of
Bern, assented to and ratified by twenty-two
nations, took effect, the exchange of
mails between separate nationalities was
done under such difficulties, and subject
to delays and mishaps of so many kinds,
that a normal growth and improvement
in keeping with the progress of civilization
was out of the question. In 1840 the
foreign mail from England for the United
States, carried on the Great Western, consisted
of two sacks of mail. As late as
1873 a steamer from Europe with 20,000
letters on board was considered a record
breaker. To-day the Cunard steamers
63
and other transatlantic ships carrying what
is called a “full European mail,” usually
bring some two hundred thousand letters,
and an average of three hundred sacks of
newspapers and printed matter for New
York City, not to mention the five hundred
and odd sacks for Canada, Mexico,
and transpacific countries, and a few
United States exchange offices, which
are now taken direct to the trains and not
handled at the New York office.

The working unit of the International
Postal Union system is the “Exchange
Office.” Each postal administration selects
these despatching and receiving
centres according to quantity of mail
handled at any particular point. In European
countries many of these offices
are on trains from one important point to
another, and are called Travelling Exchange
offices. They receive and despatch
mails in the same manner as offices
located in large cities. There are also
exchange offices located on steamship
lines, and they are called Sea Post-offices.
No matter where located, these offices all
conduct business on the same lines, and
handle mail in the same manner throughout
the world. The rules and regulations
of this service are adopted by Postal Congresses,
meeting about every six years
and under the general supervision of the
International Bureau of the Postal Union
located at Bern, Switzerland, and supported
by funds from all governments
represented in the Union according to the
respective importance of their mail service.

Transferring Mails from an Ocean Greyhound to the Post-office Boat, Postmaster General, through the Chutes.

Only through these exchange offices can
correspondence go from one country to another,
as no other offices are provided with
the clerical force and system necessary to
64
the handling of international mails. It is
at times difficult to explain to business
people that a North German Lloyd steamer
calling at Gibraltar and Naples will carry
mail for Naples only, and that a letter addressed
to Gibraltar by that particular
steamer cannot be delivered at that port,
but will be carried all the way to Naples,
whence it will be re-despatched to Gibraltar
through a more or less circuitous route.
This is because Gibraltar is not an “exchange
office” with New York, and
“closed mails” are not sent thereto from
New York. A “closed mail,” as the name
indicates, is a mail duly tied up, sealed,
and labelled with the name of the exchange
office to which it is sent, and not
to be opened until it gets there, passing
sometimes through four or five countries
before reaching its destination. No other
kind of mails is carried by steamers, yet
the answer will often be made to inquiries,
that a certain letter would have been
sent “in open mail” to London or elsewhere.
This does not mean that the mail
in which the letter in question would be
sent is despatched “opened,” but that it
is sent in the “closed” mail for London,
there to be opened and disposed of by
the London clerks, just as if it had been
mailed in London. This course is followed
with all correspondence for offices
abroad, or even entire countries, which is
not in sufficient quantity to justify the
establishment of an exchange; and the
mails for these offices or countries is sent
to the foreign exchange office with the
best facilities for disposing of it. Thus
mail for Liberia will be sent sometimes to
Hamburg, Germany, and at other times
to Liverpool, England.

On Board the Postmaster General, at the End of the Chute—Receiving, Piling, and Checking Off Sacks.

Some Sample Labels from Abroad.

Belgian label—string made fast through wooden block with
wax seal and a second block of compressed lead.
Paraguay label—plain linen.
Austrian label—wooden block, string sealed with wax.
German white leather label.
Argentine label—strong, ordinary leather.
Norwegian label—cardboard—string sealed on back with wax.

A closed mail consists of ordinary letters,
printed matter, and other articles, and of
registered articles. Sometimes all these
elements will be enclosed in the same sack,
or they may be despatched in separate
65
sacks, when in sufficient quantity. The
registered mail is tied up and sealed in
distinctive red-striped sacks, and then these
sacks are enclosed in ordinary mail-sacks,
tied up and labelled in exactly the same
manner as the sacks containing ordinary
letters, so that it is impossible to tell from
the outside which sack contains registered
matter. A mail may consist of one sack
only, containing all classes of correspondence,
or it may be composed of a large
number of sacks. In either case it is accompanied
by a letter bill, enclosed in one
of the sacks. This letter bill is one of a
series beginning on January 1st of each
year, being numbered with consecutive
numbers to each foreign exchange office.
Thus when Naples receives a mail from
New York containing the letter bill numbered
65, and the previous mail received at
that office had Letter Bill No. 63, Naples
knows that mail with Letter Bill No. 64
is missing, and immediately notifies New
York of the fact in a form called “Bulletin
of Verification.” This form is in use
for official correspondence between all
offices in the Postal Union regarding
irregularities of all sorts discovered in the
mails of one office for another. A record
of the number of each mail and the particulars
of its despatch being kept by each
office, the inquiry from Naples in the
above instance would immediately be investigated,
and that office notified that the
missing mail had been sent on such a date,
by such a steamer, etc.; or, if more was
known concerning its fate, as in the case
of the mails sent per La Bourgogne last
July, mention would be made of the fact.
The Russian travelling exchange office
of Kibarty to St. Petersburg frequently
receives the mails sent from this office
every Wednesday in inverted order, that
is, the mail sent by a fast White Star liner
at noon on Wednesday, may be received
a few hours ahead of the mail sent by a
slower American line steamer which sailed
at 10 A.M. on the same day. The occurrence
is so often repeated that one would
think it would go unnoticed, and the Russian
office would wait a few hours anyway
before notifying New York that a
66
mail is missing, but such is not the case,
and the bulletin “Your mail No. —— is
missing,” is immediately sent to New
York, followed next day by another bulletin,
“Your mail No. —— has arrived.”
At the New York office the first bulletin
is always held until receipt of the second,
which is sure to follow and renders investigation
unnecessary; they are called
“Katie didn’t,” and “Katie did.” Many
bulletins are received subsequent to the
holidays with best wishes for Christmas
or New Year from one office to another.
They are mostly all in English, French, or
Spanish, and are, at times, more or less
humorous, if not pathetic, as was one received
from Martinique about the time
Cervera’s ill-fated fleet was hovering near
that island. A mail from New York had
just been received at St. Pierre, and in
one of the sacks the horrified
French Director of Posts had
found a cat in the last stages
of decomposition. He had
sent for the American Consul
to view the remains, and his
bulletin to the New York office
regarding this irregularity was
a model of official French. It
stated how the smell of that
dead cat had penetrated every
corner of his office, and one
could read between the lines
that he suspected the whole
affair to be a joke played upon
him by the Yankee postal
clerks. The event was duly investigated in
the New York office, but beyond the fact
that one member of the numerous pussy
tribe in the mail building was missing, little
else could be positively ascertained. That
the cat could have been sent in that bag
as a joke was not to be thought of for an
instant, but it was presumed that in its
wandering among the piles of mail-sacks
in the basement, pussy had found the
sack for Martinique awaiting to be sealed,
and had concluded to take a nap therein.
The sack was probably tied up and sealed
soon afterward, and the unwilling stow-away
had been sent to the steamer. Later
on it was reported by the purser of the
steamer that he suspected there was something
alive in one of the mail-bags, but
such is the respect for postal seals that he
never thought to open the sack in the presence
67
of witnesses and release the animal.
Thrown in the mail-room with other sacks
on top of it, there could be no doubt that
poor pussy had been smothered before
passing the Hook, and his condition when
landed at Martinique must have been such
as to fully justify and explain the ill-disguised
indignation of the French officials.

In the Newspaper Division.

Throwing papers into boxes for all parts of the world.

The letter bill describes minutely the
mail it accompanies, states how many sacks
of letters, how many sacks of papers, and
how many articles registered, describing
each registered article separately, except in
cases of heavy registered mails, when a separate
descriptive list is sent in addition to
the letter bill. Thus it is easy for the office
of destination to verify the mail it receives
and ascertain whether any is missing.

Small closed mails are at times enclosed
inside of closed mails for other offices; for
instance, the mails made up at Paris for
Guatemala are in a sack duly sealed and
labelled as aforesaid, but this sack is put
inside of one of the bags for the New
York office, and in such cases the fact is
noted on the letter bill sent with the New
York mail.

Samples of Ordinary Letters.

For Government of Simbursk, Russia.             For Finland.
For Hungary.

The business of the foreign clerks when
a foreign mail is received in the manner described
in our first lines is to open promptly
every sack received, inspect and dispose
of contents, and report to the chief clerk
the result from each sack thus opened.
Each clerk takes hold of one of the sacks
piled on the table, and throws it on another
table used for opening the mails. He
cuts open the fastenings, keeping the label
separate, and also the letter-bill, if he happens
to find it in the sack; if several classes
of mail matter are found therein, he pushes
the ordinary letters over to one side,
sweeps the newspapers into large four-wheeled
baskets near by, takes to another
place the smaller enclosed mails addressed
to other offices, and lays the registered sack
on the chief clerk’s desk, where a man
from the registry division will receive it
and give a receipt for it. The clerk then
calls out to the chief clerk the result of
his examination, “Lisbon-Reg.-Bill and 1
Honolulu”—which means that in the sack
just opened he found the mail from Lisbon
for New York with the letter-bill, registered
articles and a smaller closed mail for
Honolulu. Like the rattle of musketry
these calls are fired at the chief clerk, who
68
marks everything on a tally-sheet, which
will later on be compared with the advices
received from the foreign offices on each
letter-bill; and if any discrepancy is found
it will be investigated, resulting in a bulletin
of verification to office of origin, or in
something worse for the foreign clerk who
made an erroneous announcement of the
contents, if the fault is laid to him. In a
few minutes, sometimes an hour or more,
an entire mail is opened and the room
cleared, the registry man getting away to
his department with all the registered mails,
and the newspaper force wheeling away
the baskets full of newspapers and packages.
The letters are then divided into
four parts—those for New York City proper,
those for the rest of the United States
and Canada, those for foreign countries
which have been sent in open mail to New
York, and those which are unpaid or partially
prepaid. Many foreign offices make
a separation of the mails for New York
City from those for other places, but this is
a matter of accommodation and reciprocal
arrangements between exchange offices;
and the work of separation is, strictly
speaking, that of the foreign clerks in any
office. The newspapers are treated in the
same manner as the letters. All city mail
is then sent to the city department for final
distribution and delivery, and that for other
parts of the United States and Canada is
sent to the domestic mail division for despatch.
All letters and mail addressed to
other countries are retained in the foreign
division, and included in the next mail for
these countries. The unpaid and short-paid
mail is “rated up” before delivery to
other divisions. This mail is put up under
distinctive labels. The despatching
offices have marked on each article the
amount of deficiency in prepayment. No
matter where originating, this amount is
marked in French money (centimes). The
letter “T” (initial of French word “tax”)
is also stamped on covers. The foreign
clerks at the receiving office calculate, in
the money of their country, the amount
of deficiency and double it up, stamping
this charge on the covers for collection by
office of delivery.

Despatching a Mail—Sacks Loaded on Trucks.

Despatching clerk, on the left, tallying off mails, sack by sack. Foreign mails are delivered to trucks sent by the Steamship
Companies and are receipted for at the door of New York Post Office.

This work, and also that of separating
New York mail and mail for the principal
69
States and cities, is done by the sea post-offices
in steamers of the North German
Lloyd, Hamburg-American, and American
Lines; and when mails are received by
either of these steamers they are ready for
delivery in a much shorter time than when
received by other vessels. In addition to
the sea post-office service, the transfer service
has also in the last two or three years
materially reduced the work at the foreign
department in the New York office.

No sooner has the “ticker” reported
the Campania or other big liner “off
Fire Island” than a veteran of the
transportation department, accompanied by a
few clerks and porters, hastens to the foot
of Cortlandt Street and boards the
Postmaster-General, the flag-ship of the
post-office fleet. The boat was built for this
service, and is equipped with spacious
mail-rooms, chutes for transboarding
sacks, and other expediting appliances.
Steam is up, and she is off down the
bay to meet the big steamer. She makes
fast to her sides, and the mails are received
aboard through the chutes, while the
clerks check and verify the number received
on a sort of invoice called “way bill,” prepared
by the London, Havre, or sea post-office.
Frequently the passengers are
still awaiting the quarantine doctor while
the mails are speeding on their way to the
Battery, where the New York City sacks
are landed; then to the Pennsylvania
Railroad, then to the foot of Forty-second
Street, where wagons await the mails for
the Grand Central Depot. Thus a great
saving in time is often made, while formerly
the whole mail went first to the docks
of the several transatlantic lines, then by
wagons to the General Post-Office, then
again by wagons to the different depots.
When the mails are handled by sea post-offices
during the sea-trip, they generally
arrive ready for the trains, and little but
what is for New York City proper comes
to the general office; but the large and
heavy mails on the Cunard and White
Star Lines, also on the French Line, are
not thus assorted, and fully two-thirds has
to come to the foreign division to be
handled as previously described.

We have explained to a great extent so
far what seems to pertain to the incoming
mails only; but we said at the start that
the foreign mail is worked throughout the
world in every exchange office very much
after the same pattern, and it will now be
easier to explain the handling of mail going
from the United States to other countries.
There are in the United States several exchange
offices besides New York, but, with
the exception of New Orleans and San
Francisco, the mails they make up consist
only of matter originating at each of these
offices. Mail for some of the Central
American republics is sent to New Orleans,
and mail for transpacific countries goes
mostly to San Francisco. All other mail,
no matter where dropped in the letter-box,
comes to the New York office through the
instrumentality of the Railway Mail Service.
Letters for abroad are tied up in bundles,
and labelled “New York Foreign.”
Some of the railway mail offices make a
preliminary separation by countries, and
many bundles reach New York labelled
“Russia,” “Switzerland,” etc.; but as
there are many exchange offices in these
foreign countries, these bundles have again
to be opened at New York, and assorted,
although this first separation facilitates the
process. The bundles are cut open, and
the letters are all passed through the electric
machine or stamped by hand, the
“back-stamp” thus impressed showing
their date of arrival in New York.

This is not done with letters originating
in New York City, the date and time of
mailing being in that case shown in the
stamp-mark cancelling the postage-stamps,
and being held sufficient for records. The
mail having been “back-stamped,” goes
on a low shelf in front of each distributor,
and is then assorted according to destination.
The “separating case” consists of
nine rows of boxes, ten boxes in each row.
Many of the boxes bear the names of exchange
offices in Europe or those reached
by steamers for Europe. There are also
boxes for other parts of the world, in which
letters are deposited to be later on taken
to another special “separating case” for
these countries. In each separating case
there is a box where unpaid or short-paid
letters are deposited. A special clerk takes
them out, weighs them, marks thereon the
deficient postage, and stamps them “T,”
when they are assorted on a separate case
and tied up in bundles under labels indicating
that the contents of the bundles consist
of short-paid mail. They go in the same
70
sacks as ordinary letters. When a box bearing
the name of an exchange office is full
(about one hundred and fifty letters), the
contents are taken out, divided into two
parts, the largest letters being laid across
both parts, and the whole is tied up in a sheet
of strong manila paper. String is not spared
in this process, and so securely and strongly
are these packages tied that they have been
known to remain in the water for days and
weeks at times, and when found, with the
exception of the top letters and the edges,
they were yet in a condition to permit delivery
to persons for whom they were intended.
Many people, no doubt, some weeks
after the Elbe disaster, remember having
received letters with a paster attached,
stating that the letter had been found in
the North Sea, in a bag originating in Norway
and sunk with the Elbe. This was the
only sack of mail ever recovered from that
steamer. The same was true of the mail
recovered from the Oregon, sacks being
found far down the Jersey coast days after
the wreck of that steamer, and forwarded
to New York, where, after being dried, most
of the letters were found to be deliverable.

The package thus wrapped and tied is
labelled with the printed name of the exchange
office for which its contents are
intended, and thrown into a large basket.
When the basket is full, it is wheeled over
to the pouching rack, an iron frame divided
into sections, each section bearing
the name of an exchange office, and provided
with four hooks which hold open
a mail sack. The pouching clerk takes
the packages of letters, reads the labels
thereon, and throws them into the proper
sack. When full (about seventy-five
pounds), the sack is taken down and ready
for tying and sealing up. The last sack
taken down receives the letter-bill for the
exchange office of destination. The sack
is tied, and a label bearing the name of
the office for which it is destined is
inserted in the string. After several turns have
been taken, both ends of the string are
passed through the holes at the bottom of
a small tin cup which is subsequently filled
with hot wax, so that the string cannot be
removed without its being cut open (see
illustration on page 71). In this country
labels made of good Holland linen are
used fresh for each sack. In other countries
other material is employed, some
using leather, some wood, some strong
cardboard. The return of labels of any
value is generally requested, and they are
used over and over until worn out. Great
Britain does not use labels of any kind,
but has the address of each sack stencilled
on the sack itself, thus: “London for
New York.” This, of course, renders the
sack useless for any other service. In the
United States the labels are white for
letter sacks, buff for papers, and cardinal
red for registered mails.

The newspapers are assorted in the basement
of the Post-office, very much in the
same fashion as letters, but they are not
tied up in bundles. The separating cases
into which they are thrown are so made
that a sack hanging at the lower end of the
box receives the mail thrown therein, and
when full, it is ready for tying, labelling,
and sealing up. In this department are
received the queerest odds and ends going
through the mails to foreign countries,
newspapers especially being selected
to hide in their folds sundry articles of
every description sent to friends “in the
auld country.” Jewelry, from the penny
kind to really valuable articles, handkerchiefs
galore, baby’s dressing outfits, rattlesnake
skins, plugs of tobacco, cucumbers—these
and many other curios of every description
are found and stopped. If the address
of the sender appears on the package,
it is returned to him direct. Otherwise
it goes to the Dead Letter Office, where
it is kept a certain length of time awaiting
to be claimed. The unclaimed part is
finally sold at auction.

In the letter department there are also
curiosities, but of another kind. The greatest
part of the letters addressed to Santa
Claus in Greenland, or other Northern
lands, are treated by the foreign clerks.
There are also many mysteries to be unravelled
in the queer hieroglyphics which are supposed
to be the addresses of letters, especially
those going to Russia, Turkey,
Hungary, and even Italy. Clerks of
the foreign department are not linguists;
but the same characters recurring so constantly
soon appear familiar, and they experience
no trouble in “boxing” the letters
to the proper office.

When a mail has closed, no more letters
or papers are put in the assorting boxes,
but everything that was there is taken out,
71
tied, labelled, and sacked. The letter-bills
are then prepared, and after all the
sacks are sealed the way-bills are made up
in duplicate copies. A full European mail
via Queenstown or via Southampton
averages nine to twelve hundred sacks,
fully two-thirds of which have been made
up in the New York office. The way-bill
describes this large mail only as so
many letter-sacks and so many paper-sacks
from the New York office, or the
Chicago, or other office of origin, for
Paris, or for Dublin, etc., and when the
steamers land the mail at its port of arrival,
the way-bills are used to check and verify
the number of sacks landed. One copy
of the way-bill is returned to New York
with a receipt from the official at the port of
destination, and the responsibility of this
office for the mails ceases. Their further
transportation will be the business of the
administration which has received them.

The Parcels Post system is also taken
care of by the clerks of the foreign
department, but as it is a system based on
special conventions or agreements between
any two countries, it is not within
the sphere of an article relating to the
international mail service as regulated by
the Postal Union Conventions. The
exchange of large parcels, however, as
well as of ordinary correspondence, is one
of the improvements which remain for
future postal congresses to introduce in
the system. At present, the United States
parcels’ post exchange is confined to the
West Indies, Central America, Mexico,
Hawaii, and Newfoundland. Ordinary
merchandise not exceeding eleven pounds
can be forwarded under that system for
twelve cents a pound.

The general supervision over all American
exchange offices is centred in the Office
of Foreign Mails, in Washington, but
the fact that over ninety per cent. of foreign
mail matter is handled, or passes
through the New York office would make
exceedingly advantageous, especially for
business interests all over the country, the
transfer to New York of the supreme direction
of that service. Many times questions
have to be decided and steps taken
at short notice, delay being the great bugaboo
of postal officials, and in such cases
constant and daily touch with a system
ever increasing and improving would be
of incalculable benefit. The New York
force, however, is so well trained, its
superintendents and clerks are so completely
acquainted with every detail of the system,
that so far the business world has not
suffered from the present arrangement. It
certainly has not gained. A flattering
testimonial of this efficiency of the New York
foreign force is found in a report to his
government of the New Zealand Postal
Agent residing at San Francisco and in
charge of the important British-Australian
Mail Service. “I find,” says he, “that the
New York officials are extremely anxious
to make the best connections and are
indefatigable in their efforts to expedite
the transfer of mails. Messrs. Maze and
Boyle,[1] Superintendent and Assistant
Superintendent of mails in New York City,
are particularly energetic and watchful,
and no stone is left unturned at that office
to further our interests in that direction,
and the mails are often transferred to tugs
and sent after the Atlantic liners when
late.”

United States System of
Tying, Sealing, and
Labelling Sacks.

72

NEMESIS
“Vicisti, Galilæo”

I

73

II

III

74

DANIEL WEBSTER
WITH UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS AND SOME EXAMPLES OF
HIS PREPARATION FOR PUBLIC SPEAKING
By George F. Hoar

In one respect Daniel Webster
is the most striking figure
in our history, and one
of the few most striking
figures in all history. That
is, in the impression he
made on everybody—that, great as were
his achievements, he was himself greater
than his greatest achievement.

Franklin, Webster, and Emerson are
the three great New Englanders. Each
of them was a great public teacher. If
Webster did not lack, at least he did not
manifest, Franklin’s wonderful common-sense,
as applied to common things and
common life. He had not Emerson’s profound
spiritual discernment or wonderful
poetic instinct. But his intellect seems
like a vast quarry. When you have excavated
the great rocks at the surface, you
know there is an inexhaustible supply left.
When he died, the people felt as if the
corner-stone of the Capitol had been removed;
as if the elephant had died that
bore the universe on its back.

Emerson’s portraiture of Webster at
Bunker Hill is made up of a few strokes.
But it reveals the whole secret. Great as
were the things that Webster said, profound
as was his reasoning, lofty as are the
flights of his imagination, stirring as are
his appeals to the profoundest passions of
his countrymen, there is a constant feeling
that Jove is behind these thunderbolts.
That is the contrast between him and so
many other orators. Even in Choate and
Phillips you are admiring the phrase and
the elocution, and not the men. In Webster
you are thinking of the man, and not
the phrases. The best things that he said
do not seem to his listener to be superior,
and rarely seem to his listener to be equal,
to the man who said them. There is plenty
of reserve power behind—

Emerson also said of him, “His strength
was like the falling of a planet; his discretion,
the return of its due and perfect
curve.”

Nothing certainly can be more profitable
for youth who desire to cultivate the
capacity for public speaking for the purpose
of addressing juries, legislative bodies,
or popular assemblies, than the study of
the style, the delivery, and the method of
preparation of him whom nearly all his
countrymen think the foremost American
orator, and whom many of them think the
foremost orator who ever spoke the English
tongue. Many admirable critics have
dealt with these topics.[2]

Mr. Winthrop has told,[3] in his own delightful
way, the story of one of Webster’s
compositions, famous at the time, now
almost forgotten.

Mr. Winthrop says also truly of Daniel
Webster:

“Daniel Webster, unlike Everett or
Choate, was all deliberation, both in matter
and manner. I do not believe that
it ever occurred to him what gestures he
should make, or that he ever remembered
what gestures he had made. His words
seemed to flow spontaneously and often
75
slowly, whether from his lips or his pen, as
from a profound and exhaustless reservoir
of thought. Of him it might be, and perhaps
often has been, said:

He says of Webster’s eloquence that it
was the eloquence of clear, cogent argument,
and of occasional deep emotion,
expressed in clear, forcible Saxon words—sometimes
adorned by most felicitous
quotations and sometimes by magnificent
and matchless metaphors.

James Parton says:

“He discovered, he says, that the value
as well as the force of a sentence depends
chiefly upon its meaning, not its language,
and that great writing is that in
which much is said in a few words, and
those words the simplest that will answer
the purpose. Having made this notable
discovery, he became a great eraser of
adjectives, and toiled after simplicity and
directness.”

Edward Everett, who knew Mr. Webster
very intimately, says:

“Perhaps the noblest bursts—the loftiest
flights, the last and warmest tints of
his discourses of this kind—were the unpremeditated
inspiration of the moment
of delivery.”

I suppose, from all I can gather, that
Mr. Webster, with very few exceptions
indeed, committed to writing nothing
but the heads of his speeches. But they
were, nearly all of them, upon subjects
constantly in his thoughts. He had undoubtedly
matured sentences and phrases
which came to his mind in leisure moments,
and which came to his memory
under the stimulant of great occasions
and great audiences, in addressing juries
or public assemblies or the Senate, with
which he ornamented his discourses, or
strengthened his argument. Most of the
speeches we have only as they came to
us in the imperfect reporting of the
time. Some of them, like the oration at
Plymouth, he probably revised carefully
before they were published. We have his
own testimony that this was true of the
well-known “morning drum-beat” passage
in the speech on the President’s Protest.

Still, the testimony is abundant that
some of his best passages must have come
from an inspiration while he was upon his
feet. Mr. Winthrop gives an account
of one; Mellen Chamberlain, a most accomplished
critic and observer, another.
And there are plenty of others floating
about. Judge Chamberlain says one
thing of him, which I dare say may have
been said before and since. It explains
Webster’s influence over his auditors and
over posterity. He says:

“He was perfectly sane, and it may be
the most perfectly sane orator who ever
spoke English.”

I have in my possession a good many
of Mr. Webster’s manuscripts, including
his preparations for speeches, letters from
him to intimate friends and from his intimate
friends to him, a good many bound
volumes of political pamphlets, some of
them with the autographs of famous authors,
and some of his books. From
these I select a few which relate to important
and interesting events in his life,
or throw some additional light upon his
habit and method of preparation for public
speaking, adding some explanation and
comment.

One of the greatest debates in our parliamentary
history, only surpassed in importance
in Mr. Webster’s public life by
the debate with Hayne on Foot’s Resolution
and the debate on the Compromise
measures in March, 1850, is the debate
on the Sub-Treasury in the early part of
the year 1838. Silas Wright introduced
the Sub-Treasury Bill January 16, 1838.
January 30, 1838, the bill came on for a
second reading, and Mr. Wright made an
elaborate speech in its support. The next
day Mr. Webster spoke. His speech,
which is wholly a reply to Wright, makes
no allusion whatever to Mr. Calhoun. It
is reported in the fourth volume of his
works, page 432. I have before me Mr.
Webster’s notes of preparation for that
speech. They constitute a mere brief, all
included on six pages of letter-paper, and
mostly consisting of mere catch-words.
The first sentence or two, however, indicate
the difference between Webster and
the supporters of the Sub-Treasury:

“Let the government attend to its own
business; and let the people attend to
theirs.”
76

“Let the government take care of the
currency for its own revenue; for all other
purposes, let it leave it to the States and
to the people.”

“Ominous and disheartening sentences.
Yet the whole spirit of the Administration
and of this bill.”

There is no hint in these notes, except the
above, of any of the eloquent and weighty
sentences with which the speech abounds.

February 15, 1838, Mr. Calhoun spoke
on the Independent Treasury Bill. (See,
for this speech, his Works, vol. 3, page
202.) He makes an allusion to one of
Mr. Webster’s arguments, viz., his claim
that the government should furnish paper
currency. But the speech contains nothing
personal or calculated to excite challenge
and reply. March 10, 1838, Calhoun
makes a second speech on the same
bill (reported, Works, vol. 3, page 244).
That speech, also, contains hardly any
allusion to Mr. Webster. It is devoted
almost wholly to a reply to Clay, between
whom and Calhoun a very angry personal
altercation had arisen. March 12,
1838, Mr. Webster delivered his second
speech on the Sub-Treasury, which is reported
in his Works, vol. 4, page 424.
It occupies seventy-six pages there. Of
this, the last thirty-three are a reply to
Mr. Calhoun. Calhoun said in his answer,
which was made on the 22d of the
same month, that Webster delivered this
part of his speech with great vehemence,
and evidently considered it the most important
portion of his remarks. So much
of the speech as is a reply to Mr. Calhoun,
however, deals chiefly with a speech
made by him at the extra session in September,
1837, and with a letter known as
the “Edgefield Letter,” written by Mr.
Calhoun to his constituents in the vacation.
I have Mr. Webster’s entire preparation
for this speech. It is in Webster’s
handwriting, and consists of eight
heads, all on one page of a sheet of small
note-paper, labelled on the back, in Webster’s
handwriting, “Heads of my speech
on the Sub-Treasury,” and is as follows:

“No. 1. General state of the country
and credit system.”

“No. 2. Our pecuniary condition and
question of excess.”

“No. 3. Is the measure suited to the
condition of the country?”

“No. 4. Is it a just exercise of our
powers?”

“No. 5. Mr. C.’s speech, September
19.”

“No. 6. Mr. C.’s letter, November 3.”

“No. 7. Mr. C.’s speech, February
15.”

“No. 8. Identity of commerce.”

Besides this, Mr. Webster wrote out the
concluding part of the speech in twenty-one
pages of a rather small letter-paper,
of which I have the last eight, which
correspond to about three of the seventy-six
pages which the whole speech occupies
in the printed report. This part
seems to have been corrected again and
again. A fac-simile of a part of one of
these pages is here given, showing how
careful was Mr. Webster’s revision and
correction. The whole page runs:

“Sir, the spirit of Union is particularly
liable to temptation, & seduction, in moments
of peace & prosperity. In war,
this spirit is strengthened, by a sense of
common danger, & by a thousand recollections
of ancient efforts, & ancient glory,
in a common cause.

“In the calms of a long peace, & the absence
of all apparent causes of great alarm,
things near gain an ascendancy over things
remote. Local interests & feelings overshadow
national sentiments. Our attention,
our regard, & our attachment, are
ever more solicited to what touches us
closest, feel less and less the attraction
of a distant orb. Such tendencies, we
are bound by true patriotism, & by our
love of union, to resist.”