McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, September 1908, No. 5

by Various

FRANCIS PRESTON BLAIR

THE DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE FOR VICE-PRESIDENT IN THE CAMPAIGN OF 1868

Grant, the Candidate of the Whole Republic

The presidential campaign of 1868 was not one of uncommon excitement or enthusiasm. The Republican candidate, General Grant, was then at the height of his prestige. He had never been active in politics and never identified himself with any political party. Whether he held any settled opinions on political questions, and, if so, what they were, nobody could tell with any assurance. But people were willing to take him for the presidency, just as he was. It is quite probable, and it has frequently been said, that, had the Democrats succeeded in "capturing" him as their candidate, he would have been accepted with equal readiness on that side. He was one of the most striking examples in history of the military hero who is endowed by the popular imagination with every conceivable capacity and virtue. People believed in perfectly good faith that the man who had commanded such mighty armies, and conducted such brilliant campaigns, and won such great battles, must necessarily be able and wise and energetic enough to lead in the solution of any problem of civil government; that he who had performed great tasks of strategy in the field must be fitted to accomplish great tasks of statesmanship in the forum or in the closet. General Grant had the advantage of such presumptions in the highest degree, especially as he had, in addition to his luster as a warrior, won a reputation for wise generosity and a fine tact in fixing the terms of Lee's surrender and in quietly composing the disagreements which had sprung from the precipitate action of General Sherman in treating with the Confederate General Johnston. On the whole, the country received the candidacy of General Grant as that of a deserving and a safe man.

HORATIO SEYMOUR

THE DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT IN THE CAMPAIGN OF 1868

On the other hand, the Democratic party had not only to bear the traditional odium of the sympathy of some of its prominent members with the rebellion, which at that time still counted for much, but it managed to produce an especially unfavorable impression by the action of its convention. Its platform stopped but little short of advocating violence to accomplish the annulment of the reconstruction laws adopted by Congress, and it demanded the payment of a large part of the national debt in depreciated greenbacks. The floundering search for a candidate and the final forcing of the nomination upon the unwilling, weak, and amiable Horatio Seymour presented an almost ludicrous spectacle of helplessness, while the furious utterances of the fiery Frank Blair, the candidate for the vice-presidency, sounded like the wild cries of a madman bent upon stirring up another revolution when the people wanted peace. The Democrats were evidently riding for a fall.

JOHN B. HENDERSON

ONE OF THE SEVEN REPUBLICAN SENATORS WHOSE VOTES DEFEATED THE IMPEACHMENT OF PRESIDENT JOHNSON. HE WAS SUCCEEDED IN THE SENATE BY CARL SCHURZ

I was called upon for a good many speeches in the campaign, and had large and enthusiastic audiences. One of the experiences I had in this campaign I remember with especial pleasure. The movement in favor of paying off national bonds, not in coin, but in depreciated paper money, which found advocacy in the Democratic platform, was in fact not confined to the ranks of the Democratic party. Although the Republican Convention had in its platform sternly declared against any form of repudiation, yet that movement found supporters among the Republicans, too, especially among people of confused moral notions, small politicians eager to win a cheap popularity by catering to questionable impulses, and politicians of higher rank nervously anxious to catch every popular breeze and inclined to bend to it whenever it seemed to blow with some force.

An Appeal to the Plain People

In the early part of the campaign I was asked to make a series of speeches in Indiana, and to begin with an outdoor mass-meeting at a little place—if I remember rightly its name was Corydon—near the Illinois line, at which a large number of farmers were expected. While a great crowd was gathering, I dined at the village hotel with the members of the local committee. They seemed to have something on their minds, which finally came forth, apparently with some hesitation. One of them, after a few minutes of general silence, turned to me with a very serious mien, as if he had to deliver an important message, saying that they thought it their duty to inform me of a peculiar condition of the public mind in that region: that the people around there were all, Republicans as well as Democrats, of the opinion that all the United States bonds should be paid off in greenbacks and that an additional quantity of greenbacks should be issued for that purpose; that there was much feeling on that question, and that they, the committee, would earnestly ask me, if I could not conscientiously advocate the same policy, at least not to mention the subject in my speech.

SENATOR CHARLES D. DRAKE

WHOM CARL SCHURZ MET IN JOINT DEBATE, WHILE RUNNING AGAINST DRAKE'S CANDIDATE FOR THE MISSOURI SENATORSHIP

Having been informed that there had been a good deal of greenback talk in that neighborhood, I was not surprised. But I thought it a good opportunity to administer a drastic lesson to my chicken-hearted party friends. "Gentlemen," I said, "I have been invited here to preach Republican doctrines to your people. The Democratic platform advocates the very policy which you say is favored by your people. The Republican platform emphatically condemns that policy. I think it is barefaced, dishonest, rascally repudiation. If your people favor this, they stand in eminent need of a good, vigorous talking to. But if you, the committee managing this meeting, do not want me to speak my mind on this subject, I shall not speak at all. I shall leave instantly, and you may do with the meeting as you like."

It was as if a bombshell had dropped among my committee-men. They were in great consternation and cried out accordingly. I had been announced as the principal speaker. A large number of people had come to hear me. If I left, there would be a great disappointment which would hurt the party. But I did not mean it—did I?

I assured them that I was in dead earnest. I would stay and speak only on condition that I should feel at perfect liberty to express my convictions straightforwardly and impressively. They looked at one another as if in great doubt what to do, and then, after a whispered consultation, told me that, of course, if I insisted, they must let me have my way; but they begged me to "draw it mild." I replied that I could not promise to "draw it mild," but that I believed they were mistaken in thinking that their people, if properly told the truth, would favor the rascally policy of repudiation. They shook their heads and sighed, and "hoped there would be no row."

The meeting was very large, mostly plain country people, men and women. The committee-men sat on the platform on both sides of me, with anxious faces, evidently doubtful of what would happen. I had put the audience in sympathetic temper when in the due order of my speech I reached the bond question. Then I did not "draw it mild." I described the circumstances under which the bonds were sold by our government and bought by our creditors: the rebellion at the height of its strength; our armies in the field suffering defeat after defeat; our regular revenues sadly insufficient to cover the expenses of the war; our credit at a low ebb; a gloomy cloud of uncertainty hanging over our future. These were the circumstances under which our government called upon our own citizens and upon the world abroad for loans of money. The people whom we then called bond-holders lent their money upon our promise that the money should be paid back in coin. They did so at a great risk, for if we had failed in the war, they might have lost all or much of what they had lent us. Largely owing to the help they gave us in our extremity, we succeeded. And now are we to turn round and denounce them as speculators and bloodsuckers, and say that we will not give them in the day of success and prosperity what we promised them in the day of our need and distress? Would not that be downright knavery and a crime before God and men?

When I had advanced thus far, cries of "shame! shame!" came from the audience. Then I began to denounce the vile politicians who advocated such a disgraceful course, first the Democrats who had made such an ignominious proposition a part of their platform, and then the Republicans who, believing that such a movement might develop some popular strength, had cowardly bent their knees to it. By this time my hearers were thoroughly warmed up, and when I opened my whole vocabulary of strong language, in all parts of the crowd arose such cries as "You are right!" "Bully for you!" "Give it to them!" "Hit them again!" and other ebullitions of the unsophisticated mind; and when I added that I had been told the whole population of this region were in favor of that crime of repudiating the honest debts of the republic, and that I had in their name repelled the charge as a dastardly slander, my hearers broke out in a storm of applause and cheers lasting long enough to give me time to look round at my committee-men, who returned my gaze with a smile of pitiable embarrassment on their faces.

The Moral Cowardice of Politicians a National Danger

When my speech was over, I asked them what they now thought of the repudiation sentiment in their neighborhood. Ah, they had "never been so astonished in their lives." One of them attempted to compliment me upon my "success in so quickly turning the minds of those people." But I would not let them have that consoling conception of the facts, and answered that I had not turned the minds of those people at all; that their feelings and impulses were originally honest; that I had only called forth a manifestation of that original honesty; and that if the local political leaders had believed in the original honesty of the people and courageously stood up for truth and right instead of permitting themselves to be frightened by a rascally agitation and of pusillanimously pandering to it, they would have had the same experience.

In fact, the same experience has repeated itself in the course of my political activity again and again until a late period. I have had an active part in a great many political campaigns and probably addressed as many popular meetings as any man now living; and I have always found that whenever any public question under public discussion had in it any moral element, an appeal to the moral sense of the people proved uniformly the most powerful argument. I do not, of course, mean to say that there were not at all times many persons accessible to selfish motives and liable to yield to the seduction of the opportunity for unrighteous gain, and that such evil influences were not at times hard to overcome. But with the majority of the people, notably the "plain people"—using the term in the sense in which Abraham Lincoln was wont to use it—I found the question "is this morally right?" to have ultimately more weight than the question "will this be profitable?"

ALEXANDER T. STEWART

IN WHOSE BEHALF PRESIDENT GRANT ASKED CONGRESS TO SUSPEND THE ACT ESTABLISHING THE TREASURY DEPARTMENT

We have, indeed, sometimes witnessed so-called "crazes" in favor of financial policies that were essentially immoral, such as the "inflation craze" and the "silver craze," gaining an apparently almost irresistible momentum among the people. But that was not owing to a real and wide-spread demoralization of the popular conscience, but rather to an artful presentation of the question which covered up and disguised the moral element in it, and so deceived the unsophisticated understanding, and also to the cowardice of politicians of high as well as low rank, who, instead of courageously calling things by their right names, would, against their better convictions, yield to what they considered a strong current of opinion, for fear of jeopardizing their personal popularity. I have seen men of great ability and high standing in the official world do the most astonishing things in this respect when they might, as far as their voices could be heard, have easily arrested the vicious heresies by a bold utterance of their true opinions. The moral cowardice of the politicians is one of the most dangerous ailments of democracies.

Missouri Retires Senator Henderson

To me the Republican victory brought a promotion which I had not anticipated while I was active in the campaign. One of the United States Senators from Missouri, Mr. John B. Henderson, had voted in the impeachment trial for the acquittal of President Johnson. He was a gentleman of superior ability and of high character, but he had voted for the acquittal of Andrew Johnson. He had done so for reasons entirely honorable and entirely consistent with his principles and convictions of right, but in disregard of the feelings prevalent among his constituents and in spite of a strong pressure brought upon him by hosts of Republicans in his own State; and as his term as a Senator was just then expiring, this clash was fatal to his prospects of a reëlection. The warmest of his friends frankly recognized the absolute impossibility of keeping him in his place.

Indeed, all the Republican Senators who had voted for Johnson's acquittal found themselves more or less at variance with their party in their respective States; but Republicanism in Missouri was in one respect somewhat different from Republicanism elsewhere. In Missouri a large part of the population had joined the rebellion. The two parties in the Civil War had not been geographically divided. The Civil War had therefore had the character of a neighborhood war—in Missouri it was not only State against State, or district against district, but house against house. The bitter animosities of the civil conflict survived in Missouri much longer than in the northern States, and any favor shown to "the traitor" Andrew Johnson appeared to the great mass of Missouri Republicans simply unpardonable.

The immediate consequence of Mr. Henderson's course was that his colleague in the Senate, Mr. Charles D. Drake, obtained a directing influence in the party which for the moment seemed to be undisputed. Senator Drake was an able lawyer and an unquestionably honest man, but narrow-minded, dogmatic, and intolerant to a degree. He aspired to be the Republican "boss" of the State—not, indeed, as if he had intended to organize a machine for the purpose of enriching himself or his henchmen. Corrupt schemes were absolutely foreign to his mind. He merely wished to be the recognized authority dictating the policies of his party and controlling the federal offices in Missouri. This ambition overruled with him all others.

Senator Drake was of small stature, but he planted his feet upon the ground with demonstrative firmness. His face, framed with grey hair and a short, stubby white beard and marked with heavy eyebrows, usually wore a stern and often even a surly expression. His voice had a rasping sound, and his speech, slow and peremptory, was constantly accompanied with a vigorous shake of the forefinger which meant laying down the law. I do not know to what religious denomination he belonged; but he gave the impression that no religion would be satisfactory to him that did not provide for a well-kept hell-fire to roast sinners and heretics. Still, he was said to be very kind and genial in his family and in the circle of his intimate friends. But in politics he was inexorable. I doubt whether, as a leader, he was ever really popular with the Republican rank and file in Missouri. But certain it is that most of the members of his party, especially in the country districts, stood much in awe of him.

How Schurz Became a Candidate

Mr. Drake, very naturally, wished to have at his side, in the place of Mr. Henderson, a colleague sympathizing with him and likely to shape his conduct according to Senator Drake's wishes. He chose General Ben Loan of the western part of the State, a gentleman of excellent character, and respectable but not uncommon abilities. Senator Drake permitted it to go forth as a sort of decree of his that Mr. Loan should be elected to the Senate, and, although the proposition did not seem to meet with any hearty response in the State, he would have been so elected, had not another candidacy intervened.

It happened in this wise: I was a member of a little club consisting of a few gentlemen of the same way of thinking in politics, who dined together and discussed current events once or twice a month. At one of those dinners, soon after the presidential election of 1868, the conversation turned upon the impending election of Senator Henderson's successor and the candidacy of Mr. Drake's favorite, General Loan. We were all agreed in heartily disliking Mr. Drake's kind of statesmanship. We likewise agreed in disliking the prospect of seeing Mr. Drake duplicated in the Senate—indeed fully duplicated—by the election of Mr. Loan. But how prevent it? We all recognized, regretfully, the absolute impossibility of getting the Legislature to reëlect Mr. Henderson. But what other candidate was there to oppose to Mr. Loan? One of our table turned round to me and said: "You!" The others instantly and warmly applauded.

The thought that I, a comparative newcomer in Missouri, should be elected senator in preference to others, who had been among the leaders in the great crisis of the State only a few years ago, seemed to me extravagant, and I was by no means eager to expose myself to what I considered almost certain defeat. But my companions insisted, and I finally agreed that a "feeler" might be put out in the Globe-Democrat, the leading Republican journal in St. Louis, of which Colonel William M. Grosvenor, a member of our little table-company, was the editor in chief. The number of Republican papers in the State which responded approvingly was surprisingly large, and I soon found myself in the situation of an acknowledged candidate for the senatorship "in the hands of his friends." It seemed that when "stumping" the State in the last campaign, I had won more favor with the country people than I myself was aware of. Still, my chances of success would have been slim, had not my principal adversary, Senator Drake, appeared in person upon the scene.

When he learned that my candidacy was developing strength, he hurried from Washington to Jefferson City, the capital of Missouri, to throw the weight of his personal influence with the Legislature into the scale against me. By his side appeared General Loan. There was then perfect justification for me to be on the ground with some of my friends. My manager was Colonel Grosvenor, the editor of the Globe-Democrat, an uncommonly bright, genial, active, and energetic young man. I could not have had a more efficient and more faithful champion, or a more skilful tactician. In their talks with members of the Legislature my opponents were reckless in the extreme. They denounced me as a foreign intruder, as a professional revolutionist, as a "German infidel," as a habitual drunkard, and what not.

Our plan of campaign was very simple: Not a word against my competitor, General Loan; no champagne or whisky, nor even cigars; no noisy demonstrations; no promises of offices or other pledges in case of my election; but a challenge to General Loan and also to Senator Drake, if he would accept it, to meet me in public debate before the day when the caucus of the Republican majority for the nomination of a senatorial candidate was to be held. The campaign attracted much attention throughout the North and was commented upon in the newspapers, mostly in my favor. There were some symptoms of friendly zeal in my behalf. My friend Sigismund Kaufmann in New York telegraphed to me that if I needed any money for my campaign he would put $10,000 at my disposal. I telegraphed back my thanks, but declined the money, since I had no use for it. My reliance was upon the public debate.

A Joint Debate for a Senatorship

Senator Drake accepted the challenge for himself and General Loan. Arrangements were made for two meetings on two consecutive evenings. On the first evening I was to open with a speech of a certain length, and on the second evening Loan and Drake were to answer me, and I was to close. The announcement, as it went over the State, attracted from the country districts—as well as the cities—so many of the friends of the two candidates who wished to witness what they considered a great event, that the hotels of the State capital were crowded to the utmost.

Remembering the debate between Lincoln and Douglas at Quincy, Illinois, to which I had listened ten years before, I kept my opening speech in a calm, somewhat tame defensive tone, reserving my best ammunition for my closing argument and putting forth in a somewhat challenging manner only a few sharp points which I wished Drake to take up the next evening. The effect of my speech was satisfactory in a double sense. My supporters were well pleased with the courtesy and moderation with which I had stated my position and repelled certain attacks, and Mr. Drake was jubilant. He could not conceal his anticipation of triumph. Before a large crowd he said in a loud voice: "That man was described to me as a remarkable orator, something like Cicero and Demosthenes combined. But what did we hear? A very ordinary talk. Gentlemen, to-morrow night about this hour General Carl Schurz will be as dead as Julius Cæsar!" When I heard this, I was sure that his speech would be as bitter, overbearing, and dictatorial as I could wish, and that thus he would deliver himself into my hands.

The next evening the great hall of the assembly was crowded to suffocation. General Loan spoke first. His speech was entirely decent in tone but quite insignificant in matter. Its only virtue was its brevity. It received only that sort of applause which any audience will grant to any respectable man's utterance which is not too long and not offensive, even if uttered in a voice too low to be heard.

Senator Drake then mounted the rostrum with a defiant air, as of one who would make short work of his antagonists. After a few remarks concerning his attitude on the negro question, he took me in hand. Who was I, to presume to be a candidate for the Senate? He would, indeed, like to inquire a little into my past career, were it not that he would have to travel too far—to Germany, and to various places in this country, to find out whether there was not much to my discredit. But he had no time for so long a journey, however instructive such a search might be. This insinuation was received by the audience with strong signs of displeasure, which, however, stirred up Mr. Drake to greater energy. Then he launched into a violent attack on the Germans of Missouri, for whose political character and conduct he made me responsible. He denounced them as an ignorant crowd, who did not understand English, read only their German newspapers, and were led by corrupt and designing rings; as marplots and mischief-makers who could never be counted upon, and whose presence in the Republican party hurt that party more than it helped it. Finally, after having expressed his contempt for the newspapers and the politicians who supported my candidacy, he closed with an elaborate eulogy of General Loan and of himself, the length of which seemed to tire the audience, for it was interrupted by vociferous calls for me coming from all parts of the house. The immediate effect of Mr. Drake's speech was perceptibly unfavorable to him and his candidate—especially his bitter denunciation of the Germans and of a large part of the Republican party which advocated my election, for many members of the Legislature remembered how important an element of their constituency those same Germans formed, and how much their political standing depended on those same newspapers.

When I rose, the audience received me with a round of uproarious cheers. I succeeded in putting myself into relations of good humor even with my opponents by introducing myself as "a young David who, single-handed and without any weapon except his sling and a few pebbles in his pouch, had to meet in combat two heavily armed Goliaths at once." The audience laughed and cheered again. I next brushed away Mr. Loan's "harmless" speech with a few polite phrases and "passed from the second to the principal."

I then proceeded to take the offensive against Mr. Drake in good earnest. To the great amusement of my hearers I punctured with irony and ridicule the pompous pretence that he was the father of the new constitution with which Missouri was blessed. I took up his assault upon the Germans. I asked the question, "Who was it that at the beginning of the war took prisoners the rebel force assembled in camp Jackson and thus saved St. Louis and the State to the Union, and who was foremost on all the bloody fields in Missouri?" The whole audience shouted "The Germans! The Germans!" I asked where Mr. Drake was in those critical days, and answered that having been a Democrat before the war, pleading the cause of slavery, he sat quietly in his law office, coolly calculating when it would be safe for him to pronounce himself openly for the Union, while the Germans were shedding their blood for that Union. This was a terrible thrust.

My unfortunate victim nervously jumped to his feet and called my friend, General McNeil, who was present, to witness that the General himself advised him to stay quietly at home, because he could do better service there than twenty men in the field. Whereupon General McNeil promptly answered: "Yes, but that was long after the beginning of the war"—an answer which made Mr. Drake sink back into his chair, while the meeting burst out in a peal of laughter. Soon he rose again to say that I was wrong in imputing to him any hostility to the Germans, for he was their friend. My reply instantly followed that then we had to take what he had said of them to-night as a specimen of Mr. Drake's characteristic friendship. The audience again roared with laughter.

But the sharpest arrow was still to be shot. I reviewed the Senator's career as a party leader—how he had hurled his anathema against every Republican who would not take his word as law, thus disgusting and alienating one man after another, and was now seeking to read out of the party every man and every newspaper, among them the strongest journal in the State, that supported me. Almost every sentence drew applause. But when I reached my climax, picturing Mr. Drake as a party leader so thinning out his following that he would finally stand "lonesome and forlorn, surrounded by an immensity of solitude, in desolate self-appreciation," the general hilarity became so boisterous and the cheering so persistent, that I had to wait minutes for a chance to proceed. I closed my speech in a pacific strain. There had been talk that, if I were elected, the unseemly spectacle would be presented of two Senators from the same State constantly quarrelling with one another. I did not apprehend anything of the kind. I was sure that if we ever differed, Senator Drake would respect my freedom of opinion, and I certainly would respectfully recognize his. Our watchword would be: "Let us have peace."

When I had finished there was another outbreak of tumultuous applause and a rush for a handshake, the severest I have ever had to go through. With great difficulty I had to work my way to my tavern and to bed, where I lay long awake hearing the jubilant shouts of my friends on the streets. The first report I received in the morning was that Mr. Drake had quickly withdrawn from last night's meeting before its adjournment, had hurried to his hotel, had asked for his bill and the washing he had given out, and when told that his shirts and collars were not yet dry, had insisted upon having them instantly whether wet or dry, and then had hurried to the railroad station for the night train East. The party-dictatorship was over, and its annihilation was proclaimed by the flight of the dictator.

The Republic's Crowning Honor to an Adopted Son

That same day the caucus of the Republican members of the Legislature took place. I was nominated for the senatorship on the first ballot, and on motion the nomination was made unanimous. My election by the Legislature followed in due course. No political victory was ever more cleanly won. My whole election expenses amounted only to my board bill at the hotel, and absolutely unencumbered by any promise of patronage or other favor I took my seat in the Senate of the United States on the 4th of March, 1869. My colleague, Mr. Drake, courteously escorted me to the chair of the president of the Senate where I took the oath of office.

I remember vividly the feelings which almost oppressed me as I first sat down in my chair in the Senate chamber. Now I had actually reached the exalted public position to which my boldest dreams of ambition had hardly dared to aspire. I was still a young man, just forty. Little more than sixteen years had elapsed since I had landed on these shores, a homeless waif saved from the wreck of a revolutionary movement in Europe. Then I was enfolded in the generous hospitality of the American people, opening to me, as freely as to its own children, the great opportunities of the new world. And here I was now, a member of the highest law-making body of the greatest of republics. Should I ever be able fully to pay my debt of gratitude to this country, and to justify the honors that had been heaped upon me? To accomplish this, my conception of duty could not be pitched too high. I recorded a vow in my own heart that I would at least honestly endeavor to fulfil that duty; that I would conscientiously adhere to the principle "Salus populi, suprema lex"; that I would never be a sycophant of power nor a flatterer of the multitude; that, if need be, I would stand up alone for my conviction of truth and right; and that there would be no personal sacrifice too great for my devotion to the republic.

My first official duty was to witness, with the Senate, the inauguration of General Grant as President of the United States. I stood near the same spot from which, eight years before, I had witnessed the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln. It was a remarkable contrast—then the anxious patriot, in the hour of stress, with pathetic tenderness appealing to the wayward children of the nation; now the victorious soldier speaking in the name of the restored national authority. General Grant's inaugural address, evidently his own work, was somewhat crude in style, but breathed a rugged honesty of purpose. With particular rigor it emphasized our obligations to the national creditor—in striking contrast to Mr. Johnson's last annual message, which had stopped little short of advising downright repudiation.

On the whole, General Grant's accession to the presidency was welcomed by almost everybody with a sense of relief. It put an end to the unseemly, not to say scandalous brawl between the executive and the legislative branches of the national government, which at times came near threatening the peace of the country. It was justly expected to restore the government to its proper dignity and to furnish, if not a brilliant, at least a highly decent and efficient business administration. As General Grant had really not owed his nomination to any set of politicians, nor even, strictly speaking, to his identification with a political party, he enjoyed an independence of position which offered him peculiarly favorable possibilities for emancipating the public service from the grasp of the spoils politician, and the friends of civil service reform looked up to him with great hope.

It was not unnatural that in the absolute absence of political experience he should not only have had much to learn concerning the nature and conduct of civil government, but that he should also have had much to unlearn of the mental habits and the ways of thinking he had acquired in the exercise of almost unlimited military command. This was strikingly illustrated by some remarkable incidents.

A. T. Stewart and the Law of the Treasury

As usual, the nominations made by the President for Cabinet offices were promptly ratified by the Senate without being referred to any committee. But after this had been done, it was remembered and reported to President Grant that one of the nominees so confirmed, Mr. A. T. Stewart of New York, whom President Grant had selected for the secretaryship of the treasury, as a person engaged in commerce, was disqualified by one of the oldest laws on the statute-book—in fact, the act of September 2, 1789, establishing the Treasury Department. That this law, which provided that the Treasury Department, having the administration of the custom houses under its control, should not have at its head a merchant or importer in active business, was an entirely proper, indeed, a necessary one, had never been questioned. The next morning, March 6th, I had occasion to call upon President Grant for the purpose of presenting to him a congratulatory message from certain citizens of St. Louis. I found him alone, engaged in writing something on a half-sheet of note-paper. "Mr. President," I said, "I see you are busy, and I do not wish to interrupt you. My business can wait." "Never mind," he answered, "I am only writing a message to the Senate." My business was quickly disposed of, and I withdrew.

In the course of that day's session of the Senate a message from the President was brought in, in which, after quoting the statute of September 2, 1789, the President asked that Mr. Stewart be exempted by joint resolution of the two Houses of Congress from the operation of the law which stood in Mr. Stewart's way. There were some signs of surprise among Senators when the message was read, but Mr. Sherman at once asked unanimous consent to introduce a bill in accordance with the President's wish. But Mr. Sumner objected to the immediate consideration thereof because of its great importance. This stopped further proceedings, and the bill was laid on the table never to be heard of again. However, the President's message had evidently made an impression, and there was forthwith a little council held in the cloakroom, which agreed that some Senator should without delay go to see Mr. Elihu B. Washburn, the new Secretary of State, who was General Grant's intimate friend, and urgently ask him to suggest to the President that, while there was now perfect good feeling all round, it would be prudent for him to drop Mr. Stewart and to abstain from demanding the suspension or the repeal of good laws which he found in his way. Whether Mr. Washburn did carry this admonition to President Grant, I do not know. Probably he did, for Mr. Stewart was promptly dropped. Mr. Boutwell of Massachusetts was made Secretary of the Treasury in Mr. Stewart's place, and the repeal or suspension of the old law was never again heard of.

A Governor's Right to His Staff

So this incident passed, harmless. But the cloakroom of the Senate, where Senators amused one another with the gossip of the day, continued to buzz with anecdotes about President Grant's curious notions of the nature and functions of civil government. One of these anecdotes, told by a Senator who was considered one of the best lawyers in that body and one of the most jealous of the character of his profession, was particularly significant. He heard a rumor that President Grant was about to remove a Federal judge in one of the territories of the United States. The Senator happened to know that judge as a lawyer of excellent ability and uncommon fitness for the bench, and he went to the President to remonstrate against so extreme a measure as the removal of a judge unless there were cogent reasons for it connected with the administration of the office. President Grant admitted that, as far as he knew, there was no allegation of the unfitness of the judge, as a judge, "but," he added, "the governor of the territory writes me that he cannot get along with that judge at all, and is very anxious to be rid of him; and I think the governor is entitled to have control of his staff." The Senator closed his story by saying that he found it to be a delicate as well as a difficult job to make the great general in the chair of the President of the United States understand how different the relations between a territorial governor and a Federal judge were from those between a military commander and his staff officers. The anecdote was received by the listeners with a laugh, but the mirth was not far from apprehension. However, there being sincere and perfect goodwill on both sides, things went on pleasantly in the expectation that the military hero at the head of the government would learn what he needed to know and that the men in places of political power would treat him with due consideration and fairness.

Grant Presses for San Domingo Annexation

It was a few days later when I met President Grant at an evening reception given by Colonel Forney, the Secretary of the Senate. I was somewhat surprised when I saw the President coming toward me from the opposite side of the room, saying: "Senator, you have not called to see me at the White House for some time, and I have been wanting to speak to you." All I could say in response was that I was very sorry to have missed a conversation I might have had with him, but that I knew him to be a busy man who should not be robbed of his time by merely conventional visits. He repeated that he wished very much to see me. Would I not call upon him at my earliest convenience some evening? I put myself at once at his service, and went to the White House the next night. He received me in the library room and invited me to sit with him on a sofa. He plunged forthwith into the subject he had at heart. "I hear you are a member of the Senate committee that has the San Domingo treaty under consideration," he said, "and I wish you would support the treaty. Won't you do that?" I thought it would be best not to resort to any circumlocution in answering so pointblank a summons, but to be entirely frank. I said I should be sincerely happy to act with his administration whenever and wherever I conscientiously could, but in this case, I was sorry to confess, I was not able to do as he wished, because I was profoundly convinced it would be against the best interests of the republic. Then I gave him some of my dominant reasons; in short, acquisition and possession of such tropical countries with indigestible, unassimilable populations would be highly obnoxious to the nature of our republican system of government; it would greatly aggravate the racial problems we had already to contend with; those tropical islands would, owing to their climatic conditions, never be predominantly settled by people of Germanic blood; this federative republic could not, without dangerously vitiating its vital principles, undertake to govern them by force, while the populations inhabitating them could not be trusted with a share in governing our country; to the difficulties we had under existing circumstances to struggle with in our Southern States, much greater and more enduring difficulties would be added; and for all this the plan offered absolutely no compensating advantages. Moreover, the conversations I had had with Senators convinced me that the treaty had no chance of receiving the two-thirds vote necessary for its confirmation, and I sincerely regretted to see his administration expose itself to a defeat which, as I thought, was inevitable.

The Liveryman and the Foreign Mission

I spoke with the verve of sincere conviction, and at first the President listened to me with evident interest, looking at me as if the objections to the treaty which I expressed were quite new to him and made an impression on his mind. But after a little while I noticed that his eyes wandered about the room, and I became doubtful whether he listened to me at all. When I had stopped, he sat silent for a minute or two. I, of course, sat silent too, waiting for him to speak. At last he said in a perfectly calm tone, as if nothing had happened: "Well, I hope you will at least vote for the confirmation of Mr. Jones, whom I have selected for a foreign mission."

I was very much taken aback by this turn of the conversation. Who was Mr. Jones? If the President had sent his nomination to the Senate, it had escaped me. I had not heard of a Mr. Jones as a nominee for a foreign mission. What could I say? The President's request that I should vote for Mr. Jones sounded so child-like and guileless, at the same time implying an apprehension that I might not vote for the confirmation of Mr. Jones, which he had evidently much at heart, that I was sincerely sorry that I could not promptly answer "Yes." I should have been happy to please the President. But I had to tell him the truth. So I gathered myself together and replied that I knew nothing of Mr. Jones, either by personal acquaintance or by report; that it was the duty of the Committee on Foreign Relations to inquire into the qualifications for diplomatic service of the persons nominated for foreign missions and to report accordingly to the Senate, and that if Mr. Jones was found to possess those qualifications, it would give me the most genuine pleasure to vote for him. This closed the conference.

A few days later there was a meeting of the Committee on Foreign Relations. After having disposed of some other business, Charles Sumner, its chairman, said in his usual grave tone: "Here is the President's nomination of Mr. Jones for the mission to Brussels. Can any member of the committee give us any information concerning Mr. Jones?" There was a moment's silence. Then Senator Morton of Indiana, a sarcastic smile flickering over his face—I see him now before me—replied: "Well, Mr. Jones is about the most elegant gentleman that ever presided over a livery stable." The whole committee, except Mr. Sumner, broke out in a laugh. Sumner, with unbroken gravity, asked whether any other member of the committee could give any further information. There was none. Whereupon Mr. Sumner suggested that the nomination be laid over for further inquiry, which was done.

At a subsequent meeting the committee took up the case of Mr. Jones again. It was a matter of real embarrassment to every one of us. We all wished to avoid hurting the feelings of President Grant. There had been no malice in Senator Morton's remark about the elegant gentleman presiding over a livery stable. Morton was one of the staunchest administration men, but he simply could not resist the humor of the occasion. I do not recollect what the result of the "further inquiry" was. I have a vague impression that Mr. Jones turned out to be in some way connected with the street-car lines in Chicago, and to have had much to do with horses, which was supposed to be the link of sympathy between him and President Grant. However reluctant the committee was to wound the President's feelings in so personal a matter, yet it did not think it consistent with its sense of duty and dignity positively to recommend to the Senate to confirm the nomination of Mr. Jones. It therefore, if I remember rightly, reported it back to the Senate without any recommendation, whereupon the Senate indulgently ratified it.

The foregoing article will be the last of the Carl Schurz Reminiscences to appear in McClure's Magazine. The writing of the Memoirs was broken off at this point by Mr. Schurz' death, which occurred in 1906. A conclusion to the series, compiled by Mr. Frederic Bancroft from Carl Schurz' notes and letters, will appear in Volume III of the book, which will be issued in the fall.

---

[A CAVALRY PEGASUS]
BY
WILL ADAMS

The orderly-room was quiet; only the clicking of the Troop Clerk's type-writer broke the stillness in sharp taps. Captain Campbell and Sergeant Stone were at their desks, absorbed in papers. Presently Stone pushed his work aside, and, hunting in a pigeonhole, brought forth a grimy bundle.

"Are you interested in poetry, sir?" he said. Captain Campbell, alias Shorty, sat up, with a snort, and peered over the piled-up findings of a court-martial case. "Am I a love-sick puppy? Do I look as if I were interested in poetry?" Shorty's hair was mussed and matted, his flannel shirt (he never wore a coat, if he could help it) was open at the throat, and the dust of the early-morning drill still adhered to his countenance, giving it a curiously gray-veiled appearance—he said he hadn't had time to wash. Stone was forced to admit that his appearance was not poetic.

"Well," he said, "I guess this isn't really poetry—just a stab at it. Shall I read——"

"Sergeant Stone," interrupted his captain vehemently, "if you've been such an ass as to try to write poetry, I'll be condemned if I keep you as Top of my troop. No, don't attempt to explain; I know it all! There's a girl at the bottom of it: there always is. Poetry leads to everything and anything. Soon you'll be neglecting your duties, and then, I warn you,—I warn you,—you're busted! 'Member Sergeant Johnson? Good soldier, but very foolish man. Went and got married—what a fool! No good any more. Poetry will do the same for you."

Stone had been trying to stem the torrent. "For the Lord's sake, Captain, what do you take me for? I haven't been writin' any poetry."

"What do you mean, then, insinuating that you have? There's only one man living now who can write poetry, but be hanged if I'd want him in my troop."

"Still," said Stone, with his boyish, dimpling grin, "you've a poet in the troop, in spite of you. It's Teddy Ryan."

"Ryan! That freckled kid? Why, he's a pretty fair soldier. Reckon his poetry must be right rotten. Don't believe he knows enough to spell 'cat,' even. What you got there? Hand 'em over, only hurry up. I got to go to headquarters soon. Oh, this is goin' to be a picnic!" Shorty was chuckling over the soiled scraps.

The first one was ominously entitled "Destinny, by Prvt. T. Ryan 5th Mont. Inf. U. S. V. 1898," and set forth:

I do not like my tacks and bacon,

They allus sets my belly aken.

I do not like to tote a gun,

It seems like I was son of one.

And lots of other things they done

to me I do not like at all.

I wish I never had inlisted

My feet is allus gettin' blistered

It's allus drillin drillin drillin

And eating grub that isent fillin.

And that is why I do not wanter stay.

And O By jimminy dont i wish my time

was up and i could get away.

"You bet he did," laughed Shorty. "You read these?" turning to Stone.

"Sure. Aren't they rich? Read 'Soljer and Moskeeter' an' 'To My Hoss.' There's a horse on you in that last."

"Soldier and Mosquito" proved to be a dialogue.

SOLJER AND MOSKEETER

Soljer says:

"When we do go to bed

We do try to sleep instead

Of lyeing awake.

But we cannot for you kno

The pesky moskeeto

Our blood does take."

Moskeeter says:

"When that feller goes to bed

he covers up his head

In the dark,

i cannot cannot eat her

so I starve says poor moskeeter,

Grim and stark."

"'ARE YOU INTERESTED IN POETRY, SIR?' HE SAID"

"Soldier seems to be a he an' a she too. An' he is sure impartial," remarked Captain Campbell. "Even a mosquito must have a point of view—darn little nuisances!"

"'Life is one long gorgeous sunset if your head-net works as planned,'" agreed Stone, quoting from the American Mandalay. "Go on an' read 'To My Hoss,' You'll appreciate that."

TO MY HOSS

My hoss is gentle has no fears,

And is slow if you dont ticcle his years.

He has fore long legs and a drawn out hed,

And so is cald a quadruped.

Saturday morning enspection time

i groom my hoss up clene and fine,

But if his saddel aint packed wel,

You bet Shorty gives me hel.

My hoss must be fed before the men,

Wen i dont do it I get hel agen,

My hosses tale is very long

the end of him and the end of my song.

"I know," chuckled Shorty, "what was the inspiration for that second verse. I jumped all over him one Saturday for havin' his canteen on the near side an' his picket-pin upside-down where it would blame well spit him if he should fall on it. He's right he got all that was coming to him. I only got time for one more now—a short one. What shall it be?"

"Try 'Fiting Joe And Dewey'; that's a bit different—might be classed under 'Poems of Ambition'."

Shorty shuffled the papers and read:

FITTING JOE AND DEWEY

Theres heaps of places in the world men wud lik to been and see

But i tell you

And I tell you true,

That theres only 2 for me.

Ide like to have worn my Countrys blu

In the calvery riding or holding the tiller

With Fiting joe at San Wan Hill or with Dewey at Manilla.

And the old man says:

"Ive been in slews of battels and ime toting in my shin

A bullit from a johnny-rebils killer,

With Fiting joe at San Wan Hill or Dewey a t manilla."

"How in Tophet did you come by this stuff, Sergeant?" asked the Captain, as he got up to put on his small coat, and, on tiptoe before a little hanging mirror, tried, ineffectually, to calm his upstanding hair with the ten-toothed comb of nature.

"Why, sir, Ryan gave 'em to me to read. He came into my room two or three nights ago an' asked me if I wouldn't like to see them. Said he'd written that 'Destinny' quite a time ago, but that all the others were just recently finished; that he'd been writing a lot lately, an' felt as if he just had to show 'em to somebody, an' he thought the other fellows would laugh at him. He said I might keep an' read them to anybody I thought would appreciate them. He thinks they're Shaksperean."

"Well," said Shorty, grabbing his hat and preparing to bolt, "I have sure appreciated 'em. But, you mark my words, there's a girl behind this. A fellow like Ryan doesn't go squanderin' rhymes for nothin', hombre. Adios." And off shot Shorty, with hands jammed deep in his pockets.

"He's smart, all right," said Stone to himself; "the girl's there. Where the deuce is that bloomin' ode, 'To my Lady-Frend'?" Finding it, he read:

Heaven meant things to go in 2s Cora,

Thats why i am alone unhappy single.

There won't be a bird or animal refuse Cora

Each with other folks to mingle.

So why do you give me the cold sholder Cora

Is it becaws youre shi or love another?

If youd only speak to your deer soljer Cora,

Ide fite a feller if he was my brother.

The moone is shining britely in the ski my Cora deer

The nite is late the village clock strikes 2.

Yes everything says 2 my years can hear Cora,

And that is why i think of you.

"Poor kid, he seems to be up against it! Wonder where he got that about the village clock? Must have been doin' some promiscious readin'. He said that was the best 'piece' he'd written. I wonder if he—I wonder if she——" Still wondering, Stone carefully put the precious manuscript away and turned back to work, resolving to corral Private T. Ryan at the first opportunity.

Private T. Ryan proved obliging, however, and came into Stone's room after supper to get his verses and the first sergeant's opinion of them.

"'he used language to me, sir, and i am hiss sergeant'"

"What do I think about 'em, kid? Why, I think they're mighty interestin'. Take a chair. I didn't know you had it in you. But that one about your lady-friend, now; is that straight goods or is it a poet's pipe-dream?"

"It's true, all right. You know who she is, too. Cora Sheean—father's that retired chief trumpeter; lives over back o' the ridin'-hall."

"Cora Sheean! Why, yes, I know who she is." Mrs. Sheean did Stone's washing, and he had often seen red-haired Cora, and heard of her, too; for she was the belle of the post in "enlisted" circles. "She's a mighty pretty girl, Ted,—here's luck to you,—but she's so bloomin' popular it's liable to be heavy goin'. You tell me all about it, an' maybe I can help you some"; and Stone began a rapid-fire broadside of questions, in the midst of which arrived John Whitney.

"Howdy," he remarked. "Say, yo' runnin' a pumpin'-station, Jerry?"

"No, I'm not. Now, either you clear out or come in an' help. I showed you Ryan's poetry—an' you remember that one about his lady-friend? Well, it's true, an' he's tellin' me about it. Do you mind his comin' in, kid? He can probably help you better than I can, as he's had so much more experience with Eliz——"

"Shut up! Yo'-all are mighty fond of refe'in' to that lady. I notice yo' get a letter every day yo'self!"

"Set down," said Ryan. "No, I don't mind, but don't you ever let on. There's Hansen, now. He'd devil me all over the place if he caught on."

And so he continued his recital. Yes, Cora had flirted outrageously with him. "But she says she ain't ever goin' ter marry no private; I got ter be a sergeant anyway, or she won't look at me." He was going to hold her to that; he was going to work hard, and there was a good chance, for there would be two non-coms to get their discharge next week. No, he hadn't always been fond of poetry; only this last winter. Will Carleton was a fine poet. "'Member 'bout that feller who fell through the ceilin' into the butter-tub?—or was it a churn he fell in?" But Ella Wheeler Wilcox was the finest poet who ever wrote a line. "So all-fired hot," she was. He had two books full of her things. He always wrote verses when he felt sort of lonely or Cora had been making him mad. "I write 'em about everything. To-day, at Retreat, now, I thought they'd keep us standin' there till kingdom come; an' when them bugles was blowin' the last part, that goes down an' up an' down again twice, an' then has a little wiggle to it, yer know, why, the words to it just popped into my head. Like this": And he sang:

Rhymes came easy when he felt like it. Sometimes he could write 'em when he felt extra good, too. It had to be one way or the other; he couldn't write a bit when things were just common. And he was awfully fond of Cora. He'd give up 'most anything he had if she'd only say she'd marry him. But Hansen was a Q. M. sergeant an' put on dog, an' had reenlisted pay an' all, an' it cut a big figger with her. He wasn't worried about any of the other fellers; he could beat them out easy; but Hansen had him buffaloed. "An' I say, Sergeant, don't you tell Shorty I want ter get married or he won't do a blame thing for me."

"Sure thing," said Stone, "I won't tell him. But look here, kid; if I can work a pull for you,—an' I'll do the best I can,—will the lady have you, after all?"

"I think I can work it. I believe she's got a fondness for me, but she's that proud she wouldn't never marry nothin' but a sergeant; her father was chief trumpeter, yer know. Say, do please give me a recommend ter Shorty, an' I'll try mer very best ter do the work well an' be a good soldier."

"Glad to hear you say that; 'cause, I warn you, if you don't make a good non-com, you get busted. We can't run this troop on sentiment. Yes, I'll tell the captain I think you'll do for a corporal, if that'll ease your mind any; as for your getting a sergeancy, that's your own lookout later. It all depends on what sort you prove yourself to be. If it isn't the right sort, back you go."

"'I was a corporal wanst; I was rejuiced aftherwards,'" murmured Whitney. "Yes, Ted, I'll tell Shorty, too, that you'd make a good non-com. Will yo' leave yo' vuhses? I want to read 'em again. Goodnight. Next time I see Miss Cora, I'll make yo' ears bu'n." And, as Ryan departed with abject thanks, visibly cheered, Whitney stretched out his hand. "Speakin' of Kiplin', hand over that Lady-Friend yonder—want to learn her; she's a gem. Say, do yo' think Hansen's in earnest over that?"

"Ask me an' I say no. I know that Knudt down to the ground. He isn't the marryin' kind."

"Soldier of fortune, pyo' an' simple, he is," said Whitney; "always on the go; an' do yo' think he's goin' to pin himself down anywhere? Not he. He's only in this for the fun of the thing, an' it's a heap better fo' the little Cora girl if he stays out."

"I'm with you. He couldn't tie up to one girl, never in his bloomin' life. Between you an' me an' the lamp-post, he's goin' to the bad in more ways than one. 'Wine, women, an' song,' an' consequent mix-ups in his accounts. He's gettin' too crooked to stay quartermaster. Shorty's about decided to put him back in the line. Why, only yesterday he came over to me an' said, 'Say, make me out a afferdavid, will you? I lost my carbine.' I knew blame well he hadn't lost it, so I said right quick, 'That so? How much you get for it?'

"'Why,' he says, 'the man only gave me three-fif—. Say, Stone, you're darn smart! But help a feller out a bit, won't you? I had to have the money.'

"'No,' I said, 'I won't. You get out of here. I'm not goin' to perjure my soul so's you can have any three-fifteen, or three-fifty, or whatever it was.' The big yap! An', you can bet your life, if it had come down to his carbine, he's been doin' some tall monkeyin' with the accounts an' the troop fund. An' yet, with it all, I can't help liking him; there's so many good things about him. If he's your friend once, he's your friend for always—never knew such a man to stick. He's been awfully good to me when there's no call to be, an' helped me in lots of little ways."

"Yes," said Whitney; "an' the things he's seen, an' the places he's been, an' the messes he's been mixed up in—an' he knows how to tell it, too. That takes with the little Cora girl, of co'se. Better fo' her, though, if he'd keep away. I like him all right fo' myself, but he's liable to be crooked anywheres. Little Teddy Ryan's clean strain, but he wouldn't show up to much advantage beside Knudt. Dixon goes out to-mo'w; I s'pose that's what yo're thinkin' of fo' the kid. Who gets the sergeancy? Decided?"

"Yep. Melody's jumped, an' Sullivan gets it, but I don't think Shorty's thought of who'd be corporal. I'll try an' fix it in the mornin'."

Accordingly, next morning Stone nominated the poet to be Corporal Ryan.

"What the——!" said Shorty. "I've no use for a poet, I was thinkin' of Terry—what?"

"Well, only that Terry drinks an' Ryan never does. I don't think his verse-makin' will interfere with his duties; it hasn't hitherto, an' if he doesn't make good, we can try some one else."

"Have it your own way, then. The way you run this troop is scandalous. There's not another T. C. in the army who gets bossed by his Top the way I do." And off went Shorty chuckling, having decided two days before that Ryan was to be corporal, and well knowing that Stone would defy even the colonel before he would run counter to an order given by his adored captain.

---

Two nights later Stone and Whitney were again together.

"Well," said Whitney, "I've just seen the new co'poral goin', in all his glory, to the little Cora girl's. He didn't take long to get his stripes an' chevrons."

"To get! What you talkin' about? He had 'em all ready. Stevens saw him take 'em out of his locker already fixed on a new suit."

"That's what I call befo'handed. But the little cuss is so blame happy over it all."

"Yes," said Stone; "happy, an' wooin' the Muse again, too. Hope he don't mix her up with his Cora. Will you look at this? And the length of it? It's an ode to the troop, an' he hasn't left out anybody. Wonder where he got the time to do it all! Read the first three verses an' then the last; they're all you need to waste your time on."

So Whitney read:

ODE TO J TROOP

Come comrads come your carbeans load

While neer and far I sing my oad.

There never was a troop like owers

It does deserve all bueateous flowers.

Ower Captain in the army is the best

But he doesent give you any rest

And sergeants Stone and Whitny is very fine to,

The best sergeants who breth ever drew.

And now I come with unwiling pennence,

To tell you about ower 2 lootennence.

Lootenent Burns a Prints could be,

But Spurs isent neerly as educated as me.

So galopp on my gallent troop,

Let no one to a bob-tale stoop,

Its prayses sound from East to West

For all agree J troop is best.

Signed,

Corporal T. Ryan

Poet Lariat of J troop

18th U. S. Cav.

"Lariat! Gee! Wonder he didn't put 'an' picket-pin.' The second line of that last verse is mighty ambiguous. Do you s'pose he means a hawse or a dishono'able discharge?"

"Don't know," said Stone. "An' look at the last two lines:

Its prayses sound from East to West
For all agree J troop is best.

Sounds like a soap advertisement to me. An' up there about the lieutenants. Wonder if an' 'unwiling pennence' meant a reluctant pen 'cause he didn't care to mention Spurs an' had to have a rhyme?"

"It's likely. But look yere, Jerry. Yo' an' I don't breathe. Our breath draws us."

"Pretty strong breath it must be, then."

"Hush, man! Yo' goin' to show these to Shorty?"

"I was thinkin' maybe he wouldn't like to think Ryan was still writin', now that he's a corporal."

"Ah, go on; show it. Shorty won't care."

And Shorty didn't. Only, after a delighted snort over the ode, he sent forth the order: "You tell him I say this has got to be the last. If I catch him writin' any more monkey-doodle verses, I'll bust him quick as a minute. If he wants to be a non-com in my troop, he's got to put his whole mind to it."

Ryan obeyed, and, unsaddling his Pegasus, set himself to work with such a will that as time went on he came to be one of the best non-coms in the troop, particularly where the instruction of recruits was concerned; for he seemed to have a special sympathy with them, and a knack of imparting the correct way to do things; His suit with Cora prospered, too, for she paid more attention to the corporal than she had to the private; but, being past grand mistress of the art of flirtation, she always contrived some little act or remark to chasten her lover's spirit and keep him sufficiently humble, as an offset to any particular favoritism that might have uplifted his spirits; which manoeuver always successfully puzzled Teddy. "First she's all sweet as candy; next minute I get the throw-down." But he never despaired, and came back strongly on the rebound, inquiring periodically, "Say, Cora, you're goin' ter marry me when I get mer sergeancy, ain't yer?" And she would reply, laughing: "Yes, when you get to be a sergeant I'll marry yer; an' that'll be when the river catches fire."

Time wore on, and the summer drew to a close. Hansen was no longer the quartermaster-sergeant, so he was not such an impressive figure as he had been. One payday Captain Campbell instructed Stone to read the men a lecture on the sin of drunkenness. "Not that I mind a man's gettin' drunk so much, but when the whole troop goes on a booze, it's a blame sight too much of a good thing. We're not to have any such time in J barracks as we did last month. You tell 'em that, an' make it red-hot."

So Stone, translating liberally, read them a severe lecture, ending up with: "An' if any of you big yaps comes home drunk, don't care who he is, he gets put under arrest. Savvy? That's straight."

The troop paid honors to an ultimatum when it was paraded before them, and it was a straight-walking, sober crowd that rounded up at J barracks that night. But, shortly before reveille, sounds of song and hilarity disturbed the sleepers, and Stone was obliged to rise and place Sergeant Knudt Hansen under arrest. He had returned from town in an exceedingly talkative frame of mind, and was now tipsily enlightening his squad-room on the disgracefully small quantity of drinks that could be bought on a sergeant's pay.

"I hate to do it, old man," said Stone, "but I'll have to put you under arrest. You know what I said, and now you've gone an' done this deliberately."

"Aw right. 'Sh mer own fault—only 'sh bad exshample to 'resht shergeant before shquad-room o' privatshes; mosht demoralizin'."

"I'm sorry, Hansen, but I must do it. You are confined to quarters for two days." And Stone retired, grieved that Hansen, of all men, should have been the one to suffer for the sake of an example.

"Gee!" said Brown, "I never thought Stone'd do that!"

"Wouldn't he, though?" rejoined Ryan. "You bet your boots, a sergeant looks all same buck to the Top."

"Hansen'll lay it up to him, you see," said Hickey, looking at the big man now sprawled out on his bunk in noisy slumber.

"Not on yer life, Dope," said Brown. "Hansen's too much sense fer that. He'll see the Top's side of it." And so it proved, for, after a few half-laughs, half-apologetic words from his first sergeant, Hansen agreed that there had been no other course to pursue.

"And, anyway," he said, with a grin, "I'll get a goot rest, yess. It iss about time I loafed some. I shall sleep."

Now, sleep was all very well for that day and part of the next, but by the afternoon of the second day Sergeant Knudt Hansen's active mind and body became saturated with rest and extremely bored. He had read everything he could lay his hands on, even including a vagrant copy of "Edgeworth's Moral Tales" that had wandered, Heaven knows how, into the troop library. While affording him food for sarcastically profane comment in the slimy sediment of at least six different languages, this estimable work had, if anything, increased his ennui. His body began actually to ache for action of some sort; almost anything would do at a pinch.

Strolling disconsolately through the hall, whom should he chance to see but Corporal Ryan, who was in charge of quarters for that day, busily cleaning his saber (for the next day was Saturday), and singing cheerfully, "'You're in the army now.'"

"Let up on that musical, you gamin; it iss not to the ear pleasant," growled Hansen. Besides his other grievance that Ryan's cheerfulness flicked on the raw, the little corporal had cut out the big sergeant several times lately with Cora.

"Ah, g'wan an' soak yer swelled head!" retorted Ryan respectfully, and, bending to his work, began to carol forth the delectable ballad of the "Rubber Dolly." Hansen advanced into the room.

"See here, Meester Freshie, that iss no way to speak to your sergeant! Oh, yess; I am knowing what you mean. You t'ank, because Cora go with you a leetle, you can come it ofer me here, too—not?"

"You leave her name out o' that," said Teddy, straightening up and reddening. "She's got nothin' ter do with it, an' you leave her be."

"Oho! The leetle man tank she iss so sweet and innocent a leetle girl, I am not fit to speak of her—yess? Why, she—" And Hansen started in to enumerate in no very choice language certain fabricated insinuations against the character of the popular Miss Cora Sheean. But they were barely out of his mouth before Teddy Ryan's fist was in it. Blindly the big Swede struck back, catching Ryan on the nose and drawing the blood; and then they started in in earnest.

"Hello, hello! What's all this?" demanded Captain Campbell, popping in on the scene like a vibrant little jack-in-the-box. Hansen drew off. "He used language to me, sir, and I am hiss sergeant; it iss him that I am teaching hiss place," he explained sullenly.

"But, Cap'en," cried Ryan, "he said—he said—I can't tell yer what he said," he finished slowly.

"Well, I can tell what I'll say, an' pretty blame quick! Hansen, you're a bully, that's what. Next time tackle some one nearer your size; an' you get three days' confinement. Ryan (for heaven's sake get a handkerchief an' wipe your nose), I'll give you a day, too; for fightin' your sergeant an' for gettin' into a fight when you're left in charge of quarters." Thus it was that the Captain ended the fight, but the consequences stretched far beyond him and were in the hands of Cora.

"You oughter been ter J Troop yesterday," quoth Corporal Brown the next evening, while sitting on Miss Cora Sheean's front step. "Hansen an' Ryan had a fight. Hansen said somepin', an' Ryan went fer him, an' they had it hot. Nobody was by, an' Ryan won't tell, so we don't know what Hansen said."

Cora was staring at him with eyes wide with concern. "My Lord!" she gasped, "is he hurt?"

"Naw, Hansen ain't hurt none. He's a fighter, an' Ryan ain't big enough ter——"

"Stupid! I mean Teddy Ryan. Is he hurt?"

"Naw; only a black eye an' a nose-bleed. Cap'en stopped 'em before Hansen had a chance ter do much."

"Thank Gawd!" sighed Cora, sinking back in relief. "Look here, Mr. Brown, will you do me a favor? Will you tell Mr. Ryan that if he can run over here early to-morrow mornin', I got somethin' I want ter give him?"

When the bearer of tidings had departed, Cora sat up very straight, with tightly clasped hands, repeating vacantly, with an ambiguous mixture of pronouns, "He might er killed him—he might er killed him!" For to her the fight between these men had only one meaning; intuitively she knew herself to be the cause. "He fought for me," she said, "I know he did. An' I want Teddy Ryan. I want him!"

Next morning she peeped out of the window and watched the approach of the sturdy, honest-faced little corporal before she went to open the door for him herself.

"You wanted ter see me?" he said, fingering his hat shyly.

"Yes; I—I heard you'd been in a fight. I—I wanted to read you a lecture. That's an awful eye you got, Mr. Ryan!"

"I'm sorry you don't like it, Miss Cora, but I had to; you'd have wanted me to if you'd known."

"Oh!" cried Cora, and her heart whispered: "Then it was about me, just as I thought, and the dear won't tell me." But aloud she said, "It ain't ever right to fight, an' I didn't think it of you, Mr. Ryan."

"I had to," he repeated awkwardly, and turned away. "Is that all you had ter say ter me? I must go back; but I thought Brown said that you had somethin' ter give me."

"Yes," said Cora in a very scared, small voice. "I have—me!"

"Cora! Do you mean it, girlie? Do you really mean it?" And two short but strong arms went round her. "But I ain't a sergeant yet, nor won't be for ever so long."

"Oh, Teddy!" said Cora, and hid her face right over his second button, "I ain't lovin' yer chevrons; I'm lovin' you."

---

Shorty received the joyous news in ominous silence. "When's the weddin'?" he demanded abruptly.

"Oh, sometime next month, I guess," said the proud husband-to-be.

"Nothin' of the sort. You get married next week; do you hear? No mañana about this business; get it over as quick as possible. You'll be worthless to me for long enough, as it is. A great poet you are! The whole thing was nothin' but the girl, just as I told Sergeant Stone."

So J Troop had a wedding, and the whole troop turned out in force, brave in full dress, from Shorty down to the latest junior rook—the only member not present being Sergeant Hansen, who had no interest in the proceedings. And the punch flowed so freely and so strongly that every man who tried to enlighten the absent one told a totally different story.

---

Spring had come again at Fort Hotchkiss, and one soft evening, as Stone and Whitney were sitting on the porch, Sergeant Theodore Ryan, now proudly sporting his three chevrons, came up to them, smiling a wide-mouthed, foolish smile.

"Well, what's up, hombre?"

"Recruits fer J Troop—over to my quarters."

"Recruits! You don't mean to say there's two of 'em?"

Ryan nodded. "Twins," he assented beamingly.

"'Heaven meant things to go in twos, Cora,'" quoted Whitney.

---

Copyright, 1908, by Ellen Terry (Mrs. Carew)

One of the best "audiences" that actor or actress could wish for was Mr. Gladstone. He used often to come and see the play at the Lyceum from a little seat in the O. P. entrance, and he nearly always arrived five minutes before the curtain went up. One night I thought he would catch cold—it was a bitter night—and I lent him my white scarf.

He could always give his whole great mind to the matter in hand. This made him one of the most comfortable people to talk to that I have ever met.

I contrasted his punctuality, when he came to see "King Lear," with the unpunctuality of Lord Randolph Churchill, who came to see the play the very next night with a party of men friends and arrived when the first act was over. Lord Randolph was, all the same, a great admirer of Henry Irving. He confessed to him once that he had never read a play of Shakespeare's in his life, but that after seeing Henry act he thought it was time to begin. A very few days later he astonished us with his complete and masterly knowledge of at least half a dozen of the plays. He was a perfect person to meet at a dinner or supper—brilliantly entertaining, and queerly simple. He struck one as being able to master any subject that interested him, and, once a Shakespeare performance at the Lyceum had fired his interest, there was nothing about that play, or about past performances of it, which he did not know. His beautiful wife, now Mrs. George Cornwallis West, wore a dress at supper one evening which gave me the idea for the Lady Macbeth dress, afterwards painted by Sargent. The bodice of Lady Randolph's gown was trimmed all over with green beetles' wings. I told Mrs. Comyns Carr about it, and she remembered it when she designed my Lady Macbeth dress.

The present Princess of Wales, when she was Princess May of Teck, used often to come to the Lyceum with her mother, Princess Mary, and to supper in the Beefsteak Room. In 1891 she chose to come as her birthday treat, which was very flattering to us.

A record of those Beefsteak Room suppers would be a pleasant thing to possess. I have such a bad memory. I see faces round the table—the face of Liszt among them—but when I try to think when it was, or how it was, the faces vanish. Singers were often among Henry Irving's guests in the Beefsteak Room—Patti, Melba, Calvé, Albani, and many others.

I once watched Patti sing from behind the scenes at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York. My impression from that point of view was that she was actually a bird. She could not help singing. Her head, flattened on top, her nose, tilted downwards like a lovely little beak, her throat, swelling and swelling as it poured out that extraordinary volume of sound, all made me think that she must have been a nightingale before she was transmigrated into a human being. I imagine that Tetrazzini, whom I have not yet heard, must have this bird-like quality.

The dear, kind-hearted Melba has always been a good friend of mine. The first time I met her was in New York at a supper party, and she had a bad cold, and therefore a frightful speaking voice for the moment. I shall never forget the shock it gave me. Thank goodness, I very soon afterwards heard her again when she hadn't a cold, and she spoke as exquisitely as she sang. She was one of the first to offer her services for my Jubilee performance at Drury Lane, but unfortunately she was ill when the day came and could not sing. She had her dresses in "Faust" copied from mine by Mrs. Nettleship, and I came across a note from her the other day, thanking me for having introduced her to "an angel." Another note sent round to me during a performance of "King Arthur" in Boston I shall always prize:

"You are sublime, adorable, ce soir.... I wish I were a millionaire—I would throw all my millions at your feet. If there is another procession, tell the stage-manager to see those imps of Satan don't chew gum. It looks awful.

Love. Melba."

I think at that time it was the solemn procession of mourners following the dead body of Elaine who were chewing gum, but we always had to be prepared for it among our American "supers," whether they were angels or devils or courtiers.

In "Faust" we "carried" about six leading devils for the Brocken scene and recruited the forty others from local talent in the different towns that we visited. Their general instructions were to throw up their arms and look fierce at certain music cues. One night I noticed a girl going through the most terrible contortions with her jaw, and thought I must say something. "That's right, dear. Very good, but don't exaggerate."

"How?" was all the answer that I got; and the girl continued to make faces as before. I was contemplating a second attempt, when Templeton, the lime-light man, who had heard me speak to her, touched me gently on the shoulder. "Beg pardon, miss, she don't mean it. She's only chewing gum."

An "Alice in Wonderland" Letter

One of my earliest friends among literary folk was Mr. Charles Dodgson—or Lewis Carroll—or "Alice in Wonderland." Ah, now you know what I am talking about. I can't remember when I didn't know him. I think he must have seen Kate act as a child, and having given her "Alice"—he always gave his young friends "Alice" at once by way of establishing pleasant relations—he made progress as the years went on through the whole family. Finally he gave "Alice" to my children.

He was a splendid theatre-goer, and took the keenest interest in all the Lyceum productions, frequently writing to me to point out slips in the dramatist's logic which only he would ever have noticed. He did not even spare Shakespeare. I think he wrote these letters for fun, as some people make puzzles, anagrams, or limericks.

Mr. Dodgson's kindness to children was wonderful. He really loved them and put himself out for them. The children he knew who wanted to go on the stage were those who came under my observation, and nothing could have been more touching than his ceaseless industry on their behalf. This letter to my sister Floss is characteristic of his "Wonderland" style when writing to children:

"My dear Florence:

"Ever since that heartless piece of conduct of yours (I allude to the affair of the Moon and the blue silk gown), I have regarded you with a gloomy interest, rather than with any of the affection of former years—so that the above epithet 'dear' must be taken as conventional only, or perhaps may be more fitly taken in the sense in which we talk of a 'dear' bargain, meaning to imply how much it has cost us; and who shall say how many sleepless nights it has cost me to endeavour to unravel (a most appropriate verb) that 'blue silk gown'?

"Will you please explain to Tom about that photograph of the family group which I promised him? Its history is an instructive one, as illustrating my habits of care and deliberation. In 1867 the picture was promised him, and an entry made in my book. In 1869, or thereabouts, I mounted the picture on a large card, and packed it in brown paper. In 1870, or 1871, or thereabouts, I took it with me to Guildford, that it might be handy to take with me when I went up to town. Since then I have taken it two or three times to London, and on each occasion (having forgotten to deliver it to him) I brought it back again.

"This was because I had no convenient place in London to leave it in. But now I have found such a place. Mr. Dubourg has kindly taken charge of it—so that it is now much nearer to its future owner than it has been for seven years. I quite hope, in the course of another year or two, to be able to remember to bring it to your house; or perhaps Mr. Dubourg may be calling even sooner than that and take it with him. You will wonder why I ask you to tell him instead of writing myself. The obvious reason is that you will be able, from sympathy, to put my delay in the most favourable light; to make him see that, as hasty puddings are not the best of puddings, so hasty judgments are not the best of judgments, and that he ought to be content to wait even another seven years for his picture, and to sit 'like patience on a monument, smiling at grief.'

WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE

FROM THE PAINTING BY J. MCCLURE HAMILTON, DONE AT HAWARDEN CASTLE IN 1890

"This quotation, by the way, is altogether a misprint. Let me explain it to you. The passage originally stood, 'They sit, like patients on the Monument, smiling at Greenwich.' In the next edition 'Greenwich' was printed short, 'Greenh,' and so got gradually altered into 'Grief.' The allusion, of course, is to the celebrated Dr. Jenner, who used to send all his patients to sit on the top of the Monument (near London Bridge) to inhale fresh air, promising them that, when they were well enough, they should go to 'Greenwich Fair.' So, of course, they always looked out towards Greenwich, and sat smiling to think of the treat in store for them. A play was written on the subject of their inhaling the fresh air, and was for some time attributed to him (Shakespeare), but it is certainly not in his style. It was called 'The Wandering Air,' and was lately revived at the Queen's Theatre. The custom of sitting on the Monument was given up when Dr. Jenner went mad,

Copyrighted by the London Stereoscopic Co.

LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL

and insisted on it that the air was worse up there, and that the lower you went the more airy it became. Hence he always called those little yards, below the pavement, outside the kitchen windows, 'the kitchen airier,' a name that is still in use.

Copyrighted by W. & D. Downey

THE PRINCESS OF WALES

TO WHOM HENRY IRVING GAVE A BIRTHDAY SUPPER IN THE BEEFSTEAK ROOM OF THE LYCEUM IN 1891

"All this information you are most welcome to use, the next time you are in want of something to talk about. You may say you learned it from 'a distinguished etymologist,' which is perfectly true, since anyone who knows me by sight can easily distinguish me from all other etymologists.

"What parts are you and Polly now playing?

"Believe me to be (conventionally)

"Yours affectionately,
C. Dodgson.."

"Sentimental Tommy" Writes Himself

No two men could be more unlike than Mr. Dodgson and Mr. J. M. Barrie, yet there are more points of resemblance than "because there's a 'b' in both!" If "Alice in Wonderland" is the children's classic of the library, and one perhaps even more loved by the grown-up children than by the others, "Peter Pan" is the children's stage classic, and here again elderly children are the most devoted admirers. I am a very old child, nearly old enough to be a "beautiful great-grandmother" (a part that I am sure Mr. Barrie could write for me), and I go and see "Peter" year after year and love him more each time.

MELBA AS MARGUERITE IN "FAUST"

There is one advantage in being a grown-up child—you are not afraid of the pirates or the crocodile.

I first became an ardent lover of Mr. Barrie through "Sentimental Tommy" and I simply had to write and tell him how hugely I had enjoyed it. In reply I received this letter from Tommy himself:

"Dear Miss Ellen Terry:

"I just wonder at you. I noticed that Mr. Barrie, the author (so-called), and his masterful wife had a letter they wanted to conceal from me, so I got hold of it, and it turned out to be from you, and not a line to me in it! If you like the book, it is me you like, not him, and it is to me you should send your love, not to him. Corp thinks, however, that you did not like to make the first overtures, and if that is the explanation, I beg herewith to send you my warm love (don't mention this to Elspeth), and to say that I wish you would come and have a game with us in the Den (Don't let on to Grizel that I invited you). The first moment I saw you, I said to myself 'This is the kind I like,' and while the people round about me were only thinking of your acting, I was wondering which would be the best way of making you my willing slave, and I beg to say that I believe I have 'found a way,' for most happily the very ones I want most to lord it over are the ones who are least able to resist me.

"We should have ripping fun. You would be Jean MacGregor, captive in the Queen's Bower, but I would climb up at the peril of my neck to rescue you, and you would faint in my strong arms; and wouldn't Grizel get a turn when she came upon you and me whispering sweet nothings in the Lovers' Walk. I think it advisable to say in writing that I would only mean them as nothings (because Grizel is really my one), but so long as they were sweet, what does that matter (at the time)? And, besides, you could love me genuinely, and I would carelessly kiss your burning tears away.

"Corp is a bit fidgetty about it, because he says I have two to love me already, but I feel confident that I can manage more than two.

"Trusting to see you at the Cuttle Well on Saturday when the eight o'clock bell is ringing,

I am, Your Indulgent Commander,

"T. Sandys."

"P. S.—Can you bring some of the Lyceum armour with you, and two hard-boiled eggs?"

Henry Irving once thought of producing Mr. Barrie's play "The Professor's Love Story." He was delighted with the first act, but when he read the rest he did not think the play would do for the Lyceum. It was the same with many plays which were proposed for us. The ideas sounded all right, but as a rule the treatment was too thin, and the play, even if good, on too small a scale for the theatre.

Mrs. Craigie's Great Promise

One of our playwrights from whom I always expected a great play was Mrs. Craigie (John Oliver Hobbes). A little one-act play of hers, "Journeys End in Lovers' Meeting," in which I first acted with Johnston Forbes Robertson and Terriss at a special matinée in 1894, brought about a friendship between us that lasted until her death. Of her it could indeed be said with poignant truth, "She should have died hereafter." Her powers had not nearly reached their limit.

MRS. CRAIGIE (JOHN OLIVER HOBBES)

From the painting by Miss Maud Porter

Lent by the Press Picture Agency.

C. L. DODGSON (LEWIS CARROLL)

WHO GAVE "ALICE IN WONDERLAND" TO ALL OF ELLEN TERRY'S FAMILY

Pearl Craigie had a man's intellect, a woman's wit and apprehension. "Bright," as the Americans say, she always managed to be even in the dullest company, and she knew how to be silent at times, to give the "other fellow" a chance. Her executive ability was extraordinary. Wonderfully tolerant, she could at the same time not easily forgive any meanness or injustice that seemed to her deliberate. Hers was a splendid spirit.

I shall always bless that little play of hers which first brought me near to so fine a creature. I rather think that I never met any one who gave out so much as she did. To me, at least, she gave, gave all the time. I hope she was not exhausted after our long "confabs." I was most certainly refreshed and replenished.

Photograph by the London Autotype Co.

J. M. BARRIE

FROM THE PAINTING BY LESLIE BROOKE. BARRIE'S PLAY, "ALICE-SIT-BY-THE-FIRE," WHICH HE WROTE FOR MISS TERRY, WAS PRODUCED BY HER IN 1905

The first performance of "Journeys End in Lovers' Meeting" she watched from a private box with the Princess of Wales (our present Queen) and Henry Irving. She came round afterwards just burning with enthusiasm and praising me for work which was really not good. She spoiled me for other women.

Her best play was, I think, "The Ambassador," in which Violet Vanbrugh, who is now Mrs. Bouchier, played a pathetic part very beautifully, and made a great advance in her profession. There was some idea of Pearl Craigie writing a play for Henry Irving and me, but it never came to anything. There was a play on the same subject as "The School for Saints," and another about Guizot.

Feb. 11, 1898.

"My very dear Nell:

"I have an idea for a real four-act comedy (in these matters nothing daunts me!), founded on a charming little episode in the private lives of Princess Lieven (the famous Russian ambassadress), and the celebrated Guizot, the French Prime Minister and historian. I should have to veil the identity slightly, and also make the story a husband-and-wife story; it would be more amusing this way. It is comedy from beginning to end. Sir Henry would make a splendid Guizot, and you the ideal Madame de Lieven. Do let me talk it over with you. 'The School for Saints' was, as it were, a born biography. But the Lieven-Guizot idea is a play.

"Yours ever affectionately,

"Pearl Mary Teresa Craigie."

In another letter she writes:

"I am changing all my views about so-called 'literary' dialogue. It means pedantry. The great thing is to be lively."

"Captain Brassbound's Conversion"

It has always been a reproach against Henry Irving in some mouths that he neglected the modern English playwright; and of course the reproach included me to a certain extent. I was glad, then, to show that I could act in the new plays when Mr. Barrie wrote "Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire" for me, and after some years' delay I was able to play in Mr. Bernard Shaw's "Captain Brassbound's Conversion." Of course I could not have played in "little" plays of this school at the Lyceum with Henry Irving, even if I had wanted to; they are essentially plays for small theatres and a single "star."

[572-1]

Copyrighted by Window & Grove

ELLEN TERRY AND HER SON, GORDON CRAIG, IN "THE DEAD HEART"

In Mr. Shaw's "A Man of Destiny" there were two good parts, and Henry, at my request, considered it, although it was always difficult to fit a one-act play into the Lyceum bill. For reasons of his own Henry never produced Mr. Shaw's play, and there was a good deal of fuss made about it at the time, 1897. But ten years ago Mr. Shaw was not so well known as he is now, and the so-called "rejection" was probably of use to him as an advertisement. "A Man of Destiny" has been produced since, but without any great success. I wonder if Henry and I could have done more with it?

Copyrighted by Window & Grove

ELLEN TERRY AS MISTRESS PAGE IN "MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR"

At this time Mr. Shaw and I frequently corresponded. It began by my writing to ask him as musical critic of the Saturday Review, to tell me frankly what he thought of the chances of a composer-singer friend of mine. He answered "characteristically," and we developed a perfect fury for writing to each other. Sometimes the letters were on business, sometimes they were not, but always his were entertaining, and mine were, I suppose, "good copy," as he drew the character of Lady Cecily Waynflete in "Brassbound" entirely from my letters. He never met me until after the play was written. In 1902 he sent me this ultimatum:—

"3rd April, 1902.

"Mr. Bernard Shaw's compliments to Miss Ellen Terry.

"Mr. Bernard Shaw has been approached by Mrs. Langtry with a view to the immediate and splendid production of 'Captain Brassbound's Conversion.'

"Mr. Bernard Shaw, with the last flash of a trampled-out love, has repulsed Mrs. Langtry with a petulance bordering on brutality.

"Mr. Bernard Shaw has been actuated in this ungentlemanly and unbusinesslike course by an angry desire to seize Miss Ellen Terry by the hair and make her play Lady Cecily.

"Mr. Bernard Shaw would be glad to know whether Miss Ellen Terry wishes to play Martha at the Lyceum instead.

"Mr. Bernard Shaw will go to the length of keeping a minor part open for Sir Henry Irving when 'Faust' fails, if Miss Ellen Terry desires it.

"Mr. Bernard Shaw lives in daily fear of Mrs. Langtry recovering sufficiently from her natural resentment of his ill manners to re-open the subject.

"Mr. Bernard Shaw begs Miss Ellen Terry to answer this letter.

"Mr. Bernard Shaw is looking for a new cottage or house in the country and wants advice on the subject.

"Mr. Bernard Shaw craves for the sight of Miss Ellen Terry's once familiar handwriting."

ELLEN TERRY AS LADY CECILY WAYNFLETE IN
"CAPTAIN BRASSBOUND'S CONVERSION"

Isn't it Horace who says that there is nothing to prevent the man who laughs from speaking the truth? I think I have heard so, and I always remember it coupled with the name of Bernard Shaw. He laughs, but he speaks the truth.[11] The first time he came to my house I was not present, but a young American lady, who had long adored him from the other side of the Atlantic, took my place as hostess. I had to be at the theatre, as usual, but I took great pains to have everything looking nice; I spent a long time putting out my best blue china, and ordered a splendid dinner, quite forgetting that the honoured guest usually dined off a Plasmon biscuit and a bean.

Mr. Shaw— a Gentle Creature with "Brainstorms"

Mr. Shaw read "Arms and the Man" to my young American friend, Miss Sally Fairchild, without even going into the dining-room where the blue china was spread out to delight his eye. My daughter, Edy, was present at the reading, and appeared so much absorbed in some embroidery and paid the reader so few compliments about his play, that he expressed the opinion that she behaved as if she had been married to him for twenty years.

The first time I ever saw Mr. Shaw in the flesh—I hope he will pardon me such an anti-vegetarian expression—was when he took his call after the first production of "Captain Brassbound's Conversion" by the Stage Society. He was quite unlike what I had imagined from his letters.

By permission of Frederick H. Evans

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

WHOSE PLAY, "CAPTAIN BRASSBOUND'S CONVERSION," WRITTEN FOR MISS TERRY, WAS PRODUCED BY HER IN 1906

When at last I was able to play in "Captain Brassbound's Conversion" I found Bernard Shaw wonderfully patient at rehearsal. I look upon him as a good, kind, gentle creature whose "brainstorms" are due to the Irishman's love of a fight; they never spring from malice or anger. It doesn't answer to take Bernard Shaw seriously. He is not a man of convictions; that is one of the charms of his plays, to me, at least. One never knows how the cat is really jumping. But it jumps. Bernard Shaw is alive, with nine lives, like the cat.

Shakespeare's Rabelaisian Mood

On Whit Monday, 1902, I received a telegram from Mr. Tree saying that he was coming down to Winchelsea to see me on "an important matter of business." I was at the time suffering from considerable depression about the future.

The Stratford-on-Avon visit had inspired me with the feeling that there was life in the old 'un yet, and had distracted my mind from the strangeness of no longer being at the Lyceum permanently with Henry Irving. But there seemed to be nothing ahead, except two matinées a week with him at the Lyceum, to be followed by a provincial tour in which I was only to play twice a week, as Henry's chief attraction was to be "Faust." This sort of "dowager" engagement did not tempt me. Besides, I hated the idea of drawing a large salary and doing next to no work. So when Mr. Tree proposed that I should play Mrs. Page (Mrs. Kendal being Mrs. Ford) in "Merry Wives of Windsor" at His Majesty's, it was only natural that I should accept the offer joyfully. I telegraphed to Henry Irving, asking him if he had any objection to my playing at His Majesty's. He answered: "Quite willing if proposed arrangements about matinées are adhered to."

I have thought it worth while to give the facts about this engagement, because so many people seemed at the time and afterwards to think that I had treated Henry Irving badly by going on playing in another theatre, and that theatre one where a certain rivalry with the Lyceum as regards Shakespearian productions had grown up. There was absolutely no foundation for the rumors that my "desertion" caused further estrangement between Henry Irving and me.

"Heaven give you many, many merry days and nights," he telegraphed to me on the first night, and after that first night, the jolliest that I ever saw, he wrote delighting in my success. It was a success, there was no doubt about it. Some people accused the "Merry Wives" of rollicking and "mafficking" overmuch, but these were the people who forgot that we were acting in a farce, and that farce is farce, even when Shakespeare is the author. The audience at first used to seem rather amazed. This thwacking, rough-and-tumble, Rabelaisian horse-play Shakespeare? Impossible! But as the evening went on we used to capture even the most civilized, and force them to return to a simple Jacobian frame of mind.

In my later career I think I have had no success like this. Letters rained on me—yes, even love-letters, as if, to quote Mrs. Page, it were still "the holiday-time of my beauty." As I would always rather make an audience laugh than see them weep, it may be guessed how much I enjoyed the hearty laughter at His Majesty's during the run of the madcap absurdity of "Merry Wives of Windsor."

MISS TERRY'S GARDEN AT WINCHELSEA;
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH GIVEN BY HER TO MISS EVELYN SMALLEY

On the nineteenth of July, 1902, I acted at the Lyceum for the last time, although I did not know it then. These last Lyceum days were very sad. The reception given by Henry to the Indian princes who were in England for the Coronation was the last flash of the splendid hospitality which had for so many years been one of the glories of the theatre.

During my provincial tour with Henry Irving in the autumn of this year I thought long and anxiously over the proposition that I should play in "Dante." I heard the play read, and saw no possible part for me in it. I refused a large sum of money to go to America with Henry Irving, because I could not consent to play a part even worse than the one that I had played in "Robespierre." As things turned out, although "Dante" did fairly well at Drury Lane, the Americans would have none of it, and Henry had to fall back upon his repertoire.

Ibsen's "Vikings"

Having made the decision against "Dante," I began to wonder what I should do. My partnership with Henry Irving was definitely broken; most inevitably and naturally "dissolved." There were many roads open to me. I chose the one which was, from a financial point of view, madness. Instead of going to America, and earning £12,000, I decided to take a theatre with my son, and produce plays in conjunction with him.

I hope it will be remembered, when I am spoken of by the youngest critics after my death as a "Victorian" actress, lacking in enterprise, an actress belonging to the "old school," that I produced a spectacular play of Ibsen's in a manner which possibly outstripped the scenic ideas of to-day by a century; of which at any rate the orthodox theatre managers of the present age would not have dreamed. At the Imperial Theatre, where I spent my financially unfortunate season in April, 1903, I gave my son a free hand. Naturally I am not inclined to criticise his methods. When I worked with him I found him far from unpractical. It was the modern theatre which was unpractical when he was in it. It was wrongly designed, wrongly built. We had to disembowel the Imperial behind scenes before he could even start, and then the great height of the proscenium made his lighting lose all its value.

When his idea of dramatic significance clashed with Ibsen's, strange things would happen. Mr. Bernard Shaw, though impressed by Ted's work and the beauty that he brought on to the stage of the Imperial, wrote to me that the symbolism of the first act of "Vikings" was Dawn, youth rising with the morning sun, reconciliation, rich gifts, brightness, lightness, pleasant feelings, peace. On to this sunlit scene stalks Hiördis, a figure of gloom, revenge, of feud eternal, of relentless hatred and uncompromising unforgetfulness of wrong.

At the Imperial, said Mr. Shaw, the curtain rose on profound gloom. When you could see anything, you saw eld and severity—old men with white hair personating the gallant young sons of Ormulf; everywhere murky cliffs and shadowy spears, melancholy, darkness. Into this symbolic night enter, in a blaze of limelight, a fair figure robed in complete fluffy white fur, a gay and bright Hiördis, with a timid manner and hesitating utterance! The last items in the topsy-turviness of Ted's practical significance were entirely my fault.

I singed my wings a good deal in the Imperial limelight, which, although our audiences complained of the darkness on the stage, was the most serious strain on my purse. But a few provincial tours did something towards restoring some of the money that I had lost in management.

On one of these tours I produced "The Good Hope," a play by the Dutch dramatist, Heijermans, dealing with life in a fishing village. This was almost as new a departure for me as my season at the Imperial. The play was essentially modern in construction and development—full of action, but the action of incident rather than the action of stage situation. It had no "star" parts, but every part was good, and the gloom of the story was made bearable by the beauty of the atmosphere, of the sea, which played a bigger part in it than any of the visible characters. For the first time I played an old woman, a very homely old peasant woman, too. I flattered myself that I was able to assume a certain roughness and solidity of the peasantry in "The Good Hope," but although I stumped about heavily in large sabots, the critics said that I walked like a fairy instead of like a fisherwoman.

My last Shakespearian part was Hermione in "A Winter's Tale." By some strange coincidence it fell to me to play it exactly fifty years after I had played the little boy Mamilius in the same play. I sometimes think that Fate is the best of stage-managers. Hermione is a gravely beautiful part, well-balanced, difficult to act, but certain in its appeal. If only it were possible to put on the play in a simple way and arrange the scenes to knit up the ravelled interest, I should hope to play Hermione again.

---

[IN THE SHADOW OF THE SCAFFOLD]
BY
HARRY GRAHAM

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ANDRÉ CASTAIGNE

"C'est le crime qui fait la honte, et non pas l'échafaud."

The clock in the public gardens outside the Conciergerie had just struck the half hour. Richard, the prison warder, a rough old veteran whose patient face wore that air of tolerant kindliness which stamps the features of all whose duty it is to be the daily witness of human suffering, stirred uneasily in his hard wooden chair. Somewhere in the huge building a gate clanged noisily, and the old man opened his eyes with the guilty start of the daydreamer and looked expectantly round towards the door.

The room in which he sat, with its simple wooden bed, its plain deal table in the center, its squalid jug and basin in the corner, was but one of a score or so of similar cells in the old Conciergerie prison. To Richard it had always seemed a dingy apartment enough, but even to his accustomed eye, as it fell upon the little white linen bonnet which hung from a peg beside the bed and looked so singularly out of place amid its surroundings, the gloom had never appeared so deep and joyless as it did upon this warm evening of July, in that time of bloodshed, of passion, and of terror, that sinister summer of 1793. The dazzling light which flooded the stone courtyard outside seemed reluctant to force its way through the high barred window of this dingy cage, as if timid of intruding its brilliance upon a scene whose atmosphere was already clouded by the shadow of death.

"Half-past five," said Richard to himself, with a yawn. "My little captive will soon be back."

He glanced up at the few simple garments that lay neatly folded on a low shelf beneath the window. "Poor little soul!" he murmured. "She was surely created for sunnier scenes than this! But there," he added, after a moment's reflection, "justice can't afford to make distinctions! Young and old, rich and poor, men and women, we all suffer alike—when we get found out!"

Richard's reverie was interrupted by a loud knock at the door, which was immediately flung open, and a short, middle-aged man, dressed almost entirely in faded black, entered the room.

The newcomer closed the door behind him with a swift, sinuous movement and, turning noiselessly, confronted the startled veteran with a malevolent expression in his small, beady eyes.

Richard could not conceal his astonishment.

"The Deputy Chabot!" he exclaimed, with an air of surprise.

"It is indeed the Deputy Chabot," replied the other.

The warder rose awkwardly to his feet.

"I am very sorry," he said apologetically, "but the prison regulations do not allow admittance to the public. It is against the rules." He crossed to the door as though to open it. With a quick gesture the Deputy stopped him.

"I am not of the public," he said in a pompous voice. "I am above regulations." He took a paper from the pocket of his coat. "See here, I have a pass signed by the Police Commissioner." And he handed the paper to Richard.

With great difficulty the old man retrieved a large pair of horn spectacles from his forehead and adjusted them on the very tip of his nose.

"'Admit Citizen Chabot,'" he read, spelling out each word laboriously, "'Deputy of the Department of Loir-et-Cher, member of the Legislative Assembly ... um ... um ...; signed Guellard, Police Commissioner.' That seems correct enough," he added, as he re-folded the document and handed it back to its owner.

The Deputy laughed shortly. "As you see," he said, "your regulations are of no great value where a man of my position is concerned."

"TERRIBLE TALES OF BLOODSHED AND INJUSTICE REACHED THE LITTLE SUN-KISSED VILLAGE OF CAEN"

Richard still hesitated. "Perhaps you are not aware that this is the cell of the prisoner, Charlotte Corday."

"The criminal, Charlotte Corday?" corrected the other. "Yes, I am perfectly aware. I have just come from her trial, where I spent a very dull afternoon, and wasted much valuable time."

"You were at the trial?" exclaimed the warder, with a fresh note of anxiety in his voice. "Then you can tell me, citizen. What has happened?"

"What has happened?" repeated the Deputy scornfully. "The only thing that could possibly have happened, I am thankful to say. Justice has been done. Marat's, the martyr Marat's death will be avenged. The woman who struck so foul a blow at liberty and the Constitution has been sentenced!" He walked up and down the narrow cell in his excitement. Suddenly, stopping short in front of the old man, "She dies on the scaffold this evening," he ended in a quiet voice of triumph.

Richard sank heavily into a chair. A troubled look came over his face.

"Ah, I am sorry," he said, after a pause. "The wife will be sorry, too," he added thoughtfully, "and my little boy, my little Jean, he will be sorry. The wife has taken a great fancy to this Charlotte Corday," he explained; "and little Jean, he thinks the world of her. But there, she spoils him," he continued apologetically. "Well, well, citizen, I am indeed sorry."

Chabot had not moved during the old man's speech. "You are sorry for a murderess who receives her just deserts?" he asked.

"I am sorry for a lovely woman," replied the warder. "I am an old veteran of the Conciergerie," he went on. "I have had many prisoners pass through my hands; and I judge them by what they are, not by what they may have done; not by what they may be accused of doing.

"I know nothing of this Charlotte Corday," he continued, "nothing beyond what I have seen of her during the last few days. I have never questioned her as to her crime, nor as to her reasons for committing it. That is none of my business," with a shrug of his shoulders. "My duty is to keep her here, to take care that she does not escape, to see that she has whatever is necessary—which is little enough," he added with a smile. "I judge people as I find them; and I have found this girl gentle and well-behaved. The wife likes her, and my little Jean worships the ground she treads on. She gives me no trouble; she is more than grateful for any small kindness; and Heaven knows there is not much that I can do."

The old man was quite out of breath. He crossed over to the window, mopping his brow as he went.

"I see," said the Deputy bitterly; "like the rest of them, you are won over by her beauty!"

"I am too old for that," replied the warder. "I am won over by her charm, if you will; by her sweet nature. And the wife, too, and little Jean; and he is a good judge of character, I can tell you, is little Jean."

Chabot turned away with an expression of disgust.

"She is a devil," he exclaimed, with a tone of intense hatred in his voice, "she is a fiend in human form!"

Richard thought for a moment before replying.

"You may be right, citizen," he said, "but to me, at any rate, she seems a quiet, modest girl enough; and my little Jean, he——"

"Modest!" interrupted Chabot. "Bah! is it modest to force one's way into a man's bedroom? Is murder, cold-blooded murder, a practice that commends itself to modest persons?" He turned round with an angry snarl. "I tell you," he said, "she is a devil!"

The old warder shrugged his shoulders, as he was wont to do when his powers of argument failed him—and argument was not his strong point.

"Well," he stoutly reiterated, "I am sorry for her, nevertheless. She is only a girl; so young, so frail, so delicate——"

"Delicate!" burst in the indignant Deputy. "Why, after she had murdered Marat—and," he smiled sarcastically, "with what delicacy she performed the deed, eh?—when the porter, Laurent Basse, rushed in to seize her, it was only after twice striking her with a chair that he was able to overpower her. Oh, she is a delicate creature, truly!"

For the moment Richard seemed nonplussed.

"Well," he replied with determination, "I would not strike any woman with a chair myself. Ask the wife whether I would! Not—" he added, as though to explain this apparent idiosyncrasy of his—"not while the good God has given me two hands for the purpose."

"Nonsense!"

There was a brief silence, during which Richard's glance fell upon the few pathetic garments so carefully folded upon the narrow bed.

"So my poor little prisoner is to die today," he murmured sadly.

"Yes," answered the Deputy, "and I am glad of it. There is no room in France for such vermin. They must be exterminated, and the sooner the better. I know what I am saying, and I tell you that this woman Corday is a dangerous character. She has others behind her. She is but an accomplice. I am here this evening," he explained, "to try and find out from her the names of her confederates. She would give no satisfactory replies this afternoon, but perhaps, now that the fear of death is upon her, we may be more successful."

"AT LAST, TOWARD EVENING, SHE FORCED HER WAY IN"

"Well," affirmed the veteran, with the stubbornness of his class, "whatever you may say, I cannot help pitying the girl. How I am to break the news to little Jean, I don't know!" he added pathetically. "Myself, I shall have no appetite for supper. Poor girl! My heart goes out to her in her time of trouble."

"Yes," said Chabot, with a sardonic smile, "and yours is not the only heart, my friend."

Richard looked puzzled.

"There is a young painter," continued the Deputy, "Hauer, by name. He has been sketching her in the court-house; yes, and speaking to her as well. He had better be careful," he added threateningly. "I have my eye on him; and so has the Committee of Public Safety." Chabot was standing by the window; he picked up one of the garments lying folded there on the shelf, examined it for a moment, and threw it down again in disdain.

"Yes, this Citizen Hauer is a fool. Like you," he turned to Richard, "and your little Jean, and the rest. His head has been turned by the woman's looks. He will lose it altogether if he is not careful."

To so simple a mind as that of the old warder, the Deputy's fierce and bitter hatred toward his prisoner seemed difficult to understand until he remembered certain stories connected with her arrest, stories in which his visitor had played an important, if not a very edifying part.

In early life Chabot had been a member of the priesthood, but renounced his vows in order to enter the sphere of politics. After the murder of Marat, when Charlotte Corday had been conveyed to the Abbaye prison, Chabot was among those who had helped to search her, a task in which his zeal had so far outrun his discretion as to induce him to retain a watch which he found upon the prisoner's person, until she somewhat sarcastically reminded him of his early and apparently forgotten vows of priestly poverty.

It was Chabot, too, who, suspecting Charlotte of having important papers concealed about her, had profited by the fact of her hands being tied to search for them. The wretched girl, supposing him to be bent upon some fresh outrage, sprang away with so violent a gesture, in her efforts to elude his touch, that the front of her dress burst open. With a natural and spontaneous movement of shame, she turned quickly away and stood with her face to the wall, begging to be allowed to rearrange her dress. So genuine was her emotion, and so strongly did her innocent modesty appeal to her jailors, that the request was immediately granted, and she was even permitted to draw down and arrange her sleeves in such a manner as to interpose them between her wrists and the cords that bound her none too tenderly.

Richard recalled those incidents, which had been related to him by Lafondée, the dentist, who lived opposite Marat's house, and who had been one of the first to rush to the scene of the murder; and he smiled knowingly to himself as he looked across the narrow space at the passionate, revengeful face of the ex-priest.

He was about to formulate some further arguments in defence of his little protégée, when a movement at the threshold of the cell attracted his attention, and in another moment the object of his thoughts stood framed in the open doorway.

What a child she looked, standing there, with her hands behind her back, wearing a simple country-made frock of some dark material, a white fichu crossed over her breast and fastened behind at the waist. Her auburn hair was tied back by a green ribbon, and a little white cap, the "bonnet" of the period, similar to that worn by Marie Antoinette in David's celebrated picture, rested lightly upon her small, girlish head.

There was nothing of the convicted criminal about her appearance, save the slight shade of pallor which these last few days of captivity had left upon her cheek; there was nothing of the prisoner in her bearing, save that her hands were bound behind her. Her wide gray eyes, fresh from the dazzling sunshine of the street, seemed to open wider still in an endeavor to pierce the prison gloom into which she was returning. But, as she saw the old warder's homely figure, standing there in a kindly attitude of welcome, an expression of relief, almost of happiness, illumined her face.

Two soldiers, who had accompanied her as far as the entrance, withdrew as soon as their prisoner had crossed the threshold, and the door closed upon them.

The old warder advanced to meet his captive.

"So you are back again, citizeness?" he said, with an assumed cheerfulness which he was far from feeling.

"Ah, my good friend," replied the girl, in a low voice, which bore signs of the long and fatiguing cross-examination to which she had just been subjected, "I shall not trouble you much longer."

Richard shrugged his shoulders, as though to deny that any trouble was involved in the care of so well-behaved a prisoner.

"'I KISS THE TIPS OF YOUR WINGS,' HE SAID"

"I will tell the wife of your return," he said. "You promised to take your supper with us, you remember."

"I fear I must break my promise," said Charlotte, with a sad smile. "There will be no time for supper to-night."

"But my little Jean is so looking forward——"

"Poor little Jean," she interrupted; "I am so sorry to disappoint him. But he will forgive me, I know. And by the by," she continued, "I am expecting a visitor this evening. Will you please see that he is admitted the moment he arrives?"

Chabot, who up to this time had been sitting unperceived in the corner of the cell, gave vent to a low chuckle.

Charlotte looked about at the sound, and as her eye fell upon the sinister figure of the ex-priest, she could not repress a shudder.

"You!" she exclaimed, starting back suddenly.

Chabot advanced toward her, with mock politeness, which the expression on his face belied. "At your service!" he said, with a low bow.

"But why are you here? What do you want with me?" asked the frightened girl.

"I am here to see you, on a little matter of—er—business. I want a few moments' conversation with you."

Charlotte turned an appealing glance upon the old warder. "Surely," she exclaimed, with a tone of passionate entreaty in her voice, "surely I have a right to ask that the short hour of life that is left to me shall be undisturbed?"

Richard made a weak, deprecating movement with his hands. "I am not to blame," he explained. "The Deputy has a pass, signed by the Police Commissioner."

He crossed over behind the prisoner, and was about to untie her hands. Chabot, noticing his intention, stopped him with a peremptory gesture.

"Leave that to me," he said. "I will see to it myself."

"But—citizen—" the old man began.

Chabot pointed sternly toward the door.

"Go!" he said. "Go! For time is short, and I have things to say to the prisoner in private."

Richard hesitated, as though about to refuse, but his natural weakness was no match for the firm attitude of the Deputy, and, after an uneasy glance at Charlotte Corday, he shambled clumsily to the threshold and went out.

Chabot crossed to the door and made sure that it was properly closed. Then he turned quickly and advanced to where Charlotte was still standing.

"And now," he said, "now that we are alone, quite alone together, you and I, let us for the moment forget our mutual—shall I say dislike?—our distrust of one another, eh?"

He approached and laid his hands upon her wrists, stooping to undo the cords with which the prisoner was bound.

At his touch Charlotte, who had been watching his movements with a look of terror on her face, sprang sharply back, as though she had been stung by some poisonous reptile.

"Don't come near me!" she exclaimed passionately. "I could not bear you to touch me!"

She retreated to the farthest end of the cell and stood at bay there with her back to the wall.

"As you will! as you will!" replied the other. "I merely thought that perhaps you would chat more freely if—but no matter."

"Will you not sit down?" he added, motioning her to a chair.

"I will stand!" she answered coldly.

"By all means," said Chabot, in an amused voice, "by all means. But I suppose you have no objection to my sitting?"

The girl made no reply.

Chabot ensconced himself as comfortably as possible in the hard wooden chair which the warder had vacated.

"Let us be sensible," he said, after a pause. "Your little game is over, you know. You have lost."

"I have won!" exclaimed Charlotte, with a touch of triumph in her voice.

"We will not discuss the point," said Chabot. "I do not argue with women. I wish you to tell me what you were unwilling, and very naturally unwilling, to admit at your trial—the true motive of your crime. I want to know the source from which came the inspiration. You have executed the deed alone, but you cannot have planned it alone. Others have helped you. You are to die, remember, alone; to suffer alone; and yet it is not you alone who are guilty. There are, there must be, others who have urged you to commit this crime. The Girondist Barbaroux, for instance," he suggested, "a friend of yours, who has just been arrested——"

"Had nothing whatever to do with it," exclaimed the girl, breaking in upon his unfinished sentence. "What I have done, I have done alone, and I am proud of it! I confided in none; I asked advice of none. The idea was my own; the conception was my own; and I carried it out by myself!"

There was in her voice a note of exultation, of glory, of triumph in the success of her crime; she seemed almost to boast of the solitude of her guilt, as though conscious of the fact that one executes but ill that which another's brain has conceived.

"Oh, it is very loyal of you to try and conceal the identity of your accomplices," said Chabot, with a sneer.

"My loyalty is for my country alone. It was my love of her that inspired me to plan my project; my love of her that helped me to undertake it; my desire for her welfare that gave me strength to carry it out!"

"Indeed," said the Deputy sardonically. "And doubtless it required unusual strength to deal so fatal a blow, straight to the heart!"

The girl looked at him in surprise.

"The indignation in my own heart showed me the way," she said quietly.

"One would think," continued Chabot, "that you had practised with the knife before on some other——" He left the sentence unfinished.

The blood rushed to Charlotte's cheek. A fire of indignation and resentment burned in her usually tender eyes, making them blaze and flame until even the cold-blooded Deputy was moved to admire the beauty of this emotional woman, so fierce in the defence of her honor.

"You know well that I am no ordinary assassin," she exclaimed. "My hands are clean in the eyes of Heaven. My soul is guiltless before God."

The ex-priest took a step forward. "How dare you speak of God? You?"

"I dare speak of Him," replied the girl, in an impassioned voice, "because I believe that it was He who inspired me, as He inspired Judith of old, to make this sacrifice in the cause of liberty. I believe that He chose me to bear this message of His righteous vengeance to a people who have forgotten His name; that He nerved my arm to strike the blow at which you wonder. I have completed my task," she went on, in a quieter tone, "I leave the rest to others. I have avenged much innocent blood. I have prevented the shedding of much more." She turned proudly round and faced the Deputy with flashing eyes.

"I have killed one man," she said, "to save a hundred thousand!"

Chabot smiled grimly.

"Do you then imagine," he asked, "that you have murdered all the Marats?"

"I have destroyed one," she retorted. Her fearless gaze met the crafty eyes of her examiner, and they quailed before it.

"Perhaps the others will be afraid," she added meaningly.

"I must admit," replied the Deputy with a nervous assumption of jocularity, "I am relieved to think that for the moment I am beyond the reach of those pretty hands of yours. For I have no desire, believe me, to be added to the list of your victims!"

Charlotte smiled scornfully. "You need have no fears," she said. "Were my hands as free as yours, or my heart as black, you would still be safe. You surely cannot flatter yourself that the question of the life or death of such as you could be of any importance to the State."

The natural egotism of the man was wounded; his vanity was touched. Confident of Charlotte's helplessness, he approached to within a few feet of her.

"Are you not afraid to speak in such a tone to me?" he asked. "We are alone here—" he looked meaningly round at the empty cell. "The walls are thick. No one can hear us."

Charlotte looked him up and down with a slow, scornful gaze. "Afraid?" she asked. "Of you?" She smiled. "Do you think that one can look at you; at your shifty eyes—at your restless mouth—" involuntarily the Deputy's hand rose to his lips—"without discovering the secret which you conceal so badly behind a mask of insult and of bluster? Do you think I cannot see what a coward you are at heart?"

"Truly polite!" exclaimed the other nervously. "At any rate, I am no murderer!"

"Because you have not the courage!" replied the girl. "But be sure that however great the guilt of those who have shed all this innocent blood, you who have allowed it to be spilt will also have to answer for it."

Her face was transfigured by emotion as she spoke. She seemed to be gazing into the caverns of eternity with the eyes of some inspired prophetess. "I look forward into the future," she continued, "and I see you, and the other brigands who surrounded Marat, whom God only allows to live so as to make their fall the more terrible,—so as to frighten all who would attempt to establish their fortunes on the ruins of a misguided people,—I see you dragged by force up the scaffold steps—the ladder to Eternity which I scale so willingly—till your coward's eyes gaze forth flinching from that blood-stained casement, that is for me the window looking out on immortality!"

Chabot stared in amazement at this young girl, who seemed to speak with the assurance of a seer. He could not subdue his admiration of a woman who was so obviously fearless of death. "Come," he said, "I like your pluck." He inspected her with a critical eye. "You're not a bad-looking girl, either, for an aristocrat." He came very close to her, apparently unconscious of the loathing with which she regarded his approach. "Turn round and let me have a look at you," he ordered. Charlotte did not seem to have heard him, but kept her head high in the air, and the same lofty look of disdain in her eye.

"Proud, are you?" said the deputy, with a snarl. "I suppose I'm not good enough to speak to you, eh?"

Charlotte still remained silent.

"Hoity toity!" continued Chabot, "with your fine airs and graces! You won't be so damned haughty in an hour's time, I know! You won't hold your head so high then, I'll be bound!" He came quite close and leered into her face. "Why do you treat me like this?" he asked. "Aren't I good enough for you?" There was no tremor of fear in the girl's attitude, but almost unconsciously she turned her head away. "Come here!" he said sharply. "Come closer!" Charlotte Corday did not move. Chabot stooped until his face was only a few inches from hers. "I've a good mind to take a kiss from you," he said, with an ugly smile. "What do you say to that, eh?" he asked. The girl moved her head still further away so as to avoid looking upon the hideous features which were now so close to her own pure lips.

"What's the use of making all this fuss?" said Chabot impatiently. Still no reply from the woman, who, beneath her appearance of calm and courage, could feel her heart beating wildly with terror and apprehension. "What?" continued the Deputy. "Look at me!" he commanded. Then, as Charlotte seemed to pay no attention to his orders, "Damn you!" he said, "you shall look at me!" And he placed his hands upon her shoulders and turned her quickly round so as to face him.

Then, and not till then, did her self-reliance give way. With the amorous touch of his hateful fingers upon her neck, she realized the helplessness and horror of her position. With a convulsive movement she tried to free her hands. The face of her enemy came closer and closer to hers, and she read the coarse desires of his vicious soul in the lustful brightness of his eyes. In a perfect agony of disgust and terror she fought desperately to fling herself out of his reach.

"Let me go!" she appealed, "let me go! Ah, God!" she cried, in a strangled voice, "Let me go!"

Her cry must have been loud enough to penetrate the thick prison door, for in a moment it was flung open, and two men, Richard and another, rushed into the room, and Charlotte was aware that the old warder had interposed his burly person between her and the man she loathed.

"I should have known better than to leave you alone with a man of his character," exclaimed the veteran, glowering at the ex-priest. "The wife will never forgive me."

Chabot had recovered his self-possession, and was regarding the old man's perturbation with evident amusement.

The stranger who had entered the cell with Richard was a young man of about thirty, clean-shaven, with dark, almost black hair shading a high, intellectual brow and eyes of unusual brilliance. He was dressed in the uniform, such as it was, of the National Guard, but his appearance was not that of a soldier, and the artist's block and sketching materials which he carried in his hand proclaimed him to be, what indeed he was, a portrait painter.

He had heard the woman's agonized cry. The scene that he had witnessed on entering the room had shown him the cause of her distress, and, with the blind, impetuous rage which the sight of any act of violence or injustice towards the weak or helpless rouses in a young and chivalrous soul, he rushed to where Chabot was standing and seized that worthy violently by the shoulder.

"What the devil are you doing?" he demanded furiously.

"That is no business of yours," retorted Chabot, coolly disengaging himself from the other's grasp. "You evidently do not know who I am, young man."

"I have no wish to. It does not interest me. But I do know that you are not wanted here!"

"I am the Deputy Chabot, of the Department of Loir-et-Cher!"

"Indeed," replied the young man, apparently unabashed by so much distinction. "Well, I am Jean Jacques Hauer! And to the devil with your 'deputy'!"

"So you are the fortunate Citizen Hauer," said Chabot, with a dark smile of comprehension. "I see, I see!"

"What do you mean?" asked the artist threateningly.

Chabot turned to Charlotte Corday with a bow.

"I congratulate you, mademoiselle," he said, with meaning in his voice, "I congratulate you on the possession of so well-bred, so well-mannered a lover!"

Hauer sprang forward with a cry of rage, and would have hurled himself upon the Deputy, had not Charlotte's quiet voice stopped him.

"Leave him alone," she begged. "Let him be, I pray you. He is not worthy of your anger."

Chabot moved toward the entrance slowly.

"Good-by, mademoiselle," he said, "and thank you"—ironically—"thank you for a very pleasant chat, which I shall always remember, when you are—what shall we say?—forgotten!"

Charlotte faced him with quiet dignity.

"I may be forgotten," she replied, "and that soon. But what I have done shall not readily be forgotten."

With a sarcastic laugh the Deputy crossed the threshold and was gone.

Richard watched his departure with evident relief, and then turned to address his prisoner.

"There is a priest without," he said, "who asks whether you desire his services."

Charlotte shook her head. "Will you thank him on my behalf for his kindness. But I do not need the offices of the Church."

She crossed to the table and leaned one hand upon it.

"The blood that I have spilt, and my blood that I am about to shed, are the only sacrifices that I can offer to God," she said. "I have no fears. He knows all, and will forgive."

The warder bowed his head, took a last look round the cell to see that all was well, and left the room.

II

As the door closed Charlotte sank into a chair and buried her face in her hands. The long trial and the incidents that had followed it had been very tiring. She was young and lonely, and her last hour had come. Small wonder then that for a moment she should give way to emotion or that her eyes should brim with the bitter tears of fatigue and disappointment.

Hauer watched her in silence for a little while, and then crossed the narrow room and stood beside her chair.

"Perhaps you would rather be alone?" he said, in a tender voice of pity.

Charlotte raised her shining eyes to his, and a grave smile stole like a shadow to her lips.

"No, no," she exclaimed, holding out a detaining hand, "I have but few moments left to me, and still fewer friends. Stay with me, Monsieur Hauer, if you will, and," she added in a lighter tone, "you may finish the portrait."

He took his painting materials from the table, set up the small portable easel, arranged the palette and brushes in his hand, and commenced his work upon the portrait of the prisoner, which he had begun in the court-house, and which, at her request and by permission of her judges, he was now to be allowed to complete.

And as he painted, they talked together, quietly, sympathetically, with the understanding and the occasional silence of old friends, these two who had but learned to know each other during the last few days, but from whose short acquaintance were destined to spring, for the one, a friendship which did much to lighten the burden of these last hours, for the other, a love which he was to bear in his heart to the end of an adventurous career.

This girl, who had lost her mother at an early age; who had ever since lived a simple, secluded, somewhat lonely existence, first in the convent of L'Abbaye-aux-Dames, and subsequently under the care of an old aunt at Caen; who had never found a friend in whom to confide her troubles; now for the first time discovered a sympathetic listener, who gradually drew from her the sad story of her life and of the sinister events that led up to the tragedy with which it was to close.

As a girl she had been much alone; had played alone, thought alone, lived alone. And in her case, as in that of many others, solitude had been the mother of great thoughts. Hers was not an unhappy childhood, but her happiness had sprung from sources other than those usually open to children. She drew most of her pleasure from books, from Plutarch, from Corneille, the poet, her ancestor, of whom she was justly proud, and who had declared that poetry and heroism were of the same race, the one carrying out what the other conceived.

So had she grown up at Caen, dreaming much of her country's welfare, filled with a romantic ambition to do something for France, something grand, something noble.

And then came all the horrors of the Revolution. Terrible tales of bloodshed and injustice reached the little sun-kissed village of Caen. The name of Marat was on every tongue—Marat, who made the streets run with blood; Marat, the murderer of thousands whose only crime was loyalty; Marat, through whose wanton ferocity the blood-stained Loire was discolored for miles, to whose rage for extermination the gloomy solitude of the towns and the desolation of the country bore ghastly testimony. The very crimson of the autumn woods seemed to reflect the bloodshed of those cruel September massacres.

It was then, no doubt, that the thought first entered the mind of this young girl; the idea that perhaps she, though only a woman, with no knowledge of the world, without experience, might achieve what men seemed frightened to attempt, something that should help to retrieve the lost honor of France. It was ambitious, surely; but then, was not Joan of Arc a girl?

Marat, the murderer of peace, if only he were dead, thought Charlotte Corday, peace would be restored. "It is expedient for one man to die for all."

The shadow of Marat darkened the whole picture, and in the background stood the scaffold, which liberty was mounting in company with the victims of this murderer, at whose name one shuddered, as at the mention of death. Marat, without Danton's courage or the integrity of Robespierre, seemed but a wild beast bent on devouring France.

Charlotte saw her beloved country in its death agony, she saw the victims and the tyrant. She sought to avenge the one, to punish the other, to save all.

Many a long summer night did she lie awake in her little attic room at Caen, wondering what she should do. Suddenly all seemed to clear before her. Her mind was made up.

After a sad parting with her family, who believed that she was going to England with the many other refugees who found a haven there at this time, she started for Paris, arriving there with no friend save a battered copy of her beloved Plutarch. During the two days and nights that she spent at the little Hotel de la Providence in the Rue des Vieux Augustins, but one thought was uppermost in her mind; to seek out Marat and do what she had to do.

The recital of these incidents had brought a tinge of color into the girl's cheeks, and to Hauer, as he sat and gazed at her in admiration, her beauty appealed irresistibly. He could picture the whole scene as she described it. In imagination he accompanied heron that early morning walk, on the fatal Saturday, the eve of the anniversary of the taking of the Bastille, when she went to the Palais Royal to buy the knife with which the murder was committed. He could fancy, as she described it, the sun shining through the trees, the children playing in the public gardens. She told him how she had helped one little curly-headed lad to recover his top which had rolled through the railings out of reach. The little fellow had kissed her, little realizing what she carried so carefully hidden in her bosom. In his heart Hauer blessed that little boy; he was grateful for that childish kiss, the last that Charlotte was to know. He followed her to the house in the Rue des Cordeliers, where Marat lived, and where for so long she strove in vain to gain admission, until, at last, toward evening, she forced her way in.

"You know the rest," continued Charlotte. "How I pretended to be a traitor to my cause.—God will forgive me," she added, "for we owe no truth to tyrants.—How I informed Marat of the names of the refugee deputies at Caen who were organizing the Federalist movement. 'Ah!' he exclaimed, his irresistible thirst for blood rekindled at the thought of these new victims, 'they shall be guillotined within a week!' Guillotined!" repeated Charlotte, rising to her feet. "My friends! The patriots of Caen!"

She turned and saw Hauer's eye fixed upon her as though awaiting the end of the story. "And then?" he asked.

There was silence for a short space, broken only by the quick breathing of the girl.

"I stabbed him to the heart."

"Did you not realize——?"

"I realized nothing," she interrupted, "save that I was carrying out my unalterable purpose. I felt no more remorse than if I were treading on the head of some loathsome snake. The hideousness of Marat's appearance, the squalor of his surroundings, the infamy of his character, all these urged me on to accomplish the deed I had planned. And in my heart a voice kept whispering that the end justified the means."

"Brave little Jesuit!"

"Oh, I am glad I killed him! I have no regrets, none. I was ready, I am ready now, to pay the penalty." She paused, "Ah, I weary you with all this," she said. "But I have had no one to speak to, all these days; nobody seems to understand——"

"I understand," said Hauer with feeling.

"Yes, I believe you do, and I thank you for it." She sat at the table where the artist was putting the finishing touches to his picture.

"I had hoped that an old friend of mine," she added, "one on whose loyalty I relied implicitly, would have appeared to defend me at the trial. I wrote and asked him. But he never came. He did not even trouble to reply. Well," she sighed, "I am no poorer for the loss of such a friend."

Hauer laid down his brushes, rose, and stood before her. His voice was unsteady, and his face had grown pale.

"Others may fail you," he exclaimed, "but you know that I will always stand by you, though the whole world turn against you."

He took both her hands in one of his, and, looking into her eyes, saw down to the very depths of her pure soul. A rush of memories flooded his brain as he gazed at this woman whose life was to close so soon.

He recalled the very first time he had ever seen her—how long ago was it?—in the gardens at Caen, opposite the little Church of St. Antoine. Five years ago; and yet to him it seemed but yesterday. She had been a girl then; a timid, neatly-dressed girl of nineteen she looked, as she walked slowly along, deep in meditation, intent upon her own thoughts. Hauer was sitting sketching beneath a tree as she passed. She dropped one of the books she was carrying; he picked it up for her; she thanked him. That was all—and yet at the sound of that one word something had stirred in the young artist's heart, something that he had not been able to understand at the time, but that he had understood in the court-house today, when he heard once more the music of her voice—something that he understood now, and knew to be love.

"Charlotte," he exclaimed, with a sudden passionate cry, as he flung himself on his knees at her feet, "I love you, I love you!"

The girl gazed tenderly down at him, with a look of innocent affection in those eyes which no hint of any deeper passion had ever illumined. She laid her hand lightly upon his head for a moment and then drew him to his feet.

"Please, monsieur," she said gently, "please; you will not say that. You are my very good friend, and you must think of me as a friend, and nothing more. You know well that I can never be grateful enough for the blessing of your friendship, and for all you have done for me."

Hauer had recovered his self-possession. "Alas! I have done nothing for you—I, who would gladly lay down my life for your happiness."

"You have done much," replied the girl. "You have spoken to me, when all others were afraid and held aloof. You have given me the comfort of your welcome society, while other friends stayed away. Are your words of sympathy nothing?" she asked. "Ah, I could not bear to think that I should cause you any unhappiness. I pray you, let us be friends, and friends only. The parting will be the easier for that."

"Don't speak of parting," he cried, aghast at the picture conjured up in his imagination by her ominous words.

"And yet it is to be so soon. In a little while I shall go out of your life forever. I shall be nothing to you but a memory. It is hard enough to have to die, do not make it harder for me."

"Charlotte!" cried the young man in an agonized voice, "you shall not go out of my life like this! I will kill myself! I will share your fate. I cannot live without you!"

The girl gazed up at him with a look of infinite tenderness and pity. "Do you really love me?" she asked.

"Charlotte——"

"Remember then that the price of love is sacrifice; and do as I ask." She sat down on the edge of the hard bed and drew him down beside her.

"Is it so easy for me to be brave?" she asked, "to leave the sunshine, to say goodby to all the bright and beautiful things of this world, to life and love? Do not make it harder for me; then. Ah, I pray you, forget me; or rather, rejoice at my fate, remembering that the cause for which I lay down my life is indeed a glorious one. Help me to bear the trials of this last scene bravely, with a courage you would wish to see in one you loved."

Hauer seized her hands and kissed them feverishly.

Charlotte smiled sadly at him.

"I have had but little tenderness in my life," she said. "Your kisses are dear to me, believe. I will bear them in my hands to the scaffold, as I shall bear the comfort of your friendship in my heart.

"Do not weep for me," she added, as the tears, which he was unable to control, fell and mingled with his kisses upon her pale hands. "I want all your help, all your courage, if I am to face the end bravely, to meet death with a smile."

There was a loud and peremptory knock at the entrance. With a swift exclamation Hauer crossed the floor and threw open the door.

A tall man, dressed entirely in black, with a thick beard half covering a sallow but not unkindly face, entered the room. He carried a long red smock over his shoulder, a short piece of thick cord in his hand, and to his wide leather belt was suspended a pair of shears. It was Charles Henry Sanson, the public executioner.

A momentary expression of terror flitted across Charlotte Corday's eyes as they gazed upon this sinister figure, whose mission required no explanation. After a brief inward struggle, she regained possession of her wonted calm and faced the unwelcome visitor with an unflinching gaze.

The executioner advanced, holding out the red smock, a roughly made cloak of common scarlet material, which condemned persons wore on their way to the scaffold. Without a word spoken on either side, Charlotte allowed him to throw this garment round her shoulders.

Sanson then drew the shears from his belt. But the prisoner, anticipating his intention, stopped him with a quick gesture and took the instruments from his hand.

"Give them to me," she said quietly, and the man obeyed. Then, throwing off her cap, she unbound the ribbon with which her hair was confined and with a quick, graceful movement of the head, shook down its burden of auburn hair so that it covered her shoulders. With a few swift strokes of the scissors she cut off the waving masses, which fell in a heap in her lap and at her feet, and handed the shears back to Sanson. With her bared head, its aureole of close-cropped hair crowning the small oval face beneath it, Charlotte looked like some beautiful boy, and it was evident that even the impassive executioner was moved by her charm and by the tender grace of her every movement.

One of the many curls which she had severed so ruthlessly had fallen into the bosom of her dress, and Charlotte now held it in her hand and turned toward Hauer, who had been watching the sacrifice with much emotion.

"Will you accept this?" she asked timidly, "I—it is all I have to give. If you would care to have it——"

The young man took it tenderly from her and raised it to his lips.

"I shall hold it dearer than all else in the world," he said; "this lock of your beautiful hair."

"Is it beautiful? I used to be very vain of my hair once." She smiled. "If you will keep it," she continued, "and perhaps look at it sometimes, and, when you do, recall the memory of one to whom you were kind—of one who will never forget—who will offer prayers for your welfare and your happiness at the very throne of God——" She brushed away a tear that had crept out unseen upon her cheek, and for the moment her voice failed her.

Sanson moved forward silently and seized her wrist with one hand, while with the other he shook out the short coil of cord which he held.

The blood flamed in Charlotte's cheek, and she shrank back suddenly, dreading some fresh indignity.

"Ah, no!" she exclaimed passionately. "I beg of you! Not that again! I promise you, I will be good!" she reiterated, standing with her hands behind her, like some frightened child expecting punishment, "I will keep still! I will do whatever you tell me. I will not move. Oh, let me be free, for this last hour of my life!"

Hauer approached the executioner. "Surely she has suffered enough already," he said. "Look at her wrists." For the severity of her former bondage had left cruel marks upon the white skin of her delicate arms.

Sanson spoke for the first time. His voice was low and had a tone of refinement which perhaps reassured his listeners.

"You need not be afraid," he said. "I am not rough. I will not hurt you. It is for the best."

Charlotte looked up into his face and, reading there nothing but the desire of a blunt but honest man to discharge an unpleasant duty with as little pain as possible to all concerned, submitted without further entreaty.

"As you will," she said, holding out her hands to him. He laid one small wrist across the other and with a few quick turns of the rope tied her hands behind her back, fastening them securely but without unnecessary severity.

As he opened the cell-door, a loud tumult rose from the street below. Charlotte drew back in terror.

"What sound is that?" she asked trembling.

"'Tis but the crowd growing impatient. Do not be frightened," said Sanson in a reassuring voice. "You are safe enough with me."

Hauer stepped forward. "I will accompany you," he said, in a determined tone.

"No, no!" entreated the girl. "Please not. 'Farewell' is always a hard word to say. I shall want all my courage on the scaffold." She moved towards the door, then turned again to the artist. "One last request I have to make," she said. "That you will send the portrait to my old father at Argentan. It will comfort his heart, perhaps," she added, "and help him to forgive me for disposing of my life without his permission."

"Now," she continued, "let us say goodby."

With an effort Hauer restrained his tears. He fell on one knee at her feet, as though to kiss her hands once more. But she shook her head sadly, unable to lift them, bound as they were, to his lips. "Ah, no," she said, "you see, it is no longer allowed!"

Hauer raised the edge of her red smock and kissed it passionately. "I kiss the tips of your wings!" he said.

Charlotte turned to the executioner, who was waiting somewhat impatiently at the door. "I am ready," she said. Then, as her eye fell upon the lonely kneeling figure of her lover, "Farewell," she added. "Farewell, for the last time. God bless you for all that you have been to me. You will not forget me, I know. And I shall carry with me the memory of your friendship to the end. Be happy in the knowledge that I am glad to die for France; and remember that it is guilt alone that brings disgrace, and not the scaffold!"

With a resolute step she walked through the open door and out into the tumult of the street.

An hour later, when the warder, Richard, entered the cell, he found the young artist still on his knees, convulsive sobs shaking his whole body, while tears of anguish rained down his cheeks and fell unheeded upon a long lock of hair which he was holding tenderly in his hands and which he now and again raised to his lips.

With a grunt, half scorn, half sympathy, the old warder shook his head and, closing the door quickly behind him, stole away in search of the more cheerful society of his wife and little Jean.

---

[THE BURIED ANCHOR]
BY
PERCEVAL GIBBON

There was a tale that Oom Piet used to tell, of the days when he showed his back to the tax-gatherers, and trekked east to the very edge of the world, where the veld broke into patches of sand and shelved down into the sea. It was the only one of all his stories that did not make him out a hero; the rest were all of war with the kafirs and hunting in new-found lands, where the game was so thick that it jostled for pasture. But this was a tale of wonder, and he wondered over it contentedly till he went to that place where all riddles are answered.

It began always with the long Odyssey of the trek, while the slow wagons drew indomitably to ever fresh horizons and each dawn showed a new country and the fresh spoor of buck. Then there were the mountains, seen afar for days, that stood across his track; he had searched them north and south for more than a month ere he found the winding thread of valley that let him through. Not once but a dozen times in that year-long journey his ripe craft of war had served him well, and the wagons had been laagered in time to stand off an attack of kafirs; each lonely battle was fresh in his memory, and he never omitted to tell how his wife crouched beside him as he fought, loading his spare rifle and passing it into his hand. Sometimes, at this stage in the history, some of his old force would return to him, and one could see all the face harden and grow keen behind the big beard. Oom Piet was very old and much under the dominion of his years; for him one thing in a story was as much as another; and he always carried us through every stage of that trek, from the Bushmen he shot in the mountains to the baby he buried at Weenen Drift.[12]

And thus at last, when they had passed through an easy country, where Zulu satraps from the north ruled the terror-stricken kraals, and nothing any longer had the power to make him wonder, they came upon the sea. It was a still evening when they drew down to its shore, and before them the unimagined ocean filled the world and lay against the sky, and its murmur hushed the long-familiar noises of the veld. A broken reef of rock stood a hundred yards from the beach and the water creamed about it; the crags were like gapped and broken teeth. Oom Piet stood with his wife's hand on his arm and his three sons at his elbow, and all five gazed awhile in silence. The spell of the stillness and the great space worked within them all.

"It is a place of peace, at all events," said Oom Piet, at last.

The hand on his arm tightened. Susanna looked up at him with a smile.

"But I am glad I am not alone here," she answered.

As for the lads, theirs was a bewilderment that stilled their judgment. Klein Piet, the eldest, leaned on his rifle and stared out at the sea with empty eyes, for it spoke to unguessed depths in his soul; and Jan and Andries were both a little afraid. They had nothing to say, and when presently Piet led the way back to the wagons, they followed him hesitating, casting nervous glances over their shoulders as they went. Even by the fires, as they sat together over their evening meal, some constraint remained with them, so that they talked with an effort of trivial things while their thoughts abode elsewhere, and Susanna looked from one to another with a little frown of perplexity. Not one of them could have told what troubled him, or guessed that in his very name of Van Praagh there closed a long tradition of the salt and sound of the sea.

It was when a new dawn had shown them the place in clear light, unwitched by evening shadows and calm, that Piet made his decision. Landward of the sand the veld was rich, with patches of bush; a stream ran through it handily, and to his eyes, wise in a hundred aspects of game land, cattle land, and mealie land, it spoke of security and comfort. He was not a man to be drawn from his sure judgment by trifles of liking and curiosity; he had lived too close to the real things of life to be deluded by semblances; but none the less, there was gladness for him that all these good things, the materials of a home and a livelihood, lay at the flank of that great tame sea, to whose noise his ears were already become accustomed. There was a welcome in the sound of it; under the morning sun it showed a face as bright as a host's; and when the lads came back from the beach, with their hair blown about their faces and their hands full of shells, they found him sitting on an ant hill, in the middle of a square he had marked out with big smooth stones.

"What is it?" asked Klein Piet.

"Our house," answered his father. "We will build it here, with the stoop looking out to the water. That—" he pointed a line with his finger—"that shall be the front of it, to face the sun each day when he up-saddles. There, yonder, shall be the kraals; and we will live between the sea and the veld and have the best of both. What do you think of it?"

Andries laughed delightedly; a new thing was always a good thing for him. Jan, too, was pleased and curious; only Klein Piet looked grave, but not with any doubt or dissatisfaction.

"Well?" asked the father again. "What do you think of it, my son?"

Klein Piet answered slowly. "I think well of it," he said, meeting his father's gaze with his steady blue eyes; "so well, father, that I should have stayed in any case, even if you had turned back."

"Eh?" The elder man doubted if he heard aright.

Klein Piet seemed to be in a dream. "I only know," he said, in the same slow manner of speech, "that this place I stand on is like a birthplace to me. I must have dreamed of it when I was a child."

The younger boys were watching the pair of them in wonder. Piet put out his hand to his son.

"Then we shall not quarrel," he said. "I cannot say what it is, the finger of God stirring or the lusts of the flesh, but the same thing has hold of me, Klein Piet. I am fallen at the same dyke; I could not leave this place if I would."

Only Susanna was not completely at her ease. Piet found no matter for surprise in this, but looked to see a change when the house should be built and the offices of home-keeping should have set up landmarks in her life. A Boer woman should live between her kitchen and her bed, he was used to say, and he held to this unswervingly even when the kitchen was but the cheek of a wood-fire in the veld and the bed the windy sail of a wagon. So when her face showed that the strangeness of the place did not abate for her, when she shrank from being alone and shivered at the on-coming of the nights that strode in from the sea, he only smiled on her and was careful to be close to her, and was glad, with a mild satisfaction, that the long trek and the fights and the sorrows had left her womanly and soft. She was a De Villiers from the western edge of the Karoo, fair and still as all the women of that stock are; but it never happened to him to think of the dead men and women who had gone to the making of her family, soldiers and gospellers and martyrs, but never a sailor among them. Neither did it happen that he took any account of his kafirs, for Piet was sound Boer to the bone; or he might have seen that they, too, had their fears and misgivings. The black man's solitude is peopled with ghosts and devils; beyond the ring of his firelight, the dark is uneasy with presences; and it was not fear of the Zulus alone that kept these tremblers close about the camp, and cowed them to an anxious obedience the sjambok could never have commanded.

Indeed, there was no time for Piet and his sons to become infected with doubts, for they set to work at once on the building of their house. The stone thereabouts lay over the face of the land in rounded boulders and splintered cleanly under the sledge-hammer. The house they devised to face the sea was to be of stone from eaves to the foot of the walls and rooted well in the ground. Piet marked it all out with little gutters, and, since he himself was the strongest of them, he set the lads to dig a firm foundation with half the kafirs, while he took the other half to split and carry stone. They had all a good will to work; their task was to justify to themselves their choice of a home, and the skinny kafirs had to bend their naked backs freely to keep pace with the eager work of their masters. The thud of the picks and the ring of Piet's great hammer made a loud answer to the ceaseless murmur and rustle of the sea on the sand; even Susanna was stirred from her cares by the briskness of the work.

The place where Piet labored at the stone was under the bank of the stream, where it ran deep and slow, and curved curiously between little hard headlands of rock and easy bosoms of sand; so that when he was plying the great sledge and cutting out the stone in big, flat cakes, he was hidden from the lads who dug on the foundations of the house, a couple of hundred paces away. There was little enough to fear now, but his old lore of war still governed him, and he carried his rifle to his work with him, and had chosen to work in a spot where he could not be suddenly approached by one coming secretly through the hummocks. Here, at noon, on the fourth or fifth day of the building, he was laboring happily. His was the part to swing the great sledge on the wedges; three, four full-bodied blows, each ringing true as a bell on the iron wedges, and a fat, flat slice of stone jarred loose from the body of the rock, to be hauled apart by the kafirs; and then in with the wedges again. He had joy in his strength, and in the pretty skill of never missing the head of the wedge; so that he worked on without fatigue and did not look about him. It was when another big flake of stone was broken away, that an exclamation from one of the kafirs made him turn sharply to look up-stream.

He was never sure what manner of man he saw, watching him from the far side of the spruit. For one thing, there was sweat in his eyes; for another, he turned to grasp his rifle, and when he turned back, the man was gone. But in the couple of moments that the man was in view, Piet saw that he was white, a short, strongly-built white man, dark against the pale sand. And though he could never find a phrase for the impression in his mind, the thing that puzzled him was the utter strangeness of the man's appearance. Whether it was the fashion of his clothes, his attitude, his looks, or just the mere whole of him, he could never explain. But, "it seemed to me as if he were none of God's making," he always added.

It was a matter of no more than a couple of breaths; then his bewilderment broke up, and caution took its place. He bustled his kafirs together and shepherded them out of the streambed and back to the camp, coming last with his rifle cocked in the crook of his arm to guard against any possible danger. He saw that work had ceased in the foundations of the house; the lads and the kafirs were gathered in a knot in the pit, and their voices buzzed in talk. But he gave no notice to that.

"We are being watched," he said to them. "Back to the laager and get your guns."

And once again the square of wagons became a fort, and the little family stood to its arms against all comers, for its right to live in the place it had chosen.

Piet told them what he had seen; it was little enough, and he had no key to its meaning. Susanna, having helped to lay the spare rifles and the ammunition ready, had gone back to her fire, for pots must be watched though the veld were alive with enemies. The men, each standing on a wagon wheel, searching the country with keen eyes, turned the thing over in their minds.

"You are sure he was white, father?" asked Jan.

Piet was quite sure.

"And he had no gun?"

"No," replied Piet. "He had nothing in his hands at all."

They spoke without turning their heads or ceasing for an instant in the watch they kept.

"Then," said Klein Piet, with assurance, "it must be the English. Only the English go about without guns in a wild country, and collect taxes."

The explanation seemed reasonable to them all; they would have been less dismayed if a black foe had shown himself in force. The feeling that dragged the Boer people up by the roots and set them trekking into the unknown was no mere antipathy to taxation; it was founded on an abiding mistrust and hatred of the English who were multiplying in the land. Piet's strong face took on an added grimness as Klein Piet's explanation forced itself on him.

"But perhaps," suggested Andries, the youngest, "it is just an Englishman on trek. He would not trouble us."

That was a comfortable thought, too. Piet kept his boys on watch for another hour, but nothing showed, and then they ate quickly, and he disposed them for a search. It was all done in good order and after the approved fashion; as each moved forward, his retreat was covered by another's rifle; and between them they scoured all the broken ground within a couple of miles.

"Well," said Piet at last, when the search was over and they had not found so much as a spoor of a foot, "this is a wonderful thing."

"You are sure it was a man you saw?" asked Klein Piet, doubtfully. "The sun plays tricks with a man's eyes, sometimes."

But Piet was not to be shaken. "As sure," he said, "as I am here. But what kind of man—" he broke off, frowning. "There is nothing for it," he added, "but to go on with the work and be wary."

"Yes, the work." Klein Piet turned to him. "When you came back from the spruit, we had just found a curious thing where we were digging."

"An iron cross," put in young Andries.

"A cross?" repeated the father.

"It is not a cross," said Klein Piet, quickly. "It is—something else. Come and see it, father."

They had been talking together outside their laager, and now they went across to the great pit that the lads and the kafirs had dug to plant the house in. The digging was not yet all done, and where the morning's labor had ended, Klein Piet pointed to the thing of which he had spoken. Only a part of it was uncovered—two curving, spade-ended arms of rust-red iron, and a shaft which stuck out of the earth.

"Is that not a cross, father?" cried Andries. "See, it has arms and——"

Piet shook his head. "No, it's no cross," he answered. "How can it have come here? I remember once a man who rode on commando, an Englishman, and he had pictures of such things as this on his arms, pricked into the skin. This is an anchor, a piece of a ship."

Klein Piet, standing by his side, laughed suddenly, so short and harsh a laugh that Piet turned to him in surprise.

"I might have known," said Klein Piet. "Of course it is part of a ship. There have been ships here, once; can't you feel that there have been ships hereabouts?"

At another time Piet would have shown little patience with this manner of talk; but now his mind was full of other concerns, and he let it pass.

"We must dig the thing out," he said. "It will be heavy to lift, though. Take a pair of spades and see how big it is."

Klein Piet and Jan jumped down into the pit and set to work, while Andries and Piet watched. It was no hard matter to unbury the shank of the anchor; the easy earth came away in heaping shovelfuls, and presently the whole of it lay bare, with its great wooden stock rotted to threads and its ring pitted and thin with rust. Jan leaned on his shovel and stared at it; Klein Piet knelt by it and swept away earth with his hands.

"Perhaps there was a wreck here," Piet was saying. "Some ship may have been driven up by a storm and the sea have beaten it to pieces, so that all the wooden parts floated away and this was left."

Klein Piet, on his knees, still grubbing away with his hands, laughed at him.

"No," he said. "That is not so, father. For there is a chain fast to this anchor."

He had worried a hole with his hands, and sure enough, when they came to look, there was a link of a great chain running from the anchor ring into the earth.

"Now," said Klein Piet, rising from his knees; "who will tell me what the other end of that chain is fast to?"

It was a strange thing for a house-building Boer to find; their shovels only showed them that there was a long chain there, running level perhaps six feet below the surface of the ground. They bared a couple of fathoms of it, red as gold with its long burial, and then Piet bade them halt.

"We must cut it," he said. "It will be hard work, but plainer to do than digging up the whole of it. And for today, let us go back to camp and leave it."

Piet was a little resentful of these things that had arrived to disturb the course of his work. First, the sudden stranger who left no spoor where he walked, and now the anchor lying where the roots of his home should be—they were beyond the calculations of an upright Boer. Like many more sophisticated men, Piet relied on his environment possessing a certain quality; when foreign elements colored it, when it was flavored with unascertained ingredients, a sort of helplessness sapped his powers; he was like a man walking blindfold. Only his bull-headed pluck served him at such times; and now, when he doubted and was uneasy, he held on without hesitation in the task he had undertaken. A brand-wacht was maintained that night, the four of them taking turns to sit sentry by the great wood fire; and though, during his turn of the watch, the night seemed alive with lurking men who stared and slunk, he faced the new dawn with no leak in his courage.

That day, they set to work at cutting through the great chain that was fast to the anchor ring. Their equipment for such a purpose was poor; there was nothing for it but to flog a cold chisel through the wrought iron; and though the rust flaked from it if one but scratched with a fingernail, the metal below was sound and tough yet, a heartbreaking thing to assault with mere strength of arm. Further, there is a science of cutting with the cold edge which was outside all their knowledge. The younger lads took turns to hold the chisel while Piet and Klein Piet, swinging alternately, rung a strenuous bob-major on its head; but the hot hours passed in sweat and labor, and afternoon was upon them, while the chain seemed scarcely scratched. It was cruel work for all of them, jarring to the arms and stunning to the ears. At last, Piet dropped his sledge-hammer and wiped the wet from his face.

"Honest men made that chain," he said. "We shall be all to-morrow cutting at it. Hullo! What kafir is this?"

None of them had seen the approach of the kafir who now stood on the edge of the pit looking down at them; he carried his hand to his head in a salute as they looked up at him. He was an old kafir, with tufts of white on his chin and a skin hanging on his loins, gaunt and big and upstanding, with a kind of dignity that was new to them in kafirs. He supported their stare with no embarrassment, and gave them back an unabashed regard of quiet curiosity.

"Who are you?" demanded Piet. "Where do you come from?"

But the kafir could speak no Dutch; he made a reply in some tongue of his own, sonorous and full-throated, and raised his hand again in salute.

"We must know where he comes from," said Piet to the lads. "Between ourselves and our own kafirs, we must find some language he can understand."

They came out of the pit and took the kafir back to the camp with them, leaving their tools where they lay. The old man went in obedience to their gestures without demur, and squatted himself on his hams to be talked to. The average Boer knows no native tongues; he will not condescend so far to the kafir; but Piet and his sons had yielded to their vicissitudes, and between them could command quite a number of dialects. Tembu, Fingo and the "kitchen "Now," she continued, "let us say goodby." kafir" of the Cape failed to gain any response; Klein Piet's few words of Bechuana only made the old man laugh; the Griqua "clicks" made him laugh more. Then, by an inspiration, Piet put a question in Basuto, the harsh speech of the mountaineers. Up went the black hand in a salute, and the old kafir replied in the same tongue.

"I am a doctor," he told them. "I am of The Men (the Zulus). I am walking north to my own people."

He spoke with a seriousness that was like courtesy, so attentive and gracious. To each of Piet's questions he gave a considered answer, ample and careful. There was no war in these parts, he told them; the nearest kraal was four days away. In any case, his people would not concern themselves with a single family of white people; they had nothing to fear.

"But," said Piet, "since I have been here, I have seen another white man. He watched me at work from a distance. Do you know who he was?"

The old kafir listened to him with a sedulous attention.

"It is said," he answered, "that white men have been seen hereabouts. My grandfather saw them, and his father. But I have never seen them."

Piet stared at him. "Your grandfather?" he cried. "But I saw him yesterday."

The old kafir nodded. "It is a tale that is told," he said. "A very old tale. White men came from yonder—" his lean finger waved to the darkling sea southwards,—"traveling on the water in a——" he paused for a word.

"A ship," said Piet. "I know."

The old man nodded. "This was in the old times, before we Men had come to this country," he went on; "when white men were dreams. Here their ship halted; and that same night, the great wind of the year drove down on them. It was a wind that struck men as with a club and killed them; it lifted the sea as mowers lift hay and stacked it high on the veld, so that here where we sit was all water, and the shore was a mile inland. And with the water, the wind carried their ship, plunging and turning like a cow in a torrent; when the sea went back to its place, it stood here on the land, great and wonderful, with its white men swarming about it. That iron at which you were sweating was the hook with which they held their ship in one place."

Evening had come upon them while they talked; its shadows were cast over the sea and the shore, and the old kafir's strong face was lit by the leaping fire at which they sat. Piet looked over his shoulder at the darkling dome of the night, under which they sat in a hush of solitude.

"Yes," he said. "And what became of them?"

The old kafir spread his hands asunder before him.

"Who can tell?" he answered. "They were killed, of course; the kafirs who had escaped to the hills came back and made war on them. It lasted a while, for the white men fought cleverly; but in the end, there was a creeping by night, a narrowing ring of assegais, the hush of stealth; and last the roar of the warcry and a charge. The kafirs thronged on that ship like ants on a carrion; in the middle of it, the white men put fire to their powder, and all the ship and the fighters vanished in a spring of fire. Yes, all the white men were killed; but still they have been seen, slinking through the hills and returning by the stream. They were killed, but who is to say what became of them?"

The four Boers looked at one another; their breath came short and harsh. Piet recalled all that sense of strangeness with which the sight of the man by the stream had filled him; the growing night was suddenly dangerous and fearful.

Klein Piet turned to the old kafir. "All this was very long ago?" he said.

The kafir considered, with a forefinger that calculated on the fingers of his other hand.

"My grandfather was old," he said. "So old that he was blind. And his grandfather had heard it as a tale of olden times."

Piet was still in thrall to the awe of the thing.

"Then I saw a spirit?" he demanded.

The old kafir shrugged, and a silence fell between them all. Jan and Andries had understood less than the half of what was said, but the ill-ease reached them like a contagion and they sat very close together, their eyes wide open and quick.

Piet was about to ask further questions, when Jan suddenly gripped his brother and started.

"Hark!" he cried. "What is that?"

The quick alarm strung them all to tenseness; only the old kafir cocked his eyebrow humorously and spat into the fire. The others rested where they sat, straining their ears.

"There!" cried Jan again.

It was a dull noise of metal on metal that they heard, a muffled ring and clink; it sounded again and again.

"Someone is cutting at the chains," said Piet hoarsely.

"It is they," said Klein Piet.

Susanna's hand stole into Piet's arm; he had almost forgotten that she was sitting a little behind him, so still had she been. But the touch of her hand made him the equal of his terrors; the man with a wife to shield cannot afford fears. He pressed her hand and rose to his feet.

"We are shivering like old women round a death-bed," he said. "Klein Piet, get your rifle; we will see who is mending our work for us."

Klein Piet obeyed, swallowing to ease his tight throat; the old kafir rose too, and the three of them went forth from the light of the fires and across the crisp grass to that dark pit where yet the "clink, clink" of the unseen work was sounding. Piet and his son walked abreast, the kafir a little behind them; his bare feet were soundless as he strode. The Boer was conscious of no fear; only of a strange lightening of his senses and a pricking in his skin such as he had known when he had lain on his rifle at night waiting for a charge of kafirs. As they went, the sound of the hammers grew clearer, till they could pick out the heavy note of the great sledge and the lighter cadence of the top-mall. They halted by an end of bush to mark the steady ring of them and make sure of their breath; the old kafir went on a few paces.

"So the tale was true," they heard him say; and then Piet sprang out, with Klein Piet at his heels, flung up his gun, and fired at the pit. The smoke of the shot blew back into their faces; its noise, peremptory and sudden, thrust their alert faculties from their poise; an effort was needed ere they saw clear again. The pit was empty.

"What did you see?" cried Klein Piet.

"I don't know," answered Piet. "I thought—but I don't know. Let us go and see what they have done to the chain."

Klein Piet had his tinderbox in his pocket; by the light he made, they both bent to look at the link on the ground.

"It is deeper," said Klein Piet. "The cut is half through the iron."

They went back to the camp in a silence of utter bewilderment. To his wife's look and the questions of the younger boys, Piet only answered that he had found no one. The old kafir had gone off without a word to his place among Piet's kafirs, and presently Susanna moved off to her bed in the wagon. Piet packed Jan and Andries off after her, and remained smoking by the fire with Klein Piet opposite him.

"Now," said Klein Piet, when they were alone; "what was it you saw?"

Piet took the pipe from his lips and gazed at him across the fire.

"As sure as death," he said, "I saw the pit swarming with men like birds over a wheatfield. And you?"

"I saw it too," answered Klein Piet. "And the men with the hammers—they were naked to the waist and hairy like baboons."

They stared at each other stupidly, half-aghast at the knowledge they shared. Their faces, in the firelight, were white and hard.

"Have we trekked too far?" said Piet, almost in a whisper. "Can a man trek to hell? God, there are those hammers again."

Clink, Clink! they sounded, pounding away in the night, clear and even as the ticking of a clock.

"They will have it cut by morning," whispered Klein Piet. "What will happen then?"

Piet was listening to the sounds, with his pipe poised in front of his mouth. He shook his head.

"I don't know," he answered. "But we will see. Klein Piet, you and I will keep the brand-wacht to-night. If anything is to happen, we will be awake for it."

"Yes, father," answered Klein Piet mechanically, and then the talk between them dropped. On either side of the fire they sat in long stages of silence, listening to the hammers plying in the night, their noise making a rhythm above the slow murmur of the water on the beach. A little wind got up, blowing from the north; it carried the scent of the seaweed and the damp sand to their nostrils and fanned their smoldering fire to a clearer glow. Somewhere in the bush a jackal sobbed like a lost child; the wood ask clicked and rustled as it burned out and settled down. And through it all, like the dominant of a harmony, the hammers spoke their unceasing clink and the darkness stirred like a windy arras.

Perhaps the rhythm lulled him somewhat; perhaps he was but sunk in a deeper thought; but Piet did not notice his son spring to his feet. Klein Piet shook him from his stupor; he came back to himself and to the agitated face of the young man leaning over him.

"The hammers have ceased," he shouted.

Klein Piet gabbled the words with lips that puckered and sagged in an ague of excitement. The elder man rose forthwith.

"Now we shall see!" he said.

He went down to crawl under one of the wagons into the open, but remained on his knees under it. Klein Piet, on all fours at his side, shivered and gulped. Their eyes wrestled with the baffling dark, and their pulses checked and raced; for something was moving out yonder. They could see but the loom of a great bulk, a blackness blacker than the night, something vast and tall—and it moved. As their eyes grew familiar with the darkness, they could see plainly that it moved; it seemed to slide slowly. Then, delicate but quite clear, some voice called and others answered. The sliding bulk took on an outline; it made a vague tracery against the faint sky as it neared them; each instant it was plainer to see. Piet, intent, every faculty set like a cocked pistol, noted a long flank, a tall, window-pierced structure that sloped. Old pictures and forgotten names fermented in his memory.

"Allemachtig! It's a ship," he cried.

Superbly she passed them, that lost galleon of the young world, slipped from her age-long anchorage. Her high sides were a-bristle with her guns; her sails were sheeted and her head was to the east. There was a great company of men on board of her; on her high poop, rising like a citadel, a little group of them was black and busy. As she passed down the beach, she dipped and lifted like a burdened ship in a seaway. It was then Klein Piet had his moment of madness. Suddenly he screamed like a girl and began to scramble forward. "Wait for me!" he cried. "I will go with you. I am a sailor too."

He would have run down towards her, but Piet grasped him and held on. He struggled and they rolled together on the grass, fighting with one another. Then Klein Piet ceased as suddenly as he had begun.

"I am better now," he gasped, and Piet let him rise. They stood up together and gazed seaward. A squall was blowing in from the east, thick and black, with a gleam of white water under it. Was it a sail they saw, a ship that heeled to the brisk wind and was screened from sight by the rain? They crawled back under the wagon as the first wetness lit on their faces, and sat there together.

"If you tell me you saw a ship," said Piet suddenly, "I will call you a liar."

"Yes," said Klein Piet. "I must be a liar, for I saw one."

When Oom Piet finished this tale, he was wont to knock out his pipe on the heel of his boot.

"But in the morning, when we went back to our work," he always added, "there was the chain—cut through!"

---

A FOOTPATH MORALITY
BY
LOUISE IMOGEN GUINE

Along the Hills, height after height

Tosses the dappled light;

Waters unhindered flow;

The cuckoo calls beyond the third hedgerow;

And young winds nothing can quell

Scale the wild-chestnut citadel,

Again to make

Its thousand faery white pagodas shake.

Up many a lane,

The blue vervain

A coverlid hath featly spread

For the bees' bed,

That those tired sylvan thieves

May lie most soft on the sweet and scalloped leaves.

To-morrow morn,

Will high uphold

Each cinquefoil of plain gold;

Hogwood in white will hood herself apace,

And betony flaunt a varied gypsy mace,

On the waste common by some rock

Her lone dark-centred wheel draw in

Long, long ere dusk begin.

This day

Of infinite May

Is far more fitly yours than ours,

O spirit-bodied flowers!

What heart disordered sore

Comes through the greenwood door,

Shall for your sake

Find sap and soil and dew, and shall not break:

And hearts beneath no ban

Will in your sight some penance do for man,

Poor lagging man, content to be

Sick with the impact of eternity,

Who might keep step with you in the low grass,

Best part of one strange pageant made in joy to pass!

Not ye, not ye, the privilege disown

To flourish fair, and fall fair, and be strewn

Deep in that Will of God, where blend

The origin of beauty and the end.

---

[TAFT AND LABOR]
BY
GEORGE W. ALGER

A labor record considered solely in its utilitarian aspect as a vote-getting device is not especially important to the general public. The attitude of a presidential candidate, however, towards the industrial and social problems of the working people is another matter. Does he know what they are? Does he see the great economic questions of labor and capital with eyes blinded by class prejudice or does he see them with the clear vision of a statesman? Does he intend to play a man's part in helping to solve them? The answer to these inquiries is of interest not merely to the capitalists and the workers but to all of us.

In his judicial career Mr. Taft has rendered some decisions in matters brought before him as a judge, which are bound to be a subject of discussion in the coming campaign. One group of these decisions deals with what may be described as rules of industrial warfare.

International agreement has done much toward civilizing international war. Capital and labor have no Hague Court. The limitations upon the scope and method of their warfare must come from the courts and the legislatures. The Treaty of Paris provided for the rights of neutrals, for the freedom of peaceful ships of commerce from plunder and destruction in war. The rights of neutrals in industrial war are less protected but are no less important. In that warfare the neutral party—the public—stands much as Mr. Pickwick did between the rival editors, receiving the fire-tongs on one side of the head and the carpet-bag on the other. The labor question in its militant phase is a public question largely because the public has no desire to occupy Mr. Pickwick's unhappy position.

It happens that all the so-called labor decisions which Judge Taft made when on the bench involve directly and primarily the rights of the general public and of outsiders having no direct part in any industrial quarrel, who against their will have been drawn into the warfare between capital and labor. In deciding these cases it has been necessary not only to consider the rights of labor in industrial disputes, but to pass upon the right of the general public and of disinterested outsiders to be let alone.

A Veto to Economic Excommunication

The first of these cases was one decided by Judge Taft in 1890 when he was a judge of the Superior Court of Cincinnati. A Bricklayers' Union in Cincinnati, having about four hundred members, had a dispute with the firm of Parker Brothers, contracting bricklayers. The Union wanted Parker Brothers to pay a fine it had imposed upon one of their employees who was a member of the Union, to reinstate an apprentice who had left them, and to discharge another apprentice. Parker Brothers refused to do so. A strike was accordingly called. The Union also declared a boycott against Parker Brothers, and its business agent issued a circular to material men, contractors, and owners, which concluded with this announcement: "Any firm dealing in building materials who ignores this request, is hereby notified that we will not work his material upon any building nor for any contractor by whom we are employed. (Signed) Bricklayers' Union No. 1." One of the contractors to whom this notice was sent was the Moore Lime Company, engaged in selling lime in Cincinnati. Parker Brothers were customers of the Moores, and the Moores continued selling lime to them, notwithstanding the notice. Another circular was then sent out by the Union to its members, which read as follows: "Bricklayers' Union No. 1, Ohio. We, the members of the Bricklayers' Union, will not use material supplied by the following dealers until further notice": and in the list they put Moore & Company. The effect of the circular was to interfere with Moore & Company's business and to cause loss to their customers, who feared a similar fate. On these facts the Moores sued the Union for damage which they claimed had been done to their business by a wrongful and malicious conspiracy. The case was tried by a jury, which gave the Moores $2,250 damages. An appeal was taken by the Union to the Superior Court of Cincinnati, where Judge Taft presided.

The facts just related show the issue involved. The Moores' employees had no grievance against them. The only grievance which the Bricklayers had against them was that they refused to permit themselves to be used as a battering-ram in an assault on Parker Brothers. The Union insisted on the right to boycott Moore's Lime Company because Moore's Lime Company would not assist them in injuring the Parkers. Judge Taft decided, as other judges have decided in many cases, that such a combination to injure the Moores was without just cause or legal excuse and was illegal. This, so far as the Moores were concerned, was not a strike case, but a boycott, and in his decision Taft was very careful to draw the distinction and so express himself that the legal rights of labor in a lawful strike should not be impaired. He says:

If the workmen of an employer refuse to work for him except on better terms at a time when their withdrawal will cause great loss to him, and they intentionally inflict such loss to coerce him to come to their terms, they are bona fide exercising their lawful right to dispose of their labor for the purpose of lawful gain. But the dealings between Parker Brothers and their material men, or between such material men and their customers had not the remotest natural connection either with defendants' wages or their other terms of employment. There was no competition or possible contractual relation between the plaintiffs and defendants, where their interests were naturally opposed. The right of the plaintiffs (Moore & Company) to sell their material was not one which, in its exercise, brought them into legitimate conflict with the rights of defendants' Union and its members to dispose of their labor as they chose. The conflict was brought about by the efforts of defendants to use plaintiffs' right of trade to injure Parker Brothers, and, upon failure of this, to use plaintiffs' customers' right of trade to injure plaintiffs. Such effort cannot be in the bona fide exercise of trade, is without just cause, and is, therefore, malicious. The immediate motive of defendants here was to show to the building world what punishment and disaster necessarily followed a defiance of their demands. The remote motive of wishing to better their condition by the power so acquired, will not, as we think we have shown, make any legal justification for defendants' acts.

The doctrine of excommunication, the great engine of the Church in the Middle Ages, has not been revived and transferred from the Pope to the labor unions.

End of the Engineers' Famous "Rule 12"

The next decision of Taft's in a labor dispute came after his elevation to the Federal Bench, and again involved the same principle—the extent to which the rights of a third party, against whom neither labor nor capital has any grievance, can be impaired by involving him against his will in labor disputes. This case arose out of a strike of locomotive engineers on the Toledo-Ann Arbor Railroad in 1893. The strike had been called after numerous conferences between the railroad officials and Mr. Arthur, the representative of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. It was a legitimate strike, as against the Toledo-Ann Arbor Railroad, for higher wages. The phase of the controversy which came into court for Judge Taft's consideration, however, was not the strike itself, but grew out of an attempt by the Union to compel other railroads to refuse to receive freight from the Toledo Road and thereby paralyze that road and coerce it into granting the demands of the engineers.

On March 7, 1893, Mr. Arthur sent to the chairman of the General Adjustment Committees of the Brotherhood on eleven railroad systems in Ohio and neighboring States the following telegram: "There is a legal strike in force upon the Toledo-Ann Arbor & North Michigan Railroad. See that the men on your road comply with the laws of the Brotherhood. Notify your general manager." A "legal" strike, as the term was used, meant one to which the Grand Chief of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers had consented, and meant the promulgation of Rule 12 of the organization, which provided in substance that after a strike had been declared against a railroad, it should, while the strike continued, be "a violation of obligation for a member of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers who may be employed on a railroad running in connection with or adjacent to said road, to handle the property belonging to said road or system in any way that may benefit said company with which the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers is at issue."

In obedience to Mr. Arthur's telegram, representatives of the Brotherhood on various railroads notified the general managers of these railroads that after a certain date the engineers would refuse to haul cars or freight forwarded by the Toledo Road. Some of these railroads thereafter notified the management of the Toledo Railroad that in view of the threatened actions of their own engineers, they would be obliged to discontinue receiving or forwarding freight for the road. The Toledo thereupon obtained from Judge Taft in the United States Circuit Court an injunction against the Pennsylvania Railroad and other railroad companies, enjoining them from refusing to handle its freight and commanding them to perform their railroad functions as required by the Interstate Commerce Act, which made it a criminal offense for connecting railroads to refuse to receive or transport freight from one another's lines. Mr. Arthur was made a party, and the injunction, issued, and sustained after hearing, directed him to rescind his order putting into effect Rule 12 of his organization. The decree did not require the employees of these other railroads to continue to work for the railroads if they saw fit to strike, but it did require them, as long as they were in the employ of those railroads, to handle the freight of the Toledo Road as they would the freight of any other road.

The opinion which Judge Taft wrote in this case is a long one. He quotes the provisions of the Interstate Commerce Act, which clearly made it a criminal offense for the officers, agents, or employees of any of these connecting roads wilfully to refuse to receive and transmit the freight of the Toledo Road, and declares that the attempt of the Locomotive Engineers to compel the railroads to commit this criminal offense through this Rule 12 was unlawful. As to the rule itself, he says, after an exhaustive examination of it in connection with the provisions of the Interstate Commerce Law:

We have thus considered with some care the criminal character of Rule 12 and its enforcement, not only, as will presently be seen, because it assists in determining the civil liabilities which grow out of them, but also because we wish to make it plain, if we can, to the intelligent and generally law-abiding men who compose the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, as well as to their usually conservative chief officer, what we cannot believe they appreciate, that notwithstanding their perfect organization and their charitable, temperance and other elevated and useful purposes, the existence of Rule 12 under their organic law makes the Brotherhood a criminal conspiracy against the laws of their country.

The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers acquiesced in the criticism of this section of their laws and removed it. The fact that this organization is in existence today, unimpaired in power and authority throughout the American railroad world, is an indication of its willingness to recognize and obey the law of the land. Its conduct in subsequently withdrawing the rule shows that Judge Taft was justified in setting forth with such painstaking clearness the illegality of the rule, with the expectation that its illegality would be recognized and the rule abolished—a confidence which was justified by its results.

Phelan Sentence in the Pullman Strike

The next labor decision made by Judge Taft was in the well-known Phelan case in the great Pullman strike of 1894. The organization with which he was then called upon to deal was of a totally different character from that of the Locomotive Engineers. It was one managed in entire disregard of the law, the courts, and the public. Eugene V. Debs, the chief agent of that organization, the American Railway Union, is today the Socialist candidate for the presidency. In the Pullman strike of 1894 Judge Taft sent one of Debs' chief assistants—Phelan—to jail for six months. If his judicial conduct in this matter merits criticism, here are the facts on which that criticism must be based:

Some of us have fairly hazy notions today as to the Pullman strike and what it was all about. It began in May, 1894. The employees of the Pullman Company, engaged in making cars at Pullman, Illinois, went on a strike because of the refusal of the Company to restore wages which had been reduced in the preceding year. The American Railway Union, which then comprised some two hundred and fifty thousand railway employees which Debs had organized and over which he was master in control, later endorsed this strike and started in actively to make it a success. The principal means by which that success was sought was by declaring a boycott on Pullman cars. In Judge Taft's opinion in the Phelan case (Thomas vs. Cincinnati, N. O. & T. P. Rd. Co.), he gives the plan and scope of this boycott as follows:

Pullman cars are used on a large majority of the railways of the country. The members of the American Railway Union, whose duty it was to handle Pullman cars on such railways, were to refuse to do so, with the hope that the railway companies, fearing a strike, would decline further to haul them in their trains and inflict a great pecuniary injury upon the Pullman Company. In case these railroads failed to yield to the demand, every effort was to be made to tie them up and cripple the doing of any business whatever by them, and particular attention was to be directed to the freight traffic, which it was known was the chief source of revenue. As the lodges of the American Railway Union extended from the Alleghany Mountains to the Pacific Coast, it will be seen that it was contemplated by those engaged in carrying out their plans, that in case of a refusal of the railway companies to join the Union in its attack upon the Pullman Company, there would be a paralysis of all railroad traffic of every kind throughout the vast territory traversed by the lines using Pullman cars.

Phelan came to Cincinnati to carry on this warfare against the Pullman Company by paralyzing, if he could, all the railroads centering there. He did not stop even with the railroads using Pullman cars, but ordered a strike against the Big Four, which used none of these cars. On the day Phelan called the strike in Cincinnati, Debs telegraphed to him to let the Big Four alone if it was not using Pullman cars, to which Phelan answered: "I cannot keep others out if Big Four is excepted. The rest are emphatic on all together or none. The tie-up is successful." Debs replied "About twenty-five lines are paralyzed. More following. Tremendous blockade." A few days later Debs telegraphed: "Advices from all points show our position strengthened. Baltimore & Ohio, Pan Handle, Big Four, Lake Shore, Erie, Grand Trunk, and Michigan Central are now in the fight. Take measures to paralyze all those which enter Cincinnati. Not a wheel turning between here and the Canadian line."

"Starvation of a Nation" Illegal

On the day that Debs telegraphed Phelan to take measures to paralyze all those lines which entered Cincinnati—work which was already well under way—at the very crisis of the strike, on the application of the receiver of the Cincinnati, New Orleans & Texas Pacific Railway Company, and on a petition which alleged a malicious conspiracy to prevent the receiver from operating that road, Phelan was arrested by an order of Judge Taft for inciting the employees of the receiver to quit their employment and for urging them to prevent others from taking their places, by persuasion if possible, by clubbing if necessary. The receiver asked for the commitment of Phelan for contempt, alleging that the whole boycott was an unlawful and criminal conspiracy, and that, for his acts in maliciously inciting the employees of the receiver, who was operating the railroad under order of the United States Court, to leave his employ in pursuance of that unlawful combination, Phelan was in contempt of court.

Was the combination of Debs and his associates illegal? Judge Taft said that it was, not only because boycotts are illegal under the law of every State in the Union where the question has arisen, with one possible exception, but because this combination of men, in their efforts to gain their own personal ends, had trampled upon the rights of the public. He said:

The railroads have become as necessary to the life and health and comfort of the people of the country as are the arteries in the human body, and yet Debs and Phelan and their associates propose, by inciting the employees of all the railways in the country to suddenly quit their service without any dissatisfaction with the terms of their employment, to paralyze utterly all the traffic by which the public live, and in this way to compel Pullman, for whose acts neither the public nor the railway companies are in the slightest degree responsible and over whose acts they can lawfully exercise no control, to pay more wages to his employees. Certainly the starvation of a nation cannot be a lawful purpose of a combination, and it is utterly immaterial whether the purpose is effected by means usually lawful or otherwise.

The "starvation of a nation," for such purposes, by such means, stopped, so far as Phelan was concerned, on the day these words were read by Judge Taft—the 13th day of July, 1894. It stopped because after a protracted and exciting trial, in which many witnesses were called and Phelan was fully heard in his own defense, Taft sent Phelan to jail for six months. Those who believe that the starvation of a nation is within the rights of labor engaged in a private quarrel, must tell us wherein this Judge did wrong.

These three cases are legal landmarks showing the limitations of industrial warfare. They are what the lawyers call "leading cases." They lay down clearly and dispassionately the law which marks the rights of the public to remain unmolested by the conflict of labor and capital at war. Such decisions are in American law what the Treaty of Paris is in the Law of Nations—a declaration of the rights of neutrals.

If, as a candidate for the presidency, Mr. Taft is to suffer from unpopularity created in any quarter by these decisions which he made as judge, he must endure it, for the search for popularity is not a part of the functions of a judge.

The Courage of Great Judges

The picture of Taft in the Phelan case, reading in a court-room crowded with angry and hostile men a decision which was to send their leader to jail; a decision which was to play a large part in determining one of the most distressing industrial wars of our day;—this picture recalls another court, another great occasion long ago.

In 1768 John Wilkes, who had been prosecuted relentlessly by the British Crown, and who had been outlawed and driven to France, returned to England, appeared before Lord Mansfield in the Court of Kings Bench, and demanded that the judgment of outlawry be reversed. The nation was frenzied by faction. Abuse and threats of personal violence were heaped upon the Chief Justice. In a courtroom crowded with the enemies of Wilkes, the greatest of English judges reversed and annulled the decree of outlawry. In doing it, he gave what seemed a death blow to his own favor with the King, who had placed the judicial ermine on his shoulders. After he had rendered this judgment, facing the angry sycophants of the Crown, he spoke these words:

If during the King's reign I have ever supported his government and assisted his measures, I have done it without any other reward than the consciousness of doing what I thought right. If I have ever opposed, I have done it upon the points themselves, without mixing in party or faction, and without any collateral views. I honor the King and respect the people; but many things required by the favor of either are, in my account, objects not worth ambition. I wish popularity, but it is that popularity which follows, not that which is run after. It is that popularity which, sooner or later, never fails to do justice to the pursuit of noble ends by noble means. I will not do that which my conscience tells me is wrong, upon this occasion, to gain the huzzas of thousands, or the daily praise of all the papers which come from the press. I will not avoid doing what I think is right, though it should draw on me the whole artillery of libels; all that falsehood and malice can invent or that the credulity of a deluded populace can swallow.

The two qualities which make a great judge are wisdom and moral courage. No great judge ever lived who did not possess them both. When the Phelan case was on trial before Judge Taft, it was a time of tremendous excitement. It was the very crisis of a great strike. The friends of the Judge feared for his life and asked him not to read his decision from the bench. He read it. The last sentence of that decision directed the marshal safely to convey Phelan to the Warren County Jail. When he read that final sentence he turned to the packed court-room and looking squarely into the angry faces before him said: "If there is any power in the army of the United States to run those trains, the trains will be run." To those who honor judicial courage no less than judicial wisdom, such occasions deserve to be recalled and remembered, for they are part of the great traditions of the bench.

But these decisions are not solely declarations of public rights. They contain statements of the legal rights of labor organizations in strikes, stated so clearly that the decisions have been cited time and again in subsequent litigation by labor organizations themselves as precedents in their favor. They affirm unequivocally the right of labor organizations to strike to better the condition of their members, and the right to use peaceable persuasion to prevent other employees from taking the place of strikers, a right which in some jurisdictions, particularly Pennsylvania, has been denied.

The Right to Strike

Quite apart from his judicial decisions, Taft's position on the strike question is clearly stated in public addresses. Last January, at Cooper Institute, he said to an audience of workingmen: "Now what is the right of the labor unions with respect to the strike? I know that there has been at times a suggestion in the law that no strike can be legal. I deny this. Men have the right to leave the employ of their employer in a body in order to impose on him as great an inconvenience as possible to induce him to come to their terms. They have the right in their labor unions to delegate to a leader power to say when to strike. They have the right in advance to accumulate by contributions of all members of the labor union a fund which shall enable them to live during the strike. They have the right to use persuasion with all other employees who are invited to take their places in order to convince them of the advantage to labor of united action. It is the business of the courts and the police to respect these rights with the same degree of care that they respect the owners of capital in the protection of their property and business."

No public man has placed himself more clearly on record on the so-called injunction question. The plank of the Republican platform which advocates a modification of the present federal court practice, under which injunctions are issued without notice to organizations sought to be enjoined, is a plank adopted at Mr. Taft's request and suggestion. The jurist who, in a decision in the coal mine cases of 1902 in West Virginia, described an organization which has done more for the coal miners than any other social force, the United Mine Workers, as a band of walking delegates fattening on the poor and ignorant, declared in the same decision that no injunction had ever been issued in strike cases which was not entirely justified by the facts. Judge Taft says this is not true; that such injunctions have been issued unjustly; and in his Cooper Union address he said:

But it is said that the writ of injunction has been abused in this country in labor disputes and that a number of injunctions have been issued which ought never to have been issued. I agree that there has been abuse in this regard. President Roosevelt referred to it in his last message. I think it has grown largely from the practice of issuing injunctions ex parte, that is, without giving notice or hearing to the defendants.... Under the original Federal judiciary act it was not permissible for the Federal courts to issue an injunction without notice. There had to be notice, and, of course, a hearing. I think it would be entirely right in this class of cases to amend the law and provide that no temporary restraining order should issue until after notice and a hearing.

He at the same time expressed himself in favor of having contempt proceedings for violations of injunctions heard by a judge other than the one who issued the injunction. But to the proposal that in such cases the ancient power of the courts to protect their own dignity and authority be taken from them and turned over to juries of laymen selected by interested parties and subject to all the passions and prejudices inevitable in such trials—to this he is opposed.

The Laborer's Right to Protection

One decision of Judge Taft's on a highly important labor question has been generally overlooked and deserves mention. The interests of labor in the law are not confined to strike questions. Its rights in peace are no less important than in war. The working people are deeply interested in the enforcement of laws which protect them against unnecessary dangers in employment. The position of Judge Taft on this important question is best shown by the contrast made by one of his decisions (Narramore vs. C., C., C. & St. Louis Railroad Co.) with the leading case in New York on the same subject. Both of these cases involve statutes directing employers to furnish certain specific protection for the safety of employees. In both cases the employer failed to obey the law which required the furnishing of that protection. The New York Court of Appeals decided that notwithstanding the statute, if the employee stayed at work knowing that the employer had not obeyed the law, and knowing the danger created by the employer's failure to obey the law, by the mere fact of his remaining at work, the employee assumed as a matter of law the risks of being injured and could have no claims against the employer for injuries so sustained. This construction obviously makes the protective statute a dead letter and absolutely worthless.

Judge Taft, in a case in which this same reasoning was advanced, and in which the decision of this New York Court of Appeals was cited as an authority, refused to follow it and rendered a decision which leaves full vitality to protective legislation. The case was one in which a railroad company had failed to obey the law which required it to fill or block frogs and furnish guard rails on their tracks. The plaintiff, a railway employee, kept at work, knowing that the frogs were not blocked, and was hurt through the absence of the protection which the statute required the railroad to furnish him. He had a verdict from the jury, the railroad appealed, and its lawyer, Judson Harmon, argued that the verdict should be set aside because the man had kept at work knowing the railroad's violation of the law, and had therefore by legal implication contracted with the railroad to take all the chances of being hurt. Judge Taft refused to follow the New York case, declaring:

The only ground for passing such a statute is found in the inequality of terms upon which the railroad company and its servants deal in regard to the dangers of their employment. The manifest legislative purpose was to protect the servant by positive law, because he had not previously shown himself capable of protecting himself by contract, and it would entirely defeat its purpose thus to permit the servant to contract the master out of the statute.

This case has been cited all over the United States by counsel for workmen injured through the failure of their employers to furnish the protection required by statute for their safety. Perhaps a majority of the State courts follow the New York case, and say that protective legislation intended for the benefit of working men at work is of no legal value to them if they stay at work. The legal theory on which the workman assumes the risks of personal injury need not here be discussed. Judge Taft, however, decided that when a law is made applying to a dangerous business, in which four thousand men are killed and sixty-five thousand are injured every year, the intention was that the railroads should obey that law, and it should not be nullified "by construction." In this conclusion he does not lack judicial support of high character.

This, in substance, is Taft's labor record so far as his judicial career is concerned. Its consideration by the general public can be useful but for one purpose, which is this: A country like ours cannot afford to elect a class president. It cannot afford to elect a president in whose mind the distinction between lawlessness and personal rights is not clear and distinct; who to please one class will weaken the foundations of the liberty and peace of a whole nation. It can still less afford to elect a president to whom the working people are but pawns on the chessboard, and to whom prosperity means peace at any price by the sacrifice of the rights of the working people, so long as the mills are at work and property is secure in the possessions which it has somehow acquired. The enemies of our democracy are at both extremes.

The Socialists attacked Roosevelt with greater bitterness than any president who had preceded him, because he had not been a class president, and because he had not ignored the interests and rights of the working people and thereby helped still further to increase the constantly growing "class-conscious" body of dissatisfied men marching under the Socialists' banner. That section of the press which supports lawless property has attacked him because he has disturbed "values" and "vested interests." There is no sure protection for property but justice. Suppression of the labor organizations will not insure it; they should not and cannot be suppressed. Nor is there on the other hand any protection for the public if at the demands of a class, no matter how large its voting strength, the peace of the whole country is to be jeopardized by weakening the foundations of law which impose just limitations on industrial warfare. We need for president a man who will recognize and protect the just rights of both rich and poor and thereby protect American democracy against its class enemies. By these standards Mr. Taft must be judged.

---