List of Illustrations

Nicholas II., The Tsar of Russia and The Tsarevitch[483]
State Councillor Alexander Mikhailovich Bezobrazoff[484]
Admiral Alexeieff[485]
Sergius de Witte[486]
Two Views of Port Arthur[488]
Taken at the Time of the War[489]
Map Showing Field of the Operations that led to the War between
Russia and Japan		[493]
"'I'd be glad to do it as a favor,' he said."[502]
"'I cannot fight this peasant—I am a gentleman'."”[504]
"'It was of a suddenness, said Angélique blushing"[505]
"That fight will long be remembered in the annals of the gang.[506]
"An admiring concourse of small boys followed at a respectful distance.[508]
"Most of the hotel negroes spent this recess in an adjacent dive."[512]
"It was into this atmosphere that the student took his way"[515]
"Heah's an ole devil i used to wrastle with,' he exclaimed shrilly"[517]
"Old benjy continued to blink silently"[519]
Four Drawings by Thomas R. Manley:[523]
1. Drawing.[523]
2. Drawing.[524]
3. Drawing.[525]
4. Drawing.[526]
Dr. Emil Preetorius[544]
Schuyler Colfax[544]
Ulysses S. Grant[545]
Francis Preston Blair[546]
Horatio Seymour[546]
John B. Henderson[547]
Senator Charles D. Drake[548]
Alexander T. Stewart[550]
"'Are you interested in poetry, sir?' he said"[558]
"'He used language to me, sir, and i am hiss sergeant'"[559]
[No caption] "And so he continued his recital."[560]
[No caption] Miss Cora?[561]
William Ewart Gladstone.[567]
Lord Randolph Churchill.[567]
The Princess of Wales.[568]
Melba as Marguerite in "Faust".[569]
Mrs. Craigie (John Oliver Hobbes).[569]
C. L. Dodgson (Lewis Carroll).[570]
J. M. Barrrie.[571]
Ellen Terry and her son, Gordon Craig, in "The Dead Heart".[572]
Ellen Terry as Mistress Page in "Merry Wives of Windsor".[572]
Ellen Terry as Lady Cecily Waynflete in "Captain
Brassbound's Conversion".		[573]
George Bernard Shaw.[574]
Miss Terry's Garden at Winchelsea; from a Photograph given
by her to Miss Evelyn Smalley.		[575]
"Terrible tales of bloodshed and injustice reached the little sun-kissed
village of Caen".		[578]
"At last, toward evening, she forced her way in".[580]
"'I kiss the tips of your wings,' he said".[582]

STATE COUNCILLOR ALEXANDER MIKHAILOVICH BEZOBRAZOFF

WHO ACQUIRED HIS EXTRAORDINARY POWER IN THE FAR EAST BY MEANS OF HIS KOREAN TIMBER COMPANY, AN ENTERPRISE IN WHICH HE INTERESTED THE TSAR OF RUSSIA TO THE EXTENT OF 2,000,000 RUBLES. RATHER THAN SACRIFICE THE FAMILY INVESTMENT IN THIS ENTERPRISE, THE TSAR ALLOWED RUSSIA TO BE DRAGGED INTO A WAR WITH JAPAN

I have chosen, as the subject for this article, General Kuropatkin's narrative of the events which preceded the rupture with Japan, in February, 1904, and which may be regarded, historically, as the causes of the war that ensued. It contains many new facts, and throws a flood of light upon Russian governmental methods, upon Russia's Asiatic policy, and upon the character of the monarch who now sits on the Russian throne.

Kuropatkin begins this part of his work with a review of Russia's policy and territorial acquisitions in the Far East, which may be briefly summarized as follows: The question of obtaining an outlet on the Pacific Ocean was theoretically considered in Russia long ago; and the conclusion reached was that, in view of the sparseness of Russia's population east of Lake Baikal, and the insignificance of her commerce, foreign and domestic, in that part of the world, the task of getting access to the Pacific, which might involve a serious struggle, ought not to be imposed upon the existing generation. An outlet was not needed at that time, and it is not needed yet. The Russian War Department, moreover, has always regarded with apprehension, and as far as possible combatted, the opinion that "Russia is the most western of Asiatic states, not the most eastern of European," and that all her future lies beyond the Urals.

Prior to the Japanese-Chinese war, nobody questioned that the trans-Siberian railway should follow a route inside of Russian territory; but the weakness shown by China in 1894-5 suggested a new project, namely, to carry the road through Manchuria and thus shorten it by five hundred versts. General Dukhovski, governor-general of the Pri-Amur and commander of the forces in that territory, opposed this project, and pointed out that a line crossing the boundaries of China would not connect the Pri-Amur with European Russia securely, and would benefit the Chinese rather than the Russian population. His opinion was not approved, and this railroad, which had for Russia such immense importance, was carried through a foreign country. This change of route, which proved to be so unfortunate, was the first striking proof of the fact that Russia, in the Far East, had begun a policy of energetic action. The occupation of Port Arthur, the foundation of Dalny, the construction of the southern branch of the railway, the formation of a commercial fleet on the Pacific, and the timber enterprise of State Councillor Bezobrazoff on the Yalu River in northern Korea, were all links of one and the same chain, which was to unite permanently the destinies of Russia and the destinies of the Far East—and thus bring gain to Russia.

ADMIRAL ALEXEIEFF

WHO SECRETLY SUPPORTED BEZOBRAZOFF IN HIS EFFORTS TO DELAY THE EVACUATION OF SOUTHERN MANCHURIA AND TO BRING THE RUSSIAN ARMS INTO KOREA FOR THE EXPLOITATION OF HIS TIMBER ENTERPRISE. IN RETURN FOR ALEXEIEFF'S SERVICES, BEZOBRAZOFF USED HIS INFLUENCE WITH THE TSAR TO GET ALEXEIEFF APPOINTED VICEROY

"There is a prevalent opinion," says Kuropatkin, "that if we had confined ourselves to the construction of the main trans-Siberian road, even though we built a part of it through northern Manchuria, there would have been no war; that the war was caused by our occupation of Port Arthur and Mukden, and, more particularly, by the Bezobrazoff timber enterprise in Korea. There is also an opinion, held by others, that the building of the main line through northern Manchuria should be regarded not merely as the first of our active enterprises in the Far East, but as the basis and foundation of them all, because if we had carried the road along the Amur, through our own territory, we should never have thought of occupying the southern part of Manchuria and the province of Kwang-tung."

After reviewing the Boxer uprising, the occupation of Manchuria by Russian troops for the protection of the railway, and the treaty agreement with China to evacuate southern Manchuria by April 8, 1903, and northern Manchuria within six months thereafter, General Kuropatkin, who was at that time Minister of War, begins his narrative of later events as follows:

THE SECRET CAUSES OF THE WAR WITH JAPAN
BY
GENERAL KUROPATKIN

Prior to the conclusion of the treaty with China, in April, 1902, there was a difference of opinion between the commander of Kwang-tung (Admiral Alexeieff) and myself, as to the expediency of evacuating Manchuria, and the importance to us of the southern part of that country. I believed that occupation of southern Manchuria would bring us no profit, but, on the contrary, would involve us in trouble with Japan on one side, through our nearness to Korea, and with China on the other, through our possession of Mukden. I therefore regarded the speedy evacuation of southern Manchuria and Mukden as a matter of extreme necessity. Admiral Alexeieff, on the other hand, as the commander of Kwang-tung, had reason to contend that occupation of southern Manchuria was important because it insured the safety of railroad communication between Kwang-tung and Russia.

This difference of opinion, however, ended with the ratification of the Russo-Chinese treaty of March 26, 1902 (April 8, N. S.). By the terms of that convention, our troops—with the exception of those guarding the railway—were to be removed, within specified periods, from all parts of Manchuria, southern as well as northern. This settlement of the question, was a great relief to the War Department, because it held out the hope of a "return to the West" in our military affairs. In the first period of six months, we were to evacuate the western part of southern Manchuria, from Shan-hai-kuan to the river Liao; and this we punctually did. In the second period of six months, we were to remove our troops from the rest of the province of Mukden, including the cities of Mukden and Yinkow (New Chwang).

SERGIUS DE WITTE

FORMER RUSSIAN MINISTER OF FINANCE, WHO BUILT UP EXTENSIVE RUSSIAN INTERESTS IN MANCHURIA, AND CREATED THE PORT OF DALNY, AN ACT WHICH KUROPATKIN CLAIMS TO HAVE WEAKENED THE STRENGTH OF PORT ARTHUR

The War Department regarded the agreement to evacuate the province of Mukden with approval, and made energetic preparations to carry it into effect. Barracks for the soldiers to be withdrawn were hastily erected between Blagovestchensk and Vladivostok, in the Pri-Amur country; plans of transportation were drawn up and approved; the movement of troops had begun; and Mukden had actually been evacuated; when, suddenly, everything was stopped by order of Admiral Alexeieff, the commander of Kwang-tung, whose reasons for taking such action have not, to this day, been sufficiently cleared up.[1] It is definitely known, however, that the change in policy which stopped the withdrawal of troops from southern Manchuria corresponded in time with the first visit to the Far East of State Councillor Bezobrazoff, retired. Mukden, which we had already evacuated, was6 reoccupied, as was also the city of Yinkow (New Chwang). The Yalu timber enterprise assumed more importance than ever, and in order to give support to it, and to our other undertakings in northern Korea, Admiral Alexeieff, commander of Kwang-tung, sent a force of cavalry with field guns to Feng-wang-cheng.[2] Thus, instead of completing the evacuation of southern Manchuria, we moved into parts of it that we had never before occupied. At the same time, we allowed operations in connection with the Korean timber enterprise to go on, despite the fact that the promoters of this enterprise, contrary to instructions from St. Petersburg, were striving to give it a political and military character.

There is good reason to affirm that the unexpected change of policy that put a stop to the evacuation of the province of Mukden was an event of immense importance. So long as we held to our intention of withdrawing all our troops from Manchuria (except the railway guard and a small force at Kharbin), and so long as we refrained from invading Korea with our enterprises, there was little danger of a break with Japan; but we were brought alarmingly nearer to a rupture with that Power when, contrary to our agreement with China, we left our troops in southern Manchuria, and when, in the promotion of our timber enterprise, we entered northern Korea. The uncertainty, moreover, with regard to our intentions, alarmed not only China and Japan, but even England, America, and other Powers.

COUNT LAMSDORFF

FORMER RUSSIAN MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS, WHO COÖPERATED WITH WITTE AND KUROPATKIN IN TRYING TO PREVENT WAR WITH JAPAN

Witte Creates the Port of Dalny

In the early part of 1903, our situation in the Far East became very much involved. The interests of the Pri-Amur were thrown completely into the background, and General Dukhovski, the military commander and governor-general of that territory, was wholly ignored in the consideration and decision of the most important questions of Far Eastern policy. Meanwhile, in Manchuria—on Chinese territory—enterprises involving many millions of rubles were undertaken and carried on by virtue of authority that was wholly special. The Minister of Finance (M. Witte) was building and managing there a railroad about two thousand versts in length; he had the direction of a whole army corps of railway guards; he was trying to increase the economic importance of the railway by running in connection with it a fleet of sea-going steamers; he had on the Manchurian rivers a flotilla of smaller vessels, some of which carried guns and gunners; and in military matters he was so independent of the War Department that, without consulting the latter, he even selected and purchased abroad the artillery for the railway guard. Vladivostok, as a terminus, no longer seemed to satisfy the requirements of an international transit line, so, regardless of the fact that the province of Kwang-tung was subject to the authority of the provincial commander, M. Witte, without consulting either the latter or the Minister of War, located and created therein the spacious port of Dalny. The enormous sums of money spent there only lessened the importance and weakened the strength of Port Arthur, because it was necessary either to fortify Dalny, or prepare to have it seized by an enemy and used as a base of operations against us—a thing that afterward happened. Finally, the Minister of Finance managed the affairs of the Russo-Chinese Bank, and had at Peking, Seoul, and other points, his own agents (in Peking, Pokotiloff).

Incredible Schemes of Promoter Bezobrazoff

It thus appears that in 1903 M. Witte controlled or directed in the Far East not only railroads, but corps of troops, a fleet of commercial steamers, armed river boats, the port of Dalny, and the Russo-Chinese Bank. At the same time, Bezobrazoff and his company were developing their enterprises in Manchuria and Korea, and promoting, by every possible means, their timber speculation on the Yalu. One incredible scheme of Bezobrazoff followed another; and in the summer of 1903 there was submitted to me for examination a project of his which provided for the immediate concentration in southern Manchuria of an army of 70,000 men. His aim was to utilize the timber company as a means of creating a sort of "screen," or barrier against a possible attack upon us by the Japanese, and in 1902-1903 his activity, and that of his adherents, assumed a very alarming form. Among the requests that he made of Admiral Alexeieff were, to send into Korean territory six hundred soldiers in civilian dress; to organize for service in the same locality a force of three thousand Khunkhuzes[3]; to give the agents of the timber company the support of four companies of chasseurs (six hundred mounted riflemen) to be stationed at Shakhedze, on the Yalu; and to occupy Feng-wang-cheng with a body of troops capable of acting independently. Admiral Alexeieff denied some of these requests, but, unfortunately, he consented to station one company of chasseurs (one hundred and fifty mounted riflemen) at Shakhedze, and to send a regiment of Cossack cavalry, with field guns, to Feng-wang-cheng. These measures were particularly serious and injurious to us, for the reason that they were taken at the very time when we were under obligations to evacuate the province of Mukden altogether.

Copyright, 1905, by Underwood & Underwood

TWO VIEWS OF PORT ARTHUR

LOOKING ACROSS THE OLD TOWN OF PORT ARTHUR AND ACROSS THE NAVAL BASIS, FROM A HIGH HILL TO THE NORTH OF THE CITY

The Ministers of Finance, Foreign Affairs, and War (Witte, Lamsdorff and Kuropatkin) all recognized the danger that would threaten us if we continued to defer fulfilment of our promise to evacuate Manchuria, and, more especially, if we failed to put an end to Bezobrazoff's activity in Korea. These three Ministers, therefore, procured the appointment of a special council, which assembled in St. Petersburg on the 5th of April, 1903 (April 18, N. S.), and took into consideration certain propositions which Bezobrazoff had made to its members separately in writing. These propositions had for their object the strengthening of Russia's strategic position in the basin of the Yalu. All three of the Ministers above designated expressed themselves firmly and definitely in opposition to Bezobrazoff's proposals, and all agreed that if his enterprise on the Yalu were to be sustained, it must be upon a strictly commercial basis. The Minister of Finance showed conclusively that, for the next five or ten years, Russia's task in the Far East must be to tranquilize the country and bring to completion the work already undertaken there. He said, furthermore, that although the views of the different departments of the Government were not always precisely the same, there had never been—so far as the Ministers of War, Foreign Affairs, and Finance were concerned—any conflict of action. The Minister of Foreign Affairs pointed out, particularly, the danger involved in Bezobrazoff's proposal to stop the withdrawal of troops from Manchuria.

Copyright, 1905, by Underwood & Underwood

TAKEN AT THE TIME OF THE WAR

ON THE TERRACE JUST ABOVE THE WHARVES. THE HIGH PROMONTORY AT THE LEFT IS PART OF THE GOLDEN HILL, WHERE THERE ARE IMMENSELY STRONG FORTIFICATIONS, AND WHERE THE RUSSIANS MAINTAINED AN IMPORTANT SIGNAL STATION UNTIL STOESSEL's SURRENDER

The Tsar Takes Action

It pleased His Imperial Majesty to say, after he had listened to these expressions of opinion, that war with Japan was extremely undesirable, and that we must endeavor to restore in Manchuria a state of tranquillity. The company formed for the purpose of exploiting the timber on the river Yalu must be a strictly commercial organization, must admit foreigners who desired to participate, and must exclude all ranks of the army. I was then ordered to proceed to the Far East, for the purpose of acquainting myself, on the ground, with our needs, and ascertaining what the state of mind was in Japan. In the latter country, where I met with the most cordial and kind-hearted reception, I became convinced that the Government desired to avoid a rupture with Russia, but that it would be necessary for us to act in a perfectly definite way in Manchuria, and to refrain from interference in the affairs of Korea. If we should go on with the adventure of Bezobrazoff & Co., we should be threatened with conflict. These conclusions I telegraphed to St. Petersburg. After my departure from that city, however, the danger of a rupture with Japan, on account of Korea, had increased considerably—especially when, on the 7th of May, 1903 (May 20, N. S.), the Minister of Finance announced that "after having had an explanation from State Councillor Bezobrazoff, he (the Minister) was not in disagreement with him, so far as the essence of the matter was concerned."

In the council that was held at Port Arthur, when I arrived there, Admiral Alexeieff, Lessar,[4] Pavloff,[5] and I cordially agreed that the Yalu enterprise should have a purely commercial character, and I said, furthermore, that, in my opinion, it ought to be abandoned altogether. I brought about the recall of several army officers who were taking part in it, and suggested to Lieutenant Colonel Madritoff, who was managing the military and political side of it, that he either resign his commission or give up employment which, in my judgment, was not suitable for an officer wearing the uniform of the General Staff. He chose the former alternative.

In view of the repeated assurances given me by Admiral Alexeieff that he was wholly opposed to Bezobrazoff's schemes; that he was holding them back with all his strength; and that he was a convinced advocate of a peaceful Russo-Japanese agreement, I left Port Arthur for St. Petersburg, in July, 1903 (O. S.), fully believing that the avoidance of a rupture with Japan was a matter entirely within our control. The results of my visit to the Far East were embodied in a special report to the Emperor, submitted July 24th, 1903 (August 6, N. S.), in which, with absolute frankness, I expressed the opinion that if we did not put an end to the uncertain state of affairs in Manchuria, and to the adventurous activity of Bezobrazoff in Korea, we must expect a rupture with Japan. Copies of this report were sent to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of Finance, and met with their approval.

Kuropatkin's Protest Criticised

By some means unknown to me, this report was given publicity; and on the 11th of June, 1905 (June 24, N. S.), the newspaper Razsvet printed an article, by one Roslavleff, entitled "Which is the Greater?" the object of which was to prove that I must be included among the persons responsible for the rupture with Japan, because, through fear of Bezobrazoff, I signed the minutes of the Port Arthur council which put the Yalu enterprise under the protection of Russian troops and thus stopped the evacuation of Manchuria.[6] This article has been reprinted by many Russian and foreign journals, and there has never been any refutation of the misstatements that it contains with regard to my alleged action in signing certain fantastic minutes. M. Roslavleff quotes from my report to the Emperor the following sentences and paragraphs:

"Our actions in the basin of the Yalu and our behavior in Manchuria have excited in Japan a feeling of hostility to us, which, upon our taking any incautious step, may lead to war.... State Secretary Bezobrazoff's plan of operations, if carried out, will inevitably lead to a violation of the agreement that we made with China on the 26th of March, 1902 (April 8, N. S.), and will also cause, inevitably, complications with Japan.... The activity of State Secretary Bezobrazoff, toward the end of last year and at the beginning of this, has practically brought about already a violation of the treaty with China and a breach with Japan.... At the request of Bezobrazoff, Admiral Alexeieff sent a force of chasseurs to Shakhedze (on the Yalu) and kept a body of troops in Feng-wang-cheng. These measures put a stop to the evacuation of the province of Mukden.... Among other participants in the Yalu enterprise who have given trouble to Admiral Alexeieff is Actual State Councillor Balasheff, who has a disposition quite as warlike as that of Bezobrazoff. If Admiral Alexeieff had not succeeded in intercepting a dispatch from Balasheff to Captain Bodisco, with regard to 'catching all the Japanese,' 'punishing them publicly,' and 'taking action with volleys,' there would have been a bloody episode on the Yalu before this time.[7] Unfortunately, it is liable to happen any day, even now.... During my stay in Japan, I had an opportunity to see with what nervous apprehension the people regarded our activity on the Yalu, how they exaggerated our intentions, and how they were preparing to defend, with arms, their Korean interests. Our active operations there have convinced them that Russia is now about to proceed to the second part of her Far Eastern program—that, having swallowed Manchuria, she is getting ready to gulp down Korea. The excitement in Japan is such that if Admiral Alexeieff had not shown wise caution—if he had allowed all the proposals of Bezobrazoff to go through—we should probably be at war with Japan now. There is no reason whatever to suppose that a few officers and soldiers, cutting timber on the Yalu, will be of any use in a war with Japan. Their value is trifling in comparison with the danger that the timber enterprise creates by keeping up the excitement among the Japanese people.... Suffice it to say that, in the opinion of Admiral Alexeieff, and of our ministers in Peking, Seoul, and Tokio, the timber enterprise may be the cause of war; and in this opinion I fully concur."

After quoting the above sentences and paragraphs from my report, M. Roslavleff says: "Thus warmly, eloquently, and shrewdly did Kuropatkin condemn the Yalu adventure, and thus clearly did he see, on the political horizon, the ruinous consequences that it would have for Russia. But why did not this bold and clear-sighted accuser protest against the decision of the Port Arthur council? Why, after making a few caustic remarks about Bezobrazoff, did he sign the minutes of the council which put the Yalu adventure under the protection of Russian troops, and thus stopped the evacuation of Manchuria? Why? Simply because, at that time, everybody was afraid of Bezobrazoff."

Such accusations, which have had wide publicity, require an explanation.

The council held at Port Arthur, in June, 1903, was called for the purpose of finding, if possible, some means of settling the Manchurian question without lowering the dignity of Russia. There were present at this council, in addition to Admiral Alexeieff and myself, Actual State Councillor Lessar, Russian minister in China; Chamberlain Pavloff, Russian minister in Seoul; Major General Vogak; State Councillor Bezobrazoff; and M. Plançon, an officer of the diplomatic service. We were all acquainted with the will of the Emperor that our enterprises in the Far East should not lead to war, and we had to devise means of carrying the Imperial will into effect. With regard to such means there were differences of opinion; but upon fundamental questions there was complete agreement. Among such fundamental questions were:

1. The Manchurian question.

On the 20th of June (July 3, N. S.) the council expressed its judgment with regard to this question as follows: "In view of the extraordinary difficulties and enormous administrative expenses that the annexation of Manchuria would involve, all the members of the council agree that it is, in principle, undesirable; and this conclusion applies not only to Manchuria as a whole, but also to its northern part."

2. The Korean question.

On the 19th of June (July 2, N. S.) the council decided that the occupation of the whole of Korea, or even of the northern part, would be unprofitable to Russia, and therefore undesirable. Our activity in the basin of the Yalu, moreover, might give Japan reason to fear a seizure by us of the northern part of the peninsula. On the 24th of June (July 7, N. S.) the council invited Actual State Councillor Balasheff and Lieutenant Colonel Madritoff, of the General Staff, to appear before it, and explain the status of the Yalu enterprise. From their testimony it appeared that the business was legally organized, the company holding permits from the Chinese authorities to cut timber on the northern side of the Yalu, and a concession from the Korean Government covering the southern side. Although the enterprise lost, to some extent, its provocative character, after the conclusions of the St. Petersburg council of April 5, 1903 (April 18, N. S.) became known in the province of Kwang-tung, its operations could not yet be regarded as purely commercial. Its affairs were managed by Lieutenant Colonel Madritoff, of the General Staff, although that officer was not officially in service.

After consideration of all the facts presented, the members of the council came to the conclusion that "although the Russian Timber Company really appears to be a commercial organization, its employment of officers of the active military service to do work that has military importance undoubtedly gives to it a politico-military aspect." The council, therefore, acknowledged the necessity of "taking measures, at once, to give the enterprise an exclusively commercial character, to exclude from it officers of the regular army, and to commit the management of the timber business to persons not employed in the service of the Empire." On the 24th of June (July 7, N. S.) these conclusions were signed by all the members of the council, including State Councillor Bezobrazoff.

It is evident, from the facts above set forth, that the statement in which M. Roslavleff charges the members of the council with signing minutes of proceedings that gave the Bezobrazoff adventure a place among useful imperial enterprises is fiction. Upon what it was based we do not know. The duty of immediately carrying into effect the conclusions of the council rested upon Admiral Alexeieff, by virtue of the authority given to him. The thing that he had to do, first of all, and that he was fully empowered to do, was to recall our force from Feng-wang-cheng and the company of chasseurs from the Yalu. Why this was not done I do not know. Personally, I did not allow Lieutenant Colonel Madritoff to continue his connection with the timber company as an officer of the General Staff, and I may add that he and other officers who associated themselves with the enterprise did so without consulting me.

But no matter how effective might be the measures taken by Admiral Alexeieff to give the Yalu enterprise a purely commercial character, I still feared that this undertaking, which had obtained world-wide notoriety, would continue to have important political significance. In my report of July 24, 1903 (August 6, N. S.), which was presented to the Emperor upon my return from Japan, I therefore expressed the opinion that an end should be put to the operations of the timber company, and that the whole enterprise should be sold to foreigners.

"Must We Break the Russian Empire?"

The thought that our interests in Korea, which were of trifling importance, might bring us into conflict with Japan, caused me incessant anxiety during my stay in the latter country. On the 13th of June, 1903 (June 26, N. S.), when I was passing through the Inland Sea, on my way to Nagasaki, I wrote in my diary:

"If I were asked to express an opinion, from a military point of view, with regard to the comparative importance of Russian interests in different parts of the Empire, and upon different frontiers, I should put my judgment into the form of a pyramidal diagram, placing the least important of our interests at the top and the most important at the bottom, as follows:

"This diagram shows clearly where the principal energies of the Ministry of War should hereafter be concentrated, and what direction, in future, should be given to Russia's main powers and resources. The interests that lie at the foundation of our position as a nation are: (1) the defence of the territorial integrity of the Empire against the Powers of the Triple Alliance; and (2) employment of the forces of all our military districts for the preservation of internal peace and order. These are our principal tasks, and in comparison with them all the others have secondary importance. The diagram shows, furthermore, that our interests in the Pri-Amur region must be regarded as more important than our interests in Manchuria, and that the latter must take precedence of our interests in Korea. I am afraid, however, that, for a time at least, our national activity will be based on affairs in the Far East, and, if so, the pyramid will have to be turned bottom side up and made to stand on its narrow Korean top. But such a structure on such a foundation will fall. Columbus solved the problem of making an egg stand on its end by breaking the egg. Must we, in order to make our pyramid stand on its narrow Korean end, break the Russian Empire?"

Upon my return from Japan, I showed the above diagram to M. Witte, who agreed that it was correct.

Kuropatkin Asks to be Relieved

The establishment of the Viceroyalty in the Far East was for me a complete surprise. On the 2nd of August, 1903 (August 15, N. S.) I asked the Emperor to relieve me from duty as Minister of War, and after the great manœuvers I was granted an indefinite leave of absence, of which I availed myself with the expectation that my place would be filled by the appointment of some other person.

In September, 1903 (O. S.) the state of affairs in the Far East began to be alarming, and Admiral Alexeieff was definitely ordered to take all necessary measures to avoid war. The Emperor expressed his will to this effect with firmness, and did not limit or restrict in any way the concessions that should be made in order to avert a rupture with Japan. All that had to be done was to find a method of making such concessions that should be as little injurious as possible to Russian interests. During my stay in Japan, I became satisfied that the Japanese Government was disposed to consider Japanese and Korean affairs calmly, with a view to arriving at an agreement upon the basis of mutual concessions.

MAP SHOWING FIELD OF THE OPERATIONS THAT LED TO THE WAR BETWEEN RUSSIA AND JAPAN

In view of the alarming situation in the Far East, I cut short my leave of absence, and, in reporting to the Emperor for duty, I gave this threatening state of affairs as my reason for returning. The Emperor, on the 10th of October, 1903 (October 23, N. S.), made the following marginal note upon my letter: "The alarm in the Far East is apparently beginning to subside." In October I recommended that the garrison of Vladivostok be strengthened, but permission to reinforce it was not given. Meanwhile, there was really no reëstablishment of tranquillity in the Far East, and our relations with Japan and China were becoming more and more involved.

On the 15th of October, 1903 (October 28, N. S.) I presented to the Emperor a special report on the Manchurian question, in which I showed that, in order to avoid complications with China and a rupture with Japan, we must put an end to our military occupation of southern Manchuria, and confine our activity and our administrative supervision to the northern part of that territory. My report was, in part, as follows:

The Great Advisability of Evacuation

"If we do not touch the boundary of Korea, and do not place garrisons between that boundary and the railway, we shall really convince the Japanese that we have no intention of first taking Manchuria and then seizing Korea. In all probability, they will then confine themselves to the peaceful promotion of their interests in the peninsula, and will neither take possession of it with troops, nor greatly increase the strength of their army at home. This will relieve us of the necessity of strengthening our forces in the Far East, and of supporting the heavy burden of an armed peace—even should there be no war. If, on the other hand, we annex southern Manchuria, all the questions that now trouble two nations and threaten to bring about an armed conflict will assume a still more critical aspect. Our temporary occupation of certain points between the railway and Korea will become permanent; our attention will be more and more attracted to the Korean frontier; and our attitude will confirm the suspicion of the Japanese that Russia intends to seize the peninsula.

"That our occupation of southern Manchuria will lead to Japanese occupation of southern Korea there can be no doubt. Beyond that, all is dark. One thing, however, is certain, and that is that if Japan takes this step, she will be compelled to increase rapidly her military strength, and we, in turn, shall respond by enlarging our Far Eastern force. Thus two nations whose interests are so different that they would seem destined to live in peace will begin a contest in which each will try to surpass the other in military resources and power. And we Russians shall do this at the expense of our fighting readiness in the West; at the sacrifice of the interest of our native population; and for the sake of portions of Korea which, so far as Russia is concerned, have no serious importance. If, moreover, other Powers take part in this rivalry, the struggle for military supremacy is liable to change, at any moment, into a deadly conflict, which may not only retard, for a long time, the peaceful development of our Far Eastern possessions, but check the growth and progress of the whole Empire.

Japan a Dangerous and Warlike Enemy

"Even if we should defeat Japan on the mainland (in Korea and Manchuria) we could not destroy her, nor obtain decisive results, without carrying the war into her territory. That, of course, would not be impossible, but to invade a country where there is a warlike population of forty-seven millions, and where even the women participate in wars of national defence, would be a serious undertaking, even for a Power as mighty as Russia. And if we do not destroy Japan utterly—if we do not deprive her of the right and the power to maintain a navy—she will wait until we are engaged in war in the West, and will then avail herself of the opportunity to attack us, either alone, or in coöperation with our Western enemies.

"It must not be forgotten that Japan can not only put quickly into the field, in Korea or Manchuria, a well organized and well trained army of from 150,000 to 180,000 men, but can do this without drawing at all heavily upon her population. If we take the German ratio of regular troops to population, namely, one per cent, we shall see that Japan, with her forty-seven millions of people, can maintain a force of 400,000 soldiers in time of peace, and 1,000,000 in time of war. And we must bear in mind the fact that, even if we reduce this estimate by two thirds, Japan, in a comparatively short time, will be able to oppose us in Korea, and march into Manchuria, with a regular army of from 300,000 to 350,000 men. If we make it our aim to annex Manchuria, we shall be compelled to increase our military strength to such an extent that, with our Far Eastern force alone, we can withstand the Japanese attack in the annexed territory."

From the above lines it will be seen how seriously the War Department regarded such an antagonist as Japan, and how much anxiety it felt concerning possible complications with that Power on account of Korea. At the time when this report was presented, and later, in November, the negotiations that Admiral Alexeieff was carrying on with Japan not only made no progress, but became more critical, the Admiral still believing that to show a yielding disposition would only make matters worse.

Insignificance of Russia's Eastern Interests

Bearing in mind the clearly expressed will of the Emperor that all necessary measures should be taken to avoid war, and not expecting favorable results from Alexeieff's negotiations, I presented to His Majesty, on the 26th of November, 1903 (December 9, N. S.) a second report on the Manchurian question, in which I proposed that we return Port Arthur and the province of Kwang-tung to China, securing, in lieu thereof, certain special rights in the northern part of Manchuria. In substance, this proposition was that we admit the untimeliness of our attempt to get an outlet on the Pacific and abandon it altogether. The sacrifice might seem a grievous one to make, but I showed the necessity for it by presenting two important considerations. In the first place, by surrendering Port Arthur (which had been taken away from the Japanese) and by giving up southern Manchuria (with the Yalu enterprise), we should escape the danger of a rupture with Japan and China. In the second place, we should avoid the possibility of internal disturbances in European Russia. A war with Japan would be extremely unpopular, and would increase the feeling of dissatisfaction with the ruling authorities. My report was, in part, as follows:

"The economic interests of Russia in the Far East are extremely insignificant. We have as yet, thank God, no over-production in manufactures, because even our domestic markets are not yet glutted. There may be some export of articles from our factories and foundries, but it is largely due to artificial encouragement and will cease—or nearly cease—when such encouragement is withheld. Russia, therefore, has not yet grown up to the melancholy necessity of waging war in order to get markets for her products. As for our other interests in the Far East, the success or failure of a few coal or timber enterprises in Manchuria and Korea is not a matter of sufficient importance to make it worth while for Russia to run the risk of war on their account.

"The railway lines that we have built through Manchuria do not change the situation, and the hope that these lines will have world-wide importance, as avenues of international commerce, is not likely, in the near future, to be realized. Travelers, the mails, tea, and possibly some other merchandise, will go over them, but the great masses of heavy international freight which, alone, can give world-wide importance to a railway, will go by sea, simply because they cannot bear railway charges. Such is not the case, however, with local freight to supply local needs. This the roads—and especially the southern branch—will carry more and more, deriving from it most of their revenue, and, at the same time, stimulating the growth of the country, and, in southern Manchuria particularly, benefiting the Chinese population. But if we do not take special measures to direct even local freight to Dalny, that port is likely to suffer from the competition of Yinkow (New Chwang). Port Arthur has no value for Russia as the defence and terminus of a railway, unless that railway is part of an international transit route. The southern branch of the Eastern Chinese road has only—or chiefly—local importance, and, from an economic point of view, Russia does not need to protect it by means so costly as the fortifications of Port Arthur, a fleet of warships, and a garrison of 30,000 soldiers.

"It thus appears that the retention of a position of an aggressive character in Kwang-tung is no more supported by economic than it is by political and military considerations. What, then, are the aims that may involve us in war with Japan and China? Are such aims important enough to justify the great sacrifices that war will demand? The Russian people are powerful, and their faith in Divine Providence, as well as their devotion to their Tsar and their country, is unshaken. We may trust, therefore, that if Russia is destined to undergo the trial of war at the beginning of the twentieth century, she will come out of it with victory and glory. But she will have to make terrible sacrifices—sacrifices that may long retard the natural growth of the Empire.

"In the wars that we waged in the early years of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, the enemy invaded our territory, and we fought for the existence of Russia—marched forth in defence of our country and died for faith, Tsar, and Fatherland. If, in the early years of the twentieth century, war breaks out as the result of controverted questions arising in the Far East, the Russian people and the Russian army will execute the will of their Monarch with as much devotion and self-sacrifice as ever, and will give up their lives and their property for the sake of attaining complete victory; but they will have no intelligent comprehension of the objects for which the war is waged. For that reason there will be no such exaltation of spirit—no such outburst of patriotism—as that which accompanied the wars that we fought either in self-defence or for objects dear to the hearts of the people.

"We are now living through a critical period. Internal enemies, aiming at the destruction of the dearest and most sacred foundations of our life, are invading even the ranks of our army. Large groups of the population have become dissatisfied, or mentally unsettled, and disorders of various sorts—mostly created by a revolutionary propaganda—are increasing in frequency. Cases in which troops have to be called out to deal with such disorders are much more common than they were even a short time ago. We must hope, however, that this evil has not yet taken deep root in Russian soil, and that by strict and wise measures it may be eradicated.

"If Russia were attacked from without, the people, with patriotic fervor, would undoubtedly repudiate the false teaching of the revolutionary propaganda, and show themselves as ready to answer the call of their revered Monarch, and to defend their Tsar and country, as they were in the early years of the eighteenth and particularly in the nineteenth century. If, however, they are asked to make great sacrifices in order to carry on a war whose objects are not clearly understood by them, the leaders of the anti-Government party will take advantage of the opportunity to spread sedition. Thus there will be introduced a new factor which, if we decide on war in the Far East, we must take into account.

"The sacrifices and dangers that we have experienced, or that we anticipate, as results of the position we have taken in the Far East, ought to be a warning to us when we dream of getting an outlet on the unfreezing waters of the Indian Ocean at Chahbar. It is already evident that the English are preparing to meet us there. The building of a railroad across the whole of Persia, and the establishment of a port at Chahbar, with fortifications, a fleet, etc., will simply be a repetition of our experience with the Eastern Chinese Railway and Port Arthur. In the place of Port Arthur, we shall have Chahbar, and instead of war with Japan, we shall have a still more unnecessary and still more terrible war with Great Britain.

"In view of the considerations above set forth, the questions arise: Ought we not to avoid the present danger at Port Arthur, as well as the future danger in Persia? Ought we not to return Kwang-tung, Port Arthur, and Dalny to China, give up the southern branch of the Eastern Chinese Railway, and get from China, in place of it, certain rights in northern Manchuria and a sum of, say, 250,000,000 rubles as reimbursement for expenses incurred by us in connection with the railway and Port Arthur?" Further on in my report I considered fully the advantages and disadvantages of such a decision, and set forth the principal advantages as follows: "(1) We shall escape the necessity of fighting Japan on account of Korea, and China on account of Mukden. (2) We shall be able to reëstablish friendly relations with both Japan and China. (3) We shall give peace and tranquillity, not only to Russia, but to the whole world."

Russia's Fatal Unpreparedness

Copies of this report were sent to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of Finance, and Admiral Alexeieff. Unfortunately, my views were not approved, and meanwhile the negotiations with Japan dragged along and became more and more involved. The future historian, who will have access to all the documents, may be able, from study of them, to determine why the will of the Russian Monarch to avoid war with Japan was not carried into effect by his principal co-workers. At present, it is only possible to say, unconditionally, that although neither the Emperor nor Russia desired war, we did not succeed in escaping it. The reason for the failure of the negotiations is evidently to be found in our ignorance of Japan's readiness for war, and her determination to support her contentions with armed force. We ourselves were not ready to fight, and resolved that it should not come to fighting. We made demands, but we had no intention of using weapons to enforce them—and, it may be added, they were not worth going to war about. We always thought, moreover, that the question whether there should be war or peace depended upon us, and we wholly overlooked Japan's stubborn determination to enforce demands that had for her such vital importance, and also her reliance upon our military unreadiness. Thus the negotiations were carried on by the respective parties under unequal conditions.

Then, too, our position was made worse by the form that Admiral Alexeieff gave to the negotiations intrusted to him. References were made that offended Japanese pride, and the whole correspondence became strained and difficult as a result of the Admiral's unfamiliarity with diplomatic procedure and his lack of competent staff assistance. He proceeded, moreover, upon the mistaken assumption that, in such a negotiation, it was necessary to display inflexibility and tenacity. His idea was that one concession, if made, would inevitably lead to another, and that a yielding policy would be more likely, in the end, to bring about a rupture with Japan than a policy of firmness. On the 25th of January, 1904 (February 6, N. S.) diplomatic relations were broken off by the Japanese, and a few days later war began.

My opinions with regard to the relative importance of the tasks set before the War Department of Russia made me a convinced opponent of an active Asiatic policy.

1. Recognizing our military unreadiness on our western frontier, and taking into account also the urgent need of devoting our resources to the work of internal reorganization and reform, I thought that a rupture with Japan would be a national calamity, and I did everything in my power to prevent it. Throughout my long service in Asia, I was an advocate of an agreement with Great Britain there, and I was satisfied that there might also be a peaceable delimitation of spheres of influence in the Far East between Russia and Japan.

2. I regarded the building of the main line of the trans-Siberian railway through Manchuria as a mistake. The decision to adopt that route was made without my participation (I was then commander of the trans-Caspian territory); but it was contrary to the judgment of the War Department's representative in the Far East—General Dukhovski.

3. The occupation of Port Arthur took place before I became Minister of War, and I had nothing to do with it. I regard it as not only a mistake, but a fatal mistake. By thus acquiring, prematurely, an extremely inconvenient outlet on the Pacific, we broke up our good understanding with China and made an enemy of Japan.

4. I was always opposed to the timber enterprise on the Yalu, because I foresaw that it might bring about a rupture with Japan. I therefore took all possible measures to have it made an exclusively commercial affair, or to have it suppressed altogether.

5. So far as the Manchurian question is concerned, I made a sharp distinction between the comparative importance to us of northern Manchuria and southern Manchuria. At first, I was in favor of removing our troops as quickly as possible from both; but after the Boxer uprising, in 1900, I recognized the necessity of keeping on the railway at Kharbin three or four battalions of infantry, a battery, and a hundred Cossacks, as a reserve for the boundary guard.

6. When our position in the Far East became difficult, and there seemed to be danger of a rupture with Japan, I was in favor of decisive measures, and proposed that we avert war by admitting the untimeliness of our attempt to get an outlet on the Pacific; by restoring Port Arthur and Kwang-tung to China; and by selling the southern branch of the Chinese Eastern Railway.

When Adjutant General Daniloff returned from Japan, he told me that, at the farewell dinner given him there, General Terauchi, the Japanese Minister of War, said that General Kuropatkin and he had done everything in their power to avert war. And yet, even now, I sometimes ask myself doubtfully, "Did I do everything that was within the bounds of possibility to prevent it?" The strong desire of the Emperor to avoid war with Japan was well known to me, as it was to his other co-workers, and yet we, who stood nearest to him, were unable to execute his will.

[THE ROYAL TIMBER COMPANY]

[Editor's Note.]—Among the first questions suggested by General Kuropatkin's narrative and the editorials, reports, and official proceedings that he quotes, are: Who was State Councillor Bezobrazoff? How did he acquire the extraordinary power that he evidently exercised in the Far East? Why was "everybody"—including the Minister of War—"afraid of him"? Why did even the Viceroy respond to his calls for troops, and why was his Korean timber company allowed to drag Russia into a war with Japan, against the opposition and resistance, apparently, of the Tsar, the Viceroy, the Minister of War, the Minister of Finance, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Port Arthur council, and the diplomatic representatives of Russia in Peking, Tokio, and Seoul?

No replies to these questions can be found in General Kuropatkin's record of the events that preceded the rupture with Japan, but convincing answers are furnished by certain confidential documents found in the archives of Port Arthur and published, just after the close of the war, in the liberal Russian review Osvobozhdenie at Stuttgart.[8] Whether General Kuropatkin was aware of the existence of these documents or not, I am unable to say; but as they throw a strong side-light on his narrative, I shall append them thereto, and tell briefly, in connection with them, the story of the Yalu timber enterprise, as it is related in St. Petersburg.

In the year 1898, a Vladivostok merchant named Briner obtained from the Korean Government, upon extremely favorable terms, a concession for a timber company that should have authority to exploit the great forest wealth of the upper Yalu River.[9] As Briner was a promoter and speculator, who had little means and less influence, he was unable to organize his company, and in 1902 he sold his concession to Alexander Mikhailovich Bezobrazoff, another Russian promoter and speculator, who had held the rank of State Councillor in the Tsar's civil service, and who was high in the favor of some of the Grand Dukes in St. Petersburg.

Bezobrazoff, who seems to have been a most fluent and persuasive talker, as well as a man of fine personal presence and bearing, soon interested his Grand Ducal friends in the fabulous wealth of the Far East generally, and in the extraordinary value of the Korean timber concession especially. They all took stock in his enterprise, and one of them, with a view to getting the strongest possible support for it, presented him to the Tsar. Bezobrazoff made upon Nicholas II. an extraordinarily favorable impression and, in the course of a few months, acquired an influence over him that nothing afterward seemed able to shake. That the Tsar became financially interested in Bezobrazoff's timber company is certain; and it is currently reported in St. Petersburg that the Emperor and the Empress Dowager, together, put into the enterprise several million rubles. This report may, or may not, be trustworthy; but the appended telegram (No. 5) sent by Rear Admiral Abaza, of the Tsar's suite, to Bezobrazoff, in November, 1903, indicates that the Emperor was interested in the Yalu enterprise to the extent, at least, of the two million rubles mentioned. Bezobrazoff's "Company," in fact, seems to have consisted of the Tsar, the Grand Dukes, certain favored noblemen of the Court, Viceroy Alexeieff, probably, and the Empress Dowager possibly. Bezobrazoff had made them all see golden visions of wealth to be amassed, power to be attained, and glory to be won, in the Far East, for themselves and the Fatherland. It was this known influence of Bezobrazoff with the Tsar that made "everybody" in the Far East "afraid of him"; that enabled him to enlist in the service of the timber company even officers of the Russian General Staff; that caused Alexeieff to respond to his call for troops to garrison Feng-wang-cheng and Shakhedze; and that finally changed Russia's policy in the Far East and stopped the withdrawal of troops from southern Manchuria.

General Kuropatkin says that the Russian evacuation of the province of Mukden "was suddenly stopped by an order of Admiral Alexeieff, whose reasons for taking such action have not, to this day, been sufficiently cleared up." The following telegram from Lieutenant Colonel Madritoff of the Russian General Staff to Rear Admiral Abaza, the Tsar's personal representative in St. Petersburg, may throw some light on the subject.

(No. 1.)

To Admiral Abaza,
House No. 50, Fifth Line,
Vassili Ostroff, St. Petersburg.

Our enterprises in East meet constantly with opposition from Dzan-Dzun of Mukden and Taotai of Feng-wang-cheng. Russian officer-merchants have been sent East to make reconnoissance and examine places on Yalu. They are accompanied by Khunkhuzes whom I have hired. The Dzan-Dzun, feeling that he is soon to be freed from guardianship of Russians, has become awfully impudent, and has even gone so far as to order Yuan to begin hostile operations against Russian merchants and Chinese accompanying them, and to put latter under arrest. Thanks to timely measures taken by Admiral, this order has not been carried out; but very fact shows that Chinese rulers of Manchuria are giving themselves free rein, and, of course, after we evacuate Manchuria, their impudence, and their opposition to Russian interests, will have no limit. Admiral (Alexeieff) took it upon himself to order that Mukden and Yinkow (New Chwang) be not evacuated.[10] To-day it has been decided to hold Yinkow, but, unfortunately, to move the troops out of Mukden. After evacuation of Mukden, state of affairs, so far as our enterprises are concerned, will be very, very much worse which, of course, is not desirable. [10] To-morrow I go to the Yalu myself.

Signed)

Madritoff.

Shortly before Lieutenant Colonel Madritoff sent this telegram to Admiral Abaza, Bezobrazoff, who had been several months in the Far East, started for St. Petersburg, with the intention, evidently, of seeing the Tsar and persuading him to order, definitely, a suspension of the evacuation of the province of Mukden, for the reason that "it would inevitably result in the liquidation of the affairs of the timber company." From a point on the road he sent back to Madritoff the following telegram, which bears date of March 26, 1903 (April 8, N. S.)—the very day when the evacuation of the province of Mukden should have been completed, in accordance with the Russo-Chinese agreement of March 26 (April 8, N. S.), 1902:

(No. 2.)

To Madritoff,
Port Arthur.

There will be an understanding attitude toward the affair after I make my first report. I am only afraid of being too late, as I shall not get there until the 3rd (April 16, N. S.) and the Master (Khozain) leaves for Moscow on the 4th (April 17, N. S.). I will do all that is possible and shall insist on manifestation of energy in one form or another. Keep me advised and don't get discouraged. There will soon be an end of the misunderstanding.

(Signed)

Bezobrazoff.

On April 11, 1903 (April 24, N. S.), Bezobrazoff sent Madritoff from St. Petersburg a telegram written, evidently, after he had made his first "report" to "the Master." It was as follows:

To Madritoff,,
Port Arthur.

Everything with me is all right. I hope to get my views adopted in full as conditions imposed by existing situation and force of circumstances. I hope that if they ask the opinion of the Admiral (Alexeieff), he, I am convinced (sic), will give me his support. That will enable me to put many things into his hands.

(Signed)

Bezobrazoff.

General Kuropatkin says that Admiral Alexeieff gave him "repeated assurances that he was wholly opposed to Bezobrazoff's schemes, and that he was holding them back with all his strength"; but the Admiral was evidently playing a double part. While pretending to be in full sympathy with Kuropatkin's hostility to the Yalu enterprise, he was supporting Bezobrazoff's efforts to promote that enterprise, Bezobrazoff rewarded him, and fulfilled his promise to "put many things into his hands" by getting him appointed Viceroy. Kuropatkin says that this appointment was a "complete surprise to him," and it naturally would be, because the Tsar acted on the advice of Bezobrazoff, von Plehve, Alexeieff, and Abaza, and not on the advice of Kuropatkin, Witte, and Lamsdorff. It will be noticed that von Plehve—the powerful Minister of the Interior—is never once mentioned by name in Kuropatkin's narrative. Everything seems to indicate that von Plehve formed an alliance with Bezobrazoff, and that, together, they brought about the dismissal of Witte, who ceased to be Minister of Finance on the 16th of August, 1903 (August 29, N. S.). Anticipating this result of his efforts, and filled with triumph at the prospect opening before him, Bezobrazoff wrote Lieutenant Colonel Madritoff, on the 12th of August, 1903 (August 25, N. S.), as follows:

(No. 4.)

The great saw-mill and the principal trade in timber will be transferred to Dalny, and this in copartnership with the Ministry of Finance. The Manchurian Steamship Line will have all our ocean freight, amounting to twenty-five million feet of timber, and the business will become international (mirovava). From this you will understand how I selected my base and my operating lines.

In view of the complete defeat of such clear-sighted statesmen and sane counsellors as Kuropatkin, Witte, and Lamsdorff, there can be no doubt that Bezobrazoff's "base and operating lines" were well "selected."

The document that shows most clearly the interest of the Tsar in the Yalu timber enterprise is a telegram sent to Bezobrazoff at Port Arthur, in November, 1903, by Rear Admiral Abaza, who was then Director of the Special Committee on Far Eastern Affairs, over which the Tsar presided, and who acted as the latter's personal representative in all dealings with Bezobrazoff and the timber company. In the original of this telegram, significant words, such as "Witte," "Emperor," "millions," "garrison," "reinforcement," etc., were in cipher; but when Bezobrazoff read it, he (or possibly his private secretary) interlined the equivalents of the cipher words, and also, in one place, a query as to the significance of "artels"—did it mean chasseurs, or artillery? The following copy was made from the interlined original:

(No. 5.)

From Petersburg, Nov. 14-27, 1903.

To Bezobrazoff,
Port Arthur.

Witte has told the Emperor that you have already spent the whole of the two millions. Your telegram with regard to expenditures has made it possible for me to report on this disgusting slander and, at the same time, contradict it. Remember that the Master counts on your not touching a ruble more than the three hundred without permission in every case. Yesterday I reported again your ideas with regard to the reinforcement of the garrison and also with regard to the artels (chasseurs or artillery?) in the basin. The Emperor directed me to reply that he takes all that you say into consideration and that, in principle, he approves. In connection with this, the Emperor again confirmed his order that the Admiral telegraph directly to him. He expects a telegram soon, and immediately upon the receipt of the Admiral's statement, arrangements will be made with regard to the reinforcement of the garrison, and, at the same time, with regard to the chasseurs in the basin. In the course of the conversation, the Emperor expressed the fullest confidence in you.

Signed)

Abaza.

General Kuropatkin refers, again and again, to the Tsar's "clearly expressed desire that war should be avoided," and he regrets that His Imperial Majesty's "co-workers" "were unable to execute his will." It is more than likely that Nicholas II. did wish to avoid war—if he could do so without impairing the value of the family investment in the Korean timber company—but from the above telegram it appears that, as late as November 27, 1903—only seventy days before the rupture with Japan—he was still disregarding the sane and judicious advice of Kuropatkin, was still expressing "the fullest confidence" in Bezobrazoff, and was still ordering troops to the valley of the Yalu.

[THE AMERICANIZING OF ANDRÉ FRANÇOIS]
BY
STELLA WYNNE HERRON

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ARTHUR G. DOVE

I wonder," said Andrew F. Biron, manager of the White Star Mine, to his sister, as he watched, with drawn brows, André François, immaculate in a white flannel suit, bare-kneed and sailor-hatted, go down the street attended by the ministering Angélique, "what Providence had against me when it picked me for the father of Andrew François?"

"He is certainly the strangest child I have ever known," answered his sister irrelevantly, "and I have had experience with a good many—an old maid always does, you know."

"What he needs is to mix up with the other boys—to become Americanized. There is too much European varnish on him. It needs to be rubbed off so that the real boy underneath will show through."

"He needs something," assented his sister shortly, for she had looked with none too gracious an eye upon the advent of André François and his bonne, the volatile Angélique. "He thinks of nothing except how he is dressed—a miniature fop! He is now ten years old and he is absolutely helpless. He seems never to have learned to do anything for himself. There is no manliness nor independence in him—nothing but a head full of foolish, old-world notions about what is due a gentleman of his standing. As for Angélique, one moment she runs his errands and the next bullies him. Who ever heard of a big boy of ten with a nurse, anyway?" Miss Biron stopped a moment to catch her breath, then continued:

"To be frank with you, Andrew, I think you have been little less than criminal to take so little interest in him as to leave him for eight years in an environment of which you knew nothing. You should have had him home immediately after your wife's death, and not have waited until his grandmother died and the responsibility of your son was literally forced upon you."

"The responsibility of his son." All through a busy morning at the office the phrase remained subconsciously in Mr. Biron's mind. At noon hour, when the work slackened up, he set himself to face and thresh it out, for it was his policy to face and thresh out at the first opportunity any difficulty which confronted him.

For half an hour he paced his office, his hands thrust hard down into his pockets, in his mouth a black, unlighted cigar of the stogie species, upon which he chewed with all the concentrated violence which he would have liked to expend upon the problem in hand. His son—how well he remembered the little two-year-old codger, with his serious blue eyes and his fleece of yellow hair, whom he had taken tight in his arms and told not to forget his daddy, as he bid goodby on the steamer to his pretty, pale French wife going back on a visit to her native land.

After her death, little André François had at once found snug quarters in the home of his aristocratic Parisian grandmother, Madame Fouchette, a grand dame of the old régime. She wrote and begged to keep him. She said he would be placed in a good school—the best, indeed, in France—where, as a rule, none except the sons of noblemen were admitted. Year after year had drifted by, and the busy mine-manager in Colorado, occupied with a thousand and one matters of daily importance, had sent a monthly check of generous figure, together with a quarter-page of hurriedly type-written, kindly words, accompanied at Christmas, and at what he approximately made out to be André François' birthday, by a great miscellaneous box of toys. He religiously selected these as his wife had advised him to select them on that first Christmas—for he instinctively mistrusted his own judgment in such matters—and varied them only in the matter of quantity, which he increased each year in allowance for the boy's growth.

Perhaps it was because he always pictured him as a tyro of two, unsteady on his legs, principally experimental in his speech, that he was so unprepared for the real André François, the above, plus eight formative years of growth in the French capital, an aristocratic grandmother's idolatry, and the training of a school where, "as a rule, only the sons of noblemen were received."

Mr. Biron recalled with a rueful smile that first meeting with his son and heir. André François, self-possessed, slim, and aristocratic, cultivating already the airs and graces of the young boulevardier, greeted the manager of the White Star with a careful—for he was none too sure of where the accent fell in his mother-tongue——

"I am delighted, my father," and kissed him ceremoniously, first on one cheek, then on the other. After which he devoted himself to directing Angélique—who had been his bonne ever since his mother's death and in whose care he had come across the ocean—in the disposal of his four trunks. Madame Fouchette, during her life, had spared neither time nor attention in providing André François with as many new suits and caps as his blue-blooded playmates.

The little raw town of fifteen hundred inhabitants, still half mining-camp, was not prepared for the youthful scion of the Old World, and regarded him as a huge joke. As for Angélique, in her high heels and infinitesimal aprons, with her coquettish airs and her showers of exclamations, nothing like her had ever been seen, except in an overnight show, where the traditional French maid, between a song and dance, whisked imaginary dust off parlor chairs.

At school André François was under a double disadvantage. In the class-room, he not only knew more than any other boy, but frequently and authoritatively corrected the teacher. In the yard his white flannel sailor suit, with its embroidered anchor and immense soft, red silk bow in front, his jaunty round sailor hat and dainty shoes—it had become the mode in Paris at that time to follow the English style in children's dress—were regarded with derisive and hostile looks by the sturdy blue-and- brown-overalled town boys. Indeed, the little transplanted Parisian, as he stood in line with his fellows, looked very much like a lonely orchid in a bunch of dusty field-flowers.

In the yard André François did not shine. His attitude was marked in the eyes of the indigenous youth by a supercilious stupidity. He neither knew nor cared for baseball, football, or any of the lesser sports which excite young America at playtime. He had, indeed, at first extended tentative invitations to a chosen few of his class-mates to engage in a fencing bout, but, finding that art entirely unknown, he contented himself, during recess, with sitting on the bench and reading from a French book, over the top of which he sometimes stared at his hot, excited school-mates with insolent superiority.

They returned his contempt with full measure. One and all looked upon André François as a special brand of "Dago"—under which general head they classified all things Latin—protected from their scorn and patriotism by an arbitrary higher power in the form of a father who was a mine manager.

André François, in turn, confided to his father that nobody but ignorant peasants, with whom no gentleman could associate, attended the school.

So matters stood without a change in either direction two weeks after André François' arrival in town. No change of environment seemed strong enough to move him from his accustomed ways of thought. Every morning he started out for school at a quarter of nine followed by the omnipresent Angélique. Every afternoon he returned at three o'clock, still followed by Angélique.

"Angélique! A nurse! A bonne!" As the manager of the White Star thought of her, he nearly bit the cigar, upon which he was chewing, in half. All the militant Americanism in him rose in revolt. He remembered his own bare-footed, swaggering youth, independent as the wind, insolent as a king. And now his son——. He stopped short in his pacing and stared wrathfully out into the street, which, like all the streets of the town, ended abruptly, without any preliminary slopes, in a sheer wall of rock which went up and up and up into a rugged mountain peak.

It chanced that school had just let out for the noon hour, and down the middle of the street, whistling to the full of his lungs, swinging in a circle around his head a long leather strap with a blue calico-covered book at the end for a weight, swaggered a sturdy specimen of young America. Mr. Biron gazed at him with an envious eye and sighed. Then a thought, sudden and sharp, popped into his head. He hesitated for a moment. But why not? Anything was worth trying.

The manager of the White Star was a man of action, so, without wasting further time in debate with himself, he beat a loud tattoo with his knuckles on the window glass. The whistling stopped.

"'I'D BE GLAD TO DO IT AS A FAVOR,' HE SAID"

He crooked his finger and motioned, and the deed was done. A moment later the ground-glass door opened, and a chunky, red-haired boy, with a belligerent eye, stood expectantly before him. The newcomer placed himself so that the big iron office safe furnished a background for him, and as he stood there with his feet wide apart, his hands in his pockets, he seemed as solidly planted as it. A shaft of noonday sunlight, coming through a side window, struck his hair and made a rubescent halo around his freckled face. The manager of the White Star looked him up and down, and the boy eyed him back look for look. At length Mr. Biron cleared his throat.

"What is your name, my lad?" he asked.

"James Joseph McCarthy," answered the boy, in the same quick, phonographic monotone that he had used on his first day at school, when the teacher had asked him the same question.

"Ah, yes—do you know my son, Andrew Francis Biron?"

"Sure. Most everybody knows Andray Franswa."

"And what do you think of—er—André François?"

The boy looked at him searchingly. "You oughter know—he's your kid," he said tersely.

"I know what I think," said Mr. Biron, "but I want to know what you think. That's what I brought you in for. I want to get some data on the subject."

The boy ran his hand through his hair, and his brow puckered, as he struggled to find a phrase by which to sum up his impression of André François. Then he said:

"Ah, gee——" he made an abortive effort, out of regard for parental feelings, to mitigate the vast contempt in his voice, "he's just a darn sissy."

"Um—I see. Are there any more sissies in town?"

"Nope. Not now. There uster be one onest, about a year ago, but he's all right now. We licked him till he got all right."

"And do you intend to lick André François until he gets all right?"

The scion of the McCarthys looked at him suspiciously for a moment, but seeing in his face rather a desire for honest information than the guile of a parent, he answered:

"Nope. Nobody dast to touch him."

"Why?" asked Mr. Biron with a gleam of hope, "would he fight?"

"Who? Him? Him fight? I guess not. It's cause you're his dad. My dad, he said that if I dast to lay a finger on Andray Franswa, he'd skin me alive—an' the rest o' the kids, their dads told 'em the same thing."

"I see," said the manager of the White Star, and he saw also that a certain disadvantage went with being the employer of nearly every man in the town.

He took a thoughtful turn around the office, for his conscience gave him a twinge at the critical moment, then stopped abruptly in front of James Joseph and took from his pocket a bright, new silver dollar.

"See this, Jimmie?" he asked, balancing it seductively on the tip of his index finger, "I will give you this, and further, I will see that no complaint is made to your father—if you lick André François."

Each of Jimmie's eyes grew as big and as round as the dollar.

"Sure? D' yer mean it? Gee, that'd be fine. There's goin' to be a circus next week in Briggs' lot, and us fellows is savin' up. Say—is that what you just said on the dead square?"

"On the dead square," said André François' father solemnly.

Jimmie held out his hand for the dollar. "Sure," he said, "I'll lick Andray Franswa. I'll lay low till that crazy Angélique is out of the way. Burbank, the assayer's assistant, is soft on her, and she stops to talk to him every afternoon, an' Andray Franswa walks as far as from school to the assayer's office alone. I'll get him then. I'm boss o' the gang, an' I kin lick fine. Onest I licked a kid an' he wasn't able to be out fer a week."

"Wait," said Mr. Biron, a little alarmed at the enthusiasm he had invoked. "Remember—you are acting under orders, and your orders are not to hurt him. Just roll him around in the mud good and plenty—and, Jimmie, spoil that white sailor suit."

Jimmie's eyes filled with fellow feeling. For the first time during the interview he and the White Star manager were equals.

"I guess you was a pretty nice kid yourself onest," he said, "an' I know how you must feel 'bout Andray Franswa."

He hesitated a moment, his face twitched with a fierce internal struggle, then he thrust out his arm straight from the shoulder and handed back to Mr. Biron the price of his service.

"I—I'd be glad to do it as a favor," he said.

"Thank you," said André François' father gravely, and he took and pocketed the dollar.

As Jimmie was about to leave the office he put out a detaining hand.

"Oh, by the way," he remarked, with elaborate casuality, "you said something of a circus in Briggs' lot—I can't get away myself, at present, but if you'd take this and go, and let me know if there is anything good, you'd oblige me greatly."

Jimmie McCarthy left the office of the White Star with his ethics and his honor satisfied, and with a dollar in the pocket of his blue overalls.

Thus was enacted the preliminary part of the plot to Americanize André François, fils.

The following afternoon the manager of the White Star sat at his office desk, a file of papers before him. But his attention wavered, and the nearer the clock hands drew to three, the less grew his concentration upon the file. At last the expected happened. The ground-glass door burst open, and in rushed the immaculate Angélique, her entire person in such dishevelment as the Rue St. Honoré had never seen. Her cap hung by one pin from her black hair, her ruffled swiss apron was under one arm. By the hand she dragged after her the panting André François. His hat was gone, his hair wet, his white sailor suit streaked terra cotta from the clayey mud of the street. His red tie, however, still made a brave flare of color under one ear.

"Father," he said in a high, excited voice, "I have been attacked!"

Angélique motioned him to be quiet.

"Oh, Monsieur Bir-on, oh, sair," she burst out, her round eyes becoming perfect spheres in her excitement, "Monsieur André François have been attack'. I have jus' stop to spik to a gentleman for a so leetle moment—when I look a-r-r-ound and zee thees so ter-r-ible boy make the tackle at Monsieur André François' legs. And nex'—O, ciel! I zee Monsieur André François high in the air, and then—splash! Quelle horreur! down in the depths of the mud pud-dle, and thees boy r-r-ool heem r-round an' r-round an' r-r-round. Barbare! Sauvage!" Angélique's voice broke, and she buried her face in her abbreviated apron to shut out the memory of a sight so uncivilized.

"Father," said André François, trembling with passion, "you will have him punished at once—publicly, so that every one may know that the indignity has been wiped out?"

"My boy," said Mr. Biron quietly, placing his hand on his son's shoulder, "I am not lord of a feudal principality. I cannot interfere. You will have to fight your own fights."

"But," said André François, angry tears rushing to his eyes, "I cannot fight this peasant—I am a gentleman." And he drew himself up with a jerk, in his drabbled sailor suit, to his full three feet eight. This assumption of dignity was not without discomfort, for the muddy water from his over-long hair dripped down his neck in the back and into his eyes in the front.

"Of a certainty," affirmed Angélique with finality, "he is a gentleman. Madame Fouchette so raised heem."

"You will have to settle it your own way, Andrew. If you are too good to fight him, and he is not too good to fight you, I do not see what you can do—except run."

"I will not run," cried André François, his voice becoming shrill and childish with impotent rage. "I want him punished."

"I can do nothing for you," said his father shortly. "You had better go home now to your aunt and have your suit changed."

"Allons," said Angélique indignantly, and, catching André François by the hand, she started out. At the door she paused long enough to say devoutly, fixing the so unnatural father with a basilisk glance.

"Dieu vous garde, mon pauvre enfant."

The manager of the White Star even thought he heard a "Bête!" as the door was closed so decisively that one would almost say it was slammed. All of which the so unnatural parent endured with equanimity, and turned to his delayed files with a patient if dubious smile, for he had begun to do his parental duty as he saw it, and anything he began, whether it was a lockout, a new policy, or the training of his son, he saw through to the bitter end.

The next morning, when the White Star manager reached his office—and he got there early, for he began his day's work when his office boy was still comfortably snoring—- he found a small boy leaning against the door in the stiff and resigned position of a guard waiting to be relieved from duty. The only parts of him which moved were the toes of his bare legs, and these nimble members dibbled the clayey earth in front of the door-step.

As soon as this apparition caught sight of Mr. Biron, it straightened up into life.

"Kin I see you, Mr. Biron?" asked the boy eagerly, "on a matter o' business?"

"'I CANNOT FIGHT THIS PEASANT—I AM A GENTLEMAN'"

"Certainly," said the manager of the White Star, "just step into the office."

The boy followed him in through the ground-glass door, shifted from one bare foot to the other, cleared his throat, then without further preliminary said:

"Say—d' you want Andray Franswa licked to-day?" Then, fixing him with a bargaining eye, "I'll do it dandy fer seventy-five cents. I kin fight 'most as good as Jimmie—I uster be the biggest kid here before he come an' licked me," he added, with reminiscent pride in a past glory.

Mr. Biron looked at him thoughtfully a moment, then said:

"I engaged Jimmie for the first job, and he did it satisfactorily. I think there may be a tacit contract existing between us that I give him, at least, the refusal of the rest."

"Nope," said the boy. "Jimmie, he ain't no pig. He told the bunch, 'You fellers go 'round an' see if yer kin git nuf for the circus what's comin'.' I bin waitin' a long time so's to be early nuf."

"I see," said Mr. Biron, "Jimmie does not believe in monopolies. He is a despot, but an enlightened one."

"Kin I have the job, then?"

"Very well," said Mr. Biron, "I engage you to lick André François—but with this reservation—mind you do not hurt him, and I will pay you the standard rate of one dollar for a first-class job."

This was the first but not the last of the manager's visitors. It was Saturday, and that whole morning the office of the White Star was besieged by applicants for a "job." Mr. Biron had his pick of the entire bellicose population of the town between the ages of nine and thirteen, and several more nefarious bargains were secretively struck in the shadow of the big iron safe, behind the discreet ground-glass door of the White Star office.

"'IT WAS OF A SUDDENNESS,' SAID ANGÉLIQUE BLUSHING"

That afternoon Mr. Biron found it difficult to concentrate on the work before him, for, reasoning from cause to effect, and having produced the cause, he was subconsciously expectant of another visit from André and Angélique. Nothing, however, occurred to disturb him and, as he closed up his desk and safe, preparatory to leaving, he smiled grimly to himself.

"I never was stumped by a proposition yet," he muttered half aloud, as he walked home in the sunset, "and André François isn't going to be the first. He must have some red blood in his veins—his grandfather fought at Gettysburg, and I could fight my weight in wildcats at his age."

As he ate his dinner, half an hour later, his sister recounted to him the events of the day.

"Andrew Francis was attacked again," she said, casually nodding toward André François, who ate in silence—for she was a woman of sense. "He came home again covered with mud from head to foot. Angélique says he refused to run and she could do nothing——"

"But no," interrupted the bonne eagerly, and her words came like a string of firecrackers exploded by a small boy on the Fourth of July, "he came with a quickness—like zat!" and she clapped her hands. "Before I know, he have come behin' and trip Monsieur André François up from his legs. Zen I try to grab thees boy, but he is of a so great slipperiness as an eel! He have hit Monsieur André François—whack! He have poke heem an' make heem to fall into the mud. Zen he is away with a quickness—zipp! No person is of a similar quickness to catch heem."

During this display of wordy pyrotechnics, the son and heir of the house sat in sullen silence and broke his bread into small pieces. When it ended, he suddenly looked up.

"Father," he said, "I do not want Angélique to take me to school any longer. She is a fool."

"Sank you, sair," said the lady referred to sarcastically, "you have a great gratitude when I protec' your life." Then she turned to the manager of the White Star:

"Sair, I have the pleasure to inform you of somesing. In one month I am about to marry myself to the Mr. Bur-bank—he who makes known what is in the rocks."

"Kind of sudden, wasn't it, Angélique?" asked Mr. Biron.

"It was of a suddenness," said Angélique blushing. "I was greatly of a desire to go back to France, but I could not, an' the nex' bes' zing—zat is to marry myself. I mus' have a protector in thees so savage land where even the children are bloodthirsty. I am not of a nervousness to stan' everysing. Voilà!"

"THAT FIGHT WILL LONG BE REMEMBERED IN THE ANNALS OF THE GANG"

The next morning André François went to school minus his familiar. During the week and a half that followed he was "attacked" with startling frequency and regularity. Almost every afternoon he came home with his clothes muddy and torn.

He was grimly silent about the details of these mishaps.

Angélique was in despair.

"Ah, Madame," she said to Miss Biron, "in one short month he will not have a stitch to wear—out of the largesse of four trunks full. And the las' command of Madame Fouchette, it was 'Angélique, always make Monsieur André François to look like the little prince.' Ciel! how can one make heem to look like the little prince when thees so savage boys tear off his clothes? But I do my ver' bes'—I darn and darn and darn heem."

André François made no one his confidant, but day by day he grew more somber and silent. His early garrulity was quite gone. Instead of the air of hauteur which characterized him on his entrance to the town, he now had a pathetic droop. He even became careless about his clothes.

"He used to be so proud, so debonair," said Angélique sadly, "when he have the clean, white suit on, he is like the peacock, he know he is beautiful—but now—he does not care what he have on. No!"

"What can be the matter?" asked Miss Biron anxiously, for she was really worried by André François' looks; "he has never been seriously hurt in these little school-boy fights."

"Eh, bien! Madame! Is it not of a seriousness to be wound' in the pride? To be insult'? Monsieur André François has been made the gross insult many times. Those insult, they knaw heem in his heart. He zink. He zink all the time now. He zink of those many insult'! Some day he will have his revengement—you see."

About this time the manager of the White Star noticed a falling off in the number of applicants for his peculiar variety of "job." There was a slump in the André François market. One morning he called in a youngster whom he saw going early to school, stated his terms, and made his usual proposal. The boy hesitated a few moments, then said:

"It'll cost yer a dollar an' a quarter now, Mr. Biron. Yer see, 'taint so easy as 'twas at first. 'Course Andray Franswa never runs, an' it's easy t' git him, but he's growin' awful savage. He kicks an' bites somethin' fierce, sir. He nearly chewed Harry Peters' finger offer him day 'fore yesterday."

The manager paid the extra quarter without any demur.

It was about this time also that Mr. Biron made a discovery which gratified him. He found, secreted under a pillow in the window-seat where André François usually sat, a dusty, copiously diagrammed book entitled, "The Manly Art of Self-Defense." It was an edition of twenty years ago, and had been used by Mr. Biron himself during his college days.

He put it back carefully and held his silence.

The following evening he proceeded in an experimental, roundabout way to get into a conversation with his son.

"Andrew," he said, with sociable casualness, to his heir, who now always ensconced himself in the window-seat directly after dinner, and kept a moody silence until Angélique took him off to bed, "you have never told me about your school days in France."

Accepting this remark as the statement of an irrefutable fact, André François merely remained politely silent.

"What do you do for recreation? What sport do you have now, for instance?"

"We fence, father," said André François, listlessly.

"Ah, yes," said the White Star manager, introducing his subject in as elaborately casual a way as a politician about to ask for a favor, "just so. Well, you see we don't do much fencing in America, not very much. Boxing, now, is more in our line."

A gleam of interest, which was not lost upon his father, shot into André François' weary eyes.

"Father," he asked timidly, "are you familiar with the manly art of self-defense?"

"I am, my son," answered the manager of the White Star gravely.

André François gazed at him questioningly a moment, then drew the manual from under the sofa cushion.

"I have been practising some of the things described in this book," he said, slowly opening it and disclosing diagrams of a heavy-muscled individual executing a wonderful curve along a dotted line marked "a—— a—— a," "but I am unable to make out the explanations attached to most of these figures. If you could show me the rudiments——" he finished tentatively.

It was at this point that the manager of the White Star joyously threw diplomacy to the winds.

"You bet I will," he cried enthusiastically, "we will have our first lesson to-night in the attic," and grasping his son's arm he started off.

Miss Biron and Angélique, sedately sewing by the fire in the next room, were electrified to see, a moment later, the manager of the White Star and André François rush madly through, banging a door at either end in their flight, and laughing at the top of their voices. They also stayed awake that night beyond their usual retiring time, for strange noises emanated from the attic long after the hour when a well-conducted father and son should have been in bed.

The next morning the manager of the White Star let the applicant in waiting know that no further business would be transacted, and the word went forth among the members of the gang that he would pay for no more André François lickings, and would tolerate no unpaid-for ones.

So, by the ultimatum of his father, André François went whither he would, unmolested except by word of mouth. But he underwent such martyrdom as only a small boy can receive at the hands of others of his kind.

Not only did the gang remember and resent his former attitude of superiority, but they looked on him as a source of revenue taken from them. His presence irritated them as the presence of a government-owned railroad might irritate a company of magnates shorn of their profits. His first position had been marked at least by a certain uniqueness and dignity. He had never been licked, even if he could have been.

Now, however, he was the lowest of the low. In the democracy of the gang, where might was right, he was a pariah, a proven coward, licked by each and every member, and ought, by the law of the survival of the fittest, to be kicked out. He was only allowed to intrude his presence on suffrance, because a higher power artificially protected him.

At recess, in school, he sat on the well-worn bench that ran around the yard and watched the others play or fight. No one ever spoke to him, except now and then to throw a taunt his way.

"Where's nursie, Annie?"

"Hello, sissy—are yer lost?"

"Where'd yer git that suit?" and similar personalities greeted him when one of the boys chanced to notice his presence. Sometimes, as he walked home, pebbles and bits of hardened mud were sent richochetting after him, but this was the extent of any assault, for the manager of the White Star, sitting behind his ground-glass door, had it within his power to speak a potent word to the father of any boy who disobeyed him.

André François seldom spoke back, but his silence had something grim in it, and there was a portentous light in his eye.

At home he never complained, and Angélique, rejoiced that the régime of physical violence was over, snatched the time between stitches on a wonderful, beruffled trousseau, to make him "look like the little prince." Only his father knew how he spent his time every evening in the attic, and what passionate energy he put into his work. Neither alluded to it, but both knew that the lessons had an ultimate object.

And, one day, three weeks from the time he took his first boxing lesson, this object was unexpectedly accomplished.

It was a Saturday afternoon, and the gang, freed from the tyranny of school and the irritation of Saturday morning chores, were joyously disporting themselves in a vacant lot at the corner of the street. The first inning of a baseball game was just over, and the overalled players were lying on the ground disputing certain fine points of the play with the audience.

André François stopped, leaned on the top rail of the fence, and gazed at them a trifle wistfully. Jimmie McCarthy's roving eye discovered him, and he yelled out:

"You'd better run along, Annie—nursie will be out lookin' fer yer in a minnut."

The gang laughed flatteringly at the subtle wit of their leader. André François' face flushed a vivid crimson and his eyes darkened. Then he electrified the gang by leaping over the fence and rushing straight up to the redoubtable Jimmie.

He thrust out his chin and yelled up into the face of the surprised leader:

"I'll show you if I'm an Annie or not. D'you want to fight?"

Jimmie stood dumb with amazement a moment, then he laughed long and loud, for his sense of humor was Irish; and the whole gang joined in.

"S-a-a-y," he said, "yer wanter git licked again, d'yer? You must'er got inter the habit. I tell yer what—I got a baby brother two years old ter home. I'll go fetch him, and the two o' yez kin have it out."

"AN ADMIRING CONCOURSE OF SMALL BOYS FOLLOWED AT A RESPECTFUL DISTANCE"

It was here that André François' early training enabled him to make an impression. He stood up on his toes, as he had once seen the Marquis de Boissé stand up on his toes, and slapped Jimmie McCarthy across the mouth with his open palm, as he had seen that noble marquis slap a count of France.

But what followed was not an exchange of ultra courteous priorities to a duel. It was a good American fight in the middle of a ring of small boys, and what happened is what always happens when natural and scientific force stand up before each other. That fight will be long remembered in the annals of the gang, which, like the records of the great Homeric fights or the sagas of the primitive Northmen, are first handed down by word of mouth.

"I wished yer'd seen it, kid," said Charlie Brown, to his wide-eyed, freckled-faced junior, whom he was trying to bring up in the right way. "It'd bin an eddycation fer yer. Andray Franswa jumped round jest like he was made o' rubber. Every time that Jim grabbed fer him, he was on the other side an' had landed him one on the nose. Gee, yer oughter seen it bleed—it was worse'n the time Jim beat Buck Paxell. Now, Teddy, yer want ter keep yer eye on Andray Franswa, an' do same as yer see him doin'—'cause he's goin' ter be a great man some day like Jim Jeffries—see?"

That afternoon the manager of the White Star chanced to look out of his window, and he saw André François, with his white sailor hat, fashioned after that of Prince Edward, set rakishly over one ear, his hands in his pockets, whistling at the top of his lungs, come down the street. His face was muddy and bleeding, a great scratch cut across it from ear to ear, his hair was wild and tangled, but his swagger was that of a conqueror, and he took the middle of the road. An admiring concourse of small boys followed along at a respectful distance.

Mr. Biron smiled to himself. Then he took down his ledger, for he was a careful man of business, and read over a certain page. On it was written fourteen times:

"To Andrew Francis, licking ... $1.00"

"Um," said the manager of the White Star softly at the end of the addition, "fourteen dollars." Then he took another look out of the window:

"I never made a better bargain in my life."

AIN'T YOU GWINE TO COME?
BY
EDMUND VANCE COOKE

De debbil done ast me to be his chile;

De debbil he's allus a follerin';

I run de debbil foh mos' a mile;

Don' you hear de debbil a-hollerin'?

I'se gwine to jine de fambly of de Lohd;

I'se gwine to glory in de mawnin';

I'se gwine to be bohn in de grace of Gohd;

Ain't you gwine to come to my bohnin'?

Come along-a sisteh, come along-a bruddeh,

Come along-a one an' a come along de uddeh,

Bring along a frien' an' a-bring along anuddeh;

Ain't you gwine to come to my bohnin'?

De debbil done temp' me to visit his roof;

De debbil he's allus a follerin';

I stomp my foot on de debbil's hoof;

Don' you hear de debbil a-hollerin'?

I'se gwine to jine de fambly of de Lohd;

De debbil's done quit his harryin';

I'se gwine to be married to de son of Gohd;

Ain't you gwine to come to my marryin'?

Come along-a sisteh, come along-a bruddeh,

Come along-a one an' a come along de uddeh,

Bring along a frien' an a-bring along anuddeh;

Ain't you gwine to come to my marryin'?

De debbil done beg me to sail his ship;

De debbil he's allus a follerin';

I smack my han' on de debbil's lip;

Don' you hear de debbil a hollerin'?

I'se gwine to sail in de ship of de Lohd

Dat's a runnin' to glory at de ferryin';

I'se gwine to be buried in de grace of Gohd;

Ain't you gwine to come to my buryin'?

Come along-a sisteh an' a come along-a bruddeh,

Come along-a one an' a come along de uddeh,

Bring along a frien' an' a bring along anuddeh;

Ain't you gwine to come to my buryin'?

[JUNGLE BLOOD]
BY
ELMORE ELLIOTT PEAKE

ILLUSTRATIONS BY WALTER JACK DUNCAN

He was a coal-black, box-headed negro, of a bulk and stature never before admitted to the dining-room of the Bluegrass Hotel. The blacks preferred by the management of that fastidious hostelry were agile, under-sized fellows with round heads and small hands; and Moss Harper would assuredly never have effected an entrance to the dining-room, had it not been for a waiters' strike, which made almost any kind of help welcome.

The lynx-eyed head waiter, prejudiced from the start against his gigantic underling, quickly discovered that salt-cellars and other small objects eluded Moss' clumsy fingers like drops of quicksilver; also, that the channels between the tables were wholly inadequate for the safe navigation of a vessel of this draft. Hence Moss' term of service would doubtless have been a very brief one, had it not been for an unforeseen event. On his way home the very first night, he broke the heads of half a dozen union pickets who had waylaid him in a dark alley, and this feat gave the strike a shock from which it died the next day.

Out of gratitude, and possibly also a desire to give the recalcitrant negroes an object-lesson, the management decided to tolerate Moss for a month. It was clearly a case of toleration. He broke more dishes than any four of the other waiters; he forgot orders; he trod on toes; and, although he was of a singularly peaceful disposition, never taking part in the multitudinous squabbles of the dining-room, the incessant gibes, sneers, and threats of his unionized associates would occasionally prove too much for even his equanimity. Then, like an infuriated gorilla, he would spring upon his tormentors, regardless of their number, and dearly indeed would they pay for their sport.

He was, moreover, a silent fellow; and his silence was not that of the well-bred waiter, but a solemn, profound, brooding, depressing thing, acquired, one could almost believe, in the African jungles where his forefathers had crept like wild beasts or squatted in superstitious terror. People, consequently, were a little afraid of him. It was told that he had once carried a piano up three flights of stairs on his back; and when he would pass down the dining-room with a seventy-pound tray balanced on the tips of three fingers as lightly as if it were a pie-pan, a certain bald-headed, white-waist-coated, pink-faced old bachelor, who made his home at the hotel, never tired of observing to strangers, with his dry little chuckle: "How'd you like to meet that boy on a lonely road, suh, afteh dark, with your gun at home?" And, in truth, Moss' huge black paw, suddenly appearing over their shoulders from behind, as he served a meal, was a trifle disconcerting to ladies with delicate nerves.

There was, however, a force of some kind, a sort of dumb nobility about the fellow, which made itself felt; and, in spite of his manifold shortcomings, he had, when his month was up, made a fairly favorable impression. Still, his fate was hanging in the balance when Fortune once more intervened in his behalf. An imaginative reporter on one of the Louisville papers, being hard pressed for a Sunday story, concocted an article entitled "A Congo King," in which he solemnly averred that the herculean waiter at the Bluegrass was the grandson of an African prince who had been captured by slavers on the upper Congo, after a desperate fight, and landed in Charleston in 1832.

From that hour Moss became a show-piece which the proprietors of the Bluegrass would not willingly have parted with. Guests almost daily asked to be shown the "Congo King." A German ethnologist who was touring the country ran down from Chicago to get some exact measurements of the royal descendant's head. An artist of State reputation painted him in what was alleged to be his grandfather's court costume—a strip of leopard-skin around his loins; and a photograph from this painting made the most popular souvenir post-card which the hotel's news-stand had ever handled.

Curiously enough, his fame did not spoil him. Indeed, for any change in him, he might have been unaware of his fame, and possibly was unaware of it. At all events, he continued to pursue the simple routine of his life. He worked seven days in the week, from six in the morning until nine at night, with a respite from two till six. Most of the hotel negroes spent this recess in shooting craps and guzzling beer in an adjacent dive, but Moss devoted it to the prosecution of an enterprise very near to his heart. He was learning to read! He could already read a bill-of-fare, of course, to any near-sighted guest who had chanced to forget his glasses; but this was merely a mnemonic trick, assisted by the position of the words on the card. He yearned to be able to read "really and truly," out of a newspaper or a book.

One afternoon, after laying off his dining-room livery and getting into his own shabby clothes,—in which few of the Bluegrass guests would have recognized their Congo King!—he set off with unusual alacrity. At the street door he paused to turn up his collar and draw down his hat-brim, and then indifferently stepped out into a pelting shower. A block away he entered a second-hand book-store and bought a greasy, dog-eared Second Reader which he had priced the day before. Stowing his purchase in an inside pocket to keep it dry, he longingly eyed a passing street-car, for he was tired; but he put the temptation aside—five cents would buy a loaf of bread or two quarts of buttermilk—and stepped out into the rain again.

A walk of ten blocks brought him to the head of an ill-smelling, narrow alley, dotted with foul pools of water and bordered with tumble-down shanties. The rain had now ceased, and the sun, beating down more fiercely than ever, was raising a pestilential reek which had brought the black denizens of the alley to their tiny stoops for a breath of comparatively fresh air. Children, the smaller ones quite naked, pattered about like ducks in the black mud.

The number of men present, considering it was midday, would have surprised any one not familiar with the fact that the residents of Goosefoot Lane plied their varied trades mostly by night. Oily-skinned and blear-eyed from heat, drink, and loss of sleep, these gentlemen of color somewhat resembled the animals of an over-traveled menagerie, blinking stupidly, staring morosely into vacancy, slapping viciously at flies, and occasionally exposing their red mouths and gleaming teeth in a wide, fierce, carnivorous yawn. Some few, in a better humor, were drinking pailed beer and shooting craps. The women held their babies and chatted with their neighbors, while now and then some fat old mammy would waddle out into the lane to settle a row among the youngsters.

It was into this atmosphere that the student took his way, nodding at an acquaintance here and there, until he reached the shanty which the payment of four dollars a month in advance entitled him to call home. An old darky sat drowsing on the stoop. There was something ape-like about his long arms, his flat, wide-nostriled nose, and the mat of gray wool which crept down his forehead to within two inches of his eyebrows. Yet, on a closer inspection, his face was human, kindly, and benevolent, and even lit with a shrewd humor.

"This you' Secum Reader, sonny?" asked old Benjy, starting from his doze as Moss thrust the book into his hand. He fumbled in his pocket for his silver-rimmed spectacles,—cherished memento of better days,—pinched the book between his thick, knotted fingers, and opened it about as gracefully as a bear would open an oyster. Then he squinted at the page with an owl-like expression, moving the book now nearer, now farther, and turning it this way and that for a better light. For he was Moss' teacher, and it would be highly injurious to his prestige for him to show any flustration over this new volume. Nevertheless, he was not quite at ease.

"Yass—book-store man di'n' cheat you. He Secum Reader," he observed astutely, after moving his lips inaudibly for a moment. "Says so—right theh—top o' the page—in plain print. An' print don' lie! 'Member that, sonny,—print don' lie. Men lies, women lies, clouds lies—say it's gwine rain when it don' do nothin' but blow up a li'l' dust—but print neveh lies. 'Cause why? 'Cause the Good Book is print. But, sonny, if you gwine git an educashum, you gotter strike out for it—strike out—strike out."

"Ain't I strikin' out?" asked Moss in an aggrieved tone.

"Shuh, sonny, shuh. But this yere vollum make you scratch you' haid. Yass, indeed, sonny,—make you scratch you' haid. Purt' near makes me scratch mine!" The last, however, was accompanied by a low chuckle to indicate that it was only a joke; after which he adjusted his glasses afresh and again fixed his gaze on the book. "Wuds in heah, sonny, you neveh seen befo'. I done seen 'em, of co'se, 'cause ole Mis' tuk me mos' through the Thud Reader befo' the Wah broke out. But, of co'se, my eyesight ain't what it was—no, sonny, 'tain't what it was." He stared harder than ever, shutting first one eye, as though squinting along his old coon-gun, then the other, blinking, and moving his lips. Finally his black face lighted.

"Heah's an ole devil I used to wrastle with!" he exclaimed shrilly. "Lawd, Lawd, how I used to wrastle with that ole devil! Succumstance! Succumstance! That's the ole devil!"

"Lemme see 'im," said Moss curiously, bending nearer.

"Right theh," answered Benjy proudly, pointing with his stub forefinger. "That long, crinkly, twis'ed feller. Looks a good 'eal like a dried fish-wum. Sonny, when you kin read a wud like him, easy-like, same as I do—succumstance—see!—suc-cum-stance—you' educashum mighty neah complete."

Satisfied with this feat, however, the old man turned from the text to the pictures, which were less trying, he declared, to his eyesight. His attention was at once caught by a little girl, in an old-fashioned pinafore, driving a hoop amid a fairly Edenic profusion of butterflies, flowers, and birds, with a squirrel eating a nut overhead. For a moment he stared fixedly through his grimy lenses, and then his hands trembled with excitement.

"Sonny," he almost shouted, "dis the same Secum Reader ole Mis' done learn me out of! Dar's li'l' gull with her hoop, and squ'ull up above. An' dar"—turning a page—"is li'l' boy with pony—spotted pony with a collah 'stid of breas'-strap. An' dar anudder li'l' boy with white rabbits. I 'members 'em all. I 'members what ole Mis' said about 'em all," he ran on eagerly, while Moss' own eyes grew large with wonder at the strange coincidence. "I 'members de day ole Mis' guve me de book. I done driv' her back that day fum the Law'ences', where she spend the day with ole Mis' Lutie. She spend lots of days with ole Mis' Lutie, 'cause ole Mis' Lutie's husband killed in Mexican Wah, same as ole Mistis'. An' as we driv' up the ca'igeway, Miss Pen and Marse Willie Hahpeh, her cousin, come kitin' by us on theh hosses, makin' sich a clatter, my hosses shied in the blackberry-bushes. But Miss Pen juss larf, like she always do when Marse Willie with her, and neveh slowed up a bit. Ole Mis' kind of sighed and sayed: 'Benjy, that gull gwine breck her neck some day on that hoss.' An' I say, 'Mis' Judie, neveh while Marse Willie aroun'. He got better use for her neck than breckin' it.' An' she say, 'Shut up, Benjy; you fohget they fust cousins.' So we kim on up to the po'ch. Then she han' me a book an' say, 'Benjy, that's Secum Reader. You done learn all they is in the Fust.' An', sonny, it's the same book, the same book."

For a moment he was lost in reverie. His faded, age-filmed eyes, lifted to an archipelago of fleecy cloudlets, grew dreamy as his mind wandered back to the shady driveways of the old Harper mansion; the spacious, rose-curtained veranda; the cool, high-ceiled rooms within; Old Marse and Old Mis', Miss Pen and Miss Patty, and the troops of guests who kept the great house ringing with merriment, with few intermissions, from January till December.

"Times is change, sonny," he murmured plaintively. "Ole Mistis been grave-dust fo' thutty yeahs, eenamost, I reckon. Miss Pen done mah'd Marse Willie, spite of bein' fust cousins; de Wah kem on, an' Benjy—fool Benjy—run away with the Linkum sojers. Yass, ole fool Benjy run away with the Linkum sojers, an' been livin' on 'taters and sow-belly eveh since."

The new Second Reader was forgotten, and he rambled on with the tale of the old days—a tale which had neither beginning nor end, whose characters and events grew sharper with each repetition, and of which the old man never grew weary.

It was a tale of which Moss never grew weary, either. In his childhood it had served him in lieu of the fairy-tales which a white child hears at its mother's knees, and throughout his later years it had served him in lieu of books, pictures, music—in short, had been the sole food of his esthetic nature. At Harper Hall, before the War, according to Benjy, it was never too hot or too cold; birds and flowers were present throughout the year; the grass was always green, the streams were always full of water; nobody ever worked very hard; there was always time to fish and hunt, to dance and play the banjo; there was always plenty to eat. Best of all, there was always love. In that Garden of Eden, a broken head or a broken heart was equally sure of healing balm. Old Mis', Miss Pen, and Miss Patty were little lower than the angels.

"MOST OF THE HOTEL NEGROES SPENT THIS RECESS IN AN ADJACENT DIVE"

Moss had heard of slavery, of course. He even knew that his father had been a slave. But the word conveyed little meaning to him. The war of which his father so often spoke was equally vague. The only clear thing about it was that it had ended the old times and begun the new. How vastly superior those old times had been to the new! What possible comparison could there be, for instance, between Harper Hall and Goosefoot Lane? What a fallen creature was the landlord at the Bluegrass, compared with Benjy's old master! How miserable a thing was Moss' daily fare beside the feasts to which his father habitually used to sit down!

The old man was still muttering reminiscently, and Moss was still sitting with his chin buried in his hands, when an apparition appeared at the head of the Lane. It was a lady, with a white parasol and broad-brimmed white hat, daintily lifting a fluffy, many-ruffled white skirt, and exposing a pair of white shoes and stockings. She nodded amiably at the blacks on either side as she picked her way along, and halted once for a bit of chat; but at last she bore airily down on Moss Harper's stoop, where she folded her parasol as a dove might fold its wings on reaching its ledge.

It was then, and not till then, that a stranger, unless a Southerner, would have discovered that black blood flowed in her veins—that she was, in the vernacular of the South, a "nigger"—no more so and no less so than her thick-lipped, ebon-hued husband, Moss Harper.

She paused for a last covetous glimpse of the stream of life flowing past the head of the Lane, out there in the white man's world, and then, with a careless nod at her husband, she passed through the squat doorway of the musty den—a butterfly entering a rat-hole.

Moss had not spoken,—with elemental human nature mere words count for little,—but his mind glided from Benjy's broken recital to his wife. He never thought of her as half white, for she had been suckled at a black breast; she had played with black pickaninnies; her present associates were black, like her husband; and she spoke the jargon of the blacks. He preferred, in fact, to think of her as of his own race. Yet her undeniable beauty, her fair skin and her wavy hair, were facts to be reckoned with. And beneath that fair skin and wavy hair were other things to be reckoned with—yearnings and ambitions unknown to an Ethiopian, a taste for fine clothes, a discontent with her present state and a blind groping for something better in the way of life, all handed down in her white father's blood.

It is true that the ladies for whom Estelle formerly acted as maid had pronounced her worthless—vain, frivolous, and dishonest. And they were right. She was a thief. The beautiful skirt which she had this day flaunted in the envious eyes of the wenches of Goosefoot Lane had been stolen from the laundry at which she worked three days in a week, and many a neat job of shoplifting had she done. Yet, after all, these were only mistaken means to a great End—means which, if history speaks true, were not unknown to a far-distant generation of our own race when they were groping their way out of the darkness of barbarism.

Of these means Moss, fortunately, knew nothing; for old Benjy, rigidly drilled in honesty by his mistress, had done the same for his son. But the End he saw, mistily and uncertainly, for Estelle had handed over to him a great deal of that which her father had handed down to her; and it was toward this end that he himself was now making his slow and painful way, with a Second Reader in his hand.

Estelle laid off her scented finery lingeringly and lovingly, put on a calico wrapper, and passed into the diminutive lean-to which they called a kitchen. Five minutes later she appeared at the front door, shot a searching glance up the Lane for anything of interest, and coolly announced supper. Then the man who, for eleven hours of seven days in the week, served other men with every luxury which the four quarters of the globe could supply, sat down to a meal of buttermilk, cold potatoes, and dry bread.

When Moss got home again that night, Estelle was sitting on the stoop alone, old Benjy having gone to bed with the chickens, as usual. His eyes brightened, for very often she was summoned to the laundry at night to take care of "immediate" work from the hotels, she being an expert at ironing women's fine fabrics. He sat down beside her on one of the benches which flanked the stoop, and she rested her head on his arm, as if weary.

"You done paid Fitzpatrick the rent to-day?" he finally asked.

"Yass."

"You show him that hole in the flo'?"

"Yass." She dropped her long dark lashes for an instant, and then added: "I tole him about it. He di'n' come here. I took the money to his saloom. You know, he sayed if he haved to come here again fo' that money, he th'ow us out in the alley."

"He ain' neveh tried to th'ow me yet," observed Moss quietly. "We'll th'ow ourseffs out befo' long. We ain' gwine to live in this hawg-pen all the time." He paused, and added more gently: "I don' want you to go to his saloom no mo', 'Stelle."

"I went in the side do'," she explained. "Nobody di'n' see me. An' I di'n' go no furder than the do'. But I won' go no mo' ef you don' want me to."

"I don' want you to," he repeated definitely. "I don' want him to insult you like he did me when I axed him to fix that hole what you could th'ow a bull thoo."

"Why, Mossie, you neveh tole me about that! What he say?" There was an indescribable undertone—possibly of amusement—in her velvety voice.

"He sayed he'd hoss-whip me ef I eveh come to his saloom again beggin' for repai's."

Estelle's lashes again quivered slightly, and her lips parted in the shadow of a smile—just enough to reveal the straight, faultless joint between her two rows of glistening teeth. She reached for the great black hand which rested on his knee and laid it in her lap, covering it with her own. It was as if she recognized in that member of sledge-hammer size and hardness a sure defense from all harm. Yet the light which played in her eyes, as she lazily turned her face toward his, was still half-ironical. Was it Caucasian fleering at Ethiopian—white blood mocking black?

"Moss, I'd lak to see him try to hoss-whip you." She laughed at the thought.

"You mus'n' want me to fight," he rebuked her quietly. "I don' lak to fight. I want to git where I won' never have to fight. When I gits awdained as preacher, we gwine live in the country, an' have a li'l' house with a gyahden, where dad kin potter roun' and raise us veg'tables. You won' have to wuk in no laundry then, or live in a hawg-pen lak this."

Estelle was quiet for several minutes, with her large eyes fixed reflectively on the stars.

"When you think you gwine be awdained?" she finally asked.

"Pretty soon, now; soon's I learns to read a li'l' better."

But in his heart he was not so sure. Old Benjy was of the opinion that he would at least have to go through the Third Reader to qualify for ordination, and he was only beginning the Second.

"You think you lak the country better as you do the city?" asked Estelle hesitatingly.

"Don' you?" he demanded in astonishment.

"Oh, I do," she hastened to assure him. "But I was juss wunnerin' ef you wou'n' make mo money in a big chu'ch in the city as you would in a li'l' chu'ch in the country."

"Got to take li'l' chu'ch fust," he observed astutely.

That he was still dissatisfied with her question, Estelle seemed to detect by some sixth sense, for she ran on suavely: "You know, I neveh lived in the country, lak you. Tha's why I axed you what I did. I reckon I don' know how sweet the country is. Moss, I wish we gwine the country to-mo'ow to live!" She flung her arms about his neck and let herself settle down upon his broad chest.

Tears filled the giant's eyes. "I wish you was, honey. But I cyarn take you—juss yit. Got to wait a li'l' while—juss a li'l' while."

In that moment Estelle probably meant what she said. In that moment her love for the man whose name she bore was probably uppermost in her foolish heart. In that moment her impulse toward a higher life may have carried her beyond her love of finery, and she may have been willing to give up the city and the very questionable means which it afforded for securing that finery.

"IT WAS INTO THIS ATMOSPHERE THAT THE STUDENT TOOK HIS WAY"

II

We drift along the placid stream of Time, complaining of the monotony of the voyage, when already the murmur of rapids which are to try every muscle and thrill every nerve might be heard if we but stilled our peevish notes long enough to listen. A week after the above events a party of four ladies from central Kentucky arrived one evening at the Bluegrass. The register showed them to be mother and daughters; and their gentle manners and soft voices, added to the beauty of the girls, had put the clerk on his mettle, spurring him to an exhibition of his choicest Kentucky gallantry. He had just promised them a large, cool room on the second floor, containing two beds, and, in answer to their laughing, half-ironical request that they might be shown the Congo King, he had assured them that they should be seated at that royal scion's table.

"You certainly are entitled to the privilege," he added blandly, "for his real name is the same as yours."

"Harper?" queried the mother of the pretty trio, with some surprise.

"Yes; Moss Harper."

The four ladies exchanged quick glances.

"Why, our carriage-driver, long before the War, was an old negro named Moss. He had a son named Benjy, who ran away during the War. I don't want to impeach the genealogy of your King, but I wonder—" She stopped, as if recalling that her auditor was a stranger, then added, with a smile: "Anyhow, we must be waited on by him, now."

Moss was aware that the ladies at his table were scanning him with more interest than even his size and legendary history usually evoked, and he was not much surprised, therefore, when the eldest of them said: "Excuse me, please, but is your real name Moss Harper?"

"Yassum," he answered, halting instantly in his employment, as old Benjy had taught him to do, and dumbly waiting the lady's further pleasure.

"Do you know your father's name?"

"Yassum. Ole Benjy."

"Is he still living?"

"Yassum; livin' with me."

The lady's small white hand closed rather quickly on the table-cloth.

"Do you know what county he came from?"

"Yassum. Ole Bubbon; he done live at Hahpeh Hall." Then the lady's lighting eyes encouraged him to volunteer a word or two, contrary to his habit. "The Hahpehs all daid and gone now, though. All killed in the Wah."

One of the girls shot her sisters an amused glance, but Penelope Harper's lips quivered. In a voice which struck Moss as the sweetest he had ever heard, she continued: "I think I shall ask you to come to our room—No. 120—as soon as you are through with your duties here. I have something of interest to tell you."

To Moss, with the childish impatience of his race, it seemed as if he would never escape from the dining-room that night; for when he was on the point of leaving, at a little after nine, he was detailed to help take care of a party of a dozen or more that had just come in. It was, therefore, after ten when he gently tapped on the door of No. 120.

He had been too well bred by his father to sit down; and Mrs. Harper, not wishing to disturb his conception of propriety, though some laxity on the present occasion would have been permissible, let him stand just inside the door, with his greasy old hat clutched awkwardly between his hands and the shrunken sleeves of his butternut suit exposing four or five inches of muscular black wrist.

"In the first place, Moss," she began, after ascertaining a little more of his history, "I want to tell you that the Harpers are not all dead. I am a Harper myself. I am the Miss Pen that old Benjy must have often told you about."

"Not Miss Pen!" exclaimed Moss, with starting eyes, as if beholding an apparition. "Not the one that mah'd Marse Willie Hahpeh?"

"The very same," she assured him, smiling. "And these are my daughters. But Marse Willie is dead; he died a long time ago, during the War."

Verily, it was as if some magician had rung up the curtain on the past—that beautiful past of which his father had told him so much. He listened to Mrs. Harper's story in something like a trance, with his blue-black eyes half lost in reverie. And, thus forgetting himself, his awkwardness passed; his hands fell naturally by his side, his chest came out, his head rose, and he stood before the ladies in all the splendor of physique which Nature had invested him with.

"Now, Moss," Mrs. Harper concluded, "no Harper could ever neglect a descendant of our faithful old Moss, even though his son did run away during the War. We want to take care of you and Benjy. We'll give him a cabin by himself, and we'll give you and your wife another cabin. As fast as you learn the plantation work, you shall be advanced. With your strength and intelligence, I am sure that you can soon be earning good wages, and you will be much happier and better off than you are here. To-morrow afternoon, when you are at home, we'll drive out to see old Benjy, as he is probably too feeble to come here, and you can then tell us what you have decided to do. Meanwhile, to relieve any immediate needs, accept this." And she handed him a ten-dollar bill.

Just how he expressed his thanks, or how he got out of the room, Moss never clearly recalled, for his brain was whirling. But when he found himself in the street, with the cool

"HEAH'S AN OLE DEVIL I USED TO WRASTLE WITH,' HE EXCLAIMED SHRILLY"

evening air on his heated brow, he started for home on a run. It was a rather dangerous thing for a black man to do, too, at that hour of the night, in a Southern city, since a policeman was likely to stop him with a tap on the head from a "billy."

But the first thing that stopped Moss was the glowing front of a pawnshop, near the head of Goosefoot Lane. In the window was a brooch which Estelle had paused to gaze at, with covetous eyes, every day for weeks. Moss had looked at it himself a good many times, dreaming rather than hoping to carry it home some day as a surprise for Estelle. Now he had the money, and, without a thought of the prodigality of his course, he entered the shop.

His heavy breathing did not escape the sharp eyes of the Hebrew proprietor, who would not have been at all surprised to see a pursuing policeman heave in sight. But when Moss showed his bill and asked for the brooch, the pawnbroker quickly went forward for the article, and, after taking into consideration his customer's evident hurry, he set a price of five dollars on it. Estelle would have got it for half that sum, but Moss paid the price without a murmur, and then sped on down the Lane, leaving the Hebrew well pleased with the transaction and fully convinced that his customer was a thief.

Estelle was not at home, to Moss' keen disappointment, and, though he took it that she was at the laundry, he woke his father to make sure. Old Benjy, as torpid as a woodchuck in January, was not easily roused; but Moss' repeated shouts and by no means gentle thumps finally brought him to his elbow, blinking dazedly.

"Daddy, Miss Pen's alive! She's at the hotel, and she's foun' us out, and gwine to teck us all back to Hahpeh Hall!"

Old Benjy continued to blink silently, and was evidently of the opinion that he had been dreaming. But when Moss had repeated the news twice or thrice, and the facts had finally filtered through Benjy's thick skull, he let out a yelp that would have shamed a coyote.

"Halleluyer! Halleluyer! Glory to Gawd! Bress de Lam'! Bress de Lam'!"

Moss, after confirming his supposition as to Estelle's whereabouts, did not wait for the broadside of questions which his father was sure to fire at him, but ran out to the stoop. Should he wait for her? Should he pin the brooch on her night-dress, and then, when she discovered it, overwhelm her with the good news? That would be fine, but it was far too severe a tax upon his patience. The next moment he was on the wing again.

No negroes were allowed to enter the laundry by the front door, or, indeed, by any door, unless employed about the place. But Moss stole in through the engine-room at the rear, and managed to make his way as far as the ironing-machines without challenge. Estelle was nowhere in sight, however; and, raising his voice above the clatter, he inquired as to where she was of a mulatto girl whom he had often seen with his wife.

"She done gone to git some medicine fur a haidache," answered the girl.

"How long 'go?"

"Juss li'l' while—not ten minutes."

At this, a wrinkled old negress, who had bent her head forward to catch the colloquy, showed her half-dozen yellow teeth in an evil grin.

"Sonny," she volunteered maliciously, "she been gone two hou's by the clock. The medicine that gull gwine arfter don' come fum no drug-sto'."

Moss had no time for further parley, for the threatening voice of the foreman warned him to depart without loss of time, and he glided swiftly out again; but in the starlight outside he paused, with the mist from the exhaust-pipe drifting into his upturned face.

Some of the joy had gone out of his eyes. Did the old woman mean that Estelle drank? Once or twice, recently, he thought he had detected liquor on her breath, but he had immediately dismissed the suspicion. Drinking, of course, was no heinous offense in his eyes; he daily saw too many white women drinking to hold such an opinion as that. Nevertheless, he himself had forgone liquor for years—old Benjy had preached him many a temperance sermon; and Estelle had allowed him to believe that she, too, never drank.

But now that the accursed maggot of doubt was in his brain, he could not cast it out, and its foul progeny multiplied thick and fast. With feverish haste he made the round of all the drug-stores in the vicinity; but Estelle was not to be seen. Twice he returned to the cabin; but the measured snoring of old Benjy, who had swallowed the good news as a child would a sugar-plum, and then calmly fallen asleep again, was the only sound that greeted his ears.

How quiet the cabin was! A chill solitude already seemed brooding over it, and the familiar objects of the room had taken on a strange appearance. With an unnamed, unnamable fear compressing his heart and making breathing difficult, he took his way back to the head of the Lane. After standing there a moment, straining his eyes in either direction, he began to wander slowly and a little wearily up and down the avenue, scrutinizing every woman who came within his range of vision.

"OLD BENJY CONTINUED TO BLINK SILENTLY"

He finally found himself, by mere chance, in front of his landlord's saloon. A passing thought brought his leaden feet to a stand-still. If Estelle should have gone out for a drink, and had had no money,—as he believed to be the case,—would she not have come to Fitzpatrick's? It would have been the last place to which he would have gone to ask credit for a drink, for, in the first place, no negroes were allowed to drink at Fitzpatrick's bar; in the second place, Fitzpatrick was no friend of his. Yet Estelle had gone there once with the rent! Maybe she had gone more than once; maybe——

A sound in the gloomy hallway along one side of the saloon suddenly made his steady-going heart give one great bound. It was Estelle's voice in silly, tipsy laughter, followed by a profane admonition, in a masculine voice, to keep still. Next came the cautious closing of a door and guarded footsteps. As rigid as iron, with his great fists clenched and his nostrils spread like an angry bull's, Moss waited for the pair to appear. But, instead of coming nearer, their footsteps receded until he heard them ascending the stairs at the other end of the hall; then they ceased.

One—two—three—four—five minutes Moss stood there, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, a film over his eyes, a noise like rushing waters in his ears. His sensations were very similar to those he had felt when a careless carpenter had once dropped an oak two-by-four on his head from the second story of a building; and now, as then, he automatically raised his hand to his scalp.

But at last he came out of the curious obsession; he saw the twinkling arc-lights, heard the humming of the trolley-cars, and was conscious of people passing to and fro. With a strange smile, he took the packet containing the brooch from his pocket, slowly unwrapped it, and dropped the trinket to the sidewalk, after which he ground it under his heel. Then he crossed the street to a negro saloon—that is, a saloon for negroes, run by a white man. He poured himself a big drink. The villainous liquor trickled pleasantly through his interior, and he immediately ordered a second drink—then a third—then a fourth. This time the bartender, after an uneasy glance at the herculean shoulders and muddy eyes of his patron, substituted a weaker mixture for the fiery stuff he had been setting out. He also shifted a revolver beneath the bar into a slightly handier position.

But Moss walked quietly out and recrossed the street, with no hint of unsteadiness in his gait, in spite of his unusual potations. He softly entered Fitzpatrick's hallway, and in the dark recess behind the stairs he took his stand—a silent, grim, fearsome statue of obsidian hue and almost heroic size.

He waited for what seemed hours; but, queerly enough, he was not impatient, nor was he in the least excited. Occasionally a policeman sauntered past the entrance; at intervals a trolley-car thundered by; the bartender of the saloon slammed and locked the back door. Finally, a tower clock began to boom out the hour, and Moss, in the absence of anything else to do, counted the strokes.

Only twelve! He would have guessed that it was at least two o'clock. Then, having counted to twelve without much effort, he began to count his fingers over and over, to see how far he could go. At thirty-nine, being a little uncertain of the next number, he paused. During the pause he heard the swish of a skirt in the hall above. They were coming!

A woman's agonized shriek, a man's curse, a chance shot into the dark from his ever-ready revolver, a scuffle,—a very brief scuffle,—and then all was as still as before. Estelle had told her last lie; Fitzpatrick had dispensed his last drink.

Moss walked forward to the doorway, waited quietly until an officer who had heard the report of the revolver came running up, and then surrendered himself.

"I done kill 'em," he explained laconically.

Ten minutes later, in heavy manacles, he stepped down from the police ambulance at the entrance to the jail—a huge brick building, covering an entire block, with its barred windows rising story on story, a somber architectural jest at Civilization.

Some two months later, the governor of Kentucky was standing with his hands in his pockets at the window of his office, in the quaint capitol building at Frankfort, and gazing idly at the tablet in the sidewalk which marks the spot where William Goebel fell, the victim of an assassin's ball. He turned, at the rustle of a lady's skirts.

"Why, Pen! What angel sent you?" he exclaimed, pushing forward his easiest chair. "Pen, do you know you're just in time to save the gov'neh of Kentucky from a spell of the blues? It's a fact. I read a book last night, by a man named Buckle, about civilization and that sawt of thing, and the pesky thoughts stick to me like a nightmare. I was standin' by that window theh, just reviewin' the events which have taken place in our deah old State in the past quarter of a century, and I was askin' myself which way we were headed—up or down."

"Up, surely," answered Mrs. Harper. She looked at him with that candor and seriousness which is permitted only between old friends, and then continued: "Wilbur, I have a problem, too, and I want you to help me solve it. I want you to pardon a negro who was convicted last June in Louisville of a double murder, and who is now here in the penitentiary. He is the son of that Benjy of ours that ran off during the War, and the grandson of our old Moss. You remember them both. I never knew either of them to be guilty of a vicious act, and this boy—he's only twenty-five—killed his wife and the white man who had debauched her."

The governor sat playing with his pen-knife for some time after she had finished her story.

"I wish this Moss of yours had killed only the man, Pen," he observed. "That's what a white man would have done, and everybody would have applauded. But, then, a niggeh ain't a white man—never will be a white man. Pen, being gov'neh is a terribly responsible job. Now, you, for instance, ask me, one man, to set aside the findings of twelve men appointed by the people to determine this niggeh's guilt. Yet the pahdoning power was certainly given me for a purpose, and I intend to use it when I see fit. I'll take your word for it, Pen, that Moss is a good niggeh; I'll look into his case, and if you are not mistaken as to the facts, and will take him out to the Hall and keep him theh, I'll pahdon him. But I can't do it right away. In the fust place, a little punishment will do him good. In the second place, theh's politics. Politics, Pen! To pahdon that niggeh now, my dear Pen, while the events are still so fresh, would make an awful row. The press would froth at the mouth. But in a year, mind you, or eighteen months at the most, I'll turn him loose."

"Oh, Wilbur, a year is such a long time!" exclaimed Mrs. Harper plaintively.

"Is it, Pen,—to you—at fifty-five?" he asked whimsically.

"Alas, no, not to me! I'm not in a cell. But I understand your position, Wilbur, and I'll submit to the inevitable. It is so much better than it might have been, and I am very, very grateful. But can I not intimate the good news to him, just to keep up his courage?"

"If you do it very diplomatically, Pen, and do not mention me."

Then, after she had left, he sat chuckling in his chair at the idea of asking a woman to be diplomatic under such circumstances.

The warden, after reading the Governor's note, turned to a guard. "Put a coat on 1610 and bring him to the reception-room."

"If you please," interposed Mrs. Harper, "I should like to see him just as he is, at his work."

She followed her conductor through the stifling prison-yard, cut off by the encircling hills from every current of air. On the hill-side, where the convicts were breaking stone, it seemed even hotter, the oven-like breath of the dog-day sun rebounding into one's face in almost palpable pulsations. Moss was one of a gang of fifty. He was naked to the waist, and his broad, sweaty back glistened in the sunlight like the skin of a porpoise; yet, in spite of the heat, his sledge rose and fell with the regularity of machinery.

"Has he given you any trouble?" asked Mrs. Harper of the guard.

"No'm. He ain't that kind. He's the kind that gits gloomy and either dies or goes nutty. But after a year or two we'll probably make a trusty of him, and then he'll be happier. Murderers generally make the best trusties."

When Mrs. Harper, after going forward a few steps alone, with a quickened pulse, spoke his name, Moss' sledge hung in mid-air, and he hearkened without looking up, as if doubting his ears. It was not until she repeated his name that he turned toward her. His face was neither bitter nor vindictive, but dull, oh, unutterably dull, as if he had said farewell forever to hope. He did not speak—to speak was against the rules. He did not even smile, but simply touched the brim of his wool hat.

Mrs. Harper, with a catch in her breath, stepped still nearer.

"Moss, I remain your friend," she began tremulously. "Benjy is with us, and we are taking the best care of him. And, listen, Moss! This is what I came to tell you. I am authorized to say, positively, by a power that is supreme, that, if your behavior is good, your detention here will not be more than eighteen months, and I hope only twelve. You can stand the work that long, can't you, knowing that we are waiting for you, ready to give you a home?"

Still his expression did not change, and still he did not speak.

"Don't you—don't you understand, Moss?" she asked, with quivering lips, fearful that his mind had already been shocked.

His slow words then came:

"Yassum, I kin stan' it. I could stan' it foreveh. But she's daid," he cried hoarsely. "I kill her—I choke her—with that han'!" thrusting out the member. "The same han' she used to put her li'l' han's roun' and hole so tight—same han' I used to pat her cheek with—same han'—" A shudder passed over his huge form until his teeth chattered.

"Oh, I know it's hard!" exclaimed the tender woman, suffering only less than he. "You have sinned, and you must do penance. But we've all sinned, and all done penance, and yet happiness comes again. Believe me, Moss, some day you'll be happy again. Be brave, and one month from to-day I'll be here to see you again. Meanwhile, can I do anything for you—take any word to Benjy?"

His lusterless eyes seemed to brighten a little.

"Mis' Pen, will you sot up a li'l' tombstone on her grave? Juss a li'l' one, so I kin fine it some day, when I gits out?"

And Penelope, with blinding eyes, promised.

[AN AMERICAN MASTER OF LANDSCAPE]
BY
T. M. CLELAND

A striking reversal of attitude may be noticed to-day toward innovations in the field of art. Time was, we are told by the biographers of the Old Masters, when the painter who dared to step beyond the pale of conventions current in his day, suffered the neglect and bitter scorn of his contemporaries. From the earliest period of artistic endeavor, the innovator has been on the defensive; whereas the cardinal sin in the modern artist is rather the failure to innovate or to startle us by some new form of disregard for the principles established by tradition. In the place of knowledge and patient scholarship, we find sophistication and a restless, conscious craving to produce an effect sufficiently startling to command the instant attention of a busy world. In the art of landscape painting particularly this desire to be effective at any cost has led many of the younger generation of artists to adopt for themselves hastily formed theories regarding the phenomena of light and air and to devote their lives to these, forgetting all else.

The result of all this is a modern school of landscape, the aims of which seem strangely more allied to scientific investigation than to artistic study, and a class of pictures which expound, frequently with great skill, the theories upon which they are accomplished; but which are rarely intelligible to any one not directly concerned with the study of art.

So it is with some sense of relief that we may turn our attention upon the achievements of an artist like Thomas R. Manley, whose drawings are reproduced here, not that they may be the subject of a written discourse, but that of themselves they may give pleasure to a wider public than it has hitherto been their fortune to command. They are the product of a quiet and orderly development carried on outside the clamor of the modern movement, simple masterpieces of landscape drawing as it has been practised since the days of Claude Lorrain. They present no "theory" upon which we may base a philosophical discussion, and there is nothing "new" about them at all beyond a simple technical invention of the artist's, whereby his line is rendered more soft and pliable than by the ordinary mediums of crayon or pencil.

What they do possess, however, and to a high degree, is the evidence of a mastery of the technique of design plus a finely trained intelligence and feeling. This technical mastery of design is perhaps the rarest of accomplishments at the present day, because it is the most difficult to acquire and makes too great a demand upon patience. And yet it is this which should and does satisfy most directly the unconscious esthetic sense in us all; for who cannot experience some inward pleasure in the form and movement of the hills and trees as they are expressed to us in these drawings? It is not essential to our enjoyment of these things that we should ourselves have knowledge of the technical means whereby they are conveyed; but it is these studied accomplishments which we are enjoying nevertheless; because through them our own sense of harmony is aroused. Let us note, for instance, the character of the lines used to represent the foliage in the first drawing reproduced, and see with what beautiful, rhythmic precision they produce at one and the same time the required tone and the movement of the thing represented. And again, in the trunks of the trees how fully the firm lines record the upward growth and the vicissitudes of weather suffered in their struggles to attain the majestic heights to which they rise. This method of drawing, in which light and shade is produced by lines which at the same time follow the form and movement of the objects represented, is perhaps the oldest and most conventional; but in the hands of a master like Mr. Manley it is more fully expressive and beautiful in its results than any other.

If to dwell upon points as technical as this seems a contradiction to the statement already made, to the effect that these reproductions are presented for what pleasure they may give the layman, it should be said that it is for the reason that such technicalities as are pointed out may well be within the understanding of all intelligent persons and that their elucidation may assist greatly toward a fuller appreciation of the more intellectual merits. And if we fail to consider sufficiently here those more poetic qualities and to attempt some description of the meanings and sensations conveyed to us by the pictures themselves, it will be because it seems that these are matters best left to the individual observer.

This is what might be called the "literary" side of pictures, and one upon which art criticism has come too largely to dwell. If, on the other hand, the discussion of pictures were content to confine itself to the pointing out of what constitutes the "art" of the work, might we not derive each for himself a more intimate pleasure in undisturbed enjoyment of those intellectual conceptions, which, though produced by the same picture, are, in no two of us, precisely alike?

There are represented in the four drawings here selected (from a collection so interesting that any selection at all was difficult) several phases of the artist's ability, each so well demonstrated that it is scarcely possible to choose between them. This versatility of mood is a noteworthy evidence in itself of the well grounded mastery of the artist and of his ability to deal with nature at all points. It is, in other words, no mere trick or specialty which he has learned as one might pick out note for note and learn by heart a tune upon the piano; but the work of a hand and eye and mind turned in perfect accord, like a single instrument capable of an infinite range of expression.

In the first of the drawings, that of the piece of woodland through which a path winds off to where it is lost to view among the trees, carrying our imagination with it to the contemplation of scenes still farther on, we find virtues of a more uncommon type than in the others. The large nobility—the monumental quality—is an aspect of nature wholly out of fashion in our day. The firm bed of earth we can feel under our feet with a sense that it is good to stand upon, and the fine pattern of trees and clouds swayed in common movement stirs one with that martial sense of activity, that vitality of impulse which recalls the memory of some high-winded, keen-aired autumn day. We have considered already the spirited and skilful drawing of the trees in this picture; but it is difficult to turn from it without again noting some of those qualities of line which are particularly well displayed in these parts of the composition. To render those long, bare, sinuous stems, growing upward with their roots unmistakably planted in the ground and not so that they have the appearance of hanging down from the clouds, is a feat of no small difficulty, to judge from the frequent instances one meets with of failure in this regard. This well established feeling of the growth from the ground upward of the trunks of the trees and the springing from the branches outward of the foliage, this complete and harmonious development of the whole structure from the seed, as it were, is the product of an exhaustive study, in all of its stages, of the life and characteristics of the tree itself.

We are confronted in the second drawing with a striking contrast to the first, in that the merits of vigorous and harmoniously balanced line and form are supplanted by the more tender effects of atmosphere, and the vigorous stroke becomes gentle in its handling of the delicate trees worn by the winds and but half seen through the uncertain twilight. Here, perhaps, the man is more in evidence than the draftsman, and the sensitive and sympathetic spirit of the artist seems abstracted for a time from the more tangible qualities which are the chief glory of the former work. But like the first drawing it possesses a carefully built up unity of sentiment and notes no point in the scene not concerned with the impression of loneliness and neglect it seems intended to convey.

The third and fourth drawings are more remarkable for skilled and accomplished draftsmanship than for the expression of any distinctive feature in the varying moods of nature. Our delight in them comes more from the beautiful precision of aim whereby a single stroke is made to record a number of interesting facts at the same time. In the drawing of the barn and shed over-topped by a rugged tree and with a middle ground filled by lively detail, we are reminded of the great masters of etching in the clever abbreviation of each of those details and the manner in which they are grouped or merged one into the other. And then, in the last one, note the contour of the earth, how well it is rendered by that cleverly foreshortened winding line of half obliterated roadway leading up the hill and into the fresh mass of foliage which crowns it. This ability to draw the solid ground so that it appears solid is a rare gift in any draftsman, and it may well be taken as an evidence of the fullness of his talent and training.

Like Constable, Mr. Manley has been content to draw his inspiration from the small section of the world in which circumstances have placed him, the quiet New Jersey country where Inness worked out for himself the distinguished place his name holds among American landscape painters. These drawings by no means represent the full range of Mr. Manley's activities, for he has won high esteem as a painter and an etcher and holds a position of importance as a miniaturist; but they are, perhaps, the things in which his rarest talents are displayed, as they are also the closest to his own pleasure in his art. They are the pastimes of an uncommonly sincere and scholarly master who shows integrity in play as well as in work, and who has carried on his career with an earnestness and a humility and modesty of character which all but deprived us of any sight of his achievements at all.

[THE HOUSE OF MUSIC]
BY
GERTRUDE HALL

One elating, blue and white April morning saw a cheerful company of six assembling in a railroad-station waiting-room. There were the manager of the tour, Duprez—gray-haired in comparative youth, at once care-worn and accommodating looking—the foreign stamp on him not entirely obliterated by the stamp of the country; and his wife, the popular Pearl Wharton-Duprez, whose habit of facing the world as an audience must have found its way into her features; she was recognizable at sight for a singer. Her brilliant face, while not precluding the possibility of a heart, suggested less remotely a temper.

There was one Milen Odiesky, gripping a black violin-box; who listened to a hilarious conversation he but half understood, with a fixed smile, revealing a marked division between his two broad, white front teeth,—disagreeable, for some reason, though he might pass for handsome in a dark, hairy, Oriental way.

Then there was one who at first glance looked in the group as if he must be an aquaintance come to see them off. He was tall and proportionately broad, with stalwart shoulders, a deep chest, and a big neck; superlatively well groomed and dressed. The gloss of his silk hat was not broken by the wilfulness of one hair. He carried himself a trifle more than erect, and swept his limited horizon with a calm, kingly eye. His face was close-shaven, a smooth coppery rose, shading easily into the color of his close-cropped hair. His features were of the rather thick, round, good-natured type, and time was beginning to divide up his face into heavier masses than occur in the forties; but these facts did not prevent his presence on the whole from impressing an observer with the sense that he looked at something really very fine. This was Bronson, whose name on the program would occupy the most room: the great Bronson, Anthony, the tenor of long sustained fame—sustained, indeed, so long that these appearances in parts that knew him only by that fame had now been projected.

Then there was a little plump woman, the one who kept the others laughing; and she carried, besides what one is accustomed to see on the arms of travelers, all the things she had forgotten to put into her trunk; among which were an alarm-clock, a sponge-bag, a pink flannel dressing-sacque, and a little image of the Virgin. She bubbled on, in a voice as impossible to forget or mistake for another's as her face; which face, however, was not pretty, but so faithfully reflected a nature as to be memorable for its want of all malice, concealment, or suspicion. It was not that her features were child-like which accounted for her face bringing to mind a child's, but that it shared some quality inclining one on shortest acquaintance, without fear of rebuff, to treat its winsome, unsevere, uncritical owner familiarly and affectionately. She was not pretty, but certainly her dark-edged, misty, pale blue eyes, with their capacity in the same measure for humor and sentiment, under eyebrows sympathetically working with her thoughts, and lids stained a tender bistre, had an attaching sweetness; and the clear spaces of her face, the forehead and temples, something cool and rare, like the stamp of talent; while just beside her ear, where a faint lock of silken black hung an inch or so down a soft, sallow cheek, was a spot creating an instant desire to kiss it. This was Miss Nevers, the pianiste; Nevers, they briefly called her in speaking of her, pronouncing the name like an English one; Marie-Aimée they called her in speaking to her, all excepting Odiesky, who did not yet know her well enough; except, too, the sixth member of the party, who could never take it into his head to do so. The latter was a homely, thin man, neither young nor old, of the name of Snell, who was engaged to play common accompaniments, and tune the pianos. He stood near the others, but only ventured a smile where they laughed.

Yet he with the rest, as they trooped to the train, was conscious of a lift to his spirits. The tour was a turning the back upon the old and known. It had the charm of beginnings; it opened to life, with this new combination, new possibilities. Hard work and wearing travel were a certainty in the prospect, but it showed nevertheless like a holiday, enlivened by daily change of scene, faces, food.

Beside these general justifications of a reasonable elation on starting, there was excuse for the festive jollity which made people turn to look after our friends as they progressed down the platform—the stately Bronson now carrying a bulging rubber sponge-bag, impossible to conceal—in the brilliant artistic auspices under which these musical peregrinations were undertaken, and the discovery, now that the artists were come together en troupe, that they severally brought elements promising uncommon liveliness and fun.

About five years had passed since the laurel-laden return of the Duprez Concert Company, when Marie-Aimée one morning, rather earlier than it is customary to make a call, rang the door-bell of a certain large impressive house.

Whether the explanations were hurry in dressing or absence of mind, she looked, on this occasion, somewhat as if her clothes, as the saying is, had been thrown at her. The velvet of her little bonnet needed brushing; and her little gloves, alas, mending. She wore no veil, and wisps of her hair had been blown on end. But this effect of disorder culminated in her face itself, where the colors were out of their places; her cheeks being pale, her poor small nose and her eyelids red. She had grown stouter since our last sight of her, and on this day was carrying herself so without pride or heed as to look fairly round-shouldered.

As she stood waiting, she must have forgotten that she was in a public street, or else felt bad beyond caring; two or three times she openly mopped her eyes. When, however, she faced the tall butler who opened the door, she appeared to have nothing worse the matter with her than a bad head-cold. She asked if Miss Cheriton were in, gave her card, and was shown into a vast hushed drawing-room. There, as soon as she had been left alone, she looked at herself in the mirror; after which she chose a seat with its back to the windows. She had occupied this but a moment, when, lest the thoughts stealing back upon her should drive her again to tears, she crossed over to the grand-piano glimmering in the half-light with liquid reflections of gilt moldings, brocade, and palms. She lifted the lid to peer at the name of the maker, and tried its tone with a scarce audible chord. Then she took up piece after piece of the music in the rack, questioning it as to Miss Cheriton's title to her high reputation as an amateur pianist.

On hearing a rustle, she hurriedly laid down the music, and got up, her heart rushing. Miss Cheriton had shaken hands, with expressions of pleasure in making her aquaintance, had offered her a seat, and taken one, before Marie-Aimée had been able to do more than clear her throat.

Miss Cheriton had allotted her a seat well in the lights; her curiosity about this caller could do no less; wherefore Marie-Aimée's reddened eyes at first refused a square encounter. But shortly, while Miss Cheriton was forcing a dullish conversation, Marie-Aimée forgot herself, and looked Miss Cheriton in the face; full as interested as she in the looks of the other at close range.

Marie-Aimée saw a well-grown young woman of eight or nine and twenty; faultlessly dressed in a fawn colored cloth matching her perfectly arranged abundant hair. Her face was entirely fine, if a little cold. She gave an impression of great self-poise; she could be imagined to have always thought and decided for herself, and had the fortune to see everything go as she wished, which no doubt she laid to the firm and just management she looked so capable of exercising. She had a beautiful calm complexion and calm dark-blue eyes, which weighed you thoughtfully, and would with difficulty, you fancied, alter their conclusions about you. But at least, Marie-Aimée felt with relief and hope, they were windows into a mind where there was room to breathe.

She began abruptly, in a suggestive pause occurring in Miss Cheriton's small talk, "You must be wondering what brought me."

The expression of Miss Cheriton's face, her only answer to this, signified that though she hoped she had not seemed to be wondering rudely, she would in effect be pleased to know.

Marie-Aimée picked at her glove. "It is this. I was told that I had been making mischief. And I came, wishing if possible to remedy it."

Miss Cheriton's eyebrows moved upward just enough to start a ripple in the beautiful smoothness of her forehead, and she waited, her eyes inquiring of Miss Nevers' troubled face; in their depths had flashed a prevision of what might be coming.

"I know I talk a dreadful lot," Marie-Aimée burst forth in disgust, "I tell everything I know. I can't keep to myself even stories that are against myself. Whatever is on my heart, I say it. I have been making a dreadful fool of myself—which is bad enough, but I feel worse about having given annoyance to others.... Mr. Bronson came to see me yesterday evening."

She paused, as after a piece of news. Miss Cheriton waited in silence, her face expressing nothing beyond polite attention.

"And he said that my doing as I have been doing made a lot of gossip, which inevitably reached you, and was calculated to give you a mistaken impression of our relations in the past——" Marie-Aimée's voice stuck.

After a moment, "Please, please, don't be distressed," murmured Miss Cheriton; and as if her uneasiness at the sight of tears had made her restless, left her seat, and went to stand beside the mantle-piece, leaning on it with one elbow, ornaments at choice within reach, to pick up and play with.

Marie-Aimée laughed through a sob. "You see? Was there ever such a fool? And this is the way I have been ever since I heard of his engagement. But I want you to understand, Miss Cheriton, that that's just me. How can he help it, unhappy man, if I am made this way? I have cried like a pump. I have cried upon the shoulder of every one who would stand it. But I had no right, no possible right, to lament in the highways like that. It was only—when my heart was full, I let it run over. But I never in the least meant it as a reproach to anyone,—any more, put it this way, than a sunflower going draggled and crazy at sunset. But he told me last night I made him ridiculous. Oh, he was gentle. For all that, the things he said troubled me horribly; and I made up my mind, after he had left, to come directly to you and explain, so that if reports have vexed you, you should not mind them after this."

Miss Cheriton said quietly, not looking at Marie-Aimée, but at an ivory Chinaman she held: "It is not necessary, Miss Nevers. I did indeed hear something, but I did not give it much thought."

Upon which Marie-Aimée, as if these words had contained all the encouragement necessary, proceeded eagerly, "We never, never were engaged. You will believe me, whatever you may hear. We merely have been friends for years. I had known him slightly a long time already, when we went on a tour together, with Madame Wharton-Duprez. It was then we became such chums.... Mercy on me, that tour! Shall I ever forget it? Will any of us?" She smiled, with a sudden drenched reflection of sunshine on her tear-bedabbled face.

"I know!" Miss Cheriton smiled too. "Mr. Bronson has spoken of it to me."

"Has he?" asked Marie-Aimée, brightening still further, rainbow-like, and immediately at greater ease with Miss Cheriton, from a responsiveness she felt in her smile when the ever fertile subject of the tour was broached, dear in its time to Anthony Bronson's heart. "That's good. For it will in part explain.... Don't you agree with me that laughing together makes a stronger bond than even weeping? Well, on that tour, what we did best and chiefly, was to laugh. Did he ever tell you——" She dropped her voice like a person having something good to relate, and fun played over her face in ripples, "the adventure of the water-melon? Yes, of course! I suppose he has told you everything. And the adventure of the face-wash and the curling-irons? And the night of the great thunderstorm? Oh, make him tell you that one. It is incredible, the number of things, and the description of things, that happened to us in those six months. It was as if we had been a sort of lightening-rod attracting all the incongruous, ludicrous, delicious happenings that should have been distributed over the country. Or else, it is that we were in a disposition of mind to find everything funny. Of course, it may have been that. But still—imagine our arriving once at a little place where we had never been heard of. There is a mistake. And no one expects us. And there is no hotel. And it ends in our being obliged to sleep in the empty jail, we women, a dovecote of a jail, with just two wee cells; oh, slumbers of sweetness and safety, after our many nights in strange hostelries. No need for once to look under the bed for burglars; and the men in a barn. Odiesky didn't get the hayseed out of his hair that season. And imagine—imagine having along with you a man who has a nightmare every time he drops off to sleep. A poor Mr. Snell who went with us was like that, and we used to run into one another in the lobbies, in curl-papers, at dead of night, flying to knock him up, he made such awful, such blood-curdling sounds, which could be heard all over the hotel. It is unkind to laugh at an infirmity, but the sounds he made, could you have heard them, would excuse me to you. And imagine—but try to—imagine the six of us, six people who feel themselves not a little famous, going fourteen miles in a single-seated wagon, that, or miss our connection, and complications without end. I don't believe I stopped laughing the whole way. You see it? We two, the grace and beauty of the party, enthroned upon the laps of ces messieurs—no other way, no other way possible, none. Wharton-Duprez in the arms of her own husband; and Odiesky astride the horse, postilion, having to drive; and poor little Snell on the floor with his knees over the dash-board; and the danger at any moment of the wagon breaking down——" She pieced out that fourteen-mile long ecstasy of merriment with more of a singularly rich, unaffected laugh, in the midst of which her face fell blankly serious, and she held up, as if she had never seen it before, the hand which in the heat of her description she had been waving.

"Will you look at my glove?" she said; promptly closing which parenthesis she continued, "As I was saying, it may have been that circumstances really justified us, or our mood, which was exceptional. For myself, I never enjoyed myself so much. Oh, I was impressionable then, and ready to be pleased. Every day a new place, every night a new triumph. It was Mr. Bronson's triumph, but his glory fell upon us all. We lived in an atmosphere of success; and people were so nice to us, we were entertained everywhere like king and court. It was then, you see, when we were together from morning until night, we grew to know each other so well. And, you know him, you know how kind he would be to a little person traveling as I was doing; kind does not express it, and thoughtful and considerate. And you know the charming companion that he is, even-tempered, easy-going, good fellow. And in traveling like that you know the thousand little services a man can render you, and, among artists, the good turns. He, you will have discovered, has not a touch of that queer jealousy so common among artists.

"But there was even more than all that. Before the end of our engagement, Wharton-Duprez had taken the most cattish dislike to me; I have never known why. And everything that woman could do to make things uncomfortable for me she took pains to do, even, will you believe it, contriving that my luggage should be left behind, and I forced to appear on the stage in the filthiest little coal-begrimed traveling-suit—at the fag end of the season, you understand. Ferdinand, her husband, did not dare to say a word. It would have been past endurance for me then, had it not been for Mr. Bronson's invariably showing himself my friend, and keeping her within limits. I had reason to be grateful to him, you see. I should have had to be a monster not to become devoted to him. You can put yourself in my place, can't you? And then, add to everything else his singing. Never, never, never, to me, has there been anything like it."

Miss Cheriton bowed her head, slowly, in agreement.

"If with all your heart ye truly seek me," murmured Marie-Aimée, looking as if she listened to a voice singing in her memory.

"In manly worth and honor clad," murmured the other, likewise.

"It opens a door, doesn't it," Marie-Aimée spoke low, as if they had entered a church, "into a world where it is all beautiful, calm, eternal— the only world—where whoever breathes its air must worship and must love; just his mere voice, when it is what I call his ballad-voice, doesn't it contain all romance? Moonlight, boats on lonely seas, lattices with roses; and when it is his anthem-voice, it contains, doesn't it, all aspiration, cathedrals, matin-bells, archangel's choirs——"

Again Miss Cheriton nodded dreamily; then, raising her eyes, which in listening she had dropped, forgot the one of whom they were speaking for interest in the face of the speaker, who looked ahead with eyes which clearly did not see what was before them, but the cloudy white pillars, one might have surmised, and dim glimmering splendors of some temple of Music and Love.

Marie-Aimée swept her hand across her forehead. "And I," she continued, raising her voice in a tone of plaintive exculpation, "I was born mad for music! A voice has power over me like a spell. And I am flesh and blood! And so——" she ended feebly, "do you wonder?"

Silence, while Marie-Aimée turned her face wholly from the light. But even while she made application of her little damp pocket-handkerchief, a stealing sense warmed her in all her woe that she had somehow made a friend of Miss Cheriton. The exemplary piece of tranquility there felt drawn to her; something communicated this unimaginable fact directly to her heart; and it melted her, as the hint of kindness always did, and inclined her now verily to make no more circumstances about it, but show her whole heart in abandoned frankness, repeating just once more the fault she was here to confess. But simultaneously with gratitude for that liking, rose in Marie-Aimée the need to repay it greatly; whence a caution to herself to proceed more than ever guardedly with the truth.

"And after we were come back," she took up again, "we naturally continued seeing a great deal of each other. I won't say we would not have done so from choice, but it was inevitable, too. Our profession threw us together, concerts, rehearsals; he used, besides, to bring every bit of new music to learn at my house, with me to play it over for him. And so on, for years; and to me, I tell it frankly, that light-hearted, unconventional comradeship of ours gave its principal charm to life. In the last year I have seen less of him, and latterly very much less. He was not singing much, he was under treatment for his throat, and often out of town by his doctor's directions. I missed him, but I am busy from morning until night, the week round, work and a thousand things. I thought nothing of it. Do old friends need to see each other constantly to be assured nothing is changed? Then I hear of his engagement to you. I am thunderstruck! For never, never, never, had I dreamed of such a possibility. You see my folly? He was not bound to me by any promise, or by what you would call a moral obligation. There never had been any question of our marrying, not even at the beginning when we first got home, not even in my own mind—" Native honesty and poor human nature would not permit but that she should add, though in a tone that made little of it—" any definite, immediate, formulated idea of it. My poor sweet mother was living then, a sufficient reason against it. And when she was no longer there, all had got into a groove, and remained as it had been. And it seemed natural. I have nothing but what I earn. He was having bothers about money. He put all his in a mine, you know. We called ourselves poor working-people. But still! There it is! That's where you discover my bird's brain. That's me! The way I am! I flatly refused to believe it, and when I saw him again, I did not even ask. But I daresay I looked as he had never seen me look. Then he himself told me of it, as one tells such a thing to an old friend. And the past stood suddenly in a new light; and I saw clearly, in a flash, that just this and nothing else was to have been expected. And I knew that it was altogether the most fortunate thing that could happen to him; and, after the first, I acquiesced.

"Only, I followed my nature in making the outcry of one who has received a wound and is bleeding dreadfully. I have no dignity, Miss Cheriton. Discretion and I have never so much as been acquainted. I go around with my heart in my face, I forget my face, you see, in thinking of what has befallen me. And I run into some sympathetic woman who is fond of me, and she cries out 'Marie-Aimée, my poor child, what is the matter with you?' and I bend feebly upon her shoulder, and tell. And then I suppose she goes off and tells too. Hence, you see, the ground of Mr. Bronson's remonstrances with me yesterday evening. And in consequence of them I am here. I didn't know what else to do, Miss Cheriton. I hope it was best. And you do see, don't you? I have made the whole thing plain? I have made it all right? You know how he is, and now you have seen how I am, the inference will be simple! And I beg both your pardons. Oh, he is right, he is quite right, to feel put out with me, but not—" she forced a little watery smile, as she rose to take her leave—"not because it has ever seemed so terribly to a great singer's discredit that, when the whole world goes after him, among them should be a silly woman who does not manage to conceal her grande passion. It only makes him like Mario and others; you must not let it trouble you, Miss Cheriton. You must think of me in a thought of the same strain you bestow upon the thousands of photographs of him that have been sold in the course of his career, and are cherished and given places of honor in young ladies' rooms; and the sentimental follies school girls have committed in the way of sending him flowers and notes. Let these tributes to him merely increase your pride of possession. He is free from all blame, all, that is what I have wished you to feel assured of, or all—" she put out her hand in farewell—"except just a little, little bit. You don't mind? A little bit he certainly was to blame, though I suppose it can be laid to the account of his modesty, in not taking it home to himself that he could not be so nice, so consistently, persistently dear and nice to a person, without her falling to stupidly adoring him."

She stopped, and stood, vaguely shaking her head, prolonging her faint, watery, bitter-sweet smile; and would have withdrawn her hand, but Miss Cheriton retained it, by a firmer pressure, in the warm, kind clasp of hers. Marie-Aimée lifted her eyes, touched and full of thanks, to the fine calm eyes above her; and in their unclouded light read Anthony Bronson's unqualified exoneration, and that she herself had been impartially examined, and now stood classed, past appeal, among those soft, sweet, idiotic women who will fall into unwarranted love with any man of whom they see much, and are by their own passion made incapable of discerning the fact that he is not in love with them. The glance was full of honest sympathy for a sorrow so real; but it was not untinged with as much contempt as would be implied in the prayer, "I thank thee, my God, I am not as these women are!" Under which Marie-Aimée humbly bowed her head and waited but for the release of her hand to go. But Miss Cheriton, whom stiffness or delicacy kept from saying a word in reference to what she had heard, yet found herself utterly unwilling that her visitor should leave so uncheered. Still holding her hand, she told her, in a voice full of the suggestion of sincerity, the deep pleasure she had always had in hearing her; she amplified, tactfully, understandingly, upon all she had discovered of exquisite in her playing.

Marie-Aimée's face lightened a little; she had never become callous to praise. Miss Cheriton spoke of friends they had in common, from whom she had heard so much of her, of a sort that had long made it one of her most eager wishes to know her. Whereupon Marie-Aimée, as ever responsive, gave herself into Miss Cheriton's hands, to be known. And the two were shortly making acquaintance as they might have done had they been presented to each other at the house of those mutual friends. One could not have dreamed, to hear them, what had gone before. They talked of music mostly, and musicians, wholly forgetful of time. To illustrate some point, Marie-Aimée went to the piano and played a bar or two; after which, as she would have risen, Miss Cheriton entreated against it; and when Marie-Aimée, who never resisted, asked what she should play, suggested a composition of Miss Nevers' own, which the latter had imagined so obscure, she said, as to be almost her only secret. And she found, to her astonishment, that Miss Cheriton, whether moved by genuine musical congeniality, or a vulgarer curiosity, had procured everything ever published of Marie-Aimée's. Afterwards, Miss Cheriton took the place at the piano of Marie-Aimée urgent. Then Marie-Aimée begged leave, and supplanted her, to show how a different sequence of chords would be better; and the woman of talent and the woman of cultivation spent a long hour, delightful to both; in the course of which Miss Cheriton found the quaint enthusiasm for Marie-Aimée felt by her innumerable friends accounted for; and Marie-Aimée came to disdain, as paltry praise, the definition "very fine girl" which one was accustomed to hear joined to the name of Kate Cheriton.

Smiting her brow, aghast, at the recollection of an appointment missed, Marie-Aimée jumped to her feet. By running she might still be in time to apologize. They shook hands again, warmly; and Marie-Aimée said, all her heart in her voice, "I hope you will be very happy."

In the street, Marie-Aimée, as she hurried along, could think of nothing but Miss Cheriton. She would send her as a wedding-gift the French great-grandmother's rococo cross, the choicest bit of jewelry she owned.

Her heart might have been so much dusty, worm-eaten wood; remarking its astonishing lightness and insensibility, she reverted in thought, almost flippantly, to the horrors besetting her when she left home that morning. Surely, if it were possible that with Tony's marriage brought as close as a visit to his intended brought it, she should feel as she felt, she might still hope to put on a good face about it to the world.

In this mood she went about a good part of that day; and talked to some with so much of a return to her old spirit that they disguised their surprise by a greater cheerfulness than really their mystification allowed them to feel. Meeting an old aquaintance who put on the face of a sympathizer to say, "My dear, I did feel for you when I heard of his engagement, you know whose I mean," she looked as if not sure she understood; and the old aquaintance, after a searching look at her, dropped her mournfulness, to proceed, "It seems to be a fine thing for Bronson, this marriage. I hear that Miss Cheriton will be a millionaire. People exaggerate, you think? But she has bought a superb place out of town?"

By the late afternoon, that curious, unseasonable, baseless good cheer was wearing off, like the effects of wine, and the world, through its fading fumes, was returning to look like the world of yesterday. Weariness was overtaking her; but her heart had not recommenced its clamorous aching; it was only a little sick, when she went into a music-store for a score she needed. She was looking this over, with her eyes rather than her mind, when her attention became fixed in memory upon that expression of Miss Cheriton's face from which she had judged her mission successful—Tony cleared. Suddenly, as in the middle of the night she had sometimes known that in a letter sent off there was a word misspelled, she felt that triumph of confidence in Miss Cheriton's eyes not to have been the work of her own explanations. She herself had been fully explained to Miss Cheriton before ever she set foot in her house. How could it have been otherwise?

Marie-Aimée's ghost-seeing eyes became fixed upon nothingness. She sat so a long time, her chin dropped in dolorous absorption; a figure which struck discomfort in the beholder. Another woman buying music bent over the counter and whispered to the clerk, who whispered back, and both stole glances at the unconscious, rigid, dumpy profile, stamped with tragedy, of the well-known pianiste, whose most intimate sorrow had become town-talk.

She went out at last into the hubbub of the streets, which seemed a cruelty of men, under the gorgeous sunset sky, which seemed a cruelty of Heaven's, and, as much as a great heaviness would allow, hurried home and to bed and the dark. It was no use! no use! Though Tony's conduct to her admitted of the face she had put on it to Miss Cheriton, and though the world's jury, upon full evidence, might have acquitted him, he not being the last shade of black, she herself knew, and something of incorruptible justice in the bottom of her heart would not let her blink it, that she had been badly, badly treated. But that was not the most woeful, that she should have been badly treated, or that she must live her days hereafter without him; but that he, Tony, should have been capable of doing this thing to her, to her, who would have shed her blood for him, and he knew it.

In the days following, as she went about her crowded occupations, she did not, as she had allowed herself to do before, seek relief in speaking of what weighed upon her heart. But human strength did not suffice to keep the matter out of her face; her cheek was leaden, her eyes were in a fog.

But it was useless now, her avoiding Anthony Bronson's name. She had spoken too much before. Besides, too many remembered the soft, radiant, enamored face with which she had been used to beam up at him in those earliest days after their return from touring, and down upon which he had benignantly beamed, like a big, gratified idol. Furthermore, this gossip concerning persons so well known had too many of the elements which ensure a thing being repeated till everyone knows. Reports of "scenes" made by Marie-Aimée were still spreading after she had placed the seal upon her lips; and those who got them last did not know that they were old news; and as it was the least interested in her personally who last became au fait of her affairs, some among them took the view that little Nevers was disgracing herself; which sentiment once in the air, certain of Marie-Aimée's closer friends saw the matter more nearly in that light, experienced a reaction from too complete sympathy with her. One heard it said with a touch of impatience, "Some one ought to talk to Marie-Aimée!" Even those who loved her most, this, as it seemed, insistent and protracted harping upon an unfortunate attachment at last came near disgusting. And she did receive scoldings and lectures, of which she abjectly owned the justice; and she tried to keep herself more out of sight. Only so far as the necessity to earn a living made it imperative did she go about. Wherefore some whose invitations she refused said, "Nevers is moping. It is a pity she can't behave like the rest who have to suffer from the fickleness of man!"

A critical, less friendly attitude of the world toward her was beginning at last, through her dismal preoccupation, to penetrate her heart with its novel chill, and make the city where she had always lived seem not like home any more. She looked about, bewildered, for escape. The day of the Bronson-Cheriton wedding, too, was close at hand; but before it had arrived, there descended upon her from a distance a stern older married sister, whom rumors at last had aroused.

No one saw Marie-Aimée after the coming of this sister. To everyone's astonishment, in the busiest time of the season, Marie-Aimée's rooms were empty of her. It was thought that the sister had carried her off to keep her under surveillance: till it became known from Marie-Aimée herself, writing to her old friends, that she was in a convent of the Sacred Heart, hundreds of miles removed, and there proposed to remain until she had become free from the faintest taint of the folly that had made her a scandal and a laughing-stock,—yes, if she remained there until she died. Her time was profitably spent in study, and the giving of piano-lessons to the young girls receiving their education in the holy house. And she enjoyed the inestimable privilege, accorded to her by the Mother Superior, of weeping as much as she pleased.

II

To that little portion of the busy world-in-general which concerned itself with her, one may be sure it seemed very soon after her disappearance that it began to be said Nevers might be looked for again. Already? Yet, when one had grumbled that love, after all, does not last very long, he made calculations, and these told him that three years and more had slipped past since the tragico-comic retreat of the poor crossed-in-love. Certainly, something may be expected of three years.

She was really coming back? There was excitement. She was coming, no longer any doubt of it; there was glee, there was expanding of the heart. She was come; there was a rush to see her. Affection accounted for much of this; for the rest, curiosity to see the result of her three years. But when she had been seen, delight knew no reserve; each felt as if he had won a bet.

A movement arose, as a breeze comes up, and gradually gained force, till it resulted in a concert given for Marie-Aimée, a testimony of the regard felt for her, and the joy at her return. The occasion was made a magnificent one; the house was crowded, and contained such a proportion of personal friends of Marie-Aimée that the affair took the character of a huge family festivity. But the applause resounding when Marie-Aimée herself appeared to perform her little task at the piano was in excess of all the rest. In the sound, in the faces, in the air, one felt "How she is beloved!"

She came forward in the childlike manner one remembered of her, with that adorable absence of self-consciousness which touches more than grace, bowing from side to side with the moved air which infallibly moves, half in tears, yet smiling. To gratify her faithful, she had gone into hearty extravagance, and appeared wonderfully encased in a warm delicious pink, worthy of the event, much of it rustling off far from her heels, not much of it at all troubling her dimpled arms and shoulders. She held her sweet little black head on one side, like a tender bird; it looked as if dragged over by the weight of a big rose in her hair. And the people could not be satisfied with clapping their hands. The public was for the occasion become romantic, and, as much as the artist, was applauding the woman who had loved and, by this token, triumphed over a villainous deserter. They kept it up ad absurdum, intoxicated by the noise they made, more and more touched by their own loyalty to the old favorite, wishing to proclaim it still more loudly; and so expressing at last, it is sad to say, far more than any one felt. But it had been a goodly demonstration, and all thought better of themselves when finally those who were eager to hear the playing began hushing, and silence gradually came about.

Then she played, and it was to many what they were pleased to call a revelation. It was at all events a fresh, delicate, inspirating, moving music. There were those who listened with eyes upturned, and thought of sunrise upon Eden; there were those who nodded surprise and commendation, and spoke of technique.

Marie-Aimée was one of those persons about whom all who know them talk. She offered opportunity for it, certainly, by herself talking; her manner of being and her ways were fertile in food for comment; but her modest ray of fame was also accountable, being felt to brighten all who could claim sufficient nearness to her to know her affairs.

Had she changed? was the capital question in the discussions of her following upon her return. Most said not in the least, except, the presumption was, toward Bronson. She was open-hearted as ever, merry once more as she had used to be when her star first rose among them. She was still the one that so lent herself to be loved and gently, almost enviously, laughed at. But if she were changed, as some maintained, it was for the better. She looked younger, rested; her face was clear and untroubled now. If, after the first, one missed something in her, she explained that it was her old faults.

"When I began to see glimmering ahead of me in the distance a triumphal re-entrance among you," she held forth to a little group, "I began to prepare for it. I tried to fit myself better to please you. For the bon Dieu's sake, I had tried to obtain a clean soul; but for the world's sake—your sake, my dears—I tried to become thin! I did gymnastics, I walked, I dosed myself, I gave up eating everything I liked, and you see the result? Honor my beautiful shape, will you? and do not press upon me sponge-cake and plum-cake, as you used to do. Then I became orderly. Haven't you noticed? All my buttons there, all my hooks and eyes. And every little spot at once rubbed out with cologne. When did you know such things of me before? But look at my head! I tell you I hunt up mirrors expressly to see myself in them; and I set my bonnet straight, and tuck in my loose ends. Then I became prudent. I always think before I act, now, and before I speak, and before I spend my money. And punctual! I catch trains, and I keep appointments. I look at my watch, like the rest of you, and see that it is time to go, and I go. I no longer, like some one I remember, sit down and play and play and play, or talk and talk and talk, till it is dinner time, and I have to be invited. And then I am not a chatter-box now, no, not what you could call a chatter-box."

Her joy at being again among her old friends softened and won them; and no less did the humility of her attitude toward the past. In regard to that she was shame-faced, apologetic, reformed.

So much of the story of her exile filtered through those who received it at first hand, that a legend of it was before long public property; and such a character was given the event, Marie-Aimée's own view perhaps initially tinging it for all, that, without fear of being thereby unacceptable, the multitude of those who stood with Marie-Aimée on a footing of good-humored comradeship neglected, even in speaking to her, to disguise their familiarity with what concerned her. It was common, on the ground of a perfect understanding with her, and a supposition of at least some small degree of that enmity which often succeeds love and takes satisfaction in hearing of Fortune's disparaging turns on the ex-beloved, to entertain her with late accounts of Bronson. And though she merely listened, as she would have done to anything well-intentioned, her unoffended air left a feeling that encouragement had not been wanting. One irresponsible, feather-brained youth, of the baritone variety, reached such recklessness, while regaling her with good stories as they stood waiting for her cab, as to inquire, "Have you heard the latest joke about old Bronson?" He brought his lips near her ear, and breathed through a chuckle: "They say it takes two years and seven months to get over being in love with Bronson, but if you marry him it doesn't take so long!" And as he laughed heartily, she let her bright laugh ring out companionably alongside of his. Having got into her cab, she repeated the joke carefully over to herself, to apprehend the point of it.

It was not to have been expected that the peculiar extreme enthusiasm for Marie-Aimée, with the exaggerated form of tribute to her, should continue long unabated. Still, with discretion on her part, it might have had the ordinary length of such things. As it was, alas, there soon seemed occasion to believe that the public mind is ruled by the law of reaction: By so much as the public had gone beyond rational appreciation, it seemed now threatening to fall below it.

Those who watched Marie-Aimée's fortunes with most interest, with a sinking of the spirit began to note a decrease in her social popularity. As they witnessed this trifling evidence of it and that, these lifted their eyebrows and pushed out their chins, with the expression which one interprets, "But what can be done about it?" Whenever there was reference to her now, it seemed to bring about in the atmosphere a vague fall of temperature. A just appreciable effect of disappointment, disapproval, regret, followed the long-loved name.

Those fondest of her could scarcely be brought to speak of it; when they did speak, it was not frankly and openly, as everyone had used to discuss her affairs once, shaking the head amusedly. They talked in dreary undertones, and ended asking each other "Now, can you understand it?"

Presently, she was by certain ones avoided, because of an awkwardness they felt in meeting her, with a consciousness of what were best not mentioned—disagreeable to those accustomed to dealings with her of a perfect candor. When met, she was at best in these days indifferent fun, preoccupied, unlike herself, with little to say.

At last, as an increasing coldness takes a definite pattern of frost, certain persons refrained from calling upon her, explaining privately that they had heard it said that it was possible to come upon Anthony Bronson in her little drawing-room. This refraining did not signify by any means in all a wish to express condemnation; on the part of most it really expressed a good-humored wish not to be in the way.

It was as winter was waning, that, reversing somewhat the order of the day, one who had never called on her resolved to do so. With her clothes and her hair and her eyes full of March, she ascended to Miss Nevers' little flat. The door was opened by Marie-Aimée herself, who stood looking up, uncertain, inquiring.

"I fear you do not remember me," the visitor said. "May I come in?"

"Your voice," Marie-Aimée faltered, "is familiar —but the light—the light is behind you. Do, I pray, come in."

She hurried ahead into the drawing-room, which was unexpectedly light, from the reflection upon its ceiling of the snow on lower neighboring roofs. She turned and looked at the visitor who was entering; she uttered an exclamation, unfollowed by any word.

"I see you have recalled me," said the visitor. "Mrs. Bronson? Kate Cheriton that was?"

"Take a seat, I pray!" said Marie-Aimée faintly.

Mrs. Bronson looked around her for once. Though her eye confessed no more scrutiny than accords with good breeding, it missed little in the tiny room, warm-colored, crowded, a bit untidy, but genially so, as where a pair of evening gloves and a crumpled play-bill lay on a chair, and a lace bonnet saddled a green bronze lion. The walls were covered with gimcracks and pictures, among which in profusion photographs of the celebrated, overscrawled with their various calligraphies. The piano stood open, littered with music; a tea-table, ready for service, the kettle steaming, was drawn close to the fire; a faint smell of macaroons mingled in the air with the smell of violets, whereof a big double handful was fading in a bowl. A well-worn leather chair, deep and wide, patriarchal, was on one side of the fire-place; and, suggestively at its elbow, matches and an ash-tray.

In this seat, after her casual circular glance, Mrs. Bronson quietly arranged herself; and Marie-Aimée took the rocker on the opposite side of the fire. She dropped back in it, leaning, and loosely folded her hands; which no sooner had she done, than she sat upright, and moved forward to the edge of her chair.

There was a longer silence than is often suffered by persons of the world. To attempt "carrying off" anything whatsoever was not in Marie-Aimée's moyens.

"Do you know why I have come, Miss Nevers?" Mrs. Bronson asked.

Marie-Aimée regarded her with eyes as steady as they were inwardly frightened. Her whole face expressed what one had never expected to see in it, something very near hostility; its like could be imagined in the look of a tame animal uncertain whether harm is meant to its young.

"I judge you have come here to find Mr. Bronson," she answered, "I expect him at any moment."

It was plain there would be no delicate fencing this afternoon.

Mrs. Bronson shook her head, and laughed in spite of herself at this unheard-of directness. "Oh, no! I scarcely think he will come to-day, I mentioned at lunch that I should call on you."

This was spoken without the hint of a sneer, yet Marie-Aimée flushed.

"You are quite mistaken if you think he makes love to me," she blurted out, her breath coming quick.

Mrs. Bronson lifted her hand in deprecation. "And you are mistaken, my dear Miss Nevers, if you think I have come to make a vulgar scene about him. I am here, and solely, because I like you!"

Marie-Aimée stared, doubt in her eyes; then, expressing wonder by the faintest possible effect of a shrug, looked down in her lap, all her face slowly relaxing to a plaintive look of trouble. Her lips composed themselves to lines of such stiff stillness, it might be guessed that if she tried to speak they would tremble; she picked at the folds of her tea-gown, readjusting them, smoothing the fabric across her knees.

"I don't believe you have any idea how much I felt myself attracted to you that single time we met, Miss Nevers. You made my conquest completely, and I am not one who takes fancies. Though you are so contrary to all I am, it seemed to me I understood you better than all the others did, just as I had always felt that I appreciated your work more truly at its worth. I don't know what I would not have given to have you for a friend."

Marie-Aimée put out her hands, to stop her, her kindness at that moment hurt so much. But Mrs. Bronson went on eagerly. "You are not made right for this low world. Your very virtues have the effect of faults, and bring calamity upon you. There you are, one piece of honesty, lovingness, unselfishness; and the consequence,—you have no chance among us who are nothing of the sort. Being as you are would be all right in a world peopled with angels, but here——!"

Marie-Aimée, with a deepening look of dejection and a vast returning softness, slowly shook her head; rather as if she were trying to make these notions of herself fit into place, than in denial of what she heard.

"And now I find you doing something dreadfully foolish," Mrs. Bronson continued, with a remonstrative mother's persuasive inflections, "something, I am afraid, which will prove the deadliest mistake. I cannot resist the impulse to come and warn you of it, to try to drag you back into the safe path—all, I do assure you, because I so sincerely like and respect and admire you. Of those in question, believe me, it is you, you, who are the one I care about."

There was a pause. Marie-Aimée sat as if considering a proposition; but in reality she was only groping after thoughts among emotions. She made a gesture of resignation, casting up her hands and letting them drop again. "Well? I am listening, but is it not likely that I know already all you are intending to say?"

"No, no, it is not possible!" Mrs. Bronson said emphatically. "You cannot see clearly for yourself, else you would have turned back long ago. Mind you, I know how easy it will be for you to misunderstand me in this. Almost necessarily, you will imagine that it is myself I have principally in view, that I am jealous, perhaps, or anxious about appearances, concerned in the figure I myself cut in all this. But you would be wrong. To all that I am highly indifferent. Jealous! For jealousy there must be some remnant of the folly of fondness. And, for the rest, I refuse to grant that anything Mr. Bronson does can either lift or lower me. No, what he chooses to do affects me not at all. But for you, I tell you, I am sorry."

"If it is as you say," said Marie-Aimée, regaining a little life, "you need be troubled about nothing. It is all so much simpler than one thinks, than, I find, one is willing to think. Because once or twice a caller has found him here, a caller likewise, it has been taken for granted that he spends I don't know how much of his time with me, which is particularly false and unfair. He comes from time to time; I will be quite honest, perhaps once or twice in the week, when he happens to be in town. Then we try over music, and I tell him the gossip of the world which used to be his as well as mine, and we laugh together as we used to do. You know that I always had a knack of cheering him. And I give him tea, and let him smoke, and that is all. And is it not truly innocent enough?"

"I believe you perfectly, Miss Nevers. And for that you are willing to give up all that I know you are losing?"

Marie-Aimée repeated her little French gesture of resignation. "When it comes to contending with the evil mind of the world, how can one hope to do it? I used to believe in the world, I loved it. I have lately discovered it to be such that I care very little what I lose with it. Its good opinion? I don't want it any more!"

"Quite right, Miss Nevers. You are as right as possible in valuing the opinion of the world lightly. Still, the loss of all that comes to make life pleasant, from being on good terms with it, is serious. There should be something to counterbalance it, in that for the sake of which one renounces it. And you, will you tell me what you are getting? You are ruining your life, Miss Nevers, no other word serves, for a man who is perfectly willing to let you do it, for the satisfaction he derives from his occasional afternoons here of gossip and tea, music and smoke."

Marie-Aimée kept her eyes unflinchingly upon Mrs. Bronson's, eyes full of resentment and denial, but she was too moved now to speak.

"He spoiled the best years of your life," Mrs. Bronson went on, her nostrils sharpening till their edges were white, a cold fire in her eyes. "Oh, how well I see now, now that I know him better, what his conduct would be with you. But when the moment came in which it was convenient, he set you aside without one second's hesitation. You patiently take the broken pieces of your life out of sight, you manage to put them together again, you reappear bravely patched up, poor child; oh, I saw you. To me, you were pathetic—and again, because it is convenient, just a little bit convenient, he takes you up, calmly, to break you into pieces a second time."

"You don't understand him!" burst forth Marie-Aimée, in her tone the deepest hopelessness that the other ever could understand.

"I don't understand him? I don't?"

"No, no, no!"

"Then you think three years of marriage not instructive?" Mrs. Bronson asked rapidly. "Or do you think him complicated? The truth is, he is as simple as simplicity. Suppose a man with one instinct, one motive, heretofore and forever: to do that which is at the moment easiest and pleasantest and most profitable for himself, and you have him. But you must, to have him exact, accommodate this tendency with a brain the most elementary; and must suppose his objects always of the lowest and most ordinary: little common satisfactions, material or mental, good wine and cigars, or the flattery of some woman's silly admiration. And, for I will do him justice, you must accommodate it with a constitution completely healthy, like a prize animal's, without any more viciousness than he has imagination. For the rest, ideas?" continued the coldly indignant woman, reaching a fearful fluency, "he has none. All the fine things which his singing brings to our minds have no existence in himself. Talent? I do you the credit, Miss Nevers, to suppose you with me in the secret of his musical talent. Talent he has none, nor ever had any, nor the least real love or appreciation of music. But a God-given voice he had, and an instinct for using it to perfection which he shares with nightingales and mocking-birds; and, besides these, what you call a presence, combined with an enormous vanity and an equal hatred of hard work!"

"Why do you say all this to me?" gasped Marie-Aimée, choking.

"Because I cannot conceive but that you misrepresent him to yourself, but that you still have illusions about him. If I were removed to-morrow, do you imagine he would by any chance marry you? If my removal left him wealthy, he would not marry at all; if it left him poor, you can be sure he would not marry you."

After another gesture of warding off, Marie-Aimée, shuddering, buried her face in her hands, as if blinding herself might deaden hearing too.

Mrs. Bronson at once accorded the respite for which this action seemed to entreat. She sat in silence, critically regarding the top of Marie-Aimée's bent head, as if one could hope to see through it into her brain.

"Can you tell me that all this is not so?" she asked at last, heat and anger conspicuously absent from her voice, speaking in that reasonable tone of debate which seems to lay a compulsion of reasonableness upon others. The question sounded genuine, as if, for plain human curiosity's sake, she would like to know if there could be two points of view about Anthony.

Marie-Aimée raised her face, all sickened protest and repudiation. "Everything you have said, and have made to sound so heinous, might, differently worded, fit perfectly into one's description of a nice normal boy. And is a boy unworthy of one's love? Say that Anthony Bronson remained all his life a boy, and who will contradict you? It is the same nature, that reaches out so simply toward what pleases him, that wants what it wants without thought of afterwards. But you must add to this, in his case, that sort of native kingliness of the great, who have never a doubt but theirs is the first right, and that others will be glad to yield for them. He has never meant to hurt anyone, one could not be further from cruel. He merely, in order to go where he would be, must drive steadily onward. He would be sorry if his wheels crushed anything, but that it should stop him could never enter his brain. Call it an incapacity, it is that of most strong, healthy big boys."

"It must have likewise characterized arboreal man."

"Don't, Mrs. Bronson!" Marie-Aimée cried, and rose whole-heartedly at last to the encounter, bringing to bear the most piercing of her arguments, "He is not happy now! He wants things as much as ever, but he no longer can get what he wants. He can't sing any more. His voice is gone. You think he doesn't care, but he does, indeed, he does! He feels so dreadfully out of it. The public is ungrateful. His friends are not yours, they scarcely any longer seem his own; your friends are not his; Everything has turned out wrong. Don't sneer at him. Nothing can brighten his life to what it was before. And he feels helpless against it, just as the boy we were speaking of would feel. Oh, he is blue—blue! You have not made him happy!"

"Has he made me happy?"

"He has meant to!" Marie-Aimée said earnestly. "Your quarrel is with his whole manner of being. One must take him as he is."

"Yes! And whatever he is is to be enough, so he thinks in his calm Jovian babyhood. How could he but satisfy any woman? How should any but feel honored to be his servant and worshipper? the great, heavy, self-pleased, all-sufficient Male!"

"You married him!"

"You are right. My stupidity deserves exactly what I have got. But I didn't come here to speak of myself, or to complain of him. It has been vulgar enough, as it is. I beg your pardon and I beg you to believe, Miss Nevers, that I speak to no one—no one, I assure you—as I have spoken to you. I go my way, with my chin high, my eyes well above the heads of the scandal-mongering crowd. It was by accident I discovered his renewed visits to you; and the brazenness, the heartlessness of it, revolted even me, prepared for anything, God knows, in the way of calm, colossal selfishness. My first thought was the most common one—that he acted from pique, that his vanity could not quite stand having it blazed abroad that you had recovered. But I know him better than that, after all. I am just. It was simpler. It was nothing more than a big dog wanting to be petted. He felt in need of consolation, sympathy, condolence, some one to talk to about me—oh, I know it—and never stopping a moment to think of you, poor woman, he turned to the quarter where he felt surest of getting it. But what puzzles me beyond everything is that he should have guessed right. Pardon me, Marie-Aimée, but in those three years at the convent, what were you doing? You seem to have wasted your time. What was that far-spread anecdote that you had come out because it was all over, lived down, you were cured, immune? Did others make up this fable, or did you?"

"Ah, don't speak of it! I was in good faith."

"You really thought it was all done with? You honestly felt sure of yourself?"

"But certainly! More than sure! How otherwise would I have come back?"

"And then?"

"Then at the rehearsal for Mrs. MacDougal's charity concert I met him again. He had consented to sing, you remember, but afterwards withdrew. And I had scarcely more than seen him, when the three years might as well not have been. But to whom—dear me, to whom am I saying this?"

Mrs. Bronson leaned forward till she could touch Marie-Aimée's knee. "It's all right," she said gently. "Don't mind because it's I. I can understand," and as she saw tears springing into Marie-Aimée's eyes, she patted the knee, and murmured in her most soothing note, "You poor darling!"

"Oh, you needn't pity me at all!" Marie-Aimée laughed harshly through her tears. "When I think that I might—that there could have been the possibility—that those three years should so have changed me, that I should have grown so cold and dry-hearted, and proud of my dry-hearted coldness, and supposed it a virtue, and called it morality, that when he turned to his old comrade for a little cheer against the thickening shadows, the fast-coming gray hairs, the lost voice, the domestic misères, I might have refused, I am glad and grateful for the ill-name and the snubs that may follow me the rest of my life because I didn't." Whereupon her voice came utterly to wreck; she subsided into soft unrestrained weeping.

Mrs. Bronson with a distressed frown left her seat for the corner of a divan which was nearer Marie-Aimée. After listening helplessly a moment, fidgeting, embarrassed by her life-habit of undemonstrativeness, she put out her hands, quick as darting swallows, and enclosed one of Marie-Aimée's, pressing it, stroking it, murmuring, "Don't! Don't! You are a dear!"

Without a word Marie-Aimée turned her wet face to kiss the cheek of the consoler. Mrs. Bronson pressed closer to her; and the two sat crushed against each other with interlocked, hands—and so, silently drifted into a different relation. It was as if the thoughts of their blood had communed through their hands, and there were no need more to conceal anything.

"Imagine," Marie-Aimée said, in a voice cracked with rueful laughter, "that when I was in the convent I had reached the point of believing that it was one of the laws of nature which was being accomplished in me! I said that love was like a plant, and if it got neither sunshine nor rain, it perished. I was not in the least happy over it, you know. But I became philosophical about it, and was glad, as one might be over something one owned which was not beautiful, but had a practical use. When I went into that place, you know, I honestly believed I should never come out of it again; and I used to read his old letters, and pore upon photographs of him, and play over and over all the music associated with him.

"But one day I found them flatly wearying me. I shall never understand it! I could picture seeing him again, meeting him in company with you at his side, and not minding. I could picture meeting him again, free, and anxious that all should be as before, and I could be calm over it, inclined, if anything, to refuse. I was worn out, I suppose. I imagined it was my illusion about him which had worn out. I judged him! But in the same breath I judged myself, as likewise incapable of any but shallow feelings; and I despised us both equally, and forgave him, as one forgives offences one no longer suffers from. And so, foolhardily, I come forth again. And when I see him, all I know is that it is he, the same one, who was all the romance of life to me once; that the same door is still open between our eyes through which we come and go familiarly into each other. All that I had thought dead and buried comes to life again. And I know that I may go into a convent for twenty years, that I might be buried and dust as many more, but when Anthony Bronson comes by, and we are face to face again, it will be all as nothing. And the marvel is that though it can only mean a return to suffering, I can only be glad. Isn't it strange?"

"Oh, yes!" Mrs. Bronson pressed one of her hands across her tearless eyes; her cheek was pale. "Strange, and beautiful. But terrible too!"

She got up abruptly, as if to escape an oppression from the atmosphere down on Marie-Aimée's level; she made a motion with her head as if to disengage it; and walking to the window, stood looking out across the snowy roofs and the steeples, to the dull distance, the bank of purplish dun hanging at the horizon over the enormous city, her eyes full of gloomy distances too.

In the long silence ensuing there developed small homely noises of tea-making, over yonder, near the fire.

"But it's all really wasted!" Mrs. Bronson exclaimed unexpectedly, as if in expostulation with herself as much as with Marie-Aimée, "I know it! You saw him again, he had grown older, it shocked you. His hair had turned—it is his time of life—it saddened you. You say he has lost his voice. That is a manner of speaking; nothing is wrong with his throat. But he has never cared to sing since he was married. A little careful practice, and he could sing very acceptably still—I won't say in public, but for his own pleasure—if he cared anything for music, and for that of others who have had a cult for his singing. You have thought him blue, and it has moved you. I understand it. But do believe me that he is a little bit of a humbug. Why should he be so blue? Everything is his own fault. Do you really believe that I have never tried? He is blue when he is with you, just because it will move you. He is not so very blue when among others. I can imagine circumstances, with which you would have nothing to do, you, nor music, nor the past, but simple, sordid, material circumstances, in which he would be perfectly happy, perfectly content—"

She had said this staring out of the window. She turned, feeling Marie-Aimée at her elbow. Marie-Aimée held toward her a cup of tea and a piece of thin bread-and-butter. Mrs. Bronson let her stand there, apparently not seeing these things, while she searched her little shut over-clouded face, which showed plainly enough a resolve to say no more about it. "But to you, I do believe, all this makes no difference!" Mrs. Bronson pursued. "Let him be, let him do, what he pleases, you will care just the same, just as much. Are you completely a fool, my dear, and blind as a mole, or—do you see more than we do? That's what I can't make out. I beg your pardon!"

She accepted the cup from her, and helped herself to the bread, and took a seat on the music-stool. She drew the gloves off her beautiful milk-white hands liberally begemmed with diamonds and sapphires, and mechanically folded her bread. She tasted the tea, and continued looking off out of the window. Marie-Aimée brought a cup of tea for herself, and stood in the window-place too, looking off, drinking.

What Mrs. Bronson thought in her long stare at the grave distance from which the light was beginning to depart, she may, as her eye caught the silhouette against it of the other woman's meek, set profile, have perceived the futility of saying. "You have a beautiful view," was her next remark.

Marie-Aimée deplored its not being to-day at its best; she described it by touches, when finest. And they talked a while like parties to the most ordinary call, of views, flats, and so forth, but in intonations so curiously detached and melancholy that they might have been ghosts talking over a tragedy that had its end three centuries ago.

Suddenly, over the roofs, flashed an arc of light, splendid; strings of lamp-like jewels, red and green and golden, publishing to earth and sky the name of an actor and of a melodrama. Mrs. Bronson looked at her watch, set down her cup, and rose.

"So I shall go as I came," she said; "I had thought I had such things to say to you, Miss Nevers, so to the point, so irrefutable, that you could not but listen to me. I thought that the fact that it was I who came to you and said them would have its weight. I meant, at a pinch, Miss Nevers, to demand of you to leave, at all events to break off relations with Anthony. But now, see, I am going, and I have demanded nothing. I am all adrift. You have taken me out beyond my depth. You shall do as you feel right. As for me, I don't know. I have not a heart to lead me, as you have. I have only my common share of hard worldly sense, and you have made me feel that it might be unsafe sometimes to trust it. Do as you please. I don't know! I don't know! Perhaps it is you who are right, you who love him, and all we who are fools."

In Marie-Aimée's face, which her eyes were intently interrogating as she spoke this, Mrs. Bronson could not fail to read a perplexity equal to her own, but coupled with a forlornness such as her own nature could never match, no, not if Fate should place her alone on a storm-beaten rock in mid-ocean—as Marie-Aimée might have been imagined standing, with that face. Marie-Aimée drew in the air through her lips, till her shoulders were lifted, and let it out in a great sigh.

"Ah, we are poor things all!" Mrs. Bronson agreed, with an echo of the sigh; and repeated that gesture of pressing her hand to her eyes, not to hide tears, but as part of an attempt to concentrate the mental vision upon those mysteries in life which offer the effect of blank impenetrable walls. She tore away her hand almost at once, her brief pantomime declaring the uselessness of trying to understand anything, verily, of all that happens in this sorrowful world; and whether in mockery of it, or of herself, or in the wish merely to effect a change in the current of their thoughts, struck a startling, brilliant chord on the piano under her hand; and while it still vibrated, another, and another, and executed a cadenza that seemed to laugh aloud and shake fool's-bells.

"Do you remember," she sat fairly down before the keyboard, and preluded while she talked, "the last time? After that scene of blood and tears, you poor sweet thing, how you played for me, so dearly obliging as you were? And polonaises and waltzes you played; as well as elegies and nocturnes. And then I played and then you played. You played and played, my dear, till you had missed an engagement. I shall miss one now if I don't hurry off instantly, but let it be missed. I shall count it well done, if you will sit down here a moment and play for me."

"Oh," moaned Marie-Aimée, putting up the ever-willing hands, like a martyr in prayer, "don't ask me. And don't take it ill if I can't. It's not the same thing any longer." She let her head hang; "I haven't the heart for it to-night."

"I am a beast!" said Mrs. Bronson heartily, and without adding a note further to the musical phrase she was in the middle of, jumped up, sick at herself. And feeling of so little importance before depths of woe such as she suspected near her that it mattered nothing whether she apologized, she pressed Marie-Aimée's hand with all her strength, and murmuring, "I will take myself away," made haste to be gone.

Mrs. Bronson was conscious of a vast relief, by which she first learned in what suspense she had been living, when a few days later she recognized Marie-Aimée's hand-writing on a letter to her. She read:

"I went, you see, after all. I am at my sister's, to remain with her and the dear children until I have thought further what I had better do. You were right in wishing me to go, though not perhaps for the reasons you gave. My thoughts are not at all clear upon the subject of the rightness or wrongness of what I was doing then, or what I have done since. I felt sure I was justified against the whole world, and even now I find no good argument against it. Only, it came home to me that I who used to love everyone and have only feelings of kindness towards others, was fast coming to hate everybody, myself most, and it seemed a sufficient sign. But you won't think that was quite all. I did also think of you, who perhaps—which of us knows her own heart?—care more than you believe. Very likely not. But on the barest possibility of the sort, how could I continue obstinately fixed in my position?

"And now, lest the sympathy you showed me be troubled on my account, I want you to be sure that I shall not be unhappy. For one thing, because there is something strangely compensating in the assurance a person may gain that the one she loves is never, to the edge of doom, to lack the whole love of at least one heart; and then, because I believe you will grant a request I am about to make, oh, more humbly and supplicatingly than pen and ink can show: which is that you will try to see him more truly, to discern what is good and lovable in him; and that—I find it difficult. Yet why? Let me seem brazen and indelicate, I will finish. I have thought I divined that he is a pensioner of yours, and sometimes a straightened one. It cannot be but that you are by nature as generous as you are kind, nothing else would accord with your forehead and eyes. I can only think that you have imagined things about him, that his marriage perhaps was mercenary, and this has been your revenge. Do differently hereafter. Show him and yourself this respect. Grudge him not the independence and the honors that beseem the state of the lion growing old. For, do not deceive yourself, he has been great. Those upon whom God bestows such a gift are marked for the reverence of others.

"You will forgive my meddling and will do what I ask? You asked me to go, and I went. You could not demand it, nor can I demand this. Yet let it be as a bargain between us, will you?

"For your infinite kindness and gentleness and generosity to myself, receive the assurance of my utmost gratitude; and for the affection you were so good as to say you feel for me, a return of affection which is of sufficient strength, I believe, to outlast all that divides us.

Marie-Aimée."

Mrs. Bronson kissed the name, like a school-girl; but glancing back over the letter could not repress a laugh tinged with disdain as the thought presented itself: "She wishes to provide against his missing her. Oh, the poor child, how well she knows him, after all!" Rising to the noblest height of her nature, she determined to set the figure of Anthony Bronson's income, as near as her fortune permitted, at what should represent her own estimate of his loss in Marie-Aimée; at the same time reflecting that very much less—but very much less, indeed—would quite as effectually have kept him from missing her overmuch.

VERSES
BY
A. E. HOUSMAN

There pass the careless people

That call their souls their own:

Here by the road I loiter,

How idle and alone.

Ah, past the plunge of plummet,

In seas I cannot sound,

My heart and soul and senses,

World without end, are drowned.

His folly has not fellow

Beneath the blue of day

That gives to man or woman

His heart and soul away.

There flowers no balm to sain him

From east of earth to west

That's lost for everlasting

The heart out of his breast.

Here by the laboring highway

With empty hands I stroll:

Sea-deep, till doomsday morning

Lie lost my heart and soul.

From "A Shropshire Lad."

When I arrived in the United States again, the impeachment trial was over and President Johnson had been acquitted. There had indeed not been any revolutionary disturbance, but the public mind was much agitated by what had happened.

I had, since I left Washington, been quietly engaged in editing the Detroit Post, when one day in the spring of 1867 I received, quite unexpectedly, a proposition from the proprietors of the Westliche Post, a daily journal published in the German language in St. Louis, Missouri, inviting me to join them, and offering me, on reasonable terms, a property interest in their prosperous concern. On further inquiry I found the proposition advantageous, and accepted it. My connection with the Detroit Post, which, owing to the excellent character of the persons with whom it brought me into contact, had been most pleasant, was amicably dissolved, and I went to St. Louis to take charge of the new duties.

A particular attraction to me in this new arrangement was the association with Dr. Emil Preetorius, one of the proprietors of the Westliche Post. He was a native of the Bavarian Palatinate, the same province in which in 1849 the great popular uprising in favor of the National Constitution of Germany had taken place, and of the town of Alzei, which, according to ancient legend, had been the home of the great fiddler among the heroes of the Nibelungenlied—"Volker von Alzeien," grim Hagen's valiant brother in arms. The town of Alzei still carries a fiddle in its coat of arms. Mr. Preetorius was a few years older than I. He had already won the diploma of Doctor of Laws when the revolution of 1848 broke out. With all the ardor of his soul he threw himself into the movement for free government and had to leave the Fatherland in consequence. But all the idealism of 1848 he brought with him to his new home in America. As a matter of course, he at once embraced the anti-slavery cause with the warmest devotion and became one of the leaders of the German-born citizens of St. Louis, who, in the spring of 1861, by their courageous patriotism, saved their city and their State to the Union. He then remained in public life as a journalist and as a speaker of sonorous eloquence.

The Convention of 1868

In the winter of 1867-8, as I have said, I made a visit to Germany. Not long after my return to St. Louis, the Republican State Convention was held for the purpose of selecting delegates for the Republican National Convention which was to meet at Chicago on the 20th of May. I was appointed one of the delegates at large, and at its first meeting the Missouri delegation elected me its chairman. At Chicago a surprise awaited me which is usually reckoned by men engaged in politics as an agreeable one. The chairman of the Republican National Committee, Mr. Marcus L. Ward, informed me that his committee had chosen me to serve as the temporary chairman of the Republican National Convention. It was an entirely unexpected honor, which I accepted with due appreciation. I made as short a speech as is permissible on such occasions, and, after the customary routine proceedings, surrendered the gavel to the permanent president, General Joseph R. Hawley of Connecticut.

DR. EMIL PREETORIUS

ONE OF THE PROPRIETORS OF THE WESTLICHE POST, THE NEWSPAPER WITH WHICH CARL SCHURZ BECAME ASSOCIATED IN 1867

That General Grant would be nominated as the Republican candidate for the presidency was a foregone conclusion. As to the nomination for the vice-presidency, there was a rather tame contest, which resulted in the choice of Schuyler Colfax, the Speaker of the National House of Representatives, who at that time enjoyed much popularity and seemed to have a brilliant future before him, but was fated to be wrecked on the rocks of finance.

From the collection of F. H. Meserve

SCHUYLER COLFAX

WHO WAS ELECTED VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES ON THE REPUBLICAN TICKET OF 1868

When the Committee on Resolutions made its report, I observed with surprise that the proposed platform contained nothing on the subject of an amnesty to be granted to any of the participants in the late rebellion. This omission struck me as a grave blunder. Should the great Republican party go into the next contest for the presidency without, in its profession of faith and its program of policy, holding out a friendly hand to the erring brethren who were to return to their old allegiance, and without marking out for itself a policy of generosity and conciliation? I resolved at once upon an effort to prevent so grievous a mistake by offering an amendment to the platform. Not knowing whether the subject had not been thought of in the committee, or whether a resolution touching it had been debated and voted down there, and deeming it important that my amendment should be adopted by the Convention without a discussion that might have let loose the lingering war passions of some hot-heads, I drew up a resolution which did not go as far as I should have liked it to go, but which would substantially accomplish the double object I had in view—the encouragement of well-disposed Southerners and the commitment of the Republican party—without arousing any opposition. It was as follows:

"That we highly commend the spirit of magnanimity and forbearance with which men who have served in the rebellion, but who now frankly and honestly coöperate with us in restoring the peace of the country and reconstructing the Southern State governments upon the basis of impartial justice and equal rights, are received back into the communion of the loyal people; and we favor the removal of the disqualifications and restrictions imposed upon the late rebels in the same measure as the spirit of disloyalty will die out, and as may be consistent with the safety of the loyal people."

ULYSSES S. GRANT

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN 1869, THE YEAR OF HIS FIRST INAUGURATION

The resolution received general applause when it was read to the Convention, and, as I had hoped, it was adopted and made a part of the platform without a word of adverse debate.