IV
The afternoon was broiling. The sun came in, scarcely checked by the yellow shades; fell on and soaked into the smooth, varnished surfaces of the desks and tables, and turned the iron of the big vault into a sort of storage battery of heat. Even the electric fan in the president's office, which we had placed on top of the telephone closet (as near us as its length of wire would allow), gave but little relief.
Both of us were working in our shirt-sleeves, but the sweat stood on our brows, and my fingers were so sticky I could scarcely handle my bills. It was too hot for conversation even; so the only sounds in the room were the snipping of my shears, the crisp fluttering of the fresh, new bills as they fell one by one on the table; and the snapping of rubber bands as the cashier went over bundle after bundle of the bank paper, on the security of which all our positions depended.
As I said, it was too hot for talk; and besides, I had plenty to engross me in my own thoughts—which were about John, of course.
I began by thinking how profitable it would be to the bank if John might only have a baby every day; and then, as this was out of the question, fell to calculating how long this one that had just arrived would continue to work the same beneficial influence on her father's actions.
Presently, however, my ideas became more serious; and at last so serious that they brought about a reaction in the shape of a suspicion that perhaps I had been making too much out of the incident, after all. So I determined to get Mr. Young's opinion on the subject, if I could; and was just framing my first interrogatory, when the telephone rang.
"Claflin National?" said the voice.
"Yes."
"The cashier in? Young, isn't it?"
"Yes. Yes, he's in."
"See him a moment?"
"Yes."
I was certain that the voice did not belong to any of the bank employees in town; and yet it was familiar.
"Someone to see you, sir," I said, trying all the while to place the voice; and then, the resemblance suddenly dawning on me,
"Is Spencer John's family physician?"
"Yes. Why?" and the cashier started.
"I think it's he at the 'phone."
The cashier was in the telephone closet almost five minutes. When he came out he was white, and it was plain he had been undergoing very strong emotions, though the worst of them was evidently passed.
He began hurriedly gathering his notes together.
"Put up your work, Jim," he said. "We must lock up as soon as possible. John's baby's dead."
The news hardly took me by surprise. I foresaw from the first that it was something pretty bad. So I simply commenced doing as I was told.
"He wants me to tell him," began the cashier after a moment.
"The doctor?"
"Yes, and," looking at the clock, "he'll be back any minute now, and, perhaps, Jim——"
"I'd best be going?"
"Yes. I'll fix up, and—My God, it's sad!—and be down early to-morrow, Jim."
"John won't be here, I suppose."
"I hope not; but there's no telling. At any rate he won't—hustle—to-morrow as—he did to-day. I was thinking of that."
So, as I left the bank, I found that the question I was going to put the cashier as the telephone rang, had been answered, after all.
A Stork's Nest, Dordrecht, Holland—12-inch Lens.
Stork's Nest—Telephoto Lens.
TELEPHOTOGRAPHY
By Dwight L. Elmendorf
Illustrated by the Author's Photographs
JUST when the telescope was invented is not known, but it is certain that Galileo was the first to direct his toward the heavens early in the seventeenth century. His instrument consisted of a long tube with a convex lens at one end and a concave ocular at the other. A modified form of this instrument still obtains in the ordinary opera and field glasses, which are binocular Galilean telescopes; and a single barrel of a field-glass is practically the telephoto lens of to-day.
Whenever anything is so far away that we cannot see it distinctly, we make use of a field-glass or telescope, which produces a magnified image of the object so that we are able to perceive what the unaided eye could not. In a similar manner the telephoto attachment enlarges the image formed by the ordinary lens in the camera. To produce on a photographic plate an image that fairly resembles what our eyes see, requires a lens of much longer focus than is generally used, and a camera that would permit the use of such a lens would be unwieldy and too cumbersome for a peripatetic photographer, and simply impossible for a mountain-climber. The telephoto lens overcomes this difficulty by producing the effect of a lens of long focus in a very compact camera.
It would be interesting to know who first applied this form of lens to a camera for the purpose of photographing distant objects. In 1890, while experimenting with the lenses from an old field-glass, I discovered that a dim yet distinct image of St. Patrick's Cathedral spires was formed in my camera, although the Cathedral was eighteen blocks away. After making several exposures with this combination of lenses I became convinced that with lenses of the best possible optical construction wonderful results might be attained. Having previously purchased a telescope with a three-and-a-half inch lens of sixty inches focus (with the idea of attaching it to a long box-camera as a photographic lens for the purpose of making photographs of distant terrestrial objects, as astronomers photograph heavenly bodies). I found that the field-glass combination of lenses yielded an image nearly as large as that produced by the telescope lens, and that too with a camera only one third the length of the other.
Milan Cathedral from Opposite Corner of Piazza.
Becoming deeply interested in this line of investigation I called upon a celebrated lens maker in London and learned that he had manufactured what he called a "Compound Telephoto Lens" consisting of a portrait lens with a small negative or concave lens adjusted at a suitable distance back of it. This instrument was too large and cumbersome for my small camera, and shortly afterward a negative lens, with a rack and pinion mounting, was manufactured of such a size that it could be attached to any fine rectilinear lens of suitable focus, although in some cases special corrections are necessary.
This is called the "Telephoto Attachment," and was employed in making the telephoto illustrations here shown. The tube is 3¼ inches long and 1½ inch in diameter. When this lens is attached to the ordinary lens the time of exposure is necessarily increased, because only a few of the rays of light which diverge from the positive or ordinary lens pass through the negative lens to the plate. This is a serious drawback, for it not only debars one from using it upon moving subjects, but also increases the liability of the image to be blurred by vibrations of the camera. In order to obtain the best results the camera must be very rigid. Most of the cameras and tripods of to-day are too light and unstable for telephotography.
The method of using the telephoto attachment is very simple, but requires very great care, particularly in the matter of focussing. Suppose that an exposure has been made in the ordinary way upon a certain object; the lens is then removed from the camera front and screwed into the tube of the telephoto attachment, forming a small telescope; the whole combination is then put back on the camera as if it were the ordinary lens. Upon the ground glass or focussing screen will be seen an enlarged image which may be made sharp or distinct by adjusting the focus by means of the rack and pinion movement on the telephoto tube, just as a field glass is adjusted to suit the eyes of the observer. If greater amplification be desired it is obtained by moving the front of the camera, holding the lenses farther from the ground-glass and then readjusting the focus as before. It will be seen from this that the attachment forms a lens of variable focus, changeable at the pleasure of the operator within the limits of the camera.
Roof and Dome, Milan Cathedral—Telephoto Lens, from Same Corner of Piazza.
Some of the attachments on the market require a camera with a very long bellows, because the difference between the foci of the negative and positive lenses is not great enough to give ample power unless the combination is several feet from the plate. With my own attachment, eight inches from the plate the image is equal to that formed by an ordinary lens of twenty-four inches focus; while at twenty-four inches from the plate it is equivalent to that of a lens of sixty-four inches focus.
The camera used in making the accompanying illustrations takes a plate measuring four by five inches, and the bed allows an extension of twenty-four; and when closed for transportation the box measures seven by seven by six-and-a-half inches.
Of all my experiences in photography none were so unsatisfactory as my attempts on mountain scenery with an ordinary lens. This was especially true of the photographs of the Alps made while tramping through that heavenly tramping ground, Switzerland. The small camera made the mountains look like little humps of rocks and snow, and all the views made from a great elevation seemed to be like photographs of the waves of the ocean, smoothed out flat. These results caused me to experiment in the direction of telescopic work with the camera.
It is often the case that grand mountains appear at their best only from some point so distant that the ordinary lens can produce little or nothing of the desired effect.
One of the most charming views in Switzerland is the evening view of the Jungfrau as seen from the Höheweg or promenade at Interlaken, about sixteen miles from the mountain. With her robes of dazzling white she rises majestically above the Lauterbrunnen Thal to a height of nearly fourteen thousand feet. Upon several former occasions I had endeavored to photograph this queen of the Bernese Oberland, but did not succeed until I used the telephoto attachment. The two illustrations of this view [pp. [462]-[63]] were made from the same standpoint on the Hoheweg, one with the ordinary lens, the other with the telephoto attachment added to the lens, no change being made in the camera at all. It is a pleasure to note the wonderful detail in the telephotograph, and not only that, the mountain seems to rise, giving the impression of abruptness which rarely if ever is obtained with an ordinary lens. I suppose something of this result might have been obtained with the ordinary lens had I been up in a balloon at an elevation of about four thousand feet and about three miles from the Jungfrau. The pictures of this mountain taken from the Wengern Alp do not give this beautiful effect.
Façade of the Cathedral of Florence, from Sidewalk.
This is especially the case with Popocatepetl in Mexico, a beautiful volcanic cone rising gradually above the plateau about ten thousand feet, its snow-capped summit being over seventeen thousand feet above sea-level. Having tried in vain from several places near by, I finally succeeded in obtaining a fair view of it from the roof of the Hotel Jardin in the city of Puebla, about thirty miles or more from the peak [pp. [466]-[67]]. Desiring to take the only train for Oaxaca, leaving Puebla at 5.30 in the morning, I was compelled to photograph the mountain rather early, and the atmosphere was not at that time in the best condition, so that the reader would have needed a field-glass to see the mountain clearly. To obtain good results with the telephoto attachment a clear atmosphere is a sine qua non.
Not only does this apply to mountain subjects but to many others alike. What remarkable pictures of the naval battle of Santiago, the chase of the Cristobal Colon, or the gallant rescue of the despairing Spaniards from their burning ships, might have been obtained from the battle-ship New York, with a lens of this description, even at long range! I believe it will be of inestimable value for the purpose of securing views of the batteries and fortifications of an enemy's harbor, which might be done at a safe distance from their guns.
Central Rose Window, Cathedral of Florence, from Sidewalk—Telephoto Lens.
While this attachment is of great value in photographing things miles away, it is even more useful in obtaining photographs of choice bits of landscape which are on the opposite side of a river or lake, and are just beyond the working capacity of an ordinary lens. Odd things are always turning up at unexpected moments, and are frequently just out of reach.
Mosaic over Central Door, Cathedral of Florence, from side of Baptistery—Telephoto Lens.
A particular instance of this kind is illustrated in the two views made of a stork's nest [p. [457]] which I happened to see while sauntering along one of the picturesque old canals near Dordrecht in Holland. Of course the nest was on the wrong side of the canal, and a nearer approach was impossible without a ducking; so one view was made with a twelve-inch lens and then the telephoto was used, although not much was expected, for there was a stiff Holland breeze blowing, which is not conducive to perfect results, and moreover the storks seemed inclined to greater activity than well-behaved birds of this species generally exhibit. The exposure was almost instantaneous and the result a surprise to the operator.
The Jungfrau from the Höheweg, Interlaken, Switzerland (sixteen miles distant).
Another example of the curious uses to which this lens may be put is seen in the illustration of the beautiful memorial column at West Point [p. [468]]. The general view was taken at a distance of about three hundred feet in the ordinary way and then a telephoto was made of the bronze figure of Victory which surmounts the column.
Inaccessible parts of fine architecture offer an endless series of subjects for telephoto work, where remarkable results may be obtained. The cathedral at Milan, since the removal of the buildings which formerly obstructed the view, now appears to great advantage when viewed from the opposite side of the piazza. The two views of this beautiful structure [pp. [458]-[59]] were made from a second story window on the opposite side of the piazza. I chose this point of view because of the enormous dimensions of the building. I first used the ordinary lens, obtaining the general view, and then telephotographed various portions of it.
The cathedral at Florence is so shut in by adjacent buildings that it must receive other treatment. The vast amount of work upon the façade is lost to the casual observer because of the propinquity of the baptistery, which completely destroys the effect of this wonderful mosaic. Standing on the sidewalk, as far from the façade as the other buildings would permit, I made the general view of it with a lens of four inches focus, then retreating still farther, till a corner of the baptistery began to interfere, I used the telephoto attachment on the central rose-window, the camera being about a hundred yards from it [pp. [460]-[61]]. Then taking a position beside the baptistery I telephotographed the mosaic over the central door. It will be noticed that in the telephotographs there is less distortion than in the ordinary view, for although the rose-window is over a hundred feet above the pavement it was photographed from such a distance that only a slight inclination of the camera was necessary, and the picture appears as if taken from an elevation, whereas it was actually made from the sidewalk. The delicate carving and mosaic work about the central door are distinctly brought out, and it is one of the best examples of telephoto work the attachment has made.
The Jungfrau from the same Standpoint (sixteen miles distant), Telephoto Lens.
At Venice one turns instinctively toward the grand Piazza, the Mecca of many a traveller as well as of the Venetians themselves. St. Mark's Cathedral offers many studies for the camera, and for many years the glass mosaics upon the upper part of the front of the building were a perplexing problem to me, for the balcony was too near and the pavement below was too far away for successful work with the ordinary lens; and if taken from a near position below they were so distorted as to be useless. The problem was not solved till the advent of the telephoto attachment, which procured the studies with ease. After making a picture of the whole front of the cathedral from the centre of the piazza in the ordinary way, the camera was moved a little to the right, so that one of the large flag-poles would not interfere, and the upper left-hand mosaic, representing the "Descent from the Cross," was telephotographed [pp. [466]-[67]]. The result is about the same as that which might have been obtained in the ordinary way from the top of a scaffold fifty feet high and about forty feet from the mosaic.
A Cocoanut-tree, St. Kitts, British West Indies.
Cocoanuts on the Tree, St. Kitts, British West Indies—Telephoto Lens.
As all the illustrations mentioned were made with the idea of reproducing them as lantern slides, which are only about three inches square, they do not indicate the full power of the attachment in a single case. Therefore I placed my camera near a window in one of my rooms and photographed the row of dwellings across the back yards [p. [465]]. The actual distance from the camera to the first dwelling is one hundred and thirty feet; to the chimney, one hundred and fifty-four feet. Then, after putting on the telephoto attachment and extending the front of the camera as far as the bellows would permit, I telephotographed one of the chimneys on the third house, the only change in the camera being a slight inclination so that the chimney would be in the centre of the plate. This picture, when compared with that taken with the ordinary lens, shows an enlargement of nearly sixteen diameters, which is considerably more than the capacity or power of a very large field-glass.
From My Window. (The house is 130 feet distant.)
Chimney of Third House, 154 feet from My Window.—Telephoto Lens, full power, sixteen diameters.
Popocatepetl, Thirty Miles from Hotel Jardin, Puebla, Mexico.
Popocatepetl from Same Point of View, Thirty Miles Distant—Telephoto Lens.
Although some of the detail is lost in half-tone reproduction, yet the vast difference between the ordinary photograph and the telephotograph is well shown. The telegraph wires and the other details which are not visible in the former are clearly brought out in the latter. The exposure with the ordinary lens was about one-thirtieth of a second, while that with the attachment was one-fourth of a second. One-fourth of a second may seem to be a very short period of time, but it is entirely too long for many subjects that are very desirable.
St. Mark's Cathedral, Venice.
Left Mosaic of the Cathedral, Venice, from Piazza at a Distance of More than 200 Feet—Telephoto Lens.
The shortest exposure I have ever made with the attachment was upon a very fruitful specimen of the cocoanut-tree on the island of St. Kitts, one of the emerald gems of the Lesser Antilles, belonging to Great Britain. After making an instantaneous picture in the ordinary way, I used the attachment on the cocoanuts, making use of a drop-shutter giving an exposure of about one-tenth of a second. As the tree was swaying with the strong trade-wind a very quick exposure was necessary, and thanks to the intense light the plate responded to the application of a powerful developer [p. [464]].
Telephoto of the Bronze Figure of Victory on Memorial Column at West Point.
(Distance 100 Yards.)
With a new combination of very thin lenses now in process of construction, I hope to be able to diminish the time of exposure so that moving objects may be photographed without difficulty. If successful, this new lens will be invaluable for the purpose of obtaining pictures of birds and wild animals in their natural haunts, long before they become aware of the approach of their enemy. It would enable one to photograph domestic animals in their natural picturesque attitudes, which are almost always lost as soon as the camera is observed, and only too often the owner of the camera is compelled to beat a hasty retreat, sometimes with the loss of everything but honor.
The Memorial Column, West Point. (Distance 100 Yards.)
The improvement in photographic lenses in the last few years has been very remarkable, and if the telephoto receives the attention it deserves of the best lens makers, the accompanying telephoto illustrations may be but harbingers of better things to come. Instead of being compelled to carry heavy unwieldy cameras and a battery of lenses, the wandering photographer will be able to accomplish even more with a compact camera and a little telephoto tube, no larger than the single barrel of a small field-glass.
THE LETTERS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
Edited by Sidney Colvin
THE VOYAGE OF THE CASCO: HONOLULU (JULY, 1888-JUNE, 1889)
IT was on July 26, 1888, that Stevenson started from the harbor of San Francisco on what was intended to be a health and pleasure excursion of a few months' duration, but turned into a voluntary exile prolonged until the hour of his death. The trading party consisted, besides himself, of his wife, his mother, his stepson, Mr. Lloyd Osbourne, and the servant Valentine. They sailed on board the schooner yacht Casco, Captain Otis, and made straight for the Marquesa dropping anchor on July 28th in the harbor of Nukahiva. The magic effect of this first island landfall on his mind he has described in the opening chapter of his book The South Seas. After spending six weeks in this group they sailed southeastward, visiting (a somewhat perilous piece of navigation) several of the coral atolls of the Paumotus or Low Archipelago. Thence they arrived in the first week of October at the Tahitian group or "Society Islands." In these their longest stay was not at the chief town, Papeete, but in a more secluded and very beautiful station, Tautira, where they were detained by the necessity of re-masting the schooner, and where Stevenson and one of the local chiefs, Ori a Ori, made special friends and parted with heartfelt mutual regret. Thence sailing due northward through forty degrees of latitude, they arrived about Christmas at Honolulu, the more than semi-civilized capital of the Hawaiian group (Sandwich Islands), where they paid off the yacht Casco and made a stay of nearly six months. There the elder Mrs. Stevenson left them to return to Scotland, and only rejoined her son's household when it was fairly installed two years later at Vailima. From Honolulu Stevenson made several excursions, including one, which profoundly impressed him, to the leper settlement at Molokai, the scene of Father Damien's ministrations and death.
The result of this first year's voyaging and residence among the Pacific Islands had been so encouraging a renewal of health, and so keen a zest added to life by the restored capacity for outdoor activity and adventure, that Stevenson determined to prolong his experiences in yet more remote archipelagoes of the same ocean. He started accordingly from Honolulu in June, 1889, on a trading schooner, the Equator, bound to the Gilberts, one of the least visited and most primitively mannered of all the island groups of the Western Pacific; emerged toward Christmas of the same year into semi-civilization again at Samoa; stayed there for six weeks, enchanted with the scenery and the people; bought a property, the future Vailima, on the mountain-side above Apia, with a view to making it, if not a home, at least a place of rest and call on later projected excursions among the islands; and began to make collections for his studies in recent Samoan history. In February he went on to Sydney to find his correspondence and consider future plans. It was during this stay at Sydney that his righteous indignation was aroused by the publication of a letter in depreciation of Father Damien, written by the Rev. Dr. Hyde of Honolulu. Here also he fell once more sharply ill, with a renewal of all his old symptoms, and the conclusion was forced upon him that he must make his home for the rest of his life in the tropics—though with occasional excursions, as he then thought, at least half-way homeward to places where it might be possible for friends from England to meet him. With a view to shaking off the effects of his fresh attack, he started with his party on a fresh sea voyage from Sydney, this time on a trading steamer, the Janet Nicoll, which took him by a very devious course among many remote islands during the months of April-August, 1890. During this journey he began to put into shape the notes for a comprehensive book on the South Seas—not one of incidents and impressions only, which was what his readers craved from him, but one of studious inquiry and research—which he had been compiling ever since he left San Francisco. On the return voyage of the Janet Nicoll he left her at New Caledonia, staying for some days at Noumea before he went on to Sydney, where he spent four or five weeks of later August and September; and in October he came to take up his abode for good on his Samoan property, where the work of clearing and planting had been going on busily during his absence.
The letters in the following section are selected from those which reached his correspondents in England and the United States at intervals, necessarily somewhat rare, during the first part of these voyages—that is, from the Marquesas, Paumotus, and the Tahitian and Hawaiian groups—down to June, 1889.
Yacht Casco, Anaho Bay, Nukahiva, Marquesas Islands. [July, 1888.]
My dear Colvin,—From this somewhat (ahem) out of the way place, I write to say how d'ye do. It is all a swindle: I chose these isles as having the most beastly population, and they are far better, and far more civilised than we. I know one old chief Ko-o-amua, a great cannibal in his day, who ate his enemies even as he walked home from killing 'em, and he is a perfect gentleman and exceedingly amiable and simple-minded: no fool, though.
The climate is delightful; and the harbour where we lie one of the loveliest spots imaginable. Yesterday evening we had near a score natives on board; lovely parties. We have a native god; very rare now. Very rare and equally absurd to view.
This sort of work is not favourable to correspondence; it takes me all the little strength I have to go about and see, and then come home and note the strangeness around us. I shouldn't wonder if there came trouble here some day, all the same. I could name a nation[M] that is not beloved in certain islands—and it does not know it! Strange: like ourselves, perhaps, in India! Love to all and much to yourself.
R. L. S.
Yacht Casco, at sea, near the Paumotus, 7 a.m., September 6th, 1888.
My dear Charles [Baxter],—Last night as I lay under my blanket in the cockpit, courting sleep, I had a comic seizure. There was nothing visible but the southern stars, and the steersman there out by the binnacle lamp; we were all looking forward to a most deplorable landfall on the morrow, praying God we should fetch a tuft of palms which are to indicate the Dangerous Archipelago; the night was as warm as milk, and all of a sudden I had a vision of—Drummond Street. It came on me like a flash of lightning; I simply returned thither, and into the past. And when I remember all I hoped and feared as I pickled about Rutherford's in the rain and the east wind; how I feared I should make a mere shipwreck, and yet timidly hoped not; how I feared I should never have a friend, far less a wife, and yet passionately hoped I might; how I hoped (if I did not take to drink) I should possibly write one little book, etc. etc. And then now—what a change! I feel somehow as if I should like the incident set upon a brass plate at the corner of that dreary thoroughfare for all students to read, poor devils, when their hearts are down. And I felt I must write one word to you. Excuse me if I write little: when I am at sea, it gives me a headache; when I am in port, I have my diary crying, 'Give, give.' I shall have a fine book of travels, I feel sure; and will tell you more of the South Seas after very few months than any other writer has done—except Herman Melville perhaps, who is a howling cheese. Good luck to you, God bless you.—Your affectionate friend,
R. L. S.
Taiti, as ever was, 6th October, 1888.
My dear Charles [Baxter],
... You will receive a lot of mostly very bad proofs of photographs: the paper was so bad. Please keep them very private, as they are for the book. We send them, having learned so dread a fear of the sea, that we wish to put our eggs in different baskets. We have been thrice within an ace of being ashore: we were lost (!) for about twelve hours in the Low Archipelago, but by God's blessing had quiet weather all the time; and once, in a squall, we cam' so near gaun heels ower hurdies, that I really dinnae ken why we didnae a' thegither. Hence, as I say, a great desire to put our eggs in different baskets, particularly on the Pacific (aw-haw-haw) Pacific Ocean.
You can have no idea what a mean time we have had, owing to incidental beastlinesses, nor what a glorious, owing to the intrinsic interest of these isles. I hope the book will be a good one; nor do I really very much doubt that—the stuff is so curious; what I wonder is, if the public will rise to it. A copy of my journal, or as much of it as is made, shall go to you also; it is, of course, quite imperfect, much being to be added and corrected; but O, for the eggs in the different baskets.
All the rest are well enough, and all have enjoyed the cruise so far, in spite of its drawbacks. We have had an awfae' time in some ways, Mr. Baxter; and if I wasnae sic a verra patient man (when I ken that I have to be) there wad hae been a braw row; and ance if I hadnae happened to be on deck about three in the marnin', I think there would have been murder done. The American Mairchant Marine is a kent service; ye'll have heard its praise, I'm thinkin'; an' if ye never did, ye can get Twa Years Before the Mast, by Dana, whaur forbye a great deal o' pleisure, ye'll get a' the needcessary information. Love to your father and all the family.—Ever your affectionate friend,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
[Miss Boodle had made Mr. Stevenson a present of a paper-cutter when he left Bournemouth; and it is in the character of the paper-cutter that he now writes to her:]
Taiti, October 10th, 1888.
Dear Giver,—I am at a loss to conceive your object in giving me to a person so locomotory as my proprietor. The number of thousand miles that I have travelled, the strange bed-fellows with which I have been made acquainted, I lack the requisite literary talent to make clear to your imagination. I speak of bed-fellows; pocket-fellows would be a more exact expression, for the place of my abode is in my master's right-hand trouser-pocket; and there, as he waded on the resounding beaches of Nukahiva, or in the shallow tepid water on the reef of Fakarava, I have been overwhelmed by and buried among all manner of abominable South Sea shells, beautiful enough in their way, I make no doubt, but singular company for any self-respecting paper-cutter. He, my master—or as I more justly call him, my bearer; for although I occasionally serve him, does not he serve me daily and all day long, carrying me like an African potentate on my subject's legs?—he is delighted with these isles, and this climate, and these savages, and a variety of other things. He now blows a flageolet with singular effects; sometimes the poor thing appears stifled with shame, sometimes it screams with agony; he pursues his career with truculent insensibility. Health appears to reign in the party. I was very nearly sunk in a squall. I am sorry I ever left England, for here there are no books to be had, and without books there is no stable situation for, dear Giver, your affectionate
Wooden Paper-Cutter.
A neighbouring pair of scissors snips a kiss in your direction.
[The ballad referred to in the letter which follows is the Feast of Famine (published with others in the collection of 1890; "Ballads," Chatto & Windus). I never very much admired his ballads for any quality except their narrative vigor; thinking them unequal and uncertain both in metre and style.]
Taiti, October 16th, 1888.
My Dear Colvin,—The cruiser for San Francisco departs to-morrow morning bearing you some kind of a scratch. This much more important packet will travel by way of Auckland. It contains a ballant; and I think a better ballant than I expected ever to do. I can imagine how you will wag your pow over it, and how ragged you will find it, etc., but has it not spirit all the same? and though the verse is not all your fancy painted it, has it not some life? And surely, as narrative, the thing has considerable merit! Read it, get a type-written copy taken, and send me that and your opinion to the Sandwiches. I know I am only courting the most excruciating mortification; but the real cause of my sending the thing is that I could bear to go down myself, but not to have much MS. go down with me. To say truth, we are through the most dangerous; but it has left in all minds a strong sense of insecurity, and we are all for putting eggs in various baskets.
We leave here soon, bound for Uahiva, Reiatea, Bora-Bora, and the Sandwiches.
O, how my spirit languishes
To step ashore on the Sanguishes;
For there my letters wait,
There shall I know my fate.
O, how my spirit languidges
To step ashore on the Sanguidges.
18th.—I think we shall leave here if all is well on Monday. I am quite recovered, astonishingly recovered. It must be owned these climates and this voyage have given me more strength than I could have thought possible. And yet the sea is a terrible place, stupefying to the mind and poisonous to the temper, the sea, the motion, the lack of space, the cruel publicity, the villainous tinned foods, the sailors, the captain, the passengers—but you are amply repaid when you sight an island, and drop anchor in a new world. Much trouble has attended this trip, but I must confess more pleasure. Nor should I ever complain, as in the last few weeks, with the curing of my illness indeed, as if that were the bursting of an abscess, the cloud has risen from my spirits and to some degree from my temper. Do you know what they called the Casco at Fakarava? The Silver Ship. Is that not pretty? Pray tell Mrs. Jenkin, die silberne Frau, as I only learned it since I wrote her. I think of calling the book by that name: The Cruise of the Silver Ship—so there will be one poetic page at least—the title. At the Sandwiches we shall say farewell to the S. S. with mingled feelings. She is a lovely creature: the most beautiful thing at this moment in Taiti.
Well, I will take another sheet, though I know I have nothing to say. You would think I was bursting: but the voyage is all stored up for the book, which is to pay for it, we fondly hope; and the troubles of the time are not worth telling; and our news is little.
Here I conclude (Oct. 24th, I think) for we are now stored, and the Blue Peter metaphorically flies.
R. L. S.
[The second part of this letter is addressed to a young son of Mr. Archer's, with whom Stevenson, as with almost every boy he met, was on terms of special and private understanding.]
Taiti, October 17th, 1888.
Dear Archer,—Though quite unable to write letters, I nobly send you a line signifying nothing. The voyage has agreed well with all; it has had its pains, and its extraordinary pleasures; nothing in the world can equal the excitement of the first time you cast anchor in some bay of a tropical island, and the boats begin to surround you, and the tattooed people swarm aboard. Tell Tomarcher, with my respex, that hide-and-seek is not equal to it; no, nor hidee-in-the-dark; which, for the matter of that, is a game for the unskilful: the artist prefers daylight, a good-sized garden, some shrubbery, an open paddock, and—come on, Macduff.
Tomarcher, I am now a distinguished litterytour, but that was not the real bent of my genius. I was the best player of hide-and-seek going; not a good runner, I was up to every shift and dodge, I could jink very well, I could crawl without any noise through leaves, I could hide under a carrot plant, it used to be my favorite boast that I always walked into the den. You may care to hear, Tomarcher, about the children in these parts; their parents obey them, they do not obey their parents; and I am sorry to tell you (for I daresay you are already thinking the idea a good one) that it does not pay one halfpenny. There are three sorts of civilisation, Tomarcher: the real old-fashioned one, in which children either had to find out how to please their dear papas, or their dear papas cut their heads off. This style did very well, but is now out of fashion. Then the modern European style: in which children have to behave reasonably well, and go to school and say their prayers, or their dear papas will know the reason why. This does fairly well. Then there is the South Sea Island plan, which does not do one bit. The children beat their parents here; it does not make their parents any better; so do not try it.
Dear Tomarcher, I have forgotten the address of your new house, but will send this to one of your papa's publishers. Remember us all to all of you, and believe me, yours respectably,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
[The following is the draft of a proposed dedication to the South Sea travel book which was to be the fruit of the present voyages; as is explained in a note at foot.]
November 11, 1888.
To J. A. Symonds.
One November night, in the village of Tautira, we sat at the high table in the hall of assembly, hearing the natives sing. It was dark in the hall, and very warm; though at times the land wind blew a little shrewdly through the chinks, and at times, through the larger openings, we could see the moonlight on the lawn. As the songs arose in the rattling Tahitian chorus, the chief translated here and there a verse. Farther on in the volume you shall read the songs themselves; and I am in hopes that not you only, but all who can find a savour in the ancient poetry of places, will read them with some pleasure. You are to conceive us, therefore, in strange circumstances and very pleasing; in a strange land and climate, the most beautiful on earth; surrounded by a foreign race that all travellers have agreed to be the most engaging; and taking a double interest in two foreign arts.
We came forth again at last, in a cloudy moonlight, on the forest lawn which is the street of Tautira. The Pacific roared outside upon the reef. Here and there one of the scattered palm-built lodges shone out under the shadow of the wood, the lamplight bursting through the crannies of the wall. We went homeward slowly, Ori a Ori carrying behind us the lantern and the chairs, properties with which we had just been enacting our part of the distinguished visitor. It was one of those moments in which minds not altogether churlish recall the names and deplore the absence of congenial friends; and it was your name that first rose upon our lips. "How Symonds would have enjoyed this evening!" said one, and then another. The word caught in my mind; I went to bed, and it was still there. The glittering, frosty solitudes in which your days are cast, arose before me: I seemed to see you walking there in the late night, under the pine-trees and the stars; and I received the image with something like remorse.
There is a modern attitude towards fortune; in this place I will not use a graver name. Staunchly to withstand her buffets and to enjoy with equanimity her favours was the code of the virtuous of old. Our fathers, it should seem, wondered and doubted how they had merited their misfortunes: we, rather how we have deserved our happiness. And we stand often abashed, and sometimes revolted, at those partialities of fate by which we profit most. It was so with me on that November night: I felt that our positions should be changed. It was you, dear Symonds, who should have gone upon that voyage and written this account. With your rich stores of knowledge, you could have remarked and understood a thousand things of interest and beauty that escaped my ignorance; and the brilliant colors of your style would have carried into a thousand sickrooms the sea air and the strong sun of tropic islands. It was otherwise decreed. But suffer me at least to connect you, if only in name and only in the fondness of imagination, with the voyage of the Silver Ship.
Robert Louis Stevenson.
Dear Symonds,—I send you this (November 11th), the morning of its completion. If I ever write an account of this voyage, may I place this letter at the beginning? It represents—I need not tell you, for you too are an artist—a most genuine feeling, which kept me long awake last night; and though perhaps a little elaborate, I think it a good piece of writing. We are in heaven here. Do not forget
R. L. S.
Please keep this: I have no perfect copy.
Tautira, on the peninsula of Tahiti.
Tautira, Island of Tahiti
[November, 1888].
Dear Tomarcher,—This is a pretty state of things! seven o'clock and no word of breakfast! And I was awake a good deal last night, for it was full moon, and they had made a great fire of cocoanut husks down by the sea, and as we have no blinds or shutters, this kept my room very bright. And then the rats had a wedding or a school-feast under my bed. And then I woke early, and I have nothing to read except Virgil's Æneid, which is not good fun on an empty stomach, and a Latin dictionary, which is good for naught, and by some humorous accident, your dear papa's article on Skerryvore. And I read the whole of that, and very impudent it is, but you must not tell your dear papa I said so, or it might come to a battle in which you might lose either a dear papa or a valued correspondent, or both, which would be prodigal. And still no breakfast; so I said 'Let's write to Tomarcher.'
This is a much better place for children than any I have hitherto seen in these seas. The girls (and sometimes the boys) play a very elaborate kind of hopscotch. The boys play horses exactly as we do in Europe; and have very good fun on stilts, trying to knock each other down, in which they do not often succeed. The children of all ages go to church and are allowed to do what they please, running about the aisles, rolling balls, stealing mamma's bonnet and publicly sitting on it, and at last going to sleep in the middle of the floor. I forgot to say that the whips to play horses, and the balls to roll about the church—at least I never saw them used elsewhere—grow ready made on trees; which is rough on toy-shops. The whips are so good that I wanted to play horses myself; but no such luck! my hair is grey, and I am a great, big, ugly man. The balls are rather hard, but very light and quite round. When you grow up and become offensively rich, you can charter a ship in the port of London, and have it come back to you entirely loaded with these balls; when you could satisfy your mind as to their character, and give them away when done with to your uncles and aunts. But what I really wanted to tell you was this: besides the tree-top toys (Hush-a-by, toy-shop, on the tree-top!), I have seen some real made toys, the first hitherto observed in the South Seas.
This was how. You are to imagine a four-wheeled gig; one horse; in the front seat two Tahiti natives, in their Sunday clothes, blue coat, white shirt, kilt (a little longer than the Scotch) of a blue stuff with big white or yellow flowers, legs and feet bare; in the back seat me and my wife, who is a friend of yours; under our feet, plenty of lunch and things; among us a great deal of fun in broken Tahitian, one of the natives, the sub-chief of the village, being a great ally of mine. Indeed we have exchanged names; so that he is now called Rui, the nearest they can come to Louis, for they have no l and no s in their language. Rui is six feet three in his stockings, and a magnificent man. We all have straw hats, for the sun is strong. We drive between the sea, which makes a great noise, and the mountains; the road is cut through a forest mostly of fruit trees, the very creepers, which take the place of our ivy, heavy with a great and delicious fruit, bigger than your head and far nicer, called Barbedine. Presently we came to a house in a pretty garden, quite by itself, very nicely kept, the doors and windows open, no one about, and no noise but that of the sea. It looked like a house in a fairy-tale, and just beyond we must ford a river, and there we saw the inhabitants. Just in the mouth of the river, where it met the sea waves, they were ducking and bathing and screaming together like a covey of birds: seven or eight little naked brown boys and girls as happy as the day was long; and on the banks of the stream beside them, real toys—toy ships, full rigged, and with their sails set, though they were lying in the dust on their beam ends. And then I knew for sure they were all children in a fairy-story, living alone together in that lonely house with the only toys in all the island; and that I had myself driven, in my four-wheeled gig, into a corner of the fairy-story, and the question was, should I get out again? But it was all right; I guess only one of the wheels of the gig had got into the fairy-story; and the next jolt the whole thing vanished, and we drove on in our sea-side forest as before, and I have the honor to be Tomarcher's valued correspondent, Teriitera, which he was previously known as
Robert Louis Stevenson.
Yacht Casco, At Sea, 14th January, 1889.
My dear Colvin,—20 days out from Papeete. Yes, sir, all that, and only (for a guess) in 4° north or at the best 4° 30', though already the wind seems to smell a little of the North Pole. My handwriting you must take as you get, for we are speeding along through a nasty swell, and I can only keep my place at the table by means of a foot against the divan, the unoccupied hand meanwhile gripping the ink-bottle. As we begin (so very slowly) to draw near to seven months of correspondence, we are all in some fear; and I want to have letters written before I shall be plunged into that boiling pot of disagreeables which I constantly expect at Honolulu. What is needful can be added there.
We were kept two months at Tautira in the house of my dear old friend, Ori a Ori, till both the masts of this invaluable yacht had been repaired. It was all for the best: Tautira being the most beautiful spot, and its people the most amiable, I have ever found. Besides which, the climate suited me to the ground; I actually went sea-bathing almost every day, and in our feasts (we are all huge eaters in Taiarapu) have been known to apply four times for pig. And then again I got wonderful materials for my book, collected songs and legends on the spot; songs still sung in chorus by perhaps a hundred persons, not two of whom can agree on their translation; legends, on which I have seen half-a-dozen seniors sitting in conclave and debating what came next. Once I went a day's journey to the other side of the island to Tati, the high chief of the Tevas—my chief that is, for I am now a Teva and Teriitera at your service—to collect more and correct what I had already. In the meanwhile I got on with my work, almost finished the Master of Ballantrae, which contains more human work than anything of mine but Kidnapped, and wrote the half of another ballad, the 'Song of Rahero,' on a Taiarapu legend of my own clan, sir—not so much fire as the Feast of Famine, but promising to be more even and correct. But the best fortune of our stay at Tautira was my knowledge of Ori himself, one of the finest creatures extant. The day of our parting was a sad one. We deduced from it a rule for travellers: not to stay two months in one place—which is to cultivate regrets.
At last our contemptible ship was ready; to sea we went, bound for Honolulu and the letter bag, on Christmas Day; and from then to now have experienced every sort of minor misfortune, squalls, calms, contrary winds and seas, pertinacious rains, declining stores, till we came almost to regard ourselves as in the case of Vanderdecken. Three days ago our luck seemed to improve, we struck a leading breeze, got creditably through the doldrums, and just as we looked to have the N.E. trades and a straight run, the rains and squalls and calms began again about midnight, and this morning, though there is breeze enough to send us along, we are beaten back by an obnoxious swell out of the north. Here is a page of complaint, when a verse of thanksgiving had perhaps been more in place. For all this time we must have been skirting past dangerous weather, in the tail and circumference of hurricanes, and getting only annoyance where we should have had peril, and ill-humour instead of fear.
I wonder if I have managed to give you any news this time, or whether the usual damn hangs over my letter? 'The midwife whispered, Be thou dull!' or at least inexplicit. Anyway I have tried my best, am exhausted with the effort, and fall back into the land of generalities. I cannot tell you how often we have planned our arrival at the Monument: two nights ago, the 12th January, we had it all planned out, arrived in the lights and whirl of Waterloo, hailed a hansom, span up Waterloo Road, over the bridge, etc., etc., and hailed the monument gate in triumph and with indescribable delight. My dear Custodian, I always think we are too sparing of assurances: Cordelia is only to be excused by Regan and Goneril in the same nursery; I wish to tell you that the longer I live, the more dear do you become to me, nor does my heart own any stronger sentiment. If the bloody schooner didn't send me flying in every sort of direction at the same time, I would say better what I feel so much; but really if you were here, you would not be writing letters, I believe; and even I, though of a more marine constitution, am much perturbed with this bobbery and wish—O ye gods, how I wish—that it was done, and we had arrived, and I had Pandora's Box (my mail bag) in hand, and was in the lively hope of something eatable for dinner instead of salt horse, tinned mutton, duff without any plums, and pie fruit, which now make up our whole repertory. O Pandora's Box! I wonder what you will contain. As like as not you will contain but little money; if that be so, we shall have to retire to 'Frisco in the Casco, and thence by sea viâ Panama to Southampton, where we should arrive in April. I would like fine to see you on the tug: ten years older both of us than the last time you came to welcome Fanny and me to England. If we have money, however, we shall do a little differently: send the Casco away from Honolulu empty of its high-born lessees, for that voyage to 'Frisco is one long dead beat in foul and at last in cold weather; stay awhile behind, follow by steamer, cross the States by train, stay awhile in New York on business, and arrive probably by the German Line in Southampton. But all this is a question of money. We shall have to lie very dark awhile to recruit our finances: what comes from the book of the cruise, I do not want to touch until the capital is repaid.
R. L. S.
Honolulu, February 8th, 1889.
My Dear Charles [Baxter],—Here we are at Honolulu, and have dismissed the yacht, and lie here until April anyway, in a fine state of haze, which I am yet in hopes some letter of yours (still on the way) may dissipate. No money, and not one word as to money! However, I have got the yacht paid off in triumph, I think; and though we stay here impignorate, it should not be for long, even if you bring us no extra help from home. The cruise has been a great success, both as to matter, fun, and health; and yet, Lord, man! we're pleased to be ashore! Yon was a very fine voyage from Tahiti up here, but—the dry land's a fine place too, and we don't mind squalls any longer, and eh, man, that's a great thing. Blow, blow, thou wintry wind, thou hast done me no appreciable harm beyond a few grey hairs! Altogether, this foolhardy venture is achieved; and if I have but nine months of life and any kind of health, I shall have both eaten my cake and got it back again with usury. But, man, there have been days when I felt guilty, and thought I was in no position for the head of a house.
Your letter and accounts is doubtless at S. F., and will reach me in course. My wife is no great shakes; she is the one who has suffered most. My mother has had a Huge Old Time; Lloyd is first chop; I so well that I do not know myself—sea-bathing, if you please, and what is far more dangerous, entertaining and being entertained by His Majesty here, who is a very fine intelligent fellow, but O, Charles! what a crop for the drink! He carries it too like a mountain with a sparrow on its shoulders. We calculated five bottles of champagne in three hours and-a-half (afternoon) and the sovereign quite presentable, although perceptibly more dignified at the end....
The extraordinary health I enjoy and variety of interests I find among these islands would tempt me to remain here; only for Lloyd, who is not well placed in such countries for a permanency; and a little for Colvin, to whom I feel I owe a sort of filial duty. And these two considerations will no doubt bring me back—to go to bed again—in England. I will write again soon and beg for all news of the Henleys and all friends.—Yours ever affectionately,
R. L. S.
Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands,
February, 1889.
My dear Bob [Stevenson],—My extremely foolhardy venture is practically over. How foolhardy it was I don't think I realized. We had a very small schooner, and, like most yachts over-rigged and over-sparred, and like many American yachts on a very dangerous sail plan....
The waters we sailed in are, of course, entirely unlighted, and very badly charted; in the Dangerous Archipelago through which we were fools enough to go, we were perfectly in ignorance of where we were for a whole night and half the next day, and this in the midst of invisible islands and rapid and variable currents; and we were lucky when we found our whereabouts at last. We have twice had all we wanted in the way of squalls; once, as I came on deck, I found the green sea over the cockpit coamings and running down the companion like a brook to meet me; at that same moment the foresail sheet jammed and the captain had no knife; this was the only occasion on the cruise that ever I set a hand to a rope, but I worked like a Trojan, judging the possibility of hæmorrhage better than the certainty of drowning. Another time I saw a rather singular thing: our whole ship's company as pale as paper from the captain to the cook; we had a black squall astern on the port and a white squall ahead to starboard; the complication passed off innocuous, the black squall only fetching us with its tail, and the white one slewing off somewhere else. Twice we were a long while (days) in the close vicinity of hurricane weather, but again luck prevailed, and we saw none of it. These are dangers incident to these seas and small craft. What was an amazement, and at the same time a powerful stroke of luck, both our masts were rotten, and we found it out—I was going to say in time, but it was stranger and luckier than that. The head of the mainmast hung over so that hands were afraid to go to the helm; and less than three weeks before—I am not sure it was more than a fortnight—we had been nearly twelve hours beating off the lee shore of Eimeo (or Moorea, next island to Tahiti) in half a gale of wind with a violent head sea; she would neither tack nor wear once, and had to be boxed off with the mainsail; you can imagine what an ungodly show of kites we carried—and yet the mast stood. The very day after that, in the southern bight of Tahiti, we had a near squeak, the wind suddenly coming calm; the reefs were close in, with, my eye! what a surf! The pilot thought we were gone, and the captain had a boat cleared, when a lucky squall came to our rescue. My wife, hearing the order given about the boats, remarked to my mother, 'Isn't that nice? we shall soon be ashore!' Thus does the female mind unconsciously skirt along the verge of eternity. Our voyage up here was most disastrous—calms, squalls, head sea, waterspouts of rain, hurricane weather all about, and we in the midst of the hurricane season, when even the hopeful builder and owner of the yacht had pronounced these seas unfit for her. We ran out of food, and were quite given up for lost in Honolulu: people had ceased to speak to Belle[N] about the Casco, as a deadly object.
But the perils of the deep were part of the programme; and though I am very glad to be done with them for a while and comfortably ashore, where a squall does not matter a snuff to any one, I feel pretty sure I shall want to get to sea again ere long. The dreadful risk I took was financial, and double-headed. First, I had to sink a lot of money in the cruise, and if I didn't get health, how was I to get it back? I have got health to a wonderful extent; and as I have the most interesting matter for my book, bar accidents, I ought to get all I have laid out and a profit. But second (what I own I never considered till too late), there was the danger of collisions, of damages and heavy repairs, of disablement, towing, and salvage; indeed, the cruise might have turned round and cost me double. Nor will this danger be quite over till I hear the yacht is in San Francisco; for though I have shaken the dust of her deck from my feet, I fear (as a point of law) she is still mine till she gets there.
From my point of view, up to now the cruise has been a wonderful success. I never knew the world was so amusing. On the last voyage we had grown so used to sea-life that no one wearied, though it lasted a full month, except Fanny, who is always ill. All the time our visits to the islands have been more like dreams than realities: the people, the life, the beach-combers, the old stories and songs I have picked up, so interesting; the climate, the scenery, and (in some places) the women so beautiful. The women are handsomest in Tahiti; the men in the Marquesas, both as fine types as can be imagined. Lloyd reminds me, I have not told you one characteristic incident of the cruise from a semi-naval point of view. One night we were going ashore in Anaho Bay; the most awful noise on deck; the breakers distinctly audible in the cabin; and there I had to sit below, entertaining in my best style a negroid native chieftain, much the worse for rum! You can imagine the evening's pleasure.
This naval report on cruising in the South Seas would be incomplete without one other trait. On our voyage up here I came one day into the dining-room, the hatch in the floor was open, the ship's boy was below with a baler, and two of the hands were carrying buckets as for a fire; this meant that the pumps had ceased working.
One stirring day was that in which we sighted Hawaii. It blew fair, but very strong; we carried jib, foresail, and mainsail, all single-reefed, and she carried her lee rail under water and flew. The swell, the heaviest I have ever been out in—I tried in vain to estimate the height, at least fifteen feet—came tearing after us about a point and a half off the wind. We had the best hand—old Louis—at the wheel; and, really, he did nobly, and had noble luck, for it never caught us once. At times it seemed we must have it; Louis would look over his shoulder with the queerest look and dive down his neck into his shoulders; and then it missed us somehow, and only sprays came over our quarter, turning the little outside lane of deck into a mill race as deep as to the cockpit coamings. I never remember anything more delightful and exciting. Pretty soon after we were lying absolutely becalmed under the lee of Hawaii, of which we had been warned; and the captain never confessed he had done it on purpose, but when accused, he smiled. Really, I suppose he did quite right, for we stood committed to a dangerous race, and to bring her to the wind would have been rather a heart-sickening manœuvre.
R. L. S.
[At Honolulu Stevenson found awaiting him among the accumulations of the mail-bag, two letters of friendly homage—the first, I think, he had received from any foreign confrère—addressed to him by a distinguished young French scholar and man of letters, M. Marcel Schwob.]
Honolulu, Sandwich Islands,
February 8th, 1889. M. Schwob.
Dear Sir,—I thank you—from the midst of such a flurry as you can imagine, with seven months' accumulated correspondence on my table—for your two friendly and clever letters. Pray write me again. I shall be home in May or June, and not improbably shall come to Paris in the summer. Then we can talk; or in the interval I may be able to write, which is to-day out of the question. Pray take a word from a man of crushing occupations, and count it as a volume. Your little conte is delightful. Ah yes, you are right, I love the eighteenth century; and so do you, and have not listened to its voice in vain.—The Hunted One,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
Honolulu, April 2nd, 1889.
My Dear Colvin,—I am beginning to be ashamed of writing on to you without the least acknowledgement, like a tramp; but I do not care—I am hardened; and whatever be the cause of your silence, I mean to write till all is blue. I am outright ashamed of my news, which is that we are not coming home for another year. I cannot but hope it may continue the vast improvement of my health; I think it good for Fanny and Lloyd; and we have all a taste for this wandering and dangerous life. My mother I send home, to my relief, as this part of our cruise will be (if we can carry it out) rather difficult in places. Here is the idea: about the middle of June (unless the Boston Board objects) we sail from Honolulu in the missionary ship (barquentine auxiliary steamer) Morning Star: she takes us through the Gilberts and Marshalls, and drops us (this is my great idea) on Ponapue, one of the volcanic islands of the Carolines. Here we stay marooned among a doubtful population, with a Spanish vice-governor and five native kings, and a sprinkling of missionaries, all at loggerheads, on the chance of fetching a passage to Sydney in a trader, a labor ship or (maybe, but this appears too bright) a ship of war. If we can't get the Morning Star (and the Board has many reasons that I can see for refusing its permission) I mean to try to fetch Fiji, hire a schooner there, do the Fijis and Friendlies, hit the course of the Richmond at Tonga Tabu, make back by Tahiti, and so to S. F., and home: perhaps in June, 1890. For the latter part of the cruise will likely be the same in either case. You can see for yourself how much variety and adventure this promises: and that it is not devoid of danger at the best, but if we can pull it off in safety, gives me a fine book of travel, and Lloyd a fine lecture and diorama, which should vastly better our finances. I feel as if I were untrue to friendship; believe me, Colvin, when I look forward to this absence of another year, my conscience sinks at thought of the Monument; but I think you will pardon me if you consider how much this tropical weather mends my health. Remember me as I was at home, and think of me sea-bathing and walking about, as jolly as a sandboy; you will own the temptation is strong; and as the scheme, bar fatal accidents, is bound to pay in the bargain, sooner or later, it seems it would be madness to come home now, with an imperfect book, no illustrations to speak of, no diorama, and perhaps fall sick again by autumn. I do not think I delude myself when I say the tendency to catarrh has visibly diminished.
It is a singular thing that as I was packing up old papers ere I left Skerryvore, I came on the prophecies of a drunken Highland Sybil, when I was seventeen. She said I was to be very happy, to visit America, and to be much upon the sea. It seems as if it were coming true with a vengeance. Also, do you remember my strong, old, rooted belief that I shall die by drowning? I don't want that to come true, though it is an easy death; but it occurs to me oddly, with these long chances in front. I cannot say why I like the sea; no man is more cynically and constantly alive to its perils; I regard it as the highest form of gambling; and yet I love the sea as much as I hate gambling. Fine, clean emotions; a world all and always beautiful; air better than wine; interest unflagging: there is upon the whole no better life. Yours ever,
R. L. S.
Honolulu, April 6th, 1889.
My dear Miss Boodle,—The family seems to say I am the man, or rather, mine is the voice; for as to gratitude, we are all in a concatenation. Nobody writes a better letter than my gamekeeper; so gay, so pleasant, so engagingly particular, answering (by some delicate instinct) all the questions she suggests. It is a shame you should get such a poor return as I can make, from a mind essentially and originally incapable of the art epistolary. I would let the paper-cutter take my place; but I am sorry to say, the little wooden seaman did after the manner of seamen, and deserted in the Societies. The place he seems to have stayed at—seems, for his absence was not observed till we were near the Equator—was Tautira, and, I assure you, he displayed good taste, Tautira being as 'nigh hand heaven' as a paper-cutter or anybody has a right to expect.
I think all our friends will be very angry with us, and I give the grounds of their probable displeasure bluntly—we are not coming home for another year. My mother returns next month. Fanny, Lloyd, and I push on again among the islands on a trading schooner, The Equator—first for the Gilbert group, which we shall have an opportunity to explore thoroughly; then, if occasion serve, to the Marshalls and Carolines; and if occasion (or money) fail, to Samoa, and back to Tahiti. I own we are deserters, but we have excuses. You cannot conceive how these climates agree with the wretched house-plant of Skerryvore; he wonders to find himself sea-bathing, and cutting about the world loose, like a grown-up person. They agree with Fanny too, who does not suffer from her rheumatism, and with Lloyd also. And the interest of the islands is endless, and the sea, though I own it is a fearsome place, is very delightful. We had applied for places in the American missionary ship, the Morning Star, but this trading schooner is a far preferable idea, giving us more time and a thousand-fold more liberty; so we determined to cut off the missionaries with a shilling.
The Sandwich Islands do not interest us very much; we live here, oppressed with civilisation, and look for good things in the future. But it would surprise you if you came out to-night from Honolulu (all shining with electric lights, and all in a bustle from the arrival of the mail, which is to carry you these lines) and crossed the long wooden causeway along the beach, and came out on the road through Kapiolani park, and seeing a gate in the palings, with a tub of gold-fish by the wayside, entered casually in. The buildings stand in these groups by the edge of the beach, where an angry little spitfire sea continually spirts and thrashes with impotent irascibility; the big seas breaking further out upon the reef. The first is a small house, with a very large summer parlour, or lanai, as they call it here, roofed, but practically open. There you will find the lamps burning and the family sitting about the table, dinner just done; my mother, my wife, Lloyd, Bell, my wife's daughter, Austin her child, and to-night (by way of rarity) a guest. All about the walls our South Sea curiosities, war clubs, idols, pearl shells, stone axes, etc., and the walls are only a small part of a lanai, the rest being glazed or latticed windows, or mere open space. You will see there no sign of the Squire, however; and being a person of a humane disposition, you will only glance in over the balcony railing at the merry-makers in the summer parlour, and proceed further afield after the Exile. You look round, there is beautiful green turf, many trees of an outlandish sort that drop thorns—look out if your feet are bare; but I beg your pardon, you have not been long enough in the South Seas—and many oleanders in full flower. The next group of buildings is ramshackle, and quite dark; you make out a coach-house door, and look in—only some cocoanuts; you try round to the left and come to the sea front, where Venus and the moon are making luminous tracks on the water, and a great swell rolls and shines on the outer reef, and here is another door—all these places open from the outside—and you go in, and find photography, tubs of water, negatives steeping, a tap, and a chair and an inkbottle, where my wife is supposed to write; round a little further, a third door, entering which you find a picture upon the easel and a table sticky with paints; a fourth door admits you to a sort of court, where there is a hen sitting—I believe on a fallacious egg. No sign of the Squire in all this. But right opposite the studio door you have observed a third little house, from whose open door lamplight streams and makes hay of the strong moonlight shadows. You had supposed it made no part of the grounds, for a fence runs round it lined with oleander; but as the Squire is nowhere else, is it not just possible he may be here? It is a grim little wooden shanty; cobwebs bedeck it; friendly mice inhabit its recesses; the mailed cockroach walks upon the wall; so also, I regret to say, the scorpion. Herein are two pallet beds, two mosquito curtains, strung to the pitch-boards of the roof, two tables laden with books and manuscripts, three chairs, and, in one of the beds, the Squire busy writing to yourself, as it chances, and just at this moment somewhat bitten by mosquitoes. He has just set fire to the insect powder, and will be all right in no time; but just now he contemplates large white blisters, and would like to scratch them, but knows better. The house is not bare; it has been inhabited by Kanakas, and—you know what children are!—the bare wood walls are pasted over with pages from the Graphic, Harper's Weekly, etc. The floor is matted, and I am bound to say the matting is filthy. There are two windows and two doors, one of which is condemned; on the panels of that last a sheet of paper is pinned up, and covered with writing. I cull a few plums:—
- 'A duck hammock for each person.
- A patent organ like the commandant's at Taiahae.
- Cheap and bad cigars for presents.
- Revolvers.
- Permanganate of potass.
- Liniment for the head and sulphur.
- Fine tooth-comb.'
What do you think this is? Simply life in the South Seas foreshortened. These are a few of our desiderata for the next trip, which we jot down as they occur.
There, I have really done my best and tried to send something like a letter—one letter in return for all your dozens. Pray remember us all to yourself, Mrs. Boodle, and the rest of your house. I do hope your mother will be better when this comes. I shall write and give you a new address when I have made up my mind as to the most probable, and I do beg you will continue to write from time to time and give us airs from home. To-morrow—think of it—I must be off by a quarter to eight to drive into the palace and breakfast with his Hawaiian Majesty at 8.30; I shall be dead indeed. Please give my news to Scott, I trust he is better: give him my warm regards. To you we all send all kinds of things, and I am the absentee Squire,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
[The allusions in the latter half of this letter are to the departure for Europe of the young Hawaiian princess Kaiulani (see the poem beginning 'When from Her Land to Mine She Goes,' in Songs of Travel, p. 47); and to the circumstances of the great hurricane at Apia, on March 15, 1889.]
Honolulu (about) 20th May '89.
My dear Low,— ... The goods have come; many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all.—I have at length finished the Master; it has been a sore cross to me; but now he is buried, his body's under hatches,—his soul, if there is any hell to go to, gone to hell; and I forgive him; it is harder to forgive Burlingame for having induced me to begin the publication, or myself for suffering the induction.—Yes, I think Hole has done finely; it will be one of the most adequately illustrated books of our generation; he gets the note, he tells the story—my story: I know only one failure—the Master standing on the beach.—You must have a letter for me at Sydney—till further notice. Remember me to Mrs. Will. H., the godlike sculptor, and any of the faithful. If you want to cease to be a republican, see my little Kaiulani, as she goes through—but she is gone already. You will die a red; I wear the colours of that little royal maiden, Nous allons chanter à la ronde, si vous voulez! only she is not blonde by several chalks, though she is but a half-blood, and the wrong half Edinburgh Scots like mysel'. But, O, Low, I love the Polynesian: this civilisation of ours is a dingy, ungentlemanly business; it drops out too much of man, and too much of that the very beauty of the poor beast; who has his beauties in spite of Zola and Co. As usual here is a whole letter with no news; I am a bloodless, inhuman dog; and no doubt Zola is a better correspondent.—Long live your fine old English admiral—yours, I mean—the U.S.A. one at Samoa; I wept tears and loved myself and mankind when I read of him: he is not too much civilised. And there was Gordon, too; and there are others, beyond question. But if you could live, the only white folk, in a Polynesian village; and drink that warm, light vin du pays of human affection, and enjoy that simple dignity of all about you—I will not gush, for I am now in my fortieth year, which seems highly unjust, but there it is, Mr. Low, and the Lord enlighten your affectionate.
R. L. S.
[The following two letters, one to his wife and one to me, were written during and immediately after Stevenson's trip to the noted leper settlement, the scene of Father Damien's labors, at Molokai.]
No date. (The latter part of May.)
Kalawao, Molokai [May, 1889].
Dear Fanny,—I had a lovely sail up. Captain Cameron and Mr. Gilfillan, both born in the States, yet the first still with a strong Highland, and the second still with a strong Lowland accent, were good company, the night was warm, the victuals plain but good. Mr. Gilfillan gave me his berth, and I slept well, though I heard the sisters sick in the next stateroom, poor souls. Heavy rolling woke me in the morning; I turned in all standing, so went right on the upper deck. The day was on the peep out of a low morning bank, and we were wallowing along under stupendous cliffs. As the lights brightened, we could see certain abutments and buttresses on their front where wood clustered and grass grew brightly. But the whole brow seemed quite impassable, and my heart sank at the sight. Two thousand feet of rock making 19° (the Captain guesses) seemed quite beyond my powers. However, I had come so far; and to tell you the truth, I was so cowed with fear and disgust that I dared not go back on the adventure in the interests of my own self-respect. Presently we came up with the leper promontory: lowland, quite bare and bleak and harsh, a little town of wooden houses, two churches, a landing stair, all unsightly, sour, northerly, lying athwart the sunrise, with the great wall of the pali cutting the world out on the south. Our lepers were sent on the first boat, about a dozen, one poor child very horrid, one white man, leaving a large grown family behind him in Honolulu, and then into the second stepped the sisters and myself. I do not know how it would have been with me had the sisters not been there. My horror of the horrible is about my weakest point; but the moral loveliness at my elbow blotted all else out; and when I found that one of them was crying, poor soul, quietly under her veil, I cried a little myself; then I felt as right as a trivet, only a little crushed to be there so uselessly. I thought it was a sin and a shame she should feel unhappy; I turned round to her, and said something like this: 'Ladies, God Himself is here to give you welcome. I'm sure it is good for me to be beside you; I hope it will be blessed to me; I thank you for myself and the good you do me.' It seemed to cheer her up; but indeed I had scarce said it when we were at the landing-stairs and there was a great crowd, hundreds of (God save us!) pantomine masks in poor human flesh, waiting to receive the sisters and the new patients. Every hand was offered; I had gloves, but I had made up my mind on the boat's voyage not to give my hand, that seemed less offensive than the gloves. So the sisters and I went up among that crew, and presently I got aside (for I felt I had no business there) and set off on foot across the promontory, carrying my wrap and the camera. All horror was quite gone from me; to see these dread creatures smile and look happy was beautiful. On my way through Kalaupapa I was exchanging cheerful alohas with the patients coming galloping over on their horses; I was stopping to gossip at house-doors; I was happy, only ashamed of myself that I was here for no good. One woman was pretty, and spoke good English, and was infinitely engaging and (in the old phrase) towardly; she thought I was the new white patient; and when she found I was only a visitor, a curious change came in her face and voice—the only sad thing, morally sad, I mean—that I met that morning. But for all that, they tell me none want to leave. Beyond Kalaupapa the houses became rare; dry stone dykes, grassy, stoney land, one sick pandanus; a dreary country; from overhead in the little clinging woods shogs of the pali chirruping of birds fell; the low sun was right in my face; the trade blew pure and cool and delicious; I felt as right as ninepence, and stopped and chatted with the patients whom I still met on their horses, with not the least disgust. About half-way over, I met the superintendent (a leper) with a horse for me, and O wasn't I glad! But the horse was one of those curious, dogged, cranky brutes that alway dully want to go somewhere else, and my traffic with him completed my crushing fatigue. I got to the guest-house, an empty house with several rooms, kitchen, bath, etc. There was no one there, and I let the horse go loose in the garden, lay down on the bed, and fell asleep.
Dr. Swift woke me and gave me breakfast, then I came back and slept again while he was at the dispensary, and he woke me for dinner; and I came back and slept again, and he woke me about six for supper; and then in about an hour I felt tired again, and came up to my solitary guest-house, played the flageolet, and am now writing to you. As yet, you see, I have seen nothing of the settlement, and my crushing fatigue (though I believe that was moral and a measure of my cowardice) and the doctor's opinion make me think the pali hopeless. 'You don't look a strong man,' said the doctor; 'but are you sound?' I told him the truth; then he said it was out of the question, and if I were to get up at all, I must be carried up. But, as it seems, men as well as horses continually fall on this ascent: the doctor goes up with a change of clothes—it is plain that to be carried would in itself be very fatiguing to both mind and body; and I should then be at the beginning of thirteen miles of mountain road to be ridden against time. How should I come through? I hope you will think me right in my decision: I mean to stay, and shall not be back in Honolulu till Saturday, June first. You must all do the best you can to make ready.... Dr. S. has a wife and an infant son, beginning to toddle and run, and they live here as composed as brick and mortar; at least the wife does, a Kentucky German, a fine enough creature I believe, who was quite amazed at the sisters shedding tears! How strange is mankind! —— too, a good fellow I think, and far from a stupid, kept up his hard Lowland Scottish talk in the boat while the sister was covering her face; but I believe he knew, and did it (partly) in embarrassment, and part perhaps in mistaken kindness. And that was one reason, too, why I made my speech to them. Partly, too, I did it, because I was ashamed to do so, and remembered one of my golden rules, 'When you are ashamed to speak, speak up at once.' But, mind you, that rule is only golden with strangers; with your own folks, there are other considerations. This is a strange place to be in. A bell has been sounded at intervals while I wrote, now all is still but a musical humming of the sea, not unlike the sound of telegraph wires; the night is quite cool and pitch dark, with a small fine rain; one light over in the leper settlement, one cricket whistling in the garden, my lamp here by my bedside, and my pen cheaping between my inky fingers.
Next day, lovely morning, slept all night, 80° in the shade, strong, sweet, Anaho trade-wind.
Honolulu, May or June, 1889.
My dear Colvin,—I am just home after twelve days journey to Molokai, seven of them at the leper settlement, where I can only say that the sight of so much courage, cheerfulness and devotion, strung me too high to mind the infinite pity and horror of the sights. I used to ride over from Kalawao to Kalaupapa (about three miles across the promontory, the cliff-wall, ivied with forest and yet inaccessible from steepness, on my left), go to the Sisters' home which is a miracle of neatness, play a game of croquet with seven leper girls (90° in the shade), get a little old-maid meal served me by the Sisters, and ride home again, tired enough but not too tired. The girls have all dolls, and love dressing them. You who know so many ladies delicately clad, and they who know so many dressmakers, please make it known it would be an acceptable gift to send scraps for doll dressmaking to the Reverend Sister Maryanne, Bishop Home, Kalaupapa, Molokai, Hawaiian Islands.
I have seen sights that cannot be told, and heard stories that cannot be repeated: yet I never admired my poor race so much, nor (strange as it may seem) loved life more than in the settlement. A horror of moral beauty broods over the place: that's like bad Victor Hugo, but it is the only way I can express the sense that lived with me all these days. And this even though it was in great part Catholic, and my sympathies flew never with so much difficulty as towards Catholic virtues. The pass-book kept with heaven stirs me to anger and laughter. One of the sisters calls the place "the ticket-office to heaven." Well, what is the odds? They do their darg, and do it with kindness and efficiency incredible; and we must take folk's virtues as we find them, and love the better part. Of old Damien, whose weaknesses and worse perhaps I heard fully, I think only the more. It was a European peasant: dirty, bigotted, untruthful, unwise, tricky, but superb with generosity, residual candour and fundamental good-humour: convince him he had done wrong (it might take hours of insult) and he would undo what he had done and like his corrector better. A man, with all the grime and paltriness of mankind, but a saint and hero all the more for that. The place as regards scenery is grand, gloomy and bleak. Mighty mountain walls descending sheer along the whole face of the island into a sea unusually deep; the front of the mountain ivied and furred with clinging forest, one iridescent cliff: about half-way from east to west, the low, bare stony promontory edged in between the cliff and the ocean; the two little towns (Kalawao and Kalaupapa) seated on either side of it, as bare almost as bathing machines upon a beach; and the population—gorgons and chimæras dire. All this tear of the nerves, I bore admirably; and the day after I got away, rode twenty miles along the opposite coast and up into the mountains: they call it twenty, I am doubtful of the figures: I should guess it nearer twelve; but let me take credit for what residents allege; and I was riding again the day after, so I need say no more about health. Honolulu does not agree with me at all; I am always out of sorts there, with slight headache, blood to the head, etc. I had a good deal of work to do and did it with miserable difficulty; and yet all the time I have been gaining strength as you see, which is highly encouraging. By the time I am done with this cruise I shall have the material for a very singular book of travels: names of strange stories and characters, cannibals, pirates, ancient legends, old Polynesian poetry; never was so generous a farrago. I am going down now to get the story of a shipwrecked family, who were fifteen months on an island with a murderer: there is a specimen. The Pacific is a strange place, the nineteenth century only exists there in spots; all round, it is a no man's land of the ages, a stir-about of epochs and races, barbarisms and civilisations, virtues and crimes.
It is good of you to let me stay longer, but if I had known how ill you were, I should be now on my way home. I had chartered my schooner and made all arrangements before (at last) we got definite news. I feel highly guilty; I should be back to insult and worry you a little. Our address till further notice is to be c/o R. Towns & Co., Sydney. That is final; I only got the arrangement made yesterday; but you may now publish it abroad. Yours ever,
R. L. S.
[The following was written to his old friend of Cornhill Magazine days, Mr. James Payn, on receiving in Hawaii ill news of that gentleman's health.]
Honolulu, H. I., June 13th, 1889.
My Dear James Payn,—I get sad news of you here at my offsetting for further voyages; I wish I could say what I feel. Since there was never any man less deserved this calamity; for I have heard you speak time and again, and I remember nothing that was unkind, nothing that was untrue, nothing that was not helpful, from your lips. It is the ill-talkers that should hear no more. God knows, I know no word of consolation; but I do feel your trouble. You are the more open to letters now; let me talk to you for two pages; I have nothing but happiness to tell; and you may bless God you are a man so sound-hearted that (even in the freshness of your calamity) I can come to you with my own good fortune unashamed and secure of sympathy. It is a good thing to be a good man, whether deaf or whether dumb; and of all our fellow-craftsmen (whom yet they count a jealous race), I never knew one but gave you the name of honesty and kindness: come to think of it gravely, this is better than the finest hearing. We are all on the march to deafness, blindness, and all conceivable and fatal disabilities; we shall not all get there with a report so good. My good news is a health astonishingly reinstated. This climate; these voyagings; these landfalls at dawn; new islands peaking from the morning bank; new forested harbours; new passing alarms of squalls and surf; new interests of gentle natives,—the whole tale of my life is better to me than any poem. I am fresh just now from the leper settlement of Molokai, playing croquet with seven leper girls, sitting and yarning with old, blind, leper beach-combers in the hospital, sickened with the spectacle of abhorrent suffering and deformation amongst the patients, touched to the heart by the sight of lovely and effective virtues in their helpers: no stranger time have I ever had, nor any so moving; I do not think it a little thing to be deaf, God knows, and God defend me from the same!—but to be a leper, or one of the self-condemned, how much more awful! and yet there's a way there also. 'There are Molokais everywhere,' said Mr. Dutton, Father Damien's dresser; you are but new landed in yours; and my dear and kind adviser, I wish you, with all my soul, that patience and courage which you will require. Think of me meanwhile on a trading schooner, bound for the Gilbert Islands, thereafter for the Marshalls, with a diet of fish and cocoanut before me; bound on a cruise of—well, of investigation to what islands we can reach, and to get (some day or other) to Sydney, where a letter addressed to the care of R. Towns & Co. will find me sooner or later; and if it contain any good news, whether of your welfare or the courage with which you bear the contrary, will do me good.—Yours affectionately (although so near a stranger),
Robert Louis Stevenson.
THE VAUDEVILLE THEATRE
By Edwin Milton Royle
Illustrated by W. Glackens
THE Vaudeville Theatre is an American invention. There is nothing like it anywhere else in the world. It is neither the Café Chantant, the English music-hall, nor the German garden. What has been called by a variety of names, but has remained always and everywhere pretty much the same—reeky with smoke, damp with libations, gay with the informalities of the half-world—is now doing business with us under the patronage of the royal American family.
Having expurgated and rehabilitated the tawdry thing, the American invites in the family and neighbors, hands over to them beautiful theatres, lavishly decorated and appointed, nails up everywhere church and army regulations, and in the exuberance of his gayety passes around ice-water. He hasn't painted out the French name, but that is because he has been, as usual, in a hurry. Fourteen years ago this may have been a dream in a Yankee's brain; now it is a part of us. The strictly professional world has been looking for the balloon to come down, for the fad to die out, for the impossible thing to stop, but year by year these theatres increase and multiply, till now they flourish the country over.
Sometimes the vaudeville theatre is an individual and independent enterprise; more often it belongs to a circuit. The patronage, expenses, and receipts are enormous. One circuit will speak for all. It has a theatre in New York, one in Philadelphia, one in Boston, and one in Providence, and they give no Sunday performances; and yet these four theatres entertain over 5,000,000 people every year, give employment to 350 attachés and to 3,500 actors. Four thousand people pass in and out of each one of these theatres daily. Ten thousand dollars are distributed each week in salaries to the actors and $3,500 to the attachés. Take one theatre for example, the house in Boston. It is open the year round and it costs $7,000 a week to keep it open, while its patrons will average 25,000 every week. On a holiday it will play to from ten to twelve thousand people. How is it possible?
Persons who secrete campaign rations about them, and camp there from 9.30 a.m. to 10.30 p.m.—Page [486].
A holiday to an American is a serious affair, so the doors of the theatre are open and the performance begins when most people are eating breakfast; 9.30 a.m. is not too soon for the man who pursues pleasure with the same intensity he puts into business. There are no reserved seats, so one must come first to be first served. One may go in at 9.30 a.m. and stay until 10.30 at night. If he leaves his seat, though, the nearest standing Socialist drops into it and he must wait for a vacancy in order to sit down again.
Not over two per cent. of an audience remains longer than to see the performance through once, but there are persons who secrete campaign rations about them, and camp there from 9.30 a.m. to 10.30 p.m., thereby surviving all of the acts twice and most of them four or five times. The management calculate to sell out the house two and a half times on ordinary days and four times on holidays, and it is this system that makes such enormous receipts possible. Of course I have taken the circuit which is representative of the vaudeville idea at its best, but it is not alone in its standards or success, and what I have said about the houses in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia applies more or less to all the principal cities of the country, and in a less degree of course to the houses in the smaller cities.
Some of these theatres are never closed the year round. Some are content with three matinees a week in addition to their night performances. Others open their doors about noon and close them at 10.30 at night. These are called "continuous" houses. It is manifest, I think, that the vaudeville theatre is playing an important part in the amusement world and in our national life. Perhaps we should be grateful. At present it would seem that the moral tone of a theatre is in the inverse ratio of the price of admission. The higher the price, the lower the tone. It is certain that plays are tolerated and even acclaimed on the New York stage to-day which would have been removed with tongs half a dozen years ago.
Begged me "to soften the asperities."—Page [488].
On the eighteenth day of last April the member of Parliament for Flintshire made a formal query in the House of Commons in relation to the drama, asking "if the Government will, in view of the depraving nature of several plays now on the stage, consider the advisability of controlling theatres by licenses." The honorable member appeared to think one censorship in the person of the Lord Chamberlain not enough for the growing necessities of London. As we are no longer manufacturers but importers of plays, and largely by way of London, it is not strange that there should be some talk here of a legal censorship for our playhouses.
So far as the vaudeville theatres are concerned, one might as well ask for a censorship of a "family magazine." It would be a work of supererogation. The local manager of every vaudeville house is its censor, and he lives up to his position laboriously and, I may say, religiously. The bill changes usually from week to week. It is the solemn duty of this austere personage to sit through the first performance of every week and to let no guilty word or look escape. But this is precautionary only.
A Ballad Singer.
"You are to distinctly understand," say the first words of the contracts of a certain circuit, "that the management conducts this house upon a high plane of respectability and moral cleanliness," etc.
But long before the performer has entered the dressing-rooms, he has been made acquainted with the following legend which everywhere adorns the walls:
NOTICE TO PERFORMERS.
You are hereby warned that your act must be free from all vulgarity and suggestiveness in words, action, and costume, while playing in any of Mr. ——'s houses, and all vulgar, double-meaning and profane words and songs must be cut out of your act before the first performance. If you are in doubt as to what is right or wrong, submit it to the resident manager at rehearsal.
Such words as Liar, Slob, Son-of-a-Gun, Devil, Sucker, Damn, and all other words unfit for the ears of ladies and children, also any reference to questionable streets, resorts, localities, and bar-rooms, are prohibited under fine of instant discharge.
—— ——,
General Manager.
And this is not merely a literary effort on the part of the management; it is obligatory and final. When we have about accepted as conclusive the time-honored theory that "You must give the public what it wants," and that it wants bilge-water in champagne glasses, we are confronted with the vaudeville theatre, no longer an experiment, but a comprehensive fact.
The funniest farce ever written could not be done at these houses if it had any of the ear-marks of the thing in vogue at many of our first-class theatres. Said a lady to me: "They (the vaudeville theatres) are the only theatres in New York where I should feel absolutely safe in taking a young girl without making preliminary inquiries. Though they may offend the taste, they never offend one's sense of decency." The vaudeville theatres may be said to have established the commercial value of decency. This is their corner-stone. They were conceived with the object of catering to ladies and children, and, strange to say, a large, if not the larger, part of their audiences is always men.
What I have said does not describe all theatres which may have "fashionable vaudeville" over their doors. Godliness has proved so profitable that there be here, as elsewhere, wolves masquerading in woollens, but the houses I have described are well known. Nor have the stringent regulations of these theatres exiled the "song-and-dance man," who was wont to rely on risqué songs and suggestive jokes—they have only forced him to happier and saner efforts, and the result is not Calvinistic; on the contrary, nowhere are audiences jollier, quicker, and more intelligent, and the world of fashion even is not absent from these theatres primarily designed for the wholesome middle classes.
She ruled, she reigned, she triumphed.—Page [492].
I never for a moment suspected that these admirable regulations could be meant for me, or that indeed I was in need of rules and regulations, but my self-righteousness, as was meet, met with discipline. I had a line in my little farce to this effect: "I'll have the devil's own time explaining," etc. I had become so familiar with the devil that I was not even aware of his presence, but the management unmasked me and I received a polite request (which was a command) to cast out the devil. I finally got used to substituting the word "dickens." Later on, the local manager, a big, handsome man, faultlessly attired, in person begged me "to soften the asperities." Need I add that this occurred in Boston? When I travel again I shall leave my asperities at home.
A friend of mine was leaving a spacious vaudeville theatre, along with the audience, and was passing through the beautiful corridor, when one of the multitude of uniformed attachés handed him this printed notice:
Gentlemen will kindly avoid carrying cigars or cigarettes in their mouths while in the building, and greatly oblige
The Management.
My friend was guilty of carrying in his hand an unlighted cigar.
How careful of the conduct of their patrons the management is may be seen from the following printed requests with which the employees are armed:
Gentlemen will kindly avoid the stamping of feet and pounding of canes on the floor, and greatly oblige the Management. All applause is best shown by clapping of hands.
Please don't talk during acts, as it annoys those about you, and prevents a perfect hearing of the entertainment.
The Management.
When we were playing in Philadelphia a young woman was singing with what is known as the "song-sheet," at the same theatre with us. Her costume consisted of silk stockings, knee-breeches, and a velvet coat—the regulation page's dress, decorous enough to the unsanctified eye; but one day the proprietor himself happened in unexpectedly (as is his wont) and the order quick and stern went forth that the young woman was not to appear again except in skirts—her street-clothes, if she had nothing else, and street-clothes it came about.
These are the chronicles of what is known among the vaudeville fraternity as "The Sunday-school Circuit," and the proprietor of "The Sunday-school Circuit" is the inventor of vaudeville as we know it. This which makes for righteousness, as is usual, makes also for great and abiding cleanliness—physical as well as moral. I almost lost things in my Philadelphia dressing-room—it was cleaned so constantly. Paternal, austere perhaps, but clean, gloriously clean!
The character of the entertainment is always the same. There is a sameness even about its infinite variety. No act or "turn" consumes much over thirty minutes. Everyone's taste is consulted, and if one objects to the perilous feats of the acrobats or jugglers he can read his programme or shut his eyes for a few moments and he will be compensated by some sweet bell-ringing or a sentimental or comic song, graceful or grotesque dancing, a one-act farce, trained animals, legerdemain, impersonations, clay modelling, the biograph pictures, or the stories of the comic monologuist. The most serious thing about the programme is that seriousness is barred, with some melancholy results. From the artist who balances a set of parlor furniture on his nose to the academic baboon, there is one concentrated, strenuous struggle for a laugh. No artist can afford to do without it. It hangs like a solemn and awful obligation over everything. Once in a while an artist who juggles tubs on his feet is a comedian, but not always. It would seem as if a serious person would be a relief now and then. But so far the effort to introduce a serious note, even by dramatic artists, has been discouraged. I suspect the serious sketches have not been of superlative merit. Though this premium is put upon a laugh, everyone is aware of the difference between the man who rings a bell at forty paces with a rifle, and the man who smashes it with a club, and the loudest laugh is sometimes yoked with a timid salary. The man who said: "Let me get out of here or I'll lose my self-respect—I actually laughed," goes to the vaudeville theatres, too, and must be reckoned with.
The orchestra's place is filled by pianists.—Page [493].
So far as the character of the entertainment goes, vaudeville has the "open door." Whatever or whoever can interest an audience for thirty minutes or less, and has passed quarantine, is welcome. The conditions in the regular theatres are not encouraging to progress. To produce a play or launch a star requires capital of from $10,000 upward. There is no welcome and no encouragement. The door is shut and locked. And even with capital, the conditions are all unfavorable to proof. But if you can sing or dance or amuse people in any way; if you think you can write a one-act play, the vaudeville theatre will give you a chance to prove it. One day of every week is devoted to these trials. If at this trial you interest a man who is looking for good material, he will put you in the bill for one performance, and give you a chance at an audience, which is much better. The result of this open-door attitude is a very interesting innovation in vaudeville which is more or less recent, but seems destined to last—the incursion of the dramatic artist into vaudeville.
Singing Soubrettes.
The managers of the vaudeville theatres are not emotional persons, and there were some strictly business reasons back of the actor's entrance into vaudeville. We do not live by bread alone, but by the saving graces of the art of advertising. It was quite impossible to accentuate sixteen or eighteen features of a bill. Some one name was needed to give it character and meaning at a glance. A name that had already become familiar was preferred. The actor's name served to head the bill and expand the type and catch the eye, and hence arose the vaudeville term—"Head-Liner."
This word is not used in contracts, but it is established and understood, and carries with it well-recognized rights and privileges, such as being featured in the advertisements, use of the star dressing-room, and the favorite place on the bill; for it is not conducive to one's happiness or success to appear during the hours favored by the public for coming in or going out. The manager was not the loser, for many people who had never been inside a vaudeville theatre were attracted thither by the name of some well-known and favorite actor, and became permanent patrons of these houses.
At first the actor, who is sentimental rather than practical, was inclined to the belief that it was beneath his dignity to appear on the stage with "a lot of freaks," but he was tempted by salaries no one else could afford to pay (sometimes as high as $500 to $1,000 per week) and by the amount of attention afforded to the innovation by the newspapers. He was told that if he stepped from the sacred precincts of art, the door of the temple would be forever barred against him. The dignity of an artist is a serious thing, but the dignity of the dollar is also a serious thing. None of the dire suppositions happened. The door of the temple proved to be a swinging door, opening easily both ways, and the actor goes back and forth as there is demand for him and as the dollar dictates. Indeed, the advertising secured by association with "a lot of freaks" oiled the door for the actor's return to the legitimate drama at an increased salary.
Manifestly, it has been a boon to the "legitimate" artist. To the actor who has starred; who has had the care of a large company, with its certain expenses and its uncertain receipts; who has, in addition, responsibility for his own performance and for the work of the individual members of his company and for the work of the company as a whole, vaudeville offers inducements not altogether measured in dollars and cents. He is rid not only of financial obligation, but of a thousand cares and details that twist and strain a nervous temperament. He hands over to the amiable manager the death of the widely mourned Mr. Smith, and prevalent social functions, Lent and the circus, private and public calamities, floods and railroad accidents, the blizzard of winter and the heat of summer, desolating drought and murderous rains, the crops, strikes and panics, wars and pestilences and opera. It is quite a bunch of thorns that he hands over!
Time and terms are usually arranged by agents, who get five per cent. of the actor's salary for their services. Time and terms arranged, the rest is easy. The actor provides himself and assistants and his play or vehicle. His income and outcome are fixed, and he knows at the start whether he is to be a capitalist at the end of the year; for he runs almost no risk of not getting his salary in the well-known circuits.
The Monologuist.
It is then incumbent on him to forward property and scene-plots, photographs and cast to the theatre two weeks before he opens, and on arrival, he plays twenty or thirty minutes in the afternoon and the same at night. There his responsibility ends. It involves the trifling annoyance of dressing and making up twice a day. In and about New York the actor pays the railroad fares of himself and company, but when he goes West or South, the railroad fares (not including sleepers) are provided by the management.
A couple of stage hands ran in and shut you out with two flats upon which were painted in huge letters "N. G."—Page [494].
The great circuit which covers the territory west of Chicago keeps an agent in New York and one in Chicago to facilitate the handling of their big interests. These gentlemen purchase tickets, arrange for sleepers, take care of baggage, and lubricate the wheels of progress from New York to San Francisco and back again. The actor's only duty is to live up to the schedule made and provided.
The Human Lizard and the Human Frog.—Page [494].
The main disadvantage of the Western trip is the loss of a week going and one coming, as there is no vaudeville theatre between Omaha and San Francisco. To avoid the loss of a week on my return I contracted for two nights at the Salt Lake Theatre. My company consisted of four people all told, and my ammunition, suited to that calibre, was three one-act plays. To give the entire evening's entertainment at a first-class theatre, at the usual prices, with four people was a novel undertaking.
I finally determined to add to my mammoth aggregation a distinctly vaudeville feature, and while in San Francisco I engaged a young woman who was to fill in the intermissions with her song-and-dance specialty. Scorning painful effort to escape the conventional, I billed her as "The Queen of Vaudeville," whatever that may mean. We were caught in a tunnel fire at Summit and delayed thirty-six hours. I threatened the railroad officials with various and awful consequences, but the best I could do was to get them to drag my theatre-trunks around the tunnel by hand over a mile and a half of mountain trail, newly made, and get me into Salt Lake just in time to miss my opening night, with a big advance sale and the heart-rendings incident to money refunded. We were in time to play the second night, but my Queen, starting from 'Frisco on a later train, had shown no signs of appearing when the curtain rose. I made the usual apologies. The evening's entertainment was half over when a carriage came tearing up to the theatre and my Queen burst into the theatre without music, trunks, costumes, make-up, supper.
She borrowed a gown from my ingenue, which was much too small for her; a pair of slippers from my wife, which were much too big for her; make-up from both ladies, and went on. She leaned over, whispered the key to the leader of the orchestra and began to sing. The orchestra evolved a chord now and then, jiggled and wiggled, stalled, flew the track, crawled apologetically back, did its amiable best individually, but its amiable worst collectively. No mere man could have lived through it. But the young woman justified my billing. She ruled, she reigned, she triumphed. Pluck and good humor always win, and so did the Queen of Vaudeville.
When high-class musical artists and dramatic sketches were first introduced into vaudeville, I understand policemen had to be stationed in the galleries to compel respectful attention, but now these acts are the principal features of every bill, and if they have real merit the gallery-gods are the first to appreciate it. So it would seem that vaudeville has torpedoed the ancient superstition that the manager is always forced to give the public just what it wants. At first his efforts were not taken seriously either by the actor himself or the public, and many well-known artists failed to "make good," as the expression is, largely because they used "canned" or embalmed plays; that is, hastily and crudely condensed versions of well-known plays; but many succeeded, and the result has been a large increase in the number of good one-act farces and comedies, and a distinct elevation in the performance and the patronage of the vaudeville theatres. This has been a gain to everybody concerned.
It cannot be denied that the vaudeville "turn" is an experience for the actor. The intense activity everywhere, orderly and systematic though it is, is confusing. The proximity to the "educated donkey," and some not so educated; the variegated and motley samples of all strange things in man and beast; the fact that the curtain never falls, and the huge machine never stops to take breath until 10.30 at night; the being associated after the style of criminals with a number, having your name or number shot into a slot in the proscenium arch to introduce you to your audience; the shortness of your reign, and the consequent necessity of capturing your audience on sight—all this, and some other things, make the first plunge unique in the actor's experience.
Irish Comedians.
One comedian walks on and says, "Hello, audience!" and no further introduction is needed; for the audience is trained to the quick and sharp exigencies of the occasion, and neither slumbers nor sleeps.
One of the first things to surprise the actor in the "continuous" house is the absence of an orchestra. The orchestra's place is filled by pianists who labor industriously five hours a day each. As they practically live at the piano, their knowledge of current music and their adaptability and skill are often surprising, but they are the most universally abused men I ever met. Everyone who comes off the stage Monday afternoon says of the pianist that he ruins their songs; he spoils their acts; he has sinister designs on their popularity, and he wishes to wreck their future. The pianist, on the other hand, says he doesn't mind his work—the five thumping, tyrannous hours—it is the excruciating agony of being compelled to sit through the efforts of the imbecile beings on the stage. It is the point of view!
The Monday-afternoon bill is a tentative one, but thereafter one's position on the bill and the time of one's performance are fixed and mathematical for the remainder of the week. The principal artists appear only twice a day, once in the afternoon and once in the evening, but there is an undivided middle, composed of artists not so independent as some others, which "does three turns" a day (more on holidays), and forms what is picturesquely known as the "supper bill." The "supper bill" explains itself. It lasts from five o'clock, say, till eight or eight-thirty. Who the singular people are who do not eat, or who would rather see the undivided middle than eat, will always be a mystery to me. But if they were not in esse, and in the audience, the management would certainly never retain the "supper bill."
The man who arranges the programme has to have some of the qualities of a general. To fix eighteen or nineteen different acts into the exact time allotted, and so to arrange them that the performance shall never lapse or flag; to see that the "turns" which require only a front scene can be utilized to set the stage for the "turns" which require a full stage, requires judgment and training; but there is very little confusion even at the first performance, and none thereafter.
Many of our best comedians, men and women, have come from the variety stage, and it is rather remarkable that some of our best actors have of late turned their attention to it. This interchange of courtesies has brought out some amusing contrasts. A clever comedian of a comic-opera organization was explaining to me his early experience in the "old days," when he was a song-and-dance man. "The tough manager," he said, "used to stand in the wings with a whistle, and if he didn't like your act he blew it and a couple of stage hands ran in and shut you out from your audience with two flats upon which were painted in huge letters 'N. G.,' and that was the end of your engagement." Then he proceeded to tell with honest pride of his struggles, and his rise in the world of art. "And now," said he to me, "I can say 'cawn't' as well as you can."
German Dialect Comedians.
Our first day in vaudeville was rich in experience for us, and particularly for one of the members of my little company. He was already busy at the dressing-table making up, when the two other occupants of his room entered—middle-aged, bald-headed, bandy-legged little men, who quickly divested themselves of their street-clothes, and then mysteriously disappeared from sight. Suddenly a deep-drawn sigh welled up from the floor, and turning to see what had become of his companions, the actor saw a good-humored face peering up out of a green-striped bundle of assorted legs and arms. He was face to face with the Human Lizard, and his partner in the Batrachian business, the Human Frog.
"Good Lord! what are you doing?" exclaimed Mr. Roberts.
"Loosenin' up!"—laconically.
"But do you always do that?"
"Yes. Now!"
"Why now?"
"Well, I'm a little older than I was when I began this business, and yer legs git stiff, ye know. I remember when I could tie a knot in either leg without cracking a joint, but now I am four-flushing until I can get enough to retire."
"Four-flushing?"
"Yes, doin' my turn one card shy. You understand."
And the striped bundle folded in and out on itself and tied itself in bows, ascots, and four-in-hands until every joint in the actor's body was cracking in sympathy.
Meanwhile his partner was standing apart with one foot touching the low ceiling, and his hands clutching two of the clothes-hooks, striving for the fifth card to redeem his four-flush.
"Number fourteen!" shouts the call-boy through the door.
"That's us!"
And the four-flushers unwound and, gathering their heads and tails under their arms, glided away for the stage.
Presently they were back panting and perspiring, with the information that there was a man in one of the boxes who never turned his head to look at their act; that there was a pretty girl in another box fascinated by it; that the audience had relatives in the ice business and were incapable of a proper appreciation of the double split and the great brother double tie and slide—whatever that may be; and the two athletes passed the alcohol bottle, and slipped gracefully back into their clothes and private life.
Rag-time Dance.
This unique and original world has its conventions, too, quite as hard and fast as elsewhere. The vaudeville dude always bears an enormous cane with a spike in the end of it even though the style in canes may be a bamboo switch. The comedian will black his face, though he never makes the lightest pretence to negro characterization, under the delusion that the black face and kinky hair and short trousers are necessary badges of the funny man. The vaudeville "artist" and his partner will "slang" each other and indulge in brutal personalities under the theory that they are guilty of repartee; and with a few brilliant exceptions, they all steal from each other jokes and gags and songs and "business," absolutely without conscience. So that if a comedian has originated a funny story that makes a hit in New York, by the time he reaches Philadelphia he finds that another comedian has filched it and told it in Philadelphia, and the originator finds himself a dealer in second-hand goods.
It is manifest, I think, that vaudeville is very American. It touches us and our lives at many places. It appeals to the business man, tired and worn, who drops in for half an hour on his way home; to the person who has an hour or two before a train goes, or before a business appointment; to the woman who is wearied of shopping; to the children who love animals and acrobats; to the man with his sweetheart or sister; to the individual who wants to be diverted but doesn't want to think or feel; to the American of all grades and kinds who wants a great deal for his money. The vaudeville theatre belongs to the era of the department store and the short story. It may be a kind of lunch-counter art, but then art is so vague and lunch is so real.
And I think I may add that if anyone has anything exceptional in the way of art, the vaudeville door is not shut to that.
THE ROYAL INTENT
By William Maynadier Browne
ONE day, early in June—I cannot recall the exact date—Mrs. Timothy Fennessey, née O'Connor, presented her husband with a fine ten-pound boy. Now, the Fennesseys are of royal descent, as well as are the O'Connors. The last of the House of Fennessey (Tim was collaterally descended) was slain in battle, if I be not mistaken; still, I cannot vouch for this. He may have been assassinated, struck by lightning, or drowned in a bag, as many of Ireland's kings were. I am quite sure, however, he did not die in his bed. Very, very few of those whose names appear in the chronological table of Ireland's rulers reached so prosaic an end as natural death.
Thus, by the wedding of Mollie O'Connor with Tim Fennessey, two royal houses were united, and, as you may imagine, the Heir Apparent was a personage of no small importance.
One week after the baby's birth, his grandfather, dear old O'Connor himself, came to the office to call upon Mr. Cutting and to inform him of the new arrival. Incidentally, I had heard the news some days before, and had been from that time expecting a visit from O'Connor. So, when I saw the office-door slowly and noiselessly move inward, I was quite prepared to see the royal grandparent. But I was not prepared to see so modest an entrance—to use the parlance of the stage.
The door moved inward, gingerly, for perhaps a foot; next I caught sight of a homely, well-used hand clasped about its outer edge. Then followed a much-brushed, tall silk hat of ancient design and of great respectability. This hat was held by the fitting fellow of the hand I had first seen and that still grasped the door-rim. Now, from between the two, came in the white-halo-ed, wrinkled face of Michael J., lineal descendant of Roderic, last King of Ireland.
"Mr. Cuttin', sor," I heard in a husky, happy, excited whisper; "are you busy, sor?" Mr. Cutting looked up from his desk and called out in his brusque, pleasant way:
"Hello! That you, Michael? Not too busy to see you. Come right in." Then followed the real entrance; for what I have thus far described might better be called "an appearance," to again use the vernacular of the stage. With hurried, tender steps, O'Connor almost danced across the room to where Mr. Cutting was seated. His face was completely covered with one expansive smile of radiant happiness, and, as if to even emphasize this, when he had reached his short journey's end, he upraised both his hands, the right one still grasping the royal headgear, and exclaimed in tones of awe at his own joy:
"Oh my, oh my, oh my! Shure, Mr. Cuttin', you should see him!"
"Who?" replied Mr. Cutting, laconically, and with careful indifference to grammar.
"The little felly. Mollie, me daughter, that is now Mrs. Fennessey, do be afther havin' a fine boy. Ah-h! He is a marvil."
"And how is Mollie?" asked Mr. Cutting.
"Shure Mollie's well. She is a fine, strong girl." O'Connor dismissed the interpolation with a kindly wave of the hand and immediately returned to the main proposition. "But the little felly!" At this point he so far forgot himself as to pull his chair close to Mr. Cutting's and to place one of his honest hands on that gentleman's knee. Mr. Cutting quietly allowed his own to rest for a moment upon that of his old friend, and said:
"Tell me all about him, Mike."
In response to this invitation, O'Connor gave his enthusiasm, and his narrative and descriptive powers full rein. "Well, Mr. Cuttin', sor," he began, with manifest determination to do the subject full justice; "as I said before, he is a marvil. Listen, now; yister' mawnin' I wint, as is me custom, to see Mollie an' the little felly."
Here Mr. Cutting, with gentle malice aforethought, again checked the flow, as he gravely winked at me, aside. "By the way, how is Tim Fennessey?" he asked.
"Just the same," O'Connor replied to the interruption. "He do be doin' his worruk as ushal—but wid wan per-pet-chill grin on him." The old man paused long enough to chuckle, then proceeded: "Shure we all av us has that. But lemme till ye, sor. When I leaned over to look at him——"
"Who?" said Mr. Cutting again, keenly enjoying the narration, and evidently anxious to have no mistake or lapse in its progression.
"The little felly, av course," said O'Connor, for once, I believe, doubting Mr. Cutting's mental capacity. "Begorra, phwat do you think, sor? Up kem the two little fists av him—the two to wanst, moind you—an' him but wan week ould!—an' grab me be me whishkers, here. Thin he pulled an' he pulled. Well, Mr. Cuttin', sor, what wid de drag on me hair, an' the joy in me heart, I akchilly cried. Then the ould woman—she is mostly at Mollie's now, except whin I needs me meals—you know how modthers is, sor—she sez to me, 'Michael, dear,' she sez, 'go away now, you, from the child. You are annoyin' him,' she sez; an' all the while me unabil to move." O'Connor threw both hands in the air, and then let them fall softly on his knees as he added, earnestly, "He will be a grand man, sor. So, whishper! I kem to emply you." As he finished, he leaned back in his chair with an air of importance hitherto quite foreign to him.
"How so?" asked Mr. Cutting, his face abeam with lack of calculation.
Just here I must digress. Up to this point O'Connor had entirely ignored my presence in the office. He hadn't even looked my way, though I knew him well and deserved better treatment at his hands in return for the few favors I had been able to do him in the past. Still, I was quite alive to his mental condition, entirely due to "the little felly," and knowing, as I did, that all Mr. Cutting's labors in his behalf had been labors of love, and, too, I confess, because I wished to call O'Connor's attention to myself, I could not resist a chance remark. So, when Mr. Cutting asked, "How so?" I interjected, before O'Connor had time to reply:
"As referee—between him and the little fellow." The effect upon O'Connor was instantaneous. He whipped round upon me, stared an instant, and then burst into unconstrained laughter. Mr. Cutting and I joined him, while the old man rose from his seat and slapped his bended knees with delight. Then he crossed to my desk, his hand clumsily extended and apology in every line of his good face.
"Good-morning, sor," he said, as I rose to shake hands with him, "I forgot me manners lately, sor, but—but me moind is occypied, sor." Then, with his free hand across his mouth (I still held the other) he laughed again until he found the breath to say:
"A referee bechune the little felly an' me! Ye young divvil!"—the last remark being accented by an entirely playful poke upon my shoulder. An instant afterward he was all contrition and further apology, which I checked by reminding him of his intention to "emply" Mr. Cutting. At my reminder, he re-crossed to my senior, and resumed his seat and his earnestness with noticeable celerity.
"'Tis this, sor," he began, out of breath from his laughing, but becoming at once grave; "since the little felly kem, I have been sayin' to meself, constant, 'some day you will die.' All men does, some day, sor, God rest their souls! And then—well, Mr. Cuttin', sor, 'tis me juty to make me will."
I saw Mr. Cutting wince a little at the premonition of the responsibility that must inevitably come to him. I knew that, busy man as he was, he could refuse O'Connor nothing, whether of time or thought. Indeed, I doubt if anybody except O'Connor could have made an inroad upon Mr. Cutting's hours and brain on this particular day. At the moment of O'Connor's calling, Mr. Cutting was in the intricate midst of a complicated contract he was drawing for the Traction Co., of which he was counsel. Still, as every man to be thoroughly able must, he possessed the three qualities of patience, kindness of heart, and never-failing sense of humor. So he said:
"Well, Michael, if you want to make your will, I will do my best to draw it up for you. But a will is a pretty important matter."
"That's why I come to you, sor," said O'Connor, simply. I saw Mr. Cutting's eyes glisten with pleasure as he answered:
"Tell me what you want done with your property."
"That's what I don't know, sor," was O'Connor's reply. Here seemed to be a hopeless situation, until it cleared when the old man, after pulling at his beard for a while, added: "I do be thinkin' about the little felly."
"Yes?" said Mr. Cutting, with all the encouragement rising inflection can give.
"Thin," O'Connor responded, "there's the ould woman, who has been a good wife to me." Here he ruminated, his hardened hand across his seasoned lips. At length he added: "No man could ask a betther, God knows. An', thin, there's Mollie, me daughter—a shweet, good gurrul, an' his modther. But I was thinkin' about the little felly—" O'Connor's supply of speech became temporarily exhausted and the sound of his voice ceased with a long sigh of inability to further express himself.
"There may, some day, be other little fellies—or fillies," suggested Mr. Cutting, unable to resist the temptation.
"That's so-o," said O'Connor, thoughtfully. "Shure I forgot that." He leaned back in his chair and considered.
"You love them all, Michael," Mr. Cutting interposed. "Your wife and your daughter as well as your grandson?"
The reply came quickly. "I do that, sor. God bless them, ivery wan. That's what's perplexin' me, sor." Sweeter and better perplexity could no man have. Kindly anxiety overspread the old face.
"You have, of course, entire confidence in your son-in-law?" The question was a steady one, fully anticipating the answer that came at once:
"I'd thrust Tim wid me life. He is a good man, an' a kind man—an' he niver drinks."
"Then, Michael," said Mr. Cutting, gravely and after no slight pause, "the best will you can make is no will."
"How is that?"
"In the first place," Mr. Cutting explained, "if you make no will, it can't be broken." This was a bull that decidedly impressed the would-be client.
"That's thrue, sor," he replied, reflectively.
"In the second place," Mr. Cutting continued, "by leaving no will, those you love will, I believe, benefit by your estate precisely as you would wish them to. The law provides for just that."
O'Connor pondered long. At last he said:
"Well, Mr. Cuttin', sor, if all I need is the law, I'm sorry I bodthered you." I ducked into the recesses of my roll-top desk, whence, after an interval, during which I could almost hear Mr. Cutting restraining his laughter (as I was mine), he replied:
"No bother at all, Michael." Then he added, after a sigh, "I believe I have advised you for the best."
"Ye have that, sor. And I knowed you would." Thus the matter of the will was closed, and nothing further was said regarding it. But I thought I could see there was something more on O'Connor's mind. I knew the unfinished contract was on Mr. Cutting's, though he sat and patiently awaited further developments, meanwhile passing his thumb and forefinger along a lead-pencil, which, in the passing, he turned and turned, alternately resting point and end upon the blotter on his desk. During this, O'Connor, seated on the edge of his chair, hesitated whether to rise and go, or to further unburden his mind. Mr. Cutting relieved the situation.
"What is the little boy's name, Mike?" he asked.
"Shure 'tis that I wished to exshplain, sor," O'Connor hastened to reply, his hesitation gone on the instant. "Whin he was born I sez to my wife, 'Bridget Ann,' I sez, 'we will name him Hinry Haitch Cuttin',' I sez. 'We will do no such thing,' she sez. 'Tim an' Mollie will name the child. 'Tis no affair ov ours,' she sez. So, sor—well—" O'Connor's finish was tinged with regret, and accented by a hopeless wave of the hands.
"And your wife was entirely right, Michael," Mr. Cutting answered, quickly; "although I appreciate and thank you for the compliment you wished to pay me." He was now making marks on his blotter, the pencil in position to jot down a memorandum. "What name did his mother give him?" As the reply came, I saw him let the pencil fall. There was no need of a memorandum.
"Michael Joseph, after mesilf, sor." O'Connor looked very sheepish, but there was an undernote of pleasure in his answer.
"Eminently proper, and the best name he could have," said Mr. Cutting, rising, and thus supplying the necessary fillip to his client's readiness to depart. He walked to the door with the old man, his hand on the royal shoulder, and bade him a warm "good-by," sending his kindest regards and best wishes to all the members of the Royal Family, especially the Heir Apparent.
Then, assuming his most professional manner, and to my surprise making ready to go out, Mr. Cutting remarked to me:
"I shall leave the drawing-up of the contract until my return. I am now going out to luncheon. I may be a little longer than usual because, incidentally, I shall select a silver utensil for one Michael Joseph O'Connor, Junior, and give directions in regard to a suitable inscription to be thereupon engraved."
As he opened the door to leave the office, out broke his pleasant laugh, and I heard it continuing for some moments after the sound of his foot-fall upon the stone hallway had died out in the distance.
It must have been two months after this—indeed, I am sure it was in August, because Mr. Cutting was away on his vacation, and I was alone in the office—that O'Connor called again. I should state, though, in passing, that he had called once in the meantime to thank Mr. Cutting for a certain silver mug, duly inscribed:
MICHAEL JOSEPH O'CONNOR, JUNIOR
FROM HIS AND HIS
GRANDFATHER'S FRIEND
HENRY HARTWELL CUTTING.
I have an idea, although I have no word or proof of any kind to uphold it, that O'Connor regarded the omission of "Esq." after "Cutting" as an oversight. Still, he was royally pleased by the gift, and assured Mr. Cutting it should be kept with the greatest care among the most cherished of the family possessions, and at this point, I remember, Mr. Cutting had occasion again to advise his client, and to the effect that if the "little felly" were not to make actual, daily use of the gift—not only as a utensil, but also to bite, pound, dent and treat at will—he, the "little felly," would never acquire real affection for it. Mr. Cutting further explained that it was from such treatment and familiarity real affection sprang; and that he wanted the recipient to come to love the gift—and the giver, too, perhaps, some day. This advice the client accepted with entire faith in its wisdom; as a good client should always accept advice from a good counsellor. But all this was during O'Connor's intermediate visit—not at the time to which I refer.
That time was on a very hot day in August; in fact, it was, as O'Connor tersely put it, when he had seated himself beside me, "too hot altogither."
"Mr. Cutting is away, sor?" was his next remark, made with an inflection that showed it to be not only a statement but an interrogatory as well, intended to serve as an introduction to matters of import. I replied, accordingly:
"Yes, Mr. Cutting is on his vacation. Is there anything I can do for you?"
O'Connor's method of approach melted at once into complete confidence. You may well imagine my pleasure at being consulted, as follows, in my senior's absence:
"It was you I wished to see, sor," the old man went on, placing his tall hat on my desk and his moist red handkerchief within the hat. "Ye have been a friend to me more than once, and I wish your advice." He slowly drew an honest, well-worn wallet from his hip pocket. I protested. "Ye are a young felly, sor, and this is different," he said. "'Tis me intention to pay you for the service I ask."
From "young felly" to "little felly" was a quick mental transition, and instantly I grasped the opportunity that would enable me, as well as the senior counsel, to bear gifts to the Heir Apparent, so I said:
"Well, Mr. O'Connor, if you wish to employ me, of course—" I paused, while he extracted and laid upon my desk a battered ten dollar bill. I immediately secluded it.
In justice to my poor self I must digress once more. The "little felly" now possesses, in addition to a silver mug, (and the "mug" Heaven gave him as a lineal descendant) a silver spoon and a silver fork of no mean dimensions, suitably inscribed. However, that is nobody's business but my own. Probably that is why I tell it. I never could keep my business to myself, any more than I now can O'Connor's.
"'Tis like this, sor," the old fellow proceeded. "I have it in me moind to go to th' ould counthree. I kem over whin I was a lad, so-o—well, sor, there is much I dishremember now. But I would like some day to tell the little felly all about it, and—" Here he paused a moment. "Me sister is there, too," he added, "and sor, well—I would be afther askin' you to arrange the thrip for me. I wish to have it done decent, d'ye moind, and, whishper! I don't know the ropes mesilf, and I don't want the odthers to know I don't know them, d'ye moind?"
Here was confidence from a client, indeed.
Never mind about the succeeding details, consisting of a letter of credit, exchange, passage, and an excellent stateroom in the second cabin. To all these details I attended personally, and can and do vouch for their careful accomplishment.
On a certain day I shall never forget—it was in the latter part of the same August—I stood looking out of the window of our office. From it I had a clear view of the harbor and of the vessels that came to and left it. Soon, a Cunarder glided into my vista, and, passing out, left a quickly lost picture of white wake, purple sea, and low hanging gray smoke. But the thought in my heart as I stood and watched remains:
"God bless his kindly old heart! and God grant he may return safe and sound to the 'little felly.'"
I speak of it as a thought. It must have been a prayer, so quickly was it answered. As I stood watching the slow blending of the smoke with the mellow light of the afternoon, I heard behind me a gentle, initiatory cough.
I turned. There stood O'Connor himself, hat in hand, in the centre of the office. I can tell you nothing of his entrance.
"What in the world!" I exclaimed and asked.
He hung his dear old head, and fingered the rim of the same tall hat I knew so well, while he slowly passed it round and round between his hands. At last he spoke. His voice was all appeal; without a tone of assertion:
"I decided not to go."
"Why?"
"The little felly."
"You went aboard?"
"Yis."
I ventured, from intuition, "But at the last moment you felt homesick? Is that it?"
He answered me over a half-turned, bashful, aged, and patient shoulder.
"Yis."
"So you left the boat before she sailed?"
"Jist that."
"And your baggage?"
"It's gone—wid the boat. But—but that's no differ."
Once more—never mind about the details. We had a long talk, our client and I. I learned that his wife and daughter, Tim Fennessey, too, had parted from him at his own request, a quarter of an hour before the sailing of the liner—"To have no scene," he said—and finally I learned what I could do in his behalf. It was to ease his return to his own people.
"Now, sor," he said, at the close of our interview, "will you be so kind as to go before me and warn me wife?"
"Tell her you changed your mind at the last moment? Is that it?" I asked.
"Yis, sor, 'tis jist that." Then, he added, with the first semblance of assertiveness, "And it was me right."
"Unquestionably," I answered. Then I suggested that we start on our journey, at the end of which I was to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Royal Consort.
During our walk through the almost deserted streets, where the heat of the passing day still hung in sluggish malignity, we had plenty of time for further consultation. Old O'Connor at my side, but never once in step, gave me minute instructions.
"You see, sor," he said, by way of additional explanation, "the windie from me place looks to the harbor, and we can see the steamboats as they comes and goes. 'Twas all arranged the little felly should be in wan o' the windies to see me as I wint away; well, when the orf'cer o' the boat sez that all thim that wasn't intendin' to go should go back to the dock, I sez to mesilf, "Are you intendin' to go?" Thin I thinks to mesilf, 'Shure some odther day will do as well and 'tis as well to wait until the little felly is big enough to go with me and see for himself,' dye moind? Wid that I walks off av the boat and comes to your offus."
"Leaving your baggage on board," I added.
"Yis, sor—but that's no differ—shure the duds was all new, and I care little for thim." His eagerness increased as we neared his home, down on the wharf, and above his junk-store and saloon. So our conferences came in short sentences.
"I will get your baggage back," I began.
"Can you do that, sor?"
"Certainly. I will see the steamship company." He sighed comfortably.
"Thank you, sor. 'Twill be a favor to me. But, whishper! When we reaches my place, I will shtand outside forninst the corner. Thin, do you go inside and exshplain to me wife and prepare her for me return, do ye see?"
I quite understood, and said so. As we turned our last corner, we caught the soft caress of a gentle, belated sea-breeze, and I felt my heart uplift and my brain clear.
"Go on, now, you," was his parting instruction. "I will wait here till ye come back and tell me."
You may be sure I made my way to the royal mansion as quickly as the temperature would permit. In response to my knock at the inner door, it was opened by Mrs. O'Connor herself. She greeted me with quiet, simple courtesy and, as soon as I was seated and she had remarked upon the heat of the day (her remarks fitting exactly into my own opinion of the weather) she asked, before I had time to even set the wheels of my diplomacy in motion:
"Is Michael on the corner, sor?"
"Yes," I gasped, any further need for diplomacy gone.
"Tell him, sor, if you will kindly, that Tim and Mollie is here, and the baby, and we have supper most ready and is waiting for him."
"You knew, then?" I asked, weakly.
"Shure we all av us see him leave the boat, sor. We niver thought he'd go. And thank you, kindly, sor, for your trouble." Mrs. O'Connor crossed with me to the door, and a minute smile just beginning at the corners of her shrewd, old mouth let me out.
I soon came back to my principal in the affair. "Everything is all right," I said to him, and with the usual presumption of an ambassador, added, "I have fixed it. You needn't worry."
"God bless you, sor," he said as he grasped my hand. "I'll be in again soon to see you, sor. And now I—I think I will be gettin' home."
So we parted, he to his loved domain, I to my club.
I don't know the rest of the story.
IN THE SMALL HOURS
By Brander Matthews
SUDDENLY he found himself wide awake. He had been lost in sleep, dreamless and spaceless; and now, without warning, his slumber had left him abruptly and for no reason that he could guess. Although he strained his ear he caught the echo of no unusual sound. He listened in vague doubt whether there might not be someone moving about in the apartment; but he could hear nothing except the shrill creak of the brakes of a train on the elevated railroad nearly a block away. Wilson Carpenter was in the habit of observing his own feelings, and he was surprised to note that he did not really expect to detect any physical cause for his unexpected awakening. Sleep had left him as inexplicably as it had swiftly.
He lay there in bed with no restlessness; he heard the regular breathing of his wife, who was sleeping at his side; he saw the faint illumination from the door open into the next room where the baby was also asleep. He looked toward the window, but no ray of light was yet visible; and he guessed it to be about four o'clock in the morning, perhaps a little earlier. In that case he had not been in bed more than two or three hours at the most. He wondered why he had waked thus unexpectedly, since he had had a fatiguing day. Perhaps it was the excitement—there was no doubt that he had had his full share of excitement that evening—and he thrilled again as he recalled the delicious sensation of dull dread yielding at last to the certainty of success.
He had played for a heavy stake and he had won. That was just what he had been doing—gambling with fate, throwing dice with fortune itself. That was what every dramatic author had to do every time he brought out a new play. The production of a piece at an important New York theatre was a venture as aleatory almost as cutting a pack of cards, and the odds were always against the dramatist. And as the young man quietly recalled the events of the evening it seemed to him that the excitement of those who engineer corners in Wall Street must be like his own anxiety while the future of his drama hung in the balance, only theirs could not but be less keen than his, less poignant, for he was playing his game with men and women, while what they touched were but inanimate stocks. His winning depended upon the actors and actresses who had bodied forth his conception. A single lapse of memory or a single slip of the tongue, and the very sceptical audience of the first night might laugh in the wrong place, and so cut themselves off from sympathy; and all his labor would go for nothing, and all his hopes would shrivel before his eyes. Of a truth it is the ordeal by fire that the dramatist must undergo; and there had been moments that long swift evening when he had felt as though he were tied to the stake, and awaiting only the haggard squaw who was to apply the torch.
Now the trial was over and the cause was gained. There had been too many war-pieces of late, so the croakers urged, and the public would not stand another drama of the rebellion. But he had not been greatly discouraged, for in his play the military scenes were but the setting for a story of everyday heroism, of human conflict, of man's conquest of himself. It was the simple strength of this story that had caught the spectators, before the first act was half over, and held them breathless as situation followed situation. At the adroitly spaced comic scenes the audience had gladly relaxed, joyously relieving the emotional strain with welcome laughter. The future of the play was beyond all question; of that the author felt assured, judging not so much by the mere applause as by the tensity of the interest aroused, and by the long-drawn sigh of suspense he had heard so often in the course of the evening. He did not dread the acrid criticisms he knew he should find in some of the morning papers, the writers of which would be bitterer than usual, since the writer of the new play had been a newspaper man himself.
The author of "A Bold Stroke" knew what its success meant to him. It meant a fortune. The play would perhaps run the season out in New York, and this was only the middle of October. With matinées on Wednesday as well as on Saturday, two hundred performances in the city were not impossible. Then next season there would be at least two companies on the road. He ought to make $25,000 by the piece, and perhaps more. The long struggle just to keep his head above water, just to get his daily bread, just to make both ends meet—that was over forever. He could move out of the little Harlem flat to which he had brought his bride two years before; and he could soon get her the house she was longing for somewhere in the country, near New York, where the baby could grow up under the trees.
The success of the play meant more than mere money, so the ambitious young author was thinking as he lay there sleepless. It meant praise, too—and praise was pleasant. It meant recognition—and recognition was better than praise, for it would open other opportunities. The money he made by the play would give him a home, and also leisure for thought and for adequate preparation before he began his next piece. He had done his best in writing the war-drama; he had spared no pains and neglected no possibility of improvement; it was as good as he could make it. But there were other plays he had in mind, making a different appeal, quieter than his military piece, subtler; and these he could now risk writing, since the managers would believe in him after the triumph of "A Bold Stroke."
It would be possible for him hereafter to do what he wanted to do and what he believed himself best fitted to do. It had always seemed to him that New York opened an infinity of vistas to the dramatist. He intended to seize some of this opulent material and to set on the stage the life of the great city as he had seen it during his five years of journalism. He knew that it did a man good to be a reporter for a little while, if he had the courage to cut himself loose before it was too late, before journalism had corroded its stigma. His reporting had taken him into strange places now and again; but it had also taken him into the homes of the plain people who make New York what it is. Society, as Society was described in the Sunday papers, he knew little about, and he cared less; he was not a snob, if he knew himself. But humanity was unfailingly interesting and unendingly instructive; and it was more interesting, and more instructive in the factories and in the tenements than it was in the immense mansions on Lenox Hill.
His work as a reporter had not only sharpened his eyes and broadened his sympathies; it had led him to see things that made him think. He had not inherited his New England conscience for nothing; and his college studies in sociology, that seemed so bare to him as an undergraduate, had taken on a new aspect since he had seen for himself the actual working of the inexorable laws of life. To sneer at the reformers who were endeavoring to make the world better had not been easy for him, even he was straining to achieve the false brilliance of the star-reporter; and now that he was free to say what he thought, he was going to seize the first opportunity to help along the good cause, to show those rich enough to sit in the good seats in the theatre that the boy perched up in the gallery in his shirt-sleeves was also a man and a brother.
The young playwright held that a play ought to be amusing, of course, but he held also that it might give the spectators something to think about after they got home. He was going to utilize his opportunity to show how many failures there are, and how many there must be, if the fittest is to survive, and how hard it is to fail, how bitter, how pitiful! With an effort he refrained from saying out loud enough to waken his wife the quotation that floated back to his memory:
Whether at Naishápúr or Babylon,
Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run,
The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop
The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one.
His own success, now it had come, found him wondering at it. He was a modest young fellow at bottom, and he really did not know why he had attained the prize so many were striving to grasp. Probably it was due to the sturdiness of the stock he came from; and he was glad that his ancestors had lived cleanly and had left him a healthy body and a sober mind. His father and his mother had survived long enough to see him through college and started in newspaper work in New York. They had been old-fashioned in their ways, and he was aware that they might not have approved altogether of his choice of a profession, since it would have seemed very strange to them that a son of theirs should earn his living by writing plays. Yet he grieved that they had gone before he was able to repay any of the sacrifices they had made for him; it was the one blot on his good fortune that he could not share it with them in the future.
The future! Yes, the future was in his power at last. As he lay there in the darkness he said to himself that all his ambitions were now almost within his grasp. He was young and well educated; he had proved ability and true courage; he had friends; he had a wife whom he loved and who loved him; his first-born was a son, already almost able to walk. Never before had his prospects appeared so smiling, and never before had he foreseen how his hopes might be fulfilled. And yet, now as he thought of the future, for the first time his pulse did not beat faster. When it was plain to him that he might soon have the most of the things he cared for, he found himself asking whether, after all, he really did care for them so much. He was happy, but just then his happiness was passive. The future might be left to take care of itself all in good time. He was wide awake, yet he had almost the languor of slumber; it surprised him to find himself thus unenergetic and not wanting to be roused to battle, even if the enemy were in sight. He thought of the Nirvana that the oriental philosophers sought to gain as the final good; and he asked himself if perhaps the West had not still something to learn from the East.
Afar, in the silence of the night, he heard the faint clang of an ambulance-bell, and he began to think of the huge city now sunk in slumber all around him. He had nearly four million fellow-citizens; and in an hour or two or three they would awaken and go forth to labor. They would fill the day with struggle, vying one with another, each trying to make his footing secure; and now and again one of them would fall and be crushed to the ground. They would go to bed again at night, wearied out, and they would sleep again, and waken again, and begin the battle again. Most of them would take part in the combat all in vain, since only a few of them could hope to escape from the fight unvanquished. Most of them would fall by the wayside or be trampled under foot on the high road. Most of them would be beaten in the battle and would drop out of the fight, wounded unto death. And for the first time all this ceaseless turmoil and unending warfare seemed to him futile and purposeless.
What was victory but a chance to engage again in the combat? To win to-day was but to have a right to enter the fray again to-morrow. His triumph that evening in the theatre only opened the door for him; and if he was to hold his own he must make ready to wrestle again and again. Each time the effort would be harder than the last. And at the end, what? He would be richer in money, perhaps, but just then money seemed to have no absolute value. He would do good perhaps; but perhaps also he might do harm, for he knew himself not to be infallible. He would not be more contented, he feared, for he had discovered already that although success is less bitter than failure, it rarely brings complete satisfaction. If it were contentment that he really was seeking, why not be satisfied now with what he had won? Why not quit? Why not step out of the ranks and throw down his musket and get out of the way and leave the fighting to those who had a stomach for it?
As he asked himself these questions a gray shroud of melancholy was wrapped about him and all the brightness of youth was quenched in him. Probably this was the inevitable reaction after the strain of his long effort. But none the less it left him looking forward to the end of his life and he saw himself withered and racked with pain; he saw his young wife worn and ugly, perhaps dead—and the ghastly vision of the grave glimpsed before him; he saw his boy dead also, dead in youth; and he saw himself left alone and lonely in his old age, and still struggling, struggling, struggling in vain and forever.
Then he became more morbid even and he felt he was truly alone now, as every one of us must be always. He loved his wife and she loved him, and there was sympathy and understanding between them; but he doubted if he really knew her, for he felt sure she did not really know him. There were thoughts in his heart sometimes that he was glad she did not guess; and no doubt she had emotions and sentiments she did not reveal to him. After all, every human being must be a self-contained and repellent entity; and no two of them can ever feel alike or think alike. He and his wife came of different stocks, with a different training, with a different experience of life, with different ideals; and although they were united in love, they could not but be separate and distinct to all eternity. And as his wife was of another sex from his, so his boy was of another generation, certain to grow up with other tastes and other aspirations.
Wilson Carpenter's marriage had been happy and his boy was all he could wish,—and yet—and yet—Is this all that life can give a man? A little joy for the few who are fortunate, a little pleasure, and then—and then—For the first time he understood how it was that a happy man sometimes commits suicide. And he smiled as he thought that if he wished to choose death at the instant of life when the outsider would suppose his future to be brightest, now was the moment. He knew that there ought to be a revolver in the upper drawer of the table at the side of the bed. He turned gently; and then he lay back again, smiling bitterly at his own foolishness.
A heavy wagon rumbled along down the next street, and he heard also the whistle of a train on the river-front. These signs of returning day did not interest him at that moment when—so it seemed to him, although he was aware this was perfectly unreasonable—when he was at a crisis in his life.
Then there came to him another quatrain of Omar's, a quatrain he had often quoted with joy in its stern vigor and its lofty resolve:
So when the Angel of the darker Drink
At last shall find you by the river-brink,
And, offering his Cup, invite your Soul
Forth to your Lips to quaff—you shall not shrink.
And youth came to his rescue again, and hope rose within him once more; and his interest in the eternal conflict of humanity sprang up as keen as ever.
The mood of craven surrender passed from him as abruptly as it had come, leaving him older, and with a vague impression as though he had had a strange and unnatural experience. He knew again that life is infinitely various, and that it is worth while for its own sake; and he wondered how it was that he had ever doubted it. Even if struggle is the rule of our existence in this world, the fight is its own reward; it brings its own guerdon; it gives a zest to life; and sometimes it even takes the sting from defeat. The ardor of the combat is bracing; and fate is a foeman worthy of every man's steel.
So long as a man does his best always, his pay is secure; and the ultimate success or failure matters little after all, for though he be the sport of circumstance, he is the master of himself. To be alone even—in youth or in age—is not the worst thing that can befall, if a man is not ashamed of the companionship of his own soul. If his spirit is unafraid and ready to brave the bludgeon of chance, then has man a stanch friend in himself, and he can boldly front whatever the future has in store for him. Only a thin-blooded weakling casts down his weapons for nothing and flees around the arena; the least that a man of even ordinary courage can do is to stand to his arms and to fight for his life to the end.
Wilson Carpenter had no idea how long it was that he had been lying awake motionless, staring at the ceiling. There were signs of dawn now, and he heard a cart rattle briskly up to the house next door.
Perhaps his wife heard this also, for she turned and put out one arm caressingly, smiling at him in her sleep. He took her hand in his, gently, and held it. Peace descended upon him and his brain ceased to torment itself with the future or with the present, or with the past.
He was conscious of no effort not to think, nor indeed of any unfulfilled desire on his part. It seemed to him that he was floating lazily on a summer sea, not becalmed but bound for no destination. And before he knew it, he was again asleep.