William T. Stead's Opportunities.
At fifty-five years of age, and in spite of many bitter experiences, Mr. Stead is still a man of many enthusiasms. He has always had the courage of his convictions, and has known what it is to suffer for them. He has probably never, in the course of a long and honorable journalistic career, sought the popular side of a controversy; indeed, during the Boer war he was one of a mere handful of Englishmen to stand out against the entire nation.
As he himself shows, he has had abundant opportunity to form an opinion of Nicholas, and sufficient experience of men to make that opinion valuable. It may be recalled, however, that after spending an hour or two with Richard Croker during a voyage across the Atlantic, when that eminent politician was at the height of his power, Mr. Stead described the boss of Tammany Hall as a benefactor of his countrymen.
No one would think of accusing Mr. Stead of wilful misstatement, but it may be mentioned that, while Mr. Stead informs us that the interview quoted from is the fourth he has had with the Russian sovereign, it is probable that if he had ventured to publish anything detrimental about him in any one of them that one would have been the last. And access to a reigning monarch is a valuable asset to any journalist.
Mr. Hodgetts is a different type of journalist from Mr. Stead. He is of the school which, as a matter of public policy, invariably treats with outward reverence men in high station. More than that, an article like Mr. Hodgetts's appearing in a journal of the standing of the Pall Mall Gazette might secure for its author any degree of consideration on the occasion of a visit to Russia.
Mr. Hodgetts, however, does not pretend to come by his ideas about Nicholas II at first hand, but gives an instructor of the young emperor as his authority; and who ever heard of an instructor having opinions other than complimentary of a royal pupil, even when we get down to the tutors of the princes of the cannibal islands?
Dr. Dillon's rather involved despatch to the Daily Telegraph, quoted above, bears internal evidence of having been produced under some sort of pressure. As a matter of fact, it was his first contribution to his paper after his release from arrest to which he had been subjected by reason of his association with Maxim Gorky and other liberals with whom the Russian officials knew him to be in sympathy. If, in the circumstances, Dr. Dillon allowed his name to be attached to a telegram dictated by Trepoff he is not to be severely blamed.
Both Mr. Flint and Mr. Nixon take an admiring view of the Czar, and agree that he is a man of unusual intelligence, the former crediting him with "imperial poise and kingly dignity." It may be noted, however, that both of these gentlemen come within the category of witnesses who, Dr. Johnson believes, may from gratitude exaggerate the praises of kings.
The unnecessary use of the word "imperial" by both Mr. Flint and Mr. Hodgetts, by the way, seems to be palpable flattery, though either gentleman may have employed it merely for rhetorical purposes.
Mr. White, in his estimate of the character of Nicholas, seems to have come very close to the facts. Mr. White is not only an unprejudiced witness, but a trained observer and thinker. He is an American who has spent a considerable portion of his life in European courts, and thus has come out of the ordeal a truer democrat than ever, and he is, above everything else, a truth-seeker and a truth-speaker.
His testimony is the more valuable in that he violates one of the unwritten laws that help to make diplomacy ridiculous in these times, in venturing to make public property of information obtained in a diplomatic capacity within the awesome precincts of a court.
That Mr. White's picture of Nicholas is true to life is evidenced by the present plight of Russia, as well as by the fact that the American diplomat's views are corroborated, not only by the three Russian witnesses who may be considered as testifying against him, but by Messrs. Flint, Nixon and Stead, who speak in his favor. Mr. Stead declares that during his recent interview with the Czar "his spirits were as high, his courage as calm, and his outlook as cheerful as ever." Only a weakling sovereign, careless and unfit to rule, could remain serene, indifferent, and passive—whether his demeanor be characterized as kingly dignity or the self-complacency of mental and moral impotence—under the conditions that exist in Russia to-day.
ANECDOTES OF AUTHORS.
A.T. Quiller-Couch told a good Cornish story the other day in presenting certificates to the members of an ambulance class in his own town of Troy.
"Years ago," he said, "an old Cornish fisherman at a similar class was asked how he would treat the apparently drowned.
"'Well,' he replied, 'the first thing we always did was to empty the man's pockets.'"—Westminster Gazette.
When Archibald Clavering Gunter began the series of novels which was to make him famous, he tried in vain to find a publisher. As none of them would have anything to do with his books, he was obliged to bring them out himself.
Shortly after the appearance of "Mr. Barnes of New York," he met the head of one of the big publishing houses, who inquired how his last book was selling.
"Fine," responded the cheerful commercialist; "I've sold two tons of it already."
Thackeray chanced to be dining at his club when a pompous officer of the Guards stopped beside the table and said:
"Haw, Thackeray, old boy, I hear Lawrence has been painting yer portrait!"
"So he has," was the reply.
"Full length?"
"No; full-length portraits are for soldiers, that we may see their spurs. But the other end of the man is the principal thing with authors," said Thackeray.—London Tit-Bits.
Mr. Gladstone was once guilty of deliberately evading an international regulation at the Franco-Italian frontier. He was carrying for his refreshment a basket of fine grapes, which stringent regulations at the time forbade being taken from one country to the other, on account of phylloxera, an insect that attacks the roots and leaves of the grapevines.
Mr. Gladstone's great brain reviewed the situation; he must obey the law, but he was determined to have the grapes, so he sat down then and there on the railway station bench and—ate them.
Irving Bacheller, the author of "Eben Holden," went a little farther north than usual last summer while on his vacation, and penetrated Newfoundland. He caught a good many fish, but this did not prevent his keeping an eye on the natives. He was particularly impressed by the men who spent the day lounging about the village stores.
"What do you fellows do when you sit around the store like this?" he asked of the crowd arranged in a circle of tilted chairs and empty boxes and maintaining a profound silence.
"Well," drawled one of the oldest, "sometimes we set and think, and then again other times we just set."—Woman's Home Companion.
Marie Corelli's domestic quiet at Stratford-on-Avon seemed likely to be destroyed not long since by the opening of a girls' school in the house immediately adjoining her own. The famous novelist found that the recitations of the pupils greatly interrupted her literary work. She stood it, however, as long as she could, but finally wrote a letter of protest to the proprietor of the school. The reply she received from the elderly school-mistress was prompt, and ran as follows:
"Dear Miss Corelli: Judging from the literary work of yours which it has been my privilege to see, I should say that it would be just as well if you were interrupted even more frequently."—New York Times.
Emerson Hough once wrote a story called "Hasenberg's Cross-Eyed Horse," which he sought diligently, but unsuccessfully, to market with the greater number of the known periodicals of the world. At last the story found a resting-place in Mr. Hough's desk. Three years ago, feeling a bit let down physically, he took the advice of a distinguished publisher of New York and put himself in the hands of an osteopathic physician.
Some doubts as to the beneficial results existed, but no doubt whatever as to the size of the bill. Mr. Hough pondered long and seriously on the question of getting even with his doctor. At length he happened to think of his old story of the cross-eyed horse.
"I'll have the osteopath treat the horse's cross-eyes," said the author to himself. Whereupon he rewrote the story, sold it promptly at a good figure, and made it a chapter of his last novel, "Heart's Desire," where it is known as "Science at Heart's Desire."—Bookman.
WHEN THE MUSE CUTS BAIT.
Fish Don't Always Bite, but Everything Is Grist for the Poet's Mill, So Here Are a Few
Verses Anglers May Con When the Tide is Out and the Boat's
High and Dry on a Mud Flat.