Transcriber’s Notes

This e-text is based on ‘The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine,’ from July, 1913. The table of contents, based on the index from the May issue, has been added by the transcriber.

Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation have been retained, but punctuation and typographical errors have been corrected. Passages in English dialect and in languages other than English have not been altered.

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

FICTION NUMBER

THE CENTURY MAGAZINE

VOL. LXXXVI

JULY, 1913

NO. 3

CONTENTS

VERSE

HOW BEELZEBUB CAME TO THE CONVENT

BY ETHEL WATTS MUMFORD

Author of “The Eyes of the Heart,” “Whitewash,” etc.

WITH A PICTURE BY N. C. WYETH

Copyright 1913, by THE CENTURY CO. All rights reserved.

SISTER EULALIA rose from the bench by the door in answer to Sister Teresa’s call. The broken pavement in the outer patio of the Convent of La Merced echoed the tapping of her stick as she slowly made her way to the arch leading to the interior of the building. Sister Eulalia was blind, but as nearly the whole seventy years of her life had been passed within these same gray walls familiarity supplied the defect of vision. Her daily tasks never had been interrupted since, a full half-century before, a wind-driven cactus-thorn had robbed her of sight. She wore with simple dignity the white woolen garb of the order, with its band of blue ribbon from which depended a silver cross, the snowy coif framing her saintly face with smooth bands that contrasted with the wrinkled surface of her skin. To the eye of an artist, her frail figure in its quaint surroundings of Spanish architecture, dating from the early years of the seventeenth century, would have made an irresistible appeal. But no artist ever sought that remote, almost forgotten city, and for the few Indians and half-breeds who have inherited the fallen glories of Antigua de Guatemala, the moribund convent held no interest. Occasionally one of the older “Indigenes” whose conscience troubled him would leave an offering of food at the twisted iron gate and mumble a request for prayers of intercession; or the dark-eyed half-Spanish children would stare with something of both fascination and fear at the five white-clad ancient women who, morning and evening, crossed the patio to the chapel: Sister Eulalia on the arm of Sister Teresa, Sister Rose de Lima and Sister Catalina, one on each side of the Mother Superior. To these two younger sisters—their years were but sixty-six and sixty-nine—had fallen, by common consent, the care of the Mother Superior, whose age no one knew, so great it was, and whose infirmities the nuns loyally concealed. By them her wandering sentences were received as divine revelations, and indeed her strange, thin voice, as it repeated Latin texts with level insistence, conveyed a weird, Delphic impression.

The Mother Superior had been a woman of learning, of beauty, and of high birth, but all that had been long ago. Now she was but a pale shade repeating vaguely the words learned in a former life. Her features remained fine and fair, as if preserved in some crystalline substance. Her skin was unlined, for care and sorrow could reach her no more.

Unless she were being conducted to and from the chapel by her devoted handmaidens, or lay at rest in the state bed of the visitors’ room, she sat in the high carved seat at the end of the refectory table, her thin hands folded, her eyes fixed on the symbolic cross on her breast, unconscious of those who came and went about her, or of the echoing aisles and lofty pillared porticos that surrounded her abstracted existence.

As the blind nun crossed the court and entered the refectory, she became conscious of an unusual stir. She divined the presence of each of the sisters, divined them strangely intent and not a little agitated. The voice of Sister Rose de Lima reached her in a whisper of portent.

“The reverend Mother has spoken—in Spanish!”

A pause followed the announcement. There was a slight sound from the white prophetess. Sister Teresa and Sister Catalina, who stood beside her, drew insensibly closer. Their hands were joined, finger-tip to finger-tip, in the prayerful pose of medieval funereal statues; their withered faces were drawn with expectation. At the opposite end of the table stood Sister Rose, leaning forward breathlessly. Sister Eulalia remained at the entrance, rigid, as if turned into stone. The moments lengthened. The sunlight danced in golden motes through the long windows, innocent now of their olden glories of painted glass, and showed the worn carving of memorial stones emblazoned with coats of arms, half erased by the passing of many sandaled feet. The stone walls betrayed by protruding nails the absence of their wood-carvings and panels. The badly repaired rifts in the earthquake-torn walls showed garishly. The white figures, as in a tableau, remained still and unmoving, and the seated form of the Mother Superior appeared as lifeless as the waxen figure of Jesus under its shade of glass on the little altar.

She opened her eyes, if such a slow unclosing of the lids could be so called, revealing two wells of opaque blackness. A quick sigh escaped the lips of the three nuns. Sister Eulalia heard, and slowly knelt, ready to receive the word should such be sent.

The reverend Mother’s colorless lips moved. At first no sound issued from them. Then, with strange forceful vibration, her voice broke the waiting stillness.

“Woe!” she cried. “Woe! ‘The Fiend, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour!’”

Four withered hands hastily made the sign of the cross.

Heavily as they had lifted, the waxen lids closed over the opaque black eyes. The rigid body relaxed slightly, and the Mother Superior relapsed into her wonted insensibility.

“We are surely to be tempted!” said Sister Eulalia. “Sisters, we must be strong to resist the Fiend.” Sister Teresa nodded. “We are warned,” she added.

Sister Rose crossed herself again.

Very gently Sister Catalina assured herself of the comfort of the reverend Mother, and the four aged nuns turned to their tasks again, but with beating hearts. The Fiend would beset them soon, and in some dreadful guise. Sister Rose breathed a prayer for strength, as she filled the tiny red lamp burning ever before the waxen image. Sister Teresa hurriedly began “Aves,” as she peeled an onion; Sister Catalina’s “paternosters” preceded her into the garden; and Sister Eulalia’s beads slipped hastily through her knotted fingers as she returned to the mechanical perfection of her work at the loom.

“As a roaring lion!”—Sister Eulalia’s blind eyes could conjure more dreadful sights than the faded vision of her less afflicted companions would ever see. Now she brought them before her in endless array of horror. She would know him only by his roar, she thought, and he might creep up close noiselessly. Her ear was alert to the lightest sound. But the day wore on and no roaring beast came with hellish clamor to affright the gentle recluse.

Drawn by N. C. Wyeth. Half-tone plate engraved by H. Davidson

“THE FIVE WHITE-CLAD ANCIENT WOMEN WHO, MORNING AND EVENING,
CROSSED THE PATIO TO THE CHAPEL”

[❏
LARGER IMAGE]

Sister Catalina entered the patio from the garden-close, a yellow hill-rose in her hand to pleasure her afflicted companion with its subtle peppery scent; an act not sanctioned by the drastic rules of the convent. But years upon years had rolled by, bringing a gentle sagging of discipline. Occasionally one of the few priests who still clung to the wrecked cathedrals came to hear confessions of puerile and trifling misdemeanors, and a severer penance than a dozen “Aves” was unknown and unmerited. Sister Eulalia inhaled the rose’s fragrance gratefully. Her blunt, weaving-calloused fingers sought and found the soft petals of the flower with loving touch.

It was thus that the Rev. Dr. Joel McBean saw them. He paused, delighted. What a characteristic picture! How well composed; how symbolical of a decaying faith! His kodak was instantly leveled, and with a snap the sisters were immortalized. For Dr. McBean was known far and wide on the west coast for his lectures on the benighted people of other lands. His present visit to Central America combined his vacation with a search for new material for his winter tour.

The click of the camera caused Eulalia, the sightless, to turn sharply. Catalina, who was slightly deaf, seeing her companion’s movement, looked about and stood still in open-mouthed amazement. Then she made the gesture common to all women in all lands, and emitted the sound that accompanies it when the invading hen must be incited to flight.

“Shoo!” she cried. “Shiss—shiss!” and waved her garden apron at the intruder.

Sister Eulalia grasped the hem of Catalina’s flowing sleeve.

“What is it? Oh, what is it?” she gasped.

“A man! A strange man!” came the answer in a frightened whisper.

The gentleman in question realized that he was distinctly de trop, but he strongly desired to gather more lecture material from this promising source. Setting down the camera, he took out his well-thumbed volume of “Handy Spanish” and sought for a suitable phrase of explanation and introduction. There were headings about “The Hotel,” “The Laundry,” “The Eating and Procuring of Meals,” “At the Railway Station,” “The Diligence,” “The Physician”; but among the thousand useful phrases, not one seemed to offer itself aptly. At last he found the heading he sought: “Cameras—Films—Developing, etc.” “Have you any cyanide?” did not fit. “Have you a darkroom in this hotel?” seemed ambiguous. “Direct me to the photographer” would not do. Ah! Eureka! “May I take your picture?” He bowed politely, approached the now thoroughly frightened nuns, and with carefully spaced utterance made his request. “May I take your picture?” he repeated, with a graceful sweep of his white hand. “Fotografia—cuadro—”

Sister Rose appeared in the doorway, followed by Teresa. His gesture included them also, and the ancient gateway, the columned portico, and the quaint façade of the little chapel.

“Beautiful!” he cried. “Multo bueno! Hermosa, hermosa—muy hermosa!”

He wanted to take their picture! The nuns were completely at sea. Why should this stranger, this man with queer apparel and strange speech, want their picture? They possessed only one—the portrait of Our Lady of Mercy above the little altar of the chapel—and why should any one want a thing that so obviously it was impossible for them to give? Bewildered, they looked from one to another. Sister Rose, being the youngest and most mentally alert, became aware of the sacerdotal character of their visitor: the gold cross at the end of his chain, the wide-bordered felt hat which he waved so gracefully, the neat black clothes, the breviary that bulged from his pocket; but, more than all, the expression of his smiling face and gentle, near-sighted eyes.

“He is a priest—see you not?” she said excitedly. “His dress, his manner, bespeak it. He comes from some foreign land. Alas! that the reverend Mother cannot speak with him in Latin!”

“It is true,” said Catalina. “Pardon, reverend Father,” she quavered, “I did not know! Our picture—you shall see it.”

She turned toward the chapel, but the visitor waved her back. The group before him was irresistible, just as they were. Catalina instinctively obeyed his gesture, marveling.

“Are—are there any more of you?” he inquired in his halting Spanish.

Now at last they understood. The reverend Father was making the rounds of the clerical houses in order to make his report to the bishop. That had happened once before. Sister Rose launched into explanations.

“No. We are all that are left, except the Mother Superior,” she told him. “We are allowed here on sufferance only, for as, of course, the reverend Father knows, the churches have all been taken by the state, and but for the reverend Mother, who was kinswoman to some one great in the land, we should have been sent forth. Alas! our numbers have dwindled—grave upon grave we have made, each nun for herself, and now all are filled save five. We have not, it is quite true, turned the holy sod of our last sleeping-places as often as is the rule; but we have grown old, and the work is hard—”

It was the lecturer’s turn to be utterly confused and routed; the sudden change of manner, the deference shown to him all at once; above all the avalanche of Spanish was too much for him, but he still retained his amateur photographer’s zeal. With a hand raised to draw their attention, but which the nuns mistook for pastoral blessing, he steadied the camera against his narrow chest, and snapped a second picture. With a polite “Thank you” and a sigh of satisfaction, he wound the reel, heartily regretting the while that the limits of the camera’s focus must necessarily leave out the perfection of the setting—the towering, smoking peak of the Volcan de Fuego on the right, stained red and yellow by its sulphurous outpourings, and the menacing green inactivity of Agua’s deadly summit; all the gloom and glow of those earthquake-seamed walls, and tottering, carved gateways.

“Mil gracias!” He thanked them awkwardly. “I—well—goodness! how does one say it?” He seized upon the “Handy Spanish Phrases” again, and ran his finger down the line of camera sentences. “Please make me six prints.” “This is over-exposed.” “You have fogged the plate.”—“Tut, tut!” he exclaimed impatiently, “how in the world do you say ‘I’ll give you a blue-print’?—blue-print—blue-print—Ah! this will do. ‘An excellent portrait’—presented—for you,” he explained, and supplemented the statement with an elaborate pantomime. The nuns watched his gesticulations with breathless interest. He pointed to each in turn, made a circle around his own face, smiling blandly and nodding appreciation.

The sisters conferred.

“It clears!” said Sister Rose. “He asks us have we broken the rules and looked at ourselves in a looking-glass.” She advanced toward Dr. McBean and spoke for the sisterhood with deep earnestness. “Oh, no, reverend Father, we have not seen our own reflections for fifty years, and more—oh, never! There never has been a mirror on the walls of La Merced. Vanity is not our sin. Thanks be to Our Lady, not even in the convent well have we looked to see our faces reflected. Oh, no!”

Dr. McBean caught a word here and there, and felt that he was being vehemently reassured about something, probably that the nuns would be grateful for his kindness; that the elderly virgins knew nothing whatever of such a thing as a camera, and had no idea of the use to which he put his black box, would have seemed so ridiculous that the possibility of it never occurred to him. With more bows, and renewed and halting thanks, he took his departure.

“To-morrow,” he called. “Mañana—I will bring the blue-prints—mañana. Adios! Gracias!”

The nuns watched his departure in silence, but as the sound of his tripping footsteps died away, they turned to one another excitedly.

“Tell me, you who have eyes—what was he like?” begged Eulalia.

The others turned to her pityingly.

“Thou shalt hear. We had forgotten thine affliction, poor sister. He is thin of the leg and round above. He wears glasses on a small nose. His eyes are blue, and his hands are beautiful and white, like the hands of Father Ignatius—the saints rest his soul! He wore black, with a cassock very short indeed; and a round white collar, and a gold cross hung at his waist. He bore a small black box, that doubtless contained a holy relic, for ofttimes he clasped it to his bosom and cared for it most lovingly.”

“How strange,” mused Eulalia, “that the reverend Fathers should send one to question us thus unannounced, and one who also speaks so strangely! His words were confusing, and I caught not often the sense, though I listened with all my ears. Had it not been for Sister Rose, I never should have guessed his mission.”

“Had’st thou seen him, thou would’st have known,” said Sister Teresa. “His calling was not to be mistaken; moreover, with the reliquary he blessed us.”

They had great food for speculation. Such excitement had not come into their lives in unnumbered years. The dreadful prophecy of the Mother Superior was forgotten. For the first time in a decade Eulalia was heard to lament her loss of sight. Try as she would, she could not make a satisfactory mental picture from her companions’ descriptions of their visitor. These were vivid and detailed enough, but somehow she could not bring them to take definite shape. Over and over again they discussed the form and face, the manners and raiment of Dr. Joel McBean. Not a gesture they did not speculate upon and imitate, not a sentence of his incoherent Spanish that was not dissected, analyzed, and wondered about. In particular, why did he want their picture, and then leave without it?

But “to-morrow” he had said, to-morrow he would come; then perhaps they would understand.

The sunlight turned copper-red, warning them of the lateness of the hour and putting a sudden end to their excited converse. Suddenly sobered and recalled to its own world, the flustered dove-cote subsided. With stately tread they sought the reverend Mother. She suffered herself to be lifted from her chair, and with eyes downcast took her slow way to the chapel, with the help and guidance of her two faithful attendants.

THE perspiration stood in great beads upon the brow of Joel McBean as he emerged from a black, unventilated closet in the Posada del Rey, a tray of chemicals in his hand. He held the developed films up to the light and nodded with satisfaction. The pictures were excellent, clear and sharp, well composed, excellently suited to the enlargement of the stereopticon. He examined each with minute care, but found none requiring the intensifier. There at last they were fixed forever, the replicas of this strange land of contradictions—pictures that should make his audiences realize how fortunate they were to be able to stay at home in comfort while an intrepid and intelligent explorer braved the trials of arduous travel in order to bring the simulacrum of these other lands to their very doors, together with enlightening and well-turned elucidations of the manners and customs of these benighted dwellers in lands forgotten. Already he felt glowing sentences stirring in his brain, sonorous and uplifting words, at once pitying and broad-minded. “Tolerance”—that was the motto of his discourses; tolerance always, but coupled with the well-directed searchlight of comparison. What a point he would make of these aged, recluse women—their ignorance, their useless lives, their abasement before the Juggernaut of outworn rules! He flattered himself that his presence, momentary as it was, had brought new impetus, and a realization of other and more intelligent peoples, to these remnants of obsolete conditions. “Obsolete conditions”—ah, a good expression!

He slipped the sensitized paper under the films in their wooden cases, and set them for a moment on the rim of his balcony overlooking the cobbled pavement of the unfrequented King’s Highway, upon which the tropic sun beat with white fury. A moment only sufficed, and he withdrew the prints. They proved marvelously good; as portraits they could not have been excelled. He smiled with satisfaction. How pleased these benighted little sisters would be, he thought, for he was a kindly man. He slipped the photographs between the leaves of his “Handy Spanish Phrases,” and, walking along the red-tiled gallery, made his way across the blue-and-white-walled patio, and while parrots shrieked at him and capuchin monkeys chattered, he passed from their cages toward the great, sweating water-jars, and emerged into the glare of the street.

Everywhere the remains of huge triumphal arches met his eye; enormous buildings of state and vast churches, seamed and cracked by the volcano’s upheavals, now flowered with creepers and plumed with growing trees. The silence indicated complete desertion, except where one caught, from time to time, in some shattered palace, a glimpse of an Indian family at their squalid tasks, or the bray of a burro echoing from some stately ruin.

At last the twisted wrought-iron gate and the flanking spiral columns of the gateway of the convent came in sight. Dr. McBean quickened his steps.

He had been eagerly awaited within those solemn walls. After matins the excited sisters had gossiped and chatted over the events of the previous day, and then proceeded—each quietly, in her own cell, and unknown to her fellows—to make an elaborate toilet. The least faded blue ribbons were put on, a fresh coif was found, spots and stains were removed from worn white garments, while the little silver crosses received an unaccustomed furbishing.

Somewhat shamefaced they met, and laughed like children as each realized the worldliness of the others, till again Sister Eulalia’s complaint turned them to consolatory condolences. A frown of petulance had settled between Sister Eulalia’s brows. To be sure, it was lost in a maze of wrinkles, but it was there. In her old heart was revolt against the sorrow accepted so bravely fifty years before. She did not realize her sin, absorbed as she was in the Great Interest.

When Dr. McBean entered the patio he was met by the four nuns, who advanced smiling, with murmured hopes of a happy sleep of the night before and perfect health to-day.

“I kept my promise, you see,” he beamed, handing the prints to Sister Teresa, and speaking in his native tongue. “The pictures are really very good, and I hope you will enjoy having them. Thank you so much—and good-by. I start on my journey again to-day; so I must be off. Good-by, again. Adios—buanos dais!”

The nuns curtsied and bowed. He paused a moment in order to jot in his note-book: “Ignorant peoples invariably gratefully receive and appreciate—all evidences superior civilization”—bowed again and departed.

It was not till any further glimpse of him was denied by the corner wall that they turned to the photographs. They looked in astonishment, which increased to puzzled wonder; then a look of fear crossed Sister Teresa’s face. Sister Eulalia, with tears in her eyeless lids, had disconsolately sought her seat on the weaving-bench. These marvels were not for her. For a moment she hated her companions—they were no longer companions. She was alone in her misery.

From the depths of self-pity she was rushed to sudden astounded attention by sounds of wrath, of venomous speech, of resentment and anger. Sister Eulalia could not believe her ears, and the angry conversation gave her no hint of its cause. It seemed the babblings of sheer madness.

Sister Teresa had been the first to exclaim.

“See!” she cried, “I cannot understand! This is thy portrait to the life, Sister Catalina, and thine, Sister Rose, also this likeness of Sister Eulalia. But where am I? Who is this strange nun?”

Sister Catalina gazed at the picture in deep perturbation. “But I see thee well,” she affirmed. “It is thy very self upon the paper, but it is I who am not there, and this is the strange nun!” She pointed to her own portrait.

Sister Rose intervened. “Foolish! It is thy very self, and Sister Eulalia, and Sister Teresa, yes; but I am not there, and in my place is a stranger!” She pointed to her own semblance. “Who is this?”

Both Sister Teresa and Sister Catalina looked at her scornfully. “It is thyself,” they said in one breath.

Sister Rose colored till she symbolized her name, but it was the red of anger that mantled her cheeks.

“Indeed, it is not!” she answered hotly. “I have not a withered face, a jaw like a knife, and such eyes!”

“I tell thee, that”—Sister Catalina pointed, that there be no further mistake—“that is thou! This is the stranger.”

“Stranger?” laughed Rose; “then we know thee not!”

It was Sister Catalina’s turn to flame with anger. “It is not true!” she cried, stamping her foot with a grotesque parody of infantile rage. “I look like that! I know better! I remember as if it were to-day how I looked in the great mirror in my father’s house!”

“I tell thee naught but the truth,” exclaimed Sister Teresa, now quite beside herself. “Give me the picture!” She snatched at the print. A tussle ensued, punctuated by the sharp sound of a slap as they fought for the apple of discord.

Sister Catalina being the youngest, and, owing to her daily labors in the garden, the most active of the trio, obtained possession of the photograph, but not till, with a desperate push, she had thrust Sister Teresa so sharply forward that she fell panting against the iron gate. The force of the impact made the rusty iron clang, and Sister Teresa sank to the ground with a faint cry.

Not till then could Sister Eulalia master her fright and nervousness sufficiently to enter the arena. With outstretched hands, forgetful of her crutch, she advanced to the center of the patio. Her first words were sufficiently arresting to bring a sudden cessation of hostilities.

“Oh, my sisters!” she cried, “oh, my sisters—the Fiend! The Fiend!”

Involuntarily three pairs of terror-stricken eyes looked about. The sun-flooded courtyard held no unfamiliar shape; the sky was undarkened by any dreadful wing. No fateful roar broke the morning hush. But Sister Eulalia had sunk to her knees, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“We were warned,” she shrilled, “but we were not proof against him. How should we know him in the guise of a holy man?” The listeners gasped. “Look, oh, my sisters, what has happened. I—even I, whom God had blessed with blindness that I might not see—I complained aloud. Envy and hatred were in my heart that ye saw marvels while I lay in darkness. I am ashamed—I am ashamed!”

She rocked backward and forward, a prey to remorse.

With a cry of sudden terror, Sister Catalina flung the crumpled photograph from her. It fluttered like a blown leaf, was caught by a vagrant breeze and wafted toward Sister Teresa, crouching by the gate. As if the white-hot fires of the dreaded volcano had suddenly poured toward her in searing streams, she screamed aloud, dragged herself to her feet with surprising alacrity, and rushed for protection to her former assailant, throwing her arms about Sister Catalina in a paroxysm of fear.

“Ay, cry aloud your terror, sisters,” continued Sister Eulalia. “What was this thing of mystery the Fiend brought among ye? In the winking of an eye it brought strife and anger. How wise were they who forbade us looking-glasses. For ye forgot your own images till ye knew them no more. Behold, this thing that showed ye yourselves, as in a glass that was not glass, let in the very spirit of the devil. All the years of our happiness together in God were as nothing before the magic of the Evil One, whom we welcomed. Though we were warned, though we knew him the ‘Prince of Disguise’! Pray for pardon—pray quickly, that our souls be not lost forever!”

They knelt in prayer, signing themselves with the cross, surprised, indeed, that their hands did not refuse their mission in punishment for their sin. The noonday sun beat mercilessly upon the veiled heads as they bent in petition. At last Sister Catalina interrupted the droning cadence.

“Sister whom God hath blessed with blindness, I will lead thee to this evil thing. Thine eyes are closed against its wiles. Take it, thou, to the chapel, and there, with a taper lit at the altar, we will burn it, that it may return to the Father of Lies, who sent it.”

Sister Eulalia winced with fear, but realizing her peculiar mission she suffered herself to be led by the trembling nun till her fingers closed on the cursed paper. Painfully, on their knees, as one mounts the holy stairs in penance, they crawled to the chapel and prostrated themselves at the rail. With tears of remorse, the sisters embraced. A taper, one of the precious few in the tin box under the altar-lace, was lighted at the flame of the tiny red lamp. The print as it flared up seemed to show the pictured faces in twisted grimace; then it blackened, withered to ash, and dispersed in gray filaments.

For a moment the penitents remained in silent contemplation, then with one accord they crossed the patio to the refectory. Though the reverend Mother hear them not, yet they must make confession.

As they entered they stopped short, spellbound. The opaque black eyes were open wide, staring at them from the crystalline whiteness of the Mother Superior’s face. To the culprits that gaze was as accusing as any clarion voice of Judgment. They bowed their heads.

The reverend Mother’s lips moved.

“Vanitas vanitatum!” she cried, and again—“Vanitas vanitatum!”

The echoes took up the sound as a bell that will not be silenced—Vanitatum.

MY CONSCIENCE

BY JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY

SOMETIMES my Conscience says, says he,

“Don’t you know me?”

And I, says I, skeered through and through,

“Of course I do.

You air a nice chap ever’ way,

I’m here to say!

You make me cry—you make me pray,

And all them good things thataway—

That is, at night. Where do you stay

Durin’ the day?”

And then my Conscience says, onc’t more,

“You know me—shore?”

“Oh, yes,” says I, a-trimblin’ faint,

“You’re jes’ a saint!

Your ways is all so holy-right,

I love you better ever’ night

You come around,—’tel plum daylight,

When you air out o’ sight!”

And then my Conscience sort o’ grits

His teeth, and spits

On his two hands and grabs, of course,

Some old remorse,

And beats me with the big butt-end

O’ that thing—‘tel my clostest friend

’Ud hardly know me. “Now,” says he,

“Be keerful as you’d orto be

And allus think o’ me!”

MILLET’S RETURN TO HIS OLD HOME

WITH LETTERS FROM HIMSELF AND HIS SON

BY TRUMAN H. BARTLETT

REPRODUCTIONS MADE FOR THE CENTURY OF PAINTINGS AND PASTELS BY MILLET IN THE COLLECTION OF THE LATE QUINCY A. SHAW

WHEN Jean François Millet, with his wife and nine children, went to Cherbourg in August, 1870, soon after the breaking out of the Franco-German War, he carried with him some of his own pictures and several belonging to Théodore Rousseau that had been left in his care, which were owned by a Mr. Hartmann, a friend of both artists. Once in that city, there was no certainty that Millet could sell a picture or get means to live upon from any one. To be sure, Barye and his family were already there, but he had a large family to look after, and was helping Armand Sylvestre, the writer, who lived there.

Detrimont, the picture-dealer, had advanced eight hundred francs on a painting he had previously ordered of Millet; but when this money should be gone Millet was sure to be in very embarrassing straits. Sensier’s business relations with Millet had long since ceased, and he had gone with the government to Tours. What was the poor painter to do, and what did he think? Behind him were twenty-one years of incessant labor and harsh experiences, a procession of great works of art sent into the world, out of which he had got a bare living. He was tired and health-broken, and had a large family to care for; he was worried over the dark days of his country, while possessing hardly a dollar and living in a city always indifferent to his genius.

But fortune had not quite forsaken poor Millet. Durand Ruel had managed to get out of Paris and reach London with some pictures. He, too, was in no prosperous condition, and in his anxiety he determined to give an exhibition in that city and take his chances as to the result. Trusting in the merits of the “Norman Peasant,” which he believed would be recognized in London, even in war-time, he wrote to Millet asking for some pictures and promising to send him some money—a small sum at once, if he were in need. Ruel added as a further encouragement that if he had any luck he would continue to order pictures and forward money for them as fast as he could.

The London scheme worked so well that Millet was enabled to stay in Cherbourg and its vicinity for sixteen months; and yet there was trouble in it. Nothing ever seemed to come to him in bright colors that was not shaded or involved in some train of unpleasant circumstance; and what made it still more fateful was the fact that he could not extricate himself by his own efforts. Never was a leaf more powerless before the wind than was Millet in the worldly entanglements that pursued him to his latest breath.

“I will begin a picture for you at once with the greatest ardor,” he wrote to Ruel. When he had finished it, it was taken by his son François to the wharf, where the little steamer lay that was to carry it to Southampton, while the father went to the custom-house to get a permit. The collector of customs, although knowing perfectly well who the artist was, refused to accept his declaration of authorship—all that ever was required—unless the artist would swear to it on the Bible. This extra demand, and the arrogant manner of the collector, was interpreted by Millet as an insult, and he left the official’s presence in anger and despair. He could not forward this or any other picture without the oath, and how was he to live if he did not? To his surprise and joy, he found on going to the wharf where the picture was to leave for Southampton that it had been taken on board the steamer. A seaman who had charge of embarking freight had seen the name of Millet on the box, and had asked young François about it, and whether that was the Millet who came from Greville. Learning that it was, he said, “Oh, all right! Never mind the permit; bring it aboard, and I will see that no one disturbs it.”

From the collection of the late Quincy A. Shaw. Half-tone plate engraved by R. C. Collins

THE SPADERS

FROM THE PASTEL BY JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET

There seemed to be an undying enmity against Millet on the part of the representative authorities of Cherbourg, beginning when they gave him a niggardly allowance to pursue his first studies in Paris, accentuated when they refused to continue it, and brutally intensified when he returned for refuge in 1870. Nor did it cease; for not long after his death some resident artists were discovered counterfeiting Millet’s works and selling them to those who were supposed to have been familiar with what he had done for more than thirty years. The punishment meted out to these rascally imitators was only two months in prison, and even then there were those who regarded the penalty as too severe for the offense.

There were still more troubles to come, for Millet tried to do some sketching out of doors, but the authorities prevented him. Writing to Sensier in September, 1870, he says: “It is utterly impossible for me to make a single mark of the pencil outside of the house. I should be immediately cut down or shot. I have been arrested twice and brought before the military authorities, and was released only after they had inquired about me at the mayor’s office, though they advised me strongly not even to show an indication of holding a pencil.”

The following extracts from other letters to Sensier will illustrate the precious patriotism of these military authorities when their own comfort was in question, as well as let a little light upon their ardent efforts to sustain their struggling country in its darkest days of 1870–71. He says:

“What a chance those miserable Prussians have for devastating the country! I fear that, though touching Paris lightly at present, they will still hold it so that they may continue their work in other places. I fear that they will make believe to attack Paris, and under the shadow of that pretense devastate the country of everything it has that they need. During this time Paris will exhaust its provisions, and, famine once there, they will do with it as they please. In supporting the Prussians the country will eventually exhaust itself; then will come universal famine. What do they think of all this at Tours? There is one thing I wish to tell you: for a long time they have sent from here to England sheep, pigs, potatoes, and every kind of provisions, but since the war these exports have increased. A good deal of complaint has been made, and for my part I ask myself how they can send these things to strangers abroad—and probably by indirect ways to the enemy—when we have so great a need for them. How can they rob a country now given to misery, as ours is?—for a large part of France is not only devastated but is prevented from planting crops for the coming year.

“Naturally, you know of Gambetta’s circular for preventing the exporting of provisions. That circular did not give details of everything that should not be exported. The authorities here have slyly dodged that and have permitted things to be sent away that were not mentioned in the circular. This has almost made a revolution. The people tried to prevent the embarking of these articles, but the national guard surrounded the dock and the shipment was made. I think these authorities are horrible. They let eggs, butter, and fowls be sent away. The mayor and the prefect should be whipped. If you can only tell Gambetta this! It appears that a great quantity of cannon is in the arsenal here, of which no use is made. They say that the chassepôts that came from England were left out of doors in the rain and mud. The maritime authorities do nothing, and the people cry out against them. It is said that there are eight thousand sailors here who wish to go into action, but not one is permitted to leave.

“Neither will the authorities send the cannon to Lille—those that were ordered to be sent long ago—and Lille begs for them. Eleven hundred cannon here, and not one used or sent away to the places where they are needed! There are also several gunboats which the officers say could be employed on the rivers, but they, too, are idle, although certain officers are doing their best to have something done with them. Why not tell Gambetta all this, so that he could give rigid orders? Durand Ruel has sent me a thousand francs. It was time! Oh, it was time! It will be quickly spent; and so I must work to get more when I need it.”

Before Millet returned to Barbizon he went with his family to look for the last time upon the scenes of his youth, to walk over the fields that his forefathers had tilled for generations, to visit the church where his dead had worshiped, and to sit beside their graves. It was a pilgrimage that deeply touched every chord of his nature as it never had been touched before.

He was conscious that he had lived an unusual life, that he had contributed his share to his country’s glory, and that, too, when rarely released from the awful chain of untoward circumstances. Yet no word of bitter complaint ever escaped his lips, nor did he fully confide his thoughts to any one. He knew that some tidings of him had reached his native hamlet and had given pleasure to its humble dwellers. “He longed,” says his son François, “to see whether he could again feel his youth. I think he did, for he never seemed to be present, not even when he told us children of the wondrous legends of the priory of Greville.”

The following is a part of François’ story of their journey to Gruchy.

“When we all went to Gruchy we stopped on the way at Vauville, and as we came to the little inn we were met by a large and fine-looking old woman who approached us as if we were princes, and after saluting us she said very humbly: ‘Gentlemen, we haven’t much for the table.’ ‘Haven’t you soup?’ asked Father. ‘Oh, yes!’ she replied, ‘but do you care for that?’ ‘Certainly, we like soup,’ was the answer. ‘Very well, then, you shall have some soup.’ ‘Have you any butter?’ ‘Yes, we have butter.’ ‘Very well, we like butter.’ ‘Then, gentlemen, you shall have butter, and you can eat as we do.’ ‘But I am very hungry,’ said one of my brothers. ‘Then,’ said the woman, ‘we will kill a rabbit for the boy.’

“While we were waiting for our food we sat around a fireplace in which was burned a kind of dry brush, thrown into it with a pitchfork. It made a tremendous blaze, giving Father much pleasure, and he said that that was the way they had fire when he was a boy in the old home.

From the collection of the late Quincy A. Shaw. Half-tone plate engraved by C. W. Chadwick

THE SHEPHERD

FROM THE PASTEL BY JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET

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“After we had eaten we went out to make some sketches of the church and priory. Soon after our arrival, a peasant, eighty-seven years old, who had known my grandfather, came to the hotel to find us and to renew his acquaintance with Father. He invited us to come to the priory and take breakfast with his son, who lived there and had charge of the property. We accepted the invitation, and just before it was time to go the old man came with two carts, a large one with rude board sides for Father, Mother, and the older children, and a small one for the younger ones and the servant. In this way we were trundled off to the priory, where we were very warmly welcomed by the old man’s son.

“The dining-room was very large, with an enormous fireplace, and great iron locks were on the doors. Our breakfast consisted of little beans and butter. While we were eating, a half-crazy uncle of our host sat in the fireplace, watching, as he said, for a headless prior who continually visited the convent, entering it through the chimney. ‘I must not let him come down,’ he said, ‘so I watch him; but he must not know that I see him.’

“The priory is very rich in legends concerning every phase of the life that has been lived in it for many generations. This man had cared for it since it had been used as one of the buildings of a farm; and, in cultivating the ground, had lived so secluded a life, and dwelt so constantly upon the history of the priory, that he had become insane, his head turned in faithfulness to duty.

“The priory is on a hill, while the village of Vauville is below, near the sea, and hidden from the building.

“On entering the church at Vauville we encountered the curé, who appeared very curious and desirous to talk with strangers, as they very seldom come there. While Father was looking at the picture over the altar, he said, ‘It is not bad; it has good color’; whereupon the curé, who had come up hurriedly, remarked, ‘You are looking at the picture, I see. It seems to interest you.’ ‘Yes,’ said Father. ‘Ah, well, I can tell you who painted it—one Mouchel, a child of Cherbourg. I don’t know how much he is known away from us, but he had a pupil who was helped by the city of Cherbourg and has now become known as a man of great talent.’

“The curé was very polite, and he conducted us to the door without dreaming that he had seen the pupil of Mouchel, though Father was that person.

“One day when we were in the café of the inn, a little old man with large blue eyes came to the door and looked at Father, and said in the patois of the locality, which consists more of movements of the head, peculiar accents of words, and of pauses, than of a full language, ‘Ah! do you know? Yes.’ Then Father’s chin moved upward in deep emotion. ‘Ah! I knew you when you were a little toad. We are old now. Ah, changes have come! You know it.’ ‘Come in,’ said Father, still more affected, pointing to a chair and table. Then turning to me, with his head close to my ear, he whispered, ‘It is Peter, our old servant. He took care of my father when he died, as well as all the rest of the family.’ After Father had become somewhat composed, he said to the innkeeper, ‘Give Peter all he wants.’ ‘Oh, I want nothing now, but to see you. To go back into the years. Ah, we are old now!’ This was too much for Father, and, rising to go out, he said quietly to the innkeeper, ‘He is now a drunkard, but give him everything.’

“One night at the little inn, the wind blew a real tempest; it was fearfully dark and the roar of the sea was something terrific, so the proprietor said to his servant, who was putting thorns on the fire to make a great blaze, as if to calm the elements outside, ‘How would you like to go on such a night as this to the priory?’ ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he replied, ‘there are things you cannot reason about, and happenings you had better keep away from. Perhaps it would be better to stay at home on a night like this. The old boy up there is not a good sleeper. He is out and around nights like this, watching his stacks of grain, for he, as you know, though very learned, is in league with the devil in some way. At any rate, the devil has something to do with him. He always looks at me suspiciously, as if I had stolen his wheat, though he knows well enough that it was the devil that did it. For, even in the daytime, when he counts his sheaves, there are always some lacking, and in the night still more are missing. He can’t even drink his own cider without the devil hiding his pitcher and playing all sorts of tricks with him. No, it’s better to stay indoors when things outside are so uncertain.’

From the collection of the late Quincy A. Shaw. Half-tone plate engraved by H. Davidson

THE LESSON IN KNITTING

FROM THE PAINTING BY JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET

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“The proprietor of the inn had been a cook in Paris, but had returned to his native hamlet to live the rest of his days. He soon began to talk, perhaps to please us, as we said nothing. ‘They are strange men, those of this country,’ he began; ‘I myself have been in Paris, and I have seen many things; but I could not stay away from here, and so I came back. You see, sir, we people of these parts cannot live away. I don’t know why, but there is no place like our own land. So I came back from Paris to spend the time still left to me. But there was one who did not come back. Nor is this country without its interest. Many years ago a young fellow named Millet lived near here, and he had the strange fancy to be a painter, making pictures on cloth, sir, and, almost incredible as it may seem, he went to Paris. Going to Paris nowadays is nothing, but then it was a very serious matter. They do say that though he had much trouble he had courage also, and has succeeded, so that he is on the road to celebrity and has become a great honor to his country. A man of much talent, of whom we are all very proud.’ Father said nothing, but I saw he was smiling broadly. When we left the inn for good, the proprietor looked at Father very carefully, as if he suspected that he had not entertained an ordinary traveler; and finally, his suspicions evidently growing, he said, ‘I remember the physiognomy of the Millets, who were well known along this coast as fine-looking men.’ We could see that he was ready to ask whether Father was not the young fellow who went to Paris. His curiosity was gratified later.

From the collection of the late Quincy A. Shaw. Half-tone plate engraved by G. M. Lewis

PEASANT WOMAN AND CHURN

FROM THE DRAWING BY JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET

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“When we visited the graveyard at Greville, where our ancestors were buried, and found their graves, which had no headstones and the wooden crosses of which had long ago gone to dust, we saw that they were covered thickly with weeds nearly as high as our heads. I said nothing, but pointed to them as if asking which member of the family each grave contained; and Father, also pointing, simply said, ‘Father, Mother, Grandmother,’ and so on through the family category. Waiting awhile, much affected, he repeated, as only he could, the words, ‘Oh, the high weeds where sleep the dead!’

“In a few days we went there again and found a man cutting the weeds. Father asked him why he was doing so. ‘To sell them,’ he replied. ‘Sell!’ exclaimed Father. ‘Do you say that you are selling the weeds from the graves?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Does the curé know of it?’ ‘Know of it? Of course he does. He consents to it and thinks it a good thing to do.’ Then, as if speaking to himself, Father said, ‘Ah! the heart has left this place. You are men no more. And the curé—!’

“It was in November, 1870, that Father made the sketch of the superb marine, which he painted in the spring of the next year and sent to Ruel.[1] He made also a great number of sketches and drawings of places near Greville and Vauville, as well as of the priory. Father loved every inch of the earth of his native hamlet. It is a wonderful land.

“We lived in M. Feuardent’s house in Cherbourg, Father doing his work in an ordinary room with no special light facilities. He desired very much to make some pictures of the country and sea around Cherbourg, but the authorities told him that he must not even carry a pencil or a note-book. It was in Cherbourg that he made the drawings of ‘The Milk-maid,’ from sketches taken in Greville.”

[1] Owned by the estate of the late Quincy A. Shaw, of Boston, Massachusetts.

HOUSE-WITHOUT-ROOF

BY EDITH M. THOMAS

HOUSE-WITHOUT-ROOF my house I called,

Whether in palaces I dwelt

Or lowly cot, clay-paved and walled;

And, if at wayside cross I knelt,

Or if at shrine, for me the place

Dissolved into hypæthral space.

Beside the fire on mine own hearth,

While household hours slipped softly by,

With those most dearly loved on earth,

Still would the ceiling fade on high;

And, as the sparks my fire up-sent,

My soul escaped above, unpent.

The lightnings oftentimes she drew,

And crossed the wingèd migrants’ flight;

She sought her roof in midday blue,

Where tender cloud-weft fails from sight—

In evening-red’s ethereal bars—

Or vault of night with brede of stars.

She sought—but higher yet must rise

The courses of her mansionry;

Beyond these skies to Other Skies,

Its walls cut through so sheer, so free;

Beyond the brede of stars, aloof,

I look—but nowhere find a Roof!

THE MAN WHO DID NOT GO TO HEAVEN ON TUESDAY

BY ELLIS PARKER BUTLER

Author of “Pigs is Pigs,” “Long Sam ‘Takes Out,’” etc.

UNCLE NOAH PRUTT, sitting in the front row of seats, leaned forward and put his hand behind his ear, vainly seeking to hear what his wife was saying to Judge Murphy. From time to time he stood up, trying to hear the better, but each time the lanky policeman pushed him back into his seat.

“Judge, yer Honor,” said the policeman, after the fifth time, “this man here has nawthin’ t’ do with th’ case, an’ he’s disthurbin’ th’ coort. Shall I thrun him out?”

“Let him be, Flaherty, let him be!” said the justice, carelessly, and at the words Uncle Noah arose and came forward to the black walnut bar that separated the raised platform of the justice from the rest of the room.

“Ah pleads not guilty, Judge!” said Uncle Noah, laying one trembling hand on the rail and pushing forward his ear with the other. He was a coal black Negro, with close-kinked white hair that looked like a white wig. His nose was large and flattened against his face, and his eyeballs were streaked with brown veins that gave him a dissipated look. He was the type of Negro that, at fifty, claims eighty years of age, and, so judged, Uncle Noah Prutt might have been anywhere between sixty and one hundred and ten. As he stood at the bar his black face bore a look of the most deeply pained resentment, and his thick lower lip protruded loosely as a sign of woe.

“Sit down!” shouted both the justice of the peace and the policeman, and, with his lip hanging still lower, Uncle Noah backed into his seat. He sat as far forward as he could, and leaned his head still farther forward.

“Who is that man?” asked the justice of no one in particular.

“Him? He’s mah husban’,” said the young colored woman, with a slight up-tilt of her nose. “Yo’ don’ need to pay no ’tention to him at all, Jedge. Ah ain’ ask him to come yere. He ain’ yere in no capacity but audjeence, he ain’.”

“He has no connection with this case?” asked the justice.

“No, sah!” said the young woman, decidedly.

“If he makes any more trouble, Flaherty,” said the justice, “put him out of the court. Now, what is this trouble, Sally?”

The young woman standing against the bar was fit to be classed as a beauty. Well-formed, with a rich yellow skin through which the blood glowed in her cheeks, with masses of black hair and her head carried high, she was superb, even in her cheap print wrapper. Even the fact that her feet were hideous in a pair of broken and run-down shoes of the sort worn by men did not impair her general appearance of an injured brown Venus seeking justice, and when she glanced at the prisoner her bosom heaved with anger and her brown eyes glowed dangerously.

The prisoner sat humped down in a chair in an attitude of the most profound dejection. He was of a darker brown than the woman, and so loose of joint that when he moved he flopped. His feet were so large as to be almost grotesque, and he was so thin that the bones of his shoulders were outlined by his light coat. But as he sat in the prisoner’s seat his face was the most noticeable feature. It was thin and long for a Negro, but with such high and prominent cheek-bones that his eyes seemed hidden in deep caves, and the eyes were like those of a dog that knows he is to be beaten. His wide mouth hung far down at the corners. He was a picture of the utterly crushed, the utterly helpless, the utterly hopeless. He was the shiftless Negro, with the last ray of hope extinguished. He had but one thing to look forward to, and that was the worst. As the justice asked Sally the question the prisoner’s mouth sagged a bit farther at the ends, and his eyes took a still sadder dullness.

“Yo’ ain’ miss it none when yo’ asks whut am dis trouble, Jedge,” said Sally, angrily. “Dis yere ain’ nuttin’ but trouble, an’ I gwine ask yo’ to send dis yere Silas to jail forebber an’ ebber. Yassah! An’ den he ain’ gwine be in jail long enough to suit me. An’ Ah gwine ask yo’ to declare damages ag’inst him, fo’ huhtin’ mah feelin’s, an’ fo’ tryin’ to drown me, an’ fo’ abductin’ me away from dat poor ol’ no-’count Noah whut am mah husban’, an’ fo’ alieamatin’ mah affections, on’y he couldn’t. When Ah whack him awn de head wid dat bed-slat—”

“Now, one minute,” said the justice, raising his hand. “Flaherty, what do you know about this case?”

“Well, yer Honor,” said the policeman, in the confidential tone an officer of the law assumes when he feels that he, and he only, can explain matters, “th’ way ut was was this way: I was walkin’ me beat up there awn Twilf’ Strate this mawrnin’, like I always does, whin I heard a yellin’ an’ a shoutin’. So I run into th’ lot—”

“What lot?” asked Justice Murphy.

“’Twas betwane Olive an’ Beech Strates, yer Honor. This here deff man, Noah Prutt, lives in a shack-like there, facin’ awn th’ strate. Th’ vacant lot is full iv thim hazel-brushes an’ what all I dunno.”

“You said there was a shanty on the lot. How could it be a vacant lot if there was a shanty on it?” asked the justice.

“Now, yer Honor,” said Flaherty, with an ingratiating smile, “there’s moore than wan lot in th’ wurrld, ain’t there? Th’ lot this Noah Prutt lives awn is wan iv thim. And th’ nixt wan is another iv thim. An’ th’ nixt wan t’ that is th’ third iv thim, an’ th’ ould Darky owns all iv thim, and iv th’ three iv thim but wan is vacant, and that’s th’ middle wan. There’s a shanty awn th’ furrst wan, and there’s a shanty awn th’ thurrd wan, an’ as I was sayin’, there’s nawthin’ awn th’ vacant wan excipt brush-like, an’ mebby a few trees, an’ some tin cans, an’ whatnot.”

“Very good!” said his honor. “Go ahead.”

“Well, sor,” said Flaherty, “this Prutt an’ this wife iv his lives in th’ furrst shanty, but th’ other wan is vacant excipt whin ’t is occupied. Th’ ould man rints ut now an’ again, an’ a dang lonely habitation ut is, set ’way back fr’m th’ strate, like ut is. So here I was, comin’ along, whin I hear th’ racket in th’ vacant lot, an’ whin I got there amidst th’ hazel-brush here was this Sally a-hammerin’ this Silas over th’ head wid a bed-slat, an’ him yellin’ bloody-murdther. So I tuck thim up, th’ bot’ iv thim, yer Honor.”

“And that’s all you know of the case?” asked the judge.

“Excipt what she tould me,” said Flaherty.

“And what was that?” asked Judge Murphy.

“Ut was what previnted me from arristin’ her for assault an’ batthery,” said Flaherty, “for if iver a man was assaulted an’ batthered, this same Silas was. She can wield a bed-slat like a warryor.”

“Ah’d ’a’ killed him! Ah’d ’a’ killed him shore!” said Sally.

“She w’u’d!” said Flaherty, briefly. “Thim Naygurs have th’ harrd heads, but wan more whack an’ he’d iv had a crack in th’ cranyum. So I wrested th’ bed-slat from her. Th’ place looked like there’d been a war, yer Honor. Plinty iv thim hazel-brushes she’d mowed down wid th’ bed-slat thryin’ t’ murdther him. An’ whin I heard th’ sthory, I did not blame her.”

“I have been waiting patiently to hear it myself,” said the justice.

“Accordin’ t’ th’ lady,” said Flaherty, “she’s a respictable married woman, yer Honor, bound in th’ clamps iv wedlock to this Noah Prutt, an’ niver stheppin’ t’ wan side iv th’ path iv wifely duty or to th’ other. ’Tis nawthin’ t’ us why a foine-lookin’ gurrl like her sh’u’d marry an’ ould felly like him. Maybe him havin’ two houses atthracted her. I dunno. But, annyway, she’s had t’ wash th’ wolf from th’ doore.”

“Had to do what?” asked the justice.

“Go out doin’ week’s wash t’ kape food in th’ house,” explained Flaherty. “For th’ ould man will not wurrk much. He’s got that used t’ livin’ awn th’ rint iv th’ exthra shanty, ye see. An’ there’s been no rint comin’ in this long whiles, for th’ prisoner at th’ bar has been th’ tinint iv th’ shanty, an’ he ped no rint at all.”

“Why not?” asked the justice.

“Well, sor,” said Flaherty, rubbing the hair at the back of his neck and grinning, “th’ lady here says he’s been that busy coortin’ her he’s had no time t’ wurrk. ’Twas nawthin’ fr’m wan ind iv th’ week till th’ other but, ‘Will ye elope wid me, darlint?’ an’, ‘Come now, l’ave th’ ould man an’ be me own turtle-dove!’”

“Ah tol’ him Ah gwine murder him ef he gwine keep up dat-a-way of proceedin’!” cried Sally, shrilly. “Ah tol’ him! Ah say, ‘Go on away, you wuthless deadbeat Nigger! Wha’ don’ you pay yo’ rent like a man, befo’ yo’ come talkin’ ’bout supportin’ a lady?’ Dass whut Ah tol’ him, Jedge. An’ whut he say? He say, ‘Sally gal! Ah gwine nab yo’ an’ hab yo’. Ah gwine steal yo’ an’ lock yo’ up, an’ nail yo’ up, an’ keep yo’!’ Dass whut he say. An’ he done hit!”

“Stole you, and locked you up?” asked the judge.

“Yassah!” cried Sally, glaring at the trembling Silas. “He lock me up, an’ he nail me up, an’ he try to drown me, ef Ah ain’ say whut he want me to say. Dat low-down, hypocritical Nigger! Yassah! Ah tole him, ‘Silas, ef yo’ don’ go way an’ leave me alone Ah gwine tek mah hands an’ Ah gwine yank all de wool right offen yo’ haid!’ Dass whut Ah say, Jedge. An’ Ah say, ‘Ef yo’ don’ shet up Ah gwine tear yo’ eyes out!’ An’ Ah means it. Talkin’ up to me like dat! An’ den whut he do?”

She held out her hand toward the dejected Silas and shook her finger at him.

“Den whut he do? He see Ah ain’ to be coax’ dat-a-way, ’cause he a no-’count Nigger, an’ he let on he purtind he get religion an’ wuk on mah feelin’s. Yassah! ’Cause he know Ah’s religious mahsilf an’ he cogitate how he come lak a snake in de grass an’ cotch me whin Ah ain’ thinkin’ no meanness of him. So long come dish yere prophet-man, whut call hisself Obediah, whut get all de Niggers wuk up an’ a-shoutin’ over yonder on de ol’ camp groun’s. Ah am’ tek no stock in dat Obediah prophet-man, Jedge, ’cause Ah a good Baptis’, lak mah husban’ yonder; but plinty of de black folks dey run to him, an’ dey hear him perorate an’ carry on, an’ dey get sot in dere minds dat dey gwine to hebben las’ Tuesday night whin de sun set. Yassah, dass whut dey think, ’cause de prophet-man he pretch dat-a-way. An’ dis yere Silas he let on he gwine to hebben along wid de rest of de folks.”

She let her lip curl scornfully.

“Him a-gwine to hebben!” she scoffed. “But Ah ain’ but half believe he got religion lak he say. Ah say, ‘Luk out, Sally! Ef he gwine to hebben nex’ Tuesday let him go; an’ if he ain’ gwine, let him alone.’ But yo’ look at him, Jedge! Jes look at him! He ain’ look so dangeroos, is he? An’ whin he come to me an’ say, ‘Sally, Ah done got quit of de ol’ Nick whut was in me, an’ Ah gwine be lak dat no mo’,’ Ah jes got to believe him. Yassah! He dat pernicious meek an’ lowly an’ sorrumful-like dat Ah ain’ suspict no divilment at all. ‘Ah feel troubled in mah conscience,’ he say, ‘’cause Ah been tryin’ to lead yo’ on de wrong paff, an’ Ah can’t go to hebben nex’ Tuesday les’ yo’ forgib me,’ he say, an’ he look so downheart’ an’ seem lak he so set on gwine to hebben wid de rest ob de folks, dat Ah say, ‘All right, Silas, Ah don’ hold no hard feelin’s. Ef yo’ don’ bodder me no more, Ah forgib yo’ whut is pas’ an’ done for, but ef yo’ gwine to hebben yo’ better clean up yo’ house an’ put hit in order, lak de Book say, before yo’ start, ’cause ef yo’ don’ yo’ gwine get sint back, shore!’ So he let on lak dat how he think, too. He purtind to thank me kinely fo’ dat recommindation, an’ he ask’ c’u’d Ah lind him a scrub pail an’ a mop an’ a broom, twell he clean up he house. An’ I so done.

“Dass all right! He scrub, an’ he wash, an’ he clean, an’ he move all he furniture out in de lot, an’ he clean, an’ he wash, an’ he scrub! He ain’ wuk lak dat fo’ months, Jedge. So den Ah think shore he got religion, lak he let on. So, come Monday, Ah got a job down to Mis’ Gilbert’s scrubbin’ her house, an’ Ah jes got to hab dat pail an’ dat mop an’ dat broom. So Ah tell Noah whut job Ah got, an’ Ah say, ‘Noah, Ah gwine down to Mis’ Gilbert’s house, fo’ to help clean house, an’ ef she want me, Ah gwine stay right dah twell de house all clean’ up.’ Cause dat a long perambulation down to Mis’ Gilbert’s house, Jedge, an’ ef she ask me to stay a couple o’ days, Ah gwine save mah breakfas’ an’ mah suppah whilst Ah stay down yonder. So Ah go outen de house an’ Ah walk down de street twell Ah come to de gate whut lead up to Silas’ house, an’ Ah walk up de paff, an’ Ah knock on de do’. Nobody say nuffin’! Ah knock ag’in. Nobody say nuffin’! Ah open de do’ gintly, an’ Ah peek in. Ain’ nobody in de shack at all. So Ah steps in, fo’ to get mah pail an’ mah mop an’ mah broom.

“Dab dey set, right by de do’, an’ excipt fo’ dem, dey ain’ nuffin’ in de shack at all but de straw outen Silas he’s bed, an’ dat all scatter aroun’ lak to dry an’ air out. Excipt dey one bed-slat whut Ah calculate Silas he keep handy fo’ to whack at de rats, which am mighty pestiferous about dat shack. So whin Ah seen he done clean up yeverything as neat as a pin, my heart soften unto him. Ah jes gwine feel sorry fo’ him, de leas’ little bit. So Ah gwine look in de cupboard to see ef he got plenty to eat—an’ he ain’ got nuffin’ in de cupboard but a box of matches, an’ dat all! So Ah feel right smart sorry I been scold him lak I do, an’ Ah gwine pick up mah pail an’ mah mop an’ mah broom whin—bang!—de do’ go shut an’ Ah all in de dark.”

“Some one shut the door?” asked the justice.

“He shet de do’!” shouted Sally, shrilly, pointing her finger at the trembling Silas. “He shet de do’, an’ he lock de do’, an’ he start to nail de do’, lak he say he would! Yassah! Ah bang mahsilf ag’inst de do’ an’ Ah yell an’ shout, an’ de do’ don’t budge, ’cause hit locked. An’ all de while—bam! bam! bam!—he nailin’ de do’ from de outside. Ah poun’ wif mah fists an’ Ah peck up mah pail an’ slam at de do’ twell de pail all bus’ to pieces, an’ Ah bang mah mop to pieces, but—bam! bam! bam!—he go on nailin’.”

She paused for breath, and Silas opened his mouth, as if to speak, but closed it again.

“Yassah!” she shrilled, glaring at Silas, “he nail up de do’ so Ah can’t budge hit, an’ whin Ah try de windows, dey nailed up too.”

“There’s two iv thim doors,” explained Flaherty, “an’ both iv thim open outward. He’d nailed sthrips acrost thim. Th’ two windys has wooden shutters, and he’d nailed thim fast.”

“What!” exclaimed Justice Murphy. “He nailed the woman in?”

“He did, sor!”

“But—but this is outrageous!” exclaimed the justice.

All three glared at the dejected Silas, and did not see Noah Prutt as he arose from his chair.

“Make him pay, Jedge! Make him pay!” cried Noah, eagerly.

“Sit ye down!” cried Flaherty, in a voice of thunder, and Noah subsided. On the edge of his chair he nodded like a toy mandarin. He understood that things were going badly for Silas, and that was enough to please him. Sally turned to him and shouted in his ear.

“Shet up an’ stay shet!” she cried. “This is none of yo’ business, Noah. Ah gwine manage this mahsilf!”

The old man smiled and nodded his willingness. As she turned away he touched her on the arm.

“Thutty dollahs,” he said, and nodded and smiled again.

“Thutty nuffin’s!” she muttered. “Ah guess yo’ Honor will know whut Ah ought to get from dat Silas, an’ whut he ought to get from yo’. ’Cause Ah suffer a heap o’ distress of min’ an’ body whilst Ah been shet up in dat shanty dem three days.”

“Three days!” exclaimed the justice.

“Yassah! Ah been nail up in dat shanty three days an’ three nights,” said Sally, “an’ all dat time Ah been pestered an’ annoyed. Ah been sploshed on mah feet an’ Ah been hungry an’ col’, an’ Ah been insulted. Dat Silas he jus’ hong roun’ dat shanty to make me mizzable, but Ah ain’ give in one bit. No, sah! Ah’d a-died fus’. Fus’ off Ah bang on de do’ an’ Ah bang on de windows, an’ Ah keep wahm, an’ whin Ah get col’ Ah pile some straw in de fireplace an’ Ah get dem matches an’ Ah mek me a straw fire. An’ prisintly Ah hear Silas scramble-scramble on de roof. ‘Whut he up to now?’ Ah say; ‘He gwine try climb down de chimbly? Ef he do Ah whack him wid de bed-slat twell he mighty sorry he try dat.’ But he ain’ try hit. No, sah! Splosh! come a pail of wahtah down de chimbly, an’ out go mah fire, an’ mah feet suttinly get sopped. An’ Silas he say, down de chimbly, lak he voice all clog up wif laughin’, ‘Ain’ gone to hebben yit! Ain’ gone to hebben yit!’ an’ splosh! yere come anudder pail of wahtah.”

“Why, this is no case for me,” said the justice. “This man should be bound over to the Grand Jury!”

“Ah don’ care whut yo’ bind him to, so as yo’ bind him good an’ strong,” said Sally, vindictively. “Yevery time Ah try to get wahm by makin’ a fire, down come dat pail of wahtah an’ splosh mah feet, twell Ah think he try to drown me. ‘Ain’ gone to hebben yit!’ he shout’. Hit right col’ in dat shanty, Jedge. Hit pernicious col’. Dat wahtah freeze on de flo’, an’ hit freeze on mah shoes, an’ Ah get hungrier an’ hungrier, an’ Ah shout an’ Ah rage, an’ all he say is, ‘Ain’ gone to hebben yit! Ain’ gone to hebben yit!’ Ah bet he ain’! Whin de time come he gwine somewheres ilse!”

“How did you get out, finally?” asked the justice.

“Ah keep maulin’ at de do’ wif dat bed-slat all de whiles,” said Sally. “Dat a mahty fine piece of bed-slat, dat is. An’ prisintly, whin Ah about to drap wid hunger an’ col’ an’ die where Ah drap, Ah beat a hol’ in de do’. ‘Ain’ gone to hebben yit!’ he ’low, an’ whack at de bed-slat wif a club, but Ah right smart mad, an’ Ah pry an’ Ah wuk, an’ prisintly Ah pry off one board. An’ when he see Ah gwine win out he scoot. Yassah! He scoot. Ah ’low he run away ’cause he afraid, but dass not hit. No, suh! He gwine fotch an ax, fo’ to nail up dat do’ ag’in. So prisintly Ah wuk dat do’ open an’ Ah step out, an’ whut Ah see? Ah see dat Silas a-standin’ yere in de paff, wid he ax in he hand an’ he mouf wide open, lak Ah been a ghos’. ‘Ain’ gone to hebben yit, her?’ Ah say; ‘Well, if yo’ ain’ gone yit, yo’ gwine mighty soon!’ an’ I wint fo’ him wif de bed-slat, an’ he yell lak blazes whilst Ah gwine murder him. An’ dat how-come de pleeceman heah him an’ save he life.”

The justice folded his hands, his fingers working nervously, as if they longed to take hold of the throat of the dispirited prisoner.

“In all my experience,” he said, “this is the most outrageous case I have ever met! I am only sorry I am not the proper official to try this case. I hope this man gets the full penalty of the law. I can’t express—”

He shook his head.

“Whatever possessed you?” he asked the shrinking Silas.

“His Honor is speakin’ t’ ye!” cried Flaherty, poking Silas with his baton. “Spake up whin he addrisses ye! Why did ye do ut?”

“Ah—” began Silas, in a thin, scared voice.

“Sthand up whin ye addriss th’ coort!” said Flaherty, and Silas stood.

As he stood there was nothing about him that suggested the fiery lover. His drooping shoulders and general air of long-permanent shiftlessness almost gave the lie to the idea that he could have taken the trouble to carry a pail of water to a roof. He looked as if to walk at a shambling gait was about the extreme of any exertion of which he was possible.

“Ah didn’ do hit,” he said weakly, and sat down again.

“Now! now!” said Justice Murphy, sharply. “None of that!”

“Sthand up whin his Honor addrisses ye!” said Flaherty.

“Ah don’ know nuffin’ about hit, Jedge,” said Silas, in a squeaky voice as he half lifted himself out of the chair. “Ah’ll tell yo’ all whut Ah know. Ah wint away from mah shanty Monday, ’cause Ah got to yearn a dollar fo’ to buy a white robe fo’ to go to hebben in Tuesday, an’ Ah chop a cord ob wood an’ yearn mah dollar an’ buy mah white robe. An’ dat night all de prophet’s folks spind de night on de hilltop, a-waitin’ fo’ de dawn ob de great day, an’ a-prayin’ an’ a-singin’ an’ a-fastin’. An’ Tuesday Ah spint awn de hilltop like dat, a-prayin’ an’ a-singin’ an’ a-fastin’ twell de sun sh’u’d set. An’ whin de sun set nuffin’ happen. No, sah. Nobody go nowheres, an’ dey ain’ no prophet no mo’, fo’ he wint away wid whut he done collicted up endurin’ de revival. So whin dat come about Ah quite pertickler hungry, an’ Ah go fo’th t’ yearn some money fo’ to get mah food an’ to pay whut Ah owe Noah, ’cause he been pesterin’ me about he rint. So Ah get some wood to chop, an’ I chop hit. An’ bime-by, whin Ah chop all dat wood, Ah guess Ah’ll go home, an’ Ah go home. An’ whin Ah retch mah shanty, Ah see de do’ bruk, an’ somebody a-yammerin’ on hit, an’ whilst Ah look, out sprong dis Sally Prutt an’ whack me on de haid wid a bed-slat, an’ holler, ‘Ain’ gone to hebben yit! Ain’ gone to hebben yit!’ lak she done gwine crazy, an’ ebbery time she whack she holler, an’ ebbery time she holler she whack. So I gwine get away from dere quick, an’ whin Ah run, she run, an’ she shore gwine murder me, ef dish yere pleeceman am’ come an’ stop her.”

“Just so!” said Justice Murphy, sarcastically. “And you were not near the shanty at all? And you did not nail this woman in it? And you did not pour water down the chimney?”

“No, sah,” said Silas, in a frightened voice.

“Oh, you brack liah!” said Sally, angrily.

“And I suppose you never said, ‘Ain’t gone to heaven yet!’ did you?” said the judge. “You never heard those words, did you?”

Silas looked from side to side, and his lower lip trembled. His back took a more disconsolate droop. There are no words in the English language to describe how utterly downcast and hopeless and woe-saturated he looked. Milton came near it when he said something about “Below the lowest depths still lower depths—” In woe Silas was in depths a couple of stories lower than that.

“Well?” said the justice, sharply.

“Answer his Honor whin he addrisses ye!” shouted Flaherty, and Silas moistened his lips and gulped.

“No, sah! Ah—Ah ain’ hear them wuds perzackly, nevah befo’. Ah ain’ heah, ‘Ain’ gone to hebben.’ Ah jes heah ‘Ain’ gwine to hebben.’”

“Oh, you did hear that, did you?” said the justice. “Who said that?”

Silas stared at his boot. He blinked a couple of times, and then spoke.

“Ol’ Noah, he say thim wuds,” he said. The judge turned to the old Negro on the chair in the front row, and pointed at him.

“That Noah?” he asked. “Is that the man?”

“Yassah,” said Silas, sadly. “Dass de man. He say hit.”

Old Noah, seeing that the conversation was veering his way, arose and came forward, his hand behind his ear and expectation in his face.

“Thutty dollahs, Jedge!” he said eagerly. “Dass de right amount. Thutty dollahs.”

“You go set down!” yelled his wife in his ear, but the old man shook his head.

“Ain’ he gwine pay hit?” he asked resentfully. “Ain’ de jedge gwine mek him pay hit? Whaffo’ Ah nail up de shack ef he ain’ gwine pay hit?”

“Whut yo’ palaver about? Nail up de shack! You ain’ nail up no shack. Dat no-’count Silas he nail up de shack,” shouted Sally.

The old man nodded his head and grinned.

“Yas, dasso! Dasso! Ah nail up de shack, Jedge,” he chuckled. “Ah nail him in. Yassah, Ah done jes so.”

“Him?” shouted the justice, “you mean her?”

“Yassah, Ah nail him in,” said Noah.

“You did?” shouted the justice.

“Ah—Ah beg pawdon, Jedge,” said the old man. “Ah cawn’t heah as—as well as Ah used to heah. Ah cawn’t hear whisperin’ tones no moah. Ah—Ah got to beg yo’ to speak jes a leetle mite louder.”

“WHY DID YOU NAIL HIM IN THE SHACK?” shouted Justice Murphy at the top of his voice.

“Why, ’cause he won’ pay me de rint,” said Noah, as if it was a thing every one should have known. “Ain’ Sally been jes tol’ yo’? Ah surmise she done confabulate about that all de whiles she talkin’. Yo’ mus’ scuse her, Jedge. Whin de womens staht talkin’, nobuddy know whut dey talk about. Dey jes talk fo’ de exumcise. Mah secon’ wife, which am de las’ but one befo’ Ah tuck Sally—”

“Look here!” shouted Justice Murphy. “Why did you nail him in the shack?”

“Zack?” said the old man, doubtfully. “No, sah, he name Silas. Dass him yondah. I arsk him fo’ de rint, an’ I beg him fo’ de rint, an’ I argyfy about dat rint twell Ah jes wohn out, an’ Ah don’ git no rint at all. So bime-by erlong come dish yere prophet whut you heah about, maybe. Ah ain’ tek no stock in dat prophet-man at all! No, sah! Ah ’s a good Baptis’ an’ Ah don’ truckle to none o’ dem come-easy, go-easy, folks like dat. Ah stay ’way from him, an’ Ah tell Sally she stay way likewise. But dis yere Silas he get de prophet-man’s religion bad. Yassah. He ’low he gwine to hebben las’ Tuesday whin all de res’ ob de gang go. Ah reckon he ain’ gwine go, ’cause Ah feel dey ain’ none ob dem gwine go, but Ah can’t be shore. Mos’ anything li’ble to happen whin times so bad like dey is. So Ah projeck up to Silas an’ Ah say to him, ‘Ef yo’ gwine to hebben nex’ Tuesday, yo’ bettah pay me de rint befo’ yo’ go.’ Dass whut Ah say, Jedge. An’—an’—an’ dass reason-able. ’Cause ef he gwine to hebben Tuesday, Ah ain’ gwine hab no chance to collict dat rint come Winsday. No, sah.”

“Then what?” shouted the justice.

“Nuffin’!” said Noah. “Nuffin’ at all. He say, ‘Scuse me, Noah, but Ah so full ob preparations fo’ de great evint Ah ain’ got time to yearn no money to pay de rint.’ An’ Ah say, ‘Silas, Ah want mah rint!’ So, bime-by, whin Monday mawrnin’ come erlong, Sally she gwine away to do a job o’ work, an’ Ah meyander ober to Silas’ shack, an’ Ah got mah hatchit an’ mah nails, whut Ah gwine mind de fince. An’ whin Ah come to de shack All hear de squawk ob a board in de flo’ an’ Ah know Silas he in de shack, an’ Ah slam de do’ an’ Ah nail up de do’ an’ he carrye on scandalous, but he can’t git yout. An’ Ah don’ care whut he say, ’cause Ah can’t heah ef he cuss or ef he palaver.

“’Cause Ah ain’ gwine hab no tinint go to hebben like dat whin he owe me rint twell he pay de rint. So Ah reckon Ah leave him dere twell de gwine is all gone, an’ Ah ain’ worried erbout Silas gwine alone by hisse’f. He ain’ got de get-up to do nuffin’ alone by hisse’f. So Ah leab him dah twell he natchully bus’ out.”

“You tried to starve him,” shouted the justice. “You threw water down the chimney.”

“Dass jes a pre-caution, Jedge, dass jes a pre-caution,” said the old Negro. “Ah got mah doubts erbout dat ol’ Obediah prophet-man whut come from nowhares. Whin Ah see de smoke a-risin’ from de chimbly, Ah speculate ef et hebben whar de prophet-man gwine tek they-all, or ef he gwine tek dem ilsewhars, an’ Ah cogitate how maybe Silas gwine escape in de flame ob de fiah. Dey yain’t nuffin’ like good ol’ Baptis’ water fo’ to fight debbil’s fiah, so Ah fotch a couple o’ pail’ ob wahtah, an’ Ah po’ hit down de chimbly, an’ Ah say, ‘Yo’ ain’ gwine to hebben yit! Yo’ ain’ gwine to hebben yit!’ Yassah. An’ he ain’!”

He chuckled with glee, but at the same moment he caught a glimpse of Sally’s face, and his grin gave way to a look of blank surprise. Slowly and carefully Sally was rolling up her sleeves, and her eyes glittered menacingly. Flaherty tapped her on the shoulder.

“None iv that here!” he said sternly.

The justice looked from one to the other of the parties before him, closed an impressive-looking law book with a bang, and stood up, feeling for his tobacco-pipe in his hip pocket.

“Flaherty,” he said slowly, “this is not a case for this court. It seems in the nature of a domestic misunderstanding. Under ordinary circumstances,” he added, pressing tobacco into the pipe with his thumb, “I should undertake to explain to all parties just what happened and how it happened and why it happened but—” he looked at old Noah and shook his head—“there is nothing in the statutes of the State of Iowa compelling a justice of the peace of the County of Riverbank, City of Riverbank and Township of Riverbank, to shout that loud and that long. Case dismissed!”

Flaherty herded the three parties out of the room and the justice lighted his pipe.

“Whaffo’ Ah ain’ git mah thutty dollahs?” he heard Uncle Noah ask in the hall. “Wha’ we gwine?”

“Ah tell yo’ wha’ yo’ ain’ gwine!” he heard Sally shout. “You ain’ gwine to hebben yit! But yo’ gwine to wish yo’ was gwine ’fo’ Ah git froo wif yo’!”

“Flaherty,” said his Honor, tilting back comfortably and blowing a cloud of blue smoke toward the ceiling, “go out and warn that woman to keep the peace.”

“I will,” said Flaherty, “but can ye ixpict ut iv her, Murphy?”

SIERRA MADRE

BY HENRY VAN DYKE

O MOTHER mountains! billowing far to the snow-lands,

Robed in aërial amethyst, silver, and blue,

Why do ye look so proudly down on the lowlands?

What have their gardens and groves to do with you?

Theirs is the languorous charm of the orange and myrtle,

Theirs are the fruitage and fragrance of Eden of old,—

Broad-boughed oaks in the meadows fair and fertile,

Dark-leaved orchards gleaming with globes of gold.

You, in your solitude standing, lofty and lonely,

Bear neither garden nor grove on your barren breasts;

Rough is the rock-loving growth of your cañons, and only

Storm-battered pines and fir-trees cling to your crests.

Why are ye throned so high and arrayed in splendor

Richer than all the fields at your feet can claim?

What is your right, ye rugged peaks, to the tender

Queenly promise and pride of the mother-name?

Answered the mountains, dim in the distance dreaming:

“Ours are the forests that treasure the riches of rain;

Ours are the secret springs and the rivulets streaming

Softly down through the manifold bloom of the plain.

“Vain were the toiling of men in the dust of the dry land,

Vain were the plowing and planting in waterless fields,

Save for the life-giving currents we send from the sky-land,

Save for the fruit our embrace with the storm-cloud yields.”

O mother mountains, Madre Sierra, I love you!

Rightly you reign o’er the vale that your bounty fills,—

Kissed by the sun, or with big, bright stars above you,—

I murmur your holy name and lift up mine eyes to the hills.

THE BORROWED LOVER

BY L. FRANK TOOKER

Author of “Kerrigan’s Christmas Sermon,” “Under Rocking Skies,” etc.

’TIS this way with women,” declared Kerrigan: “some of thim will desave ye, and some will not, but ye will niver know which till ut ’s done; for they’re all alike in the use of their eyes and tongues, and the proof of the puddin’ ’s in the ’atun’. Mind thot, laad.”

It was Sunday morning, and Kerrigan was leaning over the rail, looking dreamily off across the waste of piled lumber to the spires and roofs of the city. The sun shone brightly; the yellow flood of the river lipped softly the barnacled piles of the wharf; the hush of the Sabbath lay over all. Nicolao had just gone over the side of the vessel for an all-day outing; but he turned at Kerrigan’s warning. He waved his hand airily.

“Tha’ ’s alla right,” he replied. “Eet ees the gamble, yas—what yo’ expec’. So-long! Adios!”

“Staay where ye arre,” commanded Kerrigan, sternly. “I’m goun’ wid ye. ’Tis a guardeen ye waant, ye light-mind child of misfortune. Wait till I change me clothes.”

Twenty minutes later they crossed the wharf and passed cityward, something of Kerrigan’s grandfatherly air of protection dropping away at every step.

“’Tis good to be young,” he said; “I mind I was young wance mesilf. Where are ye goun’, laad?”

“I hava the friend,” Nicolao replied; “his name is Porfirio—Portuguese, weeth the nice shop, nice fam’ly, nice daughter, yo’ know.”

“I do,” said Kerrigan, significantly; “ye’d niver go ilse. I’ll attind ye for yer own safety. ’Tis on me mind.”

At the crossing they boarded a trolley, for the sun was hot and Nicolao in haste; and going well forward, they seated themselves in the car. As Kerrigan glanced down to return the change of his fare to his pocket, he saw two hands meekly folded in the lap of the woman who sat at his left. The hands held a breviary and a handkerchief. He glanced up at the face of the holder—the fresh Irish face of a young woman.

He sighed and looked away; he knew not why, but for an instant it gave him a desolate feeling of homesickness. Then Nicolao began to talk, and Kerrigan forgot the girl.

But presently she left the car, and as she rose to her feet, he saw a handkerchief flutter to the floor. He leaned forward quickly, and, picking it up, hurried after his neighbor; but others had risen between them, and she had reached the street and was stepping up to the curb when he touched her arm.

“Ye dropped it, acushla,” he said, and turning quickly, she glanced at his outstretched hand.

“Then ’twas a miracle,” she said, “and belongs to the church, not to me.” She held up her own hand, in which safely reposed the breviary and the handkerchief. Kerrigan stared.

“Wid me two eyes I saw it drop as ye got up,” he declared.

“I had but one,” replied the girl. “Are your two eyes strong enough to see that I’ve got it still? And you’ve lost your car.”

“I’ve lost more—me good name,” Kerrigan said. “I’ve stolen the handkerchief.”

“Then you’d better pray for repentance,” she advised. “I’ll give you a hint: the church is before you. Good-by, and thank you—for nothing.” Laughing, she hurried away up the steps of the church.

Kerrigan hesitatingly watched her go, then walked to a side porch and sat down.

“I’ll tak’ the hint to this extint,” he muttered, and patiently waited through the hour of service; but as the audience streamed forth at the close he returned to the main door and stood watching.

But suddenly he felt a touch on his arm and heard a voice say:

“I’ll be going home now.”

Startled, he looked down into the face of the girl. It was very demure, though flushed.

“Ah, ’tis ye thot’s repinted—of yer haard heart,” he said. “Ye’ve come back to tell me so.”

“I’ve repented of naught but my sins,” she replied, “and a hard heart is not one of them. But I’d borrow you for a little, if you have nothing better to do.”

“I’ll have nothing better to do all through purgatory, which will be hiven to me if ye’re wid me,” he replied. “And there’s another miracle.”

She laughed.

“I’d not care to keep you so long.”

“Thin I’ll get me hell first, which is wrong,” he answered sadly. “I tho’t ye were orthodox.”

“I’m—” She pressed his arm in warning as a man passed them rapidly, turning to look back into their faces. He was weazen, middle-aged, with a wry face.

“That’s the reason for borrowing you,” she explained in a low voice.

“Thot’s not a reason; ut’s an apology,” Kerrigan said tartly. “Ut’s a monkey, not a mon.”

“He’s always hanging about,” she replied. “My father and mother favor him; he’s got money.”

“Ut’s a curse,” Kerrigan declared solemnly.

“So the rich tell me,” said the girl with a laugh.

“I’m rich mesilf while I have ye,” he said.

“You’re only borrowed,” she warned him. “Are you a masterful man?”

“I’m meek as Moses,” he assured her. “A child could lade me.”

“Oh, then you won’t do at all!” she cried. “I thought you were masterful by your looks. My father and mother are meek, but set in their ways, and I’m tired of it. Now, a man who’d knock me about and them—”

“Ye waant me to knock thim about—yer father and mither?”

“I want them to think you would,” she corrected him. “’T would be good for them. But of course you’d not do it; you’d only be soft-spoken and blarneying.”

“I’m as gintle as a cow by nature,” he assured her; “but I’d sell me birthright to plaze ye. Now tak’ me home wid ye and prove ut.”

“’T is worth trying,” she replied. “You’ll stay to dinner? I’ve taken to you, you know.”

“I accipt both the dinner and the compliment,” he answered, “and thank ye kindly for both.”

In the porch of their small house near the wall of the cemetery of the city her father and mother sat waiting as they entered the gate.

“My friend, Mr.——” The girl hesitated.

“Kerrigan—Thomas Kerrigan,” that gentleman said promptly.

“My father and mother,” continued the girl. “Reilly’s their name. The gentleman was very kind. He lost his car to return my handkerchief.”

Her father, a weather-beaten little man, looked Kerrigan over coolly as he nodded.

“Faith!” he said at last, “I’m thinkin’ he’s likely to lose his supper before he returns it; he’s got it in his hand yet.”

The girl laughed.

“It was not mine, you know,” she explained.

“I don’t see the joke,” her father said irritably. “What’s all the stir, Kate?”

“Ye’ll see ut in time,” Kerrigan replied with composure. “’T is like this: she liked me betther nor the bit of white rag, so she took me instid.”

“She was always greedy,” replied Reilly; “she’d take the biggest lump iv’ry time, not countin’ the quality.” He turned to his wife. “Do ye mind thot, Mary?”

“I don’t understand a’ the nonsince,” replied his wife, a meek little wisp of a woman. She rose and went into the house, followed by Kate.

Kerrigan was looking complacently about him, and now said:

“Ye have the cimetery handy, Reilly.”

“I need to,” the old man replied. “I worrk in it.”

“’T is the fine job,” declared Kerrigan. “Ye can feel all the time how much betther off ye are than yer neighbors. I doubt not ut makes ye consated.”

“There’s thim that are livin’ that make me feel the same,” Reilly said significantly. He glared at Kerrigan, who nodded.

“’T is a habit and grows on ye, like drinkun’,” Kerrigan declared. “What do ye do to cure ut?”

“I choose me own fri’nds mostly,” Reilly said tartly. “Belikes ye will take the hint.”

“I do,” replied Kerrigan. “’T is the raison ye worrk in the cimetery, I tak’ ut; the talk’s wan-sided. Ye’d like thot.”

Kate came out and, seeing her father glowering, sat down by Kerrigan, carelessly placing her hand on the back of his chair.

“My father has taken to you,” she said with a coquettish glance. “He’ll monopolize you. I’ll not see you at all. I’m fair green with the jealousy.”

“Good Lord!” sputtered the old man, and glared at her, but she seemed not to hear or see.

“We’ll go for a walk after dinner,” she went on—“in the cemetery. It’s the only place I can get you away from him; for he works there in the week, and he’d not like to spoil his holiday by seeing the place.”

“’T will be a sore thing to part from him,” answered Kerrigan, “for we’re like brithers alriddy, barrun’ the size of us and the looks; but I’d not like to remind him of worrk, so we’ll go, as ye say.”

“’T is the nice, quiet place for young people,” Kate said and laughed. “You’ll find them all about, walking arm and arm, and sitting on the benches in the shade, hand in hand. They’ll not notice us at all.”

“Thin we’ll not notice thim,” answered Kerrigan, with good-natured generosity; but Reilly rose up and stormed into the house, slamming the door.

He ate his dinner rapidly and in silence, and left the table long before the others, and when, ready for their walk, Kate and Kerrigan appeared in the porch, he sat there grim and silent, wearing his coat and hat.

Kate showed her surprise.

“Why, Father, have you the chill?” she asked anxiously. “Are you cold?”

“Wan worrd more, me girl, and I’ll fetch ye a clip on the side of the head, old as ye are,” Reilly said savagely.

“You’d never do the like of such a queer thing,” she exclaimed—“never. And you know me Tom would not stand for that at all. Would you?” She looked trustingly up into Kerrigan’s face.

“’T would hurt me more nor him to tak’ a little, small mon across me knee,” Kerrigan replied, “but ’t would be both me duty and right. But he’s only jokun’, me dear. He’s laughun’ in his sleeve this minut’.”

Reilly eyed him with a look of ferocity.

“Tin years younger, ye lump,” he said, “and small as I am, I’d fetch ye the mate of it over the jaw, big as ye are.”

“Hiven be thanked for the tin years, thin!” exclaimed Kerrigan, piously.

“Yes, Heaven be thanked!” echoed Kate. “’T would be a sore thing for a loving girl to see her old father in the hands of a strong man. You’ll always be tender to him, won’t you?”

“Always,” promised Kerrigan—“tender, but firm.”

“Thank you,” she said softly. “I knew you would. But good-by, Father.”

“Ye can’t go,” snapped Reilly. “Into the house wid yez!”

“What!” she cried. “And me of age, and earning me living these five years!” She threw back her head and walked toward the gate, with her father following after.

“Thin I’ll go wid yez, ye ungrateful girl,” Reilly declared.

“Thin take me ither arm,” said Kerrigan, with a solicitous air; but Reilly stepped back, waving him off.

“Go on, ye lump!” he commanded.

“Aye, ye know best,” Kerrigan agreed. “’T is more like a marriage procission yer way.”

Kate laughed.

“For shame,” she cried, “to talk of marriage so soon! I’ve known you but four hours.”

“What’s time to the lovun’ hearrt thot knows uts own mate?” asked Kerrigan.

“True,” she replied; “it’s nothing at all.”

“If ye’ve no respict for yer owld father, ye hussy,” Reilly hissed close at her ear, “think shame to yersilf for the bowldniss of yez.”

“To think you’d put the black name of boldness on your own daughter!” Kate cried, turning angrily. “I’ll not listen to you.” She flounced up the road.

Reilly followed. He passed into the cemetery behind them and stubbornly kept near; but as they turned into an avenue of live-oaks, he caught sight of a slender young man who stood in a path and watched Kate and Kerrigan go by. Reilly beckoned to him, and the young man came hesitatingly forward.

“And how are ye the day?” Reilly said genially, and extended his hand. In manifest surprise the young man shook hands and said:

“Well, Mr. Reilly, as the world goes. And how are you?”

“Fine, Michael,” Reilly replied, “though troubled a small bit.” He glanced ahead at the pair, who had not looked back. The young man’s eyes also followed them.

“Aye, it’s the world’s way,” he agreed with a somber air. “It’s up and down with us all.”

“It is, Michael Cassidy,” replied Reilly. “But I’ve not seen ye for the long time.”

As Michael had been forbidden to come to the house, he deemed it politic to make no reply. His silence left Reilly at a loss, and presently he said with a melancholy shake of the head:

“It’s God’s truth, as they say, that a mon niver knows what’s good for him.”

Michael looked at him inquiringly.

“Are you speaking of yourself, Mr. Reilly?” he asked.

“I am,” Reilly confessed. “Here was I keepin’ a fine lad like yersilf from me house, and who should me daughter bring into it but thot big lump yon! Bedad! he fills the whole place!”

“Lord keep us all!” exclaimed Michael.

“’T is well said, Michael Cassidy,” replied Reilly. “’T is the bitter, true worrd.”

“But not past mending, Mr. Reilly,” Michael said with a sly glance. “’T is only to let me come back and send the lump flying.”

“Flyin’ is it?” exclaimed Reilly, wrathfully. “Faith! he flies like a tree.”

“’T is your own house,” Michael replied. “You have only to say the word go. I know how it sounds myself.”

“Have I? ’T is all ye know. I give him a couple or three hints of the same, and he was for takin’ me over his knee—me, the father of me own daughter. And what did she do but egg him on!”

“Aye, that’s bad.”

“It is so.”

“If you could manage to let him do it,” Michael said thoughtfully, “and then call the police for assault, you’d have him fine. ’T would shame Kate. ’T would be bad for him.”

“Would it?” Reilly said with scorn. “And how would it be for me in me owld age to be taken across a mon’s knee? Tell me thot.”

Michael snickered, but quickly changed his snicker to a cough under Reilly’s wrathful look.

“You’re right, Mr. Reilly,” he said soberly; “’t would make angels weep.”

“I’d not distress the howly wans to thot extint,” Reilly declared. He was silent a moment, then said with a brightening face: “If you’d pass a scrappy worrd wid him yersilf, Michael, and take a clip or two of his fist, belikes Kate would take pity on ye and—”

“The pity of a woman is a poor tale,” Michael replied hastily. “Has Kate taken a liking to him?”

“A liking to him, is it!” exclaimed Reilly. “She makes me fair blush for her bowldniss.”

“Then she’s given me up, and it’s no use at all,” Michael said with a groan.

“Well, if she’s given ye up, ye’ve nothing to lose by me plan,” argued Reilly. “She might take ye back.”

“And be where I was before,” objected Michael, “and that was nowhere at all, with you against me. That’s the plain word between friends, Mr. Reilly, and no harm meant.”

“But all that’s done and gone, as I told ye,” Reilly irritably replied. “I’m for ye now, Michael. ’T is her pity that’s the only way to win her now.”

“Faith! I think I’d get it,” answered Michael, dolefully; “the man’s as broad as a house.”

“Well, if it comes to the blows bechune ye,” Reilly said, “just grapple wid him, and I’ll give him a little small clip on the back of the head wid me stick.” He gripped his cane hard as he added grimly: “Bedad! I’ll put me heart in it, and that’s no lie. Now come on and try me plan.”

But Michael still held back.

“What’s changed you all at once?” he asked. “You never liked me.”

“That lump,” said Reilly. “He’ll marry her out of hand before their walk’s over if ye do not stop him.”

“And if I do stop him, will I have her myself?” Michael asked.

“Ye will,” Reilly promised. “I’ve passed me worrd.”

“Then God be with us all, and here goes!” said Michael.

They quickened their pace and caught up with the pair, and Kate, looking back, stopped.

“I thought you’d forgotten us, Father,” she said with a laugh. “And is it Mr. Cassidy with you, the great stranger!” She introduced him to Kerrigan as a “friend of the family,” and they walked on together, Reilly straggling on ahead, leading the way toward his tool-house, in a lonely part of the cemetery.

“It’s the long time since you’ve been to see us, Mr. Cassidy,” Kate said at last.

“It is,” Michael replied. “The place is fairly overrun. It’s the queer lot you have hanging about.”

“Overrun, do you say!” exclaimed Kate. “There’s not been a soul there in weeks.”

Michael laughed disagreeably.

“It’s not an hour since I saw this wind-bag come out of the door,” he replied in a loud voice. Then he put his hand to his mouth, saying softly: “When you strike, strike quick and hard, Mr. Kerrigan. I’d like to have it over. And look out for the old man’s stick.” Kerrigan grinned.

Kate, on Kerrigan’s left, had not heard the aside, and she grew pale. She leaned forward now to say sweetly:

“And how are your father and mother—Michael? Are they well?”

“They are,” Michael answered; “but a bit low in spirit. I’d take it kindly if you’d parade the big monkey you’ve got with you before their gate. Belikes it would hearten them up; they’re fond of a show.”

They heard Reilly chuckle.

“Aye, Michael’s the b’y,” he muttered, and gripped his stick hard.

Kerrigan stopped short.

“We’ll go now,” he said stiffly.

“With all my heart,” retorted Michael, and turned back. But Kate caught Kerrigan’s arm, pulling him forward.

“Would you leave a girl in the middle of a walk to go following after a joker like Michael?” she cried. “Sure, he was always up to his tricks. It’s some little, small joke on his father, the poor old man. I’ll have naught to do with it.”

The two men stood glaring at each other, the grimness of Kerrigan’s face being lighted, however, as he stood with his back to Kate, by a sly wink.

“Is ut a joke?” he demanded.

“Would you call the lady a liar?” Michael asked hotly. “She says it’s a joke; and if she says it’s one, it is, even if it isn’t. Are your manners as awry as your face?”

“I niver quarrel before ladies, but we’ll take a walk soon and try to match faces,” Kerrigan said significantly.

“You couldn’t please me more if you asked me to your wake,” Michael airily replied.

“Oh, Father, there’s your little workhouse,” nervously called Kate. “I left something in it when I brought you your dinner-pail Thursday. I’ll get it now, if you have your key, though I’m thinking you’ve forgotten it, as usual.”

“I niver forget it,” retorted Reilly; and to prove his contention, led the way to the tool-house.

It was a stout little stone house with a strong door, and as Reilly opened it, he stepped in, looking back at the others with a sour smile.

“Forget it, did I?” he snapped. “Now, where did ye l’ave what ye left?”

“I hid it on top of that shelf—a little, small box,” Kate said. “Will you reach it down, Mr. Kerrigan? You’re as tall as the house yourself, and ’t will not trouble you, like these small men.”

Kerrigan stepped into the room, and in a flash she closed the door and locked it.

“Now, Michael, run, if you love me!” she exclaimed. “Do you think I want to see you murdered before my eyes? Your courage is two sizes too big for your body.”

But Michael did not move.

“Better be murdered than see you making love to that brute,” he said doggedly. “I’ll see it out now.”

She caught him by the shoulders and tried to push him away.

“But it’s not making love, Michael dear,” she replied. “It was just to stir father.” She explained in a word, with Michael’s face gradually relaxing in a grin.

“Well, you’ve stirred him all right,” he said; “he wants you to marry me now. We’ll do it at once before he changes his mind.”

“In a hurry like this!” she cried. “Oh, I couldn’t.”

“All right,” he replied, and seated himself on the door-step. “Then I’ll stay and be murdered.”

For a moment Kate stood irresolute, wringing her hands.

“Oh, what shall I do!” she murmured.

“I told you—marry me now,” he replied. He went to her, and, taking her hands, said quickly: “I’ve the license; I’ve had it for weeks. It would be the fine thing, wouldn’t it, to have it found like that on my dead body?”

“I think I should die of shame,” she confessed. “It would hardly seem decent.”

“It’s the true word you say, Katie dear. You see, there’s nothing left but to use it.”

“Sure, it would make me feel like a widow, and me not yet a wife,” she said. “I’ll go, Michael. It’s all that’s left for us now. Hurry.”

INSIDE the barred window Kerrigan and her father saw them hasten away. Her father chuckled.

“She fooled ye,” he said, for Kerrigan had not found the box.

“She did,” Kerrigan agreed. He seated himself on a stool and looked about him complacently. “Ye’ve the nice little shop for wet weather,” he went on.

“For anny weather,” Reilly replied. He had suddenly become genial, and he began to talk of his work. “Thirty years I’ve worked here,” he said at the close, “and I’ve put by a little against me owld age. And now Kate will marry, and there’s wan trouble liss off me mind. Michael’s a good b’y.”

“He is,” Kerrigan agreed with great heartiness. “Did ye hear him blackguarrdun’ me to me face as bowld as ye plaze? Me hearrt warrmed to the laad.”

“Aye, and he fooled ye well; they both did,” said Reilly, and chuckled.

“They did,” answered Kerrigan. “And now I’m like a hin in a coop; but I’m not alone.”

For a moment Reilly looked at him, and then a shadow crossed his face.

“Ye take it aisy,” he said suspiciously.

“Ut’s me way,” replied Kerrigan. “I’m a sedenthary mon by nature, though I’m slightly out of practice, though ut all comes back. I’ll shmoke now.” He took his pipe from his pocket and leisurely began to fill it.

“But ye lost the girl,” Reilly told him.

“Can I lose what I niver had or waanted?” Kerrigan asked. “I don’t know.”

“It was not an hour since ye were all but marryin’ her before me eyes,” snapped Reilly. “What of that?”

“I was borrowed only,” exclaimed Kerrigan.

“And what do ye mane?” demanded Reilly.

“’T was what Katie said,” answered Kerrigan. “We were standun’ before the church whin up edged a red-headed little old mon, and says she to me, ‘May I borrow ye for a bit?’ ‘Sure,’ says I. And she borrowed me to get rid of the mon, and now she’s borrowed anither to get rid of you and me. Sure, she’s the bright wan.”

Reilly was staring straight ahead, piecing the broken patches of truth together. Suddenly he looked up.

“And nayther of ye meant nothing at all by all the love-talk?”

“Nothing at all,” answered Kerrigan.

“Thin she’s a desateful hussy,” cried Reilly, angrily. “She’s made me ate me own worrds through fear of ye. I said young Cassidy should niver have her, and now she’s made me fair’ throw him at her, as if he was the last mon on God’s earth! Ye can’t trust a woman at all.”

“Sometimes ye can and sometimes ye cannot,” amended Kerrigan, “but ye niver know which ut is till ut’s too late.”

“It’s the true worrd,” agreed Reilly. He sighed, then added not without a touch of pardonable pride: “Well, she’s no fool, and she’s me own daughter. There’s something in that.”

RECOLLECTIONS OF FREDERIC REMINGTON

BY AUGUSTUS THOMAS

Author of “Arizona,” “The Witching Hour,” etc.

WITH PICTURES BY FREDERIC REMINGTON AND A PORTRAIT

FREDERIC REMINGTON had a large mind in a big body. The mind had great natural capacity in many directions, and in one of those directions was remarkably self-taught. The body had been splendidly cultivated and came to be unwisely overtaxed. His young manhood was spent in the far West, at work with the cow-boys and near the soldiers and Indians whose picture historian he was destined to become. The life of those men was rude and exciting. Much that would be considered dissipation in civilized surroundings was logical reaction to their environment—man’s answer to nature’s challenge. Remington adopted the cow-boy habit and point of view, and finally assimilated the cow-boy standard and philosophy. It is necessary to consider that fact if one would accurately estimate his character, his work, his achievement, and his untimely end. His very intimacy with the men and the material he drew was purchased at what others may call that cost. Future generations who profit by the facts he recorded must not quarrel with the method of their unconscious acquisition; and the wisest of those who loved him would be less wise if they wished any of his steps retraced. That education reinforced the independence of his nature, made him indifferent to the “cards and custards” of society, and, to speak after his own fashion, kept him “with the bark on.” He worked unhampered by rule, example, or opinion, a veritable child of nature, and he died untamed. Nature and second nature kept him at high pressure. He lived, thought, spoke, and worked by a series of explosions insulated under deep sympathy and great good humor.

Remington was primitive and partizan. Sensitive as an Indian, he liked instinctively and enduringly, he hated intuitively and long. He adored the memory of his father, who had been a soldier, and he remembered him in his uniform. Besides, in the West, in Frederic’s day, the local advent of the troopers meant sudden and inflexible order. The military acted promptly and without debate.

Remington loved the soldiers; he loathed all politicians because they talked.

One of Remington’s distinctions between orators and officers is worth recording. He had been recently visiting General Chaffee and more recently listening to Mr. Bourke Cockran and Mr. William J. Bryan. Indian fashion, he was half acting the manner of all three and feeling inwardly for his answer. “This is it,” he said; “Chaffee tells you to do a thing like this; he looks out from under his eyebrows with his head down; the orator throws his head up and looks out from under his eyelids. The soldier menaces—the orator hypnotizes.”

Remington kept near the ground in all his thinking. The superstructure of things, the embellishment of ideas, the amplification of systems, had small attraction for him. He had a passion for the roots, for the explanations, for the causes. His speech was laconic. If his friends had known the sign language he would generally have used it. His own vocabulary was small, vital, and picturesque, singularly free from slang, but strongly colored with military terms and phrases. He was a good listener and a good laugher. Like the disappearing Carson River, an adequate joke flowing through his system would rise again with recurrent and unexpected irruptions of reflected sunshine. He had also the quality of being humorous himself, and the flavor of his humor was Western, fresh, and wholesome.

One evening he strolled, astonished and abashed, into our half-lighted dining-room, where, unknown to him, a dinner party was in progress. After his own dinner he had come “across lots” for a cigar and our usual argumentative salvation of mankind. The introductions being over, a lady purring at the great man in knickerbockers and herculean stockings asked:

“Did you ride your bicycle, Mr. Remington?”

“Ride it? Ha-ha! Why the blankety-blanked thing wouldn’t let me walk with it.”

From a photograph by Sarony, owned by E. W. Kemble

FREDERIC REMINGTON

Mrs. Remington had a liking and a capacity for philosophic study. Some of the modern phases had her attention, and one of them which she felt would be useful she pressed upon Remington’s notice. His hospitality to the idea was more tolerant than acquisitive, and at times he may have really doubted its potency; but if he had any criticism it was never spoken, and perhaps never implied. One morning during that period, however, his man Tim brought me a brief note, which read as follows:

Dear Tommy:

I was in town last night at The Players and I got so out of tune with the Infinite that you could notice it for two blocks.

Copyright by Mrs. Frederic Remington

“THE SCALP”

MODELED BY FREDERIC REMINGTON

The value of mere anecdotes of any man is that each reader draws from them that side of the personality which he would have seen and drawn from the man himself, not merely the element open to the proper vision of the reporter; and that must be the excuse for anecdotes. E. W. Kemble, or, as his friends know him, Ed Kemble, introduced the writer to Remington in 1890. The two illustrators were friends, but the most beautiful side of their friendship needed a third friend for its precipitation. Kemble is universally amusing when he cares to be. Few men are his equal in putting the spirit of caricature into ordinary verbal report or comment; even his famous drawings do not show such sure fun. Remington responded promptly to Kemble’s comedy, however expressed. Most men who know it do the same, but Remington went further. When Kemble had left him after any interview, all of Kemble’s woes of which Remington had been the repository were suddenly dwarfed in the larger horizon of Remington’s experiences and transmuted into side-splitting jokes. In his mind, Kemble was never “grown up”; and Kemble reciprocated. Remington’s throes, viewed through Kemble’s prism, were just as amusing. They took even each other’s art as playfellows take each other’s games. There were years when much of their leisure was passed in company; in the winter, skating and long walks over the hills of Westchester; in the summer, swimming baths in the Sound, bicycling, and tennis. Their understanding was mutual and immediate. One night after the theater, on the train home from New York, sitting together, Remington was by the car window, Kemble next to the aisle. An obstreperous commuter was disturbing the passengers, men and women. The busy conductor’s admonition had been ineffective, the brakeman’s repeated expostulations useless. The men passengers seemed cowed; the rowdy was gaining confidence. On his third blatant parade through the car, and as he passed Kemble’s side, Remington’s two hundred and fifty pounds of bone and muscle reached out into the aisle, and, with the precision of a snapping-turtle, lifted him from his feet like a naughty boy and laid him face downward over Kemble’s interposing lap. With the spirit of perfect team-work, as Remington held the ruffian, Kemble spanked him, while the legs in the aisle wriggled frantically for a foothold. The correction, prolonged and ample, was accompanied by roars of laughter from fifty other passengers. Being done, Remington stood the offender on his feet. The man began a threatening tirade. Before half a sentence was uttered Remington had him again exposed to Kemble’s rhythmic tattoo. This was enough; and when again released the fellow rapidly left the car for the relative seclusion of the smoker.

Mrs. Remington used to tell of her husband’s return to her one night when they had transiently taken rooms at a New York hotel. Remington, after escorting her back from the theater, had her consent to a little romp at the club. It had come to be two o’clock in the morning; Mrs. Remington had gone to bed, but was as yet only in the border-land of sleep when she was aroused by the repeated slamming of hallway doors. At the proper moment in the crescendo her own door was opened, and in the frame of light stood her husband, quickly joined by a protesting attendant.

“It’s all right,” said Remington; “this one’s my wife—good-night!”

One early morning in February, 1898, James Waterbury, the agent of the Western Union Company at New Rochelle, telephoned me that the Maine had been blown up and had sunk in the harbor of Havana. Knowing the interest the report would have for Remington, I immediately called him on the telephone and repeated the information. His only thanks or comment was to shout “Ring off!” In the process of doing so I could hear him calling the private telephone number of his publishers in New York. In his mind, his own campaign was already actively under way.

One incident of that campaign illustrates the primitive man in Remington. He and Richard Harding Davis were engaged to go into Cuba by the back way and send material to an evening newspaper. The two men were to cross in the night from Key West to Cuba on a mackerel-shaped speed boat of sheet-iron and shallow draft. Three times the boat put out from Key West and three times turned back, unable to stand the weather. The last time even the crew lost hope of regaining port. Davis and Remington were lying in the scuppers and clinging to the shallow rail to keep from being washed overboard. The Chinaman cook between lurches was lashing together a door and some boxes to serve as a raft. Davis suggested to Remington the advisability of trying something of the kind for themselves.

“Lie still,” Remington commanded; “you and I don’t know how to do that. Let him make his raft. If we capsize, I’ll throttle him and take it from him.”

Some months later, on learning of the incident, I tried to discuss the moral phase of it with him; but he brushed my hypocrisy aside with the remark: “Why, Davis alone was worth a dozen sea-cooks. I don’t have to talk of myself.”

His experiences in Cuba were scarcely more supportable than this unpropitious start. The heat was terrible, the transportation bad, and his physical condition poor. He suffered. Growling over it all, long afterward he said to me:

“From now on I mean to paint fruits and flowers. Then if I’m ordered to the scene of action I can go fearlessly.”

Until his increasing weight made it hard to find a mount, he liked to ride. He had no fear of any horse, and among men he had a man’s courage; but he had an unreasonable fear of dogs. Once, on the occasion of a men’s dinner in the early days of the bicycle’s popularity, Kemble had made a souvenir caricature for each guest. The card at Remington’s plate represented Frederic in the costume of a bronco buster, with chaps, sombrero, and guns, riding a bicycle—a look of terror on his face. The bicycle was bucking half-way over the road, frightened at a little cotton dog on four wooden wheels. Nobody laughed more heartily over the card than Remington, and for years it had a place of honor in his studio.

The waning of his great strength was a more sensitive subject with him than his increasing weight, which produced the condition. Gradually in our Sunday walks, the hills grew steeper for him. His favorite ruse for disguising the strain on him was to stop occasionally and survey the landscape:

“Look there, Tommy, how that land lies. I could put a company of men back of that stone wall and hold it against a thousand until they flanked me.”

As with the Southern gentleman who used to look out of the window after passing the decanter to his guest, it was the part of friendship on these occasions to multiply details of the supposititious fortifications until the commander regained his wind.

One Sunday morning in those later days I went with him to the office of an osteopathic physician who was treating him. The osteopath was a slight man and not tall. Remington, lying face downward on the operating-table, presented a skyline so much higher than that of the average patient that the doctor standing on the floor lacked the angle of pressure necessary to his treatment. The doctor therefore mounted a chair, from which he stepped to the table, and finally sat astride of Remington, applying his full weight to the manipulation which he was giving to the spinal column.

Copyright by Mrs. Frederic Remington. From a photograph by Davis and Sanford.

“THE BRONCO BUSTER”

FROM THE SCULPTURE BY FREDERIC REMINGTON

“I hope I’m not hurting you, Mr. Remington?” said the doctor. Remington answered:

“It’s all right, Doctor—so long as—you don’t—use your spurs.”

Early in his occupancy of the New Rochelle home—perhaps in 1895—he added to his house a studio. This room was twenty by forty feet on the floor, and twenty feet to the roof-tree. A big skylight was in one pitch of the roof; windows with the sills breast-high were on one end, and one side wall. The second end had a double door big enough to admit a horse, or to be opened wide as he painted the horse in the open air outside. All four walls of the studio were covered, above doors and windows and in their dead spaces, with military and Indian and Mexican trappings of all descriptions from spurs to war-bonnets; there were guns of every kind ever carried by an American soldier; all kinds of swords and bridles, saddles, belts, canteens, and cartridge-boxes, powder-horns, bayonets, and knives; there were war clubs, tomahawks, bows, arrows, spears, tom-toms, pipes, scalps, and the wands of medicine-men; moccasins, blankets, beaded deerskins, and the skulls of buffalo, mountain goats, and American carnivora; sombreros, quirts, horsehair lassos, chaps, serapes, ollas, mats, pots, and baskets; in short, not prints or catalogues, but, for all that he might need for any Western picture, the veritable thing itself. He knew the troop and tribe and time and latitude of each. Accuracy in their use was his religion. In his chosen field he abhorred anachronisms. There was considerable éclat over the exhibition of a painting by a new-comer. The subject showed in an Indian fight the rescue of one trooper by another. Remington took one look at it and turned away in disgust. Bits of arms, uniforms, and harness that had never met outside of a museum were assembled in the picture. To the ordinary observer their association was harmonious; but to his expert eye it was falsehood and fake.

In the four arts which he essayed—letters, illustration, painting, and sculpture—Remington was self-taught. His writing was soon abandoned because it was not easy to him, and was not so remunerative as was drawing done in the same time. He had something to say, however, when he did write, and he had an attractive and a graphic style. Great good nature and wholesomeness showed through his lines, and he wrote always from the inside of his subject. It is not the province of this rambling anecdotal recollection of him to attempt an appreciation or a criticism of his art, but one may with propriety note the rapidity with which he overcame the initial difficulties of his tasks and outgrew the unavoidable mistakes of the beginner. Thumbing the older numbers of the magazines in which his earliest illustrations appear,[2] notably those of the Roosevelt articles, one sees that the salient marks of the novice, the small hands and feet of his figures, soon disappear, and in their stead the vigorous members of a master are employed.

Drawn by Frederic Remington

“I TOOK YE FOR AN INJIN”

Remington’s first work was in black-and-white India-ink washes. He was skilled with the pen, but to achieve values by multiplied strokes was foreign to both temperament and training. As those technically informed are aware, but as not all readers know, his illustrations, like all printed pictures, since the direct drawing upon boxwood and lithographic stone was superseded, were made on a large scale and reduced by photographic processes to the size needed for the printed page. He usually worked on a cardboard twenty-four by thirty inches, or thereabout, in size. From black-and-white washes he advanced to black-and-white in oils, and again from these to canvases of such color in flat fields as lent themselves to the earlier reproductions for magazine covers and double pages. During all of this time he was acquiring a technic that grew through the various stages of his contemporaries’ estimate from rebuke to admiration.

Half-tone plate engraved by H. C. Merrill

THE PACK-HORSE MEN REPELLING AN ATTACK BY INDIANS

FROM THE PAINTING BY FREDERIC REMINGTON

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It was an exhibition of Charles Rolla Peters’s moonlights, about 1894, that gave Remington his most serious wish to paint. The mystery of these efforts and their largeness were keyed to the mute though not inglorious poet in him. He came to see and to master the nuances of the moon’s witchery in all her moods. It was interesting to follow his awakened and developing sense of color. Nature on that side made more and more appeal to him, until in our Sunday-morning and weekday-evening tramps the tints of sky and field and road almost totally dislodged the phantom soldiery from the hillsides.

About 1896 Ruckstuhl, the sculptor, set up a tent on a vacant lot back of our place at New Rochelle, New York, and began in clay the construction of the half-size model for the heroic equestrian statue of General Hartranft that now stands in bronze in front of the State-house at Harrisburg. It was Remington’s first intimate view of sculpture in the making. The horse especially interested him. During the two months that the sculptor labored, Remington made daily visits to the Ruckstuhl tent. The following winter I was sitting one day in his studio watching him at an illustration for some story of Owen Wister’s. He was working “chic,” that is to say, without models, and was making his first marks in charcoal. His outline began to show a cow-boy in the foreground of a bar-room shooting toward the back of the picture, into the perspective of which ran the bar and its stampeding clientele. As it occurred to him that the bulking figure of the local egotist obscured too much of other interesting detail, he quickly dusted off the drawing and reversed his characters, thereby making the aggressor stand in the background and putting the victims to the front. With equal ease he could have put his cow-boy to either side of the room. I said to him:

“Frederic, you’re not an illustrator so much as you’re a sculptor. You don’t mentally see your figures on one side of them. Your mind goes all around them.”

Not long after that he bought a set of tools. Ruckstuhl sent him a supply of modeler’s wax, and he began his “Bronco Buster.” It was characteristic of the man that his first attempt should be a subject difficult enough as a technical problem to have daunted a sculptor of experience and a master of technic. His love of the work when he got at it, his marvelous aptitude for an art in which he had never had a single lesson, are some evidence that it was possibly his métier. His few bronze groups and figures that rapidly followed “The Bronco Buster,” and his heroic equestrian monument of “The Pioneer” in Fairmont Park, are the work of one who surely would have excelled in sculpture if he had lived to follow it.

Remington thought he believed in “art for art’s sake,” but I know of nothing that he ever did in any of its departments that did not primarily attempt a story. His wish to tell something that had touched him, and tell it at first hand, was as primitive as the instinct of a caveman.

The boy in the nursery wants something that will go. There is a kinship in Remington’s frequently expressed choice of an epitaph:

“He Knew the Horse.”

His death occurred December 26, 1909. On January 1, 1912, the present Democratic administration of New Rochelle was formally installed. It transacted no business that day except to pass a resolution requesting the New Haven Railroad, which was constructing a new station near Remington’s old home, to call that stop “Remington Place.” The railroad graciously complied. Remington’s fellow sculptor, Robert Aitken, has under way a portrait bust of him and four pedestal bas-reliefs. This monument is to be set up fronting the station, and perhaps it, too, will carry that commemorating phrase.

[2] See THE CENTURY for January, April, July, and August, 1889, June, 1896, and February, 1902.

Half-tone plate engraved by H. Davidson

“PEGGY”

FROM THE MARBLE BUST BY EVELYN BEATRICE LONGMAN

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THE AMERICAN SPINSTER

BY AGNES REPPLIER

Author of “The Fireside Sphinx,” etc.

THAT this is the Golden Age of spinsters no one will deny, and that America furnishes the soil in which these hardy plants put forth their finest bloom is equally indisputable. How many years have passed since the “antient maydes” of Boston—which term included all unmarried women older than twenty-five—were pronounced by John Dunton to be a “dismal spectacle”?[3] How many years since a few “acute and ingenious gentlewomen” in colonial Virginia had the temerity to remain single and cultivate their own tobacco plantations, for which unnatural behavior they were subjected to repeated “admonishments”? Now the “antient mayde” flaunts her freedom in the faces of those who are patiently doing their duty to the world. Now if a woman runs a successful apple-orchard or dairy-farm, her exploits are heralded far and wide, and other women write exultant papers about her, intimating that the day of the male agriculturist is virtually over. I am not sure that the attitude of our great-great-grandfathers, who jealously and somewhat fearfully guarded their prerogatives, was not more flattering to my sex than this enthusiasm evoked by achievements which in a man would not be found worthy of notice.

As for age—well, who in these years of grace is frankly and confessedly old? We no longer say, “On a l’âge de son cœur,” but “On a l’âge de sa volonté.” Jane Austen settled down to caps and spinsterhood before she was thirty. Dr. Johnson alluded to Miss Lucy Porter’s “hoary virginity” when that lady was fifty-two. The Ettrick Shepherd stubbornly protested that “to ca’ a woman saxty, and then mainteen that ye didna ca’ her auld, is naething short o’ a sophism.” But now no one gets beyond middle age, or “the prime of life.” I have heard a Boston spinster of eighty-two (a remarkable woman, I admit) casually spoken of as middle-aged; and when, in a desperate resolve to push matters to an issue, I said: “Miss D—is not middle-aged; she is old. If you are not old when you are eighty-two, when are you old?” the remark was taken in ill part. “I should not dream of calling Miss D—old,” said one gallant Bostonian, and all his hearers agreed with him.

The French spinster is a negligible factor. The English spinster has conquered her territory and become a force to be reckoned with. But the American spinster is the standard-bearer of the tribe. Her incessant activities and her radiant self-satisfaction have made her appear more dominant than she is, and have caused her critics much needless apprehension. When Mrs. Van Vorst wrote, in 1903, “Our factories are full of old maids, our colleges are full of old maids, our ball-rooms in the worldly centers are full of old maids,” Americans read these words with placid unconcern. They had given too many wedding presents in their day to have any doubts anent the permanent popularity of marriage. But English readers, who are ever prone to be literal, appear to have accepted Mrs. Van Vorst’s statements au pied de la lettre. Mr. Marriott Watson, chilled to the heart—as well he might be—by the vision of a ballroom destitute alike of girls and matrons, wrote for the “Nineteenth Century” a severe and agitated protest. He asserted that a woman’s “functions” “alone excuse or explain her existence,”—which is one way of looking at the matter; and he pointed out that American women are the most remote the world can show from the primitive and savage type which represents the dynamic force of a race.

The mere fact that the American spinster is so often and so sharply censured marks the strength of her position. No one dreams of censuring the French vieille fille or the German jungfrau. These victims of fate meet with scorn or sympathy, according to the taste and breeding of commentators. In either case, their lives are registered as failures. Nothing can rob the German woman of those vital sensibilities which center in the home and family. “Every great movement of the Teutonic soul,” says Mr. Havelock Ellis, “has been rooted in emotion.” If the women of Germany are demanding “rights,” and demanding them with no uncertain voice, it is because they seek to meet their responsibilities with authority. The sphere of home and child-rearing is their sphere, and they purpose to rule in it.

It is not possible for the Frenchwoman, who understands the structure of society, to welcome spinsterhood. “All her instincts of expansion,” says that acute observer Mr. William Crary Brownell, “are hostile to it. There is no more provision in the French social constitution than in the order of nature itself for the old maid.” Therefore, as the twin passions of the French heart are to be in rational accord with nature and in rational accord with social life, the unmarried woman has no alternative but to feel herself doubly incomplete. She is unstirred by the American woman’s vaulting ambition to be man’s rival, or by an uneasy envy of man’s estate. Perhaps it is because a French girl never regrets her sex that France has produced more eminent women than any other nation in the world. Certainly the only man who ever had the courage to say he would like to be a woman (a beautiful woman, he stipulated) was that distinguished Frenchman M. Jules Lemaître.

No one since De Quincey has spoken so generously of the English spinster as has Mr. John B. Atkins in the pages of THE CENTURY. He does not, like so many of his contemporaries, accuse her of gross selfishness. He does not deny her the right to control her own life. He goes so far as to say that she may use it to good purpose, and extract from it some measure of content. He points out the philanthropic paths which it should be her duty and her pleasure to tread. He draws a pleasing picture of the maiden aunt giving to nieces and nephews—to nephews especially—her sympathy and comradeship. Sir Leslie Stephen says that “Woman to a boy is simply an incumbrance upon reasonable modes of life,” and it is to be feared that many women—aunts and others—have the same doubtful regard for boys. But British sentimentality demands of the old maid, if she be a good old maid, that yearning attitude toward other people’s children which marks her as “womanly” and earns for her the tolerance of the world.

The American spinster is seldom sentimental, which is in her favor, and she is seldom emotional, which is both gain and loss. Her attenuation of feeling lessens her charm and influence, but serves to keep her in accord with the orderly conventions of society. She is keenly competitive, and eager for new fields of activity; but she can read Ellen Key’s “Love and Marriage” with intelligent detachment. She cries occasionally for the moon, but she is in no immediate danger of scorching her fingers by trying to play with the sun.

The flexibility of American social life gives to the unmarried woman an assured position which has no counterpart in the older civilizations. She may be an anomaly in nature, but she is in perfect accord with her more or less agreeable surroundings. She has no background to give repute and distinction to her rôle; but she infuses into it her own persuasive personality. She stands free from the common obligations of her sex, but she does work which is well worth doing, and she not infrequently adds to the gaiety of life. “Of how many homes,” says Mr. Brownell, “is she not the decorously decorative ornament! She may have courted or have drifted into her position of dignified singleness; it is in either case equally sure that she has not considered her estate incomplete in itself, or disengaged from the structure of society.”

As a matter of fact, she is wont to feel herself—birth and fortune permitting—a pillar of society. It is no question with her of wasted force or blighted vitality. It is a question of directing her superabundant energy into those channels where she can accomplish measurable results. She seeks and finds a constructive human existence remote from marriage and maternity. The French or German woman remains unmarried because the unkindly fates have so decreed. The English woman occasionally assists fate from sheer love of independence. “The most ordinarie cause of a single life,” says Bacon, “is liberty, especially in certain self-pleasing and humorous minds.” But it is surely reserved for the American woman to remain unmarried because she feels herself too good for matrimony, too valuable to be intrusted to a husband’s keeping. Her attitude bears some resemblance to that of Mademoiselle de Montpensier, who wrote with praiseworthy conviction: “I may say without vanity that just Heaven would not bestow such a woman as myself upon a man who was unworthy of her.”

This is not idle jesting. Would it be possible in any country save our own for a lady to write to a periodical, explaining, “Why I am an Old Maid,” and be paid coin of the realm for the explanation? Would it be possible in any other country to hear such a question as “Should the Gifted Woman Marry?” seriously asked, and seriously answered? Would it be possible for any sane and thoughtful woman who was not an American to consider even the remote possibility of our spinsters becoming a detached class, who shall form “the intellectual and economic élite of the sex, and leave marriage and maternity for the less developed woman”? What has become of the belief, as old as humanity, that marriage and maternity are highly developing processes, forcing into flower a woman’s latent potentialities; and that the less developed woman is inevitably the woman who has escaped this keen and powerful stimulus. “Never,” says Edmond de Goncourt, “has a virgin, young or old, produced a work of art.” One makes allowance for the Latin point of view. And it is probable that M. de Goncourt never read “Emma.”

Signor Ferrero, contemplating the unmarried women of England, those amazing creatures who “devote themselves to sterility, not from religious motives, but from sheer calculation” (which is also a Latin point of view), has recorded his conviction that they will make themselves felt as a force, and has expressed his genuine dismay as to the possible results of their activity. He has even confessed to some whimsical misgivings lest Italian and Sicilian women should acquire this Saxon taste for spinsterhood. Yet England is emphatically a man’s country—which France has never been—and its attitude toward marriage is a robustly masculine attitude, as unacceptable to the French as to the American woman. There is no attempt anywhere to gloss over this rude fact. The Englishman believes with Mr. Kipling:

“He travels the fastest who travels alone.”

He echoes the verdict of Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson, “Marriage narrows and damps the spirits of generous men.” “The position of a single man,” says a stout-hearted writer in the “Contemporary Review,” “is in itself envied and applauded; that of a single woman certainly is not. To every woman marriage is still accounted a promotion. There may be counterbalancing circumstances, but to be married is, in itself, an object of desire and a subject for congratulation.”

In the good old days when English spinsters softened the reproach of spinsterhood by borrowing the prefix “Mrs.,” as did those excellent ladies, Mrs. Hannah More and Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, the position of a single man was neither envied nor applauded. He was held to be (if of decent life,—much allowance was made for rakes) only a little less contemptible than a single woman. “The pain and the opprobrium o’ defunckin an auld bachelor,” writes the Ettrick Shepherd, expressing after his hardy fashion the sentiment of his time. Dr. Johnson firmly maintained that marriage was more necessary for a man than for a woman, because a woman could make herself comfortable and a man could not. The responsibility for the more modern and more supercilious masculine attitude must be placed where it belongs,—on the shoulders of the Englishwoman, who has accepted the creed that for her marriage is a promotion, and that “counterbalancing circumstances” should not be held to weigh too heavily in the scale. As Dean Hole’s friend said to him, when congratulated on her daughter’s engagement: “To be sure, Jenny hates the man, but then there’s always something.”

Miss Austen was the most veracious of chroniclers, one who with careful self-control refused to wander beyond the area of her own observation; but there is nothing in American fiction, and very little, I fancy, in the fiction of any land, which is comparable to the marriage of Charlotte Lucas and Mr. Collins. Many novelists have made easy copy of husband-hunting. It is a favorite theme with Trollope, who treats it with ruthless cynicism, and it is a not uncommon element in modern story-telling. But Charlotte Lucas staggers us. Miss Austen calls her “sensible and intelligent.” She is also well-bred, clear-headed, and kind. She is Elizabeth Bennet’s chosen friend. And she marries Mr. Collins! Marries him with alacrity, and with permanent satisfaction. If there be any one episode in life and letters which is calculated to reconcile us to the rapid increase of spinsterhood in England and America, it is the amazing fact that Jane Austen not only married Charlotte Lucas to Mr. Collins, but plainly considered it a not unnatural thing for her to do.

Ten years ago, when a rage for compiling useless statistics swept over Europe and the United States, it occurred to some active minds that children should be made to bear their part in the guidance of the human race. Accordingly a series of questions—some sensible and some foolish—were put to English, German, and American school children, and their enlightening answers were given to the world. One of these questions read: “Would you rather be a man or a woman, and why?” Naturally this query was of concern only to little girls. No sane educator would ask it of a boy. Even Jules Lemaître at twelve must have shared the convictions of his fellows. German pedagogues, be it noted, struck the question off the list. They said that to ask a child, “Would you rather be something you must be, or something you cannot possibly be?” was both foolish and useless. Interrogations concerning choice were of value only when the will was a determining factor.

In this country no such logical inference chilled the examiner’s zeal. The question was asked and was answered, and we discovered as a result that a great many little American girls (a minority, to be sure, but a respectable minority,) were well content with their sex; not because it had its duties and dignities, its pleasures and exemptions; but because they plainly considered that they were superior to little American boys, and were destined, when grown up, to be superior to American men. One small New England maiden wrote that she would rather be a woman because “Women are always better than men in morals.” Another, because “Women are more use in the world.” A third, because “Women learn things quicker than men, and have more intelligence.” And so on through varying degrees of self-sufficiency. “Lord, gie us a gude conceit o’ ourselves!” prayed the Scotchman, who knew the value of assurance.

Now certainly these little girls were old maids in the making. They had stamped upon them in their tender infancy the hall-mark of the American spinster. In a few more years they will be writing papers on “The Place of Unmarried Women in the World’s Work,” and reading addresses on “The Woman of Intellect: her Duty to Herself and to the State.” There is a formidable lack of humor in this easy confidence, in the somewhat contemptuous attitude of women whose capacities have not yet been tested, toward men who stand responsible for the failures of the world. It denotes, at home or abroad, a density not far removed from dullness. In that dreary little Irish drama, “Mixed Marriages,” which the Dublin actors played in New York two years ago, an old woman, presumed to be witty and wise, said to her son’s betrothed: “Sure, I believe the Lord made Eve when He saw that Adam could not take care of himself”; and the remark, while received with applause, reflected painfully upon the absence of that humorous sense which we used to think was the birthright of Irishmen. The too obvious retort which nobody uttered, but which everybody must have thought, was that if Eve had been designed as a care-taker, she had made a shining failure of her job.

It is conceded, theoretically at least, that woman’s sphere is an elastic term, comprising any work she is able to do well. Therefore, it may be that American spinsters, keen, college-bred, ambitious, and, above all, free, are destined to compete vigorously and permanently with men. They are, we are told, the only women who can give themselves unreservedly to work, and from them alone enduring results are to be expected. Yet it is at least worthy of notice that most of the successful business women of France,—Mme. Clicquot-Ponsardin, Mme. Pommery, Mme. Dumas, Mme. Bernet, Mme. Boucicault,—have been either married women who were their husbands’ partners, or widows who took upon their capable shoulders the burden of their dead husbands’ cares. They were also mothers who, with the definite aims and practical instincts of their race, projected themselves into the future, and wove out of their own pursuits the fabric of their children’s lives.

At present the American spinster is in a transition stage, a stage so replete with advantages that we may be permitted to hope it will last long. She has escaped from the chimney-corner, and is not yet shut up in banks and offices. She does a reasonable amount of work, and embraces every reasonable opportunity of enjoyment. She gratifies her own tastes, and cherishes her natural affinities. She sometimes cultivates her mind, and she never breaks her heart. She is the best of friends, and she has leisure for companionship. She is equally free from l’esprit gaulois and from “les mœurs de vestales pétrifiées,” which are the Scylla and Charybdis of the French vieille fille. She is content with a contentment which the German jungfrau neither understands nor envies. She is assured with an assurance unknown to the experienced English old maid. She is, as I have said, the standard-bearer of her tribe, and the pibroch to which she marches blithely through life has the ring of the old Covenanting song:

“That a’ the world may see

There’s nane in the right but we.”

All this is far removed, as Mr. Marriott Watson warns us, from the savage and primitive woman, who represents the dynamic force of a race. But who shall ring the bells backward? And who shall reconcile the primitive woman to the exigencies and formalities of civilization? Some years ago in South Carolina I came to know and love an old Negro “mammy,” a wise, fat, kind, mysterious old mammy, whose heart was soft, whose touch was healing, whose voice was like a lullaby, and whose experiences would have colored half a dozen ordinary lives. Her sister, the laundress, was one day under discussion, and I asked, with more than my customary ineptitude: “Aunt Cordelia, is Caroline an old maid?”

Aunt Cordelia turned upon me a look in which contempt for my ignorance blended with a deep acceptance and understanding of life as she had known it, unfiltered, unsheltered, unevasive. “Laws, honey,” she said, “we’s no ole maids. Some’s married, and some isn’t; but we’s no ole maids.”

[3] “Life and Errors of John Dunton,” 1705.

PRAYERS FOR THE LIVING

BY MARY W. PLUMMER

O SOUL of all souls whitest, what need’st thou

Of solemn masses who with angel choirs

Dost chant enraptured thy most pure desires,

And to the heavenly will, as erst on earth, dost bow?

What can I ask for thee, in halting prayer,

Heavy with grief, that could increase thy bliss?

What in thy perfectness can be amiss

Who grewest to angelhood all unaware?

Rather, pray thou for me. And when ye stand,

Making petition, folding wing on wing,

Drooping your eyes before the glory-light,

Think, if thou may’st, on him who, wandering

Along the lower way, hath lost thy hand,

Yet seeketh for thy footprints day and night!

THE COMING SNEEZE

BY HARRY STILLWELL EDWARDS

Author of “Sons and Fathers,” “Two Runaways,” etc.

WHAT it really was that twisted Aunt Tildy’s features into the anxious expression which inevitably waits on an approaching sneeze, no one, it is likely, will ever discover, though several plausible explanations have been offered; but twisted they were, early in life, and for all time Aunt Tildy was condemned to face the world with wrinkles on her forehead, lifted brows, a ruffled nose, half-closed eyes, and a drawn mouth. The theory of an arrested sneeze was advanced many years ago by Tim Broggins, who still sits around the cotton warehouse and, while he whittles white pine splinters and chews tobacco, is wont to settle all questions as they arise. Tim knows everything worth knowing and probably some things that are not; and of course he knew what was the trouble with Aunt Tildy’s face.

“Hit’s er comin’ sneeze, that’s what!” said he once, when Aunt Tildy, passing in her little country buggy, drew comment after her. “Hit’s er comin’ sneeze! Hit’s er sollum fac’, gentlemen, that Aunt Tildy ain’t been known ter sneeze in her whole life. She started oncet erlong back in th’ sixties; got her face twisted jes right, looked at th’ sun an’ was er-strainin’ of her corsits when somebody hollered ‘Cyclone!’ She’d been in one cyclone that like ter drug her hair out by th’ roots, an’ when she heard th’ name ag’in, she jes natchully hunted cover an’ forgot to pull ’er face together. When th’ cyclone passed, hit were too late. She ain’t never sneeze’ sence that day. Thought I’d try her some time with snuff or red pepper an’ see if hit wouldn’t tech ’er off an’ straighten out things; but hit’s done growed that erway now. The thing is sot an’ fixed!”

Aunt Tildy, however, did not let the tangled condition of her features interfere with business. From the profits of her little farm and country store she managed to sustain herself admirably; to educate and marry off her niece and lay up a competency for old age. It mattered not how hard the times, how poor the crops, and how bad were general collections, there was seldom a day when she did not have money in bank to loan at legal interest on exceptional collateral. With her bonnet pushed back, her fat umbrella grasped by its middle, and her little worn bag, she was a familiar figure in town on most Saturdays.

It was on a Saturday that Aunt Tildy and handsome Jack Cromby met for the first time, and Jack heard from Tim Broggins the old legend of the coming sneeze. Jack was the wide-awake and pushing representative of an up-State snuff factory, and was flooding the county with little red labeled tin boxes that contained samples of its product.

“Tell yer what, Jack,” said Tim, as he passed his knife-blade under a delicate curl of pine to the end of his splinter, “ef you was ter git th’ ole lady’s face on your boxes an’ call it ‘The Comin’ Sneeze’ brand, hit would ketch th’ town. Say, Jack! why ’n’t you try er little of the stuff on her, anyhow? Seems ter me ef you could jes git her up-town on the Court-House Square whar folks could see it all, an’ git her to turn loose that sneeze that’s been er hangin’ fire forty years, you’d sell er million! I ain’t er-sayin’ yo’ ole stuff could reach it, but it mout. My private opinion is that when that sneeze do come, hit’ll have ter be broke up with dynamite firs’ an’ then took out of her system piece by piece. Still, as I said, yo’ pertickerlar brand of tickler mout tech it off!”

Jack laughed heartily at the drollery of the wag; and then, the spirit of commercial enterprise taking possession of him, he suddenly grew serious.

“Not a bad idea, Tim—that about the picture. Think of the big ones to hang in the window—three colors—‘The coming sneeze’! And what a trade-mark! By George! I wonder whether I can get a photograph of her.”

“Dunno ’bout that. But I did hear John Belton who runs the gallery up-town say as how las’ week he took some to sen’ to her niece out in Texas. Maybe you mout git hold o’ one ef you go ’bout it right. But looker here, Jack!—don’t you git me mixed up in this thing! Lord! She run down that sneeze joke o’ mine ten years ago an’ sech er tongue lashin’!—Keep me out o’ hit er I’ll call you er liar, sho’!”

“I’ll keep you out, Tim. Belton, did you say?”

“Yes—John Belton. He’ll let you have one of the pictur’s, mebbe, ef you don’t tell what you want with hit. Ef you tell him that, he wouldn’t sell you one fer no price—’cause Belton wants ter live erwhile yet.”

Jack Cromby finessed. He had his own picture taken, being now thoroughly carried away with the advertising scheme, and voluntarily paid cash in advance. He then begged of the well-pleased artist one of Aunt Tildy’s,—to “send away to some friends.” In after days—though it is a shameful thing to print—he very generously assisted the unfortunate Belton to erect a barricade of fiction between himself and his outraged patron.

Jack’s one great error in discretion, after embarking on this perilous enterprise, was committed when he confided his plans to a young belle of the community. Handsome, dashing, well-dressed, and generous, Jack was a favorite, and numbered his sweethearts by dozens up and down the road. Among these was Miss Pinkie Appleby, selected by him in an evil moment to become the joint custodian of his mature plans touching Aunt Tildy’s likeness. Of course, Miss Pinkie laughed. What girl would not, in the circumstances? How could the innocent joke, as Jack described it, in any way injure Aunt Tildy? And what girl would not have promptly confided the secret to several intimates whom Jack had not honored, with strict injunctions as to secrecy?

The little group of idlers around the warehouse were holding their usual morning conversation when Aunt Tildy’s vehicle turned the corner at a pace that caused all four wheels to slide sidewise and give forth a harsh warning. Tim Broggins suspended his whittling a moment, looked at the broad scar left in the dust, and suffered his contemplative gaze to follow the receding figure in the buggy.

“What ails Tildy?” The question came from Judge Oglesby, whose two hundred and fifty pounds were waiting upright in a broad chair while his justice court threatened to convene. “Sorter flustered, ’pears to me.” He crossed his fat hands on his hickory cane and rested them against his zone of greatest circumference, blinking, as the dust began to float in.

“I wonder!—I wonder!” said Tim, reflectively, as he resumed his interrupted occupation. “Now, gentlemen, I’m goin’ ter give er guess; an’ watch me hit the nail on the head! Jedge, you know how ol’ Squire Jones laugh’ erbout that sneeze picture las’ night, an’ how drunk he were?”

“Squire was putty drunk, Tim. Worse ’n usual.”

“Well, now, I bet squire stop’ an’ tole Aunt Tildy all erbout hit! Right on his way home, her store is, an’ most gener’ly he begins to ricollec’ things he was to bring back ’bout time he gits there! Aunt Tildy gits er big trade o’ that sort. Hit’s a good soberin’-up stan’ for fellows goin’ thet erway an’ totin’ too much of the brand o’ O-be-joyful they buy eroun’ town. Yes, sir, squire tole ’er cert’in—dad blast his ol’ skin, he had oughter be lynched! Where’d she pull up, Jedge?”

“Lawyer Thomas’s office!”

“Thar now! She ain’t got no common business on ’er mind ter-day! This ain’t no mortgage, gentlemen, ner no jumpin’ account case. This is fight. She’s done cross the line an’ got on the criminal side o’ th’ docket, Jedge. Let’s go an’ stan’ eroun’ an’ see what’s up!”

But if the idlers sought excitement, they failed to get it. Aunt Tildy, after half an hour spent in consultation with her lawyer, issued from his office and, with one withering glance at the group, climbed into her buggy. When she turned it about, it slid as before, only this time the sound that came back seemed a defiance. Tim surveyed the little drama with intense interest.

“See ’er cut the horse, Jedge—three times ’twixt crossings! Mad? Dad blast my skin, she’s jes natchully er hornet now! Hit’s squire’s work.”

The pictures arrived a week or two later. They set the town wild with laughter. Merchants, clerks, and customers came out on the sidewalks up and down the single business street and exchanged criticisms after an ancient fashion of town people. There was Aunt Tildy, sure enough, in the act of holding a box of snuff; and there was the old, familiar, coming, but long delayed, sneeze! The supply of pictures was exhausted in thirty minutes. At ten o’clock they brought fifty cents each; at eleven, a dollar; and at noon Tim Broggins sold his copy to the town bank for one dollar and a half. The cashier was Aunt Tildy’s agent.

The laughter, which began down-town, spread over the dinner-hour up-town and rippled over the county for a week. No more striking advertisement had ever been put forth in that region. No other snuff could touch the trade. “The Coming Sneeze” brand had won and held the market.

Then one day Lawyer Thomas took the train for Macon and filed suit for $10,000, as damages direct and punitive, against the snuff company for infringement of copyright. For, on the day Aunt Tildy had come to town so angry, she had bought the negative of Belton and applied through him for a copyright on her own face as portrayed in that photograph. “The Coming Sneeze” was her own personal property.

After this fact became known, the idlers took their hats off and cheered Aunt Tildy whenever she passed. Her sole recognition of their friendliness was an abortive smile that flickered for an instant against the background of the coming sneeze.

Tim became oracular.

“Tell you what, boys!—Jedge—that’s er new p’int in law, on me! Don’t er man or er woman own his own face? Fer an instance, has er man got ter put his face on er record like er guano contrac’ or mule mortgidge befo’ he can pertec’ hisself? Dad blast my skin, nobody ain’t safe! I’m er goin’ right up-town an’ git my pictur’ struck off an’ patented now! Some o’ these smarties like Jack Cromby’ll be comin’ erlong here bime-by an’ er gittin’ me onter er Christmas cyard, an’ you on er valentine!” Tim laughed silently. “Po’ Jack!” he said. “Always did lack jedgment an’ allus will, I reck’n!”

Jack Cromby’s experience with the managers of his snuff company is not a matter of public record. He may have suffered criticism or he may have convinced them that their product was getting, throughout the rural districts for which it was manufactured, an advertisement worth all it might cost. If the airing of Aunt Tildy’s complaint was not confined to a city office and its spectacular values lost in the multiplicity of graver legal causes, the snuff company would not suffer much, if any. A local hearing would give him a chance to fill a column of the town’s weekly paper with a carefully prepared report of the trial, which report would be quoted in full in all the rural weeklies of the State. The advertisement department of his company would see to that.

The transference of Aunt Tildy’s case to her home county was easily effected. Lawyer Thomas was after a verdict in her favor, and perhaps was not unmindful of the advertising feature as concerned himself, and greatly preferred the home atmosphere.

The reappearance of Jack on the scene, therefore, betrayed no evidence of chagrin. On the contrary, his step was a little more elastic, his head held a bit higher, his movements were quicker, and his salutes and greetings full of cheer. Resiliency was written all over him; the sunrise was on his face.

“Now ding blast his imperdunce!” said Broggins one day when Jack, passing on the opposite side of the street, had waved a hand to them joyously and shouted a greeting: “Hello, Tim! Hello, Judge! Major, how are you? See you boys later!”—“ding blast his imperdunce! What’s he got up his sleeve now? Jack! Oh, Jack!” he called lazily.

“What’s the matter, Tim?”

“Got you going some—ain’t they?”

“Not—on—your—life, Tim! Watch me!”

Aunt Tildy’s case, by consent, came up in her own town before a special master appointed by the court.

Long before the hour set for the hearing arrived, people began to appear on the scene. Every wagon-yard, every vacant lot was crowded with vehicles; every horse-rack and hitching-post was in use. There had been great days in town before; Robinson’s old one-ring circus had occasionally depopulated the rural district in its favor, and at another time the political contest between Democrats and Populists and Tom Watson’s impassioned speeches had made it the storm-center of excitement. But no such crowd ever had assembled within the incorporated limits as that which gathered to see Aunt Tildy through in her brave assault on the enemy. The special master had elected to hear the issue in a private office, but indignant public opinion drove him into the court-house and to the bench, where he was soon surrounded by an eager crowd so dense that breathing became difficult despite the fact that all the court-room windows were open.

Drawn by F. R. Gruger Half-tone plate engraved by R. C. Collins

“‘WELL, NOW, I BET SQUIRE STOP’ AN’ TOLE AUNT TILDY ALL ERBOUT HIT!’”

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Not half the visitors secured entrance. The majority gathered around the building in the public square, men, women, and children, and took, second-hand, from those who struggled exhausted out of the doors, such reports of the proceedings as were not borne to their ears direct on the vibrant air. Buggies, wagons, carryalls, and the grass afforded seats, and the good-natured crowd settled down to enjoy the day.

Within the building the master and the lawyers soon arranged preliminaries and the case was opened, Aunt Tildy sitting serenely scornful beside her lawyer and facing the curious spectators with perfect indifference. It was a long trial, stubbornly contested at every point. The defense protested against “imperfect service” and “surprise.” Both sides amended and contested each other’s amendments. Both sides “demurred” and fought each other’s demurrers. Both sides offered documentary evidence, and both sides moved to “strike out.” And there were arguments at every crisis. So the day wore along, and the people outside proceeded to dine from their baskets. They were having the best of it by far.

Finally a buzz of excitement came from within. Persons visible through the windows were observed to straighten up and face one way. The crowd on the outside were now having the worst of it.

About this time Tim Broggins, who had heretofore been in evidence chiefly around the grocery down the street, where he had all day elaborately explained between “treats” the features of Aunt Tildy’s remarkable case, as well as the Federal law governing copyrights, appeared on the scene bearing a long scaling-ladder. Tim’s approach to the building with his burden was one of the features of the case not soon forgotten. The unsteadiness of his gait, the weight and length of the ladder, and his attempts to face every one who asked him questions—there were dozens of them—produced a set of gymnastics on his part that cleared the whole north side of the square. People fled from him as from a plague, the women with babies leaving first.

Reaching the court-house, Tim made heroic efforts to place the ladder upright against the wall—a performance that convulsed his audience, then at a safe distance. The final result was, Tim went over on his back with the ladder on top of him, escaping miraculously without broken bones. Friendly hands stood up both Tim and the ladder, and presently he climbed unsteadily to the second-story window, where, after a brief survey of the court-room scene and swaying dangerously, he began to laugh.

“Jedge,” he called eagerly to Oglesby below, “come up! Come up!” The judge was about as happy as Tim, but more discreet. He shook his head and shifted his quid.

“Tell us erbout it, Tim!”

“Ol’ lady on th’ stan’, Jedge, hammerin’ away with her umberella!—Go it, Aunt Tildy!” he shouted. The master’s gavel was heard, and those within the room near the window turned and shook their heads at Tim.

“What’s she sayin’, Tim?”

“She’s jes p’intedly er-skinnin’ of Jack Cromby! ‘Oudacionest’ is the shortes’ word I’ve ketched. Go it, Aunt Tildy, I’m er bettin’ on yer! Whoopee-ee—!”

“Silence in court!” The master’s angry voice could be heard by the outsiders; and again the people at the window, gesticulating, turned on Tim, whose expostulations descended.

“Thass all right, gentlemen,—all right! I ain’t in the court ner on th’ earth ner in th’ heavens, ner in the waters unner th’—earth!” Tim made a dangerous lurch as he concluded, but swayed back into the perpendicular, while the crowd below held their breath. Then he straightened up and craned his neck over his neighbors’ heads, his sides shaking while he hammered on the ladder with his fist. The people below him were burning with curiosity and the judge grew impatient.

“How goes it, Tim?”

“Fine, Jedge! Come up!—Come up! Room at the top! Allus room at the top!”

“More room down here! What’s she sayin’ now?”

“Oh, gee! Oh, gee!—” Tim laid his head against the wall and joined loudly in the subdued laugh which rippled through the window. “This here is er circus right, Jedge! She says anybody says she ever took er pinch o’ snuff er wet er snuff-stick in her born days is er lower down houn’ th’n Jack Cromby, an’ Jack is th’ lowes’ she met in thirty years’ tradin’ with Niggers an’ po’ white trash! Jedge,—oh, Jedge!—” Tim held on with both hands for safety and let his laughter come. He finally ended it with a wild “Whoop-ee-ee!” which was followed by furious strokes of the master’s gavel and the usual pantomime in the window. These did not trouble Tim. “Jedge, you had oughter see Jack’s face now! Geminy criminy! He better keep outer the way of the ‘befo’ takin’’ man or git er patent on it quick! Hello, Jack!” He had thrust his head in the window. Somebody shook him and pushed it out. “All right, all-l-l right, gentlemen. Wouldn’t ’sturb nobody fer nothin’!”

Then the vibrant voice of Lawyer Thomas rang out clear and loud, and the attentive people in the square below needed no interpreter. His arraignment of the foreign firm which had slandered and humiliated one of the noble women of the county, his scathing denunciation of Jack Cromby, were things to talk about for years. Despite the gavel, applause followed his every rounded period, and to this applause Tim contributed each time a wild whoop that fairly split the air. When Lawyer Thomas closed with a flight of eloquence that caused the older people to mention Toombs and Linton Stevens, the applause from within was answered by cheers from without. At this climax Tim Broggins’s feet slipped, the outer cheers subsided suddenly into something like a gasp of horror, and Oglesby beat a hasty retreat. Fortunately, however, Tim lodged among the upper rounds of the ladder from which he disengaged himself only after five minutes of hard work. During his struggles to get back on the upper side of his ladder he was good-naturedly assisted by advice from the sympathetic crowd who knew a “Roman holiday” sacrifice by sight if not in terms.

But all good things as well as bad must have an end. There came a few moments of silence with evidence of close attention above.

“What’s up now, Tim?” The judge drew nearer the ladder to avoid shouting.

“Hush! The boss is talkin’!” The silence was short; presently the people in the court-room began to move excitedly and to clap hands, and once more Tim, who had regained his lost ground, uttered his “Whoopee-ee!”

“One thousan’, Jedge, one thousan’! That’s what she gits! Oh, gee!—oh, gee!” he cried, cupping one hand toward Oglesby, who had ventured back into the danger zone below.

Then a queer sound issued from within, a single sound, a shrill, high-pitched, prolonged note, so totally divorced from the masculine hubbub there that it attracted the attention of everybody. And this time the people within the court-room cheered wildly, joyously, and hilariously, shaking one another by the shoulders and slapping backs. But almost instantly there began to mingle with the cheers certain vocal explosions up and down the whole chromatic scale which, swelling in volume, finally swallowed up all other sounds, and frantic hands were seen through the windows clutching at elusive coat-tail pockets. Tim was holding to the window-sill desperately and swaying violently as he gasped for breath to answer the excited questions hurled up to him. He found it at last.

“Aunt Tildy has snee—snee—sneezed! And scattered er box over ev’ybody! The comin’ sneeze has done come! An’—an’—by gosh!—hit’s—got me—too,—Currasha-h-h-o! Kitty!” The ladder went out from under him, and he hung, sneezing, to the window-sill, while below the women shrieked.

However, no tragedy marred the day. Judge Oglesby galloped out from under the falling ladder, and responsive to the frantic appeals of women, and greatly to the relief of all, the men at the window reeled Tim in by his hair and coat-collar and trousers’ seat, despite his struggles.

“Hurrah for Tim Broggins!” yelled the delighted Oglesby from a safe distance, waving his hat. A ringing shout went up.

“Currasha-h-h-o!” faintly replied the invisible Tim.

SKIRTING THE BALKAN PENINSULA

FROM TRIEST TO CONSTANTINOPLE

FIFTH PAPER: IN CONSTANTINOPLE

BY ROBERT HICHENS

Author of “The Spell of Egypt,” “The Holy Land,” “The Garden of Allah,” etc.

WITH PICTURES BY JULES GUÉRIN (SEE FRONTISPIECE) AND PHOTOGRAPHS

CONSTANTINOPLE is beautiful and hateful. It fascinates and it repels. And it bewilders—how it bewilders! No other city that I have seen has so confused and distressed me. For days I could not release myself from the obsession of its angry tumult. Much of it seems to be in a perpetual rage, pushing, struggling, fighting, full of ugly determination to do—what? One does not know, one cannot even surmise what it desires, what is its aim, if, indeed, it has any aim. These masses of dark-eyed, suspicious, glittering people thronging its streets, rushing down its alleys, darting out of its houses, calling from its windows, muttering in its dark and noisome corners, gathering in compact, astonishing crowds in its great squares before its mosques, blackening even its waters, amid fierce noises of sirens from its innumerable steamers and yells from its violent boatmen, what is it that they want? Whither are they going in this brutal haste, these Greeks, Corsicans, Corfiotes, Montenegrins, Armenians, Jews, Albanians, Syrians, Egyptians, Arabs, Turks? They have no time or desire to be courteous, to heed any one but themselves. They push you from the pavement. They elbow you in the road. Upon the two bridges they crush past you, careless if they tread upon you or force you into the mud. If you are in a caique, traveling over the waters of the Golden Horn, they run into you. Caique bangs into caique. The boatmen howl at one another, and somehow pull their craft free. If you are in a carriage, the horses slither round the sharp corners, and you come abruptly face to face with another carriage, dashing on as yours is dashing, carelessly, scornfully, reckless apparently of traffic and of human lives. There seems to be no plan in the tumult, no conception of anything wanted quietly, toward which any one is moving with a definite, simple purpose. The noise is beyond all description. London, even New York, seems to me almost peaceful in comparison with Constantinople. There is no sound of dogs. They are all dead. But even their sickly howling, of which one has heard much, must surely have been overpowered by the uproar one hears to-day, except perhaps in the dead of night.

Soldiers seem to be everywhere. To live in Constantinople is like living in some vast camp. When I was there, Turkey was preparing feverishly for war. The streets were blocked with trains of artillery. The steamers in the harbor were vomiting forth regiments of infantry. Patrols of horsemen paraded the city. On my first night in Pera, when, weary with my efforts to obtain some general conception of what the spectacular monster really was, what it wanted, what it meant, what it was about to do, I had at length fallen asleep toward dawn, I was wakened by a prolonged, clattering roar beneath my windows. I got up, opened the shutters, and looked out. And below me, in the semi-darkness, I saw interminable lines of soldiers passing: officers on horseback, men tramping with knapsacks on their backs and rifles over their shoulders; then artillery, gun-carriages, with soldiers sitting loosely on them holding one another’s hands; guns, horses, more horses, with officers riding them; then trains of loaded mules. On and on they went, and always more were coming behind. I watched them till I was tired, descending to the darkness of Galata, to the blackness of old Stamboul.

Gradually, as the days passed by, I began to understand something of the city, to realize never what it wanted or what it really meant, but something of what it was. It seemed to me then like a person with two natures uneasily housed in one perturbed body. These two natures were startlingly different. One was to me hateful—Pera, with Galata touching it. The other was not to be understood by me, but it held me with an indifferent grasp, and from it there flowed a strange and almost rustic melancholy that I cared for—Stamboul. And between these two natures a gulf was fixed—the gulf of the Golden Horn.

From a photograph, copyright by Underwood & Underwood

THE WATER-FRONT OF STAMBOUL, WITH PERA IN THE DISTANCE

Pera is a mongrel city, set on a height and streaming blatantly to Galata; a city of discolored houses not unlike the houses of Naples; of embassies and churches; of glaring shops and cafés glittering with plate-glass, through which crafty, impudent eyes are forever staring; of noisy, unattractive hotels and wizen gardens, where bands play at stated hours, and pretentious, painted women from second-rate European music-halls posture and squall under the electric lamps. There is no rest, no peace in Pera. There seems to be no discipline. Motor-cars make noises there even in the dead of night, and when standing still, such as I never before heard or imagined. They have a special breed of cars in Pera. Bicyclists are allowed to use motor sirens to clear the way before them. One Sunday when, owing to a merciful strike of the coachmen, there was comparative calm, I saw a boy on horseback going at full gallop over the pavement of the Grande Rue. He passed and repassed me five times, lashing his horse till it was all in a lather. Nobody stopped him. You may do anything, it seems, in Pera, if it is noisy, brutal, objectionable. Pera has all that is odious of the Levant: impudence, ostentation, slyness, indelicacy, uproar, a glittering commonness. It is like a blazing ring of imitation diamonds squeezing a fat and dirty finger. But it is wonderfully interesting simply because of the variety of human types one sees there. The strange thing is that this multitude of types from all over the East and from all the nations of Europe is reduced, as it were, by Pera to a common, a very common, denominator. The influence of place seems fatal there.

From a photograph, copyright by Underwood & Underwood

A STREET OF HAREM HOMES IN CONSTANTINOPLE

Stamboul is a city of wood and of marble, of dusty, frail houses that look as if they had been run up in a night and might tumble to pieces at any moment, and of magnificent mosques, centuries old, solid, huge, superb, great monuments of the sultans. The fire-tower of Galata looks toward the fire-tower of Stamboul across a forest of masts; but no watchfulness, no swiftness of action, can prevent flames from continually sweeping through Stamboul, leaving waste places behind them, but dying at the feet of the mosques. As one looks at Stamboul from the heights of Pera, it rises on its hills across the water, beyond the sea of the Golden Horn, like a wonderful garden city, warm, almost ruddy, full of autumnal beauty, with its red-brown roofs and its trees. And out of its rich-toned rusticity the mosques heave themselves up like leviathans that have nothing in common with it; the Mosque of Santa Sophia, of the Sultan Achmet, with its six exquisite minarets, of Mohammed the Conqueror, of Suleiman the Magnificent, and how many others!

From a photograph, copyright by Underwood & Underwood

GALATA BRIDGE, WHICH CONNECTS GALATA AND PERA

There is no harmony between the mosques of Stamboul and the houses of Stamboul. The former are enduring and grand; the latter, almost like houses of cards. And yet Stamboul is harmonious, is very beautiful. Romance seems brooding over it, trailing lights and shadows to clothe it with flame and with darkness. It holds you, it entices you. It sheds upon you a sense of mystery. What it has seen, Stamboul! What it has known! What a core of red violence that heart has and always has had! When the sunset dies away among the autumnal houses and between the minarets that rise above the city like prayers; when the many cypresses that echo the minarets in notes of dark green become black, and the thousands of houses seem to be subtly run together into a huge streak of umber above the lights at the waterside; when Seraglio Point stretches like a shadowy spear toward the Bosporus and the Black Sea, and the coasts of Asia fade away in the night, old Stamboul murmurs to you with a voice that seems to hold all secrets, to call you away from the world of Pera to the world of Aladdin’s lamp. Pera glitters in the night and cries out to heaven. Old Stamboul wraps itself in a black veil and withdraws where you may not follow.

THE COURTYARD OF THE “PIGEON’S MOSQUE”

FROM THE PAINTING MADE FOR THE CENTURY BY JULES GUÉRIN

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When I think of Constantinople as a whole, as seen, say, from the top of the Galata tower, set up by the Genoese, I think of it as the most wonderful, the most beautiful, and the most superbly situated city I ever have seen.

It is an Eastern city of the sea, pierced by water at its heart, giving itself to the winds from Marmora, from the Golden Horn, from the Bosporus, from the Black Sea. The snows of Asia look upon it across the blue waters of Marmora, where the Iles des Princes sleep in a flickering haze of gold. Stamboul climbs, like Rome, to the summits of seven hills, and gazes over the great harbor, crowded with a forest of masts, echoing with sounds of the sea, to Galata, and to Pera on the height. And the Golden Horn narrows to the sweet waters of Europe, but broadens toward Seraglio Point into the Bosporus, that glorious highway of water between Europe and Asia, lined with the palaces and the villas of sultans and pashas, of Eastern potentates and of the European Powers: Yildiz, and Dolma bagtché, Beylerbey, and Cheragan, the great palace of the Khedive of Egypt’s mother, with its quay upon the water, facing the villa of her son, which stands on the Asian shore, lifted high amid its woods, the palace of the “sweet waters of Asia,” the gigantic red-roofed palace where Ismail died in exile. Farther on toward Therapia, where stand the summer embassies of the Powers, Robert College, dignified, looking from afar almost like a great gray castle, rises on its height above its sloping gardens. Gaze from any summit upon Constantinople, and you are amazed by the wonder of it, by the wonder of its setting. There is a vastness, a glory of men, of ships, of seas, of mountains, in this grand view which sets it apart from all other views of the world. Two seas send it their message. Two continents give of their beauty to make it beautiful. Two religions have striven to sanctify it with glorious buildings. In the midst of its hidden squalor and crime rises what many consider the most beautiful church—now a mosque—in the world. Perhaps no harbor in Europe can compare with its harbor. For human and historical interest it can scarcely be equaled. In the shadow of its marvelous walls, guarded by innumerable towers and girdled by forests of cypresses, it lies like some great magician, glittering, mysterious, crafty, praying, singing, intriguing, assassinating, looking to East and West, watchful, and full of fanaticism.

I crossed the new bridge. The famous old timber bridge, which rocks under your feet, has been moved up the Golden Horn, and now spans the sea by the marine barracks. Evening was falling; a wind had brought clouds from the Black Sea. The waters were colorless, and were licked into fretful wavelets, on which the delicate-pointed caiques swayed like leaves on a tide. Opposite to me, at the edge of Stamboul, the huge Mosque of Yeni-Validé-Jamissi rose, with its crowd of cupolas large and small and its prodigious minarets. Although built by two women, it looked stern and male, seemed to be guarding the bridge, to be proclaiming to all the mongrels from Galata and Pera, who hurried from shore to shore, that Stamboul will make no compromise with the infidel, that in the great space before this mosque the true East in Europe begins.

Russia was in the wind, I thought. The breath of the steppes was wandering afar to seek—what? The breath of the desert? The great mosque confronted it, Islam erect, and now dark, forbidding under the darkening sky. Even the minarets had lost their delicate purity, had become fierce, prayers calling down destruction on unbelievers. And all the cries of Stamboul seemed to gather themselves together in my ears, keening over the sea above which I stood—voices of many nations; of Turks, Arabs, Circassians, Persians, of men from the wilds of Asia and the plains of India; voices of bashi-bazouks and of slaves; even, thin high voices of eunuchs. From the quays to right and left of the bridge crowds of people rose to my sight and hurried away; to them crowds of people descended, sinking out of my sight. Soldiers and hamals passed, upright and armed, bending beneath the weight of incredible loads. Calls of Albanian boatmen came up from the sea. From the city of closely packed fishermen’s vessels rose here and there little trails of smoke. On their decks dim figures crouched about wavering fires. A gnarled beggar pushed me, muttering, then whining uncouth words. Along the curving shore, toward the cypress-crowned height of Eyub, lights were strung out, marking the waterside. Behind me tall Pera began to glitter meretriciously. The Greek barbers, I knew, were standing impudently before the doors of their little saloons, watching the evening pageant as it surged slowly through the Grande Rue and toward the Taxim Garden. Diplomats were driving home from the Sublime Porte in victorias. The “cinemas” were gathering in their mobs. Tokatlian’s was thronged with Levantines whispering from mouth to mouth the current lies of the day. Below, near the ships, the business men of Galata were rushing out of their banks, past the large round-browed Montenegrins who stand on the steps, out of their offices and shops, like a mighty swarm of disturbed bees. The long shriek of a siren from a steamer near Seraglio Point tore the gloom. I went on, despite menacing Validé Sultan, I lost myself in the wonderful maze of Stamboul.

Stamboul near the waterside is full of contrasts so sharp, so strange that they bewilder and charm, and sometimes render uneasy even one who has wandered alone through many towns of the East. Sordid and filthy, there is yet something grandiose in it, something hostile and threatening in the watchful crowds that are forever passing by. Between the houses the sea-wind blows up, and you catch glimpses of water, of masts, of the funnels of steamers. Above the cries of the nations rise the long-drawn wails and the hootings of sirens. The traffic of the streets is made more confusing by your constant consciousness of the traffic of the sea, embraced by it, almost mingling with it. Water and wind, mud and dust, cries of coachmen and seamen, of motor-cars and steamers, and soldiers, soldiers, soldiers passing, always passing. Through a window-pane you catch a glitter of jewels and a glitter of Armenian eyes gazing stealthily out. You pass by some marble tombs sheltered by weary trees, under the giant shadow of a mosque, and a few steps farther on you look through an arched doorway and see on the marble floor of a dimly lighted hall half-naked men, with tufts of black hair drooping from partly shaved heads and striped towels girt round their loins, going softly to and fro, or bending about a fountain from which water gushes with a silvery noise. This is a Turkish bath. Throughout Stamboul there are bath-houses with little cupolas on their roofs, and throughout Stamboul there are tombs; but the uneasy and watchful crowds throng the quarters near the waterside and the great bazaars and the spaces before the principal mosques. They are not spread throughout the city. Many parts of Stamboul are as the waste places of the earth, abandoned by men.

By night they are silent and black; by day they look like the ways of a great wooden village from which the inhabitants have fled. In their open spaces, patches of waste ground, perhaps a few goats are trying to browse among rubbish and stones, a few little children are loitering, two or three silent men may be sitting under a vine by a shed, which is a Turkish café. There is no sound of steps or of voices. One has no feeling of being in a great city, of being in a city at all. Little there is of romance, little of that mysterious and exquisite melancholy which imaginative writers have described. Dullness and shabbiness brood over everything. Yet an enormous population lives in the apparently empty houses. Women are watching from the windows behind the grilles. Life is fermenting in the midst of the dust, the discomfort, the almost ghastly silence.

The great bazaar of Stamboul is a city within a city. As you stand before its entrance you think of a fortress full of immured treasures. And there are treasures of price under the heavy arches, in the long roofed-over lanes. The bazaars of Tunis seem minute, of Damascus ephemeral, of Cairo dressed up, of Jerusalem crushed together and stifling, when compared with the vast bazaars of Stamboul, which have a solidity, a massiveness, unshared by their rivals. I saw there many cheap goods such as I have seen on certain booths in the East End of London, but they were surrounded with a certain pomp and dignity, with a curious atmosphere of age. Some parts of the bazaars are narrow. Others are broad and huge, with great cupolas above them, and, far up, wooden galleries running round them. Now and then you come upon an old fountain of stained marble and dim faience about which men are squatting on their haunches to wash their faces and hands and their carefully bared arms. The lanes are paved and are often slippery. Just under the lofty roof there are windows of white glass, and about them, and on arches and walls, there are crude decorations in strong blues and purples, yellows and greens. The serious merchants from many lands do not beset you with importunities as you pass; but sometimes a lustrous pair of eyes invites you to pause, or a dark and long-fingered hand gently beckons you toward a jewel, a prayer-carpet, a weapon, or something strange in silver or gold or ivory.

One day a man from Bagdad invited me to buy a picture as I drew near to him. It was the portrait of a dervish’s cap worked in silk. The cap, orange-colored and silver, was perched upon a small table (in the picture) above which hung curtains in two shades of green. A heavy gilt frame surrounded this “old master” of the East. We bargained. The merchant’s languages were broken, but at length I understood him to say that the cap was a perfect likeness. I retorted that all the dervishes’ caps I had seen upon living heads were the color of earth. The merchant, I believe, pitied my ignorance. His eyes, hands, arms, and even his shoulders were eloquent of compassion. He lowered the price of the picture by about half a farthing in Turkish money, but I resisted the blandishment and escaped into the jewel bazaar, half regretting a lost opportunity.

From a photograph, copyright by Underwood & Underwood

PUBLIC LETTER-WRITERS IN A CONSTANTINOPLE STREET

Many Turkish women come to the bazaars only to meet their lovers. They cover a secret desire by a pretense of making purchases. From the upper floor of the yellow-blue-and-red kiosk, in which Turkish sweets are sold, and you can eat the breasts of chickens cooked deliciously in cream and served with milk and starch, I have watched these subtle truants passing in their pretty disguises suggestive of a masked ball. They look delicate and graceful in their thin and shining robes, like dominoes, of black or sometimes of prune-color, with crape dropping over their faces and letting you see not enough; for many Turkish women are pretty.

One day I was in the upper room of a photographer’s shop when two Turkish women came in and removed their veils, standing with their backs to the English infidel. One was obviously much younger than the other, and seemed to have a beautiful figure. I was gazing at it, perhaps rather steadily, when, evidently aware of my glance, she turned slowly and deliberately round. For two or three minutes she faced me, looking to right and left of me, above me, even on the floor near my feet, with her large and beautiful blue-gray eyes. She was lovely. Young, perhaps eighteen, she was slightly painted, and her eyebrows and long curling lashes were blackened. Her features were perfect, her complexion was smooth and brilliant, and her expression was really adorable. It seemed to say to me quietly:

“Yes, you are right. It is foolish ever to conceal such a face as this with a veil when really there is not too much beauty in the world. Mais que voulez-vous? Les Turcs!” And the little hanum surely moved her thin shoulders contemptuously. But her elderly companion pulled at her robe, and slowly she moved away. As the two women left the room, the photographer, a Greek, looked after them, smiling. Then he turned to me, spread out his thin hands, and said, with a shrug, “Encore des désenchantées!”

I thought of the disenchanted one day as I sat among the letter-writers in the large and roughly paved court of the “Pigeon’s Mosque,” or Mosque of Bajazet II. For hours I had been wandering on foot through the upper quarters of old Stamboul, and I could not release my mind from the dull pressure of its influence. All those wooden houses, silent, apparently abandoned, shuttered—streets and streets of them, myriads of them! Now and then above the carved wood of a lattice I had seen a striped curtain, cheap, dusty, hanging, I guessed, above a cheap and dusty divan. The doors of the houses were large and solid, like prison doors. Before one, as I slowly passed by, I had seen an old Turk in a long quilted coat of green, with a huge key in his hand, about to enter. He glanced to right and left, then thrust the key into the door. I had felt inclined to stop and say to him:

“That house has been abandoned for years. Every one has migrated long ago from this quarter of Stamboul. If you stay here, you will be quite alone.” But the old Turk knew very well that all the houses were full of people, of imprisoned women. What a fate to be one of the prisoners!

That was my thought as I looked at the sacred pigeons, circling in happy freedom over the garden where Bajazet slumbers under his catafalque, fluttering round the cupolas of their mosque, and beneath the gray-pink-and-white arcade, with its dull-green and plum-colored columns, or crowding together upon the thin branches of their plane-tree. A pure wind blew through the court and about the marble fountain. The music made by the iridescent wings of the birds never ceased, and their perpetual cooing was like the sweet voice of content. The sunshine streamed over the pavement and penetrated under the arches, making the coral beads of a rosary glow and its gold beads glitter, giving to the amber liquid carried on a tray by a boy to a barber beneath his awning a vivacity almost of flame. Beside me a lover was dictating a letter to a scribe, who squatted before his table, on which were arranged a bright-blue inkstand and cup, a pile of white paper, and a stand with red pens and blue pencils. Farther on, men were being shaved, and were drinking coffee as they lounged upon bright-yellow sofas. Near me a very old Turk, with fanatical, half-shut eyes, was sitting on the ground and gazing at the pink feet of the pigeons as they tripped over the pavement, upon which a pilgrim to the mosque had just flung some grain. As he gazed, he mechanically fingered his rosary, swiftly shifting the beads on and on, beads after beads, always two at a time. Some incense smoldered in a three-legged brazier, giving out its peculiar and drowsy smell. On the other side of the court a fruit-seller slept by a pile of yellow melons. The grain thrown by the pilgrim was all eaten now, and for a moment the sunshine was dimmed by the cloud of rising and dispersing birds, gray and green, with soft gleams like jewels entangled in their plumage. Some flew far to the tall white-and-gray minaret of their mosque, others settled on the cupola above the fountain. A few, venturous truants, disappeared in the direction of the seraskierat wall, not far off. The greater number returned to their plane-tree on the right of the lover and the scribe. And as the lover suggested, and the scribe wrote from right to left, the pigeons puffed out their breasts and cooed, calling other pilgrims to remember that even the sacred have their carnal appetites, and to honor the poor widow’s memory before going up to the mosque to pray.

MOSQUE OF THE YENI-VALIDÉ-JAMISSI, CONSTANTINOPLE

PAINTED FOR THE CENTURY BY JULES GUÉRIN

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One day I went up the hill toward Yildiz to see the Selamlik. That morning the sultan was going to pray in the mosque of wood which Abdul Hamid built close to the mysterious, walled-in quarter of palaces, harems, kiosks, gardens, barracks, and parks which he made his prison. From the Bosporus you can see it extending from the hilltop almost to the sea, a great property, outside the city, yet dominating it, with dense groves of trees in which wild animals were kept, with open spaces, with solitary buildings and lines of roofs, and the cupola of the mosque of the soldiers. All about it are the high walls which a coward raised up to protect him and his fear. The mosque is below the great entrance-gates on a steep hillside beyond the walls. A large modern house, white, with green shutters, in which Abdul Hamid used to grant audiences and, I believe, to give banquets, looks down on it. From the upper windows of this dwelling the Turks say the ex-sultan often stared at his city through powerful glasses.

The mosque is not large. It is yellow and white, with a minaret of plaster on the side next the sea, and a graveled courtyard surrounded by green iron railings and planted with a few trees. On the side next to Yildiz is a steep bank. A road runs up the hill to the left of the mosque as you face Yildiz, and another hidden road descends from the gates and gives access to the courtyard behind the mosque. The sultan has therefore a choice of two routes, and nobody seems to know beforehand which way he will come. There were very few tourists in Constantinople when I was there. People were afraid of war, and before I left the Orient express had ceased to run. But I found awaiting the padishah many Indian pilgrims, a large troop of pilgrims from Trebizond who were on their way to Mecca, several Persians wearing black toques, and a good many Turks. These were in the courtyard close to the mosque, where I was allowed to stand by the aristocratic young chief of police, who wore a woolly, gray, fez-shaped cap. Outside the railings stood a dense crowd of veiled women.

Soon after I arrived a squadron of the body-guard rode up from the city, carrying red-and-green pennons on long staffs, and halted before the gates of the palace. And almost at the same moment the palace musicians, in dark-blue, red, and gold, wearing short swords, and carrying shining brass instruments, marched into the inclosure. They stood still, then dropped their instruments on the ground, moved away, and sat down on the bank, lolling in easy attitudes. Time slipped by, and important people strolled in, officers, court officials, attendants. Eunuchs shambled loosely past in wonderfully fitting, long frock-coats, wearing turquoise rings on their large weak hands, and looking half-piteously impudent. Men hurried into the mosque carrying brown Gladstone bags. Nazim Pasha, weary and grave, the weight of war already on his shoulders, talked with the master of the ceremonies beside steps before which lay a bright-yellow carpet.

This is the sultan’s entrance to the mosque. It is not imposing. The two flights of steps curve on right and left to a trivial glass porch which reminded me of that bulbous addition to certain pretentious houses which is dignified by the name “winter garden.” Some smart, very strong Turkish sailors lined up opposite me. Not far from the porch stood a group of military doctors in somber uniforms. A second yellow carpet was unrolled to cover the flight of steps on the left of the porch, more eunuchs went by, more Gladstone bags were carried past me. Then came soldiers in yellowish brown, and palace officials in white and blue, with red collars. Two riding-horses were led by two grooms toward the back of the mosque. The musicians rose languidly from the bank, took up their instruments, turned round, and faced toward Yildiz. Through the crowd, like a wind, went that curious stir which always precedes an important event for which many people are waiting. Nazim Pasha spoke to the chief of police, slowly moving his white-gloved hands, and then from the hilltop came a rhythmical, booming noise of men’s voices, very deep, very male: the soldiers before the gates were acclaiming their sovereign. I saw a fluttering movement of pennons; the sultan had emerged from the palace and was descending by the hidden road to perform his devotions.

In perhaps five minutes an outrider appeared from behind the mosque, advancing slowly parallel with the bank, followed by a magnificent victoria, covered with gold and lined, I think, with satin, drawn by two enormous brown horses the harness of which was plated with gold. They were driven from the box by a gorgeous coachman, who was standing. The musicians, turning once more, struck up the “Sultan’s Hymn,” the soldiers presented arms; the brown horses wheeled slowly round, and I saw within a few paces of me, sitting alone in the victoria in a curious, spread-out attitude, a bulky and weary old man in a blue uniform, wearing white kid gloves and the fez. He was staring straight before him, and on his unusually large fair face there was no more expression than there is on a white envelop. Women twittered. Men saluted. The victoria stopped beside the bright-yellow carpet. After a moment’s pause, as if emerging from a sort of trance, the Calif of Islam got up and stepped slowly and heavily out, raising one hand to his fez. Then, as if with an abrupt effort to show alertness, he walked almost quickly up the steps to the glass porch, turned just before entering it, stood for an instant looking absolutely blank, again saluted, swung round awkwardly and disappeared. Almost immediately afterward one of his sons, a rather short and fair young man with a flushed face, attended by an officer, hurried past me and into the mosque by another entrance.

A few persons went away while his Majesty was praying; but all the pilgrims stayed, and I stayed with them. Several of the officials walked about on the gravel, talked, smoked, and drank orangeade, which a servant brought to them on a silver tray. Now and then from within the mosque came to us the loud murmur of praying voices. The soldiers of the body-guard descended the hill from the gates of Yildiz on foot, leading their horses, and assembled outside the courtyard. They were followed by a brilliant squadron of cavalry in dark-blue-and-red uniforms, with green-and-red saddle-cloths; their blood-red flag was borne before them, and their own music accompanied them. The soldiers in yellowish brown had piled arms and were standing at ease, smoking and talking. Twenty minutes perhaps went by, then a Gladstone bag was carried out of the mosque. We all gazed at it with reverence. What was in it? Or, if there was nothing, what had been recently taken out of it? I never shall know. As the bag vanished, a loud sound of singing came from within, and a troop of palace guards in vivid-red uniforms, with white-and-red toques trimmed with black astrakhan, marched into the court led by an officer. Some gendarmes followed them. Then the chief of police tripped forward with nervous agility, and made us all cross over and stand with our backs to the bank in a long line. An outrider, dressed in green and gold, and holding a big whip, rode in on a huge strawberry-roan horse. Behind him came a green-and-red brougham with satin cushions, drawn by a pair of strawberry roans. A smart coachman and footman sat on the box, and on each side rode two officers on white horses.

Now the singing ceased in the mosque. People began to come out. The sultan’s son, less flushed, passed by on foot, answering swiftly the salutes of the people. The brougham was drawn up before the bright-yellow carpet. Nazim Pasha once more stood there talking with several officials. The soldiers had picked up their arms, the sailors were standing at attention.

Then there was a very long wait.

“The sultan is taking coffee.”

Another five minutes passed.

“The sultan is sleeping.”

On this announcement being made to me, I thought seriously of departing in peace; but a Greek friend, who had spoken to an official, murmured in my ear:

“The sultan is awake and is changing his clothes.”

This sounded promising, and I decided to wait.

It seemed to me that his Majesty was a very long time at his toilet; but at last we were rewarded. Abruptly from the glass porch he appeared in European dress, with very baggy trousers much too long in the leg and a voluminous black frock-coat. He stood for a moment holding the frock-coat with both hands, as if wishing to wrap himself up in it. Then, still grasping it, he walked quickly down the steps, his legs seeming almost to ripple beneath the weight of his body, and stepped heavily into the brougham, which swung upon its springs. The horses moved, the carriage passed close to me, and again I gazed at this mighty sovereign, while the Eastern pilgrims salaamed to the ground. Mechanically he saluted. His large face was still unnaturally blank, and yet somehow it looked kind. And I felt that this old man was weary and sad, that his long years of imprisonment had robbed him of all vitality, of all power to enjoy; that he was unable to appreciate the pageant of life in which now, by the irony of fate, he was called to play the central part. All alone he sat in the bright-colored brougham, carrying a flaccid hand to his fez and gazing blankly before him. The carriage passed out of the courtyard, but it did not go up the hill to the palace.

“The sultan,” said a voice, “is going out into the country to rest and to divert himself.”

To rest, perhaps; but to divert himself!

After that day I often saw before me a large white envelop, and the most expressive people in the world were salaaming before it.

(To be continued)

THE LITTLE PEOPLE

BY AMELIA JOSEPHINE BURR

BECAUSE I left the hearthstone to watch the stars at night,

Because I loved the forest and wandered there alone,

The little fairy people who mock at human might

They set a spell upon me and chose me for their own.

The Little People called me—and oh, their word was sweet!

Fair as the towers of sunset I saw their kingdom rise—

But I knew my mother listened for the coming of my feet.

In tears the vision darkened and vanished from mine eyes.

The Little People called me to cast with them my lot

Or nevermore to see them, for mine own kindred’s sake.

The heart cried out within me, and yet I faltered not.

My people were my people—what choice was mine to make?

My people are my people, and dear they are to me,

Yet sometimes comes a longing—till I hardly dare to pray—

For that far land of wonder that I shall never see,

And for the Little People from whom I turned away.

LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI

BY JOHN KEATS

WITH A PICTURE BY PAUL MEYLAN

OH, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,

Alone and palely loitering?

The sedge has withered from the lake,

And no birds sing.

Oh, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms

So haggard and so woebegone?

The squirrel’s granary is full,

And the harvest’s done.

I see a lily on thy brow

With anguish moist and fever-dew,

And on thy cheeks a fading rose

Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the mead,

Full beautiful—a fairy’s child,

Her hair was long, her foot was light,

And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head,

And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;

She looked at me as she did love,

And made sweet moan.

I set her on my pacing steed

And nothing else saw all day long,

For sidelong would she bend, and sing

A fairy song.

She found me roots of relish sweet,

And honey wild and manna-dew,

And sure in language strange she said,

“I love thee true.”

She took me to her elfin grot,

And there she wept and sighed full sore;

And there I shut her wild, wild eyes

With kisses four.

And there she lullèd me asleep,

And there I dreamed—ah! woe betide!

The latest dream I ever dreamed

On the cold hill’s side.

I saw pale kings and princes too,

Pale warriors, death-pale were they all:

They cried, “La belle dame sans merci

Hath thee in thrall!”

I saw their starved lips in the gloam

With horrid warning gapèd wide,

And I awoke and found me here

On the cold hill’s side.

And this is why I sojourn here

Alone and palely loitering,

Though the sedge is withered from the lake,

And no birds sing.

Drawn by Paul Meylan. Half-tone plate engraved by C. W. Chadwick.

LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI

“I set her on my pacing steed

And nothing else saw all day long.”—KEATS.

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THE NEW MINISTER’S GREAT OPPORTUNITY[4]

BY C. H. WHITE

Author of “The Village Convict,” “Eli,” etc.

WITH A PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR AND A PICTURE BY HARRY TOWNSEND

(NOTEWORTHY STORIES OF THE LAST GENERATION)

THE minister’s got a job,” said Mr. Snell.

Mr. Snell had been driven in by a shower from the painting of a barn, and was now sitting, with one bedaubed overall leg crossed over the other, in Mr. Hamblin’s shop.

Half a dozen other men who had likewise found in the rain a call to leisure looked up at him inquiringly.

“How do you mean?” said Mr. Noyes, who sat beside him, girt with a nail-pocket. “‘The minister’s got a job?’ How do you mean?” And Mr. Noyes assumed a listener’s air, and stroked his thin, yellow beard.

Mr. Snell smiled with half-shut, knowing eyes, but made no answer.

“How do you mean?” repeated Mr. Noyes. “‘The minister’s got a job?’ Of course he has—got a stiddy job. We knew that before.”

“Very well,” said Mr. Snell, with a placid face; “seeing’s you know so much about it, enough said. Let it rest there.”

“But,” said Mr. Noyes, nervously blowing his nose, “you lay down this proposition: ‘The minister’s got a job.’ Now I ask, what is it?”

Mr. Snell uncrossed his legs, and stooped to pick up a last, which he proceeded to scan with a shrewd, critical eye.

“Narrer foot,” he said to Mr. Hamblin.

“Private last—Doctor Hunter’s,” said Mr. Hamblin, laying down a boot upon which he was stitching an outer sole, and rising to make a ponderous, elephantine excursion across the quaking shop to the earthen water-pitcher, from which he took a generous draft.

“Well, Brother Snell,” said Mr. Noyes,—they were members together of a secret organization, of which Mr. Snell was P. G. W. T. F., “ain’t you going to tell us? What is this job? That is to say, what—is it?”

Brother Snell set his thumbs firmly in the armholes of his waistcoat, surveyed the smoke-stained pictures pasted on the wall, looked keen, and softly whistled. At last he condescended to explain.

“Preaching Uncle Capen’s funeral sermon.”

There was a subdued general laugh. Even Mr. Hamblin’s leathern apron shook.

Mr. Noyes, however, painfully looking down upon his beard to draw out a white hair, maintained his serious expression.

“I don’t see much ‘job’ in that,” he said. “A minister’s supposed to preach a hundred and four sermons in each and every year, and there’s plenty more where they come from. What’s one sermon more or less when stock costs nothing? It’s like wheeling gravel from the pit.”

HEMAN W. CHAPLIN (“C. H. WHITE”)

Author of “The New Minister’s Great Opportunity”

“O. K.,” said Mr. Snell; “if ’tain’t no trouble, then ’tain’t. But seeing’s you know, suppose you specify the materials for this particular discourse.”

Mr. Noyes looked a little disconcerted.

“Well,” he said, “of course I can’t set here and compose a funereal discourse offhand without no writing-desk; but there’s stock enough to make a sermon of any time.”

“Oh, come,” said Mr. Snell, “don’t sneak out; particularize.”

“Why,” said Mr. Noyes, “you’ve only to open the leds of your Bible, and choose a text, and then: When did this happen? Why did this happen? To who did this happen? and so forth and so on; and there’s your sermon. I’ve heard ’em so a hunderd times.”

“All right,” said Mr. Snell; “I don’t doubt, you know: but as for me, I for one never happened to hear of anything that Uncle Capen did but whitewash and saw wood. Now, what sort of an autobiographical sermon could you make out of sawing wood?”

Whereat Leander Buffum proceeded, by that harsh, guttural noise well known to country boys, to imitate the sound of sawing through a log.

His sally was warmly greeted.

“The minister might narrate,” said Mr. Blood, “what Uncle Capen said to Issachar, when Issachar told him that he charged high for sawing wood. ‘See here,’ says Uncle Capen, ‘s’pos’n’ I do. My arms are shorter ’n other folks’s, and it takes me just so much longer to do it.’”

“Well,” said Mr. Noyes, “I’m a fair man; always do exactly right is the rule I go by; and I will frankly admit now and here that if it’s a biographical discourse they want, they’ll have to cut corners.”

“Pre-cisely,” said Mr. Snell; “and that’s just what they do want.”

“Well, well,” said Mr. Hamblin, laboriously rising and putting his spectacles into their silver case, for it was suppertime, “joking one side, if Uncle Capen never did set the pond afire, we’d all rather take his chances to-day, I guess, than those of some smarter men.”

At which Mr. Snell turned red; for he was a very smart man, and had just failed, to everybody’s surprise,—for there was no reason in the world why he should fail,—and had created more merriment for the public than joy among his creditors by paying a cent and a half on the dollar.

“COME in and sit down,” said Dr. Hunter as the young minister appeared at his office door; and he tipped back in his chair, and put his feet upon a table. “What’s the news?”

“Doctor,” said Mr. Holt, laughing, as he laid down his hat and took an arm-chair, “you told me to come to you for any information. Now, I want materials for a sermon on old Mr. Capen.”

The doctor looked at him with a half-amused expression, and then sending out a curl of blue smoke, he watched it as it rose melting into the general air.

“You don’t smoke, I believe?” he said to the minister.

Holt shook his head and smiled.

The doctor put his cigar back into his mouth, clasped one knee in his hands, and fixed his eyes in meditation on a one-eared Hippocrates looking down with a dirty face from the top of a bookcase. Perhaps the doctor was thinking of the two or three hundred complimentary visits he had been permitted to make upon Uncle Capen within ten years.

Presently a smile broke over his face.

“I must tell you before I forget it,” he said, “how Uncle Capen nursed one of my patients. Years and years ago I had John Ellis, our postmaster now, down with a fever. One night Uncle Capen watched; you know he was spry and active till he was ninety. Every hour he was to give Ellis a little ice-water, and when the first time came, he took a table-spoonful—there was only a dim light in the room—and poured the ice-water down Ellis’s neck. Well, Ellis jumped as much as so sick a man could, and then lifted his finger to his lips. ‘Here’s my mouth,’ said he. ‘Why, why,’ said Uncle Capen, ‘is that your mouth? I took that for a wrinkle in your forehead.’”

The minister laughed.

“I have heard a score of such stories to-day,” he said. “There seem to be enough of them; but I can’t find anything adapted to a sermon, and yet they seem to expect a detailed biography.”

“Ah, that’s just the trouble,” said the doctor. “But let us go into the house. My wife remembers everything that ever happens, and she can post you up on Uncle Capen, if anybody can.”

So they crossed the dooryard into the house.

Mrs. Hunter was sewing; a neighbor, come to tea, was crocheting wristers for her grandson. They were both talking at once as the doctor opened the sitting-room door.

“Since neither of you appears to be listening,” he said, as they started up, “I won’t apologize for interrupting. Mr. Holt is collecting facts about Uncle Capen for his funeral sermon, and I thought that my good wife could help him out, if anybody could. So I will leave him.”

And the doctor, nodding, went into the hall for his coat and driving-gloves, and, going out, disappeared round the corner of the house.

“You will really oblige me very much, Mrs. Hunter,” said the minister—“or Mrs. French, if you can give me any particulars about old Mr. Capen’s life. His family seem to be rather sensitive, and they depend on a long, old-fashioned funeral sermon; and here I am utterly bare of facts.”

“Why, yes,” said Mrs. Hunter. “Of course. Now—”

“Why, yes; everybody knows all about him,” said Mrs. French.

And then they laid their work down and relapsed into meditation.

“Oh!” said Mrs. Hunter in a moment. “No, though—”

“Why, you know,” said Mrs. French—“no, I guess, on the whole—”

“You remember,” said the doctor’s wife to Mrs. French, with a faint smile, “the time he papered my east chamber, don’t you—how he made the pattern come?”

And then they both laughed gently for a moment.

“Well, I have always known him,” said Mrs. French; “but really, being asked so suddenly, it seems to drive everything out of my head.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Hunter, “and it’s odd that I can’t think of exactly the thing just at this minute; but if I do, I will run over to the parsonage this evening.”

“Yes, so will I,” said Mrs. French. “I know that I shall think of oceans of things just as soon as you have gone.”

“Won’t you stay to tea?” said Mrs. Hunter as Holt rose to go. “The doctor has gone; but we never count on him.”

“No, I thank you,” said Mr. Holt. “If I am to invent a biography, I may as well be at it.”

Mrs. Hunter went with him to the door.

“I must just tell you,” she said, “one of Uncle Capen’s sayings. It was long ago, when I was first married, and came here. I had a young men’s Bible class in Sunday-school, and Uncle Capen came into it. He always wore a cap, and sat at meetings with the boys. So one Sunday we had in the lesson that verse,—you know,—that if all these things should be written, even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written; and there Uncle Capen stopped me, and said he, ‘I suppose that means the world as known to the ancients.’”

HOLT put on his hat, and with a smile turned and went on his way toward the parsonage; but he remembered that he had promised to call at what the local paper termed “the late residence of the deceased,” where, on the one hundredth birthday of the centenarian, according to the poet’s corner:

“Friends, neighbors, and visitors he did receive

From early in the morning till dewy eve.”

So he turned his steps in that direction.

He opened the clicking latch of the gate and rattled the knocker on the front door of the little cottage, and a tall, motherly woman of the neighborhood appeared and ushered him in.

Uncle Capen’s unmarried daughter, a woman of sixty, her two brothers and their wives, and half a dozen neighbors were sitting in the tidy kitchen, where a crackling wood-fire in the stove was suggesting a hospitable cup of tea.

The minister’s appearance, breaking the formal gloom, was welcomed.

“Well,” said Miss Maria, “I suppose the sermon is all writ by this time. I think likely you’ve come down to read it to us.”

“No,” said Holt, “I have left the actual writing of it till I get all my facts. I thought perhaps you might have thought of something else.”

“No; I told you everything there was about Father yesterday,” she said. “I’m sure you can’t lack of things to put in; why, Father lived a hundred years—and longer, too, for he was a hundred years and six days, you remember.”

“You know,” said Holt, “there are a great many things that are very interesting to a man’s immediate friends that don’t interest the public.”

And he looked to Mr. Small for confirmation.

“Yes, that’s so,” said Mr. Small, nodding wisely.

“But, you see, Father was a centenarian,” said Maria, “and so that makes everything about him interesting. It’s a lesson to the young, you know.”