Transcriber’s Notes

This e-text is based on ‘The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine,’ from May 1913. Even though this edition includes an Index for the complete volume (May–October 1913), page links have been created for the May issue only.

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.

THE CENTURY
ILLUSTRATED MONTHLY
MAGAZINE

VOL. LXXXVI

NEW SERIES: VOL. LXIV

MAY TO OCTOBER, 1913

THE CENTURY CO., NEW YORK

HODDER & STOUGHTON, LONDON

Copyright, 1913, by THE CENTURY CO.

THE DE VINNE PRESS

INDEX
TO
THE CENTURY MAGAZINE

VOL. LXXXVI   NEW SERIES: VOL. LXIV

VERSE

TIMOTHY COLE’S WOOD ENGRAVINGS OF MASTERPIECES IN AMERICAN GALLERIES

UNE DAME ESPAGNOLE

BY

FORTUNY

Owned by the Metropolitan Museum, New York

UNE DAME ESPAGNOLE. BY FORTUNY

(TIMOTHY COLE’S WOOD ENGRAVINGS OF MASTERPIECES IN AMERICAN GALLERIES)

[❏
LARGER IMAGE]

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

THE CENTURY MAGAZINE

VOL. LXXXVI

MAY, 1913

NO. 1

THE HAYES-TILDEN CONTEST FOR THE PRESIDENCY

INSIDE HISTORY OF A GREAT POLITICAL CRISIS

(THE CENTURY’S AFTER-THE-WAR SERIES)

BY HENRY WATTERSON

Editor of the Louisville “Courier-Journal”

I

THE time is coming, if it has not already arrived, when among fair-minded and intelligent Americans there will not be two opinions touching the Hayes-Tilden contest for the Presidency in 1876–77—that both by the popular vote and a fair count of the electoral vote Tilden was elected and Hayes was defeated—but the whole truth underlying the determinate incidents which led to the rejection of Tilden and the seating of Hayes will never be known.

“All history is a lie,” observed Sir Robert Walpole, the corruptionist, mindful of what was likely to be written about himself, and, “What is history,” asked Napoleon, the conqueror, “but a fable agreed upon?”

In the first administration of Mr. Cleveland, there were present at a dinner-table in Washington, the President being of the party, two leading Democrats and two leading Republicans who had sustained confidential relations to the principals and played important parts in the drama of the Disputed Succession. These latter had been long upon terms of personal intimacy. The occasion was informal and joyous, the good-fellowship of the heartiest. Inevitably the conversation drifted to the Electoral Commission, which had counted Tilden out and Hayes in, and of which each of the four had some story to tell. Beginning in banter, with interchanges of badinage, it presently fell into reminiscence, deepening as the interest of the listeners rose to what under different conditions might have been described as unguarded gaiety, if not imprudent garrulity. The little audience was rapt. Finally, Mr. Cleveland raised both hands and exclaimed, “What would the people of this country think if the roof could be lifted from this house and they could hear these men!” And then one of the four, a gentleman noted for his wealth both of money and humor, replied, “But the roof is not going to be lifted from this house, and if any one repeats what I have said I will denounce him as a liar.”

Once in a while the world is startled by some revelation of the unknown which alters the estimate of an historic event or figure; but it is measurably true, as Metternich declares, that those who make history rarely have time to write it.

It is not my wish in recurring to the events of five-and-thirty years ago to invoke and awaken any of the passions of that time, nor my purpose to assail the character or motives of any of the leading actors. Most of them, including the principals, I knew well; to many of their secrets I was privy. As I was serving, in a sense, as Mr. Tilden’s personal representative in the Lower House of the Forty-fourth Congress, and as a member of the joint Democratic Advisory or Steering Committee of the two Houses, all that passed came more or less, if not under my supervision, yet to my knowledge; and long ago I resolved that certain matters should remain a sealed book in my memory. I make no issue of veracity with the living; the dead should be sacred. The contradictory promptings, not always crooked; the double constructions possible to men’s actions; the intermingling of ambition and patriotism beneath the lash of party spirit; often wrong unconscious of itself; sometimes equivocation deceiving itself; in short, the tangled web of good and ill inseparable from great affairs of loss and gain, made debatable ground for every step of the Hayes-Tilden proceeding.

I shall bear sure testimony to the integrity of Mr. Tilden. I directly know that the Presidency was offered to him for a price and that he refused it; and I indirectly know and believe that two other offers came to him which also he declined. The accusation that he was willing to buy, and through the cipher despatches and other ways tried to buy, rests upon appearance supporting mistaken surmise. Mr. Tilden knew nothing of the cipher despatches until they appeared in the “New-York Tribune.” Neither did Mr. George W. Smith, his private secretary, and later one of the trustees to his will. It should be sufficient to say that, so far as they involved No. 15 Gramercy Park, they were the work solely of Colonel Pelton, acting on his own responsibility, and, as Mr. Tilden’s nephew, exceeding his authority to act; that it later developed that during this period Colonel Pelton had not been in his perfect mind, but was at least semi-irresponsible; and that on two occasions when the vote or votes sought seemed within reach, Mr. Tilden interposed to forbid. Directly and personally, I know this to be true.

The price, at least in patronage, which the Republicans actually paid for possession is of public record. Yet I not only do not question the integrity of Mr. Hayes, but I believe him, and most of those immediately about him, to have been high-minded men who thought they were doing for the best in a situation unparalleled and beset with perplexity. What they did tends to show that men will do for party and in concert what the same men never would be willing to do each on his own responsibility. In his “Life of Samuel J. Tilden,” John Bigelow says:

Why persons occupying the most exalted positions should have ventured to compromise their reputations by this deliberate consummation of a series of crimes which struck at the very foundations of the Republic, is a question which still puzzles many of all parties who have no charity for the crimes themselves. I have already referred to the terrors and desperation with which the prospect of Tilden’s election inspired the great army of office-holders at the close of Grant’s administration. That army, numerous and formidable as it was, was comparatively limited. There was a much larger and justly influential class who were apprehensive that the return of the Democratic party to power threatened a reactionary policy at Washington, to the undoing of some or all the important results of the war. These apprehensions were inflamed by the party press until they were confined to no class, but more or less pervaded all the Northern States. The Electoral Tribunal, consisting mainly of men appointed to their positions by Republican Presidents, or elected from strong Republican States, felt the pressure of this feeling, and from motives compounded in more or less varying proportions of dread of the Democrats, personal ambition, zeal for their party, and respect for their constituents, reached the conclusion that the exclusion of Tilden from the White House was an end which justified whatever means were necessary to accomplish it. They regarded it like the emancipation of the slaves, as a war measure.

PRESIDENT AND MRS. HAYES IN 1877, AT THE TIME
OF THEIR SILVER WEDDING

II

THE nomination of Horace Greeley in 1872 and the overwhelming defeat that followed left the Democratic party in an abyss of despair. The old Whig party, after the disaster that overtook it in 1852, had been not more demoralized. Yet in the general elections of 1874 the Democrats swept the country, carrying many Northern States and sending a great majority to the Forty-fourth Congress.

From a photograph by W. Kurtz

SAMUEL J. TILDEN, GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK, 1875–76

From a photograph owned by F. H. Meserve

SENATOR ZACHARIAH CHANDLER

Chairman of the Republican National Committee
in the Hayes-Tilden campaign.

Reconstruction was breaking down of its very weight and rottenness. The panic of 1873 reacted against the party in power. Dissatisfaction with Grant, which had not sufficed two years before to displace him, was growing apace. Favoritism bred corruption, and corruption grew more and more defiant. Succeeding, scandals cast their shadows before. Chickens of “carpet-baggery” let loose upon the South were coming home to roost at the North. There appeared everywhere a noticeable subsidence of the sectional spirit and a rising tide of the national spirit. Reform was needed alike in the State governments and the National government, and the cry for reform proved something other than an idle word. All things made for Democracy.

Yet there were many and serious handicaps. The light and leading of the historic Democratic party which had issued from the South were in obscurity and abeyance, while most of those surviving who had been distinguished in the party conduct and counsels were disabled by act of Congress. Of the few prominent Democrats left at the North, many were tainted by what was called Copperheadism (sympathy with the Confederacy). To find a chieftain wholly free from this contamination, Democracy, having failed of success in presidential campaigns not only with Greeley but with McClellan and Seymour, was turning to such disaffected Republicans as Chase, Field, and Davis of the Supreme Court. At last Heaven seemed to smile from the clouds upon the disordered ranks and to summon thence a man meeting the requirements of the time. This was Samuel Jones Tilden.

From a photograph by Sherman & McHug

CONGRESSMAN ABRAM S. HEWITT

Chairman of the Democratic National Committee
in the Hayes-Tilden campaign.

To his familiars, Mr. Tilden was a dear old bachelor who lived in a fine old mansion in Gramercy Park. Though sixty years of age, he seemed in the prime of his manhood; a genial and overflowing scholar; a trained and earnest doctrinaire; a public-spirited, patriotic citizen, well known and highly esteemed, who had made fame and fortune at the bar and had always been interested in public affairs. He was a dreamer with a genius for business, a philosopher yet an organizer. He pursued the tenor of his life with measured tread. His domestic fabric was disfigured by none of the isolation and squalor which so often attend the confirmed celibate. His home life was a model of order and decorum, his home as unchallenged as a bishopric, its hospitality, though select, profuse and untiring. An elder sister presided at his board, as simple, kindly, and unostentatious, but as methodical as himself. He was a lover of books rather than music and art, but also of horses and dogs and out-of-door activity. He was fond of young people, particularly of young girls; he drew them about him, and was a veritable Sir Roger de Coverley in his gallantries toward them and his zeal in amusing them and making them happy. His tastes were frugal and their indulgence was sparing. He took his wine not plenteously, though he enjoyed it—especially his “blue seal” while it lasted—and sipped his whisky-and-water on occasion with a pleased composure redolent of discursive talk, of which, when he cared to lead the conversation, he was a master. He had early come into a great legal practice and held a commanding professional position. His judgment was believed to be infallible; and it is certain that after 1871 he rarely appeared in the courts of law except as counselor, settling in chambers most of the cases that came to him.

It was such a man whom, in 1874, the Democrats nominated for Governor of New York. To say truth, it was not thought by those making the nomination that he had much chance to win. He was himself so much better advised that months ahead he prefigured very near the exact vote. The afternoon of the day of election one of the group of friends, who even thus early had the Presidency in mind, found him in his library confident and calm.

“What majority will you have?” he asked cheerily.

“Any,” replied the friend sententiously.

“How about fifteen thousand?”

“Quite enough.”

“Twenty-five thousand?”

“Still better.”

“The majority,” he said, “will be a little in excess of fifty thousand.” It was 53,315. His estimate was not guesswork. He had organized his campaign by school-districts. His canvass system was perfect, his canvassers were as penetrating and careful as census-takers. He had before him reports from every voting precinct in the State. They were corroborated by the official returns. He had defeated General John A. Dix, thought to be invincible, by a majority very nearly the same as that by which Governor Dix had been elected two years before.

III

THE time and the man had met. Although Mr. Tilden had not before held executive office, he was ripe and ready for the work. His experience in the pursuit and overthrow of the Tweed Ring in New York, the great metropolis, had prepared and fitted him to deal with the Canal Ring at Albany, the State Capital. Administrative Reform was now uppermost in the public mind, and here in the Empire State of the Union had come to the head of affairs a Chief Magistrate at once exact and exacting, deeply versed not only in legal lore but in a knowledge of the methods by which political power was being turned to private profit, and of the men—Democrats as well as Republicans—who were preying upon the substance of the people.

The story of the two years that followed relates to investigations that investigated, to prosecutions that convicted, to the overhauling of the civil fabric, to the rehabilitation of popular censorship, to reduced estimates and lower taxes.

The campaign for the presidential nomination began as early as the autumn of 1875. The Southern end of it was easy enough. A committee of Southerners residing in New York was formed. Never a leading Southern man came to town who was not “seen.” If of enough importance, he was taken to No. 15 Gramercy Park. Mr. Tilden measured to the Southern standard of the gentleman in politics. He impressed the disfranchised Southern leaders as a statesman of the old order and altogether after their own idea of what a President ought to be. The South came to St. Louis, the seat of the National Convention, represented by its foremost citizens and almost a unit for the Governor of New York. The main opposition sprang from Tammany Hall, of which John Kelly was then the Chief. Its very extravagance proved an advantage to Tilden. Two days before the meeting of the Convention I sent this message to Mr. Tilden: “Tell Blackstone [his favorite riding horse] that he wins in a walk.” The anti-Tilden men put up the Hon. S. S. (“Sunset”) Cox, for Temporary Chairman. It was a clever move. Mr. Cox, though sure for Tammany, was popular everywhere and especially at the South. His backers thought that with him they could count upon a majority of the National Committee.

The night before the assembling, Mr. Tilden’s two or three leading friends on the Committee came to me and said: “We can elect you Chairman over Cox, but no one else.” I demurred at once. “I don’t know one rule of parliamentary law from another,” I said. “We will have the best parliamentarian on the continent right by you all the time,” they said. “I can’t see to recognize a man on the floor of the convention,” I said. “We’ll have a dozen men to tell you,” they replied. So it was arranged, and thus at the last moment I was chosen.

I had barely time to write the required “key-note” speech, but not to commit it to memory, nor sight to read it, even had I been willing to adopt that mode of delivery. It would not do to trust to extemporization. A friend, Colonel Stoddard Johnston, who was familiar with my penmanship, came to the rescue. Concealing my manuscript behind his hat, he lined the words out to me between the cheering, I having mastered a few opening sentences.

From a photograph owned by F. H. Meserve

THOMAS F. BAYARD
of Delaware

From a photograph by Brady

FRANCIS KERNAN
of New York

From a photograph, copyright by C. M. Bell

ALLEN G. THURMAN
of Ohio

From a photograph, copyright by C. M. Bell

JOSEPH E. MCDONALD
of Indiana

From a photograph by Brady

JOHN W. STEVENSON
of Kentucky

SENATORS OF THE DEMOCRATIC “ADVISORY COMMITTEE” IN THE HAYES-TILDEN CONTEST

[❏
LARGER IMAGE]

Luck was with me. It went with a bang—not, however, wholly without detection. The Indianians, devoted to Hendricks, were very wroth. “See that fat man behind the hat telling him what to say,” said one to his neighbor, who answered, “Yes, and wrote it for him, too, I’ll be bound.”

One might as well attempt to drive six horses by proxy as preside over a National Convention by hearsay. I lost my parliamentarian at once. I just made my parliamentary law as we went. Never before nor since did any deliberative body proceed under manual so startling and original. But I delivered each ruling with a resonance—it were better called an impudence—which had an air of authority. There was a good deal of quiet laughter on the floor among the knowing ones, though I knew the mass was as ignorant as I was myself; but, realizing that I meant to be just and was expediting business, the Convention soon warmed to me, and, feeling this, I began to be perfectly at home. I never had a better day’s sport in all my life.

One incident was particularly amusing. Much against my will and over my protest, I was brought to promise that Miss Phœbe Couzins, who bore a Woman’s Rights Memorial, should at some opportune moment be given the floor to present it. I foresaw what a row it was bound to occasion. Toward noon, when there was a lull in the proceedings, I said with an emphasis meant to carry conviction, “Gentlemen of the Convention, Miss Phœbe Couzins, a representative of the Woman’s Association of America, has a Memorial from that body and, in the absence of other business, the chair will now recognize her.”

Instantly, and from every part of the hall, arose cries of “No!” These put some heart into me. Many a time as a school-boy I had proudly declaimed the passage from John Home’s tragedy, “My name is Norval.” Again I stood upon “the Grampian hills.” The Committee was escorting Miss Couzins down the aisle. When she came within the radius of my poor vision I saw that she was a beauty and dressed to kill! That was reassurance. Gaining a little time while the hall fairly rocked with its thunder of negation, I laid the gavel down and stepped to the edge of the platform and gave Miss Couzins my hand. As she appeared above the throng there was a momentary “Ah!” and then a lull broken by a single voice: “Mr. Chairman, I rise to a point of order.” Leading Miss Couzins to the front of the stage, I took up the gavel and gave a gentle rap, saying, “The gentleman will take his seat.”

“But, Mr. Chairman, I rise to a point of order,” he vociferated.

“The gentleman will take his seat instantly,” I answered in a tone of one about to throw the gavel at his head. “No point of order is in order when a lady has the floor.”

After that Miss Couzins received a positive ovation, and having delivered her message retired in a blaze of glory.

Mr. Tilden was nominated on the second ballot. The campaign that followed proved one of the most memorable in our history. When it came to an end the result showed on the face of the returns 196 in the Electoral College, 11 more than a majority, and in the popular vote 4,300,316, a majority of 264,300 over Hayes.

How this came to be first contested and then complicated so as ultimately to be set aside has been minutely related by its authors. The newspapers, both Republican and Democratic, of November 8, 1876, the morning after the election, conceded an overwhelming victory for Tilden and Hendricks. There was, however, a single exception. “The New York Times” had gone to press with its first edition, leaving the result in doubt but inclining toward the success of the Democrats. In its later editions this tentative attitude was changed to the statement that Mr. Hayes lacked the vote only of Florida—“claimed by the Republicans”—to be sure of the required 185 votes in the Electoral College.

The story of this surprising discrepancy between midnight and daylight reads like a chapter of fiction.

CONGRESSMEN OF THE DEMOCRATIC “ADVISORY
COMMITTEE” IN THE HAYES-TILDEN CONTEST

From a photograph, copyright by C. M. Bell

R. L. GIBSON
of Louisiana

From a photograph

WILLIAM S. HOLMAN
of Indiana

From a photograph by Sarony

HENRY WATTERSON
of Kentucky

From a photograph, copyright by C. M. Bell

SAMUEL J. RANDALL
of Pennsylvania (Speaker)

From a photograph, copyright by C. M. Bell

EPPA HUNTON
of Virginia

From a photograph, copyright by C. M. Bell

L. Q. C. LAMAR
of Mississippi

From a photograph, copyright by C. M. Bell

HENRY B. PAYNE
of Ohio

[❏
LARGER IMAGE]

After the early edition of the “Times” had gone to press certain members of the editorial staff were at supper, very much cast down by the returns, when a messenger brought a telegram from Senator Barnum of Connecticut, financial head of the Democratic National Committee, asking for the “Times’s” latest news from Oregon, Louisiana, Florida, and South Carolina. But for that unlucky telegram Tilden would probably have been inaugurated President of the United States.

FIRE AND WATER MAKE VAPOR.
WHAT A COOLING OFF WILL BE THERE, MY COUNTRYMEN!

From “Harper’s Weekly” of February 3, 1877

THOMAS NAST’S CARTOON ON COLONEL WATTERSON’S
SUGGESTION OF A GATHERING OF ONE HUNDRED
THOUSAND DEMOCRATS IN WASHINGTON

The ice-water is being applied by Murat Halstead, editor of the
Cincinnati “Commercial,” which was opposed to Tilden; but in
the Greeley campaign of 1872 Halstead had worked with Watterson.
(See THE CENTURY for November, 1912.)

The “Times” people, intense Republican partizans, at once saw an opportunity. If Barnum did not know, why might not a doubt be raised? At once the editorial in the first edition was revised to take a decisive tone and declare the election of Hayes. One of the editorial council, Mr. John C. Reid, hurried to Republican Headquarters in the Fifth Avenue Hotel, which he found deserted, the triumph of Tilden having long before sent everybody to bed. Mr. Reid then sought the room of Senator Zachariah Chandler, Chairman of the National Republican Committee. While upon this errand he encountered in the hotel corridor “a small man wearing an enormous pair of goggles, his hat drawn over his ears, a greatcoat with a heavy military cloak, and carrying a gripsack and newspaper in his hand. The newspaper was the ‘New-York Tribune,’” announcing the election of Tilden and the defeat of Hayes. The new-comer was Mr. William E. Chandler, even then a very prominent Republican politician, just arrived from New Hampshire and very much exasperated by what he had read.

Mr. Reid had another tale to tell. The two found Mr. Zachariah Chandler, who bade them leave him alone and do whatever they thought best. They did so consumingly, sending telegrams to Columbia, Tallahassee, and New Orleans, stating to each of the parties addressed that the result of the election depended upon his State. To these were appended the signature of Zachariah Chandler. Later in the day Senator Chandler, advised of what had been set on foot and its possibilities, issued from National Republican Headquarters this laconic message: “Hayes has 185 electoral votes and is elected.” Thus began and was put in motion the scheme to confuse the returns and make a disputed count of the vote.

IV

THE day after the election I wired Mr. Tilden suggesting that, as Governor of New York, he propose to Mr. Hayes, the Governor of Ohio, that they unite upon a committee of eminent citizens, composed in equal numbers of the friends of each, who should proceed at once to Louisiana, which appeared to be the objective point of greatest moment to the already contested result. Pursuant to a telegraphic correspondence which followed, I left Louisville that night for New Orleans. I was joined en route by Mr. Lamar of Mississippi, and together we arrived in the Crescent City Friday morning.

“ONE TOUCH OF NATURE MAKES”—EVEN HENRY
WATTERSON GIVE IN

“Let us have peace. I don’t care who is the next
President,” cries our bold Patriarch at the FIRST arrival.
“The Hon. Henry Watterson has just been presented with
son—weight, 11 pounds.”—Washington Correspondence.

This cartoon by Thomas Nast, with the above titles and
explanation, appeared in “Harper’s Weekly” of March 10, 1877, as
an apology for the lampoon on the opposite page. (See page 17.)

It has since transpired that the Republicans were promptly advised by the Western Union Telegraph Company of all that passed over its wires, my despatches to Mr. Tilden being read in Republican Headquarters at least as soon they reached Gramercy Park.

From a photograph owned by F. H. Meserve

STANLEY MATTHEWS OF OHIO

Mr. Tilden did not adopt the plan of a direct proposal to Mr. Hayes. Instead, he chose a body of Democrats to go to the “seat of war.” But before any of them had arrived General Grant, the actual President, anticipating what was about to happen, appointed a body of Republicans for the like purpose, and the advance guard of these appeared on the scene the following Monday.

Within a week the St. Charles Hotel might have been mistaken for a caravansary of the National Capital. Among the Republicans were John Sherman, Stanley Matthews, Garfield, Evarts, Logan, Kelley, Stoughton, and many others. Among the Democrats, besides Lamar and myself, came Lyman Trumbull, Samuel J. Randall, William R. Morrison, McDonald, of Indiana, and many others. A certain degree of personal intimacy existed between the members of the two groups, and the “entente” was quite as unrestrained as might have existed between rival athletic teams. A Kentucky friend sent me a demijohn of what was represented as very old Bourbon, and I divided it with “our friends the enemy.” New Orleans was new to most of the “visiting statesmen,” and we attended the places of amusement, lived in the restaurants, and “saw the sights,” as if we had been tourists in a foreign land and not partizans charged with the business of adjusting a presidential election from implacable points of view.

My own relations were especially friendly with John Sherman and James A. Garfield, a colleague on the Committee of Ways and Means, and with Stanley Matthews, a near kinsman by marriage, who had stood as an elder brother to me from my childhood.

Corruption was in the air. That the Returning Board was for sale and could be bought was the universal impression. Every day some one turned up with pretended authority and an offer. Most of these were of course the merest adventurers. It was my own belief that the Returning Board was playing for the best price it could get from the Republicans and that the only effect of any offer to buy on our part would be to assist this scheme of blackmail.

The Returning Board consisted of two white men, Wells and Anderson, and two Negroes, Kenner and Casanave. One and all they were without character. I was tempted through sheer curiosity to listen to a proposal which seemed to come direct from the Board itself, the messenger being a well-known State senator. As if he were proposing to dispose of a horse or a dog he stated his errand.

“You think you can deliver the goods?” said I.

“I am authorized to make the offer,” he answered.

“And for how much?” I asked.

“Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” he replied. “One hundred thousand each for Wells and Anderson and twenty-five thousand apiece for the niggers.”

To my mind it was a joke. “Senator,” said I, “the terms are as cheap as dirt. I don’t happen to have the amount about me at the moment, but I will communicate with my principal and see you later.”

Having no thought of entertaining the proposal, I had forgotten the incident, when two or three days later my man met me in the lobby of the hotel and pressed for a definite reply. I then told him I had found that I possessed no authority to act and advised him to go elsewhere.

It is asserted that Wells and Anderson did agree to sell and were turned down by Mr. Hewitt, and, being refused their demands for cash by the Democrats, took their final pay, at least in patronage, from their own party.[1]

V

From a photograph owned by F. H. Meserve

WILLIAM E. CHANDLER
OF NEW HAMPSHIRE

I PASSED the Christmas week of 1876 in New York with Mr. Tilden. On Christmas day we dined alone. The outlook, on the whole, was cheering. With John Bigelow and Manton Marble Mr. Tilden had been busily engaged compiling the data for a constitutional battle to be fought by the Democrats in Congress, maintaining the right of the House of Representatives to concurrent jurisdiction with the Senate in the counting of the electoral vote, pursuant to an unbroken line of precedents established by the method of proceeding in every presidential election between 1793 and 1872.

There was very great perplexity in the public mind. Both parties appeared to be at sea. The dispute between the Democratic House and the Republican Senate made for thick weather. Contests of the vote of three States—Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida, not to mention single votes in Oregon and Vermont—which presently began to blow a gale, had already spread menacing clouds across the political sky. Except Mr. Tilden, the wisest among the leaders knew not precisely what to do.

From New Orleans, on the Saturday night succeeding the presidential election, I had telegraphed to Mr. Tilden, detailing the exact conditions there and urging active and immediate agitation. The chance had been lost. I thought then, and I still think, that the conspiracy of a few men to use the corrupt Returning Boards of Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida to upset the election and make confusion in Congress, might, by prompt exposure and popular appeal, have been thwarted. Be this as it may, my spirit was depressed and my confidence discouraged the intense quietude on our side, for I was sure that beneath the surface the Republicans, with resolute determination and multiplied resources, were as busy as bees.

Mr. Robert M. McLane, later Governor of Maryland and Minister to France—a man of rare ability and large experience, who had served in Congress and in diplomacy, and was an old friend of Mr. Tilden—had been at a Gramercy Park conference when my New Orleans report arrived, and had then and there urged the agitation recommended by me. He was now again in New York. When a lad he had been in England with his father, Lewis McLane, then American Minister to the Court of St. James’s, during the excitement over the Reform Bill of 1832. He had witnessed the popular demonstrations and had been impressed by the direct force of public opinion upon law-making and law-makers. An analogous situation had arrived in America. The Republican Senate was as the Tory House of Lords. We must organize a movement such as had been so effectual in England. Obviously something was going amiss with us and something had to be done.

From the painting by Cordelia Adele Fassett, in the Senate wing of the Capitol at Washington.
After a photograph, copyright, 1878, by Mrs. S. M. Fassett

THE SESSION OF THE ELECTORAL COMMISSION TO CONSIDER THE CASE OF THE
FLORIDA RETURNS, IN THE SUPREME COURT ROOM, FEBRUARY 5, 1877

[❏
LARGER IMAGE]

NOTE TO “THE SESSION OF THE ELECTORAL COMMISSION,” ETC. (SEE THE [PREVIOUS PAGE])

With the purpose of making a picture typical of the sessions of the Electoral Commission, Mrs. Fassett included prominent people who were in Washington at the time, and who gave the artist sittings in the Supreme Court Room.

The Commissioners on the bench, from left to right are: Senators Thurman, Bayard (writing), Frelinghuysen, Morton, Edmunds; Supreme Court Justices Strong, Miller, Clifford, Field, Bradley; Members of the House, Payne, Hunton, Abbott, Garfield, and Hoar. At the left, below Thurman, is the head of Senator Kernan who acted as substitute for the former when ill.

William M. Evarts, counsel for Hayes, is addressing the Commission, and his associate, E. W. Stoughton (white-haired), sits behind him; Charles O’Conor, chief counsel for Tilden, sits at his left. Other members of counsel are grouped in the middle-ground. At the left is seen George Bancroft (with long white beard), and in the middle foreground (looking out), James G. Blaine.

It was agreed that I return to Washington and make a speech “feeling the pulse” of the country, with the suggestion that in the National Capital should assemble “a mass convention of at least one hundred thousand peaceful citizens,” exercising “the freeman’s right of petition.”

The idea was one of many proposals of a more drastic kind and was the merest venture. I, myself, had no great faith in it. But I prepared the speech, and after much reading and revising, it was held by Mr. Tilden and Mr. McLane to cover the case and meet the purpose, Mr. Tilden writing Mr. Randall, Speaker of the House of Representatives, a letter, carried to Washington by Mr. McLane, instructing him what to do in the event that the popular response should prove favorable.

Alack-the-day! The Democrats were equal to nothing affirmative. The Republicans were united and resolute. I delivered the speech, not in the House, as had been intended, but at a public meeting which seemed opportune. The Democrats at once set about denying the sinister and violent purpose ascribed to it by the Republicans, who, fully advised that it had emanated from Gramercy Park, and came by authority, started a counter agitation of their own.

I became the target for every kind of ridicule and abuse. Nast drew a grotesque cartoon of me, distorting my suggestion for the assembling of one hundred thousand citizens, which was both offensive and libelous.

Being on friendly terms with the Harpers, I made my displeasure so resonant in Franklin Square—Nast himself having no personal ill-will toward me—that a curious and pleasing opportunity which came to pass was taken to make amends. A son having been born to me, “Harper’s Weekly” contained an atoning cartoon representing the child in its father’s arms, and, above, the legend: “10,000 sons from Kentucky, alone.” Some wag said that the son in question, was “the only one of the hundred thousand in arms who came when he was called.”

For many years afterward I was pursued by this unlucky speech, or rather by the misinterpretation given to it alike by friend and foe. Nast’s first cartoon was accepted as a faithful portrait, and I was accordingly satirized and stigmatized, although no thought of violence ever had entered my mind, and in the final proceedings I had voted for the Electoral Commission Bill and faithfully stood by its decisions. Joseph Pulitzer, who immediately followed me on the occasion named, declared that he wanted my “one hundred thousand” to come fully armed and ready for business; yet he never was taken to task or reminded of his temerity.

VI

THE Electoral Commission Bill was considered with great secrecy by the Joint Committees of the House and Senate. Its terms were in direct contravention of Mr. Tilden’s plan. This was simplicity itself. He was for asserting, by formal resolution, the conclusive right of the two Houses acting concurrently to count the electoral vote and determine what should be counted as electoral votes, and for denying, also by formal resolution, the pretension set up by the Republicans that the President of the Senate had lawful right to assume that function. He was for urging that issue in debate in both Houses and before the country. He thought that if the attempt should be made to usurp for the President of the Senate a power to make the count, and thus practically to control the Presidential election, the scheme would break down in process of execution.

Strange to say, Mr. Tilden was not consulted by the party leaders in Congress until the fourteenth of January, and then only by Mr. Hewitt, the extra-constitutional features of the Electoral Tribunal measure having already received the assent of Mr. Bayard and Mr. Thurman, the Democratic members of the Senate Committee. Standing by his original plan, and answering Mr. Hewitt’s statement that Mr. Bayard and Mr. Thurman were fully committed, Mr. Tilden said: “Is it not, then, rather late to consult me?” to which Mr. Hewitt replied: “They do not consult you. They are public men, and have their own duties and responsibilities. I consult you.” In the course of the discussion with Mr. Hewitt which followed Mr. Tilden said, “If you go into conference with your adversary, and can’t break off because you feel you must agree to something, you cannot negotiate—you are not fit to negotiate. You will be beaten upon every detail.” Replying to the apprehension of a collision of force between the parties, Mr. Tilden thought it exaggerated, but said: “Why surrender now? You can always surrender. Why surrender before the battle, for fear you may have to surrender after the battle?”

In short, Mr. Tilden condemned the proceeding as precipitate. It was a month before the time for the count, and he saw no reason why opportunity should not be given for consideration and consultation by all the representatives of the people. He treated the state of mind of Bayard and Thurman as a panic in which they were liable to act in haste and repent at leisure. He stood for publicity and wider discussion, distrusting a scheme to submit such vast interests to a small body sitting in the Capitol, as likely to become the sport of intrigue and fraud.

Mr. Hewitt returned to Washington and, without communicating to Mr. Tilden’s immediate friends in the House his attitude and objection, united with Mr. Thurman and Mr. Bayard in completing the bill and reporting it to the Democratic Advisory Committee, as, by a caucus rule, had to be done with all measures relating to the great issue then before us. No intimation had preceded it. It fell like a bombshell upon the members of the Committee. In the debate that followed Mr. Bayard was very insistent, answering the objections at once offered by me, first aggressively and then angrily, going the length of saying, “If you do not accept this plan I shall wash my hands of the whole business, and you can go ahead and seat your President in your own way.”

Mr. Randall, the Speaker, said nothing, but he was with me, as was a majority of my colleagues. It was Mr. Hunton, of Virginia, who poured oil on the troubled waters, and, somewhat in doubt as to whether the changed situation had changed Mr. Tilden, I yielded my better judgment, declaring it as my opinion that the plan would seat Hayes, and there being no other protestant the Committee finally gave a reluctant assent.

In “open session” a majority of Democrats favored the bill. Many of them made it their own. They passed it. There was belief that justice David Davis, who was expected to become a member of the Commission, was sure for Tilden. If, under this surmise, he had been, the political complexion of “eight to seven” would have been reversed. Elected to the United States Senate from Illinois, Judge Davis declined to serve, and Mr. Justice Bradley was chosen for the Commission in his place. The day after the inauguration of Hayes my kinsman, Stanley Matthews, said to me, “You people wanted Judge Davis. So did we. I tell you what I know, that Judge Davis was as safe for us as Judge Bradley. We preferred him because he carried more weight.” The subsequent career of Judge Davis in the Senate gives conclusive proof that this was true.

When the consideration of the disputed votes before the Commission had proceeded far enough to demonstrate the likelihood that its final decision would be for Hayes, a movement of obstruction and delay, “a filibuster,” was organized by about forty Democratic members of the House. It proved rather turbulent than effective. The South stood very nearly solid for carrying out the agreement in good faith. “Toward the close the filibuster received what appeared formidable reinforcement from the Louisiana Delegation.” This was in reality merely a “bluff,” intended to induce the Hayes people to make certain concessions touching their State government. It had the desired effect. Satisfactory assurances having been given, the count proceeded to the end—a very bitter end, indeed, for the Democrats.

The final conference between the Louisianians and the accredited representatives of Mr. Hayes was held at Wormley’s Hotel and came to be called “the Wormley Conference.” It was the subject of uncommon interest and heated controversy at the time and long afterward. Without knowing why or for what purpose, I was asked to be present by my colleague, Mr. Ellis, of Louisiana, and later in the day the same invitation came to me from the Republicans through Mr. Garfield. Something was said about my serving as “a referee.” Just before the appointed hour General M. C. Butler, of South Carolina, afterward so long a Senator in Congress, said to me: “This meeting is called to enable Louisiana to make terms with Hayes. South Carolina is as deeply concerned as Louisiana, but we have nobody to represent us in Congress and hence have not been invited. South Carolina puts herself in your hands and expects you to secure for her whatever terms are given to Louisiana.” So, of a sudden, I found myself invested with responsibility equally as an “agent” and a “referee.”

It is hardly worth while repeating in detail all that passed at this Wormley Conference, made public long ago by Congressional investigation. When I entered the apartment of Mr. Evarts at Wormley’s I found, besides Mr. Evarts, Mr. John Sherman, Mr. Garfield, Governor Dennison and Mr. Stanley Matthews, of the Republicans, and Mr. Ellis, Mr. Levy, and Mr. Burke, Democrats of Louisiana. Substantially, the terms had been agreed upon during previous conferences; that is, the promise that, if Hayes came in, the troops should be withdrawn and the people of Louisiana be left free to set their house in order to suit themselves. The actual order withdrawing the troops was issued by President Grant two or three days later, just as he was going out of office.

“Now, gentlemen,” said I, half in jest, “I am here to represent South Carolina, and if the terms given to Louisiana are not equally applied to South Carolina, I become a filibuster myself to-morrow morning.” There was some chaffing as to what right I had there and how I got in, when with great earnestness Governor Dennison, who had been the bearer of a letter from Mr. Hayes which he had read to us, put his hand on my shoulder and said, “As a matter of course, the Southern policy to which Mr. Hayes has here pledged himself embraces South Carolina as well as Louisiana.” Mr. Sherman, Mr. Garfield, and Mr. Evarts concurred warmly in this, and, immediately after we separated, I communicated the fact to General Butler.

In the acrimonious discussion which subsequently sought to make “bargain, intrigue, and corruption” of this Wormley Conference, and to involve certain Democratic members of the House who were nowise party to it, but had sympathized with the purpose of Louisiana and South Carolina to obtain some measure of relief from intolerable local conditions, I never was questioned or assailed. No one doubted my fidelity to Mr. Tilden, who had been promptly advised of all that passed and who justified what I had done. Though “conscripted,” as it were, and rather a passive agent, I could see no wrong in the proceeding. I had spoken and voted in favor of the Electoral Tribunal Bill and, losing, had no thought of repudiating its conclusions. Hayes was already as good as seated. If the States of Louisiana and South Carolina could save their local autonomy out of the general wreck, there seemed no good reason to forbid. On the other hand, the Republican leaders were glad of an opportunity to make an end of the corrupt and tragic farce of Reconstruction; to unload their party of a dead weight which had been burdensome and was growing dangerous; mayhap to punish their Southern agents who had demanded so much for doctoring the returns and making an exhibit in favor of Hayes.

VII

MR. TILDEN accepted the result with equanimity. “I was at his house,” says John Bigelow, “when his exclusion was announced to him, and also on the fourth of March when Mr. Hayes was inaugurated, and it was impossible to remark any change in his manner, except perhaps that he was less absorbed than usual and more interested in current affairs.” His was an intensely serious mind; and he had come to regard the Presidency as rather a burden to be borne—an opportunity for public usefulness—involving a life of constant toil and care, than as an occasion for personal exploitation and rejoicing.

However much of captivation the idea of the Presidency may have had for him when he was first named for the office, I cannot say, for he was as unexultant in the moment of victory as he was unsubdued in the hour of defeat; but it is certainly true that he gave no sign of disappointment to any of his friends. He lived nearly ten years longer, at Greystone, in a noble homestead he had purchased for himself overlooking the Hudson River, the same ideal life of the scholar and gentleman that he had passed in Gramercy Park.

Looking back over these untoward and sometimes mystifying events, I have often asked myself: Was it possible, with the elements what they were, and he himself what he was, to seat Mr. Tilden in the office to which he had been elected? The missing ingredient in a character intellectually and morally great, and a personality far from unimpressive, was the touch of the dramatic discoverable in most of the leaders of men: even in such leaders as William of Orange and Louis the XI, as Cromwell and Washington.

There was nothing spectacular about Mr. Tilden. Not wanting the sense of humor, he seldom indulged it. In spite of his positiveness of opinion and amplitude of knowledge, he was always courteous and deferential in debate. He had none of the audacious daring, let us say, of Mr. Blaine, the energetic self-assertion of Mr. Roosevelt. Either, in his place, would have carried all before him.

It would be hard to find a character farther from that of a subtle schemer—sitting behind his screen and pulling his wires—which his political and party enemies discovered him to be as soon as he began to get in the way of the Machine and obstruct the march of the self-elect. His confidences were not effusive nor their subjects numerous. His deliberation was unfailing, and sometimes it carried the idea of indecision, not to say actual love of procrastination. But in my experience with him I found that he usually ended where he began, and it was nowise difficult for those whom he trusted to divine the bias of his mind where he thought it best to reserve its conclusions. I do not think that in any great affair he ever hesitated longer than the gravity of the case required of a prudent man, or that he had a preference for delays, or that he clung over-tenaciously to both horns of the dilemma, as his professional training and instinct might lead him to do, and did certainly expose him to the accusation of doing.

He was a philosopher and took the world as he found it. He rarely complained and never inveighed. He had a discriminating way of balancing men’s good and bad qualities and of giving each the benefit of a generous accounting, and a just way of expecting no more of a man than it was in him to yield. As he got into deeper water his stature rose to its level, and, from his exclusion from the Presidency in 1877 to his renunciation of public affairs in 1884 and his death in 1886, his walks and ways might have been a study for all who would learn life’s truest lessons and know the real sources of honor, happiness, and fame.

THE ELIXIR OF YOUTH

BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE

Author of “The Bread-Line,” “Elizabeth,” “Mark Twain: A Biography,” etc.

THEN, it being no use to try, Carringford let the hand holding the book drop into his lap and from his lap to his side. His eyes stared grimly into the fire, which was dropping to embers.

“I suppose I’m getting old,” he said; “that’s the reason. The books are as good as ever they were—the old ones, at any rate. Only they don’t interest me any more. It’s because I don’t believe in them as I did. I see through them all. I begin taking them to pieces as soon as I begin to read, and of course romance and glamour won’t stand dissection. Yes, it’s because I’m getting old; that’s it. Those things go with youth. Why, I remember when I would give up a dinner for a new book, when a fresh magazine gave me a positive thrill. I lost that somewhere, somehow; I wonder why. It is a ghastly loss. If I had to live my life over, I would at least try not to destroy my faith in books. It seems to me now just about the one thing worth keeping for old age.”

The book slipped from the hand hanging at his side. The embers broke, and, falling together, sent up a tongue of renewed flame. Carringford’s mind was slipping into by-paths.

“If one only might live his life over!” he muttered. “If one might be young again!”

He was not thinking of books now. A procession of ifs had come filing out of the past—a sequence of opportunities where, with the privilege of choice, he had chosen the wrong, the irrevocable thing.

“If one only might try again!” he whispered. “If one only might! Good God!” Something like a soft footfall on the rug caused him to turn suddenly. “I beg your pardon,” he said, rising, “I did not hear you. I was dreaming, I suppose.”

A man stood before him, apparently a stranger.

“I came quietly,” he said. “I did not wish to break in upon your thought. It interested me, and I felt that I—might be of help.”

Carringford was trying to recall the man’s face,—a studious, clean-shaven face,—to associate it and the black-garbed, slender figure with a name. So many frequented his apartment, congenial, idle fellows who came and went, and brought their friends if they liked, that Carringford was not surprised to be confronted by one he could not place. He was about to extend his hand, confessing a lack of memory, when his visitor spoke again.

“No,” he said in a gentle, composed voice, “you would not know it if you heard it. I have never been here before. I should not have come now only that, as I was passing below, I heard you thinking you would like to be young again—to live your life over, as they say.”

Carringford stared a moment or two at the smooth, clean-cut features and slender, black figure of his visitor before replying. He was used to many curious things, and not many things surprised him.

“I beg your pardon,” he repeated, “you mentioned, I believe, that you heard me thinking as you were passing on the street below?”

The slender man in black bowed.

“Wishing that you might be young again, that you might have another try at the game of life. I believe that was the exact thought.”

“And, may I ask, is it your habit to hear persons think?”

“When their thoughts interest me, yes, as one might overhear an interesting conversation.”

Carringford had slipped back into his chair and motioned his guest to another. Wizard or unbalanced, he was likely to prove a diversion. When the cigars were pushed in his direction, he took one, lighted it, and smoked silently. Carringford smoked, too, and looked into the fire.

“You were saying,” he began presently, “that you pick up interesting thought-currents as one might overhear bits of conversation. I suppose you find the process quite as simple as hearing in the ordinary way. Only it seems a little—well, unusual. Of course that is only my opinion.”

The slender man in black assented with a slight nod.

“The faculty is not unusual; it is universal. It is only undeveloped, uncontrolled, as yet. It was the same with electricity a generation ago. Now it has become our most useful servant.”

Carringford gave his visitor an intent look. This did not seem the inconsequential phrasing of an addled brain.

“You interest me,” he said. “Of course I have heard a good deal of such things, and all of us have had manifestations; but I think I have never before met any one who was able to control—to demonstrate, if you will—this particular force. It is a sort of mental wireless, I suppose—wordless, if you will permit the term.”

“Yes, the true wireless, the thing we are approaching—speech of mind to mind. Our minds are easily attuned to waves of mutual interest. When one vibrates, another in the same wave will answer to it. We are just musical instruments: a chord struck on the piano answers on the attuned harp. Any strong mutual interest forms the key-note of mental harmonic vibration. We need only develop the mental ear to hear, the mental eye to see.”

The look of weariness returned to Carringford’s face. These were trite, familiar phrases.

“I seem to have heard most of those things before,” he said. Then, as his guest smoked silently, he added, “I am only wondering how it came that my thought of the past and its hopelessness should have struck a chord or key-note which would send you up my stair.”

The slender, black figure rose and took a turn across the room, pausing in front of Carringford.

“You were saying as I passed your door that you would live your life over if you could. You were thinking: ‘If one might be young again! If one only might try again! If only one might!’ That was your thought, I believe.”

Carringford nodded.

“That was my thought,” he said, “through whatever magic you came by it.”

“And may I ask if there was a genuine desire behind that thought? Did you mean that you would indeed live your life over if you could? That, if the opportunity were given to tread the backward way to a new beginning, you would accept it?”

There was an intensity of interest in the man’s quiet voice, an eager gleam in his half-closed eyes, a hovering expectancy in the attitude of the slender, black figure. Carringford had the feeling of having been swept backward into a time of sorcery and incantation. He vaguely wondered if he had not fallen asleep. Well, he would follow the dream through.

“Yes, I would live my life over if I could,” he said. “I have made a poor mess of it this time. I could play the game better, I know, if the Fates would but deal me a new hand. If I could start young again, with all the opportunities of youth, I would not so often choose the poorer thing.”

The long, white fingers of Carringford’s guest had slipped into his waistcoat pocket. They now drew forth a small, bright object and held it to the light. Carringford saw that it was a vial, filled with a clear, golden liquid that shimmered and quivered in the light and was never still. Its possessor regarded it for a moment through half-closed lashes, then placed it on a table under the lamp, where it continued to glint and tremble.

Carringford watched it, fascinated, half hypnotized by the marvel of its gleam. Surely there was magic in this. The man was an alchemist, a sort of reincarnation from some forgotten day.

Carringford’s guest also watched the vial. The room seemed to have grown very still. Then after a time his thin lips parted.

“If you are really willing to admit failure,” he began slowly, carefully selecting each word, “if behind your wish there lies a sincere desire to go back to youth and begin life over, if that desire is strong enough to grow into a purpose, if you are ready to make the experiment, there you will find the means. That vial contains the very essence of vitality, the true elixir of youth. It is not a magic philter, as I see by your thought you believe. There is no magic. Whatever is, belongs to science. I am not a necromancer, but a scientist. From boyhood my study has been to solve the subtler secrets of life. I have solved many such. I have solved at last the secret of life itself. It is contained in that golden vial, an elixir to renew the tissues, to repair the cells, of the wasting body. Taken as I direct, you will no longer grow old, but young. The gray in your hair will vanish, the lines will smooth out of your face, your step will become buoyant, your pulses quick, your heart will sing with youth.” The speaker paused a moment, and his gray eyes rested on Carringford and seemed probing his very soul.

“It will take a little time,” he went on; “for as the natural processes of decay are not rapid, the natural restoration may not be hurried. You can go back to where you will, even to early youth, and so begin over, if it is your wish. Are you willing to make the experiment? If you are, I will place the means in your hands.”

While his visitor had been speaking, Carringford had been completely absorbed, filled with strange emotions, too amazed, too confused for utterance.

“I see a doubt in your mind as to the genuineness, the efficacy, of my discovery,” the even voice continued. “I will relieve that.” From an inner pocket he drew a card photograph and handed it to Carringford. “That was taken three years ago. I was then approaching eighty. I am now, I should say, about forty-five. I could be younger if I chose, but forty-five is the age of achievement—the ripe age. Mankind needs me at forty-five.”

Carringford stared at the photograph, then at the face before him, then again at the photograph. Yes, they were the same, certainly they were the same, but for the difference of years. The peculiar eyes, the clean, unusual outlines were unmistakable. Even a curious cast in the eye was there.

“An inheritance,” explained his visitor. “Is the identification enough?”

Carringford nodded in a dazed way and handed back the picture. Any lingering doubt of the genuineness of this strange being or his science had vanished. His one thought now was that growing old need be no more than a fiction, after all that one might grow young instead, might lay aside the wrinkles and the gray hairs, and walk once more the way of purposes and dreams. His pulses leaped, his blood surged up and smothered him.

The acceptance of such a boon seemed too wonderful a thing to be put into words. His eyes grew wide and deep with the very bigness of it, but he could not for the moment find speech.

“You are willing to make the experiment?” the man asked. “I see many emotions in your mind. Think—think clearly, and make your decision.”

Words of acceptance rushed to Carringford’s lips. They were upon the verge of utterance when suddenly he was gripped by an old and dearly acquired habit—the habit of forethought.

“But I should want to keep my knowledge of the world,” he said, “to profit by my experience, my wisdom, such as it is. I should want to live my life over, knowing what I know now.”

The look of weariness which Carringford’s face had worn earlier had found its way to the face of the visitor.

“I seem to have heard most of those things before,” he said, with a faint smile.

“But shall I not remember the life I have lived, with its shortcomings, its blunders?”

“Yes, you will remember as well as you do now—better, perhaps, for your faculties will be renewed; but whether you will profit by it—that is another matter.”

“You mean that I shall make the same mistakes, commit the same sins?”

“Let us consider to a moment. You will go back to youth. You will be young again. Perhaps you have forgotten what it is to be young. Let me remind you.” The man’s lashes met; his voice seemed to come from a great distance. “It is to be filled with the very ecstasy of living,” he breathed—“its impulses, its fevers, the things that have always belonged to youth, that have always made youth beautiful. Your experience? Yes, you will have that, too; but it will not be the experience of that same youth, but of another—the youth that you were.” The gray eyes gleamed, the voice hardened a little. “Did you ever profit by the experience of another in that earlier time?”

Carringford shook his head.

“No,” he whispered.

His guest pointed to the book-shelves.

“Did you ever, in a later time, profit by the wisdom set down in those?”

Carringford shook his head.

“No,” he whispered.

“Yet the story is all there, and you knew the record to be true. Have you always profited even by your own experience? Have you always avoided the same blunder a second, even a third, time? Do you always profit by your own experience even now?”

Carringford shook his head.

“No,” he whispered.

“And yet you think that if you could only live your life over, you would avoid the pitfalls and the temptations, remembering what they had cost you before. No, oh, no; I am not here to promise you that. I am not a magician; I am only a scientist, and I have not yet discovered the elixir of wisdom or of morals. I am not superhuman; I am only human, like yourself. I am not a god, and I cannot make you one. Going back to youth means that you will be young again—young! Don’t you see? It does not mean that you will drag back with you the strength and the wisdom and the sobered impulses of middle age. That would not be youth. Youth cares nothing for such things, and profits by no experience, not even its own.”

Carringford’s eyes had wandered to the yellow vial under the lamp—to the quivering, shimmering fascination of its dancing gold. His gaze rested there a moment, then again sought the face of his guest—that inscrutable face where seemed mingled the look of middle age with the wisdom of the centuries.

“You do not care to go back further?” Carringford said.

The man’s eyes closed for a moment, and something that was akin to fierce human emotion swept his features.

“Yes, oh, yes, I care,” he said quickly. “It is the temptation I fight always. Oh, you do not know what it means to feel that you are growing young! To feel your body renew, your heart beat stronger, to feel your blood take on a swifter flow, like the sap of a tree in spring! You have known the false stimulus of wine. Ah, it is a feeble thing compared with this! For this is not false, but true. This is the substance of renewal, not the fire of waste. To wake in the morning feeling that you are not older than yesterday, but younger, better able to cope and to enjoy; to travel back from fourscore to forty-five—I have done that. Do you realize what that means? It means treading the flowery way, lighted by eternal radiance, cheered by the songs of birds. And then to stop—you cannot know what it means to stop! Oh, yes, it was hard to stop; but I must stop now, or not at all this side of youth. Only at forty-five would one have the strength to stop—the age of reason and will, the age of achievement. And I need to achieve, for I still have much to do. So I stopped when I had the strength and had reached the fullness of my power. While I have work to do I shall not go further back. I shall remain as I am, and as you are, at middle age—the age of work.”

He had been pacing up and down in front of Carringford as he spoke. He now halted, facing him, gazing down.

“I must not linger,” he said. “These are my hours for labor, and I have so much to do, so much, it will keep me busy for a thousand years. I have only begun. Perhaps some day I may discover the elixir of wisdom. Perhaps I may yet solve the secret of genius. Perhaps”—His voice lowered—“I shall one day unveil the secret of the soul. The vial I leave with you, for I see in your mind that you cannot reach a conclusion now. On the attached label you will find instructions for its use. Think, ponder, and be sure before you set out on that flowery backward way. Be sure that you want youth again, with all that youth means, before you start back to find it.” He laid his hand in Carringford’s for an instant, and was gone.

Drawn by O. F. Schmidt. Half-tone plate engraved by H. C. Merrill

“HE BALANCED THE PRECIOUS VIAL MORE QUICKLY”

For a while Carringford did not move, but sat as one in a dream, staring at the dancing fluid gold in the bottle beneath the lamp.

Youth—youth, how he had longed for that vanished gold, which he had so prodigally wasted when it was in his grasp! How often he had said, as he had said to-night, “Oh, to have one more chance, to be able to begin the game anew!” He reached out and grasped the vial, and held it up to the light. The glinting radiance in it began a wild, new dance at his touch.

Youth, life renewed, yes, that is what it was, its very essence; to taste of that elixir, and start back along the flowery, sunlit way of which his guest had spoken; to feel the blood start more quickly in his veins, a new spring in his muscles; to know that a new bloom had come into his cheek, a new light into his eye.

But, then, the other things, they would come, too. Along that fair backward way lurked all the temptations, the dangers, the heartbreaks—all the efforts and the failures he had once left behind. Did he want to face them again? Did he want to endure again all those years of the struggle of human wisdom with human weakness? He knew it would mean that, and that the same old fights and failures would be his share. He had never thought of it before, but he knew now that it must be so.

Yet, to tread that flowery way, to begin to-night!

He wheeled around to the dying fire, and sat staring into the deep coals and flickering blaze, balancing the golden vial in his hand, as one weighing a decision.

To tread that flowery way, with its blue skies and its singing birds, to feel one’s heart bursting with a new ecstasy, to reach again the land of hope and love, and to linger there with some one—some one with a heart full of love and life! He had always been so lonely!

The age of work, his own age, his guest had chosen to linger there; had resisted all other temptations for that. With the wisdom of fourscore years and all his subtle gift for detecting and avoiding dangers, he had chosen the middle age of life for his abiding-place. The age of work, yes, it was that, if one only made it his vantage-ground.

But, oh, the glory of the flowery way, with all its dangers and all its heartbreaks! His decision was swinging to and fro, like a pendulum: the age of work, the flowery way, the age of work?

And he had been so idle. Perhaps that had been the trouble all along.

“The age of work,” he whispered, “the age of achievement!”

He balanced the precious vial more quickly. It caught the flicker of a waning blaze and became a great, throbbing ruby in his hand.

“To live life over! To go back and begin the game anew! Good God!”

Then—he did not know how it happened—the little bottle toppled, fell, and struck the stone hearth, splashing its contents into the dying embers. There was a leap of yellow flame, which an instant later had become vivid scarlet, changing as quickly to crimson, deep purple, then to a flare of blinding white, and was gone.

Carringford, startled for a moment, sat gazing dumbly at the ashes of his dying fire.

“The question has decided itself,” he said.

A LAST MESSAGE

BY GRACE DENIO LITCHFIELD

DEAR, I lie dying, and thou dost not know—

Thou whom of all the world I love the best,

And wilt not know until I lie at rest,

With lips forever closed and lids dropped low.

O Love, O Love, I cannot leave thee so!

Cannot, still undivined, still unexpressed,

Unheeding to the last my heart’s behest,

Dumb into the eternal silence go!

What reck I in this moment of disgrace?

Albeit the whole world hear what my heart saith,

I cry aloud to thee across all space,

To thee—to thee—I call with my last breath!

O Love, lean forth from out thy dwelling-place!

Listen, and learn I loved thee, Love, till death.

THOMAS JEFFERSON

FROM THE STATUE BY KARL BITTER, FOR THE
JEFFERSON MEMORIAL IN ST. LOUIS

This statue will be unveiled in the presence of a congressional
committee on April 30, 1913, the one hundred and tenth anniversary
of the Louisiana Purchase.

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TO A SCARLET TANAGER

BY GRACE HAZARD CONKLING

MY tanager, what crescent coast,

Curving beyond what seas of air,

Invites your elfin commerce most?

For I would fain inhabit there.

Is it a corner of Cathay,

That I could reach by caravan,

Or do you traffic far away

Beyond the mountains of Japan?

If, where some iridescent isle

Wears like a rose its calm lagoon,

You plan to spend a little while,—

An April or a fervid June,—

Deign to direct my wanderings,

And I shall be the one who sees

Your scarlet pinnace furl its wings

And come to anchor in the trees.

Do you collect for merchandise

Ribbons of weed and jeweled shells,

And dazzle color-hungry eyes

With rainbows from the coral wells?

But when your freight is asphodels,

You must be fresh from Enna’s lawn.

Who buys, when such a merchant sells,

And in what market roofed with dawn?

Much would it ease my spirit if

To-day I might embark with you,

Low-drifting like the milkweed-skiff,

Or voyaging against the blue,

To learn who speeds your ebon sails,

And what you do in Ispahan.

Do you convey to nightingales

Strange honey-dew from Hindustan?

With you for master mariner,

I yet might travel very far;

Discover whence your cargoes were,

And whither tending, by a star;

Or what ineffable bazaar

You most frequent in Samarkand;

Or even where those harbors are

Keats found forlorn in fairy-land.

Owned by Mrs. Frank H. Scott

THE SCARLET TANAGER

FROM THE PAINTING, IN WATER-COLORS, BY ALFRED BRENNAN

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A WAR WORTH WAGING

THE SUCCESSFUL FIGHT TO IMPROVE THE HEALTH OF NEW YORK CITY

(AVERAGE LIFE IN 1866, THIRTY YEARS; IN 1912, SIXTY-SIX YEARS. DEATH-RATE IN 1866, 34 PER THOUSAND; IN 1912, 14.11 PER THOUSAND)

BY RICHARD BARRY

PROFESSOR FISHER, of the Committee of One Hundred appointed to consider the problem of the national health, was laboring with Senator Works of California, the official representative in Washington of the Christian Scientists.

“Your approval, Senator,” he said, “of such measures as clean streets and playgrounds is really an indorsement of preventive medicine.”

“But,” exclaimed Senator Works, “I did not know you meant those things as being preventive medicine. I thought preventive medicine meant serums.”

“No,” said Professor Fisher, laughing; “it means mosquito-bars and bath-tubs.”

It is not only serums and bacteriology, but mosquito-bars and bath-tubs, clean streets and plenty of sewers, together with an efficient organization to perfect the operation of such things, that have revolutionized the conditions of health in New York City.

Consider what has been done for poor children alone. Recently I stood in one of the fifty-five diet-kitchens maintained by the city. A poor woman of the neighborhood entered, carrying in her arms a sickly baby. Evidently familiar with the proper course of procedure, she said to the nurse in charge, “I have given him castor-oil and barley gruel; now what shall I do?” This incident is remarkable because the woman never before had come within the reach of the Health Department. In the danger that menaced the child, she had learned to take the first essential steps not through experience or instruction, but merely through neighborhood gossip.

CONDITION OF NEW YORK HALF A CENTURY AGO

TEN years ago such a thing would have been impossible in New York or in any other large city. The tremendous agencies that now exist for the medical enlightenment of the masses were then unheard of. A generation ago New York was in a condition of almost primeval darkness concerning questions of public health. Canton or Constantinople is to-day little worse off than was America’s chief city then.

In 1866 the public health conditions of New York were in so low a state that the average length of life of the inhabitants was thirty years. In 1912 these conditions had been improved so that the average length of life was sixty-six years. Thus the value of human life, reckoned in terms of time alone, had more than doubled in less than half a century.

Let us go back to the year following the Civil War. The only paving in New York then was of cobblestones, and many streets were unpaved. All were in filthy condition, being irregularly cleaned by contractors, who shirked their work. There was no general system for the removal of ashes and garbage, and these were thrown loosely upon the streets. In three quarters of the city, cellars were in foul condition, often flooded with water and undrained. At that time, incredible as it may seem to the modern New Yorker, few houses were connected with sewers. Offensive trades, such as the boiling of bones, offal, and fat, were carried on without hindrance. There were numerous cesspools and cisterns overflowing with filth. Much of the city’s milk was obtained from cows kept in dark, crowded, ill-ventilated stables and fed upon swill from distilleries. The animals were diseased, and the milk was unclean, unwholesome, and frequently was watered.

In alleyways and back yards great quantities of manure were allowed to accumulate. Farmers sometimes bought it and carted it off for fertilizing; but if no farmer happened to come along, the stuff stayed there indefinitely. Outhouses were neglected, and never were properly cared for by the scavengers, who worked for grafting contractors. The practice of keeping swine in the built-up portions of the city was common. The slaughterhouses were in horrible condition, and the offal from these could not be properly cared for because of defective sewers.

Tenement-house conditions were as bad as they have ever been anywhere. No space was left unoccupied. Sheds, basements, and even cellars were rented to families and lodgers. The vast numbers of immigrants pouring in, and the constricted space on Manhattan Island, made rents so high that even a corner in a cellar brought an exorbitant price. Single rooms were divided by partitions, and whole families occupied each section.

In 1866 it was estimated that 20,000 People were then living in cellars in New York. Ten years before that period many of the city houses had been shaky from quick building; after the war, figuratively speaking, they had fallen into the cellars. At that time New York could hardly claim distinction as a great city. Travelers referred to it as an overgrown village, into which had been shoveled slovenly hordes of European immigrants. The annual death-rate was thirty-four per thousand, while that of London was about twenty-three per thousand. And it must be remembered that New York’s new population was composed of vigorous men and women, the cream of other localities, with what should have been healthy offspring, who had quickly centered here, ambitious and active; whereas London was an ancient city, bearing the ills of its own age. It must be remembered also that at that time the medical profession knew little of bacteriology; antitoxins were unknown; people lived like ostriches, with their heads in the sand concerning questions of sex hygiene and child hygiene; and the science of sociology had yet to be discovered.

Cities had always existed, it is true, but they had to be constantly replenished by fresh blood from the country, and most of them had space to spread out into the country, and thus absorb naturally some of the health that comes from fresh air. But here was a city that had little chance to spread. It was confined to a narrow, rocky island, and was growing more rapidly than any other city in the history of the world. “Bounded on one side by a bluff and on the other side by a sound,” it was burrowing into the earth and climbing constantly into the air to make room for its fast-growing population. It was the center of the fiercest contest for money and power, yet it failed to hold long those who came there. The men that made money went to Europe to spend it, and those that fell in the fight went to the West to recuperate. Immigrants that arrived there with money went on to the West or the South; those without money stayed.

The result was that New York did not primarily become a city of residence, but the resort of those who either through the necessity of poverty or the necessity of ambition sojourned there. Of all American cities it became the most artificial; there life came to be lived at its highest tension; there the struggle for existence became fiercest.

It is apparent that in such a city Nature cannot be left to her own devices. When man deserts Nature, she promptly retaliates by deserting man. And, in substitution of so-called “natural” living, there has been developed the present-day mode, built up of scientific analysis, skilful treatment, and thorough organization.

A NEW DEPARTURE

THE health campaigns of the last forty-five years divide themselves naturally into two groups, those that came before 1900 and those that came after that year. The early campaigns were the more obvious; the later campaigns are the more subtle in their tactics, but none the less effective. Before 1900 the death-rate had been reduced by more than one third. In 1866 it was 34 per thousand; in 1900 it was 20.57 per thousand. During this period of thirty-four years wells had been gradually eliminated as sources of drinking-water, until not one was left in the principal parts of the city. Young children who never had been in the country were brought to the well in Central Park and they gazed into it as a curiosity, just as they looked at the bears and the greenhouses. At the same time the general water-supply was vastly improved. To live in cellars was made illegal, and there was a general improvement in the condition of dwellings. Street-cleaning became well organized; sewers were laid in almost all the streets, and refuse was cared for scientifically. The public supervision of contagious diseases became effective; good use was made of new medical discoveries, such as diphtheria antitoxin, and the public hospitals were improved.

Yet the advances in sanitary safeguarding since 1900 are more wonderful than those that came before. In the last twelve years the death-rate has been reduced by a quarter from its comparatively high rate at the beginning of the century. In 1911 it was 15.13 per thousand. For 1912 it was 14.11 per thousand. However, this reduction of more than six per thousand has been won with over twice the effort that was necessary to make the first fourteen per thousand. The city budget for 1912 carried an appropriation for the Department of Health of more than $3,000,000. As much more was spent the same year by the seventy-odd organizations, private or semi-public, the purpose of which is the betterment of health conditions. Besides, there has been the devoted labor of more than seven thousand physicians.

In all this vast field of effort, as diversified as the entire scope of modern science, as complex as civilization itself, two main lines stand out conspicuously. New York was a pioneer among cities in both. These concerned the treatment of tuberculosis and children’s diseases. The organized fight against tuberculosis in New York, under the latest approved scientific methods, dates only from 1904. Before that time there was no successful effort on the part of the authorities to diagnose the disease properly, nor any attempt to deal with it intelligently when it was discovered accidentally. Yet New York is as great a sufferer from the white plague as any other locality. Its congested living, its large Negro population, and its indigent foreigners, ignorant of our language and customs, make it a fertile breeding-ground for the tubercle bacillus.

Within eight years, twenty-nine tuberculosis clinics have been established, and several day camps have been built where sufferers can recuperate without expense and without leaving the city. In all these thorough blood and sputum tests are made with modern scientific apparatus. At the same time, it has been widely made known that to recover from the dread disease it is not necessary to leave the city, which, situated between two bodies of water, is swept constantly by fresh air, the chief necessity in the treatment of tuberculosis.

SAVING THE BABIES

BUT the really remarkable work in the reduction of the death-rate within the last few years has been done among the children. It is here that the war worth waging has been carried on most effectively. If, as Ellen Key says, this is the century of the child, New York proved it in its first decade by concentrating the health battalions on infant mortality.

“A baby that comes into the world has less chance to live one week than an old man of ninety, and less chance to live a year than a man of eighty,” Bergeron, the French authority on children’s diseases, said ten years ago. Within five years those chances have been increased by a third in New York. In 1911, throughout the United States one death in every five was that of a child under one year of age, while in New York only one death in every eight was that of a child under one year of age. Yet five years before that time New York’s average of infant mortality had been equal to that of the rest of the country. And in 1912 the infant mortality was further decreased by six per cent., a greater decrease than that of any other city.

Drawn by Jay Hambidge. Half-tone plate engraved by H. C. Merrill

WEIGHING THE BABIES AT AN INFANTS’ MILK STATION IN NEW YORK

What has accomplished this result? Primarily, two causes: first, the attention of the Board of Health, whose department of child hygiene now receives a larger annual appropriation than any other (in 1913 it will have more than $600,000, a fifth of the entire budget); and, second, the work of the New York Milk Committee, a semi-public organization composed of many of the chief physicians and philanthropists of the city.

Eight years ago there was not one infants’ milk station in New York. The babies of the poor were obliged to live on what milk could be found easily for them. Few could afford and still fewer could find what is known as “Grade A” milk, which sells in the commercial market for from fifteen to twenty-five cents a quart, and which is thoroughly inspected and certified. At the close of 1912 there were seventy-nine such stations in the city. At every one Grade A milk was sold at the nominal price of eight cents a quart, so as to be in easy competition with ordinary commercial milk. Every day thousands of mothers with their babies throng these stations. However, their chief purpose is not the mere selling of pure, rich milk. They serve principally as dispensaries. The milk is used by the city as a lure by means of which ignorant mothers are brought within the reach of the physicians of the Health Department. With the milk, thorough instruction and advice as to the care of infants is given gratis. The old idea that mothers know entirely how best to care for their own children has been proved erroneous. Not all mothers in a large city know how to care for their children. Many of them are virtually as helpless as the children themselves. They have to be taken in hand, trained, and taught in the care of their offspring as completely as the children themselves are taken in hand a few years later in the public schools.

In addition to the seventy-nine dispensaries of milk and medical knowledge, the city maintains a large corps of trained nurses who make visits, especially during the summer, to the homes to complete the instruction. In the poorer districts, every child under a year old is visited by a city nurse at least once in ten days. The average cost is fifty cents a month for each child. At the same time the inspection of the general milk-supply has become thorough. The city’s inspectors now cover all farms within two hundred miles from the city hall, and the sources of supply are thus kept in proper sanitary condition.

The city also gives ice in summer to those families (with children) that are unable to buy it. In the summer of 1912, 900,000 pounds were thus distributed. This is in addition to the accepted efforts to secure better playgrounds, better ventilated schools, etc.

A decade ago the summer death-rate among children in New York was from two to three times as high as the winter death-rate. For the last four years it has been steadily decreasing, and in 1912 it was almost as low as the winter death-rate. Deaths from diarrheal diseases among children have been reduced to a minimum through the concentrated efforts of a few years. The next work to be taken up will be the winter deaths from respiratory diseases. This is a more difficult problem.

Yet the greatest problem in infant mortality has still to be solved. This is the care of the “institution” baby. As in England and in France, the largest number of deaths among New York children occur among the illegitimate and those lacking a mother’s care during the early months of life. In 1911 more than forty per cent. of the deaths of infants under one year in Manhattan occurred in institutions.

The institutions that receive foundlings are too few and too poorly equipped. One day Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan saw in the street, within a block of his home, a poor woman hugging despairingly to her breast a new-born infant. In consequence, he caused to be built the million-dollar lying-in hospital on Stuyvesant Square, which has already been the means of saving many an innocent life. But that superb hospital, large as it is, has not the facilities for taking care of more than a small number of the infants that require such an institution.

The material agencies, efficient and marvelous as they have become, have not been the chief aid in the reduction of the death-rate, especially among children. Public education has really had more to do with it. Even those in direct charge of the work in infant mortality do not assert that the entire credit for the satisfactory progress should be given to the milk stations, the dispensaries, and the hospitals. Pamphlets, lectures, newspaper articles, and school-room instruction are at the base of the advance. Publicity has proved to be a greater force than milk inspection. Certain popular newspapers in New York have the power to achieve definite radical reforms in modes of living whenever they choose to prosecute a vigorous campaign. Just as the newspapers can expose corruption in any of the city’s departments, so almost as readily they can uproot or at least substantially lessen certain sanitary evils. A case in point is their campaign against the fly last summer. By means of wide-spread and vigorous news articles and editorials they succeeded in so rousing the mass of the people that the fly pest was visibly reduced. Health Department officials testify readily to this.

The work of the social settlements, of the mothers’ clubs, of the neighborhood nursing associations, of the diet-kitchens, all contribute to the general education that is bringing about a condition of excellent public sanitation. This work is necessarily of slow growth. Its effect is not nearly so evident as that of vaccination, of smallpox segregation, or of typhoid diagnosis. It is not so simple as establishing proper sewers or purifying the water-supply; but it is no less important.

THE STUDY OF SEX HYGIENE

IN all this tremendous volume of public sanitary education, no one feature stands out more clearly than the work being done in sex hygiene. Prudery is passing; there can be no doubt of that. Within the last five years every public school in New York has introduced a course of teaching in its physiology or biology department the aim of which is to acquaint the growing boy and girl with the essential facts of sex life, to open their eyes to sexual evils, and to prepare them to treat with sexual diseases intelligently. Ignorant mothers, both foreign-born and native, or those whose false modesty is worse than their ignorance, are day by day being taught by their daughters of twelve and fourteen, who have learned their lessons in school or in neighborhood classes, certain essential facts of sex life, ignorance of which has brought about pitiful conditions of disease and death.

The effect of this is not yet fully apparent in a decreased death-rate, but there can be little doubt that within a very few years it will have its result. For instance, one third of the infant mortality is due to prenatal conditions, congenital diseases which afflict the child at birth, and which mean either speedy death or a lingering, crippled life. The larger part of these untoward prenatal conditions are due to sexual diseases. To eliminate them will require two sustained efforts: the further abolishing of prudery, with consequent rigorous sex hygiene, and the enactment and enforcement of laws that will require proper medical examination before marriage.

A physician told me recently that in his opinion within a decade laws will be enacted providing that every man and woman desiring to marry can do so only with a doctor’s certificate that shall carry with it a clean bill of health. Once that is done, it is confidently believed that the death-rate among infants will fall off perhaps by a quarter, and surely by a fifth or a sixth. The educational work in this field is being done for the future. With present adults there is little hope; but the fathers and mothers of the next generation will be much better equipped.

THE FIGHT AGAINST TYPHOID GERMS

IN one more campaign the immediate future seems likely to yield great results perhaps almost as important as those resulting from the discovery of antitoxin. This will be from the use of the new anti-typhoid serum, which the Department of Health in December, 1912, decided to use as extensively as possible in New York. This decision followed close on the War Department’s public declaration that the anti-typhoid serum had proved a success, virtually eliminating the disease from the army. In 1909 there were more cases of typhoid in the United States than of the plague in India, despite the fact that India’s population is two and a half times that of the United States. In 1907 there were more cases of typhoid in New York than of pellagra in Italy, though Italy’s population is six times that of New York. In this work, as in children’s diseases and in tuberculosis, New York is a pioneer, and yet New York is better off regarding typhoid than many other American cities, for it has a lower typhoid death-rate than Boston, Chicago, Washington, or Philadelphia; yet its typhoid death-rate is higher than that of London, Paris, Berlin, or Hamburg.

Last spring when Wilbur Wright, the aviator, died of typhoid fever at the age of forty-five, several newspapers were honest enough to speak of it as a murder—a murder by the American people, through neglect and ignorance, of a genius who, had he been allowed, might have lived to be of still more distinguished service to the world.

In the last two years the New York Department of Health has been able to trace definitely several typhoid-fever outbreaks. In nearly every instance it was found that the disease could be traced to a “carrier.” A carrier is a person who has recovered from an attack of typhoid, but who remains infected. One outbreak of four hundred cases was traced to the infection of a milk-supply by a typhoid carrier who had had the disease forty-seven years before. In another outbreak of fifty cases the contamination was traced to a man who had the disease seven years before.

Within the last few months the case of “Typhoid Mary” has received much attention. This woman has recently brought suit against the Department of Health for damaging her career as a cook. For more than six months she was kept in a sort of exile by the department. Before that time she had been a cook in many households, and wherever she went typhoid fever followed her. Although she had suffered with the disease many years before she was apprehended, the germs were said to be still very lively in her system. The authorities asserted that her blood tests revealed that she was likely to communicate typhoid to any one at any time; and therefore Mary did no more cooking.

There is no telling how many carriers are loose in New York at present, and the only known way of averting the danger is by the use of the serum which the army has found efficacious. It is estimated that about three per cent. of those recovering from typhoid become bacillus-carriers. As yet typhoid vaccination is not compulsory among the public at large, as in the army; but a strong movement is felt in the city to make it so. When typhoid-fever becomes as thoroughly controlled as smallpox, or even as diphtheria, the death-rate will drop another point or two. It will be the last of the filth diseases to go. It is asserted by competent authorities that eighty-five per cent. of the cases are preventable.

OPINIONS OF AN EXPERT

DR. LEDERLE, Health Commissioner of New York City, says that while typhoid vaccination is likely to prove of untold benefit, other specific improvements should be made. There should be a more perfect control of the milk-supply. At present there is no central testing-station. He recommends also an improved method of sewage disposal, either by treatment or by carrying it farther out to sea, thus preventing pollution of the harbor. There should be a drainage of surrounding land to do away with mosquitos; improved methods of street-cleaning that would result in the prevention of flying dust-clouds; and the open garbage receptacles and dumps should be abolished in favor of cremation of all refuse. The campaign against the fly must be carried on more vigorously every year, and immediate steps are to be taken for the protection of all foods from fly contamination. This will be an extension of the control of food, together with the proper filtration of the public water-supply. Dr. Lederle says further that increased hospital facilities for contagious diseases are needed. There will be further popular education in sanitary matters, special stress being laid on the need of fresh air in homes, schools, factories, offices, theaters, and churches; and a comprehensive publication will be made, chiefly for the aid of the poorer classes, of the comparative nutritive and cost values of foods; and further changes in the customs of the time, due to these plans and to other activities, will result in a simpler manner of living. This should render overeating less frequent and reduce the consumption of alcohol and medicines.

Finally, in addition to these efforts, which are under the direction of public officers, the health commissioner declares that if the death-rate is to be further reduced, there must be in the immediate future two changes: first, a definite advance in bacteriological knowledge; and, second, a change in the attitude toward the health of our adult population.

“Save the babies!” was the cry of the last decade. “Save the middle-aged!” will be the cry of this. The real race suicide is not in the insufficiency of births, but in the inadequate knowledge of the diseases of maturity, and in the inadequate care and prevention of these diseases. Deaths from arterio-sclerosis, apoplexy, kidney affections, stomach disorders, and cancer are continuously on the increase, and have been for ten years past. Of the 75,000 persons that died in New York in 1911, 17,000 died of “middle-age complaints.”

The intense life of New Yorkers, their intemperance in eating, drinking, and working, contributes chiefly to the increase in the middle-age death-rate. However, Bright’s disease, diabetes, and cancer are not more a mystery than diphtheria was before antitoxin was discovered. Bacteriology has its fields of further effort well laid out in those directions.

It is the contention of those that give their lives to the study of the subject that “public health is a purchasable commodity.” The struggle, then, is between the death-rate and the dollar rate. Contribute more money to the cause of public health, and the death-rate will go down. Forty thousand babies were saved in 1910 at an average cost of eighteen dollars. It would have cost more to bury them, as the cheapest sort of funeral costs twenty-five dollars.

The appropriation for the care of the public health in New York is not niggardly; it is larger than in most cities. Still, it is not enough. Where the health officers ask for a dollar and a half, they get a dollar. The excuse is that the rest of the desired money is needed to improve parks and streets, for the police and fire departments, for the city government, the water-fronts, etc. Besides, the people of this city are absolutely obliged to spend about $100,000,000 a year on automobiles, candy, theaters, alcoholic drinks, tobacco, diamonds, and such other urgent needs of life. What is left over, after those necessities are provided for, goes toward the preservation of health!

The average expectation of life for man varies in different countries in direct proportion to the application of efficient principles of hygiene and sanitation. In India, for instance, where sanitation is low and the majority of the population live, like Kim, on “the ravellings of circumstance,” the average duration of life is less than twenty-five years. In Sweden and Denmark, where life is methodical and ideals are high, and the Government takes up the ash-heaps regularly, a normal man may expect to live more than seventy years. In Massachusetts, which is the only one of our States to furnish us with reliable statistics, the average duration of life is forty-five years. Wherever sanitary science is active, the length of life is steadily increasing. In India it is stationary; in Europe it has doubled in the last 350 years; in New York, as we have seen, it has doubled within the last half-century. Despite the many obstacles, it seems likely that when the next general census is taken the death-rate of the metropolis will be down to thirteen per thousand. With such a rate, every person in the city may expect to live to be seventy years old. And most of them will say, “Isn’t that old enough?”

THE ILLUSION OF PROGRESS[2]

BY KENYON COX

IN these days all of us, even Academicians, are to some extent believers in progress. Our golden age is no longer in the past, but in the future. We know that our early ancestors were a race of wretched cave-dwellers, and we believe that our still earlier ancestors were possessed of tails and pointed ears. Having come so far, we are sometimes inclined to forget that not every step has been an advance, and to entertain an illogical confidence that each future step must carry us still further forward; having indubitably progressed in many things, we think of ourselves as progressing in all. And as the pace of progress in science and in material things has become more and more rapid, we have come to expect a similar pace in art and letters, to imagine that the art of the future must be far finer than the art of the present or than that of the past, and that the art of one decade, or even of one year, must supersede that of the preceding decade or the preceding year, as the 1913 model in automobiles supersedes the model of 1912. More than ever before “To have done, is to hang quite out of fashion,” and the only title to consideration is to do something quite obviously new or to proclaim one’s intention of doing something newer. The race grows madder and madder. It is hardly two years since we first heard of “Cubism” and already the “Futurists” are calling the “Cubists” reactionary. Even the gasping critics, pounding manfully in the rear, have thrown away all impedimenta of traditional standards in the desperate effort to keep up with what seems less a march than a stampede.

But while we talk so loudly of progress in the arts we have an uneasy feeling that we are not really progressing. If our belief in our own art were as full-blooded as was that of the great creative epochs, we should scarce be so reverent of the art of the past. It is, perhaps, a sign of anemia that we have become founders of museums and conservers of old buildings. If we are so careful of our heritage, it is surely from some doubt of our ability to replace it. When art has been vigorously alive, it has been ruthless in its treatment of what has gone before. No cathedral builder thought of reconciling his own work to that of the builder who preceded him; he built in his own way, confident of its superiority. And when the Renaissance builder came, in his turn, he contemptuously dismissed all medieval art as “Gothic” and barbarous, and was as ready to tear down an old façade as to build a new one. Even the most cock-sure of our moderns might hesitate to emulate Michelangelo in his calm destruction of three frescos by Perugino to make room for his own “Last Judgment.” He at least had the full courage of his convictions, and his opinion of Perugino is of record.

Not all of us would consider even Michelangelo’s arrogance entirely justified, but it is not only the Michelangelos who have had this belief in themselves. Apparently the confidence of progress has been as great in times that now seem to us decadent as in times that we think of as truly progressive. The past, or at least the immediate past, has always seemed “out of date,” and each generation, as it made its entrance on the stage, has plumed itself upon its superiority to that which was leaving it. The architect of the most debased baroque grafted his “improvements” upon the buildings of the high Renaissance with an assurance not less than that with which David and his contemporaries banished the whole charming art of the eighteenth century. Van Orley and Frans Floris were as sure of their advance upon the ancient Flemish painting of the Van Eycks and of Memling as Rubens himself must have been of his advance upon them.

We can see plainly enough that in at least some of these cases the sense of progress was an illusion. There was movement, but it was not always forward movement. And if progress was illusory in some instances, may it not, possibly, have been so in all? It is at least worth inquiry how far the fine arts have ever been in a state of true progress, going forward regularly from good to better, each generation building on the work of its predecessors and surpassing that work, in the way in which science has normally progressed when material conditions were favorable.

If, with a view to answering this question, we examine, however cursorily, the history of the five great arts, we shall find a somewhat different state of affairs in the case of each. In the end it may be possible to formulate something like a general rule that shall accord with all the facts. Let us begin with the greatest and simplest of the arts, the art of poetry.

In the history of poetry we shall find less evidence of progress than anywhere else, for it will be seen that its acknowledged masterpieces are almost invariably near the beginning of a series rather than near the end. Almost as soon as a clear and flexible language has been formed by any people, a great poem has been composed in that language, which has remained not only unsurpassed, but unequaled, by any subsequent work. Homer is for us, as he was for the Greeks, the greatest of their poets; and if the opinion could be taken of all cultivated readers in those nations that have inherited the Greek tradition, it is doubtful whether he would not be acclaimed the greatest poet of the ages. Dante has remained the first of Italian poets, as he was one of the earliest. Chaucer, who wrote when our language was transforming itself from Anglo-Saxon into English, has still lovers who are willing for his sake to master what is to them almost a foreign tongue, and yet other lovers who ask for new translations of his works into our modern idiom; while Shakspere, who wrote almost as soon as that transformation had been accomplished, is universally reckoned one of the greatest of world-poets. There have, indeed, been true poets at almost all stages of the world’s history, but the preëminence of such masters as these can hardly be questioned, and if we looked to poetry alone for a type of the arts, we should almost be forced to conclude that art is the reverse of progressive. We should think of it as gushing forth in full splendor when the world is ready for it, and as unable ever again to rise to the level of its fount.

The art of architecture is later in its beginning than that of poetry, for it can exist only when men have learned to build solidly and permanently. A nomad may be a poet, but he cannot be an architect; a herdsman might have written the Book of Job, but the great builders are dwellers in cities. But since men first learned to build they have never quite forgotten how to do so. At all times there have been somewhere peoples who knew enough of building to mold its utility into forms of beauty, and the history of architecture may be read more continuously than that of any other art. It is a history of constant change and of continuous development, each people and each age forming out of the old elements a new style which should express its mind, and each style reaching its point of greatest distinctiveness only to begin a further transformation into something else; but is it a history of progress? Building, indeed, has progressed at one time or another. The Romans, with their domes and arches, were more scientific builders than the Greeks, with their simple post and lintel, but were they better architects? We of to-day, with our steel construction, can scrape the sky with erections that would have amazed the boldest of medieval craftsmen; can we equal his art? If we ask where in the history of architecture do its masterpieces appear, the answer must be “Almost anywhere.” Wherever men have had the wealth and the energy to build greatly, they have builded beautifully, and the distinctions are less between style and style or epoch and epoch than between building and building. The masterpieces of one time are as the masterpieces of another, and no man may say that the nave of Amiens is finer than the Parthenon or that the Parthenon is nobler than the nave of Amiens. One may say only that each is perfect in its kind, a supreme expression of the human spirit.

Of the art of music I must speak with the diffidence becoming to the ignorant; but it seems to me to consist of two elements and to contain an inspirational art as direct and as simple as that of poetry, and a science so difficult that its fullest mastery is of very recent achievement. In melodic invention it is so far from progressive that its most brilliant masters are often content to elaborate and to decorate a theme old enough to have no history—a theme the inventor of which has been so entirely forgotten that we think of it as sprung not from the mind of one man, but from that of a whole people, and call it a folk-song. The song is almost as old as the race, but the symphony has had to wait for the invention of many instruments and for a mastery of the laws of harmony, and so symphonic music is a modern art. We are still adding new instruments to the orchestra and admitting to our compositions new combinations of sounds, but have we in a hundred years made any essential progress even in this part of the art? Have we produced anything, I will not say greater, but anything as great as the noblest works of Bach and Beethoven?

Already, and before considering the arts of painting and sculpture, we are coming within sight of our general law. This law seems to be that, so far as an art is dependent upon any form of exact knowledge, so far it partakes of the nature of science and is capable of progress. So far as it is expressive of a mind and soul, its greatness is dependent upon the greatness of that mind and soul, and it is incapable of progress. It may even be the reverse of progressive, because as an art becomes more complicated and makes ever greater demands upon technical mastery, it becomes more difficult as a medium of expression, while the mind to be expressed becomes more sophisticated and less easy of expression in any medium. It would take a greater mind than Homer’s to express modern ideas in modern verse with Homer’s serene perfection; it would take, perhaps, a greater mind than Bach’s to employ all the resources of modern music with his glorious ease and directness. And greater minds than those of Bach and Homer the world has not often the felicity to possess.

The arts of painting and sculpture are imitative arts above all others, and therefore more dependent than any others upon exact knowledge, more tinged with the quality of science. Let us see how they illustrate our supposed law.

Sculpture depends, as does architecture, upon certain laws of proportion in space which are analogous to the laws of proportion in time and in pitch upon which music is founded. But as sculpture represents the human figure, whereas architecture and music represent nothing, sculpture requires for its perfection the mastery of an additional science, which is the knowledge of the structure and movement of the human body. This knowledge may be acquired with some rapidity, especially in times and countries where man is often seen unclothed. So, in the history of civilizations, sculpture developed early, after poetry, but with architecture, and before painting and polyphonic music. It reached the greatest perfection of which it is capable in the age of Pericles, and from that time progress was impossible to it, and for a thousand years its movement was one of decline. After the dark ages sculpture was one of the first arts to revive, and again it develops rapidly, though not so rapidly as before, conditions of custom and climate being less favorable to it, until it reaches, in the first half of the sixteenth century, something near its former perfection. Again it can go no further; and since then it has changed, but has not progressed. In Phidias, by which name I would signify the sculptor of the pediments of the Parthenon, we have the coincidence of a superlatively great artist with the moment of technical and scientific perfection in the art, and a similar coincidence crowns the work of Michelangelo with a peculiar glory. But, apart from the work of these two men, the essential value of a work of sculpture is by no means always equal to its technical and scientific completeness. There are archaic statues that are almost as nobly beautiful as any work by Phidias, and more beautiful than almost any work that has been done since his time. There are bits of Gothic sculpture that are more valuable expressions of human feeling than anything produced by the contemporaries of Buonarroti. Even in times of decadence a great artist has created finer things than could be accomplished by a mediocre talent of the great epochs, and the world could ill spare the “Victory” of Samothrace or the portrait busts of Houdon.

As sculpture is one of the simplest of the arts, painting is one of the most complicated. The harmonies it constructs are composed of almost innumerable elements of lines and forms and colors and degrees of light and dark, and the science it professes is no less than that of the visible aspect of the whole of nature—a science so vast that it never has been and perhaps never can be mastered in its totality. Anything approaching a complete art of painting can exist only in an advanced stage of civilization. An entirely complete art of painting never has existed and probably never will exist. The history of painting, after its early stages, is a history of loss here balancing gain there, of a new means of expression acquired at the cost of an old one.

We know comparatively little of the painting of antiquity, but we have no reason to suppose that that art, however admirable, ever attained to ripeness, and we know that the painting of the Orient has stopped short at a comparatively early stage of development. For our purpose the art to be studied is the painting of modern times in Europe from its origin in the Middle Ages. Even in the beginning, or before the beginning, while painting is a decadent reminiscence of the past rather than a prophecy of the new birth, there are decorative splendors in the Byzantine mosaics hardly to be recaptured. Then comes primitive painting, an art of the line and of pure color with little modulation and no attempt at the rendering of solid form. It gradually attains to some sense of relief by the use of degrees of light and less light; but the instant it admits the true shadow, the old brightness and purity of color have become impossible. The line remains dominant for a time, and is carried to the pitch of refinement and beauty, but the love for solid form gradually overcomes it, and in the art of the high Renaissance it takes a second place. Then light and shade begins to be studied for its own sake; color, no longer pure and bright, but deep and resonant, comes in again; the line vanishes altogether, and even form becomes secondary. The last step is taken by Rembrandt, and even color is subordinated to light and shade, which exists alone in a world of brownness. At every step there has been progress, but there has also been regress. Perhaps the greatest balance of gain against loss, and the nearest approach to a complete art of painting, was with the great Venetians. The transformation is still going on, and in our own day we have conquered some corners of the science of visible aspects which were unexplored by our ancestors. But the balance has turned against us; our loss has been greater than our gain; and our art, even in its scientific aspect, is inferior to that of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

And just because there never has been a complete art of painting, entirely rounded and perfected, it is the clearer to us that the final value of a work in that art never has depended on its approach to such completion. There is no one supreme master of painting, but a long succession of masters of different yet equal glory. If the masterpieces of architecture are everywhere because there has often been a complete art of architecture, the masterpieces of painting are everywhere for the opposite reason. And if we do not always value a master the more as his art is more nearly complete, neither do we always value him especially who has placed new scientific conquests at the disposal of art. Palma Vecchio painted by the side of Titian, but he is only a minor master; Botticelli remained of the generation before Leonardo, but he is one of the immortal great. Paolo Ucello, by his study of perspective, made a distinct advance in pictorial science, but his interest for us is purely historic; Fra Angelico made no advance whatever, but he practised consummately the current art as he found it, and his work is eternally delightful. At every stage of its development the art of painting has been a sufficient medium for the expression of a great man’s mind; and wherever and whenever a great man has practised it, the result has been a great and permanently valuable work of art.

For this seems, finally, to be the law of all the arts: the one essential prerequisite to the production of a great work of art is a great man. You cannot have the art without the man, and when you have the man you have the art. His time and his surroundings will color him, his art will not be at one time or place precisely what it might be at another; but at bottom the art is the man, and at all times and in all countries is just as great as the man.

Let us clear our minds, then, of the illusion that there is in any important sense such a thing as progress in the fine arts. We may with a clear conscience judge every new work for what it appears in itself to be, asking of it that it be noble and beautiful and reasonable, not that it be novel or progressive. If it be great art, it will always be novel enough; for there will be a great mind behind it, and no two great minds are alike. And if it be novel without being great, how shall we be the better off? There are enough forms of mediocre or evil art in the world already. Being no longer intimidated by the fetish of progress, when a thing calling itself a work of art seems to us hideous and degraded, indecent and insane, we shall have the courage to say so and shall not care to investigate it further. Detestable things have been produced in the past, and they are none the less detestable because we are able to see how they came to be produced. Detestable things are produced now, and they will be no more admirable if we learn to understand the minds that create them. Even should such things prove to be not the mere freaks of a diseased intellect that they seem, but a necessary outgrowth of the conditions of the age and a true prophecy of “the art of the future,” they are not necessarily the better for that. It is only that the future will be very unlucky in its art.

TO THE EXPERIMENTERS

BY CHARLES BADGER CLARK, JR.

HELP me live long, O keen, cool servants of science!

Give me a hundred years, for life is good and I love it,

And wonders are easy for you.

Yet, by a rule that is older than Æsculapius,

I still must reckon my time to that luckless day

When a ’whelming foe will cross a frontier unguarded

Into this myriad nation of cells that bears my name,

Storming fort after fort till the swarming defenders have perished

And the strangled empire shall fall.

My friends, simple folk, will weep and say, “He is dead!”

But you will smile at their terrible, black-winged angel,

And jot his name and description down in your note-book—

The bitter song of the ages in a line of chemic formula!

Aye, and perchance you can take the components of living,—

Provinces, ravaged and waste, of that ruinous empire,—

And cunningly right them again.

Then call in the mourners.

“Say you your friend is dead?

See through that glass how his heart is pulsating steadily.

Look there, and there, at the beautiful play of the organs—

All the reactions of life restored by our science!

Where is your death?”

But I—is there not an I?—catch you that in a test-tube!

Owned by Mr. Hugo Reisinger

NONCHALANCE

FROM THE PAINTING BY JOHN S. SARGENT

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WAR-HORSES OF FAMOUS GENERALS

WASHINGTON—WELLINGTON—NAPOLEON—GRANT—LEE—SHERMAN—SHERIDAN

BY JAMES GRANT WILSON

WHEN Colonel Washington accompanied General Braddock as aide-de-camp in the Virginia campaign against the French and their Indian allies, he took with him three war-horses. Of these his favorite was “Greenway,” a fiery steed of great speed and endurance. In the disastrous battle of July 9, 1755, Braddock was mortally wounded, after having five horses killed under him, a record, so far as the writer is aware, unequaled in the annals of war. Washington lost two horses. One of these was replaced by the dying general, who presented to him his best charger, which had escaped the carnage. A week later the young colonel wrote of the engagement to his brother John:

By the all powerful dispensation of Providence, I have been protected beyond all human probability or expectation: for I have had four bullets through my coat, and two horses shot under me, yet escaped unhurt, although death was on every side of me.

After the capture of Canada and the close of the war, Washington frequently followed the foxhounds mounted on “Braddock,” as he named that soldier’s powerful dark bay, or on “Greenway,” which was a dark gray, and it was seldom that the Virginian was not in the lead.

On June 20, 1775, Colonel Washington received his commission as Commander-in-Chief of the American Army, and on the following morning, accompanied by Generals Charles Lee and Philip Schuyler, he set out for Cambridge, Massachusetts. He took with him five horses, his favorite being a spirited stallion called “Douglas,” on which Washington first appeared before the army at Cambridge, charming all beholders with his manly grace and military bearing. Jefferson called him “the best horseman of his age.” Before the close of the Revolutionary War the general acquired by gift or purchase seven additional chargers. His bay horse “Fairfax” was so badly wounded at the battle of Trenton that he was left behind. At the battle of Monmouth, Washington rode a white steed presented to him by William Livingston, Governor of New Jersey. Such was the excessive heat on that June day, as well as the deep and sandy nature of the soil, that the spirited charger sank under the general, dying on the spot. His portrait is preserved in Trumbull’s full-length painting of Washington, in the City Hall of New York. He then mounted a high-bred chestnut mare with long, flowing mane and tail named “Dolly.” Lafayette said of her and her rider:

At Monmouth I commanded a division, and it may be supposed I was pretty well occupied; still, I took time, amid the roar and confusion of the conflict, to admire our beloved chief, who, mounted on a splendid charger, rode along the ranks amid the shouts of the soldiers, cheering them by his voice and example, and restoring to our standard the fortunes of the fight. I thought I had never seen so superb a man.

Another of Washington’s war-horses, and the last to be mentioned, was “Nelson,” a light chestnut, sixteen hands high, with white face and legs. He was a gift from Governor Thomas Nelson of Virginia, and was named in his honor. He was used for the last time at the surrender of Lord Cornwallis, afterward leading a life of leisure at Mount Vernon and following Washington’s bier in the funeral procession. Before the Civil War, while on a visit to the general’s adopted son, Mr. Custis of Arlington, I was informed that when a youth he had ridden “Buckskin” and “Nelson,” and that the handsome white horse that fell on the field of Monmouth was painted from memory by Colonel Trumbull. Mr. Custis said:

Among the many troublesome and unbroken horses ridden by Washington, he was never thrown, and he was perhaps the strongest man of his time. Mounted on “Buckskin,” I occasionally accompanied the general when making his daily morning rounds at Mount Vernon, riding “Yorktown,” the youngest of his war-horses, and the last mounted by him, only a few days before his death. On one of those occasions Washington saw with displeasure two stalwart negroes vainly endeavoring to raise a heavy stone to the top of a wall. Throwing “Yorktown’s” bridle to me, he sprang from his saddle, strode forward, pushed the slaves aside, leaned over, and, grasping the huge stone with his large, strong hands, slowly but surely raised it to its place, and remounted without any remark.

WASHINGTON’S FAVORITE WHITE CHARGER “LEXINGTON,” AT THE BATTLE OF MONMOUTH

FROM THE PAINTING BY JOHN TRUMBULL

AT four o’clock on a June morning ninety-eight years ago, when Napoleon was defeated by Wellington in one of the sixteen decisive battles of the world, the illustrious English soldier mounted his celebrated charger “Copenhagen,” remaining in the saddle for eighteen hours. “Copenhagen” was a powerful chestnut, grandson of the famous war-horse “Eclipse,” and the son of “Lady Catherine,” the charger ridden by Field-Marshal Lord Grosvenor at the siege of Copenhagen, when she was in foal with the colt which afterward carried Wellington at Waterloo. The war-horse cost him, in 1813, four hundred guineas. Two years later, when the famous victory was won, and Wellington had held his historic interview with Blücher, the duke dismounted at ten o’clock. As “Copenhagen” was led away by the groom, he playfully threw out his heels as a “good-night” salutation to his successful master. It was Wellington’s last act before leaving Strathfieldsaye for London on public or private business, to walk out to the adjacent paddock to pat his favorite charger, and to feed him with chocolate or other confectionery, of which he was inordinately fond.

NAPOLEON’S FAMOUS WAR-HORSE “MARENGO”

FROM THE PAINTING BY MEISSONIER

For more than a dozen years before his death “Copenhagen,” leading the easy, comfortable career of a well-pensioned veteran who had retired from all the activities of life, was only twice surreptitiously saddled and ridden by the duke’s eldest son, the Marquis of Douro. The second Duke of Wellington, who died in 1884, erected two monuments on the grounds of Strathfieldsaye, that fine estate of nearly seven thousand acres on which is situated Silchester, the site of a Roman station, presented to the “Iron Duke” by the British government for a day’s work at Waterloo. One of these, a superb and lofty marble column, is to the memory of his illustrious father, the other to that of “Copenhagen.” The former stands just outside the park at the point where, immediately in front of one of the lodges, the London road meets at right angles that which connects Reading with Basingstoke. A simple marble tombstone standing under the shadow of a spreading Turkish oak marks the spot where the brave steed was buried with military honors, and bears the following inscription from the pen of the second duke:

Here lies Copenhagen, the charger ridden by the Duke of Wellington the entire day of the battle of Waterloo. Born 1808, died 1836.

God’s humbler instrument though meaner clay

Should share the glory of that glorious day.

WELLINGTON’S WATERLOO CHARGER “COPENHAGEN”

FROM THE PAINTING BY JAMES WARD, R.A.

As we stood by “Copenhagen’s” grave in the summer of 1872, the duke said to me:

Several years after my father’s death an old servant of the family came to me in the library, and, producing a paper parcel, spoke as follows: “Your Grace, I do not believe that I have long to live, and before I die I wish to place in your hands what belongs to you.” With no small degree of surprise I inquired what it was, and when he opened the package and produced a horse’s hoof he said: “Your Grace, when Copenhagen died I cut off this hoof. None of us imagined that the duke would trouble his head about the body of the war-horse, but, to our great surprise, he walked down to the stables on his sudden return from London to see him buried. He instantly observed that his right forefoot was gone, and was in a fearful passion. No one dared tell him how it happened. I have preserved the hoof carefully for thirty years, and I now return it to your Grace.”

GRANT’S THREE FAVORITE WAR-HORSES: “EGYPT” (ON THE LEFT), “CINCINNATI” (IN THE MIDDLE), AND “JEFF DAVIS” (ON THE RIGHT)

By permission of “Harper’s Weekly”
SHERMAN’S FAVORITE STEED “LEXINGTON”
FROM A DRAWING BY THURE DE THULSTRUP

SHERIDAN’S FAMOUS WAR-HORSE “WINCHESTER”

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Lady de Ros, the last survivor of those who danced at the Duchess of Richmond’s ball in Brussels on the evening before the battle of Waterloo, also the last among those who had mounted “Copenhagen,” published a little volume of recollections of Wellington which contained the following extract:

We often stayed with the duke at Abbaye, Mount St. Martin, Cambrai, and one morning he announced that there would be a sham battle, and that he had given orders to Sir George Scovell that the ladies riding should be taken prisoners, so he recommended our keeping close to him. I had no difficulty in doing so, as I was riding the duke’s Waterloo charger “Copenhagen,” and I found myself the only one within a square where they were firing. To the duke’s great amusement, he heard one of the soldiers saying to another: “Take care of that ’ere horse; he kicks out. We knew him well in Spain,” pointing to “Copenhagen.” He was a most unpleasant horse to ride, but always snorted and neighed with pleasure at the sight of troops. I was jumping with him when the stirrup broke, and I fell off. In the evening the duke had a dance, and said to me, “Here’s the heroine of the day—got kicked off, and didn’t mind it.”

LEE’S CELEBRATED CHARGER “TRAVELLER”

The first Duchess of Wellington, with whom “Copenhagen” was a great favorite, wore a bracelet of his hair, as did several of her friends. Her daughter-in-law, the second duchess, who died in August, 1894, and who was much admired by the great duke, accompanying him on his last visit to the field of Waterloo, showed the writer a bracelet and breastpin made of “Copenhagen’s” mane. On my last sojourn of several days at Strathfieldsaye in September, 1883, I received from the second duke as a parting gift a precious lock of the Waterloo hero’s hair and a sheaf of the charger’s tail. It may be mentioned en passant that Sir William Gomm’s redoubtable Waterloo charger “Old George,” once mounted by Wellington, which lived to the unusual age for war-horses of thirty-three years, is buried beneath a stone seat at Stoke Pogis, the pastoral scene of Gray’s familiar and beautiful elegy.

On the authority of his eldest son, who mentioned the circumstance to the writer, it may be stated in conclusion that the last time Wellington walked out of Walmer Castle, on the afternoon of the day previous to his death, it was to visit his stable and to give orders to the groom concerning his horses.

CHIEF among the most celebrated battle-chargers of the nineteenth century was “Marengo,” Napoleon’s favorite war-horse. He was named in honor of one of the most remarkable victories ever achieved by the illustrious soldier. The day was lost by the French, and then gained by the resistless charges of cavalry led by Desaix and Kellermann. Their success caused the beaten infantry to rally and, taking heart, to attack the Austrians with fury, and the field was finally won. In view of the several hundred biographies of Bonaparte, it is certainly surprising that so little should be known with any degree of certainty concerning the world-famous Arab which he rode for eight hours at Waterloo, and previously in scores of battles, as well as during the disastrous Russian campaign. To an American visitor to the Bonapartes at Chiselhurst in the summer of 1872, Louis Napoleon, in speaking of his own horses and those of his uncle, said:

The emperor’s “Marengo” was an Arabian of good size and style and almost white. He rode him in his last battle of Mont St. Jean, where the famous war-horse received his seventh wound. I mounted him once in my youth, and only a short time before his death in England at the age of thirty-six. Another favorite was “Marie,” and was used by the emperor in many of his hundred battles. Her skeleton is to be seen in the ancient castle of Ivenach on the Rhine, the property of the Von Plessen family. Of the other sixty or seventy steeds owned by Napoleon and used in his campaigns, perhaps the most celebrated were “Ali,” “Austerlitz,” “Jaffa,” and “Styrie.” He had nineteen horses killed under him.

The American might have mentioned, but did not, that Field-Marshal Blücher had twenty shot in battle, while in the American Civil War Generals Custer of the North and Forrest of the South are believed to have lost almost as many in the short period of four years. “Marie” is thus described by Victor Hugo in the words of a soldier of the Old Guard:

On the day when he [Napoleon] gave me the cross, I noticed the beast. It had its ears very far apart, a deep saddle, a fine head marked with a black star, a very long neck, prominent knees, projecting flanks, oblique shoulders, and a strong crupper. She was a little above fifteen hands high.

When “Marengo” was slightly wounded in the near haunch, Napoleon mounted “Marie,” and finished his final battle on her. On his downfall, a French gentleman purchased “Jaffa” and “Marengo” and sent them to his English estate at Glastonbury, Kent. The tombstone of the former may be seen there, with the inscription, “Under this stone lies Jaffa, the celebrated charger of Napoleon.”

The last trumpet-call sounded for “Marengo” in September, 1829. After his death the skeleton was purchased and presented to the United Service Institution at Whitehall, London, and is at present among its most highly treasured relics. Another interesting souvenir of the famous steed is one of his hoofs, made into a snuff-box, which makes its daily rounds after dinner at the King’s Guards, in St. James’s Palace. On its silver lid is engraved the legend, “Hoof of Marengo, barb charger of Napoleon, ridden by him at Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena, Wagram, in the Russian campaign, and at Waterloo,” and round the silver shoe the legend continues: “Marengo was wounded in the near hip at Waterloo, when his great master was on him in the hollow road in advance of the French. He had frequently been wounded before in other battles.” Near his skeleton may be seen an oil painting of “Marengo,” by James Ward, R.A., who also was commissioned by Wellington to paint a picture of “Copenhagen,” Napoleon’s pocket-telescope, and other articles found in his carriage at Genappe, near Waterloo, where he was nearly captured, but escaped by mounting the fleet “Marengo.” In the museum is also displayed the saddle used by Blücher at Waterloo, and a letter written by the fiery old field-marshal, the day after the fierce battle, of which the following is a translation:

Gossalines June 19, 1815.

You remember, my dear wife, what I promised you, and I have kept my word. The superiority of the enemy’s numbers obliged me to give way on the 17th; but yesterday, in conjunction with my friend Wellington, I put an end forever to Bonaparte’s dancing. His army is completely routed, and the whole of his artillery, baggage, caissons, and equipage are in my hands. I have had two horses killed under me since the beginning of this short campaign. It will soon be all over with Bonaparte.

From a recent Paris publication, written by General Gourgaud, we learn that at St. Helena Napoleon said that the finest charger he ever owned was not the famous “Marengo,” but one named “Mourad Bey,” of which, unfortunately, no further information is afforded by the French general. In his St. Helena diary, Gourgaud writes:

L’Empereur passé à l’equitation. Il n’avait pas peur à cheval, parce qu’il n’avait jamais appris. “J’avais de bons chevaux le Mourad-Bey etait le meilleur et le plus beau à l’armée d’Italie. J’en avait un excellent: Aussi, pour invalide, l’ai-je mis à Saint-Cloud, où il passait en liberté.”

The last horse used by Napoleon was purchased at St. Helena. He was a small bay of about fifteen hands called “King George,” but afterward named by the emperor “Scheik,” which became much attached to him. Captain Frederick Lahrbush of the Sixtieth Rifles, who was then stationed on the island and who, as he could speak French, became intimate with Napoleon, gave me a description of “Scheik” and bequeathed to me his silver Waterloo medal and a lock of the emperor’s hair, received as a parting gift on his departure from St. Helena.

AS far as I am aware, no great commander ever possessed so valuable a charger as “Cincinnati,” General Grant’s favorite during the fourth year of the Civil War, and after his great victory at Chattanooga, during which he rode “Egypt,” another of his six war-horses. A few weeks later, when in Cincinnati, Grant received the gift of the noble steed, which he named after that city. He was a son of “Lexington,” with a single exception the fastest four-mile thoroughbred that ever ran on an American race-course, having made the distance in 7:19¾ minutes. The general was offered $10,000 for the horse, as his record almost equaled that of his sire and his half-brother “Kentucky.” He was a spirited and superb dark bay of great endurance, Grant riding him almost daily during the Wilderness campaign of the summer of 1864, and until the war closed in the following spring. “Cincinnati” was seventeen hands, and, in the estimation of the illustrious soldier, the grandest horse that he had ever seen, perhaps the most valuable ever ridden by an army commander from the time of Alexander down to our own day.

The general very rarely permitted any person but himself to mount him. Only two exceptions are recalled by the writer, once when Admiral Daniel Ammen, who saved Grant when a small boy from being drowned, visited him at his headquarters at City Point on the James River, and when, a little later, President Lincoln came to the same place from Washington to spend a week with the general. On the admiral’s return from a two-hours’ ride, accompanied by a young aide-de-camp, Grant asked how he liked “Cincinnati.”

Ammen answered, “I have never backed his equal.”

“Nor have I,” said the general.

In his “Personal Memoirs” Grant writes:

Lincoln spent the last days of his life with me. He came to City Point in the last month of the war, and was with me all the time. He lived on a despatch-boat in the river, but was always around headquarters. He was a fine horseman, and rode my horse “Cincinnati” every day. He visited the different camps, and I did all that I could to interest him. The President was exceedingly anxious about the war closing, and was apprehensive that we could not stand another campaign.

Soon after the surrender of General Robert E. Lee and his army at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, in April, 1865, “Cincinnati” was retired from active service, thereafter enjoying almost a decade of peace and comfort on Admiral Ammen’s Maryland estate near Washington until the end came in September, 1874, and he then received honorable burial. The charger is fully entitled to a prominent place among the most celebrated chargers of the nineteenth century, which includes General Lee’s “Traveller,” General Sherman’s “Lexington,” and General Sheridan’s “Winchester,” which died in 1878, and was skilfully mounted by a taxidermist. “Winchester” is included among the relics of the Mexican and later wars in the interesting collection of the Military Service Institution on Governor’s Island, New York Harbor.

It is interesting to record that Washington, who was six feet and two inches in stature, weighed at the time of the siege of Yorktown 195 pounds; Wellington, five feet seven inches, weighed at Waterloo 140 pounds; Napoleon, five feet six inches, at the same date, 158 pounds; and Grant, five feet eight inches, weighed at Appomattox Court House 145 pounds; General Lee at Gettysburg weighed 180 pounds; Sherman at Atlanta 165 pounds; and Sheridan, in the battle of Cedar Creek, about 150 pounds. Washington was the tallest, and Sheridan the shortest of the seven generals whose war-horses are described in this article. It will be seen, therefore, that Washington’s war-horse “Nelson” had a much heavier weight to carry than the chargers “Copenhagen,” “Marengo,” and “Cincinnati,” in their masters’ concluding campaigns.

THE most celebrated charger in the Confederacy during our four years’ war was General Robert E. Lee’s “Traveller,” described to the writer by Sheridan, who first saw him on the day of surrender at Appomattox, as “a chunky gray horse.” He was born near Blue Sulphur Springs in West Virginia in April, 1857, and when a colt won the first prize at the Greenbrier Fair under the name of “Jeff Davis.” When purchased by the great Virginian early in February, 1862, his name was changed by Lee to “Traveller,” his master being very careful always to spell the word with a double l. The horse was sixteen hands, above half bred, well developed, of great courage and kindness, and carried his head well up. He liked the excitement of battle, and at such times was a superb and typical war-steed. General Fitzhugh Lee said to me that “Traveller” was much admired for his rapid, springy walk, high spirit, bold carriage, and muscular strength.

It may be doubted if any of the great commanders mentioned in American history possessed greater admiration for a fine horse than General Lee, who said, “There is many a war-horse that is more entitled to immortality than the man who rides him.” On the third day of the battle of Gettysburg, when Pickett’s gallant charge had been successfully repulsed by Hancock, and the survivors of his broken and decimated command were returning to the Confederate position, Lee appeared and spoke encouragingly to his defeated troops. While he was thus occupied, observing an officer beating his horse for shying at the bursting of a shell, he shouted: “Don’t whip him, Captain! Don’t whip him! I have just such another foolish horse myself, and whipping does no good.” A moment later an excited officer rode up to Lee and “Traveller,” and reported the broken condition of his brigade. “Never mind, General,” responded Lee, cheerfully; “all this has been my fault. It is I that have lost the battle, and you must help me out of it in the best way you can.”

As with Napoleon and Wellington at Waterloo, so was it with Grant and Lee, who saw each other but once during their many fierce encounters about Richmond in the eleven months previous to the final surrender, and then only at a great distance, Grant, as he told me, recognizing the gray horse, but not his rider. The illustrious soldiers had met in Mexico while serving under General Scott, but after separating in April, 1865, never saw each other again but once—when General Lee called at the White House to see President Grant.

Soon after the close of the Civil War, Lee accepted the presidency of Washington and Lee University. For five years, until his death, he almost daily rode or fed his favorite charger. At the hero’s funeral, “Traveller” was equipped for service and placed close to the hearse. When the flower-covered coffin was carried out from the church, the faithful horse put his nose on it and whinnied! He survived his attached master for two years, when a nail penetrated his right forefoot while grazing in a field, and, although it was immediately removed, and everything possible was done to save him, lockjaw developed, and he died during the summer of 1872. “Traveller’s” skeleton was preserved, and is to be seen at Lexington, Virginia, as well as Stonewall Jackson’s famous “Sorrel,” which was skilfully set up by a veteran taxidermist. “Traveller,” like Sheridan’s celebrated charger “Winchester,” enjoyed the very great distinction of having his illustrious master for a biographer. In the sketch Lee mentions his other horses, saying: “Of all, ‘Traveller’s’ companions in toil,—‘Richmond,’ ‘Brown Roan,’ ‘Ajax,’ and quiet ‘Lucy Long,’—he is the only one that retained his vigor. The first two expired under their onerous burdens, and the last two failed.” During the Mexican War, the general’s favorite was “Grace Darling,” a handsome and powerful chestnut, which was seven times wounded, but never seriously.

Referring to the photograph of “Traveller,” General Custis Lee wrote to me:

You will observe that my father’s position in the picture which I send you, is that “to gather the horse,” in order to keep him quiet. The legs are crossed behind the girth, and the hand is slightly raised. “Traveller” injured both my father’s hands at the second battle of Manassas, and General Lee could not thereafter hold the reins in the regulation manner.

The brilliant Sherman’s favorite war-horse was killed under him in the first day of the bloody battle of Shiloh, and two others were shot while in charge of his orderly. Later in the four years’ contest his most famous steeds were “Lexington” and “Sam.” The former was a Kentucky thoroughbred, and is mentioned in his memoirs. Sherman was photographed on “Lexington” in Atlanta, and he rode him in the grand review in Washington, May 24, 1865. The horse that under the homely name of “Sam” most firmly established himself in the affection and confidence of the general was a large, half-thoroughbred bay, sixteen and a half hands, which he purchased soon after losing his three steeds at Shiloh. “Sam” possessed speed, strength, and endurance, and was so steady under fire that Sherman had no difficulty in writing orders from the saddle and giving attention to other matters. While as steady as a rock under fire, “Sam” was nevertheless prudent and sagacious in his choice of shelter from hostile shot and shell. The charger was wounded several times when mounted, and the fault was wholly due to his master. He acquired wide reputation as a forager, and always contrived to obtain a full allowance of rations, sometimes escaping on independent expeditions for that purpose.

What first endeared “Sam” to Sherman was that he became a favorite with his son Willie, whom the writer well remembers when he came to Vicksburg on a visit during the siege only a brief period before his untimely death. The general told us that he always felt safe when his boy was absent on “Sam,” knowing that he would keep out of danger and return in time for dinner. Sherman rode him in many pitched battles, and placed him on an Illinois farm, where he was pensioned, dying of extreme old age in the summer of 1884. The general’s son Tecumseh writes: “Sam was hardly the heroic horse to place with the others you mention, but he was a strong, faithful animal who did perfectly the varied and dangerous work allotted to him, and made a march as long and difficult as any recorded in history—that from Vicksburg to Washington,” via Atlanta, Savannah, Columbia, and Richmond.

A few months before his death Sherman said to me: “Now remember, Wilson, when I am gone, you are not to hand around a hat for a monument. I have paid for one in St. Louis, and all you have to do is to place me under it.”

“General,” was the reply, “your wishes shall be respected; but of course your troops of friends and admirers will certainly erect statues in New York and Washington, and I am certain our Society of the Army of the Tennessee will expect to honor their great commander with a statue in some city of the West.”

“Oh, well, that’s all right,” said the old hero, “if they think I am worthy of them; but don’t put me on a circus horse.”

This comment I repeated at the Metropolitan Club luncheon which followed the unveiling of Saint-Gaudens’s equestrian statue of the illustrious soldier. While McKim, who designed the pedestal, the poet Stedman, and others smiled, the gifted sculptor looked solemn. The steed, whose feet are not all where Sherman wished them to be, is supposed to be a counterfeit presentment of “Lexington.”

PHILIP H. SHERIDAN, who was in half a hundred battles and skirmishes without ever being wounded, wrote to an army friend in January, 1876:

In regard to the black horse, I am glad to say that he is still living, and is now in my stable. He has been a pensioner for the past eight years, never being used save in the way of necessary exercise. He is of the Black Hawk stock, was foaled at, or near, Grand Rapids, Michigan, and was brought into the army by one of the officers of the Second Michigan Cavalry, of which I was made Colonel in 1862. Early in the spring of that year, while the regiment was stationed at Rienzi, Miss., the horse was presented to me by the officers, and at that time was rising three years old. He is over seventeen hands in height, powerfully built, with a deep chest, strong shoulders, has a broad forehead, a clear eye, and is an animal of great intelligence. In his prime he was one of the strongest horses I have ever known, very active, and the fastest walker in the army, so far as my experience goes.[3] I rode him constantly from 1862 to the close of the war, in all the actions and in all the raids, as well as campaigns in which I took part. He was never ill, and his staying powers were superb. At present he is a little rheumatic, fat and lazy; but he has fairly earned his rest, and so long as I live he will be taken care of.

The celebrated charger died in October, 1878, when Sheridan made a slight addition to his biography, saying:

He always held his head high, and by the quickness of his movements gave many persons the impression that he was exceedingly impetuous. This was not the case, for I could at any time control him by a firm hand and a few words, and he was as cool and quiet under fire as one of my old soldiers. I doubt if his superior for field service was ever ridden by any one.

The poet-painter Buchanan Read, Herman Melville, and many minor writers made “Winchester” the subject of poems and sketches, while several sculptors and painters delineated him in marble and bronze and on canvas. On every returning Memorial day many gray-haired survivors of Sheridan’s rough-riders who remember the services of his

Steed as black as the steeds of night,

cross over from New York to Governor’s Island museum, and place flowers on the glass case containing the celebrated charger, whose body, after being set up by a skilled taxidermist, was, accompanied by his accoutrements, presented by the general to the United States Military Service Institution.

Near the close of his career, when General Grant lost his fortune in Wall Street, he voluntarily surrendered all his property with a single exception. He retained Read’s spirited painting of Sheridan’s “Ride,” representing “Winchester” and his master, the greatest sabreur that our country has produced, perhaps not surpassed by any cavalry commander since the days of Murat. Read’s poem of “Sheridan’s Ride” will probably outlive his famous picture.

Hurrah, hurrah for Sheridan!

Hurrah, hurrah for horse and man!

And when their statues are placed on high

Under the dome of the Union sky,

The American soldier’s temple of fame,

There with the glorious General’s name

Be it said in letters both bold and bright:

“Here is the steed that saved the day

By carrying Sheridan into the fight,

From Winchester—twenty miles away.”

May I be permitted, in conclusion, to mention that none of the hundreds of battle-chargers ridden by Washington, Napoleon, Wellington, Grant, Lee, Sherman, and Sheridan, suffered mutilation by the barbarous modern practice of docking their tails, which even uncivilized savages never perpetrate on their horses.

MRS. LONGBOW’S BIOGRAPHY

BY GORDON HALL GEROULD

MY acquaintance with Mrs. Longbow was due to my early friendship with her son Charles. Mrs. Longbow and her two daughters swung into my orbit quite unimportantly at first as shadowy persons to whom Charlie wrote letters home while we were boys at school; later I came to know the mother as an imposing figure, shiny with black jet, who eyed the school from a platform on those great occasions when Charlie received prizes and I did not. I never learned her weight, but I saw that her displacement was enormous. By successive stages, as I increased in stature and in years, my knowledge of her grew. I visited her son, I danced with her daughters, I frequently conversed with her,—she preferred to converse rather than to talk,—and I came to know as much of her habit and attitude of mind, perhaps, as one could who was thirty years her junior, not actively engaged in reforming the world, and of the despised sex.

Mrs. Longbow—Amelia E. Longbow, to designate her at once by the name that she made illustrious—was of the older school of philanthropists, who combined militant activity with the literary graces and a tremendous sense of personal dignity. She could despise men and yet receive them in her drawing-room without embarrassment; she could wage a bitter warfare on wickedness and, when deeply stirred, write a tolerable sonnet. She was indefatigable in her labors, but she was never, to my knowledge, flurried or hurried. A large presence, she moved through life with the splendid serenity of a steam-roller. She was capable of prodigious labor, but not of idleness. Whatever her hands found to do she did with all her might—and in her own way. At one time or another she was engaged in reforming most things that are susceptible of improvement or of disturbance. If she did not leave the world better than she found it, the fault was the world’s, not hers.

It was a considerable shock to me that she should leave the world at all, so necessary had she seemingly become to its proper administration, let alone its progress. I read the news of her death in London just as I was sailing for home after a summer’s holiday, and I felt a touch of pride that I had known the woman whose career was written large that day in the journals of a sister nation. But, as I reflected, neither America nor England had waited till her death to pay their homage. She had lived long, and on many great occasions during three decades she had been signally and publicly honored as the most remarkable of her sex. The cable-despatches announced that she left a comfortable fortune, and leading articles agreed that she was wholly admirable. I felt sure that she would have regarded the praise as unmerited if she had not shown her ability by leaving a respectable inheritance to her children. I had reason also to believe that she never lost her self-confident assurance of her own worth: she died, the newspapers said, quite peacefully.

Once back in New York, I took an early occasion to call on my friend Charles Longbow. I had always liked him ever since the day that I fished him, a shivering mite, out of the skating-pond at school. I had been his chum thereafter until the end of my college course. Though I could not emulate his distinction in scholarship or public speaking, I could at least be useful to him, by virtue of my year’s seniority, in protecting him from the consequences of his mother’s celebrity. I even did him some service by pushing him into the thick of undergraduate life. I was really very fond of him, and I was sure he liked me.

If I had seen less of Charlie in later years, it was merely because our paths did not often cross in a natural way. We boast about our civilization a good deal, but we keep to our trails much as savages do—or animals, for that matter. Besides, for some years I had a good reason, not connected with Charlie’s mother or himself, for keeping away from the Longbow house. So I had been with him less than I could have wished, though I had never lost the habit of his friendship. I was busy in my own way, and he was occupied in his. He had never been the conspicuous success that his youth had promised, but he was more widely known than many men with a greater professional reputation. To the larger public he was always, of course, his mother’s son. At forty he was what one might call a philanthropic lawyer. He did a certain amount of ordinary business, and he wrote on many topics of contemporary interest for the reviews, made many addresses to gatherings of earnest people, served on many boards and commissions. He had retained the modesty and generosity of his boyhood, which made some of us devoted to him even though we were not in full sympathy with all of his activities. Pride and vain-glory in him were purely vicarious: he was a little conceited about his mother.

As far back as my college days I had begun to distrust the estimate in which Mrs. Longbow was held by her family and, as well as one could judge, by herself. All of them, be it said, were supported in their opinion of her greatness and her abounding righteousness by the world at large. It was one of my earliest disillusionments to discover the yawning vacuity that lay behind her solid front of fame; it was a sad day for me, though it fostered intellectual pride, when I found out that she was not such a miracle of goodness as she seemed. Though Charles, as a matter of course, knew her much more intimately than I, I think that he never penetrated her disguise.

With his sisters the case was somewhat different, as I began to suspect not long after my own private discovery. They were a little older than Charles, and had better opportunities of watching their mother at close range. Helen married, when she was about twenty-five, a man of her own age, who eventually became one of the most prominent editors in New York—Henry Wakefield Bradford. She made him a good wife, no doubt, and had some share in his success both as debtor and as creditor. Whether she loved him or not, she supported his interests loyally. Though she had made an escape from her mother’s house, she did not desert her. Indeed, in Helen’s marriage Mrs. Longbow might truly have been said to have gained a son rather than to have lost a daughter. The Bradfords were ardent worshipers at the shrine, and they worshiped very publicly. In private, however, I detected a faint acidity of reference, a tinge of irony, that made me suspect them of harboring envious feelings. Perhaps they resented the luster of satellites, and would have liked to emulate Mrs. Longbow’s glow of assured fame. Helen never seemed to me a very good sort, though we were accounted friends. She had many of her mother’s most striking qualities.

Margaret, who was only a year older than Charles, never married. She was her mother’s secretary and a most devoted daughter. She received with her, traveled with her, labored for her without apparent repining. Whether she ever had time to think seriously of marrying, or of leaving her mother on other terms, always seemed to me doubtful. At all events, she said as much to me repeatedly when at the age of twenty-five I proposed to her. Without question, she had a great deal to do in helping Mrs. Longbow to transact efficiently the business of the universe. She was prettier than Helen, who grew large and stately by her thirtieth year and was of too bold and mustached an aquiline type for beauty. Margaret was fair, and retained the girlish lines of her slender figure until middle age. She was clever, too, like the rest of the family, and had seen much of the world in her mother’s company. She wrote stories that had considerable success, and she would have had personal distinction as a member of any other family. My only reason for suspecting that she sometimes wearied of her filial rôle was a remark that she once made to me when I complimented her on a pretty novel she had published.

“Oh, yes,” she replied, “one has to do something on one’s own account in self-defense. Mother swallows everybody—she is so wonderful.” The final phrase, I thought, did not altogether let Mrs. Longbow out.

They were all writers, you see, all well known on the platform and in the press, all active in good works and reform; but the children’s celebrity shone mainly with a borrowed light. Irreverently enough, I used to think of the mother as being like a hen with chicks. The hen’s maternal clucking calls less attention to her brood than to herself.

When I went to see Charles, I expected to find him overwhelmed with genuine grief, and Margaret, if she appeared at all, endeavoring to conceal the relief that was sure to be mixed with her natural sense of loss. Of course, Helen—Mrs. Bradford, that is—I should not see, for she had her own house. I should have to pay her a visit of condolence separately. I dreaded this first meeting, though I was really very sorry for Charles, whose devotion to his mother could not be doubted. I knew that he would expect me to say things at once consoling and laudatory, which would be difficult to frame. With so vocal a family, the pressure of a hand and a murmured word would be insufficient expressions of sympathy.

When I reached the old house rather too far east on Thirty-eighth Street, I was in a state of mind so craven that I would gladly have shirked my duty on any pretext whatsoever; but I could think of none. Instead, I had to tell both Margaret and Charles how deeply I felt their loss. I found them up-stairs in the library, a dismal room with too much furniture of the seventies, a mean grate, and heavy bookcases filled with an odd collection of standard sets, reports of philanthropic societies and commissions, and presentation copies of works in all fields of literature and learning. I cherished a peculiar dislike for this room, and I found no help in its dreadful reminders of Mrs. Longbow’s active life. I did not quit myself well, but I managed to speak some phrases of commonplace sympathy.

Charles, lean, dark, and bearded, took up my words, while Margaret drooped in her chair as though some spring had gone wrong inside her.

“It was good of you to come so soon,” he said. “I’m sorry that you couldn’t have been here for the funeral. Our friends were magnificent. We were overwhelmed by the tide of sympathy. I think I might say that the whole country mourned with us. You would have appreciated it, as we did. It made one proud of America to see how she was revered; it made me personally ready to ask forgiveness for all my cheap outbursts of temper when I’ve thought the country was going wrong.”

“The papers on the other side were full of praises for her,” I remarked uncomfortably.

“I know,” returned Charles. “The world must be better than we have thought. I’d like to believe that the moral awakening in which she was a leader has stirred men and women everywhere to right the wrongs of humanity. But it will take more lives like hers to complete the work.”

“She interested a great many people in reform who wouldn’t have taken it up if it hadn’t been for her influence. And all of you are carrying on work along the same lines.” I had to say something, and I could think of nothing less inane.

“Yes,” Charlie answered, wrinkling his forehead; “we must go on as well as we can. But it’s like losing a pilot. She had genius.”

Margaret Longbow suddenly straightened herself and began to wipe her eyes delicately.

“Mother had strength for it,” she said in a broken voice; “she had wonderful energy.”

“But think what you have done—all of you!” I protested. “As a family, you are the most active people I know.”

“I can’t go on—now. I’m going away as soon as things are straightened out. I’m going to Italy to rest.” Margaret’s figure relaxed as suddenly as it had stiffened. She lay back against a pile of cushions with the inertness of utter fatigue.

“Margaret!” Charles exclaimed sharply. “What would mother have said?”

Margaret’s thin lip curled. She made me wonder what explosion was going to follow.

“It doesn’t matter about Robert,” she said, turning her head ever so slightly in my direction. “He knows that I’ve tagged behind mother all my life; he knows that I never could keep up. He even knows how hard I used to try. I’m not good enough and I’m not clever enough. She was a whirlwind. I feel her death more than any of you,—I understood her better,—but you don’t know what it has been like.”

She was sobbing now, gently, indeed, but with every sign of an hysterical outburst, save that her voice never rose above its ordinary key. I felt sure that she was not being histrionic even for her own benefit, sure that she was filled with despairing grief, sure that she was holding hard to the crumbling edge of self-control; but I wondered what martyrdom of stifled individualism she was keeping back. Evidently Charles and I did not understand.

Pale, horrified, obviously angry at the sudden exposure of his sister’s weakness, Charles Longbow rose from his chair and confronted her.

“Margaret,” he said, and I detected in him, as he spoke, a comical resemblance to Mrs. Longbow, “I can’t see, to be sure, why you should behave so childishly. You ought to know better than any one else the importance of mother’s work, and you owe it to her not to drop out now that she is dead. She liked Italy, too, but she had a sense of duty.”

“She had—oh, I know all about it!” Margaret had suddenly grown calm, and spoke with something like scorn. “But you don’t know what it was to live with her so many hours every day—to be so dependent on her. I haven’t cultivated any sense of duty of my own.”

“You must need to rest,” I remarked, wishing more than ever that I could go away, and feeling sure that Charles would give anything to get me out of the house. “A winter in Italy would do both of you a lot of good, I feel sure, after all the strain you’ve been through. Why don’t you go with Margaret, Charlie?”

He looked at me, sad-eyed and a little wondering.

“I couldn’t possibly take the time, Bob; but I dare say Margaret does need a change. I’m sorry it I spoke impatiently. Only I can’t stand it, Sister, when you speak as though mother were somehow to blame.”

“It’s all right, Charlie,” said Margaret, smiling from her cushions. “I shouldn’t have broken out so. My nerves are on edge, I suppose. Perhaps I shall come back from Italy after a while quite ready to take hold. And one can write even in Italy.”

“That reminds me.” Charles turned again to me. “I’ve been hoping to see you soon about one thing. We agreed the other day that you ought to be asked about it before we made any move. The public naturally expects an authorized biography of mother. The demand for it has already begun. Don’t you think Henry Bradford is the person to do it? Helen thinks he would be willing to.”

“He would do it well, undoubtedly,” I answered, rather startled by the abruptness of the question. I was really unprepared to give a judicial opinion about the matter.

“Henry would like to do it,” said Margaret, “and he would give a very just estimate of her public life. Helen could look after the English; she always does. Only I won’t have Henry or anybody else rummaging through all mother’s private papers.”

“Of course we should—I mean, you ought to look them over first,” returned Charles, uneasily.

“Henry has no discretion whatever,” commented Margaret. “Besides, mother never liked him particularly, as both of you know perfectly well. She liked you, Robert, a great deal better. Helen would be furious if I said it to her, but it’s true.”

“Yes, yes, Henry tried her sometimes,” Charles murmured; “but he knows about everything in which she was interested.”

“Why shouldn’t you do it?” I asked him.

“Oh, it ought to be some one further removed from her,” he answered—“some one who could speak quite freely. I couldn’t do it.”

“There’s one other possible plan,” I remarked. “Haven’t you thought of it? Why shouldn’t the three of you collaborate in a life? It seems to me that might be the most suitable arrangement. All of you write; you have all been associated with your mother in her work. Why shouldn’t you?”

“That plan hasn’t occurred to us,” returned Charles, hesitatingly. “It might be appropriate: ‘The Life of Mrs. Longbow, by Her Children.’ What do you think, Margaret? Would Helen think well of it?”

“Helen might,” replied Margaret. “I don’t quite know. I’d rather be left out of it myself.”

“Oh, I couldn’t work with Helen alone,” said Charles. “She would overrule me at every turn.”

“There you are!” Margaret put in. “It would be a beautiful idea, no doubt; but we should find it hard to agree.”

“Yet we ought to consider the plan before we ask any one else to do the book,” said Charles, looking at me as though for confirmation. He had been walking about while we talked, and now stood facing us from behind the library table.

“You certainly ought,” I agreed, rising to go.

A few days later I paid a visit to the Bradfords. Helen was alone. She received me graciously and spoke of her mother with much feeling and pride. Very soon, however, she turned the conversation to her sister.

“I’m troubled about Margaret,” she said. “You’ve seen her. I’d like to know exactly what you think. She seems to me to be on the edge of a nervous collapse, but she won’t see a doctor.”

“She is very tired, evidently,” I responded, “but I thought she had herself well in hand. Perhaps it may be a good thing for her to put through her plan of going to Italy.”

“Perhaps so. The poor child needs a rest, certainly. But I’m not at all sure that she ought to be allowed to go away by herself.” Helen Bradford eyed me significantly. “What worries me is her fixed idea that mother has somehow been unjust to her. It is almost insane, this idea, and it distresses me more than I can say. You see, I shouldn’t speak of it at all except that you have known her so long. You see how absurd the idea is. Margaret has had greater advantages from mother’s society than any one else, as you know. It was a great privilege.”

“Undoubtedly.” I could not bring myself to say more than that, for I had a swift vision of what forty-two years of constant association with Mrs. Longbow must have been like. “But the strain on her these last two months must have been very great.”

“Hardly greater than for me,” remarked Helen Bradford, stiffly. “I relieved her at every turn. I think I did my full duty to mother. Besides, mother never gave trouble; she was almost painfully anxious to avoid doing so.”

“I am sure of it,” I hastened to say; “but I suspect that Margaret has not the strength of Mrs. Longbow. You are more like your mother in many respects.” I was not quite sure whether Helen would take this as a compliment, whether she might not detect a flavor of irony in the speech; but I was relieved when it brought to her lips an amiable smile.

“That is very good of you,” she said. “Margaret—poor dear!—has always been perfectly well, but she has never had much vitality. That is very important for us who are busy with so many kinds of work. Charles doesn’t get tired in the same way, but he gets worried and anxious. Mother never did. Margaret and Charles are more like my father. You never knew him, I think?”

All through her speech Helen Bradford had been pluming herself much as I have seen fat geese do. The comparison is inelegant, but it conveys the impression she gave me. At the end she sighed.

“No,” I answered, “he died before I knew Charlie.”

“I remember him vividly,” said Helen, “though I was a mere girl when he died, and I have often heard mother say that he fretted himself to death over non-essentials, quite selfishly. I am, I hope and believe, whatever my faults may be, not like that.”

I could truthfully say that she was not, and I added some commonplace about Margaret’s restoration.

“I shall have to look after her,” she went on. “Charles can’t be depended on to do so. It is a great pity she has never married. A great deal will come on me, now that mother is gone. For instance, there is her biography. I must arrange for it without too much delay. I am aware that people will be waiting for it eagerly.”

“We can hardly hope to have the complete record of so active a life immediately,” I said, thinking to be polite.

“Perhaps not,” she answered, “but my husband says that the success of a biography depends very largely on when it is issued. It mustn’t be too long delayed. You may not know that mother kept a copious journal all through the years, from her earliest girlhood. With the letters she saved, it will be of the greatest service to her biographer, I feel sure.”

“I am convinced of it,” I returned. Indeed, I could picture to myself the amazing confessions that must be hidden in any really intimate journal by Mrs. Longbow. I suspected that the revelation of it would shock right-minded persons; but I did not doubt that the spectacle of self-immolation finding its reward in worldly success and fame would give to thousands the thrill of true romance.

“Charles tells me,” proceeded Mrs. Bradford, “that you suggested the possibility of our collaborating—the three of us—in the biography. It is a very beautiful idea. ‘Mrs. Longbow, by Her Children!’ The great public servant as seen by those nearest and dearest to her, by those whom she brought into the world and trained to follow in her steps! Mother would have appreciated your thinking of it, Robert, I feel sure. But you must see how impracticable it would be. Margaret is in such a state, and Charles would never get anything done. He is very busy with his work, of course, as all of us are; and he is apt to weigh things very critically. I should have great trouble in getting the biography written within a reasonable time. I have thought that perhaps we ought to get Henry to do it.”

“He would no doubt do it very effectively,” I said, and rose to go.

“We must consider carefully a great many things, mustn’t we?” she remarked brightly. “And the matter is so very important! It is a great responsibility for one to be the child of such a mother. So kind of you to come, Robert! I prize your sympathy not only for itself, but because I know how greatly you admired mother. It has been a great consolation to see you.”

I left the house, glad that the interview was over and determined to see as little of the Longbows as possible, unless I could get Charles by himself. It struck me that, in donning her mother’s prophetic mantle, of which she obviously considered herself the rightful heiress, Mrs. Bradford found compensation for her responsibilities. I could not see why I should be troubled about the question of a proper tribute to Mrs. Longbow, whose personality I disliked as cordially as I disliked most of her agitations. I wondered whether other friends had suffered in the same way.

I was, indeed, not altogether pleased the following week when I received from Margaret Longbow an invitation to dine informally with her brother and herself.

“Helen and her husband are to be here Friday night,” she wrote, “and I feel the need of outside support. They seem to think me harmlessly insane, but will perhaps treat me less like a mental invalid if you are here. I’m sure you will be bored; but I hope you will come, if you can, for old friendship’s sake.” I could think of no polite excuse for not responding to this signal of distress, and accordingly found myself once more gathered to the collective bosom of the Longbows. I could only hope that they would have the decency not to appeal to me for any further advice.

The family was assembled before I arrived at the house. Margaret and Charles looked a little uneasy, I thought; but the Bradfords, as usual, were superbly aware only of their superiorities. Henry Bradford, well-fed and carefully dressed, exuded success at every pore, but only the delicate aroma of success. As an experienced editor, he had learned to be tactful, and he had made himself the plump embodiment of tact. His features composed themselves on this occasion with a becoming trace of regretful melancholy and an apparent willingness to be as cheerful as seemed proper. The only discordant note in his whole well-rounded presentation of a journalist in easy circumstances was the top of his head. Seen through a sparse thicket of hair, it was shiny, like a coat worn too long. His wife had the impressive exterior of a volcano in repose.

During the simple dinner we talked pleasantly about a variety of things that were within the province of the Longbows: municipal reform, Tolstoy, labor-unions, a plain-spoken novel by Mrs. Virgin, Turkish misgovernment, the temperance movement. We did not mention Mrs. Longbow’s name, but we felt, I am sure, that her spirit hovered over us. I, at least, had an abiding sense of her immanence. When we went back to the drawing-room together, I expected that her virtues would become the topic of general conversation, and I dreaded the hour to follow.

My fears were relieved, however, by the prompt withdrawal of Mrs. Bradford and Charles. He wished her to sign some document. Margaret and I were left for Henry Bradford to amuse, which he did to his own satisfaction. He was kind enough to be interested in my humble efforts to live honestly by my pen: he expressed himself almost in those terms. When his wife appeared in the doorway and announced briefly, “Henry dear, I want you,” I saw him waddle away without feeling myself moved to sympathy.

“Henry is insufferable, isn’t he?” said Margaret, quietly. “I don’t see how Helen can stand him except that he stands her.”

“Oh, come,” I answered, “you’re too hard on them. Besides, you wouldn’t like it if I agreed with you.”

“Really, I shouldn’t mind at all. I’ve stood by the family all my life, and I’ll stand by Charlie now; but I’ve never been deceived into believing that I cared for Helen or Henry. I wouldn’t hurt them even by saying what I think of them to anybody except you, but I prefer not to see them. That’s one reason why I’m going abroad. We sha’n’t be so intimate after I get back.”

She rose languidly from her chair and fidgeted nervously with some books on the table.

“How long do you plan to stay?” I asked, crossing the room to her side.

“You think it will take me a good while to get free of their clutches? I’m going to stay till I feel safe, that’s all. I don’t want to do anything for anybody again, and I sha’n’t come back as long as there’s a chance of my being asked.”

She spoke vindictively, with more vehemence than I had ever seen in her. She gave me the impression that the stifled flame of rebellion was breaking free at last, but only when the food for it was exhausted. In her trim and faded prettiness she was mildly tragic—futilely tragic would perhaps be the better phrase. Life and Mrs. Longbow had sapped her vitality; that was clear. They had taken much from her, and given her little in exchange. I wondered fatuously whether she had chosen well twenty years before in devoting herself to reform and her mother rather than to me.

Doubtless I hesitated longer than was conventionally polite over framing my reply, for she turned to me with a rather mocking laugh and went on:

“It’s very sad about me, isn’t it? But you needn’t pity me, Robert. You gave me a chance to get out once, you remember, and I chose to do good to all the world instead of battening on you. It was foolish of me, but it was probably a lucky thing for you.”

“I’ve never married, Margaret,” I answered, feeling somewhat grim and a little uncomfortable.

“Pure habit, I suppose,” she answered lightly, “but it ought to give you satisfaction that I’m sorry both of us haven’t. You needn’t be frightened, even though Helen has the absurd notion of throwing me at your head now. You see what I am—just dregs. Mother and Helen have never got over thinking me a young girl, and they’ve always planned for you to marry whatever was left of me after they’d finished.”

“I’ve never been very proud of my own behavior,” I put in. “I ought to have been able to make you marry me back there, but—”

“You were no match for mother.” Margaret ended the sentence for me. “Nobody ever was. But even she shouldn’t have expected to keep that old affair in cold storage for twenty years. I’m a baby to be complaining, but I can’t help it this once. Things are so terribly dead that I can safely tell you now that you ought to marry—not that I suppose you have been restrained on my account for some fifteen years! I’m merely showing you my death-certificate in the hope that you’ll avoid my unhappy end.”

“But, Margaret, what are you going to do?” I cried, too disturbed by the situation not to realize that she had diagnosed it correctly.

“Oh, as I’ve said, I’m going to inter myself decently in Italy, where I shall probably write a book about my mother. I can stay away just so much longer.”

At that moment the others came in and stopped whatever reply I could have made.

“So sorry we had to leave you like this,” said Mrs. Bradford, sailing majestically into the room; “but you are such an old friend that we treat you like one of the family, you see.” She smiled in a way that made her meaning plain.

“It doesn’t matter about Bob, of course,” said Charles, who was clearly so much engrossed by his own affairs as to be impervious to anything else. “He and Margaret ought to be able to entertain each other.”

“I think we do very well, thank you,” I remarked with a flicker of amusement. “At least I do.”

Charles, quite serious and earnest, planted himself in full view of the group of us.

“Look here,” he said “—all of you. I wish to talk to you about mother’s biography.”

“Yes, indeed,” responded Mrs. Bradford, settling heavily into a chair, “we ought to consider the matter at once. It was largely on account of it that Henry and I took the time to come here to-night.” She assumed her most business-like expression.

“There’s really nothing more to consider,” went on Charles, puckering his forehead. “I simply wish to tell you that I have received an excellent offer from Singleton for a work in two volumes, and have accepted it. He will give a large sum for the book—a very large sum.”

“Charles,” said Helen Bradford, severely, “how can you speak of money in such a connection? I think that you acted very unwisely in not first consulting your family. As a matter of fact, your precipitate action is very embarrassing, isn’t it, Henry?”

“You certainly should have told us that the offer had been made,” concurred Bradford, looking aggrieved. “It does complicate things.”

“I can’t see why,” said Charles, with a sudden burst of anger. “I’m mother’s executor, as well as her only son, and I surely have the right to make my own arrangements about her biography. I thought at first that some one outside the family ought to write it, but I’ve been shown quite clearly that it is my duty to do it.”

Mrs. Bradford’s firm jaw dropped a little.

“You do it!” she cried. “I’ve decided that it will be most suitable for me to write it myself. In point of fact, Henry has already made satisfactory arrangements for me with Banister. So you see—”

“I see,” said Charles, impatiently, “that you and Henry have been meddling in the most unwarrantable fashion, quite as usual. You’ll have to get out of it with Banister the best way you can, that’s all.”

Margaret’s even voice broke in on the dispute.

“It may interest you to know that I’m proposing to write a book about mother myself. The Henrysons naturally wish one to go with their edition of her writings, and they pay quite handsomely. What they want isn’t a complete biography, you know—just the recollections of a daughter. They seem to think me the one best qualified to do it. Perhaps, after all, I am.”

“It is impossible!” exclaimed Helen Bradford. “I cannot allow this thing to go on. At great personal inconvenience I have agreed to do the book; and I refuse to be placed in the undignified position into which you are trying to force me. I decided that I’d better write it myself, partly because you seemed to be jealous about having Henry do it. I have prepared to give valuable time to it. And what is my reward? You have gone ahead secretly and made arrangements on your own account not for one biography, but for two. I think it most selfish and inconsiderate of you.”

“It will injure sales,” put in Henry Bradford, knowingly.

“Of course you don’t need to go ahead with yours, Helen, if you feel like that,” said Margaret.

“I don’t see why—” began Mr. Bradford, but he was interrupted by his wife.

“I don’t see why either. There is no reason. I’m not going to let you get all the honor and reward of it. What would people think of me?”

Margaret laughed.

“Only that you were too busy to write, my dear,” she remarked; “that you had left it to less important members of the family.”

“I shall write the book in spite of you,” Mrs. Bradford replied. She was furiously angry and a quite unlovely spectacle. A volcano in eruption is not necessarily beautiful. “Mother always taught me,” she continued, “never to be too busy to do my duty. I couldn’t bear to think of leaving her great personality in the hands of either of you. You are undutiful children.”

Charles Longbow’s frown had deepened, but he had regained his composure.

“I think, Helen,” he said, “that mother wouldn’t like to see us quarreling like this. She believed in peace and calm.” For a moment his natural generosity seemed to assert itself. “You are so much like her that I can’t bear to have anything come between us. I’m sorry I didn’t know you wanted to write the book.”

“You did very wrong in not consulting me,” replied Helen, with angry dignity. “I was at least mother’s eldest child, and took a considerable share in her great work. You ought to see Singleton and get him to release you from your contract.”

“Perhaps Helen ought to have her own way,” remarked Margaret, wearily. “She always has.”

“I’m certainly not going to change my arrangements now,” Charles returned, with sudden stiffness. “I shall bring out a work in suitable form, something on a scale worthy of mother. What is more, her journal and all her papers are mine to do what I please with.”

“Come, Henry!” cried Mrs. Bradford. “You may like to have insults heaped upon me, but I won’t remain to hear them.”

Magnificently, explosively, she swept from the room, followed close by her husband. For a moment the brother and sister stood looking at each other like naughty children apprehended in a fault. I was forgotten. At length Margaret sank into the chair from which her sister had risen and gave a nervous laugh.

“I hope you have enjoyed the entertainment we’ve been giving you, Robert,” she said, turning her head in my direction. “This will be the end of everything. All the same, Charlie dear, I hope you’ll let me sort mother’s papers before I go away.”

“Oh, come, Charlie,”—I plucked up my courage to play the peacemaker, for I felt that this dance on a newly made grave would disturb even Mrs. Longbow’s serene and righteous soul,—“there’s no reason why Helen shouldn’t write a book as well as you. The public will stand for it. I hope you’ll tell her so.”

Charles’s solemn face cracked with a grin.

“I sha’n’t have to,” he said. “But I’m sorry you were here-you know what I mean. I’m ashamed.”

I could not fail to see that his pride was touched to the bleeding-point, and that Margaret was utterly weary. With only a hand-shake and a word of parting I went away, glad enough, you can understand, to make my escape.

I met none of them again till I went to the docks, a month later, to say farewell to Margaret. Charles was with her, but Helen was not there. Margaret looked very old and ill, I thought. Just before the boat sailed, she managed to screen herself from her brother, and hurriedly slipped an envelop into my hand.

“Please give this to Charlie when I’m well out to sea,” she whispered. “I can’t bear to send it through the post-office.”

“How soon?” I asked under my breath, supposing her secrecy to be the whim of a nervous invalid.

“Give me three days,” she replied, glancing furtively at her brother, who was just then absorbed by the spectacle of a donkey-engine on a lower deck. “It’s about mother’s journal and her papers. Don’t you see? I looked them over,—Charlie told me to,—but I couldn’t bear to explain to him, and I haven’t had time yet to copy them. My letter tells about it.”

She turned from me quickly and took her brother’s arm, insisting that both he and I must leave the ship at once. Twenty minutes later she waved gaily to us as the cables slackened and the boat swung out into the river.

I disliked my new commission, but I had been given no opportunity to refuse it. At the time appointed I carried the letter to Charles, whom I found in the family library amid heaps of faded and disorderly manuscript. As I entered the room, he rose excitedly.

“It’s extraordinary!” he exclaimed. “Mother’s journals are gone, and so is all her intimate correspondence. Where can Margaret have put them? She went through everything.”

“Perhaps this will tell you,” I said, handing him the letter. “Margaret gave it to me just before we left the boat, and told me to keep it till to-day.”

He read the letter, frowning.

“What does the girl think!” he cried when he had ended. “It’s extremely careless of her—she has carried off all of mother’s really important papers; says she hadn’t finished arranging them, and will return them when that’s done. She must be out of her head to think of trusting such invaluable documents to any carrier in the world. And how does she suppose I’m to go on with my book in the meantime? It’s mad.”

“I don’t quite see, myself,” I responded, though in reality I was able to understand her motives: evidently she wished to spare Charles the full light of their mother’s self-revelation.

“No one could see,” he returned, his lean cheeks flushed with anger. “It’s impossible. It’s going to be a great inconvenience, even if the things don’t get lost, and it may cost me a lot of money.”

“Can’t you be working through what’s left?” I asked. “There seems to be a lot of material.”

“That’s just the trouble,” he replied. “Margaret has sorted everything, and she’s left the rubbish—papers that couldn’t be of any use for the book I’m engaged to write.”

I was sympathetic, and willing to give Margaret her due measure of blame. If she had been less worn and flurried, she might have found some more discreet way of protecting her brother’s happiness and her mother’s reputation. Yet I rather admired her courage. I wondered how she would manage to Bowdlerize the journal without exciting her brother’s suspicions. I awaited the outcome with curiosity and some misgivings. When I left Charles, he was writing a peremptory demand for the immediate return of the papers.

My curiosity was amply satisfied, and my misgivings were realized, when I received a letter from Margaret three weeks after she sailed. It was post-marked Gibraltar, and it ran astoundingly:

Dear Robert:

I’m too ill to write, but I must. Try, if you can, to invent some plausible excuse for me, and tell Charlie about it. I can’t possibly write to him. I tried—I really tried—to arrange the papers so that he’d get only a favorable impression from them; but I couldn’t—and I couldn’t let him find mother out. If he had, he’d have been hurt, and he’d have filled his book with reservations. He’s terribly conscientious. I couldn’t bear to have poor mother’s name injured, even if she did treat me badly. She did a lot of good in her way, and she was rather magnificent. So one night I dropped the papers overboard, journal and all. It’s a great deal better so.

I sha’n’t stop till I get to Assisi. Don’t let Charlie be angry with me. I trust you to understand.

Ever sincerely yours,
MARGARET LONGBOW.

I give the letter in full because it explains why no complete biography of Mrs. Longbow has ever been published. Conscientious Charles, naturally, has been unwilling to write a two-volume life without the essential documents, and Margaret has never put her recollections into a book. Helen Bradford’s pompous work, “The Public and Private Life of My Mother,” hardly serves as a biography; it really gives more information about Mrs. Bradford than about Mrs. Longbow. To supply the public’s need of an intimate picture of the great philanthropist I have here set down my impressions of her.

THE WIDENING FIELD OF THE MOVING-PICTURE

ITS COMMERCIAL, EDUCATIONAL, AND ARTISTIC VALUE

BY CHARLES B. BREWER

IT has been variously estimated that there are already from fifteen thousand to thirty thousand moving-picture show-places in the United States. Greater New York alone has six hundred. Their development as an industry has been very recent. For while as early as 1864 a French patent was granted to Ducos for a battery of lenses, which, actuated in rapid succession, depicted successive stages of movement, this device could not have fulfilled the requirements of the moving-picture of to-day for the important reason, if for no other, that the dry, sensitized plate of that day could not receive impressions with sufficient rapidity. With the advent of instantaneous photography came what was probably the direct forerunner of the motion-picture in the work of Eadweard Muybridge, a photographer who, about 1878, began his camera studies of “The Horse in Motion,”[4] “Animal Locomotion,”[5] and other motion studies. His work was begun in California, on the private race-course of Governor Leland Stanford. Here he employed a battery of twenty-four cameras, spaced a foot apart, the shutters of which were sprung by the horse coming in contact with threads stretched across the track.

Mr. Edison’s kinetoscope camera, begun in 1889, was described in court[6] as “capable of producing an indefinite number of negatives on a single, sensitized, flexible film, at a speed theretofore unknown.” In his patent specification, Mr. Edison refers to this speed by saying, “I have been able to take with a single camera and tape film as many as forty-six photographs per second.”

A recently published account of what seemed a novel development served to show that other inventors were also busy on the subject nearly twenty years ago. The innovation makes use of glass plates instead of the ordinary films. The pictures are taken in rows, 162 to a plate, and the finished plate resembles a sheet of postage-stamps. Provision is made for carrying eighteen plates and for automatically shifting the plates to take the pictures in proper sequence.

From a photograph, copyright by The Biograph Co.

TABLEAU: THE DEPARTURE OF ENOCH ARDEN

Mr. Edison first showed the world his completed invention at the world’s fair in Chicago in 1893; but it was nearly 1900 before this infant industry could be said to be fairly started, though one enterprising manager had a regular place of exhibition as early as 1894. Two years ago it was estimated that in a single year the country paid over a hundred million dollars in admissions. There are no definite figures available, though the census officials contemplate gathering such statistics this year. It is probably safe, however, to place the present revenue from admissions at close to two hundred million dollars.

From a photograph, copyright by The Biograph Co.

SCENE FROM “THE LAST DROP OF WATER.”
OF WATER.” AN ATTACK BY HOSTILE INDIANS
IN THE DESERT

The Department of Justice, which has recently instituted action for alleged combination of the ten leading film-makers of the country, states that the total of pictures printed by these ten leading companies, which handle between seventy and eighty per cent. of the country’s business, fill between 2,500,000 and 3,000,000 feet of film every week. This means between 25,000 and 30,000 miles of pictures annually.

By permission of the Jungle Film Company. From a photograph, copyright by Paul J. Rainey

BEAR-HOUNDS PURSUING A CHETAH (FROM THE LIFE)

There is an ever-increasing demand for films, and many manufacturers are kept busy. From an original film about two hundred positives are usually reproduced and sent broadcast to the forty-five distributing agencies of the general company, which do the work formerly done by about one hundred and fifty independent exchanges in the various cities of the country. The reels were formerly sold; but are now leased to various theaters. Dates of exhibition are arranged with as much care and business acumen as are the great plays of the stage.

From a photograph, copyright by the Famous Players Film Co.

SARAH BERNHARDT AS QUEEN ELIZABETH SIGNING THE DEATH WARRANT OF THE EARL OF LEICESTER

The larger places attempt to have one “first-night” reel among the several shown at every performance. The reels usually rent to the exhibitor for from $20 to $25 for the first night, the price being scaled down each succeeding night about twenty per cent., until finally the rent is as low as a dollar a night. Hence a reel may travel every day, much the same as a theatrical troop in visiting small cities. The writer once had occasion to trace one of the Edison films, known as “Target Practice of the Atlantic Fleet.” The exchange had a complete schedule of just where this film would be shown for three weeks. It had been shown in several places in Washington, where it was scheduled to return, but was then in Richmond, Virginia, and was billed to appear the next day in Frederick, Maryland.

The admissions are small, but the expenses are usually not great. Most of the exhibition places are cared for by an operator, usually paid not more than twenty-five dollars per week; a piano-player, a doorkeeper, and a ticket-seller, varying from fifteen to eight dollars per week. Many proprietors operate a chain of several places, and many fenced-in city lots are pressed into service in summer.

The moral tone of the pictures now exhibited has been greatly benefited by the movement started in New York by those public-spirited citizens, headed by the late Mr. Charles Sprague-Smith, known as the National Board of Censorship, which wisely serves without compensation. The film-makers voluntarily submit their work, and are more than glad to have it reviewed, and it is said on good authority that no manufacturer has ever refused to destroy a film which did not receive the indorsement of the board. In a recent letter to “The Outlook,” Mr. Darrell Hibbard, director of boys’ work, Y. M. C. A., Indianapolis, discusses this phase of the subject. He writes: “Why is it that from juvenile, divorce, and criminal courts we hear constant blame for wayward deeds laid on the ‘five-cent shows’? The one answer is the word ‘Greed.’” He adds that when a film has passed the National Board of Censors, copies of it go to distributing agencies, in whose hands “it can be made over uncensored, strips can be inserted, or any mutilation made that fancy or trade may dictate.... A so-called class of ‘pirated’ films are the extreme of irresponsibility.... They are either manufactured locally or smuggled in from Europe, and thus miss the National Board of Censors.... The only way that the people, and especially the children, can be safeguarded from the influence of evil pictures is by careful regulation of the places of exhibition.... The nation-wide supervision of public exhibitions should be under the Department of Education or Child Welfare at Washington.”

Produced by Thomas A. Edison, Inc.

A SCENE FROM “THE BLACK ARROW”

This picture, showing the “Battle of Shorebytown,” was posed near New York City.

There are now many auxiliary boards. Some are under the city governments, and are compulsory, as in Chicago. Last year this board passed on more than 3000 reels of pictures, comprising 2,604,000 feet of films. They found it necessary to reject less than three per cent. If, however, on investigation Mr. Hibbard’s fears are found to be justified, the recently organized Children’s Bureau of the Department of Commerce and Labor will here obtain an early chance to justify its existence, as probably ninety-five per cent. of the films, as articles of interstate commerce, can now be subjected to its jurisdiction. Such supervision should also be welcomed by film-makers as an important step in furthering an advancement in the moral tone of films, long since on the upward grade, and thus to open up an even wider field of usefulness than they now exert.

THE FILMS

By permission of “The American Quarterly
of Roentgenology” and “The Archives
of the Roentgen Ray”

SERIES OF RADIOGRAPHS
SHOWING THE MOTIONS OF A
STOMACH SUFFERING FROM
GASTRIC PERISTALSIS

[❏
LARGER IMAGE]

THE smaller illustrations show the exact size of the pictures as they appear on the film. They are an inch wide and three quarters of an inch deep. A reel is usually a thousand feet long, and contains sixteen thousand pictures. On a screen twelve feet square, which is smaller than the usual size, there is surface enough to show twenty-seven thousand of the pictures side by side if they are reproduced without enlargement. Yet if every enlarged picture were shown on a separate twelve-foot screen, a single reel would require a stretch of canvas thirty-six miles long. Likewise a screen twenty feet square would accommodate over seventy-six thousand of the little pictures, and the stretch of canvas required for the enlarged pictures would be sixty miles long. After witnessing a performance, few realize that they have seen any such stretch of pictures as the figures show.

The life of a film is usually from three to six months, though varying, of course, with the treatment in handling. “The Scientific American” gives credit for superiority to films of French make, and attributes their excellence to the many tests to which they are subjected to secure exact dimensions, adequate strength, and other properties.

It is almost as vain to speak of the cost of producing a film as it is to speak of the cost of producing a painting. We know the cost of the canvas of the latter, and we also know the cost of the bare film is three cents per foot; but the cost of what is on the film may be represented only by the cost of developing and the labor of the machine-operator, as, for example, in such pictures as “An Inaugural Parade,” or the famous pictures showing the “Coronation of George V.” Sometimes, however, the cost runs as high as fifty thousand dollars, as did the film known as “The Landing of Columbus.” These films require many people, necessitate the taking of long journeys to provide an appropriate setting, and need from two to three years to finish them. Before the film known as “The Crusaders” was ready for the public, six hundred players and nearly three hundred horses had appeared in front of the lens. The film of “The Passion Play,” now in preparation, will cost, it is said, a hundred thousand dollars.

Mr. Paul Rainey has stated that his wonderful animal pictures, which showed his happenings from the unloading of his expedition from an Atlantic steamer on the coast of Africa, through the various hunts, and up to his departure, likewise cost fifty thousand dollars. Some of these wonderful films demonstrated how practical was his much-laughed-at theory that the Mississippi hounds used for hunting bear could successfully hunt the destructive African lion and the chetah. These pictures, which were taken with the idea of permitting Mr. Rainey’s friends at home to journey with him in spirit in his travels, were first shown publicly last winter at the National Geographic Society in Washington to illustrate a lecture by Mr. Rainey. Those who then enjoyed them can feel only satisfaction to know that they have now been placed on public exhibition, to show to the people at large what Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn, President of the American Museum of Natural History, has declared to be “the greatest contribution to natural history of the last decade.” The writer recently saw these pictures, and while the films are naturally not as perfect as when first shown in Washington, all the essentials are faithfully reproduced.

It is only recently that the streaky, flickering, eye-straining series of pictures first brought out have been supplanted by pictures so improved and so steady and continuous that the setting of a room or a landscape made up of hundreds of pictures appears as a single photograph. This is admirably illustrated by a portion of Mr. Rainey’s pictures, which show, through the peculiarly clear African atmosphere, a range of mountains ninety miles away. Again, his picture of the drinking-place, where, owing to a long drought, some of the animals had come eighty miles to scratch in the sand for water, shows the stillness of an immense landscape broken only by the swaying of the nests of half a hundred weaver-birds in a single tree, and by the scamper of monkeys, baboons, and other small animals two hundred and fifty yards from the camera. The same still background is shown as these little animals cautiously approach, drink, and are driven away by those of larger size, who in turn give way to companies of zebras, giraffes, rhinos, and elephants.

In a recent lecture given to benefit a fund to establish an animal hospital in New York, Dr. Joseph K. Dixon is credited with having shown a rare set of films which took his audience on a most interesting trip through the Yellowstone Park, and showed them an animal hospital which nature had provided in a secluded spot of aspen-trees, where injured creatures went for rest and convalescence. Many vivid pictures showed lame deer, wounded elk, and bears having their cuts and bruises healed by their own applications of oil taken from the trees.

By permission of “The American Quarterly of Roentgenology”
and “The Archives of the Roentgen Ray”

SERIES OF RADIOGRAPHS SHOWING MOTIONS OF
THE STOMACH DURING DIGESTION

[❏
LARGER IMAGE]

SCIENTIFIC AND EDUCATIONAL,—MICROCINEMATOGRAPH FILMS AND ROENTGENCINEMATOGRAPHY

THOUGH the work of the cinematograph is only in its infancy, the range of its possibilities seems almost boundless. When the target-practice pictures mentioned above were taken, it was said that some of the pictures showed a twelve-inch shell actually in flight. The writer saw these pictures, and while he did not see this point illustrated, possibly due to the breaking and imperfect repairing of the film, the statement can be credited, as it is feasible to see this with the naked eye if the observer is well in the line of flight. Another remarkable instance which illustrates the capabilities and speed of the lens has been cited in the case of a picture which shows a rifle-bullet on the inside of a soap-bubble, from which it was learned that the bubble does not break until the bullet leaves the opposite side from which it entered.

Produced by Thomas A. Edison, Inc.

SCENE FROM “WASHINGTON CROSSING THE DELAWARE”

The moving-picture is more and more being used for educational and scientific purposes. It has been used for recruiting, and pictures were taken of the convention at Chicago for use in the national campaign. Pictures showing the methods of teaching in New York schools have been shown in many parts of the country. Dr. William M. Davidson, superintendent of public schools in the District of Columbia, is strongly advocating the passage of a bill now pending before Congress to use the schools as social centers for exhibiting educational moving-pictures. Likewise Superintendent Maxwell is urging their use in the New York public schools. Mr. Edison has very recently been quoted as saying: “I intend to do away with books in the school; that is, I mean to try to do away with school-books. When we get the moving-pictures in the school, the child will be so interested that he will hurry to get there before the bell rings, because it’s the natural way to teach, through the eye. I have half a dozen fellows writing scenari now on A and B.” An eight-year course is being planned which it is expected will be started in Orange, New Jersey, in about a year.

By the use of the moving-picture, the St. Louis Medical Society has recently shown the method of inoculating animals with disease-germs and the effect of the germs on the blood. Circulation of the blood and action of numerous species of bacilli were also illustrated. In a micro-cinematograph film showing the circulation of the blood in a living body, prepared by M. Camandon, a French scientist, and exhibited by MM. Pathe Frères, the London “Nature” states that the white corpuscles of the blood are shown gradually altering their shape and position and fulfilling one of their best-known functions in acting as scavengers and absorbing such abnormal substances as microbes, disease-cells, and granules of inert matter. “By reproducing at a slower pace the changes,” this journal continues, “the cinematograph can assist us to attain a clearer perception of the nature of the alteration as it takes place.... No amount of imagination can supply the clearness and comprehension which actual seeing can give. The cinematograph might well become a most sufficient aid to the teaching of very many biological and especially medical subjects.”

Produced by Thomas A. Edison, Inc.

SCENE FROM “THE LAND BEYOND THE SUNSET”

This picture shows the fairies guiding a little newsboy to the land of his dreams.

Utilizing the moving-picture with the microscope has given the layman an insight into a world almost beyond comprehension, and yet this field particularly is only in its infancy. At the recent World’s Hygienic Congress in Washington, the large attendance at the lecture of Dr. Fullerborn of Hamburg, illustrated with microscopic moving-pictures, demonstrated the keen public interest in this subject. The pictures showed the skin of a guinea-pig being shaved, how it was inoculated with the hook-worm, the surgeon cutting out a piece of the skin and preparing his microscope. The remainder of the film showed just how the rapid multiplication of the much-talked-of hook-worm is revealed through the microscope.

The peculiar opaqueness necessary for the X-ray is obtained by administering to a patient, who is in a fasting condition, two ounces of bismuth subcarbonate mixed with two glasses of buttermilk. Many radiographs are then made in rapid succession. These are reduced to cinematographic size and projected upon a screen, giving a very graphic representation of the motions of the stomach during digestion. The films used in this paper were made by Dr. Lewis Gregory Cole, Radiologist to Cornell University Medical College, and were shown at a recent meeting of the American Medical Association, and published in the journal of that society and in the Archives of Roentgen Ray. This procedure is termed “Roentgencinematography” by Kaestle, Rieder, and Rosenthal, to whom Dr. Cole gives much credit for previous work along the same line. In the articles referred to above Dr. Cole advises this method of examination for determining the presence of cancers and ulcers of the stomach.

Produced by Thomas A. Edison, Inc.

SCENE FROM “THE STARS AND THE STRIPES”

This picture shows the surrender of the British captain to John Paul Jones in the famous
fight between the Bonhomme Richard and the Serapis. The scene was arranged in the
Edison Studio, the American ship being stationary and the other arranged to run on rollers.

“Photographing time” has a spectacular sound, yet patents were recently issued to the writer which virtually accomplished this. Between the shutter and the film of the moving-picture machine are introduced the marked edges of revolving transparent dials, actuated by clock-movement. The figures in the three dials denote the hour, minute, second, and smaller divisions, and are arranged to come to a prescribed position as the shutter opens. By this means the exact time at which any motion is photographed is imprinted on the different pictures of the film independent of the varying speed of the hand-crank. Such records promise to be most useful in the “scientific management” field and medical pictures, from which comparative time studies can be made from a number of films at the same time or from a single film by reproducing it on the screen in the usual manner.

Over twenty years ago, Mr. Edison stated in his patent specification in referring to his ability to take forty-six photographs per second, “I have also been able to hold the tape at rest for nine tenths of the time.” It was probably not intended to convey the impression that he could take anything approaching ten times the number of pictures, as it is of course necessary to provide for rest periods; but it is significant that very recently a machine has been perfected for portraying such rapid motion as projectiles in flight, etc., which takes the almost inconceivable number of two hundred and fifty pictures per second. Indeed, experiments are in progress which promise even four hundred per second.

Films are also being utilized to show the news of the day. A member of THE CENTURY staff was in Rome last year when the king was fired upon. Two days later, in Perugia, he saw a moving-picture of the king appearing on the balcony of the palace before an enormous crowd assembled to congratulate him on his escape. More recently a London theater which shows the news of the day in motion-pictures is regularly opened and important events are shown on the screen two hours after their occurrence, a promptness approaching that of the press “extra.”

TRICK FILMS

THE old saying is that figures do not lie; but a modern one is that they can be made to. Just so the trick film places before one’s very eyes what to one’s inner consciousness is impossible. Two favorite devices of the trickster are brought into play in a recent film which shows a cleverly produced romance woven about such an absurdity as the painting of a landscape by the switching of a cow’s tail. The film tells the story of a ne’er-do-well, in love, pretending to study art. The father frowns on the match, but promises his favor if the son will produce an example of his skill. In desperation the brush and palette are taken to a field, and while the lovers are despairing, a friendly cow approaches the easel. The switching begins at once, and a change in the canvas is seen with every movement until a creditable painting appears. What has appeared astonishing would have attracted less attention had the audience seen that the pictures showing the restless cow were taken at intervals, between which, while the camera was stopped, a real artist worked on the picture, and stepped to one side when the camera was put into action.

The work of the trickster is shown to advantage in reversing a film depicting a building operation. When run backward, a brand-new structure is seen to be pulled to pieces, and its various members hauled away in wagons running backward.

One operator, who had shown boys diving from a high spring-board, has related how, by reversing the film, he let his audience see the boys come out of the water feet foremost, rise through the air the same way, and by a graceful turn land on their feet on the spring-board. Another has told how, by the same reverse motion, firemen, who a moment before had rescued occupants from a burning building, were seen to carry their victims back into the flames. We may perhaps look for some of these enterprising tricksters to illustrate the possibility of that expression of impossibility, “the unscrambling of eggs,” or for one of them, with rare presence of mind, to catch on his lens an accident shattering a number of valuable cut-glass pieces, and then to convert a loss into profit by exhibiting the film reversed, and showing with wonderful effectiveness a mass of broken glass ascend through space and form itself on the table into the perfect originals.

THE PHOTO-PLAY

THE moving-picture has developed an important branch in the field of literature. Several periodicals are devoted entirely to the subject, and in many of the standard magazines can be found regular advertisements for short “photo-plays.” The scenario-writers engaged in the work do not seem to be able to keep up with the increasing demand. Standard plays are pressed into service, and the leading managers and actors of the world are found among those producing the 5000 plays which moving-picture audiences require every year.

The drama on the white sheet dates back to the autumn of 1894, when Alexander Black of New York brought out the first “picture-play” before a distinguished literary audience. This first picture-play, called “Miss Jerry,” like later white-sheet plays by the same author and artist, was accompanied by a spoken monologue giving all the speeches and covering all the transitions of the action. The pictures, the making of which was begun before the appearance of the motion-picture device, were produced in series, indoors and out, from a living cast, as in the present plays, and were put on the screen with registered backgrounds by the aid of a double stereopticon at the rate of from three to five per minute, thus presenting stages of action—a prophecy of the continuous action perfected in the plays of to-day.

When Mr. Black gave “Miss Jerry” for the first time in Boston, Edward Everett Hale, greeting the author after the performance, exclaimed, “Black, it’s so inevitable that I’m chagrined to think that I didn’t invent it myself.” It seemed inevitable, also, that the motion-picture machine would take up the play idea; yet for a considerable time motion exploitation was confined to short, episodic films. Indeed, the early motion films were far less smooth in effect than the modern product, and at the beginning a prolonged run appeared like a hazardous undertaking for the eyes. Within the present season certain films have been run in almost unbroken continuity (as in Bernhardt’s “Queen Elizabeth”) for an hour and a half, which is to say that the motion-pictures are now giving the full dramatic progression suggested by the original lantern-play as seen by Dr. Hale.

Doubtless the value of the moving-picture drama will be greatly enhanced if speaking and singing parts in moving-picture performances, with the aid of the phonograph, have been made thoroughly practical by means of an instrument known as the “magnaphone,” as is claimed by promoters of the device. The promoters are so well satisfied with the outcome of their experiments that they claim it will soon be used in all parts of the country. The instruments are not sound-magnifiers, but consist of a number of instruments resembling the megaphone which are placed in various parts of the audience, and the voice from the phonograph, which comes over a wire, is thus brought close enough to all parts of the house to make it plainly audible to every one.[7]

The following progress of “Picture Plays” has been kindly furnished by Mr. Alexander Black:

1—First “plays,” in three acts, written, photographed, and presented by Alexander Black—1894.

2—Episodic motion-pictures placed in series.

3—Short five-minute comedies in motion pictures.

4—Scenes of travel in motion-pictures.

5—Scenes from novels in motion-pictures (“Vanity Fair,” for example, presented in consecutive series—1911).

6—Scenes from “Odyssey” in consecutive series—1911–12.

7—Sarah Bernhardt in “Queen Elizabeth”—1912.

PICTURES IN NATURAL COLORS

WITH other improvements have come the admirable pictures in natural colors, all mechanically produced. For some time we have had hand-colored films, but these have required extraordinary patience on the part of the colorist, who had to treat each of the sixteen thousand pictures one at a time. Excessive care was also necessary as an overlap of a thirty-second part of an inch would show the color many inches out of place when the picture was shown enlarged on the screen. The work is so tedious that the capacity of the colorist is said to be limited to about thirty-five feet of film per day; the cost is thus made excessive. And the market needs, which frequently require two hundred reproductions of a reel, render the hand-colored film commercially impracticable.

The machine which now produces beautiful color pictures is known as the “kinemacolor.” It is the joint work of Mr. Charles Urban, an American who went to London a few years ago as a representative of manufacturers of an American motion-picture machine, and a London photographer. The machine differs from the ordinary cinematograph in several important particulars. The most noticeable difference is a rapidly driven, revolving skeleton frame known as a color-filter, which is located between the lens and the shutter. This color-filter is made up of different sections of specially prepared gelatin, two sections of which are colored, one red and the other green. The filter-screen is revolved while the pictures are taken, as well as when they are reproduced, being so geared that the red section of the filter appears in line with the lens for one photograph, and the green section for the next.

The photographs are all in pairs, and twice the number of pictures are taken and reproduced as in the ordinary machine, and the speed is also twice as great, the kinemacolor taking and reproducing thirty-two—and sometimes as many as fifty-five—per second, and the ordinary machine sixteen. Incidentally, to care for the greater speed the kinemacolor machine is also driven by a motor instead of by the ordinary hand-crank.

When a negative is produced through the red screen, red light is chiefly transmitted, and red-colored objects in the original will appear transparent on the copy produced from the negative. Where the next section of negative has moved into place the green section of the filter has come into position, and the red-colored objects on this part of the negative will appear dark. This can be noticed in the illustrations, where such objects as the red coats of the horsemen and the red of the flowers, as shown in the enlarged pictures, in the small pictures appear light in every second view, and dark in each succeeding one. When the pictures are thrown on a screen, the transparent parts allow the colors of the filter to pass through, and the revolutions of the filter are arranged for showing the appropriate color for every picture. This will cause confusion, if, in repairing a broken kinemacolor film, an uneven number of pictures are cut out and the “pairs” thus interfered with.

The successful reproducing of these wonderful colors is largely due to what we know as “persistence of vision” (the same principle on which the kinetoscope is based), and is easily recognized when we remember that the lighted point of a stick appears to our vision as a ring of fire when the stick is rapidly revolved. Just so with these pictures: they are produced so rapidly that the red of one lingers on the retina of the eye until the green appears, and the red of the first picture melts into the green of the next, which does not appear, however, until the red one has passed away. The green selected for the filter has in it a certain amount of blue, and the red a certain amount of orange, and in the fusion of the colors may be seen pleasing combinations of greenish-yellow, orange, grays, blues, and even rich indigos.

The early products of this kinemacolor process were the pictures of the George V “Coronation” and the “Durbar.” The coronation pictures are noteworthy for the brilliancy of the scenes, showing in action thousands of horses, some bay, some chestnut, while others are pure white, black, or of a peculiar cream color, all of them carrying gay horsemen, with bright red coats, before a sea of color shown in the gorgeous hats and exquisite gowns of the spectators and court attendants. The durbar pictures, of course, are more recent. They consist of 64,000 feet of pictures taken in Bombay, Calcutta, and Delhi, where the actual durbar ceremonial of coronation was held. The pictures at Calcutta, showing the royal elephants, are probably those which will most impress Americans, particularly those showing the superb control displayed when, at the mahout’s bidding, the elephants go into and under the water, head and all, and leave the mahout on his back apparently standing on the water’s surface. One set of pictures shows the elephants in the pageant, and illustrates the wonderful color capabilities of the process by distinctly reproducing on the enormous cloth of gold covering the elephants the sheen as its folds move with the elephants’ steps.

In another part of these durbar pictures is shown a sea of color where fifty thousand troops pass in review before the eyes of the spectator in ten minutes. Two sets of the pictures show how quick is the action of this particular process. These are the polo tournament at Delhi and the cavalry charge, the action in which was so rapid as to require the machine to take fifty-five pictures a second, in order to show faithfully all of the movement.

After witnessing pictures so full of interest and so wonderful in color effect and action, one accustomed to democratic ideas could but wonder to see moving upon the screen, on a mechanically revolved table, so inanimate an object as a crown of jewels. Interest, however, was aroused when it was learned that the appearance of this picture was due to the fact that, as a mark of high appreciation of the coronation and durbar pictures, the king broke many precedents and permitted his crown to be taken for photographing to the private studio of Mr. Urban, the inventor of the process. Incidentally, too, the crown was more wonderful than its appearance at a distance indicated; for the company informed the writer that it is made up of 6170 diamonds, 24 rubies, and 25 emeralds, the largest of which weighs thirty-four carats.

Another mark of the king’s appreciation was his storing away in the “Jewel Office” of the Tower of London, in hermetically sealed vessels, a complete set of the pictures, to show posterity at successive coronations the exact manner in which George V became King of England and Emperor of India.

FROM BUD TO BLOSSOM

A RARE set of pictures taken by this color process which had not been given to the public was courteously shown to the writer in the private theater of the company. These, which are called “From Bud to Blossom,” show a stream of pictures in such rapid succession that they simulate the trick of the Eastern magician who makes flowers grow into being before the eyes of the spectator. The pictures are taken in intervals of about three minutes by an automatic arrangement which continues the work for a period required for the flower to blossom, which is usually about three days. The speed of the growth, as seen by the spectator, is thus magnified about from six thousand to nine thousand times the actual growth of the flowers. So faithfully has the camera performed its task that even the loosening of the petals can be counted one by one, and in one picture, where two buds of a poppy are shown, the growth of one is far enough ahead of the other to show its shattered petals wither and drop while the companion is left in its magnificence. In another picture the water in the glass is seen to evaporate to one fourth its quantity before the flowers have fully blossomed.

As a fitting climax, to excel in gorgeousness the pictures of the flowers, there were retained until the last a series of pictures of a battle “unto death” in an aquarium between water-beetles and a magnificently marked snake. It almost passes the imagination to see the distinct preservation of the many and varied colors of the snake as it writhes and twists among the rocks on the bottom in its endeavor to loose the hold of the beetles. The thought is delayed too long, for soon after the bottom is reached one of the beetles finishes his well-planned attack, and the neck of the snake is shown where these vigorous little insects of the water have chewed it half-way through. Vanquished, the snake gives up the battle as its lifeless form is stretched on the rocks at the bottom.

THE YOUNG HEART IN AGE

BY EDITH M. THOMAS

LET fall the ashen veil

On locks of ebon sheen;

And let Time’s furrowing tale

On once-smooth brows be seen.

And let my eyes forego

Their once-keen shaft of sight;

Let hands and feet not know

Their former skill or might.

Take all of outward grace,

Ye Aging Powers—but hold!

Touch not the inner place,

Let not my heart be old!

Then, Youth, to me repair;

And be my soothéd guest;

All things with you I share

Save one,—that wild unrest!

HER OWN LIFE

BY ALLAN UPDEGRAFF

SHE paid the landlady five dollars from a plump little purse of gold mesh.

“And I’m expecting a—a gentleman to see me within the next half-hour,” she said.

“Certainly, ma’am; I’ll show him right into the drawring-room and call you. I hope you’ll like the surroundings, ma’am; I have nobody in my house but the most refined—”

“Oh, I’m sure I shall. Good day.”

She sat on the edge of the bed in the furnished room she had just rented, and her face had the look of the girl’s face in a little autotype of “The Soul’s Awakening through Books” that hung on the wall opposite her. At last her soul was awake; she could hear it whispering, whispering in her bosom. Or was that sound merely the exultation of her excited heart?

At any rate, her soul was awake. She knew it, she could feel it, and it made her tingle. At last she had broken her bonds, she had proclaimed herself a real person in a real world. Her doll existence and her doll-self were further behind than the doll’s house she had left. She was free—free to be herself, free to live her own life as her own desires decreed.

“Free! free!” she repeated under her breath. “Free!”

Her very presence gave a glamour to the shabby little room, so palpitating with life was she, so dainty and pretty and sweet, and so palpably young. The coils of her bright-brown hair were smooth and artfully simple, as only the fingers of an expert hair-dresser could have made them; her clear-skinned, brunette coloring showed the fine hand of nature given every chance to produce its best; the delicate, dark curves of her eyebrows, the carmine bows of her lips, the changing, liquid velvet of her gold-brown eyes, were masterpieces of the same supreme artist. She was as fair as an April morning that has somehow strayed into the luxuriance of June.

Suddenly she realized that the air in the little room was close, that the single tall window was closed top and bottom. With a quick rustle of silken draperies, she fluttered over to it and threw it wide. The sounds that came in were not the metallic tenor shriek of the “elevated,” the rumbling of wagons on cobblestones, the whining of surface cars: they were voices of the world. She held out her arms to them before returning to her perch on the bed.

There was such a dazzling host of things to be done that she could not begin to do anything. Her two big cowhide suitcases, standing in rather disdainful opulence beside the shabby chiffonier, invited her to unpack; but she dismissed the invitation with a toss of her head. How could she desecrate her first hour of freedom by putting clothing into bureau drawers? A mote-filled streak of sunshine, oblique with late afternoon, offered more congenial occupation. She let her eyes rest on it, and dreamed. It was pale golden, like hope, like the turrets of castles in Spain, like the wealth awaiting claimants at the foot of a rainbow. For a long time she looked into it, and her face put off its first flush of exultation for the wistful doubtfulness of reverie.

There was a knock at her door.

“Yes?” she answered.

“Your gentleman friend is a-waiting for you in the drawring-room, ma’am,” announced the landlady’s voice from outside.

“All right; thank you. I’ll be right down,” she said.

She arose in a small flutter of excitement, and patted her faultless hair before the mirror, turning her head this way and that. Gone was her doubtfulness, her wistfulness; she had brightened like a mirror when a lamp is brought into the room. The warm color in her cheeks deepened, and her eyes felicitated their doubles in the mirror. Lightly she fluttered down the broad stairway to the tiled hall below. At the entrance to the parlor she paused a moment, then swept back the heavy curtain with such an air as one might use in unveiling a statue.

A man, sitting in the big Turkish rocking-chair between the front windows, rose hastily to his feet. He was a compact, short-statured, middle-aged man, with a look of grave alertness behind the friendly set of his face.

“Mrs. Wendell?” he murmured, coming forward.

“And so you,” she said, still poising between the curtains, “are Ames Hallton!” Immediately she laughed. “That sounds like melodrama,” she exclaimed. “I’m very glad to see you.”

They shook hands. Her eyes continued to regard him with the puzzled interest that wonderful objects frequently inspire when seen closely. There was a faint shadow of disappointment on her face, but she did not allow it to linger.

“It was kind—it was awf’ly kind of you to come,” she said. “Sha’n’t we sit down? Do you know, I almost thought you wouldn’t come.”

“Your letter was very interesting,” he returned dryly.

“I tried to make it that way—so interesting that you just couldn’t keep from coming.” She folded her hands in her brown-silk lap and gravely bowed her head so that light from the window could bring out the copper tints in her hair. She felt the judicial expression of the gray eyes watching her, and chose the simplest means of making partizans of them. “I was quite desperate, and after I’d read your ‘Love’s Ordeal’ I knew you were the one person who could help me.”

“Have you already left your husband?” he inquired.

She winced a little, and her brows protested. “You remind me of a surgeon,” she said; “but that’s what I need—that’s what attracted me to you in your book. It’s all so calm and simple and scientific. It made me realize for the first time what I was—it and Ibsen’s ‘Doll’s House.’ I was nothing but a plaything, a parasite, a mistress, a doll.” She bowed her head in shame. The warm color flooding her cheeks was as flawless as that in the finest tinted bisque.

“What you say is very, very interesting,” murmured Hallton; and she knew from his changed tone that the fact of her beauty had at last been borne in upon him.

With renewed confidence, almost with boldness, she lifted her head and continued: “You see, I was married when I was only eighteen—just out of boarding-school. I was already sick of hearing about love; everybody made love to me.”

“Of course,” said Hallton, slightly sarcastic.

“I couldn’t help that, could I?” she complained, turning the depths of her gold-brown eyes full upon him.

He lowered his own eyes and pursed his lips.

“No, of course not,” he admitted. “And then, when you realized that you were—inconveniently situated, you decided to imitate Nora in the ‘Doll’s House,’ and get out? Is that it?”

“Well, yes; but—”

“So you explained to your husband how you felt, and left him?”

“I didn’t exactly explain; my thoughts seemed to be all mixed up: I thought it would be better to write, after I’d thought a little more.” Again she allowed the glory of her eyes to be her best apologist. “I was going to write as soon as I’d had a talk with you. You see, I came away only two hours ago, and Harry—my husband—will just think I’ve gone to visit somewhere.” Her beauty made a confident appeal that he would sanction her position.

But Hallton looked out of the window.

“And what do you expect to do to earn your living,” he asked, “now that you’ve decided to quit being a parasite?”

It was cruelly unfamiliar ground, this necessity he put upon her of answering questions with mere words; she had become accustomed to use glances as a final statement of her position, as a full and sufficient answer for any question that a man could ask her. Nevertheless, she drew herself together and addressed Hallton’s unappreciative profile:

“My husband will give me an allowance, I’m sure, until I decide on some suitable occupation; or, if he is mean enough not to, there’ll be alimony or—or something like that, won’t there?” Her eyebrows began to arch a little as Hallton continued to look out of the window, and her lips lost some of their softness. “That is one of the things I wished to speak to you about,” she explained. “I thought perhaps I might take up writing, and I thought you might tell me the best way to begin.”

Hallton put one hand to his forehead.

“However, of course the most important thing,” she resumed steadily, “is for me to live my own life. That’s what I’ve come to realize: I must express myself, I must be free. Why, I didn’t know I had a soul until I found myself alone a short time ago in the little room that I had rented myself, all for myself. I’ve been a chattel—yes, a chattel!” Her voice quavered; she hesitated, waiting for at least a glance of encouragement.

“I hoped you’d understand, that you’d advise me,” she murmured. “I’m afraid I’m frightfully helpless; I’ve always been that way.”

“My God! yes, madam!” he exploded, facing her; “I should think you were!”

She made no reply; she did not even show surprise by a change of expression; she simply sat up very straight and faced him with the look of clear-eyed intelligence that she had found best suited to situations utterly beyond her comprehension. She waited, calm-browed, level-eyed, judicious-mouthed, for him to explain, to apologize.

“I beg your pardon,” he said.

Her silence demanded more.

“I was rather overcome; I was about to take a cheap, narrow view of your—your dilemma,” he explained. “I was about to say that your troubles were as common as dirt, and that you were wrong to take them so idealistically, and not to realize the simplest fundamentals, of—. Women are going through a period of readjustment just now, of course. Your troubles probably aren’t much greater than those of any woman, or man, who goes out to hunt a job. You don’t need to smash things, to kick up a row.”

She watched, with the penetrating gaze of a Muse, his half-disgusted attempts to be polite. She had not the slightest idea what he was driving at; she merely understood that only his regard for her beauty and womanhood kept him from saying wild, irrational things. It occurred to her that he might be mentally unbalanced; geniuses often were.

“Look here,” he continued, growing increasingly excited under her look of beautiful, understanding aloofness, “wouldn’t it be a good thing if you decided, before beginning to live your own life, just what sort of life your own life is—what you want to make of it? You’re breaking away from a beastly artificial environment; aren’t you afraid you’ll have as hard a time as, say, a pet canary turned out to make a living among the sparrows? Besides, canaries are quite as useful as sparrows.”

“I hardly think,” she said with great determination, “that I can be compared to a pet canary; and I’ll have to ask you to be more considerate in referring to my husband. He may not understand me, but he is kind, and as good as he knows—”

“Excuse me,” interrupted Hallton, putting his hand to his forehead; “but I have no recollection of referring to your husband at all.”

“You spoke of my breaking away from him,” she said, “and you called him a beastly artificial—I won’t repeat what you said.” The delicate curves of her cheeks warmed with the memory of the unfamiliar appellation, with faint doubt as to her first idea of its value. “However, that’s neither here nor there. I wish to ask you a simple, straightforward question, Mr. Hallton: do you, or do you not, think it is right for persons to live their own lives?”

For a moment she thought she had succeeded in bringing him back to a humble consideration of her case; he looked at her with something like consternation in his face, his alert, gray eyes blinking rapidly. Light from the window made her massed hair a soft, golden glimmer above the sweet, injured, girlish seriousness of her face; her lips softened, curved downward, like a troubled child’s.

But Hallton turned from her to look out of the window.

“Your own life, your own life!” he exploded again. “Why, you great, big, beautiful doll, that’s your own life—a doll’s life! When is a doll not a doll?” He got out of his chair and jerked his coat together at the throat. His lower jaw protruded; he looked through rather than at her, and his eyes were sick and tired. “Even your talk is the talk of an automaton; you haven’t an idea without a forest of quotation-marks around it,” he said. “If you weren’t so good-looking, you’d be a private in that big brigade of female nincompoops who write their soul-troubles to the author of the latest successful book. Your beauty removes you from that class—at least as long as I look at you.”

He bowed to her, with an expression slightly resembling a sneer.

“Your beauty makes you a temptation; for you’d soon be looking for another cage, or another doll’s house, and any man might be glad to feed you. If I weren’t so busy, and you weren’t so devoid of character, common sense, everything else that—”

“Oh, you brute!” she cried, recoiling from the crassly material admiration in his eyes. “How dare you speak to me like that?”

“Perfect!” He bowed with his hand on his heart. “I press the button, and you utter the absolutely obvious remarks. You are a masterpiece—such a doll as would grace any home of the middle of the last century. And my advice to you is to go back to your home and to your devoted husband. I take it for granted that he is devoted: the prices which you mechanical beauties command usually include devotion by the bucketful. But perhaps I’m unnecessarily harsh because I see you slipping through my fingers. Good day, Mrs. Wendell; and good luck!”

She saw him go with a feeling that the universe had suddenly been inverted and that she was scrambling around amid a Noah’s ark load of displaced properties. It was not so much that he had disturbed her ideals, her plans, her dream of freedom, but that he could have treated her so cavalierly; that he could have been so impolite, so unreasonable, so brutal; that he could so completely have failed to understand her—that was what left her as dazed and terrified as a lost child.

“Oh, he is a cad, a perfect beast!” she gasped to herself as she fled up the broad stairway to her room.

She threw herself down on the hard little bed, crumpled silks, crumpled hair, crumpled rose-petals of cheeks, crumpled pansies-and-dew of eyes. All her sweetness and delicacy wilted and drooped and quivered in the cold, gathering gloom of the little room. The city snarled and rumbled and hissed and groaned outside, and its great composite voice was the voice of loneliness incarnate.

“Oh, there’s no one to take care of me!” she sobbed suddenly, and burst into a flood of tears.

Half-tone plate engraved by H. Davidson

A CORNER OF THE TABLE

FROM THE PAINTING BY CHARLES CHABAS

(EXAMPLES OF CONTEMPORARY FRENCH ART)

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Drawn by André Castaigne

A DISTANT VIEW OF THE ACROPOLIS AT SUNSET

SKIRTING THE BALKAN PENINSULA

FROM TRIEST TO CONSTANTINOPLE

THIRD PAPER: THE ENVIRONS OF ATHENS

BY ROBERT HICHENS

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

WITH PICTURES BY JULES GUÉRIN AND PHOTOGRAPHS

UPON the southern slope of the Acropolis, beneath the limestone precipices and the great golden-brown walls above which the Parthenon shows its white summit, are many ruins; among them the Theater of Dionysus and the Odeum of Herodes Atticus, the rich Marathonian who spent much of his money in the beautification of Athens, and who taught rhetoric to two men who eventually became Roman emperors. The Theater of Dionysus, in which Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides produced their dramas, is of stone and silver-white marble. Many of the seats are arm-chairs, and are so comfortable that it is no uncommon thing to see weary travelers, who have just come down from the Acropolis, resting in them with almost unsuitable airs of unbridled satisfaction.

It is evident to any one who examines this great theater carefully that the Greeks considered it important for the body to be at ease while the mind was at work; for not only are the seats perfectly adapted to their purpose, but ample room is given for the feet of the spectators, the distance between each tier and the tier above it being wide enough to do away with all fear of crowding and inconvenience. The marble arm-chairs were assigned to priests, whose names are carved upon them. In the theater I saw one high arm-chair, like a throne, with lion’s feet. This is Roman, and was the seat of a Roman general. The fronts of the seats are pierced with small holes, which allow the rain-water to escape. Below the stage there are some sculptured figures, most of them headless. One which is not is a very striking and powerful, though almost sinister, old man, in a crouching posture. His rather round forehead resembles the very characteristic foreheads of the Montenegrins.

Herodes Atticus restored this theater. Before his time it had been embellished by Lycurgus of Athens, the orator, and disciple of Plato. It is not one of the gloriously placed theaters of the Greeks, but from the upper tiers of seats there is a view across part of the Attic plain to the isolated grove of cypresses where the famous Schliemann is buried, and beyond to gray Hymettus.

Standing near by is another theater, Roman-Greek, not Greek, the Odeum of Herodes Atticus, said to have been built by him in memory of his wife. This is not certain, and there are some authorities who think that, like the beautiful arch near the Olympieion, this peculiar, very picturesque structure was raised by the Emperor Hadrian, who was much fonder of Athens than of Rome.

The contrast between the exterior, the immensely massive, three-storied façade with Roman arches, and the interior, or, rather, what was once the interior, of this formerly roofed-in building, is very strange. They do not seem to belong to each other, to have any artistic connection the one with the other.

From a photograph, copyright by Underwood & Underwood

THEATER OF DIONYSUS ON THE SOUTHERN SLOPE
OF THE ACROPOLIS

The outer walls are barbarically huge and heavy, and superb in color. They gleam with a fierce-red gold, and are conspicuous from afar. The almost monstrous, but impressive, solidity of Rome, heavy and bold, indeed almost crudely imperious, is shown forth by them—a solidity absolutely different from the Greek massiveness, which you can study in the Doric temples, and far less beautiful. When you pass beyond and this towering façade, which might well be a section of the Colosseum transferred from gladiatorial Rome to intellectual Athens, you find yourself in a theater which looks oddly, indeed, almost meanly, small and pale and graceful. With a sort of fragile timidity it seems to be cowering behind the flamboyant walls. When all its blanched marble seats were crowded with spectators it contained five thousand persons. As you approach the outer walls, you expect to find a building that might accommodate perhaps twenty-five thousand. There is something bizarre in the two colors, fierce and pale, in the two sizes, huge and comparatively small, that are united in the odeum. Though very remarkable, it seems to me to be one of the most inharmonious ruins in Greece.

The modern Athenians are not very fond of hard exercise, and except in the height of summer, when many of them go to Kephisia and Phalerum, and others to the islands, or to the baths near Corinth for a “cure,” they seem well content to remain within their city. They are governed, it seems, by fashion, like those who dwell in less-favored lands. When I was in Athens the weather was usually magnificent and often very hot. Yet Phalerum, perhaps half an hour by train from Constitution Square, was deserted. In the vast hotel there I found only two or three children, in the baths half a dozen swimmers. The pleasure-boats lay idle by the pier. I asked the reason of this—why at evening dusty Athens was crammed with strollers, and the pavements were black with people taking coffee and ices, while delightful Phalerum, with its cooler air and its limpid waters, held no one but an English traveler?

“The season is over,” was the only reply I received, delivered with a grave air of finality. I tried to argue the matter, and suggested that anxiety about the war had something to do with it. But I was informed that the “season” closed on a certain day, and that after that day the Athenians gave up going to Phalerum.

The season for many things seemed “over” when I was in Athens. Round-about the city, and within easy reach of it, there is fascinating country—country that seems to call you with a smiling decision to enjoy all Arcadian delights; country, too, that has great associations connected with it. From Athens you can go to picnic at Marathon or at Salamis, or you can carry a tea-basket to the pine-woods which slope down to the Convent of Daphni, and come back to it after paying a visit to Eleusis. Or, if you are not afraid of a “long day,” you can motor out and lunch in the lonely home of the sea-god under the columns at Sunium. If you wish to go where a king goes, you can spend the day in the thick woods at Tatoï. If you are full of social ambition, and aim at “climbing,” a train in not many minutes will set you down at Kephisia, the summer home of “the fifty-two” on the slope of a spur of Mount Pentelicus.

Thither I went one bright day. But, as at Phalerum, I found a deserted paradise. The charming gardens and arbors were empty. The villas, Russian, Egyptian, Swiss, English, French, and even now and then Greek in style, were shuttered and closed. All in vain the waterfalls sang, all in vain the silver poplars and the yellow-green pines gave their shade. No one was there. I went at length to a restaurant to get something to eat. Its door was unlocked, and I entered a large, deserted room, with many tables, a piano, and a terrace. No one came. I called, knocked, stamped, and at length evoked a thin elderly lady in a gray shawl, who seemed alarmed at the sight of me, and in a frail voice begged to know what I wanted. When I told her, she said there was nothing to eat except what they were going to have themselves. The season was over. Eventually she brought me mastika and part of her own dinner to the terrace, which overlooked a luxuriant and deserted garden. And there I spent two happy, golden hours. I had sought the heart of fashion, and found the exquisite peace that comes to places when fashion has left them. Henceforth I shall always associate beautiful Kephisia with silence, flowers, and one thin old woman in a gray shawl.

THE TEMPLE OF POSEIDON AND ATHENE AT SUNIUM

PAINTED FOR THE CENTURY BY JULES GUÉRIN

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Greece, though sparsely inhabited, is in the main a very cheerful-looking country. The loneliness of much of it is not depressing, the bareness of much of it is not sad. I began to understand this on the day when I went to the plain of Marathon, which, fortunately, lies away from railroads. One must go there by carriage or motor or on horseback. The road is bad both for beasts and machinery, but it passes through country which is typical of Greece, and through which it would be foolish to go in haste. Go quietly to Marathon, spend two hours there, or more, and when you return in the evening to Athens you will have tasted a new joy. You will have lived for a little while in an exquisite pastoral—a pastoral through which, it is true, no pipes of Pan have fluted to you,—I heard little music in Greece,—but which has been full of that lightness, brightness, simplicity, and delicacy peculiar to Greece. The soil of the land is light, and, I believe, though Hellenes have told me that in this I am wrong, that the heart of the people is light. Certainly the heart of one traveler was as he made his way to Marathon along a white road thickly powdered with dust.

From a photograph, copyright by Underwood & Underwood

THE PLAIN OF MARATHON

Has not each land its representative tree? America has its maple, England its oak, France its poplar, Italy its olive, Turkey its cypress, Egypt its palm, and so on. The representative tree of Greece is the pine. I do not forget the wild olive, from which in past days the crowns were made, nor the fact that the guide-books say that in a Greek landscape the masses of color are usually formed by the silver-green olive-trees. It seemed to me, and it seems to me still in remembrance, that the lovely little pine is the most precious ornament of the Grecian scene.

Marathon that day was a pastoral of yellow and blue, of pines and sea. On the way I passed through great olive-groves, in one of which long since some countrymen of mine were taken by brigands and carried away to be done to death. And there were mighty fig-trees, and mulberry-trees, and acres and acres of vines, with here and there an almost black cypress among them. But the pines, more yellow than green, and the bright blue sea made the picture that lives in my memory.

From a photograph, copyright by Underwood & Underwood

RUINS OF THE GREAT TEMPLE OF THE
MYSTERIES AT ELEUSIS

Not very long after we were clear of the town we passed not far from the village of “Louis,” who won the first Marathon race that was run under King George’s scepter, Marousi, where the delicious water is found that Athens loves to drink. And then away we went through the groves and the little villages, where dusty soldiers were buying up mules for the coming war; and Greek priests were reading newspapers; and olive-skinned children, with bright, yet not ungentle, eyes, were coming from school; and outside of ramshackle cafés, a huddle of wood, a vine, a couple of tables, and a few bottles, old gentlemen, some of them in native dress, with the white fustanelle, a sort of short skirt not reaching to the knees, and shoes with turned-up toes ornamented with big black tassels, were busily talking politics. Carts, not covered with absurd but lively pictures, as they are in Sicily, lumbered by in the dust. Peasants, sitting sidewise with dangling feet, met us on trotting donkeys. Now and then a white dog dashed out, or a flock of thin turkeys gobbled and stretched their necks nervously as they gave us passage. Women, with rather dingy handkerchiefs tied over their heads, were working in the vineyards or washing clothes here and there beside thin runlets of water. Two German beggars, with matted hair uncovered to the sun, red faces, and fingers with nails like the claws of birds, tramped by, going to Athens. And farther on we met a few Turkish Gipsies, swarthy and full of a lively malice, whose tents were visible on a hillside at a little distance, in the midst of a grove of pines. All the country smiled at us in the sunshine. One jovial man in a fustanelle leaned down from a cart as we passed, and shouted in Greek: “Enjoy yourselves! Enjoy yourselves!” And the gentle hills, the olive-and pine-groves, the stretching vineyards, seemed to echo his cry.

Half-tone plate engraved by H. Davidson

THE ODEUM OF HERODES ATTICUS IN ATHENS

FROM THE PAINTING MADE FOR THE CENTURY BY JULES GUÉRIN

What is the magic of pastoral Greece? What is it that gives to you a sensation of being gently released from the cares of life and the boredom of modern civilization, with its often unmeaning complications, its unnecessary luxuries, its noisy self-satisfactions? This is not the tremendous, the spectacular release of the desert, an almost savage tearing away of bonds. Nothing in the Greece I saw is savage; scarcely anything is spectacular. But, oh, the bright simplicity of the life and the country along the way to Marathon! It was like an early world. One looked, and longed to live in those happy woods like the Turkish Gipsies. Could life offer anything better? The pines are small, exquisitely shaped, with foliage that looks almost as though it had been deftly arranged by a consummate artist. They curl over the slopes with a lightness almost of foam cresting a wave. Their color is quite lovely. The ancient Egyptians had a love color: well, the little pine-trees of Greece are the color of happiness. You smile involuntarily when you see them. And when, descending among them, you are greeted by the shining of the brilliant-blue sea, which stretches along the edge of the plain of Marathon, you know radiance purged of fierceness.

The road winds down among the pines till, at right angles to it, appears another road, or rough track just wide enough for a carriage. This leads to a large mound which bars the way. Upon this mound a habitation was perched. It was raised high above the ground upon a sort of tripod of poles. It had yellow walls of wheat, and a roof and floor of brushwood and maize. A ladder gave access to it, and from it there was a wide outlook over the whole crescent-shaped plain of Marathon. This dwelling belonged to a guardian of the vineyards, and the mound is the tomb of those who died in the great battle.

I sat for a long time on this strange tomb, in the shadow of the rustic watch-house, and looked out over the plain. It is quite flat, and is now cultivated, though there are some bare tracts of unfruitful ground. In all directions I saw straggling vines. Not far away was one low, red-tiled house belonging to a peasant, whose three small, dirty, and unhealthy-looking children presently approached, and gazed at me from below. In the distance a man on a white horse rode slowly toward the pine-woods, and to my left I saw a group of women bending mysteriously to accomplish some task unknown to me. No other figures could I see between me and the bright-blue waters that once bore up the fleet of Persia. Behind me were stony and not very high hills, ending in the slopes down which Miltiades made his soldiers advance “at a running pace.” One hundred and ninety-two brave men gone to dust beneath me; instead of the commemorative lion, the little watch-house of brushwood and wheat and maize, silence the only epitaph. The mound, of hard, sun-baked earth, was yellow and bare. On one side a few rusty-looking thorn-bushes decorated it harshly. But about it grew aloes, and the wild oleander, with its bright-pink flowers, and near by were many great fig-trees. A river intersects the plain, and its course is marked by sedges and tall reeds. Where the land is bare, it takes a tawny-yellow hue. Some clustering low houses far off under the hills form the Albanian village of Marathon. Just twenty-two miles from Athens, this place of an ancient glory, this tomb of men who, I suppose, will not be forgotten so long as the Hellenic kingdom lasts, seems very far away, hidden from the world between woods and waters, solitary, but not sad. Beyond the plain and the sea are ranges of mountains and the island of Eubœa.

A figure slowly approaches. It is the guardian of the vineyards, coming back to his watch-house above the grave of his countrymen, smiling, with a cigarette between his white teeth. As I go, he calls out “Addio!” Then he mounts his ladder carefully and withdraws to his easy work. How strange to be a watcher of vineyards upon the tumulus of Marathon!

If you care at all for life in the open, if you have the love of camping in your blood, Greece will call to you at every moment to throw off the dullness of houses, to come and stay under blue heaven and be happy. Yet I suppose the season for all such joys was over when I was in Greece, for I never met any citizens of Athens taking their pleasure in the surrounding country. In Turkey and Asia Minor, near any large town, when the weather is hot and fine, one may see cheerful parties of friends making merry in the open air, under trees and in arbors; or men dreaming idly in nooks that might have made old Omar’s delight, shaded, and sung to by a stream. In Greece it is not so. Once you are out in the country, you come upon no one but peasants, shepherds, goatherds, Gipsies, turkey-drivers, and, speaking generally, “sons of the soil.”

THE TEMPLE OF ATHENE, ISLAND OF ÆGINA

PAINTED FOR THE CENTURY BY JULES GUÉRIN

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In the very height of summer, I am told, the Athenians do condescend to go to the pine-woods. They sleep during part of the day, and stay out of doors at night, often driving into the country, and eating under the trees or by the sea. But even in the heat of a rainless September, if I may judge by my own experience, they prefer Constitution Square and “the Dardanelles” to any more pastoral pleasures.

I did not imitate them, but followed the Via Sacra one morning, past the oldest olive-tree in Greece, a small and corrugated veteran said to have been planted in the time of Pericles, to the Convent of Daphni, now fallen into a sort of poetic decay.

Once more I was among pine-trees. They thronged the almost park-like slopes under Ægaleos. They crowded toward the little Byzantine church, which stands on the left of the road on the site of a vanished temple of Apollo, with remains of its once strongly fortified walls about it. Lonely, but smiling, as though with a radiant satisfaction at its own shining peace, is the country in whose bosom the church lies. A few sheep, small, with shaggy coats of brown and white, were grazing near it; a dog lay stretched out in the sun; and some lean, long-tailed horses were standing with bowed heads, as if drowsing. An ancient and very deep well was close by. In the marble well-head the friction of many drawn cords has cut grooves, some of them nearly an inch in depth. The court of the convent is roughly paved and is inclosed within rough walls. In it are a few trees, an acacia or two, a wild pepper-tree, and one gigantic cypress. From a branch near the entrance a big bell hung by a chain. But the only sound of bells came to me from without the walls, where some hidden goats were moving to pasture. Fragments of broken columns and two or three sarcophagi lay on the hot ground at my feet. To my right, close to the church, a flight of very old marble steps led to a rustic loggia with wooden supports, full of red geraniums and the flowers of a plant like a very small convolvulus. From the loggia, which fronted her abiding-place, a cheerful, kindly faced woman came down and let me into the church, where she left me with two companions, a black kitten playing with a bee under the gilded cupola.

The church, like almost all the Byzantine churches I saw in Greece, is very small, but it is tremendously solid and has a tall belfry. The exterior, stained by weather, is now a sort of earthy yellow; the cupola is covered with red tiles. The interior walls look very ancient, and are blackened in many places by the fingers of Time. Made more than eight hundred years ago, the remains of the Byzantine mosaics are very curious and interesting. In the cupola, on a gold ground, is a very large head of a Christ (“Christos Pantokrator”), which looks as though it were just finished. The face is sinister and repellent, but expressive. There are several other mosaics, of the apostles, of episodes in the life of the Virgin, and of angels. None of them seemed to me beautiful, though perhaps not one looks so wicked as the Christos, which dominates the whole church. Until comparatively recent times there were monks attached to this convent, but now they are gone.

I passed through a doorway and came into a sort of tiny cloister, shaded by a huge and evidently very ancient fig-tree with enormous leaves. Here I found the remains of an old staircase of stone. As I returned to the dim and massive little church, glimmering with gold where the sunlight fell upon the mosaics, the eyes of the Christos seemed to rebuke me from the lofty cupola. The good-natured woman locked the door behind me with a large key, handed to me a bunch of the flowers I had noticed growing in the loggia, and bade me “Addio!” And soon the sound of the goat-bells died away from my ears as I went on my way back to Eleusis.

There is nothing mysterious about this road which leads to the site of the Temple of the Mysteries. It winds down through the pine-woods and rocks of the Pass of Daphni into the cheerful and well-cultivated Thriasian plain, whence across a brilliant-blue stretch of water, which looks like a lake, but which is the bay of Eleusis, you can see houses and, alas! several tall chimneys pouring forth smoke. The group of houses is Eleusis, now an Albanian settlement, and the chimneys belong to a factory where olive-oil soap is made. The road passes between the sea and a little salt lake, which latter seems to be prevented from submerging it only by a raised coping of stone. The color of this lake is a brilliant purple. In the distance is the mountainous and rocky island of Salamis.

When I reached the village, I found it a cheery little place of small white, yellow, and rose-colored houses, among which a few cypress-trees grow. Although one of the most ancient places in Greece, it now looks very modern. And it is difficult to believe, as one glances at the chimneys of the soap factory, and at two or three black and dingy steamers lying just off the works to take in cargo, that here Demeter was worshiped with mysterious rites at the great festival of the Eleusinia. Yet, according to the legend, it was here that she came, disguised as an old hag, in search of her lost Persephone; here that she taught Triptolemus how to sow the plain, and to reap the first harvest of yellow wheat, as a reward for the hospitable welcome given to her by his father Celeus.

The ruins at Eleusis are disappointing to the ordinary traveler, though interesting to the archæologist. They have none of the pathetic romance which, notwithstanding the scoldings of many vulgar persons set forth in a certain visitors’ book, broods gently over poetic Olympia. Above the village is a vast confusion of broken columns, defaced capitals, bits of wall, bits of pavement, marble steps, fallen medallions, vaults, propylæa, substructures, scraps of architraves carved with inscriptions, and subterranean store-rooms. In the pavement of the processional way, by which the chariots came up to the Temple of Demeter, the chief glory and shrine of Eleusis, are the deep ruts made by the chariot-wheels. The remnants of the hall of the initiated bears witness to the long desire of poor human beings in all ages to find that peace which passeth our understanding. Of beauty there is little or none. Nevertheless, even now, it is not possible in the midst of this tragic débâcle to remain wholly unmoved. Indeed, the very completeness of the disaster that time and humanity have wrought here creates emotion when one remembers that here great men came, such men as Cicero, Sophocles, and Plato; that here they worshiped and adored under cover of the darkness of night; that here, seeking, they found, as has been recorded, peace and hope to sustain them when, the august festival over, they took their way back into the ordinary world along the shores of sea and lake. Eleusis is no longer beautiful. It is a home of devastation. It is no longer mysterious. A successful man is making a fortune out of soap there. But it is a place one cannot easily forget. And just above the ruins there is a small museum which contains several very interesting things, and one thing that is superb.

This last is the enormous and noble upper part of the statue of a woman wearing ear-rings. I do not know its history, though some one assured me that it was a caryatid. It was dug up among the ruins, and the color of it is akin to that of the earth. The roughly undulating hair is parted in the middle of a majestic, goddess-like head. The features are pure and grand; but the two things that most struck me, as I looked at this great work of art, were the expression of the face and the deep bosom, as of the earth-mother and all her fruitfulness. In few Greek statues have I seen such majesty and power, combined with such intensity, as this nameless woman shows forth. There is indeed almost a suggestion of underlying fierceness in the face, but it is the fierceness that may sometimes leap up in an imperial nature. Are there not royal angers which flame out of the pure furnaces of love? This noble woman seems to me to be the present glory of Eleusis.