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specimens 
 
 of 
 
 English Composition 
 
 For use in College Classes in 
 Rhetoric and 
 Composition 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 HOWARD B. GROSE, Jr., Ph. B., 
 
 Instructor in English 
 in Brown University 
 
 CHICAGO 
 SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY 
 5 
 
t\.3l«.C3U.iS' 
 
 Copyright, 1909, by 
 Scott, Foresman and Company 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THE use of volumes of specimens like the present is 
 so widespread, and the recognition of their value is 
 so universal among teachers of English in colleges, 
 that it is unnecessary here to enter into a discussion of 
 their general usefulness. It seems appropriate, however, 
 to point out the more important respects in which Speci- 
 mens of English Composition differs from other books of the 
 kind, and to indicate the reasons for the changes that have 
 been made. 
 
 Several of the selections are noticeably longer than those 
 found in other volumes of specimens. It has been custom- 
 ary, especially in dealing with exposition and argument, 
 to multiply the number of short and incomplete extracts ; 
 to say, in effect; this is the way so-and-so handles a par- 
 ticular element of his explanation, or introduces his story, 
 or closes his argument. And this is certainly one of the 
 useful functions which a book of specimens should per- 
 form. But if the selections are too exclusively frag- 
 mentary, if the student's attention is made to center 
 mainly, or even largely, on incomplete bits of writing, 
 there is danger that he will come to lay more emphasis 
 upon the parts than upon the whole, and will regard writ- 
 ing as a mechanical fitting together of patches rather than 
 as the presentation of an idea with all its detail and 
 by-paths subordinated to a main design. To avoid this 
 marked stress upon the parts of a composition, with its 
 implication that a literary product is a mechanism divisible 
 into separate pieces, and to focus the student's attention 
 upon the problems of writing as they actually present 
 themselves, has been one of the reasons for including the 
 longer selections. There is still material enough for the 
 study, let us say, of introductions as introductions, but 
 there is, in addition, material for the study of introduc- 
 
iv PREFACE 
 
 tions as organic parts of a whole. Another reason for the 
 inclusion of the longer pieces is the positive need felt by 
 many teachers for articles of which outlines and abstracts 
 may profitably be made. The intellectual discipline 
 involved in laying bare the structure and in stating briefly 
 the leading ideas of an extended exposition or argument is 
 not to be gainsaid, and perhaps in no other way can the 
 student be brought to realize so vividly how largely suc- 
 cessful writing depends upon fullness of information, close 
 thinking, and a sense of structure. Short extracts cannot 
 serve the purpose adequately : they rarely present prob- 
 lems of structure ; and a student can write abstracts of 
 them by a mere process of condensation which involves no 
 real grasp of what the writers have to say. 
 
 Emphasis has been given to exposition and argument, 
 both by the position they occupy and by the space allotted 
 to them. One reason for this is the belief that exposition 
 and argument are of greater practical value to the average 
 student than any other kinds of writing. For one college 
 graduate who writes novels, or stories, or descriptions, 
 there are hundreds who have to explain how something 
 works, or how it ought to work, or why it would be better 
 to do one thing rather than another. The need for a body 
 of fact to build upon, the need for precision, for orderly 
 thought, for method, are things most strongly insisted 
 upon in work in exposition and argument, and they are of 
 value to any man, even if he afterwards never puts pen to 
 paper. Exposition and argument afford, too, the simplest 
 and most convenient approach to a consideration of the 
 laws, logical and stylistic, which underlie the art of writ- 
 ing; because of their more purely intellectual qualities 
 they yield to the student's analysis more readily and with 
 less violence to literary fact than do narration and descrip- 
 tion. It is not that narration and description are less 
 reducible to law, but that their analysis is frequently more 
 subtle because of their emotional elements, and because 
 they are apt to be handled with relatively greater freedom 
 and variety. There is nothing, however, in the arrange- 
 ment of the book to hinder the teacher who wishes to begin 
 with narration or description from doing so, nor is there 
 
PREFACE V 
 
 anytliing to prevent tlio teacher from devoting most atten- 
 tion to those sections of the book which he considers most 
 valuable for his purposes. 
 
 The addition of an appendix containing faulty composi- 
 tions is due to the belief that the training of the student 
 should be negative as well as positive. By means of these 
 selections he is brought face to face with the fact that to 
 ignore or .run counter to the laws he has seen illustrated in 
 the other sections of the book is apt to lead to unfortunate 
 results. It is not always enough to tell the student that 
 this is so ; and the criticism 6f defective writing, if done 
 thoroughly, but in moderation, is a simple and efficient 
 means of helping him to a keener realization of the perti- 
 nency of rhetorical laws. The experience of many college 
 teachers of composition leads them to believe that if a 
 thing is worth teaching it can hardly be brought home to 
 the student too forcibly or in too great a variety of ways. 
 
 The classification of material adopted in this book is, 
 with one exception, that generally used in modern 
 rhetorics, and it was adopted solely for convenience. As 
 a matter of fact, not all writing can accurately be grouped 
 under the customary four headings : argument only rarely 
 exists apart from exposition, and description and narration 
 are usually bound closely together; there are numberless 
 essays, novels, arguments, volumes of travel, etc., in which 
 two, three, or even all four of the ' ' kinds ' ' of writing are 
 combined; the essay by Charles Lamb, reprinted in Part 
 One, may be cited as one example out of many in which 
 narration, description, exposition, and argument are 
 blended together. As in actual practice no sane writer 
 ever stops to consider whether he is writing pure exposi- 
 tion or pure argument, it is only fair to give to the student 
 a hint that it is more important that he should have some- 
 thing to say and should say it as well as he can, than that 
 he should be able to tag his work accurately with this o^r 
 that particular label. To remind the student, then, that 
 the usual classification is arbitrary, the title of the first 
 section of this book has been made not merely "Exposi- 
 tion." but "Exposition and Miscellaneous Prose," and 
 articles which do not come absolutely within the formal 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 definition of exposition have been included in it. It is 
 quite possible, as several books of selections shovr, to 
 choose only those examples which belong strictly to the 
 type, but in the opinion of the editor of this book some 
 neatness of classification may well be sacrificed if a closer 
 approximation to the real conditions of writing can thereby 
 be gained. For this reason, also, two selections which very 
 clearly show a combination, in the one ease of narration 
 and description, and in the other of narration, description 
 and exposition, have, been included in Part Three. 
 
 The present volume contains a larger amount of material 
 than is usually found in books of selections, and this gives 
 the teacher who uses it elbow-room. His range of selec- 
 tion is large enough to permit him considerable freedom in 
 the choice of the material he assigns. It is not to be 
 expected that the individual teacher will agree with every- 
 thing that is said in the various articles (there is no reason 
 why he should), nor that he will wish to use all of the 
 selections; but he should find enough that is adapted to 
 his needs to make the book useful to him and to his classes. 
 
 It gives the editor great pleasure to acknowledge his 
 indebtedness for valuable suggestions to his colleagues, 
 Dr. George W. Benedict and Mr. William T. Hastings, to 
 JFessrs. Eliot G. Parkhurst and Laurence R. Grose, and for 
 unfailing counsel and criticism, to Professor Lindsay T. 
 Damon. To the following authors and publishers, who 
 have permitted certain articles to be reprinted, he gives 
 his hearty thanks : Mr. Chester Bailey Fernald and Pro- 
 fessor Paul Hanus; The Century Company, Houghton, 
 Mifflin & Co., The Outlook Company, Charles Scribner's 
 Sons, The Atlantic Monthly Company, The John Lane 
 Company, Brentano's, The Sun Publishing Association, D. 
 Appleton & Company, and "Walter Baker & Company. 
 
 H. B. G.. Jr. 
 
 Providence, Rhode Island, August, 1909. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PART ONE 
 
 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 Explanation of a Process: 
 
 Refining Crude Petroleum W. S. Tower 1 
 
 Explanation by Definition: 
 
 Steam Railway Bonds George Carey .... 15 
 
 Explanation by Simple Examples: 
 
 The Method of Scientific Investigation. . . .T. H. Huxley. ... 20 
 Corporations and the Nation Thomas Thacher 28 
 
 Methodical Treatment of General Questions: 
 
 What Knowledge Is of Most Worth Herbert Spencer 32 
 
 A Short View of the State of Ireland . . .Jonathan Swift 77 
 
 Scientific Exposition: 
 
 Matter and Force John Tyndall 84 ■■ 
 
 The Present Condition of Organic Nature. .T. H. Huxley 98 
 
 Biographical Exposition: 
 
 Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell Charlotte Bronte 114 
 
 Character Analysis: 
 
 The Early Character of Henry VIII J. A. Proude 121 
 
 Bensley as Malvolio Charles Lamb 124 
 
 Editorials: 
 
 Pensions for Employes The Outlook 127 
 
 Fleecing the Filipinos The Outlook 129 
 
 A Book Review: 
 
 "The Serf" The Nation 130 
 
 Critical Essays: 
 
 On Style Arthur Schopenhauer 131 
 
 The Tragedies of Shakspeare Charles Lamb J41 -. 
 
 VII 
 
vm Table of Contents 
 
 Personal Essay: 
 
 Loafing Kenneth Grahame 159 
 
 Students' Themes: 
 
 I. How a Gas Engine Works 163 
 
 II. The Metamorphoses of a Sheep "Liver-Fluke" 166 
 
 III. Space Perception 167 
 
 IV. Psychology Applied to Healing 169 
 
 V. Ben Jonson's "Timber" 173 
 
 VI. Taylor's "Holy Dying" 174 
 
 VII. The Sterner Side of Poetry 176- 
 
 VIII-X. Short Themes 180 
 
 PART TWO 
 
 ARGUMENT 
 
 Argument by Means of Simple Exposition: 
 
 International Tribunals and National Courts . . Elihu Root .... 183 
 
 Justification of an Attitude: 
 
 Letter on Impressment Daniel Webster . . . 191 
 
 General Arguments: 
 
 Industrial Education Paul H. Hanus 200 
 
 The Educational Value of the Natural 
 " History Sciences T. H. Huxley 214 
 
 Legal Argument : 
 
 The Rights of the Trustees of Dart- 
 mouth College Daniel Webster 232 
 
 Political Argument: 
 
 Address at Cooper Institute Abraham Lincoln 261 
 
 Two Sides of a Question: 
 
 The Polish Question The Outlook. . . .280 
 
 The PoHsh Side Henryk Sienkiewicz. . . .284 
 
 The German Side Emil Klaessig 286 
 
 Students' Arguments: 
 
 I. Brief and Argument on Compulsory Militia Service. . .290 
 
 II. A Plea for Argumentation 301 
 
 III. Freedom of Speech in the United States 304 
 
Table of Contents ix 
 
 PART THREE 
 
 DESCRIPTION 
 
 Scientific Description : 
 
 Vineyard Haven United States Coast Pilot 306 
 
 The Widgeon Montague Chartiberlain 307 
 
 Wanted Police Circular 308 
 
 A Stage Setting A. W. Pinero. . . .308 
 
 Nature : 
 
 A Winter Landscape Charlotte Bronte 310 
 
 A Coral Island R. L. Stevenson 311 
 
 A Pine Forest P. Kropotkin 311 
 
 Drought in the Jungle Rudyard Kipling 312 
 
 • At the Devil's Limekiln Charles Kingsley 312 
 
 The Weir at Whitford Priors Charles Kingsley 313 
 
 The Approach to Haworth Parsonage Mrs. Gaskell 314 
 
 At Beachy Head Richard Jeffries 317 
 
 Egdon Heath Thomas Hardy 324 
 
 The Downs George Meredith 327 
 
 Capri J. R. Green 327 
 
 Before the Storm Thomas Hardy 329 
 
 The End of the Great Frost R. D. Blackmore 330 
 
 Snow in Spring Emily Bronte 331 
 
 The Guide-Post Emily Bronte. . . .331 
 
 Spring Leigh Hunt 332 
 
 A Hot Day Leigh Hunt. . . .333 
 
 Defacement John Buskin 334 
 
 The Roman Campagna John Ruskin 336 
 
 Nature Awaking R. L. Stevenson 337 
 
 Miscellaneous : 
 
 A Stage Setting G. B. Shaw. . . .338 
 
 By Old Wharves G. W. Curtis. . . .342 
 
 A Ship at Sea R. H. Dana. . . .344 
 
 A Farm House George Eliot 344 
 
 A Suite at Cumnor Hall Walter Scott. . . .347 
 
 The Old Tower of Calais Church John Ruskin. . . .349 
 
 Night View of the City Thomas Carlyle. . . .350 
 
 The Battle of Bull Run Walt Whitman . . . .351 
 
 The Shield of Achilles Homer. . . .353 
 
 An Opal George Meredith 356 
 
 People : 
 
 John Reed Charlotte Bronte 357 
 
 Tom TuUiver George Eliot. . . .357 
 
 Five Stage Characters G. B. Shaw 357 
 
X Table of Contents 
 
 Anne Garland Thomas Hardy 359 
 
 Captain Macmurdo at Home W. M. Thackeray 360 
 
 Lawyers' Clerks Charles Dickens 360 
 
 Catherine Morland Jane Austen 361 
 
 A Portrait G. W. Curtis. . . .363 
 
 Monna Lisa Walter Pater 365 
 
 Captain Brown and His Daughters Mrs. Gaskell 366 
 
 From an Office Window H. C. Bunner 370 
 
 Narration and Description: 
 
 A Duel R. L. Stevenson. . . .376 
 
 Narration, Description and Exposition: 
 
 Boy and Girl George Eliot 379 
 
 Students' Descriptions: 
 
 I-IX 382 / 
 
 PART FOUR 
 
 NARRATION 
 Narratives of Fact : 
 
 Ascent of the Weisshorn John Tyndall .... 394 
 
 An Escape from Prison P. Kropotkin .... 411 
 
 Big Steamers Crash in Fog New York Sun 421 
 
 Death of Thomas Becket J. A. Froude 426 
 
 Narratives of Fiction: 
 
 Incidents in the Career of Lazarillo de Tormes . . Mendoza 438 
 
 At Northanger Abbey Jane Austen 446 
 
 A Fight and Its Consequences W. M. Thackeray 459 
 
 The Pickwickian's Journey to Manor 
 
 Farm Charles Dickens 468 
 
 Cree Queery and Mysy Drolly J. M. Barrie 478 
 
 Short Stories : 
 
 The Necklace Guy de Maupassant 483 
 
 Dr. Heidegger's Experiment Nathaniel Hawthorne 492 
 
 The Yellow Burgee C. B. Fernald. . . .502 
 
 Students' Narratives : 
 
 I. The Man Who Waited 52o 
 
 II. A Night of Tempest 523 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 Faulty Compositions 537 ^, 
 
PART I. 
 
 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 Refining Crude Petroleum 
 
 The enormous supplies of petroleum in this country never 
 had any great industrial value until some method of puri- 
 fication or refining was invented. The early attempts to use 
 the crude oil for domestic lighting purposes in various 
 places w^ere invariably unsuccessful, on account of the sooty, 
 smoking flame, and the extremely disagreeable, nauseous 
 odor. Use as an illuminant was the only avenue of devel- 
 opment which seemed to oflfer any real possibilities, but 
 it was absolutely necessary that the quality of the oil 
 should be improved by the removal of these objectionable 
 features, if its use were to become general. 
 
 Purification of petroleum was done in a rough way 
 many years before the modern process was perfected, but 
 never on a very important scale. The medicinal oils used 
 in European countries two centuries ago were generally 
 subjected to some process of distillation or filtration. 
 Refined illuminating oil from the Galician districts was 
 introduced in the early part of the last century, and soon 
 after that time filtering through charcoal was tried in this 
 country to remove the odor and improve the general 
 appearance of the crude oil. The first important refining 
 plant in the world, however, was probably erected in the 
 Baku district about 1823. It consisted of an iron still 
 having a capacity of forty buckets, and said to give about 
 sixteen buckets of so-called "white naphtha" from each 
 charge. This refined oil found a ready sale at the great 
 Russian fair at Nishni Novgorod, presumably to be used 
 in lamps. 
 
 Petroleum refining in this country began in a small 
 way about 1855, with Kier's experiments to turn his medi- 
 cinal oil to some more valuable use. The manufacture of 
 
2 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 so-called "parafSn oils" from coal and shale had 
 increased so rapidly in the decade following 1850 that there 
 were some fifty or sixty establishments in the eastern pal"t 
 of the United States when Drake's well was opened. 
 Kier's results had already shown clearly enough that 
 paraffin oils could be secured more easily from petroleum 
 than from coal or shale, and more cheaply also if the 
 supply of petroleum were large enough. The prospect of 
 securing petroleum in large quantities by following 
 Drake's example made the entire shale oil industry totter. 
 The owners of the refineries, many of which were then 
 only fairly started, saw themselves facing ruin, until a 
 simple and easy salvation appeared in converting their 
 plants into petroleum refineries. Thus, the latter industry 
 was able to profit immediately from the existence of this 
 large number of ready-made establishments. 
 
 Kier's first attempts at refining petroleum had given 
 him a "carbon oil" distillate, distinctly superior to the 
 crude oil, but far from being perfect. The strong odor still 
 persisted and brought a storm of complaints from the con- 
 sumers. General dissatisfaction was expressed also on 
 account of the rapidity with which the oilturnedblack,and 
 on account of the formation of a hard crust on the wick 
 which interfered with the free burning of the flame. As a 
 result the "carbon oil" gained favor slowly, despite the 
 fact that an army of canvassers and selling agents spread 
 over the country to boom its use. Something had to be 
 done to place petroleum oil on as satisfactory a basis as 
 were the shale and coal oils. Distillation alone would evi- 
 dently never suffice. Chemical treatment to purify the 
 products after distillation was tried and soon demon- 
 strated that successive manipulations with solutions of 
 alkali and acid would remove the chief objectionable fea- 
 tures. These improvements, already familiar abroad, had 
 been introduced here about the time Drake went to the oil 
 regions. Therefore, as soon as his well was struck the 
 refining of petroleum was in a condition to expand' and 
 drive the shale oil industry out of existence in short order 
 
 The most important process in the refining of petroleum 
 as it is carried on today, consists essentially of two parts ■ 
 
REFINING CRUDE PETROLEUM 3 
 
 first, heating the oil in a still until it vaporizes in the same 
 way as boiling water passes into steam; and second, 
 condensing these vapors just as steam condenses on cold 
 objects. The successful separation of the different products 
 depends on the fact that each of the many compounds 
 composing crude oil has its own particular boiling point, 
 and thus allows gradual heating to carry on the process of 
 division, or fractional distillation, as it is called. The stills 
 where the crude oil is heated, the condensers where the 
 vapors of successive divisions are returned to the liquid 
 form, and the tanks for storing the refined products, there- 
 fore, represent the important parts of the skeleton of every 
 refinery. 
 
 The early refineries were mainly small plants with a few 
 vertical iron stills resembling giant cheese boxes, and hav- 
 ing a capacity of twentj'^-five to seventy-five barrels each. 
 As the industry expanded, however, and made constantly 
 increasing demands on the capacity of the refineries, 
 larger and larger stills were introduced. A horizontal 
 cylinder still was found to offer various advantages over 
 the old cheese box style, and the cylinder form, with a 
 capacity of about 600 barrels, is the type now generally 
 used in this country. 
 
 Each still may have its own condenser, or several stills 
 may be connected with a common condenser, although the 
 former arrangement is preferable. In either case the con- 
 denser is the same, consisting of coils of three or four inch 
 pipe several hundred feet long, and ordinarily kept cool 
 by thousands of gallons of water pumped over them daily. 
 The hot vapors entering the condenser from the still come 
 in contact with the cold pipe and return to liquid form, in 
 the same Way as steam on a winter day will collect on the 
 cold glass of a window and trickle down the pane in tiny 
 streams of water. The refined product of a dozen con- 
 densers may be turned into a single receiving tank until 
 the limit of its capacity is reached, and then other similar 
 tanks are pressed into service. 
 
 Between the condenser and the receiving tanks, the dis- 
 tilled oil has to pass through the stillhouse and undergo 
 the keen scrutiny of the stillman, on whose skill the success 
 
4 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 of the entire process depends. The condensed distillates 
 make their entrance to the stillhouse through a 
 V-shaped tube, such as are commonly inserted in drain 
 pipes to prevent the passage of sewer gas, and which serves 
 miich the same purpose here. A vertical pipe on the eon- 
 denser side of the V allows the uncondensable gases from 
 the still, that is, those vapors which will condense only at 
 very low temperature, either to escape into the air or to 
 be led away to be burned under the still from which they 
 came. The condensed distillate, now in the liquid form 
 again, passes through the V tube and enters the stillhouse 
 in what is called the separating box, a triangular, cast- 
 iron affair. A glass door on one side of the box enables the 
 stillman to watch both the color of the oil and the size of 
 the stream as it enters the box. In this way, from the 
 knowledge of long experience, he knows how to regulate 
 his fires under the stills, and from occasional samples of 
 the distillate he can determine when a diiferent grade of 
 oil haS' begun to vaporize in the still and is coming 
 through the condenser. Shutting one valve and opening 
 another close at hand turns the stream into a different 
 receiving tank. So the process goes as long as separation is 
 possible, or until some special requirements make it 
 desirable to stop the distillation at a cgrtain point. 
 
 The actual process of distillation consists in carefully 
 separating the different hydrocarbon compounds which 
 make up the crude petroleum. These "fractions," as the 
 different compounds are called, are determined more or 
 less arbitrarily by their weight as compared with an equal 
 bulk of water, and by the ease with which they give off 
 inflammable vapors. 
 
 Distillation may be done by what is known a? the inter- 
 mittent process, in which the major part of the operation is 
 carried on in one still heated to successively higher tem- 
 peratures by gradually increasing the fires beneath it. 
 This method is most commonly used in the United States. 
 Distillation may also be done by the continuous process, in 
 which the crude oil is pumped through a series of stills 
 each succeeding one being heated to a constant tempera- 
 ture higher than that of the one preceding. 
 
REFINING CRUDE PETROLEUM 5 
 
 In the intermittent process, the crude oil in the still is 
 subjected to a gradually increasing temperature, so that 
 the different fractions pass off to the condenser in the 
 order of their volatility. The lighter and more volatile 
 compounds, that is, those boiling at low temperatures, are 
 vaporized first, the heavy, less volatile compounds not ap- 
 pearing until the highest temperatures are reached. Differ- 
 ent petroleums vary so widely in character, andthenumber 
 of possible products is so large that each kind requires 
 special treatment to secure the particular products for 
 which it is best adapted. The distilling business, therefore, 
 becomes decidedly intricate when examined in detail, and 
 a high degree of skill must be exercised in manipulating 
 the process so that it will yield the largest quantity and 
 best quality of the valuable oils. 
 
 The general character of the treatment can be shown by 
 comparing the two common processes known as "running 
 to tar" and "running to cylinder stock." The main dif- 
 ference between these two processes is that the former 
 gives the largest possible yield of illuminating oils and a 
 small yield of heavier products for lubricating. The sec- 
 ond process is intended to yield a maximum amount of the 
 lubricating oils, with the illuminating oils of secondary 
 consideration. In general, therefore, one process is the 
 direct reverse of the other in so far as its chief object in 
 view is concerned. 
 
 Both processes start with crude oil heated in the still, and 
 the vapors passing off into the condenser. The most vola- 
 tile of these vapors begin to appear before much of any 
 heat is applied to the still. They can be condensed only by 
 .special processes at temperatures near the freezing point, 
 consequently in the ordinary course of distillation they 
 pass off into the air through the escape pipe from the con- 
 denser or are led under the still to serve as fuel. The first 
 distillate which condenses and passes through the V tube 
 to the stillhouse is a clear, colorless light oil, but, as the 
 process goes on, the stream of oil entering the separating 
 box becomes heavier, and the color gradually changes 
 through yellow to darker shades. The stillman tests the 
 density of the oil from time to time, and on the basis of 
 
6 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 these tests and the color, he turns the stream into differ- 
 ent tanks, by simply closing and opening convenient 
 valves. . 
 
 The stream passing through the separating box is con- 
 tinuous as long as the still contains any oil which can be 
 vaporized, hence the stillman's divisions of the stream of 
 distillates, or his "cuts," as they are called, are an 
 exceedingly important part of the process. The first cut is 
 usually made when oils of the naphtha class cease to 
 appear. The second cut is the illuminating oil. In the "run- 
 ning to tar" process, the method known as "cracking" is 
 employed after about two-thirds of the cut of illuminating 
 oil has passed over, its object being to increase the pro- 
 portion of illuminating oils obtained. 
 
 The exact changes which take place in the still during 
 this "cracking" process are only partly understood. The 
 process was discovered accidentally in 1861 by a stillman 
 at Newark, N. J., who left his post one day after about 
 half the contents had passed off, building a strong fire 
 under the stiU to last until he returned, as he expected, a 
 half hour later. Several hours elapsed, however, before he 
 did return, and then, to his amazement, he found issuing 
 from the condenser a lighter distillate than was being 
 obtained when he left, whereas it should normally have 
 been much heavier. Such an entirely unheard-of thing led 
 immediately to experiments, in which it was found that a 
 portion of the heavy distillate, normally coming through 
 the condenser last, had condensed on the cooler upper por- 
 tion of the still, and dropping back on the highly heated 
 liquid had encountered a temperature hot enough to cause 
 decomposition of some sort, so that a lighter oil was the 
 final result. Many different devices have been invented to 
 aid in this cracking process, and, though some refineries 
 use it but little, cracking has been of enormous benefit in 
 the case of certain petroleums, naturally yielding only a 
 small percentage of kerosene, yet rich in the grades heavier 
 than kerosene, and not heavy enough to be high quality 
 lubricating oils. By cracking, many of these intermediate 
 grades are broken -up, and become valuable illuminatinff 
 oil. ^ 
 
REFINING CRUDE PETROLEUM 7 
 
 After cracking has given as much kerosene as can be 
 secured the fires are checked, and the tar process stops so 
 far as the first still is concerned.. A certain amount of 
 thick residue, or "tar," always remains in the still and 
 must be removed before the still can receive another 
 charge of crude oil. This tar usually goes to a second still, 
 where further distillation gives lubricating oils, paraffin 
 wax, and coke. The cuts of naphtha and illuminating 
 oils are also either redistilled or subjected to further treat- 
 ment to purify them and separate them into different 
 commercial grades. 
 
 The process known as "running to cylinder stock" is 
 essentially the same as the other up to the point where 
 cracking would begin, except that it is usually applied 
 to crude oils naturally adapted to the manufacture of lubri- 
 cants. The important difference consists in heating the 
 still by free superheated steam within, as well as by the 
 usual fire underneath the still. The presence of the steam 
 causes a more even distribution of the heat, and more com- 
 pletely vaporizes the volatile lighter oils from the whole 
 charge without having to subject it to such a high temper- 
 ature. When the distillate in this process appears too 
 heavy for kerosene, instead of the cracking treatment, a 
 third cut, known as the "wax slop," is often made. Differ- 
 ent methods of handling this cut yield special brands of oil 
 for a great variety of purposes, from the headlight oil of 
 locomotives to the thin "spindle oils" used to lubricate 
 light machinery. The entire elimination of the cracking- 
 process leaves a greater residue in the still after the ' ' wax 
 slop" cut is made and this residue, known as "cylinder 
 stock," forms the basis for the manufacture of a host of 
 lubricating oils. 
 
 The Russian process of continuous distillation differs 
 from the American method only in using a series of a 
 dozen or more stills, each of which is heated to a definite 
 steady temperature. The crude oil passing from one still 
 to another encounters these successively higher tempera- 
 tures, which correspond to the boiling points of the dif- 
 ferent petroleum products. Each still constantly gives off 
 a distillate of uniform character, while the series of stills 
 
8 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 gives the same range of distillates as are obtained by the 
 gradual application of increased heat in the intermittent 
 system. The possibility of supplying the crude oil to the 
 stills as fast as the distillates pass off results in important 
 economies of time, less waste of fuel, and a minimum of 
 injury to the plant by avoiding the cooling and reheating 
 of the still. This process, hovrever, is not well adapted to 
 American conditions because of differences in the nature 
 of the crude oils, and in the products most desired. The 
 American refiner, in general, aims to produce as much 
 kerosene or lubricating oils as possible, whereas in Russia 
 the enormous demand for the residuum, or astatki for fuel, 
 makes it nearly as valuable as any other product. There 
 is, therefore, little inducement to increase the yield of 
 kerosene and reduce the quantity of residuum by employ- 
 ing the cracking process, which can be done only in 
 intermittent distillation. 
 
 The first distillates obtained from the crude oil by either 
 process usually have to be redistilled or purified before 
 they can be used. Any sulphur which is present must be 
 removed either in the first process or subsequently. One 
 method makes use of copper oxide in the first condenser, or 
 in a specially constructed still, the sulphur by chemical 
 union being removed in the form of a copper sulphide, 
 from which the copper can be reclaimed and used over and 
 over. Another method makes the separation by treating 
 the distillates successively with sulphuric acid, caustic soda 
 and litharge in agitator tanks built for the purpose, the 
 removal in this case being in the form of a sulphide of lead. 
 This treatment for sulphur is one of the most important 
 and yet most troublesome processes of all, since the pres- 
 ence of a very small percentage of sulphur imparts a highly 
 disagreeable odor to any distillate. No product can be 
 sold until the last trace of sulphur has been removed. 
 
 The naphtha distillate, where obtained in important 
 quantities, may be roughly separated into different grades, 
 or cuts, known as gasoline, commercial naphtha, and ben- 
 zine. When the division is made by the stillman, as they 
 come from the condenser, washing with acid, water, caustic 
 soda, and water again, in the metal agitators, to purify 
 
REFINING CRUDE PETROLEUM 9 
 
 and deodorize is the only further treatment necessary 
 before they are ready for shipment. More often, however, 
 all the naphtha distillate goes into a single cut as it comes 
 from the condenser, is subjected as a whole to the 
 deodorizing and purifying treatment and is then redistilled 
 and divided into the three fractions mentioned above. 
 This redistillation of the naphtha is done in a special still 
 heated by steam, and with the outlet, through which the 
 vapors reach the condenser, rising for some distance before 
 it actually enters the condenser coil. This arrangement 
 is introduced to prevent any liquid from being carried 
 over into the condenser with the gas. The condenser 
 for the naphtha still also differs from the others in having 
 two coils of pipe, the first of which has a ' ' back trap, ' ' or 
 pipe leading back to the still, so that any heavier oils 
 present, condensing quickly, will be returned to the still. 
 The main body of the naphtha distillate is condensed in 
 the second coil of pipe, and is cut into standard grades 
 by the usual separating-box method, but, in order to 
 secure the very lightest of the products, it is necessary 
 to use a third coil surrounded by a freezing mixture 
 of salt and ice. The different cuts obtained from this dis- 
 tillation are immediately ready for use as soon as tested 
 to prove their quality. 
 
 The distillate of illuminating oil, or kerosene, as we 
 know it, if used just as it comes from the original still, 
 has aU the disadvantages which Kier's "carbon oil" pre- 
 sented, charring the wicks, giving off an unpleasant odor, 
 and rapidly turning to a dark color after standing, all 
 owing to the presence of various impurities. The illumin- 
 ating "cut," therefore, is given the same sort of purifi- 
 cation treatment as is applied to the naphtha. Testing 
 and grading for sale then complete the last stages in the 
 production of kerosene. 
 
 The manufacture of lubricating oils, and paraffin or wax 
 complete the principal processes of refining. Some lubri- 
 cating oils are produced by the processes known as sun- 
 ning or reducing, depending on the evaporation of the 
 lighter products either by exposing the crude in open 
 tanks or by gently heating it with steam. This method of 
 
10 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 treatment is said to have originated from the observation 
 that certain oils spilled on the streams of the oil regions 
 were thickened by evaporation, and became fit for lubri- 
 cating purposes without further treatment. Experiments 
 with different oils showed the possibility of making nat- 
 ural lubricators in this way from special grades of crude 
 petroleum. So-called "sunned oils" and "reduced oils" 
 are still to be found on the market, but by far the greater 
 proportion of machine oils are products of distillation. 
 
 These refined lubricating oils come either from the 
 process of "running to cylinder stock," or from the redis- 
 tillation of the "wax slop" and of the tar left in the still 
 after cracking for kerosene is completed. These oils, in 
 one way or another, form the basis of all grades of machine 
 oil from the very lightest "spindle oil" to the heaviest 
 grease. The processes of treatment differ only in minor 
 details from those used for the lighter oils. Different 
 cuts are made, and these cuts, together with varying 
 methods of purification, bleaching and filtering, deter- 
 mine the particular grade produced. In general, however, 
 the redistillation of the "wax slop" cut yields the major 
 portion of the light and especially high-grade lubricating 
 oils, while the heavier grades come from the cylinder stock. 
 
 Paraffin was once regarded merely as a by-product of 
 distillation, but it is now so widely used in industrial pro- 
 cesses that in some refineries it is fully as valuable as any 
 of the other products. Paraffin is obtained from the 
 redistillation of either the residuum left in the tar process 
 after cracking is completed, or from the "wax slop" cut 
 in the cylinder-stock process. In either case the paraffin 
 distillation is carried on in heavy steel stills at very high 
 temperatures. The paraffin passes off in one long stream 
 of distillate, the latter end of which may be almost pure 
 wax. It then undergoes the same chemical purification 
 as the other products, the only difference being that the 
 agitator must be heated to prevent cooling and solidifi- 
 cation of the wax. The subsequent treatment, however 
 is much more complicated, consisting of a variety of steps 
 as follows : to a settling tank where the water is removed • 
 to a chilling tank where ammonia machines cause it to 
 
REFINING CRUDE PETROLEUM 11 
 
 congeal and crystallize ; to a filter press which forces out 
 any oil remaining, and leaves only solid paraffin; to tho 
 melting tank to be converted into liquid paraffin again; 
 to the bone-black filter where all color impurities are 
 removed ; and, finally, to the second chilling tank, where it 
 is returned to the crystallized form ready for the hydrau- 
 lic presses, which convert it into cakes for shipment. 
 
 From this description it appears that only two of the 
 important products of petroleum are regularly obtained 
 directly from the first distillation ; these are the illuminat- 
 ing oils and the cylinder stock, and both of these have to 
 receive additional treatment subsequently. All other 
 products are the result of a second distillation and of chem- 
 ical manipulations. The percentage of the different 
 products obtained by refining varies immensely, depending 
 both on the original character of the crude oil and on the 
 special aims of the individual refiner. Illuminating oils 
 run as high as seventy-five per cent, or eighty per cent., and 
 as low as twenty per cent, to twenty-five per cent. Lubri- 
 cating oils vary from nothing up to twenty per cent, or 
 thirty per cent., and the residuum and waste may be as 
 high as thirty per cent, of the whole volume of crude oil. 
 The residuum, representing the compounds which cannot 
 be vaporized by ordinary means, is not, however, all loss, 
 because, whether pitch, coke, or asphalt, according to the 
 character of the crude, oil, various methods of treatment 
 and utilization are devised. Practically nothing is 
 lost except moisture, solid impurities, and the vary- 
 ing amounts of uncondensed gases. Even the water used 
 in washing the distillates is sent to huge settling tanks to 
 recover any oil which may have been included in it. 
 
 The most volatile of these distilled oils, the naphthas, 
 are extremely inflammable liquids, the gases from which 
 make violently explosive combinations when mixed with 
 air. The presence of a very small percentage of the lighter 
 naphtha oils in illuminating or lubricating oils is, there- 
 fore, a constant source of danger. If such oils are used 
 explosions and fires are sure to occur. The danger is 
 especially great in the case of naphthas present in kerosene, 
 the most prolific cause of lamp accidents and fires in the 
 
12 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 early days of the industry. Continued complaints about 
 the "deadly kerosene," as it was frequently called, led to 
 the establishment of certain legal standards which all 
 illuminating oils must meet. It has consequently become 
 customary to subject all the distilled oils to standard tests 
 in order to insure a uniform quality of the product. Test- 
 ing is now fully as important a part of the refining process 
 as is distillation itself, since it is the only safeguard for 
 the interests of both producer and consumer. 
 
 The lighter oils of the naphtha group are usually tested 
 for gravity, odor and acid impurity. The gravity test is 
 made with the usual Baume hydrometer, and on the basis 
 of this test the oils are graded for commercial purposes, as 
 gasoline, naphtha, and benzine. The test for odors is made 
 by simply saturating a cloth with the oil, as the oil evapo- 
 rates from the cloth any foreign odors are readily detected. 
 The presence of acid is revealed by testing with litmus 
 paper, which immediately turns red if the acid has not been 
 entirely removed. Benzines for special purposes, as in the 
 manufacture of paints and varnishes, also have to be free 
 from any of the heavier oils. The test in this case is made 
 by soaking part of a sheet of paper in the benzine, if 
 heavier oil, like kerosene, is present, a grease spot shows 
 as the volatile benzine rapidly evaporates; otherwise the 
 whole sheet of paper presents the same appearance. 
 
 The testing of kerosene oils is by far the most important 
 of all, because the conditions under which it is used in 
 ordinary lamps are especially favorable for the occurrence 
 of explosions. Kerosene is tested for acid, sulphur, grav- 
 ity, color, and what is known as the "fire test." Acid and 
 gravity tests are the same as for naphthas. Color is, of 
 course, determined by inspection, and furnishes the basis 
 for division of the kerosene into the three grades common 
 in this country : water white, which is colorless, and is the 
 standard of American kerosene ; prime white, of a faint yel- 
 low color ; and standard or standard white, a pronounced 
 yellow. In European countries other grades are recog- 
 nized, as many as seven being commonly sold in Germany. 
 
 The fire tests, however, are the most significant since 
 they determine the safe or unsafe character of the 
 
REFINING CRUDE PETROLEUM 13 
 
 kerosene and the legality of its sale. Two fire tests may be 
 used, one of them called the "flash test," determining the 
 temperature at which the oil will give off an inflammable 
 vapor when heated artificially, or when exposed naturally 
 to the air. The other, known as the "burning test," 
 determines the temperature at which the oil will take fire 
 and burn on the surface. The latter temperature is usually 
 from ten to forty degrees higher than the "flash- 
 ing point," and, since the gravest dangers are from the 
 generation of explosive vapors, the flash test means most. 
 
 A great number of devices have been invented for mak- 
 ing the flash test, the essential principle of each being a 
 closed or open cup in which the oil is heated. A common 
 form of tester consists of a cup holding about the same 
 amount of oil as a medium-sized lamp, thecup beingimmersed 
 in water and heated carefully by heating the water, on the 
 same principle as cooking in a double boiler. The glass 
 cover of the cup has a hole for a thermometer and another 
 for inserting a match to ignite the vapor. Kerosene, to be 
 safe for lighting purposes, should have a flashing point 
 higher than any temperature which it is likely to reach 
 under ordinary conditions. In most places a flashing point 
 of 110° or higher is required by law. Testing, however, 
 usually begins as soon as the thermometer shows the oil to 
 have a temperature of about 85° or 90°, and continues at 
 intervals of every degree or two until the insertion of the 
 match causes the appearance of a bluish flame in the cup. 
 As soon as this "flash" flame appears the reading of the 
 thermometer indicates whether the oil is up to the required 
 standard. Illuminating oils for special purposes such as 
 headlight oil for locomotives, signal lamps, miners ' lamps, 
 and so on, frequently have to meet much higher require- 
 ments than for ordinary domestic use, but the testing 
 process is the same. 
 
 Lubricating oils are subjected to three important tests, 
 viscosity, fire test, and cold test, each, in a way, being of 
 vital significance in determining the value of the oil. The 
 first, if atiy, is perhaps the most important since viscosity 
 is the most necessary quality of any lubricating fluid. The 
 test may be made in innumerable ways, but all depend on 
 
14 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 the principle of determining the length of time required for 
 a given quantity of the oil to flow through a small opening. 
 The temperature at which the test is made depends on the 
 special use for which the individual oil is intended, rang- 
 ing up as high as 212° in the case of cylinder oils for steam 
 engines. 
 
 The fire test is necessary in the case of most machine 
 and engine oils because the heat from friction might gen- 
 erate inflammable vapors if very volatile products were 
 present. The cold test is also required to determine the 
 temperature at which the oil would beconie thick and 
 cloudy. This test is made by freezing the oil in a tube, 
 and then as it melts, noting the temperature at which it 
 begins to run. High-grade lubricating oils have to with- 
 stand a very wide range of temperatvires ; first quality 
 cylinder oil, for example, must have a cold test as low as 
 55°, and it must not flash below 550° Fahrenheit. 
 
 All these tests must be made at the refinery for each lot 
 of distillates before they can be approved, graded, and 
 loaded for shipment to the consumer. If any distillate 
 does not "prove up," it has to go back for further manip- 
 ulation to remedy the defects, the success or failure of the 
 tests depending largely on the skill of the stillman in 
 making his cuts as the distillate passes through his separ- 
 ating box. 
 
 In spite of its many steps and intricate processes there is 
 nothing picturesque or spectacular in petroleum refining, 
 unless it is in the magnitude of the plant and the very 
 obscurity of the many transformations going on every- 
 where yet entirely unseen. One refinery is essentially the 
 jsame as every other save in size, and perhaps in a few minor 
 details. At a hundred refineries from the Atlantic to the 
 Pacific, and from the Lakes to the Gulf, the same story 
 is repeated day after day and year after year, as the invis- 
 ible stream of oil makes its journey step by step through 
 the maze of pipes, stills, condensers, and agitators, leaving 
 at every turn a part of its precious burden. On the one 
 hand, the vast network of pipe lines binds the refinery to 
 thousands of wells, scattered halfway across the continent. 
 
STEA M RA IL WA Y BONDS 1 S 
 
 On the other hand, the world-wide distributing system 
 carries the multitude of refined products into the daily life 
 of every class of hiimanity. 
 
 From The Story of Oil by W. S. Tower. (Copyright, 1909, by D. 
 Appleton and Company, and reprinted by permission.) 
 
 Steam Railway Bonds 
 
 Bonds are simply certificates of value. They represent, 
 fractionally, material property such as houses, land, fac- 
 tory sites, railway stations, steam engines, steel rails, 
 machinery, docks and terminals, etc., and also such intang- 
 ible things as earning power. Corpo: itions must operate 
 upon borrowed money, just as a merchant does. The lat- 
 ter borrows from his bank for two, four, or six months, in 
 order to finance his purchases ; as security for his borrow- 
 ings he gives to the bank his personal note. Sometimes 
 he is required to give collateral security as well. Corpor- 
 ations borrow on a larger scale and for longer periods. 
 The form of borrowing they employ is called a bond issue. 
 
 A bond is a written promise to repay a loan at a given 
 date. The interest to be paid during the life of the loan is 
 also specifically stated upon the face of the bond. The 
 bond is secured by the pledge of some material thing, such 
 as a railway property or a factory site. All these facts 
 are minutely stated in a contract or mortgage, together 
 with a detailed description of the property offered as 
 security. This contract is deposited with some responsible 
 person or banking institution, usually a trust company, 
 who shall act as trustee for possible purchasers of the 
 bond. Conservative companies issue their bonds only up 
 to about seventy-five or eighty per cent, of the actual 
 market value of the property pledged. This leaves a satis- 
 factory margin of safety for the prospective bondholders. 
 If the company fails to pay interest on the loan at the 
 stated times, or the principal at maturity, the trustee is 
 empowered by the clauses of the mortgage contract to 
 sell the property and satisfy the claims of the bondholders 
 b«th as to principal and as to interest. What remains 
 after the satisfaction of the bondholders' claims goes to the 
 stockholders. 
 
16 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 Bonds are issued usually in denominations of $1,000, 
 but there are^ also many bonds for $500 each, and some for 
 $100 each. Interest is ordinarily paid semi-annually, and 
 little detachable checks, or slips, called coupons, repre- 
 senting the amount of interest due each half year, are 
 attached to the bond. These should be cut off and presented 
 at the office of the company for payment upon the agreed 
 day. Such bonds are termed "coupon bonds." There are 
 also what are known as "registered bonds. " These do not 
 possess the little cheeks or coupons, but show instead, 
 upon the reverse side, blank spaces for the purchaser's 
 signature. His name and address are at the same time 
 registered upon the books of the company, together with 
 the number of his bond. At interest periods the com- 
 pany's treasurer forwards him a check for the interest 
 due. Registered bonds may not be sold without the writ- 
 ten consent of the holder over his signature, or that of 
 some person holding his power of attorney. For this 
 reason the purchase and sale of registered bonds involve 
 considerable detail and sometimes expense. Hence their 
 market price is usually lower than coupon bonds of the 
 same issue. The latter are readily negotiable by any 
 holder, and require no form whatever. If a registered 
 bond were stolen, it could not be disposed of by the thief, 
 whereas the sale of a stolen coupon bond might be an easy 
 matter. Savings banks and trust estates generally prefer 
 registered bonds as investments becavise of their great;er 
 safety and their convenience in the matter of interest. 
 Certain bonds may be issued in either coupon or regis- 
 terable form at the option of the purchaser. 
 
 Railway bonds are issued in both coupon and registered 
 form, and usually in $1,000 pieces, but there are also many 
 $500 and a few $100 bonds. Upon the exchanges, however, 
 when one buys or sells a bond, unless specifically stated 
 otherwise, a $1,000 bond is meant. The bond issues of 
 nearly all steam railways are listed and dealt in upon the 
 exchanges of one or more of the great cities. Thus they 
 have a wide and ready market. Because of this fact, 
 they will be accepted anywhere by bankers as collateral 
 for loans, where real estate mortgages and the bonds of 
 
STEAM RAILWAY BONDS 17 
 
 small industrial companies, known only in the locality 
 in which the property mortgaged is situated, will ordi- 
 narily be refused because of their less ready negotiability. 
 Financial ingenuity has created many kinds of bonds 
 and has tagged them with a great variety of names. In 
 some instances the appellations are self-explanatory. 
 Bond issues include: first, second, and third mortgages; 
 extension, divisional, and refunding mortgages; general, 
 consolidated, and unified mortgages ; collateral trust mort- 
 gages; participating, convertible, and sinking fund 
 mortgages; debenture bonds; and equipment and car 
 trust bonds and notes. 
 
 When a railway line is projected, the bond issue which 
 is sold to the investing public through the medium of the 
 great investment banking houses, in order to obtain funds 
 for construction, constitutes a first claim upon all the 
 assets of the company, i. e., stations, roadbeds, terminal 
 properties, land grants, shops, and often upon cars and 
 engines as well. As the country is developed and the 
 road's business expands, it frequently becomes necessary 
 to borrow further sums to be used for improvements neces- 
 sitated by the heavier traffic, and for new working capital. 
 A new bond issue is proposed, and a second mortgage is 
 placed upon the property, which follows in its claim to 
 assets and earnings, the first mortgage. The merchant 
 conducts his business upon precisely similar principles, 
 borrowing new working funds from time to time as busi- 
 ness increases beyond the capacity of his original capital." 
 The merchant, however, instead of issiiing a mortgage, 
 borrows upon his personal note for a short period, that 
 note being secured by collateral deposited with the lender, 
 or else by the implied pledge of his merchandise and other 
 real and personal property. 
 
 It will be readily seen that, when the money obtained by 
 the sale of the second mortgage bonds has been expended 
 for betterments to the property and for superior trans- 
 portation facilities, the value of the first mortgage bonds is 
 materially enhanced. The latter now constitute no longer 
 a speculative, but a real, investment security. The second 
 mortgage, however, belongs to the speculative class, since 
 
18 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 the road's capacity to carry this additional burden of debt 
 has not as yet been tested. 
 
 Third mortgage bonds, as their title suggests, are issued 
 against property already pledged to secure the first and 
 second mortgages. Their claim upon earnings and assets 
 follows the satisfaction of the two prior liens. Sometimes 
 bonds are a first lien iipon one portion of road, a second 
 mortgage upon another, and constitute still a third claim 
 upon yet another. 
 
 Where the territory lying beyond the terminus of a 
 road reaches such a state of development that the road's 
 management thinks it rich enough to be tapped, the road 
 is extended. To finance its building, extension bonds are 
 issued, and these bonds form a first lien upon the exten- 
 sion. A series of such extensions, whether they be continu- 
 ations of the main line, or spurs running oflf at angles 
 through adjacent communities, are spoken of as " divisions ' ' 
 and the mortgages sold to build them are first mortgages 
 upon such divisions. Divisional and extensional bonds 
 are, as a rule, not regarded as being as attractive as 
 the direct liens upon the main line. The reason for this 
 is that such extensions and spurs are dependent for their 
 earning power upon the outlet afforded them by the main 
 line, whereas the latter is a paying property independent 
 of the business contributed by the divisional lines. 
 
 Kefunding bonds are issued to redeem old outstanding 
 bonds when they mature. The amount of a refunding 
 mortgage may greatly exceed the issue that is to be 
 redeemed, and frequently a portion is sold long before the 
 old bonds come due. The funds accruing from such sale 
 are to be used for various purposes which must be set 
 forth in the mortgage. An amount sufficient to take up 
 the old bonds is retained in the company's treasury until 
 the latter fall due. 
 
 General, consolidated, and unified bonds are practically 
 identical. Such mortgages are usually secured upon an 
 entire property, subject to the right of prior line and 
 divisional bonds, or upon several independent properties 
 which have been brought together, "consolidated" or 
 
STEA M RAILWAY BONDS 19 
 
 "unified," under the management and ownership of one 
 parent corporation. 
 
 Collateral trust bonds are those issued for the purchase 
 of some independent competing road, the stocks and 
 bonds of which, or at least a sufB(aent amount of the latter 
 to carry control to the purchasing company, are deposited 
 with a trustee as collateral to secure the mortgage. 
 The latter, therefore, is only an indirect lien upon 
 the purchased property. It is often difficult to estimate 
 the real worth or marketability of this collateral. Hence 
 a very large proportion of collateral trust bonds may 
 be regarded as approaching the border line of the 
 speculative. 
 
 Participating bonds are rare. Besides forming a direct 
 lien, first, second, or third, as the case may be, upon the 
 property and receiving an agreed rate of interest, they are 
 allowed to participate in the company's surplus earnings 
 when the latter exceed a given amount. 
 
 Convertible bonds have of late years become a very 
 popular form of issue. In the first place, they are a direct 
 obligation of the issuing company. In addition, the mort- 
 gage contract or indenture, as it is termed, accords the 
 holder the privilege of converting his bond into stock 
 of the company at any given time, or at certain specified 
 times within a given period. Take the ease of the five per 
 cent, convertible bonds of a certain railway. Suppose the 
 investor purchases one of these bonds at par. He is 
 assured of his five per cent, by the promise of a solvent 
 and highly prosperous company. Since his bond is a 
 direct obligation of the latter, it is not conceivable that in 
 normal times its market price should decline very far 
 below this point, five per cent, upon a safe investment 
 being an equitable rate of income. But he has also the 
 right to exchange the bond, dollar for dollar, for the com- 
 pany's common stock, paying six per cent, dividends. 
 There is every reason to expect that such a six per cent, 
 stock should, in ordinary seasons, bring a price far in 
 excess of its par value. 
 
 Sinking fund mortgages contain a clause which pro- 
 vides for the setting aside, out of the earnings each year, 
 
20 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 a certain sum to be applied to the annual or semi-annual 
 purchase and retirement of so many bonds of that par- 
 ticular issue. The bonds are sometimes purchased at an 
 agreed price, and sometimes are drawn by lot. 
 
 Debenture bonds are .not secured by a mortgage, but 
 are simply a long-time promise to pay. They resemble 
 notes, and their value as an investment depends entirely 
 upon the general credit of the issuing company. 
 
 Equipment and car trust bonds are secured by the 
 pledge of the freight and passenger cars for the purchase 
 of which they are sold. The agreement is usually drawn 
 between the trustee, acting for the railway company, and 
 the manufacturers and builders of the cars. The bonds 
 are issued in series, so many maturing every six months. 
 Under the terms of the contract the title to the cars, or 
 actual ownership, remains with the trustee until all pay- 
 ments have been made. This is a very safe form of 
 investment, and usually returns an excellent income. 
 
 Adapted from "Investing Money," by George Carey, in The OtitUiok. 
 
 The Method of Scientific Investigation 
 The method of scientific investigation is nothing but the 
 expression of the necessary mode of working of the human 
 mind. It is simply the mode at which all phenomena are 
 reasoned about, rendered precise and exact. There is no 
 more difference, but there is just the same kind of differ- 
 ence, between the mental operations of a man of science and 
 those of an ordinary person, as there is between the opera- 
 tions and methods of a baker or of a butcher weighing out 
 his goods on common scales, and the operations of a chem- 
 ist in performing a difficult and complex analysis by means 
 of his balance and finely-graduated weights. It is not that 
 the action of the scales in the one ease, and the balance in 
 the other, differ in the principles of their construction or 
 manner of working; but the beam of one is set on an 
 infinitely finer axis than the other, and, of course, turns by 
 the addition of a much smaller weight. 
 
 You will understand this better, perhaps, if I give you 
 some familiar example. You have all heard it repeated, I 
 
METHOD OF SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION 21 
 
 dare say, that men of science work by means of induction 
 and deduction, and that by the help of these operations, 
 they, in a sort of sense, wring from nature certain other 
 things, which are called natural laws, and causes, and that 
 out of these, by some cunning skill of their own, they build 
 up hypotheses and theories. And it is imagined by many 
 that the operations of the common mind can be, by no 
 means, compared with these processes, and that they have to 
 be acquired by a sort of special apprenticeship to the craft. 
 To hear all these large words, you would think that the 
 mind of a man of science must be constituted differently 
 from that of his fellow-men ; but if you will not be fright- 
 ened by terms, you will discover that you are quite wrong, 
 and that all these terrible apparatus are being used by 
 yourselves every day and every hour of your lives. 
 
 There is a well-known incident in one of Moliere 's plays, 
 where the author makes the hero express unbounded 
 delight on being told that he had been talking prose 
 during the whole of his life. In the same way, I trust, that 
 you will take comfort, and be delighted with yourselves, 
 on the discovery that you have been acting on the prin- 
 ciples of inductive and deductive philosophy during the 
 same period. Probably there is not one here who has not 
 in the course of the day had occasion to set in motion a 
 complex train of reasoning, of the very same kind, though 
 differing of course in degree, as that which a scientific 
 man goes through in tracing the causes of natural 
 phenomena. 
 
 A very trivial circumstance will serve to exemplify this. 
 Suppose you go into a fruiterer's shop, wanting an apple — 
 you take up one, and, on biting it, you find it is sour; you 
 look at it, and see that it is hard and green. You take up 
 another one, and that too is hard, green, and sour. The 
 shopman offers you a third; but before biting it, you 
 examine it, and find that it is hard and green, and you 
 immediately say that you will not have it, as it must be 
 sour, like those that you have already tried. 
 
 Nothing can be more simple than that, you think ; but 
 if you will take the trouble to analyze and trace out into 
 its logical elements what has been done by the mind, you 
 
22 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 will be greatly surprised. In the first place, you have 
 performed the operation of induction. You found that, in 
 two experiences, hardness and greenness in apples went 
 together with sourness. It was so in the first case, and it 
 was confirmed by the second. True, it is a very small 
 basis, but still it is enough to make an induction from; 
 you generalize the facts, and you expect to find sourness 
 in apples where you get hardness and greenness. You 
 found upon that a general law, that all hard and green 
 apples are sour; and that, so far as it goes, is a perfect 
 induction. Well, having got your natural law in this way, 
 when you are offered another apple which you find is hard 
 and green, you say, "All hard and green apples are sour; 
 this apple is hard and green, therefore this apple is sour." 
 That train of reasoning is what logicians call a syllogism, 
 and has all its various parts and terms — its major premise, 
 its minor premise, and its conclusion. And, by the help of 
 further reasoning, which, if drawn out, would have to be 
 exhibited in two or three other syllogisms, you arrive at 
 your final determination, "I will not have that apple." 
 So that, you see, you have, in the first place, established a 
 law by induction, and upon that you have founded a 
 deduction, and reasoned out the special conclusion of the 
 particular case. Well now, suppose, having got your law, 
 that at some time afterwards, you are discussing the 
 qualities of apples with a friend: you will say to him, "It 
 is a very curious thing — but I find that all hard and green 
 apples are sour!" Your friend says to you, "But how 
 do you know that ? ' ' You at once reply, ' ' Oh, because I 
 have tried them over and over again, and have always 
 found them to be so." Well, if we were talking science 
 instead of common sense, we should call that an experi- 
 mental verification. And, if still opposed, you go further, 
 and say, "I have heard from the people in Somersetshire 
 and Devonshire, where a large number of apples are 
 grown, that they have observed the same thing. It is also 
 found to be the case in Normandy, and in North America. 
 In short, I find it to be the universal experience of man- 
 kind wherever attention has been directed to the subject. " 
 Whereupon, your friend, unless he is a very unreason- 
 
METHOD OF SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION 23 
 
 able man, agrees with you, and is convinced that you are 
 quite right in the conclusion you have drawn. He believes, 
 although perhaps he does not know he believes it, that the 
 more extensive verifications are that the more fre- 
 quently experiments have been made, and the results 
 of the same kind arrived at — that the more varied 
 the conditions under which the same results are attained, 
 the more certain is the ultimate conclusion, and he dis- 
 putes the question no further. He sees that the experi- 
 ment has been tried under all sorts of conditions, as to 
 time, place, and people, with the same result ; and he says 
 with you, therefore, that the law you have laid down must 
 be a good one, and he must believe it. 
 
 In science we do the same thing ; the philosopher exer- 
 cises precisely the same faculties, though in a much more 
 delicate manner. In scientific inquiry it becomes a matter 
 of duty to expose a supposed law to every possible kind of 
 verification, and to take care, moreover, that this is done 
 intentionally, and not left to a mere accident, as in the 
 case of the apples. And in science, as in common life, our 
 confidence in a law is in exact proportion to the absence 
 of variation in the result of our experimental verifications. 
 For instance, if you let go your grasp of an article you 
 may have in your hand, it will immediately fall to the 
 ground. That is a very common verification of one of the 
 best established laws of nature — that of gravitation. The 
 method by which men of science establish the existence of 
 that law is exactly the same as that by which we have' 
 established the trivial proposition about the sourness of 
 hard and green apples. But we believe it in such an 
 extensive, thorough, and unhesitating manner because the 
 universal experience of mankind verifies it, and we can 
 verify it ourselves at any time ; and that is the strongest 
 possible foundation on which any natural law can rest. 
 
 So much then, bj"^ way of proof that the method of 
 establishing laws in science is exactly the same as that 
 pursued in common life. Let us now turn to another 
 matter (though really it is but another phase of the same 
 question) and that is, the method by which, from the 
 
24 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 relations of certain phenomena, we prove that some stand 
 in the position of causes towards the others. 
 
 I want to put the case clearly before you, and I will 
 therefore show you what I mean by another familiar 
 example. I will suppose that one of you, on coming down 
 in the morning to the parlor of your house, finds that a 
 teapot and some spoons which had been left in the room 
 on the previous evening are gone — the window is open, 
 and you observe the mark of a dirty hand on the window 
 frame, and perhaps, in addition to that, you notice the 
 impress of a hob-nailed shoe on the gravel outside. All 
 these phenomena have struck your attention instantly, 
 and before two seconds have passed you say, "Oh, some- 
 body has broken open the window, entered the room, and 
 run oflf with the spoons and the teapot ! ' ' That speech is 
 out of your mouth in a moment. And you will probably 
 add, "I know there has; I am quite sure of it!" You 
 mean to say exactly what you know; but in reality you 
 are giving expression to what is, in all essential particu- 
 lars, an hypothesis. You do not know it at all ; it is nothing 
 but an hypothesis rapidly framed in your own mind ! And, 
 it is an hypothesis founded on a long train of inductions 
 and deductions. 
 
 What are those inductions and deductions, and how 
 have you got at this hypothesis? You have observed, in 
 the first place, that the window is open ; but by a train of 
 reasoning involving many inductions and deductions, you 
 have probably arrived long before at the general law — and 
 a very good one it is — that windows do not open of them- 
 selves; and you therefore conclude that something has 
 opened the window. A second general law that you have 
 arrived at in the same way is, that teapots and spoons do 
 not go out of a window spontaneously, and you are satis- 
 fied that, as they are not now where you left them, they 
 have been removed. In the third place, you look at the 
 marks on the window sill, and the shoe marks outside, and 
 you say that in all previous experience the former kind of 
 mark has never been produced by anything else but the 
 hand of a human being; and the same experience shows 
 that no other animal but man at present wears shoes with 
 
METHOD OF SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION 25 
 
 hob-nails in them siich as would produce the marks in the 
 gravel. I do not know, even if we could discover any of 
 those "missing links" that are talked about, that they 
 would help us to any other conclusion! At any rate the 
 law which states our present experience is strong enough 
 for my present purpose. You next reach the conclusion, 
 that as these kinds of marks have not been left by any 
 other animals than men, or are liable to be formed in any 
 other way than by a man's hand and shoe, the marks in 
 question have been formed by a man in that way. You 
 have, further, a general law, founded on observation and 
 experience, and that, too, is, I am sorry to say, a very 
 universal and unimpeachable one — that some men are 
 thieves ; and you assume at once from all these premises — 
 and that is what constitutes your hypothesis — ^that the 
 man who made the marks outside and on the window sill, 
 opened the window, got into the room, and stole your 
 teapot and spoons. You have now arrived at a Vera Causa; 
 you have assumed a cause which it is plain is competent 
 to produce all the phenomena you have observed. You 
 can explain all these phenomena only by the hypothesis 
 of a thief. But that is a hypothetical conclusion, of the 
 justice of which you have no absolute proof at all; it is 
 only rendered highly probable by a series of inductive and 
 deductive reasonings. 
 
 I suppose your first action, assuming that you are a man 
 of ordinary common sense, and that you have established 
 this hypothesis to your own satisfaction, will very likely 
 be to go off for the police, and set them on the track of the 
 burglar, with the view to the recovery of your property. 
 But just as you are starting with this object, some person 
 comes in, and on learning what you are about, says, "My 
 good friend, you are going on a great deal too fast. How 
 do you know that the man who really made the marks 
 took the spoons ? It might have been a monkey that took 
 them, and the man may have merely looked in after- 
 wards." You would probably reply, "Well, that is all 
 very well, but you see it is contrary to all experience of 
 the way teapots and spoons are abstracted ; so that, at any 
 rate, your hypothesis is less probable than mine." "While 
 
26 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 you are talking the thing over in this way, another friend 
 arrives, one of that good kind of people that I was talking 
 of a little while ago. And he might say, "Oh, my dear sir, 
 you are certainly going on a great deal too fast. You are 
 most presumptuous. You admit that all these occurrences 
 took place when you were fast asleep, at a time when you 
 could not possibly have known anything about what was 
 taking place. How do you know that the laws of nature 
 are not suspended during the night ? It may be that there 
 has been some kind of supernatural interference in this 
 case." In point of fact, he declares that your hypothesis 
 is one of which you cannot at all demonstrate the truth, 
 and that you are by no means sure that the laws of nature 
 are the same when you are asleep as when you are awake. 
 Well, now, you cannot at the moment answer that kind 
 of reasoning. You feel that your worthy friend has you 
 somewhat at a disadvantage. You will feel perfectly con- 
 vinced in your own mind, however, that you are quite 
 right, and you say to him, "My good friend, I can only be 
 guided by the natural probabilities of the case, and if you 
 will be kind enough to stand aside and permit me to pass, 
 I will go and fetch the police." Well, we will suppose 
 that your journey is successful, and that by good luck you 
 meet with a policeman; that eventually the burglar is 
 found with your property on his person, and the marks 
 correspond to his hand and to his boots. Probably any 
 jury would consider those facts a very good experimental 
 verification of your hypothesis, touching the cause of the 
 abnormal phenomena observed in your parlor, and would 
 act accordingly. 
 
 ' Now, in this supposititious case, I have taken phenomena 
 of a very common kind, in order that you might see what 
 are the different steps in an ordinary process of reasoning, 
 if you will only take the trouble to analyze it carefully. 
 All the operations I have described, you will see, are 
 involved in the mind of any man of sense in leading him 
 to a conclusion as to the course he should take in order to 
 make good a robbery and punish the offender. I say that 
 you are led, in that case, to your conclusion by exactly the 
 same train of reasoning as that which a man of science 
 
METHOD OF SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION 27 
 
 pursues when he is endeavoring to discover the origin and 
 laws of the most occult phenomena. The process is, and 
 always must be, the same ; and precisely the same mode 
 of reasoning was employed by Newton and Laplace in 
 their endeavors to discover and define the causes of the 
 movements of the heavenly bodies, as you, with your own 
 common sense, would employ to detect a burglar. The 
 only difference is, that the nature of the inquiry being 
 more abstruse, every step has to be most carefully 
 watched, so that there may not be a single crack or flaw 
 in your hypothesis. A flaw or crack in many of the 
 hypotheses of daily life may be of little or no moment as 
 affecting the general correctness of the conclusions at 
 which we may arrive ; but in a scientific inquiry a fallacy, 
 great or small, is always of importance, and is sure to be in 
 the long run constantly productive of mischievous, if not 
 fatal results. 
 
 Do not allow yourselves to be misled by the common 
 notion that an hypothesis is untrustworthy simply because 
 it is an hypothesis. It is often urged, in respect to some 
 scientific conclusion, that, after all, it is only an hypothesis. 
 But what more have we to guide us in nine-tenths of the 
 most important affairs of daily life than hypotheses, and 
 often very ill-based ones? So that in science, where the 
 evidence of an hypothesis is subjected to the most rigid 
 examination, we may rightly pursue the same course. You 
 may have hypotheses and hypotheses. A man may say, if 
 he likes, that the moon is made of green cheese : that is an 
 hypothesis. But another man, who has devoted a great 
 deal of time and attention to the subject, and availed him- 
 self of the most powerful telescopes and the results of the 
 observations of others, declares that in his opinion it is 
 probably composed of materials very similar to those of 
 which our -own earth is made up : and that is also only an 
 hypothesis. But I need not tell you that there is an 
 enormous difference in the value of the two hypotheses. 
 That one which is based on sound scientific knowledge is 
 sure to have a corresponding value ; and that which is a 
 mere hasty random guess is likely to have but little value. 
 Every great step in our progress in discovering causes 
 
28 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 has been made in exactly the same way as that which' 
 have detailed to you. A person observing the occurrence 
 of certain facts and phenomena asks, naturally enough 
 what process, what kind of operation known to occur i] 
 nature applied to the particular case, will unravel anc 
 explain the mystery? Hence you have the scientifli 
 hypothesis ; and its value will be proportionate to the can 
 and completeness with which its basis has been tested anc 
 verified. It is in these matters as in the commonest affairi 
 of practical life : the guess of the fool will be folly, -whih 
 the guess of the wise man will contain wisdom. In al 
 cases, you see that the value of the result depends on th( 
 patience and faithfulness with which the investigatoi 
 applies to his hypothesis every possible kind of verification 
 
 T. H. Huxley: Six Lectures to Workingmen on the Phenomena o 
 Organic Nature. 
 
 Corporations and the Nation 
 The Nation has no peculiar relation to corporationi 
 created by the States. It can deal with them only as i 
 can deal with unincorporated associations, partnershipi 
 and individuals. Incorporation gives a privilege. Thi 
 power which gives it may reserve the right to regulate it 
 enjoyment, that is, the conduct of the association s( 
 privileged. In the nature of things, such right can bi 
 reserved only in the grant of the privilege and only by th^ 
 grantor. The fact that an association of men is ineor 
 porated by one State cannot be made the basis of regul 
 ation by any other power. Incorporation under the law 
 of one or more States of the Union, gives no basis fo 
 control or regulation by the United States. The basis fo 
 Federal action must be found outside of the fact of sue 
 incorporation in something which, regardless of ineorpors 
 tion, brings the association within the field of Feders 
 jurisdiction, under the provisions of the Constitutioi 
 State incorporation gives neither a ground for, nor 
 shield against. Federal interference. 
 
 If a partnership runs a stage between two villages i 
 
CORPORATIONS AND THE NATION 29 
 
 Vermont, its business being confined to that State, even 
 the most advanced advocate of centralization will admit 
 that its business cannot be regulated by Congress. If the 
 partnership is changed into a corporation, or, in other 
 words, if the same association of individuals is incor- 
 porated by the State of Vermont, the business being 
 limited as before, the corporation, equally with the pre- 
 vious partnership, is beyond the reach of congressional 
 regulation. The power of Congress is unaffected by 
 incorporation. 
 
 Substitute for the two villages in Vermont, two villages, 
 one of which is in Vermont, and the other across the Con- 
 necticut River, in New Hampshire, so that the business is 
 interstate transportation. Then such business undoubtedly 
 may be regulated by Congress under its power to regulate 
 interstate commerce. And this is equally so while the 
 individuals who carry it on remain a mere partnership and 
 after they have become a corporation. Regulation may be 
 applied to the business because of its character. The legal 
 character of the association, the fact that it is or is not 
 incorporated, in no way affects the question. 
 
 Suppose a further change is made, and the business of 
 the association is both carriage between two villages in 
 Vermont and carriage between two villages one in 
 Vermont and one in New Hampshire. Business of the 
 former kind is outside of the power of Federal regulation ; 
 business of the latter kind is within such power. The one 
 kind of business may and the other may not be regulated 
 by Congress. The association generally is not subject to 
 such regulation, but only the interstate business which it 
 does. The fact that the same body of men carry on both 
 kinds of business cannot extend the power of Congress; 
 and the power is precisely the same, whether they are 
 associated as a partnership or as a State corporation. That 
 part of the business which is within the definition of inter- 
 state commerce, is subject to regulation under the powers 
 referred to ; the rest of the business is not. The associa- 
 tion may be regulated with respect to its interstate busi- 
 ness, but only with respect to such business. Whether it 
 is incorporated or not, whatever it does is free from, or 
 
30 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 subject to, Federal regulation, according as what it does 
 is without or within the field of interstate commerce. 
 
 The Interstate Commerce Act in no sense attempts to 
 regulate corporations ; it regulates commerce only. It has 
 lately been extended so as to cover express business. Some 
 of the express companies are incorporated; some of the 
 important ones are not. 
 
 The Anti-Trust Act of 1890, does not mention corpora- 
 tions, except in declaring that the word "person" as 
 therein used, includes ' ' corporations. ' ' It prohibits certain 
 doings — if the word "certain" may be used, though it is 
 still uncertain what the prohibited doings are. It applies 
 whether the doers are corporations or natural persons. It 
 is the character of the business, not the character* of those 
 who do it, which gives to Congress the right to regulate it, 
 and is to be considered in any proceeding under the Act. 
 
 When individuals are more frequently prosecuted under 
 these acts, it will be more generally realized that they are 
 not based upon any peculiar relation of the Nation to 
 corporations, but upon the power of Congress to regulate 
 interstate and foreign commerce by whomsoever carried 
 on. 
 
 In the proposals for Federal regulation of corporations, 
 it is sometimes urged that corporations are peculiarly sub- 
 ject to State regulations, because of the franchises which 
 they enjoy. The State by which a franchise is granted, 
 may regulate the use of such franchises, if this right is 
 reserved in the grant. But no other sovereignty can base 
 a right of regulation upon such grant or such reservation 
 therein. Whether a corporation enjoys only the franchise 
 of corporate being — as is true of all industrial corpora- 
 tions — or enjoys, in addition to such franchise, a preroga- 
 tive franchise such as that of maintaining and operating 
 a railroad, the fact that it enjoys such franchise or fran- 
 chises by grant from one or more of the States, gives no 
 basis whatever for regulation of its business by the Fed- 
 eral Government. 
 
 With reference to the Federal Government then 
 corporations created by the States, stand upon the same 
 footing as natural persons; if their business may be 
 
CORPORATIONS AND THE NATION 31 
 
 regulated, it is because of the character of the business, 
 because such business — by whomsoever it may be carried 
 on — is of the kind which is subjected to Federal regula- 
 tion by the Constitution. 
 
 All this is quite obvious; but the obvious is often 
 o^•e^looked. Argument is unnecessary. Reference to 
 authorities would be a waste of effort. It needs only 
 to be pointed out. That it is overlooked is shown by much 
 of the talk upon many legislative suggestions which are 
 heard in these days. 
 
 The conclusions from what has been pointed out are 
 both restrictive and expansive. Limitations are seen to 
 lie in the way of some legislative measures proposed. 
 But on the other hand, it equally appears that some 
 proposals should be broadened. If there is any reason 
 for any suggested form of regulation as applied to busi- 
 ness done by corporations, there must be the same reason 
 for regulation of like business done by individuals, part- 
 nerships and unincorporated associations. Since the 
 power of the Nation depends in no way upon incorpora- 
 tion, incorporation neither extends nor limits the power. 
 Since it is the character of the business and not the legal 
 character of the agency by which it is done which gives 
 Congress its right of regulation, the legal character of 
 the agency does not limit the power of Congress in its 
 regulation of the business. Nor does it appear that there 
 can be any difference in expediency, whether the agency 
 is incorporated or not. The regulations which seem wise 
 with respect to the business should not, therefore, be 
 limited in their application to incorporated bodies. They 
 should be general — as are the regulations of the Anti- 
 Trust Act and the Interstate Commerce Act — applying to 
 the doings of individuals and unincorporated associations 
 in like manner as to those of corporations. And the pro- 
 priety of their enactment should be tested by the thought 
 that they must, in reason, be made so to apply. 
 
 There are doubtless those who think — without much 
 thinking — ^that to draw the line in such matters between 
 corporations and agencies unincorporated, is simply to 
 distinguish between things large and small. But this is 
 
32 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 a mistake. A partnership which becomes incorporate 
 gains nothing in size or power. On the other hand, there 
 are associations unincorporated which are larger and 
 stronger than all but the largest corporations. Several 
 important combinations have been organized lately by 
 mere agreement, and the express companies give examples 
 of association on a large scale without incorporation. If 
 regulations are to be adopted as to any business, there 
 would seem to be no reason why persons doing such busi- 
 ness as individuals, or in unincorporated associations, 
 should find themselves outside of their reach. Indeed, 
 it would seem that incorporation cannot properly be 
 made a basis of differentiation or of classification in any 
 enactment by the Nation, unless it would cut free from 
 the rule of equality of burden which is imposed upon the 
 States by the Federal Constitution. 
 Thomas Thacher, in the Yale Law Journal. 
 
 What Knowledge Is of Most Wohth 
 It has been truly remarked that, in order of time, 
 decoration precedes dress. Among people who submit 
 to great physical suffering that they may have themselves 
 handsomely tattooed, extremes of temperature are borne 
 with but little attempt at mitigation. Humboldt tells 
 us that an Orinoco Indian, though quite regardless of 
 bodily comfort, will yet labor for a fortnight to purchase 
 pigment wherewith to make himself admired; and that 
 the same woman who would not hesitate to leave her 
 hut without a fragment of clothing on, would not dare 
 to commit such a breach of decorum as to go out 
 unpainted. Voyagers uniformly find that colored beads 
 and trinkets are much more prized by wild tribes than 
 are calicoes or broadcloths. And the anecdotes we have 
 of the ways in which, when shirts and coats are given 
 they turn them to some ludicrous display, show how 
 completely the idea of ornament predominates over that 
 of use. Nay, there are still more extreme illustrations • 
 witness the fact narrated by Capt. Speke of his African 
 attendants, who strutted about in their goat-skin mantles 
 
WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH 33 
 
 when the weather was fine, but when it was wet, took 
 them off, folded them up, and went about naked, shivering 
 in the rain! Indeed, the facts of aboriginal life seem to 
 indicate that dress is developed out of decorations. And 
 Avhen we remember that even among ourselves most think 
 more about the fineness of the fabric than its warmth, and 
 more about the cut than the convenience — when we see 
 that the function is still in great measure subordinated 
 to the appearance — we have further reason for inferring 
 such an origin. 
 
 It is not a little curious that the like relations hold 
 with the mind. Among mental as among bodily acquisi- 
 tions, the ornamental comes before the useful. Not only 
 in times past, but almost as much in our own era, that 
 knowledge which conduces to personal well-being has been 
 postponed to that which brings applause. In the Greek 
 schools, music, poetry, rhetoric, and a philosophy which, 
 until Socrates taught, had but little bearing upon action, 
 were the dominant subjects ; while knowledge aiding the 
 arts of life had. a very subordinate place. And in our 
 own universities and schools at the present moment the 
 like antithesis holds. We are guilty of something like a 
 platitude when we say that throughout his after-career 
 a boy, in nine cases out of ten, applies his Latin and Greek 
 to no practical purposes. The remark is trite that in his 
 shop, or his office, in managing his estate or his family, 
 in playing his part as director of a bank or a railway, he is 
 very little aided by this knowledge he took so many years 
 to acquire — so little, that generally the greater part of it 
 drops out of his memory; and if he occasionally vents 
 a Latin quotation, or alludes to some Greek myth, it is 
 less to throw light on the topic in hand than for the sake 
 of effect. If we inquire what is the real motive for giving 
 boys a classical education, we find it to be simply Con- 
 formity to public opinion. Men dress their children's 
 minds as they do their bodies, in the prevailing fashion. 
 As the Orinoco Indian puts on his paint before leaving 
 his hut, not with a view to any direct benefit, but because 
 he would be ashamed to be seen without it; so, a boy's 
 drilling in Latin and Greek is insisted on, not because of 
 
34 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 their intrinsic value, but that he may not be disgraced 
 by being found ignorant of them — that he may have "the 
 education of a gentleman ' ' — the badge marking a certain 
 social position, and bringing a consequent respect. 
 
 This parallel is still more clearly displayed in the case 
 of the other sex. In tli« treatment of both mind and body, 
 the decorative element has continued to predominate in 
 a greater degree among women than among men. Orig- 
 inally, personal adornment occupied the attention of both 
 sexes equally. In these latter days of civilization, how- 
 ever, we see that in the dress of men the regard for 
 appearance has in a considerable degree yielded to the 
 regard for comfort; while in their education the useful 
 has of late been trenching on the ornamental. In neither 
 direction has this change gone so far with women. The 
 wearing of ear-rings, finger-rings, bracelets; the elabor- 
 ate dressings of the hair; the still occasional use of 
 paint; the immense labor bestowed in making habili- 
 ments sufficiently attractive; and the great discomfort 
 that will be submitted to for the sake of conformity; 
 show how greatly in the attiring of women, the desire 
 of approbation overrides the desire for warmth and con- 
 venience. And similarly in their education, the immense 
 preponderance of "accomplishments" proves how here, 
 too, use is subordinated to display. Dancing, deportment, 
 the piano, singing, drawing — ^what a large space do these 
 occupy ! If you ask why Italian and German are learnt, 
 you will find that under all the sham reasons given, the 
 real reason is, that a knowledge of those tongues is 
 thought lady-like. It is not that the books written in 
 them may be utilized, which they scarcely ever are ; but 
 that Italian and German songs may be sung, and that the 
 extent of attainment may bring whispered admiration. 
 The births, deaths, and marriages of kings, and other like 
 historic trivialities, are committed to memory, not because 
 of any direct benefits that can possibly result from know- 
 ing them; but because society considers them parts of a 
 good education— because the absence of such knowledge 
 may bring the contempt of others. When we have named 
 reading, writing, spelling, grammar, arithmetic, and sew- 
 
WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH 35 
 
 ing, we have named about all the things a girl is taught 
 with a view to their direct uses in life ; and even some of 
 these have more reference to the good opinion of others 
 than to immediate personal welfare. 
 
 Thoroughly to realize the truth that with the mind as 
 with the body the ornamental precedes the useful, it is 
 needful to glance at its rationale. This lies in the fact 
 that, from the far past down even to the present, social 
 needs have subordinated individual needs, and that the 
 chief social need has been the control of individuals. It 
 is not, as we commonly suppose, that there are no govern- 
 ments but those of monarchs, and parliaments, and consti- 
 tuted authorities. These acknowledged governments are 
 supplemented by other unacknowledged ones, that grow 
 up in all circles, in which every man or woman strives 
 to be king or queen or lesser dignitary. To get above 
 some and be reverenced bj' them, and to propitiate those 
 who are above us, is the universal struggle in which the 
 chief energies of life are expended. By the accumulation 
 of wealth, by style of living, by beauty of dress, by 
 display of knowledge or intellect, each tries to subjugate 
 others; and so aids in weaving that ramified network of 
 restraints by which society is kept in order. It is not 
 the savage chief only, who, in formidable war-paint, with 
 scalps at his belt, aims to strike awe into his inferiors ; it 
 is not only the belle who, by elaborate toilet, polished 
 manners, and numerous accomplishments, strives to 
 "make conquests;" but the scholar, the historian, the 
 philosopher, use their acquirements to the same end. We 
 are none of us content with quietly unfolding our own 
 individualities to the full in all directions; but have a 
 restless craving to impress our individualities upon others, 
 and in some way subordinate them. And this it is which 
 determines the character of our education. Not what 
 knowledge is of most real worth, is the consideration; 
 but what will bring most applause, honor, respect — ^what 
 will most conduce to social position and influence — ^what 
 wiU be most imposing. As, throughout life, not what we 
 are, but what we shall be thought, is the question; so in 
 education, the question is, not the intrinsic value of 
 
36 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 knowledge, so much as its extrinsic effects on others. 
 And this being our dominant idea, direct utility is scarcely- 
 more regarded than by the barbarian when filing his teeth 
 and staining his nails. 
 
 If there needs any further evidence of the rude, unde- 
 veloped character of our education, we have it in the fact 
 that the comparative worths of different kinds of knowl- 
 edge have been as yet scarcely even discussed — much less 
 discussed in a methodic way with definite results. Not 
 only is it that no standard of relative values has yet been 
 agreed upon; but the existence of any such standard 
 has not been conceived in any clear manner. And not 
 only is it that the existence of any such standard has not 
 been clearly conceived ; but the need for it seems to have 
 been scarcely even felt. Meii read books on this topic, 
 and attend lectures on that; decide that their children 
 shall be instructed in these branches of knowledge, and 
 shall not be instructed in those; and all under the 
 guidance of mere custom, or liking, or prejudice; with- 
 out ever considering the enormous importance of deter- 
 mining in some rational way what things are really most 
 worth learning. It is true that in all circles we have 
 occasional remarks on the importance of this or the other 
 order of information. But whether the degree of its 
 importance justifies the expenditure of the time needed 
 to acquire it ; and whether there are not things' of more 
 importance to which the time might be better devoted; 
 are queries which, if raised at all, are disposed of 
 quite summarily, according to personal predilections. 
 It is true, also, that from time to time, we hear 
 revived the standing controversy respecting the compara- 
 tive merits of classics and mathematics. Not only, hcw;- 
 ever, is this controversy carried on in an empirical 
 manner, with no reference to an ascertained criterion; 
 but the question at issue is totally insignificant when com- 
 pared with the general question of which it is part. To 
 suppose that deciding whether a mathematical or a 
 classical education is the best, is deciding what is the 
 proper curriculum, is much the same thing as to suppose 
 
WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH 37 
 
 that the whole of dietetics lies in determining whether or 
 not bread is more nutritive than potatoes! 
 
 The question which we contend is of such transcendent 
 moment, is, not whether such or such knowledge is of 
 worth, but what is its relative worth? When they have 
 named certain advantages which a given course of study 
 has secured them, persons are apt to assume that they have 
 justified themselves : quite forgetting that the adequate- 
 ness of the advantages is the point to be judged. There 
 is, perhaps, not a subject to which men devote attention 
 that has not some value. A year diligently spent in getting 
 up heraldry, would very possibly give a little further 
 insight into ancient manners and morals, and into the 
 origin of names. Any one who should learn the distances 
 between all the towns in England, might, in the course of 
 his life, find one or two of the thousand facts he had 
 acquired of some slight service when arranging a journey. 
 Gathering together all the small gossip of a county, profit- 
 less occupation as it would be, might yet occasionally 
 help to establish some useful fact — say, a good example 
 of hereditary transmission. But in these cases, every one 
 would admit that there was no proportion between the 
 required labor and the probable benefit. No one would 
 tolerate the proposal to devote some years of a boy's 
 time to getting such information, at the cost of much more 
 valuable information which he might else have got. And 
 if here the test of relative value is appealed to and held 
 conclusive, then should it be appealed to and held con- 
 clusive throughout. Had we time to master all subjects 
 we need not be particular. To quote the old song : — 
 
 Could a man be secure 
 
 That his days would endure 
 
 As of old for a thousand long years, 
 
 What things might he know: 
 
 What deeds might he do! 
 
 And all without hurry or care. 
 
 "But we that have but span-long lives" must ever bear 
 in mind our limited time for acquisition. And remem- 
 bering how narrowly this time is limited, not only by 
 the shortness of life, bxit also still more by the business 
 of life, we ought to be especially solicitous to employ what 
 
3& EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 time we have to the greatest advantage. Before devoting 
 years to some subject which fashion or fancy suggests, 
 it is surely wise to weigh with great care the worth of the 
 results, as compared with the worth of various alternative 
 results which the same years might bring if otherwise 
 applied. 
 
 In education, then, this is the question of questions, 
 which it is high time we discussed in some methodic way. 
 The first in importance, though the last to be considered, 
 is the problem — how to decide among the conflicting 
 claims of various subjects on our attention. Before there 
 can be a rational curriculum, we must settle which things 
 it most concerns us to know; or to use a word of Bacon's 
 now unfortunately obsolete — we must determine the rela- 
 tive values of knowledges. 
 
 To this end, a measure of value is the first requisite. 
 And happily, respecting the true measure of value, as 
 expressed in general terms, there can be no dispute. 
 Every one in contending for the worth of any particular 
 order of information, does so by showing its bearing upon 
 some part of life. In reply to the question, ' ' Of what use 
 is it?" the mathematician, linguist, naturalist, or philoso- 
 pher, explains the way in which his learning beneficially 
 influences action — saves from evil or secures good — con- 
 duces to happiness. When the teacher of writing has pointed 
 out how great an aid writing is to success in business — 
 that is, to the obtainment of sustenance — that is, to satis- 
 factory living; he is held to have proved his case. And 
 when the collector of dead facts (say a numismatist) fails 
 to make clear any appreciable effects which these facts can 
 produce on human welfare, he is obliged to admit that 
 they are comparatively valueless. All then, either directly 
 or by implication, appeal to this as the ultimate test. 
 
 How to live? — that is the essential question for us. 
 Not how to live in the mere material sense only, but in the 
 widest sense. The general problem which comprehends 
 every special problem is— the right ruling of conduct 
 in all directions under all circumstances. In what way 
 to treat the body; in what way to treat the mind; in 
 What way to manage our affairs ; in what way to bring 
 
WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH 39 
 
 up a family ; in what way to behave as a citizen ; in what 
 way to utilize all those sources of happiness which nature 
 supplies — how to use all our faculties to the greatest 
 advantage to ourselves and others — how to live completely 1 
 And this being the great thing needful for us to learn, is, 
 by consequence, the great thing which education has to 
 teach. To prepare us for complete living is the function 
 which education has to discharge; and the only rational 
 mode of judging of any educational course is, to judge in 
 what degree it discharges such function. 
 
 This test, never used in its entirety, but rarely even 
 partially used, and used then in a vague, half-conscious 
 way, has to be applied consciously, methodically, and 
 throughout all cases. It behooves us to set before our- 
 selves, and ever to keep clearly in view, complete living 
 as the end to be achieved; so that in bringing up our 
 children we may choose subjects and methods of instruc- 
 tion, with deliberate reference to this end. Not only 
 ought we to cease from the mere unthinking adoption of 
 the current fashion in education, which has no better war- 
 rant than any other fashion ; but we must also rise above 
 that rude, empirical style of judging displayed by those 
 more intelligent people who do bestow some care in over- 
 seeing the cultivation of their children 's minds. It must not 
 suffice simply to think that such or such information will 
 be useful in after life, or that this kind of knowledge is 
 of more practical value than that ; but we must seek out 
 some process of estimating their respective values, so that 
 as far as possible we may positively know which are most 
 deserving of attention. 
 
 Doubtless the task is difficult — perhaps never to be more 
 than approximately achieved. But, considering the vast- 
 ness of the interests at stake, its difficulty is no reason 
 for pusillanimously passing it by ; but rather for devoting 
 every energy to its mastery. And if we only proceed 
 systematically, we may very soon get at results of no 
 small moment. 
 
 Our first step must obviously be to classify, in the order 
 of their importance, the leading kinds of activity which 
 constitute human life. They may be naturally arranged 
 
40 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 into: — 1. Those activities which directly minister to 
 self-preservation; 2. Those activities which, by securing 
 the, necessaries of life, indirectly minister to self-preser- 
 vation ; 3. Those activities which have for their end the 
 rearing and discipline of offspring; 4. Those activities 
 which are involved in the maintenance of proper social 
 and political relations ; 5. Those miscellaneous activities 
 which make up the leisure part of life, devoted to the 
 gratification of the tastes and feelings. 
 
 That these stand in something like their true order of 
 subordination, it needs no long consideration to show. 
 The actions and precautions by which, from moment to 
 moment, we secure personal safety, must clearly take 
 precedence of all others. Could there be a man, ignorant as 
 an infant of all surrounding objects and movements, or 
 how to guide himself among them, he would pretty 
 certainly lose his life the first time he went into the street ; 
 notwithstanding any amount of learning he might have 
 on other matters. And as entire ignorance in all other 
 directions would be less promptly fatal than entire ignor- 
 ance in this direction, it must be admitted that knowledge 
 immediately conducive to self-preservation is of primary 
 importance. 
 
 That next after direct self-preservation comes the 
 indirect self-preservation which consists in acquiring the 
 means of living, none will question. That a man's indus- 
 trial functions must be considered before his parental 
 ones, is manifest from the fact that, speaking generally, 
 the discharge of the parental functions is made possible 
 only by the previous discharge of the industrial ones. The 
 power of self-maintenance necessarily preceding the 
 power of maintaining offspring, it follows that knowledge 
 needful for self-maintenance has stronger claims than 
 knowledge needful for family welfare — is second in value 
 to none save knowledge needful for immediate self- 
 preservation. 
 
 As the family comes before the State in order of time 
 
 as the bringing up of children is possible before the State 
 exists, or when it has ceased to be, whereas the State is 
 rendered possible only by the bringing up of children • it 
 
WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH 41 
 
 follows that the duties of the parent demand closer atten- 
 tion than those of the citizen. Or, to use a further 
 argument — since the goodness of a society ultimately 
 depends on the nature of its citizens ; and since the 
 nature of its citizens is more modifiable by early training 
 than by anything else ; we must conclude that the welfare 
 of the family underlies the welfare of society. And hence 
 knowledge directly conducing to the first, must take 
 precedence of knowledge directly conducing to the last. 
 
 Those various forms of pleasurable occupation which 
 fill up the leisure left by graver occupations — the enjoy- 
 ments of music, poetry, painting, etc. — manifestly imply 
 a pre-existing society. Not only is a considerable 
 development of them impossible without a long-estab- 
 lished social union; but their very subject-matter 
 consists in great part of social sentiments and sympathies. 
 Not only does society supply the conditions to their 
 growth; but also the ideas and sentiments they express. 
 And, consequently, that part of human conduct which 
 constitutes good citizenship is of more moment than that 
 which goes out in accomplishments or exercise of the 
 tastes; and, in education, preparation for the one must 
 rank before preparation for the other. 
 
 Such, then, we repeat, is something like the rational 
 order of subordination: — That education which prepares 
 for direct self-preservation; that which prepares for 
 indirect self-preservation; that which prepares for 
 parenthood; that which prepares for citizenship; that 
 which prepares for the miscellaneous refinements of life. 
 We do not mean to say that these divisions are definitely 
 separable. "We do not deny that they are intricately 
 entangled with each other in such way that there can be 
 no training for any that is not in some measure a training 
 for all. Nor do we question that of each division there are 
 portions more important than certain portions of the pre- 
 ceding divisions; that, for instance, a man of much skill 
 in business but little other faculty, may fall further below 
 the standard of complete living than one of but moderate 
 power of acquiring money but great judgment as a 
 parent; or that exhaustive information' bearing on right 
 
42 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 social action, joined with entire want of general culture 
 in literature and the fine arts, is less desirable than a more 
 moderate share of the one joined with some of the other. 
 But, after making all qualifications, there still remain 
 these broadly-marked divisions; and it still continues 
 substantially true that these divisions subordinate one 
 another in the foregoing order, because the corresponding 
 divisions of life make one another possible in that order. 
 
 Of course the ideal of education is — complete prepara- 
 tion in all these divisions. But failing this ideal, as in our 
 phase of civilization every one must do more or less, the 
 aim should be to maintain a due proportion between the 
 degrees of preparation in each. Not exhaustive cultiva- 
 tion in any one, supremely important though it may be — 
 not even an exclusive attention to the two, three, or four 
 divisions of greatest importance ; but an attention to all, — 
 greatest where the value is greatest, less where the value 
 is less, least where the value is least. For the average 
 man (not to forget the cases in which peculiar aptitude 
 for some one department of knowledge rightly makes 
 that one the bread-winning occupation) — for the average 
 man, we say, the desideratum is, a training that 
 approaches nearest to perfection in the things which most 
 subserve complete living, and falls more and more below 
 perfection in the things that have more and more remote 
 bearings on complete living. 
 
 In regulating education by this standard, there are 
 some general considerations that should be ever present to 
 us. The worth of any kind of culture, as aiding complete 
 living, may be either necessary or more or less contingent. 
 There is knowledge of intrinsic value; knowledge of 
 quasi-intrinsic value and knowledge of conventional value. 
 Such facts as that sensations of numbness and tingling 
 commonly precede paralysis, that the resistance of water 
 to a body moving through it varies as the square of the 
 velocity, that chlorine is a disinfectant — these, and the 
 truths of science in general, are of intrinsic value : they 
 will bear on human conduct ten thousand years hence as 
 they do now. The extra knowledge of our own language, 
 which is given by an acquaintance with Latin and Greek' 
 
WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH 43 
 
 may be considered to have a value that is quasi-intrinsic ; 
 it must exist for us and for other races whose languages 
 owe much to these sources ; but will last only as long as 
 our languages last. While that kind of information 
 which, in our schools, usurps the name History — the mere 
 tissue of names and dates and dead unmeaning events — 
 has a conventional value only; it has not the remotest 
 bearing upon any of our actions ; and is of use only for 
 the avoidance of those unpleasant criticisms which current 
 opinion passes upon its absence. Of course, as those facts 
 which concern all mankind throughout all time must be 
 held of greater moment than those which concern only a 
 portion of them during a limited era, and of far greater 
 moment than those which concern only a portion of them 
 during the continuance of a fashion ; it follows that in a 
 rational estimate, knowledge of intrinsic worth must, 
 other things equal, take precedence of knowledge that is of 
 quasi-intrinsic or conventional worth. 
 
 One further preliminary. Acquirement of every kind 
 has two values — value as knowledge and value as discipline. 
 Besides its use for guidance in conduct, the acquisition of 
 each order of facts has also its use as mental exercise; 
 and its effects as a preparative for complete living have to 
 be considered under both these heads. 
 
 These, then, are the general ideas with which we moist 
 set out in discussing a curriculum: — Life as divided into 
 several kinds of activity of successively decreasing import- 
 ance ; the worth of each order of facts as regulating these 
 several kinds of activity, intrinsically, quasi-intrinsieally, 
 and conventionally; and their regulative influences esti- 
 mated both as knowledge and discipline. 
 
 Happily, that all-important part of education which 
 goes to secure direct self-preservation is in great part 
 already provided for. Too momentous to be left to our 
 blundering Nature takes it into her own hands. While yet 
 in its nurse's arms, the infant, by hiding its face and cry- 
 ing at the sight of a stranger, shows the dawning instinct 
 to attain safety by flying from that which is unknown 
 and may be dangerous ; and when it can walk, the terror 
 it manifests if an unfamiliar dog comes near, or the 
 
44 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 screams with which it runs to its mother after any 
 startling sight or sound, shows this instinct further devel- 
 oped. Moreover, knowledge subserving direct self- 
 preservation is that which it is chiefly busied in acquiring 
 from hour to hour. How to balance its body; how to 
 control its movements so as to avoid collisions; what 
 objects are hard, and will hurt if struck; what objects 
 are heavy, and injure if they fall on the limbs; which 
 things will bear the weight of the body, and which not; 
 the pains inflicted by fire, by missiles, by sharp instru- 
 ments — these, and various other pieces of information 
 needful for the avoidance of death or accident, it is ever 
 learning. And when, a few years later, the energies go 
 out in running, climbing, and jumping, in games of 
 strength and games of skill, we see in all these actions by 
 which the muscles are developed, the perceptions sharp- 
 ened, and the judgment quickened, a preparation for the 
 safe conduct of the body among surrounding objects and 
 movements ; and for meeting those greater dangers that 
 occasionally occur in the lives of all. Being thus, we may 
 say, so well cared for by Nature, this fundamental edu- 
 cation needs comparatively little care from us. What we 
 are chiefly called upon to see, is, that there shall be free 
 scope for gaining this experience, and receiving this 
 discipline, — that there shall be no such thwarting of 
 Nature as that by which stupid schoolmistresses commonly 
 prevent the girls in their charge from the spontaneous 
 physical activities they would indulge in; and so render 
 them comparatively incapable of taking care of themselves 
 in circumstances of peril. 
 
 This, however, is by no means all that is comprehended 
 in the education that prepares for direct self-preservation. 
 Besides guarding the body against mechanical damage or 
 destruction, it has to be guarded against injury from other 
 causes — against the disease and death that follow breaches 
 of physiologic law. For complete living it is necessary, 
 not only that sudden annihilations of life shall be warded 
 off; but also that there shall be escaped the incapacities 
 and the slow annihilation which unwise habits entail. 
 As, without health and energy, the industrial the 
 
WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH AS 
 
 parental, the social, and all other activities become more 
 or less impossible; it is clear that this secondary kind 
 of direct self-preservation is only less important than the 
 primary kind; and that knowledge tending to secure it 
 should rank very high. 
 
 It is true that here, too, guidance is in some measure ready 
 supplied. By our various physical sensations and desires, 
 Nature has insured a tolerable conformity to the chief 
 requirements. Fortunately for us, want of food, great 
 heat, extreme cold, produce promptings too peremptory to 
 be disregarded. And would men habitually obey these and 
 all like promptings when less strong, comparatively few 
 evils would arise. If fatigue of body or brain were in 
 every case followed by desistance ; if the oppression pro- 
 duced by a close atmosphere always led to ventilation ; if 
 there were no eating without hunger, or drinking without 
 thirst; then would the system be but seldom out of 
 working order. But so profound an ignorance is there 
 of the laws of life, that men do not even know that their 
 sensations are their natural guides, and (when not ren- 
 dered morbid by long-continued disobedience) their 
 trustworthy guides. So that though, to speak teleolog- 
 ieally, Nature has provided efficient safeguards to health, 
 lack of knowledge makes them in a great measure useless. 
 
 K any one doubts the importance of an acquaintance 
 with the fundamental principles of physiology as a means 
 to complete living, let him look around and see how many 
 men and women he can find in middle or later life who 
 are thoroughly well. Occasionally only do we meet with 
 an example of vigorous health continued to old age; 
 hourly do we meet with examples of acute disorder, 
 chronic ailment, general debility, premature decrepitude. 
 Scarcely is there one to whom you put the question, who 
 has not, in the course of his life brought upon himself 
 illnesses which a little knowledge would have saved him 
 from. Here is a case of heart disease, consequent on a 
 rheumatic fever that followed reckless exposure. There 
 is a case of eyes spoiled for life by overstudy. Yesterday 
 the account was of one whose long-enduring lameness was 
 brought on by continuing, spite of the pain, to use a 
 
46 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 knee after it had been slightly injured. And to-day we 
 are told of another who has had to lie by for years, 
 because he did not know that the palpitation he suffered 
 from resulted from overtaxed brain. Now we hear of an 
 irremediable injury that followed some silly feat of 
 strength; and, again, of a constitution that has never 
 recovered from the effects of excessive work needlessly 
 undertaken. While on all sides we see the perpetual 
 minor ailments which accompany feebleness. Not to dwell 
 on the natural pain, the weariness, the gloom, the waste 
 of time and money thus entailed, only consider how greatly 
 ill-health hinders the discharge of all duties — makes busi- 
 ness often impossible, and always more difficult ; produces 
 an irritability fatal to the right management of children; 
 puts the functions of citizenship out of the question; 
 and makes amusement a bore. Is it not clear that the 
 physical sins — ^partly our forefathers ' and partly our own 
 — which produce this ill-health, deduct more from com- 
 plete living than anything else? and to a great extent 
 make life a failure and a burden instead of a benefaction 
 and a pleasure ? 
 
 To all which add the fact, that life, besides being thus 
 immensely deteriorated, is also cut short. It is not true, 
 as we commonly suppose, that a disorder or disease from 
 which we have recovered leaves us as before. No disturb- 
 ance of the normal course of the functions can pass away 
 and leave things exactly as they were. In all cases a 
 permanent damage is done — not immediately appreciable, 
 it may be, but still there; and along with other such 
 items which Nature in her strict account-keeping never 
 drops, will tell against us to the inevitable shortening of 
 our days. Through the accumulation of small injuries it 
 is that constitutions are commonly undermined, and break 
 down, long before their time. And if we call to mind 
 how far the average duration of life falls below the 
 possible duration, we see how immense is the loss. When, 
 to the numerous partial deductions wliich bad health 
 entails, we add this great final deduction, it results that 
 ordinarily more than one-half of life is thrown away. 
 
 Hence, knowledge which subserves direct self-preserva- 
 
WHA T KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH 47 
 
 tion by preventing this loss of health, is of primary 
 importance. We do not contend that possession of such 
 knowledge would by any means wholly remedy the evil. 
 For it is clear that in our present phase of civilization 
 men's necessities often compel them to transgress. And 
 it is further clear that, even in the absence of such com- 
 pulsion, their inclinations would frequently lead them, 
 spite of their knowledge, to sacrifice future good to 
 present gratification. But we do contend that the right 
 knowledge impressed in the right way would effect 
 much ; and we further contend, that as the laws of health 
 must be recognized before they can be fully conformed to, 
 the imparting of such knowledge must precede a more 
 rational living — come when that may. We infer that as 
 vigorous health and its accompanying high spirits are 
 larger elements of happiness than any other things what- 
 ever, the teaching how to maintain them is a teaching that 
 yields in moment to no other whatever. And therefore 
 we assert that such a course of physiology as is needful 
 for the comprehension of its general truths, and their 
 bearings on daily conduct, is an all-essential part of a 
 rational education. 
 
 Strange that the assertion should need making! 
 Stranger still that it should need defending! Yet are 
 there not a few by whom such a proposition will be 
 received with something approaching to derision. Men 
 who would blush if caught saying Iphigenia instead of 
 Iphigenia, or would resent as an insult any imputation 
 of ignorance respecting the fabled labors of a fabled 
 demi-god, show not the slightest shame in confessing that 
 they do not know where the Eustachian tubes are, what 
 are the actions of the spinal cord, what is the normal 
 rate of pulsation, or how the lungs are inflated. While- 
 anxious that their sons should be well up in the super- 
 stitions of two thousand years ago, they care not that they 
 should be taught anything about the structure and func- 
 tions of their own bodies — nay, would even disapprove 
 such instruction. So overwhelming is the influence of 
 established routine! So terribly in our education does 
 the ornamental override the useful. 
 
48 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 We need not insist on the value of that knowledge 
 which aids indirect self-preservation by facilitating the 
 gaining of a livelihood. This is admitted by all; and, 
 indeed, by the mass is perhaps too exclusively regarded 
 as the end of education. But while every one is ready to 
 endorse the abstract proposition that instruction fitting 
 youths for the business of life is of high importance, or 
 even to consider it of supreme importance ; yet scarcely 
 any inquire what instruction will so fit them. It is true 
 that reading, writing, and arithmetic are taught with an 
 intelligent appreciation of. their uses; but when we have 
 said this we have said nearly all. "While the great bulk of 
 what else is acquired has no bearing on the industrial 
 activities, an immensity of information that has a direct 
 bearing on the industrial activities is entirely passed over. 
 
 For, leaving out only some very small classes, what 
 are all men employed in? They are employed in the pro- 
 duction, preparation, and distribution of commodities. 
 And on what does efSciency in the production, preparation, 
 and distribution of commodities depend? It depends on 
 the use of methods fitted to the respective natures 
 of these commodities; it depends on an adequate knowl- 
 edge of their physical, chemical, or vital properties, as 
 the case may be; that is, it depends on science. This 
 order of knowledge, which is in great part ignored in our 
 school courses, is the order of knowledge underlying the 
 right performance of all those processes by which civilized 
 life is made possible. Undeniable as is this truth, and 
 thrust upon us as it is at every turn, there seems to be no 
 living consciousness of it; its very familiarity makes it 
 unregarded. To give due weight to our argument, we 
 must, therefore, realize this truth to the reader by a rapid 
 review of the facts. 
 
 For all the higher arts of construction, some acquaint- 
 ance with mathematics is indispensable. The village 
 carpenter, who, lacking rational instruction, lays out his 
 work by empirical rules learnt in his apprenticeship, 
 equally with the builder of a Britannia Bridge, makes 
 hourly reference to the laws of quantitative relations. The 
 surveyor on whose survey the land is purchased -j the 
 
WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH 49 
 
 architect in designing a mansion to be built on it; the 
 builder in preparing his estimates ; his foreman in laying 
 out the foundations; the masons in cutting the stones; 
 and the various artisans who put up the fittings; are all 
 guided by geometrical truths. Railway making is regu- 
 lated from beginning to end by mathematics : alike in the 
 preparation of plans and sections ; in staking out the line ; 
 in the mensuration of cuttings and embankments; in the 
 designing, estimating, and building of bridges, culverts, 
 viaducts, tunnels, stations. And similarly with the har- 
 bors, docks, piers, and various engineering and archi- 
 tectural works that fringe the coasts and overspread the 
 face of the country ; as well as the mines that run under- 
 neath it. Out of geometry, too, as applied to astronomy, 
 the art of navigation has grown ; and so by this science, 
 has been made possible that enormous foreign commerce 
 which supports a large part of our population, and sup- 
 plies us with many necessaries and most of our luxuries. 
 And now-a-days even the farmer, for the correct laying 
 out of his drains, has recourse to the level — ^that is, to 
 geometrical principles. When from those divisions of 
 mathematics which deal with space, and number, some small 
 smattering of which is given in schools, we turn to that 
 other division which deals with force, of which cTen a 
 smattering is scarcely ever given, we meet with another 
 large class of activities which this science presides over. 
 On the application of rational mechanics depends the suc- 
 cess of nearly all modern manufacture. The properties of 
 the lever, the wheel and axle, etc., are involved in every 
 machine — every machine is a solidified mechanical 
 theorem ; and to machinery in these times we owe nearly 
 all production. Trace the history of the breakfast roll. 
 The soil out of which it came was drained with machine- 
 made tiles ; the surface was turned over by a machine ; 
 the seed was put in by a machine ; the wheat was reaped, 
 thrashed, and winnowed by machines; by machinery it 
 was ground and bolted; and had the flour been sent to 
 Gosport, it might have been made into biscuits by a 
 machine. Look round the room in which you sit. If 
 modem, probably the bricks in its walls were machine- 
 
50 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 made; by machinery the flooring was sawn and planed, 
 the mantel-shelf sawn and polished, the paperhangings 
 made and printed; the veneer on the table, the turned 
 legs of the chairs, the carpet, the curtains, are all products 
 of machinery. And your clothing — ^plain, figured, or 
 printed — is it not wholly woven, nay, perhaps even sewed 
 by machinery ? And the volume you are reading — are not 
 its leaves fabricated by one machine and covered with 
 these words by another ? Add to which that for the means 
 of distribution over both land and sea, we are similarly 
 indebted. And then let it be remembered that according 
 as the principles of mechanics are well or ill used to these 
 ends, comes success or failure — individual and national. 
 The engineer who misapplies his formulae for the strength 
 of materials, builds a bridge that breaks down. The manu- 
 facturer whose apparatus is badly devised, cannot compete 
 with another whose apparatus wastes less in friction and 
 inertia. The shipbuilder adhering to the old model, is out- 
 sailed by one who builds on the mechanically- justified 
 wave-line principle. And as the ability of a nation to hold 
 its own against other nations depends on the skilled 
 activity of its units, we see that on such knowledge may 
 turn the national fate. Judge then the worth of 
 mathematics. 
 
 Pass next to physics. Joined with mathematics, it has 
 given us the steam engine, which does the work of millions 
 of laborers. That section of physics which deals with the 
 laws of heat, has taught us how to economize fuel in our 
 various industries; how to increase the produce of our 
 smelting furnaces by substituting the hot for the cold 
 blast ; how to ventilate our mines ; how to prevent explo- 
 sions by using the safety lamp; and, through the ther- 
 mometer, how to regulate innumerable processes. That 
 division which has the phenomena of light for its subject, 
 gives eyes to the old and the myopic; aids through the 
 microscope in detecting diseases and adulterations; and 
 by improved lighthouses prevents shipwrecks. Researches 
 in electricity and magnetism have saved incalculable life 
 and property by the compass ; have subserved sundry arts 
 by the electrotype ; and now in the telegraph, have sup- 
 
WHA T KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH SI 
 
 plied us with the agency by which for the future all 
 mercantile transactions will be regulated, political inter- 
 course carried on, and perhaps national quarrels often 
 avoided. "While in the details of indoor life, from the 
 improved kitchen range up to the stereoscope on the 
 drawing room table, the application of advanced physics 
 underlie our comforts and gratifications. 
 
 Still more numerous are the bearings of chemistry on 
 those activities by which men obtain the means of living. 
 The bleacher, the dyer, the calico printer, are severally 
 occupied in processes that are well or ill done according as 
 they do or do not conform to chemical laws. The econom- 
 ical reduction from their ores of copper, tin, zinc, lead, 
 silver, iron, are in a great measure questions of chemistry. 
 Sugar refining, gas making, soap boiling, gunpowder 
 manufacture, are operations all partly chemical; as are 
 also those by which are produced glass and porcelain. 
 Whether the distiller's work stops at the alcoholic fer- 
 mentation or passes into the acetous, is a chemical ques- 
 tion on which hangs his profit or loss and the brewer, if 
 his business is sufficiently large, finds it pays to keep a 
 chemist on his premises. Glance through a work on 
 technology, and it becomes at once apparent that there is 
 now scarcely any process in the arts or manufactures over 
 some part of which chemistry does not preside. And then, 
 lastly, we come to the fact that in these times, agriculture, 
 to be profitably carried on, must have like guidance. The 
 analysis of manures and soils; their adaptations to each 
 other; the use of gypsum or other substance for fixing 
 ammonia ; the utilization of coprolites ; the production of 
 artificial manures — all these are boons of chemistry which 
 it behooves the farmer to acquaint himself with. Be it in 
 the lucifer match, or in disinfected se\yage, or in photo- 
 graphs — ^in bread made without fermentation, or perfumes 
 extracted from refuse, we may perceive that chemistry 
 affects all our industries ; and that, by consequence, knowl- 
 edge of it concerns every one who is directly or indirectly 
 connected with our industries. 
 
 And then the science of life — biology : does not this, too, 
 bear fundamentally upon these processes of indirect selfr 
 
52 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 preservation ? With what we ordinarily call manufactures, 
 it has, indeed, little connection; but with the all-essential 
 manufacture — that of food — it is inseparably connected. 
 As agriculture must conform its methods to the phenomena 
 of vegetable and animal life, it follows necessarily that 
 the science of these phenomena is the rational basis of 
 agriculture. Various biological truths have indeed been 
 empirically established and acted upon by farmers while 
 yet there has been no conception of them as science : such 
 as that particular manures are suited to particular plants ; 
 that crops of certain kinds unfit the soil for other crops; 
 that horses cannot do good work on poor food ; that such 
 and such diseases of cattle and sheep are caused by such 
 and such conditions. These, and the every-day knowledge 
 which the agriculturist gains by experience respecting the 
 right management of plants and animals, constitute his 
 stock of biological facts ; on the largeness of which greatly 
 depends his success. And as these biological facts, scanty, 
 indefinite, rudimentary, though they are, aid him so essen- 
 tially; judge what must be the value to him of such facts 
 when they become positive, definite, and exhaustive. 
 Indeed, even now we may see the benefits that rational 
 biology is conferring on him. The truth that the produc- 
 tion of animal heat implies waste of substance, and that, 
 therefore, preventing loss of heat prevents the need for 
 extra food — a purely theoretical conclusion — now guides 
 the fattening of cattle : it is found that by keeping cattle 
 warm, fodder is saved. ' Similarly with respect to variety 
 of food. The experiments of physiologists have shown 
 that not only is change of diet beneficial, but that diges- 
 tion is facilitated by a mixture of ingredients in each 
 meal: both which truths are now influencing cattle 
 feeding. The discovery that a disorder known as "the 
 staggers," of which many thousands of sheep have died 
 annually, is caused by an entozoon which presses on the 
 brain; and that if the creature is extracted through the 
 softened place in the skull which marks its position the 
 sheep usually recovers, is another debt which agriculture 
 owes to biology. When we observe the marked contrast 
 between our farming and farming on the continent and 
 
WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH S3 
 
 remember that this contrast is mainly due to the far 
 greater influence science has had upon farming here than 
 there ; and when we see how, daily, competition is making 
 the adoption of seientifie methods more general and neces- 
 sary; we shall rightly infer that verj^ soon, agricultural 
 success in England will be impossible without a competent 
 knowledge of animal and vegetable physiology. 
 
 Yet one more science have we to note as bearing directly 
 on industrial success — the science of society. Without 
 knowing it, men who daily look at the state of the money 
 market, glance over prices current, discuss the probable 
 crops of corn, cotton, sugar, wool, silk, weigh the chances 
 of war, and from all those data decide on their mercantile 
 operations, are students of social science : empirical and 
 blundering students it may be; but still, students who 
 gain the prizes or are plucked of their profits, according 
 as they do or do not reach the right conclusion. Not oijly 
 the manufacturer and the merchant must guide their 
 transactions by calculations of supply and demand, based 
 on numerous facts, and tacitly recognizing sundry general 
 principles of social action ; but even the retailer must do 
 the like : his prosperity very greatly depending upon the 
 correctness of his judgments respecting the future whole- 
 sale prices and the future rates of consumption. Mani- 
 festly, all who take part in the entangled commercial 
 activities of a community, are vitally interested in under- 
 standing the laws according to which those activities vary. 
 
 Thus, to all such as are occupied in the production, 
 exchange, or distribution of commodities, acquaintance 
 with science in some of its departments, is of fundamental 
 importance. Whoever is immediately or remotely impli- 
 cated in any form of industry (and few are not) has a 
 direct interest in understanding something of the mathe- 
 matical, physical, and chemical properties of things ; per- 
 haps, also, has a direct interest in biology; and certainly 
 has in sociology. Whether he does or does not succeed well 
 in that indirect self-preservation which we call getting a 
 good livelihood, depends in a great degree on his knowl- 
 edge of one or more of these sciences : not, it may be, a 
 rational knowledge; but still a knowledge, though 
 
54' EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 empirical. For what we call learning a business, really 
 implies learning the science involved in it; though not 
 perhaps under the name of science. And hence a ground- 
 ing in science is of great importance, both because it pre- 
 pares for all this, and because rational knowledge has an 
 immense superiority over empirical knowledge. More- 
 over, not only is it that scientific culture is requisite for 
 each, that he may understand the how and the why of the 
 things and processes with which he is concerned as maker 
 or distributor; but it is often of much moment that he 
 should understand the how and the why of various other 
 things and processes. In this age of joint stock under- 
 takings, nearly every man above the laborer is interested 
 as capitalist in some other occupation than his own ; and, 
 as thus interested, his profit or loss often depends on his 
 knowledge of the sciences bearing on this other occupation. 
 Here is a mine, in the sinking of which many shareh^Dlders 
 ruined themselves, from not knowing that a certain fossil 
 belonged to the old red sandstone, below which no coal is 
 found. Not many years ago, 20,000/. was lost in the prose- 
 cution of a scheme for collecting the alcohol that distills 
 from bread in baking : all of which would have been saved 
 to the subscribers, had they known that less than a 
 hundredth part by weight of the flour is changed in fer- 
 mentation. Numerous attempts have been made to 
 construct electro-magnetic engines in the hope of super- 
 seding steam; but had those who supplied the money, 
 understood the general law of the correlation and 
 equivalence of forces, they might have had better balances 
 at their bankers. Daily are men induced to aid in carry- 
 ing out inventions which a mere tyro in science could 
 show to be futile. Scarcely a locality but has its history 
 of fortunes thrown away over some impossible project. 
 
 And if already the loss from want of science is so 
 frequent and so great, still greater and more frequent will 
 it be to those who hereafter lack science. Just as fast as 
 productive processes become more scientific, which com- 
 petition will inevitably make them do; and just as fast 
 as joint stock undertakings spread, which they certainly 
 
WHA T KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH S5 
 
 will; SO fast will scientific knowledge grow necessary to 
 every one. 
 
 That which our school courses leave almost entirely out, 
 we thus find to be that which most nearly concerns the 
 business of life. All our industries would cease, were it 
 not for that information which men begin to acquire as 
 they best may after their education is said to be finished. 
 And were it not for this information, that has been from 
 age to age accumulated and spread by unofficial means, 
 these industries would never have existed. Had there been 
 no teaching but such as is given in our public schools, 
 England would now be what it was in feudal times. That 
 increasing acquaintance with the laws of phenomena 
 which has through successive ages enabled us to subjugate 
 nature to our needs, and in these days gives the common 
 laborer comforts which a few centuries ago kings could 
 not purchase, is scarcely in any degree owed to the 
 appointed means of instructing our youth. The vital 
 knowledge — that by which we have grown as a nation to 
 what we are, and which now underlies our whole existence, 
 is a knowledge that has got itself taught in nooks and 
 corners; while the ordained agencies for teaching have 
 been mumbling little else but dead formulas. 
 
 We come now to the third great division of human 
 activities — a division for which no preparation whatever 
 is made. If by some strange chance not a vestige of us 
 descended to the remote future save a pile of our school 
 books or some college examination papers, we may imagine 
 how puzzled an antiquary of the period would be on 
 finding in them no indication that the learners were ever 
 likely to be parents. "This must have been the curriculum 
 for their celibates," we may fancy him concluding. "I 
 perceive here an elaborate preparation for many things : 
 especially for reading the books of extinct nations and of 
 co-existing nations (from which indeed it seems clear that 
 these people had very little worth reading in their own 
 tongue) ; but I find no reference whatever to the bringing 
 up of children. They could not have been so absurd as to 
 omit all training for this gravest of responsibilities. Evi- 
 
56 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 dently then, this was the school course of one of their 
 monastic orders." 
 
 Seriously, is it not an astonishing fact, that though on 
 the treatment of offspring depend their lives or deaths, 
 and their moral welfare or ruin; yet not one word of 
 instruction on the treatment of offspring is ever given to 
 those who will hereafter be parents ? Is it not monstrous 
 that the fate of a new generation should be left to the 
 chances of unreasoning custom, impulse, fancy — ^joined 
 with the suggestions of ignorant nurses and the prejudiced 
 counsel of grandmothers ? If a merchant commenced busi- 
 ness without any knowledge of arithmetic and bookkeep- 
 ing, we should exclaim at his folly, and look for disastrous 
 consequences. Or if, before studying anatomy, a man set 
 up as a surgical operator, we should wonder at his auda- 
 city and pity his patients. But that parents should begin 
 the difficult task of rearing children without ever having 
 given a thought to the principles — physical, moral, or 
 intellectual — which ought to guide them, excites neither 
 surprise at the actors nor pity for their victims. 
 
 To tens of thousands that are killed, add hundreds of 
 thousands that survive with feeble constitutions, and 
 millions that grow up with constitutions not so strong as 
 they should be ; and you will have some idea of the curse 
 inflicted on their offspring by parents ignorant of the laws 
 of life. Do but consider for a moment that the regimen to 
 which children are subject is hourly telling upon them to 
 their life-long injury or benefit ; and that there are twenty 
 ways of going wrong to one way of going right ; and you 
 will get some idea of the enormous mischief that is almost 
 everywhere inflicted by the thoughtless, haphazard system 
 in common use. . Is it decided that a boy shall be clothed in 
 some flimsy short dress, and be allowed to go playing 
 about with limbs reddened by cold ? The decision will tell 
 on his whole future existence — either in illnesses; or in 
 stunted growth ; or in deficient energy ; or in a maturity 
 less vigorous than it ought to have been, and consequent 
 hindrances to success and happiness. Are children doomed 
 to a monotonous dietary, or a dietary that is deficient in 
 nutritiveness ? Their ultimate physical power and their 
 
n'HAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH 57 
 
 efficiency as men and women, will inevitably be more or 
 less diminished by it. Are they forbidden vociferous play, 
 or (being too ill-elothed to bear exposure), are they kept 
 indoors in cold weather? They are certain to fall below 
 that measure of health and strength to which they would 
 else ha\e attained. AYhen sons and daughters grow up 
 sickly and feeble, parents commonly regard the event as a 
 misfortune — as a visitation of Providence. Thinking after 
 the prevalent chaotic fashion, they assume that these evils 
 come without causes ; or that the causes are supernatural. 
 Nothing of the kind. In some cases the causes are doubt- 
 less inherited; but in most cases foolish regulations are 
 the causes. Very generally parents themselves are respon- 
 sible for all this pain, this debility, this depression, this 
 misery. They have undertaken to control the lives of 
 their offspring from hour to hour ; with cruel carelessness 
 they have neglected to learn anything about these vital 
 processes which they are unceasingly affecting by their 
 eommands and prohibitions; in utter ignorance of the 
 simplest physiologic laws, they have been year by year 
 undermining the constitutions of their children ; and have 
 so inflicted disease and premature death, not only on them 
 but on their descendants. 
 
 Equally great are the ignorance and the consequent 
 injury, when we turn from physical training to moral 
 training. Consider the young mother and her nursery 
 legislation. But a few years ago she was at school, where 
 her memory was crammed with words, and names, and 
 dates, and her reflective faculties scarcely in the slightest 
 degree exercised — where not one idea was given her 
 respecting the methods of dealing with the opening mind 
 of childhood ; and where her discipline did not in the least 
 fit her for thinking out methods of her own. The interven- 
 ing years have been passed in practicing music, in fancy 
 work, in novel reading, and in party going; no thought 
 having yet been given to the grave responsibilities of 
 maternity; and scarcely any of that solid intellectual 
 culture obtained which would be some preparation for 
 such responsibilities. And' now see her with an unfolding 
 human character committed to her charge — see her pro- 
 
S8 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 f oundly ignorant of the phenomena with which she has to 
 deal, undertaking to do that which can be done but imper- 
 fectly even with the aid of the profoundest knowledge. 
 She knows nothing about the nature of the emotions, their 
 order of evolution, their functions, or where use ends and 
 abuse begins. She is under the impression that some of 
 the feelings are wholly bad, which is not true of any one 
 of them ; and that others are good, however far they may 
 be carried, which is also not true of any one of them. ' And 
 then, ignorant as she is of that with which she has to deal, 
 she is equally ignorant of the effects that will be produced 
 on it by this or that treatment. What can be more inevi- 
 table than the disastrous results we see hourly arising? 
 Lacking knowledge of -mental phenomena, with their 
 causes and consequences, her interference is frequently 
 more mischievous than absolute passivity would have 
 been. This and that kind of action, which are quite normal 
 and beneficial, she perpetually thwarts ; and so diminishes 
 the child's happiness and profit, injures its temper and her 
 own, and produces estrangement. Deeds which she thinks 
 it desirable to encourage, she gets performed by threats 
 and bribes, or by exciting a desire for applause : consider- 
 ing little what the inward motive may be, so long as the 
 outward conduct conforms; and thus cultivating hypoc- 
 risy, and fear, and selfishness, in place of good feeling. 
 While insisting on truthfulness, she constantly sets an 
 example of untruth, by threatening penalties which she 
 does not inflict. While inculcating self-control, she hourly 
 visits on her little ones angry scoldings for acts that do not 
 call for them. She has not the remotest idea that in the 
 nursery, as in the world, that alone is the truly salutary 
 discipline which visits on all conduct, good and bad, the 
 natural consequences — the consequences, pleasurable or 
 painful, which in the nature of things such conduct 
 tends to bring. Being thus without theoretic guidance, 
 and quite incapable of guiding herself by tracing the 
 mental processes going on in her children, her rule is 
 impulsive, inconsistent, mischievous, often in the highest 
 degree; and would indeed be generally ruinous, were it 
 not that the overwhelming tendency of the growing mind 
 
WHA T KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH 59 
 
 to assume the moral type of the race, usually subordi- 
 nates all minor influences. 
 
 And then the culture of the intellect — is not this, too, 
 mismanaged in a similar manner? Grant that the phe- 
 nomena of intelligence conform to laws; grant that the 
 evolution of intelligence in a child also conforms to laws ; 
 and it follows inevitably that education can be rightly 
 guided only by a knowledge of these laws. To suppose 
 that you can properly regulate this process of forming and 
 accumulating ideas, without understanding the nature of 
 the process is absurd. How widely, then, must teaching 
 as it is, differ from teaching as it should be ; when hardly 
 any parents, and but few teachers, know anything about 
 psychology. As might be expected, the system is griev- 
 ously at fault, alike in matter and in manner. While the 
 right class of facts is withheld, the wrong class is forcibly 
 administered in the wrong way and in the wrong order. 
 With that common limited idea of education which con- 
 fines it to knowledge gained from books, parents thrust 
 primers into the hands of their little ones years too soon, 
 to their great injury. Not recognizing the truth that the 
 function of books is supplementary — that they form an 
 indirect means to knowledge when direct means fail — a 
 means of seeing through other men what you cannot see 
 for yourself; they are eager to give second-hand facts in 
 place of first-hand facts. Not perceiving the enormous 
 value of that spontaneous education which goes on in early 
 years — not perceiving that a child's restless observation, 
 instead of being ignored or checked, should be diligently 
 administered to, and made as accurate and complete as 
 possible; they insist on occupying its eyes and thoughts 
 with things that are, for the time being, incomprehensible 
 and repugnant. Possessed by a superstition which wor- 
 ships the symbols of knowledge instead of the knowledge 
 itself, they do not see that only Avhen his acquaintance 
 with the objects and processes of the household, the 
 streets, and the fields, is becoming tolerably exhaustive — 
 only then should a child be introduced to the new sources 
 of information which books supply: and this, not only 
 because immediate cognition is of far greater value than 
 
60 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 mediate cognition; but also because the words contained 
 in books can be rightly interpreted into ideas, only in pro- 
 portion to the antecedent experience of things. Observe 
 next, that this formal instruction, far too soon commenced, 
 is carried on with but little reference to the laws of mental 
 development. Intellectual progress is of necessity from 
 the concrete to the abstract. But regardless of this, highly 
 abstract subjects, such as grammar, which should come 
 quite late, are begun quite early. Political geography, 
 dead and uninteresting to a child, and which should be an 
 appendage of sociological studies is commenced betimes; 
 while physical geography, comprehensible and compara- 
 tively attractive to a child, is in great part passed over. 
 Nearly every subject dealt with is arranged in abnormal 
 order : definitions, and rules, and principles being put first, 
 instead of being disclosed, as they are in the order of 
 nature, through the study of cases. And then, pervading 
 the whole, is the vicious system of rote learning^jii system 
 of sacrificing the spirit to the letter. See the results. 
 What with perceptions unnaturally dulled by early 
 thwarting, and a coerced attention to books — what with 
 the mental confusion produced by teaching subjects before 
 they can be understood, and in each of them giving gen- 
 eralizations before the facts of which, these are the 
 generalizations — what with making the pupil a mere pas- 
 sive recipient of other's ideas, and not in the least leading 
 him to be an active inquirer or self-instructor — and what 
 with taxing the faculties to excess; there are very few 
 minds that become as efficient as they might be. Examina- 
 tions being onee passed, books are laid aside ; the greater 
 part of what has been acquired, being unorganized, soon 
 drops out of recollection ; what remains is mostly inert— 
 the art of applying knowledge not having been cultivated; 
 and there is but little power either of accurate observa- 
 tion or independent thinking. To all which add, that 
 while much of the information gained is of relatively 
 small value, an immense mass of information of trans- 
 cendent value is entirely passed over. 
 
 Thus we find the facts to be such as might have been 
 inferred a priori. The training of children— physical, 
 
WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH 61 
 
 moral, and intellectual — is dreadfully defective. And in 
 great measure it is so, because parents are devoid of that 
 knowledge by which this training can alone be rightly 
 guided. What is to be expected when one of the most 
 intricate of problems is undertaken by those who have 
 given scarcely a thought to the principles on which its 
 solution depends ? For shoe making or house building, for 
 the management of a ship or a locomotive engine, a long 
 apprenticeship is needful. Is it, then, that the unfolding 
 of a human being in body and mind, is so comparatively 
 simple a process, that any one may superintend and regu- 
 late it with no preparation whatever? If not — if the 
 process is with one exception more complex than any in 
 Nature, and the task of administering to it one of sur- 
 passing difiSculty; is it not madness to make no provision 
 for such a task? Better sacrifice accomplishments than 
 omit this all-essential instruction. When a father, acting on 
 false dogmas adopted without examination, has alienated 
 his sons, driven them into rebellion by his harsh treatment, 
 ruined them, and made himself miserable; he might 
 reflect that the study of Ethology would have been worth 
 pursuing, even at the cost of knowing nothing about 
 Aeschylus. When a mother is mourning over a first born 
 that has sunk under the sequelae of scarlet fever — when 
 perhaps a candid medical man has confirmed her sus- 
 picion that her child would have recovered had not its 
 system been enfeebled by over study — when she is pros- 
 trate under the pangs of combined grief and remorse ; it 
 is but a small consolation that she can read Dante in the 
 original. 
 
 Thus we see that for regulating the third great division 
 of human activities, a knowledge of the laws of life is 
 the one thing needful. Some acquaintance with the first 
 principles of physiology and the elementary truths of 
 psychology is indispensable for the right bringing up of 
 children. We doubt not that this assertion will by many 
 be read with a smile. That parents in general should be 
 expected to acquire a knowledge of subjects so abstruse, 
 will seem to them an absurdity. . And if we proposed that 
 an exhaustive knowledge of these subjects should be 
 
62 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 obtained by all fathers and mothers, the absurdity would 
 indeed be glaring enough. But we do not. General 
 principles only, accompanied by such detailed illustrations 
 as may be needed to make them understood, would suffice. 
 And these might be readily taught — if not rationally, then 
 dogmatically. Be this as it may, however, here are the 
 indisputable facts: that the development of children in 
 mind and body rigorously obeys certain laws ; that unless 
 these laws are in some degree conformed to by parents, 
 death is inevitable ; that unless they are in a great degree 
 conformed to, there must result serious physical and 
 mental defects ; and that only when they are completely 
 conformed to, can a perfect maturity be reached. Judge, 
 then, whether all who may one day be parents, should 
 not strive with some anxiety to learn what these laws are. 
 
 Prom the parental functions let us pass now, to the 
 functions of the citizen. We have here to inquire what 
 knowledge best fits a man for the discharge of these 
 functions. It cannot be alleged, as in the last case, that 
 the need for knowledge fitting him for these functions is 
 wholly overlooked ; for our school courses contain certain 
 studies which, nominally at least, bear upon political and 
 social duties. Of these the only one that occupies a promi- 
 nent place is history. 
 
 But as already more than once hinted, the historic 
 information commonly given is almost valueless for pur- 
 poses of guidance. Scarcely any of the facts set down in 
 our school histories, and very few even of those contained 
 in the more elaborate works virritten for adults, give any 
 clue to the right principles of political action. The 
 biographies of monarchs (and our children commonly 
 learn little else) throw scarcely any light upon the science 
 of society. Familiarity with court intrigues, plots, usurp- 
 ations, or the like, and with all the personalities accom- 
 panying them, aids very little in elucidating the principles 
 on which national welfare depends. We read of some 
 squabble for power, that it. led to a pitched battle ; that 
 such and such were the names of the generals and their 
 leading subordinates; that they had each so many 
 thousand infantry and cavalry, and so many cannon : that 
 
WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH 63 
 
 they arranged their forces in this and that order; that 
 they maneuvered, attacked and fell back in certain ways ; 
 that at this part of the day such disasters were sustained 
 and at that such advantages gained; that in one par- 
 ticular movement some leading officer fell, while in 
 another a certain regiment was decimated; that after all 
 the changing fortunes of the fight, the victory was gained 
 by this or that army; and that so many were killed and 
 wounded on each side, and so many captured by the con- 
 querors. And now, out of the accumulated details which 
 make up the narrative, say which it is that helps you in 
 deciding on your conduct as a citizen. Supposing even 
 that you had diligently read, not only "The Fifteen 
 Decisive Battles of the World," but accounts of all other 
 battles that history mentions; how much more judicious 
 would your vote be at the next election? "But these are 
 facts — interesting facts," you say. Without doubt they 
 are facts (such, at least, as are not wholly or partially 
 fictions) ; and to many they may be interesting facts. 
 But this by no means implies that they are valuable. 
 Factitious or morbid opinion often gives seeining value to 
 things that have scarcely any. A tulipomaniac will not 
 part with a choice bulb for its weight in gold. To another 
 man an ugly piece of cracked old china seems his most 
 desirable possession. And there are those who give high 
 prices for the relics of celebrated murderers. Will it be 
 contended that these tastes are any measures of value in 
 the things that gratify them? If not, then it must be 
 admitted that the liking felt for certain classes of his- 
 torical facts is no proof of their worth ; and that we must 
 test their worth as we test the worth of other facts, by 
 asking to what uses they are applicable. Were some one 
 to tell you that your neighbor's cat kittened yesterday, 
 you would say the information was worthless. Fact 
 though it might be, you would say it was an utterly use- 
 less fact — a fact that could in no way influence your 
 actions in life — a fact that would not help you in learning 
 how to live completely. Well, apply the same test to the 
 great mass of historical facts, and you will get the same 
 results. They are facts from which no conclusions can be 
 
64 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 drawn — unorganizabh facts ; and therefore facts which can 
 be of no service in establishing principles of conduct, 
 which is the chief use of facts. Read them, if you like, 
 for amusement; but do not flatter yovirself they are 
 instructive. 
 
 That which constitutes history, properly so called, is 
 in great part omitted from works on the subject. Only of 
 late years have historians commenced giving us, in any 
 considerable quantity, the truly valuable information. 
 As in past ages the king was everything and the people 
 nothing; so, in past histories the doings of the king fill 
 the entire picture, to which the national life forms but an 
 obscure background. "While only now, when the welfare 
 of nations rather than of rulers is becoming the dominant 
 idea, are historians beginning to occupy themselves with 
 the phenomena of social progress. That which it really 
 concerns us to know, is the natural history of society. 
 We want all facts which help us to understand how a 
 nation has grown and organized itself. Among these, let 
 us of course have an account of its government ; with as 
 little as may be of gossip about the men who officered it, 
 and as much as possible about the structure, principles, 
 methods, prejudices, corruptions, etc., which it exhibited: 
 and let this account not only include the nature and 
 actions of the central government, but also those of local 
 governments, down to their minutest ramifications. Let us 
 of course also have a parallel description of the ecclesias- 
 tical government — its organization, its conduct, its power, 
 its relations to the State: and accompanying this, the 
 ceremonial, creed, and religious ideas — not only those 
 nominally believed, but those really believed and acted 
 upon. Let us at the same time be informed of the control 
 exercised by class over class, as displayed in all social 
 observances — in titles, salutations, and forms of address. 
 Let us know, too, what were all the other customs which 
 regulated the popular life out of doors and in doors: 
 including those which concern the relations of the sexes. 
 and the relations of parents to children. The supersti- 
 tions, also, from the more important myths down to the 
 charms in common use, should be indicated. Next should 
 
iVHA T KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH 65 
 
 come a delineation of the industrial system; showing to 
 what extent the division of labor was carried ; how trades 
 were regulated, whether by caste, guilds, or otherwise; 
 what was the connection between employers and 
 employed; what were the agencies for distributing com- 
 modities, what were the means of communication; what 
 was the circiilating medium. Accompanying all which 
 should come an account of the industrial arts technically 
 considered; stating the processes in use, and the quality 
 of the products. Further, the intellectual condition of the 
 nation in its various grades should be depicted : not only 
 with respect to the kind and amount of education, but 
 with respect to the progress made in science, and the 
 prevailing manner of thinking. The degree of aesthetic 
 culture, as displayed in architecture, sculpture, painting, 
 dress, music, poetry, and fiction, should be described. Nor 
 should there be omitted a sketch of the daily lives of the 
 people — ^their food, their homes, and their amusements. 
 And lastly, to connect the whole, should be exhibited the 
 morals, theoretical and practical, of all classes : as indi- 
 cated in their laws, habits, proverbs, deeds. All these 
 facts, given with as much brevity as consists with 
 clearness and accuracy, should be so grouped and 
 arranged that they may be comprehended in their 
 ensemble; and thus may be contemplated as mutually 
 dependent parts of one great whole. The aim should be so 
 to present them that we may readily trace the consensus 
 subsisting among them; with the view of learning what 
 social phenomena co-exists with what others. And then 
 the corresponding delineations of succeeding ages should 
 be so managed as to show us, as clearly as may be, how 
 each belief, institution, custom, and arrangement was 
 modified; and how the consensus of preceding structures 
 and functions was developed into the consensus of succeed- 
 ing ones. Such alone is the kind of information respecting 
 past times, which can be of service to the citizen for the 
 regulation of his conduct. The only history that is of 
 practical value, is what may be called descriptive 
 sociology. And the highest oflBce which the historian can 
 discharge, is that of so narrating the lives of nations, as 
 
66 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 to furnish materials for a comparative sociology ; and for 
 the subsequent determination of the ultimate laws to 
 which social phenomena conform. 
 
 But now mark, that even supposing an adequate stock 
 of this truly valuable historical knowledge has been 
 acquired, it is of comparatively little use without the key. 
 And the key is to be found only in science. Without an 
 acquaintance with the general truths of biology and 
 psychology, rational interpretation of social phenomena is 
 impossible. Only in proportion as men obtain a certain 
 rude, empirical knowledge of human nature, are they 
 enabled to understand even the simplest facts of social 
 life: as, for instance, the relation between supply and 
 demand. And if not even the most elementary truths of 
 sociology can be reached until some knowledge is obtained 
 of how men generally think, feel, and act under given 
 circumstances; then it is manifest that there can be 
 nothing like a wide comprehension of sociology, unless 
 through a competent knowledge of man in all his faculties, 
 bodily and mental. Consider the matter in the abstract, 
 and this conclusion is self-evident. Thus: Society is 
 made up of individuals ; all that is done in society is done 
 by the combined actions of individuals ; and, therefore, in 
 individual actions only can be found the solutions of social 
 phenomena. But the actions of individuals depend on the 
 laws of their natures ; and their actions cannot be under- 
 stood until these laws are understood. These laws, how- 
 ever, when reduced to their simplest expression, are found 
 to depend on the laws of body and mind in general. 
 Hence it necessarily follows, that biology and psychology 
 are indispensable as interpreters of sociology. Or, to state 
 the conclusions still more simply — all social phenomena 
 are phenomena of life — are the most complex manifesta- 
 tions of life — are ultimately dependent on the laws of 
 life — and can be understood only when the laws of life 
 are understood. Thus, then, we see that for the regulation 
 of this fourth division of human activities, we are, as 
 before, dependent on science. Of the knowledge com- 
 monly imparted in educational courses, very little is of 
 any service in guiding a man in his conduct as a citizen. 
 
WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH 67 
 
 Only a small part of the history he reads is of practical 
 value ; and of this small part he is not prepared to make 
 proper use. He commonly lacks not only the materials 
 for, but the very conception of, descriptive sociology ; and 
 he also lacks that knowledge of the organic sciences, 
 without which even descriptive sociology can give him 
 but little aid. 
 
 And now we come to that remaining division of human 
 life which includes the relaxations, pleasures, and amuse- 
 ments jSUing leisure hours. After considering what 
 training best fits for self-preservation, for the obtainment 
 of sustenance, for the discharge of parental duties, and 
 for the regulation of social and political conduct; we 
 have now to consider what training best fits for the mis- 
 cellaneous ends not included in these — for the enjoyments 
 of nature, of literature, and of the fine arts, in all their 
 forms. Postponing them as we do to things that bear 
 more vitaUy upon human welfare ; and bringing every- 
 thing, as we have, to the test of actual value; it will 
 perhaps be inferred that we are inclined to slight these less 
 essential things. No greater mistake could be made, 
 however. We yield to none in the value we attach to 
 aesthetic culture and its pleasures. Without painting, 
 sculpture, music, poetry, and the emotions produced by 
 natural beauty of every kind, life would lose half its 
 charm. So far from thinking that the training and 
 gratification of the tastes are unimportant, we believe 
 the time will come when they will occupy a much larger 
 share of human life than now. When the forces of nature 
 have been fully conquered to man 's use— when the means 
 of production have been brought to perfection — ^when 
 labor has been economized to the highest degree — when 
 education has been so systematized that a preparation for 
 the more essential activities may be made with compara- 
 tive rapidity — and when, consequently, there is a great 
 increase of spare time ; then will the poetry, both of art 
 and nature, rightly fill a large space in the minds of all. 
 
 But it is one thing to admit that aesthetic culture is in 
 a high degree conducive to human happiness ; and another 
 thing to admit that it is a fundamental requisite to human 
 
68 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 happiness. However important it may be, it must yield 
 precedence to those kinds of culture which bear more 
 directly upon the duties of life. As before hinted, litera- 
 ture and the fine arts are made possible by those activities 
 which make individual and social life possible ; and mani- 
 festly, that which is made possible, must be postponed to 
 that which makes it possible. A florist cultivates a plant 
 for the sake of its flower; and regards the roots and 
 leaves as of value, chiefly because they are instrumental 
 in producing the flower. But while, as an ultimate 
 product, the flower is the thing to which everything else 
 is subordinate, the florist very well knows tha't the root 
 and leaves are intrinsically of greater importance; 
 because on them the evolution of the flower depends. 
 He bestows every care in rearing a healthy plant; and 
 knows it would be folly if, in his anxiety to obtain the 
 flower, he were to neglect the plant. Similarly in the 
 case before us. Architecture, sculpture, painting, music, 
 poetry, etc., may be truly called ithe efflorescence of 
 civilized life. But even supposing them to be of such 
 transcendent worth as to subordinate the civilized life out 
 of which they grow (which can hardly be asserted), it 
 will still be admitted that the production of a healthy 
 civilized life must be the first consideration ; and that the 
 knowledge conducing to this must occupy the highest 
 place. 
 
 And here we see most distinctly the vice of our educa^ 
 tional system. It neglects the plant for the sake of the 
 flower. In anxiety for elegance, it forgets substance. 
 While it gives no knowledge conducive to self-preserva- 
 tion — while of knowledge that facilitates gaining a liveli- 
 hood it gives but the rudiments, and leaves the greater 
 part to be picked up any how in after life — ^while for the 
 discharge of parental functions it makes not the slightest 
 provision — and while for the duties of citizenship it pre- 
 pares by imparting a mass of facts, most of which are 
 irrelevant, and the rest without a key; it is diligent in 
 teaching everything that adds to refinement, polish, eclat. 
 However fully we may admit that extensive acquaintance 
 with modern languages is a valuable accomplishment, 
 
WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH 69 
 
 which, through reading, conversation, and travel, aids in 
 giving a certain finish; it by no means follows that this 
 result is rightly purchased at the cost of that vitally 
 important knowledge sacrificed to it. Supposing it true 
 that classical education conduces to elegance and correct- 
 ness of style ; it cannot be said that elegance and correct- 
 ness of style are comparable in importance to a familiarity 
 with the principles that should guide the rearing of 
 children. Grant that the taste may be greatly improved 
 by reading all the poetry written in extinct languages; 
 yet it is not to be inferred that such improvement of taste 
 is equivalent in value to an acquaintance with the laws of 
 health. Accomplishments, the fine arts, belles-lettres, and 
 all these things which, as we say, constitute the efflores- 
 cence of civilization, should be wholly subordinate to that 
 knowledge and discipline in which civilization rests. As 
 they occupy the leisure part of life, so should they occupy the 
 leisure part of education. 
 
 Thus far our question has been, the worth of knowledge 
 of this or that kind for purposes of guidance. We have 
 now to judge the relative values of different kinds of 
 knowledge for purposes of discipline. This division of our 
 subject we are obliged to treat with comparative brevity; 
 and happily, no very lengthened treatment of it is needed. 
 Having found what is best for the one end, we have by 
 implication found what is best for the other. We may be 
 quite sure that the acquirement of those classes of facts 
 which are most useful for regulating conduct, involves a 
 mental exercise best fitted for strengthening the faculties. 
 It would be utterly contrary to the beautifxil economy of 
 nature, if one kind of culture were needed for the gaining 
 of information and another kind were needed as a mental 
 gymnastic. Everywhere throughout creation we find 
 faculties developed through the performance of those 
 functions which it is their ofSce to perform ; not through 
 the performance of artificial exercises devised to fit them 
 for these functions. The Red Indian acquires the swift- 
 ness and agility which makes him a successful hunter, by 
 the actual pursuit of animals; and by the miscellaneous 
 
70 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 activities of his life, he gains a better balance of physical 
 powers than gymnastics ever give. That skill in tracking 
 enemies and prey which he has reached by long practice, 
 implies a subtlety of perception far exceeding anything 
 produced by artificial training. And similarly through- 
 out. From the Bushman, whose eye, which being 
 habitually employed in identifying distant objects that are 
 to be pursued or fled from, has acquired a quite telescopic 
 range, to the accountant whose daily practice enables him 
 to add up several columns of figures simultaneously, we 
 find that the highest power of a faculty results from the 
 discharge of those duties which the conditions of life 
 require it to discharge. And we may be certain, a priori, 
 that the same law holds throughout education. The edu- 
 cation of most value for guidance, must at the same time 
 be the education of most value for discipline. Let us 
 consider the evidence. 
 
 One advantage claimed for that devotion to language 
 learning which forms so prominent a feature in the ordi- 
 nary curriculum, is, that the memory is thereby strength- 
 ened. And it is apparently assumed that this is an 
 advantage peculiar to the study of words. But the truth 
 is, that the sciences afford far wider fields for the exercise 
 of memory. It is no slight task to remember all the facts 
 ascertained respecting our solar system; much more to 
 remember all that is known concerning the structure of 
 our galaxy. The new compounds which chemistry daily 
 accumulates, are so numerous that few, save professors, 
 know the names of them all; and to recollect the atomic 
 constitutions and affinities of all these compounds, is 
 scarcely possible without making chemistry the occupation 
 of life. In the enormous mass of phenomena presented by 
 the earth's crust, and in the still more enormous mass of 
 phenomena presented by the fossils it contains, there is 
 matter which it takes the geological student years of 
 application to master. In each leading division of 
 physics— sound, heat, light, electricity — the facts are 
 numerous enough to alarm any one proposing to learn 
 them all. And when we pass to the organic sciences, the 
 effort of memory required becomes still greater. In 
 
WHA T KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH 7 1 
 
 human anatomy alone, the quantity of detail is so great, 
 that the young surgeon has commonly to get it up half a 
 dozen times before he can permanently retain it. The num- 
 ber of species of plants which botanists distinguish, amounts 
 to some 320,000; while the varied forms of animal life 
 with which the zoologist deals, are estimated at some two 
 millions. So vast is the accumulation of facts which men 
 of science have before them, that only by dividing and 
 subdividing their labors can they deal with it. To a 
 complete knowledge of his own division, each adds but a 
 general knowledge of the rest. Surely, then, science, 
 cultivated even to a very moderate extent, affords ade- 
 quate exercise for memory. To say the very least, it 
 involves quite as good a training for this faculty as 
 language does. 
 
 But now mark that while for the training of mere 
 memory, science is as good as, if not better than, language ; 
 it has an immense superiority in the kind of memory it 
 cultivates. In the acquirement of a language, the con- 
 nections of ideas to be established in the mind correspond 
 to facts that are in a great measure accidental ; whereas, 
 in the acquirement of science, the connections of ideas to 
 be established in the mind correspond to facts that are 
 mostly necessary. It is true that the relations of words to 
 their meaning is in one sense natural, and that the genesis 
 of these relations may be traced back a certain distance ; 
 though very rarely to the beginning ; (to which let us add 
 the remark that the laws of this genesis form a branch of 
 mental science — the science of philology). But since it 
 will not be contended that in the acquisition of languages, 
 as ordinarily carried on, these natural relations between 
 words and their meanings are habitually traced, and 
 the laws regulating them explained; it must be admitted 
 that they are commonly learned as fortuitous relations. 
 On the other hand, the relations which science pre- 
 sents are causal relations; and, when properly taught, 
 are understood as such. Instead of being practically 
 accidental, they are necessary; and as such, give exercise 
 to the reasoning faculties. While language familiarizes 
 with non-rational relations, science familiarizes with 
 
72 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 rational relations. While the one exercises memory only, 
 the other exercises both memory and understanding. 
 
 Observe next that a great superiority of science over 
 language as a means of discipline, is, that it cultivates the 
 judgment. As, in a lecture on mental education delivered 
 at the Eoyal Institution, Professor Faralday well remarks, 
 the most common intellectual fault is deficiency of, judg- 
 ment. He contends that "society, speaking generally, is 
 not only ignorant as respects education of the judgment, 
 but it is also ignorant of its ignorance. ' ' And the cause to 
 which he ascribes this state is want of scientific culture. 
 The truth of his conclusion is obvious. Correct judgment 
 with regard to all surrounding things, events, and conse- 
 quences, becomes possible only through knowledge of the 
 way in which surrounding phenomena depend on each 
 other. No extent of acquaintance with the meanings of 
 words, can give the power of forming correct inferences 
 respecting causes and effects. The constant drawing of 
 conclusions from data, and then of verifying those conclu- 
 sions by observation and experiment, can alone give the 
 power of judging correctly. And that it necessitates this 
 habit is one of the immense advantages of science. 
 
 Not only, however, for intellectual discipline is science 
 the best; but also for moral discipline. The learning of 
 languages tends, if anything, further to increase the 
 already undue respect for authority. Such and such are 
 the meanings of these words, says the teacher or the 
 dictionary. So and so is the rule in this case, says the 
 grammar. By the pupil these dicta are received as 
 unquestionable. His constant attitude of mind is that of 
 submission to dogmatic teaching. And a necessary result 
 is a tendency to accept without inquiry whatever is estab- 
 lished. Quite opposite is the attitude of mind generated 
 by the cultivation of science. By science, constant appeal 
 is made to individual reason. Its truths are not accepted 
 upon authority alone ; but all are at liberty to test them— 
 nay, in many cases, the pupil is required to think out 
 his own conclusions. Every step in a scientific investiga- 
 tion is submitted to his judgment. He is not asked to 
 admit it without seeing it to be true. And the trust in his 
 
WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH 73 
 
 own powers thus produced, is further increased by the 
 constancy with which nature justifies his conclusions when 
 they are correctly drawn. From all which there flows that 
 independence which is a most valuable element in character. 
 Nor is this the only moral benefit bequeathed by scientific 
 culture. When carried on, as it should always be, as much 
 as possible under the form of independent research, it 
 exercises perseverance and sincerity. As says Professor 
 Tyndall of inductive inquiry, "it requires patient 
 industry, and an humble and conscientious acceptance of 
 what nature reveals. The first condition of success is 
 an honest receptivity and a willingness to abandon all 
 preconceived notions, however cherished, if they be found 
 to contradict the truth. Believe me, a self-renunciation 
 which has something noble in it, and of which the world 
 never hears, is often enacted in the private experience of 
 the true votary of science." 
 
 Lastly we have to assert — and the assertion will, we 
 doubt not, cause extreme surprise — ^that the discipline of 
 science is superior to that of our ordinary education, 
 because of the religious culture that it gives. Of course we 
 do not here use the words scientific and religious in their 
 ordinary limited acceptations; but in their widest and 
 highest acceptations. Doubtless, to the superstitions that 
 pass under the name of religion, science is antagonistic ; 
 but not to the essential religion which these superstitions 
 merely hide. Doubtless, too, in much of the science that is 
 current, there is a pervading spirit of irreligion ; but not 
 in that true science which has passed beyond the super- 
 ficial into the profound. 
 
 ' ' True science and true religion, ' ' says Professor Huxley 
 at the close of a recent course of lectures, ' ' are twin sisters, 
 and the separation of either from the other is sure to prove 
 the death of both. Science prospers exactly in proportion 
 as it is religious ; and religion flourishes in exact proportion 
 to the scientific depth and firmness of its basis. The great 
 deeds of philosophers have been le'ss the fruit of their 
 intellect than of the direction of that intellect by an 
 eminently religious tone of mind. Truth has yielded 
 herself rather to their patience, their love, their single 
 
74 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 heartedness, and their self-denial, than to their logical 
 acumen. " 
 
 So far from science being irreligious, as many think, it 
 is the neglect of science that is irreligious — it is the refusal 
 to study the surrounding creation that is irreligious. Take 
 a humble simile. Suppose a writer were daily saluted 
 with praises couched in superlative language. Suppose 
 the wisdom, the grandeur, the beauty of his works, were 
 the constant topics of eulogies addressed to him. Suppose 
 those who unceasingly uttered these eulogies on his works 
 were content with looking at the outsides of them; and 
 had never opened them, much less tried to understand 
 them. What value should we put upon their praises? 
 What should we think of their sincerity ? Yet comparing 
 small things to great, such is the conduct of mankind in 
 general, in reference to the universe and its cause. Nay, 
 it is worse. Not only do they pass by without study, these 
 things which they daily proclaim to be so wonderful ; but 
 very frequently they condemn as mere triflers those who 
 give time to the observation of nature — they actually 
 scorn those who show any active interest in these marvels. 
 We repeat, then, that not science, but the neglect of 
 science, is irreligious. Devotion to science is a tacit 
 worship — a tacit recognition of worth in the things 
 studied; and by implication in their cause. It is not a 
 mere lip-homage, but a homage expressed in actions — 
 not a professed respect, but a respect proved by the 
 sacrifice of time, thought and labor. 
 
 Nor is it thus only that true science is essentially 
 religious. It is religious, too, inasmuch as it generates a 
 profound respect for, and an implicit faith in, those uni- 
 form laws which underlie all things. By accumulated 
 experiences the man of science acquires a thorough belief 
 in the unchanging relations of phenomena — in the invari- 
 able connection of cause and consequence — in the necessity 
 of good or evil results. Instead of the rewards and pun- 
 ishments of tradition'6,1 belief, which men vaguely hope 
 they may gain, or escape, spite of their disobedience ; he 
 finds that there are rewards and punishments in the 
 ordained constitution of things, and that the evil results of 
 
WHA T KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH 7S 
 
 disobedience are inevitable. He sees that the laws to 
 which we must submit are not only inexorable but benefi- 
 cent. He sees that in virtue of these laws, the process of 
 things is ever toward a greater perfection and a higher 
 happiness. Hence he is led constantly to insist on these 
 laws, and is indignant when men disregard them. And 
 thus does he, by asserting the eternal principles of things 
 and the necessity of conforming to them, prove himself 
 intrinsically religious. 
 
 To all which add the further religious aspect of science, 
 that it alone can give us true conceptions of ourselves and 
 our relation to the mysteries of existence. At the same 
 time that it shows us aU which can be known, it shows us 
 the limits beyond which we can know nothing. Not by 
 dogmatic assertion does it teach the impossibility of com- 
 prehending the ultimate cause of things ; but it leads us 
 clearly to recognize this impossibility by. bringing us in 
 every direction to boundaries we cannot cross. It realizes 
 to us in a way which nothing else can, the littleness of 
 human intelligence in the face of that which transcends 
 human intelligence. While toward the traditions and 
 authorities of men its attitude may be proud, before the 
 impenetrable veil which hides the Absolute its attitude is 
 humble — a true pride and a true humility. Only the 
 sincere man of science (and by this title we do not mean 
 the mere calculator of distances, or analyzer of compounds, 
 or labeller of species ; but him who through lower truths 
 seeks higher, and eventually the highest) only the genuine 
 man of science, we say, can truly know how utterly 
 beyond, not only human knowledge, but human concep- 
 tion, is the universal power of which nature, and life, and 
 thought are manifestations. 
 
 "We conclude, then, that for discipline, as well as for 
 guidance, science is of chiefest value. In all its effects, 
 learning the meanings of things, is better than learning the 
 meanings of words. Whether for intellectual, moral, or 
 religious training, the study of surrounding phenomena is 
 immensely superior to the study of grammars and lexicons. 
 
 Thus to the question with which we set out — What 
 knowledge is of most worth? — the uniform reply is — 
 
76 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 Science. This is the verdict on all the counts. For direct 
 self-preservation, or the maintenance of life and health, 
 the all-important knowledge is — Science. For that indirect 
 self-preservation which we call gaining a livelihood, the 
 knowledge of greatest value is — Science. For the due dis- 
 charge of parental functions, the proper guidance is to be 
 found only in — Science, For that interpretation of 
 national life, past and present, without which the citizen 
 cannot rightly, regulate his conduct, the indispensable key 
 is — Science. Alike for the most perfect production and 
 highest enjoyment of art in all its forms, the needful 
 preparation is still — Science. And for purposes of disci- 
 pline — intellectual, moral, religious — the most efficient 
 study is, once more — Science. The question which at first 
 seemed so perplex, has become in the course of our 
 inquiry, comparatively simple. We have not to estimate 
 the degrees of importance of different orders of human 
 activity, and different studies as severally fitting us for 
 them ; since we find that the study of Science, in its most 
 comprehensive meaning, is the best preparation for all 
 these orders of activity. We have not to decide between 
 the claims of knowledge of great though conventional 
 value, and knowledge of less though intrinsic value ; see- 
 ing that the knowledge which we find to be of most value 
 in all other respects, is intrinsically most valuable: its 
 worth is not dependent upon opinion, but is as fixed as is 
 the relation of man to the surrounding world. Necessary 
 and eternal as are its truths, all Science concerns all 
 mankind for all time. Equally at present, and in the 
 remotest future, must it be of incalculable importance for 
 the regulation of their conduct, that men should under- 
 stand the science of life, physical, mental, and social; 
 and that they should understand all other science as a 
 key to the science of life. 
 Herbert Spencer: Education. 
 
A SHORT VIEW OF THE STATE OF IRELAND 77 
 
 A Short View of the State of Ibeland 
 IN 1727 
 
 I am assured, that it has for some time been practiced 
 as a method of making men's court, when they are asked 
 about the rate of lands, the abilities of tenants, the state 
 of trade and manufacture in this kingdom, and how their 
 rents are paid; to answer, that in their neighborhood all 
 things are in a flourishing condition, the rent and purchase 
 of land every day increasing. And if a gentleman happen 
 to be a little more sincere in his representation, beside 
 being looked on as not well-affected, he is sure to have a 
 dozen contradictors at his elbow. I think it is no manner 
 of secret, why these questions are so cordially asked, or so 
 obligingly answered. 
 
 But since, with regard to the affairs of this kingdom, I 
 have been using all endeavors to subdue my indignation; 
 to which indeed I am not provoked by any personal inter- 
 est, not being the owner of one spot of ground in the 
 whole island, I shall only enumerate, by rules generally 
 known, and never contradicted, what are the true causes 
 of any country's flourishing and growing rich; and then 
 examine what effects arise from those causes in the 
 kingdom of Ireland. 
 
 The first cause of a kingdom's thriving is, the fruitful- 
 ness of the soil to produce the necessaries and conven- 
 iences of life ; not only suflScient for the inhabitants, but 
 for exportation into other countries. 
 
 The second is, the industry of the people, in working 
 up all their native commodities to the last degree of 
 manufacture. 
 
 The third is, the conveniency of safe ports and havens, 
 to carry out their own goods as much manufactured, and 
 bring in those of others as little manufactured, as the 
 nature of natural commerce will allow. 
 
 The fourth is, that the natives should, as much as 
 possible, export and import their goods in vessels of their 
 own timber, made in their own country. 
 
 The fifth is, the privilege of a free trade in all foreign 
 
78 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 countries which will permit them, except those who are in 
 war with their own prince or state. 
 
 The sixth is, by being governed only by laws made with 
 their own consent; for otherwise they are not a free 
 people. And therefore, all appeals for justice, or applica- 
 tions for favor or preferment, to another country, are so 
 many grievous impoverishments. 
 
 The seventh is, by improvement of land, encouragement 
 of agriculture, and thereby increasing the number of their 
 people; without which any country, however blessed by 
 nature, must continue poor. 
 
 The eighth is, the residence of the prince, or chief 
 administrator of the civil power. 
 
 The ninth is, the concourse of foreigners, for education, 
 curiosity, or pleasure, or as to a general mart of trade. 
 
 The tenth is, by disposing all offices of honor, profit, or 
 trust, only to the natives ; or at least with very few excep- 
 tions, where strangers have long inhabited the country, 
 and are supposed to understand and regard the interests 
 of it as their own. 
 
 The eleventh is, when the rents of land and profits of 
 employment are spent in the country which produced 
 them, and not in another; the former of which will 
 certainly happen where the love of our native country 
 prevails. 
 
 The twelfth is, by the public revenues being all spent 
 and employed at home, except on the occasions of a 
 foreign war. 
 
 The thirteenth is, where the people are not obliged, 
 unless they find it for their own interest or conveniency, to 
 receive any monies, except of their own coinage by a 
 public mint, after the manner of all civilized nations. 
 
 The fourteenth is, a disposition of the people of a 
 country to wear their own manufactures, and import as 
 few incitements to luxury, either in clothes, furniture, 
 food, or drink, as they possibly can live conveniently 
 without. 
 
 There are many other causes of a nation's thriving, 
 which I at present cannot recollect ; but without advan- 
 tage from at least some of these, after turning my 
 
.4 SHORT VIEW OF THE STATE OF IRELAND 79 
 
 thoughts a long time, I am not able to discover whence 
 our wealth proceeds, and therefore would gladly be better 
 informed. In the meantime I will here examine what 
 share falls to Ireland of these causes, or of the effects 
 and consequences. 
 
 It is not my intention to complain, but barely to relate 
 facts ; and the matter is not of small importance. For it 
 is allowed, that a man who lives in a solitary house, far 
 from help, is not wise in endeavoring to acquire in the 
 neighborhood the reputation of being rich ; because those 
 who come for gold, will go off with pewter and brass, 
 rather than return empty; and in the common practice 
 of the world, those who possess most wealth make the 
 least parade ; which they leave to others, who have 
 nothing else to bear them out in showing their faces on the 
 Exchange. 
 
 As to the first cause of a nation's riches, being the 
 fertility of the soil, as well as temperature of climate, 
 we have no reason to complain ; for, although the quantity 
 of unprofitable land in this kingdom, reckoning bog 
 and rock and barren mountain, be double in proportion 
 to what it is in England; yet the native productions, 
 which both kingdoms deal in, are very near on an equality 
 in point of goodness, and might, with the same encourage- 
 ment, be as well manufactured. I except mines and 
 minerals ; in some of which, however, we are only defec- 
 tive in point of skill and industry. 
 
 In the second, whict is the industry of the people, our 
 misfortune is not altogether owing to our own fault, but 
 to a million of discouragements. 
 
 The conveniency of ports and havens, which nature has 
 bestowed so liberally on this kingdom, is of no more use 
 to us than a beautiful prospect to a man shut up in a 
 dungeon. 
 
 As to shipping of its own, Ireland is so utterly unpro- 
 vided, that of all the excellent timber cut down within 
 these fifty or sixty years, it can hardly be said that the 
 nation has received the benefit of one valuable house to 
 dwell in, or one ship to trade with. 
 
 Ireland is the only kingdom I ever heard or read of. 
 
80 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 either in ancient or modern story, which was denied the 
 liberty of exporting their native commodities and manu- 
 factures wherever they pleased, except to countries at war 
 with their own prince or state : yet this privilege, by the 
 superiority of mere power, is refused us in the most 
 momentous parts of commerce; beside an act of naviga- 
 tion, to which we never consented, pinned down upon us, 
 and rigorously executed; and a thousand other unex- 
 ampled circumstances, as grievous as they are invidious to 
 mention. To go on to the rest. 
 
 It is too well known, that we are forced to obey some 
 laws we never consented to; which is a condition I must 
 not call by its true uncontroverted name. Thus we are in 
 the condition of patients, who have physic sent them by 
 doctors at a distance, strangers to their constitution and 
 the nature of their disease ; and thus we are forced to 
 pay five hundred per cent, to decide our properties; in 
 all which we have likewise the honor to be distinguished 
 from the whole race of mankind. 
 
 As to the improvement of land, those few who attempt 
 that or planting, through covetousness, or want or skill, 
 generally leave things worse than they were ; neither suc- 
 ceeding in trees nor hedges; and by running into the 
 fancy of grazing, after the manner of the Scythians, are 
 every day depopulating the country. 
 
 We are so far from having a king to reside among us, 
 that even the viceroy is generally absent four-fifths of his 
 time in the government. 
 
 No strangers from other countries make this a part of 
 their travels; where they can expect to see nothing but 
 scenes of misery and desolation. 
 
 Those who have the misfortune to be born here, have the 
 least title to any considerable employment ; to which they 
 are seldom preferred, but upon a political consideration. 
 
 One-third part of the rents of Ireland is spent in Eng- 
 land; which with the profit of employments, pensions, 
 appeals, journeys of pleasure or health, education at the 
 inns of court and both universities, remittances at pleas- 
 ure, the pay of all superior officers in the army, and other 
 
A SHORT VIEW OF THE STATE OF IRELAND 81 
 
 incidents, will amount to a full half of the income of the 
 whole kingdom, all clear profit to England. 
 
 We are denied the liberty of coining gold, silver, or even 
 copper. In the Isle of Man they coin their own silver; 
 every petty prince, vassal to the emperor, can coin what 
 money he pleases. And in this, as in most of the articles 
 already mentioned, we are an exception to all other states 
 or monarchies that were ever known in the world. 
 
 As to the last or fourteenth article, we take special 
 care to act diametrically contrary to it in the whole course 
 of our lives. Both sexes, but especially the women, despise 
 and abhor to wear any of their own manufactures, even 
 those which are better made than in other countries; 
 particularly a sort of silk plaid, through which the work- 
 men are forced to run a kind of gold thread that it may 
 pass for Indian. Even ale and potatoes are imported from 
 England, as well as corn; and our foreign trade is little 
 more than importation of French wine, for which I am 
 told we pay ready money. 
 
 Now, if all this be true (upon which I could easily 
 enlarge) I should be glad to know, by what secret method 
 it is, that we grow a rich and flourishing people, without 
 liberty, trade, manufactures, inhabitants, money, or the 
 privilege of coining ; without industry, labor, or improve- 
 ment of land; and with more than half the rent and 
 profits of the whole kingdom annually exported, for which 
 we receive not a single farthing : and to make up all this, 
 nothing worth mentioning, except the linen of the north, 
 a trade casual, corrupted, and at mercy ; and some butter 
 from Cork. If we do flourish, it must be against every 
 law of nature and reason ; like the thorn at Glastonbury, 
 that blossoms in the midst of winter. 
 
 Let the worthy commissioners who come from England, 
 ride round the kingdom, and observe vlie face of nature, 
 or the face of the natives ; the improvement of the land ; 
 the thriving numerous plantations ; the noble woods ; the 
 abundance and vicinity of country seats ; the commodious 
 farms, houses, and barns; the towns and villages, where 
 everybody is busy, and thriving with all kinds of manu- 
 facturers ; the shops full of goods wrought to perfection, 
 
82 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 and filled with customers ; the comfortable diet, and dress, 
 and dwellings of the people ; the vast number of ships in 
 our harbors and docks, and shipwrights in our seaport 
 towns ; the roads, crowded with carriers, laden with rich 
 manufactures; the perpetual concourse to and fro of 
 pompous equipages. 
 
 With what envy and admiration would those gentlemen 
 return from so delightful a progress! what glorious 
 reports , would they make, when they went back to 
 England ! 
 
 But my heart is too heavy to continue this irony 
 longer: for it is manifest, that whatever stranger took 
 such a journey, would be apt to think himself traveling 
 in Lapland or Ysland, rather than in a country so 
 favored by nature as ours, both in fruitfulness of soil 
 and temperature of climate. The miserable dress, and 
 diet, and dwelling of the people; the general desola- 
 tion in most parts of the kingdom; the old seats of the 
 nobility and gentry all in ruins, and no new ones in their 
 stead; the families of farmers, who pay great rents, 
 living in filth and nastiness upon buttermilk and potatoes, 
 without a shoe or stocking to their feet, or a house so 
 convenient as an English hog sty to receive them. These 
 indeed may be comfortable sights to an English spectator ; 
 who comes for a short time, only to learn the language, 
 and returns back to his own country whither he finds all 
 his wealth transmitted. 
 
 Nostra miseria magna est. 
 
 There is not one argument used to prove the. riches of 
 Ireland, which is not a logical demonstration of its 
 poverty. The rise of our rents is squeezed out of the very 
 blood, and vitals, and clothes, and dwellings of the tenants 
 who live worse than English beggars. The lowness of 
 interest, in all other countries a sign of wealth, is in us 
 a proof of misery; there being no trade to employ any 
 borrower. Hence alone comes the dearness of land, since 
 the savers have no other way to lay out their money; 
 hence the dearness of necessaries of life; because the 
 tenants cannot afford to pay such extravagant rates for 
 land (which they must take or go a-begging), without 
 
A SHORT VIEW OF THE STATE OF IRELAND 83 
 
 raising the price of cattle and of corn, although them- 
 selves should livo upon chaff. Hence our increase of 
 building in this city; because workmen have nothing to 
 do but to employ one another, and one-half of them are 
 infallibly undone. Hence the daily increase of bankers, 
 who may be a necessary evil in a trading country, but 
 so ruinous in ours ; who, for their private advantage, have 
 sent away all our silver, and one-third of our gold; so 
 that within three years past the running cash of the 
 nation, which was about five hundred thousand pounds, 
 is now less than two, and must daily diminish, unless we 
 have liberty to coin, as well as that important kingdom, 
 the Isle of Man, and the meanest principality in the 
 German empire, as I before observed. 
 
 I have sometimes thought, that this paradox of the 
 kingdom's growing rich, is chiefly owing to those worthy 
 gentlemen the bankers; who, except some custom house 
 officers, birds of passage, oppressive thrifty squires, and a 
 few others who shall be nameless, are the only thriving 
 people among us : and I have often wished that a law 
 were enacted to hang up half a dozen bankers every year, 
 and thereby interpose at least some short delay to the 
 farther ruin of Ireland. 
 
 Ye are idle ! ye are idle ! answered Pharaoh to the 
 Israelites, when they complained to his majesty that they 
 were forced to make bricks without straw. 
 
 England enjoys every one of those advantages for 
 enriching a nation, which I have above enumerated ; and, 
 into the bargain, a good million returned to them every 
 year without labor or hazard, or one farthing value 
 received on our side : but how long we shall be able to 
 continue the payment, I am not under the least concern. 
 One thing I know, that, when the hen is starved to death, 
 there will be no more golden eggs. 
 
 I think it a little unhospitable, and others may call it 
 a subtile piece of malice, that because there may be a 
 dozen families in this town, able to entertain their Eng- 
 lish friends in a generous manner at their tables, their 
 guests upon their return to England shall report that we 
 wallow in riches and luxury. 
 
84 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 Yet I confess I have known an hospital, where all the 
 household officers grew rich; while the poor, for whose 
 sake it was built, were almost starving for want of food 
 and raiment. 
 
 To conclude: If Ireland be a rich and flourishing 
 kingdom, its wealth and prosperity must be owing to 
 certain causes, that' are yet concealed from the whole 
 race of mankind; and the effects are equally invisible. 
 We need not wonder at strangers, when they deliver such 
 paradoxes ; but a native and inhabitant of this kingdom, 
 who gives the same verdict, must be either ignorant to 
 stupidity, or a man-pleaser at the expense of all honor, 
 conscience, and truth. 
 
 Jonathan Swift: Facts upon Irish Affairs. 
 
 Matter and Fokce 
 
 Whether it be a consequence of long-continued develop- 
 ment, or an endowment conferred once for all on man at 
 his creation, we find him here gifted with a mind curious 
 to know the causes of things, and surrounded by objects 
 which excite its questionings and raise the desire for an 
 explanation. It is related of a young prince of one of the 
 Pacific islands, that when he first saw himself in a looking 
 glass, he ran round the glass to see who was standing 
 at the back. And thus it is with the general human 
 intellect, as regards the phenomena of the external world. 
 It wishes to get behind and learn the causes and connec- 
 tions of these phenomena. What is the sun, what is the 
 earth, what should we see if we came to the edge of the 
 earth and looked over? What is the meaning of thunder 
 and lightning, of hail, rain, storm, and snow ? Such ques- 
 tions presented themselves to early men, and by and by it 
 was discovered that this desire for knowledge was not 
 implanted in vain. After many trials it became evident 
 that man's capacities were, so to speak, the complement 
 of nature's facts, and that, within certain limits, the 
 secret of the universe was open to the human under- 
 standing. It was found that the mind of man had the 
 power of penetrating far beyond the boundaries of his 
 
MA TTER A ND FORCE 85 
 
 five senses ; that the things which are seen in the material 
 world depend for their action upon things unseen; in 
 short, that besides the phenomena which address the 
 senses, there are laws and principles and processes which 
 do not address the senses at all, but which must be, and 
 can be, spiritually discerned. 
 
 To the subjects which require this discernment belong 
 the phenomena of molecular force. But to trace the genesis 
 of the notions now entertained upon this subject, we have 
 to go a long way back. In the drawing of a bow, the dart- 
 ing of a javelin, the throwing of a stone — in the lifting of 
 burdens, and in personal combats, even savage man 
 became acquainted with the operation of force. Ages of 
 discipline, moreover, taught him foresight. He laid by at 
 the proper season stores of food, thus obtaining time to 
 look about him, and to become an observer, an enquirer. 
 Two things which he noticed must have profoundly stirred 
 his curiosity. He found that a kind of resin dropped from 
 a certain tree possessed, when rubbed, the power of draw- 
 ing light bodies to itself, and of causing them to cling to 
 it ; and he also found that a particular stone exerted a 
 similar power over a particular kind of metal. I allude, 
 of course, to electrified amber, and to the loadstone, or 
 natural magnet, and its power to attract particles of iron. 
 Previous experience of his own muscles had enabled our 
 early enquirer to distinguish between a push and a pull. 
 Augmented experience showed him that in the case of 
 the magnet and the amber, pulls and pushes — attractions 
 and repulsions — were also exerted; and, by a kind of 
 poetic transfer, he applied to things external to himself, 
 conceptions derived from himself. The magnet and the 
 rubbed amber were credited with pushing and pulling, or, 
 in other words, with exerting force. 
 
 In the time of the great Lord Bacon the margin of these 
 pushes and pulls was vastly extended by Dr. Gilbert, a 
 man probably of firmer scientific fibre, and of finer insight, 
 than Bacon himself. Gilbert proved that a multitude of 
 other bodies, when rubbed, exerted the power, which, 
 thousands of years previously, had been observed in 
 amber. In this way the notion of attraction and repulsion 
 
86 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 in external nature was rendered familiar. It was a matter 
 of experience that bodies, between which no visible link 
 or connection existed, possessed the power of acting upon 
 each other; and the action came to be technically called 
 "action at a distance." 
 
 But out of experience in science there grows something 
 finer than mere experience. Experience furnishes the soil 
 for plants of higher growth; and this observation of 
 action at a distance provided material for speculation 
 upon the largest of problems. Bodies were observed to 
 fall to the earth? Why should they do so? The earth 
 was proved to revolve round the sun; and the moon to 
 revolve round the earth. Why should they do so ? What 
 prevents them from flying straight oflf into space? Sup- 
 posing it were ascertained that from a part of the earth 's 
 rocky crust a firmly fixed and tightly stretched chain 
 started towards the sun, we might be inclined to conclude 
 that the earth is held in its orbit by the chain — that the 
 sun twirls the earth around him, as a boy twirls round 
 his head a bullet at the end of a string. But why should 
 the chain be needed? It is a fact of experience that bodies 
 can attract each other at a distance, without the inter- 
 vention of any chain. Why should not the sun and earth 
 so attract each other? and why should not the fall of 
 bodies from a height be the result of their attraction by 
 the earth? Here then we reach one of those higher 
 speculations which grow out of the fruitful soil of observa- 
 tion. Having started with the savage, and his sensations 
 of muscular force we pass on to' the observation of force 
 exerted between a magnet and rubbed amber and the 
 bodies which they attract, rising, by an unbroken growth 
 of ideas, to a conception of the force by which sun aad 
 plahets are held together. 
 
 This idea of attraction between sun and planets had 
 become familiar in the time of Newton. He set himself 
 to examine the attraction ; and here, as elsewhere, we find 
 the speculative mind falling back for its materials upon 
 experience. It had been observed in the case of magnetic 
 and electric bodies, that the nearer they were brought 
 together the stronger was the force exerted between them; 
 
MATTER AND FORCE 87 
 
 while, by increasing the distance the force diminished 
 until it became insensible. Hence the inference that the 
 assumed pull between the earth and the sun would be 
 influenced by their distance asunder. Guesses had been 
 made as to the exact manner in which the force varied 
 with the distance; but Newton supplemented the guess 
 by the severe test of experiment and calculation. Com- 
 paring the pull of the earth upon a body close to its sur- 
 face, with its pull upon the moon, 240,000 miles away, 
 Newton rigidly established the law of variation with the 
 distance. But on his way to this result Newton found 
 room for other conceptions, some of which, indeed, con- 
 stituted the necessary stepping stones to his result. The 
 one that here concerns us is, that not only does the sun 
 attract the earth, and the earth attract the sun, as wholes. 
 but every particle of the sun attracts every particle of 
 the earth, and the reverse. His conclusion was, that the 
 attraction of the masses was simply the sum of the attrac- 
 tions of their constituent particles. 
 
 This result seems so obvious that you will perhaps 
 wonder at my dwelling upon it; but it really marks a 
 turning point in our notions of force. You have probably 
 heard of certain philosophers of the ancient world named 
 Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius. These men adopted, 
 developed, and diffused the doctrine of atoms and mole- 
 cules, which found its consummation at the hands of the 
 illustrious John Dalton. But the Greek and Roman philos- 
 ophers I have named, and their followers, up to the time of 
 Newton, pictured their atoms as falling and flying through 
 space, hitting each other, and clinging together by imagin- 
 ary hooks and claws. They missed the central idea that 
 atoms and molecules could come together not by being 
 fortuitously knocked against each other, but by their own 
 mutual attractions. This is one of the great steps taken 
 by Newton. He familiarized the world with the concep- 
 tion of molecular force. 
 
 Newton was preceded by John Kepler who, by analyz- 
 ing the astronomical observations of his master, Tycho 
 Brahe, had actually found that the planets moved as they 
 are now known to move. Kepler knew as much about the 
 
88 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 motions of the planets as Newton did; in fact, Kepler 
 taught Newton and the world generally the facts of plane- 
 tary motion. But this was not enough. The question 
 arose — Why should the facts be so? This was the great 
 question for Newton, and it was the solution of it which 
 renders his name and fame immortal. Starting from the 
 principle that every particle of matter in the solar system 
 attracts every other particle by a force which varies as 
 the inverse square of the distance between the particles, 
 he proved that the planetary motions must be what 
 observation makes them to be. He showed that the moon 
 fell towards the earth, and that the planets fell towards 
 the sun, through the operation of the same force that pulls 
 an apple from its tree. This all-pervading force, which 
 forms the solder of the material universe, is called the 
 force of gravitation. 
 
 Gravitation is a purely attractive force, but in elec- 
 tricity and magnetism, repulsion had always been seen to 
 accompany attraction. Electricity and magnetism are 
 double or polar forces. In the case of magnetism, experience 
 soon pushed the mind beyond the bounds of experience, 
 compelling it to conclude that the polarity of the magnet 
 was resident in its molecules. I hold a magnetized strip 
 of steel by its center, and find that one-half of the strip 
 attracts, and the other half repels, the north end of a mag- 
 netic needle. I break the strip in the middle, find that this 
 half, which a moment ago attracted throughout its entire 
 length the north pole of a magnetic needle, is now divided 
 into two new halves, one of which wholly attracts and the 
 other of which wholly repels, the north pole of the needle. 
 The half proves to be as perfect a magnet as the whole. You 
 may break this half and go on till further breaking becomes 
 impossible through the very smallness of the fragments; 
 the smallest fragment is found endowed with two poles, 
 and is, therefore, a perfect magnet. But you cannot stop 
 there : you imagine where you cannot experiment; and reach 
 the conclusion entertained by all scientific men, that the 
 magnet which you see and feel is an assemblage of molec- 
 ular magnets which you cannot see and feel, but which, 
 as before stated, must be intellectually discerned. 
 
MATTER AND FORCE 89 
 
 Magnetism then is a polar force; and experience hints 
 that a force of this kind may exert a certain structural 
 power. It is known, for example, that iron filings strewn 
 round a magnet arrange themselves in definite lines, called 
 by some, "magnetic curves," and by others, "lines of 
 magnetic force." Over two magnets now before me is 
 spread a sheet of paper. Scattering iron filings over the 
 paper, polar force comes into play, and every particle of 
 the iron responds to that force. We have a kind of archi- 
 tectural effort — if I may use the term — exerted on the part 
 of the iron filings. Here then is a fact of experience 
 which, as you will see immediately, furnishes further 
 material for the mind to operate upon, rendering it pos- 
 sible to attain intellectual clearness and repose, while 
 speculating upon apparently remote phenomena. 
 
 The magnetic force has here acted upon particles visible 
 to the eye. But, as already stated, there are numerous 
 processes in nature which entirely elude the eye of the 
 body, and must be figured by the eye of the mind. The 
 processes of chemistry are examples of these. Long think- 
 ing and experimenting has led philosophers to conclude 
 that matter is composed of atoms from which, whether 
 separate or in combination, the whole material world is 
 built up. The air we breathe, for example, is mainly a 
 mechanical mixture of the atoms of oxygen and nitrogen. 
 The water we drink is also composed of oxygen and 
 hydrogen. But it differs from the air in this particular, 
 that in water the oxygen and hydrogen are not mechan- 
 ically mixed, but chemically combined. The atoms of 
 oxygen and those of hydrogen exert enormous attractions 
 on each other, so that when brought into sufficient prox- 
 imity they rush together with an almost incredible force 
 to form a chemical compound. But powerful as is the 
 force with which these atoms lock themselves together, we 
 have the means of tearing them asunder, and the agent by 
 which we accomplish this may here receive a few 
 moments' attention. 
 
 Into a vessel containing acidulated water I dip two 
 strips of metal, the one being zinc and the other platinum, 
 not permitting them to touch each other in the liquid. 
 
90 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 I connect the two upper ends of the strips by a piece of 
 copper wire. The wire is now the channel of what, for 
 want of a better name, we call an "electric current." 
 What the inner change of the wire is we do not know, but 
 we do know that a change has occurred, by the external 
 effects produced by the wire. Let me show you one or two 
 of these effects. Before you is a series of ten vessels, each 
 with its pair of metals, and I wish to get the added force of 
 all ten. The arrangement is called a voltaic battery. I 
 plunge a piece of copper wire among these iron filings; 
 they refuse to cling to it. I employ the self-same wire to 
 connect the two ends of the battery, and subject it to the 
 same test. The iron filings now crowd round the wire 
 and cling to it. I interrupt the current, and the filings 
 immediately fall ; the power of attraction continues only 
 so long as the wire connects the two ends of the battery. 
 
 Here is a piece of similar wire, overspun with cotton, to 
 prevent the contact of its various parts, and formed into a 
 eoil. I make the coil part of the wire which connects the 
 two ends of the voltaic battery. By the attractive force 
 with which it has become suddenly endowed it now empties 
 this tool box of its iron nails. I twist a covered copper wire 
 round this common poker; connecting the wire with the 
 two ends of the voltaic battery, the poker is instantly 
 transformed into a strong magnet. Two flat spirals are 
 here suspended facing each other, about six inches apart. 
 Sending a current through both spirals, they clash sud- 
 denly together ; reversing what is called the direction of 
 the current in one of the spirals, they fly asunder. All 
 these effects are due to the power which we name an 
 electric current, and which we figure as flowing through 
 the wire when the circuit is complete. 
 
 By the same agent we tear asunder the locked atoms of 
 a chemical compound. Into this small cell, containing 
 water, dip two thin wires. Prom the small battery I send 
 an electric current from wire to wire. Bubbles of gas 
 rise immediately from each of them, and these are the two 
 gases of which the water is composed. The oxygen is 
 always liberated on the one wire, the hydrogen on the 
 other. The gases may be collected either separately or 
 
MATTER AND FORCE 91 
 
 mixed. I place upon my hand a soap bubble filled with 
 the mixture of both gases. Applying a taper to the 
 bubble, a loud explosion is heard. The atoms have rushed 
 together with detonation, and without injury to my hand, 
 and the water from which they were extracted is the 
 result of their reunion. 
 
 One consequence of the rushing together of the atoms 
 is the development of heat. What is this heat ? Here are 
 two ivory balls suspended from the same point of support 
 by two short strings. I draw them thus apart and then 
 liberate them. They clash together, but, by virtue of their 
 elasticity, they quickly recoil, and a sharp vibratory rattle 
 succeeds their collision. This experiment will enable you 
 to figure to your mind a pair of clashing atoms. We have 
 in the first place, a motion of the one atom towards the 
 other — a motion of translation, as it is usually called — 
 then a recoil, and afterwards a motion of vibration. To 
 this vibratory motion we give the name of heat. Thus, 
 three things are to be kept before the mind — first, the 
 atoms themselves; secondly, the force with which they 
 attract each other; and thirdly, the motion consequent 
 upon the exertion of that force. This motion must be 
 figured first as a motion of translation, and then as a 
 motion of vibration, to which latter we give the name of 
 heat. For some time after the act of combination this 
 motion is so violent as to prevent the molecules from 
 coming together, the water being maintained in a state of 
 vapor. But as the vapor cools, or, in other words, loses its 
 motion, the molecules coalesce to form a liquid. 
 
 And now we approach a new and wonderful display of 
 force. As long as the substance remains in a liquid or 
 vaporous condition, the play of this force is altogether 
 masked and hidden. But as the heat is gradually with- 
 drawn, the molecules prepare for new arrangements and 
 combinations. Solid crystals of water are at length 
 formed, to which we give the familiar name of ice. Look- 
 ing at these beautiful edifices and their internal structure, 
 the pondering mind has forced upon it the question. How 
 are they built up? We have obtained clear conceptions 
 of polar force ; and we infer from our broken magnet that 
 
92 EXPOSITION A ND MISCELLA NED US PROSE 
 
 polar force may be resident in the molecules or smallest 
 particles of matter, and that by the play of this force 
 structural arrangement is possible. What, in relation to 
 our present question, is the natural action of a mind fur- 
 nished with this knowledge ? It is compelled to transcend 
 experience, and endow the atoms and molecules of which 
 crystals are built with definite poles whence issue attrac- 
 tions and repulsions. In virtue of these forces some poles 
 are drawn together, while some retreat from each other; 
 atom is added to atom, and molecule to molecule, . not 
 boisterously or fortuitously, but silently and symmetric- 
 ally, and in accordance with laws more rigid than those 
 which guide a human builder when he places his materials 
 together. Imagine the bricks and stones of this town 
 of Dundee endowed with structural power. Imagine them 
 attracting and repelling, and arranging themselves into 
 streets and houses — would not that be wonderful ? Hardly 
 less wonderful is the play of force by which the molecules 
 of water build themselves into sheets of ice which every 
 winter roof your ponds and lakes. 
 
 If I could show you the actual progress of this molec- 
 ular architecture, its beauty would delight and astonish 
 you. A reversal of the process of crystallization may be 
 actually shown. The molecules of a piece of ice may be 
 taken asunder before your eyes ; and from the manner in 
 which they separate, you may to some extent infer the 
 manner in which they go together. When a beam is sent 
 from our electric lamp through a plate of glass, a portion 
 of the beam is intercepted, and the glass is warmed by 
 the portion thus retained within it. When the beam is 
 sent through a plate of ice, a portion of the beam is also 
 absorbed ; but instead of warming the ice, the intercepted 
 heat melts it internally. It is to the delicate silent action 
 of the beam within the ice that I now wish to. call your 
 attention. Upon the screen is thrown a magnified image 
 of the slab of ice: the light of the beam passes freely 
 through the ice without melting it, and enables us to form 
 the image ; but the heat is in great part intercepted, and 
 that heat now applies itself to the work of internal lique- 
 faction. Selecting certain points for attack, round about 
 
MATTER AND FORCE 93 
 
 those points the beam works silently, undoing the crystal- 
 line architecture and reducing to the freedom of liquidity 
 molecules which had been previously locked in a solid 
 embrace. The liquefied spaces are rendered visible by 
 strong illumination. Observe those six-petaled flowers 
 breaking out over the white surface, and expanding in 
 size as the action of the beam continues. These flowers 
 are liquefied ice. Under the action of the heat the mole- 
 cules of the crystals fall asunder, so as to leave behind 
 them these exquisite forms. We have here a process of 
 demolition which clearly reveals the reverse process of 
 construction. In this fashion, and in strict accordance 
 with this hexagonal type, every ice molecule takes its place 
 upon our ponds and lakes during the frosts of winter. To 
 use the language of an American poet, "the atoms march 
 in tune," moving to the music of law, which thus renders 
 the commonest substance in nature a miracle of beauty. 
 
 Those fern-like forms, which on a frosty morning over- 
 spread your window panes, illustrate the action of the 
 same force. Breathe upon such a pane before the fires 
 are lighted, and reduce the solid crystalline film to the 
 liquid condition; then watch its subsequent resolidifiea- 
 tion. You will see it all the better if you look at it 
 through a common magnifying glass. After you have 
 ceased breathing, the film, abandoned to the action of its 
 own forces, appears for a moment to be alive. Lines of 
 motion run through it; molecule closes with molecule, 
 until finally the whole film passes from the state of liquid- 
 ity, through this state of motion, to its final crystalline 
 repose. 
 
 I can show you something similar. Over a piece of 
 perfectly clean glass I pour a little water in which certain 
 crystals have been dissolved. A film of the solution clings 
 to the glass. By means of a microscope and a lamp, an 
 image of the plate of glass is thrown upon the screen. The 
 beam of the lamp, besides illuminating the glass, also 
 heats it; evaporation sets in, and at a certain moment, 
 when the solution has become supersaturated^ splendid 
 branches of crystal shoot out over the screen. A dozen 
 square feet of surface are now covered by those beautiful 
 
94 EXPOSITION A-ND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 forms. With another solution we obtain crystalline spears 
 feathered right and left by other spears. Prom distant 
 nuclei in the middle of the field of view the spears shoot 
 with magical rapidity in all directions. The film of water 
 on a window pane on a frosty morning exhibits effects 
 quite as wonderful as these. Latent in these formless 
 solutions, latent in every drop of water, lies this marvelous 
 structural power, which only requires the withdrawal of 
 opposing forces to bring it into action. 
 
 The clear liquid now held up before you is a solution of 
 nitrate of silver — a compound of silver and nitric acid. 
 When an electric current is sent through this liquid the 
 silver is severed from the acid, as the hydrogen was sepa- 
 rated from the oxygen in a former experiment; and I 
 would ask you to observe how the metal behaves when its 
 molecules are thus successively set free. The image of the 
 cell, and of the two wires which dip into the liquid of the 
 cell, are now clearly shown upon the screen. Let us close 
 the circuit, and send the current through the liquid. From 
 one of the wires a beautiful silver tree commences imme- 
 diately to sprout. Branches of the metal are thrown out, 
 and umbrageous foliage loads the branches. You have 
 here a growth, apparently as wonderful as that of any 
 vegetable, perfected in a minute before your eyes. Substi- 
 tuting for the nitrate of silver acetate of lead, which is a 
 compound of lead and acetic acid, the electric current 
 severs the lead from the acid, and you see the metal slowly 
 branching into exquisite metallic ferns, the fronds of 
 which, as they become too heavy, break from their roots 
 and fall to the bottom of the cell. 
 
 These experiments show that the common matter of our 
 earth — "brute matter," as Dr. Young, in his Night 
 Thoughts, is pleased to call it — when its atoms and mole- 
 cules are permitted to bring their forces into free play, 
 arranges itself, under the operation of these forces, into 
 forms which rival in beauty those of the vegetable world. 
 And what is the vegetable world itself, but the result of 
 the complex play of these molecular forces ? Here, as else- 
 where throughout nature, if matter moves it is force that 
 moves it, and if a certain structure, vegetable or mineral, 
 
MATTER AND FORCE 95 
 
 is produced, it is through the operation of the forces 
 exerted between the atoms and molecules. 
 
 The solid matter of which our lead and silver trees were 
 formed was, in the first instance, disguised in a trans- 
 parent liquid; the solid matter of which our woods and 
 forests are composed is also for the most part disguised in a 
 transparent gas, which is mixed in small quantities with the 
 air of our atmosphere. This gas is formed by the union 
 of carbon and oxygen, and is called carbonic acid gas. The 
 carbonic acid of the air being subjected to an action some- 
 what analogous to that of the electric current in the case 
 of our lead and silver solutions, has its carbon liberated 
 and deposited as woody fibre. The watery vapor of the 
 air is subjected to similar action ; its hydrogen is liberated 
 from its oxygen, and lies down side by side with the 
 carbon in the tissues of the tree. The oxygen in both cases 
 is permitted to wander away into the atmosphere. But 
 what is it in nature that plays the part of the electric cur- 
 rent in our experiments, tearing asunder the locked atoms 
 of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen? The rays of the sun. 
 The leaves of plants which absorb both the carbonic acid 
 and the aqueous vapor of the air, answer to the cells in 
 which our decompositions took place. And just as the 
 molecular attractions of the silver and the lead found 
 expression in those beautiful branching forms seen in our 
 experiments, so do the molecular attractions of the 
 liberated carbon and hydrogen find expression in the 
 architecture .of grasses, plants, and trees. 
 
 In the fall of a cataract and the rush of the wind we 
 have examples of mechanical power. In the combinations 
 of chemistry and in the formation of crystals and vege- 
 tables we have examples of molecular power. You have 
 learned how the atoms of oxygen and hydrogen rush 
 together to form water. I have not thought it necessary 
 to dwell upon the mighty mechanical energy of their act 
 of combination ; and it may be said, in passing, that the 
 clashing together of one pound of hydrogen and eight 
 pounds of oxygen to form nine pounds of aqueous vapor, 
 is greater than the shock of a weight of 1,000 tons falling 
 from a height of twenty feet against the earth. Now, in 
 
96 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 order that the atoms of oxygen and hydrogen should rise 
 by their mutual attractions to the velocity corresponding 
 to this enormous mechanical effect, a certain distance must 
 exist between the particles. It is in rushing over this that 
 the velocity is attained. 
 
 This idea of distance between the attracting atoms is 
 of the highest importance in our conception to the system 
 of the world. For the matter of the world may be classi- 
 fied under two distinct heads : atoms and molecules which 
 have already combined and thus satisfied their mutual 
 attractions, and atoms and molecules which have not yet 
 combined, and whose mutual attractions are, therefore, 
 unsatisfied. Now, as regards motive power, we are entirely 
 dependent on atoms and molecules of the latter kind. 
 Their attractions can produce motion, because sufficient 
 distance intervenes, between the attracting atoms, and it is 
 this atomic motion that we utilize in our machines. Thus 
 we can get power out of oxygen and hydrogen by the act 
 of their union ; but once they are combined, and once the 
 vibratory motion consequent on their combination has 
 been expended, no further power can be got out of their 
 mutual attraction. As dynamic agents they are dead. The 
 materials of the earth 's crust consist for the most part of 
 substances whose atoms have already closed in chemical 
 union — whose mutual attractions are satisfied. Granite, 
 for instance, is a widely diffused substance ; but granite 
 consists, in great part, of silicon, oxygen, potassium, cal- 
 cium, and aluminum, whose atoms united long ago, and 
 are therefore dead. Limestone is composed of carbon, 
 oxygen, and calcium, the atoms of which have already closed 
 in chemical union, and are therefore finally at rest. In this 
 way we might go over nearly the whole of the materials of 
 the earth's crust, and satisfy ourselves that though they 
 were sources of power in ages past, and long before any 
 creature appeared on the earth capable of turning their 
 power to account, they are sources of power no longer. 
 
 A few exceptions to the general state of union of the 
 molecules of the earth's crust— vast in relation to us but 
 trivial in comparison to the total store of which they are 
 the residue— still remain. They constitute our main source 
 
MATTER AND FORCE 97 
 
 of motive power. By far the most important of these are 
 our beds of coal. Distance still intervenes between the 
 atoms of carbon and those of atmospheric oxygen, across 
 which the atoms may be urged by their mutual attrac- 
 tions ; and we can utilize the motion thus produced. Once 
 the carbon and the oxygen have rushed together, so as to 
 form carbonic acid, their mutual attractions are satisfied ; 
 and, while they continue in this condition, as dynamic 
 agents they are dead. Our woods and forests are also 
 sources of mechanical energy, because they have the 
 power of uniting with the atmospheric oxygen. Passing 
 from plants to animals, we find that the source of motive 
 power just referred to is also the source of muscular 
 power. A horse can perform work, and so can a man ; but 
 this work is at bottom the molecular work of the trans- 
 muted food and the oxygen of the air. We inhale this 
 vital gas, and bring it into sufficiently close proximity 
 with the carbon and the hydrogen of the body. These unite 
 in obedience to their mutual attractions ; and their motion 
 toward each other, properly turned to account by the won- 
 derful mechanism of the body, becomes muscular action. 
 
 One fundamental thought pervades all these statements : 
 there is one tap root from which they all spring. That is 
 the ancient maxim that out of nothing nothing comes ; that 
 neither in the organic world nor in the inorganic is power 
 produced without the expenditure of power ; that neither 
 in the plant nor in the animal is there a creation of force 
 or motion. Trees grow, and so do men and horses ; and 
 here we have new power incessantly introduced upon the 
 earth. But its source, as I have already stated, is the sun. 
 It is the sun that separates the carbon from the oxygen of 
 the carbonic acid, and thus enables them to recombine. 
 Whether they recombine in the furnace of the steam 
 engine or in the animal body, the origin of the power they 
 produce is the same. In this sense we are all "souls of 
 fire and children of the sun." But, as remarked by Helm- 
 holtz, we must be content to share our celestial pedigree 
 with the meanest of living things. 
 
 John Tyndall: Fragments of Science. (Reprinted by permission of 
 D. Appleton and Company.) 
 
98 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 The Present Condition of Organic Nature 
 
 When it was my duty to consider what subject I would 
 select for the six lectures which I shall now have the 
 pleasure of delivering to you, it occurred to me that I 
 could not do better than endeavor to put before you in a 
 true light, or in what I might perhaps with more modesty 
 eaU, that which I conceive myself to be the true light, the 
 position of a book which has been more praised and more 
 abused, perhaps, than any book which has appeared for 
 some years — ^I mean Mr. Darwin's work on the "Origin 
 of Species." That work, I doubt not, many of you have 
 read ; for I know the inquiring spirit which is rife among 
 you. At any rate, all of you will have heard of it — some 
 by one kind of report and some by another kind of report ; 
 the attention of all and the curiosity of all have been 
 probably more or less excited on the subject of that work. 
 All I can do, and all I shall attempt to do, is to put before 
 you that kind of judgment which has been formed by a 
 man, who, of course, is liable to judge erroneously ; but at 
 any rate, of one whose business and profession it is to form 
 judgments upon questions of this nature. 
 
 And here, as it wiU always happen when dealing with 
 an extensive subject, the greater part of my course — ^if, 
 indeed, so small a. number of lectures can be properly 
 called a course — ^must be devoted to preliminary matters, 
 or rather to a statement of those facts and of those prin- 
 ciples which the work itself dwells upon, and brings more 
 or less directly before us. I have no right to suppose that 
 all or any of you are naturalists ; and even if you were, 
 the misconceptions and misunderstandings prevalent even 
 among naturalists on these matters would make it desir- 
 able that I should take the course I now propose to take — 
 that I should start from the beginning — that I should 
 endeavor to point out what is the existing state of the 
 organic world— that I should point out its past condition- 
 that I should state what is the precise nature of the under- 
 taking which Mr. Darwin has taken in hand; that I 
 
PRESENT CONDITION OF ORGANIC NATURE 99 
 
 should endeavor to show you what are the only methods 
 by which that undertaking can be brought to an issue, and 
 to point out to you how far the author of the work in 
 question has satisfied those conditions, how far he has not 
 satisfied them, how far they are satisfiable by man, and 
 how far they are not satisfiable by man. 
 
 Tonight, in taking up the first part of the question, I 
 shall endeavor to put before you a sort of broad notion of 
 our knowledge of the condition of the living world. There 
 are many ways of doing this, I might deal with it 
 pictorially and graphically. Following the example of 
 Humboldt in his "Aspects of Nature," I might endeavor 
 to point out the infinite variety of organic life in every 
 mode of its existence, with reference to the variations of 
 climate and the like; and such an attempt would be 
 fraught with interest to us all; but considering the sub- 
 ject before us, such a course would not be that best calcu- 
 lated to assist us. In an argument of this kind we must go 
 further and dig deeper into the matter ; we must endeavor 
 to look into the foundations of living nature, if I may so 
 say, and discover the principles involved in some of her 
 most secret operations. I propose, therefore, in the first 
 place, to take some ordinary animal with which you are all 
 familiar, and, by easily comprehensible and obvious 
 examples drawn from it, to show what are the kind of 
 problems which living beings in general lay before us; 
 and I shall then show you that the same problems are laid 
 open to us by all kinds of living beings. But, first, let me 
 say in what sense I have used the words ' ' organic nature. ' ' 
 In speaking of the causes which lead to our present knowl- 
 edge of organic nature, I have used it almost as an equiva- 
 lent of the word "living," and for this reason — ^that in 
 almost all living beings you can distinguish several 
 distinct portions set apart to do particular things and 
 work in a particular way. These are termed "organs," 
 and the whole together is called "organic." And as it is 
 universally characteristic of them, the term "organic" has 
 been very conveniently employed to denote the whole of 
 living nature, — the whole of the plant world, and the 
 whole of the animal world. 
 
100 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 Few animals can be more familiar to you than that 
 whose skeleton is shown on o\ir diagram. You need not 
 bother yourselves with this "Equus caballus" written under 
 it ; that is only the Latin name of it, and does not make it 
 any better. It simply means the common Horse. Suppose 
 we wish to understand all about the Horse. Our first object 
 must be to study the structure of the animal. The whole 
 of his body is enclosed within a hide, a skin covered with 
 hair ; and if that hide or skin be taken off, we find a great 
 mass of flesh, or what is technically called muscle, being 
 the substance which by its power of contraction enables the 
 animal to move. These muscles move the hard parts one 
 upon the other, and so give that strength and power of 
 motion which renders the Horse so useful to us in the per- 
 formance of those services in which we employ him. 
 
 And then, on separating and removing the whole of this 
 skin and flesh, you have a great series of bones, hard struc- 
 tures, bound together with ligaments, and forming the 
 skeleton which is represented here. 
 
 In that skeleton there are a number of parts to be recog- 
 nized. The long series of bones, beginning from the skull 
 and ending in the tail, is called the spine, and those in 
 front are the ribs ; and then there are two pairs of limbs, 
 one before and one behind; and these are what we all 
 know as the forelegs and the hindlegs. If we pursue our 
 researches into the interior of this animal, we find within 
 the framework of the skeleton a great cavity, or rather I 
 should say, two great cavities, — one cavity beginning in 
 the skull and running through the neck bones, along the 
 spine, and ending in the tail, containing the brain and the 
 spinal marrow, which are extremely important organs. 
 The second great cavity, commencing with the mouth, con- 
 tains the gullet, the stomach, the long intestine, and all 
 the rest of those internal apparatus which are essential for 
 digestion; and then in the same great cavity, there are 
 lodged the heart and all the great vessels going from it ; 
 and, besides that, the organs of respiration — ^the lungs j 
 and then the kidneys, and the organs of reproduction, and 
 so on. Let us now endeavor to reduce this notion of a horse 
 
PRESENT CONDITION OF ORGANIC NATURE 101 
 
 that we now have, to some such kind of simple expression 
 as can be at once, and without difficulty, retained in the 
 
 mind, apart from all minor 
 details. If I make a transverse 
 section, that is, if I were to saw 
 a dead horse across, I should 
 find that, if I left out the details, 
 and supposing I took my sec- 
 tion through the anterior region, 
 and through the forelimbs, I 
 should have here this kind of 
 section of the body (Fig. 1). 
 p,g , Here would be the upper part 
 
 of the animal — ^that great mass 
 of bones that we spoke of as the spine {a. Fig. 1). Here I 
 should have the alimentary canal (b. Fig. 1). Here I 
 should have the heart (c. Fig. 1) ; and then you see, there 
 would be a kind of double tube, the whole being enclosed 
 within the hide; the spinal marrow would be placed in 
 the upper tube (a. Fig. 1), and in the lower tube (d d. Fig. 
 1), there would be the alimentary canal (b), and the heart 
 (f) ; and here I shall have the legs proceeding from each 
 side. For simplicity's sake, I represent them merely as 
 stumps {e e. Fig. 1). Now that is a horse — as mathema- 
 ticians would say — ^reduced to its most simple expression. 
 Carry that in your minds, if you please, as a simplified 
 idea of the structure of the Horse. The considerations 
 which I have now put before you belong to what we 
 technically call the "anatomy" of the Horse. Now, sup- 
 pose we go to work upon these several parts — flesh and 
 hair, and skin and bone, and lay open these various organs 
 with our scalpels, and examine them by means of our 
 magnifying glasses, and see what we can make of them. 
 We shall find that the flesh is made up of bundles of 
 strong fibres. The brain and nerves, too, we shall find, are 
 made up of fibres, and these queer looking things that are 
 called ganglionic corpuscles. If we take a slice of the bone 
 and examine it, we shall find that it is very like this diagram 
 of a section of the bone of an ostrich, though differing, of 
 course, in some details ; and if we take any part whatsoever 
 
102 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 of the tissue, and examine it, we shall find it all has a minute 
 structure, visible only under the microscope. All these parts 
 constitute microscopic anatomy or "Histology." These 
 parts are constantly being changed; and 
 every part is constantly growing, decaying, 
 and being replaced during the life of the 
 animal. The tissue is constantly replaced by 
 new material ; and if you go back to the young 
 state of the tissue in the case of muscle, or 
 in the case of skin, or any of the organs I 
 have mentioned, you will find that they all 
 come under the same condition. Every one of these micro- 
 scopic filaments and fibres (I now speak merely of the 
 general character of the whole process) — every one of 
 these parts — could be traced down to some modification of 
 a tissue which can be readily divided into little particles 
 of fleshy matter, of that substance which is composed of 
 the chemical elements, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and 
 nitrogen, having such a shape as this (Fig. 2). These 
 particles, into which all primitive tissues break up, are 
 called cells. If I were to make a section of a piece of the 
 skin of my hand, I should find that it was made up of these 
 cells. If I examine the fibres which form the various 
 organs of all living animals, I should find that all of them, 
 at one time or other, had been formed out of a substance 
 consisting of similar elements ; so that you see, just as we 
 reduced the whole body in the gross to that sort of simple 
 expression given in Pig. 1, so we may reduce the whole of 
 the microscopic structural elements to a form of even 
 greater simplicity ; just as the plan of the whole body may 
 be so represented in a sense (Fig. 1), so the primary struc- 
 ture of every tissue may be represented by a mass of cells 
 (Fig. 2). 
 
 Having thus, in this sort of general way, sketched to 
 you what I may call, perhaps, the architecture of the body 
 of the Horse (what we term technically its Morphology), I 
 must now turn to another aspect. A horse is not a mere 
 dead structure : it is an active, living, working machine. 
 Hitherto we have, as it were, been looking at a steam 
 engine with the fires out, and nothing in the boiler ; but 
 
PRESENT CONDITION OF ORGANIC NATURE 103 
 
 the body of the living animal is a beautifully formed 
 active machine, and every part has its different work to do 
 in the working of that machine, which is what we call its 
 life. The Horse, if you see him after his day's work is 
 done, is cropping the grass in the fields, as it may be, or 
 munching the oats in his stable. What is he doing ? His 
 jaws are working as a mill — and a very complex mill too — 
 grinding the corn, or crushing the grass to a pulp. As 
 soon as that operation has taken place, the food is passed 
 down to the stomach, and there it is mixed with the chemi- 
 cal fluid called the gastric juice, a substance which has the 
 peculiar property of making soluble and dissolving out the 
 nutritious matter in the grass, and leaving behind those 
 parts which are not nutritious ; so that you have, first, the 
 mill, then a sort of chemical digester ; and then the food, 
 thus partially dissolved, is carried back by the muscular 
 contractions of the intestines into the hinder parts of the 
 body, while the soluble portions are taken up into the blood. 
 The blood is contained in a vast system of pipes, spreading 
 through the whole body, connected with a force pump, — 
 the heart, — ^which, by its position and by the contractions 
 of its valves, keeps the blood constantly circulating in one 
 direction, never allowing it to rest ; and then, by means of 
 this circulation of the blood, laden as it is with the pro- 
 duets of digestion, the skin, the flesh, the hair, and every 
 other part of the body, draws from it that which it wants, 
 and every one of these organs derives those materials 
 which are necessary to enable it to do its work. 
 
 The action of each of these organs, the performance of 
 5ach of these variotis duties, involve in their operation a 
 continual absorption of the matters necessary for their 
 support, from the blood, and a constant formation of 
 waste products, which are returned to the blood, and con- 
 veyed by it to the lungs and the kidneys, which are organs 
 that have allotted to them the office of extracting, separat- 
 ing, and getting rid of these waste products ; and thus the 
 general nourishment, labor, and repair of the whole 
 machine is kept up with order and regularity. But not 
 only is it a machine which feeds and appropriates to its 
 own support the nourishment necessary to its existence — 
 
104 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 it is an engine for locomotive purposes. The Horse desires 
 to go from one place to another; and to enable it to do 
 this, it has those strong contractile bundles of muscles 
 attached to the bones of its limbs, which are put in motion 
 by means of a sort of telegraphic apparatus formed by the 
 brain and the great spinal cord running through the spine 
 or backbone; and to this spinal cord are attached a 
 number of fibres termed nerves, which proceed to all parts 
 of the structure. By means of these the eyes, nose, tongue 
 and skin— all the organs of perception— transmit impres- 
 sions or sensations to the brain, which acts as a sort of 
 great central telegraph office, receiving impressions and 
 sending messages to all parts of the body, and putting in 
 motion the muscles necessary to accomplish any movement 
 that may be desired. So that you have here an extremely 
 complex and beautifully proportioned machine, with all its 
 parts working harmoniously together towards one com- 
 mon object — the preservation of the life of the animal. 
 
 Now, note this : the Horse makes up its waste by feed- 
 ing, and its food is grass or oats, or perhaps other vege- 
 table products ; therefore, in the long run, the source of 
 all this complex machinery lies in the vegetable kingdom. 
 But where does the grass, or the oat, or any other plant, 
 obtain this nourishing, food producing material ? At first 
 it is a little seed, which soon begins to draw into itself 
 from the earth and the surrounding air matters which in 
 themselves contain no vital properties whatever; it 
 absorbs into its own substance water, an inorganic body; 
 it draws into its substance carbonic acid, an inorganic 
 matter ; and ammonia, another inorganic matter, found in 
 the air; and then, by some wonderful chemical process, 
 the details of which chemists do not yet understand, 
 though they are near foreshadowing them, it combines 
 them into one substance, which is known to us as "pro- 
 tein," a complex compound of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, 
 and nitrogen, which alone possesses the property of mani- 
 festing vitality and of permanently supporting animal life. 
 So that, you see, the waste products of the animal economy, 
 the efPete materials which are continually being thrown off 
 by all living beings, in the form of organic matters, are 
 
PRESENT CONDITION OF ORGANIC NATURE lOS 
 
 constantly replaced by supplies of the necessary repairing 
 and rebuilding materials drawn from the plants, which in 
 their turn manufacture them, so to speak, by a mysterious 
 combination of those same inorganic materials. 
 
 Let us trace out the history of the Horse in another 
 direction. After a certain time, as the result of sickness 
 or disease, the effect of accident, or the consequence of old 
 age, sooner or later, the animal dies. The multitudinous 
 operations of this beautiful mechanism flag in their per- 
 formance, the Horse loses its vigor, and after passing 
 through the curious series of changes comprised in its 
 formation and preservation, it finally decays, and ends its 
 life by going back into that inorganic world from which 
 all but an inappreciable fraction of its substance was 
 derived. Its bones become mere carbonate and phosphate 
 of lime ; the matter of its flesh, and of its other parts, 
 becomes, in the long run, converted into carbonic acid, 
 into water, and into ammonia. You will now, perhaps, 
 understand the curious relation of the animal with the 
 plant, of the organic with the inorganic world, which is 
 shown in this diagram. 
 
 The plant gathers these inorganic materials together 
 and makes them up into its own substance. The animal 
 eats the plant and appropriates the niitritious portions to 
 its own sustenance, rejects and gets rid of the useless 
 matters ; and finally, the animal itself dies, and its whole 
 body is decomposed and returned into the inorganic world. 
 There is thus a constant circulation from one to the other, 
 a 'continual formation of organic life from inorganic 
 matters, and as constant a return of the matter of living 
 bodies to the inorganic world; so that the materials of 
 which our bodies are composed are largely, in all prob- 
 ability, the substances which constituted the matter of 
 long extinct creations, but which have in the interval con- 
 stituted a part of the inorganic world. 
 
 Thus we come to the conclusion, strange at first sight, 
 that the matter constituting the living world is identical 
 with that which forms the inorganic world. And not less 
 true is it that, remarkable as are the powers or, in other 
 words as are the forces which are exerted by living beings. 
 
106 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 yet all these forces are either identical with those which 
 exist in the inorganic world, or they are convertible into 
 them ; I mean in just the same sense as the researches of 
 physical philosophers have shown that heat is convertible 
 into electricity, that electricitj/^ is convertible into mag- 
 netism, magnetism into mechanical force or chemical 
 force, and any one of them with the other, each being 
 measurable in terms of the other, — even so, I say, that 
 great law is applicable to the living world. Consider why 
 is the skeleton of this horse capable of supporting the 
 masses of flesh and the various organs forming the living 
 
 INORGANIC WORLD. 
 
 Carbonic Acid 
 
 Salines. 
 
 VEGETABLE WORLD. 
 
 ANIMAL WORLD. 
 
 Fig. 3 
 
 body, unless it is because of the action of the same forces 
 of cohesion which combines together the particles of 
 matter composing this piece of chalk? What is there in 
 the muscular contractile power of the animal but the force 
 which is expressible, and which is in a certain sense con- 
 vertible, into the force of gravity which it overcomes ? Or, 
 if you go to more hidden processes, in what does the pro- 
 cess of digestion differ from those processes which are 
 carried on in the laboratory of the chemist? Even if we 
 take the more recondite and more complex operations of 
 animal life — those of the nervous system, these of late 
 years have been shown to be — ^I do not say identical in any 
 
PRESENT CONDITION OF ORGANIC NATURE 107 
 
 sense with the electrical processes — but this has been 
 shown, that they are in some way or other associated with 
 them ; that is to say, that every amount of nervous action 
 is accompanied by a certain amount of electrical disturb- 
 ance in the particles of the nerves in which that nervous 
 action is carried on. In this way the nervous action is 
 related to electricity in the same way that heat is related 
 to electricity; and the same sort of argument which 
 demonstrates the two latter to be related to one another 
 shows that the nervous forces are correlated to electricity ; 
 for the experiments of M. Dubois Reymond and others 
 have shown that whenever a nerve is in a state of excite- 
 ment, sending a message to the muscles or conveying an 
 impression to the brain, there is a disturbance of the elec- 
 trical condition of that nerve which does not exist at other 
 times ; and there are a number of other facts and 
 phenomena of that sort; so that we come to the broad 
 conclusion that not only as to living matter itself, but as to 
 the forces that matter exerts, there is a close relationship 
 between the organic and the inorganic world — ^the differ- 
 ence between them arising from the diverse combination 
 and disposition of identical forces, and not from any 
 primary diversity, so far as we can see. 
 
 I said just now that the Horse eventually died and 
 became converted into the same inorganic substances from 
 whence all but an inappreciable fraction of its substance 
 demonstrably originated, so that the actual wanderings of 
 matter are as remarkable as the transmigrations of the 
 soul fabled by Indian tradition. But before death has 
 occurred, in the one sex or the other, and in fact in both, 
 certain products or parts of the organism have been set 
 free, certain parts of the organisms of the two sexes have 
 come into contact with one another, and from that con- 
 junction, from that union which then takes place, there 
 results the formation of a new being. At stated times 
 the mare, from a particular part of the interior of her 
 body, called the ovary, gets rid of a minute particle of 
 matter comparable in all essential respects with that 
 which we called a cell a little while since, which cell 
 contains a kind of nucleus in its center, surrounded l)y a 
 
108 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 clear space and by a ,viscid mass of protein substance 
 (Fig. 2) ; and though it is different in appearance from 
 the eggs which we are mostly acquainted with, it is really 
 an egg. After a time this minute particle of matter, which 
 may only be a small fraction of a grain in weight, under- 
 goes a series of changes, — wonderful complex changes. 
 Finally, upon its surface there is fashioned a little eleva- 
 tion, which afterwards becomes divided and marked by 
 a groove. The lateral boundaries of the groove extend 
 upwards and downwards, and at length give rise to a 
 double tube. In the upper and smaller tube the spinal 
 marrow and brain are fashioned; in the lower, the 
 alimentary canal and heart; and at length two pairs of 
 buds shoot out at the sides of the body, and they are the 
 rudiments of the limbs. In fact a true drawing of a sec- 
 tion of the embryo in this state would in all essential 
 respects resemble that diagram of a horse reduced to its 
 simplest expression, which I first placed before you 
 (Fig. 1). 
 
 Slowly and gradually these changes take place. The 
 whole of the body, at first, can be broken up into "cells," 
 which become in one place metamorphosed into muscle — 
 in another place into gristle and bone — in another place 
 into fibrous tissue — and in another into hair; every part 
 becoming gradually and slowly fashioned, as if there were 
 an artificer at work in each of these complex structures 
 that I have mentioned. This embryo, as it is called, then 
 passes into other conditions. I should tell you that there 
 is a time when the embryos of neither dog, nor horse, nor 
 porpoise, nor monkey, nor man, can be distinguished by 
 any essential feature one from the other ; there is a time 
 when they each and all of them resemble this one of the 
 Dog. But as development advances, all the parts acquire 
 their specialty, till at length you have the embryo con- 
 verted into the form of the parent from which it started. 
 So that you see, this living animal, this horse, begins its 
 existence as a minute particle of nitrogenous matter, 
 which, being supplied with nutriment (derived, as I have 
 shown, from the inorganic world), grows up according to 
 the special type and construction of its parents, works and 
 
PRESENT CONDITION OF ORGANIC NATURE 109 
 
 undergoes a constant waste, and that waste is made good 
 by nutriment derived from the inorganic world ; the waste 
 given off in this way being directly added to the inorganic 
 world. Eventually the animal itself dies, and by the pro- 
 cess of decomposition, its whole body is returned to those 
 conditions of inorganic matter in which its substance 
 originated. 
 
 This, then, is that which is true of every living form, 
 from the lowest plant to the highest animal — to man 
 himself. You might define the life of every one in exactly 
 the same terms as those which I have now used; the 
 difference between the highest and the lowest being 
 simply in the complexity of the developmental changes, 
 the variety of the structural forms, and the diversity of 
 the physiological functions which are exerted by each. 
 
 If I were to take an oak tree, as a specimen of the plant 
 world, I should find that it originated in an acorn, which, 
 too, commenced in a cell; the acorn is placed in the 
 ground, and it very speedily begins to absorb the inor- 
 ganic matters I have named, adds enormously to its bulk, 
 and we can see it, year after year, extending itself upward 
 and downward, attracting and appropriating to itself 
 inorganic materials, which it vivifies, and eventually, as 
 it ripens, gives off its own proper acorns, which again run 
 the same course. But I need not multiply examples, — from 
 the highest to the lowest the essential features of life are 
 the same as I have described in each of these cases. 
 
 So much then, for these particular features of the 
 organic world, which you can understand and compre- 
 hend, so long as you confine yourself to one sort of living 
 being, and study that only. 
 
 But as you know, horses are not the only living crea- 
 tures in the world; and again, horses, like all other 
 animals, have certain limits — are confined to a certain area 
 on the surface of the earth on which we live, — and, as that 
 is the simpler matter, I may take that first. In its wild 
 state, and before the discovery of America, when the 
 natural state of things was interfered with by the Span- 
 iards, the Horse was only to be found in parts of the earth 
 which are known to geographers as the Old World ; that 
 
110 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 is to say, you might meet with horses in Europe, Asia, or 
 Africa ;• but there were none in Australia, and there were 
 none whatsoever in the whole continent of America, from 
 Labrador down to Cape Horn. This is an empirical fact, 
 and it is what is called, stated in the way I have given it 
 you, the " Geographical Distribution" of the Horse. 
 
 Why horses should be found in Europe, Asia, and 
 Africa, and not in America, is not obvious ; the explana- 
 tion that the conditions of life in America are unfavorable 
 to their existence, and that, therefore, they had not been 
 created there, evidently does not apply; for when the 
 invading Spaniards, or our own yeomen farmers, con- 
 veyed horses to these countries for their own use, they 
 were found to thrive well and multiply very rapidly ; and 
 many are even now running wild in those countries, and 
 in a perfectly natural condition. Now, suppose we were 
 to do for every animal what we have here done for the 
 Horse.-^that is, to mark off and distinguish the particular 
 district or region to which each belonged ; and supposing 
 we tabulated all these results, that would be called the 
 Geographical Distribution of animals, while a correspond- 
 ing study of plants would yield as a result the Geo- 
 graphical Distribution of plants. 
 
 I pass on from that now, as I merely wished to explain to 
 you what I meant by the use of the term ' ' Geographical 
 Distribution." As I said, there is another aspect, and a 
 much more important one, and that is, the relations of the 
 various animals to one another. The Horse is a very well 
 defined matter-of-fact sort of animal, and we are all pretty 
 familiar with its structure. I dare say it may have struck 
 you, that it resembles very much no other member of the 
 animal kingdom, except perhaps the Zebra or the Ass. But 
 let me ask you to look along these diagrams. Here is the 
 skeleton of the Horse, and here the skeleton of the Dog. 
 You will notice that we have in the Horse a skull, a back- 
 bone and ribs, shoulder blades and haunch bones. In the 
 fore limb, one upper arm bone, two fore arm bones, wrist 
 bones (wrongly called knee), and middle hand bones, 
 ending in the three bones of a finger, the last of which is 
 sheathed in the horny hoof of the forefoot : in the hind 
 
PRESENT CONDITION OF ORGANIC NATURE HI 
 
 limb, one thigh bone, two leg bones, ankle bones, and 
 middle foot bones, ending in the three bones of a toe, the 
 last of which is encased in the hoof of the hind foot. Now 
 turn to the Dog 's skeleton. "We find identically the same 
 bones, but more of them, there being more toes in each 
 foot, and hence more toe bones. 
 
 Well, that -is a very curious thing! The fact is that the 
 Dog and the Horse — ^when one gets a look at them without 
 the outward impediments of the skin — are found to be 
 made in very much the same sort of fashion. And if I 
 were to make a transverse section of the Dog, I should 
 find the same organs that I have already shown you as 
 forming parts of the Horse. "Well, here is another skele- 
 ton — ^that of a kind of Lemur — you see he has just the 
 same bones ; and if I were to make a transverse section of 
 it, it would be just the same again. In your mind's eye 
 turn him round, so as to put his backbone in a position 
 inclined obliquely upwards and forwards, just as in the 
 next three diagrams, which represent the skeletons of an 
 Orang, a Chimpanzee and a Gorilla, and you find you have 
 no trouble in identifying the bones throughout ; and lastly 
 turn to the end of the series, the diagram representing a 
 man's skeleton, and still you find no great structural 
 feature essentially altered. There are the same bones in 
 the same relations. From the Horse we pass on and on 
 with gradual steps, until we arrive at last at the highest 
 known forms. On the other hand, take the other line of 
 diagrams, and pass from the Horse downwards in the scale 
 to this fish ; and still, though the modifications are vastly 
 greater, the essential framework of the organization 
 remains unchanged. Here, for instance, is a Porpoise; 
 here is its strong backbone, with the cavity running 
 through it, which contains the spinal cord; here are the 
 ribs, here the shoulder blade ; here is the little short upper 
 arm bone, here are the two forearm bones, the wrist bone, 
 and the finger bones. 
 
 Strange is it not, that the Porpoise should have in this 
 queer-looking affair — its flapper (as it is called), the same 
 fundamental elements as the fore leg of the Horse or the 
 Dog, or the Ape or Man ; and here you will notice a very 
 
112 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 curious thing — the hinder limbs are absent. Now, let us 
 make another jump. Let us go to the Codfish : here you 
 see is the forearm, in this large pectoral fin — carrying 
 your mind 's eye onward from the flapper of the Porpoise. 
 And here you have the hinder limbs restored in the shape 
 of these ventral fins. If I were to make a transverse sec- 
 tion of this, I should find just the same orgdns that we 
 have before noticed. So that, you see, there comes out 
 this strange conclusion as the result of our investigations, 
 that the Horse, when examined and compared with other 
 animals, is found by no means to stand alone in nature; 
 but that there are an enormous number of other creatures 
 which have backbones, ribs, and legs, and other parts 
 arranged in the same general manner, and in all their 
 formation exhibiting the same broad peculiarities. 
 
 I am sure that you cannot Jiave followed me even in 
 this extremely elementary exposition of the structural 
 relations of animals, without seeing what I have been 
 driving at all through, which is, to show you that, step by 
 step, naturalists have come to the idea of a unity of plan, 
 or conformity of construction, among animals which 
 appeared at first sight to be extremely dissimilar. 
 
 And here you have evidence of such a unity of plan 
 among all the animals which have backbones, and which 
 we technically call Vertebrata. But there are multitudes of 
 other animals, such as crabs, lobsters, spiders, and so on, 
 which we term Annulosa. In these I could not point out to 
 you the parts that correspond with those of the Horse — ^the 
 backbone, for instance, — as they are constructed upon a 
 very different principle, which is also common to all of 
 them ; that is to say, the Lobster, the Spider and the Centi- 
 pede, have a common plan running through their whole 
 arrangement, in just the same way that the Horse, the Dog, 
 and the Porpoise assimilate to each other. 
 
 Yet other creatures — whelks, cuttlefishes, oysters, snails, 
 and all their tribe (Mollusca) — resemble one another in 
 the same way, but differ from both Vertebrata and Annu- 
 losa; and the like is true of the animals called Coelenterata 
 (Polypes) and Protozoa (animalcules and sponges). 
 
PRESENT CONDITION OF ORGANIC NATURE 113 
 
 Now, by pursuing this sort of comparison, naturalists 
 have arrived at the conviction that there are — some think 
 five, and some seven — but certainly not more than the 
 latter number — and perhaps it is simpler to assume five — 
 distinct plans of constructions in the whole of the animal • 
 world; and that the hundreds of thousands of species of 
 creatures on the surface of the earth, are all reducible to 
 those five, or, at most, seven plans of organization. 
 
 But can we go no further than that ? When one has got 
 so far, one is tempted to go on a step and inquire whether 
 we cannot go back yet further and bring down the whole 
 to modifications of one primordial unit. The anatomist 
 cannot do this; but if he call to his aid the study of 
 development, he can do it. For we shall find that, distinct 
 as those plans are, whether it be a porpoise or man, or 
 lobster, or any of those other kinds I have mentioned, 
 every one begins its existence with one and the same 
 primitive forms, — ^that of the egg, consisting, as we have 
 seen, of a nitrogenous substance, having a small particle 
 or nucleus in the center of it. Furthermore, the earlier 
 changes of each are substantially the same. And it is in 
 this that lies that true "unity of organization" of the 
 animal kingdom which has been guessed at and fancied 
 for many years ; but which it has been left to the present 
 time to be demonstrated by the careful study of develop- 
 ment. But is it possible to go another step further still, 
 and to show that in the same way the whole of the organic 
 world is reducible to one primitive condition of form? Is 
 there among the plants the same primitive form of organ- 
 ization, and is that identical with that of the animal 
 kingdom 1 The reply to that question, too, is not uncertain 
 or doubtful. It is now proved that every plant begins its 
 existence under the same form ; that is to say, in that of a 
 cell — a particle of nitrogenous matter having substantially 
 the same conditions. So that if you trace back the oak to 
 its first germ, or a man, or a horse, or lobster, or oyster, 
 or any other animal you choose to name, you shall find 
 each and all of these commencing their existence in forms 
 essentially similar to each other: and, furthermore, that 
 the first processes of growth, and many of the subsequent 
 
1 1 4 EXPOSITION A ND M ISC ELLA NEO US PROSE 
 
 modifications, are essentially the same 'in principle in 
 almost all. 
 
 In conclusion, let me, in a few words, recapitulate the 
 positions which I have laid down. And you must under- 
 stand that I have not been talking mere theory; I have 
 been speaking of matters which are as plainly demon- 
 strable as the commonest propositions of Euclid — of facts 
 that must form the basis of all speculations and beliefs in 
 biological science. We have gradually traced down all 
 organic forms, or, in other words, we have analyzed the 
 present condition of animated nature, until we found that 
 each species took its origin in a form similar to that under 
 which all the others commenced their existence. We have 
 found the whole of the vast array of living forms with 
 which we are surrounded, constantly growing, increasing, 
 decaying and disappearing ; the animal constantly attract- 
 ing, modifying, and applying to its sustenance the matter 
 of the vegetable kingdom, which derived its support from 
 the absorption and conversion of inorganic matter. And 
 so constant and universal is this absorption, waste, and 
 reproduction, that it may be said with perfect certainty 
 that there is left in no one of our bodies at the present 
 moment a millionth part of the matter of which they were 
 originally formed ! We have seen, again, that not only is 
 the living matter derived from the inorganic world, but 
 that the forces of that matter are all of them correlative 
 with and convertible into those of inorganic nature. 
 
 This, for our present purposes, is the best view of the 
 present condition of organic nature which I can lay before 
 you: it gives you the great outlines of a vast picture, 
 which you must fill up by your own study. 
 
 T. H. Huxley. 
 
 CuKRER, Ellis, and Acton Bell 
 
 It has been thought that all the works published under 
 the names of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, were, in reality, 
 the production of one person. This mistake I endeavored 
 to rectify by a few words of disclaimer prefixed to the third 
 edition of "Jane Eyre." These, too, it appears, failed to 
 
CURRER, ELLIS, AND ACTON BELL US 
 
 gain general credence, and now, on the occasion of a 
 reprint of "Wuthering Heights" and "Agnes Grey," I 
 am advised distinctly to state how the case really stands. 
 
 Indeed, I feel myself that it is time the obscurity attend- 
 ing those two names — Ellis and Acton — was done away. 
 The little mystery, which formerly yielded some harmless 
 pleasure, has lost its interest ; circumstances are changed. 
 It becomes, then, my duty to explain briefly the origin 
 and authorship of the books written by Currer, Ellis and 
 Acton Bell. 
 
 About five years ago, my two sisters and myself, after 
 a somewhat prolonged period of separation, found our- 
 selves reunited, and- at home. Kesident in a remote dis- 
 trict, where education had made little progress, and where, 
 consequently, there was no inducement to seek social inter- 
 course beyond our own domestic circle, we were wholly 
 dependent on ourselves and each other, on books and 
 study, for the enjoyments and occupations of life. The 
 highest stimulus, as well as the liveliest pleasure we had 
 known from childhood upwards, lay in attempts at literary 
 composition; formerly we used to show each other what 
 we wrote, but of late years this habit of communication 
 and consultation had been discontinued ; hence it ensued, 
 that we were mutually ignorant of the progress we might 
 respectively have made. 
 
 One day in the autumn of 1845, I accidentally lig^hted 
 on a IIS. volume of verse in my sister Emily's handwrit- 
 ing. Of course, I was not surprised, knowing that she 
 could and did write verse : I looked it over, and something 
 more than surprise seized me, — a deep conviction that 
 these were not common effusions, nor at all like the poetry 
 women generally write. I thought them condensed and 
 terse, vigorous and genuine. To my ear, they had also a 
 peculiar music — wild, melancholy, and elevating. 
 
 My sister Emily was not a person of demonstrative 
 character, nor one on the recesses of whose mind and feel- 
 ings, even those nearest and dearest to her could, with 
 impunity, intrude unlicensed; it took hours to reconcile 
 her to the discovery I had made, and days to persuade her 
 that such poems merited publication. I knew, however, 
 
116 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 that a mind like hers could not be without some latent 
 spark of honorable ambition, and refused to be discour- 
 aged in my attempts to fan that spark to flame. 
 
 Meaiitime, my younger sister quietly produced some of 
 her own compositions, intimating that, since Emily's had 
 given me pleasure, I might like to look at hers. I could 
 not but be a partial judge, yet I thought that these verses, 
 too, had a sweet sincere pathos of their own. 
 
 We had very early cherished the dream of one day 
 becoming authors. This dream, never relinquished even 
 when distance divided and absorbing tasks occupied us, 
 now suddenly acquired strength and consistency : it took 
 the character of a resolve. We agreed to arrange a small 
 selection of our poems, and, if possible, get them printed. 
 Averse to personal publicity, we veiled our own names 
 under those of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell ; the ambigu- 
 ous choice being dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple 
 at assuming Christian names positively masculine, while 
 we did not like to declare ourselves women, because — 
 without at that time suspecting that our mode of writing 
 and thinking was not what is called "feminine" — we had 
 a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked 
 on with prejudice ; we had noticed how critics sometimes 
 use for their chastisement the weapon of personality, 
 and for their reward, a flattery which is not true praise. 
 
 The bringing out of our little book was hard work. As 
 was to be expected, neither we nor our poems were at all 
 wanted ; but for this we had been prepared at the outset ; 
 though inexperienced ourselves, we had read the experi- 
 ence of others. The great puzzle lay in the difficulty of 
 getting answers of any kind from the publishers to whom 
 we applied. Being greatly harassed by this obstacle, I 
 ventured to apply to the Messrs. Chambers, of Edinburgh, 
 for a word of advice ; they may have forgotten the circum- 
 stance, but I have not, for from them I received a brief 
 and business-like, but civil and sensible reply, on which we 
 acted, and at last made a way. 
 
 The book was printed : it is scarcely known, and all of 
 it that merits to be known are the poems of Ellis Bell. 
 The flxed conviction I held, and hold, of the worth of these 
 
CURRER, ELLIS, AND ACTON BELL 117 
 
 poems has not indeed received the confirmation of much 
 favorable criticism ; but I must retain it notwithstanding. 
 
 lU-suceess failed to crush us : the mere effort to succeed 
 had given a wonderful zest to existence; it must be pur- 
 sued. We each set to work on a prose tale : Ellis Bell 
 produced "Wuthering Heights," Acton Bell "Agnes 
 Grey," and Currer Bell also wrote a narrative in one 
 volume. These MSS. were perseveringly obtruded upon 
 various publishers for the space of a year and a half; 
 usually, their fate was an ignominious and abrupt 
 dismissal. 
 
 At last ' ' Wuthering Heights ' ' and ' ' Agnes Grey ' ' were 
 accepted on terms somewhat impoverishing to the authors ; 
 Currer Bell's book found acceptance nowhere, nor any 
 acknowledgment of merit, so that something likie the chill 
 of despair began to invade his heart. As a forlorn hope, 
 he tried one publishing house more — Messrs. Smith, Elder 
 & Co. Ere long, in a much shorter space than that on 
 which experience had taught him to calculate — there came 
 a letter, which he opened in the dreary expectation of 
 finding two hard hopeless lines, intimating that Messrs. 
 Smith, Elder & Co. "were not disposed to publish the 
 MS., ' ' and, instead, he took out of the envelope a letter of 
 two pages. He read it trembling. It declined, indeed, to 
 publish that tale, for business reasons, but it discussed its 
 merits and demerits so courteously, so considerately, in 
 a spirit so rational, with a discrimination so enlightened, 
 that this very refusal cheered the author better than a 
 ^Tilgarly expressed acceptance would have done. It was 
 added, that a work in three volumes would meet with 
 careful attention. 
 
 I was just then completing ' ' Jane Eyre, ' ' at which I had 
 been working while the one volume tale was plodding its 
 weary round in London: in three weeks I sent it off; 
 friendly and skilful hands took it in. This was in the com- 
 mencement of September, 1847; it came out before the 
 close of the October following, while "Wuthering 
 Heights" and "Agnes Grey," my sisters' works, which 
 had already been in the press for months, still lingered 
 under a different management. 
 
118 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 They appeared at last. Critics failed to do them justice. 
 The immature but very real powers revealed in "Wuther- 
 ing Heights" were scarcely recognized; its import and 
 nature were misunderstood ; the identity of its author mis- 
 represented ; it was said that this was an earlier and ruder 
 attempt of the same pen which had produced "Jane 
 Eyre." Unjust and grievous error I We laughed at it at 
 first, but I deeply lament it now. Hence, I fear, arose a 
 prejudice against the book. That writer who could 
 attempt to palm off an inferior and immature production 
 under cover of one successful effort, must indeed bo 
 unduly eager after the secondary and sordid results of 
 authorship, and pitiably indifferent to its true and honor- 
 able meed. If reviewers and the public truly believed this, 
 no wonder that they looked darkly on the cheat. 
 
 Yet I must not be understood to make these things sub- 
 ject for reproach or complaint ; I dare not do so ; respect 
 for my sister's memory forbids me. By her any such 
 querulous manifestation would have been regarded as an 
 unworthy and offensive weakness. 
 
 "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall," by Acton Bell, had like- 
 wise an unfavorable reception. At this I cannot wonder. 
 The choice of subject was an entire mistake. Nothing less 
 congruous with the writer's nature could be conceived. 
 The motives which dictated this choice were pure, but, I 
 think, slightly morbid. She had, in the course of her life, 
 been called on to contemplate, near at hand, and for a long 
 time, the terrible effects of talents misused and faculties 
 abused; hers was naturally a sensitive, reserved, and 
 dejected nature ; what she saw sank very deeply into her 
 mind; it did her harm. She brooded ov(T it till she 
 believed it to be a duty to reproduce every detail (of 
 course with fictitious characters, incidents, and situations), 
 as a warning to others. She hated her work, but would 
 pursue it. When reasoned with on the subject, she 
 regarded such reasonings as a temptation to self-indul- 
 gence. She must be honest, she must not varnish, soften 
 or conceal. This well-meant resolution brought on her mis- 
 construction, and some abuse, which she bore, as it was her 
 custom to bear whatever was unpleasant, with mild, steady 
 
CURRER, ELLIS, AND ACTON BELL 119 
 
 patience. She was a very sincere and practical Christian, 
 but the tinge of religious melancholy communicated a sad 
 shape to her brief, blameless life. 
 
 Neither Ellis nor Acton allowed herself for one moment 
 to sink under want of encouragement ; energy nerved the 
 one, and endurance upheld the other. They were both 
 prepared to try again; I would fain think that hope 
 and the sense of power was yet strong within them. But 
 a great change approached : affliction came in that shape 
 which to anticipate is dread: to look back on, grief. In 
 the very heat and burden of the day, the laborers failed 
 over their work. 
 
 My sister Emily first declined. The details of her illness 
 are deep-branded in my memory, but to dwell on them, 
 either in thought or narrative, is not in my power. Never 
 in all her life had she lingered over any task that lay 
 before her, and she did not linger now. She sank rapidly. 
 She made haste to leave us. Yet, while physically she 
 perished, mentally she grew stronger than we had yet 
 known her. Day by day when I saw with what a front she 
 met suffering, I looked on her with an anguish of wonder 
 and love. I have seen nothing like it ; but, indeed, I havt; 
 never seen her parallel in anything. Stronger than a man, 
 simpler than a child, her nature stood alone. The awful 
 point was, that while full of ruth for others, on herself she 
 had no pity ; the spirit was inexorable to the flesh ; from 
 the trembling hand, the unnerved limbs, the faded eyes, 
 the same service was exacted as they had rendered in 
 health. To stand by and witness this, and not dare to 
 remonstrate, was a pain no words can render. 
 
 Two cruel months of hope and fear passed painfully by. 
 and the day came at last when the terrors and pains of 
 death were to be undergone by this treasure, which had 
 grown dearer and dearer to our hearts as it wasted before 
 our eyes. Towards the decline of that day, we had nothing 
 of Emily but her mortal remains as consumption left them. 
 She died December 19, 1848. 
 
 We thought this enough : but we were utterly and pre- 
 sumptuously wrong. She was not buried ere Anne fell ill. 
 She had not been committed to the grave a fortnight, 
 
120 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 before we received distinct intimation that it was neces- 
 sary to prepare our minds to see the younger sister go 
 after the elder. Accordingly, she followed in the same 
 path with slower step, and with a patience that equalled 
 the other's fortitude. I have said that she was religious, 
 and it was by leaning on those Christian doctrines in 
 which she firmly believed, that she found support through 
 her most painful journey. I witnessed their efficacy in her 
 latest hour and greatest trial, and must bear my testimony 
 to the calm triumph with which they brought her through. 
 She died May 28, 1849. 
 
 What more shall I say about them ? I cannot and need not 
 say much more. In externals, they were two unobtrusive 
 women ; a perfectly secluded life gave them retiring man- 
 ners and habits. In Emily's nature the extremes of vigor 
 and simplicity seemed to meet. Under an unsophisticated 
 culture, inartificial tastes, and an unpretending outside, 
 lay a secret power and fire that might have informed the 
 brain and kindled the veins of a hero; but she had no 
 worldly wisdom; her powers were unadapted to the 
 practical business of life: she would fail to defend her 
 most manifest rights, to consult her most legitimate 
 advantage. An interpreter ought always to have stood 
 between her and the world. Her will was not very flexible, 
 and it generally opposed her interests. Her temper was 
 magnanimous, but warm and sudden ; her spirit altogether 
 unbending. 
 
 Anne's character was milder and more subdued; she 
 wanted the power, the fire, the originality of her sister, 
 but was well endowed with quiet virtues of her own. 
 Long-suffering, self-denying, reflective, and intelligent, a 
 constitutional reserve and taciturnity placed and kept her 
 in the shade, and covered her mind, and especially her 
 feelings, with a sort of nun-like veil, which was rarely 
 lifted. Neither Emily nor Anne was learned ; they had no 
 thought of filling their pitchers at the well-spring of other 
 minds ; they always wrote from the impulse of nature, the 
 dictates of intuition, and from such stores of observation 
 as their limited experience had enabled them to amass. I 
 may sum up all by saying that for strangers they were 
 
EARLY CHARACTER OF HENR Y VIII. 121 
 
 uothing, for superficial observers less than nothing; but 
 for those who had known them all their lives in the inti- 
 macy of close relationship, they were genuinely good and 
 truly great. 
 
 This notice has been written, because I felt it a sacred 
 duty to wipe the dust off their gravestones, and leave their 
 dear names free from soil. 
 
 Charlotte Bronte: Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell. 
 
 The Early Character of Henry VIII. 
 
 If Henry VIII. had died previous to the first agitation of 
 the divorce, his loss would have been deplored as one of 
 the heaviest misfortunes which had ever befallen the 
 country; and he would have left a name which would 
 have taken its place in history by the side of that of the 
 Black Prince or the conqueror of Agincourt. Left at the 
 most trying age with his character unformed, with the 
 means at his disposal of gratifying every inclination, and 
 married by his ministers when a boy to an unattractive 
 woman far his senior, he had lived for thirty-six years 
 almost without blame, and bore through England the 
 reputation of an upright and virtuous king. Nature had 
 been prodigal to him of her rarest gifts. In person he is 
 said to have resembled his grandfather, Edward IV., who 
 was the handsomest man in Europe. His form and bearing 
 were princely ; and amidst the easy freedom of his address, 
 his manner remained majestic. No knight in England 
 could match him in the tournament except the Duke of 
 Suffolk ; he drew with ease as strong a bow as was borne 
 by any yeoman of his guard; and these powers were 
 sustained in unfailing vigor, by a temperate habit and by 
 constant exercise. Of his intellectual ability we are not 
 left to judge from the suspicious panegyrics of his con- 
 temporaries. His state papers and letters may be placed 
 by the side of those of Wolsey or of Cromwell, and they 
 lose nothing in the comparison. Though they are broadly 
 different, the perception is equally clear, the expression 
 equally powerful, and they breathe throughout an irresist- 
 
122 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 ible vigor of purpose. In addition to this he had a fine 
 musical taste, carefully cultivated ; he spoke and wrote in 
 four languages; and his knowledge of a multitude of 
 other subjects, with which his versatile ability made him 
 conversant, would have formed the reputation of any ordi- 
 nary man. He was among the best physicians of his age ; 
 he was his own engineer, inventing improvements in artil- 
 lery, and new constructions in ship building ; and this not 
 with the condescending incapacity of a royal amateur, but 
 with thorough workmanlike understanding. His reading 
 was vast, especially in theology, which has been ridicu- 
 lously ascribed by Lord Herbert to his father 's intention of 
 educating him for the Archbishopric of Canterbury : as if 
 the scientific mastery of such a subject could have been 
 acquired by a boy of twelve years of age, for he was no 
 more when he became Prince of Wales. He must have 
 studied theology with the full maturity of his intellect; 
 and he had a fixed and perhaps unfortunate interest in the 
 subject itself. 
 
 In all directions of human activity Henry displayed 
 natural powers of the highest order, at the highest stretch 
 of industrious culture. He was ' ' attentive, " as it is called, 
 "to his religious duties," being present at the services in 
 chapel two or three times a day with unfailing regularity, 
 and showing to outward appearance a real sense of 
 religious obligation in the energy and purity of his life. 
 In private he was good humored and good natured. His 
 letters to his secretaries, though never undignified, are 
 simple, easy, and unrestrained ; and the letters written by 
 them to him are similarly plain and business-like, as if the 
 writers knew that the person whom they were addressing 
 disliked compliments, and chose to be treated as a man. 
 Again, from their correspondence with one another, when 
 they describe interviews with him, we gather the same 
 pleasant impression. He seems to have been always kind, 
 always considerate ; inquiring into their private concerns 
 with genuine interest, and winning, as a consequence, 
 their warm and unafifected attachment. 
 
 As aruler he had been eminently popular. All his wars 
 had been successful. He had the splendid tastes in which 
 
£.4 KL Y CHA RA CTER OF HENR Y VIII. 1 2 3 
 
 the English people most delighted, and he had substan- 
 tially acted out his own theory of his duty which was 
 expressed in the following words : 
 
 "Scripture taketh princes to be, as it were, fathers and 
 nurses to their subjects, and by Scripture it appear eth that 
 it appertaineth unto the office of princes to see that right 
 religion and true doctrine be maintained and taught, and 
 that their subjects may be well ruled and governed by 
 good and just laws ; and to provide and care for them that 
 all things necessary for them may be plenteous ; and that 
 the people and commonweal may increase ; and to defend 
 them from oppression and invasion, as well within the 
 realm as without ; and to see that justice be administered 
 unto them indifferently; and to hear benignly their com- 
 plaints ; and to show towards them, although they offend, 
 fatherly pity. ' ' 
 
 He had more than once been tried with insurrection, 
 which he had soothed down without bloodshed, and extin- 
 guished in forgiveness ; and London long remembered the 
 great scene which followed "Evil May-day," 1517, when 
 the apprentices were brought down to Westminster Hall 
 to receive their pardons. There had been a dangerous riot 
 in the streets, which might have provoked a mild govern- 
 ment to severity; but the king contented himself with 
 punishing the five ringleaders, and four hundred other 
 prisoners, after being paraded down the streets in white 
 shirts with halters round their necks, were dismissed with 
 an admonition. 
 
 It is certain that if, as I have said, he had died before 
 the divorce was mooted, Henry VIII., like that Roman 
 Emperor said by Tacitus to have been consensu omnium 
 dignus imperii nisi imperasset, would have been considered by 
 posterity as formed by Providence for the conduct of the 
 Reformation, and his loss would have been deplored as a 
 perpetual calamity. We must allow him, therefore, the 
 benefit of his past career, and be careful to remember it, 
 when interpreting his later actions. Not many men would 
 have borne themselves through the same trials with the 
 same integrity; but the circumstances of those trials had 
 not tested the true defects in his moral constitution. Like 
 
124 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 all princes of the Plantagenet blood, he was a person of 
 most intense and imperious will. His impulses, in general 
 nobly directed, had never known contradiction; and late 
 in life, when his character was formed, he was forced into 
 collision with difficulties with which the experience of 
 discipline had not fitted him to contend. Education had 
 done much for him, but his nature required more correc- 
 tion than his position had permitted, whilst unbroken pros- 
 perity and early independence of control had been his 
 most serious misfortune. He had capacity, if his training 
 had been equal to it, to be one of the greatest of men. 
 With all his faults about him, he was still perhaps the 
 greatest of his contemporaries ; and the man best able of 
 all living Englishmen to govei-n England, had been set to 
 do it by the conditions of his birth. 
 
 James Anthony Froude: History of England. 
 
 Bensley as Malvolio 
 
 The part of Malvolio, in Twelfth Night, was performed 
 by Bensley with a richness and dignity, of which (to judge 
 from some recent castings of that character) the very 
 tradition must be worn out from the stage. . . . Malvolio 
 is not essentially ludicrous. He becomes eomie but by acci- 
 dent. He is cold, austere, repelling; but dignified, con- 
 sistent, and, for what appears, rather of an over-stretched 
 morality. Maria describes him as a sort of Puritan ; and 
 he might have worn his gold chain with honor in one of 
 our old roundhead families .... But his morality and 
 his manners are misplaced in lUyria. He is opposed to the 
 proper levities of the piece, and falls in the unequal contest. 
 Still his pride, or his gravity (call it which you will), is 
 inherent, and native to the man, not mock or affected, 
 which latter only are the fit objects to excite laughter. His 
 quality is at the best unlovely, but neither buffoon nor 
 contemptible. His bearing is lofty a little above his 
 station, but probably not much above his deserts. We see 
 no reason why he should not have been brave, honorable, 
 accomplished. His careless committal of the ring to the 
 
BENSLE Y AS MA VOLIO 1 2 5 
 
 ground (which he was commissioned to restore to Cesario), 
 bespeaks a generosity of birth and feeling. His dialect on 
 all occasions is that of a gentleman, and a man of educa- 
 tion. We must not confound him with the eternal old, low 
 steward of comedy. He is master of the household to a 
 great princess ; a dignity probably conferred upon him for 
 other respects than age or length of service. Olivia, at the 
 first indication of his supposed madness, declares that she 
 "would not have him miscarry for half of her dowry." 
 Does this look as if the character was meant to appear 
 little or insignificant? Once, indeed, she accuses him to 
 his face — of what? — of being "sick of self-love" — but 
 with a gentleness and considerateness which could not have 
 been, if she had not thought that this particular infirmity 
 shaded some virtues. His rebuke to the knight, and his 
 sottish revellers, is sensible and spirited; and when we 
 take into consideration the unprotected condition of his 
 mistress, and the strict regard with which her state of real 
 or dissembled mourning would draw the eyes of the world 
 upon her house affairs, Malvolio might feel the honor of 
 the family in some sort in his keeping; as it appears not 
 that Olivia had any more brothers, or kinsmen, to look to 
 it — for Sir Toby had dropped all such nice respects at the 
 buttery hatch. That Malvolio was meant to be represented 
 as possessing estimable qualities, the expression of the 
 duke in his anxiety to have him reconciled, almost infers. 
 "Pursue him, and entreat him to a peace." Even in his 
 abused state of chains and darkness, a sort of greatness 
 seems never to desert him. He argues highly and well 
 with the supposed Sir Topas, and philosophises gallantly 
 upon his straw.^ There must have been some shadow of 
 worth about the man ; he must have been something more 
 than a mere vapor — a thing of straw, or Jack in office — 
 before Fabian and Maria could have ventured sending him 
 upon a courting errand to Olivia. There was some con- 
 sonancy (as he would say) in the undertaking, or the jest 
 
 "Clown — What is the opinion of Pythagoras conceTning wild fowl? 
 Mai. — That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird. 
 Clown — What thinkest thou of his opinion? 
 Mai. — I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve of his opinion. 
 
126 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 would have been too bold even for that house of misrule. 
 
 Bensley, accordingly, threw over the part an air of 
 Spanish loftiness. He looked, spake, and moved like an 
 old Castilian. He was starch, spruce, opinionated, but his 
 superstructure of pride seemed bottomed upon a sense of 
 worth. There was something in it beyond the coxcomb. 
 It was big and swelling, but you could not be sure that it 
 was hollow. You might wish to see it taken down, but you 
 felt that it was upon an elevation. He was magnificent 
 from the outset; but when the decent sobrieties of the 
 character began to give way, and the poison of self-love, in 
 his conceit of the countess 's affection, gradually to work, 
 you would have thought that the hero of La Mancha in 
 person stood before you. How he went smiling to himself ! 
 with what ineffable carelessness would he twirl his gold 
 chain ! what a dream it was ! you were infected with the 
 illusion, and did not wish that it should be removed ! you 
 had no room for laughter ! if an unseasonable reflection of 
 morality obtruded itself, it was a deep sense of the pitiable 
 infirmity of man's nature, that can lay him open to such 
 frenzies — but in truth you rather admired than pitied the 
 lunacy while it lasted — you felt that an hour of such 
 mistake was worth an age with the eyes open. Who 
 would not wish to live but for a day in the conceit of such 
 a lady's love as Olivia? "Why, the duke would have given 
 his priucipality but for a quarter of a minute, sleeping or 
 waking, to have been so deluded. The man seemed to 
 tread upon air, to taste manna, to walk with his head in 
 the clouds, to mate Hyperion. ! shake not the castles of 
 his pride — endure yet for a season bright moments of con- 
 fidence — "stand still ye watches of the element," that 
 Malvolio may be still in fancy fair Olivia's lord — but fate 
 and retribution say no — I hear the mischievous titter of 
 Maria — the witty taunts of Sir Toby — the still more insup- 
 portable triumph of the foolish knight — the counterfeit Sir 
 Topas is unmasked — and "thus the whirligig of time," 
 as the true clown hath it, ' ' brings in his revenges. ' ' I con- 
 fess that I never saw the catastrophe of this character, 
 while Bensley played it, without a kind of tragic interest. 
 
 Charles Lamb : The Essays of Elia. 
 
PENSIONS FOR EMPLOYES 127 
 
 Pensions for Employes 
 
 There is no element in the American industrial system 
 more hopeful than the occasional evidences of a spirit of 
 mutual efiPort between employer and employe for the com- 
 mon good. Such an evidence is to be found in the Pension 
 Bill for employes of the Boston and Maine Eailroad, lately 
 signed by the Governor of Massachusetts. This bill is 
 important because it supplements the existing plan of 
 savings bank insurance, already described in The Outlook, 
 and because it may lead in other States to a sound and 
 generous system of insurance and pensions for working- 
 men, and it is especially noteworthy because it is thor- 
 oughly co-operative — co-operative in that it was enacted 
 at the request of employes with the sympathetic aid of the 
 railway officials; co-operative in that the pensions come 
 from money contributed equally by employer and employe 
 (except that the company undertakes to make an addi- 
 tional contribution at its discretion to meet the hardships 
 which might otherwise fall upon those workers now 
 already advanced in years and service) ; co-operative in 
 that to put the system in effect a vote of two-thirds of the 
 workmen and the official consent of the company must 
 both be obtained, and co-operative also in management, as 
 workmen and company are to have equal representation 
 in the governing board. If the plan is carried out, some 
 27,000 employes will be affected ; and as their consent has 
 first been obtained, their contributions, made in the form 
 of deductions from wages, will be, Mr. Louis D. Brandeis 
 remarks, "obligatory contributions secured by democratic 
 methods." To illustrate the working of the plan con- 
 cretely, let us take the case of Michael Flynn, track- 
 walker: At present, when he becomes too old to work 
 effectively, he is simply "fired," and, if he has not laid up 
 money, must be supported by his friends or the public; 
 under the new plan he would receive a pension, which 
 under the law cannot be less than two hundred dollars a 
 year. It is hoped that eventually the pension will amount 
 to half the average annual wages during the last ten years 
 
128 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 of Michael's service ; but the rate will be fixed, under the 
 law, by the trustees of the pension fund in consultation 
 with the railway. If Michael has been only a short time at 
 work for the company, he cannot expect to get much, if 
 anything ; but if he is really an old and faithful workman, 
 his pension will be substantial and he will have the satis- 
 faction of feeling that half, or nearly half, of it has been 
 the result of his own savings, hardly noticed by him as 
 pay day after pay day has passed by. It is to be noticed 
 that while, as we have said, the underlying principle of 
 the bill is co-operative, once adopted it creates legal 
 rights; thus Michael will receive, if he prematurely 
 throws up his job, all the cash he has paid in and perhaps 
 a little more, while his claim to a pension, if he stays on, 
 may be enforced in the court, and is not a favor but a 
 right. On the other hand, if Michael enters the company's 
 employ after the plan is adopted, he positively must pay 
 his dues ; and the same is true if he had worked in the 
 employ of the company before, unless, indeed, Michael 
 was one of the persons who voted against the adoption of 
 the system and within three months recorded his objec- 
 tions. This last privilege, called "the elective obligatory" 
 clause, is a new feature in pension legislation, and shows 
 how scrupulously personal rights have been observed to 
 the last limit. Another feature of the scheme is that the 
 funds are exempt from taxation and that the right to the 
 pension cannot be assigned. On this point Mr. Brandeis 
 comments as follows : 
 
 This is but an application of a broader purpose that underlies 
 our whole agitation of wage earners' insurance. To make free 
 citizens, we must have men financially independent, and that 
 financial independence is only possible through a comprehensive 
 system of insurance against the contingencies of sickness, accident, 
 old age, or premature death. Independence, in fact, therefore 
 involves prohibition of loss of the bare means of subsistence either 
 through legal processes or voluntary act, just as much as loss of 
 liberty through selling one's self into servitude. 
 
 From The Outlook. 
 
FLEECING THE FILIPINOS 129 
 
 Fleecing the Filipinos 
 
 Last week the tariff discussion in the United States 
 Senate reached the point where it had to provide for 
 future trade with the Philippine Islands. By the pending 
 bill our products are to be freely admitted to the Islands. 
 As to the admittance of Philippine products to the United 
 States, President Taft, when Secretary of War a year ago, 
 recommended that legislation be adopted by Congress 
 admitting the products of the Philippine Islands to the 
 markets of the United States, with such reasonable limita- 
 tions as may remove fear of interference with home 
 tobacco and sugar interests. Hence the bill proposed the 
 admission free of duty, of only a hundred and fifty million 
 cigars, one million five hundred thousand pounds of filler 
 tobacco, and three hundred thousand pounds of sugar. 
 All other products would be admitted free. Despite the 
 belief that a hundred and fifty million cigars represent 
 less than half the present annual increase in the demand 
 for domestic cigars, and therefore would not interfere 
 with the domestic market, the Connecticut Senators pro- 
 posed to fix the number of free cigars at seventy million, 
 and to reduce the amount of filler tobacco to a million 
 pounds. This proposition was opposed by Senator Root, 
 of New York, who declared : 
 
 I, for one, sir, am not willing to vote for a bill which, in my 
 judgment, secures to this great and powerful nation an advantage 
 over the weak people of the Philippine Islands, and I am against 
 the reduction, whether the Senator from Wisconsin [Mr. La PoUette] 
 or if all the committees of the Senate approve it. I shall vote 
 against it. 
 
 Mr. Root properly defined our Philippine policy in pro- 
 claiming that — 
 
 The good faith, the good name, the honor of the American people 
 are all pledged to lead the people of the Islands on by paths of 
 growing prosperity and capacity for government to the point where 
 they will be capable of supporting and governing themselves. Wo 
 cannot fulfill that high duty by giving them money,. as the Senator 
 from Nevada [Mr. Newlands] would have us do. Gifts of money 
 tend to reduce the independence of individual character. We cannot 
 
130 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 fulfill that duty by making the Islands unsuccessful in business, by 
 retarding and confining their industry. We can fulfill it only by 
 giving to them the opportunities to grow in habits of industry, in 
 the building up of national pride and national power, to grow in 
 the accumulation of property and the diffusion of wealth lying at 
 the foundation of eiviUzation. 
 
 The "opportunities" mentioned by Mr. Boot are thus 
 utilized by us : We deny to the Filipinos the right to buy 
 in the cheapest market. We force them to buy from us. 
 And then we refuse them a free access to our markets for 
 their products. In addition, we now order that but half 
 the proposed limitation of one of their principal products 
 shall come to us, for Senator Boot was overwhelmingly 
 outvoted by what he called "the particular and selfish 
 interests." This is not a fulfillment of our promise of 
 economic guidance to the Filipinos. It is a violation of 
 National good faith and honor. 
 
 From The Outlook. 
 
 A Book Review 
 The Serf. By Guy Thome. New York : R. F. Fenno & Co. 
 
 This book, dedicated to the members of the National 
 Liberal Club, is written with a certain animus which dif- 
 ferentiates it from the merely literary historical fiction of 
 the day. The author seeks deliberately to strip the tinsel 
 glories from mediaeval romance, and to paint feudal 
 society for us as it really was. He has a decided theory of 
 history : 
 
 "The only certain way in which it is possible to get at 
 the inner meaning of a period of history, is by comparison 
 of the attitude of an individual brain toward his time, and 
 the attitude of a general type of brain. The individual 
 with the point of view must, of course, be a known 
 quantity." 
 
 Our enthusiast goes on to say that this is a method of 
 extraordinary possibilities, concluding somewhat quaintly: 
 "It combines the pleasures of the laboratory with the 
 pleasures of psychology, and never was science so happily 
 
ON STYLE 131 
 
 wedded to art." The point is that we are to study the 
 feudal institution through the eyes of a single serf, a man 
 of natural nobility and form. 
 
 Having just finished reading a feudal romance a-la-mode, 
 full of mediaeval lingo lugged in for effect, and with an 
 atmosphere obviously as false as fair, the present reviewer 
 rubbed his eyes incredulously after a few pages of this 
 forthright narrative. Eealism and the middle ages had 
 seemed as far asunder as the poles ; yet here they met, or 
 seemed to meet. The author has had, no doubt, his own 
 romantic impulse; to celebrate those humble and for- 
 gotten masses who have been at best the footstools of all 
 accredited mediseval heroes and heroines. He frequently 
 leaves the straight path of his narrative in order to preach 
 a modern doctrine of brotherhood. But what strikes one 
 most is his ruthlessness in presenting the sordid and dis- 
 tressing aspects of the life of the mediasval baron. It was, 
 he declares, "a bestial, malignant, inhuman time." Brutal 
 manners and filthy habits of living were common to the 
 aristocracy and the herd. "A dog kennel would hardly 
 have suffered any one of our heroes and heroines. That is 
 one reason why it is so difficult for the veracious historian 
 to present his characters as they really were. It is hard 
 to explain them, people are too accustomed to romance." 
 Apart from its didactic quality the story has a good deal 
 of force ; Hyla the serf and his fortunes are worth follow- 
 ing for their own sake. 
 
 From The Nation. 
 
 On Style 
 
 Style is the physiognomy of the mind, and a safer index 
 to character than the face. To imitate another man's style 
 is like wearing a mask, which, be it never so fine, is not 
 long in arousing disgust and abhorrence, because it is life- 
 less ; so that even the ugliest living face is better. Hence 
 those who write in Latin and copy the manner of ancient 
 authors, may be said to speak through a mask ; the reader, 
 it is true, hears what they say, but he cannot observe their 
 
132 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 physiognomy too; he cannot see their style. With the 
 Latin works of writers who think for themselves, the case 
 is different, and their style is visible ; writers, I mean, who 
 have not condescended to any sort of imitation, such as 
 Scotus, Erigena, Petrarch, Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, and 
 many others. And affectation in style is like making 
 grimaces. Further, the language in which a man writes 
 is the physiogonomy of the nation to which he belongs^ 
 and here there are many hard and fast differences, begin- 
 ning from the language of the Greeks, down to that of the 
 Caribbean islanders. 
 
 To form a provisional estimate of the value of a writer's 
 productions, it is not directly necessary to know the sub- 
 ject on which he has thought, or what it is that he has said 
 about it ; that would imply a perusal of all his works. It 
 will be enough, in the main, to know how he has thought. 
 This, which means the essential temper or general quality 
 of his mind, may be percisely determined by his style. A 
 man's style shows the formal nature of all his thoughts — 
 the formal nature which he can never change, be the sub- 
 ject or the character of his thoughts what it may : it is, as 
 it were, the dough out of which all the contents of his 
 mind are kneaded. "When Eulenspiegel was a^ked how 
 long it would take to walk to the next village, he gave the 
 seemingly incongruous answer : Walk. He wanted to find 
 out by the man's pace the distance he would cover in a 
 given time. In the same way, when I have read a few pages 
 . of an author, I know fairly well how far he can bring me. 
 Every mediocre writer tries to mask his own natural 
 style, because in his heart he knows the truth of what I am 
 saying. He is thus forced, at the outset, to give up any 
 attempt at being frank or naive — a privilege which is 
 thereby reserved for superior minds, conscious of their 
 own worth, and therefore sure of themselves. What I 
 mean is that these everyday writers are absolutely unable 
 to resolve upon writing just as they think ; because they 
 have a notion that, were they to do so, their work might 
 possibly look very childish and simple. For all that, it 
 would not be without its value. If they would only go 
 honestly to work, and say, quite simply, the things they 
 
ON STYLE 133 
 
 have really thought, and just as they have thought them, 
 these writers would be readable and, within their own 
 proper sphere, even instructive. 
 
 But instead of that, they try to make the reader believe 
 that their thoughts have gone much further and deeper 
 than is really the case. They say what they have to say in 
 long sentences that wind about in a forced and unnatural 
 way ; they coin new words and write prolix periods which 
 go round and round the thought and wrap it up in a sort of 
 disguise. They tremble between the two separate aims of 
 communicating what they want to say and of concealing 
 it. Their object is to dress it up so that it may look 
 learned or deep, in order to give people the impression 
 that there is very much more in it than for the moment 
 meets the eye. They either jot down their thoughts bit by 
 bit, in short, ambiguous, and paradoxical sentences, which 
 apparently mean much more than they say; or else they 
 hold forth with a deluge of words and the most intolerable 
 diffusiveness, as though no end of fuss were necessary to 
 make the reader understand the deep meaning of their 
 sentences, whereas it is some quite simple, if not actually 
 trivial, idea ; or, again, they try to write in some particular 
 style which they have been pleased to take up and think 
 very grand — a style, for example par excellence profound 
 and scientific, where the reader is tormented to death by 
 the narcotic effect of long-spun periods without a single 
 idea in them; or it may be that they strive after an 
 intellectual style — then it seems as though their object 
 were to go crazy altogether; and so on in many other 
 eases. All these endeavor to put off the nascetur ridiculus 
 mus — to avoid showing the funny little creature that is 
 born after such mighty throes — often make it difScult to 
 know what it is that they really mean. And then, too, they 
 write down words, nay, even whole sentences, without 
 attaching any meaning to them, but hoping that someone 
 else will get sense out of them. 
 
 And what is at the bottom of all this ? Nothing but the 
 untiring effort to sell words for thoughts ; a mode of mer- 
 chandise that is always trying to make fresh openings for 
 itself, and by means of odd expressions, turns of phrase. 
 
134 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 and combinations of every sort, whether new or used in a 
 new sense, to produce the appearance of intellect in order 
 to make up for the very painfully felt lack of it. 
 
 It is amusing to see how writers with this object in view 
 will attempt first one mannerism and then another, as 
 though they were putting on the mask of intellect ! This 
 mask may possibly deceive the inexperienced for a while, 
 until it is seen to be a dead thing, with no life in it at all : 
 it is then laughed at and exchanged for another. Such 
 authors will at one moment write in a dithyrambic vein, 
 as though they were tipsy; at another, nay, on the very 
 next page, they will be pompous, severe, profoundly 
 learned and prolix, stumbling on in the most cumbrous 
 way and chopping up everything very small 
 
 And yet nothing is easier than to write so that no one 
 can understand, just as, eontrarily, nothing is more difB- 
 cult than to express deep things in such a way that every 
 one must necessarily grasp them. All the arts and tricks 
 I have been mentioning are rendered superfluous if the 
 author really has any brains ; for that allows him to show 
 himself as he is, and confirms to all time Horace's maxim 
 that good sense is the source and origin of good style : 
 
 Scribendi recte sapere est et principium et fans. 
 
 But those authors I have named are like certain workers 
 in metal, who try a hundred difEerent compounds to take 
 the place of gold — the only metal which can never liave 
 any substitute. Rather than do that, there is nothing 
 against which a writer should be more upon his guard 
 than the manifest endeavor to exhibit more intellect than 
 he really has ; because this makes the reader suspect that 
 he possesses very little, since it is always the case that if a 
 man affects anything, whatever it may be, it is just there 
 that he is deficient. 
 
 That is why it is praise to an author to say that he is 
 naive; it means that he need not shrink from showing him- 
 self as he is. Generally speaking, to be naive is to be 
 attractive ; while lack of naturalness is everywhere repul- 
 sive. As a matter of fact we find that every really great 
 writer tries to express his thoughts as purely, clearly, 
 
ON STYLE 135 
 
 definitely and shortly as possible. Simplicity has always 
 been held to be a mark of truth; it is also a mark of 
 genius. Style receives its beauty from the thought it 
 expresses ; but with sham thinkers the thoughts are sup- 
 posed to be fine because of the style. Style is nothing but 
 the mere silhouette of thought ; and an obscure or bad 
 style means a dull or confused brain. 
 
 The first rule, then, for a good style is that the author 
 should have something to say; nay, this is in itself almost all 
 that is necessary. Ah, how much it means ! The neglect 
 of this rule is a fundamental trait of the philosophical 
 writing, and, in fact, of all the reflective literature of my 
 country. . . . These writers all let it be seen that they 
 want to appear as though they had something to say, 
 whereas they have nothing to say. Writing of this kind 
 was brought in by the pseudo-philosophers at the Univer- 
 sities, and now it is current everywhere, even among the 
 first literary notabilities of the age. It is the mother of that 
 strained and vague style, where there seem to be two or 
 even more meanings in the sentence; also of that prolix 
 and cumbrous manner of expression, called le stile empese; 
 again, of that mere waste of words which consists in pour- 
 ing them out like a flood; finally, of that trick of con- 
 cealing the direst poverty of thought under a farrago of 
 never-ending clatter, which clacks away like a windmill 
 and quite stupifies one — stuff which a man may read for 
 hours together without getting hold of a single clearly 
 expressed and definite idea. However, people are easy- 
 going, and they have formed the habit of reading page 
 upon page of all sorts of such verbiage, without having 
 any particular idea of what the author really means. They 
 fancy it is all as it should be, and fail to discover that he 
 is writing simply for writing's sake. 
 
 On the other hand, a good author, fertile in ideas, soon 
 wins his reader's confidence that, when he writes, he has 
 really and truly something to say; and this gives the intelli- 
 gent reader patience to follow him with attention. Such 
 an author, just because he really has something to say, 
 will never fail to express himself in the simplest and most 
 straightforward manner; because his object is to awake 
 
136 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 the very same thought in the reader that he has in himself, 
 and no other. So he will be able to affirm with Boileau 
 that his thoughts are everywhere open to the light of day, 
 and that his verse always says something, whether it says 
 it well or ill : while of the writers previously described it 
 may be asserted, in the words of the same poet, that they 
 talk much and never say anything at all — qui parlant beau- 
 coup ne disent jamais rien. 
 
 The very fact that these commonplace authors are never 
 more than half-conscious when they write, would be 
 enough to account for their dullness of mind and the 
 tedious things they produce. I say they are only half- 
 eonseious, because they really do not themselves under- 
 stand the meaning of the words they use : they take words 
 ready-mdde and commit them to memory. Hence when 
 they write, it is not so much words as whole phrases that 
 they put together — phrases banales. This is the explanation 
 of that palpable lack of clearly expressed thought in what 
 they say. The fact is that they do not possess the die to 
 give this stamp to their writing; clear thought of their 
 own is just what they have not got. And what do we find 
 in its place ? — a vague, enigmatical intermixture of words, 
 current phrases, hackneyed terms, and fashionable expres- 
 sions. The result is that the foggy stuff they write is like 
 a page printed with very old type. 
 
 On the other hand, an intelligent author really speaks to 
 us when he writes, and that is why he is able to rouse our 
 interest and commune with us. It is the intelligent author 
 alone who puts individual words together with a full con- 
 sciousness of their meaning, and chooses them with 
 deliberate design. Consequently his discourse stands to 
 that of the writers just described, much as a picture that 
 has been painted to one that has been produced by the use 
 of a stencil. In the one case, every word, every "touch of 
 the brush, has a special purpose ; in the other, all is done 
 mechanically. 
 
 I have alluded to the tediousness which marks the works 
 of these writers, and in this connection it is to be observed, 
 
ON STYLE 137 
 
 generally, that tediousness is of two kinds : objective and 
 subjective. A work is objectively tedious when it contains 
 the defect in question ; that is to say, when its author has 
 no perfectly clear thought or knowledge to communicate. 
 For if a man has any clear thought or knowledge in him, 
 his aim will be to communicate it, and he will direct his 
 energies to this end; so that the ideas he furnishes are 
 everywhere clearly expressed. The result is that he is 
 .neither diffuse, nor unmeaning, nor confused, and conse- 
 quently not tedious. In such a case, even though the author 
 is at bottom in error, the error is at any rate clearly 
 worked out and well thought over, so that it is at least 
 formally correct ; and thus some value always attaches to 
 the work. But for the same reason a work that is objec- 
 tively tedious is at all times devoid of any value whatever. 
 The other kind of tediousness is only relative : a reader 
 may find a work dull because he has no interest in the 
 question treated of in it, and this means that his intellect 
 is restricted. The best work may, therefore, be tedious 
 subjectively — tedious, I mean, to this or that particular 
 person — just as the worst work may be subjectively 
 engrossing to this or that particular person who has an 
 interest in the question treated of, or in the writer of 
 the book. 
 
 It would generally serve writers in good stead if they 
 would see that, while a man should, if possible, think like 
 a great geniiis, he should talk the same language as every- 
 one else. Authors should use common words to say 
 uncommon things. But they do just the opposite. We 
 find them trying to wrap up trivial ideas in grand words, 
 and to clothe their very ordinary thoughts in the most 
 extraordinary phrases, the most far-fetched, unnatural, 
 and out-of-the-way expressions. Their sentences per- 
 petually stalk about on stilts. They take so much pleasure 
 in bombast, and write in such a high-flown, bloated, 
 affeeted, hyperbolical, and aerobatie style that their proto- 
 type is Ancient Pistol, whom his friend Falstaff once 
 impatiently told to say what he had to say like a man of 
 this world. 
 
 There is no expr(>.ssion in any other language exactly 
 
138 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 answering to the French stile empese; but the thing itself 
 exists all the more often. When associated with affecta- 
 tion, it is in literature what assumption of dignity, grand 
 airs, and primness are in society — and is equally intoler- 
 able. Dullness of mind is fond of donning this dress ; just 
 as in ordinary life it is stupid people who like being 
 demure and formal. 
 
 An author who writes in the prim style resembles a man 
 who dresses himself up in order to avoid being confounded 
 or put on the same level with the mob — a risk never run 
 by the gentleman, even in his worst clothes. The plebeian, 
 may be known by a certain showiness of attire and a wish 
 to have everything spick and span ; and, in the same way, 
 a commonplace person is betrayed by his style. 
 
 Nevertheless, an author follows a false aim if he tries to 
 write exactly as he speaks. There is no style of writing 
 but should have a certain trace of kinship with the 
 epigraphic or monumental style, which is, indeed, the ances- 
 tor of all styles. For an author to write as he speaks is 
 just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he 
 writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, 
 and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible. 
 
 Let all redundancy be avoided, all stringing together of 
 remarks which have no meaning and are not worth 
 perusal. A writer must make a sparing use of the reader's 
 time, patience, and attention. ... It is always better to 
 omit something good than to add that which is not worth 
 saying at all. This is the right application of Hesiod's 
 maxim, the half is more than the whole, Le secret pour etre 
 ennuyeux, c'est de tout dire. Therefore, if possible, the quin- 
 tessence only! mere leading thoughts! nothing that the 
 reader would think for himself. To use many words to 
 communicate few thoughts is everywhere the unmistak- 
 able sign of mediocrity. To gather much thought into few 
 words stamps the man of genius. 
 
 Truth is most beautiful undraped ; and the impression 
 it makes is deep in proportion as its expression has been 
 simple. This is so, partly because it then takes unob- 
 
ON STYLE 139 
 
 structed possession of the hearer's whole soul, and leaves 
 him no by-thoughts to distract him; partly, also, because 
 he feels that here he is not being corrupted or cheated by 
 the arts of rhetoric, but that all the effect of what is said 
 comes from the thing itself. For instance, what declama- 
 tion on the vanity of human existence could ever be more 
 telling than the words of Job ? — Man that is born of a woman 
 hath but a short time to live and is full of misery. He cometh 
 up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fteeth as it were a shadow, 
 and never continueth in one stay. 
 
 For the same reason Goethe's naive poetry is incom- 
 parably greater than Schiller's rhetoric. It is this, again, 
 that makes many popular songs so affecting. As in archi- 
 tecture an excess of decoration is to be avoided, so in the 
 art of literature a writer must guard against all rhetorical 
 finery, all useless amplification, and all superfluity of 
 expression in general; in a word, he must strive after 
 chastity of style. Every word that can be spared is hurtful 
 if it remains. The law of simplicity and naivety holds 
 good of all fine art ; for it is quite possible to be at once 
 simple and sublime. 
 
 True brevity of expression consists in everywhere 
 saying only what is worth saying, and in avoiding tedious 
 detail about things which everyone can supply for himself. 
 This involves correct discrimination between what is 
 necessary and what superfluous. A writer should never 
 be brief at the expense of being clear, to say nothing of 
 being grammatical. It shows lamentable want of judg- 
 ment to weaken the expression of a thought, or to stunt 
 the meaning of a period for the sake of using a few words 
 less. But this is the precise endeavor of that false brevity 
 nowadays so much in vogue, which proceeds by leaving 
 out useful words and even by sacrificing grammar and 
 logic. It is not only that such writers spare a word by 
 making a single verb or adjective do duty for several 
 different periods, so that the reader, as it were, has to 
 grope his way through them in the dark ; they also prac- 
 tise, in many respects, an unseemly economy of speech, in 
 the effort to effect what they foolishly take to be brevity 
 of expression and conciseness of style. By omitting some- 
 
140 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 thing that might have thrown a light over the whole 
 sentence, they turn it into a conundrum, which the reader 
 tries to solve by going over it again and again. 
 
 It is wealth and weight of thought, and nothing else, 
 that gives brevity to style, and makes it concise and preg- 
 nant. If a writer's ideas are important, luminous, and 
 generally worth commuriieating, they will necessarily fur- 
 nish matter and substance enough to fill out the periods 
 which give them expression, and make these in all their 
 parts both grammatically and verbally complete; and so 
 much will this be the case that no one will ever find them 
 hollow, empty, or feeble. The diction will everywhere be 
 brief and pregnant, and allow the thought to find intel- 
 ligible and easy expression, and even unfold and move 
 about with grace. Therefore instead of contracting his 
 words and forms of- speech, let a writer enlarge his 
 thoughts. If a man has been thinned by illness and finds 
 his clothes too big, it is not by cutting them down, but by 
 recovering his usual bodily condition, that he ought to 
 make them fit him again. 
 
 He who writes carelessly confesses thereby at the very 
 outset that he does not attach much importance to his own 
 thoughts. For it is only where a man is convinced of the 
 truth and importance of his thoughts that he feels the 
 enthusiasm necessary for an untiring and assiduous effort 
 to find the clearest, finest, and strongest expression for 
 
 them It was this feeling that led ancient authors, 
 
 whose thoughts, expressed in their own words, have lived 
 thoiisands of years, and therefore bear the honored title of 
 classics, always to write with care. Plato, indeed, is said to 
 have written the introduction to his Republic seven times 
 over in different ways. 
 
 Few write in the way in which an architect builds; 
 who. before he sets to work, sketches out his plan, and 
 thinks it 'over down to its smallest details. Nay, most 
 people write only as though they were playing dominoes ; 
 
THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKSPEARE 141 
 
 and as in this game the pieces are arranged half by design, 
 
 half by chance, so it is with the sequence and connection 
 
 of their sentences. They have merely an idea of what the 
 
 general shape of their work will be, and of the aim they 
 
 set before themselves. Many are ignorant even of this, 
 
 and write as the coral insects build — ^period joins to 
 
 period, and Lord knows what the writer means. 
 
 Arthur Schopenhauer: The Art of Literature. (Translated by T. B. 
 Saunders.) 
 
 On the Tragedies of SnAKSPE^iRE Considered with 
 
 Reference to their Fitness for 
 
 Stage Representation 
 
 Taking a turn the other day in the Abbey, I was struck 
 with the affected attitude of a figure, which I do not 
 remember to have seen before, and which upon examina- 
 tion proved to be a whole-length of the celebrated Mr. 
 Garriek. Though I would not go so far with some good 
 Catholics abroad as to shut players altogether out of con- 
 secrated ground, yet I own I was not a little scandalized 
 at the introduction of theatrical airs and gestures into a 
 place set apart to remind us of the saddest realities. Going 
 nearer, I found inscribed under this harlequin figure the 
 following lines : 
 
 To paint fair Xatnre, by divine command, 
 
 Her magic pencil in his glowing hand, 
 
 A Shakspeare rose: then to expand his fame 
 
 Wide o 'er this breathing world, a Garriek came. 
 
 Though sunk in death the forms the poet drew, 
 
 The Actor's genins bade them breathe anew; 
 
 Though, like the bard himself, in night they lay. 
 
 Immortal Garriek call'd them back to day: 
 
 And tiU ETERNITY with power sublime, 
 
 Shall mark the mortal hour of hoary TIME, 
 
 SHAKSPEARE and GAKEICK like twin stars shall shine, 
 
 And earth irradiate with a beam divine. 
 
 It would be an insult to my readers' understandings to 
 attempt anything like a criticism on this farrago of false 
 thoughts and nonsense. But the reflection it led me into 
 was a kind of wonder, how, from the days of the actor 
 
142 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 here celebrated to our own, it should have been the fashion 
 to compliment every performer in his turn, that has had 
 the luck to please the town in any of the great characters 
 of Shakspeare, with the notion of possessing a mind con- 
 genial with the poet's: how people should come thus unac- 
 countably to confound the power of originating poetical 
 images and conceptions with the faculty of being able to 
 read or recite the same when put into words; or what 
 connection that absolute mastery over the heart and soul 
 of man, which a great dramatic poet possesses, has with 
 those low tricks jipon the eye and ear, which a player by 
 observing a few general effects, which some common 
 passion, as grief, anger, etc., usually has upon the gestures 
 and exterior, can so easily compass. To know the internal 
 workings and movements of a great mind, of an Othello 
 or a Hamlet for instance, the when and the why and the 
 how far they should be moved; to what pitch a passion is 
 becoming ; to give the reins and to pull in the curb exactly 
 at the moment when the drawing in or the slackening is 
 most graceful; seems to demand a reach of intellect of a 
 vastly different extent from that which is employed upon 
 the bare imitation of the signs of these passions in the 
 countenance or gesture, which signs are usually observed 
 to be most lively and emphatic in the weaker sort of 
 minds, and which signs can after all but indicate some 
 passion, as I said before, anger, or grief, generally ; but of 
 the motives and grounds of the passion, wherein it differs 
 from the same passion in low and vulgar natures, of these 
 the actor can give no more idea by his face or gesture than 
 the eye (without a metaphor) can speak, or the muscles 
 utter intelligible sounds. But such is the instantaneous 
 nature of the impressions which we take in at the eye and 
 ear at a playhouse, compared with the slow apprehension 
 oftentimes of the understanding in reading, that we are 
 apt not only to sink the play writer in the consideration 
 which we pay to the actor, but even to identify in our 
 minds in a perverse manner, the actor with the character 
 which he represents. It is difficult for a frequent play- 
 goer to disembarrass the idea of Hamlet from the person 
 and voice of Mr. K. "We speak of Lady Macbeth, While we 
 
THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKSPEARE 143 
 
 are in reality thinking of Mrs. S. Nor is this confusion 
 incidental alone to unlettered persons, who, not possessing 
 the advantage of reading, are necessarily dependent 
 upon the stage-player for all the pleasure which they can 
 receive from the drama, and to whom the very idea of 
 what an author is cannot be made comprehensible without 
 some pain and perplexity of mind; the error is one from 
 which persons otherwise not meanly lettered, find it 
 almost impossible to extricate themselves. 
 
 Never let me be so ungrateful as to forget the very high 
 degree of satisfaction which I received some years back, 
 from seeing for the first time a tragedy of Shakspeare 
 performed, in which these two great performers sustained 
 the principal parts. It seemed to embody and realize con- 
 ceptions which had hitherto assumed no distinct shape. 
 But dearly do we pay all our life after for this juvenile 
 pleasure, this sense of distinctness. When the novelty is 
 past, we find to our cost that instead of realizing an idea, 
 we have only materialized and brought down a fine vision 
 to the standard of flesh and blood. We have let go a 
 dream, in quest of an unattainable substance. 
 
 Eow cruelly this operates upon the mind, to have its 
 free conceptions thus cramped and pressed down to the 
 measure of a strait-lacing actuality, may be judged from 
 that delightful sensation of freshness, with which we turn 
 to those plays of Shakspeare which have escaped being 
 performed, and to those passages in the acting plays of 
 the same writer which have been happily left out in per- 
 formance. How far the very custom of hearing anything 
 spouted, withers and blows upon a fine passage, may be 
 seen in those speeches from Henry the Fifth, etc., which 
 are current in the mouths of school-boys from their being 
 to be found in Enfield Speakers, and such kind of books. 
 I confess myself utterly unable to appreciate that cele- 
 brated soliloquy in Hamlet, beginning "To be or not to 
 be," or to tell whether it be good, bad, or indifferent, it 
 has been so handled and pawed about by declamatory boys 
 and men, and torn so inhumanly from its living place and 
 principle of continuity in the play, till it is become to me a 
 perfect dead member. 
 
144 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 It may seem a paradox, but I cannot help being of 
 opinion that the plays of Shakspeare are less calculated 
 for performance on a stage, than those of almost any other 
 dramatist whatever. Their distinguished excellence is a 
 reason that they should be so. There is so much in them, 
 which comes not under the province of acting, with which 
 eye, and tone, and gesture, have nothing, to do. 
 
 The glory of the scenic art is to personate passion, and 
 the turn of passion ; and the more coarse and palpable the 
 passion is, the more hold upon the eyes and ears of the 
 spectators the performer obviously possesses. For this 
 reason, scolding scenes, scenes where two persons talk 
 themselves into a fit of fury, and then in a surprising 
 manner talk themselves out of it again, have always been 
 the most popular upon our stage. And the reason is plain, 
 because the spectators are here most palpably appealed to, 
 they are the proper judges in this war of words, they are 
 the legitimate ring that should be formed round such 
 "intellectual prize-fighters." Talking is the direct object 
 of the imitation here. But in all the best dramas, and in 
 Shakspeare above all, how obvious it is, that the form of 
 speaking, whether it be in soliloquy or dialogue, is only a 
 medium, and often a highly artificial one, for putting the 
 reader or spectator into possession of that knowledge of 
 the inner structure and workings of mind in a character, 
 which he could otherwise never have arrived at in that 
 form of composition by any gift short of intuition. We do 
 here as we do with novels written in the epistolary form. 
 How many improprieties, perfect solecisms in letter- 
 writing, do we put up with in Clarissa and other books, 
 for the sake of the delight which that form upon the whole 
 gives us. 
 
 But the practice of stage representation reduces every 
 thing to a controversy of elocution. Every character, from 
 the boisterous blasphemings of Bajazet to the shrinking 
 timidity of womanhood, must play the orator. The love- 
 dialogues of Romeo and Juliet, those silver-sweet sounds 
 of lovers ' tongues by night ; the more intimate and sacred 
 sweetness of nuptial colloquy between an Othello or a 
 
THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKSPEARE 145 
 
 Posthumvis with their married wives, all those delicacies 
 which are so delightful in the reading, as when we read of 
 those youthful dalliances in Paradise — 
 
 as beseem 'd 
 Fair couple link'd in happy nuptial league. 
 Alone: 
 
 by the inherent fault of stage representation, how are 
 these things sullied and turned from their very nature by 
 being exposed to a large assembly ; when such speeches as 
 Imogen addresses to her lord, come drawling out of the 
 mouth of a hired actress, whose courtship, though nomi- 
 nally addressed to the personated Posthumus, is mani- 
 festly aimed at the spectators, who are to judge of her 
 endearments and her returns of love. 
 
 The character of Hamlet is perhaps that by which, since 
 the days of Betterton, a succession of popular performers 
 have had the greatest ambition to distinguish themselves. 
 The length of the part may be one of their reasons. But 
 for the character itself, we find it in a play, and therefore 
 we judge it a fit subject for dramatic representation. The 
 play itself abounds in maxims and reflections beyond any 
 other, and therefore we consider it as a proper vehicle for 
 conveying moral instruction. But Hamlet himself — what 
 does he suffer meanwhile by being dragged forth as a 
 public schoolmaster, to give lectures to the crowd ! "Why, 
 nine parts in ten of what Hamlet does, are transactions 
 between himself and his moral sense, they are the effusions 
 of his solitary musings, which he retires to holes and 
 corners and the most sequestered parts of the palace to 
 pour forth ; or rather, they are the silent meditations with 
 which his bosom is bursting, reduced to words for the sake 
 of the reader, who must else remain ignorant of what is 
 passing there. These profound sorrows, these light-and- 
 noise-abhorring ruminations, which the tongue scarce dares 
 utter to deaf walls and chambers, how can they be repre- 
 sented by a gesticulating actor, who comes and mouths 
 them out before an audience, making four hundred people 
 his confidants at once ? I say not that it is the fault of the 
 actor so to do; he must pronounce them ore rotundo, he 
 must accompany them with his eye, tone, or gesture, or he 
 
146 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 fails. He must be thinking all the while of his appearance, 
 because he knows that all the while the spectators are judging of 
 it. And this is the way to represent the shy, negligent, 
 retiring Hamlet ! 
 
 It is true that there is no other mode of conveying a 
 vast quantity of thought and feeling to a great portion of 
 the audience, who otherwise would never earn it for them- 
 selves by reading, and the intellectual acquisition gained 
 this way may, for aught I know, be inestimable : but I am 
 not arguing that Hamlet should not be acted, but how 
 much Hamlet is made another thing by being acted. I 
 have heard much of the wonder which Garrick performed 
 in this part ; but as I never saw him, I must have leave to 
 doubt whether the representation of such a character came 
 within the province of his art. Those who tell me of him, 
 speak of his eye, of the magic of his eye, and of his com- 
 manding voice : physical properties, vastly desirable in an 
 actor, and without which he can never insinuate meaning 
 into an auditory — but what have they to do with Hamlet ? 
 what have they to do with intellect? In fact, the things 
 aimed at in theatrical representation, are to arrest the 
 spectator's eye upon the form and the gesture, and so to 
 gain a more favorable hearing to what is spoken : ■ it is not 
 what the character is, but how he looks ; not what he says, 
 but how he speaks it. I see no reason to think that if the 
 play of Hamlet were written over again by some such 
 writer as Banks or Lillo, retaining the process of the story, 
 but totally omitting all the poetry of it, all the divine 
 features of Shakspeare, his stupendous intellect ; and only 
 taking care to give us enough of passionate dialogue, 
 which Banks or Lillo were never at a loss to furnish; I 
 see not how the effect could be much different upon an 
 audience, nor how the actor has it in his power to repre- 
 sent Shakspeare to us differently from his representation 
 of Banks or Lillo. Hamlet would still be a youthful 
 accomplished prince, and must be gracefully personated ; 
 he might be puzzled in his mind, wavering in his conduct, 
 seemingly cruel to Ophelia, he might see a ghost, and start 
 at it, and address it kindly when he found it to be his 
 father ; all this in the poorest and most homely language 
 
THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKSPEARE 147 
 
 of the servilest creeper after nature that ever consulted 
 the palate of an audience ; without troubling Shakspeare 
 for the matter : and I see not but there would be room for 
 all the power" which an actor has, to display itself. All the 
 passions and changes of passion might remain: for those 
 are much less difficult to write or act than is thought, it is 
 a trick easy to be attained, it is but rising or falling a 
 note or two in the voice, a whisper with a significant fore- 
 boding look to announce its approach, and so contagious 
 the counterfeit appearance of any emotion is, that let the 
 words be what they will, the look and tone shall carry it 
 off and make it pass for deep skill in the passions. 
 
 It is common for people to talk of Shakspeare 's plays 
 being so natural; that everybody can understand him. 
 They are natural indeed, they are grounded deep in 
 nature, so deep that the depth of them lies out of the 
 reach of most of us. You shall hear the same persons say 
 that George Barnwell is very natural, and Othello is very 
 natural, that they are both very deep ; and to them they 
 are the same kind of thing. At the one they sit and shed 
 tears, because a good sort of young man is tempted by a 
 naughty woman to commit a trifling peccadillo, the murder 
 of an uncle or so, that is all, and so comes to an untimely 
 end, which is so moving; and at the other, because a 
 blackamoor in a fit of jealousy kills his innocent white 
 wife : and the odds are that ninety-nine out of a hundred 
 would willingly behold the same catastrophe happen to 
 both the heroes, and have thought the rope more due to 
 Othello than to Barnwell. For of the texture of Othello 's 
 mind, the inward construction marvellously laid open with 
 all its strengths and weaknesses, its heroic confidences and 
 its human misgivings, its agonies of hate springing from 
 the depths of love, they see no more than the spectators 
 at a cheaper rate, who pay their pennies apiece to look 
 through the man's telescope in Leicester Fields, see into 
 the inward plot and topography of the moon. Some dim 
 thing or other they see, they see an actor personating a 
 passion of grief, or anger, for instance, and they recognize 
 it as a copy of the usual external effects of such passions ; 
 or at least as being true to that symbol of the emotion which 
 
148 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 passes current at the theatre for it, for it is often no more than 
 that : but of the grounds of the passion, its correspondence 
 to a great or heroic nature, which is the only worthy- 
 object of tragedy — that common auditors know any thing 
 of this, or can have any such notions dinned into them by 
 the mere strength of an actor's lungs — ^that apprehensions 
 foreign to them should be thus infused into them by storm, 
 I can neither believe, nor understand how it can be 
 possible. 
 
 We talk of Shakspeare's admirable observation of life, 
 when we should feel, that not from a petty inquisition into 
 those cheap and every-day characters which surrounded 
 him, as they surround us, but from his own mind, which 
 was, to borrow a phrase of Ben Jonson's, the very "sphere 
 of humanity" fetched those images of virtue and of knowl- 
 edge, of which every one of us recognizing a part, think we 
 comprehend in our natures the whole; and oftentimes 
 mistake the powers which he positively creates in us, for 
 nothing more than indigenous faculties of our own minds, 
 which only waited the application of corresponding vir- 
 tues in him to return a full and clear echo of the same. 
 
 To return to Hamlet. — Among the distinguishing 
 features of that wonderful character, one of the most 
 interesting (yet painful) is that soreness of mind which 
 makes him treat the intrusions of Polonius with harshness, 
 and that asperity which he puts on in his interviews with 
 Ophelia. These tokens of an unhinged mind (if they be 
 not mixed in the latter case with a profound artifice of 
 love, to alienate Ophelia by affected discourtesies, so to 
 prepare her mind for the breaking off of that loving inter- 
 course, which can no longer find a place amidst business so 
 serious as that which he has to do) are parts of his char- 
 acter, which to reconcile with our admiration of Hamlet, 
 the most patient consideration of his situation is no more 
 than necessary; they are what we forgive afterwards, and 
 explain by the whole of his character, but at the time they 
 are harsh and unpleasant. Yet such is the actor's neces- 
 sity of giving strong blows to the audience, that I have 
 never seen a player in this character, who^ did not exag- 
 gerate and strain to the utmost these ambiguous features — 
 
THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKSPEARE 149 
 
 these temporary deformities in the character. They make 
 him express a vulgar scorn at Polonius which utterly 
 degrades his gentility, and which no explanation can 
 render palatable ; they make him show contempt and curl 
 up the nose at Ophelia's father — contempt in its very 
 grossest and most hateful form ; but they get applause by 
 it : it is natural, people say ; that is, the words are scorn- 
 ful, and the actor expresses scorn, and that they can judge 
 of: but why so much scorn, and of that sort, they never 
 think of asking. 
 
 So to Ophelia. — All the Hamlets that I have ever seen, 
 rant and rave at her as if she had committed some great 
 crime, and the audience are highly pleased, because the 
 words of the part are satirical, and they are enforced by 
 the strongest expression of satirical indignation of which 
 the face and voice are capable. But then, whether Hamlet 
 is likely to have put on such brutal appearances to a lady 
 whom he loved so dearly, is never thought on. The truth 
 is, that in all such deep affections as had subsisted between 
 Hamlet and Ophelia, there is a stock of superogatory love, 
 (if I may venture to use the expression) which in any 
 great grief of heart, especially where that which preys 
 upon the mind cannot be communicated, confers a kind of 
 indulgence upon the grieved party to express itself, even 
 to its heart's dearest object, in the language of a tempor- 
 ary alienation; but it is not alienation, it is a distraction 
 purely, and so it always makes itself to be felt by that 
 object : it is not anger, but grief assuming the appearance 
 of anger — love awkwardly counterfeiting hate, as sweet 
 countenances when they try to frown : but such sternness 
 and fierce disgust as Hamlet is made to show, is no 
 counterfeit, but the real face of absolute aversion — of 
 irreconcilable alienation. It may be said he puts on the 
 madman; but then he should only so far put on this 
 counterfeit lunacy as his own real distraction will give 
 him leave; that is, incompletely, imperfectly; not in that 
 confirmed, practiced way, like a master of his art, or, as 
 Dame Quickly would say, "like one of those harlotry 
 players. ' ' 
 
 I mean no disrespect to any actor, but the sort of 
 
ISO EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 pleasure which Shakspeare's plays give in the acting 
 seems to me not at all to differ from that which the audi- 
 ence receives from those of other writers ; and, they being in 
 themselves essentially so different from all others, I must con- 
 clude that there is something in the nature of acting which 
 levels all distinctions. And in fact, who does not speak 
 indifferently of the Gamester and of Macbeth as fine stage 
 performances, and praise the Mrs. Beverley in the same 
 way as the Lady Macbeth of Mrs. S.? Belvidera, and 
 Calista, and Isabella, and Euphrasia, are they less liked 
 than Imogen, or than Juliet, or than Desdemona? Are 
 they not spoken of and remembered in the same way? Is 
 not the female performer as great (as they call it) in one 
 as in the other? Did not Garrick shine, and was he not 
 ambitious of shining in every drawling tragedy that his 
 wretched day produced — the productions of the Hills and 
 the Murphys and the Browns — and shall he have that 
 honor to dwell in our minds for ever as an inseparable 
 concomitant with Shakspeare ? A kindred mind ! who 
 can read that affecting sonnet of Shakspeare which alludes 
 to his profession as a player : 
 
 Oh for my sake do you with Fortune chide, 
 
 The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, 
 
 That did not better for my life provide 
 
 Thau public means which public custom breeds — 
 
 Thence comes it that my name receives a brand; 
 
 And almost thence my nature is subdued 
 
 To what it works in, like the dyer's hand — 
 
 Or that other confession — 
 
 Alas! 'tis true, I have gone here and there. 
 
 And made myself a motley to thy view, 
 
 Gor'd mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear — 
 
 Who can read these instances of jealous self-watchfulness 
 in our sweet Shakspeare, and dream of any congeniality 
 between him and one that, by every tradition of 
 him, appears to have been as mere a player as ever 
 existed; to have had his mind tainted with the lowest 
 player's vices — envy and jealousy, and miserable cravings 
 after applause ; one who in the exercise of his profession 
 
THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKSPEARE 151 
 
 was jealous even of the women performers that stood in 
 his way; a manager full of managerial tricks and strata- 
 gems and finesse : that any resemblance should be dreamed 
 of between him and Shakspeare — Shakspeare who, in the 
 plenitude and consciousness of his own powers, could with 
 that noble modesty, which we can neither imitate nor 
 appreciate, express himself thus of his own sense of his 
 own defects : 
 
 Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, 
 Featured like him, like him with friends possest; 
 Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope. 
 
 I am almost disposed to deny to Garrick the merit of 
 being an admirer of Shakspeare. A true lover of his excel- 
 lencies he certainly was not ; for would any true lover of 
 them have admitted into his matchless scenes such ribald 
 trash as Tate and Gibber, and the rest of them, that "With 
 their darkness durst affront his light," have foisted into 
 the acting plays of Shakspeare? I believe it impossible 
 that he could have had a proper reverence for Shakspeare, 
 and have condescended to go through that interpolated 
 scene in Richard the Third, in which Richard tries to break 
 his wife's heart by telling her he loves another woman, 
 and says, "If she survives this she is immortal." Yet I 
 doubt not he delivered this vulgar stuff with as much 
 anxiety of emphasis as any of the genuine parts ; and for 
 acting, it is as well calculated as any. But we have seen 
 the part of Richard lately produce great fame to an actor 
 by his manner of playing it, and it lets us into the secret 
 of acting, and of popular judgments of Shakspeare 
 derived from acting. Not one of the spectators who have 
 witnessed Mr. C. 's exertions in that part, but has come 
 away with a proper conviction that Richard is a very 
 wicked man and kills little children in their beds, with 
 something like the pleasure which the giants and ogres in 
 children's books are represented to have taken in that 
 practice ; moreover, that he is very close and shrewd and 
 devilish cunning, for you could see that by his eye. 
 
 But is in fact this the impression we have in reading the 
 Richard of Shakspeare ? Do we feel anything like disgust, 
 
152 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 as we do at that butcher-like representation of him that 
 passes for him on the stage ? A horror at his crimes blends 
 with the effect which we feel, but how is it qualified, how 
 is it carried off, by the rich intellect which he displays, his 
 resources, his wit, his buoyant spirits, his vast knowledge 
 and insight into characters, the poetry of his part — ^not an 
 atom of all which is made perceivable in Mr. C. 's way of 
 acting it. Nothing but his crimes, his actions, is visible ; 
 they are prominent and staring ; the murderer stands out, 
 but where is the lofty genius, the man of vast capacity — 
 the profound, the witty, accomplished Richard ? 
 
 The truth is, the characters of Shakspeare are so much 
 the object of meditation rather than of interest or curi- 
 osity as to their actions, that while we are reading any of 
 his great criminal characters — Macbeth, Richard, even 
 lago — we think not so much of the crimes which they 
 commit, as of the ambition, the aspiring spirit, the intel- 
 lectual activity, which prompts them to overleap those 
 moral fences. Barnwell is a wretched murderer ; there is 
 a certain fitness between his neck and the rope; he is the 
 legitimate heir to the gallows ; nobody who thinks at all 
 can think of any alleviating circumstances in his ease to 
 make him a fit object of mercy. Or to take an instance 
 from the higher tragedy, what else but a mere assassin is 
 Glenalvon! Do we think of anything but of the crime 
 which he commits, and the rack which he deserves ? That 
 is all which we really think about him. "Whereas in cor- 
 responding characters in Shakspeare so little do the 
 actions comparatively affect us, that while the impulses, 
 the inner mind in all its perverted greatness, solely seems 
 real and is exclusively attended to, the crime is compara- 
 tively nothing. But when we see these things represented, 
 the acts which they do are comparatively everything, their 
 impulses nothing. The state of sublime emotion into which 
 we are elevated by those images of night and horror which 
 Macbeth is made to utter, that solemn prelude with which 
 he entertains the time till the bell shall strike which is to 
 call him to murder Duncan — ^when we no longer read it in 
 a book, when we have given up that vantage-ground of 
 abstraction which reading possesses over seeing, and come 
 
THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKSPEARE 153 
 
 to see a man in his bodily shape before our eyes actually 
 preparing to commit a murder, if the acting be true and 
 impressive, as I have witnessed it in Mr. K. 's performance 
 of that part, the painful anxiety about the act, the natural 
 longing to prevent it while it yet seems unperpetrated, the 
 too close pressing semblance of reality, give a pain and an 
 uneasiness which totally destroy all the delight which the 
 words in the book convey, where the deed doing never 
 presses upon us with the painful sense of presence: it 
 rather seems to belong to history — to something past and 
 inevitable, if it has any thing to do with time at all. The 
 sublime images, the poetry alone, is that which is present 
 to our minds in the reading. 
 
 So to see Lear acted — to see an old man tottering about 
 the stage with a walking stick, turned out of doors by his 
 daughters in a rainy night, has nothing in it but what is 
 painful and disgusting. "\Ve want to take him into shelter 
 and relieve him. That is all the feeling which the acting 
 of Lear ever produced in me. But the Lear of Shakspeare 
 cannot be acted. The contemptible machinery by which 
 they mimic the storm which he goes out in, is not more 
 inadequate to represent the horrors of the real elements, 
 than any actor can be to represent Lear : they might more 
 easily propose to personate the Satan of Milton upon a 
 stage, or one of Michael Angelo's terrible figures. The 
 greatness of Lear is not in corporal dimension, but in 
 intellectual: the explosions of his passion are terrible as 
 a volcano ; they are storms turning up and disclosing to 
 the bottom that sea, his mind, with all its vast riches. It 
 is his mind which is laid bare. This case of flesh and blood 
 seems too insignificant to be thought on ; even as he him- 
 self neglects it. On the stage we see nothing but corporal 
 infirmities and weakness, the impotence of rage ; while we 
 read it, we see not Lear, but we are Lear — we are in his 
 mind, we are sustained by a grandeur which baffles the 
 malice of daughters and storms ; in the aberrations of his 
 reason, we discover a mighty irregular power of reason- 
 ing, immethodized from the ordinary purposes of life, but 
 exerting its power, as the wind blows where it listeth, at 
 will upon the corruptions and abuses of mankind. What 
 
154 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 have looks, or tones, to do with that sublime identification 
 of his age with that of the heavens themselves, when in his 
 reproaches to them for conniving at the injustice of his 
 children, he reminds them that "they themselves are old." 
 "What gesture shall we appropriate to this ? What has the 
 voice or the eye to do with such things? But the play is 
 beyond all art, as the tamperings with it show : it is too 
 hard and stony; it must have love-scenes, and a happy 
 ending. It is not enough that Cordelia is a daughter, she 
 must shine as a lover too. Tate has put his hook in the 
 nostrils of this Leviathan, for Garrick and his followers, 
 the showmen of the scene, to draw the mighty beast about 
 more easily. A happy ending! — as if the living martyr- 
 dom that Lear had gone through — the flaying of his 
 feelings alive, did not make a fair dismissal from the stage 
 of life the only decorous thing for him. If he is to live and 
 be happy after, if he could sustain this world's burden 
 after, why all this pudder and preparation — why torment 
 us with all this unnecessary sympathy ? As if the childish 
 pleasure of getting his gilt robes and sceptre again could 
 tempt him to act over again his misused station — as if at 
 his years, and with his experience, anything was left 
 but to die. 
 
 Lear is essentially impossible to be represented on a 
 stage. But how many dramatic personages are there in 
 Shakspeare, which though more tractable and feasible 
 (if I may so speak) than Lear, yet from some circum- 
 stance, some adjunct to their character, are improper to 
 be shown to our bodily eye. Othello for instance. Nothing 
 can be more soothing, more flattering to the nobler parts 
 of our natures, than to read of a young Venetian lady of 
 highest extraction, through the force of love and from a 
 sense of merit in him whom she loved, laying aside every 
 consideration of kindred and country, and color, and 
 wedding with a coal-black Moor — (for such he is repre- 
 sented, in the imperfect state of knowledge respecting 
 foreign countries in those days, compared with our own, or 
 in compliance with popular notions . . . ) — it is the per- 
 fect triumph of virtue over accidents, of the imagination 
 over the senses. She sees Othello's color in his mind. But 
 
THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKSPEARE ISS 
 
 upon the stage, when the imagination is no longer the 
 ruling faculty, but we are left to our poor unassisted 
 senses, I appeal to every one that has seen Othello played, 
 whether he did not, on the contrary, sink Othello's mind 
 in his color ; whether he did not find something extremely 
 revolting in the courtship and wedded caresses of Othello 
 and Desdemona; and whether the actual sight of the 
 thing did not overweigh all that beautiful compromise 
 which we make in reading — and the reason it should do so 
 is obvious, because there is just so much reality presented 
 to oiu: senses as to give a perception of disagreement, with 
 not enough of belief in the internal motives — all that 
 which is unseen — to overpower and reconcile the first and 
 obvious prejudices. What we see upon a stage is body 
 and bodily action ; what we are conscious of in reading is 
 almost exclusively the mind, and its movements : and this 
 I think may sufficiently account for the very different sort 
 of delight with which the same play so often affects us in 
 the reading and the seeing. 
 
 It requires little reflection to perceive, that if those 
 characters in Shakspeare which are within the precincts of 
 nature, have yet something in them which appeals too 
 exclusively to the imagination, to admit of their being 
 made objects to the senses without suffering a change and 
 a diminution — ^that still stronger the objection must lie 
 against representing another line of characters, which 
 Shakspeare has introduced to give a wildness and a super- 
 natural elevation to his scenes, as if to remove them still 
 farther from that assimilation to common life in which 
 their excellence is vulgarly supposed to consist. When we 
 read the incantations of those terrible beings the Witches 
 in Macbeth, though some of the ingredients of their hellish 
 composition savor of the grotesque, yet is the effect upon 
 us other than the most serious and appalling that can be 
 imagined? Do we not feel spellbound as Macbeth was? 
 Can any mirth accompany a sense of their presence ? We 
 might as well laugh under a consciousness of the Principle 
 of Evil himself being truly and really present with us. 
 But attempt to bring these beings on to a stage, and you 
 turn them instantly into so many old women, that rtien 
 
156 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 and children are to laugh at. Contrary to the old saying, 
 that "seeing is believing," the sight actually destroys the 
 faith ; and the mirth in which we indulge at their expense, 
 when we see these creatures upon a stage, seems to be a 
 sort of indemnification which we make to ourselves for 
 the terror which they put us in when reading made them 
 an object of belief — when we surrendered up our reason 
 to the poet, as children to their nurses and their elders f 
 and we laugh at our fears, as children who thought they 
 saw something in the dark, triumph when the bringing in 
 of a candle discovers the vanity of their fears. For this 
 exposure of supernatural agents upon a stage is truly 
 bringing in a candle to expose their own delusiveness. It 
 is a solitary taper and the book that generates a faith in 
 these terrors: a ghost by chandelier light, and in good 
 company, deceives no spectators — a ghost that can be 
 measured by the eye, and his human dimensions made out 
 at leisure. The sight of a well-lighted house, and a well- 
 dressed audience, shall arm the most nervous child against 
 any apprehensions: as Tom Brown says of the impen- 
 etrable skin of Achilles with his impenetrable armor over 
 it, "Bully Dawson would have fought the devil with such 
 advantages." 
 
 Much has been said, and deservedly, in reprobation of 
 the vile mixture which Dryden has thrown into The 
 Tempest: doubtless without some such vicious alloy, the 
 impure ears of that age would never have sat out to hear 
 so much innocence of love as is contained in the sweet 
 courtship of Ferdinand and Miranda. But is The Tempest 
 of Shakspeare at all a subject for stage representation? 
 It is one thing to read of an enchanter, and to believe the 
 wondrous tale while we are reading it; but to have a 
 conjuror brought before us in his conjuring gown, with his 
 spirits about him, which none but himself and some 
 hundred of favored spectators before the curtain are sup- 
 posed to see, involves such a quantity of the hateful incred- 
 ible, that all our reverence for the author cannot hinder us 
 from perceiving such gross attempts upon the senses to be 
 in the highest degree childish and inefficient. Spirits and 
 fairies cannot be represented, they cannot even be 
 
THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKSPEARE 157 
 
 painted — they can only be believed. But the elaborate 
 and anxious provision of scenery, which the luxury of the 
 age demands, in these eases works a quite contrary effect 
 to what is intended. That which in comedy, or plays of 
 familiar life, adds so much to the life of the imitation, in 
 plays which appeal to the higher faculties, positively 
 destroys the illusion which it is introduced to aid. A 
 parlor or a drawing room — a library opening into a 
 garden — a garden with an alcove in it — a street, or the 
 piazza of Covent Garden, does well enough in a scene; 
 we are content to give as much credit to it as it demands ; 
 or rather, we think little about it — it is little more than 
 reading at the top of a page, "Scene, a Garden;" we do 
 not imagine ourselves there, but we readily admit the 
 imitation of familiar objects. But to think by the help of 
 painted trees and caverns, which we know to be painted, 
 to transport our minds to Prospero, and his island 
 and his lonely cell; or by the aid of a fiddle dexter- 
 ously thrown in, in an interval of speaking, to make us 
 believe that we hear those supernatural noises of which 
 the isle was full — the Orrery Lecturer at the Haymarket 
 might as well hope, by his musical glasses cleverly sta- 
 tioned out of sight behind his apparatus, to make us 
 believe that we do indeed hear the crystal spheres ring out 
 that chime, which if it were to inwrap our fancy long, 
 Milton thinks, 
 
 Time would run back and fetch the age of gold. 
 
 And speckled vanity 
 
 Would sicken soon and die, 
 
 And leprous Sin would melt from earthly mould; 
 
 Yea Hell itself would pass away, 
 
 And leave its dolorous mansions to the peering day. 
 
 The Garden of Eden, with our first parents in it, is not 
 more impossible to be shown on a stage, than the 
 Enchanted Isle, with its no less interesting and innocent 
 first settlers. 
 
 The subject of scenery is closely connected with that of 
 the dresses, which are so anxiously attended to on our stage. 
 I remember the last time I saw Macbeth played, the dis- 
 
158 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 crepancy I felt at the changes of garment which he 
 varied — the shiftings and re-shiftings, like a Romish priest 
 at mass. The luxury of stage improvements, and the 
 importunity of the public eye, require this. The coronation 
 robe of the Scottish monarch was fairly a counterpart to 
 that which our King wears when he goes to the Parliament 
 House — just so full and cumbersome, and set out with 
 ermine and pearls. And if things must be represented, I 
 see not what to find fault with in this. But in reading, 
 what robe are we conscious of? Some dim images of 
 royalty — a crown and sceptre, may float before our eyes, 
 but who shall describe the fashion of it? Do we see in our 
 mind's eye what "VVebb or any other robe maker could 
 pattern? This is the inevitable consequence of imitating 
 every thing, to make all things natural. Whereas the 
 reading of a tragedy is a fine abstraction. It presents to 
 the fancy just so much of external appearances as to make 
 us feel that we are among flesh and blood, while by far the 
 greater and better part of our imagination is employed 
 upon the thoughts and internal machinery of the char- 
 acter. But in acting, scenery, dress, the most contemptible 
 things, call upon us to judge of their naturalness. 
 
 Perhaps it would be no bad similitude, to liken the 
 pleasure which we take in seeing one of these fine plays 
 acted, compared with that quiet delight which we find in 
 the reading of it, to the different feelings with which a 
 reviewer, and a man that is not a reviewer, reads a fine 
 poem. The accursed critical habit — the being called upon 
 to judge and pronounce, must make it quite a different 
 thing to the former. In seeing these plays acted, we are 
 affected just as judges. When Hamlet compares the two 
 pictures of Gertrude's first and second husband, who 
 wants to see the pictures? But in the acting, a miniature 
 must be lugged out ; which we know not to be the picture, 
 but only to show how finely a miniature may be repre- 
 sented. This showing of everything levels all things : it 
 makes tricks, bows, and courtesies, of importance. Mrs. S. 
 never got more fame by any thing than by the manner in 
 which she dismisses the guests in the banquet scene in 
 Macbeth : it is as much remembered as any of her thrilling 
 
LOAFING 159 
 
 tones or impressive looks. But does such a trifle as this 
 enter into the imaginations of the readers of that wild and 
 wonderful scene ? Does not the mind dismiss the feasters 
 as rapidly as it can? Does it care about the gracefulness 
 of the doing it? But by acting, and judging of acting, all 
 these non-essentials are raised into an importance, injuri- 
 ous to the main interest of the play. 
 
 I have confined my observations to the tragic parts of 
 Shakspeare. It would be no very difficult task to extend 
 the enquiry to his comedies; and to show why Falstaff, 
 Shallow, Sir Hugh Evans, and the rest, are equally incom- 
 patible with stage representation. The length to which 
 this essay has run, will make it, I am afraid, sufficiently 
 distasteful to the amateurs of the theatre, without going 
 any deeper into the subject at present. 
 
 Charles Lamb: Miscellaneous Papers. 
 
 Loafing 
 
 "When the golden summer has rounded languidly to his 
 close, when autumn has been carried forth in russet 
 winding sheet, then all good fellows who look upon holi- 
 days as a chief end of life return from moor and stream 
 and begin to take stock of gains and losses. And the 
 wisest, realizing that the time of action is over while that 
 of reminiscence has begun, realize too that the one is preg- 
 nant with greater pleasures than the other — that action, 
 indeed, is only the means to an end of reflection and appre- 
 ciation. "Wisest of all, the Loafer stands apart supreme. 
 For he, of one mind with the philosopher as to the end, 
 goes straight to it at once; and his happy summer has 
 accordingly been spent in those subjective pleasures of the 
 mind whereof the others, the men of muscle and peeled 
 faces, are only just beginning to taste. 
 
 And yet though he may a little despise (or rather pity) 
 them, the Loafer does not dislike nor altogether shun 
 them. Far from it: they are very necessary to him. For 
 "Suave mart magno" is the motto of your true Loafer; and 
 it is chiefly by keeping ever in view the struggles and the 
 clamorous jostlings of the unenlightened making holiday 
 
160 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 that he is able to realize the bliss of his own condition and 
 maintain his self-satisfaction at boiling point. And so is 
 he never very far away from the track beaten by the 
 hurrying Philistine hoof, but hovers more or less on the 
 edge of it, where, the sole fixed star amidst whirling con- 
 stellations, he may watch the mad world ' ' glance, and nod, 
 and hurry by. ' ' 
 
 There are many such centres of contemplation along the 
 west coast of Scotland. Few places are better loafing 
 ground than a pier, with its tranquil "lucid interval" 
 between steamers, the ever recurrent throb of paddle- 
 wheel, the rush and foam of beaten water among the piles, 
 splash of ropes and rumble of gangways, and all the 
 attendant hurry and scurry of the human morrice. Here 
 tanquam in specula, the Loafer, as he lounges may, by attor- 
 ney as it were, touch gently every stop in the great organ 
 of the emotions of mortality. Rapture of meeting, depart- 
 ing woe, lote at first sight, disdain, laughter, indifference — 
 he may experience them all, but attenuated and as if he 
 saw them in a dream; as if, indeed, he were Heine's god 
 in dream on a mountain-side. Let the drowsy deity 
 awake, and all these puppets, emanations of his dream, 
 will vanish into the nothing whence they came. And these 
 emotions may be renewed each morning ; if a fair one sail 
 today, be sure that one as fair will land tomorrow. The 
 supply is inexhaustible. 
 
 But in the south perhaps the happiest loafing ground is 
 the gift of Father Thames; for there again the contrast 
 of violent action, with its blisters, perspiration, and the 
 like, throws into fine relief the bliss of "quietism." I 
 know one little village in the upper reaches where loafing 
 may be pushed to high perfection. Here the early hours 
 of the morning are vexed by the voices of boaters making 
 their way down the little street to the river. The most of 
 them go staggering under hampers, bundles of water- 
 proofs, and so forth. Their voices are clamant of feats to 
 be accomplished ; they will row, they will punt, they will 
 paddle, till they weary out the sun. All this the Loafer 
 hears through the open door of his cottage, where in his 
 shirt-sleeves he is dallying with his bacon, as a gentleman 
 
LOAFING 161 
 
 should. He is the only one who has had a comfortable 
 breakfast — and he knows it. Later he will issue forth and 
 stroll down in their track to the bridge. The last of these 
 Argonauts is pulling lustily forth ; the river is dotted with 
 evanishing blazers. Upon all these lunatics a pitiless 
 Phoebus shines triumphant. The Loafer sees the last of 
 them off the stage, turns his back on it, and seeks the 
 shady side of the street. 
 
 A holy calm possesses the village now; the foreign 
 element has passed away with shouting and waving of 
 banners, and its natural life of somnolency is in evidence 
 at last. And first, as a true Loafer should, let him respect- 
 fully greet elaeh several village dog. Arcades ambo — 
 loafers likewise — they lie there in the warm dust, each 
 outside his own door, ready to return the smallest courtesy. 
 Their own lords and masters are not given to the exchange 
 of compliments nor to greetings in the market place. The 
 dog is generally the better gentleman, and he is aware of 
 it; and he duly appreciates the Loafer, who is not too 
 proud to pause a moment, change the news, and pass the 
 time of day. He will mark his sense of this attention by 
 rising from his dust divan and accompanying his caller 
 some steps on his way. But he will stop short of his 
 neighbor 's dust patch ; for the morning is really too hot 
 for a shindy. So, by easy stages (the street is not a long 
 one : six dogs will see it out), the Loafer quits the village ; 
 and now the world is before him. Shall he sit on a gate 
 and smoke ? or lie on the grass and smoke 1 or smoke aim- 
 lessly and at large along the road? Such a choice of 
 happiness is distracting; but perhaps the last course is 
 best — as needing the least mental effort of selection. 
 Hardly, however, has he fairly started his first day-dream 
 when the snappish "ting" of a bellkin recalls him to 
 realities. By comes the bicyclist : dusty, sweating, a piteous 
 thing to look upon. But the irritation of the strepitant 
 metal has jarred the Loafer's always exquisite nerves : he 
 is fain to climb a gate and make his way towards solitude 
 and the breezy downs. 
 
 Up here all vestiges of a sordid humanity disappear. 
 The Loafer is alone with the southwest wind and the blue 
 
162 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 sky. Only a carolling of larks and a tinkling from distant 
 flocks break the brooding noonday stillness; above, the 
 wind-hover hangs motionless, a black dot on the blue. 
 Prone on his back on the springy turf, gazing up into the 
 sky, his fleshy integument seems to drop away, and the 
 spirit ranges at will among the tranquil clouds. This way 
 Nirvana nearest lies. Earth no longer obtrudes herself; 
 possibly somewhere a thousand miles or so below him the 
 thing still "spins like a fretful midge. " The Loafer knows 
 not nor cares. His is now an astral body, and through 
 golden spaces of imagination his soul is winging her 
 untrammelled flight. And there he really might remain 
 for ever, but that his vagrom spirit is called back to earth 
 by a gentle but resistless, very human summons — a 
 gradual, consuming, Pantagruelian, god-like thirst: a 
 thirst to thank Heaven on. So, with a sigh half of regret, 
 half of anticipation, he bends his solitary steps towards 
 the nearest inn. Tobacco for one is good; to commune 
 with oneself and be still is truest wisdom; but beer is a 
 thing of deity — beer is divine. 
 
 Later the Loafer may decently make some concession to 
 popular taste by strolling down to the river and getting out 
 his boat. "With one paddle out he will drift down the stream : 
 just brushing the flowering rush and the meadow-sweet 
 and taking in as peculiar gifts the varied sweets of even. 
 The loosestrife is his, and the arrowhead : his the distant 
 moan of the weir; his are the glories, amber and scarlet 
 and silver, of the sunset-haunted surface. By-and-by the 
 boaters will pass him homeward bound. All are blistered 
 and sore: his withers are unwrung. Most are too tired 
 and hungry to see the sunset glories ; no corporeal pangs 
 clog his aesthesis — his perceptive faculty. Some have 
 quarrelled in the day and are no longer on speaking 
 terms; he is at peace with himself and with the whole 
 world. Of all that lay them down in the little village that 
 night, his sleep will be the surest and the sweetest. For 
 not even the blacksmith himself will have better claim to 
 have earned a night's repose. 
 
 Kenneth Grahame: Pagan Papers. (Copyright by John Lane and 
 Company.) 
 
STUDENTS' THEMES 163 
 
 How A Gas Engine Works 
 
 The purr of automobiles and the chug of motor boats 
 have long since ceased to be unusual sounds, yet it is prob- 
 able that most people are ignorant of the principles under- 
 lying the operation of the gas engine — or at best, have but 
 a vague idea how such an engine works. They know that 
 gasoline (because gasoline is the fuel most commonly 
 employed) is used, and have a notion, perhaps, if they know 
 anything of steam engines, that some sort of an explosion 
 takes the place of steam under pressure ; but further than 
 this they know very little. In view of this general ignor- 
 ance, I shall endeavor to explain as briefly as possible and 
 without going into minute technical details, how a gas 
 engine works. 
 
 At the present time there are two forms of gas engine 
 in general use : the four-cycle type, in which four strokes 
 of the piston are required to complete one cycle, or oper-i- 
 tion; and the two-cycle, in which only two strokes are 
 required. The essential parts of the engine are the same 
 in both types, the difference between them being due to a 
 varied arrangement of the parts. Every gas engine must 
 have a cylinder, closed at the top by a stationary cylinder 
 head and at the bottom by a movable piston head which 
 is fitted snugly to the walls of the cylinder. To this piston 
 head is attached a piston rod which operates upon a crank 
 shaft and thus delivers the power of the engine in usable 
 form. In the cylinder there must be two openings, known 
 as "ports," through one of which the explosive mixture is 
 drawn and through the other of which the exploded gases 
 are expelled. The inlet port is connected by a pipe to the 
 carburetor, a device for making an explosive mixture of 
 air and gasoline, or other vapor. The outlet port is con- 
 nected to the exhaust pipe, which may be attached to a 
 ' ' muffler ' ' to deaden the sound of the explosion. Finally, 
 there must be an apparatus for exploding the gas in the 
 
164 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 cylinder at the proper time. There are various ways of 
 accomplishing this, but at the present time electrical 
 sparking systems are most in use. It is impossible, in so 
 brief a paper, to give an adequate idea of these complex 
 systems : it will be enough for our purposes to know that 
 when the piston head is near the top of the cylinder an 
 electric spark, or series of sparks, is made to pass between 
 two insulated points within the cylinder and thus cause an 
 explosion. 
 
 In the four-cycle type of engine the inlet and exhaust 
 ports are near the top of the cylinder. On the first down- 
 ward stroke of the piston a partial vacuum is created, and 
 this serves to draw into the cylinder, through the car- 
 buretor and an inlet port, a portion of the explosive 
 mixture. The inlet port is fitted with a valve, operated 
 automatically by the partial vacuum or mechanically by 
 means of a cam attached to the crank shaft. When the 
 piston reaches the lower end of this first stroke the inlet 
 valve is closed, and the piston then starts upward on its 
 second or compression, stroke, compressing the gas that 
 has been admitted into the cylinder. Just before it reaches 
 the top of this stroke an electrical contact is made, which 
 causes a spark to pass between the two insulated points 
 inside the cylinder and ignite the charge of compressed 
 gas. By the time the gas is thoroughly ignited the piston, 
 which has started downward on its third stroke, is ready 
 to be driven ahead by the rapidly expanding gases. As 
 the piston reaches the bottom of its third stroke the valve 
 on the outlet port is opened by a cam, and the burned 
 gases begin to rush out. The piston then starts upward on 
 the fourth, and last, stroke of the cycle, driving the 
 exhaust gases before it. When the piston reaches the top 
 of this stroke the exhaust valve is closed, and the cycle is 
 complete. 
 
 Thus it may be seen that one cycle requires four strokes 
 of the piston, or two revolutions of the crank shaft, for its 
 completion. And it follows from this that all of the cams 
 operating the inlet and exhaust valves and the "spark 
 timer," or "commutator" (which regulates the number of 
 sparks in a given length of time), have to be revolved at 
 
STUDENTS' THEMES 16S 
 
 just half the speed of the crank shaft in order that they 
 may act only once in every two revolutions of the shaft. 
 The speed of the engine is regulated by means of the 
 amount of gas which is allowed to enter the cylinder, and 
 by the rapidity with which one ignition spark succeeds 
 another. 
 
 The two-cycle engine is a much simpler piece of machin- 
 ery than the four-cycle engine; for the cams, shafts, 
 gears, etc., necessary to operate the valves on the latter 
 make it somewhat complicated. No valves are used on the 
 two-cycle engine, their duty being performed by the piston 
 as it covers or uncovers the ports — which are placed near 
 the bottom of the cylinder. The speed of this engine is 
 regulated by the same means as those employed in the- 
 f our-cycle type. 
 
 Again let us start with the piston at the top, or closed 
 end, of the cylinder, but this time just as the explosion 
 occurs. The piston is driven downward by the expanding 
 gases until, when nearly at the bottom of its stroke, it 
 uncovers the exhaust port, through which the gases imme- 
 diately seek an outlet. As the piston goes on to finish its 
 stroke it uncovers the inlet port, and the compressed 
 explosive mixture which was drawn into the gas-tight 
 crank case, or portion below the piston, on the previous 
 upward stroke, is forced into the cylinder and drives out 
 the exhaust gases. The piston then starts on its second 
 stroke, covering the ports and compressing the gas in 
 front of it. Meanwhile a partial vacuum is formed in the 
 crank case, and this draws another charge of the explosive 
 mixture from the carburetor. Just before the top of the 
 stroke is reached a spark occurs in the cylinder and an 
 explosion takes place, thus completing the cycle. 
 
 The gas engine is not quite the simple machine that I 
 have tried to make it appear. The ignition systems, the 
 arrangements made for cooling the cylinder, the lubricat- 
 ing devices, the delicate adjustments of the carburetor, 
 etc., make the individual engine a thing to be carefully 
 examined and studied. There are many different styles of 
 engines, fitted with a great variety of appliances and 
 adapted to various uses, so that it is manifestly impossible 
 
166 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 to describe all by describing one. But with one exception 
 (an engine in which the fixed cylinder-head is replaced by 
 a second piston so that the explosion drives the pistons in 
 opposite directions), the essential parts of a gas engine are 
 those I have indicated, and it works in the way I have 
 attempted to explain. 
 
 II. 
 The Metamorphoses of a Sheep "Liver Fluke" 
 
 The "liver fluke" is unique in the animal kingdom for 
 the series of emigrations and transformations of which its 
 life history is composed. In the liver of the sheep it starts 
 its life as a simple flat worm about three-fourths of an 
 inch long. But here it produces no young, lest, upon its 
 million or so eggs maturing, the hungry young flukes 
 entirely consume the sheep. Instead the eggs, incased in a 
 hard shell, leave the sheep's body; and, provided they 
 reach a moist place, burst the shell enclosing them, and 
 swim forth as tiny cone-shaped embryos. These embryos, 
 barely visible to the eye, yet equipped with a set of paddle- 
 like hairs, and two eyes, have twelve hours to flnd a lin- 
 nean snail or die. Those that do find the snail strike its 
 body with their heads, and by spinning around like a top, 
 bore through its body into the lungs. 
 
 Here each embryo loses its hairs and grows into a 
 shapeless sack called the sporocrust or nurse. The nurse 
 in turn proceeds to rear a new brood of parasites, unlike 
 itself, but better adapted to live in the snail. These are 
 little, white, cigar-shaped bags called redia, which burst 
 the sack they were reared in, permeate to the snail 's liver, 
 and leave their nurse to die. The redia, equipped with 
 two suckers and an alimentary canal, not only live com- 
 fortably here, but produce in their membranous sack of a 
 body a multitude of young redia. Cut open a snail's liver, 
 and you will often see hundreds of these little wriggling 
 parasites, and within them ten or twelve young redia even 
 more active than their parent. 
 
STUDENTS' THEMES 167 
 
 In the spring, however, the redia, for some unknown 
 reason, no longer rears more redia, but an entirely new 
 form, much the shape of a translucent tadpole, called 
 cercaria. The eercaria, by squeezing its little jelly-like 
 body together and by pulling it along, with its sucker, 
 squirms out of the snail's body; and, with a lightning 
 stroke of its tail, swims off to make the most of its short 
 life. Attracted by the sunlight, it swims to the water's 
 surface ; but suddenly the wriggling tail drops off and it 
 drifts helpless until caught by some weed or lily pad. 
 Here it secretes a transparent shell and waits, often 
 through much drouth, until an unsuspecting sheep crops 
 it off with the marsh grass. Once in the sheep's stomach 
 it dissolves its shell ; emigrates to the liver ; and develops 
 into the original "liver fluke." 
 
 ni. 
 
 Space Perception 
 
 All objects can be located in space in terms of distance 
 and direction; for instance the building across the street 
 is a certain distance east of me, the front facing me is so 
 many feet north and sOuth, by so many feet high, and the 
 length back into the lot (east) is a given number of feet. 
 The problem of space perception, therefore, resolves itself 
 into two elements, the perception of distance and of 
 direction. 
 
 As a basis for the development of these two fundamental 
 ideas, the child is endowed from the beginning with three 
 inborn resources ; the sense of touch, the sense of muscular 
 activity and the sense of sight. Entirely independent of 
 heredity, the child accidentally, through unconscious 
 experiments, builds up his individual perception of space 
 according to the activity of these three senses. 
 
 At first the child experiences only isolated and varied 
 feelings of touch — a mere uncontrolled succession of col- 
 lisions and contacts with vague, unseen objects or objects 
 seen with unperceiving eyes. These gropings continue 
 
168 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 and, occasionally, as the number of possibilities is limited, 
 some of them are repeated. Such successive repetitions of 
 the same sense of touch form the basis for locating the 
 particular spot touched. As soon as the child perceives 
 that he can repeat a given sensation of touch and is able to 
 repeat that sensation at will, he has located a spot on his 
 body. Moreover the entire use of the sense of touch in 
 space perception is simply to form the basis for the tem- 
 porary memorizing of the peculiar sense of touch resulting 
 from a few contacts with a particular part of the body. 
 
 With these data, i.e., the knowledge of the character- 
 istic feelings produced by touching a few parts of the 
 body, the child, by means of the sense of muscular activity, 
 gains his first definite perception of distance and direction. 
 The amount of muscular activity expended in passing 
 from one of these known locations to another constitutes 
 the fundamental perception of distance. The passage from 
 one location to another, however, uses a different set of 
 muscles than the passage back again — the difference in 
 the kind of muscular activity employed constitutes the 
 fundamental perception of direction. In the case of a 
 blind child this completes his perception of space. 
 
 Meanwhile, in a normal child, the sense of sight has 
 developed, and co-ordinated with the sense of touch. The 
 child now knows that he can touch and see objects at the 
 same time and that objects seen afar could be touched if 
 near. His perception of distance is limited only by his 
 powers of locomotion; space is unappreeiable which 
 cannot be reached by movement, and unknown when it 
 has not been reached and remembered from past experi- 
 ence. As the child grows older, however, experience with 
 the sense of sight enlarges his knowledge of space. He; 
 learns that objects near by are seen more distinctly than 
 those at a distance, that near objects by interposition 
 eclipse those farther away even if they be of equal or 
 greater size, and that the apparent movement of near 
 objects is faster than that of distant objects as seen by a 
 moving person. Moreover his perception of direction is 
 no longer merely the kind of muscular activity required to 
 touch two objects successively, but the amount of effort 
 
STUDENTS' THEMES 169 
 
 expended in turning the body, head and eyes to see two 
 objects sucessively straight in front of him. 
 
 The perfection of fully developed space perception is 
 now merely a matter of time and practice, for habit soon 
 ingrains and facilitates these laborious processes into 
 unconscious, effortless acts, so unconscious, indeed, that 
 the psychologist has had much ado in tracing the process 
 back to its origin. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Psychology Applied to Healing 
 
 The mind as a curative agent is by no means a new force 
 in the treatment of disease. It has always been employed 
 in one form or another. To be sure, in former times 
 empiricism or quackery prevailed in this field, experi- 
 mentation resulting only in hazy generalizations; never- 
 theless, the power of mind over body has been continually 
 exercised in a more or less unconscious manner. How- 
 ever, the scientific and rational application of the idea has 
 been the work of only recent years, and, at the present 
 time, the curing of the sick through mental methods is 
 becoming an important tendency of medical science. 
 
 Long before the time of physicians, people became 
 sick, and in some way they recovered. What did our fore- 
 fathers do in cases of illness, living as they did in rural 
 districts, even before the country variety store carried its 
 supply of remedies? We are told that it was once the 
 belief of some that a red flannel had greater effect than 
 any other in keeping away colds, and that horse chestnuts 
 carried in the pocket prevented rheumatism. In the same 
 way, amber beads were worn to ward off disease, sulphur 
 was carried in the shoes to prevent contagion, and other 
 seemingly superstitious notions were practiced. One is 
 reminded of the incident related in the Bible when Mpses 
 had a serpent of brass put on a pole, and when the 
 
170 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 people passed by and beheld the serpent they were made 
 well. People have been cured by suggestion; the belief 
 has been produced that they will get well and health has 
 been restored. 
 
 Suggestion in healing was not lost sight of with the com- 
 ing of medical science and physicians. Many doctors will 
 tell you that they have always used the mind cure more or 
 less. Doctors have been known to give the "placebo," a 
 harmless. inert drug, to produce the effect, or in another 
 word, the suggestion. The patient gains simply because of 
 the fact that he thinks he has taken medicine. While this 
 method is regarded by many as a form of deceit . and 
 quackery, it is true that the personality of the physician 
 may in itself accomplish much. Undoubtedly, much of 
 the good xhich comes from his visit, often more than 
 results from his prescription, is due to suggestion; his 
 manner and cheerful voice inspire confidence. 
 
 A modern instance illustrating the power of mind over 
 body may be found in the recent movement known as 
 Christian Science, a theory of mental healing. Doubtless, 
 many have found relief from it, and they have testified 
 concerning their cures. An eminent physician, Dr. Richard 
 C. Cabot/ who made an examination of a large number of 
 Christian Science cures, has recently set forth a discussion 
 based on this investigation. Defining clearly organic 
 disease and functional disease — the former causing 
 deterioration of the tissues of the body, and the latter 
 being due to perverted action of approximately normal 
 organs — ^Dr. Cabot believes that most of the Christian 
 Science cures are genuine, but that they are not the cures 
 of organic disease. Furthermore, he believes that while 
 Christian Science has done much good, there are funda- 
 mental errors which prevent it from attaining greater 
 success. These may be briefly stated as the ignoring of 
 diagnosis, and the lack of cooperation with medical 
 science. In other words, one should find out what the 
 matter is before beginning to cure, and surely before 
 claiming to have cured ; and at the same time, ought not 
 to ignore history and what has been accomplished by one 's 
 predecessors. 
 
STUDENTS' THEMES 171 
 
 Following the subject from a historical point of view, 
 we should come finally to a movement which is getting its 
 start at the present time. In the first place, it may be said 
 that it endeavors to ' ' prove all things and hold fast to that 
 which is good." Psychotherapy, a rather formidable 
 term, is nothing more or less than the Greek for "mind 
 cure. " It is a neutral word and suggests no alliance with 
 faith cure or any special sort of mental healers. It is a 
 medico-religious movement, meant to include all legitimate 
 ways of helping the sick through mental methods. The mind 
 cure has existed all along ; that functional disease has been 
 greatly alleviated by such methods has already been 
 demonstrated. Now, the idea is to be given intelligent 
 and scientific application. 
 
 Some of the fundamental methods of psychotherapeutics 
 are as follows. Explanation often alleviates suffering. 
 There are two elements in one's suffering, the pain itself 
 and what the individual thinks of it. The pain may not 
 be as bad as the patient thinks it is. You may read a per- 
 nicious advertisement which tells you that pain in the 
 back indicates kidney trouble, while a prominent medical 
 specialist has made the statement that kidney trouble is 
 rarely accompanied by pain in the back. The truth alone, 
 a clear explanation of the reality of things as known today 
 by the medical profession, may often perform the cure. 
 
 Encouragement is another equally important method 
 known to psychotherapeutics. Physicians have used the 
 very simple method of telling patients that they will 
 recover because so many others, having the same affliction 
 and taking advantage of the same treatment, are now 
 perfectly well. And doctors are testifying as to the power 
 of such simple procedures as this one in dealing with the 
 sick. The application of the method goes still further. 
 Some people need to be shown that they can work. It has 
 been proved that a person sometimes cannot acquire 
 health until some position is obtained where he can be 
 occupied. In some cases it is a really great encouragement 
 for one to realize that he is really worth something and 
 that someone needs him. On the 'other hand, the "work 
 cure" does not mean drudgery. It is becoming known 
 
172 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 that people must be taught how to work and what work 
 satisfies them. The need of the right vocation is often the 
 source of ill health. 
 
 Explanation, encouragement, and education are import- 
 ant elements in the definite application of psychology to 
 healing. But there is still something else to be considered 
 and this is of utmost importance. The point of view of the 
 sufferers must not be ignored. It has been said that there 
 is a distinction between a pain and what one thinks of it. 
 What the man thinks of it goes deep in his character, 
 underlies his mental life, his religion, for religion has been 
 defined as the deepest and strongest motive in any human 
 being. Psychotherapy may be and is properly related to 
 religion. 
 
 The alliance of religion and medicine, as an organized 
 effort, is to be found in the movement undertaken in 
 Emmanuel Church, Boston, Much has been written on 
 the subject of the movement. The power of the mind over 
 the body is firmly believed at the Emmanuel Clinic, but 
 they believe in medicine also. Treatment of functional 
 disease is carried on, not with the expectation that the 
 mind would accomplish results alone, but, with the aid of 
 the best medical and surgical specialists who have offered 
 their services, this work has been undertaken. All cases 
 receive careful diagnosis by competent physicians and 
 only sufferers from functional disorders are admitted to 
 the clinic where the psychotherapeutic treatment is 
 carried on under the united guidance of competent social 
 workers and physicians. This combination of method has 
 already resulted in considerable success ; and it is cer- 
 tainly gratifying to see such a splendid example, such an 
 earnest attempt to give to mankind the best opportunity 
 of life and health. 
 
 Having traced the history and effect of mind on healing 
 methods we observe a preponderance of power due to 
 psychological laws alone, but the end is not yet. We have 
 much to learn and may eventually be able to dispense with 
 all kinds of material remedies. 
 
STUDENTS' THEMES 173 
 
 V. 
 Ben Jonson's "Timber" 
 
 Brief as it is, Jonson's "Timber" is yet long enough to 
 give us a peep at "rare Ben" behind the blinds of his 
 literary workshop — sleeves rolled up, feet on the table, a 
 "church warden" resting comfortably on his paunch (for 
 of course he smoked: "sweet tobagy" being discovered 
 a-purpose to solace just such a genially cogitative nature 
 as his). More of the man clings to these scraps of reflec- 
 tion with their Burton-like morasses of classical quotations, 
 than is retained in the polished comedy made ready for the 
 public; just as there is more of the sculptor in the clay 
 model with its thumb marks than there is in the chiselled 
 marble. 
 
 Those qualities which made Jonson adorable in the eyes 
 of his followers, and which, in fact, rendered possible ' ' the 
 tribe of Ben," become patent to us as we read "Timber." 
 It will not be necessary to enumerate them in so brief a 
 paper; enough to say that the man who cries, "It profits 
 not me to have any man fence or fight for me, to flourish, 
 or take a side. Stand for truth, and 'tis enough," will 
 never be wanting in defenders and henchmen whether he 
 desire them or no. Aside from his love of honesty, it 
 would appear that common sense is one of Jonson's most 
 distinguishing attributes. In spite of all the weight of his 
 learning he never grows top heavy, but ever makes his 
 feet carry his head as nature intended. Alas that such a 
 combination of erudition and reasonableness should be so 
 rare as to excite remark ! 
 
 If he frequently sins by overloading his pages with 
 sluggish Latin words, he yet can strike ofiE a phrase that is 
 exquisite in its homeliness and simplicity. Speaking of a 
 certain class of authors, he says, "Their writings need sun- 
 shine." Could anything be better put? And likewise the 
 felicity of such a passage as the following needs no com- 
 ment: "Some words are to be culled out for ornament 
 and color, as we gather flowers to strew houses or make 
 garlands ; but they are better when they grow to our style 
 
174 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 as in a meadow. " A further merit of his style is its vigor. 
 "Some controverters in divinity qj-e like swaggerers in a 
 tavern that catch that which stands next them, the 
 candlestick or pots ; turn everything into a weapon : oft- 
 times they fight blindfold, and both beat the air. The one 
 milks a he-goat the other holds under a sieve. ' ' The pen 
 that writes after such fashion is always held in a man's 
 fist; it never shakes and quavers for lack of good English 
 brawn. 
 
 The last point which I wish to note is Jonson's shrewd- 
 ness. Underneath his scholarship there runs a vein of that 
 wisdom which men are pleased to call worldly. He walks 
 through the market place with his eyes open to see men 
 and things ; he is not deceived by appearances and can tell 
 a stale cabbage from a fresh one. Much of his writing 
 shows an acute perception of the workings of human 
 nature ; nor is the edge of this perception blunted by the 
 quizzical humor with which he furbishes forth his observa- 
 tions. His satire hits the mark, his close insight unmasks 
 many pretensions ; yet it is kindly, for it proceeds from a 
 broadly tolerant spirit. 
 
 VI. 
 Taylors' "Holy Dying" 
 
 Learning, illustrations, eloquence — all the elements 
 which combine to make up the rich texture of Taylor's 
 discourse, cannot disguise the essential unloveliness to 
 which it gives expression. Underneath those wonderfully 
 dyed garments, those imperial purple robes of style, walks 
 a skeleton instead of the true spirit of holiness for whom 
 those costly fabrics were ostensibly woven. 
 
 In its time and place the Bishop's manual may have 
 served its purpose well, if, as I take it, that purpose was 
 so to wean life of its rightful and necessary joys that the 
 thought of death would lose much of its terror by com- 
 parison therewith. "We should not forget that in Taylor's 
 day the reaction from the humanism of the Renaissance 
 
STUDENTS' THEMES 17S 
 
 had long set in ; in Holland the memory of the Spaniard 
 was yet vivid, in France the forces which matured in the 
 Revocation of the Edict of Nantes were openly at work, 
 and throughout Protestantism there were enough morbid 
 souls to give power to the baleful tenets of Calvinism. In 
 this light we cannot accuse Taylor of undue harshness: 
 we can only regret that his unquestioned' powers were 
 devoted to the inculcation of principles whose ethical level 
 is about on a par with that of the old nurse who scares her 
 charge into the paths of virtue by threats of the Bogey 
 Man. Outside of the results which may be obtained from 
 a purely literary study of "Holy Dying," the reading of 
 it leads to a feeling of thankfulness that like the rack and 
 the wheel, it likewise is sleeping the long sleep. 
 
 For, stripped of its beauties of expression, what is 
 "Holy Dying" in its last analysis but a compound of 
 sordidness with cruelty ? What is Taylor 's ' ' holiness ' ' but 
 expediency ? He busies himself with the details of repent- 
 ance that salvation may not be lost through a technical 
 oversight'; he counts over his stock of virtues as a trades- 
 man takes tally of his store of goods; like Caliban he 
 propitiates Setebos by a great show of misery, checking off 
 the dismal hours that carry his body nearer to the worms 
 with heart-rending penitential groans. Surely, he seems 
 to argue, if the end justifies the means let us turn the 
 world into a charnel house and mount to heaven on the 
 heaped up carcasses of unfortunate humanity. At no step 
 of his journey does he seem to catch a glimpse of a wider 
 vision; his eye is ever on the main chance, his thought 
 fixed on the sqag security of the "many mansions." 
 Righteousness for righteousness' sake does not enter into 
 this sound commercial morality with its careful balancing 
 of losses and gains, its debit and credit accountings. And 
 apart from this utter sordidness what shall we say of the 
 callous heart that can consign "the greatest number of 
 men and women born" to eternal perdition, delivering 
 them over "into the possession of devils, to eternal ages?" 
 
 In spite of aU, however, when we forget whither Tay- 
 lor 's eloquence would lead us we cannot help being swept 
 on in its torrent. His oration on the vanity of life wells 
 
176 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 forth with all the vigor of a Hebrew prophecy, his1;errible 
 denunciation of worldliness carries conviction in its mag- 
 nificent periods, his ardor is the acme of persuasiveness. 
 As a master of sinuous, glowing prose decked out in all 
 the glories of learning, insight, and passion, there is no 
 gainsaying him. "As one crying in the wilderness," our 
 Bishop says, "f that am the meat of worms cry vehemently 
 in spirit." While casting away much of his philosophies 
 we needs must admit the vehemence. 
 
 VII. 
 
 The Sterner Side of Poetry 
 
 Nowadays it has become almost an unwritten law to 
 idolize Victorian poetry. "We laugh at the English public 
 of the last half of the eighteenth century for their blind 
 age-worship and their cock-sure belief in their narrow 
 and conventional poetic ideals. Yet we show the same 
 hide-bound subservience to our own different but equally 
 narrow beliefs. We go into uncritical raptures over the 
 exuberance, the variety, the richness of Victorian poetry. 
 But this is not all. Far from being satisfied with com- 
 placently setting our fathers and ourselves upon pedestals, 
 we reject all poetry not consonant with that of our own 
 time. We cannot appreciate the passionate human sym- 
 pathy and the fitful and unconscious grandeur of the 
 Elizabethan dramatists, the crushing power, the sweep 
 and majesty of Milton's blank verse, the iron march of 
 Dryden's stern couplets, the reckless but vigorous pro- 
 fusion of Shelley and Keats. True, we have claimed for 
 the Victorian poets the exuberance which marks these 
 two last writers. But is the claim defensible? Exuber- 
 ance in poetry means an audacious and unpremeditated 
 outburst of gorgeous imagery and music. What we call 
 the exuberance of Victorian poetry is really a laborious 
 piling up of rich detail, a conscious search for minute and 
 esoteric novelties. Browning and Swinburne have com- 
 bined vigor and splendor, but both often lapse into hope- 
 
STUDENTS' THEMES 177 
 
 less vagueness of imagery and tortuosity of style. Tenny- 
 son and Kossetti carved out their minute details with all 
 the painful deliberateness of a Cellini adorning a golden 
 helmet. Arnold is repeatedly labored and heavy. Mrs. 
 Browning, straining with the artificiality of a limited 
 imagination after spontaneity of thought and style, too 
 often indulged in sentimentality in place of passion, and 
 crudeness instead of grace and freedom. William Morris 
 was frequently garrulous, facile, and spineless. If we turn 
 to poets of the past we find that Dion and Moschus in 
 Greece, Claudian at Rome, Marini in Italy, show similar 
 characteristics, and we call them decadents. 
 
 The attitude towards life of our Victorian poets presents 
 equally serious deficiencies. Never has an age been more 
 fertile in sources for inspiration. Not even the golden age 
 of discovery during Queen Elizabeth's reign, nor the 
 thrilling revival of Hellenism during the Italian Renais- 
 sance produced wonders as elevating and inspiring as 
 those brought forth by the sweeping progress of recent 
 science. The great painters of the Italian Renaissance, the 
 great poets of the Elizabethan period drank in the new 
 influences and flamed out like resistless meteors. Tenny- 
 son, after giving tentative expression to the spirit of his 
 age, shrank from its final issue — the destruction by science 
 of many well-loved ideals. Rossetti and Morris deliber- 
 ately turned away from the problems of this era. Arnold 
 lingered in melancholy hesitancy. Browning and Swin- 
 burne are again partial exceptions. Both accepted our 
 age in its full significance; but Browning's optimism 
 occasionally comes dangerously near the facile, and Swin- 
 burne chose the aloofness of an over-cultured utterance. 
 Even those who accepted the spirit of our age, then, have 
 failed to give to its complex greatness large and virile 
 expression. 
 
 It has been an ungenerous task to attack Victorian 
 poetry so harshly, but the point at issue precludes any 
 attempt to show recognition of the really noble qualities 
 of our latest poets. My present concern is to note a serious 
 and a growing weakness in the achievement of Victorian 
 and later day poetry. Our singers have not shown the 
 
178 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 intellectual solidity of the greatest poets like Goethe and 
 Calderon; they have not shown the intense moral con- 
 sciousness which always underlies the massive creations of 
 Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Dante ; they have not accepted 
 and exulted in all the problems, the hopes, the fears of 
 their time as did Lucretius and Goethe and Victor Hugo ; 
 they lack the wide love and understanding of men that 
 vitalizes the poetry of Chaucer, of Shakspeare, of Schiller. 
 The shrinking, the hesitancy, the growing aloofness of 
 Victorian poetry has reached its culmination. We have 
 been told by recent poets and theorizers upon poetry to 
 banish vexing problems. We are informed that art must 
 exist for art 's sake. The group of poets who exploit them- 
 selves as decadent tell us that poetry is an escape from 
 life. The great poets of the past seem to have had a far 
 different idea. The function of their poetry is to quicken 
 our lives into a greater and nobler intensity. They widen 
 our human sympathies and make us think more pro- 
 foundly. But the decadent poets tell us that their songs 
 are non-moral and that they are merely the musical 
 embodiment of an intangible mood. If we have any right 
 to judge poetry by the first principles which we find lying 
 on the surface in the works of the universal singers, we 
 are forced to accept an ugly conclusion. We are compelled 
 to believe that the Victorian poets were gradually losing 
 their grip on some of the most vital properties of their art, 
 and that this weakness has culminated today in an almost 
 complete divorce from the larger laws of song. 
 
 The weakness of our poets is indeed deep-seated. They 
 tremble before commercialism, yet commercialism is but a 
 flimsy, pasteboard dragon, ready to fall before the first 
 touch of virile idealism. They fear the disillusionment of 
 science and the tumultuous and motley pageant of a 
 people emancipated by democracy, but the forces from 
 which the poet is shrinking form what should be one of 
 the main causes of his existence. In spite of the apparent 
 indifference of the world to song, the fault is not with the 
 people but with the poets. A true art will arise phcenix- 
 like from the ashes of our decrepitude. Our great poet, 
 when he comes, will crush mammonism into a groveling 
 
STUDENTS • THEMES 179 
 
 insignificance. He will love mankind as Christ did. And 
 the magnificent concepts of science will fill him with exult- 
 ant inspiration. 
 
 To embody the sterner side of poetry, to be large 
 enough for the task of truth seeking, the great singer must 
 have the spirit of intellectual adventure. In other words, 
 he should feel the great longing which makes the strong 
 man more ardent with the increasing hopelessness of this 
 quest for complete knowledge. Then the poet, the 
 scientist, and the metaphysician would work side by side 
 as they should, for their duties are fundamentally iden- 
 tical. The poet of tomorrow must exult in a spirit of skep- 
 ticism which will free him from narrow faiths and inspire 
 him with an irresistible longing to reach out into the 
 infinite. He should face the immensity of the universe 
 with blazing eyes, as Keats did when he was awakened by 
 Chapman's ringing translation of Homer: 
 
 Then felt I like some watcher of the skies 
 When a new planet swims into his ken; 
 
 Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes 
 He stared at the Pacific — and all his men 
 
 Look'd at each other with a wild surmise 
 Silent upon a peak in Darien. 
 
 This is the dauntless spirit of intellectual adventure 
 that produces the sterner side of poetry. 
 
 The great poet of the future must have one other funda- 
 mental quality. Mr. Yeats, in one of the most stimulating 
 essays of recent years, has asserted that the poet is the 
 priest. If this be true, the need for him is growing, because 
 the hunger for his noble and sympathetic ministrations will 
 rapidly become compelling. The dead and baseless for- 
 malism of contemporary religion offers little solace to an 
 age disillusioned by science and corrupted by mammonism. 
 The result is that the great masses of people are drifting 
 restlessly, uninfluenced by any sound system of thought. 
 Some renounce the church; others accept its dictates in 
 theory and pitch their lives in violent opposition to its 
 most fundamental religious and ethical tenets. The great 
 mass of people are wandering in idle uncertainty. A few, 
 a little more thoughtful, seek a cowardly refuge in cheap 
 
180 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 forms of mysticism. Such a spectacle as this weltering sea 
 of humanity would startle a true poet into commanding 
 genius. The real singer .does not devote himself to morbid 
 introspection, but is impelled by an intense human sym- 
 pathy. He is filled with the spirit of revolt against dead 
 and corrupted beliefs. He is filled with the spirit of won- 
 der and longing before ideals unattained. Dowered with 
 the spirit of adventure he would delude men with no false 
 hopes but he would quicken them .into a more intense con- 
 sciousness. He would stem the mad scramble for optimism, 
 so prevalent today, with a spirit of pitiless denial. But 
 along with his stern criticism he would bring them ennobled 
 aspirations. Marlowe, aflame with the tremendous Eliza- 
 bethan awakening, has described this very spirit of truth- 
 seeking in some matchless lines : 
 
 Nature that framed us of four elements 
 Warring within our breasts for regiment, 
 Doth teaeh us all to have aspiring minds; 
 Our souls whose faculties ean comprehend 
 The wondrous architecture of the world, 
 And measure every wandering planet's course, 
 Still climbing after knowledge infinite, 
 And always moving as the restless spheres. 
 Will us to wear ourselves and never rest. 
 
 This is the indomitable spirit of intellectual adventure 
 which inspires the singer with the sterner side of poetry 
 and makes him a savior of men. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 A playwright's style is shaped and limited by the condi- 
 tions under which he must work. These conditions apply 
 to the playwright alone, and are quite imperative in their 
 nature. In the first place, he must say a great deal in a 
 very limited time, for the drama is a highly condensed 
 form of literature. In the second place, he must make 
 himself understood on the first hearing, for the audience 
 at a theatre has no opportunity to linger over a shadowy 
 passage and extract fine shades of meaning from it. Two 
 essential elements of his style, then, must be terseness and 
 
STUDENTS' THEMES 181 
 
 lucidity. In addition to these it must also have great 
 flexibility in order that his people may speak "in char- 
 acter ' ' — that is, his fishwives must speak in the vernacular 
 of fishwives, and his kings alter the manner of royalty. 
 At times, too, he must have the power of phrasing a thing 
 so that it will strike the audience like a clap of thunder; 
 he must be able to point a remark so that it will stick in 
 the memory like a burr. These are the fundamentals of a 
 playwright's style, and not until he has mastered them 
 thoroughly should he attempt to embellish his dialogue 
 with softer literary graces. 
 
 IX. 
 
 There are a certain number of modest little books in the 
 world which tickle our vanity mightily in the reading, 
 These books are of such a quality as to remain ever 
 unnoticed by the industrious army which our literary 
 periodicals refer to as "the great reading public." Stu- 
 dents of literature may read them, but in much the same 
 manner as a farmer 's boy does his chores ; it remains to a 
 few — the few, I might say — ^to really love and enjoy them. 
 And if we are of this select and chosen number — if, for 
 example, we prefer a half-hour with Walter Savage Lan- 
 dor's "Imaginary Conversations" to a chapter from the 
 most enticing romance of the hour — what food for com- 
 placent reverie lies in the realization of the fact. We feel 
 ourselves lifted above the rank and file. "Poor Jones, or 
 poor Brown, ' ' we say, ' ' what a gulf lies between us ! This 
 most amusing discourse between Fra Filippo Lippi and 
 Eugenius would be mere rubbish to you. The subtleties of 
 tjjie satire, the incisive strokes which lay bare the con- 
 trasted characters, would all be lost in the fogs of your 
 dull brain. You lack the insight, the artistic sympathy, 
 the penetration of that sixth sense called critical acumen, 
 necessary to a just appreciation of this man Landor." 
 And thus we go on to flatter ourselves by implication; 
 and the fire of vanity burns with a steady and not unpleas- 
 ant warmth. 
 
182 EXPOSITION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 
 
 The Old Theory 
 
 Thousands and thousands of years ago, a monkey climbed, 
 one evening, into a tall tree. He had been there many times 
 before, but this evening something happened, something 
 unusual. For the smooth tree-bark was slippery with the 
 rain which had fallen all day long, and the monkey, careless 
 on account of familiarity with danger, by some unheard of 
 accident lost his hold and fell. Down he went, brushing 
 against the yielding leaves, dashing through the crackling 
 • twigs, and almost to the ground. But just in time a stout 
 branch interposed itself ; the fall was broken ; and in half 
 a second, with his tail firmly wrapped around the bough, 
 the monkey snuggled up to the trunk of the tree and 
 thought. Then he went about his business, and did not 
 alter his manner of life on account of a fall. In truth, he 
 fell many times after this first accident and after each fall 
 he thought a little about it, and an impression was made 
 on his mind by these rushes toward the earth, which 
 always stopped before the dreaded goal was reached. He 
 always stopped in time because he was a fortunate beast, 
 but he saw many a brother, whose fate was not so happy, 
 fall and keep on falling till he struck hard ground. And 
 in that ease nothing happened, for dead monkeys do not 
 think. 
 
 Many cycles have passed since the monkey's first fall. 
 It is evening again, and a son of Adam lies down t« 
 rest. He goes to sleep and dreams. He is falling, falling 
 from some awful height. Down he rushes, down, down— 
 and then the fall ceases. — And he wakes up. 
 
PART II. 
 ARGUMENT 
 
 The Relations Between International Tribunals 
 
 OF Arbitration and the Jurisdiction of 
 
 National Courts 
 
 The growing tendency towards international arbitration 
 brings into special consideration and importance the rela- 
 tion between the jurisdiction of National Courts of Justice 
 and International Tribunals of Arbitration. 
 
 When one nation urges claims in behalf of its citizens 
 upon the government of another nation and proposes arbi- 
 tration, how far does that other nation's respect for its 
 own independent sovereignty and for the integrity of its 
 own judicial system require it to insist that the claims be 
 submitted for final decision to its own national courts? 
 
 The true basis for the consideration of this question is in 
 the nature of the obligation which constrains a nation to 
 submit questions to any tribunal whatever. 
 
 That there is no legal obligation to make any submis- 
 sion, that is to say, that it is not required by any rule 
 imposed by a superior power, is a corollary from our 
 conception of sovereignty. Sovereignty involves the right 
 to determine one's own actions — to pay or not to pay, to 
 redress injury or not to redress it, at the will of the 
 sovereign, subject only to the necessary conditions created 
 by the existence of other equally independent states. So 
 far as questions arise out of contract, Alexander Hamilton 
 states the strongest view of national freedom from 
 restraint in a passage often quoted in recent years : 
 
 Contracts between a nation and private individuals are obliga- 
 tory, according to the conscience of the sovereign, and may not be 
 the object of compelling force. They confer no right of action 
 contrary to the sovereign will. 
 
 183 
 
184 ARGUMENT 
 
 So far as questions arise out of alleged wrongs by one 
 government against a. citizen of another, the sovereignty 
 of one nation is merely confronted by another sovereignty, 
 which is itself equally supreme within its own limits. 
 Wherever the true lines are to be drawn between two 
 mutually exclusive sovereignties, each is supreme and sub- 
 ject to no compulsion on its own side of the line. Wher- 
 ever there is infringement by one on the other there exists 
 the right of adverse action, which involves no impeach- 
 ment of independent sovereignty, but follows necessarily 
 from the contact of two independent powers. Whatever 
 modifications international lawyers urge to the broad 
 statement of doctrine to which Doctor Calvo has given his 
 name, so ably enforced by his successor. Dr. Drago, there is 
 no effective dispute regarding the foundation of his main 
 proposition, regarding the essential nature of sovereignty. 
 
 The conditions under which this sovereign power is 
 exercised among civilized nations do, however, impose 
 upon it important limitations, just as the conditions under 
 which individual liberty is enjoyed in a free civil com- 
 munity impose limitations upon individual conduct in 
 matters not at all controlled by law. Municipal law does 
 not, in general, undertake to compel men to be virtuous, 
 truthful, sober, fair, polite, and considerate of others. Yet 
 the existence of civil liberty is conditioned upon the 
 existence of a community standard of conduct quite 
 independent of legal compulsion, and extending far 
 beyond the limits touched by any statute. The member 
 of a community who chooses to use his individual liberty 
 to violate that standard conspicuously, meets severe pun- 
 ishment in the loss of respect, confidence, and esteem, and 
 in the consequences of that loss. Another very effective 
 limitation upon conduct is the knowledge that certain 
 courses of conduct quite within one 's legal rights may lead 
 some other man to use his individual freedom, to do one 
 injury. The compulsion which such considerations produce 
 upon individual action is no more an infringement upon 
 individual liberty than is the effect caused by the knowl- 
 edge that fire will burn and water will drown. The 
 
RELATIONS BETWEEN INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNALS 18S 
 
 individual in each ease regulates his own conduct in 
 accordance with his own will. 
 
 The assertion of independent sovereignty of nations is 
 but another expression of the individual liberty of each 
 nation in the community of nations. In its practical appli- 
 cation it is of modern acceptance, superseding the old idea 
 that each nation, tribe, or group of people under whatever 
 chieftain, leader, sovereign, or government, was entitled 
 to hold such territory and exercise such control over its 
 own conduct, as it could maintain by force of arms, and 
 no more. 
 
 The theory of independent sovereignty, entitled to be 
 respected by all mankind without regard to its power to 
 maintain itself by force, could find no place in the world 
 except in coincidence with a standard of international 
 conduct to which the nations generally, in the exercise of 
 their individual sovereignty, conform, each without com- 
 pulsion of any other power, but voluntarily. 
 
 The chief principle entering into this standard of con- 
 duct is that every sovereign nation is willing at all times 
 and under all circumstances to do what is just. That is the 
 universal postulate of all modern diplomatic discussion. 
 No nation would for a moment permit its own conformity 
 to the standard in this respect, to be questioned. The 
 obligation which this willingness implies is no impeach- 
 ment of sovereignty. It is voluntarily assumed as an 
 incident to the exercise of sovereignty because it is essen- 
 tial to a continuance of the conditions under which the 
 independence of sovereignty is possible. This obligation 
 is by universal consent interpreted according to estab- 
 lished and accepted rules as to what constitutes justice 
 under certain known and frequently recurring conditions ; 
 and these accepted rules we call international law. No 
 demand can ever be made by one nation upon another to 
 give redress in any case but that the demand is met by an 
 avowed readiness to do justice in that case, and upon that 
 demand in accordance with the rules of international law. 
 No compulsion upon sovereignty is needed to reach that 
 result. 
 
186 ARGUMENT 
 
 The only question that can arise upon such a demand is 
 the question, ' ' What is just in this case ? " In that neces- 
 sary condition of agreement upon the underlying principle 
 to be followed, a common duty is presented to both nations 
 to ascertain and determine what is just. 
 
 It is not usually a simple or easy thing to determine 
 what is just as .between a nation and either its own citizens 
 or the citizens of other nations. Upon one conclusion all 
 civilized nations are in accord — ^that the executive and 
 administrative officers of government cannot be depended 
 upon to make such determinations. Civilized nations 
 uniformly provide machinery for judicial decision of such 
 questions so that the views of executive and administra- 
 tive officers in rejecting claims may be reviewed and con- 
 trolled. The grant of jurisdiction to courts or the creation 
 of courts to exercise such jurisdiction is no disparagement 
 of the officers whose views of what is just are thus called 
 in question. Sovereigns and presidents and ministers and 
 department officers are not insulted by such provisions, or 
 because the common sense of justice recognizes that their 
 relation to the questions which arise between the govern- 
 ment which they conduct, and others, is such that they can 
 not well be impartial. 
 
 The whole system by which sovereign states permit 
 themselves to be sued in courts vested with jurisdiction 
 for that purpose is in recognition of the fundamental rule 
 of right that none shall be a judge in his own case. 
 
 That same great rule cannot be ignored when the ques- 
 tion is whether the decision of a national court is to be 
 taken as a final and satisfactory determination of what is 
 just in an international case, to which the judge's own 
 country is a party. For after all judges are but men. 
 They are part of the government that is called in question. 
 They are subject to the influence of their environment. 
 They cannot always escape all the influences of popular 
 feeling and prejudice in their own communities. The 
 political fortunes of the very officials who appointed them 
 to the bench or their own tenure of office may perhaps be 
 at stake upon their action. They cannot help bringing to 
 the bench strong tendencies and predilections in favor of 
 
RELATIONS BETWEEN INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNALS 187 
 
 their own countrymen's ways of acting and thinking. They 
 desire the approbation of their fellow citizens, and in 
 cases of public interest it may be much harder to decide 
 against than for their own country. It is difficult for 
 a foreigner to understand and avail himself of their modes 
 of reasoning, their rules of evidence and of procedure, and 
 the precedents they follow. If there is a difference of 
 languages a stranger is at a great disadvantage. He may 
 often lose his ease through not knowing how to do his 
 part towards maintaining it. 
 
 There are many circumstances varying in different coun- 
 tries and in different cases which tend to strengthen or to 
 weaken these obstacles to a satisfactory attainment of 
 justice. _ The general state of feeling in the country of 
 trial toward the country of the complainant and its effect 
 upon the atmosphere of the court room, that every 
 experienced lawyer knows to be so important, is one of 
 these circumstances. The relative importance of the case 
 in proportion to the resources of the country — ^whether an 
 adverse decision would make a slight or a great difference 
 to the government or the people, is another. Whether the 
 action of the executive has been generally discussed and 
 has assumed political importance is another. 
 
 Every country is entitled to follow its own judgment 
 and is not subject to criticism for following its own 
 judgment, as to the degree of independence it shall give to 
 its judiciary, yet it cannot well be denied that with human 
 nature as it is, there is less certainty of an impartial 
 decision from judges removable at will in a case calling in 
 question the acts of the appointing and removing power, 
 than from judges whose tenure of office is not dependent 
 upon the executive. The decision of such a dependent 
 court is liable to be affected by the same infirmities which 
 the whole world recognizes as making the determination 
 of the executive itself, an unsatisfactory method of con- 
 cluding the search for justice. 
 
 It should not be forgotten that it is not only desirable 
 to have justice done; but also to have men believe that 
 justice is done. That belief is important to respect for law 
 among the people within each nation and to the mainte- 
 
188 ARGUMENT 
 
 nance and growth of respect and friendship between the 
 peoples of different nations. 
 
 Of course there are many cases falling naturally into 
 the ordinary routine of national judicial procedure — cases 
 plainly not presenting the elements of prejudice which 
 would prevent reaching justice through that procedure. 
 Of course there are many great international questions 
 which no one would ever propose to lay before a national 
 tribunal. Between these two extremes there is a wide 
 range of cases in which national courts may exercise 
 jurisdiction, but to which the considerations that I have 
 suggested apply. When such cases arise the international 
 question is not one of compulsion or derogation from 
 sovereignty, but it is : How shall two nations desiring to 
 ascertain what is the truth of justice in this case reach 
 a decision ? By what procedure and before what tribunal 
 can that end best be attained? 
 
 If recourse to arbitration is a reflection upon national 
 courts, the people of the United States have been strangely 
 obtuse, for nowhere in the world, surely, is greater honor 
 paid to the courts of justice, yet we have embodied in the 
 fundamental law which binds our states together a recog- 
 nition of the liability of courts to be affected by local 
 sentiment, prejudice, and pressure. We have provided in 
 the third article of the Constitution of the United States 
 that in controversies between states or between citizens of 
 different states the determination of what is just shall not 
 be confined to the courts of justice of either state, but may 
 be brought in the Federal tribunals, selected and empow- 
 ered by the representatives of both states and of all the 
 states — true arbitral tribunals in the method of their 
 creation and the office they perform. 
 
 Alexander Hamilton explains this provision in The 
 Federalist in these words : 
 
 The reasonableness of the agency of the National courts in cases 
 in which the state tribunals cannot be supposed to be impartial 
 speaks for itself. No man ought certainly to be a judge in his own 
 cause, or in any cause in respect to which he has the slightest 
 interest or bias. This principle has no inconsiderable weight in 
 designating the Federal courts as the proper tribunals for the 
 determination of controversies between different states and their 
 
RELATIONS BETWEEN INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNALS 189 
 
 citizens. And it ought to have the same operation in regard to 
 some cases between the citizens of the same state. Claims to lands 
 under grants of different states founded upon adverse pretension of 
 boundary are of this description. The courts of neither of the 
 granting states could be expected to be unbiased. The laws may 
 have even prejudged the question and tied the courts down to 
 decisions in favor of the grant of the state to which ,they belonged. 
 And where this has not been done it would be natural that judges 
 as men should feel as strong predilection to the claims of their own 
 government. 
 
 The whole world owes too much to the Constitution of 
 the United States to think little of its example. Especially 
 the American nations, which have drawn from that great 
 instrument their forms of government and the spirit of 
 their free institutions, must regard with respect the lesson 
 which it teaches. 
 
 The proud independent sovereign commonwealths like 
 Virginia and Pennsylvania and New York and Massa- 
 chusetts, which formed the American Union, revered their 
 judges. They were prepared to give, and did give to their 
 courts a degree of authority over them and over their 
 executives and legislatures without precedent in the his- 
 tory of free government; but they also revered justice; 
 they prized peace and concord and friendship and brother- 
 hood between the states and their citizens. A century and 
 a half of free self-government had brought to them the 
 lessons and the self-restraint of experience. They knew the 
 limitations of good men and the essential conditions of 
 doing justice. In that great cause they allowed no small 
 local jealousies to bar the way. When the ever recurring 
 question arises between submission of controversies to 
 international arbitration on the one hand and insistence 
 upon the jurisdiction of National tribunals on the other, 
 the nations who look to the framers of the American 
 Constitution as an example of high constructive states- 
 manship and wisdom should not fail to find in this judg- 
 ment, matter to arrest their attention and influence their 
 action. 
 
 No court in the world has greater power and independ- 
 ence and honor than the Supreme Court, established under 
 the Constitution of the United States, yet our government, 
 by international agreement, has submitted to international 
 
190 ARGUMENT 
 
 tribunals many cases which could have been, and many 
 eases which already had been, decided by that great court. 
 For example, the cases of the Peterhof, reported in Wal- 
 lace's Reports, Volume 5 ; the Dashing Wave (5 Wallace) ; 
 the Georgia (7 Wallace) ; the Isabella Thompson (3 Wal- 
 lace) ; the Pearl (5 Wallace) ; the Adela (6 Wallace), had 
 all been decided by the Supreme Court, and they were 
 resubmitted to an international tribunal, which decided 
 them in the same way the court had decided them. 
 
 The cases of the Hiawatha (2 Black) ; the Circassian (2 
 Wallace) ; the Springbock (5 Wallace) ; the Sir William 
 Peel (5 Wallace) ; the Volant (5 Wallace) ; the Science 
 (5 Wallace), had all been decided by the Supreme Court, 
 and they were resubmitted to an international tribunal, 
 which decided them adversely to the decisions of the court, 
 and the United States complied with the decisions of the 
 arbitral tribunal. 
 
 It is true that the rule is undisputed that where there 
 has been a denial of justice in national courts their 
 decisions are not to be held conclusive, and arbitration or 
 other further action may be called for. Unfortunately it 
 has been necessary often in the past, to invoke this rule; 
 but it is an unsatisfactory rule and injurious in its effects. 
 It involves an indictment and trial of the judicial system 
 under which the 'denial of justice is alleged to have 
 occurred. It involves aspersions upon government, 
 imputations upon high officials, incitement to anger and 
 resentment, and tends to destroy rather than to preserve 
 good feeling and friendship between the nations 
 concerned. 
 
 The better rule would be, to avoid the danger of denials 
 of justice, and to prevent the belief that justice has not 
 been done, which must always possess the parties defeated 
 in a tribunal suspected of partiality, by submitting in the 
 first instance to an impartial arbitral tribunal all such 
 cases as are liable to be affected by the considerations I 
 have mentioned. 
 
 And the reason of such a rule would require that when 
 such cases have been decided already by national courts, 
 and the impartial justice of the decision is seriously ques- 
 
LETTER ON IMPRESSMENT 191 
 
 tioned, upon substantial grounds, they should be resub- 
 mitted to an arbitral tribunal, not for proof that justice 
 has been denied, but for rehearing upon the merits because 
 self-respect and intelligent self-interest forbid a nation to 
 shelter itself behind decisions of its own courts that rest 
 under the imputation of partiality, or to be content with 
 any but the best means and the most sincere effort to learn 
 what is just in order that the nation may do what is just. 
 
 Eiihu Root. 
 
 Letter on Impressment 
 
 Department of State, 
 Washington, August 8, 1842. 
 
 My Lord, — TVe have had several conversations on the 
 subject of impressment, but I do not understand that your 
 lordship has instructions from your government to nego- 
 tiate upon it, nor does the government of the United States 
 see any utility in opening such negotiation, unless the 
 British government is prepared to renounce the practice 
 in all future wars. 
 
 No cause had produced to so great an extent, and for so 
 long a period, disturbing and irritating influences on the 
 political relations of the United States and England, as 
 the impressment of seamen by British cruisers from 
 American merchant vessels. 
 
 From the commencement of the French revolution to 
 the breaking out of the war between the two countries in 
 1812 hardly a year elapsed without loud complaint and 
 earnest remonstrance. A deep feeling of opposition to the 
 right claimed and to the practice exercised under it, and 
 not unfrequently exercised without the least regard to 
 what justice and humanity would have dictated, even if 
 the right itself had been admitted, took possession of the 
 public mind of America, and this feeling, it is well known, 
 cooperated most powerfully with other causes to produce 
 the state of hostilities which ensued. 
 
 At different periods, both before and since the war, 
 negotiations have taken place between the two govern- 
 
192 ARGUMENT 
 
 ments, with the hope of finding some means of quieting 
 these complaints. At some times, the effectual abolition 
 of the practice has been requested and treated of ; at other 
 times, its temporary suspension ; and at other times, again 
 the limitation of its exercise, and some security against its 
 enormous abuses. 
 
 A common destiny has attended these efforts ; they have 
 all failed. The question stands at this moment where it 
 stood fifty years ago. The nearest approach to a settle- 
 ment was a convention proposed in 1803, and which had 
 come to the point of signature, when it was broken off in 
 consequence of the British government insisting that the 
 narrow seas should be expressly excepted out of the sphere 
 over which the contemplated stipulation against impress- 
 ment should extend. The American minister, Mr. King, 
 regarded this exception as quite inadmissible, and chose 
 rather to abandon the negotiation than to acquiesce in the 
 doctrine which it proposed to establish. 
 
 England asserts the right of impressing British subjects, 
 in time of war, out of neutral merchant vessels, and of 
 deciding by her visiting officers who, among the crews of 
 such merchant vessels, are British subjects. She asserts 
 this as a legal exercise of the prerogative of the crown; 
 which prerogative is alleged to be founded on the English 
 law of perpetual and indissoluble allegiance of the sub- 
 ject, and his obligation under all circumstances, and for 
 his whole life, to render military service to the crown 
 whenever required. 
 
 The statement, made in the words of eminent British 
 jurists, shows at once that the English claim is far broader 
 than the basis of platform on which it is raised. The law 
 relied on is English law; the obligations insisted on are 
 obligations existing between the crown of England and its 
 subjects. This law and these obligations, it is admitted, 
 may be such as England may choose they shall be. But 
 then they must be confined to the parties. Impressment 
 of seamen out of and beyond English territory, and from 
 on board the ships of other nations, is an interference with 
 the rights of other nations ; it is further, therefore, than 
 English prerogative can legally extend ; and is nothing but 
 
LETTER ON IMPRESSMENT 193 
 
 an attempt to enforce the peculiar law of England beyond 
 the dominions and jurisdiction of the crown. The claim 
 asserts an extra-territorial authority for the law of British 
 prerogative, and assumes to exercise this extra-territorial 
 authority to the manifest injury and annoyance of the 
 citizens and subjects of other states, on board their own 
 vessels, on the high seas. 
 
 Every merchant vessel on these is rightfully considered 
 as part of the territory of the country to which it belongs. 
 The entry, therefore, into such vessel, being neutral, by a 
 belligerent, is an act of force, and is, prima facie, a wrong, 
 a trespass, which can be justified only when done for some 
 purpose allowed to form a sufficient justification by the law 
 of nations. But a British cruiser enters an American 
 merchant vessel in order to take therefrom supposed 
 British subjects; offering no justification, therefore, 
 under the law of nations, but claiming the right under the 
 law of England respecting the king's prerogative. This 
 cannot be defended. English soil, English territory, 
 English jurisdiction, is the appropriate sphere for the 
 operation of English law. The ocean is the sphere of the 
 law of nations ; and any merchant vessel on the seas is by 
 that law under the protection of the laws of her own 
 nation, and may claim immunity, unless in cases in which 
 that law aUows her to be entered or visited. 
 
 If this notion of perpetual allegiance, and the conse- 
 quent power of the prerogative, were the law of the world ; 
 if it formed part of the conventional code of nations, and 
 was usually practiced, like the right of visiting neutral 
 ships for the purpose of discovering and seizing enemy's 
 property, then impressment might be defended as a com- 
 mon right, and there would be no remedy for the evil till 
 the national code should be altered. But this is by no 
 means the case. There is no such principle incorporated 
 into the code of nations. The doctrine stands only as 
 English law, not as a national law; and English law 
 cannot be of force beyond English dominion. Whatever 
 duties or relations that law creates between the sovereign 
 and his subjects can be enforced and maintained only 
 within the realm, or proper possessions or territory of the 
 
194 ARGUMENT 
 
 sovereign. There may be quite as just a prerogative right 
 to the property of subjects as to their personal services, 
 in an exigency of the state ; but no government thinks of 
 controlling by its own laws property of its subjects situ- 
 ated abroad; much less does any government think of 
 entering the territory of another power for the purpose 
 of seizing such property and applying it to its own uses. 
 As laws, the prerogatives of the crown of England have no 
 obligation on persons or property domiciled or situated 
 abroad. 
 
 "When, therefore," says an authority not unknown or 
 unregarded on either side of the Atlantic, "we speak of 
 the right of a state to bind its own native subjects every- 
 where, we speak only of its own claim and exercise of 
 sovereignty over them when they return within its own 
 territorial jurisdiction, and not of its right to compel or 
 require obedience to such laws, on the part of other 
 nations, within their own territorial sovereignty. On the 
 contrary, every nation has an exclusive right to regulate 
 persons and things within its own territory, according to 
 its sovereign will and public polity. ' ' 
 
 The good sense of these principles, their remarkable 
 pertinency to the subject now under ' consideration, and 
 the extraordinary consequences resulting from the British 
 doctrine, are signally manifested by that which we see 
 taking place every day. England acknowledges herself 
 overburdened with population of the poorer classes. 
 Every instance of the emigration of persons of those 
 classes is regarded by her as a benefit. England,therefore, 
 encourages emigration; means are notoriously supplied 
 to emigrants, to assist their conveyance, from public 
 funds; and the New World, and most especially these 
 United States, receive the many thousands of her subjects 
 thus ejected from the bosom of their native land by the 
 necessities of their condition. They come away from 
 poverty and distress in overcrowded cities, to seek employ- 
 ment, comfort, and new homes in a country of free institu- 
 tions, possessed by a kindred race, speaking their own 
 language, and having laws and usages in many respects 
 like those to which they have been accustomed; and a 
 
LETTER ON IMPRESSMENT 19S 
 
 country which, upon the whole, is found to possess more 
 attractions for persons of their character and condition 
 than any other on the face of the globe. It is stated that, 
 in the quarter of the year ending with June last, more 
 than twenty-six thousand emigrants left the single port of 
 Liverpool for the United States, being four or five times 
 as many as left the same port within the same period for 
 the British colonies and all other parts of the world. Of 
 these crowds of emigrants, many arrive in our cities in 
 circumstances of great destitution, and the charities of 
 the country, both public and private, are severely taxed 
 to relieve their immediate wants. In time they mingle 
 with the new community in which they find themselves 
 and seek means of living. Some find employment in the 
 cities, others go to the frontiers, to cultivate lands 
 reclaimed from the forest ; and a greater or less number of 
 the residue, becoming in time naturalized citizens, enter 
 into the merchant service under the flag of their adopted 
 country. 
 
 Now, my lord, if war should break out between England 
 and a European power, can anything be more unjust, 
 anything more irreconcilable to the general sentiments of 
 mankind, than that England should seek out these persons, 
 thus encouraged by her and compelled by their own con- 
 dition to leave their native homes, tear them away from 
 their new employments, their new political relations, and 
 their domestic connections, and force them to undergo the 
 dangers and hardships of military service for a country 
 which has thus ceased to be their own country ? Certainly, 
 certainly, my lord, there can be but one answer to this 
 question. Is it not far more reasonable that England 
 should either prevent such emigration of her subjects, or 
 that, if she encourage and promote it, she should leave 
 them, not to the embroilment of a double and contradic- 
 tory allegiance, but to their own voluntary choice, to form 
 such relations, political or social, as they see fit in the 
 country where they are to find their bread, and to the laws 
 and institutions of which they are to look for defense and 
 protection ? 
 
 A question of such serious importance ought now to be 
 
196 ARGUMENT 
 
 put at rest. If the United States give shelter and protec- 
 tion to those whom the policy of England annually casts 
 upon their shores; if, by the benign influences of their 
 government and institutions, and by the happy condition 
 of the country, those emigrants become raised from 
 poverty to comfort, finding it easy even to becon^e land- 
 holders, and being allowed to partake in the enjoyment of 
 all civil rights; if all this may be done (and all this is 
 done, under the countenance and encouragement of Eng- 
 land herself) , is it not high time, my' lord, that, yielding 
 that which had its origin in feudal ideas as inconsistent 
 with the present state of society, and especially with the 
 intercourse and relations subsisting between the Old 
 World and the New, England should at length formally 
 disclaim all right to the services of such persons, and 
 renounce all control over their conduct? 
 
 But impressment is subject to objections of a much 
 wider range. If it could be justified in its application to 
 those who are declared to be its only objects, it still 
 remains true that, in its exercise, it touches the political 
 rights of other governments, and endangers the security 
 of their own native subjects, and citizens. The sovereignty 
 of the state is concerned in maintaining its exclusive juris- 
 diction and possession over its merchant ships on the seas, 
 except so far as the law of nations justifies intrusion upon 
 that possession for special purposes; and all experience 
 has shown, that no member of a crew, wherever born, is 
 safe against impressment when a ship is visited. 
 
 The evils and injuries resulting from the actual practice 
 can hardly be overrated, and have ever proved themselves 
 to be such as should lead to its relinquishment, even if it 
 were founded in any defensible principle. The difficulty 
 of discriminating between English subjects and American 
 citizens has always been found to be great, even when an 
 honest purpose of discrimination has existed. But the 
 lieutenant of a man-of-war, having necessity for men, is 
 apt to be a summary judge, and his decisions will be quite 
 as significant of his own wants and his own power, as of 
 the truth and justice of the case. An extract from a 
 letter of Mr. King, of the 13th of April, 1797, to the 
 
LETTER ON IMPRESSMENT 197 
 
 American secretary of state, shows something of the 
 enormous extent of these wrongful seizures. 
 
 "Instead of a few, and these in many instances equivo- 
 cal cases, I have," says he, "since the month of July past, 
 made application for the discharge from British men-of- 
 war of two hundred and seventy-one seamen, who, stating 
 themselves to be Americans, have claimed my interference. 
 Of this number, eighty-six have been ordered by the 
 admiralty to be discharged, thirty-seven more have been 
 detained as British subjects or as American volunteers, or 
 for want of proof that they are Americans, and to my 
 applications for the discharge of the remaining one 
 hundred and forty-eight I have received no answer, the 
 ships on board of which these seamen were detained 
 having, in many instances, sailed before an examination 
 was made in consequence of my application. 
 
 "It is certain that some of those who have applied to 
 me are not American citizens, but the exceptions are, in 
 my opinion, few, and the evidence, exclusive of certificates, 
 has been such as, in most cases, to satisfy me that the 
 applicants were "real Americans, who have been forced 
 into the British service, and who, with singular constancy, 
 have generally persevered in refusing pay or bounty, 
 though in some instances they have been in service more 
 than two years." 
 
 But the injuries of impressment are by no means con- 
 fined to its immediate subjects, or the individuals on 
 whom it is practiced. Vessels suffer from the weakening 
 of their crews, and voyages are often delayed, and not 
 unfrequently broken up, by subtraction from the number 
 of necessary hands by impressment. And what is of still 
 greater and more general moment, the fear of impressment 
 has been found to create great difficulty in obtaining sailors 
 for the American merchant service in times of European 
 war. Seafaring men, otherwise inclined to enter into that 
 service, are, as experience has shown, deterred by the fear 
 of finding themselves ere long in compulsory military 
 service in British ships of war. Many instances have 
 occurred, fully established in proof, in which raw seamen, 
 natives of the United States, fresh from the fields of agri- 
 
198 ARGUMENT 
 
 culture, entering for the first time on shipboard, have been 
 impressed before they made the land, placed on the decks 
 of British men-of-war, and compelled to serve for years 
 before they could obtain their release, or revisit their 
 country and their homes. Such instances become known, 
 and their effect in discouraging young men from engaging 
 in the merchant service of their country can neither be 
 doubted nor wondered at. More than all; my lord, the 
 practice of impressment, whenever it has existed, has pro- 
 duced, not conciliation and good feeling, but resentment, 
 exasperation, and animosity between the two great com- 
 mercial countries of the world. 
 
 In the calm and quiet which have succeeded the late 
 war, a condition so favorable for dispassionate considera- 
 tion, England herself has evidently seen the harshness of 
 impressment, even when exercised on seamen in her own 
 merchant service, and she has adopted measures calcu- 
 lated, if not to renounce the power or to abolish the 
 practice, yet at least to supersede its necessity by other 
 means of manning the royal navy more compatible with 
 justice and the rights of individuals, and far more con- 
 formable to the spirit and sentiments of the age. 
 
 Under these circumstances, the government of the 
 United States has used the occasion of your lordship's 
 pacific mission to review this whole subject, and to bring 
 it to your notice, and that of your government. It has 
 reflected on the past, pondered the condition of the pres- 
 ent, and endeavored to anticipate so far as might be in its 
 power, the probable future ; and I am now to communicate 
 to your lordship the result of these deliberations. 
 
 The American government, then, is prepared to say that 
 the practice of impressing seamen from American vessels 
 cannot hereafter be allowed to take place. That practice 
 is founded on principles which it does not recognize, and is 
 invariably attended by consequences so unjust, so injuri- 
 ous, and of such formidable magnitude, as cannot be 
 submitted to. 
 
 In the early disputes between the two governments on 
 this so long contested topic, the distinguished persons to 
 whose hands were first entrusted the seals of this depart- 
 
LETTER ON IMPRESSMENT 199 
 
 ment, declared, that "the simplest rule will be, that the 
 vessel being American shall be evidence that the seamen 
 on board are such. ' ' 
 
 Fifty years' experience, the utter failure of, many 
 negotiations, and a careful reconsideration now had, of 
 the whole subject, at a moment when the passions are 
 laid, and no present interest or emergency exists to bias 
 the judgment, have fully convinced this government that 
 this is not only the simplest and best, but the only rule, 
 which can be adopted and observed, consistently with the 
 rights and honor of the United States and the security of 
 their citizens. That rule announces, therefore, what will 
 hereafter be the principle maintained by their government. 
 In every regularly documented American merchant vessel 
 the crew who navigate it will find their protection in the 
 flag which is over them. 
 
 This announcement is not made, my lord, to revive 
 useless recollections of the past, nor to stir the embers 
 from fires which have been, in a great degree, smothered 
 by many years of peace. Far otherwise. Its purpose is to 
 extinguish those fires effectually, before new incidents 
 arise to fan them into flame. The communication is in the 
 spirit of peace, and for the sake of peace, and springs from 
 a deep and conscientious conviction that high interests of 
 both nations require that this so long contested and con- 
 troverted subject shall now be finally put to rest. I per- 
 suade my self that you will do justice to this frank and 
 sincere avowal of motives, and that you will communicate 
 your sentiments in this respect to your government. 
 
 This letter closes, my lord, on my part, our official 
 correspondence ; and I gladly use the occasion to offer you 
 the assurance of my high and sincere regard. 
 
 Daniel Webster. 
 
 Lord Ashburton, etc. 
 
200 ARGUMENT 
 
 Industrial Education 
 
 This paper contends that an efficient public school 
 system must include adequate provision for vocational 
 training for persons of both sexes over fourteen years 
 of age. 
 
 Two important phases of the subject under discussion 
 cannot be treated specifically in this paper, and one closely 
 related phase of education, equally important, cannot be 
 discussed at all. I shall be able to refer only incidentally 
 to industrial education for girls, and to agricultural educa- 
 tion for boys and girls; and I shall have to omit all dis- 
 cussion of commercial education. I need all the space at 
 my disposal for the discussion of the general problem of 
 industrial education, with special reference to the training 
 of recruits for our leading mechanical industries. 
 
 Heretofore we have planned the work of our public 
 schools almost entirely with reference to "culture;" we 
 have done very little to stimulate a vocational purpose, 
 and less still to provide for the realization of that purpose. 
 In other words, while the schools have laid stress on 
 culture as the end of education, they have laid almost no 
 stress on preparation for a vocation. "We may go farther, 
 and say that, not infrequently, the schools have even 
 disparaged vocational purposes in the training they give. 
 They have been afraid of "utilitarian" aims, and some- 
 times, by a curiously inadequate conception of their real 
 function, they have even measured their own usefulness 
 by the extent to which they have kept the distinctly useful 
 out of their M^ork. 
 
 By way of illustration I need only cite the difficulty we 
 have had in getting manual training for boys, and sewing 
 and cooking for girls, recognized as appropriate school 
 subjects or activities. Manual training is not vocational 
 training, to be sure, as will be shown later on ; but, what- 
 ever manual training may be, its bearing on such training 
 is clear. And it was this obvious bearing on preparation 
 for the vocation of the artisan and the engineer that 
 caused the first advocates of manual training after our 
 
INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 201 
 
 Centennial Exposition to urge its claims on the attention 
 of the schools. But so strong was the opposition to teach- 
 ing a utilitarian subject in the public schools that the 
 claims of manual training for recognition have been based, 
 until quite recently, chiefly on its "psychological" value. 
 I do not wish to belittle the psychological value of manual 
 training, but the strongest reason for giving it a place in 
 our scheme of public education is that it introduces our 
 youth to a sympathetic understanding of the constructive 
 activities which constitute so important a part of con- 
 temporary life. It has not been entirely possible to rob 
 manual training of its distinctly useful quality in public 
 elementary and secondary education, although the 
 attempt has sometimes been made. Nevertheless, in many 
 schools it has been pretty thoroughly academieized. This 
 is one reason why so few of the pupils and graduates of 
 our manual training schools become craftsmen. The 
 manual training, like other school activities, has been used 
 largely as a means of ' ' general education ' ' regarded as an 
 end in itself or as preparation for further (usually tech- 
 nical) education. As for sewing and cooking, they too have 
 been urged for their "psychological" value. But there 
 has been more speedy recognition of the weightiest reason 
 for giving them a place in the schools — namely, their 
 supreme usefulness, in view of contemporary social condi- 
 tions and of our enormous and increasing immigrant 
 population. 
 
 It is strange that we should be so reluctant to admit the 
 distinctly useful into our scheme of public elementary and 
 secondary education — that is, to admit that one of the 
 functions of the public schools is to recognize the claims of 
 elementary vocational training as entirely legitimate and 
 desirable. For the principle of vocational training at the 
 public expense has long been recognized in the field of 
 higher education. The state normal schools of the country 
 have educated teachers since 1839 ; the state universities 
 have educated teachers, lawyers, doctors, druggists, and 
 engineers, and they continue to do so ; and the state agri- 
 cultural colleges give training in agriculture, and often in 
 engineering. Massachusetts, though without a state uni- 
 
202 ARGUMENT 
 
 versity, has long aided technical education by scholarships 
 in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, 
 and the Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, and by direct 
 grants of money to those institutions. Massachusetts also 
 maintains, partly at public expense, three textile schools 
 for. the training of textile workers who desire to rise in 
 their calling. 
 
 Our elementary schools and our high schools together 
 constitute, theoretically at least, one continuous educa- 
 tional scheme through which a youth, whatever his circum- 
 stances in early life may be, may secure the elements of 
 general culture ; and through which, if his circumstances 
 permit, he may attain, on the basis of the preparation 
 secured in school, a college education, or enter at once on 
 professional study in nearly all the professional schools of 
 the country. We have thus planned our educational 
 scheme primarily in the interests of those who have a long 
 educational career ahead of them, and who need not there- 
 fore give any immediate attention to preparation for a 
 life pursuit. 
 
 Nevertheless, it is well known that the greater mass of 
 our children and youth are obliged to leave school at the 
 end of the grammar school period, or when they have 
 attained the upper limit of the compulsory school age — 
 fourteen years, in most states. That is to say, the public 
 school system in which we take a just pride, as now 
 planned, does not reach the great majority of our youth 
 during the critical period of adolescence. This is the 
 period when life aims begin to have a serious and lasting 
 importance; when the child becomes a youth; when the 
 habits formed rapidly acquire permanence; when the 
 plasticity of earlier years gives place to stability. And 
 because this is so, what happens to him then is likely to 
 permanently shape his future. Yet during this, period we 
 send the great majority of our youth into the world with- 
 out further systematic educational influence, and usually 
 without any comprehension of the serious purposes of life 
 or training in the endeavor to realize them. 
 
 The question which we have to answer is : What becomes 
 of the great majority of these young people who enter 
 
INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 203 
 
 their active life work at the early age of fourteen, with no 
 preparation save that ofiEered by the general educatioli of 
 the elementary schools ? Some inquiry was made into this 
 question in Massachusetts two years ago, and it was found 
 that there are probably no less than twenty-five thousand 
 boys and girls between the ages of fourteen and sixteen 
 who are not in school. They are at work in various kinds 
 of juvenile occupations, or they are idle. The boys become 
 elevator boys, errand boys, office boys, they drive a wagon, 
 or do other work in which they learn nothing, in which no 
 demand is made on them for the application of what they 
 learned in school ; and consequently, by the time they are 
 seventeen, eighteen, twenty or more years of age they have 
 an earning capacity but little greater than that which they 
 had when they first left school.* And a similar fate over- 
 takes the girls. Moreover, the unfortunate education of 
 shifting experience and environment during these years 
 does much to destroy both the substance and the spirit of 
 the education which they received when in school. The 
 result is that at the threshold of citizenship the great 
 majority of these young people are actually more ignorant 
 than they were when they left school. They are sophisti- 
 cated, to be sure ; but they have seldom acquired the char- 
 acteristics of substantial manhood and womanhood ; and, 
 as I have just said, economically they are but little more 
 valuable than they were when they began to work. They 
 have not become increasingly valuable "economic units." 
 And the reason, of course, is that in the unskilled pursuits 
 which they have followed it was impossible to acquire the 
 character, knowledge, and skill which would give them an 
 earning capacity proportionate to their years. 
 
 A striking illustration of what I am saying was offered 
 by the elevator boy in a Boston building, last spring. This 
 boy said, "Can't you find me a job that would pay me 
 better?" "How old are you?" he was asked. "Twenty- 
 one. " " What can you do ? " " Well, you see, I left school 
 at fifteen ; I have drifted about from one thing to another 
 since ; recently my father died, and I find it necessary to 
 earn more in order to help myself and my family. ' ' Here 
 was a youth twenty-one years of age, with no capacity to 
 
204 ARGUMENT 
 
 do anything that is worth paying more for than the sum 
 paid for the juvenile services that he had been engaged in 
 since he was fifteen years old. This case is probably typical 
 of the great majority of the twenty-five thousand young 
 people in Massachusetts to whom I have referred. And it 
 it only too probable that what is true of Massachusetts is 
 true of other states. The investigation referred to also 
 revealed the fact that a large proportion — the majority — 
 of these children would be in school between the ages of 
 fourteen and sixteen if the school afforded a training that 
 promised increased earning capacity. It is fair to con- 
 clude, therefore, that the present condition of many young 
 workers, typified by our elevator boy, is preventable. 
 
 Moreover, it is clear that the most valuable resources 
 which any state has are its young men (and young 
 women). It is clear that the greatest waste is the waste 
 of these resources. The failure to develop them to their 
 fullest capacity is an irredeemable failure. Boys are not 
 wanted in the industries until they are sixteen years of 
 age, and in some industries they are not wanted until they 
 are past seventeen. If, therefore, between the ages of 
 fourteen and seventeen these boys are allowed to drift, if 
 they go about from one occupation to another in which 
 they do not develop such capacity for mechanical pursuits 
 as they have, or if they remain in school and the academic 
 traditions prevalent there turn them away from the trades, 
 as is not uncommon, they too commonly go to swell the 
 ranks of the unskilled; and as they grow older, of the 
 dissatisfied, the stranded, and the dependent. 
 
 Although boys are not wanted in the industries until 
 they are sixteen years of age, the years from fourteen to 
 sixteen are, nevertheless, exceedingly valuable years for 
 education — an education that teaches them the significance 
 of a skilled vocation, and that helps them to explore their 
 capacities and their tastes for the vocations in which 
 skilled labor is needed. These years are, therefore, 
 extremely valuable for purposes of industrial education. 
 What the nature of that education might be I shall 
 describe later on. I shall first sketch the difficulty which 
 
INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 205 
 
 boys now find in learning a trade without special prepara- 
 tion for it. 
 
 Under the specialized condition of modern industry it is 
 usually exceedingly difficult for a man to learn his trade in 
 the shop, and sometimes impossible. The old apprentice- 
 ship system, which enabled a man to learn the whole of a 
 trade, is dead. It is well known that today the man in the 
 shop works at a part of the product with a given machine, 
 and knows little of what is done toward the completion of 
 that product by other men and other machines. He is a 
 narrow specialist, working day by day at the same kind of 
 work under precisely the same conditions, the machine 
 requiring but little exercise of thought or ingenuity. 
 Usually he knows little or nothing about the machine 
 itself. The shop has machinists who repair the machines. 
 Under such circumstances a man loses the habit of think- 
 ing, since no demand is made on him for thought. It is 
 true that all men have not "all the conveniences for 
 thinking," even if they were called upon to think, but 
 under the exigencies of the modern shop the habit of 
 thinking is rarely developed. This specialization in modern 
 industry is, however, highly profitable to the manufac- 
 turer. It is one of the reasons why goods can be produced 
 so quickly and so cheaply. It is, therefore, like other 
 modern developments, a condition which will survive. 
 
 In a shop if a man wishes to learn his trade, he has, as 
 I said a moment ago, great difficulty in attaining his end. 
 What happens is usually something like this. A youth 
 applies for work in a shop. He is put, let us say, on a 
 milling machine. He learns in the course of a few weeks 
 to run that machine. Meanwhile, of course, he spoils more 
 or less material. The machine is subject to his ignorant 
 handling and necessarily gets more or less out of repair; 
 the product which he turns out is more or less imperfect 
 in quality; and the total result is, temporarily at least, a 
 loss to the manufacturer. 
 
 If the youth is ambitious, he naturally desires to learn 
 to run the other machines of the shop ; but when he asks 
 the foreman to be transferred to another machine, he will 
 
206 ARGUMENT 
 
 be told, "You are doing well enough where you are." The 
 reason, of course, is plain. Every time he is transferred to 
 a new machine the process previously described is 
 repeated. If there are one hundred or five hundred raw 
 men in a shop, the loss to the manufacturer is considerable. 
 The shop exists for turning out products, and not for 
 teaching men how to turn out products. In the shop, 
 therefore, no one has the time and very often no one has 
 the inclination, to help a man to learn his trade. That 
 isn't what the shop is for. 
 
 What happens, then, to our ambitious young man who 
 persists in his intention to learn his trade ? He quits, and 
 applies for work at another shop, asking for work at 
 another machine, saying that he is, let us say, a lathe 
 hand. Meanwhile, he has naturally become somewhat 
 familiar with a lathe and knows something about the 
 working of it. Shortly after he begins his work as a lathe 
 hand, the foreman comes around to see how he is getting 
 along, looks at the work, and says,- "You can't do this 
 work; you can go." Naturally the man has to go to 
 another shop and there the process is repeated with the 
 possibility, however, of a longer stay. This procedure an 
 ambitious man will continue until he has made himself, by 
 repeated changes and brief periods of practice, a lathe 
 hand and can do satisfactory work. I have heard of one 
 man who repeated this process nineteen times in his 
 endeavor to learn his trade. It won 't do to talk to such a 
 man about the dignity of labor. By such a procedure a 
 man may require six or seven years to learn his trade ; and 
 even then he commonly learns only the processes of the 
 trade and not the theoretical foundations of it. The 
 mathematics, drawing, science, and the rest, applicable to 
 his particular trade, are inaccessible to him. fie has little 
 opportunity to develop "industrial intelligence" and the 
 "shop and business ethics" that grow out of insight into 
 and consequent interest in his work, and the sense of 
 responsibility born of conscious resources as a workman 
 and a man. Consequently, although he is better equipped 
 for steady work and for possible promotion to a foreman- 
 ship than the ordinary specialist, his further progress is 
 
INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 207 
 
 obstructed, if not prevented, just at the point where he 
 could become most valuable to himself and to his employer. 
 
 It must be remembered that the great mass of young 
 workmen are not ambitious and persistent enough to fol- 
 low so difficult a road in learning their trades. The result 
 is that most of them fall by the way ; they become narrow 
 workmen who can handle a single machine only, and 
 whose prospects of an upward career in their trades are 
 consequently very meagre. 
 
 Now let us follow the body of ambitious workmen whom 
 I have described as persisting against tremendous odds in 
 learning their trades so that they can be useful in any part 
 of the shop, and, if possible, rise to the grade of foreman. 
 Such men constitute an army of workers who are going 
 from one factory to another, "stealing their trades," as 
 the phrase is. These men spend too many of the most 
 valuable years of their lives in overcoming obstacles to a 
 career of usefulness — years that should represent steady 
 progress in that career. Moreover, they cannot become 
 attached to a locality, and the steadying and inspiring 
 sense of usefulness to a single employer or manufacturing 
 concern cannot be realized. 
 
 Many manufacturers have encouraged their employes to 
 seek instruction by correspondence, and the extent to 
 which our artisans avail themselves of such instruction is 
 remarkable. For example, out of seventeen hundred 
 employes in a well-known establishment, three hundred 
 were, last year, enrolled in correspondence courses. This 
 is decidedly creditable to American workmen, and it is not 
 discreditable to the correspondence schools. But the dis- 
 advantages of instruction by correspondence only are 
 great and obvious. Moreover, since a considerable number 
 of those who enroll in correspondence courses do not, for 
 various reasons, continue them, a considerable part of the 
 money paid for such courses is wasted. They do, however, 
 afford the sole available means to many persistent and 
 ambitious men, to secure the theoretical instruction on 
 which their upward career depends. Besides the corres- 
 pondence schools, the Y. M. C. A. and other philanthropies 
 offer some opportunities for industrial education to men 
 
208 ARGUMENT 
 
 already employed in the trades. Public schools for trade 
 instruction, aside from the public evening drawing schools, 
 are very rare. 
 
 It may seem odd that under such circumstances the 
 manufacturers themselves have not more frequently estab- 
 lished schools in connection with their establishments for 
 the training of apprentices. But it is clear that such 
 schools are expensive, if they are in the interests of the 
 workmen as well as of the employer. And hence only the 
 largest manufacturers can undertake such apprentice 
 schools anyway. There are a few such schools; but gen- 
 erally the manufacturer prefers to employ the man who 
 already knows one machine. He gets his foremen from 
 other shops, or from Europe ; or he may try to train the 
 foremen he needs in his own shop, usually with many dis- 
 appointing experiences. 
 
 Nothing is clearer, however, than that the means 
 hitherto employed are inadequate to meet the demand for 
 skilled labor. Manufacturers in all parts of the country 
 declare that if they could find the skilled help which they 
 need, they could double their plants and hence largely 
 increase or double their output, and that they never have 
 as many foremen as they need. On every hand the need of 
 skilled labor is deplored, and yet we have done and are 
 doing comparatively little to meet this need. 
 
 There is a specious American complacency which stands 
 in the way of the proper development of our industry and 
 commerce. This was clearly e?;emplified at the exposition 
 in St. Louis. It is well known that the Germans who 
 visited that exposition went away much impressed by the 
 magnitude of American industrial and commercial enter- 
 prises, and the enormous wealth which resulted therefrom. 
 But they told their fellows on their return to the Father- 
 land that they had nothing to' fear from the American 
 people so long as our complacency prevented us from 
 seeing that it was only the abundance of raw material and 
 the extraordinary ingenuity displayed in our industrial 
 and commercial combinations which led to our success. As 
 a nation we had yet scarcely begun to realize the import- 
 ance of quality in our output, and of the trained workman 
 
INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 209 
 
 in making the most of our resources ; and until we did, it 
 was not likely that a nation like Qermany which empha- 
 sizes such training and the quality of its output had any- 
 thing to fear from the competition of the United States.* 
 
 Such comments, by thoughtful observers, contain a 
 lesson that Americans should heed. Not long ago Mr. 
 Vanderlip of New York expressed himself, in substance, as 
 follows : The remarkable prosperity of the United States 
 is due chiefly to three causes : the great abundance of our 
 raw materials, our ingenuity in the invention of machinery, 
 and our genius for commercial combinations. Not one of 
 these three causes, however, can be looked upon as a per- 
 manent cause of success. Great inroads are being made on 
 our raw materials, and some of them are even now fairly 
 well used up. Labor saving machinery and cheap produc- 
 tion cannot be a monopoly of the United States, for this 
 machinery is obtainable the world over. American com- 
 mercial combinations are being imitated everywhere. It 
 has never yet been shown that the cause of American suc- 
 cess in foreign markets was due to the quality of the goods 
 produced. In that respect we have not yet made much 
 progress, and until we do we are, of course, at the mercy 
 of those who are able to use all the resources which we 
 possess and, in addition, to use them to better advantage." 
 So far Mr. Vanderlip. 
 
 Germany is the classical example of a nation that has 
 not neglected the development of all its resources, men 
 included. For example, in one city — Munich — there are 
 forty different kinds of industrial continuation schools — 
 schools for chimney sweeps, coachmen, hotel and restau- 
 rant waiters, jewelers, shoemakers, carpenters, machinists, 
 blacksmiths, tinsmiths, printers and bookbinders, and the 
 rest. The name continuation school — Fortbildungsschule — 
 is chosen advisedly, for every youth who graduates only 
 from an elementary school is obliged by law to continue his 
 education in some continuation school during the period 
 
 1 Monthly Consular Reports of the United States, January, 1905, page 229. 
 Referred to by Professor Harlow Stafford Person in his Industrial Education, Hough- 
 ton, Mifflin & Co., 1907. 
 
 2 "American Industrial Training as Compared with European Industrial Train- 
 ing." In the Social Education Quarterly (Boston), June, 1907. 
 
210 ARGUMENT 
 
 of his apprenticeship to his trade ; and each youth finds a 
 continuation school appropriate to his calling. Employers 
 are by law required to give their employes the time to 
 attend these schools — ^from six to twelve hours a week, 
 depending on the trade, for from three to five years. These 
 continuation schools are not evening schools ; because it is 
 well known that boys fourteen to fifteen years of age, after 
 a hard day's work in a shop or factory or on a building 
 are unable to profit by evening instruction to the extent to 
 which they could profit by the same instruction if it were 
 given in the daytime. Moreover, it is clear that forced 
 school work at the end of an arduous day is unhygienic. 
 
 In these continuation schools one of the most suggestive 
 arrangements is the close correlation of the theoretical 
 foundations of each trade with the instruction in the pro- 
 cesses of the trade. That is to saj^, the mathematics of the 
 school is the mathematics of the shop, whether it is jewelry 
 or shoemaking or carpentry. The same is true of the 
 machinist's mathematics. Similarly the drawing of the 
 school is the drawing of the shop. The problems which 
 the boy finds in the shop today are dwelt upon at length in 
 the school tomorrow. In the same way the closest possible 
 relation of the sciences, physical or biological, to the trade 
 concerned are maintained. The youth learns also the his- 
 tory of his trade, and civics, and the proper use of his 
 mother tongue in relation to his trade. 
 
 From the continuation school the youth at eighteen or 
 nineteen enters the army, where for at least two years 
 more he is under systematic educational influence. That is 
 to say, the German nation has been unwilling for more 
 than a generation, that a youth after he leaves the elemen- 
 tary school" should be without systematic educational 
 influence until he reaches the age of citizenship ; while, in 
 this country, we are just beginning to realize our respon- 
 sibilities in this respect. 
 
 The effect of the extraordinary scheme of technical 
 education of all grades, not only the elementary technical 
 education which has just been sketched, but of all higher 
 grades of technical education, on the progress of German 
 industry and commerce is well known. Before the Franco- 
 
IND USTRIAL ED UCA TION 2 1 1 
 
 Prussian war Germany was, industrially and commercially, 
 rather an unimportant nation. Immediately after the 
 Franco-Prussian war, after German unity had been accom- 
 plished, the nation devoted itself to the development of its 
 educational system and to the development of industry 
 and commerce ; and it has become, as is also well known, 
 one of the inost important manufacturing and commercial 
 nations of the world — a tremendous rival in that respect 
 of other progressive nations. While Germany's educa- 
 tional system is not the sole cause of this extraordinary 
 prosperity, it is, nevertheless, one of the most important 
 causes, and by the Germans themselves is regarded as the 
 most important. 
 
 Now while it would be undesirable and impossible to 
 transplant any German institution to this country just as 
 it exists in Germany, it is, ncA'ertheless, clear that this 
 particular German institution offers most valuable sug- 
 gestions for America. We flatter ourselves that in our 
 democratic society we provide equal opportunities for all 
 through education. That is to say, we claim to provide 
 educational opportunities that will enable a man to make 
 the most of his capacity, his industry, and his character, 
 whatever his original station in life may be. And yet we 
 have failed to provide such an opportunity for that great 
 mass of our population who must face the most serious 
 problem of life — self-support and the means of progressive 
 well-being — at an early age. 
 
 Thus far, I have endeavored to show that there is a 
 great need of industrial education. The manufacturer 
 needs skilled labor. The workman needs an opportunity 
 to develop ' ' industrial intelligence ' ' and skill, and a sense 
 of responsibility. I have also endeavored to show that 
 while we have developed with much industry and enter- 
 prise the material resources which we possess, we have 
 done little, if anything, to promote the development of the 
 most important resource we have, namely, the great 
 majority of our wage-earning men (and women). I have 
 endeavored to show also that, while the effect of this 
 neglect is to deprive the employer of the industrial 
 intelligence and skill that he needs, it also deprives the 
 
212 ARGUMENT 
 
 wage-earner of the greatest blessing which any man on 
 earth can have — the prospect of a steady job, and an 
 increasing wage based on progressive efficiency and 
 responsibility. And, therefore, that there is here an 
 educational need for which we have not yet provided an 
 educational institution. This institution is the school of 
 mechanical industries.^ And it remains to sketch in 
 briefest outline the nature of this school. Such a sketch 
 is suggested only as a basis for intelligent experimenting. 
 It is thought to be definite enough, however, to serve as a 
 possible guide in planning industrial schools, and flexible 
 enough to permit adaptation to local conditions and local 
 needs. 
 
 Each school should receive boys (and girls) fourteen 
 years of age and upwards who express their intention to 
 learn a trade. When these schools are fully established, 
 they would require four years of day instruction. The 
 first two years would include much shop instruction, 
 greater in amount and much closer to the trades than the 
 shop instruction of most of the manual training schools 
 now in existence; together with related mathematics, 
 natural science, drawing, the history of industry and 
 commerce, civics treated as concretely as possible, and 
 shop and business English. These two years would serve 
 first of all to direct the attention of boys and girls to a 
 trade, would develop in them the vocational purpose, 
 would explore their several capacities ; and should enable 
 them, with the help of their teachers, to select that trade 
 for which they are best fitted by natural taste and 
 capacity. 
 
 The last two years would include specialized instruction 
 in the trades appropriate to a given locality, and the theo- 
 retical foundations of each trade — drawing, mathemat- 
 ics, natural science, and also the history of that trade, 
 shop and business English, and civics, as before. These 
 last two years could be completed in that time by pupils 
 who are able to attend the school continuously, or in a 
 longer time by pupils who are obliged to work a part of 
 
 1 Cf. the Report of the Massachusetts Commission on Industrial Education 
 March, 1907. Public Document No. 76. 
 
INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 213 
 
 the time; or the work could be done by such pupils in 
 the evening. Some manufacturers believe that some kind 
 of part-time scheme — that is, part of the time in school 
 and part of the time in the factory — is possible for some 
 industries; whereas for other industries the further edu- 
 cation of the pupil would have to be undertaken in the 
 evening. Evening instruction for persons already em- 
 ployed in the trades would, of course, be an important 
 part of every school. 
 
 In every community that has a manual training school 
 the plan just outlined for the industrial school could be 
 easily carried out. At this point a brief digression seems 
 desirable. It seems worth while to indicate in a few 
 sentences the difference between manual training and 
 industrial training. Manual training is a means of gen- 
 eral education just as history or chemistry or language is 
 a means of general education. It has materials of its own 
 and a method of its own, and hence the result is a pecul- 
 iar kind of knowledge and power due to the nature of 
 the subject and the method that it demands. That is 
 to say, each subject of instruction is a means of general 
 education because it supplies a peculiar kind of knowl- 
 edge and develops a peculiar kind of power. Each of 
 these subjects, therefore, possesses an educational value 
 not shared by other studies. The peculiar educational 
 value of manual training is that it gives a knowledge of 
 our constructive activities and a sympathetic apprecia- 
 tion of them which cannot be gained in any other way; 
 and an incipient power to be useful in them, which simi- 
 larly cannot be gained in any other way. It is, however, 
 as now carried on, usually much too general to be com- 
 parable to industrial training. Manual training abstracts 
 the principles of all trades and teaches them. It ought 
 to make a pupil generally "handy." It is, if properly 
 carried on, an excellent preparation for industrial train- 
 ing. Industrial training goes farther. Besides teaching 
 all the processes of a given trade from the first attack 
 on the raw material to the last touches on the finished 
 product, it teaches the theoretical foundations of that 
 trade. Hence it gives the worker a technical knowledge 
 
214 ARGUMENT 
 
 of his trade, and begins the development of skill in the 
 practice of it. It must not be inferred, however, from 
 what has just been said that an industrial school can turn 
 out a journeyman. The skill of the journeyman can be 
 developed fully only in the factory. 
 
 Such schools as have been sketched shoiild be independ- 
 ent schools parallel to the existing high schools. They 
 should be independent schools, because the motive which 
 dominates them determines the value of their work in 
 every detail. It is clear from what has gone before that 
 the theoretical instruction of the general high school 
 is not adapted to specific instruction in a trade. In a gen- 
 eral high school no specific application of the instruction 
 is aimed at. In the industrial school everything has its 
 specific application. Therein lies its value and its sig- 
 nificance. While in training for a trade, or in the pursuit 
 of that trade itself, there is constant opportunity for the 
 application of all that the pupil has learned, and hence 
 the possibility of progressive growth in thinking about 
 his calling and in his command over it, not only in the 
 processes of the trade, but in all that the trade means. 
 
 Under such circumstances the workman knows not 
 merely the processes of his trade; he knows all of them 
 as he cannot learn them in the factory, but he knows the 
 principles of his trade as well. And he should be able to 
 form a just estimate of his own value to himself and to the 
 community. 
 
 Paul H. Hanus, in The Atlantic Monthly. 
 
 The Educational Value of Natural History Sciences 
 
 The subject to which I have to beg your attention dur- 
 ing the ensuing hour is "The Relation of Physiological 
 Science to other branches of knowledge. ' ' 
 
 Had circumstances permitted of the delivery, in their 
 strict logical order, of that series of discourses of which 
 the present lecture is a member, I should have preceded 
 
VALUE OF NATURAL HISTORY SCIENCES 215 
 
 my friend and colleague Mr. Henfrey, who addressed 
 you on Monday last ; but while, for the sake of that order, 
 I must beg you to suppose that this discussion of the edu- 
 cational bearings of biology in general does precede that 
 of special zoology and botany, I am rejoiced to be able to 
 take advantage of the light thus already thrown upon 
 the tendency and methods of physiological science. 
 
 Regarding physiological science then, in its widest sense 
 — as the equivalent of Biology — the science of individual 
 life — we have to consider in succession: 
 
 1. Its position and scope as a branch of knowledge. 
 
 2. Its value as a means of mental discipline. 
 
 3. Its worth as practical information. 
 And lastly, 
 
 4. At what period it may best be made a branch of edu- 
 cation. 
 
 Our conclusions on the first of these heads must depend, 
 of course, upon the nature of the subject-matter of biol- 
 ogy; and I think a few preliminary considerations will 
 place before you in a clear light the vast difference which 
 exists between the living bodies with which physiolog- 
 ical science is concerned, and the remainder of the uni- 
 verse; — between the phenomena of number and space, of 
 physical and of chemical force, on the one hand, and those 
 of life on the other. 
 
 The mathematician, the physicist, and the chemist con- 
 template things in a condition of rest ; they look upon a 
 state of equilibrium as that to which all bodies normally 
 tend. 
 
 The mathematician does not suppose that a quantity 
 will alter, or that a given point in space will change its 
 direction with regard to another point, spontaneously. 
 And it is the same with the physicist. When Newton saw 
 the apple fall, he concluded at once that the act of falling 
 was not the result of any power inherent in the apple, but 
 that it was the result of the action of something else on 
 the apple. In a similar manner, all physical force is 
 regarded as the disturbance of an equilibrium to which 
 things tended before its exertion, — to which they will tend 
 again after its cessation. 
 
216 . ARGUMENT 
 
 The chemist equally regards chemical change in a body, 
 as the effect of the action of something external to the 
 body changed. A chemical compound once formed would 
 persist forever, if no alteration took place in surrounding 
 conditions. 
 
 But to the student of life the aspect of nature is 
 reversed. Here, incessant, and, so far as we know, spon- 
 taneous change is the rule, rest the exception — ^the anom- 
 aly to be accounted for. Living things have no inertia 
 and tend to no equilibrium. 
 
 Permit me, however, to give more force and clearness 
 to these somewhat abstract considerations, by an illus- 
 tration or two. 
 
 Imagine a vessel full of water, at the ordinary temper- 
 ature, in an atmosphere saturated with vapor. The 
 quantity and the figure of that water wiU not change, so 
 far as we know, for ever. 
 
 Suppose a lump of gold be thrown into the vessel — 
 motion and disturbance of figure exactly proportional to 
 the momentum of the gold will take place. But after a 
 time the effects of this disturbance will subside — equi- 
 librium will be restored, and the water will return to its 
 passive state. 
 
 Expose the water to cold — it will solidify — and in so 
 doing its particles will arrange themselves in definite crys- 
 talline shapes. But once formed, these crystals change no 
 further. 
 
 Again, substitute for the lump of gold some substance 
 capable of entering into chemical relations with the water : 
 — say, a mass of that substance which is called "protein" 
 — the substance of flesh : — a very considerable disturbance 
 of equilibrium will take place — all sorts of chemical com- 
 positions and decompositions will occur; but in the end, 
 as before, the result will be the resumption of a condition 
 of rest. 
 
 Instead of such a mass of dead protein, however, take 
 a particle of livinff protein — one of those minute micro- 
 scopic living things which throng our pools, and are 
 known as Infusoria — such a creature, for instance, as an 
 Euglena, and place it in our vessel of water. It is a round 
 
VALUE OF NATURAL HISTORY SCIENCES 217 
 
 mass provided with a long filament, and except in this 
 peculiarity of shape, presents no appreciable physical or 
 chemical difference whereby it might be distinguished 
 from the particle of dead protein. 
 
 But the difference in the phenomena to which it will 
 give rise is immense : in the first place it will develop a 
 ^ast quantity of physical force — cleaving the water in all 
 directions, with considerable rapidity, by means of the 
 vibrations of the long filament or cilium. 
 
 Nor is the amount of chemical energy which the little 
 creature possesses less striking. It is a perfect laboratory 
 in itself, and it will act and react upon the water and 
 the matters contained therein; converting them into new 
 compounds resembling its own substance and, at the same 
 time, giving up portions of its own substance which have 
 become effete. 
 
 Furthermore, the Euglena will increase in size; but 
 this increase is by no means unlimited, as the increase 
 of a crystal might be. After it has grown to a certain 
 extent it divides, and each portion assumes the form of 
 the original and proceeds to repeat the process of growth 
 and division. 
 
 Nor is this all. For after a series of such divisions and 
 subdivisions, these minute points assume a totally new 
 form, lose their long tails — ^round themselves, and secrete 
 a sort of envelope or box, in which they remain shut up 
 for a time, eventually to resume, directly or indirectly, 
 their primitive mode of existence. 
 
 Now, so far as we know, there is no natural limit to the 
 existence of the Euglena, or of any other living germ. A 
 living species once launched into existence tends to live 
 for ever. 
 
 Consider how widely different this living particle is 
 from the dead atoms with which the physicist and chemist 
 have to do ! 
 
 The particle of' gold falls to the bottom and rests — the 
 particle of dead protein decomposes and disappears — it 
 also rests: but the living protein mass neither tends to 
 exhaustion of its forces nor to any permanency of form, 
 but is essentially distinguished as a disturber of equilib- 
 
218 ARGUMENT 
 
 rium so far as force is concerned, — as undergoing con- 
 tinual metamorphosis and change, in point of form. 
 
 Tendency to equilibrium of force, and to permanency 
 of form then, are the characters of that portion of the 
 universe which does not live — the domain of the chemist 
 and physicist. 
 
 Tendency to disturb existing equilibrium,— to take on 
 forms which succeed one another in definite cycles, is the 
 character of the living world. 
 
 What is the cause of this wonderful difference between 
 the dead particle and the living particle of matter appear- 
 ing in other respects identical? that difference to which 
 we give the name of Life? 
 
 I, for one, cannot tell you. It may be that, by and bye, 
 philosophers will discover some higher laws of which the 
 facts of life are particular cases — very possibly they will 
 find out some bond between physico-chemical phenomena 
 on the one hand, and vital phenomena on the other. At 
 present, however, we assuredly know of none; and I 
 think we shall exercise a wise humility in confessing that, 
 for us at least, this successive assumption of different 
 states — (external conditions remaining the same) — ^this 
 spontaneity of action — if I may use a term which implies 
 more than I would be answerable for — which constitutes 
 so vast and plain a practical distinction between living 
 bodies and those which do not live, is an ultimate fact; 
 indicating as such, the existence of a broad line of demar- 
 cation between the subject-matter of biological and that 
 of all other sciences. 
 
 For I would have it understood that this simple Euglena 
 is the type of all living things, so far as the distinction 
 between these and inert matter is concerned. That cycle 
 of chainges, which is constituted by perhaps not more than 
 two or three steps in the Euglena, is as clearly manifested 
 in the multitudinous stages through which the germ of 
 an oak or of a man passes. Whatever forms the living 
 being may take on, whether simple or complex, — produc- 
 tion, growth, reproduction, — are the phenomena which dis- 
 tinguish it from that which does not live. 
 
 If this be true, it is clear that the student, in passing 
 
VALVE OF NATURAL HISTORY SCIENCES 219 
 
 from the physico-chemical to the physiological sciences, 
 enters upon a totally new order of facts ; and it will next 
 be for us to consider how far these new facts involve new 
 methods, or require a modification of those with which 
 he is already acquainted. Now a great deal is said about 
 the peculiarity of the scientific method in general, and 
 of the different methods which are pursued in the different 
 sciences. The mathematics are said to have one special 
 method; physics another, biology a third, and so forth. 
 For my own part, I must confess that I do not understand 
 this phraseology. So far as I can arrive at any clear com- 
 prehension of the matter, science is not, as many would 
 seem to suppose, a modification of the black art, suited to 
 the tastes of the nineteenth century, and flourishing 
 mainly in consequence of the decay of the Inquisition. 
 
 Science is, I believe, nothing but trained and organized 
 common sense, differing from the latter only as a veteran 
 may differ from a raw recruit : and its methods differ 
 from those of common sense only so far as the guards- 
 man's cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a 
 savage wields his club. The primary power is the same 
 in each ease, and perhaps the untutored savage has the 
 more brawny arm of the two. The real advantage lies in 
 the point and polish of the swordsman's weapon; in the 
 trained eye quick to spy out the weakness of the adver- 
 sary ; in the ready hand prompt to follow it on the instant. 
 But after all, the sword exercise is only the hewing and 
 poking of the clubman developed and perfected. 
 
 So, the vast results obtained by Science are won by no 
 mystical faculties, by no mental processes, other than 
 those which are practised by every one of us, in the hum- 
 blest and meanest affairs of life. A detective policeman 
 discovers a burglar from the marks made by his shoe, by 
 a mental process identical with that by which Cuvier 
 restored the extinct animals of Montmartre from frag- 
 ments of their bones. Nor does that process of induc- 
 tion and deduction by which a lady, finding a stain of a 
 peculiar kind upon her dress, concludes that somebody 
 has upset the inkstand thereon, differ in any way, in 
 
220 ARGUMENT 
 
 kind, from that by which Adams and Leverrier discov- 
 ered a new planet. 
 
 The man <*f science, in fact, simply uses with scrupulous 
 exactness, the methods which we all, habitually and at 
 every moment, use carelessly; and the man of business 
 must as much avail himself of the scientific method — 
 must be as truly a man of science — as the veriest book- 
 worm of us all; though I have no doubt that the man of 
 business will find himself out to be a philosopher with 
 as much surprise as i\I. Jourdain exhibited when he dis- 
 covered that he had been all his life talking prose. If, 
 however, there be no real difference between the methods 
 of science and those of common life, it would seem on the 
 face of the matter highly improbable that there should 
 be any difference between the methods of the different 
 sciences; nevertheless, it is constantly taken for granted 
 that there is a very wide difference between the physio- 
 logical and other sciences in point of method. 
 
 In the first place it is said — and I take this point first, 
 because the imputation is too frequently admitted by 
 physiologists themselves — ^that biology differs from the 
 physico-chemical and mathematical sciences, in being 
 "inexact." 
 
 Now, this phrase "inexact" must refer either to the 
 methods or to the results of physiological science. 
 
 It cannot be correct to apply it to the methods ; for, as 
 I hope to show you by and bye, these are identical in all 
 sciences, and whatever is true of physiological method is 
 true of physical and mathematical method. 
 
 Is it then the results of biological science which are 
 "inexact"? I think not. If I say that respiration is per- 
 formed by the lungs; that digestion is eflfected in the 
 stomach ; that the eye is the organ of sight ; that the jaws 
 of a vertebrated animal never open sideways, but always 
 up and down; while those of an annulose animal always 
 open sideways, and never up and down — I am enumerat- 
 ing propositions which are as exact as anything in Euclid. 
 How then has this notion of the inexactness of biological 
 science come about? I believe from two causes: first 
 because, in consequence of the great complexity of the 
 
VALVE OF NATURAL HISTORY SCIENCES 221 
 
 science and the multitude of interfering conditions, we 
 are very often only enabled to predict approximately 
 what will occur under given circumstances ; and secondly, 
 because, on account of the comparative youth of the phys- 
 iological sciences, a great many of their laws are still 
 imperfectly worked out. But in an educational point of 
 view, it is most important to distinguish between the 
 essence of a science and the accidents which surround it ; 
 and essentially, the methods and results of physiology are 
 as exact as those of physics or mathematics. 
 
 It is said that the physiological method is especially 
 comparative; and this dictum also finds favor in the eyes 
 of many. I should be sorry to suggest that the specula- 
 tors on scientific classification have been misled by the 
 accident of the name of one leading branch of biology — 
 Comparative Anatomy; but I would ask whether comparison, 
 and that classification which is the result of comparison, 
 are not the essence of every science whatsoever? How 
 is it possible to discover a relation of cause and effect of 
 any kind without comparing a series of cases together in 
 which the supposed cause and effect occur singly, or com- 
 bined ? So far from comparison being in any way peculiar 
 to biological science, it is, I think, the essence of every 
 science. 
 
 A speculative philosopher again tells us that the bio- 
 logical sciences are distinguished by being sciences of 
 observation and not of experiment ! 
 
 Of all the strange assertions into which speculation 
 without practical acquaintance with a subject may lead 
 even an able man, I think this is the very strangest. 
 Physiology not an experimental science! Why, there is 
 not a function of a single organ in the body which has 
 not been determined wholly and solely by experiment? 
 How did Harvey determine the nature of the circulation, 
 except by experiment? How did Sir Charles Bell deter- 
 mine the functions of the roots of the spinal nerves, save 
 by experiment? How do we know the use of a nerve at 
 all, except by experiment? Nay, how do you know even 
 that your eye is your seeing apparatus, unless you make 
 the experiment of shutting it; or that your ear is your 
 
222 ARGUMENT 
 
 hearing apparatus, unless you close it up and thereby 
 discover that you become deaf? 
 
 It would really be much more true to say that physiol- 
 ogy is the experimental science par excellence of all sci- 
 ences; that in which there is least to be learnt by mere 
 observation, and that which affords the greatest field for 
 the exercise of those faculties which characterize the 
 experimental philosopher. I confess, if any one were to 
 ask me for a model application of the logic of experi- 
 ment, I should know no better work to put into his hands 
 than Bernard's late Researches on the Functions of the 
 Liver. 
 
 Not to give this lecture a too controversial tone, how- 
 ever, I must only advert to one more doctrine, held by a 
 thinker of our own age and country, whose opinions are 
 worthy of all respect. It is, that the biological sciences 
 differ from all others, inasmuch as in them, classification 
 takes place by type and not by definition. 
 
 It is said, in short, that a natural-history class is not 
 capable of being defined — that the class Rosacese, for 
 instance, or the class of fishes, is not accurately and abso- 
 lutely definable, inasmuch as its members will present 
 exceptions to every possible definition; and that the 
 members of the class are united together only by the 
 circumstance that they are all more like some imaginary 
 average rose or average fish, than they resemble anything 
 else. 
 
 But here, as before, I think the distinction has arisen 
 entirely from confusing a transitory imperfection with an 
 essential character. So long as our information concern- 
 ing them is imperfect, we class all objects together accord- 
 ing to resemblances which we feel, but cannot define; we 
 group them round types, in short. Thus, if you ask an 
 ordinary person what kinds of animals there are, he will 
 probably say, beasts, birds, reptiles, fishes, insects, &c. 
 Ask him to define a beast from a reptile, and he cannot 
 do it ; but he says, things like a cow or a horse are beasts, 
 and things like a frog or a lizard are reptiles. You see 
 he does class by type and not by definition. But how does 
 this classification differ from that of the scientific zoolo-. 
 
VALUE OF NATURAL HISTORY SCIENCES 223 
 
 gist? How does the meaning of the scientific class-name 
 of "Mammalia" differ from the unscientific of "Beasts"? 
 
 Why, exactly because the former depends on a defini- 
 tion, the latter on a type. The class Mammalia is scien- 
 tifically defined as "all animals which have a vertebrated 
 skeleton and suckle their young." Here is no reference 
 to type, but a definition rigorous enough for a geometri- 
 cian. And such is the character which every scientific 
 naturalist recognizes as that to which his classes must 
 aspire — knowing, as he does, that classification by type 
 is simply an acknowledgment of ignorance and a tem- 
 porary device. 
 
 So much in the way of negative argument as against 
 the reputed differences between biological and other 
 methods. No such differences, I believe, really exist. The 
 subject-matter of biological science is different from that 
 of other sciences, but the methods of all are identical; 
 and these methods are — 
 
 1. Observation of facts — including under this head that 
 artificial observation which is called experiment. 
 
 2. That process of tying up similar facts into bundles, 
 ticketed and ready for use, which is called Comparison 
 and Classification, — the results of the process, the ticketed 
 bundles, being named General propositions. 
 
 3. Deduction, which takes us from the general proposi- 
 tion to facts again — ^teaches us, if I may so say, to antici- 
 pate from the ticket what is inside the bundle. And 
 finally — 
 
 4. Verification, which is the process of ascertaining 
 whether, in point of fact, our anticipation is a correct 
 one. 
 
 Such are the methods of all science whatsoever; but 
 perhaps you will permit me to give you an illustration 
 of their employment in the science of life; and I will 
 take as a special case, the establishment of the doctrine 
 of the Circulation of the Blood. 
 
 In this case, simple observation yields us a knowledge 
 of the existence of the blood from some accidental hemor- 
 rhage, we will say: we may even grant that it informs 
 us of the localization of this blood in particular vessels, 
 
224 ARGUMENT 
 
 the heart, &c., from some accidental cut or the like. It 
 teaches also the existence of a pulse in various parts of the 
 body, and acquaints us with the structure of the heart 
 and vessels. 
 
 Here, however, simple observation stops, and we must 
 have Recourse to experiment. 
 
 You tie a vein, and you find that the blood accumulates 
 on the side of the ligature opposite the heart. You tie 
 an artery, and you find that the blood accumulates on the 
 side near the heart. Open the chest, and you see the 
 heart contracting with great force. Make openings into 
 its principal cavities, and you will find that all the blood 
 flows out, and no more pressure is exerted on either side 
 of the arterial or venous ligature. 
 
 Now all these facts, taken together, constitute the evi- 
 dence that the blood is propelled by the heart through 
 the arteries, and returns by the veins — ^that, in short, the 
 blood circulates. 
 
 Suppose our experiments and observations have been 
 made on horses, then we group and ticket them into a 
 general proposition, thus : — all horses have a circulation of 
 their blood. 
 
 Henceforth a horse is a sort of indication or label, tell- 
 ing us where we shall find a peculiar series of phenomena 
 called the circulation of the blood. 
 
 Here is our general proposition then. 
 
 How and when are we justified in making our next 
 step — a deduction from it? 
 
 Suppose our physiologist, whose experience is limited 
 to horses, meets with a zebra for the first time, — will he 
 suppose that his generalization holds good for zebras 
 also? 
 
 That depends very much on his turn of mind. But we 
 will suppose him to be a bold man. He will say, "The 
 zebra is certainly not a horse, but it is very like one, — 
 so like, that it must be the 'ticket '.or mark of a blood- 
 circulation also; and, I conclude that the zebra has a 
 circulation. ' ' 
 
 That is a deduction, a very fair deduction, but by no 
 means to be considered scientifically secure. This last 
 
VALUE OF NATURAL HISTORY SCIENCES 225 
 
 quality in fact can only be given by verification — that is, 
 by making a zebra the subject of all the experiments per- 
 formed on the horse. Of course in the present case the 
 deduction would be confirmed by this process of verifica- 
 tion, and the result would be, not merely a positive widen- 
 ing of knowledge, but a fair increase of confidence in the 
 truth of one 's generalizations in other cases. 
 
 Thus, having settled the point in the zebra and horse, 
 our philosopher would have great confidence in the exist- 
 ence of a circulation in the ass. Nay, I fancy most per- 
 sons would excuse him, if in this case he did not take the 
 trouble to go through the process of verification at all; 
 and it would not be without a parallel in the history of 
 the human mind, if our imaginary physiologist now main- 
 tained that he was acquainted with asinine circulation 
 a priori. 
 
 However, if I might impress any caution upon your 
 minds, it is the utterly conditional nature of all our knowl- 
 edge, — ^the danger of neglecting the process of verifica- 
 tion under any circumstances; and the film upon which 
 we rest, the moment our deductions carry us beyond 
 the reach of this great process of verification. There is 
 no better instance of this than is afforded by the history 
 of our knowledge of the circulation of the blood in the 
 animal kingdom until the year 1824. In every animal pos- 
 sessing a circulation at all, which had been observed up to 
 that time, the current of the blood was known to take one 
 definite and invariable direction. Now, there is a class of 
 animals called Ascidians which possess a heart and a cir- 
 culation, and up to the period of which I speak, no one 
 would have dreamt of questioning the propriety of the 
 deduction, that these creatures have a circulation in one 
 direction ; nor would any one have thought it worth while 
 to verify the point. But, in that year, M. von Hasselt hap- 
 pening to examine a transparent animal of this class, 
 found to his infinite surprise, that after the heart had 
 beat a certain number of times, it stopped, and then 
 began beating the opposite way — so as to reverse the 
 course of the current, which returned by and bye to its 
 original direction. 
 
226 ARGUMENT 
 
 I have myself timed the heart of these little animals. 
 I found it as regular as possible in its periods of reversal : 
 and I know no spectacle in the animal kingdom more 
 wonderful than that which it presents — all the more won- 
 derful that to this day it remains an unique fact, pecul- 
 iar to this class among the whole animated world. At 
 the same time I know of no more striking ease of the 
 necessity of the verification of even those deductions 
 which seem founded on the widest and safest inductions. 
 
 Such are the methods of biology — methods which are 
 obviously identical with those of all other sciences, and 
 therefore wholly incompetent to form the ground of any 
 distinction between it and them. 
 
 But I shall be asked at once, do you mean to say that 
 there is no difference between the habit of mind of a 
 mathematician and that of a naturalist ? Do you imagine 
 that Laplace might have been put into the Jardin des 
 Plantes, and Cuvier into the Observatory, with equal 
 advantage to the progress of the sciences they professed? 
 
 To which 1 would reply, that nothing could be further 
 from my thoughts. But different habits and various 
 special tendencies of two sciences do not imply different 
 methods. The mountaineer and the man of the plains 
 have very different habits of progression, and each would 
 be at a loss in the other's place; but the method of pro- 
 gression, by putting one leg before the other, is the same in 
 each case. Every step of each is a combination of a lift 
 and a push ; but the mountaineer lifts more and the low- 
 lander pushes more. And I think the case of two sciences 
 resembles this. 
 
 I do not question for a moment, that while the mathe- 
 matician is busy with deductions from general propo- 
 sitions, the biologist is more especially occupied with 
 observation, comparison, and those processes which lead 
 to general propositions. All I wish to insist upon is, that 
 this difference depends not on any fundamental distinc- 
 tion in the sciences themselves, but on the accidents of 
 their subject-matter, of their relative complexity, and con- 
 sequent relative perfection. 
 
 The mathematician deals with two properties of objects 
 
VALUE OF NATURAL HISTORY SCIENCES 227 
 
 only, number and extension, and all the inductions he 
 wants have been formed and finished ages ago. He is 
 occupied now with nothing but deduction and verification. 
 
 The biologist deals with a vast number of properties of 
 objects, and his inductions will not be completed, I fear, 
 for ages to come ; but when they are, his science will be 
 as deductive and as exact as the mathematics themselves. 
 
 Such is the relation of biology to those sciences which 
 deal with objects having fewer properties than itself. 
 But as the student in reaching biology looks back upon 
 sciences of a less complex and therefore more perfect 
 nature, so on the other hand does he look forward to 
 other more complex and less perfect branches of knowl- 
 edge. Biology deals only with living beings as isolated 
 things — ^treats only of the life of the individual : but there 
 is a higher division of science still, which considers living 
 beings as aggregates — which deals with the relation of 
 living beings one to another — the science which observes 
 men — ^whose experiments are made by nations one upon 
 another, in battle-fields — ^whose general propositions are 
 embodied in history, morality, and religion — ^whose deduc- 
 tions lead to our happiness or our misery, — and whose 
 verifications so often come too late, and serve only 
 
 To point a moral or adorn a tale — 
 
 I mean the science of Society or Sociology. 
 
 I think it is one of the grandest features of biology, 
 that it occupies this central position in human knowledge. 
 There is no side of the human mind which physiological 
 study leaves uncultivated. Connected by innumerable 
 ties with abstract science, physiology is yet in the most 
 intimate relation with humanity ; and by teaching us that 
 law and order, and a definite scheme of development, 
 regulate even the strangest and wildest manifestations of 
 individual life, she prepares the student to look for a goal 
 even amidst the erratic wanderings of mankind, and to 
 believe that history offers something more than an enter- 
 taining chaos — a journal of a toilsome tragi-comic march 
 nowhither. 
 
 The preceding considerations have, I hope, served to 
 
228 ARGUMENT 
 
 indicate the replies which befit the two first of the ques- 
 tions which I set before you at starting, viz., what is the 
 range and position of physiological science as a branch of 
 knowledge, and what is its value as a means of mental 
 discipline ? 
 
 Its subject-matter is a large moiety of the universe — its 
 position is midway between the physico-chemical and the 
 social sciences. Its value as a branch of discipline is 
 partly that which it has in common with all sciences — 
 the training and strengthening of common sense; partly 
 that which is more peculiar to itself — the great exercise 
 which it affords to the faculties of observation and com- 
 parison ; and I may add, the exactness of knowledge which 
 it requires on the part of those among its votaries who 
 desire to extend its boundaries. 
 
 If what has been said as to the position and scope of 
 biology be correct, our third question — what is the prac- 
 tical value of physiological instruction? — might, one 
 would think, be left to answer itself. 
 
 On other grounds even, were mankind deserving of the 
 title "rational," which they arrogate to themselves, there 
 can be no question that they would consider as the most 
 necessary of all branches of instruction for themselves and 
 for their children — that which professes to acquaint them 
 with the conditions of the existence they prize so highly — 
 which teaches them how to avoid disease and to cherish 
 health, in themselves and those who are dear to them. 
 
 I am addressing, I imagine, an audience of educated 
 persons ; and yet I dare venture to assert, that with the 
 exception of those of my hearers who may chance to have 
 received a medical education, there is not one who could 
 tell me what is the meaning and use of an act which he 
 performs a score of times every minute, and whose sus- 
 pension would involve his immediate death; — I mean the 
 act of breathing — or who could state in precise terms why 
 it is that a confined atmosphere is injurious to health. 
 
 The practical value of .physiological knowledge! Why 
 is it that educated men can be found to maintain that a 
 slaughter-house in the midst of a great city is rather a 
 good thing than otherwise ?— that mothers persist in 
 
VALUE OF NATURAL HISTORY SCIENCES 229 
 
 exposing the largest possible amount of surface of their 
 children to the cold, by the absurd style of dress they 
 adopt, and then marvel at the peculiar dispensation of 
 Providence, which removes their infants by bronchitis and 
 gastric fever* Why is it that quackery rides rampant 
 over the land; and that not long ago, one of the largest 
 public rooms in this great city could be filled by an 
 audience gravely listening to the reverend expositor of the 
 doctrine — that the simple physiological phenomena known 
 as spirit-rapping,table-turning, phreno-magnetism, and by 
 I know not what other absurd and inappropriate names, 
 are due to the direct and personal agency of Satan ? 
 
 AYhy is all this, except from the utter ignorance as to 
 the simplest laws of their own animal life, which prevails 
 among even the most highly educated persons in this 
 country ? 
 
 But there are other branches of biological science, 
 besides physiology proper, whose practical influence, 
 though less obvious, is not, as I believe, less certain. I 
 have heard educated men speak with an ill-disguised 
 contempt of the studies of the naturalist, and ask, not 
 without a shrug, "What is the use of knowing all about 
 these miserable animals — ^what bearing has it on human 
 life?" 
 
 I will endeavor to answer that question. I take it that 
 all will admit there is definite government of this uni- 
 verse — that its pleasures and pains are not scattered at 
 random, but are distributed in accordance with orderly 
 and fixed laws, and that it is only in accordance with all 
 we know of the rest of the world, that there should be 
 an agreement between one portion of the sensitive crea- 
 tion and another in" these matters. 
 
 Surely then it interests us to know the lot of other 
 animal creatures — however far below us, they are still the 
 sole created things which share with us the capability of 
 pleasure and the susceptibility to pain. 
 
 I cannot but think that he who finds a certain pro- 
 portion of pain and evil inseparably woven up in the life 
 of the very worms, will bear his own share with more 
 courage and submission ; and will, at any rate, view with 
 
230 ARGUMENT 
 
 suspicion those weakly amiable theories of the divine gov- 
 ernment, which would have us believe pain to be an over- 
 sight and a mistake, — to be corrected by and bye. On the 
 other hand, the predominance of happiness among 
 living things — ^their lavish beauty — the secret and wonder- 
 ful harmony which pervades them all, from the highest 
 to the lowest, are equally striking refutations of that mod- 
 ern Manichean doctrine, which exhibits the world as a 
 slave-mill, worked with many tears, for mere utilitarian 
 ends. 
 
 There is yet another way in which natural history may, 
 I am convinced, take a profound hold upon practical life, 
 — and that is, by its influence over our finer feelings, as 
 the greatest of all sources of that pleasure which is deriv- 
 able from beauty. I do not pretend that natural-history 
 knowledge, as such, can increase our sense of the beauti- 
 ful in natural objects. I do not suppose that the dead soul 
 of Peter Bell, of whom the great poet of nature says, — 
 
 A primrose by the river 's brim, 
 A yellow primrose was to him — 
 And it was nothing more, 
 
 would have been a whit roused from its apathy, by the 
 information that the primrose is a Dicotyledonous Exo- 
 gen, with a monopetalous corolla and central placenta- 
 tion. But I advocate natural-history knowledge from this 
 point of view, because it would lead us to seek the beauties 
 of natural objects, instead of trusting to chance to force 
 them on our attention. To a person uninstructed in nat- 
 ural history, his country or sea-side stroll is a walk 
 through a gallery filled with wonderful works of art, nine- 
 tenths of which have their faces turned to the wall- 
 Teach him something of natural history, and you place 
 in his hands a catalogue of those which are worth turning 
 round. Surely our innocent pleasures are not so abundant 
 in this life, that we can afford to despise this or any other 
 source of them. We should fear being banished for our 
 neglect to that limbo, where the great Florentine tells us 
 are those who during this life ' ' wept when they might be 
 joyful." 
 
VALUE OF NATURAL HISTORY SCIENCES 231 
 
 But I shall be trespassing unwarrantably on your kind- 
 ness, if I do not proceed at once to my last point — the 
 time at which physiological science should first form a 
 part of the curriculum of education. 
 
 The distinction between the teaching of the facts of 
 a science as instruction, and the teaching it systematically 
 as knowledge, has already been placed before you in a pre- 
 vious lecture : and it appears to me, that, as with other 
 sciences, the common facts of biology — the uses of parts 
 of the body — the names and habits of the living creatures 
 which surround us — may be taught with advantage to the 
 youngest child. Indeed, the avidity of children for this 
 kind of knowledge, and the comparative ease with which 
 they retain it, is something quite marvellous. I doubt 
 whether any toy would be so acceptable to young children 
 as a vivarium, of the same kind as, but of course on a 
 smaller scale than, those admirable devices in the zoo- 
 logical gardens. 
 
 On the other hand, systematic teaching in biology can- 
 not be attempted with success until the student has 
 attained to a certain knowledge of physics and chemistry : 
 for though the phenomena of life are dependent neither 
 on physical nor on chemical, but on vital forces, yet they 
 result in all sorts of physical and chemical changes, which 
 can only be judged by their own laws. 
 
 And now to sum up in a few words the conclusions to 
 which I hope you see reason to follow me. 
 
 Biology needs no apologist when she demands a place — 
 and a prominent place — in any scheme of education 
 worthy of the name. Leave out the physiological sciences 
 from your curriculum, and you launch the student into 
 the world, undisciplined in that science whose subject- 
 matter would best develop his powers of observation; 
 ignorant of facts of the deepest importance for his own 
 and others ' welfare ; blind to the richest sources of beauty 
 in God's creation; and unprovided with that belief in a 
 living law, and an order manifesting itself in and through 
 endless change and variety, which might serve to check 
 and moderate that phase of despair through which, if 
 
232 ARGUMENT 
 
 he take an earnest interest in social problems, he will 
 assuredly sooner or later pass. 
 
 Finally, one word for myself. I have not hesitated to 
 speak strongly where I have felt strongly; and I am but 
 too conscious that the indicative and imperative moods 
 have too often taken the place of the more becoming 
 subjunctive and conditional. I feel, therefore, how neces- 
 sary it is to beg you to forget the personality of him who 
 has thus ventured to address you, and to consider only 
 the truth or error in what has been said. 
 
 T. H. Huxley. 
 
 The Rights of the Trustees of Dartmouth College 
 
 (Argument in the Case of the Trustees of Dartmouth College iis- 
 Woodward, before the Supreme Court of the United States, March 
 10, 1818.) 
 
 [In order to understand certain parts of this argument, the 
 student unfamiliar with the common law in the United States 
 should know that the Revolutionary War, although it divorced the 
 political systems of England and this country, had in general no 
 effect upon the law. The great body of the statutes which were 
 passed, charters which were granted and decisions which were 
 handed down prior to the Revolution, remained in force and were 
 accorded the same respect and given the same interpretation as 
 though no conflict had occurred.] 
 
 The general question is, whether the acts of the 27th 
 of June, and of the 18th and 26th of December, 1816, are 
 valid and binding on the rights of the plaintiffs, without 
 their acceptance or assent. 
 
 The charter of 1769 created and established a corpora- 
 tion, to consist of twelve persons, and no more; to be 
 called the "Trustees of Dartmouth College." The pre- 
 amble to the charter recites, that it is granted on the 
 application and request of the Rev. Eleazer Wheelock: 
 That Doctor Wheelock, about the year 1754, established 
 a charity school, at his own expense, and on his own estate 
 and plantation: That for several years, through the 
 assistance of well-disposed persons in America granted 
 at his solicitation, he had clothed, maintained, and edu- 
 
RIGHTS OF TRUSTEES OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE 233 
 
 cated a number of native Indians, and employed them 
 afterwards as missionaries and .schoolmasters among the 
 savage tribes: That, his design promising to be useful, 
 he had constituted the Rev. Mr. Whitaker to be his attor- 
 ney, with power to solicit contributions, in England, for 
 the further extension and carrying on of his undertaking ; 
 and that he had requested the Earl of Dartmouth, Baron 
 Smith, Mr. Thornton, and other gentlemen, to receive such 
 sums as might be contributed, in England, towards sup- 
 porting his school, and to be trustees thereof for his char- 
 ity; which these persons had agreed to do: And there- 
 upon Doctor Wheelock had executed to them a deed of 
 trust, in pursuance to such agreement between him and 
 them, and, for divers good reasons, had referred it to these 
 persons to determine the place in which the school should 
 be finally established: And, to enable them to form a 
 proper decision on this subject, had laid before them the 
 several offers which had been made to him by the several 
 governments in America, in order to induce him to settle 
 and establish his school within the limits of such govern- 
 ments for their own emolument, and the increase of learn- 
 ing in their respective places, as well as for the further- 
 ance of his general original design: And inasmuch as a 
 number of the proprietors of lands in New Hampshire, 
 animated by the example of the governor himself and 
 others, and in consideration that, without any impediment 
 to its original design, the school might be enlarged and 
 improved, to promote learning among the English, and to 
 supply ministers to the people of that province, had 
 promised large tracts of land, provided the school should 
 be established in that province, the persons before men- 
 tioned, having weighed the reasons in favor of the several 
 places proposed, had given the preference to this province, 
 and these offers : That Doctor Wheelock therefore repre- 
 sented the necessity of a legal incorporation, and proposed 
 that certain gentlemen in America, whom he had already 
 named and appointed in his will to be trustees of his 
 charity after his decease, should compose the corporation. 
 Upon this recital, and in consideration of the laudable 
 original design of Doctor Wheelock, and willing that the 
 
234 ARGUMENT 
 
 best means of education be established in New Hampshire, 
 for the benefit of the province, the king granted the 
 charter, by the advice of his provincial council. 
 
 The substance of the facts thus recited is, that Doctor 
 Wheelock had founded a charity, on funds owned and pro- 
 cured by himself; that he was at that time the sole 
 dispenser and sole administrator, as well as the legal 
 owner, of these funds ; that he had made his will, devising 
 this property in trust, to continue the existence and uses 
 of the school, and appointed trustees ; that in this state of 
 things, he had been invited to fix his school permanently 
 in New Hampshire, and to extend the design of it to the 
 education of the youth of that province; that before he 
 removed his school, or accepted this invitation, which his 
 friends in England had advised him to accept, he applied 
 for a charter, to be granted, not to whomsoever the king 
 or government of the province should please, but to such 
 persons as he named and appointed, namely, the persons 
 whom he had already appointed to be the future trustees 
 of his charity by his will. 
 
 The charter, or letters patent, then proceed to create 
 such a corporation, and to appoint twelve persons to con- 
 stitute it, by the name of the "Trustees of Dartmouth 
 College ; " to have perpetual existence, as such corporation, 
 and with power to hold and dispose of lands and goods, 
 for the use of the college with all the ordinary powers of 
 corporations. They are in their discretion to apply the 
 funds and property of the college to the support of the 
 president, tutors, ministers, and other ofiScers of the col- 
 lege, and such missionaries and schoolmasters as they 
 may see fit to employ among the Indians. There are to be 
 twelve trustees forever, and no more; and they are to have 
 the right of filling vacancies occurring in their own body. 
 All proper powers of government, superintendence, and 
 visitation are vested in the trustees. They are to appoint 
 and remove all offlcers at their discretion; to fix their 
 salaries, and assign their duties; and to make all ordi- 
 nances, orders, and laws for the government of the 
 students. These letters patent are to be good and effectual, 
 in law, against the king, his heirs and successors forever, with- 
 
RIGHTS OF TRUSTEES OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE 23S 
 
 out further grant or confirmation ; and the trustees are to 
 hold all and singular these privileges, advantages, liberties, 
 and immunities to them and to their successors forever. 
 
 After the institution thus created and constituted had 
 existed, uninterruptedly and usefully, nearly fifty years, 
 the legislature of New Hampshire passed the acts in 
 question. 
 
 The first act makes the twelve trustees under the 
 charter, and nine other individuals, to be appointed by 
 the governor and council, a corporation, by a new name ; 
 and to this new corporation transfers all the property,- 
 rights, powers, liberties, and privileges of the old corporation ; 
 with further power to establish new colleges and an 
 institute, and to apply all or any part of the funds to these 
 purposes ; subject to the power and control of a board of 
 twenty-five overseers, to be appointed by the governor and 
 council. 
 
 The second act makes further provisions for executing 
 the objects of the first, and the last act authorizes the 
 defendant, the treasurer of the plaintiffs, to retain and 
 hold their property, against their will. 
 
 If these acts are valid, the old corporation is abolished, 
 and a new one created. The first act does, in fact, if it 
 can have any effect, create a new corporation, and transfer 
 to it all the property and franchises of the old. The two 
 corporations are. not the same, in anything which essen- 
 tially belongs to the existence of a corporation. They have 
 different names and different powers, rights, and duties. 
 Their organization is wholly different. The powers of the 
 corporation are not vested in the same, or similar hands. 
 In one, the trustees are twelve, and no more. In the other, 
 they are twenty-one. In one, the power is in a single 
 board. In the other, it is divided between two boards. 
 Although the act professes to include the old trustees in 
 the new corporation, yet that was without their assent, 
 and against their remonstrance; and no person can be 
 compelled to be a member of such a corporation against 
 his will. It was neither expected nor intended that they 
 should be members of the new corporation. The act itself 
 treats the old corporation as at an end, and going on the 
 
236 > ARGUMENT 
 
 ground that all its functions have ceased, it provides for 
 the first meeting and organization of the new corporation. 
 It expressly provides, also, that the new corporation shall 
 have and hold all the property of the old; a provision 
 which would be quite unnecessary upon any other ground, 
 than that the old corporation was dissolved. But if it 
 could be contended that the effect of these acts was not 
 entirely to abolish the old corporation, yet it is manifest 
 that they impair and invade the rights, property, and 
 powers of the trustees under the charter, as a corporation, 
 and the legal rights, privileges, and immunities which 
 belong to them, as individual members of the corporation. 
 
 The twelve trustees were the sole legal owners of all the 
 property acquired under the charter. By the acts, others 
 are admitted, against their will, to be joint owners. The 
 twelve individuals who are trustees were posesssed of all 
 the franchises and immunities conferred by the charter. 
 By the acts, nine other trustees and twenty-five overseers 
 are admitted, against their will, to divide these franchises 
 and immunities with them. 
 
 If, either as a corporation or as individuals, they have 
 any legal rights, this forcible intrusion of others violates 
 those rights as manifestly as an entire and complete ouster 
 and dispossession. These acts alter the whole constitution 
 of the corporation. They affect the rights of the whole 
 body as a corporation, and the rights of the individuals 
 who compose it. They revoke corporate powers and fran- 
 chises. They alienate and transfer the property of the 
 college to others. By the charter, the trustees had a right 
 to fill vacancies in their own number. This is now taken 
 away. They were to consist of twelve, and, by express 
 provision, of no more. This is altered. They and their 
 successors, appointed by themselves, were forever to hold 
 the property. The legislature has found successors for 
 them, before their seats are vacant. The powers and 
 privileges which the twelve were to exercise exclusively, 
 are now to be exercised by others. By one of the acts, 
 they are subjected to heavy penalties if they exercise their 
 offices, or any of those powers and privileges granted them 
 by charter, and which they had exercised for fifty years. 
 
RIGHTS OF TR USTEES OF DARTMO UTH COLLEGE 23 7 
 
 They are to be punished for not accepting the new grant, 
 and taking its benefits. This, it must be confessed, is 
 rather a summary mode of settling a question of constitu- 
 tional right. Not only are new trustees forced into the 
 corporation, but new trusts and uses are created. The 
 college is turned into a university. Power is given to 
 create new colleges, and, to authorize any diversion of the 
 funds which may be agreeable to the new boards, sufficient 
 latitude is given by the undefined power of establishing 
 an institute. To these new colleges, and this institute, the 
 funds contributed by the founder. Doctor Wheelock, and 
 by the original donors, the Earl of Dartmouth and others, 
 are to be applied, in plain and manifest disregard of the 
 uses to which they were given. 
 
 It will be contended by the plaintiffs, that these acts are 
 not valid and binding on them, without their assent — 
 1. Because they are against common right, and the consti- 
 tution of New Hampshire. 2. Because they are repugnant 
 to the Constitution of the United States. 
 
 I am aware of the limits which bound the jurisdiction 
 of the court in this case, and that on this record nothing 
 can be decided but the single question, whether these acts 
 are repugnant to the Constitution of the United States. 
 Yet it may assist in forming an opinion of their true 
 nature and character to compare them with those funda- 
 mental principles introduced into the state governments 
 for the purpose of limiting the exercise of the legislative 
 power, and which the constitution of New Hampshire 
 expresses with great fullness and accuracy. 
 
 It is not too much to assert that the legislature of New 
 Hampshire would not have been competent to pass the 
 acts in question, and to make them binding on the plain- 
 tiffs without their assent, even if there had been, in the 
 Constitution of New Hampshire or of the United States, 
 no special restriction on their power, because these acts 
 are not the exercise of a power properly legislative. Their 
 object and effect are to take away, from one, rights, 
 property, and franchises, and to grant them to another. 
 This is not the exercise of a legislative power. To justify 
 
238 ARGUMENT 
 
 the taking away of vested rights there must be a for- 
 feiture, to adjudge upon and declare which is the proper 
 province of the judiciary. Attainder and confiscation are 
 acts of sovereign power, not acts of legislation. 
 
 The legislature of New Hampshire has no more power 
 over the rights of the plaintiffs than existed somewhere, 
 in some department of government, before the revolution. 
 The British Parliament could not have annulled or 
 revoked this grant as an act of ordinary legislation. If it 
 had done it at all, it could only have been in virtue of that 
 sovereign power called omnipotent which does not belong 
 to any legislature in the United States. The legislature 
 of New Hampshire has the same power over this charter 
 which belonged to the king who granted it and no more. 
 By the law of England, the power to create corporations is 
 a part of the royal prerogative.^ By the revolution, this 
 power may be considered as having devolved on the legis- 
 lature of the state, and it has accordingly been exercised 
 by the legislature. But the king cannot abolish a corpora- 
 tion, or new-model it, or alter its powers, without its 
 assent. This is the acknowledged and well-known doctrine 
 of the common laAv. "Whatever might have been the 
 notion in former times," says Lord Mansfield, "it is most 
 certain now that the corporations of the universities are 
 lay corporations; and that the crown cannot take away 
 from them any rights that have been formerly subsisting 
 in them under old charters or prescriptive usage. "^ 
 
 Corporate franchises can only be forfeited by trial and 
 judgment.' In case of a new charter or grant to an exist- 
 ing corporation, it may accept or reject it as it pleases.* It 
 may accept such part of the grant as it chooses, and reject 
 the rest." In the very nature of things a charter cannot be 
 forced upon anybody. No one can be compelled to accept 
 a grant; and without acceptance the grant is necessarily 
 void." It cannot be pretended that the legislature, as suc- 
 
 1 1 Black, 472, 473. 2 3 Burr. 1656. 
 
 3 3 T. R. 244. King v. Pasmore. 
 
 4 King V. Vice Chancellor of Cambridge, 3 Burr. 1656, 3 T. R. 240 — Lord Kenyon. 
 
 5 Idem, 1661, and King v. Pasmore, ubi supra. 
 
 6 Ellis V. Marshall, 2 Mass. Rep. 277: 1 Kyd on Corporations. 
 
RIGHTS OF TR USTEES OF DARTMO UTH COLLEGE 239 
 
 eessor to the king in this part of his prerogative, has any 
 power to revoke, vacate, or alter this charter. If, there- 
 fore, the legislature has not this power by any specific 
 grant contained in the constitution ; nor as included in its 
 ordinary legislative powers ; nor by reason of its succes- 
 sion to the prerogatives of the crown in this particular, on 
 what ground would the authority to pass these acts rest, 
 even if there were no prohibitory clauses in the constitu- 
 tion and the bill of rights? 
 
 But there are prohibitions in the constitution and bill of 
 rights of New Hampshire, introduced for the purpose of 
 limiting the legislative power and protecting the rights 
 and property of the citizens. One prohibition is ' ' that no 
 person shall be deprived of his property, immunities, or 
 privileges, put out of the protection of the law, or deprived 
 of his life, liberty, or estate, but by judgment of his peers 
 or the law of the land. ' ' 
 
 In the opinion, however, which was given in the court 
 below, it is denied that the trustees under the charter had 
 any property, immunity, liberty, or privilege in this cor- 
 poration, within the meaning of this prohibition in the bill 
 of rights. It is said that it is a public corporation and 
 public property ; that the trustees have no greater interest 
 in it than any other individuals; that it is not private 
 property, which they can sell or transmit to their heirs, 
 and that therefore they have no interest in it ; that their 
 office is a public trust, like that of the governor or a judge, 
 and that they have no more concern in the property of the 
 college than the governor in the property of the state, or 
 than the judges in the fines which they impose on the 
 culprits at their bar; that it is nothing to them whether 
 their powers shall be extended or lessened, any more than 
 it is to their honors whether their jurisdiction shall be 
 enlarged or diminished. It is necessary, therefore, to 
 inquire into the true nature and character of the corpora- 
 tion which was created by the charter of 1769. 
 
 There are divers sorts of corporations; and it may be 
 safely admitted that the legislature has more power over 
 some than others.^ Some corporations are for government 
 
 1 1 Wooddeson, 474: 1 Black, 467. 
 
240 ARGUMENT 
 
 and political arrangement; such, for example, as 
 cities, counties, and towns in New England. These 
 may be changed and modified as public convenience may- 
 require, due regard being always had to the rights of 
 property. Of such corporations, all who live within the 
 limits are of course obliged to be .members, and to sub- 
 mit to the duties which the law imposes on them as such. 
 Other civil corporations are for the advancement of trade 
 and business, such as banks, insurance companies, and the 
 like. These are created, not by general law, but usually 
 by grant. Their constitution is special. It is such as the 
 legislature sees fit to give, and the grantees to accept. 
 
 The corporation in question is not a civil, although it is 
 a lay corporation. It is an eleemosynary corporation. It 
 is a private charity, originally founded and endowed by 
 an individual, with a charter obtained for it at his request, 
 for the better administration of his charity. "The elee- 
 mosynary sort of corporations are such as are constituted 
 for the perpetual distributions of the free alms or bounty 
 of the founder of them, to such persons as he has directed. 
 Of this are all hospitals for the maintenance of the poor, 
 sick, and impotent; and all colleges both in our univer- 
 sities and out of them. ' ' ^ Eleemosynary corporations are 
 for the management of private property, according to the 
 will of the donors. They are private corporations. A col- 
 lege is as much a private corporation as a hospital; espe- 
 cially a college founded, as this was, by private bounty. 
 A college is a charity. "The establishment of learning," 
 says Lord Hardwicke, "is a charity, and so considered 
 in the statute of Elizabeth. A devise to a college, for 
 their benefit is a laudable charity, and deserves encour- 
 agement. ' ' ^ 
 
 The legal signification of a charity is derived chiefly 
 from the statute 43 Eliz. ch. 4. "Those purposes," says 
 Sir "William Grant, "are considered charitable which that 
 statute enumerates.'" Colleges are enumerated as char- 
 ities in that statute. The government, in these cases, lends 
 its aid to perpetuate the beneficent intention of the donor, 
 by granting a charter under which his private charity 
 
 1 1 Black, 471. 2 1 Ves. 537. 3 9 Ves. Jun. 405. 
 
RIGHTS OF TRUSTEES OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE 241 
 
 shall continue to be dispensed after his death. This is 
 done either by incorporating the objects of the charity, 
 as, for instance, the scholars in a college or the poor in a 
 hospital, or by incorporating those who are to be govern- 
 ors or trustees of the charity/ In cases of the first sort, 
 the founder is, by the common law, visitor. In early 
 times it became a maxim, that he who gave the property 
 might regulate it in future. This right of visitation 
 descended from the founder to his heir as a right of prop- 
 erty, and precisely as his other property went to his heir ; 
 and in default of heirs it went to the king, as all other 
 property goes to the king for the want of heirs. The 
 right of visitation arises from the property. It grows out 
 of the endowment. The founder may, if he please, p£|,rt 
 with it at the time when he establishes the charity, and 
 may vest it in others. Therefore, if he chooses that gov- 
 ernors, trustees, or overseers should be appointed in the 
 charter, he may cause it to be done, and his power of vis- 
 itation will be transferred to them, instead of descend- 
 ing to his heirs. The persons thus assigned or appointed 
 by the founder will be visitors, with all the powers of 
 the founder, in exclusion of his heir.^ The right of vis- 
 itation, then, accrues to them, as a matter of property, by 
 the gift, transfer, or appointment of the founder. This 
 is a private right, which they can assert in all legal modes, 
 and in which they have the same protection of the law 
 as in all other rights. As visitors they may make rules, 
 ordinances, and statutes, and alter and repeal them, as 
 far as permitted so to do by the charter.* Although the 
 charter proceeds from the crown or the government, it is 
 considered as the will of the donor. It is obtained at his 
 request. He imposes it as the rule which is to prevail in 
 the dispensation of his bounty in all future times. The 
 king or government which grants the charter is not 
 thereby the founder, but he who furnishes the funds. 
 The gift of the revenues is the foundation.* The leading 
 ease on this subject is Phillips v. Bury.° This was an 
 
 1 1 Wood, 474. 2 1 Black, 471. 
 
 3 2 Term. Rep. 350-1. 4 1 Black, 480. 
 
 5 Reported in 1 Lord Raymond, 5; Comb. 265; Holt, 715; 1 Show, 360; 4 Mod. 
 106; Skinn, 447. 
 
242 ARGUMENT 
 
 ejectment brought to recover the rectory-house, etc., of 
 Exeter College in Oxford. The question was, whether the 
 plaintiff or defendant was legal rector. Exeter College 
 was founded by an individual, and incorporated by a 
 charter granted by Queen Elizabeth. The controversy 
 turned upon the power of the visitor, and in the discus- 
 sion of the cause, the nature of college charters and cor- 
 porations was very fully considered. 
 
 Lord Holt concludes his whole argument by again 
 repeating, that that college was a private corporation, and 
 that the founder had a right to appoint a visitor, arid to 
 give him such power as he saw fit.^ 
 
 These opinions received the sanction of the house of 
 lords, and they seem to be settled and undoubted law. 
 Where there is a charter, vesting proper powers in trus- 
 tees, or governors, they are visitors ; and there is no con- 
 trol in anybody else; except only that the courts of 
 equity or of law will interfere so far as to preserve the 
 revenues and prevent the perversion of the funds, and to 
 keep the visitors within their prescribed bounds. 
 
 "The foundations of colleges," says Lord Mansfield, 
 "are to be considered in two views; namely, as they are 
 corporations and as they are eleemosynary. As eleemosy- 
 nary, they are the creatures of the founder ; he may 
 delegate his power, either generally or specially; he may 
 prescribe particular modes and manners, as to the exer- 
 cise of part of it. If he makes a general visitor the per- 
 son so constituted has all incidental power; but he may 
 be restrained as to particular instances. The founder may 
 appoint a special visitor for a particular purpose, and no 
 further. The founder may make a general visitor; and 
 yet appoint an inferior particular power, to be executed 
 without going to the visitor in the first instance."^ And 
 even if the king be founder, if he grant a charter, incor- 
 porating trustees and governors, they are visitors, and the 
 
 1 1 Lord Ray, 9. 
 
 2 St. John's College, Cambridge, v. Todington, 1 Burr. 200. 
 
RIGHTS OF TRUSTEES OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE 243 
 
 king cannot visit/ A subsequent donation, or ingrafted 
 fellowship, falls under the same general visitatorial 
 power, if not otherwise specially provided.^ 
 
 In New England, and perhaps throughout the United 
 States, eleemosynary corporations have been generally 
 established in the latter mode; that is, by incorporating 
 governors, or trustees, and vesting in them the right of 
 visitation. Small variations may have been in some in- 
 stances adopted ; as in the case of Harvard College, where 
 some power of inspection is given to the overseers, but 
 not, strictly speaking, a visitatorial power, which still 
 belongs, it is apprehended, to the fellows or members of 
 the corporation. In general, there are many donors. A 
 charter is obtained, comprising them all, or some of them, 
 and such others as they choose to include, with the right 
 of appointing their successors. They are thus the visitors 
 of their own charity, and appoint others, such as they may 
 see fit, to exercise the same office in time to come. All 
 such corporations are private. The case before the court 
 is clearly that of an eleemosynary corporation. It is, in 
 the strictest legal sense, a private charity. In King v. St. 
 Catharine's Hall,^ that coUege is called a private elee- 
 mosynary lay corporation. It was endowed by a private 
 founder, and incorporated by letters patent. And in the 
 same manner was Dartmouth College founded and incor- 
 porated. Doctor Wheelock is declared by the charter to 
 be its founder. It was established by him, on funds con- 
 tributed and collected by himself. 
 
 As such founder, he had a right of visitation, which he 
 assigned to the trustees, and they received it by his con- 
 sent and appointment, and held it under the charter. He 
 appointed these trustees visitors, and in that respect to 
 take place of his heir. Little, probably, did he think at 
 that time, that the legislature would ever take away this 
 property and these privileges, and give them to others. 
 Little did he suppose that this charter secured to him and 
 his successors no legal rights. Little did the other donors 
 
 1 Attorney General v. Middleton, 2 Ves. 328. 
 
 2 Green v. Rutherforth, aW supra; St. John's College v. Todington, ubi supra. 
 
 3 4 Term. Rep. 233. 
 
244 ARGUMENT 
 
 think so. If they had, the college would have been, what 
 the university is now, a thing upon paper, existing only 
 in name. 
 
 The numerous academies in New England have been 
 established substantially in the same manner. They hold 
 their property by the same tenure, and no other. Nor 
 has Harvard College any surer title than Dartmouth Col- 
 lege. It may today have more friends; but tomorrow 
 it may have more enemies. Its legal rights are the same. 
 So also of Yale College; and, indeed, of all the others. 
 When the legislature gives to these institutions, it may 
 and does accompany its grants with such conditions as it 
 pleases. The grant of lands by the legislature of New 
 Hampshire to Dartmouth College, in 1789, was accom- 
 panied with various conditions. When donations are 
 made, by the legislature or others, to a charity . already 
 existing, without any condition, or the specification of Any 
 new use, the donation follows the nature of the charity. 
 Hence the doctrine, that all eleemosynary corporations 
 are private bodies. They are founded by private persons, 
 and on private property. The public cannot be charitable 
 in these institutions. It is not the money of the public, 
 but of private persons, which is dispensed. It may be 
 public, that is general, in its uses and advantages; and 
 the state may very laudably add contributions of its own 
 to the funds; but it is still private in the tenure of the 
 property, and in the right of administering the funds. 
 
 If the doctrine laid down by Lord Holt, and the house 
 of lords, in Phillips v. Bury, and recognized and estab- 
 lished in all the other cases, be correct, the property of 
 this college was private property; it was vested in the 
 trustees by the charter, and to be administered by them, 
 according to the will of the founder and donors, as ex- 
 pressed in the charter. They had, therefore, as they con- 
 tend, privileges, property, and immunities, within the 
 true meaning of the bill of rights. They had rights, and 
 still have them, which they can assert against the legisla- 
 ture, as well as against other wrongdoers. It makes no 
 difference, that the estate is holden for certain trusts. 
 The legal estate is still theirs. They have a right in the 
 
RIGHTS OF TR USTEES OF DARTMO UTH COLLEGE 245 
 
 property, and they have a right of visiting and superin- 
 tending the trust; and this is an object of legal protec- 
 tion, as much as any other right. The charter declares 
 that the powers conferred on the trustees are ' ' privileges, 
 advantages, liberties, and immunities"; and that they 
 shall be forever holden by them and their successors. 
 The New Hampshire bill of rights declares that no one 
 shall be deprived of his "property, privileges, or immuni- 
 ties," but by judgment of his peers, or the law of the 
 land. The argument on the other side is, that, although 
 these terms may mean something in the bill of rights, 
 they mean nothing in this charter. But they are terms of 
 legal signification, and very properly used in the charter. 
 They are equivalent with franchises. Blackstone says that 
 franchise and liberty are used as synonymous terms. And 
 after enumerating other liberties and franchises, he says : 
 "It is likewise a franchise for a number of persons to be 
 incorporated and subsist as a body politic, with a power 
 to maintain perpetual succession and do other corporate 
 acts; and each individual member of such a corporation 
 is also said to have a franchise or freedom."^ 
 
 Liberties is the term used in Magna Charta as including 
 franchises, privileges, immunities, and all the rights which 
 belong to that class. Professor Sullivan says, the term 
 signifies the "privileges that some of the subjects, whether 
 single persons or bodies corporate,, have above others by 
 the lawful grant of the king ; as the chattels of felons or 
 outlaws, and the lands and privileges of corporations." ^ 
 
 The privilege, then, of being a member of a corporation, 
 under a lawful grant, and of exercising the rights and 
 powers of such member, is such a privilege, liberty or fran- 
 chise, as has been the object of legal protection, and the 
 subject of a legal interest, from the time of Magna Charta 
 to the present moment. The plaintiffs have such an in- 
 terest in this corporation, individually, as they could 
 assert and maintain in a court of law, not as agents of the 
 public, but in their own right. Each trustee has a fran- 
 chise, as if he be disturbed in the enjoyment of it, he 
 would have redress, on appealing to the law, as promptly 
 
 1 2 Black. Com. 37. 2 Bull. 41st Lect. 
 
246 ARGUMENT 
 
 as for any other injury. If the other trustees should con- 
 spire against any one of them to prevent his equal right 
 and voice in the appointment of a president or professor, 
 or in the passing of any statute or ordinance of the col- 
 lege, he would be entitled to his action, for depriving him 
 of his franchise. It makes no difference, that this prop- 
 erty is to be holden and administered, and these fran- 
 chises exercised, for the purpose of diffusing learning. 
 No principle and no case establishes any such distinction. 
 The public may be benefited by the use of this property. 
 But this does not change the nature of the property, or 
 the rights of the owners. The object of the charter may 
 be public good; so it is in all other corporations; and 
 this would as well justify the resumption or violation of 
 the grant in any other case as in this. In the case of an 
 advowson, the use is public, and the right cannot be 
 turned to any private benefit or emolument. It is never- 
 theless a legal private right, and the property of the owner, 
 as emphatically as his freehold. The rights and privileges 
 of trustees, visitors, or governors of incorporated colleges, 
 stand on the same foundation. They are so considered, 
 both by Lord Holt and Lord Hardwicke.^ 
 
 To contend that the rights of the plaintiffs may be taken 
 away, because they derive from them no pecuniary benefit 
 or private emolument, or because they cannot be trans- 
 mitted to their heirs, or would not be assets to pay their 
 debts, is taking an extremely narrow view of the subject. 
 According to this notion, the ease would be different, if, 
 in the charter, they had stipulated for a commission on 
 the disbursement of the funds ; and they have ceased to 
 have any interest in the property, because they have un- 
 dertaken to administer it gratuitously. 
 
 It cannot be necessary to say much in refutation of the 
 idea, that there cannot be a legal interest, or ownership, 
 in anything which does not yield a pecuniary profit ; as if 
 the law regarded no rights but the rights of money, and 
 of visible, tangible property. Of what nature are all 
 rights of suffrage? No elector has a particular personal 
 interest ; but each has a legal right, to be exercised at his 
 
 1 Phillips v. Bury. — Green v. Rutherforth, mW safra. Vide also 2 Black. '21. 
 
RIGHTS OF TRUSTEES OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE 247 
 
 own discretion, and it cannot be taken away from him. 
 The exercise of this right directly and very materially 
 affects the public ; much more so than the exercise of the 
 privileges of a trustee of this college. Consequences of 
 the utmost magnitude may sometimes depend on the exer- 
 cise of the right of suffrage by one or a few electors. 
 Nobody was ever yet heard to contend, however, that on 
 that account the public might take away the right, or 
 impair it. This notion appears to be borrowed from no 
 better source than the repudiated doctrine of the three 
 judges in the Aylesbury case.^ That was an action against 
 a returning officer for refusing the plaintiff's vote, in the 
 election of a member of parliament. Three of the judges 
 of the king's bench held, that the action could not be 
 maintained because, among other objections, "it was not 
 any matter of profit, either in presenti, or in futuro." It 
 would not enrich the plaintiff in presenti, nor would it in 
 futuro go to his heirs, or answer to pay his debts. But 
 Lord Holt and the house of lords were of another 
 opinion. The judgment of the three judges was reversed, 
 and the doctrine they held, having been exploded for a 
 century, seems now for the first time to be revived. 
 
 Individuals have a right to use their own property for 
 purposes of benevolence, either towards the public, or 
 towards other individuals. They have a right to exercise 
 this benevolence in such lawful manner as they may 
 choose; and when the government has induced and 
 excited it, by contracting to give perpetuity to the stipu- 
 lated manner of exercising it, to rescind this contract, and 
 seize on the property, is not law, but violence. Whether 
 the state will grant these franchises, and under what con- 
 ditions it will grant them, it decides for itself. But when 
 once granted, the constitution holds them to be sacred, till 
 forfeited for just cause. 
 
 That all property, of which the use may be beneficial 
 to the public, belongs therefore to the public, is quite a 
 new doctrine. It has no precedent, and is supported by no 
 known principle. Doctor Wheelock might have answered 
 his purposes, in this case, by executing a private 
 
 1 Ashby V. White, 2 Lord Raym. 938. 
 
248 ARGUMENT 
 
 deed of trust. He might have conveyed his property to 
 trustees, for precisely such uses as are described in this 
 charter. Indeed, it appears that he had contemplated the 
 establishing of his school in that manner, and had made 
 his wjU, and devised the property to the same persons 
 who were afterwards appointed trustees in the charter. 
 Many literary and other charitable institutions are 
 founded in that manner, and the trust is renewed, and 
 conferred on other persons, from time to time, as occasion 
 may require. In such a case, no lawyer would or could 
 say, that the legislature might divest the trustees, con- 
 stituted by deed or will, seize upon the property, and give 
 it to other persons, for other purposes. And does the 
 granting of a chapter, which is only done to perpetuate 
 the trust in a more convenient manner, make any differ- 
 ence? Does or can this change the nature of the charity, 
 and turn it into a public political corporation? Happily, 
 we are not without authority on this point. It has 
 been considered and adjudged. Lord Hardwicke says, 
 in so many words, ' ' The charter of the crown cannot make 
 a charity more or less public, but only more permanent 
 than it would otherwise be. " ^ 
 
 The granting of the corporation is but making the 
 trust perpetual, and does not alter the nature of the char- 
 ity. The very object sought in obtaining such charter, 
 and in giving property to such a corporation, is to make 
 and keep it private property and to clothe it with all the 
 security and inviolability of private property. The intent 
 is, that there shall be a legal private ownership, and that 
 the legal owners shall maintain, and protect the property, 
 for the benefit of those for whose use it was designed. 
 Who ever endowed the public? Who ever appointed a 
 legislature to administer his charity ? Or who ever heard, 
 before, that a gift to a college, or hospital, or an asylum, 
 was, in reality, nothing but a gift to the state ? 
 
 I hope enough has been said to show that the trustees 
 possessed vested liberties, privileges, and immunities, 
 
 1 2 Atk. 87, Attorney-General ». Pearce. 
 
RIGHTS OF TRUSTEES OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE 249 
 
 under this charter; and that such liberties, privileges, 
 and immunities, being once lawfully obtained and vested, 
 are as inviolable as any vested rights of property what- 
 ever. Rights to do certain acts, such, for instance, as the 
 visitation and superintendence of a college and the 
 appointment of its officers, may surely be vested rights, to 
 all legal intents, as completely as the right to possess 
 property. A late learned judge of this court has said, 
 "When I say that a right is vested in a citizen, I mean 
 that he has the power to do certain actions, or to possess 
 certain things, according to the law of the land. ' ' ^ 
 
 If such be the true nature of the plaintiffs' interests 
 under this charter, what are the articles in the New 
 Hampshire bill of rights which these acts infringe ? 
 
 They infringe the second article; which says, that the 
 citizens of the state have a right to hold and possess prop- 
 erty. The plaintiffs had a legal property in this charter ; 
 and they had acquired property under it. The acts 
 deprive them of both. They impair and take away the 
 charter; and they appropriate the property to new uses, 
 against their consent. The plaintiffs cannot now hold 
 the property acquired by themselves, and which this 
 article says they have a right to hold. 
 
 They infringe the twentieth article. By that article it 
 is declared that, in questions of property, there is a right 
 to trial. The plaintiffs are divested, without trial or 
 judgment. 
 
 They infringe the twenty-third article. It is therein 
 declared that no retrospective laws shall be passed. This 
 article bears directly on the case. These acts must be 
 deemed to be retrospective, within the settled construc- 
 tion of that term. "What a retrospective law is, has been 
 decided, on the construction of this very article, in the 
 circuit court for the first circuit. The learned judge of 
 that circuit says: "Every statute which takes away, or 
 impairs vested rights, acquired under existing laws, must 
 be deemed retrospective." ^ That all such laws are retro- 
 spective was decided also in the case of Dash v. Van 
 
 1 3 Dall. 394. 2 2 Gal. 103, Society v. Wheeler. 
 
250 ARGUMENT 
 
 Kleek/ where a most learned judge quotes this article 
 from the constitution of New Hampshire, with manifest 
 approbation, as a plain and clear expression of those fun- 
 damental and unalterable principles of justice, which must 
 lie at the foundation of every free and just system of 
 laws. Can any man deny that the plaintiffs had rights, 
 under the charter, which were legally vested, and that by 
 these acts those rights are impaired? 
 
 These acts infringe also the thirty-seventh article of 
 the constitution of New Hampshire ; which says, that the 
 powers of government shall be kept separate. By these 
 acts, the legislature assumes to exercise a judicial power. 
 It declares a forfeiture, and resumes franchises, once 
 granted, without trial or hearing. 
 
 If the constitution be not altogether waste-paper, it has 
 restrained the power of the legislature in these particu- 
 lars. If it has any meaning, it is that the legislature 
 shall pass no act directly and manifestly impairing pri- 
 vate property and private privileges. It shall not judge 
 by act. It shall not decide by act. It shall not deprive 
 by act. But it shall leave all these things to be tried 
 and adjudged by the law of the land. 
 
 The fifteenth article has been referred to before. It 
 declares that no one shall be "deprived of his property, 
 immunities, or privileges, but by the judgment of his 
 peers or the law of the land. ' ' Notwithstanding the light 
 in which the learned judges in New Hampshire viewed 
 the rights of the plaintiffs under the charter, and which 
 has been before adverted to, it is found to be admitted in 
 their opinion, that those rights are privileges within the 
 meaning of this fifteenth article of the bill of rights. 
 Having quoted that article, they say : ' ' That the right to 
 manage the affairs of this college is a privilege, within the 
 meaning of this clause of the bill of rights, is not to be 
 doubted." In my humble opinion, this surrenders the 
 point. To resist the effect of this admission, however, 
 the learned judges add: "But how a privilege can be 
 
 1 7 Johnson's Rep. 477. 
 
RIGHTS OF TRUSTEES OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE 251 
 
 protected from the operation of the law of the land by a 
 clause in the constitution, declaring that it shall not be 
 taken away but by the law of the land, is not very easily 
 understood." This answer goes on the ground that the 
 acts in question are laws of the land, within the meaning 
 of the constitution. If they be so, the argument drawn 
 from this article is ftdly answered. If they be not so, it 
 being admitted that the plaintiffs' rights are "privileges," 
 within the meaning of the article, the argument is not 
 answered, and the article is infringed by the acts. Are, 
 then, these acts of the legislature, which affect only par- 
 ticular persons and their particular privileges, laws of the 
 land? 
 
 Let this question be answered by the text of Black- 
 stone. "And first it (i. e. law) is a rule: not a transient, 
 sudden order from a superior to or concerning a partic- 
 ular person; but something permanent, uniform, and 
 universal. Therefore a particular act of the legislature 
 to confiscate the goods of Titiiis, or to attaint him of high 
 treason, does not enter into the idea of a municipal law; 
 for the operation of this act is spent upon Titius only, 
 and has no relation to the community in general; it is 
 rather a sentence than a law."^ Lord Coke is equally 
 decisive and emphatic. Citing and commenting on the 
 celebrated twenty-ninth chapter of Magna Charta, he 
 says: "No man shall be disseized, etc., unless it be by 
 the lawful judgment, that is, verdict of equals, or by the 
 law of the land, that is (to speak it once for all), by the 
 due course and process of law."^ Have the plaintiffs 
 lost their franchises by ' ' due course and process of law ? ' ' 
 On the contrary, are not these acts "particular acts of 
 the legislature, which have no relation to the community 
 in general and which are rather sentences than laws ? ' ' 
 
 By the law of the land is most clearly intended the 
 general law ; a law which hears before it condemns ; 
 which proceeds upon inquiry, and renders judgment only 
 after trial. The meaning is, that every citizen shall hold 
 his life, liberty, property, and immunities under the pro- 
 tection of the general rules which govern society. Every- 
 
 1 1 Black. Com. 44. 2 Coke. 2 In. 46. 
 
252 ARGUMENT 
 
 thing which may pass under the form of an enactment is 
 not therefore to be considered the law of the land. If 
 this were so, acts of attainder, bills of pains and penal- 
 ties, acts of confiscation, acts reversing judgments, and 
 acts directly transferring one man's estate to another, 
 legislative judgments, decrees and forfeitures in all pos- 
 sible forms would be the law of the land. 
 
 Such a strange construction would render constitutional 
 provisions of the highest importance completely inoper- 
 ative and void. It would tend directly to establish the 
 union of all powers in the legislature. There would be 
 no general permanent law for courts to administer or for 
 men to live under. The administration of justice would 
 be an empty form, an idle ceremony. Judges would sit 
 to execute legislative judgments and decrees; not to 
 declare the law or to administer the justice of the country. 
 "Is that the law of the land," said Mr. Burke, "upon 
 which, if a man go to Westminster Hall, and ask counsel 
 by what title or tenure he holds his privilege or estate 
 according to the law of the land, he should be told, that 
 the law of the land is not yet known; that no decision 
 or decree has been made in his case; that when a decree 
 shall be passed, he will then know what the law of the land 
 is? "Will this be said to be the law of the land, by any 
 lawyer who has a rag of a gown left upon his back, or a 
 wig with one tie upon his head ? ' ' 
 
 That the power of electing and appointing the officers 
 of this college is not only a right of the trustees as a cor- 
 poration, generally, and in the aggregate, but that each 
 individual trusteje has also his own individual franchise 
 in such right of election and appointment, is according 
 to the language of all the authorities. Lord Holt says: 
 "It is agreeable to reason and the rules of law, that a 
 franchise should be vested in the corporation aggregate, 
 and yet the benefit of it to redound to the particular 
 members, and to be enjoyed by them in their private 
 capacity. Where the privilege of election is used by 
 particular persons, it is a particular right, vested in every 
 particular man." ^ 
 
 1 2 Lord Ray, 952. 
 
RIGHTS OFTR VSTEES OF DA RTMO UTH COLLEGE 2 S3 
 
 If the view which has been taken of this question be at 
 all correct, this was an eleemosynary corporation, a pri- 
 vate charity. The property was private property. The 
 trustees were visitors, and the right to hold the charter, 
 administer the funds, and visit and govern the college, 
 was a franchise and privilege, solemnly granted to them. 
 The use being public in no way diminishes their legal 
 estate in the property, or their title to the franchise. 
 There is no principle, nor any case, which declares that a 
 gift to such a corporation is a gift to the public. The acts 
 in question violate property. They take away privileges, 
 immunities, and franchises. They deny to the trustees 
 the protection of the law; and they are retrospective in 
 their operation. In all which respects they are against 
 the constitution of New Hampshire. 
 
 The plaintiffs contend, in the second place, that the acts 
 in question are repugnant to the tenth section of the first 
 article of the constitution of the United States. The 
 material words of that section are : ' ' No state shall pass 
 any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing 
 the obligation of contracts." 
 
 It has already been decided in this court, that a grant 
 is a contract, within the meaning of this provision; and 
 that a grant by a state is also a contract, as much as the 
 grant of an individual. In Fletcher v. Peck,^ this court 
 says: "A contract is a compact between two or more 
 parties, and is either executory or executed. An execu- 
 tory contract is one in which a party binds himself to do, 
 or not to do, a particular thing; such was the law under 
 which the conveyance was made by the government. A 
 contract executed is one in which the object of contract 
 is performed; and this, says Blackstone, differs in noth- 
 ing from a grant. The contract between Georgia and the 
 purchasers was executed by the grant. A contract exe- 
 cuted, as well as one which is executory, contains obliga- 
 tions binding on the parties. A grant, in its own nature, 
 amounts to an extinguishment of the right of the grantor, 
 and implies a contract not to reassert that right. If, under 
 a fair construction of the constitution, grants are compre- 
 
 1 6 Cranch, 87. 
 
254 ARGUMENT 
 
 hended under the term contracts, is a grant from the state 
 excluded from the operation of the provision? Is the 
 clause to be .considered as inhibiting the state from impair- 
 ing the obligation of contracts between two individuals, 
 but as excluding from that inhibition contracts made with 
 itself ? The words themselves contain no such distinction. 
 They are general, and are applicable to contracts of every 
 description. If contracts made with the state are to be 
 exempted from their operation, the exception must arise 
 from the character of the contracting party, not from the 
 words which are employed. Whatever respect might 
 have been felt for the state sovereignties, it is not to be 
 disguised that the framers of the constitution viewed 
 with some apprehension the violent acts which might grow 
 out of the feelings of the moment; and that the people 
 of the United States, in adopting that instrument, have 
 manifested a determination to shield themselves and their 
 property from the effects of those sudden and strong pas- 
 sions to which men are exposed. The restrictions on the 
 legislative power of the states are obviously founded in 
 this sentiment ; and the constitution of the United States 
 contains what may be deemed a bill of rights for the 
 people of each state." 
 
 It has also been decided that a grant by a state before 
 the revolution is as much to be protected as a grant 
 sinee.^ But the case of Terrett v. Taylor, before cited, is 
 of all others most pertinent to the present argument. 
 Indeed, the judgment of the court in that case seems to 
 leave little to be argued or decided in this. "A private 
 corporation," say the court, "created by the legislature, 
 may lose its franchises by a misuser or a nonuser of them; 
 and they may be resumed by the government under a 
 judicial judgment upon a quo warranto to ascertain and 
 enforce the forfeiture. This is the common law of the 
 land, and is a tacit condition annexed to the creation of 
 every such corporation. Upon a change of government, 
 too, it may be admitted that such exclusive privileges 
 attached to a private corporation as are inconsistent with 
 the new government, may be abolished. In respect, also, 
 
 1 New Jersey v. Wilson, 7 Cranch, 164. 
 
RIGHTS OF TR USTEES OF DA RTMO UTH COLLEGE 2 5 5 
 
 to ^kA/«c corporations which exist only for public purposes, 
 such as counties, towns, cities, and so forth, the legisla- 
 ture may, under proper limitations, have a right to 
 change, modify, enlarge, or restrain them, securing, how- 
 ever, the property for the uses of those for whom, and at 
 whose expense it was originally purchased. But that the 
 legislature can repeal statutes creating private corpora:, 
 tions, or confirming to them property already acquired 
 under the faith of previous laws, and by such repeal can 
 vest the property of such corporations exclusively in the 
 state, or dispose of the same to such purposes as they 
 please, without the consent or default of the corporators, 
 we are not prepared to admit; and we think ourselves 
 standing upon the principles of natural justice, upon the 
 fundamental laws of every free government, upon the 
 spirit and letter of the constitution of the United States, 
 and upon the decisions of most respectable judicial tri- 
 bunals, in resisting such a doctrine." 
 
 This court, then, does not admit the doctrine that a leg- 
 islature can repeal statutes creating private corpora- 
 tions. If it cannot repeal them altogether, of course it 
 cannot repeal any part of them, or impair them, or essen- 
 tially alter them, without the consent of the corporators. 
 If, therefore, it has been shown that this college is to be 
 regarded as a private charity, this case is embraced within 
 the very terms of that decision. A grant of corporate 
 powers and privileges is as much a contract as a grant of 
 land. What proves all charters of this sort to be contracts 
 is, that they must be accepted to give them force and 
 effect. If they are not accepted, they are void. And in 
 the case of an existing corporation, if a new charter is 
 given it, it may even accept part and reject the rest. In 
 Rex V. Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge,^ Lord Mansfield 
 says : ' ' There is a vast deal of difference between a new 
 charter granted to a new corporation (who must take 
 it as it is given), and a new charter given to a corporation 
 already in being, and acting either under a former charter 
 or under prescriptive usage. The latter, a corporation 
 already existing, are not obliged to accept the new charter 
 
 1 3 Burr. 1656. 
 
256 ARGUMENT 
 
 in toto, and to receive either all or none of it; they may 
 act partly under it, and partly under their old charter 
 or prescription. The validity of these new charters must 
 turn upon the acceptance of them." In the same case 
 Mr. Justice Wilmot says: "It is the concurrence and 
 acceptance of the university that gives the force to the 
 charter of the crown." In the King v. Pasmore/ Lord 
 Kenyon observes : ' ' Some things are clear : when a cor- 
 poration exists capable of discharging its functions, the 
 crown cannot obtrude another charter upon them ; ' they 
 may either accept or reject it."^ 
 
 In all cases relative to charters, the acceptance of them 
 is uniformly alleged in the pleadings. This shows the 
 general understanding of the law, that they are grants or 
 contracts; and that parties are necessary to give them 
 force and validity. In King v. Dr. Askew,^ it is said: 
 ' ' The crown cannot oblige a man to be a corporator, with- 
 out his consent; he shall not be subject to the inconven- 
 iences of , it, without accepting it and assenting to it." 
 These terms, ' ' acceptance ' ' and ' ' assent, ' ' are the very Ian- _ 
 guage of contract. In Ellis v. Marshall,* it was expressly 
 adjudged that the naming of the defendant among 
 others, in an act of incorporation, did hot, of itself, make 
 him a corporator; and that his assent was necessary to 
 that end. The court speak of the act of incorporation as 
 a grant, and observe : ' ' That a man may refuse a grant, 
 whether from the government or an individual, seems to 
 be a principle too clear to require the support of author- 
 ities. ' ' But Justice BuUer in King v. Pasmore, furnishes, 
 if possible, a still more direct and explicit authority. 
 Speaking of a corporation for government, he says: "I 
 do not know how to reason on this point, better than in 
 the manner urged by one of the relator 's counsel, who con- 
 sidered the grant of incorporation to be a compact 
 between the crown and a certain number of the subjects, 
 the latter of whom undertake, in consideration of the 
 privileges which are bestowed, to exert themselves tor 
 the good government of the place." This language 
 
 1 3 Term. Rep. 240 2 Vide also 1 Kyd on Cor. 65. 
 
 3 4 Burr. 2200. 4 2 Mass. Rep. 269. 
 
RIGHTS OF TRUSTEES OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE 257 
 
 applies with peculiar propriety and force to the case 
 before the court. It was in consequence of the "priv- 
 ileges bestowed," that Dr. Wheelock and his associates 
 undertook to exert themselves for the instruction and edu- 
 tion of youth in this college; and it was on the same 
 consideration that the founder endowed it with his 
 property. 
 
 There are, in this case, all the essential constituent 
 parts of a contract. There is something to be contracted 
 about, there are parties, and there are plain terms in 
 which the agreement of the parties on the subject of the 
 contract is expressed. There are mutual considerations 
 and inducements. The charter recites that the founder, 
 on his part, has agreed to establish his seminary in New 
 Hampshire, and to enlarge it beyond its original design, 
 among other things, for the benefit of that province ; and 
 thereupon a charter is given to him and his associates, 
 designated by himself, promising and assuring to them, 
 under the plighted faith of the state, the right of govern- 
 ing the college and administering its concerns in the 
 manner provided in the charter. There is a complete and 
 perfect grant to them of all the power of superintendence, 
 visitation, and government. Is not this a contract? If 
 lands or money had been granted to him and his asso- 
 ciates, for the same purposes, such grant could not be 
 rescinded. And is there any difference, in legal contem- 
 plation, between a grant of corporate franchises and a 
 grant of tangible property? No such difference is recog- 
 nized in any decided case, nor does it exist in the common 
 apprehension of mankind. 
 
 It is, therefore, contended that this ease falls within 
 the true meaning of this provision of the constitution, as 
 expounded in the decisions of this court ; that the charter 
 of 1769 is a contract, a stipulation or agreement, mutual 
 in its considerations, express and formal in its terms, and 
 of a most binding and solemn nature. That the acts in 
 question impair this contract, has already been sufiSciently 
 shown. They repeal and abrogate its most essential parts. 
 
 A single observation may not be improper on the 
 
258 ARGUMENT 
 
 opinion of the court of New Hampshire, which has been 
 published. The learned judges who delivered that opin- 
 ion have viewed this question in a very different light 
 from that in which the plaintiffs have endeavored to 
 exhibit it. After some general remarks, they assume that 
 this college is a puhlie corporation; and on this basis 
 their judgment rests. Whether all colleges are not 
 regarded as private and eleemosynary corporations, by all 
 law writers, and all judicial decisions; whether this 
 college was not founded by Dr. Wheelock; whether the 
 charter was not granted at his request, the better to exe- 
 cute a trust, which he had already created ; and whether 
 Dartmouth College be not, therefore, in the strictest sense, 
 a private charity, are questions which the learned judges 
 do not appear to have discussed. 
 
 It is admitted in that opinion, that, if it be a private 
 corporation, its rights stand on the same ground as those 
 of an individual. The great question, therefore, to be 
 decided is, To which class of corporations do colleges thus 
 founded belong? And the plaintiffs have endeavored to 
 satisfy the court, that, according to the well-settled prin- 
 ciples and uniform decisions of law, they are private, 
 eleemosynary corporations. 
 
 Much has heretofore been said on the necessity of 
 admitting such a power in the legislature as has been 
 assumed in this case. Many cases of possible evil have 
 been imagined, which might otherwise be without remedy. 
 Abuses, it is contended, might arise in the management 
 of such institutions, which the ordinary courts of law 
 would be unable to correct. But this is only another 
 instance of that habit of supposing extreme cases, and 
 then of reasoning from them, which is the constant refuge 
 of those who are obliged to defend a cause, which, upon 
 its merits, is indefensible. It would be sufficient to say 
 in answer, that it is not pretended that there was here any 
 such case of necessity. But a still more satisfactory 
 answer is, that the apprehension of danger is groundless, 
 and therefore, the whole argument fails. Experience has 
 not taught us that there is danger of great evils or of 
 great inconvenience from this source. Hitherto, neither 
 
RIGHTS OF TRUSTEES OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE 259 
 
 in our own country nor elsewhere have such cases of 
 necessity occurred. The judicial establishments of the 
 state are presumed to be competent to prevent abuses and 
 violations of trust, in cases of this kind, as well as in all 
 others. If they be not, they are imperfect, and their 
 amendment would be a most proper subject for legislative 
 wisdom. Under the government and protection of the 
 general laws of the land, these institutions have always 
 been found safe, as well as useful. They go on, with the 
 progress of society, accommodating themselves easily, 
 without sudden change or violence to the alterations 
 which take place in its condition, and in the knowledge, 
 the habits, and pursuits of men. The English colleges 
 were founded in Catholic ages. Their religion was 
 reformed with the general reformation of the nation ; apd 
 they are suited perfectly well to the purpose of educating 
 the Protestant youth of modem times. Dartmouth Col- 
 lege was established under a charter granted by the 
 provincial government; but a better constitution for a 
 college, or one more adapted to the condition of things 
 under the present government, in all material respects, 
 could not now be framed. Nothing in it was found to 
 need alteration at the revolution. The wise men of that 
 day saw in it one of the best hopes of future times, and 
 commended it as it was, with parental care, to the protec- 
 tion and guardianship of the government of the state. A 
 charter of more liberal sentiments, of wiser provisions, 
 drawn with more care, or in a better spirit, could not be 
 expected at any time or from any source. The college 
 needed no change in its organization or government. That 
 which it did need was the kindness, the patronage, the 
 bounty of the legislature; not a mock elevation to the 
 character of a university, without the solid benefit of a 
 shilling's donation to sustain the character; not the 
 swelling and empty authority of establishing institutes 
 and other colleges. This unsubstantial pageantry would 
 seem to have been in derision of the scanty endowment 
 and limited means of an unobtrusive, but useful and 
 growing seminary. Least of all, was there a necessity, or 
 pretense of necessity, to infringe its legal rights, violate 
 
260 ARGUMENT 
 
 its franchises and privileges, and pour upon it these over- 
 whelming streams of litigation. 
 
 But this argument, from necessity, would equally apply 
 in all other cases. If it be well founded, it would prove, 
 that, whenever any inconvenience or evil is experienced 
 from the restrictions imposed on the legislature by the 
 constitution, these restrictions ought to be disregarded. 
 It is enough to say that the people have thought otherwise. 
 They have most wisely chosen to take the risk of occa- 
 sional inconvenience from the want of power, in order 
 that there might be a settled limit to its exercise, and a 
 permanent security against its abuse. They have imposed 
 prohibitions and restraints; and they have not rendered 
 these altogether vain and nugatory by conferring the 
 power of dispensation. If inconvenience should arise 
 which the legislature cannot remedy under the power 
 conferred upon it, it is not answerable for such inconven- 
 ience. That which it cannot do within the limits pre- 
 scribed to it, it cannot do at all. No legislature in this 
 country is able, and may the time never come when it 
 shall be able, to apply to itself the memorable expression 
 of a Roman pontiff: "Licet hoc de jure non possumus, 
 volumus tamen de plenitudine potestatis." 
 
 The ease before the court is not of ordinary importance, 
 nor of every-day occurrence. It affects not this college 
 only, but every college, and all the literary institutions of 
 the country. They have flourished hitherto, and have 
 become, in a high degree, useful to the community. They 
 have all a common principle of existence, the inviola- 
 bility of their charters. It will be a dangerous, a most 
 dangerous experiment, to hold these institutions subject 
 to the rise and fall of popular parties and the fluctua- 
 tions of political opinions. If the franchise may be at 
 any time taken away, or impaired, the property, also, may 
 be taken away, or its use perverted. Benefactors will have 
 no certainty of effecting the object of their bounty; and 
 learned men will be deterred from devoting themselves 
 to the service of such institutions, from the precarious 
 title of their offices. Colleges and halls will be deserted 
 by all better spirits, and become a theater for the conten- 
 
ADDRESS AT COOPER INSTITUTE 261 
 
 tions of politics. Party and faction will be cherished 
 in the places consecrated to piety and learning. These 
 consequences are neither remote nor possible only. They 
 are certain and immediate. 
 
 It was, for many and obvious reasons, most anxiously 
 desired that the question of the power of the legislature 
 over this charter, should have been jSnally decided in the 
 state court. An earnest hope was entertained that the 
 judges of that court might have viewed the case in a light 
 favorable to the rights of the trustees. That hope has 
 failed. It is here that those rights are now to be main- 
 tained, or they are prostrated forever. 
 
 Daniel Webster. 
 
 Address at Cooper Institute 
 (February 27, 1860.) 
 
 Mr. President and Fellow Citizens of New York: The 
 facts with which I shall deal this evening are mainly old 
 and familiar; nor is there anything new in the general 
 use I shall make of them. If there shall be any novelty, 
 it will be in the mode of presenting the facts, and the 
 inferences and observations following that presentation. 
 In his speech last autumn at Columbus, Ohio, as reported 
 in the ' ' New York Times, ' ' Senator Douglas said : 
 
 ' ' Our fathers, when they framed the government under 
 which we live, understood this question just as well, and 
 even better, than we do now." 
 
 I fully indorse this, and I adopt it as a text for this dis- 
 course. I so adopt it because it furnishes a precise and 
 an agreed starting-point for a discussion between Repub- 
 licans and that wing of the Democracy headed by Senator 
 Douglas. It simply leaves the inquiry: What was 
 the understanding those fathers had of the question 
 mentioned ? 
 
 What is the frame of government under which we live ? 
 The answer must be, "The Constitution of the United 
 
262 ARGUMENT 
 
 States." That Constitution consists of the original, 
 framed in 1787, and under which the present government 
 first went into operation, and twelve subsequently framed 
 amendments, the first ten. of which were framed in 1789. 
 
 Who were our fathers that framed the Constitution? 
 I suppose the "thirty-nine" who signed the original 
 instrument may be fairly called our fathers who framed 
 that part of the present government. It is almost exactly 
 true to say they framed it, and it is altogether true to 
 say they fairly represented the opinion and sentiment 
 of the whole nation at that time. Their names, being 
 familiar to nearly all, and accessible to quite all, need 
 not now be repeated. 
 
 I take these "thirty-nine," for the present, as being 
 ' ' our fathers who framed the government under which we 
 live." What is the question which, according to the 
 text, those fathers understood "just as well, and even 
 better, than we do now"? 
 
 It is this: Does the proper division of local from Fed- 
 eral authority, or anything in the Constitution, forbid 
 our Federal Government to control as to slavery in our 
 Federal Territories? 
 
 Upon this, Senator Douglas holds the affirmative, and 
 Republicans the negative. This affirmation and denial form 
 an issue ; and this issue — ^this question — is precisely what 
 the text declares our fathers understood "better than 
 we." Let us now inquire whether the "thirty-nine," or 
 any of them, ever acted upon this question; and if they 
 did, how they acted upon it — how they expressed that 
 better understanding. In 1784, three years before the 
 Constitution, the United States then owning the North- 
 western Territory, and no other, the Congress of the Con- 
 federation had before them the question of prohibiting 
 slavery in that Territory; and four of the "thirty-nine" 
 who afterward framed the Constitution were in that 
 Congr^ess, and voted on that question. Of these, Roger 
 Sherman, Thomas Mifflin, and Hugh Williamson voted 
 for the prohibition, thus showing that, in their under- 
 standing, no line dividing local from Federal authority, 
 nor anything else, properly forbade the Federal Govern- 
 
ADDRESS AT COOPER INSTITUTE 263 
 
 ment to control as to slavery in Federal territory. The 
 other of the four, James McHenry, voted against the pro- 
 hibition, lowing that for some cause he thought it 
 improper to vote for it. 
 
 In 1787, still before the Constitution, but while the con- 
 vention was in session framing it, and while the North- 
 western Territory still was the only Territory owned by 
 the United States, the same question of prohibiting slav- 
 ery in the Territory again came before the Congress of 
 the Confederation; and two more of the "thirty-nine" 
 who afterward signed the Constitution were in that Con- 
 gress, and voted on the question. They were William 
 Blount and William Few; and they both voted for the 
 prohibition — ^thus showing that in their understanding no 
 line dividing local from Federal authority, nor anything 
 else, properly forbade the Federal Government to control 
 as to slavery in Federal territory. This time the prohibi- 
 tion became a law, being part of what is now well known 
 as the ordinance of '87. 
 
 The question of Federal control of slavery in the Terri- 
 tories seems not to have been directly before the conven- 
 tion which framed the original Constitution; and hence 
 it is not recorded that the "thirty-nine," or any of them, 
 while engaged on that instrument, expressed any opinion 
 on that precise question. 
 
 In 1789, by the first Congress which sat under the 
 Constitution, an act was passed to enforce the ordinance 
 of '87, including the prohibition of slavery in the North- 
 western Territory. The bill for this act was reported by 
 one of the "thirty-nine" — Thomas Fitzsimraons, then a 
 member of the House of Representatives from Pennsyl- 
 vania. It went through all its stages vnthout a word of 
 opposition, and finally passed both branches without ayes 
 and nays, which is equivalent to a unanimous passage. 
 In this Congress there were sixteen of the thirty-nine 
 fathers who framed the original Constitution 
 
 This shows that, in their understanding, no line dividing 
 local from Federal authority, nor anything in the Consti- 
 tution, properly forbade Congress to prohibit slavery in 
 the Federal territory; else both their fidelity to correct 
 
264 ARGUMENT 
 
 principle, and their oath to support the Constitution, 
 would have constrained them to oppose the prohibition. 
 
 Again, George Washington, another of the "thirty- 
 nine," was then President of the United States, and as 
 such approved and signed the bill, thus completing its 
 validity as a law, and thus showing that, in his under- 
 standing, no line dividing local from Federal authority, 
 nor anything in the Constitution, forbade the Federal 
 Government to control as to slavery in Federal territory. 
 
 No great while after the adoption of the original 
 Constitution, North Carolina ceded to the Federal Govern- 
 ment the country now constituting the State of Tennes- 
 see ; and a few years later Georgia ceded that which now 
 constitutes the States of Mississippi and Alabama. In 
 both deeds of cession it was made a condition by the 
 ceding States that the Federal Government should not 
 prohibit slavery in the ceded country. Besides this, 
 slavery was then actually in the ceded country. Under 
 these circumstances, Congress, on taking charge of these 
 countries, did not absolutely prohibit slavery within 
 them. But they did interfere with it — take control of it 
 — even there, to a certain extent. In 1798 Congress 
 organized the Territory of Mississippi. In the act of 
 organization they prohibited the bringing of slaves into 
 the Territory from any place without the United States, 
 by fine, and giving freedom to slaves so brought. This 
 act passed both branches of Congress without yeas and 
 nays. In that Congress were three of the "thirty-nine" 
 who framed the original Constitution. . . . They all 
 probably voted for it. Certainly they would have placed 
 their opposition to it upon record if, in their understand- 
 ing, any line dividing local from Federal authority, or 
 anything in the Constitution, properly forbade the Federal 
 Government to control as to slavery in Federal territory. 
 
 In 1803 the Federal Government purchased the Louis- 
 iana country. Our former territorial acquisitions came 
 from certain of our own States ; but this Louisiana coun- 
 try was acquired from a foreign nation. In 1804 Congress 
 gave a territorial organization to that part of it which 
 now constitutes the State of Louisiana. New Orleans, 
 
ADDRESS AT COOPER INSTITUTE 26S 
 
 lying within that part, was an old and comparatively large 
 city. There were other considerable towns and settle- 
 ments, and slavery was extensively and thoroughly 
 intermingled with the people. Congress did not, in the 
 Territorial Act, prohibit slavery; but they did interfere 
 with it — take control of it — in a more marked and exten- 
 sive way than they did in the case of Mississippi. The 
 substance of the provision therein made in relation to 
 slaves was: 
 
 1st. That no slave should be imported into the Territory 
 from foreign parts. 
 
 2d. That no slave should be carried into it who had 
 been imported into the United States since the first day 
 of May, 1798. 
 
 3d. That no slave should be carried into it, except by 
 the owner and for his own use as a settler; the penalty 
 in all the cases being a fine upon the violator of the law, 
 and freedom to the slave. 
 
 This act was also passed without ayes or nays. In the 
 Congress which passed it there were two of the "thirty- 
 nine. ' ' They were Abraham Baldwin and Jonathan Day- 
 ton. As stated in the case of Mississippi, it is probable 
 they both voted for it. They would not have allowed it 
 to pass without recording their opposition to it if, in their 
 understanding, it violated either the line properly divid- 
 ing local from Federal authority, or any provision of the 
 Constitution. 
 
 In 1819-20 came and passed the Missouri question. 
 Many votes were taken, by yeas and nays, in both 
 branches of Congress, upon the various phases of the 
 general question. Two of the "thirty-nine" — Rufus King 
 and Charles Pinckney — were members of that Congress. 
 Mr. King steadily voted for slavery prohibition and 
 against all compromise, while Mr. Pinckney as steadily 
 voted against slavery prohibition and against all com- 
 promises. By this, Mr. King showed that, in his under- 
 standing, no line dividing local from Federal authority, 
 nor anything in the Constitution, was violated by Congress 
 prohibiting slavery in Federal territory ; while Mr. Pinck- 
 ney, by his votes, showed that, in his understanding, there 
 
266 ARGUMENT 
 
 was some sufficient reason for opposing such prohibition in 
 that case. 
 
 The cases I have mentioned are the only acts of the 
 "thirty-nine," or of any of them, upon the direct issue, 
 which I have been able to discover. 
 
 To enumerate the persons who thus acted as being 
 four in 1784, two in 1787, seventeen in 1789, three in 1798, 
 two in 1804, and two in 1819-20, there would be thirty of 
 them. But this would be counting John Langdon, Roger 
 Sherman, William Few, Rufus King, and George Read 
 each twice, and Abraham Baldwin three times. The true 
 number of those of the "thirty-nine" whom I have shown 
 to have acted upon the question which, by the text, they 
 understood better than we, is twenty-three, leaving six- 
 teen not shown to have acted upon it in any way. 
 
 Here, then, we have twenty-three out of our thirty- 
 nine fathers "who framed the government under which 
 we live," who have, upon their official responsibility 
 and their corporal oaths, acted upon the question which 
 the text affirms they "understood just as well, and even 
 better, than we do now ' ' ; and twenty-one of them — a clear 
 majority of the whole ' ' thirty-nine ' ' — so acting upon it as 
 to make them guilty of gross political impropriety and 
 wilful perjury if, in their understanding, any proper 
 division between local and Federal authority, or anything 
 in the Constitution they had themselves made, and sworn 
 to support, forbade the Federal Government to control 
 as to slavery in the Federal Territories. Thus the twenty- 
 one acted; and, as actions speak louder than words, so 
 actions under such responsibility speak still louder. 
 
 Two of the twenty-three voted against congressional 
 prohibition of slavery in the Federal Territories, in the 
 instances in which they acted upon the question. But 
 for what reasons they so voted is not known. They may 
 have done so because they thought a proper division of 
 local from Federal authority, or some provision or prin- 
 ciple of the Constitution, stood in the way ; or they may, 
 without any such question, have voted against the prohi- 
 bition on what appeared to them to be sufficient grounds 
 of expediency. No one who has sworn to support the 
 
ADDRESS A T COOPER INSTITUTE. 267 
 
 Constitution can conscientiously vote for what he under- 
 stands to be an unconstitutional measure, however expe- 
 dient he may think it; but one may and ought to vote 
 against a measure which he deems constitutional if, at the 
 same time, he deems it inexpedient. It, therefore, would 
 be unsafe to set down even the two who voted against 
 the prohibition as having done so because, in their under- 
 standing, any proper division of local from Federal 
 authority, or anything in the Constitution, forbade the 
 Federal Government to control as to slavery in Federal 
 territory. 
 
 The remaining sixteen of the "thirty-nine," so far as 
 I have discovered, have left no record of their under- 
 standing upon the direct question of Federal control of 
 Slavery in the Federal Territories. But there is much 
 reason to believe that their understanding upon that 
 question would not have appeared different from that of 
 their twenty-three compeers, had it been manifested at 
 all. 
 
 For the purpose of adhering rigidly to the text, I have 
 purposely omitted whatever understanding may have 
 been manifested by any person, however distinguished, 
 other than the thirty-nine fathers who framed the original 
 Constitution; and, for the same reason, I have also 
 omitted whatever understanding may have been mani- 
 fested by any of the "thirty-nine" even on any other 
 phase of the general question of slavery. If we should 
 look into their acts and declarations on those other phases, 
 as the foreign slave-trade, and the morality and policy of 
 slavery generally, it would appear to us that on the direct 
 question of Federal control of slavery in Federal Terri- 
 tories, the sixteen, if they had acted at all, would probably 
 have acted just as the twenty-three did. Among that 
 sixteen were several of the most noted antislavery men 
 of those times, — as Dr. Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, 
 and Gouverneur Morris, — while there was not one now 
 known to have been otherwise, unless it may be John 
 Rutledge, of South Carolina. 
 
 The sum of the whole is that of our thirty-nine fathers 
 who framed the original Constitution, twenty-one — a 
 
268 ARGUMENT 
 
 clear majority of the whole — certainly understood that 
 no proper division of local from Federal authority, nor 
 any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal Govern- 
 ment to control slavery in the Federal Territories ; while 
 all the rest had probably the same understanding. Such, 
 unquestionably, was the understanding of our fathers who 
 framed the original Constitution ; and the text affirms that 
 they understood the question "better than we." 
 
 But, so far, I have been considering the understanding 
 of the question manifested by the framers of the original 
 Constitution. In and by the original instrument, a mode 
 was provided for amending it; and as I have already 
 stated, the present frame of "the government under which 
 we live" consists of that original, and twelve amenda- 
 tory articles framed and adopted since. Those who now 
 insist that Federal control of slavery in Federal Terri- 
 tories violates the Constitution, point us to the provisions 
 which they suppose it thus violates ; and, as I understand, 
 they all fix upon provisions in these amendatory articles, 
 and not in the original instrument. The Supreme Court, 
 in the Dred Scott ease, plant themselves upon the fifth 
 amendment, which provides that no person shall be 
 deprived of "life, liberty, or property without due 
 process of law ' ' ; while Senator Douglas and his peculiar 
 adherents plant themselves upon the tenth amendment, 
 providing that "the powers not delegated to the United 
 States by the Constitution . . . are reserved to the 
 States respectively, or to the people." 
 
 Now, it so happens that these amendments were framed 
 by the first Congress which sat under the Constitution — 
 the identical Congress which passed the act, already men- 
 tioned, enforcing the prohibition of slavery in the North- 
 western Territory. Not only was it the same Congress, 
 but they were the identical, same individual men who, 
 at the same session, and at the same time within the 
 session, had under consideration, and in progress toward 
 maturity, these constitutional amendments, and this act 
 prohibiting slavery in all the territory the nation then 
 owned. The constitutional amendments were introduced 
 before, and passed after, the act enforcing the ordinance 
 
ADDRESS AT COOPER INSTITUTE 269 
 
 of '87; SO that, during the whole pendency of the act 
 to enforce the ordinance, the constitutional amendments 
 were also pending. 
 
 The seventy-six members of that Congress, including 
 sixteen of the framers of the original Constitution, as 
 before stated, were preeminently our fathers who framed 
 that part of "the government under which we live" which 
 is now claimed as forbidding the Federal Government to 
 control slavery in the Federal Territories. 
 
 Is it not a little presumptuous in any one at this day. 
 to affirm that the two things which that Congress delib- 
 erately framed, and carried to maturity at the same time, 
 are absolutely inconsistent with each other? And does 
 not such affirmation become impudently absurd when 
 coupled with the other affirmation, from the same mouth, 
 that those who did the two things alleged to be incon- 
 sistent, understood whether they really were inconsis- 
 tent better than we — ^better than he who affirms that they 
 were inconsistent? 
 
 It is surely safe to assume that the thirty-nine framers 
 of the original Constitution, and the seventy-six members 
 of the Congress which framed the amendments thereto, 
 taken together, do certainly include those who may be 
 fairly called "our fathers who framed the government 
 under which we live. ' ' And so assuming, I defy any man 
 to show that any one of them ever, in his whole life," 
 declared that, in his understanding, any proper division 
 of local from Federal authority, or any part of the Consti- 
 tution, forbade the Federal Government to control as to 
 slavery in the Federal Territories. I go a step further. 
 I defy any one to show that any man in the whole world 
 ever did, prior to the beginning of the present century 
 (and I might almost say prior to the beginning of the last 
 half of the present century), declare that, in his under- 
 standing, any proper division of local from Federal 
 authority, or any part of the Constitution forbade the 
 Federal Government to control as to slavery in the 
 Federal Territories. To those who now so declare I give 
 not only "our fathers who framed the government under 
 which we live, ' ' but with them all other living men within 
 
270 ARGUMENT 
 
 the century in which it was framed, among whom to 
 search, and they shall not be able to find the evidence of 
 a single man agreeing with them. 
 
 Now, and here, let me guard a little against being mis- 
 understood. I do not mean to say we are bound to follow 
 implicitly in whatever our fathers did. To do so, would 
 be to discard all the lights of current experience — to 
 reject all progress, all improvement. What I do say is, 
 that if we would supplant the opinions and policy of our 
 fathers in any case, we should do so on evidence so con- 
 clusive, and arguments so clear, that even their great 
 authority, fairly considered and weighed, cannot stand; 
 and most surely not in a ease whereof we ourselves declare 
 they understood the question better than we. 
 
 If £|,ny man at this day sincerely believes that the proper 
 division of local from Federal authority, or any part of 
 the Constitution, forbids the Federal Government to 
 control as to slavery in the Federal Territories, he is right 
 to say so, and to enforce his position by all truthful evi- 
 dence and fair argument he can. But he has no right to 
 mislead others who have less access to history, and less 
 leisure to study it, into the false belief that "our fathers 
 who framed the government under which we live" were 
 of the same opinion — thus substituting falsehood and 
 deception for truthful evidence and fair argument. If 
 any man at this day sincerely believes "our fathers who 
 framed the government under which we live" used and 
 applied principles, in other cases, which ought to have 
 led them to understand that a proper division of local 
 from Federal authority, or some part of the Constitution, 
 forbids the Federal Government to control as to slavery 
 in the Federal Territories, he is right to say so. But he 
 should, at the same time, have the responsibility of 
 declaring that, in his opinion, he understands their prin- 
 ciples better than they did themselves; and especially 
 should he not shirk the responsibility by asserting that 
 they understood the question just as well and even better 
 than we do now. 
 
 But enough! Let all who believe that "our fathers 
 who framed the government under which we live under- 
 
ADDRESS AT COOPER INSTITUTE 271 
 
 stood this question just as well, and even better than we 
 do now, ' ' speak as they spoke, and act as they acted upon 
 it. This is all Republicans ask, all Republicans desire, 
 in relation to slavery. As those fathers marked it, so let 
 it again be marked, as an evil not to be extended, but to 
 be tolerated and protected only because of and so far as 
 its actual presence among us makes that toleration and 
 protection a necessity. Let all the guaranties those 
 fathers gave it be not grudgingly, but fully and fairly 
 maintained. For this Republicans contend, and with 
 this, so far as I know or believe, they will be content. 
 
 And now, if they would listen — as I suppose they will 
 not, — I would address a few words to the Southern 
 people. 
 
 I would say to them: You consider yourselves a 
 reasonable and a just people; and I consider that in the 
 general qualities of reason and justice you are not inferior 
 to any other people. Still when you speak of us Republi- 
 cans, you do so only to denounce us as reptiles, or, at the 
 best, as no better than outlaws. You will grant a hearing 
 to pirates or murderers, but nothing like it to "Black 
 Republicans." In all your contentions with one another, 
 each of you deems an unconditional condemnation of 
 "Black Republicanism" as the first thing to be attended 
 to. Indeed, such condemnation of us seems to be an indis- 
 pensable prerequisite — license, so to speak — among you 
 to be admitted or permitted to speak at all. Now, can 
 you or not be prevailed upon to pause and to consider 
 whether this is quite just to us, or even to yourselves? 
 Bring forward your charges and specifications, and. then 
 be patient long enough to hear us deny or justify. 
 
 You say we are sectional. We deny it. That makes 
 an issue; and the burden of proof is upon you. You 
 produce yottr proof; and what is it? Why, that our 
 party has no existence in your section — gets no votes in 
 your section. The fact is substantially true ; but does -it 
 prove the issue? If it does, then, in case we should, 
 without change of principle, begin to get votes in your 
 section, we should thereby cease to be sectional. You 
 cannot escape this conclusion ; and yet, are you willing to 
 
272 ARGUMENT 
 
 abide by it? If you are, you will probably soon find 
 that we have ceased to be sectional, for we shall get votes 
 in your section this very year. You will then begin to 
 discover, as the truth plainly is, that your proof does not 
 touch the issue. The fact that we get no votes in your 
 section is a fact of your making, and not of ours. 
 
 And if there be fault in that fact, that fault is primarily 
 yours, and remains so until you show that we repel you 
 by some wrong principle or practice. If we do repel you 
 by any wrong principle or practice, the fault is ours ; but 
 this brings you to where you ought to have started — to a 
 discussion of the right or wrong of our principle. If our 
 principle, put in practice, would wrong your section for 
 the benefit of ours, or for any other object, then our 
 principle, and we with it, are sectional, and are justly 
 opposed and denounced as such. Meet us, then, on the 
 question of whether our principle, put in practice, would 
 wrong your section ; and so meet us as if it were possible 
 that something may be said on our side. Do you accept 
 the challenge? No! Then you 'really believe that the 
 principle which "our fathers who framed the government 
 under which we live ' ' thought so clearly right as to adopt 
 it, and indorse it again and again, upon their official 
 oaths, is in fact so clearly wrong as to demand your con- 
 demnation without a moment's consideration. 
 
 Some of you delight to flaunt in our faces the warning 
 against sectional parties given by Washington in his Fare- 
 well Address. Less than eight years before Washington 
 gave that warning he had, as President of the United 
 States, approved and signed an act of Congress enforcing 
 the prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory, 
 which act embodied the policy of the government upon 
 that subject up to and at the very moment he penned 
 that warning ; and about one year after he penned it, he 
 wrote Lafayette that he considered that prohibition a wise 
 measure, expressing in the same connection his hope 
 that we should at some time have a confederacy of free 
 States. 
 
 Bearing this in mind, and seeing that sectionalism has 
 since arisen upon this same subject, is that warning a 
 
ADDRESS AT COOPER INSTITUTE 273 
 
 weapon in your hands against us, or in our hands against 
 you? Could Washington himself speak, would he cast 
 the blame of that sectionalism upon us, who sustain his 
 policy, or upon you, who repudiate it? We respect that 
 warning of Washington, and we commend it to you, 
 together with his example pointing to the right application 
 of it. 
 
 But you say you are conservative, — eminently conserva- 
 tive, — ^while we are revolutionary, destructive, or some- 
 thing of the sort. 
 
 What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old 
 and tried, against the new and untried? We stick to, 
 contend for, the identical old policy on the point in con- 
 troversy which was adopted by "our fathers who framed 
 the government under which we live ' ' ; while you with one 
 accord reject, and scout, and spit upon that old policy, and 
 insist upon substituting something new. 
 
 True, you disagree among yourselves as to what that 
 substitute shall be. You are divided on new propositions 
 and plans, but you are unanimous in rejecting and 
 denouncing the old policy of the fathers. Some of you 
 are for reviving the foreign slave-trade ; some for a Con- 
 gressional slave-code for the Territories; some for Con- 
 gress forbidding the Territories to prohibit slavery within 
 their limits; some for maintaining slavery in the Terri- 
 tories through the judiciary; some for the "gur-reat 
 pur-rinciple " that "if one man would enslave another, no 
 third man should object," fantastically called "popu- 
 lar sovereignty"; but never a man among you is in favor 
 of Federal prohibition of slavery in Federal Territories, 
 according to the practice of ' ' our fathers who framed the 
 government under which we live." Not one of all your 
 various plans can show a precedent or an advocate in the 
 century within which our government originated. 
 
 Consider, then, whether your claim for conservatism 
 for yourselves, and your charge of destructiveness against 
 us, are based on the most clear and stable foundations. 
 
 Again, you say we have made the slavery question 
 more prominent than it formerly was. We deny it. We 
 admit that it is more prominent, but we deny that we 
 
274 ARGUMENT 
 
 made it so. It was not we, but you, who discarded the 
 old policy of the fathers. We resisted, and still resist, 
 your innovation; and thence comes the greater promi- 
 nence of the question. Would you have that question 
 reduced to its former proportions? Go back to that old 
 policy. What has been will be again, under the same 
 conditions. If you would have the peace of the old 
 times, readopt the precepts and policy of the old times. 
 
 You charge that we stir up insurrections among your 
 slaves. We deny it; and what is your proof? Harper's 
 Ferry! John Brown! John Brown was no Republican; 
 and you have failed to implicate a single Republican in his 
 Harper's Ferry enterprise. If any member of our party is 
 guilty in that matter, you know it, or you do not know it. 
 If you do know it, you are inexcusable for not designating 
 the man and proving the fact. If you do not know it, you 
 are inexcusable for asserting it, and especially for persist- 
 ing in the assertion after you have tried and failed to 
 make the proof. You need not be told that persisting in 
 a charge which one does not know to be true is simply 
 malicious slander. 
 
 Some of you admit that no Republican designedly aided 
 or encouraged the Harper's Ferry affair, but still insist 
 that our doctrines and declarations necessarily lead to 
 such results. We do not believe it. We know we hold no 
 doctrine, and make no declaration, which were not held to 
 and made by "our fathers who framed the government 
 under which we live." You never dealt fairly by us in 
 relation to this affair. When it occurred, some important 
 State elections were near at hand, and you were in evident 
 glee with the belief that, by charging the blame upon us, you 
 could get an advantage of us in those elections. The elec- 
 tions came, and your expectations were not quite fulfilled. 
 Every Republican man knew that, as to himself at least, 
 your charge was a slander, and he was not much inclined 
 by it to cast his vote in your favor. Republican doctrines 
 and declarations are accompanied with a continual protest 
 against any interference whatever with your slaves, or 
 with you about your slaves. Surely this does not encour- 
 age them to revolt. True, we do, in common with "our 
 
ADDRESS AT COOPER INSTITUTE 275 
 
 fathers who framed the government under which we live," 
 declare our belief that slavery is wrong; but the slaves 
 do not hear us declare even this. For anything we say or 
 do, the slaves would scarcely know there is a Republican 
 party. I believe they would not, in fact, generally knoM^ 
 it but for your misrepresentations of us in their hearing. 
 In your political contests among yourselves, each faction 
 charges the other with sympathy with Black Republi- 
 canism; and then, to give point to the charge, defines 
 Black Republicanism to simply be insurrection, blood, 
 and thunder among the slaves. 
 
 Slave insurrections are no more common now than 
 they were before the Republican party was organized. 
 What induced the Southampton insurrection, twenty- 
 eight years ago, in which at least three times as many lives 
 were lost as at Harper's Ferry? You can scarcely stretch 
 your very elastic fancy to the conclusion that Southamp- 
 ton was "got up by Black Republicanism." In the 
 present state of things in the United States, I do not 
 think a general, or even a very extensive, slave insurrec- 
 tion is possible. The indispensable concert of action cannot 
 be attained. The slaves have no means of rapid communi- 
 cation; nor can incendiary freemen, black or white, 
 supply it. The explosive materials are everywhere in 
 parcels; but there neither are, nor can be supplied, the 
 indispensable connecting trains. 
 
 Much is said by Southern people about the affection 
 of slaves for their masters and mistresses ; and a part of 
 it, at least, is true. A plot for an uprising could scarcely 
 be devised and communicated to twenty individuals 
 before some one of them, to save the life of a favorite 
 master or mistress, would divulge it. This is the rule ; 
 and the slave revolution in Haiti was not an exception to 
 it, but a case occurring under peculiar circumstances. 
 The Gunpowder Plot of British history, though not con- 
 nected with slaves, was more in point. In that case, only 
 about twenty were admitted to the secret; and yet one 
 of them, in his anxiety to save a friend, betrayed the 
 plot to that friend, and, by consequence, averted the 
 calamity. Occasional poisonings from the kitchen, and 
 
276 ARGUMENT 
 
 open or stealthy assassinations in the field, and local 
 revolts extending to a score or so, wiU continue to occur 
 as the natural results of slavery ; but no general insurrec- 
 tion of slaves, as I think, can happen in this country for 
 a long time. Whoever much fears, or much hopes, for 
 such an event, will be alike disappointed. 
 
 In the language of Mr. Jefferson, uttered many years 
 ago, "It is still in our power to direct the process of 
 emancipation and deportation peaceably, and in such 
 slow degrees as that the evil will wear off insensibly. 
 and their places be, pari passu, fiUed up by free white 
 laborers. If, on the contrary, it is left to force itself on, 
 human natiu-e must shudder at the prospect held up." 
 
 Mr. Jefferson did not mean to say, nor do I, that the 
 power of emancipation is in the Federal Government. 
 He spoke of Virginia; and, as to the power of emanci- 
 pation, I speak of the slaveholding States only. The 
 Federal Government, however, as we insist, has the 
 power of restraining the extension of the institution — 
 the power to insure that a slave insurrection shall never 
 occur on any American soil which is now free from 
 slavery. 
 
 John Brown's effort was peculiar. It was not a slave 
 insurrection. It was an attempt by white men to get up 
 a revolt among slaves, in which the slaves refused to par- 
 ticipate. In fact, it was so absurd that the slaves, with all 
 their ignorance, saw plainly^ enough it could not succeed. 
 That affair, in its philosophy, corresponds with the many 
 attempts, related in history, at the assassination of kings 
 and emperors. An enthusiast broods over the oppres- 
 sion of a people till he fancies himself commissioned by 
 Heaven to liberate them. He ventures the attempt, 
 which ends in little else than his own execution. Orsini's 
 attempt on Louis Xapoleon, and John Brown's attempt 
 at Harper's Ferry, were, in their philosophy, precisely the 
 same. The eagerness to cast blame on Old England in 
 the one case, and on New England in the other, does not 
 disprove the sameness of the two things. 
 
 And how much would it avail you if you could, by the 
 use of John Brown, Helper's book, and the like, break 
 
ADDRESS AT COOPER INSTITUTE 277 
 
 up the Republican organization? Human action can be 
 modified to some extent, but human nature cannot be 
 changed. There is a judgment and a feeling against 
 slavery in this nation, which cast at least a million and a 
 half of votes. You cannot destroy that judgment and 
 feeling — that sentiment — by breaking up the political 
 organization which rallies around it. You can scarcely 
 scatter and disperse an army which has been formed into 
 order in the face of your heaviest fire ; but if you could, 
 how much would you gain by forcing the sentiment 
 which created it out of the peaceful channel of the ballot- 
 box into some other channel? What would that other 
 channel probably be ? "Would the number of John Browns 
 be lessened or enlarged by the operation? 
 
 But you will break up the Union rather than submit 
 to a denial of your constitutional rights. , 
 
 That has a somewhat reckless sound; but it would be 
 palliated, if not fully justified, were we proposing, by the 
 mere force of numbers, to deprive you of some right 
 plainly written down in the Constitution. But we are 
 proposing no such thing. 
 
 When you make these declarations you have a specific 
 and well-understood allusion to an assumed constitu- 
 tional right of yours to take slaves into the Federal 
 Territories, and to hold them there as property. But 
 no such right is specifically written in the Constitution. 
 That instrument is literally silent about any such right. 
 We, on the contrary, deny that such a right has any 
 existence in the Constitution, even by implication. 
 
 Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will 
 destroy the government, unless you be allowed to con- 
 strue and force the Constitution as you please, on all 
 points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or 
 ruin in all events. 
 
 This, plainly stated, is your language. Perhaps you 
 will say the Supreme Court has decided the disputed 
 constitutional question in your favor. Not quite so. 
 But waiving the lawyer's distinction between dictum and 
 decision, the court has decided the question for you in a 
 sort of way. The court has substantially said, it is your 
 
278 ARGUMENT 
 
 constitutional right to take slaves into the Federal Terri- 
 tories, and to hold them there as property. When I say 
 the decision was made in a sort of way, I mean it was 
 made in a divided court, by a bare majority of the 
 judges, and they not quite agreeing with one another in 
 the reasons for making it; that it is so made as that its 
 avowed supporters disagree with one another about its 
 meaning, and that it was mainly based upon a mistaken 
 statement of fact — the statement in the opinion that "the 
 right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly 
 affirmed in the Constitution. ' ' 
 
 An inspection of the Constitution will show that the 
 right of property in a slave is not "distinctly and 
 expressly affirmed" in it. Bear in mind, the judges do 
 not pledge their judicial opinion that such right is 
 impliedly affirmed in the Constitution; but they pledge 
 their veracity that it is "distinctly and expressly" 
 affirmed there — "distinctly," that is, not mingled with 
 anything else; "expressly," that is, in words meaning 
 just that, without the aid of any inference, and susceptible 
 of no other meaning. 
 
 If they had only pledged their judicial opinion that 
 such right is affirmed in the instrument by implication, it 
 would be open to others to show that neither the word 
 "slave" nor "slavery" is to be found in the Constitution, 
 nor the word "property," even, in any connection with 
 language alluding to the things slave or slavery; and 
 that wherever in that instrument the slave is alluded to, 
 he is called a "person"; and wherever his master's legal 
 right in relation to him is alluded to, it is spoken of as 
 "service or labor which may be due" — as a debt payable 
 in service or labor. Also it would be open to show, by 
 contemporaneous history, that this mode of alluding to 
 slaves and slavery, instead of speaking of them, was 
 employed on purpose to exclude from the Constitution 
 the idea that there could be property in man. 
 
 To show all this is easy and certain. 
 
 When this obvious mistake of the judges shall be 
 brought to their notice, is it not reasonable to expect 
 
ADDRESS AT COOPER INSTITUTE 279 
 
 that they will withdraw the mistaken statement, and 
 reconsider the conclusion based upon it? 
 
 And then it is to be remembered that "our fathers 
 who framed the government under which we live" — thB 
 men who made the Constitution — decided this same con- 
 stitutional question in our favor long ago; decided it 
 without division among themselves when making the 
 decision; without division among themselves about the 
 meaning of it after it was made, and, so far as any 
 evidence is left, without basing it upon any mistaken 
 statement of facts. 
 
 Under all these circumstances, do you really feel your- 
 selves justified to break up this government unless such 
 a court decision as yours is shall be at once submitted 
 to as a conclusive and final rule of political action? But 
 you will not abide the election of a Republican President ! 
 In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the 
 Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having 
 destroyed it will be upon us ! That is cool. A highway- 
 man holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his 
 teeth, "Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then 
 you will be a murderer ! ' ' 
 
 To be sure, what the robber demanded of me — my 
 money — was my own; and I had a clear right to keep 
 it ; but it was no more my own than my vote is my own ; 
 and the threat of death to me, to extort my money, and 
 the threat of destruction to the Union, to extort my vote, 
 can scarcely be distinguished in principle. 
 
 Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let 
 it alone where it is, because that much is due to the 
 necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; 
 but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to 
 spread into the national Territories, and to overrun us 
 here in these free States? If our sense of duty forbids 
 this, then let us stand by our duty fearlessly and effec- 
 tively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical 
 contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied 
 and belabored, — contrivances such as groping for some 
 
AKILjUMja.i\l 
 
 middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as 
 
 the search for a man who should be neither a living man 
 
 nor a dead man; such as a policy of "don't care," on a 
 
 question about which all true men do care ; such • as 
 
 Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to 
 
 disunionists, reversing the Divine rule, and calling not 
 
 the sinners, but the righteous to repentance; such as 
 
 invocations to Washington, imploring men to unsay what 
 
 Washington said, and undo what Washington did. 
 
 Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false 
 
 accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces 
 
 of destruction to the government, nor of^ dungeons to 
 
 ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and 
 
 in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we 
 
 understand it. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln. (Complete works edited by Nicolay & Hay, 
 published by The Century Company. 
 
 The Polish Question 
 
 [The three selections which follow, reprinted from The Outlimi, 
 are discussions of the same question: the first is chiefly expository; 
 the second and third are purely argumentative. From the material 
 thus presented the student should be able to construct a brief argu- 
 ment of his own. The second and third articles form an interesting 
 contrast in controversial method.] 
 
 On another page will be found a presentation of the 
 two sides of a political and racial controversy that is 
 shaking the Polish and the German peoples. 
 
 For over a hundred years the Poles, in customs, man- 
 ners, speech, and religion a unified people, have been 
 politically divided into three parts, one part under the 
 domination of Russia, one part under the domination of 
 Germany, and one part under the domination of 
 Austria. There has been constant social and political 
 conflict between the Poles in Russia and their Gov- 
 ernors, and between the Poles in Germany and their 
 Governors; while in Austria the Poles and the Govern- 
 ment have learned to live in practical harmony. The 
 Polish-German conflict is not difScult to explain. Having 
 
THE POLISH QUESTION 281 
 
 political authority over the Poles living within her 
 borders, Germany wishes to assimilate them, and the Poles 
 refuse to be assimilated. They passionately hope for a 
 reunion of the three divisions of their race in Russia, 
 Austria, and Germany, and the reestablishment of the 
 Kingdom of Poland. In pursuance of this hope they 
 exasperate the Germans by very reason of their fiery and 
 often visionary temperament, and their lack of modera- 
 tion. The Polish novelist, Henryk Sienkiewiez, says 
 somevirhere: "The German students drink . . . nor 
 does it prevent them from becoming sober, practical 
 men. But let a Slav [and the Poles are Slavs] acquire 
 the habit and he will drink himself into an early grave." 
 
 But no faults of Polish racial, social, or political char- 
 acter can excuse political injustice towards a people who 
 have notably stood for liberty, who have been the bul- 
 wark of Christianity in eastern Europe, the shelter of the 
 Jews, the rescuer of Austria from the enslavement of the 
 Turk, and last, not least, an aid in our own Revolution. 
 Sobieski, Kosciusko, Pulaski, stand high in the list of 
 heroes. To appreciate what Poland has done in other 
 domains, those of literature, science, and art, one has but 
 to mention the names of Martin Gallus, the chronicler; 
 of Copernicus, the mighty astronomer; of Miekiewicz, 
 Poland's greatest poet; of Lelewel, the historian; of 
 Matejko, the painter; of Chopin, Moszkowski, Pader- 
 ewski, Sembrich, and the de Reszkes in the world of music, 
 and Modjeska in that of the drama ; finally of Sienkiewiez, 
 one of the most eminent of living novelists, whose defense 
 of his country may be found on another page. This is 
 not his first appeal. He has before this appealed not so 
 much to foreigners as to his brother Poles. He has 
 begged them to permit no phase of the agitation against 
 them to drive them into extreme words or acts. If the 
 Poles no longer speak as loudly as they once did, their 
 silence may be quite as ominous of discontent as it was 
 in the days of "Thaddeus of Warsaw." 
 
 Despite all changes, the Poles remain, whether in 
 Russia, Prussia, or Austria, a distinct, individual, and 
 unconquered people. Their common aim is some day to 
 
282 ARGUMENT 
 
 reestablish the old kingdom, but on a more democratic 
 basis. They covet their old territory from the Baltic 
 to the Black Sea, a long buffer state between Russia and 
 the rest of Europe. Their patriotic societies in Russia 
 and Prussia, at least, masquerade under all sorts of 
 insignia and cause anxiety to the authorities. 
 
 Why not equally in Austria? Because she has under- 
 stood how to assimilate them. One might think that 
 Russia would understand better, because Russians and 
 Poles are closely allied Slavs in temperament, language, 
 and customs. Political assimilation, however, has not 
 been accomplished either by Russia or Prussia. Austria 
 has in great measure succeeded in Galicia, because she 
 has permitted the Poles there to use their own language 
 from the cradle to the grave. Instead of imposing a 
 foreign tongue in the public schools, the wise Austrian 
 rulers recognized the safety-valve in permitting an emo- 
 tional people to "let off steam" in their own tongue. 
 Accordingly, a Pole may live under Francis Joseph's 
 benign rule and never hear anything but Polish. 
 
 In his temperate article on another page, defending 
 the Prussian Government's action, Mr. Emil Klaessig 
 frankly admits that the Prussian Poles were envious 
 when they looked across the boundary into Galicia and 
 saw what the Austrian Poles enjoyed. How different 
 the harsh policy in Prussia which forbade children to 
 speak Polish within the precincts of the Government 
 schools or to appear with scarfs or neckties of Poland's 
 national colors, a policy which would arbitrarily change 
 Polish names of places to German and require that all 
 speeches made within the German Empire should be 
 spoken in the German tongue. 
 
 Of course in this Polish question Prussia is primarily 
 concerned, not Germany, of which Prussia is by far the 
 largest of the federated states. "With their characteristic 
 grasp of history, however, Germans, as a whole, do not 
 forget that before the Polish Kingdom was founded the 
 Polish prince was a feudatory of the German Empire, 
 that German power itself was strengthened by the Ger- 
 mans even then living in Polish communities, and that 
 
THE POLISH QUESTION 283 
 
 the Teutonic Knights early obtained release from the 
 homage they owed for part of their dominions to the 
 Polish Crown, and became Poland's enemies. When 
 Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, acquired part of 
 Poland at the partition, he bought lands and settled 
 Prussians thereon. The present Prussian Government has 
 long continued this policy, latterly at an enormous 
 expenditure. 
 
 But Poland refuses to be colonized. The Government 
 deems a sterner measure necessary. Color is given 
 because of alleged increasing Polish disloyalty and 
 traitorousness, the fact that Poland's border is incon- 
 veniently close to Berlin, and, what is of more importance, 
 the claim of Prince von Bulow, the Imperial Chancellor, 
 that a discontinuance of colonization would run counter 
 to the wishes of the great mass of the German people. 
 Hence a measure recently introduced into the Prussian 
 Diet provides for a credit of nearly $90,000,000 to acquire 
 over 170,000 acres of Polish estates by condemnation pro- 
 ceedings under the law of eminent domain, and the settling 
 of Grermans thereon. It would thus compel forcible expul- 
 sion of the Poles, mitigated in no way by money payments. 
 In introducing this measure the Chancellor explained that 
 the artificially high prices of land in Poland had now 
 prevented the Government from buying property in the 
 open market in continuance of its colonization policy, and 
 hence it should have the right to dispossess the Poles by 
 legal means. How would our newly settled Scandinavians 
 of the Northwest regard it if the Government of Minnesota 
 suddenly decided to Americanize the State by forcible 
 expropriation ? 
 
 In our opinion, the bill is bad both politically and 
 morally. Germany must indeed be threatened when the 
 Government introduces such a measure. Granted a 
 natural irritation if the discontented Poles are seen to be 
 increasing proportionally faster in numbers than are 
 the contented Germans, and a possible Slavonization peril 
 looms large on the horizon. Will the discontent be but 
 aggravated by the use of brute force in "the State's higher 
 interests"? Surely such wide-awake statesmen as the 
 
284 ARGUMENT 
 
 Kaiser and his Chancellor must recognize that the long 
 day of aristocracy and autocracy is drawing to its close, 
 to be succeeded by one of democracy and liberty. 
 
 In Canada, Latins and Anglo-Saxons, representing 
 different races, languages, religions, and customs, live 
 amicably side by side. Germany aspires to be a colonial 
 power. So far, German colonization at home and abroad 
 has not been a marked success. "We suggest Canadian 
 liberty as worthy of imitation by Germany. 
 
 ir. 
 
 The Polish Side 
 
 The twentieth century is now witnessing an unprece- 
 dented fact, an insult to civilization, to right, to justice, 
 to all the human notions which are the basis of the life 
 and intellectual culture of modern societies. 
 
 For a long time thfere had existed in Prussian Poland a 
 committee of colonization commissioned to buy the estates 
 of the Poles, in order to implant German people in their 
 stead. These estates were paid with funds realized by the 
 taxes to which the Poles themselves contributed as Prus- 
 sian subjects. If, moreover, we mention the martyrdom 
 of Polish children in German schools, and the recent bill 
 prohibiting the use of the Polish tongue in public meet- 
 ings, it will seem impossible that iniquity and the 
 contempt of equality before the laws can go further. 
 And yet the Government whose principle is "Might is 
 above right" would not rest satisfied. 
 
 Consequently a bill of Compulsory Dispossession has been 
 proposed to the Prussian Parliament. The Poles subjected 
 to the Prussian scepter would then at last be rooted out 
 of that soil which is their country, the beloved land 
 where, for thousands of years, long, uninterrupted gen- 
 erations have been born, have lived, and remain buried. 
 
 That part of Poland which the monarchy of the Hohen- 
 zollerns has taken hold of has never kindled revolutionary 
 flames; she behaves peacefully, strictly fulfills the hard 
 duties that events impose upon her ; she pays the taxes, 
 
THE POLISH SIDE 285 
 
 and yields a military contingent whose courage was more 
 than once admired by Bismarck. 
 
 Therefore, when the first news about the compulsory 
 dispossession was published in the European papers, this 
 plan was deemed to be the wild, mad lucubration of a 
 few fanatics bereft not only of moral sense but of reason. 
 People were persuaded that a civilized state that con- 
 siders the right of property as the corner-stone of the 
 social edifice could never go so far as to tread so brutally 
 both upon this principle and upon the most elementary 
 notions of justice. Nobody believed that such a crime 
 might be committed in a society which asserts its claims 
 to being Christian. 
 
 And yet Chancellor von Bulow has presented to the 
 Prussian Parliament a bill tending to the Compulsory 
 Dispossession of the Poles, and the Parliament, instead of 
 sending back the Chancellor to the study of what is right 
 and moral, has sent the bill to be examined. 
 
 The official news of this event has already spread 
 throughout the world, and, much to the credit of man- 
 kind, we must state that everywhere it has raised a 
 unanimous cry of indignation and protestation. The 
 European newspapers, without any distinction of tenden- 
 cies or parties — and, besides, the whole of the independent 
 German papers — have condemned the way of acting of the 
 Prussian Government as a shameful outrage against the 
 natural rights of humanity, and against the very consti- 
 tution existent in the Kingdom of Prussia. 
 
 Even such a Government is compelled to take that 
 universal indignation and contempt into account. 
 
 But we wish this protestation against barbarity to last 
 as long as possible and to take the most extensive propor- 
 tions. We therefore do not consider the clamors of the 
 press as sufficient, obliged as it is to deal every day with 
 novelty. This protestation will get a lasting life and at 
 the same time an immense weight only if throughout 
 the world the most eminent men in science, literature, 
 and arts are willing to express their opinion individually. 
 This shall be the definitive judgment of universal con- 
 science against an unprecedented crime ; and this uni- 
 
286 ARGUMENT 
 
 versal conscience against an unprecedented crime shall 
 also be the mightiest plea for the defense of an important 
 fraction of a civilized nation that has well deserved of 
 mankind. 
 
 We in no way intend meddling with the private affairs 
 of the monarchy of the HohenzoUerns ; we have to deal 
 with a question about which every civilized man is 
 entitled to speak his mind, chiefly those who, among the 
 nations, are the pillars of civilization and intellectual 
 culture. 
 
 This is why we ask Americans to state their opinion 
 about the bill presented by the Prussian Government, 
 whose aim is to turn the Poles out of their estates by 
 means of compulsory dispossession. We do not suppose, 
 of course, that this opinion may be anything else, than an 
 utterance of indignation and reprobation, but a public 
 censure coming from America will be the condemnation 
 of the greatest iniquity and infamy in the history of the 
 twentieth century. Such an answer will fill the Polish 
 nation with sanguine hope and will be of great help to all 
 the honest people of Germany who, unwilling, to see their 
 country disgraced before the world, boldly attack the 
 hateful scheme of the Prussian Government. 
 
 '' Henryk Sienkiewicz. 
 
 III. 
 
 The German Side 
 
 From time to time for the last score of years the 
 attention of the world at large has been attracted to the 
 so-called German-Polish question, concerning the regula- 
 tion of the relations .between the Prussian Government 
 and the Polish population of those eastern portions of 
 Prussia that formerly were a part of the old Kingdom of 
 Poland. Two circumstances have for some time made the 
 Polish question again a topic of international discussion, 
 and special efforts have been made to enlist the sympathy 
 of the American people for the fate of the Poles. 
 
 The controversy has assumed an acute phase by the intro- 
 duction in the Prussian Diet of a bill by the Government 
 
THE GERMAN SIDE 287 
 
 authorizing it to enforce by condemnation proceedings the 
 sale to the so-called settlement commission of lands in Prus- 
 sian Poland held by Poles. This bill has, naturally, aroused 
 great indignation among the Poles, and this indignation 
 has been publicly voiced in an appeal to the intellectual 
 world by the Polish author Sienkiewicz. This appeal 
 is a bitter attack on the Prussian policies in connection 
 with the Polish question. There have been so many 
 misrepresentations of the character of these policies, not 
 only by Sienkiewicz and other leading Poles, but also by 
 newspapers all over the world, that it might be worth 
 while to hear some of the facts which have forced the 
 Prussian Government to consider drastic measures against 
 the Poles. 
 
 Until about thirty years ago conditions developed 
 normally in the Polish provinces. German culture 
 advanced there continually, as was perfectly natural. 
 At the end of the '70 's, however, there was a change. 
 The Poles began to dislodge the German element of the 
 population as a result of the political conditions in 
 Austria. The Austrian Government had continually made 
 concessions to the various nationalities composing its 
 population, playing one element against another. This 
 policy was embodied in the unfortunate "Metternich 
 system." The Austrian Poles proved to be the cleverer 
 diplomats in this political game, granting every desire 
 of the Government after gaining a corresponding con- 
 cession for Galicia. In this way the Province of Galicia 
 acquired a political position practically independent of 
 Austria. The Prussian Poles, witnessing the success of the 
 Austrian Poles, determined to follow suit and began an 
 effective agitation for this purpose. No German who did 
 not sympathize with this movement of the Poles in the 
 Prussian provinces had a chance of making a living. 
 The German merchants in the cities were boycotted and 
 had to make room for Poles. Trade was largely Poland- 
 ized. Political errors on the part of the Prussian Govern- 
 ment in a degree helped to support the agitation. During 
 the struggle between the German States and the Roman 
 Catholic Church, the Polish clergy were largely instru- 
 
288 ARGUMENT ■ 
 
 mental in the Polandization of those eastern Prussian 
 provinces, owing to their great influence over the inhab- 
 itants of the rural districts. 
 
 Eeonomieal mistakes were also made by the Prussian 
 Government in supporting the great landed property, 
 which in the main was owned by Poles. These land- 
 owners have always been disloyal, having never relin- 
 quished their dream of a Polish State with aristocratic 
 rule, as it formerly existed. They also sought to further 
 the Polish movement by replacing the German laborers 
 on the large estates with Poles. Later, when industry 
 began to develop, this process of Polandization worked 
 automatically, the German farm-hands leaving for the 
 large cities to enjoy higher wages, the Poles on the estates 
 thus having a free hand. This would have been impossible 
 if an opportunity had been given to German farm-hands 
 to settle down as independent farmers on little farms of 
 their own. 
 
 The political success of the Austrian Poles gave an 
 ever-increasing stimulus to the Polish agitation, and the 
 Prussian Poles made no secret of their hope of reestab- 
 lishing an independent Polish State. They communicated 
 with the Poles in Austria, and undoubtedly also maintain 
 a secret understanding with the Russian Poles. The great 
 danger of the situation lies in the fact that they want 
 to sever the bonds that bind them to the countries to 
 which they politically belong. 
 
 Sienkiewicz, in his appeal, says that the Prussian Polesi 
 have always been loyal to the Prussian Government. 
 That, as a matter of fact, was true in the past, but is no 
 longer true. There is no exaggeration in the statement 
 often made that the Polish provinces of Prussia constitute 
 a German Ireland. The Prussian Poles have achieved 
 more than the Irish. The latter have not driven out the 
 British, while the Poles have invaded German territory. 
 This condition is the more serious in view of the fact 
 that Germany is wedged in between Latin and Slavic 
 races, and it can hardly view with indifference the 
 strengthening of a Slavic element inimical to Germanism 
 by the creation of a new nation. 
 
THE GERMAN SIDE 289 
 
 The logical development of afifairs would have been for 
 the German element to have made inroads on Polish 
 territory in order to strengthen the barrier against the 
 Slavic element. Now that this was not possible, precau- 
 tion must at least be taken to prevent the Germans being 
 driven out of their own country adjacent to the Polish 
 provinces. That the Germans are already being crowded 
 out of such territories is shown by the Polandization of 
 Upper Silesia. Nothing, therefore, is more ridiculous 
 than the contention of the Poles that Prussia is crowding 
 them out. 
 
 At the end of the 80 's, Prussia inaugurated the policy 
 of buying up Polish lands and settling thereon German 
 farmers. This has proved a failure as far as Germaniza- 
 tion is concerned ; it strengthened the cause of the Poles, 
 who, with the money received from the Prussian Gov- 
 ernment, bought and Polandized more farms than could be 
 Germanized. The policy now proposed as embodied in the 
 new bill is not to pay the Polish landholders excessive sums 
 for their property, but to acquire it through condemnation 
 proceedings, allowing compensation equal to the real 
 value of the property. It is this measure which the Poles 
 decry as barbarous and which has been so characterized 
 by many newspapers in different parts of the world that 
 have no knowledge of the actual state of affairs justify- 
 ing the measure. By American critics of the bill it has 
 been said that the injustice thereby done to the Poles 
 would be equivalent to an attempt to apply the same 
 proceeding to the Germans in America. But it is to be 
 borne in mind that the Germans in Amerca are in full 
 harmony with the laws and have never thought of creating 
 an independent state here. American critics overlook the 
 fact that a higher law, that of national self-preservation, 
 is the impelling motive for the adoption of a policy of 
 this nature. Those who bear in mind that the United 
 States for four years carried on the most sanguinary 
 war in history in the interest of this higher law will 
 readily understand the constrained position of Prussia 
 in its relation to the Poles. 
 
 Emil Klaessig. 
 
290 ARGUMENT 
 
 STUDENT'S BRIEF AND ARGUMENT 
 
 Brief 
 
 Should every able-bodied American youth be required 
 to serve in the militia for a period sufficient to give a 
 reasonably adequate military training? 
 
 Introduction 
 
 I. The present methods of military training in the United 
 States are as follows : 
 
 A. The training of officers at West Point ; 
 
 B. The training of volunteer citizens in the National 
 Guard ; 
 
 C. The training of students in agricultural colleges 
 and in military schools throughout the country. 
 
 II. Definition of terms : 
 
 A. Militia is now known as National Guard ;^ 
 
 B. A reasonably adequate military training is a working 
 knowledge of the drills and army regulations.^ 
 
 III. It is granted that the United States should be pre- 
 pared for war, no matter how remote any danger seems. 
 
 IV. The points of special issue are as follows : 
 
 A. Does the present system of military training prop- 
 erly insure the United States against sudden war ? 
 
 B. Would a compulsory system of militia service afford 
 better protection to the United States in case of war 
 or internal disorders? 
 
 C. Would such a system be too great a burden upon 
 the nation? 
 
 D. Is such a system against the principles of democratic 
 government ? 
 
 1 War Department Report, 1908, pp. 29-30. 
 
 2 General George B. McClellan, quoted in Overland Monthly, Vol. S3, p. 458. 
 
STUDENTS- ARGUMENTS 291 
 
 Brief Phopbb 
 
 Every able-bodied American youth should be required 
 to serve in the militia for a period sufficient to give a 
 reasonably adequate military training, for 
 
 I. The present system of military training does not insure 
 the United States proper protection against sudden 
 war, for 
 
 A. We lack soldiers enough to defend us against any 
 first-class power, for 
 
 1. The War Department estimates that it would take 
 at least 350,000 men for the first line of defence 
 in case of war with any first-class power/ 
 
 2. The Regular Army consists of but 53,000 officers 
 and men who are stationed in the United States.^ 
 
 3. But 60 per cent, of the 110,000 militia are available 
 for immediate service^^ 
 
 B. The United States has not enough officers to carry 
 out the system now established, for 
 
 1. West Point does not graduate officers enough for 
 the Regular Army in time of peace, for ^ 
 
 a. Secretary Taft recommended in 1907 that 612 
 new officers be commissioned at once.^ 
 
 2. The service is greatly impaired by the number of 
 officers detached to train the pupils in the agri- 
 cultural colleges and military schools/ 
 
 C. The drill given to the students in the agricultural 
 colleges is not effective, for 
 
 1. In the majority of the colleges but two hours a 
 week are devoted to drill." 
 
 1 War Department Report, 1908, pp. 30-48. 
 
 i ronBresaional Kaiori, Vol. 36, p. 1.186. 
 
 3 Report of American Nat. Educational Ass'n., 1«)8, pp. 61-8 
 
292 ARGUMENT 
 
 2. The drill is not thorough, for 
 
 a. Although United States army officers have 
 charge of the drill in most of the colleges 
 
 b. Yet the principles, merely to comply with the 
 government requirements, give them but the 
 barest encouragement.* 
 
 D. Students at the military schools are of practically 
 no value in w&t, for 
 
 1. In 1907 they were but a group of 22,000 boys of 
 various ages.^ 
 
 2. The course at these schools is more of a prepara- 
 tory than of a military nature. 
 
 B. Our volunteer army, upon which we must place our 
 greatest reliance, is but a paper army, for ^ 
 
 1. It is unorganized and untrained. 
 
 2. It is assumed to be more powerful than it really is. 
 
 II. The only way in which the United States can be well 
 defended in time of war or internal disorders is by a 
 system of compulsory militia service for its young men, 
 for 
 
 A. Training in times of peace is the only means of 
 national security in times of danger,* for 
 
 1. It is impossible to teach even patriotic citizens mili- 
 tary drill and discipline at a moment 's notice, for 
 a. Military drill and discipline are not acquired 
 
 easily. 
 
 2. We cannot assume that time will be given us to 
 train our young men.^ 
 
 3. In war today fortune does not follow the brave.' 
 
 B. The volunteer army of the United States cannot 
 succeed unless the men who form it have a fairly 
 adequate military training, for 
 
 1 Report of American Nat. Educational Ass'n., 1908, pp. 61-80. 
 
 2 Wai Department Report, 1908, pp. 54-58. 
 
 3 Congressional Record, Vol. 36, p. 1388. 
 
 4 General Fraser, Fortnightly Review, Vol. 87, pp. 159-164. 
 
 5 Lord Milner, 19<* Ctntury, Vol. 51, pp. 318-324. 
 
STUDENTS' ARGUMENTS 293 
 
 1. The entire structure of an army rests upon proper 
 training and discipline,^ for 
 a. Each man must know his duty and perform his 
 
 share of the work so that the whole will be able 
 
 to move effectively. 
 
 C. The argument that patriotism would prompt the 
 American youth to learn military drill is unfounded, 
 for 
 
 1. Of the 14,670,000 males available for military 
 service in this country, less than seven-tenths of 
 one per cent, have volunteered to learn military 
 drill by serving in the militia.^ 
 
 2. He has other pleasures and diversions which 
 occupy his time. 
 
 III. The adoption of such a system will not be a burden 
 upon the nation, for 
 
 A. The expense will not be prohibitive, for 
 
 1. Many states already possess armories and drill- 
 haUs which may be used. 
 
 2. Our history shows that our habitual economy in 
 time of peace has always been more than counter- 
 balanced by the consequent unduly heavy cost of 
 preparing suddenly for war.^ 
 
 B. The time spent in drilling would not be a loss to 
 the American youth, for 
 
 1. It would teach him to shoot.* 
 
 2. It would improve his physical condition, for 
 
 a. Military drill combined with the "setting-up" 
 drill gives an erect carriage of body, better 
 breathing, better circulation, and a greater 
 power of endurance." 
 
 1 Col. Thomas Wiehelm, Overland Monthly, Vol. 53, pp. 461-464. 
 
 2 War Department Report, 1908, p. 63. 
 
 3 General George B. McClellan, quoted in Overland Monthly, Vol. S3, p. 465. 
 
 4 President's Message, Dec. 14, 1908. 
 
 5 Report of American Nat. Educational Ass'n., 1908. pp. 72-75. 
 
294 ARGUMENT 
 
 3. It would improve his moral condition, for 
 
 a. Military drill gives a training in attention and 
 in the habit of prompt obedience which cannot 
 be excelled by any other means.^ 
 
 IV. Compulsory militia service for the American youth 
 is not contrary to the principles of a democratic form 
 of government, for 
 
 A. Each citizen of a democracy should know how to 
 defend it, for 
 
 1. In a democratic state having a national militia the 
 men who decide upon a war are the men who have 
 to wage it.^ 
 
 B. A man's first duty is to his country. 
 
 C. The fact that self-defence is recognized as the first 
 law of nations shows a compulsory militia service to 
 be in accord with the principles of democratic gov- 
 ernment, for 
 
 1. Compulsory service in the militia is but a means 
 of providing for self-defence. 
 
 Conclusion 
 
 I. Since the present system of military training does not 
 insure us against sudden war; 
 
 II. Since the only way to secure protection is to force our 
 young men to serve in the militia until they obtain 
 a reasonably adequate military education ; 
 
 III. Since such a system would not be a burden to the 
 nation; and 
 
 IV. Since it is not contrary to the principles of democratic 
 government, — 
 
 Therefore, every able-bodied American youth should 
 be required to serve in the militia for a period sufficient 
 to give him a reasonably adequate military training. 
 
 1 Dr. Sargent, 19(fc Century, Vol. 46, pp. 281-289. 
 
 2 Lord Milner, 19(ft Century, Vol. 51, p. 325. 
 
STUDENTS' ARGUMENTS 295 
 
 Argument 
 
 Should every able-bodied American youth be required 
 to serve in the militia for a period sufficient to give a 
 reasonably adequate military training? 
 
 At the present time there are at least three distinct 
 methods of military training for the young, able-bodied 
 men of the United States. We have at West Point a 
 national school from which our officers for the army are 
 graduated. In the militia we have a system which ena- 
 bles those of our citizens who join it to acquire a militarjj 
 education that is adequate and well enough for a man 
 of average intelligence. Besides these two methods of 
 general training we have a third by which the students 
 in the agricultural colleges and the so-called military 
 schools throughout the country are taught military drill 
 as a regular part of their education. 
 
 Knowing the present means by which our young men 
 may acquire military knowledge, we are better able to 
 discuss the question as to whether or not every able-bodied 
 American youth should be required to serve in the militia 
 for a period sufficient to give a reasonably adequate 
 military training. Let us first understand what we mean 
 by "militia" and "a reasonably adequate military train- 
 ing. ' ' According to the Act of Congress, January 21, 1903, 
 later amended May 27, 1908, "the militia shall consist of 
 every able-bodied male citizen of the respective States and 
 Territories and the District of Columbia .... who 
 is more than eighteen and less than forty-five years of age, 
 and shall be divided into two classes: The organized 
 militia to be known as the National Guard . . . . ; the 
 remainder to be known as the Reserve Militia. ' ' We shall 
 of necessity consider that portion ' ' known as the National 
 Guard." As for a reasonably adequate military training, 
 perhaps as good a definition as any has been given by 
 General George B. McClellan, who says that it is possessed 
 by men "passably disciplined, accustomed to the use of 
 their weapons and to act together, instructed in the rudi- 
 ments, at least, of field service — in such a condition, in 
 
296 ARGUMENT 
 
 brief, that a few weeks ' service in the camp and field will 
 convert them into respectable soldiers. ' ' ^ 
 
 Although the danger of war seems to be less now than 
 ever, it is generally conceded that the United States should 
 be prepared for war, no matter how remote the possibility- 
 seems, as a total unpreparedness presents too many temp- 
 tations even to a foe otherwise weak. I propose a scheme 
 of preparation which is very simple. It merely requires 
 that every able-bodied American youth shall be obliged by 
 law to join the National Guard for a period of at least 
 three years, and shall be obliged to drill at least once a 
 week. In addition to the weekly drill, he shaU be required 
 to attend a militia camp with his company for no less 
 than seven consecutive days during the summer months. 
 The difference between this plan and that of the National 
 Guard is that continual attendance is not absolutely 
 required by the latter. According to the report of the 
 United States army officers who investigated the work of 
 the National Guard in 1907, the military knowledge of the 
 men was adequate and highly satisfactory. So that the 
 knowledge gained by the men under the stricter com- 
 pulsory system could not fail to be even better. 
 
 While arguing in favor of such a plan as this there arise 
 certain important questions which must be fully discussed 
 in order to see clearly its reasonableness and necessity. 
 Does the present system of military training properly 
 insure the United States against sudden war? Can we 
 believe that a compulsory system of militia service is the 
 best way to afford a better protection to the United States 
 in case of war or internal disorders ? Would such a system 
 be too great a burden upon the nation? Or, is it that such 
 a system is contrary to the principles of our democratic 
 government ? 
 
 In 1908, after a careful determination of the strengths of 
 the leading nations of the world, the War Department 
 gave out the statement that in case of war with any first- 
 class power the United States would need at least 350,000 
 men in the first line of defence.^ To compare with these 
 
 1 General George B. McClellan, quoted in Overland Monthly, Vol. S3, p. 458. 
 
 2 War Department Report, 1908, pp. 30-48. 
 
STUDENTS' ARGUMENTS 297 
 
 figures let us see how many men we could put into the field 
 if war were declared upon us tomorrow. Our Regular Army 
 is small and consists of 53,000 officers and men scattered 
 all over the country. There are 110,000 men enrolled in 
 the National Guard, but it is computed that only seventy- 
 five per cent, would be able to respond to a call to arms 
 and that of these some twenty per cent, would be unable to 
 meet the physical requirements of war-time. Thus but 
 sixty per cent, of the original number, or 67,000, would be 
 available for immediate service. This makes the actual 
 strength of our first line of defence but 120,000, a little 
 more than one-third of the smallest force that the War 
 Department finds necessary. 
 
 But it is not men alone that the United States lacks; 
 more officers are needed to lead the forces that we have.^ 
 Without officers our system of defence is like a ship with- 
 out a rudder; it would be beaten to pieces by the first 
 severe storm. Yet officers may not be had for the asking ; 
 they must be trained. The trouble is we are not training 
 them fast enough. Although 250 are graduated annually 
 from West Point, the number is not sufficient to supply 
 the demand, as Secretary Taft recommended in 1908 that 
 612 more officers be commissioned at once.^ This increase 
 has been made necessary because the number of officers 
 needed for new fortifications and for detached service has 
 left the army improperly officered. To meet this increase 
 militia officers must be drafted into the regular service. 
 
 In spite of the fact that the government has charge of 
 the military training in the greater part of the State agri- 
 cultural colleges, it cannot be said that the drill offered the 
 students tends to produce such a satisfactory military 
 education as we might expect. The reason for this is the 
 attitude taken by the faculties of these colleges in regard 
 to the Morrill Act, which sets aside a certain annual sum 
 to be given to those State institutions of learning which 
 devote not less than two hours a week to the drilling of 
 their students. Such drilling the facilities seem to regard 
 as an evil which must be endured if they are to have the 
 
 1 Congressional Record, Vol. 36, p. 13S6. 
 
 2 War Department Report, 1908, pp. 30-48. 
 
298 ARGUMENT 
 
 benefits resulting from the appropriation. So in order to 
 make the results of the evil as small as possible they frown 
 upon it and devote but the two hours to its practice, with 
 the result that the opportunity to make their students take 
 high rank in the militia is lost.^ In the military schools it 
 is a little different. Here the army officers acting as drill 
 instructors, receive more encouragement. Yet a glance at 
 the catalogue of any of these schools will show that the 
 course is of a preparatory, rather than of a military, 
 nature, as it must be since their avowed purpose is to 
 prepare their students for higher institutions. So even with 
 the highest approval of the faculty an extensive training 
 cannot be given. Even if it were, the students would be of 
 little value in case of war, for the registration books of such 
 schools in the United States showed in 1907 that the total 
 number was some 22,000 boys of all ages ranging from 
 twelve to twenty.^ 
 
 So much for the visible forces upon which we can rely in 
 time of danger. Now let us turn for a moment to the 
 Reserve Militia, the Volunteer Army in which we must 
 place our greatest reliance. Where is it ? Can you point to 
 a body of men well organized and well trained in military 
 tactics and say with pride, there is our Reserve Militia? 
 Of course not. Yet you have always assumed that it did 
 exist, that it was a national safeguard, our bulwark against 
 disaster. As a matter of fact it never did exist,' except on 
 paper and in the hearts of trustful Americans. Indeed we 
 have come to a pretty state of military affairs with a dearth 
 of officers, a small army, an inadequate National Guard, and 
 a hypothetical force as a main defence. Clearly our system 
 of military training has not borne the fruit that it should. 
 
 But where is the remedy? What can we do to prepare 
 ourselves against sudden attacks or unexpected intestine 
 outbreaks ? Train our men in time of peace ;* that is the 
 only road to national security, for in war today fortune 
 does not follow the brave." We cannot assume that in 
 
 1 Report of American Nat. Educational Ass'n., 1908, pp. 61-80. 
 
 2 War Department Report, 190S, pp. 54-58. 
 
 3 Congressional Record, Vol. 36, p. 1388. 
 
 4 General Eraser, Fortnightly Review, Vol. 87, pp. 159-164. 
 
 5 Lord Milner, 19th Century, Vol. 51, pp. 318-324. 
 
STUDENTS' ARGUMENTS 299 
 
 time of strife other nations will be considerate enough to 
 permit us first to train our citizens before fighting. Neither 
 can we assume that military drill and discipline may be 
 infused at a moment 's notice even into the most patriotic 
 volunteers. Our Reserve Militia will not be successful 
 unless the men in its ranks have a fair knowledge of these 
 things, for it is not upon patriotism or braveness that the 
 structure of an army rests, but upon proper training and 
 discipline.' To make the whole effective, each man must 
 know his duty, must know how to perform his small part. 
 
 One cannot argue that patriotism will prompt the Ameri- 
 can youth to learn military drill, for in the past less than 
 seven-tenths of one per cent, of our men have volunteered 
 to do so by serving in the militia. Of the 14,670,000 males 
 available for military service in this country, but 110,000 
 belong to the National Guard at the present time.^ But, 
 you say, the fact that he has not joined in the past is no 
 reason for thinking that he wiU not do so in the future 
 when he sees that it is for the protection of the country. 
 You may bring a horse to the water but he will not drink 
 if he prefers to nibble the grass that grows beside the 
 trough. Likewise you may bring a young man to see the 
 usefulness of joining the militia, but he will not join if he 
 prefers to follow other pursuits. So if it is by men versed 
 in military tactics that our country must be defended, and 
 if the large majority will not learn of their own free 
 choice, we should institute a compulsory system of militia 
 service, such as I have previously described. It is well to 
 begin with the young men. As their time expires others 
 will be constantly joining, thus creating a large active 
 militia, while the older ones will form the nucleus of a 
 substantial reserve force. 
 
 Such a system should not be burdensome, neither should 
 it be held to be prohibitive because of expense. Many of 
 the States already possess armories and halls that may be 
 used for drilling ; thus the first cost, which will naturally 
 be the greatest will be considerably lessened. Granting 
 that the expense will be large, the adoption of such a plan 
 
 1 CoL Thomas Wiehelm, Overland Monthly, Vol. S3, pp. 461-464. 
 
 2 War Department Report, 1908, p. 63. 
 
300 ARGUMENT 
 
 is nevertheless the wisest policy. All our history shows 
 that our habitual economy in time of peace has always 
 been more than counterbalanced by the consequent unduly 
 heavy cost of preparing suddenly for war/ 
 
 On the other hand, our young men would not suffer loss 
 of time or energy by drilling. In the first place, they 
 would be taught shooting, which Theodore Roosevelt says 
 "is the most important factor in the defence of the 
 country," and which is an accomplishment that is becom- 
 ing rarer and rarer every day.^ Most gymnastic authori- 
 ties agree with the statement of Professor Wilkinson that 
 "military drill combined with the 'setting-up' drill gives 
 an erect carriage to the body, better breathing, better 
 circulation, and a greater power of endurance."^ It is 
 not our young men's physical condition alone that will be 
 improved, but their moral condition as well, for military 
 drill gives an unexcelled training in habits of attention 
 and prompt obedience.* 
 
 It seems that two general objections to compulsory 
 militia service are that it would involve a deplorable 
 economic waste, inasmuch as it would withdraw young 
 men for a time from the pursuits of industry, and that it 
 would give the youth too great an opportunity to acquire 
 vices. The first objection would scarcely apply to the 
 system I have advocated, since the seven days taken from 
 business during the summer would be a part of the vaca- 
 tion of the militiamen. As for their forming bad habits 
 because they belong to a militia organization meeting once 
 a week, that seems far-fetched. If a young man wishes to 
 indulge in any kind of vice, he will do so, whether he 
 belongs to the militia or not. 
 
 There is still another reason for compulsory militia 
 service which is perhaps after all the strongest; it is in 
 accordance with the principles of our democratic form of 
 government. A man's first duty is to his country; with it 
 he stands or falls. In such a State as ours the men who 
 
 1 General George B. McCIellan, quoted in Overland Monthly, Vol. S3, p. 465. 
 
 2 President's Message, Dec. 14, 1908. 
 
 3 Report of American Nat. Educational Ass'n., 1908. pp. 72-75. 
 
 4 Dr. Sargent, 19M Century, Vol. 46, pp. 281-289. 
 
STUDENTS' ARGUMENTS 301 
 
 decide upon a war are the men who have to wage it/ It is 
 upon them that the burden falls. It is to them that the 
 State looks for her defenders. And if her citizens do not 
 know how to protect her and will not learn of their own 
 free choice, the first law of nations, which is self-defence, 
 makes it necessary to take measures that will compel them 
 to learn. 
 
 Since the present system of military training does not 
 properly insure us against sudden war, it is essential that 
 we adopt a system that will secure us ample protection. 
 We find that the only remedy for present conditions is 
 compulsory militia service for the young, able-bodied men. 
 This system will not be a burden to the country, and is in 
 accordance with the underlying principles of our form of 
 government. This being the case, let us adopt the system 
 which promises our young men a fairly adequate military 
 education and which will create for the country a true 
 army of defence. 
 
 A Plea for Aegumentation 
 
 "Why should women be required to take argumenta- 
 tion? What good does it do them to read a mass of 
 material on some question of only temporary or local 
 importance, and work it into forensic form? Would not 
 the time be better spent on French, or music, or litera- 
 ture — or something that contributes to general culture? 
 What sufficient excuse can there be for compelling girls to 
 argue? 
 
 This is an old refrain, and is persistently repeated — so 
 persistently, indeed, that at many women's colleges the 
 course in argumentation has disappeared from the list of 
 requirements for a degree. It is not surprising that objec- 
 tion is made to it: — not all students are prejudiced in 
 favor of hard studies, and this course is by no means the 
 least troublesome in the college curriculum. We agree, 
 moreover, that there is little sense in compelling girls to 
 
 1 l«rd Milner, I9lh Century, Vol. 51, p. 325. 
 
302 ARGUMENT 
 
 argue, for argument's sake. But there is some excuse for 
 the course, nevertheless, and we will endeavor to make 
 clear what is is. 
 
 In order to discover what good it does a woman to write 
 briefs and f orensies, we must see in what the work consists, 
 and what qualities of mind are needed for its successful 
 accomplishment. 
 
 The first thing necessary in preparing an argument is to 
 get a complete grasp of one's subject. One must determine 
 with perfect definiteness and accuracy all that is meant by 
 each of the words in which his proposition is phrased. 
 After defining terms with care, one wonders, not infre- 
 quently, if he has ever before in his life really compre- 
 hended the full meaning of an English sentence — so great 
 is the precision, so nice the distinction, required in this 
 part of the work. 
 
 The next thing, after one has settled clearly what the 
 question is about, is to go through a mass of material more 
 or less closely related to the matter in hand, and select 
 from it just such facts and theories as will really go to 
 prove, or to strengthen, one side of the case. Due atten- 
 tion must at the same time be given to the points in which 
 lies the strength of one 's opponent and bits of proof must 
 be picked out to balance or to weaken each piece of 
 evidence he may bring forward. Here there is demand for 
 the most careful discrimination ; in this part of the work 
 one must stick resolutely to the point, rejecting all except 
 the telling facts, however interesting and worthy of atten- 
 tion the useless ones may be in themselves. He who says 
 all that applies to the question at issue, and no more, is 
 the one whose work has the greatest force and weight. 
 
 Next, the chosen material must be classified and put in 
 order. There are naturally certain broad divisions of the 
 proof, and under these narrower ones, and narrower. Each 
 smallest bit of fact has a place of its own, and must be put 
 into it, in order that it may do its proper share of work: 
 its relation to every other fact must be decided, and its 
 place in the whole structure must correspond to this rela- 
 tion. The whole proof must be so organized as to be at 
 once logical, coherent, and forcible. Skilfully one must 
 
STUDENTS' ARGUMENTS 303 
 
 lead his readers on, from lesser things to greater, quietly 
 advancing step by step until he can say: "See, I have 
 proved this to be true, and this and this — and now the 
 whole is established." In our college forensies it is not 
 the persuasiveness of the language, but the skilful exposi- 
 tion of facts in logical order, that makes good argument. 
 Any one who has an orderly mind will not fare ill in the 
 class in argumentation. 
 
 Accuracy, discrimination, orderliness — are not these 
 worth teaching, even to women? Are not women, more 
 than men, accused of jumping at hasty conclusions, of 
 saying at random all that comes into their heads, and of 
 jumbling ideas into an unintelligible mixture of sense and 
 nonsense ? It would seem that few courses of study could 
 answer their needs better than this very bugbear of which 
 we are speaking. Today, women are expected to talk, and 
 to talk with sense and force. It is easy enough for them 
 to learn things to talk about, for their perception is keen 
 and their memory good. Their great need is of logical 
 thinking and clear expression. The actual questions that 
 a girl reads up for argumentation add little, usually, to 
 her stock of information; but the lesson in grasping the 
 question, and in selecting, classifying, and organizing 
 material, is one so much needed that it makes of argu- 
 mentation a "culture" course in a far stricter sense than 
 are courses in French, music, and literature. Whenever a 
 woman prepares a forensic she is truly cultivating her 
 mind. She is learning the value of making orderly dis- 
 position of material in the pigeonholes of her own brain, 
 where she can find it ready to be put into effective use at 
 any moment. With more of mental discipline she can do 
 with less of concrete fact — and the time spent on forensic 
 work is, therefore, not ill-spent. The course in argumenta- 
 tion has an excuse for existing ; and women who would be 
 reasonable should take up the study feeling not ill-treated, 
 but privileged. 
 
304 ARGUMENT 
 
 Freedom of Thought and Speech in the 
 United States 
 
 In the later part of October of last year, John Turner 
 was arrested in New York; tried upon the charge of anarchy, 
 and sentenced to be deported. This man had, until recently, 
 been an organizer of labor unions in England. He was address- 
 ing a gathering upon some of the principles of anarchy 
 at the time of his arrest. He was not in any way trying to 
 excite his hearers to deeds of destruction; indeed, he did not 
 believe in such means, being one of the so-called "philosoph- 
 ical" anarchists. Soon after his sentence of deportation had 
 been delivered, a meeting of many prominent citizens of New 
 York was held to protest against such action being taken. 
 Turner, at the request of this meeting, decided to appeal his 
 case and to test the law under which he was ordered to be 
 removed from this country. 
 
 The law which will be called in question was passed by 
 Congress, March 3, 1903. Its purpose is to prevent the spread 
 of anarchy — particularly of the more objectionable type — in 
 the United States. To accomplish this purpose it provides 
 for the deportation of any immigrant who is not a believer 
 in an organized government, or who is known to have 
 expressed hostility to government of any kind. The law does 
 not affect anyone who is a resident or a citizen of the United 
 States. Even its most bitter enemy cannot call it very 
 extreme or oppressive. 
 
 It gains its importance from the fact that it marks a dis- 
 tinct departure from the traditional policy of this country. 
 We, who call ourselves Americans, have long gloried in the 
 fact that here one may believe and say what he likes. He 
 has only been restricted in expressing such beliefs when the 
 expression contained threats or was. slanderous in its nature. 
 The makers of the constitution desired such freedom of 
 expression and the nature of our government has tended to 
 preserve it. Thus, we have looked with pity upon the closely 
 watched subjects of the Czar or of the Kaiser. 
 
 The events which could move our government to depart in 
 any way from this strongly-held policy had to be of consid- 
 
STUDENTS- ARGUMENTS 305 
 
 erable weight. Indeed, they were of such a character that 
 every American was aroused and shocked by them. The 
 assassinations of Lincoln and Garfield brought unsuccessful 
 attempts at repressive legislation. When, in the later part of 
 the nineties, it was learned that many of the most dangerous 
 anarchists in the world were on their way to this country, a 
 strong effort was made to pass a law to prevent their landing. 
 This attempt also failed. But, when ilcKinley was shot; 
 when we learned that the assassin had no reason for com- 
 plaint against the man, but aimed simply to destroy the head 
 of the government; when we realized that there were many 
 like this murderer and saw with horror how simple a matter 
 it would be to slay all who were in the line of succession to 
 the position of chief executive, then it was felt that some 
 action was called for. The present law resulted, — aimed at 
 immigrants, because most of our anarchy comes to us with 
 those who have learned it under the terrible oppression of 
 such places as Italy and Poland. 
 
 That some action was needed cannot be denied, but it is 
 very doubtful whether such a law as the one that we have 
 under discussion is advisable. It departs, as has been shown, 
 from a long-established policy, and every such radical change 
 makes our government less stable and more liable to become 
 the victim of hot-headed enthusiasts. It excludes from this 
 coxintry many men of advanced ideas and great ability, who 
 cannot be imagined as harmful to the nation. Such a one is 
 Tolstoi. It attempts to rid this country of evil by casting it 
 upon some other nation. At best it can only partly accom- 
 plish the purpose for which it was designed. But the most 
 important objection is that it is a real, if slight, limitation 
 of the right to freedom of thought and speech. In a country 
 with a republican government such as ours such liberty is 
 absolutely essential to the welfare of the nation. To have 
 progress in the government the mass of the people must 
 advance. This they cannot do without freedom ; unless leaders 
 of thought can go ahead of the crowd in their beliefs and can 
 teach freely the revelations that they have received. Such lib- 
 erty brings many evils ; the absence of such liberty brings the 
 destruction of any real democratic government. 
 
PART III 
 
 DESCEIPTIOISr 
 
 Vineyard Haven 
 
 Vineyard Haven is a funnel-shaped bight about 1% miles 
 long in a NE. and SW. direction and about 1^^ miles wide 
 at the entrance; it is on the northern side of Martha's Vine- 
 yard, 131^ miles WNW. % W. from Cross Eip Light-vessel, 
 Gy2 miles NW. from Cape Poge, and 3% miles SE. from 
 Nobska Point Lighthouse. 
 
 The points at the entrance are East Chop and West Chop, 
 each marked by a lighthouse. The harbor is easy of access 
 and is the most important and generally used harbor of refuge 
 for coasters between Provincetown and Narragansett Bay; it 
 is exposed to northeasterly winds, but vessels with good ground 
 tackle can ride out any gale. The greatest danger encountered 
 by vessels at anchor in a northeast gale is from vessels with 
 poor ground tackle, which are likely to drift and foul other 
 vessels and then go ashore. The depth is sufBeient for the 
 largest vessels passing through Vineyard Sound; it ranges 
 from 35 feet at the entrance to 15 feet near the head of the 
 harbor. On the west shore, near the head of the harbor, is the 
 town of Vineyard Haven, which has a little trade and daily 
 communication by steamer with New Bedford. There is 13 
 feet of water at the end of the wharf at low water. On the 
 east shore are numerous scattered houses and a wharf with 
 15 feet of water at its end at low water. A road leads from 
 this wharf to Cottage City, which is an important summer 
 resort. 
 
 The channel is unobstructed and the lead will be the best 
 guide in selecting an anchorage. When well inside the 
 entrance the water shoals gradually toward the western shore ; 
 toward the eastern shore the water shoals more abruptly and 
 the shore should be given a berth of about 300 yards. 
 
THE WIDGEON 307 
 
 Vessels anchor, according to draft, anywhere from the points 
 at the entrance to the head of the harbor, the light-draft ves- 
 sels favoring the western shore. 
 
 Coal, in limited quantity, and fresh water can be obtained 
 alongside the wharf for steamers of 15 feet draft or less; 
 steamers of greater draft can have coal brought alongside in 
 lighters. Provisions and some ship-chandler's stores can be 
 had at Vineyard Haven. 
 
 There is one marine railway at Vineyard Haven, capacity 
 about 200 tons, where vessels can be repaired. New Bedford 
 is the nearest place at which repairs to the machinery of 
 steamers can be made. 
 
 Storm warning displays are made on a staff near East Chop 
 Lighthouse. 
 
 There is a U. S. Marine Hospital at Vineyard Haven to 
 which seamen entitled to hospital treatment are sent. 
 
 The tidal currents have little velocity in the harbor; care 
 should, however, be taken on the ebb, which sets westward, 
 not to approach too closely to "West Chop, as the current there 
 sets on the ledges which make eastward and northward from 
 the point. 
 
 United States Coast Pilot, Part III. 
 
 The Widgeon 
 
 Characteristics. Adult male: mantle white, marked with 
 fine lines of dark gray; shoulders white, followed by bar of 
 black; wing-patch green; longer wing-feathers and tail dark 
 brown; head and neck chestnut, shading to buff on the fore- 
 head and to black on the throat; breast gray, tinged with 
 rufous and shading to white below, which extends across the 
 belly; sides marked with fine lines of dark gray; under tail- 
 coverts black ; bill slate blue, tipped with black ; legs and feet 
 dusky lead color. Soon after the mating season the male as- 
 sumes plumage similar to the female. Female: upper parts 
 grayish brown, — the feathers with paler margins ; under parts 
 
308 DESCRIPTION 
 
 white, the breast huffish brown ; under tail-eoverts barred with 
 brown; wing-patch grayish brown. Length 18 inches. 
 
 Nest. Concealed amid rank herbage or under a bush, on 
 the margin of a lake; a deep bowl made of sedges and lined 
 with grass and down. 
 
 Eggs. 7 — 13 (usually about 10) ; rich cream color or buff; 
 average size 2.20 by 1.50. 
 
 Montague Chamberlain: A Popular Handbook of the Ornithology 
 of the United States and Canada. (Copyright, 1891, by Little, 
 Brown, and Company.) 
 
 Wanted 
 
 Edward A , alias Charles M , aiias "Connie" B , 
 
 for forgery. 
 
 About 5 ft. 10 in. tall ; slight build ; weight about 148 lbs. 
 Sloping shoulders; left shoulder carried a little higher than 
 right. Puts head well forward in walking. 
 
 Light complexion ; smooth-shaven ; light brown hair, slightly 
 curling over temples; gray-blue eyes, set close together; 
 straight, medium-sized nose; high, narrow forehead; irregu- 
 lar mouth, drooping at right corner; thin lips; prominent 
 gold-filling in lower teeth; short, round chin; small, flat 
 ears. Has a half-inch scar (badly healed) on left cheek, and 
 a small mole under right ear. Is thirt_y-four years old. 
 
 When last seen, was dressed in close-fitting double-breasted 
 blue serge suit, blue and white striped shirt, black tie, black 
 derby hat, and tan button-shoes. 
 
 Please communicate with Chief of Police, F , Mass. 
 
 A Stage Setting 
 
 The scene represents a manicure establishment in New 
 Bond Street. It is a front room upon the first floor with 
 three French-windows affording a view of certain buildings 
 on the east side of the street. On the left, furthest from the 
 spectator, is a wide, arched opening, apparently leading to 
 another apartment, in which is the door giving entrance to 
 
A STAGE SETTING 309 
 
 the rooms from the staircase. Nearer, there is another 
 French-wijadow, opening on to an expanse of "leads" and 
 showing the exterior of the wall of the further room above- 
 mentioned. From the right, above the middle window, runs 
 an ornamental partition, about nine feet in height, with 
 panels of opaque glass. This partition extends more than 
 half-way across the room, then runs forward for some dis- 
 tance, turns off at a sharp angle, and terminates between the 
 arched opening and the window on the left. That part of 
 the partition running from right to left is closed on its 
 left side and forms, therefore, a separate room or compart- 
 ment. Facing the audience, on the right, is a door admitting 
 to this compartment; and, on the left, also in the partition 
 opposite the windows on the right, is an opening with n 
 looped-back portiere. The space between this opening and 
 the further room forms a narrow anteroom, containing articles 
 of furniture visible through the opening. Mirrors are affixed 
 to the right wall, between the lower and the middle window 
 and between the middle window and the partition, while on 
 the left, between the window and the partition, is another 
 mirror. A number of business cards are stuck in the frames 
 of the mirrors. On the right, before each of the two lower 
 windows, turned from the spectators, is a capacious arm- 
 chair, made in cane open-work. Attached to the arms of these 
 chairs are little screens — also made of cane — shielding, in a 
 measure, the occupants of the chairs from observation. Upon 
 both the right and left arms of these chairs are circular 
 frames in cane, shaped to receive bowls of water. Above each 
 of the screen-chairs stands a smaller chair, set to face the 
 larger one; and beside the small chair, on its right hand, is 
 a low table upon which are arranged the instruments and 
 toilet necessaries employed in the process of manicure. On 
 the right, between the window and the partition, is a three- 
 cornered what-not, on which are set out packets of soap and 
 of powder and other articles of the toilet. At the further 
 end of the room, in the centre, stands a desk laden with 
 account-books; and above the desk, its back against the par- 
 tition, is a chair. On the right is a hat-and-umbrella stand. 
 Nearer, in the centre, is a large circular table on which are 
 
310 DESCRIPTION 
 
 displayed bottles of scent and liquid soap, cases of instru- 
 ments for manicure, and some wooden bowls of bath-soap with 
 lather brushes. On the right and left are ordinary chains. 
 Placed against the partition on the left, and facing the audi- 
 ence, is a cabinet, making a display similar to that upon 
 the what-not. Nearer, on the left, there is another screen- 
 chair set to face the audience ; below it is a smaller seat and, 
 by the side of the smaller seat, another little table witli 
 manicure tools, etc. Some framed photographs of ladies 
 hang against the wood-work of the partition and in the wall- 
 spaces; and in the lower and middle windows, on the right, 
 bird-cages are suspended. 
 
 The light is that of a bright day in June. 
 
 Arthur W. Pinero: The Gay Lord Quex. (Reprinted by permis- 
 sion of Walter H. Baker and Company.) 
 
 A Winter Landscape 
 
 The charm of thj hour lay in its approaching dimness, in 
 the low-gliding .and pale-beaming sun. I was a mile from 
 Thomfield, in a lane noted for wild roses in summer, for 
 nuts and blackberries in autumn, and even now possessing a 
 few coral treasures in hips and haws, but whose best winter 
 delight lay in its utter solitude and leafless repose. If a 
 breath of air stirred, it made no sound here; for there was 
 not a holly, not an evergreen to rustle, and the stripped haw- 
 thorn and hazel bushes were still as the white worn stones 
 which causewayed the middle of the path. Far and wide, 
 on each side, there were only fields, where no cattle now 
 browsed ; and the little brown birds, which stirred occasionally 
 in the hedge, looked like single russet leaves that had for- 
 gotten to drop From my seat I could look down on 
 
 Thornfield: the gray and battlemented hall was the prin- 
 cipal object in the vale below me ; its woods and dark rookery 
 rose against the west. I lingered till the sun went down 
 amongst the trees, and sank crimson and clear behind them. 
 
 Charlotte Bronte : Jane Eyre. 
 
A FINE FOREST 311 
 
 A Coral Island 
 
 The isle — the undiscovered, the scarce believed in — now lay 
 before them and close aboard; and Herrick thought that 
 never in his dreams had he beheld anything more strange 
 and delicate. The beach was excellently white, the continu- 
 ous barrier of trees inimitably green; the land perhaps ten 
 feet high, the trees thirty more. Evei-y here and there, as 
 the schooner coasted northward, the wood was intermitted; 
 and he could see clear over the inconsiderable strip of land 
 (as man looks over a wall) to the lagoon within; and clear 
 over that, again, to where the far side of the atoll prolonged 
 its pencilling of trees against the morning sky. He tortured 
 
 himself to find analogies So slender it seemed amidst 
 
 the outrageous breakers, so frail and pretty, he would scarce 
 have wondered to see it sink and disappear without a sound, 
 and the waves close smoothly over its descent. 
 
 R. L. Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne. The Ebb Tide. 
 
 A Pine Forest 
 
 Beyond Kaluga we had to cross for a stretch of five miles 
 a beautiful pine forest, which remains connected in my 
 memory with some of the happiest reminiscences of my child- 
 hood. The sand in that forest was as deep as in an African 
 desert, and we went all the way on foot, while the horses, 
 stopping every moment, slowly dragged the carriages in the 
 sand. When I was in my teens, it was my delight to leave the 
 family behind, and to walk the whole distance by myself. 
 Immense red pines, centuries old, rose on every side, and 
 not a sound reached the ear except the voices of the lofty 
 trees. In a small ravine a fresh crystal spring murmured, 
 and a passer-by had left in it, for the use of those who should 
 come after him, a small funnel-shaped ladle, made of birch 
 bark, with a split stick for a handle. Noiselessly a squirrel 
 ran up a tree, and the underwood was as full of mysteries as 
 were the trees. In that forest my first love of nature and 
 my first dim perception of its incessant life were born. 
 
 Prince Kropotkin : Memoirs of a Revolutionist. 
 
312 DESCRIPTION 
 
 Drought in the Jungle 
 
 That spring, the mohiva tree, that Baloo was so fond of, 
 never flowered. The greeny, cream-colored, waxy-blossoms 
 were heat-killed before they were born, and only a few bad- 
 smelling petals came down when he stood on his hind legs 
 and shook the tree. Then, inch by inch, the untempered heat 
 crept into the heart of the Jungle, turning it yellow, brown, 
 and at last black. The green growths in the sides of the 
 ravines burned up to broken wires and curled films of dead 
 stuff; the hidden pools sank down and caked over, keeping 
 the least footmark on their edges as if it had been cast in 
 iron; the ]uiey-stemmed creepers fell away from the trees 
 they clung to and died at their feet; the bamboos withered, 
 clanking when the hot winds blew, and the moss peeled off 
 the rocks deep in the Jungle, till they were as bare and as hot 
 as the quivering blue boulders in the bed of the stream, 
 
 Rudyard Kipling: The Second Jungle Book. 
 
 At the Devil's Limekiln 
 
 So on they went to the point, where the cyclopean wall of 
 granite cliff, which forms the western side of Lundy, ends 
 sheer in a precipice of some three hundred feet, topped by 
 a pile of snow-white rock, bespangled with golden lichens. 
 As they approached, a raven, who sat upon the topmost stone, 
 black against the bright blue sky, flapped lazily away, and 
 sank down the abysses of the cliff, as if he scented the corpses 
 underneath the surge. Below them from the gull-rock rose a 
 thousand birds, and filled the air with sound; the choughs 
 cackled, the hacklets wailed, the great black-backs laughed 
 querulous defiance at the intruders, and a single falcon, with 
 an angry gark, dashed out from beneath their feet, and hung 
 poised aloft, watching the sea fowl which swung slowly round 
 and round below. 
 
 It was a glorious sight upon a glorious day. To the north- 
 ward the glens rush down toward the cliff, crowned with gray 
 
THE 1 1 EIR A T WHIT FORD PRIORS i 1 3 
 
 t-nii^js, and carpeted with purple heather and green fern; and 
 from their feet stretched away to the westward the sapphire 
 rollers of the vast Atlantic, crowned with a thousand crests of 
 flying foam. On their left hand, some ten miles to the south, 
 stood out against the sky the purple wall of Hartland cliffs, 
 sinking lower and lower, as they trended away to the south- 
 ward along the lonely iron-bound shores of Cornwall, until 
 they faded, dim and blue, into the blue horizon, forty miles 
 away. 
 
 'VhG sky was flecked with clouds, which rushed toward them 
 fast upon the roaring south-west wind; and the warm ocean 
 breeze swept up the cliffs, and whistled through the heather 
 bells, and howled in cranny and in crag. 
 
 Till the pillars and clefts of the granite 
 Rang like a God-swept lyre ; 
 
 while Amyas, a proud smile upon his lips, stood breasting 
 that genial stream of airy wine with swelling nostrils and 
 fast heaving chest, and seemed to drink in life from every 
 gust. 
 
 Charles Kingsley: Westward Hoi 
 
 The Weir at Whitford Priors 
 
 Launcelot sat and tried to catch perch, but Tregarva's 
 woids haunted him. lie liglited his eifjiir, and tried to think 
 earnestly over the matter, but he had got into the wrong 
 place for thinking. All his thoughts, all his sympathies, 
 were drowned in the rush and whirl of the water. He forgot 
 everything else in the mere animal enjoyment of sight and 
 sound. Like many young men at his erisis of life, he had 
 given himself up to the mere contemplation of nature till 
 he had become her slave; and now a luscious scene, a sing- 
 ing bird, were enough to allure his mind away from the 
 most earnest and awful thoughts. He tried to think, but 
 , the river would not let him. It thundered and spouted out 
 behind him from the hatches, and leapt madly past him, and 
 caught his eyes in spite of him and swept them away down its 
 dancing waves, and then let them go again only to sweep them 
 
314 DESCRIPTION 
 
 down again and again, till his brain felt a delicious dizziness 
 from the everlasting rush and the everlasting roar. And 
 then below, how it spread, and writhed, and whirled into 
 transparent fans, hissing and twining snakes, polished glass 
 wreaths, huge crystal bells, which boiled up from the bottom, 
 and dived again beneath long threads of creamy foam, and 
 swung round posts and roots, and rushed blackening under 
 dark weed-fringed boughs, and gnawed at the marly banks, 
 and shook the ever restless bulrushes, till it was swept away 
 and down over the white pebbles and olive weeds, in one broad 
 rippling sheet of molten silver, towards the distant sea. 
 Downwards it fleeted ever, and bore his thoughts floating 
 on its oily stream; and the great trout, with their yellow 
 sides and peacock backs, lunged among the eddies, and the 
 silver grayling dimpled and wandered upon the shallows, 
 and the Mayflies flickered and rustled round him like water 
 fairies, with their green gauzy wings; the coot clanked 
 musically among the reeds; the frogs hummed their ceaseless 
 vesper monotone; the kingfisher darted from his hole in the 
 bank like a blue spark of electric light; the swallow's bills 
 snapped as they twined and hawked above the pool ; the swifts' 
 wings whirred like musket balls, as they rushed screaming 
 past his head; and ever the river fleeted by, bearing his eyes 
 away down the current, till its wild eddies began to glow 
 with crimson beneath the setting sun. 
 Charles Kingsley: Yeast. 
 
 The Approach to Hawokth Parsonage 
 
 The town of Keighley never quite melts into country on 
 the road to Haworth, although the houses become more sparse 
 as the traveller journeys upwards to the grey round hills that 
 seem to bound his journey in a westerly direction. First 
 come some villas; just sufRciently retired from the road to. 
 show that they can scarcely belong to any one liable to be 
 summoned in a hurry, at the call of suffering or danger, from 
 his comfortable fireside; the lawyer, the doctor, and the 
 
THE APPROACH TO HAWORTH PARSONAGE 31S 
 
 clergyman, live at hand, and hardly in the suburbs, -with a 
 screen of shrubs for concealment. 
 
 In a town one does not look for vivid colouring; what 
 there may be of this is furnished by the wares in the shops, 
 not by foliage or atmospheric effects ; but in the country some 
 brilliancy and vividness seems to be instinctively expected, 
 and there is consequently a slight feeling of disappointment 
 at the grey neutral tint of every object, near or far off, on 
 the way from Keighley to Haworth. The distance is about 
 four miles; and, as I have said, what with villas, great 
 worsted factories, rows of workmen's houses, with here and 
 there an old-fashioned farm-house and outbuildings, it can 
 hardly be called "country^' any part of the way. For two 
 miles the road passes over tolerably level ground, distant 
 hills on the left, a "beck" flowing through meadows on the 
 right, and furnishing water power, at certain points, to the 
 factories built on its banks. The air is dim and lightless 
 with the smoke from all these habitations and places of busi- 
 ness. The soil in the valley (or "bottom," to use the local 
 term) is rich; but, as the road begins to ascend, the vegeta- 
 tion becomes poorer; it does not flourish, it merely exists; 
 and, instead of trees, there are only bushes and shrubs about 
 the dwellings. Stone dykes are everywhere used in place of 
 hedges; and what crops there are, on the patches of arable 
 land, consist of pale, himgry-looking, grey-green oats. Eight 
 before the traveller on this road rises Haworth village; he 
 can see it for two miles before he arrives, for it is situated 
 on the side of a pretty steep hill, with a background of dun 
 and purple moors, rising and sweeping away yet higher than 
 the church, which is built at the very summit of the long 
 narrow street. All round the horizon there is this same line 
 of sinuous wave-like hills; the scoops into which they fall 
 only revealing other hills beyond, of similar colour and shape, 
 crowned with wild, bleak moors — grand, from the ideas of 
 solitude and loneliness which they suggest, or oppressive from 
 the feeling which they give of being pent-up by some monot- 
 onous and illimitable barrier, according to the mood of mind 
 in which the spectator may be. 
 
 For a short distance the road appears to turn away from 
 
316 DESCRIPTION 
 
 Haworth, as it winds round the base of the shoulder of a 
 hill; but then it crosses a bridge over the "beek," and the 
 ascent through the village begins. The flag-stones with which 
 it is paved are placed end-ways, in order to give a better 
 hold to the horses' feet; and, even with this help, they seem 
 to be in constant danger of slipping backwards. The old 
 stone houses are high compared to the width of the street, 
 which makes an abrupt turn before reaching the more level 
 ground at the head of the village, so that the steep aspect of 
 the place, in one part, is almost like that of a wall. But this 
 surmounted, the church lies a little off the main road on 
 the left; a hundred yards, or so, and the driver relaxes his 
 care, and the horse breathes more easily, as they pass into 
 the quiet little by-street that leads to Haworth Parsonage. 
 The churchyard is on one side of this lane, the school-house 
 and the sexton's dwelling (where the curates formerly lodged) 
 on the other. 
 
 The parsonage stands at right angles to the road, facing 
 down upon the church; so that, in fact, parsonage, church, 
 and belfried school-house, form three sides of an irregular 
 oblong, of which the fourth is open to the fields and moors 
 that lie beyond. The area of this oblong is filled up by a 
 crowded churchyard, and a small garden or court in front 
 of the clergjrman's house. As the entrance to this from the 
 road is at the side, the path goes round the corner into 
 the little plot of ground. Underneath the windows is a nar- 
 row flower-border, carefully tended in days of yore, although 
 only the most hardy plants could be made to grow there. 
 Withia the stone wall, which keeps out the surrounding 
 churchyard, are bushes of elder and lilac; the rest of the 
 ground is occupied by a square grass plot and a gravel 
 walk. The house is of grey stone, two stories high, heavily 
 roofed with flags, in order to resist the winds that might 
 strip off a lighter covering. It appears to have been buUt 
 about a hundred years ago, and to consist of four rooms on 
 each story; the two windows on the right (as the visitor 
 stands, with his back to the church, ready to enter in at the 
 front door) belonging to Mr. Bronte's study, the two on the 
 left to the family sitting-room. Everything about the place 
 
AT BEACHY HEAD 317 
 
 tells of the most dainty order, the most exquisite cleanliness. 
 The door-steps are spotless; the small old-fashioned window- 
 panes glitter like looking-glass. Inside and outside of that 
 house cleanliness goes up into its essence, purify. 
 
 The little church lies, as I mentioned, above most of tha 
 houses in the village; and the graveyard rises above the 
 church, and is terribly full of upright tombstones. 
 
 Mrs. Gaskell; Life of Charlotte Bronte. 
 
 At Beachy Head 
 
 The waves coming round the promontory before the west 
 wind still give the idea of a flowing stream, as they did in 
 Homer's days. Here beneath the cliff, standing where beach 
 and sand meet, it is still; the wind passes six hundred feet 
 overhead; but yonder, every larger wave rolling before the 
 breeze breaks over the rocks; a white line of spray rushes 
 along them, gleaming in the sunshine ; for a moment the dark 
 rockwall disappears, till the spray sinks. 
 
 The sea seems higher than the spot where I stand, its 
 surface on a higher level, — raised like. a green mound, — as if 
 it could burst it and occupy the space up to the foot of the 
 cliff in a moment. It will not do so, I know; but there is 
 an infinite possibility about the sea; it may do what it is 
 not recorded to have done. It is not to be ordered; it may 
 overleap the bounds human observation has fixed for it. It 
 has a potency unfathomable. There is still something in it 
 not quite grasped and understood, something still to be dis- 
 covered, a mystery. 
 
 So the white spray rushes along the low broken wall of 
 rocks, the sun gleams on the flying fragments of the wave; 
 again it sinks, and the rhythmic motion holds the mind, as 
 an invisible force holds back the tide. A faith of expectancy, 
 a sense that something may drift up from the unknown, u 
 large belief in the unseen resources of the endless space out 
 yonder, soothes the mind with dreamy hope. 
 
 The little rules and little experiences — all the petty ways 
 
318 DESCRIPTION 
 
 of narrow life — are shut off behind by the ponderous and 
 impassable cliff ; as if we had dwelt in the dim light of a cave, 
 but coming out at last to look at the sun, a great stone had 
 fallen and closed the entrance, so that there was no return 
 to the shadow. The impassable precipice shuts off our former 
 selves of yesterday, forcing us to look out over the sea only, 
 or up to the deeper heaven. 
 
 These breadths draw out the soul; we feel that we have 
 wider thoughts than we knew; the soul has been living as 
 it were in a nutshell, all unaware of its own power, and now 
 suddenly finds freedom in the sun and the sky. Straight, as 
 if sawn down from turf to beach, the cliff shuts off the 
 human world, for the sea knows no time and no era; you 
 cannot tell what century it is from the face of the sea. 
 A Eoman trireme suddenly rounding the white edge-line 
 of chalk, borne on wind and oar from the Isle of Wight 
 towards the gray castle at Pevensey (already old in olden 
 days), would not seem strange. What wonder could surprise 
 us coming from the wonderful sea ? 
 
 The little rills winding through the sand have made an 
 islet of a detached rock by the beach ; limpets cover it, adher- 
 ing like rivet-heads. In the stillness here, under the roof 
 of the wind so high above, the sound of the sand draining 
 itself is audible. From the cliff, blocks of chalk have fallen, 
 leaving hollows as when a knot drops from a beam. They 
 lie crushed together at the base, and on the point of this 
 jagged ridge a wheatear perches. 
 
 There are ledges three hundred feet above; and from 
 these now and then a jackdaw glides out and returns again 
 to his place, where, when still and with folded wings, he is 
 but a speck of black. A spire of chalk still higher stands 
 out from the wall ; but the rains have got behind it, and will 
 cut the crevice deeper and deeper into its foundation. Water 
 too has carried the soil from under the turf at the summit 
 over the verge, forming brown streaks. 
 
 Upon the beach lies a piece of timber, part of a wreck; the 
 wood is torn and the fibers rent where it was battered against 
 the dull edge of the rocks. The heat of the sun burns, 
 thrown back by the dazzling chalk; the river of ocean flows 
 
AT BEACHV HEAD 319 
 
 ceaselessly, casting the spray over the stones; the unchanged 
 sky is blue. 
 
 Let us go back and mount the steps at the Gap, and rest 
 on the sward there. I feel that I want the presence of 
 grass. The sky is a softer blue, and the sun genial ; now the 
 eye and the mind alike are relieved — the one of the strain 
 of too great solitude (not the solitude of the woods), the 
 other of too brilliant and hard a contrast of colors. Touch 
 but the grass, and harmony returns; it is repose after exalta- 
 tion. 
 
 A vessel comes round the promontory. It is not a trireme 
 of old Eome, nor the "fair and stately galley" Count Amaldus 
 hailed with its seamen singing the mystery of the sea; it is 
 but a brig in ballast, high out of the water, black of hull 
 and dingy of sail; still it is a ship, and there is always an 
 interest about a ship. She is so near, running along but 
 just outside the reef, that the deck is visible. Up rises her 
 stem as the billows come fast and roll under; then her 
 bow lifts, and immediately she rolls, and loosely swaying 
 with the sea, drives along. 
 
 The slope of the billow now behind her is white with 
 the bubbles of her passage, rising too from her rudder. Steer- 
 ing athwart with a widening angle from the land, she is laid 
 to clear the distant point of Dungeness. Next a steamer 
 glides forth, unseen till she passed the cliff; and thus each 
 vessel that comes from the westward has the charm of the 
 unexpected. Eastward there is many a sail working slowly 
 into the wind, and as they approach, talking in the language 
 of flags with the watch on the summit of the Head. 
 
 The sea-gulls as they settle on the surface ride high out of 
 the water, like the mediaeval caravels, with their sterns almost 
 as tall as the masts. Their unconcerned flight, with crooked 
 wings unbent, as if it were no matter to them whether they 
 flew or floated, in its peculiar jerking motion reminds one of 
 the lapwing; the heron has it too, a little; as if aquatic or 
 water-side birds had a common and distinct action of the 
 wing. 
 
 Sometimes a porpoise comes along, but just" beyond the 
 
320 DESCRIPTION 
 
 reef; looking down on him from the verge of the cliff, his 
 course can be watched. His dark body, wet and oily, appears 
 on the surface for two seconds; and then, throwing up his 
 tail like the fluke of an anchor, down he goes. Now look 
 forward along the waves some fifty yards or so, and he will 
 come up, the sunshine gleaming on the water as it runs off 
 his back, to again dive, and reappear after a similar interval. 
 Even when the eye can no longer distinguish the form, the 
 spot where he rises is visible, from the slight change in the 
 surface. 
 
 The hill receding in hollows leaves a narrow plain between 
 the foot of the sward and the cliff; it is plowed, and the teams 
 come to the footpath which follows the edge; and thus those 
 who plow the sea and those who plow the land look upon 
 each other. The one sees the vessel change her tack, the 
 other notes the plow turning at the end of the furrow. Bram- 
 ble-bushes" project over the dangerous wall of chalk, and 
 grasses fill up the interstices, a hedge suspended in air; but 
 be careful not to reach too far for the blackberries. 
 
 The green sea is on the one hand, the yellow stubble on 
 the other. The porpoise dives along beneath, the sheep graze 
 above. Green seaweed lines the reef over which the white 
 spray flies, blue lucerne dots the field. The pebbles of the 
 beach seen from the height mingle in a faint blue tint, as if 
 the distance ground them into colored sand. Leaving the 
 footpath now, and crossing the stubble to "Prance," as the 
 wide open hollow in the down is called by the shepherds, 
 it is no easy matter in dry summer weather to climb the 
 steep turf to the furze line above. 
 
 Dry grass is as slippery as if it were hair, and the sheep 
 have fed it too close for a grip of the hand. Under the 
 furze (still far from the summit) they have worn a path — 
 a narrow ledge, cut by their cloven feet — ^through the sward. 
 It is time to rest; and already, looking back, the sea has 
 extended to an indefinite horizon. This climb of a few hun- 
 dred feet opens a view of so many miles more. But the ships 
 lose their individuality and human character; they are so 
 far, so very far away, they do not take hold of the sympathies; 
 they seem like sketdies — cunningly executed, but only sketches 
 
AT BEACHY HEAD 321 
 
 — on the immense canvas of the ocean. There is something 
 unreal about them. 
 
 On a calm day, when the surface is smooth as if the 
 brimming ocean had been stroked, — the rod passed across the 
 top of the measure, thrusting off the irregidarities of wave; 
 when the distant green from long simmering under the sun 
 becomes pale; when the sky, without cloud, but with some 
 slight haze in it, likewise loses its hue, and the two so com- 
 mingle in the pallor of heat that they cannot be separated, 
 — then the still ships appear suspended in space. They are 
 as much held from above as upborne from beneath. 
 
 They are motionless, midway in space — whether it is sea 
 or air is not to be known. They neither float nor fly, they 
 are suspended. There is no force in the flat sail, the mast is 
 lifeless, the hull without impetus. For hours they linger, 
 changeless as the constellations ; still, silent, motionless, phan- 
 tom vessels on a void sea. 
 
 Another climb up from the sheep-path, and it is not far 
 then to the terrible edge of that tremendous cliff which rises 
 straighter than a ship's side out of the sea, six hundred feet 
 above the detached rock below, where the limpets cling like 
 rivet-heads, and the sand rills run around it. But it is not 
 possible to look down to it; the glance of necessity falls out- 
 wards, as a raindrop from the eaves is deflected by the 
 wind, because it is the edge where the mold crumbles; the 
 rootlets of the grass are exposed ; the chalk is about to break 
 away in flakes. 
 
 You cannot lean over as over a parapet, lest such a flake 
 should detach itself; lest a mere trifle should begin to fall, 
 awakening a dread and dormant inclination to slide and 
 finally plunge like it. Stand back; the sea there goes out 
 and out to the left and to the right, and how far is it to 
 the blue overhead? The eye must stay here a long period 
 and drink in these distances, before it can adjust the measure 
 and know exactly what it sees. 
 
 Here, reclining on the grass — the verge of the cliff rising 
 a little shuts out the actual sea— the glance goes forth into 
 the hollow unsupported. It is sweeter towards the corn- 
 ricks, and yet the mind will not be satisfied, but ever turns 
 
322 DESCRIPTION 
 
 to the vrnknown. The edge and abyss recall us ; the boundless 
 plain — ^for it appears solid as the waves are leveled by dis- 
 tance — demands the gaze. But with use it becomes easier, 
 and the eye labors less. There is a promontory standing 
 out from the main wall, whence you can see the side of the 
 cliff, getting a iiank view, as from a tower. 
 
 The jackdaws occasionally iloating out from the ledge 
 are as mere specks from above, as they were from below. The 
 reef running out from the beach, though now covered by the 
 tide, is visible as you look down on it through the water; 
 the seaweed, which lay matted and half dry on the rocks, 
 is now under the wave. Boats have come round, and are 
 beached; how helplessly little they seem beneath the cliff 
 by the sea ! 
 
 On returning homewards towards Eastbourne, stay awhile 
 by the tumulus on the slope. There are others hidden among 
 the furze; butterflies flutter over them, and the bees hum. 
 round by day; by night the nighthawk passes, coming up' 
 from the fields and even skirting the sheds and houses below. 
 The rains beat on them, and the storm drives the dead leaves 
 over their low green domes; the waves boom on the shore 
 far down. 
 
 How many times has the morning star shone yonder in 
 the east? All the mystery of the sun and of the stars centers 
 around these lowly mounds. 
 
 But the glory of these glorious downs is the breeze. The 
 air in the valleys immediately beneath them is pure and 
 pleasant; but the least climb, even a hundred feet, put? 
 you on a plane with the atmosphere itself, uninterrupted 
 by so much as the tree-tops. It is air without admixture. If 
 it comes from the south the waves refine it; if inland, the 
 wheat and flowers and grass distill it. The great headland 
 and the whole rib of the promontory is windswept and washed 
 with air; the billows of the atmosphere roll over it. 
 
 The sun searches out every erevice amongst the grass, nor 
 is there the smallest fragment of surface which is not sweet- 
 ened by air and light. Underneath, the chalk itself is pure, 
 and the turf thus washed by wind and rain, sun-dried and 
 dew-scented, is a couch prepared with thyme to rest on. Dis- 
 
AT BEACHY HEAD 323 
 
 cover some excuse to remain up there always, to search for 
 stray mushrooms — they will be stray, for the crop is gathered 
 extremely early in the morning — or to make a list of flowers 
 and grasses; to do anything, and if not, go always without 
 any pretext. Lands of gold have been found, and lands of 
 spices and precious merchandise; but this is the land of 
 health. 
 
 There is the sea below to bathe in, the air of the sky 
 up hither to breathe, the sun to infuse the invisible mag- 
 netism of his heams. These are the three potent medicines 
 of nature, and they are medicines that by degrees strengthen 
 not only the body but the unquiet mind. It is not neces- 
 sary to always look out over the sea. By strolling along the 
 slopes of the ridge a little way inland, there is another scene 
 where hills roll on after hills till the last and largest hides 
 those that succeed bdiind it. 
 
 Vast cloud-shadows darken one, and lift their veil from 
 another; like the sea, their tint varies with the hue of the 
 sky over them. Deep, narrow valleys — ^Isines in the hills — 
 draw the footsteps downwards into their solitude; but there 
 is always the delicious air, turn whither you will, and there 
 is always the grass, the touch of which refreshes. Though 
 not in sight, it is pleasant to know that the sea is close at 
 hand, and that you have only to mount to the ridge to view 
 it. At sunset the curves of the shore westward are filled 
 with a Ixuninous mist. 
 
 Or if it should be calm, and you should like to look at the 
 massive headline from the level of the sea, row out a mile 
 from the beach. Eastwards a bank of red vapor shuts in 
 the sea; the wavelets — no larger than those raised by the 
 oar — on that side are purple as if wine had been spilt upon 
 them, but westwards the ripples shimmer with palest gold. 
 
 The sun sinks behind the summit of the downs, and slender 
 streaks of purple are drawn along above them. A shadow 
 comes forth from the cliff; a darkness dwells on the water; 
 something tempts the eye upwards, and near the zenith there 
 is a star. 
 
 Richard Jeffries: Nature Near London. 
 
324 DESCRIPTION 
 
 Egdon Heath 
 
 A Saturday afternoon in November was approaching the 
 time of twilight, and the vast tract of uninclosed wild known 
 as Egdon Heath embrowned itself moment after moment. 
 Overhead, the hollow stretch of whitish cloud shutting out 
 the sky was as a tent which had the whole heath for its 
 floor. 
 
 The heaven being spread with this pallid screen, the earth 
 with the swarthiest of vegetation, their closing line at the 
 horizon was clearly marked. In such contrast the heath 
 wore the appearance of an installment of night, which had 
 taken up its place before its astronomical hour was come; 
 darkness had to a great extent arrived hereon, while day 
 stood distinct in the sky. Looking upward, a furze-cutter 
 would have been inclined to continue work; looking down, 
 he would have decided to finish his fagot and go home. The 
 meeting rims of the world and of the firmament seemed to 
 be a division in time no less than a division in matter. The 
 face of the heath by its mere complexion added half an hour 
 to eve; it could in like manner retard the dawn, sadden 
 noon, anticipate the frowning of storms scarcely generated, 
 and intensify the opacity of a moonless midnight to a cause 
 of shaking and dread. 
 
 In fact, precisely at this transitional point of its nightly 
 roll into darkness, the great and particular glory of the Egdon 
 waste began, and nobody could be said to understand the 
 heath, who had not been there at such a time. It could 
 best be felt when it could not clearly be seen. Its completed 
 effect and explanation lay in this and the succeeding hours 
 before the next dawn; then, and only then, did it tell its 
 true tale. The spot was indeed a close relation of night; 
 and when the night was beginning to draw near, a certain 
 tendency to gravitate together could be perceived between 
 its shades and the scene. The somber stretches of round 
 and hollow seemed to rise to meet the evening gloom in pure 
 sympathy; nay, they anticipated its livery, putting on the 
 obscurity of night while the upper night of the sky was 
 still far in the distance. First, the heath exhaled dark- 
 ness ; next, the heavens precipitated it. The obscurity in the 
 
EGDON HEATH 325 
 
 air and the obscurity in the land then close together in a 
 black fraternization toward which each advanced half-way. 
 
 The place became full of a watchful intentness now. 
 When other things sank brooding to sleep, the heath appeared 
 slowly to awake and listen. Evory night its Titanic form 
 seemed thus to await something. What it awaited none 
 could say. It had waited unmoved during so many centuries, 
 through the crises of so many othiT things, that it could 
 only be imagined to await one last crisis — the final over- 
 throw. 
 
 It was a spot which returned upon the memory of those 
 who loved it with an aspect of peculiar and kindly con- 
 gruity. Smiling champaigns of flowers and fruit hardly 
 do this, for they are permanently harmonious only with an 
 existence of better reputation than the present. Twilight 
 combined with the scenery of Egdon Heath to evolve a thing 
 majestic without severity, impressive without showiness, 
 emphatic in its admonitions, grand in its simplicity. The 
 qualifications which frequently invest the facade of a prison 
 with far more dignity than is found in the facade of a palace 
 double its size lent to this heath a sublimity in which spots 
 renowned for their attractions were utterly wanting. Gay 
 prospects wed happily with gay times; but, alas, if times 
 be not gay! Men have oftener suffered from the mockery 
 of a place too smiling for their reason than from the oppres- 
 sion of surroundings over-sadly tinged. Haggard Egdon 
 appealed to subtler and scarcer instinct, to a more recently 
 learned emotion, than that which responds to the sort of 
 beauty called charming. 
 
 The most thorough-going ascetic could feel that he had a 
 natural right to wander on Egdon; he was keeping within 
 the line of legitimate indulgence when he laid himself open 
 to influences such as these. Colors and beauties so far sub- 
 dued were at least the birthright of all. Only in summer 
 days of highest feather did its mood touch the level of 
 gayety. Intensity was more usually reached by way of the 
 solemn than by way of the brilliant, and such a sort of 
 intensity was often arrived at during winter darkness, 
 tempests, and mists. 
 
326 DESCRIPTION 
 
 Then Bgdon was aroused to reciprocity. The storm was 
 its lover; the wind was its friend. Then it became the lair 
 of strange phantoms ; it was found to be the hitherto unrecog- 
 nized original of those wild regions of obscurity which are 
 vaguely felt to be compassing us about in midnight dreams 
 of flight and disaster, and are never thought . of after the 
 dream till revived by scenes like this. 
 
 The untamable, Ishmaelitish thing that Egdon now was, 
 it always had been. Civilization was its enemy. • Ever 
 since the beginning of vegetation its soil had worn the same 
 antique brown dress — the natural and invariable garment 
 of the formation. In its monotonous costume lay a certain 
 vein of satire on human vanity in clothes. For this reason 
 a person on a heath, in raiment of modern cut and colors, 
 wears more or less an anomalous look. We seem to want 
 the oldest and simplest human clothing where the clothing 
 of the earth is so primitive. 
 
 To recline on a stump of thorn in the central valley of 
 Egdon, between afternoon and night, as now, where the eye 
 could reach nothing of the world outside the summits and 
 shoulders of heath-land which filled the whole circumfer- 
 ence of its glance, and to know that everything around and 
 underneath had been from prehistoric times as unaltered as 
 the stars overhead, gave ballast to the mind adrift on change, 
 and harassed by the irrepressible New. The great inviolate 
 place had an ancient permanence which the sea cannot claim. 
 Who can say of a particular sea that it is old? Distilled 
 by the sun, kneaded by the moon, it is renewed in a year, 
 in a day, in an hour. The sea changed, the fields changed, 
 the rivers changed, the villages changed, the people changed, 
 yet Bgdon remained. Those surfaces were neither so steep 
 as to be destructible by weather, nor so flat as to be the victim 
 of floods and deposits. With the exception of an aged high- 
 way, and a still more aged barrow — themselves almost crystal- 
 lized to cosmic products by long continuance — even the trifling 
 irregularities were not caused by pickaxe, plough, or spade" 
 but remained as the very finger-touches of the last geological 
 change. 
 
 Thomas Hardy: The Return of the Native. 
 
CAPRI 327 
 
 The Downs 
 
 . . . He described the downs fronting the paleness of 
 earliest dawn, and then their arch and curve and dip against 
 the pearly grey of the half-glow; and then, among their 
 hollows, lo, the illumination of the East all around, and 
 up and away, and a gallop for miles along the turfy thymy 
 rolling billows, land to left, sea to right, below you. "It's 
 the nearest hit to wings we can make, Cecilia." . . . Com- 
 pare you the Alps with them? If you could jump on the 
 back of an eagle, you might. The Alps have height. But 
 the downs have swiftness. Those long stretching lines of 
 the downs are greyhounds in full career. To look at them 
 is to set the blood racing! Speed is on the downs, glorious 
 motion, odorous air of sea and herb, exquisite as in the 
 isles of Greece. 
 
 George Meredith: Beauchamp's Career. 
 
 Capri 
 
 Among the broken heights to the east or in the two central 
 valleys there are scores of different walks and a hundred 
 diflferent nooks, and each walk and nook has its own inde- 
 pendent charm. Steeps clothed from top to bottom in the 
 thick greenery of the lemon or orange; sudden breaks like 
 that of Metromania where a blue strip of sea seems to have 
 been cunningly let in among the rocks; backgrounds of 
 tumbled limestone; slopes dusty gray with wild cactus; 
 thickets of delightful greenery where one lies hidden in 
 the dense scrup of myrtle and arbutus; olive-yards creeping 
 thriftily up the hill-sides and over the cliffs and down every 
 slope and into every rock-corner wjiere the Caprese peasant- 
 farmer can find footing; homesteads of gray stone with low 
 domed Oriental roofs on which women sit spinning, their 
 figures etched out against the sky ; gardens where the writhed 
 fig-trees stand barely waiting for the foliage of the spring; 
 nooks amidst broken boulders and vast fingers of rock with 
 the dark mass of the carouba flinging its shade over them; 
 heights from which one looks suddenly northward and south- 
 ward over a hundred miles of sea — this is Capri. The sea 
 
328 DESCRIPTION 
 
 is everywhere. At one turn its waters go flashing away 
 unbroken by a single sail towards the far-ofE African coast 
 where the Caprese boatmen are coral-fishing through the hot 
 summer months; at another the eye ranges over the tumbled 
 mountain masses above Amalfi to the dim sweep of coast 
 where the haze hides the temples -of Paestum ; at another the 
 Bay of Naples opens suddenly before us, Vesuvius and the 
 blue deep of Castellamare and the white city-line along the 
 coast seen with a strange witchery across twenty miles of 
 clear air. 
 
 The island is a paradise of silence for those to whom 
 silence is a delight. One wanders about in the vineyards 
 without a sound save the call of the vine-dressers; one lies 
 on the cliff and hears a thousand feet below the dreamy wash 
 of the sea. There is hardly the cry of a bird to break the 
 spell; even the girls who meet one with a smile on the hill- 
 side smile quietly and gravely in the Southern fashion as they 
 pass by. It is the stillest place that the sun shines on; but 
 with all its stillness it is far from being a home of bore- 
 dom. There are, in fact, few places in the world so full of 
 interest. The artist finds a world of "studies" in its rifts 
 and cliff-walls, in the sailor groups along its beach and the 
 Greek faces of the girls in its vineyards. The geologist 
 reads the secret of the past in its abruptly tilted strata, in 
 a deposit of volcanic ash, in the fossils and bones which 
 Augustus set the fashion of collecting before geology was 
 thought of. The historian and the archaeologist have a yet 
 wider field. Capyi is a perfect treasure-house of Roman 
 remains, and though in later remains the island is far 
 poorer, the ruins of mediaeval castles crown the heights of 
 Castiglione and Anacapri, and the mother church of San 
 Costanzo with its central dome supported on marble shafts 
 from the ruins hard by is an early specimen of Sicilian or 
 southern Italian architecture. Perhaps the most remark- 
 able touch of the South is seen in the low stone vaults which 
 form the roofs of all the older houses of Capri, and whose 
 upper surface serves as a terrace where the women gather 
 in the sunshine in a way which brings home to one oddly 
 the recollections of Syria and Jerusalem. 
 John Richard Green: Stray Studies. 
 
BEFORE THE STORM 329 
 
 Before the Storm 
 
 The night had a sinister aspect. A heated breeze from 
 the south slowly fanned the summits of lofty objects, and 
 in the sky dashes of buoyant cloud were sailing in a course 
 at right angles to that of another stratum, neither of them 
 in the direction of the breeze below. The moon, as seen 
 through these films, had a lurid metallic look. The fields 
 were sallow with the impure light, and all were tinged in 
 monochrome, as if beheld through stained glass. The same 
 evening the sheep had trailed homeward head to tail, the 
 behavior of the rooks had been confused, and the horses had 
 moved with timidity and caution. 
 
 Thunder was imminent, and, taking some secondary appear- 
 ances into consideration, it was likely to be followed 
 by one of the lengthened rains which mark the close of dry 
 weather for the season. Before twelve hours had passed a 
 harvest atmosphere would be a bygone thing. 
 
 Gabriel proceeded towards his home. In approaching the 
 door, his toe kicked something which felt and sounded soft, 
 leathery, and distended, like a boxing-glove. It was a large 
 toad traveling humbly across the path. Oak took it up, 
 thinking it might be better to kill the creature to save it 
 from pain ; but finding it iminjured, he placed it again among 
 the grass. He knew what this direct message from the 
 Great Mother meant. And soon came another. 
 
 When he struck a light indoors there appeared upon the 
 table a thin glistening streak, as if a brush of varnish had 
 been lightly dragged across it. Oak's eyes followed the ser- 
 pentine sheen to the other side, where it led to a huge brown 
 garden-slug, which had come indoors to-night for reasons 
 of its own. It was Nature's second way of hinting to him 
 that he was to prepare for foul weather. 
 
 Oak sat down meditating for nearly an hour. During 
 this time two black spiders, of the kind common in thatched 
 houses, promenaded the ceiling, ultimately dropping to the 
 floor. This reminded him that if there was one class of 
 
330 DESCRIPTION 
 
 manifestation on this matter that he thoroughly understood, 
 it was the instincts of sheep. He left the room, ran across 
 two or three fields towards the flock, got upon a hedge, and 
 looked over among them. 
 
 They were crowded close together on the other side around 
 some furze bushes, and the first peculiarity observable was 
 that, on the sudden appearance of Oak's head over the fence, 
 they did not stir or run away. They had now a terror of 
 something greater than their terror of man. But Ihis was 
 not the most noteworthy feature: they, were all grpuped in 
 such a way that their tails, without a single exception, were 
 towards that half of the horizon from which the storm 
 threatened. There was an inner circle closely huddled, and 
 outside these they radiated wider apart, the pattern formed 
 by the flock as a whole not being unlike a vandyked lace 
 collar, to which the clump of furze bushes stood in the posi- 
 tion of a wearer's neck. 
 
 Every voice in nature was unanimous in bespeaking change. 
 But two translations attached to these dimib expressions. 
 Apparently there was to be a thunder storm, and afterwards 
 a cold continuous rain. The creeping things seemed to know 
 all about the later rain, but little of the interpolated thunder- 
 storm; whilst the sheep knew all about the thunder-storm 
 and nothing of the later rain. 
 
 Thomas Hardy: Far From the Madding Crowd. 
 
 The End of the Great Frost 
 
 The rain came down upon us from the southwest wind, and 
 we could not have enough of it, even putting our tongues to 
 catch it, as little children do, and beginning to talk of prim- 
 roses; the very noblest thing of all was to hear and see the 
 gratitude of the poor beasts yet remaining and the few sur- 
 viving birds. From the cow-house lowing came more than 
 of fifty milking-times ; moo and moo, and a turn-up noise 
 at the end of every bellow, as if from the very heart of kine. 
 Then the horses in the stables, packed as closely as they 
 could stick, at the risk of kicking, to keep the warmth in one 
 
THE GUIDE POST 331 
 
 another, and their spirits up by discoursing ; these began with 
 one accord to lift up their voices, snorting, snaflSing, whinny- 
 ing, and neighing, and trotting to the door to know when they 
 should have work again. To whom, as if in answer, came 
 the feeble bleating of the sheep, what few, by dint of greatest 
 care, had kept their fleeces on their backs and their four 
 legs under them. 
 
 Neither was it a trifling thing, let whoso will say the con- 
 trary, to behold the ducks and geese marching forth in hand- 
 some order from their beds of fern and straw. What a goodly 
 noise they kept, what a flapping of their wings, and a jerking 
 of their tails, as they stood right up and tried with a whistling 
 in their throats to imitate a cock's crow! And then how 
 daintily they took the wet upon their dusty plumes, and 
 ducked their shoulders to it, and began to dress themselves, 
 and laid their grooved bills on the snow, and dabbled for 
 more ooziness ! 
 
 R. D. Blackmore: Lorna Doone. 
 
 Snow in Spring 
 
 That Friday made the last of our fine days for a month. 
 In the evening, the weather broke: the wind shifted from 
 south to north-east, and brought rain first, and then sleet 
 and snow. On the morrow one could hardly imagine that 
 there had been three weeks of summer: The primroses and 
 crocuses were hidden under wintry drifts; the larks were 
 silent, the young leaves of the early trees smitten and black- 
 ened. And dreary, and chill, and dismal, that morrow did 
 creep over ! 
 
 Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights. 
 
 The Guide Post 
 One time I passed the old gate, going out of my way, on 
 a journey to Gimmerton. It was about the period that my 
 narrative has reached: a bright frosty afternoon; the ground 
 bare and the road hard and dry. I came to a stone where 
 the highway branches off on to the moor at your left hand ; 
 
332 DESCRIPTION 
 
 a rough sand-pillar, with the letters W. H. cut on its north 
 side, on the east, G., and on the sonth-west, T. G. It serves 
 as a gnide-post to the Grange, the Heights, and village. The 
 snn shone yellow on its grey head, reminding me of simmier; 
 and I cannot say why, but all at once, a gush of child's sen- 
 sations flowed into my heart. I gazed long at the weather- 
 worn block, and, stooping down, perceived a hole near the bot- 
 tom still full of snail-shells and pebbles, which we were fond 
 of storing there with more perishable things ; and, as fresh as 
 reality, it appeared that I beheld my early playmate seated 
 on the withered turf, his dark, square head bent forward, 
 and his little hand scooping out the earth with a piece of 
 slate. 
 Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights. 
 
 Spring 
 
 Spring, while we are writing, is complete. The winds have 
 done their work. The shaken air, well tempered and equalized, 
 has subsided; the genial rains, however thickly they may come, 
 do not saturate the ground beyond the power of the sun 
 to dry it up again. There are clear crystal mornings; noons 
 of blue sky and white cloud; nights, in which the grow- 
 ing moon seems to lie looking at the stars, Uke a young shep- 
 herdess at her flock. A few nights ago she lay gazing in this 
 manner at the solitary evening star, like Diana, on the slope 
 of a valley, looking up at Endymion. His young eye seemed 
 to sparkle out upon the world; while she, bending inwards, 
 her hands behind her head, watched bim with an enamored 
 dumbness. 
 
 But this is the quiet of Spring. Its voices and swift move- 
 ments have come back also. The swallow shoots by us, like 
 an embodied ardor of the season. The glowing bee has his 
 will of the honied flowers, grappling with them as they 
 tremble. We have not yet heard the nightingale or the cuckoo ; 
 but we can hear them with our imagination, and enjoy them 
 through the content of those who have. 
 
 Then the young green. This is the most apt and perfect 
 
A HOT DAY lu 
 
 mark of tlie season — tlie true issuing forth of the Spring. 
 The trees and bushes are putting forth their crisp fans; the 
 lilac is loaded with bud; the meadows are thick with the 
 bright young grass, running into sweeps of white and gold 
 with the daisies and butter-cups. The orchards announce their 
 riches, in a shower of silver blossoms. The earth in fertile 
 woods is spread with yellow and blue carpets of primroses, 
 nolets, and hyacinths, over which the birch-trees, like stooping 
 nymphs, hang with their thickening hair. Lilies-of-the-val- 
 ley, stocks, columbines, lady-smocks, and the intensely red 
 peony which seems to anticipate the full glow of summer- 
 time, all come out to wait upon the season, like fairies from 
 their subterraneous palaces. 
 
 Leigh Hunt: "Spring and Daisies," in Essays. 
 
 A Hot Day 
 
 Now the rosy (and lazy) fingered Aurora, issuing from her 
 saffron house, calls up the moist vapors to surround her, and 
 goes veiled with them as long as she can ; till Phoebus, coming 
 forth in his power, looks everything out of the sky, and holds 
 sharp, uninterrupted empire from his throne of beams. Now 
 the mower begins to make his sweeping cuts more slowly, 
 and resorts oftener to the beer. Now the carter sleeps a-top 
 of his load of hay, or plods with double slouch of shoulder, 
 looking out with eyes winking under his shading hat, and 
 with a hitch upward of one side of his mouth. Now the 
 little girl at her grandmother's cottage door watches the 
 coaches that go by, with her hand held up over her sunny 
 forehead. Now laborers look well resting in their white shirts 
 at the doors of rural ale-houses. Now an elm is fine there, 
 with a seat under it; and horses drink out of the trough, 
 stretching their yearning necks with loosened collars; and 
 the traveller calls for his glass of ale, having been without 
 one for more than ten minutes; and his horse stands wincing 
 at the flies, giving sharp shivers of his skin, and moving to 
 and fro his ineffectual docked tail; and now Miss Betty 
 
334 DESCRIPTION 
 
 Wilson, the host's daughter, comes streaming forth in a 
 flowered gown and ear-rings carrying with four of her beauti- 
 ful fingers the foaming glass, for which she receives with an 
 indifferent eye, looking another way, the lawful twopence. 
 Now grasshoppers "fry," as Dryden says. Now cattle stand 
 in water, and ducks are envied. Now boots, and shoes, and 
 trees by the roadside, are thick with dust; and dogs, rolling 
 in it, after issuing out of the water, into which they have 
 been thrown to fetch sticks, come scattering horror among the 
 legs of the spectators. Now a fellow who finds he has three 
 miles further to go in a pair of tight shoes is in a pretty 
 situation. Now rooms with the sun upon them become intoler- 
 able; and the apothecary's apprentice, with a bitterness beyond 
 aloes, thinks of the pond he used to bathe in at school. Now 
 boys assemble round the village pump with a ladle to it, and 
 delight to make a forbidden splash and get wet through the 
 shoes. Now also they make suckers of leather, and bathe 
 all day long in rivers and ponds, and make mighty fishings 
 for "tittle-bats." Now the bee, as he hums along, seems to 
 be talking heavily of the heat. Now doors and brick-walls 
 are burning to the hand ! and a walled lane, with dust and 
 broken bottles in it, near a brick-field, is a thing not to be 
 thought of. Now a green lane, on the contrary, thick-set 
 with hedgerow elms, and having the noise of a brook "rum- 
 bling in pebble-stone," is one of the pleasantest things in the 
 world. 
 
 Leigh Hunt: "A 'Now,' Descriptive of a Hot Day," in Essays. 
 
 Defacement 
 
 Twenty years ago, there was no lovelier piece of lowland 
 scenery in South England, nor any more pathetic in the 
 world, by its expression of sweet human character and life, 
 than that immediately bordering on the sources of the Wandle, 
 and including the lower moors of Addington, and the vil- 
 lages of Beddington and Carshalton, with all their pools and 
 streams. No clearer or diviner waters ever sang with ton- 
 
DEFACEMENT 33S 
 
 stant lips of the hand which "giveth rain from heaven;" no 
 pastures ever lightened in springtime with more passionate 
 blossoming; no sweeter homes ever hallowed the heart of the 
 passer-by with their pride of peaceful gladness — fain-hidden — 
 yet full-confessed. The place remains, or, until a few months 
 ago, remained, nearly unchanged in its larger features; but, 
 with deliberate mind I say, that I have never seen anything 
 so ghastly in its inner tragic meaning, — not in Pisan Mar- 
 emma, — ^not by Campagna tomb, — ^not by the sand-isles of the 
 Torcellan shore, — as the slow stealing of aspects of reckless, 
 indolent animal neglect, over the delicate sweetness of that 
 English scene : nor is any blasphemy or impiety — any frantic 
 saying or godless thought — more appalling to me, using the 
 best power of judgment I have to discern its sense and scope, 
 than the insolent defilings of those springs by the human 
 herds that drink of them. Just where the welling of stainless 
 water, trembling and pure, like a body of light, enters the 
 pool of Carshalton, cutting itself a radiant channel down to 
 the gravel, through warp of feathery weeds, all waving, which 
 it traverses with its deep threads of clearness, like the chal- 
 cedony in moss-agate, starred here and there with white 
 grenouillette ; just in the very rush and murmur of the first 
 spreading currents, the human wretches of the place cast 
 their street and house foulness; heaps of dust and slime, and 
 broken shreds of old metal, and rags of putrid clothes; they 
 having neither energy to cart it away, nor decency enough to 
 dig it into the ground, thus shed into the stream, to diffuse 
 what venom of it vnll float and melt, far away, in all places 
 where God meant those waters to bring joy and health. And, 
 in a little pool, behind some houses farther in the village, 
 where another spring rises, the shattered stones of the well, 
 and of the little fretted channel which was long ago built 
 and traced for it by gentler hands, lie scattered, each from 
 each, under a ragged bank of mortar, and scoria, and brick- 
 layers' refuse, on one side, which the clean water neverthe- 
 less chastises to purity; but it cannot conquer the dead earth 
 beyond; and there, circled and coiled under festering scum, 
 the stagnant edge of the pool effaces itself into a slope of black 
 slime, the accumulation of indolent years. Half a dozen men. 
 
336 DESCRIPTION 
 
 with one day's work, could cleanse those pools, and trim the 
 flowers about their banks, and make every breath of summer 
 air above them rich with cool balm ; and every glittering wave 
 medicinal, as if it ran, troubled of angels, from the porch 
 of Bethesda. But that day's work is never given, nor will 
 be ; nor will any joy be possible to heart of man, for evermore, 
 about those wells of English waters. 
 
 John Ruskin: Preface to The Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
 The Roman Campagna 
 
 Perhaps there is no more impressive scene on earth than 
 the solitary extent of the Campagna of Eome under evening 
 light. Let the reader imagine himself for the moment with- 
 drawn from fhe sounds and motion of the living world, and 
 sent forth alone into this wild and wasted plain. The earth 
 yields and crumbles beneath his foot, tread he never so lightly, 
 for its substance is white, hollow, and carious, like the dusty 
 wreck of the bones of men. The long knotted grass waves 
 and tosses feebly in the evening wind, and the shadows of its 
 motion shake feverishly along the banks of ruin that lift 
 themselves to the sunlight. Hillocks of mouldering earth 
 heave around him, as if the dead beneath were struggling in 
 their sleep. Scattered blocks of black stone, four-square rem- 
 nants of mighty edifices, not one left upon another, lie upon 
 them to keep them down. A dull purple poisonous haze 
 stretches level along the desert, veiling its spectral wrecks 
 of massy ruins, on whose rents the red light rests, like dying 
 fire on defiled altars; the blue ridge of the Alban Mount 
 lifts itself against a solemn space of green, clear, quiet sky. 
 Watch-towers of dark clouds stand steadfastly along the 
 promontories of the Apennines. From the plain to the moun- 
 tains, the shattered aqueducts, pier beyond pier, melt into the 
 darkness, like shadowy and countless troops of funeral 
 mourners, passing from a nation's grave. 
 
 John Ruskin: Preface to the second edition of Modern Painters. 
 
NA TURE A WAKING 337 
 
 Nature Awaking 
 
 Night is a dead monotonous period under a roof; but in 
 the open world it passes lightly, with its stars and dews and 
 perfumes, and the hours are marked by changes in the face 
 of Nature. What seems a kind of temporal death to people 
 choked between walls and curtains, is only a light and living 
 slumber to the man who sleeps afield. All night long he can 
 hear Xature breathing deeply and freely; even as she takes 
 her rest, she turns and smiles ; and there is one stirring hour 
 unknown to those who dwell in houses, when a wakeful 
 influence goes abroad over the sleeping hemisphere, and all 
 the outdoor world are on their feet. It is then that the 
 cock fi.rst crows, not this time to announce the dawn, but like 
 a cheerful watchman speeding the course of night. Cattle 
 awake on the meadows; sheep break their fast on dewy hill- 
 sides, and change to a new lair among the ferns; and houseless 
 men, who have lain down with the fowls, open their dim eyes 
 and behold the beauty of the night. 
 
 At what inaudible summons, at what gentle touch of 
 Nature, are all these sleepers thus recalled in the same hour 
 to life? Do the stars rain down an influence, or do we share 
 some thrill of mother earth below our resting bodies? Even 
 shepherds and old country-folk, who are the deepest read in 
 these arcana, have not a guess as to the means or purpose of 
 this nightly resurrection. Towards two in the morning they 
 declared the thing takes place; and neither know nor inquire 
 further. And at least it is a pleasant incident. We are dis- 
 turbed in our slumber, only like the luxurious Montaigne, 
 "that we may the better and more sensible relish it." We have 
 a moment to look up on the stars. And there is a special 
 pleasure for some minds in the reflection that we share the 
 impulse with all outdoor creatures in our neighborhood, that 
 we have escaped out of the Bastille of civilization, and are 
 become, for the time being, a mere kindly animal and a sheep 
 of Nature's flock. 
 
 When that hour came to me among the pines, I wakened 
 thirsty. My tin was standing by me half full of water. I 
 emptied it at a draught; and feeling broad awake after this 
 internal cold aspersion, sat upright to make a cigarette. The 
 
338 DESCRIPTION 
 
 stars were clear, coloured, jewel-like, but not frosty. A faint 
 silvery vapor stood for the Milky Way. All around me tlie 
 black fir-points stood upright and stock-still. By the white- 
 ness of the pack-saddle, I could see Modestine walking round 
 and round at the length of her tether; I could hear her 
 steadily munching at the sward; but there was not another 
 sound, save the indescribable quiet talk of the runnel over the 
 stones. I lay lazily smoking and studying the color of the 
 sky, as we call the void of space, from where it showed a 
 reddish gray behind the pines to where it showed a glossy 
 blue black between the stars. As if to be more like a pedler, 
 I wear a silver ring. This I could see faintly shining as I 
 raised or lowered the cigarette; and at each whiff the inside 
 of my hand was illuminated and became for a second the 
 highest light in the landscape. 
 
 A faint wind, more like a moving coldness than a stream 
 of air, passed down the glade from time to time; so that 
 even in my great chamber the air was being renewed all 
 night long. I thought with horror of the inn at Chasserades 
 and the congregated nightcaps; with horror of the nocturnal 
 prowesses of clerks and students, of hot theatres and pass- 
 keys and close rooms. I have not often enjoyed a more serene 
 possession of myself, nor felt more independent of material 
 aids. The outer world, from which we cower into our houses, 
 seemed after all a gentle habitable place; and night after 
 night a man's bed, it seemed, was laid and waiting for him 
 in the fields, where God keeps an open house. I thought 
 I had rediscovered one of those truths which are revealed 
 to savages and hid from political economists: at the least 
 I had discovered a new pleasure for myself. 
 
 Robert Louis Stevenson: Travels with a Donkey.^ (Charles 
 Scribner's Sons.) 
 
 A Stage Setting 
 
 A fine October morning in the north east suburbs of London, 
 a vast district many miles away from the London of Mayfair 
 and St. James's, much less known there than the Paris of 
 the Eue de Eivoli and the Champs Elysees, and much less 
 
A STAGE SETTING 339 
 
 narrow, squalid, fetid and airless in its slums ; strong in com- 
 fortable, prosperous middle class life; wide streeted; myriad- 
 populated; well-served with Eadical clubs, tram lines, and 
 a perpetual stream of yellow cars; enjoying, in its main 
 thoroughfares the luxury of grass-grown "front gardens," 
 untrodden by the foot of man save as to the path from the 
 gate to the hall door ; but blighted by an intolerable monotony 
 of miles and miles of graceless, characterless brick houses, black 
 iron railings, stony pavements, slaty roofs, and respectably ill 
 dressed or disreputably poorly dressed people, quite accus- 
 tomed to the place, and mostly plodding about somebody 
 else's work, which they would not do if they themselves could 
 help it. The little energy and eagerness that crop up show 
 themselves in cockney cupidity and business "push." Even 
 the policemen and the chapels are not infrequent enough to 
 break the monotony. The sun is shining cheerfully; there 
 is no fog; and though the smoke effectually prevents anything, 
 whether faces and hands or bricks and mortar, from looking 
 fresh and clean, it is not hanging heavily enough to trouble 
 a Londoner. 
 
 This desert of nnattractiveness has its oasis. Near the 
 out€r end of the Hackney Eoad is a park of 217 acres, fenced 
 in, not by railings, but by a wooden paling, and containing 
 plenty of greensward, trees, a lake for bathers, flower beds 
 with the flowers arranged carefully in patterns by the admired 
 cockney art of carpet gardening and a sandpit, imported from 
 the seaside for the delight of the children, but speedily 
 deserted on its becoming a natural vermin preserve for all 
 the petty fauna of Eangsland, Hackney, and Hoxton. A band- 
 stand, an unflnished forum for religious, anti-religious, and 
 political orators, cricket pitches, a gymnasium, and an old 
 fashioned stone kiosk are among its attractions. Wherever 
 the prospect is bounded by trees or rising green grounds, 
 it is a pleasant place. Where the ground stretches flat to the 
 gray palings, with bricks and mortar, sky signs, crowded 
 chimneys and smoke beyond, the prospect makes it desolate 
 and sordid. 
 
 The best view of Victoria Park is from the front window 
 of St. Dominic's Parsonage, from which not a single chimney 
 
340 DESCRIPTION 
 
 is visible. The parsonage is a semi-detached villa with a 
 front garden and a porch. Visitors go up the flight of steps 
 to the porch : tradespeople and members of the family go down 
 by a door under the steps to the basement, with a breakfast 
 room, used for all meals, in front, and the kitchen at the 
 back. Upstairs, on the level of the hall door, is the drawing- 
 room, with its large plate glass window looking on the park. 
 In this room, the only sitting-room that can be spared from 
 the children and the family meals, the parson, the Eeverend 
 James Mavor Morell does his work. He is sitting in a strong 
 round backed revolving chair at the right hand end of a 
 long table, which stands across the window, so that he can 
 cheer himself with the view of the park at his elbow. At the 
 opposite end of the table, adjoining it, is a little table only 
 half the width of the other, with a typewriter on it. His 
 typist is sitting at this machine, with her back to the window. 
 The large table is littered with pamphlets, journals, letters, 
 nests of drawers, an ofBce diary, postage scales and the like. 
 A spare chair for visitors having business with the parson is 
 in the middle, turned to his end. Within reach of his hand 
 is a stationery case, and a cabinet photograph in a frame. 
 Behind him the right hand wall, recessed above the fireplace, 
 it fitted with bookshelves, on which an adept eye can measure 
 the parson's divinity and casuistry by a complete set of 
 Browning's poems and Maurice's Theological Essays, and 
 guess at his politics from a yellow backed Progress and 
 Poverty, Tabian Essays, a Dream of John Ball, Marx's 
 Capital, and half a dozen other literary landmarks in Social- 
 ism. Opposite him on the left, near the typewriter, is the 
 door. Eurther down the room, opposite the fireplace, a book- 
 case stands on a cellaret, with a sofa near it. There is a gener- 
 ous fire burning ; and the hearth, with a comfortable armchair 
 and a Japanned fiower painted coal scuttle at one side, a 
 miniature chair for a boy or girl on the other, a nicely varn- 
 ished wooden mantelpiece, with neatly moulded shelves, tiny 
 bits of mirror let into the panels, and a travelling clock 
 in a leather case (the inevitable wedding present), and on 
 the wall above a large autotype of the chief figure in Titian's 
 Virgin of the Assumption, is very inviting. Altogether the 
 
A STAGE SETTING 341 
 
 room is the room of a good housekeeper, vanquished, as far 
 as the table is concerned, by an untidy man, but elsewhere 
 mistress of the situation. The furniture, in its ornamental 
 aspect, betrays the style of the advertised "drawing-room 
 suite" of the pushing suburban furniture dealer ; but there is 
 nothing useless or pretentious in the room. The paper and 
 panelling are dark, throwing the big cheery window and the 
 park outside into strong relief. 
 
 The Reverend James Mavor Morell is a Christian Socialist 
 elerg3?man of the Church of England, and an active member' 
 of the Guild of St. Matthew and the Christian Social Union. 
 A vigorous, genial, popular man of forty, robust and good- 
 looking, full of energy, with pleasant, hearty, considerate 
 manners, and a sound, unaffected voice, which he uses with 
 the clean, athletic articulation of a practiced orator, and 
 with a wide range and perfect command of expression. He 
 is a first rate clergyman, able to say what he likes to whom he 
 likes, to lecture people without setting himself up against 
 them, to impose his authority on them without humiliating 
 them, and to interfere in their business without impertinence. 
 His well spring of spiritual enthusiasm and sympathetic 
 emotion has never run dry for a moment: he stUl eats and 
 sleeps heartily enough to win the daily battle between exhaus- 
 tion and recuperation triumphantly. Withal, a great baby, 
 pardonably fain of his powers and unconsciously pleased with 
 himself. He has a healthy complexion, a good forehead, 
 with the brows somewhat blunt, and the eyes bright and eager, 
 a mouth resolute, but not particularly well cut, and a sub- 
 stantial nose, with the mobile, spreading nostrils of the 
 dramatic orator, but, like all his features, void of subtlety. 
 
 The typist. Miss Proserpine Gamett, is a brisk little woman 
 of about 30, of the lower middle class, neatly but cheaply 
 dressed in a black merino skirt and a blouse, rather pert and 
 quick of speech, and not very civil in her manner, but sen- 
 sitive and affectionate. She is clattering away busily at her 
 machine while Morell opens the last of his morning's letters. 
 He realizes its contents with a comic groan of despair. 
 
 George Bernard Shaw. Candida. (Copyright, 1905, by Brentano's.) 
 
342 DESCRIPTION 
 
 By Old Wharves 
 
 My earliest renieinbranees are of a long range of old, 
 half -dilapidated stores; red brick stores with steep wooden 
 roofs, and stone window frames and door frames, which stood 
 upon docks bnilt as if for immense trade with all quarters 
 of the globe. 
 
 Generally tliere were only a few sloops moored to the tre- 
 .mendous posts, which I fancied could easily hold fast a 
 Spanish Armada in a tropical hurricane. But sometimes 
 a great ship, an East Indiaman, with rusty, seamed, blistered 
 sides, and dingy sails, came slowly moving up the harbor, 
 with an air of indolent self-importance and consciousness 
 of superiority, which inspired me with profound respect. If 
 the ship had ever chanced to run down a rowboat, or a sloop, 
 or any specimen of smaller craft, I should only have wondered 
 at the temerity of any floating thing in crossing the path of 
 such supreme majesty. The ship was leisurely chained and 
 cabled to the old dock, and then came the disemboweling. 
 
 How the stately monster had been fattening upon foreign 
 spoils! How it had gorged itself (such galleons did never 
 seem to me of the feminine gender) with the luscious treas- 
 ures of the tropics! It had lain its lazy length along the 
 shores of China, and sucked in whole flowery harvests of 
 tea. The Brazilian sun flashed through the strong wicker 
 prisons, bursting with bananas and nectaiean fruits that 
 eschew the temperate zone. Steams of camphor, of sandal 
 wood, arose from the hold. Sailors chanting cabalistic strains, 
 that had to my ears a shrill and monotonous pathos, like 
 the uniform rising and falling of an autumn wind, turned 
 cranks that lifted the bales, and boxes, and crates, and swung 
 them ashore. 
 
 But to my mind, the spell of their singing raised the fra- 
 grant freight, and not the crank. Madagascar and Ceylon 
 appeared at the mystic bidding of the song. The placid 
 sunshine of the docks was perfumed with India. The uni- 
 versal calm of southern seas poured from the bosom of the 
 ship over the quiet, decaying old northern port. 
 
 Long after the confusion of unloading was over, and the 
 
BY OLD WHARVES 343 
 
 ship lay as if all voyages were ended, I dared to creep timor- 
 ously along the edge of the dock, and at great risk of falling 
 in the black water of its hnge shadow, I placed my hand 
 upon the hot hulk, and so established a mystic and exquisite 
 connection with Pacific islands, with palm groves and all the 
 passionate beauties they embower ; with jungles, Bengal tigers, 
 pepper, and the crushed feet of Chinese fairies. I touched 
 Asia, the Cape of Good Hope, and the Happy Islands. I 
 would not believe that the heat I felt was of our northern 
 Bim ; to my finer sympathy it burned with equatorial fervors. 
 
 The freight was piled in the old stores. I believe that many 
 of them remain, but they have lost their character. When 
 I knew them, not only was I younger, but partial decay 
 had overtaken the town; at least the bulk of its India trade 
 had shifted to New York and Boston. But the appliances 
 remained. There was no throng of busy traflBckers, and after 
 school, in the afternoon, I strolled by and gazed into the 
 Bolemn interiors. 
 
 Silence reigned witiiin — silence, dimness, and pdles of 
 foreign treasure. Vast coils of cable, like tame boa-constric- 
 tors, served as seats for men with large stomachs and heavy 
 watch seals, and nankeen trousers, who sat looking out of the 
 door toward the ships, with little other sign of life than 
 an occasional low talking, as if in their sleep. Huge hogs- 
 heads perspiring brown sugar and oozing slow molasses, as if 
 nothing tropical could keep within bounds, but must con- 
 tinually expand, and exude, and overflow, stood against the 
 walls, and had an architectural significance, for they darkly 
 reminded me of Egyptian prints, and in the duskiness of the 
 low-vaulted store seemed cyclopean columns incomplete. 
 Strange festoons and heaps of bags, square piles of square 
 boxes cased in mats, bales of airy summer stuflEs, which, even 
 in winter, scoffed at cold, and shamed it by audacious assump- 
 tion of eternal sun; little specimen boxes of precious dyes 
 that even now shine through my memory, like old Venetian 
 schools unpainted — these were all there in rich confusion. 
 
 The stores had a twilight of dimness, the air was spicy 
 with mingled odors. I liked to look suddenly in from the 
 glare of sunlight outside, and then the cool sweet dimness 
 
344 DESCRIPTION 
 
 was like the palpable breath of the far-ofE island groves; 
 and if only some parrot or maeaw hung within, would flaunt 
 with glistening plumage in his cage, and as the gay hue 
 flashed in a chance sunbeam, call in his hard, shrill voice, as 
 if thrusting sharp sounds upon a glistening wire from out 
 that grateful gloom, then the enchantment was complete, and 
 without moving, I was circumnavigating the globe. 
 George William Curtis: Prue and I. 
 
 A Ship at Sea 
 
 One night, while we were in these tropics, I went out to 
 the end of the flying jib-boom upon some duty, and having 
 finished it turned round and lay over the boom for a long 
 time, admiring the beauty of the sight before me. Being 
 sa far out from the deck I could look at the ship as at a 
 separate vessel, and there rose up from the water, supported 
 only by the small black hull, a pyramid of canvas, spreading 
 out far beyond the hull, and towering up almost, as it seemed 
 in the indistinct night air, to the clouds. The sea was as still 
 as an inland lake ; the light trade-wind was gently and steadily 
 breathing from astern; there was no sound but the rippling 
 of the water under the stem; and the sails were spread out 
 wide and high — ^the two lower studding-sails stretching, on 
 each side, far beyond the deck; the top-mast studding-sails, 
 like wings to the top-sails; the topgallant studding-sails 
 spreading fearlessly out above them ; still higher, the two royal 
 studding-sails, looking like two kites flying from the same 
 string; and, highest of all, the little skysail, the apex of the 
 pyramid, seeming actually to touch the stars and to be out 
 of reach of human hand. Not a ripple upon the surface of 
 the canvas, not even a quivering of the extreme edges of the 
 sail, so perfectly were they distended by the breeze. 
 
 R. H. Dana: Two Years Before the Mast. 
 
 A Farm Housk 
 Evidently that gate is never opened: for the long grass 
 and the great hemlocks grow close against it ; and if it were 
 opened, it is so rusty, that the force necessary to turn it on 
 
A FARM HOUSE 34S 
 
 its hinges would be likely to pull down the square stone-built 
 pillars, to l:he detriment of the two stone lionesses which 
 grin with a carnivorous affability above a coat of arms sur- 
 mounting each of the pillars. It would be easy enough, by 
 the aid of the nicks in the stone pillars, to climb over the 
 brick wall with its smooth stone coping; but by putting our 
 eyes close to the rusty bars of the gate, we can see the house 
 well enough, and all but the very corners of the grassy 
 enclosure. 
 
 It is a very fine old place, of red brick, softened by a pale 
 powdery lichen, which has dispersed itself with a happy irregu- 
 larity, so as to bring the red brick into terms of friendly com- 
 panionship with the limestone ornaments surrounding the 
 three gables, the windows, and the door-place. But the win- 
 dows are patched with wooden panes, and the door, I think, 
 is like the gate — it is never opened: how it would groan 
 and grate against the stone floor if it were ! For it is a solid, 
 heavy, handsome door, and must once have been in the habit 
 of shutting with a sonorous bang behind a liveried lackey, 
 who had just seen his master and mistress off the grounds 
 in a carriage and pair. 
 
 But at present one might fancy the house in the early stage 
 of a chancery suit, and that the fruit from that grand double 
 row of walnut trees on the right hand of the enclosure would 
 fall and rot among the grass, if it were not that we heard 
 the booming bark of dogs echoing from great buildings at the 
 back. And now the half-weaned calves that have been shel- 
 tering themselves in a gorse-built hovel against the left-hand 
 wall, come out and set up a silly answer to that terrible 
 bark, doubtless supposing that it has reference to buckets of 
 milk. 
 
 Yes, the house must be inhabited, and we will see by whom ; 
 for imagination is a licensed trespasser; it has no fear of 
 dogs, but may climb over walls and peep in at windows with 
 impunity. Put your face to one of the glass panes in the 
 right-hand window; what do you see? A large open fire- 
 place, with rusty dogs in it, and a bare-boarded floor, at the 
 far end, fleeces of wool stacked up; in the middle of the 
 floor, some empty corn-bags. That is the furniture of the 
 
346 DESCRIPTION 
 
 dining-room. And what through the left-hand window? 
 Several clothes-horses, a pillion, a spinning-wheel, and an old 
 box wide open, and stuffed full of coloured rags. At the 
 edge of this box there lies a great wooden doll, which, so far 
 as mutilation is concerned, bears a strong resemblance to the 
 finest Greek sculpture, and especially in the total loss of its 
 nose. Near it there is a little chair, and the butt-end of a 
 boy's leather long-lashed whip. 
 
 The history of the house is plain now. It was once the 
 ^ residence of a country squire, whose family, probably dwind- 
 ling down to mere spinsterhood, got merged in the more 
 territorial name of "Donnithorne. It was once the Hall; it 
 is now the Hall Farm. Like the life in some coast town that 
 was once a watering-place, and is now a port, where the 
 genteel streets are silent and grass-grown, and the docks and 
 warehouses busy and resonant, the life at the Hall has changed 
 its focus, and no longer radiates from the parlour, but from 
 the kitchen and the farm-yard. 
 
 Plenty of life there! though this is the drowsiest time of 
 the year, just before the hay-harvest; and it is the drowsiest 
 time of the day too, for it is close upon three by the sun, 
 and it is half-past three by Mrs. Poyser's handsome eight-day 
 clock. But there is always a stronger sense of life when tht 
 sun is brilliant after rain; and now he is pouring down his 
 beams, and making sparks among the wet straw, and lighting 
 up every patch of vivid green moss on the red tiles of the cow- 
 shed, and turning even the muddy water that is hurrying 
 along the channel to the drain into a mirror for the yellow- 
 billed ducks, who are seizing the opportunity of getting a 
 drink with as much body in it as possible. There is quite 
 a concert of noises: the great bull-dog, chained against the 
 stables, is thrown into furious exasperation by the unwary 
 approach of a cock too near the mouth of his kennel, and 
 sends forth a thundering bark, which is answered by two 
 fox-hounds shut up in the opposite cow-house; the old top- 
 knotted hens, scratching with their chicks among the straw, 
 set up a sympathetic croaking as the discomfited cock joins 
 them; a sow with her brood, all very muddy as to the legs, 
 and curled as to the tail, throws in some deep staccato notes; 
 
A SUITE AT CVMNOR HALL 347 
 
 our friends the calves are bleating from the same home croft; 
 and under all, a fine ear discerns the continuous hum of 
 human voices. 
 
 For the great barn-doors are thrown wide open, and men are 
 busy there mending the harness, under the superintendence 
 of Mr. Goby, the "whittaw", otherwise saddler, who enter- 
 tains them with the latest Treddleston gossip. It is certainly 
 rather an unfortunate day that Alick, the shepherd, has chosen 
 for having the whittaws, since the morning turned out so 
 wet; and Mrs. Poyser had spoken her mind pretty strongly 
 as to the dirt which the extra number of men's shoes brought 
 into the house at dinner-time. Indeed she has not yet recov- 
 ered her equanimity on the subject, though it is now nearly 
 three hours since dinner, and the house floor is perfectly clean 
 again; as clean as everything else in that wonderful house- 
 place, where the only chance of collecting a few grains of 
 dust would be to climb on the salt-coffer, and put your finger 
 on the high mantel-shelf on which the glittering brass candle- 
 sticks are enjoying their summer sinecure; for at this time 
 of year, of course, every one goes to bed while it is yet light, 
 or at least light enough to discern the outline of objects after 
 you have bruised your shins against them. Surely nowhere 
 else could an oak clock-case and an oak table have got such a 
 polish by the hand: genuine "elbow polish", as Mrs. Poyser 
 called it, for she thanked God she never had any of your 
 varnished rubbish in her house. Hetty Sorrel often took 
 the opportunity, when her aunt's back was turned, of looking 
 at the pleasant reflection of herself in those polished surfaces, 
 for the oak table was usually turned up like a screen, and 
 was more for ornament than for use ; and she could see her- 
 self sometimes in the great round pewter dishes that were 
 ranged on the shelves above the long deal dinner table, or in 
 the hobs of the grate, which always shone like jasper. 
 
 George Eliot: Adam Bede. 
 
 A StriTE OF Apartments at Cumnob Hall 
 From this antechamber opened a banquet-room of moderate 
 size, but brilliant enough to dazzle the eyes of the spectator 
 with the richness of its furniture. The walls lately so bare 
 
348 DESCRIPTION 
 
 and ghastly, were now clothed with hangings of sky-blue 
 velvet and silver; the chairs were of ebony, richly carved, with 
 cushions corresponding to the hangings ; and the place of the 
 silver sconces which enlightened the antechamber was supplied 
 by a huge chandelier, of the same precious metal. The floor 
 was covered with a Spanish foot-cloth, or carpet, on whiqh 
 flowers and fruits were represented in such glowing and 
 natural colors, that you hesitated to place the foot on such 
 exquisite workmanship. The table of old English oak stood 
 ready covered with the finest linen; and a large, portable 
 court cupboard was placed, with the leaves of its embossed 
 folding-doors displayed, showing the shelves within, decorated 
 with a full display of plate and porcelain. In the midst of 
 the table stood a salt-cellar of Italian workmanship, — a beauti- 
 ful and splendid piece of plate, about two feet high, moulded 
 into a representation of the giant Briareus, whose hundred 
 hands of silver presented to the guest various sorts of spices, 
 or condiments, to season their food withal. 
 
 The third apartment was called the withdrawing-room. It 
 was hung with the finest tapestry, representing the fall of 
 Phaeton, for the looms of Flanders were now much occupied 
 on classical subjects. The principal seat of this apartment 
 was a chair of state, raised a step or two from the floor, and 
 large enough to contain two persons. It was surmounted by 
 a canopy, which, as well as the cushions, side-curtains, and 
 the very foot-cloth, were composed of crimson velvet embroid- 
 ered with seed-pearl. On the top of the canopy were two coro- 
 nets, resembling those of an earl and countess. Stools covered 
 with velvet, and some cushions disposed in the Moorish fash- 
 ion, and ornamented with Arabesque needlework, supplied 
 the place of chairs in this apartment, which contained musical 
 instruments, embroidery frames, and other articles for ladies' 
 pastime. Besides lesser lights, the withdrawing-room was 
 illuminated by four tall torches of virgin wax, each of which 
 wa^: placed in the grasp of a statue, representing an armed 
 Moor, who held in his left arm a round buckler of silver, 
 highly polished, interposed betwixt his breast and the light, 
 which was thus brilliantly reflected as from a crystal mirror. 
 
 The sleeping chamber belonging to this splendid suite of 
 
THE OLD TOWER OF CALAIS CHURCH 349 
 
 apartments was decorated in a taste less showy, but not less 
 rich, than had been displayed in the others. Two silver lamps, 
 fed with perfumed oil, diffused at once a delicious odor and 
 a trembling, twilight-seeming shimmer through the quiet 
 apartment. It was carpeted so thick that the heaviest step 
 could not have been heard; and the bed, richly heaped with 
 down, was spread with an ample coverlet of silk and gold; 
 from under which peeped forth cambric sheets, and blankets 
 as white as the lambs which yielded the fleece that made 
 them. The curtains were of blue velvet, lined with crimson 
 silk, deeply festooned with gold, and embroidered with the 
 loves of Cupid and Psyche. On the toilet was a beautiful 
 Venetian mirror, in a frame of silver filigree, and beside it 
 stood a gold posset-dish to contain the night draught. A 
 pair of pistols and a dagger mounted with gold were dis- 
 played near the head of the bed, being the arms for the night, 
 which were presented to honored guests, rather, it may be sup- 
 posed, in the way of ceremony than from any apprehension 
 of danger. We must not omit to mention, what was more 
 to the credit of the manners of that time, that, in a small 
 recess, illuminated by a taper, were disposed two hassocks 
 of velvet and gold, corresponding with the bed furniture, 
 before a desk of carved ebony. This recess had formerly 
 been the private oratory of the abbot; but the crucifix was 
 removed, and instead there were placed on the desk two 
 Books of Common Prayer richly bound and embossed with 
 silver. With this enviable sleeping apartment, which was 
 so far removed from every sound, save that of the wind 
 sighing among the oaks of the park, that Morpheus might 
 have coveted it for his own proper repose, corresponded two 
 wardrobes, or dressing-rooms as they are now termed, suitably 
 furnished, and in a style of the same magnificence which 
 we have already described. 
 Sir Walter Scott : Kenilworth. 
 
 The Old Tower of Calais Church 
 The large neglect, the noble unsightliness of it; the record 
 of its years written so visibly, yet without sign of weakness 
 or decay; its stern wasteness and gloom, eaten away by the 
 
350 DESCRIPTION 
 
 Channel winds, and overgrown with the bitter sea grasses; 
 its slates and tiles all shaken and rent, and yet not falling; 
 its desert of brickwork, full of bolts, and holes, and ugly 
 fissures, and yet strong, like a bare brown rock; its careless- 
 ness of what any one thinks or feels about it ; putting forth no 
 claim, having no beauty, nor desirableness, pride, nor grace; 
 yet neither asking for pity; not, as ruins are, useless and 
 piteous, feebly or fondly garrulous of better days; but useful 
 still, going through its own daily work, — as some old fisher- 
 man, beaten grey by storm, yet drawing his daily nets: so 
 it stands, with no complaint about its past youth, in blanched 
 and meagre massiveness and serviceableness, gathering human 
 souls together underneath it ; the sound of its bells for prayer 
 still rolling through its rents; and the grey peak of it seen 
 far across the sea, principal of the three that rise above the 
 waste of surgy sand and hillocked shore, — ^the light-house for 
 life, and the belfry for labor, and this — for patience and 
 praise. 
 
 John Ruskin: Modern Painters. 
 
 Night View of the City 
 (Described by Teufelsdrockh as he sits in his watchtower.) 
 
 "Ach, mein Lieber!" said he once, at midnight, when we 
 had returned from the Coffee-house in rather earnest talk, 
 *'it is a true sublimity to dwell here. These fringes of 
 lamplight, struggling up through smoke and thousand-fold 
 exhalation, some fathoms into the ancient region of Night, 
 what thinks Bootes of them, as he leads his Hunting-dogs 
 over the Zenith in their leash of sidereal fire? That stifled 
 hum of midnight, when Traffic has lain down to rest; and 
 the chariot-wheels of Vanity, still rolling here and there 
 through distant streets, are bearing her to Halls roofed in, 
 and lighted to the due pitch for her; and only Vice and " 
 Misery, to prowl or to moan like night-birds, are abroad; that 
 hum, I say, like the stertorous, unquiet slumber of sick Ufe, 
 is heard in Heaven! Oh! under that hideous coverlet of 
 vapors, and putrefactions, and unimaginable gases, what a 
 Fermenting-vat lies simmering and hid ! The joyful and the 
 
BATTLE OF BULL RUN 3S1 
 
 sorrowful are there; men are dying there, men are being 
 born; men are praying, — on the other side of a brick par- 
 tition, men are cursing ; and around them all is the vast, void 
 Niglit. The proud Grandee still lingers in his perfumed 
 saloons, or reposes within damask curtains; Wretchedness 
 cowers into truckle-beds, or shivers hunger-stricken into its 
 lair of straw; in obscure cellars, Rouge-et-Noir languidly 
 emits its voice-of-destiny to haggard hungry villains; while 
 Councillors of State sit plotting and playing their high chess- 
 game whereof the pawns are Men. The Lover whispers his 
 mistress that the coach is ready; and she, full of hope and 
 fear, glides down, to fly with him over the borders: The 
 Thief, still more silently, sets-to his pick-locks and crow- 
 bars, or lurks in wait till the watchmen first snore in their 
 boxes. Gay mansions, with supper-rooms and dancing-rooms, 
 are full of light and music and high-swelling hearts; but, 
 in the condemned cells, the pulse of life beats tremulous and 
 and faint, and bloodshot eyes look out through the darkness, 
 which is around and within, for the light of a stern last 
 morning. Upwards of five-hundred-thousand two-legged ani- 
 mals without feathers lie round us, in horizontal positions; 
 their heads all in nightcaps, and full of the foolishest dreams. 
 Riot cries aloud, and staggers and swaggers in his rank dens 
 of shame; and the Mother, with streaming hair, kneels over 
 her pallid dying infant, whose cracked lips only her tears 
 now moisten. All these heaped and huddled together, with 
 nothing but a little carpentry and masonry between them ; — 
 crammed in like salted fish in their barrel; — or weltering, 
 shall I say, like an Egyptian pitcher of tamed vipers, each 
 straggling to get its head above the others: such work goes 
 on under that smoke-counterpane! But I, mein Werther, 
 sit above it all ; I am alone with the Stars." 
 Thomas Carlyle: Sartor Resartus. 
 
 Battle of Bull Run, July, 1861 
 
 The defeated troops commenced pouring into Washington 
 over the Long Bridge at daylight on Monday, 22 — day. 
 drizzling all through with rain. The Saturday and Sunday 
 
352 DESCRIPTION 
 
 of the battle (20th, 21st), had been parch'd and hot to an 
 extreme — the dust, the grime and smoke, in layers, sweated 
 in, follow'd by other layers again sweated in, absorb'd by 
 those excited souls — their clothes all saturated with the clay- 
 powder filling the air — stirr'd up everywhere on the dry 
 roads and trodden fields by the regiments, swarming wagons, 
 artillery, etc. — all the men with this coating of murk and 
 sweat and rain, now recoiling back, pouring over the Long 
 Bridge — a horrible march of twenty miles, returning to Wash- 
 ington baffled, humiliated, panic-struck. Where are the 
 vaunts, and the proud boasts with which you went forth? 
 Where are your banners, and your bands of music, and your 
 ropes to bring back your prisoners ? Well, there isn't a band 
 playing — and there isn't a flag but clings ashamed and lank 
 to its staff. 
 
 The sun rises, but shines not. The men appear, at first 
 sparsely and shame-faced enough, then thicker, in the streets 
 of Washington — appear in Pennsylvania avenue, and on the 
 steps and basement entrances. They come along in dis- 
 orderly mobs, some in squads, stragglers, companies. Occa- 
 sionally, a rare regiment, in perfect order, with its officers 
 (some gaps, dead, the true braves), marching in silence, with 
 lowering faces, stern, weary to sinking, all black and dirty, 
 but every man with his musket, and stepping alive; but 
 these are the exceptions. Sidewalks of Pennsylvania avenue, 
 Fourteenth street, etc., crowded, iamm'd with citizens, dark- 
 ies, clerks, everybody, lookers-on; women in the windows, 
 curious expressions from faces, as those swarms of dirt-cover'd 
 retum'd soldiers there (will they never end?) move by; but 
 
 pothing said, no comments; During the forenoon 
 
 Washington gets all over motley with these defeated soldiers — 
 queer-looking objects, strange eyes and faces, drench'd (the 
 steady rain drizzles on all day) and fearfully worn, hungry, 
 haggard, blister'd in the feet. Good people (but not over- 
 many of them either), hurry up something for their grub. 
 They put wash-kettles on the fire, for soup, for coffee. They 
 set tables on the sidewalks — wagon-loads of bread are pur- 
 chas'd, swiftly cut in stout chunks. Here are two aged 
 ladies, beautiful, the first in the city for culture and charm, 
 
THE SHIELD OF A CHILLES 353 
 
 they stand with store of eating and drink at an improvis'd 
 table of rough plank, and give food, and have the store 
 replenish'd from their house every half -hour all that day; 
 and there in tlie rain thej- stand, active, silent, white-hair'd, 
 and give food, though the tears stream down their cheeks, 
 almost without intermission, the whole time. Amid the 
 deep excitement, crowds and motion, and desperate eagerness, 
 it seems strange to see many, very many, of the soldiers 
 sleeping — in the midst of all, sleeping sound. They drop 
 down anywhere, on the steps of houses, up close by the 
 basements or fences, on the sidewalk, aside on some vacant 
 lot, and deeply sleep. A poor seventeen or eighteen year 
 old boy lies there, on the stoop of a grand house; he sleeps 
 so calmly, so profoundly. Some clutch their muskets firmly 
 even in sleep. Some in squads; comrades, brothers, close 
 together — and on them, as they lie, sulkily drips the rain. 
 Walt Whitman : Specimen Days. 
 
 The Shield of Achilles 
 
 First fashioned he [Hephaistos] a shield great and strong, 
 adorning it all over, and set thereto a shining rim, triple, 
 bright-glancing, and therefrom a silver baldrick. Five were 
 the folds of the shield itself ; and therein fashioned he much 
 cunning work from his wise heart. 
 
 There wrought he the earth, and the heavens, and the sea, 
 and the unwearying sun, and the moon waxing to the full, 
 and the signs every one wherewith the heavens are crowned, 
 Pleiads and Hyads and Orion's might, and the Bear that 
 men call also tiie Wain, her that turneth in her place and 
 watcheth Orion, and alone hath no part in the baths of 
 Ocean. 
 
 Also he fashioned therein two fair cities of mortal men. 
 In the one were espousals and marriage feasts, and beneath 
 the blaze of torches they were leading the brides from their 
 chambeiTB through the city, and loud arose the bridal song. 
 And young men were whirling in the dance, and among them 
 flutes and viols sounded high; and the women standing each 
 at her door were marvelling. But the folk were gathered 
 
334 DESCRIPTION 
 
 in the assembly place; for there a strife was arisen, two men 
 striving about the blood-price of a man slain ; the one avowed 
 that he had paid all, expounding to the people, but the other 
 denied that he had received aught; and each was fain to 
 obtain consummation on the word of his witness. And the 
 folk were cheering both, as they took part on either side. And 
 heralds kept order among the folk, while the elders on polished 
 stones were sitting in the sacred circle, and holding in their 
 hands staves from the loud-voiced heralds. Then before the 
 people they rose up and gave judgment each in turn. And 
 in the midst lay two talents of gold, to be given unto him 
 who should plead among them most righteously. 
 
 But around the other city were two armies in siege with 
 glittering arms. And two councils found favor among them, 
 either to sack the town or to share all with the townsfolk, 
 even whatever substance the fair city held within. But the 
 besieged were not yet yielding, but arming for an ambush- 
 ment. On the wall there stood to guard it their dear wives 
 and infant children, and with these the old men; but the 
 rest went forth, and their leaders were Ares and Pallas 
 Athene, both wrought in gold, and golden was the vesture 
 they had on. Goodly and great were they in their armour, 
 even as gods, far seen around, and the folk at their feet were 
 smaller. And when they came where it seemed good to them 
 to lay ambush, in a river bed where there was a common water- 
 ing-place of herds, there they set them, clad in glittering 
 bronze. And two scouts were posted by them afar off to spy 
 the coming of flocks and of oxen with crooked horns. And 
 presently came the cattle, and with them two herdsmen play- 
 ing on pipes, that took no thought of guile. Then the others 
 when they beheld these ran upon them and quickly cut ofE 
 the herds of oxen and fair flocks of white sheep, and slew 
 the shepherds withal. But the besiegers, as they sat before the 
 speech-places and heard much din among the oxen, mounted 
 forthwith behind their high-stepping horses, and came up 
 with speed. Then they arrayed their battle and fought beside 
 the river banks, and smote one another with bronze-shod 
 spears. And among them mingled Strife and Tumult, and 
 fell Death, grasping one man alive fresh-wounded, another 
 
THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES 3SS 
 
 without wound, and dragging another dead through the 
 mellay by the feet ; and the raiment on her shoulders was red 
 with the blood of men. Like living mortals they hurled to- 
 gether and fought, and haled the corpses each of the otlier's 
 slain. 
 
 Furthermore he set in the shield a soft fresh-ploughed field, 
 rich tilth and wide, the third time ploughed; and many 
 ploughers therein drave their yokes to and fro as they wheeled 
 about. Whensoever they came to the boundary of the field and 
 turned, then would a man come to each and give into his 
 hands a goblet of sweet wine, while others would be turning 
 back along the furrows, fain to reach the boundary of the 
 deep tilth. And the field grew black behind and seemed as it 
 were a-ploughing, albeit of gold, for this was the great 
 marvel of the work. 
 
 Furthermore he set therein a demesne-land deep in corn, 
 where hinds were reaping with sharp sickles in their hands. 
 Some armfuls along the swathe were falling in rows to the 
 earth, while others the sheaf-binders were binding in twisted 
 bands of straw. Three sheaf-binders stood over them, while 
 behind boys gathering corn and bearing it in their arms 
 gave it constantly to the binders; and among them the lord 
 in silence was standing at the swathe with his staff, rejoicing 
 in his heart. And henchmen apart beneath an oak were 
 making ready a feast, and preparing a great ox they had sac- 
 rificed; while the women were strewing much white barley 
 to be a supper for the hinds. 
 
 Also he set therein a vineyard teeming plenteously with 
 clusters, wrought fair in gold; black were the grapes, but 
 the ^-ines hung throughout on silver poles. And around it 
 he ran a ditch of cyanus, and round that a fence of tin ; and 
 one single pathway led to it. whereby the vintagers might 
 go when they should gather tiie vintage. And maidens and 
 striplings in childish glee bare the sweet fruit in plaited 
 baskets. And in the midst of them a boy made pleasant music 
 on a clear-toned viol, and sang thereto a sweet Linos-song 
 with delicate voice; while the rest with feet falling together 
 kept time with the music and song. 
 
 Also he wrought therein a herd of kine with upright horns. 
 
3S6 DESCRIPTION 
 
 and the kine weTe fashioned of gold and tin, and with low- 
 ing they hurried from the byre to pasture beside a murmur- 
 ing river, beside the waving reed. And herdsmen of gold 
 were following with the kine, four of them, and nine dogs 
 fleet of foot came after them. But two terrible lions among 
 the foremost kine had seized a loud-roaring bull that bel- 
 lowed mightily as they haled him, and the dogs and the 
 young men sped after him. The lions rending the great 
 bull's hide were devouring his vitals and his black blood; 
 while the herdsmen in vain tarred on their fleet dogs to set 
 on, for they shrank from biting the lions but stood hard by 
 and barked and swerved away. 
 
 Also the glorious lame god wrought therein a pasture in a 
 fair glen, a great pasture of white sheep, and a steading, and 
 roofed huts, and folds. 
 
 Also did the glorious lame god devise a dancing-place like 
 unto that which, once in wide Knosos, Daidalos wrought for 
 Ariadne of the lovely tresses. There were youths dancing and 
 maidens of costly wooing, their hands upon one another's 
 wrists. Fine linen the maidens had on, and the youths 
 well-woven doublets faintly glistening with oil. Fair wreaths 
 had the maidens, and the youths' daggers of gold hanging 
 from silver baldricks. And now would they run round with 
 deft feet exceeding lightly, as when a potter sitting by his 
 wheel that fitteth between his hands maketh trial of it whether 
 it run; and now anon they would run in lines to meet each 
 other. And a great company stood round the lovely dance 
 in joy; and among them a divine minstrel was making music 
 on his lyre, and through the midst of them, as he began 
 his strain, two tumblers whirled. 
 
 Also he set therein the great might of the River of Ocean 
 around the uttermost rim of the cunningly-fashioned shield. 
 
 Translated from The Iliad, by Ernest Myers. 
 
 An Opal 
 
 a really fine opal, coquetting with the flashes of every 
 
 gem that is known; it shot succinct red flashes, and green, 
 and yellow ; the emerald, the amethyst, the topaz, lived in it, 
 
FIVE STAGE CHARACTERS 357 
 
 and a remote ruby ; it was veined with lightning hues, and 
 at times it slept in a milky cloud, innocent of fire, quite 
 maidenlike. 
 
 George Meredith: Rhoda Fleming. 
 
 John Reed 
 
 John Reed was a schoolboy of fourteen .... large and stout 
 for his age, with a dingy and unwholesome skin; thick line- 
 aments in a spacious visage, heavy limbs and large extrem- 
 ities. He gorged himself habitually at table, which made 
 him bilious, and gave him a dim and bleared eye and flabby 
 cheeks. 
 
 Charlotte Bronte : Jane Eyre. 
 
 Tom Tulliver 
 
 He was one of those lads that grow everywhere in England, 
 and at twelve or thirteen years of age look as much alike as 
 goslings, — a lad with light-brown hair, cheeks of cream and 
 roses, full lips, indeterminate nose and eyebrows, — a physi- 
 ognomy in which it seems impossible to discern anything but 
 the generic character of boyhood. 
 
 George Eliot: The Mill on the Floss. 
 
 Sahtorius 
 
 The gentleman is fifty, tall, well preserved and of upright 
 carriage, with an incisive, domineering utterance and impos- 
 ing style, which, with his strong aquiline nose and resolute 
 clean-shaven mouth, give him an air of importance. He 
 wears a light grey frock-coat with silk linings, a white hat, 
 and field-glass slung in a new leather case. A self-made 
 man, formidable to servants, not. easily accessible to any one. 
 
 George Bernard Shaw: Widowers' Houses. 
 
358 DESCRIPTION 
 
 Chofts 
 
 Crofts is a tall, powerfully-built man of about fifty, fash- 
 ionably dressed in the style of a young man. Nasal voice, 
 reedier than might be expected from his strong frame. Clean- 
 shaven, bull-dog jaws, large flat ears, and thick neck, gen- 
 tlemanly combination of the most brutal types of city man, 
 sporting man, and man about town. 
 
 George Bernard Shaw: Mrs. Warren's Profession. 
 
 Dr. Paramore 
 
 Dr. Paramore is on the divan, reading "The British Med- 
 ical Journal." He is a young man as age is counted in the 
 professions — ^barely forty. His hair is wearing bald on his 
 forehead; and dark arched eyebrows, coming rather close 
 together, give him a conscientiously sinister appearance. He 
 wears the frock coat and cultivates the "bedside manner" 
 of the fashionable physician with scrupulous conventionality. 
 Not at all a happy or frank man, but not consciously unhappy 
 nor intentionally insincere, and highly self-satisfied intel- 
 lectually. 
 
 George Bernard Shaw: The Philanderer. 
 
 Two Gentlemen 
 
 The elder of the two gentlemen. Colonel Daniel Craven, 
 affects the bluff, simple veteran, and carries it off pleasantly 
 and well, having a fine upright figure, and being, in fact, a 
 goodnaturedly impulsive, credulous person who, after an 
 entirely thoughtless career as an officer and a gentleman, is 
 now being startled into some sort of self-education by the 
 surprising proceedings of his children. 
 
 His companion, Mr. Joseph Cuthbertson, has none of the 
 Colonel's boyishness. He is a man of fervent idealistic senti- 
 ment, so frequently outraged by the facts of life, that he has 
 acquired an habitually indignant manner, which unexpectedly 
 becomes enthusiastic or affectionate when he speaks. 
 
ANNE GARLAND 359 
 
 The two men differ greatly in expression. The Colonel's 
 face is lined with weather, with age, with eating and drink- 
 ing, and with the cumulative effects of many petty vexations, 
 hut not with thought; he is still fresh, and he has by no 
 means full expectations of pleasure and novelty. Cuthbert- 
 son has the lines of sedentary London brain work, with 
 its chronic fatigue and longing for rest and recreative emo- 
 tion, and its disillusioned indifference to adventure and enjoy- 
 ment, except as means of recuperation. 
 
 They are both in evening dress; and Cuthbertson wears 
 his fur collared overcoat, which, with his vigilant, irascible 
 eye, piled up hair, and the honorable earnestness with which 
 he takes himself, gives him an air of considerable conse- 
 quence. 
 
 George Bernard Shaw: The Philanderer. 
 
 Anne Garland 
 
 Anne was fair, very fair, in a poetical sense; but in com- 
 plexion she was of that particular tint between blonde and 
 brunette which is inconveniently left without a name. Her 
 eyes were honest and inquiring, her mouth cleanly cut and 
 yet not classical, the middle point of her upper lip scarcely 
 descending so far as it should have done by rights, so that 
 at the merest pleasant thought, not to mention a smile, por- 
 tions of two or three white teeth were uncovered whether she 
 would or not. Some people said that this was very attractive. 
 She was graceful and slender, and, though but little above 
 five feet in height, could draw herself up to look tall. In 
 her manner, in her comings and goings, in her "I'll do this," 
 or "111 do that," she combined dignity with sweetness as no 
 other girl could do; and any impressionable stranger youths 
 who passed by were led to yearn for a windfall of speech 
 from her, and to see at the same time that they would not 
 get it. 
 
 Thomas Hardy: The Trumpet Major. 
 
360 DESCRIPTION 
 
 Captain Macmukdo at Home 
 
 Captain Macmurdo, a veteran oflBcer and Waterloo man, 
 greatly liked by his regiment, in which want of money alone 
 prevented him from attaining the highest ranks, was enjoy- 
 ing the forenoon calmly in bed. He had been at a fast supper- 
 party given the night before by Captain the Honourable 
 George Cinqbars, at his house in Brompton Square, to several 
 young men of the regiment, and a number of ladies of the 
 corps de ballet, and old Mac, who was at home with people 
 of all ages and ranks, and consorted with generals, dog- 
 fanciers, opera-dancers, bruisers, and every kind of person, 
 in a word, was resting himself after the night's labours, and, 
 not being on duty, was in bed. 
 
 His room was hung round with boxing, sporting, and 
 dancing pictures, presented . to him by comrades as they 
 retired from the regiment, and married and settled into quiet 
 life. And as he was now nearly fifty years of age, twenty-four 
 of which he had passed in the corps, he had a singular 
 museum. He was one of the best shots in England, and, 
 for a heavy man, one of the best riders ; indeed, he and Craw- 
 ley had been rivals when the latter was in the army. To be 
 brief, Mr. Macmurdo was lying in bed, reading in Bell's Life 
 an account of that very fight between the Tutbury Pet and 
 the Barking Butcher, which has been before mentioned — 
 a venerable bristly warrior, with a little close-shaved grey 
 head, with a silk nightcap, a red face and nose, and a great 
 dyed moustache. 
 
 W. M. Thackeray: Vanity Fair. 
 
 Lawyer's Clerks 
 Scattered about, in various holes and corners of the Tem- 
 ple, are certain dark and dirty chambers, in and out of 
 which, all the morning in Vacation, and half the evening 
 too in Term, time, there may be seen constantly hurrying 
 with bundles of papers under their arms, and protruding 
 from their pockets, an almost uninterrupted succession of 
 Lawyers' Clerks. There are several grades of Lawyers' 
 Clerks. There is the Articled Clerk, who has paid a pre- 
 
CATHERINE MORLAND 361 
 
 mium, and is an attorney in perspective, who runs a tailor's 
 bill, receives invitations to parties, knows a family in Gower 
 Street and another in Tavistock Square, goes out of town 
 every Long Vacation to see his father, who keeps live horses 
 innumerable; and who is, in short, the very aristocrat of 
 clerks. There is the salaried clerk — out of door, or in door, 
 as the case may be — who devotes the major part of his thirty 
 shillings a week to his personal pleasure and adornment, 
 repairs half-price to the Adelphi at least three times a week, 
 dissipates majestically at the cider cellars afterwards, and 
 is a dirty caricature of the fashion, which expired six months 
 ago. There is the middle-aged copying clerk, with a large 
 family, who is always shabby, and often drunk. And there 
 are the office lads in their first surtouts, who feel a befitting 
 contempt for boys at day schools, club as they go home at 
 night, for saveloys and porter, and think there's nothing like 
 "life." There are varieties of the genus too numerous to 
 recapitulate, but however numerous they may be, they are all 
 to be seen, at certain regulated business hours, hurrying to 
 and from the places we have just mentioned. 
 
 These sequestered nooks are the public offices of the legal 
 profession, where writs are issued, judgments signed, liecla- 
 rations filed, and numerous other ingenious little machines 
 put ia motion for the torture and torment ,of His Majesty's 
 liege subjects, and the comfort and emolument of the prac- 
 titioners of the law. They are, for the most part, low- 
 roofed, mouldy rooms, where innumerable rolls of parch- 
 ment, which have been perspiring in secret for the last 
 century, send forth an agreeable odour, which is mingled 
 by day with the scent of the dry rot, and by night with 
 the various exhalations which arise from damp cloaks, fester- 
 ing umbrellas, and the coarsest tallow candles. 
 
 Charles Dickens: Pickwick Papers. 
 
 Catherine Morland 
 
 No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy 
 would have supposed her born to be an heroine. Her situation 
 in life, the character of her father and mother, her own 
 
362 DESCRIPTION 
 
 person and disposition, were all equally against her. Her 
 father was a clergyman, without being neglected or poor, 
 and a very respectable man, though his name was Eichard, 
 and he had never been handsome. He had a considerable inde- 
 pendence, besides two good livings, and he was not in the 
 least addicted to locking up his daughters. Her mother was 
 a woman of useful plain sense, with a good temper, and, 
 what is more remarkable, with a good constitution. She had 
 three sons before Catherine was born; and, instead of dying 
 in bringing the latter into the world, as any body might 
 expect, she still lived on — ^lived to have six children more — 
 to see them growing up around her, and to enjoy excellent 
 health herself. A family of ten children will be always called 
 a fine family, where there are heads, and arms, and legs 
 enough for the number; but the Morlands had little other 
 right to the word, for they were in general very plain, and 
 Catherine, for many years of her life, as plain as any. She 
 had a thin awkward figure, a sallow skin without colour, 
 dark lank hair, and strong features ; so much for her person, 
 and not less unpropitious for heroism seemed her mind. 
 She was fond of all boys' plays, and greatly preferred 
 cricket, not merely to dolls, but to the more heroic enjoy- 
 ments of infancy, nursing a dormouse, feeding a canary- 
 bird, or watering a rosebush. Indeed she had no taste for 
 garden, and if she gathered flowers at all, it was chiefly for 
 the pleasure of mischief, at least so it was conjectured from 
 her always preferring those which she was forbidden to take. 
 Such were her propensities; her abilities were quite as extra- 
 ordinary. She never could learn or understand anything 
 before she was taught, and sometimes not even then, for she 
 was often inattentive, and occasionally stupid. Her mother 
 was three months in teaching her only to repeat the "Beggar's 
 Petition," and, after all, her next sister Sally could say it 
 better than she did. Not that Catherine was always stupid; 
 by no means; she learnt the fable of "The Hare and many 
 Friends," as quickly as any girl in England. Her mother 
 wished her to learn music ; and Catherine was sure she should 
 like it, for she was very fond of tinkling the keys of the old 
 forlorn spinnet, so at eight years old she began. She learnt a 
 
A PORTRAIT 363 
 
 year and could not bear it; and Mrs. Morland, who did not 
 insist on her daughters being accomplished in spite of inca- 
 pacity or distaste, allowed her to leave off. The day which 
 dismissed the music-master was one of the happiest of Cath- 
 erine's life. Her taste for drawing was not superior; though 
 whenever she could obtain the outside of a letter from her 
 mother, or seize upon any other odd piece of paper, she did 
 what she could in that way by drawing houses and trees, hens 
 and chickens, all very much like one another. Writing and 
 accounts she was taught by her father ; French by her mother. 
 Her proficiency in either was not remarkable, and she shirked 
 her lessons in both whenever she could. What a strange unac- 
 countable character ! for with all these symptoms of profligacy 
 at ten years old, she had neither a bad heart nor a bad 
 temper, was seldom stubborn, scarcely ever quarrelsome, and 
 very kind to the little ones, with few interruptions of tyrrany. 
 She was, moreover, noisy and wild, hated confinement and 
 cleanliness, and loved nothing so well in the world as rolling 
 down the green slope at the back of the house. 
 
 Such was Catherine Morland at ten. At fifteen appear- 
 ances were mending; she began to curl her hair and long for 
 balls, her complexion improved, her features were softened 
 by plumpness and colour, her eyes gained more animation, 
 and her figure more consequence. Her love of dirt gave way 
 to an inclination for finery, and she grew clean as slie grew 
 smart; she had now the pleasure of sometimes hearing her 
 father and mother remark on her personal improvement. 
 "Catherine grows quite a good-looking girl; she is almost 
 pretty to-day," were words which caught her ears now and 
 then ; and how welcome were the sounds ! To look almost 
 pretty is an acquisition of higher delight to a girl who has 
 been looking plain the first fifteen years of her life than a 
 beauty from her cradle can ever receive. 
 
 Jane Austen: Northanger Abbey. 
 
 A Portrait 
 We have no family pictures, Prue and I; only a portrait 
 of my grandmother hangs upon our parlor wall. It was taken 
 at least a century ago, and represents the venerable lady. 
 
364 DESCRIPTION 
 
 whom I remember' in my childhood in spectacles and comely 
 cap, as a young and blooming girl. 
 
 She is sitting upon an old-fashioned sofa, by the side of a 
 prim aunt of hers, and with her back to the open window. 
 Her costume is quaint, but handsome. It consists of a cream- 
 colored dress made high in the throat, ruffled around the 
 neck, and over the bosom and the shoulders. The waist is 
 just under her shoulders, and the sleeves are tight, tighter 
 than any of our coat sleeves, and also ruffled at the . wrist. 
 Around the plump and' rosy neck, which I remember as 
 shriveled and sallow, and hidden under a decent lace hand- 
 kerchief, hangs, in the picture, a necklace of large ebony 
 beads. There are two curls upon the forehead and the rest 
 of the hair flows away in ringlets down the neck. 
 
 The hands hold an open book ; the eyes look up from it with 
 tranquil sweetness, and, through the open window behind, 
 you see a quiet landscape — a hill, a tree, the glimpse of a 
 river, and a few peaceful summer clouds. 
 
 Often in my younger days, when my grandmother sat by 
 the fire after dinner, lost in thought — perhaps remembering 
 the time when the picture was really a portrait — I have 
 curiously compared her wasted face with the blooming beauty 
 of the girl, and tried to detect a likeness. It was strange 
 how the resemblance would sometimes start out; how, as I 
 gazed and gazed upon her old face, age disappeared before 
 my eager glance, as snow melts in the sunshine, revealing the 
 flowers of a forgotten spring. 
 
 It was touching to see my grandmother steal quietly up 
 to her portrait, oh still summer mornings when everyone 
 had left the house — and I, the only child, played, disre- 
 garded — and look at it wistfully and long. 
 
 She held her hand over her eyes to shade them from the 
 light that streamed in at the window, and I have seen her 
 stand at least a quarter of an hour gazing steadfastly at the 
 picture. She said nothing, she made no motion, she shed 
 no tear, but when she turned away there was always a pen- 
 sive sweetness in her face that made it not less lovely than 
 the face of her youth. 
 
 I have learned since, what her thoughts must have been — 
 
MONNA USA 365 
 
 how that long, wistful glance annihilated time and space, 
 how forms and faces unknown to any other, rose in sudden 
 ifsurrc'ction around her — how she loved, suffered, struggled, 
 and conquered again; how many a jest that I shall never hear, 
 how many a game that I shall never play, how many a song 
 that I shall never sing, were all renewed and remembered 
 as my grandmother contemplated her picture. 
 George William Curtis: Prue and I. 
 
 MoNNA Lisa' 
 
 The presence that thus rose so strangely beside tlie waters 
 is expressive of what in the ways of a thousand years men 
 had come to desire. Hers is the head upon which all the 
 ends of the world are come and the eyelids are a little weary. 
 It is a beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh, the 
 deposit, little cell by cell, of strange thoughts and fantastic 
 reveries and exquisite passions. Set it for a moment beside 
 one of those white Grcuk goddesses or beautiful women of 
 antiquity, and how would they be troubled by this beauty, 
 into which the soul with all its maladies has passed! All the 
 thoughts and experiences of the world have etched and 
 moulded there, in that which they have of power to refine 
 and make expressive the outward form, the animalism of 
 Greece, the lust of Rome, the reverie of the middle age with 
 itw spiritual ambition and imaginative loves, the return of 
 the Pagan world, the sins of the Borgias. She is older than 
 the I'ockrt among which kIic sitw; like the vampire she has been 
 dead many times, and learned tlie secrets of the grave; und 
 has been a diver in deep seas and keeps their fallen day 
 about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern mer- 
 chants; and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, 
 as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary; and all this has been 
 to her but aH the sound of lyre and flulu and lives only 
 in the delicacy with which it has moulded the changing 
 lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the hands. The 
 fancy of a perpetual life, swccpinf;; together ten thousand 
 
 1 |A famous portrait by da Vinci. 1 
 
366 DESCRIPTION 
 
 experiences, is an old one; a modern thought has conceived 
 the idea of humanity as wrought upon by, and summing up 
 in itself, all modes of thought and life. Certainly Lady Lisa 
 might stand as the embodiment of the old fancy, the symbol 
 of the modern idea. 
 
 Walter Pater: Leonardo da Vinci. 
 
 Captain Brown and His Daughters 
 
 Captain Brown had taken a small house on the outskirts of 
 the town, where he lived with his two daughters. He must 
 have been upwards of sixty at the time of the first visit 
 I paid to Cranford, after I had left it as a residence. But 
 he had a wiry, well-trained, elastic figure; a stifE military 
 throw-back of his head, and a springing step, which made 
 him appear much younger than he was. His eldest daughter 
 looked almost as old as himself, and betrayed the fact that 
 his real, was more than his apparent, age. Miss Brown must 
 have been forty; she had a sickly, pained, careworn expres- 
 sion on her face, and looked as if the gaiety of youth had 
 long faded out of sight. Even when young she must have been 
 plain and hard-featured. Miss Jessie Brown was ten years 
 younger than her sister, and twenty shades prettier. Her 
 face was round and dimpled. Miss Jenkyns once said, in a 
 passion against Captain Brown (the cause of which I will 
 tell you presently), "that she thought it was time for Miss 
 Jessie to leave off her dimples, and not always be trying to 
 look like a child." It was true that there was something 
 childlike in her face ; and there will be, I think, till she dies, 
 though she should live to a hundred. Her eyes were large 
 blue wondering eyes, looking straight at you; her nose was 
 unformed and snub, and her lips were red and dewy; she 
 wore her hair, tco, in little rows of curfe, which heightened 
 this appearance. I do not know whether she was pretty or 
 not; but I liked her face, and so did everybody, and I do 
 not think she could help her dimples. She had something 
 of her father's jauntiness of gait and manner; and any 
 female observer might detect a slight difference in the attire 
 of the two sisters — that of Miss Jessie being about two pounds 
 
CAPTAIN BROWN AND HIS DAUGHTERS 367 
 
 per annum more expensive than Miss Brown's. Two pounds 
 was a large sum in Captain Brown's annual disbursements. 
 
 Such was the impression made upon me by the Brown 
 family, when I first saw them all together in Cranford 
 church. The Captain I had met before — on the occasion of 
 the smoky chimney, which he had cured by some simple alter- 
 ation in the flue. In church, he held his double eye-glass to 
 his eyes during the Morning Hymn, and then lifted up his 
 head erect, and sang out loud and joyfully. He made the 
 responses louder than the clerk — an old man with a piping 
 feeble voice, who, I think, felt aggrieved at the Captain's 
 sonorous bass, and quavered higher and higher in conse- 
 quence. 
 
 On coming out of church, the brisk Captain paid the most 
 gallant attentions to his two daughters. He nodded and 
 smiled to his acquaintances, but he shook hands with none 
 until he had helped Miss Brown to unfurl her umbrella, 
 and relieved her of her prayer-book, and had waited patiently 
 till she, with trembling nervous hands, had taken up her 
 gown to walk through the wet roads. 
 
 It was impossible to live a month at Cranford, and not 
 know the daily habits of each resident; and long before my 
 visit was ended, I knew much concerning the whole Brown 
 trio. There was nothing new to be discovered respecting 
 their poverty; for they had spoken simply and openly about 
 that from the very first. They made no mystery of the 
 necessity for their being economical. All that remained to 
 be discovered was the Captain's infinite kindness of heart, 
 and the various modes in which, unconsciously to himself, 
 he manifested it. Some little anecdotes were talked about 
 for some time after they occurred. As we did not read much, 
 and as all the ladies were pretty well suited with servants, 
 there was a dearth of subjects for conversation. We there, 
 fore discussed the circumstances of the Captain taking a 
 poor old woman's dinner out of her hands, one very slippery 
 Sunday. He had met her returning from the bake-house 
 as he came from church, and noticed her precarious footing; 
 and, with the grave dignity with which he did everything, 
 
368 DESCRIPTION 
 
 he relieved her of her burden, and steered along the stieet 
 by her side, carrying her baked mutton and potatoes safely 
 home. This was thought very eccentric; and it was rather 
 expected that he would pay a round of calls, on the Monday 
 morning, to explain and apologize to the Cranford sense 
 of propriety; but he did no such thing; and then it was 
 decided that he was ashamed, and was keeping out of sight. 
 In a kindly pity for him, we began to say — "After all, the 
 Sunday morning's occurrence showed great goodness of 
 heart"; and it was resolved that he should be comforted on 
 his next appearance amongst us ; but, lo ! he came down upon 
 us, untouched by any sense of shame, speaking loud and bass 
 as ever, his head thrown back, his wig as jaunty and well- 
 curled as usual, and we were obliged to conclude he had 
 forgotten all about Sunday. 
 
 Miss Pole and Miss Jessie Brown had set up a kind of 
 intimacy, so it happened that when I went to visit Miss 
 Pole, I saw more of the Browns than I had done while 
 staying with Miss Jenkyns; who had never got over what 
 she called Captain Brown's disparaging remarks upon Dr. 
 Johnson, as a writer of light and agreeable fiction. I 
 found that Miss Brown was seriously ill of some lingering 
 incurable complaint, the pain occasioned by which gave the 
 uneasy expression to her face that I had taken for unmiti- 
 gated crossness. Cross, too, she was at times, when the 
 nervous irritability occasioned by her disease became past 
 endurance. Miss Jessie bore with her at these times even 
 more patiently than she did with the bitter self-upbraidings 
 by which they were invariably succeeded. Miss Brown used 
 to accuse herself, not merely of hasty and irritable temper; 
 but also of being the cause why her father and sister were 
 obliged to pinch, in order to allow her the small luxuries 
 which were necessaries in her condition. She would so fain 
 have made sacrifices for them and have lightened their cares, 
 that the original generosity of her disposition added acerbity 
 to her temper. All this was borne by Miss Jessie and her 
 father with more than placidity — with absolute tenderness. 
 I forgave Miss Jessie her singing out of tune, and her juve- 
 nility of dress, when I saw her at home. I came to perceive 
 
CAPTAIN BROIVN AND HIS DAUGHTERS 369 
 
 that Captain Brown's dark Brutus wig and padded coat 
 (alas! too often threadbare) were remnants of the military 
 smartness of his youth, which he now wore unconsciously. 
 He was a man of infinite resources, gained in his barrack 
 experience. As he confessed, no one could, black his boots 
 to please him, except himself; but, indeed, he was not above 
 saving the little maid-servant's labors in every way — know- 
 ing, most likely, that his daughter's illness made the place 
 a hard one. 
 
 The poor, brave Captain ! he looked older, and more worn, 
 and his clothes were very threadbare. But he seemed as 
 bright and cheerful as ever, unless he was asked about his 
 daughter's health. 
 
 "She suffers a great deal, and she must suffer more; we 
 do what we can to alleviate her pain — God's will be done!" 
 He took off his hat at these last words. I found, from Miss 
 Matty, that everything had been done, in fact. A medical 
 man, of high repute in that country neighborhood, had been 
 sent for, and every injunction he had given was attended to, 
 regardless of expense. Miss Matty was sure they denied 
 themselves many things in order to make the invalid com- 
 fortable; but they never spoke about it; and as for Miss 
 Jessie ! "I really think she's an angel," said poor Miss Matty, 
 quite overcome. "To see her way of bearing with Miss 
 Brown's crossness, and the bright face she puts on after she's 
 been sitting up a whole night and scolded above half of it, 
 is quite beautiful. Yet she looks as neat and as ready to 
 welcome the Captain at breakfast time, as if she had been 
 asleep in the Queen's bed all night. My dear! you could 
 never laugh at her prim little curls or her pink bows again, if 
 you saw her as I have done." I could only feel very penitent, 
 and greet Miss Jessie with double respect when I met her 
 next. She looked faded and pinched; and her lips began 
 to quiver, as if she was very weak, when she spoke of her 
 sister. But she brightened, and sent back the tears that were 
 glittering in her pretty eyes, as she said : 
 
 "But, to be sure, what a town Cranford is for kindness! 
 I don't suppose any one has a better dinner than usual cooked, 
 
370 DESCRIPTION 
 
 but the best part of all comes in a little covered basin for 
 my sister. The poor people will leave their earliest vege- 
 tables at our door for her. They speak short and gruff, 
 as if they were ashamed of it; but I am sure it often goes 
 to my heart to see their thoughtfulness." The tears now 
 came back and overflowed; but after a minute or two, she 
 began to scold herself, and ended by going away, the same 
 cheerful Miss Jessie as ever. 
 Mrs. Gasket: Cranford. 
 
 From an Office Window' 
 
 My own personal and private window looks out on Mul- 
 berry Street. It is in a little den at the end of a long string 
 of low-partitioned offices stretching along the Mulberry Street 
 side; and we who tenant them have looked out of the win- 
 dows for so many years that we have got to know, at least 
 by sight, a great many of the dwellers thereabouts. 
 
 The figure and form which we know best are those of old 
 Judge Phoenix — for so the office-jester named him when we 
 first moved in,^ and we have known him by .that name ever 
 since. He is a fat old Irishman, with a clean-shaven face, 
 who stands summer and winter in the side doorway that 
 opens, next to the little grocery opposite, on the alley-way 
 to the rear tenement. Summer and winter he is buttoned 
 to his chin in a faded old black overcoat. Alone he stands 
 for the most part, smoking his black pipe and teetering 
 gently from, one foot to the other. But sometimes a woman 
 inth a shawl over her head comes out of the allej'-way and 
 exchanges a few words with him before she goes to the little 
 grocery to get a loaf of bread, or a half-pint of milk, or. 
 to make that favorite purchase of the poor — three pota- 
 toes, one turnip, one carrot, four onions, and a handful of 
 kale — a "b'ilin'." And there is also another old man, a 
 small and bent old man, who has some strange job that 
 occupies odd hours of the day, who stops on his way to and 
 from work to talk with the Judge. For hours and hours 
 
 1 From Jersey Street and Jersey Lane; copyright, 1893, 1894, 189S, 1896, by 
 Charles Scribner's Sons. 
 
FROM AN OFFICE WINDOW 371 
 
 they talk together, till one wonders how in the course of 
 years they have not come to talk themselves out. What 
 can they have left to talk about? If they had been Mezzo- 
 fanti and Macaulay, talking in all known languages on all 
 known topics, they ought certainly to have exhausted the re- 
 sources of conversation long before this time. 
 
 Judge Phoenix must be a man of independent fortune .... 
 Perhaps he owns the rear tenement. I suspect so, for he 
 must have been at one time in the labor-contract business. 
 This, of course, is a mere guess, founded upon the fact that 
 we once discovered the Judge away from his post and at 
 work. It was the time they were repaving Broadway with 
 the great pavement. We found the Judge at the corner 
 of Bleecker Street perched on a pile of dirt, doing duty as 
 sub-section boss. He was talking to the drivers of the 
 vehicles that went past him, through the half-blockaded thor- 
 oughfare, and he was addressing them, after the true pro- 
 fessional contractor's style, by the names of their loads. 
 
 "Hi there, sand," he would cry, "git along lively! Stone, 
 if s you the boss wants on the other side of the street ! Dhry- 
 goods, there's no place for ye here; take the next turn!" 
 It was a proud day for the old Judge, and I have no doubt 
 that he talks it over still with his bent old crony, and boasts 
 of vain deeds that grow in the telling. 
 
 Judge Phoenix is not, however, without mute company. 
 Fair days and foul are all one to the Judge, but on fair 
 days his companion is brought out. In front of the grocery 
 is a box with a sloping top, on which are little bins for vege- 
 tables. In front of this box, again, on days when it is not 
 raining or snowing, a little girl of five or six comes out 
 of the grocery and sets a little red chair. Then she brings 
 out a smaller girl yet, who may be two or three, a plump 
 and puggy little thing; and down in the red chair big sister 
 plunks little sister, and there till next mealtime little sister 
 sits and never so much as offers to move. She must have 
 been trained to this unchildlike self-imprisonment, for she 
 is lusty and strong enough. Big sister works in the shop, 
 and once in a while she comes out and settles little sister 
 more comfortably in her red chair; and then little sister 
 
372 DESCRIPTION 
 
 has the sole moment of relief from a monotonous existence. 
 She hammers on big sister's face with her fat little hands, 
 and with such skill and force does she direct the blows that 
 big sister often has to wipe her streaming eyes. But big 
 sister always takes it in good part, and little sister evidently 
 does it, not from any lack of affection, but in the way of 
 healthful exercise. Then big sister wipes little sister's nose 
 and goes back into the shop. I suppose there is some com- 
 pact between them. 
 
 Of course there is plenty of child life all up and down 
 the sidewalk on both sides, although little sister never joins 
 in it. My side of the street swarms with Italian children, 
 most of them from Jersey Street, which is really not a street, 
 but an alley. Judge Phoenix's side is peopled with small 
 Germans and Irish. I have noticed one peculiar thing about 
 these children: they never change sides. They play together 
 most amicably in the middle of the street or in the gutter, 
 but neither ventures beyond its neutral ground. 
 
 Judge Phoenix and little sister are by far the most inter- 
 estiiig figures to be seen from my windows, but there are 
 many others whom we know. There is the Italian barber 
 whose brother dropped dead while shaving a customer. You 
 would never imagine, to see the simple and unaffected way in 
 which he comes out to take the air once in a while, standing 
 on the steps of his basement, and twirling his tin-backed 
 comb in idle thought, that he had had such a distinguished 
 death in his family. But I don't let him shave me. 
 
 Then there is Mamie, the pretty girl in the window with 
 the lace curtains, and there is her epileptic brother. He 
 is insane, but harmless, and amusing, although- rather trying 
 to the nerves. He comes out of the house in a hurry, walks 
 quickly up the street for twenty or thirty feet, then turns 
 suddenly, as if he had forgotten something, and hurries back, 
 to reappear two minutes later from the basement door, only 
 to hasten wildly in another direction, turn back again, plunge 
 into the basement door, emerge from the upper door, get 
 half way down the block, forget it again, and go back to 
 make a new combination of doors and exits. . . . 
 
 In the window next to Mamie's is a little, putty-colored 
 
FROM AN OFFICE WINDOW 373 
 
 face, and a still smaller white face, that just peeps over 
 the sill. One belongs to the mulatto woman's youngster. 
 Her mother goes out scrubbing, and the little girl is alone all 
 day. She is so much alone, that the sage-green old bachelor 
 in the second den from mine could not stand it last Christmas 
 time, so he sent her a doll on the sly. That's the other face. 
 
 Jersey Street, or at least the rear of it, seems to be given 
 up wholly to the Italians. The most charming tenant of 
 Jersey Street is the lovely Italian girl, who looks like a 
 Jewess, whose mission in life seems to be to hang all day 
 long out of her window and watch the doings in the little 
 stone-flagged courts below her. In one of these an old 
 man sometimes comes out, sits him down in a shady corner, 
 and plays on the Italian bagpipes, which are really more 
 painful than any hand-organ that ever was made. After 
 a while his wife opens hostilities with him from her window. 
 I suppose she is reproaching him for an idle devotion to 
 art, but I cannot follow the conversation, although it is 
 loud enough on both sides. But the handsome Italian girl 
 up at the window follows the changes of the strife with the 
 light of the joy of battle in her beautiful dark eyes, and 
 I can tell from her face exactly which of the old folk is 
 getting the better of it. 
 
 But though the life of Jersey and Mulberry Streets may be 
 mildly interesting to outside spectators, the inhabitants must 
 find it rather monotonous. Jersey Street is not only a blind 
 alley, but a dead one, so far as outside life is concerned, and 
 Judge Phoenix and little sister see pretty much the same 
 old two-and-sixpence every day. The bustle and clamor of 
 Mulberry Bend are only a few blocks below them, but the Bend 
 is an exclusive slum; and Police Headquarters — the Central 
 Office — is a block above, but the Central Office deals only 
 with the refinements of artistic crime, and is not half so 
 interesting as an ordinary police station. The priests go by 
 from the school below, in their black robes and tall silk 
 hats, always two by two, marching with brisk, business-like 
 tread. An occasional drunken man or woman wavers along, 
 but generally their faces and their conditions are familiar. 
 
3?4 DESCRIPTION 
 
 Sometimes two men hurry by, pressing side by side. If you 
 have seen that peculiar walk before, you know what it means. 
 Two light steel rings link their wrists together. The old 
 man idly watches them until they disappear in the white 
 marble building on the next block. And then, of course, there 
 is always a thin stream of working folk going to and fro 
 upon their business. 
 
 In spring and fall things brighten a little. Those are the 
 seasons of processions and religious festivals. Almost every 
 day then, and sometimes half a dozen times in a day, the Judge 
 and the baby may see some Italian society parading through 
 the street. Fourteen proud sons of Italy, clad in magnificent 
 new uniforms, bearing aloft huge silk banners, strut magnifi- 
 cently in the rear of a German band of twenty-four pieces, 
 and a drum-corps of a dozen more. Then, too, come the 
 religious processions, when the little girls are taken to their 
 first communion. Six sturdy Italians struggle along under 
 the weight of a mighty temple or pavilion, all made of colored 
 candles — ^the great big candles of the Eomish church ; mighty 
 candles, six and eight feet tall, and as thick as your wrist, 
 of red and blue and green and yellow, arranged in artistic 
 com,binations around a statue of the Virgin. From this 
 splendid structure, silken ribbons stream in all directions, 
 and at the end of each ribbon is a little girl — ^generally a 
 pretty little girl — in a white dress bedecked with green bows. 
 And each little girl leads by the hand one smaller than her- 
 self, sometimes a toddler so tiny that you marvel that it 
 can walk at all. Some of the little ones are bare-headed, but 
 most of them wear the square head-cloth of the Italian 
 peasant, such as their mothers and grandmothers wore in 
 Italy. At each side of the girls marches an escort of proud 
 parents, very much mixed up with the boys of the families, 
 who generally appear in their usual street dress. . . . 
 And before and behind them are bands and drum-corps, and 
 societies with banners, and it is all a blare of martial music 
 and primary colors the whole length of the street. 
 
 But these are Mulberry Street's brief carnival seasons, and 
 when their splendor has departed the block relapses into work- 
 aday dullness. . . . 
 
FROM AN OFFICE WINDOW 375 
 
 Suddenly there is an explosion of sound . . . and a 
 hand-organ starts off with a jerk like a freight train on a 
 down grade, that joggles a whole string of crashing notes. It 
 gets down to work, and its harsh, high-pitched, metallic drone 
 makes the street ring for a moment. Then it is temporarily 
 drowned by a chorus of shrill, small voices. I lean on my 
 broad window-sill and look out. The street is filled with 
 children of every age, size, and nationality; dirty children, 
 clean children, well-dressed children, and children in rags 
 . . . I do not know where they have all swarmed from. 
 There were only three or four in sight just before the organ 
 came; now there are several dozen in the crowd, and the 
 crowd is growing. See, the women are coming out in the 
 rear tenements. Some male passers-by line up on the edge 
 of the sidewalk and look on with a superior air. The Italian 
 barber has come all the way up his steps, and is sitting on the 
 rail. Judge Phoenix has teetered forward at least half a 
 yard, and stands looking at the show over the heads of a 
 little knot of women hooded with red plaid shawls. The 
 epileptic boy comes out on his stoop and stays there at least 
 three minutes before the area-way swallows him. Up above 
 there is a head in almost every casement. JIamie is at her 
 window, and the little mulatto child at hers. There are only 
 two people who do not stop and look on and listen. One is 
 a Chinaman, who stalks by with no expression at all on his 
 blank face ; the other is the boy from the printing-office with 
 a dozen foaming cans of beer on his long stick. But he does 
 not leave because he wants to. He lingers as long as he 
 can, in his passage through the throng, and disappears in the 
 printing-oflBce doorway with his head screwed half way around 
 on his shoulders. He would linger yet, but the big foreman 
 would call him "Spitzbube !" and would cuff his ears. 
 
 The children are dancing. The organ is playing "On the 
 Blue Alsatian Mountains," and the little heads are bobbing 
 up and down to it in time as true as ever was kept. Watch 
 the little things! They are really waltzing. There is a 
 young one of four years old. See her little worn shoes take 
 the step and keep it! Look at that ring of children — all 
 girls — waltzing round hand in hand! How is that for a 
 
376 DESCRIPTION 
 
 ladies' chain? The heart grows young to see them. And 
 now look over to the grocery. Big sister has come out and 
 climhed on the vegetable-stand, and is sitting in the potatoes 
 with little sister in her lap. Little sister wares her fat, red 
 arms in the air and shrieks in babyish delight. The old 
 women with the shawls over their heads are talking together, 
 crooning over the spectacle in their Irish way: 
 
 "Thot's me Mary Ann, I was tellin' ye about, Mrs. Eaf- 
 ferty, dancin' wid the little one in the green apron." 
 
 "It's a foine sthring o' childher ye have, Mrs. Finn," says 
 Mrs. Rafferty, nodding her head as though it were balanced 
 on wires. And so the dance goes on. 
 
 H. C. Bunner: Jersey Street and Jersey Lane. 
 
 A Duel 
 
 Mr. Henry laid down his cards. He rose to his feet very 
 softly, and seemed all the while like a person in deep 
 thought. "You coward!" he said gently, as if to himself. 
 And then, with neither hurry nor any particular violence, 
 he struck the Master in tlie mouth. 
 
 The Master sprang to his feet like one transfigured; I 
 had never seen the man so beautiful. "A blow!" he cried. 
 "I would not take a blow from God Almighty !" 
 
 "Lower your voice," said Mr. Henry. "Do you wish my 
 father to interfere for you again?" 
 
 "Gentlemen, gentlemen," I cried, and sought to come 
 between them. 
 
 The Master caught me by the shoulder, held me at arm's 
 length, and still addressing his brother: "Do you know what 
 this means?" said he. 
 
 "It was the most deliberate act of my life," says Mr. Henry. 
 
 "I must have blood, I must have blood for this," says the 
 Master. 
 
 "Please God it shall be yours," said Mr. Henry;. and he 
 went to the wall and took down a pair of swords that hung 
 there with others, naked. These he presented to the Master 
 by the points. "Mackellar shall see us play fair," said Mr. 
 Henry. "I think it very needful.". 
 
A DUEL 377 
 
 "You need insult me no more," said the Master, taking 
 one of the swords at random. "I have hated you all my life." 
 
 "My father is but newly gone to bed," said Mr. Henry. 
 "We must go somewhere forth of the house." 
 
 "There is an excellent place in the long shrubbery," said 
 the Master. 
 
 "Gentlemen," said 1, "shame upon you both ! Sons of the 
 same mother, would you turn against the life she gave you?" 
 
 "Even so, Mackellar," said Mr. Henry, with the same 
 perfect quietude of manner he had shown throughout. 
 
 "It is what I will prevent," said I. 
 
 And now here is a blot upon my life. At these words of 
 mine the Master turned his blade against my bosom; I saw 
 the light run along the steel ; and I threw up my arms and 
 fell to my knees before him on the floor. "No, no," I cried, 
 like a baby. 
 
 "We shall have no more trouble with him," said the Master. 
 "It is a good thing to have a coward in the house." 
 
 "We must have a light," said Mr. Henry, as though there 
 had been no interruption. 
 
 "This trembler can bring a pair of candles," said the 
 Master. 
 
 To my shame be it said, I was still so blinded with the ■ 
 flashing of that bare sword that I volunteered to bring a 
 lantern. 
 
 "We do not need a 1-1-lantern," says the Master, mocking 
 me. "There is no breath of air. Come, get to your feet, 
 take a pair of lights, and go before. I am close behind with 
 this — " making the blade glitter as he spoke. 
 
 I took up the candlesticks and went before them, steps that 
 I would give my hand to recall; but a coward is a slave at 
 the best; and even as I went, my teeth smote each other in 
 my mouth. It was as he had said: there was no breath 
 stirring; a windless stricture of frost had bound the air; 
 and as we went forth in the shine of the candles, the black- 
 ness was like a roof over our heads. Never a word was said; 
 there was never a sound but the creaking of our steps along 
 the frozen path. The cold of the night fell about me like a 
 bucket of water; I shook as 1 went with more than terror; 
 
37? DESCRIPTION 
 
 but my companions, bare-headed like myself, and fresh from 
 the warm hall, appeared not even conscious of. the change. 
 
 "Here is the place," said the Master. "Set down the 
 candles." 
 
 I did as he bid me, and presently the flames went up, as 
 steady as in a chamber, in the midst of the frosted trees, and 
 I beheld these two brothers take their places. 
 
 "The light is something in my eyes," said the Master. 
 
 "I will give you every advantage," replied Mr. Henry, 
 shifting his ground, "for I think you are about to die." He 
 spoke rather sadly than otherwise, yet there was a ring in his 
 voice. 
 
 "Henry Durie," said the Master, "two words before I 
 begin. You are a fencer, you can hold a foil; you little 
 know what a change it makes to hold a sword. And by that 
 I know you are to fall. But see how strong is my situa- 
 tion ! If you fall, I shift out of this country to where my 
 money is before me. If I fall, where are you? My father, 
 your wife — who is m love with me, as you very well know — 
 your child even, who prefers me to yourself; — ^how will 
 these avenge me! Had you thought of that, dear Henry?" 
 He looked at his brother with a smile; then made a fencing 
 , room salute. 
 
 Never a word said Mr. Henry, but saluted too, and the 
 swords rang together. 
 
 I am no judge of the play; my head, besides, was gone 
 with cold and fear of horror; but it seems that Mr. Henry 
 took and kept the upper hand from the engagement, crowding 
 in upon his foe with a contained and- glowing fury. Nearer 
 and nearer he crept upon the man, till of a sudden the Master 
 leaped back with a little sobbing oath; and I believe the 
 movement brought the light once more against his eyes. To 
 it they went again, on the fresh ground ; but now methought 
 closer, Mr. Henry pressing more outrageously, the Master 
 beyond doubt with shaken confidence. For it is beyond doubt 
 he now recognized himself for lost, and had some taste of 
 the cold agony of fear; or he had never attempted the foul 
 stroke. I cannot say I followed it, my untrained eye was 
 never quick enough to seize details, but it appears he caught 
 
BOY AND GIRL 379 
 
 his brother's blade with his left hand, a practice not per- 
 mitted. Certainly Mr. Henry only saved himself by leaping 
 on one side; as certainly the Master, lunging in the air, 
 stumbled on his knee, and before he could move the sword 
 was through his body. 
 
 I cried out with a stifled scream, and ran in ; but the body 
 was already fallen to the ground, where it writhed a moment 
 like a trodden worm, and then lay motionless. 
 
 R. L. Stevenson: The Master of Ballantrae. 
 
 Boy and Girl 
 
 The next morning Maggie was trotting with, her own 
 fishing-rod in one hand and a handle of the basket in the 
 other, stepping always, by a peculiar gift, in the muddiest 
 places, and looking darkly radiant from under her beaver- 
 bonnet because Tom was good to her. She had told Tom, 
 however, that she should like him to put the worms on the 
 hook for her, although she accepted his word when he assured 
 her that worms couldn't feel (it was Tom's private opinion 
 that it didn't matter much if they did) . He knew all about 
 worms, and fish, and those things; and what birds were 
 mischievous, and how padlocks opened, and which way the 
 handles of the gates were to be lifted. Maggie thought 
 this sort of knowledge was very wonderful, — much more 
 diflBcult than remembering what was in the books; and she 
 was rather in awe of Tom's superiority, for he was the only 
 person who called her knowledge "stuff," and did not feel 
 surprised at her cleverness. Tom, indeed, was of the opinion 
 that Maggie was a silly little thing; all girls were silly, — they 
 couldn't throw a stone so as to hit anything, couldn't do 
 anything with a pocket-knife, and were frightened at frogs. 
 Still, he was very fond of his sister, and meant always to 
 take care of her, make her his housekeeper, and punish her 
 when she did wrong. 
 
 They were on their way to the Round Pool, — that won- 
 derful pool that the floods had made a long while ago. No 
 one knew how deep it was ; and it was mysterious, too, that 
 
380 DESCRIPTION 
 
 it should be almost a perfect round, framed in with willows 
 and tall reeds, so that the water was only to be seen when 
 you got close to the brink. The sight of the old favorite spot 
 always heightened Tom's good humor, and he spoke to Maggie 
 in the most amicable whispers, as he opened the precious 
 basket and prepared their tackle. He threw her line for her, 
 and put the rod into her hand. Maggie thought it probable 
 that the small fish would come to her hook, and the large ones 
 to Tom's. But she had forgotten all about the fish, and was 
 looking dreamily at the glassy water, when Tom said, in a 
 loud whisper, "Look, look, Maggie!" and came running to 
 prevent her from snatching her line away. 
 
 Maggie was frightened lest she had been doing something 
 wrong, as usual, but presently Tom drew out her line and 
 brought a large tench bouncing on the grass. 
 
 Tom was excited. 
 
 "0 Magsie, you little duck ! Empty the basket." 
 
 Maggie was not conscious of unusual merit, but it was 
 enough that Tom called her Magsie, and was pleased with 
 her. There was nothing to mar her delight in the whispers 
 and the dreamy silences when she listened to the light dipping 
 sounds of the rising fish, and the gentle rustling, as if the 
 willows and the reeds and the water had their happy whisper- 
 ings also. Maggie thought it would make a very nice heaven 
 to sit by the pool in that way and never be scolded. She 
 never knew she had a bite till Tom told her; but she liked 
 fishing very much. 
 
 It was one of their happy mornings. They trotted along 
 and sat down together, with no thought that life would 
 ever change much for them; they would only get bigger 
 and not go to school, and it would always be like the holidays ; 
 they would always live together and be fond of each other. 
 And the mill with its booming ; the great chestnut-tree under 
 which they played at houses ; their own little river, the Eipple, 
 where the banks seemed like home, and Tom was always 
 seeing the water-rats, while Maggie gathered the purple 
 plumy tops of the reeds, which she forgot and dropped after- 
 ward; above all, the great Floss, along which they wandered 
 with a sense of tra-vel, to see the rushing spring-tide, the 
 
BOY AND GIRL 381 
 
 awful Eagre, come up like a hxmgry monster, or to see the 
 Great Ash which had once wailed and groaned like a man — 
 these things would always be just the same to them. Tom 
 thought people were at a disadvantage who lived on any 
 other spot of the globe; and Maggie, when she read about 
 Christiana passing "the river over which there is no bridge,'' 
 alwavs saw the Floss between the green pastures by tlie Great 
 Ash." 
 
 life did change for Tom and Maggie; and yet they were 
 not wrong in believing that the thoughts and loves of these 
 first years would always make part of their lives. We could 
 never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood 
 in it, — if it were'not the earth where the same flowers come up 
 again every spring that we used to gatlier with our tiny 
 fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves in the grass; the same 
 hips and haws on the autumn hedgerows; the same red- 
 breasts that we used to call "God's birds," because they did 
 no harm to the precious crops. What novelty is worth that 
 sweet monotony where everything is known, and loved because 
 it is known? 
 
 The wood I walk in on this mild May day, with the young 
 yeUow-brown foliage of the oaks between me and the blue 
 sky, the white star-flowers and the blue-eyed speedwell and 
 ground ivy at my feet — what grove of tropic palms, what 
 strange ferns or splendid broad-petalled blossoms, could ever 
 thrill such deep and delicate fibres within me as this home 
 scene? These familiar flowers, these well-remembered bird- 
 notes, this sky, with its fitful brightness, these furrowed and 
 grassy fields, each with a sort of personality given to it by the 
 capricious hedgerows, — such things as these are the mother- 
 tongue of our imagination, the language that is laden with 
 all the subtle, inextricable associations the fleeting hours of 
 our childhood left behind them. Our delight in the sunshine 
 on the deep-bladed grass to-day might be no more than the 
 faint perception of wearied souls, if it were not for the sun- 
 shine and the grass in the far-off years which still live in us, 
 and transform our perception into love. 
 
 George Eliot: The Mill on the Floss. 
 
382 DESCRIPTION 
 
 STUDENTS' THEMES. 
 
 A light west wind is blowing, which whistles like a gale 
 as we exceed the speed limit over ten or twelve miles of 
 good Massachusetts pike. There is a lingering feel of frosty 
 although the sun shines bright and high, and the oak leaves, 
 large as a mouse's ear, give the Eedman's token that corn- 
 planting time is come; while the swamp willows are green 
 as the fresh flag grass that shoots its little tufts in the water 
 beneath them, and arbutus buds are opening on every southern 
 bank. 
 
 At Anawan, the Lake, with its neighboring ponds and 
 puddles, teems with animal life. Tadpoles, newts, larval 
 salamanders, dart about; fairy-shrimps, belly upward, guide 
 with gently moving swimmerets their transparent, wraith- 
 like forms among the shadows; and the water beetles, with 
 long side oars, dash madly about from surface to bottom 
 and back again, belter skelter, like dogs let loose at evening 
 after having been chained all day. Masses of toads' eggs 
 and the cases of caddis flies evidence the potential life that 
 soon will be awakened. Down among the bottom stones — 
 look closely — ^tiny red hydras and fresh water sponges cling, 
 and flat-worms and leeches and yellow insect larvae hide 
 among the water plants. 
 
 But evening approaches. Overhead the cooler wind is 
 whispering to the young leaves the coming of summer. A 
 slide of the lever, a chugging of the exhaust, and- once again 
 we are exceeding the speed limit over the hard, smooth road- 
 ways of Massachusetts. 
 
 II. 
 
 The hour was after midnight and I know not what had 
 awakened me, but I lay perfectly conscious in the full stream 
 of moonlight that flooded through my wide-open window 
 
STUDENTS' DESCRIPTIONS 383 
 
 on a calm night in early April. It was the first warm night 
 of Spring; the moon sjiono softly through the thin low- 
 hanging haze, and the atmosphere breathed of the warmth 
 and dampness which precede the annual awakening of Nature. 
 Far below me I heard a medley of sounds from the city's 
 greatest thoroughfare, for my room was in an upper story 
 of one of Xew York's tower-like apartment buildings. But 
 the sounds below seemed unnatural, artificial, and my whole 
 attention was directed above into the spaciousness of the quiet 
 silvery night, which bespoke forests and plains just turning 
 green, and rippling lakes bathed by the same moon, far 
 away from the restless, hurrying city. I thought of my long 
 winter confinement, of the months during which I had not 
 seen a bird or a flower. Then suddenly, clearly from the air 
 above, there came notes like the broken strains of a trumpet, 
 — ^the wild geese were honking on their northward way. 
 With a quickening of blood, the primeval passion, the long- 
 ing for such freedom as only the brutes enjoy, swept over me. 
 and before I fell into fitful, feverish slumber, I yielded to the 
 irresistible impulse and vowed that on the morrow I should be 
 off once more to the unsettled wilderness, there to remain 
 until ambition, the vexation of man, should call me back 
 to the strife and bondage of civilization. 
 
 III. 
 
 Captain Mayhew's ship chandlery long ago ceased to be an 
 important factor in the commerce of Boothbay Harbor. 
 Its dusty and fly-specked interior is no longer the scene of 
 active barter; the few stray customers who find their way 
 inside withdraw hastily when they have taken a cursory glance 
 at the venerable contents of shelf and counter. The faded 
 candy in the show-window fails to attract the small boy 
 with a penny to spend, and the lithographic young ladies 
 in tight sleeves and bustles no longer charm the onlooker 
 into buying a cake of "Frank Siddle's Soap." As for the 
 proprietor. Captain Mayhew himself, he smoketh a corn-cob 
 and sitteth at ease amidst the wreckage of his former pros- 
 perity, splicing together the rope-ends of his variegated 
 
384 DESCRIPTION 
 
 career as sailor, fisherman, ship broker, and chandler. Eetro- 
 spection is his delight, the occasional visit of an old crony, 
 his solace. He loveth to turn his merry blue eye inwards 
 and philosophize upon the ways of herring, of county polities, 
 of sailormen, of summer visitors and nautical instruments. 
 He joyeth to emit the salt-encrusted wisdom of th6 seas. 
 Like his shop he is quaint and aromatic of the past. Both 
 the place and the man carry us back to the days when grand- 
 mother was a belle, and we are fain to linger in the old 
 store as in an eddy of the long-ago which the busy modern 
 currents have failed to sweep away. 
 
 IV. 
 
 I am sitting on the upper veranda of the Bermuda Dinghy 
 — ^they pronounce it dinjcy — Club, sipping brandy-and-soda to 
 keep off the fever — an exceedingly pleasant way of staying 
 healthy. I can see the lights of the naval station over on 
 the other side of the harbor, and the anchor-light of a 
 shadowy man-o'-war. All else is vagueness and starry tropical 
 night. From somewhere among the deep shadows below me 
 come the thrum of a guitar and the mellow tones of a negro 
 serenading his dusky Miranda. The music ceases, and for 
 a while all is still until a loud clattering on the pavement 
 announces the approach of a group of drunken soldiers. 
 Men of His Majesty's Lancashire Regiment, black Irish, are 
 they, and their loud voices jar me from my pleasant reverie. 
 But their footsteps and raucous laughter die away round the 
 next corner and the night resumes its quiet. Quiet, did I 
 say? Ah, but an emotional quiet, a palpitating stillness 
 crowded with innumerable silent voices that fill the heart 
 with languDfously enchanting music. "This is living," I say 
 to myself, and doze off idly repeating those lines of Shelley's, 
 
 The wandering airs they faint 
 On the dark, the silent stream — 
 
 And the Champak odors fail 
 Like sweet thoughts in a dream. 
 
STUDENTS' DESCRIPTIONS 385 
 
 The strains of Mendelsohn's Wedding March always remind 
 me of a little girl in a long trailing night-gown, with two 
 short pig-tails down her back, and two mischievous black 
 eyes. Every evening a wonderful wedding procession used 
 to wend its way slowly from the dressing-room through the 
 hall to a little bedroom. The bride always was my little 
 friend, whose cotton night gown was changed for the time 
 being into a dress of the finest satin. The music she fur- 
 nished herself, humming it low under her breath if the 
 wedding was that of a meek and sweet young couple, or 
 whistling it boisterously if the bride and groom belonged 
 to high life on the Bowery. The groom, by the way, was 
 always an imaginary quantity, for I steadfastly declined to 
 assume the honors and responsibilities of that position. 
 Instead, I was the flower-girl with a bouquet of combs and 
 brushes and an armful of clothes. When the procession 
 reached the bedroom door the inevitable always happened; 
 either the church fell in and buried the meek couple, or an 
 irate first wife appeared on the scene and carried off the 
 base Bowery beau. Then I bundled the quondam bride into 
 bed and told her to go to sleep at once. But for half an 
 hour longer fragments of the Wedding March would come 
 floating down the staircase into the sitting-room. 
 
 VI. 
 
 No one knew anything about Sophia except that tlie 
 church paid her board, but everyone knew Sophia herself. 
 Every Sunday morning and evening about five minutes after 
 the service had begun, Sophia would march up th'e centre 
 aisle arrayed in the glory of ilrs. Smith's last year's bonnet, 
 Mrs. Jones's old silk waist, and Miss Brown's black and green 
 golf skirt. All three ladies groaned inwardly as skirt, waist, 
 and hat passed by, for Sophia possessed the knack of mak- 
 ing the newest things look gray and seedy in a week. "That 
 waist looks just as though I had dug it out of the ash-can 
 before I gave it to her," thought Mrs. Jones. 
 
386 DESCRIPTION 
 
 But regular as Sophia was in her attendance at the church 
 services, she was still more regular at socials and suppers. 
 The fact that she had no ticket never troubled her. In she 
 would walk with the calmest self-assurance and would order 
 chicken salad, turkey sandwiches, mince pie, or ice cream, 
 with the greatest composure. They usually gave her what- 
 ever she wanted, and report says that once after she had 
 made away with seven plates of ice cream she sighed, "Oh, 
 dear ! I wish I could eat more, but I can't." Poor Sophia ! 
 To her life meant eating and drinking, but not being merry. 
 How could she be happy when she was always trying to get 
 as much as possible for herself? 
 
 Nevertheless, going home one night from a church supper 
 with half a chocolate cake in her hand, she found a little 
 boy crying in the street. Gathering from his complaints that 
 he must be hungry she broke off a comer of the cake and 
 gave it to him. Then she went home with something like 
 a glow of satisfaction in her heart, which lasted until she 
 had eaten all of the cake. But when she had gathered up 
 the last few crumbs her heart went out longingly to the piece 
 so rashly given away. And Sophia vowed she would never 
 do it again. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Newport, Isle of Wight 
 
 The Isle of Wight looks so insignificant on the map — 
 just a little island off the south coast of England — that 
 most tourists who are trying to "see" the British Isles pass 
 it by unnoticed. It is off the beaten track which tourists 
 follow, it has no old ruins of world-wide renown, it is the 
 home of no men of extraordinary fame, and its surface is 
 marked by no very unusual freaks of nature; indeed, it is 
 only a bit of English country, just like any other English 
 countryside except that it is surrounded by water, that it 
 is a little more secluded, and that its fields are a little greener 
 and its days sunnier, than those of other parts of England. 
 It is, however, so vivid an incarnation of rural England, so 
 precisely a counterpart of the England which has been 
 
STUDENTS' DESCRIPTIONS 387 
 
 depicted to your mind by every English writer from Chaucer 
 to Tennyson, that, if you visit it, you get a breath of real 
 Eng^lish atmosphere, an insight into English rural life, which 
 you cannot obtain by gazing at ancient ruins, by inspecting 
 handsome cathedrals, or by listening to a guide's explanations 
 of the wonders of a remarkable work of nature. 
 
 When you go to the Isle of Wight, if you make your 
 headquarters at Newport, the musty old capital of the island, 
 and stop at Warburton's Hotel, your host will tell you of an 
 old castle about a mile's drive from the town, a Norman 
 fortress with a Saxon keep, where King Charles was once 
 kept a prisoner, and he will tell you of a fine stone church, 
 where lie the remains of so-and-so, daughter of the well- 
 known Prince so-and-so, of whom, undoubtedly, you have 
 never heard. But, if you want to see the town of Newport, 
 you will not take the innkeeper's advice and hire his car- 
 riage to make the tour of the neighborhood. You will take a 
 walk out into the country, leave the stuffy little town behind, 
 and ramble through the green fields and over the rounding 
 hills, climbing over stiles, walking through gates, until you 
 get out on top of one of the low hills, out in the bright 
 morning sun, where you can look, without a thought of 
 history and dates, a^t the old castle standing not far away on 
 a wooded knoll, its stone tower extending above the surround- 
 ing trees. 
 
 From your position you can overlook the landscape. If 
 you look back over the country you have passed through you 
 will see the hills lying calm and still in the sunlight, their 
 surface sectioned off into quiet little farms. I remember we 
 likened the scene to a patchwork quilt spread over a billowy 
 bed. A prettily arranged quilt it was. On the side of the 
 larger billow, which lay opposite us, there was a large, right 
 triangle of emerald-green velvet — a field of rich, young grass. 
 Against one leg o& this triangle was placed a rectangle of 
 brown — a field lately plowed and still dark with the Tip- 
 turned clod. Erom. the other leg was spread out an irregular 
 polygon of green pasture-land, spotted with white .^eep. 
 On the hypothenuse was constructed an uneven parallelogram, 
 yellow with growing com. And on the sides of all these fig- 
 
388 DESCRIPTION 
 
 nres ^aJ other fignree, and on tbe sides of iliese, otbera; 
 cjrdee of green, spotted witiii the brown badcs of brov-dng 
 cattle, sqaares of gray, plowed land, and more aectioDi; of 
 ejieep-dotted pasture, stretdiing in unordered neatness orer 
 the hillsides. 
 
 Aj Ton sit down on the soft, grassy bank and drowsilT gaze 
 at tile brown lines of hawthorn beiges which separate the 
 fidds and intersect the appoate hillside in e^er^ directim; 
 at the jellow -ftrip of road widdi comes ont of the ralky, 
 earring in a long bow diagonaify across the hills, joa dreamilj 
 absorb the peace and qniet of English rural liCe^ Below, in 
 the little Taller, is a eozj-lotAdag homestead, resting in the 
 midst of a clump of trees. In the field abore it a man is 
 working with his scrthe. Along the road an old woman is 
 riding to town in her ehnnsj, wooden maik^reart. Fnmi 
 the hillside conies the noise of bleating ^laeep. In Ute he%-r 
 iKarbr a sparrow flutters about among the branches. Frcrni 
 an around rises the good scent of growing things. 
 
 Ton loD around, quiet as the scene if^If , until the sun in 
 mid-skr informs yon that hmcfa L< waiting to rou at War- 
 burton's Hoftel. As yon start to return to your ImScL tfct 
 stone keep of flie caitle peepe out from among the leares 
 TO try to tell rou that yon hare done no si^it-^eing dns 
 morning. But the peaceful hiDs. the quietly brow»ng cattle, 
 and the sweet-smelling air make you feel that yoa hare seen 
 deeper into the iinide of England tiian if you had visited 
 the King at Buckin^iani. 
 
 VUL 
 
 Datbkeak ox the Praibibb 
 
 There was not a sign of human existence in a^A. \i 
 mattered not in which direction we hxIkeA, the same fw- 
 bidding prospect ''s^.niTonzfA us, — a sweep of saSraa plain 
 meeting in a far-off horLz/Tn a hot, doudleas summer fkj, and 
 that was alL We had but just made oar way finoag^ a tiiiek. 
 
STUDENTS ' DESCRIPTIONS 389 
 
 damp wood, and the open with its utter barrenness offered 
 indeed an uninteresting contrast. Nevertheless we tramped 
 on stoutly, sometimes stopping a moment to shift the shoulder 
 straps of our packs or to mop our sweat-drenched faces. 
 Every footfall sent up a little cloud of choking, white dust, 
 and the sun was never so hot as it was that day. 
 
 Luckily, it was past noon when we left the wood, so that 
 we had not been subjected to the sizzling heat a very long 
 time before a gentle evening breeze came up to revive us 
 somewhat and the sun began to sink upon our left. At about 
 the same time we stumbled upon old, sand-clogged wagon ruts 
 and knew that we had found the trail for which we had kept 
 our eyes so long upon the ground. 
 
 We turned to follow the scarcely discernible track and 
 plodded wearily onward, caring little that the flaring yellow 
 of the plain had turned into a sickening grey, the intense 
 blue of the sky into a lifeless, sombre drab; and the dis- 
 appearing sun, with its gaudy magenta effects, seemed to us 
 only like a clot of fresh blood upon dirty linen. Wlien the 
 sun sank entirely, there remained only a narrow streak of 
 pale buff which gradually sha^ded off into a deep, deep violet, 
 leading to the vastness of desolation an air of abject infinite- 
 ness. 
 
 When we could no longer see our own grotesque shadows, 
 nor follow the trail with certainty, very silently we unslung 
 our packs and spread a blanket upon the ground so that we 
 might sleep a few minutes before setting out again, for we 
 had decided to ti^ to cross the little desert as soon as possible 
 that same night. The absolute loneliness of our situation, 
 however, cast an unhallowed, entrancing spell upon me, 
 and I could not close my eyes. 
 
 I felt as if I were floating among the planets. There was 
 not a star, though, to be seen, not a light of any sort ; above, 
 below, on every side, was the same velvet blackness ; and the 
 universe was as solemnly quiet, as heavily noiseless, as 
 expectantly calm, as it was in the dawn of creation. I may 
 have fallen asleep, but it seemed only a short time before 
 I found myself lying full length, my chin in my hands, 
 gazing straight ahead into the impenetrable darkness, and 
 
390 DESCRIPTION 
 
 unconsciously becoming conscious that the blackness in 
 which I had been buried was stealthily changing into an 
 indefinable, greenish grey. 
 
 Far away where earth and sky were one, unknown forces 
 were striving to pry them apart, for, presently succeeding, a 
 crevice, very narrow, letting in a silvery light, stretched 
 along the edge of the plain; and from behind the crevice, 
 which was gradually widening, glittered and glistened a mil- 
 lion scintillating colors, until all at once there burst forth 
 a soft, soothing golden glow, which grew brighter and 
 brighter, and bordered at length with garish pinks and pur- 
 ples, until it merged finally into the downy grey above. I 
 was completely charmed by the brilliancy of the swiftly 
 changing colors which, of themselves, seemed to have dis- 
 tilled the clean, sweet perfumes the risen breezes were bear- 
 ing. I sat up to watch a ribbon of purple unwind itself 
 along the bank of gold. But the purple grew quickly into a 
 dazzling, rich, soft, and perfectly pure blue, while in the 
 meantime a clear-cut crescent of amber, from which radiated 
 every imaginable tint, broke into what seemed the very fore- 
 ground of the picture, rising lightly and steadily, easting 
 into insignificance the splendid colors which had heralded 
 its advent, until it rested in perfect balance upon the utter- 
 most edge of the world, — a great disc of blinding, burnished 
 copper. 
 
 We were into another day. 
 
 IX. 
 
 A Tenement House 
 
 We chose a fine April day to make our trip of inspection. 
 After a brisk walk down a side street, past a few small shops 
 and stores, past a few pleasant dwelling-places, we came into 
 the section that we sought. Here and there a huge mill 
 thundered out its unceasing noises jand emitted a vast cloud 
 of smoke, which dimmed the brightness of the day. Between 
 the mills were rows or groups of houses, of all sizes, and 
 
STUDENTS' DESCRIPTIONS 391 
 
 descriptions ; all were undesirable in the extreme. The streets 
 and yards were ill-kept and imsightly; children in all de- 
 grees of raggedness were tumbling about in the gutters. 
 
 Just beyond a particularly noisy mill, where sweaty, grimy 
 faces appeared at the windows to watch us pass, was the 
 object of our expedition, — a large, repulsive tenement house. 
 We stopped on the opposite side of the street to look the house 
 over before venturing inside it. It was a four-story build- 
 ing, rising directly from the sidewalk. The walls appeared 
 to be of cement, a dirty, rough cement, but in many places 
 the thin covering had fallen, revealing the true walls of small 
 stones and plaster. There were two doors, which looked like 
 the grim mouths of some unseemly cavern. The windows, 
 apparently scattered over the walls without regard to plan, 
 foretold an interesting, though not entirely pleasant, interior. 
 Some had soiled and torn lace curtains, some exhibited a 
 green plant or two or a row of cans and boxes, some were 
 sadly broken, some had dirty curtains pulled closely down. 
 There were no blinds. Ashes and garbage were heaped about 
 the sides of the building. A small, rocky yard full of rubbish 
 led from the side around to the back of the house. 
 
 We looked away at the green of the hills on the distant 
 horizon, and up into the sky to see if, indeed, the day was 
 as pleasant as we had thought. Then taking one more deep 
 ■breath of pure air, we ventured into the nearest hallway. 
 
 The exterior had predicted not too much. The hall, 
 painted a dull and discouraging blue, was barnlike and very 
 dirty. The air was dead. A gray, rainy day could hardly 
 have made the place more disagreeable. At the foot of the 
 stairs were several doors, and at one of these we rapped. We 
 waited several minutes before a slovenly, sodden woman 
 opened the door a crack and gazed stupidly at us. To our 
 question, "Do you speak English," she merely hung her head, 
 and we could almost imagine that she could not speak any 
 language at all, so few signs of human intelligence did she 
 show. At last we gained admittance to the dim interior, and 
 found there a boy who could talk a little with us and who 
 led us around. There were but two rooms for the family of 
 eight or ten. The first, in which we were, was a sleeping 
 
392 DESCRIPTION 
 
 room — at least, there were here two low beds, which now 
 held the family's clothing. An old rug covered a portion 
 of the rough floor. A little light, but no air, was afforded 
 by a single darkened window. But this room was very clean, 
 and about the walls were a gaudy picture or two, and a few 
 gay bits of wearing apparel. We stopped in it only a moment 
 before pushing on into the next room. 
 
 Here several men, all Poles, were sitting about, smoking 
 some very poor tobacco and emitting occasional gutteral 
 remarks. We found that they were out of work and were 
 living on their savings of the past. This room was as dirty 
 as the other was clean, and was littered with pots, kettles, 
 and broken furniture, which were strewn about the floor in 
 utter confusion. Two cradles, probably brought from the 
 "old country," indicated that here the children slept. Indeed, 
 in one of them there now slept a chubby little Pole, entirely 
 oblivious of all about him, and, happily entirely ignorant 
 of the misfortune which had determined his lot in life. 
 
 Almost suffocated, we made our way out of this room, went 
 up the creaking stairway, through dark halls and narrow 
 passages, calling at many doors. Sometimes we were greeted 
 by a dull, ignorant woman who would speak no word, but 
 at other doors we found women, bright and happy, who 
 were making the best of their surroundings. Some of these 
 homes, if such they may be called, were clean and bright, 
 like the mothers in them; many others were also like the 
 mothers, dirty and disagreeable. We found filth, dirt, and 
 unsanitary conditions from the top to the bottom of the 
 house. But the vilest spot was the cellar. We reached this 
 only after considerable difficulty, for we had to climb through 
 the rubbish of several dark, unused rooms and down a still 
 darker and most uncertain, stairway. Everything was damp 
 and musty. We made our way through the dampness of two 
 of the rooms into which the cellar was divided and came to a 
 place that was worse than anything I had ever seen before. 
 The drainage of the twenty-five or thirty families above passed 
 through this room in a pipe along the ceiling. The pipe was 
 not secure and its filth leaked down upon the earth of the 
 cellar bottom, forming a great pool of putrefaction which 
 
STUDENTS' DESCRIPTIONS 393 
 
 blocked our further progress. Out of the pool rose the posts 
 on which the building rested, slowly rotting away. The con- 
 stant dripping made an uncanny sound, and the awful stench 
 quickly drove us back. 
 
 The yard in the rear of the house, to which we next went, 
 was better in that it had, at least, more pure air and sun- 
 shine. A swarm of dirty children were playing here on the 
 rocky side-hill on which the tenement was built. Close beside 
 the house was a large bin filled with rotting garbage, whose 
 fetid odors were rising to the windows above. 
 
 It was all bad — too bad. It was the evidence of neglect 
 and ignorance. A place so evil, so injurious to health and 
 so disgraceful to the community, it is hard to imagine. Yet 
 this was vile beyond the power of description. We left the 
 place fairly sickened at what we had seen, and walked slowly 
 back into the city. The mills were closing, and we were just 
 in time to see men, ^omen, and children, of the sort we had 
 been visiting, coming out of their prisons of the day to 
 return to places worse than prisons, in which to spend their 
 nights. 
 
PART IV 
 
 NAEEATION 
 Ascent of the Weisshorn 
 
 In his own loom's garment drest, 
 
 By his proper bounty blest, 
 
 Fast abides this constant giver. 
 
 Pouring many a cheerful river, 
 
 To far eyes an aerial isle, 
 
 Unploughed, which finer spirits pile; 
 
 Which morn, and crimson evening, paint 
 
 For bard, for lover, and for saint; 
 
 The country's core, 
 
 Inspirer, prophet, evermore ! 
 
 On Priday the 16th of August I rose at 4 :30 A. M. ; the 
 eastern heaven was hot with the glow of the rising sun, 
 and against the burning sky the mountain outlines were 
 most impressively drawn. At 5 :30 I bade goodbye to the 
 excellent little auberge, and engaging a porter to carry my 
 knapsack, went straight down the mountain towards Briegg. 
 Beyond the end of the present ice the land gives evidence of 
 vast glacier operations. It is scooped into hollows and raised 
 into mounds; long ridges, sharpening to edges at the top, 
 indicating the stranded moraines of the ancient glacier. And 
 these hollows, and these hills, over which the ice had passed, 
 destroying every trace of life which could possibly find a 
 lodgment in them, were now clothed with the richest verdure. 
 And not to vegetable life alone did they give support, for a mil- 
 lion grylli chirruped in the grass. Eich, sapid meadows spread 
 their emerald carpets in the sun; nut trees and fruit trees 
 glimmered as the light fell upon their .quivering leaves. 
 Thus sanative nature healed the scars which she had herself 
 inflicted. The road is very rough a part of the way to Briegg ; 
 let us trust that before your arrival it will be improved. I 
 took the diligence to Visp, and engaged a porter immediately 
 to Band a. I had sent Benen thither, on reaching the Bel Alp, 
 to seek out a resting place whence the Weisshorn might be 
 
 394 
 
ASCENT OF THE WEISSHORN 395 
 
 assailed. On my arrival I learned that he had made the nec- 
 essary reconnaissance, and entertained hopes of our being able 
 to gain the top. 
 
 This noble mountain had been tried on various occasions 
 and from different sides by brave and competent men, but 
 had never been scaled ; and from the entries in the travellers' 
 books I might infer that formidable obstacles stood in the 
 way of a successful ascent. The peak of the mountain is 
 not visible at Eanda, being far withdrawn behind the Alps. 
 Beyond the Biezbach its ramparts consist of a craggy slope 
 crowned above by three tiers of rocky strata. In front of 
 the hotel is a mountain slope with pines clinging to its ledges, 
 while stretching across the couloir of the Biezbach the divided 
 ramparts are connected by battlements of ice. A quantity of 
 debris which has been carried down the couloir spreads out in 
 the shape of a fan at the bottom ; near the edge of this debris 
 stands a group of dingy houses, and close alongside them our 
 pathway up the mountain runs. 
 
 Previous to quitting Eanda I had two pair of rugs sewed 
 together so as to form two sacks. These and other coverlets 
 intended for my men, together with our wine and provisions, 
 were sent on in advance of us. At 1 p. m., on the 18th of 
 August, we, that is Benen, Wenger, and myself, quitted the 
 hotel, and were soon zigzagging among the pines ef the oppo- 
 site mountain. Wenger had been the guide of my friend F., 
 and had shown himself so active and handy on the Strahleck, 
 that I commissioned Benen to engage him. During the 
 previous night I had been very unwell, but I hoped that the 
 strength left me, if properly applied, and drained to the 
 uttermost, would still enable me to keep up with my com- 
 panions. As I climbed the slope I suffered from intense 
 thirst, and we once halted beside a fillet of clear spring water 
 to have a draught. It seemed powerless to quench the drought 
 which beset me. We reached a ehUlet; milking time was at 
 hand and at our request a smart young Senner caught up a 
 pail, and soon returned with it full of delicious milk. It 
 was poured into a small tub. With my two hands I seized 
 the two ends of a diameter of this vessel, gave it the necessary 
 inclination and stooping down, with a concentration of 
 
396 NARRATION 
 
 purpose which I had rarely before exerted, I drew the milk 
 into me. Thrice I returned to the attack before that insatiate 
 thirst gave way. The effect was astonishing. The liquid 
 appeared to lubricate every atom of my body, and its fragrance 
 to permeate my brain. I felt a growth of strength at once 
 commence within me; all anxiety as to physical power with 
 reference to the work in hand soon vanished, and before 
 retiring to rest I was able to say to Benen, 'Go where thou 
 wilt to-morrow, and I will follow thee.' 
 
 Two hours' additional climbing brought us to our bivouac. 
 A ledge of rock jutted from the mountain side, and formed 
 an overhanging roof. On removing the stones from beneath 
 it, a space of comparatively dry clay was laid bare. This 
 was to be my bed, and to soften it Wenger considerately 
 stirred it up with his axe. The position was excellent, for 
 lying upon my left side, I commanded the whole range of 
 Monte Rosa, from the Mischabel to the Breithorn. We were 
 on the edge of an amphitheater. Beyond the Schallenbach 
 was the stately Mettelhorn. A row of eminent peaks swept 
 round to the right, linked by loftly ridges of cliffs, thus form- 
 ing the circus in which the Schallenberg Glacier originated. 
 They were, however, only a spur cast out from the vaster 
 Weisshorn, the cone of which was not visible from our dormi- 
 tory. I wished to examine it, and in company with Benen 
 skirted the mountain for half-an-hour, until the whole colossal 
 pyramid stood facing us. When I first looked at it my hope 
 sank, but both of us gathered confidence from a more 
 lengthened gaze. The mountain is a pyramid with three 
 faces, the intersections of which form three sharp edges or 
 aretes. The end of the eastern arete was nearest to us, and 
 on it our attention was principally fixed. A couloir led up 
 to it filled with snow, which Benen, after having examined it 
 with the telescope, pronounced 'furchtbar steil.' This slope 
 was cut across by a bergschrund, which we also carefully 
 examined, and finally, Benen decided on the route to be 
 pursued next morning. A chastened hope was predominant 
 in both our breasts as we returned to our shelter. 
 
 Water was our first necessity : it seemed everywhere, but 
 there was none to drink. It was locked to solidity in the ice 
 
ASCENT OF THE WEISSHORN i 9 7 
 
 and snow. The sound of it came booming up from the Visp- 
 bach, as it broke into foam or rolled its boulders over its 
 waterworn bed; and the swish of many a minor streamlet 
 mingled with the muffled roar of the large one. Benen set 
 out in search of the precious liquid and after a long absence 
 returned with a jug and panful. I had been particular in 
 including tea in our list of provisions; but on opening the 
 parcel we found it half green, and not to be indulged in at 
 a moment when the main object of one's life was to get an 
 hour's sleep. We rejected the tea and made coffee instead. 
 At our evening meal the idea of toasting our cheese occurred 
 to Wenger, who is a man rich in expedients of all kinds. He 
 turned the section of a large cheese towards the flame of 
 our pine fire; it fizzed and blistered and turned viscous, and 
 the toasted surface being removed was consumed with relish 
 by us all. Our meal being ended and our beds arranged, by 
 the help of Benen, I introduced myself into my two sacks in 
 succession, and placed a knapsack beneath my head for a 
 pillow. The talk now ceased and sleep became the object of 
 our devotions. 
 
 But the goddess flies most shyly where she is most intensely 
 wooed, still I think she touched my eyes gently once or 
 twice during the night. The sunset had been unspeakably 
 grand, steeping the zenith in violet, and flooding the base 
 of the heavens with crimson light. Immediately opposite 
 to us, on the other side of the valley of St. Nicholas, rose the 
 Mischabel, with its two great peaks, the Grubenhorn and the 
 Taschhom, each barely under 15,000 feet in height. Next 
 came the Alphubel, with its flattened crown of snow; then 
 the Alleleinhorn and Eympfischhom encased in glittering 
 enamel; then the Cima di Jazzi; next the mass of Monte 
 Eosa, with nothing competent to cast a shadow between it and 
 the sun, and consequently flooded with light from bottom to 
 top. The face of the Lyskamm turned towards us was for the 
 most part shaded, but here and there its projecting portions, 
 jutted forth like red-hot embers as the light fell upon them. 
 The Twins' were most singularly illuminated; across the 
 waist of each of them was drawn a black bar produced by 
 the shadow of a comer of the Breithorn, while their white 
 
398 NARRATION 
 
 bases and whiter crowns were exposed to the sunlight. Over 
 the nigged face of the Breithom itself the light fell as if in 
 splashes, igniting its glaciers and swathing its black crags 
 in a layer of transparent red. The Mettelhorn was cold, so 
 was the entire range over which the Weisshorn ruled as king, 
 while the glaciers which they embraced lay grey and ghastly 
 in the twilight shade. 
 
 The sun is going, but not yet gone; while up the arch of 
 the opposite heavens, the moon, within one day of being 
 full, is hastening to our aid. She finally appears exactly 
 behind the peak of the Eympfischhorn : the cone of the 
 mountain being projected for a time as a triangle on the disc. 
 Only for a moment, however; for the queenly orb sails aloft, 
 clears the mountain, and bears splendidly away through the 
 tinted sky. The motion was quite visible, and resembled that 
 of a vast bailloon. As the day approached its end the scene 
 assumed the most sublime aspect. All the lower portions of 
 the mountains were deeply shaded, while the loftiest peaks, 
 ranged upon a semicircle, were fully exposed to the sinking 
 sun. They seemed pyramids of solid fire, while here and there 
 long stretches of crimson light drawn over the higher snow- 
 fields linked the glorified summits together. An intensely 
 illuminated geranium flower seems to swim in its own colour 
 which apparently surrounds the petals like a layer, and defeats 
 by its lustre any attempt of the eye to seize upon the sharp 
 outline of the leaves. A similar effect was here observed 
 upon the mountains; the glory did not seem to come from 
 them alone, but seemed also eflBuent from the air around tHem. 
 This' gave them a certain buoyancy which suggested entire 
 detachment from the earth. They swam in splendour, which 
 intoxicated the soul, and I will not now repeat in my moments 
 of soberness the extravagant analogies which then ran through 
 my brain. As the evening advanced, the eastern heavens 
 low down assumed a deep purple hue, above which, and blend- 
 ing with it by infinitesimal gradations, was a belt of red, and 
 over this again zones of orange and violet. I walked around 
 the corner of the mountain at sunset, and fecund ttie western 
 sky glowing with a more transparent crimspi^, than that which 
 overspread the east. The crown of the Weisshorn was 
 
ASCENT OF THE WEISSHORN 399 
 
 embedded in this magnificent light. After sunset the purple 
 of the east changed to a deep neutral tint, and against the 
 faded red which spread above it, the sun-forsaken mountains 
 laid their cold and ghastly heads. The ruddy colour vanished 
 more and more ; the stars strengtliened in lustre, until finally 
 the moon and they held undisputed possession of the blue 
 grey sky. 
 
 I lay with my face turned towards the moon until it 
 became so cliilled that I was forced to protect it by a light 
 handkerchief. The power of blinding the eyes is ascribed to 
 the moonbeams but the real mischief is that produced by 
 radiation from the eyes into clear space, and tlie inflamma- 
 tion consequent upon the chill. As the cold increased I was 
 fain to squeeze myself more and more underneath my ledge, 
 so as to lesson the space of sky against which my body could 
 radiate. Nothing could be more solemn tlian tlie night. 
 Up from tlie valley came the low thunder of the Yispbacli. 
 Over tiie Dom flashed in succession the stars of Orion, until 
 finally the entire constellation hung aloft. Higher up in 
 heaven was the moon, and her rajrs as they fell upon the 
 saowfields and pyramids were sent back in silvery lustre by 
 some, while othera remained dull. These, as the orb sailed 
 round, came duly in for their share of the glory. The Twins 
 caught it at length, and retained it long, shining with a 
 pure spiritual radiance while the moon continued to ride 
 above the hills. 
 
 I looked at my watch at 12 o'clock; and a second time 
 at 8. A.M. The moon was tlien just touching the crest of 
 the Sehallenberg, and we were tiireatened with the witli- 
 drawal of her light. This soon occurred. We rose at 2^4 
 A.M., consumed our coffee, and had to wait idly for the dawn. 
 A faint illumination at length overspread the west, and 
 with this promise of the coming day we quitted our bivouac 
 at 3\-2 A.M. No cloud was to be seen ; as far as the weather 
 was concerned we were sure to have fair play. We rounded 
 the shingly shoulder of the mountain to the edge of a snow- 
 field, but before entering upon it I disburthened myself of 
 roy strong shooting jacket, and left it on the mountain 
 side. The sunbeams and my ovra exertion would, I knew, 
 
400 NARRATION 
 
 keep me only too warm during the day. We crossed the 
 snow, cut our way through a piece of entangled glacier, 
 reached the hergschrund, and passed it without a rope. We 
 ascended the frozen snow of the couloir by steps, but soon 
 diverged from it to the rocks at our right, and sca'led them to 
 the end of the eastern arete of the mountain. 
 
 Here a saddle of snow separates us from the next higher 
 rocks. With our staff-spikes at one side of the saddle, we 
 pass by steps cut upon the other. The snow is firmly con- 
 gealed. We reach the rocks, which we find hewn into fantastic 
 turrets and obelisks, while the loose chips of this colossal 
 sculpture are strewn confusedly upon the ridge. Amid the 
 chips we cautiously pick our way, winding round the towers 
 or scaling them amain. From the very first the work is 
 heavy, the bending, twisting, reaching, and drawing up, 
 calling upon all the muscles of the frame. After two hours 
 of this work we halt, and looking back we observe two mov- 
 ing objects on the glacier below us. At first we take them 
 to be chamois, but they are instantly pronounced men, and 
 the telescope at once confirms this. The leader carries an 
 axe, and his companion a knapsack and alpenstock. They 
 are following our traces, losing them apparently now and 
 then, and waiting to recover them. Our expedition had put 
 Eanda in a state of excitement, and some of its best climbers 
 had come to Benen and urged him to take them with him. 
 But this he did not dfeem necessary, and now here were 
 two of them determined to try the thing on their own 
 account; and perhaps to dispute with us tiie honor of the 
 enterprise. On this point, however, our uneasiness was 
 small. 
 
 Eesuming our gymnastics, the rocky staircase led us to 
 the flat summit of a tower, where we found ourselves cut 
 off from a similar tower by a deep gap bitten into the 
 mountain. Betreat appeared inevitable, but it is wonder- 
 ful how many ways out of difficulty open to a man who 
 diligently seeks them. The rope is here our refuge. Benen 
 coils it around his waist, scrapes along the surface of the 
 rock, fixes himself on a ledge, where he can lend me a helping 
 hand. I follow him, Wenger follows me, and in a few min- 
 
ASCENT OF THE WEISSHORN 401 
 
 utes all three of us stand iu llie middle of the gap. By a 
 kind of screw motion we twist ourselves round the opposite 
 tower, and reach the arete behind it. Work of this kind, 
 however, is not to be performed by the day, and with a view 
 of sparing our strength, we quit the arete and endeavour to 
 get along the southern slope of the pyramid. The mountain 
 is here scarred by longitudinal depressions which stretch a 
 long way down it. These are now filled with clear hard ice, 
 produced by the melting and refreezing of the snow. The 
 cutting of steps across these couloirs proves to be so tedious 
 and fatiguing, that I urge Benen to abandon it and try the 
 arete once more. By a stout tug we regain the ridge and 
 work along it as before. Here and there from the northern 
 side the snow has folded itself over the crags, and along it 
 we sometimes work upward. The arete for a time has 
 become gradually narrower, and the precipices on each side 
 more sheer. We reach the end of one of the subdivisions 
 of the ridge, and find ourselves separated from the next 
 rocks by a gap about twenty yards across. The arete here has 
 narrowed to a mere wall, which, however, as rock would pre- 
 sent no serious difficulty. But upon the wall of rock is placed 
 a second wall of snow, which dwindles to a knife edge at the 
 top. It is white and pure, of very fine grain, and a little 
 moist. How to pass this snow catenary I knew not, for I 
 had no idea of a human foot trusting itself upon so" frail a 
 support. Benen's practical sagacity was, however, greater 
 than mine. He tried the snow by squeezing it with his foot, 
 and to my astonishment commenced to cross. Even after 
 the pressure of his feet the space he had to stand on did not 
 exceed a handbreath. I followed him, exactly as a boy walk- 
 ing along a horizontal pole, with toes turned outwards. Eight 
 and left the precipices were appalling ; but the sense of power 
 on such occasions is exceedingly sweet. We reached the oppo- 
 site rock, and here a smile rippled over Benen's countenance 
 as he turned towards me. He knew that he had done a 
 daring thing, though not a presumptuous one. 'Had the 
 snow,' he said, 'been less perfect, I should not have thought 
 of attempting it, but I knew after I had set my foot upon 
 the ridge that we might pass without fear.' 
 
402 NARRATION 
 
 It is quite surprising what a number of things the simple 
 observation made by Faraday, in 1846, enables us to explain. 
 Benen's instinctive act is justified by theory. The snow was 
 fine in grain, pure and moist. When pressed, the attach- 
 ments of its granules were innumerable, and their perfect 
 cleanness enabled them to freeze together with a maximum 
 energy. It was this freezing together of the particles at 
 innumerable points which gave the mass its sustaining power. 
 Take two fragments of ordinary * table ice and bring them 
 carefully together, you will find that they freeze and cement 
 themselves at their place of junction; or if two pieces float 
 in water, you can bring them together, when they instantly 
 freeze, and by laying hold of either of them gently, you can 
 drag the other after it through the water. Imagine such 
 points of attachment distributed without number through a 
 mass of snow. The substance becomes thereby a semi-solid 
 instead of a mass of powder. My guide, however, unaided 
 by any theory, did a thing from which I, though backed 
 by all the theories in the world, should have shrunk in 
 dismay. 
 
 After this we found the rocks on the ridge so shaken to 
 pieces that it required the greatest caution to avoid bringing 
 them down upon us. With all our care, however, we some- 
 times dislodged vast masses which leaped upon the slope 
 adjacent, loosened others by their shock, these again others, 
 until finally a whole flight of them would escape, setting 
 the mountain in a roar as they whizzed and thundered along 
 its side to the snow-fields 4000 feet below us. The day is 
 hot, the work hard, and our bodies are drained of their liquids 
 as by a Turkish bath. The perspiration trickles down our 
 faces, and drops profusely from the projecting points. To 
 make good our loss we halt at intervals where the melted 
 snow forms a liquid vein, and quench our thirst. We possess, 
 moreover, a bottle of champagne, which, poured sparingly 
 into our goblets on a little snow, furnishes Wenger and 
 myself with many a refreshing draught. Benen fears his 
 eyes, and will not touch champagne. The less, however, we 
 rest the better, for after every pause I find a certain unwill- 
 ingness to renew the toil. The muscles have become set, and 
 
ASCENT OP THE WEISSHORN 403 
 
 8ome minutes are necessary to render them again elastic. But 
 the discipline is first-rate for both mind and body. There is 
 scarcely a position possible to a human being which, at one 
 time or another during the day, I was not forced to assume. 
 The fingers, wrist, and forearm, were my main reliance, and 
 as a mechanical instrument the human hand appeared to me 
 this day in a light which it never assumed before. It is a 
 miracle of constructive art. 
 
 We were often during the day the victims of illusions 
 regarding the distance which we had to climb. For the 
 most part the summit was hidden from us, but on reach- 
 ing the eminences it came frequently into view. After three 
 hours spent on the arete, about five hours that is, subsequent 
 to starting, the summit was clearly in view; we looked at 
 it over a minor summit, which gave it an illusive proximity. 
 'You have now good hopes,' I remarked, turning to Benen. 
 'Not only good hopes,' he replied, 'but I do not allow myself 
 to entertain the idea of failure.' Well, six hours passed on 
 the arete, each of which put in its inexorable claim to the 
 due amount of mechanical work ; the lowering and the raising 
 of three human bodies through definite spaces, and at the 
 end of this time we found ourselves apparently no nearer to 
 the summit than when Benen's hopes cropped out in con- 
 fidence. I looked anxiously at my guide as he fixed his weary 
 eyes upon the distant peak. There was no confidence in the 
 expression of his countenance ; still I do not believe that either 
 of us entertained for a moment the thought of giving in. 
 Wenger complained of his lungs, and Benen counselled him 
 several times to stop and let him and me continue the ascent ; 
 but this the Oberland man refused to do. At the commence- 
 ment of a day's work I often find myself anxious, if not 
 timid; but this feeling vanishes when I become warm and 
 interested. When the work is very hard we become callous 
 and sometimes stupefied by the incessant knocking about. 
 This was my case at present, and I kept watch lest my indif- 
 ference should become carelessness. I supposed repeatedly a 
 case where a sudden effort might be required of me, and felt 
 all through that I had a fair residue of strength to fall back 
 upon. I tested this conclusion sometimes by a spurt; flinging 
 
404 NARRATION 
 
 myself suddenly from rock to rock, and thns proved my 
 condition by experiment instead of relying on opinion. An 
 eminence in the ridge which cut off the view of the summit 
 was now the object of our exertions. We reached it; but how 
 hopelessly distant did the summit appear; Benen laid his 
 face upon his axe for a moment ; a kind of sickly despair was 
 in his ^e as he turned to me, remarking, Tjieber Herr, die 
 Spitze ist noch sehr weit oben.' 
 
 Lest the desire to gratify me should urge him beyond the 
 bounds of prudence, I said to Benen that he must not persist 
 on my accoimt, if he ceased to feel confidence in his own 
 powers ; that I should cheerfully return with him the moment 
 he thought it no longer safe to proceed. He replied that 
 though weary he felt quite sure of himself, and asked for 
 some food. He had it, and a gulp of wine, which mightily 
 refreshed him. Looking at the mountain with a firmer eye, 
 lie exclaimed, 'Herr! wir miissen ihn haben,' and his voice, 
 as he spoke, rung like steel within my heart. I thought 
 of Englishmen in battle, of the qualities which had made 
 them famous, it was mainly the quality of not knowing when 
 to yield; of fighting for duty even after they had ceased to 
 be animated by hope. Such thoughts had a dynamic value, 
 and helped to lift me over the rocks. Another eminence now 
 fronted us, behind which, how far we knew not, the summit 
 lay. We scaled this height, and above us, but clearly within 
 reach, a silvery pyramid projected itself against the blue sk7. 
 I was assured ten times by my companions that it was the 
 highest point before I ventured to stake my faith upon the 
 assertion. I feared that it also might take rank with the 
 illusions which had so often beset our ascent, and shrunk from 
 the consequent moral shock. Towards the point, however, we 
 steadily worked. A large prism of granite, or granitic gneiss, 
 terminated the arete, and from it a knife edge of pure white 
 snow ran up to a little point. We passed along the edge, 
 reached that point, and instantly swept with our ejes the 
 whole range of the horizon. The crown of the Weisshom 
 was underneath our feet. 
 
 The long pent feelings of my two gnides found vent in 
 a wild and reiterated cheer. Benen shook his arms in the 
 
ASCENT OF THE WEISSHORN 40S 
 
 air and shouted as a Valaisian, while Wenger chimed in with 
 the shriller yell of the Oberland. We looked along the arete, 
 and far below perched on one of its crags, could discern the 
 two Eanda men. Again and again the roar of triumph 
 was sent down to them. They had accomplished but a small 
 portion of the ridge, and soon after our success they wended 
 their way homewards. They came, willing enough, no doubt, 
 to publish our failure had we failed ; but we found out after- 
 wards that they had been equally strenuous in announcing 
 our success; they had seen us, they affirmed, like three 
 flies upon the summit of the mountain. Both men had to 
 endure a little persecution for the truth's sake, for nobody in 
 Banda would believe that the Weisshorn could be scaled, and 
 least of all by a man who for two days previously had been 
 the object of Philomene, the waiter's, constant pity, on 
 account of the incompetence of his stomach to accept all that 
 she offered for its acceptance. The energy of conviction with 
 which the men gave their evidence had, however, convinced 
 the most sceptical before we arrived ourselves. 
 
 Benen wished to leave some outward and visible sign of 
 our success on the summit. He deplored having no flag; but 
 as a substitute it was proposed that he should knock the 
 head off his axe, use the handle as a flagstaff, and surmount 
 it by a red pocket-handkerchief. This was done, and for some 
 time subsequently the extempore banner was seen flapping in 
 the wind. To his extreme delight, it was shown to Benen 
 himself three days afterwards by my friend Mr. Galton from 
 the Eiffel Hotel. But you will desire to know what we saw 
 from the summit, and this desire I am sorry to confess 
 my total incompetence to gratify. I remember the picture, 
 but cannot analyze its parts. Every Swiss tourist is 
 acquainted with the Weisshorn. I have long regarded it as 
 the noblest of all the Alps, and many, if not most other 
 travellers, have shared this opinion. The impression it pro- 
 duces is in some measure due to the comparative isolation 
 with which its cone juts into the heavens. It is not masked 
 by other mountains, and all around the Alps its final pyramid 
 is in view. Conversely the Weisshorn commands a vast 
 range of prospect. Neither Benen nor myself had ever seen 
 
406 NARRATION 
 
 anything at all equal to it. The day, moreover, was perfect; 
 not a cloud was to be seen; and the gauzy haze of the dis- 
 tant air, though sufficient to soften the outlines and enhance 
 the colouring of the mountains, was far too thin to obscure 
 them. Over the peaks and through the valleys the sunbeams 
 poured, unimpeded save by the mountains themselves, which 
 in some cases drew their shadows in straight bars of dark- 
 ness through the illuminated air. I had never before wit- 
 nessed a scene which afEected me like this. Benen once vol- 
 unteered some information regarding its details, but I was 
 unable to hear him. An influence seemed to proceed from 
 it direct to the soul; the delight and exultation experienced 
 were not those of Beason or of Knowledge, but of Being: — ^I 
 was part of it and it of me, and in the trsmscendent glory 
 of Nature I entirely forgot myself as man. Suppose the sea 
 waves exalted to nearly a thousand times their normal height, 
 crest them with foam, and fancy yourself upon the most 
 commanding crest, with the sunlight from a deep blue heaven 
 illuminating such a scene, and you will have some idea of 
 the form under which the Alps present themselves from the 
 Bummit of the Weisshorn. East, west, north, and south, rose 
 those Tjillows of a granite sea,' back to the distant heaven, 
 which they hacked into an indented shore. I opened my 
 note-book to make a few observations, but I soon relin- 
 quished the attempt. There was something incongruous, if 
 not profane, in allowing the scientific faculty to interfere 
 where silent worship was the 'reasonable service.' 
 
 We had been ten hours climbing from our bivouac to the 
 summit, and it was now necessary that we should clear the 
 mountain before the close of day. Oxir muscles were loose 
 and numbed, and unless extremely urged declined all ener- 
 getic tension; the thought of our success, liowever, ran like 
 a kind of wine through our fibres and helped us down. We 
 once fancied that the descent would be rapid, but it was 
 far from it. Benen, as in ascending, took the lead ; he slowly 
 cleared each crag, paused till I joined him, I pausing till 
 Wenger joined me, and thus one or other of us was always 
 in motion. Benen shows a preference for the snow where 
 he can choose it, while I hold on to the rocks where my hands 
 
ASCENT OF THE WEISSHORN 407 
 
 can assist my feet Our muscles are sorely tried by the twist- 
 ing round the splintered turrets of the arete, and we resolve 
 to escape from it when we can; but a long, long stretch of 
 the ridge must be passed before we dare to swerve from it. 
 We are roused from our stupefaction at times by the roar 
 of the stones which we have loosed from the ridge, and sent 
 leaping down the mountain. The snow catenary is attained, 
 and we recross it. Soon afterwards we quit the ridge and try 
 to get obliquely along the slope of the mountain. The face of 
 the pyramid is here scarred by couloirs, of which the deeper 
 and narrower ones are filled with ice, while the others are 
 highways to the bottom of the mountain for the rocks quar- 
 ried by the weather above. Steps must be cut in the ice, but 
 the swing of the axe is very different now from what it was 
 in the i.iorning. Still, though Benen's blows descend with 
 the deliberateness of a man whose fire is half-quenched, they 
 fall with sufBeient power, and the needful cavities are soon 
 formed. We retrace our morning steps over some of the 
 slopes. No word of warning was uttered here as we ascended, 
 but now Benen's admonitions were frequent and emphatic, — 
 Take care not to slip.' I looked down the slopes; they 
 seemed fearfully long, and those whose ends we could see 
 were continued by rocks over which it would be the reverse 
 of comfortable to be precipitated. I imagined, however, 
 that even if a man slipped he would be able to arrest his 
 descent ; but Benen's response when I stated this opinion was 
 veiy prompt, — 'No! it would be utterly impossible. If it 
 were snow you might do it, but it is pure ice, and if you 
 fall you will lose your senses before you can use your axe.' 
 I suppose he was right. At length we turn directly down- 
 wards, and work along one of the ridges which are here drawn 
 parallel to the line of steepest fall. We first drop cau- 
 tiously from ledge to ledge. At one place Benen clings for a 
 considerable time to a face of rock, casting out feelers of leg 
 and arm, and desiring me to stand still. I do not understand 
 the difBculty, for the rock though steep is by no means verti- 
 cal. I fasten myself to it, but Benen is now on a ledge below, 
 waiting to receive me. The spot on which he stands is a 
 little rounded protuberance sufficient to afford him footing. 
 
408 NARRATION 
 
 but over which the slightest momentum would have carried 
 him. He knew this, and hence his caution in descending. 
 Soon after this we quit our ridge and drop into a couloir to 
 the left of it. It is dark and damp with trickling water. 
 The rope hampers us, and I propose its abandonment. We 
 disencumber ourselves, and find our speed greatly increased. 
 In some places the rocks are worn to a powder, along which 
 we shoot by glissades. We swerve again to the left; cross a 
 ridge, and get into another and drier couloir. The last one 
 was dangerous, as the water exerted a constant sapping action 
 upon the rooks. From our new position we could hear the 
 clatter of stones descending the gully which we had just for- 
 saken. Wenger, who had brought up the rear during the day, 
 is now sent to the front; he has not Benen's power, but his 
 legs are long and his descent rapid. He scents out the way, 
 which becomes more and more difficult. He pauses, observes, 
 dodges, but finally comes to a dead stop on the summit of a 
 precipice, which sweeps like a rampart round the mountain. 
 We move to the left, and after a long detour succeed in round- 
 ing the rocky wall. Again straight downwards. Half-an-hour 
 brings us to the brow of a second precipice, which is scooped 
 out along its centre so as to cause the brow to overhang. I 
 see chagrin in Benen's face; he turns his eyes upwards, and 
 I fear mortally that he is about to propose a re-ascent to the 
 arete. He had actually thought of doing so, but it was very 
 questionable whether our muscles could have responded to 
 such a demand. While we stood pondering here, a deep and 
 confused roar attracted our attention. From a point near 
 the summit of the Weisshorn, a rock had been discharged; it 
 plunged down a dry couloir, raising a cloud of dust at each 
 bump against the mountain. A hundred similar ones were 
 immediately in motion, while the spaces between the larger 
 masses were filled by an innumerable flight of smaller stones. 
 Each of them shakes its quantum of dust in the air, until 
 finally the avalanche is enveloped in a vast cloud. The clatter 
 of this devil's cavalry was stunning. Black masses of rock 
 emerged here and there from the cloud, and sped through the 
 air like flying fiends. Their motion was not one of transla- 
 tion merely, but they whizzed and vibrated in their flight as 
 
ASCENT OF THE WEISSHORN 409 
 
 it urged by wings. The clang of echoes resounded from side 
 to side, from ^e Schallenberg to the Weisshorn and back, 
 until finally the vhole troop came to rest, after many a deep? 
 sounding thud in the snow, at the bottom of the mountain. 
 This stone avalanche was one of the most extraordinary 
 things I had ever witnessed, and in connection with it, I 
 would draw the attention of future climbers to the danger 
 which would infallibly beset any attempt to ascend the Weiss- 
 h<»rn from this side, except by one of its arStes. At any 
 moment the mountain side may be raked by a fii>e as deadly as 
 that of cannon. 
 
 After due deliberation we move along the precipice west- 
 ward, I fearing that each step forward is but plunging us 
 into deeper difRculty. At one place, however, the precipice 
 bevels off to a steep incline of smooth rock. Along this runs 
 a crack, wide enough to admit the fingers, and sloping 
 obliquely down to the lower glacier. Each in succession grips 
 the rock and sliifts his body eidewaiys parallel to thb fissure, 
 until he comes near enough to the glacier to let go and slide 
 down by a rough glissade. We afterwards pass swiftly along 
 the glacier, sometimes running, and, on the steeper 
 slopes, by sliding, until we are pulled up for the third time 
 hy a predpioe which seems actually worse than either of the 
 others. It is quite sheer, and as far as I can see right or 
 left altogether hopeless. I fully expected to hear Benen sound 
 a retreat, but to my surprise both men turned without hesi- 
 tation to the right, which took us 'away from our side of 
 the mountain. I felt desperately blank, but I dould notice 
 no expression of dismay in the countenance of either of the 
 men. They observed the moraine matter ovw which we 
 milked, and at length one of them exclaimed, 'Da sind die 
 Spuren,' lengthening his strides at the same moment. We 
 look over the brink at intervals, and at length discover what 
 appears to be a mere streak of day on the face of the preci- 
 pice. We get round a corner, and find footing on this streak. 
 It is by no means easy, but to hard-pushed men it i^ a 
 deliverance. The streak vanities, and we must scmpe down 
 tiiie took. This fortunately is rough, so that fay pressing the 
 hands against its rounded protuberances, and stickiitg the 
 
410 NARRATION 
 
 boot-nails against its projecting crystals, we let our bodies 
 gradually down. We thus reach the bottom; a deep cleft 
 separates the glacier from the precipice, this is crossed, and we 
 are now free men, clearly placed beyond the last bastion 
 of the mountain. 
 
 I could not repress an expression of admiration at the 
 behaviour of my men. The day previous to my arrival at 
 Eanda they had been up to examine the mountain, when 
 they observed a solitary chamois moving along the base of 
 this very precipice, and making several ineffectual attempts 
 to get up it. At one place the creature succeeded; this 
 spot they marked in their memories as well as they could, and 
 when they reached the top of the precipice they sought for the 
 traces of the chamois, found them, and were guided by them 
 to the only place where escape in any reasonable time was 
 possible. Our way is now clear ; over the glacier we cheerfully 
 march, and pass from the ice just as the moon and the eastern 
 sky contribute about equally to the illumination. Wenger 
 makes direct for our resting-place and packs up our things, 
 while Benen and myself try to descend towards the chalet. 
 Clouds gather round the Eympfischorn and intercept the 
 light of the moon. We are often at a loss, and wander half- 
 bewildered over the Alp. At length the welcome tinkle of 
 cowbells is heard in the distance, and guided by them we 
 reach the chalet a little after 9 p.m. The cows had been 
 milked and the milk disposed of, but the men managed to 
 get us a moderate draught. Thus refreshed we continue 
 the descent, and are soon amid the pines which clothe the 
 mountain facing Eanda. A light glimmers from the window 
 of the hotel; we conclude that they are waiting for us; it 
 disappears, and we infer that they have gone to bed. Wenger 
 is sent on to order some food; I was half -famished, for my 
 nutriment during the day consisted solely of a box of meat 
 lozenges given to me by Mr. Hawkins. Benen and myself 
 descend the mountain deliberately, and after many windings 
 emerge upon the valley, cross it, and reach the hotel a little 
 before 11 p.m. I had a basin of broth, nat made according 
 to Liebig, and a piece of mutton boiled probably for the 
 seventh time. Fortified by these, and comforted by a warm 
 
AN ESCAPE FROM PRISON 411 
 
 footbath, I went to bed, wliere six hours' sound sleep chased 
 away every memory of tlie Weisehorn save the pleasant ones. 
 I was astonished to find the loose atoms of my body knitted 
 80 firmly together by so brief a rest. Up to my attempt 
 upon the Weisshorn I had felt more or less dilapidated, but 
 here all weakness endod. My fibres assumed more and more 
 the tenacity of steel and during my subsequent stay in Switz- 
 erland I was unacquainted with infirmity. If you, my 
 friend, should ask me why I incur such labour and such 
 risk, here is one reply. 
 
 John Tyndall: Mountaineering in 1861. 
 
 An Escape From Prison 
 
 [Prince Kropotkin, broken in health by his imprisonment in the 
 fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, has just been transferred to the 
 military hospital on the outskirts of St. Petersburg.] 
 
 In the hospital I began at once to recover. I was given a 
 spacious room on tiio ground floor, close by the room of the 
 military guard. It had an immense grated window looking 
 south, which opened on a small boulevard with two rows of 
 trees ; and beyond the boulevard there was a wide space where 
 two hundred carpenters were engaged in building wooden 
 shanties for typhoid patients. A sentry marched up and down 
 the boulevard, his box standing opposite my room. 
 
 In the fortress I had heard from a comrade who had been 
 in the hospital prison that it would not be hard for me to 
 escape from it, and I made my presence there known to 
 my friends. However, escape proved far more difficult than 
 I had been led to believe. A stricter supervision than had 
 ever before been heard of was exercised over me. The sentry 
 in the passage was placed at my door, and I was never let 
 out of. my room. The hospital soldiers and the officers of 
 the guard who occasionally entered it seemed to be afraid to 
 stay more than a minute or two. 
 
 Various plans were made by my friends to liberate me, — 
 some of them very amusing. I was, for instance, to file 
 through the iron bars of my window. Then, on a rainy 
 
412 NARRATION 
 
 night, when the sentry on the boulevard was dozing in his 
 box, two friends were to creep up from behind and overturn 
 the box, so that it would fall upon the sentry and catch him 
 like a mouse in a trap, without hurting him. In the mean- 
 time, I was to jump out of the window. But a better solu- 
 tion came in an unexpected way. 
 
 "Ask to be let out for a walk," one of the soldiers whis- 
 pered to me one day. I did so. The doctor supported my 
 demand, and every afternoon, at four, I was allowed to take 
 an hour's walk in the prison yard. I had to keep on the 
 green flannel dressing-gown which is worn by the hospital 
 patients, but my boots, my vest, and my trousers were deliv- 
 ered to me every day. 
 
 I shall never forget my first walk. When I was taken out, 
 I saw before me a yard full three hundred paces long and more 
 than two hundred paces wide, all covered with grass. The gate 
 was open, and through it I could see the street, the im- 
 mense hospital opposite, and the people who passed by. I 
 stopped on the doorsteps of the prison, unable for a moment 
 to move when I saw that yard and that gate. 
 
 At one end of the yard stood the prison, — a narirow build- 
 ing, about one hundred and fifty paces ,long, — at each end 
 of which was a sentry box. Two sentries paced up and down 
 in front of the building, and had tramped out a footpath in 
 the green. Along this footpath I was told to walk, and the 
 two sentries continued to walk up and down, — so that I 
 was never more than ten or fifteen paces from the one or the 
 other. Three hospital soldiers took their seats on the door- 
 steps. 
 
 At the opposite end of this spacious yard wood for fuel 
 was being ^ unloaded from a dozen carts, and piled up along 
 the wall by a dozen, peasants. The whole yard was inclosed 
 by a high fence made of thick boards. Its gate was open to 
 let the carts in and out. 
 
 This open gate fascinated me. "I must not stare 'at it," 
 I said to myself; and yet I looked at it all the time. As 
 soon as I was taken back to my cell I wrote to my friends 
 to communicate to them the welcome news. "I feel well- 
 nigh unable to use the cipher," I wrote with a tremulous 
 
AN ESCAPE FROM PRISON 413 
 
 hand, tracing almost illegible signs instead of figures. "This 
 nearness of liberty makes me tremble as if I were in a fever. 
 They took me out to-day in the yard ; its gate was open, and 
 no sentry near it. Through this unguarded gate I will run 
 out; my sentries will not catch me," — and I gave the plan 
 of escape. "A lady is to come in an open carriage to the 
 hospital. She is to alight, and the carriage to wait for her 
 in the street, some fifty paces from the gate. When I am 
 taken out, at four, I shall walk for a while with my hat in 
 my hand, and somebody who passes by the gate will take it 
 for a signal that aU is right within the prison. Then you 
 must return a signal: 'The street is clear.' Without it I 
 shall not start; once beyond the gate I must not be recap- 
 tured. Light or sound only can be used for your signal. 
 The coachman may send a flash of light, — the sun's rays 
 reflected from his laquered hat upon the main hospital build- 
 ing; or, still better, the sound of a song continued as long 
 as the street is clear; unless you can occupy the little gray 
 bungalow which I see from the yard, and signal to me from 
 its window. The sentry will run after me like a dog after 
 a hare, describing a curve, while I run in a straight line, 
 and I will keep flve or ten paces in advance of him. In the 
 street, I shall spring into the carriage and we shall gallop 
 away. If the sentry shoots — well, that cannot be helped; it 
 lies beyond our foresight; and then, against a certain death 
 in prison, the thing is well worth the risk." 
 
 Counter proposals were made, but that plan was ultimately 
 adopted. The matter was taken in hand by our circle; peo- 
 ple who never had known me entered into it, as if it were 
 the release of the dearest of their brothers. However, the 
 attempt was beset with difficulties, and time went with ter- 
 rible rapidity. I worked hard, writing late at night ; but my 
 health improved, nevertheless, at a speed which I found 
 appalling. When I was let out into the yard for the first 
 time, I could only creep like a tortoise along the footpath; 
 now I felt strong enough to run. True, I continued to 
 go at the same tortoise pace, lest my walks should be stopped ; 
 but my natural vivacity might betray me at any moment. 
 And my comrades, in the meantime, had to enlist more 
 
414 NARRATION 
 
 than a score of people in the affair, to find a reliable horse 
 and an experienced coachman, and to arrange hundreds of 
 unforseen details which always spring up around such con- 
 spiracies. The preparations took a month or so, and any 
 day I might be moved back to the house of detention. 
 
 At last the day of escape was settled. June 29, Old Style, 
 is the day of St. Peter and St. Paul. My friends, throwing 
 a touch of sentimentalism into their enterprise, wanted to 
 set me free on that day. They had let me know that in reply 
 to my signal "All right within" they would signal "All 
 right outside" by sending up a red toy balloon. Then the 
 carriage would come, and a song would be sung to let me 
 know when the street was open. 
 
 I went out on the 29th, took off my hat, and waited for 
 the balloon. But nothing of the kind was to be seen. I 
 heard the rumble of a carriage in the street; I heard a man's 
 voice singing a song unknown to me; but there was no 
 balloon. 
 
 The hour was over, and with a broken heart I returned 
 to my room. "Something must have gone wrong," I said 
 to myself. 
 
 The impossible had happened that day- Hundreds, of 
 children's balloons are always on sale in St. Petersburg, near 
 the Grostoni Dvor. That morning there were none; not a 
 single balloon was to be found. One was discovered at last, 
 in the possession of a child, but it was old and would not 
 fly. My friends rushed then to an optician's shop, bought 
 an apparatus for making hydrogen, and filled the balloon; 
 but it would not fly any better; the hydrogen had not been 
 dried. Time pressed. Then a lady attached the balloon 
 to her umbrella, and, holding the umbrella high over her head, 
 walked up and down in the street along the high wall of 
 our yard ; but I saw nothing of it, — the wall being too high, 
 and the lady too short. 
 
 As it turned out, nothing could have been better thaA 
 that accident with the balloon. When the hour of my walk 
 had passed, the carriage was driven along the streets which 
 it was intended to follow after the escape; and there, in a 
 narrow street it was stopped by a dozen or more carts which 
 
AN ESCAPE FROM PRISON 415 
 
 were carrying wood to the hospital. The horses of the carts 
 
 got into disorder and the carriage had to make 
 
 its way at a slow pace amongst them; at a turning it was 
 actually blocked. If I had been in it, we should have 
 been caught. 
 
 Now a whole system of signals was established along the 
 streets through which we should have to go after the escape, 
 in order to give notice if the streets were not clear. For a 
 couple of miles from the hospital my comrades took the 
 position of sentries. One was to walk up and down with a 
 handkerchief in his hand, which, at the approach of the 
 carts, he was to put into his pocket; another was to sit on a 
 stone and eat cherries, stopping when the carts came near; 
 and 80 on. All these signals, transmitted along the streets, 
 were finally to reach the carriage. My friends had also 
 hired the gray bungalow that I had seen from the yard, and at 
 an open window of that little house a violinist was to stand, 
 ready to play when the signal "Street clear" reached him. 
 
 The attempt had been settled for the next day. Further 
 postponement would have been dangerous. In fact, the car- 
 riage had been taken notice of by the hospital people, and 
 something suspicious must have reached the ears of the 
 authorities, as on the night before my escape I heard the 
 patrol officer ask the sentry who stood opposite my window, 
 "Where are your ball cartridges?" The soldier began to 
 take them in a clumsy way out of his cartridge pouch, spend- 
 ing a couple of minutes before he got them. The patrol 
 officer swore at him. "Have you not been told to keep 
 four ball cartridges in the pocket of your coat?" And he 
 stood by the sentry till the latter put four cartridges into 
 his pocket. "Look sharp!" he said as he turned away. 
 
 The new arrangements concerning the signals had to be 
 communicated to me at once; and at two on the next day 
 a lady — a dear relative of mine — came to the prison, asking 
 that a watch might be transmitted to me. Everything had 
 to go through the hands of the procureur; but as this was 
 simply a watch, without a box, it was passed along. In it 
 was a tiny cipher note which contained the whole plan. 
 When I read it I was seized with terror, so daring was the 
 
416 NARRATION 
 
 feat. The lady, herself under pursuit by the police for politi- 
 cal reasons, would have been arrested on the spot, if any 
 one had chanced to open the lid of the watch. But I saw 
 her calmly leave the prison and move slowly along the boule- 
 vard. 
 
 I came out at four, as usual, and gave my signal. I heard 
 next the rumble of the carriage, and a few minutes later 
 the tones of the violin in the gray house sounded through 
 our yard. But I was then at the other end of the building. 
 When I got back to the end of my path which was nearest 
 the gate — about a hundred paces from it — the sentry was 
 close upon my heels. "One turn more," I thought — but 
 before I reached the farther end of the path the violin sud- 
 denly ceased playing. 
 
 More than a quarter of an hour passed, full of anxiety, 
 before I understood the cause of the interruption. Then a 
 dozen heavily loaded carts entered the gate and moved to 
 the other end of the yard. 
 
 Immediately, the violinist — a good one, I must say — began 
 a wildly exciting mazurka from Kontsky, as if to say, 
 "Straight on now, — this is your time!'^ I moved slowly 
 to the nearer end of the footpath, trembling at the thought 
 that the mazurka migttt stop before I reached it. 
 
 When I was there I turned round. The sentry had stopped 
 five or six paces behind me; he was looking the other way. 
 "Now or Never!" I remember that tliought flashed through 
 my head. I flung ofE my green flannel dressing-gown and 
 began to run. 
 
 For many days in succession I had practiced how to get 
 rid of that immeasurably long and cumbrous garment. It 
 was so long that I carried the lower part on my left arm, 
 as ladies carry the trains of their riding habits. Do what I 
 might, it would not come off in one movement. I cut the 
 seams under the armpits, but that did .not help. Then I 
 decided to learn to throw it off in two movements; one cast- 
 ing the end from my arm, the other dropping the gown on 
 the floor. I practiced patiently in my room until I could 
 do it as neatly as soldiers handle their rifles. "One, two," and 
 it wa6 on the ground. 
 
AN ESCAPE FROM PRISON 417 
 
 "I did not trust much to my vigor, and began to run rather 
 slowly, to economize my strength. But no sooner had I taken 
 a few steps than the peasants who were piling the wood at 
 the other end shouted, "He runs! Stop him! Catch him!" 
 and they hastened to intercept me at the gate. Then I 
 flew for my life. I thought of nothing but running, — not 
 even of the pit that the carts had dug out at the gate. Run ! 
 run! full speed! 
 
 The sentry, I was told later by the friends who witnessed 
 the scene from the gray house, ran after me, followed by 
 three soldiers who had been sitting on the doorsteps. The 
 sentry was so near me that he felt sure of catching me. 
 Several times he flung his rifle forward, trying to give me a 
 blow in the back with the bayonet. One moment my friends 
 in the window thought he had me. He was so convinced that 
 he could stop me in this manner that he did not flre. But 
 I kept my distance, and he had to give up at the gate. 
 
 Safe out of the gate, I perceived, to my terror, that the 
 carriage was occupied by a civilian who wore a military cap. 
 He sat without turning his head to me. "Sold!" was my 
 first thought. The comrades had written in their last letter, 
 "Once in the street, don't give yourself up; there will be 
 friends to defend you in case of need," and I did not want 
 to jump into the carriage if it was occupied by an enemy. 
 However, as I got nearer to the carriage I noticed that the 
 man in it had sandy whiskers which seemed to be those of 
 a warm friend of mine. He did not belong to our circle, 
 but we were personal friends, and on more than one occa- 
 sion I had learned to know his admirable, daring courage, 
 and how his strength suddenly became herculean when there 
 was danger at hand. "Why should he be there? Is it 
 possible?" I reflected, and was going to shout out his name, 
 when I caught myself in good time, and instead clapped my 
 hands, while still running, to attract his attention. He 
 turned his face to me, and I knew who it was. 
 
 "Jump in, quick, quick!" he shouted in a terrible voice, 
 calling me and the coachman all sorts of names, a revolver in 
 his hand and ready to shoot. "Gallop! gallop! I will kill 
 you!" he cried to the coachman. The horse^a beautiful 
 
418 NARRATION 
 
 racing trotter, which had been bought on purpose — started at 
 full gallop. Scores of voices yelling, "Hold them! Get 
 them !" resounded behind us, my friend meanwhile helping 
 me to put on an elegant overcoat and an opera hat. But the 
 real danger was not so much in the pursuers as in a soldier 
 who was posted at the gate of the hospital, about opposite 
 the spot where the carriage .had to wait. He could have 
 prevented my jumping into the carriage, or could have stopped 
 the horse, by simply rushing a few steps forward. A friend 
 was consequently commissioned to divert this soldier by 
 talking. He did this most successfully. The soldier hav- 
 ing been employed at one time in the laboratory of the hospi- 
 tal, my friend gave a scientific turn to their chat, speaking 
 about the microscope and the wonderful things one sees 
 through it. Eeferring to a certain parasite of the human 
 body, he asked, "Did you ever see what a formidable tail it 
 has ?" "What, man, a tail ?" "Yes, it has ; under the micro- 
 scope it is as big as that." "Don't tell me any of your tales !" 
 retorted the soldier. "I know better. It was the first thing 
 I looked at under the microscope." This animated discussion 
 took place just as I ran past them and sprang into the car- 
 riage. It sounds like fable, but it is fact. 
 
 The carriage turned sharply into a narrow lane, past the 
 same wall of the yard where the peasants had been piling 
 wood, and which all of them had now deserted in their run 
 after me. The turn was so sharp that the carriage was nearly 
 upset, when I flung myself inward, dragging toward me 
 my friend; this sudden movement righted the carriage. 
 
 We trotted through the narrow lane and then turned to the 
 left. Two gendarmes were standing there at the door of a 
 public-house, and gave to the military cap of my companion 
 the military salute. "Hush ! hush !" I said to him, for he was 
 still terribly excited. "All goes well; the gendarmes salute 
 us!" The coachman thereupon turned his face toward me, 
 and I recognized in him another friend, who smiled with 
 
 Everywhere we saw friends, who winked to us or gave us 
 a God-speed as we passed at the full trot of our beautiful 
 horse. Then we entered the large Nevsky Prospekt, turned 
 
AN ESCAPE FROM PRISON 419 
 
 into a side street, and alighted at a door, sending away the 
 coachman. I ran up a staircase, and at its top fell into the 
 arms of my sister-in-law, who had been waiting in painful 
 anxiety. She laughed and cried at the same time, bidding me 
 hurry to put on another dress and to crop my conspicuous 
 beard. Ten minutes later my friend and I left the house 
 and took a cab. 
 
 In the meantime, the oflBcer of the guard at the prison and 
 the hospital soldiers had rushed out into the street, doubtful 
 as to what measures they should take. There was not a 
 cab for a mile round, every one having been hired by my 
 friends. An old peasant woman from the crowd was wiser 
 than all the lot. "Poor people," she said, as if talking to 
 herself, "they are sure to come out on the Prospekt, and there 
 they will be caught if somebody runs along that lane, which 
 leads straight to the Prospekt." She was quite right, and the 
 officer ran to the tramway car that stood close by, and asked 
 the men to let him have their horses to send somebody on 
 horseback to intercept us. But the men obstinately re- 
 fused to give up their horses, and the officer did not use force. 
 
 As to the violinist and the lady who had taken the gray 
 house, they lushed out and joined the crowd with the old 
 woman, whom they heard giving advice, and when the crowd 
 dispersed they went away also. 
 
 It was a fine afternoon. We drove to the islands where 
 all the St. Petersburg aristocracy goes on bright spring days 
 to see the sunset, and called on the way, in a remote street, 
 at a barber's shop to shave off my beard, which operation 
 changed me, of course, but not very much. We drove aim- 
 lessly up and down the islands, but, having been told not to 
 reach our night quarters till late in the evening, did not know 
 where to go. "What shall we do in the meantime ?" I asked 
 my friend. He also pondered over that question. "To 
 Donon !" he suddenly called out to the cabman, naming one 
 of the best St. Petersburg restaurants. "No one will ever 
 think of looking for you at Donon," he calmly remarked. 
 "They will hunt for you everywhere else, but not there; and 
 we shall have a dinner in honor of the success of your escape." 
 
 What could I reply to so reasonable a suggestion? So we 
 
420 NARRATION 
 
 went to Donon, passed the halls flooded with light and 
 crowded with visitors at the dinner hour, and took a separate 
 room, where we spent the evening till the time came when 
 we were expected. The house where we had first alighted 
 was searched less than two hours after we left, as were also 
 the apartments of nearly all our friends. Nobody thought 
 of making a search at Donon. 
 
 A couple of days later I was to take possession of an 
 apartment which had been engaged for me, and which I could 
 occupy under a false passport. But the lady who was to 
 accompany me there in, a carriage took the precaution of 
 visiting the house first by herself. It was thickly surrounded 
 by spies. So many of my friends had come to inquire whether 
 I was safe there that the suspicions of the police had been 
 aroused. Moreover my portrait had been printed by the 
 Third Section, and hundreds of copies had been distributed 
 to policemen and watchmen. All the detectives who knew 
 me by sight were looking for me in tlie streets; while those 
 who did not were accompanied by soldiers and warders who 
 had seen me during my imprisonment. The Tsar was furious 
 that such an escape should have taken place in his capital in 
 full daylight, and had given the order, "He must be found." 
 
 It was impossible to remain in St. Petersburg, and I con- 
 cealed myself in country houses in its neighborhood. In 
 company with half a dozen friends, I stayed at a village fre- 
 quented at this time of the year by St. Petersburg people bent 
 on picnicking. Then it was decided that I should go abroad. 
 But from a foreign paper we had learned tliat all the frontier 
 stations and railway termini in the Baltic provinces and 
 Finland were closely watched by detectives who knew me by 
 sight. So I determined to travel in a direction where I 
 should be least expected. Armed with the passport of a 
 friend, and accompanied by another friend, I crossed Finland, 
 and went northward to a remote port on the Gulf of Bothnia, 
 whence I crossed to Sweden. 
 
 After I had gone on board the steamer, and it was about 
 to sail, the friend who accompanied me to the frontier told 
 me the St. Petersburg news, which he had promised our 
 friends not to tell me before. My sister Helene had been 
 
BIG STEAMERS CRASH IN FOG 421 
 
 arrested, as well as the sister of my brother's wife, who had 
 visited me in prison once a month after my brother and his 
 wife went to Siberia. 
 
 My sister knew absolutely nothing of the preparations for 
 my escape. Only after I had escaped a friend had hurried 
 to her, to teU her the welcome news. She protested her 
 ignorance in vain; she was taken from her children, and was 
 kept imprisoned for a fortnight. As to the sister of my brother's 
 wife, she had known vaguely that something was to be 
 attempted, but she had had no part in the preparations. 
 Common sense ought to have shown the authorities that a per- 
 son who had officially visited me in prison would not be 
 involved in such an afiEair. Xevertheless, she was kept in 
 prison for over two months. Her husband, a well-known 
 lawyer, vainly endeavored to obtain her release. "We are 
 aware now," he was told by the gendarme officers, "that she 
 has had nothing to do with the escape; but, you see, we 
 reported to the Emperor, on the day we arrested her, that 
 the person who had organized the escape was discovered and 
 arrested. It will now take some time to prepare the Emperor 
 to accept the idea that she is not the real culprit." 
 
 I crossed Sweden without stopping anywhere, and went 
 to Christiania, where I waited a few days for a steamer to 
 sail for Hull. As I went to the steamer I asked myself with 
 anxiety, "Under what flag does she sail, — Norwegian, German, 
 English?" Then I saw floating above the stem the union 
 jack, — the flag imder which so many refugees, Eussian, 
 Italian, French, Hungarian, and of all nations, have found 
 an asylimi. I greeted that flag from the depth of my heart. 
 
 P. Kropotkin: Memoirs of a Revolutionist. (Used by special per- 
 mission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co.) 
 
 Big Steamers Crash in Fog 
 
 Boston, March 10.— While ploughing their way through 
 Pollock Bip slue, off the heel of Cape Cod, about 8 o'clock 
 this morning the steamer Horatio Hall, bound from Portland 
 for New York, and the steamer H. F. Dimock, from New 
 York for Boston, collided. 
 
422 NARRATION 
 
 The Dimock cut her way into the port side of the Hall 
 almost to the mainmast about twenty feet. Her captain, 
 John A. Thompson, ordering full speed ahead, kept her nose 
 in the gap and shoved the wounded vessel across the slue 
 to the western side, where she grounded on a sand bank and 
 filled with water. 
 
 While the Dimock's nose was acting as a collision mattress 
 the five passengers on board the Hall, including two women. 
 Miss Euth Emstrom and Miss Gurli Bmstrom, were swung 
 across to the deck of the former, and some of the crew fol- 
 lowed them. 
 
 After the Hall had settled to the bottom and her decks 
 were about awash the remainder of the people on board her, 
 except Capt. H. P. Jewell, First OflScer James Parker of 
 New York, the pilot and two seamen, lowered a lifeboat and 
 rowed to the Dimock, where they were taken aboard. Capt. 
 Jewell refused to leave his vessel and the others decided to 
 stay with him. They are in no great danger as they have life- 
 boats in plenty. The revenue cutter Gresham is in the neigh- 
 borhood and only at high water will they be obliged to take 
 to the rigging. 
 
 The settling of the Hall upon the sand bank did not com- 
 plete the story, for the Dimock in driving a wedgelike hole 
 into the side of the other craft had a gash eight feet wide torn 
 in her starboard bow, through which the water began to come 
 almost immediately. At first the pumps handled the inflow 
 without difiiculty, but when the Dimock tried to steam up 
 along the Cape Cod beach on her way to Boston a rising 
 sea began to send a dangerous volume of water into the 
 opening. 
 
 This was about noon time and soon the weight of the water 
 in the compartment began to put the craft down by the bows 
 as well as to give her a list to port. There was danger 
 of the steamer sinking and Capt. Thompson had a lifeboat 
 swung out on the davits, and into this he placed the two 
 women taken from the Hall with Mrs. and Miss Casey of 
 Melrose Hillside, Mass., passengers on the Dimock. They 
 were wrapped in blankets and told to remain in the boat, 
 so that if the vessel went down they would be saved. Orders 
 
BIG STEAMERS CRASH IN FOG 423 
 
 were also issued by Capt. Thompson to the men passengers 
 and seamen not to take to a boat until he gave the word. 
 
 Under these trying conditions, with the Dimock in danger 
 of plunging to the bottom any minute, Capt. Thompson 
 crowded on all steam and made for the Orleans beach. 
 The craft struck her keel into the sand about half a mile 
 south of the Orleans life saving station at 2:15 o'clock this 
 afternoon and the tooting of her whistle soon brought life- 
 boats from the Orleans, Old Harbor, and Nauset stations. 
 
 The passengers on both vessels and the crew of the Horatio 
 Hall were brought ashore, the officers and crew of the Dimock 
 remaining on board to aid in wrecking operations, which will 
 begin as soon as the tugs Underwriter and Orion and the 
 big lighter Salvage reach the scene, these craft having 
 started from Boston late this evening. The chances are that 
 the Dimock will be floated again. The passengers from the 
 vessels and the sailors brought ashore remained in Orleans 
 to-night and will proceed to their destinations tomorrow. 
 
 The Horatio Hall sailed from Portland at 10 :30 last night, 
 having 700 tons of freight on board and five passengers : Miss 
 Euth Emstrom and Miss Gurli Emstrom of Brooklyn, M. E. 
 Marks of 561 Broadway, New York; W. S. Marie of Bidde- 
 ford. Me., and Michael Dolan of New York. It was raining 
 and thick weather when the boat left Portland, and going 
 across the mouth of Massachusetts Bay the conditions did not 
 improve. A thick fog prevailed as the steamer made her 
 way down outside Cape Cod, and at daylight the lookouts 
 were doubled and fog signals were blown at regular intervals. 
 The Hall had just passed the gas buoy in Pollock Eip slue 
 when the whistle of another steamer was heard. The Hall 
 veered a little to the westward, as the sound of the approach- 
 ing steamer indicated that she was headed directly for her. 
 Then in less time than it takes to tell it the Dimock burst 
 out from the fog into full view and drove her bow deep into 
 the side of the Hall. 
 
 Mr. Marks, who was dressing himself in his stateroom 
 when the steamers came together, said there was no distinct 
 shock from the collision, the sensation being rather one of 
 grinding than anything else, as the Dimock bored her way 
 
424 NARRATION 
 
 through the hull. He ran on deck and saw what occurred. 
 There was shouting and yelling aboard both vessels, but the 
 seamen were cool and their officers gave orders calmly. 
 
 The steward of the Hall ran below and passed up the two 
 women passengers who were lightly clad, having just tumbled 
 from their berths. They were quickly passed by the sailors 
 across to the deck of the Dimoek and the male passengers 
 clambered over also. Meantime, the Hall was being shoved 
 sideways across the slue, heeling to starboard until her hull 
 brought up against a sand bank. The Dimoek then backed 
 away and efforts were made to patch up the hole in her 
 bow. 
 
 When the Hall was slowly sinking, the wireless man on 
 board her began sending out the "C Q D" call, which was 
 picked up by a number of Government stations along the 
 coast. The revenue cutter Gresham was in Vineyard Sound on 
 her way to the freight steamer Massachusetts ashore to the 
 westward and got this message, as did other stations : "Horatio 
 Hall in collision with H. F. Dimoek at t a. m. Ship cut 
 below waterline. Is on the bottom, send assistance at once." 
 
 The Gresham at once changed her course to the eastward, 
 but by this time the wireless on the Hall was put out of com- 
 mission by the rising water in her hold, and therefore there 
 was no way for the Gresham to ascertain just where the 
 steamer had sunk. On shore the various wireless stations tried 
 to get the same information, but amateur operators from 
 New London began filling the atmosphere with electric waves 
 and there was such a confusion of dots and dashes aloft that 
 no one was able to get any news as to the whereabouts of the 
 Hall, so that it was not until the Dimoek landed some people 
 on the Orleans beach that this became known. Later the 
 Gresham got a message from a land station and proceeded 
 to Pollock Rip. 
 
 Boston, March 11. — In the opinion of Capt. John A. 
 Thompson of the Metropolitan Line steamer H. F. Dimoek 
 that craft had only about five minutes more to float when she 
 shoved her nose on the Orleans beach yesterday afternoon, 
 six hours after sinking the Horatio Hall in Pollock Rip slue. 
 
 Capt. Thompson came ashore from his vessel this morning 
 and related his experiences. He said that after pushing the 
 
BIG STEAMERS CRASH IN FOG 42S 
 
 Hall upon the sand bank and transferring her passengers he 
 backed away and anchored to repair damages. 
 
 "I patched the Dimock's bows," said Capt, Thompson, 
 "with canvas as well as I could besides shifting the cargo to 
 list the Dimock to port to get the hole in her starboard 
 bow out of water. I filled our aft ballast tanks to set 
 the Dimock down by the stem and raise her bow out of 
 water. 
 
 "I raised tiie holes in the Dimock's bows above the water 
 line and thought the vessel seaworthy. Then I got up a^nchor 
 when the fog lifted, and as the sea was rising got to leeward 
 of the Hall so her men who were alongside her in the boats 
 could drop down to us, and we took them aboard. Then I 
 got under way and started north. 
 
 "I considered, after an investigation, sounding the bilges 
 and with a man sta,tioned at each bulkhead, that the Dimock 
 was seaworthy, and felt the safest course was to proceed to the 
 northward, as I had a southerly wind. I got well under the 
 shore and proceeded under moderate speed, but at the end 
 of an hour's run from the Pollock Eip lightship the chief 
 engineer reported a little water showing in the sounding 
 tube of the forehold. 
 
 "I ordered o£E the hatches and found there was seven feet 
 of water in the forehold, and as the forward bulkhead was 
 holding it showed there was an unsuspected hole somewhere 
 in the bottom. I had over 100 people on board at this time, 
 and as I had only two lifeboats of my own and one of the 
 Hall, partly filled with water, towing astern, I headed the 
 Dimock for the nearest land at full speed. 
 
 "Before we got into seven fathoms the ship was five feet 
 down by the head and was listed to port 30 degrees. The 
 Dimock went on the beach easily, and with all these people 
 aboard it was a relief to hear her hit the sand. 
 
 "We couldn't have lived five minutes longer. If we hadn't 
 struck the beach when we did we would undoubtedly all have 
 gone to the bottom, and then there would have been a 
 vastly different story to tell. 
 
 "It was as close a shave as I care to face again, and it 
 seems miraculous that no lives were lost." 
 
 From the New York Sun, March 10 and 11. 1909. 
 
426 NARRATION 
 
 Death of Thomas Becket 
 
 No one knows what passed at Bayeux during the first weeks 
 of that December. King and council, knights and nobles, 
 squires and valets must have talked of little else but Becket 
 and his doings. The pages at Winchester laid their hands 
 on their dagger-hilts when the priest delivered his haughty 
 message. The peers and gentlemen who surrounded Henry 
 at Bayeux are not likely to have felt more gently as each day 
 brought news from England of some fresh audacity. At 
 length a few days before Christmas, the three bishops arrived. 
 Two were under the curse, and could not be admitted into 
 the king's presence. The Archbishop of York, being only 
 suspended, carried less contamination with him. At a council 
 the archbishop was introduced, and produced Alexander's 
 letters. From these it appeared not only that he and the other 
 bishops were denounced by name, but that every person who 
 had taken any part in the young Hug's coronation was by 
 implication excommunicated also. It is to be remembered 
 that the king had received a positive sanction for the coro- 
 nation from Alexander; that neither he nor the bishops had 
 received the prohibition till the ceremony was over; and that 
 the prohibitory letter, which it is at least possible that the 
 king would have respected, had been kept back by Becket 
 himself. 
 
 The Archbishop of York still advised forbearance, and an 
 appeal once more to Eome. The pope would see at last what 
 Becket really was, and would relieve the country of him. 
 But an appeal to Eome would take time, and England mean- 
 while might be in flames. "By God's eyes," said the king, 
 "if all are excommunicated who were concerned in the coro- 
 nation, I am excommunicated also." Some one (the name of 
 the speaker is not mentioned) said that there would be no 
 peace while Becket lived. With the fierce impatience of a man 
 baffled by a problem which he has done his best to solve, and 
 has failed through no fault of his own, Henry is reported to 
 have exclaimed : "Is this varlet that I loaded with kindness, 
 that came first to court to me on a lame mule, to insult me and 
 my children, and take my crown from me? What cowards 
 have I about me, that no one will deliver me from this low- 
 
DEATH OF THOMAS BECKET 427 
 
 fcom priest !" It is very likely that Henry used such words. 
 The greatest prince that ever sat on a throne, if tried as 
 Henry had been, would have said the same; and Henry had 
 used almost the same language to the bishops at Chinon in 
 1166. But it is evident that much is still untold. These passion- 
 ate denunciations can be no more than the outcome of long 
 and ineflEectual deliberation. Projects must have been talked 
 over and rejected; orders were certainly conceived which 
 were to be sent to the archbishop, and measures were devised 
 for dealing with him short of his death. He was to be 
 required to absolve the censured bishops. If he refused, 
 he might be sent in custody to the young king, he might 
 be brought to Normandy, he might be exiled from the English 
 dominions, or he might be imprisoned in some English castle. 
 Indications can be traced of all these plans; and something 
 of the kind would probably have been resolved upon, although 
 it must have been painfully clear also that, without the pope's 
 help, none of them would really meet the difficulty. But the 
 result was that the knights about the court, seeing the king's 
 perplexity, determined to take the risk on themselves, and 
 deliver both him and their country. If the king acted, the king 
 might be excommunicated, and the empire might be laid under 
 interdict, with the consequences which every one foresaw. 
 For their own acts the penalty would but fall upon them- 
 selves. They did not know, perhaps, distinctly what they 
 meant to do, but something might have to be done which 
 the king must condemn if they proposed it to him. 
 
 But being done unknown, 
 He would have found it afterwards well done. 
 
 Impetuous loyalty to the sovereign was in the spirit of the 
 age. 
 
 Among the gentlemen about his person whom Henry had 
 intended to employ, could he have resolved upon the instruc- 
 tions which were to be given to them, were four knights of 
 high birth and large estate — Sir Eeginald Pitzurse, of Somer- 
 setshire, a tenant in chief of the Crown, whom Becket himself 
 had originally introduced into the court; Sir Hugh de 
 Morville, custodian of Knaresborough Castle, and justiciary 
 of Northumberland; Sir William de Tracy, half a Saxon, 
 
428 NARRATION 
 
 with royal blood in him; and Sir Eiehard le Breton, 
 had been moved to volunteer in the service by another 
 instance of Becket's dangerous meddling. Le Breton was 
 a friend of the king's brother William, whom the arch- 
 bishop had separated from the lady to whom he was about 
 to be married, on some plea of consanguinity. Sir William 
 de Mandeville and others were to have been joined in the com- 
 mission. But these four chose to anticipate both their com- 
 panions and their final orders, and started alone. Their 
 disappearance was observed. An express was sent to recall 
 them, and the king supposed that they had returned. But 
 they had gone by separate routes to separate ports. The 
 weather was fair for the season of the year, with an east 
 wind perhaps; and each had found a vessel without difBculty 
 to carry him across the Channel. The rendezvous was Sir 
 Eanulf de Broc's castle of Saltwood, near Hythe, thirteen 
 miles from Canterbury. 
 
 The archbishop meanwhile had returned from his adventur- 
 ous expedition. The young king and his advisers had deter- 
 mined to leave him no fair cause of complaint, and had sent 
 orders for the restoration of his wine and the release of the 
 captured seamen; but the archbishop would not wait for the 
 State to do him justice. On Christmas eve he was further 
 exasperated by the appearance at the gate of his palace of one 
 of his sumpter mules, which had been brutally mutilated by 
 Sir Eanulf de Broc's kinsman Eobert. "The viper's brood," 
 as Herbert de Bosham said, "were lifting up their heads. 
 The hornets were out. Bulls of Bashan compassed the arch- 
 bishop round about." The Earl of Cornwall's warning had 
 reached him, but "fight, not flight," was alone in his thoughts. 
 He, too, was probably weary of the strife, and may have 
 felt that he would serve his cause more effectually by death 
 than by life. On Christmas day he preached in the cathedral 
 on the text "Peace to men of good will." There was no peace, 
 he said, except to men of good will. He spoke passionately 
 of the trials of the Church. As he drew towards an end 
 he alluded to the possibility of his own martyrdom. He 
 could scarcely articulate for tears. The congregation were 
 sobbing round him. Suddenly his face altered, his tone 
 
DEATH OF THOMAS BECKET 429 
 
 changed. Glowing with anger, with the fatal candles in 
 front of him, and in a voice of thunder, the solemn and the 
 absurd strangely blended in the overwhelming sense of his 
 own wrongs, he cursed the intruders into his churches; he 
 cursed Sir Eanulf de Broc; he cursed Eobert de Broc for 
 cutting ofE his mule's tail; he cursed by name several of 
 the old king's most intimate councillors who were at the 
 court in Normandy. At each fierce imprecation he quenched 
 a light, and dashed down a candle. "As he spoke," says 
 the enthusiastic Herbert, "you saw the very beast of the 
 prophet's vision, with the face of a lion and the face of a 
 man." He had drawn the spiritual sword, as he had sworn 
 that he would. So experienced a man of the world could 
 not have failed to foresee that he was provoking passions 
 which would no longer respect his oflBce, and that no rising 
 in England would now be in time to save him. He was in 
 better spirits, it was observed, after he had discharged his 
 anathema. The Christmas festival was held in the hall. 
 Asceticism was a virtue which was never easy to him. He 
 indulged his natural inclinations at all permitted times, and 
 on this occasion he ate and drank more copiously than usual. 
 
 The next day Becket received another warning that he 
 was in personal danger. He needed no friends to tell him 
 that. The only attention which he paid to these messages 
 was to send his secretary Herbert and his crossbearer, Alex- 
 ander Llewellyn, to Prance, to report his situation to Lewis 
 and to the Archbishop of Sens. He told Herbert at parting 
 that he would see his face no more. 
 
 So passed at Canterbury Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, 
 the 26th, 27th, and 28th of December. On that same Mon- 
 day afternoon the four knights arrived at Saltwood. They 
 were expected, for Sir Eanulf with a party of men-at-arms 
 had gone to meet them. There on their arrival they learned 
 the fresh excommunications which had been pronounced 
 against their host and against their friends at the court. 
 The news could only have confirmed whatever resolutions 
 they had formed. 
 
 On the morning of the 29th they rode with an escort 
 of horse along the old Eoman road to Canterbury. They 
 
430 NARRATION 
 
 halted at St. Augustine's Monastery, where they were enter- 
 tained by the abbot elect, Becket's old enemy, the scandalous 
 Clarembald. They, perhaps, dined there. At any rate they 
 issued a proclamation bidding the inhabitants remain quiet 
 in their houses, in the king's name, and then, with some 
 of Clarembald's armed servants in addition to their own 
 party, they went on to the great gate of the archbishop's 
 palace. Leaving their men outside, the four knights alighted 
 and entered the court. They unbuckled their swords, leaving 
 them at the lodge, and, throwing gowns over their armor, 
 they strode across to the- door of the hall. Their appearance 
 could hardly have been unexpected. It was now between 
 three and four o'clock in the afternoon. They had been 
 some time in the town, and their arrival could not fail to 
 have been reported. The archbishop's midday meal was over. 
 The servants were dining on the remains, and the usual com- 
 pany of mendicants were waiting for their turn. The arch- 
 bishop had been again disturbed at daybreak by intimation 
 of danger. He had advised any of his clergy who were afraid, 
 to escape to Sandwich; but none of them had left him. He 
 had heard mass as usual. He had received his customary 
 floggings. At dinner he had drunk freely, observing, when 
 some one remarked upon it, that he that had blood to lose 
 needed wine to support him. Afterwards he had retired into an 
 inner room with John of Salisbury, his chaplain Fitzstephen, 
 Edward Grim of Cambridge, who was on a visit to him, 
 and several others, and was now sitting in conversation with 
 them in the declining light of the winter afternoon till the 
 bell should ring for vespers. 
 
 The knights were recognized, when they entered the hall, 
 as belonging to the king's court. The steward invited them 
 to eat. They declined, and desired him to inform the arch- 
 bishop that they had arrived with a message from the Court. 
 This was the first communication which the archbishop had 
 received from Henry since he had used his name so freely to 
 cover acts which, could Henry have anticipated them, would 
 have barred his return to Canterbury forever. The insin- 
 cere professions of peace had covered an intention of pro- 
 voking a rebellion. The truth was now plain. There was no 
 
DEATH OF THOMAS BECKET 431 
 
 room any more for excuse or palliation. What course had 
 the king determined on? 
 
 The knights were introduced. They advanced. The arch- 
 bishop neither spoke nor looked at them, but continued talk- 
 ing to a monk who was next him. He himself was sitting 
 on a bed. The rest of the party present were on the floor. 
 The knights seated themselves in the same manner, and for 
 a few moments there was silence. Then Becket's black, rest- 
 less eye glanced from one to the other. He. slightly noticed 
 Tracy ; and Fitzurse said a few unrecorded sentences to him, 
 which ended with "God help you !" To Becket's friends the 
 words sounded like insolence. They may have meant no 
 more than pity for the deliberate fool who was forcing destruc- 
 tion upon himself. 
 
 Becket's face flushed. Fitzurse went on, "We bring you 
 the commands of the King beyond the sea; will you hear us 
 in public or in private?" Becket said he cared not. "In 
 private, then," said Fitzurse. The monks thought after- 
 wards that Fitzurse had meant to kill the archbishop where 
 he sat. If the knights had entered the palace, thronged as 
 it was with men, with any such intention, they would scarcely 
 have left their swords behind them. The room was cleared, 
 and a short altercation followed, of which nothing is known 
 save that it ended speedily in high words on both sides. 
 Becket called in his clergy again, his lay servants being 
 excluded, and bade Fitzurse go on. "Be it so," Sir Reginald 
 said. "Listen then, to what the King says. When the peace 
 was made, he put aside all his complaints against you. He 
 allowed you to return, as you desired, free to your see. You 
 have now added contempt to your other offenses. You have 
 broken the treaty. You have allowed your pride to tempt 
 you to defy your lord and master to your own sorrow. You 
 have censured the bishops by whose administration the Prince 
 was crowned. You have pronounced an anathema against 
 the King's ministers, by whose advice he is guided in the 
 management of the empire. You have made it plain that 
 if you could you would take the Prince's crown from him. 
 Your plots and contrivances to attain your ends are notorious 
 to all men. Say, then, will you "attend us to the King's 
 
432 NARRATION 
 
 presence, and there answer for yourself? For this we are 
 sent." 
 
 The archbishop declared that he had never wished any 
 hurt to the Prince. The King had no occasion to be dis- 
 pleased if crowds came about him in the towns and cities, 
 after having been so long deprived of his presence. If he 
 had done any wrong he would make satisfaction, but he 
 protested against being suspected of intentions which had 
 never entered his mind. 
 
 Fitzurse did not enter into an altercation with him, but 
 continued: "The King commands further that you and 
 your clerks repair without delay to the young King's presence, 
 and swear allegiance, and promise to amend your faults." 
 
 The archbishop's temper was fast rising. "I will do what- 
 ever miay be reasonable," he said, "but I tell you plainly, 
 the King shall have no oaths from me, nor from any one of 
 my clergy. There has been too much perjury already. I 
 have absolved many, with God's help, who had perjured 
 themselves. I will absolve the rest when he permits." 
 
 "I understand you to say that you will not obey?" said 
 Fitzurse, and went on in the same tone: "The King com- 
 mands you to absolve the bishops whom you have exeom- 
 munciated without his permission" (absque licentid sva). 
 
 "The Pope sentenced the bishops," the archbishop said, 
 "if you are not pleased, you must go to him. The affair 
 is none of mine." 
 
 Fitzurse said it had been done at his instigation, which 
 he did not deny; but he proceeded to reassert that the King 
 had given his permission. He had complained at the time 
 of the peace of the injury which he had suffered in the- 
 coronation, and the King had told him that he might obtain 
 from the Pope any satisfaction for which he liked to ask. 
 
 If this was all the consent which the King had given, the 
 pretense of his authority was inexcusable. Fitzurse could 
 scarce hear the archbishop out with patience. "Ay, ay !" said 
 he; "will you make the King out to be a traitor, then? The 
 King gave you leave to excommunicate the bishops when 
 they were acting by his own order! It is more than we can 
 bear to listen to such monstrous accusations." 
 
DEATH OF THOMAS BECKET 433 
 
 John of Salisbury tried to check the archbishop's impru- 
 dent tongue, and whispered to him to speak to the knights 
 in private; but when the passion was on him, no mule was 
 more ungovernable than Becket. Drawing to a conclusion, 
 Fitzurse said to him: "Since you refuse to do any one of 
 those things which the King requires of you, his final com- 
 mands are that you and your clergy shall forthwith depart 
 out of this realm and out of his dominions, never more to 
 return. You have broken the peace, and the King cannot 
 trust you again." 
 
 Becket answered wildly that he would not go — never again 
 would he leave England. Nothing but death should now 
 part him from his church. Stung by the reproach of ill- 
 faith, he poured out the catalogue of his own injuries. He 
 had been promised restoration, and instead of restoration 
 he had been robbed and insulted. Eanulf de Broc had laid 
 an embargo on his wine. Robert de Broc had cut off his 
 mule's tail; and now the knights had come to menace him. 
 
 De Morville said that if he had suffered any wrong he 
 had only to appeal to the Council, and justice would be done. 
 
 Becket did not vnsh for the Council's justice. "I have 
 complained enough," he said; "so many wrongs are daily 
 heaped upon me that I could not find messengers to carry 
 the tale of them. I am refused access to the court. Neither 
 one king nor the other will do me right. I will endure it 
 no more. I will use my own powers as archbishop, and no 
 child of man shall prevent me." 
 
 "You will lay the realm under interdict, then, and excom- 
 municate the whole of us?" said Fitzurse. 
 
 "So God help me," said one of the others, "he shall not do 
 that. He has excommunicated over-many already. We have 
 borne too long with him." . 
 
 The knights sprang to their feet, twisting their gloves and 
 swinging their arms. The archbishop rose. In the general 
 noise words e(Juld no longer be accurately heard. At length 
 the knights moved to leave the room, and addressing the 
 archbishop's attendants, said, "In the King's name we 
 command you to see that this man does not escape." 
 
 "Do you think I shall 'fly, then?" cried the archbishop. 
 
434 NARRATION 
 
 "Neither for the King nor for any living man will I fly. 
 You cannot be more ready to kill me than I am to die . . . 
 Here you will find me," he shouted, following them to the 
 door as they went out, and calling after them. Some of his 
 friends thought that he had asked De Morville to come back 
 and speak quietly with him, but it was not so. He returned 
 to his seat, still excited and complaining. 
 
 "My lord," said John of Salisbury to him, "it is strange 
 that you will never be advised. What occasion was there 
 for you to go after these men and exasperate them with 
 your bitter speeches? You would have done better, surely, 
 by being quiet and giving them a milder answer. They mean 
 no good, and you only commit yourself." 
 
 The archbishop sighed, and said, "I have done with 
 advice. I know what I have before me." 
 
 It was foar o'clock when the knights entered. It was now 
 nearly five; and unless there were lights the room must have 
 been almost dark. Beyond the archbishop's chamber was an 
 anteroom, beyond the anteroom the hall. The knights, pass- 
 ing through the hall into the quadrangle, and thence to the 
 lodge, called their men to arms. The great gate was closed. 
 A mounted guard was stationed outside, with orders to allow 
 no one to go out or in. The knights threw off their cloaks 
 and buckled on their swords. This was the work of a few 
 minutes. From the cathedral tower the vesper bell was 
 beginning to sound. The archbishop had seated himself to 
 recover from the agitation of the preceding scene, when a 
 breathless monk rushed in to say that the knights were arming. 
 "Who cares? Let them arm," was all that the archbishop 
 said. His clergy was less indifferent. If the archbishop was 
 ready for death, they were not. The door from the hall into 
 the court was closed and barred, and a short respite was thus 
 secured. The intention of the knights, it may be presumed, 
 was to seize the archbishop and carry him off to Saltwood or 
 to De Morville's castle at Knaresborough, or perhaps to Nor- 
 mandy. Coming back to execute their purpose, they found 
 themselves stopped by the hall door. To burst it open would 
 require time; the anteroom between the hall and the arch- 
 bishop's apartments opened by an oriel window and an out- 
 
DEATH OF THOMAS BECKET 435 
 
 side stair into a garden. Robert de Broc, who knew the house 
 well, led the way to it in the dark. The steps were broken, 
 but a ladder was standing against the window, by which the 
 knights mounted, and the crash of the falling casement told 
 the fluttered group about the archbishop that their enemies 
 were upon them. There was still a moment. The party 
 who entered by the window, instead of turning into the arch- 
 bishop's room, first went into the hall to open the door and 
 admit their comrades. From the archbishop's room a second 
 passage, little used, opened into the northwest corner of the 
 cloister, and from the cloister there was a way into the north 
 transept of the cathedral. The cry was "To the church ! To 
 the church !" There at least there would be immediate safety. 
 
 The archbishop had told the knights that they would find 
 him where they left him. He did not choose to show fear; 
 or he was afraid, as some thought, of losing his martyrdom. 
 He would not move. The bell had ceased. They reminded 
 him that vespers had begun, and that he ought to be in the 
 cathedral. Half yielding, half resisting, his friends swept 
 him down the passage into the cloister. His cross had been 
 forgotten in the haste. He refused to stir till it was fetched 
 and carried before him as usual. Then only, himself incapable 
 of fear, and rebuking the terror of the rest, he advanced 
 deliberately to the door into the south transept. His train 
 was scattered behind him, all along the cloister from the pas- 
 sage leading out of the palace. As he entered the church, 
 cries were heard, from which it became plain that the knights 
 had broken into the archbishop's room, had found the passage, 
 and were following him. Almost immediately Fitzurse, Tracy, 
 De Morville, and Le Breton were discerned ia the dim light, 
 coming through the cloister in their armor, with drawn 
 swords, and a.^es in their left hands. A company of men- 
 a1>-arms was behind them. In front they were driving before 
 them a frightened flock of monks. 
 
 From the middle of the transept in which the archbishop 
 was standing, a single pillar rose into the roof. On the east- 
 em side of it opened a chapel of St. Benedict, in which were 
 the tombs of several of the old primates. On the west, running 
 of course parallel to the nave, was a Lady chapel. Behind 
 
436 NARRATION 
 
 the pillar, steps led up into the choir, where voices were 
 already singing vespers. A faint light may have been reflected 
 into the transept from the choir tapers, and candles may 
 perhaps have been burning before the altars in the two chapels ; 
 of light from without through the windows at that hour 
 there could have been none. Seeing the knights coming on, 
 the clergy who had entered with the archbishop closed the door 
 and barred it. "What do you fear?" he cried in a clear, 
 loud voice. "Out of the way, you coward! the Church of 
 God must not be made a fortress." He stepped back and 
 reopened the door with his own hands, to let in the trembling 
 wretches who had been shut out among the wolves. They 
 rushed past him, and scattered in the hiding places of the 
 vast sanctuary, in the crypt, in the galleries, or behind the 
 tombs. All, or almost all, even of his closest friends, — Wil- 
 liam of Canterbury, Benedict, John of Salisbury himself, — 
 forsook him to shift for themselves, admitting frankly that 
 they were unworthy of martyrdom. The archbishop was left 
 alone with his chaplain Fitzstephen, Robert of Merton, his 
 old master, and Edward Grim, the stranger from Cambridge, 
 — or perhaps with Grim only, who says that he was the only 
 one who stayed, and was the only one certainly who showed 
 any sign of courage. A cry had been raised in the choir that 
 armed men were breaking into the cathedral. The vespers 
 ceased; the few monks assembled left their seats and rushed 
 to the edge of the transept, looking wildly into the darkness. 
 
 The archbishop was on the fourth step beyond the central 
 pillar ascending into the choir, when the knights came in. 
 The outline of his figure may have been just visible to them, 
 if light fell upon it from candles in the Lady chapel. Fitzurse 
 passed to the right of the pillar, De Morville, Tracy, and Le 
 Breton to the left. Eobert de Broc, and Hugh Mauclerc, 
 another apostate priest, remained at the door by which they 
 entered. A voice cried, "Where is the traitor? Where is 
 Thomas Becket ?" There was silence ; such a name could not 
 be acknowledged. "Where is the archbishop?" Fitzurse 
 shouted. "I am here," the archbishop replied, descending the 
 steps, and meeting the knights full in the face. "What do you 
 want with me? I am not afraid of your swords. I will not 
 
DEATH OF THOMAS BECKET 437 
 
 do what is unjust." The knights closed round him. "Absolve 
 the persons whom you have excommunicated," they said, "and 
 take off the suspensions." "They have made no satisfaction," 
 he answered; "I will not." "Then you shall die as you have 
 deserved,'' they said. 
 
 They had not meant to kill him — certainly not at that time 
 and in that place. One of them touched him on the shoulder 
 with the flat of his sword, and hissed in his ears, "Fly, or you 
 are a dead man." There was still time; with a few steps he 
 would have been lost in the gloom of the cathedral, and could 
 have concealed him in any one of a hundred hiding-places. But 
 lie was careless of life, and he felt that his time was come. 
 "I am ready to die," he said. "May the Church through my 
 blood obtain peace and liberty ! I charge you in the name of 
 God that you hurt no one here but me." 
 
 The people from the town were now pouring into the 
 cathedral ; De Morville was keeping them back with difficulty 
 at the head of the steps from the choir, and there was danger 
 of a rescue. Fitzurse seized him, meaning to drag him off as a 
 prisoner. He had been calm so far; his pride rose at the 
 indignity of an arrest. "Touch me not, thou abominable 
 wretch !" he said, wrenching his cloak out of Fitzurse's grasp. 
 "Off, thou pander, thou !" Le Breton and Fitzurse grasped 
 him again, and tried to force him upon Tracy's back. He 
 grappled with Tracy and flung him to the ground, and then 
 stood with his back against the pillar, Edward Grim support- 
 ing him. Fitzurse, stung by the foul epithet which Becket 
 had thrown at him, swept his sword ovef him and dashed 
 off his cap. Tracy, rising from the pavement, struck direct 
 at his head. Grim raised his arm and caught the blow. The 
 arm fell broken, and the one friend found faithful sank back 
 disabled against the wall. The sword with its remaining 
 force wounded the archbishop above the forehead, and the 
 blood trickled down his face. Standing firmly, with his hands 
 clasped, he bent his neck for the death-stroke, saying in a 
 low voice, "I am prepared to die for Christ and for his 
 Church." These were his last words. Tracy again struck 
 him. He fell forward upon his knees and hands. In that 
 position Le Breton dealt him a blow which severed the scalp 
 
438 NARRATION 
 
 from the head and broke the sword against the stone, saying, 
 "Take that for my Lord William." De Broc or Mauclerc — 
 the needless fei'ocity was attributed to both of them — strode 
 forward from the cloister door, set his foot on the neck of the 
 dead lion, and spread the brains upon the pavement with his 
 sword's point. "We may go," he said ; "the traitor is dead, 
 and will trouble us no more." 
 
 Such was the murder of Becket, the echoes of which are 
 still heard across seven centuries of time, and which, be the 
 iinal judgment upon it what it may, has its place among the 
 most enduring incidents of English history. Was Becket 
 a martyr, or was he justly executed as a traitor to . his 
 sovereign? Even in that supreme moment of terror and 
 wonder, opinions were divided among his own monks. That 
 very night Grim heard one of them say, "He is no martyr, he 
 is justly served." Another said — scarcely feeling, perhaps, 
 the meaning of the words,— "He wished to be king and more 
 than king. Let him be king, let him be king." Whether the 
 cause for which he died was to prevail, or whether the sacri- 
 fice had been in vain, hung on the answer which would be 
 given to this momentous question. In a few days or weeks 
 an answer came in a form to which in that age no rejoinder 
 was possible; and the only uncertainty which remained at 
 Canterbury was whether it was lawful to use the ordinary 
 prayers for the repose of the dead man's soul, or whether, 
 in consequence of the astounding miracles which were 
 instantly worked by his remains, the Pope's judgment ought 
 not to be anticipated, and the archbishop ought not to be 
 at once adored as a saint in heaven. 
 
 James Anthony Froude: Short Studies on Great Subjects. 
 
 Incidents in the Cabeer of Lazahillo De Toemes 
 
 At that time there came to lodge at the inn a blind man 
 who, seeing that I would do to lead him, asked for me from 
 my toother. She gave me to him, saying that I was the son 
 of a good father, and boasting that he had been killed at the 
 Island of Gelves. She told the blind man that she trusted in 
 
CAREER OF LAZARILLO DE TORMES 439 
 
 God that I would not turn out a worse man than my father, 
 and she begged him to treat me well and look after me, as 
 I was an orphan. He answered that he would do so, and that 
 he received me not as his servant but as his son. Thus it 
 was that I began to serve and to lead my new master. We 
 were in Salamanca for some days, but, as the earnings were 
 not to my master's liking, he determined to go somewhere 
 else. When we were about to depart, I went to see my 
 mother, and, both weeping, she gave me her blessing and said, 
 "I shaR see you no more. Strive to be good, and may God 
 direct your ways. You have been brought up, and are now 
 put with a good master. Farewell!" And so I went away 
 to my master who was waiting for me. 
 
 We went out of Salamanca and came to the bridge. There 
 is, at the entrance of it, an animal of stone which almost has 
 the shape of a bull. The blind man told me to go near this 
 animal, and being there, he said, Lazaro, put your ear against 
 this bull, and you will hear a great noise inside." I did so, 
 hke a simpleton, believing it to be as he said. When he felt 
 that my head was against the stone, he raised his hand and 
 gave me a tremendous blow against the devil of a bull, so that 
 I felt the pain for more than three days. Then he 'said to 
 me, "This will teach you that a blind man's boy ought to be 
 one point more knowing than the devil himself;" and he 
 laughed heartily at his joke. It seemed to me that in an 
 instant I awoke from the simplicity in which I had reposed 
 from childhood. I said to myself, "This man says truly that 
 it behooves me to keep my eyes open, for I am alone and 
 have to think for myself." 
 
 We set out on our road, and in a very few days I showed 
 myself to be sprightly, which pleased the blind man, and he 
 said, "I can give you neither gold nor silver, but I can teach 
 you much in the ways of getting a livelihood." And it 
 turned out that after a few days he showed me many things, 
 and being blind himself, he enlightened and guided me in the 
 ways of life. I mention these trifles to your Honor to show 
 how much knowledge men must have when they are down, and 
 to keep from falling when they are exalted. 
 Speaking of the good there was in my blind man, your 
 
440 NARRATION 
 
 Honor must know that since God created the world He has 
 not made a being more astute and sagacious. In his own 
 line he was unequalled. He knew a hundred or more prayers 
 of the choir, he recited in a low and very tuneful voice, he 
 put on a devout and very humble countenance when he 
 recited, without making faces or gestures as others usually 
 do. Besides this he had a hundred other ways and means of 
 getting money. He knew how to make prayers for different 
 occasions, and in the matter of medicine he said that Galen 
 himself did not possess half his knowledge for curing tooth- 
 aches and fainting fits. Finally, no one mentioned what 
 pain or illness he was suffering from, but he told him at 
 once — do this, you should do that, gather such a herb, take 
 such a root. In this way he went with all the world after 
 him, especially the women. They believed whatever he said, 
 and from them he drew great profits by the arts I have 
 described, for he gained more in a month than a hundred 
 other blind men would in a year. I also desire your Honor 
 should know that, in spite of all he acquired and had, I never 
 met a man so avaricious and stingy, insomuch that he nearly 
 killed me with hunger, depriving me of the necessaries of 
 life. 
 
 I tell the truth, that if, by way of subtlety and cunning, 
 I had not found a remedy, I should many times have suc- 
 cumbed to starvation. With all his knowledge and experience, 
 I managed so well that, oftener than not, I got the best of it. 
 On account of these matters there were infernal rows between 
 us, of which I will relate some — ^but not all. 
 
 He carried the bread, and all the rest of his things, in a 
 linen knapsack, closing the mouth with an iron chain having 
 a padlock and key. He put in and took out his things 
 himself, using great vigilance, and he kept such a close 
 account that there was not a man in all the world that could 
 have taken so much as a crumb without his knowing it. Well, 
 I had to take the lazar's allowance which he gave me. It was 
 all despatched in less than two mouthfuls. After he had 
 locked the bag and was not looking out, thinking that I was 
 attending to other things, by a little unstitching I often 
 opened one side of the bag and sewed it up again; bleeding 
 
CAREER OF LAZARILLO DE TORMES 441 
 
 the avaricious knapsack not only of bread but of good pieces 
 of bacon and sausage. Thus I watched for convenient times 
 to make up for the infernal wrong that the wicked blind man 
 inflicted on me. 
 
 All that I could pilfer and steal I carried in half "blancas." 
 When they paid him for saying prayers for them, they gave 
 him a whole "blanca." But as he could not see, I had got 
 it in my mouth, and put a half blanca in its place, before his 
 hand could reach it, quick as he was, so that he only got half- 
 price. The evil-minded blind man complained when he 
 found that it was not a whole blanca. He said to me : "How 
 the devil is it that since you have been with me they only 
 give half blancas, and before it used to be a whole blanca 
 or even a "maravedi" that they gave me? The ill-luck has 
 come with you." So he shortened up the prayers and did 
 not give them more than half, ordering me to remind him to 
 stop by pulling his sleeve. Then he began to cry out that they 
 had called for such and such a prayer from him, such as he 
 used to recite, and that he had given it. 
 
 The blind man used to have a small jug of wine near him 
 when he dined, and quick as thought I gave it silent kisses 
 when I put it down for him. But it was not long before 
 he noticed the loss in what lie drank, so he never let the 
 jug out of his hand, but always kept it by him. However, 
 he had no magnet to point to what went on, while I had a 
 long oaten straw which I prepared for this need of mine. 
 Slipping it into the mouth of the jug I sucked up the wine 
 to my heart's content. The old rascal, being very astute, 
 suspected something. So he put the jug between his knees 
 and, covering the mouth with his hand, drank in security. 
 Seeing the wine go I craved for it. The straw being no longer 
 of any avail, I hit upon another plan. I succeeded in making 
 a tiny hole in the bottom of the jug, and stopped it with a 
 small piece of wax. lyWhen dinner-time came I pretended to be 
 cold, and got between the old man's legs, to warm myself at 
 the poor little light we had. With the same light I melted 
 the wax, and very soon a little fountain began to drain into 
 my mouth, which I placed so that I should not lose a drop. 
 When the poor old man wanted to drink, he got nothing. 
 
442 NARRATION 
 
 His astonishment was expressed in curses, devoting the wine 
 and the jug to the devil. "You cannot think that I have 
 been drinking, uncle !" I said, "for you have not let the jug 
 out of your hand." But he gave the jug so many twists 
 and turns that at last he found the hole. He said nothing. 
 Next day I was sucking at the hole as usual, thinking no 
 evil, and little dreaming of what he was getting ready for 
 me. I was seated on the ground, taking in those delicious 
 draughts, my face turned up to heaven, my eyes half closed 
 the better to enjoy the toothsome liquor, when the wicked 
 blind man took his revenge. He raised the jug with both 
 hands, and, with all his might, sent it crashing down on my 
 mouth. Poor Lazaro was quite off his guard, being careless 
 and joyous as at other times. Truly it seemed to me as if 
 the sky and all that was in it had fallen upon me ! 
 
 From that time I wished evil to the cruel blind man, and, 
 although he was kind to me afterward and cured me, I saw 
 very well that he enjoyed my cruel punishment. He washed 
 the bruises and places torn by the bits of the broken jug, 
 but he smiled as he did so, saying, "What would you have, 
 Lazaro? If I wish you ill I cure you and restore you to 
 health," with other jokes that were not to my taste, when 
 I had only half recovered from my wounds. I now wanted 
 to free myself from him, tiiinking that a few more such 
 blows might free him from me. He was not much inclined 
 to see to my health and welfare, and even if I had wished to 
 forgive him the blow with the jug, his evil treatment of me 
 from that time would have prevented it. 
 
 Without cause or reason, the malignant blind man was 
 always beating me and knocking me about. If any one asked 
 him why he treated me so badly, he told the story of the 
 jug, adding: "Think you that my boy is a little innocent? 
 Well, listen and judge whether the devil himself could have 
 played such tricks. Who could believe that such a small boy 
 could be -so depraved." Then they said: "Chastize him 
 in God's name,"' and he never did anything else. 
 
 So I led him by the worst ways, seeking to do him harm, 
 taking him over stony places and into mud. He always beat 
 me on the back of my head, so that it was covered with bruises. 
 
CAREER OF LAZARILLO DE TORMES 443 
 
 and although I cried out that I did not do it on purpose, 
 but only because there was no better road, he did not believe 
 me, such was the astuteness of the old ruflSan. 
 
 In order that your Honor may judge of the cleverness of 
 this knowing old man I will relate one thing out of many 
 that happened while I was with him. When we left Sala- 
 manca his intention was to go to Toledo, for he said that 
 the people there were richer, though not very charitable. 
 He repeated this saying, "The hard man gives more than 
 the penniless man." We took the road by the best places, 
 where we were well received. It happened that we came to 
 a place called Almorax at the time of the vintage. A grape- 
 gatherer gave us a bunch out of charity. As the baskets 
 are knocked about, and the grapes at that time are very hard, 
 the blind man kept the bunch in his hand, and to content me, 
 he determined to have a banquet with it, instead of putting 
 it in his bag. For he had given me on that day many 
 blows and kicks. 
 
 We sat down in an enclosed place and he said : "Now I am 
 going to treat yon with liberality. We will both eat this 
 bunch of grapes in equal shares, and it shall be in this way. 
 You take one and I will take another. You must only take 
 one at a time, and I will take another until it is finished. 
 In this way there can be no trick." So we began. At the 
 second turn the old traitor began to take two at a time, and as 
 he had broken the agreement I thought that 1 ought to do the 
 same. Not content to do as he did, I began to take three at 
 a time. When the bunch was finished, he sat for some time 
 with the stalk in his hand. Then he said: "Lazaro, you 
 have deceived me. I would swear to God that you have 
 been eating three at a time." "I did not eat so," I declared. 
 "Why do you suspect me?" Would you know how I am 
 certain that you took three at a time?" he replied. "It is 
 because when I began to take two at a time you said nothing." 
 
 Though only a boy I noted the cleverness of the old man. 
 But to avoid being dull I will leave out many things both 
 curious and remarkable that happened to me while I was 
 with my first master, for I wish to come to the leave-taking, 
 and with that there is an end of him. 
 
444 NARRATION 
 
 We were at Escalona, a town belonging to the Duke of that 
 name, lodging at an inn. 
 
 The blind man gave me a piece of sausage to roast. When 
 the sausage had been basted and the toasted bread on which 
 the grease was poured had been eaten, he took a maravedi 
 out of his bag and sent me to fetch wine from a tavern. 
 The devil put the temptation before my eyes, which, as they 
 say, is how a thief is made. There was a long piece of cole- 
 wort on the fire, which, being unfit for the pot, ought to have 
 been thrown away. There was nobody but the blind man and 
 myself, and I became very greedy under the delicious smell 
 of the sausage. I only thought of present enjoyment, without 
 considering what might happen afterwards, so when the blind 
 man took the money out of his bag, I took the sausage, and 
 quickly put the colewort to be cooked in its place. When my 
 master handed the money to me I took it, and went for the 
 wine, not failing to eat the sausage. 
 
 When the sinful blind man found the colewort in the pot, 
 of which he knew nothing, he thought it was the sausage and 
 bit it. Then he said, "What is this, Lazaro ?" I said "Had I 
 not gone for the wine ? Some one else has been here and has 
 done it for fun." "No ! No !" he cried, "that is impossible, 
 for I have never let the pan out of my hand." I then turned 
 to swear, and swore again, that it was not me. But it availed 
 me nothing. From the cunning of the cursed blind man noth- 
 ing could be hidden. 
 
 Lord! who would not rather have been buried than go 
 through that misery ? The rage of the perverse old man was 
 such that if people had not been drawn there by the noise, 
 he would not have left me alive. They took me from him, 
 leaving his few hairs in my hands, and his face and throat 
 all scratched, which he deserved for his cruel treatment of 
 me. 
 
 The blind man related all my misfortunes over and ovei 
 again, including the story of the jug and of the bunch of 
 grapes. The laughter was so loud that all the passers-by came 
 in to see the fun; for the old wretch told the stories of 
 my misfortunes so well that even I, ill-treated as I was, 
 could not help half joining- in the laughter. Remembering 
 
CAREER OF LAZARILLO DE TORMES 445 
 
 my troubles thero came a weakness upon me. But my stomach 
 recovered, and the landlady of the inn, with others who 
 were present, washed my face and throat with the wine that 
 had been brought to drink. This enraged the wicked blind 
 man, who declared that I would cost him more wine with 
 my washings in one year, than he could drink in two. 
 
 "Lazaro," he said, "you owe more to the wine than to your 
 father. He got you once, but the wine has brought you to 
 life several times." Then he counted how many times he had 
 torn and bruised my face and afterwards cured it with 
 wine. "If there is a man in the world who ought to be 
 lucky with wine," he added, "it is you." 
 
 Those who were washing me laughed a good deal at what 
 the old man said, though I dissented. However, the prognos- 
 tications of the blind rascal did not turn out false, and after- 
 wards I often thought of that man, who certainly had the 
 spirit of prophecy. The evil things he did to me made me 
 sad, though I paid him back, as your Honor will presently 
 hear. 
 
 Seeing all this, and how the blind man made me a laugh- 
 ing-stock, I determined to leave him at all hazards. This 
 resolution was always in my mind, and the last game he played 
 me confirmed it. On another day we left the town to seek 
 alms. It had rained a great deal in the night, and as it con- 
 tinued to rain in the day-time, we got under some arcades in 
 the village where we were, so as to keep out of the wet. Night 
 was coming on, and the rain did not cease. The blind man 
 said to me, "Lazaro, this rain is very persistent, and as the 
 night closes in it will not cease, so we will make for the 
 inn in good time. To go there we have to cross a stream which 
 will have become swollen by the heavy rain." I replied, 
 "Uncle, the stream is now very broad, but if you like I can 
 take you to a place where we can get across without being 
 wet, for it becomes much narrower, and by jumping we can 
 clear it."' This seemed good advice, so he said, "You are 
 discreet and aou shall take me to that place where the stream 
 becomes so narrow, for it is winter time, and a bad thing to 
 get our feet wet." Seeing that things were going as I wished, 
 I took him out of the arcade, and placed him just in front 
 
446 NARRATION 
 
 of a stone pillar that stood in the square. Then I saidto him, 
 "Uncle, this is the narrowest part of the stream." 
 
 As the rain continued and he was getting wet, we were in 
 a hurry to get shelter from the water that was falling upon us. 
 The principal thing was (seeing that God blinded my under- 
 standing in that hour) to be avenged. The old man believed 
 in me and said, "Put me in the right place while you jump 
 over the stream." So I put him just in front of the pillar, 
 and placed myself behind it. I then said, "Jump with all 
 your might so as to clear the stream." I had hardly finished 
 speaking, when the poor old man, balancing himself like a 
 goat, gave one step backwards, and then sprang with all 
 his force. His head came with such a noise against the pillar 
 that it sounded like a great calabash. He fell down half 
 dead. I left him among several people who ran to help him, 
 while I made for the gate of the town at a sharp trot, so that 
 before nightfall I might be in Torrijos, not knowing nor car- 
 ing what afterwards happened to my blind man. 
 
 Don Diego de Mendoza: Lazarille de Tormes. (Translated by 
 Sir Clements Markham. 
 
 At North anger Abbey 
 
 [Catherine Morland, a young lady very well-read in the romantic 
 fiction of her day (1798), is about to pay her first visit to Northan- 
 ger Abbey, the home of General Tilney. She is driving to the Abbey 
 with Henry Tilney, the General's son.] 
 
 He smiled and said, "You have formed a very favourable 
 idea of the abbey." 
 
 "To be sure I have. Is not it a fine old place, just like 
 what one reads about?" 
 
 "And are you prepared to encounter all the horrors that a 
 building such as 'what one reads about' may produce? Have 
 you a stout heart? Nerves fit for sliding panels and tapes- 
 try?" 
 
 "Oh! yes, I do not think I should be easily frightentd, 
 because there would be so many people in the house; and 
 besides, it has never been uninhabited and left deserted for 
 years, and then the family come back to it unawares, with- 
 out giving any notice, as generally happens." 
 
AT NORTHANGER ABBEY 'iAl 
 
 "No, certainly. We shall not have to explore our way into 
 a hall dimly lighted by the expiring embers of a wood fire, 
 nor be obliged to spread our beds on the floor of a room with- 
 out windows, doors, or furniture. But you must be aware 
 that when a young lady is (by whatever means) introduced 
 into a dwelling of this kind, she is always lodged apart from 
 the rest of the family. While they snugly repair to their own 
 end of the house, she is formally conducted by Dorothy, the 
 ancient housekeeper, up a diilerent staircase, and along many 
 gloomy passages, into an apartment never used since some 
 cousin or kin died in it about twenty years before. Can 
 you stand such a ceremony as this ! Will not your mind mis- 
 give you, when you find yourself in this gloomy chamber, 
 too lofty and extensive for you, with only the feeble rays of 
 a single lamp to take in its size, its walls hung with tapestry 
 exhibiting figures as large as life, and the bed of dark green 
 stuff or purple velvet, presenting even a funeral appearance. 
 Will not your heart sink within you ?" 
 
 "Oh ! but this will not happen to me I am sure." 
 
 "How fearfully will you examine the furniture of your 
 apartment! And what will you discern? Not tables, toil- 
 ettes, wardrobes, or drawers, but on one side perhaps the 
 remains of a broken lute, on the other a ponderous chest which 
 no efforts can open, and over the fire-place the portrait 
 of some handsome warrior, whose features will so incompre- 
 hensibly strike you, that you will not be able to withdraw your 
 eyes from it. Dorothy, meanwhile, no less struck by your 
 appearance, gazes on you in great agitation, and drops a few 
 unintelligible hints. To raise your spirits, moreover, phe 
 gives you reason to suppose that the part of the abbey you 
 inhabit is undoubtedly haunted, and informs you that you 
 will not have a single domestic within call. With this parting 
 cordial, she curtseys off : you listen to the sound of her reced- 
 ing footsteps, as long as the last echo can reach you: and 
 when, with fainting spirits, you attempt to fasten your door, 
 you discover, with increased alarm, that it has no lock." 
 
 "Oh ! Mr. Tilney, how frightful. This is just like a book ! 
 But it cannot really happen to me. I am sure your house- 
 keeper is not really Dorothy. Well, what then?" 
 
448 NARRATION 
 
 "Nothing further to alarm, perhaps, may occur the first 
 night. After surmounting your unconquerable horror of the 
 bed, you will retire to rest, and get a few "hours' unquiet 
 slumber. But on the second, or at farthest the third night 
 after your arrival, you will probably have a violent storm. 
 Peals of thunder so loud as to seem to shake the edifice 
 to its foundation will roll around the neighboring mountains ; 
 and during the frightful gusts of wind which accompany 
 it, you will probably think you discern (for your lamp is not 
 extinguished) one part of the hanging mOre violently agi- 
 tated than the rest. Unable of course to repress your curi- 
 osity in so favourable a moment for indulging it, you will 
 instantly arise, and, throwing your dressing-gown around you, 
 proceed to examine this mystery. After a very short search, 
 you will discover a division in the tapestry so artfully con- 
 structed as to defy the minutest inspection, and on opening it, 
 a door will immediately appear, which door being only secured 
 by massy bars and a padlock, you will, after a few efforts, 
 succeed in opening, and, with your lamp in your hand, will 
 pass through it into a small vaulted room." 
 
 "No, indeed; I should be too much frightened to do any 
 such thing." 
 
 "What! not when Dorothy has given you to understand 
 that there is a secret subterraneous communication between 
 your apartment and the chapel of St. Anthony, scarcely two 
 miles off. Could you shrink from so simple an adventure? 
 No, no; you will proceed into this small vaulted room, and 
 through this into several others, without perceiving anything 
 very remarkable in either. In one, perhaps, there may be a 
 dagger, in another a few drops of blood, and in a third the 
 remains of some instrument of torture; but there being 
 nothing in all this out of the common way, and your lamp 
 being nearly exhausted, you will return towards your own 
 apartment. In repassing through the small vaulted room, 
 however, your eyes will be attracted towards a large, old- 
 fashioned cabinet of ebony and gold, which, though narrowly 
 examining the furniture before, you had passed unnoticed. 
 Impelled by an irresistible presentiment, you will eagerly 
 advance to it, unlock its folding doors, and search into every 
 
AT NORTHANGER ABBEY 449 
 
 drawer; but for sometime without discovering anything of 
 importance; perhaps nothing but a considerable hoard of 
 diamonds. At last, however, by touching a secret spring, 
 an inner compartment will open, a roll of paper appears, 
 you seize it — ^it contains many sheets of manuscript; you 
 hasten with the precious treasure into your own chamber, but 
 scarcely have you been able to decipher, 'Oh thou, whomsoever 
 thou mayst be, into whose hands these memoirs of the wretched 
 Matilda may fall,' when your lamp suddenly expires in the 
 socket, and leaves you ia total darkness." 
 
 "Oh no, no! do not say so. Well, go on." 
 
 But Henry was too much amused by the interest he had 
 raised to be able to carry it farther : he could no longer com- 
 mand solemnity either of subject or voice, and was obliged to 
 entreat her to use her own fancy in the perusal of Matilda's 
 woes. Catherine, recollecting herself, grew ashamed of her 
 eagerness, and began earnestly to assure him that her attention 
 had been fixed without the smallest apprehension of really 
 meeting with what he related. "Miss Tilney, she was sure, 
 would never put her into such a chamber as he had described. 
 She was not at all afraid." 
 
 As they drew near the end of their journey, her impatience 
 for a sight of the abbey, for some time suspended by his 
 conversation on subjects very different, returned in full force, 
 and every bend in the road was expected, with solemn awe, 
 to afford a glimpse of its massy walls of grey stone, rising 
 amidst a grove of ancient oaks, with the last beams of the 
 sun playing in beautiful splendour on its high Gothie windows. 
 But so low did the building stand, that she found herself 
 passing through the great gates of the lodge, into the very 
 grounds of Northanger, without having discerned even an 
 antique chimney. 
 
 She knew not that she had any right to be surprised, but 
 there was something in this mode of approach which she cer- 
 tainly had not expected. To pass between lodges of a modern 
 appearance, to find herself with such ease in the very pre- 
 cincts of the abbey, and driven so rapidly along a smooth, 
 level road of fine gravel, without obstacle, alarm, or solemnity 
 of any kind, struck her as odd and inconsistent. She was not 
 
450 NARRATION 
 
 long at leisure, however, for such considerations. A sudden 
 scud of rain driving full in her face, made it impossible for 
 her to observe anything further, and fixed all her thoughts 
 on the welfare of her new straw bonnet; and she was actually 
 under the abbey walls, was springing, with Henry's assist- 
 ance, from the carriage, was beneath the shelter of the old 
 porch, and had even passed on to the hall, where her friend 
 and the General were waiting to welcome her, without feeling 
 one awful foreboding of future misery to herself or one 
 moment's suspicion of any past scenes of horror being acted 
 within the solemn edifice. The breeze had not seemed to 
 waft the sighs of the murdered to her ; it had wafted nothing 
 worse than a thick mizzling rain, and having given a good 
 shake to her habit, she was ready to be shown into the common 
 drawing-room, and capable of considering where she was. 
 
 [Catherine goes to her room to dress for dinner.] 
 A moment's glance was enough to satisfy Catherine that her 
 apartment was very unlike the one which Henry had 
 endeavoured to alarm her by the description of. It was by 
 no means unreasonably large, and contained neither tapestry 
 nor velvet. The walls were papered, the floor was carpeted, 
 the windows were neither less perfect nor more dim than , 
 those of the drawing-room below; the furniture, though not 
 of the latest fashion, was handsome and comfortable, and the 
 air of the room altogether far from uncheerful. Her heart 
 instantaneously at ease on this point, she resolved to lose no 
 time in particular examination of anything, as she greatly 
 dreaded disobliging the General by any delay. Her habit 
 therefore was thrown oil with all possible haste, and she was 
 preparing to unpin the linen package, which the chaise seat 
 had conveyed for her immediate accommodation, when her 
 eye suddenTy fell on a large high ghest, standing back in a 
 deep recess on one side of the fire-place. The sight of it 
 made her start; and, forgetting every thing else, she stood 
 gazing on it in motionless wonder, while these thoughts 
 crossed her : 
 
 "This is strange, indeed ! I did not expect such a sight 
 as this ! An immense heavy chest ! What can it hold ? Why 
 
AT NORTHANGER ABBEY 451 
 
 should it be placed here? Pushed back, too, as if meant to 
 be out of sight ! I will look into it; cost me what it may, I 
 will look into it, and directly too — by daylight. If I stay till 
 evening my candle may go out." She advanced and exam- 
 ined it closely; it was of cedar, curiously inlaid with some 
 darker wood, and raised about a foot from the ground on a 
 carved stand of the same. The lock was silver, though tar- 
 nished from age; at each end were the imperfect remains of 
 handles also of silver, broken perhaps prematurely by some 
 strange violence; and on the centre of the lid, was a mys- 
 terious cipher in the same metal. Catherine bent over it 
 intently, but without being able to distinguish anything with 
 certainty. She could not, in whatever direction she took 
 It, believe the last letter to be a T; and yet that it should be 
 anything else in that house was a circumstance to raise no 
 common degree of astonishment. If not originally theirs, 
 by what strange events could it have fallen into the Tilney 
 family ? 
 
 Her fearful curiosity was every moment growing greater; 
 and seizing with trembling hands, the hasp of the lock, she 
 resolved, at all hazards, to satisfy herself at least as to its 
 contents. With diflSculty, for something seemed to resist 
 her efforts, she raised the lid a few inches; but at that 
 moment a sudden knocking at the door of the room made 
 her, starting, quit her hold, and the lid closed with alarm- 
 ing violence. This ill-timed intruder was Miss Tilney'si 
 maid, sent by her mistress to be of use to Miss Morland; 
 and though Catherine immediately dismissed her, it recalled 
 her to the sense of what she ought to be doing, and forced 
 her, in spite of her anxious desire to penetrate this mystery, 
 to proceed in her dressing without further delay. Her 
 progress was not quick, for her thoughts and her eyes were 
 still bent on the object so well calculated to interest and 
 alarm; and though she dared not waste a moment upon a 
 second attempt, she could not remain many paces from the 
 chest. At length, however, having slipped one arm into her 
 gown, her toilet seemed so nearly finished, that the impa- 
 tience of her curiosity might safely be indulged. One moment 
 surely might be spared ; and so desperate should be the exer- 
 
4S2 NARRATION 
 
 tion of her strength, that unless secured by supernatural 
 means, the lid in one moment should be thrown back. With 
 this spirit she sprang forward, and her confidence did not 
 deceive her. Her resolute effort threw back the lid, and gave 
 to her astonished eyes the view of a white cotton counter- 
 pane, properly folded, reposing at one end of the chest in 
 undisputed possession ! 
 
 She was gazing on it with -the first blush of surprise, when 
 Miss Tilney, anxious for her friend's being ready, entered 
 the room, and to the rising shame of having harboured for 
 some minutes - an absurd expectation, was then added the 
 shame of being caught in so idle a search. "That is a 
 curious old chest, is not it?" said Miss Tilney, as Catherine 
 hastily closed it and turned away to the glass. "It is impos- 
 sible to say how many generations it has been here. How it 
 came to be first put in this room I know not, but I have not 
 had it moved, because I thought it might sometimes be of 
 use in holding hats and bonnets. The worst of it is, that its 
 weight makes it diflScult to open. In that comer, however, 
 it is at least out of the way." 
 
 Catherine had no leisure for speech, being at once blush- 
 ing, tying her gown, and forming wise resolutions with the 
 most violent dispatch. Miss Tilney gently hinted her fear 
 of being late; and in half a minute they ran downstairs 
 together, in an alarm not wholly unfounded, for General 
 Tilney was pacing the drawing-room, his watch in his hand, 
 and having, on the very instant of their entering, pulled the 
 bell with violence, ordered, "Dinner to be on table directly!" 
 
 Catherine trembled at the emphasis with which he spoke, 
 and sat pale and breathless, in a most humble mood, con- 
 cerned for his children, and detesting old chests; and the 
 General recovering his politeness as he looked at her, spent 
 the rest of his time in scolding his daughter, for so foolishly 
 hurrying her fair friend, who was absolutely out of breath 
 from haste, when there was not the least occasion for hurry 
 in the world; but Catherine could not at all get over the 
 double distress of having involved her friend in a lecture 
 and been a great simpleton herself, till they were happily 
 
AT NORTHANGER ABBEY 453 
 
 seated at the dinner-table, when the General's complacent 
 smiles, and a good appetite of her own, restored her to peace. 
 
 The night was stormy; the wind had been rising at inter- 
 vals the whole afternoon; and by the time the party broke 
 up, it blew and rained violently. Catherine, as she crossed 
 the hall, listened to the tempest with sensations of awe; 
 and when she heard it rage round a corner of the ancient 
 building, and close with sudden fury a distant door, felt for 
 the first time that she was really in an abbey. Yes, these 
 were characteristic sounds; they brought to her recollection 
 a countless variety of dreadful situations and horrid scenes, 
 which such buildings had witnessed, and such storms ushered 
 in; and most heartily did she rejoice in the happier circum- 
 stances attending her entrance within walls so solemn ! She 
 had nothing to dread from midnight assassins or drunken 
 gallants. Henry had certainly been only in jest in what 
 he had told her that morning. In a house so furnished, and 
 80 guarded, she could have nothing to explore or to suffer, 
 and might go to her bed-room as securely as if it had been 
 her own chamber at Fnllerton. Thus wisely fortifying her 
 mind, as she proceeded upstairs, she was enabled, especially 
 on perceiving that Miss Tilney slept only two doors from her, 
 to enter her room with a tolerably stout heart; and her 
 spirits were immediately assisted by the cheerful blaze of a 
 wood fire. "How much better is this," said she, as she 
 walked to the fender ; "how much better to find a fire ready 
 lit, than to have to wait shivering in the cold, till all the 
 family are in bed, as so many poor girls have been obliged to 
 do, and then to have a faithful old servant frightening one 
 by coming in with a faggot! How glad I am that North- 
 anger is what it is ! If it had been like some other places, 
 I do not know that, in such a night as this, I could have 
 answered for my courage; but now, to be sure, there is noth- 
 ing to alarm one." 
 
 She looked round the room. The window curtains seemed 
 in riiotion. It could be nothing but the violence of the wind- 
 penetrating through the divisions of the shutters; and she 
 stept boldly forward, carelessly humming a tune, to assure 
 
454 NARRATION 
 
 herself of its being so, peeped courageously behind each cur- 
 tain, saw nothing on either low window-seat to scare her, and 
 on placing her hand against the shutter, felt the strongest 
 conviction of the wind's force. A glance at the old chest, 
 as she turned away from this examination, was not without 
 its use; she scorned the causeless fears of an idle fancy, and 
 began with a most happy indifference to prepare herself for 
 bed. "She should take her time; she should not hurry her- 
 self; she did not care if she were the last person up in the 
 house. But she would not make up her fire : that would seem 
 cowardly, as if she wished for the protection of light after 
 she were in bed." The fire, therefore, died away; and Cath- 
 erine, having spent the best part of an hour in her arrange- 
 ments, was beginning to think of stepping into bed, when, 
 on giving a parting glance round the room, she was struck 
 by the appearance of a high, old-fashioned black cabinet, 
 which, though in a situation conspicuous enough, had never 
 caught her notice before. Henry's words, the description of 
 the ebony cabinet which was to escape her observation at 
 first, immediately rushed across her; and though there could 
 be nothing really in it, it was certainly a very remarkable 
 coincidence! She took her candle and looked closely at the 
 cabinet. It was not absolutely ebony and gold; but it was 
 Japan, black and yellow Japan of the handsomest kind; and 
 as she held her candle, the yellow had very much the effect 
 of gold. 
 
 The key was in the door, and she had a strange fancy to 
 look into it; not, however, with the smallest expectation of 
 finding anything, but it was so very odd, after what Henry 
 had -said. In short she could not sleep till she had examined 
 it. So, placing the candle with great caution on a chair, 
 she seized the key with a very tremulous hand, and tried to 
 turn it; but it resisted her utmost strength. Alarmed, but 
 not discouraged, she tried it another way; a bolt flew, and 
 she believed herself successful; but how strangely mysterious! 
 the door was still immovable. She paused a moment in 
 breathless wonder. The wind roared down the chimney, the 
 rain beat in torrents against the windows, and everything 
 seemed to speak the awfulness of her situation. To retire 
 
AT NORTHANGER ABBEY 4SS 
 
 to bed, however, unsatisfied on such a point, would be vain, 
 since sleep must be impossible with the consciousness of a 
 cabinet so m3^steriously closed in her immediate vicinity. 
 Again, therefore, she applied herself to the key, and after 
 moving it in every possible way, for some instants, with the 
 determined celerity of hope's last effort, the door suddenly 
 yielded to her hand ; her heart leaped with exTiltation at such 
 a victory, and having thrown open each folding door, the 
 second being secured only by bolts of less wonderful con- 
 struction than the lock, though in that her eye could not 
 discern anything unusual, a double range of small drawers 
 appeared in view, with some larger drawers above and below 
 them, and in the centre, a small door, closed also with lock 
 and key, secured in all probability a cavity of importance. 
 
 Catherine's heart beat quick, but her courage did not fail 
 her. With a cheek flushed by hope, and an eye straining with 
 curiosity, her fingers grasped the handle of a drawer and 
 drew it forth. It was entirely empty. With less alarm and 
 greater eagerness she seized a second, a third, a fourth — each 
 was equally empty. Not one was left unsearched, and in not 
 one was anything found. Well read in the art of concealing 
 a treasure, the possibility of false linings to the drawers did 
 not escape her, and she felt round each with anxious aeute- 
 ness in vain. The place in the middle alone remained now 
 unexplored; and though she had "never from the first had 
 the smallest idea of finding anything in any part of the 
 cabinet, and was not in the least disappointed at her ill suc- 
 cess thus far, it would be foolish not to examine it thor- 
 oughly while she was about it." It was some time, however, 
 before she could unfasten the door, the same diflBculty occur- 
 ring in the management of this inner lock as of the outer; 
 but at length it did open ; and not vain, as hitherto, was her 
 search; her quick eyes directly fell on a roll of paper pushed 
 back into the further part of the cavity, apparently for con- 
 cealment, and her feelings at that moment were indescriba- 
 ble. Her heart fluttered, her knees trembled, and her cheeks 
 grew pale. She seized, with an unsteady hand, the precious 
 manuscript, for half a glance sufficed to ascertain written 
 characters ; and while she acknowledged with awful sensations 
 
456 NARRATION 
 
 this striking exemplification of what Henry had foretold, 
 resolved instantly to peruse every line before she attempted 
 to rest. 
 
 The dimness of the light her candle emitted made her 
 turn to it with alarm; but there was no danger of its sud- 
 den extinction, it had yet some hours to burn; and that she 
 might not have any greater difficulty in distinguishing the 
 writing than what its ancient date might occasion, she hastily 
 snufEed it. Alas! it was snuffed and extinguished in one. 
 A lamp could not have expired with more awful effect. 
 Catherine, for a few moments, was motionless with horror. 
 It was done completely; not a remnant of light in the wick 
 could give hope to the rekindling breath. Darkness impene- 
 trable and immovable filled the room. A violent gust of 
 wind, rising with sudden fury, added fresh horror to the 
 moment. Catherine trembled from head to foot. In the 
 pause which succeeded, a sound like receding footsteps and 
 the closing of a distant door struck on her affrighted ear. 
 Human nature could support no more. A cold sweat stood 
 on her forehead, the manuscript fell from her hand, and 
 groping her way to the bed, she jumped hastily in, and sought 
 some suspension of agony by creeping far underneath the 
 clothes. To close her eyes in sleep that night she felt must 
 be entirely out of the question. With a curiosity so justly 
 awakened, and feelings in every way so agitated, repose must 
 be absolutely impossible. The storm, too, abroad so dread- 
 ful! She had not been used to feel alarm from wind, but 
 now every blast seemed fraught with awful intelligence. The 
 manuscript so wonderfully found, so wonderfully accomplish- 
 ing the morning's prediction, how was it to be accounted for ? 
 What could it contain? to whom could it relate? by what 
 means could it have been so long concealed ? and how singu- 
 larly strange that it should fall to her lot to discover it! 
 Till she had made herself mistress of its contents, however, 
 she could have neither repose nor comfort; and with the 
 sun's first rays she was determined to peruse it. But many 
 were the tedious hours which must yet intervene. She shud- 
 dered, tossed about in her bed, and envied every quiet sleeper. 
 The storm still raged, and various were the noises, more ter- 
 
AT NORTHANGER ABBEY 457 
 
 rific even than the wind, which struck at intervals on her 
 startled ear. The very curtains of her bed seemed at one 
 moment in motion, and at another the lock of her door was 
 agitated, as if by the attempt of somebody to enter. Hollow 
 murmurs seemed to creep along the gallery, and more than 
 once her blood was chilled by the sound of distant moans. 
 Hour after hour passed away, and the wearied Catherine had 
 heard three proclaimed by all the clocks in the house, before 
 the tempest subsided, or she unknowingly fell fast asleep. 
 
 The housemaid's folding back her window-shutters at eight 
 o'clock the next day was the sound which first roused Cath- 
 erine; and she opened her eyes, wondering that they could 
 ever have been closed, on objects of cheerfulness; her fire 
 was already burning, and a bright morning had succeeded 
 the tempest of the night. Instantaneously with the con- 
 sciousness of existence, returned her recollection of the manu- 
 script; and springing from the bed in the very moment of 
 the maid's going away, she eagerly collected every scattered 
 sheet which had burst from the roll on its falling to the 
 ground, and flew back to enjoy the luxury of their perusal on 
 her pillow. She now plainly saw that she must not expect a 
 manuscript of equal length with the generality of what she 
 had shuddered over in books; for the roll, seeming to con- 
 sist entirely of small disjointed sheets, was altogether but of 
 trifling size, and much less than she had supposed it to be 
 at first. 
 
 Her greedy eye glanced rapidly over a page. She started 
 at its import. Could it be possible, or did not her senses 
 play her false ? An inventory of linen, in coarse and modern 
 characters, seemed all that was before her ! If the evidence 
 of sight might be trusted, she held a washing-bill in her hand. 
 She seized another sheet, and saw the same articles with 
 little variation; a third, a fourth, and a fifth, presented 
 nothing new. Shirts, stockings, cravats, and waistcoats, faced 
 her in each. Two others, penned by the same hand, marked 
 an expenditure scarcely more interesting, in letters, hair- 
 powders, shoe-string, and breeches-ball; and the larger sheet, 
 which had enclosed the rest, seemed by its first cramp line, 
 "To poultice chestnut mare," a farrier's bill ! Such was the 
 
458 NARRATION 
 
 collection of papers (left, perhaps, as she could then sup- 
 pose, by the negligence of a servant, in the place whence she 
 had taken them) which had filled her with expectation and 
 alarm, and robbed her of half her night's rest! She felt 
 humbled to the dust. Could not the adventure of the chest 
 have taught her wisdom? A comer of it catching her eye 
 as she lay, seemed to rise up in judgment against her. Noth- 
 ing could now be clearer than the absurdity of her recent 
 fancies. To suppose that a manuscript of many generations 
 back could have remained undiscovered in a room such as 
 that, so modem, so habitable ! or that she should be the first 
 to possess the skill of unlocking a cabinet, the key of which 
 was open to all. 
 
 How could she have so imposed on herself ? Heaven forbid 
 that Henry Tilney should ever know her folly! And it 
 was in a great measure his own doing, for had not the cabi- 
 net appeared so exactly to agree with his description of her 
 adventures, she should never have felt the smallest curiosity 
 about it. This was the only comfort that occurred. Im- 
 patient to get rid of those hateful evidences of her folly, 
 those detestable papers then scattered over the bed, she rose 
 directly ; and folding them up as nearly as possible in the same 
 shape as before, returned them to the same spot within the 
 cabinet, with a very hearty wish that no untoward accident 
 might ever bring them forward again, to disgrace her even 
 with herself. 
 
 Why the locks should have been so difficult to open, how- 
 ever, was still something remarkable, for she could now man- 
 age them with perfect ease. In this there was surely some- 
 thing mysterious, and she indulged in the flattering sugges- 
 tion for half a minute, till the possibility of the door's 
 having been at first unlocked, and of being herself its fastener, 
 darted into her head and cost her another blush. 
 
 She got away as soon as she could from a room in which 
 her conduct produced such unpleasant reflections, and found 
 her way with all speed to the breakfast, parlour, as it had been 
 pointed out to her by Miss Tilney the evening before. Henry 
 was alone in it; and his immediate hope of her having been 
 undisturbed by the tempest, with an arch reference to the 
 
A FIGHT AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 459 
 
 character of the building they inhabited, was rather distress- 
 ing. For the world would she not have her weakness sus- 
 pected; and yet, unequal to an absolute falsehood, was con- 
 strained to acknowledge that the wind had kept her awake 
 a little. "But we have a charming morning after it," she 
 added, desiring to get rid of the subject; "and storms and 
 sleeplessness are nothing when they are over. What beautiful 
 hyacinths! I have just learnt to love a hyacinth." 
 Jane Austen: Northanger Abbey. 
 
 A Fight and its Consequences 
 
 Cuff's fight with Dobbin, and the unexpected issue of that 
 contest, will long be remembered by e;very man who was edu- 
 cated at Dr. Swishtail's famous school. The latter youth 
 (who used to be called Heigh-ho Dobbin, Gee-ho Dobbin, and 
 by many other names indicative of puerile contempt) was 
 the quietest, the clumsiest, and, as it seemed, the dullest of 
 all Dr. Swishtail's yovmg gentlemen. His parent was a grocer 
 in the City: and it was bruited abroad that he was admitted 
 into Dr. Swishtail's academy upon what are called "mutual 
 principles" — ^that is to say, the expenses of his board and 
 schooling were defrayed by his father in goods, not money; 
 and he stood there — almost at the bottom of the school — ^in 
 his scraggy corduroys and jacket, through the seams of which 
 his great big bones were bursting — as the representative of so 
 many pounds of tea, candles, sugar, mottled-soap, plums (of 
 which a very mild proportion was supplied for the puddings of 
 the establishment), and other commodities. A dreadful day it 
 was for young Dobbin when one of the youngsters of the 
 school, having run into the town upon a poaching excursion 
 for hardbake and polonies, espied the cart of Dobbin and 
 Eudge, Grocers and Oilmen, Thames Street, London, at the 
 Doctor's door, discharging a cargo of the warfls in which the 
 firm dealt. 
 
 Young Dobbin had no peace after that. The jokes were 
 frightful, and merciless against him. "Hullo, Dobbin," one 
 wag would say, "here's good news in the paper. Sugar is ris'. 
 
460 NARRATION 
 
 my boy." Another would set a sum — "If a pound of mutton- 
 candles cost sevenpence-halfpenny, how much must Dobbin 
 cost?" and a roar would follow from all the circle of young 
 knaves, usher and all, who rightly considered that the selling 
 of goods by retail is a shameful and infamous practice, merit- 
 ing the contempt and scorn of all real gentlemen. 
 
 "Your father's only a merchant, Osborne," Dobbin said in 
 private to the little boy who had brought down the storm upon 
 him. At which the latter replied haughtily, "My father's a 
 gentleman, and keeps his carriage;" and Mr. William Dobbin 
 retreated to a remote outhouse in the playground, where he 
 passed a half-holiday in the bitterest sadness and woe. Who 
 amongst us is there that does not recollect similar hours of bit- 
 ter, bitter childish grief? Who feels injustice; who shrinks 
 before a slight; who has a sense of wrong so acute, and so 
 glowing a gratitude for kindness, as a generous boy? and 
 how many of those gentle souls do you degrade, estrange, tor- 
 ture, for the sake of a little loose arithmetic, and miserable 
 dog-Latin. 
 
 Now, William Dobbin, from an incapacity to acquire the 
 rudiments of the above language, as they are propounded in 
 that wonderful book the Eton Latin Grammar, was com- 
 pelled to remain among the very last of Dr. Swishtail's 
 scholars, and was "taken down" continually by little fellows 
 with pink faces and pinafores when he marched up with the 
 lower form, a giant amongst them, with downcast, stupe- 
 fied look, his dog's-eared primer, and his tight corduroys. 
 High and low, all made fun of him. They sewed up those 
 corduroys, tight as they were. They cut his bed-strings. 
 They upset buckets and benches, so that he might break his 
 shins over them, which he never failed to do. They sent him 
 parcels which, when opened, were found to contain the pater- 
 nal soap and candles. There was no little fellow but had his 
 ]eer and joke at Dobbin; and he bore everything quite 
 patiently, and* was entirely dumb and miserable. 
 
 Cuff, on the contrary, was the great chief and dandy of the 
 Swishtail Seminary. He smuggled wine in. He fought the 
 town-boys. Ponies used to come for him to ride home on 
 Saturdays. He had his top-boots in his room, in which he 
 
A FIGHT AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 401 
 
 used to hunt in the holidays. He had a gold repeater; and 
 took snuff like the Doctor. He had been to the Opera, and 
 knew the merits of the principal actors, preferring Mr. Kean 
 to Mr. Kemble. He could knock you off forty Latin verses in 
 an hour. He could make French poetry. What else didn't 
 he know, or couldn't he do ? They said even the Doctor him- 
 self was afraid of him. 
 
 Cuff, the unquestioned king of the school, ruled over his 
 subjects, and bullied tliem, with splendid superiority. This 
 one blacked his slioes; that toasted his bread, others would 
 fag out, and give him balls at cricket during whole summer 
 afternoons. '"Figs'' was the fellow whom he despised most, 
 and with whom, though always abusing him, and sneering 
 at him, he scarcely ever condescended to hold personal com- 
 munication. 
 
 One day in private, the two young gentlemen had had a 
 difference. Figs, alone in the school-room, was blundering 
 over a home letter; when Cuff, entering, bade him go upon 
 some message, of which tarts were probably the subject. 
 
 "I can't," says Dobbin; "I want to finish my letter." 
 
 "You can't!" says Mr. Cuff, laying hold of that document 
 (in which many words were scratched out, many were mis- 
 spelt, on which had been spent I don't know how much 
 thought, and labour, and tears ; for the poor fellow was writ- 
 ing to his mother, who was fond of him, although she was 
 a grocer's wife, and lived in a back parlour in Thames Street). 
 "You can't?" says Mr. Cuff: "I should like to know why, 
 pray ? Can't you write to old Mother Figs to-morrow ?" 
 
 "Don't call names," Dobbin said, getting off the bench 
 very nervous. 
 
 "Well, sir, will you go?" crowed the cock of the school. 
 
 "Put down the letter," Dobbin replied; "no gentleman 
 readth letterth." 
 
 "Well, noiv will you go?" says the other. 
 
 "No, I won't. Don't strike, or I'll thmash you," roars out 
 Dobbin, springing to a leaden inkstand, and looking so 
 wicked, that Mr. Cuff paused, turned down his coat sleeves 
 again, put his hands into his pockets, and walked away with 
 a sneer. But he never meddled personally with the grocer's 
 
462 NARRATION 
 
 boy after that; though we must do him the justice to say he 
 always spoke of Mr. Dobbin with contempt behind his back. 
 
 Some time after this interview, it happened that Mr. Cuff, 
 on a sunshiny afternoon, was in the neighbourhood of poor 
 William Dobbin, who was lying under a tree in the play- 
 ground, spelling over a favourite copy of the Arahicm Nights 
 which he had — apart from the rest of the school, who were 
 pursuing their various sports — quite lonely, and almost happy. 
 If people would but leave children to themselves; if teachers 
 would cease to bully them; if parents would not insist upon 
 directing their thoughts, and dominating their feelings — 
 those feelings and thoughts which are a mystery to all (for 
 how much do you and I know of each other, of our children, 
 of our fathers, of our neighbour, and how far more beau- 
 tiful and sacred are the thoughts of the poor lad or girl whom 
 you govern likely to be, than those of the dull and world- 
 corrupted person who rules him?) — if, I say, parents and 
 masters would leave their children alone a little more, — 
 small harm would accrue, although a less quantity of as in 
 prcBsenti might be acquired. 
 
 Well, William Dobbin had for once forgotten the world, 
 and was away with Sindbad the Sailor in the Valley of Dia- 
 monds, or with Prince Ahmed and. the Eairy Peribanou in 
 that delightful cavern where the Prince found her, and 
 whither we should all like to make a tour; when shrill cries, 
 as of a little fellow weeping, woke up his pleasant reverie; 
 and looking up, he saw Cuff before him, belabouring a little 
 boy. 
 
 It was the lad who had peached upon him about the 
 grocer's cart; but he bore little malice, not at least towards 
 the young and small. "How dare you, sir, break the bottle ?" 
 says Cuff to the little urchin, swinging a yellow cricket-stump 
 over him. 
 
 The boy had been instructed to get over the playground 
 wall (at a selected spot where the broken glass had been 
 removed from the top, and niches made convenient in the 
 brick) ; to run a quarter of a mile; to purchase a pint of 
 mmshrub on credit; to brave all the Doctor's outlying spies, 
 and to clamber back into the playground again; during the 
 
A FIGHT AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 463 
 
 performance of which feat, his foot had slipt, and the bottle 
 was broken, and the shrub had been spilt, and his pantaloons 
 had been damaged, and he appeared before his employer a 
 perfectly guilty and trembling, though harmless, wretch. 
 
 "How dare you, sir, break it?" says Cuff; "you blunder- 
 ing little thief. You drank the shrub, and now you pre- 
 tend to have broken the bottle. Hold out your hand, sir." 
 
 Down came the stump with a great heavy thimip on the 
 child's hand. A moan followed. Dobbin looked up. The 
 Fairy Peribanou had fled into the inmost cavern with Prince 
 Ahmed; the Eoc had whisked away Sindbad the Sailor out 
 of the Valley of Diamonds out of sight, far into the clouds; 
 and there was everyday life before honest William ; and a big 
 boy beating a little one without cause. 
 
 "Hold out your other hand, sir," roars Cuff to his little 
 school-fellow, whose face was distorted with pain. Dobbin 
 quivered, and gathered himself up in his narrow old clothes. 
 
 "Take that, you little devil!" cried Mr. Cuff, and down 
 came the wicket again on the child's hand. Don't be hor- 
 rified, ladies, every boy at a public school has done it. Your 
 children will so do and be done by, in all probability. Down 
 came the wicket again; and Dobbin started up. 
 
 I can't tell what his motive was. Torture in a public 
 school is as much licensed as the knout in Eussia. It would 
 be ungentlemanlike (in a manner) to resist it. Perhaps Dob- 
 bin's foolish soul revolted against that exercise of tyrrany; 
 or perhaps he had a hankering feeling of revenge in his 
 mind, and longed to measure himself against that splendid 
 bully and tyrant, who had all the glory, pride, pomp, cir- 
 cumstance, banners flying, drums beating, guards saluting, 
 in the place. Whatever may have been his incentive, how- 
 ever, up he sprang, and screamed out, "Hold off, Cuff; don't 
 bully tiiat child any more; or I'll" 
 
 "Or youTl what ?" Cuff asked in amazement at this inter- 
 ruption. "Hold out your hand, you little beast." 
 
 "I'll give you the worst thrashing you ever had in your 
 life," Dobbin said, in reply to the first part of Cuff's sen- 
 tence; and little Osborne, gasping and in tears, looked up 
 with wonder and incredulity at seeing this amazing cham- 
 
464 NARRATION 
 
 pion put up suddenly to defend him; while CuiFs astonish- 
 ment was scarcely less. Fancy our late monarch George III. 
 when he heard of the revolt of the North American colonies ; 
 fancy brazen Goliath when little David stepped forward and 
 claimed a meeting; and you have the feelings of Mr. Reginald 
 Cuff when this rencontre was proposed to him. 
 
 "After school," says he, of course; after a pause and a 
 look, as much as to say, "Make your will, and communicate 
 your last wishes to your friends between this time and that." 
 
 "As you please," Dobbin said. "You must be my bottle- 
 holder, Osborne." 
 
 "Well, if you like," little Osborne replied; for you see his 
 papa kept a carriage, and he was rather ashamed of his 
 champion. 
 
 Yes, when the hour of battle came, he was almost ashamed 
 to say, "Go it. Figs ;" and not a single other boy in the place 
 uttered that cry for the first two or three rounds of this 
 famous combat, at the commencement of which the scientific 
 Cuff, with a contemptuous smile on his face, and as light and 
 as gay as if he was at a ball, planted his blows upon his 
 adversary, and floored that unlucky champion three times 
 running. At each fall there was a cheer; and everybody was 
 anzious to have the honour of offering the conqueror a knee. 
 
 "What a licking I shall get when it's over," young Osborne 
 thought, picking up his man. "You'd best give in," he said 
 to Dobbin; "It's only a thrashing, Figs, and you know I'm 
 used to it." But Figs, all whose limbs were in a quiver, 
 and whose nostrils were breathing rage, put his little bottle- 
 holder aside, and went in for a fourth time. 
 
 As he did not in the least know how to parry the blows 
 that were aimed at himself, and Cuff had begun the attack 
 on three preceding occasions, without ever allowing his enemy 
 to strike, Figs now determined that he would commence the 
 engagement by a charge on his own part; and accordingly, 
 being a left-handed man, brought that arm into action, and 
 hit out. a couple of times with all his might — once at Mr. 
 Cuff's left eye, and once on his beautiful Roman nose. 
 
 Cuff went down this time, to the astonishment of the assem- 
 bly. "Well hit, by Jove," says little Osborne, with the air 
 
A FIGHT AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 46S 
 
 of a connoisseur, clapping his man on the back. "Give it him 
 with the left. Figs, my boy." 
 
 Figs' left made terrific play during all the rest of the 
 combat. Cuflf went down every time. At the sixth round, 
 there were almost as many fellows shouting out, "Go it, 
 Kgs," as there were youths exclaiming, "Go it, Cuff." At 
 the twelfth round the latter champion was all abroad, as the 
 saying is, and had lost all presence of mind and power of 
 attack or defense. Figs, on the contrary, was as calm as a 
 Quaker. His face being quite pale, his eyes shining open, and 
 a great cut on his under lip bleeding profusely, gave this 
 young fellow a fierce and ghastly air, which perhaps struck 
 terror into many spectators. Nevertheless, his intrepid adver- 
 sary prepared to close for the thirteenth time. 
 
 If I had the pen of a Napier, or a Bell's Life, I should 
 like to describe this combat properly. It was the last charge 
 of the Guard — (that is, it would have been, only Waterloo 
 had not yet taken place) — it was Ney^s column breasting the 
 hill of La Haye Sainte, bristling with ten thousand bayonets, 
 and crowned with twenty eagles — it was the shout of the beef- 
 eating British, as leaping down the hill they rushed to hug 
 the enemy in the savage arms of battle — in other words. Cuff 
 coming up full of pluck, but quite reeling and groggy, the 
 Fig-merchant put in his left as usual on his adversary's nose, 
 and sent him down for the last time. 
 
 "I think that will do for him," Figs said, as his opponent 
 dropped as neatly on the green as I have seen Jack Spot's 
 ball plump into the pocket at billiards ; and the fact is, when 
 time was called, Mr. Eeginald Cuff was not able, or did not 
 choose, to stand up again. 
 
 And now all the boys set up such a shout for Figs as 
 would have made you think he had been their darling cham- 
 pion through the whole battle; and as absolutely brought 
 Dr. Swishtail out of his study, curious to know the cause of 
 the uproar. He threatened to flog Figs violently, of course; 
 but Cuff, who had come to himself by this time, and was 
 washing his wounds, stood up and said, "It's my fault, sir — 
 not Figs' — ^not Dobbin's. I was bullying a little boy; and 
 he served me right." By which magnanimous speech he not 
 
466 NARRATION 
 
 only saved his conqueror a whipping, but got back all his 
 ascendency over the boys which his defeat had nearly cost 
 him. 
 
 Young Osborne wrote home to his parents an account of 
 the transaction. 
 
 "Sugarcane House, Richmond, March 18 — . 
 
 "Dear Mama^ — I hope you are quite well. I should be 
 much obliged to you to send me a cake and five shillings. 
 There has been a fight here between Cuff & Dobbin. Cuff, 
 you know, was the Cock of the School. They fought thir- 
 teen rounds, and Dobbin Licked. So Cuff is now Only Second 
 Cock. The fight was about me. Cuff was licking me for 
 breaking a bottle of milk, and Pigs wouldn't stand it. We 
 call him Figs because his father is a Grocer — Pigs & Eudge, 
 Thames St., City — I think as he fought for me you ought 
 to buy your Tea & Sugar at his father's. Cuff goes home 
 every Saturday, but can't this, because he has 3 Black Eyes. 
 He has a white Pony to come and fetch him, and a groom 
 in livery on a bay mare. I wish my Papa would let me have 
 a Pony, and I am 
 
 "Your dutiful Son, 
 
 "Geoege Sedlet Osborne. 
 
 "P. 8. — Give my love to little Emmy. I am cutting her 
 out a Coach in cardboard. Please not a seed-cake, but a plum- 
 cake." 
 
 In consequence of Dobbin's victory, his character rose 
 prodigiously in the estimation of all his schoolfellows, and 
 the name of Pigs, which had been a byword of reproach, 
 became as respectable and popular a nickname as any other 
 in use in the school. "After all, it's not his fault that his 
 father's a grocer," George Osborne said, who, though a little 
 chap, had a very high popularity among the Swishtail youth ; 
 and his opinion was received with great applause. It was 
 voted low to sneer at Dobbin about his accident of birth. 
 "Old Figs" grew to be a name of kindness and endearment; 
 and the sneak of an usher jeered at him no longer. 
 
 And Dobbin's spirit rose with his altered circumstances. 
 He made wonderful advances in scholastic learning. The 
 superb Cuff himself, at whose condescension Dobbin could 
 
A FIGHT AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 467 
 
 only blush and wonder, helped him on with his Latin verses ; 
 "coached" him in play-hours j carried him triumphantly out 
 of the little-boy class into the middle-sized form; and even 
 there got a fair place for him. It was discovered, that 
 although dull at classical learning, at mathematics he was 
 uncommonly quick. To the contentment of all he passed 
 third in algebra, and got a French prize-book at the public 
 Midsimimer examination. You should have seen his mother's 
 face when Telemaque (that delicious romance) was pre- 
 sented to him by the Doctor in the face of the whole school 
 and the parents and company, with an inscription to 
 Grulielmo Dobbin. All the boys clapped hands in token of 
 applause and sympathy. His blushes, his stumbles, his 
 awkwardness, and the number of feet which he crushed as 
 he went back to his place, who shall describe or calculate? 
 Old Dobbin, his father, who now respected him for the first 
 time, gave him two guineas publicly; most of which he spent 
 in a general tuekout for the school; and he came back in a 
 tail-coat after the holidays. 
 
 Dobbin was much too modest a young fellow to suppose 
 that this happy change in all his circumstances arose from 
 his own generous and manly disposition ; he chose, from some 
 perverseness, to attribute his good fortune to the sole agency 
 and benevolence of little George Osborne, to whom hence- 
 forth he vowed such a love and affection as is only felt by 
 children — such an affection, as we read in the charming 
 fairy-book, uncouth Orson had for splendid young Valentine 
 his conqueror. He flung himself down at little Osborne's 
 feet and loved him. Even before they were acquainted, he 
 had admired Osborne in secret. Now he was his valet, his 
 dog, his man Friday. He believed Osborne to be the pos- 
 sessor of every perfection, to be the handsomest, the bravest, 
 the most active, the cleverest, the most generous of created 
 boys. He shared his money with him ; bought him uncount- 
 able presents of knives, pencil-cases, gold seals, toffee. Little 
 Warblers, and romantic books, with large coloured pictures 
 of knights and robbers, in many of which latter you might 
 read inscriptions to George Sedley Osborne, Esquire, from 
 
468 NARRATION 
 
 his attached friend William Dobbin — ^the which tokens of 
 homage George received very graciously, as became his supe- 
 rior merit. 
 
 W. M. Thackeray: Vanity Fair. 
 
 The Pickwickian's Journey to Manor Farm 
 Bright and pleasant was the sky, balmy the air, and beau- 
 tiful the appearance of every object around, as Mr. Pick- 
 wick leant over the balustrades of Rochester Bridge, con- 
 templating nature, and waiting for breakfast. The scene 
 was indeed one, which might well have charmed a far less 
 reflective mind, than that to which it was presented. 
 
 On the left of the spectator lay the ruined wall, broken 
 in many places, and in some, overhanging the narrow beach 
 below in rude and heavy masses. Huge knots of sea-weed 
 hung upon the jagged and pointed stones, trembling in every 
 breath of wind; and the green vry clung moumfullj' round 
 the dark, and ruined battlements. Behind it rose the ancient 
 castle, its towers roofless, and its massive walls crumbling 
 away, but telling us proudly of its old might and strength, 
 as when, seven himdred years ago, it rang with the clash of 
 arms, or resounded with the noise of feasting and revelry. 
 On either side, the banks of the Medway, covered with corn- 
 fields and pastures, with here and there a windmill, or a 
 distant church, stretched away as far as the eye could see, 
 presenting a rich and varied landscape, rendered more beau- 
 tiful by the changing shadows which passed swiftly across 
 it, as the thin and half-formed clouds skimmed away in tho 
 light of the morning sun. The river, reflecting the clear 
 blue of the sky, glistened and sparkled as it flowed noise- 
 lessly on ; and the oars of the fishermen dipped into the water 
 with a clear and liquid sound, as their heavy but picturesque 
 boats glided slowly down the stream. 
 
 Mr. Pickwick was roused from the agreeable reverie into 
 which he had been led by the objects before him, by a deep 
 sigh, and a touch on his shoulder. He turned round; and 
 the dismal man was at his side. 
 
 "Contemplating the scene?" inquired the dismal man. 
 
 "I was," said Mr. Pickwick. 
 
THE PICKWICKIAN'S JOURNEY TO MANOR FARM 469 
 
 "And congratulating yourself on being up so soon?" Mr. 
 Pickwick nodded assent. 
 
 "Ah ! people need to rise early, to see the sun in all his 
 splendour, for his brightness seldom lasts the day through. 
 The morning of day and the morning of life are but too 
 much alike." 
 
 "You speak truly. Sir," said Mr. Pickwick. 
 
 "How common tlie saying," continued the dismal man, 
 "'The morning's too fine to last.' How well might it be 
 applied to our every-day existence. God ! what would I for- 
 feit to have the days of my childhood restored, or to be able 
 to forget them forever !" 
 
 "You have seen much trouble. Sir," said Mr. Pickwick, 
 compassionately. 
 
 "I have," said the dismal man, hurriedly; "I have. More 
 than those who see me now would believe possible." He 
 paused for an instant, and then said, abruptly : 
 
 "Did it ever strike you, on such a morning as this, that 
 drowning would be happiness and peace?" 
 
 "God bless me, no!" replied ^Ir. Pickwick, edging a little 
 from the balustrade, as the possibility of the dismal man's 
 tipping him over, by way of experiment, occurred to him 
 rather forcibly. 
 
 "7 have thought so, often." said the dismal man, with' 
 out noticing the action. "The calm, cool water seems to me 
 to murmur an invitation to repose and rest. A bound, a 
 splash, a brief struggle; there is an eddy for an instant, it 
 gradually subsides into a gentle ripple; the waters have 
 closed above your head, and the world has closed upon your 
 miseries and misfortunes forever." The sunken eye of the 
 dismal man flashed brightly as he spoke, but the momentary 
 excitement quickly subsided; and, resisting Mr. Pickwick's 
 pressing invitation to breakfast, left tliat gentleman at his 
 inn, and walked slowly away. 
 
 Mr. Pickwick found that his three companions had risen, 
 and were waiting his arrival to commence breakfast, which 
 was ready laid in tempting display. They sat down to the 
 meal ; and broiled ham, eggs, tea, coffee, and sundries, began 
 to disappear with a rapidity which at once bore testimony 
 
470 NARRATION 
 
 to the excellence of the fare, and the appetites of its con- 
 sumers. 
 
 "Now, about Manor Farm/' said Mr. Pickwick. "How 
 shall we go ?" 
 
 "We had better consult the waiter, perhaps," said Mr. 
 Tupman; and the waiter was summoned accordingly. 
 
 "Dingley Dell, gentleman — fifteen miles, gentlemen — crosa 
 road — post-chaise. Sir ?" 
 
 "Post-chaise won't hold more than two," said Mr. Pick- 
 wick. 
 
 "True, Sir — beg your pardon. Sir. Very nice four-wheel 
 chaise, Sir — seat for two behind — one in front for the gen- 
 tleman that drives — oh! beg your pardon. Sir — that'll only 
 hold three." 
 
 "What's to be done ?" said Mr. Snodgrass. 
 
 "Perhaps one of the gentlemen like to ride. Sir," sug- 
 gested the waiter, looking towards Mr. Winkle; "very good 
 saddle horses. Sir — any of Mr. Wardle's men coming to 
 Eochester, bring 'em back, Sir." 
 
 "The very thing," said Mr. Pickwick. "Winkle, will you 
 go on horseback?" 
 
 Now Mr. Winkle did entertain considerable misgivings 
 in the very lowest recesses of his own heart, relative to hia 
 equestrian skill ; but, as he would not have them even sus- 
 pected on any account, he at once replied with great hardi- 
 hood, "Certainly. I should enjoy it, of all things." 
 Mr. Winkle had rushed upon his fate ; there was no resource. 
 "Let them be at the door by eleven," said Mr. Pickwick. 
 
 "Very well. Sir," replied the waiter. 
 
 The waiter retired ; the breakfast concluded ; and the trav- 
 ellers ascended to their respective bedrooms, to prepare a 
 change of clothing, to take with them on their approaching 
 expedition. 
 
 Mr. Pickwick had made his preliminary arrangements, and 
 was looking over the coffee-room blinds at the passengers in 
 the street, when the waiter entered, and announced that the 
 chaise was ready — an announcement which the vehicle itself 
 confirmed, by forthwith appearing before the coffee-room 
 blinds aforesaid. 
 
THE PICKWICKIAN'S JOURNEY TO MANOR FARM 471 
 
 It was a curious little green box on four wheels, with a 
 low place like a wine bin for two behind, and an elevated perch 
 for one in front, drawn by an immense brown horse, display- 
 ing great symmetry of bone. An hostler stood near it, holding 
 by the bridle another immense horse — apparently a near 
 relative of the animal in the chaise — ready saddled for Mr. 
 Winkle. 
 
 "Bless my soul !" said Mr. Pickwick, as they stood upon 
 the pavement while the coats were being put in. "Bless my 
 soul ! who's to drive ? I never thought of that." 
 
 "Oh ! you, of course," said Mr. Tupman. 
 
 "Of course," said Mr. Snodgrass. 
 
 "I !" exclaimed Mr. Pickwick. 
 
 "Not the slightest fear, Sir," interposed the hostler. "War- 
 rant him quiet. Sir; a hinfant in arms might drive him." 
 
 "He don't shy, does he ?" inquired Mr. Pickwick. 
 
 "Shy, Sir? — He wouldn't shy if he was to meet a vagin- 
 load of monkeys, with their tails burnt off." 
 
 The last recommendation was indisputable. Mr. Tupman 
 and Mr. Snodgrass got into the bin; Mr. Pickwick ascended 
 to his perch, and deposited his feet on a floor-clothed shelf, 
 erected beneath it, for that purpose. 
 
 "Now, shiny Villiam," said the hostler to the deputy 
 hostler, "give the gen'lm'n the ribbins." "Shiny Villiam" — 
 so called, probably, from his sleek hair and oily countenance — 
 placed the reins in Mr. Pickwick's left hand; and the upper 
 hostler thrust a whip into his right. 
 
 "Woo," cried Mr. Pickwick, as the tall quadruped 
 evinced a decided inclination to back into the coffee-room 
 window. 
 
 "Wo — 0," echoed Mr. Tupman and Mr. Snodgrass, from 
 the bin. 
 
 "Only his playfulness, gen'lm'n," said the head hostler, 
 encouragingly, "jist kitch hold on him, Villiam." The 
 deputy restrained the animal's impetuosity, and the prin- 
 cipal ran to assist Mr. Winkle in mounting. 
 
 "T'other side. Sir, if you please." 
 
 "Slowed if the gen'lm'n worn't a gettin' up on the wrong 
 side," whispered a grinning post-boy, to the inexpressibly 
 gratified waiter. 
 
472 NARRATION 
 
 Mr. Winkle, thus instructed, climljed into his saddle, 
 with about as much difficulty as he would have experienced 
 in getting up the side of a first-rate man-of-war. 
 
 "All right?" inquired Mr. 'Pickwick, w4th an inward 
 presentiment that it was all wrong. 
 
 "All right," replied Mr. Winkle faintly. 
 
 "Let 'em go," cried the hostler, — "Hold him in. Sir;" 
 and away went the chaise, and the saddle horse, with Mr. 
 Pickwick on the box of the one, and Mr. Winkle on the 
 back of the other, to the delight and gratification of the 
 whole inn yard. 
 
 "What makes him go sideways?" said Mr. Snodgrass in 
 the bin, to Mr. Winkle in the saddle. 
 
 "I can't imagine," replied Mr. Winkle. His horse was 
 going up the street in the most mysterious manner — side 
 first, with his head towards one side of the way, and his 
 tail to the other. 
 
 Mr. Pickwick had no leisure to observe either this, or any 
 other particular, the whole of his faculties being concen- 
 trated in the management of the animal attached to the 
 chaise, who displayed various peculiarities, highly interest- 
 ing to a by-stander, but by no means equally amusing to 
 any one seated behind him. Besides constantly jerking his 
 head up, in a very unpleasant and uncomfortable manner, 
 and tugging at the reins to an extent which rendered it a 
 matter of great difficulty for Mr. Pickwick to hold them, 
 he had a singular propensity for darting suddenly every 
 now and then to the side of the road, then stopping short, 
 and then rushing forward for some minutes, at a speed 
 which it was wholly impossible to control. 
 
 "What can he mean by this?" said Mr. Snodgrass, when 
 the horse had executed this manoeuvre for the twentieth 
 time. 
 
 "I don't know," replied Mr. Tupman; "it looles very like 
 shying, don't it?" Mr. Snodgrass was about to reply, when 
 he was interrupted by a shout from Mr. Pickwick. 
 
 *'Woo," said that gentleman, "I have dropped my whip." 
 
 "Winkle," cried Mr. Snodgrass, as the equestrian came 
 trotting up on the tall horse, with his hat over his ears; 
 
THE PICKWICKIAN'S JOURNEY TO MANOR FARM 473 
 
 and shaking all over, as if he would shake to pieces, with 
 the violence of the exercise. "Pick up the whip, there's 
 a good fellow." Mr. Winkle pulled at the bridle of the 
 tall horse till he was black in the face; and having at length 
 succeeded in stopping him, dismounted, handed the whip to 
 Mr. Pickwick, and grasping the reins, prepared to remount. 
 
 Now whether the tall horse, in the natural playfulness 
 of his disposition, was desirous of having a little innocent 
 recreation with Mr. Winkle, or whether it occurred to him 
 that he could perform the journey as much to his own 
 satisfaction, without a rider as with one, are points upon 
 which, of course, we can arrive at no definite and distinct 
 conclusion. By whatever motives the animal was actuated, 
 certain it is that Mr. Winkle had no sooner touched the 
 reins, than he slipped them over his head, and darted back- 
 wards to their full length. 
 
 "Poor fellow," said Mr. Winkle, soothingly, — "poor fel- 
 low — ^good old horse." The "poor fellow" was proof 
 against flattery; the more Mr. Winkle tried to get nearer 
 him, the more he sidled away; and, notwithstanding all 
 kinds of coaxing and wheedling, there were Mr. Winkle 
 and the horse going round and round each other for ten 
 minutes, at the end of which time each was at precisely 
 the same distance from the other as when they first com- 
 menced — an unsatisfactory sort of thing under any circum- 
 stances, but particularly so in a lonely road, where no 
 assistance can be procured. 
 
 "What am I to do?" shouted Mr. Winkle, after the 
 dodging had been prolonged for a considerable time. 
 "What am I to do? 1 can't get on him?" 
 
 "You had better lead him till we come to a turnpike," 
 replied Mr. Pickwick from the chaise. 
 
 "But he won't come," roared Mr. Winkle. "Do come, 
 and hold him." 
 
 Mr. Pickwick was the very personation of kindness and 
 humanity; he threw the reins on the horse's back, and 
 having descended from his seat, carefully drew the chaise 
 into the hedge, lest anything should come along the road, 
 and stepped back to the assistance of his distressed com- 
 
474 NARRATION 
 
 panion, leaving Mr. Tupman and Mr. Snodgrass in the 
 vehicle. 
 
 The horse no sooner beheld Mr. Pickwick advancing 
 towards him, with the chaise whip in his hand, than he 
 exchanged from the rotary motion in which he had pre- 
 viously indulged, for a retrograde movement of so very 
 determined a character, that it at once drew Mr. Winkle, 
 who was still at the end of the bridle, at a rather quicker 
 rate than fast walking, in the direction from which they 
 had just come. Mr. Pickwick ran to his assistance, but 
 the faster Mr. Pickwick ran forward, the faster the horse 
 ran backward. There was a great scraping of feet, and 
 kicking up. of the dust; and at last Mr. Winkle, his arms 
 being nearly pulled out of their sockets, fairly let go his 
 hold. The horse paused, stared, shook his head, turned 
 round, and quietly trotted home to Eochester, leaving Mr. 
 Winkle and Mr. Pickwick gazing on each other with coun- 
 tenances of blank dismay. A rattling noise at a little 
 distance attracted their attention. They looked up. 
 
 "Bless my soul!" exclaimed the agonized Mr. Pickwick, 
 "there's the other horse running away!" 
 
 It was but too true. The animal was startled by the 
 noise, and the reins were on his back. The result may be 
 guessed. He tore off with the four-wheeled chaise behind 
 him, and Mr. Tupman and Mr. Snodgrass in the four- 
 wheeled chaise. The heat was a short one. Mr. Tupman 
 threw himself into the hedge, Mr. Snodgrass followed his 
 example, the horse dashed the four-wheeled chaise against 
 a wooden bridge, separated the wheels from the body, and 
 the bin from the perch; and finally stood stock still, to gaze 
 upon the ruin he had made. 
 
 The first care of the two unspilt friends was to extricate 
 their unfortunate companions from their bed of quickset — 
 a process which gave them the unspeakable satisfaction of 
 discovering that they had sustained no injury, beyond sun- 
 dry rents in their garments, and various lacerations from 
 the brambles. The next thing to be done was, to unharness 
 the horse. This complicated process having been effected, 
 the party walked slowly forward, leading the horse among 
 them, and abandoning the chaise to its fate. 
 
THE PICKWICKIAN'S JOURNEY TO MANOR FARM 475 
 
 An hour's walking brought the travellers to a little road- 
 side public house, with two elm-trees, a horse trough, and 
 a sign-post, in front; one or two deformed hay-ricks 
 behind, a kitchen garden at the side, and rotten sheds and 
 mouldering out-houses, jumbled in strange confusion, all 
 about it. A red-headed man was working in the garden; 
 and to him Mr. Pickwick called lustily — ^"Hallo there!" 
 
 The red-headed man raised his body, shaded his eyes 
 with his hand, and stared, long and coolly, at Mr. Pick- 
 wick and his companions. 
 
 "Hallo there!" repeated Mr. Pickwick. 
 
 "Hallo!" was the red-headed man's reply. 
 
 "How far is it to Dingley Dell?" 
 
 "Better er seven mile." 
 
 "Is it a good road?" 
 
 "No, f ant." Having uttered this brief reply, and appar- 
 ently satisfied himself with another scrutiny, the red-headed 
 man resumed his work. 
 
 "We want to put this horse up here," said Mr. Pickwick; 
 "I suppose we can, can't we?" 
 
 "Want to put that ere horse up, do ee?" repeated the 
 red-headed man, leaning on his spade. 
 
 "Of course," replied Mr. Pickwick, who had by this time 
 advanced, horse in hand, to the garden rails. 
 
 "Missus" — roared the man with the red head, emerging 
 from the garden, and looking very hard at the horse — 
 "Missus." 
 
 A tall bony woman — straight all the way down — ^in a 
 coarse blue pelisse, with the waist an inch or two below 
 her arm-pits, responded to the call. 
 
 "Can we put this horse up here, my good woman?" said 
 Mr. Tupman, advancing, and speaking in his most seduc- 
 tive tones. The woman looked very hard at the whole 
 party; and the red-headed man whispered something in 
 her ear. 
 
 "No," replied the woman, after a little consideration, 
 "I'm afeerd on it." 
 
 "Afraid!" exclaimed Mr. Pickwick, "what's the woman 
 afraid of!" 
 
476 NARRATION 
 
 "It got UB in trouble last time," said the woman, turn- 
 ing into the house; "I woant have nothin' to say to 'un." 
 
 "Most extraordinary thing I ever met with in my life," 
 said the astonished Mr. Pickwick. 
 
 "I — I — really believe," whispered Mr. Winkle, as his 
 friends gathered round him, "that they think we have come 
 by this horse in some dishonest manner." 
 
 "What!" exclaimed Mr. Pickwick, in a storm of indigna- 
 tion. Mr. Winkle modestly repeated his suggestion. 
 
 "Hallo, you fellow!" said the angry Mr. Pickwick, "do 
 you think we stole this horse?" 
 
 "I'm sure ye did," replied the red-headed man, with a 
 grin which agitated his countenance from one auricular 
 organ to the other. Saying which, he turned into the 
 house, and banged the door after him. 
 
 "It's like a dream," — ejacuated Mr. Pickwick, "a hid- 
 eous dream. The idea of a man's walking about, all day, 
 with a dreadful horse that he can't get rid of!" The 
 depressed Pickwiekians turned moodily away, with the tall 
 quadruped, for which they all felt the most unmitigated 
 disgust, following slowly at their heels. 
 
 It was late in the afternoon, when the four friends and 
 their four-footed companion, turned into the lane leading 
 to Manor Farm; and even when they were so near their 
 place of destination, the pleasure they would otherwise 
 have experienced, was materially damped as they reflected 
 on the singularity of their appearance and the absurdity of 
 their situation. Torn clothes, lacerated faces, dusty shoes, 
 exhausted looks, and, above all, the horse. Oh, how Mr. Pick- 
 wick cursed that horse; he had eyed the noble animal from 
 time to time with looks expressive of hatred and revenge; 
 more than once he had calculated the probable amount of the 
 expense he would incur by cutting his throat; and now the 
 temptation to destroy him, or to cast him loose upon the 
 world, rushed upon his mind with tenfold force. He was 
 roused from a meditation on these dire imaginings, by the sud- 
 den appearance of two figures, at a turn of the lane. It was 
 Mr. Wardle, and his faithful attendant, the fat boy. 
 
 "Why, where heme you been?" said the hospitable old gen- 
 tleman. "I've been waiting for you all day. Well, you do 
 
THE PICKWICKIAN'S JOURNEY TO MANOR FARM 477 
 
 look tired. What! Scratches! Not hurt, I hope— eh ? Well, 
 I am glad to hear that — very. So you've been spilt, eh? 
 Never mind. Common accident in these parts. Joe — damn 
 that boy, he's asleep again — Joe take that horse from the 
 gentleman, and lead it into the stable." 
 
 The fat boy sauntered heavily behind them with the ani- 
 mal; and the old gentleman condoling with his guests in 
 homely phrase, on so much of the day's adventures as they 
 thought proper to communicate, led the way to the kitchen. 
 
 "We'll have you put to rights here," said the old gentle- 
 man, "and then I'll introduce you to the people in the parlour. 
 Emma, bring out the cherry brandy; now, Jane, a needle and 
 thread here; towels and water, Mary. Come, girls, bustle 
 about." 
 
 Three or four buxom girls speedily dispersed in search of 
 the different articles in requisition, while a couple of large- 
 headed, circular-visaged males rose from their seats in the 
 chimney corner, (for although it was a May evening, their 
 attachment to the wood fire appeared as cordial as if it were 
 Christmas,) and dived into some obscure recesses, from which 
 they speedily produced a bottle of blacking, and some half- 
 dozen brushes. 
 
 "Bustle," said the old gentleman again, but the admonition 
 was quite unnecessary, for one of the girls poured out the 
 cherry brandy, and another brought in the towels, and one of 
 the men suddenly seizing Mr. Pickwick by the leg, at the 
 imminent hazard of throwing him ofiE his balance, brushed 
 away at his boot, till his corns were red-hot ; while the other 
 shampoo'd Mr. Winkle with a heavy clothes brush, indulging, 
 during the operation, in that hissing sound, which hostlers are 
 wont to produce, when engaged in rubbing down a horse. 
 
 Mr. Snodgrass, having concluded his ablutions, took a sur- 
 vey of the room, while standing with his back to the fire, sip- 
 ping his cherry brandy with heartfelt satisfaction. He 
 describes it, as a large apartment, with a red brick floor, and 
 a capacious chimney; the ceiling garnished with hams, sides 
 of bacon, and ropes of onions. The walls were decorated 
 with several hunting-whips, two or three bridles, a saddle, and 
 an old rusty blunderbuss, with an inscription below it, inti- 
 mating that it was "Loaded" — as it had been, on the same 
 
478 NARRATION 
 
 authority, for half a century at least. An old eight-day 
 clock, of solemn and sedate demeanour, ticked gravely in one 
 corner ; and a silver watch, of equal antiquity, dangled from 
 one of the many hooks which ornamented the dresser. 
 
 "Eeady?" said the old gentleman inquiringly, when his 
 guests had been washed, mended, brushed, and brandied. 
 
 "Quite," replied Mr. Pickwick. 
 
 "Come along then," and the party having traversed several 
 dark passages, and being joined by Mr. Tupman, who had 
 lingered behind to snatch a kiss from Emma, for which he 
 had been duly rewarded with sundry pushings and scratch- 
 ings, arrived at the parlour door. 
 
 "Welcome," said their hospitable host, throwing it open 
 and stepping forward to announce them, "Welcome, gentle- 
 men, to Manor Farm." 
 
 Charles Dickens : Pickwick Papers. 
 
 CrEE QtTEEKY and MyST DrOIiLT 
 
 The children used to fling stones at Grinder Queery 
 because he loved his mother. I never heard the Grinder's 
 real name. He and his mother were Queery and DroUy, 
 contemptuously so called, and they ansvrered to these 
 names. I remember Cree best as a battered old vsreaver, 
 ■who bent forward as he walked, with his arms hanging 
 limp as if ready to grasp the shafts of the barrow behind 
 which it was his life to totter uphill and downhill, a rope 
 of yarn suspended round his shaking neck, and fastened 
 to the shafts, assisting him to bear the yoke and slowly 
 strangling him. By and by there came a time when the 
 barrow and the weaver seemed both palsy-stricken, and 
 Cree, gasping for breath, would stop in the middle of a 
 brae, unable to push his load over a stone. Then he laid 
 himself down behind it to prevent the barrow's slipping 
 back. On those occasions only the bare-footed boys who 
 jeered at the panting weaver could put new strength into 
 his shriveled arms. They did it by telling him that he and 
 
CREE QUEERY AND MYSY DROLLY 479 
 
 Mysy would have to go to the "poorhouse" after all, at 
 which the gi-ay old man would wince, as if " joukin" from 
 a blow, and shuddering, rise and with a desperate effort, 
 gain the top of the incline. Small blame perhaps attached 
 to Cree if, as he neared his grave, he grew a little dottle. 
 His loads of yarn frequently took him past the workhouse, 
 and his eyelids quivered as he drew near. Boys used to 
 gather round the gate in anticipation of his coming, and 
 make a feint of driving him inside. Cree, when he observed 
 them, sat down on his barrow^hafts terrified to approach, 
 and I see them now pointing to the workhouse till he left 
 his barrow on the road and hobbled away, his legs crack- 
 ling as he ran. 
 
 It is strange to know that there was once a time when 
 Cree was young and straight, a callant who wore a flower 
 in his buttonhole, and tried to be a hero for a maiden's 
 sake. 
 
 Before Cree settled down as a weaver, he was knife and 
 scissors grinder for three counties, and Mysy, his mother, 
 accompanied him wherever he went. Mysy trudged along- 
 side him till her eyes grew dim and her limbs failed her, 
 and then Cree was told that she must be sent to the 
 pauper's home. After that a pitiable and beautiful sight 
 was to be seen. Grinder Queery, already a feeble man, 
 would wheel his grindstone along the long highroad, leav- 
 ing Mysy behind. He took the stone on a few hundred 
 yards, and then, hiding it by the roadside in a ditch or 
 behind a paling, return for his mother. Her he led — some- 
 times he almost carried her — ^to the place where the grind- 
 stone lay, and thus by double journeys kept her with him. 
 Everyone said that Mysy's death would be a merciful 
 release — everyone but Cree. 
 
 Cree had been a grinder from his youth, having learned 
 the trade from his father, but he gave it up when Mysy 
 became almost blind. For a time he had to leave her in 
 Thrums with Danl Wilkie's wife, and find employment 
 himself in TiUiedrum. Mysy got me to write several letters 
 for her to Cree, and she cried while telling me what to say. 
 I never heard either of them use a term of endearment to 
 the other, but all Mysy could teU me to put in writing 
 
480 NARRATION 
 
 was — ' ' Oh, my son Cree ; oh, my beloved son ; oh, I have 
 no one but you; oh, thou God, watch over my Cree !" On 
 one of these occasions Mysy put into my hands a paper, 
 which, she said, would perhaps help me to write the letter. 
 It had been drawn up by Cree many years before, when he 
 and his mother had been compelled to part for a time, and 
 I saw from it that he had been trying to teach Mysy to 
 write. The paper consisted of phrases such as "Dear son 
 Cree," "Loving mother," "'I am taking my food weel," 
 "Yesterday," "Blankets," "The peats is near done," 
 "Mr. Dishart," "Come home, Cree." The Grinder had 
 left this paper with his mother, and she had written, letters 
 to him from it. 
 
 When Dan'l Wilkie objected to keeping a cranky old 
 body like Mysy in his house Cree came back to Thrums 
 and took a single room with a handloom in it. The flooring 
 was only lumpy earth, with sacks spread over it to protect 
 Mysy's feet. The room contained two dilapidated old 
 coffin beds, a dresser, a high backed armchair, several 
 three-legged stools, and two tables, of which one could be 
 packed away beneath the other. In one corner stood the 
 wheel at which Cree had to fill his own pirns. There was a 
 plate rack on one wall, and near the chimney piece hung 
 the wag-at-the-wall clock, the timepiece that was com- 
 monest in Thrums at that time, and that got this name 
 because its exposed pendvilum swung along the wall. The 
 two windows in the room faced each other on opposite 
 walls, and were so small that even a child might have 
 stuck in trying to crawl through them. They opened on 
 hinges, like a door. In the wall of the dark passage lead- 
 ing from the outer door into the room was a recess where a 
 pan and pitcher of water always stood wedded, as it were, 
 and a little hole, known as the "bole," in the wall opposite 
 the fireplace contained Cree's library. It consisted of 
 Baxter's "Saints' Rest," Harvey's "Meditations," the 
 "Pilgrim's Progress," a work on folk lore, and several 
 Bibles. The saut-backet, or salt bucket, stood at the end 
 of the fender, which was half of an old cart wheel. Here 
 Cree worked, whistling "Ower the Watter for Chairlie" 
 to make Mysy think that he was as gay as a mavis. Mysy 
 
CME QUMM7 AND MYSY DKOLLY 481 
 
 |NW qu«rnloua ia her old &e«, and up to the end she 
 ^Wtl^t of poor, done Oree an a handsome gallant. Only 
 ^weaving far on into the night oould Oree earn as muoh 
 ■six ihillings a vreek. He began at six o'olook in the 
 ^ning and worked until midnight by the light of his 
 oviiiiey. The oruimy was all the lamp Thrums had in 
 those days, though it ia only to be seen in use now in a few 
 lild*world houses in the glens. It is an ungainly thing in 
 irMt, the siie of a man's palm, and shaped not unlike the 
 palm when oontraoted, and deepened to hold a liquid. 
 Whale oil, lying open in the mold, was used, and the wiok 
 was a rash with tite green skin peeled off, These rashes 
 were sold by herd boys at a hidfpenny the bundle, but 
 Oree gathered his own wioka. The rashes skin readily 
 when you know how to do it. The iron mold was plaoed 
 lioide another of the same shape, but slightly larger, for in 
 ^e the oil dipped through the iron, and the whole was 
 then hung by a (deek or hook olose to the person using it. 
 Iven wi^ ^ree wioks it gave but a stime of light, and 
 M'ver allowed the weaver to s«q more than the hiJf of his 
 loom at a time. Sometimes Oree used threads for wioks, 
 ^e was too dull a man to have many visitors, but Mr, 
 HMhart oalled oooasionally and reproved him ^r telling 
 hki mother lies. The lies Oree told Mysy were that he was 
 idiaring tiite meals he won for her, and that he wore the 
 igilWKoat whioh he had exchanged years before for a 
 Uuket to keep her warm. 
 
 There was a terrible want of spirit about Qrinder 
 %MW7. Boys used to olimb on to his stone roof with 
 #0^ of damp earth in their hands, which they dropped 
 iaym the ohimney. Myay was bedridden by this time, and 
 the imoke threatened to ohoke her; so Cree, instead of 
 ehasing his peneoutora, bargained with them. He gave 
 ^«m iiy hooka whioh he had biudted himself, and when he 
 had nothing left to give he tried to flatter them into 
 dealiBg gently with Myay by talking to them as men. One 
 idi^t it went through the town that Myay now lay in bed 
 att glistening for her aummona to depart Aooordingto 
 her ideaa thia would oome in the form of a tapping at the 
 wiadow, and their intention was to ftureatall the apirit. 
 
482 NARRATION 
 
 Dite Gow's boy, who is now a grown man, was hoisted up 
 to one of the little windows, and he has always thought of 
 Mysy since as he saw her then for the last time. She 
 lay sleeping, so far as he could see, and Cree sat by the 
 fireside looking at her. 
 
 Everyone knew that there was seldom a fire in that house 
 unless Mysy was cold. Cree seemed to think that the fire 
 was getting low. In the little closet, which, with the 
 kitchen, made up his house, was a corner shut off from the 
 rest of the room by a few boards, and behind this he kept 
 his peats. There was a similar receptacle for potatoes in 
 the kitchen. Cree wanted to get another peat for the fixe 
 without disturbing Mysy. First he took off his boots, 
 and made for the peats on tip-toe. His shadow was cast 
 on the bed, however, so he next got down on his knees 
 and crawled softly into the closet. With the peat in his 
 hands, he returned in the same way, glancing every 
 moment at the bed where Mysy lay. Though Tammy 
 Gow's face was pressed against a broken window he did 
 not hear Cree putting that peat on the fire. Some say 
 that Mysy heard, but pretended not to do so for her son's 
 sake, that she realized the deception he played on her, 
 and had not the heart to undeceive him. But it would 
 be too sad to believe that. The boys left Cree alone that 
 night. 
 
 The old weaver lived on alone in that solitary housi 
 after Mysy left him, and by and by the story went abroad 
 that he was saving money. At first no one believed this 
 except the man who told it, but there seemed after all 
 to be something in it. You had only to hit Cree 's trouser 
 pocket to hear the money chinking, for he was afraid 
 to let it out of his clutch. Those who sat on dikes with 
 him when his day's labor was over said that the weaver 
 kept his hand all the time in his poekot, and that they 
 saw his lips move as he counted his hoard by letting it 
 slip through his fingers. So there were boys who called 
 "Miser Queery" after him instead of Grinder, and asked 
 him whether he was saving up to keep himself from the 
 workhouse. 
 
 But we had all done Cree wrong. It came out on his 
 
THE NECKLACE 483 
 
 deathbed what he had been storing up his money for. 
 Grinder, according to the doctor, died of getting a good 
 meal from a friend of his earlier days after being accus- 
 tomed to starve on potatoes and a very little oatmeal 
 indeed. The day before he died this friend sent him 
 half a sovereign, and when Grinder saw it he sat up 
 excitedly in his bed and pulled his corduroys from beneath 
 his pillow. The woman who, out of kindness, attended him 
 in his last illness, looked on curiously, while Cree added 
 the sixpences and coppers in his pocket to the half-sov- 
 ereign. After all, they only made some two pounds, but a 
 look of peace came into Cree's eyes as he told the woman 
 to take it all to a shop in the town. Nearly twelve years 
 previously Jamie Lownie had lent him two pounds, and 
 though the money was never asked for, it preyed on Cree 's 
 mind that he was in debt. He paid off all he owed, and 
 so Cree's life was not, I think, a failure. 
 J. M. Barrie: Aidd Licht Idylls. 
 
 The Necklace 
 
 She was one of those pretty and charming girls who are 
 sometimes, as if by a mistake of destiny, born in a family 
 of clerks. She had no dowry, no expectations, no means 
 of being known, understood, loved, wedded, by any rich 
 and distinguished man, and she let herself be married to 
 a little clerk at the ilinistry of Public Instruction. 
 
 She dressed plainly because she could not dress well, 
 but she was as unhappy as though she had really fallen 
 from her proper station; since with women there is 
 neither caste nor rank ; and beauty, grace, and charm act 
 instead of family and birth. Natural fineness, instinct for 
 what is elegant, suppleness of wit, are the sole hierarchy, 
 and make from women of the people the equals of the very 
 greatest ladies. 
 
 She suffered ceaselessly, feeling herself born for all the 
 delicacies and all the luxuries. She suffered from the 
 poverty of her dwelling, from the vrretched look of the 
 
484 NARRATION 
 
 walls, from the worn-out chairs, from the ugliness of the 
 curtains. All those things of which another woman of 
 her rank would never even have been conscious, tortured 
 her and made her angry. The sight of the little Breton 
 peasant who did her humble housework aroused in her 
 regrets which were despairing and distracted dreams. 
 She thought pf the silent antechambers hung with Ori- 
 ental tapestry, lit by tall bronze candelabra, and of the 
 two great footmen in knee breeches who sleep .in the big 
 arm-chairs, made drowsy by the heavy warmth of the hot- 
 air stove. She thought of the long salons fitted up with 
 ancient silk, of the delicate furniture carrying priceless 
 curiosities, and of the coquettish perfumed boudoirs made 
 for talks at five o'clock with intimate friends, with men 
 famous and sought after, whom all women envy, and 
 whose attention they all desire. 
 
 When she sat down to dinner before the round table 
 covered with a tablecloth three days old, opposite her 
 husband, who uncovered the soup-tureen and declared 
 with an enchanted air, "Ah, the good pot-au-feu! I don't 
 know anything better than that," she thought of dainty 
 dinners, of shining silverware, of tapestry which peopled 
 the walls with ancient personages and with strange birds 
 flying in the midst of a fairy forest ; and she thought of 
 delicious dishes served on marvelous plates, and of the 
 whispered gallantries which you listen to with a sphinx- 
 like smile, while you are eating the pink flesh of a trout 
 or the wings of a quail. 
 
 She had no dresses, no jewels, nothing. And she loved 
 nothing but that; she felt made for that. She would so 
 have liked to please, to be envied, to be charming, to be 
 sought after. 
 
 She had a friend, a former schoolmate at the convent, 
 who was rich and whom she did not like to go and see any 
 more, because she suffered so much when she came back. 
 
 But, one evening, her husband returned home with a tri- 
 umphant air, and holding a large envelope in his hand. 
 
 "There," said he, "here is something for you." 
 
 She tore the paper sharply, and drew out a printed card 
 which bore these words: 
 
THE NECKLACE 48S 
 
 "The Minister of Public Instruction and Mme. Georges 
 Eamponneau request the honor of M. and Mme. Loisel's 
 company at the palace of the Ministry on Monday even- 
 ing, January 18th." 
 
 Instead of being delighted, as her husband hoped, she 
 threw the invitation on the table with disdain, murmuring: 
 
 ""What do you want me to do with that?" 
 
 "But, my dear, I thought you would be glad. You 
 never go out. and this is such a fine opportunity. I had 
 awful trouble to get it. Every one wants to go ; it is very 
 select, and they are not giving many invitations to clerks. 
 The whole official world will be there." 
 
 She looked at him with an irritated eye, and she said, 
 impatiently : 
 
 "And what do you want me to put on my back?" 
 
 He had not thought of that; he stammered: 
 
 "Why, the dress you go to the theater in. It looks 
 very well to me." 
 
 He stopped, distracted, seeing that his wife was crying. 
 Two great tears descended slowly from the corners of her 
 eyes toward the corners of her mouth. He stuttered : 
 
 ' ' "What 's the matter ? "What 's the matter ? ' ' 
 
 But by a violent effort she had conquered her grief, 
 and she replied, with a calm voice, while she wiped her 
 wet cheeks : 
 
 "Nothing. Only I have no dress, and therefore I can't 
 go to this ball. Give your card to some colleague whose 
 wife is better equipped than I. ' ' 
 
 He was in despair. He resumed: 
 
 "Come, let us see, Mathilde. How much would it cost, 
 a suitable dress which you could use on other occasions, 
 something very simple?" 
 
 She reflected several seconds, making her calculations 
 and wondering also what sum she could ask without 
 drawing on herself an immediate refusal and a.^ fright- 
 ened exclamation from the economical clerk. 
 
 Finally she replied, hesitatingly: 
 
 "I don't know exactly, but I think I could manage it 
 with four hundred francs." 
 
486 NARRATION 
 
 He had grown a little pale, because he was laying aside 
 just that amount to buy a gun and treat himself to a little 
 shooting next summer on the plain of Nanterre, with 
 several friends who went to shoot larks down there, of a 
 Sunday. 
 
 But he said : 
 
 "All right. I will give you four hundred francs. And 
 try to have a pretty dress." 
 
 The day of the ball drew near, and Mme. Loisel seemed 
 sad, uneasy, anxious. Her dress was ready, however. 
 Her husband said to her one evening: 
 
 "What is the matter? Come, you've been so queer 
 these last three days." 
 
 And she answered: 
 
 "It annoys me not to have a single jewel, not a single 
 stone, nothing to put on. I shall look like distress. I 
 should almost rather not go at all." 
 
 He resumed: 
 
 "You might wear natural flowers. It's very stylish at 
 this time of the year. For ten francs you can get two or 
 three magnificent roses." 
 
 She was not convinced. 
 
 "No; there's nothing more humiliating than to look 
 poor among other women who are rich." 
 
 But her husband cried : 
 
 "How stupid you are! Go look up your friend Mme. 
 Forestier, and ask her to lend you some jewels. You're 
 quite thick enough with her to do that. ' ' 
 
 She uttered a cry of joy. 
 
 "It's true. I never thought of it." 
 
 The next day she went to her friend and told of her 
 distress. 
 
 Mme. Forestier went to a wardrobe with a glass door, 
 took out a large jewelbox, brought it back, opened it, 
 and said to Mme. Loisel : 
 
 "Choose, my dear." 
 
 She saw first of all some bracelets, then a pearl neck- 
 lace, then a Venetian cross, gold and precious stones of 
 admirable workmanship. She tried on the ornaments 
 before the glass, hesitated, could not make up her mind 
 
THE NECKLACE 487 
 
 to part with them, to give them back. She kept asking : 
 
 "Haven't you any more?" 
 
 "Why, yes. Look. I don't know what you like." 
 
 All of a sudden she discovered, in a black satin box, 
 a superb necklace of diamonds ; and her heart began to 
 beat with an immoderate desire. Her hands trembled as 
 she took it. She fastened it around her throat, outside 
 her high-necked dress, and remained lost in ecstacy at the 
 sight of herself. 
 
 Then she asked, hesitatingly, filled with anguish : 
 
 "Can you lend me that, only that?" 
 
 "Why, yes, certainly." 
 
 She sprang upon the neck of her friend, kissed her 
 passionately, then fled with her treasure. 
 
 The day of the ball arrived. Mme. Loisel made a great 
 success. She was prettier than them all, elegant, 
 gracious, smiling, and crazy with joy. All the men looked 
 at her, asked her name, endeavored to be introduced. 
 All the attaches of the Cabinet wanted to waltz with her. 
 She was remarked by the Minister himself. 
 
 She danced with intoxication, with passion, made drunk 
 by pleasure, forgetting all in the triumph of her beauty, 
 in the glory of her success, in a sort of cloud of happiness 
 composed of all this homage, of all this admiration, of all 
 these awakened desires, and of that sense of complete 
 victory which is so sweet to woman's heart. 
 
 She went away about four o 'clock in the morning. Her 
 husband had been sleeping since midnight, in a little 
 deserted anteroom, with three other gentlemen whose 
 wives were having a very good time. 
 
 He threw over her shoulders the wraps which he had 
 brought, modest wraps of common life, whose poverty 
 contrasted with the elegance of the ball dress. She felt 
 this, and wanted to escape so as not to be remarked by the 
 other women who were enveloping themselves in costly 
 furs. 
 
 Loisel held her back. 
 
 "Wait a bit. You will catch cold outside. I will go 
 and call a cab." 
 
 But she did not listen to him, and rapidly descended 
 
488 NARRATION 
 
 the stairs. When they were in the street, they did not 
 find a carriage ; and they began to look for one, shouting 
 after the cabmen whom they saw passing by at a distance. 
 
 They went down towards the Seine, in despair, shiver- 
 ing with cold. At last they found on the quay one of those 
 ancient noctambulant eoup6s, which, exactly as if they 
 were ashamed to show their misery during the. day, are 
 never seen round Paris until after nightfall. 
 
 It took them to their door in the Rue des Martyrs, and 
 once more, sadly, they climbed up homeward. All was 
 ended for her. And as to him, he reflected that he must 
 be at the Ministry at ten o'clock. 
 
 She removed the wraps, which covered her shoulders, 
 before the glass, so as once more to see herself in all her 
 glory. But suddenly she uttered a cry. She had no 
 longer the necklace around her neck ! 
 
 Her husband, already half undressed, demanded: 
 
 "What is the matter with youf" 
 
 She turned madly towards him. 
 
 "I have — I have — I've lost Mme. Porestier's necklace." 
 
 He stood up, distracted. 
 
 ' ' What !— how ?— Impossible ! ' ' 
 
 And they looked in the folds of her dress, in the folds 
 of her cloak, in her pockets, everywhere. They did not 
 find it. 
 
 He asked : 
 
 "You're sure you had it on when you left the ball?" 
 
 "Yes, I felt it in the vestibule of the palace." 
 
 "But if you had lost it in the street we should have 
 heard it fall. It must be in ,the cab. ' ' 
 
 "Yes. .Probably. Did you take his number?" 
 
 "No. And you, didn't you notice it?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 They looked, thunderstruck, at one another. At last 
 Loisel put on his clothes. 
 
 "I shall go back on foot," said he, "over the whole 
 route which we have taken, to see if I can't find it." 
 
 And he went out. She sat waiting on a chair in her ball 
 dress, without strength to go to bed, overwhelmed, with- 
 out fire, without a thought. 
 
THE NECKLACE 489 
 
 Her husband came back about seven o'clock. He had 
 found nothing. 
 
 He went to Police Headquarters, to the newspaper 
 offices, to offer a reward ; he went to the cab companies — 
 t'verywhere, in fact, whither ho was urged by the least 
 suspicion of hope. 
 
 She waited all day, in the same condition of mad fear 
 before this terrible calamity. 
 
 Loisel returned at night with a hollow, pale face ; he 
 had discovered nothing. 
 
 "You must write to your friend," said he, "that you 
 have broken the clasp of her necklace, and that you are 
 having it mended. That will give us time to turn round." 
 
 She wrote at his dictation. 
 
 At the end of a week they had lost all hope. 
 
 And Loisel, who had aged five years, declared : 
 
 ' ' \V€ must consider how to replace that ornament. ' ' 
 
 The next day they took the box which had contained 
 it, and they went to the jeweler whose name was found 
 within. He consulted his books. 
 
 "It was not I, Madame, who sold that necklace; I must 
 simply have furnished the case." 
 
 Then they went from jeweler to jeweler, searching for 
 a necklace like the other, consulting their memories, sick, 
 both of them, with chagrin and with anguish. 
 
 They found, in a shop at the Palais Royal, a string of 
 diamonds which seemed to them exactly like the one they 
 looked for. It was worth forty thousand francs. They 
 could have it for thirty-six. 
 
 So they begged the jeweler not to sell it for three days 
 yet. And they made a bargain that he should buy it 
 back for thirty-four thousand francs, in case they found 
 the other one before the end of February. 
 
 Loisel possessed eighteen thousand francs which his 
 father had left him. He would borrow the rest. 
 
 He did borrow, asking a thousand francs of one, five 
 hundred of another, five louis here, three louis there. He 
 gave notes, took up ruinous obligations, dealt with 
 usurers, and all the race of lenders. He compromised all 
 the rest of his life, risked his signature without even 
 
490 NARRATION 
 
 knowing if he could meet it ; and, frightened by the pains 
 yet to come, by the black misery which was about to fall 
 upon him, by the prospect of all the physical privations 
 and of all the moral tortures which he was to suffer, he 
 went to get the new necklace, putting down upon the mer- 
 chant's counter thirty-six thousand francs. 
 
 When Mme. Loisel took back the necklace, Mme. 
 Forestier said to her, with a chilly manner: 
 
 "You should have returned it sooner. I might have 
 needed it." 
 
 She did not open the case, as her friend had so much 
 feared. If she had detected the substitution, what would 
 she have thought, what would she have said? Would 
 fihe not have taken Mme. Loisel for a thief? 
 
 Mme. Loisel now knew the horrible existence of the 
 needy. She took her part, moreover, all on a sudden, with 
 heroism. That dreadful debt must be paid. She would 
 pay it. They dismissed their servant ; they changed their 
 lodgings ; they rented a garret under the roof. 
 
 She came to know what heavy housework meant and 
 the odious cares of the kitchen. She washed the dishes, 
 using her rosy nails on the greasy pots and pans. She 
 washed the dirty linen, the shirts, and the dish cloths, 
 which she dried upon a line; she carried the slops down 
 to the street every morning, and carried up the water, 
 stopping for breath at every landing. And, dressed" like 
 a woman of the people, she went to the fruiterer, the 
 grocer, the butcher, her basket on her arm, bargaining, 
 insulted, defending her miserable money sou by sou. 
 
 Each month they had to meet some notes, renew others, 
 obtain more time. 
 
 Her husband worked in the evening making a fair copy 
 of some tradesman's accounts, and late at night he often 
 copied manuscript for five sous a page. 
 
 And this life lasted ten years. 
 
 At the end of ten years they had paid everything, every- 
 thing, with the rates of usury, and the accumulations of 
 the compound interest. 
 
 Mme. Loisel looked old now. She had become the 
 woman of impoverished households — strong and hard 
 
THE NECKLA CE 49 1 
 
 and rough. "With frowsy hair, skirts askew, and red 
 hands, she talked loud while washing the floor with great 
 swishes of water. But sometimes, when her husband was 
 at the office, she sat down near the window, and she 
 thought of that gay evening of long ago, of that ball 
 where she had been so beautiful and so feted. 
 
 What would have happened if she had not lost that 
 necklace T Who knows * who knows ? How life is strange 
 and changeful ! How little a thing is needed for us to be 
 lost or to be saved! 
 
 But one Sunday, having gone to take a walk in the 
 Champs Elysees to refresh herself from the labors of the 
 week, she suddenly perceived a woman who was leading 
 a child. It was Mme. Forestier, still young, still beautiful, 
 still charming. 
 
 Mme. Loisel felt moved. Was she going to speak to 
 her? Yes, certainly. And now that she had paid, she 
 was going to tell her all about it. Why not * 
 
 She went up. 
 
 "Grood-day, Jeanne." 
 
 The other, astonished to be familiarly addressed by 
 this plain goodwife, did not recognize her at all, and 
 stammered : 
 
 "But — Madame! — I do not know — ^You must have 
 mistaken." 
 
 "No. I am Mathilde Loisel." 
 
 Her friend uttered a cry. 
 
 "Oh, my poor Mathilde! How you are changed!" 
 
 "Yes, I have had days hard enough since I have seen 
 you, days wretched enough — and that because of you ! ' ' 
 
 "Of me! How so?" 
 
 "Do you remember that diamond necklace which you 
 lent me to wear at the ministerial ball?" 
 
 "Yes. WeU?" 
 
 "WeU, I lost it." 
 
 "What do you mean? You brought it back." 
 
 "I brought you back another just like it. And for this 
 we have been ten years paying. You can understand 
 that it was not easy for us, us who had nothing. At last 
 it is ended, and I am very glad." 
 
492 NARRATION 
 
 Mme. Porestier had stopped. 
 
 "You say that you bought a necklace of diamonds to 
 replace mine?" 
 
 "Yes. You never noticed it, then! They were very 
 like." 
 
 And she smiled with a joy which was proud and naive 
 at once. 
 
 Mme. Forestier, strongly moved, took her two hands. 
 
 "Oh, my poor Mathilde! Why, my necklace was pasto. 
 It was worth at most five hundred francs!" 
 
 Guy de Maupassant. 
 
 Dr. Heidegger's Experiment 
 
 That very singular man old Dr. Heidegger once invited 
 four venerable friends to meet him in his study. There 
 were three white-bearded gentlemen — Mr. Medbourne, 
 Colonel Killigrew and Mr. Gascoigne — and a withered 
 gentlewoman whose nami> was the widow Wycherly. 
 They were all melancholy old creatures who had been 
 unfortunate in life, and whose greatest -misfortune it was 
 that they were not long ago in their graves. Mr. Med- 
 bourne, in the vigor of his age, had been a prosperous 
 merchant, but had lost his all by a frantic speculation, 
 and was now little better than a mendicant. Colonel 
 Killigrew had wasted his best years and his health and 
 substance in the pursuit of sinful pleasures which had 
 given birth to a brood of pains, such as the gout and 
 divers other torments of soul and body. Mr. Gascoigne 
 was a ruined politician, a man of evil fame — or, at least, 
 had been so till time had buried him from the knowledge 
 of the present generation and made him obscure instead 
 of infamous. As for the widow Wycherly, tradition tells 
 us that she was a great beauty in her day, but for a long 
 while past she had lived in deep seclusion on account of 
 certain scandalous stories which had prejudiced the 
 gentry of the town against her. It is a circumstance Avorth 
 mentioning that each of these three old gentleman — Mr. 
 
DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT 493 
 
 Medboume, Colonel Killigrew, and ilr. Gascoigne — wi-re 
 early lovers of the widow Wycherly, and had once bec-n 
 on the point of cutting each other s throats for hi-r sake. 
 And before proceeding farther I will merely hint that Dr. 
 Heidegger and all of his four guests were sometimes 
 thought to be a little beside themselves, as is not infre- 
 quently the ease with old people when worried either by 
 present troubles or woful recollections. 
 
 "My dear old friends," said Dr. Heidegger, motion- 
 ing them to be seated, "I am desirous of your assistance 
 in one of those little experiments with which I amuse 
 myself here in my study." 
 
 If all stories were true. Dr. Heidegger's study must 
 have been a very curious place. It was a dim, old-fash- 
 ioned chamber festooned with cobwebs and besprinkled 
 with antique dust. Around the walls stood several oaken 
 bookcases, the lower shelves of which were filled with 
 rows of gigantic folios and black-letter quartos, and the 
 upper with little parchment-covered duodecimos. Over 
 the central bookcase was a bronze bust of Hippocrates, 
 with which, according to some authorities. Dr. Heideg- 
 ger was accustomed to hold consultations in all difficult 
 cases of his practice. In the obscurest corner of the room 
 stood a tall and narrow oaken closet with its door ajar, 
 within which doubtfully appeared a skeleton. Between 
 two of the bookcases hung a looking-glass, presenting its 
 high and dusty plate within a tarnished gilt frame. 
 Among many wonderful stories related of this mirror, 
 it was fabled that the spirits of all the doctor's deceased 
 patients dwelt within its verge and would stare him in 
 the face whenever he looked thitherward. The opposite 
 Bide of the chamber was ornamented with the full-length 
 portrait of a young lady arrayed in the faded magnifi- 
 cence of silk, satin, and brocade, and with a visage as 
 faded as her dress. Above half a century ago Dr. Heideg- 
 ger had been on the point of marriage with this young 
 lady, but, being affected with some slight disorder, she 
 had swallowed one of her lover's prescriptions and died 
 on the bridal-evening. The greatest curiosity of the study 
 remains to be mentioned : it was a ponderous folio volume 
 
494 NARRATION 
 
 bound in black leather, with massive silver clasps. There 
 were no letters on the back, and nobody could tell the 
 title of the book. But it was well known to be a book of 
 magic, and once, when a chambermaid had lifted it merely 
 to brush away the dust, the skeleton had rattled in its 
 closet, the picture of the young lady had stepped one foot 
 upon the floor and several ghastly faces had peeped forth 
 from the mirror, while the brazen head of Hippocrates 
 frowned and said, "Forbear!" 
 
 Such was Dr. Heidegger 's study. On the summer after- 
 noon of our tale a small round table as black as ebony 
 stood in the center of the room, sustaining a cut-glass 
 vase of beautiful form and elaborate workmanship. The 
 sunshine came through the window between the heavy 
 festoons of two faded damask curtains and fell directly 
 across this vase; so that a mild splendor was reflected 
 from it on the ashen visages of the five old people who 
 sat around. Four champagne-glasses were also on the 
 table. 
 
 "My dear old friends," repeated Dr. Heidegger, "may 
 I reckon on your aid in performing an exceedingly curi- 
 ous experiment?" 
 
 Now, Dr. Heidegger was a very strange old gentleman 
 whose eccentricity had become the nucleus for a thousand 
 fantastic stories. Some of these fables — to my shame be 
 it spoken — might possibly be traced back to mine own 
 veracious self; and if any passages of the present tale 
 should startle the reader's faith, I must be content to "bear 
 the stigma of a fiction monger. 
 
 When the doctor's four guests heard him talk of his 
 proposed experiment, they anticipated nothing more won- 
 derful than the murder of a mouse in an air-pump or the 
 examination of a cobweb by the microscope, or some simi- 
 lar nonsense with which he was constantly in the habit 
 of pestering his intimates. But without waiting for a reply 
 Dr. Heidegger hobbled across the chamber and returned 
 with the same ponderous folio bound in black leather 
 which common report" affirmed to be a book of magic. 
 Undoing the silver clasps, he opened the volume and took 
 from among its black-letter pages a rose, or what was 
 
' DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT 495 
 
 once a rose, though now the green leaves and crimson 
 petals had assumed one brownish hue and the ancient 
 flower seemed ready to crumble to dust in the doctor's 
 hands. 
 
 "This rose," said Dr. Heidegger, with a sigh — "this 
 same withered and crumbling flower — blossomed five and 
 fifty years ago. It was given me by Sylvia Ward, whose 
 portrait hangs yonder, and I meant to wear it in my bosom 
 at our wedding. Five and fifty years it has been treasured 
 between the leaves of this old volume. Now, would you 
 deem it possible that this rose of half a century could ever 
 bloom again ? ' ' 
 
 "Nonsense!" said the widow Wycherly, with a peevish 
 toss of her head. "You might as well ask whether an old 
 woman's wrinkled face could ever bloom again." 
 
 "See!" answered Dr. Heidegger. He uncovered the 
 vase and threw the faded rose into the water which it 
 contained. At first it lay lightly on the surface of the 
 fluid, appearing to imbibe none of its moisture. Soon, 
 however, a singular change began to be visible. The 
 crushed and dried petals stirred and assumed a deepen- 
 ing tinge of crimson, as if the flower were reviving from a 
 deathlike slumber, the slender stalk and twigs of foliage 
 became green, and there was the rose of half a century, 
 looking as fresh as when Sylvia Ward had first given it 
 to her lover. It was scarcely full-blown, for some of its 
 delicate red leaves curled modestly around its moist 
 bosom, within which two or three dewdrops were 
 sparkling. 
 
 "That is certainly a very pretty deception," said the 
 doctor's friends — carelessly, however, for they had wit- 
 nessed greater miracles at a conjurer's show. "Pray, 
 how was it effected ? ' ' 
 
 "Did you never hear of the Fountain of Youth?" asked 
 Dr. Heidegger, "which Ponce de Leon, the Spanish 
 adventurer, went in search of two or three centuries ago?" 
 
 "But did Ponce de Leon ever find it?" said the widow 
 Wycherly. 
 
 "No," answered Dr. Heidegger, "for he never sought 
 it in the right place. The famous Fountain of Youth, 
 
495 NARRATION 
 
 if I am rightly informed, is situated in the southern part 
 of the Floridian peninsula, not far from Lake Macaco. Its 
 source is overshadowed by several gigantic magnolias 
 which, though numberless centuries old, have been kept 
 as fresh as violets by the virtues of this wonderful water. 
 An acquaintance of mine, knowing my curiosity in such 
 matters, has sent me what you see in the vase." 
 
 "Ahem!" said Colonel Killigrew, who believed not a 
 word of the doctor's story; "and what may be the effect 
 of this fluid on the human frame ? ' ' 
 
 "You shall judge for yourself, my dear colonel," 
 replied Dr. Heidegger. — "And all of you, my respected 
 friends, are welcome to so much of this admirable fluid as 
 may restore to you the bloom of youth. For my own part, 
 having had much trouble in growing old, I am in no hurry 
 to grow young again. With your permission, therefore, 
 I will merely watch the progress of the experiment." 
 
 While he spoke Dr. Heidegger had been filling the four 
 champagne-glasses with the water of the Fountain of 
 Youth. It was apparently impregnated with an efferves- 
 cent gas, for little bubbles were continually ascending 
 from the depths of the glasses and bursting in silvery 
 spray at the surface. As the liquor diffused a pleasant 
 perfume, the old people doubted not that it possessed 
 cordial and comfortable properties, aiid, though utter 
 skeptics as to its rejuvenescent power, they were inclined 
 to swallow it at once. But Dr. Heidegger besought them 
 to stay a' moment. 
 
 "Before you drink, my respectable old friends," said 
 he, "it would be well that, with the experience of a life- 
 time to direct you, you should draw up a few general rules 
 for your guidance in passing a second time through the 
 perils of youth. Think what a sin and shame it would be 
 if, with your peculiar advantages, you should not become 
 patterns of virtue and wisdom to all the young people of 
 the age!" 
 
 The doctor 's four venerable friends made him no answer 
 except by a feeble and tremulous laugh, so very ridicu- 
 lous was the idea that, knowing how closely Repentance 
 
DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT 497 
 
 treads behind the steps of Error, they should ever go 
 astray again. 
 
 "Drink, then," said the doctor, bowing; "I rejoice that 
 I have so well selected the subjects of my experiment. ' ' 
 
 With palsied hands they raised the glasses to their lips. 
 The liquor, if it really possessed such virtues as Dr. Hei- 
 degger imputed to it, could not have been bestowed on 
 four human beings who needed it more wofuUy. They 
 looked as if they had never known, what youth or pleasure 
 was, but had been the ofEspring of Nature's dotage, and 
 always the gray, decrepit, sapless, miserable creatures 
 who now sat stooping round the doctor's table without 
 life enough in their souls or bodies to be animated even by 
 the prospect of growing young again. They drank off 
 the water and replaced their glasses on the table. 
 
 Assuredly, there was an almost immediate improvement 
 in the aspect of the party — ^not unlike what might have 
 been produced by a ^lass of generous wine — ^together with 
 a sudden glow of cheerful sunshine, brightening over all 
 their visages at once. There was a healthful suffusion on 
 their cheeks instead of the ashen hue that had made them 
 look so corpse-like. They gazed at one another, and fan- 
 cied that some magic power had really begun to smooth 
 away the deep and sad inscriptions which Father Time 
 had been so long engraving on their broils. The widow 
 Wycherly adjusted her cap, for she felt almost like a 
 woman again. 
 
 "Give us more of this wondrous water," cried they, 
 eagerly. "We are younger, but we are still too old. 
 Quick! give us more!" 
 
 "Patience, patience!" quoth Dr. Heidegger, who sat 
 watching the experiment with philosophic coolness. "You 
 have been a long time growing old; surely you might 
 be content to grow young in half an hour. But the water 
 is at your service." Again he filled their glasses with the 
 liquor of youth, enough of which still remained in the 
 vase to turn half the old people in the city to the age of 
 their own grandchildren. 
 
 While the bubbles were yet sparkling on the brim, the 
 doctor's four guests snatched their glasses from the table 
 
498 NARRATION 
 
 and swallowed the contents at a single gulp. Was it 
 delusion? Even while the draught was passinjg down 
 their throats it seemed to have wrought a change on their 
 whole systems. Their eyes grew clear and bright ; a dark 
 shade deepened among their silvery locks; they sat 
 around the table three gentlemen of middle age and a 
 woman hardly beyond her buxom prime. 
 
 "My dear widow, you are charming!" cried Colonel 
 Killigrew, whose eyes had been fixed upon her face while 
 the shadows of age were flitting from it like darkness 
 from the crimson daybreak. 
 
 The fair widow knew of old that Colonel Killigrew 's 
 compliments were not always measured by sober truth; 
 so she started up and ran to the mirror, still dreading 
 that the ugly visage of an old woman would meet her 
 gaze. 
 
 Meanwhile, the three gentlemen behaved in such a 
 manner as proved that the water of the Fountain of 
 Youth possessed some intoxicating qualities — ^unless, 
 indeed, their exhilaration of spirits were merely a light- 
 some dizziness caused by the sudden removal of the 
 weight of years. Mr. Gascoigne's mind seemed to run 
 on political topics, but whether relating to the past, 
 present, or future could not easily be determined, since the 
 same ideas and phrases have been in vogue these fifty 
 years. Now he rattled forth full-throated sentences about 
 patriotism, national glory, and the people's rights ; now he 
 muttered some perilous stuff or other in a sly and doubtful 
 whisper, so cautiously that even his own conscience could 
 scarcely catch the secret; and now, again, he spoke in 
 measured accents and a deeply-deferential tone, as if a 
 royal ear were listening to his well-turned periods. Col- 
 onel Killigrew all this time had been trolling forth a 
 jolly bottle song and ringing his glass in symphony with 
 the chorus, while his eyes wandered toward the buxom 
 figure of the widow Wycherly. On the other side of the 
 table, Mr. Medbourne was involved in a calculation of 
 dollars and cents with which was strangely intermingled 
 a project for supplying the East Indies with ice by har- 
 nessing a team of whales to the polar icebergs. As for 
 
DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT 499 
 
 the widow Wycherly, she stood before the mirror courtesy- 
 ing and simpering to her own image and greeting it as 
 the friend whom she loved better than all the world 
 besides. She thrust her face close to the glass to see 
 whether some long-remembered wrinkle or crow's-foot 
 had indeed vanished; she examined whether the snow 
 had so entirely melted from her hair that the venerable 
 cap could be safely thrown aside. At last, tiirning 
 briskly away, she came with a sort of dancing step to 
 the table. 
 
 "My dear old doctor," cried she, "pray favor me with 
 another glass." 
 
 "Certainly, my dear madam — certainly," replied the 
 complaisant doctor. "See! I have already filled the 
 glasses. ' ' 
 
 There, in fact, stood the four glasses brimful of this 
 wonderful water, the delicate spray of which, as it effer- 
 vesced from the surface, resembled the tremulous glitter 
 of diamonds. 
 
 It was now so nearly sunset that the chamber had grown 
 duskier than ever, but a mild and moonlike splendor 
 gleamed from within the vase and rested alike on the four 
 guests and on the doctor's venerable figure. He sat in a 
 high-backed, elaborately-carved oaken arm-chair with a 
 gray dignity of aspect that might have well befitted that 
 very Father Time whose power had never been disputed 
 save by this fortunate company. Even while quaffing 
 the third draught of the Fountain of Youth, they were 
 almost awed by the expression of his mysterious visage. 
 But the next moment the exhilarating gush of young life 
 shot through their veins. They were now in the happy 
 prime of youth. Age, with its miserable train of cares 
 and sorrows and diseases, was remembered only as the 
 trouble of a dream from which they had joyously awoke. 
 The fresh gloss of the soul, so early lost and without which 
 the world's successive scenes had been but a gallery of 
 faded pictures, again threw its enchantment over all their 
 prospects. They felt like new-created beings in a new- 
 created universe. 
 
 "We are young! "We are young!" they cried, exultingly. 
 
SOO NARRATION 
 
 Youth, like the extremity of age, had effaced the 
 strongly-marked characteristics of middle life and mutu- 
 ally assimilated them all. They were a group of merry 
 youngsters almost maddened with the exuberant frolie- 
 someness of their years. The most singular effect of their 
 gayety was an impulse to mock the infirmity and decrepi- 
 tude of which they had so lately been the victims. They 
 laughed loudly at their old-fashioned attire — the wide- 
 skirted coats and flapped waistcoats of the young men 
 and the ancient cap and gown of the blooming girl. One 
 limped across the floor like a gouty grandfather; one set 
 a pair of spectacles astride of his nose and pretended to 
 pore over the black-letter pages of the book of magic; a 
 third seated himself in an arm-chair and strove to imitate 
 the venerable dignity of Dr. Heidegger. Then all shouted 
 mirthfully and leaped about the room. 
 
 The widow Wycherly — if so fresh a damsel could be 
 called a widow — tripped up to the doctor's chair with a 
 mischievous merriment in her rosy face. 
 
 "Doctor, you dear old soul," cried she, "get up and 
 dance with me ; " and then the four young people laughed 
 louder than ever to think what a queer figure the poor 
 old doctor would cut. 
 
 "Pray excuse me," answered the doctor, quietly. "I 
 am old and rheumatic, and my dancing-days were over 
 long ago. But either of these gay young gentlemen will 
 be glad of so pretty a partner. ' ' 
 
 "Dance with me, Clara," cried Colonel Killigrew. 
 
 "No, no! I will be her partner," shouted Mr. Gascoigne. 
 
 "She promised me her hand fifty years ago," exclaimed 
 Mr. Medbourne. 
 
 They all gathered round her. One caught both her 
 hands in his passionate grasp, another threw his arm 
 about her waist, the third buried his hand among the 
 glossy curls that clustered beneath the widow's cap. 
 Blushing, panting, struggling, chiding, laughing, her warm 
 breath fanning each of their faces by turns, she strove 
 to disengage herself, yet still remained in their triple 
 embrace. Never was there a livelier picture of youthful 
 rivalship, with bewitching beauty for the prize. Yet, by 
 
DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT 501 
 
 a strange deception, owing to the duskiness of the cham- 
 ber and the antique dresses which they still wore, the tall 
 mirror is said to have reflected the figures of the three 
 old, gray, withered grandsires ridiculously contending for 
 the skinny ugliness of a shriveled grandam. But they 
 were young : their burning passions proved them so. 
 
 Inflamed to madness by the coquetry of the girl-widow, 
 who neither granted nor quite withheld her favors, the 
 three rivals began to interchange threatening glances. 
 Still keeping hold of the fair prize, they grappled fiercely 
 at one another's throats. As they struggled to and fro 
 the table was overturned and the vase dashed into a 
 thousand fragments. The precious Water of Youth 
 flowed in a bright stream across the floor, moistening the 
 wings of a butterfly which, grown old in the decline of 
 summer, had alighted there to die. The insect fluttered 
 lightly through the chamber and settled on the snowy 
 head of Dr. Heidegger. 
 
 "Come, come, gentlemen! Come, Madam Wycherly!" 
 exclaimed the doctor. "I really must protest against 
 this riot." 
 
 They stood still and shivered, for it seemed as if gray 
 Time were calling them back from their sunny youth far 
 down into the chill and darksome vale of years. They 
 looked at old Dr. Heidegger, who sat in his carved arm- 
 chair holding the rose of half a century, which he had 
 rescued from among the fragments of the shattered vase. 
 At the motion of his hand the four rioters resumed their 
 seats — the more readily because their violent exertions 
 had wearied them, youthful though they were. 
 
 "My poor Sylvia's rose!" ejaculated Dr. Heidegger, 
 holding it in the light of the sunset clouds. "It appears 
 to be fading again. ' ' 
 
 And so it was. Even while the party were looking at 
 it the flower continued to shrivel up, till it became as 
 dry and fragile as when the doctor had first thrown it 
 into the vase. He shook off the few drops of moisture 
 which clung to its petals. 
 
 "I love it as well thus as in its dewy freshness," 
 observed he, pressing the withered rose to his withered lips. 
 
502 NARRATION 
 
 While he spoke the butterfly fluttered down from the 
 doctor's snowy head and fell upon the floor. His guests 
 shivered again. A strange chillness — ^whether of the body 
 or spirit they could not tell — was creeping gradually over 
 them all. They gazed at one another, and fancied that 
 each fleeting moment snatched away a charm and left a 
 deepening furrow where none had been before. Was it 
 an illusion? Had the changes of a lifetime been crowded 
 into so brief a space, and were they now four aged people 
 sitting with their old friend Dr. Heidegger? 
 
 "Are we grown old again so soon?" cried they, 
 dolefully. 
 
 In truth, they had. The Water of Youth possessed 
 merely a virtue more transient than that of wine; the 
 delirium which it created had effervesced away. Yes, they 
 were old again. With a shuddering impulse that showed 
 her a woman still, the widow clasped her skinny hands 
 before her face and wished that the coffin-lid were over it, 
 since it could be no longer beautiful. 
 
 "Yes, friends, ye are old again," said Dr. Heidegger, 
 ' ' and lo ! the Water of Youth is all lavished on the ground. 
 Well, I bemoan it not; for if the fountain gushed at my 
 very doorstep, I would not stoop to bathe my lips in it — 
 no, though its delirium were for years instead of moments. 
 Such is the lesson ye have taught me." 
 
 But the doctor 's four friends had taught no such lesson 
 to themselves. They resolved forthwith to make a pil- 
 grimage to Florida and quaff at morning, noon, and night 
 from the Fountain of Youth. 
 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne: Twice Told Tales. 
 
 The Yellow Burgee 
 
 There was me and Clarence O'Shay; and Fergus of 
 Oregon; and Bo's'n Nutt of Newburyport, so called, 
 though no bo's'n at all; and Brawney Thompson, the 
 new recruit ; and we was the crew of her tops — all bottled 
 with fight, and guessing what next, with the department 
 
THE YELLOW BURGEE 503 
 
 tight as a drum with information, for yet having none 
 to impart. By the hot twilight of the Keys the clot of 
 us would rally under the jaekstaff for general expansion 
 and repartee, till we was the gist of society. Then Bo 's 'n 
 Nutt would play rubber with the truth of his troubles 
 in being a boy in Newburyport, and me to draw the 
 giant's bow of me doings in China; then Clarence would 
 dance a solemn sand-dance with his feet, and Fergus of 
 Oregon would speak: "Flap-doodle, flap-doodle — fall in 
 for your boodle ! ' ' — ^till at last the nigger with his infant 
 banjo, and Brawney Thompson with his beautiful nasal 
 voice, would sing music to words spliced by Brawney 
 himself whife laying awake to think of his Madeleine, 
 like: 
 
 The first I knew I had me tears, I found me eyes afloat, 
 To see the Stars and Stripes at Guan-tar.«a-mo; 
 
 The first I knew I had me heart, I found it in me throat, 
 To see the Stars and Stripes at Guan-tar«a-mo, 
 
 which would start with the stamping of feet, and end with 
 silence; for all the rhymes that Brawney wrote would 
 finish sad. 
 
 One morning we hove up in the middle of the night, and 
 bid adieu without saying good-by; and our hopes of 
 gitting something for our ammunition was certified by 
 the invent of a stranger. He wore knee-breeches and 
 a Walter Raleigh beard ; and he stops at the gang-boards, 
 with his nose smelling at the rifle of the marine. 
 
 "Who the divil do ye wish to see, sir?" says the guard, 
 or such words. 
 
 The knee-breeches gives a shirk of the eyebrows, and 
 waves at the rifle to abolish it. 
 
 "Tell 'em I've came," says he, — "and they don't seem 
 to expect me!" he says in surprise. "Call the captain 
 and his officers," says he, granting the privilege with 
 grace. 
 
 "What name, sir?" say the marine, polite as a dancing- 
 master, and aching to push him in the countenance with 
 his piece. 
 
504 NARRATION 
 
 ' ' "What name ! ' ' says the knee-breeches. ' ' Ain 't me face 
 been printed often enough, with me biography? Don't 
 ye read? I'm Kuhlamar," says he, with a pause to let it 
 sink home, — "Kuhlamar, the War Critic of the 'Daily 
 Flash,' " says he, staring at the rifle, and ignoring the 
 cold eye in the white breeches behind it. "I never met 
 such a crazy divil at the door of the Pope ! ' ' says he. 
 
 And says the marine, stiff as St. Peter: 
 
 "Tell the deck one of them reporters — " 
 
 "Reporters !" says the knee-breeches. "What brand of 
 laughing-stock are ye? Don't you know I'm the Special 
 Envoy of the ' Daily Plash '? " 
 
 So by letters of introduction and command he saddled 
 himself on the crowded ward-room mess, and begun roos- 
 tering up and down the quarter-deck. I never hear what 
 happened; but after the first meal I see the War Critic 
 smoking to himself, with the officers casting eyes and 
 nodding in general opinion; and he never seen anything 
 but the sea before him. And the same thereafter — him 
 total oblivious, but writing down notes of his thoughts 
 disfavorable. Brawney and me and Clarence lit out for 
 the top on a call for quarters. ' Twas command of silence, 
 with everything trained on an innocent bark on the bow, 
 and all hands mumbling, "Too much drill," when a 
 snicker arose, and with it the War Critic. There was two 
 revolvers slung to his waist, with ammunition to take 
 Gibraltar; and a spy-glass, a canteen of booze, and a roll 
 of bunting tied to him, along with a photograph-box ; and 
 his coat was a patchwork of pockets, with maps and pads, 
 and ink-druling pencils, and yeller glasses to give color 
 to the Spanish war. The red cross was sewed on both 
 sleeves, and his big white helmet made him look like a 
 snail a-dangling of its in'ards. 
 
 " 'Tis only a drill," says he, through his spy-glass, as 
 kind as your grandfather. "And ye needn't fear any 
 fighting, for I have a letter from me friends at court. ' ' 
 
 ' ' Silence, there ! ' ' yells up Bo 's 'n Nutt. The War Critic 
 give him the piteous smile, and killed time by taking the 
 bo's'n with his photograph-box. By and by he strolled 
 with all toggery through the living-space ; and they 
 
THE YELLOW BURGEE SOS 
 
 stared before him, and cat-called behind him; but he 
 turned, and says not to be scared of him, and he conversed 
 as indulgent as with lunatics. He had private information 
 as to her destination, he says, — and they all crowded to 
 the bait, — but 't was not good policy to tell, he says, at 
 the present time. But, from his experience, which 
 extended from Chili to China, by way of Turkey, he 
 would say that the war would be but a naval parade, with 
 a little bluflSng at long range, and a killing or two. It 
 grieved him sore, for fighting was his joy. Anyway, he 
 says, his career was the most interesting he ever hear of, 
 and his talents the most extraordinary. 'T was always 
 him first in with the news, which was why all them that 
 ranked as but plain correspondents was down on him. 
 
 ' T was him that first noticed the Johnstown flood ; and 
 he jumped aboard of it with a hen-coop, to have the front 
 seat and arrive at the telegraph. And he was the only 
 one living that had interviewed the Czar — the old Czar 
 watching with two cocked revolvers to see if he slipped 
 a cog in his etiquette. And he was the same that advised 
 with the King of Greece for exterminating the Turks; 
 but the King got grouty, and, bedad, the War Critic 
 brought over the Turk^ to knock him into a pint-pot. 
 But he says he was tired of herding with them kings and 
 queens; for they was a stuck-up lot, he says, with their 
 noses always in your pedigree ; but 't was superior to lay- 
 ing at Washington, and driving a string of congressmen 
 with the brand of the ' ' Flash. ' ' The only decent life was 
 making war ; and he was planting the mines for a general 
 conflict of the powers, which, he says, the world needed 
 to draw its bad blood. And by the end of his two hours' 
 ego-biography there was none left but Brawney Thomp- 
 son, that stood sizing him up, and Bo's'n Nutt, that was 
 aching to tell a lie of his own, but couldn't get the wedge 
 in. The War Critic fastens on Brawney, and commences 
 to educate him, from telling him how to wear a beard to 
 how inferior he was to the bluejackets of Europe. The 
 navy was bad enough, says he, but the regular army on 
 parade would make the Emperor of Germany fall off his 
 horse. And he says he always passed himself for an 
 
506 NARRATION 
 
 Austrian abroad, for shame of the United States being so 
 raw in the particulars of formality. 
 
 "For I see your intelligence," says the War Critic, 
 "and by your conversation more of a gentleman than 
 them officers aft. ' ' 
 
 And Brawney says, "Thank ye," which was the first he 
 had opened his mouth. 
 
 " So it may occur I need ye, ' ' says the War Critic, drop- 
 ping his tone. "The captain and his staff conspires to 
 beat me out of sending the news ; but the poor divils don 't 
 know what it is to go up ag'in the 'Daily Plash'; for ye 
 can lay to it I'm, the big thing aboard this craft. 'T is 
 all right to be singing songs of the star-spangled rag, 
 but the 'Daily Flash' will be doing politics when one- 
 legged patriots is starving on ten-dollar pensions ; and ye 
 can think of that. I'll throw up me hat with the next, 
 and yell 'Hail, Columbia!' " says he; "but the 'Daily 
 Flash' will give the people the news, if it scuttles the 
 Ship of State to git it ; and if the fact is worth money to 
 ye, I may see ye again," says he, walking off. 
 : "Eh? What?" says Brawney, staring after him. "The 
 blackguard!" says Brawney, coming to himself. "And 
 he called the flag a rag — and I never pulled out his Aus- 
 trian beard; and what will me Madeleine say to that?" 
 
 " 'Twas the best thing ye never did," says I, "and the 
 future will prove it." 
 
 We made Cape Haitien without adventures, and the 
 launch was called away for despatches. The War Critic 
 saunters down, and sets himself in the stern-sheets, like 
 the admiral of all he surveyed. 
 
 "Ye '11 have to go back on board, sir," says little Ensign 
 Charlie. 
 
 "What for?" says the War Critic. "Is the launch dis- 
 abled?" 
 
 "No, sir," says Charlie. " 'T is because ye can't go 
 ashore." 
 
 "I'll look into that!" says the War Critic, climbing the 
 ladder. "Ye can hold the launch till I confer with the 
 captain," says he. 
 
 ' ' Cast off ! " says Charlie ; and the launch rolled away to 
 
THE YELLOW BURGEE S07 
 
 town. We waited for her long in the dark, me and Braw- 
 ney, chewing tobacco in the eyes of the ship, and expecu- 
 lating on what was the chances of meeting the foe. Then 
 for the first time since the launch departed the War Critic 
 appeared, and motioned silent for Brawney to draw to 
 one side. They fumbled together in the dark without 
 speaking audible, and I was glad to see 'em break away 
 without Brawney smashing him for having miscalled the 
 flag. The War Critic wandered away in the gloom, and 
 Brawney drags me double-quick to a den in the torpedo-flat. 
 
 "He gimme ten dollars and a tin can," says Brawney. 
 "He says I must drop the can to the bumboat with the 
 sail." 
 
 "And— ?" says I. 
 
 "I dropped the can," says Brawney. "But first I drew 
 the charge. Listen to it, directed to one at Cape Haitien : 
 
 "I am able to announce exclusively that our destina- 
 tion, which for strategic reasons of greatest importance 
 government has so far succeeded in concealing, is Isle of 
 Pines. As soon as this fact is known, change of destina- 
 tion will become necessary, that enemy may not profit by 
 disclosure. Influence of 'Flash's' War Critic is being 
 thrown toward early crushing of enemy in these waters, at 
 whatever sacrifice. 'Flash's' Special Envoy will fly yel- 
 low burgee of 'Daily Flash* when ship goes into action; 
 and flag of 'Flash' will never be taken down. 
 
 "Special to MuUiraw: Flag is no fake. Shall fly it 
 long enough for snap-shot in confusion of some prize- 
 capture. Try hot oven on this sea-mule and his officers : 
 they have thrown me down everywhere. 
 
 "K." 
 
 In ten minutes Brawney had red-taped himself to Old 
 Handsome in his cabin. 
 
 "Hm!" says the Old Man, tapping his desk, "and what 
 did ye intend with the ten dollars?" 
 
 " 'T was cross-purpose," says Brawney — "to send it to 
 me Madeleine, or give it to the Red Cross, or light me pipe 
 with it." 
 
 The Old Man went on tapping. 
 
SOS NARRATION 
 
 "But," says Brawney, "we not being yet married, and 
 such dirty money as that, — ^why, what would me Made- 
 leine think? And maybe the Red Cross — or else — " says 
 . he, stammering. 
 
 "This money," says the Old Man, handing back the 
 bill, "is from the 'Daily Flash.' It came cent by cent from 
 the dirty palms of diseivilization, paying tribute to the 
 king of the garbage-heap," says he — or such words. 
 "There's plenty of honest money over there," says he, 
 pointing to the United States. "The Red Cross don't 
 have to draw on the maggot of license and corruption," 
 says he — or such words. ' ' There 's five ships of the enemy 
 in these waters, and we've got to git past 'em. This man 
 would deliver us all to Davy Jones for the sake of glorify- 
 ing himself in his newspaper. And what was it he called 
 the flag?". 
 
 "By St. Peter-in-the-Pilot-house ! " exclaims Brawney 
 at the thought of it. In the scratch of a match ye could 
 smell the ten dollars in his palm, consuming in flames. 
 
 The Old Man watched the ashes being poured into 
 Brawney 's cap; then he pulled out a new ten from his 
 own salary. 
 
 "Send that to your Madeleine," says he, "and tell her, 
 as far as this ship has its keel, I know a good man. " 
 
 "Thank ye, sir — yes, sir; beg pardon, sir!" says Braw- 
 ney with the new bill in his hand; "but, anyway, me 
 Madeleine has dough of her own ; and, anyway, the money 
 is only come by virtue of a d — d squid aboard that would 
 spit ink on the flag; and I think it would twice more 
 please the taste of me Madeleine to take it back for the 
 Red Cross, sir!" 
 
 Bo's'n Nutt says he see the same thing took place in 
 Newburyport when he was a boy ; but it 's a lie. 
 
 We was a grumbling lot. Drill and clear and juggle 
 with dummy loads till I thought I would f orgit me brain ! 
 The Old Man had reinforced the upper top, and mounted 
 a three-pounder, being special for secondary battery; and 
 he had placed behind it the eye of Clarence O'Shay, such 
 that Clareiiee would grin in his sleep, and would sit at the 
 breech by the hour, shaking insults at the sky-line. But 
 
THE YELLOW BURGEE SOT 
 
 never a bull-rag showed up. We passed to the north of 
 Porto Rico, and begun sliding down the Antilles, till it 
 seemed we had fooled the enemy's squadron, with no 
 chance of excitement more; and Brawney mumbled we 
 was nothing but a picnic for a news-scavenger. The 
 four niggers would clump apart, in disgrace for preserv- 
 ing good nature. Every false alarm, by day or night, the 
 War Critic would haul himself to the top in all his bag- 
 gage ; for he told Brawney the top was the softest place 
 in case of surprise, and him too high-salaried a man to be 
 risking his skin unuecesary. On deck he treated us shy 
 for a while after Cape Haitien; but at length he come 
 with a bunch of cigars from his giveaway box. Did one 
 of us ever meet with adventures * says he ; and what made 
 us enlist at such jobs ? 
 
 'T was the speech of his congressman that made him 
 enlist, says Brawney — ^which 't was thought of so highly 
 that Congress had it printed and sent free through the 
 mails. The speech says, who was it, with none dependent, 
 and having his manhood, that would sit home in his slip- 
 pers, with a lot of bull-ragging fandangos pulling at the 
 tail of the eagle? And Brawney says that hit him, and 
 he give up an eighty-doUar job. The War Critic let out a 
 laugh. 
 
 " 'T was me that wrote it for him," says he ; "for your 
 congressman was fuddled as a snake in alcohol. 'T was 
 considered the best he ever made, and he had it printed 
 at his own expense. 'T is a cheap little rascal, your con- 
 gressman ; ye can buy him for ten dollars or more ; but a 
 man that won't stay bought," says the War Critic, with 
 virtuous indignation, "I have no use for!" 
 
 Brawney threw the cigar over his head, and walked 
 oflf. I heard him mumbling over it in the middle of the 
 night, when, by the regulations, he ought to be sleeping. 
 
 "Aiid she and me setting up to finish it!" says he; 
 "and crying, and patting me on the shoulder!" 
 
 He went on berating to himself, with the whole of us 
 swaying in the gloom, and having bad dreams of peace 
 declared, like two hundred cods in a cockpit. 
 
 "Here we are walking on the water," says he, "at 
 
510 NARRATION 
 
 chambermaids' wages, for the joy of defending the finest 
 flag afloat, when along comes this gromet-mouthed gas- 
 vat to foul our course, and bringing the powers of Con- 
 gress behind him! And he called it a rag to me face!" 
 says he, beating the rivets overhead. 
 
 I heard five bells. The nigger and Bo's'n Nutt com- 
 peted with snores like twins. The night was escaping 
 Without drill. 
 
 "Is the whole government rotten, and the universe?" 
 says Brawney; "and the President's message wrote by 
 some husky reporter that loafs at the "White House gate ? 
 And me leaving me Madeleine ! ' ' And he pulls out a pho- 
 tograph and tries to see it. 
 
 "Don't git so honest ye think you're the only one," 
 says I. 
 
 "Well, there's me Madeleine that's square," says Braw- 
 ney; "ye can lay to that. And Father Moore I will swear 
 to, though no Catholic; and, bedad, you and Old Hand- 
 some would kick the divil, if he come with absolution. 
 But the rest of mankind, I mistrust, would have took the 
 ten dollars ; and some of them senators, too. ' ' 
 
 "Have ye been reading the 'Flash'?" says I. "And the 
 world but a magazine of crime, and the flag but for fools, 
 by inference?" 
 
 " 'T is the finest flag since God made bunting!" says 
 Brawney. "And — " says he. 
 
 We all heeled over, caused by the helm brought hard 
 to port. By an instinct of hope, ten others and Bo's'n 
 Nutt and me slid out barefoot, and ducked for the hatch. 
 
 The sea was a lavender Japanese crape; a pasty fog 
 picked its skirts across us, with the moon shining through 
 like a paper screen. We lumbered the bit of a swell like 
 a blind blue dripping shape of lead for our war-paint, with 
 our funnels daubing ag'in' the sky; and the little six- 
 pounders sniffed over the berthings, and the big rifles 
 stared with their thoughts nine miles in space. She come 
 at a gathering gait ; two brown ribbons streamed behind, 
 singing a song of sixpence to a sea that curled and kissed 
 her lines in admiration. Her pilot-house rushing in a 
 point like an arrow, as if she would say: "I'm a round 
 
THE YELLOW BURGEE SU 
 
 nine thousand tons of steel, and I ride by the quest of 
 
 freedom. ' ' 
 Nutt asked me and I asked Nutt. All we see was the 
 
 Old Man making for the bridge. Clarence was gazing 
 
 ahead from the jack-staff, in his little square coat. I give 
 
 me double cough. Clarence stuck out a thumb to the 
 
 waters, and I see a faint line of bubbles — the wake of a 
 
 steamer, not five minutes old. 
 "Are ye seasick?" says the War Critic, over me 
 
 shoulder. "What is it up?" says he, seeing two orderlies 
 
 dash for below. "What did ye see?" says he, leaning 
 
 with haste into Clarence's ear. 
 "Keep that reporter abaft the davits!" says a dark 
 
 voice. 
 "Don't git excited!" worries the War Critic, with 
 
 Brawney Thompson helping his retreat. ' ' ' Reporter ' ! 
 
 I'll black-list these jumping-jacks!" says he to me. 
 
 But I see a torrent of silent legs up-pouring. "Clear 
 ship!" I says to meself. "Has the Old Man found his 
 quarry?" says I, me heart on a jig. I swallowed meself 
 in the melee. 
 
 "Pleasant to see something doing," the War Critic was 
 observing, taking the ladder for the upper deck. A half- 
 dozen stokers, risking their hides to see what was up 
 before they dropped down to the boiler-hell, come flying, 
 and shouldered him up like a hod of plaster. The coil 
 of a boat-fall lowered away, and carried his props from 
 under him. Somebody harpooned him in the back with a 
 loose hatch-batten, and a crew of bare-breasted spirits 
 snatched him aft in the bight of a length of hose. In the 
 dark, the gallop of men and marines, landsmen and 
 idlers, tooth and nail, like a rally of ants, bedazzled his 
 wits. He slid for home base astride of a stream from a 
 two-inch nozzle, and he chased himself up the mast in the 
 quiet of "all divisions heard from." He met Brawney 
 Thompson sliding down from the peak with a smile. 
 
 "The finest, freest war-ribbon that ever topped God's 
 green!" says Brawney, looking back. "And me a-setting 
 ye there, at dawn on this day of our Lord that may God 
 send the enemy ! What would me Madeleine say to that ? ' ' 
 
512 NARRATION 
 
 "Silence!" went everywhere. 
 
 "I had hopes," whispered the War Critic; "but 't is 
 only another sham." 
 
 Clarence set by the breech of his piece, with his eyes 
 in the water. The bubbles had grown to suds. 
 
 "I seen the corn-paper stumps of their cigarettes!" 
 whispers Clarence. 
 
 But the crews of the rapid-flres on deck had seen no 
 suds; and worse in the turrets. 'T was plain cold feet 
 and wet gratings and vituperation inside, with little more 
 on but trousers. "Have over, and back to our snores!" 
 they muttered; but there they stood, with their toes 
 turned up. The boilers begun to growl. 'T was one bell. 
 
 "Don't strike that bell!" says a sudden voice. 
 
 "Eh?" says the six pounders, scared at their rising 
 hbpes. 
 
 We took up another two knots to the hour; and ye 
 could tell that below they was shoving the soot to beat 
 the divil with a new batch of souls, and the oilers and 
 water-tenders crawling like bugs in the belly of a whale. 
 
 ' ' Well, I suppose them fellers at the small guns on deck 
 would git the brunt of it," says the War Critic. 
 
 "Silence!" says Bo's-'n Nutt, from beneath. 
 
 "Silence!" says I under breath, "for we're attending a 
 wake. ' ' 
 
 Which the War Critic put in his book ; for the color of 
 day was bleaching the mist that shrouded us, and the sit- 
 uation plain to all. 
 
 ' ' 'T will turn out a Portegee ! ' ' mumbles Clarence, 
 berating Providence. " 'T is always so when we git our 
 mouths puckered!" 
 
 "It might be a prize," says the War Critic, lighting 
 his cigar, in the face of the regulations, "and money 
 coming to ye. They would owe me some, too ; for 't was 
 action of mine that throwed us here," says he, smiling 
 at his thoughts. 
 
 "This sea-sheriff business can go to the divil," says 
 Brawney. "I'm looking for a prize that thinks it can 
 shoot target with Yankee Doodle." 
 
THE YELLOW BURGEE 5\i 
 
 'T will be but a Scotch man-o '-war full of greasers ! ' ' 
 says Clarence, doleful ; ' ' and me grandmother calling me 
 a dove!" 
 
 I give a snort. Had the wind come astern of the fun- 
 nels » Divil a bit ; but I smelt smoke with the fog. Was 
 it true, and the craft ahead had crossed our bows ? 
 
 "What have ye?" says Clarence. "Make no noses at 
 me ! " says he, in his evil mood. 
 
 ' ' Smoke in the wind ! " I bellered, believing me nostrils. 
 
 "In the wind?" says the voice-pipe. 
 
 "In the wind, sir!" says I. 
 
 The War Critic laid down his roll of bunting — ^the 
 yeller burgee of the "Daily Flash." I see through me 
 glass the mist take shape, then dissolve. 
 
 "Military top, sir!" I bawled. "Two points for'ard 
 the beam ; no ship of ours, sir. 
 
 Approbations rose from the deck in murmurs. "There 
 was two of them, then," says every one, "for the wake of 
 the other was straight and fresh. ' ' The air was thick with 
 prayers that it might not be friends. 
 
 ' ' Two of 'em ! ' ' says the War Critic. ' ' And us stumbling 
 between 'em with colors set! Shout the warning!" says 
 he. 
 
 We swung away to put the two in the fog to port of us, 
 and the starboard sections groaned. 
 
 "The Old Man finds his senses," says the War Critic. 
 "He'll be away and from sight, and they never guess!" 
 
 But we took up our course again. The breeze waked 
 up and rubbed the eyes of the morning, as Brawney says ; 
 and the fog swept clear for a thousand yards, then for 
 another thousand; and then, like throwed on stereopti- 
 can, it showed us a big armored cruiser, with our broad- 
 side trained on it like needles on the pole. She was asleep, 
 with no colors shown; and your toes clenched in your 
 boots. 
 
 "Stick up your rag!" says Clarence, shaking his fist; 
 for the marks of the breed stood out on every stitch of 
 her. "Have ye nothing but hind legs, ye bull-ragging 
 beast?" says he. 
 
SU NARRATION 
 
 'T was as though she heard, for she let out a scream like 
 a nightmare; and our steam siren yelled for watertight 
 doors. 
 
 "What?" says the War Critic. "Hear the answering 
 toots in the fog ! Don 't he know 't is the first art of war 
 not to fight with a superior force?" 
 
 "Ship ahoy! What ship is that?" says the Old Man, 
 speaking across her bows through our for'ard five-inch 
 rifie. They was flying up and down her decks like rats, 
 and she edged away toward the fog. 
 
 "Ship ahoy, there! What ship is that?" roars the Old 
 Man, tapping a hole through the fandango 's funnel. 
 
 I see the flag of the enemy break from her peak, and a 
 dozen juts of smoke from her side. A howl of delight 
 arose to me ears, and the sea splashed up like a school of 
 whales. Our eights' and half our fives was up and away 
 with the bugle-blast, with the six-pounders barking at 
 their heels ; and the sun jumped out of the night, with its 
 chin on the sky-line, to see what the divil was doing. It 
 see the moon as pale as a shirt, and the fog skedaddling 
 with its petticoats up, and hell's tune playing 'twixt two 
 little specks at sea, with me and Brawney and Clarence 
 little specks at sea, with me and Brawney and Clarence 
 was cursing with finest freedom ye ever hear, for he was 
 out of range. The War Critic stood hold of the mast, bit- 
 ing his teeth, and his eyes in a stare. Brawney stood ready 
 to serve, with a gaze and a smile ; and he looked up at the 
 flag standing, sharp to the breeze, where he put it, and 
 he laughed and slapped his thigh. Never such joy I've 
 known in the forty years since me mother's lap. Natural 
 lust of destruction flying loose in me heart; bottled and 
 corked essence of peace-drill and peace-subordination, 
 bedad, and peace-idleness of twenty years' cruising, 
 dropped, with a rifle-crack, like a cangue from off me neck. 
 The sides of me brain worked separate together. "Let 
 it exude," says the one, "free! — Free's a balloon!" And 
 the other howled: 
 
 "Gunboat coming out of the fog, sir — enemy's flag!" 
 
 The Old Man and his mate stood like the rear of an 
 observation car, roaring remarks in each other's ears. 
 
THE YELLOW BURGEE SIS 
 
 The hot light of day rode the bare backs along the berth- 
 ing till each man steamed like a horse on ico. We was 
 easing the gap botwocu us and the foe, and her consort 
 hovering down to the region of six-inch remonstrance, and 
 landing by luek with a shell through our armor-belt that 
 sent the carpenter sprinting for the protective deck with 
 nine kinds of patches. A six-pounder Avoat through me 
 hair, I thought; and the AVar Critic felt it, and kneeled 
 down to the trap, staring at the deck fifty feet below. 
 But he got up again, and jammed his helmet over his 
 eyes. 
 
 "The coal-bunkers was the place to be," he says to 
 himself. 
 
 "Nineteen hundred yards!" yells Fergus of Oregon, 
 his head through the trap. 
 
 Clarence stopped his profanity. By the holy powers, I 
 see the two corners of his mouth from the back of his 
 head, and he had no nerves. He settled as quick to the 
 breech of his piece as a squalling baby put to the breast, 
 and he took aim like wiping the rim of your glass with 
 a doily before ye swig your beer; and we never heard 
 no more from him but the smell of saltpeter. The air 
 whistled like a typhoon, and there was Fergus, still with 
 his head and shoulders through, his chin on his breast, 
 like thinking. 
 
 "My God!" says the War Critic, drawing away from 
 Fergus. 
 
 We all howled, for we see the gunboat doubled up with 
 an eight-inch shell in her brain, and not knowing where 
 to go. The big fandango landed on our for'ard torpedo- 
 flat, and knocked a Whitehead into watchworks, and 
 blowed an ensign off tlio navy-register. 
 
 "She's on fire in the quarters, sir!" I yelled with one 
 eye. With the other I seen 'em discumbering Fergus from 
 the trap. He hadn't no legs. The War Critic gazed at 
 him dumb, the photograph-box askew on his back. A 
 shower of hot commas exploded under my jaw. 
 
 "Bedad, they're loading with barbed-wire fence!" says 
 Brawney, observing the flesh-cuts on him and me; "and 
 thev'vc tore out a gap in the list of junior grade in the 
 
S16 NARRATION 
 
 after-turret ; and there 's White Olsen keeled over and bit 
 a piece from an officer's shoe." 
 
 "Enemy's stern caved in by a shell, sir. Enemy's 
 squadron approaching ahead — three ships ! ' ' says I. 
 
 Our port anchor-davit arose off the deck at the news, 
 and jumped into the sea, with a solid shot behind; and 
 I thought the "War Critic would dive after, it. 
 
 "Look here; ain't we got enough?" say he, clutching 
 Clarence's shoulder with sharp finger-nails. But Clar- 
 ence thought it was a wound, and would pay no attention. 
 "Man, man," says the War Critic, "leave 'em alone — 
 leave 'em alone!" 
 
 The big fandango was winded a bit, or her tailfeathers 
 broke, for she slowed and swung. The Old Man smiled. 
 We started all steam to cross her bow — ^to run 'atween 
 her and her mate, for the love of raking her fore and 
 aft, though the two of 'em snatched us bald. "There's 
 three fresh craft a-vomiting smoke behind," says I, free- 
 ing me face of nose-bleed; and I laughed such a divil's 
 own joy of a laugh as ye can't brew the liquor to bring. 
 A hot shot went between Clarence and his elbow. 
 
 "Did ye find my card beneath your hammick door?" 
 yells Clarence, like a row in a tenement. "Take that, ye 
 yeller baboons ! ' ' 
 
 "I'll give ye a hundred dollars to jam your breech; 
 they must leave us alone!" says the War Critic, fanning 
 the air with a hand-load of bills for the second time in 
 Clarence's face. Clarence took the wad, and fed it into 
 the breech of his piece; and the next five shots cost the 
 "Daily Flash" twenty dollars apiece; and Clarence went 
 right on. 
 
 So we shot the rapids, starboard and port, great guns 
 and small, Bo's'n Nutt and Clarence O'Shay, at nine- 
 teen knots for the other world. I says good-by to meself . 
 I says, ' ' Some angel will be walking ye by the ear in a 
 minute, and there's an awkward thing or two he'll be 
 asking ye about. What ? ' ' says I. ' ' Are we afloat ? That 's 
 the nigger down there with his leg broke ; and Clarence 's 
 scalp has a piece sticking up like the door of a spider; 
 
THE YELLOW BURGEE S17 
 
 and the War Critic has a vaccination on his arm, but too 
 busy counting his sins to know it ; and, bedad, we're afloat." 
 
 ' ' Git away ! ' ' says Clarence, straining to train the three- 
 pounder astern. 
 
 There come a yell from the lower top. A gasp of joy, 
 and some stripes of red passed over me eyes. 'T was the 
 colors, brought down by the breaking of the block; and 
 't was the "War Critic clutching it, hauling it in like the 
 divil after your soul. 
 
 "We've struck! We've saved our skins!" he says, 
 falling on the flag to hide it. 
 
 Did ye ever hear Yankee Doodle roar when a tuft of his 
 feathers was pulled? I heard a shout as big as North 
 America. Me and Clarence and the bloody crew of 
 Bo's'n Nutt collided in a bunch; but we was all behind. 
 The War Critic laid in the ruins of his tackle. 'T was 
 Brawney Thompson that shinned the bare pole, with the 
 bunting in his teeth, and a thousand yells to boost him. 
 A flight of whistling iron went by, and for answer the 
 forty-five stars stood stiff to the breeze. Brawney gripped 
 the pole. He turned his face and looked down strange in 
 me eye, and me and Clarence went up after him. We all 
 slid back in a heap, and we set Brawney ag'in' the mast, 
 and tore his shirt apart, his head rolling like an apple on 
 its stem. The little sky-terrier begun barking again in 
 the hands of a new detail — six of us crammed in a space fit 
 for three ; and I couldn 't hear what Brawney was trying 
 to tell. The seconds went by in a daze, and we couldn't 
 see nothing to do. Then the bugle blowed, and a howling 
 din of silence beat on your brain to break your heart. I put 
 me ear to Brawney 's mouth ; but all I hear was the tinkle 
 of the nigger with the broken leg, in the top below, and his 
 infant banjo, to the tune : 
 
 "The first I knew I had me heart, I found it in me throat, 
 To see the Stars and Stripes at Guan-ta-«a-mo." 
 
 " I '11 give ten dollars for a flask of liquor ! ' ' says the War 
 Critic. "I've got to git down from here, somehow !"says he. 
 
S18 NARRATION 
 
 "We heard a boom away astern. Brawney opened his 
 eyes. 
 
 "Commenced again?" says he. 
 
 ' ' The fandango has blowed up her small-arms magazine ; 
 I judge," says I; "and her mates galloping to hold her 
 head out of water." 
 
 "Fandango blowed up!" says Brawney, with the end of 
 a smile. "Lemme see — ^lemme see! Ah," he says, "your 
 glass is all fog! I can't see a blank thing! But that's 
 the flag!" he says, his head reeling back. ""Well, it ain't 
 no rag, is it? And only a minute ago — and what would 
 me Madeleine say to that?" 
 
 Then he didn't speak no more; and 't was the first 
 time I ever see Clarence afraid. 
 
 We laid Brawney down on a six-pounder grating, 
 wrapped in a flag, with the rest. The Old Man tightened 
 his lips to look at him. The "War Critic, in the wreck of 
 his helmet, came out of the mast, hanging to what he 
 could, gazing at the seams in the deck. 
 
 "Here's a bit of bunting foiuid in the top, sir," says the 
 mate to the Old Man ; and he unrolls the yeller burgee of 
 the "Daily Plash." 
 
 "I want to see you, sir!" says the Old Man, eyes fixed 
 on the "War Critic like two eight-inch guns. 
 
 The War Critic straightened himself a bit, and raised 
 his head. There were two hundred half-naked men facing 
 him with folded arms, and no place for him to look. 
 
 Mr. Chyne," says the Old Man, "wrap the body of 
 Brawney Thompson in the same flag he rescued from this 
 man Kuhlamar. When Thompson goes into the sea, let 
 the flag go with him. Mr. Kuhlamar, if the enemy had 
 been shooting more to the gain of the United States, and 
 less to its loss," says the Old Man, "I would be heaving 
 you overboard — bagged in your own quarantine rag, which 
 is the symbol of your soul." 
 
 I see five little specks away in our wake, under a pall of 
 smoke. I see Buck Williams, propped ag'in' the berthing, 
 in tears, and his banjo with a broken string. I thought of 
 Brawney 's Madeleine— she and him in the light of a lamp 
 
THE YELLOW BURGEE 519 
 
 at home, with their heads together over the speech that the 
 
 congressman didn't write. 
 
 "The first I knew I had me heart, I found it in me 
 
 throat!" says I with me eyes on the flag at the peak. 
 
 "And what will his Madeleine say to that?" 
 
 Chester Bailey Fernald: Under the Jack-staff. (Copyright, 1898, 
 by The Century Company.) 
 
520 NARRATION 
 
 STUDENTS' NARRATIVES 
 
 The Man Who Waited 
 
 "You've got to come into this, Jerry, you've got to. 
 Just think of the rest of the troop; they'd give anythin' 
 for the chance, half of 'em. Why, Tony Le Roy come to 
 me with tears in his eyes an' he says: 'Don't let him 
 come back, Jim, for God 's sake ; you know we 're all with 
 you.' An' he—" 
 
 "Come, men, step lively there." 
 
 At the sharp word of the Lieutenant three of the little 
 group moved away and busied themselves sullenly with 
 saddles and blankets. Old Donahue went on earnestly : 
 
 "There, you see how it goes. He treats us like dogs 
 still, and yet he 's afraid of it, damnably afraid of it. I 
 saw him when the Colonel gave him the detail, an' he 
 was as white as a ghost. He's a mean, dirty slob an' — " 
 
 The man at his elbow broke in quickly. 
 
 "Oh, Jerry '11 come with us all right. He ain't afraid 
 to help do the troop 's work for 'em. ' ' 
 
 The youngest of the three looked up from his dust- 
 covered boot. He was a tall, raw-boned youth, clearly 
 not long from the "awkward squad." 
 
 "Yes, I'll come with you," he said slowly. 
 « "Good!" said old Donahue, gripping his hand. "And 
 don't wait." 
 
 The gray after-glow of an Arizona sunset hardly out- 
 lined the peaks that jutted above the horizon across from 
 the little arroyo where the detail had slept through the 
 torrid day. There were twenty of them besides the 
 Lieutenant, all picked veterans except the recruit, who 
 had been sent along in accordance with a pet theory of 
 the colonel's as to the proper education of a raw cavalry- 
 man. Silently they mounted and rode off down the 
 arroyo in single file ; the Lieutenant at the head, next to 
 him the recruit. 
 
STUDENTS' NARRATIVES S21 
 
 The boy rode with a set face, for he knew that out there 
 in the tumble of brown foot-hills he should meet an awful 
 moment of his life — perhaps the last. He had been wildly 
 delighted when he had learned that he was to go with the 
 detail and get his first taste of fighting ; he wanted to feel 
 that he had earned a place among these brown-faced 
 men who had told him how they had felt under fire for the 
 first time; he wanted to know how a bullet would sound 
 going by his hat. Then, since they had been riding three 
 days now, he had wondered how he should feel, and he 
 was not proud of his thoughts; but he had prayed that 
 the time might come quickly so that he might show how 
 steadily he could bear himself in spite of thoughts or 
 feelings. 
 
 But now — noiv he had a thing to do that was much more 
 than not running away when the others were watching 
 him. ' ' Don 't wait, ' ' old Donahue had told him a thousand 
 times. "Don't wait," that was a soldier's first duty, 
 promptness. And now if the chance should come to him 
 first, he must shoot, quick and straight; he had just 
 given his word for that, and he must not miss. If the 
 chance should come to him first — if only it would not! To 
 shoot a man in the back, when he was not looking, and a 
 white man in brown khaki — . Yet the whole troop was 
 behind him in it; he knew that well. And the man 
 deserved it richly. He remembered the curses of the 
 troop that he had heard ever since the day he himself 
 had first come to the fort, and the hard words and petty 
 annoyances that had called them forth. As Donahue had 
 said: "If he was a bit of a boy from the Hudson with 
 Geometry an' Fortifications crowdin' out his decency, 
 we'd pound that out of him with the help of God and the 
 Colonel. As it is, it's one fool too many in the Army." 
 
 They had broken it to the boy very suddenly, only 
 today ; and he was almost dazed at the thought. He had 
 heard tales of such things whispered in the dark barrack- 
 room long after "lights out," and had never dreamed of 
 giving them more serious credence than the other grue- 
 some yarns that were spun at enormous length to harrow 
 the nerves of young recruits. But he had given his word. 
 
522 NARRATION 
 
 he had given his word; the stern Scottish conscience 
 that he thought he had left away in Michigan kept scourg- 
 ing him back to the grim reality. It was a dirty business 
 to shoot a man so — still, if the man deserved it ? Besides, 
 probably it would be one of the others who would really 
 do it, after all; there were six of them to whom the lot 
 might come. No, there was no relief then ; he had given 
 his word, he had given his word; and the deed would be 
 his unalterably, whoever might pull the trigger. 
 
 They had crossed the open valley and the glow had quite 
 faded from the sky. Before him he could see the figure of 
 the Lieutenant, dim in the starlight, swaying with the 
 motion of his horse. They entered another arroyo, the 
 shortest path across this chain of hills; and as the Lieu- 
 tenant rose on a sharp pitch of the ground, his body 
 showed dark against the paler darkness of the sky. The 
 boy looked up at him and wondered whereabouts in that 
 broad back he ought to aim to give the man as little pain 
 as possible. It luas a nasty business. But he had given 
 his word. And, after all, would not the result be better 
 for everybody? And how could he get out of it if he 
 wanted to? He could not stop and demand his promise 
 back from Donahue, for the old trooper rode last in the 
 line, and the Lieutenant was very strict about talking 
 during a march. He could — 
 
 Beyond the Lieutenant, up at the head of the arroyo, a 
 dozen splashes of fire flared at once, and the air was full of 
 the sibilant whine the other men had told him of. Almost 
 before the boy heard the crackle of the reports, the Lieu- 
 tenant had swung from his saddle and lay prone on the 
 earth. There had been no order to dismount, and Jerry 
 turned to look at the rest of the file. Every man was flat 
 on his stomach; the second horse behind him was down 
 and fighting, with a gurgle at its throat. 
 
 "Down! Get down, man!" fifteen voices called. As 
 he turned again, not yet understanding what had hap- 
 pened, something struck his hat and a section of the brim 
 fell across his eyes. The Lieutenant sprang to his feet 
 with an oath, took the boy by both shoulders and pulled 
 him headlong from his horse. His legs and feet struck 
 
STUDENTS' NARRATIVES 523 
 
 heavily; as he gathered himself it suddenly dawned on 
 him that this man had exposed himself to the Indians' fire 
 only to get him into comparative shelter. As the Lieu- 
 tenant crouched again, something struck him in the chest ; 
 Jerry heard the thud and the puff of the breath it knocked 
 out of him. The body fell forward and lay across his face. 
 Something warm and wet trickled into his eyes, and he 
 went sick and giddy as he knew what it was. Reckless of 
 the enemy, he tipped the corpse aside and reeled to his 
 feet with its revolver. 
 
 "Who shot him? Who shot him? Who shot him?" 
 he screamed to the prone figures around. "Who shot 
 him? I'UsendhimtoheU. I'll—" 
 
 Then he fell in a crumpled heap across the body of the 
 Lieutenant, with a bullet through his brain, for the 
 Apaches were picking off every man who moved in the 
 arroyo. 
 
 A Night of Tempest 
 
 My uncle Charley told me this while we were over- 
 hauling barrels in the doorway of his big stone apple- 
 bam on Isle La Motte in Champlain, one windy after- 
 noon in late August. The barn stands on a long hill 
 that slopes up from the shore all smooth and covered with 
 dark green orchards, and from our work we could look 
 out over the blowing apple trees on to the West Passage, 
 and see the whiteeaps come and go on the rough blue 
 water all the way across to the New York shore. 
 
 My Uncle Charley is a tall, lean old Scotchman with a 
 bushy white beard, steady gray eyes and a face all fur- 
 rowed under the tan with wrinkles that make you wonder 
 if the man behind them is a hard or a kindly one. You 
 would stiU be wondering after you had talked with him. 
 His speech is full of a strange, Calvinistic piety that 
 strikes you oddly enough at first, but which even I, a 
 heedless lad finishing out the tag-end of a college vacation 
 at the house of my unfamiliar kinsman, had come by the 
 
524 NARRATION 
 
 end of my first week's stay to respect as profoiindly sin- 
 cere. Beyond that I was quite at sea as to my uncle's 
 character. Shrewd I knew he was, an able farmer, sternly 
 upright and expecting uprightness in others. He was 
 unmarried and lived with one old housekeeper more 
 ancient than himself in the old farm house where my 
 mother had been born. It might have been a more kindly 
 feeling than his clannish Scotch sense of blood-nearness 
 that prompted him to have me with him for this visit 
 when he found out that I had no home but a great Eastern 
 University but, if it was he had never shown it by word 
 or sign. The coldness of his greeting had chilled me at 
 the first, but now I was beginning to see how great was 
 the caution with which he habitually spoke and moved, 
 and to wonder if, deep within the man, there was not a 
 great hidden tenderness. 
 
 So on this roaring August afternoon I tried in a crude 
 and boyish way to make him talk. I had found that my 
 uncle was the best company that was to be had in those 
 parts, and moreover he had been pleased with my offer to 
 help him ; so there we were, bringing the barrels from the 
 big stacks in the barn and turning them about, feeling 
 circumspectly inside for any nails that might damage 
 the fruit with which they were to be packed, and all 
 the while we kept up a desultory talk about a great many 
 things. He had been a sharpshooter in the Union army 
 throughout the war, and I tried to lure him into telling 
 me about some of his adventures, but got no more out of 
 him than that his deadliest work had been done before 
 Vicksburg, and a long disquisition upon God's wrath 
 at the crimes of slavery. The old man's terrible religion, 
 which colored all his speech, had made me ill at ease 
 at first after the reckless college talk, where there is little 
 enough heed of such things, but now I was used to the 
 ways of the man it bothered me little. 
 
 A low-lying tug out in the channel, with the smoke 
 from her high stack blowing down ahead of her in a 
 straight gray line and a quarter-mile string of lumber- 
 barges high out of water splashing along astern, all bound 
 down the lake for Canada, suggested the question of 
 
STUDENTS' NARRATIVES 525 
 
 smuggling. But the trouble about that goes on down 
 at the Canada line, twenty miles to the north, and before 
 the new railroad, twenty miles in the Islands was a very 
 long way for news to come. A long flat scow with a 
 yellow sail on a mast stepped midships on the leeward 
 gunwale put out suddenly from the near shore half a mile 
 up the lake from us with a horse and buggy on board. 
 I recognized the preposterous craft as the ferry-boat that 
 carried the traffic between the Island and the New York 
 side across the four miles of open water between. The 
 wind was coming straight down the lake, and she was 
 pointing into it and edging her way across almost crab- 
 fashion. 
 
 "She'll never make her landing over there in this 
 breeze, will she?" I observed. 
 
 There was reason in the remark, for the ridiculous wad- 
 dle with which she crunched over the waves would hardly 
 inspire confidence in her ability at windward work. 
 
 "She'll do it," my uncle said, "I've taken the boat 
 that ran here before that one across in five times this 
 wind." He paused and then added slowly, "It was the 
 night." 
 
 There was the promise of a story here, but it would not 
 do to hurry him. 
 
 "I hope you didn't do that often," I said after a pause. 
 "It must be running six feet high out there now, and the 
 breeze only came up this noon." 
 
 "I said it was five times this wind, and it was all of 
 that. Black as the night that hath no end, and I saw the 
 justice of God riding on the wings of the storm. I saw 
 men killed that night." 
 
 "When was it?" 
 
 "Years and years ago, before the war and before your 
 mother was born." He stopped again, and I heard him 
 mutter as if to himself: "And woe to that man by whom 
 the offence cometh. God is not mocked." I did not 
 reply, for indeed I was already picking up something of 
 his own reserve. He took another barrel and had ham- 
 mered flat the two nails he found in it before he went on. 
 "I might tell you about the way of the Maker that night 
 
S26 NARRATION 
 
 with some of his evil creatures : it would red you out of 
 some of your wild boys' ways to see what I saw then. I 
 was only a lad myself, a bit of a lad not so old as you." 
 
 I did not speak, and I do think he liked me the better 
 for it; that was the way of our clan. Then he went on 
 to tell me this story, slowly at first and with pauses for 
 the work, but soon we both forgot about that. 
 
 "It was in fifty-nine," he began, "in November when 
 I had just turned sixteen. One night when we had just 
 got in after chores and were sitting in the kitchen before 
 bedtime, old Steve Miller's little girl came running in all 
 out of breath and said her father was sick in bed and 
 wanted me to come down right away. Your grandfather 
 offered to go after the doctor, but she said no, the doctor 
 had been there, but her father said for me to come down 
 for he wanted to see me most special. So I put on my 
 hat and went along with her, wondering all the time what 
 he could be wanting with me that late in the night. The 
 open water around us makes frosts begin late on the 
 Islands ; that is what made them such a great orcharding 
 country later on, but we generally get a hard freeze before 
 Thanksgiving time, and there had just been one then. It 
 was getting warmer again; there was some wind coming 
 in puffs from the south and the sky was all low clouds, 
 but it was light enough to see the fringe of ice along the 
 lake shore and the little waves breaking along its outer 
 edge. 
 
 "I wondered a good deal what the old man would be 
 wanting me for. Your grandfather had queer notions for 
 a farmer and one of them was that a growing boy ought 
 not to be set at the hard work, so between chore times 
 I had gone down and helped Steve with the boat and 
 sometimes had taken her across by myself when the pas- 
 senger would lend a hand with the ropes, and so I had 
 got to sail her almost as well as the old man. I thought 
 maybe somebody might be wanting to go across tonight 
 and he down sick, but the little girl said that nobody had 
 been to the house all day but the doctor, and he had 
 driven back into Alburg by the other ferry. 
 
 "When the little girl and I got down to the house we 
 
srUDENTS' KAKRATIVES 527 
 
 found tho old nitui douhlod up in bod with I'houmatism. 
 He sont her out of tlio room aud tlion u\ado im> i-oino right 
 up oloso fo him. Tho hand of tho Lord was heavy upon 
 him, for he was all twisted aud kept his uunith tight shut 
 with the pain of it so that he spoke quick and sharp and I 
 had to stoop over him to hear what he was saying. 
 
 "' 'Laddie,' he said — he always called mo 'laddie,' but 
 now his Seotoh was dreadful tliick and ohoked-like — 
 haddie.' are ye a brave nionf 
 
 " 'I hope to be.' I said, and wondered what was com- 
 ing next. He hitehed himself up on one elbow a bit and 
 spoke lower and closer to my ear. 
 
 " "An" ye know how down South they're slavin' an' 
 beatin' an' killin' the black folks as are made in God's 
 imager 
 
 "I said 'Yes.' and stared at him, for I thought the old 
 man was going a mite queer. He took it well enough, 
 though, and said: 
 
 " "Kh, laddie, I know your heart is in the rioht place.' 
 And tlien he went on to tell why he wanted me. 
 
 "You will have heard of tlie way God-fearing folks all 
 over the North before the war had of lielping the black 
 people who had been delivered over unto the Accursed, 
 when they were trying to escape out of the hands of their 
 oppressor. They would hide them in their houses through 
 the day and tlien in the night carry them along to the 
 house of some other good man, and tlu>y would call it 
 the 'underground railway." I had heard all about this, 
 for tliey would take one of the slaves sometimes and then 
 the papers that wo got from Burlington once in the week 
 would be all full with a great talk about the wickedness 
 of the trade in men with immortal souls, but all that I 
 had ever heard of had boon over in Ohio and Pennsylvania 
 and I never thought of it coining near by us. But it 
 seems tliat lately they had made a way of coming through 
 the mountains in east Pouusylvania, then across the flat 
 farm land in middle New York, right under the eyes of 
 the men tiu\v kept watching in the eitios. and so to tho tail 
 of Lake Gkorge. From there they wonld oomo down tho 
 two lakes and land somowhore above Plattsbnrg and then 
 
S28 NARRATION 
 
 up through the mountains over in York State right across 
 from us here into Canada so as to miss the watch they 
 kept on the lake near the line. I knew afterwards that 
 only a few slaves were ever passed through by that way. 
 
 "Now the old man told me that there was a black boy 
 at a farm-house beyond Plattsburg whom they had 
 brought so far but didn't dare take through on the York 
 side because they had got word that the road was being 
 watched. They had sure word that he who called himself 
 the lad's master was following him and had got as far as 
 the lake in his chase. They had to get him over the line 
 at once and so they got Steve to agree to be at the York 
 landing at eleven this night with the boat to set them 
 over to the Island; they had seen to the other ferry, and 
 were going to drive across the Island and on through 
 Alburg into Canada. And now here was Steve down in 
 bed and that black boy looking to him for his freedom, and 
 would I take the boat over and keep his promise? 
 
 " 'You'll have a rough night of it,' he said, and indeed 
 you could hear the wind already whistling about the eaves 
 and shaking the house, but I was keen to start at once 
 though it was hardly nine yet. They might have to start 
 sooner than they thought, you see, with the master right 
 in the near. 
 
 " So I left the old man and hurried down to the landing 
 where the boat was, and the little girl held the door open 
 to light me, for I was afraid to show a lantern; at that 
 time of night anybody would have known that something 
 was up. The wind had been rising fast, and when I got 
 down by the landing out of the shine from the door I 
 could hear the waves washing loud on the fringe of ice, 
 though I could hardly see them, near as they were, for the 
 dark that had shut down with the heavy clouds. The 
 wind made a solemn sound, not whistling the way it does 
 around a house and sometimes in the trees, but it went 
 through the birches there by the landing with a rushing 
 noise that hardly changed, and the trees bent all straight 
 to the north and twisted and waved but never straightened 
 up at all. I noticed that, for it was diflEerent from the 
 
STUDENTS ' NARRA TIVES 529 
 
 gusty storms we get from the northwest. But I was keen 
 to be off and didn't stop to watch the trees long. 
 
 "The boat hadn't been out since the night before so 
 I had to break the thin ice around her with the big steer- 
 ing-sweep before I cast off. She was pretty much like 
 this boat that runs now, with the mast rigged at one side 
 and built to sail either end foremost. There was a line 
 of reef-points across the middle of the sail and I tied 
 them down before I hoisted it and then cast off. The 
 sail flapped over with a bang and she heeled away over 
 and went smashing out through the ice into the clear 
 water. Out there I had my hands full. On the shore 
 I hadn't known it was such an awful storm. The waves 
 hadn't got up big, but they were sharp and choppy and 
 the wind drove her over until the water would come 
 slopping in now and then when a big one struck her to 
 windward. I had to point her away up like they did 
 today. Man, but that was a storm! If it had come in 
 gusts it would have knocked the sail into bits in two 
 minutes. As it was I had to ease her up almost into it 
 time and again, and the wind took the tops right off the 
 waves that pounded her to windward and flung the water 
 in sheets full aboard. Before I had gone far I could see 
 that the waves were getting higher and by and by she 
 would take the solid water over the gunwale. A dozen 
 times the big steering-oar near jerked me overboard. It 
 was twenty feet long and so heavy that I could hardly lift 
 it into place, so that was no wonder. I lost sight in no 
 time of everything but the whitecaps and the lighter 
 places in the clouds and there was nothing to steer by, 
 so I had to point her as high into it as I could and chance 
 it. 
 
 "AU of a sudden I saw the waves breaking on the 
 shore just ahead, and before I could swing her clear into 
 the wind she had wallowed across some smoother water 
 and smashed against a pebble beach. It knocked me 
 clean off my feet and into the bottom of the boat when she 
 struck, but she was planked with two inches of oak and 
 it didn't break her. I got the sail down and a rope around 
 a tree without any more damage and then took a look 
 
S30 NARRATION 
 
 around. I found that she had come ashore not more than 
 ten rods from her regular landing, and the little point 
 of land just up the lake broke the sea so that she had 
 been saved from going to pieces, and she had come straight 
 to her regular landing-place. They hadn't brought the 
 black man there yet, and though I listened hard for them 
 I couldn't hear the wheels coming; you would hardly 
 expect to hear them until they were close by on a night 
 like that. I got her close up on the beach where she 
 would pound as little as might be and began to watch for 
 the men. 
 
 "I had no notion how long I had been crossing; it 
 seemed a good many hours, and I was worrying to myself 
 for fear that they had been there and I failing them, and 
 that the black man had been taken. It was a solemn 
 thought to think that a fellow creature's freedom might 
 have been lost for my failure, though I knew that the boat 
 could not have come across any sooner and it was not in 
 the right my fault. I thought about my father and mother 
 at home and how maybe they were worrying that I did not 
 come back; they would likely suppose that I was on the 
 lake, though they would not know my errand. I won- 
 dered too about the black man. Though I had read of 
 them in the papers^ and had heard folks talk of them, I 
 had never seen one, and, boy fashion, I was as much 
 anxious to know what sort of a person the lad might be as 
 worrying how I should ever get out of such a dreadful 
 storm alive. 
 
 "AH of sudden I thought I heard the sound of a gun 
 away down the lake through the great noise of the storm, 
 and I ran up on the low knoll behind the landing and 
 looked about. There was nothing to see but the water 
 breaking in great white sheets on the point and the sweet- 
 fern bushes about me all blown flat with the wind that 
 almost took me off my feet. It had begun to rain, but I 
 was soaked with the spray I got in the coming over so I 
 didn't mind that. But now I began to see what a wind 
 it was. It hadn't risen to speak of since I had crossed, 
 but the waves were twice as high ; I have never seen them 
 any higher in sixty years, and where I could see them go 
 
STUDENTS' NARRATIVES S31 
 
 running by the end of the point they were all white foam 
 at the top and went curling over like breakers. But 
 though I waited and listened maybe a quarter of an hour 
 I saw nor heard nothing of the men with the black man. 
 
 "Then I went back to the boat and watched the sea 
 growing and growing and heard the boat pound on the 
 stones of the beach, and that sheltered by the point, until 
 it seemed as if she would break open. How I should ever 
 take her out on to that water I could not see ; it looked to 
 be sure death, and then I fell to wondering how I had 
 ever come through it getting across, and most of all how 
 I had come straight to the only place on that shore where 
 I might save the black man, and I not knowing in the least 
 where I was steering. And yet of course I did know, and 
 boy as I was I could see plain that it was the God that 
 holds the great sea and the lakes, too, in the hollow of his 
 hand. It was nothing but the Lord Almighty that could 
 save a man that would be seeming to tempt his wrath on 
 that water, and He had shown that His mighty arm was 
 stretched out over me for the saving of that runaway 
 black, and so I knew that if we had to put out again 
 He would show forth His might yet again. But it was a 
 fearful storm, and while I knelt there and prayed that 
 we might all be saved from the danger of the water, I 
 asked, too, that we might not have to set forth on it again. 
 
 "The night went on and the black man- did not come. 
 Twice I went up on the knoll and looked and listened, 
 but I saw nothing more than I had before. Then I sat by 
 the boat and watched the white waves go past out beyond 
 the point — for it was getting a bit lighter, whether from 
 the clouds getting thin or from the day I did not know — 
 and as I looked and saw the great might and power of the 
 Maker, and heard the wind as you might say shouting for 
 gladness at its strength, I fell to thinking, all solemnly 
 and not at all afraid, but as if the storm and the moving 
 waters were only like me, for indeed we were both in the 
 hands of the Everlasting. And for all it seems to be a 
 waste that men and ships should sink as they do in the 
 storms, yet I thought that as the Creator hath made every- 
 thing for some purpose it must be that they are only the 
 
532 NARRATION 
 
 mighty ways that He hath of doing His work. And then as 
 I saw more and more the strength of the storm, I thought 
 that if I was like them, though a mere mortal man, I too 
 was an instrument of God's hand, and in the long hours 
 that I waited I purposed that if ever the time came I 
 would be, like them, strong, and if there was need, fearful 
 and cruel. 
 
 "The night went by and it began to come daylight 
 a little, and still they had not come. I was cold and wet, 
 but the great thoughts kept me from feeling it, and as 
 I sat there I even hoped that they would come and that I 
 might go out on the lake and try the mercy of the Lord. 
 All at once I heard a horse's feet and wheels, and a 
 buggy with two men in it drove over the knoll at a run 
 and came stumbling down to the landing. The man who 
 was driving was a heavy man, a farmer, and the other 
 was a boy about my age but slimmer and better dressed 
 than most folks I had seen. I wondered where the 
 black man was and hurried to ask them. The driver took 
 one look at the lake and then said, all excited : 
 
 " 'Is there a road along the shore here?' I said 'No,' 
 and then blurted out without thinking that it might be 
 somebody else: 
 
 " 'Where is the black man?' He looked at me quick 
 and said: 
 
 " 'He's here.' So Steve sent you over. They're only 
 half a mile behind us; they'll be at the turn by now. 
 How can we get out of this ? ' 
 
 "I was glad at that, for I saw that God would show 
 forth his might, and I told him there was no way but 
 by the lake. I could hardly believe that that was the black 
 man, for the lad was as white as myself. 
 
 "The man stared at what I said. 
 
 " 'Boy,' he said, 'are ye crazy? No boat that's on the 
 lake could float a minute out there. Quick, can we drive 
 through the fields back to the road?' and he tightened 
 the reins as if he was going on. 
 
 '.'I stopped him, for it was all sweet-fern bushes and 
 plowed fields there, and just then we heard the noise 
 of hoofs and wheels on the road. There was no time to 
 
STUDENTS' NARRATIVES 533 
 
 stop then, and I ran to the boat a3p.d pulled up the sail. 
 The boy followed and I cut the rope and pried her oflf 
 from the beach with the sweep. The other man tried 
 to stop us, and indeed it must have looked to him like 
 taking our own lives, but we were oflf and pitching across 
 the quiet water before he could think of anything to say. 
 I brought the sail across the boat, for there was nothing 
 to do but run from that wind, and I hadn't got the sheet 
 trimmed before the boy gave a cry, and a gun went off on 
 shore and a bullet went by my head. We could hardly 
 see ashore, for the light was still bad, but in the glimpse 
 I had time for I saw that there was another buggy on the 
 crest of the knoll and a man standing in it with a big 
 pistol, and he wore a wide felt hat. We lost them in no 
 time in the dark and the rain and then I could think of 
 nothing but the steering. 
 
 "You would think that after the awful time I had had 
 coming across at the first there would be no chance of the 
 boat going through this sea that was three times as big. 
 But it had grown so that now she would go clear up on 
 each wave and then down into the hollow instead of rock- 
 ing about on two at once and shipping their spray. But 
 every time she came down she would plunge her bow 
 under and take in water, and at the crests it would come 
 over her sides. The wind was falling or she would have 
 been buried in the foam and spray, but she went on, 
 taking in water with every wave and sometimes getting 
 as much as half a barrel-full at once. I set the boy to 
 bailing with a tin basin there was aboard, but the water 
 kept gaining on him and I saw that we could never keep 
 afloat to cross the Cafiada line. It was foolish to think of 
 making the Island, for we must have run half-way by 
 already and if we missed it we would be sure to run into 
 the reefs off the north end. So I kept her as close to the 
 York shore as I dared so that if the worst should happen 
 we might by God's great help get safe to land. But all 
 the while, though I made these plans, I was really think- 
 ing of the might of the Maker of it all and not the least 
 frightened, but glad of His strength. 
 
534 NARRATION 
 
 ' ' We had run perhaps half an hour, and there was six or 
 seven inches of water washing about in the bottom of the 
 boat and she was beginning to ride heavier for it. It had 
 been getting lighter so that I could see the York shore but 
 not plain enough to make out where we were. The Island 
 was all hidden with the dark and rain. All at once there 
 was a bend in the land and I knew that we had got to 
 the point that runs out in the lake over there to the north 
 just this side of the line. I had a hard time getting her 
 swung away on the new course ; I was afraid at first that 
 I should have to bring her about, and had just got the 
 sheet where I wanted it — ^the wind was going down fast 
 now, and made that easier — when I looked astern. The 
 lake was all high waves with hollows between them so 
 deep that when the boat went down into one I couldn't 
 see near out of it. Just then we were going over a crest, 
 and as I looked back I saw a boat right behind us and not 
 more than thirty rods away. It was only a bit of a skiff 
 that you wouldn't think would ride a minute in such a 
 sea; when I got the glimpse of her she was half out of 
 water as she came over the top of a wave. She had a 
 little three-cornered sail and there was a tall man standing 
 in the stern and he had a wide felt hat that the wind bent 
 about his head. Then we went down in the hollow and 
 when we came up on the next wave I could only make 
 out the tip of her sail. "We were taking in more water on 
 the new course, and when I looked back the next time she 
 was going down a wave not half as far as before. 
 
 "At the bottom of the next wave the water came 
 aboard in a solid sheet half-way to my knees as I stood 
 up on her stern. It was a foot deep in her now, and 
 three more like that would fill her. I eased away to run 
 her ashore on the Point ; it would be a better chance with 
 the breakers than drowning in the open lake. Just as I 
 was telling the boy to ease off on the sheet he gave a cry 
 and stared astern. There was a skiff coming down the 
 wave behind us as we swung up to the crest of the one we 
 were on. We went down with a plunge, and as we 
 reached the bottom she came over the top and down after 
 us. Her bow drove under the overhang of our stern and 
 
STUDENTS' NARRATIVES 535 
 
 we came down and crushed her. The man came forward 
 over the seats in her as she went down and aboard us 
 with one jump. I never saw a mortal man so angry. His 
 eyes were all red and there was a snarl about his mouth 
 like a dog's. He pulled himself to his feet and went 
 straight at the boy. The lad saw the man's face and he 
 drew himself up before the mast, for he had nothing to 
 defend himself with and he saw that his time had come. 
 The man took one step and had him by the throat with 
 one hand holding him against the mast. For a second he 
 held him there, then put up a pistol that he held in his 
 other hand, and pointed it at the lad 's head, and shot him. 
 The body fell into the bottom of the boat, and as the head 
 struck against the mast I saw his brains splash out of the 
 great red hole like milk out of a pitcher. I was only a 
 lad and I had never seen a man die and I went all sick 
 and the oar jerked out of my hands. 
 
 "But God used even my womanishness for His own 
 good will. As I lost the oar, I lost my footing, and fell 
 down into the water in the bottom by the body. The 
 boat came about in a flash and the big boom swung across 
 as she came over and struck the man square in the chest. 
 I heard the ribs crack, and saw his body flatten out with 
 the blow, and then he went backwards overboard and 
 sank like a stone in the lake, and his wide hat was float- 
 ing on the water until the sail covered it as the boat went 
 over. 
 
 "When she capsized it threw me into the water; but 
 I hung to the rigging, and when I found I was like to 
 faint with the long watching and the work, I tied myself 
 to the mast, and there they found me when the scow came 
 ashore on the point two hours later. But from that day I 
 was a different man. I had seen the awful wickedness of 
 man and the weakness of human justice — ^for the law 
 would not have punished the man for the murder he did 
 that night — and the sight had sobered me. And then too 
 I had seen the might of God's justice, and I had. felt the 
 strength of the storm. From that day I knew that God's 
 curse was on the slave-owners, and when the call came for 
 fighting men I went with the first. I had some skill with 
 
536 NARRATION 
 
 the rifle and they made me a sharpshooter. I struck them 
 down as God would have them. Twelve I killed in one 
 day at Antietam, and forty-seven in the trenches of Vicks- 
 burg. All told they were two hundred and thirty-six. 
 And woe to that man by whom the offence cometh. God 
 is not mocked." 
 
APPENDIX 
 FAULTY COMPOSITIONS 
 
 DeFoe's Diction in "Robinson Crusoe" 
 
 Inasmuch as Daniel DeFoe was the first exponent of that 
 style of writing known as the novel, it is not surprising 
 that he overstepped the limits, as regards the subject- 
 matter and the use of words and phrases, which are now 
 prescribed by the best authorities. There are instances, 
 pretty frequent ones at that, in which DeFoe makes 
 Crusoe soliloquize on various aspects of religion, thus 
 breaking up the continuity of the story to a very consid- 
 erable degree. Of course, these passages tend to picture 
 DeFoe himself as a ^ery conscientious man, but it does 
 not seem proper to me to put them in a book like "Robin- 
 son Crusoe. ' ' The movement of the tale is rapid, although 
 the numerous descriptions, however well-done, interrupt 
 its thread. DeFoe's use of words, now obsolete or used 
 in an entirely different sense, is very marked : e. g., "eat" 
 for "ate." His idioms and phrases, many of them, are 
 not in good use now, although they were undoubtedly in 
 his time. His manner of expression is vivid, though sim- 
 ple, and although he takes a great number of words to 
 express a simple idea. The passages referring to Crusoe 's 
 doubts as to the advisability of interfering with the canni- 
 bal's feasts show a certain reflective attitude in DeFoe's 
 mind, as well as his strong belief in God. However, in 
 spite of these obvious defects, I think DeFoe acquitted 
 himself very well for a first attempt at a style of writing 
 hitherto unattempted. 
 
 537 
 
538 APPENDIX 
 
 Conclusion of a Theme on the Geogkaphical 
 Discoveries of the Fifteenth Century 
 
 Columbus was one of these navigators with the belief 
 that he could reach India by sailing directly westward — 
 for he believed that the earth was round. He set out 
 from Spain in the year 1492 and discovered later in the 
 same year, one of a group of islands which are called the 
 Bahama Islands. But he thought that he had discovered 
 an island lying just off the coast of Asia. And he died 
 believing to the last that he had found a westward passage 
 to India. What he had discovered was America, the land 
 which was to play so important a part in the world's 
 history. 
 
 Europe was astounded by the great discoveries. And 
 the reports which were brought back from the new lands 
 resulted in a changing of the great commercial centres 
 from the Mediterranean ports to ports on the Atlantic 
 Ocean. Colonies were planted in the new world which had 
 to be protected from the other countries. So at home new 
 offices were added to the government which now became 
 more intricate than it had ever been before. 
 
 Ocean Waves 
 
 If one has never seen the waves along the shore after 
 a big storm, he has missed a fine spectacle. Some of the 
 prettiest sights I have ever viewed were big ocean waves 
 pounding on the beach near my home. The sandy shores 
 of the ocean are generally not as slanting as the inland 
 bodies of water. This is accounted for in the fact that 
 the larger waves break farther from the shore, and the 
 rush of the water which follows gains a momentum whose 
 force is nearly horizontal. It is said that if the wind 
 should cease to blow in every part of the ocean for three 
 days, there would be no waves. I have never heard that 
 this has ever occurred. 
 
FAULTY COMPOSITIONS 539 
 
 Ocean waves are extremely dangerous to bathe in on 
 account of the "undertow"; a term given to the current 
 of water from a receding wave, which runs back under the 
 next wave. 
 
 The Educational Value of the Play 
 
 The wandering montebanks easily gather a crowd of 
 people about them by exhibiting a few tricks, or showing 
 some monstrosity of nature, because people's curiosity 
 is easily aroused, and they are attracted, by anything 
 which they can see. The early monks understood this 
 element in human nature, and sought to teach the people 
 about the Bible by performing miracle plays on large 
 wooden platforms which were moved about in the streets. 
 Thus the first attempts were made to educate people 
 through the medium of the play. 
 
 Long strides have been made from the time when a sign 
 was hung by the side of the stage, to indicate to the peo- 
 ple whether they were looking at the forest of Arden, or 
 at a street scene in Venice, to the present time, when 
 every play has its complement of scenery. When the cur- 
 tain goes up, each new scene has a surprise ; it may be a 
 quaint German street with high, gable-roofed houses, and 
 brightly dressed peasants, or the kitchen of a New 
 England farmer's home, with the mother darning stock- 
 ings, while a kitten plays with the ball of yarn under the 
 table. The costumes have an element of surprise, and 
 lend an added interest to the scene which is revealed. 
 They may be either the slashed velvets of the seventeenth 
 century, or the brown homespun suits of the Continental 
 army. Certainly every one who saw the "Street Scene in 
 Madrid," in "A Royal Army" with Marita in her Gypsy 
 costume, singing to the music of her tambourine, while 
 the gayly dressed people stood about the picturesque 
 street, would have a better idea of the life of the Span- 
 iards, and their customs. A good idea of the magnificence 
 of the dress worn at the time of Louis XVI., by the 
 
540 APPENDIX ' 
 
 nobility in both France and England, is gotten from the 
 beautiful costumes in ' ' Beaucaire. ' ' The impression made 
 by a play is strengthened by the personality of the actor, 
 whose interpretation of the role which he is playing, may 
 make a character full of interest, and reveal hidden 
 meanings in the character, which is seen through his 
 temperanient. 
 
 A person's knowledge is extended, and his ideas broad- 
 ened by play going. The spectator unconsciously gets 
 away from himself, and the little world which surrounds 
 him, while his thoughts are carried across the sea to other 
 countries, and customs, or to the lives of other people. 
 Almost all sides of human life are depicted upon the stage. 
 The historical periods have been well represented 
 especially the time of the Revolutionary war here in 
 America. So common have these been that every play-goer 
 is familiar with the sight of the Continental soldiers, in 
 their blue, and buff uniforms, and of the life in the South 
 on the plantations before the "War." 
 
 The play takes an important place in our modern life, 
 and it behooves every one to know something about it. 
 Some people who attend the theatre regularly, although 
 they have not read widely, are intelligent about many of 
 the works of great authors, are conversant with the great 
 historical periods, have a good idea of the life led in 
 different countries, and a knowledge of the leading actors 
 before the public. 
 
 No one can attend a good play without becoming more 
 intelligent, having the mind stimulated, the imagination 
 quickened and the mental horizon enlarged. 
 
 Carding Machinery — ^Its Strtjcture and Use 
 
 The first operation in the manufacture of cotton cloth 
 is putting the raw cotton into the picker machine; here 
 it is torn apart and conveyed to the spreading machine, 
 where it is spread into a "coil of lap" and is then ready 
 for the carding machine. But before describing the man- 
 
FA ULTY COMPOSITIONS 541 
 
 ner in which the cotton is treated here, let me describe the 
 building of these machines. 
 
 There are many different machines, and each year finds 
 many new improvements of those of the former year, yet 
 they are all of nearly the same kind considering it from 
 a material point of view. These machines are about ten 
 feet and a half long, but only three and a half feet wide. 
 Large iron cylinders ten feet and a half in circumference 
 take up the greater part of the machine. These large 
 cylinders which I have last mentioned are nearly three and 
 a half feet in length, and in some machines are replaced 
 by a great number of smaller ones. These frames as well 
 as the large cylinders are of cast iron, but the smaller 
 ones are generally of wood. The large cylinders have 
 steel chains fastened on gearing and sprocketed wheels at 
 both ends of it; to this chain are attached what are 
 called top flats, — ^long triangular pieces of iron covered on 
 one side with card clothing. Doffers, which are now gen- 
 erally constructed of cast iron, are not as preferable as 
 those which are made of zinc, since the card clothing can 
 be tacked on instead of being put on with glue. The most 
 important is putting the sheet cards on the main cylinder, 
 since care must be taken to fasten them on as tight as they 
 will bear without tearing the leather. Calfskin is used in 
 some cases and still greater care must be used for if it is 
 not put on very tight, it is apt to stretch and become slack 
 in grinding. 
 
 The card clothing which is used in covering cards is 
 filled with wire staples or teeth of the best quality (gen- 
 erally). A roller about six inches in diameter and about 
 three feet and a half long is covered with card clothing 
 having teeth nearly four times as long as that on the flats 
 or cylinder and is called a stripper. The teeth of this 
 small cylinder stand contrary to those on the main cylin- 
 der and run opposite. The teeth of the top flats and cards 
 stand in a different direction to those on the main 
 cylinder. 
 
 One very important operation in the structure of the 
 cards is the grinding of these teeth ; emery rollers which 
 are used for this purpose are about seven or eight inches 
 
542 APPENDIX 
 
 in diameter and always two or three inches wider than the 
 card cylinders, so that they may traverse an inch each way 
 on the cylinder and grind each flat evenly; this travers- 
 ing is produced by a crooked iron strap, which fitting 
 between the rims of the pulley will move the emery roller 
 longitudinally and around at the same time and the time 
 required to grind a set of cards is about a day. If the 
 parts of the clothing of the cylinders, flats or fillets are not 
 even and level, the fiUet is easily broken and then drops 
 into the card, when carding the cotton and revolving at 
 the rate of about one hundred and forty revolutions a 
 minute, and causes great disaster ; it has rightly been said 
 that the breaking of 'these fillets is one of the miseries of 
 cotton manufacture since about forty or fifty dollars 
 worth of damage is caused by each fillet which falls. 
 After the cotton has left the spreading machine it is car- 
 ried along to the carding machine in a " coil of lap ' ' and 
 here it is, as we may call it, shredded, that is the fibres of 
 the cotton are disentangled and are laid lengthwise, par- 
 allel to each other. 
 
 Carding consists mostly in the reversed action of two 
 opposite surfaces which are studded with wire hooks. 
 "When many small cylinders in these machines are used 
 it is for coarse yarn and cotton, but when one or two 
 small cylinders are used it is for fine yarn and cotton. 
 Carding then is one of the most important operations in 
 the manufacture of cloth, since it regulates the size and 
 strength of the threads of which cloth is made. 
 
 Why I AM A Baptist 
 
 While I am giving my reasons for being a Baptist, I 
 wish it to be distinctly understood that I speak for myself 
 only; for the Baptists are an independent class, each 
 having his own opinions and his own reasons for them. 
 Although my opinions are entirely my own, yet I shall give 
 as reasons for them what the Baptists as a class believe. 
 
 Baptists generally agree with the other evangelical 
 
FAULTY COMPOSITIONS 54 
 
 bodies of Christians in their belief as to the Being am 
 Attributes of God, the Inspiration of the Scriptures, th( 
 Divinity and Atonement of Christ, the Necessity of Regen 
 eration and the power and work of the Holy Spirit. Th( 
 principal distinction between their beliefs and those o: 
 other denominations is found in their views of the abso 
 lute authority of God's word, and of the Church ; its mem 
 bership, and its ordinances. Whatever is taught in the Nev 
 Testament this denomination accepts without question 
 On the other hand they reject all laws which spring fron 
 tradition or ecclesiastical authority. Many local churches 
 have what they term Articles of Faith, and many have 
 nothing of the kind. As a denomination, Baptists, how 
 ever, have never put forth an authorized expression o: 
 their principles and practices in the form of a creed 
 The New Testament is their creed, and they have nothing 
 else to give form or limits to their beliefs. 
 
 The Baptists also believe that the New Testameni 
 Churches were companies of baptized believers in Christ 
 with pastors, or bishops, and deacons as their only officers 
 These were convenanted together for worship and relig 
 ious work, supreme in the government of their own affairs 
 and independent of all outside control ; and so the Baptis 
 minister of today is neither a priest nor a ruler. He is 
 simply a shepherd and teacher. All members of his churcl 
 are equals, and the whole body is self-governed. Then 
 too, the Baptists protest that the State has nothing to d( 
 with the control of religion; and, therefore they have 
 always opposed the union of Church and State. 
 
 All Baptists believe that the true Christian baptism is 
 the immersion of a believer in Christ in water in the name 
 of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The records of bap 
 tisms in the New Testament, and the allusions to it as i 
 burial, leave no room for doubt as to what the primitiv( 
 mode of baptism was. Then if one looks up the meaning 
 of the word "Baptist" in any Greek lexicon, he will fine 
 that it means "to immerse." The Christian scholarshij 
 of all the world upholds the belief that immersion was th( 
 only baptism practised during the first thirteen centuries 
 In connection with baptism comes the question of infani 
 
544 APPENDIX 
 
 christening. The Baptists can find no reason for believ- 
 ing in this act which other churches believe in, because 
 the New Testament gives no proof that it was ever done 
 in Christ's time. 
 
 One of the strongest points of the Baptist faith is the 
 close communion service. For they believe that the Lord 's 
 Supper is an ordinance of the Church, in which, by the 
 bread and wine, Christ's disciples commemorate his 
 sufferings and death in obedience to his command : ' ' This 
 do in remembrance of me." The Baptists have ever pro- 
 tested most firmly against the doctrine that either baptism 
 or the Lord's Supper is in any way a means of salvation. 
 They have always declared that only those who have 
 already become Christians are proper persons for bap- 
 tism and the Lord's Supper. 
 
 The motto of the Baptists is loyalty to the word of God. 
 Because I believe as they do in the authority of God's 
 word, his Church, its Members, and its Ordinances, I am 
 a Baptist. 
 
 The Effect of the Newspaper on our Reading 
 
 In these days of advanced learning and endless rushing, 
 one does not always spend much time reading the good 
 authors and the classical literature for, as anybody would 
 answer, "there is no time." The newspaper and the his- 
 torical novel have found their way into everyone's house 
 and the good old authors have been obliged to wait their 
 turn. 
 
 The life of the present day is a great contrast to that 
 of the time of Dickens or Shakespeare, for now one rushes 
 from sunrise until midnight. Glancing at the newspaper 
 is a very convenient way of finding out what is going on 
 in the world, and, in order to appear well educated, one is 
 obliged to know the present events pretty well. The news- 
 paper not only contains an account of what is going on in 
 the different countries but it also takes up, usually in a 
 sensational way, all the crimes and fires in the neighbor- 
 
FAULTY COMPOSITIONS S4S 
 
 hood. The English in the reporter's accounts in an 
 ordinary journal is very careless and slovenly as well as 
 being vulgar. A reporter in his haste often coins new 
 words or uses old words in a new way, with the result that 
 a constant reader of the paper almost invariably spoils 
 his vocabulary. Why should this careless and vulgar 
 English be allowed to take the place of all the good old 
 writers who spent so much time and pains with their 
 work? 
 
 It has often been argued that the constant reading of a 
 newspaper causes hasty reading on the part of the 
 peruser. If it wiU cause only the hasty reading of the 
 newspaper, it is all right, but when it begins to cause 
 hasty reading of good books, something ought to be done. 
 Each article in a journal is preceded by headlines which 
 act as an outline of the article itself, so that by glancing 
 over the headlines one has the thought of the article. For 
 newspaper reading this is a very good plan, but when one 
 applies the same method to the works of Dickens, it is not 
 so good. We are too apt to come down to breakfast, 
 snatch up the paper, glance through the headlines, rush 
 off to work, and, on coming home in the evening, snatch 
 up some new historical novel that every one is talking 
 about, glance it through, and then rush off to a dance or 
 some other entertainment. Of course that causes very 
 hasty reading; but is it the fault of the newspaper? I 
 think it is the fault of the times, for every one is living 
 on their nerves with no time for a quiet association with 
 good literature but always time to read modern trash. 
 
 The editorial page of the high class paper is usually 
 good, and, as it stands to reason that a well educated 
 man should keep in touch with the times, there is no harm 
 to be found in reading the editor's comments. The editor 
 of a good journal is always careful to use the best English 
 and to deal only with the most important subjects of the 
 day. Although the editor of a modern newspaper is not 
 a Dickens or a Macaulay, still he is well educated and it is 
 worth while for any one who wishes to keep up with the 
 times to read his writings. 
 
 There are a great many classes of newspapers, beginning 
 
546 APPENDIX 
 
 with the "Yellow Journal" and going up to the very best. 
 It is hardly necessary to say that in this age of, one could 
 almost say low morals and could certainly say carelessness, 
 in this age of carelessness the best is none too good. The 
 "Yellow Journal" deals with everything in a most sensa- 
 tional way, sells for one cent and therefore boasts of a 
 very large circulation. The best paper deals with every 
 thing in a fair and even manner and, let us be ashamed 
 to say it, although costing not more than three cents, it 
 has a much smaller circulation than its sensational 
 cousin. 
 
 So among the better class of people the editorials of a 
 good newspaper have no ill effects on the reader nor do 
 they cause hasty reading, but those who read carefully 
 the sensational paper usually spoil their vocabulary. If 
 there is any doubt whether we are well enough educated 
 to prefer the quiet, unobtrusive paper let us entirely 
 avoid newspapers until we are better educated. 
 
 The Use of High Power Rifles in the Woods 
 
 At the close of each season set apart by law for the legal 
 shooting of deer and the other big game of the forest, it is 
 customary for the newspapers to present statements con- 
 taining the list of casualties during the past season. A 
 careful observer will notice that the list is growing larger, 
 year by year. He will also note that the list swells propor- 
 tionately with the more general adoption of the high power 
 rifle. This state of affairs should be carefully investigated. 
 It seems that something ought to be done to prevent this 
 unnecessary yearly murder of so many persons. 
 
 As has been noted, the death list increases propor- 
 tionately with the adoption of the high power rifle. This 
 seems to point pretty clearly to the new gun as the cause 
 of most of the mischief. If we compare the modern high 
 power gun with the more old-fashioned rifle, we imme- 
 diately see great differences. The newer gun is of very 
 small calibre. This quality alone accounts for a "multi- 
 
FAULTY COMPOSITIONS 547 
 
 tude of sins. ' ' The explosive which is used in the modern 
 gun, burns very rapidly. Putting these two qualities 
 together, it is seen that the lead slug of the old guns would 
 be partly melted while in the barrel of the piece, by the 
 tremendous friction. This would lead to woful results. 
 The rifling in the barrel would become clogged with lead 
 and rendered nearly useless. To prevent this occurrence, 
 the lead slug is furnished with a nickel "jacket." Let us 
 discuss two of these points more in detail. Owing to the 
 small calibre of the high power rifle, the slug possesses 
 tremendous piercing power, enabling it to pass through a 
 small sized tree, and still have power enough left to cause 
 instant death to any unfortunate man or beast in its path. 
 There is also another disadvantage in relation to the size of 
 the bullet. If a deer is not killed instantly, it will run at 
 full speed as far as its strength allows, or, in other words, 
 until the loss of blood has been so great that the creature 
 faints. A small calibre bullet makes a very small hole in 
 the flesh, obviously letting very little blood escape. This 
 means that, unless an animal is instantly killed, it will 
 escape its pursuers and die a lingering death from a 
 gangrenous wound. This should be enough to prevent a 
 sportsman, — if he is one in the true sense of the word — 
 from using the new rifles. But still more is to come. The 
 impact of the small nickel-jacketed slugs is not a blow, but 
 rather of a cutting nature. If a bone is struck, it is not 
 shattered, as would be the case if a "mushroom" lead 
 bullet had been used, but a small hole is drilled out by the 
 bidlet, and the bone becomes diseased. This, also, results 
 in a death by slow torture. Another very good reason 
 against the use of this class of firearms is that it is not 
 needed in the woods. If a hunter were trailing the Big 
 Horn sheep in the Rocky Mountains, he would need a rifle 
 with an exceedingly long range, but in the woods it is 
 impossible to see as far as this. These seem to be good 
 reasons for the return to the old low pressure rifle. 
 
 We have seen the great disadvantages of this class of 
 firearms, and now the question is, "What can be done to 
 prevent the killing of men at great distance by careless 
 hunters, and the infliction of lingering, agonizing deaths 
 
548 APPENDIX 
 
 upon the wild creatures of the forest?" There is but one 
 thing to be done which will offer adequate protection to 
 all concerned. A law should be passed, forbidding the use 
 of rifles having a range over a certain specified distance. If 
 such a law were passed and rigidly enforced, the death lists 
 in the papers would number less victims, and our big game 
 would be spared much needless pain. 
 
 FOHEST FlKES 
 
 Eighteen years ago I first visited the Adirondacks, and 
 with one exception have spent there some part of each 
 year since. Ignorance and neglect have wrought sad 
 changes since the first year I tramped over the trails of 
 the North Woods. Hardly a year passes without a few 
 weeks of dry weather, dry enough to prepare the ground 
 for the engine spark or the careless camper or the mali- 
 cious "out of a job" and hungering for the wages of a fire 
 fighter on State pay. 
 
 This summer, with my wife, I drove through a whirl 
 of fire and smoke during the month of July between Paul 
 Smith's and Blue Mountain. Half an hour after we crossed 
 the St. Regis River bridge it burned away and fell into the 
 stream. The operations of one corporation notorious as 
 a company that ruthlessly destroys in lumbering had left 
 the usual slash of tree tops and dead brush with the 
 inevitable consequence. Along the Spring Cove grade on 
 the New York and Ottawa division of the New York 
 Central hardly a day passes without a fire caused by 
 freight or passenger trains trying to make the grade. 
 
 A letter to Governor Hughes resulted in the sending 
 down to Blue Mountain of the chief fire warden and the 
 local warden, together with Mr. William Rockefeller's 
 superintendent, John Redwood. The Governor showed an 
 active interest in the prevention of further fires, and Com- 
 missioner Whipple has labored in the face of discouraging 
 ignorance and malicious indifference. The people who live 
 in this region appear dazed or stupid. They permit fires 
 
FAULTY COMPOSITIONS 549 
 
 to spread which could readily be extinguished by prompt 
 attention. When the fire becomes a disaster there is a 
 great "how de do." Gangs with shovels and buckets 
 descend upon the scene of danger or are "ordered" there 
 and work to extinguish the blaze — that is, some of them 
 work. The rest work when the boss is looking, and it is a 
 common spectacle to find them lying on the ground watch- 
 ing the fire. 
 
 Why the railroads, which spend thousands of dollars to 
 coax people up in the Adirondacks, are so indifferent to 
 the destruction is hard to understand. Everything accom- 
 plished by the State has only been done by practically 
 taking the railroads by the neck and forcing them into 
 line. Of course the proposition to remove "burned or 
 fallen timber ' ' is viewed with suspicion. How many addi- 
 tional acres of burned or fallen timber would result from 
 the enactment of such permission ? 
 
 Instead of conserving the trees — millions of them, each 
 in itself a guarantee of natural water storage ; instead of 
 conserving the flow of many streams on the watersheds 
 far from the natural sources — ^the attempt was made to 
 construct storage dams at the headwaters by raising the 
 levels of mountain lakes, flooding valuable land, destroy- 
 ing millions of yoTxng trees. 
 
 Wherever the ownership of large tracts of forest land 
 has been administered with a broad policy, and not the 
 narrow desire to punish any one who sets foot thereon as 
 a trespasser, the owner thereof has found cooperation, and 
 when fires threatened this land the native was there to 
 aid in saving property. On the other hand, those whose 
 policy has been of exclusion have suffered a thousandfold 
 thereby. Contrast the opposite policies of Paul Smith and 
 William G. Rockefeller, also contrast the broad green acres 
 of the former with the forest of the latter. It is common 
 knowledge that when the great fires of five years ago 
 swept this section of Franklin County Paul Smith had 
 plenty of aid and saved his park. The gray fire line may 
 now be seen where it was stopped on St. Regis mountain 
 where it swept the Rockefeller park. Mr. Rockefeller advo- 
 cates the use of oil on the roads running in this region, and 
 
SSO APPENDIX 
 
 it can hardly be fair to accuse him of any but unselfish 
 interest in this direction. 
 
 In a communication a few years ago he said that the use 
 of oil would probably be objected to by the railroads, but 
 that they might be compelled by law. He realized at the 
 time the large responsibility they assumed in spreading 
 fire by the throwing of sparks from the engine. 
 
 A uniformed force, telephone systems, observation sta- 
 tions, roads, and a law taxing counties in which fires occur, 
 should receive support and would be the means of saving 
 our beautiful natural parks. Otherwise, the loss to future 
 generations and ourselves will be inestimable. "We must 
 move quickly and now. 
 
 The Dependence of the College upon the 
 Prepakatohy School 
 
 The dependence of the college upon the preparatory 
 school is a matter of great general interest. At the recent 
 installation of Woodrow Wilson as president of Princeton 
 University, this well-known and brilliant authority on 
 international law pointed out in his address "how fully 
 the college or university (I am using these terms in the 
 same meaning) is dependent upon the lower schools in all 
 branches of its life. Without them it could not long sur- 
 vive and must slowly but surely decline and pass out of 
 existence." In the weekly and monthly periodicals, also, 
 articles appear from time to time by prominent educators, 
 pointing out of how great importance the "prep" school 
 is to the higher technical and academic institutions of 
 learning. 
 
 First and foremost comes the dependence of the college 
 upon the preparatory school as regards financial and 
 intellectual maintenance of the standard and then its 
 upbuilding. The college by its reputation along intel- 
 lectual, moral, and athletic lines becomes known not only 
 in the immediate vicinity of its location but all over the 
 country and also in foreign lands. Here at Brown, for 
 
FAULTY COMPOSITIONS 551 
 
 example, we have men from Oklahoma and Wisconsin 
 and even from far-off Korea. Our Alma Mater's name 
 and fame have been spread abroad by loyal and enthu- 
 siastic alumni, whose praises have brought here many a 
 student who would otherwise have been lost to us. To 
 do its best work, the college must have a certain number 
 of attendants at least, who will support it financially and 
 inteUectually with all the means at their command. To 
 obtain this all-important support, the advantages of that 
 particular college must be attractively set forth in the cat- 
 alogue, with illustrations of the buildings and grounds and 
 pictures of prominent professors and students if possible. 
 By this method of advertisement, as it were, more students 
 are induced to enter and thus further the upbuilding of 
 the university. With a larger attendance, better instruc- 
 tors can be procured and better living accommodations 
 furnished. Teachers, who thoroughly understand their 
 work, always say that their classes do better and more 
 far-reaching work and acquire more knowledge, if all 
 take hold together with the belief that students and 
 teachers are alike students, and not feel that certain ones 
 are far above them and not to be spoken to except in the 
 class-room. So, we see, the more the students, the better 
 the intellectual and financial status of the imiversity in 
 the higher psychical world. 
 
 But, in speaking of the entrance of large numbers of 
 new students to college, there arises the ever-discussed 
 question of the method : by certificate, or by examination. 
 Let us look at a few examples of both systems. At Yale, 
 Harvard, Bowdoin, and a few others, entrance is gained 
 by examination only; while at Brown, Amherst, Dart- 
 mouth and many more, certificates will admit prospective 
 students. If examinations do not have the name of being 
 comparatively easy or admission is not by certificate, all 
 the manifold advantages so glowingly set forth in the cat- 
 alogue will count for naught. There is no doubt but that 
 most of the men who enter college by the first-mentioned 
 method could pass examinations if required; but by dis- 
 honesty on the part of the teacher or "pull" with the 
 head of the "prep" school some few get in every year, 
 
SS2 APPENDIX 
 
 who do most to retard the broadening of the range of 
 Tosefulness of the college by their low scholarship and low 
 morals and associations. If entrance were by examination 
 only, prospective Freshmen would strive more in the lower 
 schools to equip themselves in order to pass the examina- 
 tions; in this way, a general intellectual advancement 
 would be made on the principle of competition, and only 
 those would be enabled to come to college who wished to 
 see ' ' how much college would do for them ' ' and not how 
 they could best get a bare pass-mark. 
 
 A great deal of the " cracking-up " of a college is done 
 in the reports of victorious foot-ball and base-ball games. 
 Along athletic lines, we see how important the "prep" 
 school is to the university. At present, in every college 
 where there is the least semblance of fairness in sports, 
 students are limited to four years' playing. So if it were 
 not for the lower schools, athletics, of an intercollegiate 
 nature at least, would die out inevitably in four, years at 
 the most. Prom these come men who are to uphold the 
 reputation of their chosen Alma Mater and perhaps add 
 to her prestige, but among whom there are always a few 
 who come to college solely for the purpose of playing 
 foot-ball or base-ball, in whichever direction their ability 
 lies, not to acquire academic or mechanical knowledge or 
 advancement. But in the last few years the average of 
 athletes who are good students has noticeably increased, 
 and the college, which has a high reputation intellectually 
 and for honest athletics, soon becomes recognized as a 
 factor in the world of higher education, and fellows from 
 all parts of the world, almost, flock to its standard. In 
 a broad view of athletics, we see a further argument in 
 favor of entrance by examination. If this method were 
 more generally in vogue, the purely athletic men could 
 be weeded out from the intellectually inclined and placed 
 in their proper position in the social world. This method 
 might keep a few dollars out of the treasury but it would 
 add more to the intellectual life, value, and work of the 
 university than could be measured in dollars and cents. 
 
 In speaking of the probably fate of the college where 
 athletics die out in four years, there naturally comes up 
 
FAULTY COMPOSITIONS 5 S3 
 
 the question of the shortening of the course from four to 
 three or even two years, which is now being agitated con- 
 siderably. Some colleges, among them Harvard, Brown, 
 and Pennsylvania, will now confer an A. B. or Ph. B. after 
 a three years ' course, while President Wilson of Princeton 
 favors a two years' course, thinking that time sufficient 
 training for the struggle with the world. If the college 
 course were shortened to two years, many of the higher 
 preparatory schools by small additions to their curricu- 
 lum could attain the dignity, if not the name, of ' ' college. ' ' 
 This woidd put the real colleges into very undesirable 
 positions and quite probably throw them out of existence. 
 This closing would deprive many people of a means of 
 livelihood and seriously affect the opportunities for higher 
 education. So in this line also, we see how dependent the 
 college is upon the lower school for its support and 
 existence. 
 
 The organizations within the college are also dependent 
 upon the "prep" schools for their continuance. The fra- 
 ternities furnish the best example of these. If they did 
 not receive each year a certain number of new men 
 into their brotherhood, in the course of time they must 
 inevitably perish; their destruction would obliterate one 
 of the best and most well-known influences that go to 
 frame a man's character, some of them unfortunately. 
 While fraternities are, of course, no essential part of 
 college life, their absence would be keenly felt, and the 
 "non-frat" man thinks he is (and usually he is) "out of 
 things." 
 
 Therefore we see very clearly how dependent the col- 
 lege is upon the preparatory school for its very existence, 
 financial, intellectual, athletic. Were we deprived of the 
 ' ' prep ' ' school, nearly everyone must of necessity become 
 illiterate and uncultured, and of course the college in 
 four years at the most must succumb to its fate. Perhaps, 
 if people saw how totally absent were "prep" schools and 
 therefore colleges, and no chance to educate their chil- 
 dren, propagation of the human race would cease, and 
 thus one of the greatest evils imaginable — the nonhabita- 
 tion of the earth — ^would be wrought. 
 
SS4 APPENDIX 
 
 An Appeal 
 
 The exhibition of Mr. Brown's fine paintings of the 
 Acropolis has awakened a general desire to secure these 
 art treasures for X University. 
 
 If everyone who would be benefited by this acquisition 
 would contribute a dollar the sum required would soon 
 be raised. It would be too miserable a manifestation of 
 the pauper spirit if we wait until some millionaire will 
 give us the money. And I would especially direct my 
 appeal on this matter to the Democrats, who have, to say 
 the very least, during the past 30 years derived quite as 
 much benefit from X University as the party whose mem- 
 bers have made the most generous contributions to its 
 funds. I read in the morning paper a complaint that our 
 school committee is managed too much in the interest of 
 the Republican party. That has certainly not been the 
 case with X. For many years it had a Democratic 
 President. 
 
 President Jones was an admirable administrator; but, 
 as a Free Trader and Free Silver advocate, he failed to 
 gain the pecuniary sympathy of those who had hitherto 
 contributed to the funds of this institution. During the 
 whole of President Jones' administration I anxiously 
 looked for some evidence that the Democrats whose rela- 
 tives profited by the influence of X University were also 
 willing to contribute to it funds, but came reluctantly to 
 the conclusion that they were as little inclined to make 
 personal sacrifices for so good an object as the great heroes 
 of their New York party, from Boss Tweed all the way to 
 Boss Croker, were willing to do in New York State. 
 
 Immediately after my arrival in the States, in 1872, I 
 was the guest, at Washington, of an independent Repub- 
 lican, who thought (as now all who understand American 
 history must think) that Charles Francis Adams would 
 make a better President than General Grant. 
 
 He hoped for the support of the better element in the 
 Democratic party but at the Cincinnati Convention the 
 blackmailers outvoted him, and nominated a candidate, 
 who, though he was a genuine philanthropist and an excel- 
 
FAULTY COMPOSITIONS 555 
 
 lent newspaper manager, would have made a worse Pres- 
 ident than General Grant, and like the wounded fox in 
 Aesop 's Fables, who, when the hedgehog ofiEered to relieve 
 him of the flies which were feeding on his open sores, 
 replied: "It is useless, they will only be replaced by a 
 hungrier set," the majority of the American people 
 preferred to endure the ills they had, rather than to 
 fly to the unknown horrors of a Greeley-cum-Tammany 
 administration. 
 
 We are now on the eve of a presidential election, and 
 have to vote not for the special interests of one little 
 State, but for those of the whole republic. We do not 
 know at present any better candidate than President 
 Roosevelt, and we are sure that he, without the black- 
 mailers that attach themselves to every prosperous cause, 
 will be a much better President than he would be if he 
 were obliged to purchase his reelection by concessions to 
 those blackmailers. 
 
 Will not the Democrats aid us in this? To elect one 
 able and trustworthy man, unhampered by the horde of 
 pelf and place hunters who look upon every general elec- 
 tion as an occasion to reap a rich harvest of spoils. 
 
 The Power of the Senate 
 
 On March fourth, the last day of the Senate conference, 
 there was a great appropriation bill of vital importance 
 to be introduced. A certain Senator delivered an ulti- 
 matum that an ancient claim of his state should be fas- 
 tened to the bill, or he would defeat the measure. By 
 defeating a measure, some Senator carries on a debate, 
 from the time just previous to the introduction of the bill, 
 until the close of the session thus preventing the bill from 
 being considered. Thus, it is easy to see the effects of the 
 Senate rules, which justly allow a man to do this. A 
 measure is usually defeated, because s6me Senator thinks 
 that his state will not derive any benefit from the bill. 
 
SS6 APPENDIX 
 
 If this rule is not changed, it will mean that the House 
 of Representatives will have to accept a government, by 
 unanimous instead of majority vote. 
 
 Let us compare the Senate of today with that of the 
 seventeenth century: has its standard been raised, or 
 lowered ? To be sui*e, the framers of the Constitution were 
 a distinguished body of men; but do not our Senators of 
 today possess equal qualities? "When we consider such a 
 speaker as Reed, such a debater as Spooner, and so dis- 
 cerning a leader as Aldrich, is not one justified in saying, 
 that the Senate of today is up to the standard? 
 
 The Constitution provided that representation and 
 direct taxes should be in proportion to the population. 
 Naturally, the larger states fought against paying such 
 large taxes without being more fully represented; while 
 the smaller states immediately demanded a provision that 
 equal representation of states in the Senate should not be 
 amended without it being unanimous. With this unequal 
 representation, one man in one section is equal to one 
 hundred equally good ones in another section. This 
 inequality, which is a great fault in the Constitution, does 
 not only violate our ideals, but it proves disastrous, prac- 
 tically. An instance of this was when the country nearly 
 fell under the silver platform. The Senators from the 
 mining states almost gained the measure, which would 
 overthrow the commercial interests of the nation; but 
 with great difficulty were only stopped by the President. 
 The House of Representatives have the power of making 
 the taxes, and proposing requisite supplies for maintain- 
 ing the government, but the Senate can amend either one. 
 The power of amending has advanced from a privilege to 
 an abuse, as was seen in 1872, when the Senate instead of 
 amending the "coffee bill," a complete revision of tariff 
 was made. The House of Representatives is an important 
 and full representation of the people. This being the 
 case, should not the House have the preference over the 
 Senate ? If the Senate conformed more to the prerogatives 
 of the House, it would mean a greater benefit to the masses 
 at a sacrifice to individual interests. According to the 
 Constitution, no Senator shall hold any office under the 
 
FAULTY COMPOSITIONS SS7 
 
 United States except possibly in ease of a treaty or 
 boundary, but how many Senators do we see holding other 
 offices, thus lowering the democratic ideas of our govern- 
 ment. The expansion of the Senate power in this undemo- 
 cratic way has given them a tendency to pass laws and 
 make treaties. So, luckily the Constitution provides that 
 revenue bills shall originate in the House, or otherwise 
 the masses would suffer to a great extent. 
 
 Finally, if we wish to have a sound government, we 
 must stand firm in our prerogatives and let all disputes be 
 settled by public opinion. 
 
 Advantages of Living in a College Town 
 
 There has been for a long time the question, whether 
 or not it is advantageous for a student to continue his 
 course of study in the college in his own city. There are 
 many strong points for either side. Students who attend 
 college away from home have more of the real college life, 
 but, in my opinion, it is better for them to continue in their 
 home life. 
 
 Long before one is old enough to contemplate entering 
 college, he is interested in the college, not from the stand- 
 point of a student, but merely as a citizen who takes pride 
 in the university of his own city. Then, when he is ready 
 to enter college, he naturally wants to go there. When 
 he is a student and has become interested in the college 
 sports, his interest increases and he grows deeply attached 
 to his college. Students who attend universities away 
 from their own cities, cannot have this natural interest 
 in their college. 
 
 When a student goes to a college in his own city he 
 has the privilege of being at home. This is a great 
 advantage over living away from home with all kinds of 
 associates, because the student is very likely to drift 
 away from his high standards of Jiving. And, when the 
 student lives at his own home, and in his own city, he 
 is able to keep up his relations with his former associates 
 
S58 • APPENDIX 
 
 and friends, while, on the other hand, it is impossible for 
 him to go away from his home and come back again to his 
 former associates with the same old friendship for them. 
 
 Any young person entering a strange city has to take 
 considerable time to accustom himself to the surroundings. 
 A student, who is usually rather young, and unused to 
 traveling, has two things to become accustomed to. In 
 addition to acquainting himself with the city he has to 
 acquaint himself with the college and college customs. 
 
 On the other hand, a student who has lived in the city 
 a long time before entering college, knows the city well 
 and is already acquainted with it. He may have been, 
 very likely, accustomed to go to the university to visit 
 and so he would know the college and a few, at least, of 
 the college students. Then he would be known and would 
 be likely to be taken into a fraternity and so have the 
 real college life. This would do away with all the uncom- 
 fortable feelings of homesickness and it would make him 
 feel right at home. Thus a student living in a college 
 town has much more interest in his college than he would 
 have for any college which he might attend, and the privi- 
 lege of living at his own home, and knowing the city. 
 
 The Value of Dead Langttages 
 
 "Oh, I hate Latin. It is no good anyway. I never can 
 make any use of it, and nobody ever can converse in 
 Latin." 
 
 Over and over again these dreadful statements have 
 been made by high and normal school pupils. Now the 
 main reason for these useless remarks seems to be ignor- 
 nance of both the language itself and its real value. 
 
 It is certainly the duty of every language teacher to try 
 to impress her pupils with the importance and value of the 
 language, as well as the rules and translations. 
 
 No pupil can work ambitiously upon a language they 
 do not realize either progress from or the uses of. 
 
 No high school student ought to expect to be able to 
 
FAULTY COMPOSITIONS 559 
 
 converse in the ancient languages. Comparatively few 
 college students can do this. The accomplishment is con- 
 fined principally to the professors and teachers of the 
 languages. 
 
 Latin and Greek are certainly grand old languages, and 
 it is only after persistent and faithful study, continued for 
 years, that the real value of these languages can be fully 
 realized and the reward for study seem great. 
 
 If a student never progresses farther than the high 
 school course permits of these languages, whatever voca- 
 tion he pursues they will be of some benefit to him. 
 
 Many of the words in the English language are of 
 Latin origin, and the ability to translate them readily 
 (after determining from which ancient words they are 
 derived) is often of much consequence. Besides many 
 of the great authors use Latin phrases, and both monu- 
 ments and tombstones (in America as well as the Old 
 World) are sometimes inscribed in Latin and the Catholic 
 mass of today is often said in Latin. 
 
 The English language differs from other European lan- 
 guages, because it is based upon so many different ones. 
 
 The fact that Caesar invaded Britain in 55 B. C, 
 accounts for such a large proportion of Latin words in 
 the English language. 
 
 "Latin, Greek and Hebrew are so ancient nobody could 
 ever speak them, ' ' said a normal school graduate. Surely 
 she didn't suppose the ancients used them for records 
 and inscriptions, and conversed in French or German. 
 
 The reason so few people can speak the language is 
 because they do not spend money, energy, and study 
 enough to acquire it. 
 
 "What earthly good are Greek and Hebrew?" asked 
 a grammar school teacher (who had laboriously dragged 
 through four years Latin in her school days). 
 
 The scholars of old, well versed in these languages, have 
 produced for us Latin and English translations of the 
 Bible. All historical records in the Holy Land were 
 derived from ancient tongues. Hebrew is the source of 
 most of these. 
 
560 APPENDIX 
 
 Roman and Greek history (in English) are translations 
 of the dead languages. 
 
 Grod 's commandments were translated from Hebrew. 
 
 What greater proof of the truth of the Bible can one 
 wish for than to laboriously translate chapters of the Old 
 and New Testaments from ancient Greek? The Roman 
 Catholics consider Latin the Holy Language. 
 
 All true ministers believe the Bible, and they are usually 
 familiar with the dead languages. 
 
 Let us hope that the day will come, as in years agone, 
 when students will better realize the value of these 
 glorious old languages and not discontinue them after 
 the first year or two in high school, because they are no 
 good. 
 
 Should the American Navy be Materially Increased ? 
 
 Introduction 
 
 I. The question of increasing the American Navy has 
 arisen from the nation's growth in the last few years, 
 and from the rapid development in Asia. 
 
 Our existing navy has been built for the needs of the 
 Atlantic Ocean, now we find the need of battle-ships in 
 the Pacific. 
 
 II. The discussion of the question will be facilitated by 
 the following explanations : 
 
 A. A navy is the entire marine military force of a 
 country. 
 
 B. By the increase of the navy, we mean the construc- 
 tion of new battle-ships, torpedo-boats, destroyers, 
 colliers, submarines, and sub-surface boats. 
 
 III. The points to. be determined are : 
 
 A. Is the American Navy large enough to protect the 
 rights of American citizens, wherever they may be ? 
 
FAULTY COMPOSITIONS 561 
 
 B. Is it large enough to support our foreign policy with 
 other countries? 
 
 C. If the navy is not sufficient, to what extent should it 
 be increased? 
 
 IV. Both sides agree that the increase of the navy will be 
 a vast expense to the country and that a good navy is 
 essential. 
 
 Brief Proper 
 
 Refutation 
 
 I. That a large navy is essential for purposes of national 
 defence is unfounded, for 
 
 A. We have little danger of being suddenly attacked, 
 for 
 
 1. No nation would hastily engage in war with Amer- 
 ica, as she holds one of the highest places among 
 the powerful nations of the world. 
 
 2. If America cultivates peace and honest commerce 
 with all the people of the earth, we shall never have 
 to initiate war. 
 
 B. In former years, America defended itself with a 
 small navy. Now it ranks along with the best navies 
 in the world. 
 
 II. A larger navy is not needed for the ever-increasing 
 American commerce, for 
 
 A. If the American commerce is hindered, interposition 
 will be made by other nations in behalf of the United 
 States, because 
 
 1. The interference with commerce will affect almost 
 every nation on the globe. 
 
 2. America is the chief granary of the world. 
 
 III. American colonial possessions are a naval burden, 
 but not so heavy as to require a larger fleet, for 
 
562 APPENDIX 
 
 A. The Philippine Islands are in no danger of being 
 attacked by foreign nations, because 
 
 1. No power would accept the Islands as a gift, for 
 
 a. They have cost America an endless amount of 
 money. 
 
 B. The canal-zone is not likely to be attacked, while 
 it is building for 
 
 1. It is costing America millions of dollars, which no 
 other nation is willing to spend. 
 
 2. If it should be attacked, it could far better be 
 defended by land than by water. 
 
 ly. It is not necessary to strengthen the navy, so that 
 the United States may compete with the other principal 
 navies of the day, for 
 
 A. It only leads to an inexhaustible competition between 
 the nations for as an example, 
 
 1. The American navy was quoted last year in the 
 French Assembly as an argument for enlarging the 
 French navy. 
 
 B. America should not hesitate to set an example 
 against rivalry among the nations. 
 
 V. A war with Japan is not impending and even if it 
 were it would not be very detrimental to the United 
 States, for 
 
 A. There can be no reason to doubt that in such a 
 conflict as the race question, all the nations in Europe 
 would fight on the American side, because 
 
 1. Every European nation would know that if the 
 Japs had undertaken to establish the supremacy of 
 the yellow man throughout the world, our defeat 
 would be followed by the defeat of one European 
 nation after another. 
 
FAULTY COMPOSITIONS S63 
 
 Brief Proper 
 
 I. The enlargement of the navy incurs too much extrav- 
 agance, for 
 
 A. Sixty-five per cent of the nation's revenue is spent 
 on payment for past war and in preparation for 
 future war and there is only one-third left for 
 judicial and executive departments, etc. 
 
 B. Sixteen years ago, the navy cost about $22,000,000 
 annually, but last year it cost $135,000,000. 
 
 C. Our navy is seven and one-half times as large as our 
 navy was when America declared war against Spain. 
 
 D. In order to have a navy, which will render the nation 
 secure, it will take an endless number of ships, for 
 
 1. America must not only have more ships than any 
 one nation, but more than all nations combined. 
 
 II. The need of a large number of -battle-ships is decreas- 
 ing, for 
 
 A. The sentiment of the world is for peace, not for war, 
 as is shown in The Hague Conferences, The Pan- 
 American Conferences, and the arbitration treaties. 
 
 III. The battle-ships fifty years from now are apt to 
 undergo a complete change, which will require the abso- 
 lute reconstruction of the ships, for 
 
 A. Armor-plate may no longer be used in war-ships, 
 just as man no longer uses it. 
 
 B. Ships may rely on speed and swift movement, rather 
 than on heavy hulls, for 
 
 1. War will result in bigger risks, as time goes on. 
 
 C. Any new invention may render battle-ships old- 
 fashioned. 
 
 IV. Monroe Doctrine is being pushed too far, for 
 
 A. America may interfere too far in the affairs of other 
 nations 
 
S64 APPENDIX 
 
 B. It is only another way of saying "might makes 
 right." 
 
 V. The enlargement of the United States navy should be 
 stopped for a couple of years at least, for 
 
 A. There is a feeling that the increase of the navy is 
 being carried too far. 
 
 B. Our national treasury is threatened with a deficit. 
 
 C. It is difScult to secure men to man all the ships Amer- 
 ica has. 
 
 - Conclusion 
 
 I. Since the enlargement of the navy is unnecessary and 
 very extravagant; 
 
 II. Since the need of a large number of battle-ships is 
 decreasing, and the sentiment of the world is for peace ; 
 
 III. Since, fifty years from now, battle-ships are apt to ba 
 old-fashioned ; 
 
 IV. Since the Monroe Doctrine is being pushed too far ; — 
 Therefore, the navy should not be materially increased 
 for a couple of years, at the least. 
 
 A House 
 
 The building, which I am about to describe, is a large 
 dwelling house. It is a three story house. It is made of 
 red brick. The front of the building faces toward the 
 south. There is a large door in the front of the house. 
 There are also eight windows facing the south. On the 
 east side of the house there is a large porch and a door 
 entering onto this porch. There are seven windows on this 
 side of the house. On the north side of the house is a small 
 door entering the kitchen and also a door entering the 
 
FAULTY COMPOSITIONS S65 
 
 cellar. There are six windows on this side of the house. 
 On the west side of the house there are no doors. There 
 are seven windows on the west side of the house. It is a 
 very simple house and yet it is a very good looking 
 dwelling. 
 
 A Ball-Ground 
 
 Across the street from my home is a vacant lot. This 
 field has been used for ball playing for many years. At 
 one time it was a large field where big games were played, 
 but little by little it has been sold for house lots. It is now 
 hardly big enough to play ball on. In fact if the ball is 
 hit very hard in either direction there is usually some 
 window glass to pay for. Up till four years ago the lot 
 was in the shape of a square, but now in three of the 
 corners there are houses and on one of the sides there is a 
 large billboard. 
 
 The New York Stock Exchange Building 
 
 To New Yorkers a source of pride is the New York 
 Stock Exchange. The building of this institution is one 
 of the most ornamental which in this era of building, in 
 that city, have been given to New York. Located on one 
 of the broadest streets, diagonally across the way from 
 the historical sub-treasury building and opposite to the 
 offices of the noted financier J. P. Morgan, it commands 
 the attention and admiration of everybody. In contra- 
 distinction from the tendency to construct very high 
 buildings the "Stock Exchange" is low, but what it has 
 lost in height it has gained in beauty. Massive columns 
 of finest marble, constructed according to the Corinthian 
 pattern, constitute a chief eletiffent of the beauty of its 
 exterior. Above these is a rc^of resembling the style of 
 the ancient Greek temples, aii&*W^ which the ornkniCTital 
 figures, that are to embelHsh'1t;'^ave not yet been com- 
 
566 APPENDIX 
 
 pleted. Passing the building at evening, one cannot help 
 observe the artistic nature of its illumination. Through 
 the immense windows a soft, pale blue light streams forth. 
 This appears to be produced by having the electric light 
 globes of a light blue color, and placed within small 
 niches in the ceiling. As we go from consideration of the 
 artistic to that of the practical elements of this building, 
 probably the first that would attract a visitor's attention 
 would be the extensive system of telephones which occu- 
 pies a considerable floor space. The walls exhibit huge 
 systems of marking stock quotations by means of electric 
 buttons for the convenience of members. A visitor's gal- 
 lery admits to a perfect view of the interior. No one, who 
 has once visited the "Exchange" during the hours of a 
 busy day, is ever likely to forget that sight, which for 
 excitement finds not its equal in the busy business world. 
 
 Watch Hili> 
 
 When a person stands upon one of the long boat- 
 wharfs of Watch Hill, and looks toward the shore, he sees 
 a view that he remembers many years. The wharf extends 
 about two hundred feet out into the ocean. On the left, 
 across the blue ocean, one can see a long peninsula which 
 forms the Little Narragansett Bay. On the point of this 
 peninsula stand the white fort with its large cannon and 
 the steel-colored barracks of Fort Mansfield. 
 
 On the right of the spectator, a stone's throw away, 
 is Watch Hill Point. The most prominent thing here is 
 the Light House with the high white tower. Near it is the 
 squatty Life Saving Station. 
 
 Watch Hill proper, in which we are most directly inter- 
 ested is straight ahead. A little to the left is the bathing 
 beach with its long stretch of fine white sand. The bath 
 houses are a little distance from the shore. There are 
 two sections. One is called the public section, for any- 
 body may use these ; and the other one is called the pri- 
 vate section, for only those who buy season tickets are 
 
FAULTY COMPOSITIONS S67 
 
 allowed to use them. Directly in the middle of the fore- 
 ground is seen the principal street of the resort. On this 
 are situated all the stores. They consist of markets, 
 grocery stores, drug stores, shore dinner houses and other 
 smaU stores characteristic of such places. There are also 
 two hotels upon this street. These hotels are surrounded 
 on three sides by large, broad piazzas, upon which dances 
 are often held. 
 
 To the right of the street a bluff overlooks the ocean 
 and on this are situated four of the most costly cottages 
 of the resort. These cottages are very neatly arranged, 
 surrounded with fine green lawns that are carefully cared 
 for. These green lawns are interlaced with white cement 
 walks that curve and wind about. 
 
 To the left of the street Little Narragansett Bay is 
 seen, in which all the launches and sail-boats are kept. 
 Across the Bay rise the ragged hills upon which some 
 very beautiful cottages are built. Many of these cottages 
 are over a hundred feet long and can be seen from a great 
 distance. To the right of these cottages the hills continue 
 and pass out of sight on the distant horizon. 
 
 The cottages that I mentioned previously, that have 
 such fine lawns, have a large sand-dune for a back- 
 ground, and a pretty little legend is connected with this 
 hill, from which the resort got its name. The legend has 
 been told in many different ways but to me the most 
 appropriate is this. The Indians who inhabited Long 
 Island were most bitter enemies to the Narragansett 
 tribes, whose home was in this section of the country. 
 The Narragansetts set out from the main land, in their 
 many canoes, to fight the Montauks on Long Island. The 
 Narragansett warriors had been gone a long time and 
 nothing had been heard of them. One of the Indian girls 
 was in love with one of the Narragansett warriors, and 
 she went daily to this sand-dune and watched for the 
 return of her lover. 
 
 Far over the top of this sand-dune is seen the Club 
 House. The club house belongs to the Misquanicut Golf 
 Links and every afternoon great numbers of the cottagers 
 
568 APPENDIX 
 
 and hotel guests go to the Club to spend the afternoon 
 either at golf or tennis. 
 
 Watch Hill covers an area about two miles square, con- 
 tains seventy-five cottages and six large hotels. There 
 are people from all over the United States who come to 
 the resort for the summer. It is renowned for its fine 
 bathing beach and the exquisite landscape that surrounds 
 the Hill. 
 
 A Day's Experience 
 
 One day this summer I went to a small town about nine 
 miles from my home, to play baseball. The game began at 
 about ten o'clock and was finished about eleven-thirty. I 
 had intended to return home on the twelve-thirty train, 
 and as there was an hour to wait, I had dinner. I then 
 walked for some distance and at last came to the railroad. 
 
 While I was waiting for the train, two men came walk- 
 ing along the railroad tracks. I asked them when the 
 train was due and they told me it did not stop unless by 
 special orders, and that there was not another that would 
 stop before five. 
 
 As I wished to reach home before three o 'clock I decided 
 to go by the way of Norwich. This was a much longer 
 journey than if I had taken the first train, but after walk- 
 ing some distance I came to a small station. From here I 
 rode to Norwich. I reached Norwich about two-fifteen. 
 Prom here I took the electric car for New London. From 
 New London I took the ferry to my own town, and arrived 
 home at about four o'clock, after rather a long trip, but 
 before I would have had I waited for the five o'clock train. 
 
 A Midnight Ride 
 
 One evening two of my friends and I went to a neigh- 
 boring village about fifteen miles from the town in which 
 we were spending the summer. We stayed at this town. 
 
FAULTY COMPOSITIONS 569 
 
 dancing at its casino, until about eleven o 'clock and then 
 we started on our way home in a large touring car. We 
 had just struck the main road from the casino, when I 
 thought to look and see if we had enough gasoline to get 
 home. I found that I had made a very fortunate investi- 
 gation, for looking into the gasoline tank, I saw that we 
 had only about one gallon of gasoline left, and this was not 
 enough to carry us home. So we turned back to the 
 small town again, and seeing a gasoline sign hung out in 
 front of a store we stopped and got ten gallons more. 
 
 Now our trip home began again, and this time for 
 sure. Once more we were on the main road and as my 
 friend, who owned the car, was an expert driver, he 
 opened up the throttle and we spun over the road at a 
 good rate. 
 
 It seemed rather strange to be rushing over the road 
 in the dead of night, with two bull's-eye lamps showing 
 up the road before us. We passed many farm houses that 
 were blacker than coal and now and then a dog would 
 bark as if to warn his master that someone was in the 
 neighborhood. 
 
 Soon we struck a portion of the road that was being 
 repaired and as it was either covered with large chip 
 stones or else was all sand, we were obliged to go very 
 slow. Now and then the car would sway as it struck a big 
 hole in the road, and once I thought that we would be 
 tipped out. Presently the road became good again and 
 throwing on all the power we once more hummed over the 
 road. As we passed close by pastures we could see the 
 cattle grazing or lying down in the fields. Soon we 
 climbed a long, steep hill and from the top of this we 
 could see the ocean away off to the south with its glitter- 
 ing lights on the passing steamers. 
 
 Presently we saw a dim haze in the sky and as we drew 
 closer, saw the lights of a small village in the distance. 
 We knew that our own home was only three miles distani 
 and when we came to the top of another hill we saw i1 
 lying in almost total darkness before us. When we 
 reached home we met a large ear full of our friends whc 
 lived in a small town five miles from our home. They had 
 
570 APPENDIX 
 
 been out on a "joy ride" and when they reached our home 
 their car had become disabled and as they wished to get 
 home that night, they asked us to tow them home. We 
 went down to the garage, got a piece of strong rope and 
 hitched their ear to ours. We were off on the road again, 
 but our progress was greatly decreased, as the car that 
 we were towing was much heavier than our own. 
 
 The course led us now in a very winding manner over 
 the hills to the shore of Narragansett Bay, and far over 
 the Bay we could see the lights of Newport. The road 
 now became very level and straight and once more open- 
 ing the throttle we spun over the three remaining miles 
 with the large touring car in tow. 
 
 Suddenly we perceived a dull light a little way in front 
 of us and we knew that our journey was almost at an 
 end. Gradually the light grew brighter until we were 
 directly in front of the garage in which the disabled car 
 was kept. We pushed the car into the garage and then 
 returning to our car, we started for our own home and 
 made the five miles in just twelve minutes. 
 
 A Fishing Trip in Maine. 
 
 Three years ago next July, I went for what I supposed 
 would be a two months ' stay at the ' ' Little Blue ' ' school 
 in Farmington, Maine. That was the first summer the 
 school had been run; since 1848 it had been used as a 
 winter boarding-school for about twenty boys, whose ages 
 ranged from eight to twenty years. The principal was 
 Mr. G: G. Abbott, son of the late Rev. Dr. H. A. Abbott, 
 author of the well-known Rollo books ; in fact, the scene 
 of these stories is laid in the country round about Farm- 
 ington. Although the school was hardly one in the strict 
 use of the word, yet it might be called such, for four hours 
 of work a week was required ; however, we were left free 
 to choose our own courses. It was, then, while at ' ' Little 
 Blue" that the following circumstances occurred, which 
 were to materially shorten my vacation. 
 
FAULTY COMPOSITIONS 571 
 
 We arrived in Farmington late on the afternoon ol 
 July 2. About three weeks later, or, to be exact, oi 
 
 Saturday, the twenty-first, one of the instructors, 
 
 Brown '99, and three of us Providence fellows, 
 
 , and myself, set off down the river about half 
 
 past ten. We had ridden our bicycles about two mile! 
 out from the village and then left them in a barn near th( 
 point where our canoe was secreted. Two of us paddlec 
 slowly along, while the other two troUed for pickere 
 and black-bass. If one has never been fishing in thif 
 way, with his canoe gliding noiselessly along a quiei 
 stream, which has scarcely any current except near eithe: 
 shore, and with his supple steel pole bending gracefullj 
 when the water resists the metal trolling-spoon, making 
 it spin round and round as it gleams in the sunlight on th( 
 water's surface, he cannot realize or even imagine th« 
 thrill of joy and excitement that goes through one when t 
 tug on the line is felt, and a silvery something jumps i 
 few feet in the air and then disappears under water. As 
 soon as this tug is felt, your companion knows it by the 
 slight cry that escapes you and paddles a little more 
 steadily to offset the force that is trying to puU the 
 canoe backward. The angler turns his reel slowly, but 
 never allows any slack in the line, lest the gamey fisl 
 take advantage of his carelessness, and by jumping sud- 
 denly out of the water break the line or tear the hoot 
 from its gills. By continuing this steady reeling, you 
 gradually bring the bass to the surface near the canoe, and 
 deftly land him in it. 
 
 It was in this way that we caught our bass and pickere] 
 on the six-mile trip to Farmington Falls, locally knowE 
 as the Falls village. We had no occasion for haste, but 
 paddled slowly down-stream, watching the sand-swallows 
 in their nests, or rather holes, that they had made in the 
 high banks, which at intervals lined the shores on both sides 
 for a considerable distance. Shooting the rapids, which 
 could only be distinguished by the choppiness and very 
 deep blue color of the water, furnished us keen excite- 
 ment, and reminded me of the days when stolid Indian 
 warriors must have shot those same rapids in their light 
 
S72 APPENDIX 
 
 birch-bark canoes. The time passed quickly, and we were 
 surprised to find out it was half-past four when we arrived 
 at the Falls village. Here we learned of a large fire that 
 had totally destroyed "Little Blue"; and we four miles 
 away by the nearest route, the road. 
 
 We secreted the canoe in a clump of thick bushes near 
 the river's edge, and walked the two miles back along the 
 road to where we had left our bicycles. Thence we made 
 good time home, only to find a mass of blackened ruins, 
 which were still blazing fiercely. Nothing, save some very 
 valuable books, the piano, and the more expensive furni- 
 ture, had been saved : everything of ours has gone up in 
 smoke, and all we owned was what was on our backs. 
 You may imagine my condition when I tell you that I had 
 worn on the fishing-trip my oldest bicycle suit, sneaks, 
 and an old shirt. I had taken my watch, but no money. 
 
 Mr. lost everything he had in the world, except 
 
 what he was wearing, with little chance of replacing his 
 
 loss for some time to come. That night , another 
 
 Providence fellow, and myself stayed at a house where a 
 lady who had taught us both in grammar-school happened 
 to be visiting. The next afternoon, Sunday, Mr. Abbott 
 packed us off to a camp, some seven miles distant, on the 
 edge of a lake, although a hundred feet above it, where 
 we remained until the thirty-first of the month. After 
 
 obtaining some clothing from home, and I returned, 
 
 glad that the fire had occurred in the daytime, but sorry 
 to have lost our summer's outing.