CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Cornell University Library PS 3087.09 3 1924 022 200 608 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022200608 AN OUTING THE QUEEN OF HEARTS ALBION W- TOURGEE DECORATED BY AIMEE TOURGl^E NEW YORK MERRILL & BAKER 1894 Copyright, 1894, liY AIMEE TOURGEE BY JOHN WILSON AND SON, Camhridge. p^ DO not know how it may be with others, but for me, Nature is enjoyable chiefly through the sense of isolation. I love to be alone, — ^to feel that I am alone ; that the world does not know where I am, and could not come to me if it did, I like to bathe in solitude as in a sea, and know that I am king of a realm no other lives to dispute with me — a realm protected from intrusion by distance or difficulty, by mountain or desert, by wide expanse of water, by the precipitous sides of a cafion, or 1 even by the sheltering umbrage of a neglected copse upon a green hillside — no matter what, if I can only feel sure no prying eye notes my move- ments and no human ear listen to my words. This impulse does not spring from any desire ( to avoid my fellows, nor from any special lik- ing for my own society. Permanent seclusion has no charm for me. The St. StyUtes, who, wrapped for years in self-contemplation, shriv- els flnaUy into helplessness, is, to my mind, the most despicable of human shirks. To do is nobler than to think. He who merely thinks and does not, starves the better half of his nature and serves the devil as well as could be wished, though he strive never so hard only to meditate on God. Even as a boy, I think I pitied Robinson Crusoe almost as much in the im- penetrable loneliness of his Island before the Man Friday came, as I did afterwards when he had that too faithful nondescript forever tagging like a shadow at his heels. I am sure I should 2 have made a poor castaway, and a most miser-: r^W?T hung like ghostly brushes against the sky, where the air was rich with balsamic odors, and listened to tales of the chase until I sank to sleep with the crepitant murmur of the bound- less forest in my ears. I have slept alone upon the shore of an angry sea with the sand dune for my bed, the roar of the breakers in my ears, the wreckage thrown up by the winter storms, feeding the blue-green flame of my soUtary fire, and only the light on a dangerous reef in the 8 4 W 9 dim distance to hint of human co-occupanoy of earth. I have seen the deer bend his antlered head and taste the waters of the forest-bordered pool which my campfire gilded into rippling gold, and been awakened.by a sudden rumbling, from starlit slumber beside a stream that flowed, broad and placid, from a mountain lake, to find it beaten into silver foam by countless multitudes of writhing, glittering fish, impelled by some fierce frenzy to a sudden change of habitat, leaving the waters, which had been wont to yield rich tribute to my rod, barren and empty as the Dead Sea caves. I have spun through darkness, over a tum- bling phosphorescent sea, in tow of a shark ; and waited for dawn on the trail of a mountain lion in the straggling pines that skirt the snow-line of the Rocky Mountains. In short, I have gathered the trophies of gun and rod from mountain and forest and lake and river, from the reefs of Florida to well beyond the borders 10 of our peppery little neighbor on the north, who insists that she ought to be measured by the possibilities of space and not restricted to the stern actualities of prosaic enumeration. I have bathed in the surf of the Gulf and slept in the snows of Winnipeg ; yet I have hardly known a whole week in camp at one time since I ceased to be one of that great ^i^ host which dwelt in canvas J 'L "^^(Hk^^vjAj walls, or bivouacked under >the stars with only the armed A #" sentry's tramp and the watoh- ful picket's hail to break the silence which reigned about the smouldering campfires. Almost all my vacations have been brief episodes, — one and two days' divagations from the accustomed path, often undertaken alone, I seldom with more than one companion, and ^never with that jolly crowd so many deem essential to a good time. Man is an animal ; but an animal in which nerve and brain are of more moment than muscle. Sleep and food restore the wasted tis- sues, but the power to will and to do, to con- ceive and execute depends upon a mystic ether which is the very essence of life. We call it //^C^ nerve-power, vital force, and discourse learned- ly, sometimes, of cell-formation and the gray matter of the brain. It makes small difference ^'X ~, what we call it ; it is that which only live and "^ '^^ healthy tissue can secrete, and which life's activities consume. The great enemy of this subtle life-force is '^ man. The human face divine is a battery a which shocks every soul it meets, taking more ,*? or less out of its reserve of strength. Herd '3 men together and they become brutes vsdthout farther ado. The city crushes out vitality. Strangers crowd into the realm of selfhood and make us carry the burden of their conscious- ness. Some one is forever looking over our 11 shoulder and reading our most secret thoughts. "We fancy that a thousand eyes are f ocussed on us, and are afraid or ashamed to live our own lives. So fashion rules and cowardice abounds ,rf^\\ "where the multitude cramps the man. What is the remedy ? There is but one. We lock ourselves in the home at night. It is our kingdom, — the realm of the Ego. Be it large or small, it shuts out prying eyes and carping tongues. We are alone — for wife and children are part and parcel of ourselves. The night restores the balance of self-respect. With each returning day we are ready again to meet the eye-buffet of the myriad-headed enemy. A man will be as brave as a Hon at dawn who is an arrant coward at nightfall. He asserts him- self with confidence on his way down town ia the morning, but asks advice on the way home at night. In the morning he is a man ; when the crowd has trodden on him all day, he is only a battered ganglion. 12 13 When this diurnal battle has continued for too long a time without respite, the reserve force becomes exhausted, the ganglion loses the capacity of expansion, and the man remains permanently shrunken, timorous, weak. The world has tramped on him xmtil soul and brain have lost elasticity. He thinks what others think ; and seeks advice instead of making re- solves. If he has already won success, the world says he is worn out with the effort ; if the battle is not yet over, it declares that he has " lost his grip." What he needs is the appeal to Nature. If he is far gone, the cure wiU take a long time to complete ; if he has only tem- porarily overdrawn his reserve, a little rest of the right kind will go very far towards restora- tion. A few days of the right sort of vacation are better than a month of human-fringed semi- civilization. No matter where one may be, if SiiSIJiiniiiupniniiii^liillllllllHI 2SC:-.; he knows he is alone, if the air is pure and the scenery something different from that which meets the eye on its accustomed daily round. Two or three of these little respites from the tax humanity lays on the individual, judiciously distributed through the season, will give an overworked man more body and nerve rest, and result in the renewal of more gray brain-matter than he can compass by spending the whole heated term at a watering-place. But if one appeal to Nature, he must comply r-A^ implicitly with Nature's laws. He who ^ seeks reUef in her court, must first do eqidty '^ to her best work — ^himself. The business- beaten brain cannot gather strength while it remains under the buffeting of business and social requirement. Air and exercise alone will not suffice to bring back the vigor and elas- ticity which make life enjoyable and labor a pleasure. The ear and eye are the avenues by which the soul is attacked and nerve de- 14 stroyed, and the first thing Nature demands is that they shall be closed — hermetically sealed up — so that no challenge from the investing world-life may be sent to the citadel of selfhood She prescribes the silence of solitude, which is never still, and a repose which demands noth- ing from the loiterer. These are her specifics for nervous overwear, — the weakness which means that the multitude is crushing out the man. How I came to engage in literature I hardly know. I had no idea of making it a profession, and certainly had no desire to be enroUedl among that strange fraternity to whom an unconquerable desire to do incredible things from preterhuman motives is so usually ascribed. In other words, I had no consuming ambition for achieving fame by authorship. If I flirted with the Muses in my young days, it was with- 15 out serious intent. I counted myself plighted to the Law, and had been duly warned that she is a jealous mistress. I recognized the fact, too, that I had none of the divine afflatus supposed to be an essential quality of him who would woo the Muses with success. 1 had only an inex- haustible capacity for hard work — a capacity which enabled me to serve my chosen mistress with an assiduity which did not go unrewarded and yet carry on a secret amour with the shy divinities of Parnassus, which lasted through i^ two decades of my manhood. Then the liaison was discovered, and as a consequence something like a score of volumes stand charged to my pen ; for more than a decade I have labored un- remittingly in that profession which hae neither school nor method, which is both the noblest and most despicable that man can pursue, — the most laborious and exacting in its demands and more uncertain in its rewards than any other. Yet, although chained to the pen like 16 a galley-slave to the oar, I have felt little disposition to complain : though the Law woos me with fascinating promises, and I linger fondly in the pur- lieus of her temple still, whenever I grow weak and discontent there comes some sweet vision out of the Unknowable — faces none ever saw before shine in the dim light of my secluded workshop, and voices that never spake fall on my ear, while days and weeks slip by unnoted, until there goes forth at length into the mystic ether which men call life, — a new thought, a grouping of unlived lives, a picture projected against the background of the world's life, and I am happy in a new creation. They are realities to me, and nothing brings such rapture to the human breast as the act of crea- tion. Why should it not? It is that which lints man most closely to Deity. It is this rapture, as I think, rather than the weak, self- ish, unworthy greed for fame, that binds the 17 u imaginative artist to his work, despite the ills which may overwhelm. The love of fame is mean ; the joy of creation is divine. That is why the true artist is willing to forego all else for the sake of his art. What is the painter's or the sculptor's joy in his creations compared with his who clothes his visions, not in pig- ment or marble but in words ; whose works are not clay, nor flesh, but spirit? It is folly to say that an author lives in his works. The works born of his soul may live for- ever, though he may die as utterly as if he had never wrought. Whether the ignorant, miserly, besotted actor or the scholarly, weak, unfor- tunate sage, gave us the lives which march, a wondrous procession, through Shakespeare's pages, what matters it to us who read them now ? Who knows or I'eally cares to know ? It is not the sage or the actor who lives in them. They are the animate creations of a soul which gave them birth. They live ; their author is past earthly resurrection. 18 So, too, it is not true that an author is known by his works ; rather it may be said that he liides behind them, and is only dimly seen in the life they live. He is their shadow, rather than their master ; and like the children begot- ten of his body they may give only a dim hint of their parentage. It is not Milton or Homer or Dante whom we know. Perhaps we would not care to know them if alive. The thoughts which they imprisoned in words have inspired generations to noble deeds, but they — not one in ten thousand knows what they suffered, hoped, endured, not one in a hundred thousand cares. They do not live : only the pulsating penumbra they created thrill with hypnotic power the souls of them that peruse their words. Their works are deeds that have blessed mankind — impulses that have inspired ages to well-doing. But they are dead — as dead to us, saving that their names are known — as he who invented the auger, the saw, or the needle. " Deeds 19 men die," is just as true of him who works with the pen as of him who forges with the hammer. The product lives : the creator dies. Almost before the down of manhood had darkened my lip, I had begun to wield that most dangerous of all weapons in a weak or unaccustomed hand, a pen. I had no thought of making a Uvelihood thereby, and would have counted it hardly less a sacrilege to beat Ex- cahbar into a plowshare than to make my pen a mere bread-winner. There were then two theories of literary production, one old and the other new ; both equally vague. The one was that a peculiar, half-miraoulous quaUty known as genius, gave creative power and set the seal of immortality upon the spontaneous effusions of its children. Wealth and leisure or a garret and stai^ation were the environments most favor- able, perhaps even essential to its highest devel- 20 21 opinent. It shunned the middle ways of life and dehghted in its extremes. It loved a lord or a peasant, but despised the common lot. It dehghted in anomalies. Sanctity and vice were its equal favorites, but it had little esteem for homely every-day virtues. It dwelt sometimes in a comfortable home, but preferred a prison or a hovel. Ignorance was no bar to its pos- session nor culture essential to its enjoyment. It mastered knowledge without study, and de- fied logic in its deductions. Inclination was its only regulator, and the love of fame its only worthy motive. The other, which had just been broached in my young days, insisted that literature was a profession like the law or medicine, for which men should be trained, and in which suc- cess might be assured by a particular course of instruction, united with a certainly undefined quality termed " liter- ary aptitude.'' alysis there is not so much difference in these theories as would at first appear. " Literary aptitude '' is scarcely more than an every-day name for genius ; and the training insisted on was merely the equivalent of teaching genius to use his wings. Literary excellence, on which depends both success and fame, or, to use more prosaic terms, popularity and value, like all other excellence, must ultimately depend on labor. The law of ■f^ ) supply and demand governs the literary worker's compensation as well as every other laborer's hire, whether he takes his pay in money or 1 X" fame. They are merely equivalents of the value he gives; and "value "is only another name for desirability. He who expects the world to take his wares, must offer somewhat that the world desires to have, and in a form that it approves. If he seeks present apprecia- tion he must meet some existing demand; we call this popularity. If he seeks future applause 22 he must do work that the future will approve ; we call that fame. Both are simply the wages of labor ; only one is a present reward and the other a deferred payment. Happy is he who wins both ! Literature is, in effect, but the intangible cor- relate of material manufacture. The hand- worker must either produce new forms, use new material for accustomed wares, or merely duplicate the products of j'esterday. The liter- ary producer must also offer what others desire — it may be a new thought, an old thought in a new dress , or an attractive medley of accustomed thoughts in some attractive, though not espe- cially novel, form. On what, then, does litei-ary production and excellence depend ? On invention shall we say ? On technical skill ? The most expert workman oftentimes has the least conception of anything like an original application of force. The in- ventor is very seldom a skilled workman, espe- 23 cially in the lines in which his capacity of in- vention is most marked. Invention and skill are both essential to mechanical progress, but they need not be united in the same person. The in- ventor may see clearly the forms required to produce certain results, but be unable to fashion even the least important of them. He may even lack the skiE requisite to make a compre- hensible drawing of them ; but by rough drafts and sundry explanations, perhaps only by con- stant supervision of the workman, he may at length attain the desired end. What invention is to material production, that imagination is to literature ; and what manual dexterity is to mechanical perfection, that tech- nical skill is to literary achievement. Words are indeed things, but they are not literature; and no skill in juggling with them can of itself make a worthy literature. They are merely the tools of the thinker, the instruments with which the artistic conception is wrought out. 24 Literature differs from mechanical production^ and from some forms of material art, in that creative power and technical skill must l)oth reside in the same individualjwhom we call the author. Separated they are of no value. The literary inventor must make and polish his OTfrn wares. Though there is much journey-work in literature, there has thus far been found no means by which one writer may take another's model, work out its lines, retain its proportions and yet give it a gloze and finish, a completeness of detail and harmony of color which the origi- nator was quite incapable of attaining. This is done every day in other arts. A blind designer has a dream : his pencil shows its outlines ; his brain works out its dimensions : he puts them in the hands of a master-builder, and a yacht, which is a poem in wood and steel, attests both by her lines and her performance, the essential individuality of her inventor. It is his work, though his hand never touched her sides, nor his eye marked the taper of her spars. 25 26 So a scTilptor models the plastic clay, perhaps in pitchy darkness, to a form which another's hand makes to live in marble. His work an- other may inspect and criticise, may even suggest amendment. Not so with the author : " What is written is written ! " is the very acme of immutability. The writer's thought is stamped not merely on white paper but on the reader's soul as well. Not more certain is it that " as the tree falls so it must lie," than that the value of an author's work must be judged by the form and finish which he gives it. No other hand will ever smooth its asper- ities, correct its lines or enhance its effects. The author, alone of all laborers, must ever be both workman and artist ; elaborating his own creations, fitting and polishing his own in- ventions. ' For the same reason, he must be the most careful, patient and uncomplaining of workers. As long as the theory of genius as a special gift of Providence prevailed, it was well enough for the author to bewail his own mis- fortunes and infirmities. It was no imputation i of the genuineness of the divine afflatus that the i' individual on whom it was bestowed was un- , ^/t! able to accede to its demand and furnish strength i \fi/l.^\. sufficient for the transcription of its message or be unable to find a market for its half-mirac- ;7j ulcus products. In those days, and indeed, until kjiiLJ^// // the sweet-souled Hood mocked at his pains I'j/I jf/n with so many tender gibes, wrestling, smiling 8.\vJ;/ and cheery, with untoward fate until he slipped, Mf/t /, mvi with an apologetic quip upon his lips, into thew,'^^ grave that had so long yearned for him — until | his day, and even now and then since that time, it has been the wont of those divinely- gifted, or so esteeming themselves, to make ' market of their infirmities and take the world into their confidence by retailing their mental, moral and sometimes their physical symptoms also. There was a sort of interest in the results of such self-depiction, too. Genius being an in- 27 determinate, undefinable fact, every person was naturally anxious to learn as much about it as possible. Those who were impressed with the idea that they might have something of the divine fire themselves, were especially anxious to study its manifestations in order to enable them to judge of the correctness of this im- pression. When, however, this theory was abandoned, save for some traditions which depend on ignorance for the sense of verity they stiU retain, the author became a mere worker, 'i taking his stand beside his fellows as one of them, using the same powers, depending on the same application, the same economy of force and the same universal law, " By the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread." Then his haps and mishaps became a matter of no moment. Toilers, broken in heart and brain and body, sitting envious and wistful by the thoroughfares of life, are too frequent tilings to be matter of any great concern to the busy 28 world. "Who cares for the soldier ^,j^ who might have won laurels had he not been stricken with disease' before the fight began ; or the poet who. might have framed an immortal lay not his poor brain reeled and fallen beneath the exceeding weight of glory of his divine vision? The rule of life is universal and inflexible : " To him that overcometh is the victory." To this inevitable decree soldier and toiler must alike bow. Genius cannot make excuse by retail- ing its idiosyncrasies ; for the world no longer believes in genius, as a distinct psychic force at least. What we now call genius is simply the per- sistent application of vital energy to the accom- plishment of a specific result ; and it is no more exceptional or abnormal when applied to liter- ary creation than when apphed to scientific dis- covery, to mechanical production, to statecraft or to war. The only difference is in the method of application, the instrumentalities employed, 29 and the fact that the same person must both conceive and execute. The most mysterious of human attributes is the power of invention. A new form, a new thought— what is it ? Whence did it come ? It is useless to speculate in regard to it. The process may be long or short, but the result is always the same. A human brain labors : a thought is born ; the lield of human intellec- tion is widened ; the finite has approached by one more step the borders of the infinite. It %^ may show in steel or marble or only on the printed page. It matters not how or where- It is but an atom coiiquered from the unknown, — a kingdom added to the known. This at- tribute the successful literary worker must ever keep in play. He may originate a character, a moral principle, a legal subtlety, an economic theory or a mere form of words. He may write 30 a novel or a poem ; a parable or a pun ; he may give expression to something absolutely new.; make a new combination, arrangement or ap- plication of old ideas, or he may merely put old thouglits in a new garb. In any case, the in- tellectual act has the same quality — it is inven- tion — discovery. It may be re-discovery and yet be none the less valuable or difficult. The ancients knew how to temper brass or copper — („ at least we believe they did — yet he who should y to-day re-disoover the art would be not less an inventor. So, in all the realm of thought, we know not I hdw many may have trodden the paths wej-| pursue ; but he who walks where he finds no footsteps is a discoverer still. Bernard du Pa- lissy might have learned all he found out and more, perhaps, about the glazing of pottery and making of porcelain, if he had only crossed the Alps into Italy. But he went instead by a trackless way, through poverty and toil, up a 31 more difficult height, on the top of which he felt it must be that the sun was shining. His toil made him a creator : his agony made him an artist. The human brain is sharpened only by appli- cation or by suffering. These are th6 toll which fate exacts for achievement. The worker who would live must first die. He who would discover new things must surrender the enjoyment of some familiar things he might otherwise peace- fully possess. He who labors with his hands gives only the vitality that muscular activity demands ; he who labors with his brain must give the vital energy that fiUs its mystic cells. He who wins his bread by manual labor must give and keep on giving till the end is reached ; he who wins by intellectual toil must none the less depend on continuous endeavor. The wanderer may find a diamond in the dust of his path, but millions will only find pebbles. So one merely loitering on the shores of time, may discover a new 32 thought — an intellectual Kohinoor — but an age of loitei'ei-s has never yet added aught of con- sequence to the intellectual kingdom of man. It is only they who delve with patience who x build enduringly. ■ ■'-" So achievement is but the crown of labor : it may be honest labor or stolen labor ; the labor of him who lives or of him who perishes; the slave's labor or the hireling's toil. The doer may work for wages or for bread, for wealth or fame, but toil he must. What we term prosperity or progress is like a coral reef, reared on the graves of its builders. Civilization is a Juggernaut whose car crushes his worshippers. Only sweat and blood yield immortality ; for they alone testify of self-forgetf ulness. Labor lives and sacrifice endures, though he who toils and he who bleeds may both be forgotten. 3 33 m HERE is no one on whom the primal curses rest more heavily than on the literary workman. '^/ The product of his labor is intangible and his title to his own at all times insecure. What is his to-day is all the world's to-morrow. Yesterday it was not. If a suggestion of it existed, it was without form and void. The creative spirit brooded over chaos : a man gave up something of the vital energy received from God and a thought was born. The syllables are traoecl with trembling hand : the straggling lines seem but a defacement of the clean white scroll, The types are marshalled in glittering forms ; the press groans angrily as it consumes the un- 34 woven coil. The sheets scatter to the winds of heaven. What was not yesterday, and is mine alone to day, will be all the world's to-morrow. There are no "visible metes and bounds" ^ *■ which mark my possession ; no trademark which ^ secures my title. The law, indeed, gives a copy- right upon the words — a dim and delusive boundary of ownership — but the thought? Words cannot bind it ! It is gone. The world has gained ; the thinker has lost. He has given life ; the world has received — it may be truth or / error — good or bad. Words are indeed things, but they are only the costume of thought. They require skill in draping, contrast of color and quality, and sometimes, no doubt, are of much more importance than the thought they set forth or conceal ; just as there are men and women whose clothes are of more consequence to others than themselves. Sometimes the tir- ing of even a lay figure requires the utmost 35 skill of the artist, though the figure itself is only lath and buckram. So the literary artist who clothes either thought or pretence in be- coming and attractive phrase, must give brain- sweat to the costuming. This is essential to his art, and because it is essential, it means toil. He may be a creator of thought, he may be a maker who groups and combines the products of other minds ; or he may be a mere costumer who only puts the common, every-day thought of all into quaint and attractive guise — it matters not what sort of a literary producer he may be, he is first of all things a worker whose brain and eye and hand must be con- tinuously taxed to secure the results he seeks. Such labor brings weariness, and for weari- n3ss there is but one remedy. And that remedy ? The weariness that comes from overworked muscles is that which sleep cures, what time she tenderly " knits up the ravelled sleeve of Care." The twilight brings balm ; the sunlight 36 J'J sees a cure. Given svifficient food and healthful sleep, muscular outwear is next to impossi- T^ ble, unless old age or disease shall join hands with toil. But with the brain it is not so. It may endure abuse and resist overstrain for a f*^ much longer period than muscular fiber can, i~^. but the time comes — must come — when it wiU refuse to do its daily task. There may be no visible token of disease, but the mind which was wont to act with ready delight grows dull and slow in its routine labor. The words that drip from the pen's point have an unfamiliar look ; thoughts they are meant to express have somehow an incomplete, uncertain quality. For a while, the night rests brain as well as body ; but the time comes when a longer re- spite must be taken. Perhaps the labor-days have filled the year, even swallowing up the holidays which the manual toiler clairos : per- haps the years have been many and the re- spites few, so that the page is covered with. 37 waving shadows which the pen wades wearily through, while the sough of wind-swept branches, the dash of sparkling waves, or the trickling of hidden i-ills falls on the ears in the silence of the darkened study. It is kindly nature's demand for relaxation ; the petition of brain and nerve for a surcease from toU. He who fails to heed must pay in pain and weak- ness for his hardihood. The dream of verdant /wold and bosky glen or sparkling wave is- only ' the dear old nurse's " hint of the medicament which she prescribes. It was at such a time that one of those poems which " sing themselves," and so are rarely worth another's while to sing, ran off my pen's point and showed scratchy and vague upon the pad that lay upon my desk. I do not often write verse, and have so seldom been betrayed into 38 i its publication that the world has quite forgotten^ ~' a sin of long ago, of which so few took note, that all evidence of its happening is now fortunately lost. This time the Queen of Heai-ts picked up the pad and read : Into the eloud that lay Over a silent stream. We sailed and sailed away Into a golden dream ; Into a fleecy mist. Over a waveless stream ; Into a eloud, sun-Mssed, Into a peaceful dream. Hidden from shore and sky. Afloat off a boundless lea. Alone in the world was I, Yet there was one with rae ; — Afloat in a sunless day On a silent, shoreless tide, — For the earth had faded away. And only twain did abide. "What is it?" she asked. "Nothing," I answered, evasively. The Queen of Hearts has been regnant in my 39 4^ 40 life under that style, from a day long past — I care not to think how long, — when I first saw her sweet girl-face, alight with the nameless glow of maidenhood, as she stood alone in an amber-curtained woodland aisle, and knowing not even her name, answered one who asked who she might be, " That know I not, but mean that she shall be my wife.' It was a foolish speech, but simply and rev- erently intended. I did not count myself wor- thy of her love, nor deem that she would so esteem me, but only meant that I would be worthy of it, if I could, and win her if I might. It was presumptuous, since it placed reliance on my own effort to win, rather than the grace it was hers to exercise in giving. Before the years which brought fulfilment ended, I had reason enough to blush for my boldness. And ever since I have hardly ceased to mourn that I had not more to give for what I did receive. Let me not say it was a love-match ; for I would 41 not shame the gentle presence which has stood at my side through all the storm and sunshine that has fallen on our path — sweet sunshine and fruitful storms, in the main, it may be — but none the less hard to bear when woes beat un- pityingly upon us. Instead of being a shield, I have too often been the cause of sorrow, and to her uncomplainingness could only give the bar- ren consolation that the morrow never dupli- cates yesterday's ills : " For yesterday's smile and yesterday's frown Can never eome over again, sweet wife. Can never come over again." How often have not I thanked the poet for that ready-made excuse for the results of folly 1 She has stood by me, one in purpose and unfal- tering in trust, a co-worker supplementing my effort more effectively than any other might. When condemned by the imperative rescript of untoward fate, to darkness and the helplessness ■€^^ i^^ it brings to him who wins a livelihood by the pen, she has been hands and eyes to me. For me she has surrendered ease, and given up what many count most precious of all things, the world which so subtly charms the woman- nature ; yet through it all, the light in her calm eyes has been the same as on that June day wlien I saw the sun stealing through the clustering maples overhead to kiss her sweet young lips. I would not bring reproach upon her now by calling it a love-match, that union which has held us hand in hand so long, while we have trampled the blood-red grapes in the wine-pi"ess of life. In that day it was no discredit to love, and to believe in love. But since that time the world has grown wiser. The self -chosen hiero- phants of art and society assure us now with a positiveness that leaves no room for doubt, that love is only an unreal, childish fantasy, or a sensuous yearning so alloyed with self as to 42 ""^C\ ■■^^:^ drag its votaries earthward instead of lifting them towards heaven. We are even told tliat love is no secure foundation for liappiness in married life, which should, instead, be based on "mutual esteem and forbearance." Indeed, one of the chief priests of this new-fangled doc- trine of life-relations, has gone so far as to de- clare that marriage itself is " the most sinful form of love," which itself, so he assures us, is of the devil and altogether vile. I thank God /v_^/ that he is not an American ; and am still more grateful that those Americans who were erst- while his most enthusiastic worshippers, are mostly glad enough, since his last utterances, to let others sound his plaudits. It is but a few years since, that one of our college presidents hymned his praises from the pulpit, under the style of ' ' Saint Tolstoi " — a saint whose cult consists of the debasement of love and the publication of a creed as black as Slavic pessimism can depict, — that all men are false and aU women foal, save 43 only as temptation and opportunity may fail ! It is an infamous theory, this notion that the worst and weakest phases of humanity are the only true and real things of life ; that hero- ism and love and the impulse to do good to others, are mere figments of a vain and deluded fancy It is fortunate indeed, for the world, that the dethronement of the ideal did not come sooner. There may have been few — possibly, there may have been none — fortunate enough to realize all their dreams, to attain to all their ideals. But how much sweeter the world is for theu- having believed in them ! How many more , have straggled towards them, and how much higher have they climbed than if they had set out with the thought that all these things are vain, and that he does best who merely seeks what is easiest to attain, rather than strive for 44 an ideal he may never reach. The arrow may not reach its mark. The weight of the earth hangs on its tip and drags it ever down. The aspirant will never achieve his liope, for the same reason. The earthly impulse drags forever downward liis tired soul. He falls far, very far, below his fair ideal, — a battered, shattered, weak and wing-stained creature ! Pitiful in- deed, his disappointment ! If he only had not tried ! If he had only learned the philosophy of "realism" before he plumed his wings for flight, there would have been no bitter Icarean plunge ! Ti'ue enough ; but he would never have been so near the sun, either. He would never have reached the height from which he fell upon the mount of disappointment. It is a law of human nature as well as of gravitation that what goes not upward, impelled by some heaven-seeking force, must go downward, dragged back to the mire of earthiness. Love may be a myth. Of course it must be, 45 or the ■' realists" would not mock at it. Tliey know tlie truth, for it was born with them. They would have us believe that all men were fools or liars, until they came with the new gospel of debasement as a means of exaltation, which teaches that no man should believe in love because its perfection is unattainable, or hope for purity, lest he should suffer disappoint- ment. How have not the ages been deceived '. by this luckless faith in the ideal ! What rapt- urous visions has it not inspired ! What quag- miires has it not hid I What poor weak souls has it not lifted so near to God that their songs of rejoicing have seemed the echo of cherubic choirs! If they had only known ! What peaceful brutes they might have lived and died ! Then they would have been happy, — such is the " re- alistic " idea of happiness, — and the world would not have been shocked by discovering defects inconsistent with professed ideals. It would have expected naught but weakness and bru- 46 47 tishness, and finding nothing better, would have felt no regret. From this weakness and crudity of our past, no doubt, results that fact so discreditable to Amer- ican manhood, which an high-priest of culture has of late pointed out as separating us by an Infinite distance from those whom riper opportu- nity has lifted to a plane of "sweetness and light " which only the most favored of earth can hope to attain ; I mean that lack of dignity , ■which the pitying beholder declared was "so universal that, even in the best society, the American is likely, at any moment, to commit the fault of jesting with his wife, as if they were still lovers — or children ! " It is a most humil- iating fact which apparently can only be reme- died by a course of ' ' realism " which shall make universal the belief that love is both foolish and vulgar. Fortunate, indeed, must l\ the American woman esteem her English sister who is never L, m 48 troubled by lover-like phillstinism nor com- pelled laboriously to decipher her husband's I will not say it was a love-match, therefore, when the Queen of Hearts, acceding to my prayer, sent me, on one " soft, serene September day," a fragrant token which the years that fol- lowed have so sweetly confirmed. It was only a bunch of autumn flowers, tied with a bit of white ribbon, — and cased in a simple pasteboard box. They were of the common 'sort that grew in country gardens then, for we were country bred, and they were grown by her own hand, — plain, common flowers from which came the pervasive fragrance of the mignonette, Uke an exhalation of the sweet soul who had sent them. I do not know why it was — it could not have been from love, for that is a sham — but I reaUy thought the little token exceedingly precious, so much so that 1 gave it place among my simple treas- ures, and now, when the years have grown to more than double what I then had known, it is still one of my most prized possessions. The haps of life have spared it strangely. Perils many, by flood and lire, it ]ias passed through, yet withered and shrunken and crumbling to dust, it still lies in its frail cgsket, labelled " My Sweetheart's first bouquet." And still the fra- grance of the mignonette, rising from its dust, bears me back across the intervening years, and I fancy myself still in love. Of course, it was not love that prompted her to send, or led me to preserve, the frail me- mento ; but I am glad we thought it was, and were not wakened from our silly dream until the years had brought such sweet fruitage as to put us beyond the fear of disappointment. I suppose we should yet speak of it as love, and go on believing in it to the very last, had not "realism" and the curious contempt for all 49 U- things American, which has come to lift us up to the sublime level of social formalism by which the society of other lands is shaped into such matchless excellence, taught us that be- lief in love, and more especially in married love, is not merely the very "worst possible form," but a weak and vain crudity in which only " the immature American " is any longer willing to admib himself so foolish as to in- dulge. Do not think so meanly of us, then, kind . reader, as to imagine that ours was a marriage of love. It was only " common-sense " and "mutual esteem" that brought us together. We did not think so very highly of each other, nor imagine that life would be a void for each without the other. We knew that married life was "one continued story of misconception, compromise and forbearance," — a genuine tor- ture-bed, which, if it fitted one of its occupants must of necessitv rack the other. We only 50 entered it because there seemed nothing better to do, and chose each other merely because there seemed to be no other combination ofiEering less discomfort. Of course, we did not look for happiness, nor expect love to take the sting. out ^ '■ of the mishaps of life. We only hoped for as mIJ^^ little unhappiness as might be. We did not ex- pect any merger of thought and soul and pur- .' pose — any common aim and instinctive co- PS operative endeavor such as the siUy and deceiv ing ' ' romancists '' indicate as tlie possible It'j fruition of love. We merely thought to live / like two unmated birds in a cage, only hoping tliat each would trespass on the other's idiosyn- crasies as Uttle as possible, leaving each its own domain of querulous selfhood to do with as we pleased. This must have been the case, for the " realists" tell us that those are the only conditions on which a happy marriage can be based. Of course, we pretended to be in love. It 51 was the fashion to love, and even to marry for love in those days. Such had been the fashion for some centuries ; in fact, ever since humanity escaped from barbarism. Dur- ing the antecedent epochs we know that love, as well as all the daintier sentiments, was not only rare, but hardly more esteemed than if sav- agery and "realism "had been two extremes of the same soul-withering philosophy, which builds around the heart a chevaux de frise of !f:i^- j selfishness which leaves no loophole by which silly sentiment may creep in and demoralize ' ' the simple nature whish seeks to be taken only for what it is." Being young and inexperienced we naturally fell into this ancient custom, and made be- lieve we were in love, so stoutly that it may be questioned whether either doubted the fact, discreditable as the admission may now seem. Indeed, to show how complete was " the degradation which results from this 52 childish weakness," it may be admitted that we have kept up the play for many years, pretend- /^rroCi ing that what we did was from love, though every one now knows it was simple selfishness. Even yet, I sadly fear, we are hardly emanci- pated from " the gilded shackles of false senti- ment," and in our secret hearts are glad that the withered bouquet is still counted a treasure, and that the fragrance of the mignonette yet QpX remains. It even seems as if the Queen were not un- willing to suffer "the degradation of being a mere helpmeet," bearing not only her share of the common burthen, but as much more as my selfishness will permit her to assume. In- deed, I have often thought she was more anxious to keep me from doing too much, than to prevent me from receiving credit for what could not have been achieved but for her aid. At any rate, she has never objected to my walk- ing the quarter-deck of our common craft with 53 ^.v^- such display of authority as I might see fit to assume ; and if, when my back was turned, she has at times presumed to lay the course at her own sweet will, why should I complain? Full well I know that she would steer only whither I wish to go, and whatsoever wind might blow, would make always for the Fortunate Isles. If, while I manned the sails, she held not the rud- der, how should we make the voyage ? It is v-^ i,^ not her emijire nor mine that is at stake, but — ■SjJJj^^, ours ! "I do not like it," said the Queen thought- fully, as she read the little poem a second, and perhaps a third time ; " it is as vague and misty as a ' realistic' love-scene." " But it is not at all ' reahstic ' " I began in troubled defence. " Oil, I know," interrupted theQueen ; " there can never be any such thing as ' realistic ' 54 poetry. ' Eealism ' blights imagination and shrivels up the lips of love. There can be no poetry without love and heroism, and no use for verse, in the vporld of ' realism,' except as an attractive form of advertising." "But this is only a bit of 'introspective verse,' " I hastened to say, anxious to divert the Queen from consideration of that debasement of the ideal which, in her belief, promises so little for the elevation or happiness of to- morrow. The Queen of Hearts is not speculative. She does not argue or analyze, but simply feels and decides. She regards the theory of "realism" in fiction, with profound dis- approval, not so much, I think, because of its essential falsity, narrowness and crud- ity, as because it would rob life of its no- blest aspirations and paralyze its progress to- ward heroic achievement, by substituting for self-sacrificing endeavor mere petulant, seK- 55 pitying submission, not to a sublime and over- whelming fate but to an innumerable host of petty ills. She stubbornly maintains that there is nothing worthy of the pen of the novelist in the trivial annoyances of life, any moi-e than the merely irritating diseases of the flesh are woi-thy of depiction in material art ; unless it be, in both cases, to bring into clearer relief some nobler quality which lifts man or woman above such petty Uls. Job's boils, she contends, were a fit element of poetic nari'a- tive, not because they were facts, but because he was strong enough to forget their stings and rebuke his ' ' realistic " advisers, who would fain have him believe that boils and misfortunes were the only things worth thinking about. Unfortunately, in trying to avoid Scylla I fell upon Oharybdis ; for if the Queen has little patience with 'realism,' all forms of "in- trospective" self -analytical literature are her pet abomination. 56 "Worse and worse," she exclaimed : " I can imagine a man actually believing in ' realism,' through a misconception of what truth is. One who looks always upon the earth and never up into the sky, naturally gets to think that dust and stones are the only real things of life. But why any one should think a study of his own morbid symptoms, whether mental, moral or physical, can be of any interest to the world, outside of his physician at least, I cannot comprehend." "You would blot out everything autobio- graphical, then ? " " You know I do not mean that, though I do believe that if men would spend less time writ- ing about their own excellences and infirmities and more in thinking about the welfare and elevation of others, the world would be better off. At the best, autobiography is but a man's opinion of himself, or what he wishes others to regard as his opinion of himself. Neither is 57 likely to be entirely reliable ; but that which passes under the name of ' introspective ' litera- ture might more properly be tei'med the litera- ture of undefined yearning — mere crying for the moon. " " And what phase of the moon do you think I am crying for ? " I asked. " Oh, you are tired and need a rest ; that is all. You do not want to be ' afloat off a bound- less lea' in any sort of boat, alone or with another. You might endure such a situation until dinner-time, or even longer, if the fishing were good, not otherwise. I know tlie symp- toms well enough. You have worked too long and too steadily. Where shall we go ? " I knew the Queen's diagnosis was, in the main, correct. I had toiled sedulously at a task which had extended over many months, and was out of humor with myself. I agreed with her, too, in regarding self -analysis as usually a harmful and misleading mental exercise There can be 58 nothing more delusive than a man's estimate of his own powers and purposes. " When self the wavering balance holds, 'Tis rarely right adjusted. The personal is an absolutely indeterminable element in life's equation ; one never knows how much to allow on account of it. One must, per- haps, as often add as subtract, in order to get a true result ; f orhumilitymisleadsas well as pride, and the undue self -depredator is as frequently met with among men, especially good men, as the boaster. It would not do to take St. Paul or St. Augustine at their own estimates. In order to exalt their Master, both debased them- selves beyond the point of safe comparison, by magnifying their infirmities. On the other hand, Caesar painted but one side of his own career, leaving the other in such deep shadow that, despite the fact that he stood at the pinnacle of the world's life, we know what 59 manner of man he was, only by the disjointed reflections of other minds. Carlyle, from a mere life-long habit of denunciation, trampled on himself at last, as he had trampled on others before, wholly unconscious that the re- sult was a distortion as false in effect, as if he had indulged in self -laudation. Marie Bash- kirtseff made herself a marvel of precocious self-maligning, for the mere sake of being ^Vv.,/-^ accounted exceptional and monstrous. All 2„>-Y^ these are but types of extremes : in a less degree ' the same impulses distort all self -related lives. If retrospection is so apt to mislead, what shall be said of introspection, which is its imaginative counterpart! When one sounds the shallows of self -hood with a loaded plummet, he is apt to biing up only the detritus of his life — the waste that sinks beneath the tide of his achieve- ment. Let none misconceive the liberty which the Queen of Hearts took with what she found upon 60 J my desk, or the plainness of her speech in re- gard to its character. It is long since she felt any hesitancy in asking about my work or delving in the confused mass of sheets that hide the green baize cover and sometimes heap them- selves above even the great brass inkstand, which thrusts aloft its load of rusty pens, point- less pencils, knives, rubbers, and all the miscel- laneous fragments which find no other place to rest, as if in mute protest at its threatened inhu- mation. Indeed,it is hardly too much to say, that but for her clarifying touch, little had ever come ij off the work-bench on which so much has been / vL, heaped. Though she has little imagination and , | no invention, the genius of completion and utili- zation is marvelous] y strong in her nature, and many an unpromising sketch has grown under her prudent nursing, to a lusty volume. If these volumes are the children of my brain, they are none the less the creatures of her hand. Not only has she been a tireless collaborator 61 but also that priceless helpful intelligence which comes within the verge of consciousness yet never disturbs, and that truest of all arbiters, one whose personal interest in what she judges is so keen that lapse from truth would be to her a crime. So, in and out of the dim shadows of the darkened workshop, she comes and goes at will. Sometimes I hear her footsteps ; sometimes I am unconscious of her presence. She knows when to speak and when to keep silent, a v faithful watcher, kindly monitor and Rha- ^ damanthine arbiter of what shall be and what shall have no chance of being. Many an unseemly branch has she lopped off and many a happy thought preserved, which but for her had been wholly lost. Her words were not intended as reproach but as warning. She takes the " realistic " cult somewhat too seriously, as I think, insisting that health and disease, strength and weakness should stand in the same relation 62 to each other in literature and art as in life, the one being no more real than the other, and mental and moral disease worthy of study and depiction, only as a means of inducing health ; just as a physician pi-aotices morbid anatomy, not for its own sake, but that he may learn the struct- ure and needs of healthy tissue. So she declares that he who paints a sick and scarred soul no more depicts a. verity, than he who depicts a clean and whole- some one. She has some strange canons of art, my sweet co-laborer ; but they are very clear and positive. Art, like labor and thought, she maintains, exists for human betterment — one of the forces on which Divine wis- dom has based the possibility of progress. It 63 may be stimulating or sedative, incline to laughter or move to tears ; it may be restful or inspiring, but if it make man weaker in im- pulse or worse in tendency and purpose, it is bad art, no matter how skillful the delineator may be in the depiction of realities. The man who paints warts and weakness, sin and shame, may tell the truth ; but it is an insignificant l/^ti-uth, unworthy of the artist's skill, unless it bring some lesson of cause or cure. Scars are worthy of note only as they speak of manly con- flict for a worthy cause. Wrinkles, callouses and grime may serve to show a soul that shines with courage and fortitude in spite of them. But,merely as independent f acts,deformities and defacements are just as vmworthy of the artist's labor as they are of cultivation and development as an end in life. She insists that a painter who should depict only deformity and disease would be hated and contemned, especially by eveiy mother. Why, then, she asks, should a novel- 64 ist depict only mental and moral ^-i^ deformity, or paint soul-weakness without purpose, except to show the defects of humanity ? Even a false hope or an impossible aspiration, she main- tains, is better than no hope and no aspiration. These deductions are quite correct, but com- mon charity should show her that "realism,' as it modestly calls itself, is, in truth, quite as much a trick of trade as a theory of life or a method in art adopted for its own sake. The literary artist wlio is so unfortunate as to be born in the nineteenth century, has at best, small chance to win a place beside the immor tals who have worked the mighty leads of hu- man passion and purpose in the past. Tliere are but two possible ways in which he may win rank at all commensurate with theirs. Either he must outdo them with the new materials of later life — its lights and shadows, mighty back- grounds and infinite scope and sweep — or else '5 65 he must convince the world that these great de- lineators of human nature were mere tyros and dawdlers, whom it were scarce creditable to a school-boy to excel. We are accustomed to say that those great mas- ters who have gone before have sounded every y depth of human passion and exhausted the category of dramatic situation. It seems hardly probable, because human experience is just as infinite in motive as in fact ; but there is no denying that all the ultimate facts of existence have been worked in an almost infinite variety of forms, and he who paints a picture of life to- day must use some of the methods and poses of the old masters. This makes his task in one sense harder, and in another easier, than was theirs. If they used certain striking situations, they also pointed out effective methods. If, how- ever, one could contrive to throw discredit not only on their methods, but on their conceptions also, it would not merely vacate some of the topmost niches in the temple of fame, but vastly %'.^' }-=- improve the chances of the writer of to-day to .-^''^ — i-r^ n scramble into one of them. The thought seems bold to the very verge of sacrilege ; but this is just what "realism" has attempted to do. It affirms that the masters of iictitious narrative neither understood human nature correctly nor painted it truly. Shakes- peare and Scott, Hugo and Dickens, Eliot and Sand, and a host of other creators of characters who are deemed immortal, from the very fact that they hold the mirror up to nature so truly that the ages must forever reproduce their lines — these were all juggling fakirs, who de- luded with false seeming ; and those who have vaunted and admired their works as master- pieces — are only weak sentimentalists, ' ' who have not yet outgrown a childish appetite for the marvelous " ! Only those who paint the tedious, .and the commonplace, are true artists.. And these are true because they 67 depict only little things the minute micro- cosms of life, or because they ignore purity and courage and love, and tell, or hint at, things which must not be spoken. Down with aspira- tion, achievement, passion, purity and love ! Up with pettiness, cowardice, indecision and whatever bespeaks weakness and hints of earthi- ness 1 Exit Cooper and Hawthorne I Enter Zola and Valdes ! He that paints man noble, or desirous of doing noble things, is false ; he ^ that paints him mean and selfish and petty — he alone is true ! If the world could orly be made to accept such theories, and then stand to its election, what vistas of fame would not be opened up to the new discoverers of truth ! The fox with the abbreviated taU laid no prettier plan for get- ting on even terms with his fellows, when he urged docking as a vast improvement on the brush, in which so many generations of the " unthinking rabble " had delighted. 68 The trouble with " realism," both as a philos- ophy of life and a metliod in art, is that it sees only one side of truth. It perceives very clearly certain phases of life and character, and, over- looking all others, stoutly declares that these alone are true. As a matter of fact, literalness is by no means synonymous with tmth. Ac- curacy of outline is only one element of verity. Light and shadow, tone and perspective, are equally essential. Between the facts of life is a whole world of relation, which, if not truly given, the result may be even more false than if it had no particle of truth about it. The camera is the most desperate of "realistic" sticklers for accuracy of out- line and detail ever known to the world of art, and yet the most unblushing liar that ever dis- torted truth. It does not hesitate to make the mote upon the lens greater than the mountain in the distance, and then impeaches the true artist's verity, because, in picturing the oak, he 70 has not given with accuracy tlie proportions of each leaf. " Realism,'' so-caUed, is merely my- optio truth — a painful accuracy of detail, with great vagueness or complete absence of back- ground and relation. Its mistake consists in the stout asseveration that what it depicts is all there is of truth. It bears the same rela- tion to literature that the camera does to art-^it sees one side and that without perspective or relief. >Its reality is that half-truth )*: which is the worst of all Ues, ~ because the most difficult to detect. Where shall we go ? " the Queen asked once more ; and, looking into her eyes, I read her |thought. She, too, wished for rest ; but the rest she desired was essentially different from that for which I longed. She wished for recreation. amusement, a new form of intellectual activity. She would like to go to some gay resort, where people herd together in search of pleasure, going in crowds, lest they should get lonely on the way. I think her idea of heaven is a city where fair women and brave men do con- gregate. No doubt she would have it within easy reach of leafy suburbs, filled with secluded homes, but she loves the light, the bustle, al- most I had said, the strife and brawl of the city. She takes the apocalyptic vision liter- ally, and counts the New Jerusalem a fact al- most as hard and glittering as the exiled prophet's memory of the old one. To her, the haven of eternal rest is a city with glistening walls and burnished pavements, set hard by a glaring, crystal sea, with only one green thing in it — ^the Tree of Life, with leaves of magic po- tency. She accepts, as veritable, the mirage which a son of the desert, who knew nothing of verdant meads and the opaline shadows under 71 thiok-leaved branches interlocked above clois- tered forest-paths, saw in his Sabbath vision. To his seared eyeballs, glory vs^as only gold and glitter — riches and display. The glare of the temple's gilded roof was his supremest type of magnificence. On this model, therefore, hia rapt vision buUded the Eternal City. As for me, I a am dim-eyed, heavy-lidded child of umbrage, who hates the clamor of the city and dislikes the desert, with its heat and glare — everything, indeed, except its long, wondrous shadows, its silence, its feeling of in- finite distance and vague sense of nearness to the sky when night spreads over it her star- gemmed canopy and the dew hushes the sand to fitful rest. But I can understand how one whose optic nerves had been hardened into in- sensibility by its glare, and whose heart had grown hungry, in its acrid silences, for the light of friendly faces, might dream of Heaven as a crowded thoroughfare full of the glitter of 72 matoMess gems, the harmonies of choristic praise, and tiie joyful clamor of unnumbered hosts of the redeemed. To my thought, the Blessed Abode is exactly the reverse — a quiet place f uU of the tender light that distills through half -grown leaves and faUs upon brown, elastic mold — the dark, fragrant treasure with which dead ages bless the unborn forest-life — of shel- tered glens, gray, silent peaks, shelly shores, reedy banks and foamy waterfalls. Instead of hallelujahs, I would have it fuLL of worshipful stretches of silence, tvjiere every soul might hide away with God and be invisible to all save those to whom each might choose to reveal himself. Such is, I think, the highest occidental ideal of heaven, born of cool shadows, silence and isolation, and making the home and sweet earth-ties immortal as well as the soul. Our Druidic ancestors did well to consecrate the soft solemnity of ancient groves to the Divine, 73 The oriental conception of Heaven is harsh and garisli, born of sand and sunshine, witliout ten- derness or flavor of home — much fitter for the Moslemic ideal than for that religion which is of the heart alone, and not of the eye or ear or sense — the Christianity which time has grafted on Celtic and Visigothic ideals. "Why not go to the sea-shore for a while?" the Queen of Hearts asked, seeing that I did not offer any suggestion upon the subject. vHrC-^ ' ' The sea-shore ? " I exclaimed. " If we could 5..,,W 'j\/f find a place where there was only the sea — the sea and the tides and a few fisher-folk ! " " Why not the sea and comfort and good society also ? " " The sea and good society ! Oh, my dear, do you not see that good society robs the sea of all that makes it sweet and restful — ^the silence, the isolation — and leaves only the glare, the sand, the discomfort ? " "What is the use of burying yourself when 74 you might go where people are ? I should think you would want to see life," she answered, not wholly pleased. "Life ? Good Heavens, my dear, do you call that life? If business is a masque with us, ' pleasuring ' has become an absolute unreality. Those people are not alive — they are only pup- pets who play at making one another believe that they are happy. I can see more life and a truer, better life too, by riding on a street-car an hour, than one will find at a ' resort ' in a month. They are the patches which civilization sticks upon the face of Nature, — very pleasant if one has youth and health and wealth, and wants to have a good time, but no more like life than a hippodrome or the opera. The people one meets there are not men and women, but shams, washed and gilded pre- tenses, or victims of that queer delusion which we call society. Of course, under the surface, there are strong hearts and true lives, but 75 they are hard to discover, being hid beneath so much tinsel. I like to go and find them out, to sit and watch the curious play that goes on in the light and in the dark, in the par- lor and in the kitchen, during that rushing ' season,' when men make a business of diver- sion, and women of dissimulation. You know I like to see it, when I have time and strength to spare ; but it is not rest, — and I am tired." ' ' Why not go to some of the summer schools —some Chautauqua, where rest is combined with intellectual improvement ? " she suggested. ' ' Don't, don't ! A brain which lias been sweating and travailing for a twelve-month does not want any ' intellectual improvement,' and especially does not care for the society of intel- lect-improvers. It wants rest ! " " I am sure you ought to rest at any of these quiet places, — say the Thousand Islands ; you know how picturesque they are — besides, there is the fishing. And you would be welcome 76 as the day to tliousands who would like to see and know you better." " But the land and water are covered with men and women," I protest, impatiently. ' ' One is no more alone there than if he were on Broad- way. He would hardly find a chance to pray, without having his petition criticised by a score of expei-ts, long before it reached the Lord's V ears. Besides, tlie water is ' fished-out,' and of all things, a sportsman hates worst a ' fished out ' stream." "Well, then, why not go ' up the Lakes.' You know what a pleasant trip it is ? " "But that will take a month at least; and liere is all this ." I pointed to a table on wliich were a heap of books and a pile of paste- board sheets, lieaded with chapter numbers, and names of people and places. She knew what It meant. It was a novel in embryo. "Can it not wait?" " It is promised, you know." 77 " Perhaps you might do some work at Petos- ky ; the saiUng is good and the season is de- Hghtful there." There is a wistful look in the loving eyes. Dear gentle deceiver ! How well she knows my weaknesses, nor ever dreams that I have any suspicion of hers ! She knows I love the tossing yacht and the fresh breezes of Lake Michigan, but does not suspect that I know it is the bustling life of the gem-lined shore which attracts her, and the lingering hope that I may yet be seduced to try the vain experi- ment of uniting labor and recreation, rather than seek a solitude she cannot share, and a life which, truth to tell, she does not greatly enjoy. I cannot blame her. We have been comrades and co-workers so long that each is crippled by the other's absence. Besides, she is always in 78 •f-^ fear that the solitude which swallows up may not give back, — that some mishap may befall by flood 01' fell. She realizes more keenly than j^ I the limitations which the accidents of war long past, have put on my activities, robbing mo of that power of self-help and self-defence, ir>ig which are the prime elements of security to i him who loves the sports of the solitary. The discomforts of a prolonged stay in camp are by no means imaginary, and the woman who braves the wilderness for a week has need of much patience, not a little blindness, and de- serves a reward infinitely greater than she is likely to receive. Solitude she cannot have. A woman is never really alone — in the forest or on the desert — except with another. Do not count that a solecism ; it hides the very sweetest truth of human life. A woman knows no soli; tude except she shares it with another. The house is her refuge ; society her respite. She cannot take rod and gun and wander off and 79 lose herself for days and weeks at a time, nor hardly for an hour. The pleasantest camp, with the dearest friends, becomes tedious to her,when the sense of the unusual has once worn off. Perhaps her nature does not require soUtude to renew its forces, or it may be that the home- wall protects her from that exhaustion which comes when ' ' face answereth to face,'' which is the bane of civilized life. I knew that to ask the Queen to share the camp life and camp fire for a week with only the best-beloved, -was to requii'e her to undergo discomforts which even a woman's love of self-sacrifice ought not to be called upon to face. Yet I have always longed to share with her the delights of the wilderness. They have even lost much of their sweetness because this seenjed impossible. How often I had wished her with me — not to break the solitude, but to share it I How many delights I had experienced which would have been a thousand-fold more raptur- 80 81 ous, if I could have noted her pleasure in them also ! I have always been foolish, and to a cer- tain extent sentimental. My friends think I am foolish because I love to go into the woods alone ; and sentimental because I some- times care little for the sports of the day or the joUity of the camp at night. What would they say if they knew that I felt charged to en- joy for two — myself and the staid matron who '•J'- b waiting for the story I will tell on my return, — and that half the pleasure of many a happy ^ day is lost, because a certain pair of calm gray .^ eyes do not see the things which I behold. I need v not say that I am old. The man who will ad- i mit such feehng for a woman who has made the race of life with him, is something even a thou- sand times more reprehensible, according to the canons of to-day — he is old-fashioned. Never mind ; she likes it, and in her efforts to gratify me by taking part in my pleasure she has encountered some peril and endured 6 uncomplainingly not a little discomfort. She shudders yet, for instance, when the water surges under the keel of a row-boat, remember- ing a certain tempestuous passage across the little lake whose glint is part and parcel of our home entourage, which, once upon a time, stirred by some malignant power, seemed bent on our engulfment. As a rule, I am forced to admit that my attempts to enable her to partici- pate in such pleasures with me, have not been altogether successful. Yet I think she would f hardly be willing to miss some of these experi- ences from the pages of her memory. Even ^^ the nameless fear attending a scramble along a wave-washed cliff, crawling through a nar- row passage into an ice-cave, underneath which the waves beat with threatening roar while half a hundred feet of frozen wall shut out the light, was, I think, forgotten in the enjoyment of the rare beauty of the crystal chamber I had illuminated and adorned 82 in honor of her coming. But I had never dared [I /iil ask her to face the discomforts of a camp, and j one of the pleasures I had long regretted she :' had missed was a soUtary bivouac — a night under the summer stars. This longing came over me with renewed force as a result of this annual discussion of the ;. summer vacation, which was much more apt i ,| to be discussed than enjoyed. " Why not come with me and have our long ^sji) talked of night in camp ?" I asked, at length. "Oh, dear! Don'tspeak of it ! Ishould justf spoil your pleasure, and get none myself." jt \h " Try it once, won't you?" "Just once? You will never ask me to go again?" "Just this once : I will never ask again ; — s'help me — Polyphemus ! " "There, there," she interrupted, laughing at my earnestness. " I don't want any protesta- tions. I expect I shall get drowned, or a tree 83 K' •i-! will fall on me ; or my clothes catch fire, or a rattlesnake bite me, or a fish-hook get in my eye, or I shall be shot or fall over a clifl:, or get my death of cold ; but if you will promise never to ask me again — and only expect me to stay one night^I'U go ! " To tell the truth, I was sorry, on the instant, that I had asked her, for I thought it more than likely one or more of the evils she anticipated 1 might befall. However, I made light of her fears, and a fortnight was filled with pleasant expectations, while, with much weighty argu- ment and prolonged study of maps and guide- books, we selected the scene of our outing, and ordered our going and coming according to their inflexible requirements. 84 'here shall rest be found? There is an island — let me not tell its name nor reveal what coast it confronts ; but rather f give it the vague description with which the conqueror of Gaul veiled his own ignorance, and say that it lies ' ' under the Seven Stars." It rises sheer out of a green, sparkling, unsalted sea, which beats it with sand and wave, as if angry because it breaks the line of rippling foam that bears down upon it with equal impetuosity whatever way the wind may lie. It is large enough for a duchy, if it lay off the coast of the Old World ; but too poor to attract, and too inaccessible to hold for long, the liberty- 85 loving and gold-gathering American. Once it was inhabited, — just long enough to be shorn of its forest, or the better part of it. The sand and the second-growths struggle now for its possession. Maples and beeches compete for the places left vacant by the ancient monarchs ; the sand mocks at them ; heaps itself about them ; strangles their life, and invites a new growth to begin again the unequal conflict. Sometimes the forest wins, sometimes the sea ; man does little to aid the one or discourage the other. The old roads by which the wood- men drew the forest giants to the shore, have become deep, yawning scars through which the waters rush down the gentle slopes in the spring freshets and the summer showers ; but the clustering maples hide the rocks laid bare by this erosion which reveals how firm a sub- sti-ucture the little islet has. A few huts, now fallen to decay, tell where the lunabermen once dwelt, and the timothy, self-seeded from the 86 hay on which their teams were fed, grows rank and green in the clear- ings. The wliarf is fast crum- bling away ; the inhabitants have departed : — only one family and the crew of a life- saving station remain. Horses and sheep wan- der almost at will in the dense chapparal, or crop the rich grass of the clearings. There are no mountains ; little ruggedness, indeed, and few springs. It is just a great rook covered with clay and heaped with sand, on which a forest has once grown and another is striving to grow. It is a part of the domain of the United States. Once a week a hardy flsherman brings a mail- bag from the nearest shore. If the winds are contrary, he now and then intermits a week. Sometimes, under protest, and with many a murmur of discontent, a steamer, whose route lies a dozen miles away, heads into the ofBng, blows her whistle angrily, is answered by a red flag by day or a rocket by night, and the Ufe- 87 /§ # boat puts off from the Station, taking away those who desire to leave, and bringing back anj' who may have come. ■^'^' {j^Tk It is a ghostly, silent shore, seen in the ^«^p^\ moonlight, and the people have the peculiar reticence which isolation gives. Yet there are warm hearts and warm welcomes for those who care to step upon its wreck-strown beach. There is neither law nor traffic in its boundaries, for no one has aught that any other requires of which he may not easily become possessed. There is a dim suspicion that it is sometimes the hiding-place of smugglers, and one or two little schooners, with fine lines and raking masts, are sometimes hauled ashore where the timber is thickest, or liid in sharp breaks of the rocky parapet when revenue cutters are unpleasantly abundant in the neighboring waters. It is prob- ably merely a coincidence, for where there is no law there can be no crime ; and how can there be law where there is no magistrate? 88 The cocks crow as the steamer blows her whistle and turns back into the darkness, and as you approach the shoi-e, the long oars of the life-boat rising and falling in perfect time, you hear the foxes bark upon the wooded hills. In the morning you feel a strange loneliness. It is like being a castaway, only there is no fear of want. The one farm upon the "Island" makes profusion. There is always enough and to spare of what the earth produces ; and the nets of the fishermen, who compose the crew of the Station, make fisli almost too abundant to be esteemed of any value. One may live in comfort here, made all the more attractive by certain discomforts, and yet be lost to the world, and bid defiance to the demand of the multi- tude as successfully as if he were in the middle of Sahara. No telegram can reach him, and the most urgent of letters must stop respectfully upon the mainland a week or a fortnight, before it can disturb his equanimity, unless it chance to come precisely at the right moment to catch the uncertain little cockle-shell which glories in the distinction of being the mail-boat, which, however, does not make its owner any whit more anxious to put out when the winds do blow, or enable it to make any better headway when they refuse to blow. You feel as if you were on an orb in space, with other worlds hur- rying by, and only enough of your fellow-mor- tals within hail to afford the pleasure of talking your symptoms over with them. Of the world's life there are but two types acces- sible, farmer and fisher, and hardly a score of both. Of " Merchant, lawyer, doctor, chief, Eich man, poor man, beggar-man, thief," there is neither hint nor suggestion. You are alone in a world you are at liberty to explore at your own sweet will, or leave wholly to im- agination, as you may choose. 90 It was here we went for our vacation. A Ju| friendly greeting, and a roomy, ancient dwell- JS; ing with no occupants but ourselves, against which the sand beat when the wind blew, and in sight of whose windows the green waves \'w broke angrily or lapped lazily upon the shore, \j|J awaited us.- The booming of the surf lulled us "^i to sleep. How silent the world when we awoke ! "i^ The sand made every footfall noiseless ; the -^ waves and the wood muflSed every tone. The ■MT gulls screamed. An eagle sat undisturbed on EM, one of the piles of the crumbling dock. A !/ drove of fly-stung horses rushed madly over the cushioning sands into the waves to escape their tormentors. The watchman in the tower of the Station was looking down at another of the crew catching white-bait with a pin-hook, and throwing them back into the placid deep. The chipmunks were playing about the doorsteps ; the stillness seemed Sabbatic, and we instinct- ively spoke in hushed tones. The tinkle of 91 a distant reaping-machine suggested profana- tion. Yet even here is romance. Love and duty are the sovereigns of this fair isle. A family, cultur- ed, refined and tender, quite beyond the common lot, have bmlt here the home which is the center of the universal world. Neither misanthropy nor hate nor greed, guided the footsteps of the gray-haired man who led hither a little com- pany bound together by the ties of kindred. A shattered fortune and overwrought brain may have had something to do with the exodus from the busy city into a wilderness far more lonely than that in which the prophet found the burn- ing bush ; but it was the impulse of duty to one upon whom an impenetrable shadow had fallen, which led to the founding of this colony, so gen- tle and peaceful in its character that even the foals that wander almost unrestrained in the shady pastures, come with equal readiness at the call of any of the household. Here the souls 92 which had grown weary in the endless strife which we call civilization, rest beneath the stars, with only the surfs deep monotone for a lullaby, and grow calm and strong. Here peace reigns, and love spying its sweets from far, makes choice among its flowers, and one by one bears them away to other homes. Gentler men or sweeter women, in the circle of the earth's course may not be found, for here the bluest of New England's blood with its unflinching pride and high ideals, mingles with that broader, heartier, stronger Western life from which joint- ure to-morrow's kings shall come. Blessed is the stranger who is admitted behind the barrier of formal entertainment, and feels himself a guest indeed, rather than a mere visitant. Let us be thankful that though art may be- come "realistic," life can never cease to be " romantic." In the very middle of this mystic Island, a little lake is hid — hardly large enough to 93 attract the sportsman or the pot-hunter, nor yet small enough to make the name Inappropriate — a mile long, half a mile wide, and of a depth to make one shudder at the thought of the force by which its basin was reft. Pine and hemlock giants, scattered here and there, stand on the eastward hills, with thickets of maple and birch, fir and balsam, interspersed with grassy clear- ings. On the western margin hundreds of acres of marsh filled with cedar and tamarack ; be- yond that, sand and silence and the echoing shore. Sloping gently from a narrow beach for a little distance, its sides plunge suddenly down as sheer as a crater's edge to unknown depths. Ten thousand acres, more or less, of forest and thicket surround it, on the outermost verge of which are half a dozen houses. The foxes and half-wild horses alone know all the bye- paths through the crowding chapparal. The little sapphire lake lies in an emerald setting, broken by gray rocks here and there, and 94 glimpses of gleaming birchen boles, when the wind parts the clustering branches. To this hidden spot we came,- my Queen of Hearts and I, for a day's sport and the long hoped-for night under the stars. The August day was hardly well begun when we reached its verdant shores. Om: stores and equipage were taken to the point I had selected for our carnp ; the lumbering wagon that brought us turned back over the rough, echoing road — and we were alone. The next day at nightfall it would return to take us away. " How strange one feels," said the Queen, as she sank down on a mossy bank, " to be alone in the middle of this green Island which itself is in the middle of the great Lake ! It is like be- ing in a special world which only comes in hail of the rest of the universe, now and then, in its course through the heavens. Are you sure there is nobody on the other shore ? " She looked across at the reedy margin where a blue heron was just alighting. 95 " It seems as if there might be somebody peering out of the bushes over yonder," she continued, nervously pointing to the opposite shore. " You know there is no one." j;^^^ " Of course ; but it does seem so strange to be all alone and know we are all alone, out of doors. How long do you suppose it has been since any one was here ? " " Some weeks, perhaps months. That shows it has been a good while." I pointed to an eagle which had just lighted on a dead hemlock within easy range. " He would not be there if he had visitors often. I have half a mind to Jsv^ make him pay for.his impudence." My hand closed nervously about the stock of my. gun. The civilized man is the worst sort of savage. He kills for the pure love of kill- ing. There was no reason why I should wish to slay one of a species almost extinct, even if he did prey upon our host's lambs. I 96 was sportsman enough to have no need to gather such cheap laurels. Yet the piece was at my shoulder, my eye seeking the wing-joint along the gleaming barrel, and the noble bird would soon have been a memory, had not my companion interfered. " Oh don't ! " she exclaimed. "I should feel as if you had committed murder, if you should kill him. I am sure I could not sleep a wink to-night. It is bad enough to be alone, without being haunted, also. It is right by our camp, too. Oh don't ! " I lowered the gun with a laugh, nothing loth i to spare the veteran, though of course, being a i' man, I made light of the Queen's remonstrance. The eagle, which had been watching us critical- ly, his pinions once or twice half -spread, seemed now to realize that he was safe, and settling down upon his perch, tucked his head between his wings and eyed us with patronizing com- posure. 7 97 There was but one boat upon the little lake — a flat-bottomed scow, which in style and con- dition was the very climax of the unromantic. It did not take long, however, with a woodman's craft where firs and birches were so abundant, to transform its interior, making the bottom a fragrant carpet whose springy pile of mot- tled green and silver was fit for a queen's foot- ing. The disgust which my half-unwilling companion had been unable to conceal when she first saw the dirty punt, gave way to a smile of pleasure as I handed her over the bulwark into a seat cushioned with fir-branches and up- holstered with silver birch. It was a toilsome job for an August day, but when a lady con- sents to share a man's sports, it is only fair that he should tax his knowledge of woodland mys- teries to give her pleasures she never before enjoyed. There were three of us, the Queen, myself and brave El Cid, a swart Newfoundland, thus named because of royal port and unswerving devotion, after the Campeador wliose loyal service death itself was powerless to conclude. So fervid was his love, that he hated, with a, fierceness that smacked of peril, all those to whom we showed favor ; while between us his heart was so divided that this very morning he had been torn with doubt whether he should come with the Queen and his master or stay with his young mistress, who had elected to re- main, that she might take snap-shots of the crew of the Life-Saving Station in their weekly drill. Persuaded that she needed not his care, he had come with us, tearing gleefully through the leafy chapparal, in pretended search of game more worthy of his notice than the chipmunks which darted with sudden squeaks and saucy, up-flung tails hither and thither, at his ap- proach. He had growled at the eagle, whined at a covey of ducks he saw feeding among the reeds on the other side of the little bay, until, 99 ^' finding neither of any avail to re-awaken my murderous proclivities, he flung himself down beside the Queen and watched, with grave at- tention, the decoration of the scow. When the seat amidship had been converted into a ver- dant throne, ready for the Queen's occupancy, he provoked us both to laughter by gravely stalking on board and appropriating it himself. However, like a true knight, he yielded it with evident pleasure, when he saw her cross the gunwale, retiring with dainty steps along the rave of the bulwark, to a less ornate but more sightly and picturesque station on the poop. Ah, dear old Cid, rarest and truest of canine friends, whose love was his own undoing, how incomplete would be any mention of that rare day without tribute to thee ! How often we smiled at your antics, laughed at your jealous care for us, and consoled your baseless suspi- cion that our boisterous glee was meant foj ridicule 1 100 When, with rod and gun and bait safely- stowed, I took my place upon the bow and pushed out to find a fishing-ground, it was with the feeling that only good fortune was needed to ensure a perfect day. We were weU-equipped for happiness — I with my rod, the Queen of Hearts with her book, if sport were dull ; El Cid nodding on his narrow bit of deck if the strikes were rare. Over all fell the golden sunshine or the soft cloud-shadows ; around us were the verdure-clad shores, the deep sapphire-tinted waters, and the silence broken only by the duU boom of the surf on the Island's outmost verge. Of this company, I was the captain and crew, the Queen of Hearts our royal passenger and El Cid master and owner of the whole outfit. I had provided myself, therefore, with a sup- ply of live-bait of a silvery whiteness, found in] the crevices of the old dock, where they bite 10] ravenously at one kind of bait only, — ^the com- mon house-fly. They are strong-finned and Tigorous, and in the dark green depths of the little lake, shine like flashing stars. Unlike most live-bait, the capture of one of these on a ten-foot leader, is no light task even for a bass whose strength of fin is matched with a power of curve which makes him almost unrivalled in those sudden changes of direction which add so much to his quality as a staunch fighter. Two hooks were laden with the shining lures, not without protest from the Queen and whin- ing remonstrance from the big Newfoundland, who, being accustomed to share my sports, re- garded himself as very iU-used because com- pelled to remain a boat's length away from the scene of action. By the time he had been quieted and the silver scales of the bait had disappeared in the translu- cent depths, the Queen, with the charming inconsistency of her sex, began to wonder why 102 103 the flsh did not bite. I laughed, with the con- scious superiority of manhood, and explained that they must have time to become accustomed to our presence, the shadow of the boat and the strangeness of the lure. She looked around with a sigh of contentment, settled back upon her fragrant cushioned seat and began to read the book upon her lap. I watched her face, lighted up by the reflection of the water which , crept under hat and sunshade and gave it that tender, tremulous glow which only the face of a woman afloat ever reveals. It is not strange that ladies are fond of yacht- ing, especially fair ones, for there is no place where golden-tinted hair, blue eyes and fair cheeks show with such surpassing loveliness, even when the gold has given place to silver. But let the brunette shun the sea, if she would maintain her empire. Whether the weather be fair or foul, the sea is her enemy. The ^ray drabbles, the sun sallows, the wind fills her fly- <6 ^:p ing tresses with Medusa-like suggestions. Let the brunette who would keep her lover's heart, beware of the sea, if he be of her company. '•Whir-r-rr !" The Qvieen looks up in surprise and asks : " Why — what is the matter ? " The, dog with more experience, starts from his nap, gazes intently into the water, first on one side of the boat, then on the other, then whining and trembling with excitement, runs H daintily along the nan-ow bulwark, leaping half I^J' over the Queen of Hearts, and lands in the bow, where he places his feet on the gunwale and leans over with utter scorn for the trim of the craft and the comfort of the other passengers. With the first cUck of the reel the Captain is on his feet, kicking the camp-stool on which he has been sitting on the narrow deck, back into the boat, lest it should fall overboard, while with hand upraised he fol- lows the movement of the startled prey as it 104 105 makes the line hiss through the rippling water. Back and forth, now on this side, now on that ; plunging now into the shadow of the boat, now sulking stubbornly down into the depths, until half a hundred feet scarce measure his sound- ings. Slowly circling, rising up as the reel draws him gently to the surface ; showing a dull red as we look down upon him ; then revealing glowing eyes and golden side as he shakes his head angrily and leaps above the water scattering the bright drops from his writhing form and shooting down again into ( | the darkness, vainly dreaming that he has ^\ escaped. Again and again, the exciting play is repeated. The Queen of Hearts leans, flushed and eager over the gunwale. El Cid rushes from side to side. The fisherman has eyes only for his prey, and voice only for angry but quite useless remonstrance with the dog, who recks nothing of the danger and inconvenience of shifting from side to side of a hundred pounds •^ of animate ballast. He cares little for a douche, and cannot be made to understand that others do. Half to quiet the confusion and half to allay her own fears, the Queen grasps him firmly by the collar and holds him trembling and whining, whUe the exhausted fish turns on his side, beating the water now and then an- grily with his tail ; is gently entreated to ap- proach ; the landing-net is slipped deftly under him and his golden side shows its swiftly chang- ing hues among the glistening leaves of the fir yv>. carpet of the awkward craft. The great dog lays his foot upon the prize in playful restraint, and licks his master's perspiring face as he stoops down to unloose the barb. The savage instinct of slaughter brings man and brute upon a level, and his familiarity goes un- rebuked. Through all the sultry morning the sport goes on, and always the same scene is repeated, though not always with like result. To the 106 Bportsman an escape is often more exciting than ^ ^, a capture. Tlie Queen of Hearts has long since £>rJ^-^T^ dropped her book, which has slipped through the flr carpet to the bottom, of the boat, whore it lies drabbled and soalied in the water which has dripped from El Cid's >'*<|< shaggy hide, who nodding on the high poop to which he had been forced to return, fell overboard, and amid much laughter at his ^'N, mishap, scrambled back again, dripping and shiny, but cured of dreaming on such a perch. The Queen has forgotten the story she was reading, and watches with pleasure hardly less than mine, the recurring struggles, and even con- templates with satisfaction the flapping string of fierce-eyed captives, pinioned by their gills, which hang in the water securely fastened to the thwart, still angrily protesting against their imprisonment. The string has grown heavy, as one by one and two by two, new victims have been led with gentle persistence from the dark 107 *i 108 caverns of the ledge below to share their bond- age. There is no haste, no brutal force ; only the quiet compulsion of the gossamer thread, the unceasing pressure of the swaying tip, the watchfulness of the alert eye and the yielding of the supple wrist. The click-reel has been changed for an automatic recovery, — almost an essential of enjoyable deep-water bass-fishing — less startling in its announcements, but more efficient in operation. It was a day of splendid sport. In my mem- ^'^^ ^\l\v ory there is but one to compare with it, and ^'' ~- ^**™ ^=\ that, I am almost ashamed to confess, was neither with trout nor salmon, nor tarpon of phe- nomenal size and savageness. I have had such struggles, but the tmur de force which lives unap- proachable for delight in my ^- -Sli ""^T^^^ memory, was a two hours' fight one late au- /V \. "^\ tumnal day, upon a wind-swept lake with a twenty pound muskalonge upon a twelve ounce rod, in which, most unexpectedly, I came off victorious. As the sun approached the meridian, I felt my hand growing tired, and could see, despite the flush upon her face, that the sport was beginning to pall with the Queen. As for El Cid, like hip namesake the Campeador, he is never weai-y ,of slaughter ; with every strike his frenzy is the same : between whiles he dozes on his perch or watches with furtive eye the gold-brown scales of the captives, start- ing now and then with apprehension as he im- agines they have broken from their bonds ; still he gloats over every new capture and gazes into my eyes with sad reproachfulness at each escape. He is a born sportsman, and never tires either of the water or the rod. Even the old eagle seems to take an interest in our sport. More than once he has soared above us and sent his broad shadow upon the water shrieking ap- 109 proval of some fortunate catch and swooping down as if for a nearer view at the finish, then flying back to his percli on the old Iiemlook to await another strike. "I believe he knows what you are doing," said my companion, as the great wings swished over us, and startled by his harsh cry, we looked up to see the fierce yellow eyes glaring down, the great coarse talons extended and working nervously as he swept past. The dog drew back his lips, showed his white teeth, and burst into an angry roar. " No doubt he approves ; he is a sportsman himself," responded the fisherman as he bent on another leader. " Now," he added, as he cast forth three shining beauties and dropped them gently forty feet away, just breaking the rippled surface with their fall. ' ' Now for triplets— just let me get three at a cast and I will quit. Then we wiU go ashore and lunch ; make the camp 110 for the night, and, just as the sun goes down, 1 will have a cast or two with a fly, off yonder point." We had not long to wait. There was a gentle thrill, a steady pull, then an interval when the line hung relaxed and motionless. Looking down in the shadow of the boat, we beheld a spec- tacle not often seen even by the most experi- enced fishermen. Twenty feet below a great bass was poised, his reddish brown form seeming strangely dull in comparison with the mingled, green and gold he shows at nearer view; his flns and tail moving slowly, while on each side of his mouth gleamed a bit of silver — the head and tail of the bait he held transversely, occasionally shaking his head like a dog who has captured his prey but is hardly sure it will not seek to escape. Pi-esently he looses his hold on the stunned and mangled bait, but instantly dashing forward he seizes it again, this time by the head, and it wholly disappears. The moment has come for 111 action. The tip is sharply raised ; there is a sudden jerk ; the barb shoots through the tough lip, and the fisherman smiles grimly at the sur- prised victim's struggles. " A good one and well-hooked," he says with confldent satisfaction. "Look! look!" cries the Queen excitedly, pointing down into the water. The sight was one to stir a sportsman's blood to fever-heat. As the enraged fish started on a wild rush for liberty, another, and an instant afterwards yet another seized upon the bait attached to the other leaders and were securely hooked by the impetus of his dash. Then followed a scene which maybe imagined but can never be described. Three gamey bass — the least not an ounce under three pounds — pulling each their several ways for escape! The fight was a long one : — first above the water and then hidden in the depths, the bonny prey kept up the struggle. It would not do to 112 lose the touch nor yet to add a feather's weight to the strain upon the hissing line. They worked out into deep water, and, despite the flsherman!s efforts, seemed bound to make a journey to the other shore. The breeze had risen, and the little lake was covered with sparkling ripples. It took off the captain's hat : the Queen landed it with the gaff before it iloated out of reach. The three captives kept well together, showing now and then their golden sides upon the surface of the waves, now sinking as by one accord and pull- ing like a team of Conestogas, all the time. The eagle, aroused by the unusual excitement, flew over us with a scream. " Seems to like the fun," said the captain, not relaxing his attention. Just then there was a break, another and another, and we saw the three flashing beauties at one time in the aii'. With a gasp of rapture I shot a glance at the Queen of Hearts. Her 8 113 114 sunshade had fallen backward in the boat, and was saved from going overboard only by one of ElCid's great paws resting on the silken lining ; she was following every movement of the line with breathless expectation. For a moment the catch disappeared from view. Then a fin flashed on the crest of a wave sixty feet away and a gleaming side turned up on the one that fol- lowed. There was a fiercer scream above our " Look out ! " cried the Queen. The big Newfoundland barked angrily and leaped overboard. There was a rush of wings as the great bird swooped down and clutched one of the prizes with a single talon. As he rose, he lifted the fish upon the second leader above the surface. Sweeping down again, the greedy thief caught it with the other claw. El Cid, re- senting this interference with his master's sport, was drawing near with long swift strokes of his black, webbed feet, barking angrily. With a; _^^ shrill scream of triumph the eagle rose, a fish, in either claw, the dog just snapping at the wing-feathers that brushed the waves before him. As the bird sailed away, the fish upon the third leader came into view and hung, splashing and wriggling, twenty feet below. " Aha, old fellow — that is a bigger load than you bargained for ! " I exclaimed, excitedly. "Why don't you shoot him?" asked the Queen, quite oblivious of her former plea for the life of the bird. The Captain dropped his rod— the line had already parted— and caught up his gun. As he did so the eagle, which had risen perhaps a hundred feet, watching with down-turned, twisting neck, the wriggling fish upon the leader— which would have snapped long before if subjected to such strain under ordinary cir- cumstances—suddenly shot down, seized the third fish in his beak, turning a complete som- 115 116 mersault. Though he fell almost to the water, hardly a boat's length away, he recovered before the excited dog could reach him, and sailed away to his perch with my champion catch in his possession. I wondered how he would manage to alight, cumbered as he was, but he seemed to have no difficulty in doing so. I could only guess at the weight of the fish, but I am sure it was more pounds of bass than I have ever had upon a rod at one time, before or since. Whether the hooks and leaders agreed with the robber's digestion I do not know, but despite my pride as an angler I would rather have witnessed that vision of gray wings, flashing eyes and savage talons than have landed the catch myself.. Only El Cid was dis- appointed ; he followed the shadow of the great, bird to the shore and bayed fiercely at him un- til called away ; and not once did he afterwards hear his discordant scream without responding with an angry snarl. When we had drawn some wondering breaths ; looked into each other's eyes, and the Queen had raised her sunshade, and I had donned my dripping hat, we drew in the captives ; counted them, guessed at their weight — only a sports- man who is utterly reckless or quite destitute of moral sense will carry scales, — and reserv- ing a few for our evening meal, returned the rest to their native element, pulled up the anchor, ran the old punt ashore, and lunched under the shade of the trees with the waves softly lapping the yellow sands at our feet. What an afternoon that was ! The sport of the morning had given appetite and inclination for repose ; the verdant canopy shut out the sun- shine ; the hreeze crept in over the sparkling waves ; the silence told of solitude, and- the booming of the distant surf attested that the world was far away. The delicious, indescrib- 117 able sense of isolation settled down upon us, — a feeling strangely akin to that of possession ; — it was our lake, our sky, our solitude. I wonder if this is not the reason why all forest and desert-born peoples resent the restrictions of civilization. They have been accustomed to regard themselves as tenants-in-common of everything — ^the earth as well as sea and sky — and so are cramped and chafed by the fetters of individual possession. b^>2 ^* '^ curious how the duality of human nature yr.;* attests itself under such conditions. A man and a woman, if harmonious in character, are more thoroughly alone with each other than when absolutely isolated. If the Queen of Hearts had not been there, I should have been thinking at least half the time of her — of what she would feel and do and say if she were with me. As it was, I had no curiosity about her sensations or rather assumed that hers were as agreeable, as languorous, as vague and as boundless as were mine. 118 "Alone in the world was I Yet there was one with me, — " I quoted as I lay upon my face on the un- pitohed tent, my head resting on one ai-m, and looked up at her as she sat with her back against a tree, the soft leafy shadows dancing over the fair face with its crown of clustering silver, a ^^, spray of spicewood in her hand, and her lap full of ferns. What pleasure it had been | to gather them '.—she follow- ing in my footsteps, knowl- I edge making my eye keen to discover what she would have missed, and the curious instinct of woodcraft prevising what each thicket would reveal. I did not wonder of what she thought ; I simply felt her sweet content, and the talk flowed on, sometimes smoothly and again with long silences, — but always of other things. 119 She looked up as I quoted the lines, as if she comprehended them. I suppose she always had. In truth, it is only woman who fully understands the sacred mystery of love, though it is man who speculates most about it. Thank God, man is not all flesh, and mar- riage is not yet a mere matter of convenience ! Love is potent because it is of God, and men and women will continue to love and marry, because solitude is most complete where there are twain who are one in heart, and because 5p| this is impossible except where love is. There may be men who lose their sense of individuality sometimes, when with other men, as there may be women who forget the presence of other women ; but they are so rare as to be phenomenal., Take your friend into camp with you ; hunt with him ; fish with him ; tent with him — ^have him at your slbow day and night. It may be very pleasant at first ; soon it will grow tiresome ; after a while it is.likely to gro\V 120 imtatiug almost beyond endurance. Yet mill- ions of men live from youth to age, in the daily company of their wives, and neither find it irksome. After a time, I set about preparing the even- ing meal and the camp-bed. The day gave promise of a cloudless night, and I determined to risk a bivouac rather than spoU Elysium by the intervention of canvas. A sandy hillock twenty feet above the waters of the lake which had washed away its side, pitching outward the young second-growths upon its edge, and mak- ing a network of green branches that overhung a bit of white sandy beach,, bounded by the trunks of two great forest monarchs, which stretched like piers out almost to the blue water, marking the sudden plunge the,shore takes to the level of the lake's bed, was the place I had chosen for the camp. A little opening in the rift of hemlock, cedar, birch and maple which covered it as a verdant curtain, gave a ghmpse 121 of the sky. A great cedar stump upon the landward side invited us to use it as a fireplace ; a moss-covered slope, inclining gently away cv from the lake, was already a fragrant couch. Twenty steps distant was a high, precipitous • i bank studded with a majestic growth of ever- greens and birches whose white boles showed like ghosts amid the shadows that fell upon the lichen-covered rocks. What ravages I made with knife and hatchet among those treasures of the wUdwood ! Why / is a woodsman — at least, the civilized woods- man — always so proud of his abiliEy to make Nature minister to his comfort? Why should he be prouder of cooking a meal in the forest which tnay be eaten if the appetite be sharp enough, than his wife would be of preparing one that would tempt the most sated desire, in a kitchen. Never mind : he is ; and only the woodsman can guess the pleasure of those hours of toU. 122 .^■J Supplies were abundant, — our host had been ' careful that we should lack for nothing — and in ! good condition, thanks to our ceUar which was on the bench of white sand imder the leafy shadows where the cool waves kept our cans of mUk and butter as fresh as if in an ice-house. jr>^- I had looked out for that, knowing by experi- ence how a little discomfort may destroy the otherwise most perfect outing. There was only coffee to make ; potatoes to roast in the peaty ashes ; fish to cook in bark cases buried in the hot sand ; steak to broil on a forked stick before the blaze. Do not imagine that I did all, — or even the major part of these things. The Queen as- sured me that what I did not know about making coffee was simply phenomenal. Her idea of packing the fish so as to exclude the sand and yet allow the steam to escape, was well worth considering, too. But when it came to roasting potatoes in the ashes or planking a 123 bass on a birch slab, fresh cut from the tree, she was nowlwre. So, too, she had no part in making the moss table, covered with silvery bark held in place by skewers, from which the meal was eaten. The breeze crept softly in from the lake ; the level sun shot its rays here and there under the leafy canopy ; the birds sang in the trees above us ; the crickets chirped, and the waves that pat- tered on the beach below were transparent gold, such as "never was on land or sea" before. There was a hint of ashes about much that we ate : the smoke blew in our faces once or twice ; but everything had -the nameless flavor of unaccustomedness, and the meal was sweeter than any can be which is prepared and eaten where the scent of the forest does not come. The bed was of moss and fir — only woodsmen know how soft and fi-agrant such a couch may 124 be. There was the perfume of pennyroyal in it too, and the headboard of birch-bark, two feet high, which stretched between us and the lake, Jest the freshening night-breeze should visit the Queen's cheek too roughly, gave forth its sweet resinous odor to soothe our slumber. A row of cedar boughs screened the firelight from our eyes. One half the heavy canvas " fly " spread over the flr-boughs, guarded alike from possible dampness of the earth and the pitch of the cush- ioning firs ; the other half was security against the dew if any should find its way through the leafy canopy. We were well supplied with blankets, and the saplings at the bed's head made a convenient wardrobe. When we were ready to retire. El Cid seemed greatly disturbed at the idea of his mistress occupying such a lowly couch. He minded nothing about me, but thrusting his nose under her arm, seemed bent upon compelling her to rise. How we laughed at his efforts and won- 125 126 dered, as we wonder still, what it was that he feared ! Finding himself obliged to abandon his desire, he finally curled down beside her, his nose resting on her arm, and all night long with jealous wakefulness, watched over her slumber. The chirp of a cricket, the splash of a bass in the lake below, the song of the whip- poorwill on one of the great logs by which the scow was moored, the hoot of an owl upon the hill-top, stirred him to growling remonstrance, but he kept faitlifuUy at his post. If these things half -wakened us, the lapping of the waters on the beach, the murmur of the cool night-wind in the pines upon the hiUslde, the soft mellow silence of the wood and wave, which is never hard and harsh like that of a sleeping city, wooed us again to slumber, almost before we realized that we had wakened. The moon crept round and shone upon the Queen's face. She smiled and murmured in her sleep. Then came the waking songs of the birds. She had never heard them in their native haunts before, and could not sleep for the vibrant plaintiveness of some, and the weird sense of remoteness in others. We wondered at the sequence of the familiar notes, and still more at the strangeness of those to which we were unaccustomed. Then we slept again. Just as the day was breaking, tliere came a swish of wings, the splash of water, and presently the air was full of contented murmurs and the snap of busy mandibles. El Cid would have remon- strated, but I restrained him and waked his mistress. Looking over the bark-headboard, we saw the water aUvo with feeding ducks. I reached for my gun — it is strange how a man always wants his gun when he goes into the woods, though he may know there is nothing to shoot, or he may not be able to shoot it if there were. Just then, the dog uttered an angry growl ; we heard the rush of pinions above us, and the great eagle dashed among the unsus- 127 pecting covey. In the excitement 1 let off both barrels at the rising flock. I do not know whether the eagle got his breakfaso or not, but the echoes had hardly died away, when El Cid was in the water, striking out with an impatient ll whine for the dead birds. A moment later he stood beside the bed with one in his mouth, and in response to a word of commendation from his mistress, shook out a shower of cold drops from his dripping coat which drove her to the shelter of the blankets with a shriek. I covered her up snugly, ran out upon one of the great logs, took a header into.the dimpling waters, swam a race with the dog ; pretended to sink, and made him tow me ashore ; raced with him up and down the sands ; then care- fully re-made the fire ; put the potatoes in the ashy bed ; hung the kettle over the blaze, and taking my rod with a brace of " dusty millers" and a sober " brown-hackle," for lures, crept out on the old hemlock to the very edge of the 128 submarine cliff and began very gently to whip the water. El Cid stood behind me, watching each cast with eager expectation. Poor fellow ! Whatever his infirmities of temper towards others, no dog ever loved master and mistress more faithfully, or followed their movements with more intense devotion ! The day was bright, though the sun as yet had only kissed the tree-tops. A light mist was curling off the lake, which lay like molten silver beneath it. Tlie shadows were stiU heavy along the wooded shores. A fox was stealing to- wards a bunch of reeds near which a covey of ducks was feeding. Again and again I softly dropped the gray lures through the silver vapor. All at once there was a rush ! A splendid bass just missed the fly, turned and struck,and an in- stant afterward another ! I had hardly time to note that they were of exceptional size, as is usually true of early morning catches in deep water, when down they went — down until I won- 9 129 ,\ dered how deep the cliff must be on the side of which they no doubt had their lair. I wondered, too, what peril of jutting rock and sunken branch my line would have to encounter. It touched nothing,but worked smooth and clear until they broke a hundred feet away. As one after the other shot out of the water, I saw it was the best catch I had ever hooked, save the triplets of the day before, and that great care would be necessary to take them, especially as I stood upon a hemlock log set full of branching limbs, six feet above the water and fifty feet from shore. To land them unaided under these con- ditions, would be an achievement worthy of the occasion. I took out ray watch and noted the time. Forty minutes afterwards, I stood beside the cedar couch and held them up for the Queen's inspection. " Have you been asleep ?" I asked. ' ' No ; just lying here dreaming. What a sweet night under the stars ! I liad not thought 130 L 4 /•wsfis.y.ii I wonder if I shall it could be so delightful, ever have another?" The Queen of Hearts supervised the breakfast, which is, perhaps,' the reason I remember its excellence. Was it because she cooked them or because they were killed out of season, that the ducks were so fine? But I forget. Where there is no law, there can be no offence, and there was no law upon our Island, or at least, no repre- sentative to assert it. I did not make another cast that day. The desire for sport had been sated, and the achieve- ment of the morning was not to be diminished by comparison. AE day long we wandered about, enjoying the solitude ; prying into Nature's secrets ; talking of old times ; feeling the oneness which had grown with years, and is God's sweetest gift to man. Thus may we walk on the celestial floor, "thick inlaid with patines of bright gold," — hand in hand alone, beyond the ken of other souls. For such is life's 131 uttermost expansion and fullest perfection — that every soul shall fill infinity and occupy eter- nity. The sun was low when we heard a hail from the point below. The wagon which was to take us back to the shore had come. As we drove away in the twilight, we turned back for a last glimpse of the little lake. It was stiU a sap- phire set in emerald, but silvered now by the reflection of the western sky. The eagle on his lofty perch gave a shrill scream, and we waved him a laughing good-bye. In the morning twilight we hear the hoarse call of the steamer and take our places in the life-boat. The crew run down the ways and leap to their stations. There is a sharp order, and the thole-pins rattle to their places ; an- other, and the oars are poised, then drop noise- lesslv in the water. The green billows of Lake 132 Michigan swell under the keel. The steamer's huU looms out of the mist. We clamber on board ; the adieus are said, and as the Island's soft outline sinks into the bosom of the great inland sea, the Queen murmurs, " No wonder the Indians called it Manitou — the island of the God ! " 133