CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Cornell University Library PS 688.S45 Seen by the spectator )eing a selection 3 1924 022 003 457 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/cu31924022003457 SEEN BY THE SPECTATOR SEEN BY THE SPECTATOR Being a selection of Ram- bling Papers first printed in The Outlook, under the title The Spectator New York The Outlook Company 1902 Copyright, 1903 By The Outlook Company Mount ^Itaaaut ^teaa J. Horace McFarland Co. Harrisburg, Pa. CONTENTS Seeing a City I At the Virginia Springs , 19 In the Virginia Hills 37 An East Side Political Outing SI Concerning the Sense of Humor 67 Johns Hopkins' Quarter Century . 81 At Berea College 99 "Be Not Too Tidy" . ll^ Uncle Sam's Big Guns 131 One Kind of Mind Cure 14s Heard on the Trolley -Car 161 A Day in Oxford 181 A Glimpse of New York's Chinatown 193 San Francisco's Chinatown 209 The Art of Shoplifting 223 Umbrella Tales 237 The Woman's Page .... 251 I SEEING A CITY THE SPECTATOR SEEING A CITY njH^ZriHE Spectator, in the spring, I 01 I ^^^^^ ^^ experiment. He 1 ^"^ I paid a visit to Boston in the same way that one visits some foreign city — that is, he ignored his Boston acquaintance, took a room at a hotel for a week, and made a business of leisurely sightseeing. Do Aniericans often visit their own distinguished cities in this way? The Spectator is not sure. His impression is that they do not, — Washington, the great "show town," being a conspicuous exception, — for his friends, each in THE SPECTATOR turn, commented on his experiment with "What an interesting thing to do," as if it were something quite out of the ordinary. Americans, of course, take many "trips" in their own country, and, if possessed of means and leisure, are given to changing their residences with the season. Indeed, this last once led Mr. Charles Dudley Warner to sound a note of alarm in The Outlook on the growth of "the migratory habit;" while an acute English observer, the late G. W. Steevens, put it with what may be called American exag- geration when he said: "I believe many Americans regard that day as wasted in which they do not see the inside of a railway train." In the course of "trips" or "migrations" Americans "stop over" at cities on SEEING A CITY the route. They see a few of the principal buildings and points of interest, drive about and get a gen- eral idea of the peculiarities of the streets, and, having let friends know of their presence, meet certain people at dinner, the friends of their friends. All this is pleasant and informing, but it is quite different from the way in which the Spectator drifted about Boston, Baedeker in hand, encoun- tering the average Bostonian in the undisguised role of sightseer (pro- claimed, indeed, by the questions he asked) , and thus receiving a distinct, if not defined, impression of the people, no less than of the town. Boston now has to him substance as well as name, certain differentiating qualities that fit in with and supple- ment its fame — a result of the ex- THE SPECTATOR periment that to the Spectator was quite worth while. Whatever the hotel one may choose in Boston one cannot go far wrong. That, at least, is the conclusion the Spectator reached after comparing notes with his friends, for each de- clared that his or her particular hotel was "most delightful." The Spec- tator's hotel had a library, a beautiful room with perhaps a thousand well- selected standard works and recent books within immediate reach, not like a ship's library, kept under lock and key and accessible only after one has run the gantlet of the steward. What would Dr. Johnson have found to say of such an inn? Why is it, the Spectator wonders, that hotels in other cities, while seeking every- where for the most modern attrac- SEEING A CITY tions, have so generally failed to hit upon the device of a library? It is, of course, in accordance with the eternal fitness of things that the inno- vation of a hotel library should be first thought of in Boston, but hardly a credit to hotel civilization in Amer- ica that it should stop there. The Spectator w^as interested to observe the distinctly civilizing influ- ence of that library, even with the tolerance of cigars, deprecated, as no doubt it is, by many patrons of the hotel. The smokers, usually the most selfishly self-indulgent of mor- tals, seemed of their own accord to choose corners where their smoke would be least offensive. Every one respected the proprieties of the library. There was much chatting by small groups, but no loud talking. 5 THE SPECTATOR Staring, as one notes it so disagree- ably in the lobbies and lounging- rooms of large hotels, was conspicu- ous by its absence. Whatever one was doing was done with strict regard to the rights of those who sought the library to read or to write. A spirit of sociability or companionship dwelt there, but subdued, as it should be, under the restraint of literature, un- guarded save by a noiseless maid who slipped in and out without apparent purpose or authority. The mere presence of so many books seemed of itself a sufficing influence, a silent lesson in good breeding. It is a commonplace of observation that Boston constantly reminds one of London. This resemblance, by the Spectator's experience, extends far beyond a certain quaintness of 6 SEEING A CITY the streets, and includes one English trait, that of courtesy to strangers. The English are popularly supposed to be discourteous, but this stand- offishness, the Spectator is sure, from his own experience and that of his friends, is reserved by Englishmen for other Englishmen. For an Eng- lishman, so a cynical, much -traveled friend explains, " never compromises himself by cordial recognition of Americans, though strangers, for they have no social status in England." Be this as it may, the case of the American whom a noble lord dis- covered standing around in the en- trance hall of Parliament, not know- ing how to get in, and whom that noble lord "personally conducted" through both Houses, is by no means an exceptional instance of English THE SPECTATOR courtesy. The Bostonian seems to feel a like sense of responsibility for the stranger within the gates. His business, apparently, is never so pressing that he cannot stop to give information or a direction — in what other American city is a direction so imperatively necessary? — or even to walk a block out of his way to be sure the stranger is started right. The same courtesy characterizes all public employes, from the trolley- car conductor to the hotel bell-boy who, instead of thrusting the direc- tory at the inquirer in a fashion only too exasperatingly familiar (unless there are signs of a forthcoming fee) , asks pleasantly, "Can't I look it up for you ?" and adds exact information as to the color of the car that must be taken to go there. All this, the 8 SEEING A CITY outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual state, tells of the human quality of Boston citizenship, and prepares one for a characteristic manifestation. On a Sunday morn- ing, as a visitor comes down after breakfast, he notes a young man sit- ting in the hotel lobby, distinguished from others by a small placard, "Bu- reau of Church Information." The young man is a member of the Broth- erhood of St. Andrew, who gives in- formation about the services at the various churches and directions as to the way to reach them. Of course the Spectator, in his various journeyings by trolley, was interestedly on the watch for one of those typical Boston conductors who, according to tradition, read Brown- ing and quote Emerson. He has no THE SPECTATOR discoveries to report, the nearest be- ing a conductor of whom he asked a question about the Museum of Fine Arts on Copley Square. The conductor answered politely, but added half-rebukingly of the Spec- tator's possible slip in pronunciation: "But don't you say Museum, not Museum, sir?" This seemed to the Spectator to show a nice sense of discrimination in one whose employ- ment hardly gave time for its culti- vation. It led him to hope for equally tangible evidence that "peo- ple are different" in Boston. So he tried a little experiment. Standing on the grand staircase of the Public Library, near the noble lions which guard the turn after the first ascent, the Spectator inquired of passers-by whose work the lions were. The lO SEEING A CITY first person accosted, being a French- man, who explained with much po- Ute gesticulation that he did not speak English, was hardly a fair sub- ject. The second said simply that "he did not know," and the third that he "had heard the name," but did "not recall it just then." After another failure, the fifth replied, "St. Gaudens," adding, what the Spec- tator had failed to note, that the sculptor was not Augustus St. Gau- dens, but his brother Louis. No one, the Spectator is sure, can pass those lions unimpressed. They must appeal even to a child. Yet with the impression there is evidently in the case of many people no prompting of curiosity to learn the name of the artist — something which may or may not be significant, according to one's THE SPECTATOR mood or point of view. A very clever argument might be made, at any rate, for the enjoyment of a work of art undisturbed by the question so tiresomely reiterated in galleries : "Whose picture did you say this was ? " While in the Boston Public Li- brary, the Spectator confesses him- self enough of a Philistine to enjoy a comment he overheard on the famous mural decorations of the staircase corridor by Puvis de Cha- vannes. As will be remembered, the paintings have been criticized because of the prominence they give to the nude, which, so the comment ran, is morally innocuous, seen as it is through an "antiseptic haze." The point is, as those can hardly appre- ciate who have not seen the work, 12 SEEING A CITY that the "antiseptic" treatment has given the flesh-tints an ashen tone, which suggests anything but what is fleshly. In this connection he cannot forbear quoting another PhiUstine comment, that of Mr. Steevens, on the much-admired mural decoration by Sargent, treating "the triumph of religion." As the guide-book truth- fully says, the theme is "so various, so significant, and so vast in its scope that it is difficult to find an adequate label." Mr. Steevens evidently en- countered this difficulty, for he calls the theme "an appallingly complex allegory," adding: "When the good Bostonian dies it will be granted her to sit for ever and ever before this work with a diagram and a num- bered key." Of course no visit to Boston is 13 THE SPECTATOR complete without a visit to Concord. It was the Spectator's good luck to have for his driver a representative Concord citizen who had known all the celebrities — he had often driven Franklin Pierce to Hawthorne's home and waited for the ex-Presi- dent during his prolonged calls — a citizen who had his own views about celebrities, as became a man of inde- pendence. The citizen quite sym- pathized with Hawthorne's choice of a perch for a study, a cupola in which the novelist made himself in- accessible by drawing up the ladder after him, shutting the trap -door, and rolling his desk over it to hold it down. With Thoreau, however, the citizen had no sympathy at all. Thoreau was a good surveyor, he said, as he pointed out a bit of land 14 SEEING A CITY the hermit had plotted, adding with some contempt: "But as soon as he found he was making money he stopped, as he always did." Stand- ing by the heap of stones which marks the site of the hut at Walden Pond, he commented: "Well, Tho- reau raised beans, and when he got hungry he cut across lots to his mother's and filled up on her dough- nuts, and then bragged how cheap he lived." Of Emerson the citizen made an exception, having no flip- pant comment to pass, and entertain- ing the profoundest respect, not only for his uncommon, but as well for his common sense, which enabled him always to have at hand the means to help the less fortunate celebrities, "for they all 'came down' on him, sir." And this reminds the 15 THE SPECTATOR Spectator of the story Whipple tells: "The train, as usual, stopped at Con- cord. Then one of two silent Yan- kees in the seat ahead turned to the other and lazily remarked: 'Mr. Emerson, I hear, lives in this town.' 'Ya-as,' was the drawling rejoinder, 'and I understand that, in spite of his odd notions, he is a man of con-sid- er-a-ble propity.' " i6 II AT THE VIRGINIA SPRINGS II AT THE VIRGINIA SPRINGS 0^ iHE Spectator has been spend- 01 "^"S ^ little time lately at one ^^ of the Virginia Springs. To name the particular one is unneces- sary, for there are any number of them in the Virginia mountains, and all more or less alike. There are the Red, White, Blue, Salt, and Cold Sulphur Springs, the Hot and Warm Springs, the Old Sweet, the Heal- ing, the Rockbridge Alum Springs, the — but why pursue the flowing theme further, since there is no end to it? No practiced sojourner among the Springs ever calls them by their full names, as the Spec- tator soon found. "Have you been 19 THE SPECTATOR at the Healing this season?" "I've just come from the Old Sweet;" "They're at the White this year," and so on, were familiar remarks among the guests at the rambling Southern hotel, with its pillared porch and its rows of cottages scat- tered about the springs which had made it a popular resort for over a hundred years. Washington and Jefferson had been among its guests, and the ancient register, still pre- served in the office, enshrined their board bills to everlasting remem- brance. None of the colored wait- ers was quite venerable enough to have been Washington's body- ser- vant, but they were types neverthe- less — trained and old-fashioned do- mestics, with all the deference, the willing interest, the quick good man- 20 AT THE VIRGINIA SPRINGS ners of the old negro family ser- vants, used to waiting on "quality" and proud of their own deftness and skill in doing so. Where the pro- prietor found such delightful sur- vivals the Spectator cannot imagine ; they certainly were one of the at- tractions of the house. Another attraction appeared to be the mint juleps. The waiters be- gan sallying forth before breakfast, across the grass to the various cot- tages, bearing trays of tall glasses, flowering out at the top into such green and spreading bouquets of mint that they reminded one of Birnam Wood going to Dunsinane. There were more juleps at high noon, and still again after supper. Virginia was not settled by the Puri- tan, but by the Cavalier, and her 21 THE SPECTATOR ways are not the ways of New Eng- land. One famous New York law- yer (now dead) , a Southerner by birth, came every year to the Vir- ginia Springs simply for the mint juleps — so he once told a friend of the Spectator — and he certainly came to the fountain-head. The other side of the question is shown by the fact that after a season of mint juleps at one spring, it is frequently neces- sary to go to another spring later for a thorough course of the waters. It is a trifle difficult, however, to get away from the mint julep even in seeking the waters ; for the Specta- tor can vouch for the fact that a table is sometimes floated in the middle of the bathing-pool, with a supply of mint juleps on it ready to hand for the bathers. 22 AT THE VIRGINIA SPRINGS One of the quaintest features of the place, to the Spectator's mind, was the county court. The court-house, jail, and post-office all lay together on a green slope just opposite the gate of the hotel grounds, and once a month the judge came to hold court there. At such times all the white men in the county, apparently, came riding in on rough mountain horses or slender thoroughbreds, and hitched their steeds to the fences. The negroes came on mules or on foot. A man and boy, bareback, on one mule, was not an uncommon sight. The only two lawyers in the place had one -story wooden offices on either side the court-house green, and were there ready to take what- ever cases came to hand. The sheriff sold a mountain farm, before court 23 THE SPECTATOR commenced, for a surprisingly low sum, it seemed to the Spectator; but it was explained that "mountains are cheap — it's the cleared land that counts." Witnesses, lawyers, plain- tiffs, defendants, sheriff, and lookers- on all lounged together on the green hour after hour, court opening any- where from half an hour to an hour after the appointed time, and every- thing else partaking of the leisurely character of the occasion. The ladies from the hotel came over and brought their fancy-work, occupying one end of the judge's platform, and being treated with expansive South- ern courtesy. Even the prisoner — there was only one in the old brick jail, with its massive wrought- iron doors with their triple padlocks — seemed to enjoy things, and sat out- 24 AT THE VIRGINIA SPRINGS side the jail on the grass while the jailer's family utilized his cell for domestic purposes. The Spectator attended one trial, which indeed was attended by many other guests from the hotel, since it came home to their own business and bosoms, so to speak. One of the neighbors had owned a pair of "break-fence" oxen, and, the fence of the hotel not being in better con- dition than most Southern fences, these oxen had, so it was charged, broken in one night and eaten all the "roastin' ears" in the corn-field, whereby the hotel table had to be supplied with canned corn in place of the fresh variety. The proprietor asked for $35 and costs, and had the full sympathy of every guest who ate corn. The defendant, a dirty, un- 25 THE SPECTATOR kempt, sparse-bearded, tangle-haired man, who wore blue goggles and looked like a descendant of the lost tribes, strove to prove first, that the fence was not "breshed up" prop- erly; second, that the oxen never were in the corn ; and, third, that they only ate two dollars' worth of it in all. There was no jury, the law- yers agreeing to leave the decision entirely to the judge. The character of the yoke of "breachy" oxen (they were dark-dun color to begin with) deepened to black as the plaintiflf's witnesses testi- fied. The stories told of those two agile creatures were astounding, and justified their owner's boast (incau- tiously made to a neighbor once, and coming out in the testimony) "that them oxen could break any fence in 26 AT THE VIRGINIA SPRINGS the county." One young man, re- joicing in the name of Gay, swore that he had seen them jump the hotel fence "as slick as a dog." The in- timacy between witnesses and lawyers was great. "Now, Gay," the plain- tiff's lawyer would remark, "you know that farm of mine, where the fence jines Henry's — now, isn't the corn-field fence like that?" Strange facts developed concerning the keep- ing of cattle in that section — how it was the common practice for all men to turn their stock loose on the "bou- levah," as the highroad was sound- ingly called, and how some hotel proprietors had to keep cattle guards as a regular thing to protect their fields. It was proved that the owner of the oxen had fifteen head of stock, and, having sold his farm some time 27 THE SPECTATOR before, was keeping them entirely upon the "boulevah." But the main contention was, in the end, how many "roastin' ears" an ox could eat in one night; and the earnestly ex- pressed views of the witnesses all differed greatly. Three - quarters of an acre of corn which was "jus' tas- selin' " had been destroyed, the plain- tiff claimed. One witness, who had kept cattle long, asserted that two dollars' worth of corn (at ten cents a dozen) would "bust any ox he ever knew," while a county official said that he had possessed an ox that ate five acres of corn at a sitting, and was still vigorous. The testimony was so conflicting, indeed, that at one point one of the ladies on the platform forgot herself and exclaimed aloud, whereat the whole court smiled, and 28 AT THE VIRGINIA SPRINGS the sheriff laughed and forgot to rap for order. All the white witnesses in the case were sworn first by the sheriff, the Spectator noticed. "Come and be sworn, gentlemen," was the formula, shouted from the steps of the court- house to the crowd on the green after the list of the witnesses' names had been duly called out. Some of the witnesses, lounging about the post -office, refused to come in, and the judge had to issue a warrant for one especially contumacious one ; but they were all corralled at last, and formed a ring about the ancient Bible. The oath was singsonged by the sheriff, and one after another kissed the book and stepped back and down. Then, after an interval, the negro witnesses were sworn, but 29 THE SPECTATOR with less ceremony. One old col- ored man was especially hesitating in his testimony. To the question when he had seen the oxen going up the "boulevah," he replied, "Well, hit mout hev been a Monday, and then hit mout hev been a Tuesday, sah, 'long 'bout five o'clock in de ebenin', er p'r'aps six o'clock, sah, er later." Pressed further, he testi- fied that they might have been near the corn-patch, or half a mile away; and finally he shook his kinky gray head doubtfully and remarked, "Ef I'd 'a' knowed all dis wuz a-comin', sah, I would er took more notice; yes, sah, I shuahly would," at which the old negro preacher who was standing at one side of the court- room, with shiny frock-coat, baggy umbrella, watch-chain and spectacles, 30 AT THE VIRGINIA SPRINGS gravely shook his head also in sym- pathy with his bewildered parish- ioner. In the end the hotel proprietor got eighteen dollars and costs, and court adjourned for the day, after a road commissioner had been sworn in, part of whose oath was not to fight duels in or out of the State. The reason for this seemed clearer later, when the whole county went over to the hotel for mint juleps, and the combative element proved so strong that there was one hand-to-hand fight before the evening was over — at least so the Spectator heard. County court brings these evils in its train, he was told, and when the session lasts over a week the drinking and quarreling of the mountaineers is a most unpleasant feature. The julep 31 THE SPECTATOR is not all a joy, even in the land of the Cavalier. Before the Spectator left the Springs he attended a costume dance — a thing for which this special resort is famed. The affair was classic, and the Roman robes — one of the Latin matrons wore a most superb black and gold one — the temple of the Vestal Virgins, the wreathed columns and the laurel crowns, etc., were very fine indeed. The waiters, dressed as Nubian slaves, came and went with trays of refreshments on their heads, and one of them gave the Spectator afterwards the benefit of his observa- tions. "It suttinly was fine, sah. Dat ar lady in de black and gol' wuz de /o'-mos' one, and nex' to her come de Vestibule Virgins ! " This was the same waiter who, receiving 32 AT THE VIRGINIA SPRINGS an order for beefsteak, brought a tempting slice of ham also, and, put- ting the dish down on the table, re- marked suavely: "I jes' bring dis ham, sah, in parenthesis /'" Truly the man who has not visited the Virginia Springs has missed being served by a Virginia Springs waiter, and his memories will be the poorer for it all his life long. 33 Ill IN THE VIRGINIA HILLS Ill IN THE VIRGINIA HILLS © HE five white tents in the camp stretched along a ridge besides the Nicholas County road. At the foot of the ridge the Gauley River rushed down over the rocks or swirled about in fishing pools. Just across the road from the camp, and again on the other side of the river, as far up and down the valley as one could see, the hills rose wild and beautiful, green-wooded to their tops except where great ledges of bare rock thrust the trees aside. In any other place these ridges on the earth's surface would have been called mountains. Here in West Vir- ginia, where there are so many loftier 37 THE SPECTATOR summits, they are only hills. Some- times the members of the Spectator's party wondered whose land they were camping on, but it was near a good spring and evidently public camping ground, for there were embers of numberless camp-fires. One evening, as the Spectator was picking his way up the rocky bed of a tiny creek which flowed into the Gauley near the camp, a man riding a good gray horse overtook him. "Howdy?" the man said. "Howdy?" said the Spectator, and added, "Who owns all this land around here?" "It all's just been sold," the horse- man answered; "nineteen thousand acres in one lump. It all belonged to some heirs, an' they sold it. I forget the name of the man what bought it." 38 IN THE VIRGINIA HILLS A minute later he added, as an afterthought, "It's the same man as bought the K. & M. railroad last spring." Thus it was that the Spectator learned that he was a squatter, for the time being, on the property of J. Pierpont Morgan. All this country is rich in soft coal, and great tracts like this one are be- ing bought up by the coal companies to be held against future needs. There were four houses in the valley of this creek, strung at intervals of half a mile along the stream. The only highway by which the people living there had access to the county road was the bed of the creek itself, often for rods in succession a mass of water-worn cobblestones or solid bed- rock over which the water slipped in 39 THE SPECTATOR clear thin sheets. The horseman lived in the last of the houses. The Spec- tator asked him what rent people living as he and his neighbors lived paid. "Ten dollars a year, the most of them, and they can cultivate as much land or as little as they choose. There's a heap more of it than will ever be used. I pay only a dollar a year myself, because I've been a sort of agent to look out for the land." This man said that, so far as he knew, there were not more than twelve or fifteen families living on the nineteen thousand acres. A county official told the Spectator later that, as a matter of fact, not many of these people paid any rent except the taxes on such portion of the land as they occupied, and specified a man living 40 IN THE VIRGINIA HILLS near the camp from whom the year before he had collected $2.47 taxes, and who had paid nothing more. This man had not even been to the expense of providing a house, having moved into one which he found de- serted by some former occupant. The Spectator asked the horseman if the tract of land of which they had been speaking would not accommodate many more tenants. "It certainly would; a heap more." "Would the people living here now object to other people moving in?" "No, sir. They'd like to have 'em come." That night around the camp-fire the talk was of the neighboring families and the nineteen thousand acres of land, and of the thousands of people crowded into cities who might find 41 THE SPECTATOR homes here for the taking. The leader of the party said that the buy- ing up of land in such great tracts was a misfortune, and unfavorable to the development of the country — that only "no account" squatters would settle on land under these conditions, and that they would not improve it because they would not be sure of possession. There were others in the party who argued that the man who embarks in almost any business must run some risk, and that the risk in- volved here was reasonable when the small investment necessary was con- sidered, and the advantage of having one's home in this country. This climate makes a simple home com- fortable. The majority of the houses outside the villages are built of rough boards with "battened" joints, or else 42 IN THE VIRGINIA HILLS of hewn logs. The house to which the Spectator was going with a tin pail for milk when the horseman over- took him was a log house, built of great poplar sticks two feet wide and eight inches thick, hand-hewn, and gray with age. The three rooms, rather scant of windows and rough as to finish, looked comfortable, but the family seemed to live mostly on a rude veranda which stretched along the whole front of the house, where strings of "leather- breeches" beans hung to dry. The view from the veranda was across an Alp-like yard where marigolds and zinnias flamed royally, and thence across the creek right into the side of a hill. In no direction, except up into the sky, could the occupants of the house look for more than fifty rods without hav- 43 THE SPECTATOR ing their view cut off by a mountain. The "farm" was back of the house, and most of it was set up edgeways, but the soil bore good crops, and the people were counted well-to-do and comfortable, albeit they went barefoot most of the time and kept three dogs. This was not wholly what is known in that region as a "hand-made" house. Such a house there was, farther up among the hills, where not only were the hewn timbers covered with split shingles, but even the few nails re- quired were made by the neighbor- hood blacksmith. Much of the fur- niture in this house, too, even bed- steads and chairs, was cut out by the ax and shave and knife of the owner. One cannot live among these West Virginia hill people and not learn to like them and respect them — drawing 44 IN THE VIRGINIA HILLS the line at "sand-diggers" and "cliff- dwellers." In general, they have a superb physical development — no ex- tra flesh, but tall, straight, and strong; and they look one in the eye. They are independent in a self-respecting way, and accept no favors they cannot return. A Nicholas County farmer on his way to market, stopping for the night near the camp, would accept an invitation to supper only on condi- tion that his hosts crack a watermelon from his wagon with him after the meal. They are intelligent, too, for their opportunities, most of them, even if one man passing camp did stop to ask if a big portable tin bath- tub, which one of the party had brought to camp with him, was some kind of a boat. What was the use of having a bath-tub there, anyway, 45 THE SPECTATOR with the Gauley river at one's feet? This hill country of West Virginia is as well supplied with neat little wooden school houses as any part of New England, and the standard re- quired of the teachers is said to be high. Near the camp lived a four- teen-year-old boy who, when school was in session, went to one of these houses "up the river." This boy — although he could row a boat, and fish, and fire a gun, and set his dog on the wandering hogs that beset the camp kitchen — had a face so pure and beautiful that a painter might have set it in a saint's retinue. The next day the Spectator went to visit a coal mine far up among the hills. A young giant took him in charge, and showed him how to brace himself in the empty coal car in which 46 IN THE VIRGINIA HILLS he was to be dragged up 1,350 feet of incline on the mountain side, some- what steeper than the roof of a house, by a wire rope hitched — so one would have said looking up to it from the valley below — to a pulley among the clouds. Oh, the wonder and beauty of the view from that mountain-top when the car reached it! Hill after hill rolled away beyond one another into the sky. Between them narrow valleys, sometimes with a thread of silver creek at the bottom ; here and there a house, and smooth patches of lighter green marking corn fields. When the two men came from out the mine, afterward, and the guide had blown out the smoky little lamp which had lighted them, he straight- ened up to his whole superb height, and, throwing back his shoulders so 47 THE SPECTATOR as to draw in a long breath, stood looking down into the valley. " How beautiful this country is I " the Spec- tator said. The young miner looked down at him. "I love it," he said. "I was born here among the hills, and I'm just uneasy an5rwhere else. I've tried it, but I always come back. When the laurel bushes blossom here in the spring, it's the prettiest place I ever saw. Men ain't always to be trusted, but these hills are always just the same." 48 IV AN EAST SIDE POLITICAL OUTING IV AN EAST SIDE POLITICAL OUTING ^SJZIHE Spectator was one of it\ many thousands to enjoy a ^^ spectacle which taught him what poHtics means in the East Side of New York. The daily papers had announced, one after another, the annual outings of the many political factions that add to the gayety of life in New York, as well as to its problems. Every announcement of this character had one or two ad- jectives to describe the outing — "largest" or "greatest," with prefer- ence for the first. The morning papers recently announced that the truly largest — if that is permissible — outing was to be given that day, 51 THE SPECTATOR followed by a parade through the district of the leader's five thousand followers; that every band in the lower part of the city had been en- gaged for the outing and the parade, and that altogether this leader would surpass his own efforts in the past. A car deposited the Spectator in front of the district leader's liquor- saloon. For several blocks there had been an air of expectancy in the crowds on the usually active Bowery. Lanterns and bunting gave an air of festivity to buildings here and there along the way. As the car approached the headquarters of the district leader the air of expectancy changed to suppressed excitement. Groups were gathering on the side- walk. The small boy was securing his usual point of vantage, the ele- 52 EAST SIDE OUTING vated railroad column, while his venturesome sister took possession of any chance projection that was within reach, hanging on to the lamp-posts, the posts of stoops, or on barrels or boxes. Families were out. Mothers, bare-headed or with gay shawls covering their heads, car- ried the youngest baby; the father, with hat of the latest style, and coat- less, carried the next, while the others straggled unnoticed in the crowd, but fearless and able to hold their own. Scores of working-girls, gayly dressed, laughing and chat- ting, greeting friends, making jokes, tended to make even the Bowery gayer and less business-like than usual. The shops carefully avoided show- ing political affiliations, though there 53 THE SPECTATOR was a canny bid for trade. The liquor-saloons alone dared risk open declaration of political color. The saloon of the leader was decorated from the sidewalk to the roof with streamers of red, white and blue, with flags, lanterns, and transpar- encies. An enormous lantern sur- rounded by smaller lanterns hung over the middle of the street. At this point the sidewalk was impass- able. The hero-worshipers, from the tiny chap who ought to have been in bed to the oldest voter in the district, and all the ages be- tween, were gathered to greet the man who ruled them. They were ready to take the places of the faith- ful adherents who were too tired after the day's festivities to march all the way in the parading ranks. 54 EAST SIDE OUTING It is the Spectator's good fortune to count among his friends a young man who knows the East Side thor- oughly. This young man's attitude towards it is dispassionate and to the last degree non-partisan. He sees the virtues and the vices of all the leaders, and deals out justice when he compares them. "Why, this is not the place to see this show. Come, I'll take you," was his greeting when the Spectator's object was made known to him. As the Spectator and his friend picked their way through the streets, over babies, between baby-carriages and groups of mothers, looking sharply to avoid banana-peelings meanwhile, the Spectator listened to the life- history of this leader. "Know him? Why, everybody knows him. He 55 THE SPECTATOR grew up over here. He used to black shoes and sell newspapers. He gets jobs now in the Street- Cleaning Department for lots of men whose boots he blacked when a boy. Smart? Smart ain't in it with that feller: he's more than smart. There ain't a man anywhere can hold a candle to him. Why, he's made himself. — Yes, sir, big and good-looking; always dresses well; not like a sport, you know — he ain't that kind; dresses like a gentleman, he does, always. No fellow ever went to him and asked help that didn't get it. His heart is as big as himself ; fills him up all the way through. Every man in the district knows who's his best friend. He gets them work ; he helps them when they're sick; buries them if 56 EAST SIDE OUTING they ain't insured. Nobody goes to Potter's Field from his district. He hustles every minute. Nobody ever catches him asleep. He's on to every trick. He knows a feller the minute he puts his eye on him. He's a hustler from the word go. Say, do you know his is the banner district? There ain't a vote cast in his district 'cept for his party. No need counting votes there after elec- tion. Look at the list — that's the vote solid. He runs a lot of pool- rooms. Raided? What if they were; 'twouldn't touch him — they ain't in his name. No, they ain't one o' his men would squeal. He don't have that kind around him. You may think it's wrong; I sup- pose you do ; but I tell you, it's hard saying what would come to the 57 THE SPECTATOR poor of his district if it were not for him. He stands by his friends, and they know it. Lordy, though, he's an ugly man to run up against! You'd better move out of the dis- trict. I guess they do, those who run up agin Jimmie [the Spectator will call this great leader Jimmie for convenience]. They don't stay in his district, you can put that down." We had crossed the Bowery and were now in the heart of this leader's district. As we turned a corner the Spectator stood still. Could this be New York? The street, as far as the eye could see, was an arch of lights — red, green, and white. The shabby, squalid tenement-houses of the daytime had been turned into palaces by the magic of light. Fire-escapes, deco- 58 EAST SIDE OUTING rated with bunting, flags and lan- terns, became balconies ; strings of lanterns extended in every direction across the fronts of buildings, re- vealing the olive-skinned, dark-eyed women in gay colors leaning over balcony railings, chatting and laugh- ing with their friends. Under the arches of light made by colored glass lanterns over the immediate center, with ropes of lanterns looped to the posts erected on the streets, moved the Italians of other sections of the city. It was a gala night, a festa that was born in the new coun- try. A shrine that had been one of many erected the preceding week to mark a religious festival had not yet been dismantled ; its glitter and its candles were the center for the crowds. 59 THE SPECTATOR As block after block was traversed slowly through the crowds that filled not only the sidewalk but the street, the scene was so unlike anything American that one doubted his senses. Hardly a face in sight was that of an American. Except among the children not a word of English was spoken. The women on street and balconies wore large earrings, gold chains, and gay colors. The sharpness of contrast between the prodigality of the exterior decora- tions and the smoke-begrimed ceil- ings and general poverty of the rooms behind the balconies added to the strangeness of the scene. At last there is a blaze of fire- works and the sound of explosions at the far end of the street. "Here they come ! " the small boys cry out, 60 EAST SIDE OUTING and scamper for any place that will take them above the crowd, or they wriggle through to the curb. With- out the least confusion the street is cleared, and the people are on the sidewalk crowded from curb to house. On balcony after balcony red fire is burned, and Roman can- dles send their balls of light to add to the beauty. The ladders leading up the front of the buildings from one fire-escape to the next above are crowded, and over the roofs, as the lime-light on the wagons in the procession reveal, are hundreds and hundreds of faces looking down. What prevents a panic, or a fire, is a mystery. Paper lanterns catch fire and drop on the drapery and the people below. Sparks from the fire- works sent off above the crowds 6i THE SPECTATOR drop down on cotton dresses, bare heads and upturned faces. The en- thusiasm vents itself in fireworks. There is no hurrahing, — not even when the leader's proxy who heads the procession comes in sight, — only more fireworks, more lanterns lighted, more laughter, more chat- tering, more happiness. The procession is headed by a platoon of police stretching from curb to curb, but they have no trouble, the people of themselves make way. And the banner ! It is the proud emblem of success ! Not a vote in the district for the other party. Proud are the four bearers and attendant guard of honor. And then the voters and their sons who will not vote, some of them, for several years — on they 62 EAST SIDE OUTING come, battalion after battalion, small regard to time or tune. Gayly they are saluted by friends, and gayly they salute. Suddenly the Spectator discovered that many of the men wore white caps with narrow black band and visor, "Yes; them's the regular crowd, been to the outing; those others dropped in on the way up. Oh, yes, they'll get beer, all they want, when it's over. Yes; I tell you Jimmie never does anything by halves." "Who pays for all these lights — the people?" asks the Spec- tator. "Jimmie gets a man a job in the Street-Cleaning Department, you see, and the man decorates his fire-escape. That's the way he shows Jimmie his gratitude," was the answer. 63 THE SPECTATOR The last bony white horse and peddler's cart with its lime-light had passed, and the Spectator started homeward. One block away a dark- ness that might be felt covered the street. It was out of Jimmie's dis- trict, out of the rays of his protec- tion, out of the reach of his gen- erosity, beyond the reach of his "big heart," for the votes there did not count in Jimmie's district. Early the next morning the Spectator was on a surface car that crosses Jimmie's district. Bootblacks, newsboys, young boys on their way to work, wore white caps with narrow black band and visor. Jimmie's caps were the badge of allegiance worn proudly by the coming voters. 64 V CONCERNING THE SENSE OF HUMOR CONCERNING THE SENSE OF HUMOR mtm VERY night and morning, xt when I say my prayers," as- I serted a sweet lady of many sorrows, "from the bottom of my heart I thank my heavenly Father, first, that I can read books, and, secondly, that I have a sense of humor." And, indeed, through the tragic happenings of that little lady's brave life, those who knew her best could never doubt that her trials were lightened, her burdens made bearable, by the possession of those same blessings for which she thus gave thanks. It has always seemed to the Spectator a little strange that 67 THE SPECTATOR among the beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount humor is not once definitely mentioned as a cardinal blessing for which man should strive and pray. But those who, with the Spectator, reverently believe in hu- mor as a rare and helpful virtue may be able to persuade themselves that some one of the beatitudes must have stood, in its day and generation, as the equivalent of what we would now call humor. Some time in the future one of our schol- ars may make the discovery that humor was definitely mentioned in this inspired list, just as it has been decided that it isn't "charity" that vaunteth not itself, but "love." Or it may be that the gentle gift of humor had no actual place or need of existence in the storm and stress 68 CONCERNING HUMOR of those sterner, more volcanic, less conventional and less subtle days. Be this as it may, it remains true for us in this present period that some degree of humor each of us must have, or labor under a serious disadvantage among our kind. Firm- ness of temper, force of character, patience, endurance — all these can do much toward gaining an end in view. But when all these forces have been applied in turn unsuc- cessfully, how often, at a sudden touch on that mighty lever called humor, do we see all that accom- plished which force could never have gained ! There was a certain very reason- able-minded friend of the Spectator's who owned a wharf that led up from the water before his door to his 69 THE SPECTATOR summer home, but, unfortunately, this wharf was also a convenient landing-place for the public road that ran behind his house. The wharf -owner was a man sufficiently generous to the traveling public, but when a man has any regard for pri- vacy, as most of us have, or ought to have, it is not conducive to a calm state of temper to find boats constantly tied to our pier-posts, and the boats' owners climbing over our wharf to walk across our lawns, past our porch, and under the very shadow of our own private vine and fig-tree. The wharf's proprie- tor tried to solve his problem by every method that firmness and dig- nity dictated. He built him a fence at the pier's end. He posted warn- ing signs, and in his own person, 70 CONCERNING HUMOR with more or less imperiousness, warned off persistent trespassers. All was of no avail. At last, one morn- ing, this fertile -minded proprietor went to his wharf and carefully re- moved from it every sign he had posted there. He also removed every vestige of his fence, leaving the way perfectly free. Then on the end of his landing he hung one fairly large sign that threatened noth- ing and nobody. The sign was merely a polite but brief poem, and ran thus : Please keep off This private wharf. Which gentle and, above all, humor- ous request was strictly respected from the hour of its appearance. Boat-loads of people paused on their way, read, laughed, and passed on, 71 THE SPECTATOR but ventured not to intrude on a privacy that laughingly ridiculed them as intruders, though they had not hesitated to trespass when seri- ously threatened. The Spectator will quote one other such efficacious sign: "We don't lend our tools; you don't return them!" This sug- gestive and humorous saying, hand- painted, and hanging over a country carpenter's work- bench, must have palsied many a tongue that came a-borrowing. The Spectator can an- swer for one tongue that hurriedly changed a request for the loan of a foot-rule, to a mild request for a drink of water, but doubtless there were others who were similarly affected. As a weapon of self-defense, humor has its own peculiar place in life's arsenal ; that fact is proven ; but it 7a CONCERNING HUMOR is not a weapon of offense, as is satire, the bastard cousin of humor. Humor's gentle answer turneth away wrath, while satire invites anger. A humorous retort has a pleasant and calming influence, yet carries with it at the same time a subtle warning that the speaker is not quite to be trifled with. Satire gives a like warn- ing, to be sure, but, in common with chickens and curses and boomerangs, satire has a fatal trick of coming home to roost. No one wholly en- joys being laughed at, smile the hu- morist ever so gently; and in this laugh lies humor's restraining power; but when it comes to being sneered at, as satire sneers, human nature will not endure the insult, and sooner or later vengeance is apt to follow. It may be that humor has no place 73 THE SPECTATOR in the original beatitudes, but the Spectator must still declare, Blessed are the Humorous ! We love them for the self-restraint which keeps ridicule inside the line of satire, and yet we fear their gentle laugh sufficiently to respect their "private wharves." Still speaking of humor, it is not always an easy thing to define, even where we detect its presence. Not long ago the Spectator was visiting a fellow-worker, who was a wife and mother, and as he sat near her desk his eye was suddenly caught by a memorandum written so clearly that at a glance (this is the Spectator's justification) he read it. It ran thus : Write short essay on humor. Buy matches. Stove-lifter. 7+ CONCERNING HUMOR "What are you laughing at?" asked the Spectator's hostess, and in reply he silently pointed to the memoran- dum on the desk. The authoress blushed a little as she read the list, but the woman in her rose at once in defense. "And why not essays and stove- lifters?" she asked. "Why not, indeed?" replied the Spectator. "Only it struck me that your memorandum was a kind of short humorous essay in itself. What do you think?" And after a momentary struggle the writer of this short humorous essay admitted the impeachment. "I can see it's humorous," she answered, "but I don't see why it is. Matches and stove-lifters are just as serious affairs and just as impor- 75 THE SPECTATOR tant to have as essays on any subject. Suppose you let me look over your note-book." The Spectator handed her his note- book, and there on the first leaf that appeared, were these memoranda: Answer Gov. 's letter. See Editor of . Buy Johnny's rocking-horse. "TA^re.^" cried the Spectator's hos- tess, turning the leaf out triumph- antly. The Spectator read the items over. "Yes," he said, "there they are, the same kind of items : but your point is not proven. Your memo- randum strikes us both as humorous, and mine doesn't at all. It seems perfectly natural. I don't know why that's so, but it is, and you know it." The Spectator's candid friend 76 CONCERNING HUMOR thought for a moment and then replied : "But why is it so?" "I don't know," said the Specta- tor, "I think it has something to do with the woman question, but I'm not sure." "Suppose you write and ask The Outlook about it," said the lady. "I will," said the Spectator. 77 VI JOHNS HOPKINS' QUARTER CENTURY VI JOHNS HOPKINS' QUARTER CENTURY 0^ |H£ Spectator's English friends /|l are wont to jeer at our ^^ American fondness for semi and quarter centennials and anni- versaries. No doubt it is a sign of the newness of our National life that we celebrate so eagerly the lapse of inconsiderable intervals of time. Now and then, however, a quarter-century holds for some insti- tution or other a record of achieve- ment which it would be a crying shame not to celebrate. Such a quarter century, the Spectator thinks, has just closed for Johns Hopkins University. In twenty-five brief years THE SPECTATOR Johns Hopkins has not only so pro- foundly influenced the educational standards of America as practically to inaugurate a new educational era, but it has contrived to wring a thoroughgoing respect for American scholarship from the grudging savants of the Old World. Therefore, de- spite his English critics, the Specta- tor noted with approval that Johns Hopkins proposed to make a jubi- lee of its first quarter centennial. Twenty-five years ago, on Washing- ton's Birthday, Dr. Oilman took con- trol of the infant university. Wash- ington's Birthday this year (1902) sees the inauguration of a new Presi- dent. The Spectator has been able to hear but one verdict as to the choice of Dr. Ira Remsen, of the department of Chemistry, to fill its 82 JOHNS HOPKINS vacant chair. A man of conspicuous scholarship, genial personality, and great executive ability; a man familiar for years with every cog in the elaborate mechanism of the Uni- versity, Dr. Remsen has slipped quietly into the place of the retired chief, and the University has gone through the crisis with never a jar. The Spectator well remembers his first introduction to the veteran President of Johns Hopkins. It was at a library party held one gusty September evening in a cozy cot- tage on the coast of Maine. The other guests and the books they represented are lost in nebulous un- certainty. But the Spectator re- members that Dr. Oilman appeared in faultless evening dress, with only a copy of his annual report in his 83 THE SPECTATOR hand. The whole library of wits were baffled. Long after all the other grotesquely costumed characters had been guessed, the last obscure allu- sion ferreted out, that picturesque white-haired figure, with the Uni- versity report, remained as inscru- table as ever. It was a young girl from New York who cried at last, "I have you I You're 'Progress and Poverty,' by George!" It matters little that her clever guess went wide, that Dr. Oilman meant to impersonate the Book of Daniel, — she had compressed into a neat phrase the popular understanding of Johns Hopkins. Indeed, with its fatal facility for remembering ill news, the public is less impressed with the progress than with the poverty. 84 JOHNS HOPKINS Now, the Spectator prides himself on keeping abreast of current his- tory; but he is forced to confess that he was not ahogether innocent of this popular misconception when he went, this fall, to visit the Univer- sity. The buildings did not unde- ceive him. Indeed, the Spectator walked several times around them before he could persuade himself that these gloomy-looking, though dignified, Romanesque structures really represented so impressive an institution as Johns Hopkins Uni- versity. Arrived at the president's office, he confided to Dr. Remsen his regret that an institution which started out with such boundless am- bitions should be so cruelly ham- pered for lack of funds. The presi- dent smiled, and suggested as an 85 THE SPECTATOR antidote to that state of mind a tour of the laboratories under expert guidance. Assenting, the Spectator was convoyed over the buildings by a long series of Ph.D.'s, who del- uged him with interesting informa- tion till his brain reeled. They use the German fashion at Johns Hop- kins, giving every man his title of "Doctor." As the Spectator was brought up to say "Professor," he had much ado to teach his tongue the new trick ; and he came away with harrowing suspicion that he had "Doctored" the elevator-boy. Long before he had finished his round the Spectator was ready to retract on his weary knees the charge of poverty. Not that there was mag- nificence of the marble and mosaic type ; outside McCoy Hall there is 86 JOHNS HOPKINS little enough of that. Some of the buildings are even honestly ugly, though each one fits its use to per- fection ; for Johns Hopkins buildings are an adaptation to needs, having been planned by the men who work in them. What impressed the Spec- tator was the seemingly limitless supply of everything needed for actual work. Electrical voltage is turned on like water; costly and infinitely delicate pieces of appara- tus, by the hundred, are treated as essential furniture; and as for minor laboratory supplies, in the great store- rooms dehcate flasks, clumsy mor- tars, measuring-glasses, and the like, crowd countless shelves, while frail glass tubing is sheafed up like grain. What any student needs, and the Uni- versity has not, is instantly bought; 87 THE SPECTATOR or, if money will not buy it, it is made for him in the University work- shops. The Spectator was assured that if the question lay between hampering the work of professor or student and running into debt, they would unhesitatingly choose debt. As a matter of fact, it is not neces- sary. Baltimoreans came generously to the University's relief in time of need, and outside funds still supply the deficiency in its endowment in- come. They have millions for gen- uine research, but not one cent for show. The Spectator's strongest precon- ception of Johns Hopkins was that of a very solemn place. He ex- pected to find the learned professors grave of countenance and impressive of manner. What he did find was JOHNS HOPKINS a body of men, young-looking for their years, alert, enthusiastic, with a strong tendency toward vigorous, even colloquial expression — not slang, but concrete, idiomatic English. The Spectator is beginning to suspect that a discriminating use of crisp idiom is an evidence of intellectual independence. Look at the letters of Stevenson, Rossetti, Ruskin, Hux- ley — they are liberally interlarded with diction as colloquial as it is forcible. Be this as it may, the Uni- versity men with whom the Specta- tor talked were apparently concerned about nothing so little as the im- pression they made. They were men of obvious culture, but they were also eager, unconventional, keenly alive. The blight of the teaching profession was not on them. 89 THE SPECTATOR They were men actively at work, not mere rehearsers of knowledge garnered in some forgotten past and poured out soullessly to deaden the souls of unfortunate youth. The finest thing about the Uni- versity, to the Spectator's mind, was the prevailing atmosphere of eager, unforced work. Compulsion has no place in research. Nobody cares whether a graduate student works much or little — it is his own affair. The influence of the professors is needed rather to prevent overwork. Passing the University at five o'clock on winter afternoons and glancing into the lighted laboratories, the Spectator saw always scores of young men in their shirt-sleeves, poring over mechanical apparatus, or micro- scopes, or mysterious chemical de- 90 JOHNS HOPKINS coctions. There they stay night after night till they are put out. This spirit filters down more or less to the graceless undergraduates, mak- ing it possible to extend somewhat of that freedom which belongs to the true university to distinctively college work. For at Johns Hop- kins, as at no other American uni- versity where the two elements com- bine, the graduate outnumbers and overpowers the undergraduate body. The Spectator mistook the fine collection of books on the top floor of McCoy Hall for the University library. He was quickly disabused of that narrow notion. The library is all over the University. The technical books, scientific, linguistic, economic, and the like, are treated as working apparatus, and shelved 91 THE SPECTATOR each in its appropriate laboratory or seminary. They put the student and the books he wants in the closest possible contact. The University has priceless complete sets of foreign technical journals ; each goes where most needed. Of current scientific journals they take about two thou- sand — simply all there are; these go to the laboratory tables, to be dis- cussed and digested by the students at monthly journal meetings. But the library resources of the "Hop- kins man" do not stop with the one hundred thousand volumes within University walls. Baltimore is the paradise of bookworms. The great students' library at Peabody Insti- tute, the Enoch Pratt, Mercantile, Steinicke, and Maryland Historical Society libraries, bring half a mil- 92 JOHNS HOPKINS lion books within half a mile of the University. Moreover, three-quar- ters of an hour and half a dollar will put a Hopkins man within reach of the limitless resources of the Library of Congress. Once in the capital, he has the undigested, stored -up wisdom of the national museums at his command as much as if he were studying in the pros- pective National University. Thanksgiving morning the Spec- tator spent in a solitary trip to the so-called "new site" of Johns Hop- kins. "Homewood," they call the beautiful, hilltop country place which Mr. Wyman has offered to the Uni- versity upon the sole condition that one million dollars be subscribed to accompany his gift. That this mil- lion has not yet been made up is, 93 THE SPECTATOR the Spectator thinks, little to the credit of the country. With millions flying about like snowflakes, it seems strange that none have settled upon an institution so unhampered by un- fortunate founders' restrictions and with such limitless possibilities of growth. However, a beautiful faith sustains the authorities in the be- lief that this unique opportunity will not be allowed to slip from them ; and they refer to Homewood as "the new site." A ride through the brownstone length of Charles Street and out into open country brought the Spectator to a board-walk lead- ing across a field and up a fine hill, bordered by splendid stretches of rich Maryland woodland. Squirrels were whisking about in the leaf- filled hollows ; giant crows sailed 94 JOHNS HOPKINS cawing overhead ; the ring of horses' hoofs on the hard road came up through the crisp, still air. At the crest of the hill the Spectator dis- covered a big gateway marked "Boys' Country School." He stepped in- side and faced a beautiful colonial mansion, a veritable Monticello. Be- hold ! the Carroll mansion, and the "site"! Here on this high hill is to be the future campus; here the room for that expansion which never can come in the crowded city's heart; here the clean, pure air which hangs no curtain between the night sky and the astronomer's anx- ious eyes; here the gracious quiet for these patient experiments which now must be carried on while the city sleeps and its rumbling carts are still; here, within two miles of 95 THE SPECTATOR that Monument which is the Hub of Baltimore, and yet in the whole- some countryside — the site of sites! The Spectator felt a prophetic thrill. Before his mind's eye rose a picture of the future University, expressed in architectural terms worthy of its intellectual ideals — a vision he be- lieves will one day come true. 96 VII AT BEREA COLLEGE VII AT BEREA COLLEGE tmm VERY ounce of educational ^K power, efficiently applied, at 1 the right moment, on the most receptive material." This was the conviction which flashed into the Spectator's mind when, not long ago, he visited Berea College for the first time. Colleges represent a vast range of accumulation, efficiency, and opportunity. Some colleges impress the imagination by reason of their traditions and their surroundings ; they belong to a ripe past ; they have been mellowed by the touch of time; memory has gathered about them as richly as the ivy has crept up the walls. Some colleges are 99 THE SPECTATOR impressive by reason of the capital- ized scholarship which they repre- sent. Last summer, when the Spec- tator was rowed over the marvelous half-mile of the Cam at the backs of the colleges, it seemed to him, as it has seemed before, as if no equal distance in Europe was so rich in the things which suggest the beauty and ripeness of an an- cient civilization. Queens', Kings', Clare, Trinity, St. John's, united by beautiful arching bridges with the shaded meadows across the stream, stand for the accumulated capital of knowledge and for the richest and the most impressive intellectual tra- ditions. At every turn great names are in the air; in every quadrangle one is reminded of the noblest names in English literature, religion, and lOO AT BEREA COLLEGE thought. These ancient colleges have everything which can invest a seat of learning with dignity, in- fluence, and romance. One could dream forever along the banks of the Cam, as one could dream for- ever in the Gardens of Oxford. At the other end of the long line of educational service stands Berea — a new college compared with the venerable institutions which line the Cam; a poor college when one thinks of the endowments of Harvard, of Yale, and of Chicago ; a college re- mote from the great centers when one recalls the Sorbonne, Berlin, and Columbia; but a college with its face to the future, dealing at first hand with the "stuff of life" in a body of young men and young women of pure English blood, whose lOI THE SPECTATOR ancestors have been cut oflf from the world for nearly two centuries, and who now emerge with the racial qualities of the English-speaking people, but untutored and unde- veloped. If one looks at the past, he will not find at Berea those ele- ments which charm the imagination at Oxford, at Heidelberg, at Cam- bridge ; but if he looks at the pres- ent with reference to the material with which the college deals, and at the future with reference to the influence which the college may exert, he will leave Berea, as the Spectator did, with a holy joy in his heart that there are in America such places of sacrifice, of concen- trated efficiency, and of religious en- thusiasm. In the older universities there is always a certain weariness ; 1 02 AT BEREA COLLEGE for the weight of kaowledge, like the weight of money, makes some men cynical, skeptical and indiffer- ent. This is the penalty which is always paid for great accumulations. Where such accumulations exist there will be many who will take what they need and refuse to be burdened by that which cannot en- rich them ; but there will be others who, out of the mere lust of acqui- sition, with the miser's instinct, will bury themselves under the weight of the learning of other centuries. At Berea no man has time to be cynical or skeptical ; the work of the hour is too pressing, the appeal for knowledge is too direct, the op- portunity for immediate effectiveness is too evident. Every bit of educa- tional capital in the little Kentucky 103 THE SPECTATOR town is turned over in the shortest possible time. Berea is unique in its situation and its possibilities. It lies at the entrance to that great mountain or table land which President Frost has called "Appalachian America," the "back yards of nine States;" a ter- ritory which includes about two hun- dred mountain counties and is much larger than New England ; which heretofore has been accessible only on horseback, and which, by rea- son of its natural formation, has been shut off from rapid or frequent in- tercourse with the rest of the world. In this secluded America live more than two million men, women, and children whose ancestors have been kept secluded from the rest of the country since the Revolution, and 104 AT BEREA COLLEGE who are now living under practically the same conditions which obtained in that section in colonial times. These people are of pure English blood, the most interesting survivals in our time of an earlier condition of a race from which we are de- scended. They still have their own household industries; they wear the clothes which they make on their looms ; they use the old Saxon words, speaking a much earlier and quainter English than that which is in use in the rest of the country. Barter is carried on in every store ; religion is of the most primitive character; political ideas are largely feudal, al- though the men of that section bore a heroic part in the war for the Union. Primitive log huts, which are often not much better than rude 105 THE SPECTATOR shanties, dot the valleys and moun- tain sides of the lonely country, and the children who grow up in those mountain solitudes, which have been so admirably described by Miss Mur- free and John Fox, Jr., bear the stamp of their surroundings. The blood-feud survives; moonshine whis- key is still made in great quantities, and the revenue officer is held to be a public enemy. There one finds views of surpassing loveliness, im- pressive and majestic outlines, one valley merging into another valley, over two hundred miles of terri- tory, and mountain peak crowding upon mountain peak to the farthest horizon line. It is for the young men and the young women of Appalachian Amer- ica that Berea college preeminently 1 06 AT BEREA COLLEGE stands. It has other students from the adjacent Northern States, and it has a small group of negro students; but its eight hundred and more un- dergraduates are drawn largely from the great table-land at the back of the college. They are boys and girls with the ancient instinct of our race in their blood, with moral cleanness, with great personal in- dependence, and with innate energy and intelligence when these quali- ties are Uberated. If the stories of these mountain boys and girls could be collected, they would read like romance. Many of them have seen so little of the world that the first sight of the buildings at Berea appalls by reason of what appears to be their incredible mag- nitude. More than once students 107 THE SPECTATOR have been turned back by their parents, after great preparation and long journeys on foot or horseback, because the first sight of a train of moving cars brought such terror that the father was not willing to trust his son into the keeping of such an engine of destruction. Many of these boys are in the habit of walking from one to two hundred miles in order to get to college ; and when they arrive they are able to live, under the generous provision which the college makes for them, at rates which seem in- credible to a man accustomed to the scale of expenditure in older institutions. Nothing could be more impressive to an open-minded man than the silent appeal made by the youth of two millions of secluded 1 08 AT BEREA COLLEGE and uneducated Americans, with the characteristic American qualities in their blood, the eagerness with which these opportunities are sought when they are brought within the knowl- edge of boys and girls, and the self- sacrificing enthusiasm with which a band of teachers are meeting this opportunity and planting the seeds of knowledge and power in this rich and unworked soil. Organized in a free community, and expressing the impulse for reform, receiving again and again the liberating and inspir- ing touch of Oberlin, Berea College is using its opportunity with breadth and freedom, adapting its educa- tional methods to the immediate needs of the exceptional constitu- ency to which it appeals, and train- ing the eye and the hand in crafts 1 09 THE SPECTATOR and trades as thoroughly as it trains the mind. It is, in a very real sense, an educational community, where the older traditions inspire fresher and more practical methods, and the endeavor is made, not to illustrate a system of education, but to help men and women, through broadly diversified training, to help themselves. Although Berea is one of the youngest of colleges, and one of the poorest in point of endowment, it does not content itself with work- ing upon students under its own roof ; its influence is abroad in the mountains. The impetus of the Berea spirit has brought about an adaptation of university extension methods to the conditions of the mountain people ; and many of the no AT BEREA COLLEGE remotest hamlets in Appalachian America have been stirred by the work of the college men, bent in the simplest and most human way upon sharing with these neglected kinsmen the intellectual and moral life of the world. Popular lectures, talks on history, addresses on schools, special meetings for farmers, for housewives, for teachers, practical talks on family feuds, the use of small circulating libraries — all these methods are being employed to carry Berea throughout the whole district. More than this, Berea is represented in the schools of the State by hundreds of teachers, and it is becoming a definite influence for better methods and a new spirit in sections where education was formerly not only meager but ele- III THE SPECTATOR mentary. Thus this young college, with its small endowment of money but its vital force of conviction and its group of enthusiastic teachers, is not only bringing the mountain peo- ple to its doors, but is invading the mountains and penetrating them with the best thought, the best knowl- edge, and the best methods of fnod- ern times. At the head of this noble young college is a man of tireless energy and inspiring personality who is pouring his life out in heroic efforts to establish it on solid foun- dations and equip it . for its unique work. He has already accomplished much, but his task is still far too heavy. An additional endowment of five hundred thousand dollars would give Dr. Frost what the country owes as a very inadequate recogni- 112 AT BEREA COLLEGE tion of a noble public service. In the abundance of these golden years there must be men and women who are waiting for this opportunity to serve their kind for all time to come. "3 VIII "BE NOT TOO TIDY" VIII "BE NOT TOO TIDY" 0^ HE Spectator suffered a se- /|l vere shock yesterday, which ^^ has in a degree uprooted some of his most cherished illusions and set him a-pondering whether there is, after all, any law which it is never right to break. If you had asked the Spectator yesterday if it could ever be moral to deliberately sweep crumbs under a hearth-rug, he would have promptly and em- phatically answered "No I" To-day he could make no such reply. His conversion was in this wise. Within the last twenty-four hours the Spec- tator was calling at the house of a friend whose morality he has always 117 THE SPECTATOR considered above question, and whose reputation for superlative house- keeping rests like a halo above her brow; and yet it was in her drawing- room that the Spectator received his lesson anent crumbs and hearth-rugs. Afternoon tea was being served to the Spectator, and a young daughter of the house, in passing a plate of brittle little cakes, dropped all those cakes to the floor, where they broke, scattering a shower of crumbs. The daughter at once moved to the bell, and had laid her hand upon it, evi- dently intending to ring for the maid. "No, no, my dear," said her mother; "don't ring for Susan. Just take the hearth -brush there and sweep the crumbs under the hearth- rug." "Mamma!" exclaimed this well-brought-up daughter. But her ii8 "BE NOT TOO TIDY" mother sat placidly confident and unabashed, merely remarking: "Su- san ought really to be in bed this afternoon. She's keeping up simply because it's my reception day. The crumbs can wait perfectly well until to-morrow. 'Be tidy. Be not too tidy.'" The Spectator sat amazed in his chair, and, it must be confessed, he was at that moment disloyally won- dering if there were many other such skeletons concealed under other hearth-rugs in this house. A little later he plucked up sufficient cour- age to make to his hostess a laugh- ing confession of the shock he had suffered at her hands. "I am sure you are right," he said, "but won't you explain to me why you are right?" To the Spectator's amaze- 119 THE SPECTATOR ment this notable house-mother with some warmth recorded her disap- proval of those who could never bring themselves to thus sweep crumbs under rugs. "I have seen housekeepers," she averred, "who not only lived and died to be clean, but who killed for it. There have been times," went on this blended Mary and Martha, "when I have seen my floors very dirty indeed, and known it was my plain duty to continue to see them dirty — and keep calm. I have had to make it a matter of prayer to be able to sweep crumbs under rugs and to believe that cleanliness isn't the first thing in the world at all times, in season and out. But you can't be expected to understand such things." The Spectator, though but a man, 1 20 "BE NOT TOO TIDY" flattered himself that he did under- stand his friend's position and ap- proved it, yet at the same time he had an awestruck kind of feeling, as if the ashes of his grandmother were being strewed to the winds of heaven. He could remember that venerable lady earnestly requesting him as a lad to walk about her drawing-room "on the dark spots in the carpet;" and to this day he can recall the peculiar gait with which he crossed those floors in his dutiful visits to the grandmaternal mansion, for the "dark spots" were at irregular distances from each other. As for the Spectator's sister, she used always to wear a train gown when she visited the grand- mother, and as she stepped across the polished floors of the halls she 121 THE SPECTATOR would contrive to stoop stealthily and wipe out with the end of her train whatever traces of dust her youthful feet had left upon the shining surface. The grandmother's feet, for some mysterious reason, never left any traces of dust any- where. But the Spectator cannot remember that either he or his sis- ter ever saw anything humorous in their efforts — at the time. The Spectator begins to feel that this is a dangerous topic for him to dwell on. In the first place, by virtue of his sex, he is supposed to be ignorant of what the laws of household cleanliness should be. But when it comes to a question of personal cleanliness, the Specta- tor knows he has a right to speak with the best, and hereby feels 122 "BE NOT TOO TIDY" obliged to state that he has seen even that pleasing virtue carried too far. It is a long step from the man of more clothing than he can count to the poor man with but two changes of raiment, yet the latter, when he wears one set and himself carefully launders the other set, is more true to a high ideal of clean- liness than is his more fortunate brother whose laundress is a remote personage. "I have never envied the very rich their horses and carriages, or their gowns and balls," sighed a slender- pursed young lady to the Spectator, "but from the bottom of my heart I have always passionately envied the rich their exquisite cleanliness. Think of fresh ruching in your neck and sleeves every day if you want 123 THE SPECTATOR it ! " There is undoubtedly a lux- ury of cleanliness that every one can- not afford. Some people have not the right to be as exquisitely clean as some other people. That per- fectly sleek, w^ell - groomed look which we all know, by sight at least, comes only with never run- ning for a street car, never hurry- ing on foot from one function to another, and never wearing the cloth- ing that belongs properly at one time of the day or year at another time. It isn't every one who can afford to ride always in a carriage or own an appropriate suit for each occasion and season, and these less fortunate brethren must sometimes wear a hot and dusty-looking spring suit in midsummer, and no use of a clothes-brush will make that suit 124 "BE NOT TOO TIDY" look as dainty as a summer suit proper. In this same connection the Spec- tator was of late interested in a con- versation between two young men on this question of neatness, or clean- liness, or call it what you will. One of these lads was asserting that the difference between a gentleman and a man who was not a gentleman lay in the question of ability to con- trol the laundry-bag. "No gentle- man," so argued this sage, "had any control of the matter. Each sepa- rate day must, by a full, suit, swell that bag." It was with the utmost difficulty that the Spectator refrained from intruding with his officious tongue to ask if it made no differ- ence who paid the laundry bill. As the Spectator chanced to know, 125 THE SPECTATOR this particular boy's mother slaved with her own hands for strangers and for pay to send her son to col- lege, and he, forsooth, must wear fresh raiment daily I If this was not a case of dissipation in cleanliness, then the Spectator has a false idea of what dissipation actually is. Of course the Spectator knows all about the ideal relativity of godliness and cleanliness, and he is quite prepared to defend the sacredness of both against any odds; but neatness, and the fresh cleanliness that comes with the healthy care of the body, is something quite different from a cer- tain exquisite cleanliness that comes largely from a luxury of clothing that, like all other luxuries, is de- lightful to possess if one has the money to pay for it. In taking this 126 "BE NOT TOO TIDY" stand the Spectator hopes he will not be considered as falling in line with that brutality of indiflference to personal neatness which is at times affected by the virile and is by them regarded as a proof of virility. The Spectator remembers a friend confessing to him that when in the summers he got oflf into the Alps, as was his yearly custom, he would find, as the season waned, that the piece of bread and cheese which he most enjoyed was that chunk which had in it the mark of his own great earth-stained thumb ! When this state of mind came, the Spectator's friend asserted that he knew the hour had struck when he must at once return to the less virile and more civilized world. This gentleman, as the Spec- tator knew him, was a terror to 127 THE SPECTATOR hostesses because of his well-known fastidiousness and delicacy of palate. Perhaps as a natural type we all are untidy creatures, we human be- ings. The above history would seem to point to a return to type from the veneer of civilization. Be that as it may, the Spectator is still not afraid to say that he himself has been converted to the morality of sweeping crumbs under hearth-rugs — as an exception, not a rule. 128 IX UNCLE SAM'S BIG GUNS IX UNCLE SAM'S BIG GUNS 0^^ HE Spectator is a man of /|l peace, both in theory and I practice, under ordinary con- ditions. Just now, however, he wears a patriotic ribbon in his buttonhole, torments his friends by showing them a bit of smokeless powder which he carries in his pocket, and magnifies the power of the Nation's guns and the prowess of her soldiers, in season and out of season. This patriotism is the result of an invitation to visit Sandy Hook and lunch with an officer of the Ordnance Department who is stationed there. The oppor- tunity was too good to pass by, and on a recent sunny day the hour of 131 THE SPECTATOR ten-thirty A. M. found the Spectator starting from Governor's Island with a genial friend on either side, and a couple of weather-beaten soldiers giving color to the scene and vigor to the adjacent conversation. A tidy sailorman remarked, as the boat swung into the stream: "Be careful with your cigars, gentlemen; there is powder aboard." The warning afforded just the proper thrill, and the smokers promptly became as smokeless as the powder. It was a charming sail to Sandy Hook. The sky was clear, the water blue, the harbor as beautiful as ever. The big "Kaiser Wilhelm," monarch of the sea, glided into the Narrows ahead of us as gracefully as a pleasure yacht, and the "Yankee," in her war paint, frowning with guns, swung 132 UNCLE SAM'S BIG GUNS lazily at anchor just above the forts. The Spectator fell to talking with the soldiers. One was a veteran of ten years' service, wearing a medal on his breast and a face like a bronze statue. He was a splendid specimen physically, and had seen hard service on the plains and among the Indians. He said the discipline was more humane than it was when he enlisted, and if a man behaved himself it was all right. The fare he pronounced good enough for any soldier who didn't want the earth. The green recruits who stood at the landing near Fort Hamilton aroused his mirth. It took a year, he said, to get a man into shape so he could march. He was pleased to hear the name of the officer whom the Spectator was to visit. "That's my commanding offi- 133 THE SPECTATOR cer," he said, "and there isn't a man in the command who will say a word against him. If all the officers were like him, there would be a better feeling between officers and men." After luncheon at the "mess" of the Ordnance officers — and a very good mess it was — it developed that the powder which had come down with us was of a new smokeless va- riety, and was to be tested at once in a ten-inch gun mounted on the prov- ing grounds. If the reader has not seen or heard one of Uncle Sam's big guns, and knows only the can- non of the Civil War, he has missed something. This one is thirty-five feet long, and weighs sixty-five tons. Its powder charge is 130 pounds, more or less. Its projectile weighs 134 UNCLE SAM'S BIG GUNS a thousand pounds, and will do ex- ecution at eight miles. It costs over $60,000 to make such a gun, and $150 to fire it once. It was fired three times on the afternoon in ques- tion, and the Spectator felt that a salute costing $450 had been fired in his honor — ^which of course wasn't so. Two bags of coarse canvas, each, say, thirty inches long and ten inches in diameter, were trundled up to the gun and lifted to the platform at the breech, ten feet above the ground. Each bag contained sixty-five pounds of smokeless powder. Each grain of powder was a cylinder two and a half inches long and nearly an inch in diameter, perforated lengthwise with seven holes, to give the greatest pos- sible combustion surface. A pointed 135 THE SPECTATOR projectile, three feet long, weighing a thousand pounds, was placed in the gun ; then the two bags of powder, behind it. Then the breech-block was made fast, and the Spectator and his friends were escorted to a plat- form a hundred feet away. The officer blew a shrill whistle, and the men scurried out of range. The Spectator put his fingers in his ears — imitating his guide. "Ready!" said the officer — "Fire!" The muzzle of the gun was a mass of flame. There was a crash of sound. Half a mile seaward a water- spout sprang into the air. Some seconds later another waterspout ap- peared a mile nearer Spain, and a third was seen still later, fully three miles out to sea. The Spectator was gratified to find his ear-drums still 136 UNCLE SAM'S BIG GUNS intact, and his appetite for further experience in the same line in no wise abated. He could, however, easily believe the statement that, as a result of the concussion, not only is the glass frequently shattered in the windows of the building a thou- sand feet away, but the sashes them- selves are torn from their places. The smokeless powder was being tested for the velocity of its projectile and its pressure on the breech of the gun. The charge of 130 pounds was found to have given a velocity of 2,140 feet a second — about double the speed of sound — and a pressure of 29,800 pounds on each square inch of the breech. The methods by which this information was secured were de- scribed so clearly that the Spectator fondly imagined for a little while that 137 THE SPECTATOR he could make others understand what seemed so simple. He knew better as soon as he tried it. For the second shot the officer desired to secure a velocity of 2,250 feet a second ; and so accurate was his cal- culation and so reliable the forces under his control that, after the pro- jectile had ricochetted its picturesque way four miles to sea, the record showed a speed of just three feet a second more than had been planned. There are sundry targets of armor- plate in the vicinity, some of which are full of holes, and some are await- ing their day of trial. Two shells had lately been fired at one of them from a distance of perhaps a thousand feet. Before firing the officer had drawn with chalk two circles, each about twelve inches in diameter. In 138 UNCLE SAM'S BIG GUNS one instance the ten-inch shell had made its hole so near the center that every part of the circumference was almost exactly equidistant from the surrounding chalk -mark; and the second hole was scarcely less accu- rately centered. Our friend said that in a recent test at 2,500 yards he had placed eight shells out of twelve within a circle a foot and a half in diameter. The shooting at Manila and Matanzas was easier to compre- hend after hearing this. In answer to a question concerning durability, the Spectator learned that one of these guns may be fired three hun- dred times before its usefulness is gone. It takes the shell a tenth of a second to traverse the length of the gun. Therefore the total period of use is thirty seconds , counting the time 139 THE SPECTATOR actually consumed in the journey of three hundred shells from breech to muzzle. And in those thirty seconds the cost of the ammunition used has been forty-five thousand dollars, reck- oning each charge at $150. The Spectator learned a lot of things and enjoyed a lot of things which cannot be set down here. But the greatest thing of all that he learned was to appreciate in some dim and imperfect fashion the quality of service which Uncle Sam is getting from the men who are trained at West Point. All that the most eager civil service reformer hopes to ac- complish in the post-office, the State Department, and the diplomatic ser- vice has long been a matter of course in the army. Thorough preparation, rigid discipline, promotion for proved 140 UNCLE SAM'S BIG GUNS merit, freedom from mercenary in- fluence — these are characteristics of the service that make one proud of the Nation's defenders. If there is any better investment that the coun- try makes in any department of the pubUc service than the money it pays for the education and the mainten- ance of the sort of men who give their Hves to the v^^ork of the army, the Spectator does not know what it is. 141 X ONE KIND OF MIND CURE X ONE KIND OF MIND CURE ® HE Spectator often feels the rebound from that sympa- thetic oneness with Nature affected by the poets. He does not always find that "for his gayer hours she hath a voice of gladness and a smile," as the youthful Bryant de- clared. Au contraire, the Spectator too often finds that Nature seems so indifferent to either his gayer or his sadder hours that he is inclined to the "pathetic fallacy" of ascrib- ing a minx's spitefulness to that grand old conglomerate "all out- doors." Who but a minx would in- vite the plump and confiding Spec- tator into the shady woodlands only 145 THE SPECTATOR to deliver him up to her thirsty guerrilla bands, the mosquitoes ? Who would delight to dispatch General Humidity against the par- boiled human race, save one that found joy in suffering, or at least w^as indifferent and heartless? Why should she mix the deadly amanita with the luscious mushroom ? But here the Spectator pauses, seeing that he is approaching the Origin of Evil — and he has long ceased to find pleasure in discussing difficult questions. He will only allow him- self the pleasure of the suggestion that it is all man's own fault. If steam heat indoors, then chilliness out-of-doors ; only the Indian who is "all face" can gaze unabashed into Nature's chilly countenance. If mankind is to be cosseted into a 146 ONE KIND OF MIND CURE tenderness that unfits him for the direct companionship of the ele- ments, he must make his own en- vironment, as the shell-less animals have learned to do. He must make himself a shell. Clothes are all very well in their way, and need not be abandoned; but there is really no reason why the completely civilized man should ever come into contact at all with the rude world. "What could he do?" asked the Spectator's sympathetic friend — to whom things are occasionally read in MS. "He would have to go outdoors sometimes." "Not at all," the Spectator insisted. "He could — if rich enough — have a large structure made to contain what- ever he needed for life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness. Therein 147 THE SPECTATOR might be his home, his office, his recreation-ground — whatever he re- quired. He could escape the rain, snow, wind, dust, mud — in short, all the disagreeables, animate and inanimate." "But," objected the friend, "he would lose the excitements of life." "Excitements?" answered the Spec- tator, calmly. "He would not care for them ; he would be a graduate of the Don*t Worry Club, and far above the need of the vulgar stimuli of football games, elections, theatri- cals, public pageants, the circus, or yacht races. After they were de- cently over he could perhaps review them through the kinetoscope or kindred device." "To what end?" inquired the Spec- tator's convenient auditor, 148 ONE KIND OF MIND CURE "To no end. That is the beauty of the whole scheme. Free from the vicissitudes of the weather, unmoved by emotion, with even pulse, my ideal civilized being might live on and on until Methuselah's record was out- done." "It sounds stupid," was the com- ment. "It would be stupid — and hence highly civilized. What could be more distingue than a being without emo- tions, interests, or thoughts? Have you never observed how very vulgar a being with thoughts and opinions becomes when dropped into a gentle pool of social minnows? But no, they are not minnows ; they do not scurry away. They are anemones — they shut up, and look ugly." "What are you driving at?" asked 149 THE SPECTATOR the Spectator's caller, picking up a magazine from the table to while away the time the Spectator might consume in answering. "Simply carrying civilization to its logical outcome." "See here, old man," the caller said, kindly; "I know what is the matter with you. It's the rain. It has been raining for four days stead- ily, I know; but brace up. Don't give up to it. What's that you've been reading?" "Maeterlinck." "Whew! What for?" "I don't know. What do we read anything for?" "You are in a bad way," said the Spectator's friend, with apparent cheerfulness. "You need a dose of —Walter Scott." 150 ONE KIND OF MIND CURE "Why Walter Scott?" "Because he was sound in wind and limb. . You mustn't read such things as Ibsen, Maeterlinck, Henry James, on rainy days. They set you to wandering about in your own mind. I wonder that there haven't been lists of books drawn up from the therapeutic point of view. There are books for rainy days and books for sunshiny days, and they should be labeled for the middle-aged." "How would you go about it?" "I? I'm not the man for the work. But I could make a try at it. Given a particular mental in- valid's condition, and it would not take me long to draw up a mental regimen for him." "Give me a specimen of thy skill," said the Spectator. "I will be for 151 THE SPECTATOR the nonce the patient. Let me out- line my own case. I am, we will say, blue. I do not see tjie good of it all. I am mentally weary. I don't want to think. I don't know the why or the wherefore of things. I don't, in short, care to consider at all. What shall I read?" "Hum!" said the mental physi- cian; "I know — I know. The con- dition is not an uncommon one now- adays. You have been reading too much light literature, and you have mental indigestion. To speak meta- phorically, you have been consum- ing too much pastry and sweet stuff. You haven't allowed yourself to ac- quire an appetite. You have con- tinually spoiled it by nibbling." "But one can't give up reading," said the Spectator, hopelessly, "and 152 ONE KIND OF MIND CURE I have no time to labor over a seri- ous course of study." "Very true," remarked the caller. "You wish to be cured, but are not willing to take the medicine. That, too, is a very common condition. But you must choose between health and illness. How many magazines do you read ? " "I glance over nearly all of them — most of them are good — to glance over," the Spectator urged. "And newspapers?" "Two a day, at least." "And books?" "A few; but I never feel that I have time to really read them," and the Spectator glanced uneasily at a volume of Bryce's "American Com- monwealth" that lay upon the table. "Do you expect," asked the Spec- 153 THE SPECTATOR tator's friend, impressively, "to keep up with all the modern progress in literature, science, art, politics, his- tory, engineering, and at the same time to be a practical man of affairs, and to give a part of your time to whist, the gloves, Shakespeare, and the musical glasses?" "I don't say I do," replied the Spectator, seeing that his friend waited for an answer and would not be denied. "But what is the mod- ern man to do? How is he to help an interest in the Cuban war, the X rays, and the Zola trial?" "Simply by letting them go. Al- most everything of any importance will come to you without the seek- ing. Any one well-edited periodical will not leave you without some inti- mation of the really important views 154 ONE KIND OF MIND CURE and news of the day. Let the rest go. You never miss the periodicals you don't see. Select the few that have some serious value and ignore the rest. I have done it — to my great satisfaction. Then — read Wal- ter Scott, and, when your convales- cence is well under way, Thackeray and TroUope. Henri Greville, Ed- mond About, Cooper, Washington Irving, Holmes's prose, Birrell's es- says — all have a leisurely saneness that will do you good. Avoid the writers that stir you up — except Shakespeare, who will do you good even in that way. And when you have taken my advice you will cease to moralize gloomily about Nature." "Good-night," said the Spectator, and began, on his friend's departure, to think the matter over. He knew 155 THE SPECTATOR that the advice was well meant, and, as he had read all the newspapers in the house that evening, and as it wasn't time for the new magazines, he really was inclined to follow the path blazed out for him. But, alas for poor gullible mankind! The chances are that at the next cry of "Extra! Full account of the um- hum-ha, on the hum-um-a — just out ! Extra ! " the fallible Spectator will rush breathlessly to the door, and, if in pocket, will buy the lying sheet, or, if hard pressed by penury, will content himself by vainly endeavor- ing to make sense out of the van- ishing newsboy's purposely senseless yell, as he distributes yell-oh jour- nalism. Wherefore the Spectator ap- peals to his brothers of the pen to hold fast to that which is good. 156 ONE KIND OF MIND CURE The Spectator has made up his mind. He has resolved to stop tak- ing, buying, or reading the , , and the ; nor will he go out of his way for the and . And, by the way, the rain has stopped, and — yes! — the sun is coming out. The Spectator must go and take a walk and buy something for the children. 157 XI HEARD ON THE TROLLEY-CAR XI HEARD ON THE TROLLEY-CAR H ES, sir!" The Spectator was startled ; the assurance was most emphatically repeated, as though the speaker had been contradicted and felt in honor bound to sustain his position. He was a conductor on a trolley-car, and was standing on the step of the car at the Spectator's elbow. "Yes, sir. It's the finest company in the country, and the squarest." It simply stag- gered the Spectator. Here he was in a city rent asunder by an impending strike. Bitter feeling, only thinly veiled, was evident whether one was conversing with Capital or Labor. The daily papers had columns of i6i THE SPECTATOR news one day, which they contra- dicted the next, as to the position of the two giants who were about to measure their strength. The impend- ing strike threatened stagnation to business throughout the country. But the Spectator was listening to Labor defending Capital — Capital that had been characterized as an octopus — a street railway. "Yes, sir," accom- panied by an emphatic nod, "there ain't any better men in the country than the two men who own this line. Yes, sir, that's the company, two brothers. Square, sir, square, and don't you forget it." Here he passed rapidly along the step, and the Spec- tator was left to grasp, if he could, the thought of a surface road in a city so managed as to call out the enthusiasm of its employees. The 162 ON THE TROLLEY-CAR car ran smoothly over the rails, no jarring or jolting. It was approach- ing a new, commodious brick build- ing, two stories high and rather impressive in its simple lines, when a voice said eagerly at the Spectator's elbow, "Just take a look at the stable when we stop. Finest stables in the country. We have a reading-room, and a dining-room where we can take our lunches or warm our dinners if we bring them in on the run. There are dishes and hot water, and a chance to heat coffee, and a good woman, good as gold, like a mother to some of us, to keep the things clean and the room looking right. Yes, sir, the company is strict about that. You never know when one of them will walk in. They attends to business and expects every one else 163 THE SPECTATOR to attend to business. Then we have thirty- two shower-baths, and we're expected to use them. The reading- room has all the daily papers — New York and Chicago papers and one Boston paper, the best weeklies and all the magazines, and about four hundred books. Then there is a room with good couches and pillows. You can rest when your runs keep you late. There ain't no standing round at our stable doors in the rain, or the cold, or when it's hot. Do you see there ain't a liquor- store nearer than two blocks? The com- pany bought the house on the corner when one started there, and turned the whole place into flats. You wait till you see the stable of the road I'm going to transfer you to. It's a bum place now, I tell you. A lot of men 164 ON THE TROLLEY-CAR wandering round most of the time wiping their mouths with the back of their hands ; no chairs, no news- papers, nothing. Oh, yes, we have a smoking-room with papers down at the back there. Bells ring that call the men who are to go out, so you just sit and read or smoke, or eat your lunch, knowing the signal will warn you in time. "Oh, certainly, we're organized," he continued. "That bum road I told you about, they won't have a union man on the road. Yes, we've been organized three years on this road. Never had any trouble, sir, and don't believe we ever will, if both sides stays square. When we want a change made, a committee goes to the company and states just what we want. Neither side gets 165 THE SPECTATOR mad, but we talk it out squarely. Sometimes we're wrong, and they shows us we're wrong. Sometimes the company shows us we must wait for what we want. The road is new. Yes, we're organized, and we got the company on our side. They knew all about it, and gave us some mighty sound ideas — mighty sound. Now, we don't have drinking men in our organization. If a man comes on and gets drunk or boozy on the road, we tells him that it's got to stop. Then the second time it happens we ask the company to discharge him. We kicked, some of us, against that; it was the company's idea, but it's the best we've got. We got the cream of the railroad men on this road. Why, a man can get a job anywhere who has worked on this road. Then we 1 66 ON THE TROLLEY-CAR don't have any men on the road who do not use their wives well. The company suggested that, and that was another kick, but they knew. It's the bum fellows who don't be good to their wives. When it leaks out about a new man, we goes, the com- mittee, after we know it's true, and we tells the company. The man is laid off, and he knows why, and he knows it ain't no use to come to the union, 'cause we're at the bottom of it, and he joined knowing what would happen. Then we got a benefit asso- ciation, and the treasurer of the com- pany is our treasurer. Just as good as Government bonds, them little fifteen cents a week, and they come in well when you're sick. "No, sir, you can't have such an organization as ours without the 167 THE SPECTATOR company's back of you. They have settled trouble often between the men, and when we get all in a muddle over things we talk it out with the president, and he gives us points. But he won't decide ; he won't say which side is right; he only makes each side see where it is weak or strong. The company like married men, and they like the men to own their houses. I got a little house back here — paid for it before I was married. There ain't much in it. I just got the house. I've been married five months, and I'm the happiest man in ." The car had entered the suburbs of the city, and the con- ductor was devoted to business. He forgot the Spectator. Women and children were helped off and on. A basket was placed on the sidewalk 1 68 ON THE TROLLEY-CAR for an old man. The fares were col- lected with a nod and smile, and the bell rang pleasantly as the fares were registered. The car ran merrily, and stopped and started without a jolt. The motorman looked over his shoulder when passengers got on or off. At least in this one instance the pleasant relations between the lion and the lamb — and the Spectator would feel it hazardous to charac- terize the giants more definitely — added to the gayety of the traveling public, and the Spectator was a grate- ful and liberal patron of the road for several days. The Spectator stepped on a trolley, and ran along the step to take his favorite place behind the motorman, only to discover, comfortably seated in his special corner, a woman. She 169 THE SPECTATOR was so deeply interested in what the motorman was saying that she was not conscious of the new passenger; neither was he. "Yes'm," continued the motorman, "I runs the car care- ful, 'count of my mother." (Why, the man was fifty, if a day!) "She rides with me considerable, and she do hate jolting, so that I just fairly trembles when she is on. Sometimes when I comes round a corner, and the car swings and makes her go sideways, she looks so unhappy that I just feel miserable. Yes'm, when I come on the road first I did not think about anything but gettin' in me run, and not having accidents. Mother went with me that first week on my regular car. She got on at the stables. I saw her look at the car floor and up at the signs, and at me 170 ON THE TROLLEY-CAR and at the conductor. I put her just where you are. Gee whiz ! how that car went when we got out a bit ! I was just showing off. I didn't know it, but" — an expression of self-disdain spread over his big face — " I was. I looked around at mother, and she was sitting holding on with both hands, and her eyes round and big. Law ! how I slowed down ! Mother never liked a fuss, so I said nothin', but watched her out of the corner of my eye. There wasn't any more showing ofif that trip. When I got home that night, I said, 'Now, mother, yer might just as well go with me every day while these fine days last.' She didn't say anything, so I knowed she had somethin' on her mind. She went about gettin' supper. After a time she said, ' How 171 THE SPECTATOR often do yer scrub the floors of the cars?' 'They're swept, mother.' 'Well, it must be a man.'" Here the motorman chuckled, choked, and looked around with the pride of a father repeating the precocious re- mark of his firstborn. "The next day I asked her to go on my last after- noon trip, but she wouldn't go. It took me four weeks to find out, when she said: 'Jakie, yer runs that car so careless that I'm afraid as death. Not for me, Jakie, but fer yourself. I didn't say nothin', but I was bruised and sore for days, and I'm worried all the time.' My land! but that opened my eyes. That afternoon I began. I ran that car as if kittens were crossing the track. She didn't bump once. I bet yer yer could have carried a glass of milk and not 172 ON THE TROLLEY-CAR spilled a drop. I kept it up. Every little while I looked over my shoul- der ; everybody looked comfortable and happy. Then I insisted on mother's takin' a ride. You should have seen her when I helped her off. Her cheeks were pink as a girl's and her eyes shinier. 'Jakie, I wouldn't have believed I could have such a good time.' No more coaxing ; she's ready to go any time" — here a shade passed over the red, round face as, with a complete change of voice, he added, "when she's well enough." The Spectator was just stepping through the door of a trolley-car a few months before, when he was thrown violently against the door- frame. He sank into a corner seat in a state of mind that did not make for peace. The conductor, a small 173 THE SPECTATOR man, stepped in to take the fare, when the car gave a lurch that caused him to put his foot down on the Spectator's newly polished boot. " Why do you have such a man as that to run a car!" demanded the Spectator as though the little man were the president of the road. "I wouldn't, sir, I wouldn't. He ain't fit. He ain't a man at all, sir. Why, there ain't one of us but feel the Evil One has us in his grip when we're put on with that fellow. What do you think I have to do, sir, after a day's run with him? I buy a bottle of arnica and has to rub myself from head to foot. I'm black and blue. The passengers gets off, sir, but we have to stay on all day. It's hard on them, but think of us. No, sir! he ain't fit to run a goat-cart; but he 174 ON THE TROLLEY-CAR never damages anything but the pas- sengers, and they only kicks the conductors." The man went out of the door. A few moments afterward he put his head in and said poHtely : " It would do more good if they would kick the president." The car had started from the ter- minus with about half a dozen passen- gers, one a man of peculiar dignity of bearing, who put a box, somewhat larger than a shoe-box, down on the seat beside him, evidently hampered by the necessity of caring for it. Three or four blocks further on a man got into the car, seating himself directly behind the man with the box. The last passenger the Spec- tator read at once. He was the type of man who is always in a rush, always just on the verge of a great 175 THE SPECTATOR success, imbuing his family with such faith in his powers that every failure is to them, as to him, but the fore- runner of success. Presently he leaned forward, touched the owner of the box on the shoulder, saying, "Will you let me have the stamps on that box? They're just what I want. I wouldn't be able to get them in the ordinary run of my busi- ness, and I do want them," he added, as wistfully as a small boy. The owner of the box took out his knife and cut the stamps and postmark out of the paper, handing them to the man behind him. The joy of the receiver infected the giver, and those two men beamed in each other's faces. The man who received the stamps took a card from his pocket and handed it to the man before him, 176 ON THE TROLLEY-CAR saying, "That's my card. If ever I can do anything for you, call on me. I might be able to, and it would be a pleasure." The card was received, put in a beautiful leather wallet, and the man of the box tipped his hat as he returned to his newspaper. Behind, with radiant face, sat the man with the stamps, examining them with the intensest enjoyment. Suddenly he sprang to his feet, ex- claiming, "I've gone a mile out of my way!" and rushed from the car. On the floor lay the stamps, to be discovered when the car had gone several blocks. Attainment had again slipped through this passenger's fingers. The man with the box saw the stamps. An expression of dis- may passed over his face, followed by relief as he picked up the stamps, 177 THE SPECTATOR opened his wallet and carefully placed them beside the man's card. The Spectator felt as though a disaster had been averted. 178 XII A DAY IN OXFORD XII A DAY IN OXFORD f^g |T has been the good fortune 41 of the Spectator to come un- ^-^ der the spell of Oxford more than once, and always with a deep- ened sense of those enchantments of the Middle Ages which still linger among her towers, and of which one of the most gifted of her sons has spoken in memorable phrases. There are losses involved in seeing the ancient seat of learning in the long vacation, but there are gains as well. The "young barbarians" no longer crowd the narrow streets ; the great playgrounds are deserted; and the river is given over to idlers and pleasure parties. But one has the i8i THE SPECTATOR gardens largely for his own medita- tions. A tourist now and then ap- pears in some arched doorway, looks about, Baedeker in hand, and then flits quickly on to the next college on his list. It is the old Oxford, venerable with years and rich in imperishable memories, which the Spectator finds about him, and in which he easily loses himself. And one must lose himself in Oxford to feel its deeper charm and discern its more illusive beauty. The High Street may be the most impressive street in Europe as it curves between Queens' and University Colleges; but the real Oxford is not in this noble thoroughfare ; it is hidden away behind ivy-clad walls ; it is to be found in depths of foliage such as grows nowhere outside its gardens. 182 A DAY IN OXFORD In this very richness of leaf and vine lie not only the beauty but the secret of Oxford. One feels in these fragrant places of silence the ripe- ness of a long history, the slow, con- tinuous spiritual life of a great race. For Oxford, with its cloisters and gardens, has not only been a part of England, but has been, in a sense, its mirror and reflection. When Oxr ford has been stagnant, the higher life of England has been sluggish ; when Oxford has been alert and ardent, the life of the country has been full and deep. "When there is fighting at Oxford, there is war in England," the old adage ran ; and the broader movement of the nation has been predicted or repro- duced decade after decade in the narrower life of the University. In 183 THE SPECTATOR Oxford one sees about him the suc- cessive stages of English architec- ture, and one recalls the successive epochs in English history and the successive phases of English thought. These gardens have more than once lost their academic quietness in the tumult of revolution; and here the fiercest currents of antagonistic opin- ion have met in final struggle. The turf of these gardens, soft and deep with centuries of loving care, and the vines which have become as trees with the lapse of years, are the visible records and remembrances of a spiritual history which one may read in books, but which one enters into in a new way under the shadow of these towers. One feels everywhere in England the element which long human in- 184 A DAY IN OXFORD tercourse of the most intimate kind contributes to the landscape ; man and nature everywhere working to- gether to produce a gentle and varied loveliness which gives every detail of the scenery finish and order and charm. But this subtle enrichment of the soil with the work and com- panionship of forgotten generations, is nowhere more deeply felt than in Oxford, where time has builded with a finer genius than the great found- ers and architects. The scholar and thinker live more intimately with their surroundings than other men ; they are less active ; they are always at home ; they touch the things about them more constantly and closely. If it be true that something from the man passes into the walls which shelter him it is not difficult to un- 185 THE SPECTATOR derstand why Oxford casts such a spell upon the imagination. How many rare spirits have imparted something of themselves to these venerable houses and these shaded walks! Here they have meditated and loitered through years which have left no trace more ponderable than the light on the ancient dials ; here they have dreamed and worked and waited ; here they have endured and lost or won. Here, if one chooses to search for them, are the springs of some of the great move- ments which have stirred the world; and here, on every side, are places associated with poets, scholars, and statesmen whose story is the best heritage of a country rich in many imperishable things. Out of all this depth of experience, association, and 1 86 A DAY IN OXFORD history is diffused that atmosphere which envelops Oxford, and which is perhaps its most characteristic and precious quahty. Many subjects are better taught elsewhere ; there are in other places larger facilities for vari- ous kinds of work; but Oxford is preeminent among all the seats of learning for the atmosphere which stimulates the imagination and makes for ripeness of thought and taste, for that fine quality of mind which unites depth and vigor and sweet- ness in true proportions. But Oxford has many other as- pects of history, and one is remind- ed, as he walks through the quad- rangles of University College, that the pathos and tragedy of life have nowhere left more indelible traces. There, on the right, are the win- 187 THE SPECTATOR dows of the room in which Shelley spent a few brief months ; and a few steps bring one to the fine memorial which recalls with such poetic insight and feeling his exqui- site genius and his broken career. Under the blue dome, starred and lighted from above, lies the white marble figure, wasted, worn, naked, and yet inexpressibly beautiful; as if tossed up by the sea and caught in a place of eternal quiet and rest. There is no spot in England more full of touching and appealing mem- ories than this little room where the author of "Adonais" — the most beau- tiful of modern elegies — lies in effigy under the roof of his college. As one reads the words from "Adonais" which encircle the base of the dome, one feels again how happy it is that A DAY IN OXFORD the ashes of Shelley are in the cem- etery at Rome with the dust of Keats : two sons of song who rest together after the pain of that com- mon life of suffering in which both shared. A few steps and one is again in a garden ; and what has the world to show more beautiful ! A back- ground of old buildings hung with ivy; towers and spires in the dis- tance; perhaps a bit of the old city wall at the back, with a great mass of deep green foliage overhanging the broken bastion ; a stretch of soft level greensward in front ; long lines of flowers and rich masses of leaves concealing great trunks encircling the whole. Not an inch of ground is bare ; everywhere life runs riot in leaf or color. The ivy hangs in great 189 THE SPECTATOR masses, the shrubs seem impene- trable, the massive trees sweep the ground with their branches. Over- head the sky is of a wonderful soft- ness, and the clouds hang low as if they were on intimate terms with this quiet world of greenness. The rushing modern world lies so far away that it is inaudible ; it ought to be easy in such places to hear the eternal voices, and to know, hour by hour, that the things of the mind are eternal, while the things of the hands are for the hour. Here, surely, knowledge, thought and im- agination ought to bear that fruit which ripens only in silence, soli- tude, and the long leisure of days that pass and leave no sound. 190 XIII A GLIMPSE OF NEW YORK'S CHINATOWN XIII A GLIMPSE OF NEW YORK'S CHINATOWN f^ iHEY are an enigmatical lot, /|l these expatriated Chinamen ^^ — and doubtless we are so to them. But the mythical man from Mars would probably find more to wonder at in Chinatown than else- where in New York. And to one who drops off the cable car at Pell Street and the Bowery, and suddenly finds himself in the Orient, the stores, the signs, the occupations, the faces, — "the breeches, and all that, are so queer." It is in the evening, and preferably late at night, that China- town must be seen. The Chinamen work and play late, and get up from 193 THE SPECTATOR bed at high noon. "Early to bed and early to rise" is not a Chinese pro- verb. But these little yellow men are hardy, and have no nerves, and don't require the rest that we do. Their recreation is their rest, quite as much as sleep. So you find Mott and Pell Streets in full blast only when good Americans, not connected with the daily press, are sweetly dreaming. Then the opium joints, the theater, the gambling-places, and the restaurants are liveliest. Strange that this impassive race should care for the theater; but it seems to be a passion with them where it is only a diversion with us. On the night when the Spectator visited the Chinese theater, the place was so full that there was standing room only, and the performance was 194 NEW YORK'S CHINATOWN to continue for hours, and even days — or rather nights ; for the play was to run for three nights before the finale I The Spectator gazed for some minutes at the doings on the stage, trying to find what it was that inter- ested the audience. A man dressed in flowing robes and with a miter on his head was slowly chanting in a high key, to the weird music of sharp -sounding instruments whose rhythm grew upon one with its un- canny suggestiveness of the snake- charming fakirs of India. Presently the mitered individual retired to make room for a creature with a still sharper falsetto voice, evidently — or presumably — a woman. More chant- ing, accompanied with swaying mo- tions, occasionally joined in by others on the stage. And so the play went 195 THE SPECTATOR on. Presently what we should call a "sensation" went through the au- dience. Heads were turned from the stage to the door. Two gaily robed figures were passing out by a private passage. The Spectator leaned forward and asked a Chinaman with a derby hat on his head (by that sign indicating that he spoke English) what it was all about. "Those are Chinese ladies who have been visiting the theater," was the explanation. "Chinese ladies don't often go to the theater, and when they do they attract attention." "And what are the actors doing on the stage?" "Oh, that man with the high hat is a judge, and he is going to try the woman who has helped her lover to escape from prison by disguising him in her dress 196 NEW YORK'S CHINATOWN while she took his place in the cell." So it was the old, old story that was being told on the Chinese stage — love, persecution, rescue, heroism — or rather heroinism in this case, for the hero was safe beyond the scenes, and would not appear in the play, until perhaps the next night. The Spectator had heard that women were never allowed upon the stage in China, but he was told that two actresses appeared in this play. This, perhaps, was a concession to Amer- ican taste, but in no other respect, apparently, had Western ideas influ- enced the performance. No vaude- ville — no living pictures — no danc- ing — no acrobatic divertisements : all decorous and conventional! — what a paradise must the Celestial Empire be for followers of "the legitimate"! 197 THE SPECTATOR The Spectator went curiously astray in his search for the "joss-house." The first Chinaman he asked as to the whereabouts of the joss-house failed to understand the question, and the Spectator varied it by ask- ing for the "Chinese church." Oh, yes, "China church" was on Doyers Street. And there the Spectator found — a Christian mission. Now the Spectator has great respect for the Christian mission, but when one is looking for genuine heathenism and climbs weary flights of stairs to find it, and then walks into an evan- gelical meeting, he feels somewhat as a bad boy might who, after mak- ing a stealthy foray on the cake- box, discovers in it only a loaf of Graham bread. But the way to the joss-house was learned at the mis- 198 NEW YORK'S CHINATOWN sion, and soon the Spectator had walked up other flights of stairs and was in the sanctum of the heathen deities. It is hard to learn from the Chinese here just how much of re- ligion finds place in the joss-house, but the Spectator judges that it is not much, and that if it were not for the superstitions of the gambling Chinese the joss-house would be ill supported. The functionary in charge at once proposed to tell the fortune of the friend by whom the Spectator was accompanied — and, lest misunderstanding arise, be it known that when the Spectator speaks of a friend, unless otherwise stated the friend is of the feminine gender. Of course the friend was willing (all ladies, even sociological students, are secret worshipers of the occult, and 199 THE SPECTATOR eager to have past or future revealed) , and the divinationist at once lit in- cense-tapers, threw huge wooden dice on the floor, and from a col- lection of bamboo straws proceeded to reveal pleasing facts as to good luck, a desirable match, numerous descendants, etc., etc., very much after the fashion of a Western sooth- sayer. Incense, altars, dragons, and teakwood furniture make up the para- phernalia of the joss-house; not omitting a negro factotum who, with the aid of a missing front tooth, talks Chinese to the habitues of the place, and, with an original vocab- ulary of English, explains the "relig- ion" to the visitors. In visiting an opium joint it is necessary to have an introduction — not, perhaps, as an indorsement of 200 NEW YORK'S CHINATOWN character, but more as an "evidence of good faith." A couple of China- men were engaged in trying to ap- pear busy at the counter of a "fake" laundry through which one passed to the precincts of the seductive pipe. Here, in bunks built around the sides of a large room, lay the devotees of opium. One of them was just lighting up and permitted the visitors to witness the operation. He put a tiny bead of black wax into the bowl of the pipe, lit it, and drew strongly. After smoking a few minutes he gave himself up to the supposedly delicious sensations of the "pipe-dream," looking languidly comfortable and happy. The smok- ers here were all men and Mongo- lians, but in the early morning the up -town guests, high-toned victims 20 1 THE SPECTATOR of the habit, come down in cabs, it is said, to enjoy their morning pipe of the strange intoxicant. "Why do they do such things ? " was the irre- pressible query; to which the only reasonable answer seemed to be the Carlylean one, "They're mostly fools." Or else one might give the answer of Tolstoi in "War and Peace" — that mankind is ever seeking to forget present existence in the pursuit of a dream-world of imagined happiness. The Chinese, however, do not live on dreams alone. Nor yet only on rice, as is the prevalent opinion. The popular dish in the restaurants of Chinatown is "chop suey," a con- glomeration which at first seems for- bidding to the Western palate, but, courageously attacked, proves really appetizing. It is a mess of veal, 202 NEW YORK'S CHINATOWN mushrooms, parsley, and a kind of macaroni, with a pecuHar pungent sauce superadded and with a side dish of rice. It is served smoking hot, and with it some little cups of delicious Oolong tea poured from a bowl of more generous dimensions, wherein the tea is steeped and re- mains hot. Chop-sticks are furnished to Chinese and American patrons alike, and with a little practice the chop suey can readily, though not always gracefully, be transferred from cup to lip. The curious guest may also sample the "sake" — or rice- wine, — which, so the Spectator is in- formed, tastes not unlike Medford rum. Strange that Puritan and pa- gan tastes, in one particular at least, should run in the same channel ! No bread is served at these restaur- 203 THE SPECTATOR ants, a Chinaman apparently not car- ing for anything but soft food. This is just the ordinary fare at a Chinese restaurant. Private parties — some- times numbering scores or hundreds of guests, as on the occasion of the birth of a son to one of the well- to-do Chinese — may experiment with shark-fin soup, birds'-nest pudding, eggs preserved for a dozen years and thereby acquiring a bouquet as delicious to a Chinaman as that of a rare wine to a French connois- seur, etc., etc. "Marrowy crapes of China silk" may be seen in some of the shops, and also curiously carved fans, and common ones which the Chinamen carry in a fold of their blouse, at the back of the neck. That the Chinese are not without humor could 204 NEW YORK'S CHINATOWN be seen in the quiet enjoyment with which some of them watched a com- patriot who came out of a shop with a curious wooden top which he pro- ceeded to spin on the electric-lighted street, for the amusement of an elfish Chinese child, a rara avis here. The top was of a peculiarly lively nature, and spun across the street, emitting a weird whistle, to the delight of young and old. But the shops are lacking in the delicate work of the Japanese, and the Spectator found it impossible to discover a really ugly pagan ivory god for a mascot, and was obliged to put up with a flimsy paper divinity of presumably small intercessory puissance. The shop- keepers are, like their kind the world over, affable in their taciturn way to possible customers, and they pre- 205 THE SPECTATOR sent not the least interesting phase of an evening's tour through this strange little section of Pekin that is to be found within five minutes' walk of New York's City Hall. 206 XIV SAN FRANCISCO'S CHINATOWN XIV SAN FRANCISCO'S CHINATOWN 0^g T has always seemed to the 41 Spectator that all Chinamen ^•^ were turned out of the same mold. Those he met in the street, in the cars, and in the laundries all looked alike. Recently he had occa- sion, however, to come into much closer contact with them, as they are on our Western coast, and he dis- covered that their resemblance to one another was the result of the leveling tendency of distance; Chinamen, like babies, are distinguishable — when you know them. In San Francisco there are men whose profession it is to show visitors through Chinatown by lurid gas light. 209 THE SPECTATOR Let it be said in justice and to their credit that they are entirely familiar with the district, acquainted with most of the Chinamen, sometimes master of a little patois, and thor- oughly at home in the Chinese streets and swarming tenements. Naturally they can lead a stranger quickly and easily to the points of interest ; direct to the joss house, for instance, where they keep on friendly terms with the temple guardian by informing their parties that it is proper to purchase tapers at a joss house. They have on their list a small-foot woman. She can be seen in a stuffy room at the head of a narrow flight of stairs, and her foot, what there is of it, is well worth the climb. Her elder daugh- ter's feet, although they do not show the same degree of painful care and 210 SAN FRANCISCO'S CHINATOWN diminutiveness, still fairly represent the Celestial ideal, but the baby girl, the degenerate of her family, is kick- ing and stamping about — enjoying life, liberty, and the pursuit of happi- ness, at least as far as her feet are concerned. The guide reminds his patrons not to leave without remem- bering the baby. The "high-toned" restaurant is visited, of course. The wealthy mer- chants of Chinatown use this as their club, their bank, and safety deposit vault. They have, back of the eating- room, a heavy iron chest in which they store their valuables. Its door fairly bristles with padlocks, as each of the merchants puts his own fasten- ing upon it. No member, therefore, has access to the chest save in the presence of all the others. This 211 THE SPECTATOR restaurant suggests the limit of high life and high living in Chinatown, and the subterranean kitchens hint at the opposite extreme. Here food can be bought ready cooked or brought to be cooked, and the busi- ness is kept up all night. When you have crept down a cellar stair- way and find yourself surrounded by ovens, the only light a greasy, flaring dip, the very activity of the place looks stealthy to you, and you think of Dante's descent. A good guide never spares his parties a sight of the "Old Sot," a battered Chinaman who sleeps his life away where you see him, in a niche in the stone wall, nor of the "Outcast," a neat, harmless -looking Oriental who has outraged some law of the Chinese social or political code 212 SAN FRANCISCO'S CHINATOWN and now can find no roof to shelter him, and must therefore live in a small tent of his own making. His only occupation is keeping this tent scrupulously clean for the inspection of strangers. The guide plaintively explains that the ostracism of this unfortunate prevents his making a living. If the guide is inclined to give his money's worth of information, he gathers his party about him and dis- courses, sotto voce, on the two great Chinese secret societies that hold Chinatown and the San Francisco police in the hollow of their hands. If offense is taken at any of tlfeir crimes and they are pursued, they have a hundred places of conceal- ment and avenues of escape. The interiors of their houses are arranged 213 THE SPECTATOR with this contingency in view. The guide reassures his parties that the district is no longer what it was ; it is now fairly under control of the detective bureau ; the real danger now is fire. With all the little fires in front of doorways, down in cellars, and back in courtyards, a great con- flagration sooner or later will wipe out Chinatown and possibly sweep over the rest of the city; but it is practically out of the question to forbid the numerous flames the Chinamen have burning everjrwhere to keep off the evil spirit. The guide has two trump cards, and he plays them last — his opium den and his leper. On the ground floor of one of the tenements, known as the Palace Hotel, from its con- struction around a court, is the 214 SAN FRANCISCO'S CHINATOWN opium den — a room with thick, heavy atmosphere and a couple of sleeping Chinamen. One man, near the door, is awake, and, after a mon- etary greeting, he smokes for the visitor, and makes what the guide assures you is an opium inspiration of remarkable length. This man is always smoking when parties arrive ; unlike his fellows he is never over- come, and is always ready for exhibi- tions. The leper lives on the same floor, and a pitiful object he is — an old man covered with a most revolt- ing disease. Farther south on the American coast of the Pacific, not far beyond Monterey, is a complete village of Chinese, a fishing hamlet that hugs the beach. It is an isolated settle- ment of Mongolians, and the English 215 THE SPECTATOR language is neither spoken nor under- stood. It contains perhaps a hundred persons, living in low, weather-beaten huts that face a winding street, a street that yields to the irregular out- line of the coast. Probably because these Chinese fishermen have little to offer for sale, their village attracts few visitors. There are only two stores, and these are not curio ba- zaars, but general utility depots for the villagers' own use, where they supply themselves with clothing, cot- ton blouses of the cheapest variety, black, thick-soled slippers, stiff skull caps, and a few simple articles of food. If the shops contain anything else, the white man is certainly not aware of the fact. It is a favorite coquetry of Chinese shopkeepers, however, to conceal their wares. 216 SAN FRANCISCO'S CHINATOWN The only village attraction of in- terest to an American buyer are the pearls from the Abalone shell-fish ; imperfect, second-class pearls, of every shade, shape, and size, from the tiny, oily looking grains to the great, fantastic, distorted monsters, that are set by the jewelers in what- ever design their form suggests — an elephant, a bunch of grapes, a beetle, as the case may be. The little pearly specks are found constantly by the fisherman, but the big pearls are rare, and the visitor goes along bow- ing to the Chinamen in their door- ways and asking them in baby-talk or pigeon-English — they actually do understand it better — "if they hav^^ pearl?" Some seem not to under- stand, some seem not to want to. At last you get an answer. 217 THE SPECTATOR "Me havee pearl!" and the man offers you a handful of mimic dew- drops — the handful for fifty cents. "No, no, bigee, largee ones," you answer, with gesticulations. You may not find what you seek. Of course, there may be no large pearl, just then, in the village, but, more probably, the lucky fisherman who made the last find is too typical a Chinaman to exhibit his treasure at all, or, at least, until you promise to buy. At one place is a jog in the street where the huts stand slightly back, making a miniature town-square, in the center of which some upright boards have been set. To these are fastened tapers and candles and gay tinsel ornaments, like narrow fans with handles. These fans must be 218 SAN FRANCISCO'S CHINATOWN full of significance to a Chinaman if there is any relation whatever be- tween their meaning and their com- plicated structure. The Spectator has seen on one small fan, not more than four or five inches broad by six or eight tall, a little doll attached by a wire around its body, tinsel rosettes, the black-and-white-face of an isinglass watch, a gilt lace ruffle around as a border, and out of the point at the top a bunch of peacock's feathers ! These fan ornaments are used in great numbers at the time of the Chinese Christmas ; then all the people supply themselves for the grand procession. The women also treat themselves to special finery for that occasion, in the form of new headgear — crowns with fringe to hang over their foreheads. The 219 THE SPECTATOR suspiciously idolatrous - looking pub- lic square and the slot gambling ma- chine, in one of the stores, form a rather fleet pair of rivals for the small Young Men's Christian Association sign nailed on one of the huts in the midst of unreadable hieroglyphics. 220 XV THE ART OF SHOP- LIFTING XV THE ART OF SHOPLIFTING 0^ |H£ Spectator is not learned in /|l the law, and does not know ^"^ whether he is particeps criminis in a little matter involving the steal- ing of a brierwood pipe of the value of $2. 49. He feels very uncomfort- able about it, however, and is very sorry indeed that he happened to be where he saw, or thinks he saw, the theft committed. It was in a shop the other day — the kind of shop where articles that should be sold at two dollars are marked two-forty- nine, so that purchasers may be deluded into the notion that the fair selling price is two-fifty — and at the tobacco -counter were a man and 223 THE SPECTATOR woman who appeared much puzzled as to which of two pipes to take. Finally one was chosen, and this with other purchases was to be made into a package. While the salesman was occupied in sending the things to the desk, the woman, in the most matter-of-fact way, put the discarded pipe into her pocket, which appeared to be somewhere in the mysterious back folds of her skirt. The Spec- tator does not show his every emotion in his face, but he verily believes that his eyes bulged out much fur- ther than usual when he saw this apparently respectable woman thus appropriate what did not belong to her. Was the woman deliberately stealing, or had she put the pipe in her pocket in a moment of abstrac- tion, and therefore unconsciously? 224 ART OF SHOPLIFTING If the latter, she would find it out when she got home, and would then very likely bring the pipe back with regretful apologies. But was it the duty of the Spectator to speak to the woman or to the salesman? The Spectator does not know to this moment what his duty was under the circumstances. Had he been mistaken, and merely thought that he had seen the woman do the thing, then to have mentioned it would have been an unforgivable interference, a meddling in business in which he was not concerned. Indeed, a mis- take would have been as bad as a crime. Then, if the woman had taken it unconsciously, she would re- store it and no harm would be done, while if he spoke she would be sub- ject to a deep mortification, and also 225 THE SPECTATOR be an object of undeserved suspicion. Then, again, if she were really steal- ing, it was pretty certain that the poor salesman, not the opulent mer- chant, would have to make good the value of the theft. These thoughts galloped through the Spectator's mind, and he held his peace, for he knew of other happenings in similar shops, happenings which might have led to serious trouble and worked permanent harm to entirely innocent persons. No less a person than Mrs. Spec- tator, when once on a shopping tour in town, stopped at one of these great bazars which are called depart- ment stores, and bought a new pocketbook. When she reached home in the evening she had the purchased pocketbook wrapped in a 226 ART OF SHOPLIFTING neat package in her handbag, and two pocketbooks unwrapped but ex- actly like the one bought. How in the world did they get in the bag? The good lady did not know, but was inclined to be amused at the con- tretemps. But the Spectator got hot and cold as he thought of what might have happened to his wife. In most of these shops it is equivalent to a confession of stealing to have in one's possession an article belonging to the stock and not regularly wrapped up. Further than this, she had the pocket- books and had made no pretense of buying more than one. Now, sup- pose some one had seen these pocket- books put into the handbag — for they must have been put there. Pocket- books do not fly; it is only that which pocketbooks are made to hold 227 THE SPECTATOR which grows wings and gets away no one knows why or where. So the evidence was complete that some one put them in the bag. Who else put them in Mrs. Spectator's bag but Mrs. Spectator? Suppose, again, that the person who saw the pocket- books put in the bag had spoken and the lady had been arrested. Good gracious ! She would have been mor- tified to death. Her possession of them would have been conclusive evidence against her, and her only chance to escape punishment would have rested on the clemency of the shop -owners. Or, maybe, in con- sideration of previous good character, the magistrate might have been in- duced to suspend sentence. But the lady would have been a marked woman for life, and evil gossip would 228 ART OF SHOPLIFTING have wagged its malicious tongue wherever she appeared, or whenever her name was mentioned. So, in the pipe incident, the Spec- tator held his peace, as perhaps some one else may have done that hot day last summer when Mrs. Spectator got three pocketbooks in purchasing one. The next day the Spectator went to town for the express purpose of returning the pocketbooks. That was his only business in town, but the business would not wait. At the shop he explained his errand and re- stored the property. He was not treated with any soothing courtesy. "Some women are very careless," said the manager, with no word of thanks. "Some managers are very uncivil," is what the Spectator did not rejoin. He did not think of this till he was 229 THE SPECTATOR half a block away on his return journey to the country. Then the Spectator had an experi- ence of his own just before Christmas. He stopped in a shop and bought a copy of Rostand's "L'Aiglon." While it was being wrapped and change was being made, he picked up a very prettily bound copy of selections from Epictetus. This, too, he purchased, and when it was given to him he unwrapped it and carried it in his hand, as he meant to read it while in the street-car. Before he had taken twenty steps towards the outer door he was stopped by a Hebraic - looking person wearing a hat, and by that token not an official of the shop. "Where did you get that book?" he asked, with aggres- sive offense in word and tone and 230 ART OF SHOPLIFTING look. "That does not concern you," the Spectator replied, with what cold hauteur he could command on the spur of the moment. "But it does," said the Hebraic-looking individual, with a sinister leer ; " I am the store detective. You come with me." And he caught hold of the Spec- tator's arm; the Spectator was now under arrest. It was not twenty seconds before the girl who had sold the Epictetus explained to the detec- tive that the transaction was proper, and the Spectator was released from custody. What did he do? He de- clines to tell. He told several persons about it, and the gentle among his acquaintances say that he acted vio- lently, because the detective was only doing his duty in carrying out a regulation that unwrapped things 231 THE SPECTATOR must not be taken from the store. It was idle for the Spectator to argue that no shopkeeper had the authority to make regulations which violated and invaded the individual rights of any man or woman; it was no use for him to assert that being a detec- tive was a hazardous occupation, and the man who accepted such a post must accept the peril, at least, of his mistakes. The gentle ladies would have no such defense. And perhaps they are in the right ; but if all men in all times had thus meekly submitted, the majority of us would still be serfs and vassals, and the strong arms of hereditary masters could still hold millions of cringing minions in a debasing slavery. Not all of the mistakes of this kind, however, are tragical. One that the 232 ART OF SHOPLIFTING Spectator knows of had more than one ludicrous side to it. A lady of commanding appearance and a crown of gray hair which adds to her look of distinction went into a shop last spring and stopped at a counter quite near the door. She laid her parasol on the counter and attended to her business, which consisted of match- ing lace, and therefore took much time and careful attention. When she had finished, she took in her hand what she supposed to be her parasol and went into the street. After going half a block she was seized by a bareheaded man who, almost breathless with hurry, ex- claimed : "What do you mean by stealing that feather duster?" The lady looked at what she had in her hand. It was a feather duster, a 233 THE SPECTATOR very large, very red feather duster. "Come back, come back," the man shouted, in loud excitement. "Cer- tainly, certainly," said the lady, sweetly; "I thought it was my para- sol." And in the shop on the counter there was the parasol among the feather dusters. There were bows and smiles and half-spoken apologies, and the lady went her way not in the least ofifended, but mightily amused at the figure she had cut in the crowded street with that great red feather duster in her hand. 234- XVI UMBRELLA TALES XVI UMBRELLA TALES ^TJTJT" HEN a man's name gets a ill P^^'^^ ^^ the Encyclopjedia Britannica it may be said that his fame is tolerably secure. And if it stays there through many editions, including the last, then his place may be regarded as fixed. That is what has happened to Jonas Hanwell, who, a century and a half ago, introduced the umbrella into England from the Far East, where he had been a traveler and trader. Indeed, in Europe, until these en- lightened days, when everybody knows everything, Hanwell used to be regarded as the inventor of the umbrella, and the French called it 237 THE SPECTATOR a "Hanwell" in times so recent that it is so set down in the Francais- Anglais dictionary used by the Spec- tator's mother in her girlhood, though the name parapluie is also given. A canny conservative used to say : "Never lend an umbrella if you ever expect to get it back again." It may be that in our grandfather's day this was so, but it is not now the case. The Spectator never hesitates to lend an umbrella to any one to whom he would lend anything, and he has never failed to get it back. He has even gone so far as to lend his um- brella to a lady with whom he had no acquaintance ; this, too, he got back, together with a most charming note of thanks. The high fortunes of one of the Spectator's friends have 238 UMBRELLA TALES to do with the lending of an um- brella, or rather the offer to lend one. A heavy rain came up suddenly one day and an old gentleman who had recently been ill was in a street- car with the Spectator's friend. "Dear, dear," said the old gentle- man, "I shall get drenched." "That would be too bad," said the Spec- tator's friend; "pray take my um- brella." "No, no, but you may put me in a cab." At the first point of available shelter the Spectator's friend and the old gentleman got out of the car, and in a little while the latter was in a cab and safely on his way home. He had asked for the name of his new friend, but that young gentleman said: "It is not worth while, sir. Some one some day will pay this back to my father. 239 THE SPECTATOR And, besides, it is nothing any- how." Two months later the same old gentleman entered a crowded car that was going downtown. The Spec- tator's friend had a seat and insisted on the elder man taking it. Later the younger got a seat by the elder. They entered into conversation. Business cards were exchanged. The elder was a very rich banker ; the younger a not very prosperous dealer in investment securities. The elder threw commissions in the way of the younger, and finding him worthy made the business connection closer, until finally he was partner and then successor. Now he is a rich man, and were he to put a coat of arms on the panel of his carriage door, an umbrella in an extended hand 240 UMBRELLA TALES should be a part of the heraldic device. The Spectator does not pretend to say he never lost an umbrella. He has lost lots of them and expects with confident sadness to lose more, but he never lost any by lending. One that he lost he shall never forget. Years ago the Spectator lived in an old hotel, now, alas ! no more, and a party of friends often spent the evening in his rooms playing whist. The Spectator had recently pur- chased in London an umbrella of notable slimness and also with un- mistakable individuality in the handle. There never had been just such an umbrella and never will be again. Well, when the next rain came, the Spectator's much -prized umbrella was missing. He raised no little of 24.1 THE SPECTATOR a row in the hotel, and it was searched for high and low, but was not found. Two years later a Justice of the New York Supreme Court called on the Spectator and placed an umbrella on the Spectator's desk, just in front of him. The Spectator was embarrassed when he recognized it, for the Judge had been one of the whist party, and had not called to make restitu- tion, but to discuss another matter entirely. The Spectator did not mention the umbrella, and the Judge carried it of? jauntily enough, swing- ing it with a dandified gesture which seemed to indicate that he knew a good thing when he had it. Two years more passed and the Spectator was living in London. Again he had a visit from the Judge ; and the Judge had the same um- 242 UMBRELLA TALES brella. This time the Spectator was not too much surprised to speak, so he asked: "Where did you get that umbrella, Judge?" "Plagued if I know," the Judge answered; "I have had it for years and have had It re- covered twice, but I never did know how I got it. I suppose some one left it at my house." Then the Spec- tator told his story, and the Judge, assuming his most benchlike manner, gave judgment: "Recovery is barred by statute of limitations, and besides the property has already been re- covered at least twice ; so the Court rules that the defendant purchase for the plaintiff the umbrella which in all London best suits the plaintiff's fancy." And the judgment of the Court was carried out that afternoon. It is singular what freak-like um- 243 THE SPECTATOR brellas are come across now and then. In the Latin countries, where it is not considered ungallant for one gentleman to poke another between the ribs, or even in the back, with a stiletto, it is not uncommon for the handle and stick of an umbrella to contain a thin, sharp sword which is released by a spring. Indeed, the Spectator has seen an umbrella which was also a rifle of quite formidable carrying power. With such a weapon even a tenderfoot might get the drop on the worst of frontier rufHans. But the ordinary every-day umbrella, in skilful and determined hands, can be used effectively both in offense and defense. The Spectator has seen diagrams of instruction showing what a lady should do with her umbrella in case of attack by a man. These 244 UMBRELLA TALES diagrams, however, were particularly idiotic, as they presupposed that the brutal man would do exactly what the attacked lady required that he should do so that she could get in her fine work. They were like that broadsword exercise the boys used to play with laths — an exercise not un- known now on the melodramatic stage — three times up, three times down, then biflf, biflf, bang, and the villain falls dead. As a matter of fact, however, even a weak woman could poke a strong man's eye out with an umbrella, and put him hors de combat before he could say "Jack Robinson." The most curious umbrella, how- ever, the Spectator ever heard of was that which had a pane of glass in one of the folds, so that in a driv- 245 THE SPECTATOR ing rain-storm the carrier of the umbrella could hold it down in front of him and still see ahead. He first saw an account of this umbrella in an English paper as the latest Ameri- can invention, and the Spectator believed that another Englishman had been gulled by a Yankee yarn. But later he knew that such an um- brella had really been patented and put on the market by the same man who designed a washstand which was by turns to be itself a baby's cradle, a dining-table, a rocking-chair, and a cofEn. No limitations could ham- per the inventive faculties of this genius. But the English have fooled themselves as to American umbrellas. In one of the numerous slang dic- tionaries the editor thus defines "jag": "An Americanism for um- 246 UMBRELLA TALES brella;" then he quotes from a St. Louis paper: "Last Sunday morning the Rev. Mr. Brown was seen walk- ing down the street in the rain, carrying a large, fine jag." 247 XVII THE WOMAN'S PAGE XVII THE WOMAN'S PAGE Mm jON'T talk to me about the 4^ Advancement of Woman," I said one of the Spectator's feminine friends to him the other day, "as long as any newspaper has a Woman's Page I Did you ever read the Woman's Page? Of course not ; I never do myself, for that matter. But one can't help noticing the glaring drivel of it, even com- pared to the rest of the paper. And there must be plenty of women who do read it, for it has answers to correspondents, and all that sort of thing. I used to feel that as long as man had fourteen pockets, and woman hadn't one, the sexes would 251 THE SPECTATOR remain unequal, but after all, that's a surface affair. I feel now that as long as man has the rest of the newspaper, and woman the Wo- man's Page, the case is more hope- less still!" The Spectator was interested in this expert feminine opinion ; and as it was a subject to which his serious attention had never before been directed, he determined to read the Woman's Page for himself. His observations have been cursory, and have extended only, so far, over a period of two weeks ; but his curi- osity is, so to speak, satiated. He does not want to stock his memory with any more recipes for removing sunburn and freckles, nor any more menus for a household of six people at fifty cents a day, nor any more 252 THE WOMAN'S PAGE new occupations for women, nor any "Fashion Dots and Doings," nor additional "Notes of Woman's Progress," nor even any bit of "Sun- shine Poetry," nor advice to young mothers. The test of a good love- letter is said to be that it should contain nothing of any interest what- ever except to the one who inspires it. The Woman's Page or column seems to be run upon this principle, and to exclude an outside reader by containing nothing that can possibly interest him for a moment. But do its fashions, sensations, fancy-work, and feminine fads really interest the intelligent woman? and is the Spec- tator's friend, with her frank aver- sion to it, a freak or an average reader? The Spectator would like to know, for it raises a psychological 253 THE SPECTATOR question as to the variation of the masculine and feminine reader that is most interesting. Is the average woman, for instance, actually interested in reading and making her own such classes of facts as the following headings (taken at random from our large city dailies, not all yellow journals either) show forth: "Girl Collector of Human Skulls," "Pocket Monkeys Now in Favor as Pets," "Woman and Phre- nology — Marriages Made by Bumps," "The Only Woman Skipper," "A New Face Given to Countess C ," "Twenty Pretty Kansas Girls Form a Brass Band," "Woman as an Auc- tioneer," "Men who Fall in Love with Women's Portraits," "Fifty Years a Factory Girl," and so on? One paragraph headed "Sit Still and 254 THE WOMAN'S PAGE Rest Your Face" advises the re- moval of wrinkles by this form of rest-cure. The Spectator remembers hearing of a girl once who was "so homely that she had to sit up nights to rest her face," but he never heard that the process was beautifying be- fore. "Ladies' Maids Live Longest" is another heading, and the statistics marshaled under it are made to prove that even the clergy, hitherto supposed to be the longest-lived of mortals, must yield to the abigails, since "between twenty-five and sixty- five years of age, only eight out of a thousand ladies' maids die." If the statistics were not so positive, the same comment might be made upon this supposed longevity that gives point to the well-known and cynical conundrum, "Why do mar- 255 THE SPECTATOR ried people live longer than single ones?" "They don't; it only seems longer." For surely, to be a lady's maid cannot be an easy or pleasant existence. The pictures upon the Woman's Page usually match the text. The Spectator has a blurred remembrance of many score of bewildering fashion effects, and of innumerable portraits of women who have done unusual things. The photograph of a wo- man who has made a success as an undertaker in a western town re- mains in the memory particularly, because, being evidently clad in a ball gown, the mixed suggestion of gayety and grief was striking. The Princess Waldemar of somewhere- or-other, in fireman's costume, hel- met and all, and with her royal 256 THE WOMAN'S PAGE hands in her pockets, also stands out in the Spectator's mind with vivid force. "The Biggest Fish Ever Caught by a Woman" almost filled one Woman's Page, and the por- traits of "Twenty American Heir- esses About to Storm Europe" left barely room for the text describing their meditated descent upon the Old World, which might well trem- ble before their determined charms, as reproduced in half-tone smudgi- ness. The half-tones upon the Wo- man's Page seem smudgier, indeed, than in any other part of the paper — but this may be only the fancy of one unused to such striking femi- nine subjects. The Spectator had the curiosity to ask a journalistic friend as to the editors of the various Woman's Pages, 257 THE SPECTATOR and heard some interesting facts about their work. Not many wo- men hold such positions long; they are exacting in their demands, and require an unusual combination of powers — which seems probable. One young woman, however, fresh from a convent west of the Mississippi, came to New York at eighteen and edited the Woman's Page of a very large and very yellow newspaper for several years, making a great success of it. Another, born on a western ranch, brought up like Bret Harte's breezy heroines, and fond of riding bareback over the plains, took up this form of journalism and intro- duced a peculiarly domestic and philanthropic department into the Woman's Page of a great eastern daily that still remains a permanent 258 THE WOMAN'S PAGE feature, though she herself has left the staff. One point seems to show that the Woman's Page is read, and read largely. Advertisements upon it com- mand high prices. This pecuniary profit smooths over the rubs hat sometimes occur between the femi- nine department and the rest of the paper. For instance, not long ago, a lot of highly expensive and spe- cially prepared cloth was ordered for use in some illustrating process by a big city newspaper. The Spec- tator leaves it to those who under- stand such matters to say exactly why it was required, for he doesn't know. But the fact remains that it was ordered, and that it never turned up. The delay was great and vexatious. The manufacturers insisted that the 259 THE SPECTATOR cloth had been sent on time, how- ever, and the whole staff was finally roused up to help in the search. At this juncture the editor of the Woman's Page remembered that a package of cloth had been brought to her, but that she thought it was for a little society that had recently organized among the readers of her page — a society that distributed any- thing and everything to anybody and everybody who needed it. She had therefore joyfully cut the cloth into neat square pieces, and sent it off to various "shut-ins" from Oregon to Florida, to make tidies, pincushions, etc., of it, as their fancy willed. She further explained, sweetly, that it had pleased the society very much, and that grateful letters were begin- ning to be received from the near- 260 THE WOMAN'S PAGE est points. The feelings of the art editor may be imagined — but, after all, as the business manager re- marked, "it was a good piece of advertising, though it came high ! " The Spectator has always frowned upon the dime novel for the small boy. He cannot exactly see how the Woman's Page can be profitable reading for the American woman, young or old. There are excep- tions, of course ; but when his fair friend called it "glaring drivel," she used only the plain English of the situation. The women of America are thought to be the most clever, the most charming, and the most superior of their sex the world over; but while the Woman's Page remains what it is, they can hardly expect the world to believe the claim. The 261 THE SPECTATOR opponent of feminine progress might well paraphrase Beranger's famous saying and exclaim, "Let me write the Woman's Page for a nation, and I care not who endows its women's colleges I " 262